Hosts Jennifer Welch and Josh Welch react to the fallout from the midterm elections, focusing on Pete Hegseth, who they argue is being blamed for a loss tied to the Iran war. They play clips from Hakeem Jeffries and Abdul El-Sayed and debate whether Democratic leaders who have taken APAC money should lead the party.
The episode also covers Mike Johnson's decision not to seek another term as Republican leader, polling showing young men shifting toward Democrats, and the controversy around streamer Hassan Piker. Listeners will hear the hosts' arguments on foreign policy blowback and free speech, which they present as their own opinions rather than settled facts.
In this episode Jennifer Welch, Josh Welch
This transcript of the episode on Hegseth and the midterm losses was made with the same technology behind HappyScribe's tool that takes notes for Google Meet calls.
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Alright, the Democratic base showed up. The people showed up, and we have said we want you to have power, and we expect you to wield it. We want you to use it. That is the important part that the Democrat governing class oftentimes doesn't do. So Hakeem Jeffries went on Morning Joe this morning, and he said the following. Play the clip.
The American people don't want us to get even, they want us to get things done.
I'm going to stop him right there. Hakeem, that's where you're wrong. We do want you to get even. We want you to stop these criminals from committing crimes in their tracks. You will not preserve democracy if you merrick garland this thing. You will incubate this further. And for you to say that, and we all know that you had a private patty cake session with Jared Kushner, this is very problematic for me. Very problematic that he's not coming out guns blazing saying, "We will do two things at one time.
We're going to deliver for the Americans because we know they're suffering at the pump and all other places, but we're also going to fight for this democracy and we're going to be the party of law and order and we're going to hold these criminals governing us to account." Because he's misreading the election results. We do want you to quote unquote get even, although we see that as restoring democracy.
Yeah, I mean, he's an Israel-first Democrat. He's bought and paid for by APAC. So that's his motivation here, right? We see this Democratic socialist movement with the party, and it doesn't include him. And the people that give him money, that leverage him, don't want that. And so he gives us this message that we want to unite because it's contrary to the Democratic socialist agenda. He's paid for, bought and paid for. That should be a disqualifier.
So in the Democrats caucus in November or December, talk about that. Talk about, is this the right man to lead you in the House? Is it? Because I don't think it is. I don't think that movement last night was about that, right there.
No, it's absolutely not about that. It's 100% not about that. That tells me that he has more in common with Jared Kushner than he does with us.
He's leveraged.
It tells me that he has more in common with all of these funders. APAC donors give far more to Republicans than they do Democrats. And Hakeem also takes big tech money. And so this is super problematic for me. And I hate to rain on anybody's parade, but we start work today. We have to put the wind at the backs of these politicians and say, "Be bold. Maybe Hakeem is in line." But if he's not in line with us, with the people who have repudiated this criminal regime that is governing us, who has repudiated these tech oligarchs who are ripping us off and getting our taxpayer money via the forms of bribes to MAGA Inc.
so they can get these big taxpayer things. I am so sorry, but that's just not where the base is. And so let's look at the people that he's saying, "Oh, Americans don't want to get even." Here is Trump. He is already starting to blame the whole thing on Pete Hegseth. Pop this up. CBS News says some Trump aides expect the president to blame defense secretary Pete Hegseth for the midterm election results, believing the outcome would have been different without the Iran war.
CENTCOM commander General Brad Cooper and joint chiefs chairman General Dan Kane could also face blame over their roles in advising on the war. I have a great idea, Josh. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, said that the war was Benjamin Netanyahu's idea. Nobody on the planet thinks that Pete Hegseth is smart enough to be a mastermind on this shitty war. We believe Marco Rubio because we believe that his loose lips sunk ships.
And we know who was at the situation room. And guess what? These 18 service members, Hakeem Jeffries, that died, their families probably want you to get even. They probably want justice for their families considering these dipshits listened to a war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu, an absolute war criminal who the United States should have turned over to The Hague the minute he came here. But Hakeem won't touch that with a 10-foot pole because he takes money from the Israel lobby.
So he will provide cover for war criminals, war criminals that don't send Israeli soldiers, IDF, to get blown up. No, it's always Americans getting killed. And so this is just, of course, they're going to blame it on Pete Hegseth, but we all know because little Marco told us who drug the United States into this war.
That you're 100% right. And to me, Hakeem Jeffries is a non-starter for the Democrats to be the speaker of the House. Seriously, they have to have a serious conversation in November or December. You bring up the point with Donald Trump now trying to blame Pete Hegseth. That may be my favorite part of this whole thing. When the MAGA people wake up, and I compare this to, you know, when you pull an all-nighter, when you just get shit face drunk, you're up until 2:00 a.m., you wake up at about 9:00, 10:00 a.m., maybe noon, and you look at your house and it's a complete disaster.
That's what this is. You're like, "What just happened?"
Pete did it.
And then you have to clean it up.
He's the one that threw up everywhere.
Yeah, then you have to clean this mess up, right? And so that's what they're dealing with. They're going to have to clean this mess up. They're going to blame each other, all of them. And they forget about their reckless conduct when they were in the midst of the party, when they were going for it, you know, when they were all high-fiving, you know, when they're trolling people, when they're calling people that were murdered by ISIS terrorists. They forget about all of that shit, all the havoc they wreaked on the American people and start blaming each other. Well, guess what, Hakeem Jeffries, we're not going to forget that shit.
No.
Okay? We're not going to reach across the party aisle and forget that shit.
No.
People are going to be held accountable. And even though you take APAC money and even though you can't message that and say that, we will find people within our party that will and that can. Because that's what the American people voted for last night. Get the fuck out of the way.
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Short of Hakeem Jeffries sitting down with Morning Joe, this podcast or wherever, and saying, "I have taken APAC money in the past and it has compromised me. And I now see that Israel is not acting in the best interest of the American citizens. And I am therefore refunding all of the APAC money because I want to be able to service only the American people." We all know that's not going to happen, but that's what we deserve. We deserve a speaker of the House that is going to service America first, that is going to service Americans first, that's going to fight for all of the people that this administration killed, that's going to fight for our international reputation where now we're known that we blow up little girls in Iran because we put some drunk at the wheel, Pete Hegseth.
Well, we'll blame it on Pete later. He's always wasted, even though Benny Inn is the one, Benjamin Netanyahu is the one that brought us into this. And so we deserve better than this. We just simply deserve better than what Hakeem Jeffries just said. And we cannot stop. Right now is the time for us to accelerate. I know that some people will be like, "Oh no, don't do this." That is the Democratic Party of old. This is the new, we are the new Dems. And the new Dems do not want politicians that cannot sit down in front of the camera and say, "The only people I work for are you.
I took PAC money in the past. I told them, every single one of them to go pound sand." And they just won't do it. And now JD Vance is coming out saying this. Pop this up. Vice President Vance on GOP midterm losses. The reason we lost is the war. If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next six years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was worthwhile. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree. That's at least honest. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, "I told you so.
You're right. You did tell us so." I mean, the rat fucking of Pete Hegseth is in full swing. It will be delicious. I mean, there's no question about it because Pete Hegseth is just so hatable and incompetent and awful. But we all know that none of the people in this administration have the balls to look at Benjamin Netanyahu or Donald Trump or anybody and say, "I'm not doing this." The problem is that puts Hakeem where he has something in common with them.
And we deserve a politician who looks at his lobbyists, big tech, Israel, big oil, whoever is backing and said, "I'm not doing this. I'm saving democracy." And in order to preserve and save democracy, seeking justice for the criminals that took it over is numero uno.
Don't you think that APAC would tell Hakeem that he doesn't want anyone to investigate or look into Jared Kushner's conduct with Netanyahu? So that's a prime example right there. He's taken so much money from them that he's leveraged. Of course, he's going to try to veer off any investigations related to Netanyahu, Kushner, anybody else that's in that orbit. I mean, it's as plain as day. And we didn't all fight for this. We didn't for last night, for the results that we got.
We didn't go through all of this to have someone like that represent our party. Someone who is no better than the other side, except they have a different initial next to their name. It's a D, not an R, but the same result. You're leveraged by taking APAC money, period. Okay? So we know that you're not going to want to look at Israel. We know that you're not going to want to look at Netanyahu or Kushner or anybody that's in that web.
No problem.
The people that are making millions of dollars. And the same could be said for the people that are under other donations by large sums of other oligarchs or other organizations.
Big tech, big oil, big pharma, all of it.
Right. So if you take that money, it's a non-qualifier to be in a Democratic leadership position. It's not going to happen.
I completely agree. And we do not have to do politics as usual anymore. Politics as usual got us here. We are fighting against fascists. We have to be bold. We have to put the most uncompromised, vicious fighters as point guard. They have to play point at the House of Representatives. And the most patriotic thing that Hakeem Jeffries could do is say, "I'm too compromised because of the old system we all followed. I've got all these lobbyists breathing down my neck and I'm not going to be able to do my job."
But they won't do that. Something about taking this money breaks people. And we need an unbroken person running point in the House of Representatives. And we will not relent on this. And we've done other episodes. Chuck Schumer hit the brakes, go pound sand, quit trying to take a victory lap. I will never forgive you, ever, ever. And I can hold a grudge for what you did to Angie Nixon. Ever. Never. She should have won it. It was winnable, but she criticizes Israel. Therefore, you disqualified her when she is fighting for every American on the planet.
Incredible story. All right, let's check in with the current soon-to-be ex-speaker of the House, Little Moses "Mike" Grinder-Johnson. He has made an announcement. Pop this up. Punch ball news. Mike Johnson will not seek another term as Republican leader of the House. That is just so shocking and devastating. An alpha male like Little Grinder. I mean, I would think that he would just be like, "Of course I'm a leader. Of course I'm running again."
Yeah, let me say this. He's going to be a prime example of someone who has this position of power and who becomes the most irrelevant son of a bitch the next day after losing that power. I mean, he's not going to be on page 12 of the newspaper, much less the first page. He's toast. He's done. He's going to piggyback his way back to Shreveport, maybe go to Louisiana Downs, bet on the ponies a little bit, most of them yards, do whatever you do in Shreveport.
And he's never going to be heard of again. I mean, seriously, his career is toast.
He'll become some whacked-out Christian Heritage Foundation lobbyist.
That's true.
You know, he'll get his pockets lined, fighting, you know, "We're doing the Lord's work here. Give me a few million and I'll go lobby here."
He'll grift off something else. You're right.
God told me it's a different form of being Moses. Yeah.
I agree.
All right. And then next up, this is incredible. Okay, so young men, it was two years ago, that was the story when we woke up, is young men are breaking for Trump. That is Trump's base. Okay? Pop this up. Fox News aired this graphic. 65% of men under the age of 30, 65% voted Democratic, 32% voted Republican.
This is a generational wipeout. This is the best news ever, which brings me to the person who both sides, both Republican and Democrats, especially if you're establishment, especially if you're into prostitution politics, and what I refer to as prostitution politics is taking money from PACs, servicing the PACs, and then lying to the constituents and acting like you're servicing them when you're really just a hooker. You might as well just earn your money on your back and be honest about it because at least there's some decency and respectable work in that.
But anyway, they all were laser-focused on friend of the show, Hassan Piker, a Twitch streamer. Now, personally here, Hassan is a friend of ours, of Josh's and mine. But our sons watch us on stream and they're not alone. Millions of young men watch Hassan Piker's stream. Now, all of you that have heard all this shit about everything that he said, the most inflammatory one is America deserved 9/11, which he said like 10 years ago.
The very next day he walked it back. What he was talking about there was the concept of blowback. And this is a very nuanced foreign policy thing that we should all talk about. George W. Bush said they hate us for our freedom and that just out of the clear blue sky, these terrorists decided to drive planes into the buildings. That's not what happened. They didn't just wake up and say, "Americans are too free. We're going to kill them." It was in response to American military provocations abroad, support of Israel and forming new governments, installing new leaders, et cetera.
And there's blowback from that. Like currently right now, there could be blowback in the future for what we did in Venezuela. Kidnapped their president, now we're stealing their resources, committed war crimes and killed fishermen in the Caribbean. We killed a couple hundred Iranian school girls, not once, not twice, but a triple tap to make sure it went through. In the future, there can be blowback from that. There can be blowback from George W. Bush's Abu Ghraib and all of the war crimes committed there and the CIA black sites.
This is a conversation worthy of having. And this is the conversations that corporate media doesn't want us to have because they say, "These are the two sides and you can either pick A or B and those are the only options." And Hassan encourages his viewers to think about things. What are we doing funding this? What are we doing funding that? Why are we spending that much money on that when we have Americans going bankrupt? These are really thought-provoking things. And it's a different form of communication.
Of course, he's on stream for like seven or eight hours. And everybody's like, "Fuck her. She can suck my dick." Blah, blah, blah. But that's the way the kids talk, if you will. So Hassan Piker last night in live streams, fucking smoked out networks. Pop this up. Hassan Piker's midterm election stream is currently the second most viewed broadcast in the country with 210,000 live viewers. He is behind only NBC's Steve Kornacki. And you can see the chart down there.
As it went on, he went up to 300,000 live streamers. So you have NBC News and then Hassan Piker. So to the Republicans, if you want to obsess about Hassan Piker and put pictures of him up in his panties places, do it because it worked out great for us. Keep doing it. To the Democrat establishment, do not subtract people from the tent like our kids and my friend's kids and my kids' friends, all of them, that are engaged in politics because they found a platform in a man that says, "I know the Democrats suck a lot of the time."
We just played a video of why people think the Democrats suck at the top of this. So Hakeem Jeffries fully sucking on national TV after a huge victory. We don't want to get even. And then saying, "I know the Republicans really, really suck because they're mean to all of the people of this." Hakeem. Do not. If you are not full. Rule of subtraction by trying to cancel a guy who is pulling in more live streamers than a goddamn news network. And I've been on Hassan Piker's stream. It's just in his living room.
The world has changed. People are thinking outside of the system that y'all are trying to pitch to us. And I just encourage anybody, if you hear any Democrat or anybody in the news that claims to be independent-minded and they are laser-focused on Hassan Piker, do some digging. What are they pissed off at Hassan for? Oh, he's critical of Israel. That's what the whole thing is about. That's the whole story. That's the through line in this entire episode. You cannot censor American citizens' ability to critique a foreign government.
I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the threats of being called a bigot because I want to criticize the country of Israel. It's my right. It's my First Amendment right. And I will use it and I will never obey in advance. And I'm going to listen to Hassan Piker and I'm going to have him on my stream and I'm going to give my kids more money in their allowances for listening to him. That's what I'm going to do.
Yeah, a couple of things there. I don't know how I followed that up, but let me try. The young men under 30 years old, I think this generation of people that are Chuck Schumer's age in their 50s, 60s, 70s, I don't understand this generation and how they get their news and their day-to-day cycles. And when you show that percentage, that almost two-thirds of young men under the age of 30 vote a Democratic, that should tell you something. And it's hurtful for me to see that because I think of these kids as the bar stool kids for a long time that you see in the golf shirts that are in frat houses.
That's my biggest nightmare. Was it one of our kids would end up being like that? Honestly.
Yes, he always was so worried.
Yeah, I was like, "We're not going to do that shit." And they're not. They're not. Like Hassan, he makes people think. These young men that watch him and the way, you know, I wouldn't sit and watch somebody's stream for fucking 10 seconds. I don't give two shits about that. But kids are different. They're on their phones all the time. And most of the people that wouldn't respond to questions about Hassan, Democrats specifically, or Democrats who are leveraged that took APAC money that knew that they couldn't or that they would condemn him for something.
You never saw the independent socialist Democrats run from Hassan. All they had to do was explain in context. Did Hassan say something maybe that he would have worded differently about 9/11? Of course he did. Like we would all agree with that. But the message or the thought behind it, though, was right, as you pointed out. The way it was said, no, I would have said that completely different. Let's not forget our government flew out all these Saudis within 24 hours of 9/11. I mean, there's all sorts of things that you can attack.
And Benjamin Netanyahu immediately said, "This is going to be great for us."
Exactly.
But nobody calls out Benjamin Netanyahu. They all call out the Twitch streamer. And Josh, you make such a good point about how kids get their news right now. They're not waking up, tuning in Morning Joe. They don't watch cable news.
No, nobody does.
They watch this stuff. And one other component that I want to add to my Hassan glazing is because he was such a talking point in these midterms. One talking point I want to add to this is he advocates for all marginalized groups. Like you wouldn't believe. Like our sons are constantly correcting us if we miss, you know, they had a friend that is trans and they grew up with and we use the wrong pronoun. Our kids are jumping down our throats. Always. And Josh is like, "I'm sorry." And they're like, "Dad."
You know? And these are two white straight kids. And he advocates for these people. And this empathy trickles down. A message of universal human rights and boys hearing that and Hassan making that cool is important. It's important. We will not build a big tent if we start canceling the Hassan Pikers in this tent. And everybody who wants to cancel him, look them up.
They are an Israel first or Zionist sympathetic at the core of their politics. That is the through line. And I just want to leave you with this, Josh. You're going to love this. Here is Abdul El-Sayed calling out APAC last night. Play the clip.
Donald, look, I know you struggled with my name. So after JD swears me in in January, you could just go on and call me Senator. To the super PACs and special interests who tried to beat us, we are coming for your system of politics. To APAC who spent $42 million against us, thank you for giving me the opportunity to beat you twice.
Hakeem needs to take some notes. That's what we want.
Yeah. And he suffered an enormous onslaught of Islamophobia, of hate, seriously, day in and day out by the MAGA regime and all the politics.
And some people in the Democratic Party.
And some of the Democrats too. And we just, I think, last Friday watched where Cory Booker wouldn't instantly endorse him.
Unlike TV.
Unlike TV when they're fighting for the majority of the Senate. These people, Cory Booker's, Hakeem Jeffries', Chuck Schumer, they're disqualified, disqualified from leading this party. And so when these caucuses in the House and the Senate sit down in November and December to pick their leaders, have that discussion. All these people didn't show up in record numbers last night for that bullshit. They didn't show up to put Chuck Schumer back in power. We tried that in '24, in '20.
We've seen how that works. You don't get to be awful at your job and get rewarded. You don't get any credit for that election.
That's what MAGA does. And we have to be different.
Yeah, I agree.
All right, that's all we have. It's a great day in America. I know that we're still really gunning at this, but to me is the day that the work really begins. And the Democrats historically can win, but very rarely fight like hell. And we have elected some fighters. You heard Abdul there. And so we intend to keep applying pressure to the Democrats to let them know you will walk and chew gums. We do want you to get even because getting even means accountability for our democracy. All right, make sure you're subscribed. We'll see you all later.
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Pete Hegseth is getting all the heat from MAGA's insane midterm loss.
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