'BradCast' 9/23/2025 (Our Insane U.S. President at the U.N.; Homan Bribery Update; Kimmel Censorship Update)

Effective immediately the FDA will be notifying physicians at the use of Ascent, well, let's see how we say that. Acetaminophen. Is that okay? Yes, that's okay. Good boy. Good boy. on the stairs. Clouds to the letter me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you. I am. From Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles, this is the broadcast. As heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in LA, and on dozens of other fine affiliate stations on both the airwaves and the internet surround the country and the world. Blanketing Planet Earth. I'm Brad Friedman, your friendly investigative blogger, journalist, troublemaker, muckraker, and all around, swell fellow, says me from bradblog.com. Thank you very much for joining us for another thrilling edition. of the broadcast. All right. As usual, for change, a lot going on today, including Donald Trump's rambling, occasionally threatening, often nonsensical speech at the UN on Tuesday, following his rambling, occasionally threatening, often nonsensical remarks at the White House on Monday, pretending to have found the cause of autism. As you heard a part of there at the top of the show, spoiler alert, despite Trump's remarks on Monday with Health and Human Services Secretary and health care conspiracist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.., experts who actually study autism, as opposed to those who are paid to testify against Tylenol's maker, do not actually believe that science reveals a link between acetaminophen taken by pregnant women. and autism in their babies. Perhaps we will get to some of that today. We'll see and more, including Desi Doyen and our latest Green News report. Hello, Desiree. Hey. But it looks like we need to start at least from where we left off on yesterday's show, given at least two major updates into major stories that we covered on yesterday's brandcast. We begin with the story of allegations that Donald Trump's so-called border czar Tom Homan was taped accepting $50,000. In cash in a takeout food bag from undercover law enforcement officials posing as businessmen last September in 2024, just a month or so prior to the presidential election in exchange for promises to deliver border security contracts if and when Trump won the election in November. The story on its own.

Frankly, was alarming enough, but even more so given that first MSNBC, who broke the story and then New York Times and then other major media outlets, which confirmed the story, reported that Trump's Department of Justice and FBI subsequently shut down that probe into Tom Homan's apparent. bribery investigation. Nothing to see here. Among the initial claims made by the DOJ in response to the story when it was initially being reported out was the suggestions that the case against Holman was dropped by two of Trump's personal criminal defense attorneys, Todd Blanche and Emil Beauvais, who were both serving as top DOJ officials at the time and by Trump's FBI director, Kash Patel, dropped over Dowell. that prosecutors could prove that Holman had agreed to a specific act in exchange for the cash. In fact, as we discussed on yesterday's show in detail with our guest, Randall Eliasson, formerly the chief of the DOJ's fraud and public corruption section, the U.S. Supreme Court has narrowed the definition of bribery so much in general that it must be for a very explicit official act in exchange for a specific payment. that even though Tom Homan was caught on tape accepting a takeout food bag full of $50,000 in cash reportedly, it would depend on what was said on the actual tape, you know, regarding what Tom Homan had promised to do in return. It would depend on all of that if to make this actually the crime of bribery. That, in fact, simply giving $50,000 in cash in a food bag, while perhaps evidence of guilt... by trying to hide the exchange, as Eliasson said, it might not still be considered bribery thanks to our corrupted U.S. Supreme Court. Yeah, basically, if one of the parties doesn't say, hey, here's some money, I'm bribing you now. That might not be enough. That's kind of it. Also, DOJ explained in response to the initial allegations that because Holman in September of last year was not yet a government official again, In the new Trump administration, his act of receiving cash in exchange for promise of government contracts if and when Trump took office again could not be charged as bribery because he wasn't in a government position at the time that all of this happened. Now, Eliasson told us yesterday he was not impressed by that claim from the DOJ in that the matter could still be charged as a conspiracy to commit bribery.

And as the DOJ had been waiting to see if Holman eventually carried through with this promise after taking office, it might have ultimately, yes, been chargeable as in fact bribery. But instead of waiting to find out... If Tom Homan was going to do that, Trump's DOJ and FBI friends simply dropped the case altogether this year, not long after Trump was returned to power. That's where we left off on that story at the end of yesterday's show. But by the time the night ended, well, the White House added another wrinkle to this story, which does not appear, to me, at least, to have made things... any better for Tom Homan. And since this feels like one of those stories that's soon going to be overtaken by other madness from this particular White House and the president who lives there, And a potential, perhaps likely government shutdown coming in about a week's time. I do want to make sure that we get the latest in this particular matter on the record here before it may vanish entirely. So shortly after airtime on Monday, it was reported on Monday night by MSNBC, which originally broke the story over the weekend, that the White House on Monday asserted that Tom Homan. Trump's border czar did not take $50,000 a cash last year as part of a federal criminal investigation, contradicting the accounts of multiple people familiar with the case and internal documents that were previously reviewed by MSNBC in which a summary of the case said that Holman accepted the money in exchange for, quote, facilitating, unquote, contracts in a future Trump administration. But after the DOJ and FBI previously failed to deny that Tom Homan had accepted the cash before the story was published by multiple outlets over the weekend, the White House offered a new story when Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, a very accomplished liar, was asked. whether Trump instructed the DOJ to kill the bribery investigation into Trump's border czar, who has been leading this Trump's supposed crime fighting efforts with mass deportations, falsely claiming to target only immigrants with criminal records over the past eight months since Trump returned to office. Here's what happened in the White House when... A reporter asked about this investigation. Thanks, Caroline. So, too, on the Holman investigation, I mean, can you just speak to, did the president ask the Justice Department to close the case? And does Holman have to return the $50,000? Well, Mr. Holman never took the $50,000 that you're referring to. So you should get your fact straight, number one. Number two, this was another example of the weaponization of the Biden Department of Justice against one of President Trump's strongest and most vocal supporters.

in the midst of a presidential campaign. You had FBI agents going undercover to try and trap one of the president's top allies and supporters, someone who they knew very well, would be taking a government position months later. Mr. Tom Homan did absolutely nothing wrong. And even the... President's Department of Justice, even Kash Patel's FBI looked into this just to make sure they had a number of different prosecutors and FBI agents who looked into this. They found zero evidence of illegal activity or criminal wrongdoing. In the White House and the president stand by Tom Homan 100% because he did absolutely nothing wrong and he is a brave public servant who has done a phenomenal job in helping the president shut down the border. Oh, okay. So Mr. Holman never took the $50,000. That's new. More on that in a moment. But this is an example of the weaponization of Biden's DOJ against Trump supporters trying to entrap them. In this case, apparently a supporter willing to accept $50,000 in cash in a takeout food bag in exchange for handing out contracts to those who paid him off if Trump became president again. And by the way, as we noted yesterday, the probe into Holman was reportedly came about in the first place after a Target in a completely separate investigation informed law enforcement that Holman was already in the process of soliciting bribe money in exchange for future contracts in a new Trump administration. Oh, and Levitt's claim that... Even the president, even the president Trump's own FBI looked into this and they found no wrongdoing. As if Trump's own FBI and DOJ looking into evidence that one of Trump's own top officials was committing a crime and dismissing that evidence, that that should somehow be exculpatory. That even we who would like to have him get off the hook, put him off the hook. Well, we'll just chalk that remark up to the fact that Karoline Leavitt is seemingly having trouble keeping track of her own lies and nonsense. But it would be a major change in this story if, in fact, Homer never took any money in the first place. Despite the fact that DOJ officials never claimed as much over the first several days of this story, claiming instead that the reason that the case was dropped was because, as they seemed to argue, there was no specific crime in taking the money because there was no explicit quid pro quo that would make it bribery, presumably. And that in any case, Tom Homan was not actually a government official at the time. So what crime?

Well, as Randall Eliasson explained, that part doesn't hold water. But amid all of the initial responses to the story, none of these guys at DOJ or FBI, apparently, ever said that Tom Homan never took the money. Just that if he did, it was not a crime. That there was nothing unlawful about it. But that he never took the money as Karoline Leavitt is now claiming that was never a thing until the White House rang in about that on Monday. I'd be interested to see if Tom Homan would like to see the actual tape released to prove his name. So far he has said nothing of the comments. No, he hasn't said release the tapes, has he? And apparently the White House did not appear to have informed Tom Homan about this fresh claim that he hadn't taken the money. Tom Homan apparently didn't know about that either, at least according to his own response to the story on Fox News on Monday night on Laura Ingram's primetime show. Here's what that sounded like. I'll give you a chance to address this article that came out over the weekend, and it was on our always reliable MSNBC, and they said that you took $50,000 in cash in a bag from an undercover FBI agent to help them win government contracts in Trump's second term. The DOJ said... They concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing, but nevertheless, that story is out there, and I imagine you want to respond to that. Absolutely. Look, I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal. And it's hit piece after hit piece after hit piece. And I'm glad the FBI and DOJ came out and said. And, you know, it said that nothing illegal happened, nothing, you know, no criminal activity. You're talking about guys spent 34 years enforcing the law. I mean, I left the very successful business that I ran to come back and work for a government again. I'm back on a government paycheck. Not only did I sacrifice my family sacrifices. I make sacrifices every day. I got more debt threats than anybody. I got a security team around me, but guess what? My kids don't. My wife don't. I mean, I haven't lived to my wife in months because I don't want her to be here right now with all the threats. So after all the sacrifices, after serving my nation all these years, they want to come out and dirty me up. And it's not going to end. There's a hip piece on me every two weeks. But keep coming, because you know what, Tom Homan isn't going anywhere. Tom Homan isn't shutting up. And Tom Homan's going to keep doing up. And Tom Homan's going to keep doing it. Okay, that's very brave of you, Tom Homan. I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal, he said. Even the FBI and DOJ came out and said, I did nothing wrong, says Tom Homan. I make sacrifices every day. Tom Homan isn't going anywhere, et cetera. But with all of those words, what he never said was that he did not take the money. That's weird, isn't it?

He was specifically asked about the cash, and if he didn't actually take any money, you would think that would be the first thing that he said. This story is nonsense. I never took any cash from anybody. He did not say that. All he said was, I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal. The FBI and DOJ came out and said so. You know, they said that nothing illegal happened and nothing, no criminal activity, he said before he added, and oh yeah, I'm the real victim here. Kind of sounds like he took the money, don't it? Why wouldn't he say he didn't? And so someone really ought to let the White House know about that. As if this criminal White House actually cares about crime or law and order, especially when it's committed by their own officials, obviously they do not care, except for how to not get caught committing crimes and to then lie about those crimes when administration officials are caught actually criming. And so one more minor update in this story since yesterday. As the question about whether Tom Homan took the money has been introduced into the middle of the story. The New York Times is reporting today that, quote, House and Senate Democrats have now opened separate investigations into the Trump administration's decision to close a criminal FBI inquiry into Tom Homan that began after he was recorded last year, accepting a bag with $50,000 in cash. So, no, they, the New York Times, do not appear to be backing off of their reporting that Tom Homan was recorded last year accepting the cash, despite... Karoline Leavitt's comments there to the contrary at the White House on Monday. In a letter on Monday, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, the FBI director, provide, quote, all recordings from Mr. Tom Homan's meeting, all of their investigative material and any communications between the White House and their agencies over the case. Well, I'm sure they'll be gathering that up to send over to Congress. Right after they get those Epstein files over to them, it's the next order of business, no doubt. Quote, your reported effort to shut down this investigation appears to be a brazen cover-up to protect Donald Trump's allies at a time when the DOJ and FBI are also being ordered to aggressively pursue prosecution of Donald Trump's political enemies. The Democrats write in their letter. referring to Trump's note that was seemingly meant to be a private note to Pam Bondi, telling her to hurry up with bringing those criminal charges against Trump's perceived enemies like New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI director James Comey, California U.S. Senator Adam Schiff. Trump posted this note that was seemingly a private note. He posted it publicly.

On his failing social media site over the weekend, mentioning those three by name that they need to be rounded up quickly, the House Democrats' efforts to examine the DOJ and FBI investigative documentation in the Holman matter is being led by Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Separately on Tuesday, a group of Democrats on the U.S. Senate. Judiciary Committee also sent letters to Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, and Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General, formerly also an attorney, personal criminal attorney of Donald Trump's, asking the quote, recordings of Mr. Holman receiving cash from undercover FBI agents be provided to Congress and made public. Quote, we are initiating a robust oversight inquiry to review Mr. Holman's actions prior to and since joining this administration, as well as DOJ's role in ultimately shutting down the investigation into Mr. Holman, wrote the senators, led by Adam Schiff of California. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Panel, and seven others backed Schiff in this letter. But of course, because Democrats are in the minority in Congress in both chambers, they can't force the Trump administration to respond to any of this. They've got limited investigative authority. They can't call their own hearings or compel testimony from government officials unless the Republicans join them in such an effort. On Monday night, Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee also sent a letter that urged their panel's Republican chair to call Mr. Tom Homan to testify. In the House, quote, Congress must investigate Tom Homan's actions and his influence on government spending, they wrote. We urgently request that you call him to testify before the committee on this matter without delay. And I'm sure the Republicans will do exactly that, right? Of course, if Democrats are able to win back majority control, in the House and or the U.S. Senate next year, well, they will control those committees and they will be able to demand documentation and testimony, etc. Just in case anybody out there is wondering why it might be important to vote next year in the midterms. One other point from the Times coverage today that they conclude in their report by noting that after Mr. Trump won in November last year, law enforcement officials notified his team about the case against Tom Homan as the Trump transition team was considering candidates for government jobs. Now, I don't know if you recall, but Team Trump during the transition process after the election last year.

took the very unusual, the very unheard of step, actually, of skipping FBI vetting for potential candidates for top administration positions. Remember that? Well, if you've ever wondered why, well, the Tom Homan case, I suspect, is just one of many reasons that Trumpers said, yeah, no, thank you. We don't really need the FBI to vet any of our nominees here. before we put them in office into the administration. We don't need the FBI looking into the backgrounds of our nominees. We'll take it from here, thanks. Now, I do hope I'm wrong. about this story disappearing into the sort of the Trump madness vapor. But we will see. But I just wanted to make sure you had that update out there before and if it does disappear. So there's your update on that story for now. And in the other story that we covered yesterday, at the end of the show, as the story had just broken an hour or so before airtime, ABC and its own parent company, Disney had announced Jimmy Kimmel's late night show would be. returning to the airwaves as of Tuesday night after it had been indefinitely postponed following threats made by Brendan Carr, Donald Trump's FCC chair, specifically to ABC affiliate stations. If they did not take Kimmel off the air, In response to remarks that Carr and Maga did not like regarding the alleged assassination of far-right Republican activist Charlie Kerr. Well, Brendan Carr made these threats. Hey, you guys might have your license taken away if you allow Jimmy Kimmel to remain on the air. We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Carr said. Now, as we noted yesterday, it appeared that public pushback specifically. By We the People against Disney mass cancellations of its streaming services, such as Disney Plus and Hulu and ESPN, etc. That mass pushback and public opprobrium had forced Disney, it seems, to reverse its decision to bench Kimmel. last week as they tried to continue their, you know, cowtowing to the Trump administration. Well, that was apparently the good news that public opprobrium specifically tied to, you know, people's wallets and Disney's income had perhaps helped the Constitution's First Amendment triumph over unprecedented threats from the administration's FCC and Trump's own admission that he was gleeful about the cancellation of Kimmel. A longtime Trump opponent, he called on NBC to cancel their late night host next. CBS has already canceled Stephen Colbert next year.

With Trump claiming falsely that it was unlawful to air programming that was critical of him since he pretends that he won the presidential election in a, quote, landslide times two last year. In fact, reminder, a majority of Americans voted against Donald Trump last year. But none of that actually matters. No administration and no FCC has the right to threaten broadcasters to take away their... Broadcast licenses simply based on the programs that they air. But by the time we posted the show last night at bradblog.com, additional news came in on this matter. As NBC reported late Monday night, Jimmy Kimmel's late night show will return to ABC's airwaves on Tuesday, nearly a week after it's suspended. But many households across the U.S. still may not see the show. Sinclair. You may be familiar with them. They are the right-wing local broadcast station conglomerate that we have reported on in various unflattering ways here on this show over the years. Sinclair, a company that operates more than 35 ABC affiliates across the country, said that it would replace Jimmy Kimmel with news programming when he comes back to air on Tuesday. Quote, beginning Tuesday night, the company said in a statement, Sinclair will be preempting Jimmy Kimmel live across our ABC affiliate stations and replacing it with news programming, or what Sinclair calls news programming. Discussions with ABC, they said, are ongoing as we evaluate the show's potential return. And then on Tuesday, Tuesday morning. Next Star Media Group said that the ABC stations that it owns and partners with will also not resume airing Jimmy Kimmel Live, even as Disney brings the program back nationally. Quote, we made a decision last week to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live following what ABC referred to as Mr. Kimmel's ill-timed and insensitive comments. At a critical time in our national discourse, the company said in a news release. They went on to say we stand by that decision pending assurance that all parties are committed to fostering an environment of respectful, constructive dialogue in the markets that we serve. Now, together, Nexstar and Sinclair... Account for about 70 ABC affiliate stations, meaning that Kimmel's return on Tuesday would not be available over broadcast, at least, to tens of millions of Americans across the country. And, of course, both Sinclair and Nextar, what do you know, have business before Trump's...

Federal Communications Commission, the FCC. Sinclair is currently looking at merger options for its broadcast business, which would require FCC clearance. By an FCC, the Trump is happy to wield as a weapon to enrich himself in multiple ways, as we have seen. And Next Star, the nation's largest local station owner, is currently seeking FCC approval for a $6.2 billion merger. with another station owner named Tegna. And for that merger to go through, it would require Carr and the FCC to actually change FCC rules to allow the merger to happen since it would give Next Star control of local broadcast television stations that reach some 80% of the nation's viewers. That is far in excess of the no more than 39% of viewers nationwide that are supposed to be the max allowed by the FCC rules. So the good news yesterday that Disney and ABC is allowing Kimmel to return is of course tempered somewhat by a huge number of viewers who will not be able to watch him, at least over the air, thanks to the corporate conglomerates who are allowed to own and control all of those stations. And those corporate conglomerates interest in bending the knee to Donald Trump and foregoing the First Amendment in order to please Trump and his corrupted FCC. Even as those corporate conglomerates are proving the need for the FCC media ownership rules, limiting them to 39% because they're showing that they will withhold content from if they get control of this, if they get those media ownership rules waive, they will have control over 80% of the local. TV stations and will be able to then control the viewpoints that get aired. I mean, I'm kind of blown away that Nextar and Sinclair are really going to go with the claim that their viewers really just can't handle the Jimmy Kimmel show and that they have to protect them from that. You know, hey, Seattle. They're talking about you. You can't handle the Kimmel show. You know, you could probably call your local TV station and let them know how you feel about that. And as Josh Marshall over at TPM points out this afternoon, you know, maybe all of this, what Sinclair and Nextar are doing here is maybe not such a bad thing after all. He writes, I'm not sure I'd say I'm happy about this, but I'm not terribly sad about it either. He says, obviously, much will depend on who has more stomach for this fight. ABC Disney or Next Star and Sinclair. He says to my way of thinking, the more visible this is, the more it remains in the news. The more people who don't really focus on the daily minutia and obsessions of politics have this shoved in their face, the better.

Josh writes, no one seriously thinks the Kimmel Show is somehow some harrowing kind of destabilizing hate speech that threatens the public peace and law and order. For hardcore Trumpers, getting him knocked off the air is a win because it's Trump dominating. We know they love it, but not for the reasons claimed. If you are not in that camp, it seems either bad or weird that this programming is being withheld from you. If you do watch the show, or you did, you'll probably be irked that you're not able to anymore. And he says that's a great thing that the saga itself will make clear to a lot of people that it's a company you have never heard of, which has decided for its own reasons to take the show off the air in your city. Those cities include, Desi, you mentioned Seattle, but... New Orleans, Nashville, Knoxville, Salt Lake City, Burlington, Vermont, and a slew of local ABC affiliates in New York State for Next Star, almost 40 in all. For Sinclair, it's Portland, Seattle, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and a ton of others totaling 40 at all. Josh writes, however it plays out, it's a lot more attention on the fact that you're allowed to watch. In your town, what you're allowed to watch in your town is decided by some corporate suits because they want Trump's permission for a merger. That is all to the good as far as I'm concerned, he says. The kernel at the heart of it is just not a good look. A person in power lashing out at a comedian who makes fun of them is just inherently pathetic and cringe. You only need the most passing acquaintance with popular culture and small D democratic political culture to understand this. Josh Marshall Wrights have always thought that Sinclair especially gets away with a ton of stuff because it's mostly under the radar. Next Star is new to injecting politics directly into programming decisions. Sinclair's been at this for more than 20 years, he notes. If you know that Sinclair forces its local affiliates to broadcast chunks of right-wing propaganda on its airwaves produced by Sinclair National, then you're definitely not the target. But if you're the kind of person who's meaningfully impacted by Sinclair bleeding its propaganda into the infosphere in cities across the country, you almost certainly have never heard of Sinclair. It's ties to the conservative movement. It's history of sleazy behavior and all the rest. Well, this fight over the Kimmel Show makes the whole thing much more visible. A lot more people are going to learn about this. It makes it a fairly hot news story. If this goes on, writes Josh, I think ABC will have a hard time stopping Kimmel from making jokes about it. Jimmy held hostage, Day 57. It just writes itself. If he doesn't do that, he'll look stupid because it will be clear that he has been muzzled. As a general matter, he writes, I don't think people without strong political attachments like the idea.

of corporate suits censoring what you are able to see in your own hometown for political or backdoor deal type reasons. So he writes, let the fight commence. And I think he's got that right. Yeah. Let's lay this before the American people. We'll see if they like it. Let them decide if they like this kind of corporate political control of the public airwaves, of the stuff they watch at night on TV before they go to bed. My guess is they will not like that, but we will see. As long as the fight remains a public one, and that will continue to be a public one, as long as millions of Americans are being told they can't watch a guy tell jokes each night about politics in the Trump administration. So that story continues as well. Speaking of the joke, By the way, that is Donald Trump and his administration. Let's take a quick break here. We'll come back with coverage and a bit of debunking of Trump's insane, I think nearly hour-long ramble on Tuesday at the United Nations about all sorts of things. But, of course, we'll specifically take a look at his lies and nonsense and clown show regarding, yes, energy and climate change. And we will have our latest green news report. Yes. All of that with Desi Doyen and myself straight ahead. I'm Brad Friedman and you are listening to The Brandcast.

What the public hears on the public airwaves matters. At the broadcast, we do our best to bring you accurate news and analysis on the issues that actually matter, and we do it all independently without corporate or political influence. But we can't do it without you, now more than ever. Please help us stay on your public airwaves by going to bradblog.com slash donate to help keep us going. That's bradblog.com slash donate. And thanks. Yeah, welcome, is going in the wind. Yeah, welcome back to the broadcast. Bradfreyed from Bradblog.com. That is the answer, but don't tell Donald Trump. The president of the United States castigated the United Nations, the entire United Nations, as a feckless institution in a rambling, roughly hour-long speech to the world body on Tuesday, praising as AP describes the turn America has taken under his leadership while warning that Europe will be ruined if it doesn't turn away from a, quote, double-tailed monster. of ill-conceived migration and green energy policies. Wow, sounds bad. We'll get to some of those comments about energy policies in a moment, but Trump's speech before the UN General Assembly was both grievance-filled and self-congratulatory as he used the platform to applaud his second-term achievements and lament that some of his fellow world leaders, some of their countries, were, quote, going to hell. Afterwards, Trump attempted to assuage fears from some diplomats by assuring the top UN leader that the U.S. remained 100% supportive of the global body, despite his earlier criticism. It was another about face that Trump offered a weave of jarring juxtapositions in his address to the assembly rights AP. He trumpeted himself as a peacemaker. and enumerated successes of his administration's efforts in several hotspots around the globe, while at the same time heralding his decision to order the U.S. military to carry out strikes on Iran and more recently against alleged drug smugglers from Venezuela and argued that, quote, globalists are on the verge of destroying successful nations. Trump also addressed Russia's war in Ukraine, once again, threatening to hit Moscow with, quote, a very strong round of powerful tariffs. If Russian President Vladimir Putin does not come to the table to end the war, that of course is a threat that he's repeatedly issued for months now, but has yet to take any action whatsoever on despite Russia's increased aggression against its sovereign neighbor. Trump apparently waited until after the speech and after a meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to announce what AP describes as a dramatic shift.

in his position on the war. He said that he now believes Ukraine, with the help of NATO, can win back all territory lost to Russia. Well, that sounds new. As you know, he previously famously told Volodymyr Zelensky that Ukraine has no cards to play, that Russia is holding all the cards. But here's what AP and other outlets seem to be referring to. Trump wrote in part in a post after meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, quote, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back in its original form. With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe, and in particular NATO, the original borders from where this war started. is very much an option. So that sounds good. Now Trump thinks that Ukraine can have all of Ukraine back. But I would be very careful to give him too much credit here, at least for the moment. This war actually started back in 2014 when Russia took over several regions in the east of Ukraine. Now, if Trump is pretending that this war started in 2022 when Russia fully invaded Ukraine, then going back to those borders for 2022 would still give Russia a huge chunk of Ukraine's sovereign lands. Does that make sense? Yes. So let's be careful about giving him too much credit there when he refers to this war. Does this war start in 22 or 2014 in 2020? 22, Russia had already taken over a whole bunch of Ukraine's lands. So we will see. The president, again, made clear that he wants to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, repeating his spurious claim that he's, quote, ended seven wars since returning to office. Quote, everyone says that I should get the Nobel Prize. Everyone, in fact, does not say that, even though he does over and over again. He said, quote, it's too bad that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them. Sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them. CNN's fact checker, Dan Dale, however, responded to a few of those claims about that and a number of others from Trump's remarks at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. There are a lot of issues there. So first of all, some of the conflicts he's counting as wars he resolved were not actually wars at all. For example, Egypt and Ethiopia have argued over an Ethiopian dam project on the Blue Nile, but they were not in a raging war in which thousands of people were being killed. Similarly, Trump has claimed that he prevented conflict between Serbia and Kosovo from resuming, but they were... not in a raging war either. In addition, the conflict involving the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring Rwanda has not actually been resolved. We have good reporting from just a day ago talking about how hostilities have continued despite the peace deal that was signed under President Trump. And then in addition to that, India denies that President Trump was responsible for mediating its ceasefire, its truce with neighboring Pakistan. So a whole lot of issues with just that one claim. And Pamela, there were a whole

bunch of other claims that were just out and out fall. So I don't even have time to run through all of them. But on inflation, President Trump said that grocery prices are down during this presidency. They're up, and the pace of the increases is accelerating as the tariffs take effect. He has claimed that inflation has been defeated in general. No, inflation is also accelerating. It was 2.9% last month up from 2.7%. He said that European electricity bills are high, which is true, but that ours are coming way down. No, in the U.S., they are increasing sharply up. 6.2% in August compared to a year prior. And there were a whole bunch of other topics. He claimed that he has secured $17 trillion in investment. Well, just yesterday, his own White House press secretary said it was about $9 trillion in investment. So I don't know where the additional $8 trillion in the day has come from. And even that initial $9 trillion, the press secretary, claim, is highly dubious, counting a whole bunch of things that aren't actually spending, but rather are vague commitments from various countries. I just want to address one more. He claimed that China... builds a lot of wind turbines and manufactures them for others, but refuses to use it itself, barely uses wind power. In fact, China is the world leader in the use of wind power. It is building additional wind power in China far faster than the pace at which the US is building in the United States itself. So the idea that China is just foisting this terrible source of energy on other countries while refusing to use it is a reversal of reality. A reversal of reality. Boy, that is what we're living in right now. On that last point regarding Trump's remarks about energy and climate, he went on for about 10 minutes or so on that alone. Trump did, not Dan Dale. I'm sure Dan Dale could have. Could have gone on for an hour. But Trump went on for about 10 minutes or so. As E&E news reports this afternoon, President Donald Trump rebuked world leaders for being overly concerned about. Climate change during his speech to the United Nations in which he called global warming a, quote, con job. He argued that renewable energy like wind and solar are a, quote, scam that should be eliminated. He urged nations instead to buy more American oil and gas while also increasing nuclear energy. Quote, I'm really good at predicting things, Trump said. I don't say that in a braggadocious way, but it's true. I've been right about everything. His comments came as Trump has waged a broad campaign to slash funding from climate research to cancel clean energy tax credits and to roll back. regulations to limit climate pollution while expanding efforts to produce dirty, deadly fossil fuels. Trump devoted more than 10 minutes to issues related to climate change less than 24 hours after he repeated unproven and discredited claims linking autism and Tylenol, a position that world leaders swiftly rejected. Trump said assertions about rising temperatures have made, quote, have been made by, quote, stupid people. before declaring that climate change, quote, used to be called global cooling. It didn't, adding that environmentalists, quote, want to kill all the cows. They don't. You know, it's interesting. In the United States, we have still radicalized environmentalists, and they want the factories to stop. Everything should stop. No more cows. We don't want cows anymore. I guess they want to kill all the cows. They want to do things that are just unbelievable. And you have it too.

No, they don't want to do those things that are just unbelievable. They don't want to kill the cows. Desi Doyen, I know you've been plowing through a lot of this. What else did Trump lie about regarding climate and energy and his remarks to the world? Well, I just want to address, first of all, the lies about the cows. Environmentalists have never said get rid of all the cows. Environmental groups have never said they want factories to stop or any of that other nonsense. You know, it's the only way that we have gotten cleaner water and air now is because of regulation. that made it so. And Trump is rolling back those regulations. And in fact, during his first term, air and water pollution got worse, measurably worse, because of the rollbacks that he instituted. So going from there, there's, of course, not enough time to debunk all of his lazy rambling speech. But, you know. Careful. Yes, go ahead. I know. But there were some real low lights in there like this one. Energy is another area where the United States is now thriving like never before. We're getting rid of the falsely named renewables. By the way, they're a joke. They don't work. They're too expensive. They're not strong enough to fire up the plants that you need to make your country great. The wind doesn't blow. Those big windmills are so pathetic and so bad, so expensive to operate. Then they have to be rebuilt all the time, and they start to rust and rot. Most expensive energy ever conceived, and it's actually energy. You're supposed to make money with energy, not lose money. You lose money. The governments have to subsidize you. You can't put them out without massive subsidies. So Donald Trump at the UN telling everybody that wind power is the most expensive? energy that's ever been made? And that, of course, is nonsense. The most expensive energy is actually nuclear energy. When you have to build it, you have to mine it and all of that. It's cheap once it's actually started, but the ratepayers have to pay for the billions of dollars to build the plants, and that takes often 10 to 20 years. For nuclear energy, which is one of the things he's pushing, yeah. Yes, and also the idea that wind turbines, you have to keep repairing them. That's all complete nonsense. Renewable energy. solar and wind are now the cheapest sources of energy and the fastest to build around the world. That's just a fact, a basic, basic fact that, of course, Trump is completely and thoroughly... unaware of. Or just lying about. Well, yeah. He also called the carbon footprint a hoax that's made up by people with evil intentions. But the fact is that countries around the world track the amount of carbon dioxide released by industries because that is a way of monitoring the results of climate policies. Because what gets measured gets managed and the Trump administration is very big on getting rid of whatever you can measure because, hey, no data, then no problem, right? He also described the... Paris Agreement as unfair and he urged other countries to withdraw from it, which includes like 200 nations. Trump completely lies about that or he is too stupid to understand how the Paris Agreement works. It's entirely voluntary, non-binding. The U.S. is not paying more than any other country. Maybe he's referring to the Green Climate Fund in which the wealthy countries that got rich off of using fossil fuels help developing countries build infrastructure to adapt.

to climate impacts. But, you know, that's the kind of nonsense that he went in really deeply. And I guess we have time for just a little bit more. He said on this last one, this is clip five, that he made clear that he really doesn't understand the difference between air pollution and carbon emissions. We have a border strong and we have a shape. And that shape doesn't just go straight up. That shape is amorphous when it comes to the atmosphere. And if we had the most clean air, and I think we do, we have very clean air. We have the cleanest air we've had in many, many years. But the problem is that other countries, like China, which has air that's a little bit rough, it blows. And no matter what you're doing down here, the air up here. tends to get very dirty because it comes in from other countries. So he's saying basically our air is nice and clean. But that China, they have such terrible air, blows over here, we'll blame them for air pollution and carbon emissions. Really? unclear what kind of mangling thoughts that he has and that, you know, scrambled egg brain that he's got. But yeah, I think that's what has happening is it's true. You know, some of China's pollution does drift over to the United States, but good Lord, the U.S. makes plenty of air pollution all on our own. And apparently we're going to make more if he has his way as he continues to shut down renewable energy. And with that in mind, let's get to it, our latest green news report. This treaty will help enhance the health and resilience of the ocean beyond national jurisdiction. Historic UN treaty protecting the high seas comes into force. Coral reefs won't survive a warming planet, study warns. Plus, the EPA and the Trump administration can't repeal the laws of physics. But they tried. The Energy Department's climate science deniers group has been disbanded. That sounds like good news. It is. Are you okay? All of those stories and more straight ahead from brandblog.com. I'm Brad Friedman. And I'm Desi Doyen. Stand by for six minutes of independent green news, politics, analysis, and snarky comment. The oceans beyond national boundaries is the world's largest crime scene. Yeah, I don't think that guy has ever been to the Trump White House. This is your Green News Report.

Okay, Desi Doyne. Well, I hear you got a boatload of news. For the oceans. Oh, I see what you did there. Yeah, what do you got for us, Des? Well, first up, the oceans absorb most of the heat trapped in the atmosphere by humanity's emissions of greenhouse gases. And over the last several years, ocean temperatures have hit record levels. Now, a new study concludes that if global temperatures continue rising, virtually all of the coral reefs in the Atlantic Ocean will stop growing and will likely not survive a warmer planet. That sounds like very bad. It is. The comprehensive analysis of more than 400 existing coral reefs across the Atlantic Ocean found that many corals are already stressed and dying. The researchers project that even under optimistic scenarios, more than 70% of the Atlantic's coral reefs will begin dying by 2040. If global temperatures exceed 2 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels, they project that 99% of corals in the Atlantic. will die off by 2100, leaving shorelines and marine ecosystems vulnerable. So why is that a problem if the coral reefs die? Well, coral reefs support a quarter of all marine life and are critical fisheries that provide food for millions of people worldwide. So we kill the ocean food supply, then we kill the human food supply along with it. Kind of like that, yes. Well, that sounds like a problem. A different study warns that rising ocean temperatures are already seriously impacting a key species of microscopic phytoplankton. Prochlorococcus is a keystone species that forms the basis of the marine food web and generates about 20% of the planet's oxygen. The researchers project that the species could shrink by as much as half as tropical ocean waters heat up overcoming decades with broad risks for biodiversity. and fisheries upon which billions of people rely. Even I'm not going to bother to ask why it's a problem if we lose Earth's oxygen. Here in the U.S., scientists at the EPA's Office of Water have reportedly been ordered to halt the publication of all research studies until they undergo a new review process mandated by political appointees, raising concerns about public health and the impact on ongoing research. But some better news. Good. The Trump administration has quietly dissolved the so-called climate working group, that panel of five prominent climate science deniers who wrote a widely debunked report attempting to cast doubt on climate science. It was intended to justify the Trump EPA repealing its own scientific determination that greenhouse gases endanger human health by causing global warming. It's intended to weaken the legal foundation of U.S. climate regulations. The Energy Department dissolved the group after mainstream climate scientists submitted hundreds of pages of public comments shredding the deniers report and after environmental groups filed lawsuits alleging the group's formation violated federal laws. So they created the group long enough to say, oh, climate change doesn't exist and then they made the group not exist anymore. Yep. Mission accomplished. Finally, some very good news. The first ever global pact to protect marine life in the high seas is now...

international law after being ratified by 60 member countries. Decades in the making, the UN Treaty on the High Seas begins the process of placing international waters into marine protected areas. The treaty covers more than two-thirds of the ocean outside of countries' exclusive economic zones and sets binding rules for conservation and sustainability of fisheries and marine biodiversity to counter growing threats from overfishing, pollution, deep sea. mining and the impacts of warming oceans on marine life. Here's Johann Bergenas of the World Wildlife Fund. The oceans beyond natural boundaries is the world's largest crime scene. When you do not have established governance and management rules, countries, private sector, illegal actors, take advantage of the global commons. The Biden administration signed off on the treaty, but the second Trump administration is unlikely to ratify it. Imagine that. For much more on all of these stories and the ones we couldn't get to today, check out our website at greennews.bradblog.com. I'm Brad Friedman. And I'm Desi Doyen. And this has been your Green News Report.

That we see dancing Thank you very much, Desi Doyen, our producer. And by the way, apologies if you've heard throughout the show, the helicopter noise buzzing our studio here as Jimmy Kimmel is about to begin taping his show. Yeah. Only about what, three or four blocks away. And so all the news choppers are out there, no doubt, taking a shot of his building. Yep. Because that's how news works, apparently. Thanks again to Desi Doin. Thanks to all of you for spending a portion of your day or night with us. If you missed any portion of today's show or any other, you can download them all for free. At bradblog.com. There is no paywall. There is no corporate overlord. You can have at it all you like. However, we do ask that you consider hitting a donate button there to help us stay on your public airwaves. We rely on you, not on corporations or commercials. Or you can go straight to bradblog.com slash donate. Drop me email. I'm Bradcast at bradblog.com. And on the social medias, you will find me at the Bradblog. We will see you. There until we see you here. Tomorrow, I'm Brad Friedman. Good luck, world. You're listening to the Bradcast. We are 100% listener supported thanks to listeners like you who drop by Bradblog.com slash donate.