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- [00:00]
Tim Miller
Hey everybody, it's Tim Miller from the Bulwark here with Pablo Torre in a cardigan of Pablo Torre finds out. If you, if you're not on Pablo Torre Finds out podcast by now, what do you got? You're really missing the real deal. And we'll put a link here in the show notes. He is our unofficial sports correspondent. Our unofficial correspondent when Donald Trump engages in the crucible of sports one way or another. And today at the Philadelphia Eagles, we're at the White House. Not all of them. Jalen Hurts, the quarterback the MVP snubbed. Trump did not attend. And the only other, I guess notable news is JD Vance also was not there. So there was no harming of any trophies. Pablo, thanks for coming on to chat. Do you have any, any big picture thoughts on the Jalen Snub?
- [00:46]
Pablo Torre
Yeah, he wasn't alone. You know, this was a lot of, I'm looking at this photo from the White House. This is a lot of backups, man. Like no Jalen Hurts, no AJ Brown, no Devontae Smith, you know, a lot of the members of the defense, by the way, a lot of the black players, frankly, the starters did not show up. And of course we can do the game of like, why, which part of the current experience of being an American did they not want to co sign here? But it's pretty remarkable that they, in large quantities, the starters, the guys who actually won the super bowl, we're like, yeah, we're not going to be used as a prop by, by this administration. And this guy.
- [01:25]
Tim Miller
Yeah, it's interesting because I so, you know, not being like, football is a funny sport. Like I watched this amount of football more college. But since they all have helmets on, you know, and since it's not my job, like you're like, I don't know what A.J. brown looks like. I don't think A.J. brown showed up to, you know, that dog down the street from me here. I'm not sure I would know that it's A.J. brown. And so it's hard for me to tell. It was easy for anyone watching to tell that Trump had a favorite though, which was Saquon Barkley, who went golfing with Trump, who Trump wouldn't shut up about. And, and so I think the fact that Trump kept mentioning Saquon. Saquon, Saquon. And then there ends up being an MVP chant for Saquon who notably did not win the mvp, I think is pretty, pretty telling. What you make of that? I don't know. Is Saquon like, is he. Is He a MAGA guy or, you know, what, you know, what's happening there, do we think.
- [02:13]
Pablo Torre
I think it's remarkable that Saquon didn't just show up to this day of festivities. He showed up a day early and played golf with him. Look, as with all of this, right, the question is going to be how intentional was your participation? And when it comes to the bonus day of. I went and hung out at the club, at the golf club with Trump and a bunch of guys who I'm still trying to identify, by the way. Bunch of.
- [02:39]
Tim Miller
We'll throw up this picture for people on YouTube. Yeah, just like that.
- [02:43]
Pablo Torre
The hangout here, the hang. A real nightmare blunt rotation scenario for my, you know, personal.
- [02:50]
Tim Miller
I mean, I don't. Again, I also don't know any of these guys in the picture. It doesn't seem like a lot of political. It feels like it's like Mar a Lago club guys. You know, it feels like. It feels like it's like we're at a, you know, Deutsche bank, you know, kind of tournament, you know, just sort of average, you know, average median white guys about our age feels like.
- [03:09]
Pablo Torre
But, but, but in that explanation, I think, is the most generous interpretation, which is that this was something that was financially useful to Saquon Barkley. Maybe he's simply a capitalist in the way that Marc Andreessen is. You know, I'm trying to spin this right, as his, as his unasked for defense attorney. Maybe he just thought that there was a transaction to be had here, and maybe that's exactly what it was and not anything ideological or political. But when it comes to him being established, him as like a guy known for anything, he was known for his truly, truly staggeringly large quads. He was known for his skill as a running back, and I dare say on the medal stand right now, he is known as the dude who showed up a day early to golf with Donald Trump, while the rest of these offensive starters were like, we don't want to be within any distance of this entire pageant that Saquon signed up for the bonus stuff.
- [04:06]
Tim Miller
Then he gets praise lavished on him just over and over again by Trump. There was one thing, I don't know if you caught this. Trump snuck it kind of under his breath a little bit, but he did a classic sir story related to Saquon. Well, there were two, actually. One where Saquon said to Trump, sir, I'd love to come on the plane. So there was that one sir story, and then there was another where Trump claims that he was having dinner with the Giants coach a couple years ago, I guess, Brian Daybald, and that he was telling Daybald, you can't trade Saquon. You can't trade Saquon. So Trump has two stories. Who knows whether either of them are apocryphal or true, related to Saquon and Brian Dabel, like, catches a couple strays.
- [04:53]
Pablo Torre
For the white look. So one thing about this sir story, I find it more plausible than the story. The sir story about how every nation is sending representatives to him amid all the tariffs and kissing his ass, I find this sir story to be far more plausible than that one. But it's of a piece, Tim, with the grand unifying theory of our sports talk, which is that these guys, Trump and Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, who, by the way, famously was like, I like both the Steelers and the Eagles, as if that's a thing that anybody does. Which Vivek also did recently talking about Deion Sanders son, Shador Sanders, by saying, I'm a Bengals fan, but quote, mad respect for the good choice by the Browns, which is a thing that people definitely have said ever before.
- [05:41]
Tim Miller
Who likes fans?
- [05:42]
Pablo Torre
Yeah. But the point being here, I often.
- [05:44]
Tim Miller
Give mad respect to the Alabama Crimson Tide. As an LSU Tigers fan, I'm always like, mad respect.
- [05:51]
Pablo Torre
Yeah.
- [05:52]
Tim Miller
Saban, on your championship, if, if we.
- [05:54]
Pablo Torre
Can establish anything here, Tim, it's that people that deserve bad respect. The Cleveland Browns and Screech just famously deserving of mad respect. But the through line is that the unifying theory is these guys don't know sports.
- [06:11]
Tim Miller
Right.
- [06:11]
Pablo Torre
And so when Trump is out here saying whatever about whoever happens to be, you know, pliable enough to be used as a prop, it reminds me of this Deion Sanders, Shador Sanders story. To bring another story from the weekend into it in which he is taking credit. You know, his press secretary today was taking credit for the fact that Shadour Sanders got drafted because of Donald Trump's tweet, in which.
- [06:36]
Tim Miller
Let's watch this, actually. Yeah, let's watch this really quick.
- [06:38]
Pablo Torre
It's something.
- [06:39]
C
All I will say is the president put out a statement and a few rounds later, he was drafted. So I think the facts speak for themselves on that one.
- [06:46]
Pablo Torre
Peter, just to fill in, like the Cliff Notes version, if this was effective, it took four fucking rounds to be effective. Like, it's the least effective, you know, executive order in history. It's like, you got to draft him and no one does until the fifth round. And it's the Browns like this is again, a lack of demonstrated knowledge about how any of this stuff, meaning sports, actually works.
- [07:07]
Tim Miller
I mean, maybe Mel Kuyper should have gotten the shout out since, you know, he was spending hours and hours on TV telling people to draft shoe. I think, you know, maybe a little bit.
- [07:15]
Pablo Torre
If anyone deserves a mad respect from the Sanders fan family, it would be Mel Kuiper.
- [07:20]
Tim Miller
Mel Kuiper, number one QB pick. It's a tough analysis there. That'd be kind of like having predict that Kamala Harris was going to win 48 states. You know, as a political analyst, it was a pretty big whiff for old Mel. Nothing, nothing personal.
- [07:32]
Pablo Torre
With a light whiff of phrenology. By the way, like in the tweet, it was like, he has great genes, he's street wise. You know, it's just like, okay, at.
- [07:41]
Tim Miller
A certain point, keep the calipers at home. All right.
- [07:44]
Pablo Torre
Okay, look, we're just, we're just measuring some skulls. Tim. Very standard combine measurement is skull shape.
- [07:51]
Tim Miller
Yes. The man. There's so much more stuff to talk about. I just. For some reason that made me think of Belichick picking his spouse. I don't know if we're enough time to get to Belichick.
- [08:01]
Pablo Torre
A naval sweater full of holes. Again, just like clearly not allied with maybe. I mean, look, Belichick, by the way, a. A guy who has received a share of sir stories from Donald Trump himself, by the way, as a buddy. So maybe I'm not saying that Jordan. I call her Jordan. I refuse to call her Jordan because it's J o r d o n. But Jordan Hudson, his momager and girlfriend who's 24. I just presume that she's working some angle. Maybe she'll wind up a White House press secretary at some point. Who's to say?
- [08:34]
Tim Miller
I would, I wouldn't lose any money being on the anti maga side of that bet. I don't know anything about Jordan, but I think, I think it's probably a. You know, I think the smart money's on your side. I guess put it that way. I don't want to just pick on Saquon because the person I was actually most interested in showing up to the White House today was Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie. Because the Eagles did not go in 2018. It's just worth mentioning. It was one of those situations where like Trump keeps being like, come on a date with me. Come on a date with me. And they kept being like, no, no. And then Trump's like, never mind. I don't want to date you, you know, and tried to like do a leak to Fox News News. I was like, they're not invited. After begging them to come to the party. But anyway, they didn't show up. And Lori said at the time, he said he didn't want to be seen as support. This was actually related to some other Trump stuff, not the White House visit. But he didn't want to be seen as supporting what many of us perceive as one disastrous presidency. So that's where he was in 2018. And it's interesting, there's this whole kind of discussion two months ago about how there's this vibe shift and like the rich guys are going to start sucking up now and Zuckerberg's got a new haircut and he's going to be at the White House. And Bezos, right, like, and, and that there. And that Lurie, you know, is, is you could, you could see this as being a piece of that. Right. That he is caught up in this. But man, we're three months in and is pretty ugly now. And so it's like not to give a pass to any of the guys that showed up January 20, but April 28, it's a different picture. It's pretty interesting to me that, that the owner who had such harsh words in 2018 is like feeling better about things now. Like, what's better now than 2018? Like, a lot of worse stuff has happened since that.
- [10:17]
Pablo Torre
Yeah, look, when it comes to like the moral fortitude of any of these sports team owners, it's a real like, in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king kind of a scenario where it's like, on a relative basis, Jeffrey Lurie is basically Bernie Sanders. Like, sure, right. On a relative basis.
- [10:32]
Tim Miller
Like Woody Johnson, he's a radical leftist.
- [10:35]
Pablo Torre
Compared to Woody and Brick Johnson. What I would say though, about where we are in terms of this larger trend line, like, it's worth remembering for as much as it feels like there has been this shift, if you look at certainly like CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, like, look at, look at who in the world of business dares actually criticize this man. And you will find a list with basically no one on it, you know. And so is this again, simply part of that transactionality that Saquon Barclay I'm imputing to him, which is to say he's like, look, I don't want to get audited by Trump's irs. I don't want Cash Patel to bug my phone. I don't want my business interests to be jeopardized. Maybe it's defense as opposed to principle. But I would argue, Tim, as I think we both do here, that for our mileage, you know, playing any sort of game with this guy is in fact a reflection of a lack of principle at this point.
- [11:30]
Tim Miller
Even if it's self defense and it's a losing game. And it's just a losing game. Like, what do you. What did Zuckerberg get out of this guy? I mean, like, there's the. JD Vance is still going after him in antitrust. All these rich guys have lost huge amounts in their, you know, net worth. Except for Warren Buffett, who took out a lot of his money and put it in cash. People say that wasn't related to Trump, but I don't know, maybe, just maybe one of the rich guys in the world just keeps getting lucky. I don't know. You can decide for yourself why Warren Buffett had an unprecedented amount of money in cash at the beginning of this year. But I don't know, man. I just don't see it if you're Jeffrey Lurie, if things look bad in 2018. Like, since then we've had an insurrection. He's been indicted a couple of times, we've been sending people to a foreign concentration camp, and he's crushed the economy. Like, we've had multiple. Like, like things have gotten significantly worse than 2018.
- [12:21]
Pablo Torre
By the way, every time I'm doing all this cable news now, and every time there's like a montage of just like, stuff that's happened, I always just want to. I always want to like, pipe up and say, the Aristocrats. It's just like we have just watched a shitstorm. And by the way, in this shitstorm today, right, like, just imagine you're the Eagles, okay? And what you are passing by on the way into the White House is the lawn full of these signs of these alleged gang member terrorists with the accused crimes that the White House is accusing them of without any actual clear evidence or criminal record. And so just like the whole thing.
- [13:01]
Tim Miller
Even, by the way, if they were all rapists, it's pretty gauche. Like, why are we putting pictures? Like, what?
- [13:06]
Pablo Torre
You know, so, so part of me, part of. Look, if I'm appealing to the rich guy demographic, which is what this segment has become now, it's like, really, this is the bet you're making? Doesn't this all feel cheap, right? Like, doesn't it all feel like you're kind of living in your own version of a Bizarro DYSTOPIAN? Third world country in which we are, in fact El Salvador. We are trying to, in fact, manufacture products as if American workers are better served being sweatshop labor as opposed to the knowledge workers that our country has incentivized them otherwise to become. As if, in fact you're playing, you know, in any number of sporting events overseen by a dictator who you cannot criticize.
- [13:46]
Tim Miller
Right.
- [13:46]
Pablo Torre
Like, it's just, it all feels so on the nose and cheap and, and foreign, frankly, if we're gonna play to just that, it feels un American.
- [13:55]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [13:55]
Pablo Torre
So if that's the White House that you want to frame this photo in, Big Dom, you know, like, and whoever else wanted to get behind the microphone, just super digging wonder Cooper de Gene. I wonder how that ages. I wonder how your strategy of being, you know, aware of threats on a football field applies to being aware of threats to actually the building that you're standing on.
- [14:23]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I think pretty poorly. But it's a good, it's a good observation. Maybe some people will take that and reflect upon it because we'll have other chances, NBA, we'll have other times to get together. Hopefully people will do better as the year goes on. Okay, final, final sport related topic for Lucia. Trump did make an endorsement of the Tush push during the press conference. He said, I like it. It's sort of exciting and different.
- [14:48]
Pablo Torre
I would like, I would like Donald Trump to just explain in less than five sentences what the Tush push even is.
- [14:56]
Tim Miller
Think he might have been thinking about something different.
- [14:58]
Pablo Torre
I mean, when it comes to the rules stopping his ability to push tushes. I feel like there's been no president more in violation of such a premise in the first place.
- [15:09]
Tim Miller
That's a good point.
- [15:10]
Pablo Torre
You know, so yeah, I, I question the football strategy and I question frankly the, the principle underneath his view of Tush's and pushes.
- [15:21]
Tim Miller
If you're a star, they let you do it with the tush push or with the genital grab. Either way.
- [15:28]
Pablo Torre
That's right.
- [15:28]
Tim Miller
Pablo. Actually, we're going to leave our viewers here. I want to leave you with some good press conference answers in case you had any doubt that it was a principled choice today by Jalen Hurts, mvp. Jalen Hurts, who I do have to say, I do have to hand it to a guy from Alabama. I'm already contradicting myself from coalition.
- [15:47]
Pablo Torre
The coalition.
- [15:48]
Tim Miller
You're right, I do have to hand it to Gatlin, to Alabama. I'm going to leave everybody with this video of him at the pre super bowl press conference. Responding with disdain when asked what he thinks about Donald Trump attending. So you guys stick around and watch that. Subscribe to this feed, go watch Pablo Torre on Pablo finds out and we'll see you all again soon.
- [16:09]
Pablo Torre
It's a good play, this one.
- [16:12]
Tim Miller
He's welcome to do what he wants.