Suspension of the rules. - Isaac, Ari, and Kmele jump into it about Nick Fuentes, Jeffrey Epstein email drop and revisiting the shut down.

Summary

Tangle – "Suspension of the rules." (Nov 14, 2025)

Host: Isaac Saul
Guests: Ari Weitzman, Camille (Kmele) Foster
Setting: In person, New York City

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Episode Overview

In this in-person episode, Isaac, Ari, and Camille (Kmele) dive into three main topics dominating the political conversation:

• The controversy surrounding Tucker Carlson's platforming of Nick Fuentes
• The recent drop of Jeffrey Epstein-related emails and documents, and implications for Trump and others
• A retrospective on the recent government shutdown, asking if Democrats may have quietly "won" the fight

Woven throughout are discussions of media responsibility, social dynamics of political radicalization, and critiques of how both left and right handle controversy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and the Cost of Platforming Controversial Figures

[06:13–22:24, 25:05–61:00]

Background: Tucker Carlson, a major figure in conservative media, recently hosted Nick Fuentes—a known white nationalist, antisemite, and "incel" leader—provoking backlash even in right-wing circles. Isaac’s recent Tangle piece and the subsequent media reactions set the stage for a discussion on platforming, media responsibility, and combating toxic ideologies.

Key Arguments:

• Deplatforming vs. Exposure:

  • Ari: Bringing someone like Fuentes into the open is valuable. "Understanding tends to de-radicalize people." – [14:38]
  • Isaac: Deplatforming "doesn’t work... bringing them on and shining the light on them is helpful in a lot of ways." – [12:00]

• On Fuentes Himself:

  • Isaac: "I left [the interview] feeling like I really understood him and I pitied him in a lot of ways... [it] made him so much less threatening to me." – [13:45]
  • Ari: "If we’re able to approach people who are forming these views with a little bit of compassion and grace, maybe they don’t deserve it or haven’t earned it, but it’s better for everybody." – [16:53]

• The Appeal of Fringe Figures:

  • Kmele: "Nick Fuentes can seem profoundly brave because he's simply willing to defy this convention over and over again... That is part of the power he’s been able to wield." – [44:08]
  • There’s a discomfort in acknowledging how the rigid enforcement of social taboos can give fuel to trolls and extremists who transgress them.

• Pushback within the Right:

  • Debate on whether figures like Tucker or Candace Owens warrant engagement or condemnation, and the importance of 'policing one's own.'

• Majority vs. Minority:

  • Kmele: "We outnumber them and we should remember that…They don’t outnumber us… gives more people more courage, especially people on their side, to speak out." – [25:05]
  • Echoed by Isaac and Ari: Yes, views like Fuentes’ are horrifying but remain fringe.

• How to Respond:

  • Responding with "compassion and grace" is not about excusing, but about strategically undermining toxic worldviews—while maintaining that not everyone has the capacity (or responsibility) to respond this way.

Quotes & Moments:

• Ari (on seeing the value of open engagement):
  "If you're looking to understand Nick Fuentes, I think [the interview] was really valuable." – [11:18]

• Isaac (on the effect of the Tucker/Fuentes interview):
  "If you left feeling like Nick Fuentes was some sort of ideological leader…you're a rube." – [12:00]

• Kmele (on backlash and what worries him):
  "I'm particularly interested in the phenomena… where a number of conservatives were deeply concerned that there was infighting happening because of all this flap," leading to reluctance in self-policing their own side. – [40:00]

• Isaac (quoting Reddit criticism of his piece): "The root of the problem is minorities are too mean to people who do racist and sexist things is incomplete…" – [30:19]

2. The Jeffrey Epstein Email Drop & Trump Connections

[62:34–85:32]

Background: On the day of recording, both House Democrats and Republicans released thousands of pages of Jeffrey Epstein-related emails and documents. There’s renewed interest in possible incrimination of Trump and broader speculation around Epstein’s relationships.

Key Arguments:

• Content of the Emails:

  • House Democrats released exchanges showing Epstein and Trump were familiar, referencing Trump’s knowledge of women ("girls") Epstein was associated with.
  • Michael Wolff, a well-known journalist, appeared to be giving Epstein PR advice about handling media mentions related to Trump—a finding that both Isaac and Kmele considered quite damning for Wolff’s reputation.

• Do These Emails Move the Needle?

  • Kmele: Even if the worst-case scenario were spelled out by Epstein, "one would still have to read an email like this with a degree of profound skepticism given the source." – [70:53]
  • The emails arguably add context, but don’t provide a "smoking gun" regarding Trump’s direct criminal involvement.

• Conspiracy Theories & Impossibility of Closure:

  • Ari: "We're always going to be asked for more Epstein files… this is never going to be a story that gets fed sufficiently..." – [72:25]
  • No matter how much is released, suspicions will linger—total closure is impossible.

• What’s Plausible?

  • Isaac: "A less sophisticated… more plausible theory is: Trump and Epstein partied together in the ‘90s and early 2000s, and Epstein was trafficking women and underage girls… It feels totally… within the realm of possibility."
  • All agree that, while serious, there is still no direct evidence tying Trump to criminal conduct—but the overall proximity is disturbing.

• Why Is Trump So Eager to Bury the Files?

  • Isaac: "Maybe there’s another reason he doesn’t want all this stuff to come out… It’s weird." – [81:50]
  • The panel speculates that embarrassment or political fallout is as likely a motivator as a smoking-gun criminal secret.

Quotes & Moments:

• Isaac (on Michael Wolff):
  "Michael Wolff, this guy who’s a journalist… is at the same time giving media advice to Jeffrey Epstein, who by now… is understood to be a sexual predator… that gives me big time ick." – [66:34]

• Ari (on public hunger for the ultimate 'Epstein file'):
  "There's so many gradations… we can just be talking in circles." – [75:23]

• Kmele (on the never-ending demand for more evidence):
  "Whether this is true or false… we will never have sufficient evidence to make this go away." – [72:55]

• Camille (on the credibility of allegations):
  "If he and I had actually engaged in criminal activity together, I'm not sure I would suggest in the email he knew what was going on because he was hanging out with a girl at the house. I would say 'of course he knew, he's guilty as sin. We committed crimes together,' not 'he was hanging out with a girl at the house.'" – [79:38]

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3. Government Shutdown: Did Democrats Quietly Win?

[85:48–97:22]

Background: The panel revisits the outcome of the recent government shutdown, considering an argument (citing Bulwark’s Tim Miller) that Democrats may have come out ahead—even if the optics were muddy or a "fold" was apparent to the base.

Key Arguments:

• Political Argument:

  • Democrats forced Republicans to own potentially unpopular positions—particularly on healthcare (ACA/Obamacare subsidies).
  • Even though Dems didn’t get everything, the fight sets up future leverage and puts the opposition on record.

• Was It Really a Win?

  • Ari: "Instead of saying Democrats folded, it's just that they played their hand wrong…They could have picked a different hill and died on it… something less debatable than ACA subsidies." – [91:13]
  • Kmele: "Not every occasion of escaping defeat is, in fact, a victory." – [93:45]

• Reader Poll:

  • Ari shares that 47% of Tangle readers thought Republicans "won" the shutdown, while only 45% said "neither" and just 2% "unsure/don’t care."

Quotes & Moments:

• Isaac (setting up the new argument):
  "A couple things could happen… All of those things will happen under the threat of another shutdown… and maybe that puts Democrats on stronger, more solid ground than… standing up to Trump’s authoritarianism." – [89:41]

• Ari (on Democratic strategy):
  "They had a stronger hand." – [91:13]

• Kmele (on the limits of 'winning'):
  "Not every occasion of escaping defeat is, in fact, a victory." – [93:45]

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4. Other Memorable Exchanges & Quotes

• On the "Bravery Magic" of Truth-Telling Extremists:

  • Kmele: "Nick Fuentes can seem profoundly brave because he's simply willing to defy this convention over and over again with confidence and verve…" – [44:08]

• On Nostalgia & Perceived Decline:

  • Isaac: "Can we just…move on to what we have now and deal with it… If I see one more video of 1990s New York City and everybody’s like, look how much better life used to be…" – [103:09]

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Notable Lightning Round: Airing of Grievances

[102:07–108:09]

• Kmele: Wishes the podcast could be done in person more often, "It’s always better to be sitting down..." – [102:31]
• Isaac: Fed up with nostalgia porn and those claiming the past was better, especially regarding safer times for kids. – [103:05]
• Ari: Chagrined by procrastinating on winter tire changes and being buried after the first snow. – [106:15]

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Memorable Quotes With Timestamps

• "Deplatforming ... hasn't worked with Fuentes."
  – Isaac Saul [12:00]

• "Understanding tends to de-radicalize people."
  – Ari Weitzman [14:38]

• "We outnumber them and we should remember that."
  – Kmele Foster [25:05]

• "If you want to change somebody's mind... you have to take a different path."
  – Isaac Saul [33:52]

• "Not every occasion of escaping defeat is, in fact, a victory."
  – Kmele Foster [93:45]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 01:35–06:13: Light banter and setup for in-person episode
• 06:13–61:00: Tucker/Fuentes controversy, radicalization, platforming
• 62:34–85:32: Epstein email dump, Trump implications, conspiracy culture
• 85:48–97:22: Shutdown retrospective
• 102:07–108:09: Airing of grievances (lightning round)

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Takeaways

• Open engagement, not avoidance, is more effective in countering fringe, hateful ideologies—but requires skill, patience, and courage, and isn’t for everyone.
• The Epstein email drop raises new avenues of suspicion but little concrete evidence—and the hunger for a grand revelation might never be satisfied.
• Democrats’ handling of the government shutdown wasn’t a clear victory, but the political consequences remain open to interpretation, with some seeing a clever long game and others a missed opportunity.
• Honest self-critique, acknowledgment of complexity, and the necessity of self-policing within political tribes emerged as recurring themes.

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For listeners who missed the episode:
This conversation is an intricate, at times philosophical, behind-the-headlines tour of political media, radicalization, and the realities of American partisanship—punctuated with humor, candor, and depth. If you care about how ideas spread, the media's power, or the state of political argument, it’s a must-hear (or must-read) episode from Tangle.

Transcript

[Host]

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[Isaac Saul]

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[Isaac Saul]

Coming up, Nick Fuentes and your reactions to the piece from last week. We chat about the blowback in right wing media circles. We jump into the Jeffrey Epstein email drop that came out today as we were recording or a little bit before we started recording. And then revisiting the shutdown and whether maybe Democrats actually won the shutdown. Plus some grievances. It's a great one. We're in person. We're together in New York City. You're going to enjoy it. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Suspension of Rules podcast. Apparently now a show that we do in person together.

[Ari Weitzman]

I'm looking at you as you're talking.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, well, gentlemen here. Cheers. First of all, cheers. We can clank our glasses together.

[Camille Foster]

Goodness gracious.

[Isaac Saul]

Camille, Ari and I are in New York City. We are in what I think Camille or Ari actually accurately maybe described as like a. I mean basically feels like a podcasting factory.

[Ari Weitzman]

I thought you're gonna say a socialist hellscape. Well, that's the city post election, right?

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

This is Freedom enclave of podcasting production. Actually about a block away from where I did my coding boot camp. Like, if we turned out the. If we were to turn out a window right there, we'd be able to see the building. It's a bizarre feeling for me. I took the same train from Washington Heights where I'm staying, down to the same block where I did coding for 12 weeks and learned how to start a new career that I love to do.

[Isaac Saul]

This fake career.

[Ari Weitzman]

This is a fake career or dangling modifier there.

[Camille Foster]

I'd say you're trending in the right direction. Hang out in this 12th floor penthouse and record podcasts. This is good.

[Ari Weitzman]

I mean, we're just talking about how we now get to be friends with people who know distillers. As I before knew a distiller from Cartoon, but the way that he distilled was off of pastries that were gonna be stale and thrown out, and then he made.

[Camille Foster]

Is that a true story?

[Ari Weitzman]

It's true. Yeah. In San Diego. I forget what it's called, otherwise I'd plug it. But it's a different level of sophistication to know somebody who has actually, like, legitimate moonshine. Not. Not moonshine, but legitimate bourbon that is not brewed from day olds that are going to the dumpster.

[Camille Foster]

Did I ever. I mean, we talked about this briefly, Isaac, but the fact that people. Once you start talking about booze and drinking while podcasting, et cetera, people just start sending you stuff.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, it's terrible. Don't do that.

[Camille Foster]

In addition to receiving actual bottles of booze through the mail, which apparently is illegal and totally didn't happen. If it is. Once I received a bunch of liquid in a brown jar with no label. It was very clearly something someone made in their garage and sent to us to drink on the podcast. There was a note attached to it. Not much else. And you know what we did with that booze? We drank it. We trusted it. We drank it. It was delicious. And yeah, I mean, I didn't say I could have picked it up at the store, you know, I didn't. No. I mean, it came in the mail. That's actually, if it's against the law, come for me.

[Isaac Saul]

A good segue. We have to shout out Wesley, our friend, reader, listener. He sent me four bottles of bourbon. Wow. Over the last two years, maybe. And every single one has been fantastic. And then we finally got to meet him at the live event in la. He was in. He was at the event in. In Irvine.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

Awesome dude, met his wife, awesome woman. And they. He. He consistently hooks me up with bourbon. He did something that I was just like, this is the best thing ever. He sent me three bottles, like these little 1 ounce bottles just numbered 1, 2, and 3. And then emailed me like, hey, I sent you these little tasters. Send me back what you think about each one and based on your responses, I'll send you a new bottle of bourbon.

[Camille Foster]

I love that.

[Isaac Saul]

And then I did that. My wife was like, you're gonna drink those? I was like, yeah. She's like, they're just unlabeled bottles. I'm like, this guy's been sending me stuff. You know, we're buddies now. It's like we got a thing going.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

So now I'm awaiting the bot post my reviews of the unlabeled 1, 2, 3 little 1 ounce shots. And I can't wait for it. I'm sure it's gonna be great. So if you're somebody who likes drinking bourbon, we'll totally test your recommendations, let's put it that way.

[Camille Foster]

I don't know if I'll drink any more mystery beverages sent to me by people I've never met before, but maybe you will.

[Ari Weitzman]

And that can be a thing for us to talk about in our spinoff podcast.

[Camille Foster]

Remembering Camille Foster.

[Isaac Saul]

Yes. All right, well, we're here. We're in person. Thank you. To our. I guess maybe he's just like an anonymous benefactor who's making all this happen. Yeah, we'll leave it at that. But he knows who he is and we know who he is and we appreciate him for bringing us all together. It's good to be back in New York. It's good to be in person. Last week when we were on the show, we sort of teased the Nick Fuente stuff that was coming out in Tangle and my piece that I wrote, and we talked a little bit about some of the controversy the Fuentes Carlson interview had set off. I'm glad we didn't dive into it for a few reasons. One is that it'd be harder to talk about without having the piece that I wrote come out. And now it's out. The podcast got released. If you haven't listened to it yet or gone back and read the piece, I suggest you do it. I'm proud of it. I think it's a good piece, generated a lot of conversation. And the other reason I'm glad we didn't is because we've just had another week to kind of watch how the impacts of this have Sort of moved through the right wing ecosystem for sure. And in the event you have not been paying attention to this or blissfully unaware of what's been happening, the quick 20 second rundown is that Tucker Carlson, former Fox News anchor, incredibly important, you know, conservative media figure who has direct access to the White House and J.D. vance and the President and has a massively popular podcast invited on Nick Fuentes, who is, I mean, in my view, an unambiguous white nationalist anti Semite who sort of like revels in the trollishness of just being racist and insane and talking about how much women suck. And he's kind of in the incel community. And, and this was actually, I mean, Tucker's brought on plenty of controversial people to his show. He's had plenty of controversial guests, he's had plenty of controversial opinions, but this one seemed to be a line that was too far for a lot of people in the conservative movement. So he faced a tremendous amount of backlash, which everybody talked about. I almost said blacklash, which could be appropriate given the guests that he had on. And, you know, I, I think all this stuff about, you know, the MAGA movement and the divisions and Tucker platforming somebody, it's all interesting. But to me, the thing that was way more curious was the Nick Fuentes story. Just how did Nick Fuentes become Nick Fuentes and what can we do about people like him? So, I mean, I have a couple of places I'd like to start, I guess. First of all, I'm curious maybe to hear from you two about, you know, now that the, what we publish in Tangle has been out and we've had another week to sort of see the reaction to Fuentes's kind of ascendance to a platform like Tucker Carlson's, how do you feel like the, the counterweights are balancing each other out? I mean, do you feel as if Tucker's been sufficiently taught a lesson here by bringing someone like Fuentes on, or whether this is just actually the beginning of someone like Fuentes being brought into the mainstream. And maybe we can start there for a bit before you get into my piece.

[Camille Foster]

All right, why don't you, why don't you jump in first? I'm going to take a look at the podcast charts to see how Tucker's show is doing, to see what kind of how much he's suffering today.

[Ari Weitzman]

I'm assuming not a lot. And I think because this is reminding me of a similar conversation we had a year ago after he brought Putin on to have a conversation with him about whether or not America's propaganda in Russia was worse than Russia's propaganda in the US and the whole grocery store trip, that was going to sink his career. In a way, he's his own version of Teflon Don. I think Tucker's sort of got the fu. Money. He's got the bona fides of being on the outs with Fox News. So he can say that he is a rogue, a rebel in his own right, and he's doing his own thing. He traffics a little bit in what we could tepidly call conspiracy theory. I think that's something that he's been shown that he'll do. And him having conversations with people where he's just asking questions is, I think, you know, in quotes is I think, what people expect of him. And I think him bringing on Nick Fuentes to have a conversation where he gives Nick Fuentes the platform to describe himself in his own terms is something that we kind of expect of him. And to be frank, as somebody who I think this is the easiest limb to go out on, I think you and I are pretty united in our distaste for Nick Fuentes, his views, but.

[Isaac Saul]

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Camille Foster]

Do it.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, but. But I think that it was illuminating to hear him on that podcast.

[Camille Foster]

Yes.

[Ari Weitzman]

I think Tucker has a role in the media. Media. In the media ecosystem. I do think there's room for him to push back more, but I would.

[Isaac Saul]

Say it's always useful, even.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah. In the same way that the Putin interview was useful, I think we got to hear a lot about how Putin understand world. The thing that you can't do is take from that conversation anything where you're going to construct your own worldview based off of Nick Fuentes's views about the way that women are inferior to men and how Jews are orchestrating the world and trying to put him down. Like, that's something that if you're taking cues from that that are building your own worldview, you should be a little bit more careful. But if you're looking to understand Nick Fuentes, I think it was really valuable.

[Isaac Saul]

I mean, one of the things that it affirmed for me, which is nice because it's a prior that I have, it's just like the de platforming, ignoring these people. It A, doesn't work. It hasn't worked with Fuentes, whatever. And B, actually bringing them on and shining the light on them is helpful and useful in a lot of ways. Like, I'm sorry, if you listen to that Tucker interview and you left feeling like Nick Fuentes was some Sort of like, ideological leader or had real principles or had a clear view of the world. Like, you're. I don't know, you're Rube. You're not paying attention. I mean, like, he's saying on the show that his worldview is, if they attack me, I attack them. He's saying, without saying, you know, I hate women because none of them love me, and they're all liberal and overweight and they're insufferable to be around, but it's their fault. It's not mine. It's also transparent when you kind of listen closely to him. I'm just like, oh, this is just this despondent, kind of lonely, sad, pathetic dude who's just pissed because his life isn't what he wants it to be. And maybe now his life is kind of what he wants it to be, which is why he's just doubling down on all these views and becoming more and more extreme is because it's garnered him some sort of success. But I left feeling like I really understood him and I pitied him in a lot of ways. Like, I didn't. I left being like, this kid is. This is pathetic. Like, what he's doing. His whole shtick's pathetic. It's embarrassing. And, you know, I wasn't like, it almost made me less angry. Like, I used to be like, oh, this. You know, like. Cause he's really, to be clear. And I said this in my piece. Like, I am Nick Fuente's number one target. Like, he hates Jews. He hates Jews in the media. He hates Zionist Jews. He really doesn't like Jews who have, like, a good life and have any. Any kind of success and are mean.

[Ari Weitzman]

To him in any way.

[Isaac Saul]

Right? Or say anything critical about him. And on top of all that, like, I'm married and have children and probably a bunch of other things he wishes he had. I'm like, I like. And. And. And for all of those reasons, I want to hate him back because of the negative polarization effect that I wrote about. But then I listened to the interview, and I'm just. It made me. It made him so much less threatening to me in some way, despite the fact I'm, like, his enemy number one. I'm just like, oh, this is all. You hate Jews because Ben Shapiro mean tweeted you, like, 10 years ago.

[Ari Weitzman]

I mean, I think understanding tends to de. Radicalize people. I think I'm gonna go back to a moment that was kind of, for me, in my life, somewhat formative, which was, I mean, in my adulthood, Anyway, which was the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, where after that happened, I had to. I think we talked about this briefly. I'm not sure if it was on air or off Camille, but my cousin once removed was one of the nine people that was killed in the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh. And after that, I remember my reaction. It's really interesting. You feel like you're sort of an observer of your own reaction at times. And I was like, this is interesting that this is how I'm reacting this way. It didn't feel like a choice. I just read as much as I could. I went to the Pittsburgh Public Library. I got books about antisemitism in the United States. I read a lot from what I could about the alt right movement. I got a GAB account. I was on GAB for a while. I read more about the life of the shooter, Robert Bowers, who went to the same high school as my mom in Baldwin, Pittsburgh, and wanted to understand what could make a person do this. And when you do, you're sort of like, oh, okay, now I think I understand. And I feel a little bit less outraged. Not that I feel okay, but just that you sort of see 1. What Isaac started this statement with of deplatforming doesn't really seem to work. GAB was the cesspool, and maybe still is just less popular of people who are trafficking in this great replacement theory, which if there's anything that Nick Fuentes is presenting in a clear eyed way in this podcast, it's his view of great replacement theory just under the surface. He mentions it once or twice of this was at a time when people weren't really talking about this. They didn't think this was true, and then that moves on. It was a really interesting moment in that podcast, I thought, but that was sort of that becoming mainstream. The way that Twitter at the time and other big tech giants reacted to those views being pushed on their platform was to ban and cancel and deplatform. And that brought people to sites like Gab, like 4chan, where they would talk, egg each other on, till eventually some angry person in their mid-40s in Pittsburgh says, damn your optics, I'm going in. And then takes a gun and then does something like that. And that's why I feel like getting this out into the light is really, I think when we get a sense of where these ideas come from, who this person is, who Nick Fuentes is as a person, then we can understand him more and then we can react in a way that's more informed. Than just, let's cancel, let's deplatform. Because I'm not saying because I think Tucker Carlson gave a great interview and that we should have more chances to talk with Nick Fuentes and bring him into the comforting arms of the mainstream culture, but because I think deplatforming does not work. I don't think that it helps to fight against these kinds of worldviews. And now that we understand him, we can have conversations about it. We can have views like Isaac's where he's saying, this is actually not a scary thing. It's kind of a sad thing. And if we're able to approach people who are forming these views with a little bit of compassion and grace, maybe they don't deserve it or haven't earned it, but it's better for everybody so we prevent this big, angry monster from forming in the long run that could do something that's ultimately destructive to actual people's lives and families, rather than offensive for us to hear and difficult for us to talk about. Because Nick Fuentes, not a lot of his worldview is something that I'd be comfortable, you know, sharing or probably inviting Inpoon into my home. But talking about who he is, I think makes it easier for us to have conversations with people who are, you know, Fuentes, curious and considering where they might fit into this worldview of, you know, look at the name of the person who said that, who criticized you. Was it. Was it a Jewish last name? Was that a woman with blue hair who was being mean to you? Maybe. Maybe there's a conspiracy here. And if we're able to understand what leads people to sort of other and negatively polarize one another, then I think it helps us prevent that from happening. Or as Nick Fuentes would say, strangulant in the crib or nuke from space, which I thought was an interesting way he described being, quote, tweeted by Ben Shapiro. But that's neither here nor there. I think I've gone on long enough.

[Camille Foster]

No, look, there's so much that I want to say about this, and I've been giving this topic a lot of consideration. In fact, I started to get a little uncomfortable maybe a month ago because I realized on various media platforms where I'd been interacting with people, I kept talking about Tucker and Nick Fuentes. And I have a dispositional commitment to steering clear of hysteria and making certain that I'm not engaging in threat inflation and overstating the significance of things that I might find distressing and yet are still marginal. And I think it is the case that it is still. It is still the case that a minority of the population even knows who Nick Fuentes is, let alone agrees with him and his ideas. And I believe that to be true, despite the fact that as I look at the top shows in news on Apple podcasts today, numbers one through three are the Daily New York Times, NPR's Up first, and Pod Save America, Crooked Media. You know, are these left of center publications? In some respects. Certain respects, absolutely. In other respects, yeah, maybe. Okay, number four is Megyn Kelly. Some people may not like that, but Megyn Kelly is not. Number five, who's Candace Owens? Number six, Tucker Carlson. Seven. Pivot. Eight, Ben Shapiro. Nine, the Midas touch guys who are interesting. And 10 is the bulwark Podcast platforming is a word that gets used a lot when you talk about Fuentes and Tucker and even Candace Owens. And there are certain people who think that you shouldn't be talking to Candace and Tucker. The reality is that Candace and Tucker have platforms. To the extent they're willing to make time for cnn, they're doing CNN a favor. They are not. They don't have to do that. They don't need that to reach an audience. They don't need that to make a living. Candace has her own challenges, her legal challenges outside of the production of her podcast. But in terms of promulgating her bad ideas in the way that Fuentes does, she has reach, she has an audience. And it's an uncomfortable reality that people who engage in kind of conspiratorial musings in the media have a profound kind of influence relative to other publications individually in the aggregate. And I think it's an important bit of context to include. It's perhaps not as bad as it seems. Certainly the case that. And I was talking about this a little earlier with my comrades from the fifth column who were actually like a couple rooms away, and Isaac, who's here and was just mentioning that I was thinking about the 1970s when the National Enquirer was at its peak. And at its peak, the National Enquirer had greater circulation than the New York Times, than the Washington Post, than the Wall Street Journal, than the LA Times was a single source that had a huge readership and it was promulgating conspiracy theories that may seem like the wrong analog unless you've actually listened to Tucker and Candace. But where open talk about UFOs, about faking moon landings, about prominent persons actually being members of the other gender secretly now.

[Isaac Saul]

Chemtrails.

[Camille Foster]

Chemtrails on the Most chemtrails of Tucker Carlson and of course alongside that, like Nazis and Nazi curious people and allusions to, not so vague allusions to, but right up to the line of overt antisemitism. Israel led Jewish led conspiracies to commit all manner of atrocities. That is the fair on his publication. And again, uncomfortable reality is that it is a big deal. But at the same time, I think you have to juxtapose it against the fact that there is a universe of other publications that while may not have been as big as the Inquirer at the time, like all of them in the aggregate, had a greater reach. And I think keeping that context in mind is really important and valuable when trying to approach this conversation. But I also think that the top line that you offered, I think it was the top line, Isaac, is that these are views that are out there in the ether. They have gained more prominence. And in particular, we're talking about the right now. The left has its own problems. We can talk about those don't need to draw in equivalence, except to establish that both exist. And people have tried for a long time to ignore these people, to deplatform them. Fuentes has been kicked off of major social media platforms and YouTube multiple times, and we are still where we are at the moment. So ignoring them doesn't work. And quite frankly, blanket condemnations doesn't seem to work either. There has to be a different approach. And I do think that some level of engagement, some level of meaningful curiosity, and yes, even finding a way to imagine how someone could have reached a point where they embrace those kinds of views becomes very important. And as much as I've been frustrated by a lot, I've also been really heartened to see the number of people who are confronting these ideas in forceful ways, who are writing thoughtful pieces about what's going on here, and sometimes who are kind of stumbling over themselves and doing really stupid things like embracing narratives about faked tweets, whether or not it's clear that we know for sure that the tweets have been faked or various other things where they get out over their skis because they're so enthusiastic about the opportunity to find kompromat on these people who are promulgating, again, just malevolent ideas.

[Isaac Saul]

So, yeah, I mean, the feelings, the, the point that you made earlier when we were not on the air that I think kind of resonated with me, was that we outnumber them and we should remember that, like it's okay to talk about the problem and address it, but, like, let's not lose sight of the fact. And that's sort of the point you're making. Well, I think explicitly the point you're making with like listing the top 10 podcast shows right now is like, these people have a big platform and they don't necessarily need CNN or whatever to reach people, but they're still really healthily in the minority in terms of the audience and the reach, especially when you accumulate all the shows that are around them in size. And I think that's important because, you know, understanding that these people that like the Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, whatever, that they're not the majority stakeholders, they're not the thought leaders right now. They're. They're prominent and they have platforms, but they don't outnumber us. Gives more people more courage, especially people like, quote, unquote, on their side, maybe right of center, to actually speak out about them and speak directly about the just utter trash that they're laundering. Ben Shapiro, I mean it. Like, I. I literally don't give a shit what you think about him, what your views of him are, what your views of his politics are. I thought what he did on his show was incredible. I mean, I listened to it. I listened to the full. I watched the full 45 minute video, whatever.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

Which I actually found kind of enrapturing. I mean, it was mostly because most of it was him just clipping the shows that he was like, just showing the stuff that Fuentes was saying, showing the stuff Tucker was saying, showing the stuff. Like, he wasn't even commenting on it so much as he was just like this. Do you guys know? Like, this is what they're doing here? It is. And then you watch them say these things, you're like, holy shit, he said that? I can't believe he said that. And I thought it was really effective to make the point of just like, like, wake up. Like, you know, we're not. I'm not exaggerating the dangers here. Like, I'm not overstating what Tucker's doing. I'm not overstating what Nick Fuente. Casey's doing. You know, the. I think the point that I made in my piece, which I was going to say the point that I made that got attacked the most, which also happens to be like the central thrust of the piece, so was like the idea that, you know, Nick Fuentes is in his telling, if you're even. I understand it's a risky thing to do, but if you were to take his story, the story he Told on Tucker's show at face value, he had a very human reaction to the experiences and the encounters that he had as like a young Trump supporter. Which is just like random people come up to you at your school and tell you you're a racist for wearing a MAGA hat. You like those people a lot less and you dig in on your views a lot more. Like that is not the kind of encounter that typically makes most human beings more introspective. And the point that I was putting for in my piece was like, let's just acknowledge that and think about Nick Fuentes is gone. Whatever. He's chosen his path in my view. Maybe he realizes one day how sad and awful his life is and what he's putting out in the world and he changes course. I don't know. But right now it doesn't feel like he's somebody who's reachable. But there's a bunch of other people like him, young white men who are angry and sexless and whatever, you know.

[Camille Foster]

Certainly not just white men.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, yeah. No, for sure not. I mean, and actually it's worth saying because I didn't say this explicit my piece, but like Nick Fuentes has a not insignificant female and minority following and people who are like crazy in love.

[Ari Weitzman]

With his stuff without trying a quarter Mexican.

[Camille Foster]

So it's not like without trying at their events, you'll see photos and it'll kind of look like a Benetton ad.

[Isaac Saul]

And it's just.

[Camille Foster]

Which is surprising given the rhetoric. But it's, it's there and it's complicated and it's confused and you should expect that like that all. It's all of a piece.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. So basically one of the things. And I'm going to actually read a specific critique that popped up on the Our Tangle News Reddit thread, which by the way, if you listen to the show, I said this on our Reddit channel on our subreddit. I should use the actual. I sound like I've never been on Reddit before. On our Reddit.com yeah. On our subreddit that like podcasts and subreddits to me kind of go together like peanut butter and jelly. So there's been some very good. And I appreciate, you know, thoughtful criticisms and threads and conversations happening about this show and about stuff we're publishing in Tangle on our subreddit. So I encourage people who are interested in like engaging in the community to go there. It's plug for this for the subreddit. But somebody said, you know, one of the things I Said, I made this point about it being human for Nick Fuentes to react this way. And somebody said anger at racists and sexist is also obviously human. I appreciate Isaac's dive into Fuentes background and humanizing his evolution into the shitcake he is today. Funny word. It's important to understand what happens to create such harmful behaviors in people. But his conclusion that the root of the problem is minorities are too mean to people who do racist and sexist things is incomplete in that it does not acknowledge with compassion and understanding that being angry and lashing out towards racism and sexism is also obviously human. If it weren't, it wouldn't be so common. I think a better approach is to accept that all of the human emotions involved are involved, are understandable and somewhat inevitable. And then to suggest if people have the capacity to try to approach these lost boys with kindness and openness in favor of a better outcome for all.

[Ari Weitzman]

We kind of made the same face there at the word inevitable. I think there's. There's something there that I think is true. Like the idea that we can react in a way that's human to people who are reacting in ways that are human and everyone's being human and that's just human and fine, but also at the same time. Yeah. Like, it's not just inevitable. I think we can all sort of acknowledge when we're having an emotional reaction and even if the other person isn't, if you can acknowledge that, then you can stop the cycle a bit.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah, I actually have. Ignoring a different point.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. I have a more specific response to this though, which is the, the racists, like the people like Fuentes are the ones who are not well. And like, I don't. I actually think that it's not like a perfect analogy, but I would imagine, I would think about it almost like you think about dealing with somebody with a mental illness. Like. I understand your point. It is. Yes, it's human. I want to lash out at somebody who's saying anti Semitic shit. Somebody who is black American hearing racist stuff wants to lash out at somebody saying obvious racist stuff about black Americans. I get that. And I'm not denying that that isn't also human emotion. But like the dynamic here is that we're on the side of the angels and we understand that one side of this is obviously wrong and sick. And there's something like, there's like a sickness manifesting itself in these people who hold these views. And like the ones who are seeing clearly about the people being racist, the Nick Fuentes of the world. I don't think we actually have the privilege of saying like, we can have the same sort of reaction that they have to these perceived offenses. I think like we should take the high road. We should be able to say that like we have a greater capacity than these people to sort of manage those human emotions and put them aside and then act in a way that we think is going to bring about a greater good. And the thing I'm wrestling with is not like what is or isn't a human emotion. I acknowledge that hating, racism and sexism is a perfectly human response. But like, we have to do something with these people. We have to like, we have the arguments on our side, the non racist people out there. You have the, you have the strength, you're on the solid ground.

[Camille Foster]

You have the numbers.

[Isaac Saul]

You have the numbers. And like, and, and yeah, I would just like put forward to you that that is the frame almost the framework that I'm coming from is like, it's like dealing with somebody who's mentally ill which requires you giving them a certain level of grace and space and whatever. And I know that that sucks. And, and I, I understand that that's like a frustrating thing to be asked of you, but also like, what are you here for? Like what do you, what do you want? What's the outcome you actually want? And I, I just don't like it. I really do feel like this is such a, it's such a cop out and it's like part of, you know, honestly it's, it's part of the, the sort of like anti racist framework that I always hated and loathed was like this idea that like the minorities and the oppressed and whatever had, they had no role in resolving issues of racial resentment. And they didn't, they shouldn't be. So they shouldn't have to do the work that like, you know, white allies need to step up and do the work. It's like that, that. I'm sorry, it's just, it's not a realistic proposition and it doesn't work. And like the, it's avoiding the thing in the room which is that like the racists and the minorities have to learn to live together and they have to have contact in order for the racist to be overcome. And like Nick Fuentes is not going to be taught how to navigate this world in a better way by some like white ally lecturing him about whatever, you know, he needs to experience the people he loathes in a positive way. I'm sorry, that's just like, and, you know, I cited a lot of examples which some people said weren't sufficient or felt anecdotal. I don't think it's actually anecdotal. I think there's like lots of social sciences and research on this and it's why these de radicalization groups use these methods to get people out of this mindset. So I certainly appreciate the criticism that, like, I could have added a sentence in there that like, responding to this sort of racism in a really negative way is also a human response. And, you know, I don't hold it against anybody for, like lashing out at Nick Fuentes. I understand why you might do that. Or, or I don't understand. I don't, I don't like, aggrieve somebody. I'm not aggrieved about somebody hearing somebody say something anti Semitic and responding with anger or upset. I get it. I'm just saying that if you actually want to change somebody's mind, like there you have to take a different path. And I don't think that, like, I haven't yet heard a good argument that that's not true, basically. And I've never, in all my years of doing the kind of work I do through tangle, operating in spaces where, you know, conservative MAGA Trump friends of mine are sitting at a dinner table with like, liberal progressive woke friends of mine. I've never seen them interact in like a combative way where one person was accusing another person in a really broad generalized sense of like being racist or being a woke libtard and then they advance their position that they wanted to advance. They move the person sitting across from them to their side. It never, ever, ever happens like that. And I've seen the reverse plenty of times where like, you know, a trans woman who's a friend of mine is at a party with like a MAGA bro friend of mine who I know is like all anti trans on social media, and the two of them talk for five minutes and then he realizes that he's talking to a trans woman and, and they're like having a good time over a beer and he's like, oh, shit, maybe I'm an asshole.

[Camille Foster]

And now they're married.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's how it happens, you know, and it's really true. Like, I just. It is in my experience. Yeah. We'll be right back after this quick break. If you're like me, instead of learning to skateboard, you wish you were learning to write code. Instead of scraping through college, you wish you bought bitcoin. At less than a cent or secured a few Nvidia shares before they boomed. We might beat the FOMO generation, but don't miss out on protecting your future. For around the same price per month as one of your streaming services, you can break our generational cycle and secure your and your family's future by finding life [e-mail] if you're new to life insurance or it's your first time hearing about the idea, you're not alone. I found Selectquote and for over 40 years, SelectQuote has helped more than 2 million Americans understand their options and get the coverage they need. Over $700 billion in coverage and counting. The good news is life insurance is never cheaper than it is today. Get the right life insurance for you for less and save more than [e-mail] tangle save more than 50% on term life [e-mail] tangle today to get started, that's SelectQuote.com tangle cold mornings holiday Plans this is when I want my wardrobe to just be simple stuff that looks sharp, feels good, and things I'll actually wear. For me, that's Quince. And the bonus Quince pieces make great gifts too. This season's lineup is simple but smart and easy with quince 50 Mongolian cashmere sweaters that feel like an everyday luxury. I bought one of these. It's incredible. Honestly. Sometimes doing these host red ads can be a little bit of a drag. But this is one of the brands that I am really proud to support. Quince material is just top of the line. So if you want to give and get timeless holiday staples that last this season with quince, go to quince.comtangle for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com tangle free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com tangle.

[Camille Foster]

There'S a lot of stuff that we could get into and that I'd like to say I'm particularly interested in the phenomena that was happening not last week but the week before actually, where a number of conservatives were deeply concerned that there was infighting happening because of all of this flap that they didn't even want to talk about it. They didn't want to get into it. They didn't want people policing who Tucker could have on. It's part of the reason Heritage got involved. I'm not gonna get into that right now. I actually think the point that you were just making is a little more interesting. And I actually wanna take it a step further and say it's not so much that, it's just it's human to respond to real racism. There's also a reality that the universe of things that are imagined to be racist has expanded to include so many things that lots of people found themselves facing charges of racism who perhaps don't have any kind of malignant ideas, who perhaps just ran afoul of some societal norm. And I do think it's really interesting. There was this moment, I think it was in 2016, where Barack Obama used, quote unquote, the N word in an interview about race and it created just this bizarre scandal. One the rules supposedly suggest that it's fine for Obama to use that word, but more than that, context and circumstance ought to matter. And not merely these newly adopted conventions. And the particular convention that says it's acceptable for me to utter the word aloud and unacceptable for the two of you to utter the word aloud is one that we ought to be thinking about. Not because I want to create a world where Nick Fuentes can get away with saying whatever he likes, but because I understand we live in a world where Nick Fuentes can seem profoundly brave because he's simply willing to defy this convention over and over again with confidence and verb and charisma. And that is part of the power that he's been able to wield. It's part of the seduction that he's been able to carry out. It's not just the anti Semitic rhetoric, it's the determined defiance of these established social norms that are in themselves a little bit absurd and hypocritical. The fact that a man using a word in context of whatever race could be denigrated as a racist is kind of nuts. But that is actually the place where we've lived for a number of years. And it's irresponsible of us to simply respond to the people who have adopted these radical views, who are participating in this bigotry, without entertaining the possibility that the hypersensitivity that we've cultivated in service of hopefully creating a better world and ostracizing people who are presumed to be bigots, that it might have been a step too far, that it might have some perverse consequences. And I'm fairly confident that that's some of what we are seeing now. It's hard for me not to understand or see or, or presume perhaps is the right word, because I don't know. But I suspect very strongly that this is actually a Part of Fuentes appeal, and it's a part of what has helped to animate a lot of people and push them in his direction. And it is hardly only the fact that you might use the N word in certain contexts that might actually get you called a nigger. If you ask someone where they're from, like, I'm sorry, a racist. I used the word and I screwed it all up. But it's fine. You know what I meant. I just can't get away with saying N word over and over again. It makes me feel like a child participating in a comedy. But there's a universe of other stuff you could do. You could ask someone where they're from, but where are you really from? Is that racist, or is that a sincere curiosity? I just talked to Abby Phillip, and we were, like, having a conversation about where she's from. And where she from happens to be someplace in the Caribbean, like, or at least her family. If you meet someone and they look, like, visibly Chinese and you say, is your family from China? No, we're from Newark. Well, you know what I mean. I'm actually interested in your pedigree, where you're from. It's certainly possible for someone to mean that in a malignant way, but do most people. Is it better to have, as a default the presumption that most people do? And to the extent we've had that, has that created a culture that is, in fact, more inclusive and is, in fact, more safe? Or have we perhaps practice the kind of learned helplessness that creates this profound vulnerability and not what we ought to have? Which is. If you are an upwardly mobile minority in this country who's managed to achieve all manner of success, and you happen to come across someone who has not achieved a great deal of success and actually has overtly malignant, bigoted ideas, they don't believe that people's dignity is a function of their humanity. They believe that there's some sort of hierarchy of persons on the basis of race. Should you be responding to that person with the most profound outrage and have your life be completely. Your person, be completely unsettled by the interaction? Or do you find a way to understand that this person is. Is unwell and is in a kind of dire state? And I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not even saying that's the most important aspect of this conversation right now, but it does feel like an important detail to at least wrestle with in the midst of having these conversations. Because it can't just be about the fact that Nick Fuentes exists. It can't just be about the fact that Tucker Carlson is willing to have a conversation with him, and it can't just be about the fact that amongst conservatives, there's lots of people who are interested in what they have to say. So I don't know. I mean, there's so much about this that I think is worth talking about and that I'm interested in talking about, but I also am happy to talk about some other stuff. So I don't know. What are you gonna do? Isaac?

[Isaac Saul]

I was just gonna add, I mean, the power that I think you're talking about of the brave, like the, the bravery magic.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

It's not just something of the bravery.

[Camille Foster]

Of the kamikaze pilot. Right, right.

[Isaac Saul]

Like, like, Fuentes uses it around something like the N word or calling Jews kikes or whatever he wants to do. And like, I'm, you know. But actually it's a strategy that, like, even more closer to the center, conservative media folks are using a lot more of. Now, Ari talks about this like the, they, you know, it's like they, they don't want me to tell you this. They don't want you to hear the truth.

[Camille Foster]

Vague allusion to conspiracy.

[Isaac Saul]

Right. And, and it's like, it's a, it's, it's this incredible rhetorical tool that mostly conservative pundits are using right now.

[Camille Foster]

You think so?

[Isaac Saul]

I think more conservatives than liberals. Yeah.

[Camille Foster]

You would agree with that, Ari.

[Ari Weitzman]

Sorry, I'm just, I've got a lot to respond to, so I don't want to, I don't want to derail anymore.

[Isaac Saul]

I, I, I, I would, I would say certainly the more prominent, like, I mean, I watch Fox News primetime, and that's the, I mean, Megan Kelly even. That's the tone.

[Camille Foster]

Oh, I know.

[Ari Weitzman]

I've heard the establishment, so that they is the establishment.

[Isaac Saul]

I hear that way more than I do on, like, Pod Save America or Ezra Klein or what. There, There, there isn't some, like, ambiguous, like, they are coming for us, and they don't want you to know this thing. And my point is just that a lot of that power. I'm agreeing with you that a lot of that power comes from the fact that the other side, the center or the left, doesn't want to engage in the actual conversation. Like Tucker doing the chemtrails episode, I honestly think is a good example of this where my instinct is just like, oh, my, Like, I don't, I don't want to do. You know, I'm not trying to just. And, but when I do that. He's like, well, yeah, they don't want to talk about it.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

And. And it's proof. And if I'm a neutral, like, if I'm a neutral viewer of that interaction, Tucker's side is way more compelling of like, there's one guy who doesn't want to have the conversation. Me. And then there's the guy who's like, I'm going to do an hour and a half on chemtrails and explain to you. And it's like, I know. And this is weird thing about me. I actually have gone deep on some of the chemtrail rabbit hole stuff. I love a good conspiracy. And so, like, I know that it's all bullshit and I'm. I could. I haven't listened to Tucker show yet, but I could predict, like, probably 60% of what it is the first 25.

[Camille Foster]

30 minutes of it.

[Isaac Saul]

But, like, yeah, I just don't want to do it.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

But like, the fact that I'm like, disengaged. No. Gives Tucker the power to be like, well, he doesn't want to talk about. What does that tell you? You know? And like, Tucker Carlson doesn't give a shit about me. Isaac Saul. But if I were, you know, the editor in chief at New York Times or CNN primetime host, that would be a really effective thing to just be like, this person doesn't want to have the conversation. It makes me look like I'm covering something up and it gives him the power. It's like, same with Fuentes doing the, like, I'm not scared to say the truth about the perfidious Jews and how black people need to be in prison. It's like, you know, and if you don't, generally. Yeah, yeah. If you don't engage with him, then you're, you know, you're. You're ceding the ground for him to hold that power, which I think is problematic.

[Ari Weitzman]

I mean, there's two threads here where I think we're talking about the content of what Fuentes is saying, the content of what Tucker is saying with conspiracy theories about chem trails or great replacement theory, where.

[Camille Foster]

Or demonic attacks or those that are angels.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah. Which we now know is fact.

[Camille Foster]

It's the first episode.

[Ari Weitzman]

The lack of specificity sometimes creates openings to respond to. But the broader idea of I'm attacking something that's institutional gives me some ground to call myself an outsider that's waging a battle of truth is a stance, and it's a stance that can be effective, and it does kind of Play into the second thread in a symbiotic way, which is the way that we respond to it. And I think there's a thread of responses that we're talking about here. And I want to say from, like, being in a situation that I never thought that I would be in, of facing, looking at social media users putting avatars on their profiles and thinking, you know what, that actually makes me feel better. And I can understand now, like, having been on the other side of a headline and been in the room with the people who are scrolling next to the open casket and looking at what people are. Or, sorry, closed casket, but looking at what people are saying online, as you're experiencing that kind of thing with, like, the bodyguard of the Israeli diplomat in the room next to you and thinking about, like, you know, it was good to be at that Penguins game and have the crowd give a standing ovation for the cops who went into the synagogue. Like, there's a way that responding in a correct way actually can contribute to something beneficial, but at the same time, not responding is a totally fine option. And I think it depends on kind of who you are.

[Camille Foster]

I think that's exactly right.

[Ari Weitzman]

I think it's absolutely fine if your response is, I feel really aggravated by the way Nick Fuentes is talking about my race, gender, sexuality, or religion because these come in all of them. And I don't want to have to respond with grace. You do not have to. You don't have to respond.

[Camille Foster]

That's right.

[Ari Weitzman]

You don't have to put your thoughts on social media if they're, like, filled with vitriol and anger and disgust. You can even just say, I'm disgusted, and then leave it at that. But if we're going to use, like, we are people with a platform, if we're going to use our platform in a way where we're tailoring response to try to have a reaction, and we want to try to say, I want to work against this POV that Nick Fuentes has, then that response, that's tactical, should be something that is tailored in a way to have the reaction that you want. And us weaponizing our hurt or our offense or our discontent only serves to give us momentary relief where we feel better because we're letting our emotions out, but it doesn't actually have the reaction that is going to cause any sort of change. And, yeah, like, I remember being in a room with the people who are in charge of Facebook's response team to hate speech online and saying that they had individuals like actual people before AI who would type messages to people who were posting, like racist or anti Semitic things on the platform. And they couldn't really replicate who was successful at it. Just some individuals were successful and others weren't. But they. And that was, that was interesting. I don't know if there's been any movement on it in the last five years, but the people who were successful said that they tried to respond in a way where they tried to meet them where they were.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

Even if it was really difficult because that was their role. Like, their role is to try to listen to response that was super interesting. Have the effect that they want. And I think that's, I think that's the point. Like, I don't think that anybody who's reading Isaac's piece saying, oh, we need to respond to Nick Fuentes with grace, if you're saying, I don't want to, you do not have to. It's just a matter of if you're trying to change him, there's a better way and weaponizing your hurt isn't that way.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah, that's super interesting. Last thing I'd say briefly, I mentioned Candace Owens earlier. Ellie Reeve at CNN did an interview with her in the past week or so. And it's another thing that I thought was actually genuinely illuminating and valuable. And there's a couple of things that are worth noting. One, she gave Candace an opportunity to talk and didn't kind of talk down to her and just look at her and say, but that's racist or that's anti Semitic. She asked questions. She gave her an opportunity to answer. The answers weren't always great. And she pointed out the contrast. She gave the additional context in the reporting. She also is kind of expert in the subject matter. She's taken the time to try to understand the world of white nationalism and antisemitism and is uniquely equipped to address these kinds of questions and to engage with this kind of person. And I did hear, I don't know if it was Matt Iglesias. I'm thinking that's who it was. But it was some. And a prominent media person say something along the lines of for the foreseeable future and perhaps forever now, is just going to be a part of the job of serious journalists at serious media organizations to engage with some of these fringe people and their fringe ideas and to confront them. That is not everybody. I was actually talking to my other podcast colleague, Matt Welch, and talking about like engaging with Tucker Carlson in the context of a debate or something like that. And someone else actually, and Matt said something along the list. That's not my role. I don't want to do that. And I get it and I understand. And one does actually have to have the skills to do that sort of thing successfully. I gesture at you, Ari.

[Ari Weitzman]

It's my job.

[Camille Foster]

Well, not you, but I'm agreeing with your point, violently. But some people will. And I have profound gratitude towards those people and appreciate that that's just a part of the job. And in as much as we need investigative reporters who are cultivating sources in the administration, like talking to all of the most high profile people. I was just talking to Abby Phillip, I mentioned earlier, and she was talking about her experience reporting on the Trump administration, the first Trump administration, and cultivating a relationship with Steve Bannon, and mentioned. I talked to Steve Bannon all the time. He was a great source. He understood the president. The journalists who adopted, and these are my words and not hers, the journalist who adopted a disposition that, I mean, I'm in the rebellion. These people are beyond the pale. I need to help people understand why they're so terrible. Who would not talk to him, who wouldn't engage other than in the kind of combative way, as opposed to seeking to understand. I think there's a sense in which they didn't really do their job, and that is a bit different. I think that there is an obligation to kind of seek to understand as a journalist. And perhaps you won't want to do that in every area and perhaps won't have the skill set to do it in particular areas. But it's, I think, a really important point and a fascinating point actually as well. Well, I, my point was fascinating, but the point you made that drew that out of me. I thought your point was fascinating.

[Isaac Saul]

I think if the mind wasn't bad either, if we sort of zoom out and kind of try and distill the overarching positioning that maybe the people at this table are taking and the one that I feel like I certainly took in my piece. It's just whatever we've been doing has not been working.

[Ari Weitzman]

We the amorphous We.

[Isaac Saul]

We. We are the they.

[Host]

They.

[Camille Foster]

We the they.

[Isaac Saul]

We the they.

[Camille Foster]

That's.

[Isaac Saul]

That's actually a pretty good name for a podcast. We the day they. It has. It has been working. And, and you know, the Fuentes of the world are kind of evidence of that. And I think I am pro engagement and I think we should, we should talk to them and we don't have to platform them. We don't have to elevate their profile. We don't have to softball them like Tucker did. But I think it. The conversations are good and it's important for people to understand who these folks actually are. And like again, I'll shout out Ben Shapiro who I thought, you know when, when people police their own it's almost always the best version of the policing because they understand the way to get through to their audience and kind of like minded individuals. And I thought would Ben did. Policing the right from the right was really, really, really strong.

[Camille Foster]

And the notion that you shouldn't do it because it's somehow infighting, it's not just absurd, it's self destructive. I can think of no greater threat to the right at the moment than the right. Nick Fuentes and members of the right, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. Quite frankly, it's a huge problem.

[Isaac Saul]

Their views are toxic.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah. And the unwillingness to at least have a sober conversation with them, that actually reads pretty badly too. I've seen no evidence, and this was actually in the wake of this profound election defeat for Republicans that they were having this conversation. You saw some people posting Congratulations. If you were posting messages.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Camille Foster]

Blaming the social media controversy. I couldn't believe that like this is your fault. Actually I've seen no data and it's been several weeks now, none whatsoever to suggest that voters were casting ballots in Virginia or New Jersey and sure as shit not New York City because they were like, well now I know that they're racist.

[Isaac Saul]

They're talking to the Wipers because Matt Walsh.

[Camille Foster]

They're talking about the Goiper controversy. Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

It's just.

[Camille Foster]

Or Matt Walch and Ben Shapiro are arguing.

[Ari Weitzman]

It's tough to imagine who the voter is who's gotten persuaded to cast a Republican candidate because of that conversation. No.

[Camille Foster]

If anything, me seeing the upset at Heritage and seeing them contrite. Actually the leaking of the video, quite honestly, it's probably the best thing I've seen Heritage do in a little while. Like it actually gave me some confidence that these people have certain principles and maybe I ought to hear them out when they have something else to say on another issue. If all I'd seen from them was a video preemptively defending Tucker from quote unquote cancellation.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah. A statement of We're a monolith and we're always gonna defend his side. Is a really good.

[Camille Foster]

We will never not stand up for Tucker.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yes. And why would I listen to in a year?

[Camille Foster]

That's a bad strategy, guys. No enemies to the right, no enemies to the left is a bad strategy. And we actually, I think have seen indications in recent days that the left is perhaps embracing some of those adverse perspectives, like the no enemies to the left thing, which perhaps we'll get into as we talk about some other things. But.

[Isaac Saul]

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[Ari Weitzman]

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[Isaac Saul]

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[Camille Foster]

I or I'll just let it sit there.

[Isaac Saul]

I think we have to get to some of the the news that we have today. I mean we're recording this on Wednesday evening. By the time people listen to this, I'm assuming this will be the story of the week. Maybe I think it will be. Is that these, this new email. Now there's this weird thing happening. There's email dumps happening in Congress about Jeffrey Epstein. Democrats sort of started it. House Democrats released this email, which I suppose in some ways is damning for President Trump. I don't know if it's damning. It doesn't look great. The emails that were published by House Democrats include Jeffrey Epstein describing Mr. Trump as borderline insane with an in an email exchange with with Lawrence Summers, the former treasury secretary and Harvard University president, dismissing Trump's financial disclosures as 100 pages of nonsense, asserting that Trump I hadn't.

[Camille Foster]

Even seen some of these yet.

[Isaac Saul]

Asserting that Trump, quote, unquote, of course, knew about his associations with young women, many of whom were later found by investigators to have been underage. The portrayal, I think what the emails, what House Democrats want the emails to communicate is that Epstein and Trump had this sort of history relationship that became contentious, but that sort of started with a fundamental kind of understanding of each other. And I mean there is a story here where Trump, I mean according to these emails that Epstein is sending knew more about Epstein's sex trafficking than he's previously acknowledged, at least from Epstein's perspective. Epstein's talking to Michael Wolf, this journalist. I mean, I put journalists in quotation marks, which we'll get to in a second.

[Camille Foster]

Consiglieri might be.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. And he's. And so they released all these emails or a few of these emails. And then House Republicans respond hours later, moments before we came on the show, really, I mean, minutes before we came on the show by releasing 23,000 of their own emails, pages of documents from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, which now every news outlet is sort of combing through. I think mostly because House Republicans don't want to look like they're trying to cover something up. It's a very interesting story. There's threads to it. I don't know that it gives us a whole bunch of new information. I think to the degree that it looks bad for Trump, it's that he very obviously it's confirmation we already knew, which is that him and Epstein had a relationship and they were friends, they partied together, they were operating in the same social circles. If that is new knowledge to you at this point, I don't really know what to say. But the thing that stuck out to me, which also stuck out to Camille in looking through some of this, is that the person who looks the worst in all of this, in my estimation, is Michael Wolf, who's this reporter who's emailing Jeffrey Epstein. And Epstein is basically the exchange in one of these emails that's published. And this is December in 2015. So this is when Trump is running for president. Michael Wolff emails Jeffrey Epstein. And again, Michael Wolff is the author. If you're not familiar with him, he's written a couple books about Trump. He considers himself a journalist or reporter. He's very controversial because he's published a lot of stuff that I think could fairly be described as unsubstantiated in major publications or in his books. He is, I mean, until recently I think was mostly considered a kind of left leaning gossip person rag like the. It's kind of whatever it was beside the point what his politics are. But a lot of people viewed him as an enemy of Trump's. He writes to Jeffrey Epstein saying, I hear CNN is planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you, either on air or in scrum afterwards. Jeffrey Epstein replies, if we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be? Now, this is a little damning in my estimation. Not a lot of people talking about this. Because there's an implication here that Jeffrey Epstein could craft an answer that he could pass on to Trump and get like there's a. If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be? I don't want to read too much into that, but something about that reads to me like we could get this answer and prep Trump for that question before he goes on the show. And then Michael Wolff replies and says, I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn't been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you. Or if it really looks like he could win, you could save him generating a debt, of course. And that's if he wins the presidency. Of course, it is possible that when asked, he'll say, Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime. So, like, just to be clear here, Michael Wolff, this guy who's a journalist, Reported journalist, Reported journalist, writing books about Trump at the time writing, I mean, he was writing very high profile articles, leaks from the Trump campaign. The administration in this era is at the same time giving media advice to Jeffrey Epstein, who by now, to be very clear, is understood to be a sexual predator, basically by everyone. Really, really bizarre, weird stuff that gives me big time ick. But all of this could. I mean, I don't know how much the right still cares about these emails, but I certainly think that there's a group of Americans who care a lot about the Epstein story. And I don't think the proximation of Jeffrey Epstein and Michael Wolf to Trump looks good for Donald Trump.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of dimensions to the story that I think are worth mentioning, but to just keep it narrow, the original post that I saw at the New York Times, the title of which was Epstein Alleged. Epstein alleged in emails that Trump knew of his conduct. What conduct? It is never made clear from the emails themselves. The emails, the girls, the closest they get is, I want you to realize that the dog that hasn't barked is Trump victim spent hours at my house with him. He's never once been mentioned. Police chief, et cetera. I'm 75% there. It's very hard to make out what Epstein is saying there. That's the full text of an email. The next one is victim Mar Lago. Trump said he asked me to Resign. Never a member, ever. Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Galeen to stop. What does that mean? What does it mean to stop what? Trump has already publicly acknowledged or admitted that it seemed that Epstein was recruiting female employees away from Mar A Lago.

[Isaac Saul]

And I think that's what asked them.

[Camille Foster]

To stop doing that. Is that the conduct that he knew about or was asking him stop or something else?

[Isaac Saul]

I read that email as being. Trump asked Glenn Maxwell to stop recruiting girls from Mar A Lago into.

[Ari Weitzman]

For what? Well, either way, it doesn't.

[Isaac Saul]

It.

[Camille Foster]

It does not say. It isn't clear. But more than that, even, even if it said explicitly, I love sex trafficking. Donald Trump knows all about my sex trafficking because he hangs out with the girls. I sex traffic. One would still have to read an email like this with a degree of profound skepticism, given the source. Right.

[Isaac Saul]

I think that's key.

[Camille Foster]

But and more than that, given the way that it's actually written, it's just not clear what conduct is being talked about here.

[Isaac Saul]

I don't think I agree with you that it's not entirely clear. I think there's contextual evidence, the timeline, what we know about the relationship, what Trump said in the past about secrets. Yeah. Between friends. He contests.

[Camille Foster]

He wrote that.

[Isaac Saul]

I. Yeah. I mean, I feel fairly comfortable making the presumption that that email is about Trump asking Ghislaine Maxwell to stop recruiting women from Mar A Lago, which, I.

[Camille Foster]

Mean, I might just not want you to take my employees away, which is certainly the impression that.

[Isaac Saul]

But he knows about the girls. I mean, it's also saying he knows about the girls.

[Camille Foster]

The girls that you recruited away.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. The young women that Jeffrey Epstein is.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

This is why I think what's going to happen is we're always going to be asked for more Epstein files to answer the questions that come up from the answers in the previous leaks. I think now that Congress is back in session, we'll get a trove of emails. Then we'll say we need the Epstein files. Maybe we'll get more leaks. And then we'll say, well, we need the real ones because all this is, is incriminating about one side, whereas all of the leaks about the Clinton foundation, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know. Like, I don't think this is ever going to be a story that gets fed sufficiently because we're always gonna ask questions.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah. What is sufficient?

[Ari Weitzman]

There's no such thing as sufficient.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Camille Foster]

Anything short of tangible proof that proves.

[Ari Weitzman]

Global sex trafficking ring, that every individual.

[Camille Foster]

Wants to see that that is not sufficient. And to the extent you never get those things, and this is the interesting but absolutely true conclusion that you must accept because it is true, that whether.

[Isaac Saul]

This is true or false, I already disagree with you.

[Camille Foster]

Just because you've told me.

[Isaac Saul]

I have to. You've negative, polarized. Whatever you're about to say is bullshit. I don't care.

[Camille Foster]

This is actually binary. Whether it's true or false, we will never have sufficient evidence to make this go away.

[Ari Weitzman]

That's what I'm saying.

[Camille Foster]

And that's an interesting place to end up in. And it's also interesting to me that so many people have latched onto and believe with complete certainty what I find to be the most hard to believe version of events, which is a multidimensional conspiracy, global bipartisan conspiracy that involves intelligence agencies in America, in Israel, perhaps, beyond where they had this blackmail kompromat ring that depended upon one of the strangest characters imaginable, like, full of red flags, like, exactly the wrong person to have as the front man for your blackmail operation.

[Isaac Saul]

But maybe, maybe I actually, I mean, like, I think a less sophisticated and much more plausible theory is Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein party together, a Bunch in the 90s and early 2000s, and Epstein at that time was trafficking women and underage girls, and he brought Donald Trump to a party who had sexual relationships with an underage girl. Why is that? That feels totally. I mean, within the realm of possibility to me.

[Camille Foster]

It's certainly a thing that could have happened. Happened.

[Isaac Saul]

Right. And, and, and the thing that could have happened, like, that allegation is supported in part by, like, painting a picture of Trump knowing about what Epstein was doing, Trump having this relationship with him as him being friends, them writing letters to each other, like birthday congratulations. There's. I mean, there's victims who claim that they were abused by Donald Trump, not necessarily at Epstein island, but younger girls who say that they were raped by him. I mean, that those are real court cases that have Jane Does. We don't know much about them, but those allegations popped up, I mean, during the 2016 campaign. He was accused of sexual assault by a lot of women. And there's a recording of him saying that you can do whatever you want.

[Ari Weitzman]

Because I feel like what you want to do is say, but there isn't this. No, I'm saying, but some giant clips.

[Camille Foster]

But the claim now is that these documents contain the evidence they claim.

[Ari Weitzman]

From whom? From day. Right.

[Isaac Saul]

We are the best.

[Ari Weitzman]

I think that there's. There's so many gradations of this that we can just be talking in circles for a long time.

[Camille Foster]

It's true.

[Ari Weitzman]

But like the thing that we probably already knew, because at the beginning, Isaac said, we got these documents that confirmed a lot of things that we knew or should have known, which is that Trump knew who Epstein was, they were friends, and he knew some of his activities, at least some.

[Camille Foster]

But none of that was in dispute.

[Ari Weitzman]

Well, not probably with amongst us. No.

[Camille Foster]

Not even from Donald Trump. He said he knew and he asked her to stop taking his employees, please.

[Ari Weitzman]

So anyway. Yes, but what I'm saying is that we're getting a lot of corroborating evidence to say Trump was knowledgeable about Epstein to some degree. The thing, the key clause in that statement is to some degree.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

And whether or not we're ever going to get something that will prove this potential read, which is very reasonable, that Isaac's saying of maybe Donald Trump himself was involved with one of these women. Maybe perhaps it was at the same party and Epstein didn't arrange it, or Ghislaine Maxwell didn't. Maybe he did. The amount of proof that we're gonna get of that I don't think is ever going to be substantial. It's never gonna come out. And because I really don't think that the government's holding a file somewhere that says it. But, like, I know a lot of.

[Camille Foster]

People think that's probably correct, but I.

[Ari Weitzman]

Think a lot of people believe that there's a smoking gun for maybe Trump, maybe Congress, collection of people like him, maybe people other than him, that they're gonna keep and they're gonna keep locked away. But I think it's more to the more probable that a lot of people are implicated. They don't like being associated with him and they don't want any new information to come out because they don't know what the degree of that fallout's going to be.

[Isaac Saul]

Just to follow up really quickly on something I just said. In 2016, an anonymous woman using the pseudonym Katie Johnson, also referred to as Jane Doe in later file name killings, filed multiple civil lawsuits in U.S. federal courts alleging that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein raped her when she was 13 years old. The suits claim the assaults occurred at an underage sex party hosted by Epstein in his Manhattan residence in 1994, where the plaintiff said she was recruited as an aspiring model. She described being tied to a bed, slapped and forcibly raped by Trump, with Epstein also participating in assaults on her. The lawsuits included affidavits from two purported witnesses, one claiming to have recruited her for Epstein's parties and another saying she was a school friend who heard about the incidents contemporaneously. All versions of the lawsuits were voluntarily withdrawn or dismissed without prejudice by November 2016, shortly before the US presidential election. I'm just so a. I was wrong about something I just said, which was I was remembering this allegation, but I didn't remember it being tied to Epstein when actually it was. And all I'm saying is stuff like this, emails like this, they, they don't corroborate this woman's particular story, but they corroborate a version of the last 20 or 30 years where Trump knew about the women, knew about the young girls, where Trump was like, had.

[Camille Foster]

It doesn't cooperate that specifically.

[Isaac Saul]

No, but, but, but, but that he's the dog that hasn't barked. He's somebody who has the information that could be really harmful for Jeffrey Epstein that hasn't come out and spoken about it. And I don't think that that's insignificant. I mean, I think that doesn't have to prove that Epstein was a Mossad agent, you know, working with comparat, whatever and like trying to destroy all these various political figures. I think it could just be that Epstein and Trump were friends and Trump's like, participated with women something in this sex ring that he was, this sex driving ring that he was running. Like, I mean, this accusation is an underage sex party hosted by Epstein at his Manhattan residence in 1994. I'm like, look, I'm not accusing Trump of anything, but like, does that sound more or less plausible to me after reading these emails, it sounds more plausible. That's not like a. There's, it's not like a. It doesn't move the needle to some confirmation, but it's not nothing either.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah, I suppose I would only say I get your point. The way the email is written, if he and I had been engaged, if I'm Jeffrey Epstein and he and I had actually engaged in criminal activity together, I'm not sure. I would suggest in the email he knew what was going on because he was hanging out with a girl at the house. I would say of course he knew. Like, he's guilty of sin. We committed crimes together, not he was hanging out with the girl at the house. I think at most these emails are ambiguous in whatever implication is being directed at Trump. I don't think they approach supporting the narrative that Trump participated in certain acts. That's not knowledge of something because you hung out with someone. That's very different.

[Ari Weitzman]

It's A little. I think it's a little parsimonious. I understand your point, but I also think that it's reasonable to say, yeah, it's a thing Jeffrey Epstein could have said were that the case. And I think it's reasonable to say it creates demand for a document. I mean, it makes the thing more demand. I said, like, 10 minutes ago, age incredibly poorly immediately, because I didn't remember Epstein as being involved in that claim either. But then it does make me want to say, well, are there files that involve Trump and Epstein that the government's just not releasing?

[Isaac Saul]

Last thing I'll say about this is, I mean, to answer your question directly, is Trump literally. I mean, New York Times this afternoon is Trump summoned Lauren Boebert, who's like a potentially deciding vote. Colorado Republican backing an effort to force a House vote on whether to demand the release of the Epstein files to the White House for a meeting with top Justice Department FBI officials.

[Ari Weitzman]

To the Situation Room.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. In an effort to get her to not do that. So what. I mean, maybe you think that Donald Trump is worried about victims having their stories sprayed across the news.

[Ari Weitzman]

Maybe he is.

[Isaac Saul]

Horrible. That'd be for them.

[Camille Foster]

I mean, it's.

[Isaac Saul]

It.

[Camille Foster]

I suppose it is.

[Isaac Saul]

Or maybe that there's another reason that he doesn't want all this stuff to come out is it's weird.

[Camille Foster]

At a minimum, it is exceptionally weird that the administration is. Is conducting business this way.

[Isaac Saul]

Especially after the way they campaign. Especially after the way they campaigned.

[Camille Foster]

They.

[Isaac Saul]

I mean, they practically ran on the idea that when they were going to. I mean, obviously this wasn't like a core campaign thing, But, I mean, J.D. vance, Cash Patel, Donald Trump, they're like, we're going to uncover the deep state. And one of the core chapters in that book is the Epstein files felt.

[Camille Foster]

Like one of the key applause lines.

[Isaac Saul]

And then they get. They get there and they're like, oh, just kidding.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, nothing to see. Because that's been kind of consistent with Trump, though. I mean, he's. In interviews, they said, are you going to release these files? Yes. Files. Yes, Epstein files. Well, okay, we're gonna have to take a look at that one. But, like, definitely the people in the campaign, like Cash Patel has been on this horse forever.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

And J.D. vance has been banging the drum. So I think, like, Trump, I'll accept that it's weird. He hasn't run on it himself, but the Trump campaign did capitalize on it.

[Camille Foster]

It's weird.

[Ari Weitzman]

You could say suspicious. I think it's suspicious.

[Camille Foster]

It stinks. And it makes me wonder what is there. Yes, I will say all of those things, but it's also really hard to believe, especially given all of the controversy he's been surrounded with by and the determined effort by many people in government and in the intelligence community to find something that would stick, that this would have been secret for the last five years.

[Ari Weitzman]

Like under the Biden administration. Yeah, I mean, specifically.

[Camille Foster]

But, yes, in particular throughout the Biden administration, throughout health, throughout that first Trump administration.

[Ari Weitzman]

But the idea, though, I think, is we're going to come back to, like, the idea that there's an FBI dossier that says Epstein file on it and, like, top secret as a stamp. And somebody's walking around the actual black. That's locked.

[Camille Foster]

Right.

[Ari Weitzman]

Like, that's ledger. That's a little bit of, like, secret payments. That's going to be a myth. But the thing that I think is more believable is that there's a Justice Department sub department that's hiding. Not hiding, but keeping anonymous claims of victims who should be kept anonymous, that nobody's surfacing a report on to the Biden administration, and nobody from the Biden administration is saying to the Justice Department, find me anything you can and release these files. Like, both of those things feel pretty like. I mean, sure, likely, but very possible.

[Camille Foster]

I mean, what. Actually, as you're talking, the most feasible thing to me is some sort of report that includes some speculation and open questions authored by someone who works at an intelligence in criminal justice stuff, and who's saying, yeah, there's something weird about Donald Trump's relationship, and that's all they have to do is offer an opinion in the context of some open investigation without even much more than kind of scant evidence. And that could be enough to be sufficiently embarrassing, especially if there's a couple pages of that.

[Ari Weitzman]

But it's all probably buried under some, like, case that's just closed. We aren't gonna reopen this.

[Camille Foster]

Feels like something. They know something is in there that they don't want out.

[Isaac Saul]

I totally agree.

[Camille Foster]

Like, the degree. I mean, they've been doing this for months before the shutdown, like, they were doing all of this. And now he's summoning his representatives to the White House to put pressure on them to get them not.

[Isaac Saul]

I'll be curious to see if Lauren Boebert folds. I mean, and she's kind of got the Marjorie Taylor Greene vibe sometimes where it's like, no one can control me unless it's Trump. Maybe asterisk. I mean, I don't know. We'll See, I don't know.

[Ari Weitzman]

She also switched districts to be elected. I think she feels a little bit more pressure than.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, that could be true.

[Camille Foster]

I mean, I don't. What time is it? Well, Fatima, we got a little more time. I mean, this does feel like, Isaac, a pretty natural point at which to transition to some of the other stuff.

[Isaac Saul]

Before we get out of here. Yeah. I want to get to some retrospectives on the election, and I'll start here, which is that we sort of talked about Tuesday night. Last Tuesday night, I think, sort of. What's the word I'm looking for? There was full agreement amongst us that Democrats had swept and then immediately folded during the shutdown and lost this, like, leverage that they had by basically giving up on this fight that they had staged as being about Obamacare subsidies and all this stuff. And I saw an alternative view put forward by Tim Miller at the Bulwark that I'm now seeing kind of recycled and other people using it. I think Tim, to give him some credit, I think he was maybe the first person who kind of posited this. And I wanted to chat about it here for a little bit, which is this idea that Democrats actually won the shutdown fight. And this is what Tim said. He said this quote, unquote, fold won't matter at all in next year's midterms, but making the GOP own the dog shit, big beautiful bill, tariff, health care, healthcare policies will. This is not an example of Democrats not fighting like Republicans. It's a longer shutdown than anything the kamikaze Tea Party ever did.

[Camille Foster]

We're more kamikaze than kamikaze.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. The people who are mad about this are a small subset of the electorate that treat politics like sport. And it's possible that they're crying about the fold will contribute to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. There was no path to getting the Obamacare subsidies back because the GOP controls everything and was never going to do it. And they are fake populists. Dem should run against them on that topic. And they have a great case study Now. Marjorie Taylor Greene helps with that. The fact that there was no getting Obamacare subsidy extension endgame was obvious at the start, and anyone setting that expectation was lying to people. I do think this is like, there's a. There's an argument here that we did not present, which is why I want to do this now in the interest of viewpoint diversity, which is Democrats have gotten some concessions that, you know, like, they undid the. The furlough of all these federal Workers they guaranteed more won't be fired. They made this pretty painful for Republicans politically, polling wise, they won. And now there's going to be a vote that's. We don't know when, sometime in December, specifically about Obamacare subsidies. And a couple things could happen. Republicans could actually have the vote and not vote to extend Affordable Care act subsidies, in which case Democrats get to hammer them for that politically, because a bunch of people's insurance will get more expensive. They could avoid the vote altogether, in which case Democrats get to hammer them for that, for lying about the deal and then avoiding the vote. Or they could vote and actually extend Obamacare subsidies, in which Democrats can say, we forced the issue and made this happen. And all of those things will happen under the threat of another shutdown, because this extension only runs through January, I think. Think so Democrats could shut down the government again if Republicans don't actually give them the vote that they promise. I think that's actually a pretty good argument that I hadn't considered that is like, what did they really do? They kicked the can down the road. And the fight that they're about to have in a month or two is going to actually be about the Obamacare subsidies. And maybe that puts Democrats on stronger, more solid ground than this. Sort of like we're standing up to Trump's authoritarianism. And I think it's actually a pretty good take that this in two or three months could look like a much smarter move for Democrats than maybe it looked to me at the end of last week.

[Camille Foster]

Can I clarify something really quickly? It is, in fact, the case that the ACA subsidies that are being discussed are direct payments to insurance companies, correct?

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Camille Foster]

Okay.

[Isaac Saul]

That's how I understand it.

[Camille Foster]

It's the weirdest populism.

[Isaac Saul]

Right? But I mean, the populism is that 20 million Americans premiums are going to double or whatever, and, and, you know.

[Camille Foster]

Our health care system is insane.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Camille Foster]

Just want to put that out there.

[Isaac Saul]

True story.

[Ari Weitzman]

I don't think anybody's going to disagree with you here, but the, the idea that Democrats could have won the shutdown, I actually, I feel like it's almost. I don't know, it's almost blase and obvious to say that they did, they just didn't win it by as much as they should have. Like, we keep using the way that. I think this take helps me reflect on the language that we used in the take that you wrote that like a team of people edited and thus didn't push back up on in a way that was sufficient. Is that instead of saying Democrats folded, it's just that they played their hand wrong. Like, it's like they got dealt Ace king. They had the ability with some leverage to push for whatever they wanted. They knew they had the moment. They didn't have to rubber stamp this continuing resolution. So they could have picked a battle. They could have picked a Hill and died on it. And they picked something that is important for people with ACA coverage and whose benefits are going to expire and whose premiums are going to increase. But they also picked something that is arguable because it's always written as something that was going to expire. It's in the healthcare space where there's plenty of reasons for us to debate. Like, yeah, but things are only expensive now because they were subsidized. And we can have a lot of debate about the government's role in healthcare as it is, where it just seemed like they could have picked a different Hill. I mean, they were able to get something that if I were to back up, if I were to put myself in the position of Chuck Schumer and leading the Senate at this time, or Senate Democrats at this time, I probably would have said, I want the science funding restored. I want the people that are being fired by the federal government to be rehired. I want assurances of wages being restored, and I want to make sure that you can tell us that the budget that we pass in Congress is going to be the budget that the executive branch actually uses instead of votes to rescind later. And they got some of that. They got people to be rehired, and they got salaries to be reinstilled, but that's not what they asked for. And if they would have actually, instead of coming out and putting their cards on the table, like, hey, ace king, show me what you got. And then they're like, no, we're gonna fold. Actually, like, I think it's Republicans who fold in. They didn't go into the pot with them. And they were like, okay, yeah, they.

[Camille Foster]

Made some critical concessions as well. Like, all the terminations getting reversed.

[Ari Weitzman]

Right? Like. But I think if Democrats had asked for that publicly and if they'd asked for more, they'd ask for more funding for science or for like. Like, for USAID to be reinstalled or for Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to be reinstilled then reinstated, then they could have met somewhere maybe closer to that, but they could have gotten the same thing and looked like winners. But instead they asked for something where Republicans were never going to Beat them halfway on. And, yeah, maybe there's a word where they're saying, hey, you promised this. You didn't do it. So we're shutting the government down again. And they look good for doing that. But I think they could very easily look kind of dumb, like they're repeating the same thing. And I think it's a matter of they got the things that they got concessions from Republicans, but they showed more and they could have won by more. So it looks like a loss because they had a stronger hand.

[Camille Foster]

I mean, I think the shutdown looks much worse if it fully extends. And honestly, I mean, it's kind of over.

[Isaac Saul]

I think it's over.

[Ari Weitzman]

Not officially.

[Camille Foster]

Not officially. It's kind of over pretty much.

[Isaac Saul]

It needs to happen tonight for me to win my bet with Russell Crisscross.

[Camille Foster]

We'll see. But I mean, look, let's say it is over tonight if it extends. If it had extended past Thanksgiving into that travel holiday and became even more of a mess, if there were some sort of disaster, it's possible that the blame would have been shared more broadly and that everyone would have ended up in a bad, worse situation. And I'm not prepared to say that the Democrats won. It seems to me that they didn't lose. But not every me, not every occasion of escaping defeat is, in fact, a victory. And I think that that is a pretty apt way to describe what's happening here. I think it is particularly difficult for all the reasons you were alluding to, Ari. They could have gone for different things. But also, just the specific issue of advocating for massive payments to private insurance companies is kind of a loser. And interestingly, I actually think some conservatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene had come around and were like, this is something we should support, and if you wait long enough, you maybe get more people to do it. But you could have just asked for something that Trump seems inclined towards, which I instinctually hate. So I'm actually working my way up to saying it. But price caps on insurance, that would have been equivalent to this thing. It wouldn't have been transfer payments. It's just you using the power of the government to say, uh, no, you don't get to make that much money. And we are Democrats and we're fighting for this real populism. And Donald Trump might have been into that because apparently he loves price controls and all kinds of other horrible economic policy.

[Ari Weitzman]

It's one of the examples of. I think there's many things we could do. I think that's a really, really good example. But it's Something where that's a hail that hears that. No, that's gonna be fixed.

[Camille Foster]

That's not a fix.

[Ari Weitzman]

And used as a quote from Camille Foster.

[Camille Foster]

They're called it the Camille, Camille, Camille plan. Camille care.

[Isaac Saul]

But.

[Ari Weitzman]

But that's a hill to pick. That wouldn't be a hill to die on. Like, that's. That's a hill you could actually win.

[Camille Foster]

I think so.

[Ari Weitzman]

And I think that sort of. I think maybe we're agreeing. I. I want to ask you because I'm not sure if you saw this. We polled Tangle readers on who they think won the government shutdown. I'm not sure if you saw their Isaac or if you saw them Camille.

[Camille Foster]

No.

[Ari Weitzman]

But we had about 4,500 readers respond in. And the answers. The. The options we gave them was to who won was Democrats, Republicans, neither or unsure, slash, don't care. Can you guess what the distribution was?

[Camille Foster]

Oh, the distribution.

[Ari Weitzman]

Or like what the number one response was even unsure, don't care. That's what I thought that would be. It was 2%. Guess that.

[Camille Foster]

Wow.

[Ari Weitzman]

Or guess that. I've responded with that.

[Isaac Saul]

I would say neither.

[Ari Weitzman]

Neither was number two.

[Camille Foster]

Wow.

[Ari Weitzman]

45.6. Number one at 47% of respondents was Republicans want.

[Camille Foster]

Wow. People think that is surprising.

[Ari Weitzman]

At least our readership thinks that Democrats came away from this looking so bad.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah. They should have asked for more. And they don't look good. Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

That like the. The relative position that you came in with makes this seem like a loss, regardless of whether or not we're saying they got what they wanted.

[Isaac Saul]

It's sort of the classic, like the Simpsons meme.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

It's just like Democrats are so critical. Critical of themselves and each other. They're just like. Yeah, the circular firing squad. Like, they could have a win, but they're. There's so much like Ezra Klein is just immediately out the New York Times op ed. Like they completely screwed this up. Democrats ruin this.

[Ari Weitzman]

We hate governing and ourselves.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. Yeah. It's just chemo and hipster.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah. No, that's a.

[Isaac Saul]

That's a good point.

[Camille Foster]

I mean, that's John Lovett. Pod save. When we talked to him a couple of weeks ago, said something approaching that. Just the seriousness with which Democrats take things, the expectations they have for their party, the persistent disappointment.

[Isaac Saul]

Persistent.

[Camille Foster]

We suck. We are not getting it right. And Republicans, on the other hand, are. I mean, they're malevolent.

[Isaac Saul]

Every liberal friend I have.

[Camille Foster]

We should. No. No enemies to the right.

[Isaac Saul]

Every liberal friend I have was texting me about the shutdown ending. Like, I Cannot believe Democrats suck this much. And they're just. They're just pissed. You know, I have a friend who was telling me about a government worker he was talking to who was, like, working at Home Depot to make ends meet while he wasn't getting his salary. And he was pissed that Democrats folded.

[Camille Foster]

That's interesting.

[Isaac Saul]

Wanted them to dig in, you know, because they sold. They sold the fight, and I think they sold it successfully. And then they didn't get the thing they said they were fighting for. And everybody was like, what?

[Ari Weitzman]

I think they need somebody with more experience leading in the Senate.

[Camille Foster]

I mean, we've got to get out of here.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, we got a dinner res.

[Camille Foster]

This headline from WaPo, Democrats push for, quote, ruthlessly Pragmatic approach to counter Trump. 1. Ruthlessly pragmatic is an insane notion.

[Ari Weitzman]

It's just so crazy thinking about what that is.

[Camille Foster]

Ruthlessly pragmatism. I could see what you mean. Figuratively speaking, there's a kind of a flourish of some sort there, but also they're kind of the opposite. The pragmatism, success. You're maintaining your principles, maybe trading off a few small things here. Ruthlessly trading off your values to accomplish what, exactly? If you read this piece, and I commend it to you, just read it, especially the last bit, it reflects some of the conversations that we've had on this podcast about the redistricting fight, because it gives some details about just how acrimonious things have gotten amongst Democrats in Maryland in particular. But it also has this vibe that reminds me distinctly of stuff that I was seeing from people like Chris Ruffo in 2020, 2021, when they were saying, you people wanna have a politics, a loser politics, where you care about norms and you're trying to protect institutions. None of that matters. The only thing that matters is securing power and winning victories. And that is very much the energy of the commentary from prominent Democrats in that piece. And I suppose it is of a piece with a verdict on the shutdown that says, yeah, we lost. We didn't get everything. Like, we're always losing. We need a new strategy. And it's also this just kind of escalation with respect to partisan politicians and operatives who are willing to set aside principle to eviscerate norms in service of doing whatever is necessary to secure power so that they can do what they describe as the good. But I don't know what compromises that might require.

[Isaac Saul]

But ruthless pragmatism, ruthlessly pragmatic makes me think that adverbs should be banned in.

[Ari Weitzman]

All as an editor, I feel very happy about you getting to this place organically.

[Camille Foster]

It's not the Washington Post headline. That's what someone said.

[Isaac Saul]

All right, one last quick hit before we get in there. We're gonna have to do a lightning round of grievances, is that the penny has died at 232, in case you guys didn't hear it happened. A long decline into irrelevance ended on Wednesday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, my hometown. The American. The last American penny was printed by the Treasury Department on Wednesday. The cost of printing a single cent went up to 3 cents. And Donald Trump does not allow something like that to fly in this great nation. Thank you.

[Camille Foster]

Doge.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

You're next. The nickel.

[Isaac Saul]

Honestly, it's probably about time, but if you have a stack of pennies at home, maybe like someone I know named Isaac, you should save them because they'll probably be really valuable in like 100 years when nobody has them, when we're not here anymore.

[Camille Foster]

Maybe. But maybe you'll get a hundred year.

[Isaac Saul]

Mortgage, find the oldest penny you have and hold on to it. Yeah. And it can help pay off your 100 year mortgage. That Trump will be.

[Ari Weitzman]

I mean, seriously, if you're thinking ahead, save your nickels. Yeah, those are next.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, we didn't even get to that. But yeah, 50 year mortgage. That is. It's really good. All right, we gotta do the. We gotta do the grievances. John, you can. You can play the music.

[Camille Foster]

The airing of grievances. Between you and me, I think your country is placing a lot of importance on shoe removal. I mean, we've had a drink. I feel so good. I don't know that I can find anything to complain about.

[Isaac Saul]

I do.

[Ari Weitzman]

Let's complain about Camille, you and me right now.

[Isaac Saul]

Camille. D. No.

[Camille Foster]

I'm just so happy to see you guys in person.

[Isaac Saul]

The vibe's awesome.

[Ari Weitzman]

This is ruthlessly optimist.

[Camille Foster]

That's what I'm upset about, that we can't do this every single week in person, in the same room, looking each other in the eyes. I love that Abby Phillips came in. I'm upset that she was a little late, but she also stayed late.

[Ari Weitzman]

Sorry.

[Camille Foster]

So there's a little bit of a third dig, but no, she's great. But honestly, like, things are.

[Isaac Saul]

I do wish that we could do this more in person. That is a good grievance. It's so. It's. It's always better to be sitting down. We are giving a little bit of the game away by conceding that we often do this remotely, but maybe people have picked up on that.

[Ari Weitzman]

I think that's a known.

[Camille Foster]

They've seen the video.

[Isaac Saul]

My grievance is just the absolute insufferable prevalence of nostalgia porn that exists everywhere online right now. That's one of the best things I.

[Ari Weitzman]

Just read the about porn, so I.

[Isaac Saul]

Thought that was going to be a literary of it. If I see one more video of like 1990s New York City and everybody's like, look how much better life use.

[Camille Foster]

I'm just like, some things were pretty awesome.

[Isaac Saul]

I totally. I agree. But like, I'm just. Can we. Can we just like, can we let it go and just move on to what we have now and deal with it this. I don't think it's healthy. I don't think it's. I'm just so. I'm like, this is. And also it's. People are now assigning, like, I saw one today, which is what put me over the edge, which was this guy who's like getting very popular on Twitter. I'm not even going to name him because I don't want to give him relevance. He's getting popular on Twitter by being a liberal, former ex liberal, who's now like a diehard Trumper. It seems very faux to me. I don't think it's a real thing, but I will not spend the time, like, debunking the idea that he was ever actually a liberal. And he just posted this picture of like kids riding their bikes down the street in suburbia. That's like, you know, sepia toned. It honestly looks AI generated. And he's just like, I keep getting asked why I. I'm so angry about repeat offender crime. This photo is why. And then it's all about. It's all about, like, the childhood that these kids will never, like today's kids will never have, like, because of.

[Camille Foster]

Because of crime rates.

[Isaac Saul]

Right? And this guy's like 30.

[Camille Foster]

Just insane.

[Isaac Saul]

This guy's like 35 years old. I'm like, dude, do you think, like, when I was. I was a kid in the 1990s, I rode my bike everywhere. I had a childhood and it was like the era of serial killers and like, kidnapping.

[Camille Foster]

I mean, that's the planet.

[Ari Weitzman]

There were like five.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. Like, no, this kids are safer now than they've ever been. And this is the pro. The reason this life doesn't exist for kids is because of neurotic parents, not because of crime.

[Ari Weitzman]

That's just like, yep, good.

[Isaac Saul]

You lost me.

[Ari Weitzman]

You got me back.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

And I was. I was just like, I'm. I'm just, just. I'm out on the nostalgia point. Benny Johnson posts this thing, New York City.

[Camille Foster]

Like, that's the only city we used.

[Isaac Saul]

To have in 1993. I'm like, do you want to look up what New York City was like in 1993? Because I'm not sure that's the life you want.

[Camille Foster]

I saw someone posting, like, New York in 1970, the 1970s. I was like, ah, you idiot.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, funniest stuff. Like, I get it. The taxi cabs look cool and like, obviously the Twin Towers are still there and there's all sorts of stuff that makes you feel American and pride. But, like, like it wasn't better. Sorry.

[Camille Foster]

I wish we lived in Serpicos, New York.

[Ari Weitzman]

There are parts of it that were better and parts of it that weren't.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. There were people looking down at their phones.

[Ari Weitzman]

Is that like a lot? Yeah, more people looking down at something else, like Sudoku. We had a lot of think pieces about how Sudoku was taking our attention away from her fellow man.

[Camille Foster]

Is that a thing really?

[Ari Weitzman]

Oh, I mean, I don't know if I want it.

[Camille Foster]

Okay.

[Ari Weitzman]

No going on Sudoku right now. But it was definitely a thing in the twenties of people reading newspapers and like, the newspapers. Yes, for sure.

[Isaac Saul]

You gotta go. Yeah, sorry.

[Ari Weitzman]

Sorry, I haven't wrapped this up.

[Isaac Saul]

We're on the clock, man.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah. I guess if I'm going to be feeling particularly aggrieved about anything, it's like a complainant myself, which is. I knew that I needed to switch the snow tires over. I knew that I had to make an appointment to do that. And I was like, I'm on it. I'm going to do it early. I'm going to make sure it happens early November. And then I just didn't make the call. The time to do it was last Tuesday.

[Host]

Why?

[Ari Weitzman]

And I like, I don't know. But like, my boss is an. So I was just like, one thing after another came up and I just didn't call in to switch out the snow tires. How much snow did you do it?

[Isaac Saul]

I literally, I literally, I was like, who's his boss? That took me a full 10 seconds.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, I don't think I ever use that word. But the. Not. Not a lot, but enough. Oh, yeah. So we came back from. I came back from tournament. I was coaching in Atlanta. I don't really have a whole lot of complaints about the tournament. I think, like, of the things that are working today that we don't generally tend to appreciate things that are working when they're working. And then we look back later and we're nostalgic. And then we end up being these dudes that we hate. One of the things that's working today is like college Ultimate Frisbee, which I coach, which we've both played, is absolutely thriving. And these tournaments right now are great. And we've had nothing but good experiences this fall. All haven't won all the games, but like, it's in a really good state right now. But I, I've had complaints of tournaments where I've come back. Nothing from this. University of Georgia does a great job.

[Isaac Saul]

Grievances. No snow tires.

[Ari Weitzman]

Grievances. I came back and there's 2 inches fresh powder on the ground. Okay. And it's only more as the days have gone on and I'm like, great. Now I have to wait in line behind all the other people who didn't do it early enough. And it's just, it happens so fast.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

You think you're on top of your and then like, you forget one thing and you're like, oh, now I'm behind the ball again. Like, the wave just got got away from me. I was right.

[Isaac Saul]

Well, I'm sure it's beautiful on the upside. So it's nice.

[Ari Weitzman]

It's great.

[Camille Foster]

It's great.

[Isaac Saul]

Especially if you can't move. Gentlemen. Well, we're about to hang out for many more hours, but we've got to turn the mics off and get out of here. It was great hanging out. This was fun in person. We'll do it again soon. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive executive producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman, with senior editor Will K. Back and associate editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead Bailey, Saul, Lindsey Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our [e-mail].

[Ari Weitzman]

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[Host]

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