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- [00:01]
Isaac Saul
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- [00:35]
Ari Weitzman
Wait, is that Glow in the Dark underwear?
- [00:37]
Isaac Saul
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- [00:46]
Ari Weitzman
Tricks, treats and buttery soft briefs.
- [00:50]
Isaac Saul
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- [01:12]
Ari Weitzman
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- [01:35]
Camille
Coming up, the event we're hosting in la, the government shutdown, the Overton window shifting. And we're gonna talk about that young Republican story, the group chat controversy. Also, I should say up front some explicit language. I do use a couple slurs in this episode. That's not a joke. It happened. You'll see why in a little bit. And I think it's a really good one.
- [02:02]
Isaac Saul
From executive producer Isaac Saul.
- [02:05]
Camille
This is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening and welcome to the suspension of the rules podcast. The place where the takes are warm, lukewarm, the guys are tired. It's early morning on a Friday. Camille's a big hotshot. Had to go on Megyn Kelly yesterday. So we're recording at a different time. I'm excited. Gentlemen, I just realized that we are a week from today, we're all going to be together in Southern California in person. We have probably not sufficiently talked about that on the show, but for anybody listening, we are doing a live event in Irvine California next week, Friday, October 24, a week from today as we record this on Friday morning. It's gonna be awesome. It's at a really, really beautiful theater, the Irvine Barclay Theater, you know, hour north of San Diego, just outside Los Angeles. It's a really cool part of California and we have an incredible lineup. We have Alex Thompson, who wrote the best selling book Original Sin about the basically the COVID up of President Biden's mental faculties that led to him dropping out of the 2024 presidential race. He is, in my view, one of the most well sourced reporters in Washington D.C. he seems to kind of have a beat on everything. And we also have Anna Kasparian who is one of the co hosts of the Young Turks. I think a voice for the kind of populist left. In a lot of ways though, she's less predictable than I think a lot of people think. Camille's gonna be on stage doing his weird libertarian garbage. Probably. I'll be there. I'm bummed because we had a couple guests to kind of round out some of the ideological diversity sort of from the pro Trump maga. Right. And for various reasons, two of them fell through, which I was really bummed about, obviously, given our mission and given the state of the country and the kinds of voices I want to have in the room that are relevant. But I think it's still going to be a really, really awesome show. There's a VIP meet and greet afterwards. Most of the Tangle team's going to be there. It's beautiful California, so if you live in the area, you should come out. We'll drop a link to the tickets in the show notes today. And if you don't live in the area, it's October. It's starting to get cold and crappy across the country. Southern California is an incredible place to be in October. It's like 75 degrees and sunny every day. Cool hoodie weather at night. We'll be near the beach. It's going to be beautiful. So that's my pitch. We'd love to see you. There's still some tickets left. We want to fill the house, which would be a really big deal for us. Anything else you guys have to add to that? We should have done this like 10 times by now. But it's all right. People can buy tickets.
- [05:15]
Ari Weitzman
No, you can buy tickets. Get a babysitter. You have plenty of time. It's gonna be a lot of fun. And I speak fluent maga. I've also been charged, accused of carrying water for the administration many, many times. So I'm happy to do my very best to represent that point of view from the stage and to grovel and to engage in sycophancy where necessary.
- [05:34]
John Lowell
So, speaking of sycophancy, I think our audience might be impressed by how fluently we speak Californian too. I think, Camille, you've got your Bay Area influences. I lived in California for several years. I know. Isaac and I, for. For our bizarre hobby, have gone to the area near Irvine a couple times for a beach tournament of the sport that we ridiculously competed in competitively for many decades. And. Yeah, come on, dude. It'll be sick.
- [06:02]
Ari Weitzman
Come down to California.
- [06:03]
Camille
Yeah, I'm hella Cali, bro.
- [06:06]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, I'm super Cali. If you are bumping or bouncing around pumpkin patches in the Bay Area, you might run into me. I was at one last Saturday. I think it was Half Moon Day. I ran into a guy and he's like, Camille. And I'm like, hey, what's going on, man? And he's like, I love tangle. I listen to the podcast. I read the newsletter. I'm like, amazing. I work at Apple. And he told me all kinds of secrets about the Vision Pro.
- [06:32]
John Lowell
That's not true.
- [06:32]
Ari Weitzman
He didn't. I tried to get them out of him because he apparently works on it, and I really, really tried hard, but he. He held. Held steady. So it's great to meet you. Look forward to catching up with you some more and hopefully get to meet a lot more Californians. Although I suspect a lot of you won't be from the Bay Area, but you could totally get a ticket, fly down. It's affordable, it's fast.
- [06:51]
John Lowell
Flying to John Wayne Airport in Irvine, which is the name of the airport there. It'd be great.
- [06:56]
Camille
That's a great airport. That's been in sick. Yes, I know our senior editor will k back. Like, 15 members of his family are going to be there. It's awesome. It's his birthday that week, so they've all decided to descend on California. They're throwing him a birthday happy hour Thursday night.
- [07:11]
John Lowell
Send your birthday messages to W I l l@retail.com.
- [07:17]
Camille
Yeah, perfect. Well, I mean, we're going to have a lot to talk about in California, I think. You know, that event California is so relevant. There's gerrymandering, immigration. I think there's a very good chance that two of the top Democratic contenders for the 2028 presidential race will be California heads. Gavin Newsom is very obviously going to run and, you know, maybe is an odds on favorite. Honestly, at this Point, I'd be curious what the betting markets say. Kamala Harris, I sincerely doubt, is going to sit on the sidelines. You know, I haven't read her new book, but based on some of the excerpts that I've read and the reviews of it I've read, she seems pretty convinced that she kind of fought with one hand tied behind her back in 2024 and wants another shot at it. So we're gonna have a lot of relevant stuff to talk about, whether you're a California native or not. Until then, there's a good bit of craziness going on, which is now just typical. We're going to talk a little bit about the Overton window shifting today, which is something I've just been kind of ruminating on and trying to think about, because it might be maybe like, the single most important part of Trump's legacy. Actually, I'll make that pitch in a little bit, but one of the elements of the Overton window shifting that we could start with is the way we're witnessing a government shutdown right now, which I think is actually really novel. I had this whole thing written up about, you know, the ways in which this was different than past government shutdowns that I want to talk about in the podcast. And then I was walking down to work today, and I turned on the New York Times Daily, and their whole podcast is about this. It's like a roundtable about how bizarre the shutdown is. So, you know, I'm like an hour late on that, I guess.
- [09:10]
Ari Weitzman
But no one listens to that podcast anyways.
- [09:14]
Camille
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not the number one politics podcast in the country. Who can. In the world. Yeah, we're not just to say I'm not biting them. I had this thought originally, but it is really true, and I'd like to start here. We're a couple weeks into the shutdown. House Speaker Mike Johnson said this week that he thinks it might end up being the longest shutdown in US History, and nobody cares. I mean, seemingly nobody cares. I'm sure a bunch of people work in the government really care. But I would say in shutdowns of the past, there are people in my social life, you know, like Normie, Americans who aren't crazy religious about following the news. They're texting me things like, what does this mean for the parks? Or what's gonna happen to my healthcare? They're, like, paying attention. How is this gonna impact me? Whatever. I'm getting zero of that. I mean, there is no not even a blip of interest from people outside, like, the standard political junky world that I operate in. And then we have a president who just does. I mean, he literally doesn't care about solving it at all, which is like a whole new dynamic. He has no interest in reopening the government. He's not taking meetings. There's nobody working behind the scenes to, like, as far as, you know, the kind of insider DC Beltway reporting that we typically get. There's always, like, these meetings and people are leaking and they're trying to own the narrative. And this time it's just like, yeah, we're fine with it being shut down. We're going to fire a bunch of people. Sort of underrated story here is like, America first. Trump, you know, he's in the Middle East. He addressed Israel's Knesset on Monday, then flew to Egypt to sign the peace deal, got back to D.C. and just like all about Argentina on Tuesday, he's both bailing them out with a $20 billion currency bailout and then bombing Venezuelan boats off the coast of Venezuela that are alleged drug running. Tons of attention there. On Wednesday, he basically concedes, yeah, we're sending the CIA into Venezuela. We might actually bomb Venezuela. Mainland. Thursday, it's Russia, Russia, Russia, all about Vladimir Putin negotiations. He spoke to Putin for two hours. He's gonna meet him in person. And then today on Friday, he's meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House. Like, zero focus on figuring out anything that has to do with domestic US Politics and opening the government. I don't know. This seems kind of crazy to me. Nobody's really talking about. So I'm kind of curious what you guys think. I mean, it just seems like a. It's very bizarre that it's not a bigger deal. It's weird to have a dynamic where nobody seems interested in solving it. Democrats, too, are just like, they think that they're gonna win this conversation, which I'm not so sure about, but they certainly don't seem that they're not, like, proposing any big solutions aside from solve the Medicaid cut stuff. And. Yeah, and Trump doesn't seem to care, and his focus is totally elsewhere. And the only person who seems to be calling this out is Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's out there being like, what happened to America First? Like, why. Why is. Why do we have a rotating cast of foreign leaders showing up at the White House when the government shut down and prices are going up and healthcare is about to explode? I'm like, What? She's the one. She's the person. Like, I don't know. What do you guys think? Is this? I don't know. This feels insane to me.
- [12:54]
John Lowell
It feels insane to me, too. I think there's this. I don't know if you could call it horseshoe theory, but with the Marjorie Taylor Greene of it all. There's something that I maybe disagree with the way that she phrases it, but she's really concerned, at least on Twitter.
- [13:11]
Camille
That.
- [13:12]
John Lowell
Or X, Pardon me, didn't mean to den name that application, but she's very concerned on social media that we have all of this outsized attention being given towards Israel. And from my perspective, I'm like, yeah, that's true. I feel uncomfortable as a Jew when people are talking about the control Israel has in our lobbying and politics. And then she goes on to say Israel has so much control in her lobbying and her politics, like, well, I. I think probably we want to detract from it. But then she turns the attention, like, straight onto the way that the. The elites and Israel and parentheses parentheses Jews are having their imprint on our politics and controlling what we're doing. I think I kind of agree with her message that, like, we have this strange fascination about Israel and our country and the fact that this peace deal dropped during the government shutdown, like, in my estimation, I think is taking so much of the oxygen that, I mean, yes, Venezuela is a huge thing, yes, Russia is a huge deal, but I think that's driving all the narrative that I'm seeing. And I think it's probably one of those things where it's as simple as our media ecosystem has the attention span to focus on one story at a time, that's the one that's driving the narrative, and that's pretty much what we've got to deal with. So as much as I think the Venezuela gunboat. Sorry, the sinking of the boats in Venezuela or off the coast of. Is a huge deal. And as much as I think the government shutdown should be driving more conversation, I think that's the reason why it's not. It's just Those are stories 2A and 2B, and we just have a system that's set up to focus on one at a time. Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but that's the way it feels to me.
- [15:04]
Ari Weitzman
I mean, I think you're absolutely right. That is definitely a dimension of what's going on here. I think that the other dimension is what Isaac alluded to, that both sides imagine that they are winning this situation. But perhaps Imagine that they're winning with just a little bit of trepidation. The president has largely kept his distance here. When everything first went down, J.D. vance was the only person out front talking about this. The president had fallen back. Now you've got Kristi Noem recording these statements that she wants to have played in various airports across the country, blaming Democrats for what's going on here. So they want to highlight this, but it seems that the president is happy to do it with a little bit of kind of distance between him and the actual shutdown. And you'll notice, like a lot of the conversation about the firings, it's kind of gone away. They haven't actually done the thing. Why is that? My suspicion is that Republicans must know that there is a high likelihood that the longer this goes on, even if they manage to get this blame placed squarely on Democrats, which I don't know is necessarily likely, some of the stink will be on them as well. I've been up in the air a lot in recent weeks, bouncing between New York and California. And in every instance there's, you know, JFK is terrible. There are usually delays. Things have gotten materially worse. The TSA lines are longer. People are going to start complaining. And honestly, even if Kristi Noem had been successful and there weren't airports just saying, we don't wanna play this, I don't think it's a very good idea to highlight the fact that the government is in some way shape or form responsible for these shutdowns. Even if you blame Democrats, if you are Donald Trump, you look feckless. If this minority party is in a position to completely upend your administration and you can't do anything about it, you're supposed to be a deal maker. You're supposed to be a guy who gets things done. I think ultimately the buck stops with you, despite whatever other dynamics are happening here. And I suspect that that's how things are going to end up playing out in the very long run if this drags on too much further. But one other point I'd say is just we've been talking about this since January, since the president was inaugurated, that first week in office when we were getting that deluge of executive orders, this administration is particularly active. They are moving on all manner of fronts at the same time. And that is part of what's happening here. Certainly the international scene is quite busy, but in some respects it's busy precisely because the administration is just so active.
- [17:43]
John Lowell
That's interesting, because when you were setting that up, I thought you were going to say this administration showing that it doesn't have a vested interest in keeping the employed people in the government busy. And it showed us pretty early that it's really eager to remove jobs from people in the federal government's employ.
- [17:58]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, I think that's true too. Which perhaps there's a bit of an irony there, but not really. I mean, it's also the case that the President imagines he can do just about anything himself directly.
- [18:08]
John Lowell
Yeah. I mean, without insulting anyone.
- [18:10]
Ari Weitzman
Pretty much, yeah.
- [18:13]
Camille
I mean the, they're, I think one of the reasons that they haven't gone through with the layoffs the way they promised is that a judge stop them.
- [18:22]
John Lowell
Which is also a familiar theme.
- [18:25]
Camille
Yeah, well, yeah, but the, I mean they, they seem to reverse some of the CDC layoffs on their own, which by the way, like again, overton window stuff. Like it would have been like a weeks long scandal in past administrations if we just like somebody accidentally fired all these super important people responsible for controlling disease outbreaks and you know, administering vaccines and all this stuff. The Trump administration has done it like six times now. It happened with Doge, they did it with, it happened with air traffic controllers, it happened with, you know, Department of Labor and now it's happening at HHS and cdc and it's just like, oh, like it's a foot. You know, it's two sentences in a Washington Post write up about the story, which is nuts to me. I think a really interesting dynamic here that is novel is that there isn't really anything that this shutdown is about except power. You know, like in the past, the shutdowns are always focus on sort of a singular issue. In 2018 it was the border wall. 2013 under Obama it was a health care, like a big health care standoff. There's no animating issue here. It's literally just like both sides. You know, Democrats are sort of doing the thing that like Ezra Klein kind of called for, which was like, we can't keep submitting power to, to this guy who's abusing his power. And they seem to be taking that tack like there aren't specific demands here. They're basically just saying we want the Trump administration at the table negotiating and we're not gonna keep the government open and keep funding them when they're doing all this stuff that's unconstitutional or illegal. And Republicans, they're not asking for anything. They're just waiting for Democrats to bend the knee basically and realize that they don't like this is not politically advantageous for them. So it's just this kind of really broad power struggle. The other thing that's really interesting is in the past the way shutdowns typically end is it becomes really politically costly for one side and then that side comes to the table and they fold. And oftentimes it's because there's, you know, independent voters, swing voters who are sort of in the polling showing that they're moving in one direction. And then the news starts writing about that and the media kind of ramps that up and then there's pressure on, you know, like Democrats, Republicans, whatever, to make a move. And in this case, like A, there's not a lot of swing voters left and B, people seem just a little news fatigued and maybe not paying attention. So now we're in a spot where like, yeah, I mean, like, I don't know. When does the political cost come in? I'm actually not totally sure. So it kind of seems like this could go on for a while. I mean, to your point, I think like the TSA stuff will create some pain, but you know, a lot of Americans fly maybe once a year or something, if that. So I don't know how many people are going to feel that kind of pain. I think like the military stuff, you know, that'll be costly for the right. Soldiers will get furloughed or you know, people who work in various military related fields, maybe they stop getting paid, whatever. That's going to be a big animating issue there. At some point you imagine this comes downstream to dhs, Homeland Security type stuff that becomes problematic. And then on the left it's going to be the union speaking up for all these, or Trump and Russell Vault just actually start firing people in the way that they're promising and then they make it really painful that way. But I don't know how close we are to that. And I feel like this really could be a while.
- [22:25]
Ari Weitzman
I mentioned the TSA thing primarily because I'm selfish and I'm feeling the pain. But even if they're not feeling it directly in a given month, it becomes front page news. Once there are hours and hours and hours long waits at the airport for things that used to take a lot less time. And I think that that's true across the government in a number of areas where people are experiencing this. In fact, I'll even go a bit further, and this is anecdotal, but a lot of these people are doing their jobs and not getting paid now they have to. And I heard the grumbling. A woman I've seen At JFK two weeks in a row, the same woman in the line because I'm taking the same flights most of the time. And she's usually smiling and she's usually really engaged. And this time she was complaining she wanted to go home. She said so several times. And I'm like, ah, okay. There's something about the energy that I think is shifting.
- [23:22]
John Lowell
It's not even the people that we're seeing. Let's just stay with aviation for a second. It's the air traffic controllers in an administration that started with its first big scandal of, I mean, doge. Aside of crashes and issues with Newark and the disaster in D.C. obviously, all of that stuff is still in the ether with this administration. I don't think they've really put to bed that their concerns of the FAA have been resolved. So air traffic controllers working hard hours has already been a story. Now they're being asked to do it without pay for a little bit of time. And we don't know how long that is. And I mean, I really. You really hope that something gets resolved before this stresses the system to the point where there's another disaster. Because if you talk about the politics of it, that's the, the grim thing to predict as what's the most likely thing to happen that could be pinned on the administration. That's probably where it is. I mean, military personnel, postal workers, all working without pay is something that we've almost normalized with shutdowns. I hate to say it's not a big deal. That's not really what I think, but it's one of those things where we, I think it's something where you would read a news headline about it and go, yeah, yeah, I'm used to that. That's something that I would expect to happen. But when it comes to aviation issues, I think we expect our planes to work and we expect that we're going to get to where we want to go without there being some major issue. And if there is a major issue, that is something that's going to be very pinnable on the administration.
- [25:14]
Camille
We'll be right back after this quick break. I'm curious. I mean, I guess like in the, in the larger convo that.
- [25:33]
Isaac Saul
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- [26:10]
Ari Weitzman
Did I talk too much? Can't I just let it go? Wish I would stop thinking so much.
- [26:16]
Isaac Saul
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- [26:41]
Camille
I want to have, and maybe this is just a good transition to it. About the. The Overton window shifting. How much of that is going to play a role in this? I mean, there is, there is something about a government shutdown compared to everything else that just is like a snooze fest, kind of like. Like, how do you make people care about this? I mean, really, it's like you read one article about National Guard troops descending on an apartment building in Chicago from helicopters, like, rappelling into a building full of US Citizens and kicking doors down and rounding up a bunch of undocumented illegal immigrants, whatever you want to call them, and then hauling them outside. Alleged, I guess I should say, because plenty of them were U.S. citizens. Like, you read that and then you're, you know, you go from that to a story about a standoff, you know, day 12 of the government shutdown and some workers are getting furloughed. It's just sort of, like, hard to get animated about it, I guess. And I wonder if that's gonna, like, how big of a role that's gonna play in just the way the public kind of digests this and the sort of pressure point where it starts to actually matter to people. I do think that's something that's really important right now. Like, you know, just to give one example, I mean, we talked about the Bill Clinton, Loretta Lynch, Bill Clinton, Attorney General Loretta lynch meeting on the tarmac for, like, 20 minutes when Bill Clinton wasn't even president because Loretta lynch was involved in the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. And that story dominated the news for weeks and was used as a bludgeon against the attorney general and the FBI as evidence that the fix was in for Hillary Clinton. And that was eight years ago or something 10 years ago. And now in today's world, that we're operating in the Attorney General is literally going to have private meetings with the White House and the President while prosecuting, quote, unquote, enemies of the president. Like she, you know, she's literally in the, in the White House, in the Oval Office behind closed doors. And it's like a blip on Twitter and nobody even cares. It just feels like things have changed so dramatically so fast. You know, what does the story look like 10 years ago if Barack Obama is indicting the former head of the FBI or even John Bolton, like Obama just Obama indicting his Justice Department indicting John Bolton. ProPublica came out with an article this week. 170American citizens have been arrested and detained during these ice sweeps. Makes noise on Twitter for like two hours. I mean, a story like that, I know it's silly to say and like bring this stuff up, but it's like we did, we literally did the tan suit thing with Obama. It's like the classic example of just, you know, the fist bump, the terrorist fist bump between like, you know, Osama, Barack Obama, you know, whatever they were calling him and Michelle Obama. And that was a news cycle. And I just feel like, I don't know, A, that's going to play a role in something that the government shut down is sort of like the connecting thought there to segment one. But B, I'm just like, it is pretty remarkable to think about how much our sensitivity has changed in such a short period of time. And I think that might end up being the most impactful legacy that Trump leaves behind or the Trump administration leaves behind. It's just like, you know, and I know Trump supporting folks would say, like, what about Biden? And a lot of this comes from COVID I mean, by, you know, the, what we accepted as a society during the COVID lockdowns and you know, Trump got indicted as a former ex president and like that set a new standard and put, put a, pulled the genie out of the bottle on like a big thing. But all of that, just the last eight years, I mean, not even just saying Trump's legacy, but just the last eight or ten years feels like it is going to change what we are sensitive to forever. And the Overton window is just like permanently shifted. And I feel like that's going to have a really, really big impact in our politics going forward that maybe we haven't totally grappled with yet.
- [31:56]
Ari Weitzman
I like when you do stuff like this. Isaac, that was like a huge download and there's so much there and there's a lot of it that I just wholeheartedly agree with. I think you're right in general about the shifting in the Overton window about Trump's unique role in it. But I also think that some of what you flagged actually points to just kind of changes in the media ecosystem broadly. I think Tan Suit Gate is one of those kind of ridiculous nontroversies that sometimes end up rising to the top, and it's the only thing anyone can talk about for far too long. But the Obama administration gave us some genuine, authentic controversies as well. I think the real difference perhaps between back then and now is just that the news cycle is filtered not through kind of the big several media organizations nationally and the cable news apparatus. It much more so lives online. Your social media feed is in fact the news cycle in a way that it wasn't before. I remember when I first got over to News Corp and was there watching the way the news gets made there, I was surprised to see just how often people were kind of looking to Reddit to inform the coverage that they would do on a nightly basis. And now it seems that journalists even back then were mostly living on X, kind of having these public conversations. Now it seems that things have just kind of reached this frenetic pace where rather than having a story build over the course of a week, you get that story published about the helicopters and about agents deploying them from helicopters. But that's just like one day, and then the next day you move on to several other things and maybe you come back around to that and maybe you see that story in your newsfeed again, but there's a very good chance you don't. So the frenetic pace of the coverage feels like it is as much responsible for our lack of focus at the moment. But I think you're also correct in general just that the volume of scandals, and I think we've talked about this with the Trump administration before, is kind of unprecedented. And the kind of brazenness with which some of these things play out. I mean, I don't know that we've talked about it here. I know that we've written about it in different contexts, but just the odd dynamic where the president of the United States and people close to him are just making tons and tons of money on all sorts of crazy things. The kind of various allies, new allies in some respects, paying a bunch of money to get Trump coin, which they then use to kind of complete some other crypto transaction. And then just by chance, a little later, it looks like maybe you'll get A military base or facility here in the United States. It all looks extremely gross, but they're kind of unapologetic about it. And it seems that's enough to make it not really a big story to most people.
- [35:09]
John Lowell
What's enough? The fact that they're unapologetic about it.
- [35:11]
Ari Weitzman
That they're unapologetic?
- [35:12]
John Lowell
Yeah. So that it feels normal. I mean, I'm asking because I also kind of don't. I don't know the answer to the major question that Isaac posed here. Like, why is this different now? I don't know. I mean, I don't either. That's something I've been thinking about and something we've been talking about a lot. And it's. It feels wrong and incomplete to say, like Democrats just don't do outrage as well as Republicans. Like, what is that? I don't really know what that means. Like, it's the first thought that comes to my head, but it feels incomplete. The unapologeticness with which the administration's dealing with the pushback, maybe that's part of it. Maybe social media is part of it. Could be a perfect storm. I really don't have a great answer. But in your estimation, seems like the way that they're responding to the criticism and to the controversy is part of why the window feels like it shifted so much.
- [36:07]
Ari Weitzman
I think it's a combination of things here at least. The fact that they are uniquely unapologetic, uniquely brazen about it and that you have a news cycle that is moving at the pace at which it's moving makes it almost the perfect storm for. I want to use the word laundering, and I'll go ahead and use it because this is suspension of the rules. You're not going to judge me for it. Maybe I don't mean it in a particular way, but it makes it a little easier to launder things that would have created profound scandals before and end up just kind of landing with a wet thud instead. And I hope that gives you a kind of sensory. That sensory metaphor works well in this context.
- [36:53]
John Lowell
Laundering's interesting. Yeah, I'll sit with that.
- [36:57]
Camille
I mean, you know, the. I guess like related to the kind of the Overton window conversation. I mean, one sort of half baked theory I have is just sort of what Camille said. I mean, I was thinking about it differently in terms of the media ecosystem, but we just consume so much now. You know, it's like we're just taking in so much at once that it feels like something about that has a kind of Numbing effect when you, when you're just like, you're so in it. There's, there's kind of, you know, I've seen like a sort of genre of Instagram video or like TikTok video that these couple comedians I follow are doing, where they're just like, sort of making fun of the insanity of the world that we have, where it's like push notification that like Trump's deployed troops into Chicago or whatever. And then like email from your boss, like, hey, we're going to start using this new AI thing to craft all our emails. Like, you have to talk to Claude before you publish something. And then, you know, you get another push notification about like some person who had mass psychosis from like their relationship with, with ChatGPT. And then it's like Gaza bombing, Ukraine bombing, and then like some stupid feel good story about sports or something. And it's just like we're just in it for. And we're on the wheel. And so I think, you know, Trump family amasses $5 billion fortune from crypto scheme. All of a sudden just becomes this like, headline that's in the feed that you're sort of like, click on. Whoa, that's crazy. Read two minutes of the lead. Whoa, that's nuts. New push notification comes in, you scroll the next thing and we're just kind of like moved on. I mean, but it's happening so fast. Like, you know, I mean, to Ari's point, maybe there's some sort of imbalance here with, like, how well Democrats and Republicans leverage certain things politically. And we're in a Republican administration right now and Democrats are bad at leveraging scandal politically. And so it just feels like maybe stuff is breaking through less. But I mean, like, to the crypto point, just. Camille, like what you're saying, you know, we did this, we did this with Hunter Biden over, like, I don't. Was it. I don't even remember whether it was like a hundred. It was $100,000 a month or something on like the Burisma board. And it's like, dude, the Trump family has made $5 billion. Like the, the crypto. The value of their crypto is now larger than all of the Trump real estate holdings combined. And they did it in like a year and a half on the back of him winning the presidency. It's fucking insane. And like, we, like. And it's just like we're not even talking about it. Like, there's no, it feels like there's no space for it even. I don't like it. It's just so nuts to me.
- [39:59]
Ari Weitzman
And, you know, one dimension of that, briefly, one dimension of that might be that the President of the United States already had a lot of money and has been known as this, this businessman. Whether you kind of attribute a lot of credibility to the character he's played on the Apprentice and the Trump brand internationally, but he didn't make any secret of the fact that he was really rich. He leaned into it. Whereas a lot of other politicians kind of apologize for or obfuscate the fact that they've managed to make a whole lot of money while they've been in office. That changes the dynamic a bit. We had a first term where he's building a Trump hotel essentially across the street from the White House. And when people come and stay, that's where they stay. That's where they're parking their money at a Trump branded property. There's a sense in which this is a continuation and expansion on that. Where there was a legitimate business operation before that was Trump branded, run by his family, and his family is just doing what they did. And they're also. But they're now in this new business, this crypto business where they're selling these Trump coins. And the one qualification I might offer, and I don't think it actually changed the dynamics all that much, but it is important. It's not as though they've sold off all the coin and they've realized all these gains. It's possible that some of that goes to zero because it's still paper money, but it's still gross. It is still gross. If Hunter Biden did any of this, it would be extraordinary.
- [41:25]
Camille
Hunter Biden would blush, I should say, just for the sake of total accuracy. I mean, basically, the Wall Street Journal did an analysis on this World Liberty Group, whatever, which is like their massive crypto fund. And their paper wealth, yeah, their paper wealth is 5 to 6 billion dollars from that, which compared to the last evaluation of Trump's real estate holdings, which was like 4.1 or something, is sort of where that comes from. When I'm saying that their crypto wealth is now larger. But, and you're totally right, a lot of that crypto is locked. They'd have to liquidate it to realize it. If they were to sell off billions of dollars of the crypto, the value of it would crash. So it's complicated, but it's like, you know, their net worth is tied up in, in this stuff and it's, you know, the real estate empire is now smaller than the net worth of their crypto empire. And that seems totally insane to me as a story about, you know, sort of just, like, blase corruption that nobody really cares about. And, like, that is just the grossness of the financial advantages that they've amassed through the presidency without even talking about what it means that, like, a Saudi prince can buy a billion dollars of crypto through the Trump Fund that inflates his wealth and communicate that to, like, Don Jr. However they want, and then goes into a meeting with Trump about world affairs with, like, that context. And we have literally no way to really know or track or pay attention to any of that because of the way that, like, the crypto ledger works and how difficult it is. And all we have is, like, the leaks and the rumors. But, I mean, not to be a cynic, I just, like, if you don't think that that's happening, you are a rude. I'm sorry. Like, that is definitely happening. There's so much money, especially coming out of the Arab world, like in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, whatever, like, that is being flooded into, openly into some of the Trump properties and stuff, while these things like the Gaza negotiations are happening and these trade deals are happening. And so I can't even imagine what's happening under the table that we don't know about. And it's just. Yeah, it's just like. It's nuts. It's totally nuts. And we're really numb to it, which feels wild to.
- [43:52]
John Lowell
Well, I want to put the question back to you then. Why do you think we're numb to it?
- [43:57]
Camille
I mean, like I said, I think part of it is that I think it's too. I think it's a couple of things. I think part of it is that the feed thing I'm talking about, which just, like, we're just consuming an unbelievable amount of news, and it ends up just being another thing in the feed, which is crazy. That's one. I think. The second thing is that we've been conditioned into a level of cynicism that it's just like, yeah, of course, you know, Trump is corrupt, Biden is half dead, and he's indicting a former president and whatever, and, like, Obama was hoping change, but he was full of shit. And it's just like, you know, Bush is a warmonger, Bill Clinton's a rapist. Like, it's just. You just go down the list. And so the expectations, like, the bar has been lowered so far, and the cynicism so deep that it. It's sort of, you know, it's like, I mean, we talked about this a little bit last week with like the Megyn Kelly stuff. You know, she's just like, yeah, he's like a self interested narcissist and he does corrupt things. But like, he's, he has my interests at heart and they're all corrupt and they're all self interested. So, you know, at least he's on my team and he's doing the things I want him to do. I mean, that's like, it's not exactly how she put it, but there's like the spirit of sort of what she was saying. And I think there's a lot of people in that mindset now. And so it just hits a little bit different. And again, I think the Trump era has ushered some of this in. I'm not trying to just blame Trump for it. You know, I, like, there were people, I mean, Camille certainly included here at Tango, we wrote about this, who were saying quite loudly, when the Biden Department of Justice was pursuing Trump, when Letitia James was pursuing Trump, like, there will be repercussions for this, this matters. They better, better, better have the goods because, like, what goes around comes around in politics. And this is a can of worms that's never been opened before and, you know, got a lot of shit for saying that kind of thing. And now we're here and like, yeah, the can of worms is open and Trump's throwing them all over the room and we're living in that world. Like, it's crazy. Yeah, yeah. And, and it's, and it's, it's incremental. You know, it's like, like the Hunter Biden thing. We're joking about how the Overton windows move there. But like, also, Hunter Biden was the son of the Vice president who was doing international relations with Ukraine and he was on the board of an in Ukraine making hundreds of thousand dollars a month. That's a big fucking deal.
- [46:47]
Ari Weitzman
It's such a big deal. Yeah.
- [46:49]
Camille
And he shouldn't have done that. And Obama and Joe Biden shouldn't have allowed something like that to happen. It's insane that they allowed that to happen. And it shifted the Overton window a little bit. And so now it's like, oh, you're pissed about Don Jr. Making a billion dollars off crypto. Well, like, where were you when Hunter Biden was, you know, on the board of this oil company in Ukraine while Vice President Joe Biden was responsible for diplomatic relations with Ukraine? That's really not a good look. And like, it just keeps moving A little bit. And people didn't actually care that much about it back then when it was Hunter Biden. Like, conservative news outlets were covering it, but the New York Times was not like all over that story. There was, you know, there's a couple. Couple pieces about it in Politico or the Times or whatever, but it was like, ah, Hunter being Hunter, you know, like he's a thorn in the side of the administration. Not like this is a dangerously close to corrupt thing that, like, the administration really needs to stop. So it just builds and builds and builds. And now we're here and I'm just looking back at like, how quick it happened and it feels. Yeah, like, what does that mean about where we're gonna be? I mean, this is same thing, Ari. You and I have been talking about this a ton. Like the Venezuelan boat things. You're like, hey, yeah, he sunk another boat off the coast. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. He did not sink another boat off the coast of Venezuela. He bombed a dozen people accused of smuggling drugs and deleted them off the face of the earth without any hearing or proof or anything else. Like that's what happened. But I catch myself even now just normalizing this stuff and it's like, yeah, I don't know, I feel like the ground shifting under my feet a bit in a way that feels really disorienting.
- [48:38]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah. The progression is important to note. I think it's valuable to put into context in the way you just did. And even as you're talking about it, I'm thinking about the way that the stories have been discussed and debated and the way in which some of that prior context is brought forward in order to defend whatever is happening now. And not even so much to defend it, cuz they barely defend it. They just say that. Where were you when this happened before? One thing that I have noticed as well, though, is Hunter Biden in particular. People who are discussing the current administration going after Tish, James and Comey, they'll say things like, at least Joe Biden, his Justice Department actually prosecuted Hunter Biden. Like they went after him and his dad didn't step in. Well, no, he waited and then he gave him a pardon and then he issued blanket pardons for lots and lots of people. One might even look at that now and say, well, hey, those blanket pardons, it was totally appropriate. He made the right call. In a sense I can totally understand. In another sense, all of it is kind of building in edifice, if you will, of kind of dysfunction of perhaps the Appearance of malfeasance, of justice deployed in service of political ends, and of a willingness to look the other way when your side is engaged in behavior that otherwise you would probably have something to say about. I mean, the symmetries between the drone program and under the Obama administration, the Bush administration, and the Venezuelan boat situation should not be overlooked. They are not identical situations, but there is a symmetry there that is important. And the debates that we've had about this and about the president's authority to unilaterally kill people without sufficient oversight or any oversight in some instances is the same conversation that we were having then, and we didn't address the problem then, and that's where. And where we are now has a hell of a lot to do with the fact that we did not attempt to put meaningful safeguards in place before. It's just. It's perpetual escalation, it seems. And if that's the case, things will only get much, much, much worse.
- [51:00]
John Lowell
Well, that's. That's something that I was about to ask, though, is what the right framework or most accurate metaphor for us to use is. Because Isaac said the can of worms metaphor earlier, and now we're in a room of worms. But the thing that you're saying is escalation. And if we didn't stop the train now or before, now we're having a harder time stopping the train at this station. And it's not necessarily, okay, we opened Pandora's box when Biden failed to prosecute Hunter. It's more, that was a step. And now this is another step where we're seeing sort of barely beneath the surface exchanges of plates at charity dinners evolve into crypto donations after deals of, like, Qatar giving us planes for Air Force One and us saying, we'll trade your pilots. A lot of those stories are explainable, but the dots are really, really, really easy to connect. And now the question to me isn't like, okay, well, we're sitting in this room of worms now. When is it going to get caught, cleaned up? The question seems to be, well, what's the next thing that's going to happen now? Because if that. That feels like the framework that is more accurate to me is like, it's an escalation framework. And I. It cannot go on forever. Like, there's another framework in my mind that I'm thinking of, which is the idea that American politics, the symbol of American politics, is the pendulum, and that eventually things swing back. And I'm just wondering when, like when we are reaching the point where the pendulum starts to swing. And what does that look like? If this political thing that we're worried about isn't necessarily liberalism or conservative conservatism or we've gone too left or right, but more we've allowed so much rote corruption and above the line levels of cronyism that we can just all see and we almost normalize and accept it now. There's going to be a pendulum effect to that too. And it's not like this is a permanent state of affairs. Things always feel that way. It feels like things escalate, escalate, escalate. But it always swings back some way in some sort of action. And I'm wondering what that's going to look like. I think a lot of people assume that it's going to be some revolutionary, violent, massive force. That's some of the writing that I've seen about it is like a populist uprising. A lot of populism, pro populist candidates are succeeding across the board. Trump was even one of them. And is it going to be something that happens within the system or not? Like it feels like there's going to be a reaction to this and what's that going to look like?
- [53:46]
Camille
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it in my view the most likely scenario of sort of the whatever your way out is a kind of really clean, moderate politician who manages to get elected president and ushers in like a really prosperous era for a lot of people. Like it's basically like a figure who climbs some sort of anti corruption, like let's pull us back from the brink. Really inspirational sort of generational type thing.
- [54:23]
John Lowell
Henry Roosevelt muckraker kind of person.
- [54:26]
Camille
Yeah, I mean so just somebody who like can, can win the middle 60% band and have high marks among both their own party and a big chunk of the other party and then you know, is president for four to eight years of economic growth and peace and like, I mean literally, I think it's going to take somebody like that winning and doing it in a really clean fashion that sort of resets the standard for what matters for the country or what people want or you know, like we remember what it's like to just go back to our lives and not have to care so much about politics and the country feels like it's in good hands and that's just like relaxing and you know, it's, you know, I mean that to me it would take something like that. Do I think that's likely anytime soon? It doesn't feel that way.
- [55:14]
Ari Weitzman
No, it does not feel that way. And I mean, especially once you take a kind of global perspective on this. And as you guys alluded to, the Gen Z protests in Nepal, which have played out. Similar scenes have played out in a bunch of other places, Morocco, Madagascar, I think Peru as well, where you essentially have these social media uprisings that lead to real protests, that lead to overthrowing governments in some instances and otherwise severely disrupting the kind of political systems and orders that are there. And there's a sense in which the United States has already had some experience with this. Back in 2020, during COVID there was that wave of kind of what were then described as nationalist uprisings, but perhaps ought to be viewed in the same way that we view these more recent Gen Z riots. That feels like the much more likely progression of things than a return to moderation and people being able to just kind of focus on their lives and care less about politics again, which I think is unfortunate, because that is not a great way to do politics, in my estimation. And we would do far better to find interesting moderate voices who could help create new coalitions, who could build bridges between the parties who have. It's become impossible for them to have conversations with one another. But if you look at the two major parties, I have no idea who the figures are who could actually serve as that bridge. I don't know. I see on the left, Bernie Sanders, AOC Mandani, that is the power center of the Democratic Party at the moment. And there are a number of other prominent figures who are kind of aping Trump in terms of his particular rhetoric and his particular style of politics, which also isn't really about building bridges so much as it is like, kind of turning over the tables in the cathedral there. Gosh, we are awash in metaphors and idioms today. We've got cans of worms. We've got tables and cathedrals now, pendulums and all sorts of other stuff.
- [57:19]
John Lowell
Lots of things are in the room with us today.
- [57:20]
Ari Weitzman
I'm sure I could come up with some more.
- [57:22]
John Lowell
I'm kind of with you, though, on this. Like, I want to be on Isaac's side, that it's going to be a compelling moderate voice and that voice maybe will come, but doesn't seem like it's on the horizon. And I think I kind of want to turn criticism or a line that we get from the left right now about the Trump administration back the other direction, which is we like to think it couldn't happen here, but it very much could. And I think the left usually says that about fascism and autocracy leveling that claim against Trump. But I think you could turn that claim to the right and say, we think that some sort of political destabilization, some big event that's going to be like a leftist uprising of sorts. Like that's the fear on the right. We think that that couldn't happen here, but it could. And that's the way that this could happen is that there's enough discontent that there's going to be a populist movement. Like, we saw hordes of people in the US Capitol. That's not a thing. That's like a.
- [58:25]
Ari Weitzman
No, that happened. Right.
- [58:26]
John Lowell
That's not a fantasy. That's not a fever dream we all had when we all had Covid. Like, that's a thing that happened. I mean, I think so. So that's, there's, there could be very much an echo of that within the next four or five years. We could see storms of people. We're already seeing hordes of people in a very, very different way at ice buildings and detention facilities. I mean, imagine courthouses like the storming of the Bastille. Like, that's a thing that happened at a different place. And we like to think, you know, maybe that wouldn't happen here, but it could. And it, I don't know what that building would look like, and I don't know if it would just be constrained to one place. But I do think that there's a world in which there's some destabilization event and we're looking at the buildings and the monuments and the ideas that were our federal government. And I think that could be an idea to keep in mind. If you're on the Republican side thinking about, like, you're pushing the ball forward a lot right now and the Democrats aren't doing a good job stopping you. That's probably the guardrail to think about of what will happen if you go too far.
- [59:39]
Camille
We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [59:45]
Ari Weitzman
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Did I talk too much? Can't I just let it go? I wish I would stop. Thank you so much.
- [60:10]
Isaac Saul
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- [60:40]
Ari Weitzman
Maybe I should just throw out some more idioms before we get to them organically. Like hornet's nest, sleeping dogs, skeletons in closets.
- [60:48]
Camille
Yeah, that's good. Speaking of skeletons in closets. That's good. You teed me up previously for a transition, but I passed on the opportunity, which was kind of the necessity of people calling out their own side, which I think the sort of biggest story in that vein this week is the Young Republican Nazi group chat, or whatever we're calling it now. We didn't talk about this. We haven't done a newsletter about it or a podcast about it. But I think we have to give it some space here before we wrap up because it feels to me like a pretty big story for anybody who missed it. I guess it's necessary to do, like a quick piece of context here, but basically, apparently there was a group chat with leaders of young Republican groups throughout the country, and it was on Telegram, which is one of these encrypted apps, and somebody leaked the group chat to Politico. And in the group chat, there was quite a bit of kind of gross edgelord type commentary. You know, hard, hard to tell what's real, what's serious, what's a joke, what's not. I mean, you know, obviously a lot of people are claiming things were taken out of context, but I'll, I'll read from the Politico article, just the first couple sentences it says. Leaders of young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked. But they kept typing anyway. They referred to black people as monkeys and the watermelon people and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who believed, who they believed supported slavery. William Hendricks, the Young Kansas Republicans vice chair, use words like nigga and nigga. Variations of a racial slur, which more than it does. Yeah, you've inspired me, Camille, to not be fearful. Variations of a racial slur more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time referred to rape as epic. Peter G. Who at who at the time of who at the time was the chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber. This goes on and on and on. There's Screenshots of the group chat. A few things just establish a. The messages are authentic. One of the people in the chat briefly tried to claim that maybe they were doctored in some way. No evidence of that's been brought forward. Most people are admitting the chat was real political. Has a bunch of different sources again, screenshots, downloads, whatever. This started a wave of blowback. I mean, obviously on the left, people were. I mean, the story was all over my feed from more liberal commentators. There's something deeply unsettling about it because it's sort of. It's these young, quote, unquote, young Republicans who are the future leaders of the party. And I think for a lot of people reading it, it was like, oh my God, this is like, these are the guys coming up next. Um, that's insane. You know, that feels so crazy. The whole attitude that some conservatives have sort of had in response to this has been these are kids, basically. And there's no big, like there's, there's no big story here. It's just a bunch of kind of like 20, 30 year old, 20 year old kids, whatever, being edgelords. And this to me is like where things get really problematic. And I'm curious to hear what you guys think about it, because I do think it's possible to have different opinions and views about this. But the general thrust of it is that they're young and silly and immature and we can't get all worked up about it. JD Vance in particular has kind of been the forefront of taking this position. These guys are in their early 30s and late 20s. Some of them are a couple years younger than J.D. vance, the vice president. Many of them are older than the Doge employees who got brought in to reshape the government. This administration is currently deporting 20 year old kids for op eds that they wrote in support of, you know, the Palestinian cause. They're deporting 20 something year old people for things that they wrote about Charlie Kirk on Twitter after he was assassinated. It's like a total. I mean, it's just like if you're going to have this Standard that a 25 year old or a 28 year old needs to be forgiven for their words, that's okay, you can have that standard, but like, you have to apply it evenly. It just feels like this should not be a hard thing to condemn. And it goes back to like the Overton window shifting like 10 years ago. This is a young Republican. Organizations across the country are getting cleared out. That's what's happening. There is Firings, resignations, mass pressure, whatever. And now it's like the Vice President of the United States is getting ahead of this. Just saying. You're making a story out of nothing. I can't believe you're asking me about a bunch of edgy texts from a bunch of kids. And it's like, well, they're not kids. They're. They're like important leaders in the Republican Party. And they're in their mid, late 20s and early 30s. Like, it feels insane to sort of frame it that way. So, I mean, that was my reaction. I'm curious, like, you know, to play a little bit of devil's advocate or maybe, you know, frame it differently. Like leaked text messages. You know, this is a private conversation that's being made public. There's all sorts of contexts that can be happening outside the text that we don't know about. I certainly have made some, like, very inappropriate, edgy jokes in text messages with friends that I'm sure if they leaked in a vacuum would make me look really bad. But like, I haven't really joked about rape or Hitler or like talked about sending people to the gas chambers or use the N word or, you know, whatever. It's like, I'm not doing that. So I don't know. I want to give a little bit of grace. But it's really frustrating when the people who I think should be condemning this are playing the whole, they're kids, don't. It's not their fault.
- [67:25]
John Lowell
I think maybe if you substitute kids for immature people, it works decently. To me. I think there's a classic age old setup and, you know, mediocre comedy, but it still gets a laugh when you're a part of the, in group of. It's funny when you say the thing you're not allowed to. It's kind of just like a setup for a joke. You say something that's so over the line that in itself is the punchline. Not super clever. There's not a whole lot to it. But it also doesn't imply you actually believe the thing you're saying. You're just saying it because the shock value makes it funny. Like, we don't have to pretend, I think that the people who are posting these texts actually think the things they were saying. I don't think that's true. I think it's in terrible taste. And it's not really like, again, like, it's a joke, but it's not a good joke. But it's still a joke. And it's something that we would excuse in people who are immature, like teenagers, especially those who are really young, haven't been properly socialized yet. So the criticism isn't like, this is shocking and disgusting that you'd say this. It's. This is pretty immature for people who want to build themselves as future leaders. So if it's, if there's a scandal to it, which I think there is one. It's just that this is, you're supposed to be the people that are going to be the next wave of leaders for one of the major parties in the most advanced economy in the world that has like the biggest military in the history of the world, et cetera, et cetera. And this is where your heads are at. Like you're going to have to do better than that. And I'm not outraged. I'm not up in arms about it. It's just that this is pretty childish. And young Republicans doesn't mean children, it means the future leaders. So if you're going to be future leaders, step up and own it and get better. This is just definitely below what a major party should be doing.
- [69:20]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, I mean I've opined on this particular story quite a bit in the past week. I've talked about it on cnn, on Abby Phillips show. I just talked about it on Megyn Kelly's show as well. And in both of those appearances I was pretty relentlessly critical of J.D. vance. But I also made much the same, offered much the same qualification that you did, Ari, that my expectation is that most of these people in this private.
- [69:46]
John Lowell
Group.
- [69:49]
Ari Weitzman
They were joking around. I think there's, I've seen a bunch of different reports about who is actually in, about who is actually in these groups and their ages. And in some cases it seems like there might have been some women in there as well. I'm not sure how much all of that matters. And even if they are joking, you're joking about certain kinds of things in particular kinds of ways may in fact have consequences for you personally and professionally. If those jokes become public. And in this particular case they have. And it seems totally appropriate for there to be consequences. I think the dynamic, however, that makes me particularly annoyed by and frustrated with J.D. vance's response to this and the response of many conservatives, quite frankly, is the kind of casual dismissal, the suggestion that hey, we shouldn't be ruining kids lives over posting some jokes, making some mistakes. I'm gonna tell my kids not to post anything online. Cause it could come back to haunt you. That might be okay if we weren't seeing actual manifestations of a kind of resurgence of antisemitic and white nationalist sentiment in our polity, particularly on the right, but not exclusively. And I wouldn't even say particularly on the right, honestly, like I think a lot of the kind of identity obsession on the left, some of the kind of pro Palestinian stuff, oftentimes, not always, I won't even say most times necessarily, but oftentimes can kind of fuse with and be indistinguishable from something. A kind of anti Semitic sentimentality. One has to be aware of that being out there in the ether. And if you are aware of it, when the opportunity comes to distinguish yourself as a respectable mainstream politician, as a standard bearer for your party from people who are openly flirting with these things, are openly endorsing them, and even people who are prominent or up and coming, aspiring to be prominent figures in your party who are flirting with this stuff casually in a sustained way, you take that opportunity to distinguish yourself from those people. You take that opportunity to call that sort of outrageous behavior out. And I would go further and say you don't just say, well, that's racist. We don't use the N word. I think you have to be very specific about establishing what your affirmative values are, that we assess people based on their individual merit and dignity. We have absolutely no patience for this kind of otherizing, et cetera. That's what you do in response. And I have not seen that happen with J.D. vance. And I can. If I were to make a case to defend him, I'd say it seems like JD Vance is responding to this scandal the way I might have expected someone to respond to any number of the scandals that we've seen in years prior where some kid is getting ready to take their first at bat in college and suddenly there's a video of them singing along to a Lil Wayne song. And they use all the words and oh my God, they've lost their scholarship and they are finished. And they're were a number of stories precisely like that where we essentially contrived a scandal where there was none and destroyed people's lives for the benefit of no one. And actually I just, I missed, I made a mistake there. I said for the benefit of no one. I would restate that and say we destroyed people's lives and in some respects set the stage for some of the kind of resurgent, malignant sentiments that have become so prominent. There is a sense in which, as you mentioned earlier, Isaac and I actually hate it. There were people like us who were saying at the time when Tish James was prosecuting her case. This has a really ugly kind of political taint to it. It should not be the way that we engage in our politics. And in 2020, when the kind of Black Lives Matter moment was happening, I can appreciate all of the noble intentions that were there, but I remember saying on numerous occasions in countless contexts, this could inspire people to become more identitarian. And I think, I mean, I wish it weren't true, but I think it is quite obviously true that those things have in fact happened. And we really do need to contend with the world that we're living in. I don't know if Nick Fuentes is someone who we should view as in the same way as Richard Spencer in 2016. Richard Spencer, I think, was a kind of a threat that was inflated well beyond the proportion of his actual influence and significance. Nick Fuentes, on the other hand, I think, has a tangible real following is actually making inroads in places that I find a bit surprising. And I'm not talking about the Mar? A Lago dinner. I'm talking about more recently in terms of his media appearances, in terms of the success he's having on social media. And I don't think we've learned any of the lessons. They seem to imagine over at YouTube that you can or in Spotify that you can ban Nick Fuentes and suddenly his bad ideas are gone. That's not gonna work. He's got a foothold in the culture and a handhold too, and perhaps a length of rope to catch himself if he falls. This is a real tangible, growing problem. And I think the fact that there is some connection between this, between that phenomena and this scandal with the text messages is something that the administration ought to be aware of, is something that certainly the Vice President of the United States ought to be aware of and that Republicans should be aware of and should speak to directly.
- [75:37]
John Lowell
Question, just to clarify a little bit of what you're saying. So with the issue that you're talking about and you're drawing a line here between the way that we talked about scandals during, like sort of the pre George Floyd post MeToo era of canceling people for saying the wrong thing online, but this instance of people having these text messages link, are you saying that like, I want to try to extend similar grace, or are you saying this is a little different because of the position that they're in?
- [76:11]
Ari Weitzman
I think the current context, because we actually have these. This tangible evidence of kind of a resurgent, again, malignant set of malignant ideas, makes me think that the response from the administration should be more robust. So that's one aspect of it. I think the related aspect however, is this conversation that are happening in the signal chat. I think the fact that these people have some proximity to power means that. And there always should have been consequences for the things that you say in public. I think joking about gas chambers, however, is a lot different in a sustained way. And joking about loving Hitler again in a sustained way is very different than singing along to a Lil Wayne song. And we were literally canceling people for that in various other contexts. And now we're having a conversation about again, these people who in some instances have power in many other, more broadly, I think have some sort of proximity to power and aspirations to be involved in politics who are doing at minimum, I could say unseemly things and the maximum, I might say in some of those cases actually do endorse some of the ugly ideas that they're joking around about. It can be hard to actually distinguish between the two. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to, but I am saying that it's fine for there to be consequences here. Not just fine, totally appropriate for there to be some consequences here. And I would again, if JD Vance were employing the nuance that he seems to want to at least.
- [77:44]
Camille
Sort of.
- [77:44]
Ari Weitzman
Pantomime here, then that would be fine if he was doing it alongside a robust condemnation of the values that are being advocated for in those groups and not simply presenting it as something that is, you know, we shouldn't be destroying kids lives. I don't even want to talk about that. That isn't important. I do think him underscoring the hypocrisy of Democrats who have been unable to condemn, for example, an AG who's running for office having similarly joked about really gross things in a text message. And I think he probably should drop out of the race because given the moment that we're in, having high standards about this sort of stuff isn't crazy to me. But that's not enough. Hypocrisy isn't a justification for awful actions on the part of your party. I also don't think the two things are actually equivalent. This is a lot of people and you guys have done this several times before. The big balls scandal with the Doge kid was the first time that they tried to draw a line in a somewhat awkward place, essentially defending bad behavior. And even there I was like, eh, I don't know. Like is it? Yeah. Does he believe these things? Maybe not. Maybe he was just joking. But sometimes you lose your job when you've said things that are sufficiently bad a sufficient number of times. And I at least want to see some scrutiny because the big balls thing gives way to this. The ICE official who tosses a woman down on video gets fired and then they're like, no, no, don't fire him. It's fine. It's fine for him to toss this woman down who's having her life destroyed as her husband is being deported and her family is being torn apart and she has to wonder about what her future looks like. Yeah, we should totally throw those people to the ground. It's just there's something about it that I think I find particularly disturbing and frustrating.
- [79:36]
Camille
Yeah, I mean, I think like the most direct way to sort of compare it is you can be a, you know, a tough student who writes an op ed as a 20 year old about supporting the Palestinian cause in pretty Milkato's terms, without even, you know, no, like Hamas support or anything. Just basically like calling out what you view as a genocide and the pain and suffering of the Palestinians. And you get snatched up on the street, literally by mass agents for that and then put in jail and then deported. And you're 20 some years old. 20 years old, 21, however old she was. And then you can be a young Republican chapter leader who's in their mid to late twenties, who's joking about, you know, hating Jews and Hitler or saying racist stuff about black people. And there isn't even a slap on the wrist. I mean, not like, not even. Not even like, to Camille's point, not even a public criticism. There's just an active defense or excuse building. And I think that distinction, like that, that is just way too. There's too big of an ocean between those two things. Like, there's no standard there. There's no principled consistency. There's nothing. I'm actually of the view. I mean, I. You know, one of the most popular pieces I ever wrote for Tangle was Confessing My Sins, which was a story about just like all the horrible stuff I used to say when I was 16 to 20 years old. And looking back on old Facebook posts I have, and, you know, like using gay slurs and rapping the lyrics and saying the N word and whatever and like. And just like having gone through that experience and doing those things as a young man and then having the evolution of like, you know, the first time, like I remember really vividly the first time I was probably like 16 or 17 and I was hanging out. My oldest brother's five years older than me and I was with one of his friends who's, like, 22 or 23, and we were, like, talking about. And I always said something like, you know, like, that kid's, like, a fag, dude. Whatever. And he was just like, what'd you just say, dude?
- [82:05]
John Lowell
It's a serious podcast today.
- [82:07]
Camille
Yeah, yeah. And he was like. And he just said. And he just said to me, like. He just said, like, dude, you sound like a fucking idiot. Like, why are you talking like that? You know? Like, you're just. It's so gross, dude. Like, you sound like you're in seventh grade. Like, you're still using that word. And I was, like, 16, 17, like, feeling like I was like a. You know, growing up. It's like the age where you're like. And I had, like, this older, cool friend, like, brother's friend, who was just like, dude, you're like a loser. Like, you talk like that. And I was like, oh. Like, that's like, I. That is gross. Like, why do I talk? You know? And it, like. And I will remember that moment for the rest of my life. And, you know, like, it shifted the way. And he didn't, like, publicly shame me. He didn't, like, try and ruin my. He was just like, dude, what? Like, why are you. You know. And it. And then, like, by the time I was 20 or 21, I'm hearing, like, younger kids from where I grew up talking like that. And I became the dude who was like, dude, what? Like, why? You know, like. And it shifted my whole. And I had, like, the grace and the time to sort of evolve and change and whatever. And so all this to say, like, I've always been somebody who's, like, a really strong proponent of, like, the evolution and a little bit of grace and, like, you know, the things that you think or say when you're 16 or 21 or even 25 are not going to be the things you think or say when you're 30 or 35 or 40. And that goes on forever. And we can, like, give people space to change, and we can hold them accountable while doing that in, like, reasonable ways. And so when, you know, Camille, like, when you're talking about. I mean, there were so many examples in that sort of, like, 2019 to 2022 era, where, yeah, there's, like, a college recruit who then, like, a TikTok video of them, like, rapping while they're driving their mom's Cadillac or some stupid thing, and they say the N word while they're rapping along, like a Lil Wayne Song all of a sudden has their entire life destroyed, their scholarship removed. Like, I was out there being like, this is not good. Like, this is not how we should do this. You know, like, there are so many good kids who just need to be taught in a way that doesn't destroy them and alienate them and like push them out of society and make them hate the people who are kind of policing their language. And we have ways to do that. And so I'm generally positioned towards grace in this instance. Like, these are people with power, who are people that are supposed to be future leaders of the political world. And they're people who. I think the thing that sort of really feels weird about it is it's happening kind of publicly in the group chat. It's like there's sort of this, like they're egging each other on and it's. They're making it cool and acceptable. And I think it. To your point, Camille, I'm a lion. I think it's, it is a place where there should be consequences and it's appropriate for there to be consequences for the things that they said. The degree of those consequences doesn't have to be like, this person who said this thing when they were 25 in 10 years is like prohibited from running for office. Like, that's not what I'm saying. But like, maybe they shouldn't be the chapter leader of the Arkansas Republican Party for young Republicans. Like, I think that's a perfectly good consequence and they can spend some time in time out and have six months of this reflecting on your language and what you did and why this is wrong and the standard should be set from the top down. And it's just so unbelievably disappointing to see somebody like J.D. vance just wave this away as a non story and whatever. Especially given that he's the same person who's advocating for people to have their lives destroyed or their rights taken away from them or their immigrant status removed because they posted something on Twitter or they wrote an op ed when they were 20 years old that was vaguely inappropriate in the J.D. vance worldview. That part really sucks. So, yeah, it's like I wanna be the guy advocating for the grace and the free speech and the learning and the lessons. And also, like, it's okay to hold people accountable in a situation like this, in my view.
- [86:22]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, no, every word.
- [86:26]
Camille
I've now.
- [86:27]
Ari Weitzman
Even the naughty ones.
- [86:28]
Camille
Yeah, I was going to say I've now.
- [86:31]
Ari Weitzman
Although I won't do that. You've said landmines for sure.
- [86:34]
Camille
I will not do the thing where.
- [86:35]
Ari Weitzman
I confess all my sins publicly.
- [86:36]
John Lowell
We're going to ask for peace for a little bit.
- [86:38]
Camille
We're good.
- [86:38]
Ari Weitzman
And I will say there's a friend who has said on a number of occasions, and I think it's actually that if you don't have a text message from me that you could theoretically use to blackmail me and get me in trouble and perhaps cancel me, then we're probably not good friends, to be totally honest. So not only have I said bad things in the past as a child, I get. I work blue sometimes, sometimes being maybe yesterday. But there's a difference between these two things. And actually being curious about the difference, I think, is the important thing is the important ass is the important quality that we need to maintain in a moment like this. I have too many friends who had their lives completely upended and ruined. And some of those friends I made after they had their lives upended and ruined during MeToo, during the kind of social justice moment that we experienced over the past decade or so. And a lot of those people had their lives ruined on the basis of just, like, vague allegations. And that was unacceptable. What's also unacceptable is to develop an attitude where the evidence doesn't matter and the circumstance and the context doesn't matter at all. In the other direction, we can excuse anything. Everything is permissible because of the bad thing that was done to us before or because you guys are ignoring some other bad thing that's taking place in the world. Neither of those worlds are worlds I want to live in.
- [88:08]
Camille
All right, we're going to have to wrap up here because we're doing our unusual morning recording time, and we've got an awesome newsletter coming out. If you're listening to this, it should be out already. We're publishing dueling interviews today with Anne Applebaum and Richard Sacwa on the war in Ukraine. Two people have very different perspectives about how the war started, why it started, what's happening now, what's going to happen in the future. And we've done something kind of cool with the format where we've put their responses sort of side by side so you can see them. I think it's going to be a really interesting piece in the newsletter. Also going to release the interviews on the podcast, so they should be in our feed sometime today, if you're interested in that. I think that means it's time for some grievances. So, John, maybe you can hit the music, my friend.
- [89:01]
Isaac Saul
The airing of grievances.
- [89:06]
Ari Weitzman
Between you and me, I think your country is placing A lot of importance on shoe removal.
- [89:12]
Camille
I hate Citibank. They will never be a sponsor of the show. I will probably never say anything publicly nice about them, ever. I have a couple credit cards. I got a Citibank double cash back credit card as our business credit card for the Tangle. Some members of the Tangle staff, so four or five of us have these credit cards and it has been an experience from hell. It is like it is basically declined every second time you use it. Their fraud alert system seems entirely broken. The way that they do their fraud alert system is that if the card gets blocked, you can't just text them and say, yes, I was the person who did this charge, retry the card. You have to call in, get somebody on the customer service line, and then they read you the last month of charges on the card and you have to respond in the affirmative, yes, that each of those charges was you. And then they reactivate the card for you. It's been a total nightmare. And then it all came to this unbelievable crescendo a few weeks ago where the card got declined because Magdalena tried to pay for a Facebook ad with it. And when I called Citibank, the customer service person told me that they would be sending me in the mail in snail mail a PIN number that I would have to get receive in snail mail and then call back when the PIN number arrived and read the PIN number over the phone in order to turn the card back on. And that, my friends, was the straw that broke the camel's back. I elevated. I did something I never do. I karened out. I was like, okay, I need to talk to your supervisor. Like, you're like, we have all of our newspapers paper subscriptions, our slack subscription. Like, I'm getting emails from Slack. We tried to charge your card to re up your slack subscription and it's failed. Like, they froze the entire card. So all the business expenses that are on the credit card are being declined that are on like recurring charges. I'm just getting emails about this, getting text messages about like the card getting declined. And this woman's just telling me like, yeah, it's. It's going to take five to 10 business days for the envelope to get there. And then you'll have to call us back and just read the PIN number over the phone. So I promise I would never, ever use Citibank again. I'm planning to pay off and cancel the card shortly. We're going to move to another service that a reader recommended, which I'm really excited about. So I'm out on Citibank. That's my big grievance. The sort of good news story that I just want to inject at the end is I also have a Chase Sapphire credit card. Incredible credit card. It's heavy. It's like thick. They make it so it feels.
- [92:00]
Ari Weitzman
Don't go too far, Isaac. They got to pay. They got to pay for this guy in the middle.
- [92:04]
Camille
You have to pay. You have to pay for it. Yeah, Chase, you can sponsor the show. I will do a Chase Sapphire card. Read down, post read ad for the show. It's just, you get access to the lounge, you get all these perfect benefits. There's travel stuff. It's awesome. And recently I got a text from Chase that was like, hey, your card just got used for some vacation thing that I did not buy. We think this is a fraudulent chart. I almost never get fraud alerts from Chase. I text back, yes, that is a. Like, that's a fraudulent charge. Or I said, no, that wasn't me. And they text me back and they say, okay, thank you. Your card has been canceled. A new one is in the mail. It'll arrive tomorrow. All via text message. One text all via tomorrow. And we'll update your Apple Pay and whatever. And so literally in the span of an hour, I open my phone and my Apple wallet has a new Chase credit card that they have somehow updated via, like, this token technology. They have all the auto payments on my computer, all the subscriptions. I have been switched over to the new Chase credit card. And then, yes, the next day I wake up and I have a first class FedEx mail at my front door and open it up and it's my new Chase Sapphire credit card. And that, my friends, is how you fucking do business. I was like, this is awesome. I will be a Chase customer for the rest of my life. Incredible credit card, great business, great company. And that's the good news. Ending to my grievance about Citibank, who I will never be working for again or working with again. So that's it.
- [93:42]
Ari Weitzman
Okay, well, the story has a happy ending. I will Isaac have to flag you, however, for using a slur, Karen?
- [93:49]
Camille
Yeah.
- [93:51]
Ari Weitzman
Cause you used it as a slur.
- [93:52]
Camille
My third slur of the day that.
- [93:54]
John Lowell
I put in that one. You used it as a slur.
- [93:57]
Ari Weitzman
That's a little bit.
- [93:58]
John Lowell
That's dropping a casual F bomb, too, which we've also got a lot of complaints about.
- [94:02]
Camille
Yeah, I'm sorry about Kurt. I will say I have a very bad. I have a really foul mouth. I've always had really used really bad language. It's a thing I'm working on. I've restrained myself so much on this podcast, but sometimes I want to say.
- [94:15]
John Lowell
Like, I've known Isaac forever, and I think a lot of people have used the nickname for him, the mouth. And that's a good indication of the mouth is unchanged.
- [94:28]
Ari Weitzman
Oh, my God.
- [94:29]
Camille
This is as clean as you get me. So much fun. Yeah. I try so hard to not curse on the show because I know it bothers people, and we have, like, religious. I have a very religious uncle who writes into me sometimes and says, you just clean it up a little bit. And I'm just like, I'm trying really hard, but it's language is expansive and a beautiful thing, and I think foul language should be part of it. And I do my best to keep it pg 13 most of the time, but. All right, who's next? Yeah.
- [94:54]
Ari Weitzman
Gosh, this makes me want to watch Deadwood again. My wife used to hate it because of the profanity, but it's like Shakespearean use of profanity. Amazing. In fact, I'm gonna change mine now. I was gonna say something else before, but you've inspired me, Isaac. I am flying cross country almost every week. Over the course of the next year, it might be 40 out of 52 weeks I will be on a plane, and in many of those instances, it might be cross country. And I'm doing most of my flying on a particular airline, JetBlue, and I've obviously got very high status on the airline. Not the highest, but I will in a matter of weeks. And I'm a little frustrated because the program is inadequately generous. It's way too hard to get MIN upgrades. I shouldn't have to pay the full price for the MIN upgrade, given the volume of dollars I'm spending with you. And apparently, to get a corporate account with Mint JetBlue's Mosaic program, one needs to have, like, 2100 person staff and be booking hundreds of thousands of dollars. In business, if one person is spending 30 to $40,000 a year with you, I have to imagine there's a way to make their experience on your flights a little more generous, just slightly better. Like, maybe let me get the upgrade at no cost for, like, half the time. At least a quarter of the time. Now it's like almost never. And I find that absolutely unacceptable. I do appreciate the service. I think the Mint cabin, pretty good staffing is good, but the program is just poorly designed. And at a minimum, you should at least work something out with Me, because I suppose I'm an influencer or something. Maybe I can help sell some stuff for you. So just reach out, Jeff. Luke, like, this is an opportunity for us to turn this negative into a positive.
- [96:45]
Camille
I rarely hear JetBlue slander. That's. Most people only say good things about JetBlue.
- [96:51]
Ari Weitzman
This is qualified, qualified criticism. I think there's an opportunity for them to do better.
- [96:57]
John Lowell
Call it actionable feedback. Yeah.
- [97:00]
Ari Weitzman
Yes.
- [97:00]
Camille
It reminds me of that Louis CK bit about, like, how just, like, unbelievably cynical human beings are that, like, we can just be doing something like flying on a plane 500 miles per hour in the air, through the sky, like in space. Just this incredible feat of technology, and we're like, your WI fi's not working.
- [97:25]
John Lowell
Yeah, everything's incredible and nobody's happy. Yeah, I think that launched. This is like the second of three episodes that Louis C.K. has sort of come up organically. It's interesting.
- [97:37]
Camille
Well, the other one was because I saw that picture of him that I was like, oh, my God, that's what Louis CK looks like now. I mean, he looked terrible. I couldn't believe he aged, like, incredibly poorly in five years.
- [97:48]
John Lowell
Yeah, well, our blessings up to Louis ck. I think my. My grievance is going to be. Yeah, we are getting that explicit tag. Right. Anyway, the. The grievance that I have is rather quotidian. I'll make it pretty short and simple, which is from my perspective. I had a pretty funny approach to this podcast this morning, which was I was getting ready. Isaac sends the link to the recording studio. Click that link, come on over, get ready to start recording. And I go to respond something into Slack, and every letter that I hit sends the message. So I'm trying to say, like, on my way. And just like, oh, send and send.
- [98:33]
Ari Weitzman
And I'm like, wait.
- [98:35]
John Lowell
And I go to write hold, and it's just H O L D. And I'm like, what's going on?
- [98:40]
Ari Weitzman
Understand what was happening?
- [98:42]
John Lowell
I'm filling you in now. So the. Then the computer, like, I try to shift programs, and I do. I'm on a Mac, so Command tab, and it tabs over a couple times, goes to my browser. I find after this has happened that my enter and tab keys have both been stuck, which is a dangerous combination of keys to get stuck because those are both very, very actionable keys. So goes to Chrome, cycles through my bookmark tabs, opens up a doc that I have saved, starts adding new lines to it. Just like, that's a bunch of spaces in the middle of this document. And then I'm like, oh, shoot. And I try to shift over to another program. Like, I bring open the system preferences to shut down, and then the tab goes too far, shifts back to Chrome, shifts to a doc we're actively working on this morning that we're getting ready to publish. Adds a bunch of new lines in the middle of it. We're always trying to get these interviews transcribed so we can send them out. And then whole page of new line characters like, oh, crap. So I have to then shift back. Then, like, force quit the application, Force quit the entire, like, the entire computer. And then have to send you guys this text this morning that's like, sorry, I'm having a little bit of a computer, I guess, like, exorcism that I have to perform right now where I think my keyboard was a little bit possessed by something, so I had to shut it off, clean the keys. And this is the last grievance that I have is that there's this feature with this generation of MacBook Airs that I think it's any key, but if it's not any key, it's the tab key that if you hit tab, the computer will restart. So I want the computer to be off so I can clean it, but the tab key's stuck, so it turns itself back on as I'm trying to clean the keyboard, which ended up not being a huge issue because I'm not signed in yet. So it's just entering a string of nonsense characters in the password, clean the keyboard and up and ready to go. Wasn't necessarily a big deal, but it was just a really fun, weird thing to be a passenger for as my computer decided to take me on this ride this morning.
- [101:05]
Camille
Could I throw something out there, which is that I think having to turn your computer off to clean it is like a wives tale. I decided at some point in my life that that was just like a wives tale. Like, it doesn't matter. There's no difference. I just, like, I just spray my computer and clean it while it's on.
- [101:21]
John Lowell
Well, if you're trying to clean your keyboard, it's very risky if you have applications up. Because you're just saying, like, I'm going to roll the dice and we're going to see what's going to happen as I smash the entire keyboard.
- [101:34]
Camille
Yeah, yeah, definitely. But I'm more like, I X everything out, close everything down, My computer's just on, and I just rip it. Oh, sure. Well, because, like, I think that I always interpreted having to turn your Computer off as, like, the fact that there were, like, electrical things firing on the computer might cause some sort of like. And then one day I was like, that's so dumb. Like, why do I think it's like.
- [101:56]
John Lowell
Turning your car off when you're filling the tank? It's actually a solar thing.
- [102:00]
Ari Weitzman
Oh, okay.
- [102:02]
Camille
Also doesn't matter anymore. It used to matter a lot, but it doesn't matter.
- [102:05]
John Lowell
One of the kids that I coached was a very, very interesting person. He was a hobbyist race car driver as well as, like, an aeronautical engineer in college. And I loved being in his car. And we carpooled to tournaments. And he would always pull up to ExxonMobil because he said they have superior petroleum. I'm not sure how much I'm on board with that, but it was a.
- [102:27]
Camille
So we're taking Exxon sponsorship, Chase sponsorship, JetBlue sponsorship. Corporate sellouts. Yeah.
- [102:32]
John Lowell
And he would just pull in, have the car turned on, start filling the pump and say, like, you can just do this. You know, people turn it off and it wastes seconds. Like, waste seconds.
- [102:42]
Camille
Okay.
- [102:42]
John Lowell
That's very much the mentality of a hobbyist race car.
- [102:45]
Ari Weitzman
There's a lot in aggregate, you know.
- [102:46]
Camille
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [102:48]
John Lowell
All right.
- [102:49]
Ari Weitzman
Cell phones on planes.
- [102:50]
Camille
Yeah. Well, well, well, yeah, I think cell phones. Well, we can talk about that next show.
- [102:56]
John Lowell
We'll open with that.
- [102:57]
Camille
I think if everybody's using their cell phones on a plane, that's actually dangerous. Yeah, I read one.
- [103:02]
John Lowell
Yeah, it's about signal check, what we'll get to. We'll open the show. Stay tuned for a good.
- [103:08]
Camille
Stay tuned about. All right, we'll see you guys in Los Angeles, Irvine, California next week. Don't forget, we'll do this in person and it'll be great. All right, see you guys.
- [103:21]
John Lowell
Bye.
- [103:21]
Ari Weitzman
Bye.
- [103:23]
Camille
Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will K. Back and associate editors Hunter Asperson, Audrey Morgan, Moorhead Bailey, Saul, Lindsay 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 website@retangle.com Tonight's meal, tilapia surprise with boiled cabbage. Begin cooking steps 1:50 now.
- [104:09]
Isaac Saul
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