Donald Trump, Empath in Chief

Summary

Pod Save America – "Donald Trump, Empath in Chief" (Dec 16, 2025)

Hosts: Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vietor
Guest: Jake Tapper

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the tumultuous political landscape of late 2025, brimming with shocking violence, political infighting, and cultural dislocation. The hosts discuss the government's response to recent tragedies, analyze MAGA world discord and right-wing conspiracy theories, reflect on Democratic 2028 chatter, and feature an extended conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper about the media industry, national security, and the legacy of the War on Terror. Throughout, the tone is informal, darkly ironic, and occasionally exasperated—characteristic of Pod Save America.

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Main Topics and Highlights

1. A Tragic Weekend & U.S. Government Response

(Segment begins ~02:09)

• Host Recap: The show opens with a round-up of horrifying news:
  • Three Americans (including two Iowa National Guard soldiers) killed in Syria during a counterterrorism mission.
  • Trump promises “retaliation,” but has no clear answer on the U.S. presence in Syria.
    • Jon Favreau (06:27): "He didn't really have a good answer for that when someone asked him in the Oval as well."
  • Mass shooting at Brown University leaves two dead and nine injured. Some survivors were also present at previous mass shootings.
    • Tommy Vietor (05:06): "We have failed these kids over and over and over again. It is fucking horrifying."
• FBI Director Kash Patel’s Role:
  • Patel tweets prematurely about suspects—again as in past incidents—leading to misidentification and public panic.
    • Jon Favreau (04:00): "The idea that we should have the FBI director live tweeting through active investigations, no need. No need whatsoever… It's just this intense need for, like, social validation online from the head of our most important national law enforcement agency…"

2. Antisemitic Hanukkah Massacre in Sydney, Australia

(~06:32)

• Attack: 15 killed, including a rabbi and 87-year-old Holocaust survivor who shielded his wife. The shooting exposes failures of local authorities and growing antisemitism.
  • Jon Lovett (08:34): "The Executive Council of Australian Jewry had a statistic that 37,000 antisemitic incidents in Australia have occurred since October 7. That is five times the number… than were in the decade before."
  • Jon Favreau (09:49): "It's a scary time for a lot of Jews who are worried about this every day."
• Online Radicalization: The hosts note a generational—not just partisan—increase in conspiratorial and antisocial thinking.
• JD Vance’s Reaction: He blames immigration for rising antisemitism, providing no data and suggesting anti-immigrant scapegoating.
  • Jon Lovett (11:19): "JD Vance has still not said a word about Nick Fuentes, a vile antisemite of growing stature on the far right…"

Tommy Vietor (12:46): "I have bottomless contempt for politicians who take a crisis or an evil event like this and say, actually the solution is my personal political project or hobby horse."

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3. Donald Trump’s Appalling Response to Rob Reiner’s Murder

(~15:24)

• Incident: Rob Reiner and his wife are murdered by their son. President Trump posts a callous Truth Social message blaming Reiner’s “Trump Derangement Syndrome” for his death.
  • Host reactions: All express disbelief; Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene actually criticize Trump publicly.
  • Jon Favreau (17:40): “Hey, do you feel sympathy when terrible things happen to people that are not on your team? …Most people pass it, and then the loudest people online often struggle with it. That’s what we see—including the President.”

Jon Lovett (18:34): "A sick, deranged, sociopathic response that official White House accounts also reposted."

• Political Fallout: Dissent is more visible within Republican ranks, suggesting possible erosion of Trump’s dominance.
  • Tommy Vietor (21:05): "There's like cracks in the MAGA base. And then every time it kind of rains and it fills up, it like, erodes a little bit more."

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4. MAGA World in Disarray

(~22:12)

• Growing Base Discontent: Reporting highlights base dissatisfaction with Trump’s priorities (too much foreign policy, cost-of-living failures, cozying with billionaires).
  • Tommy Vietor (22:48): "I think it's real, I think it's consequential… Odds are things are going to get worse, not better, with the economy this coming year… and it shows."
• MAGA Media Drama: After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, media figures jockey for influence. Candace Owens spreads wild conspiracy theories (supposed French/Israeli involvement), launching bitter intra-right feuds.

Tommy Vietor (29:42): "I think MK Ultra made an appearance too… She does huge numbers… people watch the stuff and they believe it."

• Hosts reflect on Internet radicalization and audience fragmentation.
  • Jon Favreau (32:07): "The most extreme voices gain a bigger audience. But… being extreme either by self-selection or by algorithm then exposes you to more extreme things."

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5. Democratic Party: 2028 Speculation and DNC Winter Meetings

(~36:52)

• Kamala Harris and Newsom: Anxious Democratic speculation about the 2028 field is underway. Kamala’s book tour and rhetoric analyzed as possible campaign prep. Gavin Newsom is identified as the "front-runner," with praise for his base-building actions and media savvy.
  • Tommy Vietor (43:16): "He's done more to improve his image with the base of the Democratic Party than anyone else by a landslide."
• **Discussion about contenders like JB Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, approaches for establishing policy vision, and debate over “head vs. heart” voting dynamics.
  • Jon Favreau (48:07): "One thing he [Pritzker] said that I thought was interesting… because we didn't have a primary in 2024, we really didn't get the vision shaping that would have happened if we were switching between candidates."

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6. AI, News Media, and the Washington Post’s Risky Bet

(~48:47)

• AI-Generated Podcasts: The hosts dissect the Post’s buggy, error-prone rollout of customizable, AI-generated news podcasts, noting the tension between technology and journalistic standards.
  • Jon Favreau (50:02): "A lot of times what we describe as the threat of AI is actually the threat of the people in charge of the AI."
  • Tommy Vietor (51:25): "Now, some of the errors they referenced were like mispronunciations which boy, if that's a problem, don't listen to my shows."
• Concerns: They note these tools are only useful because actual journalists and creative humans do the initial work.
  • Jon Favreau (53:06): "But also too like all of these AI, this kind of an AI product is predicated on a world in which most things are made by people. And this is a synthesis of that human work."

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Jake Tapper Interview Highlights

(Begins ~55:53)

A. Media Industry Turmoil and Trump’s CCN Attacks

• CNN’s Fate: Tapper explains the precarious corporate situation as Paramount or Netflix may acquire CNN’s parent company. Trump directly called for new ownership at CNN, injecting presidential influence into the process.
  • Jake Tapper (57:36): "It’s just all unprecedented… This is the time for conservatives to say that’s not appropriate. ...Now weighing in on a potential merger that his Justice Department and the FCC and others are supposed to objectively assess."
  • Tapper warns: Foreign investment (from MBS, Saudi PIF, Emiratis, Qataris) is a major concern for journalistic independence.

B. Pentagon and White House Media Restrictions

• Press Crackdown: Tapper describes how the Pentagon is locking out journalists, replacing them with loyalists, and criminalizing unapproved reporting.
  • Jake Tapper (64:37): "...opening the door to the Pentagon being able to label a journalist who reports anything they don't like, a security risk."
• White House Press Pool: He’s less worried about including “new media” than about excluding mainstream outlets; he criticizes a lack of questioning from officials who only appear on friendly platforms.

C. "Race Against Terror" and the Legacy of the War on Terror

• Book Origins: Tapper’s new book follows the pursuit and prosecution of an al Qaeda terrorist, reflecting on post-9/11 panic, Obama's attempts to close Gitmo, and the trade-offs of Article III courts vs. military commissions.
  • Jake Tapper (72:32): "And one of the dads [at a birthday party]… starts telling me this incredible story. He's an assistant U.S. attorney… And then this guy walks up to an Italian [on a refugee boat]… says, I got [my bullet wound] fighting Americans in Afghanistan..."
• Host commentary: Obama’s failed push to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a regular court led to years of military tribunal delays.
  • Tommy Vietor (76:22): "We lost our fucking minds… Obama was forced to shift the trial from US court systems to a military commission… KSM hasn't even gone to trial yet."
• Bottom Line:
  • Tapper (81:49): “The good news is, as a journalist, I don’t actually have to land anywhere. I could just, like, report what’s true.”
  • Tapper’s view: Trying terrorists in US courts has succeeded in over 300 convictions; military detention didn’t always work out.

D. Reflections on Trump, Drugs, and New War Justifications

• Drug War Drift: Tapper and Vietor question the legality and morality of conducting drone strikes on drug traffickers, expanding “forever war” logic.
  • Jake Tapper (92:09): “…the legal argument is for all the strikes… they are killing Americans with drugs, therefore they're terrorists, and therefore we can kill them…”
  • Both hosts are deeply critical of this drift and its consequences.

E. Age, Decline, and Presidential Fitness

• Biden’s Withdrawal & Trump’s Decline: Tapper discusses his co-authored book "Original Sin," the debate about Biden's age, and whether/who in the press is holding Trump appropriately accountable for similar lapses.
  • Jake Tapper (95:41): "But beyond that, I don't know anybody who thinks that he [Biden] could be president right now and all the way through 2029 in his current state…"
  • Tapper asserts he covers Trump’s declining faculties robustly—contrary to criticism from some Democrats.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• "We have failed these kids over and over and over again. It is fucking horrifying."
  – Tommy Vietor on mass shootings and repeat survivors (05:06)

• "A sick, deranged, sociopathic response that official White House accounts also reposted."
  – Jon Lovett, on Trump’s statement after Rob Reiner’s death (18:34)

• "There’s like cracks in the MAGA base… You can feel it happening. There’s less fear of him. Courage begets courage."
  – Tommy Vietor on unusual Republican dissent toward Trump (21:05)

• "J.D. Vance has still not said a word about Nick Fuentes, a vile antisemite of growing stature on the far right..."
  – Jon Lovett (11:19)

• "Being extreme either by self selection or by algorithm then exposes you to more extreme things… that pulls you further and further online and more and more outside of the real world."
  – Jon Favreau, on the radicalization of media figures and influencers (32:07)

• "Foreign ownership… the Saudis, the Emiratis, and the Qataris… we know what Mohammed bin Salman, the crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, thinks about independent journalism or critical journalism because he has had a journalist killed according to the CIA."
  – Jake Tapper on foreign money and press freedom (61:21)

• "…if the case can be tried in criminal court, those have… proved effective. More than 300 terrorists have been convicted and put in prison."
  – Jake Tapper, on the success rate of Article III court terrorism prosecutions (85:08)

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Key Takeaways

• Trump’s empathy gap and MAGA “cracks” are exposed by his bizarre, cruel reactions to tragedy and increasing Republican pushback.
• Mass shootings and antisemitic violence dominate a landscape of national fear, bureaucratic incompetence, and political blame-shifting.
• MAGA media and influencer world is riven by paranoia, conspiracy, and public infighting—reducing its overall political effectiveness as narratives spiral out of control.
• Democrats are in early 2028 maneuvering mode, with rhetorical skirmishing and attempts to define what the post-Biden era will look like.
• AI in journalism raises deep concerns about credibility and editorial gatekeeping even as consumers seek more personalized information streams.
• The media industry is under existential stress – with corporate power plays, political interference, and foreign money threatening the future of established institutions like CNN.
• The “forever war” logic persists, from the legal ambiguity of post-9/11 terrorism prosecutions to the shaky rationales for new military interventions in Latin America.

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Structure & Tone

• The conversation is brisk, loaded with gallows humor and baffled exasperation at the dysfunction and cruelty of the moment.
• Panelists call out hypocrisy across the political spectrum, but reserve particular scorn for performative or cynical politicians.
• Quotes are often biting, conversations jump from hard news to media criticism to meta-reflection on democracy and radicalization.

Recommended for

• Listeners who want to understand both the hard news and the cultural undercurrents of today’s political brawls.
• Anyone interested in the intersection of politics, media, and the transformations shaping both parties as 2028 looms.

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End of Summary.

Transcript

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Jon Favreau]

Hey, this is Jeff Lewis from Radio Andy live and uncensored. Catch me talking with my friends about.

[Jake Tapper]

My latest obsessions, relationship issues and bodily ailments.

[Jon Favreau]

With that kind of drama that seems.

[Jake Tapper]

To follow me, you never know what's going to happen.

[Laci Mosley]

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[Jon Lovett]

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

[Tommy Vietor]

I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Tommy Vitor.

[Jon Lovett]

On today's show, we got another chapter of MAGA in disarray as Candace Owens spreads some truly insane conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk's murder. And separately, the MAGA base is getting more and more disappointed with Donald Trump. We'll also indulge in some harmless 2028 speculation coming out of the DNC winter meetings here in LA last week. And bad news. If you were counting on the Washington Post's new AI generated podcast to stay informed, you may want to double check the quotes and facts you're hearing. If you can believe that, then CNN's Jake Tapper talks to Tommy about the fate of his network now that its parent company is for sale, the decimation of the Pentagon press corps and his new book, Race Against Terror. Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer in the dawn of the Forever War. But let's start with how our government is responding to the onslaught of horrifying tragedies over the weekend, both here and around the world. On Saturday, we found out that three Americans, two Iowa National Guard soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed in Syria during a counterterrorism mission against isis. Trump has promised retaliation. Hours later, there was a mass shooting in a Brown University in Econ classroom that killed two students and injured nine. While paying respects to the victims, Trump responded to the shooting by saying, quote, things can happen. In fact, things like that happen so often that it became the 389th mass shooting in America this year. Meanwhile, FBI Director Kash Patel once again bragged about detaining a suspect who turned out to be the wrong person and has since been released. So as of this recording, the shooter is still at large and hasn't stopped Cash from tweeting. Now he's tweeting about.

[Tommy Vietor]

Nothing can stop him.

[Jon Lovett]

Any thoughts on the Brown shooting and Cash Patel? Just. This is like the third or fourth time now, the second or third time he's done this.

[Jon Favreau]

The idea that we should have the FBI director live tweeting through active investigations, no need. No need whatsoever. It doesn't do anything to help the investigation, clearly, because you're putting it out there that they've caught someone when they haven't caught the right person. And then he looks like a fucking fool. Every few hours he has to kind of adjust whatever he's put out into the world. It's just this intense need for, like, social validation online from the head of our most important national law enforcement agency. And it's just a reminder that he's an incompetent who doesn't belong the job.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. He could so easily avoid these mistakes by just following precedent and shutting up. I mean, I think the first time you tweeted about, when you tweeted about Charlie Clark's assassination, it was reportedly from a dinner table at an ultra exclusive restaurant in New York City called Rao's Or Rao's. Rao's. Rao's. So just don't do that. It's very easy.

[Jon Lovett]

Mr. Patel, also the person who was the suspect, briefly, that person's name was out there, all of their information, and as one of the local authorities said, like, hard to put that toothpaste back in the tube. Yeah. After you do that.

[Tommy Vietor]

I will say, also, just reading about the Brown University event, like, it's horrifying for all of these kids, but also you keep noticing in stories about mass shootings that there are now students involved who are in previous mass shootings, who survived previous mass shooting. And it's just like, we have failed these kids over and over and over again. It is fucking horrifying.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. Trump was asked about Patel and the. In the shooting and the investigation later when he was at the White House, and he said it was a. A school problem. It's not a FBI problem, it's a school problem. What?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, the security guards are going to run this one down and not the FBI.

[Jon Lovett]

Even though the original suspect was a suspect because of a tip that the FBI got. And of course, it's not the FBI's fault that they brought in someone who ended up being the wrong person. It is the fault of the FBI director for announcing that people bring in people. You know, the FBI brings in people of interest all the time, and then they just let them go.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, that's not a. I was baffled by what he's saying there. Is that just his way of subtly sort of indicting Brown for being a liberal institution?

[Jon Lovett]

No, I think it's just deflecting blame from him and the FBI. From the FBI and him, by extension of the FBI.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, also just. It's a different issue. But, I mean, this attack on these service members in Syria is awful and people lost their lives. I'm very nervous about what this, like, retaliation that Trump keeps previewing will look like. But also, I do hope this starts a conversation of, like, why do we have troops in Syria? What are they still doing here?

[Jon Lovett]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

Can we bring them home? Can we end this mission? Like, what?

[Jon Favreau]

Why?

[Jon Lovett]

He didn't really have a good answer for that when someone asked him in the Oval as well.

[Tommy Vietor]

That one stumped him.

[Jon Lovett]

So then on Sunday, we woke up to news of an anti Semitic massacre at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia, that killed at least 15 people, including a rabbi and a Holocaust survivor. The sh were a father and son. The son was known to authorities as at least tangentially related to some kind of local ISIS cell and one of the shooters was tackled and disarmed thanks to the heroics of a fruit shop owner named Ahmed Al Ahmed, a Muslim Syrian immigrant who's in critical but stable condition after sustaining a gunshot wound himself. Just fucking awful.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I mean news reports say the Victims included a 10 year old girl and a Holocaust survivor. So the victims were from 10 to 87. I think it's just like an unimaginable evil. And so it was Bondi, it was at Bondi beach, was the site of this Hanukkah celebration. And I also, I think like maybe the most popular tourist destination of all of Australia and filled with just families playing outside. And so yeah, these guys are murderers. They're evil. I was reading another article about this couple who got separated from their three year old as the shooting started and they couldn't find their 3 year old kid and. And then they found their little girl underneath a stranger who had shielded her with her own body and took a bullet in the process. So just like amidst the stories of these two evil monsters, there's this unbelievable heroism.

[Jon Lovett]

The Holocaust survivor that died is an 87 year old guy who shielded his wife with his body.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean it's just, who is also a Holocaust survivor, just a hero. But you know, this is for the people of Australia. They have not had to deal with a mass shooting like this since 1996 because the last one that happened there was a massacre that killed 35 people and they passed really strict gun control laws has been far less of an issue. So it's horrifying for them. It's also in particular awful for Australia's Jewish community because they have been crying out for help because of this growing number of anti Semitic threats and incidents, including like attacks on synagogues, arson attempts and things. And they just feel like they were ignored. And it's. And for Jews around the world, I mean it's just like another. You're trying to celebrate Hanukkah with your family and it's another reminder that there's people who want to kill you for your religion.

[Jon Lovett]

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry had a statistic that 37,000 ant semitic incidents in Australia have occurred since October 7. That is five times the number in the decade than were in the decade before.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, it was, it was on the first night of Hanukkah. So it is a night where a lot of Jewish people go and have, you know, they have latkes with their family and with their friends and you're celebrating and everybody was talking about it as Just a reminder that it continues to be dangerous to be Jewish, that there is a feeling that anti Semitism is rising Here in the US we see surveys that show anti Semitism and conspiratorial thinking and antisocial thinking is rising among young. It's true, by the way, of young Republicans. It's true of young Democrats. There was one Manhattan Institute survey that found that actually it is more common amongst college educated young people. Which tells you something about the ways in which this really is. Not that this is a, some kind of, a kind of ideological radicalization that's happening online, that something very sinister is happening when people are exposed to these kinds of ideas. And this was just a reminder that it is a scary time for a lot of Jews who are worried about this every day.

[Jon Lovett]

Yair Rosenberg in the Atlantic wrote a piece about this, how it's generational more than it is partisan. And Alec McGillis and other journalists posted some of the portions of the piece. And J.D. vance jumped in to basically say J.D. vance's argument, for which he offered zero evidence or data whatsoever, was that actually you should have looked at the demographics of the younger people because the reason that antisemitism is growing here is only because of immigration and the failure of immigrants to assimilate. I assume he means Muslim immigrants, again with no data whatsoever that the Manhattan Institute poll that you just talked about, Lovett, was cited in the piece.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Jon Lovett]

So I don't know if all those college educated young Republicans just happen to be Muslim immigrants that came over here and join the Young Republican club.

[Jon Favreau]

Right, Well, I saw that too. And it's sort of. Obviously he doesn't say it, but he means, he means some combination of Arabs or Muslims. Maybe he means a few other specific countries, but certainly he can't possibly mean the actual shift in demographics we've had in this country, which is rising Hispanic immigrants, rising Asian immigrants. Like the numbers are such a big change. It's so stark. Right. Like you can't account for it with just a increase in anti Semitism among a small part of the immigrant population. So he can't really defend it. There's no facts that would defend it. And it also, by the way, I just want to say it would be a surprise, I think, to American Jews to discover that anti Semitism in America is a recent fucking import.

[Jon Lovett]

Right?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes, it's a centuries old problem. And also JD Vance has still not said a word about Nick Fuentes, a vile anti Semite of growing stature on the far right who was platformed by his friend Tucker Carlson, who attacked JD Vance, attacks him all the time by name. Calls his wife and kids a racial slur to do with Indian people. And J.D. vance is silent.

[Jon Lovett]

And the piece in the Atlantic doesn't say that it is just a problem on the right either among young people. Acknowledges that it's a problem on the left as well. But like, that's not enough for J.D. vance, who just like goes on and loves to shitpost. He just has to jump right to. No, no, no. The. The problem is purely immigration, like every other problem.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, it's. And it's like it's just a. But it's the same kind of response to any event to try to make it comport with your priors. Right? And it's another example of someone looking at the complicated world that we live in and deciding that the. Only that the answers are simple. And it's what I already believe. Because if it is just a foreign import of ethnic grievances, I suppose we don't have to deal with the fact that people are being radicalized online. We don't have to deal with the fact that getting your information algorithmically is leading people down all kinds of rabbit holes. That there isn't a problem among young people. That by the way, isn't partisan. Right. That does affect young people of that are on the left that are on the right. Like, you don't have to worry about that because once we cut off the immigrants, then all of our problems will go away. Back to being the kind of pure American culture in which anti Semitism wasn't a problem.

[Tommy Vietor]

I have bottomless contempt for politicians who take a crisis or an evil event like this and say, actually the solution is my personal political project or hobby horse. J.D. vance just did it right here with immigration. Bibi Netanyahu did it and said, actually the real problem is Australia recognized a Palestinian state. Like, I'm sorry, I do not believe for a second that that is connected to these individuals, one of whom was linked to ISIS in 2019.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. What we know is that anti Semitism is related to the attack. And we can all talk about that, right? Like that is the fact that we know so far beyond that it's all just speculation and garbage.

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Laci Mosley]

I'm Lacy Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it. Each week I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time. Wanna know about the fake errors? We got em. What about a career con man? We've got them too, guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. Oh, you know they are represented because representation matters. I'm joined by guests like Nicole Byer, Ira Madison iii, Conan o' Brien and more. Join the congregation and listen to stuff Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jon Lovett]

As if all this wasn't enough, the weekend ended with the tragic news that the beloved director and political activist Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle had been found stabbed to death in their home by their own son. Just awful. After condolences poured in from political leaders like Barack Obama, Gavin Newsom figures from across the political spectrum. The current president weighed in with a statement Monday morning that reads as follows. Quote A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away together with his wife Michelle, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome, sometimes referred to as tds. May Rob and Michelle rest in peace. A sick, deranged, sociopathic response that official White House accounts also reposted. But maybe the one real surprise has been the number of Republicans in Congress who've criticized Trump for it. People like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mike Lawlor, Don Bacon, and Thomas Massie, who even issued a direct challenge to JD Vance and White House staff to denounce it. Spoiler. They have not taken him up on that challenge. JD has been tweeting all, all day about all kinds of other stuff, but not about this. Trump's original post on Truth Social has also been flooded with responses from MAGA fans saying they don't agree with what Trump said and that he should take the post down. He has not. Not only has he not, he was asked about it in the Oval Office on Monday, and here is what he said.

[Jon Favreau]

A number of Republicans have denounced your statement on Truth Social after the murder of Rob Reiner. Do you stand by that post?

[Jake Tapper]

Well, I wasn't a fan of his at all. He was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned.

[Jon Lovett]

Trump derangement syndrome.

[Jake Tapper]

So I was not a fan of Rob Reiner at all, in any way, shape or form. I thought he was very bad for our country.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's the thing. That's worse. I thought he was bad for our country. So does that mean you support killing him? Because it sure sounds like it.

[Jon Lovett]

I just like it was one of those statements, too, where when he first posted it, there were so many people on Twitter, journalists, everyone else being like, is this real? Are you sure this is a real post?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, it's a gobsmacking. The, the, you know, like, hey, do you feel sympathy when terrible things happen to people that are not on your team? Is like the. The marshmallow test for empathy. It's like the most basic thing. And I actually think most people pass it, right? That most people pass it, and then the loudest people online often struggle with it. That's what we see, and that's what we've seen with all. With Charlie Kirk's murder. It's what we saw with the United Healthcare murder. It's what you see in. In. In this case, and it is. And then you see a bunch of people try to defend Trump for clean. Well, actually, you know, Rob Reiner would have said something horrible if something happened to Trump, but actually, Rob Reiner deplored political violence, talked openly about it, was deplored the murder of Charlie Kirk. The impulse to defend this or to not obviously just say, clearly, you don't need to say murder is bad, but you just don't have to. And the fact that there's a whole clique of people online, which includes the President, they can't seem to stop themselves from doing it.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, that was. It was. It was barely a. But there was. There was. The murder is bad. But it wasn't even. It was just like, it was a joke kind of. Well, yeah, he basically blamed him. He died because other people were mad. First of all, it's like, it's, it's, it's deranged in the, in its inaccuracy. Right? Like, it's just an insane thing to say. It's, it's disgusting. But it's also like, what are you fucking talking about?

[Jon Favreau]

And are you suggesting someone on your.

[Jon Lovett]

Own side, Crazy fucking old man, like.

[Jon Favreau]

Did somebody on your own side do it? Or you're saying he was killed for, like, are you saying killed by someone on your team? Like, what are you talking about?

[Tommy Vietor]

It's like the umpteenth example of his narcissism to suggest that two people who are murdered randomly did it because of you, somehow their child, Like, I can't even wrap my head around it. But yeah, I mean, it comes after all this outrage from Trump and J.D. vance and the White House and the MAGA media world about genuinely, like, offensive, insensitive comments made by usually some rando person on Tik Tok whose comments got service. This is the President, United States. And like, of course, none of these people have a goddamn word to say about what Trump says. We had Fox News on all day. Did you guys see any segments?

[Jon Lovett]

That's why we wanted to keep it on.

[Tommy Vietor]

I didn't. A single one.

[Jon Lovett]

Not a single one.

[Tommy Vietor]

And remember, this administration was getting people suspended from their jobs, fired from the military. Like, Reuters had a big report about. They found that 600 people were fired, suspended, or otherwise disciplined by their employers for the comments about Charlie Kirk. And then Donald Trump says this.

[Jon Lovett]

It is. I was like, somewhat. I don't know if I would say, like, pleasantly surprised, but the number of Republicans in Congress who just didn't do the usual.

[Jon Favreau]

I didn't see it.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. Now the two most important ones, or the two leaders in Congress basically did that. Mike Johnson ran away, said something like he felt bad, and then Thune said, well, I have nothing more to say about Trump, but I think it's awful and blah, blah, blah. So the two leaders of the party in Congress took a pass Certainly the vice president, who's the putative frontrunner in 2028, he took a pass. The Secretary of State took a pass so far, so we'll see.

[Jon Favreau]

But I think it also, by the way, does matter too, that. But like, there are the Thomas Masseys willing to that just say the obvious truth about it, that Marjorie Taylor Greene had the right sentiment about it. Even Nancy Mace had the right sentiment. And the way Margie Taylor Greene described it, I thought was. I thought kind of. She just was. It was well said. And you know, Thomas Massie, like, it was a week ago, two weeks ago, that Trump posted that horrible thing about Thomas Massie getting remarried and.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

And I do think forgot about that.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

And that matters, right?

[Jon Favreau]

I do think it really does. It matters that these are people that are just like, no, because these are right wing people. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a right wing person. And like, this is gross. It's fucking gross.

[Tommy Vietor]

There's like cracks in the mega base. And then every time it kind of rains and it fills up, it like, erodes a little bit more. Like, you can feel it happening. There's less fear of him. Courage begets courage. And people are just like, no, that's disgusting, man.

[Jon Lovett]

This is also something that could break through beyond sort of just the politics stuff because, like, Rob Reiner, nothing except for the fact that Rob Reiner was a very committed activist, not just a donor, but like, ran ballot initiatives and did like a lot of good work. Aside from that, it was nothing about the killing or anything else had to do with politics. And, you know, young people might not know who Rob Reiner was, but most people do. One of the more famous directors. So there's gonna be a lot of news on this. And then you hear the President of the United States was like, oh, good, he hated me. Like, most Americans are gonna hear that and be like, what the fuck?

[Jon Favreau]

And by the way, like, people are gonna be reminded of how much they love when Harry Mans Sali, the American President. This is misery. Like, he, he's part, like, he's from the era of the monoculture. He made things that everybody loved in a non political era, nonpartisan era. And then to have him be like, vilified by the president turned into a political, cultural. It's just disgusting.

[Jon Lovett]

The Washington Post and Politico both had big stories over the weekend about the growing disappointment with Trump among elements of the MAGA base over a host of issues, including, according to the Post, quote, focusing too much on foreign affairs, failing to address the cost of living issues. He pledged to fix aligning himself too closely with billionaires and tech moguls and resisting the of the Epstein files. Trump himself, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Friday, said that he wouldn't have done anything differently over the last year.

[Tommy Vietor]

Nice.

[Jon Lovett]

And admitted he's not sure if his party will win the midterms. What'd you guys think of those pieces? And how real and consequential do you think the MAGA disappointment with Trump is?

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, I think it's real, I think it's consequential. I mean, I divide it into a couple parts. I mean, the first is the economic piece of this, and it's very funny that they say he's too focused on foreign affairs. And they did a big event on, like, the border and the military, and it got a bunch of foreign affairs questions today. But, I mean, that AP poll last week was brut brutal for Trump. 36% approval, 31 approval on the economy. And his response is to blame Biden or to call it a hoax. But odds are things are going to get worse, not better, with the economy this coming year because of inflation, because tariffs really start to bite. And I think Trump just sits around in Mar a Lago or sits in the White House and he talks to people worth 7, 8, 9 figures, and then he picks out furniture for his new $300 million ballroom, and he's divorced from the reality on the ground in the world, and it shows. And then the elected officials hear him talk and they're like, well, 2025 was the disaster. 2026 is looking worse. Like, now it's time to get some space from this guy. And then we'll get into the MAGA media class in a minute. But, like, they are just, they're just chasing clicks. They go where the clicks take them. Please subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube also. But, like, they're positioning themselves to be the leader, to, like, to be the leaders of the MAGA movement in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death and the kind of void that will be created by Trump being a fully lame duck. They're all kind of eyeing Nick Fuentes in his rise and seeing Fuentes say, maga's dead, Trump is over. And so, like, this feels like it's moving one direction.

[Jon Lovett]

What really made the Washington Post piece was the participation of Rasmussen pollster Mark Mitchell in the piece. So it's really great story here. J.D. vance follows him on Twitter and reached out to him, to Mark Mitchell and said, hey, like, you're an outside pollster it's not like you work with the White House. Could you maybe come in and talk to us and to Trump about what you're seeing in the numbers? And so Mark Mitchell then talks to the Post about his whole conversation with Trump. And he told the president in Butler, you said fight, fight, fight. And right now you're fight, fight, fighting, Marjorie Taylor Greene and not actually fight, fight, fighting for Americans. And then he said, he's talking to the reporters, he said, you know, to the extent to which we were talking about the economic populism message and he wasn't as interested as I would have hoped. And then he said that eventually Trump pivoted the conversation to golf and talked about how much money he raised for Lindsey Graham during a recent golf outing that doubled as a fundraiser for Lindsey Graham. Just perfect.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, just mad King wandering around in the road. But yeah, the Marjorie Taylor Greene piece of it I do think is really important because I think she is speaking like she is as good a validator as you could hope for if she's on his side and as bad of one when she's not. Because what she's describing I think is just accurate about what he's been doing. And I do think that like part of this is like Democratic legitimacy is hard to measure, but it is real. And so he had like, I think there's a, you can blur your eyes and say there was a mandate to go after the border. There was even an anti woke mandate. He talked about that a lot on the campaign trail. There wasn't one to like fuck up the national parks and get rid of a bunch of like, you know, land management jobs and a bunch of other.

[Jon Lovett]

Stuff that is tear gas one year olds, right? Not something that was a mandate or.

[Jon Favreau]

To like put on tariffs that are going to raise goods, prices for goods and hurt businesses that do a lot of exporting or any business that relies on any kind of goods that are coming in from abroad. And because he doesn't have a mandate to do those things, A, like you're seeing this in all the polling, but B, it also leads to a bunch of other weather, right? Like he's more, there's more likely to be leaks from inside of these agencies. There's more likely to be judges willing to stand in his way. Like there's just a bunch of, more likely you have members of Congress speak out against it. There's just like the, the, the, the fact that he is more and more unpopular and what he is trying to do is so unpopular is grinding the gears down so even on the places where he's trying to do things that like he might have had some kind of claim to a mandate for like his, everything is getting harder because he has pursued this agenda that, that nobody really wanted, even in his own base.

[Tommy Vietor]

Did you guys see the story over the weekend about Trump's new passion project?

[Jon Lovett]

What's this one golf course Wall street.

[Tommy Vietor]

Journalist, the Wall Street Journal reported that they're trying to figure out what with what to do with all the dirt from the east wing renovation. Someone suggested they make a big mound on the ellipse to better see the UFC fight that's coming up there.

[Jon Lovett]

Oh, I didn't see that part.

[Tommy Vietor]

But then Doug Burgum said, no, sir, what if we bring it over to this golf course over some, you know, nearby and we can refurbish the golf course. So Trump's new passion is redeveloping D.C. golf courses.

[Jon Lovett]

The people you mentioned, the AP poll there was also like an NBC News poll over the weekend. Overall approval 4,258. The two groups that show the largest drop in strong support for the president since April, those who identify as Republicans and in particular those who identify as MAGA Republicans, still highest with those voters. But he was 78% approval with those voters in April and Now he's at 70%. That's an eight point drop. It's the biggest drop of any group. They also ask people in all these polls, do you identify yourself as a MAGA Republican or a regular Republican? And it used to be MAGA Republican by, you know, 10, 20, 30 points and now it's 50, 50among Republicans. MAGA Republican versus regular Republicans.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I would say. My, my, I saw that and I thought, well, is that an actual difference or is that just a brand distinction? Right. Just because does Trump does MAGA leave MAGA leaves its residue on the Republican Party because that's also what's happening is you see like the Vances and the Gnomes, all of them are also jockeying for what a post Trump world will look like. And for some of them it is not moving anywhere towards some kind of old school Republicanism. It's like gnome going out there being like, I told the President, we get every darn immigrant out of this country. So they're all kind of jockeying for the what the future will be. But right now it looks a lot like MAGA just without Trump.

[Tommy Vietor]

MTG says, I'm not maga, I'm America first.

[Jon Lovett]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

And that's an interesting and I do.

[Jon Lovett]

Think that's Going to be the split because MAGA is so identified with Trump and America first has overlap, but not the same. There's also plenty of MAGA infighting these days that doesn't involve Trump. Most recently, the feud that Candace Owens started by spreading some truly batshit conspiracies about Charlie Kirk's assassination. Owens has implied that Israel was involved in the murder, that French assassins hired by the Macrons were involved and are also now trying to kill her. That is what happened. And that. That Kirk was even, quote, betrayed by the leadership of Turning Point usa so far as to criticize Erica Kirk, his widow, for not responding to Candace's crazy conspiracy theories. So right wing influencers from Ben Shapiro to Nick Fuentes have gone hard at Candace over this. Erica Kirk herself has publicly and quite pointedly asked Candace Owens to stop. And on Sunday night, she announced that she would be meeting privately with Candace on Monday, and that, quote, public discussions, live streams and tweets are on hold until after this meeting. Boo. Tommy, thoughts on how much this insanity matters?

[Tommy Vietor]

I think MK Ultra made an appearance too.

[Jon Lovett]

Really?

[Tommy Vietor]

Actually, a few times, if we're being honest.

[Jon Favreau]

I think.

[Tommy Vietor]

I actually think this does matter. I think it gets at a couple things. First, it's like, how. How viable and effective is Turning Point USA going to be going forward? Because this is an organization that Charlie Kirk, whether you like him or you hate him, he built this thing based on his vision. He had a ton of big donors, but, like, he created an organization that was very impactful and his death created a vacuum. And it's not clear yet whether Erica Kirk can carry the mantle and keep it as politically powerful in part. In part because of these attacks. Then there's also just like, I think this infighting is just consuming the MAGA media world and they're not talking about whatever Trump wants to talk about, like how bad Democrats are, you know, the things he's doing. And the majority of it is Candace Owens. And for those who don't know, she was at tposa, then went to Prageru for a while, then was at the Daily Wire where they fired her for being anti Semitic. And now she's on her own and she does huge numbers. Like her. I looked at some of her recent live streams. They were getting like 1.5 million, 2 million people on YouTube. Yeah, she's regularly like a top 10 podcast. So like a ton of people watch the stuff and they believe it. And you're right, like, she was focused on Brigitte Macron being a man. Then she went to Charlie Kirk. Assassination world. Those two conspiracies converged at one point point and the French were behind both of them. But there was always an Israeli in there because you know, you got to work in some Jewish people somehow. But I do think like this has become like this all consuming thing and it's spiraling out of control. Like now there's like Tucker versus Nick Fuentes and Heritage versus Tucker and Tim Pool's mad and his beanies all askew because he's mad at Candace.

[Jon Lovett]

Do you guys know why the the French and Israelis are supposedly or supposedly were part of killing were in on killing Charlie Kirk and might now want to kill Candice?

[Tommy Vietor]

I think the French were trying to kill Candice to silence her about her Brigitte Macron conspiracy theory. And I think they took out Charlie to get to her. Was the suggestion.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, not also, but they're in cahoots with the people that work at Turning Point usa. I would just say, you know, whatever the cathedral of logic Candace is building, I'm not super interested in entering.

[Jon Lovett]

Not a strong foundation.

[Jon Favreau]

But I will say it like just, you know, J.D. vance is going on and on about, you know, how it's actually immigrants that are causing anti Semitism in this country. And then you see somebody like Candace Owens getting like kind of a million.

[Jon Lovett]

People watching calls coming from deep inside the house.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And just like this is like the, the most extreme voices, like there's the most extreme voices gain a bigger audience. But also being extreme either by self selection or by algorithm then exposes you to more extreme things. And all of that pulls you further and further online and more and more outside of the real world. Whether you're a content producer like Candace Owens or the President of the United States or a content receiver. And the end result, it's a bunch of people that are just sort of completely divorced from everyday life and that may get a lot of interesting eyeballs and get a lot of people that also maybe feel alienated. But also for everybody else you see, see a Candace something like who the fuck would believe that? Or you see JD Vance blame it all on sort of like an ethnic import like well, that doesn't comport with, with reality. Or Trump says this crazy thing about, about, about Rob Reiner. It's like God, what kind of a fucking maniac would say something like that? Well, it's people whose brains are broken by in one way or another the Internet.

[Tommy Vietor]

And Candace isn't just like for political obsessives. You know, it's not just like a show about politics like, she was really into the Justin Baldoni, Blake lively world. So, like, people who come for that stuff are then getting like the crazy French conspiracy theories, the tpusas of the right wing politics. So that's why she's got this really big reach and impact.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. Cultural entertainment on ramp to politics for Candace Owens.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And there's like, what's funny too, like, like they're all like this. There's one path that leads you to Candace Owens, but there is this sort of natural cycle with, with. With a bunch of different. Like if you start watching videos about the pyramids. The pyramids, you will eventually, it won't take too long. Get to videos about how the pyramids were built by aliens and actually it's tied to Atlantis. Like, there is a kind of natural honing that happens and it leads you down these paths to. Eventually you get to some kind.

[Tommy Vietor]

The Jews, usually them, usually us.

[Jon Lovett]

Where it ends up. So, interested to see how that meeting goes with Erica Kirk and Candace Owens. I'm sure we'll get a full readout and that the readout will be uncontested by both sides.

[Tommy Vietor]

Can you imagine how weird and uncomfortable this is? Like, look, Erica Kirk has been through hell. Her husband was assassinated on live tv. Now she has to go have a meeting with this person who is not subtly suggesting that she might have been behind it and is like, Candace, by the way, is not the only one who's just really attacking Erica Kirk in some pretty gross ways, too. So this has got to be, I don't know, just awful.

[Jon Favreau]

It also speaks to just like, how, like, this is a person that has gained a lot of influence in part because until they had the wrong enemies, they were embraced by a lot of figures on the right. Not a lot of people calling for big tete a tetes when they were going after the Macrons.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's right.

[Jon Lovett]

Right. That's right.

[Jon Favreau]

Positive.

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Jon Lovett]

So you may have missed it. We sure did. But the Democratic National Committee's annual winter meetings were held in LA on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Our invite got lost in the mail.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know.

[Jon Lovett]

Party leaders were here when you sat down with jb. Pritzker stopped by.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, we saw him on his way. He let us know he made a drop by.

[Jon Lovett]

Anyway, the party leaders were here and as Politico reported, quote, for the first time in a long time, the mood was warm. Optimism coursed through the hotel ballrooms.

[Tommy Vietor]

Wow.

[Jon Favreau]

Is that what that was?

[Jon Lovett]

Taking a hit of optimism?

[Tommy Vietor]

We got good weather out here.

[Jon Lovett]

What actual business is transacted at these meetings? I've never been clear to me.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know.

[Jon Lovett]

I think it's just go, you go, you mingle, you talk rules and bylaw votes.

[Tommy Vietor]

I don't know.

[Jon Favreau]

A couple land acknowledgments.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, everybody gets I was thinking about this. I don't think I've ever been to a DNC meeting. I don't know if that's a me problem. Just maybe my job.

[Jon Lovett]

I went once with Obama and like.

[Tommy Vietor]

Like, I might have gone to DC Random hotel.

[Jon Lovett]

When he was first thinking about running.

[Tommy Vietor]

That was, I don't know what else is going on.

[Jon Favreau]

When he was first thinking about breaking his promise.

[Jon Lovett]

Right. Anyway, the whole thing led to a predictable series of speculative stories. One was an Axios piece about how Kamala Harris, who spoke on Friday night, is, quote, working to keep another White House campaign viable based on the fact that she's trying out some new applause lines and extended her book tour. Another, also from Axios, featured anonymous advisors to potential 2028 contend, acknowledging that Gavin Newsom is the current frontrunner and discussing their plans to highlight his past scandals and paint him as too liberal. Ralph really feels like 2028 is kicking into high gear. What do you guys make of the Kamala story?

[Jon Favreau]

I would say it was pretty thin. The evidence that she's like the headline said, gearing up for a run, but the actual article said gearing up for keeping her options open to run. And then you got to think that if your goal was running for president, you would stop the. The book tour, not extend it. Based on, I think, the reaction to the book tour so far, which I don't think has been very good for her.

[Tommy Vietor]

So, yeah, the evidence in quotes was she added stops to her book tour. She went to a DNC meeting down the street from her house. Ken Martin made a quip that Doug could be the first gentleman someday, not just the second gentleman, and that there are some new lines in her stump speech. And so that's pretty thin. I'm imagining the narrative. If Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic Party nominee, refused to go to a DNC meeting in her hometown, it was my first thought, probably wouldn't. Pretty bad for her. Now, I'm not, like, trying to hate on Alex Thompson here because I do think there is a world where this kind of story gets written because a bunch of advisors are like, off the record. She's keeping her, you know, options open here, and he strings together a story kind of based on available evidence. That's politically kind of a smart thing to do, right? If you're, if people think you're running for president, you get invited to speak, people write down what you say in the newspaper. They talk about you on the Sunday shows. Now if, if I were an advisor to Kamala Harris, I would be like, ignore that crap. But let's figure out, like, let's lay the foundation for what you want to run on and do as president, because I still think that is lacking. Like, she was obviously put in a bad position by Joe Biden. Both, you know, with the record, but also with 107 days to run a campaign. But I think if you were to ask most voters, like, what would Kamala do? What's her big thing? Most of them would not know. And just to use an imperfect example, like, I worked for John Edwards in 2004, and then we ran against him.

[Jon Favreau]

We know a lot about his big thing.

[Tommy Vietor]

We know about his big thing was he decided to make 2008 about ending poverty, universal health care, attacking corporate power, and attacking, like, shitty trade deals. Like, he was, like, a populist before Bernie made it cool, and he was anti Washington. I think she needs to, like, fix this problem pretty quickly so that people know, like, oh, this is her identity. This is her lane, if she runs.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, the. The new rhetoric, that's. That she trotted out that they were treating as, like, kind of a big deal. It was. The quotes they used were like, both parties have failed to hold the public's trust. Harris said, people are done with the status quo, and they're ready to break things, to force change. We cannot afford to be nostalgic for a flawed system that failed so many. And that she added, arguing that President Trump is a, quote, symptom of a bigger problem.

[Tommy Vietor]

Imagine she read a speech from October 2024. What is she supposed to not add new lines?

[Jon Lovett]

Well, it's also just like. But this is why what you just said was really important, Tommy, is that, like, the Edwards stuff was, like, very specific poverty issue. You know, saying that both parties have failed to hold the public's trust is like a. All you need to do to say that is just reflect the current polling and punditry that's out there. It's like, the next question is, okay, then, what have the Democrats done to not hold the public's trust? Like, specifically, you know?

[Jake Tapper]

Right, right.

[Jon Favreau]

That's like. So, like, in that story, one of the. One of the proof points that she might run for president, she's going on Jimmy Kimmel this week. And if Jimmy Kimmel were to say, where's the Democratic Party gone wrong? Like, maybe she has a good answer. But to be honest, what I expect right now is just a word salad. That's what I would expect because I just have not seen her lay out any kind of a specific point of view.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, I was hoping for a little more. I listened to. I haven't listened to too many of her book events, but I listened to the one with Tim in Nashville. And it was just, you know, she's funny, got some good applause, but it was just like, you just want, like, okay, what's your. How do you see the country? Where do you see the country going? What do you care about right now? You know, I do think back to the piece. Like, one piece of evidence in the piece that I do think is legitimate is expanding the book tour to go to South Carolina and to. And she's been doing a lot of Southern states, and she talked about this on some other podcast, too, that she. They were going to go to, like, the regular cities that you go to on a bookstore, but she really wanted to go to a whole bunch of different places in the South. And I do think that is. That. That is her and her campaign being like, okay, she wants to be strong with the black vote. She's going to South Carolina thinking that it's still going to be in the early state lineup. So, you know, I guess that that warrants the piece to me, the South Carolina thing, but not as much the rhetoric that's smart or the meeting that's in her backyard when she shows up.

[Tommy Vietor]

At, like, a party dinner in New Hampshire, that's when I'll be like, okay.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, that's the big one. You guys think Newsom's earned the front runner spot in the ire of the contenders who think they're gonna take him down with his liberal record?

[Jon Favreau]

I'm on front runner. I would say he's done the most to like, make himself the anti Trump figure in the Democratic Party. I don't think anybody's done as much as him to kind of take that. That spot. And he's tried things that I think have not made him necessarily the person everybody thinks should be the candidate, but he's definitely assuaged a lot of. I think he's. I think there are a lot of people that were. That are or were skeptical of Gavin Newsom that are less skeptical today than they were a year ago.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I think he's done more to improve his image with the base of the Democratic Party than anyone else by a landslide. And some of it is, like, the tone and the tweets and kind of the silly stuff that people see on the Internet. But mostly it's his willingness to use the power he currently has as governor of California to advance the Democratic Party's interests and fight Trump. Like, the biggest piece of that is Prop 50 and redistricting. We would be fucked right now if not for getting those five seats. But Also, he was the highest ranking American official to go to the UN Cop meeting in Brazil a couple weeks back to talk about climate change. I think that was like a very savvy move. It was one that was planned about a year ago, I think, but it was great timing. Now, like, it hasn't all been smooth sailing, like the early days of the podcast rollout with Charlie Kirk, with Steve Bannon. Like, that didn't go over well, but he's course corrected and adjusted.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, they listed in the piece the different areas that opponents are thinking about in terms of how to make the case against him. And they have old scandals, they have French Laundry and that kind of stuff. I'm like, I don't expect that to be as effective for someone like him who has. First of all, it's the way the media information environment is now. But everyone knows about those scandals. He owns them, he talks about them. I think him doing the podcast and him just being out there so much, much like it did with Trump and many politicians since Trump, actually helps him get through that kind of stuff. I think the biggest weakness for me at least, is sort of the. He's a liberal from California. And I don't think this is necessarily specific to just Gavin Newsom himself. I think any governor of California for the last eight years is gonna have to answer for a lot of very, very liberal legislation, even if it's not their responsibility as governor. But it's just been through the legislature and it's been passed and there's this city ordinance and that, and he's gonna have to own the housing stuff and affordability and all that kind of stuff. And he's been good on a lot of it. But, like, your record are still your record. And, you know, hearing him defend it on Ezra's pod. He just sat down with Ezra Klein last week. He has answers for everything. But, you know, over the course of a campaign, I think that's gonna be the test for him whether he.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, you look at the contrast between like, so we would say Newsom, you have Pritzker, you have Josh Shapiro. Right. These are all sitting governors, potential presidential candidates, and they have just very different profiles. Josh Shapiro has just a much smaller one right now. And that's perhaps, maybe that's a political strategy. Maybe that's a consequence of governing a purple state in which you are working with a legislature that's much more divided. You have, I think, Pritzker, who comes from a liberal state, but has kind of defined a kind of smaller set of issues with which he's kind of picked some big fights with Trump. But I agree, like, I think it's funny because there's the attacks from the left that, oh, he's been bad on homeless people or that he's thrown trans people under the bus. And I do think he'll have an easier time talking about that than he will be, say, like, health care for undocumented people.

[Tommy Vietor]

I also sort of. I can't tell yet if it's going to be like you're voting with your heart or your head election.

[Jon Lovett]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

Like, 2008 was like people were fired up after 06. We felt good. We thought we could win. They voted with their hearts for Barack Obama, even with considerable kind of concerns about electability. 2020 was a vote with your head. Like, Joe Biden is the most electable. Let's get this guy in there. We gotta beat Trump. I don't know where the headspace we're all going to be in in 20, 27 and 8.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I guess you could argue that Obama won. Part of the reason he won the primary is he successfully prosecuted the electability argument against salary. Right. And Iowa. So, like, maybe it's. Maybe it'. Yeah, it's a good question. How was J.B. pritzker? I'm 10 minutes into that one. I haven't listened to the whole thing.

[Jon Favreau]

It was really interesting talking to Pritzker because I do just. He has a, like a. And I said this to his face. Like, if you would have told me that this was like a, like a. One of the richest human beings in America and the richest person in public office, like, that would be surprising because it's not how he carries himself. He has a much more. I don't know, like, just not what. What comes to mind. And, and I. It was an interesting conversation about how he does come from all this privilege, but that he was shaped by a lot of loss when he was a kid and the tension there. But there's a. He has something that I think a lot of Democrats don't have, which is a similar to Obama, which is a feeling like they could just walk away. Yeah, right. Like he doesn't have that. Like, I don't know. I've been planning this since I was seven years old kind of a thing.

[Jon Lovett]

Like if he loses, he'll just go to Vegas and.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Just push it all forward. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tommy Vietor]

I popped in the conference room when he was waiting there, just shot the shit for a minute about, like the Bears and Chicago weather and he just, he seems like a completely normal guy. He also looks like, to your point about being a very, very rich guy, but not reading that way. Like, even his suits look like a guy who has lost 20 pounds and not gone to a tailor. Right. Which is not a very rich guy move. Like normally you just get that stuff brought in, trim it up a bit.

[Jon Favreau]

But yeah, it was a good conversation. I think people should check it out. I mean, one thing he said that I thought was interesting just about the future of the Democratic Party was because we didn't have a primary in 2024, we really didn't get the vision shaping that would have happened if we were switching between candidates. And a midterm election usually just isn't that right? Like you might have a set of proposals you're all rallying behind, but for the most part it's a, it's an anti incumbent message. And so all of this sort of like, what do we stand for? We don't know what we stand for. Like, that is a real feeling people have. But in part it's just because we never had that big debate in which one person's vision becomes the thing we coalesce around.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah, that's right. All right, last thing before we get to Tommy's conversation with Jake Tapper. We all know the media business is in rough shape right now, especially the news business. Well, Jeff Bezos, Washington Post has decided to make a big bet on AI generated podcasts. Uh oh. Which the Post has dubbed, quote, your personal podcast in which users of the paper's mobile app can, quote, shape their own briefing, select their topics, set their lengths, pick their hosts, and soon even ask questions using our Ask the Post AI technology. End quote. The rollout's been a bit shaky, to put it mildly, with Semaphore's Max Tanny reporting that the paper's journalists are frustrated with the features, error riddled episodes and fictional quotes, and that the Post went live with it even after internal tests revealed that the AI generated scripts fail to pass editorial standards two thirds of the time. Gotta work out those kinks, huh?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, it's a lot of errors.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. This to me is a good example of a lot of times what we describe as the threat of AI is actually the threat of the people in charge of the AI. Because if you had a, if you had a journalist whose hit rate was 30%, you would say, oh, you got to go do some more practice. You got, we got it, you got to get some more reps. But we're going to put this on the website.

[Jon Lovett]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

But for whatever reason, because AI is this sort of magical future box somehow you're allowed to just sort of roll it out and hope for the best and put the word beta over the top and treat people to something that has like incredible inaccuracy rate and like AI can be a great tool, it can be a harmful tool, it can be a parasite. But this is people choosing to put AI out there into the world before it is ready, before it makes sense, before it is like worthy of the institution solution.

[Tommy Vietor]

OpenAI says join the club.

[Jake Tapper]

We're all doing.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, no, like I don't like what this idea means for me personally or for us at this table or crooked media. I love the idea behind the product. If I could be a subscriber to the New York Times or the Washington Post, tell it what I like and then every morning have a bespoke, I guess, AI generated podcast that kind of summarizes for me all the stories I would be most interested in. That is a really cool idea. Is that a podcast?

[Jon Favreau]

I don't know.

[Tommy Vietor]

It's more like a AI generated voice reading me an article which I think then you know, and that. And I. But like, and I love that by.

[Jon Favreau]

The way, that's actually a useful additional feature. Right. Because it's not something you would do. Right. They don't have somebody read.

[Jon Lovett]

But like well that's such lower lift from a technological standpoint. Right. Because you can't that up because it's just a voice reading the text.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, it's a, it's a fuzzy line. Now some of the errors they referenced were like mispronunciations which boy, if that's a problem, don't listen to my shows. But you know, it's a fuzzy line between like what's a podcast, what is AI, what is going to kind of eat into all of our brain share.

[Jake Tapper]

Right.

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean we were talking about this with Warner Brothers Discovery, like the way that you know, some of these companies now, like if you're Netflix, you view TikTok as your primary competitor because it's just about aggregate, you know, leisure time people have. And I worry about this for other podcast creators, but not right now.

[Jon Favreau]

But see, like I have a. Like I agree with you actually. Right. Like if you said that to me, like, oh, you know, I would love like for my 20 minute drive in the morning. Oh, there's like a 20 minute product. It walks me through the biggest stories of the day and helps me prep based on real journalism from real people that are being Paid that are working on the paper. That all makes sense to me. And then I think, well, if the daily didn't exist. Right, if the daily didn't exist, the New York Times made this. We think, oh, wow, that's a great product. But human beings, using their capacity for imagination, creativity, make a product that takes the dailies, the newspaper's product, like, work and makes something interesting and new and special. And I do worry about the shortcut of AI to synthesize and aggregate when often what is most needed is something you couldn't describe because someone creative had to invent it.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah. I think I think about it as I would tell myself that this would be great. And I'd want to listen to my 20 minutes of vegetables, which is like, gonna get the news of the day and just the news. But in practice, when I got in the car, I'd still want to hear. Hear people joking around about the news and just talking like humans about it, having a conversation than just hear the reading of the news.

[Tommy Vietor]

Hey, fingers crossed.

[Jon Lovett]

Voice. No, like, I was just thinking about.

[Tommy Vietor]

It because I'm like, we have value.

[Jon Lovett]

Right? Like the random AI voice that's just spouting out, knowing it's AI versus like Jane doing what a day, you know, on my commute. It's like, that's not a competition.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. And it's all. But also too like all of these AI, this kind of an AI product is predicated on a world in which most things are made by people. And this is a synthesis of that human work. Right.

[Jon Lovett]

You still need the journalists at some point.

[Jon Favreau]

That's what I mean. It's the like.

[Tommy Vietor]

Which is good news. Right.

[Jon Lovett]

For now.

[Jon Favreau]

But that's why it's about. It's about what the people are making and not what the computer is doing. It's the tool user, not the tool. A lot of the time.

[Jon Lovett]

Get back to work. Jeff Bezos. Yeah, he's a tool, all right. When we come back.

[Jon Favreau]

Welcome back.

[Jon Lovett]

Tommy's conversation with Jake Tapper.

[Tommy Vietor]

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[Tommy Vietor]

Joining me today is CN's lead DC anchor and chief Washington correspondent and the author of the new book which I'm holding up right here for our YouTube viewers. Race against Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the dawn of the Forever War. Jake Tapper. Welcome back to the pod, buddy. Good to see you.

[Jake Tapper]

It's great to be here. Great to see you again. Please send my regards to all the others favs and love it or leave it. Fife and all the others.

[Tommy Vietor]

Tell everybody hello and congrats on the book. By the way, I was texting you yesterday that it's fascinating. It's an amazing story. And it deeply triggered me because it brought me back to all these, like, incredibly important and contentious counterterrorism debates from the early Obama days that I want to get into in just a minute. But first I have to ask you about, yes, the corporate media elephant in the room. Paramount and Netflix are waging a battle to buy Warner Brothers discovery. CNN's fate will be determined by that process in some form or fashion. President Trump weighed in on all of this the other day. Here's a clip.

[Jake Tapper]

I just think that the people that have run CNN into the ground, by the way, nobody watches. Very few people watch. I don't think they should be entrusted with running CNN any longer. So I think any deal should, it should be guaranteed and certain that CNN is part of it or sold separately. But I don't think the people that are running that company right now and running cnn, which is a very dishonest group of people, I don't think that should be allowed to continue. I think CNN should be sold along.

[Tommy Vietor]

With everything else, typically kind and generous media criticism from our president. So, Jake, I know you can't comment on merger talks, but I'm just curious what it's like for you and your team and everybody in the newsroom who are used to covering the story to now be a part of the story.

[Jake Tapper]

Well, let me just bring it back to a moment that I'm sure you remember. In October 2009, when the Obama White House was declaring Fox News not a legitimate news organization. And I, in a gaggle, asked White House communications director, or was he press secretary, press secretary Robert Gibbs, why is it appropriate for any White House to say any credentialed media organization is not legitimate? And I got, and still get to this day, a lot of crap from the left about that. As if I'm defending fox, which I'm not. I'm defending the principle of should a White House be not criticizing a story or criticizing a particular anchor or whatever, but just labeling an entire media organization not legitimate? And what that was, and I think it was just a Anita Dunn and Robert Gibbs, I think Anita was the communications director at the time, is so small compared to what President Trump is currently doing in terms of not only labeling one channel fake news or illegitimate or whatever, but like everyone except for the most flattering, obsequious channels and coverage and now weighing in on a potential.

[Jon Lovett]

Merger.

[Jake Tapper]

That his Justice Department and the FCC and others are supposed to objectively assess. I don't think the FCC has a role if it's what Netflix wants to do. Because the FCC doesn't cover Netflix and Netflix is buying studios and a streamer, not, not any tv. But be that as it may, it's just all unprecedented. And as with everything in this era where President Trump says and does things that would cause huge outcry from Republicans and conservative media if it were done by Obama or Biden or whatever, President whoever, Newsom, aoc, whatever, these precedents are being set. And it's like, speak now. You know, as they say at weddings, speak now or forever hold your peace. Like, this is the time for conservatives to say that's not appropriate. It's not appropriate for a president to put his thumb on the scale. And just in terms of our coverage, what is dishonest? What specifically is dishonest?

[Tommy Vietor]

That Daniel Dale guy.

[Jake Tapper]

Like, honestly, as we know, President Trump thinks that coverage that isn't flattering is fake. He's all he has said before in the past that polls that show him trailing are fake. So I, I, you know, I, it's, it's never fun to be the story. That's not what we like to do. We like to cover stories, not be part of the story. But I, I mean, I just think it's all. And one other thing, I'll just say, Tommy, is that the Paramount deal, for people who don't understand Netflix is just trying to buy the studios and the streamer. They're not trying to buy the cable news channels. We would be spun off into our own thing called Discovery Global. But Paramount wants to buy everything. That's why President Trump wants that, because he wants new management at cnn, Paramount that is doing the deal that President Trump presumably is in favor of. Their money is not just their money. It is also coming from the President's son in law, Jared Kushner. Jared Kushner. And perhaps most alarmingly, the Saudis Public.

[Tommy Vietor]

Investment Fund and the Emiratis and the Qataris. Yep.

[Jake Tapper]

Yeah. And I, you know, you could talk about foreign ownership and that's one subject. But beyond that, I mean, it is interesting because conservatives have for years been decrying Al Jazeera as like terrorist news because they're out of Qatar and et cetera, et cetera, Qatari money to buy cnn. Nobody has a word of objection on the right. But beyond that, we know what mbs, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, thinks about independent journalism or critical journalism because he has had a journalist killed according to the CIA.

[Jon Lovett]

Not a big fan.

[Jake Tapper]

Killed. Yeah. Jamal Khashoggi. So, so all of this, this is a longer answer than you Wanted. All of this is part of this situation. And again, to my friends on the right, speak now or forever hold your peace. Because like everything I've ever seen covering politics is a president gets a new toy of an expanded presidential power and the next president takes it and goes wild. Bush did drones. Obama went crazy with drones. Now Trump is using the same justification to go after drug traffickers. It's all just, it keeps going and going and going and going and going. So, I mean, I don't want to get into the, you know, the drones, obviously, for.

[Tommy Vietor]

We'll get there. We'll get there in a minute. Anyway, I want to ask you about drones and I. Look, I agree with you. And by the way, Jared Kushner, I think he's got like $5 billion under management at his firm, Affinity Partners. I think 99% of it is from foreign entities, all the same ones you just mentioned. So he's just a pass through for them.

[Jon Lovett]

He's.

[Tommy Vietor]

He gets to invest their money in an investment these sovereign wealth funds would already be in and then takes a fee. So why is he there? Clearly there's someone thinks he's one way to grease this deal and get the political support they need from the administration to make it.

[Jake Tapper]

And I should note that Paramount says that they would be non governing partners. That presumes that the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Qataris are giving $24 billion out of the goodness of their hearts. They don't want to impact whether or not I can say in a broadcast that is seen internationally that MBS ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. According to the CIA, they, they have no opinion on that. They, they want to give $24 billion. And they don't want to prevent me from saying that, which is true. According to the CIA, MbS had Jamal Khashoggi, an American resident, killed and butchered. Like, okay, you can believe that if you want.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. You know, I find it very unlikely that any sovereign wealth fund is going to spend $24 billion without. Or, sorry, or $12 million, whatever it is, without some sort of string attached. But you're right. Look, it's unprecedented times with this merger, unprecedented times, even before this for the media generally. I want to ask you about some of that. I mean, back in October, the Pentagon press corps essentially just staged a walkout of the building because Pete Hegseth and his team, the Secretary of Defense, demanded that they sign some document outlining this whole series of new rules, including one that basically prohibited the act of reporting could you just help listeners understand the impact of a policy like that on a journalist like yourself kind of day to day?

[Jake Tapper]

So I did a vertical video that lays out in detail what exactly this list was, this list of demands. But basically it was opening the door to the Pentagon being able to label a journalist who reports anything they don't like, a security risk. And it would criminalize not just the handing over by anybody in the Pentagon of classified information, but basically anything, any information not a public, not previously approved by the Pentagon. And I mean, one of the things that's. There are two things that are very interesting about this. One, they have replaced all those actual journalists with a bunch of sycophantic partisans who are just there to make Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump look good, which is not what journalism is. And second of all, this move and like, if you listen to what Hegseth says and his spokesperson, Sean Parnell, they're saying, oh, we, we need to do this to prevent classified information from being reported, which makes us weaker, et cetera, et cetera. Pete Hegseth, the inspector general of the Pentagon, said that his disclosure of pending attack information literally put pilots at risk. That's what the inspector general report that he said, you know, completely exonerated him, which it did not. That's what it did. So, like, if he can point to something that we in the media irresponsibly shared that put pilots at risk, I'd love to see it. But I can point to something that he did that put pilots at risk. So it's all just, again, I hope that the people on the right who are accepting this are excited for, you know, the next Democratic press secretary of the Pentagon to do the same thing.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

Like, only allow in the most sycophantic coverage. And yes, of course, that means that, you know, whatever. Mike Lindell Media, MyPillow Media leaves and like, we get in some, like, left wing version of the same thing.

[Tommy Vietor]

Sign me up, baby, I'll be there. I'm just kidding.

[Jake Tapper]

Are they even good pillows? Is my.

[Tommy Vietor]

I don't know if they're good pillows.

[Jake Tapper]

No.

[Tommy Vietor]

But what is kind of, I find funny about this in the near term, Jake, is that all these, this, like, sycophantic group of influencers went to the Pentagon. They all took photos from the same Cuban cubicle and said it was like some Washington Dan Lamont at the Washington Post cubicle. But they were doing this. They were doing this, like, preening right at the moment when the actual Pentagon press corps was breaking blockbuster Stories about these boat strikes off the coast of Venezuela. So these. These guys look like complete fucking idiots. Now, in the long term, we don't really know exactly how bad these restrictions will be for Pentagon reporters. Does it mean they won't be allowed in the building? Will they not be allowed to travel with the Secretary of defense? Will they not be allowed in military installations around the world? Will they not be allowed to cover international conferences, you know, the Munich security Forum or like, whatever? So I think over time, it really will sort of erode and chip away at their ability to do the job. It's a big deal.

[Jake Tapper]

So I will just say just to toot my own horn in CNN zone. Horn. Last week, a reporter named Zach Cohen and I, CNN reporter Zach Cohen and I, we broke the story of what was in the inspector general report about Hegseth a day before it was. Was released.

[Tommy Vietor]

Over Signal gate.

[Jake Tapper]

Yeah, for signal gate. And, you know, and that was just a clean kill. We just, you know, whatever. And there's not one of those people in the Pentagon press corps or whatever they are. The Pentagon fluffers. Yeah. Not one of them even came close to, you know, and that whether you like Hegseth or not, that is news. Let's say you love Pete Hegseth, you know.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yep.

[Jake Tapper]

And you wanted to put the nicest spin on it you could, you know, know, like Hegseth did, like. But the point is they didn't even do that because they can't even do that because they're not breaking any stories.

[Tommy Vietor]

They're not journalists. I mean, there also have been some kind of less draconian but impactful changes to media access at the White House. The short version is, you know, the media. The White House changed the process for deciding who attends these smaller events. They're called pooled press events now. More often than not, you have, like, events at the Oval Office includes a bunch of more sycophantic, kind of overly partisan questioners. Dudes like Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend. What do you think the impact of those changes has been over the last several months?

[Jake Tapper]

I have less of an issue of expanding the press pool to include new media, quote, unquote. I mean, people want to ask. This doesn't outrage me. I have seen good journalism in unlikely places. I have seen good journalism in partisan places. I mean, the Free Beacon and the Daily Caller and I mean, there are a bunch of right wing sites that I've read actual breaking news stories in. So that doesn't concern me. I know a lot of them were already Part of the press pool and had been added during the Obama years. But beyond that doesn't. It's the exclusion of people that bothers me more than the inclusion.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, like stripping out the wires, preventing the AP from entering the Oval Office for months and months, stuff like that.

[Jake Tapper]

Look, Caroline Levitt, whatever people think about her, she does. And President Trump, whatever people think about him, they take questions from the legacy media. They do. And so if they want to expand the circle, that doesn't really bother me. It's the exclusion that bothers me. Look, when you see Secretary Haig says, or Attorney General Bondi, they only do interviews, generally speaking. There are a couple exceptions here and there, but let's just stick with Hegseth. Secretary Hegseth. I've only seen him taking questions from Fox, period. He doesn't, like, do press conferences, generally speaking. And when he does an interview, it's only with Fox. To me, that doesn't demonstrate strength. To me, that doesn't demonstrate confidence. If I only agreed to do interviews with Pro Jake people on a book tour, then that would, I think, be indicative of me being scared.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, it's literally his former employer, too. It looks ridiculous. All right, Jake. So the book is called I got it right here. Race Against Terror. You trace the story of the prosecution of this one Al Qaeda terrorist and what it tells us about the broader war on terror. I want to dig into this, but can you just start, like, how'd you find this story? How'd you get onto this beat?

[Jake Tapper]

So I hadn't written a nonfiction book in a while. I wrote the Outpost about Afghanistan. It came out in 2012. I'm sure you remember. I keep alluding to this, but I was the White House correspondent for ABC News in Obama's first term, and Tommy was the National Security Council spokesman. So, like said I, I just for people who don't know. So I would deal with Tommy and favs and everybody else. And so I wrote the outpost in 2012, as you remember. And I hadn't written that book was so meaningful to me, and it was such a powerful experience. There was just nothing that interested me as much. And that book, I was inspired by the fact that my son Jack, who's now 16, he had been born Oct. 2, 2009. And the outpost that I wrote about had the deadly attack with 400 insurgents attacking 50American soldiers the next day, October 3, 2009. And there was something profound in the moment of holding my son and watching TV and hearing about eight American sons taken from this earth that set Me on this path to try to find out what happened. Fast forward to Jack's 13th birthday in 2022. We're out doing paintball.

[Jon Lovett]

Nice.

[Tommy Vietor]

You'll smoke a teenager. No.

[Jake Tapper]

I had, in previous years participated, but then one time I shot one of his kid, one of his friends, and the kid got really upset.

[Jon Lovett]

I stopped participating.

[Tommy Vietor]

That's good advice for me.

[Jake Tapper]

Yeah, just don't let your little boy just play. Do not get involved. Got it. Because, yeah, that was very controversial. So the kid's fine. Just anybody out there worried about it.

[Tommy Vietor]

It was paintball.

[Jake Tapper]

It was not actual shooting. But he did. You know, he did one of this kid, you know, he thought I was too close. Anyway, so I'm having this paintball party. It's October 2022. And because it's so far away, I had, like, refreshments and pizza for the grownups as well as the kids. So the grownups could just come drop their kid off, hang out for a couple hours, then leave instead of having.

[Tommy Vietor]

To drive all the way back and.

[Jake Tapper]

Forth, back and forth. And one of the dads comes up to me, and he starts talking to me, and he says, hey, I know so and so from the outpost. I said, oh, great. And I said, but that book was really tough to write because the Pentagon keeps such shitty records and they're so reluctant to share anything. And he said, tell me about it. And then he starts telling me this incredible story. He's an assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn. He gets a phone call. It's 2011. It's during the Arab Spring. And on one of these refugee boats full of Tunisians and Libyans is this guy who walks up to an Italian who is in charge of the boat and asks for water. The guy notices he has a bullet scar and says, how'd you get that? He said, I got it fighting Americans in Afghanistan. I'm with Al Qaeda. And they detain him. And then they call the Americans and say, have you ever heard of this guy? He claims he's killed Americans in Afghanistan. And they call the FBI, and the FBI calls this dad that I'm talking to at this party, Dave Bitchower. And Dave Bitchower Power tells me this incredible story about they fly there. They hear his confession in Italy. And then, because it's the Obama era and Gitmo is not taking in any new people, and the Italians wouldn't have turned him over anyway at that point, Europe was just so fed up with how the Americans were doing the war on terror, they wouldn't turn over anybody if they were going to Gitmo or doing a military or going to be subject to a military tribunal.

[Jon Favreau]

Criminal.

[Jake Tapper]

So the only option was take him and prosecute him in the US In a criminal court, which is what Obama wanted to do. He wanted to try terrorists in criminal courts. And this was a big sticking point. And anyway, they had to prove this case. That's the thing. And so the story that Bitkower told me was all about the sleuthing, all about, like, how do we prove this? How do we prove that this guy who claims he killed Americans in Afghanistan in, like, in the early days of the war on terror, 2002, 2003, how do we prove that he did this? And he just told me this unbelievable story about the clues and the evidence, and then that's how this book came about. I just thought it was just fascinating story. It ended up also being about the war on terror, from Bush to Obama to Trump. And what are the best tools? Is it good to the. Is it, you know, criminal court's the best place or whatever. And also allowed me to revisit this era of, you know, that I had covered. But when you're in the middle of it, you don't see it as clearly as, you know, 10 years later, which is why you got so mad when you were reading the book about, like, the. The response from the public, not just Republicans, the public to, you want. You want to bring terrorists to the country to prosecute them. The response was as if they were like, superhuman, and we're going to bust out of prison and kill everybody with lasers coming out of their fingers. And I had completely forgotten all that.

[Tommy Vietor]

We lost our fucking minds. This is such an important topic, I think. First of all, let's talk about this question of whether the courts, the Article 3 courts, the US judicial system, can be used as a tool to prosecute terrorists. Because for a long time it was. And then, then Republicans just demagogue the shit out of it. And now it's kind of like off the table. Because just again, just to wind back the tape, you kind of alluded to this initially. Obama comes in and makes this big decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other nine, 11 hijackers in a court in New York. And there's a huge political blowback. There's the kind of. There's legitimate security risks, there's legitimate fear, but there's a lot of just like, kind of insanity. Like you were saying that, Jake. Like, these guys are like. Like, you literally get a bust out of a prison and kill people in Manhattan and ultimately Obama was forced to shift the trial from the US court systems to a military commission at Gitmo in 2011 because the writing was just on the political wall. And so you and I are talking today, December 11, 2025. KSM hasn't even gone to trial yet. No, these cases are still struck and they're, they're in pre trial proceedings still. There's no end of those pre trial proceedings in sight. And you. And yet, Jake, there's no like discussion about this or political fallout over a decision that delayed justice for these individuals and for everyone impacted by 9 11. And it's just kind of like not discussed.

[Jake Tapper]

Yeah, no, I agree. One of the reasons that this happened and this book, I mean again, one of the things that was interesting about writing this book is just like you really get a sense of just the unrelenting nature of terror, terrorism. Just like, because it's like, oh, and then this guy happened and then, then Zazi was going to blow up the subways and then, you know, and it's just like, man, to be in charge of protecting Americans, whether Bush or Obama or Trump, like, what a weight on you to like, have to like constantly, like all they have to. They only have to succeed once. Right. So one of the cases that I had completely forgotten had to do with a guy named Galani. This is in the book. Galani was the first and I believe to this day only terrorist from Gitmo tried in a criminal court. He was the only one taken from Gitmo tried in a criminal court. He was picked up after 9 11. He was tried for his role in the 1998 embassy bombings. And what happened during that trial was that the judge excluded the key witness because the prosecutors had only learned about his name from Galani being tortured by the CIA.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right, right.

[Jake Tapper]

Or enhanced interrogation, whatever people want to call it. I just, I'm just using torture colloquially.

[Tommy Vietor]

It was torture.

[Jake Tapper]

So, yeah, so that eliminated a witness. And so that jury In Manhattan, then US Attorney Preet Bharara under Obama, acquitted Ghulani of 284 out of 285 charges. They convicted him on one. And so he did go to prison. But the idea that he almost walked scared the shit out of everybody in the Obama administration and the Justice Department and you know, whatever in the national security apparatus, they thought, thought, oh my God, this has real consequences. And that was one of the most instrumental actions or happenings in terms of why the Gitmo is still open and those guys still haven't gone to Trial.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. And just bigger picture. I mean, the book reminded me of those early years, the Obama administration, and.

[Jon Lovett]

How terrifying it was.

[Tommy Vietor]

Look, there's a lot of commentary now about, about drone strikes. There's criticism of them, especially the volume of drone strikes. And a lot of that I frankly agree with. But I also think that people do forget, like you said, how many very serious terrorist incidents or near misses there were during that time. For example, there was 2009. There was the Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who only because of user error, basically failed to bring down a plane over Detroit. There were the tempted subway bombings that you mentioned. There was Najibullazazi and his buddies. We're going to blow up the subway. There was the Times Square.

[Jake Tapper]

They just chickened out.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, they just. By the way, I think we were following them, right? That, yes, FBI was following them and.

[Jake Tapper]

But then somebody screwed up on the George Washington Bridge and let him in and let him go and then he disappeared in Manhattan. And like, if he, he, he could have done what he was going to do and blow up these subways, him and his two accomplices, at the end of the day, they just got spooked and went back to Denver.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yep. It was the near miss disaster. There was a Times Square guy, Faisal Shazad had, which is similar. Like, see something, say something. Right? Like that. Some, like, you know, someone being very vendor. Yeah, Vendor. Was like, hey, this looks weird. Call the cops. And so I bring that up, Jake, because like, again, when I look back at the totality of the war on terror, it is an, A catastrophic failure, abject failure. Right. The Taliban are running Afghanistan. Al Qaeda's not defeated, not even close. It's in more places that just change its name and metastasize. Right. But there also hasn't been another 9 11. Yeah, I don't know.

[Jake Tapper]

You can say it's a total thing.

[Tommy Vietor]

This is the nuance I want to get is like, there hasn't been another 9 11. Right. There aren't as many near misses. And you have to at least partly credit counterterrorism efforts, including drones and other military efforts for that. So I like, what, what, what did you, where did you land on, you know, kind of the War on Terror's efficacy after writing this?

[Jake Tapper]

Well, the good news is, as a journalist, I don't actually have to land anywhere. I could just like, report what's true.

[Jon Lovett]

What did you.

[Jake Tapper]

But I will say this. First of all, it's funny that you talk about wanting to remind people of how terrifying it was because I was thinking about this interview last night in bed and I was thinking about. I should confess how terrified I was after 9 11.

[Tommy Vietor]

Me too.

[Jake Tapper]

Because. Unless you. Because a lot of your listeners are either too young. Well, yeah, a lot of your listeners are too young to remember 911 or even have been alive during 9 11. And let me just say, like, I remember having a con A. I remember having lunch with my girlfriend at the time, Sarah Feinberg, who you know, and Mike Feldman, who you know. And I remember, like, I was just a complete nihilist. Like a month or 2 After 9 11. I was just like, what's the point? We're all gonna die anyway.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

Like, I. The. It was a traumatic event for the American people.

[Tommy Vietor]

My dad worked at a company called Marsh McLennan. They were on like, the hundredth floor of the second tower. I think they lost 358 employees. Thank God my father wasn't there. He wasn't one. I don't think he even worked in that building. But it, like, you know, I was still one of those kids walking around campus, like, trying to figure out what the. Was going on. Not able to reach anybody. Absolutely.

[Jake Tapper]

Are you a Kenyan at that time?

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I was in Kenya. I was sitting in the middle of Ohio. Like, boy, I've never been happier to be in the middle of nowhere in like, rural Ohio. Right. But.

[Jake Tapper]

But yeah, I mean, I was here. I was here in D.C. and we were being attacked.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

I mean, it was crazy. So, like, I just. The only reason I say this is because people need to. It's such an important part of this story, how scared everybody was. And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. I mean, like, people in the middle of, like, Kansas were convinced that Al Qaeda was going to come and poison their water supply. Like, it was so traumatic. I mean, I imagine it must have been. What, like Pearl harbor was like, just like, oh, my God, like, we're not.

[Tommy Vietor]

Safe or Israel after October 7th. Right. Like, try to put yourself in their shoes.

[Jake Tapper]

Yeah, exactly. So that's an important part of it. So to. To. I don't want to belittle how scared people were by the idea of bringing terrorists to the United States. It's just that we're. We have. It's just different now. Like, Trump, to his credit, although I don't even know if he knows the debate about this, but, like, they are going. They are trying to try the second foreign terrorist in a criminal court for killing US Service members abroad. Jafar is this Pakistani who's part of isis. Khorasan, who was part of the Abbey gate bombing in 2021. And he and Trump announced during the address to the joint session of Congress that Jafar is coming to the United States.

[Jon Lovett]

He's here.

[Jake Tapper]

He's in Virginia. He's a few miles away from me. And he's going to be tried in a criminal court. I know. I don't know whether Trump and Sebastian Gorka and all the others know that this was a very controversial thing to do. If they had tried to do it.

[Tommy Vietor]

In 2011, oh, God, Lindsey Graham would have lit himself on fire in front of the White House.

[Jake Tapper]

Yes, exactly. I mean, like, people. Not just Lindsey Graham, Chuck Schumer, Michael Bloomberg, like, people were scared. So that is, you know, that's an important part of. Of this story, I think.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, I totally agree.

[Jake Tapper]

So where did I land? I landed that well. I don't actually have to have a position. Is the truth. Like, is it better to do the military tribunals? Is it better to do criminal court? I mean, I guess, you know, if. If the case can be tried in criminal court, those have. Those cases have proved effective. More than 300 terrorists have been convicted and put in prison. And hypothetically, if spin ghoul, this particular terrorist that I write about, if he had been picked up in 2007 instead of 2011 and he had been sent to Gitmo, what do I think would have happened? I mean, it's. It's. You know, it's entirely speculative, but I think it's entirely possible that he would have been freed, because after a while, in the effort to clear Gitmo, somebody would have said, well, we don't have any evidence. He just confessed to this, that we don't. We have nothing. And since there wouldn't have been the investigation that the U.S. attorney's office in the Eastern District of New York did, and all the sleuthing that I write about in the book, maybe they would have let him free, and then maybe he would have gone and killed as many Americans as possible, which is his life's goal.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right.

[Jake Tapper]

So I don't know. But there's also the problem that war is not law enforcement, and the merging or the morphing or the blending or whatever, that's where. I mean, it's not crazy that the Bush people came up with, you know, enemy combatants and everything they did. Like, it's not. It's not out of nowhere, you know, this. This is all of a sudden, like, it's. It's not. They're waging war on Us in a way that is not. They don't abide by the laws of warfare. So how are we supposed to address it? Is it a criminal? Do we come up with new case law? I mean, I understand why it all happened. Yeah. I just think at the end of the day, like, it was effective to lock up, spin, gool and try him in a criminal court.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah. Look, I have empathy for the fear. I have empathy for how hard the choices are. I just, like, I find the politics of it so frustrating because, like, there's just decades and decades of, like, established case law and processes for trying and, and putting in jail.

[Jake Tapper]

Terrorists demagoguery is the thing also. It's like when you, with anything that we do in the media or any questions anybody has on Capitol Hill about whether, you know, this extrajudicial killing of drug dealers, drug traffickers, or, you know, which Trump is calling narco terrorists is legal or right or effective immediately, the argument, like, you're on the side of the terrorists, like, it's juvenile. Charles Cook, who writes for the National Review, wrote an entire column about this. Like, it was very clever and very well done. But, yes, I'm on the side of the drug dealers.

[Jon Lovett]

Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

You know, it's just along those lines. I mean, come on, can we be adults here for a second?

[Tommy Vietor]

It's absurd. And so, like, you know, to these bigger points, I mean, look, I think a lot of Trump's appeal in both elections was he ran against the Iraq war, he ran against nation building abroad, he ran against regime change wars abroad, and like the mysterious stakes from the war on terror. But now, as you said, the administration is murdering people in boats off the coast of Venezuela.

[Jake Tapper]

Well, I didn't say they were murdered.

[Tommy Vietor]

I said they were murdering people. There's this slow moving regime change campaign to push out Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, that included. We're talking on again, Wednesday, December 11, on Tuesday, the day before, US Special Forces, like, captured a tanker off the coast of Venezuela. And I just keep watching this news. I'm like, what is happening here? Like, who is driving this? What are the Republicans you talk to say about this sudden, like, thirst for, I don't know, this new Monroe Doctrine in Latin America, where I guess we're just the emperor of all these countries.

[Jake Tapper]

So I don't know that the seizure of the oil tanker belongs in the same bucket because Beth Sanner, who used to as, you know, pretty straight shooter, who used to work in the director of National Intelligence office, I think she was deputy.

[Jon Lovett]

Deputy.

[Jake Tapper]

She was on my show yesterday and she said that she really just sees that seizure in the same light that she sees other seizures of other oil tankers in countries that are sanctioned by the United States, whether it's the Iranians or others. And apparently this operation, they had a warrant that there was actually.

[Tommy Vietor]

They papered it, right? Look, they did some things. I texted some friends who worked on Venezuela policy, and I was like, how is this not an act of work? And they were like, well, you know, actually, it wasn't coming into the port. It was leaving. So they're not blockading the country. No one knows where the vessel is flagged. So there's all these, like, technical ways.

[Jake Tapper]

It didn't have the Venezuelan flag, which is a law. Law of sea. You have to have the. You have to be flagged. And. But in practice, it's a ghost ship. Like, I mean.

[Jon Favreau]

Right?

[Tommy Vietor]

I mean, but I mean, the US Just stole a Venezuelan tanker, right? Like, full. At least full of Venezuelan oil.

[Jake Tapper]

Okay, not to justify it, but I think that this has been done in previous administrations, including Democratic administrations, not a Venezuel, but of Iranian tankers. And I think that. Again, I'm not justifying it, but I do think that there is, as you say, they papered it. There is. There is a legal argument. It wasn't just, like, out of nowhere. So. But that said, let's. So let me just differentiate that. Let's just remove that for one second. And again, I'm not. I'm not defending it. I'm just saying, like, I think it's different, the idea of what the United States is doing when it comes to attacking, killing individuals on these boats. First of all, we should make it clear neither of us are in favor of drug traffickers. And neither of us think that, like, members of drug cartels are good people. But that said, like, these people on the boats, this is not El Chapo. These are not like the brain trust. These are not the. This is not the commander. It's not the general, it's not the colonel, it's not the major. These are the private. These are the people at the bottom of the totem pole that you put in a boat and you send them to, like, go to Suriname and drop off all this cocaine.

[Tommy Vietor]

Fishermen doing another job often.

[Jake Tapper]

And the cocaine is important also, because what's killing Americans is, by and large, opioids, which we make ourselves, and fentanyl, which is basically the ingredients, are coming from China, and they're not going to Venezuela. So, you know, when you ask Republicans about this, they're likely to say it's all. All fungible, it's all drug lords, it's all the same thing. But this idea that the only reason why it's significant, beyond the conceptual idea of, well, they're all drug lords and all drugs are bad, is because the argument, the legal argument is for all the strikes, forget the second strike, the double tap or whatever, for all the strikes, the legal argument is they are killing Americans with drugs, therefore they're terrorists, and therefore we can kill them.

[Tommy Vietor]

Right. They're attacking us.

[Jake Tapper]

And obviously. Yeah. And, you know, you can have tremendous sympathy and think that we should be doing more about the war on drugs, et cetera, et cetera, and also say, it's not really the same thing as 9 11, is it?

[Tommy Vietor]

No, it's insane. The whole policy is insane and illegal.

[Jake Tapper]

And by the way, it's not the cocaine, Right? It's not the cocaine that is killing people in the thousands. It's the fence.

[Tommy Vietor]

I just. I think that someone is going to get prosecuted for this. It probably won't be Hegseth or people at the top, because Trump will pardon them, but Hegseth in that team is putting US Service members in the position of committing, like, daily war crimes. And it's awful, and it's just hard to watch. Final question for you, Jake. Your last book, Original Sin, which you wrote with Alex Thompson from Axios, made a lot of waves. It was about President Biden, his age and decline, and the ways that people around him prevent the disclosure of that decline. I've noticed that the Biden people did.

[Jake Tapper]

Some of your fellow podcasters were in the book. Yeah, Favreau was a. Was a. Was a character who weighed in, seeing some of that debilitated.

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh, I was at that event. Yeah, I was at that event, too. It was rough. So I have noticed the Biden people didn't love your book. Biden's offenders didn't love your book. I've noticed that every time, like, Donald Trump stumbles or slips up or falls asleep, you often get attacked and kind of tagged in these tweets. Sometimes they tag me because they associate us as friends or us, you know, because Pod America said the debate went badly for Biden, we're bad now. How do you think the media is handling kind of these growing instances of Trump falling asleep in meetings or maybe seeming like he's losing a step? Like, when is it a critical mass that it becomes bookworthy? Right. For example.

[Jake Tapper]

So. So it's a great question. I mean, we cover it all the time on my show. All the time. And I think that is. That is to a large degree, because we saw what happened with Biden, and while we covered it, we didn't cover it. Maybe we didn't ask as many questions as we should have at the time. And I think it is a legitimate question for any president of any age, but particularly anybody who is, like, in the range of being an optogeneric. Right. We cover it all the time. Now. I didn't write a book about Joe Biden's missteps, Alex. And I wrote a book about an unprecedented event happening, which was Joe Biden having such a horrible performance at a presidential debate where his only job was to convince people he was up to the task of being president for another four years, his performance being so bad that people thought, oh, my God, should he drop out of the race, his not being able to do anything to disprove him. Which is like a really important part of this, because we're all sympathetic to the idea that anybody in public life can have a bad day, a bad performance, especially if you're tired. The question wasn't even about the performance of the debate, although it was unprecedentedly horrible. It was that he wasn't able to go out anytime in the following week and make any Democrats feel, or sufficient numbers of Democrats feel better that he could do this job. And frankly, I understand that there are a lot of people out there who think I would take President Biden in a coma over Donald Trump.

[Tommy Vietor]

Count me.

[Jake Tapper]

In my opinion, I understand that, first of all, it's not up to individual people who already love Biden. It was up to a bunch of swing voters in, like, seven key states.

[Tommy Vietor]

States.

[Jake Tapper]

And they didn't feel that way. But beyond that, I don't know anybody who thinks that he could be president right now and all the way through 2029 in his current state. If you see him speak, if you see him walking, like, I feel bad for him.

[Tommy Vietor]

Oh, he's fighting cancer, too. Yeah. He's got some real bad challenges beyond the cancer.

[Jake Tapper]

And obviously we wish him well. And I hope he lives to be a hundred.

[Jon Lovett]

But.

[Jake Tapper]

But, like, I don't know anybody who thinks today that he is able to be president until 2029, which was the argument. So we were covering. And then. And then basically he was chased out of the race by Democrats, not by me, but by Democrats who thought, oh, my God. And they saw the polling that suggested that not only was Joe Biden going to lose hugely, but, you know, they were going to lose states that Democrats hadn't lost in A long time. Like Minnesota and New Mexico and Colorado and Virginia and New Hampshire. So that's what we covered. It wasn't like, oh, look at all these examples of Joe Biden being old. What we covered was like, should he run for reelection? And why did they hide what they hid? And that's what it. And it was just about the story of Biden being chased out of the race because of that. In terms of what we cover about Trump, I mean, I literally cover it all the time. Like, literally yesterday, I covered that crazy truth social rant when he was mad at the New York Times for covering his aging, and he called it sedition.

[Tommy Vietor]

Or treasonous, and he attacked the appearance of the woman, the journalist.

[Jake Tapper]

That was a few weeks before.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, sorry. Lost track of my crazy truth social screens.

[Jake Tapper]

Yeah, no, it's tough to keep them straight. But. But, I mean, we covered. I covered it on social media, and I also covered it on my show. And, like, I do. I cover it.

[Tommy Vietor]

No, I know.

[Jake Tapper]

I agree.

[Tommy Vietor]

I assume you see the tweets, too, and it's sort of like, I don't.

[Jake Tapper]

I don't. Is the truth. Because I have quality filters up. Because I've just. For years. It's just to be completely candid, like, and a lot of it was started during the Trump years, the first Trump years, when if you were Jewish, you know, the Nazis would come at you.

[Jon Lovett]

Fun.

[Jake Tapper]

And so those filters were up. And then after October 7, a lot of the Hamas sympathizers would come for you. So I don't see most of it is the truth, but I'm aware that it's out there. And I'll just say, like, I cover it all the time.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah.

[Jake Tapper]

And if people. So I don't really. I don't take the criticism very seriously because I do cover it.

[Tommy Vietor]

Yeah, yeah, No, I see you covering it. Jake, thank you for doing the show. The book is called Race Against Terror. Everyone should pick up a copy, give it a read. It's really an incredible story, this one individual case, but what it tells us about a couple decades of a war on terror policy that I guess the story is yet to be written, but great to see you, buddy. Thank you for doing the show.

[Jake Tapper]

Thank you so much. Tommy, say hi to everybody else. I will.

[Jon Lovett]

That's our show for today. Thanks to Jake for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com friends to subscribe on Supercast Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our first Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Ilick Frank and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari. Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reed Churlin is our executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kanter is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt de Groat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Hayley J. Jones, Ben Hefcoat, Mia Kelman, Carol Pelaviev, David Toles, and Ryan Young, our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

[Jake Tapper]

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[Tommy Vietor]

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