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- [00:00]
Isaac Saul
When you think about meal kit companies, what do you see? Probably long, complicated recipes and subscriptions you can't escape. But with the new Blue Apron, we're doing meal delivery differently. No subscription needed, faster, easier meals, and the same dedication to quality we've always had. Shop 100/Meals@blueapron.com, get 50% off your first two orders with code apron50. Terms and conditions apply. Visit blueapron.com terms for more.
- [00:29]
Charles C.W. Cook
So good, so good, so good.
- [00:31]
Isaac Saul
Just in thousands of winter arrivals at your Nordstrom rack store, save up to 70% on coats, slippers, and cashmere from Kate Spade New York, Vince Ugg, Levi's and more.
- [00:44]
Camille Foster
Check out these boots.
- [00:45]
Ari Weitzman
They've got the best gifts.
- [00:47]
John Lowell
My holiday shopping hack.
- [00:48]
Isaac Saul
Join the Nordiclobe. Get an extra 5% off every rack purchase with your Nordstrom credit card. Plus, buy it online and pick it up in store the same day for free. Big gifts, big perks. That's why you rack.
- [01:02]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
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- [01:05]
John Lowell
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- [01:11]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
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- [01:24]
Camille Foster
All right, coming up, we're talking about the Susie Wiles piece and the Rob Reiner tweet, which by now, you probably know about both of them. And then Camille has an interview with Charles C.W. cook from National Review, and then a grievances section where we give some very questionable legal advice that you should probably ignore. It's a good one. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Suspension of the Rules podcast. I'm your somehow perpetually sick host, Isaac. Saul, you're probably just going to listen to me cough for like, the next hour and a half. I fought the flu. I beat its ass. I'm back, I'm on my feet, and I'm a survivor. Fellas, I'm here with Camille Foster, our editor at large. Ari Weitzman, managing editor. Nobody has it harder than me, fellas. I'm a. I'm a top. What's the word? I'm. I'm a fighter, man. You know, I just got through the tough times. That's what I do.
- [02:36]
Ari Weitzman
No, I'm gonna. I'm gonna jump on the line here real quick, Camille, because I want to bring up a note.
- [02:40]
Camille Foster
Yeah, do it.
- [02:40]
Ari Weitzman
And I have a note here. I have this written down from a couple months ago. Isaac Saul said this which was, I think I'm never going to be sick again. This was after he started taking magnesium supplements and said, yeah, it's me. My immune. I don't think zinc not men.
- [02:59]
Charles C.W. Cook
Right?
- [03:00]
Camille Foster
Yeah. Well, it turns out that my beautiful, handsome, lovely 10 month old son is a little walking miniature plague bomb who just like goes to school, finds various. I haven't had the flu since I was like 16 years old. And yeah, I got crushed. I had 104 degree fever this weekend. I basically didn't leave bed for 36 hours and now I have some post viral cough that won't go away. I feel like Wyatt Earp or something. Is it Wyatt Earp? Is he the one that always that drinks?
- [03:32]
Ari Weitzman
No, you're thinking, no, no, no, you're.
- [03:34]
John Lowell
Thinking of Doc Holliday. Get there first.
- [03:36]
Camille Foster
Doc Holiday.
- [03:37]
John Lowell
Doc Holliday, Val Kilmer. The only real Doc Holiday lunger is.
- [03:43]
Camille Foster
What they call the bird without the burger.
- [03:45]
Ari Weitzman
You may go.
- [03:48]
Camille Foster
Well, we have a great show for you guys today. You're going to hear Camille do an interview with National Review's Charles C.W. cook in a little bit. And before we get to that interview, I wanted to talk about two stories that we didn't get to during the week. The first of which it's like in the Trump era, it's one of those stories where as an editorial minded person you kind of have to decide should we spend time on this thing or not. And we did not cover it in Tango this week. Didn't talk about in any of the podcasts on the YouTube channel. It's not been a thing that's come up. But it's something that I feel like we ultimately made the decision that, yeah, I feel like we probably should spend a little bit of time talking about it, which is the Donald Trump Rob Reiner tweet, which I can't believe like saying that it's, it's. I like, you know, it feels weird. I can't believe we're. That's a topic of conversation on a political news podcast. But unfortunately I feel like we kind of have to talk about it. I, I don't, I can't quite place it. You know, there's like, those things happen sometimes that just sort of like offend your sensibilities in a very particular way. And this was one of the things that just like very much offended my sensibilities, which I think should be normal. The president kind of mocked a guy who was murdered in his own home, like less than 24 hours after he was murdered. I mean I don't know how else to put it aside from that, but for the people who are kind of uninitiated or maybe, you know, don't spend too much time online, we should probably read this into the record, put it out there on the show. I'll say first, just as a matter of context, for those of you who don't know, Rob Reiner is a very famous director, actor, Hollywood type person. He's also an activist. He's a, he's very left, or at least later in life, he became kind of an activist and was an outspoken critic of the presidents, which, you know, based on what I've seen, never said anything really crazy, out of bounds. I mean, maybe the worst thing he said is like, Trump should be tried for treason in the middle of the Russia stuff, which I guess you could describe that as being out of bounds if you want, given that the penalty for treason is death. But on the whole, I think he mostly did some, like normie Democratic activism. Anyway. He was murdered in his home in Los Angeles alongside his wife, by his son in a horrific, like true crime movie scene that sounds absolutely horrific in every imaginable way. The three of them were at a party at Conan o' Brien's house, one minute having an argument, they go home and the son, I guess, snaps and kills them. I should say allegedly. Though he's been arrested, there seems to be no doubt about who did it. Uh, this is what Donald Trump tweeted the morning after news broke. A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away together with his wife Michelle, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome, sometimes referred to as tds. He was known to have driven people crazy by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump. With his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness. And with the golden age of America upon us, perhaps like never before, May Robin Michelle rest in peace. I don't know, guys. I, I, like I, I, I'll put it this way. I find it odd and alarming that 0.01% of the entire population of this country who has a social media account would find posting like something like this appropriate after someone's just been murdered. Like literally before the crime scene is cleaned up, after someone's been murdered in their own home. And one of the people in the 0.01% is the president of the United States. Like, what.
- [08:44]
Ari Weitzman
What do we do with that?
- [08:46]
Camille Foster
What do we do with that? I don't know. I'm thinking out loud here, fellas. I don't have a good answer, but this seems like. I'm not saying I feel so. It's so hard because maybe this is what I want to say. I hate the fact that I feel like I have to pussyfoot around a judgment of this post because Trump and, like, his most die hard supporters are so sensitive now that, like, criticizing Trump for this ends up making you, like, opening you up to accusations of being biased or having Trump derangement syndrome or whatever else. Like, it's this insane, sick thing where we're worried about mincing words to criticize Trump when he does something as so utterly disgusting and classless as this. And he's allowed to do that. Like, he gets. He's allowed to do that say that post that after somebody gets murdered in their home. But if I'm like, holy shit, Trump is a sociopath. I can't believe he tweeted that. Then everybody gets upset at me on the right, and I'm like, no, no, no, no. He said that. Like, we all know that that's bad.
- [10:06]
Ari Weitzman
And.
- [10:06]
Camille Foster
And, like, I think what freaks me out, like, literally what scares me is, like, in order to do that, to type this, tweet out this truth after somebody's been murdered in their own home alongside their wife, like, you literally there. Something's broken in your brain to do that. I'm sorry. Like, you have to be. It's. He's. He's talking in the third person. Like, it's. And then they asked him about it, and he was like. He got asked by a reporter and he was like, yeah, well, you know, Trump doesn't think he's a very good guy. Donald Trump said that. I'm like, what, that, like, opportunity to clean it up after all the blowback. And even some of his own supporters were like, no, don't love that tweet. Yeah, I don't know. Any thoughts, feelings?
- [11:01]
Charles C.W. Cook
Go ahead.
- [11:03]
Ari Weitzman
Sorry. That most people that I've talked to who are ardent Trump supporters don't actually say that they like him as a person, that they like him as a candidate and as a fighter who's going to confront the things that they don't like. The best example that I have of this is when I was living in Pittsburgh. I had a neighbor who had a ton of Trump signs and just, like, blanketing the house he could, like a five foot one that you could see from the road. And one of my other neighbors was a mail carrier and was confronting him about this and he's like, trump's trying to take my job. He's a bad guy. And my other neighbor with the Trump sign said, like, yeah, I know you think I like the guy. I just want him to fix nafta. This is the reason why I'm voting for him. Like, I think he's a. He's like a. An oaf. But it turned out later I'd learned that he just loves decorating. Like, he had a bunch of Easter stuff up on his lawn and Halloween decorations. It was election season, so it was Trump signs. And I think a thing that, that crystallized for me was like, the behavior is always going to be secondary when the policy comes first. So what if we say to. If you say to somebody who's a hardcore MAGA supporter, the President said this and it was disgusting, they'd be like, yeah, yeah, it was. But, like, what's the altar? We need somebody to fight and bring us all the way back because we've gone so far towards the direction of giving ground to the left that we have to just go back the other way and bring things back to the center. I don't think that that's what I would believe, but I know that that's the response that people have to this kind of behavior. And, like, I don't. I don't know. He is allowed to say it. People are allowed to say whatever. But is he allowed to say it without political repercussion?
- [12:59]
Camille Foster
Yeah. No, no. Is he allowed to? He. I think he. I mean, can he? Yes.
- [13:04]
Ari Weitzman
Right.
- [13:05]
Camille Foster
Is he allowed to? I guess so, because he can. Should he be allowed to? Probably. Like, no. I mean, I think, like, I respect the. I respect the pragmatism of that response, you know, Like, I'm. And I subscribe to that kind of pragmatism in different settings. Like, I don't, you know, if I have a, like a Marine going in to get a hostage out of a situation in Iraq, I don't need that Marine to be a good dude who I trust with my sister or something. Like, I just want him to be really, really good at his job and go get that hostage and, like, be a total badass. Whatever I take, you know, whatever else he's done, I don't give a shit. Like, there's like a pragmatism to that that I get. And again, I subscribe to in certain arenas, but Like, I don't subscribe to that with the president. And maybe that's just like the divide is. I actually think the character of the person in the White House matters. And there's a trickle down effect on the culture. I think we've witnessed the trickle down effect on the culture. And it's just like whatever you think about Bush or Obama or Biden or Reagan or any past president that we've had in the last 30 years, I know for sure that none of them would ever say anything, even approaching this publicly as gross and insensitive and just kind of vile as this. And it's not, it's like he's. It's not just that. He's like taking an opportunity to talk shit about a guy who just got murdered in his home alongside his wife. We should just like keep saying that part. Stabbed to death by his son in his home alongside his wife, 12 hours before that. He's like, this is an awesome opportunity to dunk on how his acting career was bad at the end or whatever.
- [15:02]
Charles C.W. Cook
Yep.
- [15:03]
Camille Foster
It's that he did it. He went through the whole process of typing it up. He had all these people around him who like, help him compose his post, which we know he does. And nobody was like, man, maybe not, I don't know, Mr. President, like, maybe we shouldn't pull the trigger on this one. She's like, no, like, green lights all the way, let's do it. And he. Pretty sure it was an exclamation point. Yeah, he thinks it's a banger. He thinks he's like, he crushed it. Yeah, it's terrifying to me.
- [15:33]
John Lowell
Well, it was retweeted by the White House Twitter account as well, or X account. And maybe it was the Truth Social account. I'm not sure, but I think it was definitely reposted. There are a couple of dimensions of this that I think are worth pointing out. One, there were some prominent conservatives who expressed their concern about this and a number of them who also came out in defense of this post. And that's worth noting. And the fact that a lot of them, the prominent ones who did come out in defense of this or who kind of had some sort of tepid response to it is noteworthy, but perhaps not the most important thing. The dynamic that's likely to be important is the actual exhaustion on the part of that kind of mid tier Trump supporter that you were just describing. The people who cast a ballot for him, who are willing to tolerate him, who hold their nose and who acknowledge this is kind of who he is. A lot of those people are beyond exhausted at this point. And one of the best manifestations of that, or clearest manifestations of that was this post show call in event that Megyn Kelly had on her show and you had a number of callers who rang up to say expressly, I like the President, but this is just, this has gone too far. My comrade on the fifth column, Matt Welch, observed earlier today that it felt like the sort of thing that actually broke through to a lot of normies in the way that many political controversies just don't. Some of the other things that we might talk about this afternoon in this, what has been a pretty bad week for the President might not matter who quite as much. The fact that his chief of staff is just spilling to journalists over the course of almost a year, like giving the dirt on insider beefs, might not break through, but the Rob Reiner observations do break through in a pretty profound way. This is a story that is uniquely scintillating and resonates with a lot of people in terms of just the awfulness of it. And for the President to respond in such a crass way is not trivial. I think a lot of people who would write this off and say, look, this is just who he is. I saw one prominent conservative activist saying something along the lines of, this is just who he is. We have to focus on all the political benefits of having a wrecking ball like this in the White House and just accept that this is his style. It's not cost free. The coarsening of our politics, the fact that National Guard troop deployments in support of the policy of the administration have become not just a profound cultural flashpoint, but on numerous occasions now, a provocation that has led to actual violence and targeting of American citizens who are in their official capacity, in uniform, just doing their jobs is not trivial. It's not trivial. It matters the way that the President talks about fellow Americans. It matters when not that he just ignores the fact that one of his political enemies has passed away in a really dramatic fashion and refuses to comment on it, but that he goes out of his way to comment on it in a way that is odious by almost any imaginable standard, and then when asked about it, doesn't even take the opportunity to say, well, look, I mean, perhaps I shouldn't have said it in that way. No, he doubles down and it's everyone around him has to know that this is expensive. This is your own vanity, your own pettiness taking center stage. And is that equality that you want in the person who is going to be carrying out policy, even if it's someone who is likely to carry out policy that you're excited about. And I think the answer to that has to be no. Hell no. And the likelihood that this could have consequences for the Republican Party writ large is real and tangible. And it may not show up in the polls, but I do think that that exhaustion is something that's going to be palpable. It's enough to keep people from voting, if not make them vote for the other seam.
- [19:44]
Ari Weitzman
Well, let me ask this, because you're saying it might not be showing up in polls right now. You're seeing some split reactions among conservative pundits. But I want to press and maybe put you on the spot a little bit, because I know that you swim in some different waters than I do. What are some examples that you can have that you can surface of? Like, this is why I think it's different. These are people that are talking about it that I don't normally hear. Or this is a different type of response than what I normally get from this kind of person.
- [20:14]
John Lowell
I don't know that I can surface more anecdotal evidence than I already have. The Megyn Kelly call in show the fact that I've definitely talked to some prominent conservatives who express real frustration here. But I thought today about Tucker Carlson after Trump lost the election and the correspondence, those text messages that ended up leaking, where he acknowledges in these text messages rather candidly, I hate him. I'm so glad he's gone. One has to imagine that there are posts like that circulating at this point. It's indefensible. There's no political advantage to it. It's pure vanity. And even if they're silent about this, they know that this isn't a MAGA thing. This is just Trump. It's just him. And it's putting himself before the party in a way that is undeniable. And I think that was the kind of frustration that Tucker was expressing privately and has yet to ever really explain, which is one of my biggest frustrations with the way he gets treated with kid gloves and the media appearances he does agree to do, because there are quite a few important questions like that that I'd love to have him address in a more fulsome way.
- [21:39]
Camille Foster
Yeah, it's amazing that we're 10 years into Trump, and pretty much the only actual legitimate tough interview he's gotten in 10 years was Jonathan Swan back when he was at Axios, which he won an award for. And yet no journalist who's interviewed him ever since, has taken a similar approach of just coming semi prepared to respond to any of the 9 million, you know, talking points that he goes through over and over and over again. I saw, I think it was Dasha Burns Dane, oh God, what's her name, from Politico, who just did a sit down with him and I couldn't believe some of the layups or just like lack of follow ups. Speaking of Tucker Carlson, by the way, saw him on a show today, get interviewed by Judge Napolitano. Is that how you say the old Fox?
- [22:34]
John Lowell
Napolitano.
- [22:35]
Camille Foster
Napolitano, yeah. And Judge Napolitano asked him about the Venezuela stuff and Tucker told him that his understanding from members of Congress who had briefed him was that we will be launching a war in Venezuela and that he thinks Trump might be announcing that in his address. We're recording this on Wednesday and Trump's addressing the nation at nine o' clock tonight. I don't quite buy that, but you dropping the Tucker Carlson buzzword made me think of it because we're about to sit down and watch that in like four hours. And it made me wonder what does Tucker know that we don't? Or is he just fear mongering like he has before? Maybe a distraction we shouldn't go down, but I'll just plant that seed. We'll see how this show ages. In two days, it is possible that.
- [23:36]
John Lowell
There'Ll be some statements about that. I mean, he's been talking about this blockade and perhaps he'll put some of that into context. But my own suspicion, based on the reporting that I've been seeing and what just seems more likely to me is that it probably talks about economic stuff. But yeah, we'll find out exactly what that is and by the time you listen to this, you will know.
- [23:58]
Camille Foster
Let me ask you one more question about the Rob Reiner stuff. I'd be curious what you guys think. Do you imagine that this experience of like, of taking in all the Trump, of digesting and sort of having our, you know, our sensitivities fried by stuff like this will last? Like, does a Democratic president who takes over in 2029 benefit from this? If Gavin Newsom is in office and like six months into him being in office, some big conservative activist dies and he responds on Twitter by mocking the person, Will he face political repercussions or will we be like, oh, Trump did it. It's like, because to me, that's maybe the most corrosive part potentially is just the Overton window being permanently moved Wait.
- [25:01]
Ari Weitzman
I want to see if you can actually try to respond as me because I think you probably know what my response is to that question and I want to see if you have it.
- [25:12]
Camille Foster
I think that your response to that question would be that Trump has a unique quality about him that makes him sort of like impervious to this and that nobody who sort of like tries to mimic or mock Trump like do the Trump impersonation has managed to get away with it successfully, basically. So there's no reason, I think that like other people will benefit from the Overton window shifts that he's going to make.
- [25:42]
Ari Weitzman
It's a pretty good Ari impression. I wonder, ask Camille to do an Isaac impression how that would go.
- [25:48]
Camille Foster
Or what do you.
- [25:50]
John Lowell
I don't know. You guys surprise me routinely. So I don't know that I could do that channeling. I mean, I'm thinking about the question and the person who comes to mind is Gavin Newsom in particular because I think on the left he is the one who has most deliberately tried to cultivate a Trump like Persona in media. It's how he's deploying his social media. It's certainly there in the way he's kind of been a bit more assertive in recent months in his public commentary and you know, for some right wing activists to die. My suspicion is he would be a little bit more adept, but I don't think he would necessarily shy away from being more abrasive in his condemnations. I don't know if that if the experience with Trump is what would inspire him to do that. But I do think that there is a contingent on the left who I've heard and have read in recent months and weeks are much more interested in a more aggressive politics that meets MAGA kind of blow for flow, definitely. So it's hard to predict for sure. And it is definitely the case that I'm hoping that things settle down post Trump cause there will be a post Trump. But it is not at all difficult for me to imagine more of an escalation in a lot of ways. And the reality is that that's what we have seen historically. The rhetoric has gotten hotter irrespective of who's in office. The excesses with respect to the abuses of power have increased and intensified the scandal with respect to, you know, well, Obama's drone program. There are questions about this. To Obama's, to Trump's today use of not just drones, but these strange extra constitutional military interventions in places like Venezuela. There's no doubt that these things are building upon one another in ways that should be concerning.
- [28:07]
Camille Foster
To just restate or refine the question. I would say I'm less curious about whether it's going to keep getting worse in that regard, which I think it will. Versus what kind of latitude is given because the norm has been shattered. I don't think Gavin Newsom would ever do this. But Gavin Newsom is president in 2029. And let's say somebody like Kid Rock dies and Gavin Newsom fires off some tweet that's like Kid Rock, a once great musician whose career spiraled towards the end because he embraced MAGA and obsessed over trans people, is dead. It's been like a sad, miserable experience watching him obsess over the left. But this is what happens. The inevitable outcome is if you're so miserable you hate trans people, you'll ultimately kill yourself or whatever Kid Rock did, may he rest in peace. Like, does Gavin Newsom get widely condemned for that, or is he still. I can't imagine.
- [29:13]
Ari Weitzman
Can you imagine so singularly strange, legitimately ever calling Kid Rock a brilliant musician?
- [29:19]
John Lowell
Yeah, that's the part that made me laugh initially.
- [29:22]
Ari Weitzman
Yes, I think I do appreciate about that response. The idea of, like, some things build on each other. Like the point you were making about how Obama's drone programs that build on Bushes, increases in the use of. Prolonged use of military force created the stage for power that we've then normalized. But the way that we. That institutions and offices tend to hold onto power once they've subsumed it is a different pattern than the way that behaviors are moderated. And I do think that. I wouldn't say that one proves the other. And I do think it is. Really.
- [30:05]
John Lowell
Haven't you seen that with the cultural.
- [30:10]
Charles C.W. Cook
The.
- [30:11]
Ari Weitzman
The thing is, I think we. It's not a given to me that one person can change a norm or even just avoid a norm being applied to him, and then the next person then has the same standard. I think if I were to try to go back and make an analogy, because I like the instinct, I think that's helpful is to imagine Clinton was a promiscuous president and he sort of got away with it in office. He was impeached, but he was able to stay in office and still become. Be like a somewhat effective president after the Lewinsky scandal that didn't allow George W. Bush to then, like, cheat on his wife in a way that. And then for people to say, well, Clinton did it. Like, that's something that would be tough for me to imagine. And it's not A perfect analogy. But I can't think of something that shows, well, this person acted in a way that most people didn't like and was able to still do things, ergo, the next person can. I just don't think it's going to work like that.
- [31:15]
John Lowell
I don't know, man. All right, Like, I could totally imagine the what abouts with respect to that one if he had cheated. Like, well, at least it wasn't the intern who hit the cigar. Define work. Cause all you really have to do is have sufficient control of your party to essentially these days to ensure that you're not being dramatically criticized by your own side. I think that's what worked. I think that's what I mean in our politics.
- [31:45]
Charles C.W. Cook
Yeah.
- [31:45]
Ari Weitzman
I think if it's hard for me to imagine a Democrat specifically who has sufficient control of their party not to be susceptible to criticisms from the center or left without like their constituency needing to make apologies for them. And I do think it's not a specific Democrat thing. I think I have a hard time making the same jumps to Republicans. I think it is tough to imagine somebody else other than Trump.
- [32:12]
John Lowell
Can I take this one step further? Biden's age and Democrats response to it. I think in general that has helped to create a circumstance where a much older president now is in office and criticism of him in office is something that seems even more untenable amongst Republicans than perhaps it did amongst Democrats. And I don't know that there's more evidence of kind of degradation or declining mental acuity with Donald Trump. But it certainly stands to reason that there ought to be questions about this given recent experience with Biden. And I don't see a lot of Republicans or can't imagine a circumstance where a lot of Republicans would be interested in it. And I suspect they would use some what abouting if in fact they were confronted about this in public. In fact, I'm sure there are examples of that already.
- [33:05]
Ari Weitzman
That's true. I'm a little reticent to say I see trends this early. And I think with Trump providing one data point, that's a good point because I think I see two data points there. And with Congress we have 5 million, so it's fair to say we've moved our standard for acceptable age in our politicians. And age is one thing, but the. And we're fine with people who are like 80, 90, who are really competent and clearly show it, but when there are signs of slipping that we can all admit to and we're like, yeah, but it's everywhere. And then that's an issue. But with Trump and the way that he speaks online and the way that he doesn't make apologies for it, I still, I still just see one data point. So I'm not ready to say I'm going to extrapolate a trend from that.
- [33:56]
Camille Foster
We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [34:00]
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- [35:56]
Camille Foster
All right, well, speaking of the president and his inner circle and some perceptions about them, the other big story this week that we did not get A chance to talk about anywhere in the tangle media ecosystem was this Vanity Fair piece on Susan Wiles, the chief of staff, who, by the way, I found out from Reading, is the daughter of Pat Summerall, which blew my mind.
- [36:22]
Ari Weitzman
I didn't know that.
- [36:24]
Camille Foster
I was like, what? Yeah, just like what a weird world we're living in. If you didn't read the piece, first of all, I highly recommend it. It's actually, I mean, it's literally just a fascinating read. It's about her rise to politics and how she's been running the Trump White House. And I think objectively speaking, she's been doing a great job. Her role as Chief of staff is to facilitate the President's wishes, to minimize the shiving, as they said in the Vanity Fair piece, and the leaking. And I think by pretty much every account, this White House has been much better run than Trump, especially in the early days. And, you know, I can't imagine it's a hard thing to do. She has an incredibly difficult boss to navigate who's unpredictable and kind of unyielding, and then all these characters around him who are like, you know, operating and shouldering for 2028 their own spotlight and credit and all that stuff. Signal use. Pretty crazy. Yeah. Signal use. But she said some pretty crazy stuff in the piece. I mean, she. On the record, she's been talking to this reporter who is basically like the stenographer. Stenographer is not the right word. He's written autobiographies or biographies about, I think every chief of staff going back to Nixon maybe. But it is like the guy to talk to. Christopher Whipple is his name, if you are the chief of staff for the President of the United States. In the story which he leads with, she talks about how Russell Vaught is a right wing, absolute zealot. She describes Trump as having an alcoholic's personality. She says that Vance's conversion to being a MAGA acolyte from a never Trumper was, quote, sort of political. And added that the vice President has been a conspiracy theorist for a decade. She. She also said about Elon Musk and his reposting of a tweet about public sector workers killing millions under Hitler and Stalin. And now I think that's when he's microdosing, quote, unquote. Though she added that she didn't have firsthand knowledge about his ketamine use. She kind of pulled the veil back in a way on things that I don't think we've had yet in this iteration of Trump. The Trump 2.0. Because like the article notes, there just hasn't been a ton of leaking. One of the things that I thought was really interesting that's not been getting a lot of attention is that she described the USAID cuts as being this fundamental crisis early on in the administration. She said when she found out about the cuts that Elon basically tried to push through. Unanimous. Yeah. I don't. Unanimously. No, that's not the word I want.
- [39:54]
Ari Weitzman
Unilaterally.
- [39:56]
Camille Foster
Unilaterally. Thank you. That she was quoting this. Oh, yeah. I was initially aghast. She said, because I think anybody that pays attention to government and has ever paid attention to the USAID believed as I did, that they do very good work. And she said about Elon that his attitude is you have to get it done fast. If you're an incrementalist, you just won't get your rocket to the moon. And so with that attitude, you're going to break some China. But no rational person could think the USAID process was a good one. Nobody, end quote. She talked like in these very frank terms about the administration. Were like, I've been saying this stuff for months and I get like completely hammered as this like anti Trump TDS lunatic, you know, and then it's like, oh, no, the Chief of Staff is like, yeah, no, we totally fucked that up. It was a total shit show. And who thinks that we should have done that? So I thought it was a pretty remarkable profile. She seems like an incredibly powerful, smart, sharp woman. I have no clue why she did this. I literally don't have the faintest idea. But it's a really captivating read and it is basically all anybody in D.C. is talking about right now. So I don't know. You guys, I presume, read the piece. Any takeaways or things that stuck with you when you got to the end that you were just like, wow, I can't believe that quote's in here or this made it to print.
- [41:23]
Ari Weitzman
The thing that I think was most interesting to me by the time I got to the end was that I didn't recall a line that made me go, wow, I didn't think that was true. Everything that you listed was like, yeah, no, I'd heard about that. Like, I heard about Elon Musk in a sleeping bag in the Eisenhower building. I know about J.D. vance being somewhat politically expedient in his evolution to Trump's vice president from a never Trumper. I have heard about Marco Rubio's ascension to running USAID and that being sloppy and internal opposition to Tariffs, like that's all stuff that we've been talking about. So there is nothing here that was like, well, let me let you know this leak secret. Did you know that it turns out the President's economic team was not on the same page about tariffs? What it was more of what you said. We're so used to hearing things in public of the members of the White House and Trump's team are on the same page when they speak publicly of we're doing this, we're doing this, we're doing this is what the president wants. And anything that's critical, like, you can't believe them that cbs, well, I mean, maybe three months ago, that cnn, like, they're gonna grind their ax and that's something we can't. We don't listen to them. Just trust us, things are gonna be good. So it is, it is like the question that I am left with, the same one that you posed, was why? What did this come out of? What happened here? Was she just under the assumption that she was gonna sit down and they're gonna like chew the fat for a little bit and then the interview would start? Like, I'm really curious about the mechanics of this. Maybe there's something about the way Susie Wiles Fox where when she's expressing something to somebody, she's like, well, you know that old thing. And she will just like make some sort of derogatory joke and then get to the point like, oh, you know how Isaac is. He's always gonna talk himself up and you know, both sides the news. But the thing you gotta understand, he's got a good heart. And then the journalist is gonna run with Managing editor says Isaac saw both sides as him. And that's all you hear. Maybe it's a tone thing and it's just one of those things that in a piece like this, it's not gonna translate well.
- [43:39]
Camille Foster
Yeah, I agree with her. So smart and well equipped to navigate this media situation like that. I mean, the only answer I have is vanity, ironically, Vanity Fair, vanity. But it's like wanting her legacy to be out. I mean, she spoke to this reporter for 11 months on the record, dozens of times.
- [44:00]
Ari Weitzman
You don't really make a slip up over the of 11 months. It seems there's a pattern.
- [44:06]
John Lowell
Yeah, well, I mean, I agree with so much of what's already been said. Interestingly though, guys, there's, and this is totally speculative on my part, she didn't reveal anything new. As has been pointed out, she was pretty careful to just talk about things that were Already pretty well known, in fact. This stuff about Elon Musk, they've been talking for 11 months. One could take the interpretation of this as, wow, master journalists cultivating his source. Like, really getting her comfortable. She was a little more candid than one might expect. But in some instances when Elon and Trump had their fallout, if he's getting this information from her in real time, like her dishing on Elon and saying things about him that are pretty pointed and critical, that's not so insane. And with respect to Trump and J.D. vance, she doesn't dog her boss in this piece, at least not in the pieces of it that I've read. Maybe there'll be some subsequent revelation, but I suspect if it was there, we would see it already. The alcoholic personality that has been quoted over and over again, it isn't actually said in a way that's derisive. It's suggested in a kind of almost like comedic sort of way. Like somewhat tongue in cheek, like he believes he can do anything and he's relentless. You know, he's intense.
- [45:32]
Charles C.W. Cook
Like, what.
- [45:33]
John Lowell
What did she reveal? Not that much. And to the extent, Isaac, as you put it, she's done a pretty good job as chief of staff. She's kept things buttoned up, especially with this particular cast of characters. She is essentially having this ongoing conversation with a journalist who would probably come to her first if he had any sort of profound revelations and wanted to try to get comment on it to see if he could get something out of her. Generally speaking, the reason why administrations have these relationships with the press, and they always do, they certainly talk to press who's very friendly to them. That they always cultivate relationships with press who are a little bit more hostile is because they hope they can turn bad stories in a slightly better direction, or they hope they can get some advanced warning. And here it's not clear that Susie wasn't running a bit of an op herself. Like, rather deliberately managing this relationship, essentially feeding this guy these morsels. But how embarrassing is this for the administration? They've closed ranks. They're defending her. They're not taking this particularly serious at the moment. And maybe it just goes away from here. But one other data point that I do think is interesting. Trump had four chiefs of staff during his first term. Reince Priebus, John Kelly, Mick Mulvaney, Mark Meadows. Most of these people hate him now, and he hates them, or he was just kind of ignoring them altogether. The first guy lasted six months. So for this to be happening at almost month 12, and for her to still seemingly earnestly have the confidence of the president. And again, it's how big a mess up is this? That is her doing a pretty good job, it seems. It's certainly not hard to imagine much, much, much worse than this.
- [47:27]
Camille Foster
No, I think that's a good read. I mean when I saw the headlines and the quotes from the piece, I was kind of astonished. And then I read the whole thing and I was definitely left with a little bit of why did she do this? Or a lot of that. Like I don't understand. But I also felt like, oh, this person is really competent and careful with their words and smart and maybe that's the answer to the question is like she did it because that I see that and now I'm sort of like, I can't believe Susie Wiles is like alive in this administration. Being respected and listened to apparently is like Trump's right hand, you know, kind of running the show. Everybody unanimously seems to say that she's Pat Summerall's daughter. Which is just blows my mind every time I think of it. Yeah, I mean it's a, in that respect, maybe it is just self explanatory, like it looked pretty good for her. It was a juicy story that didn't really do any damage to the administration though she did feel the need to come out and like she didn't deny any quotes, but she said, you know, the framing and the context wasn't right and the reporters being misleading or whatever else.
- [48:49]
John Lowell
Non denials.
- [48:50]
Camille Foster
Yeah. I will say on the tariffs, there was one piece of this that to me was, I mean, yeah, pretty mind blowing. This is an excerpt I'll read quickly. Wiles recruited J.D. vance to help tap the brakes. We told Donald Trump, this is her in quotes telling the reporter. We told Donald Trump, hey, let's not talk about tariffs today. Let's wait until we have the team in complete unity and then we'll do it, she said. But Trump barreled ahead, announcing sweeping reciprocal tariffs from 10 to 100%, which triggered panic in the bond market and a sell off of stocks. Trump paused his policy for 90 days, but by that time the President's helter skelter levies had given rise to the taco chant. Trump always chickens out. Wiles believed the middle ground on tariffs would ultimately succeed. She said, but it's been more painful than I expected. This to me seems pretty remarkable. A she's saying Trump announced the tariffs that sent the stock market into total tailspin without having his team aligned. And while they were saying, let's not do this today. And B, that someone high ranking in the administration is acknowledging that the tariffs have been really painful, which is true, obvious. I mean, it's self evident, but it's like none of them really ever say that, or they say this is a little bit of short term pain for long term gain. In a weird way, it gave me a little bit more confidence in the administration, if that makes sense. Like that somebody was seeing things clearly, who's important. And you know, I listen to them talk publicly now and it's so scripted and it's all just like, it's the Dear Leader stuff. That routine is so disingenuous to me that I'm just like, please, God, I hope there are people who are like acting competently and seeing the field clearly. And then I read this, I'm like, oh, this person sees the field pretty clearly. And so I think in that sense it gave me, it reinforced the fact that so many of them are just doing like the public theater that every administration does. And I don't know, I can't quite put my finger on why, but I was like a little bit more confident in how things were being done after I got done reading it. Even though there were some comments that I think could be read as disparaging about some people in the administration. I don't know if either of you got that feeling, but it came up for me when I was reading the.
- [51:19]
Ari Weitzman
Piece, I think just to touch on tariffs briefly, that it's still, that's something that wasn't totally groundbreaking to me. I think we know that outside of Peter Navarro and some people that Trump's team was trying to contain him on tariffs a lot of the time and him saying, well, we're going with Pete, like, we're putting Pete in. Give me the righty and we're going to just throw heat. That's not terribly surprising. And it did. When you looked at the way the plan rolled out and then adjusted in the weeks that followed and months that followed, it did give the impression of what Susie Weil said of like, we're thinking out loud. We're doing this as we're implementing the policy. So I guess in a way you could look at that and say it gives me confidence when somebody's able to, to describe and put words to the reality that I'm seeing with my own two eyes. Like, that's, that's like, okay, great. So it's not just all trying to pop up the person who's thinking as they're going, but it still ultimately is A person who is doing it brand of spinning of Trump has his thoughts, he's going to do what he wants, we're going to try to meet him, and then ultimately we're going to just try to put the best face on what he's saying. Because at the end of the day, that's kind of the message here. And that was the message of the tariff story was like, we better get all online with this because it's happening. That's not exactly a picture of a team that's doing careful deliberation to me.
- [52:50]
Camille Foster
Yeah. All right. We've got to get to Camille's interview. He sat down with Charles. C.W. cook from National Review. Camille, anything you'd like to say about this interview before we hand it over?
- [53:03]
John Lowell
Charles is among the conservatives who I most respect. He, I think, is a pretty reliable, philosophically and intellectually consistent human who manages, I think, to call balls and strikes in a way that I think is valuable even if I don't always agree with his conclusions. You understand where he's coming from? I think National Review, as we talk about in this interview, has played this really important role in the conservative political movement in particular, ensuring that certain kinds of bad actors are not included in that movement and in a way helping to define conservatism for most of our lifetimes. That has begun to change in a pretty dramatic way on account of Donald Trump and I say begun to change. And as we all know, that transformation is well underway and the future of conservatism is very much in question and in that respect. So there are some questions about the future of an institution like National Review, which is not merely a publication but is a real institution. And I think it's a conversation that I think has major implications for the future of the Republican Party and for the future of American politics. And again, I think Charles is among the best people to give us some perspective on that. So it was a real pleasure to be able to break bread with him. And I suspect this will be of some interest to the tangled listenership and readership.
- [54:36]
Camille Foster
I love it. All right. We'll be back for our grievances after the interview. But for now, here's Camille Foster and Charles C.W. cook.
- [54:47]
Charles C.W. Cook
Foreign.
- [54:51]
Camille Foster
We'Ll be right back after this quick break.
- [54:56]
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Camille Foster
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- [56:12]
John Lowell
Well Mr. Cook, it is wonderful that you've made some time to chat with me this morning. I am delighted to be able to catch up. I've had a bunch of burning questions for you, but I want to start with a very, very easy one. This is a layup. How the hell are you? How are things?
- [56:26]
Charles C.W. Cook
I'm good. I'm good. Yeah, I'm good. Down here in Florida where it's freezing cold, 50 degrees today, and my wife is dissatisfied. May write a letter to the governor. Yeah, because it's too cold for her tastes. But other than dispiriting political news, which is common, I'm good.
- [56:46]
John Lowell
But it's always common for people like us, and by that I mean men of a particular kind of classical liberal inclination. You perhaps might describe yourself more conservative. I have reliably described myself as more libertarian, although these days it's probably small l liberal and small l libertarian, just so I'm not confusing anyone too much. But I'm also kind of a child of this fusionist project, at least for a long time I've labored in the minds of politics alongside conservatives, working on things that we agree upon in different instances. And a lot of what I'd love to get your take on, especially as we're kind of at the beginning, so to speak, or at least the end of the first year of the second Trump administration, is what on earth conservatism means how to orient myself to politics more broadly, and perhaps to get a little bit of a picture of the international scene, given your unique vantage point on all that. So maybe the best way to start, because I'd love for this to be a really accessible conversation, is to just kind of think about what a historian would Write about Trump 2.0 in the year 20, 50 high school students are sitting around, they're learning something. How do you think they might characterize things? And maybe a better way to ask is, how do you hope they'll characterize things? What does the kind of political landscape look like in the midst of the second Trump presidency?
- [58:22]
Charles C.W. Cook
I think about this a lot because I'm quite interested in the forgotten presidents of the late 19th century. And I think Kevin Williamson once said that he thinks there's a relatively high chance that in 100 years time we'll look back on this era, the last 20 years like that, rather than it being the most important thing that has ever happened.
- [58:45]
Camille Foster
Sure.
- [58:45]
Charles C.W. Cook
That instead we'll look back and people won't pay much attention to it. And I think to me, the biggest difference, if you imagine the Wikipedia entries of a Harrison or someone, I think the biggest difference that would be noted by historians is that in the first term, Trump was still much more cabined by the Republican Party as it had existed pre Trump. And by the time he won a second term, which of course was not consecutive, he had taken over the party. And there's two reasons that matters. One is that he doesn't care anymore what the Republican establishment thinks, if that even exists in a non Trumpian fashion. And so you're getting less classical liberal policy on trade or even taxes than you would have. And it also matters because Trump is not particularly coherent. And so if you don't have a separate part of the party to be in charge of things, or at least to rein him in, then what conservatism or the Republican Party or whatever is at any given point is what Trump happens to think in that moment. So I think that's the biggest 30,000 foot shift that we've seen.
- [60:07]
John Lowell
Is it fair to try to talk about wins and losses? I view you as a particularly fair minded political observer, like someone who's been openly critical of the Trump administration where appropriate, but also willing to say, well, they're making some progress here. This is a material win. Can you talk about the greatest successes and perhaps then we'll take a beat and talk about some of the most profound failures thus far?
- [60:35]
Charles C.W. Cook
Well, the biggest success is, and this was more pronounced in the first term, but is still hungover into the second term, is the judiciary. It is more originalist than any judiciary in a long time. I think Antonin Scalia died thinking he'd lost that fight. But at the moment, the court is one of which Scalia, who spent 30 years trying to build the intellectual case, would recognize. I don't think that's cause Trump's a committed originalist, that he has facilitated that. I think that Trump came in with a. I don't like the word mandate because it implies powers that the Constitution doesn't grant, but at least with political headwinds, to do something about what we might loosely call wokeness, which I see as being a rejection of small l liberalism, an obsession with race, treating people differently under the law. Now, Trump has not always been good on this in the other direction, but a lot of the early executive orders which dovetail with the Supreme Court's rejection of affirmative action have I think, been important. I think it is a good thing. We just saw one last week that reduces the use of disparate impact in the Justice Department. I think that's a good thing if we're going to be a country that doesn't judge people by immutable characteristics, which I'd really like to see. Then a lot of that 60s, 70s, 80s detritus, not the Civil Rights act, which I think has good parts, but the detritus that accrued around it being swept away is good. I think he's been positive there. I think it's good we renewed the tax bill, which he was part of. Now we added a lot of stuff into the tax code at Trump's insistence that I really did not like. I don't think the SALT deduction is good. I don't think what essentially amounted to a $80 billion increase in Social Security by taking away taxes on it is good. But the alternative was the biggest tax hike in American history, and that's good. I'm a low tax kind of guy. And then there's some business regulation stuff that's been good, too. And so before we even get to foreign policy, he's done some good things. He's not completely evil. It's not that everything he touches is bad.
- [62:44]
John Lowell
And with respect to kind of the broader purview of politics and we can maybe save foreign policy for later in general, but there's obviously been a number of things you've been critical of, like tariffs policy, for example, and I suspect some other economic issues. Obviously, conservatives have long talked about keeping taxes low, but they generally also talk about keeping spending low. And this administration hasn't been particularly adept at that project, despite all of the stuff related to Doge. I was not going to say. I was going to say promise or even promises, but I think there was a lot of ambiguity about Doge in the beginning. Now that we're at the end of the year, no one talks about it anymore. Program seems to have largely wrapped up, and there's a hell of a lot of ambiguity about what it even achieved. I'm curious about your take on that in general, but also just the broader universe of policy goals that the Trump administration has kind of set out for itself, and then it's just kind of overall governance.
- [63:48]
Charles C.W. Cook
Yeah. So tariffs, I think, are a catastrophe. I think they've destroyed his second term. Unless we get a massive growth spurt in January, which lasts through to September, I think the midterms will be a disaster. And new to him, I think that the use of tariffs in this manner is unconstitutional. I don't think Congress has or isn't even allowed to give him the power that he's claimed. I think the effects of the tariffs in a high inflation economy have been bad. People elected him to bring down prices. Whether or not he could ever do that is another question. But he said he could, and that matters.
- [64:26]
John Lowell
I believe. He says. He says he has. It's. It's working well.
- [64:29]
Charles C.W. Cook
We're in a golden age. Right. And he. Yeah, and it's all a myth. So I think with the spending and Doge, in my view, there's two big problems with Trump. The first one is he's not interested in cutting spending. That is to say, he's not going to make it a priority. He has never made it a priority. He has always increased spending while cutting taxes, which means you're gonna get bigger deficits and more debt. But worse than that, he hasn't even pretended to do it. So what he's done is he has resigned to the dustbin, a whole host of issues that are real for political reasons. Now, I do understand that as a politician, why he does it. But, for example, we still have a huge entitlements problem, and no one now will talk about it. The Democrats won't talk about it, and the Republicans won't talk about it. That means that the public is given very little opportunity to engage with that. And at the same time, he pretends that he's bringing in all this money from tariffs that can apparently be spent three times the same money. He's pretending that that was the latest one this week, that he'd brought in $18 trillion of tariff money.
- [65:45]
John Lowell
I think the number is.
- [65:47]
Charles C.W. Cook
Yeah, I think the number's 200 billion. He pretended, as did Elon Musk, that Doge was gonna save $2 trillion in a year. These things aren't true. And the big risk there is the people who don't pay attention to politics. Will see those numbers and say, oh, it's fixed. When actually we've increased spending, we're still completely unsustainable, and nothing really important was done.
- [66:12]
John Lowell
Yeah, that 18 trillion number really took me by surprise. My suspicion is that what the President is talking about there is this deluge of promises that have been received from various countries who say they will commit billions upon billions of dollars to the United States over the course of many, many years. Of course, it seems that virtually none of that money is associated with any kind of actual material obligation. To the extent people do this, it's only to avoid future penalties from the administration in some other respect, like a tariff being applied to them. But in some other instances, they can just kind of wait out the administration and not give this money. So it seems odd to count that. But the administration also seems to be, as you mentioned, giving away what little money it has actually collected or making other noises about the ways it might do that in terms of new agricultural subsidies or some sort of tariff dividend. So, yeah, all of that strikes me as particularly disconcerting. It seems the one thing you haven't mentioned, interestingly, and I suppose we've tabled foreign policy for now, but in terms of things that loom large with the Trump administration is immigration policy. And that's certainly a place where I would give the Trump administration some credit. We've seen the flow of illegal migration into the country dramatically curtailed just the moment he won election to office. But at the moment, there is quite a lot of controversy surrounding the way that they're doing their ICE raids across the country. I'm curious about your take on that.
- [67:51]
Charles C.W. Cook
So I think that, and this is an odd thing for me to say, the immigration crisis that obtained during the Biden administration was the fault of the president and the presidency. Usually my view is, we need a law, we need Congress. I'm a critic of the imperial presidency. In this case, when Biden said, I need Congress to pass a law, that's why I can't enforce the border, it just wasn't true. It was a choice not to enforce the border. Trump came in, decided that he was going to do that, and the results have been fantastic. And I think that that's actually a problem for Trump in one sense, in that that issue's gone now and the public has a short attention span. So now it's moved on to other things, mostly the economy, which was always more important. So Trump can't say, well, look, you need me to enforce the border. Cause he's already doing it. And that makes it more difficult for him to make political hay. In a sense. He's the classic problem of the politician who solves the problem and then has nothing to do. Then you've got deportations. Now, I am sympathetic toward this in that I don't understand why it is a problem to deport people who don't have a criminal activity on their rap sheet if they're here legally. If you're gonna have laws that determine who can come in and who can't, especially if we're gonna have a welfare state system, which we do, then I think it's totally fine to get people out of the country if they've lied or broken in or overstayed their visa or what you will. I think the thing that people don't like is twofold. First, I don't think people like the gleeful way in which it's being done. And I've said this for years as an immigrant myself, I would have respected it if the existing polity, through its government, had effectively said to me, you can't come in. But I would have been heartbroken. Cause America's awesome. People want to come to America because it's incredible. It's free and prosperous and dynamic and open. So there should be in sorrow more than glee approach to deportations. And the administration just hasn't taken that. They're so happy about it on their social media accounts and so on. And then I think, and this is inevitable, but when you combine it with the glee, there has been some overzealousness in execution. You're gonna get that. I mean, this is one reason I skew libertarian, Although I'm sort of conservative, classical liberal, I don't think governments are particularly competent. I think if you try and pass laws, you're gonna have abuse. But if you combine the overzealous way this has been done and the mistakes with the total inability to accept any responsibility for them from this president, I think that's where the public feels a little bit uncomfortable. And occasionally as well, you get this rhetoric that creeps in about legal immigrants where they blur the line. And Americans are very pro legal immigration. They're very critical of illegal immigration. That probably hasn't helped either.
- [70:45]
John Lowell
Yeah, I mean, I, for one, have been pretty mystified by the fact that the Obama administration managed to set records for the number of people deported without a lot of the traumatic theater that has been associated with the Trump administration's approach to immigration enforcement. And my suspicion is that in some respects, just as they're kind of Leaning into it with the memes related to this, the gleefulness, as you said, that the theater is deliberate, that they want it to seem like there is a very muscular approach to doing this. And I can certainly appreciate that when you go into a situation like I believe it was in Chicago, where they had an apartment block that effectively been taken over by some sort of narco gang, that might require a very muscular response and tight coordination with local officials. But a lot of the fights that have been picked, in particular with liberal cities, liberal states, over these deployments feel like things that are avoidable. And when I think about the Trump administration, I have lots of concerns, as I do with virtually every government. I don't know that I like more than two politicians who are currently living. That's what I think most about. It's just in the execution. Even beyond whether or not I agree with the policy, they seem to pick these choices or make these choices that are extremely corrosive, that for them, are even injurious. And I can't quite understand that leadership style, to the extent one can call it that.
- [72:31]
Charles C.W. Cook
Well, he's been like that, and so has the other party for the last 10 years. This is one of the big criticisms that you'll hear in American politics. I think it's absolutely correct that. That both sides win. They think they have a mandate to implement the preferences of the most rabid members in their base. And then they discover within a couple of years that they don't. And instead of appealing to the middle and trying to keep their core voters on side, they go all in. Joe Biden did it and destroyed his presidency in the first year by getting together with his party and passing a $2 trillion stimulus bill that caused terrible inflation, turned the public against him. He then opened up the border. And he did that because that was really the preference of those who already liked him. Trump in his first term, was hemmed in a bit by congressional Republicans, but he still had a tendency to try and alienate people and to get attaboys from his friends. And Barack Obama did the same thing in his first term. He came in and then spent all of his political capital, really, for his whole eight years, passing a healthcare bill that wiped out his party for a generation. And it's really odd because I think. I mean, I don't think this quite literally. Cause we're still gonna have a lot of political debates as a country. We're still gonna be divided. The notion we won't have division, which you hear from people, is ridiculous. But I do think the first president who works out how to be Bill Clinton in 1997, wins and wins for eight years and is generally liked because people are tired of that approach and Trump's just totally incapable of it.
- [74:22]
John Lowell
Do you have expectations for what things will look like going into the midterms next year? Is it too hard to tell? Too soon to tell? Is this something that's worth thinking about? At this stage? It just seems like a uniquely novel situation. Certainly we've seen lame duck presidencies before, but I'm not sure we've ever seen anything like this, at least in my lifetime. Observing politics.
- [74:45]
Charles C.W. Cook
Well, I think the whole thing's going to revolve around the economy. I think that's what people actually care about. And I don't think the economy is going to be great. I don't think the inflation issue is going to be fixed. And I think the affordability problems are very complicated. But Trump came in saying he would fix them and he hasn't. And I also think that he's putting off normal voters with some of his conduct. And so I expect the Republicans to do poorly. I have a slightly strange view, and this is a dangerous prediction to make, I guess, which is that I would not be surprised if the Republicans lost really badly next year. But then the economy in the middle of 2027 did start to roar and set up a very strange presidential election in 2028 in which the economy is pretty good, but the Republican Party isn't greatly liked, and the Democrats are trying to work out how to position themselves, and maybe they have a good candidate, but then people aren't sure they want to jettison the Republicans. But it can't be Trump because he's term limited. And maybe JD Vance is not as popular as people think. I mean, I think it could be really odd in 2028. I think there could be a huge difference in just two years. But between the way 2026 is fought and the way 2028's fought. Yeah.
- [75:59]
John Lowell
I wonder if we could just talk about kind of the way conservatism has changed and evolved over the course of the Trump presidencies and perhaps even the period before that. Certainly there is a kind of distinct brand of populism that the Trump administration has embraced it in some on some days I wake up and I look at things and I feel like there's just so many similarities with a Bernie Sanders that I'm a bit mystified. But on other days it's a lot less certain. And certainly there are places like with tech Policy, for example, where the administration governs in a way that seems a lot more traditionally conservative in that kind of Buckley esque sense.
- [76:45]
Jonathan Fields
But.
- [76:45]
John Lowell
But the coalition that exists today, the particular points of emphasis from a policy standpoint, all of it seems really novel. And I think a lot about your publication National Review, and the way that it kind of responded to Trump in the very beginning, and the kind of vocal opposition and that kind of period that you all spent during the first administration, kind of finding your own bearings. I wonder if you could just kind of talk about conservatism broadly, talk about perhaps the role that you see National Review playing in the broader conservative political ecosystem. This is a world where I have for a long time tracked conservative thinkers like yourself, like Evan Williamson, who you mentioned earlier, like Steve Hayes, who's a friend. And these days, it's like you guys have something on offer. But there's also this broad universe of Internet commentators who've got blogs and podcasts, and that's separate and apart from the kind of conspiracy fever swamps that I think exist on both the right and the left. But at the moment, the folks on the right in that fever swamp of conspiracy tend to have a particular sort of resonance that is gaining a lot of attention. So I just laid a lot out there, and I think I probably asked a couple of questions, but I suspect there are some things you could respond to in it.
- [78:19]
Charles C.W. Cook
Sure. Well, the first thing that's worth saying is that although it's been difficult at one level being so critical of Trump, especially in 2016, National Review has usually had an antagonistic approach toward Republican presidents. We were founded in 1955 partly because we were dissatisfied with Eisenhower, who we thought had made his peace with the New Deal, and that persisted into the 70s. There's a lot of criticism of Nixon. The joke is that Buckley only liked Nixon after Watergate had happened, not before. You know, in the 1980s, although we were very pro Reagan, it wasn't uniform in the building. And after 1985, some of what we wrote about Reagan at National Review was really, really quite acidic. I mean, one of the lines in a National Review editorial from 1985, during one of the nuclear arms treaty meetings that Reagan had with the Russian premier, said this would never have happened if Ronald Reagan was still Alive. This was 1985, so five years into his presidency. So it's not entirely unheard of for us to be at odds. I think that what has happened in part is that there has been a rebalancing of the center of gravity within the conservative movement or within the right or within the Republican Party, those aren't all the same things, but they overlap. So if you look at, say, Trump's trade policy, now partly that sui generis, it's something he's believed for a very long time. I think he's ridiculous, but he has believed it. Partly, though, it is consistent with the sort of Buchananite conservatism that has been in the Republican Party in one form or another since the 1920s. In the 1950s, there were two wings on foreign policy. There was Eisenhower, who was more of an internationalist, and then there was Senator Taft of Ohio, who was an isolationist or a non interventionist. In the 1970s, the center of gravity in the Republican Party was well to the left of anything that Trump is in favor of. Now in the 90s, as I say, the Republican president, George H.W. bush, was challenged in 92 by Buchanan, who did a lot of damage to him and got 25% of the vote. So I think a lot of the strands that inform Trumpism, insofar as Trumpism is a thing and not just what Trump thinks at any given minute, have always been there. They've just taken over because of dissatisfaction with the consensus that emerged really in the mid-80s. Now, you mentioned three people, me, Kevin Williamson, Steve Haidt, we are all in favor largely of that consensus, which is for free trade and American hegemonic foreign policy, free markets, low taxes, federalism, and so forth. But that's not everyone's view. And so I think it is absolutely true. There's been a shift. I'm not downplaying it, but I don't think most of it is new or came from nowhere. I think it was always there and at the moment, different people are running the party. What is really confusing me is what happens when Trump goes either when he is no longer president or if he died and was no longer able to play kingmaker, what happens? Because if you look at opinion polling of Republican voters, unless Trump is mentioned or they think the poll is a proxy for their opinion on Trump, they still tend to say pretty favorable things about America's role in the world or legal immigration or democracy, trade or low taxes or low business regulation or federalism, it's only when it's do you support President Trump's policy on this that you see a shift. And I still suspect that 50 to 60% of the right is more in the older mold. The one area that I would say has changed is immigration. I do think that Republican voters are just not going to tolerate illegal immigration anymore. They think they were sold out in the 80s by Reagan with the amnesty bill. I don't have really strong views on whether they were or not, but that is a sustained belief. And I think he's really changed the party there. He's also changed the party and really the country on China. But on the core issues, I'm not sure what's gonna happen when he's not there. Cause I think his being allied with those different ideas is largely what sustains the.
- [83:05]
John Lowell
And you didn't really speak to it. So I want to come back to it because I think it's very relevant to what you were just describing, the conflict. And I think it's fair to describe it as that, or at least the tension between the more institutional kind of think tank conservatism and the influencer conservatism. That seems uniquely relevant now. I mean, certainly we've seen people like Rush Limbaugh before, and Tucker Carlson has been a part of the political conversation, certainly the national conservative movement, for a very long time. But the kind of rise of the Buchananite wing of the party, which, if it's fair to describe it that way, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, and also a more kind of conspiratorial segment of the party is something that seems very noteworthy. And I'm curious what you make about that. And the kind of traditional understanding of National View and of Buckley is that they kind of put some guardrails up. This is what conservatism is, and this is what conservatism very much isn't. And perhaps a unique emphasis on that very much isn't. And a lot of the current confrontations and thus ups amongst conservatives these days seem to pertain to precisely that question. What is this movement now? What are our policy orientations? And who are the people who are part of our coalition? And I'm curious how you think about if your role in that project, if National Review can still really serve in that function. And if you imagine that there is a kind of gatekeeper role that still needs to be played or is being played by National Review and what that will look like going forward.
- [84:58]
Charles C.W. Cook
Yeah, so I think there is, although I think it's much harder for us to do it now because National Review for a long time was the only game in town, and then it was the main game in town, and now there are tons of games in town. The distinction I would draw to take the second part first, is the famous example of this is Buckley exiling the Birches. The reason that the Birches were exiled is because they were wrong. That is to say that their central contention was that Dwight Eisenhower, the President of the United States, the former leader of the Allied forces in World War II, was a communist asset. And that is crazy. And that was accompanied by all manner of other conspiracy theories, such as that the world was actually run by Jews.
- [85:44]
John Lowell
And Buckley said, I've heard that one before recently.
- [85:46]
Charles C.W. Cook
Yeah. And Buckley said, no, we're just not doing that. Insofar as there were intramural disputes on the right. National Review always loved those. They invited those figures to come together and argue them. And in fact, they did so in the early pages of National Review and before the fusionist project was complete in the early 1960s. Those people were extremely rude to one another in the pages of National Review. They threw elbows, worked in the same office, but they did not hold back. And that's a very good thing to have, is that sort of debate. The difference between that and international jury is ruling the world should be obvious, I think. On the second point, I think the influencers need to be split off into two groups, because on the one hand, you have influencers who are taking political positions because Trump has them. They see their view as being to defend Trump and denounce everyone else who won't. And this goes all the way down to things that are immaterial. Like if Trump puts out a really bad or offensive tweet, then there will be people who will just defend it and say it's necessary, it's justified, purely because Trump said it. They'd never actually defend this or think it in other circumstances, but they have to defend Trump. And so if Trump says tariffs, they're for tariffs. If Trump came out and said, tariffs are terrible and I'm rescinding them all, they would say it's a brilliant masterstroke for free trade. That's the one side that's difficult to deal with because there's nothing underneath it. It's just pure following of the current leader. Then you have some influencers who have worldviews. I might find them abhorrent in the case of Tucker Carlson, but it is a worldview. He's changed his mind on a lot, but he thinks things that are distinct from Trump, and in fact, he will criticize Trump. And you've seen other people in that sphere as well. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, yes, she's in the House of Representatives, but is also an influencer who, partly to save her own skin and partly because she's been falling out with him slowly, is now against Trump and doesn't think Trump is Trump enough or think Trump has betrayed MAGA or the right. And then you have people who, I wonder, quite genuinely, I'm not being facetious, whether they're mentally well, Candace Owens, for example, who I find almost impossible to interact with because I just don't know what on earth is happening there. So there's a different bunch of people here and they need to be dealt with, I think, differently. It's really difficult to deal with the people who will just defend Trump, whatever he does, because you can't interact with them. I think with the Tuckers of the world, it's important to engage with what it is that they're saying. And then if you want to take the sort of currently fashionable example, which is Nick Fuentes, who has an ideology that I think is generally dangerous, I think we have to engage with that. I might break with some others. I'm not speaking for National Review here. I think we have to engage with that. I do not think that it is going to work just to say what you are saying is outre. In my view, it is outre. I mean, it's just grotesque. But he has a big audience and it's not self evident to everyone in that audience why what he's saying is ugly. So I do think you have to engage. Cause Nick Fuentes actually has a philosophy, he actually has a worldview. He has a set of precepts that he's arguing. He's not just going along with the tide. So, but I think that it's a case by case basis. Sometimes you say, all right, we'll ignore them. Sometimes you say we have to engage with this. Sometimes your aim is to say you're not a conservative. Sometimes it's to say, well, you are a conservative, but you're not a National Review conservative. And we'd rather that you were. Yeah.
- [89:34]
John Lowell
It feels like a lot of people are coming around to the perspective that you just articulated, though, with respect to the more fringe elements, those kind of toxic people who I think out of habit, many people would ignore and say, you know, this person is obviously beyond the pale. What they've said is anti Semitic and that's enough. But to recognize, I think appropriately that someone like Nick Fuentes, more so than Candace Owens, quite frankly, is articulating a perspective that actually resonates with a lot of people and is actually more complicated than simply being anti Semitic. In some instances, he is saying things that are perhaps somewhat unsayable, but run pretty close to things that someone probably ought to say, perhaps in a more responsible, insane way and constructive, but someone ought to say it. How do you feel about the way conservatives and perhaps kind of the polity broadly, are responding to that particular threat? I mean, I've been talking about it for a while, certainly before I think a lot of other people were. But in addition to sharing your concern and thinking that it's appropriate to confront them, I also have this parallel concern that if we overemphasize the significance of these people, then we can very easily get into this situation where we're essentially permitting them to draw strength from the criticism as opposed to the criticism having the intended effect.
- [91:13]
Charles C.W. Cook
I agree it's a difficult line to walk. I think that one way of doing it is not always to respond to them, which allows them to set the terms of the debate, but simply to present an alternative worldview. You know, it's true that the right became complacent, even if it was right on a lot of issues, in that it merely assumed after the 1990s that mouthing certain platitudes about free markets, free trade, what you will, was sufficient to retain and continue a consensus. And this is one of the biggest criticisms that you'll hear from those who really like Donald Trump, that he came along and he smashed that. Now, I'm not pleased that he smashed it in most particulars. I do think he's right on a couple of issues, like I mentioned. But the problem with where conservatism was is that a lot of the people who were out there supposedly selling it actually didn't know a great deal about it. And so they didn't get to the second question. Just to digress for a moment, one of the things that I found very amusing when everyone was getting counseled all the time was that if someone would complain and say, I'm offended by that. If you just said, okay, I don't care, they didn't have a follow up. They never had a follow up. It would just be like, but I'm offended. And you'd say, I know and I don't care. And then they would say, but I'm offended. And I think unfortunately, some conservatives ended up like that, especially by the time Trump came along, where they would just sort of say, but the market. And then you'd say, well, what about the market? And then they would go, but the market. And I'm still very much pro market. This isn't a criticism of free market economics. I'm passionate about it. You have to be able to say, here is why I'm saying that here are all the, here's why the other side's wrong. Here's my constructive version. And I think rather than just saying, well, Nick Fuentes shouldn't say that, which he shouldn't in many cases, I think it's very important to say, here is what I believe and why, you don't even have to mention him. Most of the time you can just say, here is what I believe and why. And I think that a lot of people on the right, maybe myself included, had become complacent and got bad at that. And then in come some entrepreneurs politically and they start saying, here's my other alternative. And we just sort of spluttered.
- [93:46]
John Lowell
Yeah. Well, since I have you, and given the fact that you are a recent immigrant to the country, first generation American, I think we both have a similar view about how remarkable and amazing the United States is as a project, I'm curious to get your view on the U.S. european relationship. @ times, when I hear the rhetoric of the administration and I see the, the kind of lines upon which a lot of our international intercourse is taking place, much of that conversation has been about tariffs. And the tariffs have been directed at kind of friend and foe alike against adversaries who are viewed as serious trade rivals and against people who have zero tariffs with the United States. But even more than that, there's been all sorts of kind of culture war oriented conversations that are going on with respect to foreign policy as well. And similarly, a lot of hostility, a great deal of open criticism of people who traditionally have been viewed as allies. And that criticism is sometimes, I think, good and appropriate, like you should be. You should have your own military infrastructure so you can defend yourselves. You should be investing in a commensurate way when it comes to NATO. But in other cases, it seems really, really hostile in a way that seems counterproductive. Is the US European relationship in the midst of a meaningful decline and kind of reordering? That's likely to be something that is consequential for years and years to come. Is this just a matter of kind of getting acclimated to the second Trump administration? And he's just very transactional and you can kind of find your way through it. What kind of advice would you give to European leaders right now who are looking to better secure themselves given the threat posed by Russia, who are looking for productive economic engagement with the United States given what we're seeing from the Trump administration so.
- [95:52]
Charles C.W. Cook
Far? Yeah. So I'm pretty critical of Europe, but I write for a magazine and I think as a result, I can and ought to proceed in a different way than the President of the United States or those who work with him. I think, as I read the other day, Europe is delusional. I think that's Europe. Yeah. So Europe is sclerotic. It is unable to defend itself. It does not innovate. If you look at the GDP of Europe versus the United States, in 2008, they were equal, and now the United States is twice that nearly of Europe. Europe's also pretty terrible on free speech questions. It can be bad on freedom of religion, freedom of conscience. I think there's an awful lot to criticize. I'm happy to do that. We also need Europe strategically, and they are much closer to us, despite their flaws, than the Russians or the Chinese. And as a result, I think it's one thing for magazine writers to say Europe's a delusional mess, and it's another for the President to do so. I think some of the things that J.D. vance said about Europe and free speech and free expression were completely right. I think he'd have been better off perhaps doing it behind closed doors. There is a point, though, at which you do need to keep your allies informed of that shortcoming, because you can't. Just as I was saying earlier, people just sort of saying words and not thinking about what's beneath them. Well, we say they're our allies. They are. But we do need to keep them like us, or as much like us as possible. And that does involve small l liberal values. So I am greatly sympathetic to a lot of the criticisms of this administration toward Europe, from defense spending to free expression to lack of innovation. I just don't think the way Trump does it is always productive, and I think it would be good if it were more productive, because ultimately we are going to end up defending Europe one way or another, because it's in our national interest to do so. So, you know this won't happen. But if Europe tomorrow said, screw you all, we're just going to go it alone and we're no longer interested in NATO or paying our own way, what happens if there's a war? We're still going to have to do it. We know this. We've done it twice. So he does need them. So that's a long way of saying I think they're basically right, but I think diplomacy.
- [98:26]
John Lowell
Matters. Yeah, I'm somewhat notorious for asking these kind of French goodbye questions, but I'm going to blame you for it, partly, at least just to deflect some of the criticism from me, whether or not it's merited. But you mentioned free speech a moment ago in the European context, and I'm thinking about some of the things that the Trump administration has done that I found the most disconcerting, entering into kind of these domains where conservatives would have traditionally had a lot of concern, like the bullying of law firms going to universities, certainly addressing some of the excesses of wokeness, but going quite a bit further than that. And more recently, the specific conversations around various mergers and giving this appearance of a kind of governmental intervention that goes beyond what one might expect as just kind of the kind of run of the mill regulation to what looks like nakedly politically motivated choosing winners and losers. How concerned are you about that? When I hear people on the left talk about this administration, it isn't with the same sort of animated hysteria that I saw in the first administration, but there is a pretty definitive assessment that says, well, this is fascism and this is what it looks like when fascism is taking root. I still find a lot of that somewhat overstated, but it also seems to me that it isn't out of nowhere. There are things taking place that are very concerning and ought to be addressed and that the administration doesn't really seem to be under a great deal of pressure from the right with respect to. So I wonder if you could weigh in on where things stand on the kind of threat level posed by the administration and whether or not there's much in the way of merit to the criticisms that are being leveled from the left.
- [100:30]
Charles C.W. Cook
Primarily. No, there is. There is. I just see it like this. I think Trump is bad on free speech and always has been. If you look back to the first term, or perhaps just before he was elected, when he said he wanted to open the libel laws up, he wants to imprison people for flag burning, he wrote an executive order that pretended to do that, but thankfully he doesn't. He has gone after pollsters and media organizations. He's tried to shake down companies, as you say, that were before him or before the FTC for mergers. The glorious thing about America, though, is the First Amendment. And I look at Trump as another threat to the First Amendment in the same vein as Joe Biden was, often with different parts of it. Religious freedom, for example. Some of the work that the Biden administration did with tech companies, which seems obviously to be jawboning or imposing undue pressure, that Barack Obama did, that George W. Bush did. I mean, these are people who are constrained by the Constitution for a reason. So if the question is, is Trump a Hypocrite. Given that he talks about free speech. Yeah, absolutely. If the question is, are we, and I know you don't believe this, but are we any closer to fascism than we were three years ago? No, I don't think we are, because the First Amendment is there and is robust and is better than everywhere else. The United States is better than everywhere else on free speech by a long way. But it's not perfect. And it presumes our constitutional order that our politicians are going to try this stuff, and so they do. So I am worried about it in that I don't like it. I wish our politicians would be better on this topic, but I have an enormous amount of faith in the system. And maybe I'll finish with this. This is not just limited to the First Amendment. This is the whole system. This is why I've never freaked out. People get really, really unhappy with me sometimes. Oh, you seem so sanguine about it. Yeah, because I think the system works, and I think that the public won't put up with it for too long either. And I thought that when Joe Biden was president, and I really disliked Joe Biden, and I think that now that Trump is president again, I don't think our system is weak enough to succumb to a Joe Biden or a Donald Trump. So I am relaxed because of the First Amendment, not because I think Trump is a good.
- [103:10]
John Lowell
President. So, quick follow up. Does your analysis hold even if, say, the next winner of the next election is a Democrat and they do their best to kind of escalate in a way, essentially building on the excesses of the Trump administration and intensifying some of these areas of concern that we already have. For me, that might be my number one concern. I don't believe that the Trump administration is necessarily going to become fascist and totalitarian, But I do worry about the direction of.
- [103:47]
Charles C.W. Cook
Things. There are things I do worry about. I think that we have too much executive power. Well, first off, if you look at free speech, for example, I think even with these threats, I do think we're better off now in the United States than we have ever been in our history. I think free speech is better respected across all levels of government, or at least the courts are force the government to respect it better than has ever been the case. And I think probably the United States in 2025 is probably the freest place for free speech that has ever existed in the history of the world. So although I acknowledge all of the issues, as I did during Biden, I don't see the sum total of free speech violations as being at critical level. I think the sort of continuum point you make, or what would be called a slippery slope argument, is valid. I just haven't seen anything out. I haven't seen anything from the courts that suggest they're not willing to check the excesses or from the public that hasn't punished those who have engaged in them. If we got a situation in which whatever it is you're worried about comes to fruition and the courts step back and the public rewards it, at that point, I think we're done. But I haven't seen either one happen. I mean, the public got rid of Trump, then they got rid of Biden. The court said no to Biden on student loans, which was an insane attempt to spend half a trillion dollars without Congress. I think that the Supreme Court's gonna tell Trump he's not allowed to impose trillions of dollars of taxes without Congress. We've had major questions, doctrines and issues in the court that have limited executive overreach. You know, unless there's a total lack of pushback, I'm not too worried about that yet. But when that starts to happen, that's when I think you lose your.
- [105:47]
John Lowell
Country. Charles Cook, National Review thank you so much for making some time to talk to.
- [105:51]
Charles C.W. Cook
Me. Thanks for having.
- [105:53]
Camille Foster
Me. All right, that is it for The Camille Charles C.W. cook interview. Camille, I'm excited to talk more with you about this, but I know you have to get out of here to catch a flight, which, like, what else is new? So we gotta do our grievances quick before we wrap up the show tonight. John, you can, you can play the music, my.
- [106:20]
John Lowell
Friend. The airing of grievances. Between you and me, I think your country is placing a lot of importance on shoe.
- [106:32]
Camille Foster
Removal. My grievance this week is just coughing. Just coughing, just coughing. I can't stop coughing. I've been coughing. I've been coughing every day for like 10 days. My chest is literally sore. My throat is itchy and irritated nonstop. I was sleep taking Nyquil so I could sleep to put my cough away, but NyQuil's disgusting. I feel horrible. The next day, I get weird sweats in the middle of the night. It's just a terrible gross product. I hate to say I don't know what's in it. It works, but it is powerful. It's too powerful. It's like they talk about medical grade weed being too strong now. It's like the NyQuil's too good now. It's just like, I don't Feel right in the morning. So there's no solution anymore for having a tear. T doesn't work for this cough. Hall's drops don't work for this cough. I'm just living with it. I'm in hell. I can't wait for it to be.
- [107:37]
Ari Weitzman
Over. Zinc's not working. Doesn't do it.
- [107:39]
Camille Foster
Anymore. No, no. Talking for two hours on a podcast doesn't help. For some reason, nothing helps. So that's my goal this week. Yeah.
- [107:49]
John Lowell
Thanks. I actually have. I have one this.
- [107:52]
Camille Foster
Time. All.
- [107:53]
John Lowell
Right. It pertains to our work. I hate clip montages on social media, and I hate them most because people refuse to do any sort of sourcing. Just at least tell me when this happened. When did this person say this? In what context? And what I find most offensive is that it's not just these anonymous Internet accounts. Even super prominent media organizations, news outfits, refuse to just do the most basic. This happened on this day, at this particular time. You don't have to give me all the context. Just tell me the when, perhaps provide a source. But they don't do it. And it's outrageous and it's super frustrating. And I wish in the age of AI and manufactured clips, when it has become so difficult to know whether or not some video you're watching is actually real or fake, they would just give you some sort of handhold to help you do a little bit of the verification. And perhaps as Tangle continues to build its wonderful media empire, we can lead the way in this regard and create more of a clear sort of set of standards for how to do content well in the age of AI and deep.
- [109:11]
Camille Foster
Fakery. I love that.
- [109:15]
Ari Weitzman
One. I hope we can, too. And I'm gonna, for my grievance, go completely opposite in terms of what I want from responsibility for myself, which is I want to be more. I want to have more latitude to be irresponsible in one particular area, which is one of my friends works for a company that is publicly listed. He informed me about something that was going to happen at his company, which, if acted upon, would have netted me a return of some sizable degree. And I really, really wish that we could insider trade just like a little, just like a small amount. And I know that I don't want to get this person in trouble. And it's not. Nothing illegal happened. I didn't buy any stock after he told me about it. And then I watched the stock price go up and I was mad about it. I would think I, you know what the thing that I, my grievances isn't that I'm not allowed to insider trade. Like, if the law applies the people, it should apply to me as a person. That's fine. I guess I'm mad at my friend for telling me about it in the first place. He didn't have to do that, man. Tell me after it happened and I wouldn't feel bad. But instead, now I wish that I was Nancy Pelosi and I had the ability to put something in my portfolio that nobody's ever going to talk about. Well, I kind of like, maybe that's the grievance they can and I can't. Either we all can or none of us.
- [110:37]
Camille Foster
Can. I kind of like the idea that we should all get to do one insider trade. Like, you get one free pass. So it's just like you really have to know. You have to be so sure before you shoot your shot. And if it's your first time, it's totally fine. You get off scotch free. But like any other time, you're in big.
- [110:56]
Ari Weitzman
Trouble. It's like, I mean, what. What's that? When everyone's allowed to do whatever they want for a day, but for insider.
- [111:03]
Camille Foster
Trading? Yeah, that's like a purge, isn't it? The.
- [111:07]
Ari Weitzman
Purge. The purge for financial.
- [111:09]
John Lowell
Fraud. I do think there might be a workaround here though, Ari. If you live stream yourself, disclosing this information to some audience and then purchase the stock while you're doing the live stream. Is this not publicly public information? Now you've made.
- [111:31]
Ari Weitzman
A. Not abuse my role as a.
- [111:32]
John Lowell
Journalist. No, not abuse your role as a journalist. Anyone can livestream. You could say I am live streaming in my private capacity. And one, I've been tracking these Egyptian planes. Two, I also want to tell you about this hot stock tip that I heard. I don't know if it's true, but now that I've told you, I'm going to trade on it. That is what you could do, Ari. And I would retweet that and also trade.
- [111:54]
Ari Weitzman
It. I would be interested in some questionable legal.
- [111:58]
Camille Foster
Advice. Yeah, that does sound like questionable legal.
- [112:01]
John Lowell
Advice. What is non public information? What is that.
- [112:04]
Camille Foster
Exactly? I don't.
- [112:06]
John Lowell
Know. I'm not a lawyer. I just want to be very clear about that. And I'm joking. Except I might do.
- [112:10]
Camille Foster
It. I like what you're.
- [112:12]
Ari Weitzman
On. Financial purge.
- [112:13]
John Lowell
Day. Yeah, this is the financial.
- [112:17]
Camille Foster
Purge. I do. Yeah. I do share the sentiment though, Ari. I think just like, just a tiny bit of insider trading should be okay. Just a little.
- [112:28]
John Lowell
Bit. Just the tip. Insider.
- [112:30]
Camille Foster
Trading. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. All right. Well, yeah, it doesn't count. All right, Ari, Camille. Love having you guys here. Good.
- [112:43]
Ari Weitzman
Grief. Set the tone. We're going to end.
- [112:44]
Camille Foster
2025. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, if you listen to the end of the episode, if you made it here because you. You love the grievances, this will actually be our last episode of 2025 because we have successive recording days that fall on days off for Christmas and New Year's. So we'll see you guys on the other side of January. There'll be plenty of tangled content coming out between now and then, but suspension of the rules will be back in 2026. So, you know, hug your families, enjoy your holiday season, enjoy the new year here, and we'll see you guys.
- [113:20]
John Lowell
Soon. Happy.
- [113:22]
Camille Foster
Festivus. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman, with senior editor Will K. Back and associate editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey, Saul, Lindsey Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the Body podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our.
- [113:49]
Charles C.W. Cook
Website@Retangle.Com. So good, so good, so.
- [114:05]
Isaac Saul
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Camille Foster
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John Lowell
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John Lowell
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