BIG UPDATE on Trump‘s NEW Press Secretary

Episode Overview

• Co-hosts Tommy Vietor and Brian Tyler Cohen—who promote Crooked Media, Pod Save America, and Cohen's YouTube channel as progressive counterweights to right-wing media, alongside episode sponsor PDS Debt—examine how recent Trump administration appointments, Senate campaign debates, and ethics scandals reflect the current strategies of both major political parties.
• The discussion opens with the New York Times report that conservative commentator Katie Zacharia will succeed Karoline Leavitt (who left in August) as White House Press Secretary, analyzing the contrast between behind-the-scenes cordiality and the administration's public demand for loyalty.
• A breakdown of heated Senate debates in Georgia, Michigan, and Maine illustrates how Democratic candidates are confronting Republican opponents over extremist ties, corporate influence, and kitchen-table economic issues.
• The hosts detail a Wall Street Journal investigation and a State Department Inspector General report regarding US Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle's financial and ethical scandals involving former Kentucky congressional candidate Eric Deters.
• The episode concludes with an analysis of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's plan to hold a public, livestreamed military firing squad execution for 2009 Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, contrasting legitimate justice with political spectacle.

Key Concepts

• Public Fealty vs. Private Cordiality in Administration Communications: While incoming White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia (who briefly worked at DHS and, as Cohen notes with the caveat "if I'm not mistaken," served as spokesperson for Truth Social right before this appointment) aggressively defends President Trump on television—claiming Barack Obama and Joe Biden released "zero" and "nothing" on the Epstein files despite an ongoing investigation, prosecution up to 2022, and an appeal ending in 2025—Cohen notes she is personally a "very kind, very kind person" and "much kinder and gentler" than predecessors Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Karoline Leavitt. Similarly, Vietor notes Leavitt maintained good off-camera relationships with the press corps, illustrating how personal warmth often coexists with an administration's requirement for "undying fealty."
• Confronting Extremism and Economic Distractions in Senate Debates: In Georgia, Senator Jon Ossoff directly attacked opponent Mike Collins for cheering on young men mocking a Black woman on a college campus with monkey sounds, amplifying neo-Nazi propaganda, hiring "half the Third Reich," and voting to take money from constituents for data center developers. Vietor notes these claims are factual based on CNN reporting by Andrew Kaczynski: in 2024, Collins posted a video of Ole Miss students mocking a Black pro-Palestine protester with the caption "Ole Miss taking care of business," Collins's son-in-law is a white nationalist, and his chief of staff participated in a group chat with Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer and tried to intervene at the DOJ for a right-wing influencer.
• Navigating Mudslinging and Economic Realities in Michigan and Maine: In Michigan, Republican Mike Rogers accused the organization where Democrat Abdul El-Sayed's mother worked of being indicted for funneling money to Al-Qaeda, while El-Sayed called Rogers "cowardly, weak, and bought off," claiming Rogers had $2.7 million in Florida and owned two yachts (Rogers denied ever owning a yacht in Florida) and noting Rogers is backpedaling from Trump's positions by calling for the Iran war to end and opposing certain Canadian tariffs. While Vietor hedges that he does not know how the electorate will react—wondering if voters tune out nasty debates or if Islamophobia will prove effective—he highlights the power of pivoting back to the economy. In Maine, when Republican Susan Collins bragged about delivering rock salt, Democrat Troy Jackson replied, "Can't eat rock salt," and when Jackson claimed she always had healthcare, Collins countered that for 1 year in 1994 she was uninsured (though Vietor hedges on the race's outcome, saying, "Who the hell knows, it's a tight state").
• Transactional Pay-to-Play Networks and Diplomatic Misconduct: A Wall Street Journal report based on texts from Eric Deters—who called US Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle a "grifter" and a "wicked, evil person" and claimed Corey Lewandowski and Kristi Noem engaged in similar behavior—exposes how influence is peddled in the Trump orbit. Seeking help with taxes, legal issues, and extraditing someone for a lawsuit, Deters built a financial relationship starting in 2020: he paid over $300,000 in speaking fees to Guilfoyle, $200,000 to Donald Trump Jr., $100,000 to Eric Trump, and $125,000 to a Trump-aligned Super PAC in 2022. Days before her confirmation hearing, Guilfoyle texted Deters with a prayer emoji and a PDF of payment instructions to secretly pay off a $100,000 Amex bill. Deters also offered Guilfoyle $1 million to get him on Tucker Carlson's podcast (Carlson told the Journal he didn't know Deters, doesn't keep up with Guilfoyle, and called the offer "completely nuts") and asked her to pass lyrics for a song called "Kentucky Outlaw" to Kid Rock. Although Guilfoyle bragged on the record that Cabinet secretaries (Defense, Transportation, Treasury, Commerce), the IRS Commissioner, and FBI Director Kash Patel (whose name she misspelled) get right back to her, she also texted Deters to stop "papering all these things" and warned, "If you write an email or text about I'm going to kill you cause I love you, but you're so out of control." Furthermore, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed the reporting as "not the gospel" (in a clip where Cohen hedges he is not sure if the questioner was a Fox reporter), a State Department Inspector General report and media reports revealed Guilfoyle demoted her lead security agent (a grandfather) for missing a 4:00 AM call in Mykonos when she wanted more ice, fired 2 drivers for making left turns wrong, and gave special access to Greek lobbyists (which Vietor notes carried an unconfirmed subtext of a possible romantic relationship).
• Capital Punishment vs. Performative Spectacle: Discussing the 2009 Fort Hood shooting by Nidal Hasan—who killed 13 people, wounded 30, communicated with Al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki beforehand, and was convicted in 2013—both Vietor and Cohen explicitly endorse the death penalty for Hasan, with Cohen acknowledging this position "might not fall into the orthodoxy of the Democratic left." However, they draw a sharp distinction between carrying out capital punishment and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's interview with Jack Posobiec aboard the USS Lincoln, where Hegseth called it a "no-brainer" to make the firing squad execution public so people can watch it as a livestreamed spectacle.

Quotes

• At 3:43 - "If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club. His office has been in cahoots with some of the most notorious white supremacists in the country. He himself has amplified neo-Nazi propaganda. He's never apologized for it, and he should tonight." - Senator Jon Ossoff confronting opponent Mike Collins during the Georgia Senate debate over his office's documented ties to white nationalists and extremist rhetoric.
• At 8:26 - "He wanted to make this about him or me. The question is about you. Can you afford your gas? Can you afford your groceries? Under this guy, who's going to rubber-stamp everything Donald Trump tells him to rubber-stamp, you're going to continue to pay way more out the nose because he works for corporations and Donald Trump." - Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed demonstrating how to pivot away from personal attacks and redirect voter attention to kitchen-table economic issues.
• At 20:44 - "Guys, I'm not playing this game with you, okay? You guys write a story and then your editors tell you, 'Make sure you get a comment from him,' on something we haven't seen. Okay, you guys are not going to be our only source of information in the world, I'm sorry to tell you that." - Secretary of State Marco Rubio on a foreign tarmac refusing to address the Wall Street Journal investigation into Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle's financial dealings.
• At 23:21 - "We're going to do it on a Thursday, we're going to do it at 1:00, which is when he did it, and it's going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad. Uh, 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." - Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth explaining his plan to conduct a public military firing squad execution for the 2009 Fort Hood shooter.

Takeaways

• Pivot from personal mudslinging to kitchen-table issues: When facing personal attacks or culture-war baiting in a debate or public forum, avoid getting bogged down in personal defense; instead, address the audience directly, expose the opponent's ugliness as a deliberate distraction, and immediately shift the conversation back to tangible economic realities like gas and grocery prices.
• Counter false political narratives with specific procedural timelines: When political figures claim previous administrations hid information—such as assertions that Obama and Biden released "nothing" on the Epstein files—correct the record by pointing to concrete legal timelines, such as ongoing investigations and prosecutions running through 2022 and appeals concluding in 2025.
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