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- [00:00]
Isaac Saul
McCrispy strips are now at McDonald's. Tender juicy and its own sauce. Would you look at that? Well, you can't see it, but trust.
- [00:08]
Paige Disorva
Me, it looks delicious.
- [00:10]
Camille Foster
New McCrispy strips now at McDonald's.
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Paige Disorva
This is Paige Disorva from Giggly Squad.
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Ari Weitzman
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Paige Disorva
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Ari Weitzman
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- [01:03]
Camille Foster
With the price of just about everything going up, we thought we'd bring our prices down.
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Paige Disorva
So to help us, we brought in.
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Camille Foster
A reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a.
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Isaac Saul
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Paige Disorva
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Isaac Saul
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Paige Disorva
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Isaac Saul
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Camille Foster
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Isaac Saul
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Ari Weitzman
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- [01:33]
Paige Disorva
Coming up, Camille talks to Rand Paul. I spend a few days with Representative Jake akin Claus in D.C. where we're knee deep in the swamp. We talk about whether Elon and Trump are going to make up the latest on the LA protests. Tulsi Gabbard and some unsettling warnings. And then special announcement about the podcast and a solicitation for some help and then of course, some grievances. It's a good one.
- [02:00]
Isaac Saul
From executive producer Isaac Saul.
- [02:03]
Ari Weitzman
This is Tangle.
- [02:15]
Paige Disorva
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of my take. I'm your host Isaac Saul, here with Tangle managing editor Ari Weitzman and editor at large Camille Foster. We've just spent the last 40 minutes trying unsuccessfully to set up a camera, to set up a new microphone. Camille and I are recording in person together. Now we're in separate rooms because there's a terrible echo and software is not doing what it's supposed to be doing. And Camille's on his AirPods instead of a microphone because of a bad XLR cable and Ari is recording from a microphone that appears to be taped to makeshift stand. So we're in a terrible place everybody. Welcome fellas. How are we doing?
- [03:01]
Camille Foster
We got A Real Bill O'Reilly Energy. Real Bill O'Reilly Energy today. I'm doing it live.
- [03:08]
Isaac Saul
The problem, Isaac, is you are not. I love the transparency. You know, it just, it's truthful, it is consistent with the spirit of this media institution. But I want to project the, the, this, this sense that we are very serious people doing a serious job that we take seriously and you just completely torpedoed that.
- [03:27]
Camille Foster
Yeah, serious people don't lie there.
- [03:31]
Paige Disorva
There are just sometimes these days where it really doesn't matter how well you've, you've planned anything and the, the tech problems come for you and it's a, we had a cascading shit show in the last 40 minutes, but now we're here and the, the, the recordings on and we're doing it. There's a lot to talk about today aside from what a mess our technological setup was this afternoon. I want to start here with two interesting things that, that happened I think in the tangle media ecosphere. We were, we were knee deep in the swamp, man, this, this week as a, as a group. Camille spent a good part of his day yesterday chatting with Rand Paul, Senator Rand Paul, who may be one of the least swampy swamp creatures. While I was in Washington D.C. with John and Will for an upcoming YouTube video I'm very excited to release on what a day in the life of a member of Congress is. We were shadowing Representative Jake Auchincloss who is not a swamp creature. I would never denigrate him that way. Actually a pretty interesting, I think rising star in the Democratic Party, somebody to keep an eye on a lot of interesting forward thinking stuff. Camille, I'm gonna start with you here. I'd love to just get a little preview of this interview that's going to come out on the Fifth Column. I'm presuming in the coming days. Rand Paul recently uninvited from the White House picnic. Kind of becoming a little bit of a Persona non grata. Yeah, he's got, he's got Scarlet Letter in the party right now. Your conversation with him, what's his mood like these days?
- [05:16]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, so we actually talked to him on Thursday afternoon and we talked to him literally an hour before that video that you've seen of him talking about getting disinvited to the White House event this weekend. And that episode is available. It was released on Friday afternoon or Thursday afternoon. So we talked to him on Wednesday. I totally screwed that up. But, yeah, he's not a little bit of a pariah. Rand Paul is literally Donald Trump's. In the Trump administration's, broadly speaking, number one op, he has been the most vocal and visible critic of his signature policy things, specifically the tariffs and the great big beautiful bill. And we talked a lot about what it's been like for him in the party, the difficulty he's been having. Stephen Miller, one of the President's top advisers and certainly the kind of singular figure from a policy standpoint, has been publicly denigrating Rand Paul, not even by name, just talking about the dastardly libertarians and all of their terrible, horrible influence and of course, their inability to pass legislation. I guess he doesn't really know what libertarians value because not passing legislation is kind of the whole deal, in a way. But, yeah, you talk a lot about what he's been dealing with. The thing that I think the whole thing is worth listening to. The moment that was most interesting to me and which actually dovetails with some of what you were up to in D.C. isaac was towards the end of our conversation, and it might have been the last question I asked Rand, actually two questions. One, where are the Democrats? How is it possible that at a time when the Democratic Party clearly is in a lather and has deep contempt for most of the things that Donald Trump is doing, you almost never see them in national media. The person you see most of the time talking about the various ways that Trump's policies are bad and are something that should be fought. It's probably Rand Paul. And relatedly, I talked to Rand about the future of the Republican Party, which has obviously become a lot more populist, has moved away from the kind of free market moorings, and has just become actively hostile to people who are talking about the debt and deficit in the context of this great big beautiful bill, which wants to see a $5 trillion increase of the debt limit. And yeah, Rand had a number of interesting things to say, and I don't know that I would say he was optimistic about the future of people like him in the party, but he did suggest that behind closed doors, there are a few, more than a few people who still defend some of the positions he has and who are definitely holding their nose while supporting some of the different things The President does. The one thing that he did say that surprised me was in connection with the White House's approach to the deportation protests in la. Ram has publicly said that he was a little bit skeptical of the military deployment or the deployment of the National Guard, at any rate. And I think his quote was, law enforcement is trained to deal with things like this domestically. It's what they do best. The concern with deploying the National Guard isn't so much that this is a threat to the constitutional order as it's specifically that they don't have the training for this and giving 2000 or 4000 actually National Guardsmen several days worth of training so that they're able to kind of shift from thinking about being in a war zone to, I am in an American city. These people have constitutional rights, and I need to respect them. I don't know that that's enough. So that seems like a potential problem. But as Rand said, there's a precedent for this. During the civil rights movement, the National Guard was sent into various states and cities, in cities or in states, to essentially enforce federal law when the states didn't want to. And the states didn't have an ability to say, we don't want these National Guardsmen here. So while the President is definitely doing a lot of things that are kind of agitating concern here and generating some concern, ultimately he does seem to be within his rights. At least one court has already decided in his favor, and I suspect he'll be vindicated in that regard, whether or not these National Guardsmen are at all necessary.
- [09:52]
Camille Foster
Listening to that, I think the first question I have is when it comes to this precedent of calling in the National Guard to states when the governors didn't request them to enforce laws that the governors weren't willing to execute, the precedent does separate from the current example where it's not the governor being unwilling to enforce laws, it's the governor saying, we actually are. We're doing that now. We haven't gotten to the point where we're requesting extra support. We are trying to do the same thing. We just don't think that this is a step that we need. So I. I don't know if this is a thing you talked about with Rand or with Senator Paul. Pardon me. We don't know each other like that.
- [10:35]
Paige Disorva
Yeah.
- [10:36]
Isaac Saul
We're kind of friends.
- [10:37]
Camille Foster
Yeah. That's great. Yeah. One day. Pass on my info. Is that something that you brought up at all or that you touched on was whether or not this precedent from the civil rights era will carry over In a legal sense, I think we're seeing some examples from recent court rulings that maybe that's their own question to ask, but it does strike me as potentially a false trail to follow.
- [10:58]
Isaac Saul
Well, that's the analogy that he used, or he drew that parallel to the civil rights movement or the civil rights era. I think he did underscore the fact that there is some nuance here. And I think, at the end of the day, everyone is acknowledging that there is just some ambiguity when it comes to how to interpret the law. And I think that for all of us, in many respects, because the Trump administration is so innovative in its approach to governance, to use a euphemism, we are being forced to figure out exactly what the limits are on presidential power in a number of different contexts. And I think that's where we are again here. And we'll just have to see where the courts actually come down. But I think importantly, and Rand did underscore this, the fact is that to the extent the National Guard are there, the apex of the violent and disorderly protests appear to be on Sunday, at least in Los Angeles. And I know this weekend could be a very different story. So we'll see. At this point, the National Guardsmen have a pretty narrow role. They are deployed at federal buildings. They're supposedly being deployed in some sort of supportive role to protect, to assist ICE agents.
- [12:15]
Camille Foster
Right?
- [12:16]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. Because those are the things that they're permitted to do. And, you know, there'll be some. Again, the court challenges are going on, so we'll see if something else changes. But in general, that seems to be something that the president can do. Whether or not it's something he should do is another question. Because, again, is it fair to say that this is the sort of thing that might actually animate concern amongst the very demonstrators who are most upset? The answer is almost certainly. I mean, they are talking about this, but should it animate concern perhaps a little less than Gavin Newsom suggests? I think Gavin Newsom this week suggested that this was very nearly like kind of an apocalyptic situation, that deploying these National Guardsmen against his will is almost a kind of a threat to the democratic order. And I'm not so sure that's right. I think whether or not people like these policies, there's a phrase that a lot of Bagot supporters have been using recently. This is what I voted for. And it is true, the Trump administration was not at all ambiguous about its intentions during the campaign. They wanted to set records for the number of deportations. It could be argued that they soft peddled the fact that a lot of those deportations were going to be moms dropping off their kids at school and then suddenly finding themselves in custody, or people who are trying to follow the rules, who are showing up at courthouses for hearings that they' asked to attend because they want to stay and then finding themselves again in custody. That's very different.
- [13:52]
Camille Foster
And not even something that could be argued, but something that you did argue on CNN last night about maybe the place where if you're trying to deport a bunch of people, maybe you aren't actually able to find all of the supposed worst of the worst in a parking lot in Paramount, California, but the people that you can find are day laborers and Home Depot. And that may be motivating Some of the responses behind what we're seeing is that that's a little bit of an obvious slight pan that we're seeing and.
- [14:24]
Isaac Saul
That is explicitly happening. I mean, there's been reporting about Stephen Miller kind of behind the scenes agitated that there hasn't been more action with respect to these deportations because they couldn't find These enclaves of MS.13 members who they could just round up and put on a bus or a plane. And instead he said, look, just go to Home Depot, round some people up and let's go, let's get these deportation numbers up. And that is precisely what they've done.
- [14:54]
Camille Foster
Deport, deport, deport.
- [14:56]
Paige Disorva
It's interesting because when we were in D.C. with Representative Auchincloss, we picked him up at the airport on Monday at about 12:30 as like the beginning, the opening scene of the. What I imagine will be the opening scene of the video that comes out. And in the car ride from the airport to Congress, the conversation about LA came up immediately. I mean, it was like the first thing that he wanted to talk about. And he had kind of the, I mean, sort of the Democratic view on this, I think from somebody who, I wouldn't say he's as much of an outsider in the Democratic Party as Rand Paul is though in the Republican Republican Party, though, he's, he's similarly open to criticizing his own team in a way I think maybe not enough Democrats are. And the way that he sort of talked about it was in part this kind of the, like Posse Comitatus, this sort of legal analysis of what Trump is actually allowed to do and what he isn't allowed to do. And you know, the executive action you have to take to really capture control of the military and turn it on civilians and how to stop that from happening. But the other half, it was just the way Democrats were communicating about it. And his preference for sort of leading with, we can't have people lighting cars on fire in the street and destroying people's businesses. We have to maintain some level of order. Obviously, a lot of these people are good faith protesters who are allies of immigrant members of their community, seeing stuff that's happening and thinking that it's really gross and abhorrent and they want to do something about it and it's okay for them to go out and protest, but, like, the party needs to be really careful about clearly articulating that it's okay for the police to keep order in the streets. And also, we should all resist the kind of power grab that Trump clearly seems interested in or is gravitating towards, which I think for the party and just from like a moral perspective and a political perspective is a kind of posture towards the situation that resonates with me and is right. I think it's a smart politically and it's like the right moral position to have. It's just like it's okay to keep the peace. Also, it's very obvious that there's some kind of frightening level of power grab happening here, and maybe we should. We should do something about and speak out about that. So it's a tough spot to be a Democrat right now, I'll say. I mean, he's. Trump has put them in a really difficult position where they kind of have to talk out of both sides of their mouth on this issue.
- [17:55]
Isaac Saul
Well, I just wanted to follow up on one thing. I mean, the question that I put to Rand about where are the Democrats on all these various issues? There are a few people who you will see frequently. Gavin Newsom right now, obviously is pretty prominent, but he's kind of a theatrical character and is in various ways trying to position himself for the next election, really the next presidential election. And you see Jasmine Sullivan and you see aoc, and they have had moments where kind of out stridently criticizing the president. I am very curious why I don't see other prominent Democrats in the media regularly having these kind of moments where they're going after the administration in the way that Rand Paul manages to be able to do it. It feels like they ought to be able to generate more attention. None of them have shown up in LA at the protests, and that could be for other reasons. For example, the fact that there just has been a lot of unruliness and they don't want to be attached to that, which is interesting to the extent that's true, but it just feels like they are conspicuously absent and it's not always obvious why. It's certainly not the case that Donald Trump's various actions made it difficult for them to speak out. The emergency powers that the Trump administration is using to do all sorts of things have led Rand Paul to author a bill essentially curtailing the president's ability to use emergency powers for more than 72 hours before Congress has to vote on it. Why aren't there more Democrats who are openly talking about this and promoting this? Did you get a sense of that?
- [19:31]
Paige Disorva
I, yeah, I mean, I actually think that they are in a tough spot. I mean, I think it's really hard to walk a line where you are denouncing the worst of the protesters without framing all the protesters as being like rioters because they don't want to offend the base that's out there in the streets that is standing up for this issue they care about. They want to center Trump's power grab and sort of turn the conversation away from the immigration stuff. And they also want to defend the kind of like innocent, hard working, been here for a long time, pillar of the community immigrant who doesn't have papers and is here illegally. They want to defend that person while also not sort of being on the wrong side of the Trump wants to deport the violent criminals that are here illegally conversation. I mean, it's like it is just tightrope after tightrope after tightrope. And I think it's just a really hard thing to message on. And for what it's worth, I think that's why Trump's pushing it. I mean, I, I think he knows on the immigration question, he's kind of won that debate. Like something like 55% of Americans now support mass deportations of people who are here illegally. I, I suspect that the more that CNN and MSNBC and Fox News are covering this story and images, the same six images of these burning waymos, you know, are on every broadcast television network, despite the fact this is like a protest of hundreds of thousands of people in a city of 11.
- [21:17]
Camille Foster
Didn't use it for our cover image too, to be fair. It's a compelling image.
- [21:21]
Isaac Saul
It's a compelling image and it's a little worse than that. I mean, when they shut down the 101, there were a number of LAPD vehicles that were being destroyed and vandals putting rocks through ice vehicle windows.
- [21:34]
Paige Disorva
Again, you know, some of that happened. The exchange that you and I just had right there, I think is exactly why you're not hearing many Democrats out there talking about this. Because it's like, even if you try to frame it slightly the way I just did, where it's like, you know, the whole city's not burning, it's like, it is fairly contained, then you can say, like, I don't know, I turned on the TV and saw a bunch of cop cars on the 101 burning. And like, that is an uncomfortable spot to be in if you're a Democratic politician. And I think, yeah, they just don't have great messaging on it, and it's not a strong issue for them. And the thing they want people focused on smartly, I think, is that Trump is, you know, that it is insane for Trump to be turning marines loose against U.S. citizens. Like, that is total overkill for in a situation where the governor and the mayor are saying, we have this under control with lapd.
- [22:30]
Isaac Saul
But even that is a little bit of an overstatement. I mean, but you could go after the emergency powers thing, which is narrow and specific, and it isn't something that the President has to do, and it's certainly the most disputable aspect of what's happening in LA and in various other contexts.
- [22:49]
Paige Disorva
Then that was some of what Representative Auchincloss was focused on. He did like a town hall. We were in the room for it. He was, you know, he has a substack now. He sent a newsletter that was kind of all about the. The executive power element. I just think. Yeah, I mean, even saying. Even what Gavin Newsom saying, I mean, he's like, we have this situation under control. It's just perfect. Like, the bait is there. And then five minutes later, there's a meme on Twitter with 20,000 retweets that's like Gavin Newsom saying, we have the situation under control, with images of cop cars burning in the streets behind him. And it looks so bad, you know, And I think it's. Yeah, it's just. This is why, for what it's worth, I mean, like, I don't think any of these people who are actually rioting and, you know, doing vandalism and lighting cars on fire give a shit about this. Cause at all. I really don't think they do. But if they do, like, they should really come to terms with just how destructive what they're doing is to the actual end goal. I mean, it, like, it puts the Democratic Party and pro immigration activists in a terrible, terrible bind to have this debate on the national stage.
- [24:01]
Isaac Saul
1. One quick point of fact, the you know, polling is interesting. I think Abby mentioned yesterday when we were recording the CNN episode, you know, polling is, is some, is a momentary thing. It changes from day to day. On Wednesday, we did get new numbers. There was a Quinnipiac poll that came out that suggested Trump is actually underwater on the immigration issue. I think it was 43% disapproval, actually, no 43% approval for his actions on immigration. And of course that could change and a different poll could give you a different result. But there's reason to believe that the coverage is having an impact and it's not obviously the case that all of it is the kind of negative impact because of the surveying of the kind of worst of the calamities in la, that the Trump administration itself is taking some hits because of the tactics that they're employing and the particular kind of people they're going after.
- [25:09]
Paige Disorva
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- [26:19]
Isaac Saul
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- [27:05]
Paige Disorva
This is worth mentioning, by the way. We didn't really in the complete and utter show that was us getting set up for the show. This news broke while we were doing this that the.
- [27:19]
Isaac Saul
Not again.
- [27:20]
Paige Disorva
Senator Padilla from California was arrested by a group of DHS agents. He showed up.
- [27:29]
Camille Foster
Yeah.
- [27:30]
Paige Disorva
Rep. Padilla. Yeah, he showed up at, at. No, no, he's, he's a senator. He showed up at, at a DHS conference and tried to ask a question. And there's videos of these, I suppose. I don't know, I can't tell if they're DHS or Secret Service, but they are basically wrestling him to the ground and have arrested him and it is pretty much the only thing anybody's talking about on Twitter right now. It's basically every, every single tweet that I can see. The, let's see, the New York Times probably has this. Yeah, Senator is forced to ground and handcuffed after interrupting Krissy Noem in Los Angeles. This stuff is like, you know, a senator being arrested for asking a question and interrupting Kristi Noem at a DHS press conference is a pretty serious escalation in my view. And I think this is the kind of stuff if you're Democrats, like, if you want to target people like me who are floating around somewhere in the middle. This is sort of stuff that makes my, the hair on my neck stand up and is a good way to get my attention.
- [28:45]
Isaac Saul
That's interesting. That's interesting. I'll say that.
- [28:48]
Camille Foster
I mean, go ahead just to jump in quickly, that I think there's a simple dynamic here that does tilt the tables a bit for Trump, which is, I don't, I don't necessarily think he's acting because he's gaming how Democrats will respond. I think it's just that in the Republican Party there's an obvious center of gravity which is towards Trump and Trump's style and he can advance whatever his agenda is and his thoughts are without really having to think about it and always be forcing the other team to play defense, whereas on the other side, there's not a real center of gravity. There's no message for people to gather around. There's no Jesus for people to come to. Like we kind of saw in 2012, 2016, 2020. Like, there is a center left coalition with your Obama, Clinton, Biden style Democrats. And right now there's serious doubt in the Democratic Party that that's the winning coalition. So there's not really a good idea of where to take cues and what the message is, because I think there's a lot of people pointing to this. I'm sure we'll talk about this eventually in the newsletter, but this mayoral race in New York right now, about the social media candidate who's gaining a lot of steam and a lot of young progressive Democrats saying, can we stop doing it your way? Center left? Can we please just take a little bit more of a step to the left in the style of these Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders, like AOC even, and just see this? Because we know the other style isn't working. And there's an internal battle for that messaging. And I think that makes it really tough to just have one person come out and say, we're going to say this. This is the winning message. Y' all can disagree, whatever, we can deal with that, but we're all going to toe this line. I don't think there's an idea right now of what that line is.
- [30:28]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, no, that's a great point. Yeah, the, the fact that there is some ambiguity about exactly what the right Democratic position is on these issues isn't something that we talk enough about. In as much as there have been these major demonstrations in la, there have been some deportations in New York, and demonstrations in New York are pretty small and they're, and they're orderly. And that some of that has to the NYPD's distinct approach to managing these protests versus the LAPD, where, I mean, LA has seen some riots. The riots get names in LA the same way hurricanes do in other parts of the world. You know, you got your Watts riot and your Rodney King riot. They put this down. And it's interesting, I was having a thought before you shared that Trump runs the risk of getting the blame for the worst excesses, or at least what I've seen is the worst excesses of the lapd when they shoot a reporter or something like that with a rubber bullet. But at the same time, his supporters are kind of like, yeah, I saw those posts. They don't necessarily say this is what I voted for. But they're laughing. I don't want to say that's uniformly true, but I do think that there's far less risk of Donald Trump's muscular approach to these issues alienating Republicans or MAGA inclined voters than there is for Democrats being too vociferously supportive. When in a place like New York, the issues with the volume of migrants that arrive there and the policy approach of the Adams administration, which initially was giving away money and then got really hostile, that is probably more indicative of what's happened with attitudes on these issues in recent months, really.
- [32:17]
Camille Foster
I think the risk, though, Camille, with the muscular approach from Trump isn't that it alienates Republicans, it's that it takes this confusing miasma of LA, NY, slash, Adams, AOC, whoever it is, and gives them something to unify against. Like, if Trump comes out and says, do whatever it takes and put a boot on the neck, that's a really, really easy message to go, no. And that's it. The message is just no and resist. Hashtag resist. And then Democrats have some, some flag in the middle and people can gather on it.
- [32:52]
Paige Disorva
There is going to be at some point a particular kind of confrontation, I think, and I don't know if it's this Alex Padilla clip, but there will be something that's going to happen, you know, where somebody tries to intervene or stop one of these like, ICE raids and it's like an elderly woman or an older man, or maybe it's an undocumented immigrant who resists briefly and is sort of like, well respected member of the community who owns some restaurant, nobody knew that they were here illegally, and gets seriously hurt or shot or killed or something like that. I mean, I think that moment is going to happen at some point and it'll be interesting to me to see the way, like, you know, it's sort of the, the, the mirror image of like the guy with the Mexican flag standing in front of the burning car. Like the way that moves people from the center toward Trump, the image of something like that happening will move people from the center away from Trump and toward the left. And I suspect that something like that is going to happen again. I don't know if like a sitting Democratic senator being arrested and manhandled like this is that thing. I don't think it's quite that potent, but I'll be interested to see how that, how that plays out. You know, it's just, it's right now, all the imagery, all the kind of things that are burned into Your minds are playing into Trump's hands, in my view, and we haven't really seen them screw up in a massive way with just that kind of like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal cover photo type screw up. And I'll be interested to see if that moves the needle at all.
- [34:50]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I've been wondering why the energy around this felt so much different than the Black Lives Matter moment or even the Israeli Palestinian protests that have happened, which have been. They were large and they were disruptive, but Democrats were talking about them. They would show up at things. And you're right. While seeing someone get arrested and have their lives upended in an ice raid can be somewhat galvanizing. It is not the same as there being. And I hate to talk about the political dimensions of this, but that's kind of what we're supposed to do. It's not the same as there being a martyr. That changes things and we'll have to see. I mean, this weekend you've got both this massive military parade, which has been. Comparisons are drawn to North Korea. That may or may not be fair, but it's certainly weird. Look, I like the Blue Angels during Fleet Week as much as the next guy, but it is different when the tanks are destroying the city streets and you may have to spend tens of millions of dollars to repair them after the parade. That's a little weird, but yeah, I mean, this weekend could get crazy. I mean, I would expect there to be demonstrators during that protest. And we know that the no Kings protests are supposed to be happening all over the country. It's not clear how big those will, but the opportunities for there to be major confrontations that could create moments that create a kind of galvanizing energy are really possible. But it seems like it does have to be something pretty dramatic. I'm reminded of the Trump assassination attempts over the summer and how for a moment there, it felt like, wow, the election was decided and then two or three weeks later the bandage goes away and it's almost like it didn't happen.
- [36:41]
Camille Foster
Yeah, it was a crazy time that we lived through.
- [36:42]
Paige Disorva
Yeah, it is amazing to go back and consider, like, these little moments where we were in our psyche. Like, for instance, last week when I said that I thought Elon Musk and Trump would make up at some point, you guys thought I was totally insane. And now Elon Musk is already on the path towards apologizing.
- [37:03]
Camille Foster
Visionist history. Classic song.
- [37:08]
Isaac Saul
It seems like it's a little more complicated. As, as Ari pointed out in our.
- [37:12]
Paige Disorva
Text thread, I want to Talk about it. But before we do, I just have to close this. The loop on the LA stuff, which is that I always know when Camille went on CNN or TV because I log on to Twitter and there's people tagging me, telling me what an idiot Camille is now, which is a really nice. I went, I was, I opened my Twitter this morning and somebody had replied to my tweet from May 14th announcing Camille joining the entangle team, saying that guy is a complete. Which is. Yeah, a Lisa at Lisa came back, thinks that you're a complete Camille. I guess she was tuned into your. Your, your CNN hit last night on the. The LA stuff.
- [37:55]
Isaac Saul
I mean, I, I love.
- [37:56]
Camille Foster
Sorry. That's how you wanted to wrap that up.
- [37:57]
Isaac Saul
That's great. Yeah. I don't know. I don't mind being criticized. It does matter. The nature of the criticism does matter, however. And I think in that particular instance, I was being called a moron in a flip flopper precisely because my perspectives are hard to pin down. I'm not a kind of predictable partisan. I am happy to criticize both parties and happy to offer complimentary remarks to both parties, or at least invoke Marley's razor. And Marley's Razor being for Bob Marley, which is to say you shot the sheriff, but not necessarily the deputy. And there are just lots of occasions where criticism is being heaped on someone or condemnation or scorn is being heaped on them. Perhaps more precisely. And like it's half true, you know, Donald Trump did exceed his authority in this one area, but he didn't actually do that one other thing. And I guess, you know, some partisans find that frustrating. I just call it nuance. And I think it's important.
- [39:00]
Paige Disorva
I appreciate your.
- [39:01]
Camille Foster
You love your epistemological reasons, too.
- [39:04]
Isaac Saul
Well, that one I coined, I want to use it as much as possible so that it becomes.
- [39:08]
Camille Foster
No, I know.
- [39:09]
Paige Disorva
All right, well, let's. That's sort of an organic, organic segue to some of the Elon Trump update. I do, I will say, I mean, I mean, I don't know if it's revisionist history. I think anybody could go listen to the podcast last week. And I said, I think maybe it's.
- [39:27]
Camille Foster
It's the reaction that you said that we gave that was revisionist to, to me. But we'll talk about by the end of the show.
- [39:32]
Paige Disorva
I did, I did. I do think, to be fair, I did come to your side where I said maybe this is beyond. I don't know what's the paint the.
- [39:40]
Camille Foster
Debate that you think occurred last Week. I'm curious to hear this.
- [39:43]
Paige Disorva
I think that. That I said, I posited. I. I propose. What if there's some theater going on here? You imagine these guys are sort of texting each other behind the scenes. Maybe something about this feels a little bit performative. And I wouldn't be surprised if in like, 48 hours they've patched this up and you guys were like, no way, basically.
- [40:06]
Camille Foster
And then no fucking way was there, like a side chat that they're like, hey, what are we gonna say next? Like, that's the thing that we're disagreeing.
- [40:12]
Paige Disorva
Okay, well, it seemed there was disagreement. Yeah. The relationship.
- [40:17]
Camille Foster
Right. Like maybe a lackey slack or something.
- [40:20]
Paige Disorva
Yeah.
- [40:20]
Isaac Saul
No, look.
- [40:21]
Camille Foster
Okay.
- [40:21]
Isaac Saul
And I could say I know why you came around to it, because at some point, he drops the Epstein bomb. And it just seemed like we doubled.
- [40:28]
Paige Disorva
Down on that scene. Bomb. I think that was what turned me.
- [40:33]
Isaac Saul
You should be impeached. He was definitely in the Epstein files. Like, there was a lot. But I think Ari's theory for why Elon publicly suggested he regretted saying some of the things he said, which is a very weird way to kind of patch things up.
- [40:51]
Camille Foster
I regret some of the statements I made.
- [40:53]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. I'm sorry.
- [40:56]
Camille Foster
Right. My theory that you queued me up to say here, Camille, is that I think Elon went back to Texas and had a friendly, if not somewhat confrontational meeting with the Tesla board. And some members of that board may have suggested that some sort of public grace saving tweet would be helpful to the bottom line of the company that they're all deeply invested in. And that may have been a motivating factor behind this PR ish comment that he made. I don't know how much they're really made up. I think that the way that I read this tweet is him saying, you know, we're. We're cool. You don't have to hate me. Like, that's kind of. That's kind of what I hear when I. When I read this tweet.
- [41:36]
Paige Disorva
Do you have any. Like, my. A couple friends sent it to me. A couple very liberal friends sent it to me, and they were just. They said, like, God, Elon's such a pathetic loser. You know, like, their read of it was sort of just like, isn't this. There's something about this that's just, like, so kind of sad, where he's just like. He puts on this big, tough act for. And I kind of see what they mean. Like, he's just like, chest out. I'm gonna Blow it all up. Have a nice day, djt. Like, we all know you're in the Epstein files. And then it's like 48 hours later, he's just sort of on his knees apologizing, kind of like, I understand I crossed the line. I don't know, there's just a little bit of, of. I kind of see what they mean. Like, there's a little. It makes me just like. I mean, I have all these mixed and strong feelings about Elon Musk anyway, as a person, but I'm just. It sort of makes me sad for him in a way. Like when he got caught cheating in that video game where I was like, ah, man, it's. It's just like this. He's the richest guy in the world and he needs to pay someone to make him look like he's really good at this video game that he's not that good at. I don't know, it's just, just it's a little bit, it's a little bit sad to me. And I, I don't know if that, if that resonates for either of you at all.
- [43:00]
Camille Foster
Like, not super hard. I think I would go so far as to say, despite statements that I've made in the past that I'm probably the biggest Musk critic here, I've defended him somewhat begrudgingly in that Marley's Razor way that Camille talks about, where the defenses that I've given to Elon are things like, he did a stupid gesture, but I don't think he's a literal Nazi. Like, he, he shot the sheriff, but he didn't become Hitler. And I think, I think with Musk here, I don't. I really have this knee jerk reaction against these, these ways of viewing any interaction in public of like, oh, he got cucked.
- [43:46]
Paige Disorva
What.
- [43:46]
Camille Foster
What a loser. It's like he tried to cozy up to the President. He's always going to be second fiddle when the fiddle you're playing behind the president. And it is a little sad, I think, the way that he's tried to ingratiate himself to Trump. But it's Nothing compared to 18 months ago when he bought Twitter and then he posted incredibly strange memes that were essentially begging, in a very literal sense, begging. Oh, come back. Come back to Twitter, please, please, Mr. Trump, please, please. And that was loser ish. Him making this tweet is like, that's nothing to me. It's like, whatever he's doing damage control. It's not a loser thing to do. To say, maybe I crossed the line. I'm sorry, there are other things to criticize him for, but let's chill on that.
- [44:31]
Isaac Saul
Maybe I did see that Iman today actually reposted a tweet and it's a video of Donald Trump. And this I suppose goes back to the last conversation we were just having, essentially carving out a kind of exception. And the quote attributed to him here is people who've been here for 20 to 25 years and worked great and the owner of the farm loves them and you're supposed to throw them out. We can't do that to our farmers and leisure to hotels. We'll have to use common sense on that. It is so intriguing to me to see Donald Trump retreat from these really strident no holds bar kind of positions when just yesterday I was on air with Bhatia Ungersadhan and Bhatia was saying explicitly, look, these deportations, most Americans want complete and utter devastation for all illegal immigrants. If you're here illegally, you're getting deported. And Donald Trump is saying, look, there's a line. If you've been here long enough and you're a good hard working person, we have to use common sense. We can't draw you out. He is literally reversing himself from earlier today when he suggested that it was insane for all of these hotels to be suggesting that they can't replace these laborers. Look, we're gonna have to do something and we'll get it figured out. But those are jobs that Americans could do. And hours later he's kind of guarding his left flank. It's just interesting that that's happening.
- [46:04]
Camille Foster
Foreign.
- [46:13]
Paige Disorva
We'Ll be right back after this quick commercial break.
- [46:18]
Isaac Saul
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Paige Disorva
Choose progressives.
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Isaac Saul
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- [47:34]
Paige Disorva
Also I mean an hour ago Trump posted on Truth social Biden let 21 million unvetted illegal aliens flood into the country from some of the most dangerous and dysfunctional nations on earth, many of them rapists, murderers and terrorists. This tsunami of illegals has destroyed America's public schools, hospitals, parks, community resources and living conditions. They have stolen American jobs, consumed billions of dollars in free welfare and turned once Adila communities like Springfield, Ohio into third world nightmares. I campaigned on and received a historic mandate for the largest mass deportation program in American history. Polling shows overwhelmingly public support for getting the illegals out. And that is exactly what we will do. As Commander in Chief, I will always protect and defend the heroes of ICE and Border Patrol whose work is already resolved resulted in the most secure border in American history. Anyone who assaults or attacks an ICE or border agent will do hard time in jail. Those who are here illegally should either self deport using the CBP home app or ICE will find you and remove you. Saving America is not negotiable. Is that the same person? Like, like. I mean this is like the eternal frustration with him. I I will say, oh yeah, and then there's this. Yeah, there's the kind of follow up to that or I guess maybe the prerequisite to that, which was our great farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good longtime workers away from them. With those jobs being almost impossible to replace in many cases, the criminals allowed into our country by the very stupid Biden open borders policy policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our farmers but get the criminals out of the usa. Changes are coming. I It's weird to think that his immigration policy could become incoherent because it's one of the few things he seems to have a lot of clarity on. But like yeah, millions of the people who are here illegally have been here for 10, 20, 30 years and do nothing but work really hard jobs and send money back to their families in Mexico or Guatemala or Honduras or Venezuela. I mean that is, that's like a much More typical story of the illegal immigrant in America than they're a rapist murderer, you know, burning cars like it is. It's odd to me. It's just odd. Is he just finding this out? Also, of course, Trump is employing tons of illegal immigrants at his various properties across the country, which we know because he got. There was tons of reporting on it in 2016 and 2020, but it's like, yeah, I don't know what to do with that. It seems like a little bipolar to me.
- [50:20]
Camille Foster
Can you just ignore it a little bit? I mean, or at least heavily discount it to say, oh, he's spinning something in the moment and he'll be right back on his normal beat tomorrow. And just kind of the odd steps that are out of rhythm just say, like, that's him just trying to keep a dancing partner in the game for a little bit. He'll be back with his normal base tomorrow.
- [50:42]
Isaac Saul
It's just so hard. I mean, the reality is that, yes, Donald Trump does say absurd things sometimes. Sometimes it's just him being uncouth. I mean, he cracked a joke earlier this week when someone asked, should Gavin Newsom be arrested? What do you think about that? He's like, yeah, I think maybe he should. I think Gavin would like that. What just happened here. And you want to take the good advice, hear him and understand that he's figurative, to sort of treat it in a literal way or something along those lines. The problem is, in many instances, one thinks he's just kind of testing the limits and kind of flirting with the possibility so that he seems tough. In other instances, they are actually running afoul of the law. They are actually defying the courts. And one could imagine that you're doing this in service of trying to create additional power for the presidency so that you can have a super empowered executive. In another respect, it seems like the theater is actually the most important thing here and not so much the outcomes. The number of people deported doesn't matter. What matters is that you think I'm strong and I'm tough. You know, the amount of budget cuts that we make, like, by a doge. Doesn't matter. What matters is that you think it's a lot.
- [52:00]
Camille Foster
Right? Can. Can I. I want to propose maybe my own epistemological reason about it. Yeah, I'll drain you. Okay. All right. I'm gonna call it Nelly's Razor, which is. I'm just playing unless you're gonna do it. He's like, I'm not gonna arrest Gavin Newsom. I'm just I'm just messing around. But, like, I don't know, you seemed open to it.
- [52:23]
Isaac Saul
You know what I like? I actually like that a lot. But I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure it's taken. I'm pretty sure Nelly was quoting Kanye, so that could be Kanye's razor, but I don't know. It's hard because Kanye is complicated. As sad as it makes me, but that is a very good razor. I commend you for it. It's not as good as Marley's razor, but it's close. It's good.
- [52:47]
Camille Foster
I'll take the notes.
- [52:48]
Paige Disorva
All right, I want both of you on record here before we move on to our next thing. Elon and Trump in one month. What do you think? Describe the status, nature, color of their relationship. I would like to hear your predictions on that one month from today. Call it July 12th.
- [53:13]
Camille Foster
Say, cold and distant. Like, almost respectfully distant. Non existent.
- [53:19]
Paige Disorva
Camille.
- [53:20]
Isaac Saul
I'm going to go completely in the other direction. Best friends. Best friends forever.
- [53:25]
Camille Foster
Best body returns.
- [53:26]
Isaac Saul
I don't have any reason to believe that, but.
- [53:29]
Camille Foster
Because my power want to be contrary.
- [53:31]
Isaac Saul
Well, no, it's just I hate doing prognostication of any sort. And specifically because of Donald Trump. I remember when he was running for president and before the presidential primary, I insisted there is no way he can win the primary. And then he managed.
- [53:45]
Camille Foster
I think you were the only one who said that.
- [53:47]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, but the moment that it happened, I said, I'm just not doing this anymore because I don't actually have a really good sense of how the future will actually turn out. And in this particular case, I really don't know. I mean, I'm a little shocked that Elon backed down because he's done plenty of things that clearly jeopardized his kind of business prospects and seen the little less, less than wise and did them anyways. And I. I just thought that that's who he was. And seeing him apologize is weird. Seeing him retweeting the president in a positive light a week after publicly the insisting he was definitely a Peter is nuts. Like, that's crazy to me. But that is where we are suppose.
- [54:32]
Paige Disorva
Yeah, I think I'm imagining Trump. Trump being like, not saying mean things about him, but not saying nice things about him either. Being very neutral. Elon back to a place where he's just heaping praise on the Trump administration is the best thing ever. And maybe them collaborating on some kind of like, he gets Elon in the Rose Garden to announce some trade deal with China and Elon gives lip service to how good it's going to be for the US Economy or manufacturing. Manufacturing sector or something. That's sort of what I'm imagining. He becomes just kind of like, like a, just another political surrogate in the rotation. All right, well, we, we've covered a bit of the ground here that I wanted to today. The, the last thing that we wanted to talk about before we get into a little bit of a some Naval Gazy podcast stuff and some announcements is some of the Tulsi Gabbard happenings of the last few days. Do either you feel particularly keen on introducing this topic, the AI for JFK file disclosure stuff? I'm just looking at our podcast notes here, and I did not put this here, but I am interested in the topic. She's been, she's. I guess you could say she's been. She's been earning some headlines in the last few days. We could say.
- [55:56]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. So I can set this up a little bit. I mean, it seems Tulsi was at an Amazon Web Services conference and gave some remarks there. I haven't seen a recording of the remarks. I've only seen them represented in AP stories and essentially disclosed in her remarks, perhaps not expecting it to be controversial, that there's all sorts of possibilities for AI and that she wants to utilize it in her capacity as Director of National Intelligence to kind of streamline operations and disclose that she used some sort of AI model to determine which documents in the JFK files ought to be approved for declassification. And that seemed to shock a lot of people. I mean, I saw a couple of kind of journalists and pundits saying, somewhat sarcastically perhaps, or maybe they were speculating that she was using ChatGPT to figure out which files to disclose, which is not the craziest thing in the world in some respects, only because we've seen examples of members of the Trump administration utilizing these LLMs to do different things, like create tariff policies, for example, and then insist they hadn't. But I kind of want to defend Tulsi here a little bit. One, I mean, I think she's generally right that it would have taken a hell of a lot more effort to do the declassification by hand, so to speak, a manual process with humans kind of reviewing each document. But two, yes, the LLMs make mistakes. But one, it doesn't seem that she was using ChatGPT or anything like that. I think what she actually seemed to suggest, that there is some sort of AI system within the department that they're utilizing, perhaps a bespoke tool to do some of the kind of clearing of these documents. But the human processes are not perfect either. And at least with these particular files they're sufficiently old that it seems like exactly the kind of place where you would want to use some cost saving measure to try and get essentially a good enough outcome. And here it just doesn't seem terribly controversial and generally seems correct to me for the government to be doing this. And even the rest of her remarks seemed correct as well, which was to say she is thinking that she wants to find more opportunities to work with private companies, like in Amazon perhaps. But Amazon doesn't have a frontier model so far as I'm concerned, so far as I know with respect to the AI. So maybe someone else to to build tools that the federal government can use so it's not building its own inferior tools. And maybe she's right about that. It seems to me at a minimum that it's a worthwhile thing to talk about and not particularly controversial. So at least there it feels like some of the criticism that she's earned for that has been a little bit unjust.
- [58:56]
Camille Foster
It seems like the controversy is in the details there though, because if I'm thinking about it as I wake up tomorrow and I'm the Director of the National Intelligence Services and I'm thinking about how I'm going to potentially incorporate AI into the work that I do, which is all about making sure that data is contained and kept classified and secret, that I would want to make sure I'm taking measured steps to communicate and message that that is the way I'm thinking about it. And the way that that would look to me is Director of Intelligence Services says, I want to use an AI model that is air gapped in house, something that the government has control of is not going to be integrated into an OpenAI network, some database that's public. And I want to use that to help us with declassifications such as in these cases, JFK files, what have you. I think think the horse kind of came before the cart here and we don't know what the AI implementation is. So it's fair to say, hey, shouldn't your number one concern stay your number one concern? What's a potential data breach here? And if it had just been messaged differently, I think this is kind of the ultimate tragedy of Tulsi Gabbard, for the record, as a character who I think has a lot, like a lot going for her, but her execution always seems flawed in some way. And I think this is One of those instances where if she just kind of slowed down and been more deliberate, then maybe this is something that would have earned her a little bit more plaudits rather than criticism.
- [60:30]
Isaac Saul
And I actually think that is a good tee up for the other thing that she's made some headlines with this week, which is to release pretty serious professionally produced video with a bunch of B roll of explosions and the consequences of explosions, where she was one of detailing the horrors of nuclear war. The two condemning these unnamed figures who are bringing the country to the brink of nuclear war. I think she suggested that we've never been closer to nuclear Armageddon, which one strikes me as totally ridiculous because I remember the Cuban missile crisis, not because I was there, I am getting older, but not that old, but because I'd read about a bunch and we were pretty damn close there. Nothing like that is happening at the moment. That said, I do think that there is something, I don't know if I want to use the word endearing. I don't want to go too far, but there is something that one could imagine as praiseworthy about having a high ranking public official, particularly in the national security sector, who, you know, their first thought is, how do I avoid conflict here? It's possible that she goes too far in that direction, but it's also the case that we've certainly seen people go too far in the other direction. And yeah, I mean, I think that she overstates things, I think. But is it fear mongering or is it just kind of an earnest manifestation of her sincere belief that the tensions between Russia and the United States are far too high and things could escalate very quickly? It's possible she's seen things that not. It's possible she's seen things that none of us have and can offer assessments on the risk of a potential conflict that none of us could possibly match with respect to just the level of access? Not that she's correct. And even if you take seriously, and I say with some qualification, the things that Donald Trump has said recently about Vladimir Putin, that he thinks something is wrong with him, that he's gone a bit crazy because of the way he's responding in the Ukraine conflict, Ukrainian conflict, how much of a risk is there to the United States for supporting Ukraine in a really strident way, for being openly critical of Russia, for pushing back really hard against China with respect to its designs that it has for Taiwan? Could any of that lead to an actual nuclear exchange? It seems to me that we're probably not that close and that there's likely more we can do in all those situations. But again, I think it's good that there is a diversity of perspective and that there is someone that you know is always going to be pushing back hard. And if she were a little bit more sophisticated, then that might be a bit better for her. But at least there again just slight a modest defense of her there.
- [63:36]
Camille Foster
Yeah. And I think I could even go a little further in defending her, to be honest. I think this video that she Posted is like 3 and a half minutes long about how she went to Hiroshima and then centered herself as the main character. That's kind of cringy. And I think that's probably what drives a lot of the pushback here is like, oh, you went to Hiroshima and now you know that nuclear weapons are bad. That's awesome. That's not very nuanced or sophisticated, as you said. But the way that I think she could be right about us being really close to nuclear Armageddon isn't about an intentional exchange of fire. It's about an unintentional release of some weapon from Soviet era technology from a superpower that seems to be losing its grip before our eyes. That to me, seems somewhat cogent. I think there's an assumption that we always hear in these game theory esque models about nuclear Armageddon and tit for tat responses that lead to nuclear winter that I think may be a little bit flawed. But if you take from the first premise, the assumption we are close now, closer than maybe we've ever been to a nuclear bomb being sent off because Russia has a bunch of them, they have a tough time tracking them, they're engaged in a battle that they're sort of over their heads on and their technology is dated. That seems like a pretty decent argument to me. I don't think she made it well, but I think that's the way that I would pose it.
- [64:56]
Paige Disorva
I have to say I find this by far the most alarming thing that she's done or said sort of for the reason that Camille just broached a little bit, which was like she has access to information we don't. And she, she strikes me as the kind of, she's a little bit of like dog caught the car politician. And now she's in a position where I feel like she is just the kind of person and politician, and this part, I mean as a compliment, who like sees something that alarms her and is kind of incapable of not speaking about it publicly. And I'm sort of like, I saw the video. And my thought was, why is she releasing this? Like, yes, like, yes, Hiroshima. But like, I don't know. This seems like she knows something that we don't. That makes me deeply like, she's the Director of National Intelligence now. So presumably she's got all sorts of new access she could have only dreamed about two, three, four years ago when she was more just like edgy kind of sometimes conspiracy theorists, like counterculture representative. And so I'm, I saw that and I kind of got a little bit of like, oh, I don't like that at all. Tulsi Gabbard is, gets access to all the information and now feels like she has to release this super serious video about how bad nuclear war is. I mean, that it gave me a weird feeling that I did not like. So I found it kind of unnerving for that reason, to be honest.
- [66:36]
Camille Foster
But just a quick follow up, did, what do you think the most likely thing is that she saw that opened her eyes? Because I, I gave you one theory, but I'm wondering if you've got something else.
- [66:45]
Paige Disorva
I, I, I mean, I imagine it's just like threat level status stuff that we don't know or you know, maybe to your point about the accidental release of some Soviet era weapons thing, maybe something like that came really close to happening and she got read in on it. Or maybe she's hearing conversations that like Iran might nuke Israel or she's hearing conversations that Trump wants to just nuke Gaza or whatever. You know, who knows? Like, I think, yeah, it just, I'm not, I totally understand your read of it and I did part, I did have the part of my brain that went off like, like, oh, you went to Hiroshima now you know that like atomic bombs are dangerous. Like what, like, but that's sort of what made me think maybe that wasn't the real impetus for the video. So I don't know. But it did. Yeah, just, it was very unnerving to me. I didn't like it. I, it made me feel like I just got this sense that she was being really, really serious and she really seemed to want to get this message out and she would know what's going on or like what the kind of risk actually is. And she's not the kind of professional who would like cover that up to keep the American public calm. So that was kind of my initial reaction to it, honestly.
- [68:07]
Isaac Saul
And, and it's interesting, I mean, I'm remembering a conversation I had with my, it's funny, today I really, I realized I'm a bit of a podcast poly because I do this, the Tangle podcast here and I also do the fifth. Yeah, I suppose I just am one and, and I guess I have, I have a type as well because they're both thruffles with guys, which is fine because love wins.
- [68:31]
Paige Disorva
That's right.
- [68:31]
Isaac Saul
Happy Pride Month. Never say that. There's a film, a made for TV movie 1983 called the Day after. And I don't know if you guys are familiar with this, but this film rather famously like animated a great deal of public concern about nuclear weapons. And it did so not only by generating conversations amongst the public, but the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, watched this movie and the story goes that he watched it and it created something in him that made him say, hey, look, we can't run the risk of nuclear war. We've got to do something about this. And one wonders if there's not a similar sort of dynamic here.
- [69:21]
Paige Disorva
We'll be right back after this quick commercial break.
- [69:27]
Ari Weitzman
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- [70:37]
Isaac Saul
Whenever I need to send roses that are guaranteed to make someone's day, the.
- [70:41]
Ari Weitzman
Only place I trust is 1-800-flowers.com with 1-800-flowers, my friends and family always receive stunning, high quality bouquets that they absolutely love.
- [70:51]
Isaac Saul
Right now, when you buy a dozen.
- [70:53]
Ari Weitzman
Multicolored roses, 1-800-flowers will double your bouquet.
- [70:56]
Camille Foster
To two dozen roses.
- [70:58]
Ari Weitzman
To claim this special double roses offer, go to 1-800-flowers.com acato.
- [71:04]
Isaac Saul
That's 1-800-flowers. Com acast.
- [71:14]
Paige Disorva
All right, well, as much as I'm enjoying the Tulsi convo, I do want to transition into one last, one last topic before we get into the grievances, which is part announcement and part pulling the veil back on what's happening here at Tangle. So, first of all, the announcement. Ari and Camille and I have been getting together and doing this podcast now for a few weeks. Obviously, Ari and I were doing it for, for about a year before we hired Camille. And we've come to sort of believe that we think this is our best, our best show, our best offering, audio offering. And right now it's gated, it's behind a paywall. And we're going to change that, actually. We're going to drop the paywall on the Sunday podcast to make it free for everyone because we think it would be a really good way to get people interested in some of the work we're doing. Also because we spend so much time talking about criticism of our work and our own coverage that people who are newsletter readers or podcast listeners during the week are making, and we want them to be able to engage with that. And also because when I started Tangle, one of the promises that I made and one of the things I set out to do was to basically keep like 80 to 90% of our content free. And we're producing so much audio content now. We have this show, we have the daily podcast, we have premium versions of the Friday editions, and then we have interviews that we're doing all the time that if we were to keep this paywalled and keep the Friday editions paywalled and keep those interviews paywalled, it would be more than that, 80 or 90% of the content being paywalled that I've tried to stick to because I want to make our news and our work accessible. So for this whole convergence of reasons, we're deciding to drop the paywall on the show. And because we always record this show on Thursday and it comes out on Sunday, there's this big time gap that happens where the news sort of becomes irrelevant. And so we want to start releasing the show on Friday instead of Thursday, which we're also going to start doing. And the cascade of all that was, I said, fellows, we're going to need a new name for the podcast because it's currently called the Sunday Podcast and it's a picture of me and Ari on our artwork. And now we have Camille, who we resisted the temptation just to Photoshop his face in between us. So we need a new name and we need a new artwork. And then all of a sudden we're rebranding the show and we're re releasing it. And so that's the big news. The top line thing is we're going to be moving this show to Friday in the very near future and it's going to be free for everybody in the very near future. And I hope you share it and use the show as a great way to get people into Tangled because I do think it's a, A, it's a fun episode, basically on a weekly basis. And as part of all that, we need to rename the show. And so Ari and Camille and I and the Tangle team have been talking and we've been, you know, sharing names in a Google Doc and talking about how exactly we're going to do this. And then I said to them, what if we just talked about it on the show? What if we brought our. Some of our better ideas for a name to the show and then we gave our audience a chance to write in with their own ideas if they have them, or reflect or respond to some of the ideas we already have that we're kicking around. And so the framing here is for this very unusual last segment of the show where we're going to ask for your help to rename our show and also listen to Ari and Camille and I hash it out for the very first time because we haven't talked about any of the ideas floating around yet. The framing is we want it to be something that represents what we do, which on a weekly basis we cover this stuff. We talk about the stuff we didn't get a chance to cover in Tangle. We revisit some of our work from the week and engage in criticism with that work. We sometimes play a game or two and then of course, we have the grievances, we complain at the end and we think, you know, like, how am I going to. I. How am I going to introduce the show? I say I'm Isaac Saul and welcome to Tangle where we do XYZ thing. We want the name to kind of all fit into that. So. So I have some ideas. I know Ari and Camille have some thoughts. I'm going to start. I'll share my top. My. I don't know, the best format to do this, but I'll share one of my favorites.
- [75:48]
Camille Foster
Just don't editorialize. I think let's just all get our names out there and then we'll respond to them.
- [75:53]
Paige Disorva
Okay, great. All right, so we've each got three. That's a good way to do it. We've each got three. All right, so here are my three. My first one is in question. In question.
- [76:07]
Isaac Saul
Question.
- [76:08]
Paige Disorva
That's just in question.
- [76:09]
Camille Foster
Or is it Tango Presents in question. Or that's going to be part of the conversation.
- [76:13]
Paige Disorva
Maybe Tangle Presents in question is probably better. Tangle presents in question. The next one is the Tangle Lounge, which I kind of like. And then my third one is under consideration.
- [76:36]
Camille Foster
Ah, interesting.
- [76:37]
Paige Disorva
Those are. Those are my three names I'm bringing to the table.
- [76:41]
Isaac Saul
Okay.
- [76:41]
Camille Foster
Okay. Here. Here are mine.
- [76:43]
Paige Disorva
Oh, really quick. Can I just add one douchey thing? All three of those were ones I came up with. I didn't use any of those.
- [76:49]
Camille Foster
Well done.
- [76:51]
Paige Disorva
That's good, because I fell in love with myself all over again.
- [76:56]
Camille Foster
It's like a Lifetime movie here now. Yeah, the. The three that I picked were all ones I didn't come up with. I think I did a bad job. And we don't have to talk about mine. So the ones that I liked. I think. I think this first one was whales, but I'm not sure it's the three point turn. I know that. That no editorialized. Next up is unwinding. And then this one actually was from a side conversation. It's not in the doc is untangling.
- [77:31]
Paige Disorva
Okay, that's it, Camille.
- [77:33]
Isaac Saul
I'm not going to give three. I'm going to give two. One I actually believe in. The other is just I like it and I own the domain already, so maybe we could use it.
- [77:44]
Camille Foster
It's x.com.
- [77:47]
Isaac Saul
Gotcha. The first is a Tangle Weekly.
- [77:51]
Camille Foster
Okay.
- [77:52]
Isaac Saul
The second is. Well, and I suppose it has two variations, so I guess I do have three. A lot. Limited context. A very limited context. Those are the three.
- [78:05]
Paige Disorva
Limited context.
- [78:08]
Camille Foster
Maybe we can start doing the Q and A session here with limited context and ask what the difference is, do you think, between limited context and very limited context.
- [78:18]
Isaac Saul
Next. I. I don't know, but I have both domains and that's because I just acquired them for a different reason. So I'm not voting for that. The Tangle Weekly is definitely the name that I. I most endorse. And I know that it's a little uninspired and a bit on the nose, but not terrible. It feels right.
- [78:40]
Paige Disorva
I did say to Camille, I can't believe I, I gave you a fat contract to come work for us and the best you can do is Tangle Weekly. That's really. I cannot believe that's it.
- [78:52]
Isaac Saul
That's unfortunate. I have other responsibilities.
- [78:56]
Camille Foster
Should we, should we maybe say what we think is the best suggestion somebody else gave? Do you think that would be productive?
- [79:04]
Paige Disorva
Can you say yours one more time? Three point turn.
- [79:09]
Camille Foster
Three point turn. Unwinding and unwinding.
- [79:13]
Paige Disorva
Untangling. Yeah. I'm curious why you like three point turn. I don't get that at all.
- [79:18]
Camille Foster
Yeah, I think the thing I like about it is. Well, first, just to gauge. Do some quick focus testing here. Three point turn. Is that a phrase that you guys think has like, people know what that means commonly?
- [79:34]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, it's like a. It's a car maneuver.
- [79:36]
Camille Foster
Right, right.
- [79:37]
Paige Disorva
But is it. But is three point turn a common. I thought like a four point or five point turn is more common.
- [79:44]
Isaac Saul
I think that's correct. Yeah, I think four point turn is the more common nomenclature. The three point turn is something else. I think I just googled it. It's also called a K turn. I don't know how to do it.
- [79:57]
Camille Foster
Yeah, yeah, you do. Meet back up and then you, you go forward, you back up and you turn. You go. You know, it's the.
- [80:02]
Paige Disorva
Anyway, the reason why his car is driving for him. Dude, he doesn't exactly steering wheel anymore.
- [80:09]
Isaac Saul
Well, you have to keep your hands steering wheel. But I can watch YouTube while I do that.
- [80:12]
Paige Disorva
So.
- [80:13]
Camille Foster
Yeah, I know that. I like, I like three point turn. Not only because it's three of us, but also because like we sort of turn things around. There's a. It's sort of. It's physical. It implies the thing that we're doing. Like we're taking time, we're considering different angles and we're. We're sending it back like that. That's what I like about it. And I think that I don't see phrasing like that in the podcast space. So it's a little unique.
- [80:41]
Paige Disorva
What about in question? How good is that? Do you want to talk about that for a little bit?
- [80:47]
Camille Foster
My idea, we're not going to do. We're going to talk about each one that we suggested. I think that's good. I think that's good. In question.
- [80:55]
Paige Disorva
I'm sort of into this construct of in curiosity, in question, in dialogue. Like I got kind of stuck on that. There's some kind of music to it. I really like under consideration. In consideration, like I feel like there's an ethos of what we're doing where we're like, we're sitting in some kind of open minded conversation and I want the name of the show to reflect that a little bit. You know, like, like I'm thinking about, you know, other popular shows like Breaking Points. There's like, they're, they're, there's like this breaking news and they're hitting these talking points. Like I get it kind of, you know, the Fifth Column. They're like, they're the check on the media. I get it. You know, there's like these, there's a. I wanted to say something about what we're doing. That's why I find Tango Weekly uninspiring is because it doesn't say anything about what we actually do on the show. Yeah, three point turn. I could, you could sort of talk me into. I don't. I didn't get it right away.
- [81:58]
Camille Foster
Which is, which is maybe a problem. Yeah, yeah, but that's the thing is maybe, you know, you shouldn't get us right away the in question or in conversation. I see what you mean about it being active. It feels like it's a thing that we're doing and it describes the thing we're doing. I think the hesitation that I have is it's not entirely the thing we're doing. Like we mostly spend time questioning and turning things over in terms of nuance and multifaceted coverage in the newsletter. And then this podcast we do that, but we mostly argue with each other so it's less like maybe in dialogue is better or maybe something that implies that kind of attack mindset.
- [82:45]
Paige Disorva
Yeah. What about. With all due respect, that was another one I came up with.
- [82:51]
Camille Foster
I think that's my favorite of your. Your suggestions personally.
- [82:54]
Paige Disorva
Really interesting. Yeah, I do like the. I like. With all due respect, you're a complete piece of.
- [83:00]
Camille Foster
I've gotten that, I think verbatim from you before.
- [83:06]
Isaac Saul
I think it's a little, it's a little long and I know we're not supposed to be criticizing these necessarily. At least we weren't conversing.
- [83:12]
Camille Foster
Phase two, we're getting into it.
- [83:14]
Isaac Saul
I think, you know, in, in question and in conversation, the, the strength in some respects is a bit of a challenge as well because they're particularly common. So in conversation there's already a bunch of podcasts with that name. So that is the first challenge with that in question. Surprisingly, at least my initial survey of the Apple podcasts app doesn't suggest that there is another podcast.
- [83:42]
Paige Disorva
ChatGPT told me there wasn't. Actually, I Asked.
- [83:46]
Isaac Saul
That's really weird. I'm wondering why it feels like there should be reason why no one has used that yet, perhaps.
- [83:54]
Camille Foster
Well, there's an implication there with, like, this is in question, which sort of implies that the show itself is in question. Like, Tangle in question. Like, oh, Tangle's in question now. Maybe the source is less reliable.
- [84:07]
Paige Disorva
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [84:09]
Isaac Saul
That's interesting. I mean, I actually had a similar feeling about Untangled, and I like the play on the brand, but it's also like, well, wait a minute, like, this brand is Tangle in some respects. It's almost like the brand should be Untangled.
- [84:24]
Camille Foster
So maybe we've gotten that feedback from readers a lot.
- [84:27]
Paige Disorva
Yeah.
- [84:27]
Isaac Saul
So maybe that's the solution here. We'll just rename the entire brand, the entire organization, and then embrace Untangled as the name for the podcast. Problem solved. I would support that.
- [84:37]
Paige Disorva
I can't tell you how many times I've got an email from somebody telling me we should rename the company Untangled or Untangling or which.
- [84:44]
Camille Foster
The response that I've always given to that is, that's a promise that we don't want shock. That's like a promise that I don't think we can deliver on. And I think it's better to say we're going to leave you with a little bit of a more complicated, more wrinkled brain rather than a smooth brain. And we're not here to smooth things out for you. We're here to wrinkle that shit up, actually.
- [85:08]
Isaac Saul
I love that that's the response. It's funny because I thought about this and we haven't talked about it, but I reached a kind of similar conclus, that there is a sense in which the expectation shouldn't be that this media organization is giving you everything you need, and now you know the truth. The expectation should perhaps always be, if you have a healthy relationship with a media organization, that they're giving you lots of information, and it's part of what you use in order to reach your own conclusions. And it's not so much that we are, you know, lying to you or misleading you, it's just that there's always more context that could be considered. There's always, you know, something of a development later that may color your perspective in a slightly different way. So there's a sense in which that uncertainty is persistent and we have to live with it. We are inevitably, persistently, perhaps forever tangled and bound up, and we have to figure out how to live with that reality. And I think that's actually quite Good.
- [86:10]
Camille Foster
Like Voltaire once said.
- [86:11]
Isaac Saul
Sorry, yes, I was going to quote a different philosopher this time, but it's funny, fun.
- [86:17]
Paige Disorva
You just gave me two new names, two new ideas.
- [86:20]
Camille Foster
Great, that's helping.
- [86:21]
Paige Disorva
The first one's probably right, but the wrinkle is not a terrible. There's some. There's a ring to it. It's sounds a little. The. The second one is Uncertain Truths. That's got a nice music to it, too. Yeah.
- [86:39]
Isaac Saul
Maybe. Maybe we could go with BDSM as the name, because nobody would see it coming, but it's certainly compatible with Tangles.
- [86:48]
Camille Foster
Was that meant to be a pun? I don't like it.
- [86:51]
Isaac Saul
No, no, it's just straight up bdsf.
- [86:55]
Camille Foster
All right.
- [86:57]
Paige Disorva
It's better than the one that Camille suggested via text message, which we want.
- [87:01]
Camille Foster
I'll take your word for it.
- [87:02]
Isaac Saul
No, no, let them guess. What's the one name that would be hilarious that we would never say and never actually use?
- [87:09]
Paige Disorva
News.
- [87:10]
Isaac Saul
Please send us your emails.
- [87:11]
Paige Disorva
Yeah, that's good. All right, well, I feel like we've made zero progress, but I'm glad we set the table for our listeners.
- [87:19]
Camille Foster
Process is ongoing. Things are flying around. It's great. It's like the 60s up in here.
- [87:24]
Paige Disorva
So here's what we're gonna do. We have an email staff. S t-f retangle.com w I l l @retangle. Yeah. Or will we have a tradition?
- [87:35]
Isaac Saul
Just give out his email.
- [87:37]
Camille Foster
Yeah, every. Every time.
- [87:38]
Paige Disorva
Email with the subject line, podcast name, and send in your suggestions for something that you think captures the ethos of the show. With this trio, we'll take all. We'll consider all suggestions. We have many, many. We have a whole doc of them here. Something will stick eventually, but we won't bore you by talking about it for another 20 minutes. But I figured maybe this would be a good exercise. We can involve the Tangle community a little bit. All right, we're coming up on over an hour and a half, so with that, I think it's time for John to play the music and us to get in our weekly grievances.
- [88:18]
Ari Weitzman
The airing of grievances.
- [88:23]
Camille Foster
Doctor gave me a relaxation cassette.
- [88:26]
Isaac Saul
When my blood pressure gets too high, the man on the tape tells me to say serenity now.
- [88:31]
Paige Disorva
All right, Ari, why don't you go first? I'm going to finish today.
- [88:35]
Camille Foster
Yeah, I want to go first today. The great. We. We talked about not having any, like, video for this call that we're going to release, but I do want to show you guys something on video here just to kind of underscore what my grievance is. Which.
- [88:51]
Isaac Saul
What is that rumbling?
- [88:54]
Camille Foster
That. That's. I don't know if you can see this, but this is the end of a cord that plugs into my microphone normally. And when I unplugged, pulled part of the internal apparatus of the microphone out with it. Which is why I'm using this like jury rigged different microphone with the stand from the other microphone because. Because it articulates better. Yes sir. It is four tensile pieces of masking tape. Oh, I'm doing great. I got things put together fine. I very seriously, y' all are having a tougher problem over there. I'm sure with the AV stuff that was happening before the call. The. My grievance is small. It's. It's about micro USB sized and fast fact. And it's. It's disrupted my recording setup a little. Thankfully I have a backup microphone which I think is acceptable. And the microphone that I got to replace, it didn't come with a cable. It has one of these. What are, what are these ports called again? Help me out. I know that you're just using it xlr.
- [90:06]
Paige Disorva
Xlr.
- [90:07]
Camille Foster
XLR and as an XLR port. And I have an XLR cable, but it goes to a like a 3 mic millimeter jack, so that's not super useful. So I'm going to have to get a custom cord to plug my replacement mic into. It came in time, but it did not have the attachment correctly. Tech is getting better and better, man. We love it.
- [90:29]
Isaac Saul
Well, not to mention something that I hate first. But as we were talking there, the thought I had was, gosh, we are very serious people. And I thought to myself, very serious is a great brand. Hey, maybe Very Serious Podcast is a name we could use. And then I thought to myself, wait, that is a great brand. It's also already in existence. And that is our my friend, at least. I don't know if you guys know Josh personally, but Josh Barrows newsletter, which I'm happy to plug because it's quite good.
- [90:57]
Paige Disorva
Yeah, it is good.
- [90:58]
Camille Foster
My grievance is that Camille's plugging other people.
- [91:01]
Paige Disorva
Yeah, good grievance, good grievance. Well filed.
- [91:06]
Isaac Saul
I don't know if I, I don't think I mentioned this before, but I've certainly been thinking about it for a while and it's not.
- [91:12]
Paige Disorva
Not.
- [91:12]
Isaac Saul
It's not new. But towards the end of May, May 28, actually, to be specific, Axios published a piece the title of which was behind the Curtain A White Collar Bloodbath. And it was a big glossy story about which Jim Van Hee and Mike Allen, who are the guys at Axios, went and did a bunch of media. I remember seeing the clip of him on Morning Joe having a really impassioned conversation about what AI was going to do to decimate the white collar industry. And a lot of this reporting here is based on conversations, particularly with the CEO of Anthropic who built the frontier model Claude, which I believe is kind of number two in terms of the list of the most popular large language AI models. And, and I have to say that I read this story and I have a tremendous amount of respect for Axios and generally like a lot of their reporting, but I'm not terribly impressed with it. And I find myself deeply skeptical of a lot of the kind of both the doomer and utopian perspective. And I think in some respects the white collar bloodbath storyline, which suggests that at any point in the next one to five years we may see 20, 30, perhaps even more, a higher percentage of the workforce decimated because these large language models come online and are so amazing that they take everybody's jobs. And I just don't think that's accurate. And to dovetail with that, I had a conversation with Bhatia last night on Abby Phillips show on cnn. And at some point in the conversation she mentioned how illegal immigrants are stealing American jobs. And it seems to me that both of these things are kind of of a piece. There's a kind of incoherent economics where there's just this persistent fear of job loss, as if jobs themselves, like work in particular, is where wealth comes from, or as if we can boldly predict that the, that the net effect of AI is going to be that everyone is going to lose their jobs. And, and I just think we need a lot more dutiful skepticism with respect to these kind of sweeping dramatic claims, either in favor of the AI utopia where the computers can do everything tomorrow, or the AI apocalypse where oh my God, now ChatGPT is Skynet. I'm sick of it. I'm exhausted by it. And I wish there were more nuanced coverage about these issues that reached what seems like a much more credible depiction of what the future might look like. That in general AI is a platform like the Internet was a platform. The Internet has been transformative and has done a lot to reshape industries. And AI will likely do the same thing. But also it probably won't kill us all, it probably won't impoverish us, and it also probably won't bring about a new Jerusalem where nobody has to work or weep anymore or all diseases are cured. And that's okay. It doesn't have to be that. That in order to be really, really good.
- [94:27]
Camille Foster
So. So Camille's grievance is that he's annoyed that people are worried about losing their jobs. Great.
- [94:33]
Paige Disorva
Yeah, yeah. Good summary. Thanks for tying that up, Ari. A lot of words to say. Camille doesn't give a shit. Learn to code. All right.
- [94:43]
Isaac Saul
Actually, that won't protect you anymore, apparently.
- [94:45]
Paige Disorva
Yeah, that's going to do all the coding. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. You have to learn to do something in the real life again, like be a carpenter. Some trade that AI can never do.
- [94:55]
Camille Foster
You should have seen our excavator pointing down gravel earlier. It's really impressive how precise they can be with these giant machines. Like, yeah, really cool.
- [95:04]
Isaac Saul
How many jobs did you destroy using that excavator instead of a shovel? Or a spoon? If you'd use a spoon, we'd have many more jobs and the economy would be booming.
- [95:13]
Camille Foster
That's true.
- [95:14]
Paige Disorva
This guy's Red Milton Friedman right here.
- [95:16]
Camille Foster
Very true.
- [95:19]
Paige Disorva
Yeah, no, I honestly, I'm sympathetic to that, like a broad based grievance just on all of the AI coverage I am all about, because I think it's so totally unhinged. It's like something about the large language model, the LLMs, whatever. Like the. Just the way the AI functions and what it does and. And it. It seems to break people's brains. Like nobody can talk about it in reasonable, measured terms. They just are either like, this is the most transformative thing that's ever happened, or, you know, like, we're gonna destroy the entire world and they're gonna kill us and whatever. All right, well, mine, I have a much less sophisticated grievance, which is, is I have a great grocery store near me. And the grocery store has a very old fashioned system for parking. You drive into the grocery store, there's a parking garage, the gate goes up, you get a ticket. Well, you get a ticket, then the gate goes up. And when you go into the grocery store, when you're in the checkout line, if you're at the grocery store, you can put your ticket into a little machine that spits it back out at you and makes it so your parking is free. Because this is something many places do. It's a very simple process. You get your little ticket substitute come out. Instead of having to pay for your parking, you just scan the ticket and the gate goes up and you leave. Because the grocery store makes the parking free. Great system. Super easy. I go to the grocery store this week, and I drive in and there's covers on the ticket machines. And all over the parking garage, there are these signs that I have to scan a QR code and download a new app. Where in the new app, I will put in my license plate and all my information and my payment. And now I will use the app to scan a barcode that is somewhere in the grocery store to validate my parking. And then I'll show that barcode to the machine on my way out on the app. So I'm immediately annoyed. This is obviously a technological fix that was unneeded for a system that was working perfectly fine before. But, okay, so I scan the barcode. Predictably, the barcode scan doesn't work great. It takes me to a website that's not totally working. All the signs say, you will not be able to leave the parking lot without downloading the app and scanning the barcode. So I'm now like, okay. So I'm trapped in the parking lot, scan a couple different barcodes, finally get it on, like, the third or fourth try. Then I need a text message confirmation to enter my information into the app. So I request the code. The code does not come to my phone, just isn't showing up. I'm like, okay, this sucks. So I go download the app anyway, trying to go through the process. I'm trying to shop and do it all at once. I've requested the code four or five times. Nothing's happening. And then I'm about to check out. I'm like, I have to leave the grocery store. And I apparently can't leave this parking lot without having the app and whatever else else. And then all of a sudden, my phone starts lighting up with all the codes that I had requested, like, you know, 20 minutes before, all coming in at once. So I'm desperately trying all of them to confirm my information. None of them are working. I request a new code. I have to wait five minutes for it to come through, and then I get it. And then all my information is in this crappy new app that I have to download on my phone. And then I pull up, up to the gate where I'm supposed to, like, you know, show the barcode that now exists on my phone to scan it to get out. And I pull up to the gate, and the gate just opens up and lets me out for free. And without scanning it, without scanning it. And I was just like, I am so annoyed right now. And so my grievance Is technological. So that. Yes, but also just like, like we don't need an app. And barcodes scanning all this stuff, like the parking validation system with a paper ticket that has a barcode on it. It works. It worked great. You didn't have to change. It was efficient. I used it all the time. It was easy to remember. And now I'm stuck with this stupid app that's supposed to make my life easier and actually made it more complicated.
- [99:43]
Camille Foster
I kind of want my mantra for this year to be no new apps. I really don't want to download anymore. My grievance was almost going to be before my microphone broke yesterday, that I had to download an app to track the shipping for an item that I purchased.
- [100:02]
Paige Disorva
Ridiculous.
- [100:03]
Camille Foster
We had a system that worked. I don't want to have to go and download an app that wraps this shipping information. Just it obscures it for me. So I have to download the app so I can see it. And then, great, now I have it so I can track it outside of the app app, but I can't get it unless it's in the app in the first place. And then it shows me all of these discounts with their partners, which I'll never buy. And I've written the name of your companies and shame on you. And it's so annoying that the appification of our daily lives just makes us more dependent on these smartphones that people said that they really want to try to distance themselves from using. And also I think about, how's your dad going to use it? My dad doesn't have a smartphone. He's like a sort of dumb phone.
- [100:41]
Paige Disorva
I was like, what about somebody who's just visiting Philly and wants to go to this grocery store? They're going to have to download this. It's ridiculous to just use. Anyway. Tangential. Well, not really tangential, actually directly related to this, but interesting thing. This just reminded me of when I was in D.C. with Representative Jake Auchincloss this week. He said something to me that I thought was very interesting. He made a prediction that in 2028 there would be several politicians who had their own apps like that were just apps dedicated to the politician to directly communicate and interface with their. He thought like that was the next level, like post podcast, post newsletter, that politicians were going to move towards apps where they could have a totally isolated community without like any other outside social interference. Which I thought was a pretty interesting. Yeah, I hate it too, but pretty interesting prediction. And I asked him why and he just said, I just think, like, what's next. Like, what's the next step of, like, the, you know, the social media direct connection and audience thing is kind of like a tired thing. It's like everybody does it now. It's impossible to get notice on Twitter. Whatever. What if you could get a hundred thousand of your constituents to download an app that allowed them to directly interface with you? That's kind of like an interesting prospect.
- [101:55]
Isaac Saul
Like Truth Social.
- [101:57]
Paige Disorva
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good. That's good. I didn't even make that connection, but, yeah, pretty much that. All right, we got to get out of here, fellas. Thanks for bearing with us through some technological difficulties, Ari, especially bearing with Camille and I. I ordered two new USBC microphones while we were on this call, so nothing like what happened today will ever happen.
- [102:21]
Camille Foster
And you'll have to download an app to track them.
- [102:23]
Paige Disorva
Yeah, no, we won't have to download an app. That's the problem. We had to download an app to use this stupid microphone I tried to set Camille up on, which wasn't working for some reason.
- [102:32]
Isaac Saul
What I love is that you're doing it yourself. There's not even a person to do that again. We are very serious people. This is a very serious media organization.
- [102:40]
Paige Disorva
That's right.
- [102:41]
Camille Foster
We're doing it all.
- [102:43]
Paige Disorva
The very serious podcast. Signing off.
- [102:46]
Camille Foster
No new apps. 2025.
- [102:48]
Isaac Saul
No affiliation with Josh Bar.
- [102:50]
Paige Disorva
Yeah. No affiliation. Yeah. All.
- [102:54]
Camille Foster
Right.
- [102:55]
Isaac Saul
Take it easy.
- [102:55]
Camille Foster
Take care.
- [102:56]
Paige Disorva
Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered by John Law. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kaback and associate editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead Bailey Saul, Lindsey Knuth, and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was Produced by by Diet75 and John Law. And to learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@readtangle.com.