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- [00:00]
Isaac Zahl
Big news.
- [00:01]
Boost Mobile Announcer
Boost Mobile is now sending experts nationwide to deliver and set up customers new phones at home or work.
- [00:05]
Isaac Zahl
Wait, we're going on tour?
- [00:07]
Boost Mobile Announcer
Not a tour. We're delivering and setting up customers phones so it's easier to upgrade.
- [00:11]
Camille Foster
Let's get in the tour bus and hit the road.
- [00:12]
Boost Mobile Announcer
No, not a tour bus. It's a regular car we use to deliver and set up customers phones at home or work.
- [00:17]
Isaac Zahl
Are you a groupie on this tour?
- [00:18]
Boost Mobile Announcer
We deliver and set up phones. It's not a tour.
- [00:21]
Isaac Zahl
Oh you're definitely a groupie.
- [00:23]
Boost Mobile Announcer
Introducing store to door Switch and get a new device with expert setup and delivery wherever you're at.
- [00:27]
Isaac Zahl
Delivery available for select devices purchased@boostmobile.com dreaming of getting the all new iPhone 17 Pro designed to be the most powerful iPhone ever.
- [00:35]
Boost Mobile Announcer
Then stay in bed and let a Boost Mobile expert deliver and set it up for you.
- [00:39]
Isaac Zahl
Oh actually they will have to get.
- [00:40]
Ari Weitzman
Up and open the door.
- [00:41]
Isaac Zahl
Oh right. Delivery available for select devices purchased@boostmobile.com terms apply.
- [00:45]
Mint Mobile Announcer
Well, the holidays have come and gone once again. But if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift. Well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year.
- [01:00]
Ari Weitzman
What do you have to lose?
- [01:02]
Camille Foster
Give it.
- [01:02]
Mint Mobile Announcer
Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch limited time.
- [01:05]
Advertisement Voice
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- [01:18]
Camille Foster
Coming up. We're here in person together, the three of us, and we talk the Epstein files, Jasmine Crockett and some Washington Post news. And also why my team's incredibly incompetent in our grievances section. It's a good one. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening and welcome to the Suspension of the Rules podcast, the only podcast that Camille Foster is on with co hosts who have not been named in the Epstein file.
- [01:58]
Isaac Zahl
We haven't gotten all of them yet.
- [02:00]
Camille Foster
We don't know. It's going to be an awesome show. I am super excited to be here. We're in person. We're together, gentlemen. We don't get to do this very often and certainly not on video. I'm glad to have you guys here. We're here in our studio in Philadelphia, kind of winging it since again, somebody stole all of our stuff from the Studio. It's been an exciting morning of putting this all together. I suppose we should start there. Maybe with the Epstein file stuff, not.
- [02:26]
Isaac Zahl
With the thieving of AV equipment.
- [02:27]
Camille Foster
No, I talked enough about that last week. I will say again if you're listening. If you're listening. We're close. We're gonna get you. We will find. I know you are. And we're getting really close. Okay. We cover this today in the podcast or on the podcast and in the newsletter. But I know there's a lot of demand for us to talk about this on the show. I am getting increasingly frustrated with our audience's response to our coverage, which I wanna talk about a bit today, because I'm trying really hard to give this fair treatment, the Epstein stuff specifically, and to stay on what's actually in the files. And before our coverage came out, one of our Reddit users, I don't know if he was trying to neg me or not, but it felt a little bit like he was. He posted something on Reddit about what our response was going to be. I think it was a commenter, actually, and he was basically right, which sucked. But I, you know, I'm frustrated that it's like being framed badly. So my characterization today was basically like, yeah, we found out some things that we suspected, like there are a lot of really skeezy elite people who stayed close with Jeffrey Epstein after many of his crimes were known. Also, there is no smoking gun evidence or no new evidence brought to light, as far as I can tell, of any criminal wrongdoing released in these files. And no real leads that I've seen reported on that I saw in the files themselves that seem to me to be really interesting or worth pursuing, that might change. There's 3 million of these things and reporters are still poring over them. But I think that's just a fair position to take. And I think a lot of people are frustrated by that position because they want us to come out and say so. And so has been revealed as horrible sex ring, co conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein, and that evidence just hasn't come out yet. I know you guys are generally on my side here, so I'm playing a little bit of home court advantage, I guess. But, like, I don't know how else to treat this. And I guess I'm interested how you guys are thinking about this latest release and if you're. I don't know where your feelings are and if there's anything interesting here that maybe we are under covering in our own coverage of what's happening.
- [04:57]
Isaac Zahl
Yeah, I think I've got thoughts here, but I think the first thing is to try to fairly position what I think the reader criticism is, which is that it's not as much that we've uncovered something now that proves there's a big conspiracy. It's that, look, we all know there's a big conspiracy that's happening and the DOJ is playing cover up for it. The reason why there's no smoking gun is that the DOJ isn't releasing it. It's not that there's no smoking gun here, therefore there isn't one. So I think it's just that old joke about, oh, I had no idea how far this went, that the conspiracy just goes all the way to the top. And anything when you come in with that mindset, there's really nothing you can do to disprove it. So I think that's probably the position and obviously like the counter to that is. Okay, if you're coming in thinking there's a conspiracy here, for sure you'd want to ask the question, what is something that could happen that would move you from that preconception? And I don't know what the answer to that is, but I do think that's the basis. It's not there was a smoking gun. You missed it. It's just that there is a smoking gun and we don't see it.
- [06:01]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, I think one of the things that you did one is I think it was a really great piece and in particular I thought the conversation around Israel and whether or not he is a Mossad agent, the evidence that you put into your essay today, specifically around the kinds of conversation that Epstein was having with these high ranking officials related to the Israeli government, did not have the characteristics that you would expect from someone who is deep on the inside and understands all of the interworkings of government who's taking their orders from Israel. It was something pretty pedestrian, if not a little bit gross, like how do I make a lot of money? How do I turn my political collections into personal profit for myself? I'd like to be wealthy like you. That's what they're talking about.
- [06:49]
Isaac Zahl
It's weird that that's pedestrian, but at.
- [06:51]
Ari Weitzman
The same time, I mean pedestrian as compared to a vast conspiracy in regard.
- [06:56]
Isaac Zahl
To the crimes we're familiar with or.
- [06:58]
Ari Weitzman
The ones that have been alleged over and over again. And the fact that this is the kind of correspondence he's having in private, stuff that in many instances is embarrassing, humiliating for the people who are involved, but again, not Criminal. The Bill Gates stuff in particular, like, he looks really bad. He looks like a deplorable human being. There's also nothing in these emails that suggests anything criminal related to pedophilia, which seems really, really important. And it's also, as you pointed out as well, Epstein emailing things to himself, suggesting things that may or may not have happened. And that is, generally speaking, in a lot of the online conversation about the Epstein files, but also in a lot of the journalism that we're seeing from both great outlets and ones that are a little more susp, where you're essentially dignifying his personal musings in his diary, effectively as though it were necessarily true. And I think, you know, I see Melinda Gates, who I have tremendous sympathy for, who seems nothing but wronged here. But even her public comments about this don't necessarily validate the particular charges that are there. What they say is she was hurt terribly, tremendously by this and indirectly is perhaps a kind of a victim of Epstein because of the relationship that Bill had. But it's still just a matter of his personal conduct. And is that what we're after here? Was the purpose of this disclosure simply to embarrass powerful people, or was it to reveal crimes and actually get to the bottom of whether or not there is some dark, suspicious cabal that's taking place? And again, the evidence doesn't really seem to point in that direction. And at some point, the most extreme over the top idea about what might be going on here probably should be dismissed if the available evidence. And now we have terabytes of it, like, isn't suggesting that there is any there.
- [08:51]
Camille Foster
There. Yeah, I mean, I think what's the Mossad thing is a great example of what's really frustrating. It's like, you know, first of all, I saw somebody on, like, in the ARA Tangle news community, I responded to the comment online who said, you know, look, there's this email where Epstein is replying to something and he says, like, just make sure they know I'm not in Mossad. Smiley face.
- [09:17]
Isaac Zahl
And he wrote that it's my new sign on.
- [09:19]
Matt from P1 with Matt and Tommy
Yeah.
- [09:20]
Camille Foster
And the commenter's like, doesn't that smiley face just say it all?
- [09:24]
Ari Weitzman
And I'm like, no, no, that's a real comment.
- [09:27]
Camille Foster
Yeah. Like, and it's. And it's. And I'm like that. Like, I don't know how you're reading that. And you just. If this was an actual Mossad agent, they wouldn't be emailing, making jokes about, like, this, like, on his personal Gmail. Like it is, like that is the.
- [09:43]
Isaac Zahl
Not the CIA wiki base.
- [09:44]
Camille Foster
Yeah. That absolves him as clearly as anything possibly could. But then this video comes out where it's just like you said, it's very obvious what the relationship is here that he had to all these powerful people. And the New York Times did tremendous reporting on this. The Wall Street Journal's done reporting on it, Bloomberg's done reporting on it. Where they go through this history. How did Epstein make his money? How did he have this rise, this climb? And he was just trading these relationships and these financial deals and one by one by one and then he gets in a position where like the Minister of Defense from Israel is calling him up for advice on how to get rich after he's out of government. It's like, yeah, those are the kinds of relationships he built. Slimy Skeezy for sure is like Ehud Barak directing him or getting like, you know, kompromat on all these, you know, people via sex tapes and stuff. We have no evidence of that anywhere in any of this. It just doesn't exist. So it is really frustrating. I loved and appreciated Lindsay's defense today or her dissent today, which feels worth calling out, that she sort of took issue with me focusing so much on the people getting smeared when the real problem with this whole disclosure is a, the people that are supposed to serve most, the victims got totally, for lack of a better term, I mean, they just like, they, they, they truly got screwed over. They got named. Some of them had photos showed of themselves nude, unredacted, some of whom almost involving minors. Yeah, right.
- [11:22]
Ari Weitzman
That's insane.
- [11:23]
Camille Foster
And, and were probably non consensual photos in some cases. So to the degree this file release helped the victims, like, that's what we got, which I thought was a really good dissent. And I appreciated the kind of gut punch nature of it where she was like, you're focusing all on these people who got smeared and wronged and had their name dragged through the mud when we should really be talking about how the victims are just getting screwed over again. And I think that's right. I just think she's right about that. But it's just like this whole cacophony of stuff is like, when is this going to end now? Which I think is the question you and I have talked about is like, okay, so when will it actually be enough? How many emails do we have to see and pour over before we say, okay, we have a good idea of all these social connections? Or is this just going to Be some never ending thing. And I don't know what to do with that. And my honest feeling is starting to turn into like, I think this is enough. I think this is enough. Like, okay, we got like, Peter Attia's career is over now. We did it. I guess we did it. Great. High five us.
- [12:36]
Isaac Zahl
But like, what else are we going for?
- [12:37]
Camille Foster
Have we advanced anything meaningful for all the women here? I mean, I'm not hearing anything from them that's like, they're so thrilled about all this stuff here that how all this is happening.
- [12:48]
Isaac Zahl
So question, like, what's the goal? Right? Like, Epstein was arrested and then I think a lot of people had a lot of frustration about not being able to see justice brought to him after that. And then Ghislaine Maxwell's indicted, sentenced, called to testify, got Ghislaine to a degree. And at this point it doesn't feel like enough because of the breadth of what happened and the quietness with which people who knew Epstein allowed it to happen. So I think there's this sense of injustice, of we never really got what we wanted from Epstein and that those around him, they just need to get something, we just gotta get something from them. And I think the lack of definition around what that something is, is important, which I think is what your point is here.
- [13:38]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, we've talked about the feeding frenzy here that's happening online. It's worth acknowledging as well that this is one of those stories where we're actually seeing all of the AI slop actually pay a more prominent role in this controversy than many, many other stories that we've seen in recent weeks, months. But I've seen so many fake AI videos, generated stuff where it's a familiar video of Donald Trump and Epstein together at some party and suddenly there are children in the foreground or background. And these videos are racking up hundreds of thousands, and I presume in some cases millions of impressions. But hundreds of thousands of views and comments from people. This is sick. I can't believe it. It's odious. Animating even more of the kind of conspiratorial mindset around of this, the fervor. But to the extent we're talking about what is it that people wanted here? We know Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton are, it sounds like probably going to testify and there are people who want to see Donald Trump testify. And again, given what we've actually seen from these disclosures, is there anything that suggests that Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton are responsible for any kind of crimes?
- [14:46]
Camille Foster
No.
- [14:46]
Ari Weitzman
Is there anything to suggest that maybe there are very embarrassing things about the relationships that could be revealed or at least alleged over and over again in some sort of open setting like Congress, a congressional hearing. Yes, and that seems to be what we're looking for here. It is the political, the opportunity to further politicize this, to hurt your enemies in some way, shape or form. And that dimension of it above perhaps almost anything else relative to the actual injury to victims here and people who allege that things have happened is the part that I find particularly distressing. Like at a moment when you can imagine there's not imagine you don't have to. There are so many tangible accesses upon which one could criticize, say, the Trump administration, for example, for its conduct. And to see like high ranking Democratic officials who are saying, well, finally we're gonna like nail him on Epstein related crimes. What is he hiding? What is the Justice Department hiding?
- [15:45]
Isaac Zahl
This is.
- [15:45]
Ari Weitzman
It all feels like not merely a distraction, but a profound disservice to the polity, to the victims more broadly. And finding our way back to some kind of sane conversation about Epstein or about our politics more broadly actually seems like further away this week after these disclosures, because the, the demand for this doesn't actually seems to have abated. Like, people want more files, whether or not they exist.
- [16:13]
Camille Foster
I mean, the Trump of it all is interesting too, because yes, actually everybody is. You know, one of the prevailing comments that I've seen just in like the first bit of response to the feedback to our piece is like, why aren't you talking about all the mentions of Trump, you know, like he's mentioned thousands and thousands of times in these new 3 million files just got released. And I thought the New York Times actually had fantastic treatment of this. They did a whole write up that's just specifically focused on what we learned about Trump in the latest files. And it's like almost every single one is the vast majority of the millions of or thousands of mentions are just news articles about Trump being shared via email to Epstein or from Epstein sending them to somebody else. And then there's a few in the files that are FBI tip line like tips that have come in the FBI tip line about Trump that are unhinged.
- [17:08]
Ari Weitzman
Often anonymous, generally unsubstantiated.
- [17:10]
Camille Foster
Anonymous, unsubstantiated. Some of them are like talking about yacht parties where they're like eating the intestines of babies and they're cutting their feet and there's no scarring. It's like stuff some schizophrenic could call at the FBI and say, whatever, and then they file a report about it. And now that's been unredacted and released in these files. And the New York Times said in their piece, like, we learned basically nothing new about the Trump Epstein relationship. There's like, a couple more emails where somebody sort of offhandedly referring to Trump's pension for young women or whatever, which unsavory, yes. New information, no. This is all stuff we know. And, like, I get the urge to want to do something about it, but it's like, you know, I saw somebody say, I can't believe, like, you wrote this article. And there's no mention of all the new Trump mentioned. I'm like, because we didn't learn anything. Like, there is nothing new or newsy here with regards to Trump's relationship to Epstein. It is all stuff that we know that we've heard about. And I just like, it's because it's frustrating for me because we're trying so hard to be, like, responsible and give it fair treatment. And then the attacks are things that I feel like are so easy to respond to, but it's just there's so many of them from so many different angles. Like, why aren't you talking about the Mossad stuff? Why aren't you talking about Trump? Why is it that the standard's a smoking gun? And it's like, it's not the only standard. Like, there can be interesting information without smoking gun, but, like, we were supposed to get proof of this cabal of, like, the sex ring of Democrats who were guilty of Trump, who was guilty, and we just aren't getting that. And that feels important to keep reminding people. So. Yeah, I don't know. I'm getting tired, that's for sure.
- [19:04]
Isaac Zahl
I think, like, the point, though, is that we might not have learned anything new about Trump, but what we already knew about him wasn't that great. Like, the birthday card, the exchanges where Epstein referred to him as one of his closest friends, if not his closest friend. Like, that's something where it just seems like it's still like, there's a conflation maybe between having files be released to learn more information, having new files be released because it's punishment for the information we already knew. There's a little bit of a blurry line there of, look, we know that there's a bad relationship between Trump and Epstein. We expect. We suspect there's something similar with Bill Clinton and Hillary's also there. I don't know.
- [19:42]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah.
- [19:43]
Isaac Zahl
But to what extent are we saying we need to know more about what Clinton or Trump knew about Epstein and when they knew it. Or are we saying we need to just keep putting them in the magnifying glass because they need to suffer? It just feels like that's part of it. We want more releases because they haven't atoned enough for the fact that they were associated in the first place.
- [20:05]
Ari Weitzman
There's one dimension of this that I haven't seen discussed as frequently as it seems appropriate here, and we haven't mentioned it yet. Specifically the fact that the persistence of the Epstein story, just thinking about the context here, says something about the lack of trust in institutions, particularly the criminal justice system and the Justice Department just.
- [20:25]
Isaac Zahl
Elites in general, honestly.
- [20:26]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah. But the Trump administration in particular, in its various efforts to politicize the criminal justice system, and it simply has. It has weaponized the justice system to use it to go after their political adversaries. It's tried its power best to put in various agents in different places who are politically aligned. We've seen this and we haven't talked about it. Maybe we'll get into it at some point soon. But the situation in Georgia, where they've simply gone in and grabbed the documents using an outside court, using a particular appointee who was well aligned with them politically under a lot of strange circumstances, something very similar has been happening with respect to the Epstein story. The part of the reason we are still talking about this is because no one trusts the Justice Department. And to the extent it was even possible for our faith in these institutions to fall further, the Trump administration seems to be doing everything in its power to ensure that that continues. Because, again, even if there was a problem before, and I've spoken to this, I do think that there have been ways in which the justice system was weaponized against Trump unfairly in certain circumstances, I think fairly used in others. But even if that was the case, he's made things materially worse in the way that he's gone about reforming things. If you want to place it in the most generous way possible. And that is a function of what's going on here, too, and probably needs to be foregrounded a little bit more frequently, because once this particular administration is over, whomever comes into power afterwards and presume that maybe it's a Democrat, we need severe reforms, some meaningful kind of truth and reconciliation process to get back to a place where people can trust that investigations are taking place and they can be trusted to be generally fair and impartial, because otherwise we're going to have this circumstance happen Again and again, where people expect the only way for us to be sure is to dump a bunch of kompromat and unverifiable rumor and innuendo onto the table for everyone to look at and imagine that they kind of see shapes and patterns, whether or not they're there. And that seems like a really miserable precedent for us to set. Just imagine your correspondence as a journalist with some source that you're trying to develop who is perhaps a nefarious person, but you're not saying so in the emails because you want to be able to talk to this source. Suddenly it gets out, and now you're under scrutiny and suspicion as well, because you were doing your job trying to surface real information for people. That is already happening here. And this is. It's very distressing. And I think the implications for other contexts needs to be better appreciated.
- [23:02]
Camille Foster
Yeah, I mean, that's the Nellie Bowles story, is that she's just getting her name dragged through the mud because she was nice to have seen an email so she could take a meeting with him. Which is like typical journalists. You know, you're trying to warm up a source, however bad they are. You have to talk to bad people. I mean, it's like, it's crazy that that's happening to her, though. Again, as I said today, like, she doesn't need us to defend her.
- [23:26]
Ari Weitzman
Her.
- [23:26]
Camille Foster
She did pretty good on her own. But I guess my question about the institutional trust, I mean, when was the last time in American history that a prosecution like this could have taken place? And at the end of it, people would have been like, okay, I mean, is that like. Is that like, era that we're. I've been thinking about this more and more. Like, is that era we're reaching for real? Yeah.
- [24:00]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, you're right. I mean, like, maybe I'm hearkening back to something that didn't exist, but it feels like there's more. We are more conspiratorially minded than after 9 11, and perhaps even more conspiratorially minded than after the JFK assassination.
- [24:13]
Camille Foster
I was gonna say, collectively, it feels like post 1968, we have not really had an era in American history where something like this could come out and they could be litigated by, like, the doj and there could be some big high profile trial. And then at the end of it, everybody's like, satisfied. Like, I just don't know that that era has existed in recent memoirs or.
- [24:36]
Isaac Zahl
Even that thing can happen, that there's something where somebody puts something on the table. And you're like, there it is. That's the truth. And everyone's like, we all agree that's right. Like, that's just never gonna happen.
- [24:44]
Ari Weitzman
But, you know, I talked about this with John Avalon and the guys over at the Fifth Column, and the word that kept coming up and this was John Avalon was gatekeepers. Gatekeepers. Gatekeepers. And my comrade Michael Moynihan specifically alluded to the fact that there are all of these people who are journalists online, these independent journalists who are simply not terribly sophisticated. They are not doing a great job reporting out these facts. They are actually contributing to the awfulness of the miasma surrounding this story. And it was better when we had the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal who were doing the thing, and I understood the point that they were making, but at the time that I was listening to it and we didn't get into it much. So I'd love to have you guys maybe think about this and opine on it a bit, but that gatekeepers thing makes me uncomfortable. I actually think it's a good thing for smaller media outlets to have access to this and even for the citizenry in general to have access to this information. The actual deficiency is the profound incuriousness. And worse than the incuriousness is the confident certainty that people have absent even looking at the evidence which is leading them to insist that there are patterns in the evidence that don't actually exist. And I don't know how you combat that, but it doesn't feel like the gatekeepers are the problem there.
- [26:03]
Isaac Zahl
Well, is that just the price you pay then? If you want to have a media ecosystem where it's just, you've got some legacy companies and you've got some gatekeepers and people who are sophisticated at sifting through things, and others that are like, I don't know, why are we trusting you, though? I'm going to go sift through some stuff and ask some questions on my own. And then a lot of people who are distrustful about the institution in general, about elites, about inequality, about anything else, are just pointing at whatever other institution they're talking about that day and go, yeah, yeah, we should be thinking about this. And then as a side effect, you're just going to have a lot of people that are saying, this conspiracy I'm gonna keep in my pocket. I'm just gonna not be willing to dismiss it out of hand with Epstein, it covers so much of what you could hope to ever be. Symbolic of every possible distrust about institutions, about elites, about people who Run our governments, run our financial systems about sexual proclivities, victimization. It's just so symbolic of all of it that it makes total sense to me why anybody would want to say we haven't done enough about this story. When by this story they mean lack of accountability for people that have any sort of power or authority. If that's the case, and if you're saying, yeah, well maybe it's a good thing that we've independent journalists out there, then this is something that's gonna happen is we're gonna have some perfect storm come by every once in a while. This one is clearly the most perfect storm because it's lasted seven years and we're just gonna, you know, sail through it as best we can.
- [27:32]
Camille Foster
You know, I. The analogy I would draw, I was thinking while I was talking about this sort of gatekeeper, the independent media, it's sort of akin to like you go to the doctor, you get a bunch of tests done, you get your blood drawn and then you get the results and you can look at the results yourself. And you have a right to look at the results yourself and you should look at the results yourself, but you shouldn't really fully form your opinion until you hear from the doctor, you know, like, and I've done that where I'm like, oh my God, like my levels here are like out of the range and whoa. And I start feeling kind of did that today actually. Yeah. And then the doctor calls and is like, ah, don't worry, you know, it's fine. We see this all the time. You probably just like had coffee before you. And I'm like, oh my God, yeah, I did have coffee before the test. My fault that was, you know, like that kind of thing happens all the time. And it's like we shouldn't live in a world where the patient doesn't get the results to look at themselves, but the patient should still be level headed and calm about them and wait and not do the huge speculative whatever before they hear from somebody who actually knows what they're doing and knows how to read the results again. What I'm seeing from those independent creators and the people I think have journalism influencers. Yeah, they're journalism influencers. Where it's like, it's weird because I have, now that I've started my own, like I've started tangle, I've sort of gotten looped into that now and I'm often ID'd that way especially cause I'm doing more and more opinion and analysis. But like I actually went to school for journalism. And I went to journalism training programs and I worked as a journalist. So I feel like I have some skills, like some hard skills. And there are things like how to read redacted documents and email threads and, you know, like, that are skills that some people are really good at. And then I watch them make really basic mistakes where they interpret some sort of redaction that means something that it doesn't mean or whatever else. And it's like, okay, yeah, there are people who are patients trying to read their own blood work and they are just like blindfolded, shooting in the dark, basically. And that worries me a lot. And I would never remove the right from those people to see that, or I would never say the gatekeepers need to keep that information for them or the raw material away from them. But I also think those people have to recognize who they are and how sophisticated they are and think about it like that. Like, I should wait for the New York Times reporter who's an expert on FOIA requests to tell me what this response from the government actually means. And we just don't live in an environment where a lot of people are doing that. And it's, you know, it sucks. I had a really similar experience today. I was texting you because my son woke up with a horrifying rash all over his body. And I was like, putting pictures of it in the ChatGPT and while I was doing that, and ChatGPT is telling me, like, you need to go to the emergency room right now. Your son's having an allergic reaction. And like, this is serious.
- [30:37]
Ari Weitzman
Oh, I didn't realize it said that to you.
- [30:39]
Camille Foster
It said that, yeah. And then I was also texting a friend of mine who's a pediatric emergency physician, and he saw the pictures and was like, eh, he doesn't look that bad to me. Like, is he drinking water? Yeah. Is he eating? Yeah. Like, interacting normal. Like, yeah, he seems totally unbothered. He's like, don't worry about it. Like, if he starts breathing weird or he starts rejecting food, like rushing to the er, his lips swell up really bad. But, like, you should just get to the doctor asap. And then I went in and it turned out he's having an allergic reaction to, like, his amoxicillin. And the nurse was like, yeah, he's fine. You can take him to daycare. Just like, stop giving him the amoxicillin. It'll clear up. Like, I'm an idiot with ChatGPT. Like, we're riling each other up and I'm getting ready to rush into the emergency room.
- [31:22]
Ari Weitzman
Well, it did get the diagnosis right.
- [31:24]
Camille Foster
Yeah. It did say that he was having an allergic reaction. So it was kind of half right. But it's just another example of. I went to the emergency room physician guy who works in pediatrics, and he's like, I know exactly what's going on here. It's one of two things. This is what you need to do. Don't freak out, you're fine. And that's the person I should be going to. And I think that hierarchy exists in the news space, too, and we don't have enough people abiding by it.
- [31:52]
Isaac Zahl
Such an interesting analogy, because at the same time, I know one of the reactions that I'm having thinking about the doctor analogy is, you know, how many times I've listened to a doctor and gone, that's not right? Because, like, a lot. I mean, sometimes. This is a saying that I like to come back to. Sometimes when I'm thinking about medical advice is doctors are experts on the human body and you are an expert on yours.
- [32:16]
Camille Foster
That's right.
- [32:17]
Isaac Zahl
And it's good to try to make sure you're getting the best advice that you can and trying to understand things from experts where you don't understand. Like, I can't interpret these blood tests, but at the same time, like, if I go to the doctor and I sit and they can test my knee and say, you've torn a ligament there. You should probably do a little rehab and be fine. Like, well, no, I actually, I kind of. I'm an athlete. I play sports. I want to have the surgery. They're like, don't think you need it, though. Like, well, I think I know what I need more. I appreciate the diagnosis, but for the like, for the cure or the cause, like, maybe that's something we should talk about more as peers here.
- [32:52]
Ari Weitzman
I appreciate all of that feedback, and I think you guys are kind of confirming my impulses around this because I was a little. I felt a little uneasy coming out of the conversation about the gatekeepers. But I do think that the locus of the problem is probably closer to the media consumers, which is to say, dear listener and viewer, it is your fault, or at least done.
- [33:12]
Isaac Zahl
We're done here.
- [33:13]
Ari Weitzman
The onus is on you. I think there's something about the kind of priesthood of the journalist or the medical professional. Well, the expectation is they are going to give us the absolute distilled truth, the revealed wisdom sent down from heaven, when. No, they are practitioners of a particular trade. It is a difficult trade. They're going to get certain things wrong and certain things right. And if you are exercising dutiful skepticism every single time you come into contact with a story or media report, especially if it's something really important to you, something about the health and wellbeing of your child or about the future of the country, take a moment. That's interesting. I'll consider it. What might they be overlooking? Where might their biases be? Perhaps I should consult some other perspectives I retangled, which does that coalition for me and also gives me the perspectives of people who I've come to know and I know their biases a little bit. This is all helpful in orienting us towards the truth. And if we have this sense that reaching absolute certainty may always be a way off, but kind of compiling evidence over time is perhaps a better way to operate in most circumstances to make better decisions about our lives and about important matters in our politics, I think we'll probably be a little bit better off. And my suspicion is that the emphasis on gatekeepers is much more in the direction of the priesthood and purifying the temple and doesn't actually get us closer to the well informed populace who can thoughtfully navigate the news cycle and whatever the next Epstein drama is to come out of that a little more sober and thoughtful and to be prepared to punish politicians who are looking to exploit this nonsense for their own benefit of whichever party. Yeah, yeah.
- [34:59]
Camille Foster
Foreign. We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [35:08]
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- [36:30]
Camille Foster
What do you have to lose?
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- [36:55]
Camille Foster
Well, two things. First of all, at the top of the show, I made a joke about Camille's colleagues being in the Epstein files. For the purposes of my legal protection, I should clarify. They were in the Epstein files, but they were just. Somebody was sharing articles that they wrote, which is how easy it is to say.
- [37:12]
Ari Weitzman
Why are you defending them? I'm just saying, don't defend them.
- [37:14]
Camille Foster
I don't know. I just. I hope, like, Moynihan's not litigious or anything. Also, we're sitting here talking about sleazy rich people and gatekeepy journalists, so we should probably talk about the Washington Post layoffs. Ooh, geez.
- [37:28]
Ari Weitzman
What a transition.
- [37:29]
Camille Foster
I mean, I just. Oh, I have a lot of feelings about this. I guess maybe to start, I'll put my. I'll throw my cards on the table, which is like, I grew up as a kid. My parents are from D.C. i know you're from D.C. my dad grew up in northwest Washington, D.C. my mom grew up in Annapolis. So when I was a kid, my parents were reading me the Washington Post every morning, especially the sports section, because we're all. We were Redskins now. Commander's fans.
- [38:07]
Ari Weitzman
It's okay. I forgive you.
- [38:08]
Camille Foster
Yeah, we just, like, that is my number one sport. Number one thing I care about is, like, Commander's football. My dad and I watch every game together every year. It's just like, hearing that the Washington Post sports section is gone was sort of like just a surreal. Oh, my God. This is something I never thought was gonna happen. And it also sucks because there's a ton of really good reporters who have lost their jobs, and this industry is really tough. And, like, I feel really grateful to be on this boat here at Tangle with some stability and job security. But I know what it's like to not be there. And it's so easy to be like, they deserve it. They suck. Like, you know, that's what you get for doing bad work nobody wants to pay for. But, like, a bunch of people lost their jobs, including reporters who are sitting in war zones in Ukraine, reporters who are, like, pregnant with their first kids. I mean, I'm seeing all this stuff pop up on my Twitter feed, you know, losing their health benefits, stuck in a war zone. I mean, there's, like, real people who are decent who are getting screwed over here. So I really strongly feel that just regret and sadness about the Washington Post kind of being eviscerated before our eyes. But I'm also like, I don't know that just because Jeff Bezos is a billionaire who could fund the paper with 1.2% of his wealth for the next 10 years, that he should do that. A media organization is a business, and if it's not making money, that's kind of a signal from the market that it's not offering something that people find of value and maybe, therefore, it needs to course correct. And I don't know if that's a bad or evil thing, and I'm sort of torn about it, because my preference would be Jeff Bezos snaps his fingers and makes the sports section last for the next century. Because I love reading the Washington Post sports section, and I love the Washington Post as a newspaper. You know, it's a great source, especially of international reporting, which is one of the places that got decimated. So, I don't know. I'm curious how you feel. I know you were, like, hobnobbing with a bunch of journalists last night, and I know it's the talk of the town right now, but I'll lob it to you first, I guess, because you're also a scumbag libertarian, so you don't have any feelings. You probably don't care about these people.
- [40:31]
Ari Weitzman
No, not at all. I mean, look, I have a very similar relationship to the Washington Post to the one you described. I believe we probably had a subscription to the Post for as long as I lived at home with my parents, and I would certainly read it, and Sports page was important, but mostly to look at, like, how bad the Skins Lost. That's a longer conversation. But I was at an event last night. I don't think this was off the record at all. They didn't say so. So it was for Substack and Netflix. It was a dinner for independent journalists in Manhattan. And you can imagine that on the day that this news has broken, to be in a room where a lot of prominent journalists are not just independent, but some establishment folks, folks from cnn, et cetera. Virtually all of the conversations that I would overhear were about what happened at the Washington Post. And generally speaking, people were the rejoinders. There were not. They deserve it. They had it coming. It was more so Jeff Bezos failed. He screwed up. These people are suffering for someone else's bad decision making, et cetera, et cetera. There was this expectation that, well, he should just continue to fund it. And this is. He could do this if he wanted to. There's obviously some political motivation here. Is there a political motivation? I don't know. I think it's hard to speak to. I do think the Washington Post, particularly the Opinion section, where to the extent Bezos's fingerprints are all over that publication in recent years, he made the decision to push them in the direction of being more kind of free minds and free markets a la Reason magazine. It's also been the place where you will find the most scathing and, I think, articulate critiques of the Trump administration. So, I mean, George Will is there writing this stuff from a traditional conservative perspective, lambasting the administration. And I think that seems important if we're going to talk about political motivations, but specifically on the Post and kind of Bezos record since acquiring the Post, I think for the first decade that he owned it, made it profitable. He created this kind of technologically oriented unit within the paper that was actually selling services to other smaller publications. It made the Post more dynamic. They were profitable. They got to ride that kind of Trump wave. And they've gotten into the same trouble that virtually every publication in the country is dealing with. The New York Times is exempted from that. In terms of establishment publications, I think the Atlantic seems to be doing better, if you believe their numbers. I'm generally inclined to, but the Washington Post hacked off its sports section, just like the New York Times already did. The Washington Post is closing down foreign bureaus, just like so many other publications have already done. To the extent there are mistakes being made, maybe. But it's also the case that these are just market dynamics and they have to be permitted to play out, and the market has to find its new level. And I wonder sometimes if it's even so much that the Post isn't doing good reporting, and therefore the product doesn't really fit what people want in the market. And the economics of the economic models that have been employed are just different. These institutions are older and bloated, and unless they reform, the possibility of them surviving beyond whatever Sort of endowment. Jeff Bezos may decide to leave it or not. The prospects are going to dwindle. So I think there is a real benefit to taking a scalpel to the institutions to try to imagine how things could be different. And I think part of the challenge, and again, this was a dinner for independent journalists, is that the new media landscape is such that establishment publications are in turmoil. And there is a universe of interesting independent publications being founded on Ghost and on substack publications like Tangle, Independent podcasts, the various journalism influencers of variable quality. And a lot of them are thriving, and some of them are doing good work and are breaking news stories. And some of those Washington Post journalists will make the transition over and even CBS News. I think what's happening there, Barry's influence there, certainly a lot of scandal. But is it the right impulse for CBS News to look at itself, this celebrated, storied media organization, and say, well, how do we go into the future? What attributes do we need? Do we need to be more like cnn? Do we need to be like more like some other broadcast network? Or do we need to do the kind of stuff that the free press did in order to build an audience online, to have more direct, meaningful engagement with its subscribers? I think it's probably that latter thing. Whether or not you agree with Barry's politics on any particular issue, I think that practical fact of thinking about what does Joe Rogan's success say for the way that news media and journalism ought to operate in general? And I don't think that means talking about space aliens necessarily, but it may have something to do with the kind of way that you are shaping and delivering content with the cadence of that content, with a different approach to long form. And then there's the whole longer conversation about how to do really expensive stuff like investigative journalism, which is just hard to make profitable, as ProPublica and various other organizations have demonstrated.
- [45:46]
Camille Foster
Before you go, Ari, I mean, I will say it feels a little bit like a dodge to the core question, which is like, if you had somebody came to you and was like, I mean, I don't know what your net worth is, but not enough. But I'm saying, like, Camille, $5,000 and you can keep the Washington Post alive for 10 years.
- [46:05]
Ari Weitzman
I wouldn't want to keep it alive. As it stands, I think you probably have not. Probably you have to restructure the paper, the model that the Washington Post and the LA Times and the Baltimore sun and any other publication you can think of that has existed or currently exists over the course of the last 20 years is all wrong for the current media landscape. It just is. The economics have changed such that if these institutions don't make severe, serious changes, they simply cannot go forward into the future. The New York Times is not the publication it was. The fact that it has the athletic, the fact that it has this panoply of different services. When you subscribe to the Times, you're subscribing to their technology. That is what is keeping that publication afloat. The fact that your local newspaper defended on classifieds, it simply couldn't continue to do that in a world where Facebook and Craigslist exist. And if someone just gave them money so that they could keep operating in that way for a decade or two, at the end of that decade or two, we would be in a much better, worse situation because those publications would simply disappear because they did not have viable business models. And I think in defense of Jeff Bezos, he's probably doing them a meaningful service in trying to make them more competitive corporately as opposed to simply giving them unlimited capital to burn while staying the same. Might it fail? It may. But if Bezos hadn't acquired the Post when he did, would the Post be in a better situation today or a worse situation? And I have a difficult time imagining that the situation would obviously be better if he didn't acquire it.
- [47:47]
Isaac Zahl
I think the thing that feels weird about it though is that you have somebody who took over the Post with just as well imagined to be Rosebud style wealth, just unlimitedly deep pockets, Citizen K investments. And the solution to turmoil is, yeah, sorry, you guys gotta suffer. Sorry. But now I know that's a little simplistic, but that is the optics. And also, when you take over a publication like the Post and you have unlimited wealth, it does beg the question of like, how much stake do you actually feel on what's happening here? If it's just a project of yours and it can lose money, you can ax people from it, whatever. Like, what does Jeff Bezos actually care about it? And I mean, I feel like that's still an open question. I think it's a good point that the news media businesses are changing. I think it's salient that they're closing their international desk. Sports desk is like, how much is the Washington Post really local paper? As much as they're covering D.C. it's the nation's capital and this nation's actually somewhat important globally. So it does make sense that they would close Isaac's childhood sports paper. I know how you feel. The Post Gazette closed down or announced the closing down last month. Big deal in Pittsburgh. So that sucks to see that happen. It's a decently sized regional paper in a decently sized regional city. And you will ask questions like, okay, similarly, the Post Gazette in Pittsburgh and Washington Post business models as local papers kind of struggling. That's not super new, but we know that that's true and it's valid. But a publication the size of the Post that can actually send resources abroad to do coverage, There aren't that many of them.
- [49:22]
Ari Weitzman
No, it's true.
- [49:23]
Isaac Zahl
And something I'm glad you brought up the Times because something that's important about their model is they have games, they have recipes and style and the athletic and all of that allows them to do that serious reporting that's sort of like the shibboleth that gets them in the door is a limousine organization. And when you don't actually, when you can't pay that cost anymore, it's going to hurt you. Not just the American consumer and our ability to access important coverage across the globe, but it's going to hurt the way that they appear too. It's going to hurt their brand. And that's an important thing. And it comes back to the point of is that an important thing to Bezos? If he's just thinking about this as a business, is that something that actually matters to him? Because I mean he could just pay for it, but he's not. So what does matter to him? Is it just like self correcting? Editorial. Editorial has been interesting. I think like it's, they have been critical of the Trump administration, they have been outright partisan. So it has been interesting to read them. But you know, they are still getting a lot of these questions of but what are you guys doing? Like I think we knew what the Post was doing previously and we know what the Times is doing. We know what Wall Street Journal's doing, what National Review is doing. We kind of get what their editorial basis is. And WaPo, I don't know.
- [50:45]
Camille Foster
They also just lost a ton of talent. I mean a bunch of people left over the last six months. We got job applications from people who were fleeing Washington Post. There is sort of one element of this story that I feel like has been a little bit under discussed because we memory hole everything that happens more than two weeks ago. But like there was this giant push from all of these people to punish Jeff Bezos for like what he wanted the editorial direction to be or bringing in Will Lewis who's like the publisher and people just like canceled their subscriptions in mass. And now those same people are like, why are you firing all the time? I'm like, you just fucked everybody. Like, you canceled thousands. And you can see their chart. Like, this movement started, and then, yeah, they lost, like, millions of dollars of revenue because all you guys cancel your subscriptions. And then you turn around and are like, I can't believe you're not supporting. It's like, well, they were making a bunch of money off subscriptions, and then you sort of had a successful campaign to destroy that business. And so they responded the way that was obvious. They were always gonna respond, which is like, fire a bunch of people.
- [51:52]
Isaac Zahl
Like, the people. The people getting hurt are the ones who work for the Post. It's not Bezos.
- [51:56]
Camille Foster
Right. It's like. And that. And it's like that sort of digital activism that is so frustrating because it's like, this was obviously what was gonna happen when that. And again, I'm a proud subscriber of the Washington Post. I didn't go down that route. I didn't like what Bezos. I didn't like him sort of saying that the editorial board was gonna start taking this kind of, like, free market. You know, I think that's a good position to take. I agree with some of what he was saying, but, like, I want the editorial board to.
- [52:23]
Isaac Zahl
These are my. This is my philosophy. This is your philosophy.
- [52:25]
Camille Foster
It's like what Elon Musk is doing on X. It's like, don't thumb the scales for your views. And that's not what I want. So I understand why people objected to that, but it is just kind of funny to watch the reaction now. They're like, we're gonna destroy the Post to punish Bezos. And he's like, okay, I'm gonna fire everybody. Cause you destroyed the Post. And they're like, why'd you do it? Fire everybody.
- [52:44]
Isaac Zahl
Really similar to what our Uber driver was listening to last night. There's like, this theory of, like, cancel your subscriptions to everything.
- [52:52]
Camille Foster
It's Scott Galloway. Prof. G. Was on Sue Kanish. And we were listening to XM Radio on the Uber home from dinner last night. And Scott Galloway was basically. He started this website. I think it's called, like, resistantunsubscribe.com or something.
- [53:08]
Isaac Zahl
That's not a promotion because it might not be. Right.
- [53:12]
Camille Foster
Yeah. And he's like, telling people to cancel a bunch of their subscriptions in order to punish the Trump administration.
- [53:18]
Isaac Zahl
Right. Because the Trump administration's gonna respond to economics and the bottom line. So, like, if the markets dip, then they'll respond.
- [53:25]
Camille Foster
So it's like anyone who does business with ice, but then also people who don't do business with ice.
- [53:30]
Isaac Zahl
It's just any subscription. Just fuck the economy up. Make Trump sad.
- [53:35]
Camille Foster
It's like, unsubscribe.
- [53:36]
Isaac Zahl
He's not gonna be the one who hurts the most in that situation.
- [53:39]
Ari Weitzman
Unsubscribe advocacy.
- [53:40]
Camille Foster
And our Uber driver, and he's listening to Scott Galloway be like, you have to cancel like your doordash, your Google. And the Uber driver was like, not Uber. I hope we're all, like, laughed in the car. Like, yeah, that would suck for you mostly. You know, we would just take Lyft, which like that. And that is like, you know, people don't think a lot about. I think they're. I'm not saying people don't think a lot about, but I think there are sometimes these funny repercussions for. For that kind of.
- [54:09]
Isaac Zahl
You're imagining you're striking one area, but as you're like, you're punching through 20 pillows on the way to the wall, and the wall kind of feels it, but the pillows are really getting brutalized.
- [54:19]
Ari Weitzman
I am sympathetic to kind of spending your money in a way that is consistent with your values.
- [54:24]
Camille Foster
Totally.
- [54:25]
Ari Weitzman
It's a little different, but I would agree that this is a little different, and it's a bit more theatrical and people would benefit again by imagining things in a slightly more complex way. But I do think one thing that's worth underscoring again is just the interesting dynamics with respect to the ascendancy of independent publications. And particularly I mentioned it was a Substack Netflix party that I was at. And for Substack in particular, I was thinking a lot about the media narratives that surrounded the organization four or five years ago when we were being told continuously by very prominent publications that Substack had a Nazi problem over and over and over again. And the room I was in yesterday.
- [55:13]
Isaac Zahl
Barely room at all.
- [55:14]
Ari Weitzman
Much more left of center. Not that Substack is. But it is the case. And I saw Chris Ruffo posting about this in the past week. The activists at Manhattan Institute about the fact that so many of the top publications on Substack now are decidedly left of center to the extent CNN and these various other publications have emptied out. A lot of those folks are on cnn. A lot of. I mean, are on Substack now. They're actually having a tremendous amount of success. And the readership at Substack has changed to the extent it was Heterodox before. It is now kind of the previous establishment now lives on Substack and is making a bit of a killing. I saw Brian Stelter yesterday as one of the people I saw and just kind of jokingly, we were having a conversation. Again, I don't think this was off the record. I think it's fine to share. But he was mentioning Oliver Darcy, who's left and is doing his own thing at Beehive now on Beehive. I don't remember the name of his publication. And while Brian is back at CNN and he's like, you know, Oliver's doing great. Maybe I should have stayed over there with him. I mean, there's all sorts of rumors. He didn't say this. I'm saying this now. Context. There's all sorts of rumors swirling about the future of cnn. It's anyone's guess what happens to an institution like that that has a beautiful new building that I've been inside of many, many times but is struggling because it is so expensive to operate.
- [56:38]
Camille Foster
Yeah.
- [56:39]
Isaac Zahl
I mean, again, and similar thing is CNN does really good international reporting. You can definitely say what you want to see. Breaking news stuff, too. Yeah, yeah, right. Great news desk. But you can say what you want about their editorial and we've said plenty. But the cost that you get of these institutions, these keepers of the gate, if you will, that are losing some of that killing because of X, Y or Z while Substack or people like Tango are doing okay, is that you don't get those resources in order to do those expensive jobs. I think that's the thing I keep coming back to here. I know I'm not from media. You guys have that background. I'm kind of new to the game. I just make sure the words look good on page. But, like, the thing that I keep thinking about as somebody who's new to media, like, professionally, is this is what I always valued about Washington Post. So, like, that's the thing that concerns me. Like, I don't really. Doesn't bother me too much that, like, they're changing the business model or people are fired, they're going to find new jobs, I hope and be all right. But the thing that concerns me is, like, where are we going to get the people? Like, who's actually going to do that news then? Yeah, because, like, there's not too many other people are going to replace them. Like, there's like, there's Lyft and there's Uber if we want to get rideshares. But to cover like a Damascus desk, there's Washington Post, cnn, New York Times. Who else we got?
- [57:57]
Ari Weitzman
I think we, we probably need to pick up the slack some. We as an institution Tangle. But I also think there are people on Substack who do have some of that expertise and who are doing the reporting. And it's already the case that in the New York Times you will read an essay about some important matter and they will be quoting a source who is a journalist who works on substack who has deep information and great intel from the Iranian regime and you could maybe only find it there. And finding a new way for publications like Tangle to be clearing houses for that sort of stuff to bring those people to folks attention is I think going to be an important thing going forward. But also, yeah, us figuring out how to do more original reporting and investigative stuff and even just really great interviews as we begin to get more and more access on account of the kind of visibility of the platform.
- [58:52]
Isaac Zahl
There's that Derek Thompson line. The history of media is the rebundling of debundled bundles.
- [58:57]
Ari Weitzman
Yes.
- [58:57]
Isaac Zahl
So that's kind of natural.
- [58:59]
Camille Foster
Yeah. Foreign. We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [59:12]
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- [60:34]
Camille Foster
All right, well, we have in the last few weeks on this show, we've impugned Democrats repeatedly for being so uninteresting that we can't even create A single news story. But we have a good one this week. There's some nice infighting happening.
- [60:50]
Isaac Zahl
Some really tasty infighting.
- [60:51]
Camille Foster
Yeah, some tasty. Finally, we got some Democrats to talk about and criticize and make fun of. Everybody thinks that we're like turning into a big leftist network. Cause all we do is talk about conservatives. And really it's just like Democrats are just so boring. There's nothing in stone.
- [61:03]
Isaac Zahl
They're also not in power in a lot of places.
- [61:05]
Camille Foster
No. But they are going for a Senate seat in Texas. And the gas has been thrown on the fire because there was this state Senate race in Texas in a district that I believe Trump won by maybe 14 points or 17 points as recently as 2024, that a Democrat just flipped, which as you can imagine, shellacking, shellacking created a five alarm freakout fire at the RNC headquarters. Like if this is the map we are looking at, which it won't be. Cause it's a state Senate race and like an off, you know, cycle election. But it would be a very, very bad midterm for Republicans. And it is indicative of a really big mood, vibe shift. So once again, ad nauseam. We do this every year. Democrats are talking about maybe they can win a state Senate seat. And there's this tangle happening between James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett. J.T. versus J.C. jasmine v. James. There's some good stuff out there.
- [62:11]
Isaac Zahl
Keep spinning it.
- [62:12]
Camille Foster
Yeah. And I guess the thrust of it is, I mean, first of all, I want to hear from you guys about who your allegiances are with. But the thrust of it is that you have this sort of, I think James Tallarigo, more moderate, maybe more appealing polling suggests probably more appealing to broad Texas base. Criticizes the Democratic Party, has nuanced views on things like immigration, is being accused of maybe saying some unsavory things about his previous opponent, Colin Allrad, calling him like a mediocre black. Which unclear and also unsubstantiated. It's not like a recording, it's hearsay from somebody on TikTok who is like a staffer or something. I don't know. It's very confusing. And now he's running against again, allegedly said like a sophisticated, you know, politically savvy black in Jasmine Crockett.
- [63:13]
Ari Weitzman
Black woman.
- [63:13]
Camille Foster
Black woman. Yeah. And so he's getting hammered for that. And Jasmine Crockett is very progressive. She's very left. She's very. She's like the fighting kind of, you know, often in the trenches with people like aoc and there's this debate about who the Democratic Party should kind of rally behind and whether Democrats actually have a chance in Texas, which I don't think they do, just for the record. And I've taken. I just take that stance every year until it's wrong and it's just right every year. But I still don't think they do.
- [63:45]
Isaac Zahl
That's it. We can stop talking about it. Yeah.
- [63:49]
Camille Foster
But, yeah, I'm curious how you guys are thinking about this. Maybe you want to go first, Camille? I mean, what have you been reading and what's the storyline here you're interested in actually following?
- [64:01]
Ari Weitzman
Well, the dimension of it that I think is most interesting on some levels is that this race identity politics stuff can still cause so much scandal for Democrats. Again, with respect to just the infighting taking shots at themselves. It is a Democratic primary, so you would expect there to be some criticism. But this involves two of the most prominent young Democratic stars. Jasmine Crockett. We were debating it earlier, before we started. I would say that she's probably top five, maybe even top three most recognizable Democrats in Congress broadly.
- [64:35]
Isaac Zahl
And certainly it's crazy.
- [64:37]
Camille Foster
I found that shocking.
- [64:39]
Ari Weitzman
I think it's true. She's uniquely visible. And look, I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene is gone. AOC is probably at the top of the list, quite honestly. And Jasmine Crockett is as well. And not because she's so progressive. She's not even squad. She's actually a little bit more establishment in her willingness to kind of play on all number of sides. What is interesting is that she has the same approach as Gavin Newsom with respect to Trump. They want to kind of be like Trump with respect to how they message and talk to their audiences. They don't mind cursing at the appropriate moment or in a moment that seems appropriate, even if it's uniquely unnatural. They don't mind code switching in particular ways so they can be more folksy or hood. In Jasmine Crockett's case, she is a really sophisticated operator. I've heard her be exceptionally erudite. Also heard her kind of get into the trenches and talk like she's in the hair salon or something like that. I don't have a favorite between these two candidates, but I do think that for a race that is going to be so important for Democrats and for two people who are so important to Democrats, for them to be involved in this kind of beef animated by a political influencer's TikTok video. Again, we don't have audio of what he said or a video recording of it. That's kind of strange. And I don't think it's a matter of just kind of the media paying attention. This is still something that is happening a lot. And I should say to the Democrats credit as well, the shutdown fight, we haven't talked a lot about it because it's over, but Democrats were able to use the whip hand here. You had Donald Trump calling Chuck Schumer to have a conversation about this and try to get this resolved. And you have Democrats almost certainly going to be able to extract some sort of legislative victory with respect to ICE reforms. That is unusual territory for us to be in. This is the first time it's really happened in this second Trump administration. So while they're getting their act together in some respects, and I think circumstances have kind of benefited them in that way, I think we're probably going to see more of the Crockett Rico kind of dramas play out amongst Democrats.
- [66:52]
Isaac Zahl
Well, you know, speaking of memory holding things here, this is the Texas Senate race. It wasn't that long ago that we're like, man, Republicans are in trouble. There's a lot of infighting here with Cornyn and Paxton. And it's not as if this is gonna be some sort of slam dunk case for the Republicans on that side.
- [67:09]
Ari Weitzman
No.
- [67:09]
Isaac Zahl
Like, it's Paxton was the AG or is the AG and is running for that Senate seat. Cornyn hadn't been fundraising a ton because he thinks he's gonna win. But the polling's really close now, so who knows? And it just kind of reminds me that, like, that's where we were six months ago. Now we're talking about this six months from now when the election's really underway. This is going to be a memory. And we're going to go right back to Isaac's first thought, which is like, we're talking about a Senate seat. Texas. Let me just check the polls. Oh, yeah. Republicans are up plus 12. Why does this even matter? And until that changes, that's kind of my position, too, is like, it's Talarico or it's Crockett for the Senate. I think Crockett has a lot of name recognition. And you're right. Like, she's a really good orator and she knows how to play to whatever crowd she's in front of. Have a hard time believing that she's going to lose that nomination. Right now. I kind of. I don't think I know enough about how they compare to each other as candidates say I prefer one or the other. So I would refrain from doing that. But I think whoever ends up winning that, good luck, you are still running in Texas. And the nice thing, the one thing that I do know that gives Talarico an advantage here, he does seem to have a better polling amongst the demographic that's going to matter in the general, which is moderate Latino voters. Like, if that's a thing that Democrats end up thinking about in the primary, then maybe that's gonna be a difference maker ultimately. I mean, I don't think it's worth overthinking. It's an infight. It's before a primary. It'll happen. It's a minor scandal now. It'll probably wash away in a couple months. When it does, the person with higher name recognition, who's a really good speaker, is probably gonna win. That person has a D next to their name. They're in Texas. They're probably gonna lose to whoever comes out of the Republican side.
- [68:51]
Camille Foster
I think the last reporting or that I saw that came out about the polling was that Talarico was pulling three points behind, like a name brand generic Texas Republican, and Crockett was seven points behind. And that was like this internal RNC polling that they viewed as being, like, very frightening. I'm Team jt. I'll just go out and say it. I mean, I think Crockett's kind of a blowhard, to be honest with you. Like, I'm just so tired of the social media star theater people dominating Congress because they're good orators or they code switch or they know how to grab people's attention or they're imitating Gavin Newsom or Donald Trump or whatever. I'm just. I'm exhausted by it. I'm like, marjorie Taylor Greene's gone, thank God. I mean, whatever. I appreciate the evolution she's having people who change their mind politically, but it's like she is somebody.
- [69:53]
Ari Weitzman
I want to see more of that.
- [69:54]
Camille Foster
She sucked up so much oxygen when there were so many more important things than the things she was doing. And when I see Jasmine Crockett, most of the time I see her in the news, it's like she is sucking up oxygen about things that strike me as much less important than the things that should be taking up oxygen. And that makes me very skeptical of her.
- [70:13]
Isaac Zahl
I guess this is an example. It's like we're talking about some tiktoker's report that's unverified. That's like just rage, rage baiting.
- [70:22]
Camille Foster
And from what I've read about James Tallarico and, like, seeing him talk and Stuff. I mean, these comments aside, the veracity of them aside, like, he seems like somebody who's really willing to criticize Democrats. He's willing to buck the party. He's actually representative of a lot of the sort of, like, blue dog moderate Democrats who exist in Texas, which is like the kind of candidate Democrats should put up. I mean, this is the other thing that frustrates me about the Democratic Party. And Republicans don't do this. Republicans are really good. When there's a Republican running in New York, he is a Republican that is running for Republicans in New York. Democrats trot out these candidates in a place like Texas. I'm sorry, Jasmine Crockett is not some. I mean, maybe she'll prove me wrong, but I don't think she's somebody who statewide is gonna have a lot of success connecting with the voters. She needs to win an election, and James Talarico could. So they should run him, and the party should back him if that's what they wanna do. If they wanna win the election. Republicans are really good at that. Like, they will run a different kind of Republican in Long island than they're gonna run in Oklahoma. And they're totally comfortable with that. And they're like, sort of have this big tent party mentality these days. It all requires fealty to the emperor, Donald Trump, which frustrates me to no end. And I don't like. But I'm just, you know, I don't know. And again, maybe blowhard is, like, a little too strong, but I am just. I'm tired of just the.
- [71:52]
Isaac Zahl
The people that are gonna fundraise nationally.
- [71:54]
Camille Foster
Winning these states and the people who are. It is all performance art. And when I see Jasmine Crockett operate in public, it looks to me like someone who is doing performance art. And I don't like that feeling.
- [72:07]
Ari Weitzman
I had a conversation with someone last night, actually. We were talking about Gavin Newsom, and they said, you know, I don't know, blah, blah, blah. But he's really good at what he does. What is it that he does?
- [72:17]
Camille Foster
Troll?
- [72:18]
Ari Weitzman
I don't think you mean, like, governing California. Because that's not what I think about when I think Gavin Newsom. He's really good at what he does. It's the other thing. It's that other aspect of him as a politician and as a political operator, the kind of shrewdness, and I don't know that we want to optimize for that. And the last thing I'd say about this is Democrats should be very careful if they're looking at the success of the Trump administration electorally and the way that they are actually operating with respect to messaging and the culture, the fact that everything has to be super based, that they're making these videos that are kind of obnoxiously over the top. It's not about prestige so much as, like, owning your opponents. I don't know that Americans really want that. I don't know that the average voter is desperate for that. I think it's works online. But that old adage, old Twitter is not real life.
- [73:13]
Isaac Zahl
No, I remember Aristotle saying that.
- [73:14]
Ari Weitzman
I think that's still true. I think that's still true. It's working. Some of that stuff will go viral. Oftentimes it goes viral for the wrong reason.
- [73:22]
Isaac Zahl
And, you know, I'm so with you. I think that when it comes to midterms and then later, when it gets to the next presidential election, people are gonna remember the kind of errors they're putting on now and use it to bludgeon them when it gets time to actually make decisions. Because I think, like, the thing that's gonna matter at the ballot box a lot is, like, you're doing that thing that we don't really like anymore. And I will plant a flag right now and say, I don't think Gavin Newsom's gonna win the Democratic nomination. And I think that's gonna be a lot of why. I think he's just, like, doing this shtick, and people are like, we're kind of going with Pete because he's, like, normal, and you're being weird and, like, we're over that. And I think that's probably gonna be simple when it gets to that time, but now we're talking about more than Texas. And again, it's gonna go red.
- [74:05]
Ari Weitzman
I don't know.
- [74:07]
Isaac Zahl
No, we don't know. We don't know.
- [74:11]
Camille Foster
All right, all right. Well, we gotta wrap up here. We're all in the room now. Normally, this is the part where I'm like, john, put. John's right. John, come here.
- [74:21]
Isaac Zahl
Dip your head in front of your man.
- [74:23]
Camille Foster
Dip your head in.
- [74:24]
Isaac Zahl
All right.
- [74:24]
Camille Foster
So you say, john, play the music, John.
- [74:31]
Ari Weitzman
The airing of grievances. Between you and me, I think your country is placing a lot of importance on shoe removal.
- [74:41]
Camille Foster
All right, it's time for some grievances. It's nice to do this in person. All right. Wow. Hand up. Let's go. Yeah.
- [74:47]
Isaac Zahl
I'd been refraining from travel grievances just because I feel like they're almost too easy. But I'm gonna make It a recurring here. Shots fired, like, any time. No, sorry, sorry. I didn't mean to fire shots at you, but I will now.
- [75:02]
Ari Weitzman
That's fine.
- [75:03]
Isaac Zahl
I will do it right now. Which is that your travel grievances. You don't know travel grievances?
- [75:08]
Ari Weitzman
Oh, okay.
- [75:08]
Isaac Zahl
Oh, my roller bag won't go through the airport. I had. I couldn't get on first class on my flight. I had to take a helicopter across New York. Yeah. Come on, brother. The issues that I have with airplanes are unique and constant. I went down to a tournament in Florida this weekend. Coming from Vermont, this was a new one. The, I guess the equivalent of the airplane tugboat that pulls the plane, like, adjusts it so it can get into the gate and out of it. The tow barb that they attached to the plane froze to the plane.
- [75:39]
Advertisement Voice
Ooh.
- [75:40]
Isaac Zahl
Which is, you know, fun that it can do that. And the pilot was like, we're going to delay coming out of here just so we can try to work it off 20 minutes later. 20 minutes is a long time, by the way, when you're like sitting on a plane, right? Like, it's one thing in a story to say this happened 20 minutes later. Just imagine sitting on a plane for 20 minutes with no update, and then they come on the overhead and the pa, the pilot says, couldn't get that off. We're gonna have to get ground maintenance to come out with a blowtorch. It's like one. Why do you not have that? This is Vermont. We're not in Atlanta, where, like, it's at, like, we're going nuts because it's snowing. Like, this is something that happens every year.
- [76:17]
Ari Weitzman
So just have your blowtorch handy.
- [76:18]
Isaac Zahl
Have a thing that's gonna melt the ice or the thing that's frozen. So they had to wait for somebody to get one. Then like 10 minutes later, they're like, oh, no. One of the guys, one of the members of the gate crew, just like, figured it out. Oh, cool. There's one dude who's like, no, he's got to jimmy it harder. And then. Okay, we're off. Would have missed our connection if not for the fact that everything's so uniquely terrible now. Everywhere that that flight was delayed. So we're able to make our connection, get down to Florida. Great. On the way back from Florida, our flight was delayed, myself and my CO coach to the point where we had to cancel rebook. So now we have one flight that we're trying to catch. 38 minute layover in JFK. So it's pretty tight. Get on the plane. Immediately delayed just sitting there. Just delayed. Just because. Normally just because. Fuck you, it's a delay. The reason was we're still getting the bags on. It's a little backed up because there were so many delays. So the bags are going to take a while getting on. Cool. 20 minutes later they're like, we're almost done with the bags, guys. Just wait. And then 20 minutes later we're taxiing. So it's like, okay, There goes the 38 minutes window. We're late arriving, late taxiing. We had to catch the flight at 10:30. We start deplaning at 10:25. So that's gone. It was the only flight that we could have gotten from New York. So New York, Sunday night, sitting there with my co coach. And our options are either we reschedule the next day for a flight of three, get home, and we both really want to get home. He needs to get home because he made a promise to his wife every tournament. I'm going to be home 6am the next morning. And first mistake, I also, wow. I also wanted to get back because I'm like, I don't want to have to stay in New York. And then I'm going to what, Monday, take a flight up to Vermont so I could take a train down to Philly the next day. That makes no sense. So I should stay here. Which means I'm not going to be at home for a week. I don't want to do that. So my CO coach, Jake, is like, I'm just going to drive. I'm going to rent a car and drive. Do you want to come? I'm like, yeah, I'll absolutely do that. I'd gotten an hour and a half of sleep the night before that because of a car alarm was going off in windy ass Florida. Sounded like a cat was giving birth next to the front door because the wind was howling so much in like 35 degree Florida. So I could not sleep. So I'm like, all right, Jake, I will drive with you, but I cannot drive this first shift because I can. Like I'm. My head hurts, I'm dehydrated and I'm running on no sleep. He's like, it's cool, I got it. And he just drove the whole way.
- [78:37]
Ari Weitzman
Wow.
- [78:38]
Isaac Zahl
Like a fucking hero. Like, I was up after an hour. Like after we got out of New Jersey, I was up and I was like being a good shotgun and talking to him. So I got another hour and a half that night. I was so exhausted. Monday when we got back, got home, opened the front door, like, by five, Jake made, like, kept his promise to his wife legend. But that's like, why do I drive or why do I take cars or take trains places? Because airplanes, they don't work. And I'd rather just like, I'm taking the train back from Philly tomorrow. It's going to be a nine hour train ride. And that whole train ride, I'm going to be sitting with wifi, doing work, able to get up and walk, knowing that the train is going to drop me off when it said it does. And an airplane is just going to break your heart. And, you know, I'm not signing up to get my heart broken too much, other than like two more, three more times this year. I have more tournaments to go to and I have more grievances to share with you guys.
- [79:31]
Camille Foster
All right.
- [79:32]
Ari Weitzman
Oh, my gosh, Camille, that was epic. I can relate to the story that you just told primarily because I fly more. The only people who fly more than me are the crew of any of the flights that I happen to fly on at this point in my life anyways. But I don't have a grievance about airlines today. My grievance is about congressional hearings. And this is perhaps a nested grievance, because this week there were multiple congressional hearings that just got me so annoyed. One involved Netflix CEO coming to Capitol Hill to talk to congresspersons and try to persuade them that this deal is a good deal and we ought to.
- [80:13]
Isaac Zahl
Be able to do this.
- [80:13]
Ari Weitzman
We're not going to have an unfair monopoly going forward. I'm not even going to weigh in on that. The clip you probably saw from that was Ted Cruz asking whether or not we are on stolen land. And these prominent media executives responding in a way that was kind of not quite laughable. Just not taking the moment particularly seriously because it isn't very serious. Are there questions about kind of bias in Hollywood, et cetera, et cetera?
- [80:43]
Isaac Zahl
Sure.
- [80:43]
Ari Weitzman
Should you ask questions about whether or not Netflix will enjoy an unfair monopoly after this potential merger? Maybe. But it also seems to me that Netflix and Hollywood in general are under so much pressure from AI and independent.
- [80:56]
Isaac Zahl
Well, you said you weren't even gonna go there, but you're going there. Yeah.
- [80:58]
Ari Weitzman
Come on. Anyways, it's just they are so profoundly unserious. And the other hearing that was this week was related to autonomous vehicles. And it's again, congresspersons talking about this technology that they do not quite understand, and they never really do. This is Mark Zuckerberg Being asked about how Facebook makes money. They don't know what they're doing. It's all theater. And I wish, wish, wish, wish on some level. And this, I suppose, harkens back to the Epstein conversation. Maybe we should just stop televising these things. Maybe we should just put a moratorium on congressional hearings for the foreseeable future. I never learn anything valuable. Someone maybe makes a mistake and says something in an inelegant way. Every once in a while you get a moment where Ted Cruz, not Ted Cruz, but Rand Paul, is cross examining Marco Rubio and he just completely owns him in the best possible way. And that's interesting, that's a kind of theater. But that theater is actually necessary. These are politicians talking to each other and debating with one another. But when you summon experts in particular fields or executives from prominent companies to Capitol Hill and you ask them to.
- [82:12]
Isaac Zahl
Interrogate this Billie Eilish quote and you.
- [82:14]
Ari Weitzman
Won'T let them talk. No, no. I have just limited time here. Let me get my shots off. So you can look like a dope not answering the question. That isn't really a question. Fuck outta here. Who is this serving? I don't like it. I want it to stop. And I think it's bad. That is my grievance.
- [82:33]
Isaac Zahl
Nice.
- [82:33]
Camille Foster
It's a great grievance. I will say I did see a congressional hearing recently that I thought was enlightening, I guess a little bit.
- [82:42]
Ari Weitzman
Oh, good.
- [82:43]
Camille Foster
I'll tell you, the moment went viral. It was all over X and Instagram. And I think it was a Democrat, but I'm not 100% sure. I think it was a Democratic member of Congress who was asking these healthcare executives to raise their hand, like, if you are the CEO of a healthcare company. And then like, if you own a hospital, if you own the PBMs, if you own an insurer, and they're just like up and up, like so just to be clear, like you five own every single part. And it was like, oh, yeah, that's probably not good. And it was one of those things where actually, like seeing a little bit of the shame and the realization on their faces as their hands keep going up. It was like, nice to watch that versus just kind of read about it.
- [83:26]
Ari Weitzman
You see, my libertarian inclinations make me turn me off from that. Cause yes, healthcare is expensive, but it's not just because some people are making some money in it.
- [83:36]
Isaac Zahl
We gotta not go there.
- [83:37]
Camille Foster
Yeah, we're not yet. We can't open that can of worms.
- [83:39]
Ari Weitzman
All right, it's another time.
- [83:41]
Camille Foster
All Right. My grievance this week's actually about my team here at Tangle.
- [83:44]
Isaac Zahl
Uh.
- [83:44]
Camille Foster
Oh. It's all right. It's mostly Will.
- [83:48]
Ari Weitzman
Great, I'm back.
- [83:49]
Camille Foster
Yes. We are all. We have a bunch of the team. Not the whole team, but a good chunk of the team is here in Philly this week and we're doing a bunch of team stuff. And yesterday our day ends and we go back to the Airbnb that they're all staying here in Philly. And I had the great idea of, like, we should all watch the Melania documentary. Oh, yes. And, like, sit down with, like, a couple beers and we can maybe we can can write about it or, like, there'd be some. This is like a content where this is going. None of us have seen it, right? And we're like, okay, well, there was like, no movie theater showing. We had dinner, whatever. We had like a two and a half hour gap. And like, I won't name names. I guess I kind of already did. But, like, some people were like, yeah, I'll find it online. Like, we'll just rip it. And my crack team of journalists that I've hired for, like, three hours tries to find the Melania documentary online. I'm confessing to some illegal activity here.
- [84:43]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, I don't know if this is a good idea.
- [84:45]
Camille Foster
No, no, no, no, it's fine. I wasn't there.
- [84:48]
Isaac Zahl
That's when you get in trouble. Rebroadcasting, downloading.
- [84:50]
Ari Weitzman
It's bad, too.
- [84:51]
Isaac Zahl
Yes. Not as bad.
- [84:52]
Camille Foster
Well, don't worry, because we didn't download it because none of them were capable of finding it online, which is the most embarrassing thing ever. That is worse.
- [85:01]
Isaac Zahl
I think it speaks more to Bezos. Cover up skills here because like I said.
- [85:05]
Ari Weitzman
Or the lack of demand.
- [85:06]
Isaac Zahl
I may or may not be.
- [85:07]
Camille Foster
Or the lack of demand, that's what we're all. I'm sitting there, I'm like, what do you mean none of you can find it? Like, ripping a movie is, like, the easiest thing you can do on the Internet.
- [85:14]
Isaac Zahl
Allegedly.
- [85:14]
Camille Foster
And they're all like, on their computers. They're like in the command center.
- [85:17]
Isaac Zahl
Because allegedly, we've all done this very well.
- [85:19]
Ari Weitzman
I mean, I feel like I could. I've absolutely done this. Not with that particular film. I'm confident that if I took five minute, I could find a decision.
- [85:27]
Isaac Zahl
So were all of us.
- [85:28]
Ari Weitzman
So, yeah, so were we all.
- [85:29]
Camille Foster
Everybody shared that confidence. And zero people found the film.
- [85:32]
Isaac Zahl
We're in a PDFs, finding links to other things, like downloading Chrome extensions to, like, Zap the thing, the modals that come up over the top, we're like, we found it. It's good. And it's just a trailer and then two hours of black screen silence.
- [85:45]
Advertisement Voice
Huh?
- [85:45]
Isaac Zahl
Come on.
- [85:46]
Ari Weitzman
Give me 15 minutes after we're done.
- [85:47]
Isaac Zahl
Yeah, sure. You got it, bud. I'll watch you.
- [85:49]
Camille Foster
Nothing illegal happened because we were incapable of doing anything illegal, which is the most embarrassing thing ever.
- [85:54]
Ari Weitzman
Fifteen minutes.
- [85:55]
Camille Foster
That's my illegal for this week.
- [85:59]
Ari Weitzman
We need more criminally inclined. Thank God. Staffers. More capable, criminally inclined.
- [86:03]
Camille Foster
I just looked around the room and I said, is that. Did I hire a bunch of incompetent people? We can't commit one simple low level crime together.
- [86:11]
Ari Weitzman
Are you gonna do anything?
- [86:12]
Isaac Zahl
John, play the music.
- [86:14]
Ari Weitzman
Got it.
- [86:15]
Camille Foster
We're good. All right. That's it. It's good to see you. Nice to have you guys in real life. This is good. Touch you. All right. I only have. I don't know if we should end this episode on that note, but. All right. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Zahl. And our executive producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kbach and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsey 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.
- [87:10]
Isaac Zahl
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- [87:18]
Isaac Zahl
Oh, actually they will have to get up and open the door. Oh right. Delivery available for select devices purchased@boostmobile.com terms apply.
- [87:25]
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Camille Foster
Can I make my site firmer?
- [88:13]
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Can we sleep cooler?
- [88:15]
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Sleep number does that cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side your sleep number setting. Enjoy personalized comfort for better sleep night after night. And now during our President's day sale, take 50% off our limited edition bed Shop now for a limited time only at asleepnumber store or sleepnumber.com.