← Pablo Torre Finds Out
Pablo Torre Finds Out
"America's Biggest Failure": Share & Election & Tell with Wyatt Cenac and Tim Miller
00:50:12
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out I am Pablo Torre. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.
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B
I'm gonna change my name to Gronald.
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C
Grump and run right after this ad. You're listening to DraftKings Network. I'm in hell. I think I'm in a personal hell. And I have no exit from Donald Trump. And at this point, I think Donald Trump will outlive me. And I think that I'm cursed to never be able to think about anything else again in my entire life. He just lives in my brain.
- [00:44]
A
It does feel like, obviously, while Donald Trump is the clear main character in America, it also kind of does feel like maybe to each of us, maybe to every American, we are also the main character. Like, what did we do to bring this upon ourselves?
- [01:03]
C
I don't know if that's true about every listener, but that is true about me. And I'm convinced I'm the main character and that the rest of you are living in my personal hell.
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A
What did you do?
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C
I apologize.
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A
What did you do?
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B
Yeah, this is your fault.
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A
Was it working for John McCain? Jeb Bush?
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C
When I was working with the RNC.
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A
I did more work.
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C
Yeah. A couple of the candidates that I worked for that you haven't name checked were much worse than Jeb Bush and John. And John McCain. So maybe it's that. Maybe it's something from childhood, you know, I don't know. I was. I was not very nice to my teachers in middle school. Maybe this is like. Maybe one of them cast a spell upon me.
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A
You got a Nuggets championship. You're wearing your den.
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C
I did get. I did get a Nuggets championship at the Faustian Bargain.
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B
At what cost did you get that championship?
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C
That. It could be that nug life. The problem. I guess the only problem with that theory is that I got it after for the first Trump. So I feel like whatever happened that.
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B
Brought this curse upon you doesn't. The monkey's pod doesn't. There's no. There's no linear time on it. Yeah. Monkey's paw doesn't see time the way that we do. Yeah. It could be a thing where it just. You get it later and it's like, hey, why are you so upset? You got the thing you wanted.
- [02:10]
C
Yeah.
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B
The world around you is on fire, but you got your thing.
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C
I gotta say, I would have traded it. I would have gladly given the heat to that championship in exchange for my current health.
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A
The city of Miami, it turns out demographically and electorally did win a Tremendous championship.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Themselves.
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B
Yeah.
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A
In the incredibly red Miami Dade county maga.
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C
Miami.
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A
So I need to be very clear that this episode is not going to be a comprehensive postmortem about why Donald Trump just got elected president again. This is not going to be an episode about inflation and the economy, for instance, even though that might be the biggest suspect actually in the ongoing murder mystery now enveloping the Democratic Party. It is likewise not going to be an episode about anti incumbent bias or Covid or abortion or women or war and the Middle east or even race. It is an episode instead about this idea of influence and what it really means to be mainstream in the year 2024. And so what I wanted to do was invite our old friend Wyatt Cenac, formerly of the Daily show and hbo, and also a new guest, Tim Miller, host of the Bulwark Podcast and a former leader in the Never Trump Republican movement, which he subsequently left and also which politically may not functionally exist anymore. At least as of Tuesday night, the.
- [03:55]
C
Jeb Bush John McCain party is officially dead. For sure. The RNC is sadly thriving today. So I wish we could say it was dead, but I think that many of us had hoped that Donald Trump was killing the Republican Party, but he might. He might have killed the Democratic Party instead. So, anyway, sorry.
- [04:15]
A
My brain has felt a little bit like a lint roller, just sort of like collecting bits of garbage and insight, mostly garbage, pieces of content, as I've quietly gotten drunk on the Internet's reaction to. What are we calling it?
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B
What are we calling this election?
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A
This point in time.
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B
Oh, sure.
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A
What we're doing here today.
- [04:39]
C
Yeah, I think that we're. I mean, we're probably at the end of the American Republic. Is that maybe too serious? That's not certainly of the American Republic as America as a global world leader. So I think that's. That's an interesting time to be with you here in New York City, the world's capital.
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A
Right, right, right. And why it's an act. You recorded a comedy special the Monday after the 2016 election reference.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so how are you? What creativity is coursing through you right now?
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B
None of that.
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A
Great.
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B
Yeah. I don't know if it was intentional, but the T shirt I'm wearing is a Peanuts T shirt from the Halloween special where Charlie Brown goes trick or treating and everywhere he goes, all the other kids get candy. And he got a rock.
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C
I got five pieces of candy.
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B
I got a chocolate bar.
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C
I got a quarter, I got a rock.
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B
Maybe I chose this because this is how I'm feeling. I feel like, yeah, Halloween came and I got a rock. And that's really the. That's really all I got at this point is just a bag of rocks.
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C
How does that special hold up now? You know, in. In Donald Trump 2.0, do you think back on it, are there any jokes?
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B
I mean, if anything, it is weird because that they, they play this sort of same Charlie Brown joke that they do in the Strip a lot where Lucy holds the football and pulls the football away. And there is something about that hope that Charlie Brown has that feels like a hope that I think a lot of us had. Yeah, that. Oh, okay, this is it. We're going to kick the football this time. And things may not be perfect for everybody, but we're going to get back to. We're going to try to get to some place level of civility that maybe our discourse can be a little more civil. Maybe we can try to be a little more rational with this. And no.
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C
Yes.
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A
Snoopy. Snoopy now had 5 million people watching his live stream of the election. He's a conservative influencer.
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C
Candace Owens was on it.
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A
I want to start with an element that has stuck to my brain as I've been lint rolling across the Internet as I've been contemplating why it is that the Republican Party has won the largest majority since 1988. Tim, is that right still?
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C
That's correct.
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A
And. And I keep on returning to this idea of like, Kamala Harris had this feel of being a system quarterback at a time when the system was. I deeply loved the Shanahan offense. That was democracy. That was the institution as a premise, mainstream anything actually like a system at all. I was deeply a fan of and I sort of presumed that others, many more others would be too. Turned out that that system faced coverage to torture. The metaphor here, that that made it very easy to defeat. And one of those coverages was explained by Dana White.
- [07:55]
C
I want to thank some people real quick. I want to thank the Nel boys, Aiden Ross, Theo Vaughn, bustle with the boys. And last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan. And thank you, America.
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B
Thank you.
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C
Have a good night.
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A
They got that shout out from Dana White at the Trump victory party. And I returned to that because of course summoned in me lots of bigger picture thoughts about like, oh, of course we're here. Of course it was going to go like this. In retrospect, of course people didn't give a about January 6th. Of course the system of democracy was a system to be run against. And of Course, this is far more structural maybe, than people might appreciate at this moment. Like, I was. I was looking at. To bring up another insane meme, right? I was looking at Antonio Brown's Twitter account. Oh, yeah, because of course, AB84, an unemployable former NFL player, he'll find a.
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B
He'll find a job in the new cabinet.
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A
That's right. Who was kicked out of the league for multiple cases of sexual misconduct and also domestic violence. His Twitter account might be run. Actually, at least is allegedly run by a white dude somewhere who just posts racial slurs.
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B
Oh, sure.
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A
So that guy posted this meme where it was like, Elon and Trump and RIP Mainstream media. And Antonio Brown has like, the bolt cutters, the wire cutters or whatever, and they have the shovels. And I'm like, as much as I am going to land upon the death of mainstream media as a thing I actually do increasingly believe in, I don't even think they get the credit for it. It seems structural. Like, we know this. The reason it summoned all those feelings is because we. We know this as people making stuff online.
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B
Right.
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A
That there is no mainstream. We're all in silos. Of course, you can eat away at a system in a world in which there is no larger consensus or guardrail or monoculture or anything like that.
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B
Yes.
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C
I have two thoughts on this. One, the total collapse of the monoculture, of the structures that we've seen across a lot of other verticals coming to politics. Yeah, that should not be surprising. The democratization of. That's why we're all here. Like, the democratization of media democratization came to our political system. It does recall Kent Brockman talking about how democracy simply doesn't work.
- [10:20]
B
I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
- [10:22]
C
Democracy simply doesn't work. Maybe what we should have been more protective of was the Borg, the system of liberal democracy, because I don't know that people are going to like what happens in post liberal America. That said, the Democrats could have played this game too, you know, and so I hate to like, you know, I hate the Monday morning quarterback and all this because it's like, Trump. Trump won across the. Like, America wanted Trump. So at some level, it's like there's. There's a hollowness to be. Like, if you just would have done this one podcast, like, it would have been different. Right. That said, there are Democrats that could have gone. That could have gone into those spaces and I think taken down the temperature a little bit and, like, made them feel less like they were in this battle of, of civilizations because, like, Theo, like, these guys are not ideologues. Right. Like, they have some ideological views on things that some progressives would find offensive, particularly about trans folks or things like that. It's not William F. Buckley. Like, they don't have these constructed conservative worldviews. Like, you go in there and start talking to them about that Trump did that they don't even know about. You know what I mean? Couldn't they have engaged and like, kind of cut the, you know, cut into that?
- [11:36]
B
But does that only just legitimize that platform?
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C
Isn't that over there? I mean, they were mentioned at the victory speech of the President of the United States.
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B
Sure.
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C
No, it's over. Like, they've legitimate.
- [11:48]
B
Well, now they are legitimate. Yeah. But I'm saying the idea that Bernie Sanders would go on Rogan, the idea that Harris was considering going on Rogan, is that only sort of saying, like, how much of it is, okay, we're going to meet this particular sect of disaffected voter where they're at versus asking them to, to be better and be better informed. Because the reality is they're not.
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C
They're not getting better.
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B
They're. They're not. But also the reality is, like, white people have overwhelmingly voted Republican for over 50 years. Like, that's like the. They've always voted in that block. And I'm, and I'm lumping in a lot of that Rogan audience, a lot of that Nelk boy audience, as some of that demographic. I don't know that we fully understand why every presidential election, when you look at the white voter, the majority of white voters have voted Republican. I think it's more about understanding that.
- [12:51]
A
Well, Tim mentioned something, why that connects to what you were just articulating, which is that there are lots of people who are low information. That's the term of art in politics, AKA they aren't paying attention to politics really, and are getting their news insofar as news from such places. Right, right. And what that says is, even if you know the information, you're like, not a deal breaker for me.
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B
Right.
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A
Felonies, rape in a civil suit, insurrections go down the list. Right. It's endless.
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B
Yeah.
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A
The other thing about it is there are some people for whom they just don't even know, or maybe even as troubling, they aren't getting their news in a way that is persuasive to the cause of defending said American project. And I think the whole question of, like, is it, are we Just on this.
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C
Maybe I'm voting for yes, probably. I'm upgrading to probably.
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A
So. So it reminds me, I'm gonna force feed sports into this, not because I feel like I have an obligation to, but just because I think about my time as a sports reporter at Sports Illustrated. That website was looked down upon forever. No one wanted to write for the website because it was the Internet, Right. And you know who went and wrote for it? Peter King. And Peter King became the literal Monday morning quarterback to Miller, and he built an empire and had more success than the vast majority of Sports Illustrated writers because he recognized, okay, I'm not respected as much at the magazine. I'm going to go online.
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C
Yeah.
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A
And so the lead that the Democratic Party, the American project broadly, the liberal project broadly, has surrendered is the Internet has been ceded to people who were not as welcomed in those mainstream prestige outlets. And now we're trying to play catch up with the Nelk boys.
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C
Yeah, big time catch up. It reminds me of. I'll make the political reference of like 2012 with Romney where we were like, oh, like the Obama team organized on the Internet. Like, we should probably do that now next time, you know, and so, like, it flips so it can flip back. You know what I mean? Like, it's not as if it is, you know, like, we're only going one direction and like, if one side takes the lead on one platform, then it can't flip. You know what I mean?
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A
But we're so fragmented now where I just don't. Again, literally, the mainstream, I think is Antonio Brown was right about this is no mainstream. If there's mainstream anything.
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C
I guess that's why I just think that it's like, I. I just think the only choice is to engage with in that world. Or else you're. I mean, sure, there's other choices, like building your own platforms. Like, I forget who some. I saw somebody on the Internet fell off my lint. Lint roller, I guess. But somebody on the Internet was like, the libs need their own Rogan. And I'm like, I don't know if the libs can build a Rogan. Like, I. You know, because part of the.
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A
Why do you want to be.
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C
Yeah, maybe you can. Maybe you can try it. But part of the reason. Part of the reason to be Rogan is you have to be able to, like, just say random. You're thinking about that might be a little offensive or might be totally wrong. And, like, that's what's appealing. And that is, like, unethical to the dominant like democratic lib culture. Right. And so it's like, you can't build a responsible Rogan. Like, that's not like a thing to do.
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B
But I think there was like, when I look at Rogan and I look at a lot of comedians who've moved into the podcast space, to me what I see is what they're doing is they're just emulating late night talk show hosts. Rogan is emulating Jon Stewart and the idea of like, Jon love to engage in long, deep conversations with politicians, with authors, with actors as well. There's no network that wanted to give that person a late night talk show. And so then they found this space in the podcast world where they could be their own version of the Daily show or the Tonight show or whatever they wanted to do. And so I think to some degree that Rogan existed. It's just that the appetite for it in the same way that the appetite for right wing radio always surpassed the appetite for comparison. Yeah. For left leaning or progressive radio.
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C
So then the question is, like, how can you reach those people? And I don't know, I'm open to other ideas besides going on, on those programs and like, demonstrating that we care about people having healthcare. You know, I also, I like entrepreneurship, actually. I think, you know, building businesses is great and like, I'm, I'm chill. I can talk about sports. Like, I just, I don't know what the other solution is besides doing that, because I think that right now those folks on those platforms are getting the impression that everybody's like, you're bad, you're bad. We're ragging our fingers at you. You have a bad opinion and you're bad. And so then obviously that they're gonna vote Trump because they want a big middle finger into all the people that are pointing their finger and saying, you're bad.
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B
Right. But how much of that is. We're trying to meet this base where they're at, hoping that we can appeal to an empathy that historically we just haven't seen versus, I don't know if we put our energy into saying, like, okay, well, what if, what if that energy is just put into making our target electorate their lives better? Like, what if we say, like, okay, let's just put our energy into, like, let's build the up out of those public schools out of like. And is there something of like, oh, when you're looking across the fence and you can actually tangibly see, okay, we've made life better for women, we've made life better for people of color, for LGBTQ people.
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C
So here's my pushback on that. Didn't, Isn't, wasn't that the theory of Bidenism? Like, didn't Biden do that? Like, kind of like people's lives are getting better. I mean, things aren't.
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A
Well, I, I want to, I should mention the word inflation here, right. So when we're talking about what people can feel like, what is attention if not a mechanism through which you actually feel something and have to think about something, and it turned out that it's really hard to break through about pretty everything except for a couple of monocultural concepts, one of which might be, hey, it's the American character, Donald Trump. We all have a view of him, even if it's radically different.
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B
Right.
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A
The other one is prices have been going up. And when you talk about how the DNC and the Democratic Party feels, I think it feels like the embodiment of the institution of the system of incumbency.
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C
Yes.
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A
And so I want to connect it to inflation, just in the sense of. Of course, there's also this larger, broader global trend of post pandemic inflation has been a thing across all of these governments, all these societies, and all of these incumbent parties have been suffering huge and seemingly irrefutable losses because they happen to be the party in charge of the thing people can feel when they're not paying attention to the persuasive arguments we're trying to make on podcast, I'm.
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C
Going to add to you, but I think that's probably true. And maybe there's just a nothing matters situation and, like, we're all just sitting around here like, micro analyzing something that, like, was global forces and it was bad luck and we're in hell. And it's just the bad luck happened to work out for Donald Trump again. So it's possible it's that. But like, just really quick, to your point about, like, improving people's lives, it's like the Biden. So just like, for example, they built manufacturing plants in a lot of, like, red America, right? Like, they didn't do the thing of, oh, we're just going to, you know, give out federal money to California and to blue areas, right? It's like, no, like, we're going to build plants and build communities back up in places like Springfield, right? Like, we're to invest in these communities and the people in the communities. Like, the feedback was like, nah, man. Like, no, thanks. Like, I'm kind of, I'm mad that the new jobs that came into town actually brought Haitians with Them and they might be eating the dogs and, and the cats and. Yeah. And the goats and the ducks from the pond. And so, like, I'm not. I'm out. I'm going for Trump. Right. Like, so I guess that's my question is like, is there actually evidence that tangily helping people's lives would.
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B
Would have made a difference? Yeah, I don't, this is the thing. I don't know. And to. And sort of.
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A
I don't want to point. Remark upon that sentence, because we all agree we don't know whether tangibly helping people's lives makes a difference.
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C
Here's another theory. I've just been noodling on the last 48 hours. It's like, can people be happy in the phone in the social media era? Like, or not happy, but satisfied. Right. You know, because there's a way to look at the last four years was just like, inflation was deeply annoying. And I get. And particularly for people whose incomes were flat. It was. I know it was really hard. Right. But like, also, there are other parts of society. There are plenty of Trump people voting for plenty of the 70 some odd million people that when the Final account comes in, voted for Trump. Plenty of them are doing pretty well. You know, they have boats, they do parades, they got the flagpole. So some of, some of them were hurt by inflation.
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A
Yeah, they have vote parades, actually.
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C
And so. But the question is then, besides that, like, things are like, basically good. I mean, at least in a historical perspective. I mean, like, is everybody pissed because inflation or is everybody pissed because, like, in the little device, in the little box of screams, you know, like, you're constantly seeing bad news constantly put in front of your face, rather than just seeing it once at night during the nightly news. And so, like, maybe the establishment or whatever, whoever's in charge, like, people can never be happy with it.
- [22:38]
B
Well, and how much of that as well, though, is a battle between nostalgia versus what could be? It's so much harder to get people to imagine what could be and what the. And potential. But it's a hell of a lot easier to get them to kind of remember and look fondly at the past. And this idea of nostalgia. And I think you see it not just in the Republican Party, I think you see it across the board where people say, you know, things seemed so much easier back then, and it's very easy to cherry pick what those things were. And I think the Trump campaign has done a really good job on preying on that sort of nostalgia. Yeah, that nostalgia muscle that we have and that's so. I feel like that is so much easier than the idea of, hey, can I get you to imagine what could be. And unburdened by what has been. Yes.
- [23:44]
A
Yeah, let me write that down.
- [23:46]
B
That's. We just, I think we just made a pillow. We should cross stitch that into a pillow.
- [23:52]
A
This one will work.
- [23:53]
B
Yeah. And sell that at, at Target. And I think, I think we're onto something here. But yeah, I don't know. I think that aspect, because even when I think about somebody like Trump and where Trump is successful is also the fact that he has been around for so long and that he can speak to some of that nostalgia in a way where it's that thing of he's been referenced in, in songs and he's in movies and he's been around.
- [24:22]
A
We know him. We all do literally have experience with him at this point.
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B
Yeah. In a weird way, I think about, I even think about this with Mitt Romney where when I was making problem areas, I got really fascinated going through old Life magazines and I remember going through a Life magazine because we were, it was, we were focusing on education and we were going, I was going through. And there was an article about George Romney and in it there is like a whole paragraph about 12 year old Mitt Romney and there are photos of Mitt Romney. And if you were someone who was reading Life magazine one, you're aware of George Romney. But Mitt Romney is already getting, he's burrowing into your brain. He is the, you know, he's one of Kanye's children. You're already getting familiar with him. And I think there's an element when I reading that and seeing that where I was like, oh, that was probably very helpful that you, you saw this person at 12. Then when they started to run for public office, it's all right. That kid. Yeah. He's not my neighbor kid, but he is that kid that I saw and I've watched him grow up and I.
- [25:32]
C
Think Trump nostalgic, minor Democratic celebrity. Could we put up in 2028 to save the. Save the country?
- [25:37]
B
Yeah. This is the good question.
- [25:39]
C
Who's out there?
- [25:39]
A
And can we invent magazines again?
- [25:42]
B
Yes. Can we get, can we get magazines and. Yes. Who will be our. Yeah. Is it the kid from Mad Men?
- [25:50]
C
I don't know. It needs to be a boy. Sorry. I'm sorry. I mean, I'd be happy for it to be a woman. I feel like we should roll with a boy next time we need a boy.
- [25:59]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Is it Cannon Curry? Do we do. We put our. Our eggs in the Cannon curry basket.
- [26:06]
C
I don't know.
- [26:07]
B
His name is Cannon. That feels. You're gonna get. You're. You're gonna get a lot of Warhawks that are like, I'll vote for Cannon.
- [26:13]
C
Yeah. Strong.
- [26:14]
B
Yeah. Oh, he's strong. Yeah.
- [26:17]
A
We're sort of circling this larger. Truly, and I say this a lot, so drink if you're playing along at home. Existential question of, like, who influences America anymore. And the thing about Trump, the thing that I, Tim, am constantly struggling with, that I'm frustrated by, is that people, I don't think, are paying enough attention to the absolute suicide squad of people, of psychopaths around him at this point. That should be persuasive. And I bring it to you because the thing you brought us is something that you happen to be a character in, actually.
- [26:54]
C
You were teaching civics. You know, you're out of prison. I wonder if you're a reformed. Looking back on the last January 6th and the fact that you incited a mob that ended up.
- [27:03]
D
That would be. That would be. That would be. Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. If you look at what we said is that as the states requested. Seven states requests or never got to. Hang on. A full review. This is. Cause Vice President Pence didn't handle it correctly. This caused Vice President Pence to not handle it correctly. No, no, no, no. Absolutely no change. For the simple reason is, is that we should have had a review as requested by the states for all seven states at that time. Tim, thank you very much.
- [27:39]
B
One question at a time.
- [27:40]
D
Okay, But, Tim, if you want to make.
- [27:41]
C
Continue.
- [27:42]
D
Make speeches, it's good television. I don't want to. I don't want to talk about personal conversations, but we've had it.
- [27:48]
C
That was Bannon's post jail press conference. Great. It was on The, I believe, 12th floor, 12 or 17 or both. In my head, a high floor at the Park Avenue Lowe's. So you know the type of place that a working man goes when they get out of prison in his barbed.
- [28:05]
A
Wire coat and his mane of silver hair.
- [28:08]
C
And so he held a press conference there. I've interviewed Bannon several times, as you could tell for people watching, this little smirk on his face. He enjoys sparring with people. He enjoys sparring with me. Like, the other questions after me was like, hey, Steve, I'm from, like, magapatriot.org and I was wondering, do you think Mr. Trump's gonna win New York? You know, What I mean, and, and Bannon, for all of his flaws, you know, he likes to have his brain muscles moved. He'd rather be challenged and spar than deal with the lunatics around him. But to your point about, what did you call it? The Suicide Squad? Yeah, the lunatics. Like the people at this press conference who are now about to be running our government. Well, who are about to be dismantling our government. Actually, they. Bannon was the most normal and probably the smartest person in the room by like a mile. So if you thought his, like, weird pirate, like triple shirt vibe is like. And like, you know, basement. The bath salts he had apparently in his house, I think that's strange. Like the dudes around him, I mean, it is like you're in a. I felt like I was in a movie with like a fake Eastern European country and like this Bengali for the autocrat gets out of jail and it's like, I've got the one eyed man here and I've got like an actual monkey paw. I've got like two hot blonde chicks.
- [29:29]
B
And I got like Minions five.
- [29:31]
C
Yeah, yeah. And it was the people around him in the room, among others were Jeff Clark, the. You might remember him if you're really online as the guy that tried to help with Trump's coup, who was in the Justice Department. And when the feds went to raid his house, he was pictured outside in his undies. Mike Davis is there. He tweets insanely about how people are going to go into the gulags and how he wants to be the Viceroy of D.C. you had the New York Young Republican Club, which has gone very maga. A couple of the bros from that were there a couple of former mainstream media reporters who had sexual assault issues that have now recaptured themselves as MAGA reporters are there. Who are the people that are opting in at that point before Trump had won again. So I want to make post January 6th pre Trump winning again. And you're like, I want to roll with that crew. Think about the type of person that attract.
- [30:28]
A
And I want. The reason I want to just stay on this for a bit is because before these people are also mainstreamed under the skirt of Donald Trump. I want to acknowledge that from a purely just, anthropological, objective level, these people are freaks. Dozens upon dozens of them in his cabinet all said we would never work for slash vote for him again. Which speaks to how good he is actually at hiring people. And so now he's going to the, the bench, the, the fourth stringers of this movement.
- [31:06]
B
I feel like that's the part of it that is even more terrifying is. Yeah. The notion that there are people who already worked for him who are like, no, we can't do this again, and that it was still not enough to both convince voters to say, okay, he's. He's maybe not a good CEO of a country which countries don't need CEOs. And it feels, and even just that, the idea that, like, you don't want someone to run a country like a business, a business gets run where you, you are always looking to slash the bottom line. You are not thinking humanely, you are thinking profit wise. And maybe that all circles back, but the idea that you have people who worked for him who came away feeling like, yeah, that wasn't the most humane way to do this. And people. And then new people have jumped on and said, hell yeah.
- [32:04]
C
Hell yeah.
- [32:04]
B
Yeah.
- [32:05]
C
No, actually, I was into that. Like the.
- [32:06]
B
We.
- [32:06]
C
The worst parts of Trump, like, the people that are me around him now are like the. The worst. They're not like the. But the. Oh, I wish, I wish, you know, he didn't send the mean tweets.
- [32:16]
B
Right.
- [32:16]
C
You know, it's not those people. The people that are going into work for them now are like, hell yeah. The mean tweets, hell yeah, January 6th, hell yeah, Mass deportations. That's what I'm signing up for. Right.
- [32:26]
A
And in fact, I want to. I want to strike my characterization of freaks from the record, because I don't think that actually captures what I'm talking about. I'm talking about scammers.
- [32:35]
B
Yeah, right.
- [32:36]
A
This, like, people for whom corruption is the light that a moth should go towards. These are people who are opportunists without any semblance of shame. There are so many characters where I just need people to understand, I guess, that Tucker Carlson, just in case you were wondering what he's talking about now, he's talking about this.
- [33:00]
D
Do you think that there are deeper forces at play here? Is this more than just Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk and a bunch of guys running around talking about, in this material world, you know, politics and being Democrats and taking on the intelligence, legal, financial apparatus, Is there something deeper going on here?
- [33:22]
E
So not only is the. Is this the battle in the unseen world, not only is it part of what we're seeing, it is. It is actually what we're seeing. We're seeing the physical manifestations of something that's been going on for eternity. But, yeah, no, I was. On February 20, 2023, I was attacked in my bed by a spiritual being and clawed and left bleeding and scarred again. This war between forces that we can't see, but that has been ongoing and has been, in fact, described by every culture since the beginning. Every culture that we know about has described this battle. And in fact, it's been the basis of every religion. It's certainly the basis of Christianity, which I think is true. By the way. Factually speaking, Christianity is true. But even if you don't, I think you can acknowledge that we're the only culture that hasn't been really absorbed in thinking and talking about this, not since we dropped the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, the second one, in August of 1945, and decided that we were gods and the God himself no longer existed. Since then, we have been a secular society, and that's why we're now being destroyed. In my view, if you're making the case that abortion is an affirmative good, you are evil. You're practicing child sacrifice, worshiping abortion, the killing of kids. Not as something that, like, needs to happen, unfortunately, but it's something that is good, that's pro abortion, you know, people. And I have to say, I'm sure I'll be attacked for saying this, but.
- [34:38]
C
I really believe it.
- [34:39]
E
People are like, oh, well, we had another hurricane. Must be global warming. No, it's probably abortion, actually. Just being honest, like, you can't do that. You can't kill children on purpose, knowing that you're doing that in exchange for power or freedom or happiness, whatever you think you're getting in return. You can't participate in human sacrifice without consequences.
- [34:57]
A
I feel like we just need to really drill down on the part where he says he was attacked by a demon in his bed.
- [35:04]
C
I think in this clip, he says spiritual being. In a different interview, he does say demon. The word demon is used.
- [35:09]
A
Yes, yes, yes. He is very clear that he's in a bed with four dogs and his wife and he wakes up with claw marks underneath his arms. And the only explanation is that, and this is not a poetic description, a literal demon has attacked Tucker Carlson as bad.
- [35:28]
E
Physically mauled in a spiritual attack.
- [35:31]
C
By a demon.
- [35:32]
B
Yeah, by a demon.
- [35:33]
C
The dogs would probably have been the number one culprit out of gone two. I just assumed dogs don't have claws. Yeah, four dogs in the bed, claw marks. I would have probably gone to the dogs on that theory. Demon is an alternate case. But, you know, I mean to me, like, again, that whenever you think about that clip, and some people believe in heaven and hell and demons and angels and that's fine. But like, this is the inner circle.
- [36:03]
A
That's the respectable one.
- [36:04]
C
That's the inner circle up there. All that he's talking about global warming is caused by abortion and we're in a spiritual battle and the left is evil and the left are demons. And the demons are attacking me because they're mad that I've gone after the left. That guy was very influential in picking the Vice president.
- [36:22]
B
Right.
- [36:22]
C
When Trump was finally deciding about his vp, he had JD and then there were two boring old school Republican, well, Doug Bergam, one white guy, and then Marco Rubio, the Cuban guy. Dan's buddy.
- [36:36]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [36:37]
C
And Tucker calls Trump and he's like, if you pick Rubio or Burgum, the neocon deep state establishment that wants war and that hates you and that is part of that demonic left wing force, that's them, they will kill you because then Rubio will be able to take over and the, whatever, the military industrial complex and the globalist and all that will take over. And like Tucker said that that was not like on Tucker's podcast. Like, that was a private conversation between Tucker and Trump that was, that was later leaked to a reporter. And to me it's like, I mean, these guys are deep in the sauce.
- [37:20]
B
Yeah.
- [37:21]
C
And, and they're about to be running everything. The corruption is going to be, I think, way worse this time than the last time in part because, you know, I guess there's a chance Trump will try to stay, but most people around him will consider, like, this is our, this is the last time at the piggy bank, you know, so, like, I'm going to go in hard and then. And I think that he won this time with the help of like, Elon and a lot of these very rich oligarchs in a way that wasn't really true last time, actually. Like the, the billionaire class was, was pretty much unanimously against Trump in 2016. And he won anyway.
- [38:06]
B
Except for Teal. Right? Yeah.
- [38:07]
C
Teal, right. Yeah. So. So this time there's going to be a lot more, a lot more piggies at the trough. Right?
- [38:14]
A
Yeah. People for whom he is a vessel to accomplish their own goals.
- [38:17]
C
Yeah, right. And he'll be 82 at the end of it, so it'll be a lot more room for people to maneuver. And so, and I think Trump will think, well, then Trump family and everybody, all of them will see this as their last opportunity. So look, there's plenty of corruption last time, but I just think that like the straight old school, like machine city, you know, Mayor Daley type, like bag, paper bag type corruption. Like, I think we're gonna see a lot more of this time. I think there's a certain group of people that aren't gonna be cool with that. Right. Like, again, I think sometimes we like, we do pejorative it. The people that are listening to Theo and Knuck boys and all that stuff. And like, some of those people are like ideologically have taken the red pill and are far right. And some of them are just like guys that are like the establishment, the people, the mainstream. And like those people, I think are way more gettable with focusing on the Trump corruption stories and how he screwed you over and how he's, and how he's part of the establishment, rather than the stories about like Trump made fun of Arnold or like Trump talked about Arnold Palmer's huge and like, that's unpresidential. Right? Like, and so to me, in my mind, like, that's something that I'm going to try to pivot my energy towards in this next time because I think it might be more effective also how much nothing might matter. Right? Like, but I'm just saying, like, it feels like it could potentially.
- [39:34]
A
What we might want to consider actually is running Joe Biden again. Can we try that? Do you think that, do you think that we can get more Biden in the next election cycle?
- [39:44]
C
Hunter. Ah, the mega bros. Kind of like.
- [39:49]
A
Hunter, you know, who quietly might love a Nelk boy and vice versa. Hunter is Hunter Biden.
- [39:56]
C
I think, I think we should think about running. So far the best idea I've heard on this podcast for 2028 is Hunter. Would you get behind a Hunter Biden 2028 run? Or is that a little too.
- [40:06]
B
I, I mean, at this point I'm, I don't, I don't know.
- [40:10]
C
I feel like you're open to it though.
- [40:12]
B
Well, no, I'm curious. I have, I, I have, I, I technically have Grenadian citizenship. So I'm kind of like, is this, Do I just try to create my own, my own weird fiefdom down there and do I try to become the Trump of Grenada?
- [40:30]
C
I would, I'm into. This is an interesting idea because you could I. Do you need an advisor?
- [40:36]
B
No, I would, I need, I need a whole. I need a. This is a, this is a ground up build.
- [40:41]
A
So can I get like a military epaulettes?
- [40:44]
B
Oh, sure.
- [40:45]
A
Grenadian, Trump's secretary of Sports.
- [40:48]
B
Yes. As grump. Yeah, I'm just going to go. I'm going to change my name to Gronald Grump and run.
- [40:56]
C
I think I'd look good. And what's the. What are the rules? How are gay. Is gay marriage legal in Grenada?
- [41:02]
A
Under Grump's administration?
- [41:03]
B
Yeah, Grump's administration would be. Yeah, under the Grump administration. Yeah.
- [41:07]
A
Socially liberal.
- [41:08]
B
Yes.
- [41:09]
C
I'm not seeing a lot of holes here.
- [41:10]
B
Yeah.
- [41:11]
A
And super into crypto.
- [41:13]
B
I do like the ring of Grump coin. This is all. Yeah, we talked about this a little bit. But where. Because now I feel like this. This is dovetailing. And you mentioned Elon Musk, and even just in thinking about, like, there is the corruption that is. That I feel like we are going to see as far as, like, the financial corruption, but I also feel like there is a sort of human capital corruption that we maybe don't talk about as, as much where I feel like for a lot of these folks, they view a certain amount of the population as just kind of disposable. And so I look at something like what Elon Musk's influence in a Trump administration is going to be and what the human cost of that is going to be. As Trump has said, oh, I would let him do what he did to Twitter to, you know, government bureaucracy and let him take a, you know, take the red pen to that with no regard for, okay, we will slash this department. And then that means these hundreds of people are out of work. I am not concerned with how to employ them.
- [42:32]
C
No, they enjoy that, actually. It's not just that they're not concerned. It's like, hell, yeah, learn to code, right?
- [42:37]
B
Yes. Yeah. If. At best. At best, learn to code. But also, I don't care if you don't. And so I think there is that element of it that I'm just like, ah, like, that's the other part of this, which is, okay, they will slash a budget. Even when I think about, like, somebody like Musk talking about when he was initially talking about going to Mars and Mars colonization, I feel like one of the things that often got forgotten in that conversation was him very openly saying the first generations of people who go there will die very quickly. It's dangerous, it's uncomfortable. It's a long journey. You might not come back alive, but it's a glorious adventure and it'll be amazing, an amazing experience. And your name will go in history. Yes. You might not. It's gonna be uncomfortable.
- [43:28]
C
And we probably won't have good food.
- [43:29]
B
Yeah, that's fine. They're gonna die.
- [43:32]
A
As I. As I sort of make peace with the fact that, oh, Elon Musk will be the most powerful private citizen in the history of America, by far. I am now, by far. I am now afraid of the way in which I do believe that Elon Musk himself is somebody with a vision and a multi planetary, multi generational plan. There are lots of people that we've described who aren't actually planners, who are in fact the Remora fish. At a Steve Bannon press conference. Elon Musk is playing chess. And that's, that's, that's, that's good.
- [44:09]
B
Is it chess or is it Hungry Hungry Hippos? Because it feels a little bit like Hungry Hungry Hippos to me. Honestly, more than chess. I feel like we're, we're giving him a little too much credit.
- [44:20]
C
Or the little pearl balls.
- [44:22]
B
Yeah, yeah, he's a hippo. Yeah, he's the hippo. He's all four hippos. Yeah. But I also, this, this, you asked me to bring something. And something that I am reminded of is a book that I read some years ago called the Space Merchants. And it's an old pulp science fiction book. And not too long ago I listened to this podcast that Jill Lepore did called the Evening Rocket. And it was a really fascinating podcast. And the podcast kind of looks at Elon Musk through the science fiction that he is a fan of. And as it happens, this was a book I found just like someone was selling it on the, on the sidewalk in, in, in Manhattan. And I was just bored and I bought it for like three bucks. This book is a book that is beloved by him. It's a book that's beloved by Jeff Bezos. The setting of this book is a sort of future dystopia where we don't have states as they exist anymore. States have now been carved up to country, to companies. And so there's no longer the senator from Missouri. It is now the senator from Dow Chemical, the senator from 3M. And the other part of this is perhaps the biggest industry in this society is advertising. And it's advertising to just keep a consumer class that is just buying things and is totally blinded to the fact that the country is being run by corporations. And this book is, I feel like when you're saying like, oh, this guy's playing chess, it kind of feels like, no, he's just cribbing this book that is a science fiction book where I don't know that he finished reading the book, which is by the end of the book, one of these ad agents who had been sort of red pilled into this world gets radicalized and realizes, oh, wait a minute. We're all like, I need to fight against this. And then uses his energy to try to fight against this thing, which I feel like it's at that point that perhaps Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos fell asleep before, and they were like, yeah, that book was good. Let's. Yeah, I want to be the space merchant. Yeah.
- [46:44]
A
I should be clear. I'm not sure Elon Musk is good at chess. He's definitely attempting to play. At the end of every episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out, a show where we find stuff out, we go around the table and we say what we found out today. Wyatt, do you want to start us off? What did you find out?
- [47:16]
B
I mean, I guess I found out a couple things. The. Perhaps the, the best thing I found out is that the grump administration, it's. It's beginning.
- [47:28]
C
We're laying the groundwork.
- [47:29]
B
Yeah. We're gonna make Grenada grump again. Yeah. So that I'm excited by. Beyond that. Yeah. I, I. Nothing hopeful.
- [47:41]
C
I don't. I guess I don't know if I found this out, but you've made me think about this a lot more deeply than I have since Tuesday night as my brain just won't turn off. Like, we all knew that, like, the democratization of everything was, Was. Was created, was crumbling, all of these establishment institutions. Right. And, like, there is, in some ways, it's, like, good. Like you mentioned Sports Illustrated. It's earlier. It's like, Sports Illustrated is dead.
- [48:04]
A
And now I'm here.
- [48:05]
C
Yeah.
- [48:05]
A
Yay.
- [48:06]
C
We've replaced it with something better and more authentic and, like, closer to the people. Right. And, you know, you could do this across, like, a million. A million verticals. Right. And. And I knew that was happening in politics. The malicious forces took advantage of that in a much more effective way.
- [48:23]
A
What I found out today is that Donald Trump is mainstream media. There is no more mainstream character than that guy. And all of these downstream effects follow from that. And so what we really need if we're gonna save, you know, the institution that is America, Democracy, which is a deeply unpopular cause, it turns out, relative to expectation, is that you need someone who is both an institutionalist, but also a revolutionary, someone who can speak to a broad, it turns out, almost startlingly racially diverse coalition of Hispanics and all of the others that are now trending.
- [48:58]
C
I'm sorry, you can't let.
- [48:59]
A
You know.
- [48:59]
C
We can't let your people.
- [49:00]
A
No, no, no. We got folded into the other category. Every chart that I saw we're in. The other thing can't prove that we're in there. We need someone who can be all of these things, who is familiar with sparring against conservative influencers on podcasts. And so I just want to say, I salute Democratic nominee Stephen A. Smith.
- [49:25]
B
Oh, God.
- [49:25]
C
Sas. Okay, Hunter Biden or Stephen A.
- [49:30]
A
Why not both? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Metal Arc Media production. And we are produced by Walter Averoma, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daewig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, neely Loman, Rob McRae, Rachel Miller, Howard Ethan Schreier, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tominello, and Juliet Warren. Our studio engineering by RG Systems. Our sound design by NGW Post. Our theme song, as always, by John Bravo. And we will talk to you next time.