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- [00:00]
Ari Weitzman
Okay, I have to tell you, I was just looking on ebay, where I go for all kinds of things I love. And there it was. That hologram trading card. One of the rarest. The last one I needed for my set.
- [00:10]
Isaac Saul
Shiny like the designer handbag of my dreams.
- [00:13]
Camille Foster
One of a kind.
- [00:14]
Isaac Saul
Ebay had it. And now everyone's asking, ooh, where'd you
- [00:18]
Camille Foster
get your windshield wipers?
- [00:20]
Ari Weitzman
Ebay has all the parts that fit my car.
- [00:22]
Isaac Saul
No more annoying, just beautiful.
- [00:26]
Ari Weitzman
Millions of fines, each with a story. EBay, things people love.
- [00:30]
Camille Foster
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- [01:01]
Isaac Saul
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- [01:21]
Camille Foster
Coming up, Are we at war with Iran or not? We break down the latest. The big primary election in Texas and some other stuff in North Carolina and Arkansas. A good guy of the week and our grievances. It's a good show. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Suspension of the Rules podcast. This is a weekly politics show where the three of us sit around and try and decide if we're at war with Iran or not.
- [02:04]
Ari Weitzman
Apparently, that's the question it's never been harder to answer.
- [02:07]
Camille Foster
Very up for debate at the moment. I got an extremely frustrated slack message from our editor at large, Camille Foster here earlier today with three different clips. One, or I guess it was two clips in a news article. One clip of Mark.
- [02:27]
Isaac Saul
There's video there, too.
- [02:28]
Camille Foster
Yeah, yeah. One clip of Markway and Mullen, the Republican from Ohio, insisting that we were. That this is war, and then being asked. So you concede this is war? No, this is not a war. We have not declared war. Well, you just said it was war.
- [02:48]
Isaac Saul
You'll concede this is war.
- [02:49]
Ari Weitzman
We haven't declared war. They declared war on us.
- [02:52]
Camille Foster
Secretary Hex said we haven't declared.
- [02:54]
Ari Weitzman
You said this is war. They've called it war. What I was saying. Okay, well, that was misspoke. What I was saying that they've declared war on us. But war is ugly. It always has been ugly.
- [03:05]
Camille Foster
But we're, you know, we're at a.
- [03:07]
Ari Weitzman
We're taking out a regime that's been
- [03:09]
Isaac Saul
trying to attack us for quite some time.
- [03:11]
Ari Weitzman
But you're not.
- [03:12]
Camille Foster
Okay then, Pete Egseth coming on and saying we are dictating the terms of this war.
- [03:18]
Isaac Saul
This is what the fake news misses. We've taken control of Iran's airspace and waterways. Without boots on the ground, we control their fate. But when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it's front page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad. But try for once to report the reality. The terms of this war will be set by us at every step.
- [03:47]
Camille Foster
And then Speaker, House Speaker Mike Johnson coming out and saying this is not a war.
- [03:54]
Ari Weitzman
Iran has attacked three of our US
- [03:56]
Camille Foster
embassies in the last couple of days.
- [03:57]
Ari Weitzman
Okay, Those are sovereign territories of the US they have declared war on us. I don't believe in the semantics. We've talked about the language this morning. We're not at war right now. We're four days in to a very specific, clear mission and operation, Operation Epic Fury, which has two components, as you
- [04:16]
Camille Foster
know, that we have articulated over and over.
- [04:19]
Ari Weitzman
The President has, the commander, Joint Chiefs, everybody has explained.
- [04:24]
Camille Foster
Gentlemen, do we have a war? I think we do. Right. But we don't want to admit it, I guess is where we're at right now. That's the state of affairs.
- [04:33]
Ari Weitzman
I think to dust off a classic, it depends on what your definition of the word is. I think if we're talking about whether or not we are using military to do war with another military, then yeah. But if we're saying, did Congress authorize a conflict of some kind? Then we aren't. So we're in. We're Schrodinger's war right now. I guess. Depends on how you want to use the term.
- [04:58]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I don't love that, but it's very apt.
- [05:02]
Ari Weitzman
Except maybe we do. We don't know until we open the box.
- [05:05]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I mean, it's very clear. There is a weird perverse incentive around declarations of war, formal declarations of war. Congress doesn't like them and is supposed to be responsible for doing this sort of thing. But across multiple government, presidential administrations, straddling both political parties, whether or not it is a war always depends on who is doing the asking and who the particular party in question is. But generally speaking, the disposition, whether it be in Libya or Syria, now in Iran, is this isn't really a war. It's something else. It's something with all of the trappings of a war. But even when we're using torpedoes to sink ships in open water or dropping thousands and thousands of megatonnage worth of munitions on various cities, this is only a war when we say it's a war. Although when we say it's a war. We may just be making a mistake acknowledging essentially explicitly what we are trying very hard to obfuscate.
- [06:08]
Ari Weitzman
But it seems like there was the idea of a war that Congress would declare and then we would be at war, a state of being with another country. And then we had the concept of this is not a war. This is a prolonged authorized use of military force, which was a nice kind of legal thing to be able to use. So you could say that we're using military force without it being a war. And this isn't even that. This is within the President's ability to be the commander of chief, commander in chief of the armed forces and to dictate our foreign policy, which can be aggressive and use kinetic actions in ways that as long as we don't use the W word, hey, what? What? Doesn't matter. So, I mean, legally, it seems like we've created this definition of war that is so narrow that it's basically useless. So now we can throw out the legal definition of Congress declaring a war. And once we do that, then all we have left is if it smells like a war and it looks like a war, then that's what it is. I mean, if the legal definition doesn't matter and it's just the definition of what does it look like, then how could it not be? You know, we're at war.
- [07:17]
Camille Foster
Right. That's kind of how I feel, and I should apologize. This is my fault. I threw us headfirst into our main topic today. I have one order of business that I need to take care of before we get into that, which is last week on the show, this is my second, I think, suspension of the rules correction in three weeks, which I'm not proud of, but I apparently said, and I don't totally remember talking about this, but I think it happened in some sort of rhetorical flourish that the age of consent In Florida was 16. And a very kind reader wrote in to point out that it is only 16 in very narrow, limited circumstances. It's actually 18 years old. And I wanted to correct the record here on the show and I should have done it at the top. Now that we have that out of the way, onto other somber topics. I mean, I joke about the question of whether we're at war with Iran right now. And this is not a situation that's easy to make light of. I mean, what we're watching across the Middle east is genuinely a horrific outbreak of violence. I mean, Iran seems to be in flames. You know, not just military targets, but civilian targets are being pummeled throughout the country. These places as we talked about in our livestream on Monday, you know, throughout the Middle east that for years now have been safe and secure. Oman, United Arab Emirates, you know, Emiratis are sitting in Dubai and watching drones fly into their hotels. This is a very, very scary and unsettling situation for a lot of people. And then of course, folks in Israel, family and friends of mine who are stuck in shelters now as Iran retaliates. The situation is deteriorating, I think, pretty quickly. I have a few topics that I want to pick your guys brains about sort of in this larger topic of the Iran war today. But I want to set the table really quickly about where I think we are on the, you know, how the left and the right are both talking about this, obviously an important part of the work that we're doing. And I've been criticizing Democrats a little bit about just not having a clear, unified message about this. If I define the terms best I could, broadly speaking about the left's position so far, it is that they are opposed to this military action, war, authorized use of force, whatever euphemism you want to use, because Trump did it unilaterally without coming to Congress, because it seems like it was rushed in some way, and because there wasn't a sufficient public discourse or governmental deliberation about the upsides and downsides and what the actual plan was. I think they are unified in that. I think there are very mixed messages coming out of the Democratic Party and the left about whether it's good or bad that we are trying to take down and topple the regime, I think some people just draw a line of no more regime change. I don't care how bad you make them sound to me. While some people are saying, look, Khamenei being gone is good for the world and opens up a new possibility for the Iranian people, many of whom are pro democracy and pro west in some ways and don't want to live under this regime. And broadly speaking, that's like the contours that I'm seeing on the left on the right, there's obviously more robust defense for what Trump has decided to do. I think from the Iran hawks, from the kind of National Review, Wall Street Journal editorial board type perspective, which is basically, this regime has been given every chance possible to step back from the brink, stop funding terrorism, stop pursuing a nuclear bomb. They, at this moment, right now, are probably weaker than they've ever been, thanks to Israel, who has been waging a war against Hamas in Gaza and also waging a war against Hezbollah because of the situation in Syria, because of the domestic turbulence that they've had, there is a very strong case that of all the moments that Israel and the United States have had to strike the regime, this offered a particularly good opening to do it successfully. And so the people who are supportive of it on the right are sort of framing it in those terms. And then there's the people on the right, a lot of the folks in MAGA world, frankly, who are upset about this and say, look, Trump ran explicitly on a promise two times, I mean, three times if you count his 2020 campaign, of not dragging us into foreign wars, of not wasting money in the Middle east, of basically ending the era of regime change politics that has defined some of the 21st century. And now we're in another regime change potential quagmire, depending on how this goes. And a lot of them feel betrayed. They feel like this is the opposite of what Trump said he was going to do. So to the degree there's opposition and foment on the right, I think that's mostly where it's coming from, I would say, to their point. I saw a news report today that the Pentagon is preparing to ask Congress for more money after just getting a trillion dollar budget, effectively, which is the kind of thing I think is gonna be so astounding and offensive to the sort of isolationist right and the standard bearer left, that we're going to see a lot of opposition and outcry like this is a war that costs something. And then, of course, the price of oil has spiked across the country. So Democrats and some Republicans are using that to say this is hurting the affordability issue for Trump, which is something that he says he's trying to solve. In light of all that, I was particularly surprised by something I read in Politico, and this is kind of my opening salvo for you two, which my suspicion about how Democrats and Republicans together were feeling about this war, taking it, in sum, made me think that there would be pretty staunch opposition nationally to what we're witnessing. But Playbook got A new poll from On Message, which is conservative pollsters. But a lot of times these are the people who are. They're tracking important stories like this to really understand how politicians should be playing it. So they're trustworthy in a lot of ways. And found that support for Iran strikes was now neck and neck with 49% in favor and 48% opposed. And that actually lined up with a Fox News poll, because Fox News is one of the. Whatever you think of their primetime lineup, they are some of the best pollsters in the game. And they found basically a 5050 split, which I thought was fascinating. And I'm kind of curious to hear what you guys think about that. Do you buy that the American populace is kind of divided down the middle on this action, on these strikes, on this war? If so, do you think it's because it's early days and we've had some success and we killed Khamenei and we'll check in in a month. I mean, talk to me a little bit about your reaction to that, because I found that kind of stunning. Honestly, it was not what I was expecting.
- [15:07]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, I think it is, because it's early days. I think if you are trying to sell or you're a supporter of a war in Iran, this is really bad news. It seems like, oh, 50, 50, America's split. We're divided down the middle of this. Anytime that there's the opening of a new front or conflict or effort of some kind or a new presidency, whatever it is, you're going to get soft numbers in the beginning. If you go back and look at the Iraq war, just the very beginning when that was launched, the approval for that, whether or not that was the right or wrong decision, according to Pew, was 71% in favor. By about two or three months through the war, it would top out at about 73, 74. When we're getting a lot of headlines saying Saddam had been on the run, then had been arrested or taken to the US A lot of gains made in the first salvos of the war and then nothing but steady decline for years to the point where by 2008 it was about 40, 60 against the war being the right decision. And it kind of changes and levels out over time. But the point being, if the starting point for a war of aggression or a war of choice or whatever you want to call it, a war that clearly was not a war of defense in either sense, in any sense, if the starting point is about 50, 50, then it's probably not going to go up. But if it does go up, it'll be briefly for a period of weeks before the costs start to become incurred. And when we talk about costs, there's a couple things that I think are important to keep in mind. I kind of want to say that are both offensive, but in different ways. One is, I almost feel offended at myself sitting here very comfortably in northern New England, feeling almost no repercussions of this. And we're decrying this act of war in Iran and what it might do to the US when our military is so professionalized and so good at what it does, that for most Americans, we're insulated very strongly from the major immediate impact of this. The people who are actually going to be involved, it's a small number, and they're going to be impacted by a huge degree. And I think we're talking a lot about what the impacts will be on the military, rightly so, but a lot of it, a lot of us making a big deal, myself included, about whether or not this ought to be an action we're taking, aren't feeling it. We just like in ways in decades past that we did, we aren't. And I think that's something that we have to take stock of and be appreciative of. And the second thing is a little bit of a flip side of it's offensive to me that we spend all of this money on our military so we can be prepared for lethality when we need it. And when we need it, we ask for more. That's like, there's no way that both of those things could be true. One of those has to invalidate the other. If we have a $1 trillion plus military budget and we need to pay for more things when the time arises, then either we aren't budgeting very well because 1 trillion is almost incomprehensible sum of money, or we shouldn't be budgeting that much in the first place if it's just a pay as you go strategy. But at the same time, you know, I come back to what I was just saying, which is like, I'm not feeling these costs, really. If we have a trillion dollar budget because the military that we have is going to protect us, then I'm grateful for that. But at the same time, I know that everything looks like a nail to a hammer. And if we've built a $1 trillion hammer, we're going to be looking for ways to use it. And at this point in time, before we start getting headlines about military personnel being badly injured or God forbid, killed or price of oil spiking or the budget being overrun to such a degree. This is the high watermark for approval. If you can't tell, I think this is a foolhardy action. And I think when you think more about even the strengths of it, it doesn't end up looking very good for us. Now, there's caveats to that about whether or not it's the right thing for Iran to have a new leader. Of course, the leadership that it had was not good for the Iranian people. But this is a debate we've had forever. Is like, is this our role in order to do this? And if so, is it right that we're doing it with one ally? You would expect there to be a little bit more of a coalition involved in this, but that's. That's kind of getting into the weeds and getting into the discussion about what regime change is and how we judge it. But for now, when we look and take stock about whether or not the American people support this, I think it's easy to say why. And then once we start seeing what it costs us in real terms, those numbers will change.
- [19:55]
Isaac Saul
I mean, I can comment briefly on the polling question, and then I think there's a lot that Ari just mentioned there that is worth commenting on and meditating on. And Isaac, obviously I'm very interested in your perspective on this as well. But the interpretation of those polling numbers has to be through the lens of what has happened fairly recently, specifically with the Trump administration and its interventions abroad. They tend to be very lean. Recently, they've seemed to have been fairly successful. It's the first Iran strike. There was the recent Venezuelan action. These things happen to be pretty dramatic. They almost have an almost Jason Bourne like element to them. So if you are a fan of the President of the United States and you wanna find reasons to justify this, even if it isn't necessarily what you voted for, you can find your way there pretty easily, especially in the first three or four days that this has happened. And I mean, just given the first 24, 48 hours of this campaign. See, I've avoided mentioning whether or not it's a war. Just call it a campaign. You have the virtual annihilation of the leadership of Iran, like in moments. So having a kind of positive attitude, as someone who is observing politics and is a partisan, not at all surprising. And relatedly, with the polling numbers, we certainly know that if you break down the numbers and don't just look at the general public opinion, but look at bipartite Democrats are a lot more suspicious about this. Independents are perhaps a little more open to what's going on here. But even the Democrats who are out there talking about the need for a war powers resolution are doing it in pretty constrained ways. They are constantly mentioning the fact that the right people are getting knocked off, that Iran, Iran is bad. They're at least acknowledging to your point, Ari, about whether or not this is a defensive war, certainly a war of choice. We made a decision to do this. Now, even if you take the most generous interpretation of everything the administration has said, the specific issue is that Iran has been a threat to the United States and has made threats about the United States and its various allies. It has been a fundamental primary state sponsor of terrorism around the world, and the likelihood that that was going to continue was pretty high. So I find myself in the somewhat awkward position of being generally skeptical of interventionism, but also acknowledging the importance of having meaningful checks on bad actors around the world. And I'm at least hopeful that this action that I suspect is is probably not the best choice at the moment, that it will have some kind of positive repercussions, that the regime that ends up coming to power afterwards will be meaningfully better for Iran, that the solidarity that is actually emerging in the region, which is pretty surprising just given the way Iran has responded, is something that will actually be durable and that we do see a shift back to the Abraham Accords after this. But a lot of questions still remain to be answered and public opinion on this, as you mentioned, Ari, it's going to be fickle. 5050 early on is not the sort of thing that's going to be durable. Fortunately, it seems that no one in the administration has an appetite for something that lasts more than a few weeks. And one hopes that circumstances on the ground don't change in a way that alters that calculus because that could become exceptionally expensive both with respect to blood and treasure.
- [23:28]
Camille Foster
We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [23:36]
Ari Weitzman
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- [24:07]
Isaac Saul
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- [24:33]
Camille Foster
You know, I think the something that's maybe underrated in this discussion is in the discussion about the public opinion is so much of the narrative is driven by immediate ecosystem or immediate infrastructure that at this moment I would say is extremely skeptical of intervention in every respect. Realistically, the New York Times, the Washington Post, these major media institutions that have this sort of leftist center bias. Cnn, msnbc, then Fox News where they acquiesce to a lot of Trump's direction. But there are people on Fox News who are spitting fire about the dangers of this decision and they're bringing guests on constantly who are skeptical of this kind of representing the non interventionist MAGA base. All of indie alternative media, I mean, just the podcasters, the YouTubers, all of them are going to be critical of this. I'm not seeing anybody really in that space standing up and beating their chest and saying definitively that we should be going to do this. There's an uphill battle for Trump in this environment where it's like the people who are on his side are or like the Wall Street Journal editorial board and Mark Levin and National Review. It's like. It's not a home game for him to sell this. But I think there's a, the element that I'm getting to that I think is underrated is just if you are not somebody who's immersed in that, if you're an average American, you know, a normie who's showing up in these poll results and you spend a few minutes every week paying attention to the news. I could very much see a world where what you hear and see and understand is like Iran funds terrorism, people in Iran oppressed America and Israel kill Iranian leader. Iranian people in the streets celebrate. That's like a pretty simple story where like, you know, if you're watching this unfold and it's not having a huge impact on your life, like Ari just said, it's, it hasn't, it's not really yet impacting us as Americans. I think the price of gas spiking is maybe the only thing. Like, you know, do you really feel that negatively about this? I mean, and I was thinking about this, because I've been. I'm starting to tilt towards the critical side. And, I mean, I've obviously been like, very skeptical of this as a. Just like, this is gonna be the war that brings peace. You know, it's just like. It is a hard thing to sell. But I'll tell. Sort of just to exemplify what I mean here, I tweeted this yesterday. Trump said that the worst case scenario. He was asked, what's the worst case scenario outcome? And this is why I love Trump. He literally just said the thing no other President would ever say. He actually answered the question. And he was like, the worst case is that somebody who's as bad as Khamenei comes to power in his place, and we just did all this for nothing. And then it's like an hour later, the succession line, the IRGC comes out and says that they've chosen his grandson or his eldest son, excuse me, to be his successor, who is obviously gonna share his politics and worldview in many ways and probably run the country the same way he did. Now, there's been a bunch of conflicting reporting about whether that's true, but it's like, okay, so the worst case scenario, somebody is replacing him, who is basically him. We're getting that we're trying to evacuate Americans from the Middle east, but the State Department's gutted, and people are having a really hard time getting out. And the phone number, if you call the State Department for help, basically goes like a hotline that's. Might as well just say, you're screwed. Good luck. FBI Director Kash Patel fired a bunch of agents and staff members from a counterintelligence unit tasked with monitoring threats from Iran right before the war started. The CIA is now arming Kurdish forces to send them into Iran, which just has echoes of all this stuff we've done before that does not work. And the Pentagon's preparing to ask Congress for more money to fund the war after just getting a trillion dollar budget. And I think these are really good. They're my critiques, so I think they're good critiques. But are any of those the kind of things that are gonna break through for somebody who spends 20 minutes a week paying attention to through this? Like, I mean, a lot of my friends, you know, like, I am very immersed in this stuff. And so this, like, feels to me like something that really. These things are like, this is. This is really bad. This is getting bad. And then I'm like, you know, does my buddy Mikey, who's, like, tangentially maybe paying attention to this, actually care about whether, like, Pentagon or whether, like, State Department staffers are able to get out in a timely fashion from some job they took in Dubai. I don't think he does care, honestly. And I think what he's seeing is like, bad guys being killed, oppressed people living under bad guys rule, celebrating, and Trump saying, we're doing it and it's quick and look how badass our military is. And I get why in the wash. That comes out as maybe a pretty even split about support for and against the war. And I don't say that in, like, any kind of. I don't think it's like the people who support the war are all people who are not paying attention or not informed. I'm sure there's plenty of people who are not paying attention or not informed on both sides of this issue. But I think we maybe overrate, like, these finer details we get stuck on and how much they're actually trickling down to the general populace. So I was shocked at first when I saw these numbers because the discourse I'm seeing is so overwhelmingly negative, even on the right. But then I thought more about it and I was like, maybe it isn't that hard to sell a war with Iran to your average normie American. Maybe it's just like we're predisposed to think we're the good guys in this situation and it's probably worth it. You know what I mean?
- [31:20]
Ari Weitzman
If I had a Magic 8 ball, I would shake it and it would come up and say, ask again later. Because if you go ahead and you ask Mikey in three months, when the headlines are different and it's not like there's only so many despotic leaders to overthrow, and there's only so many times the headlines are going to lead with body counts that are only asymmetrically on the other side, before there's one Benghazi or one downed plane or one leak, any headline that goes the other way and the story changes. And I think that's the thing that we forget about our worldview sometimes is when we are reacting to events based on the way we've wired our own brains over time is we. We no longer react to things in real time. I don't think we're capable of it. Like, that's maybe sad and maybe we should work on ourselves a little bit. But I think when we see a headline and we're reacting, we're reacting to what we think will happen tomorrow and next week, in three months down the line, so when I hear, and I think this is something that happens to the three of us, a headline that says US Assassinates Iranian Leader or Takes out IRGC leadership Group in Strike, I think immediately, who is going to take over next? What if they're worse? And if they're not, then how much effort is it going to take to sustain that? And what will that mean for us? And what will it mean for the next three months, six months, year, and on and on. And I think once that starts to kick through, if I were to just make myself react to the moment and hear that the IRGC leadership group has just been taken out, I would like, how can that not be good news? Like that can only sound like good news. But I don't think it's possible for us to react just that way. And I do think people, we are reacting to more information at the time. And when all of that information starts to seep out into the public consciousness and all of those things that we're worried about start to happen or don't happen, then we're all going to be playing with the same deck of cards. But we're not all quite reacting to the same things yet. That's another thing about the media ecosystem that I think we talk about left, right, bias and the way that we're drinking from different fire hoses all the time. But one of the things that I think we should be careful not to underrate is media literate or media expert people are people who are steeped in this all day long. And that could be a bias of its own in the negative, but also sometimes in the positive, the people who have those opinions that are shaping the narrative that we're all reading are probably all kind of reacting to the same set of information. And once that information gets popularized over time, then I think we're all going to start to see 60 to 80% approval or disapproval ratings one way or the other. Maybe things will happen optimistically and all of us negative media people will have to adjust their worldviews. But if and when that doesn't happen, I think we'll probably be sharing the same kind of reactions as Mikey does.
- [34:24]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I was actually really impressed, Isaac, with the narrative that you spun, the kind of positive interpretation of things that someone who isn't really tracking the news might actually take away from this just given the headlines, because the commentators who I'm seeing in conservative media and elsewhere generally tend to be exceedingly negative. The only kind of public person who isn't actually a member of the Trump administration who I reliably see out there banging the drum for this is Lindsey Graham. And everyone else for the most part is kind of heaping skepticism on this particular operation. And I wonder if it isn't true that amongst the public, even the kind of MAGA faithful who, again, Republicans generally in favor of this operation. But I wonder how real that is. I mean, the anti war, anti kind of interventionist wing of the Republican Party was exceedingly loud during the campaign. It was a central pillar of the Trump administration. He wasn't saying, if I were president, we would have finished the Ukraine situation because I would have gotten so tough or I would have gone in and knocked around Iran. His rhetoric has for so long been expressly in the other direction that other people get into wars because they're dumb, they're unsophisticated, they can't make deals. He said that? Yeah. This is a radical departure from what he promised. And I've heard it characterized as perhaps the most profound kind of broken campaign promise since. Well, I don't know which since, but perhaps ever my mind went back to if you're like your doctor, you can keep it and read my lips. No new taxes. And this certainly seems to obliterate those as examples of presidential candidates who say one thing and deliver a very different thing once they get into office.
- [36:16]
Ari Weitzman
Well, it's not a work meal, Right?
- [36:19]
Camille Foster
Right. It's difficult foreign. We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [36:33]
Ari Weitzman
AI is transforming customer service. It's real and it works. And with fin, we've built the number one AI agent for customer service. We're seeing lots of cases where it's solving up to 90% of real queries for real businesses. This includes the real, real world.
- [36:47]
Camille Foster
Complex stuff like issuing a refund or canceling an order.
- [36:50]
Ari Weitzman
And we also see it when Finn goes up against competitors.
- [36:53]
Camille Foster
It's top of all the performance benchmarks,
- [36:55]
Ari Weitzman
top of the G2 leaderboard. And if you're not happy, we'll refund you up to a million dollars, which
- [37:00]
Camille Foster
I think says it all.
- [37:01]
Ari Weitzman
Check it out for yourself at fin.AI
- [37:03]
Camille Foster
hi, this is Matt from P1 with Matt and Tommy, and this episode is sponsored by ebay. The cars you'll find on ebay are just different. They come with a story that you can't wait to share. Like this 1973 Dodge Charger on ebay that has been tucked away in an Arizona Barn for over 40 years. Only 55,000 miles and somehow in great running order, it even has a rare sunroof. Suddenly a car that was hidden for decades is being delivered in just a few clicks with ebay's secure purchase. All the paperwork handled. There are thousands of cars on ebay, from unique finds like the Pont Grand Prix SJ to daily drivers, and now with a new way to buy them. Ebay, things people love. As we sit here Wednesday evening, you know, the. The latest news that we have is the president has been in front of the camera saying Iran's running out of its missile launchers and its systems are overwhelmed. NATO is, in some ways beginning to join the fight. NATO air defense systems shot down an Iranian ballistic missile headed toward Turkey. Spain apparently is in a kind of standoff with Trump refusing to let us use its bases. Trump threatened to halt all trade with Spain. They reneged, said they'll let them. But then another official from Spain came out and said that was a false report. So we're kind of monitoring that situation. And now the Senate is voting on whether they'll bring a resolution to the floor to restrict Trump's ability to continue military action in Iran. All of this is unfolding right now as we record the show. So I'm sure things will continue to move in the next few days, and by the time we get here next week and we're back in these seats, this situation will probably be very different than it is right now. I want to move on to, I think, the one A story this week, the second biggest story, and in a typical week, probably the thing we'd be spending most of our time talking about, which is we had our first big midterm elections of this cycle. We had primaries in Texas and North Carolina and Arkansas. There's a good deal to pick at here. I think the main event, the kind of title fight, ended up being on the Democratic side between James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett. James Talarico came out ahead, actually, pretty decisively in the end. I remember sitting here with you guys a few weeks ago talking about this when Crockett was leading in the polls, and we were sort of discussing the possibility of, you know, whether she could actually win a general election in Texas or not. Obviously, that question is now moot. The other side, the Republican side, between John Cornyn and Ken Paxton is going to run off. We're all awaiting Trump's endorsement. There was a piece, of all places in the Atlantic where an administration official had leaked that the president was gonna endorse John Cornyn for the seat, which I think is the smart thing to do politically. I think Ken Baxter's pretty toxic, but I wanted to talk about two things. One is your reflections on this tall Rico Jasmine Crockett race. Larger implications. And two is if there's any kind of, I guess, big major takeaways for each party going into this. The Wall Street Journal editorial board had a, I think, rather alarmed piece today, which I'm gonna talk about before we get outta here. But I wanna start with Crockett and Talrico. I'll start by saying I'm happy with this outcome. I do not endorse. We at Tango have a very strict policy. We do not endorse candidates. Though I'm pretty sure I called Jasmine Crockett a blowhard on the show like a month ago. I'm just. I'm just exhausted by her style of politics, which is not unique to her in any way. And I just. They can stay in the House if you want to act like that. That's your chamber and you can hang out there. I am holding on for dear life to this fantasy that the Senate is this buttoned up institution, greatest deliberative body in the world. And I know in my head somewhere, I know that's not true.
- [41:38]
Ari Weitzman
The greatest body in the world is the federal reservoir.
- [41:42]
Camille Foster
Yeah, yeah, that actually is. That might be true. But I just don't want her scorch earth, like make fun of the Texas governor for being in a wheelchair. Politics in the Senate. I'm not interested in it. And I think James Talarico is a really interesting candidate. I think we do not get many. I've learned from writing this newsletter and doing this podcast here at Tango that there are many progressive Christians in our country who feel extremely underrepresented by our nation's politics because Christian and faith centered politics are so associated with the Republican Party. And so I'm just in that narrow sense, party stuff aside, I'm happy James Talarico exists and has a national profile because I think he's in the arena and he's speaking a language that there's actually many Americans in our country who are like progressive, faith based, faith First Christians whose politics are on the left and they don't really have a face for that. And he's kind of operating as that face. That's not a judgment on his politics or anything else. It's just like I believe in representation. So I'm glad he's in the arena. I have no idea if he can win a Texas Senate race. And I think this is probably another notch in the economic populism, greater than identity politics belt for the Democratic Party. James Talarico ran Very, very hard on this anti billionaire, anti rich, anti wealth platform. And he stayed out of the race stuff that Jasmine Crockett and Colin Allred tried to drag him into. He just was above the fray of a lot of the identity politics stuff. So that's kind of my read on the situation. I'd be curious to hear from you guys if you share the sentiment about maybe a little exhale, seeing someone like this win over someone like Crockett. And if you think there's any chance in hell this guy can actually win a Texas Senate race as a Democrat.
- [43:54]
Isaac Saul
I mean, I do think that Raphael Warnock is another Democrat in the Senate who is someone who speaks that same sort of language, is talking to different communities.
- [44:03]
Camille Foster
That's a great, really good point.
- [44:04]
Isaac Saul
But I do think, just again, if we're talking about demographics with respect to age in this context, that Telrico kind of represents that in a younger, more attractive, perhaps to younger audiences or younger voters packaging, and in this particular context, against Jasmine Crockett, I suspect what's more important than the kind of populist dimensions of this, because I don't think Crockett would really disagree with most of those things. And all of those things have largely been pretty popular amongst Democrats. You see that in the kind of perennial success of someone like Bernie Sanders on the national stage and certainly in all those Democratic presidential primaries. I think he's running like 100 now. That ultimately the thing that really is telling is the exhaustion with identity politics. And I think that it is something that has existed on the right for a very long time and has really invigorated them. It's something that almost certainly helped to give Trump the win in the last election cycle. But you're seeing it increasingly among Democrats when Gavin Newsom started to run away from all of his previously held positions in a really conspicuous way, openly acknowledging in some instances that these used to be my views and now I'm going someplace else. I think we've probably done too much. Crockett is a kind of representation of a lot of those things. And even the kind of principal controversy that arose in this race turned out to be another kind of gender and race controversy that seemed to kind of unfairly saddle Tel Rico with this label of being someone who kind of had racially malignant views. I don't really see that it didn't seem like a particularly legit argument. And I do suspect to the extent there's going to be this battle between a Democrat and a Republican eventually, that they're probably Democrats are probably better positioned with Tel Rico rather than Crockett in this race.
- [45:59]
Ari Weitzman
I think it's a little. I'm going to answer the other question since you tackled the Talarico vs Crockett angle, which is do I think that he could win in Texas, which is sort of the. Until otherwise proven, no. I think maybe the word can. If we're talking about open ended, then yeah, he can, but it's going to depend. So what are the things that. Like, what does that path look like? 1, it's going to take a great campaign from him in order to sell that a change from what has been representing Texas for forever is needed. Second, it'll take the right opponent. So I mentioned this today when I wrote our first ever staff concurrence in the newsletter following your take, was that it would benefit Talarico a great deal if he's facing Paxton instead of Cornyn, because I think people like Paxton are going to have a hard time trying to split the difference when there inevitably becomes a wedge issue between a preponderance of, say, 30 to 60% of Republicans and Trump. And a good example is the southwestern border wall. That is something that is not very popular or exceedingly unpopular, depending on the area with many Texans, right or left. And if that's something that Trump moves forward with, candidate Paxton's gonna have to sell why he's standing with Trump. And if he doesn't, then he's gonna have to tell his very Trump forward base why he's breaking with them. Whereas somebody like Cornyn, who Republicans expect has some wiggle room to break with the president, he can sell that message to both camps a little bit better. So I think, and that's just one example of ways that I think Paxton's going to have a harder time in the general election than Cornyn will. But that's two things. A good campaign, a good or the right opponent. And then third, it's going to be a lot of luck. Like, it's hard for us to anticipate what's going to be the deciding issue in this election in November. A lot of things are going to change now. Every day in the newsletter we publish what we're talking about a year ago and it's always such a trip. Like a year ago, we're talking about Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office. And that was something that, I mean, that dominated. It was something we talked about for months. And now imagine casting your ballot based off of that. There's no way anybody's going to decide based on that alone how they're going to vote. So right now we're thinking about Iran. Is that even going to matter? I don't know. Last month we were talking nonstop about Greenland. So these things are going to change, especially in this landscape so fast. And if it's the right issue at the right time, then it's possible. But it's going to have to take the stars aligning, I think, in order for him to win there.
- [48:47]
Camille Foster
Yeah, it's a good point about how quickly the environment changes. I mean, I would say, yeah, he needs a perfect national environment, he needs a bad opponent, and he needs to run an excellent campaign. And I think he's capable of running an excellent campaign. I think he was on the verge of getting a bad candidate, but I think he's going to be running against Cornyn, who's a very good candidate. And I think the national environment, the national environment is great for him right now, for Talarico right now, but I don't think it's a sure thing at all that it'll be great for him in November. I mentioned this Wall Street Journal piece and I just wanted to float this because it struck me again as alarmed, I would say. The editorial board said Democrats are climbing over one another to vote and control of the Senate is now in play. Texas has been a GOP majority state for a generation, but on Tuesday, as many Democrats turned out to vote as Republicans, with some 94% counted, Hispanic voters in particular swung hard for Democrats compared to 2024. And then the board went on to sort of explain every kind of contested Senate seat coming up in 2026 and the angle on why Democrats had an advantage. I don't see any Democrats speaking as confidently as the Wall Street Journal editorial board was speaking. Alarmed. And to me, I think it's a stretch to believe that a Senate majority is actually in play for Democrats. But it struck me that this was their reaction to the results here. And I think it speaks to again the national environment that we're operating in right now, today, in February, which if I wanted to earn March, which if I wanted to paint as negatively as I possibly could for Trump and I Republicans, it would be affordability stuff, not really being solved. A war in Iran, that's a new front of ceasefire in Gaza that doesn't really feel like a ceasefire. An unresolved war in Ukraine, all the stuff that just happened in Venezuela, and lots of talk now by the way of us doing something in Cuba. There's been many, many articles.
- [51:04]
Ari Weitzman
And Ecuador.
- [51:05]
Camille Foster
Yeah, and Ecuador. So there's like, which is what they
- [51:08]
Ari Weitzman
thought you were gonna say, which is wild that we have to guess which country you're talking about.
- [51:12]
Camille Foster
Yeah, Multi front stuff happening now, like Greenland and, you know, whatever. India, Pakistan, like old news. New hot stuff is Ecuador and Cuba. That's where we are now.
- [51:25]
Isaac Saul
Lindsey Graham is asking for intervention in Lebanon.
- [51:28]
Camille Foster
Not great. I missed that. I didn't even sign it.
- [51:32]
Isaac Saul
Don't worry about it for now.
- [51:34]
Camille Foster
Yeah. So, you know, and then on top of all that, we have the DHS fight where Trump has lost a bunch of ground on his signature issue and there's a partial government shutdown with no end in sight. Right. With no end in sight. And a big sector of MAGA up in arms about all the intervention happening across the globe and some just like, you know, sometimes good, sometimes bad economic numbers and a huge, huge wave of activation on the left in terms of opposition to Trump and kind of statewide local organizing all across the country, which we've seen borne out in the special elections and the results that we've gotten at the polls in the last few months, which, you know, we're seeing these like again, low stakes, ish state House races or whatever, having 20, 30, 40 point swings to the left. So I get the alarm. I'm not sold. This is where we're going to be in four or five or six months. But certainly right now it's not a great environment to be a Republican, which I guess is a great segue to flip the script to a Good Guy of the Week segment, which we decided we would do this week and maybe in the future, depending on how this goes, we decided like maybe occasionally we should recognize the people who are being good doing things. Right. And I nominated and I think his nomination was accepted. Has the nomination been accepted, would you say?
- [53:20]
Ari Weitzman
We have to ask him will he run for your guy of the Week for tangle?
- [53:25]
Camille Foster
Yeah, I feel like you guys are the board. I've nominated Senator Kennedy for Good Guy of the Week. Why have I nominated him? Because he asked some actually thoughtful, sharp, non theatrical oppositional questions to Krissy Noemi in this hearing about DHS's actions and her actions personally. And they weren't made for TV questions. They weren't designed to, you know, it wasn't Senator Thom Tillis pointing and screaming at her and berating her and talking about what a liar she was and how she killed her dog and these personal attacks and whatever. It was like really legitimate oversight. And I was actually impressed. So I'm nominating Senator Kennedy for Good Guy of the Week. And I'm just gonna. We're gonna play a quick clip from just one exchange that he had here, and then I'd like to get your guys reactions to it and how it feels to you. How do you square that concern for waste, which I share, with the fact that you have spent $220 million running television advertisements that feature you prominently?
- [54:51]
Ari Weitzman
Sir, the president tasked me with getting the message out to the country and to other countries where we were seeing
- [54:57]
Camille Foster
the invasion come from, with putting commercials
- [55:00]
Ari Weitzman
out that told them that if they
- [55:01]
Camille Foster
were in this country illegally that they,
- [55:03]
Ari Weitzman
they needed to leave or we would
- [55:05]
Camille Foster
detain them and remove them and they not get the chance to come back
- [55:08]
Ari Weitzman
to America the right way.
- [55:10]
Camille Foster
That has been extremely effective. Ask you to run these advertisements, is that right?
- [55:16]
Ari Weitzman
We had that conversation, yes. Before I was put in this position and sworn in and confirmed and since then as well.
- [55:24]
Camille Foster
Okay. Did you, did you bid out those, those servants service contracts? Yes, they did. They went out to a competitive bid
- [55:32]
Isaac Saul
and career officials at the department chose
- [55:35]
Camille Foster
who would do those advertising commercials. And the people that you ended up picking were people who had formerly done your political work back in South Dakota, is that right? No, that's not correct, sir.
- [55:53]
Ari Weitzman
No, it's not, sir.
- [55:54]
Camille Foster
We the individuals who, I believe the
- [55:57]
Ari Weitzman
careers who they chose were two different media firms.
- [56:02]
Camille Foster
There's been conversation about their subcontractors, but we have no legal authority to look
- [56:07]
Ari Weitzman
into subcontractors on work like that.
- [56:09]
Camille Foster
Okay, and you're saying that you're testifying that President Trump approved this ahead of time. Is that my understanding? We had conversations about making sure that
- [56:22]
Isaac Saul
we were telling people, no, ma'.
- [56:23]
Ari Weitzman
Am.
- [56:23]
Camille Foster
No, ma', am, I'm asking you. Sorry to interrupt, but the president approved ahead of time you spending $220 million running TV ads across the country in which you are featured prominently. Yes, sir. We went through the legal processes. Did it?
- [56:40]
Ari Weitzman
Correct?
- [56:42]
Camille Foster
Yes, he did, yes. Okay.
- [56:47]
Ari Weitzman
And one thing, Senator, I think would be helpful to know is how effective
- [56:51]
Camille Foster
that communications has been that overwhelming, how effective in your name recognition. I mean, I personally just. I mean, to me it puts the President in a terribly awkward spot. And it. And I just, I'm not saying you're not telling the truth. It's just hard for me to believe, knowing the president, listen as I do, that you said, Mr. President, here's some ads I've cut and I'm going to spend $220 million running them that he would have agreed to that. Is it the Southern draw that makes it so gentle and nice? When he's just like, to me, it puts the President in a terribly awkward spot. I love this. To the point he's like, this was effective in your name recognition. You're talking about not wasting money and we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on commercials. And also you're being a little squishy about whether the President actually approved this or you went out and did this thing on your own. Can you really clarify there? This is good stuff. Good guy of the week right here. Senator Kennedy asking good, smart questions, not being rude. You know, very much like, this is my truth. I'm trying to understand where you're coming from. Again, I don't know how much of that is the beautiful Southern drawl he's got, but I love this. I don't know. Can we agree, Good guy?
- [58:23]
Ari Weitzman
Maybe we can take the note from this that when you are professionally doing your job, then people are gonna recognize you for it. At least three people. So it's a good thing when you check the hysteria at the door and you're like, hold on, I'm just looking at these receipts here and it's seems like you spent. Now I'm just getting this number correct. $220 million. Was it on Kristi Noam ad hits, specifically DHS also featured on the track. It seems like this is something that maybe we shouldn't be doing. And Kennedy also, later in his line of questioning went ahead and asked her who Tom Hillman reported to and made her say President Trump. And he's like, so not you. Okay, so why do you think the President appointed somebody to do the thing you were doing that isn't reporting to you? What do you think that says? And you said before that this wasn't as made for tv and everything's made for TV in these Senate hearings. But the TV play that he's going for here is, look, we should be honest about the fact that your job approval's low and these are the reasons. He was very pointed also about the shootings in Minnesota and the leadership of DHS under Kristi Noem that led to them. And whether or not the PR was cover up was sort of the insinuation there. And I think he did a good job ending at that in a way that many people could hear.
- [59:45]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I mean, I'll agree with you, Isaac, in giving him some points for style. And it's certainly nice to see someone who isn't obviously self promotionally grandstanding. But also Republicans have a huge incentive to go after Noam. She is deeply unpopular and if she can be the person to wear the dunce hat for all of the incredible mistakes and abuses of power that have taken place during this kind of surge in immigration enforcement, that is all to the good for Republicans. If you are an elected Republican, you definitely want there to be some footage of you giving her the business for her mistakes. And also slide in a couple of comments that say, this is so difficult for the. I mean, imagine what the President has to endure. Are you suggesting that the president was responsible for this? Hey, wait a minute. Did you give a $220 million contract to some friends of yours? I wish he pushed a little harder on that. You could be polite and deft while sliding in the knife slowly. Just ask. Are you sure you don't know them? No relationship to them whatsoever? That would have been nice to see as well. So, yes, definitely.
- [60:48]
Ari Weitzman
Agree.
- [60:48]
Camille Foster
Good.
- [60:49]
Isaac Saul
But also, there is some obvious kind of personal benefit and advantage to be gained from this particular pantsing.
- [61:00]
Camille Foster
Yeah, that's fair. All right, you ruined this segment, but I appreciate it. All right, well, we already said it's
- [61:07]
Ari Weitzman
impossible for us to react to things just as they are. We can't do it anymore. We're broken.
- [61:11]
Camille Foster
No, it's okay, everybody. This is a good. That's a good time. It's time to put on your negative critical hats. We've arrived at my favorite part of every week. We get to air the grievances. John, you can play the music. And we will create our safe space to complain about things happening in our lives. The airing of grievances.
- [61:40]
Ari Weitzman
Between you and me, I think your country is placing a lot of importance on shoe removal.
- [61:45]
Camille Foster
All right, I'm gonna go last today, so I'll leave. Throw a jump ball to either of you who'd like to take it.
- [61:54]
Ari Weitzman
I don't think you wanna follow me, Camille.
- [61:56]
Isaac Saul
Okay, let me go ahead and go first.
- [61:58]
Ari Weitzman
This is gentle.
- [61:59]
Camille Foster
This is.
- [61:59]
Ari Weitzman
I don't think you want to. Oh, yes.
- [62:01]
Isaac Saul
This is gentle. This is gentle. It's my son's birthday. Turned four today. And this morning we did the awarding of gifts, et cetera. But I had to put together the Hot Wheels Ultimate Garage playset after he went to school. So when he arrives home, he'll be able to play for it. Play with it. Cause I gotta get a jet outta here tonight. Not a jet, a plane. Anyways, this is not about my travel travails. This is about the quality of toys. And gentlemen. We are not quite men of the same age, but it's a similar sort of range. At least you know who The Masters of the Universe are, and I suspect you actually had better toys than my children do. The quality of toys is actually astonishingly bad. And this Hot Wheels playset is like fine, but it's so plasticky. And the thing that I found most frustrating after an hour and a half assembling the thing is that you actually have to put all the stickers and decals on the thing by yourself.
- [62:59]
Ari Weitzman
That's kind of part of the fun though, I think.
- [63:01]
Isaac Saul
It's not fun. It's not fun at all. And there was a time where you got your kind of Masters of the Universe castle grayskull playset and it came and it was painted and it was beautiful and it was rich and the plastic was durable and you could kick that thing down the steps and it would still work, it would still be fine. If I found it today, it would probably still function. I don't have any hope whatsoever that this thing will still be around two years from now. But the thing that I am most frustrated by is that somehow some marketing executive somewhere made millions of dollars for themselves creating an animated show called the Hot Wheels Something another, which is this weird mashup of Pokemon and Paw Patrol. And it is simply put, like a 30 minute marketing machine for all of their products. The Hot Wheels Ultimate Garage is featured prominently in this show. And it was the only thing.
- [63:59]
Ari Weitzman
Man, you're a libertarian.
- [63:59]
Isaac Saul
Just don't watch was the only thing he wanted commit. I don't want a law to stop it. I'm just saying that it's insane that this is where we are. The most sophisticated marketing operations in human history being directed at my son and what he gets at the end of all of that is pretty shitty toy that will probably stick around for like a year or so. Although the Hot Wheels still seem to be pretty well made. And I suspect he'll have those for a lifetime. So we'll have hundreds of those. For me to slip and fall on
- [64:30]
Camille Foster
Ari the new year, I have to say I had the exact same reaction listening to this as Ari, which is, this is the world free trade built, you libertarian piece of shit. You did this to us. Now we have cheap crappy toys to some place in Vietnam that nobody cares about. And you got what you asked for, so congratulations, man.
- [64:52]
Isaac Saul
I still have taste. Okay, there's a free market, but we get to make choices. And I'm just saying, come on, my fellow Americans, join me in deciding on that now.
- [65:00]
Ari Weitzman
Every Sunday, by God, 1:00pm Eastern Time, from September through January on national television, there's a three And a half hour commercial for a ball. And you go out there and you get him that ball and I tell you, you can go outside and play with that thing for the rest of his life. Amen.
- [65:19]
Isaac Saul
Amen.
- [65:20]
Camille Foster
All right, Ari, what do you got, man?
- [65:22]
Ari Weitzman
Well, I. I traveled this weekend, so I said a couple months ago that I didn't want to just dip into the travel bank every time I did it, but every time I travel I think it gets worse. I think the story gets worse. And last time I had a flight get canceled, my connecting flight from New York back home to Vermont and ended up driving with a rental car with a co coach, my co coach, Jake. From 12:30 till 7, this time on my way out to Knoxville, flight was delayed four times. That's almost run of the mill now. Like this is preamble stuff. And so coming out From Burlington to D.C. there is a lot of delay. That's fine because you can count. You can set your watch on the delays for the other flight coming out of DC. So my 7:30 flight out of DC was pushed back to 8:30, 9:30. Start getting worried when it's at midnight. By the time they push back to 12:30, I think I know what's happening. And by the time they cancel the flight, I already have the rental car booked. It's fine. I'll just drive from D.C. all night to Knoxville. It's Friday night, so I'm going to be getting to the tournament. I'm coaching with no sleep, but I'm prepped. It was too bad that I kind of was pacing myself with caffeine and food to crash around 2am but that meant that I'd be driving and well into Virginia by the time I was tired. So I had the rental car. Things were going pretty well, I guess, as well as they could go. I already knew travel was going to be challenging because it's me and that's airlines right now. But do my 2:30 nap, get my 40 minutes in. I'm already. I'm on track to be in Knoxville at the field at 7:30, so I can still stop for a coffee and breakfast before I get there. So I'm feeling pretty good. As good as you can. And I'm making my way through Tennessee on I81, switch over to 40, get on I40 and about a mile into that drive I hit something in the road. I'd later learned that there was a truck carrying some industrial ceramics that overturned, leaving these small shards across the road of which my driver front tire found itself going over and Getting punctured on so big bam at about 4:45 just before 5am and the tire gets a huge flat. So I have to pull over to the side of the highway and change it. Shout out to the Tennessee Highway Patrol. Very professional officer whose name I've forgotten, but he was great. Just like put his cop car behind me on the shoulder, making sure that we were safe there and no one was going to rear end me. As I'm changing the tire out on the side of the road, get the donut on. I said at the end of it, this whole time, this whole 20 minute experience changing the tire officer, I didn't make one donut joke. And he, he sort of appreciated that and he said, well, sir, you have the right to. Which was great. And then sent me on my way. So I was about 65 miles outside of Knoxville at that time. And it was then about 6:30 by the time I was on the road, which meant I was trying to get there by 8 and I had to drive with a donut. So I was going 50 to 55 the whole time and gone in at like 8:20. So I got to the tournament late, unfortunately, and on basically no sleep. And that was really, really tough. Our team meanwhile had the flu going through the squad. So we were. The whole team was suffering. We're all just trying to make it through Saturday of Smoky Mountain invite together and we're able to. We did decently. We made it to quarters that day before the wheels fell off, metaphorically, to speak the next day. But I think my grievance is just like, can I have one normal experience?
- [69:14]
Camille Foster
I'm never traveling with you.
- [69:16]
Ari Weitzman
That would be nice. I don't recommend it.
- [69:19]
Isaac Saul
Bad travel juju. He's got some kind of curse.
- [69:22]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, I just.
- [69:23]
Camille Foster
Maybe you should have this.
- [69:24]
Ari Weitzman
May as well happen now. You know, I feel like a deceased. Like I did something to Poseidon. I don't know why.
- [69:29]
Camille Foster
I think you should voodoo doll, like an airplane or something, something and just put it in a jar and fill it with something creepy.
- [69:37]
Ari Weitzman
I think, I think I'm gonna like sacrifice a horse to Poseidon or maybe I don't know what kind of animal.
- [69:44]
Camille Foster
Buy a small model plane, but yeah, maybe go kill a 1500 pound animal. I guess that's.
- [69:49]
Ari Weitzman
It's on the list. I don't know. I'm looking for suggestions if it may not be the best suggestion. But maybe I'm also just excited about this Odyssey movie that's coming. And I'm thinking about things through that lens.
- [70:00]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I'm actually looking forward to that, too. Can I say something kind to both of you in the midst of these grievances? I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I've seen you guys do the Frisbee thing, and I just have to just compliment you on your abilities as disc related athletes. It's actually pretty impressive to watch you throw the darn thing and have it, like, go hundreds of yards, it seems, and land exactly where you threw it after arching through the air. It is truly the case that people can become expert at just about anything, and you guys have become exceedingly good at this. It's very strange. You should have any interest in ultimate Frisbee before this. None whatsoever.
- [70:43]
Ari Weitzman
Tune in to college easterns at the end of this month. It's a really great.
- [70:47]
Isaac Saul
I might. Yeah.
- [70:48]
Camille Foster
Thanks, Camille. I appreciate you saying that, man. We're real athletes, too. All right? Don't let the stereotypes drag us down. Um. All right, well, my grievance for the week is one that I think everybody can relate to at this point, but I was just like, I've just been driven over the edge in the last week, which is just the robocalls. I'm just. I don't. I'm. I report every call I get that's a robocall. I block the number. I report it as spam. I do the thing you're supposed to do. I haven't, like, gone on the FCC website and tried to say, like, hey, these people. But it is relentless, dude. And. And they leave messages now. So my voicemail inbox. So I'm just like, at the end of the day, I open my phone, I have eight missed calls. I look at them. They're all spam, likely, whatever. And then I have, like, six voicemails I have to go through and delete everyone. And also, because I just bought a house, there's like, a lot of the spam calls are always like, loan stuff and whatever. And, like, a few of them have just had just enough of the language, like, in the voicemail, like, is this actually important or related to me? Like, I have a mortgage now. I have, like. You know, there's people. I do. I get, like, real text messages about, like, my loan being consolidated or bought by somebody or transfer to somebody or, like, update your payment or whatever. So I'm like, now I actually have to pay attention to them. Like, before I hear loan or something. Like, okay, hang up, whatever, or just delete the voicemail. Now I'm like, I kind of have to pay attention to it again. This is the kind of stuff to me that is just like, I don't understand how we have rovers on Mars, but I can't stop a robocall. Please fix this. Somebody fix this. There needs to be real genuine penalties. And because these are all scams. The robocalls are all scams. They're getting bet. I mean, they're really getting good. I almost got got by some call that was like, we have a suspicious login for your Gmail account or something. Like press one if this was you. Press two if it wasn't. And I'm always so skeptical of all this stuff. And I was just like, I had actually picked up the call because it didn't show as a spam number and the call actually showed as Google. And I was like, that's weird. Like a Google. And I thought maybe it was like a thing about our admin account for work or something. And so I picked it up, I got the thing and then I just hit two. Like, no, I didn't. And then I was like, somebody will call you back. And then I got this call back and it was like this very sophisticated, professional sounding guy who was like, he sent me a confirmation. He was like, I'm going to send you an email with a code that has the information about this incident, whatever. And it was in the Google letterhead and all this stuff. And then the last thing, he was like, I need you to just approve the login to clear the cache or something like that. And I opened my Gmail account on my phone. It was like, somebody's trying to log into your account in Maryland or Silver Spring, Maryland. And I was like, no, not gonna approve that. Then I was like, on the phone, I'm like, I had been suspicious the whole time, but then that was like the sure thing tell. And I was like, wait, where, where's this notification coming from? And he was like, from our headquarters in Los Angeles. Google headquarters. And I was like, ooh, not the Google headquarters. Nice. All right, I'm out. Thanks. And then I asked him if he liked ruining people's lives and whatever. And I mean, I hate these guys. I say horrible stuff.
- [74:39]
Ari Weitzman
There's actually, there's like a Internet community of people that would be pissed at you for not spending more time with them on the phone. I have complained about like having a scammer talk to me before and like sent for a laugh to like the subreddit where you do this. The thread where I'm like, here's me jerking this dude around for like 20 minutes, and they're like, wow, 20? Really? That's all you got to try to, like, take a hit for the poor people who can't do this work themselves. Like, we're trying to be the ethical ones and keep these people entertained, and that's all you got down vote. So, yeah. Bad on you, I think.
- [75:14]
Camille Foster
I guess. Yeah, I get it. And I appreciate their gumption to waste as much time these guys. These guys have as possible. But somebody has to fix this. I don't know who it is. Maybe it'll be James Talarico. Just, like, run on that. I'll move the text for you.
- [75:32]
Isaac Saul
Yeah.
- [75:34]
Camille Foster
All right, gentlemen, we gotta get out of here. It's good to see your ugly mugs. And we'll do it again next week. Have a good one. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul. And our executive producer is John Wolf. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will K. Back and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Knuth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@retangle.com.
- [76:24]
Isaac Saul
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- [76:54]
Camille Foster
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- [77:46]
Ari Weitzman
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- [77:47]
Camille Foster
Eat like a pro. Right now, go to factor meals.com healthy50 off and use code healthy50 off for 50% off and free breakfast for a year.
- [77:59]
Ari Weitzman
That's Factor Me Meals.
- [78:00]
Camille Foster
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