00:00:12
Speaker 1: Oh, we're having.
00:00:15
Speaker 2: A great impact.
00:00:18
Speaker 1: We're going to Texas right now. We have a very big one, but they're all big. Everyone is big. They're all sold out. They have a line that's a mile long or two miles long or something. You can talk before I get there. It was last night. I think we're helping the Republican Party with the Browns. We're doing almost one a day, which is a lot of work, but I like doing it.
00:00:41
Speaker 3: Mr. President, why are you going to Texas so much? We want to make sure that Ted Paxton wins.
00:00:47
Speaker 1: He's a good man. He was probably the.
00:00:49
Speaker 3: Best attorney general in the whole country or right up there. And for purposes of that, we want to make sure that Ken Paxton can win.
00:00:58
Speaker 2: President, do you agree with Ken Paxton that the war on gas prices is the biggest challenge for Republicans?
00:01:04
Speaker 3: I think the war is, if you call it a war, it's a war that's been won from the standpoint of what we have to do.
00:01:12
Speaker 1: We have to get rid of no nuclear weapons, as you know, for Iran. I think when people.
00:01:18
Speaker 3: Hear that we've done what other presidents should have done for many years, now we're up to 51 years, we've taken.
00:01:25
Speaker 1: Away their nuclear power.
00:01:26
Speaker 3: If they would have had nuclear power, you would have had problems like you've never had before. So we did this for that reason. We've essentially accomplished that. Their military is.
00:01:36
Speaker 1: Now wiped out. The whole country right now is wiped out. It'll be over very quickly.
00:01:41
Speaker 3: And when it does, oil prices will come down.
00:01:49
Speaker 4: Ah, the stars at night are big and bright. Deep in the heart of Texas, it's trouble for Trump. Welcome to Dead Air.
00:01:58
Speaker 1: My name is Dean.
00:01:58
Speaker 4: That, of course, is my friend, the indispensable Steve Schmidt from The Warning here on Substack. At Steve Schmidt is where you can find him on Substack as well as The Warning. On YouTube, Steve, good to see you. Nice to see you today. There's Donald Trump clearly in a panic, in a froth. This is the third visit he's made to Texas. He and Ken Paxton had a very unceremonious... Rally in Texas where 18 people got kicked out. Old Maggie guys are beating the shit out of young protesters. He was interrupted more than 12 times, as I understand it. Ken Paxton is down several points to James Tallarico and the unthinkable is here. And that's why we're here to talk about it. This is dead air. Let's get to it. These are stories that nobody else is going to talk about the way that we talk about them. But your thoughts on the Trump panic with Ken Paxton continually going back and forth on the taxpayer dime to try and put Ken Paxton on stilts, maybe the most aggrieved and egregious criminal attorney general in the history of the United States.
00:03:01
Speaker 5: He spent the summer gallivanting around Europe With his mistress. Side piece, yes. With his attorney general, non-government issued side piece. Yes, that's correct. And it's just incredible. I mean, he's in an age of unfathomable corruption. When he got to the U.S. Senate, he'd be the most corrupt senator ever. by far he's one of the most, maybe the most corrupt public official in the United States, not named Trump or somebody who hasn't fucked a Trump. So I got to get Kimberly Guilfoyle.
00:03:54
Speaker 4: You got a real, you got a real thing for Kimberly Guilfoyle right now.
00:03:59
Speaker 5: I love it. Oh my. And, um, No, it's just unbelievable. Ed, he's a total disgrace. He was impeached by Republicans in Texas. And he is a whack job's whack job. A hypocrite's hypocrite. A scumbag's scumbag. A MAGA's MAGA.
00:04:32
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
00:04:32
Speaker 5: But he's a loser.
00:04:34
Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.
00:04:35
Speaker 5: And so he's losing to Telerico. And one of the things about Texas is, and somebody wrote about this a while back and it sat with me. We grew up in an era where there was a lot of cultural cachet associated with Texas, Dallas. the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. Texas was always known as a friendly state, a welcoming place.
00:05:15
Speaker 4: Hi, darling.
00:05:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:05:17
Speaker 5: A big place, not a small place, not a mean place. One of the greatest heroes of the state, James Earl Rudder, is the man who led the Rangers ashore at Pointe du Hoc. He returned to Texas. He was a Democrat. He was the state agricultural commissioner, president of Texas A & M. He desegregated Texas A & M. He admitted women to Texas A & M. This mean-spirited tradition is not longstanding. Greg Abbott is a hideous character in all of this.
00:06:02
Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
00:06:05
Speaker 5: And cowardly. You look at Ovaldi and the cops, a antithesis of what we think about as Texas and Texas values. And so what you see here is a state put into turmoil by immoral men and women many of them imbeciles, who are going to be reproached by the electorate. And I think it's entirely possible that Greg Abbott goes down, too. But I think Tallarico is going to be the senator. And this race isn't going to get tighter. It's going to get wider. He's running a great campaign.
00:06:56
Speaker 4: Tallarico, yeah. You know what? And it's funny because you were big on Terry Virts, obviously, for a long period of time. And as life goes, as campaigns go, the one thing that Tallarico has done is he's been able to kind of split that evangelical middle to the common sense evangelical, which I really have appreciated. My brother's a pastor, and I come from an evangelical Christian background, not something I talk about very often unless you read my deconstruction series on Substack. And one of the things that my brother, who hates Donald Trump, who is one of those Christians who believes in the teachings and the philosophy of Christ, not in the evangelical white Christian nationalism, jihadist bullshit that you see from Pete Hegseth, which we're going to get to in just a bit. The one thing that I really love about James Tallarico is he has made his faith accessible to everybody and represented the best parts of that in a state that's steeped in evangelical Christian nationalism. And to look across the aisle to see a guy whose wife divorced him on biblical grounds, that's what Ken Paxson's wife did when she found out he was having an affair with a fitness influencer who, as you pointed out to start the show, went to England with during, as a matter of fact, July the 1st. He wasn't even in town for Independence Day. And then he accosted someone over there. He hit someone over there. He also pardoned a friend of his who was a a serial pedophile, instead of 60 days in jail, he gave him one day when the guy should never fucking see the light of day out of prison. He has $ 25 million in assets, specifically real estate that on his salary in no way should he own. He's been caught in several different corruption scams when it comes to taking in money and doing what you're talking about being the most corrupt human being in politics not named Trump. And then you look at James Tallarico, who's been able to build this lead, and let's get to D1, him leading in the polls if we can. James Tallarico has been able to connect with those people and almost pull them out in Michigan, pull them out of that mega death cult, that evangelical death cult. If you check some of these stats and James Tallarico's polling, he is one of the most accessible Christian politicians I have ever seen in my life. And listen, I'm no stranger to not disliking evangelical Christianity or organized religion. But if it were up to me and I got a chance to sit down with James Tallarico, not only would I give him my agency as a voter in Texas, I might actually convert.
00:09:31
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, I think that part of it is that Tallarico was able to overcome in a Substantial way, I think, the woke excesses of things he said. There's six different sexes, so on and so forth. And he was able to do that well. because Republicans nominated the craziest possible candidate they could conceivably nominate. And you have a guy, you know, if you're looking at, for example, in Dallas, nobody wants to be in the club in a pretty posh city. With Ken Paxton. And no one wants to sit near him. He's icky. And John Cornyn has a perfect, perfect representation of the ick that Republicans wear on their Texas shoulders like fur shoals, right? When it comes to their disdain for this guy. I mean, even Trump. has made it an issue. I don't like him. I don't like him.
00:10:54
Speaker 4: That's the first Texas rally. He was like, you might not like him, but you got to vote for him.
00:10:58
Speaker 3: I don't know if he's here.
00:11:01
Speaker 5: But you got to vote for him. And, you know, you can look at a character like Ted Cruz, and I do, and you're like, holy shit, you know, how could that guy win a statewide election? The answer to that question is, well, you first have to win a primary because And once you do that in a state like that, which is trended as a one party state, you're OK. You're OK. You know, but he's always run behind other Republicans. But maybe he's had the outer limit from a personality line and Texas voters just won't go beyond it. And Ken Paxton is a mile beyond it. He's just he's just extraordinarily corrupt. extraordinarily unfit, and you have an ethical young guy who's sincere in his views and who's run a really good campaign. I think voters are going to give him a shot.
00:12:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, which will be weird.
00:12:03
Speaker 5: I think he's going to get it done. What an embarrassment for Texas if Ken Paxton wins. What an embarrassment.
00:12:09
Speaker 4: Well, I don't think he's going to because it doesn't seem to matter how much money they pour into that state. Let's show people this This graphic. Money isn't helping the GOP.
00:12:19
Speaker 5: It's not helping any of these races. There's no amount of money.
00:12:23
Speaker 4: I think they pumped half a billion dollars into this race in Texas. Over half a billion dollars GOP spent in.
00:12:30
Speaker 5: Those little-to-move polls.
00:12:32
Speaker 4: As you can tell, one factor, Republicans advantage bigger dollars. It doesn't matter anymore. This election doesn't come down to money. That war chest doesn't matter when it comes to the misrepresentation and the embarrassment of the people of Texas. It doesn't matter when it comes to to the misrepresentation and the embarrassment of the people of Maine. It doesn't matter when it comes to the misrepresentation and the embarrassment of the people in Georgia, Michigan, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio. And we're starting to see that in the polls. And I think part of it is, too, is that you've got really leaky boats. It's not just like you can't pay for this kind of audio that we're going to hear from Ken Paxson in a second. We've had four leaks this week, and we're going to get to the latest leak in just a second. I want your thoughts on it. The first three leaks were It's all Donald Trump's fault.
00:13:15
Speaker 1: I suck.
00:13:15
Speaker 4: The next leak after that, the first leak, the next leak after that was I'm a puppet. I can do nothing. And the third leak after that was like he's killing me at this Texas rally. It's not helping me. The convention that was here, the GOP convention destroyed me. But I want to play the latest leaked audio because this is fascinating. And then I want your thoughts on if we can play that. That'd be great.
00:13:38
Speaker 5: Thank you.
00:13:39
Speaker 7: Nobody seems to be throwing out any ideas on how to deal with this, right?
00:13:41
Speaker 8: Is there anything you're giving.
00:13:42
Speaker 5: That we thought to?
00:13:43
Speaker 4: I mean, we spent $ 1. 6, $ 1.
00:13:44
Speaker 5: 7 on discretionary.
00:13:45
Speaker 4: We're spending about $ 6 trillion.
00:13:47
Speaker 7: In mandatory, right?
00:13:48
Speaker 4: And we're running over a $ 2 trillion-a-year deficit.
00:13:51
Speaker 8: So discretionary is not the problem. It's a domestic threat. It's a domestic threat to the defense industry.
00:13:56
Speaker 5: Last year was the first time the interest payment on the debt exceeded total defense spending in that country.
00:14:02
Speaker 2: Right.
00:14:03
Speaker 7: Well, even discretionary is a bad name for it. There's no doubt we have to cut some of the bandwidth.
00:14:14
Speaker 8: It's just that the numbers don't add up. And then on the other side, we've got to create tax policy that incentivizes more production. And I think sometimes we, I was always a believer in what Reagan did, which is the laugh of her, where if there's an idea of money taxation, it's not the highest level of tax. It discourages investment and wealth creation.
00:14:37
Speaker 2: So.
00:14:38
Speaker 8: We've got to get the maximum incentive by getting tax to a better place, which I think will generate more income. The growing out of this is part of the solution. And making some reasonable cuts in mandatory spending, you're going to have to do it. Or there is no solution. That's just a reality. We have to suck it up. And from Republican presidents to Democrats, we've been spending like crazy. And no one seems to care. It's going to bankrupt us.
00:15:10
Speaker 2: I would really like to pay my fair share of taxes, which is less than I'm paying now.
00:15:18
Speaker 1: That's something to keep in mind.
00:15:20
Speaker 8: I think tax cuts will actually generate more revenue. And incentivizing people to build manufacturing here, I mean, Trump's right about that, and.
00:15:32
Speaker 4: So I want your interpretation of that.
00:15:34
Speaker 5: That leads to audio, which is ridiculous.
00:15:37
Speaker 4: But I also want to find out how that audio gets out in your mind.
00:15:40
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, there's somebody there who doesn't like him, who got dragged to the event and recorded it. And that happens all the time in politics and happened to Mitt Romney, the 47%. But First off, he's talking about the Laffer Curve, which was the Reagan-era economic model for the tax cuts when there were marginal rates that were upwards of 90%. And the argument was that if you lower tax rates, you're going to incentivize investment. And in the end, the boom comes. from all of that investment will increase revenue. And it has become very much what George Herbert Walker Bush described it at contemporaneously, which was voodoo economics, right? And it's the idea in the way that Ken Paxton is talking about it there. In a country where we're $ 40 trillion in debt And the biggest line item in the budget is the interest payment, which is going up because interest rates are exploding because of Trump's failed war. So when you're sitting there like, what's happening? What's happening? Just as you're looking at money. Okay, we're $ 40 trillion in debt. we have to pay the note on that. That's the biggest expense in the country, right? We spend more on that than anything else. And now that's going up even higher because Trump started this war. And Ken Paxton's solution to it is, well, if we cut taxes, for the richest people in the country, we'll wind up with more money in the treasury. Doesn't work like that. And if we have more money in the treasury, we can, I'm not sure what. It makes no sense. It's all nonsense. It's just a deeply unserious, corrupt person.
00:18:29
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:18:30
Speaker 5: Right?
00:18:30
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:18:31
Speaker 4: Well, and, you know, it's like it's not like Texans don't know it. You know, it's not like people like I listen. I've got a rudimentary understanding of American economics, and I know it's unsustainable when you spend one point three trillion dollars a year servicing your debt and you spend less. That's the biggest ticket in your government every single fucking year. One point three four trillion dollars. servicing your debt that's a lot of money steve that's like that's a 40th of their g not even that is that's uh 126 of their gdp right like that's what we're talking about you are shoveling money into the scene ken paxton's idea is well let's just make people pay less taxes but but he's not saying that and and people are caught on to this i understand he's as corrupt as fuck He's not saying that because he thinks that this is a recording of leaked audio. He's not saying that because this is a campaign promise. What you just heard there was complete inanity for the people in the room and the female voice you heard, who I don't know who it is, is like, I certainly would like to pay my fair share of taxes, which I currently don't. Just an absolute mockery and the insult of the intelligence of every single American alive today.
00:19:43
Speaker 5: I don't you know, I've long you know, I've always had this conversation with people hypothetically, even people who are. way to the left of me. And I had one person who still hosts a show at MSNBC gave me an honest answer. And I was like, what's the number? How much do you want out of taxes? Like, what do you think I should pay? What percentage? Mostly when I ask that question, people will be like, uh, like 35%. That's like, like to me, that would be the mean number, right? That, that in an open-ended question to people I've asked over the years, right? That seems to be like the average number, right? Even from people that would describe themselves as pretty, pretty far left. This guy said I should pay 80%. right now and i had the right i had the i had to get the fuck out of here response now like here's the reality right maybe maybe she pays half of what she makes in taxes yeah right entirely possible right i don't believe i'm undertaxed i think a lot of people fall into that to that category now If you have a tax code, which is the case in the United States, it's 3,000 pages long. And then there's another 75,000 pages of regulations. Who does that help? Who does that benefit? It may mean, and she doesn't understand it, that that's why her taxes are so high.
00:21:32
Speaker 2: Right?
00:21:35
Speaker 5: It's a get-out-of-paying-taxes manual. If you have enough money to be able to hire the professionals to read the manual, which evades you from having to pay anything. If you're a Larry Ellison, if you're Elon Musk, if you're a Jeff Bezos. And that has eroded faith in democracy, in capitalism, in the American way of life, and has brought about a deep cynicism. Right? The idea that there's a category of people like Kimberly Guilfoyle, like, hey, sweetie, I need a hundred grand for.
00:22:27
Speaker 4: My Amex card.
00:22:29
Speaker 5: Before I have my Senate confirmation to be the ambassador to Greece where I travel around with my personal dresser named Fancy and I go to Mykonos and party on till 4.30 in the morning and Where I fired the head of my security detail because he wasn't awake at 4 a.m. to get me ice.
00:22:58
Speaker 1: More ice.
00:22:59
Speaker 5: Those are true stories, dude.
00:23:02
Speaker 1: That's a true fucking story.
00:23:05
Speaker 5: Right? There you go. I look at Pete Hegseth right now on the tax. I don't want to be paying anything.
00:23:17
Speaker 1: Right?
00:23:18
Speaker 5: Where the fuck does the money go?
00:23:20
Speaker 1: Right.
00:23:21
Speaker 5: To knock down the East Wing, rebuild the East Wing, knock down the Kennedy Center.
00:23:27
Speaker 3: Right.
00:23:29
Speaker 4: I mean, build an arch, guild some statues, slush funds, you know, and I want to kind of I want to walk through that, too. You mentioned Pete Eggset. who's the second most objectionable character in the Trump regime and the turd Reich. He's had a week, you know, uh, from, from the office of religious affairs and that fucking circus with flying monkeys at Quantico a couple of weeks ago or a week and a half ago to him, welcoming the people and the men and women and the sailors after a heroic tour, 321 days from the USS Lincoln and the golf back with the promise of a snuff film, uh, where they're going to, uh, Execute Nadal Hassan, who, of course, is the Fort Hood major psychologist who killed 13 different soldiers, injured another 32 in that mass murder. Make no mistake about it. Make no mistake about it. Nidal Hassan should die. But I want to play a clip for you from Pete Hegseth, who was stealing the valor of the men and women, as he does every day in the United States military, giving them and the American people this gift of sure return after 321 days of a public execution of Nidal Hassan by firing squad at Fort Hood. And this is a huge, huge story that nobody wants to talk about in terms of the merit of the story. And you put out a great piece, which we're going to get to in just a second. But let's watch this Pete Hegseth clip. This is him on the deck of the USS Lincoln, commandeering the valor of the nightmare. He put these beautiful men and women, people through with Jack Posobiec, of all people, conducting the interview. Let's watch that.
00:25:17
Speaker 6: One of these people, Jokar Zarnaev is another federal one who's got the death penalty that we were sort of waiting on, but he's not military. But Major Hassan, this news that came down regarding firing squad, can you tell us about how that came about and what led to that decision process?
00:25:33
Speaker 5: No brainer.
00:25:34
Speaker 2: Execution by firing squad. Army Major betrays his country. Radical Islamist kills a bunch of Americans at Fort Hood. Of course we're going to do it at Fort Hood. We're going to do it on a Thursday. We're going to do it at one o'clock, which is when he did it. And it's going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad. It hadn't been since World War II since we've done that. Well, I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II, which was win, which was understand when the enemy attacks you, you need to stand your ground. So it was a radical Islamist terror attack. Remember what Obama called it? Workplace violence. I mean, that's what we're up against. That's the worldview we're up against is workplace violence, CVE.
00:26:11
Speaker 1: We know what it is.
00:26:11
Speaker 2: It was a radical Islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks of And so he's going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be. And we'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public, because people need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things.
00:26:27
Speaker 6: Has Major Hassan made any final requests, reached out to the president, anything like that to your knowledge?
00:26:32
Speaker 5: Don't care.
00:26:35
Speaker 1: Your thoughts, Steve?
00:26:39
Speaker 5: First off, what's wrong with him? What's wrong? He's on... If he showed up in a United Airlines uniform for a flight as the captain, so is he coked up? Why is he so amped up like that? Why does he have such little command bearing? No capacity to restrain. And so.
00:27:13
Speaker 5: First off, let me just say, and I want to be clear about this, I've always been against the death penalty. Not an issue. I've had occasion to talk about a great deal. But I do think there is an exception to my opposition to it inside the military, where there are occasions where it is appropriate. for someone to be executed. And Major Hassan meets the test, right? So I have no objection whatsoever to a death sentence being carried out. Now, if you go back in American history, there's a story that tugged at the heartstrings of our founding fathers during the revolution. And that was the capture of Major John Andre, who was the British spy master who set up Benedict Arnold. He was erudite, handsome, a gifted artist. Alexander Hamilton lobbied for him to be spared, but he was caught in civilian clothes and he was hung as a spy. Major Andre did not want to be hung like a common criminal, which is how spies were dealt with. He wanted to face a firing squad and death like a soldier, which was the Herman Goring proposition, which led him to poison himself because he was going to be hung. So because... Pete Hegseth is an ignorant jackass. He's giving a terrorist a soldier's death. And he's giving an Al-Qaeda murderer a propaganda victory with a filmed martyrdom that is exactly the opposite of of how Admiral McRaven and others handled the dispatch of bin Laden's body after he was shot in the head by a Navy SEAL team and executed in a manner of form. So what this is about is bloodlust. It's a snuff film. It's a political act.
00:29:59
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
00:30:00
Speaker 5: And it's a political act that says, I have the power, me, the former Fox News weekend fucking monkey boy, to show to the world the execution of a man on my order. And it is a debasing act.
00:30:26
Speaker 4: Hmm.
00:30:27
Speaker 5: And so the countries in the world that publicly execute people are Afghanistan, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. These are barbaric places where there is no justice. There is no law. And so this is unacceptable.
00:30:55
Speaker 3: Hmm.
00:30:57
Speaker 5: And that this buffoon, and he is a buffoon, would attempt to do it. And I can't hear the outrage from the leaders of the Democratic Party since they chill down my spine contemplating the coming majority. Because... There's no world where it's OK for the masses of people who are voting for a Democratic majority for there to be a repeat of 2024. And the impeachment of Pete Hegseth is day one. And when you win this majority, you start communicating, especially to the Republicans that are in cycle of 2028. He's fucking gone. He's gone. You'll shut that place down. Nothing will happen until Pete Hegseth is removed from office.
00:32:09
Speaker 3: Nothing.
00:32:11
Speaker 4: As it should be.
00:32:12
Speaker 5: He's gone. Because the security of the United States demands it. Constitutional fidelity and duty requires it. And every one of those members of Congress has nothing more important to do than have the backs of the 18 and 19-year-old seamen, Marine and Army privates, airmen that count on them to have some good judgment when it comes to their safety.
00:32:55
Speaker 2: Hmm.
00:32:57
Speaker 5: So well said.
00:32:58
Speaker 4: You know, I want to take a piece out of Death Cameras. Let me just do the Death Cameras action piece. Everybody needs to go to Steve Schmidt here on Substack at Steve Schmidt at the warning, because I've got another question to ask you. There's a part to this that I found fascinating that you brought up in your piece. After American forces, which you pointed out, killed Osama bin Laden, his body was washed, wrapped and buried at sea from the USS Carl Vinson. Religious remarks were read and translated into Arabic. Officials described their efforts to observe Muslim burial practices. The United States did not display his remains as a trophy. Barack Obama withheld the death photographs because they would incite violence and become propaganda. Very important point. He explained, quote, we don't trot out this stuff as trophies. We don't need to spike the football. Why no head on the pike at the South Lawn? Because displaying a corpse would accomplish nothing worthy of a country. Restraint protected American interests. preserve the boundary around American conduct. Bin Laden's killing off during a raid differs from judicial execution. The danger of making death a trophy remains. And that death trophy will play bigly, as they say, in the extremist Muslim community. Martyrs are created through executions like this. Talk about the danger of the visuals of this, because Pete Hegseth, Steve, isn't just going to execute Nadal Hassan by firing squad the first time this has happened, I believe since 1936, in this capacity, he's going to live stream it on YouTube.
00:34:32
Speaker 5: Well, that's it, right? It's a barbaric event because it's live streamed for the purposes of glorifying violence on YouTube that correspond to like a hand into a glove with the fascist propaganda that's flooding the airwaves at taxpayer expense. And it is conditioning a political base that has already been incited to violence that watched those who were incited to violence be pardoned for their crimes and be called heroes, it's conditioning them that the state can kill to entertain them. That's not justice. It is barbarism. And so what Pete Hegseth is doing here is producing a snuff film. There are five people on death row. How is it that our Christian nationalist Uber Fuhrer, right, with the tattoos festooned on his chest, just happened to pick up the Muslim terrorist to be the first one to shoot? And by the way, Are they all going to be public executions, or is it a one-off? How many public executions can we look forward to? What if there's a way to do it not at 1 o'clock, but at 9 o'clock? And what if we can do it in conjunction with Paramount in 60 minutes? Wow, we could get great ratings. What if we put his head on a pike? in front of the White House, and we ask people to walk by and see it? What if we just hang them by a crane, lifting them up off the ground like they did in Homeland to Brody in the last episode of season three? Again, Donald Trump was calling for the execution of the Central Park Five and paid ads in the New York Post and Daily News 40 years ago. Yeah. The merging of violent rhetoric and violent act through government deed is deeply worrying in a democracy is unacceptable.
00:37:49
Speaker 4: Yeah and they're worrying because they're they're playing as entertainment they're playing it as schadenfreude you know you said something in your piece as well this proposal also gives renewed weight to mark milley's undelivered resignation letter in 2020 milley accused donald trump using military to create fear in the minds of people defending equal citizenship across race religion sexuality and warned against subordinating the military principles it had fought. And the reason why I picked that paragraph out of your piece, Death Cameras Action, everybody against Steve Schmidt on Substack, please go and subscribe and read that piece, is because the principles and the priorities of this regime, the Third Reich, are as such that they are willing to go to the wall to cancel and really criminalize drag shows, right? But they're willing to put the death of a man in a wheelchair, whether he deserves it or not. And I agree with you. I'm not for the death penalty. But I think there are superseding issues which require it. This would be one of them. He killed 13 people, injured another 32. And watching America devolve, and that was what I got out of your piece, is the devolvement from practices in the past into entertainment. where they're taking America's reputation as a measured country, as people who observed the right things for the right reasons, and what this now gives birth to, and what the priorities of this administration are in canceling shows where they don't want people to watch men dress up as women and sing Dolly Parton songs, but they will live stream literally a firing squad shooting a paraplegic because they think he deserves it. It is enormously bothering, enormously ridiculous to me that we're having this conversation as if there is any merit to what Pete Hegseth, and there is not, to what Pete Hegseth said the other day and what he is planning on December 3rd, which is when this is supposed to happen. And I want to kind of give you the last word before we break On this beautiful Monday here on Dead Air, my friend Steve Schmidt, at Steve Schmidt from The Warning, to kind of wrap this up before we head out for the rest of the day.
00:39:57
Speaker 5: You know, Major Hassan is a terrorist and a criminal and a religious fanatic. And Pete Hegseth is a terrorist and a criminal and a religious fanatic. He's a war criminal who's killed on his orders hundreds of people in the Southern Caribbean. We will find out more about the unarmed Iranian frigate sank by a U.S. submarine with no quarter given to those sea cadets in the water. Was that an American me lie? What Hassan is, is an Al Qaeda terrorist. And what Pete Hegseth is, is an American Taliban, a Christian Taliban. White ISIS. Christian ISIS. Christian ISIS. And his pastor, who now routinely speaks at the Pentagon, apparently. believe slavery was a good thing. Women shouldn't vote. God works through them to tell you what you can do. And it usually works out that you can do a lot so long as you're for them being in power. In Jesus' name.
00:41:45
Speaker 3: Amen. Right?
00:41:47
Speaker 5: And so.
00:41:49
Speaker 5: When you look at the religious fanaticism, I want no part in the public executions of any religious fanatic. I don't want any part of Pete Hegseth's revenge. Not justice, revenge. A Christian religious fanatic who has a hard-on to shoot a Muslim terrorist, and frames it as an act of Christian terrorism and retribution, because that's what you heard him do. And it's morally appalling, dishonors the US military, and it should be stopped by the United States Congress.
00:42:50
Speaker 4: Well, midterms are 25 days away. The American people can't stop this. That, of course, is my friend Steve Schmidt. From the warning, this has been Dead Air. On behalf of our friends at the Save America Movement, please subscribe to at the Save America Movement here. On Substack, please go and support them. Donate if you can. It's right versus wrong, not right versus left. And what we talked about today is in every degree right versus wrong. thesaveamericamovement.org. Dead Air is available anywhere you can get your fine podcasts, exclusively here on Substack, but you can get it on Google, YouTube. You can also get it on Apple, Stitch, wherever you find podcasts, however you get your podcasts. Please go on Google Dead Air. Always appreciate your time, Steve. Thank you very, very much for doing this. I'm sure I'll catch up with you this week in some capacity or not, but thanks so much for taking time. Good to see you, too.
00:43:40
Speaker 5: Talk to you soon.
00:44:11
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Oh, we're having.
00:00:15
Speaker 2: A great impact.
00:00:18
Speaker 1: We're going to Texas right now. We have a very big one, but they're all big. Everyone is big. They're all sold out. They have a line that's a mile long or two miles long or something. You can talk before I get there. It was last night. I think we're helping the Republican Party with the Browns. We're doing almost one a day, which is a lot of work, but I like doing it.
00:00:41
Speaker 3: Mr. President, why are you going to Texas so much? We want to make sure that Ted Paxton wins.
00:00:47
Speaker 1: He's a good man. He was probably the.
00:00:49
Speaker 3: Best attorney general in the whole country or right up there. And for purposes of that, we want to make sure that Ken Paxton can win.
00:00:58
Speaker 2: President, do you agree with Ken Paxton that the war on gas prices is the biggest challenge for Republicans?
00:01:04
Speaker 3: I think the war is, if you call it a war, it's a war that's been won from the standpoint of what we have to do.
00:01:12
Speaker 1: We have to get rid of no nuclear weapons, as you know, for Iran. I think when people.
00:01:18
Speaker 3: Hear that we've done what other presidents should have done for many years, now we're up to 51 years, we've taken.
00:01:25
Speaker 1: Away their nuclear power.
00:01:26
Speaker 3: If they would have had nuclear power, you would have had problems like you've never had before. So we did this for that reason. We've essentially accomplished that. Their military is.
00:01:36
Speaker 1: Now wiped out. The whole country right now is wiped out. It'll be over very quickly.
00:01:41
Speaker 3: And when it does, oil prices will come down.
00:01:49
Speaker 4: Ah, the stars at night are big and bright. Deep in the heart of Texas, it's trouble for Trump. Welcome to Dead Air.
00:01:58
Speaker 1: My name is Dean.
00:01:58
Speaker 4: That, of course, is my friend, the indispensable Steve Schmidt from The Warning here on Substack. At Steve Schmidt is where you can find him on Substack as well as The Warning. On YouTube, Steve, good to see you. Nice to see you today. There's Donald Trump clearly in a panic, in a froth. This is the third visit he's made to Texas. He and Ken Paxton had a very unceremonious... Rally in Texas where 18 people got kicked out. Old Maggie guys are beating the shit out of young protesters. He was interrupted more than 12 times, as I understand it. Ken Paxton is down several points to James Tallarico and the unthinkable is here. And that's why we're here to talk about it. This is dead air. Let's get to it. These are stories that nobody else is going to talk about the way that we talk about them. But your thoughts on the Trump panic with Ken Paxton continually going back and forth on the taxpayer dime to try and put Ken Paxton on stilts, maybe the most aggrieved and egregious criminal attorney general in the history of the United States.
00:03:01
Speaker 5: He spent the summer gallivanting around Europe With his mistress. Side piece, yes. With his attorney general, non-government issued side piece. Yes, that's correct. And it's just incredible. I mean, he's in an age of unfathomable corruption. When he got to the U.S. Senate, he'd be the most corrupt senator ever. by far he's one of the most, maybe the most corrupt public official in the United States, not named Trump or somebody who hasn't fucked a Trump. So I got to get Kimberly Guilfoyle.
00:03:54
Speaker 4: You got a real, you got a real thing for Kimberly Guilfoyle right now.
00:03:59
Speaker 5: I love it. Oh my. And, um, No, it's just unbelievable. Ed, he's a total disgrace. He was impeached by Republicans in Texas. And he is a whack job's whack job. A hypocrite's hypocrite. A scumbag's scumbag. A MAGA's MAGA.
00:04:32
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
00:04:32
Speaker 5: But he's a loser.
00:04:34
Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.
00:04:35
Speaker 5: And so he's losing to Telerico. And one of the things about Texas is, and somebody wrote about this a while back and it sat with me. We grew up in an era where there was a lot of cultural cachet associated with Texas, Dallas. the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. Texas was always known as a friendly state, a welcoming place.
00:05:15
Speaker 4: Hi, darling.
00:05:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:05:17
Speaker 5: A big place, not a small place, not a mean place. One of the greatest heroes of the state, James Earl Rudder, is the man who led the Rangers ashore at Pointe du Hoc. He returned to Texas. He was a Democrat. He was the state agricultural commissioner, president of Texas A & M. He desegregated Texas A & M. He admitted women to Texas A & M. This mean-spirited tradition is not longstanding. Greg Abbott is a hideous character in all of this.
00:06:02
Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
00:06:05
Speaker 5: And cowardly. You look at Ovaldi and the cops, a antithesis of what we think about as Texas and Texas values. And so what you see here is a state put into turmoil by immoral men and women many of them imbeciles, who are going to be reproached by the electorate. And I think it's entirely possible that Greg Abbott goes down, too. But I think Tallarico is going to be the senator. And this race isn't going to get tighter. It's going to get wider. He's running a great campaign.
00:06:56
Speaker 4: Tallarico, yeah. You know what? And it's funny because you were big on Terry Virts, obviously, for a long period of time. And as life goes, as campaigns go, the one thing that Tallarico has done is he's been able to kind of split that evangelical middle to the common sense evangelical, which I really have appreciated. My brother's a pastor, and I come from an evangelical Christian background, not something I talk about very often unless you read my deconstruction series on Substack. And one of the things that my brother, who hates Donald Trump, who is one of those Christians who believes in the teachings and the philosophy of Christ, not in the evangelical white Christian nationalism, jihadist bullshit that you see from Pete Hegseth, which we're going to get to in just a bit. The one thing that I really love about James Tallarico is he has made his faith accessible to everybody and represented the best parts of that in a state that's steeped in evangelical Christian nationalism. And to look across the aisle to see a guy whose wife divorced him on biblical grounds, that's what Ken Paxson's wife did when she found out he was having an affair with a fitness influencer who, as you pointed out to start the show, went to England with during, as a matter of fact, July the 1st. He wasn't even in town for Independence Day. And then he accosted someone over there. He hit someone over there. He also pardoned a friend of his who was a a serial pedophile, instead of 60 days in jail, he gave him one day when the guy should never fucking see the light of day out of prison. He has $ 25 million in assets, specifically real estate that on his salary in no way should he own. He's been caught in several different corruption scams when it comes to taking in money and doing what you're talking about being the most corrupt human being in politics not named Trump. And then you look at James Tallarico, who's been able to build this lead, and let's get to D1, him leading in the polls if we can. James Tallarico has been able to connect with those people and almost pull them out in Michigan, pull them out of that mega death cult, that evangelical death cult. If you check some of these stats and James Tallarico's polling, he is one of the most accessible Christian politicians I have ever seen in my life. And listen, I'm no stranger to not disliking evangelical Christianity or organized religion. But if it were up to me and I got a chance to sit down with James Tallarico, not only would I give him my agency as a voter in Texas, I might actually convert.
00:09:31
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, I think that part of it is that Tallarico was able to overcome in a Substantial way, I think, the woke excesses of things he said. There's six different sexes, so on and so forth. And he was able to do that well. because Republicans nominated the craziest possible candidate they could conceivably nominate. And you have a guy, you know, if you're looking at, for example, in Dallas, nobody wants to be in the club in a pretty posh city. With Ken Paxton. And no one wants to sit near him. He's icky. And John Cornyn has a perfect, perfect representation of the ick that Republicans wear on their Texas shoulders like fur shoals, right? When it comes to their disdain for this guy. I mean, even Trump. has made it an issue. I don't like him. I don't like him.
00:10:54
Speaker 4: That's the first Texas rally. He was like, you might not like him, but you got to vote for him.
00:10:58
Speaker 3: I don't know if he's here.
00:11:01
Speaker 5: But you got to vote for him. And, you know, you can look at a character like Ted Cruz, and I do, and you're like, holy shit, you know, how could that guy win a statewide election? The answer to that question is, well, you first have to win a primary because And once you do that in a state like that, which is trended as a one party state, you're OK. You're OK. You know, but he's always run behind other Republicans. But maybe he's had the outer limit from a personality line and Texas voters just won't go beyond it. And Ken Paxton is a mile beyond it. He's just he's just extraordinarily corrupt. extraordinarily unfit, and you have an ethical young guy who's sincere in his views and who's run a really good campaign. I think voters are going to give him a shot.
00:12:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, which will be weird.
00:12:03
Speaker 5: I think he's going to get it done. What an embarrassment for Texas if Ken Paxton wins. What an embarrassment.
00:12:09
Speaker 4: Well, I don't think he's going to because it doesn't seem to matter how much money they pour into that state. Let's show people this This graphic. Money isn't helping the GOP.
00:12:19
Speaker 5: It's not helping any of these races. There's no amount of money.
00:12:23
Speaker 4: I think they pumped half a billion dollars into this race in Texas. Over half a billion dollars GOP spent in.
00:12:30
Speaker 5: Those little-to-move polls.
00:12:32
Speaker 4: As you can tell, one factor, Republicans advantage bigger dollars. It doesn't matter anymore. This election doesn't come down to money. That war chest doesn't matter when it comes to the misrepresentation and the embarrassment of the people of Texas. It doesn't matter when it comes to to the misrepresentation and the embarrassment of the people of Maine. It doesn't matter when it comes to the misrepresentation and the embarrassment of the people in Georgia, Michigan, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio. And we're starting to see that in the polls. And I think part of it is, too, is that you've got really leaky boats. It's not just like you can't pay for this kind of audio that we're going to hear from Ken Paxson in a second. We've had four leaks this week, and we're going to get to the latest leak in just a second. I want your thoughts on it. The first three leaks were It's all Donald Trump's fault.
00:13:15
Speaker 1: I suck.
00:13:15
Speaker 4: The next leak after that, the first leak, the next leak after that was I'm a puppet. I can do nothing. And the third leak after that was like he's killing me at this Texas rally. It's not helping me. The convention that was here, the GOP convention destroyed me. But I want to play the latest leaked audio because this is fascinating. And then I want your thoughts on if we can play that. That'd be great.
00:13:38
Speaker 5: Thank you.
00:13:39
Speaker 7: Nobody seems to be throwing out any ideas on how to deal with this, right?
00:13:41
Speaker 8: Is there anything you're giving.
00:13:42
Speaker 5: That we thought to?
00:13:43
Speaker 4: I mean, we spent $ 1. 6, $ 1.
00:13:44
Speaker 5: 7 on discretionary.
00:13:45
Speaker 4: We're spending about $ 6 trillion.
00:13:47
Speaker 7: In mandatory, right?
00:13:48
Speaker 4: And we're running over a $ 2 trillion-a-year deficit.
00:13:51
Speaker 8: So discretionary is not the problem. It's a domestic threat. It's a domestic threat to the defense industry.
00:13:56
Speaker 5: Last year was the first time the interest payment on the debt exceeded total defense spending in that country.
00:14:02
Speaker 2: Right.
00:14:03
Speaker 7: Well, even discretionary is a bad name for it. There's no doubt we have to cut some of the bandwidth.
00:14:14
Speaker 8: It's just that the numbers don't add up. And then on the other side, we've got to create tax policy that incentivizes more production. And I think sometimes we, I was always a believer in what Reagan did, which is the laugh of her, where if there's an idea of money taxation, it's not the highest level of tax. It discourages investment and wealth creation.
00:14:37
Speaker 2: So.
00:14:38
Speaker 8: We've got to get the maximum incentive by getting tax to a better place, which I think will generate more income. The growing out of this is part of the solution. And making some reasonable cuts in mandatory spending, you're going to have to do it. Or there is no solution. That's just a reality. We have to suck it up. And from Republican presidents to Democrats, we've been spending like crazy. And no one seems to care. It's going to bankrupt us.
00:15:10
Speaker 2: I would really like to pay my fair share of taxes, which is less than I'm paying now.
00:15:18
Speaker 1: That's something to keep in mind.
00:15:20
Speaker 8: I think tax cuts will actually generate more revenue. And incentivizing people to build manufacturing here, I mean, Trump's right about that, and.
00:15:32
Speaker 4: So I want your interpretation of that.
00:15:34
Speaker 5: That leads to audio, which is ridiculous.
00:15:37
Speaker 4: But I also want to find out how that audio gets out in your mind.
00:15:40
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, there's somebody there who doesn't like him, who got dragged to the event and recorded it. And that happens all the time in politics and happened to Mitt Romney, the 47%. But First off, he's talking about the Laffer Curve, which was the Reagan-era economic model for the tax cuts when there were marginal rates that were upwards of 90%. And the argument was that if you lower tax rates, you're going to incentivize investment. And in the end, the boom comes. from all of that investment will increase revenue. And it has become very much what George Herbert Walker Bush described it at contemporaneously, which was voodoo economics, right? And it's the idea in the way that Ken Paxton is talking about it there. In a country where we're $ 40 trillion in debt And the biggest line item in the budget is the interest payment, which is going up because interest rates are exploding because of Trump's failed war. So when you're sitting there like, what's happening? What's happening? Just as you're looking at money. Okay, we're $ 40 trillion in debt. we have to pay the note on that. That's the biggest expense in the country, right? We spend more on that than anything else. And now that's going up even higher because Trump started this war. And Ken Paxton's solution to it is, well, if we cut taxes, for the richest people in the country, we'll wind up with more money in the treasury. Doesn't work like that. And if we have more money in the treasury, we can, I'm not sure what. It makes no sense. It's all nonsense. It's just a deeply unserious, corrupt person.
00:18:29
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:18:30
Speaker 5: Right?
00:18:30
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:18:31
Speaker 4: Well, and, you know, it's like it's not like Texans don't know it. You know, it's not like people like I listen. I've got a rudimentary understanding of American economics, and I know it's unsustainable when you spend one point three trillion dollars a year servicing your debt and you spend less. That's the biggest ticket in your government every single fucking year. One point three four trillion dollars. servicing your debt that's a lot of money steve that's like that's a 40th of their g not even that is that's uh 126 of their gdp right like that's what we're talking about you are shoveling money into the scene ken paxton's idea is well let's just make people pay less taxes but but he's not saying that and and people are caught on to this i understand he's as corrupt as fuck He's not saying that because he thinks that this is a recording of leaked audio. He's not saying that because this is a campaign promise. What you just heard there was complete inanity for the people in the room and the female voice you heard, who I don't know who it is, is like, I certainly would like to pay my fair share of taxes, which I currently don't. Just an absolute mockery and the insult of the intelligence of every single American alive today.
00:19:43
Speaker 5: I don't you know, I've long you know, I've always had this conversation with people hypothetically, even people who are. way to the left of me. And I had one person who still hosts a show at MSNBC gave me an honest answer. And I was like, what's the number? How much do you want out of taxes? Like, what do you think I should pay? What percentage? Mostly when I ask that question, people will be like, uh, like 35%. That's like, like to me, that would be the mean number, right? That, that in an open-ended question to people I've asked over the years, right? That seems to be like the average number, right? Even from people that would describe themselves as pretty, pretty far left. This guy said I should pay 80%. right now and i had the right i had the i had to get the fuck out of here response now like here's the reality right maybe maybe she pays half of what she makes in taxes yeah right entirely possible right i don't believe i'm undertaxed i think a lot of people fall into that to that category now If you have a tax code, which is the case in the United States, it's 3,000 pages long. And then there's another 75,000 pages of regulations. Who does that help? Who does that benefit? It may mean, and she doesn't understand it, that that's why her taxes are so high.
00:21:32
Speaker 2: Right?
00:21:35
Speaker 5: It's a get-out-of-paying-taxes manual. If you have enough money to be able to hire the professionals to read the manual, which evades you from having to pay anything. If you're a Larry Ellison, if you're Elon Musk, if you're a Jeff Bezos. And that has eroded faith in democracy, in capitalism, in the American way of life, and has brought about a deep cynicism. Right? The idea that there's a category of people like Kimberly Guilfoyle, like, hey, sweetie, I need a hundred grand for.
00:22:27
Speaker 4: My Amex card.
00:22:29
Speaker 5: Before I have my Senate confirmation to be the ambassador to Greece where I travel around with my personal dresser named Fancy and I go to Mykonos and party on till 4.30 in the morning and Where I fired the head of my security detail because he wasn't awake at 4 a.m. to get me ice.
00:22:58
Speaker 1: More ice.
00:22:59
Speaker 5: Those are true stories, dude.
00:23:02
Speaker 1: That's a true fucking story.
00:23:05
Speaker 5: Right? There you go. I look at Pete Hegseth right now on the tax. I don't want to be paying anything.
00:23:17
Speaker 1: Right?
00:23:18
Speaker 5: Where the fuck does the money go?
00:23:20
Speaker 1: Right.
00:23:21
Speaker 5: To knock down the East Wing, rebuild the East Wing, knock down the Kennedy Center.
00:23:27
Speaker 3: Right.
00:23:29
Speaker 4: I mean, build an arch, guild some statues, slush funds, you know, and I want to kind of I want to walk through that, too. You mentioned Pete Eggset. who's the second most objectionable character in the Trump regime and the turd Reich. He's had a week, you know, uh, from, from the office of religious affairs and that fucking circus with flying monkeys at Quantico a couple of weeks ago or a week and a half ago to him, welcoming the people and the men and women and the sailors after a heroic tour, 321 days from the USS Lincoln and the golf back with the promise of a snuff film, uh, where they're going to, uh, Execute Nadal Hassan, who, of course, is the Fort Hood major psychologist who killed 13 different soldiers, injured another 32 in that mass murder. Make no mistake about it. Make no mistake about it. Nidal Hassan should die. But I want to play a clip for you from Pete Hegseth, who was stealing the valor of the men and women, as he does every day in the United States military, giving them and the American people this gift of sure return after 321 days of a public execution of Nidal Hassan by firing squad at Fort Hood. And this is a huge, huge story that nobody wants to talk about in terms of the merit of the story. And you put out a great piece, which we're going to get to in just a second. But let's watch this Pete Hegseth clip. This is him on the deck of the USS Lincoln, commandeering the valor of the nightmare. He put these beautiful men and women, people through with Jack Posobiec, of all people, conducting the interview. Let's watch that.
00:25:17
Speaker 6: One of these people, Jokar Zarnaev is another federal one who's got the death penalty that we were sort of waiting on, but he's not military. But Major Hassan, this news that came down regarding firing squad, can you tell us about how that came about and what led to that decision process?
00:25:33
Speaker 5: No brainer.
00:25:34
Speaker 2: Execution by firing squad. Army Major betrays his country. Radical Islamist kills a bunch of Americans at Fort Hood. Of course we're going to do it at Fort Hood. We're going to do it on a Thursday. We're going to do it at one o'clock, which is when he did it. And it's going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad. It hadn't been since World War II since we've done that. Well, I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II, which was win, which was understand when the enemy attacks you, you need to stand your ground. So it was a radical Islamist terror attack. Remember what Obama called it? Workplace violence. I mean, that's what we're up against. That's the worldview we're up against is workplace violence, CVE.
00:26:11
Speaker 1: We know what it is.
00:26:11
Speaker 2: It was a radical Islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks of And so he's going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be. And we'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public, because people need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things.
00:26:27
Speaker 6: Has Major Hassan made any final requests, reached out to the president, anything like that to your knowledge?
00:26:32
Speaker 5: Don't care.
00:26:35
Speaker 1: Your thoughts, Steve?
00:26:39
Speaker 5: First off, what's wrong with him? What's wrong? He's on... If he showed up in a United Airlines uniform for a flight as the captain, so is he coked up? Why is he so amped up like that? Why does he have such little command bearing? No capacity to restrain. And so.
00:27:13
Speaker 5: First off, let me just say, and I want to be clear about this, I've always been against the death penalty. Not an issue. I've had occasion to talk about a great deal. But I do think there is an exception to my opposition to it inside the military, where there are occasions where it is appropriate. for someone to be executed. And Major Hassan meets the test, right? So I have no objection whatsoever to a death sentence being carried out. Now, if you go back in American history, there's a story that tugged at the heartstrings of our founding fathers during the revolution. And that was the capture of Major John Andre, who was the British spy master who set up Benedict Arnold. He was erudite, handsome, a gifted artist. Alexander Hamilton lobbied for him to be spared, but he was caught in civilian clothes and he was hung as a spy. Major Andre did not want to be hung like a common criminal, which is how spies were dealt with. He wanted to face a firing squad and death like a soldier, which was the Herman Goring proposition, which led him to poison himself because he was going to be hung. So because... Pete Hegseth is an ignorant jackass. He's giving a terrorist a soldier's death. And he's giving an Al-Qaeda murderer a propaganda victory with a filmed martyrdom that is exactly the opposite of of how Admiral McRaven and others handled the dispatch of bin Laden's body after he was shot in the head by a Navy SEAL team and executed in a manner of form. So what this is about is bloodlust. It's a snuff film. It's a political act.
00:29:59
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
00:30:00
Speaker 5: And it's a political act that says, I have the power, me, the former Fox News weekend fucking monkey boy, to show to the world the execution of a man on my order. And it is a debasing act.
00:30:26
Speaker 4: Hmm.
00:30:27
Speaker 5: And so the countries in the world that publicly execute people are Afghanistan, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. These are barbaric places where there is no justice. There is no law. And so this is unacceptable.
00:30:55
Speaker 3: Hmm.
00:30:57
Speaker 5: And that this buffoon, and he is a buffoon, would attempt to do it. And I can't hear the outrage from the leaders of the Democratic Party since they chill down my spine contemplating the coming majority. Because... There's no world where it's OK for the masses of people who are voting for a Democratic majority for there to be a repeat of 2024. And the impeachment of Pete Hegseth is day one. And when you win this majority, you start communicating, especially to the Republicans that are in cycle of 2028. He's fucking gone. He's gone. You'll shut that place down. Nothing will happen until Pete Hegseth is removed from office.
00:32:09
Speaker 3: Nothing.
00:32:11
Speaker 4: As it should be.
00:32:12
Speaker 5: He's gone. Because the security of the United States demands it. Constitutional fidelity and duty requires it. And every one of those members of Congress has nothing more important to do than have the backs of the 18 and 19-year-old seamen, Marine and Army privates, airmen that count on them to have some good judgment when it comes to their safety.
00:32:55
Speaker 2: Hmm.
00:32:57
Speaker 5: So well said.
00:32:58
Speaker 4: You know, I want to take a piece out of Death Cameras. Let me just do the Death Cameras action piece. Everybody needs to go to Steve Schmidt here on Substack at Steve Schmidt at the warning, because I've got another question to ask you. There's a part to this that I found fascinating that you brought up in your piece. After American forces, which you pointed out, killed Osama bin Laden, his body was washed, wrapped and buried at sea from the USS Carl Vinson. Religious remarks were read and translated into Arabic. Officials described their efforts to observe Muslim burial practices. The United States did not display his remains as a trophy. Barack Obama withheld the death photographs because they would incite violence and become propaganda. Very important point. He explained, quote, we don't trot out this stuff as trophies. We don't need to spike the football. Why no head on the pike at the South Lawn? Because displaying a corpse would accomplish nothing worthy of a country. Restraint protected American interests. preserve the boundary around American conduct. Bin Laden's killing off during a raid differs from judicial execution. The danger of making death a trophy remains. And that death trophy will play bigly, as they say, in the extremist Muslim community. Martyrs are created through executions like this. Talk about the danger of the visuals of this, because Pete Hegseth, Steve, isn't just going to execute Nadal Hassan by firing squad the first time this has happened, I believe since 1936, in this capacity, he's going to live stream it on YouTube.
00:34:32
Speaker 5: Well, that's it, right? It's a barbaric event because it's live streamed for the purposes of glorifying violence on YouTube that correspond to like a hand into a glove with the fascist propaganda that's flooding the airwaves at taxpayer expense. And it is conditioning a political base that has already been incited to violence that watched those who were incited to violence be pardoned for their crimes and be called heroes, it's conditioning them that the state can kill to entertain them. That's not justice. It is barbarism. And so what Pete Hegseth is doing here is producing a snuff film. There are five people on death row. How is it that our Christian nationalist Uber Fuhrer, right, with the tattoos festooned on his chest, just happened to pick up the Muslim terrorist to be the first one to shoot? And by the way, Are they all going to be public executions, or is it a one-off? How many public executions can we look forward to? What if there's a way to do it not at 1 o'clock, but at 9 o'clock? And what if we can do it in conjunction with Paramount in 60 minutes? Wow, we could get great ratings. What if we put his head on a pike? in front of the White House, and we ask people to walk by and see it? What if we just hang them by a crane, lifting them up off the ground like they did in Homeland to Brody in the last episode of season three? Again, Donald Trump was calling for the execution of the Central Park Five and paid ads in the New York Post and Daily News 40 years ago. Yeah. The merging of violent rhetoric and violent act through government deed is deeply worrying in a democracy is unacceptable.
00:37:49
Speaker 4: Yeah and they're worrying because they're they're playing as entertainment they're playing it as schadenfreude you know you said something in your piece as well this proposal also gives renewed weight to mark milley's undelivered resignation letter in 2020 milley accused donald trump using military to create fear in the minds of people defending equal citizenship across race religion sexuality and warned against subordinating the military principles it had fought. And the reason why I picked that paragraph out of your piece, Death Cameras Action, everybody against Steve Schmidt on Substack, please go and subscribe and read that piece, is because the principles and the priorities of this regime, the Third Reich, are as such that they are willing to go to the wall to cancel and really criminalize drag shows, right? But they're willing to put the death of a man in a wheelchair, whether he deserves it or not. And I agree with you. I'm not for the death penalty. But I think there are superseding issues which require it. This would be one of them. He killed 13 people, injured another 32. And watching America devolve, and that was what I got out of your piece, is the devolvement from practices in the past into entertainment. where they're taking America's reputation as a measured country, as people who observed the right things for the right reasons, and what this now gives birth to, and what the priorities of this administration are in canceling shows where they don't want people to watch men dress up as women and sing Dolly Parton songs, but they will live stream literally a firing squad shooting a paraplegic because they think he deserves it. It is enormously bothering, enormously ridiculous to me that we're having this conversation as if there is any merit to what Pete Hegseth, and there is not, to what Pete Hegseth said the other day and what he is planning on December 3rd, which is when this is supposed to happen. And I want to kind of give you the last word before we break On this beautiful Monday here on Dead Air, my friend Steve Schmidt, at Steve Schmidt from The Warning, to kind of wrap this up before we head out for the rest of the day.
00:39:57
Speaker 5: You know, Major Hassan is a terrorist and a criminal and a religious fanatic. And Pete Hegseth is a terrorist and a criminal and a religious fanatic. He's a war criminal who's killed on his orders hundreds of people in the Southern Caribbean. We will find out more about the unarmed Iranian frigate sank by a U.S. submarine with no quarter given to those sea cadets in the water. Was that an American me lie? What Hassan is, is an Al Qaeda terrorist. And what Pete Hegseth is, is an American Taliban, a Christian Taliban. White ISIS. Christian ISIS. Christian ISIS. And his pastor, who now routinely speaks at the Pentagon, apparently. believe slavery was a good thing. Women shouldn't vote. God works through them to tell you what you can do. And it usually works out that you can do a lot so long as you're for them being in power. In Jesus' name.
00:41:45
Speaker 3: Amen. Right?
00:41:47
Speaker 5: And so.
00:41:49
Speaker 5: When you look at the religious fanaticism, I want no part in the public executions of any religious fanatic. I don't want any part of Pete Hegseth's revenge. Not justice, revenge. A Christian religious fanatic who has a hard-on to shoot a Muslim terrorist, and frames it as an act of Christian terrorism and retribution, because that's what you heard him do. And it's morally appalling, dishonors the US military, and it should be stopped by the United States Congress.
00:42:50
Speaker 4: Well, midterms are 25 days away. The American people can't stop this. That, of course, is my friend Steve Schmidt. From the warning, this has been Dead Air. On behalf of our friends at the Save America Movement, please subscribe to at the Save America Movement here. On Substack, please go and support them. Donate if you can. It's right versus wrong, not right versus left. And what we talked about today is in every degree right versus wrong. thesaveamericamovement.org. Dead Air is available anywhere you can get your fine podcasts, exclusively here on Substack, but you can get it on Google, YouTube. You can also get it on Apple, Stitch, wherever you find podcasts, however you get your podcasts. Please go on Google Dead Air. Always appreciate your time, Steve. Thank you very, very much for doing this. I'm sure I'll catch up with you this week in some capacity or not, but thanks so much for taking time. Good to see you, too.
00:43:40
Speaker 5: Talk to you soon.
00:44:11
Speaker 1: Thank you.
