Suspension of the rules. - Isaac, Ari and Kmele talk Winter Olympics, Trump's racist tweet, DHS negotiations and more.

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Tangle – “Suspension of the Rules”

Date: February 13, 2026
Host: Isaac Saul
Guests: Ari Weitzman, Camille Foster

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Overview

This episode of Tangle’s “Suspension of the Rules” brings together host Isaac Saul and regular panelists Ari Weitzman and Camille Foster for a wide-ranging, spirited discussion at the intersection of politics, pop culture, and sports. The trio breaks down the latest in the Winter Olympics (with commentary on patriotism and international representation), the controversy surrounding Donald Trump’s “racist tweet”, the ongoing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding negotiations, takeaways from recent special elections, and their weekly personal grievances—all delivered in Tangle’s trademark blend of informed analysis and witty banter.

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1. The Winter Olympics, National Pride, and International Drama

Timestamps: 02:32–14:37

Key Points

• American Exceptionalism in the Olympics:
  Isaac opens the show hyped about the “most patriotic time of the year” and brags about U.S. medal prospects, before Ari and Camille gently push back (03:09).

• Olympic Sports Coverage:

  • Lindsey Vonn’s Skiing with a Torn ACL: Heartfelt concern and a dash of skepticism over Vonn’s statements that her ACL didn’t impact her performance (04:18, 05:50).
  • Figure Skating Aesthetic: Ari and Isaac discuss changing images of male figure skaters and the rise of stars like Ilia Malinin, dubbed a “sparkly Vecna” for his villainous yet brilliant performances (06:46).

• Weird Olympic Narratives:

  • A French biathlete’s credit card fraud conviction and subsequent gold medal win prompts discussion on team dynamics and international quirks (07:55).
  • The case of Eileen Gu: Born and raised in the U.S., but skiing and medaling for China.
    • Isaac’s blunt reaction:

      “If she's a product of the American system, she should race with us. Like, rep your colors. Easy.” (10:08)

    • Ari complicates the issue, pointing to cultural nuance, parental influence, and investment from China (11:49).
    • Camille: “I know the CCP is bad and I'm against it and I don't want them to win anything. …The actual truth, however, is I'm not watching any of the Olympics. …I've never felt less patriotic and connected to the country than this past week.” (13:12)

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2. The Super Bowl Halftime Controversies: Bad Bunny, TPUSA & Culture Wars

Timestamps: 14:37–23:44

Key Points

• Halftime Politics:
  • Debate over the aesthetics and politics of Bad Bunny’s halftime show (performed in Spanish, deep Puerto Rican identity), and Turning Point USA’s alternative American halftime featuring Kid Rock.
  • Isaac acknowledges criticism over the language barrier but praises the “incredible” production value:

    “It was a joyful, good show… [with] all good vibes.” (17:36)

  • Ari observes, “Identity's political. …I think that target [of halftime show representation]’s gotten too broad.” (18:02)
  • Camille humorously suggests, “God doesn't want us to have halftime shows anymore. …That was the zenith of Super Bowl performances. …They should have stopped after that.” (20:12)

Notable Quote

“I think if you want to have your alternative counter programming to the Super Bowl, you are totally entitled to… they would have been better off doing it without sounding like crybabies.” — Camille Foster (21:43)

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3. Trump’s “Racist” Tweet: Intent, Perception, and the Slippery Slope of ‘Racism’

Timestamps: 25:52–47:23

Context

Donald Trump shared a video on Truth Social containing Obama and Michelle Obama’s faces imposed on gorillas—a classic racist trope. The panel dissects the video, reactions, and broader implications.

Key Discussion Points

• Isaac’s Stance:

  • Asserts the video is “indefensible,” objects both to election denial content and the racist undertones (27:31).
  • Frames Trump’s Truth Social as “him at his purest essence. …It is like all the theories and ideas that he grabs onto… a lot of crazy, ridiculous stuff.” (29:11)

• Camille's Defense:

  • Reads his tweet aloud and clarifies he wasn’t defending the video, but arguing intent matters:

    “If we care about racism, it ought to matter whether or not the assertions of racism are actually real, whether or not someone intended to do something malevolent matters. …There's no evidence that there was any intention to post the video.” (32:52–34:03)

  • Argues that Trump's “malfeasance” on democratic legitimacy is far more serious than this meme artifact.

• Ari’s Perspective:

  • Draws a parallel to controversies over symbolic signaling (e.g., Musk’s “Nazi salute”—35:30).
  • Asserts that even without overt intent, public figures should answer for the implications of their posts:

    “I think it's fair to say, 'Yeah, what was that? You need to explain yourself for this…'” (42:34)

• Racism, Intent & Labeling:

  • Isaac cites the definition of racism and poses directly: “Would you say Donald Trump is a racist?” (36:35)
  • Camille:

    “…I don't know that I see a lot of evidence that Donald Trump is a malignant racist. …He likes Donald Trump, and he likes people who like Donald Trump… I really do think that my bottom line on this is… the way that we try to adjudicate… racism controversies is often incredibly sloppy and kind of hysterical.” (37:08, 47:23)

  • Ari notes subtler forms of bigotry are still impactful:

    “It doesn't have to be an over the top, black and white literal statement for me to go, 'I have a problem with that…'” (40:36)

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4. DHS Negotiations and Shutdown Politics

Timestamps: 49:07–69:22

The Debate

• Isaac Summarizes the Stalemate:

  • Democrats demand bodycams and “unmasking” for ICE, use-of-force standards; Republicans counter with proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration (49:07).
  • Observes “progress is not really being made in a meaningful way right now.” (51:59)

• Ari: Democrats Have the Leverage

  • “They're on offense for the first time… [Republicans] are just looking for ways to whittle them down as much as they can.” (51:59, 54:57)
  • Anticipates more brinkmanship, but expects incremental steps, not a full deal soon.

• Camille: Democrats Playing Rare Hardball

  • Sings rare praise for Democratic strategy: “They have taken full advantage of this particular circumstance… holding the line.” (54:57)
  • Points out Republican incoherence and the potential for a productive standoff.

• Link to Special Elections & Political Momentum

  • Isaac highlights upsets in Texas and New Jersey as signals that grassroots progressives are on the rise and national polling is worrying for Trump (57:24).
  • Suggests Democrats’ leverage won’t last long, given shifting media focus and political risks.

• Camille & Ari: Strategic Messaging and Endgame

  • Camille: “If Democrats have a sophisticated messaging strategy… they could keep this very simple… say, we are concerned… Which part of that is unreasonable?” (62:09)
  • But all agree that one news cycle twist, or a Republican-friendly ICE success story, could flip the narrative.

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5. Notable Quotes

On Eileen Gu (10:08–11:49):

“If she's a product of the American system, she should race with us. Like, rep your colors. Easy.”
— Isaac Saul (10:08)

On the Bad Bunny Halftime Show (17:36):

“It was a joyful, good show… the show was all good vibes. The game sucked. So it was like, thank God we're at halftime.”
— Isaac Saul (17:36)

On the Limits of Racism Discourse (47:23):

“Taking racism seriously is both a matter of being vigilant but also a matter of being thoughtful and dutiful and actually trying to adjudicate these things in a serious way and being as concerned about false positives as we are about missing the mark.”
— Camille Foster (47:23)

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6. Closing Grievances (“The Airing of Grievances”)

Timestamps: 69:58–81:05

Isaac’s Complaint:

• The persistence of road salt for snow removal:

  “It is 2026, and we don't have a better solution for deicing the roads than something that rusts my car… and maybe is poisonous in some cases if they eat it… The salt is what's getting me.” (70:57)

Ari’s Complaint:

• Mouse in the house, praise for classic mousetraps, and the horror of mouse droppings in a sock drawer (73:28).

Camille’s Complaint:

• The agony of finding the perfect pant, only to discover every subsequent pair—though labeled the same size and style—fits differently due to manufacturing and tariff issues with a European brand:

  “Every single pant fit differently… they had to make them at different facilities as a result of making them in different facilities with different mechanisms… a total disaster...” (77:28)

• Connects personal fashion ordeal to US tariff policy, joking about it—“Is this a tariff story in different colors? Yes, it is.” (77:35)

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7. Final Moments and Sign-Off

Timestamps: 81:05–81:49

Isaac jokes about the possibility of joining Ari's Olympic bingeing habits, and the trio signs off with the promise of further debate and more grievances next time.

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Summary Takeaways

• Olympics: The team explores patriotism, changing aesthetics in figure skating, and complex identity in player representation.
• Culture Wars: The panel sees the latest sports/halftime controversies as a microcosm of U.S. identity politics.
• Trump Controversy: The show provides a nuanced debate on what constitutes ‘racist’ actions, the importance of intent vs. effect, and the fatigue with policing the margins of language.
• DHS Deadlock: Democrats are, uncharacteristically, playing hardball, while Republicans appear fragmented; evolving political trends are influencing negotiation strategy as November looms.
• Personal Touch: The “airing of grievances” grounds the show in everyday frustrations, from salty streets to ill-fitting pants.

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To get more from Tangle or sign up for their newsletter, visit readtangle.com

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Episode Standouts:

• “If she's a product of the American system, she should race with us.”
• “Taking racism seriously is… being as concerned about false positives as we are about missing the mark.”
• “We don't have a better solution for deicing the roads than something that rusts my car… it’s 2026.”
• “Every single pant fit differently... a total disaster… Is this a tariff story in different colors? Yes, it is.”

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Transcript

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[Isaac Saul]

Coming up, we talk Olympics. Camille's defense of Donald Trump's racist tweet, the DHS negotiations, special elections and a very good Grievances. It's a good one. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the suspension of the rules podcast. Gentlemen, it is the most patriotic time of the year or of every, like, I guess, half decade, when we get to be reminded that we are the biggest, strongest, most physically imposing country on planet Earth.

[Camille Foster]

The election.

[Ari Weitzman]

Only Norway.

[Isaac Saul]

No, Norway can't touch us in medal counts. Don't start with this blasphemous stuff. At the time, looked at the medal counts.

[Ari Weitzman]

I'm just saying.

[Isaac Saul]

Let's check in at the end. I guess it's Winter Olympics, so maybe I don't even know. I'm, like, perfectly American about this, where I'm just ignorant to who actually wins.

[Camille Foster]

Fucking winning, obviously.

[Ari Weitzman]

Fourth. No, we're on top.

[Isaac Saul]

No, we must be the best. I do really, truly love the Olympics. We haven't had a. We haven't had a podcast since the Olympics started or since the super bowl happened. So there's some sports stuff here I think maybe worth covering. The Olympics feels tied a little bit into what we do because it's, you know, it's international, it's American. There's a whole sort of, like, political undertones. Most of my, I guess I should say, experience at the Olympics so far has just been waking up at 5:30am to watch Lindsey Vonn ski with a torn ACL.

[Ari Weitzman]

Oh, boy.

[Isaac Saul]

Which ended in horrific fashion. And, yeah, not cool. That was a really, really terrible way to start a day. And then other than that, I've just been watching a lot of figure skating, which I was telling you gu off the air. My wife Phoebe was sitting down watching the figure skating with me, and she was like, My memory of figure skating from when I watched the Olympics as a kid was all the men were these strong kind of suave collar, unbuttoned, handsome guys. And she was like, now it's all these dungeon and dragon looking kids who are skinny. And I was like, yeah, I don't really remember figure skating ever being like that. She was super disappointed. And, yeah, she was not happy with the talent, the crop of talent in the figure skating events we watched. But I don't know, Ari, you've been devouring this. What are you paying attention to right now? What should we key our audience into on the Olympic watchables?

[Ari Weitzman]

I guess we should say, oh, there's a couple things that are immediately very fascinating, like the Lindsey Vaughn story. My heart was in my throat watching her take that run. And it almost ended as well as it could have. Honestly, like, her hand clipped one of the gates on the way down. And that kind of caused her to turn. So she had a controlled fall rather than her entire leg falling off on live tv, which I was so worried about.

[Isaac Saul]

Well, did you see. She did say that the ACL had nothing to do with it.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah. No. Did you see the fall? I think we watched it. Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. I mean, I don't know if I believe her. I mean, she's saying, like, I didn't make the turn the way I wanted to. Which I'm like, maybe because your ACL was tight, that could have been possible, but. Yeah, go ahead.

[Ari Weitzman]

Sorry. I mean, like, watching that, it did seem like she was favoring her inside leg a bit there, which was her safe leg or healthy leg. So it did feel a little bit like she was, you know, impacted. But I'm glad that she's, you know, gonna walk. Mostly the Americans to watch. I don't know if you've seen any curling. There's this great joke that's going around about how the Winter Olympics are either sliding down a mountain or going on ice with, like blades or sticks attached to your feet, trying not to die. And also curling, which, like, you could do feasibly with a beer in your hand. But the Coreys, the mixed doubles team for the US Were great to watch.

[Isaac Saul]

Spoiler, right? Which is the only thing that actually matters.

[Ari Weitzman]

We bounced the Canucks. Yeah. But more. More importantly, that was prelims. They beat the Italians on home ice in the semis. Riveting match. And the Swedes ended up winning the finals. But curling ends up actually being a really fun watch. It's just like, really interesting to see them play the angles and stuff. Ilia Malinin is very much a guy. Like, he's the guy. He's the. The person that Phoebe was probably talking about is like figure skater that is waithy and not quite as like ripped and buff. I heard him described as sparkly vecna, which is perfect. He does sort of have like a. A beautiful, villainous vibe to him. He can do things that humans have not been able to achieve. Like, it is almost impossible for humans to do a triple axel where you rotate three and a half times off of one skate and then land one legged on ice, which feels impossible. And people at the top of the sport when they pull off triple axels, it's impressive. And he can do quads, which is unreal. And he does. He just peppers them into his program. Tonight's going to be his long program, so he's expected to run away with it, which would Be cool.

[Isaac Saul]

That's tonight.

[Ari Weitzman]

That's tonight. The end of the. Like, they do a short and long program together and then just along. So he's going to do that later in the week, too. That's fun. But I also wanted to ask you guys, I had this in my pocket because I think this is one of the more interesting narratives, apart from biathlon, which is hilarious, combining the two most important sports, cross country skiing and shooting. But there's a French athlete who got. She's incredible, and she just won the buy this morning. But she had a bit of trouble leading into the Olympics because she was convicted of credit card fraud and stealing credit card numbers from her teammates, which probably creates a weird dynamic in the clubhouse. I don't know if you guys have ever done that.

[Camille Foster]

Which, which, which one? Which part?

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, the fraud thing. I know that you haven't won the biathlon.

[Isaac Saul]

Or maybe stolen. But not stolen credit card numbers. No.

[Ari Weitzman]

From your teammates, let alone. But they.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

Slap on the wrist. And France just let her go back up because she's.

[Isaac Saul]

She must be good. Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

Wow. But the real thing that I wanted to ask you guys about is Eileen Goo. I think she's like the perfect, like, lightning rod for debate. I know. Before the call, I asked if you'd heard about her. Said no. So this is like, completely coming in blank on this. She is one of the best slopestyle skiers in the world. So she's an all rounder, but she does great tricks and flips and stuff. And she's like, one of the best in the world at it. She won the silver four years ago competing for China, and is competing again for China, despite the fact that she is born and raised in San Francisco in the Bay Area. She speaks with an American accent, was brought up in the US Developmental system, and she has this worldwide acclaim as, like, an icon of the sport and is like a supermodel and will be invited to do fashion Runway shows. Has all of these millions of dollars of endorsement and she's like, very much an American, and she is up there winning medals for China. A lot of people.

[Isaac Saul]

I hate it. I hate it.

[Ari Weitzman]

How do you.

[Isaac Saul]

Wow.

[Ari Weitzman]

So you hate it. Tell me more.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. If she's a product of the American system, she should race with us. Like, rep your colors. Easy. She's born here.

[Ari Weitzman]

You know, I'm not certain if she's. I'm pretty sure, though, she's definitely raised here. Like, this is where she's from.

[Isaac Saul]

Interesting.

[Ari Weitzman]

Wow.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. I mean, I'm just. I mean, not like, nothing to do with animosity towards China. Just like, I want to win. Sounds like she's super good. Yeah. I mean, that's a heartbreaking loss if she's a product of the American system and racing for somebody else. No. Good. Yeah. Definitely gets me mad. I don't like her. I don't like her. I don't know anything about her. I don't like her, though.

[Ari Weitzman]

That's exactly how I feel. And then, like, I learned a little bit more about her. So there's a couple things. One is, you know, she made this decision when she was really young, seemingly before she was 18. She got offered the chance to be this icon in China where the sport doesn't really exist. And in interviews, she said it's growing the sport to these billions of people who don't know about it, and it's a good opportunity for outreach. And it seems like her mom had a bit to do with the decision where her mom is a good skier and they got a lot of money from China to help with training and support her. Like, the massive resources of the Chinese state are behind it. And you just imagine, like, somebody who is like a first generation immigrant or second generation immigrant from mom's from China and lives in the us Not a poor family by any means. Like, this is an academic and a skier, her mom. But when you have that opportunity, when the Chinese government's, like, giving you money to help train.

[Isaac Saul]

Quick question.

[Ari Weitzman]

Maybe you convince your daughter to do it. It's not really her call either, and she's kind of making the best of her situation. Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

Was the question, does her mom happen to be like, a former administration official for Xi Jinping or something? Is there foul play here that we know about? Government interference? Like, they're stealing one from under our nose and winning some gold medals that should be ours.

[Ari Weitzman]

I think it's just the charm offensive. I don't see anything about her having ties to she' of regime, just that she is an educated person. She has an mba, she worked in finance, and she knows how to ski already. And she was really involved with her upbringing. So it just seems like her thumb's on the scale a little. And I feel like there's this little thing in the back of my head where I think anytime we see a woman who's beautiful, out doing her own thing, knowing her value and getting her money, it just pisses us off a little bit. Like, I think there's, like, a little bit of misogyny that's in there that's deep. And I know I know that you're, like shaking your head about it.

[Camille Foster]

Where did that come from? Dude, where did that come from?

[Isaac Saul]

We. We.

[Ari Weitzman]

The American. Like the commentariat. Like, I feel like there's this added vitriol to her that makes me a little uncomfortable.

[Camille Foster]

I'd forgotten her gender. Yeah. I will admit, Isaac, you perhaps are above politics in the context of the Olympics. I know the CCP is bad and I'm against it and I don't want them to win anything. And that's the only thing that makes me upset about this. The actual truth, however, is I'm not watching any of the Olympics. I haven't seen any of it. Not a single moment. And consistent with that, I haven't even seen a single moment of the Super Bowl. I've never felt less patriotic and connected to the country than this past week.

[Ari Weitzman]

Man, what are you doing?

[Isaac Saul]

What were you doing during the Super Bowl?

[Camille Foster]

Well, thank you for asking, Isaac. This would be my grievance, but I've got a better one. I live close to San Francisco, as you know. So with the super bowl in town, flights were a complete disaster. I had to get up in the air on one of the less crowded flights where even a coach ticket didn't cost $1,000 at around 3pm in the afternoon. So I didn't have an option of watching the Super Bowl. Once I was up in the air, I don't watch the TV on the plane, so I just did some work instead. So I missed the whole of the super bowl and the only thing I did was watch the Bad Bunny performance later and of course, watch the Turning Points alternative to compare the two.

[Ari Weitzman]

Oh, so that's the only thing you've done that's American?

[Camille Foster]

I don't even know. Honestly, I think the Seahawks won the Super Bowl. That is the honest truth. I don't really know what's going on.

[Isaac Saul]

They crushed. Should we talk about the Bad Bunny thing? I mean, that got political, I guess.

[Camille Foster]

Exceedingly.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Camille Foster]

Halftime shows are always political now, apparently.

[Isaac Saul]

Well, okay, the. I think there is actually kind of a. Yeah, I don't. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know how much time we should spend on this, but to me, a silly controversy. That being said, let's dive. Okay, first of all, the TPUSA halftime show sucked. I watched it. It was terrible. Kid Rock looked like he was lip syncing. The vibe was off. There was like a weird. Well, he posted this whole like 5 minute video trying to prove that he wasn't lip syncing.

[Camille Foster]

And then it's Defensible. It's defensible.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. I saw somebody post it, like, you know your performance threat really well and you have to spend five minutes explaining how wrong everything went. Like, but like. And at the same time, the Bad Bunny show was visually, like, aesthetically, I thought, incredible. I mean, the, like, what it took to pull the actual show off. It was such a feat of production. But halftime shows kind of always suck at the Super Bowl. Like, the sound is always terrible, the lyrics are always like smashed up and it's a little unclear. And there's always like some weird production stuff going on. I've never seen, like, I've seen a lot of memorable halftime shows, but like Kendrick Lamar last year, it was like everybody's like, well, I don't even know what he's saying. Like, this sucks. And then the year before was Usher, which was awesome. Mostly because he did the rollerblades thing, which was incredible. I'll never forget that. And it's Usher. But the vibe was good. I thought it was a good vibe. He did the overtly political thing with the kid, the five year old Ramos kid, who is like taken by ice. But the production value of the show was like, objectively incredible. I mean, should be decent Spanish. I didn't understand what he was saying the whole time. Which again, that happens like every halftime show. Yeah, I mean, it was just like, first of all, it's Puerto Rican Spanish, which is like a little hard for me. I'm Mexican Spanish trained, I would say. But second of all, like, the accent's just a little different and they're faster. It's singing kind of speedy. But also like, the production value sort of sucks. Like the music just doesn't sound as good. But yeah, I don't know, like people were so. I get it. It's all in Spanish and like, you're a red blooded American. You don't want. I'm like, come on. It was a joyful, good show. Rich Eisen did a great piece on this. The guy is like, clearly patriotic about being an American, about being Puerto Rican. It was like the show was all good vibes. The game sucked. So it was like, thank God we're at halftime.

[Ari Weitzman]

It's cathartic for some of us.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, cathartic in some ways to watch the Patriots get obliterated, but just like boring games. So I don't know. That's my vibe on the Bad Bunny thing. Good. Typical standard halftime show that was like uplifting and couldn't understand what he was saying. Not because it was in Spanish. Because every freaking halftime show is like that. And the TPSU thing was one of the most cringe things I've ever seen. Truly, genuinely cringeworthy.

[Ari Weitzman]

The thing that makes sense to me about why people would be mad is we're talking about an identity. Identity's political. And Bad Bunny's very proud of his Puerto Rican identity. And I think it was really cool when you v. Gumman with the perspective of, here's somebody putting on for his town and where he's from, and he's representing it and bringing people along with him, and it's just all the cool stuff you want to see from a star. And he's always been so true to where he's from, and that's all sick. But if you're a person coming in with the mentality of, this is my sport, this is my Super Bowl, I want to see something representative of my country. You know, I think that target's gotten too broad. Like, I don't think there's going to be a Super bowl halftime performer who's going to be able to go up there and represent the entire country. So that's a perspective that I feel like sets you up for failure a bit. And I know that, like, there's a middle section that Bad Bunny's not exactly close to, given the fact that he's from a place that isn't even a state. But that, you know, is worth thinking about. There's lots of places. We have a lot of overseas territories in the US And I think it's cool to think about that sometimes and what that means. And he wasn't shy about, like, the. The blackout thing that he did. Going up the light pole and fixing the power was a good reminder of these people are still here and the shit happened to them. And they're also Americans, and a lot of Americans speak Spanish, so they don't see the representation as much as we normcore Americans may when we're watching football games with the flyovers and Troy Aikman's up there butchering the English language in his own way. And we're listening to it.

[Camille Foster]

Don't talk bad about Troy Aikman now here.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, it's just like the announcer dialect. I've said this to Isaac before, is my least favorite dialect in English of, like. Now, if you're the Cowboys here, you're going to want to throw it on third down and get a couple more yards setting up the first down. It's just. Yeah, I think that's probably. If you're looking at the Clock. And I just hate all that. It just sounds like diarrhea to me. But, you know, that's. That's how I get offended watching football. So maybe the point is we all have a right to watch football and get offended. What's more American than that?

[Isaac Saul]

Actually, nothing, honestly. Yeah.

[Camille Foster]

Value is subjective. Mostly. I will say that one objective fact is that God doesn't want us to have halftime shows anymore. I think it was, what, 2007, when he sent the reins while Prince performed Purple Rain at the Super Bowl.

[Ari Weitzman]

Part of that.

[Camille Foster]

And that was the zenith of super bowl performances. And they should have stopped after that. Like, you could build a hologram and just kind of run it back again or something like that. I don't know. Get Rainmaker one of those new startups to seed the clouds so it rains again. I don't know. But I don't know a single Bad Bunny song. I still don't. After watching the Super Bowl, I thought it was a fine performance. I wasn't particularly moved. I will say for the turning points, folks, I wasn't thrilled or ecstatic watching it. I was a little surprised by the quality of the production, although not at all surprised by a major defect in the production being that the audio and video were out of sync for the grand finale. But, like, there is something about the, like, kind of sentiments and the notions of family and stuff like that that were spoken to that. Yeah, like, I share some of those values. I can appreciate. I wish they hadn't politicized it. And if they just wanted to have their own halftime show, they would have just done it like we used to have the Puppy Bowl. There's been a lingerie bowl. We've had all. Well, maybe we do. Great. I wasn't paying attention, but we have these alternatives.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, Paraplegic Puppy won the Puppy bowl this year, actually, I'm pretty sure.

[Camille Foster]

Even better representation. I just think. I think if you want to have your alternative counter programming to the super bowl, you are totally entitled to. They did serious numbers, and they would have been better off doing it without sounding like crybabies. So maybe the next time around, you just do it. You have your all American halftime show. You do it for your own cause or whatever. But I should say I'm pretty sure that Bad Bunny, at the time he was tapped to do the super bowl, had already made that decision not to tour in the continental United States because of his concerns about immigration, in which case, long before the pick became kind of political, because of that dynamic, he's also a huge star so it also makes sense that he's the guy who gets tapped. I'm not sure that anyone has sold more albums than him in the last two decades or last decade anyways. But, yeah, I don't know. It's fine.

[Isaac Saul]

Interesting.

[Ari Weitzman]

All right. Like, plurality is American, so it's okay to say this is something that I want to see. There's lots of options for everybody at halftime now.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah, you may not like reggaeton. That's fine.

[Isaac Saul]

Just to clarify, the. The. The TPUSA thing was cringe. Not because they were espousing family values.

[Camille Foster]

I know.

[Isaac Saul]

Whatever. It's because they're trotting out Kid Rock, who's, like, half dead, lip syncing these songs that are 25 years old. And then.

[Camille Foster]

Was he lip syncing, though, Isaac? We don't know.

[Isaac Saul]

Whatever. All right. He was.

[Ari Weitzman]

His karaoke with the background track.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. Him and his DJ are doing a karaoke performance and we're supposed to be like, come on. It's like, just.

[Ari Weitzman]

I did have. Interestingly, one of. I log into Facebook once every, like, week or so, and one of my friends from high school had this message that I loved, which was, I'm really excited to watch the all American halftime show with Kid Rock this week. Then below that, edit. This is not a political post. I just don't know any new music. And I grew up with Kid Rock and excited to see it.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

All right. I like that.

[Isaac Saul]

Appreciate that. Yeah, fair enough. We'll be right back after this quick break.

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[Isaac Saul]

All right, well, while we're on the topic of, you know, America and racism, Camille went to bat for the president this weekend. And so we should probably talk about really sufficiently pissed off the Tangle leadership and his own a lot of people.

[Camille Foster]

To be very clear.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. So we're going to put Camille on stage and give him a few lashings and make sure he learns his lesson.

[Ari Weitzman]

We got our bats ready. It's a quinceanera and you're the special guest.

[Camille Foster]

I thought we were going to talk about David Foster Wallace.

[Isaac Saul]

Oh, no, I can't. It's too much. David Foster Wallace is too intense. But we should note that his. Was it his birth, the anniversary of something, or was it his birthday?

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah.

[Camille Foster]

Infinite.

[Ari Weitzman]

Jess, I got you. A friend of the show, former editor of ours, Kendall White, who is a student at Pomona, just had this tweet over last week saying that the 30th anniversary of Infinite Jest passed in the last week without so much as a peep from the university and was like, this is a shame. We should be celebrating this guy. He was a luminary and he represented our university in a way. And no one really seemed to care. And that's sad.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, Kendall's a real one for that. Amen. But can't go down that rabbit hole.

[Camille Foster]

You can't put this off, Camille.

[Isaac Saul]

It's an Easter egg.

[Ari Weitzman]

We'll make a reference later.

[Isaac Saul]

Well, yeah, we'll talk about the other, the real Easter egg of the news this week, which was this Obama, Michelle Obama, Barack Obama as monkeys in this.

[Camille Foster]

Weird gorillas technically speaking.

[Isaac Saul]

No, we're not doing that. So Trump shares this video on Truth Social, which was deranged. I mean, the video itself is from this horrible election conspiracy movie. And this is like a conspiracy. I mean, it is about, like, I think it was votes being sent off to, like, Turkey or Italy or something. And a bunch of the stuff that I spent a lot of time investigating and writing about back in 2020. And it's insane that the President's still litigating this. I'm sorry, again, I don't even. I shouldn't apologize. It's indefensible that he's still doing this.

[Camille Foster]

You don't need to apologize.

[Isaac Saul]

I mean, this stuff is ridiculous. It's not true. It's total bullshit. We've litigated it. And the fact that he's stuck on 2020 and spending time tweeting this stuff is. It's bonkers to me. But in like, the last 10 seconds of the video, there's this sort of two seconds clip.

[Ari Weitzman]

Two seconds.

[Isaac Saul]

Well, yeah, but then there's a little bit after it. There's like, whatever. There's this two second clip of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama's face on gorillas in this, like, weird animated Lion King scene. It came out afterwards. There's this longer video where there's other politicians who are all different animals in the kingdom. And then Trump as the big lion comes through. Of course, it's actually very weird and kind of funny. And there's other people of color, black people, you know, Hispanic people, whatever, who are not having their faces plastered onto monkeys.

[Ari Weitzman]

Team Jeffries was a hyena, I think.

[Isaac Saul]

Was a hyena.

[Camille Foster]

No, he was a meerkat.

[Ari Weitzman]

Who was the hyena? Doesn't matter.

[Camille Foster]

I don't know. But he was a meerkat.

[Isaac Saul]

He was.

[Camille Foster]

What? Is that Timon or. Yeah, Timon from Lion King.

[Isaac Saul]

In the end, yes, Trump tweeted out a video where Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are being portrayed as monkeys, which is obviously a classic racist trope. And I shared my sentiment about it, which is this is Trump's truth. Social, to me, is him at his purest essence. It is like all the theories and ideas that he grabs onto, that he accepts that he wants to animate, that he wants to use his bullhorn to spread, and it's a lot of crazy, ridiculous stuff. My personal sensibilities were offended by both the Barack Obama and Michelle Obama portrayal and the fact that he's still sharing election conspiracy videos. But, Camille, you took sort of a different tact on this. So maybe you want to explain your position. I mean, you posted a tweet, which I think is what got most of the attention and pushback.

[Ari Weitzman]

Tweeted a, posted a post.

[Isaac Saul]

Let's give you an opportunity to share your feelings, then we'll talk about how wrong you are.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah, well, the post is brief, so I'll read it into the record, if you'll permit it. This is objectively the dumbest controversy of Trump Season two. A two minutes of election conspiracy garbage which he couldn't even be bothered to watch. In full meh, par for the course, a 2 second, 2 second clip of an AI slop Lion King spoof, likely some autoplay TikTok video and pandemonium. That was the tweet. The tweet does not suggest that the video is good. The tweet is suggesting, in response to this audio from the White House of Donald Trump explaining what he says happened with respect to this video, that late at night he's using his phone, he sees this election conspiracy video, he doesn't even bother to watch it. This is by his own admission, he doesn't care what the content of the video is beyond their heaping skepticism on the election. And he just forwarded it on to someone and told them, hey, put this on Truth Social for me. And one of his handlers apparently rips the video from there or screen records it and then posts it to the Internet. And what we get at the very end is what looks like an autoplay video, something that just begins to play for like two odd seconds and then goes away. And that two odd seconds is the beginning of this AI Slop Lion King video, which, as you said, Isaac, is kind of ridiculous. Whatever. I can't get animated and scream, oh my God, what a racist thing for him to do. If in fact it is the case that there was no intention to post that particular video, and there's no evidence that there was any intention to post the video. And he's hardly defending it at this point beyond saying, I didn't mean to do that. Hell, I didn't even post a video. All I was doing was posting election denial propaganda that I didn't even bother to screen. Because the merits of the assertions don't matter. What matters is that I'm creating consternation and confusion about the integrity of America's elections. That's all I was doing. And everybody was like, wow, you're so racist. And for me, if we care about racism, it ought to matter whether or not the assertions of racism are actually Real whether or not someone intended to do something malevolent matters. And the fact that there was this weird artifact of a video at the back end of the thing, like the programming that I'm supposed to accept is Donald Trump was secretly conveying his racist sentiments to his followers. The week before that, he'd been parading around with Nicki Minaj. He didn't just do a huge event with her where she's headlining the announcement of the Trump baby bonds. He brought her to the White House and she was treated like a foreign dignitary. I mean, which narrative is it? Is he actually. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what to believe. But I do know that when the President of the United States is doing the awful stuff he's been doing with respect to elections, that actually gets my dander up. At this point. It's beyond offensive. I am angry about it. And it bothers me that a kind of faux racism conspiracy was getting more attention in that particular moment than the tangible, provable fact the President of the United States planned to put that kind of propaganda out into the ether. Again, that bothered me more. And that's all the tweet said. It doesn't say, it's great to depict the Obamas as guerrillas.

[Ari Weitzman]

I know exactly how you feel here. As I'm listening to you talk, I remembered. I feel like I've had a similar line of thought about something and I can't place it. And it was the Elon Musk Nazi salute is what this reminds me of. Because it was weeks after talking about trimming the fat and bringing the chainsaw to the government and Doge going to come in and fix our entire deficit and just thinking how dumb that is. And that's not going to happen. And we need to be talking about actual ways to balance the budget if it's something we care about, which I do. And then he does that weird hand wave thing that kind of looks like a Nazi salute. And I remember afterwards saying, didn't really look like a Nazi salute to me. So, like, I don't think we should call him an anti Semite because of it. And then that was like a terrible takedown. That was awful when, like, I. I cared about what Doge was doing and not like Elon being some weird dude, but, like, that was the thing we're supposed to focus on, was the way the images look. Though I will say to you, my rebuttal to you, Camille, is that the response to that does matter a bit. So saying Elon, that looked Kind of bad. Is there anything you want to say? And he's like, lol. No, everyone. Like, this is just. You're being racist, actually, for talking about this. And I think that's kind of similar here, too, about Trump of saying, like, hey, man, that looked really bad. Anything you want to say? And he said, I didn't make a mistake. Took it down, whatever.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

And there's no ownership of it. It's like, oh, you know what?

[Camille Foster]

That's. He doesn't apologize for anything.

[Ari Weitzman]

No. And that sucks.

[Isaac Saul]

Okay.

[Ari Weitzman]

No, it's actually good.

[Isaac Saul]

I'm gonna. I think something interesting is happening here to Camille, specific to you and maybe your audience and the people who follow your work, which is like. I think there is a general sense that you are very reluctant to deploy a descriptor like racist or this is racism, or very. In some ways, maybe reluctant to even engage on the sort of like the baseline that this, you know, the race of the people in play matters or whatever. I think that is like, part of the criticism of the response that you're giving. In the same way, there's all this context about Donald Trump. I'm interested hearing you talk. I mean, I'm gonna read the definition of racism really quick.

[Ari Weitzman]

Which definition?

[Isaac Saul]

This is the definition I can't actually see on my computer, but the top definition comes up on Google. Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized. I mean, would you say Donald Trump is a racist given that definition?

[Camille Foster]

I mean, we'd have to adjudicate specific things. And in general, I don't know that I see a lot of evidence that Donald Trump is a malignant racist. I do think there have been times where the president has targeted particular communities and talked about them in ways that are derogatory, but I've never heard him talk about races of people in that sort of way. In fact, on the contrary, I think an actual avowed racist is unapologetically racist. It is a Richard Spencer. It is a Nick Fuentes. I think a lot of the racism that is being policed in a lot of our kind of broad public controversies is this subtextual racism, this kind of weird circumstance where people are saying, I didn't say anything racist. I don't mean it in a racist way. And it feels like that's what's going on here. Donald Trump says while he hasn't apologized for posting this video, what he has said is I haven't seen the video. I've been told it was offensive, and I'm sure if I watched it, I would think it was offensive. So much of his. I mean, this is racists. Don't generally say things like, black people love me. I'm doing so much for black people. He touts the fact that he has managed to hit a new high watermark for Republicans with respect to Latino and African American voters. He does it all the time. Is he profoundly unsophisticated and uses words like blacks in ways that will make you cringe? Yes. But I could talk to you about his many other crimes against the English language if you're so interested. I really do think that my bottom line on this is not so much that I'm reluctant to parcel out racist because I think it undermines my broader argument about the individual and the nonsensical nature of race, but because the way that we try to adjudicate, assert these racism controversies is often incredibly sloppy and kind of hysterical. We disregard intent, we disregard surrounding context, we disregard the complicating nuance. And I think it does matter that Whoopi Goldberg wasn't presented as a primate and various other minorities who were characterized or represented with these animals. I mean, Joe Biden was a baboon. Was that racist? George W. Bush was routinely displayed as a monkey of some sort or a primate. Was that racist? I'm not saying that I'm unfamiliar with caricatures of black people as monkeys. That's deplorable and disgusting. And if the President of the United States did that in a way that was clear and was provocative, I would say something about it. But in a post of a video that is in and of itself deranged and terrible, that happens to end with what very clearly looks like an autoplay clip of some other video. I have a hard time getting excited about that. And I'm not gonna label it racism because other people are excited about it. And I don't actually think it's laudable to jump on the bandwagon and say, well, it doesn't matter. He intended it. This is fourth dimensional chess. I just. People have a higher appraisal of Donald Trump and his sophistication than I do in this regard.

[Ari Weitzman]

I think it's a little literalist, to be honest. I think there's lots of room because there's a. When you started speaking, you said, when I think of racists, I think of overtly, somebody who's unabashedly racist. And I'm Thinking if that's the case, we don't need the qualifiers, then, then it just is what that thing is and it's similar. I'm going to keep making this parallel because it's the touchstone. For me, that's like personal to anti Semitism is almost never do I see anti Semitism where somebody comes out and it's like, Jews are lesser species of people. It's like that. You see that, but you see that these days. I'm not saying you don't see. Actually you see it a lot. But usually what you see is the kind of way it sneaks out in attitudes. Most people don't want to put that viewpoint out there because they know it's not really acceptable. So they'll say something like, oh yeah, I mean you usually see those kinds of people in finance, you know, like you let, let those guys handle the money for you. And like, you know, there's a worldview poking out in that kind of statement. So it doesn't have to be an over the top black and white literal statement for me to go, I have a problem with that and I want to hear a good answer. And I, you know, maybe the, the claim of he's being racist here is itself becoming too black and white. Like, I think there are people who said like, this is disgusting. This is overtly racist. You have to apologize. Donald Trump is showing he's a racist because of this. That, yeah, I think that's a bridge too far. But I also think it's fair to say this clip in the context with which it was shared, which was essentially none, was like, here's a two second thing. The Obama's faces on guerrillas. And then back to the selection denialism, which I know you're saying should be the focus. And I appreciate that point, but without that context, I think it's fair to say, yeah, what was that? You need to explain yourself for this because that looked really bad. And when the explanation's kind of lacking, then it invites reads that I think are defensible.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's a fair framing. Ari. I'm like you, Camille. I find it a little bit tiresome to pretend that Trump knew what was in this video or that he watched it till the end.

[Ari Weitzman]

I agree with that.

[Isaac Saul]

I think that there is a good deal of evidence that the President looks at particular groups of people, like non white groups of people, and has a sort of instinct to think of them as maybe less sophisticated or less worthy of being American or less. I don't know, desirable to have here. I mean, he's been clear about that in a lot of ways that I think are more than overt. The Obama stuff is so hard, especially with him. Anything Trump says about Obama that's viewed through the race lens, to me, is less close to the truth than just the sort of envy, hatred lens of. Obama had this kind of celebrity appeal, and the media loved him, and he had really good approval ratings for most of his presidency. And they're like these, you know, and he's, like, younger and, you know, fit and whatever. I mean, there's like, there's dynamics there that I think are maybe more important for why he has this sort of. I don't know exactly how to describe it, but he seems to hate him, like, really hate him. And I'm skeptical of, like, how much of that is tied to Obama's race versus how much of that is tied to just what Obama represented in terms of what Trump wanted to be as president or how he wanted to be received globally and from the sort of elite media class. Of course, Trump also was one of the founders of the birther conspiracy and pushed that. And that was kind of definitionally a racist thing they hang on to was like, this guy's. Well, you tilt your head.

[Ari Weitzman]

I mean, he's profiting. This is a man coin, at least.

[Camille Foster]

I mean, this is a. Yeah, I just. I think that Donald Trump is so many things that one can be critical of. And the birther thing is of a piece with the election denial thing and various other things that happen to be conspiracy theories. And he also deployed a birther argument against Ted Cruz. That is not because Ted Cruz is a black man or a proud black man, I should say. I understand the arguments and I've heard them, and I get it. I'm just saying that, at minimum, one ought to acknowledge that there is quite a bit of speculation associated with the Donald Trump is a racist thing, because he does a lot of things that racists don't do, like hang out with and promote and work alongside and celebrate black people and various other minorities who happen to be supportive of him. And so far as I can tell, Donald Trump's most consistent quality is he likes Donald Trump, and he likes people who like Donald Trump in every circumstance. That even includes people who his administration are actively denigrating as terrorists, who he's supposed to be on script with. But when he finds out their parents are supporters of his, he's like, ah, you know, what a tragedy that this happened. I hear they're big fans of mine. That's what I know about Donald Trump. Is he a racist? I am confident that if I were a Trump supporter and I was eager to meet the president and I met him, he would be enthusiastic about the opportunity. He would take photos with me, he would celebrate me. Would he want me to marry one of his daughters? I'm not sure about that. I have no idea. But again, this is a kind of speculation, and I think that there is a sense that we take race seriously if we're willing to be more generous with the places where we're willing to deploy racism. I'm not attributing that sentiment to you guys. I'm just saying culturally, that does appear to be kind of part of the dynamic, that if we are sufficiently hypervigilant and we go after it in every place, then that's how we take racism seriously. And I actually think taking racism seriously is both a matter of being vigilant but also imagine a matter of being thoughtful and dutiful and actually trying to adjudicate these things in a serious way and being as concerned about false positives as we are about missing the mark on some of these. That is the whole of my argument.

[Isaac Saul]

All right. Sufficiently defended and well defended. Thank you for your very back against the wall. Yeah, We'll be right back after this.

[Camille Foster]

Quick break.

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[Isaac Saul]

We should move to some actual policy news here. There is a debate happening that we covered pretty sufficiently last week, which is this DHS Republican Democrat funding bill. I don't know exactly what to call it because we're in this very unique situation where this piece of Congress's spending has been broken off to be debated in isolation. And I said last week, I think presciently that it did not seem likely to me that Democrats and Republicans were going to come to an agreement on DHS funding in a matter of like nine days or whatever they had. And it looks right now like we're barreling towards another partial government shutdown. We're recording this on Wednesday evening. So certainly some things could change between now and when this podcast will probably come out, which I think will be Friday. But the latest here is that Republicans have basically come back to Democrats proposal which is to do things like add body cameras and unmask these ideas, ICE agents and hold them to the same use of force standards that state and federal police are being held to. I'm just going to read a little bit from this CBS News article which says that Republicans have balked at the Democrats request and have some demands of their own, including the addition of legislation that would require proof of citizenship before Americans can register to vote and restrictions on cities they say don't do enough to crack down on illegal immigration. So on the one hand we have Democrats, I think with significant political leverage right now, given where things are demanding that DHS change its use of force policies and unmask these federal agents who are kind of staying anonymous and wear body cameras. And Republicans saying, yeah, we'll do that if you make everybody show proof of citizenship when they register to vote. This does not strike me as a counter proposal intended to sort of move the process along and get into the home stretch. Democrats are alleging that they're going to not vote for another temporary short term extension of funding for dhs, which again would imply a shutdown and some chaos. Famously spineless on these sorts of not allegations, these sorts of claims, these bluffs, I guess we should say. So color me skeptical that Democrats are going to hold the line on that, but kind of curious how you guys are viewing this. I mean, I'd be interested to hear if you think Democrats actually hold the line on that and what we might expect as a conclusion to this back and forth because it seems to me like progress is not really being made in a meaningful way right now.

[Ari Weitzman]

I feel like they've still got the leverage. So I don't really know what the play is from Republicans here. I also don't think they're totally in line on this. I know that the voting rights bill that you're speaking about that. I can't place the name of it right now, but that push is coming from a faction of the Republican Party. I wouldn't even say that that's a demand from the Republicans. So they're not even really on the same page about that. It just feels like a stance where they're saying, okay, you want something, Ergo, we're going to push in some things that we want and we'll see how much we can get you to back down. But I don't think there's much of a fight for something from Republicans, the Democrats for the first time. I think this is something that we said last time we covered this nine days ago crazily, was that they're on offense for the first time in the Trump administration. They have a clear objective. They want constraints on ice. They want them to be unmasked. They want body cams, they want to have them coordinate with local law enforcement offices. They want things that they can define. And the Republicans are saying, okay, but you know, we already funded ice, so if you hold out, you're just going to be hoarding other DHS stuff. Like tsa, Secret Service is under the Department of Homeland Security now, a couple other agencies that aren't coming to me at the top of my head. But, like, it's a lot of stuff that isn't going to be the thing that they're trying to hamper. So that's the defensive line. But I understand that if you're negotiating, just holding a defensive line isn't that attractive. So you want to throw in some offense, too. It just all seems somewhat transparent to me, to the point where it's all right now, we'll see where who blinks when the stakes are real and we're not playing with theoretical ammo anymore. There'll be another partial shutdown. I think that was a really was a good take. Not a particularly difficult take to make, but I think a take well made about this is not going to get done in nine days, and we're going to be right back where we started. And then when we're here, I feel like the conversation is going to be about, all right, what do you guys want that we can commit to a timeline to negotiate on? Because we are not going to get use of force standards signed, sealed and delivered within two days. There's going to be legislation horse training on that. Like that is a bill with a capital B that has to get negotiated and sent out. So they're going to be saying, what are the terms of these Agreements saying, okay, we can talk about that, here's insurance that we're going to talk about that, here's a deadline for that and we're going to be back to see our time. Like, I don't know. I don't, I honestly do not see any other way that this moves forward. The Democrats aren't going to get everything that they want in the next two days. And I think the Republicans are just looking for ways to whittle them down as much as they can. I mean, Camille, do you think they're going to. Republicans will get anything from this or Democrats are back down and we're just going to sign the budget for a dhs? I don't see it.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah, it's hard to game this out and guess which way it's going to break. But I will say as someone who's been exceptionally critical of Democrats for never really having any sort of strategy and seemingly not really having their heads in the game when it comes to actually being the opposition party in a serious way, they have taken full advantage of this particular circumstance and still seem to be holding the line. And the demands that they're making right now don't seem particularly unreasonable. They haven't sounded unreasonable to a number of Republicans who have said, yeah, it's time to unmask. Yeah, it's time to pull back. Yeah, this is our issue, we're supposed to own it. And there are so many things tactically that we shouldn't be doing. And for Holman to be on the ground saying exactly the sorts of things that Democrats want to hear, for them to ask for these policies to be formalized in certain instances, for the commitments to body cams, to body cams which have already been made to be formalized seems like a no brainer. And for Republicans to essentially be seen as being unwilling to concede on things that in principle they've already agreed to do, I think looks particularly bad for them. And I think the context, the broader context is appropriate to pay some attention to here. Democrats have notched a bunch of wins recently in addition to this. We had that procedural vote that Johnson was trying to do to try and protect the president's tariffs and that did not work out for him. I talked to Rand Paul Yesterday for about 20 minutes and DHS homeland issues did come up. He's still upset about ICE and is still talking openly about the need for reforms there. They're going to have allies on the other side of the aisle and the Republicans have an exceptionally slim majority. It's in jeopardy and the president is up against it. His poll numbers aren't looking particularly great. Even on his signature issue, immigration. They would like these things to go away. I don't know that they really do want to play shut down chicken. So I think if there was ever an opportunity for them to win, for them to hold the line and get something, this is that moment, at least relative to all of the other moments that have preceded it.

[Ari Weitzman]

But, I mean, are they gonna get anything this week? Maybe. That's a question for both of you. I mean, is there a window that's actually open there?

[Isaac Saul]

I think the longer this goes on, the worse for Democrats, the further we are out from the Alex Preddy killing, the worse for Democrats in terms of the momentum that they have and the political leverage that they have. So I think if you're a Republican member of Congress, what you want is the cameras and the mob to kind of look away and move on to the next thing and free up some sort of political oxygen, to actually come to the table and negotiate versus right now where it's like there's so much political pressure against this sort of immigration enforcement and Democratic officials feel the winds at their backs across the country on fighting back right now. And I just think that doesn't last. And there's another element to all this, which is another thing that we should talk about today, which is just the political environment now and what we're learning about it from some of these special elections that are happening. And I think that ties directly into the calculations being made in these negotiations. So, you know, in Texas, we had this huge upset in a state Senate race that was like a deep red pro Trump district that flipped to Democrats in New Jersey in the district that I'm moving to, which is crazy. I'm like, I haven't really talked about this on the air yet. Yeah, yeah. But Tom Malinowski is a member of the Democratic machine who lost to a. I'm not a political upstart, but a local community organizer with very progressive politics with endorsements from Bernie Sanders and the like. And, you know, just there's. There's. I think there's enough ground movement on the left to say that the, the lefty establishment is very much at threat right now, under threat right now, and might be getting overwhelmed. We had Mamdani, obviously, in New York, but since then, I think we're getting more and more signs that these sort of grassroots, really progressive, not necessarily woke progressive, but populist, progressive politicians are having inroads on the left. We have this Texas Senate race we talked about last week where someone like Jasmine Crockett who knows how to demand attention could be coming out of the Democratic side. And I think Republicans are looking around like, oh shit, we don't have a five point swing in the national polls to give. We can't lose the 20% of the independents in the middle or were in big trouble. And I think that sort of pressure on Congress matters a lot when these negotiations are happening. I don't want to read too much into these like off cycle elections or get too excited about them. But I also, they can't be ignored. And the polling for this for Trump is bad. I mean he has signature issues like immigration enforcement and the economy that he is polling really poorly on right now and all of our politics are nationalized. So, you know, I mean, Rand Paul Camille is obviously a bit of a rabble rouser and goes against the grain and isn't he's not some party head. So I'm not so surprised to hear him maybe talk that way and be upset about DHS and what's happening and critical of the administration. But I think seeing Tim Scott tweeting about the racist Obama post, that sort of stuff to me is canary in the coal mine of people like, I don't want to get stuck on the wrong side of. However, this is going to break in the next six to 36 months and there's a lot of people mapping their political careers right now and deciding whether they want to be tied to Trump and MAGA and all that matters in a moment like this where these negotiations are happening under intense political scrutiny. So yeah, Democrats have some leverage. They're also notoriously, again, paper hands. They are gonna fold if things get tough. And Trump's the one doing the negotiations now. It seems like they're negotiating directly with the White House. So good luck not getting steamrolled, I guess. But yeah, I similarly don't know what to make of it, but I do think the election stuff we're seeing has to be part of the calculus. If you're sitting in Congress right now.

[Camille Foster]

How much do you factor in the reporting that we're seeing that still more National Guard troops have been withdrawn from various American cities, that the actual retreat on the more forceful immigration strategy doesn't appear to be kind of an illusion? This is tangible and what they really want perhaps is Kristi Noem's scalp or something like that in this context. But they are achieving things. They have some tangible goals, some tangible achievements here. And I think more than that, Isaac, I might disagree with you about. The longer this goes on, it's bad for Democrats, the further they get away from the death of these two American citizens in connection with protests against immigration. Immigration. The immigration policies. The Trump administration. That gives them more opportunities to frame the issue on their terms. That forces the administration to have to talk about this. And if Democrats have a sophisticated messaging strategy, and I know that's a huge. If they could keep this very simple, you know, I've got two words for you. Ready and good. And just say it over and over again and say, we are concerned. Listen, if the president wants to get back to this, where we're encouraging him to make a deal with us so we can keep the American citizens safe and to work with local officials to wear body cameras and to ensure that the agents, the federal agents who are showing up at people's homes have their identification visible, which part of that is unreasonable. And I think they're gonna have a hard time arguing against that. But again, this presumes that they'll have their messaging strategy together and they'll be able to stay on the ball. But it's stranger things have happened, I'll put it that way.

[Ari Weitzman]

No, there's a corollary to that of bad news motivates. And no one wants to hear the government tell you everything's actually working according to plan. That's not a message people really buy. And I'm sure the Trump administration would love right now to be talking about how crime's down. We just covered this today. Big reports about the homicide rate being the lowest it's been since 1900, which is incredible news. And I'm sure they want to draw direct, bold, not dotted, solid line between that and the immigration policy. But right in the middle of that line is Minneapolis and Pretty and Goode, and that prevents that message from getting out. So I agree with you, Camille, about that being something that plays the Democrats favor. And I do think that it ends up being something that makes the Democrats want to hold on a little bit longer. Probably motivating. Again, just talking endgame for this specific situation. Electoral map is a little bit down the line. I know we're trying to get our seats right now. If you're in Congress, you want to make sure you're backing the right horse. But I think it's probably just about what can we do to get this a little bit resolved so that we can stop trying to answer those questions of what part of this sounds unreasonable to you? Because, yeah, I don't know what the good answer to that is, especially when you've got members of your own party making statements about how these are things we should be doing. Tom Homan saying we're going to try to be easing our presence back a little bit. And then also, man, that sucked. I just forgot what I was going to say at the end. So I'll just leave it there and let you guys have the last word. I had to tee it up too. It's going to be such a perfect conclusion. What is there to do?

[Isaac Saul]

I don't think I've ever seen you do that before.

[Ari Weitzman]

I know. I think I had the yips there for a second. What happened?

[Isaac Saul]

Well, that's fine because I had another thought that came to mind when you were talking, which is just, I think I see the perspective that dragged this on and it's good for Democrats. I also think, not to be too morbid and crude about this, but one ICE agent gets shot or one high profile arrest of some horrific sexual predator who's here illegally that Biden didn't deport or put back on the streets. Like it doesn't take much for the winds to shift back in Republicans favor on, you know, who the victims are and who the predators are. And I just think the more time that passes, the more opportunity there is for another story like that to see take over the news. I mean, we could be at war with Iran, God willing. We're not. But in two weeks. And if that's the case, are we really going to be sitting here talking about these DHS negotiations or is that just something that's going to be resolved in some hearing, nobody watches and be a bullet point in an Axios newsletter that nobody pays attention to in a month? Right now, it's the story, it's the thing people are talking about. And I think that's the advantage for Democrats is I think a lot of people who circle the middle, certainly myself, politically are looking at what just happened with some of this ICE enforcement. DHS enforcement is like, I don't like this. This feels way too far. And that's a big opening for Democrats to win over people like me. And if they lose that focus, I think it hurts them in the long term. So I think they want to get this done now. They want to finalize the negotiations this week. I don't think that's going to happen, but I think that's really the dream world for them.

[Ari Weitzman]

And I can jump in. I remembered what I was going to say. So I'm going to take 20 seconds, just end with that, which is, yeah, you're Right. And I think Trump has such good instincts for what the national attention span is and knows how to capitalize on the turning of the dial of the great wheel of national interest. That's something he's excellent at. But I think the point is, and this is what I forgot earlier, is Democrats want a legislative win. So they're getting these commitments that are sort of lukewarm about backing out of cities, National Guard drawdowns, but they want something in writing, and they want something legislative so that it's not going to be an I told you so and a rug pull next year. And then they can pitch that to people in the middle like the Isaac Saltz and Camille Fosters of the world when it comes time for November, when they're trying to sell what their wins are, instead of saying no, remember we called the president a racist. They'll actually say, no, look, we signed this. No more masked agents. That's a thing we did. So I think to that regard, that's motivation for them to keep going.

[Isaac Saul]

Sure.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, even if you just hold the line for a little bit, and again, you have some tangible wins that you can trumpet, even if you don't pass legislation here. We held the line. The president, they had to change horses. They drew back. We got all of these concessions. You could still tell that story in a successful way. And honestly, the dramatic nature of letting this go on for another week or so past the deadline, I think that strengthens their position, and it probably has more of a chance of bringing Republicans to the table and getting some sort of compromise, even if it's only a half measure here. So I think that the chances of them getting something done are. My optimism about this is improving as we talk.

[Isaac Saul]

Interesting. All right, well, Camille, a rare triple threat where Camille was wrong about everything today. It's been a great episode. All right, gentlemen, we should get into our complaints for the week. We don't have John. He's in D.C. actually, right now at a YouTube media conference, like hobnobbing with all these big, famous YouTubers. So he's not here in the production studio room to key us up, but we will let him play the music to get us into our grievances before we get out of here.

[Sarah from Olive and June]

The airing of grievances.

[Ari Weitzman]

Between you and me, I think your country is placing a lot of importance on shoe removal.

[Isaac Saul]

All right, Camille, it's my understanding that you have a. A grievance that needs some space today, so we'll let you bring us home, maybe. How do you feel about that. Sure. Sure.

[Camille Foster]

I can do that.

[Isaac Saul]

Okay. All right. I'm gonna go first. Cause I haven't gone first in a while. I'll be there. First of all, I should note. Yeah. For those of you who are loyal listeners, my wife and I recorded our annual Valentine's Day podcast last night. At the top of that show, you will hear me complain about one of the worst days I've had in a very long time. So I'm not gonna bore you here with re aggrieving myself with all the grievances that I shared on that show. But I do have a fresh one because there's so much stuff to complain about.

[Ari Weitzman]

Can always count on you.

[Isaac Saul]

It can always count on me. And this one is, I hope, a bit relatable. And it's straightforward, and it is salt. Road salt. Just.

[Ari Weitzman]

Let's go.

[Isaac Saul]

The salt we're using to melt the Snow. It is 20, 26, and we don't have a better solution for deicing the roads than something that rusts. My car destroys my. My axle, my rotors, my brakes, my tires that, like, apparently really hurts dogs paws, and maybe is poisonous in some cases if they eat it, which is, like, a whole thing I didn't know about because I don't currently own a dog and worry about that. You track it everywhere. My house is disgusting. It is like, I love being barefoot. Like, if I am home, I like not having shoes on, and I'm just walking on salt in every room of the house that's being tracked in through shoes and socks and pants and clothes. I hate it. And I cannot believe that there's not a better solution than this from melting snow. We have, like, you know, we're supposed to be in, like, the era of generative AI or whatever. Like, can't we type in a couple of formulas to chat and solve? How do we melt snow without poisoning dogs, destroying cars, and making my house extremely dirty? Somebody has to solve this problem. I don't know who it is, but I've been thinking about a lot because it's been Snowy and, like, 8 degrees for three weeks straight in Philadelphia, which is also really depressing. But the salt is what's getting me.

[Ari Weitzman]

There's a person who I coached on the University of Vermont men's Frisbee team, which is exactly the think tank where you want these kinds of solutions coming from. I say unironically. I tell you, my. My good man Jack Rice graduated with a senior thesis about using crushed oyster shells as an alternative for salt. So if you are a person Looking to hire an intelligent, sustainable MBA. Go ahead, go to LinkedIn and look up Jack Rice. He's got great ideas.

[Isaac Saul]

Crushed crushed oyster shells. I'm gonna be honest, that doesn't sound much better to me. Yeah, okay. All right. Yeah, I'm gonna look into that. I feel I'm just like, I've cut my feet on oyster shells before on the beach, you know, and just there's bad connotations there. Yeah. All right, all right, well, good. I'll look into that. Thank you. I definitely did not expect a solution on air immediately after I said it.

[Ari Weitzman]

We'll see. I mean, it's an idea he had for a master's thesis, so it's probably not in production right now, but it is the thing that came immediately into mind. And Vermont as a state currently is not buying up more salt so that more localities can buy them for themselves. It's a weird thing right now, but yeah, good four wheel tires and hopefully we'll all be all right. I'll be really brief with my, my grievance here, which is a little bit episodic because a couple weeks ago I talked about the mouse in the house and I was given some great advice from readers to just like go get the $50 old fashioned spring loaded mousetrap that you'd see on Tom and Jerry cartoons as a kid, that they're cheaper and they're actually more humane because they're quick. So I got to. And I will tell you this, they worked immediately. So thank you for that suggestion before that trap closed down on what was a very healthy looking mouse that seemed like it enjoyed itself quite a good deal. Over the last month, I found some mouse leavings in my sock drawer, which was extremely unwelcome. Leads to entire laundering of the sock drawer, I tell you. But in the time since we caught that mouse, I've seen no mouse signs. So I am optimistic that we got the guy. And this is the last one. It's no fun trying to hunt down a little rodent knowing that it's in there doing its thing somewhere. You just don't know where. But I'm grateful for the advice to just go get the $50 Mousetrap and I pass it on. So if you're plagued or beset by mices, go ahead and get those spring loaded mousetraps. They're pretty ingenious. They just work and. Well, just worked for me. Small sample size, but just like a cartoon. I put a piece of cheese on there, loaded it up, left it out, and I felt like I was living the 1960s dream. It was exactly the way it was supposed to work.

[Isaac Saul]

It's one of those things that just doesn't need an update. Is really that's just as good as it is.

[Camille Foster]

But there was no grievance there.

[Ari Weitzman]

The grievance was there as mouse poop in my sock drawer. That sucked. But I also wanted to let everybody know that this episode hopefully is reaching an end point. And if it doesn't, there'll be a.

[Camille Foster]

Part three and you're guilty of murder. But that's murder. That's a separate matter. That's a separate matter.

[Ari Weitzman]

Premeditate and mouse slaughter at the worst.

[Camille Foster]

Okay. So mine is associated with one. I've had fashion oriented grievance before, so my vanity ought to be clear. But I have tried to sort of standardize my wardrobe. And part of that project involves. Involves finding the perfect pant. And I found a pants pant. It is a pant dad or a date, a singular. But I found a pair that I loved and I got them back from the tailor, wore them and after having done that, I found them at this wonderful. I don't want to say exactly the name of the brand given what I'm going to say, but you know, European designer someplace. They have a boutique someplace in soho. It's very nice.

[Isaac Saul]

Just quick interjection.

[Camille Foster]

Went back to the store. Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

You buy the pant.

[Camille Foster]

Yes.

[Isaac Saul]

The intention is tailor the pant and then wear the same pant every day or like get a few sets of it.

[Camille Foster]

So I bought one pair to tailor it to wear it to see how I felt about the pants afterwards. Again, this is. It's a whole thing.

[Isaac Saul]

It's a system.

[Camille Foster]

You wear it a couple times, you wash it, you wear it again. How does this feel? And afterwards I thought to myself, this is perfect. What I need is five pairs of the same pant, maybe in different colors, but I just want the same pant. I get that. I went back to that store.

[Ari Weitzman]

We're both ample thigh gentlemen. It's tough to find the right fit.

[Camille Foster]

It can be challenging. It can be challenging. I get to the store, I secure several pairs of pants, different colors, same style, same fit on the label.

[Ari Weitzman]

Got it.

[Camille Foster]

To my astonishment, every single pant fit differently.

[Ari Weitzman]

Straight to jail, illegal.

[Camille Foster]

I'm talking to the rep in the store and he explains to me that what has happened and he doesn't know what I do, he's just kind of chopping it up with me. Given the background that he has, having been on corporate calls, they had been forced over the course of the past year to change manufacturers several times. Their goal, given certain pressures that are being created, was to find ways to lower the cost of these trousers by generally making what ostensibly is exactly the same pant. Is this a tariff different colors in September? Yes, it is. It is a tariff story in different colors. But they had to make them at these different facilities as a result of making them in different facilities with different mechanisms in order to try to keep costs the same. So they could sell the pants at the same price, again with the same label but a different pant. They ended up in a total disaster situation where it's not obvious what the heck is going on. Initially, you just want to be upset with the retailer. You want to be upset with the brand for giving you this product and then depriving you of the ability to get more of what you really, really want. But in this case, who should I really be upset with when the tariffs are responsible for forcing this company to try to find ways to contain cost?

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, this is how Camille votes for Gavin Newsom 2028.

[Ari Weitzman]

Sounds like you just got to find the brand you like. We just gotta keep.

[Camille Foster]

I thought I had Ari. I thought I had.

[Ari Weitzman]

You don't have one, like, right now. Do you have, like, one? Go to. This is. These are mine.

[Camille Foster]

I have a couple. I have a couple. But finding the right pair of pants can be a challenge for reasons that you just mentioned. And while I do have a brand that I love, they didn't have a pant that I love this season. So here I am. Now I've managed to get one other pair that's slightly different, but again, still same style, same size. And I am forever changed by this experience. And I don't know if this is the last you're gonna hear about this. Cause I'm definitely reaching out to corporate to try to comment, maybe see if we could do some deeply reported piece and I'll take a trip over to Europe perhaps and tour some facilities.

[Ari Weitzman]

Just buy Dewar. It's simpler. They're great. They make different kinds of pants and they have the gusset crotch and they're durable. And this is not an ad, but if you want it to be and you work for Dewar, just let me know W I L l [e-mail] okay.

[Isaac Saul]

Nice. Very nice. I have such a. I have, like, a much more working class perspective on this, which is I've had, like, the same two pairs of Levi's jeans for 10 years that I barely ever wash Phoebe's. Like, these things are stale.

[Camille Foster]

Put them in the washer.

[Isaac Saul]

Like, holes in them. And I ordered a new pair of jeans recently from Levi's. Same size, and everything fit that I had previously. And they're just, like, not even close to fitting. Because I think the ones that I've owned for so long, I've just beaten in so much that they're. They just fit me no matter what. They're just so worn in, so. And then maybe I'll employ your system. I need. I need to go on my pant journey and find the pants that fit me well, because I definitely don't have that.

[Camille Foster]

So we could be the brotherhood of the Traveling Pants.

[Isaac Saul]

I like that. Despite your frustration, I'm a little bit inspired. All right, gentlemen. Well, we did it. Good grievance, Camille. That was really authentic for you.

[Camille Foster]

I'm happy. My suffering satisfies you.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. Truly the kind of thing that could change a man's vote in a presidential election. All right, fellas, well, we'll be back soon. Ari, it became clear to me at the top of this episode, you're not doing any work for the last week. You're just watching the Olympics non stop. So maybe I'll join you.

[Ari Weitzman]

Okay.

[Isaac Saul]

We might as well do it together.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yes, that's a pretty serious allegation. What I do between 8 and 10 is supposedly my time. And if I want to watch the quad, God, quad it up, then I'm going to do that.

[Isaac Saul]

I am going to watch. I will watch that tonight, actually.

[Ari Weitzman]

Why don't you do some work, ladies and gentlemen?

[Isaac Saul]

Fair enough. All right, I'll see you guys soon.

[Ari Weitzman]

All right, see you.

[Isaac Saul]

Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman, with senior editor Will Kbach and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsey Knuth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our [e-mail].

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[Isaac Saul]

Ollie.