Warby Parker (11:50)

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Thumbtack (12:21)

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Isaac Saul (12:52)

Next up is the Supreme Court deciding to hear Trump's immunity case? This was the landmark Supreme Court case of the year, and when the Supreme Court decided to take it up, I wrote that. I imagine the court will try to address these questions, and I think they should. What was clear to me at the time, though, was that even if some of Trump's actions potentially qualify as official duties, most of what he was accused of does not. My best guess here is that the Supreme Court will rule in near unanimous fashion on when and in what cases a former president is immune from criminal prosecution and will ultimately decide that Trump's actions fall outside the lines they draw. In the end, I suspect the case will be able to move forward. So in some ways I look back on this positively, in the sense that I think the court erred in its ruling and they created a convoluted, nonsensical, and unworkable legal precedent that will damage the presidency long term. And I warned about that at the time. That being said, my suggestion that the Supreme Court would rule in near unanimous fashion and that its ruling would allow the case to move forward was just completely wrong. I was way too optimistic about the court's views aligning with my own, and they ultimately broke in a way I really did not expect them to. So on this issue, we gave ourselves a D. Next up is Iran's Attack on Israel In April, Iran levied a direct attack on Israel for the second time ever. It was a major geopolitical moment, and one a lot of commentators thought was going to Spark World War 3. Here's what I wrote in my take when we covered it Things are not getting better, they are getting worse. But that isn't all on Israel, either. Iran plays a major role in much of the violence, terrorism and instability across the Middle East. The last thing I want to do is portray Iran as victims here. They are not. If anything, they are the main aggressor. They almost certainly helped organize the October 7th attacks and have been destabilizing this region for decades. It is more than disheartening to watch some Westerners cheer on Iran, a regime that brutalizes, oppresses and starves its own people in the name of a global jihad. It is not only one of the most wealthy, powerful and organized enemies of Israel, but of the United States, too. That it has come out of the shadows with a direct attack on Israel like this marks a major turning point and one that should make the entire world nervous. So, reflecting on this, my view has not changed much. I stand by basically every sentence and the framing about Iran I put forward at a time when other outlets were whispering about World War three. I'm glad we weren't taking this serious escalation and bombastically overblowing it. My biggest miss, though, was just my belief that this attack signaled how much worse things have gotten and all my allusions to a major conflict breaking out. In fact, what has happened since is that Israel's military advantage in the region has improved, with a weakened Hezbollah, the fall of the Assad regime, and Iran either unable or unwilling to inflict real damage on Israel. At this moment, the cost, as I note in my thoughts on the genocide in Gaza, has been incalculable. But there's a reason many Israelis are celebrating these recent developments. They have made it clear the regional power is shifting toward Israel. So a lot of this writing held up. I give myself a grade of a B. Next up is Biden's New Asylum Rules One of the biggest stories in 2024 was immigration. In June, after a record setting rates of border encounters with migrants crossing into the US Illegally, President Biden issued an executive order to shut down all asylum requests at the southern border when the seven day average of daily encounters topped 2,500 a day. He'd go on to roll out more restrictions on asylum border enforcement in the following months. Here's what I wrote at the time. We were in a really bizarre situation. Biden just spent months telling voters that without the immigration bill voted down in the House earlier this year, there was nothing more he could do to address the migrant crisis at the border. Now his administration is championing precisely the kind of action he could have taken over a year ago to address the border crisis, proving that there are things he could have done to address the border. But also, and this is where it just gets bizarre, this action is probably going to be struck down by the courts, which will prove Biden's original point that he needs Congress to do anything really meaningful on the border. So I feel good about everything I wrote, except one point that the rules were never struck down by federal courts. While some of Biden's asylum rules did face legal uncertainty, they've mostly stayed intact. In fact, in September he toughened the asylum rules we are covering here. So yes, this action undermined Biden's insistence there was nothing he could do on the border crisis without Congress. And I bet if he could go back, he may have implemented these rules sooner. And get this, in November, illegal border crossings dropped to a four year low, so we missed the big thing about whether these rules would hold up to court scrutiny. But most everything else we said was pretty on point. So we're giving ourselves here a B minus. Next up is our issue on the latest Economic Signals, which came out in June. Of all the topics we covered in the last two years. The ones that came up the most were the Israel Gaza war, immigration and the Russia Ukraine war. The 2024 election and inflation the economy is always a rollercoaster, but In May of 2024 the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the inflation rate had remained the same on a month to month basis for the first time since July of 2022. I said this at the time. When the May CPI came out yesterday, a friend texted me quote, Biden should be talking about this 24 7. But I disagreed. Maintaining a debatably acceptable inflation benchmark is just not good enough reason for Biden to ask for an undecided voter's support. I will say this though, we have covered inflation over 20 times now in the Tangle newsletter, one of the most recurring topics ever. We've provided a lot of very negative updates and a handful of good ones, but this latest report is probably the most positive update of them all. So reflecting on this, this is another bit of analysis that I'm still feeling really good about in my election post mortem. One of the big points I hammered was that the Biden administration didn't do a good enough job speaking to voters feelings. The affordability crisis was a core issue, and telling voters that inflation rates were nearing normal wasn't ever going to be enough to ease the stress of the last few years of rising prices. As it turned out though, this report did augur good things to come and today inflation is slowly turning to an afterthought. I probably could have said more at the time about how Biden messaged all this to voters, but overall I'm happy with how this aged. So we're giving ourselves an A. We'll be right back after this quick break.

Thumbtack (19:50)

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Warby Parker (20:17)

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Isaac Saul (20:54)

Next up is the Hunter Biden trial We were all over this story as it happened, which I'm proud of. But my take less so here's what I wrote in June. Here's one more similarity between this case and Trump's. I really do not know what will happen if Hunter gets convicted. I have a hard time imagining him going to jail as part of his sentence. And I also think it is incredibly unlikely and would be very unwise for President Biden to get involved in any way, like by trying to pardon him. What I do think, though, is that the odds of Hunter getting convicted in this trial are strong. And then just as the 2024 campaign comes into its final weeks, he will have to take the stand in his trial over unpaid taxes. For the president, it's a headache that will not go away anytime soon, and for Hunter, it is genuine legal peril. All right, so the obvious thing here to say is that my supposition that Biden wouldn't actually pardon his son was one of the biggest misses I had all year. Of course, at the time I thought Biden would be running for reelection, not sitting on the sidelines against his will. But still I was wrong and I owned it and explained it. Once it became obvious I was wrong, I was right that Hunter was going to get convicted and that this was a headache for Biden that wasn't going anywhere. So it wasn't a total whiff. But the big story, the read of the room that mattered most about whether Biden was going to pardon him, I missed. So we're giving ourselves a D minus here. Next up was the question of whether President Biden should drop out. It was funny to look back on this writing and remember how controversial it was. But In July, roughly 10 days after the Biden Trump debate, here's why I said that Democrats should replace Biden. Is it risky? Of course. But Democrats opponent is Donald Trump, a historically weak candidate with low approval ratings in several toxic positions that alienate more than half the country. So why not reset the race? A lot of voters haven't even tuned in yet, and the ones who have will understand why Democrats are pivoting and may even draw in a lot of voters who are planning to sit out after the debate. I thought Biden was still more likely than not to stay in the race. After seeing a sustained alarm, I started to change my mind. Now, with intraparty challenges mounting, I'm increasingly confident Biden will exit the race. Donors are beginning to revolt, and leaders in the House who typically stay in line, are turning on it. Reports indicate the pressure campaign is pushing for a decision by the end of the week, end quote. So reflecting on this one, as I say in the introduction, last year was really a uniquely good year for my analysis, and in this take I again would not change a word. I think Harris did better in the election than Biden could have, and I think Biden's public appearance and Persona through Election Day actually dragged her down. Trump and his team were rightly apoplectic after Biden dropped out, since they knew Harris was at the advantage, and accusing Democrats of cheating by replacing their weak candidate with a stronger one was the Trumpian response. Harris lost, obviously, for many reasons, but I still think Biden made the right choice, as did the Democratic Party and its voters who insisted on change. So here we're giving ourselves an A. Next up was the Trump assassination attempt. So outside of the election result, this was probably the biggest story of the year. And right after the assassination attempt, this is what I wrote. I said it's worth remembering that violent actors often have motivations we cannot even begin to fathom. Partisans on the right would like the shooter to be a die hard progressive to prove their worst fears about the left. True partisans on the left would like him to be a MAGA Trumper so they can indulge themselves in deranged conspiracies that the shooting was staged for Trump's political game or a symbol of the unhinged people Trump has drawn into the fore. Few of us remember that the man who attempted to kill Ronald Reagan did so because he wanted to impress actress Jodie Foster. Yet we all prefer to jump to conclusions in the first minutes of an incredibly complex event like this. Again, reflecting on this, I feel really good about our coverage. I spread blame around, but put it mostly on the shooter. I suggested it would galvanize Trump's base. I celebrated the fact the former president survived. And on top of my typical analysis, I also broke from punditry and pleaded with people to please step back from the dark abyss. Months later, the excerpt above and the thrust of my writing has held up really well. The shooter's motives are still unknown, despite so many people trying to portray him as what was, including the advantageous.

John Law (25:30)

Hey everybody, this is John, executive producer for Tangle. We hope you enjoyed this preview of our latest Friday edition. If you are not currently a newsletter subscriber or a premium podcast subscriber and you are enjoying this content and would like to finish it, you can go to readtangle.com to sign up for a newsletter subscription. Or you can go to tangledia.supercast.com and sign up for our premium Podcast membership which will unlock this complete episode as well as ad free daily podcasts, more Friday editions, Sunday editions, bonus content, interviews and so much more. We are working on trying to get together a bundled membership package where you're able to sign up for both the newsletter and the podcast. In the meantime, if you sign up for a newsletter subscription and you'd like to receive the podcast subscription as well, or vice versa, we will offer you a 33% discount to sign up for the other. This is the best we can do in the short term while we work on a long term bundling solution. Most importantly, we just want to say thank you so much for your support. We're working hard to bring you much more content and more offerings, so stay tuned. Isaac and Ari will be here for the Sunday podcast and I will join you for the daily podcast on Monday. For the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a fantastic weekend y'all. Peace.

Isaac Saul (26:49)

Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by John Lawrence. The script is edited by our Managing Editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova who is also our Social Media Manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75 and if you're looking for more from Tangle, Please go to readtangle.com and check out our website.

Warby Parker (27:41)

What makes a great pair of glasses at Warby Parker? It's all the invisible extras without the extra cost. Their designer quality frames start at $95 including prescription lenses plus scratch resistant, smudge resistant and anti reflective coatings and UV protection and free adjustments for life. To find your next pair of glasses, sunglasses or contact lenses, or to find the Warby Parker store nearest you, head over to warbyparker.com that's warbyparker.com.