LIVE
Episode 354 of the Aggressive Progressive Podcast.
Is there anyone out there that can unify this country?
Let's start the show.
We are now the defenders of the stronghold democracy and of equal opportunity.
You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time, not only
with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift.
The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers.
The very word secrecy is repugnant.
Clearly to ship.
And we are as a people.
Not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.
Opposed to secret societies.
But ours was a nation of the both.
Not the bullets.
And a secret pursuits.
As a people, we cannot afford to let any group of citizens or any individual citizen
live or live under conditions which are injurious to the commonwealth.
Black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, young, old, gay, straight, men and women,
folks with disabilities, all pledging allegiance under the same proud flag to this big, bold
country that we love.
That's what I see.
That's the America I know.
Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
But there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.
Welcome to the Aggressive Progressive Podcast, I am your host, Chris Hahn.
Thank you for liking, rating, and subscribing and telling your friends about the show.
We continue to grow.
Alright, like every week, there is just so much going on, so much to discuss, so let's
get to it.
I don't know why Bill Cassidy is still in the room.
I don't get it.
Last week, during the Vodorama for the Must Pass, Homeland Security Funding, you know,
the thing that shut down the government for like six months.
Democrats offered an amendment, several amendments, that would have eliminated, made illegal,
Trump's slush fund, his reparations for rioters, his January 6 rioters.
Bill Cassidy voted to allow to kill that amendment.
I guess you could say he was deciding vote.
Right?
Republicans let a few senators take a walk on it.
The senator from Alaska.
The senator from Ohio.
And Lisa Murkowski, who wasn't going to vote for it, who is going to vote for it anyway.
But they held on to just enough votes to pass.
Even Tom Tillis, I don't understand what are you doing there?
I know Senator Tillis and Senator Cassidy think that that's a bad idea to have the slush
fund for people who beat up cops, gave cops brain damage, defecated in the halls of the
Capitol.
You know, Trump wants to pay him out because they were his guys, feels they were, they were
they were treated very badly, very badly.
Yeah, no, they treated cops.
And the Constitution very badly on January 6.
I don't know what they're doing there.
I thought they were going to be, you know, in the Yolo phase where they were just like,
screw Trump.
I'm going to do what I gotta do.
Like, what does Bill Cassidy thinks going to happen here?
Does he think that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche will leave him be?
I mean, I don't think Todd Blanche would go after him, Suey Generous, but I do think that
Todd Blanche would go after him if that's what Trump wanted.
And Trump might want it anyway.
I mean, you count out to Trump, you allowed RFK Jr., an anti-vaxxer, obsessed with snakes
for some weird reason, to be the head of the Health and Human Services, the secretary of
Health and Human Services in this country, you, a medical doctor, Senator Cassidy.
You did it because Trump asked you to.
And then Trump endorsed your primary opponent anyway, and you came in third.
So why do you continue to be clown yourself to him?
Senator Cassidy said, I would vote on this if it was a Republican effort, not because
it's a Democratic effort.
OK, well, let's see if there's a Republican effort to bar something that Trump wants,
right?
I get it.
Todd Blanche said it's not going to happen.
But Donald Trump said he loves the idea of it after Todd Blanche said it wasn't going
to happen.
So let's do the math here.
Who's Todd Blanche going to, who's gut is Todd Blanche going to go with?
His own or the president's?
I'm telling you right now, Todd Blanche will do whatever Donald Trump wants him to do whenever
Donald Trump wants him to do it.
So if the Congress doesn't pass an amendment attached to a bill that Donald Trump passed
to sign because Donald Trump would veto it if it was a standalone bill, it's probably
going to happen.
There probably will be a slush fund established.
As part of a settlement for a lawsuit Donald Trump brought against himself that was settled
by himself, it'll probably happen because even senators in the GOP who are no longer
running for office have no balls among them.
And I'm saying it because they're all men.
Well, I guess, I guess there's one woman not running, but she wasn't really ever going
to be anti-Trump.
I don't get it.
I do not get it.
Senator, you only live once and you will be judged historically by how you act the next
six months.
I mean, look, you stood up to him once after January 6th.
You were one of the people who voted to convict him after January 6th, Senator Cassidy.
You probably should have stuck with that when he became president again.
And you probably should have stood up to him.
Maybe your constituents would have respected you for that.
Maybe you would have made it to the runoff at least in your state's Republican Senate
primary.
But instead, you tried to appease him after you had stood up to him and the results have
been completely predictable.
I mean, anybody could have seen this coming.
He was coming for you the entire time and you just, you know, opened the door for him.
Too bad.
So sad.
Listen to this.
I'll be right back.
Welcome back.
I am your host, Chris Hahn.
I am at Christopher Hahn on X, Christopher Hahn and Y on Instagram and ChristopherHahn.com.
Those are my socials.
I hope you're listening to me on the aggressive progressive podcast.
If you're not, you can download it on Apple podcast, iHeartRadio podcast or wherever you
get your podcasts.
And of course, watch me on NewsNation.
I'll be on there a bunch this week.
I don't know when I'm hoping it's not later Monday night because I will be watching the
Nick game.
If you're listening to this on Tuesday, I would rather be watching the Nick game than
being on TV.
So if you are a producer who checks my podcast to see what's going on, please check the Nick
schedule and make sure you're not putting me on during a Nick game.
There should only be two more knock on wood, but there could be as many as, you know, five
more.
So just, you know, check the schedule.
Make sure you're accommodating my requests.
Thank you.
All right.
So President Trump said that he is not nominating the incredibly unqualified Bill Pulte to be
his director of national intelligence, the DNI, if you will.
The DNI is a, it has become a very important role.
It coordinates all of the intelligence agencies.
There are many, you know, the CIA, the NSA, et cetera, et cetera.
Bill Pulte was a real estate guy.
Right?
He was part of a family real estate, you know, like thing.
He was like an heir, just like Trump, you know, all these guys born, you know, on third
base, think they hit, I mean, you can't even say he was born on third base.
He was born, you know, with a 10-nothing lead and thinks he scored all the runs.
But Bill Pulte, Donald Trump says he will not be nominating him, but he will serve
in an interim position because Bill Pulte is going to get to the bottom of the rigged
election in 2020.
And I imagine Bill Pulte is going to try to screw up our midterm elections, but not
going to happen because it's going to be too big to rig.
Now, now here's the thing about Bill Pulte.
No Republican has answered any questions to suggest that in any way that would
suggest that they have confidence that this man should be filling this important
role. Right?
Nobody has said that, not one, not even Marco Rubio, frankly, who is secretary
of state.
I wonder if any of them, I mean, this is something that that matters to them, right?
I wonder if any of them will stand up to the president on this, even the ones
retiring we talked about earlier.
I'm not confident they will.
I mean, Democrats are now suggesting they're going to hold up.
Reauthorization of certain surveillance activities that we have used some
counterterrorism surveillance activities, they're going to hold it up.
Because they don't feel like giving Bill Pulte that power.
And they are going to make Bill Pulte an issue in this surveillance thing.
And, you know, again, bring him to Congress for hearing immediately.
Bill Pulte is the guy.
Remember when the president posted that meme of himself as Jesus?
A couple of weeks ago, you know, started to lose Catholics.
You know, we said he was in a fight with Pope Leo at the time.
And it was right around Easter and he posted a picture of himself as Jesus.
Right.
Blasphemy.
Not forgivable, just for the record.
Bill Pulte is the one who gave him that meme.
And that's no surprise because, you know, three years ago, Bill Pulte's job
was trading meme stocks, trying to get people to invest in things like Best Buy.
And not Best Buy.
Yeah, Best Buy.
Well, no, Bed Bath and Beyond.
That's what it was, that he was trying to get people to invest in as a meme stock,
just kind of like Game Stock, Game Stop.
It's stock, you know, went through the roof.
Bill Pulte was trying to do that with Bed Bath and Beyond.
Three years ago.
Not that long ago.
I'm not talking about ancient history.
I'm talking about three freaking years ago.
OK. And now a guy who has no zero experience at all, a real estate air
who is a meme stock promoter.
The president has put in as interim director of national intelligence
and the president is smart enough to know you better not put this guy before
Congress to talk about this stuff because it won't go over well.
I'm like, you know, OK, GOP national security guys.
Remember how the GOP was the serious party on foreign policy
and national security and the and the economy and the budget?
Democrats were all about, you know, giving health care to people.
And well, Democrats create more jobs, balance budgets.
And haven't started wars.
Republicans have started wars.
I mean, even this Donald Trump, you know, the one thing I always had hope
in him for was that he wouldn't start wars because he said over and over
and over again that he would not be starting stupid wars, but he has started a stupid war.
And he's higher.
He's he's asking an unserious person.
Let's let's call it what it is.
Bill Pulte is not a serious human being.
He should not be in this serious role.
He will use this position solely to seek revenge on the president's enemies
and to try to stop accountability for the president
that is coming for him in the midterm elections.
That is what Bill Pulte will do with this job.
Nothing else.
That is his plan.
He has he is without a doubt there for that reason and that reason only seek revenge
and try to help the president escape accountability.
In the meantime, the job of the DNI is really not being done.
Because, you know, the Republicans, they're the serious party on national security.
Are you out of your freaking mind?
Are you out of your mind, Mr. President?
Are you out of your mind, John Thune?
Are you out of your mind, Mike Johnson?
I mean, Mike Johnson, there's no hope.
But maybe John Thune might want to show a little backbone and do the right thing.
But let me be absolutely clear.
I have no hope whatsoever that John Thune will do the right thing here.
I mean, the fact that John Thune killed Democratic amendment should have offered
an amendment himself.
To block the slush fund, but he hasn't.
He hasn't.
I think John Thune thinks that he better hang with Trump.
And that's what he's going to do.
He doesn't want to lose his majority and he's dangerously close to.
I mean, look, they're coming after this grand platinum guy.
I talked about it.
I don't like what I'm hearing about grand platinum.
But is it worse than Ken Paxton?
Is it worse than Donald Trump?
I mean, the tattoo really bothers me, really, really bothers me.
His explanation, he didn't know it.
OK, now we're hearing somebody said he knew it.
I want to hear more.
I want to know what his policy is towards Jews in this country.
Anyway, I mean, I think Democrats win anyway.
I think we're going to win Iowa.
I think we're going to win North Carolina.
I think we're going to win Ohio.
I think we're going to win Alaska.
And I think we're going to win Texas.
So Maine would be nice, give us 52
But we're going to get to 51
I feel it.
I feel retribution is coming.
And that's why so does Donald Trump.
And that's why he wants Bill Pulte, his loyalist,
in charge of determining whether or not this was a free and fair election,
which, again, gets determined by the states, not by the DNI.
Right. He might come out and say something, do something,
you know, get some Republicans in Congress to say something.
But guess what? Their terms expire at midnight.
December 31st.
2026
And on December 1st, they're no longer Congressmen.
January 1st, they're no longer Congressmen.
They don't get a vote.
The people got the vote.
Donald Trump doesn't want the people to have the vote.
To hold him accountable.
But that is what is staring him in the face.
That is why he's putting in a guy like Bill Pulte.
It's absolutely clear to me.
Listen to this.
I'll be right back.
I don't understand.
How when you're president of the United States.
An achievement that only 40.
I mean, I guess it's 45 other people because there were two that were not consecutive, right?
45 other people have ever achieved.
You cannot be satisfied.
With that achievement.
You get hung up.
On a failure.
Right. I mean, he failed to get reelected in 2020.
He lost.
And yet at every opportunity.
The man just goes on and on ad nauseam about how it was rigged.
And now that he is about to get shellacked in the midterms, he and other Republicans are trying their best to cast doubt on the integrity of our elections.
His interview with Kristen Welker over the weekend.
Was pathetic.
It was childish.
He is the president of the United States and he's spouting conspiracy theories.
Look, I'm not happy that California takes two weeks to count their votes.
I'm not happy about it at all.
But the Constitution.
Gives the power to hold elections to the states.
And in California, they have a pretty much all mail in ballot election.
And when they count the ballots, there is a vigorous process that takes place to verify.
That the ballots were cast by people.
Who are eligible to vote and only cast one ballot.
And that's why it takes so much time.
I don't like it.
I don't like that it takes this much time, but it does takes a lot of time.
I spent a lot of time on television the last six weeks talking about this guy Spencer Pratt.
And Spencer Pratt didn't make the runoff.
It's two Democrats in a runoff.
So if your goal is to defeat Karen Bass, the other Democrat actually has a chance to beat Karen Bass.
Spencer Pratt would have lost 70 30 in LA, even if he made the runoff, even if he came in second in the runoff.
All this talk about Steve Hilton in the runoff and maybe he falls.
I don't know.
He looks like he's going to be in the runoff.
He's going to lose 65 35 in the general election.
Republican endorsed candidates don't do well in California.
And by the way, they're going to call those elections like five minutes after the polls close because the margin of victory is going to be so dramatic.
You'll know.
Yeah, in some races in California, even races where Republicans win.
It takes a while to count the vote.
That doesn't mean that the elections rigged.
In some states, there may be long vote counts on election night, maybe going into the next day, maybe going into the next week.
That doesn't mean the vote is rigged.
It means they're counting the vote.
The closer the election, the more you have to count before you can call the result.
You see, we're not children waiting for the ice cream man.
There is an election going on and professionals are counting the vote.
This is why the man is a danger.
You know, again, we talked about this poultry guy he's putting into the DNI.
He's going to be there to cast out on our elections, throw the country into chaos, not just in 2026.
America in 2028.
You know, this is this is the game plan.
Trump is not a popular guy right now.
He's not a popular guy.
He's in the low 30s in his approval and among independents, he's in the low 20s and not mid 20s.
All the gains that he made in 2024 are gone.
All the gains the Republican Party has made over the last decade with Latino voters gone.
I think that there's going to be some red states where a Democrat wins and I think Texas is going to be one of them.
I think Iowa is going to be another one.
I think Alaska is going to be another one.
What are you going to say then when it's all Republicans counting the vote?
Are you going to say it was rigged that the Democrats who don't control anything in Texas rigged the election in Texas?
What if they win in Florida?
What if they win the governor's race in Florida?
I mean, I don't think Byron Donald is exactly a great gubernatorial candidate in a state that's not as red as you think,
especially if Latinos aren't supporting Trump.
You going to say it was rigged?
Sometimes you just lose.
I lost an election.
I didn't say it was rigged.
They called my opponent and I congratulated him.
Born in a bottle of champagne, wished him well.
That's what you're supposed to do in a democracy.
Why need a little calm?
Listen to this.
I'll be right back.
Welcome back.
I am your host Chris Hahn.
I'm at Christopher Hahn on X, Christopher Hahn, NY, and GrahamCryptonCon.com.
Those are my socials.
Thank you so much for liking, reading, and subscribing and telling your friends about my aggressive progressive podcast.
Tell them they can get it on iHeart Radio Apple podcast or wherever they get their podcast and let them know it's free because it is.
And of course, watch me on News Nation.
I'll be on there a lot.
I have been trying to avoid hits that conflict with Nick games.
You know, let me just spend a minute.
I am prerecording this before the Nick game on Monday night and the president is attending the Nick game on Monday night.
And, you know, a lot of people are complaining.
Look, I have no problem with the president going to Nick game.
I just don't think he's ever been to a Nick game.
And, you know, I think the the the Knicks are on a roll, right?
They are on a roll and there's magic in New York City right now because unlike the Yankees and the Mets and the Rangers and the Islanders,
you know, the Knicks with the exception of a small pocket of people in Brooklyn that root for the Nets.
The Knicks are New York's team, right?
This is not Jets Giants where, you know, you got like, you know, 60, 40 or 50, 50.
This is a, you know, 90% of New York.
And I mean, you get outside of the city, you know, in New York in the in the burbs and the surrounding is like 100%.
They're supporting the Knicks.
It's a real unifying thing.
And the president, it's not a unifying person.
And again, I'm not going to be one of those people complain, you know, the Dolans want to invite Trump to the game.
That's that's up to the Dolans.
I mean, I, but I hope it doesn't throw things off in the game.
I hope it doesn't throw the rhythm of the game off.
I don't know how the crowd's going to react to him.
I think that there'll be a large amount of booze.
I think there'll be a large amount of cheers.
I mean, it's costing $50,000 for some seats.
$8,000 for like the cheapest seats, it said.
Who's affording those tickets?
Probably a lot of Trump supporting, you know, hedge fund types.
So there might be better cheers than you think.
But, you know, again, it's a very small demographic of people in this country that support the man at this point.
Very small demographic, 33%.
And that's nationally.
In New York state, it's probably like 23%.
So we'll see where where that lies and, you know, we'll talk more about it.
But we do need like a unifying moment in this country.
I don't think that the NBA is going to be the unifying moment.
Now, the World Cup's coming up.
I think it would take a miracle for the United States to go deep in the World Cup.
I'm pretty psyched to watch the team USA games because I went to high school with
the mother of one of the players on Team USA.
So I'm really excited for her.
So I'm going to be watching these games and he was on the team four years ago.
So this is not new.
He's a professional soccer player in Europe.
I'm excited.
It would be it would be amazing.
I think if the men's soccer team, you know, makes it deep into the mix of deep run here.
I think I think it would get the country excited about the sport.
I think it would get the excited unified about something you would have thought that our 250th.
You know, anniversary of our independence from Great Britain would bring the country together and it should.
I think we all support it, but I am.
I'm not surprised that President Trump has made this about President Trump, right?
He was going to do this concert where there were all these, you know, B list bands from the 80s who were going to million vanilla.
But one of them is dead.
And it wasn't the guys.
It wasn't the guys who actually sang the songs.
It was the guy the fake people were coming rob and fab.
One of them is dead.
I don't know which one.
I think it's Rob and vanilla ice is like, look, I come where people show me tell me to come.
He needs a gig.
I get it.
But of course, since so many bands dropped out, Donald Trump said he will headline the 250th freedom fest.
They're calling it, which is not, you know, an event for everybody.
It's an event for MAGA.
Right.
Why, why, you know, like the man does not need to run ever again.
Never again will he run now.
He wants to tease that he will.
He's not going to.
Why not try to spend a little bit of energy bringing people together instead of dividing people?
Why not just spend a little time like celebrating the 250th anniversary of our great nation, which we all love, hold dear.
You do not own patriotism, my friend.
Donald Trump, you do not own the fourth of July.
You own January 6th.
I'll tell you that right now, but you do not own the fourth of July.
And I think that, you know, this should be a unifying moment for the president to bring the entire country together, but he can't do it.
He is again, he has achieved the greatest thing you could achieve in American politics, probably in world politics.
He has become president of the United States and against all odds to non consecutive terms.
He's only the second person to do that.
And instead of trying to bring people together, he's building monuments to himself.
And the reason why he's building monuments to himself is because he knows that no future generation is going to build a monument to him.
It's not going to happen.
He is not going to be remembered fondly in history for the very reason I'm saying right now.
He refuses to bring people together.
And I've met this man.
I know that he could be charming and delightful.
So why not try to do that with the entire country?
I don't get it.
What is so wrong with him, so broken that he could reach these heights in his career and still feel the need to air grievances about things that nobody's talking about anymore other than him?
It is pathetic.
It is shameful.
It is so unpresidential and I don't know how anybody out there still supports it.
I mean, what is wrong with you if you think that this is okay?
And again, I've delved into this topic a lot.
I think it's because people have built their entire, you know, existence around him.
Their identity is just wrapped up in Trump and wrapped up in MAGA and wrapped up in grievance politics.
And people just go so far down the rabbit hole so often.
I mean, look, I've been thinking about this a lot the last couple of weeks.
Candace Owens, who is kind of on the fringe of conservative media, but has a pretty strong following.
Because she kind of does this thing where she, she talks about pop culture and then grievance and there's a lot of antisemitism in there.
I had an opportunity to take her down, right?
About eight years ago, I was on Fox News and I was asked to comment on this protest of Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk.
And I called it out for what I thought it was and what I believe to this day it was.
A protest that they brought on themselves, that they, not brought on, that they planned themselves to get attention.
Because it was the weekend before she was supposed to start a week stay on the five on Fox News.
So what she did, she was in Philadelphia with Charlie Kirk, the late Charlie Kirk.
And they were out to breakfast and somehow just out to breakfast.
Not at, not in the hotel where they were doing their conference and not before a speech.
Protesters found out that they were out to breakfast and showed up.
And I called it out. out for two reasons.
And I said this to Laura Ingraham directly. She agreed with me.
I said, Laura, I never heard of Candace Owens.
I've met Charlie Kirk a couple of times here.
I don't know how anybody would know who they are.
If they weren't, you know, going to give a speech and not for nothing, Laura, you're more famous than them.
Anybody showing up to protest you when you go out to breakfast.
And the answer to that was no.
And the other thing was, if you watch the tape of the protest, the protesters who were there at a drop of a hat,
somebody called in a tip that these two people were out to breakfast.
The protesters show up and their chant was 123 F the bourgeoisie 456 F the bourgeoisie.
Wouldn't they have a better chant?
Wouldn't they have like 456 something else if they were that good at protesting?
They were that professional.
I let her off the hook.
Because, you know, Brian Kilmeade got me on a radio show with her the next day.
And it was a, I'm telling you, there was a lot of buzz around it.
A lot of buzz around it.
Like the Philadelphia Inquirer or other papers were, you know, quoting me on it.
It was all over the place.
It went very viral.
And I get on, I get on Brian Kilmeade's radio show.
He calls me and says, can you come on with Candace Owens?
I'm like, I said, look Candace, I'm sure you're very popular.
I don't know who you are.
I don't know how pro and I'm in conservative media.
I just heard of you the day I was asked to do this story.
And I don't know how people are showing up to protest you at the drop of the hat.
She's like, I promise I didn't swear.
I swear to do it.
I swear.
I'm like, all right.
Well, you know, I guess you say you didn't do it.
You didn't do it.
Peace, you know, peace onto you.
I don't want to, she was really like stressed and I let her off the hook.
I, I shouldn't have because she did plan the protest herself, the protest of herself.
She did.
So yeah, a lot of strange people in the media doing saying strange things.
And for some reason people get caught up on it.
They go down these rabbit holes and they think of the other side as like evil and the enemy of them.
And they're not.
They're your sons and daughters, my friends.
They are cousins.
They're your neighbors.
They're people you like.
Stop.
Somebody's got to unify this country to sure as hell ain't going to be this president.
Let's hope that whoever becomes president next understand that that's the job.
All right.
I'm going to remind you now, as I always do to seek the truth to question everyone and
everything, even me.
Seek the truth.
I know it's out there and I know you'll find it.
If you look for it and I'll be back here again real soon to tell you the truth as I see it.
I'm Chris Hahn.
Thanks for joining me on the aggressive progressive podcast.
0:00
35:09