Brian and Glennis are back, this time remote (Glennis is sick, not with hantavirus or Ebola, thanks for asking). And the corruption story of the season just dropped. Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion claiming emotional damages over a leaked piece of his 2019 tax return. A federal judge called it b******t, brought in legal experts who agreed it was b******t, then settled by creating a $1.7 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" controlled by five allies of AG Todd Blanche, with no transparency requirements and the explicit purpose of paying out January 6 defendants. Glennis just paid her taxes. Brian explains why this is the most brazen self-dealing in modern American politics. This week, Brian Derrick (Political Strategist and Founder of Oath) and Glennis Meagher (Political and New Media Strategist and Co-founder of Generator Collective) walk through the slush fund, what it means that taxpayer money is about to flow to people who assaulted police officers at the Capitol, and why Brian thinks the Trump children and several cabinet members are still on a path to prison even if Trump himself never is. Then the corruption deep dive. New reporting that Trump made more than 3,600 individual stock trades in Q1, often on the same day he was visiting manufacturing plants, tweeting about specific companies, or calling into CNBC and Fox News to pump them. His personal net worth has more than doubled in a year. His inner circle is making prediction market trades minutes before Iran announcements move oil. The White House says he has nothing to do with any of it. Brian and Glennis go through the receipts. The political board is also moving fast. Bill Cassidy, the fake moderate Louisiana Republican who voted for all of Trump's nominees and then pretended to be outraged, came in third in his own primary after Trump endorsed against him. He gave a speech that could turn him into a serious thorn in Trump's side on committee votes, nominees, and DHS funding for the rest of his term. Sitting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth flew to Kentucky on duty to campaign against Thomas Massey, the last Republican still pushing on the Epstein files. Trump's approval is now 37%, the lowest of his political career. The Democratic generic ballot is at +11, larger than the 2018 wave. Plus the most expensive House primary in U.S. history (in Kentucky, of all places, where ad buys are cheap), Georgia Supreme Court races that could flip the court by 2028, and a Pennsylvania primary where Shapiro, AOC, and Bernie Sanders all backed the same firefighter. Then the Supreme Court reform conversation Kamala Harris just reopened. Glennis lays out her preference for 18 year term limits and two appointments per president. Brian walks through FDR's court packing threat and what it actually accomplished. And both of them dig into what Republicans just did in Utah and North Carolina, where they literally added seats and reheard cases to overturn rulings they didn't like. The case for Democrats getting comfortable with court reform is no longer theoretical. Plus Three Mile Island is being turned into a data center. AOC is on a community tour about data center siting and the energy bills they leave behind. The Musk versus Altman trial wrapped in two hours. Taco Trump threatened Iran and chickened out by sundown. Telehealth abortion access survived at SCOTUS. And Alligator Alcatraz, the Florida Everglades tarp over a swamp internment camp that cost $1.5 billion, is closing. The midterms are less than six months out and the receipts keep coming. Send us a text! New episodes of Vibes Only drop every week. If you like the show, the single biggest thing you can do is leave a rating and a review… it's free, it takes ten seconds, and it's how we get in front of more people who need a politics podcast that isn't going to make them want to move to the woods. Vibes Only is a weekly political podcast hosted by Brian Derrick (Political Strategist and Founder of @oath.vote) and Glennis Meagher (Political and New Media Strategist and Co-founder of @generatorcollective), two post-Obama political operatives turned creators breaking down the stories of each week in politics, elections, and culture. We aim to be your break from the doom-scrolling and consultant-speak. Just the vibes (and the receipts) with new episodes every Thursday morning.
