Jon Favreau & Jon Lovett: The Year in Politics, Part I

Summary

Impolitic with John Heilemann

Episode: Jon Favreau & Jon Lovett: The Year in Politics, Part I

Date: December 26, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this first part of a two-part 2025 political year-in-review, John Heilemann sits down with Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett—Pod Save America co-hosts and former Obama advisors— to dissect the first year of Donald Trump’s second term. The conversation is candid, incisive, often biting, and reflects both the guests’ insider knowledge and their emotional reactions to the year’s political upheavals. Together, they explore how Trump’s return to office has unfolded, whether Democrats have risen to the moment, and what the prospects look like heading into 2026 and beyond.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The "Golden Age" of America? Satire and Reality Check

• Opening Irony: Heilemann kicks things off by playing a clip of Trump declaring “the golden age of America begins right now.”
  • Heilemann: “Promises made, promises kept, guys.” (03:44)
  • Lovett (C): “Nailed it. Nailed it.” (03:46)
• The hosts openly mock this framing, reflecting on how far America has diverged from such lofty promises under Trump 2.0.
• Favreau: “Maybe he was talking about himself; like, he is in a golden age.” (04:58)

2. One Year into Trump 2.0: The Age of Hubris

• The group discusses how much of Trump’s political and policy losses in 2025 have been self-inflicted, rather than the result of effective Democratic opposition.
  • Favreau: “…so much of the damage, both to the…country, the political damage, is just hubris.” (08:47)
  • Lovett: “I think it’s like, I don’t know, 70, 80%...is self-inflicted.” (09:06)
• Democrats, they agree, have been reactive and occasionally smart but mostly lucky that Trump’s team “drank their own Kool-Aid” and overreached.

3. Democrats on the Defensive—and Occasional Wins

• Lovett points to moments where Democrats “put a line in the sand,” like fights on healthcare and lawful orders.
  • Lovett: “One lesson of this year is fights, political fights that you choose become the nexus of any kind of attention.” (10:14)
• The problem, he notes, is that power is so lopsided that even Democrats’ wins are often fleeting or simply slow down the agenda.

4. Rage, Despair, and Horse in the Hospital

• The prevailing mood is a mix of anger, exhaustion, and dread, best captured in a John Mulaney stand-up metaphor: “there’s a horse loose in the hospital.”
  • Favreau: “The creepiest days are when you don’t hear from the horse at all.” (13:01)
  • This metaphor highlights how periods of quiet under Trumpism can be more nerve-wracking than the chaos, given the potential for sudden, unpredictable lurches.

5. Was Trump 2.0 Worse Than Expected?

• The hosts agree that, despite bracing themselves for disaster, the reality of Trump’s second term exceeded their worst fears—especially because of the increased competence and ruthlessness of those surrounding him.
  • Lovett: “He’s self-radicalized because of the loss in 2020, but they had these plans waiting to come off the shelves.” (14:35)

6. Key Inflection Points: ICE Raids and January 6th Pardons

• Favreau identifies the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case (ICE deporting a legal resident to be tortured) as a wake-up call to the administration’s lawlessness and willingness to double down on acknowledged mistakes.
  • Favreau: “They sent a man to a foreign prison. To be tortured, admitted it was a mistake, and then responded to that mistake by doubling down…” (17:19)
• Lovett points to Trump's blanket pardoning of January 6th insurrectionists as a moral nadir, signaling total impunity.
  • Lovett: “…there’s no one stopping him. These are enablers. These are ideological fellow travelers.” (25:14)

7. The Problem of Republican Enablers

• All three express bafflement at Congressional Republicans’ willingness to submit entirely to Trumpism, speculating about careerism, fear, and a culture of rationalization.
  • Favreau: “…in order to succeed in the Magaverse, you have to be in good standing with the boss… the human mind can just rationalize and justify anything.” (33:08)

8. Cabinet ‘Four Horsemen’ and Structural Dangers

• Pam Bondi (AG), Cash Patel (FBI chief), RFK Jr. (Health), and Pete Hegseth (DHS) are discussed as key Trump enforcers, but the real danger, they agree, is the absence of any independent check on executive power.
  • Lovett: “A politicized Department of Justice… is what enables everything else.” (37:10)
  • Favreau: “The rule in this second Trump term has been no independent power centers…” (40:07)

9. How Trump's Extremism Breeds Incompetence and Resistance

• The authoritarian centralization of power breeds both more egregious overreach and greater internal pushback—leaks, resignations, short circuits that have slowed the agenda.

  • Lovett: “Those little short circuits, those like Democratic short circuits in courts and stories and leaks…” (43:11)

• Trump's declining popularity increases these internal fractures.

10. Why Trump’s Support Is Receding Among ‘Normal People’

• Major blows to Trump's popularity include the ICE raids (gruesomely documented on social media and local TV) and police clashing with ICE agents—a direct, visceral wedge between local authority figures and federal overreach.

  • Favreau: “What they are seeing from the Trump administration all the time are these ICE raids and these masked agents and it’s just getting worse… I think that has…pushed people back the other way.” (46:14)
  • Heilemann: ”There’s this whole sub genre in social media video now that’s of cops in New York City, like, getting in the way of the ICE guys…” (47:36)

• Trump’s strength as an “antagonist” is undermined when he governs; his efforts to control the news cycle backfire as the focus moves away from the economy to more divisive, less popular issues.

  • Lovett: “Trump is a better antagonist than protagonist. He is better as a figure critiquing the government from the outside.” (48:23)

11. Is Trump Really a Lame Duck? The Third Term Question

• Despite claims of accepting constitutional term limits, no one on the panel believes Trump will quietly leave office in 2029.
  • Favreau: “…the thing that I've always been worried about is less that Donald Trump stays in office and more that in the transition, if it is a close election, we go back to a 2021 situation…” (53:27)
  • Lovett raises the real possibility of the powers of the state being used to keep Democrats out of office, rather than Trump simply trying to cling to power personally.

12. Who is the Next to Lead the GOP? J.D. Vance, Don Jr., or Tucker?

• A playful but pointed debate over whether J.D. Vance, Don Jr., or even Tucker Carlson is most likely to inherit the MAGA mantle. Consensus veers toward Vance, but with skepticism about his broad appeal:
  • Favreau: “Is he the most likely Republican nominee? Yes, most likely.” (55:23)
  • Heilemann: “If I had to pick the most likely next Republican nominee, I’d say one of the members of the Trump family, probably Don Jr.” (55:34)

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The State of the Democratic Party

1. Skepticism About the 'Deep Bench'

• There’s a stark disconnect between Democratic elites’ claims of a strong “bench” and grassroots anxiety that there’s no obvious future leader.
  • Favreau: “We have a deep bench in the terms that there's a lot of people on it, it's definitely deep… but no one who is saying anything that we all haven't heard a million times over the last 10 years.” (61:48)

2. Vision Vacuum and Policy Malaise

• Lovett and Favreau contrast the current Democratic Party’s indecision with the era of Bill Clinton (center vision), Barack Obama (change), and the current left (ambitious but not mainstream).
  • Lovett: “That is a difference…there was technocratic, it was neoliberal… it was a vision. If you interviewed Bill Clinton… his worldview would lead to an answer. And there just is not that kind of thoughtful policy post Trump.” (65:37)
• They stress the need for a visionary, thematic narrative that matches the scale of 21st-century challenges (AI, economic dislocation, loneliness).

3. Who Advanced in 2025? Whither Gavin Newsom?

• Newsom is seen as the de facto front-runner, skilled at pugilism but lacking a unifying “driving dream.”
  • Heilemann: “I've never heard Gavin… have that… driving dream piece.” (71:33)
• Other names mentioned as having potential for big-picture vision: AOC, Pete Buttigieg, Ruben Gallego, Josh Shapiro, JB Pritzker.
• Lovett: “You can imagine AOC getting there rhetorically, 100%. And you can imagine Pete Buttigieg potentially getting there.” (74:40)
• What’s missing, for all: an animating, original vision linking emotional resonance and policy detail.

4. What Moves and Inspires?

• Final segment: each guest shares something in pop culture or literature that helped them through a tough year.
  • Favreau: “Pluribus has been fascinating. Incredible. So good.” (76:31)
  • Lovett: “Kazuo Ishiguro’s… An Artist of the Floating World… a beautiful story about someone looking… back at a changing Japan…” (77:16)
  • Banter about the need for both art and escapism amid the political storm: “Salt Lake Housewives” as less pretentious pick.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the Republican Party:
  • Favreau: “The human mind can just rationalize and justify anything. And I think all of these Republicans from Susie Wiles and the White House on down have been rationalizing and justifying for like the last decade.” (33:08)
• On Trump's Second Spell:
  • Lovett: “Clown with a gun. The gun doesn’t make him any less of a clown, and the fact he’s a clown doesn’t make him any less dangerous because he’s got the gun.” (21:23)
• On Democratic Malaise:
  • Lovett: “A lot of this sort of where’s the people? What are they going to say? Are we going to win all of that? I do think because there’s an alarm is not going off.” (66:58)
• On Visionary Leadership:
  • Favreau: “…winning campaigns on the presidential level for Democrats have been visions that go beyond just how we fix the economy and to how we treat each other, how we live with one another, how we make meaning in this country.” (68:14)
• On the Dangers Ahead:
  • Lovett: “He has no patience for people that want to indulge it. I can’t stand the corny capitalism. I can’t stand all these supplicants… I can’t stand the universities… that have been complicit at this moment.” (71:11)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Trump’s “Golden Age” Speech and Satire: 03:05–05:11
• Damage Assessment: Trump Self-Inflicted vs. Democratic Action: 08:47–09:44
• “Horse in the Hospital” Extended Metaphor: 12:23–13:33
• Was 2025 Worse Than Expected? 14:21–15:14
• Ice Raids, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and Pivotal Moments: 17:08–19:07
• January 6th Pardons as Moral Collapse: 25:14–27:44
• Republicans’ Enabling and Rationalization: 31:32–33:08
• The Four Horsemen (Bondi, Patel, RFK Jr., Hegseth): 37:10–40:34
• Trump as Protagonist/Antagonist, Why Support is Falling: 47:36–48:45
• Trump’s Lame Duck Status and 3rd Term Ambiguity: 50:22–54:38
• GOP 2028: Vance, Don Jr., or Tucker? 55:02–57:43
• Democratic Bench, Vision Vacuum, and What’s Needed for 2028: 61:05–69:01
• Gavin Newsom, the Fight for a Vision, and Presidential Potential: 71:16–75:25
• Recommendations: Pop Culture Therapy for 2025: 76:31–78:27

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Episode Tone & Style

• The conversation is irreverent, profane at times (“dumb fucking horse”; “merciful, vapid, ignorant, mean spirited egotist”), and frequently self-deprecating. The guests move fluidly from policy analysis to gallows humor, classic inside-DC banter, and cultural references (from Mulaney to Pluribus to Ishiguro).
• The hosts’ rapport and shared history allow for both broad strategic takes and granular, emotionally honest reflections—a blend that makes the show engaging for both political junkies and normies alike.

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Summary Prepared For: Listeners who want a comprehensive, entertaining, and insightful guide to the state of American politics at the end of 2025—with all content, no ads or filler.

Transcript

[A]

In Politic with John Heilman is presented by bp. See all the ways that they're investing in America. Get ready to ramp it up. Atlassian Government Cloud is now fedramp Moderate authorized. That means popular team collaboration apps like Jira Confluence and Jira Service Management are Now on a FedRAMP moderate authorized cloud platform. And just in time as you think about your mission priorities for the new fiscal year. Now that you have the all clear to ramp up to Atlassian Government Cloud, you could ensure teams, tools and data work better together to streamline collaboration, break silos and access agency wide intelligence much more easily. The result? Modernized workflows and greater efficiency all with built in security on one compliant platform. Someone call Procurement. It's time to ramp up to Atlassian Government Cloud. Find out [e-mail] govcloud. Aloha and Namaste everyone, and welcome to In Politic with John Heilman, a Puck and Odyssey joint featuring lively, in depth conversations with the people who cruise the corridors of power in America, sculpting and shaping the ebb and flow of our politics and culture as we come to the end of another year, in this case a I think it's fair to say a year more different from any year in our collective memory by quite a large margin, at least in the realm of politics. We are kicking off our usual run of retrospective holiday New Year's episodes, which we have locked and loaded to carry you well past the presence the turkey, the ham, the standing rib roast, the drunkenness, the hangovers, all of it, and well into 2026. We're kicking all that off with our 2025 year in review Politics edition. And given that politics is the bread and butter of impolitic, the news flash we have for you here at the top of the show is that this episode is merely the first of two look backs on that topic. The second, which will drop on Monday, features the inimitable Ezra Klein. So be sure to tune back in for that. You're not going to want to miss it. But today, for the first installment, we have with us a pair of the podcast universe's most prolific, influential, charming, witty, brilliant and astonishingly handsome luminaries, Pod Save America co hosts and former Obama advisors Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett. Under normal circumstances, I would tell you more about the guests or the episode that you're about to hear, but when you've got Favs and Lovett in the year we're discussing is the first year of Donald Trump's second term, who needs to Gild the goddamn lily, you know? So just kick back, spark one up and let the shimmering brilliance of these two dudes carry you away into a place where, as bad as things have been, there's still hope for us all. On this brand new year in review episode of In Politic with John Heilman. That's coming at you in 3, 2, 1.

[B]

The golden age of America begins right now. From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer. During every single day of the Trump administration, I will very simply put America first.

[A]

I mean, promises made, promises kept, guys.

[C]

Nailed it. Nailed it.

[A]

I mean, like, here, it's like the. This is the. I'm in the belly of the beast, right? Isn't this. This is where the magic happens.

[C]

This is where the magic happens.

[A]

All the magic happens here.

[C]

Right here at Crooked Media.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

You're saying you're at Crooked Media right now.

[A]

Yeah, I know. I know that. But I mean, in this studio, when I see you guys, this is.

[C]

Yeah, we got two studios. There's a. There's a big one over there. This is the smaller one.

[D]

The annex.

[C]

This is the annex.

[A]

Thank you for giving me the room Closet. I appreciate it.

[C]

I don't even know who's in the big one right now.

[D]

Aaron Ryan recording Hysteria.

[C]

Hysteria is happening right now.

[A]

How are you guys doing? Fabs. Love it. How's life?

[C]

Life is good.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah, good, you know, Sounds defiant. I know. Well, you know what it's like all of 2025. It's like someone asks you, how you doing? And you're like, well, I'm good, considering.

[A]

As good. Well as can be expected.

[C]

And then everyone talks about the answer to the question, and I'm just like, end in the year. Good. I'm good.

[D]

What about you? I am deeply concerned about the erosion of fundamental American principles, but I've never been better.

[A]

So I ask you if the golden age of America. I assume I'm going to take it as an assumption that neither one of you think we are now. We are now. We now enter the golden age.

[D]

Right?

[C]

Maybe he was talking about himself like he is in a golden age.

[A]

He's definitely golder than he was at.

[C]

The beginning of the ballroom's Golder. The White House is golder. He's, you know, getting up there. That's what it was.

[A]

What age are you? Are both wordsmiths. I. You know, I mean, Fabro, maybe a Little bit more than love it. But. Okay, you're very, but you're, but you're very felicitous with. You're very felicitous. Sure.

[D]

Thanks. Yeah, no, I, I, that was an important comparison to make.

[A]

Well, yeah, you know, I mean, look, I gotta give props to the guy who wrote all Barack Obama. Everything Barack Obama said, that was eloquent, it came out of Fabs's pen.

[C]

Same with Lovett and Hillary Clinton.

[D]

What was your question?

[A]

Well, I didn't notice how. I didn't even do that. That was him.

[C]

That's part of the chemistry.

[A]

I incited him. My question was, if it's not the golden age of America one year into Trump 2.0, what age are we in now, boy?

[C]

Close to another gilded one.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, there's definitely gold. There's just leaf attached to the outside, man. It's interesting to hear Trump from a year ago.

[A]

Yeah, that's why I played it.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, because it seems like I hear that and I'm like, I remember when he said that, but it feels like a hundred years ago. And also it feels like last Tuesday.

[D]

Yeah. Obviously at the end of the year, people do their reflecting and it's hard to. You don't want to be too sanguine about where we're at because I do think Trump becomes more dangerous when he's cornered and he's done a lot of damage and he'll do a lot more. But it's worth remembering how things felt in the first few months when they were on offense, moving faster and I think more methodically than a lot of people anticipated. Democrats were absolutely on their heels. There was a question about not just how much damage and change they would make inside the government, but the fact that they were seeming to be more dominant in the culture. Right. There was a whole conversation about that. And here we are at the end of the year, and as quickly as that kind of rise came, it does feel like he also is now receding. And so that's where I'm at with Trump's version of a golden age, which is that he came in a bit like a lion and not like a lamb.

[C]

The damage to his political standing has just been entirely self inflicted. You can go back and maybe do a counterfactual where. So say he does targeted tariffs and not the Liberation Day tariffs, and say he, you know, closes the border and really does have targeted ICE raids. And they make a big deal of them because that's what they like to do. And they, you know, sort of try to get press for them. But like it's not what we've seen. It's not sending people to seekot and arresting citizens and all that. And you can go through one by one and realize like he could have generally stuck to the agenda he talked about during the campaign, to the extent there was an agenda and been so much more popular right now, like the economy still would have been, you know, in the shape it's in, minus the tariffs, of course, which is a big if, which is a big, big problem. But he, they just, it was hubris, right? Like they started in January thinking and you know, drinking their own Kool Aid, believing that they had this huge mandate that they didn't have, letting Stephen Miller and Russ Vogt go wild. And now it's biting them in the ass because so much of the damage, both to the, like the real damage to the economy and the country, the political damage, is just hubris.

[A]

So you just said it was that all the damage is self inflicted, right?

[C]

Most of it.

[A]

Most of it. So I just want to. We'll talk about Democrats a little bit later. But how much, like if you had to apportion credit, slash blame Trump's fallen political standing is how much self inflicted and how much Democrats can take credit for?

[C]

Oh, I don't think Democrats can take credit for too much. I really don't. I think that they were there and had some smart moments and occasionally didn't fuck up when they could have occasionally didn't fuck up. But I think that it's like, I don't know, 70, 80%, I would say is self inflicted.

[A]

Yeah, you agree with that?

[D]

Yeah, I think that's right. I do think that we. It's hard to separate out presentation from the substance of Democratic strategy sometimes because I do think there is a collective lack of trust around Chuck Schumer and the way he communicates. I just think it's a huge problem. And if there had been some well.

[A]

Earned lack of trust, I'd say yeah.

[D]

Certainly as a communicator. And I do sometimes think it's like, are we mad about the script or the performance? Because plenty of reasons to be critical, whether it was the decision to not do a shutdown earlier on or how the shutdown ended. But to me, one lesson I take away from that shutdown fight is the health care. Picking the fight on health care was smart. It made it much more salient than it otherwise would have been. And even I was critical of the cave being around getting a vote on the extensions. Well, it turns out getting A vote on the extensions became a hinge point for a lot of the debate we're having right now. So there's some of what Democrats did that I think was genuinely smart and is a lesson that a lot of times on the Democratic side, we talk about the message and the messenger, and that's really important. But in an economy based on attention, when you're trying to wrestle the microphone away from Donald Trump, one lesson of this year is fights, political fights that you choose become the nexus of any kind of attention. And that was true on healthcare. That was true, by the way, with Democrats. A few Democrats deciding to pick a fight with Trump over not following lawful orders. Like, I think these are all signal examples of where Democrats, they're, we don't have power, we don't control anything. But they were able to kind of put a line in the sand that was, I thought, effective.

[A]

So when you were talking about. About Trump in like a lion, out like a lamb, I was kind of trying to read the. The love it political mood. Like that. Your emotion at the end of 2025. Your emotion, the mood ring kind of reads like you're kind of fighting off the. The impulse to be too sanguine. It's like you're kind of like, that's. That's where you're at. You were on with Stuart on the Stewart podcast the other day with Tim, and you were basically like. You guys were both actually like, we're enraged. Like, rage is fueling a lot of. Where aware of a lot of things we do and how we feel about everything is that. Is that you're not. You feel like you're more angry than Lovett, at least if I just listen to what you expressed yourselves in those different settings.

[C]

Yeah, I'm angry in the way that, you know, it's like, how are we losing to this guy? Kind of angry. And also just like, you know, reading the news every day, just the actual damage and the actual harm that he's causing to people is what drives me. And also now that we have been through this for a decade, you realize that there are these lulls where things seem like, okay, maybe things getting better and it's calm, and then something awful that you can't necessarily predict happens and we're right back into it. So I'm cognizant of that as well.

[A]

I believe that the single greatest, I think, piece of standup that's been done in all of the Trump era was the thing that that Mulaney did back in 2017, the horse in the Hospital.

[D]

This guy being the president, it's like, there's a horse loose in a hospital. It's like there's a horse loose in a hospital.

[C]

I think eventually everything's going to be okay, but I have no idea what's going to happen next.

[A]

Which is an incredible bit. And everybody in comedy always talks about it. They're like, horse in the hospital. It's like an incredible thing. And there's this moment in the middle of it where Mulaney says, the creepiest.

[C]

Days are when you don't hear from.

[A]

The horse at all.

[D]

You're down in the operating room like, hey, has anyone. Has anyone heard?

[C]

Those are those quiet days when people.

[D]

Are like, it looks like the horse.

[C]

Has finally calmed down. And then 10 seconds later, the horse is like, I'm gonna run towards the baby incubators and smash them with my hooves.

[D]

I got nice hooves and a long tail.

[C]

I'm a horse. And it's like, oh, that's what I.

[D]

Thought you'd say, you dumb fucking horse.

[A]

I mean, you know, I. As. As a. As a metaphor for Donald Trump, you can't get much better than dumb fucking horse. Okay, so when you guys think about. You also raised thing. John Lovett, that is about expectations. When he first came in, we three and many of our allies on Team Democracy, you know, Said spent two years in 2023 and 2024 going, if he wins, it's going to be worse. Right? And we all. So we were all girded for the notion, trying to convince people it's not just going to be like Trump 1.0 again. He's going to be more radical, he's going to be more competent. He's going to. They've been. There's. They've had time to prepare that we share. Right? What, What. How is the.

[D]

The. The.

[A]

How bad it got. How does that. Was it worse than you expected, even though your expectations were ramped up for how bad it would be, or did it more or less align with your expectations for how bad it was going to be? I'll say for myself, I thought it was gonna be really bad. And it's been worse.

[D]

Yeah, I think in a lot of ways it's been much worse. The actual experience of what it was like to have. And it's not Trump necessarily. It's the people like Russ Vote around Trump that were preparing every president in some ways. In the first term, the White House runs them, and then by the time they get to the second term, they run the White House. They understand the ways in which they now belong in the job. They feel confident. They know it. Trump had this four year into Regnum, in between, so he feels more cocky and confident. He's been, he's self radicalized because of the loss in 2020, but they had all these plans waiting to come off the shelves. But I do think one other piece of this is to John's point, they, they don't have a mandate for a lot of what they've been doing. And they were trying to kind of stay ahead of the weather. The weather being like the, the natural, organic or just sort of efforts of Democrats and others to push back and dismantling usaid, going after all kinds of parts of the government that we didn't even have. Part of the, weren't even part of the debate in 2024. They can do that. Right. But because it's unpopular and he's increasingly unpopular, there are people inside the government that are willing to leak about it. There are people that are willing to walk away because they feel like there'll.

[A]

Be people not leak or just give 11 interviews. Just give 11 interviews on the record. You know, fantastic.

[D]

Incredible. Incredible. We should talk about that. That judges are more willing to stop something and all of that. Members of Congress willing to push back. And so all of that was ultimately going to be what slows them down. Right. There was no, we did not, it was not necessary in Trump 2.0 to have Elon Musk destroying USAID. That was not something that we felt was like, oh, that's of course what's going to happen. That was shocking. Shocking because it's so craven and stupid and awful and unnecessary. But all of that could only happen fast. Right. Because you can't do. Even he acknowledges you can't do that.

[A]

Yeah. Do you think when you think back on the year, everybody had these moments where it was like, where it became clear, like, not that there were a bunch of bad moments. We could say we could go through the low lights all day long of Trump, but there were the kind of, the light, the penny drops. You were like, oh, so this is how it's going to be. Like that. It's going to be worse than even one thought at the time. What was that for you?

[C]

Kilmer, Abrego, Garcia and C Cottage. And I mention that example just because it was what sort of blew up that story and focused attention on deportations.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

But it's like it's not just him and it's not just what happened there, but like they sent a man to a foreign prison. To be tortured, admitted it was a mistake, and then responded to that mistake by doubling down and trying to ruin that man's life, which they are still trying to do to this day.

[A]

Well, and asserted a legal principle which was basically like, we consent anybody out, and if it turns out to be wrong and we admit that it's wrong, we have no obligation to go and get him back. Which is basically like a legal justification for disappearing people whenever the fuck you want.

[C]

Yeah. And it also became clear because the original debate around that was, well, was he a bad guy? Is he a bad guy? Is he not a bad guy? What's his background? Which, like, the Trump administration was of course, comfortable having that debate. Sure. But as time went on, you'd see, like, you know, Andre Hernandez Romero, the Venezuelan hairstylist, that was also shipped to CE cot, all of these other people that were shipped to CE COT who were not Trend Aragua, who didn't have. And then it becomes here in the United States, legal residents getting caught up in this, American citizens being disappeared for days at a time with no due process. And you're like, oh, this is how it's gonna happen. And this is where this could go really, really bad. Because you sort of inure people to the. Well, we're just going after the worst of the worst. And the libs are trying to stand up for the gang members and all that. And then once everyone's tired out and moved on to the next topic, suddenly they're picking up people off the streets who have no criminal backgrounds, are legal residents, and in many cases, United States citizens. And if no one is standing up to that, then that's how things get really bad, really quickly.

[A]

So after the Kilmar Albergue thing happened, he did that interview with Terry Moran is the end of the first hundred days. Right. I want to play it just because it's. I need love it on this because it's still one of my. One of the moments not when I realized things were going to be worse than I thought they were going to be, but where I just thought, is this guy really? I still have these moments occasionally. Is this guy really the president, United States?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

He's talking to Terry Moran about this on ABC News. Let's take a listen to that.

[B]

He said he wasn't a member of a gang. And then they looked, and on his knuckles he had Ms.

[D]

There's a dispute.

[B]

Wait a minute, wait a minute. He had MS.13 on his knuckles.

[D]

He had some tattoos that are interpreted that way. But let's move on.

[B]

Wait a minute. Okay, Terry, Terry, Terry.

[A]

He did not have the letter MS.1.

[B]

It says MS.13.

[D]

That was photoshopped.

[A]

So let me.

[B]

That was Photoshop, Terry. You can do that. Hey, they're giving you the big break of a lifetime. You know, you're doing the interview. I picked you because, frankly, I never heard of you. But that's okay. I picked you up, Terry, but you're not being very nice. He had ms.13 tattoo.

[D]

We'll agree to disagree.

[B]

I want to move on to something. Terry, do you want me to show you the picture? I saw the picture. Well, can you Photoshop? Well, here we go.

[D]

Here we go.

[B]

Don't Photoshop it. Go look at his hand. He had MS.13.

[D]

He did have tattoos that can be interpreted that way.

[A]

I'm not an expert on them. I want to turn to Ukraine.

[D]

I want to get to Ukraine.

[B]

No, no, no, no. He had M s as clear as you can be. Not interpreted.

[D]

He.

[B]

This is why people no longer believe. Well, the news. Because when he was photographed in El. In. In El Salvador.

[A]

They aren't there, but let's just go.

[D]

They aren't there when he's in El Salvador.

[B]

Oh, they weren't there now, right? No, but they're there in your picture, Terry.

[D]

Ukraine.

[B]

Sir, he's got MS.13 on his knuckles. All right, okay, we'll take a look. It's. You do such a disservice.

[A]

We'll take a look.

[B]

Why don't you just say, yes, he does and, you know, go on to something else.

[A]

It's contested.

[D]

Ukraine. First of all, I just want to say thank you for reminding us of that. I had not. I forgot how long that was.

[C]

Me too.

[A]

Yes. It goes on for. And he will not. Terry Barn is just, you know, he. Correctly, as the journalist in the situation, he's not like, going to concede this point. He's just. But he's basically just like, let me just say, contested. So we can get off this. But Trump will not. He's like a dog with a bone making the most self evidently stupid point in the world because of course, you know, it was Photoshopped and everyone in the world knew that.

[D]

Yeah, man. You know, this is the challenge, right? Like, I hope it is hard to convey to people that weren't paying attention in this era how both dangerous and stupid it was at the same time. Because if they don't feel that way, well, then things have gotten much worse. Yeah, look, he's a clown with a gun. The gun doesn't make him any less of a Clown. And the fact that he's a clown doesn't make him any less dangerous because he's got the gun. The Susie Wiles piece that came out, everybody's focused on, oh, Vance said this and oh, I can't believe she said that. And boy, that's going to be useful to these, stopping these political prosecutions. But underneath that I actually, I think the sensational parts aside, it's a fascinating and helpful look at what happens inside this White House. And what it looks like is what it is when Trump goes out there with a half cocked tariff plan that doesn't make sense. That looks like it was done without a lot of buy in from experts. That's because it was. That's what happened when he says rambling nonsense about this. That's because it's what he's saying behind the scenes when he says that he wants Pam Bondi to go after Tish James and James Comey because they're being embarrassed by their failures to attack his enemies. That's what he would say in a dm. It's what he would say on Truth Social. This is the man. There's no, this is the man in front of the curtain, is the man behind the curtain. And there's so many intellectual and philosophical defenses of Trump and trying to create this sort of cathedral of logic for them to live in. And it's all fucking bullshit. Because at the core of it, there is this kind of mercurial, vapid, ignorant, mean spirited egotist that they are all dancing around every single day trying to make something real of it.

[C]

This is it.

[D]

That's the man.

[A]

The idea that there was ever a time when someone seriously went on television of any description of any ideology who was like, you know, he's playing 40 tests, chess. That's the thing. Trump's playing 40 tests. You're like, you're like, are you kidding?

[C]

I mean, that clip reminded me though, is like something that I've been thinking about.

[A]

It's right there on his fingers, Terry. It's right there on his fingers, says Ms. 13.

[C]

Obviously, Donald Trump lies a lot.

[A]

He believes that.

[C]

I think he believes.

[A]

He believes though, there's no way he's bullshitting there. He thinks that was real.

[C]

And I think once and the Susie Wiles interview sort of illuminated this as well. I think that one story of this last year is Stephen Miller and Russ Vogt and a few others, like playing Trump and playing into his instincts that exist, right? He is a mercurial asshole. He can be very racist and xenophobic. And all the rest of it.

[A]

Vengeful, sadistic.

[C]

Vengeful, sadistic. And I think Stephen Miller, I think the picture that Miller paints about the country is, and immigration and who's here and who they're getting is just a complete lie told to Donald Trump on a regular basis. Because I think when he, you know, there's times when he gets around the Silicon Valley types and the other types, oh, well, I want the H1B visas and I think that, you know, like, you can see the soft spots and.

[A]

It'S, or at least just the, like the greedy capitalist, you know, the oligarch parts, which are more like kind of like, okay, like there's oligarchs around the world. I don't like them, but they'll just sacrifice anything for a few more bucks.

[C]

You don't have to assign any kind of benevolent motive to Trump to still think that it's possible that Stephen Miller has figured out over the last four years that if they came back to the White House, he can play this guy like a fiddle and get his agenda passed.

[A]

Totally. I will just offer on my own part here in answer to the question I just asked you guys about like when the moment was where you're kind of like, I guess you, I didn't really ask you that question. When was the moment for you when, when you were like, oh, this is where it first hit you that things were going to be even worse than you anticipated.

[D]

Pardoning all of the January 6th insurrection as well. I mean, the Kilmar Brigo Garcia and I just want like the, the, the lying about it is that I do think really important. It is important that the spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which is a serious national security organization, is a completely untrustworthy person that is in, that is dangerous. That means that if they pick someone up, accidentally, make a mistake, do it vindictively and they are an American citizen or they are a legal immigrant, they will smear that person while they are still trying to get out of a lawless detention. And they're being so unreliable. It matters around immigration. It also matters when there's a shooting on a campus. It matters when we actually need them to do what we would call something close to nonpartisan national security. So I think it's the lying about that as well that's really important. But yeah, it was the pardoning of all of them because it was the realization that whatever the, that the people that were there in the first term are gone. And as much as they were feckless and self serving and ineffective. There's no one stopping him. These are enablers. These are ideological fellow travelers. And there's no one who will even explain to him or convince him what's in his own political interest. He will do the thing that feels the best to him in the moment. And that is. It is so dangerous. It's such a terrible signal. And that. That was, for me, shocking.

[A]

You know, I would say that, you know, as recently as the Rob Reiner thing, you know, that as a window into, you know, genuinely pathological narcissism. Someone who just cannot put himself behind the eyes of any other human being and only sees the world through his own prism. That's really bad. I can come up with a bunch of examples. But the J6 thing is January. God inaugurated on January 20th and pardon them all by the end of the day. And two days later, January 22, somebody asked him about it. This. I just want to. Just for posterity, because this has been in my mind ever since. That was. I was like, I can't think of anything really.

[D]

That's.

[A]

I can think of things that are as bad that other presidents have done in the history of the country, but in terms of moral bankruptcy and sending the most kind of corrosive signal out to the world and other people who would do harm to the country, I can't think of anything that's worse than this. And here's how he explained it.

[B]

These people have already served years in prison and they've served them viciously. It's a disgusting prison. It's been horrible. It's inhumane. It's been a terrible, terrible thing.

[A]

These people. These people shit in the US Capitol and smeared it all over the walls.

[D]

Well, and beat up some.

[A]

Well, of course, they did worse things than that. But he's just about the disgusting.

[C]

The lie that he told there.

[A]

Yeah, they opened it present for years.

[C]

Is the lie that Susie Wiles told when she thought she was just off the record, I guess, background. Which is another one where I don't.

[A]

Think you can really think. You did 11 interviews with a guy and think you're off the record.

[D]

I think. I think there was. Must have been for a future book. There has to be some reason. It's baffling anyway.

[C]

But I do wonder, to the point I made about Stephen Miller, if Ed Martin or some of these people, they convinced them of this complete falsehood, that even the violent January 6th offenders that he pardoned had somehow done their time and their sentence was on the higher end of the sentencing guidelines. I think they might have got themselves, some of them might have got themselves to believe this, even though it's complete fucking fiction.

[D]

You know, we focus a lot on all the ways in which Trump is Trump. And yeah, Susie Wallace seems to be maybe trying to convince herself that they didn't do something monstrous. But what is making all this possible? The crypto corruption, the sun's going around the world self dealing, the lawless raids and all the rest. I think it's worth pausing. The alarm that's not going off. It continues to be Republicans in Congress. The politicization of the doj, Having someone like Pam Bondi in there is obviously dangerous, but all of this is possible. A level of corruption we have literally never seen in the history of this country is only possible because there is Republicans in Congress who know better and are just simply choosing to say it is not their problem or that if they made it their problem, only they would be hurt by it. And that, to me, ultimately, is the deeper degradation that could continue beyond Trump.

[A]

I really don't understand it. I mean, I truly, I'm not like the smartest person ever, but I'm also not an idiot. And like, and I've known a lot like, you guys know this. Being a member of Congress is not like really that great a job. It's like. So when people explain this to me, they say, well, we decided that these, here's the explanation makes a lot of sense. In some world, Trump will primary you. You want to keep your job, you're afraid of his voters. He has power over his voters. I understand all of that, but it's like the worst thing he's going to do to you is like, he's not threatening to kill your children. He's like, he's trying to primary you.

[D]

Well, sometimes they will threaten. Let's just be clear. Yeah, in Indiana and other places, it may not come directly from them, but whenever violence is warping our politics.

[A]

I know what you're saying, but I agree, of course, I agree with that. But all I mean is if the job doesn't pay that well, it's not that high status a job. You're a member of the House. You're one of 435 clowns. Most of these people, you guys wouldn't hire them here to what I think you're too.

[D]

Being a member of Congress is, is.

[A]

I, I think these people could make more money. They could be on corporate boards. There's all kinds of things they could do. In fact, that's what they do when they leave Congress. They go and get paid more money. They're on corporate boards. They like, I just don't get what's the point of being in Congress if you're not, if you're just basically gonna be like, I'm just gonna, I, I've submitted my entire will to some other person and do whatever they want. So what, you get the perks of being, you know, that's really, you think that's what it is?

[D]

I, I, what do you say? Hey, Jon, you take this one.

[C]

I think there's, I think Congressman Favreau.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Is he about to launch a congressional campaign?

[C]

Is that right? I think that it might be a mistake to view this as just them being in Congress. They see themselves as part of the MAGA universe. And so if they don't, what's the next step after Congress? For some of them, it's a better political job. For others, it's like, well, I want to be a MAGA influencer or I want to get hired by the Trump White House and all the other money making. You're unemployable in a lot of other jobs because you are maga. Right. And so the traditional, like, well, I'll just go to K Street and do some lobbying. That's for some people, but it's not for everyone. And so in order to succeed in the Magaverse, you have to be in good standing with the boss. Which means that if you go out on a limb and say that something's bad, then you have to make the calculation to yourself, okay, if I say something, is that gonna change anything? And then you tell yourself, well, just me saying it isn't gonna change anything. And then you say, well, if I get primary, the person who's coming after me is even worse. So I'm actually, if I'm here at least and I let this one slide, then I can, you know, the per, then maybe I can do some good. Right. This is, this like it. No, Very few people, I think, wake up every day and say, I'm gonna do some evil shit today or I'm a coward and I'm just gonna go along with it. Like people have all the human mind can just rationalize and justify anything. And I think all of these Republicans from Susie Wiles and the White House on down have been rationalizing and justifying for like the last decade.

[D]

Yeah. I also having, we were, we both worked in Congress and the Senate. Each of these offices is a little fiefdom. And when you are a member of the Senate or the House, you're not only Doing these votes to please Donald Trump. You also have constituent services. You have people telling you how much they appreciated that part of the thing you inserted into the bill. You think, I am doing real good work here. Yes. On these big salient votes. I gotta go along with the stuff I don't think is right. And yeah, there's stuff I think is wrong that I don't speak up about it. But I'm just one person. But look at all the good I get to do because I'm a member of Congress. You know, Trump's, Trump has a skill and the skill is to make the worst part about people the truest part about them. He does that with business leaders, he does that with Republicans. He does that with part of his base. And he has, he tests people and he tests liberal, so called liberal colleges and universities. He said, how much do you really believe that? How much do you really care law firms? How much do you really believe in what you claimed when you took the bar or why you say you became a lawyer? Is it, will it pass a test when it actually is on the line? And for a lot of people and a lot of institutions, the answer was no. No, it was. I say these things, I don't really give a fuck. And I do think that that's decadence. That's people who grew up in a softer era and there's a lot of people who weren't up for a lot of people who were, but a lot of people weren't.

[A]

That is true. So true. All right, we will be right back with more of our 2025 year in politics. Look back part one with the two kingpins of crooked media, Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett, right after these words. Drum roll please. Finally, your agency has the all clear to ramp up to cloud. Specifically Atlassian Government Cloud, which is now Fedramp moderate authorized. Get ready to make serious progress because teamwork and efficiency are about to. You guessed it. Ramp up. Atlassian Government Cloud offers popular teamwork apps like Jira Confluence and Jira Service management across one secure connected platform. With solutions for all government teams from software and IT to HR and program management, you can streamline collaboration and surface insights across your agency. America wasn't built in the day, but with Atlassian Government Cloud you can build smarter workflows in minutes. So come on, let's ramp it up. Find out [e-mail] govcloud so you just raised the. Love it. You just raised the thing of enablers, right? And we, I think we could, could, would all agree that Republicans in Congress, the fact that they have basically relinquished all of their, of their Article 1 authority, their life is a, is a, has been a huge structural thing that's allowed Trump to do what he's done over the course of the last year. My question from a year ago to people like you and to myself was, as we started to see who the Cabinet secretaries were going to be was, you know, I would ask everybody, I'd say, well, let's, let's take the four horsemen of the Trump apocalypse here. Let's take Pam Bondi, Cash Patel, RFK Jr. And Pete Hegseth. Which of those four do you think can do the most damage is, was the bigger existential, if not existential threat? Like, like, like who are you most afraid of and what they might do now? They've been empowered in these jobs and people had a variety of different answers. All of them would get some votes. I think that a lot of people really focused on Cash Patel because of the incredible intrusive abilities the FBI has to fuck with people's lives. But, you know, people had different views. I'm curious which of them you think. Not so much what you thought then, but in now, in the fullness of time, we've 11 months in, who's been the most damaging of the Cabinet secretaries? I think you would have to restrict yourself to those four. There might be. If there's somebody you think is worse than any of those four, you can put that person forward. That's fine.

[D]

We had this conversation on pod, Save America version of it, and we. My, my view is that it, it is Pam Bondi, because a politicized Department of Justice, it is what enables everything else. The fact that there is no watchdog on this administration, no even pretense of independence. Look, we've had attorneys general who were not independent. John F. Kennedy's attorney general, I believe, knew him. They were, they, they had, they had some sort of a connection. I don't remember what it was.

[A]

He was 35 when he had that job. That is fucking nuts, by the way.

[C]

A lot of these Trump people, you look at them and I was like, oh, 50s, 60s. And it's like 37.

[A]

I know. Well, I mean, the rotting soul, John, is not, it's not, it's not, it's not good. It's not good for the, for the, for the complexion.

[D]

What's. But they, they work the same long hours. We look like dog shit when we worked in the White House. But, yeah, I do think it's Pam Bondi because it enables A lot of what else can go wrong, both in terms of. Look, right now, if you are an ally of Trump, you just don't have to worry about the government coming after you. And if you're a lawyer inside the Department of Justice and you've been working on a case, kind of putting together an investigation into somebody who's a Trump acolyte or a Trump donor, you're really gonna do the burn the midnight oil when you know that he's gonna undercut you with a pardon or a commutation to stop something that you think is dead to rights felony. I mean, it's awful, right?

[A]

I mean, and that's like leaving aside the fact that the Attorney General of the United States, in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, actually went out in public and said the following.

[E]

The message of a party is typically determined by the candidate in the presidential election who we choose. And that is the message of the party. Right. Primary systems, you know, they're. They're painful, they're difficult if you're in them. I've been in a primary myself. Very difficult. Running against people who you mostly agree with.

[D]

Yeah.

[E]

And have to differentiate yourself. And then, you know, but. But we go through presidential primaries in the United States where we, you know, we get to see these people over a period of time in various circumstances about various issues. Right. Competing with one another. And eventually we narrow it down. Narrow it down, and then somebody gets picked. Maybe it wasn't everybody's first pick, but in the end, we get comfortable with the person who gets picked and their views. We understand what their views are, and we've all come to either compromise to agree with those views or already agreed with them. Didn't happen in 24. And so we don't have, like, the consensus that typically comes out of a presidential election in our party.

[A]

Sorry, favs, I. I cut you off. You were going to say something. I just had to get that in there. What is your take on this question?

[C]

The rule in this second Trump term has been no independent power centers, and that every agency and every powerful institution, no matter how independent it once was, is now under direct control of the President. And so I actually think that the cabinet secretaries are for show on tv. And I still think I gave this answer when we did it on the pod, which is like, I think Stephen Miller is the most damaging person in the whole government.

[D]

You have no idea the dragon you have awakened. You have no idea how determined we will be to save this civilization. We are on the side of goodness. We are on the Side of God.

[C]

And I think he runs dhs. I think he, He. He had been talking about the boat strike since 2018. And so I think Hegseth's a disaster, but I think Miller's behind that as well. And I think that the closest you get of the people that you mentioned to, like some kind of an independent power center, maybe just because they're not paying as much attention as RFK Jr. The damage he's doing at the health agencies, because I don't think that Trump and Miller are sort of in that world as much. And I think he's just being, you know, he's been a wrecking ball over there.

[A]

I mean, take a look at those two guys. It's like, doesn't seem like health is high on their. Either one of their priority list. Right. No, I'll just. I always want to put in a word for Cash Patel, though, just because, you know, I mean, the story about him having to borrow the FBI jacket and then having to get. So he's in a women's medium jacket, and then he gets the. He gets for borrows from somebody else, the patches. He's all upset. And then this is after the Charlie Kirk thing. He's out there in Salt Lake City, and then he goes out. And again, in the screenplay that we will all write together about this at some point, the parody, this we will put in word for word, lastly, to.

[D]

My friend Charlie Kirk. Rest now, brother.

[B]

We have the watch.

[D]

And I'll see you in Valhalla.

[A]

The head of the FBI, the man who occupies the seat where, terrifyingly, J. Edgar Hoover once ruled with. With. With. With an iron fist and no respect for American civil rights, but also women's medium, but would never.

[D]

That's a good joke.

[A]

That's a good joke. You're on this. You're on the screenwriting team for sure.

[D]

It's great.

[A]

I mean, you know, you just think about that. It's like Cash Patel has all the, all the powers to fuck with people of J. Edgar Hoover, but he also says things like, I'll see you in Valhalla. I just can't believe that. That's incredible.

[D]

Yeah. Here's where, though, look, the authoritarian. John's right. Trump wants to be in control. He wants to have no independent agencies. Right. It all flows to him. And that makes someone seems strong. Right. And I think that is a political strength also for Trump. But there's a weakness in that kind of authoritarian tendency. It's weaker than it looks, and democracy is stronger than it looks. And one way it's stronger than it looks. Is when you have a goofball like that in charge of the FBI and when you have a movement that doesn't have a mandate and never had the guys right one inch below the zealots and the creeps and the bondies and the Patels are people that. They're not Democrats and they may even like Trump on some level, but they're not loyalists. And they have, they have, they have their own. They are individuals with their own power and their separate power. They are a power center. And that, to me, is the kind of way democracy is short circuiting these people. Because why do we have that story about him in the fucking jacket is because there are people inside that are like, fuck, fuck you this. And the less popular he becomes, the more liberating it is, I think, to just tell the truth about this and that. Those little short circuits, those like Democratic short circuits in courts and stories and leaks and resignations in Lindsey Halligan not being able to do anything and not having people below her who are helping her figure out how to write a brief and she's going to the chatgpt and being like, how do you prosecute a case? All of that to me weakens them. We talk about how the incompetence makes them more extreme because they have to defend the indefensible. But the extremism does slow them down. It does breed incompetence, too.

[A]

Lovett said this thing at the top where he said this thing about how Trump is weaker now politically than he's been a long time and. But he's more dangerous because he's cornered. I hate to say this is embarrassing, but, like, the fact that I listen to a lot of stuff you guys do. You said like exact. Almost the same words to. To Stewart the other day. So it's like it's coming out of the, the, the. The crooked media hive mind.

[D]

Yeah. And to be clear, I make it a point to not listen to anything with Jon that I'm not.

[A]

But you. But you. But do you write scripts for him when he goes on, like Jon Stewart?

[D]

We talk a lot to them.

[C]

There was an episode where this happened because I, we literally were talking about how he's weaker now. And then at the very end of it, I think you and I had a back and forth where I was like, yeah, well, when he gets really politically weak, then he gets dangerous. And you're like, yes, I did not mean to say. Yeah, yeah, that's where that started.

[A]

So, so, so that's. So that's I think there's a, I mean I think there's a question about the more dangerous part and what that looks like. But because he's his when he was stronger he was doing a lot of terrible shit at the beginning of the year. But but in the category as we've seen his political influence decline, he is politically weaker now that he's been all year and been in a very long time. We sit around here and I want to say I totally agree with you about the Republican abdication on the Hill and of the article one, all that stuff. That's not why normal people have gone south on Donald Trump. Right. The first obvious thing has to do with the economy. I want to even just put that aside because not even we're talking about he hasn't delivered on his fundamental campaign promise. Prices are still too high. Okay, what else in your guys view has broken through to normal people that has led to his weakness? I mean Epstein is an obvious example. But there are other things. Things were like just the people who don't know what Article 1 or Article 2 is and people who don't, you know, really are not consumers of pont save America or watch cable news or just like the normal people who a lot of whom when you run into them are kind of like, yeah, it's like I'm not into this.

[C]

I think Kyle Tharp, who does this great newsletter substack Fuck, I forget what it's called. Anyway, we'll do an AI version of.

[A]

Your voice and we'll fix it perfect. We'll fix it in post for you.

[C]

The chaotic era I believe it's called he was showing the other day which stories broke through in the biggest way in media over the last year. And everything about Charlie Kirk was like, I think number one right behind it was the ICE raids. And I do think that the video footage from ordinary citizens grabbing their phones and filming what ICE has been doing and the violence and the brutality against protesters, I think that that has broken through in a way that you don't have to necessarily necessarily be a political junkie to suddenly see that on your TikTok feed or on the local. Local news has been doing an incredible job covering those stories. So you've got older people watching local news, you've got younger people watching TikTok and what they are seeing from the Trump administration all the time are these ICE raids and these masked agents and it's just getting worse and worse and worse over time. And I think that that has sort of been an under told story in the Press and among Democrats, because the year started with, well, we have to, you know, Joe Biden fucked up the border and so Democrats have to move back to the center on immigration. And that can be true, and it can be true that Trump, how Trump has handled this, is so extreme that it has pushed people back the other way.

[A]

It's awesome. There's this whole sub genre in social media video now that's of cops in New York City, like, getting in the way of the ICE guys. The ICE guys are kind of trying to take someone away. And a cop's coming up and going, you're. You don't have probable cause. Take that guy away. And the cops are basically saying, get off my fucking street to the ice guys. And the ice guys are like, these orders are coming from D.C. and the cops are going, I don't give a shit. You're here in Brooklyn, you're here in. You're here in. Get the fuck out of here.

[C]

And can you imagine how that lands with the median voter?

[D]

Right?

[C]

Because someone, if you ask someone how the immigration stuff would land with the media voter. Oh, don't talk about that because they like the board, blah, blah. But if you're just someone who likes cops, who likes law enforcement, and you see that the police standing up to the guy, be like, well, I'm on the side of the police, not that guy.

[A]

And the ICE guy is saying, these orders come from D.C. because we all know how popular D.C. is compared to, like, for the copies on the street corner, right?

[D]

Yeah. Trump is a better antagonist than protagonist. He is better as a figure critiquing the government from the outside. And his method, I think, is better because he's talking about everything, he's spinning you up about everything. He can drag. He's the assignment editor for the country and he can drag us in all kinds of directions because he's saying horrible shit. And he's a powerful person. He's Republican nominee or he's obviously the president. And I do think that works when he's out of power, but when he's in office, we're doing news cycles about a ballroom. We're doing news cycles about horrible shit he's saying about Rob Reiner. We have the ICE raids all over the place and none of it is about the economy. Right? None of it is about the core reason people were willing to give this guy another chance. And so, ironically, what has made him, I think, effective and what caught us all off guard with his rise actually doesn't work for him when he's actually The President, because, yeah, he can get us talking about things that aren't the economy. He can do that every day. He does it every day. We very rarely talk about it. You know, that is not what myself. Right. Asked an answer. Right. Like, we all know, but it just means whatever the thing that's breaking through, like, did. Do people care about the ballroom? I don't know, but I know that people care that we're not talking about the thing he said he was going to run on.

[A]

Right. Here's another end of the year question in the same vein. And I want to actually talk about Democrats a little bit in our last portion of this, but a weird thing has happened, I think, even among people who are pretty, you know, pretty hardcore in terms of their pro democracy credentials and their paranoia, justified paranoia about Trump and his authoritarian designs, which is like he did that thing on the plane about where he sort of kinda, not really, but sorta said, you know, Constitution won't let me run for a third term.

[B]

So we have the greatest economy we've ever had. I have my highest poll numbers that I've ever had. And, you know, based on what I read, I guess I'm not allowed to run. So we'll see what happens. It's a very interesting thing. I have the best numbers for any president in many years, any president. And I would say that if you read it, it's pretty clear I'm not allowed to run.

[A]

And like, all the discussion about it, I'm not saying permanently, but the discussion of like, Trump's trying to stay in office beyond 2028 has really subsided since that moment that we just played from Air Force One. But, you know, when I heard that thing, I was like, there's like fucking 20 loopholes in this thing. He's not like being declarative. He's not saying, I will not do this. The Constitution is clear. He's like, I guess it says that. Why is, A, do you perceive that is true, that this worry about it has kind of subsided? At least the discussion has subsided. And B, do you think that that's right, that we are like, there's this notion, the whole Trump is a lame duck thing is premised on the notion that, you know, that, that political analysis is premised on the notion that Trump has basically acceded to the idea that he's gonna leave in January 2029. I don't find myself convinced of that at all, but maybe you guys do.

[C]

I don't know if I'm convinced or not. I, I now understand why it was if he's not planning on staying, and he really does believe this, it was pretty smart of him to keep it alive.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

To keep everyone talking about it and to keep. Because he is starting to seem more like a lame duck. And I think as that as we get into 26 and especially as we get into 27, he is gonna have a. An incredibly difficult time dealing with this and dealing with, like, the, you know, he wants to play, of course, you know, Celebrity Apprentice with Vance and Rubio and the rest of them that are running. But, like, I don't even think he's going to have a lot of that to do because, you know, I think it could very well just be headed towards like a, you know, if he blesses Vance and Rubio says as he did to Chris Whipple and the Vanity Fair thing, that if. If J.D. vance, he's not. Runs, he's not going to run and he's just going to support him. You know, who knows, he could change his mind. But if that's the case, then Trump's just going to have to deal with the fact that were moving on to crowning his successor. And then the thing that I've always been worried about is less that Donald Trump stays in office and more that in the transition, if it is a close election, we go back to a 2021 situation where Donald Trump uses the powers he has to help flip the election to his successor, not necessarily to himself. Now, it's either that or Donald Trump is like, Fuck J.D. vance. I blame and like, the reason that he lost is because he's bad and I wasn't on the team. There is a version of that. And he leaves being like, I won my. You know, J.D. vance couldn't get it done, and so I'm out. So I'm not taking it as a hit on me or there is a. We're gonna use the powers of the federal government to keep the Democrat who just won out of the. Out of the White House.

[D]

Right.

[A]

So you're not relaxed about this, but I'm relaxed.

[C]

I think him staying another four years is like.

[A]

And the idea that the way it was gonna happen was that he was going to try to run for a third. Like, he'll be on the ballot. I'm going to now compete for the Republican nomination. I'm like, that seems much more likely if he were going to try to stick around.

[C]

It was always in the interregnum. But look.

[D]

Look at how he's. Look at how he moves our baseline too, though. He's Also just sort of musing about seizing voting machines in 2026. He's talking about, he's. And while also threatening to deploy the military in cities across the country, he claims falsely that all elections are. All local and state elections are run as like an extension of his power. All that made up nonsense. But, but that, that continues to be the threat. We have. We have an election in a year he could try to mess with. We have the possibility of, of members of Congress not being set. Greg Abbott held the seat open for a year just for, for a whim. Johnson refused to seat somebody just because he didn't want to make his majority smaller. These are people that are all willing to, to mess with the basics for advantage. So that to me continues to be the threat. And even Susie Wiles said, like, yeah, he's just having fun with people.

[A]

I would just say, I think when you started to tell a story about something in the Whipple piece, the story I thought you were going to tell, which I have not read the whole thing, but somebody was on TV last night. Somebody said this thing about how at some point, I think Vance said, the photographer, who's a friend of mine, Chris Anderson, I have to check with him about this, where he said, can you just make sure that all the rest. I'll give you some amount of money if you make sure that everybody else looks worse than me.

[D]

That's funny.

[A]

That's funny. It's totally funny.

[C]

I think it's one of the first funny things I've heard.

[A]

Yes, I know. Humor is not like the J.D. vance. You think J.D. vance to be the next Republican nominee?

[C]

Yes.

[A]

You think J.D. vance most likely the next Republican nominee?

[C]

It's crazy that I just said yes.

[A]

But I felt like I was most likely most likely. You have to make a definitive prediction. Is he the most likely Republican nominee? Yes, most likely.

[C]

Okay, that's Tucker. Run. Maybe Tucker.

[A]

I think, I think both of you guys. There's no, there is no way that guy becomes a Republican. I mean, no way. That was a trap.

[D]

That was a trap.

[A]

No, it's not a trap. I'm just making.

[C]

What do you think?

[A]

I'm just offering.

[D]

My question was. So he's the most likely, right? You're fucking idiots. Not. You don't got the, you don't got the steel trap mind.

[A]

Listen. Oh, I was thinking, what do you think it is? I think it's more likely to be. If I had to pick the most likely next Republican nominee, I'd say one of the members of the Trump family probably Don Jr. I don't think there's. I think JD Vance is repel. Is human. It's. I was not trying to trick you. I was just trying to.

[D]

No, no.

[A]

I was gonna throw my opinion out. I just think he's repellent. I think he has. I'm like, Tim. Tim has this view also, which is like that. That guy just does not have. He's not someone who. He's has a lot of skills and the shape shifting thing has served him really well. But you know, in mri, the soul department.

[C]

Well, I think it's just the reason I think he's still most likely. Is that it. This Republican primary becomes more of a coronation than anything else because he's the heir apparent, the vice president, and because, you know, he and Don Jr. And the like, they're. They're having. I just can't imagine them both like, going out on stage and like having this. This split. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, if I feel like the scenario in which Vance isn't the nominee is the scenario where someone like a Tucker or someone to his right is like. Cause. And you know, Vance is very careful about this. Like, no enemies to your right. That they are like, oh, he's just. He's phony.

[A]

Or if Trump plays hands on one of the kids, in which case, is J.D. vance gonna run against one of Trump's kids?

[C]

No, no, no.

[D]

Yeah. I also, part of this is there's a dynamic. It depends on the media dynamic as well, because what we've seen is there is value to running for president, irrespective of how far you get. And if you make a. You take a look at this thing, you say, you know what? I'm gonna jump in. Not gonna criticize Trump, I'm not gonna criticize Vance, but I'm trying to make a name for myself. Then all of a sudden, there's a race with sort of unintended consequences, unexpected consequences.

[C]

But also look at where the Republican Party's going. And to the extent that there's a split in the party, it is the Marjorie Taylor Greene, I'm America first. I'm not Maga. Right. Versus Maga. And J.D. vance is Maga. He can't. Don Jr. Is Maga. Like these, they can't run away.

[A]

They can't take the MAGA uniform off.

[C]

If there's stink on MAGA by the time the MAGA brand, by the time you get to 28, then it's going to have to be someone who is of those politics but says, oh, I'm America first. And I'm not maga.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, you know, who knows how many of those people there are going to be. We got to sneak in one more quick break. But when we come back, we will hear from the Johns on a subject close to their hearts and also the source of much of their current abiding rage, the Democratic Party. Stick around. I gotta say, it's been cold up here, especially in the morning as you wake up, man, it's been like it, freezing. And as those mornings like started to happen and the holiday plans are starting to stack up, I just start thinking about the pieces in my wardrobe that just work. Something about this time of year where it's like functionality in addition to fashion is the key. And that's why I rely on quints. Every piece that I pick up feels like it was thoughtfully made. And honestly, like a lot of it is gift worthy, even if I don't actually want to give it away. Their Mongolian cashmere sweaters are soft and cozy and keep you warm against that cold. And they're only about 50 bucks. Wool coats that hold up to daily wear. And their outerwear, holy moly. The down jackets, the wool and leather coats, they keep you warm. The cashmere beanies, the scarves, the gloves, just the icing on the cake. Offering luxury level warmth without a luxury price. Quince works directly with trusted factories, cutting out middlemen so the craftsmanship stays high and the prices stay fair. It's premium quality that makes updating your wardrobe or checking off holiday gifts stress free. So get your wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled with Quince. Don't wait. Go to quince.com impolitic for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Also, Quince is now available in Canada too. So to all of our Canadian listeners you can get in on this also by typing in Q U I n c e.com impolitic for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com impolitic I'm done with subscriptions.

[D]

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[A]

I've got subscriptions for everything in my life.

[D]

They lock you in and half the time I can't figure out how to unsubscribe. That's why I'm so excited about the new Blue Apron.

[A]

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[D]

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[A]

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[D]

Yeah, I remember them.

[A]

Okay, so, Favs, on Stuart's podcast, John asked what the real conversation is among Democrats behind the scenes, you know, in the green rooms, and you were like, the real conversation among Democrats is that all this talk about a Democratic bench being strong is bullshit. Everyone's looking around going, we don't have anybody. Who's it going to be like? I don't feel confident at all about that. I want you to say more about that, and then I'm going to ask you guys who you think had a decent. Like, if you look at all the people who potentially could run in 2028, you could rank them as either had a year where they advanced their cause, had a year where they hurt their cause or held steady. We'll talk about that in a second. But tell me about the. Over that. About that deep bench thing.

[C]

Yeah. And just, Just, you know, on another note, of all of us listening to each other's podcasts, I heard you talking to Ax about this with. With Murphy on the latest hacks on tap. But it was like, I. I do think that someone could emerge through the course of the primary.

[A]

I think I see excited you, and you probably have some kind of an alert that goes off.

[C]

No, you didn't even say it because I was like, I thought that too. But anyway, I think someone could emerge. Right. But right now, the idea of, like, we have a deep bench. We have a deep bench in the terms that there's a lot of people on it, it's definitely deep. Yeah. And I think there's people who have conventional resumes and records that are quite impressive in a world that we no longer live in.

[A]

Yes, right.

[C]

And if you were thinking about politics in terms of attention and who can grab people's attention and who can become well known and who can sort of move us beyond the last decade of shit, then I don't see anyone who is saying anything that we all haven't heard a million times over the last 10 years. And that's what is currently worrying me, because I do think there is a. Look, there's like a Moneyball version of presidential politics where you're like, okay, we gotta talk about affordability and we gotta get down back to basics, and we gotta get back to, like, what is the Democrat? And I think that that actually can get you pretty far down the road. But to get over the. To get over the hump, like, you need something different, new, exciting.

[A]

So I think on the question of whether there's a deep bench or not, you just gave me your view about it, and that's a valid answer. I am actually almost as interested in the fact that. That as a sociological matter, when I talk to Democrats, which I do frequently just in the world, I don't. It's not like I. People come up to me and go, man, we're gonna kick ass in 2026 and 2028. I'm super confident. What I hear is people come. Come up and go, how fucked are we? And who's going to save us? Is there someone out there? Because I haven't seen him yet. And I'm. Because of all that talk at the elite level of we have a deep bench. When you talk to actual Democrats, just people in the airport, they're like, man, like, who we got?

[C]

Well, the people at the elite level are the same people who are like, joe Biden's gonna be fine.

[A]

Well, makes sense then.

[D]

Yeah. I talked to JB Pritzker about this last week on the show, and he made this point, which is one way we resolve this is through big presidential primaries.

[E]

The message of a party is typically determined by the candidate in the presidential election, who we choose. And that is the message of the party. Right. Primary systems, you know, they're. They're painful. They're difficult if you're in them. I've been in a primary myself. Very difficult. Running against people who you mostly agree with.

[B]

Yeah.

[E]

And have to differentiate yourself. And then, you know, but. But we go through presidential primaries in the United States where we, you know, we get to see these people over a period of time in various circumstances about various issues. Right. Competing with one another. And eventually we narrow it down. Narrow it down, and then somebody gets picked. Maybe it wasn't everybody's first pick, but in the end, we get comfortable with the person who gets picked and their views. We understand what their views are, and we've all come to either compromise to agree with those views or already agreed with them. Didn't happen in 24. And so we don't have, like, the consensus that typically comes out of a presidential election in our party.

[D]

One thing I've been thinking about is before we get to the who, I do think there's a reason that there is so much passion and support behind the left wing of the Democratic Party. I do think that is in part because that isn't. They have an answer that I think resonates with a lot of people, and they say we have a politics that meets the scale of our challenge.

[A]

They're not playing small ball.

[D]

Whether you agree with.

[A]

They're not playing small ball. They're Swinging for the fences.

[D]

And I think that that's important. I do think sometimes it also is filling in a gap which is what does the non left wing of the party actually want for the future of the country? And I just don't know. And that is a difference. Like Barack Obama did not run from the left, he ran against Washington. Bill Clinton actually ran from the center or so as a cross critique of.

[A]

Had a very, very well worked out vision of what he wanted to, what he thought the future would look like.

[D]

And I wonder if it actually is literally because of what Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton represented. They were the people that became the focus of this and a whole kind of way of organizing politics and policy around them grew. But when I was coming up in politics, there was a big debate about policy that wasn't left center as much as it was. There was technocratic, it was neoliberal. People don't like it, but that's what it was. And it was a vision. It was like we have stretched from education to opportunity zones to a whole host of pre education and what happens.

[A]

With children's rights, human capital agenda.

[D]

And you can be critical of it and it has all kinds of problems of what systems it believed in, but it was a worldview that you could apply in different settings. And if you interviewed Bill Clinton and asked him a question he hadn't thought about before, his worldview would lead to an answer. And there just is not that kind of thoughtful policy post Trump, not based on Republicans, not as antagonist worldview. And that to me is the big gap. And for a lot of reasons the left is, is, is stepping in, in its stead. But I think a lot of this sort of where's the people? What are they going to say? Are we going to win all of that? I do think because there's an alarm is not going off.

[A]

Yes, I totally, I mean look, the Clinton thing, you know, has been a little bit older than you guys, but that, that thing of like, I have a view of the world. There are the big challenges. The information age is here, the global economy is here. Those are big things. There's going to be huge disruptions. Here are a series of policies in the middle that will address those things. I'm going to tell you how they apply and then I'm going to lay a vision on top of that. Again, you don't have to like that vision. You could say it went wrong in various ways, but that was like started at the core, at a, an appreciation of the enormity of the challenges of what the digital revolution and globalization would mean to the American economy. And then an attempt to actually layer a bunch of policies and then lay some rhetoric and some visionary kind of patina on top of it. You know, you're right. The only people in the Democratic Party are. Who are. Who are swinging for the fences is the left. They have a view about that that makes that. And people get that the problems are big. Like, that's something normal people are like, man, we are. We're fucking facing some really. AI's coming. There's like, the fucking world's changing. I don't even understand it anymore. And to hear people kind of like, you know, niggling around the edges and it is. Doesn't satisfy the need.

[C]

Well. And winning campaigns on the presidential level for Democrats have been visions that go beyond just how we fix the economy.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

And to how we treat each other, how we live with one another, how we make meaning in this country. And for Clinton, right. It was, you know, economy stupid. He also. How many times do you talk about responsibility and community along with opportunity? Barack Obama, we talked about the economy a lot. And of course, the, you know, financial crisis is what pushed us over the edge there. But also he was talking about changing Washington and changing and corruption and bringing people.

[A]

And he embodied a thing that just by his biography and by his. And from 2004. I mean, that whole thing.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

Agree without being disagree, disagree without being disagreeable. You know, no reds and all these stuff. You know, there was a series of things that he just. You looked at him and he had. He kind of raised the. There was a thematic overthink just in his biography.

[C]

Even Joe Biden in 2020. Right. Like a fight for the soul of America. Like, he. There was some lift in addition to the. Trump's been bad for you.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

That sort of, I think, helped elevated his campaign as well. And so what I'm looking for is, it's funny, we had crooked con in D.C. and I moderated a panel on message with like, what's our story going to be? Tons of really smart people. Psaki and, you know, Rebecca Katz and I asked everyone if they've heard a message from someone, if they've heard a story that sort of excites them. And no one really had but Faz Shakur, who was Bernie's campaign manager and now runs More Perfect Union. He's like, you know, I'm gonna go against type here. And what I'm concerned about is cultural decay in this country. He goes, but the cultural decay is we have become so selfish and focused on greed and money and what we can get that we have become alienated from each other, divided from one another. We become lonely and making everything about your market value and what you can that has really hurt the country. And someone needs to talk about like how. And I'm just like, you know what? Something like that I am looking to hear from one of these Democratic candidates.

[A]

Seems like this, like, to me, this challenge of I think I don't want to necessarily even go through and like rank candidates or anything, but like, what do you think? We all think Gavin had a good year and is kind of the de facto front runner right now. Someone I've known for a long time, covered for a long time, have a lot of respect for. Think he had a good year. This is where the problem, this is what his next challenge is. Because he's a great. Now that he's in the mode of fighter, he's great at the attention economy, he's great at the pugilism, he's great at critiquing Trump. I mean, you know, he just went on Ezra Klein's podcast and you know, when it comes to laying out the stakes and taking the wood to Trump, I mean, you know, he's really strong. I'm smash mouth about some of this stuff. I think Trump is one of the most destructive presidents and human beings in my lifetime. I think this republic is at real risk, this country being unrecognizable. And I have no patience for people that want to indulge it. I can't stand the corny capitalism. I can't stand all these supplicants that are sitting there bending the knee to this president. I can't stand the universities have done.

[C]

That, the lawful firms that have done.

[A]

That, individual corporate leaders that have done that, other governors, maybe Democrats and Republicans that have been complicit at this moment.

[B]

This guy is reckless.

[A]

He's a reckless country. We'll not have a fair and free election if we don't continue to fight.

[C]

I'm just, that's what matters to me seriously.

[A]

But I've never heard Gavin at any of the stages as mayor, lieutenant governor, governor, and now as aspiring presidential candidate. I've never heard him like have that, that, that, that, that the driving dream piece.

[C]

And the interesting thing with him is I think he has the potential.

[A]

I see.

[C]

That's the next smart.

[A]

Yeah, he's got to get there because he can't point to California and say, just look to California. That's my dream for the country.

[D]

Yeah, it's but he does. And by the way, it doesn't break through. But I remember maybe it was you and I who talked to him years ago and I was pushing about, about, about rail, high speed rail and it was interesting. Just he does, I think part because he, he does this all off book, right. He, he, it's, it actually very, very like impressive dyslexia.

[A]

Yes.

[D]

But he was like kind of able to kind of run through the actual details in a very, in a way that did remind me of like a Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton. Yeah. And I think it's like there's, there are these pieces, right? Because there's what, what John's talking about. But then I want to understand, okay, AI, how do you think about it? How do you talk about it? What are the answers to it? The fact that social media is rotting our kids brains. Where are you on that? Right. Are you for a ban for kids? What do you think about how you get adults out of this cycle and what the government has a role? I don't know the answer, but to me it's like how are you going to tell a story that has that kind of emotional philosophical piece and then tie it back to some kind of an ideological way of thinking about what the government's job is now going forward? And that is not tactical. That is. And that by the way, it's barely even something you're gonna find in a poll. You could pull, find whatever you wanted to poll. It's gonna be something that is from within about your understanding about what you believe, what is so important to you, you can't stop talking about it. And that to me is what's missing across the board.

[A]

Is there any candidate, is there anybody who's a potential 2028 Democratic presidential nominee who has that right now?

[C]

Not that I've heard. Doesn't mean that's not in them.

[A]

And, and again, there's time, like I said about Gavin Newsom, he's. If you listen to the Ezra Klein podcast with him, it's an hour and 45 minutes. He's smart throughout it. He says some interesting things. But this is the thing that's missing. There's not an a unifying, animating, thematic kind of vision going forward. And it's an hour and 45 minutes where he talks about a lot of stuff. They talk about a lot of these topics, but it's never like he just whirls in there and goes, I'm an abundance candidate, I embrace this. Or on a big question like AI, you know, you see Andrew Yang out there doing this mobile. This new mobile play where he wants to give people phones that will incentivize them to stay off the phone. That in itself is reflective of a kind of thoughtfulness about what you think about the onrushing technological future. And I think that for a lot of people, like, oh, a phone that will keep me off the. Pay me to stay off the phone, that's kind of interesting. I'm not pushing for Andrew Yang, by the way, is never nominee, but, you know, that that's a big new idea that takes on a big growing problem. And, you know, it's swinging for the fences. And, you know, love him or hate him, that's what Zoron did. Zoran Bomdani, that's what he did, too. And it's why so many young people turned out for him. You know, he swung for the fences.

[C]

You know, you can imagine. Imagine AOC getting there rhetorically, 100%. And you can imagine Pete Buttigieg potentially getting there.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And then I start to wonder about, like. Like, I'd like to hear more from Gallego. I'd like to hear more. I don't. You know, Josh Shapiro so far, hasn't really gone there. I don't know if Pritz Grant did with you.

[D]

So it was interesting because. And again, I think it's your. Like, there's time. It's early. Yeah. So he made this point that Democrats are much better suited to say, answer the challenges of AI and say, okay, then what are they? What are the answers? And, you know, he was like, a little bit like, oh, it was a little. And I, by the way, I really like him.

[A]

I genuinely.

[D]

But he had this look of like, oh, I didn't know that was gonna be on the test. But he talked about. He brought up universal basic income as one thing that was on his mind. But you did feel like, oh, this is somebody who is thinking about. Thinking about this kind of question. Yeah. And by the way, one other piece of it that I think it also needs to tie back to is how we got into a situation where someone like Trump got within 100 miles of the White House. Because I do think it's one story. I do. I think there is a story about alienation, about isolation, about. And the other part of it, too, which I also think is really important, is Donald Trump tells you that the world is not divided into. Is not a fair place. There's winners and there's suckers, and which one are you? And somebody that can say that understand why that worldview took hold. But also say we need to build a world where that's not the case. I think also is really important.

[A]

Yeah, I totally agree. You guys are both awesome, and it's great to see you both. Tell me one thing from the year. Movie, TV show, book, song, record, whatever, Something that you would say. This helped me through 2025.

[C]

I don't know if it helped me through, but Pluribus has been fascinating.

[A]

Incredible.

[C]

So good.

[A]

Incredible. Okay, Pluribus. Anybody who's not watching Pluribus out there, it's not too late. Vince Gilligan, genius.

[D]

I listen, I consume. Bravo. I love Pluribus. Also, shout out to Pluribus for not telling people what it's about. Because a lot of mainstream entertainment now, somebody at some point looks to the camera and says, this is about how the nuclear bomb is bad.

[A]

Exposition. Exposition is like the fucking enemy of art, right?

[D]

Like, Barbie turns the camera and says, can you believe this? Love Barbie. But that's a problem. So I'm gonna make a really pretentious pick and just. Everyone just brace. So I've this year completed reading all the novels of.

[C]

I knew this was coming.

[D]

Kazuo Ishigura.

[B]

I'm sorry.

[D]

I'm sorry.

[B]

I don't care.

[D]

I don't care.

[B]

I fucking love it.

[D]

I love it. But he wrote a novel that is not well known called An Artist of the Floating World. An Artist in the Floating World. It is about a person who became sucked into Imperial Japanese fascism and is filled with regret as an old man looking at a changing Japan. And I know that that sounds pretentious.

[A]

It doesn't just sound pretentious. It is pretentious.

[D]

It is a beautiful story about someone looking.

[C]

He's not running. Yeah, it's a beautiful story.

[A]

It also tells me he doesn't want to run a presidential campaign either, because.

[D]

That'S about someone's regret about becoming part of something that they knew was wrong at the time. But the true regret is not. Not that they did the wrong thing. It is that what they did didn't matter at all. And it is a beautiful book, and I found it really moving and super uplifting. Well, it's more about. It's not uplifting for that character, but you do see a world that looks. It's basically about the Japanese youth being, like, loving America and being like, what the fuck did you people do to our fucking country? Why did you do this? What was wrong with you? Like, I can't believe this happened. And so I found that really, I really enjoyed reading it. And you know, obviously. Salt Lake. Salt Lake Housewives.

[A]

There's a little. See, that sounds a little bit more. Right? That's. That sounds a little. That was what I was expecting.

[D]

Come on, we just got to find me the right district.

[A]

You guys are awesome. Thank you.

[C]

This was fun.

[D]

This is great.

[C]

Thanks for having us.

[A]

In. Politic with John Heilman is a Puck podcast in partnership with Odyssey. Thanks again to John and John for coming on the show. If you enjoyed this episode of In Politics with John Heilman, please follow us, rate us, share us, and review us in the free Odyssey app or wherever you have to bask in the splendor of the podcast universe. I am John Heilman, special correspondent for Puck. To read my stuff, along with the reporting and analysis of all my fabulous Puck partners, go to Puck News, Jhiel J H E I L and subscribe please. Speaking of my colleagues John Kelly and Ben Landy, our executive producers of Impolitic, Lori Blackford is our guest wrangling guru. And Bob Tabador is our very own Rick Rubin, Brian Eno, Steve Albini and the bomb squad all rolled into one, flawlessly producing, editing, mixing and mastering the show all by his lonesome in a no time flat. From all of us to all of you, a little mashup of a pair of late greats, My mom and Bob Marley. Don't get arrested, don't get dead, and don't give up the fight.

[D]

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[A]

Very happy half off holiday because right.

[D]

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[C]

To be clear, that's half price, not half the service. Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price.

[D]

So that means a half service day.

[A]

Yeah. Give it a [e-mail] switch. Upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to 15 per month required new customer offer for first 3 months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of network spizzy. Taxes and fees extra. CMT mobile.com.