Isaac Saul (2:21)

From executive producer Isaac Saul.

Ari Weitzman (2:24)

This is Tangle.

Isaac Saul (2:36)

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast. A place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. We've survived another week of 2025 madness. I'm here with Managing editor, Ari Weitzman. Ari, how are you doing, my friend?

John Law (2:56)

I'm good. I've just taken the advice of our good friend and executive producer John Law, and I've sat down with a little bit of a mixed drink for today to loosen up my vocal cords and maybe stop me from being so insufferably stuffy, which is not a real problem.

Isaac Saul (3:12)

3Pm on a Thursday, for the record. 3pm on Thursday, for the record. But we won't ask any questions. We'll just. We'll allow it.

John Law (3:20)

This is just what you have to do. It's a performance enhancer. Everybody does it. You just don't ask questions. The commissioner looks the other way.

Isaac Saul (3:26)

I was upstairs just now talking to the guys who are the developers and owners of the shared office space that I'm in. You want to talk to some people who are not pumped about tariffs? Talk to developers.

John Law (3:45)

Hard to find, I'm sure.

Isaac Saul (3:47)

Yeah, talk to some developers who own real estate. Property. Property. And are interested in building more. Yeah. I was just told that lumber is already up 35% and a lot of the banks that they normally work with are basically telling them that they can't give out the loans because there's too much volatility. And they're like, they've got like $50 million contracts frozen up. I mean, tough stuff if you're a big dog in the developing world. There's a ton here. I've got a little segment I want to do. Yeah, I want to. I want to open up a little six pack on some smaller stuff that's been going on. But we made a promise to each other. Yeah, we made a real promise that we would keep track of what happened between Thursday and Sunday. So as longtime listeners might know. Yeah, we record this podcast. We're sitting here, it's Thursday, and we released the podcast on Sunday because, you know, we have a show Monday through Friday and we like to have something extra on the weekend and do this more talk show format rather than just a kind of read down of the daily newsletter. And this is just the best time that works to record. But now, in the Trump era, since we've got a real president in office, not that, you know, brain dead Joe Biden. Yeah. We have so much news. Yeah, Action. Nonstop action. So I asked Ari to just take note of some of the big stories that happened between the podcast being recorded and the podcast being published on Sunday. And this is. Do you want to take it from here? Go ahead. I'll let you take it.

John Law (5:29)

I'll take it. From here, one of these feels like the big one to me, but let's see if you can see the one that stands out. That might be a little harder than it seems. So from the time we recorded on Thursday to the time this podcast came out on Sunday, late morning, early afternoon, we had Thursday, a lot of economics data was released. So jobs report, housing report about turnover in the housing market and GDP from fourth quarter of the last fiscal year. We also got news on Thursday that forecasters were fired from noaa, from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association. Friday, inflation report. Friday, judge blocks Office of Personnel Management from further firings of probationary employees. Friday, Keir Starmer visits Trump. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer visits Trump in the White House. Friday, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zeletsky visits Trump in the White House. Friday, the FBI, maybe you've caught it on. Friday, the FBI returns seized documents from Mar? A Lago to Trump. Saturday, judge blocks firing of head of Office of Special Counsel. Saturday, Trump signs an executive order making English the official language. Saturday, Israel blocks aid into Gaza. Saturday, treasury announces it will not enforce money laundering law. Which one of these was Biden's, like, would have sunk Biden? Which one of these was, like, his scandal that would have prevented his presidency from moving forward in his tracks? Like, maybe all of them.

Isaac Saul (7:00)

Yeah, maybe all of them. Well, for Biden, it's the Zelensky joint press conference, which was obviously the biggest story of all of those. And we covered it Monday. I'm still, I mean, yeah, we talked a bit about this last week, but I'm still pretty shocked at the response, not shocked at the response to that presser, because I understand if you're somebody who went into that feeling like Zelensky's been fleecing the United States, you're happy to see how it ended and how Trump handled it. But the vitriol and the vitriolic hate for a guy who's basically just trying to keep his country from collapsing is peculiar to me. I don't totally understand it. And I mean, I legitimately think all the things you can criticize about Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine and whatever corruption issues they have, and there are issues there with freedom of press and liberal rights and true flourishing democracy. I'm not going to pretend it's a perfect place. The guy is doing a pretty good job of trying to hold his country together and has staved off an invasion that I think a lot of people thought would overwhelm them in a matter of days. And all these, like, macho dudes on the right who are all about war and freedom and defense and they just hate him. And it's hard for me to understand. So anyway, that's a little bit tangential to the point, which is. Yeah, it's the Zelenskyy story. Though I will say FBI returning seized documents to Biden's Delaware home might be the kind of headline that we'd have congressional hearings about with Republicans for like three months. You know, that's. Yeah, that's an insane list. That is a truly insane list. We'll be right back after this quick break.

Ari Weitzman (9:11)

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No, I asked why wouldn't you switch from Verizon or T Mobile?

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John Law (10:40)

I mean one of the things that just gets completely passed over is any of these can end up being like an 800 word essay without a whole lot of effort. Israel blocks aid into Gaza. The implications of something like that with ceasefire treaties, with voting coalitions that went for Trump because of criticisms for Biden for being in the tank for Israel and what that means for the future with the Republican Party conference and the midterms, like that's only part of it. And that is only one of the things from that list. Inflation report came out that was sort of in line with expectations before tariffs were announced. So that is sort of foreboding of things that may come. The Keir Starmer visit, the way that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom sort of kowtowed to the President of the United States in what looked like a very tactful way, in a very purposeful way, sort of indicative of the way the UK maybe is trying to position itself as both, like, helpful with the US and still part of that special relationship, but still part of the European alliance with Ukraine. Like all of this stuff or just footnotes. And a lot of what was dominating the headspace that I was in and the comments for Tango were in, a lot of people online were in was, did Zelinsky deserve it? I mean, if you watch back that press conference, which I know we both have, it seems like this, like Vance made a decision to just say, you know what? Fuck this guy. Did not really seem like there is much that Zelensky did to provoke that. You could squint and see it. You could see it maybe in retrospect, but in the moment didn't seem like anything that needed to happen unless, you know, the administration wanted it to. I've seen some conspiracy theories on that, but other. That sort of cast a shadow on the rest of the list, which then, if you're thinking conspiratorially, it's like, well, maybe there's a reason why we're talking about that instead of FBI returning seizedocs from Mar a Lago. Very easy to think conspiratorially when you lay stuff out like this.

Isaac Saul (12:49)

Yeah, I mean, the Israel one is a really good point. The genocidal Joe Chance, you know, if. If we were living in a time when Biden blocked or allowed Israel to block aid into Gaza without really doing anything about it, I will say, I mean, it's because it's worth revisiting. In the first week after Trump came into office, we got. I think it was the first week, maybe it was the first couple weeks, but. Or even before he came into office, we got the, Yeah, I think it was before he came in office because it was before he was inaugurated. We got the, you know, the first phase one of the Israel Hamas ceasefire deal. And I came out and said plainly that the take that I had, which was that Trump was going to be unimaginably bad for Palestinians, people interested in the Palestinian rights movement, whatever, was not aging well off the bat, given that development. And a lot of people who didn't vote for Biden or didn't vote for Harris and rejected Biden's approach sort of came out of the woodworks beating their chest a bit. And I think pretty much every single thing that has happened since has made the take that I had that he's gonna be very bad for Palestinian.

John Law (14:10)

Right, John, put applause noises in here. Good job.

Isaac Saul (14:15)

Yeah. I'm like, it's not something that I think is, you know, shouldn't be taking a victory lap on because there's so much horror involved in it. But it is important to sort of update the record here, since I immediately came out and said, oh, maybe I was wrong about this. And now six weeks later, I think, no, I think I was right about this. I mean, he's talking about, first of all, they're trying to basically pass a First Amendment rights violation, you know, like this, like, executive order commission thing they're launching with the human Health Secretary, for some reason with hhs, to, you know, address anti Semitism, this, like, disease spreading across the country by arresting college students for having anti Israel protests. That's. That's wild. Yeah, that's wild. That's not the kind of free speech First Amendment country I want to live in, regardless of how I feel about those protesters. And that is very, very bad for the Palestinian rights movement. Trump is threatening again, as he did on the campaign trail, to literally deport people or take away funding from colleges who allow anti Israel protests to happen on their campus. He is basically now consistently and repeatedly calling for an ethnic cleansing in Gaza. I mean, what else do you call it? He's saying, get the 2 million people who live there out. We're going to turn it into like, yeah, the Riviera of the Middle East. And now he's threatening Hamas so they have to release these hostages, so there's going to be total hell to pay. He's letting Israel kind of entertain the idea of basically running roughshod in the west bank, whatever they want to do. I mean, he is no holds bar as, quote, unquote, pro Israel as a president could be in all this. And yeah, I understand the people who voted, the Muslim Americans, the Palestinian Americans, I've heard from them. I know many of them listen to this podcast. I understand witnessing a year plus of what happened in Gaza with Biden, Kamala Harris in office and saying, I can't consciously, with a clean, conscious, punch a ballot for them. But Trump is. I mean, if that's the lens you're looking at things through, that's the perspective you're coming from. I do think Trump is unquestionably worse. The ceasefire deal aside we do not look like we're headed for some kind of peaceful resolution and certainly not a path toward a Palestinian state again. Now we're six weeks in five months from now, you know, maybe Egypt has like had all their debt bought up and they've agreed to come run Gaza as like some of these proposals floating around insist they might do. And that could be good for the Palestinian people and be a pathway to statehood. And maybe what I'm saying again goes back to aging terribly. But in this moment in time, as we sit here in early March 2025, I would say Donald Trump looks extremely bad for the Palestinian rights movement and people who care about it, which is what I thought would happen.

John Law (17:25)

And that is just one of the things that got buried in the torrent of news items between Thursday and Sunday and not even one of the things that we had scoped to talk about. That's how much stuff's been happening.

Isaac Saul (17:48)

We'll be right back after this quick break.

Isaac Saul (17:54)

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Isaac Saul (18:03)

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Isaac Saul (18:36)

Yeah. All right. So speaking of, let's get to some of the stuff that was actually on the map. The plan to talk about. I think we've done this once or twice before. I'm gonna steal a little something from the podfather Bill Simmons. He does this bit on his show where he just does a six pack, a quick kind of few minutes on six different topics when it feels like there's too much to talk about and he wants to get to some different things. Not the main story, headline type stuff, but just a six pack. And Bill Simmons has this sponsored by like Bud Light or something. Come. I love beer. I love six packs. I'll take a sponsorship for my six pack of political thoughts. There's so much news that this might have to become a recurring theme for us. But number one, I want to talk about Bill Ackman, not somebody I typically would talk about.

John Law (19:39)

Go Ahead, want to talk about who Bill Ackman is? First here for the people who don't know. Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. Yeah, sort of normal person.

Isaac Saul (19:47)

Traditionally Bill Ackman is a hedge fund manager. He's the CEO of Pershing Square. He is very well respected in the economist, VC, hedge fund finance world. He's got close to 2 million followers on Twitter. He is increasingly following, in my view, people like Elon Musk kind of off the deep end, smoking the fumes on, which is crazy.

John Law (20:21)

Tesla doesn't even have any.

Isaac Saul (20:23)

Yeah, it is not great what's happening on that website these days. But this was the thing that I saw that really stopped me in my tracks. Joe Rogan and Elon Musk recently did an episode on their show together and they were discussing the fact that CNN had live streamed Donald Trump's Butler, Pennsylvania rally. And they're talking and they say, you know, CNN I do not believe for any other rally had a live stream. Certainly not for a rally in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania. There's a lot of weird shit. The fact that they wouldn't let people be on that roof. The Secret service lady said it was sloped and dangerous. Basically they're saying, oh my God, you know, why was CNN covering that rally? Bill Ackman, this, you know, proper noun, very serious person who is on TV every day telling people how to invest their money and what the future of the Trump presidency is going to look like. And all this stuff, tweets, what are the chances CNN was tipped off to stream the Butler rally? Why isn't this worthy of an investigation? It shouldn't be too hard to figure out who orders the coverage and why. It's not actually, I, I don't like. This is legit terrifying to me. People like this with the following and the respect that they have is, I mean it is insane to me that he's sweet. Just to be clear, Bill Ackman is alleging that CNN got a tip that somebody was gonna try to kill Donald Trump and instead of doing anything about it, they decided they were gonna live stream his Butler rally. The first live stream of any rally Trump's done that summer during his campaign. Ackman rightly starts getting hilloried for this online and then comes out with this super long follow up post that's like I've made a substantial number of investments where I earned a many fold multiple of capital on more than a handful of occasions, 50, 100, even a thousand time multiple of invested capital. I found these opportunities because of a willingness to consider the improbable as possible. The fact that it is uncommon to do so increases the rewards for those who do. And then goes on to try to imply this to the idea that he periodically raises the possibility of improbable explanations for things like this. Like this is the improbable explanation for CNN broadcasting the Trump rally. So he's saying that he's oh no, he knows that it's improbable, but he's suggesting this cuz he's learned from investing that sharing these conspir theories with his millions of followers sometimes is like the equivalent of him making a very unlikely bet in the stock market and winning. Then one of his followers responds to him and says improbable would be that CNN was aware there would be an assassination attempt and covered the event without alerting authorities. I don't believe this happened. What you mentioned is not improbable that they were tipped off about needing to cover the event. In fact, I'd say it's a reasonable conclusion to draw from the information provided and worth investigating. And he responds and says I totally agree. So he doesn't actually think it's that improbable apparently. This whole thing's so messy I just want I just so for the record, just a couple of things A I'm pretty sure CNN livestreamed other Trump rallies before this one. Like this claim I this I have not actually dug into and fact check but just like operating from memory about what the summer was like, I'm 90% sure that CNN livestreamed before July 13 other Trump rallies that happened across the country. And I suspect If I spent 30 minutes going back and watching old CNN footage I could figure this out. I have not done that yet. What I do know and remember off top my head and tweeted at Bill Ackman in hopes of drawing him back down to reality is that the reason that this particular event was livestreamed was not because CNN heard that Donald Trump was gonna get shot. It was because Donald Trump was teasing the fact that he was going to announce his vice president his running mate. And he had said repeatedly that he was going to do it in the week before the Republican National Convention, which this weekend. This rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the most important swing state in the country, was the last opportunity for him to do so publicly before the rnc. That is why they live stream the event. There are literal news articles. This could take you 30 seconds. So you can go do it. Google Trump VP announcement set the date range on Google results for July 10th to July 13th. And you will just see articles raising the prospect that Trump was going to announce the VP at the Butler rally, and that's why they were live streaming it. I can't believe that there are 14,000 people who retweeted his post asking whether CNN was tipped off about the Butler rally. It's got over 4 million views. Like, this space is a cesspool right now of bad information. And it is terrifying to me that people who are supposed to be smart, reasonable people like Bill Ackman are doing this. And I just felt like I had to get that off my chest. So that's number one in my six pack.

John Law (26:01)

Yeah, I mean, you're kind of at the cesspool's, right? Cesspool on Twitter, for sure. Or X, pardon me? Just looking at some of the replies from you or from your tweet where you're talking about this stuff kind of shows a little bit of what that's like. And it's sort of that meme of the U shape of the political spectrum where if you go too far to either extreme, they start to come back towards each other on the edges, because people from the right and left both think that this could have been a conspiracy. Like, on the right, there are those who are saying CNN was tipped off on this. They want to go because it's good coverage, and they didn't alert the Secret Service because they're in cahoots with the Democrats and the liberal media is all in their pockets and that kind of stuff. And then on the other side, you have Democrats saying Trump wanted this to be televised. It's good for his ratings. He got to boost this, made him president. CNN knew about it, but they were too weak, too feckless to be able to change anything. They just wanted the ratings themselves. And that's most of the replies you're getting, my man. That doesn't bode well for the health of that site.

Isaac Saul (27:11)

I just like. I guess my big, open, scary question is just how we come back from this, which I don't really like. When Bill Ackman is tweeting to people that CNN might have been tipped off about the Trump assassination, and it's just getting millions of views and tens of thousands of retweets, and there's no pushback. I don't know, Like, I don't know how to fight that, aside from doing what I do, which is like, I know I make a small splash replying to him or tweeting about it or whatever, but it's Legit scary. Like, I know Twitter's not real life, but they're real people sharing all this stuff and engaging with it, and that is real life. And it worries me. Yeah, it's like the technocrats are in the arena now on political stuff and they are just. They're applying things that have worked in their space to it, and it is tumultuous, I would say, from where I'm sitting. And I don't say that as like an institutionalist. Whatever. It's just. It is a weird thing to observe.

John Law (28:18)

Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. This is John, executive producer of YouTube and podcast content and co host of the daily podcast. I hope you enjoyed this preview of our Sunday podcast with Ari and Isaac. We are now offering this podcast exclusively to our premium podcast members, along with our ad, free daily podcasts, Friday editions, in depth interviews, upcoming new podcast series, bonus content, and much more. If you want to receive all that and give your support to help grow Tangle Media, Please go to readtangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, a podcast membership, or a discounted bundle membership, which gets you both access to the premium newsletter and the premium podcast. If it's not the right time for you to sign up, please don't worry. Our ad supported daily podcast isn't going anywhere, but if it is in your ability to support by signing up for a membership, we would greatly appreciate it and we're really excited to share all of our premium offerings with you. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all.

John Law (29:23)

Take care. Bye, y'all.

Isaac Saul (29:26)

Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will K back, Bailey Saul and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, Please go to readtangle.com and check out our website.

Isaac Saul (30:06)

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John Law (30:21)

Now you go.

Isaac Saul (30:21)

This is just how my voice sounds. Just say it like you mean it.

Isaac Saul (30:24)

Okay.

Isaac Saul (30:26)

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John Law (30:28)

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Isaac Saul (30:30)

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