Suspension of the rules. - Isaac, Ari, and Kmele talk in person from beautiful Vermont about free speech.

Summary

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Tangle Podcast – "Suspension of the rules"

Isaac, Ari, and Kmele Talk Free Speech in Vermont

Date: September 21, 2025
Host: Isaac Saul
Guests: Ari Weitzman & Camille Foster

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Episode Overview

In this special, in-person episode from a sun-drenched Airbnb in South Burlington, Vermont, Isaac Saul, Ari Weitzman, and Camille Foster gather to dive deep into the current state of free speech in America. Against the tranquil backdrop of Lake Champlain, the trio discuss the fallout from the Jimmy Kimmel–FCC controversy, the cultural climate for free speech under consecutive administrations, and how both left and right wings are implicated in censorship. The episode is marked by candid personal reflections and a lively, occasionally irreverent tone.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene and Jumping In

• The group jokes about being together in person amidst the "absurd beauty" of Vermont, fresh off a brewery tour ([03:04]).
• Early banter segues quickly into weighty issues: Camille's recent controversial appearance questioning Barack Obama's racial identity, and broader points about the complexities of identity in America ([03:33]–[05:41]).

2. Camille Foster on Obama's Identity and Free Speech

• Camille explains that his on-air challenge of "Is Obama black?" was meant to question American concepts of race, not Obama's identity per se ([03:52]).

  “I was challenging the notion of blackness and race in general. And also calling out everyone on set for employing the one drop rule and the brown paper bag test without really thinking about it.” – Camille Foster ([03:52])

• The table discusses the complicated, often contradictory ways society enforces identity, and how these complexities are flattened in media discourse.

3. The Trump/Obama Legacy and Polarization

• The conversation shifts to whether Barack Obama is to blame for deep political polarization or just associated with its rise ([07:02]).

  “I think it's entirely possible for Barack Obama's presidency to be associated with a moment when things started to change, but that doesn't suggest that he himself was uniquely responsible for it.” – Camille Foster ([07:02])

• Isaac notes the "Ben Shapiro take" that Obama stoked divisions instead of healing them, while countering with the rightwing birth certificate conspiracy targeting Obama ([09:04]).

4. The Charlie Kirk Assassination & The State of Free Speech

• The hosts frame the current moment as critical for free speech, citing the on-campus killing of Charlie Kirk as a symbolic flashpoint ([10:11]).

  “You have a young man who dies with a microphone in his hand, speaking on a college campus underneath a sign that says 'debate me.' That’s an extraordinary thing to have happen.” – Camille Foster ([10:11])

• They note increased polarization, with both sides "retreating to their corners" in interpreting events.

5. The Jimmy Kimmel–FCC–Disney Controversy

Background:

• FCC Chair Brendan Carr, on a far-right podcast, suggests revoking ABC's affiliate licenses to pressure Disney to punish Jimmy Kimmel for his monologue about the Kirk assassination ([11:48]).

Isaac’s Take:

• Isaac is alarmed by Carr’s appearance on Benny Johnson’s show and sees the event as a dangerous escalation for government-led speech restriction.

  “I think this is probably one of the most dangerous moments for free speech rights in American history. I really believe that.” – Isaac Saul ([12:54])

Discussion of Kimmel’s Monologue:

• Kimmel’s actual comments weren’t especially inflammatory, according to the panel. Their worry is less about the substance of the joke than about the precedent of government intervention.

  “Is that a crime? Is that what the FCC is there for? Policing whether or not comedians are spending a sufficient amount of time hammering both sides? Are the jokes sufficiently funny?” – Camille Foster ([21:29])

6. Historical and Comparative Context

• Ari places the current moment in context with prior threats: McCarthyism, post-9/11 anti-Muslim sentiment, etc. ([30:10]).

• Camille draws a distinction between the brazen style under Trump and the perhaps more insidious, “sophisticated” approach under earlier administrations.

  “There's a kind of status quo level of, kind of danger to free expression that we have been wrestling with for some time.” – Camille Foster ([29:33])

• Ari notes:

  “If you were a Muslim post-9/11 worshiping in peace…that was a huge threat [to free speech]. Go back to McCarthyism, that's probably the biggest threat...” – Ari Weitzman ([30:10])

• Isaac argues the present is different, citing a coordinated governmental campaign to jail and deport Americans for protected speech, unprecedented legal actions against the press, and pressure on media and corporate mergers ([31:18]).

  “If you look at the whole...you have the president openly strong arming universities and law firms into settlements. They're deporting people for speech, screening people at the border for social media stuff ... for things that are, I mean, objectively political expression.” – Isaac Saul ([31:18])

7. The Importance of Free Speech Culture

• Camille and Isaac reference Jacob Mchangama’s scholarship, discussing how cultural acceptance of censorship often precedes the legal curtailment of rights ([37:54]).

  “It seemed to me as if the culture, the free speech culture degrades first and then the law follows.” – Isaac Saul ([38:19])

• Isaac worries that normalization of government retaliation—especially as media mergers become more politicized—may rapidly erode liberty ([38:39]–[41:19]).

8. Signs of Resistance and Potential Solutions

• Despite gloom, the panel spotlights pushback from within the GOP and conservative media:

  “Ted Cruz...is in the New York Times this week referring to Carr tactics as kind of mafia bullshit...” – Camille Foster ([43:31]) “Ben Shapiro said, 'I do not want the FCC in the business of telling local affiliates that their licenses will be removed if they broadcast material that the FCC deems... false. Why? Because one day the shoe will be on the other foot.'” – Isaac Saul ([45:25])

• Positive signals: Ari and Camille highlight prominent voices from both left and right acknowledging past mistakes, suggesting a healthier culture of reflection ([54:23]).

9. Is This a Trump Problem or a Structural Problem?

• The group debates: is the problem Trump’s opportunistic style, or a broader slide in free speech norms? Ari suggests Trump is an “opportunist” rather than an ideologue ([48:28]).
• All agree the trend is worrisome, and note the persistent precedent of governments stifling speech for political advantage across both parties ([50:54]–[55:24]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Flattened Race Discourse:

  “Barack Obama...is as black as he is white, as he is mixed race. And the notion that he is absolutely any one of those things is preposterous.”
  – Camille Foster ([04:22])

• On Media Spectacle:

  “There is something hilarious about watching you try and galaxy brain people with stuff that I've heard you talk about in private but never seen you try to take publicly on a national stage.”
  – Isaac Saul to Camille Foster ([09:36])

• On the Current Free Speech Climate:

  “I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that...this is probably one of the most dangerous moments for free speech rights in American history.”
  – Isaac Saul ([12:54])

  “Carr did, like, the Mafia guy thing. 'We could do this the easy way or the hard way.'”
  – Isaac Saul ([26:04])

• On Cultural Versus Legal Degradation:

  “It seemed to me as if the culture, the free speech culture degrades first and then the law follows.”
  – Isaac Saul ([38:19])

• On Partisan Contradictions:

  “It's easy for the right to surface clips of people like Jimmy Kimmel advocating for various kinds of censorship and kind of deplatforming, while also complaining about what's happening to Jimmy Kimmel...”
  – Camille Foster ([35:18])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Opening Banter & Vermont Setting: [02:04]–[03:07]
• Obama Race Conversation: [03:39]–[09:33]
• Kirk Assassination & Free Speech Framing: [10:11]–[11:48]
• Jimmy Kimmel–FCC Controversy: [11:48]–[21:58], [23:31]–[26:26]
• Macro Threats to Free Speech: [29:33]–[33:51]
• Historical Comparisons & European Context: [33:51]–[41:19]
• Cultural Degradation of Free Speech: [37:54]–[41:19]
• Signs of Political Pushback: [43:31]–[45:29]
• Are Americans Sufficiently Concerned?: [53:09]–[55:24]
• Reflections on Left & Right Failures: [54:23]–[55:52]
• Grievance Segment (Personal Stories): [56:40]–[64:13]
• Closing: [64:13]

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Tone & Style

• Language: Blunt, disarmingly candid; occasionally playful or irreverent.
• Dynamic: The hosts are intensely engaged, frequently citing recent news, podcasts, and the broader sociopolitical landscape. Jokes and personal anecdotes lighten deep, sometimes ominous analysis.
• Perspective: Principally skeptical of government power—regardless of party—and committed to a non-partisan, pro–free speech lens, with criticism for both left and right.

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Summary Takeaways

• Both political sides have endangered free speech rights.
  • The Kimmel–FCC episode, occurring in a climate of intensifying government hostility, is viewed as an escalation and a precedent-setting move.
• The present moment is uniquely dangerous—not because the dynamic is new, but because of its brazenness, speed, and normalization.
• Hope comes from growing awareness and resistance—including from unlikely quarters on the right—as well as open admissions of past overreach from the left.
• Ultimately, the panel urges vigilance: cultural complacency and the normalization of censorship are the true threats, regardless of which party is wielding the power.

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For listeners who missed the episode:
You will come away with a nuanced understanding of the current flashpoints in the ongoing American free speech debate, how today's battles echo (and differ from) historical precedent, and why the cultural landscape of speech rights is just as critical as the legal one. The episode features insightful, sharply critical, and sometimes humorous takes on the issues shaping the "rules" of public discourse.

Transcript

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[Isaac Saul]

Coming up, we talk mostly free speech and the absurd beauty of Vermont, where we are all together and in person. It's a good one.

[Ari Weitzman]

From executive producer Isaac Saul.

[Isaac Saul]

This is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening and welcome to the Suspension of the Rules podcast. What's the thing, Ari?

[Ari Weitzman]

You have a where the takes are hot and the temperature's cool.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, we'll workshop it.

[Ari Weitzman]

It's not bad, though.

[Isaac Saul]

It sounds worse when you say it somehow. Oh God.

[Ari Weitzman]

I don't really know why I can't. I'm gonna work to not take that personally.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. This is a special episode. We're here together in person in a very fancy airbnb in Burlington, Vermont.

[Ari Weitzman]

South Burlington.

[Isaac Saul]

South Burlington. Spoken like someone from the state.

[Ari Weitzman]

There you are.

[Isaac Saul]

We're overlooking. Beautiful. That's Lake Champlain, right? Is it Champlain?

[Ari Weitzman]

Yep. With an L. Champlain in the Adirondack range of New York in the background.

[Camille Foster]

It's gorgeous.

[Isaac Saul]

It is.

[Ari Weitzman]

Pristine day.

[Isaac Saul]

Beautiful pristine day. Blue skies, sun coming down over blue water. I'm literally wearing sunglasses in the studio, the quote unquote studio, because it's that bright and sun drenched and we're fresh off a brewery tour, so who fucking knows what's gonna happen?

[Ari Weitzman]

We're talking about free speech there. Very, very free.

[Camille Foster]

I was the designated driver, so I have no excuse.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Camille Foster]

For anything that I might say. And I can't really protect these gentlemen from themselves.

[Isaac Saul]

That's true. Although of everybody in the room right now, Camille, you're the one who's in the hottest water. What do you mean you questioned Barack Obama's racial ethnicity on a national news network? 24.

[Camille Foster]

In fairness. In fairness, the question was to illustrate a broader point. And I wasn't challenging Barack Obama's racial identity in particular. I was challenging the notion of blackness and race in general. And also calling out everyone on set for employing the one drop rule and the brown paper bag test without really thinking about it.

[Ari Weitzman]

Wait, what is the brown paper bag test?

[Camille Foster]

If you are browner than this brown paper bag.

[Ari Weitzman]

Really?

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

Wow.

[Camille Foster]

I mean, this is really the infrastructure for all of the racial identity stuff. It's the one drop rule. Like, that's how the Barack Obama thing works. He is as black as he is white, as he is mixed race. And the notion that he is absolutely any one of those things is preposterous. And I'm sitting across from people on a television set and they are confidently asserting it on camera. And I ask, are you sure about that? And the response is outrage.

[Ari Weitzman]

Do you think it's, to use one of your favorite terms, do you think it's coherent to respond by saying that he is somebody who sees himself as black? It's part of his identity, therefore that's acceptable. That can be where it ends.

[Camille Foster]

It would be wonderful if that could be the standard. In which case Rachel Dolezal wouldn't be a very controversial figure. But that's not really the standard. The standard is actually quite a bit sloppier than that. And again, the insistence is not half of the people insisting, yeah, he's white, and half of the people insisting, oh, he's black. It's just, I'm black. And actually, I did specifically make that point during the segment as well, that he self identifies that way. But the reason he self identifies that way is because he says he's generally regarded in that way. And again, all of it just seems strange and sloppy to me.

[Ari Weitzman]

It's complicated. Like, I tell people that I'm Jewish. I'm not religiously Jewish. I don't observe the Jewish faith, but I feel Jewish. Cause I'm seen as Jewish. Like, that's part of it to me too. Also, I was brought up Jewish, so that's always gonna be part of it. But we've jumped right into the deep end. Yeah, right away.

[Camille Foster]

But it's again, it's like, it's the reason why I asked on set as well. Like, talk to me about his mom and his dad, the people who raised him. Like, what is the kind of culture in which he was acclimated? All of these, it feels, to me, are kind of fair points. And the broader point I was trying to make is these things can be complicated. And the response I got to that was, don't be ridiculous.

[Isaac Saul]

All right, well, to be clear, my experience was, I'm enjoying a nice, beautiful drive through Burlington, Vermont. We're in the middle of a brewery tour. Somebody hands me a cell phone with a Mediaite headline that says, we don't got the time today for this. Abby Phillip table erupts over whether Obama is actually black. And then there's just a screenshot of Camille's smiling face. You know, it's the headline of the article. I'm like, okay, I was planning to take the day off today, but.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

Yes. On CNN's Table for Five, the Fifth Column podcast host. Wow. Giving you the Fifth Column credits, Camille Foster surprised everyone when he asked, is he black? As Obama was being discussed. Yeah.

[Camille Foster]

I will say, though, that the broader convers on the show was mostly about free speech the entire time. And even the conversation about Barack Obama was specifically about his legacy and whether or not Barack Obama is, according to some people, primarily responsible for the deep polarization and the kind of zany political climate that we are all subjected to today. And some people, like Megyn Kelly, insist that it's him. He did it. Other people say that's completely ridiculous and laughable. And I actually find the question interesting. I think it's entirely possible for Barack Obama's presidency to be associated with a moment when things started to change, but that doesn't suggest that he himself was uniquely responsible for it.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, I like that. That makes sense to me.

[Isaac Saul]

I mean, it's the Ben Shapiro Ben Shapiro made the same take, too, in this Ezra Klein interview he just did last week about his book where he's sort of saying, I mean, his conservative position was that Obama was elected under the framework that he was going to relieve racial tension and that a lot of conservatives bought into that. And then actually what he did was emphasize the race element of many divisive issues in the country and made the whole thing worse, which is. I think there are some moments in his presidency that you could point to and say that feels like the Trayvon Martin stuff and him saying, it could have been my son. And there were these elements of that that I think Ferguson, the handling of Ferguson. Absolutely nobody makes up something like that. And then it turns out, actually maybe Michael Brown kind of made it up. I mean, those are real things that happen. And I mean, that is. I think there's something there.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

Though I think the obvious counterpoint is, well, Obama also got treated in a particular way by the right that very much emphasized his.

[Camille Foster]

I mean, the birth of conspiracy otherness.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. Like the very question of whether he could legally be the president or not. Well, anyway, we're not here to question Barack Obama's blackness. You've done enough of that in the last 24 hours.

[Camille Foster]

I'm not sure I technically did that at all, but, you know, we're not.

[Ari Weitzman]

Going to re litigate it either.

[Camille Foster]

It's fine. We'll just watch it.

[Ari Weitzman]

I'm guilty.

[Camille Foster]

I'm the worst.

[Isaac Saul]

It is. There is something hilarious about watching you try and galaxy brain people with stuff that I've heard you talk about in private but never seen you try to take publicly on a national stage where.

[Ari Weitzman]

Everything is flat into two dimensions. And it's like, Barack Obama, is he black? It's like, wait, what?

[Camille Foster]

This segment is four minutes. You do that halfway through. Are you kidding?

[Isaac Saul]

I don't know if the country's ready for someone to question the very underpinning of whether race is real or just a total social construct yet, though they should be.

[Camille Foster]

I think they are. I think they are. The response I get is usually half complete outrage and half. That's really interesting. Oh, wait, I agree. And that suggests that there just need to be more people making the case. So please do it. But again, free speech feels like this is a moment to be talking about those themes that came up on Abby's show and various other shows. And I think that even Ben's discussion of Barack Obama was, I think, couched in this broader attempt to try and understand the current cultural moment and the specific Thing that's been animating most of our conversations over the course of the last two weeks, the Charlie Kirk assassination in particular, but broadly free speeches. Behind this, you have a kid who. A kid, a young man who dies with a microphone in his hand speaking on a college campus underneath a sign that says debate me. You know, change my mind. I can't remember exactly what's changed my mind. Like, that's an extraordinary thing to have happen. And the response to it has been extraordinary. We had our, the first, the last episode that we did, we had a very kind of substantive, emotional, I think, conversation about it. And as the week has gone on, people have now fully retreated to their corners in certain respects. The right is kind of marshaling their resources and has a very particular take on all of this. The left, I think it's a little more complicated but curious what dimensions of this we're going to end up talking about today.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, I mean, look, I think to me it's the story right now, and we'll be a little abbreviated today because we've got a lot of team time to spend with everybody. But the obvious story this week to start with is the Jimmy Kimmel stuff. And we actually haven't covered this in tangle yet. I suspect it might be our topic on Monday. So this will be a case for the podcast listeners. Maybe get a preview of this before it comes out in the daily podcast or the newsletter. The background here is basically that Brendan Carr, who's the FCC chair, was on the right wing podcaster Benny Johnson's show, and he suggested that the FCC could revoke ABC affiliate licenses as a way to strong arm Disney to punish Jimmy Kimmel for his comments, which we'll get into for a second because I actually don't think the comments are nearly as important as this. To me, the story is that Brendon Carr goes on Benny Johnson's show, which by the way, is just in and of itself nuts. Benny Johnson, I mean, I don't often speak this way about people in this space, but he is legitimately off the deep end. I mean, he is to me, he's not like a legitimate commentator. He is like a propagandist in the truest, purest sense of the word. And the kind of stuff he does is far right. Stuff that is often conspiratorial, totally baseless. So the idea that the FCC chair is even on his show in the first place to me is just like five years ago would have been unthinkable even under a previous Trump administration. But he goes on the show. And he says, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel. But there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead. And then ABC cans Jimmy Kimmel, which, like, I mean, to me, that is about as clear one to one as it's gonna get. And I think this is probably one of the most dangerous moments for free speech rights in American history. I really believe that. Like, I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that the, you know, I tweeted that out and a lot of the response from, like, our Trump supporting followers and fans of tangle and stuff are like, were you asleep for the Biden years? And it's like, no, Actually, we wrote dozens of articles and produced dozens of podcasts about the Twitter fil about the Biden administration collaborating with Facebook to censor Covid information. Real stuff that was, like, really, really scary and worrisome to me. And I think this is worse. I think Trump is basically doing all of that and then some. I mean, he is. You know, Mark Zuckerberg is coming to Oval Office meetings and doing the Dear Leader stuff to stay in Trump's good graces, because Facebook has all sorts of acquisitions and deals that they're pushing through that they need approval for. We're about to, like, the US Is about to buy TikTok. Trump already got Elon Musk thumbing the scales of X. I mean, the stuff that's happening now to me is orders of magnitude worse. And then we have all the deportation stuff around legal American citizens who are getting shipped to Liberia for an op ed they wrote in their student newspaper or whatever, spending a month in a prison in Alabama. I mean, this stuff is really crazy. So before we get into this, which I'm curious to hear what you guys think about this stuff, because I'm certainly like, my blood pressure's up a little bit. I do think to do justice, we have to actually talk about what Jimmy said on the show. Basically, he came out and he said, quote, the MAGA gang is desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger pointing, there was grieving. And then he plays this clip of Trump, in my opinion, a damning, embarrassing clip of Trump, which was kind of funny, too. I don't think Jimmy Kimmel's show is funny, but I thought this was pretty funny where he's like, someone asked, how are you holding up? You're talking about Charlie Kirk, your dear friend, being killed. And he's like, I'm good. Have you guys seen the construction we're doing in the White House? Just, like, immediately starts pointing out, like, the new marble countertops or whatever, and everybody's like, what? And it was one of these weird moments where, like, you know, Joe Biden had answered this way, being asked about somebody in his administration dying. It would have been like, weeks of headlines about him going senile, but it's Trump, so we just, like, you know, blink once and forget it.

[Camille Foster]

And he actually. He did it twice. There's two separate instances of him doing this, talking about the ballroom in the context of talking about. And I suppose it sounds like he was there working on it when someone came to him and mentioned that Charlie Kirk had died. But he does take a moment to just talk about the ballroom, contextualize things, and make sure you understand that it's a crime that we don't have one of these. And it's wonderful that we're finally building it under me. I'm doing it. It's gonna be great. It's gonna be the best ballroom.

[Ari Weitzman]

Isn't that a normal Trump thing, though? It is normal to just say, that's one narrative. But this is what I wanna talk about, and that's something that we've talked about as being one of his superpowers, is to control the narrative in the media and just say, yeah, sure, but this is really the thing I want to talk about. Maybe it's the Biden comparison. I think that's fair. Obviously, Charlie Kirk isn't a member of the administration, which is like, an interesting little slip of the tongue there, but I know what you mean. Like an ally of his. Maybe he dies, but with.

[Camille Foster]

He's a part of the political infrastructure.

[Ari Weitzman]

He's a part of the political infrastructure. But when it comes to where there's an analogy with Biden, Trump has the superpower to control the narrative. His instincts are really good. He knows what buttons to press and how to create divides that end up playing to his favor, putting his opponents on defense. What this shows in terms of slipping is maybe he's missing that moment. His instincts are usually really good with when to push the buttons and to divide. And they're like, hey, this guy who's a big figure on the right has been killed. What do you think? He's like, well, the ballroom, look, well, hold on. We would expect Trump to go, this is awful. We need to do all the things they're doing with Jimmy Kimmel and just pound that in the press. We'd expect that. So if anything, it feels abnormal that he's not playing it farther. It's not necessarily that, oh, he's not grieving, sure. But it's like we would expect him to press the rage button a little bit more maybe.

[Camille Foster]

I think the thing is, I'm not even so sure that his instincts are so great because here, this time or usually in general, I think in general what he does, he's a bull in a china shop. And he going to use all of the metaphors and analogies now.

[Ari Weitzman]

Sure. Put all the analogies in the china shop.

[Camille Foster]

He doesn't seem to have the ability. Let me pull back from that. It's not a question of ability. He doesn't seem to care about the norms around. Well, someone is in mourning. I should probably be a little more sensitive here. It's exactly the same weaponry that gets deployed rhetorically and it's always a spin that's kind of self aggrandizing in some way. Let's pay attention to what I'm doing really well, sure. If it was just about controlling the narrative, then he could talk about what he eventually gets around to talking about when he's focused on the Charlie Kirk stuff, which is the crazy leftist extremists and how they are doing it. And we're really not. It's not us. To the extent there's right wing violence, it's usually animated by the fact that they want safer streets. But those other people really hate us. I mean, that is of all the things I've heard Donald Trump say since the assassination and in the fallout, that's the thing that's kind of stuck with me the most and seems the most out of phase with what I'd like to hear from a political leader at this point.

[Ari Weitzman]

Sure. But it's also the thing you'd expect when he keeps saying.

[Camille Foster]

Right, well, yeah, that's what I'm saying. And he didn't do that in that moment. Instead he talks about the ballroom, which makes it all a bit weird. But I feel like we've gone a little far afield here. Cause you were setting it up and talking about the monologue and trying to give us the context for what, for what Kimmel said in general. And I think your rendering of it, Isaac, is generally correct. But we should also situate it in the context. It was a comedy monologue on a late night comedy show and most of the time was devoted to talking about how people are responding to this even the specific thing he says about Charlie Kirk here, which Carr tried to characterize as well, this is part of a concerted effort on the part of various people in the media to try to proliferate this false narrative that the shooter, the alleged shooter, is in fact a conservative. And that is literally not what Jimmy Kimmel says. All that Jimmy Kimmel says, perhaps there's some motive there, but it's not clear, is that White House seems determined to make it look like this is someone who is definitely not of their party above all else. Maybe you could construe that as he's trying to push responsibility onto conservatives, but I think it's also just accurate. Everyone seemed obsessed with whether or not this person could be coded hard left or hard right in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, which was pretty unseemly actually, and it seems appropriate to acknowledge that. Did Jimmy acknowledge it on one side more than the other? Perhaps.

[Isaac Saul]

Sure.

[Camille Foster]

Is that a crime? Is that what the FCC is there for? Policing whether or not comedians are spending a sufficient amount of time hammering both sides? Are the jokes sufficiently funny?

[Ari Weitzman]

Where?

[Camille Foster]

What is the standard here exactly? We'll be right back after this quick break.

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[Isaac Saul]

I was just going to say that's interesting. I the MAGA gang is desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. When I read that, I do think that he's accusing the shooter of being maga.

[Camille Foster]

It's it the best. At best he would, or at worst, I should say he's intimating it. But even that is a matter of interpretation. Like, it's not. That's not clear, especially because it's in the context of a comedy joke and he doesn't situate himself on that point. He very well could have. He moves on from there to talk about the way that Trump is grieving and how strange it is, which again, the focus isn't on Kirk and the loss. The focus isn't on Kirk and the loss. The focus is on the ballroom and the extremism of the left and the relative calm peacefulness of the right, which all of that is incredibly strange. And it seemed to me that in the monologue, that's mostly what Jimmy was calling attention to. But here again, there's this subjective assessment about exactly what Kimmel was doing, and it's at a minimum, at least debatable what he intended to do. But the FCC chairman decides it's important to weigh in, and the White House has thus far backed his play. The President expressly has backed his play and insists they should probably be doing more of this.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, I mean, like, let's go get Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon. And I mean, the thing that struck me when I watched the initial clip was how in this environment, it was like a pretty milk of toast joke. Like, it did not strike me as particularly edgy. It was like, oh, look at Trump. He's not showing any empathy. Like, how many times have we seen Colbert do that bit? It's like, it wasn't. And the comments about the shooter, I thought when I saw them, like, if I was in his writer's room, I wouldn't have let him say that on the air. But mostly because the blowback and because the information we have is that this guy seems to have some leftist ideology. He's motivated. It seems from the evidence we have or what we're being told, that he was motivated by, you know, loathing Charlie Kirk's views of trans people and his hate.

[Camille Foster]

Yes.

[Isaac Saul]

So I wouldn't have let him go out on the air and say that. But now we're in this territory where it's like, the reaction is so over the top, where it's a clear strong arm from the FCC chairman to get him off the air in a way that feels fundamentally un American and scary to me.

[Camille Foster]

And unambiguous.

[Isaac Saul]

And unambiguous. They're not being shy about it. And then there's this whole other element that not a lot of people are talking about, which is that nexstar is trying to acquire another major US station, this place, Tegna, and they need the FCC to loosen the government's limits on broadcast station ownership in order for the Trump administration to approve that deal. So, like, there's this whole little world where even when the pressure is not explicit, in this case, it was. I mean, Brendan Carr did, like, the Mafia guy thing. We could do this the easy way or the hard way. I don't know who he thinks he is, but he did it. And then there's this whole other underpinning of just all this corporate pressure that the Trump administration is now directing in the ways it wants. And, I mean, I think there's a lot of stuff not being said because of the environment that we're in.

[Camille Foster]

I don't think there's any doubt about that. I do wanna come back to something you said earlier, just with respect to how dangerous this current moment is and the threat to free speech and, you know, whether or not this is one of the moments where our speech rights are most imperiled relative to, say, just any other moment in our lives collectively. And I suppose that means the measuring stick is mine, since it's the longest. I don't know. It's certainly the case that the Trump administration is more brazen. They are doing this openly, and in instances, they're opening up these investigations into their political adversaries. The president this week firing a top prosecutor who refuses to presume with the prosecution that the prosecutor himself described as the case being weak. But the specific dynamic that has everyone concerned is that this is clearly one of Trump's chief political rivals, someone who tried to prosecute him in New York for a crime. The reality, though, is that's the dynamic. It's a tit for tat against someone who tried to prosecute him for a crime. And that seemed to have some political motivation, too. Tish James ran for office in New York promising to get Donald Trump for unspecified crimes. She went and she proceeded. That's at the state level, slightly different in that respect, but she proceeded. And as did a number of other cases, the Trump administration returns the favor. And they're bellicose about it. It seems to me that in a certain sense, there's a kind of status quo level of, kind of danger to free expression that we have been wrestling with for some time. And in some respects, the fact that Tish James could do that, and so many people were willing to just kind of look at it and say, well, this is it. You know, the courts are doing what they do. Let justice be served. I also hate the guy and not recognizing that this is actually a real problem. This guy's running for president. Half of the country probably supports him. And it seems that there are lots and lots of people who are to his left politically who would be very happy to disqualify him from being able to run by any means necessary, utilizing the courts. And to the extent that exists, but they're not talking about it in that way because they're more sophisticated. That might actually be slightly more dangerous because fewer people perhaps recognize it for what it is.

[Isaac Saul]

I just think that the.

[Camille Foster]

Not that the relative danger is the most important quality here, the fact that there's a persistent danger is really, really the worst part in my assumption.

[Ari Weitzman]

I mean, it is important, I think, for us to relativize it. There's always a jump we want to make from this is a problem to this is an existential level problem. And then we're all seeing Nazis in the corner. Cause we're thinking everything is at that level. But you said something about there's a baseline of political threat to free speech that's existing. And then you were talking about what the immediate context behind Trump's overreaction or reaction to free speech restriction. And when we are thinking about is this the biggest threat in our lifetimes? Maybe. And if we think what do we mean by us? Because post 9 11, if you were a Muslim or it was like worshiping in peace, if you were doing that publicly or visibly, that was a huge threat. Go back to McCarthyism, that's probably the biggest threat in free speech that we can remember in our country's history. We can't remember it ourselves personally. But it's not to say this is fine. It's just to say if we want to contextualize it. I do think that's useful to say, like, look, we've weathered storms before. I'm not saying it's not a storm. I'm just saying that we aren't going to. If you don't line up on the right side, then we're all, the ship's going down. Maybe it's not as just to say it's not the unprecedented with the Capital U thing that we keep hearing.

[Isaac Saul]

I don't know, man. I mean, I think if you look at the whole, I mean, you have the president openly strong arming universities and law firms into settlements. They're deporting people for speech, screening people at the border for social media stuff for speech, for things that are like, I mean, objectively political expression, not threats of terrorism, not incitement for political views. I mean, some of these kids, college students are spending time in jail for political views that are held by a quarter of the country. Something like get Israel out of Gaza, participating in campus protests that millions of college students are participating in and they're going to jail for it. Then you have all the network stuff, all the pressure on all these major news networks who are now currying favor with the administration because they don't want to run into trouble with the fcc. They want to keep their access, whatever it is. So all that's happening, the merger stuff's happening at a huge rate right now in the media space. So they all need Trump's approval for that. He's making no bones about like, we're going to pick favorites, so do the right thing and you'll get what you want. He's filing lawsuits against the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal. So he's literally suing them. Yeah, I mean that's happening.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, that's the one thing. Honestly, like everything else up until then, I'm like, yep, McCarthy, McCarthy, McCarthy. Every single one. I'm not saying like, oh yeah, it's fine, cuz it's happened before. I'm just saying when we say unprecedented, maybe not, but the President as the private citizen being able to suit people is the thing that feels like that's the extra step that makes this moment unprecedented.

[Camille Foster]

Well, that paired with the bellicosity of the administration, although you're right, during the McCarthy, if we go back there, that was a bit different. I will say the 911 point that you raised is a salient one. And Barack Obama actually made a parallel point to that that I thought was very accurate. And he highlighted George W. Bush and alluded to the fact that during that period when the Bush administration was in office, George W. Bush was very careful to say, and I mean it is interesting to. I am about to talk about how articulate and eloquent George W. Bush is making articulation. It's amazing. I'm just, you know, that was not the case at the time. That's true.

[Ari Weitzman]

Our standards are changing.

[Camille Foster]

That administration was careful to say we are not at war with Islam. They were careful to say things about how they're focusing on these prosecutions, but they wanted to be careful about people's rights. And they talked openly about the tension between protecting civil liberties and trying to protect people, their physical safety and ensure there weren't additional attacks. Granted, they did not always do the best they tried to do some kind of legal innovations in places that I would take issue with and have taken issue with. But at the same time, that felt different. And I think to the extent I'm saying it might not be as unprecedented, it's mostly because I don't want anyone to imagine that what we need to do is return to the status quo of, say, two years ago or four years ago and imagine that, oh, everything was fine then. We had a serious president in office and civil liberties were well protected, and there weren't these persistent threats to free speech. There were. The only people talking about them at that time was a cadre of journalists and activists who care deeply about civil liberties and some Republicans. But a number of Democrats were happy to either ignore or find ways to rationalize the thing that the Biden administration was doing. Because Covid or because social justice or.

[Ari Weitzman]

Because Donald Trump's an existential threat, we have to make sure he can't run again.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah. And I think that that kind of rationalization and the sophistication of that project is pretty dangerous. The fact that. That it's easy for the right to surface clips of people like Jimmy Kimmel advocating for various kinds of censorship and kind of deplatforming while also complaining about what's happening to Jimmy Kimmel is actually proof of something that's worth acknowledging. Like that double standard in and of itself, I think kind of alludes to a kind of persistent danger that is easy to overlook. And the phrase that is coming to mind now is something that I used to say a lot when Trump was running for office the first time around. But it's not as bad as you suspect, but it could be worse than you imagine, which is to say that, yeah, this might not be the worst possible threat. It's only because the threat is always there. And there is a great deal that we ought to be doing to try to better safeguard civil liberties and free speech that we haven't done in this country. And I don't want anyone to imagine that, say, once Donald Trump is out of office, then the problem is subsided. You know, if a Democrat was to win the next election, I don't know that we would be tremendously better off if they pursue a course that includes reprisals for this kind of stuff to try to put the kind of MAGA corps in check. That would be really bad, too. And it's not impossible to imagine that, because we've seen a version of that already.

[Isaac Saul]

I mean, I would just say I wasn't even done listing the things. I mean, like, I would probably qualify National Guard troop deployments to Los Angeles. I mean, that's a crackdown on protests and demonstrations, framing them as like this, you know, these, like, riots that need to be, like, reined in when emergency powers. Yeah. Like, all the emergency power stuff. So, to me, I do feel like it kind of meets that threshold, though. Perhaps the most frightening thing or the most worrisome thing is it's the cultural degradation of speech. And, I mean, this is the thing that I worry about, I suppose. And I've heard. I mean, Camille, I know you do. You're on the board of fire. Like, this is more your space than it's mine. But from engaging with or reading a lot of free speech experts, people like Jacob mchanga. Do you know his last name? Is that right?

[Camille Foster]

It was pretty close.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. He wrote that excellent book on the history of free speech. We had him on the podcast awesome dude. And wrote a brilliant book that I think grappled with the nuance of how every era has its free speech battles. There was a time when people talked about the printing press, the way we talk about the Internet.

[Camille Foster]

Talk about books that way.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Camille Foster]

Talked about books that way.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Camille Foster]

Books were impoverishing us that we didn't have to remember anything anymore.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. And something I took from reading his work in particular was like, it seemed to me as if the culture, the free speech culture degrades first and then the law follows.

[Camille Foster]

Sure. Yes.

[Isaac Saul]

And so if Trump does this kind of thing and we're all just like. We get that desensitization to it, and we're like, I guess this is just something a president does now, the cultural implications of that on a country that values speech, to me, is really scary. And maybe another thing that makes this moment a little bit unprecedented, in my view, at least, is actually what's happening in Europe. I mean, it's not, you know, to the degree that, like, you think that our Global touch points impact the culture here. I mean, there are literally people being arrested across Europe right now for social media posts. I mean, that is happening. It has arrived. And you know, for all the shit J.D. vance gets about, like bringing this stuff up, I think often in inappropriate settings or whatever, I think he's right about a lot of this, that like, Europe has lost its way, the EU's lost its way, England has lost its way on some of these things that are supposed to be core shared values between us that create this sort of camaraderie between our countries. And the fact that it's happening there makes me feel like it could happen here quicker than we think. So what happens if Trump does something like this and we're all like, oh, that seems bad. Half the people are like, hey, Jimmy Kimmel's getting kicked off the air because the FCC strong arming these guys and there's like deals and acquisitions and it's like a little bit confusing. And then it's really easy to be like, Jimmy Kimmel show sucks. Like, who cares? You know, and just get. And then it's like two months from now, it's like, hey, some producer, like the guy who wrote that joke Jimmy Kimmel said on the air and accused the guy of being maga, got arrested for like incitement against conservatives. And everybody's like, oh, that's kind of scary. Like they don't have a case though, right? It's like, oh, well, he's gonna be in jail for three months while it goes to trial or whatever. But all of a sudden are we. We're just like talking about that like it's some news story. And then it's like, if you're a writer on a comedy show on late night tv, you have to like, yes, the administration hasn't done that yet. But like, is that that far fetched if they're doing this kind of thing where they're like, we're gonna crack down like, he tried to pin this on MAGA and we're gonna make this, you know, writers room at ABC pay and so we're gonna file charges against them and maybe we don't have a case, but like, you know, it'll cost them millions of dollars to defend themselves and they'll sit in jail while, you know, we bring it up with some Trump friendly judge. I mean, I don't think that that's that crazy. So I would say I am on very high alert right now.

[Camille Foster]

No, no, listen, you ought to be on high alert. I don't take issue with Anything in the litany of awful things that you mentioned that the on speech related issues and generally just exceeding its authority and abusing the bully pulpit in a number of contexts. I think what I'm suggesting here, and this is a somewhat nuanced point, but I think it's a legitimate thing for us to take into consideration. I saw Harry Enton on CNN Talking about 186% increase in web searches for the phrase free speech specifically related to Pam Bondi. And it's because she went on television a couple of times, actually once was on television. The other time she was talking to Stephen Miller's wife, Katie Miller on her podcast and suggested that hate speech needed to be prosecuted and that this is, you know, this is a very strange position for conservatives to adopt who have long generally been in line with a lot of very kind of intense civil liberties advocates who say there's no such thing as hate speech in the United States as a legal category of something. No, it doesn't get prosecuted because this is just not a thing. And people are searching for free speech because of what Pam Bondi is doing. And in many respects, I think people are more animated about the things that you're talking about, Isaac, than they perhaps might be. Than they might be if someone else were carrying this out. And we're doing it in a more sophisticated way, not even slightly more, but just dramatically more. Cuz they're not particularly sophisticated or depth about it. In fact, I think the likelihood that we'll just come to a point where like this is just how it is now, this is our new normal is very low. And I think the fact that you have someone like Ted Cruz who is no Democrat and has certainly been someone who's been willing to be very compliant to the Trump administration, is in the New York Times this week referring to Carr tactics as kind of mafia bullshit, which I think you alluded to as well. Like that's a good sign. And it does suggest that there is a natural resistance to the way that they're going about doing these things.

[Ari Weitzman]

I chuckled because I'm remembering like a couple months ago when we were talking about the Republicans in Congress putting up a fight against the big beautiful bill. We're like, this is good. They're showing resistance. And then the votes came and yeah, yeah, like how much does it mean?

[Camille Foster]

And it may be completely trivial, but I'm not depending on just Republicans to do it. But Ted Cruz is a fairly sophisticated political operator. Yeah, sure, he knows the party. He fell in line when he had to and has been generally not just complimentary of, but aggressively supporting a guy who has said very unkind things about.

[Ari Weitzman]

Him after running in a primary against him and then showing up for like, I'm gonna put up a fight. Never mind, like, it's kind of been his pattern too.

[Camille Foster]

It just seems like the sort of guy that is perhaps, perhaps sensing something in the water that isn't particularly great for Trump and might be an opportunity for someone to differentiate themselves from his brand of hard nose politics. And that might be a good thing. So I don't know, maybe it's a thin read to stand on. I can't help but look for some signs.

[Isaac Saul]

No, no, I would say I was actually. It's funny you said that because I was gonna say there are some encouraging signs. I should like to be clear. The Cruz thing was one of them. By the way, David McCormick, the senator from Pennsylvania, like, retweeted what Cruz said and said, I agree with Senator Cruz. Good riddance to Jimmy Kimmel and his discussing rhetoric. But Ted raises important concerns about the comments of the FCC Chairman. Tucker Carlson came out and said that he hopes his friend's assassination won't be used as a pretext for hate speech laws. If that does happen, there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that. Ben Shapiro said, I do not want the FCC in the business of telling local affiliates that their licenses will be removed if they broadcast material that the FCC deems to be informationally false. Why? Because one day the shoe will be on the other foot.

[Ari Weitzman]

That's right.

[Isaac Saul]

Which, like, you know, I don't.

[Ari Weitzman]

It's not why I don't love that.

[Isaac Saul]

As the answer, but it's like, that's what it takes. Yeah, if that's what it takes, I'll take it. And then sort of the other side of that spectrum is like, you know, Mike Pence was getting interviewed and said, the First Amendment, though, does not protect entertainers who say crass or thoughtless things as Jimmy Kimmel did in the wake of a national tragedy. And it's like, actually, yes, it does from the government.

[Ari Weitzman]

Right. It doesn't protect people from being fired for reason. When the government comes out and says, hey, watch what you say or else we'll, you know, maybe not approve your merger. It makes me think about the Colbert stuff, certainly differently, and see a trend line there. We're a little like, uncertain about that.

[Isaac Saul]

But now this one seems pretty.

[Ari Weitzman]

It's on the nose. I think the Colbert recasts that, though.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah, I think so, too.

[Isaac Saul]

And like There's a lot of people. I mean, look, I'm not an entertainment business reporter, so I can't speak with tons of authority on this kind of stuff. Like, you know, one of the responses was just like, Jimmy Kimmel show is losing money. This was just an excuse. It's like, no, Jimmy Kimmel's like a pretty big. It's possible that his show was losing money, but it is a staple of late night tv. And it's not just cable ratings that matter. Jimmy Kimmel's an influential figure. He's all over YouTube, his jokes, his shows are getting clipped all the time. I don't think that they're making that decision because they finally got an excuse to fire Jimmy Kimmel. I think they're making that decision because it became a business problem with the fcc. And that's scary to me.

[Camille Foster]

Yes, generally. Generally all correct. And I generally agree with all of that. But importantly, we are speculating here, and I think it's worth acknowledging that the broadcast television industry is. It's not just in decline. It doesn't make sense. For 2025, all of these major media companies, CBS, Fox, ABC, they are in trouble. They're having a difficult time. They're pursuing these mergers because they're trying to figure out how to make their business models work. Advertising revenue is spread out all over the place. We are the media now, to quote Elon Musk, which is to say that there is just a broad universe of different content providers and outlets that they have to compete with that they didn't have to compete with before. And Jimmy Kimmel's show, while it is popular, is uniquely expensive to produce because he is so expensive. And yeah, a lot of these companies have wanted to shed this dead weight. And it is entirely possible that just for cultural reasons, Jimmy might have gotten the ax behind this if Carr said nothing.

[Ari Weitzman]

Right.

[Camille Foster]

And it actually, like Carr's, the broader rest, the rest of his remarks are actually interesting. Jimmy Kimmel is losing influence. He doesn't matter. Like, these people have been. Aren't doing nearly as well as like say, Greg Gutfeld, et cetera. All that's true. So why are you screwing around with that?

[Ari Weitzman]

Them. But also like the other, other people on the list of satirists that are doing better are like Jon Stewart and South park, like Trey and Matt, and they're not really in danger of being canceled.

[Camille Foster]

And they don't have that. They don't have that avenue.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, well, they don't have the avenue. Right. And that, that's the thing that I'm gonna say I'm not entirely sure how convicted I am of what I'm gonna say. I'm, like, aware I'm saying the third chair kind of thing tonight. Like, you guys are all right about this being a pretty chilling moment for free speech. And I'm like, I just want to make sure. Are we in the fridge or the icebox? Is really what I'm.

[Camille Foster]

No, that's a good point.

[Ari Weitzman]

And, like, in that regard, the thing that I want to ask is, like, is this Trump and the right want to chill free speech or is it? I see an opportunity. I see business opportunity. Hey, look, they want something. There's a merger that's on the table for abc. There's a way that I can get something out of this. Why would I let it go for nothing? Like the old Blagojevich line, like, got something gold here. Why would I give it away for free? I think Trump has given.

[Camille Foster]

I've heard him say that explicitly.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

Which is kind of odd. It goes back to something we've talked about before. Like, the window for what constitutes a scandal has shifted so far that you can't even see the window anymore. Like, we're on a different street. But the point is, it's not like Trump is a fascist, and more like Trump is a blatant opportunist. And it doesn't really matter what the principle is. Right now we're talking about free speech. But if we want to zoom out a lot, the question that I want to to both of you is, are we concerned about free speech because the government is threatening free speech? Or are we concerned about free speech because it's the issue today and it's just something that happens to be in the bulldozer of Trump's opportunism.

[Camille Foster]

We'll be right back after this quick break.

[Ari Weitzman]

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[Isaac Saul]

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[Isaac Saul]

For me personally, I'm concerned about free speech because I think we've seen a persistent threat to it from consecutive governments that seems to be trending in the Wrong direction. And this is the worst. To me, it's been up and to the right. And I was pretty up in arms about some of the Biden stuff with the Twitter files and the COVID misinformation. And I think rightfully so. I thought the Hunter Biden stuff was a little bit more complicated, like the throttling of that story. But the moment that X is like not allowing me or Twitter then not allowing me to DM a story to somebody that feels really weird. And I did not like that. Yeah, those were all good reasons for people to be worried. And I think we're seeing a lot of good reasons right now.

[Camille Foster]

But this is the thing. Among the people who. Who ought to be worried, I feel like there was. I was deeply concerned then. Cause it felt like not only were they not worried, a lot of people couldn't even acknowledge it was a problem at the time. And now it feels like there are lots of people who are worried. And it is certainly the case there are people who won't acknowledge it. But even among the MAGA folks who I've encountered and in some of the prominent MAGA figures, the argument is, well, they fired him because of something else. It's not because of the pressure that the FCC brought.

[Ari Weitzman]

Right.

[Camille Foster]

You know, they're rationalizing it in different ways that don't suggest they're just going after free expression. So again, it's all bad. Their approach to governance is to innovate in ways that are oftentimes imperil the rule of law and degrade the confidence that people have in government, broadly speaking, in ways that even weirdo with my particular political inclinations is very concerned about. I don't think it's a good idea to meddle with the official statistics that are being released about the economy for the benefit of your political party.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, Weird stance, Camille.

[Camille Foster]

But yeah, I don't know. I don't want to belabor too much the kind of attempt to contextualize where we are right now. I think we all agree that it is quite bad and in many ways is decidedly unprecedented. And to the extent there is any disagreement in the room, it seems to be not even so much. Are we on a continuum? Is there where things have been getting particularly worse? I think we generally agree there. Maybe it's around this question of are enough people sufficiently concerned? And it feels like more people are concerned. Relatedly, though, and this is perhaps expanding the conversation a bit, and I know we have to wrap soon because we gotta get somewhere. I have heard people like Ezra Klein and Actually, I mentioned the CNN panel I was on this morning where people are acknowledging that during the Biden administration, not only politically, but culturally, we were in a place that was much more difficult than they seemed to acknowledge at the time. I think what Ezra Klein said specifically was that he didn't describe it as wokeness, but he referred to that period when the social justice movement really had the reins in our politics, that the left had become too censorious and said explicitly that he should have acknowledged it more at the time. And again, to the extent you're seeing what Donald Trump is doing and that's making you reflect on what happened to the culture then in that particular moment, I think that's very good. Abby Phillips did something very similar where she very forcefully said to everyone on the panel, the left needs to acknowledge what it did. Its kind of academic approach to a lot of issues, kind of framing things as systemic and othering everyone else was supposed to be helpful and was very likely counterproductive. And it's important for the left to acknowledge that. And she said that while criticizing the Trump administration's myriad overreaches right now and outright violations of people's rights, which I think it's fair to say as well, even though some those things will never get into court. So that seems to me like a healthy trend as well, and could very well suggest that maybe we enter into a period where there are more friends to free speech and fire's donor base increases, and maybe even the ACLU kind of returns to its prior form because they had been hijacked a little bit by some of the social justice. The social justice. I'm looking for a word and can't find it. And I suspect it might be the time of day.

[Isaac Saul]

Any guesses on Jimmy Kimmel's annual salary?

[Ari Weitzman]

Just from the show.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

400,000.

[Camille Foster]

No way.

[Ari Weitzman]

Super low.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah, it's super low.

[Ari Weitzman]

I mean, I feel like. Okay, yeah, I was gonna say, like, I think a lot of it could be just as an executive producer credits, and you're getting deals from something outside of a salary.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah, it's in the millions. I'm wondering if it's much more. More than, like, 10 million. But it may be tens of millions, but it's certainly not less than 10 million. That's my guess.

[Isaac Saul]

$15 million a year. 15 or 15, yeah.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

I should let you go first.

[Isaac Saul]

20 million. $20 million with endorsements and stuff.

[Camille Foster]

That sounds right.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Camille Foster]

The airing of grievances.

[Isaac Saul]

Between you and me, I think your.

[Camille Foster]

Country is placing a lot of importance on Shoe removal.

[Isaac Saul]

All right, we do have to get moving. We've got a dinner reservation, but we can't get out of here without a little. What is a better grievance session than sharing our complaints from a beautiful mansion in Vermont as we overlook Lake Champlain? The sun coming. This is Peak Grievances right here.

[Camille Foster]

I have got one.

[Isaac Saul]

All right, great.

[Camille Foster]

This may be the first time I fully participate.

[Isaac Saul]

Cool. We gotta keep it real. Well. Well, I'm not going to tug your leash, but we have to keep it quick. I'll go first and I'll be really quick. Mine is that I was sick, low key, for seven to 10 days from Omri, and on Monday was like, he had been sick. I was like, I'm not really. I survived first daycare sickness and I'm going to go to this retreat with tangle and everything's gonna be fine. And then I woke up on Tuesday morning after feeling sick for like nine days, just completely collapsed into a horrible cold and cough that I've been battling the whole time we've been here, which feels like a huge injustice to successfully fight off a virus of some kind for nearly two weeks and then have it just come raining down on your head at the most inopportune time. So I sound terrible, probably look terrible. I feel okay. My heart's full, My mind is clear, but I really wish I wasn't congested and coughing during this entire trip. Everybody's staying away from me too, which is terrible feeling.

[Ari Weitzman]

There's also that late stage productive cough. You don't feel like you're getting worse. You're like, this sucks, it hurts, it's raspy. But it's also the end of it.

[Isaac Saul]

It's real tuberculosis vibe going on for me right now.

[Ari Weitzman]

Back up on that. When you saw him entering away, you.

[Camille Foster]

Sounded worse before, so. So you're definitely on the mend for the moment. All right, I'll give you mine. I'll be quick. I think I may have mentioned that one of my vehicles was put into the shop for a month because of rodent damage. A rat got inside the truck and ate a bunch of the parts. Apparently there seems to be something where they may be attracted to the coating that's on the wiring. It turned out that my other car had been run through by rats as well. So that one also went to the dealership and I came back. Granted, the price tag in one case was like 18,000. In the other case it was about 1700.

[Ari Weitzman]

I'm totally underestimating how much things cost. If it costs 18,000. It costs like two used cars to repair your wire.

[Camille Foster]

Let's take it a bit further. What's worse is the one that cost about 18,000, the BMW. And this is the grievances. So I mentioned the brand in that respect. And I'm also a little pissed at them, so I'll mention them for that reason, too. The car came back to us. We had it for about two weeks, and it started rattling again.

[Ari Weitzman]

And it's about rattling without rattling.

[Camille Foster]

It's gone back to the dealership. And I am sure I know what's going on. Granted, we've had pest control come. We don't have any rat problems inside the house, but we do live in Marin County. Our neighbor has fruiting trees and there are lots of rodents outside. So. Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

You have a garage?

[Camille Foster]

We do. I have a gym set up in there. So apparently I just need to start taking the various weight loss shots and just give up on the gym. So I could park one of my vehicles in the one car garage and maybe have a car I can drive reliably.

[Ari Weitzman]

So that's the move. Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

Sounds like a nightmare.

[Camille Foster]

Life isn't fair. It's the vibes.

[Isaac Saul]

Now.

[Ari Weitzman]

It's true. I have to put one of my cars, BMW or my Tesla, in my one car garage in Marin county to go put my free weights in my basement. Now that's how this grievance thing works.

[Isaac Saul]

True. Really on brand.

[Ari Weitzman]

I'm doing the Isaac thing, though, where I make fun of you for.

[Camille Foster]

I'll take it. I can laugh. Today we have one working car.

[Ari Weitzman]

I'm sorry.

[Camille Foster]

Thank you.

[Ari Weitzman]

That's. That's tough, buddy. I guess I have, like, another kind of. Of grievance that's prepped to be just completely crapped on because I have this thing, like, right now. We're day two and a half, I guess, of this retreat where it's the fruits of a lot of labor for me, starting like a year ago, where I talked to the whole team, when it was five of us, saying the next time we do a team retreat, it should be in Vermont in the fall or late summer. It's gonna be great. Come up here. Come on, come on, come on, come on. Just like desperately trying to get everybody to come up. And over time, like, everyone's like, yeah, we can make that work. Find the dates in the calendar. I'm like, yeah, it's happening. And then now the team's grown. It's 12 people. Another one of our co workers and I have been planning it for a long time to get people up here and see all the places that I find to be really meaningful to me and, like, beautiful, and I want to share it with everybody. And now that it's happening, I feel like I. I'm almost, like, not as in the moment as I thought it would be.

[Camille Foster]

Huh?

[Ari Weitzman]

Like, I recognize, like, this is an incredible view of a lake that I've spent. I spent every day last summer in with my wife and dog. And it's a special lake to me. And I got to have everybody up to our house that we built, and it's a special place to me and felt really great to have everybody there. And I've had this bifurcated life where I've had the work life that happens within the 10 inch rectangle on the computer, and then I've had the life life that happens when it shuts. And I've been wanting those things to come together. And now that they're together, I'm like. I feel like. I'm like, yeah, this is. This is good. This is right? But I don't know. I was like, am I. Am I, like, experiencing it fully enough? I don't know. I'm like, am I, like, is my heart opening as wide as it needs to? Like, take it all in? So, like, the grievance is like, am I. I'm happy, but am I happy enough? I don't know. I feel like it might. I'm really, really trusting to appreciate the fact that this is gonna. Like, we planned this, it's happening, it's going well, and it's gonna be gone before I know it. I'm really trying to appreciate it.

[Isaac Saul]

I think that's the fundamental nature of hosting is, like, you just have to worry about the next thing, which makes the experience itself harder.

[Camille Foster]

Although it doesn't even sound like you're worrying about the next thing at the moment. It sounds like you're worrying about whether or not you're enjoying it.

[Ari Weitzman]

But, like, I think that might be a good reason. Reason why is like, I'm thinking about everyone else's experiences. That's kind of what you mean. Like, now I'm thinking about our itinerary and whether or not we're gonna go.

[Isaac Saul]

Well, if it makes me feel any better, I'm having a blast.

[Ari Weitzman]

That does make me feel.

[Camille Foster]

The only thing I've talked to you about is just how preposterously beautiful this place is.

[Isaac Saul]

It is outrageous.

[Ari Weitzman]

And free speech a little bit for an hour.

[Camille Foster]

We can go back to talking. I mean, it's. The sun is setting like this is it's Marin. I don't know if I've professed my love for it enough on this podcast.

[Ari Weitzman]

But I love it. Incredible place.

[Camille Foster]

It's amazing. This is close. Like this is really, really fucking good. But I would also say if you're asking yourself that question, am I sufficiently present and in the moment, I think you're doing it right. That's how it's supposed to work. You ask yourself the question and then you correct. And to the extent there's any advice, it's there's always if you weren't doing it before, you can do it from now moving forward and there always being an opportunity to kind of start getting it right is the is the thing to keep in mind. So yeah, let's go have a wonderful dinner and enjoy the rest of this evening. Maybe we can just sit outside and watch the sunset.

[Isaac Saul]

That's where I'm headed.

[Camille Foster]

Let's do it.

[Isaac Saul]

I love it. Thank you guys. Ari, Camille, we'll see you soon.

[Camille Foster]

See you in a bit.

[Ari Weitzman]

Peace.

[Isaac Saul]

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 the Memorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will K. Back and Associate editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsey Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our [e-mail].

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[Isaac Saul]

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[Camille Foster]

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[Isaac Saul]

Is just how many jigsaw pieces come.

[Camille Foster]

Together to help someone like me. I've met people who have just packaged the drugs, just this white box saying World Courier on it.

[Isaac Saul]

But I want to better say thank you to every single person that works on these things because they've saved my life.

[Camille Foster]

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