The Worst People Are Happy (With Tim Miller)

Summary

Lovett or Leave It: The Worst People Are Happy (With Tim Miller) - Detailed Summary

In this episode of Lovett or Leave It, hosted by John Lovett of Crooked Media, Jon engages in a profound and candid conversation with guest Tim Miller. Together, they delve into the pressing political and cultural issues shaping America, expressing their concerns and frustrations while seeking pathways forward. The discussion is rich with insightful analysis, historical parallels, and personal reflections, offering listeners a comprehensive look into the state of the nation.

---

Political Climate and Trump's Influence

00:00 – 05:52

The episode opens with Jon and Tim discussing the current political landscape, particularly the enduring influence of Donald Trump. Tim expresses deep concern about Trump's potential to target his enemies, referencing a recent clip where Sean Hannity interacted aggressively with immigration officials:

Tim Miller (07:14): "For those others, the non criminals, if you want to self deport, I'm all for it..."
John Lovett (08:19): "This was chilling for a number of reasons... This is the power center now, right? This is the marketplace of ideas. That's obviously terrifying."

John echoes these fears, highlighting the dangers of Trump's administration normalizing quasi-authoritarian governance:

John Lovett (05:52): "I'm worried about now what happens when Trump, fully in control of the Republican Party, makes decisions and it is just processed as normal politics."

Immigration Policies and Deportations

05:52 – 16:19

A significant portion of the conversation focuses on immigration policies under Trump's potential second term. Tim criticizes the aggressive stance on deportations, emphasizing the human cost:

Tom Homan (07:14): "The ones that want to go home on their own, they found their way across the world to come to the greatest nation on earth, they can find their way home."

John further elaborates on the systemic issues, arguing that mass deportations would not distinguish between criminal undocumented immigrants and those seeking a better life:

John Lovett (09:51): "What I worry about, right, is that Trump starts under this guy Homan doing a bunch of deportations, claiming it is the worst of the worst criminals."

They discuss the flawed bargain between America and undocumented immigrants, wherein the economy benefits from their labor despite their lack of legal protections. John advocates for comprehensive immigration reform as a humane solution:

John Lovett (12:21): "Our economy relies on you. And the bargain was you get a chance to make money in America."

Accelerationism vs. Resistance

16:19 – 38:13

The hosts explore the philosophical dilemma of whether to resist systemic threats to minimize suffering or accelerate challenges to expose underlying issues. Tim introduces the concept of accelerationism, questioning if enduring pain could lead to greater awareness of societal flaws:

Tim Miller (20:03): "Accelerationism or resistance... Do we want resistance and limits on the suffering or do we want to accelerate it so that people can see how bad it is?"

John refutes accelerationism, emphasizing the real and tangible suffering it would cause, and instead advocates for active resistance and political engagement:

John Lovett (21:43): "I'm not a believer in accelerationism because the pain is real and guaranteed."

They draw historical parallels, notably referencing Otto Wohl's courageous stand against Nazi policies after the Reichstag fire, underscoring the importance of confronting authoritarianism:

John Lovett (38:10): "We are in a very privileged position... How dare we be kind of cowed by this?"

Disillusionment with America's Trajectory

38:13 – 55:24

Tim and John delve into their growing disillusionment with America’s direction, especially in light of recent political developments and cultural shifts. Tim shares his waning belief in the “specialness” of America, fearing a bleak future under continued authoritarian leadership:

Tim Miller (25:27): "I don't know if I have anymore [belief in America's trajectory]."

John counters with a historical perspective, acknowledging America's tumultuous past and the recurring cycles of progress and backlash. He emphasizes that disillusionment stems from elite-driven narratives that overlook fundamental societal issues:

John Lovett (43:18): "People have faced so much worse... we are in the aftermath of something awful and we are trying to be tactical in what is a kind of historic, epochal event."

The conversation touches on the atomization of society, loss of local businesses, and the soullessness of a convenience-driven economy. They critique how the dismantling of local institutions in favor of corporate chains has eroded community bonds:

John Lovett (53:10): "We would give up on having common spaces in exchange for cheap, reliable, replicable convenience."

Cultural and Economic Concerns

53:10 – 55:24

The duo discusses the broader cultural implications of economic policies, highlighting how the replacement of local businesses with chains has contributed to societal disconnection and dissatisfaction. They reflect on the loss of community spaces and the impact on American identity:

John Lovett (53:37): "The soullessness of the economy we've built... hollowed out certain industries is part of it too."

---

Conclusion: Hope Amid Despair

Despite the heavy topics, Tim and John find moments of solidarity and determination. They acknowledge the immense challenges but affirm their commitment to fighting for a better future:

John Lovett (41:35): "We got to keep going."

Tim closes with a light-hearted remark to uplift spirits, reinforcing the importance of camaraderie in these trying times:

Tim Miller (54:30): "Hopefully that's a little bit of uplift for you from a Survivor expert."

John reciprocates the support, highlighting the mutual respect and gratitude that underpins their collaboration:

John Lovett (55:24): "Win or lose, I'm grateful to you."

---

Key Takeaways

• Authoritarian Threats: Concerns about Trump's potential second term normalizing authoritarian practices and aggressive immigration policies.

• Immigration Debate: The need for comprehensive reform to address the flawed bargain between America and undocumented immigrants.

• Philosophical Dilemma: Choosing between resistance and accelerationism in confronting systemic societal issues.

• Disillusionment and Hope: While expressing disillusionment with America's current trajectory, John and Tim emphasize the importance of continued political engagement and solidarity.

• Cultural Shifts: Critique of the economic policies that have led to the atomization of society and the erosion of local communities.

---

Notable Quotes

• Tim Miller (05:52): "We're already at the politics of quasi-authoritarian governance."

• John Lovett (09:51): "Trump starts under this guy Homan doing a bunch of deportations, claiming it is the worst of the worst criminals."

• Tim Miller (20:03): "Do we want resistance and limits on the suffering or do we want to accelerate it so that people can see how bad it is?"

• John Lovett (43:18): "We are in the aftermath of something awful and we are trying to be tactical in what is a kind of historic, epochal event."

• Tim Miller (55:24): "We got to keep going."

---

This episode of Lovett or Leave It offers a deep dive into the fears and frustrations surrounding current political dynamics, particularly focusing on the potential ramifications of a continued Trump administration. Through thoughtful discussion and historical context, Jon and Tim provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of the challenges ahead, coupled with a call to remain engaged and resilient.

Transcript

[John Lovett]

The kind of burgers you get today.

[Tim Miller]

Tells you a lot about yourself. You're either someone who settles for sad same old, same old burgers or you're Edit Carl's Jr.

[John Lovett]

Obsessed with a tangy OG Western bacon.

[Tim Miller]

Cheeseburger, demanding a house made guacamole, loaded guac bacon fired up for the insanely.

[John Lovett]

Hot El Diablo or craving a classic Charbold famous star.

[Tim Miller]

Give in to your flavored cravings.

[John Lovett]

Do your mouth to Carl's Jr. Good Burger.

[Tim Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I am, am I delighted. Well, I'm just happy I guess. I'm satisfied I'm something to be here with. John Lovett, co founder of Crooked Media and a podcast host, including the great podcast Love it or Leave it where this show will be cross posted later today. So if you want to hear it twice with his audio team, you can go, you can go listen to it over there. How you doing, John?

[John Lovett]

I'm doing okay, Tim. Yeah, I, we were normally on Tuesdays we record a monologue, a kind of comedic look at the previous few days news and I just thought maybe this, this would be a better a conversation about how we're feeling would be maybe more fruitful right now.

[Tim Miller]

All right, well, I'm not sure how comedic it's going to be, but I'm sure we'll find a laugh somewhere. As you alluded to because we are gay white men and podcast hosts, this will mostly be a self indulgent therapy session about how we feel. But before we go fully solipsist there, I want to think a little bit about others. Can we start by thinking a little bit about others? Is that okay?

[John Lovett]

Sure, let's do that.

[Tim Miller]

I guess just open ended, we've had a week now to marinate on this and you know there are fears, you have fears and worries about what might come. And there's a lot of unknowns still a lot of known unknowns, if you will. And so I just wonder like what feels the most acute to you as far as actual threats versus hypothetical threats?

[John Lovett]

I was thinking about this question and it's very hard to answer. And I was thinking back to how this period felt the last time Trump became president. And this was a very dark time and it continued to be one through the first couple weeks of the administration when he went for the Muslim ban and there was a lot of protest and we just didn't know what the bottom would be. And then Obamacare repeal failed and Trump was in a lot of ways overtaken by his own lack of discipline and chaos and kind of quotidian politics. And so I'm trying to, like, keep in mind that this is a very hard time because it's all perspective and we don't know what the future holds. What struck me yesterday when we were recording Pod Save America is this was a record on Monday, and John's very reasonable question was, NBC is reporting on Trump's enemies being unsure if it's safe to remain in the country, some being advised by lawyers to leave the country. Who are Trump's enemies? What happens if Trump targets his enemies? What are the politics of Trump targeting his enemies? A week earlier, we were sitting in the same studio saying to ourselves, well, we'd rather be Kamala than Trump right now. Hopeful for tomorrow, barely.

[Tim Miller]

You'd rather be convinced of Trump. So I guess actually what's relevant here is which of Trump's enemies would you rather be?

[John Lovett]

Sure.

[Tim Miller]

The other one should probably be the one that's more worried.

[John Lovett]

And what I felt about it was, how do we deal with the bloodless kind of ticky tack politics of Trump's aberrations without forgetting that they're aberrations? And obviously, we don't want to have a whole conversation about normalizing Trump. Again. Trump is obviously quite normal here. He is. But my main fear right now is that in facing a million different versions, a million different threats from a million different directions, we will win some battles, lose some battles, but by the end of this four years, we won't really recognize the country. And that's sort of what I felt in just thinking about that. These sort of like, we're already at the point where we're talking about whether there'll be blowback if Donald Trump uses the security state to kill people's clearances, causing them to lose jobs, thereby causing potential whistleblowers inside the government to be afraid to come forward. We're already at. We're already at the politics of that, which we should be. I mean, it's a reasonable place to be. We are at the politics of that. But what we're talking about is the politics of quasi authoritarian governance. We're already there. So that was my big, like, am I worried about the targeting of immigrants and how far that goes? Yes. Am I worried about the targeting of LGBT people? Yes. Am I worried about what happens when inevitably protests start happening and Trump crosses the Rubicon of, of deploying troops and we start debating the approval rating of that decision? Like, yes, I'm very worried about all of these things. But in General, I'm worried about now what happens when Trump, fully in control of the Republican Party, fully in control of the executive branch, makes decisions and it is just processed as normal politics. That's. That's. That's what I was feeling today.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. That's why I like having you on. So I thought we'd be. We're a good pair for this because my, like, my brain, like, goes in a completely different way from that into, like, crisis communications mode. Like, I go into crisis mode, right? Which is like, okay, we're here, right? And it's like, what is not acute? You know, maybe there's a distant threat to gay rights or whatever, as you mentioned, lgbtq. But, like, it's not acute, right? Like, maybe there's a distant threat to some of Trump's enemies or, like, a future protest that he cracks down on, but, like, it's not acute. And like. Like, the real thing is, like, there's a small handful of people who I worry about, like, who I think particularly kind of were involved in the. In the impeachments and the prosecutions against him that I think might be targeted initially. And, like, I worry about them. And, you know, some of them I know personally, and then I worry about this. I want to play for you what discussion between Sean Hannity last night and the new czar of deportations or whatever the fuck they're calling him.

[Tom Homan]

But for those others, the non criminals, if you want to self deport, I'm all for it. Because when they self deport, they can put their orders, put everything in order. Their family, business, if they got homes or whatever, they can put all that in order and leave with their family altogether. It makes perfect sense. For the ones that are not criminals.

[Tim Miller]

How are they going to get home? How do they get home?

[Tom Homan]

Well, the ones we go home wrestling won't put on an airplane and send them home. And the ones that want to go home on their own, they found their way across the world to come to the greatest nation on earth, they can find their way home. Either that or I'll give them a free airline ticket that we put them on our airplane and we'll take them home. Either way, it's up to them. If we arrest them, they come on our airplane. Sean, if they want to go on their own airplane, I welcome it.

[Tim Miller]

So, like, to me, it's like, okay, that is what. I can't, like, not think about that. Right? I mean, you're like, at this very meta. Which is your right. You're like, you're this very Meta, like, man, we might be so debased by 2028 that we don't even have a society anymore. And like, that's true. That's something that is in my brain somewhere. But then on the flip side, I'm like, we've got Sean fucking Hannity being like, don't you think you should be a little bit more humane when the deportations start? And the deportations are being like, no, actually, Sean, no, I don't think we should. I think everybody's got to go, yeah.

[John Lovett]

No, I saw that clip. And obviously it's like, it's chilling for a number of reasons. First of all, we have Sean Hannity pitching immigration policy to this former acting ICE guy who basically just wants to use it as an opportunity to reassert the kind of aggressive anti immigrant position that they want their message to be. And it's like, this is the power center now, right? This is the marketplace of ideas. That's obviously terrifying. If you listen to Homan in that clip, he kind of postures in this hyper aggressive, anti immigrant way while also avoiding what Hannity is specifically asking him. And to me, like, this goes to the politics of this, which is they are signaling. So if you go back and listen to Trump in 2016 when he was talking about deportations, obviously Trump in both 2024 and 2016 talked about deportations in a messy, confusing, vague way meant to allow you to draw any policy conclusion about what he might want to do. But the difference, I think between how he spoke in 2016 and how he spoke in 2024, 2016, he was mostly talking about securing the border and then deporting criminal undocumented people. That was their stated policy goal.

[Tim Miller]

Right. Like that they had committed crimes beyond.

[John Lovett]

Beyond the crime of crossing the border illegally. Yes. And by the way, they purposely allied that distinction as well. Right. They refer to criminal undocumented people, but they consider every person as having broken into the country, which is a crime, of course. So they can that vague as well. But what he's doing there is he's saying, we're going to go after the worst of the worst. And that is going to be something. Look, most Americans, when asked about it, favor mass deportations. Not clear if they really mean that. Right. They may be thinking more about just getting border under control. The number of deportations under Biden versus Trump. Right. Trump did some interior enforcement. Biden, his deportations are more focused at the border. So when people think of deportations, they may really be in their mind picturing just getting control of the border. But what I worry about, right, is that Trump starts under this guy Homan doing a bunch of deportations, claiming it is the worst of the worst criminals. We start to see reporting that it is in this dragnet, just sweeping up a bunch of other people who just came to this country for a better life, by the way, because we built an economy on their backs. I have this constant tension. I don't know if you feel the same thing. As long as we're talking about feelings and indulging ourselves, which is things that I feel like should go without saying, but then maybe they shouldn't. And one of the things that should maybe not go without saying is because I hear this right, you hear this from a lot of people who ostensibly take a somewhat moderate position in immigration, which is they support immigration, they believe there's immigration, but these people should go to the back of the line or these people broke the law. And it really is just the laws targeting the most vulnerable people. We built an economy on undocumented labor, okay? It is ostensibly against our laws for 50 years. We have basically invited people to come. We have told them if they come to this country, if they not said this explicitly, but our entire system was built on it. If you make it here, you can live here, you can work here, your children can get a better life here. Our economy relies on you. And the bargain was you get a chance to make money in America. You don't have the protections of our laws, you don't have the protections of our labor laws. If your boss screws you, you're pretty well fucked. But you get to have a better life.

[Tim Miller]

And you paid less.

[John Lovett]

And you get paid less.

[Tim Miller]

You paid more than you would at home.

[John Lovett]

You get paid more than you would at home. You get more of. You get the benefits of living in the greatest country on earth. Your kids will have opportunity. And we as Americans benefit because we get services and products at a much cheaper cost because of this giant pool of basically second class citizens providing this labor. And by the way, you're going to pay into Social Security, you're going to pay into Medicare, but you have no hope of ever redeeming it. You'll actually contribute more to the tax code than you will take out. And so what are we going to do to fix that? Well, there's a compromise to fix that. Comprehensive immigration reform. It is humane, it does require some people to pay back taxes, and it acknowledges the breaking of the law, but also the fact that this was a broken system that we all collectively built and benefited from. And now we're just going to visit all that pain on people who did what we basically told them to do and scapegoat this problem on their backs. And it's fucking disgusting. And all that's a way of saying, sorry, I'm being indulgent. No, they want this. They want to have a bunch of protests in defense of undocumented people so that they can point out the fact that they're deporting the worst of the worst. They want that fight, right? And they want that fight so that there's a whole news cycle about how they're going to say Democrats. It will just be. Activists are defending the most violent and awful people who don't belong in this country. That will generate the stories that they want as they slowly ramp up further and further deportations. And then when they are now just rounding up people who have committed no crime other than coming into the country illegally and they are separating families or giving families the choice whether to leave together to a country that they've never lived in for the kids or not, we will have already kind of done this round of protest and indignation, and it will be old news. And I don't know how you deal with that. I don't know how you deal with that. But, like, that's what I mean when I talk about the bloodless ticky tack politics and then the slow degradation and it goes to something deeper, which is, I said this, I'd love it or leave it at the live show after. And it's like Republicans go around saying, you're not wrong to care about this. Right? You're not wrong to be mad about the border. You're not wrong to be mad about undocumented immigration. You're not wrong to care about pronouns. You're not wrong to be annoyed by this, whatever it may be. And then we as Democrats, we as this big broad coalition of the small d Democratic movement, go around telling people, you're wrong not to care about this. You're wrong not to care about norms. You're wrong not to care about democracy. You're wrong not to care about Elon Musk getting on a fucking call with Zelensky. And like this new oligarchy of ours, and we beg people to care. And I don't know the way out of it, but I'm fucking sick of it. I'm sick of it.

[Tim Miller]

Being on the caring side is hard. Yeah, this is the immigration thing you just got out of Wyatt just to me is. I mean, we could do the whole thing on this. So I'm not going to. But just like my final thought on that is that it is a perfect storm where there's this, there's an acute crisis, people are going to suffer, but it's probably a political winner for them. And so it's like, it's the one area where they actually know what they're doing, kind of. I mean, they will still like be totally corrupt and ham fisted and executing it, but, like, they know the basic rules about how they can get around this. Like, there are a couple of like nativist freaks that have been like, going through the 1798 Alien and Sedition law. Like, they actually, they know what their limits are at this time. So they know what they're doing, which is not going to be true in other areas. Yeah. And the harm is going to be tangible and real to people. And the harm is going to be tangible and real to people that don't vote and that just fundamentally most Americans don't care about. So that's bad.

[John Lovett]

But then you think, well, Donald Trump did family separation and they defended. And they obviously, as a political ideology, don't believe in acknowledging mistakes or apologizing. But Trump rescinded that order. He bowed to the politics of family separation. And so I do think that taught them. I think they learned the wrong lesson from it, which is if they want to do this, they have to do it more subtly and they have to ramp up to the worst aspects of the policy. But I do think that that clearly had an impact on their thinking about this, which is why I think, you see, even though Trump said we're going to deport everybody, you see them talking about going after the worst of the worst, which is what they said the first time. And then did family separation, which actually, by the way, like, even on their own terms, they failed. Right. And part of the reason they failed is because they weren't targeted enough. What a Weekday is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. I've worked in all kinds of offices. I worked in political offices, campaign offices, I've worked in the Senate, I worked at the White House. While there are many different types of offices out there, one thing's for certain. Choosing the right candidate for any office is a huge responsibility. But if you're hiring and want to find the best candidates for your office, you need ZipRecruiter. And right now you can try it for [e-mail] loveit. Now I'm in a podcast studio, which is Basically my office. ZipRecruiter is the hiring site employers prefer the Most based on G2. How fast does ZipRecruiter smart technology start showing your job to qualified candidates immediately. ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology works fast to find top talent so you don't waste time or money. You can invite top candidates for your job to encourage them to apply sooner. Remember, if you want to find the right candidates for your office, you need ZipRecruiter. See why 4 out of 5 employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Just go to this exclusive web address right now to try ZipRecruiter for free. Ziprecruiter.com loveit Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com loveit ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire what a Weekday is Brought to you by Helix Everybody is unique and everybody sleeps differently. That's why Helix has several different mattress models to choose from, each designed for specific sleep positions and feel preferences. I took the Helix Sleep quiz and I was matched with the Dawn Luxury mattress because I am a side back stomach sleeper. I've been transitioning to a side sleeping situation which is I think better than the stomach sleeping. But the Helix mattress is so comfortable. I love my bed. It is set up with these great linen sheets and it's a really great mattress. It feels very comfortable and I highly recommend Helix and that's all I have to say about it. This month you can get 25% off sitewide plus two free dream pillows with any mattress purchase. And on top of that you can get a free bedding bundle which includes two dream pillows, sheet set and mat with any luxe or elite mattress order. Visit helixsleep.com love it. That's helixsleep.com loveit.

[Tim Miller]

This takes us to what will be kind of the ongoing at least bulwark debate. I'm sure you guys and other places and it's kind of a silly debate because it doesn't really matter because nobody, Donald Trump doesn't care what we think and the fates of global geopolitical and economic forces don't care what we think. And yet, I mean, isn't just this answer to all the problem that you just laid out, the thing that you worry the most about, about just this degradation of four years and what that impact has on our society and what that impact that has in this case in immigration across a million other verticals like isn't the answer that they just need to fuck up really bad and there really needs to be Pain. And then you have this guilt inside of you about whether you want them to have bumpers on their misdeeds and their corruption or whether you want them to have like bad luck and happen to catch a global recession while they're in there.

[John Lovett]

Yeah. You know, I've seen people talking about this, right.

[Tim Miller]

I wrote down in the notes there's this accelerationism, like, right. This is, this is what the fucking. So it's a bad sign when you're thinking maybe the neo Nazis have a point, but the Civil War guys, you know, they are accelerationists, right? Like they wanted to race war, right. That was like the term that they used because it would bring about quicker or whatever the white nationalist society they want. And so I guess the question to me, like the words I wrote down was accelerationism or resistance. Right? Like do we want resistance and limits on the suffering or do we want to accelerate it so that people can see how bad it is? Or. But maybe the answer is we live through a pandemic and we're back here. So maybe there is no. So maybe like pain. Pain isn't actually a teacher. I don't know.

[John Lovett]

So you have to separate out to me, I think two pieces of that. First of all, it's not clear to me Democrats have an ability to do anything to curtail what Donald Trump does over the next four years beyond using our platforms to make arguments. Right. I mean, that's really at the federal level. That seems to be what we'll be limited to. Will have some say in the Senate around the filibuster, one hopes the House will have a very slim majority and so they will not have the ability to lose really any House. Republicans especially, you know, if they get Stefanik, you'll have 80 days where that seat may be vacant, but some doors lock behind you, you know, and I feel like.

[Tim Miller]

Which door locked behind us?

[John Lovett]

Well, the Supreme Court locked behind us. Right. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies. And basically two presidents who didn't win the popular vote appoint however many justices that have shifted this country to the right and made democracy and progressive governance so much harder. But I'm not a believer in accelerationism because the pain is real and guaranteed, but the political shifts are perspective and hypothetical. And so that's right. I'm not really a fan of that kind of politics. I also just have this old fashioned notion, I guess, that winning begets winning, that stopping Trump on the Affordable Care Act. Right. It didn't stop the Trump movement from becoming unpopular and making wins in 2018 possible. Right. Like we beat them in 2018. We beat them even though we stopped some pretty bad stuff in 2017 and 2018. I don't think that lesson would tell us that we should just stand back and let Trump fail. I think we have to be a full throated arguer for something better. That means fighting Trump wherever we can, scoring whatever victories we can, and presenting ourselves as a viable alternative. I think the part of what makes this moment feel so awful, right, we say all the time, like, you know, how did Trump get close? How is someone, how is Trump palatable to so many people? Do we know our country? And the reality is like Trump's movement is weak and the Democratic Party is weak. We have two weak in terms of popular support are pretty weak. I think a, a normal Republican would have absolutely destroyed Joe Biden and I think I would have, would have destroyed.

[Tim Miller]

I don't think that's necessarily true.

[John Lovett]

You don't think that's true?

[Tim Miller]

I mean, normal Republicans did worse in the Senate races than Trump. A lot of people went and voted and just checked Trump and then left, right?

[John Lovett]

But I don't think that's because, and.

[Tim Miller]

I don't think any normal Ron Desantimonious wasn't going to win over a bunch of younger Latino black men, was he? Or at least not at the same rate as Trump.

[John Lovett]

I don't think, I guess that you're right. That is a unknowable question. And I think what, what my, my takeaway is, is the reason that you see this divide is there are a lot of people that wanted to vote for something different. They just didn't like the Biden administration, they don't like inflation, they're furious about it. And so they were going to pull the lever for the alternative and down ballot was different. But I don't know, maybe you're right.

[Tim Miller]

That takes us to another, like the question of we're getting closer and closer to the bone of our feelings, one, one topic at a time. But like the existentialist question of like, does this any of this fucking matter? Then like, what are we doing here like you and me, besides just hanging out with each other? Because like, if that's true, right? If it's true, there's just like people checked the box called change because a pandemic happened because a fucking leak out of a lab or a bat bit a person, whatever, in a wet market. And then four years later there was global inflation. And then Donald Trump, the bullet missed him by a centimeter and he was able to get positive momentum from that and people were upset about inflation. And so they just clicked a box called Change and they would have clicked the box called change for anybody. That doesn't make me feel good. I mean, not that I think that I'm like the central character of who is the President of the United States or not, but it does create engender a sense of helplessness, if that's the analysis. Right, yeah.

[John Lovett]

You and I talked about this before, that we were betting on politics. We were kind of betting on the power of campaigns and the fact that politics was going to matter. Right. That Joe Biden, because he was so old and had basically lost the ability to be an effective communicator, that we have a better case. If we have somebody that can make that case, we're happier. Right. So we're going to bet on just politics of a person who can work from morning till night and telling a story and trying to make an argument. Now, that didn't work. Right? It didn't work. But why? Right.

[Tim Miller]

Like, I mean, I guess. Hold on. I guess I just. I'll object to one point. I guess it worked if we believed the leak that Joe Biden was going to lose 400 electoral votes to Don.

[John Lovett]

I believe that.

[Tim Miller]

So, I mean, it worked in the sense that. Yeah, so it's worked in the sense that politics was better than no politics at all.

[John Lovett]

Okay, but, like, what does that tell us? So John shared that on psa. I had the same information. So what does that tell us? It tells us that Kamala Harris climbed back from what would have been a potentially, like, blow out on the par of, like, Nixon to what amounts to a very close race in which it swung by a point or two, causing us to lose all seven swing states. But the race was closer in those swing states. And I am not a fatalist, like, oh, there was no way for Kamala Harris to win. I don't. I don't necessarily believe that. I don't believe that. That a race in which a point or two in seven states wasn't something that she could overcome. That's not to say that I don't. That I blame the Harris campaign after the fact. Of course, you can look back and say, well, if we wanted to win, this is what we had to do differently. But I think they did a great job in the limited time that they have. But it does tell me that had Joe Biden decided not to run and there been an open primary, maybe a Democrat without all the burdens of incumbency could overcome the benefits of the desire for Change that people clearly voice. Plus the benefits that come uniquely with Donald Trump. I mean, this wasn't a blowout. Like, I know we are kind of, because we expected if Trump to win, for him to win by 5,000 votes in Georgia. We're like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. It wasn't a blowout. It was a winnable race. It was a winnable race.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, but you don't have a. There's nowhere inside your little brain that's like, this is all fucking pointless.

[John Lovett]

No, this is stupid.

[Tim Miller]

Like, we were running against the stupidest person in the entire country whose campaign was like, he's talking about Arnold Palmer's cock. And like, his. His outreach to black voters was like, look at these gold shoes and how great they are. Don't you guys like shoes and mug shots?

[John Lovett]

I know.

[Tim Miller]

And like, yeah, he had some message, and after he'd done all the shit we don't have to list, then he wins. And on the other side, like, you spend $1 billion, you have the best strategists in the world, you have people knocking doors. You haven't spent an hour in bed in the last week being like, this is all pointless, actually, we just need a recession. And that would be much better than me knocking on doors and raising money and talking.

[John Lovett]

No, honestly, no. I, like, I sometimes feel like what we are doing right now, this specific is pointless. That. Well, that we are. That you and I having this conversation for a hyper engaged, very smart, progressive, or at least kind of liberal with a small L audience, that this is kind of a collective distraction from the larger fight, which is to figure out how to get beyond this bubble of whatever you can put, you know, let's say, edges of it. A third of the country. And I do think you can say it's a third of the country. Not that a third of the country is listening to the Bulwark and Ponzi of America, but the third of the country. That a third of the country is kind of hyper anti Trump, cosmopolitan, engaged in politics and disgusted by the election results. Some of them are paying closer attention than others, but they all feel comfortable in this conversation, and they are stunned and shocked by anybody that could even consider voting for Donald Trump. And I do think one lesson from this, right, is like, I think about the last week before the vote and all this conversation about Tony Hinchcliffe, and we knew, we knew that we've done this before, that the kind of bad jokes, kind of Trump's dumb, mean, vicious, authoritarian, hateful comments that we find so abhorrent that those don't always, if ever, move the needle. And we need to focus on what he's going to do. We need to focus on what he represents and what it actually means in the day to day of people's lives, that the actual threat, the actual menace, and yet in that week before was like, well, There are these WhatsApp group chains where people are turning out and we're hearing anecdotally that this is moving the needle and it's changing people's minds. And I, here's the thing. I think that all might have been true. I think that all might have been true, but there was this huge mass of humanity of America that we weren't hearing from and that we weren't talking to. And they, they were in a throw the bums out mindset. And most of them, you know, I think about all the different ways in which I thought it was the right way to talk about Trump to say, aren't you sick of this? Aren't you ready to move on from the noise and the nonsense and the chaos and the thinking about Trump all the time.

[Tim Miller]

They weren't thinking about Trump all the time. They had nothing to move on from.

[John Lovett]

Yeah, that's not their life. They're not paying that close of attention, if they're paying attention at all. But for me, is that a reason to throw up our hands and be like, well, I guess none of this mattered? Like, actually, no, it means that we have this huge problem of this broken media system. We have this huge problem of tens of millions of people, truly not part of this big debate about the threat Donald Trump poses and not really getting political news at all and getting any news via osmosis from kind of entertainment like, yeah, that's all bad news. But it tells me that actually, no, this isn't the country coming together and saying, we choose Trump, we choose authoritarianism, we choose this. It's. It's something else. What a weekday is brought to you by SimpliSafe. If you ever worry about the safety of your home and family, there's no better time to act. Right now, you can get 60 off a new SimpliSafe security system. Their best deal of the year. SimpliSafe is rated 1 of the most trusted home security systems. And right now, love it or leave it. Listeners get 60 off today by visiting SimpliSafe.com. love it. I set up a SimpliSafe. Incredibly easy to do, customize it for your space. It comes in the mail. You set it up. It's incredibly intuitive. The app is great. It works perfectly. The customer support is excellent. I highly recommend it. SimpliSafe is a new way to protect your home that stops intruders before they break into your home. Old school systems only take action once someone is inside. That's too late. Simplisafe's Active Guard Outdoor Protection changes the game by preventing crime before it ever happens. Plus, there are no long term contracts, no cancellation fees and it's around $1 per day. For all this protection, SimpliSafe is offering our listeners exclusive early access to their Black Friday sale this week only. You can get 60% off any new system with a select professional monitoring plan. This is their best offer of the year. Head to simplisafe.com lovett that's simplisafe.com lovett there's no safe like simplisafe.

[Tim Miller]

What prompted this little dialogue? I've been spending more time with you, John Lovett, than I ever thought I could have imagined. Back was I texted you on Wednesday morning on this front and I thought I felt like you were putting on a brave face because I was like. And the text was basically, how do I do this? How do I care about this anymore? How do I wake up every day and give one fucking rat's ass, whether it's little Marco or Rick Grinnell in Foggy Bottom, like, who cares? How do I care about this? And your answer was like, well, because we have to and we're going to. It was actually more touching than that. But I'm not going to get in my feelings quite yet. But I kind of thought you were just bucking me up. But it sounds like right now that you really feel that way, you know.

[John Lovett]

I think I do. It's a little bit of faking it till I make it. It's hard to see the water we swim in. The world had a global pandemic, a once in a century traumatic event. It has reshaped us, it has changed us, it has made us coarse and weird. People drive worse. People are meaner. People feel like they lost something, it was unfair and they're going to take it back somehow, Whatever that means, whatever that looks like. And by the way, that's not necessarily a, like, pejorative. It's people trying to. People have tried to find new hobbies. People are in therapy that weren't in therapy before. But the ways in which the pandemic manifests I think are is unpredictable. And so when you say like, does none of this matter? Well, you know what? In the face of a giant political Cultural, physical, health crisis. No. Like, we may be beholden to events, right? Like that's real, that that's what may be our lot right now. Right. Like we are in the aftermath of something awful and we are trying to be tactical in what is a kind of historic, epochal event. And so I think, well, like, what's our job in the wake of that? And it's like, are we, you and I, Like, I don't know what the future holds for us, you know, I don't know how bad this second Trump term will be. And by the way, I don't. We don't know the long term impact on our politics. Right. How much of an aberration it will be. But it just can't be that, like, that we just succumb so quickly. Like, maybe give us a couple years before we give up.

[Tom Homan]

I'll give.

[John Lovett]

You want to give up in a couple years? You can give up in a couple years. But you don't get, you don't get to give up now.

[Tim Miller]

I don't want to give up. I don't want to give up. I'm not interested in giving up. I'm just. It beats you down, you know, it beats you down to watch like the worst people in the world. Maybe this is more of a personal thing. I don't know, Maybe other people, maybe this resonates with you, maybe it doesn't, but maybe it resonates with me more because I just know these people. To have the worst people in the world just continue to get rewarded for bad actions, like, it's, it's almost something if it's like, if the person is. If the person's faking it, you know, if you're like, that person's slimy, you know, but they're pretending to be nice, they're playing the game, they're buttering people up. I hate that person. But at least there's something to be said for pretending like these people didn't even pretend. They indulged their worst impulses and instincts.

[John Lovett]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

And as a result, they got everything that they wanted. That's tough. That's tough. You know? I mean, maybe that's just life. That might just be life.

[John Lovett]

It's funny because, like, as I'm getting more defiant, like, I am getting emotional about it, and it does. Oh, fuck you. It does. It does. Like, I. It does make me want to go pretty big with it, which is, yes, the worst people are happy and the best people are sad. The worst people are vindicated and believe their worldview has been validated by this. And the best people are uncertain and scared and angry and confused. But the truth is the truth. And I do think one of our jobs during this time is to remember, look, maybe there's no one that will ever keep the score, right? Who knows how bad things get. But like, I. I believe in the ledger.

[Tim Miller]

I got a fucking ledger where the.

[John Lovett]

Wins and losses are written down and that ledger is kept. And we got. We got pretty fast and loose in the last couple of days of that election. Comparing Donald Trump to Hitler. And in part, you know, J.D. vance once compared, because John Kelly did, but. But J.D. vance did as well. And there's this speech I always think about, and it was a speech by Otto Wells, who was the leader of the Social Democrats in Weimar Germany in the run up to Hitler's ascent. And I believe this is after the Reichstag fire. Hitler is in power. He is, I believe, Chancellor at this time. The Reichstag fire has just taken place. What is the name of the German parliament, whatever it was called, is meeting in the opera house in Berlin. And the communists and some of the Social Democrats have already been arrested. Hitler has his Brown Shirts walk into the opera hall, and they have their truncheons, their rubber bats, and they basically surround the inside. They kind of. Kind of stand along the walls, kind of hitting their bats against their hands. And then they march the parliament in and basically say, vote for the enabling law. Or else, you know, and Hitler gives a speech to that effect. He says some version of, we're under attack. I need the approval of this enabling Law. If you don't give it to me, I don't know what I'll have to do. I don't know how bad this will get. You just need to approve this enabling law. And Otto Wells gets up and he gives this speech and he says, basically, you can say whatever you want, and you can describe this however you want, and you can claim all these vivid patriotic notions about what you're trying to do, but history will remember what you did here, and we will know, and the truth about what happened here will be known. And I stand with everybody fighting you. I stand with all the people who know this is wrong, and there will be a brighter future. And then that was a great personal risk. He could have been arrested right there on the spot. He gives that speech. He, I believe, escapes to Prague or he leaves Germany thereafter. And there have people who have felt this in far worse and far worse circumstances, who have dealt with far worse and who have. This person didn't know how bad things would get and also felt just as unmoored and unsafe. And I just. I don't know. We are in a very privileged position.

[Tim Miller]

There's no doubt about that.

[John Lovett]

But I just, like, I think about that kind of courage. Like, that real courage in the face of genuine fascism in full and like, how dare we be kind of cowed by this? I just, how dare we? Yeah, people have faced so much worse. And like, yeah, we faced a very, very big setback. The harm will be dramatic. The difference between what we thought the future could be and what it will be for the next couple of years is dramatic. The effect on the climate, on our healthcare system, on basic rights, like, it is dramatic and it is awful. But, like, where we just going to take our ball and go home? I don't know. I just. We got to keep going.

[Tim Miller]

All of that stuff is tangible. The Germany thing, thinking about all this, there's one other. I have one other dark thought I want to get through. And then maybe we can do a minute of yelling before we close. I don't know, I might need to yell after. But the other thing for me is, like, the door that locked behind me, to use your phrase, I think was like, a view of America that I had. That is another thing that's made me sad this week. And it's kind of hard to enunciate, but I kind of felt like him winning once, there was a chance for rejection and renewal. And to me, it's kind of like he's going back into the White House. And I know that America wasn't fucking perfect and we sinned, we had slavery and we did all this stuff, but there was still like a. A trajectory, like a positive trajectory. And I had a real belief in the specialness of America that I just don't. I just don't know if I have anymore. And I just think about my kid and I'm like, I don't. Like, it's just hard for me to imagine driving through D.C. in 20 years, even if the best happens, even if he just kind of slowly recedes into dementia and they infight with each other and they don't actually do anything. And whoever your imaginary best Democrat president comes in in 2028, like, even then, it's hard for me to imagine, like, in 2040, like, having chills thinking about the American experiment anymore.

[John Lovett]

So this is why I do think, like, you right now don't have perspective. I don't either. I don't either.

[Tim Miller]

I don't certainly don't have Perspective. But like, that's why I'm verbalizing this. Isn't this what you're supposed to do when you have no perspective and when you're totally myopic and silly and stupid?

[John Lovett]

Aren't you supposed to say it to.

[Tim Miller]

Hundreds of thousands of people?

[John Lovett]

I just referred to a speech given after the Reichstag fire. I don't have perspective either. But first of all, I've never been a arc of history person. Ben Store, Justice. I find that quote silly.

[Tim Miller]

Was that John or Rhodes that did that?

[John Lovett]

I mean, it was Martin Luther King.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I know that. Re up.

[John Lovett]

But everybody's pulled. Every Democrat has pulled it. I think maybe there'll be some value in Democrats casting aside their just so stories about America. Like, I'm good on that stuff. You know, there have been periods of terrible backsliding. One thing you'll hear all the time is someone will say, oh, that's the first black X since Reconstruction. That's the first black person from this state or representative or senator since Reconstruction. Well, why do you have to say since Reconstruction? Well, because the south backslid horribly after Reconstruction. There have been periods of retrenchment. There have been periods where the reactionaries win and it's brutal and awful. And there are people who, you know, spent the best years of their life watching America get far worse around them. That's just the truth of our history. That was always there. We didn't like to talk about it. We really don't like. There are Civil War movies. There are World War II movies. There are civil rights movies. There's no Reconstruction movies.

[Tim Miller]

We have a couple.

[John Lovett]

Pretty aren't right?

[Tim Miller]

Let's do a Reconstruction.

[John Lovett]

America loves a tragedy with a happy ending. And so we don't like, we'd like to tell stories about America that skip over the parts where people were born and died in slavery while everything got worse around them. In South Carolina, in the run up to the Civil War, South Carolina made open air slave markets illegal. Why? Because they were disturbing and abhorrent and embarrassing to slave owners. And northerners would come and write about it. And so they decided that they were going to put those things behind closed doors. But in the run up to the Civil War, as Southern reactionaries decided to make the claim that slavery was not only a necessary evil, but a moral good, they reopened the outdoor open air slave markets. Sick. Sick. But like, that is our history too. And so if you were able to drive by the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial and have a song in your heart, it was a song that it's in there. The truth was always there. It was part of. It was part of America's story. So either maybe it wasn't as. It wasn't as real to you as the. As the trajectory of justice and equality, because we lived through a period of progressivism. If Donald Trump, he exists in part as a reaction to incredible progress like that is what that. If there's anything that animates this reactionary segment of Republicans today, it is a response to progress, to you being able to get married and have kids, to the success of Barack Obama as a black president, to the complete cultural victory of progressivism in the boardrooms and on.

[Tim Miller]

Television, and to maybe the overshoots of progress that maybe progressed a little too far.

[John Lovett]

Sure. But whether or not it's too far, I don't think it is. There is a revanchist response to that. That's always been true. That's always been true. And it scored a victory because Donald Trump is the luckiest fucking man on earth. He's the luckiest man on fucking luck.

[Tim Miller]

It's just unbelievable how lucky he is. Can we catch one break? Can we just catch one lucky break? Yeah, I hear you. I know. It's just. It's a tough lesson to learn at 42. You can see how vulnerable I am right now that I shared my real age, you know, because it is reminiscent. We were texting reminiscent about, you know, like, the Catholic Church, like, you know, my gayness being rejected by the Catholic Church, and then the. And then, you know, the kid diddling of the altar boys. Like, that all kind of happened around the same time. And it's kind of like it's just over for me, you know, like, there's no coming back from it. Right. Like, there's no, like, even a good Pope getting in there. Like, doesn't really do anything. Like, despite the fact that I have, like, fondness the stories and, like, the feelings and the nostalgia, like, it's over. And I feel that parallel to this now. And I know that you are correct that it was based on, like, a, you know, kind of fantastical story that I told in my head. But those are important, too, right? Like, we need to tell ourselves uplifting stories, right? Because otherwise, if we're just in the, like, Hobbesian mindset, like, that's pretty tough.

[John Lovett]

Well, yeah. I mean, there is, like, Steve Martin, in one of his books, had this line that I always think about, which is, delusions of grandeur will help get you between moments of genuine inspiration. And you talked about, like, this idea of America. And I do think that elites held it, really did. I do think that there was a, like, elites really believed in this idea of America and it led to these institutions. Like, I think about Trump, it's such a small thing, but I think about Trump putting Elon Musk on the phone with Zelensky and all. It's a small thing. Well, it's a small moment.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, got it.

[John Lovett]

But I think about all the kind of breaking that has to happen for that moment to take place. One being that, hey, we used to all kind of acknowledge that, no, you don't let a billionaire oligarchy who sponsored your campaign be in the room with you as you govern. Like, even the most corrupt American presidents, even the most corrupt politicians on earth, they do those calls separately. They don't do them and they don't do them in parallel. They do them serial. You know, you do the call with the oligarch, then you do the call with the foreign leader, you know, but the influence and also just the, like the breakdown of systems. Like we built this kind of collection of rules for how we want our government to function. And they were good rules. And it turns out the only thing keeping them in place was a kind of elite consensus that they were important and valuable. That, yeah, that the system could be stodgy and Byzantine and that there are huge problems in the bureaucracy, but that there was value in what these rules, this collective set of norms did. And it turns out the only thing keeping that in place was a collective belief in them. Because normal people, regular people watching, just don't know about them, don't care about them. It's not affect their daily lives. And when one half of our elite decided to say we don't give a fuck anymore, they all came crumbling down. Does that mean they're gone forever? Does that mean we were wrong? I don't think so. I don't think so. But I think it points to the fact that like, people were so angry and are so dissatisfied and are so mistrustful and are so cynical that if we want to put those kinds of basic rules in place, we have to figure out how to win power and govern in a way that we have a broad enough support for our agenda that the people that don't care about that kind of thing don't get anywhere near power again. But that's a decade. That's a long term project. Now it's a long hard slog.

[Tim Miller]

Now it is a long hard slog. And we're not picking fruit, we're not picking fruit, worrying about immigration raids. We're not coal miners, so we'll just wake up and do it tomorrow. But while we have a fine final moment of self indulgence, is there anything else you need to get off your chest? Any other feeling, or do you just want to grunt or just want to do a lion's breath?

[John Lovett]

Like, oh, can I tell you one thing that I've just been trying to figure out here? Because, like, yeah, I'm trying to make it see if, like, what am I. Am I focusing on the things that I want to focus on anyway? Because these are kind of things I think about and care about. Right. Like, everybody's looking at this big historical moment and saying, oh, the three things that have been on my mind a long time are the reason this happened, populism, whatever. But I'm curious what you think about this, which is, like, why are people so upset? And obviously, cost of living is real. It's a real problem. But that doesn't necessarily mean they'll vote for someone like Donald Trump, as you said. That's not to say that I'm not an economic denialist. Actually, it's a media creation. I don't believe in that at all. But I'm starting to think about whether or not there was a bargain that we all made when we decided to eviscerate local businesses and replace them with giant corporations basically everywhere. Like when we decided to get rid of smaller pharmacies and replace them with cvss, and we got rid of grocery stores and replaced them with chains and got rid of local restaurants and replaced them with tons of Panera breads and subways and all the rest.

[Tim Miller]

One of America's biggest advocates for Chili's, you. You shouldn't knock it.

[John Lovett]

But, like, I wonder if part of this, too is that, like, we all kind of made a bargain, and the bargain was that, like, we would give up on having common spaces with Seoul in exchange for cheap, reliable, replicable convenience. And when the cheap went away, people got fucking pissed that the cheap mattered more when what they were looking at was the same stretch of stores that they could see.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[John Lovett]

In every. Like, basically, drive 30 minutes one way, you see the same stretch of stores. Drive 30 minutes the next way, you see the same stretch of stores that, like, the bargain for this convenient, cheap life was the cheap. And once that went, people like, the soullessness of the economy we've built. Yes, the way it's, like, hollowed out certain industries is, like, part of it too. But, like, the soullessness of it, the Ugliness of it. I don't know. I do think there's something deeper there, too.

[Tim Miller]

I want to do a full hour on atomization with you because I want to think about that.

[John Lovett]

Okay.

[Tim Miller]

I think it's also this thing. The phone.

[John Lovett]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

I think it's like there's no. There's no reason why this period of inflation caused a political backlash greater than periods of worse economic times and greater inflation. That doesn't seem to. Doesn't include the phone. But I want to prey on both of those things. And I just want to close by giving you one positive note from my husband, who I was telling him you were on today, and he. He said this, and I wrote it down in real time. He's like, you know, I just. I just gotta say that had John Lovett survived that first episode of Survivor, I think that he would still be in the game because there's no reason to think the challenges would have gone different because the other guy wasn't very athletic either. And they've only voted off one person from their tribe since, and she was unlikable.

[John Lovett]

Wow.

[Tim Miller]

So hopefully that's a little bit of uplift for you from. From a Survivor expert. I appreciate you being my shrink for the hour. Can we have a date to do it soon? Because I think I might need it.

[John Lovett]

Would love to. Would love to. Thank you for saying that, Tyler. I appreciate that. But I will say Annika is great and.

[Tim Miller]

Sorry, Annika. I don't watch the show. Nothing personal about Annika.

[John Lovett]

I do think that maybe the fact that I couldn't hack it with a group of Gen Z normies was a signal of the problems to come.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, so the next hour, whether that signal was there, the atomization of our society, big box doors and phones with Jon Lovett. I hope you guys will be back for that. We'll be back tomorrow. We're back. We're doing it. We're doing the show all over again.

[John Lovett]

You're doing it, Tim. You're doing it. Hey, Tim.

[Tim Miller]

We're doing it together. Yeah.

[John Lovett]

I want you to know that, win or lose, I'm grateful to you.

[Tim Miller]

I appreciate you a lot, buddy. We'll be seeing you soon. Everybody else will see you back here tomorrow. Peace.