Today the home and office of John Bolton were raided by the FBI. Bolton was head of the NSA during the first Trump administration, at least for a while. He is currently one of Donald's perceived political enemies. When asked if he knew ahead of time that the FBI was going to be raiding Bolton's home and office, Donald said he had no idea about it. Breaking news, he's lying. Let's dive in.
Good evening everybody, and welcome to this episode of Marry Trump Live. It is wonderful to be here with you. It's Friday—we made it. Congratulations. To celebrate that, we actually have some good news for a change. Garcia has been released from custody after a five month legal battle with the Trump regime after he was illegally deported to the notorious mega prison in El Salvador Seco and later brought back to the United States to face charges of human smuggling. Garcia is finally going home to his family in Maryland. Since returning from El Salvador in June to face federal charges, Abrego Garcia has been incarcerated in Tennessee. But last month, US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw ordered Abrego Garcia's release in 30 days. And the same day Crenshaw issued his ruling, a federal judge in Maryland issued her own ruling that set up guardrails intended to prevent Donald and ICE from deporting him again with little or no regard at all for Abrego Garcia's due process rights. Whether or not these legal decisions will be followed, of course, remains to be seen.
So, amazing news and congratulations to Abrego Garcia and his family. Here's the problem though—this man lost five months of his life because of the lawlessness of a fascistic regime that constantly tramples upon the constitutional rights all of us have in this country to due process. So while yes, it is important that this injustice has been addressed, the wrongs have not been righted, have they? Five months in a notorious gulag in another country because the Trump regime decided that this man was a criminal when he was not, used as a pawn so the Trump regime could make its point that nobody in this country they deem unfit to be here is safe. So Donald and ICE and the Department of Homeland Security are going to continue to illegally deport others just as they are continuing the hostile takeover of our democratic cities. This is continuing to unfold in DC but at a press conference in the Oval Office, Donald took yet another shot to threaten another democratic city that so far has flown under the radar. Here is Donald.
“So I really am honored that the National Guard has done such an incredible job working with the police and we haven't had to bring in the regular military, which we're willing to do. We have to. And after we do this, we'll go to another location and we'll make it safe. Also, we're going to make our country very safe. We're going to make our cities very, very safe. Chicago's a mess. You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent. And we'll straighten that one out probably next. That'll be our next one after this and it won't even be tough. And the people in Chicago, Mr. Vice President, are screaming for us to come. They are. They're wearing red hats just like this one, but they're wearing red hats. African-American ladies, beautiful ladies are saying, please, President Trump, come to Chicago please. I did great with the black vote as you know, and they want something to happen. So I think Chicago will be our next and then we'll help with New York and we're going to…”
Could somebody just give him a cookie or something? My God, shut up. Also, I know it's not the most important thing, but what was that hideous gold thing on his desk? I know it doesn't matter, but really? Alright, I would like to see Donald try to take over Chicago just as I'd like to see him try to take over New York. I have a feeling that since he's threatening Chicago now, the governor of Illinois, J. B. Pritzker, would not particularly take kindly to the hostile takeover of his major city.
Donald seems not to understand that there actually are a lot of people, probably most people on the planet, who are smarter and tougher and savvier than he is. He also doesn't exactly know how to play the long game. And as we saw in that clip, he is a completely deluded man who spends most of his waking hours protecting himself from his very weak ego. So he may think that there are a lot of people in Chicago wearing red hats and that black Americans support him in vast numbers, but I'm pretty sure at some point he just has to bang up against the reality that none of that is true. And in blue cities like Chicago, New York, DC, and Los Angeles, we actually hate his guts and don't want him anywhere near us.
Donald was asked how long he planned to keep the military occupying US cities. And by the way, I think it is very important to remember when he says so casually, “we'll send the military and if we have to, we have the right to do that”—no, you don’t. You do not have the right to deploy active military on US soil. That's in the Constitution. Remember that thing you and your party lit on fire back in 2016? But we need to keep reminding other people what a dangerous lie it is that he can just, at his whim, use the military to police US cities because this is all part of the project of abusing his power so that he can stay in power.
“Well, I don't know if there is a headline, a deadline because if I declare a national emergency, which this was, that ends the deadline. So I mean I keep seeing about a 30 day deadline of which we have 22 days left or something. But if I think we're in great shape here, that's one thing, but if I don't, I'm going to just say it's a national emergency and if I have a national emergency, I can keep the troops there as long as I want.”
Yeah, this is a great system we have in place here. Of course, Congress could stop this, but the fascist Republicans in Congress aren't going to lift a finger. So we just have to remind ourselves that 74 million Americans thought it was a good idea to put that guy in charge of this country and to safeguard American cities—a man who thinks that on a whim he can declare a state of emergency to commit illegal, unconstitutional actions that threaten all of us.
This is simply a bid, as I said earlier, for unlimited power to keep troops in DC for an unlimited amount of time, all while he's also escalating the efforts that are already playing out. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered National Guard troops to start carrying firearms while patrolling the streets of Washington, which sounds like a brilliant idea.
The Defense Department of course didn't offer any other details as to why this massive escalation was needed, but Hegseth referred to it as “common sense” on social media. Yeah, common sense.
As you know, the White House press briefing has become a version of a daily crime blotter while Karoline Leavitt simply tells us how many arrests have been made in DC since the National Guard has been deployed and what those arrests were for. I was struck by her early on letting us know that some of the arrests were for carrying ammunition and carrying firearms, and I was struck because since when do Republicans have a problem with Americans carrying weapons around, loaded or otherwise?
Well now Jeanine Pirro, who is the US Attorney in the District of Columbia and a wildly incompetent hack and ideologue, apparently they're going to make it legal for citizens in DC to carry weapons. This sounds like it's going to be an incredibly awesome mix of horrors. So citizens are going to be armed, National Guardsmen are going to be armed. Where will this end and what is the end game?
Donald is also trying to overpower his perceived political enemies. As I mentioned at the top of the show, the FBI searched the home and office of John Bolton, Donald's former National Security Advisor and who has in the ensuing years become a loud critic of his former boss. The inquiry is into whether Bolton illegally shared or possessed classified information. Here's CBS News, Chief Washington Analyst Robert Costa with more:
“The context of this FBI raid is important. It's personal in some respects. President Trump during his first term was frustrated with John Bolton, the former UN ambassador and National Security Advisor, for his memoir about his time as Trump's National Security Advisor and made a claim. We haven't seen evidence of this, but he made a claim that Bolton used classified material at some level in this bestselling book a few years ago. And now that he's back in the White House, there is clearly scrutiny, sources tell me, on Bolton's files and whether he might have classified material in any way from that book project. This also comes as many national security officials from the first Trump administration and the Biden administration are in the spotlight from the Justice Department and the FBI for any kind of alleged conduct about the investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. There's been a revival behind the scenes in interest inside the Trump administration about that. So you're seeing a raid in part because of the book suspicion inside the administration and the Justice Department. We're not exactly clear though what prompted it at this point.”
There's absolutely no doubt that Donald has ordered this and he's behind all of this, and it's not the first time he's come after Bolton. During his first term, he used his Justice Department to open a criminal investigation after Bolton had just published his book The Room Where It Happened, which painted Donald and the White House in a rather unfavorable light.
In recent days, Bolton has been extremely outspoken against Donald as he met with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on American soil, and then President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. After Bolton said that Donald's summit in Alaska with Putin was a victory for Putin, Donald called him out on his failing social media platform, calling him “really dumb” and “a loser.” Ooh, that must have stung.
Now Bolton is back under investigation. This is a classic case of political retribution and yet another example of Donald's inability to withstand criticism, which is a terrible quality for a commander-in-chief. By the way, it is a terrible quality for somebody who has such vast reserves of power, who has the nuclear codes, to be so thin-skinned that he cannot handle criticism from somebody who comparatively has no power, who has no platform. But that is who is in charge of this country.
Donald also continues his attack on the arts. The Kennedy Center is one of the central victims of his plans to dismantle the arts in America. Today in the Oval Office, he shared his plan to rename the center, and I apologize in advance.
“December 5th of this year, the 2064 World Cup draw will take place at the Kennedy Center. Some people refer [to it] as the Trump Kennedy Center, but we're not prepared to do that quite yet. Maybe in a week or so.”
Nobody except you, you tiny little man, is referring to the Kennedy Center as the Trump Center. And that is not the appropriate place. Something about football? I mean, that is not what the Kennedy Center is for.
Now, here's the thing. The right has accused the left of shoving our ideologies, our culture, our views of the world down their throats—simply because we don't think people should have fewer rights because they're different from us in some way. They've accused us of trying to turn everybody gay or trans. They've accused us of trying to give people of color more rights than they have. They've accused us of insulting them by waging wars on Christmas and, I don't know, not letting them go to NASCAR. None of that is true.
The irony is, the right is trying to make every aspect of American life NASCAR and MMA fights. Why can't we have spaces that are dedicated to the arts? Why can't we have spaces that are dedicated to, I don't know, honor and decency? Does everything have to be a WWE match? Apparently yes, in Donald Trump's America it does.
Donald's statement comes on the heels of the Kennedy Center firing its Director of Dance Programming on Thursday—another attempt to reshape the institution since Donald has taken control. I mean, is it just going to be line dancing now? I mean there's nothing wrong with line dancing, but can we have other kinds of dancing? Can we have ballet, modern dance, hip hop?
Seriously. Does it always just have to be what they want? And the answer is yes, I believe it does. The director of Jane Row and two other full-time dance programs were dismissed amid tensions with the Center’s leadership. Rally, who worked at the Kennedy Center for more than a decade, said her termination letter attributed the action to a loss of confidence in her leadership and the ability of the department, as currently constituted, to align with the priorities of the Kennedy Center.
They only want white dancing represented, apparently. So what is that exactly other than line waltzing? I don't know. And what I continue not to understand is why more people aren't more upset that that person—that cultural illiterate, that man who has no sense, no aesthetic sense, and no regard for the arts in any way, shape, or form—has been given the power to reshape America according to his vision of it.
But he has that power now. And we see this with the Kennedy Center just as we're seeing it with the Smithsonian Museums and the ways in which the National Institute of the Arts and other agencies are being defunded. Donald will get rid of anybody who stands in his way.
So as I try to do whatever humanly possible, we must remember—as we far too often forget in this country—that the arts are the pinnacle of human achievement. Again, in my view, that is the whole point of being human: to be a creative, empathetic being who values fulfilling the best of our human potential. That doesn't mean everybody has to go to the opera. That doesn't mean everybody has to read Victorian literature or romantic poetry. It doesn't mean that everybody has to go to the Frick Museum every Saturday. No—art is all encompassing.
It may not seem like it, but there is art for everybody. I grew up in New York City in the seventies. Graffiti was one of the most powerful media in my lifetime. Graffiti is art, right?
Cloth design is art. And if you don't believe me, check out the costume design on Outlander. Seriously—art is everywhere if we know where to look for it. It is not trapped in amber. It is not only about the past. It doesn't have to be pretentious or snobbish or sophisticated. Art is everywhere. Art can be enjoyed by anybody. We are all artists if we only allow ourselves to be, if we allow ourselves to value our creative impulses and potential.
But in order for that to happen, we need leaders who understand that. John Kennedy understood that—the president, not the horrific senator. He understood that, which is why the Kennedy Center is named after him. Nobody in our government understands that or cares about that. So it is up to us to protect that which is most valuable about being a human being.
