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- [00:00]
A
Hello everyone. Han jvl here with my bulwark colleague Ben Parker. Before we get started talking about E.J. antoni and his fetish for Nazi battleships. Ben Parker, let's go. The Daily Beast has a story that E.J. antoni, who's the nominee to run the Bureau of Labor statistics, he's 37 years old. He's never managed anything larger than, I don't know, microwaving a pizza. He's going to run this 2,000 person department. And when he was in his research phase as a podcast guest, he liked to appear with a giant depiction of the German battleship Bismarck behind him. And he referred to the ship as a he. I think this is the first guest we've had with a. With a beautiful warship behind them. The Bismarck. The Bismarck, Yep. In all his glory. Interesting. I have so many questions for you, but I don't know, is this a thing? We are both, let's just put our cards on the table. We're both the kind of guys who are into like Navy porn and stuff like that, right? Super cool, I would say.
- [01:12]
B
You mean of ships, just to be clear.
- [01:15]
A
Right, right. Yes, I would say among. Among people in our community. You don't often see guys who are really into the bad Bismarck. Right. Hot and heavy for the Bismarck is not a thing. That's normal that.
- [01:31]
B
You're exactly right. That's why this is a super interesting and revealing detail and we can go through all the reasons why. Okay, so the Bismarck actually a really good emblem for Trumpism. It was big. It was very big and made of metal. Also constructed illegally. When the Germans started building it in the mid-30s, they were still under treaty obligations that said you can't build ships more than a certain size. And they just said it was much smaller than it was. Sort of like Trump with his apartment just saying it's much smaller than it is and actually it's much bigger. So yeah, built illegally. Huge symbolic thing. There were only two ships in this class, the Bismarck and the Tirpitz. And honestly from the very beginning they were more symbol than actual like useful weapon. Because as we know by the time World War II roll around, battleships aren't actually that important anymore.
- [02:26]
A
Yeah, the age of the battleship is ending with World War II and especially in the North Atlantic. Like a battleship is like how useful is the battleship? Right.
- [02:34]
B
It was supposed to go and like sort of hang out in the middle of the North Atlantic and raid Allied shipping. Do you want to know how many ships the Bismarck sunk?
- [02:41]
A
It was the Hood and how many others that's it.
- [02:45]
B
It sunk one ship and then that's.
- [02:48]
A
A lot of as an roi, right? Cost per. Cost per sinking. This is why again, anybody who's ever played Axis and Allies, the Milton Bradley grandmaster strategy game would know if you're playing as Germany, you don't buy battleships, you buy submarines, right?
- [03:04]
B
The U boats did much more damage. The Bismarck managed to sink one British ship. A big one. A big one. And then the British chased it down and destroyed it with aircraft carriers, with torpedo planes. And it went down. Actually the Germans eventually scuttled it, but it was going down. Okay. Other facts about the Bismarck, we talked about how big it was. You know, weird that if you were into just like the biggest battleship, you're.
- [03:26]
A
Just into not the biggest, right? Didn't the Japanese have a bigger one?
- [03:29]
B
2. So the Yamato class that the Japanese built also had two ships in the class, the Yamato and the Musashi. They also were not very useful and spent most of the war hiding. Now I will say big targets, huge targets. Yamato also eventually destroyed by airplanes from aircraft carriers. American in that case. But the Yamato was heavier, longer, had bigger guns and I could be wrong about this, but I think also lasted longer from like the day it was launched to the day it sank. So weird that you would choose if you're just into battleships, the one that had, you know, giant swastikas painted on it and not much else going for it. Well, wait, wait, wait, wait. Asterisk on that. Okay, by tonnage, by tonnage. The Bismarck did sink more than the Yamato did. So if you're really into which battleship sank the most allied shipping and killed the most allied soldiers, you'd be totally into the Bismarck.
- [04:29]
A
Oh, oh, that's so interesting. Now as, as regular viewers may know, when I'm in my home studio and not on the road as I am now, I in fact have a little model of a battleship now. It's a space battleship, the Yamato, which is from an anime TV series of my youth but super cool. But I, I chose it not because, you know, it was related to Imperial Japan, but I used to watch a cartoon about it. I just. If you are a. Like he seems like a super rad trad Catholic type who seems to have spent time in a seminary. Unclear why he left the seminary or what he did while he was there before he shows up in graduate school to get a PhD in economics and then start writing for Breitbart and the Federalist before just being named to to Run the bls.
- [05:22]
B
Oh, no way. He did something in between. Oh, right. January 6th. Yeah. He was at the Capitol.
- [05:27]
A
He didn't show up as a, as a bystander. A bystander. He would seems to have been. There are pictures of him outside the Capitol, not inside the Capitol. So I was just one of the very fine people who was there for an afternoon of fellowship while believing that Donald Trump had had the election stolen from him. I seem to remember Republicans saying they would never vote for people who. Anyway, unimportant. Where. I guess the question I have for you, Ben, is where is the line between oh, you guys are making too much of this. So he has a giant picture of a Nazi battleship and then the, the other side of that being. I mean come the on, like you don't pose with pictures of Nazi stuff. Yeah.
- [06:12]
B
Do you remember Madison Cawthorn who was briefly a representative from North Carolina.
- [06:18]
A
Yes.
- [06:18]
B
And had all these weird like Instagram posts about like himself at Berchtesgarden and like posting about being where the furor lived and like ever and you know what happened? People asked him about it. They were like, hey dude, you seem really thrilled to be hanging out with Hitler stuff. Look, I get it if you want to go and like, you know, for historical reasons, like visit, whatever. Weird to take like big smiling thumbs up photos with like a bunch of Nazi stuff and like be like, yeah, associate me with the Nazi stuff. I'm cool with that. Which is exactly what Antony also did by having this giant Nazi battleship in his background on these interviews, apparently. And you know, people should ask him, hey dude, why what to you is so compelling about the Bismarck? And you know, why not for example, just, just for example the USS Missouri, where World War II ended and the surrender was signed. You know, and it's American and it's.
- [07:13]
A
Named after the White House statement says that he has an artifact from the Missouri somewhere in his office. I guess I again, I struggle to land between the making too much of this and the like, oh come on, are we supposed to pretend we don't notice?
- [07:34]
B
That's why he should be asked, right? He should be asked to explain. I would love to have a 10 minute conversation with Guy. And if he says, oh well, I'm just really into battleships, then I would say why that battleship and why not the Amato or why not the Missouri?
- [07:46]
A
Right.
- [07:47]
B
Why is it that you have a huge picture of the one swastika.
- [07:51]
A
How did you.
- [07:51]
B
What's special?
- [07:51]
A
How did you get into battleships? Right. I mean that's the other part like, if he's really an enthusiast, like, I'd like to, I don't know, I'd like to hear him nerd out about it.
- [08:00]
B
You know what I mean?
- [08:01]
A
Like, but man, this kind of feels like 14 words kind of stuff, right? Like it's, it's the edge and maybe, and, and maybe it's all edgelord stuff, right? Like, maybe it's intentionally shocking to be shocking, not because he, you know, not because he really loves Nazi battleships, but because he knew it would trigger the snowflakes, you know?
- [08:24]
B
Yeah. But, you know, look, in case it's not clear at this point, like, this was not a battleship that Germany had sitting around when Hitler came to power and then they painted some swastikas on it. This was a battleship that was designed and laid down by the Nazi German government in, in. In open violation of, of its international treaties for the purpose of aggression against Germany's neighbors. It is a total Nazi project. Not just like, oh, you know, there were some German generals who really, you know, disagreed with Hitler or whatever. This is. Like, this is, this is a pretty clear cut case of like, this is a thing the Nazis did because they were Nazis, not because they were German. And this guy is, you know, apparently kind of into it.
- [09:11]
A
What a world we live in, Ben. What a world. I wonder, what do you think the odds are that his confirmation hearing, he'll give us a little my heart goes out to you salute.
- [09:21]
B
My heart goes out to you.
- [09:22]
A
Do you think we can get that? Do you think we can get that from. He's an interesting, I would say when you look at him, and I don't want to judge a book by its cover, Ben, I would never. Please don't ever accuse me of judging books by their covers. In fact, that's why many books just have, like, brown covers on them because they don't want you to pay any attention to what's on the COVID Uh, they just want you to, to look inside their hearts and, and view their merits. He looks like the kind of guy who might have, like, the, the weird goatee, the sort of wild eyes, the manner of dress is interesting, right? Like, nobody, nobody looks like that by accident. Like, that's not a look that you just get because, like, you don't care about clothes. You're like Mark Zuckerberg. You just like, you know, give me 15 gray hoodies and 50 black T shirts and I'll just wear those because it's easy. This guy is like. But he's changed his name. He's done the J.D. j.D. Vance. Name change, which is weird. How many of these guys have like, changed their, the names they go by as adults? Isn't that strange to you?
- [10:24]
B
It's a little weird. You know, I also gotta say, I really do hope in his confirmation hearing, some senator asks him, so, you know, you like Hitler's battleships? What do you think of Hitler's employment statistics? Famously, you know, not, not, not super great at getting accurate measures of his own economic performance. The Third Reich. So, you know, I just, I'm just curious about, you know, if he's, if he's a real fan of history, he should have some interesting thoughts about the problems with correct data in an autocratic government. If he's a real history buff like you and I are, you know.
- [11:04]
A
Yeah. Again, I read through some of this guy's dissertation and it's just gobbledygook. Like, I maybe, maybe he's really smart and he's just a bad writer. I doubt that's the case. But, but maybe, maybe we're all gonna find out and, you know, and maybe what he'll do, honestly, is he'll just get into the job and his, his whole function will be to just kill the, the jobs reports. Like, hey, we're gonna, you know, we're going to do this. We want to be super careful. We don't want to have revisions anymore. We want to do the revisions the very first time we release them. And so we'll release jobs numbers once a year. We'll just release them on a one year delay and that'll help the Dear Leader. Last thing. He referred to the Bismarck as a he, not as a she. Is that a thing that you hear a lot of enthusiasts doing referring to ships as men? I mean, I know that the whole idea of pronouns and misgendering is something that the right does not want to hear anything about, but I do feel as though in the community of people who are navy buffs, that's kind of a thing they care a little bit about. Like the distinction between boats and ships.
- [12:13]
B
Yeah, I, I've never heard the only, the only time I've ever heard people refer to ships as he is in the context of the Russian or Soviet Navy, because that is their tradition. Even though the word for ship is feminine, they always do he. I don't know why. Not familiar with that. For the Germans, that seems to be. I could be wrong. Could be wrong. I don't know German, but I've never, I've never heard that before. That was new to me.
- [12:43]
A
All right, guys, this was fun. Yay. You know, some little Nazi cosplay going on inside the high levels of the federal government. What could be better? We'll see you next time. Good luck, America.