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- [00:00]
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- [01:03]
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- [01:38]
Isaac Saul
Coming up, the Voting Rights Act. We talk about the White House correspondence dinner and the assassination attempt on President Trump. Our first ever celebrity fight between two members of the media, including a recent guest on the Tango podcast. And then a lot of talk about who's the most athletic and why. It's a great show. You're going to enjoy it. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Suspension of the Rules podcast. I'm your host Isaac Saul, recording here from my home studio today with Tangle Editor at large Camille Foster and Managing Editor Ari Weitzman. Gentleman, I think like the last 24 hours have just been an insane fire hose of like particularly insane fire hose of breaking news. We just had Jerome Powell who left the Fed his last Fed meeting by not changing interest rates. Ari, what did you say? You made a really funny joke in Slack.
- [02:49]
Ari Weitzman
Well, I just said that he died how he lived.
- [02:51]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. Yeah, that was good. He's, he, he wrapped his tenure without adjusting rates. Yesterday, the Trump administration leveled new charges against former FBI director James Comey for a seashell decoration on the beach, as far as I can tell.
- [03:10]
Ari Weitzman
And then that's minimizing it. Isaac, you're on this shit list now that doesn't exist.
- [03:14]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, you're right.
- [03:15]
Camille Foster
We're going to 86, Isaac.
- [03:17]
Isaac Saul
That's what we're going to do.
- [03:19]
Ari Weitzman
You could be arrested for that.
- [03:21]
Isaac Saul
Wait, okay, hold on. Actually, quick temp check. What do you guys think about the 86 Seashell thing? We weren't going to talk about this, but we're here, so we weren't.
- [03:33]
Ari Weitzman
I mean, have any of you worked in food service? I guess is the first question.
- [03:37]
Camille Foster
Yeah. Yes is the answer. And I was getting ready to ask a similar question. Like, have either of you used 86 in a normal context? And when you did, were you referring to an assassination? My presumption is that for most people the answer is absolutely not.
- [03:55]
Ari Weitzman
We're usually referring to the fact that we're out of certain appetizer enough to list it on the menu any longer.
- [04:01]
Camille Foster
Murder him, 5 years in jail, 10.
- [04:06]
Isaac Saul
I can honestly say I don't think I've ever used the term 86ing. Anyone or anything or anything's been 86 in my normal everyday conversation. So I was sensitive to the fact that some people would interpret that message in that particular way. Now, do I think it's indictment worthy? It was like an Instagram. Like a weird Comey Instagram beach post. Right. I haven't really looked into the specifics of what they're alleging. The implication is a threat, a call for the President's life, I suppose. All I know is specifics.
- [04:43]
Camille Foster
It's a three page indictment that apparently it took them a year to draft.
- [04:46]
Isaac Saul
Wonderful.
- [04:47]
Ari Weitzman
Which is why it's coming out after the other indictment, which is.
- [04:50]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. You know, in times like these, there's one great conservative man I trust. His name's Andrew McCarthy at National Review. And I read the first few sentences of his piece, which made it very clear to me I did not need to pay attention to this and nothing was gonna come of it. And I thought, okay, I'm just.
- [05:08]
Ari Weitzman
Mr. McCarthy, confirm my priors for me.
- [05:10]
Isaac Saul
Yeah.
- [05:10]
Ari Weitzman
All right. Sorry, I'm out.
- [05:12]
Isaac Saul
Thank you. I'm.
- [05:13]
Ari Weitzman
You know how I love not talking about the Comey story, so I'm thrilled that we can hopefully just dismiss this one.
- [05:18]
Isaac Saul
All right, well, the other big piece of news that we got, which I do actually want to discuss, is this Supreme Court ruling that came down. It is early in the development of what just happened, but the Supreme Court has weakened the Voting Rights Act, I think we could say, fairly I think that's a pretty nonpartisan framing of it. There is a piece of legislation called the Voting Rights Act. This ruling is definitely removing some teeth from that legislation. We covered this story back in October. I wrote pretty passionately in the newsletter and spoke about on the podcast my take around the whole Supreme Court case, which was basically, it was infuriating. This was an infuriating circle, like circular firing squad of gerrymandering. And I mean, effectively what happened is Republicans gerrymandered a bunch of black, black voters into a district it, you know, that sort of blew up. Democrats came back and tried to create a whole minority majority district that then Republicans used that response to take it to the Supreme Court to end racial gerrymandering in a like with a very obvious pursuit of future gerrymanders in Louisiana that are going to pack black voters into increasingly minority majority districts so they can reduce the number of seats that Democrats get in Congress. And it's frustrating for me at least, because I think the end game here is that we're just going to see a bunch more gerrymandering and many more voters who are going to have their power diluted. I think it's also frustrating because there is an alternative universe that we could live in where the quote unquote end of racial gerrymandering is a really good development. I'm a little skeptical about us being there yet. I think we are in a place now where race is going to be used to determine the way political operatives are gerrymandering states and districts. And then they're going to call it partisan gerrymandering. And the effect is going to be fewer competitive races across the country and probably worse representation for a lot of black voters who we know on aggregate on average, tend to vote for Democratic politicians. It's kind of where I'm sitting right now. I'll just read the New York Times lead here. The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a voting map in Louisiana and with it dealt a blow to a landmark civil rights law and opened the door for other states to redraw their congressional maps in ways that could affect elections for years to come. As just an exercise in how different news outlets cover this, I will now read the Wall Street Journal lead to this story. The Supreme Court on Wednesday sharply restricted states from using race to draw voting districts that help minority communities elect their preferred candidates. The 6:3 decision, which divided the Court along ideological lines, further weakens the Voting Rights act and could prompt some states to attempt to quickly redraw their congressional maps before this Year's midterm election. So some similarities there, some differences. Camille, I'm gonna come to you first. You had the great good fortune of sitting down with David French today on your podcast. David, obviously, is a popular guest here on Tangle. He's been on the show a few times. He is also a scholar of the Supreme Court and the law. I'm curious to hear a little bit about what you heard from him. Where you're sitting right now, what you're thinking about this piece of legislation and the Voting Rights act and the implications for it now that the Supreme Court has handed down this ruling.
- [09:03]
Camille Foster
Yeah, well, I mean, it's pure good luck that we booked David maybe a month and a half ago, and then it couldn't happen, and we just rescheduled randomly for a day. And it happens to be the day when we get two Supreme Court decisions. And on the podcast, we talked to him about both of them. One was unanimous, and, generally speaking, a win for free speech. That's all I need to say about that. The other, a lot more contentious. As you mentioned, Isaac, and the way David contextualized things was he suggested that the core of this is really the challenge of trying to differentiate between racial and political gerrymandering because of the overlap that you alluded to a moment ago, and that the decision that the court reached today is one that, for me, as someone who's an individualist, there are dimensions of it that I find pretty refreshing. The aspiration is to not have the law kind of addressing these people as members of particular ancestral groups. And in that regard, it is interesting, and one might regard it as a win. But it's also the case that it further complicates a legal standard that was already pretty ambiguous. A case comes to trial, and when one is trying to make determination as to whether or not this is racial discrimination or political gerrymandering, the standard of proof is not really clear here. And it seems to have gotten more ambiguous. And as David outlined it, his great concern is that it is perhaps impossible to really actually identify instances of racial discrimination and gerrymandering absent someone outright saying, I am doing this because I don't want black people to have representation. You can essentially say pretty much anything up to that point. And if you're not a complete idiot, you ought to be able to evade any sort of prosecution. From my own standpoint, and me and David kind of duked it out on this for a while. I don't know that I'm particularly concerned about that. It seems to me that there is at least an argument to be made that bad policy is bad policy. And while I care a great deal about racial discrimination, I'm happy for there to be a really exceptionally high standard for actually prosecuting cases on those grounds. But for the most part, like, voters actually have a lot of remedies for dealing with bad policy. Some of them are really challenging. You could vote, obviously, you could move and get out of certain jurisdictions. And an injurious policy, whether it's motivated by racial discrimination or something else, is just an injurious policy. I'm far less compelled by the notion of, like, black electoral power as a kind of abstract concept. And I worry about trying to essentially police beliefs and sentiments through the law.
- [12:05]
Ari Weitzman
There's a lot there that I think I'm willing to agree with and a lot that I'm willing to disagree with. And I want to start by just like, winding back, because I think you're thinking a couple orders, like, down in complexity, which is. Which is good. Like, we want to get in the weeds on this stuff, but to like, bring it all the way back to root level if we are going to be weakening Section 2 of the Voting Rights act, which forbids any electoral body from drawing districts in such a way that it considers race, or like, is in some way packing, cracking, diminishing minority voting power. That was kind of a proxy that was straining under the weight of having to be the only line of defense for any kind of gerrymandering. So we were using this policy that is in one legislate piece of legislation designed to address civil rights, especially in the civil rights era. It has been a very useful section for us, but it is being relied on to do the work of a system that is taking advantage of it at every turn. We the only thing preventing out and out partisan gerrymandering is that you can't really consider race and race as a somewhat reliable proxy for partisanship, as much as we could define it at all. Camille. I know, like, we won't get into the weeds on that, but with that said, with that gone, like, the floodgates kind of open up and that's like the next order complexity here. If we're going to be removing this portion of the law, we have nothing really left to prevent from partisan gerrymandering. I don't really know what kind of remedies voters have that feel direct for that, because moving pretty complex as a fix to that, especially if the districts are just going to be redrawn so frequently. Like, that's not a Great remedy. And then if the districts do get redrawn, politicians can just choose who they want to vote for them. And then it becomes harder to make your voice heard in elections. So absent there being some reform that is going to actually address directly the way we draw districts and prevent partisan gerrymandering, it becomes a really difficult position to be in, like the law we want to try. We would love to have the Supreme Court just decide cases based solely on the law and legal theory. I think it, it starts to become gray for, for people like, I don't know, normies. I'll say, like me, I don't have a law degree. I don't really get too much into the details with the cases as much as Isaac and Audrey do like our another editor on the staff. And I think kind of about these on the ground implications, these cases a little bit more and the on the ground implications to this are just pretty staggering. And it seems like without Congress existing in a way that can reliably create legislation to do the thing that prevents them from cheating, then we're going to have the cheating first. And it's going to be really tough to resolve that in any way that feels satisfactory now that this is gone. So, I mean, I guess in an ideal world we would have had voting reform first and then the Supreme Court case after, but that's not the word we're in now.
- [15:27]
Camille Foster
I actually think I agree with every single word of that.
- [15:33]
Ari Weitzman
What did I disagree with? And wait.
- [15:36]
Camille Foster
Well, I didn't complete, I didn't kind of complete the argument. Like what? The final thing I would say is if the concern is gerrymandering, we should address gerrymandering. And there are better approaches to gerrymandering than what is happening across most of the country. Even if states like California, where I happen to live, are abandoning the better way forward in favor of political gerrymandering. Maybe it's time for some sort of national statute related to gerrymandering that requires everyone to have independent gerrymandering, independent district drawing proposals of some sort. That seems like a sensible remedy to me. The kind of race obsessed, race centered approach to trying to police elections and permitting this kind of political gerrymandering like that, on the other hand, strikes me as far less valuable.
- [16:28]
Isaac Saul
I mean, this is the part of this that I find so infuriating. And it's why I wrote in October that this was like a pull my hair out moment to watch the court and watch conservatives and liberals navigate this. And actually tomorrow, Audrey Moorhead, one of our editors is going to be penning the take tomorrow. And I think her and I, she would agree with, see this issue pretty differently. I've written a lot about this, and I got the crack at oral arguments, so I wanted to give her an opportunity to write the take tomorrow. But we were jousting a little bit on slack about it. And I was just saying it's very obvious to me what comes next, which is that Republicans are going to take maximal advantage of this. They're going to try and take maximal advantage of this. And she was like, yeah, but that doesn't mean the Voting Rights act is constitutional. And I was like, that's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that the Voting Rights act is constitutional. I'm saying that the Voting Rights act was the thing that was preventing what's about to happen from happening. And now it's going to happen. And that feels like a really bad outcome to me. And I was agonized about this when oral arguments happened. And one of the I referenced Andrew McCarthy in National Review. Well, in October, National Review's editors published this piece, after oral arguments, or right before them, titled End Racial Gerrymandering. And you know, what I wrote in my take was one might expect the editors at National Review writing that piece to spend some time talking about Republicans who are cracking and packing black voters into single districts in Louisiana and all across the south, literal racial gerrymandering. But no, they spend their piece writing about Section 2 and how it was never about being able to racially gerrymander minority majority districts, which I think is true. But the whole point of the way section 2 is being used now is that it was in response to the fact that these black voters were already having their voting power diluted. So I get uncomfortable, I think, in a really similar place you do, Camille, when the conversation sort of veers into talking about black voters like they are some monolith and their politics are 100% predictable, and they're always going to vote for Democrats or whoever the minority candidate or whatever is. Like, that stuff makes me feel really icky, and I hate wading into that water. But there's like this sort of unavoidable if you're going to talk about partisan gerrymandering and racial gerrymandering, which it sounds like, David, and you spoke about, it is very hard to determine when it's one versus the other. And it's like this ultimate cover for the people who gerrymander. So, you know, there's a map in California that Somebody shared on Twitter. That's drawable. That's 50 to 0 Democratic voters in a state. 52 to 0 Democratic voters in a state that has more Republicans than basically any Indiana, for instance. Yeah, than Indiana. And that map will become a reality if Republicans try and flip 12, 15, 20 seats across the south that they can't currently flip. And it just feels like we're opening the floodgates and we're saying there's nothing we can do. I worry about the closeness to the election. I mean, we're going to now have a sprint in a midterm election where it looks like Republicans are about to get wiped out. They are clearly gonna try to do their damnedest to lessen that blow by gerrymandering as many states as they can before the election gets here under this new precedent. Supreme Court's just rolled out. And I do really, genuinely think it's a complicated question whether the VRA is constitutional or not. And I think for the Supreme Court's purposes, that's the only question that matters. Their job is not to consider the political implications. That's not their mess to clean up. That's what we did as voters. It's what Congress did as members of Congress. It's what the drafters of the Voting Rights act did when they drafted the legislation. But. But, like, now, that's the reality we're all going to have to live in. And that part is particularly tough. So, yeah, I don't really know where we go from here. I'm very, very worried about the speed with which I expect all these gerrymanders to start coming down. And I'm worried about the legal fights and any kind of ambiguity we have on where you're supposed to vote, what district you're in. You know, we are not that far away from the midterms, so imagining some new maps get approved in the next couple months, and then those maps get challenged, and all these voters in places like Louisiana or Georgia or wherever else are getting letters in the mail about their polling stations changing and then changing back. And then there's the challenge. And, like, there's a good chance this gets pretty ugly pretty quick. And I think that'll probably favor Republicans, I suspect. I don't know for sure. I do think, and last thought, I guess, which maybe I'd throw back to you guys before we move on. I do wonder how much what we've seen of the last few months dissuades Republicans here. We watched Trump start this gerrymandering war in Texas, and then we watched him promptly start to lose the gerrymandering war. And they are now, Republicans are now kind of in the negative on the seats that they've attained because of California's response and Virginia's response. We know this Florida map is being considered and it may get through, it may not. But I don't think the reward that Trump was hoping to reap has actually come to fruition. And my sort of saving grace is that Republicans in a state like Louisiana think to themselves, hey, we could go for a six zero map but we risk making three of those districts purple and then we're in big trouble when we currently have this 4, 2 map where we know we have four seats that are locked up and maybe that prevents them from barreling forward. I don't know if that's Pollyannish or how you guys view that possibility, but it's kind of my last hope for what stops us from more gerrymandering in the immediate future.
- [23:01]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, I mean it's real politique to say we need to consider the potential downsides in addition to the upsides. I think it'd be Pollyannish to say we're going to get a bunch more Indianas, which I guess second Indiana reference to the pod. But the same week that the University of Indiana won the college football national championship, Indiana voted not to redistrict do their mid decade redistricting, which was very memorable. And I think it would be overly optimistic to say other states are going to do that on a principled ground like Indiana did in round one of the gerrymandering wars. So it's possible, but I think it's probably more likely that it's just an all out blitz, as much as it can be. I don't know really what regulations there are in each state at the state level for what the deadline will be to get those maps out ahead of the election. Like you said, there's an election coming up not that far away from now. And if I'm a voter and I know my district, it's been the same the last three cycles and it's suddenly changing. I'm going to want to know where it's going to be as early as possible. And I'm sure there are states that have different statutes for when that possibility is and it's going to get confusing. And to Camille's point earlier, Isaac, I'm not sure if you made this. I think it's something we all kind of agree on. If there were a national statute that could legislate how these redistricting processes happen, then how does that even work with all the state statutes? That'd be a really hard thing to navigate. So the waters are so muddy, and amid all that confusion, I don't really see it as likely that Republicans or Democrats step down. I see it as like Wild west. Right now. Everybody's going to rush to get as much of an advantage as they can because the other guy's going to do the same thing. And then when the dust settles with the new Congress next year, then maybe we'll start to address changes after all the absurdities happen. Maybe it'll be another blitz to 2030, but I think right now it's just going to get worse before it gets better.
- [25:09]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, the real solution to all of this is probably just having an actual representative congress with like 10,000 members or something.
- [25:17]
Ari Weitzman
But we're not going to get that random assignment representation. It's a theory that I've heard pick up some steam. I'm not saying I endorse it, but
- [25:25]
Isaac Saul
I'm not saying I endorse it either. But it's got my attention. I'll say somebody did an AI generated image of what Congress would look like if all the members of Congress were and it was like this huge Superdome, a stadium. It looks like an episode of Star wars or something. Something where they're all meeting in the Galactic Senate. Yeah, the Galactic Senate. Yeah. It was sweet. We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [25:57]
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- [27:00]
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Hey, marketers, here's something to note. 75% of listeners don't consider podcasters to be influencers, yet 84% say a podcaster has changed their mind about something they once believed. That's the paradox of podcast influence. It's built on credibility, not clout. Trust, not trends. Acast's podcast Pulse 2025 report reveals how podcast creators are redefining influence through resonance, multiplatform fandoms and their ability to shape culture. Get the full report free at podcastpulse2025.com.
- [27:42]
Isaac Saul
All right, well listen, we didn't even have this section 2 stuff on our board today to chat about, so I want to make sure we get to some of the other topics we were going to talk about. I think top of the list, I mean, feels like a year ago now, is that the President was subject to another assassination attempt. It certainly appears at the White House Correspondents Dinner last week and like five days ago. Five days.
- [28:07]
Ari Weitzman
That's crazy.
- [28:08]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we've sort of all moved on. He's moved on. It seems like he didn't really care that much. The press has already ran to the next few big stories, but there was a lot here that we didn't really get to unpack or talk about that I wanted to make sure that we got to. And I'll try not to tread too much ground that we've already tread. The big one I think that's sort of come out of all this hilariously is that the President and Republicans are now full throttle on this ballroom construction, which I didn't have like presidential assassination attempt leads to bunker Ballroom on my bingo card. But in the world that we're in, it seems to be where we're going. There is all manner of interesting little elements about this. I think the first one that I'd like to start with is what your guys. I guess my sort of normie take here is this feels like a terrible messaging PR adventure, but we are going to spend time, energy, focus, and now hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money on building this glorious White House ballroom that's underground and very secure. And I know that Trump's whole business, real estate guy stuff resonates with people, but I'd love to hear you guys thoughts about just the politics of this even being something that anybody's uttering from the White House talking about. I mean, they did a whole press conference where Lindsey Graham came out and was like, we're gonna do it. And I just, I don't really know that anybody cares about this or that they should be spending any political capital on this. But maybe that's me trying too hard to channel some of my normie voter mindset. Maybe people do care. Maybe this is cool. It's going to be a beautiful ballroom that's worthy of the White House. I don't know. How do you guys think about this?
- [30:15]
Ari Weitzman
I don't know if I've ever seen a person more sycophantic than Lindsey Graham right now. Holy God. Maybe the less we say about that, the better. But, I mean, there's some sense to it in the same way that, like, if you are a single issue voter, everything can kind of reaffirm your stance. That's what it feels like, is this issue confirms that, yeah, the White House needs a ballroom. Sure. I mean, I think it's not the most unreasonable thing to say. The White House should have a space that's large enough for holding state events. And it's also, I don't think, unreasonable to say events that are held there would be more secure. But at the same time, I don't know if it would even be the place that would host the correspondence dinner. And even if it were, I don't know that it's going to be the most pressing concern for how to address assassination attempts. Because the White House Correspondents Dinner, I may note, is one event at which the President appears, and Trump has appeared at a lot of presidential events, and this is his third assassination attempt, which is crazy. And that just means that there's going to be a lot of other places that are going to be potential targets. It would knock down, if you host a correspondence dinner at a presidential White House ballroom, it would knock one of those events off the list. But apart from that, I mean, it's just like I said, it's a sensible idea to want to have it. But is it a solution to this problem? Only if you define the problem super, super narrowly of, like, events held in private spaces that could be held in private space. Public spaces, yeah.
- [31:53]
Camille Foster
There's so many dimensions to this. And I'm like you, Isaac, pretty mystified that we ended up talking about the ballroom immediately after this and that the President, I mean, seriously, on the night of, in his presser, he's like, yeah, I mean, this is why we need the ballroom. Excuse me. Even before he starts savaging the press and Democrats, as he has done over the course of the last couple of days, he's talking about the ballroom. It feels like a missed opportunity in a lot of respects, both from a kind of political calculus standpoint, but certainly from the standpoint of anyone who is authentically concerned about the specter of political violence in our culture. It's actually been kind of heartening to see people like Pete Hamby over at Puck the Pot, Save America guys, like, talking open and candidly about the importance of this issue, about the importance of people on the left taking this seriously, as they have encouraged people on the right to take this seriously for a number of years. I mean, you already mentioned three assassination attempts, and these are, you know, there ought to be some sort of categorical distinction, a formal one for an assassination attempt that is disrupted or that fails while it is actively in progress while it is being executed, versus something that is disrupted during the planning stages when someone is just like we really oughta, and the Secret Service catch wind of it and then disrupts that plot. That latter thing is what happens most of the time. Every president faces a number of those, an alarming number of them, if you have any insight into this. But very few presidents have the circumstance of being actively targeted. The gunman is in the room or right outside of the room, or shooting at you across a field, and we have a close call. And there's been three of these in under three years. It's incredible. I have been since Saturday night quite shaken by this, and it is hard not to think about what does this mean for the country. I will say that I'm perhaps in a slightly better place than I was on Monday when I was talking about this on a recording and actually talked to Glenn Beck about this yesterday as well. And the thought that I've had more recently is, I think it's Brian Burroughs book Days of Rage, which talks about just kind of 70s era radicalism. And if you haven't read it, I commend it to you, dear listener, because it is an extraordinary kind of snapshot of a period of time that I don't have any direct experience of, but that I know something about thanks to these books, where there was a pronounced concentrated moment where political violence and radicalism and extremism was so dominant that we had a terror attack per day, essentially a bombing per day in the United States of America, where airplane hijacking was absolutely routine. So while it is a deeply disconcerting moment for so many reasons and we should be taking it seriously, I think it's also important to remember that there are cycles of this kind of stuff. And at the moment we are at a point where we should be very concerned and we should be doing things to tamp down the kind of level of excitement and enthusiasm and perhaps permissiveness for some of the really strong language that we're starting to see in our politics. And hopefully we're catching that wave. I just wish that the administration, who ought to have all the incentive in the world to do this, would be more constructive in that regard. The press release they released yesterday lambasting radical crazy Democrats for all of their various statements, which conflates kind of conventional political rhetoric with people who are saying things that I'd say are a little bit beyond the pale, that's not helpful. It's not constructive. What we need more than anything is a gang of something bipartisan effort to really do this, perhaps led by the President, who at a moment when you're being targeted, even if you're not maga and I'm not, you can be concerned about this and should.
- [35:58]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I mean, I think there is a really big difference between the Time magazine cover or whatever it was that's like half Trump's face, half Hitler, and the sort of implication that this is this rising dictator who needs to be stopped at all costs versus the sorts of, I think really legitimate political complaints and political rhetoric around Trump's authoritarian tendencies or his clear and obvious effort to corrupt an organization like the Department of Justice or whatever. I mean, there are degrees to this stuff. And I think some things that I see come from Democrats to the left feel worthy of criticism because there's enough people in this great big country who are going to see those things and take them to their ultimate conclusion. While some things I think just like have to be an accepted, if not even encouraged, kind of check on the power of the executive branch and embrace as part of like the spirited and wobbly debate that we're always having in our country. On that note, I mean, Camille, you mentioned some of the President's words and, and kind of anger towards the press. One pretty interesting moment that came out of this whole White House correspondence dinner happened on 60 Minutes where 60 Minutes interviewer quoted directly from the manifesto of the shooter, who I want to talk about here in a minute and basically put to the President, what do you think about this view of you? And the question included the shooter's perspective that the President was a rapist and tied to the Epstein stuff and that there were people kind of covering up all of his crimes. And Trump snapped back pretty hard, said, I expected you to read that question and kind of called it disgusting and called her disgusting and the network a disgrace and all these things. So I'm curious just to hear your guys thoughts. And Camille, maybe we can start with you. I mean, you host the podcast called the Fifth Column, so this is pretty in Your wheelhouse. Did you feel like a question like that was inbounds, out of bounds? How did you view it? And what did you think about the president's response?
- [38:15]
Camille Foster
I mean, I thought the question was asked in a totally responsible way, reading from the manifesto saying, what is going on here? What do you think about this, the nature of these attacks? To the extent there was a dodgy moment at all in the interview, it was the moment where, and I can't for the life of a remember who was doing the interview. But she says something along the lines of, why do you think this keeps. Is there anything you can do to stop this? Which I think even in the moment, she caught herself and realized, oh, that sounds a little bit too much like, why is your skirt so short? And she corrected it and said, as president, this is happening. This is where we seem to be. Is there anything you can do? And that wasn't a moment where Donald Trump said, how could you? How dare you blame me for being targeted? It's a legitimate question. It's the appropriate question to ask in this moment. I think that the element of this circumstance that I find so disturbing right now is that this seems to be kind of almost a casual radicalization. If you read the manifesto, one, it's very brief, it's weirdly cluttered with jokes, just kind of casual asides. But it's also just really banal in terms of the kind of level of the political rhetoric. He's not even quoting the most extreme stuff over and over again. Some of it has almost become cliche at this point. The comet pizzification of our politics, where it is not uncommon to encounter someone on the political left or the political right who believes outright conspiracy theories is, I think, part and parcel of. Of what is actually happening in the climate right now. And to see it hijack someone who educated recent graduate from a prestigious university technical degree, by all accounts a fairly normal person in a lot of regards, that's troubling to me.
- [40:16]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, the sort of normie profile of the shooter was something that definitely caught my attention. I mean, typically we have this sort of young male, lone wolf red flags everywhere story. And in this case, it was almost the opposite. It seemed like somebody who kind of had their stuff together who was known on campus as being friendly and warm and I mean, even Ken Kripenstein did some really great reporting and talked to some students who went to school with the shooter who were saying, you know, he was actually pretty good at kind of de radicalizing some people politically and had done some work Sort of in some student group to bring two sides together who were, you know, getting really hot in their rhetoric about each other. All of which I found pretty interesting. The interviewer in the 60 Minutes interview is Norah O'. Donnell. And, yeah, and the story that came out afterwards that actually, Camilla, you sent to me, you were the first person to send to me today was this New Republic story that there are actually some cuts to the interview, which is fascinating because obviously, I mean, if you've been paying attention, there was this whole big controversy about 60 Minutes and their editing and how they're navigating the Trump administration. And this story that came out in New Republic was basically that 60 Minutes had cut some things from the Trump interview, but that there were actually some parts that did not make him look particularly good. I want to just pull one excerpt here and read it from this New Republic piece. In the interview, Trump is asked about the no Kings protests. And in the broadcast on 60 Minutes, he said, well, you see, the reason you have people like that is you have people doing no kings. I'm not a king. What I am, if I was a king, I wouldn't be dealing with you. Which is a sort of classic, nonsensical, hard to read Trump answer. But the actual answer that he gave that did not make it to air that the New Republic reported was this, you know, I'm not a king. I see these no Kings, which are funded just like the Southern Poverty Law center was funded. You all that Southern laws financing the KKK and lots of other radical, terrible groups. And then they go out and they say, oh, we've got to stop the kkk. And yet they give them hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars. They work. It's a total scam run by the Democrats. It shows you that, like Charlottesville, Charlottesville was all funded by the Southern Law, a claim that, you know is absurd. That was a Southern Law deal, too. And it was done to make them look bad. And it turned out to be a total fake. Again, it basically was a rigged election. This was part of the rigging of the election, which I'm sort of surprised they didn't air, to be honest. I mean, it seems like even if it's a claim that maybe CBS didn't want to broadcast because they know that the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville didn't happen because of some Southern Poverty Law center money, it does sort of give a look into the president's eyes and into his mind, and everything in his eyes comes back to the 2020 election. And it being stolen. And I was surprised to see, honestly, that some of these excerpts didn't make it into the actual broadcast. It feels like something that they might have included. Ari, I wanted to get your opinion about both the Noro o' Donnell question and also this New Republic story, if you have any thoughts there.
- [43:47]
Ari Weitzman
I mean, the question seemed like it was in bounds. I agree with Camille on that. I think it's totally reasonable to say we are asking questions about the suspect we've apprehended. We did that the first night in the press briefing room when the reporters all made their way to a area in their evening where to ask the present respectful questions about what we knew about the shooter and the apprehension that had already occurred. Those were questions that were kind of inbounds at the time. And then when we got the manifesto, now that we've learned more about his motivations, saying, what do you make of these motivations? It seems somewhat fair. And it doesn't seem to me that the President responded to the question as, what do you think of these motivations? But more, hey, isn't this guy right? Like, that seemed to be the subtext that he was picking up on. And I don't think there was a need for that. I do think it does show both that response as well as what was cut from this interview, the way that the President is just openly looking for sides to confront and enemies to kind of draw a circle around and say, oh, this is all part of the same thing. So if you are a member of the press and you're asking questions that seem to feel like they have an insinuation to them that is like you want to connect the pieces to, okay, you know who else is like that? Donors. Democrat donors, Southern Poverty Law Center. What they did, in fact, they muddied the water. Everything's a scam, and the election was stolen. Everybody's against me, and I don't even think that's new. So why they cut it? Maybe just because we know that about Trump already, that his mind kind of works like that and he's going to weave. And maybe they were like, you know, people who are listening to this interview are just going to go, wait, what was the question? I actually don't even remember what the question was after you read the question and the answer. And I think most people are going to think that. So maybe it was like a quality control thing. It's like, well, let's try to get to the meat and potatoes of this. And in that sense, I think it actually makes them look Pretty good. Like, it doesn't show that if I were a partisan news network and my goal was to just embarrass the person that I was interviewing, I would 100% air that. But if I just wanted to try to get the answers to the questions that I found to be the most salient, I mean, if I'm doing what I do every day and I'm editing something and I'm looking at a transcript and I'm saying, what's the thing that we can cut from here? I'm looking at that and go, oh, we'll cut that. We want to get to the thing that's important. So seems like. And in that frame, it was a pretty defensible decision from them.
- [46:20]
Camille Foster
Isaac, earlier you mentioned the fact that we've seen this before and we've seen essentially the reverse of it. It was with Kamala Harris during the election. She did this interview. There was a word salad response that ended up getting cut, and it was the Trump campaign that ended up raising the alarm, oh, my God, they're protecting. And look what they're doing. I mean, this is pretty much the same thing. And honestly, I thought back then that the decision that 60 Minutes made was editorially defensible. It is certainly possible to highlight and foreground the moment where someone is being uniquely inarticulate or seemingly inflammatory and eliminate the actual newsworthy content of the interview. And in this particular case, the no kings dimension of the response. We've heard the President say this before, as Ari alluded to all of the stuff about the Southern Poverty Law Center. I mean, the Justice Department is prosecuting them right now. There's no secret what the president thinks about that and the degree to which they are willing to insist strenuously that they've got a really strong case here, however dubious that may seem to me at the moment. So I don't know that that was particularly newsworthy. And frankly, the other bit of it which the New Republic leads with was something about the president essentially highlighting places where I think a lot of voters actually have questions about where Democrats are like trans issues, et cetera, which have been uniquely contentious and have been winners for Donald Trump politically. I mean, that got cut, too, and it probably would have been beneficial to him to have that included in the interview. So, you know, publications make editorial decisions for the sake of packaging a story in a way that's sufficiently concise that you'll pay attention, and people are going to have opinions about that. But I don't see any kind of evidence of egregious bias here on the part of the miserable, horrible, terrible Barry Weiss and CBS News, at least not here.
- [48:15]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I mean, I think something that's always really hard that I think consumers, media consumers underestimate is many people, and honestly, the President included, who's probably a rarity in the political world, they just aren't great speakers. And when you try and listen to them and you go back to a recording where they've been interviewed, there's so much of the interview that is, that is, you know, nonsensical, repetitive, redundant, a little boring, a little off topic. Kamala also was not a great speaker. I mean, she was notoriously just dodgy. And would you listen to her talk and be like, did you just say anything? I can't. I don't understand. What. Did you answer the question? And when you're a producer on a primetime television network, like, you have to make some really hard decisions. Even at Tangle, when we have interviews on the YouTube channel or whatever, sometimes I'll send it to John and say, like, ah, there was like a really boring part in the middle. Or maybe I misstated a question and it, you know, things got weird and we're talking past each other and it's just like you can just kind of cut or trim that part. And I think it's easy after the fact to look at what happened and say there was something really nefarious going on when oftentimes the motivations are way more mundane, where it's just like, I think the audience is going to fall asleep if we include this part, or they're just going to stop listening and you're just trying to avoid that. So, yeah, it's an interesting dynamic we're in now. We're in the Trump world all of a sudden. It's all good and gravy to be editing these interviews down and removing the word salads. But a few months ago, it was subject to lawsuit and litigation. If you're 60 Minutes and CBS, I
- [50:03]
Ari Weitzman
want to try as an effect, too. I'll just throw in real quick. Like, if that were in the interview, as it was, I don't think the lead would be Trump pivots to talking about 2020 election. It would just be like, this is a weird thing. It's going to get clipped on Twitter and then we'll move on. Now it's his own story.
- [50:24]
Isaac Saul
We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [50:29]
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- [51:32]
Ari Weitzman
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- [52:08]
Isaac Saul
I did want to before we wrap up here and get to our next segment, which I cannot wait for, I'm so excited about, I did want to just briefly go back to the more serious matter here of the shooter and his profile and kind of what we learn about him. We try and be careful at Tangle and not to name shooters and we also are a little careful about describing their motivations and manifesto and things like that because there does seem to be a pretty well documented contagion effect here and being part of the solution is definitely something we want to do. At the same time I do think in order to talk about this we have to disclose some of that, which I found it interesting that he appears to at least have been motivated a bit by some of the Epstein stuff, which is something we've talked about some of the mania around that. He also spent a good deal of his manifesto sort of constructing a religious and kind of Christian backing for the decision he was making, sort of pre refuting things people were going to say about his decision to try and carry this killing out. But as you said Camille, I mean the thing that struck me more than anything else was just the relative normie nature of who this guy was and sort of where his politics were and how he seemed to think about the world and that he was Making these sorts of rational calculations. He seemed of sound mind. He did not strike the people around him as somebody who needed to be monitored or worried about or considered. And I guess I'm wondering if in that context you two think there's anything we can take away in terms of solutions here. I mean, I think all three of us are in the business of wanting to see less political violence in the future. Is the fact that someone like this is being activated in this way, is there a lesson there that we can carry forward? Is there a learning there? Should we be thinking differently about how we approach this stuff, looking ahead? Or does it feel like a kind of one off thing that maybe there is no possible solution for all options on the table? I'm curious what you guys make of that.
- [54:32]
Ari Weitzman
We've had an unfortunate number of opportunities to talk about this stuff. So I want to talk about one of the effects that I don't think we've covered before, which is the Dunning Kruger effect a bit, which is when you overestimate your abilities or knowledge in a field that you're somewhat new to. And the way that I'm applying it here is that I'm looking at this guy's resume and he seems accomplished, very competent. Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA, Caltech, all items on his resume. Seems respected by his peers. Similar to when Elon Musk entered the government and said, I'm smart, this is easy, just get out of my way, I'll do it. I think when somebody likes this, and this is a very crude analogy, I know, but when you enter a world of politics, I don't think this is really a place based on the description that he's given of his issues that he's saying are motivating to him. Like you were saying, not a huge amount of nuanced understanding is evidenced in his manifesto. It's a lot of laundry list of stuff that you just hear in the news and you just list them off. Tick, tick, tick. It's not like this is an issue. I see denialism of this nature and the President's administration's whole worldview I take issue with. For xyz, it was just like, here's a list, we gotta do something. And if you're coming into a world where like that is your understanding and you're like, I know how to solve it, you should probably think about that. Probably don't have all the answers and the reason why. And that's gonna. That sounds like really like I'm calling him dumb. I'm not calling him dumb. If I wanted to go to NASA and say, like, you guys should just fund the space shuttle. That'll help. Like, I would be laughed out of the room because I don't know anything about their particular set of issues. The thing that I seen this manifest of him trying to steel, man, the argument against why I should do murder to solve problems. What I don't see is, one, don't do murder like you shouldn't, which is, I think that probably the number one response you should expect. And two, it doesn't fucking work. It does not work. Even if you are a person who's like, all of those lists, all of those items on the list that he mentioned are things I care about and I oppose. Even if you think all of those things are motivating and animating to you, going out to try to solve them by violently killing or disrupting in any way the people that you disagree with is not going to advance your cause. Even if you put all the moral issues and ethics of it aside, if you are just thinking about the things that you are saying you care about, this does not advance your cause. So what I'm saying, what I'm kind of pleading for, is when you feel those moments of rage, if that's a thing that happens and you just want a solution to this problem that is eating at you, just take the time to just, like, go learn more and talk to more people, exhaust the other avenues, and maybe you can find something that can be a positive outlet for that and you can create actual change in some way. Like, I don't know if you spend a lot of time doing grassroots organization or trying to talk to members like his representatives in Congress, or trying to rally for somebody who's opposing the President's preferred candidates in primaries, I don't see evidence of him doing any of that. So I don't think he exhausted the other options available to him before he decided that this was the only way to act. And I think if you jump all the way to these ultimate conclusions, it's an indication to me of emotional reasoning and he should probably slow down. So the thing I'm arguing for is like, let's slow down a little bit.
- [58:18]
Camille Foster
Yeah, I mean, I think that the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk is kind of Exhibit A and perhaps Exhibit B, although this isn't in chronological order, I suppose, is the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump, which I think arguably helped him win that election. The moment in the summer when that happened, the response afterwards at the rnc, I mean, it was impossible not to be kind of transfixed by the whole circumstance and the idea that murdering him, taking out our head of state, would actually curtail the kind of worst excesses of this administration. It's just kind of beyond absurd. But I think, Ari, you really did kind of finger something for me. Just the capacity of relatively bright people to engage in a kind of self deception, to imagine that they understand really complicated things in a simple way that no one else can, is kind of. It's terrifying and fascinating at the same time. I wonder if it isn't also part of what has made kind of the LLM mental health crisis, or at least mental health concerns, a bit more animated. Like, there's high IQ people who are using these tools, who are spending a lot of time engaging with them, often having extremely sophisticated conversations about really esoteric things like the nature of consciousness and physics, and it leads them to these very dark places. That's something worth, I think, taking a kind of unique consideration of which again, none of this is trying to explain anything away. I do think, however, that having these conversations helping us to identify some of the risk factors, perhaps cultivate a bit more empathy for people who find themselves in these circumstances and perhaps even understanding your own risk factors, probably healthy and good. You know, I mentioned earlier that there are a lot of kind of people who I find offering like really helpful commentary in this moment. That stuff that I find refreshing. I think it's also worth acknowledging that I've seen some other people who in the past week have released podcasts kind of openly musing about the possibility that this was some sort of false flag, or at least that there was all these questions about the White House Correspondence center, that sort of stuff from the kind of resistance left, it's more disconcerting. And again, I just, it's imperative that to the extent you see this sort of stuff happening amongst your own political tribe, that you're not asking or insisting, well, what about. You're saying, no, this is wrong, this is wrong and it doesn't have any place in our politics. And I won't kind of make any exception for it or allowance for it.
- [61:15]
Ari Weitzman
And I want to say that that reinforces the thing that I was saying too. When the reaction from the people that are supposedly on your political tribe to like this assassination attempt is, oh, this has to be a staged event because it's such good publicity for the administration, that's a good signal that that's not an act that's actually going to accomplish the things you want it to do. So like on one hand it's Dumb. On the other hand, it's immoral. And both of those go hand in hand, but those hands are clasped. And if it should be really, really easy to call that out and say, like, that's dumb and immoral, don't do that. Like, that's not that hard.
- [61:55]
Isaac Saul
All right, are you guys ready for the most uncomfortable transition in suspension of the rules history?
- [62:01]
Ari Weitzman
I clasp those hands and ball your fists.
- [62:05]
Isaac Saul
We're going to call this one the main event. John, you can play the music. My friend from the capital city of the United States of America, Washington, D.C. ladies and gentlemen.
- [62:18]
Ari Weitzman
Let's get ready to rumble,
- [62:24]
Isaac Saul
Guys. All right, we have, you know, I don't think we have enough fun on this show. And. And it's time for fun. Yes, we rarely wade into the media gossip, the, you know, the navel gazing media gossip, but I couldn't resist this one. We had some juicy stuff over the weekend. Michael Tracy, who just recently was on the Tangle podcast, apparently was at, I guess it was a White House correspondent's dinner party and an event and hosted by Substack. Yeah, hosted by Substack, where Tangle originated. So there's a lot of connectivity, connective tissue here. And he approached Julie Brown, who is one of the foremost Epstein story journalists. She's one of the people who broke the story open at the Miami Herald. And the details of what happened are murky. Let's just say he confronted her about some of the things that she had been saying about him publicly. It sounds like Julie had accused Michael of maybe taking money from some of the Epstein estate or Epstein supporters, and that was informing some of the way he was reporting on the issue. We obviously had Michael on the show. Many Tangled listeners did not enjoy his appearance. Some did, but we got some emails and complaints. And I have to concede that, as I said to Michael in our interview, he's abrasive. He does things in a particularly abrasive way. And give me one example.
- [64:00]
Ari Weitzman
Sorry.
- [64:03]
Isaac Saul
You know. Okay. All right. Yeah. And I guess he was being abrasive with Julie Brown at this event. Julie says that she was trying to leave the event and that she needed security to kind of help her out and get Michael away from her because he refused to leave. And then Jim Acosta, the former CNN anchor. Interesting. Handsome Jim Acosta with his nice hairline and probably a really well tailored suit comes in and.
- [64:36]
Camille Foster
Rich baritone.
- [64:37]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, yeah, rich baritone. And apparently intervenes, breaks up the little kerfuffle and helps Julie get out of the situation she was in while saying some ill fated words. To Michael Tracy, which apparently were along the lines of meet me outside if you want to, which Michael Tracy took Jim Acosta's interview and went outside waiting for him for some old fashioned western duel, I presume, and then proceeded to tweet basically nonstop for the next 72 hours. I checked before he came on the show. He's still going. He is just tweeting relentlessly about Jim Acosta, Julie Brown challenging them all to fights. He posted a picture of the Hampton Inn Suites where I guess Jim Acosta said he would meet him for their brawl. Jim Acosta didn't show. And there's been very rich, robust debate happening in the media world about who might actually win such an altercation. A battle of the physical prowess of Michael Tracy versus Jim Acosta. There's been some more serious commentated too. Some people alleging that this is Michael Tracy showing his true colors as some kind of abuser of women. Michael Tracy responding to many of the people online, accusing them of slander and all manner of libel, and sharing some of his previous email exchanges with Julie Brown, which I definitely want to get to before we get this segment complete. It's pretty. It's just a rare thing to have such a close degree of sound. I mean, we had Michael Tracy on this show to talk about the Epstein files. He's getting in this fight with Jim Acosta outside a substack event over a confrontation about the Epstein files. So the real thing I want to know is who you guys think would have won the fight if Jim Acosta actually showed up with Michael Tracy.
- [66:36]
Ari Weitzman
We gotta get Jim Acosta on. I mean, we found Michael Tracy. We got to get both sides of this, right?
- [66:41]
Isaac Saul
That's true. To level the. To level the playing field.
- [66:46]
Ari Weitzman
Have you guys ever seen Billions? I want to ask, like the HBO show. There's like a side plot in one of the, like season two or season three, I think, where, like it's just about a VC firm and there are two traders that they have a falling out and they start to publicly spat with one another. So charity organizes a boxing match selling tickets that are really expensive to come see. These two financial analysts duke it out and they go around and then just kind of collapse on each other and are just tired and it's boring. I think it would be really cool if we made that reality. I think life should imitate art and we should have a charity boxing match where we get to see these people like the last 30 seconds and then, I don't know. I think Jim Acosta looks like he's a little bit more healthy, so maybe he can go a couple rounds. I think.
- [67:36]
Isaac Saul
I think Michael Tracy would have whooped that ass. That's my personal. I think Michael Tracy has that top
- [67:44]
Ari Weitzman
eye of the tiger.
- [67:45]
Isaac Saul
He's got just enough crazy. He's just angry enough. And Jim Acosta is a pretty boy, let's be honest. I mean, he's. You know, maybe he stepped in this moment of chivalry, I presume, but he's gotta protect the face. He's got the anchor thing going on. You know, if you want me to place a bet on which one of them has been in more drunken brawls at a bar, I am definitely putting my money on Michael Tracy.
- [68:11]
Ari Weitzman
On the guy who tweeted, where are you? I'm. Here's a picture.
- [68:15]
Camille Foster
Well, that's. I think anyone who says the words meet me outside doesn't actually mean it. Like, if you were prepared to commit assault and you are an adult human being with a high profile, meet me outside is a distraction. It is a smokescreen. So my suspicion here is that Jim Acosta can't fight. He is not. He doesn't want to smoke. And I'm nervous when it comes to having confrontations with people who are really eager to fight you because they might get lucky. So if I had to choose, I'm probably not gonna fight Michael Tracy, but I'm pretty sure I could take him. I'm gonna fight Jim Acosta. Cause I don't think he actually wants to fight. And that's probably better. That's probably better. I don't wanna fight either.
- [68:58]
Ari Weitzman
To quote Norah Donnell. Oh, you think we're referring to you.
- [69:03]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I appreciate that. Nice note of context. Yeah. And to bring all these stories together, we might have to 86 this segment. 60 minutes. Nyla. We should keep going. Listen, I wanna take one little serious turn here, which is to. I'll offer a note of Michael as a former guest on the show, and then give him a little nod for some of the work he does. The criticism is, this is not winning him any friends. It's a bad look. The picture outside the Hampton Inn, I was like, whoa, were you intoxicated when you did that? Just the manner with which he's conducting himself on Twitter right now does not present as a very kind of, you know, stable genius. In the words of our great president,
- [69:53]
Ari Weitzman
turning him into a joke.
- [69:54]
Isaac Saul
A little bit, yeah. It's hard to tell how much he's playing into the joke and how much he maybe can't control his anger and fury. At some of the people who are criticizing him now. I will also say Michael Tracy has been the victim of some really, really gross smears that I don't think are true. I mean, terrible. Mary, who we also had on the show, and Julie Brown are both sort of trafficking in this totally unfounded allegation that he's somehow getting money from people who are tied to Epstein and that his journalism is being backed by these, like, shady forces, and that he's in the tank to, you know, protect sexual predators and things, which I really don't think is what happened is happening. I think Michael Tracy has done some work that's very unique, that is, you know, focused on calling into question the allegations around Epstein and sort of poking holes some of the hysteria, and that he's found that that niche is resonating with a lot of people, and he's getting traction, and so he's leaning into it, which is the thing a lot of journalists do when they sort of find a beat that they're good at. And he's become really familiar with. And I found some of his work very valuable. It's why I had him on the show, and I want to be transparent about that. Now, in the wake of this whole kerfuffle, whatever you want to call it, Michael did something pretty interesting, in my view. He published these emails, an email that he sent to Julie Brown a year or two ago, probing her about some of her reporting. And he, you know, in the email, he says, julie, I very much understand you're swamped with requests right now, but I really want to get your response to some of this. And he said sections of the book that she wrote are essentially narrated from the perspective of Virginia Giuffre. You also quote extensively from her unpublished memoir manuscript. For example, Jeffrey treated us girls like a piece of clothing he could try on for the day and get rid of the next. This is something she wrote in her manuscript. And then he says, and he quotes a few other passages, and he says, in a 2019 court filing, Giuffre's own lawyers said that the manuscript was a fictionalized account of what happened to her. Why then would you quote extensively from the manuscript as though as a factual account of what happened to Giuffre, when Giuffre's own lawyers have called it fictionalized? At the very least, since your book came out in 2021, shouldn't this context from the 2019 filing have been mentioned elsewhere? He notes that you discussed Giuffre's allegations against Alan Dershowitz. And your interactions with Dershowitz. If this book had come out after Juffe and David Boyd publicly conceded that she may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz despite having accused him for nearly a decade of committing. Committing child sex trafficking crimes. And then he basically asks her why you didn't mention this. And Julie responds to this email with a curt no comment. Thanks for reaching out, Bess. Julie Gay Brown. I did not think that was a very good look for Julie Brown, whose work I really respect. And Michael in this email, is very courteous. He's very straightforward. It's all above board. It's, here's your work, here's something I've read about the context of the work you publish. Can you connect the dots for me and explain why you haven't addressed these discrepancies? And Julie Brown is a journalist, a well read, well experienced, good journalist whose work I quote a lot. And I understand why Michael might be taking this lane and getting those kinds of responses and now is getting smeared publicly by people who have a much bigger platform than him and is pretty furious about, you know, that would be a pretty frustrating thing, to be candid. So don't think it's a good look. Don't think he's comporting himself very well. Also, he's brought some receipts on some things that I would like to hear the answers to personally, which, you know, feels worth saying, I think, in direct terms.
- [73:49]
Camille Foster
Yeah. I mean, you're an investigative journalist, you're working on a story, you've got the goods, you've published your book. Critics are going to have questions for you. Some of them won't be good faith, but plenty of them will be. It is your responsibility, your obligation to the story, basic journalistic hygiene, to be able to answer those questions, be prepared to have serious responses to sober inquiries. And if you can't do it, you are doing something wrong. No comment is just an unacceptable response to a question like that.
- [74:22]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I agree. And I think as the discourse sort of unfolds here, Michael might find some openings to tone down a little bit of the bit on X and actually maybe get some answers or get a forum where he can have a reasonable exchange with some of these folks. In retrospect, I wish we had done it on Tangle. I mean, I was really committed to bringing him and Tara on separately so it didn't turn into kind of a shouting match. Now I'm almost wishing that I didn't take that approach because we would have had this valuable, maybe, hopefully potentially valuable exchange that May never happen now because Tara, Julie, this sort of side of the debate are basically accusing him of being, you know, a womanizer and an abuser and displaying the classic characteristics of somebody who hates women. And Michael is basically accusing them of all manner of kind of libelous claims about him, and it's just pretty much hit rock bottom. So that's a sober end to what I thought would be a semi funny. And our first ever segment called the main event. Though I know Jon put together some custom music for this one, so we're gonna have to find other similar media battle celebrity boxing matches so we can reuse that. All right, fellas, we're over an hour here. Once again, it's a Wednesday, which means Camille has a flight to catch. That's just the new thing now. We should definitely get into our grievances and share some safe space to complain about the things happening in our lives. John, get us going, man.
- [76:01]
Grow Therapy Ad Voice
The airing of grievances
- [76:07]
Camille Foster
between you and
- [76:07]
Ari Weitzman
me, I think your country is.
- [76:09]
Isaac Saul
Is placing a lot of importance on shoe removal. All right, who wants to go first here today?
- [76:14]
Ari Weitzman
What, you feel compelled? I'm mostly just curious.
- [76:19]
Camille Foster
I do have something of a grievance today, but it's about the pathetic state of our medical technologies. I, as a young child, was frequently stricken with strep throat. And being able to quickly ascertain whether or not there is kind of a positive case here is something that I thought we conquered a long time ago. But it has come to my attention that my son, who had been complaining about a sore throat for weeks. I mean, I took him in to the doctor's office and tried to do all sorts of evaluations. We could not figure out what was going on. He was snoring like a train. He would occasionally say, daddy, my throat hurts, but at the same time, just be, like, bubbly and amazing, because children are often quite resilient. Turns out he does, in fact, have strep throat. And I'm not entirely sure that this wasn't just kind of a misdiagnosis, considering how long this has been going on. Or maybe it's something that's metastasized. But I took him to urgent care to get some answers. The pediatrician couldn't see him right away. I would have expected to get a prompt reply, something immediate that gives me some indication of what's going on. How does it still take, like, a day or even hours as opposed to minutes, to make a determination about this? It just feels like at the time when my computer can talk to me, about just about anything and answer all manner of esoteric questions, even if it's hallucinating half the time. We should be in a better place with respect to our medical technology and innovation. And I don't know who to blame for this, but I want to meet them. And my suggestion to them is that they should meet me outside. How's that?
- [77:58]
Isaac Saul
Yes. All right. A real grievance. Let's give a little round of applause for Camille Foster. A genuine complaint without a positive tilt on it at the end. That was really nice, man.
- [78:11]
Ari Weitzman
Strep a virus or bacteria because I feel like it does take a little bit longer to eat those bacteria diagnoses.
- [78:17]
Isaac Saul
Just ask Claude real quick, he'll tell you.
- [78:19]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, I did an old fashioned Google search and there's a bacterial infection I think that does take a little bit longer to diagnose and it shouldn't. Yeah, you're right. We should know. Why aren't we gone yet?
- [78:33]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I'll jump in and let you take us home, Ari. My complaint is mostly related to my ego, but I found a new men's basketball league here in my new home in North Jersey, which is. It's not really a league. It's organized, scheduled pickup that requires registration and paying fees for. So it's kind of like a league, but there are no set teams. It's just you show up and it's pickup, but it's the same 15 dudes or whatever. And it's been in a lot of ways great. I love basketball. It's like one of my favorite sports to play and it's how I stay in shape. My grievance is that I would say the league compared to what I was playing in Philadelphia, the level of play is much lower in the setting that I was playing in Philadelphia, I was often the oldest guy there. It was a bunch of younger dudes who had played high school basketball were playing D1, D2, D3 basketball. At some point. We even had a guy who had a stint in the G league who was a 45 year old local legend who could basically start score at any point he wanted to. I was frequently the worst player there and we were playing real high level basketball and there were many, many instances where I was like getting dunked on by people like that kind of caliber of player. And it was so fun and it was so competitive and this league is. Is much lower level. The vibe is like, don't get hurt. We're going to just have some fun, whatever. And there are definitely some good players out there and the court is really small, and there are these vents in the ceiling that are, like, way lower than they should be. So if you're shooting from either baseline at any position on the court, you basically have to take some arc off your shot to avoid shooting the ball into the van. And I am just horrible on this court. I'm a shooter by nature, and I feel cramped. I feel tight. The way everybody's playing and the fact that people are, like, not going to the spots I'm expecting them to, I've just been awful. So I'm going out to this game where I'm looking at the players and I'm thinking, oh, this is, like a lower level game that I'm used to. I should be really good. And I'm playing really badly. And the guys there are like, hey, it's all right, bud. Like, don't worry about it. I'm like, oh, God. So, yeah, it's been. I'm, like, not good enough to go dominate, but I'm just good enough to be like, I should be playing way better. And then I'm playing terrible. And then they're, like, being real, like, you'll be all right, buddy. And I'm like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna hurt somebody soon. So, yeah, it's really tough, and I'm not sure what to do with my feelings, but I'm being humbled and motivated all at the same time.
- [81:33]
Camille Foster
And that was an emotional rollercoaster. Isaac, I thought initially you were upset with these guys for not being better, but now I realize you're upset with the facility itself for not allowing you to go beast mode and hurt these people.
- [81:48]
Ari Weitzman
That's a very good way to spin that. I think it's also a bit of a. Like, I want to be able to do the things that I don't feel like I'm able to. I mean, when I came back, I've had this leg injury for two and a half years now. I've my. When I played sports, I was, like, explosive and fast, and I can't, like, run. I haven't been able to run or cut explosively for more than three minutes at a time in two and a half years. It sucks. And I tried to, like, come back for rehab and play some indoor rec league, like ultimate Frisbee at the sport that Isaac and I played most competitively. And, like, I should. I know what I'm like as a player. I should be in control of this. And I can't, like, run or cut for more than 30 seconds. My thigh Starts to get really sore. My ankles get tight. I'm rusty. I can't do the things I want. They're like, hey, man, just. Just like, do this. You need to just simplify and do these things. I'm like,
- [82:44]
Camille Foster
I.
- [82:46]
Ari Weitzman
In my head, I'm like, I. It's like Ron Swanson shopping at the store. Like, that meme where you're just like, I know more than you and you just want to keep going, but you can't prove it. You just have to be like. Like, it's. That's today. This. In this league, in this situation. This is the level that I am, and I having a difficult time accepting that.
- [83:04]
Isaac Saul
So I get that feeling, yeah, this is not the level I am, and I don't accept it.
- [83:09]
Ari Weitzman
But in this context, in that court, yeah, yeah.
- [83:17]
Camille Foster
It's the beauty of fatherhood.
- [83:18]
Ari Weitzman
I mean, I never see an opportunity. I just quit, actually pour into someone
- [83:21]
Camille Foster
else to revel in their victories and their athletic prowess. When I see my 4 year old dominating other 4 year olds on the soccer field, I'm looking at their parents, I'm like, oh, you know, good try, Jimmy.
- [83:38]
Isaac Saul
That was fine. Crush him. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm just gonna find a new league to play, and that's how I'm gonna solve this problem. But that's all right.
- [83:47]
Ari Weitzman
Have you played? I'll transition this to a light grievance. I mean, my real grievance is that my computer's haunted now that I've to get a new one. That's tough. It's tough when you're just, like, working on a computer and then, like, it just starts to become a prop from a horror movie. And it does the things that you've only seen computers do in horror movies. And you're like, oh, guess I'm done doing the computer thing today. So I'm glad it's just the monitor so I can. I have the auxiliary monitor up. It seems to be functioning for now, but that sucks. I think, like, that's a mini grievance. I think another mini grievance is, like, the sport that I think underneath it all, I'm actually the best at is racquetball. I'm, like, really good at racquetball, and I haven't played in a while over Covid. It was impossible. Racquetball is, like a sport designed to fail during COVID You're like an enclosed space where you're breathing the same air as somebody for an hour and a half. You just can't do it. And I haven't gone back to play since then. It's really tough to find racquetball places to play here. And Isaac, I don't know if you've ever been interested in trying a racket based sport, but it translates really well to Frisbee skill sets and I think it could be fun to try. And I'll come down, I'll play you lefty.
- [84:59]
Isaac Saul
All right. I'm still trying to process whether the sport I'm best at is racquetball. Is the most uncool sentence I've ever heard in my entire life. But I'll consider. I'll think about you.
- [85:10]
Ari Weitzman
Don't pick the things that you just have have the right athletic skill set for. I don't know, like I've got flexible hips, good arm control, agility.
- [85:20]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. All right, I'll give it a shot. And when we're done, you can take me out behind the bar and just end it for good. End of my athletic career when I start talking about racquetball. All right, gentlemen, thanks for being here. Appreciate you guys hanging out for some extra, extra time. Camille, we'll let you go catch your flight back to the west coast and embrace your incredibly athletic four year old son.
- [85:46]
Camille Foster
The girl is pretty good too.
- [85:47]
Isaac Saul
The girl's pretty good. Girl. All right. All right. See ya. Bye.
- [85:53]
Ari Weitzman
Bye.
- [85:54]
Isaac Saul
Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Sowell, and our executive producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Tom. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will K. Back and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Knuth and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@retangle.com.
- [86:36]
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- [87:00]
Isaac Saul
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