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- [00:00]
Isaac Saul
You know what's wild? Most people are still overpaying for car insurance just because it's a pain to switch. That's why there's Jerry. Jerry is the only app that compares rates from over 50 insurers in minutes and helps you switch fast. With no spam calls or hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Before you renew your car insurance policy, do yourself a favor, download the Jerry app or head to Jerry AI Acast.
- [00:27]
Ari Weitzman
Listen up. You can get the new iPhone 16e with Apple Intelligence for just 49.99 when you switch to Boost Mobile.
- [00:35]
Isaac Saul
We pulled so many all nighters to.
- [00:37]
Ari Weitzman
Give you this deal and hey, stop messing with the mic.
- [00:40]
Camille Foster
I'm just helping this catch people's attention.
- [00:42]
Ari Weitzman
This is a great deal. Exactly. So it doesn't need all that.
- [00:47]
Camille Foster
Fine.
- [00:49]
Ari Weitzman
Get the new iPhone 16e available at Apple Store locations and the Apple Store online.
- [00:53]
Camille Foster
Visit your nearest Boost Mobile store for full offer details. Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later. Restrictions apply.
- [00:57]
John Mull
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- [01:54]
Ari Weitzman
All right, coming up, we talk Sydney Sweeney and her wonderful jeans, the stock trading ban, the latest on the Trump economy and some of the fractures in MAGA world on what's happening in Gaza. It's a good episode capped with a very, very good grievance section. You guys are gonna enjoy this one.
- [02:18]
Camille Foster
From executive producer Isaac Saul.
- [02:21]
Ari Weitzman
This is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast. The place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of my Take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. I'm here with Tangle managing editor Ari Weitzman and our editor at large, Camille Foster. And Fellows, last week we talked about it feels like 2016, 2018, 2020. We were talking Epstein Russiagate, and now I'm like, we're in 2020 again. The woke is rearing its head. Sydney Sweeney canceled for a jeans ad. It feels like we're in some sort of retro political cycle.
- [03:16]
Camille Foster
I need you to spell genes in what you just said. You said genes. That sounded a little dog whistle Y to me.
- [03:22]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah. I don't want this to turn into some, like, anti woke podcast. There's plenty of them out there. But, my God, I'm making some presumptions about all of us having nearly identical opinions on this because I think this is one of the areas where we tend to see. But this is this. I think this is one of the crazier, dumber things that has ever constituted a quote, unquote, controversy in the history of news that I've ever witnessed.
- [03:54]
Camille Foster
Do you want to describe it or do you want to give one of us the pleasure?
- [03:57]
Ari Weitzman
Sure. Hopefully. My sincere prayer and wish for our listeners is that they're blissfully unaware of. Of this story and that I'm about to make them aware of it. But, yes, I will briefly describe the controversy, which is that Sydney Sweeney did an advertisement with American Eagle. I guess.
- [04:23]
Isaac Saul
American Eagle. Correct.
- [04:24]
Camille Foster
Yep.
- [04:24]
Ari Weitzman
Which is still a thing. I can't believe.
- [04:27]
Camille Foster
All right. Just coming out. Okay. Yep.
- [04:30]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah. Sorry. I mean, like, I was in middle school when, you know, American Eagle was like, the hot thing to rock. I had no idea that was still a brand that people wore.
- [04:40]
Camille Foster
But, I mean, they sponsor. They. They own. Pittsburgh's like the city of Pittsburgh's best downtown music venue.
- [04:47]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah. That says more about generic. That says more about Pittsburgh style than it does about literally anything else. That is a telling, like fact about Pittsburgh.
- [04:58]
Isaac Saul
Pittsburgh is well known for its musical exports. I mean.
- [05:02]
Ari Weitzman
Yes. Not well known for people who dress well, though. Yeah, sorry.
- [05:07]
Camille Foster
Wiz.
- [05:08]
Ari Weitzman
They've got Wiz. They've got Mac. Anyway, she was in an American Eagle ad where she's being Sydney Sweeney, which is to say she's looking gorgeous and apparently white, which is relevant. And the ad says, I want to make sure I get this. The wording here exactly right. Because it does seem crucial, I guess. Sydney Sweeney has great jeans. And in the advertisement, it is jeans, G, E, N E S crossed out and then the word jeans, like the pants written underneath it or above it. And that's the ad which many people took as a kind of Nazi propaganda dog whistle that's basically saying that Sydney Sweeney's genes, as in her, you know, DNA, are the thing that all Americans should aspire to and look up to, and that that is because she is white and.
- [06:19]
Camille Foster
No, no, no, no, no. I will add that there is a video ad as well that says genes control everything from hair color to skin color. I don't know if they even say skin color. I think it just says hair color, eye color. She has his hair color, eye color. And she says, my jeans are blue. And a lot of people's ears are ringing by the Nazism in that dog whistle. So just to be fair. To be fair.
- [06:47]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, that's. That's a good. That's why you guys are here. That's why this is a three man show. Because I would have left that deal out.
- [06:53]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. And I think the video. The. The video ad that I encountered didn't actually include the word genes in G E N E S. It was just jeans spelled with a J. I know there's a print advertisement as well. That's like on a big banner and that actually has both words. So they're obviously flirting with something here, but it's not always so explicit.
- [07:19]
Camille Foster
The thing they're flirting with, to me. To me sounds like a pun, if I may. I think we used to allow that sort of thing. We did. Comedy is illegal now, though, in Elon Musk's America. I think we've set the table a little bit. I think we've talked about the allegations here of this being a dog whistle saying that Americans should aspire to have the genetics of a white blonde like Sunny Sweeney. But I will say, in my opinion, my two cents, my hot take. I don't hear the dog whistle. I think it would be pretty bad to say that using the term genes and describing what they do is solely the domain of eugenicists. That's kind of a bad thing to seed. I feel like genetics is not pseudoscience like phrenology might be. I think genetics are part of the language of genetics, and geneticists talk about genetics. And I think it's kind of the same with having a person who is your spokesperson for a genes campaign. Being a white person like that cannot possibly be a thing that you can only do if you're a white supremacist. So to see both of those grounds seems like an insane thing to do. And at the same time, objectively, Camille, objectively, Sydney Sweeney is an attractive woman. And I Think it's fair to say that. And fair to say that her genetics are good. And also that we've said that about other people too, not just white people. And it's pretty low stakes to describe these things that way, or it should be.
- [09:03]
Ari Weitzman
Just to be clear here, the reaction to this piece was not like, oh, American Eagle didn't really think this one through. Totally. They, you know, this ad could be misinterpreted. It was like a group of white men clearly got in a room and came up with this ad. I mean, I'll just read some of the posts that were going viral on LinkedIn. American Eagle Outfitters, do you have white supremacists on your team or do you legitimately have no one on your team with pop culture competency to connect the dog whistling dots in your Sydney Sweeney ad? The battling, praise and backlash are so highly predictable that it's impossible to imagine this outcome wasn't discussed in multiple meetings. Perhaps the decision to move forward partly rested on the behavior of trying to at will divorce creative ideas from the context of the world they exist in. But obviously Sydney Sweeney has good genes, cannot be divorced from the fact that white supremacists have long claimed blond hair, blue eyed actress as the poster girl of good white jeans. These are like high profile people. Somebody was supposed to. Fascists are unfunny and uncreative. Besides being egregious, the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ad campaign is just really fucking boring. Not so thinly veiled white supremacy, but let's use sex appeal to soften the blow.
- [10:30]
Camille Foster
Let's use sex appeal.
- [10:30]
Ari Weitzman
I just.
- [10:31]
Camille Foster
Yeah, the gall.
- [10:33]
Isaac Saul
That's okay.
- [10:35]
Camille Foster
That's right. It's.
- [10:36]
Ari Weitzman
I mean, it's. I want to be clear that it isn't just the kind of woke left worldview that I think produces these sort of incredibly sensitive reactions to moments like this. Like the right has its own version of this, which I find equally annoying and just like shrill and overwrought and like all these things that I'm like, I can you please just like take a breath, get outside, touch some grass? But there is just this. There's something here that I don't know why it makes me so annoyed, but I'm just like, you guys are just spending so much time online, so much time in this. Like whatever the echo chamber is that you're existing in where you see an ad like this and it drives you to a place where you're accusing either defenders of the ad or the people who wrote the ad, or an entire corporation of intentionally Injecting Nazi propaganda and racist dog whistles into like the American lexicon. I honestly find it like, it is insane. Like the people, when I see people post this stuff, I'm. My genuine, totally candid thought is like, they're sick. There's something wrong. I'm serious. You're like, you're obsessed. You are stuck on this framework to see the world through and it must be miserable. It's just an ad with Sydney Sweeney being hot and a pun about jeans. That is really what it is. And I don't think it goes any deeper than that. And I, I, I'm like, so sure of that that I, I like, wish I could communicate some way to these people that that's the reality and it's okay to just like, maybe give it like a. Huh. I could see that being misinterpreted, poorly. I get that. I totally get that. But like, you're like a CEO of a major brand or design firm and you're on LinkedIn penning like a 2000 word post about how American Eagle is Nazi propaganda. There's something wrong. Like, I'm sorry, I think there's something wrong.
- [13:02]
Camille Foster
I remember when I was in college that we were taught the best and often most rewarding way to interpret a text is to assume the best intent from the author instead of the worst intent. And when you, when you assume worse intent, it just robs you of the ability to get meaning from what they're communicating. And when you assume best or even benign intent, you're able to get what you would see in it, which is sort of the intent. The intent generally of communication is to try to evoke a natural reaction from a person who's interpreting it. When you try to read worst intent, then you're not really participating in communication, good faith way, and it kind of robs you of the ability of understanding that that's, you know, at least the way that I think about it.
- [13:43]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. Although the most important currency of our modern politics is the, the outrage. It's being victimized and injured in some way, shape or form, in which case this lends itself to interpreting everything not just in kind of a negative way, not just in the worst way, but in the worst imaginable way. These people are actual eugenicist Nazis and they weren't leaning into something that was exploiting the fact that Sydney Sweeney is well known for her willingness to lean into kind of stuff, sex appeal, in order to sell movie tickets or ensure that her show is something that's well regarded. I think, Isaac, you Make the right point when you say that there is a version of this that exists on the right. And it's worth illustrating that, that when there are criticisms of the policy of, say, the Trump administration and its particular use of ice and the really muscular approach that it's taken, the criticism that is leveled is, hey, we don't like seeing these guys in unarmed vehicles with their faces covered, just grabbing people up off the street without warrants. This makes us deeply uncomfortable. And that's the softest version of the critique. And the response is, why do you not care that illegal migrants are killing American citizens? This is exactly the same sort of absurd dynamic. And in both instances, it's impossible to take that sort of response seriously if you're a sober minded person. And I do think, at least with this American Eagle circumstance, there's no kind of migrants to be concerned about. So that makes things a little easier. And no one is generally injured when we're talking about the manufacture and sale of denim jeans. And it feels like this is a situation where we can just kind of casually laugh at the preposterous outrage and recognize that the kind of Streisand effect in marketing is working to perfection here. That Isaac, who apparently didn't even know American Eagle was still a thing now, along with most of the world, well aware of the fact that you can still buy stuff at American Eagle even if you never go to the mall again, as none of us do apparently. And Sydney Sweena doesn't really wear American Eagle, I imagine, because she probably makes plenty of money and can afford nicer stuff than that. But you may see her on a couple of posters while you're there.
- [16:11]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, I want to do the anti boycott boycott where I just go buy like a whole American Eagle outfit at the mall to support them. No, the. So, two things. First of all, I should also note, you know, just to contextualize this since, you know, this is like a half serious segment, but I guess it's worth saying that there is additional context here, which is the original Brooke Shields ad, which I guess was like the same exact advertisement, but it was really controversial for a different reason, which is that Brooke Shields was underage under the age of 18 when the ad ran and she was like sexualized as a minor and there was all this blowback, but it was like the same campaign that they're clearly trying to bring back in a way that they intended to be kind of like retro and controversial and sexy. I don't think they were expected to be accused of being Nazi propagandists So it's very possible American Eagle was trying to press a button. I don't think it was this button. And maybe like a better example of the rights version of this for me or the way that I'm sort of seeing it, because I think what you just described, Camille, is like a really good example of conservatives like the Trump right being kind of incapable of engaging on a fundamental issue. When you try and like pin them down on, hey, we shouldn't be comfortable with ICE agents being mass and anonymous. And they're like, I don't care about that. What I really want to talk about its effect. There's migrants who are killing people. I'm more like the right does the same thing where they're so obsessed with an issue that they can't. It's like they see it in everything and they can't enjoy their day to day life. Like a good example I just saw literally today was there was some video going magic online or video, a video of Matt of a magic trick going viral online. And it was this little kid, this little kid playing a trick on like his grandfather where he's like pretending to do abracadabra and then making the drawer open like in the kitchen. And then the end of the clip is like the little kid's little brother is actually inside the cabinet pushing the drawer back and forth, opening and closing it as the kids like saying open. But the grandfather and the parents, I can't figure out how he's doing. It's actually like blowing their mind. It's really fun. And then the kid pops out of the bottom. It's very funny. And in the video the grandfather and the parents are wearing masks, like Covid masks. And so the video is going viral and these big accounts are retweeting the video. Like look at these libtards wearing masks indoors, you know, like, like cute video but I can't believe people are still wearing masks inside. And it's like you have literally no idea what the circumstances are of these people. Like there could be like there is literally an elderly person in the video who could be a cancer patient and one of the kids has the flu. And you're like posting this video trashing this family for wearing masks. But they are so obsessed with this masking issue that is like a kind of just like a shut up, nobody, barely anybody masks anymore. And the people who do probably are doing it for good reason and leave them alone, it doesn't matter. But they like can enjoy a video of a five year old doing a Fake magic trick. Because they see somebody in a mask, it, like, reminds me of that. I'm just like, I literally feel sad for you that you watched that video and that's what you see. You look at this Sydney Sweeney ad and you think that it's Nazi propaganda. I just. I feel sad. Like, I'm just like, it sucks that you can't just exist in the world without being, like, pissed about this thing that I think is basically imaginary because.
- [20:03]
Camille Foster
It sort of implies that you're going around looking for reasons to be mad. Like, you've got that on your mind all the time. Like, maybe an analog is. Sometimes when I'm driving, if I feel annoyed, I'll start to interpret everything that other drivers are doing as being, like, aggressive towards me. And it takes me, like, a second to be aware of it. Yeah. I'm like, how dare they turn right in front of me with, like, 20 car lengths and, like, chill. Look, you're hungry, you know?
- [20:29]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, like, you know, I'm trying to be home.
- [20:33]
Camille Foster
But, you know, I. I think that's a tough thing to try to imagine. It's like that. That sort of annoyed driving response 247 must be exhausting.
- [20:43]
Isaac Saul
Yeah.
- [20:43]
Camille Foster
And, you know, I don't want to open a huge can of worms here, but something that I'm also aware of.
- [20:50]
Ari Weitzman
Is that's always something somebody says right before.
- [20:54]
Camille Foster
Right before they open a can of worms. You could just shut this can of worms if you think there's a bunch of worms in there. But I think I notice a lot of the time when there's outrage about, like, some controversial minimal thing that shouldn't really even matter. It tends to be amplified anytime there's, like, a pretty woman being happy. That just seems like it's something that annoys people a little bit more. Like, Sydney Sweeney's successful and she's pretty, and she doesn't seem to be embarrassed about that. And she, like, has cool projects. Like, she's doing a movie right now where she's, like, a famous boxer. She just sort of transformed physically to do that. And she seems like an interesting person, but I think the fact that she is pretty, invisible, and happy is something that also adds to annoyance to people. Like, there's a little bit of something there that I tend to notice a lot of the time, too.
- [21:47]
Ari Weitzman
I'm also fairly certain a few years ago she had, like, a family party, and there were people in attendance at the family party wearing MAGA gear. So that can't be allowed. A person like her cannot be allowed to Live freely in this country. That's core to this, too. The mob is definitely after her because they think she's secretly maga.
- [22:11]
Isaac Saul
Was that a big controversy? I don't remember that.
- [22:14]
Ari Weitzman
It was an Internet sleuth controversy. She posted something from this party, and then somebody else screenshotted a bunch of different Instagram videos and stuff from the party where there were family members of her and people in the background who had like, MAGA hats on or something. And she was there rubbing shoulders with real America. Not allowed.
- [22:35]
Camille Foster
You know, very few people have family members with political differences from them.
- [22:40]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah.
- [22:40]
Camille Foster
Even if she. Even if she agrees.
- [22:42]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah.
- [22:43]
Isaac Saul
You have to disown them so they're no longer your family.
- [22:45]
Camille Foster
I thought we're over this. You know, that's.
- [22:48]
Ari Weitzman
No, that's what I'm saying. We're back, dude. We're back in 2020. We're back at. This is like. It was like a. It was like transported back into time. Yeah. Somebody sent me a tweet. This is the last thing I'll say. And then we'll get into some real news. Somebody sent me a tweet from 2020 that I guess somebody had surfaced it in their feed. It was from NPR from June of 2020. And it said, this is a tweet from, literally, NPR, like, verified NPR Twitter account that says, in essence, decolonizing your bookshelf is about actively resisting and casting aside the colonialist ideas of narrative storytelling and literature that have pervaded the American psyche for so long. Says, it's at. It's won love. And then it's a link to an article about how your bookshelf might be part of the problem. And it's just. And it was like, it transported me back into that era when those kinds of articles were being posted nonstop. And this story, like Sydney Sweeney's ad, is Nazi propaganda. Reminds me of that in earnest. All right, I'm going to move on before Camille dives into that tweet, because I know there's like. It's like I can see him, like, itching himself to get in there.
- [24:16]
Isaac Saul
Foreign.
- [24:21]
Ari Weitzman
We'll be right back after this quick break. Listen up. You can get the new iPhone 16e with Apple Intelligence for just $49.99 when you switch to Boost Mobile. We pulled so many all nighters to give you this deal. And hey, stop messing with the mic.
- [24:42]
Camille Foster
I'm just helping this catch people's attention.
- [24:44]
Ari Weitzman
This is a great deal. Exactly. So it doesn't need all that. Fine. Head to your nearest Boost Mobile store.
- [24:53]
Camille Foster
Right now visit your nearest Boost mobile store for full offer details. Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later. Restrictions apply.
- [24:58]
Isaac Saul
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- [25:36]
Ari Weitzman
All right, there is some real news, and this maybe will be something that we actually disagree on, which should be a little bit more interesting. A couple of big stories that I want to tackle today. But the first one is that there is this stock trading ban that is currently being floated in Congress. And the background here basically is that there's a couple of funny parts of this story or interesting parts of this story. One, it's being pushed by Josh Alley, who I think is kind of this rising figure on the right who is very much trying to own the sort of populist mantle that Donald Trump has kind of built. I would say if anybody's going to challenge J.D. vance in 2028 to replace Trump, this senator, Josh Alley would be in like the top two or three of my bets of people that's really going to step up and sort of come for the throne. But especially in that kind of populist tone, he very famously or now infamously penned this New York Times op ed promising to defend Medicaid against cuts and then voted for the big beautiful bill which cut Medicaid, which cut got dragged across the coals for. And now he's pushing this stock trading ban. And this is another, you know, I think, a sort of new right Trump right posture like Medicaid, like supporting Medicaid. Ten years ago, it would be unthinkable that there was a popular Republican senator pushing to preserve Medicaid or expand Medicaid and also pushing to ban members of Congress from trading stock. But now somebody like Josh Hawley is that guy, and he managed to get some Democrats on board. They've gotten this, like, Senate panel to approve the ban. So a Senate committee voted to advance the bill. And in order to get the bill advanced, Democrats said, we're on board, we'll do this, but you have to include the vice president and the president in the ban, which I thought was very clever and a good you know, politically, a smart move from Democrats. Halley took the bait, said, yeah, sure, fine, let's do it. Got them on board. He introduced the original bill barring members of Congress and their spouses from trading stocks. It was named for Representative Nancy Pelosi, which was hilarious because Nancy Pelosi very famously is like, as conspicuously good stock trader, or, you know, it's her husband. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, we know. So, you know, it's going through these. You know, it's called the Pelosi act, which, again, I just. It's insane. I'm sure that name will get changed at some point, especially before it gets through the House. But the bill is getting.
- [28:23]
Isaac Saul
I think they're calling it the Honest act now, right?
- [28:26]
Ari Weitzman
Oh, are they? Okay, I might have missed that update, but the Pelosi thing really cracked me up. And then a report came out this morning that Senator Josh. Well, not a report. Senator Josh Alley told reporters this morning that Donald Trump called him last night to try to kill the bill. And in the conversation with Trump, Trump told Josh Halley that other GOP senators who opposed the bill had called Donald Trump and told him that as part of the divestment, he would have to sell Mar? A Lago if Halley's bill passed. So Trump was being told by GOP senators that this bill was moving through Congress that would force him to sell Mar? A Lago if he didn't do something about it. So Trump calls Josh Halley to kill the bill, and Halley explains to him, this bill would not force you to sell Mar? A Lago. It's not like a divestment of all your real estate, property or whatever. Anyway, that's where things are now. Hallie claims that he was, quote, unquote exonerated by Trump. That was the word that he used. And that he's going to continue to push the bill forward. I think he will get enough bipartisan support in the House to actually pass this unless there's, like, a really concerted effort from leadership to kill it, which there very well might be. So that's my table set. I'm interested to hear from you guys whether you think this is a good thing to do or not, because I think the, you know, it's called populism for a reason. It's supposed to be an idea that is, like, innately and instinctively popular to just people like us, you know, us normies. But there are. There are good arguments against it. I certainly feel compelled initially, you know, at first pass to be like, yeah, screw them. There's so much insider trading and dirty politics and all this stuff. But I'm wondering what you guys think about this proposal in broad strokes to start and then we can kind of dig into the politics here a little bit more.
- [30:36]
Isaac Saul
Well, one refinement really quickly. I think what came out of the committee in the Senate is something that has this like 180 day provision. So the people in Congress would have 180 days to kind of get compliant with the law. But also the White House is expressly carved out of this. So if it were passed as it as drafted, the Trump administration would not be bound by any of this stuff. It doesn't come into play until. Yeah, until the next go round, whoever else is president, which is.
- [31:07]
Camille Foster
That was gonna be one of the things I asked for clarification too. Or do we mean in the Congress or do we mean like just generally any elected official.
- [31:13]
Isaac Saul
Yeah.
- [31:14]
Ari Weitzman
So wait, so there's a carve out for this current White House and then it kicks in a place for the White House in the next who's ever elected. Wow. Trump, Teflon Don baby guy, he never misses.
- [31:26]
Camille Foster
How do you feel about that?
- [31:30]
Isaac Saul
So, you know, in terms of how I feel about it, I mean, look, fighting the specter of corruption and actual corruption in Congress and in the White House totally makes sense to me. I don't think that a restriction of some sort would necessarily impoverish various members of Congress, although it might limit the kind of people who decide to go into office or try to run for office, and may also mean that people aren't pursuing kind of lifetimes in the Senate or in the House, which neither one of those things seems particularly bad to me. I think the counter argument would be, well, you have specialization and when you have the seniority there in the House and Senate, a lot of these older lawmakers know how things work and they can help to move legislation along and they develop a special understanding of how these various kinds of issue areas work. They specialize in telecom or something else, agriculture. But those arguments don't really hold a lot of water from my standpoint. Congressional staffers are the ones who do a lot of the heavy lifting. They're the ones who end up reading the bills. They're the ones who develop this kind of specialized understanding of things. And congressional staffers are often remain congressional staffers for a very long time, work across various people who get elected to office over numerous years and occasionally can even cross party lines. So I think that pursuing some of these restrictions is quite good. I think carving out anything for the President of the United States, especially in an administration who. I mean, I don't know that there has been an administration who. And I'm going to be careful here and I'm gonna not so much conceal my true feelings, but tone them down a little bit. I don't know that another White House has been under greater scrutiny and has had more overt potential conflicts of interest when it comes to doing business personally, while also being, you know, enacting or enacting law or enforcing the law or generally advocating for particular kinds of legislation. The President is heavily conflicted and is frequently going to run into challenges and did during the first administration and has certainly been doing it now. I mean, he spent the past week doing ribbon cutting ceremonies essentially at his own properties. He's done infomercials for himself and his friends at the White House while he's been President of the United States States. All of this is a bit strange. And if Congress were interested in pursuing some legislation that could give people greater confidence that, yeah, people aren't using their personal office and the knowledge that they obtained as a result of their office. And I said personal office, the office they hold publicly for the benefit of the American people, they're not using that for their personal gain. I would say that that's great. But the moment you start having these profound carve outs and especially a huge carve out for this current administration, I get a little less inspired and am much more interested in kind of deeply scrutinizing what the heck is going on here.
- [34:42]
Camille Foster
I find myself just like playing rhythm guitar here while Camille's soloing. I'm like, yep, great beat right there on it. And yeah, I'll step forward and add my two cents, which is gonna be the very same songbook here, which is that we should be sensitive to the appearance of corruption. I think that's a very fair thing to ask for elected officials. Not only that, but the doors that this creates, being able to invest in stocks and stock trade while you're in office to actual corruption are huge. Not only that, but the opportunity for self enrichment. And to lead back to Camille's first point, it makes you ask questions about the kind of people we want to take office. Something I've said on this program before, program on this podcast before, is that I support raises for people in Congress. I think it'd be great if we pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars, like a very healthy salary, because we want to attract people to this job as not only the prestige of the office, but the prestige that we compensate them for. And if we do that, it would allow us to then put a cap on stock trading, say everything that you have any liquid asset going to put into a blind trust. This is going to be the s and P500. You are invested in the economy at large. If the economy does well, you do well, period. That sounds great to me. And then we'll be able to try to attract people to this office for just the salary that will be competitive and not for personal enrichment opportunities, which attracts, I would say, probably the kind of person that we don't want to attract to office. I'll also add that the opportunities for corruption and the corruption that we are seeing, the potential with alleged fraud that we are seeing in the Trump administration is something that I don't think we've accurate or been able to really get our arms around yet. I think we're still sort of grappling with the scale that we're seeing right now and something that I've always done for the past several administrations. Anytime there's claims of corruption that are being either exaggerated or diminished, I like to try to think back to historical examples of what were then at the time seen as huge, enormous breaches of public trust and corruption going back to like the Harding administration. The Teapot Dome scandal is something that I think you'll hear about as a historical analog and it seems like something that would not even make a headline today. It was just the Secretary of Interior was selling oil leases or land for drilling leases to a couple people in exchange for interest free loans and bonds and cattle, and in return they got leases at a favorable rate. How does that compare to an infomercial on the lawn of the White House? How does that compare to selling out plates for a dinner with the President or the opportunity to buy into a crypto scheme? Like, does that even register? Is the same thing. Like, it's such a. If that is the standard that we've had in the past for unacceptable corruption in office, look there, there are policies that Trump has been. And like, I'm not trying to say that the entire administration has policies that are indefensible. Like, I just, we want to put the policies aside for a second and just talk about the doors that they're opening for themselves for fraud and corruption, which if we just look at the list, they're pretty enormous. And this carve out is not only suspicious, but highly suspicious. And not only highly suspicious, but I would bet a substantial portion of what I have, I'd put that all into a blind trust that's indexed on this is something they're going to take advantage of. They want the carve outs for a reason and it's because they want the ability to self profit from them. It's something that if you can't tell, it fires me up a little bit. And I think it's something we should all be pretty sensitive to.
- [38:42]
Ari Weitzman
I mean, yeah, it is insane to think, I mean it's the obviousness of the fact that Donald Trump would never support this if it applied to him. But he is saying, I think I like it. He's sort of giving it his tepid support because he's completely exempted from it. Like obviously, you know, and we shouldn't, that shouldn't be something that like we just gloss over, I guess that it's so clear to me at least that he would never approve of this bill if it impacted what he was able to do. So just to, sorry, get a pin in this, and this is something maybe I'll do more often. You two are sitting US Senators and this comes up for a vote. This bill as it is. Are you voting for it? Yes or no as it is? Interesting as it is.
- [39:40]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I might exempt people who are so look, part of the reason I said carving out something for Trump is because of the cloud of suspicion that is surrounding him already. But, but that said, if someone is elected to office as a senator and they've only served a year and they've got five more to go, 100 odd days is probably not going to be enough for them to get all their stuff in order and you may actually have to resign from office otherwise face substantial financial destitution. They're not all necessarily of the same means. So I might make some adjustments to the legislation for that purpose. And I'm not sure I know enough about all the different technical aspects of the. But in principle, could I support something like this if I were a sitting member of Congress and if the aspiration was both to provide a sense of kind of transparency and better confidence for the voters and in my estimation a perhaps indirect goal, but a noble goal, is to make it less interesting for people to just stay there forever? I could support something like that, sure.
- [40:50]
Camille Foster
And I think I'll add a slightly different hedge than Camille's here, but a similar one without knowing the technical aspects of it and not having like an intimate understanding of the bill, assuming that this is not, you're not allowed to have any investments of any kind, but just any stock investments you have will be surrendered to a blind trust that'll like, track some index. That's something I would definitely support, and I would vote yes for that. And then as soon as there's a carve out that exempts the current president, I think I'd vote no for that.
- [41:19]
Isaac Saul
Mm. It's not so unusual. I mean, in the private sector, if you work in a finance company. I've worked at a venture capital firm for a bit, and there were all sorts of restrictions on my personal activities and things that I couldn't do, so I would probably be comfortable with that. And that's not to say that there aren't some reforms that might be appropriate to kind of the broader regime there. I think some of the concern about insider trading in different contexts might be a bit overwrought and that we would do better to loosen some of those provisions. But I do think that the rules are very different when we're talking about Congress. They don't. You just have the power of the purse, like, they're passing laws and they can direct people with guns essentially to prohibit you from doing various things in your private personal life with your own property.
- [42:08]
Ari Weitzman
You worked at a venture capital firm for a little bit. I'd like to hear more about that.
- [42:12]
Isaac Saul
You didn't know that?
- [42:14]
Ari Weitzman
No, I didn't know that.
- [42:15]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. Was that Founders Fund for a little while?
- [42:17]
Ari Weitzman
Oh, Founders Fund, duh. Yeah. Right. Okay, cool. I was thinking preceding that. Preceding that. Yeah, for those.
- [42:25]
Isaac Saul
And never in an investing role.
- [42:27]
Ari Weitzman
So there are entire Reddit communities dedicated to figuring out Camille's history and how he became the man that he is. People investigate. So every little breadcrumb he leaves on the podcast is valuable information for Internet sleuths who want to know how Camille got to where he is today. I'm aware of it.
- [42:46]
Isaac Saul
I'm aware of it. I try to talk in ways that are even more mysterious and more fodder.
- [42:54]
Ari Weitzman
I think I would vote for this. I think if I were like a Susan Murkowski decision making. Susan Murkowski, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski decision.
- [43:08]
Camille Foster
Neither of you. I'm very, very slick. No, that's great.
- [43:12]
Ari Weitzman
Correct me there. Just for the record.
- [43:14]
Isaac Saul
I don't want to jump in and interrupt you mid street.
- [43:16]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, yeah. As soon as you're done, I'm going to start saying that if I were Susan Murkowski, I honestly and, like, it came down to me, I would vote yes. But if I had a no vote to burn to make a point about the president and the Vice president being exempted, I think I would vote no and make that point. But if it were like this bill is either gonna become law or it's not, zero sum like that, I would do the thing to make it become law. But I would love to burn the protest vote and talk a bunch of trash about the absurdity of doing this for members of Congress, but not for the White House. I do think there is. I mean, there's. The fundamental thing for me is like, the decision makers shouldn't be conflicted. I remember during the big beautiful bill, one big beautiful bill debate, I read this paragraph in the New York Times that just astounded me about West Virginia Senator Jim justice, who was basically responding to a reporter's question about all these cuts to tax credits for solar and wind and how it was going to cut, hurt West Virginians. There were going to be job losses in West Virginia because they've tried to adapt a little bit, not just be in the big oil and fracking business, but also get involved in some of the renewable stuff. And he was asked whether he heard from businesses about the jobs at stake in the wrangling over the clean energy credits. And he said, sure, I did, but I think we've got a good bill. And then it says Mr. Justice, who owns three coal companies, added that he supported eliminating the clean energy subsidies to make it a level playing field for all energy sources, including fossil fuels. And then in parentheses it says the final bill added a new tax subsidy for metallurgical coal, a fossil fuel used in steel making.
- [45:21]
Camille Foster
Right.
- [45:22]
Ari Weitzman
Like that to me is the kind of thing that makes me want to smash my head into a brick wall. It's just like they like the conflict should not be so overt. And I think anything that can kind of limit that is great. So I'm certainly the populist sentiment is definitely effective on me, and it makes me want to support something like this.
- [45:47]
Camille Foster
I guess I will go a step farther. Just like very, very briefly, as an aside about that metallurgical coal subsidy is that the chief buyer for that coal is steel makers. And most of that coal that gets bought by steel making companies are in China. So in a sense, it is a subsidy for Chinese coal making, which we're actively trying to work against in the administration by setting tariffs on Chinese imports of steel. So it's a nonsensical thing to even have in there in that context. It makes that vote even more suspicious. It just opens the. It just shows how else could you justify this other than through. On one hand, like a little bit of a culture worry thing where we want to support non renewable energies. But also if you're, if you want to support that initiative in the administration to foster production in the US Then it doesn't make sense to support that subsidy. And it's a sort of dissonant thing that when you think, how do I make sense of it? And then you learn a fact like, oh, well, Senator justice does own several coal companies. You think, well, there's my answer. I think I can take that. And that's probably the reason.
- [47:05]
Ari Weitzman
All right. Well, while we're kind of in the economic sector, stock market, stock trading, stock bans, it does feel like it's been a little while since we've done sort of a broader base economic update. We've been talking a good bit about some of the terror stuff. Camille, maybe you want to set the table for some of the news we've gotten in the last week. And we're at this sort of six month mark, which we didn't really make much fuss about, but maybe it's worth kind of checking in on the Trump economy and where things stand right now as they are.
- [47:42]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. Well, today is an interesting milestone. We're recording this on the 31st, and we are on essentially yet another deadline related to Trump's tariff agenda. And as we all know, the tariff has become almost the principal weapon in Trump's economic policy arsenal. Certainly when it comes to interacting with other countries, he views them as this universally valuable, the most beautiful word in the English language, I think he said at some point. But this tool that's kind of universally valuable that he can deploy at will and at his whim to achieve better outcomes, better deals for the American people. But as we all saw after that great big beautiful, not great big beautiful bill. This was the Liberation Day announcement in the beginning of April of this year. That was when we had a globe spanning, sweeping tariff regime that was announced. And these were described as reciprocal tariffs. And they were pretty punishing across the board. And there was a great deal of consternation. And those were delayed by 90 days and then delayed again and then delayed piecemeal to bring us to the point now where a number of countries who have failed to reach bilateral agreements with the United States, new trade agreements, are facing pretty substantial increases in tariffs, anywhere from 15 to 50% now. And the number of countries there is pretty large. And it includes pretty close trading partners like Canada and Brazil, I believe are both on the list there. I think Japan is one of the few countries that actually managed to strike a deal. And Mexico has a reprieve of about 90 days. The white House is saying there will not be any more extensions here, at least so far. That could change any moment. We've seen that happen before. We certainly saw that happen after Liberation Day, because everyone said that the president was very serious about this. And there are a couple elements of this that I think are really interesting. The first is that this is happening in conjunction with a bunch of new economic data coming out that kind of complicates the picture of things. I know, Isaac, we've talked in the past, and you wrote about kind of predictions of doom associated with the tariffs and how a lot of those things had yet to kind of fully materialize, and things looked a little bit better and similar to today. We've got reports about recent commerce department data, GDP growth around 3%. But when you actually look under the hood, it's a really complicated picture. It seems to be that there were these inventories that got built up, but there's been a lot less domestic investment than folks might have suspected, and a lot less investment in general in these production pipelines because a lot of businesses are reporting that they're having trouble actually planning out their production and their purchasing because they have a profound uncertainty about exactly what tariffs are going to be implemented, when, if ever. And I think folks have perhaps navigated the uncertainty a little better than anticipated. And we've even seen indications of consumer confidence rebounding in recent months. But at the same time, there's lots of other complicating factors, like consumer credit card use is continued to grow pretty substantially, defaults are growing, if a bit slowly, and all that while inflation is going down. So the picture is not necessarily as dire as was predicted. But it certainly doesn't seem like the beginning of a golden age at the moment, either. So it's a complicated, interesting picture, and we once again find ourselves on the threshold of perhaps major increases in the cost of tariffs, but a lot more, I think, kind of subtle uncertainty associated with it. The one other thing I'd underscore is the fact that Beijing and the United States, well, China and the United States, with Beijing being the capital, were having pretty intense conflicts in early April, and that has settled substantially. A new deal has not been struck, and there is a deadline for, I believe, like, mid August for a deal to be struck there. But the Trump administration dramatically ratcheted down its rhetoric with China has been a lot more quiet and a lot more friendly towards them. The sense is that Beijing was generally not willing to play ball in a polite way when the United States was being aggressive and adversarial with respect to trade, and that they've actually had to find ways to talk to China in a much more conciliatory way in order to try to reconcile, heal those bad feelings and possibly come up with a deal that the Trump administration believes is more beneficial to the United States broadly.
- [52:49]
Camille Foster
You know, an interesting question that I have as you bring up China is when I look at the map of the places where Trump has gotten trade deals or the US has agreed to trade deals so far before the deadline, other than Europe and the UK it's all East Asia. So I'm looking Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia. That seems like. Is this targeted towards China? Is Trump trying to isolate them, do you think?
- [53:17]
Isaac Saul
I don't think so. I suspect that that actually has a lot more to do with the places that are most interested in striking deals, as opposed to a kind of difficulty that's being created on the part of the White House. And maybe it's possible that that's part of it, but I really don't think that that's what's going on. There's a regional similarity there, but certainly the Japanese economy and the economy of a lot of those other Asian countries that you mentioned are fundamentally different in terms of the kinds of things that they provide to the United States and even their relationships to the Chinese economy. I think what is interesting is that countries that are already doing a great deal of manufacturing for the United States and depend a great deal on those relationships, and certainly ones that are importing a lot of things from the United States, even if its services are probably going to be more inclined to strike deals pretty quickly. And the deals that have been struck, it's not even as though they're dramatic departures from the pre Trump status quo in many instances. So I suspect it has more to do with just kind of the ease of getting deals done than it does further isolating China, especially because China has been particularly aggressive in pushing back against the Trump kind of tariff blitz. And it's just not clear that the brinksmanship on tariffs has actually been particularly useful where China is concerned, at least not yet. I mean, we'll have to wait and see what deal eventually emerges, but it may not be the brinksmanship that actually gets you the deal.
- [54:55]
Ari Weitzman
Anyways, I got to say, I'm having a hard time actually delineating whether, like, everything Trump is doing is working or. I mean, I really, like, I go through the headlines, I wake up in the morning, I read this stuff. You know, I'm like, wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, whatever. He seems to be landing the plane on some of these trade deals where at least on paper, it appears like he is getting some combination of a commitment for investment and a tariff rate that was higher than what was the status quo before. So, like, you know, I don't think this should change anybody's view on whether tariffs are good or bad. That view should be tested by how the tariffs that we bake into these trade deals actually impacts the economy over the next two or three years. So we're not going to have that answer for a little bit. But like, I mean, it's, it's South Korea now. It's, you know, it's Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines. We covered the EU trade deal this week, Entangle United Kingdom. I'm just those the ones off the top of my head. He, he really seems to be doing the thing that he said he was going to do. That feels to me like it's being a little undersold in some of the coverage of this. And I guess again, if your position is that tariffs are bad and are going to be a drag on the economy long term, then you're not watching any of this and thinking this is good. But there, it does seem to be like Trump is forcing these places to capitulate in a way that, you know, is important and matters and teaching a lesson about maybe how to get these concessions in a way that other past presidents haven't. And I just don't know if that's a fair read of the situation or then, you know, I read the Wall Street Journal editorial board that's like the European Union was going to, you know, invested $100 billion more dollars in the last two years. And so this like $600 billion investment over an indeterminate period of time basically tells us nothing. And I just like, literally don't know.
- [57:13]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I mean, I can certainly say with respect to the investments that are guaranteed, that are offered in the context of these trade deals that they are generally non binding and there is no real enforcement mechanism attached to them, which is to say you could say anything, so long as it's a big number and it sounds impressive and nothing ever has to materialize. And the deal is what the deal is. And the Trump administration has every reason to accept people kind of giving them these audacious promises that kind of nebulous and unenforceable. And people have every incentive to just kind of make those dramatic, sweeping promises to the extent it doesn't make them look weak at home, which is perhaps another reason for the particular constellation of people who are involved in some of these deals and promises early on, perhaps a little bit more willing to, to capitulate in those contexts and give the Trump administration at least the kind of figurative victory. But I do think, Isaac, that, and we've talked about this before, that the implications of the tariffs, had the Trump administration implemented the tariffs as presented on Liberation Day right away, that we would probably see some more profound consequences in the economy. The fact that there have been this frequent piecemeal delays, that the implementations have been kind of industry specific, with lots and lots and lots of carve outs and an expectation that there might be a carve out for you, even if you wait until the very last minute, because there's always seems to be some sort of capitulation on the part of the administration, that the impact in the short run has been a lot more diffuse and nebulous and that other things that are happening, like the building up of inventories where people, people are buying a lot of stuff from abroad in advance, hoping to take advantage of a circumstance before the potential price increase, a lot of that, the thing with the inventories, you probably won't see that happen again. So going forward, things might actually be a little bit more complicated. But it is hard to disentangle exactly what the medium and long term consequences of these policies are. Beyond kind of basic economic theory, A tariff is in fact a tax on foreign goods that is going to raise prices for American consumers on foreign goods. Whether or not there are substitute goods that are produced domestically that are of comparable price is another question entirely. And whether or not the administration can successfully identify all of the ways that its tariff policy could actually drive up the cost of those domestic goods by, say, making the inputs that are bought abroad more expensive, is a real question you have to ask. And I for one, don't have a great deal of confidence that the administration is going to be sufficiently careful to avoid making a lot of unintended mistakes as they're trying to implement this kind of brand new world order around trade that's kind of dictated from the top down all at once and achieved via threats of ruinously high tariffs. For at least from the administration standpoint, our trading partners.
- [60:30]
Camille Foster
Can I ask maybe an oversimplifying question here? Do you think it's reasonable to look at these trade deals and say with the numbers that we're getting, that we're imposing on tariffs to our trading partners and what they're imposing on us, which so far in the case of Japan, South Korea, the European Union, it's no tariffs on US goods and tariffs on theirs importing. In that it's fair to say, okay, that's us winning a trade deal. But the way the score of us of that game, of the deal we won is we just won -15 to -10 when we could have tied 00. So maybe we're winning this deal, but did we lose what could have been a tie that benefited both of us?
- [61:14]
Isaac Saul
I mean, it's not even clear that getting an increase when they're giving you zero is a win necessarily. If in fact the tariffs are going to be paid by the consumers who are buying things, at least in part because it can't all be adjustments on the production side, then that could mean higher prices in the long run. It's just not always obvious that there are even US manufactured alternatives. The tariffs could accrue some revenue domestically, or they could ultimately push people to buy imported goods from some other country with whom we have a less substantial trade deficit. So the promised benefits are as nebulous as anything else in the potential equation. The potential harms are there and in a way could be pretty tangible. They may increase the cost, they'll certainly increase the cost for the producers, they'll probably increase the cost for consumers. The actual bottom line impact for the American economy is a huge question mark. It could be neutral, it could be harmful, and certainly in some roundabout way it's possible that this could benefit Americans by creating more opportunities for investment in America, et cetera, et cetera. But that last option actually depends on a great deal of things going exactly right in the preceding way. And ordinarily what the way trade works is. I give you something which I made at my own cost, I agree to a price with you that is clearly better than the cost to me to make the thing, and you're happy because I gave it to you at a better price than anybody else could have. You don't need any tariffs involved. There are mutual gains from trade because trade is mutually beneficial. It's the attempts to try to manage the trade regimes that can oftentimes introduce weird friction and greater uncertainty in a process that is already somewhat difficult. It's something that no one quite understands all the details of all the different aspects of. But again, I think that the costs of all of this are going to be something that we're probably going to have to talk about in retrospect, and we can't expect them to all completely materialize in real time.
- [63:44]
Ari Weitzman
Do we think long term? I guess that the. I guess. Let me put it this way. Do we think that Trump's tariffs that we are seeing right now raise revenue, new revenue, hundreds of billions of dollars of new revenue, I think at this point scaled is going to actually meaningfully be able to pad the coffers of the U.S. treasury, or do we expect that adjustments will be made by the countries exporting here, the companies importing here, and that, you know, that for every 10 countries that we land some sort of trade deal with, we won't see the, you know, that revenue go up by like a factor of 10? I have no conception of how that part of this is going to play out.
- [64:47]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, it seems like in the ideal scenario, from the Trump administration's perspective, if the tariffs are being borne primarily by the manufacturers, then sure, there's going to be some sort of windfall. They'll continue to produce something like what they're producing. Americans will continue to buy it at about the same level and at about the same price, and whatever additional cost is going to somehow or another come out of the producer's pocket and will benefit the American economy. But again, it just seems to me that that requires one to presume a great deal about how everything is going to work and about the emergence of substitutes. And I just don't know that we can actually predict consumer behavior so easily or what the behavior of various corporations are likely to be. I think I read a New York Times story today that mentioned a number of prominent manufacturing brands, I think Stanley and Tesla among them, who have forecast pretty clearly that they have an expectation that their costs are going to go up and that prices may have to adjust accordingly, that they expect kind of rockier roads ahead because of the American tariff regime. And again, all of this would be easier to predict and to even talk about in a sober way if there were not if it wasn't happening so haphazardly. And the administration seems committed to this project of kind of announcing these things in a dramatic way, trying to implement them in a sweeping manner and putting a gun to everyone's head and telling them to make a deal against the clock or else. And if they're going to continue with that, then the uncertainty will continue. And it seems that a lot of the adverse consequences associated with that are probably going to continue to mount, too. And perhaps the pressure will ratchet up in ways that it hasn't so far.
- [66:40]
Camille Foster
But in terms of whether or not we can reasonably expect this is going to meaningfully increase the coffers of the Treasury, I think we have a good indication that it will, depending on how you define significantly? Like in the last month that we got data, I think from April or May, I think April we got, we were able to see that tariffs brought in an additional. They brought in over $15 billion in revenue over what we've been getting from tariffs of like six or seven. So that's an increase of about, we'll call it $8 billion in one month. If that maintains, then we're looking at over the course of a year, an additional $8 billion is like close to $100 billion in new revenue from the government. And that's when you compare that to the revenue that the government already gets, the federal government gets, which is on the order of thousands, like thousands more than that. And we're talking about trillions, not close to 100 billion. It's not a huge portion of. But when we have a government that's been pretty. It has this bad habit of being, we'll say cash flow negative, then this increase does seem like it's something that we can at least say in a vacuum, the government getting more money in to get to chip away at that deficit is a good thing. And I think.
- [67:59]
Isaac Saul
Can we say that irrespective of who pays?
- [68:03]
Camille Foster
Just. Yeah, I mean, let's talk about the specifics of it of like who's paying and why and what that means. But if one of your end goals is like we should try to get this deficit under control and there's a way to do that by increasing revenues, then this is a way to do that. And I think maybe we can agree that that's happening first and then talk about whether or not that's the best way for that to happen.
- [68:26]
Ari Weitzman
My understanding. So the data that I just found quickly, Ari, was $22 billion in May.
- [68:35]
Camille Foster
In May.
- [68:37]
Ari Weitzman
That's even more than May fiscal year 2025. Yeah. Yes, I think that partially answers my question. I guess what I'm wondering is with the new trade deals that are happening, do we expect that number to balloon and what the impact of that might be? Now, of course, all of this sits in the much larger context of the administration passing the big beautiful bill, which is going to add a trillion dollars of deficit spending or whatever a year. So it's not like this is going to get us out, but it isn't hard to imagine, I guess, a world where this were a tool that was part of a larger fiscally responsible approach to balancing the budget. I'm saying that as somebody who I am really skeptical about the use case for tariffs and I suspect that these corporations that are kind of eating the cost now will maybe do that for another three or four months, but they're not going to do it in the long. Volkswagen is not going to just eat hundreds of billions of dollars of lost profit for the rest of time. That's just not how these places work. So, yeah, I mean, it's an interesting thing to keep an eye on. It's one of those, like Trump testing the economic consensus in a really big way. And I suppose just as somebody who is really critical of the rollout and the tariff agenda more broadly, I'm sort of sitting, trying to sit patiently waiting for my priors to be affirmed. And it hasn't really happened yet. And I'm starting to wonder, you know, whether my long view on this, which was mostly I Will say, I mean, I asked Will, I was trying to write about how I was wrong about something the other day, and I asked Will to sort of find some links to my predictions about the tariff stuff. And he was like, dude, I just went through all your takes and like, you never explicitly made. Most of what you said during this rollout was like, we're gonna need six months to four years to even begin to understand the impact of this stuff. So I was happy, I was proud of myself for that because in my brain I definitely had some thoughts maybe I didn't put down in writing.
- [70:57]
Isaac Saul
Well, yeah, yeah, I think we all expect, yeah, I would just say quickly, we all expected the near term consequences to be pretty dramatic because of the way that the Trump administration was doing things. And I think you can expect that with an understanding that it takes a while for tariffs to have their kind of maximally, their maximum impact, whether it be negative or positive, depending on your point of view. So I don't think you're kind of out of pocket there, but it does seem like several months is really not long enough, especially in a context where that several months is an interregnum where these things have been announced much debated and then delayed repeatedly over and over again in whole or piecemeal. So it is impossible to say our tariff policy has been a success or a profound failure because it lives in limbo. And to the extent it stops living in limbo and becomes a more even more dominant part of our everyday experience of the world and the economy, then I think it becomes harder and harder to ignore the implications of the tariffs. And at that point, the Trump administration, maybe they can declare victory. And all of us tariff skeptical people, because I'm one of them as well, will be proven wrong. And they'll be proven right, in which case I'll exchange error for truth and be happy and live in the golden age that the Trump administration has brought us. But I remain a little bit skeptical today. Not a little bit, actually a lot of it skeptical today.
- [72:33]
Ari Weitzman
Foreign we'll be right back after this quick break.
- [72:43]
John Mull
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- [74:02]
Ari Weitzman
I think. Before we get out of here, I want to jump into one last topic, which is not a uncomplicated one. So we'll do our best to give it the coverage that it deserves, I think in maybe 15 minutes. And it's another sort of MAGA break and fracture that I'm witnessing which is happening around the Gaza, Israel starvation stuff, the war, more broadly, support for Benjamin Netanyahu. This is similar to me to some of the Epstein stuff in that I've been surprised at kind of the velocity of the fracture and the, I mean, the really, really just voracious blowback that some of these sort of MAGA influencers are facing when they're stepping onto the pro Israel side from other MAGA influencers or their own base audience, whatever you want to call it. It's been really, really fascinating to watch, especially as somebody who's often, like, in the canon on a lot of the Israel, Palestine stuff, to sort of observe other people going through the wringer on this and try and walk particular lines or in some cases, take sort of moral stands and then see what it's like to comment on this issue. Some things have happened just in the last week or so that I feel like are worth noting. And then I want to talk a little bit about what this means or if there's like, larger, broader implications. One, the big one to me was that Trump pushed back publicly on Benjamin Netanyahu's claim that starvation wasn't happening in Gaza. And I think did it in a way that was very in line with the sort of simplicity of the way a lot of people talk about this, who are in the sort of pro Palestine camp, which is like, he answered a question about whether kids were starving there and was just like, yeah, I've seen the photos and the videos. And like, I don't really know how you could fake that kind of thing. Netanyahu says it's fake. I don't know how it's fake. Like, I'm looking at the stuff, the evidence. And then there was sort of this, you know, worry from the pro Israel side that Trump was talking about this way, some support from a lot of the people who maybe aren't pro Palestine, but anti Israel, I guess, is probably a better thing to say. They're people who sort of really subscribe to the America first ideology top to bottom, and don't understand why we give them so much aid or unbridled support. And they want Trump to sort of get out of the Israel game and just sort of either wash his hands of the whole thing or take a real step, stand against what they're doing. We've got Marjorie Taylor Greene calling it a genocide in Gaza and lambasting Republican House members who are dismissing this as if, you know, it's not a real human tragedy. The Nelk boys, who are these, like, I don't want to disparage them. They are two dudes who have a YouTube show and they are outrageously, to steal Camille's language, preposterously popular in a way that just profoundly. I don't know how they've done it. I'm jealous of them. Something I should have said, actually. Not to go all the way back, but just to go back to the stock trading thing. And I'll tie it back into my point. I'm going to do the Trump weave here real quick. It's great to be rich and I think people should aspire to make money, and I aspire to make a lot of money and be rich and wealthy. And that's actually something I would love to do. I don't think people say that enough openly. And I don't want to frame the stock trading ban. Stuff is like, it's bad to be a millionaire or whatever. And these people should feel bad about it and screw. Like, if you have. If somebody wants to serve in Congress and also wants to make money, I think those should pay them more.
- [78:31]
Camille Foster
Like I said, sorry.
- [78:33]
Ari Weitzman
Right. But I think those are two aspirational things to pursue and we should support them. And if they want to do them both at once, that's fine. It just gets a little more complicated. The Nelk Brothers, to just like bring that. They're not brothers. The Nelk Boys, to bring that into.
- [78:50]
Isaac Saul
Which is more than just two guys. It's like a consortium of YouTube creators.
- [78:55]
Ari Weitzman
Right? There are two guys who are kind of the face of their podcast, whose name is escaping me, which is why I keep calling them the Nelk Boys. But they have this famous podcast that's on YouTube and they hosted Benjamin Netanyahu. And they don't seem like particularly educated guys on political happenings. Let's just say that yes, they asked a lot of really basic dumb questions that had nothing to do with anything. And they got, and I should say, they have endorsed Trump. They've backed Republican candidates. One of them was like speaking at Trump events during the campaign in 2024. They've had Trump on the podcast a couple times. It's kind of like Theo Vaughn, but actually less curious or smart or interesting. They're just like, I don't understand. Again, I'm jealous of them. They are crushing it. They have millions of followers, they're super successful. I can't figure out why, but they've done it. They've unlocked something and they got lambasted. I mean, their comment section is like a bloodbath for having Netanyahu on. People pissed. They platform them pissed. That puss. They platformed him pissed. They didn't come with any hard hitting questions. They like talked to him about what his favorite McDonald's meal was and like, whether being prime minister was hard on his kids. Like, they got crushed. So then in response to that, they realized, like, oh my God, we have totally pissed off our audience, like, lost our audience. They tried to remedy the situation by bringing on a bunch of anti Israel people. And so they brought on like Nick Fuentes, who did some video or interview. So then they like trotted out the anti Semites, got crushed for that and now sort of got that out of their system. And then today I just saw, I went on YouTube to look at something and I saw there was a live video happening. It was them and Bassem Yousef, who's the Palestinian comedian who's extremely effective communicator about the Palestinian cause, he goes on Piers Morgan and does a bunch of shows. Very respected voice for the Palestinian cause. And I tuned into the live stream for a minute and he's just like telling these kids, he's basically telling them, you guys are 30 year old men, you're not children, you're not 13 years old. You should do your fucking jobs and prepare for an interview. And that's why people are pissed off. Like you have 2 million YouTube followers. And I just sat there and they were just sitting there quietly, just letting him lash them. And the comments are all these people so happy and it's their fans. And these are MAGA. This is like MAGA world. Like this is the YouTube quote unquote manosphere or whatever dumb word Democrats came up to describe is the MAGA bro online coalition. And they're pissed. And there's this huge fracture and it's just. I'm not totally sure where it goes. Honestly, it reminds me a bit of this Epstein stuff because I don't see a clean way for Trump to resolve the concerns of this part of his base. I'm watching the influencers Trump relies on to sort of parrot his messaging, get devoured by their own audiences for saying stuff that Trump would probably support or doing. You know, Netanyahu came to the interview with the Nelk brothers after meeting with Trump in the White House for like two days straight and getting the red carpet rolled out for him. So they're sort of just taking a signal from Trump and being friendly with this guy, and then they realize that the base actually maybe doesn't really like that. It's an interesting moment and it's all wrapped up in this narrative about the starvation question that's happening in Gaza, which we gave a lot of coverage to this week. And I don't know how necessary it is to rehash all of that. But I'm curious what comes to mind for you guys with this. I mean, how meaningful this is if this is just like online stuff or if maybe the sort of America first anti war coalition that exists in the Trump world is so authentic that they are sort of primed to turn on him or the MAGA influencers, if they don't walk the proper line here, which could be true.
- [83:10]
Camille Foster
Two things immediately come out, like, stand out to me. First is I think there's a stance for a lot of the populist space on the right that's similar to some of the stance that you'll see on the left, but in the right, under the banner of America first, which is we should be highly, highly skeptical of any dollars that leave our country to go abroad for whatever purpose. And generally, the thing that's shared amongst the right and left is we should be much more skeptical of dollars that go to support war efforts that might embroil us into conflicts abroad. And I think that's one of the motivating factors here that's animating the online right against Israel, is they're an ally. We support, we send weapons, we send money. We were briefly embroiled in Iran, very briefly, and then pulled back out in a way that I don't think any of us expected. We expected that to be more protracted. But I think there's still a memory of that, of there's a line that we are close to, and I think a lot of people are sensitive to that. The second thing is, just bluntly, I think everybody can see what's happening in Gaza at this point, and it doesn't really take too much political motivation or allegiances or being cognizant of who thinks what and whether or not you're on the right side of the rest of your team and saying the right words. And just to say Netanyahu is supporting an offensive in Gaza, that I think we can objectively look at what's happening and say people are suffering to the point of starvation, and we can maybe play a blame game of whether or not it's Hamas or Israel who's more culpable. But for sure, people are acknowledging that Netanyahu deserves a great deal of culpability, and it's just very, very hard to get around that fact. So if you talk to Netanyahu, if you're a person whose job it is to talk to foreign leaders or people in media in general, you just have to ask about that. And if you aren't, then it doesn't matter what your political motivations are. It just matters that it's obvious and you're not doing your job. So I think it's just a combination of those two things that immediately stand out to me.
- [85:23]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I wonder if I could take this in a slightly different direction. I mean, one of the things that stands out to me is that this is a story in some respects about these creators and the creator economy and independent journalism. I remember hearing these guys refer to themselves as something like journalists, and they're certainly doing a thing that journalists do, sitting down to talk to a head of state and to deliver hopefully some sort of insight and information to their, to their listenership or readership or viewership. And in this particular case, it seems to me that the outrage isn't so much. You guys aren't very good at this. Please, please do a better job. I think people mostly seem outraged about the particular conclusion that they reached. And I wonder if they had simply had on someone who was a detractor of Netanyahu's and who was advocating for the Gazan cause, as perhaps they would view it if there would have been any outrage at all or if people would have just kind of moved along. And I'm not so sure. But this does at least seem to be another story after a week where we've seen a number of stories actually like this. I think we talked about the Hunter Biden thing recently, an interview that I thought was really interesting and offered a different perspective on Hunter than we'd seen and wasn't really rigorous hardcore journalism either. But all of it does kind of speak to the growing power, influence and importance of the independent kind of creator led journalism efforts and perhaps their limitations, perhaps even their inherent limitations in many instances. So that's the thing that's actually at the forefront of my mind when I think about this particular story. I mean, aside from the just broader dynamics related to the question of the starvation and who's responsible and what the fallout will be for that, the kind of schism within MAGA associated with all of this is very, very interesting to track. And I think you're correct, Ari does have just some rather obvious correlations with the kind of differing perspectives that exist on the left as well. It is kind of very difficult to ignore where the trajectory of things seems to be. And I don't think it's just the consequence of there being a particular bias in the media and how these stories are reported. There is a great deal of pent up frustration with the longer this conflict goes on. And there doesn't really seem to be any sort of swing back in the direction of Israel, which is going to be a persistent challenge for them as things go on. I mean, you're in the midst of trying to negotiate yet another peace agreement of some sort with Hamas and making zero progress and all of the pressure is really on you and not on them. That's a difficult situation to be in. Unenviable, irrespective of what you happen to think about how Israel has prosecuted this particular war.
- [88:43]
Ari Weitzman
There's some sort of parallel here with the creator thing that I think a parallel to some of what happened with the Epstein stuff too. You know, that I think is interesting because it's both these sort of fractures that are happening. And I think it's also both a product of some of the kind of infrastructure that the MAGA movement is built on, because the Epstein stuff was directly tied to this sort of conspiratorial wing of the right wing movement that sort of created this thing. And then they were kind of the dog that caught the car, you know, they created the monster. And now it's like devouring them and harming Trump and whatever. And what's happening now with the Israel stuff that is really interesting to me. To your point, Camille, is that a lot of the creators who are kind of the MAGA influencers are the ones who are the loudest voices. It's not the right wing pundits like in National Review, who maybe support Trump or even places like the Federalist who are backing Trump. It's not these like mainstream, quote unquote, conservative, pro Trump voices who are also anti Israel. Charlie Kirk is out there defending Trump and Netanyahu. He had this rabbi on his show who I just listened to just spout overt lies and propaganda, like pro Israel stuff that I very much hesitate to use that word propaganda. But he was just like literally making shit up on Charlie Kirk's show and being presented as some kind of expert. Rabbi Wolicki was his name. And there's sort of this cohort that's backing Netanyahu and Israel and the relationship there. But the ones who aren't are this. It's like the Dave Smith, the Theo Vaughn, the Nelk boys. It's this kind of coalition, Joe Rogan, this kind of coalition of these, like podcast hosts, YouTubers, interviewers who are in this influencer space, who I think are much more in touch with a little bit of the sort of populist brand. And the thing that I thought was interesting or the parallel that maybe I'm like trying to grapple is they are all sort of of this. They're of this cohort of interviewers that get disparaged a lot. I think Nathan Robinson called them like the, like the rise of the dumb, the rise of the idiot interviewer, which is not how I would describe it, but it's like the guys who just Kind of ask questions and don't prepare, and they just go in and talk to people. And it's what Joe Rogan gets criticized for all the time. And now the, quote, unquote, idiot interviewers, they're hosting these people who are either overt critics of Israel and they just go unchecked and they can say whatever they want and they're inundating this Trump MAGA base with anti Israel stuff, or they do the thing the Nelk Bros did, where the Nelk Boys did with where they bring on somebody like Benjamin Netanyahu, and then the people who support them and love their show witness their interview style applied to somebody they want to see challenged, and they are infuriated by it. And it's sort of just like this funny, like, same thing. It's like the dog who caught the car. Like, they did this thing that worked for them for so long. Like Trump did this thing with the Epstein stuff that worked for so long and all Dan Bongino, they did this thing that worked for so long. And then it's like the paradigm just shifted a little bit. Like, the Nelk Bros did this thing, the Nelk boys did this thing forever. And then they bring on. They should change their name to the Nelk Bros. It's so much better. Then they bring on Benjamin Netanyahu and it doesn't work anymore because it's the guy their audience wants to see in the hot seat. And personally, I think it's going to matter. And I don't, I think, like, after the election, everybody's assessment about how important these spaces were for public perception and the views that, like, young men hold and younger voters hold, I think was really accurate and really on point. And when it changes a little bit or the, you know, all of a sudden the output isn't something we're necessarily as comfortable with or we don't like. We can't just all of a sudden doubt the power of it. And I think it matters. Like, I'm looking at these comments on the Nelk Boys YouTube channel where people are like, 10 years of building up trust and you destroyed it in one interview. And it has 75,000 likes. Like, that's 75,000 people who watched this video and went to the comments section and punched, like, on this response that I think it's like, those are real people that are out there that care, that vote, that have been invested in this. So, yeah, I do think it matters. And, yeah, I think it's gonna be a big thing that the Trump administration has to navigate in the next year or two.
- [94:11]
Isaac Saul
Can I say one more brief thing here, which is, and I actually said something like this, maybe I think it was last Saturday when I was on Abby Phillips show on cnn. Disinformation, misinformation, platforming. These are things that people have been very upset about, concerned about. They've wanted to see legislation to kind of address these concerns. And I've always been of the opinion, and I'm even more so now of the opinion that what's more important than the disinformation, misinformation and the platforming concerns is that many, many people are reliably incurious and are prone to believe things that confirm their biases. They are aggressively seeking those things out. If you are a critical thinker, why did you ever trust the Nelk boys? You shouldn't lose your trust built up over the course of a decade. It's astonishing to me that you trusted them. And it's perhaps astonishing to me only in so much as I set aside an understanding that most people, and not most people perhaps, but many, many people, have gotten to the point where they're simply not interested in really nuanced points around things that are perhaps of great importance to them, but they're just not really doing much in the way of critical thinking about. There are necessarily, as you pointed out, Isaac, very sober questions that one can both be a critic of Israel and a critic of the way that they've prosecuted the war in Gaza and at the same time not buy into every element of the arguments against Israel, because plenty of them are going to be baseless and speculative and vice versa. And to the extent that's true, then that kind of puts some of the onus and responsibility for being a thoughtful consumer of media and journalism on the audience itself, as much as the outlets or the purveyors of journalism or journalism with a lowercase J and a huge asterisk alongside it. And I think that that is perhaps the thing that's worth really, really keeping at the forefront of our minds when we see scandals like this play out as we will again, because people like this will necessarily run afoul of the same standard that they were never actually able to maintain anyways. But that only really becomes visible the more moment that they say something that, that you find offensive and disagreeable.
- [96:50]
Camille Foster
Look, guys, I don't really know what else to add here other than like, let's try to make sure that we're getting the segment of the population as, and this is going to be disrespectful. But so it goes. Let's get the segment of the population that's not that audience. I think that's like we, we want to not have people on and just confirm their priors and like joke around and have fun. Like we want to have, we want to do that. But I think we want to keep trying to provoke people to ask questions and be curious and challenge people. And I know that that comes across as rude. I'm sure that it's. I've never listened to the Nuff Boys, so I'm, you know, going on a limb here and I'm just listening to you guys. But I, I think to me the thing that I'm getting from it is like a little bit of a cautionary tale of once you start to try to cater to an audience, you start to become captured by an audience. And I think that's just all that I mean to say.
- [97:45]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, I mean, the final thing I would just say is these guys, the Nelk boys in particular are, I would say, probably a top three or four most influential YouTube channel podcasts for the sort of like young millennial Gen Z age group that exists right now, especially on issues like this. And they are literally doing like a tail between their legs, week long tour of apologia and bring on all the like most anti Israel guests they can possibly find in response to how their audience reacted to them hosting the Prime Minister of Israel. So there is these guys. Their whole job is being in touch with their audience. So they are acting that way to me, portend something about where this is headed that I think the Trump administration can't really ignore and would be foolish to ignore. So that's where I'll leave it. All right, we've been at it for about an hour and a half now, so before we get out of here, we should probably pivot into our final segment, which as always, is our safe space. We don't believe in safe spaces except to complain. So it's our safe spaces for some grievances. So, John, you can play the music, my friend.
- [99:11]
Isaac Saul
The airing of grievances. Between you and me, I think your country is placing a lot of importance on shooting removal.
- [99:21]
Ari Weitzman
All right, Camille, why don't you start us off, man?
- [99:24]
Isaac Saul
Well, I've got two things. One that I expected to be really angry about was I lost a suitcase on the Northeast Regional train and I trawled and I talked to customer service and initially it was like, you have to wait five to seven business days. Mind you, this was a Saturday. I was flying out of Town on the Wednesday. There was no way I could wait five to seven business days. They took my information and I wasn't sure if I would ever see my suitcase again. And I had a backpack filled with a few dirty items that I needed to wash and not much else. So I needed to go shopping. And the short version of this story is I got my bag back. I got my bag back on the Monday in the afternoon and no one called me. I didn't have to. I barely waited in line more than five minutes. And it turned out to be pretty simple. Both a consequence, I think, of kind of the policy there in New York City, the municipal government. This is crazy libertarian inclined Camille saying, thank you, New York for finding me my bag, and I'm sorry for my skepticism. Now that isn't so much a complaint because I expected to complain about that. The complaint today is actually directed at myself for not having ever learned to play a musical instrument.
- [100:40]
Camille Foster
I realized what a left turn that took in my 44th year of life.
- [100:45]
Isaac Saul
I went to go see a good friend of mine perform at the Comedy Cellar, actually, because they have this wonderful cafe above it called the Olive Tree Cafe. And on Monday nights, like, bands perform. My buddy Coleman Hughes plays in a band that was performing and it was just great. I can't remember the last time I'd gone to see live music performed in a venue like that. Perhaps not, I think, since I've had kids, but it's been a while and it was just such a great night. And I thought to myself, sitting in that room, you know, 10, 15 years from now, 20 years from now, if you never, ever learn to play an instrument or even make a meaningful effort to, you will regret it. And I decided at that point I'm gonna buy a guitar and like, learn to play it at 45. So that'll be interesting.
- [101:37]
Camille Foster
Good for you. Good luck.
- [101:38]
Isaac Saul
I was kind of shaming my prior self and hoping to be better going forward and also perhaps shaming myself for not having faith in New York City government to return my suitcase to me as they did. Locked, even. It wasn't locked. I got it back. It was locked and the contents were undisturbed.
- [101:57]
Ari Weitzman
To be clear, you are going to buy a guitar or you have bought a guitar.
- [102:02]
Isaac Saul
I think I've identified the guitar that I want to buy. I have it saved in a separate browser and solicited opinions from a musically inclined friend who said, yeah, that seems like a good one, but I think I'll pull the trigger this afternoon. Let's see.
- [102:20]
Ari Weitzman
I mean, you know the executive producer of this podcast is a Berkeley school graduate. You should consult him. I should talk to him.
- [102:27]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I'll send it to him and see what he thinks.
- [102:29]
Ari Weitzman
I don't know whether to be inspired or concerned about you having a midlife crisis. Totally born.
- [102:36]
Isaac Saul
Both is fine. Both is fine.
- [102:37]
Ari Weitzman
Okay, cool. I'll embrace both.
- [102:39]
Isaac Saul
But it's not a crisis. It's not a midlife crisis. But this is definitely brought about by my advancing age.
- [102:44]
Camille Foster
Isaac, do you play an instrument?
- [102:47]
Ari Weitzman
I don't actually, and shamefully much like Camille. Well, I feel shame like Camille does in my instance. In context, it might even be worse because literally every single member of my family on both sides and all my aunts and uncles and all my cousins are, like, musically inclined and play instrument. I'm literally the only. Like, my brother plays. One brother plays the drum, the other one plays the saxophone. My mom plays the piano. My dad is like, musician. Choir guy plays like three different penny flutes and brings. Yeah, he's got his penny whistles, trumpet, whatever. My uncle, my dad's brother is like a very well recognized composer and piano player. He teaches music at San Jose State or used to. Like, it's like, it's embarrassing how much music there is in my family. And I, like, spent six months trying to teach myself how to play the harmonica once and gave up. So that's really all I have to say for myself. So maybe I'll follow in Camille's footsteps and try and lean in. I just. I like to think that my expression is, I have incredible taste in music and I'm a great dancer and those are the things that I lean on.
- [104:00]
Isaac Saul
But we could start a band is coming.
- [104:03]
Camille Foster
I want to hear if anybody self admits I have bad taste in music. I don't know anybody who says that. But I'm curious if we have a listener of a show who's like, you know, that's me. I don't have good taste in music. If that's you, please email Anne and tell us what makes you think that.
- [104:20]
Isaac Saul
That is so good, Ari? Because it's absolutely true. I definitely know people. I don't have great taste in fashion. I mean, I don't really get movies, but I don't know that I've ever heard anyone profess their poor taste in music.
- [104:33]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, I will totally concede things like, I have bad fashion. I'm not great at dressing myself. Phoebe helps me. But, yeah, I would never cop to having bad taste in music.
- [104:45]
Camille Foster
I'm curious. I want to hear what that is from somebody And I'll give my grievance here while I've got the mic for a sec, which is, um, it goes back To, I think, six days, 23 hours and 30 minutes ago, as soon as we got off our last podcast recording. I was sitting here waiting for my sound files to upload, as I'm doing now, and they're at about like 90% when the Internet stopped working. And I asked my wife if the Internet had stopped working for her too, if it's just something for my machine. And it had. So I was like, well, I need to get these files uploaded before I stop for the day I was hoping to be done. It was my birthday and I was planning on going out to enjoy some time at the lake with the dog, which is my favorite thing to do on my birthday. Just take the dog to the lake and splash around. And it was a sudden wrench to be thrown in. So I thought, okay, I'm going to go next door to my neighbors. I know their wifi. I can just sit on their porch and let things upload their Internet also out. And it turned out that there was a global Starlink outage, which affected everybody in my neighborhood because we all. That's the only way we can get Internet. So I went to the local library, closed, went to a cafe in the next town over, closed. So I had to go to another library, sit there, wait for everything to upload, furiously try to finish editing the piece that I was working on, then come back home. And it had torpedoed two and a half hours from my day. So then had to go, leave late to try to go to the lake to catch the last hours of sunlight. Ordered some sandwiches to pick up on the way. Order canceled like five minutes before we got there, so had to order from somewhere else on the way. Took another 25 minutes, get to the lake to enjoy my nice afternoon with the wife and dog at 8pm And I do blame, personally, Elon Musk. I think he signaled me out. I think he knows that we have been critical of him in some ways. Measured criticism, and he decided to press the global outage button specifically for tangle. And I feel aggrieved by that. Isaac just had his mouth open for like five seconds. Yeah, what you got?
- [107:08]
Ari Weitzman
I don't even know where to start. You know what? I'm just gonna let it sit.
- [107:15]
Camille Foster
What?
- [107:18]
Ari Weitzman
Elon. Elon is deserving of scorn for many things, but Starlink, being a great product, is not one of them. I'm sorry.
- [107:28]
Camille Foster
You can clearly sense the tongue in cheek nature of that portion of it, I think the more real annoyances that those things happened in that short order and that when you live in the middle of the woods and everybody around you is dependent on the same isp.
- [107:45]
Ari Weitzman
Oh, do you live in Vermont?
- [107:48]
Isaac Saul
What are you doing?
- [107:52]
Camille Foster
This is a theme. If anybody's listening to the show for the first time, Isaac was set the table. This is a judgment free place where we do our grievances. And then when it comes to mine, he's like, all right, what can I say? What do I have lined up to New York? Ariane?
- [108:05]
Ari Weitzman
I just like when Ari. Ari likes to shoe. Or in reminders that he lives in beautiful Vermont in the woods.
- [108:10]
Camille Foster
I didn't say Vermont. You said Vermont. I just said I live in the middle of the woods. Like a lot of people.
- [108:16]
Isaac Saul
Like a lot of. A lot of people.
- [108:18]
Camille Foster
Like a lot of people live in rural areas. They do.
- [108:21]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah.
- [108:22]
Camille Foster
Boys, now I'm aggrieved about this. Talking about this next week.
- [108:26]
Ari Weitzman
Happy birthday.
- [108:28]
Camille Foster
Thanks.
- [108:29]
Ari Weitzman
Happy belated. All right. My grievance is also a humble brag. Like Ari's is really. What are you talking about?
- [108:39]
Camille Foster
Yeah. I'm bragging about living in a house. Yeah. I have Internet.
- [108:47]
Ari Weitzman
I garden. It's a hobby of mine. I don't know if I've talked about this on the podcast before. I think maybe it's come up once or twice, but I fancy myself a gardener. I've been trying to. I'm getting into some urban gardening stuff. I've been trying to grow more of my own food on the roof here in my house in Philadelphia. So I've been growing cucumbers recently, which I'm quite proud of. I had a couple. Cucumbers get nice and big, but they taste terrible. They are. Something wrong? They are. They're like. They've soured. They don't. They're bitter. There's something broken about what's happening, and I can't quite figure out what it is. And so I've been troubleshooting my cucumber growing, and I've learned something incredibly frustrating about gardening and crops, which is my grievance for the week, which is that all the symptoms of over watering something are the same symptoms as underwatering something. And that is especially true with things like cucumbers, or maybe even uniquely true for things like cucumbers. I think some flowers or plants, like, it's obvious when they're dried out versus when. When they're just, like, waterlogged. But for cucumbers, they go pale or they get a Little yellow or they start rotting or the leaves turn yellow. And the reason that it happens when you've been giving them too much water versus not enough water are basically indistinguishable. They're incredibly particular about how they take their water. So for, like, the first month I had cucumbers, I was just watering the same way I water everything else. And then I learned that if you spray the leaves of cucumbers with waters with, like, a gardening hose, they don't really like that. They like it when you water directly into the soil underneath these big, massive, fuzzy leaves that cucumbers grow. So I have been in this bizarre cycle of, like, I won't water my cucumbers for four days to let them dry out a little bit, and then they'll get worse, and then I'll start watering them again. Then I'll water them consistently for a week, and then they'll just get worse again. And then I just don't know what to do. And I, like, freeze up in my panic decision tree, and I can't solve it. And I'm just producing these, like, chode cucumber. I don't know how else to describe it. Just these small, fat cucumbers that taste terrible, and I can't get the shape right, and they won't come out green. And, yeah, it's really. It's really grinding my gears because I like to think I've. I've been doing the urban gardening stuff for, like, six or seven years now. Back to when, during the pandemic in New York, I cleared out my entire backyard of all this junk and threw out, like, 500 pounds of stuff that had just been piled up in the back of this apartment that I was renting and built, like, a garden back there. And since then, I've been learning year after year after year, getting better and better. And I can't crack cucumbers. They've totally stunt me. So that's my grievance for the week.
- [112:01]
Isaac Saul
Down with cucumbers.
- [112:03]
Ari Weitzman
Down with cucumbers.
- [112:04]
Camille Foster
Now, this isn't my area, but I thought that the way that you tried to gauge whether or not you've been watering correctly was by looking at the soil and not the plant itself.
- [112:17]
Ari Weitzman
People say, yeah, so this is, you know, like, you look at the top of the soil, you touch it, it's maybe dry, and you think, oh, it's like it's dry. But then if you put some kind of gardening tool into the soil and churn the soil a little bit, and underneath there's moisture Then that's usually a good indicator that you're getting the plants are getting enough water, which I've been doing, and the moisture has been there. And so I'm presuming that the water, that the, you know, cucumbers getting enough water. But then I would not water it for like a day or two and let the heat settle in. It's 90 degrees here, 95 degrees here in Philly, and it just resembles like a wilted plant and it looks like it's getting crushed by the heat. So then I cave, start watering again, cycle starts all over. I'm getting mixed signals and I can't get it right, basically is what it comes down to.
- [113:13]
Camille Foster
Well, I'm excited for you to talk with Katie about it when you get here, like, honestly, because she's been gardening a good bit and my neighbors have been gardening a good bit, and the garden seems like it's doing well here. So I don't have any wisdom to impart, but I think it'd be cool to listen to you guys talk about it.
- [113:28]
Ari Weitzman
I tried talking to ChatGPT. It was fucking useless.
- [113:31]
Camille Foster
ChatGPT doesn't garden.
- [113:33]
Ari Weitzman
No, it doesn't come, believe it or not.
- [113:35]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, not yet. Not yet.
- [113:38]
Ari Weitzman
All right, it's time to get out of here. Gentlemen. Thanks for being here. Ari. Sorry for breaking your safe space again.
- [113:44]
Camille Foster
For sure.
- [113:47]
Ari Weitzman
We'll see you guys next week.
- [113:48]
Camille Foster
My safe space is in Vermont. I'm good.
- [113:53]
Ari Weitzman
Very nice. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Mull. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. 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 Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@retangle.com.
- [114:33]
John Mull
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- [115:17]
Ari Weitzman
And Amazon Live makes it easy.
- [115:19]
John Mull
Streaming, gameplay, scouting, new gear, chatting and shopping all at the same time. That's my kind of multitasking. And it all happens on Amazon Live. Shop on Amazon Live by searching Amazon Live in the Amazon Shopping app and follow your favorite creators today.
- [115:37]
Ari Weitzman
Sally from Finance loves fly fishing.
- [115:40]
Isaac Saul
She used to spend her weekend surrounded by receipts. Then she switched her company to ramp. Now spend is all under control, all in one place. Her team set submits their expenses with a text and she can close the books without all the busy work. So Sally's weekends are all her own, surrounded by fish, not receipts. Switch your business to ramp.com and love finance again.