The Sunday Podcast: Isaac, Ari, and Kmele talk the Epstein case, Hunter Biden, and cancel culture.

Summary

Podcast Summary: Tangle – "The Sunday Podcast: Isaac, Ari, and Kmele Talk the Epstein Case, Hunter Biden, and Cancel Culture"

Release Date: July 27, 2025
Host: Isaac Saul
Guests: Ari Weitzman (Managing Editor), Camille Foster (Editor at Large)
Duration: Approximately 1 hour and 50 minutes

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1. Opening Anecdotes and Personal Updates (00:01:50 – 00:05:35)

The episode begins with Isaac Saul welcoming listeners and introducing his co-hosts, Ari Weitzman and Camille Foster. The conversation kicks off with light-hearted banter about personal events:

• Isaac Saul mentions Ari's birthday and Camille's recent mishap where he nearly severed his finger while troubleshooting podcast equipment:

  Camille Foster [04:41]: “It was a questionable decision and it was a mistake. I ended up having to use a real screwdriver to remove it.”

• Ari Weitzman shares his preference for a low-key birthday celebration, contrasting Isaac's more celebratory approach.

2. Discussing the Epstein Case and Trump's Involvement (00:05:35 – 00:19:46)

The primary discussion centers around the Epstein files and Donald Trump's name appearing in them. Isaac Saul references a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article confirming Trump's inclusion:

• Isaac Saul [10:41]:
  “They made it clear in the article and in whatever this communication was to Trump that this wasn't proof of some kind of guilt.”

• Ari Weitzman [10:41]:
  “Trump probably is concerned about optics. So it's not maybe just the people like us whose job it is to react to news.”

• Camille Foster [11:32]:
  “If you just read the headline and you just interpret this as an acknowledgment... then this looks uniquely damning... but for the rest of us... this looks more procedural.”

The hosts debate the significance of Trump's mention in the Epstein files, discussing whether the lack of immediate incriminating evidence diminishes the story's impact. Camille emphasizes the procedural aspects, suggesting that without concrete evidence, the revelation may not be as damaging as some anticipate.

3. Trump Administration's Handling of the Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell Cases (00:19:46 – 00:34:29)

Isaac delves deeper into the Trump administration’s actions regarding the Epstein files and Ghislaine Maxwell:

• Isaac Saul [14:28]:
  “It was my 30th birthday... You're not at Donald Trump, you're trying to move on...”

• Camille Foster [19:46]:
  “It's a profound error, and I would love to see the country be placed on stronger footing here.”

They discuss the administration’s likely motivations to downplay the Epstein connection to protect Trump's image, comparing it to past instances where political optics took precedence over transparency. The conversation highlights potential political maneuvering and the administration’s reluctance to address deeper implications without substantial evidence.

4. Tulsi Gabbard’s Report and Russiagate Rejuvenation (00:34:29 – 00:54:18)

A significant portion of the episode examines Tulsi Gabbard's recent actions related to the Russiagate narrative and the intelligence assessments released:

• Isaac Saul [34:29]:
  “Tulsi Gabbard released a report from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence...”

• Camille Foster [43:25]:
  “It's a profound error, and I would love to see the country be placed on stronger footing here.”

Isaac outlines how Gabbard’s report challenges previous intelligence community assessments regarding Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and Clinton’s campaign. The hosts debate the report's implications, questioning its validity and the possible political fallout. Camille critiques the approach of using such reports to potentially implicate former President Obama, emphasizing the need for a bipartisan and evidence-based investigation rather than partisan attacks.

5. Hunter Biden’s Interview with Andrew Callaghan (00:54:18 – 00:78:45)

Post a brief commercial break, the discussion shifts to Hunter Biden’s candid interview with Andrew Callaghan from Channel 5:

• Ari Weitzman [78:45]:
  “I think that part is very difficult. I came away from the entire exchange thinking much more highly of Hunter Biden.”

• Isaac Saul [81:19]:
  “Hunter Biden sat down with Andrew Callaghan... and it was like some unhinged stuff too.”

Camille Foster shares her impressions of Hunter’s openness about his struggles with addiction and his defense of Kamala Harris. The hosts commend the interview for providing a rare glimpse into Hunter’s personal challenges and his complex relationship with the Biden family. They note the interview’s potential impact on public perception, highlighting Hunter’s candidness as both refreshing and revealing.

6. Cancel Culture and Public Accountability (00:78:45 – 01:12:25)

The final segment addresses a controversial incident involving Connor, a commentator fired after expressing fascist views on a Jubilee show:

• Isaac Saul [86:23]:
  “If you have someone who went on some YouTube show and they were like, arguing that the age of consent should be lowered to 12 years old, they're free to have that position. But you're not going to work for my company while you share that view and espouse it publicly.”

• Ari Weitzman [88:49]:
  “If you are going to publicly step into the ring with Mehdi Hassan, I'm going to have to face the consequences for that choice.”

• Camille Foster [92:19]:
  “I believe as well that private companies obviously have to have an ability to decide, yes, we'd rather not have you work here.”

The hosts discuss the boundaries of free speech versus private sector accountability, distinguishing between "cancel culture" and the natural repercussions of expressing extreme or harmful views. They argue that companies have the right to dissociate from individuals promoting dangerous ideologies, framing it as a matter of maintaining ethical standards rather than punitive canceling.

7. Personal Grievances and Closing Remarks (01:12:25 – 01:49:50)

Wrapping up, Camille Foster shares personal frustrations, including issues with Pennsylvania’s tax system and reflecting on recent deaths of public figures like Malcolm Jamal Warner and Ozzy Osbourne:

• Camille Foster [105:55]:
  “I will be fine. It could have been so much worse, and I'm glad it wasn't.”

The hosts conclude by acknowledging their personal challenges and affirming their commitment to addressing societal and political issues in future episodes.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Camille Foster [04:41]:
  “This is a dangerous job ... coal mining police officer, podcaster. I think that's the hierarchy.”

• Isaac Saul [07:12]:
  “It's all right. I've been around a lot of gnarly injuries...I much prefer that there was, like, a knife, and it was a standard I cut myself being a fucking idiot story.”

• Camille Foster [19:46]:
  “I have no idea what's likely to come out of this will be interesting to see.”

• Ari Weitzman [24:18]:
  “...give people who are skeptical reason to be skeptical.”

• Isaac Saul [86:23]:
  “...if you have someone who went on some YouTube show that got millions of views and they were like, arguing that the age of consent should be lowered to 12 years old, they're free to have that position. And I am like, yeah, go ahead, you can believe that. But like, you're not going to work for my company while you share that view and espouse it publicly. So bye.”

• Camille Foster [92:19]:
  “...a young man making a very imprudent decision to go on television and openly share what he knows to be opinions that are less than savory, less than popular and sufficiently dangerous for him to advocate for that.”

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Conclusion

In this episode of Tangle, Isaac Saul, Ari Weitzman, and Camille Foster navigate complex political landscapes, from high-profile cases like Epstein and Hunter Biden to societal issues such as cancel culture. Their balanced discussion offers listeners insightful perspectives, supported by detailed analysis and personal anecdotes, making it a valuable listen for those seeking to understand contemporary political and social dynamics.

Transcript

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[Ari Weitzman]

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[Isaac Saul]

It's on Prime. Yeah. All right, coming up, Ari's birthday. Camille's severed finger. Epstein, Hunter Biden, Ghislaine Maxwell, Russiagate, Obama. We're doing it all today. It's a good one.

[Trisha Hershberger]

From executive producer Isaac Saul.

[Isaac Saul]

This is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast. The place you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Stahl, and I am here with Tangle managing editor Ari Weitzman and our editor at large, Camille Foster. Ari, it's your birthday, Camille. You have nine fingers. So things are going differently for each of you guys this week. I think trending in the wrong directions for Camille, maybe positively. For Ari. Happy birthday.

[Ari Weitzman]

Another day around the sun for me. Yeah, thanks. I think I.

[Isaac Saul]

How old are you?

[Ari Weitzman]

I was going to. I was going to talk about this for my grievance a little bit, but, you know, every birthday, it's so tiresome to complain about having a birthday and having people, like, wish you a happy birthday, but it's been nice. I've decided that I'm gonna wake up today and enjoy it and respond to every text and be happy about it. So I'm happy about it.

[Isaac Saul]

I personally love my. I make a huge deal out of my birthday every year. I try and guilt all my friends into coming to see me. I throw a party. I make the whole day about me. I'm a big fan of soaking it up, so I'm a big just leave.

[Ari Weitzman]

Me alone kind of guy. Like, I'm gonna go skip rocks at my dog. Thanks for your text.

[Isaac Saul]

I'm away from keyboard. I guess we'll leave you alone then. All right. So, guys, I got a text. I got a text message from Camille last night about a canceled podcast recording. And then just a picture of his hand in a giant bucket of blood in what looked like an emergency room. And I was concerned and he said, I almost severed my fin. And then I said, that doesn't seem good. How'd you do that? And I think your words were like an uncooperative mic stand. Maybe I've not. So here we are.

[Ari Weitzman]

Camille, you say this isn't a dangerous job.

[Camille Foster]

I mean, it is a podcast related injury. And yes, I maimed myself pretty, pretty severely. It's perhaps overstatement to suggest that I nearly severed my finger, but it certainly could have gone that way. The knife, the serrated butcher knife that I was using as a screwdriver because I didn't have a flathead screwdriver. I was using the blunt side of the knife to try and pry a bolt out of this microphone so I could put it into the stand so I could do some recording. We had minutes before we were supposed to start at a guest lined up. And yeah, it didn't quite work out. So I did try to solve it.

[Ari Weitzman]

But it sounds like a questionable decision.

[Camille Foster]

It was a questionable decision and it was a mistake. And I realized it right away. It did not work. I ended up having to use a real screwdriver to remove it. And I did. But that was only after I took a visit to urgent care and had my hand bandaged up. And they couldn't actually stitch it. It was sufficiently deep and wide and actually took a chunk of the fingernail in addition to a chunk of the finger. Yeah, it's pretty bad. And yeah, she just kind of bandaged it and cleaned it up and making all sorts of jokes while doing. Which I appreciated. Promised to listen to the podcast, so she may be listening right now. Thank you so much, ladies, to the medical practitioners who patched me up and got me back on the road. And yeah, this is a dangerous job. You know, coal mining police officer, podcaster. I think that's the hierarchy And I.

[Ari Weitzman]

Just want you to know the same conversation anyway.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah, exactly. I'm happy to risk my life to do this week after week.

[Ari Weitzman]

Now, Isaac, I know we got a lot to cover, but I really got to jump in to ask, because this is something that happens in the ultimate Frisbee community. A lot is you'll go to the hospital because sports can happen, and it's very, very customary in this culture to lie about what you're doing when you go to the hospital. They're like, you hurt your knee doing what? Like soccer, running, rock climbing. You don't want to tell the ER doc you're there because you were playing Frisbee. So did you tell the ER right away, podcasting injury?

[Camille Foster]

I have a strict policy. I do my very best to always tell the truth. Will I embellish it a little bit? Truthful hyperbole, as Donald Trump calls it in his book Art of the Deal. Maybe a little bit. But in this case, I only embellished it for comedic effect. So, yeah, I told the truth. Podcasting injury, and I will say so forever. And I hope I get a really cool scar out of it.

[Ari Weitzman]

I hope you do too.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

I appreciate that you're honest about it, and also I'm glad to hear there was a knife involved. When you sent me this message last night, I was imagining that it was just like, something like your finger got caught in the stand somehow, which, like, really made my knees weak. That was, like, gave me the heebie jeebies. I much prefer that there was, like, a knife, and it was a standard I cut myself being a fucking idiot story. Give it time.

[Camille Foster]

Give it time.

[Ari Weitzman]

And, like, he caught it in the machinations of a 55 pound on Mike stand or something.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, that. That really made me squirm last night when you said that.

[Camille Foster]

So I'm sorry. I'm sorry to put you on edge.

[Isaac Saul]

It's all right. I've been around a lot of gnarly injuries, so mostly I was laughing at how dumb you were, but I'm glad to hear your. Your fingers okay. And that you did it with a knife and not purely with the mic stand. Yeah. Thank you, fellas. We're going to talk about Jeffrey Epstein, Hunter Biden, and, like, Russiagate today.

[Ari Weitzman]

And it's my 30th birthday, right?

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, Yeah, I think.

[Camille Foster]

I think Comey's gonna nail him. If I'm honest, I'm pretty sure it.

[Isaac Saul]

Is a weird timeline in the news world right now. I have a place. Oh, and Hunter Biden, we have to talk about too. So we are like. I mean, we are. We're hitting the. Playing the greatest hits today. I think we should start with the latest Epstein story. And I'm going to just throw something out there. I'd be curious to hear you guys thoughts. But yesterday the Wall Street Journal published the story that I kind of thought they were going to publish. A week ago when like the drawing thing came out, which was Donald Trump was informed in May by Attorney General Pam Bondi that he was in the Epstein files, that his name appeared in the Epstein files. And I think because of the timing of this story, it had a little less potency than maybe it would have. I mean, to just rewind what happened last week. Right before we came on the show last time was there was these rumors percolating that the Wall Street Journal was working on a really big Donald Trump Epstein story. And there was all this speculation about what it was going to be. And then what basically came out was like Trump had written Epstein a birthday card and there was this weird cryptic message in it and this weird drawing. And Trump denied it. And everybody in Trump's camp was immediately like, you know, he doesn't talk like this. It wasn't him. Whatever people like me were saying. Actually, a lot of the stuff here makes me think that this is genuine and Trump really did this, including the timeline, whatever. But I didn't find it that particularly incriminating. To me, I also don't find this story incriminating. In fact, you know, they told the President at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past. And one of the officials familiar with the documents said they contained hundreds of others, hundreds of other names. You know, they said they made it clear in the article and in whatever this communication was to Trump that this, you know, wasn't proof of some kind of guilt. But I do wonder if this had been the initial story that came out, if it would have broken through a little bit more, because I think this was the story people were expecting. Trump's in the Epstein files, and therefore he is acting strangely and doing this bizarre stuff where he's just trying to get everybody to move on after making a big deal about it. If he were told a couple months ago or a month and a half ago that he was actually in the Epstein stuff, that would make a lot more sense to me as to why in early July he's sort of closing the book on this and trying to get people to Stop talking about it and move on.

[Ari Weitzman]

It's kind of what we expected, right? I mean, the whole time, like Emil, just last week, we're saying he's probably going to be personally implicated somehow. Like, if we're just reading the President's behavior, it's very easy to read it as, like, every. All the pieces fit. If we just say his name's going to be mentioned, no criminal implications, probably, Almost definitely. But he's probably concerned about optics. So it's not maybe just the people like us whose job it is to react to news. We're like, okay, yeah, but I think the story broke through pretty well in the first place. So would it have broken through more? I don't know how to quantify that. If it would have followed up Elon Musk's tweet saying Trump's in the Epstein files? Probably more so, but I don't know. I think, like, to people who follow the news, no big surprise to people who don't, what's it mean to break through more or less? I'm not sure.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah. I do wonder for people who are already critical of the President and who are deeply skeptical of him and have imagined all sorts of things about his connection to Epstein. If you just read the headline and you just interpret this as an acknowledgment of the fact that the President has lied when asked directly whether or not Pam Bondi talked to him, disclosed to him that he's in the files, then this looks uniquely damning. But I think for the rest of us, until more information is known, this looks more procedural than particularly concerning. And I think there's a universe where one could interpret the President's behavior with respect to this almost in a similar way to how I would have interpreted his behavior at the beginning of his first administration, where he was particularly perturbed by the Russian investigation, and I'm perhaps getting a little ahead of us, but where those allegations didn't really seem to pan out, but the concern about potential obstruction ended up being something that was a heck of a lot more material and probably had more deleterious effects on him and his administration. It's not hard to imagine a world where the President didn't make things much more difficult for himself by simply being really, really candid and saying over and over again, I had nothing to do with Russia, and that whole situation goes away. I don't know that the same could be said here. But it certainly seems like between his insistence that no one should be paying attention to this thing that I was trying to animate concern about before. And I can't imagine why anyone would want to talk about this and his various apparatchiks and supporters trying to do things like send Congress on a break early so there's no opportunity to talk about this stuff. I mean, all of that seems incredibly strange. And it appears to be the behavior of people who are guilty of something and who desperately want to conceal something, when in fact it may just be the kind of sloppy proclivities of an administration that is definitely concerned about scandal and is uncomfortable being in a position where there's real material division being sown in a coalition that has been unimaginably solid for a very long time. So it could just be that they're under some pressure and not that this is proof of some deeper nefarious entanglements. It does seem a bit strange to me, Isaac, to your point, that so many of these much ballyhooed revelations that we expect to see and then eventually emerge tend to be a bit anticlimactic. I don't know that it'll continue to be this case, but given that there's still so many things in the offings, we'll find out pretty soon.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, I mean, it's a really, it's a really weird moment because I'm now seeing like the Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump Jr. Types picking the Epstein story back up. I mean, I saw today they were both kind of texting about some Obama appointed lawyer who is blocking the release of some particular Obama appointed judge who's blocking the release of some particular files. And they're just sort of like, now they're right back, you know, all last week it was let's move on. The president saying, let's move on, let's move on. And now they, I think, have recognized that their base isn't buying, that they're not following the lead. And so they're sort of pivoting back to okay, we're in. But also, you know, everything that has to do with Trump and this story is total bs. And everything that has to do with every Democrat or any Democrat or liberal politician or celebrity, whatever, who's even like vaguely referenced in Epstein's circle is like immediately incriminated. It's like this really weird thing they're trying to hold. I laugh. I mean, I literally laughed out loud reading this Wall Street Journal article because Stephen Chung, the White House communications director, got quoted in the story telling the Wall Street Journal this is another fake news story, just like the previous story by the Wall Street Journal. And then in Literally the next sentence, the Journal writer said. In a statement to the Journal on Friday, Bondi and the Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanch, said nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution. As part of our routine briefing, we made the President aware of the findings, they said. So basically just caught to the entire story, like in plain terms that, yeah, they briefed the President on what was happening, that they were going to kill the investigation, that his name was in it. They report that out and at the same time, Trump's Attorney general is saying, yeah, legit, the communications director is like fake news. Which is a great insight into how the Trump administration operates, by the way. I mean, this is just like they, everything they hate is fake. And, you know, any story that even vaguely confirms their worldview is getting elevated and blasted out. There's now this other layer, I guess, which is the Ghislaine Maxwell thing, that the Trump administration is, I guess the doj, maybe today, is sitting down with her for an interview and there's a conversation about, you know, her bringing forward some new evidence, which I think to a lot of people, myself included, the immediate alarm bells went off of like, here's a woman facing a 20 year prison sentence trying to curry favor with a president notorious for pardoning people, guilty of serious crimes. It's probably not a coincidence. That struck me. I'm, yeah, curious to hear what you guys think about the arrangement we might see unfolding in real time right now.

[Ari Weitzman]

I'm staying away from it. Like, I don't, I don't think I want to make a prediction on it. I think if we're trying to extend the principle that I think we just arrived at of amplify the things that make the administration look strong, deny full court press, deny everything that seems like it could be incriminating. We've seen that strategy work pre stage a little bit where I think we're going to be going in, in a couple minutes about Russia. If you just deny, deny, deny, eventually your opponent will overstep and then the whole thing gets muddied. How that could apply to Maxwell, Just say it was her, not me, her, not me, her, not me. And then as soon as there's like an implication that goes too far, then maybe you consider pardoning. But that's, that's like a branch that maybe I'd want to, like, I'd be afraid to crawl out on. I don't want to like make a, make a call about how this is going to go. It just seems so early. We don't know what she's going to say, and we don't know what the DOJ has and we don't really know what's going to be released or what the Journal is going to release. There's a lot of moving parts and I feel like I don't have a good, confident feel for what's going to come next.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah, I don't have any insider information here. I am watching this with a fair amount of interest now, having ignored the Epstein story for so long, so safely, now being kind of forced to talk about it and pay closer attention to it in the past month or so. I'm curious to see how this turns out. Confident the administration would like to avoid the kind of circus that would occur if there were some kind of congressional, even remote hearing with her and being able to have the DOJ go in and talk to her and see what information they can possibly extract. I mean, she's been in prison for some time now, been sentenced a while ago. If there was some new information that she had, it feels odd that her lawyers would have sat on it for this long. I think she trying to leverage the opportunity to the extent that she can, which makes a great deal of sense here. But I have no idea what's likely to come out of this will be interesting to see.

[Isaac Saul]

I think. Yeah, I mean, I suppose it seems unlikely to me that she gets any kind of pardon or clemency. I mean, regardless of what, you know, regardless of what they might get out of her in the way of helpful evidence to prosecute anybody who, you know, should be prosecuted. I mean, let's suppose some world where Todd Blanche meets with her and there is some sort of new narrative or evidence that comes out of that meeting that the DOJ can pursue and some powerful person is like rightly brought to justice for participating in this sex trafficking or something. I mean, even in that world, somebody around Trump is gonna tell him, don't pardon Ghislaine Maxwell.

[Ari Weitzman]

Right.

[Isaac Saul]

Like she was the ringleader of. She is like the living number two to the number one who's dead, who organized like a decades long sex trafficking organization based on like what she's in prison for. I feel like it would be political suicide. Like shutting down the Epstein files was a dumb enough move to attempt. Given where the base is. I think pardoning Glenn Maxwell would be like orders of magnitude worse from my perspective. Like is there a world where that's accepted? I don't know how that gets framed positively.

[Ari Weitzman]

I mean, it's just what this is where how I'm seeing It If I'm trying to follow some tea leaves and look at old patterns and make a guess, it would be right now, Trump suing the Wall Street Journal for libel for a report that we're pretty sure they must have sourced very carefully because they expected to get sued. Let's say something comes out where they made some small inaccuracy or they listened to a report from somebody that ended up not being fully reliable, not even in their main claims about Trump being in the Epstein files just by name and Bondi telling Trump about that and the decision not to release it, but just in something ancillary to the whole investigation that happens. And at the same time, we are hearing about other people who we can. Who are linked to this. And there's some other big bad. If these files eventually, like, are coming out and we see some. Somebody else who can be an enemy, and there's the. Then the mud, the waters start to get muddied. It becomes easy for Trump to say, they keep pushing on this. There's something here where Democrats have Trump derangement syndrome. Everybody's trying to say this is a big scandal and it's not. We know that it was some creepy people from a couple years ago. It's not Trump, it's some other villain. This is a witch hunt. It's a witch hunt after me. It's a witch hunt after everyone. And then just doing blanket pardons because I'm remembering a couple things. One, Russia. But two, it was inconceivable for. Just imagine January 7, 2020. Imagine saying Trump's gonna pardon everybody who is involved in this. It felt like, and I think some very smart people said at the time, the end of Trump and wasn't. So things change, and it's hard to anticipate how they will. Like I said, I'm not confident about this read at all. I'm just thinking about if similar patterns were to occur, how would that happen, what they would look like? I think that's what that looks like.

[Camille Foster]

I mean, that brief history, Ari, just leaves me even further confused about what's likely to happen here. It's just so hard to make a call. The kind of politically prudent, reasonable thing to do is not necessarily the thing that this particular administration will do. And the consequences aren't necessarily going to be what we might imagine they are. And I mean, there's so many different dynamics playing out. But interestingly, while Democrats are obviously quite happy to try and exploit the situation, they're still not at the forefront of this to the Extent we're talking about the story, to the extent we're paying attention to Maxwell potentially testifying, the people who are most interesting to talk to about this, the people who are kind of at the center of the story, aren't aoc. It's Nancy Mace. And that's the part of this entire narrative that I find most interesting, is the opposition would love to exploit these things, is making efforts to try and do so, but for the most part is able to do so while keeping pretty clean hands. So the whole thing is remarkable. But maybe it's consistent with Trump taking up so much of the oxygen in the room in virtually every single media narrative. What he's doing, how he's responding to things is the central matter of importance. And what kind of maneuvering is happening in opposition to him is oftentimes far less consequential and less interesting and just reactive.

[Ari Weitzman]

I mean, next week, it's gonna be August 1st. We're gonna be sitting here talking about tariffs.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, yeah, probably. I mean, the other thing, I guess, that's relevant to this story, that's sort of happening alongside of it, is the, the kind of revamping, revision, revitalizing, probably is the best way to put it.

[Camille Foster]

Refurbishing. I don't even know what you're getting.

[Isaac Saul]

Ready to say of the. Well, of the. Of the kind of Russiagate hoax stuff that sort of happen, happening side by side with this. I mean, we talked about this a little bit off mic before we got on. I think the allegation centrally from the left is that Trump is trying to distract everybody from the Epstein stuff in order. I mean, some people on the right are making this accusation too, by, by entering in a rejuvenation of the Russiagate story and this idea that, that he's going to go after Obama finally and, you know, put people in prison for what they did to him during his first term. And I think that certainly deserves some mention here because we're again, watching this really bizarre moment where the Trump administration is both trying to move on from the Epstein stuff while feeding the base some red meat like, like Ghislaine Maxwell's coming in. They're going to release transcripts from grand jury testimony. And, you know, they. There's. The House is kind of revolting against Trump by not doing what he wants them to do and trying to pass some sort of legislation to bring Epstein files to light. And then at the same time, there's this new sort of quote, unquote, investigation that the administration and many Republicans are trying to give momentum to which is this idea that newly unearthed information from the 2016, 2017 time period is so incriminating and so damning for President Barack Obama and former Obama White House officials that heads are going to roll and there will be, like, criminal indictments coming soon. I think it's probably worth setting the table here. So I, you know, I went on Breaking Points this morning. I know we have a lot of listeners who listen to Breaking Points. It's a great podcast. I like what they do over there. Obviously, you know, when it comes to ideological diversity, anybody who's doing that is, is somebody who I respect, given our work. And I went on just to kind of talk about, like, what we actually got this week from Tulsi Gabbard and what we didn't get. And I think maybe I'll try and just set that table briefly. And then I'm curious to hear from you guys sort of what stands out to you. So we published a podcast and a story earlier in the week about the first release, which basically had some details that we didn't have before about the back and forth between Obama and intelligence officials. There was a presidential daily briefing that got pulled by the FBI that was going to say, you know, Russia didn't have the ability to hack election infrastructure effectively to alter votes. And before that presidential daily briefing went to Obama and got published and would have gone public, it got pulled and this sort of task force was put together. And there was an intelligence community assessment that was done that definitely, you know, gave voice to a understanding of what had happened or what was happening in the election that said, you know, Russia was interfering, they were trying to help Trump. And a lot of this was being directed by Putin. And the fact that Obama was sort of involved in putting together this ICA and how quickly it came out, and all this stuff is sort of seen as like a central scandal in the kind of Russiagate story. And we've known a lot of that for a while. But the things that Gabbard released this week were some email exchanges, some like, you know, contemporaneous documents, whatever, that sort of affirm basically what we understood to be true. Before the Obama White House was leaking like a sieve to the press, there was sort of this circuitous relationship happening where they're passing information back and forth and the media is hyperventilating more and more about the story. What happened after we published that newsletter was that Tulsi Gabbard released a report from the House Permanent Select Committee on intelligence, the HPSCI, who had spent, according to them, 2300 man hours reviewing this ICA that the Obama administration released in January of 2017. We had never gotten this HBSCI review previously because it was buried by Adam Schiff, and the Biden administration basically didn't let it come out. Edits were happening on it up until 2020, which is why the Trump administration says they never released it during his first term. The primary bombshell in this report, if there is one, was that the initial report said that the assessment that Vladimir Putin developed a clear preference for Trump was based on scant, unclear, unverifiable intel, including the quote, unquote, fragment of one sentence of a human intelligence source. So basically listening to a partially spoken sentence from one single human intelligence source that five of the CIA authors read in five different ways and was initially left out of the ica. And Brennan, the CIA director at the time, put it back in. And to me, this is like, probably the most damning thing that the report had. There was a lot of other stuff in it, but I think this is the one that caught the most attention, rightfully so. And, you know, there's this weird thing happening where it's like, this stuff is important and it's looks very bad for the Obama administration. And there's a world where, like, the investigation into Donald Trump was predicated on kind of, I mean, basically conjured up really shoddy intelligence, which is a scandal, like he became the incoming president. The weird thing, the thing that complicates it that's sort of hard to hold at the same time, is that a lot of the stuff that was in that ica, that initial assessment ended up being true. You know, this report that Gabbard released this week, where it includes all this information about, you know, evidence that Putin didn't actually care who won, and that's what the intelligence community had assessed back in 2017, even though ended up becoming public, was like a narrative totally different from that. This report also says they had all this damning intelligence on Clinton, including that she was, like, taking tranquilizers and having violent mood swings, and that they never released any of that because they presumed she was going to win. They wanted to damage her, but not damage her so badly that they didn't, like, destroy the relationship. On the first page of this report, I'm just going to read this section and then I'll pass it to you guys to talk a bit about this. But on the first page of this report, I'm quoting directly here, it says most ICA judgments on Russia's activities in the US election employed proper analytic tradecraft and were consistent with observed Russian behavior. The key judgments found to be credible, and this is in the report that Gabbard just released. One, President Vladimir Putin ordered conventional and cyber influence operations, notably by leaking politically sensitive emails obtained from computer intrusions. Two, Putin's principal motivations in these operations were to undermine faith in the US democratic process and to weaken what the Russians considered to be an inevitable Clinton presidency. Three, Putin held back on leaking some compromising material for post election use against the expected Clinton administration. So the report saying that some of this, a lot of the information we got at the time and some of the basis of launching the investigation into Trump Russia collusion was bullshit, but also Russia did try to throw the election. They are interfere in the election. They, you know, they use conventional cyber influence operations. The tradecraft that the ICA used to make these judgments was consistent and proper analytically and lined up with all the other things the, you know, the intelligence community has seen. So it's not like a simple black and white thing. We kind of actually have to hold a few things at the same time. And now we have Tulsi Gabbard, you know, packaging this as proof that she is going to refer Obama to the DOJ for treason. So that's where we are.

[Ari Weitzman]

So take the baton and go.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, I mean I, yeah, I just like, it's legit stuff packaged in the most absurd, kind of overwrought, like conspiratorial way possible. I mean there is no crime that they're gonna get Obama for it. Like this is a fantasy. But they're talking about bringing him up on charges of treason now, which is like, you know, the ultimate red meat for the people who crave that kind of thing.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, Obama and the Russian military fatigues. Yeah, that the, yeah, I mean the, the thing that, what I think was kind of the nugget of this was actually in that very accurate and strong recap of events, you did this small little misspeak where you said that Russia was throwing the election for, sorry, excuse me, muddying the waters because, and I think that's the whole game honestly is that Obama wanted there to be, and a lot of Democrats wanted there to be that miscue in the mind of the American public. And it's very easy to make that miscue is the difference between Putin wanted there to be chaos, distrust. He assumed that Clinton was going to win, so he was ginning up controversy to try to make, make it seem like the election was like in Some way invalid. And that versus Putin wanted Trump to win because he was going to be more beneficial to him. That's kind of the whole game. And in this bombshell report from Gabbard, she's telling us more evidence to support the story we already knew. I think that's kind of the thing that we're getting here. Unless I'm completely missing the boat, and we are all completely missing the boat. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I think Camille is reading this the same way, but I'm about to find out is that we now know that Obama had a meeting on a specific day with specific people. And that's fine because we knew what the result of that meeting was. Here's the narrative that we're going to push. We knew that there is a report that found things about Russia's interference in the election, which we now know what the evidence was that that was based on. We know that some information was leaked to the Clinton campaign from the government and then vice versa. And we know that that was messed up and bad and something to be concerned about in a scandal. And now we know a little bit more about how that happened. It doesn't really tell us. It doesn't change the story. It just adds a couple more footnotes.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah, there's a lot of different dimensions to this and a number of places where there is some kind of confusing conflation, which is an interesting NCC that one has to keep in mind the various uses of the word hacking. In certain instances where it's totally appropriate, like Hillary Clinton's emails were in fact hacked. The election was hacked. Not quite. Was there an attempt to influence the direction of the election.

[Isaac Saul]

Sure.

[Camille Foster]

On behalf of a particular candidate. So that one of them would definitely win because of an absolute preference that either that the Russians had that is less clear. And how do those things line up with the dominant media narratives of the time and the presumptions of the Obama administration and the intelligence community at different times? That, again, is a somewhat complicated question to answer. Interestingly, my tendency is not to focus on motives first, but I do think it's worth Just introducing two separate possibilities here. Possibility one is that in December of 2016, when this meeting is taking place at the behest of Barack Obama, who knew he was supposed to get a particular briefing, a presidential daily briefing that was going to suggest that the intelligence community had reached a pretty uniform opinion, that the Russians weren't really having any particular influence on the election and weren't trying to do Something to influence the election, or at least to hack the election. Again, here's the conflation and the confusion here. They get together and the direction that they receive from the president, and there's no real ambiguity about this, is I want you to give me your best assessment of exactly what we know about any kind of influence efforts on the part of the Russians, and we should look carefully at how it may intersect with the incoming administration and whether or not it was said that explicitly. The directive, I think, was pretty well understood at that point and the reporting that would subsequently come out. And this is in, say, March of 2017, just a couple of months removed in the New York Times, which was framed in a fairly generous way as Obama administration rushed to preserve intelligence of Russian election hacking, which is a very generous read on it, was that the Obama administration was making an effort in the closing days, in the twilight of the administration, to ensure that what they knew and suspected might be possibly true about Trump's relationship with Russia was generally distributed throughout the intelligence community and readily available to people so that it couldn't be suppressed by the incoming administration if there was some guilt on their part. That is a really interesting thing for an administration to do, which effectively, whether they mean to or not, does, in fact kneecap this incoming administration. It does, in fact, create a cloud of suspicion and perhaps intensify suspicion about this incoming administration. And there's really no hair splitting about that. I do think, however, it matters whether this was done with full knowledge that this was highly unlikely and dubious, or with the belief that there might be some material smoke here, that there is more than enough reason to believe that some of Donald Trump's dodgy associations at the time, and he did have some. I mean, people like Paul Manafort were in his circle. Don Jr. Was taking meetings with Russians, and it would turn out with additional time to spend investigating these things, that they weren't necessarily as nefarious as they seemed at first blush, but all the same, these things were, in fact, happening. Do you not take these steps? Is it wildly inappropriate to have a meeting where you pull together things like this? And to the extent you're doing something like that, and you're doing it to the extent, again, we're talking about classified information and intelligence briefings involving the president? I wouldn't expect you to have full knowledge of all those things in real time reading public.

[Isaac Saul]

But.

[Camille Foster]

But it is documented. There are meeting minutes that we're reviewing now and email communications and correspondence that we're reviewing now to classify things. Isn't to put them in a deep black box that the new administration will have no access to. It's to actually document them. That's there. There is a paper trail that can be followed. And so far as I can tell, the things that have been released don't suggest that they knowingly attempted to deceive anyone. There are indications of kind of sloppiness. There is fair reason to believe that some of this could have been politically motivated. But a nefarious, treasonous conspiracy seems to go a bit too far. And quite frankly, I think the Trump administration and Tulsi Gabbard at the moment are in fact, making a pretty substantial mistake. Because to the extent there are people who were in the intelligence community at the time who did things like perhaps lie under oath in different circumstances or otherwise mislead people or generally just not do their job very well, some scrutiny would be very appropriate. But the appropriate way to go about adjudicating these questions is the kind of thing that you get with the Church Commission, like a meaningfully bipartisan effort in Congress where you've got Democrats and Republicans at a high level having sober conversations about what's going on here. It's not Tulsi Gabbard in a press briefing reading rather scandalous information kind of into the public record for the very first time about a very high profile political opponent, insinuating that this person is, in fact, mentally unwell and is getting all sorts of therapeutic help. That was a deliberate choice that was made in that meeting and asked direct questions about, well, what is the smoking gun here? What are we supposed to take away from this Dni Gabbard, she doesn't have an answer for that. Instead it's, we just gave you 200 pages. We hope that you'll read it all and report on it truthfully. But, oh yeah, did you know that Hillary Clinton was getting tranquilizers? Really important note that we want to make sure you take away from this. It is impossible to escape the perception that they're deliberately trying to kind of exploit this for political advantage and gain and to distract from some of the other difficulty that they're under at the moment. But it's also really hard to see that they have. It would be very hard to claim that they've substantially, well, that they have sufficiently substantiated the charges of treason, which again, very dire charges. It would be hugely consequential if it were true. And I think that the conservatives who say, well, they did it to us first. Here we go, are missing the mark here. It's a profound error, and I would love to see the country be placed on stronger footing here.

[Isaac Saul]

We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. Here's a stat that stops people in their tracks. Nearly half of American adults say that they would suffer financial hardship within six months if they lost their primary income earner. If that stat hits close to home, you're not alone and you're not out of options. Policygenius makes finding and buying life insurance simple, ensuring that your loved ones have a financial safety net they can use in case something happens to you, whether to cover debts and routine expenses or even to invest the money and earn interest over time. You can compare quotes from top insurers and find coverage that fits your needs and your budget. With Policygenius, you can find life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for $1 million in coverage. It's an easy way to protect the people you love and feel good about the future. You can secure your family's future with Policygenius by heading to policygenius.com to compare free life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com.

[Trisha Hershberger]

Hi, it's Maddie from After Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal on the Most Terrifying Places in America. Travel with ghost hunters, psychics and historians as they uncover the chilling truth behind America's paranormal hotspots. From a haunted hotel in New England to a Texas warship where the dead still walk the decks. It's a podcast that's part cross country road trip, part ghost tour. Listen to most terrifying places in America wherever you get your podcasts.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, I mean, look, that, that it's, I, I don't know what to do, but just laugh at the trees and stuff. I mean, saga. And Jenny asked me this today on our interview. Like, tell me a little bit about what it would look like for the Trump administration to charge Barack Obama.

[Camille Foster]

Oh my God.

[Isaac Saul]

And I was like, I literally don't have the imagination to explain that to like, I'm saying that's my honest answer. Andrew McCarthy, who I think has been awesome on this writing in National Review, I mean, a guy who wrote a whole book about this in the framework that this was a scandal and that Obama tried to destroy Trump's presidency in concert with the Clinton campaign. I mean, that is the framing of his book. He's been sort of just like, like Gabbard is undermining the project of making people take this seriously by doing all this nonsense, you know, and what he said in his piece today was like putting aside that Obama's insidious actions were not crimes, that he was not charged by Durham after a four year investigation, and that any possibility of indicting him for 2016, 2017 actions lapsed under the five year statute of limitations years ago, which is for conspiracy. You know, does Gabbard disagree with Trump that former presidents must have immunity from prosecution? Which is also a funny point that, that Trump has been arguing that for years. So, you know, it's like, it's so absurd. I, I do think it's worth maybe stating for me, at least, I'll kind of state my theory of the case here. Like, if you were to ask me to summarize what we now know as we sit here in 2025 about the sort of Russia collusion story and what happened to me, it's that the Obama administration was working with the Hillary Clinton campaign to damage candidate Trump. One of the ways that they thought they could do that was by ginning up a lot of concern about his connections to Russia that the Trump campaign then gifted them on a silver platter. Really legitimate concerns, like the Trump Jr. Meeting with the Russian lawyer, Donald Trump himself. You know, Russia, if you're out there listening, we want the emails, all the weird financial connections, whatever George Flynn talking to the ambassador, which ended up being not serious or criminal or in any way. But there was stuff there. And I think, to your point, Camille, the Obama administration had legitimate beliefs. We know that actually, because they went to a FISA court before the election was over and they stated their case to the court, which was, we think Russia is behind the hacks of the DNC emails, that they're leaking them through WikiLeaks, that they want to hurt Clinton. And we think that they're working with the Trump campaign. And that was, you know, that was based on shoddy intelligence like the Carter Page warrant. And the surveillance of him we now know was based on, like this weird intelligence community leaking to the press, the press writing these stories, the intelligence community using the stories that the press produced to go get this warrant. And there was, you know, the edited email from the FBI lawyer, Kleinsmith. There was all this really shady stuff, enough to get the FISA warrant, but the administration believed the thing that they were. We have every reason to believe they believed that Trump might be involved. And they certainly thought that Russia was conducting this cyber intrusion on the Clinton campaign. The intelligence assessment that Obama ordered that came happened months after they did that. So it wasn't like Obama gathered them all together and then Told them to, to concoct this theory. They had the theory, they were acting on it previously. The complicating, further complicating part is they do all this stuff. There's all this shoddy intelligence going around. It's clear that President Obama is a part of this. The Clinton campaign, we now have contemporaneous documents, emails, communications, that the Trump Russia connection was critical to their campaign strategy. We also know that because you can go back and watch these debates where, like, Clinton is calling Trump a Putin's puppet and all her tweets are about Trump Russia stuff. I mean, we know all that. So there's this, like, now we have the Clinton campaign using the intelligence, the shoddy intelligence from the Obama administration to concoct this story. They're both just feeding everything to the press. The media is in a frenzy. And then Trump gets elected, and then all the stuff that the Obama administration leaves behind, intentionally, which. Camille, you sent me that fantastic article from 2017 where the new York Times piece by a reporter whom maybe we'll get on the show about the Obama administration ensuring that the paper trail was preserved so that the intelligence apparatus and the incoming Trump administration couldn't bury what they felt like they had found, launches the Mueller investigation. And it's all sort of on this weird, crappy, well, coordinated intelligence, whatever you want to call it, coup against Donald Trump, and then the investigation that Mueller does and the investigation that Durham does and the investigation, or the report that John Ratcliffe, the current CIA director under Trump just issued all confirm that Russia actually did try to interfere in the election, that they did prefer Trump to Clinton, that they did what they could to damage Clinton, but not too much because they presumed she was going to win. And that story is generally still true, even though all the suspicion and stuff and all the public mania and speculation that happened in 2016, 2016, 2017, was based on a lot of really crappy intelligence. That's basically the story that I would tell. And to some people, I think that is, I understand why many people view that as like an unbelievable scandal of massive magnitude. Like a sitting president used the intelligence apparatus. Like people's lives were ruined. I mean, Michael Flynn got railroaded and his life, life was basically destroyed. People like him, lesser known people like him, had their careers destroyed, their families ripped apart. They were, you know, on. Rachel Maddow is doing 50 minute bits about them, framing them as like, Russian spies. Like, yep, a lot of people suffered. And Trump's first term was marred, the first couple years for sure, by this investigation. It slowed him down. It's not why he got impeached, which Tulsi Gabbard claimed absurdly, he got impeached for separate reasons. But, like, it did twice him. Twice. Yeah. So, like, you know, and at the same time, I don't think Obama committed treason. And I think that, like, the right vastly overstates some of this stuff, too. So it's. It's just. I'm sorry, you can't, like, explain this in three sentences. And that's just kind of the reality of where we are.

[Camille Foster]

That's actually. I mean, that is what a great. A great line. I'm sorry you can't explain this in three sentences is actually an apt description of so many of the controversies that we found ourselves stewing in for weeks and weeks and months and months over the past decade plus, that Donald Trump has been kind of at the forefront of American politics even for the four years that he wasn't in office. He was there in the background in the January 6 proceedings, and certainly once he actually declared and started running for office again and through his various criminal prosecutions. And I will say I'm someone who was exceedingly critical of the Russian collusion narrative very, very early on. The reason I recalled that 2017 story is because at the time, I recall reading the story and seeing this picture of Barack Obama with his arms crossed and this pensive look on his face looking down and thinking to myself, God, that is a really generous way to frame what the president is doing. Now. I don't even know that it's nefarious. What I know is that it's strange, it's unprecedented to have an administration doing that to an incoming administration. All these things are incredibly strange, but it is the case that they're all really complicated. And I do think it's worth really fingering the various criminal prosecutions of Donald Trump, the exaggerations of what we knew at the time, what we suspected, the cloud of suspicion that would oftentimes become. The other shoe is about to drop. Very prominent Democrats who would routinely suggest that, we finally have it, we've got it, we're gonna nail them now, only to never, ever deliver on that. And none of that justifies the excesses of the Trump administration circa 2025. And there are plenty of them. And we could kind of go through and detail all of those things, but it does presage it in an important respect. And there are very few times where I'm reading stories about the current goings on where I don't wonder, God, what Would things have looked like if Donald Trump had just won reelection in 2020? It would have been a tremendous. I mean, the world would be dramatically different. And also, what would things have looked like if some of those prosecutions and into Donald Trump, some of which could have been somewhat legitimate in other cases? I think they were a lot more politically motivated than is generally appreciated. What if those had proceeded differently and there'd been a real determination to do things in a way that was above board and seemed impartial? If the January 6 committees, for example, had been conducted in a truly bipartisan way, and that's not to cast aspersions narrowly at the Democrats, I'd say there were lots of Republicans who didn't want to take an honest look at January 6th at the we'd probably be in a very different position. And the question I find myself wrestling with, am I nostalgic for a time that will never come back again, when Congress kind of did things in a reasonable way and you could at least have a hope for that kind of bipartisan seeking of truth and an attempt to try and put us on a firmer position when partisanship wasn't everything and when all of the power hadn't just been devolved to the presidency and everyone else kind of throws up their hands. And I'm also beginning to wrestle with another weird conundrum, which is of all the things that are currently going on, the one thing that seems capable of breaking the kind of partisan stranglehold that the president of the United States has over his own party, which has given him a lot of control over Congress, which is controlled by his party, the one thing that might be able to dislodge that is the Epstein case, which is in the controversy inspired by his and his administration's mishandling of the disclosures related to the case. And that is very odd to think about. So there's a lot of strangeness going on here and a lot of questions about what it all means and where we shake out. And quite frankly, from my standpoint, what even a good outcome here looks like for the American people in terms of greater transparency and a healthier politics.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, I'm just trying to catch my breath. Trying to catch my breath. It's 20 minutes since I spoke a word. I've been in listening mode. There's too much for me to even respond to. Isaac just gave us a five year storyline. He just gave us a big theory about how to think about the future and compare it to the past. The only thing that I don't Think I can like, reformat any of what you guys said or add to it. So I think just to give a third thought, which is to try to give some perspective about the moment in relation to the claims of scandal, from the claims that scandal are treason to the idea that this moment is more partisan. We're dominated by an executive more than we've ever, ever been in our lives, that I think there's a human tendency to, while we're on a trajectory, think while we're at the peak of it, that it's going to extrapolate forward, but it's actually peaking, like right now. If you were to ask me, when will the President's powers relative to the executive's control or dominance over the other two branches, when will that peace peak? My answer would be March 2025. I think that we are already seeing Trump want to go through Congress with budget precision, with passing bills. We're already seeing the courts putting firmer guardrails on his opening salvo when he came into office. We're already seeing inter partisan divides spring up that are questioning Trump's stranglehold of his party. Like you were saying about Epstein. I'm less confident to say we've seen the peak of Trump's control of the Republican Party, but I'm saying that if we think about it in terms of what we've already witnessed and felt, we may have seen that peak and that the future of partisan or inter partisan discussion may be getting better. And not as an optimist's view, but as a view of like, at a certain point when you are so far down, there is no farther down to go. So up from here is the only thing that I would add.

[Camille Foster]

Good, good.

[Isaac Saul]

All right, we've got.

[Camille Foster]

I'm feeling more optimistic, Ari. Thank you.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, a little more optimistic. We're, we're about at the hour mark and we've got a few other, a few other topics I wanna, I wanna touch on. So I'm gonna do something on the fly here. I'm gonna invent a little, a little closing segment on the fly here. I've done before on this podcast, a six pack of topics where I basically put, put a clock on for a quick six pack. I've got three that I want to cover before we get out of here. One of them is some of the responses to Ari's excellent climate change piece. And there's a couple of comments here that I'd like to get into and hear Ari respond to. The second is the Hunter Biden.

[Ari Weitzman]

Let's Go.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. The second is the Hunter, Hunter Biden, Channel 5 interview, which, I mean, an absolute banger. It's one of the wildest interviews I've ever seen in a lot of ways. And I just want to talk about briefly. And then the third one is this guy who went on the Jubilee show with Mehdi Hassan and got fired for basically, you know, calling himself a fascist and downplaying the Holocaust. I'd like to. I'd like to have a little cancel culture dialogue with you boys. So, yeah, the first thing that I want to do is touch on the climate piece and we'll go there first, since we've made Ari sit in silence for 20 minutes and listen to us talk.

[Ari Weitzman]

We've done it to Camille and we've done it to you, too.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. So first of all, I will just say I thought this was an awesome piece and I was really proud to publish it. And one of the overarching pieces of feedback that we got, including the top comment on the article now, which is awesome. It's very rare, the top comment on an article is something positive, but in this case it's somebody saying, like, I'm, you know, studied climate science and actually a student of one of the guys that we cited in the story saying, like, this is the best climate change piece I've ever read. And we heard that from a lot of people. We got. I mean, I saw in the inbox we got a lot of people writing in and who are, you know, both people who are like, I'm a client side climate scientist or I work at NOAA or something, and like, this is such a good breakdown of where we are and what's happening. And then other people who were just, you know, normies, like me reading it and saying, like, I feel like I have a much better understanding of this, thank you. But there was a criticism that I want to highlight that I thought was interesting and I'm curious to hear Ari talk about. So. So this came from a reader who. They called themselves New Cavendish on the. That was the username that they used. And I'm just going to read what they said. They said, this is a very interesting. This is very interesting and all the nuances are useful to understand. However, it does not change the basic problem. Global warming is real getting worse, having economic and sociological effects, making some places uninhabitable and stoking migration and taking reasonable action now to mitigate the damage. Transition to clean energy could make a real difference while saving something like current developed world living standards. The problem is that Any rhetoric that appears to tone down the problem, a quote unquote problem, but not a catastrophe, will be seized upon by the ill intended climate skeptics who purport to think there is no problem or that the problem can't be addressed to stop or even reverse progress toward the energy transition, which could transform the problem into something actually resembling a catastrophe. Basically accusing Ari of doing this in his piece. Think of the little children now in kindergarten. What will they face if they live as they should past 2100? We owe it to them to do whatever we can to reduce the problem and avoid the catastrophe. It just occurred to me, by the way, do we say 2100, 2100, 2100. How do we talk about that year? I literally don't know the year 21 there.

[Ari Weitzman]

If we get there, will we?

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, we. I might. I'll be 109. So do the math on that question.

[Ari Weitzman]

Is just to me to respond to that comment.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, I'd be curious to hear you respond to that comment because I think this was the top, this was the most highly rated one on the article. And I actually see that you replied to it briefly in the comment section.

[Ari Weitzman]

But yeah, I remember.

[Isaac Saul]

It was a sentiment that I think was widely shared among our readers. Like, oh, well, intentioned piece, Ari. But you're still like giving fodder to all the climate skeptics and people who think that, you know, this isn't a big deal and we don't have to do anything about it or can't fix it.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, I think there might be a philosophical difference of opinion between how I think about conversing with people who disagree with me and how this people like this commenter did do so. Something that I said in response to this was to the effect of I don't think that pieces that deliberately lean into alarmism or that heighten the worst case scenario actually help. I think they hurt because I think it gives people who are skeptical reason to be skeptical. A lot of the people who are skeptical and I watched this Flat Earth documentary, which I love the way it ended, where there was a science conference where somebody who's a Flat Earther challenges people who are like scientists in this conference and is like getting jeered. And one of the scientists said, that person is a scientific thinker. They are challenging a model and they're trying to ask questions and probe a theory. Somewhere along the way we as a community lost them. And that's on us. It's not on them. And I think about that all the time. When we comments and feedbacks, questions, criticisms from climate skeptics. They're skeptics because they asked the question and they did not get a satisfying answer. And when you tell people who ask a good question, who don't get a good answer that they're actually asking a bad question and that they should feel ashamed, you're not making the problem better, you're making the problem worse. So my philosophy is what's the question that we're asking one of them? I'm just going to give an example from a reader that I've been corresponding with who said they are challenging this theory of global warming. I always ask anytime somebody's skeptical of it, I say it's a pretty tight theory. So tell me where you disagree with it. The tightness is we've observed that the Earth's getting warmer. We know that greenhouse gases cause the Earth to like, they insulate heat on the planet at the surface and they make the planet warmer over time. And we know that emissions from humans have caused those, those same gases to increase in proportionally in the atmosphere. So it's a logical conclusion to say those emissions are causing warming, that warming is causing global or climate change in general. So where do you disagree? And this person said I that they disagree with the temperature readings and they gave me good reasons. They said if you look back at how we were taking temperature readings in the 40s, they're near airports, places that, that are close to black body or sorry, heat, urban heat islands where these temperatures are going to be exaggerated. We haven't corrected for that in a way that is satisfactory. And I think that we have seen in my lifetime some cooling, some times when the Earth has gotten cooler and some winters that were harsher. This is like a person who's older than I am, so they have a deeper personal memory. And they said this warming that we're feeling right now, it could just be a neutral correction. And that I was happy to engage with that. And there's reasons why we know that the Earth is getting warmer. We have corrected for those readings. We can corroborate that the Earth's getting warmer through secondary side effects. Like one of the best ones is something called the cherry blossom curve where you just look at how that, what day of the year the cherry blossoms in Kyoto have bloomed every season and it's been getting earlier and earlier. Not direct information, but secondary information that all supports this as well as like ice core data. It list goes on. And I'm not the expert in temperature readings, but I've talked to them and that's the answer that they give. So I think it's better to give that response rather than tell somebody that they should be afraid of the worst possible thing, which I think this comment is doing a little bit of. They're saying there's going to be catastrophic warming. I hope our kids kids live to 20, 100. And when I spend several weeks talking to climate experts and asking them about their predictions and they're telling me three and a half degrees of warming, this is not a great outcome. It's something where we think there's going to be major effects because of this low lying island nations are going to be very impacted. Some of them may not exist and there's going to probably be massive migrations, probably be changes in the way that we're growing crops. We don't know the effects of that. Saying that we do is irresponsible and implying that therefore because of the knock on effects, our children aren't going to be able to grow up in a stable war world. Is doing that exact thing that I'm concerned about. It is creating a narrative that people can say. I don't think I buy that. And it's tough to me to say why, but I'm seeing article after article tell me this. Therefore something is just not adding up to me and I think there's more to the story than they're telling me and I doubt it. And it's hard for people to draw that reasonable conclusion to tell them to tell, to say exactly why. Some people can, a lot of people can't. But it's a reasonable thing to be skeptical. And I think that that's the way that I end is anytime that there's somebody who's skeptical of something where I think they're wrong, I want to ask the question with them because if they're right then that's a big deal. But if, if they're wrong and I'm confident I should be able to find out why and then we should be able to have a conversation together.

[Isaac Saul]

Well said. I'm gonna. There's like 9 million things I'm tempted to respond to in there, but I'm, I put five minutes on the clock for your answer and you went just slightly over. So I'm gonna keep my mouth shut and move to the second thing that I want to get to and I'm gonna restart this five minute clock clock for our next part two of our, our, our three pack, which is this Hunter Biden interview which Ari, I still, I don't know if you actually ended up getting a chance to watch.

[Ari Weitzman]

I haven't seen this, so I'm gonna seed my time to Camille here.

[Isaac Saul]

We'll be right back after this quick commercial break.

[Trisha Hershberger]

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[Isaac Saul]

Hunter Biden sat down with Andrew Callaghan from Channel 5, who I'm a, I'm, I'm a partisan for Andrew Callaghan. He's from the Philly area. I've been following his YouTube career for a long time, since he was kind of a nobody. He's about my age. He does like old school vice, guerrilla style journalism and he just kind of kills it pretty consistently. I have literally no clue how he got this interview. I, I just can't even begin to imagine what happened in the background. But Hunter Biden sat down with him for like, like three hours and some remarkable stuff came out of it, including like some really candid Hunter Biden on his addiction and also some really candid, like Hunter Biden defense of his father. Just lambasting the Democratic Party, you know, talking about how irrelevant George Clooney was and how all these guys can basically like eat and die and he hates them and what I mean, it was like, like some unhinged stuff too. Camille, I'm curious to like, what, what stayed with you after watching some clips or the full interview or whatever. Just like, I'm very interested to hear. I mean, this was like in a lot of ways one of the more revealing, accessible moments we've had with the Biden family, which is like notoriously closed knit and, you know, not press friendly, I would say.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah, I mean it doesn't take one much to imagine that the Biden White House really didn't want Hunter to be front and center, answering a bunch of questions on camera in a context like this or any other context, to be quite frank. Not because his father didn't love him, but because he was deemed a liability and perhaps even because there was some concern for what it might mean for Hunter personally to kind of amplify some of the criticism he was receiving at the time. And plenty of it, I think, had some merit to it. A lot of the rest of it was deeply unfair. But to set that aside for a moment, one, I think that this was just yet another reminder of the central importance of independent media. I heard him refer to himself as a journalist and this as a product of journalism, and I think that's a fair description. It wasn't particularly adversarial at any point. There was a lot of head nodding, and there wasn't an attempt to get into some of the sharper controversies that have painted Hunter in a bad light, which I suspect was probably important to getting the interview. That said, I think you do learn a fair amount from watching it. Hunter is clearly out to settle a few scores, disclosing information about Nancy Pelosi and what her desires were and talking openly about people who were very critical and who he feels. And I imagine the Bidens generally feel kind of betrayed their trust and were disloyal at a moment when they were uniquely vulnerable and continuing to make this case, which I think is highly dubious, that Joe Biden was not just kind of capable of doing the job, but capable of winning. Part of the reason why Hunter is the one telling this story now and making this forceful case is because his father is perhaps not really capable of doing it anymore already at this point, which makes. Makes it hard for one to imagine him being in office today as President of the United States. So I think that part is very difficult. I came away from the entire exchange thinking much more highly of Hunter Biden. I mean, he's competent and he's bright, and he could have been a very capable advocate for this administration, even in his compromise position. But I don't think even if they'd let him loose earlier on, that he would have changed the outcome of the election. I think once folks saw Joe Biden for themselves out on stage, once they had an understanding of Operation Bubble Wrap, which was the real name that they gave the operation to conceal Biden's decline from the public, and this is them, the administration themselves, I think it would have been Impossible for him to get reelected. But it was interesting, compelling, even a bit invigorating to see someone who has been so maligned and scrutinized have an opportunity to defend themselves and really to do it with a very bad hand, do it in a really capable way. I will say, in particular, with respect to kind of his candid talk of drug addiction, I thought it was really good, thought it was compelling, and thought it was honest. I thought his discussion of burisma was interesting, although I don't know that he completely redeemed himself. But I think the point that he made there around the fact that I could have done any number of things. Yes, I took this job and perhaps there were some issues, but I also just started painting. What could I do that's more clearly separated from my father's role in the White House, but start to paint? The fact that people start to buy the artwork who are friends of the family and perhaps are politically inclined is another matter. But I do think there's a degree of unfairness in the way that one is going to be characterized for just going out and trying to make a living on their own. I also think that the level of open corruption that we see with the current administration versus the last one at times would probably make Hunter Biden blush. So it was interesting and compelling again, at the same time. I don't think it. It redeems the administration, the previous administration, in the way that Hunter might have imagined or hoped it would have. But I'm sure that it inspires a lot of people who had some faith and confidence in them and wanted them to do better and were hoping for a bit of a do over.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, it's interesting, I would say quickly, because I only have about a minute, is I was surprised at the way I felt about him leaving the interview, which, like you, I mean, he was sort of oscillating between these really approachable descriptions of what his life was like in the depths of addiction. And then, you know, talking about really, like, complex legal history and, you know, they were going off on tangents about, you know, certain moments in the civil rights movement and how some of the legal precedent from the Supreme Court then relates to things we're seeing now. And you're like, oh, yeah, he did. He was like a Yale Law School graduate who, like, you know, you assume all that stuff is just nepotism and whatever. And then I hear him talk in kind of a long form like this, and it's sort of undeniable that he's a smart guy who Has a lot of really interesting knowledge and has witnessed so much of this stuff firsthand, I would say. The other thing I thought was interesting was he gave a really candid and I thought convincing defense of Kamala Harris. Not convincing in the sense that she was like. Like a good politician or whatever, but convincing in the sense that I believe that he really loves her. And he said, like, she's been. She was there for me and my family. She never turned her back on us. And like, you know, basically said, like, all this. All the stories about her and my dad being at odds were. And like, I love her like family and I thought she ran a great campaign and I think she would have been a great president. And, like, nothing about the way he said it or approach it struck me as somebody who was, you know, like, giving bs.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah, he didn't have to say anything.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, yeah. The exact quote was, she did everything that she could to support my dad and to support me and my family personally. I mean, I truly love her like family. I think she would have made an incredible president, and I think she ran an incredible campaign, you know? Yeah. Just. Just very interesting. I'll say. Lastly, there were some really good, like, I have to admit, some pretty funny content came out of the interview.

[Ari Weitzman]

It's an Andrew Callahan special. Then some. Some fun figure. Like, he's great at that.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. I saw one person tweet that, like, watching Hunter Biden describe the difference between crack and cocaine is like watching LeBron James talk about basketball. And then it's just this clip of him, like, doing this incredibly in depth analysis of. Of the difference, like the chemical difference between crack and cocaine. Cocaine and how they feel.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. Somebody else said, I. I'm going to call out Lindsay, our associate editor. We shared the interview in the Slack channel. And Lindsay was like, hunter Biden looks pretty good. And I was like, whoa, Lindsay. And then there was a really funny tweet that I saw today, which was, hunter Biden looks better at 55 on a steady diet of ketamine and boy below than Brian Johnson looks at 47 after micro calibrating the air in his sleep room where he logs his boners. Which is.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah, that is not entirely fair, but sure, yeah, yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

But it is just a picture of Hunter Biden versus the guy. For those of you who don't know, Brian Johnson's like the longevity guy who does all this insane stuff to ensure that he'll live forever, who's 10 years younger than Hunter Biden and. And admittedly doesn't look that Much better than him. Him. Yeah. Really, really funny stuff. It was a fascinating interview. I recommend it. Like I said, I think Andrew Callaghan does great work. All right, last. Last one in the. In the three pack. And it's another YouTube story. Interestingly, we don't really get into YouTube that much on this show, but some bangers out there this week. Mehdi Hassan went on Jubilee, which is the new YouTube sensation. For those of you who don't know, there is a fundamental premise. One guy sits in a circle surrounded by a bunch of people who disagree with him on some particular thing. And then like a buzzer goes off about a claim the person in the middle is making, and people run up to a seat sitting across from that person to debate them live, one on one. And so Mehdi Hasan is the very liberal British American and Muslim, which is relevant here. Broadcaster and writer. He has his own newsletter, used to be on msnbc. And he's been around for a while and very well known for, you know, conducting really combative interviews and being quick on his feet and. And he was surrounded by 20 far right, quote, unquote. That's how Jubilee framed it. Trump supporters. And they debated all sorts of things. And in one of these moments that happened, this guy who we found out later, you know, they're not really identified in this, the show, but there is a guy named Connor who comes up and debates, debates Mehdi about something related to immigration. And Hasan. Oh, no, sorry. It was actually Hasan was defending the claim that Trump is defying the Constitution. And then Connor is the one who wins the seat. And he basically argues for autocracy in the United States. He praises Carl Schmidt, who is the Nazi party political philosopher. He said there was, quote, a little bit of persecution of Jewish people during the Holocaust, which just, you know, that one definitely got my hair on the back of my neck up a little bit. And then Hasan asked him, you're a fan of the Nazis. And Conor says, I frankly don't care about being called a Nazi at all. And then Hasan later says, we may have to rename this show because you're a little bit more than a far right Republican. What can I say? Connor of replies. And Hasan says, I think you say I'm a fascist. And he says, yeah, I am. And then he sort of smiles and a bunch of the other far right people in the circle clap. This guy gets fired from his job. Turns out that he's actually a Catholic commentator. It's like how he identifies himself online. Twitter. He's like a Catholic political commentator. He gets laid off from his job. He actually had like 15 or 20,000 in followers on Twitter and people put it together that it's him and he blows this up, starts a GoFundMe, starts raising thousands of dollars because he lost his job. So my little five minute spiel that I'll, or I guess five minute segment that I'd like to engage you guys on is like, cancel culture. Yes. No, good, bad. Should people like this be, you know, liable to lose their job for an appearance like this on a YouTube show? I will do mine in 30 seconds, which is, yeah, I think private market working. If I have a, someone works for me who went on some YouTube show that got millions of views and they were like arguing that the age of consent should be lowered to 12 years old, they're free to have that position. And I am like, yeah, go ahead, you can believe that. But like, you're not going to work for my company while you share that view and espouse it publicly. So bye. That's not cancel culture. That's just like the free market kind of doing its thing, repercussions for your views. So I, I shared that perspective on Twitter. I mostly got support for it, but there are a lot of people saying like, you know, I'm drawing an artificial line and therefore I'm opening the door to this kind of, of long term cancel culture culture. So what do you guys think?

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, I'm going to go first. The first, I got a couple things. So first is that this old chestnut now that freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. So if you go out and you make an ass of yourself, then people might say you're making an ass of yourself. And them saying that is not persecution. It's not reverse persecution. It's just people responding to the thing you did first. If I'm going to, to publicly step into the ring with Mehdi Hassan, I'm going to be laced up for that. That guy is good at what he does. And I'm going to be prepped and if I'm not prepped, I'm going to have to face the consequences for that choice. That's like, that's number one. Number two, he's not being like falsely maligned here. The things that he said are the things that he's on tape saying, nobody made him say, say I'm a fascist or they did a little bit of persecution during the Holocaust. Like that's the stuff he said. The third thing is a little compare contrast between what this is and what I think the General narrative of Cancel Culture was in, like, 2017 to 2020, that era, which is somebody kind of anonymously online, like, inconspicuously says something that maybe gets taken out of context. Like, like, I forget the guy's name, but the guy who was the lead singer for the the Long Winters, like the Seattle alt rock band, was saying that he was making his daughter try to open a can of beans before dinner. And, like, saying, we're not gonna have dinner until you open these beans. And then wasn't. And then stopped tweeting for, like, two hours. And then people were like, this guy is starving his daughter just because. Just to teach her a lesson. And then he comes on, like, five hours later to see that he's been brigaded. And it said, guys, I opened the beans for her. We had dinner. I was just, like, making her work through a puzzle, and we're kind of enjoying it. And she got a little frustrated because she's six or whatever. And then I tweeted that because I thought it was funny. And then we just went about our day. You're going nuts. But he got canceled on Twitter. And that there's the people who will say something in public and get filmed and not know it, and then people will find who they are, dox them, and then they'll face consequences for something they didn't know they were being filmed for. That's cancel culture. You deciding to go toe to toe with a great debater and saying things willfully that are, like, the opinions that a lot of people would object to, and then having your employer say, that's not a good look for our company. That's not cancel culture. That's. That's something different.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, it's sort of like showing up to, like, a Charlie Kirk campus appearance and debating him and then complaining afterwards that, like, Charlie Kirk put up clips of him crushing you in public. You know, it's like, you literally asked for this. Like, you. That is. He is like the right wing media Hassan. You know, at the same time, you were.

[Ari Weitzman]

And you were saying, like, also, Mao was right and we should do more persecution of public intellectuals. Like, that's if that happens at that same time. Right?

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[Camille Foster]

I mean, I will say briefly, I have definitely laughed at these jubilee interactions before. I don't even know what else to call it. You know, it's amusing sometimes to watch people get pantsed. Watching Hasan run through everyone in this particular event was less than entertaining and at times, deeply depressing. To address the specific question that you raised, Isaac, I would agree. This is not in fact, an example of cancel culture. I'm someone who's deeply concerned about free speech and free expression especially well, both in the cultural context and in the formal legal context. I'm an absolutist, certainly when it comes to the state infringing on an individual's right to free expression. And in general, I support a kind of broad pluralism for individuals. But I believe as well that private companies obviously have to have an ability to decide, yeah, we'd rather not have you work here. I think that is especially true when you're openly advocating for fascism, autocracy, and offering up apologia for Nazism. This is a bit weird and strange and we ought to have our right to distance ourselves from you. I do think ultimately though, this boils down to a young man making a very imprudent decision to go on television and openly share what he knows to be opinions that are less than savory, less than popular and mainstream, and sufficiently dangerous for him to advocate for that. He uses a pseudonym online and almost to the point where he was asked his name and before giving it, is about to say his pseudonym because he forgets that he's apparently on video now having a conversation with someone that is likely to be viewed by millions and millions of people. And I suspect he's somewhat rejecting that decision today. I do wonder a bit, having watched the cross section of people that participated in that event, and I didn't watch the entire thing, but I watched a fair amount of it, embarrassingly, how representative it is of the extremely online right and the kind of progression of ideas there. I wouldn't call it quite an evolution, but the development perhaps of ideas there, the things that are, are kind of catching on. I hope it's not representative because it's not a great, great showing for them.

[Ari Weitzman]

I mean, the thing was, hey, you're calling me fascist. Sure, yeah, I'm a fascist. That's what it felt like he was going for, but didn't quite hit that.

[Camille Foster]

I think he went a little further than that.

[Isaac Saul]

I would say the whole of the video, you know, I, I probably watched 75% of it and I was left feeling very much like what Camille is saying. Like, it's hard to know whether Jubilee just went out and found, you know, the most extreme people they could find, or they got a really good sampling of kind of what the next generation of right, right wing thinkers and like voters is going to look and act like. But I found it fairly disturbing too. I mean, there's just like so much illiberalism and historical revisionism and like, really genuinely kind of gleeful open disgust for immigrants and people who aren't. I mean, like, you know, I think like, three of the people told Mehdi, like, to his face, I want you out. Like, you're not an American. Get out of my country, basically. And they're not. It's not like they're not doing it to be trollish. Like, they are pissed. And I'm not saying that it's like, oh, I'm unaware that. That obviously I know that exists out there. But, like, these were people expressing this, like, in the specific context of a much more fleshed out political worldview that they all sort of shared, which is what I found kind of alarming about it. Yeah, it's worth watching just because it's a little bit insightful. And I think also you get to see some of the stuff that they're arguing. There are certain debate moments where, like, it's really obvious when they're on more solid ground, like, stuff about, you know, the impact of immigration on these smaller towns or, like mass immigration and jobs and stuff where they might have points that are really worth wrestling with with. And then where it's like, really easy for Hassan to sort of just deconstruct what they're saying and make them realize how stupid it is. It was sort of insightful, I guess, in that way. But yeah, you. You might find it deeply depressing and maybe will feel like you wasted an hour of your life if you watch it. So don't come blaming me if you do that. All right, that concludes our first ever three pack, which I'll make a better name for that. And we'll do more the short segments so we can hit a lot of things. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break.

[Trisha Hershberger]

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[Camille Foster]

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[Isaac Saul]

It'S time to complain, and I think this might be Camille Foster's magnum opus of grievances coming up. So, John, you can play the music. We'll save Camille for last.

[Camille Foster]

The airing of grievances. Would you please believe When I was.

[Isaac Saul]

18, I had a silver dollar collection. I'm gonna go first. I got locked out of my path.govpa.gov or something, which is the Pennsylvania tax computer system. It's like how I pay my taxes in the state of Pennsylvania. And it is shocking how bad some government technological systems are. I've been locked out of this account for literally six months. So I haven't been able to pay my Pennsylvania state taxes. And I've been getting these automated email notices from them informing me that your your account has been inactive for six months. So in three months we're gonna shut your account down. That has like all my tax information and logins and whatever and all the business stuff related to Tangle. So six months ago, you know, I get that notification and I'm like, all right, I've got some time to deal with it. I, like put it on my to do list. I don't really get to it. A few months later, I got another notification. You know, now it's like a month out. So I'm like, okay, I gotta solve this. So I start requesting the password. You know, I forgot my password. I'm requesting the password associated with my username. I'm not getting A reset password email to any of my inboxes. So I'm like, I don't know what's going on. Email the help, you know, wait for weeks, don't get any response. And this goes on for like the last six weeks. Just like every week, I'm getting a new email from the Pennsylvania tax department telling me my account is about to get shut down in X amount of days. And the days are getting shorter and shorter because, you know, I'm inactive. And I keep requesting the password or my username, trying all these different combinations, and then getting locked in, out. And so this week I get a notice that's like, you have 10 days to solve this. And I'm just like, okay. Like, I need, like, I'm doing this today. This will be like the thing I do today. So I call up our tax guy, I get him on the phone. We're like going through our records trying to find the passwords. So I go to the MyPath website and I haven't tried logging in in months or not months. I guess a few weeks. And I open the My path thing and I type in a password one time, one of the ones that we think it might be, and it says it's not the password. And it immediately tells me, you've logged in, you've attempted to log in too many times, try again later. So, like, does like, the real freeze on your account. So I'm just like, jesus Christ. So then I request a new password. And so it sends me. And this time, for the first time ever, I get the reset email. And I'm like, oh, my God, we did it. Okay, click the email to reset my password. I go to reset my password. It asks me me the security question. I answer the security question correctly because I. It's one of my go to security questions. And I. I click, I click enter. And then it says, you've attempted too many logins. You've attempted too many, like, password resets. You've been locked out of your account. Try again later. So now I can't reset my account. So then I call, we call the My Path Taxer service. Call them up. They, we go through this hold process. We're on. Wait, whatever. We finally get an agent. The agent's like, oh, are you an LLC or personal? And we're like, oh, we're an llc. And he's like, oh, sorry, I can't help you. Like, I only help people log in who are filing personal income taxes. I'm just like, really? Yeah, let me transfer that department. You're the next person up in the queue. Okay, no problem. Transfers me to that department. First thing we hear, automated message. You're the 37th person in the queue. Please wait while you're the first person to get to the queue.

[Ari Weitzman]

To the queue.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. So, yeah, me and. Me and this our dear friend Casey, who does a lot of the financial planning and taxes for Tango. We literally sit on hold for an hour and a half. And I just spent three hours of yesterday trying to do this. An hour and a half on the phone with the hold music playing in the background, writing to hold music, which is a nightmare. And then we finally get an agent on the phone and he's like, oh, what's your username? I tell him the username and then like two second pause. Okay, I just got you a new password. I'll give it to you. One second. Gives me the password, I log in and I'm just like, that's it. This is all it took. And it took me six months, but the saga is over and I'm logged in and very pissed off that everything about the Pennsylvania system sucks. He apologized for the wait. Sort of. I don't want to say blamed it on government cuts, but vaguely was like, you know, things have been really tough around here and we don't have the same resources we used to, basically. So, yeah, that is my grievance for the week is that I had to spend hours and hours and hours over the last few hours, months, just trying to unlock my account just so I could give the government a bunch of my money, which they really don't deserve. When nothing they build works properly.

[Ari Weitzman]

They just need more of it.

[Camille Foster]

Isaac, that's. That's.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, exactly. A few more Pennsylvania tax dollars and I'll be able to reset my fucking password into my tax account.

[Ari Weitzman]

It's a very familiar story. That's. We were sharing in Tangle Slack a couple weeks ago. This article, this great article in the Atlantic from Chris Collins about sludge, which he refers to as the. This thing that slows you down when you try to interact with any large organization and how the customer service is always like almost intentionally bad. And that, that's like the same narrative. It's like you try it. Canceled, disconnected. The friction is the point. And then eventually you reach somebody who's like, yeah, I got it. And then they'll help you. And they're like, where was this person? And the answer is they were hiding. And they were hiding. Hiding on purpose. Not like they were hiding, but the. The labyrinth around them was constructed intentionally and it's. It's. It's bad. Like, I think this is. This is a severe problem. And I think everybody has a story like this, which is saying a lot, and it sucks. And I'm sorry it happened to you.

[Isaac Saul]

Thanks, man. I appreciate the empathy. All right. All right, you're up. We're going to give Camille last today.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, I can actually go pretty quick here. So I was saying at the beginning of the call how annoying it would be person to complain about the messages they get on their birthday. So I'm going to do that. A specific kind of birthday message. This one is an email that I received. It's titled Happy Birthday from Team Toyota of Redacted. I'm going to redact the town name. We'll just call it Springfield. And the email says, on this special occasion and on behalf of all of us at Team Toyota Springfield, we'd like to wish you a very happy birthday. Birthday. Have a great one. That's it. I bought a Toyota from them, I want to say, in 2010. And I'm getting automated messages like this. Just don't do this. Stop doing it. I don't want to get emails from businesses wishing me Happy Birthday or telling me that just for Hanukkah. And because they noticed I might be Jewish, they're giving me a 10% discount on mattresses. Like, I'm not interested in any of that. That. And if you own a business, stop doing this, please. Please. I want to just respond to texting from people I know.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, good. Great. Great point. No emails about your birthday. Just. Well, I can't believe that's a text message or an email you got.

[Ari Weitzman]

That was an email I got from a Toyota.

[Isaac Saul]

That makes more sense. Yeah. They really care about your birthday. It's not that came through back in to buy a new car. All right, Camille, this is what it's all about, man. These are the moments that we live for.

[Camille Foster]

I mean, look, honestly, I've had a rough week. I nearly severed my finger yesterday. I locked myself out of the office today about an hour before we were supposed to start. But that would have been the time we were actually starting if I had gotten my request earlier, because I need to leave here and go directly to the airport for a flight that's already delayed. It's also the week that Malcolm Jamal Warner died tragically, and Hulk Hogan died this morning. So thanks, Ari. It's your birthday. You'll have to always be connected to Hulkamania dying in America. So I feel like I'm losing my childhood as well. You know, it's just all sorts of things are up in the air. But I struggle with the grievance thing on week to week because I don't know what to complain about. There are many things I could complain about, but I'm trying really, really hard.

[Isaac Saul]

To be optimistic and painful and almost finger off, I did.

[Camille Foster]

And I, you know what?

[Isaac Saul]

I will say this key material when.

[Camille Foster]

I call, when I call the locksmith and I say, how much does it cost? And, and, and the first person says, the tech will call you. They'll tell you, okay. And the tech calls me and he says, I'll be there in 20 minutes. Excuse me, how much does this cost? Like, what kind of lock is it? I. I'm not a locksmith. I don't know how to tell you.

[Isaac Saul]

A broken lock.

[Camille Foster]

125, $125 and $150. And I think to myself, what would have to happen for him to give me a $25 discount voluntarily? When he arrives, I have to imagine that the actual price is the upper bound and not the lower bound. Not only that, I go from finding out that the price is $150 when I pull out my credit card to pay for this, he says, oh, It'll be a 6% surcharge. 6%? 6%. That's a lot like 3%. I can appreciate, I can understand that. I've been a merchant who's accepted credit cards before 6%. And I ask, and he throws up his hands. He doesn't know. So here I am now, pressed to complain about something and finding something to complain about.

[Isaac Saul]

I knew there was something to do with.

[Camille Foster]

The same time, I'm really glad that I still have most of my finger. And I've been told that barring some sort of horrible infection that is painful and perhaps even deadly, it'll probably come off the bandages come off in three weeks and I should be fine. It could have been so much worse, and I'm glad it wasn't.

[Ari Weitzman]

And let me be the first to say, hell yeah, brother.

[Isaac Saul]

Dude, if you die from a finger infection, I will pretend I never knew you. That would be the most embarrassing thing ever. I will arrest, erase all evidence of you ever working at Tangle. If you die of a finger injection, you know what?

[Camille Foster]

It doesn't really matter how you go out. I think that's actually one of the more interesting notes from the Hunter Biden interview was where he talked about the universality of suffering. In the context of this interview, not all of us will actually know what it's like to be loved. What we will all know is pain and anguish and suffering. And when you recognize that essential truth about existence, there's something very humbling about that. And I thought to myself, yeah, not only is that absolutely true, I've had that thought before, and it is humbling. And it does make you a little bit more conscientious about how precious life is. So even this in the grievance, I've tried to turn it into something positive and perhaps even inspiring. And if it didn't work on you, well, so much. So much for that. And I'm sorry, the voice is pulling out for you. You'll die soon enough, and then you'll understand. Or not.

[Isaac Saul]

A little bit of Ozzy Osbourne erasure.

[Camille Foster]

Oh, there it is.

[Isaac Saul]

See?

[Camille Foster]

See?

[Isaac Saul]

Not mentioning the death of Ozzy Osbourne. Yeah, they always mistake on my part. That's the rule. Yeah. Yeah. RIP Ozzy Osbourne. Never forget. All right, it's time, fellas. Good to see you guys. We'll do it again next week.

[Camille Foster]

Yes, I think.

[Isaac Saul]

And then. Yeah. And then. Soon to be newly named and branded podcast. I swear that's happening, people. It's coming. Buckle up. Get ready.

[Camille Foster]

Take it easy. Take care.

[Isaac Saul]

Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Sol. And our executive producer producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by John Wall. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kaback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead Bailey, Saul Lindsey Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75 and John Law. And to learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our [e-mail].

[Camille Foster]

Sam.