Loading summary
Transcript131 lines
- [00:00]
Farrah Pets
You were made for taking care of your dog's every need, and Farrah Pets was made for taking care of their digestive needs. Farah's probiotic supplement is made with innovative ingredients, herbs and botanicals specifically formulated to help your dog thrive. Because when it comes to your dog's gut health, we were made for going above and beyond, just like you. Visit farapets.comdog to get 20% off today. That's f e r-a pets.com dog f Farah Pets we Were made for this. If you're an experienced pet owner, you already know that having a pet is 25% belly rubs, 25% yelling drop it. And 50% groaning at the bill from every vet visit. Which is why Lemonade Pet Insurance is tailor made for your pet and can save you up to 90% on vet bills. It can help cover checkups, emergencies, diagnostics, basically all the stuff that makes your bank account nervous. Claims are filed super easily through the Lemonade app and half get settled instantly. Get a'@lemonade.com pet and they'll help cover the vet bill for whatever your pet swallowed after you yelled drop it. My husband and I recently realized that neither of us were getting the sleep we deserved. So we sat down and talked about our ideal beds. For him, soft as feathers. For me, firm as a plank. This would be a huge issue if it weren't for the Sleep Number Smart Bed. Thankfully, with our new Sleep Number Smart Bed, we can each dial in our desired Sleep Number settings to our ideal comfort and finally get the sleep we deserve. Plus, the Climate series feature makes sure our bed stays nice and cool through the warm summer months. Why choose a Sleep Number Smart Bed? So you can choose your ideal comfort on either side. And now it's the Sleep Number Everything Smart Bed Sale. Every Smart Bed and base are on sale during our Memorial Day event. Up to 50% off limited time. Exclusively at a Sleep Number store near you See store or sleepnumber.com for details.
- [02:00]
Isaac Saul
All right, coming up, we talk about Donald Trump's speech in the Middle east, which I have to say I was quite moved by. We were right about Joe Biden. It turns out the things we saw, they were real. And some questions about what exactly the DNC is doing with David Hogg. And then some very, very, very good grievances. It's a good one. You guys are going to enjoy it. From executive Producer Isaac, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. And welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum. Some Independent thinking and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, joined today by Tangle managing editor Ari Weitzman and our newly found, freshly minted editor at large, Camille Foster. The fakest job title there is in all of media. Camille, man, welcome aboard.
- [03:07]
Camille Foster
Thank you, gentlemen. I had so much fun with you during my two previous appearances on this podcast. I insisted that you keep me around. So, yeah, we invented a. Not invented, borrowed a very fake job title and attributed it to me. So I feel very good about that. I'm excited.
- [03:22]
Isaac Saul
I love it, man. Ari, how are you doing today, sir?
- [03:26]
Ari Weitzman
Great. I really appreciated the way that Camille put all of the autonomy onto him for that decision. I was like, you know what? I decided to stay around instead of treating it as like an extended mutual feeling out period. He's like, yeah, you know, I. I think you guys passed my tryout, so thanks. Camille. We're so happy to be on your podcast today.
- [03:47]
Isaac Saul
I love it, Camille. It's my birthday, so. Well, it's not my birthday today. It was yesterday. But if. If you're listening to this and you didn't follow through on my birthday subscription call out. You're guilty. I see you go become a Tangle member to support me. It's my only birthday wish. Maybe a few words about your. Your decision to join the Tangle team. I'd like to share with our audience your viewpoints on the media landscape and why you're here. You could be in a lot of different places right now, like Fox News or the Stuart Stevens show or even geographically. Yeah, you go work for Nick Fuentes.
- [04:28]
Camille Foster
Oh, my goodness. I suppose there are lots of places I could go, but there are very few places where I would want to go. And having met you, Isaac, and gotten to know the team that has done all this great work with you, I've just developed so much respect for your approach to news journalism broadly and kind of daily news in particular. This kind of introspective, boundlessly curious, always willing to interrogate your own opinions. The kind of free flowing conversations that happen behind the scenes when you're actually developing each dispatch. It was all stuff that was just so closely aligned with my own values and was precisely the kind of environment I wanted to be in. And as someone who is routinely reading the news anyways, rather selfishly, I thought to myself, not only would it be very cool to work with them on a regular basis, I'm confident this will make me better at my job, just broadly speaking, being someone who is not only up on these topics, but is carefully thinking through both what's happening, the landscape, the broader context, but why my views on it are what they seem to be. I think always being willing to interrogate your own views and exchange error for truth is something I believe in pretty profoundly and it just is something that I also detected in you all. And it's exciting to be able to conspire together. I'm looking forward to the future and making some trouble and in growing tangles, reach and influence to the extent I'm able to help with that.
- [05:59]
Ari Weitzman
Starting even with the word choice of conspire is very, very interesting. Just making observations.
- [06:05]
Camille Foster
I do host another podcast. We talk about seditious conspiracies which we're involved in. So always some subtle darkness there.
- [06:15]
Isaac Saul
Well, we're glad to have you here. It's well said. I think anybody who listens to that introduction will understand why we are so interested and bring you onto the team. And what a miraculous, serendipitous fit it was with the timing and how everything worked out. So it is truly our honor and I feel like nothing would be more appropriate today, given your addition, than a little bit of media criticism at the top of the show, something that's directly in your strike zone and I guess tying some of that media criticism to some of the work that Ari and I did a few years ago. How should I introduce this? We were right about Biden and God, we took such a beating for it. For people who maybe are not so dialed into some of what's been happening in the news space, which I know a lot of our listeners are die hard news consumers, but this did maybe not make as much noise. It made a lot of noise in the media space, but maybe not as much as it should have in the general public. But Jay Tapper and Alex Thompson wrote this book that was about basically the Biden presidency and his decision to run for a second term that lasted up until the disastrous Democratic debate. And excerpts of that book and some leaks came out this week and they were about as damning, I think, as they could be. The reporting of Biden and the administration and some of his kind of protectors and defendants and sycophants in the media. And it just feels like one of those things that we shouldn't just let go that we should talk about a bit before kind of moving on. I definitely feel the urge to get some things off my chest. I mean, I would say most notably, and maybe just to kick things off, is that we wrote in 2021, in June of 2021, a few months into Biden's first term. Know about this time, into Biden's first term, a piece titled Is President Biden okay? And the kind of exploration in that piece that we pursued was just the president doesn't look quite right. You know, he. He seems to lose his place when he's public, publicly speaking. He has this kind of shuffle that I, you know, recognized in elder grandparents, and this sort of deterioration a few months into office that seemed apparent on him, his body, his mental state. And it felt like a question that was totally reasonable to ask. We actually did a good deal of sort of steel manning the argument for him and against his critics, you know, that he has a stutter, that he is doing an exhausting job and he's an old guy, and that the administration seemed pretty organized at the time. And, you know, it would be. It's hard to imagine that he was completely out to sea or unaware of what was going on, given how smoothly a lot of the things were running. He had a lot of big legislative wins, you know, in his first year in office. And basically what we're learning now is like the things that we were seeing with our own two eyes were real and obvious, and everybody saw them. And the people around him were protecting him from those criticisms in sometimes sinister ways and sometimes ways that were just totally futile. And they couldn't really stop the criticism from pouring in. We got so many cancellations, unsubscribes criticisms, accusations of being ageist, of me being a conservative hack, of us, you know, promoting the cheap fake videos. It was a tough time in terms of the blowback for tangle, and I think I feel quite vindicated now after reading what's out of this book. So I'll maybe just lob it out there to you guys. Most shocking revelation for you or a thing that is going to kind of stick in your memory? From what we heard in. In the pieces of writing that have become public so far, I have a couple that just kind of like jaw agape. I can't believe that's real. But curious if anything really struck you too.
- [10:38]
Ari Weitzman
I have one that immediately comes to mind, which was the lead from this piece that came out in the New Yorker article was describing this fundraiser that George Clooney had put together in between his shooting schedule and at the fundraiser. There was a clutch beforehand and then there was a big Q and A with Jimmy Kimmel and Barack Obama with Biden on stage. And then afterwards, meet and greet and get check signed and all that. And I think a lot of the focus is Going to be on the Clooney story and the clutch beforehand about Biden not recognizing him. But the thing that kind of stuck in my mind the most was the description of. As Kimmel and Obama were leaving the stage, Obama stuck around and just gave a smile to the audience for a second and a thumbs up. And then he just stayed on stage and looked at the audience and Obama went back out to grab him by the arm and just shuffle him off. And Obama said, or somebody quoted Obama as saying that he just wanted to get off the stage at that moment. He just wanted to get the hell out of there. But he saw that Joe needed help and he went back to get him. And something about that has such. This. Such a resonant quality to it, knowing that Obama has this deep friendship with Biden that goes back decades. And he had this massively conflicting feeling of, I need to leave, but there's my friend, I gotta get him. And how awkward of a moment that must be for a former president to go and do for another president. Just an astounding image to think about. And to a hall of fame Democrat donors. Just that, just that image of what that must look like on stage from Obama's perspective is something that stuck with me.
- [12:29]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, that's a good one.
- [12:30]
Camille Foster
I'm reliably skeptical of politics generally, politicians in particular, and I think it's a skepticism that kind of verges on cynicism, but is not quite cynicism. I don't trust any of them. I suspect they're lying most of the time. But I was shocked by some of the off the record, on the record stuff that was happening in real time where someone would have one of these private experiences with him and then within days, maybe the same day, be publicly saying exactly the opposite about his faculties and capabilities. And I think that's the thing that is most in the front of my mind. I know Alex Thompson a little bit, and we've talked about Biden while he was initially starting to do the reporting, and talked a bit about the kind of withering criticism that he was receiving, like you guys did, but a bit later actually from other journalists, not, you know, just policy people, not folks in the administration who were upset about the coverage, but from other journalists, both privately and publicly. So it's. It's interesting that so much of this didn't get reported. My sense is that there had to be a broad universe of people who were aware of his decline at the time, prominent Democrats. That would have been true at the time when Biden should have been facing some primary opponents, but really didn't. But it was certainly true in the months leading up to that debate where it became undeniable that something was wrong and something needed to change.
- [14:03]
Isaac Saul
I. Yeah, I think it's a great point. Like the, the sort of clash. The. One of the things that I heard, you know, Camille, I listened to you on, on Megan Kelly yesterday, and you guys talked about some of this in the first half of the show, which was a nice coincidence since. Since we had it teed up today. And she made the point that I thought was, you know, that didn't really occur to me, but it was very salient, which is like the George Clooney op ed. He had this experience and then he waited basically a whole month until the actual dnc, like, the debate happened to release. It's like. And he's one of the top donors, faces of the party. And I understand he was pressing behind the scenes, but it is remarkable to me to think somebody like that with so little to lose, so much money and influence and weight to throw around, he was scared into silence until it became obvious to everybody after the debate what was happening. I mean, he was unwilling to go out publicly and say this to the world until everybody saw it with their own two eyes at the debate or, you know, the kind of floor came out on it, which I think is just a nice encapsulation of the kind of environment that this was all happening and how difficult it must have been for a lot of people to speak up. Like, if George Clooney's not willing to say something, he's not in the party, he doesn't have a job tied to politics. He's not a staffer, he's not an aide. He's just like an influential donor. And he wouldn't do it. Which, you know, struck me at least a bit, the quote that will stick in my head. My answer to this is one. A Hollywood vip, they called him. So, you know, I'm assuming some sort of actor, producer who is at this event, that Clooney was at the quote, which was not attributed in this story, that he. It was like watching someone who was not alive. It was startling. And we all looked at each other. It was so awful. It's hard to imagine, like, what kind of state somebody has to be in for that to be the quote that comes out of it. I wish Tapper and Thompson got this person on the record because I'm earnestly curious who it was, but it was, you know, that quote, to me, just. It was like watching Somebody who is not alive. Which, again, there were moments. It wasn't a constant throughout the Biden presidency, but there were moments where I felt that way watching him, like he looked catatonic, like he didn't know where he was. And I couldn't understand the point he was trying to make and the degree to which it was so difficult to talk about that without getting this huge blowback. And all the throat clearing you had to do about not being ageist and not talking about all old people and that, you know, he has a stutter and that the job's hard and whatever. Like, you just couldn't just say, this guy looks like he's not alive. We should probably do something about that. It was a pretty. Pretty remarkable. It was a pretty remarkable thing to read this in retrospect, knowing all the things we knew then and being able to look back on them now.
- [17:19]
Ari Weitzman
I think the question of retrospect is kind of cuts both ways, though, because this is a quote that I would expect to not come out this anonymous quote the day after. I assume that Tapper said that he was writing this book, or Thompson said he's writing a book about this event and probably got this quote at least after the debate, at least, and probably more recently than that. So that quote's gonna be colored a little bit by the retrospect of the person saying it. I do think that there's this Milan Kandera quote that I'm not going to be able to tell you exactly about. How when you look at the legacy of a person's life, you see a person's footsteps and the decisions that they made in the fog of war. And you see the footsteps, but you don't see the fog. And when we look back at this time, it's very easy for us to look at the decisions we made as a news organization or that other people made who were near Biden. But we kind of forget what things were confusing us. What was the fog around this? And one of the things that was foggy was he just gave this really good State of the Union. People who were closer to him were saying things that felt believable based on some of the things that we saw. Like, he did have good days and bad days. It wasn't just this linear decline into being catatonic. And there is reasons for people with partial information to be skeptical, including people like Clooney. I have a little bit of a hard time being super critical of him, knowing that he's an actor and was going to film a movie right after like it shouldn't be George Clooney's responsibility to do this. But I mean, to your point, Camille, like, we should be skeptical of politicians and the people who work for them and their aides. But if we're looking to lay blame anywhere, it's with people who are telling us partial information, knowing the whole story. And I know that's kind of the point of this book here and why we're saying it's good that we're getting this information. We should have gotten it sooner. But that seems like the heart of it is why weren't we getting the information when we should have been?
- [19:19]
Camille Foster
Yeah, I agree with so much of that. I mean, I think there are a couple of different dimensions here that I'd try to quickly underscore. I mean, first, yes, people in retrospect, looking back at this, many of them establishment Democrats are going to talk about this in ways that one, is often still off the record, not attributed to anyone. So that's interesting. Two, make them look clean. You know, did I notice some things at the time? Well, this was the moment when I noticed not many moons before. And that's interesting. And certainly remembering it in a way that kind of gives you a kind of clairvoyance or at least even surrounding it with some context because the Clooney anecdote is surrounded by some context. And that context is, well, Biden had just gotten back from a long trip and I thought maybe that's what threw him off that evening. It is certainly the case that for someone like Clooney, who is a Biden mega donor who was looking to hold multiple events for him that would be record breaking cash hauls for this campaign. He wanted to see a particular Biden. He wanted to believe that his guy could still win. And I can fault him for that. But also, George Clooney is an American private citizen who is able to support whomever he likes. He is not a journalist and he is not a member of the Biden administration. So I do think that it, it's appropriate for us to place particular attention there. And when it comes to journalists, I mean, something that I shared with Megan when we were talking yesterday is I don't think it's appropriate to just boil this down to bias. It is certainly true that much of the media establishment has a particular contempt for Donald Trump reliably and as such is almost by default going to try to pull in Biden's direction. But it's also the case that a climate, a cultural climate can be such that it becomes really Hard to see certain things in real time, as you mentioned, Ari, and it certainly becomes hard to say them aloud when I was doing some reporting on the Central Park Karen situation. Her name is Amy Cooper. Actually, folks, I can remember calling around to journalists barely a year removed from when the original incident in the park happened. And for anyone who doesn't recall, this is a woman who is walking her dog in Central park off leash in an area of the park where it was restricted. She was confronted by a man named Christian Cooper, no relation, who self described gay black man who was an avid birder and didn't like what was happening, tried to entice her dog with some treats and there was a big scandal that emerged because she ended up calling the police. At any rate, I won't tell you any more about my own reporting, but I will say that there were some complicating details and that actually finding people who knew about those complicating details in real time and still didn't report them was not hard. Getting them to explain why they did that, why they didn't share these complicating details was a lot harder. And in a couple of instances I got responses, and in some cases from conservative media outlets, we weren't going to be the ones to offer up that additional complicating detail. Like we didn't want to get crucified. And I think the climate, again, culturally, from the kind of broader societal context, but certainly within the media establishment and amongst particular politicians, this had become the thing that you could not say aloud. So even if you did have that kind of contemporaneous account of the event, that said, look, Joe Biden, he doesn't seem like he's doing very well. You're not gonna talk about it publicly and you're certainly not gonna mention it to a journalist on the record and a journalist who does hear it or see it is going to be very reluctant to write about it. So for all of the criticism that Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson have received with respect to their publication of this book, and perhaps not having seen it earlier or talked differently about things at the time, I think it's worth just considering that broader context and the fact that we're all human and we all suffer from exactly the same proclivities to see what we want to see in certain contexts and to have a real reluctance to say things that we know are going to be reliably unpopular amongst.
- [23:40]
Ari Weitzman
Unpopular specifically with the market you're selling to. Sounds like what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. And you're going to see that every day.
- [23:46]
Camille Foster
Yep.
- [23:47]
Isaac Saul
I'm curious, Camille, I guess, like when you actually broke through and did the reporting on Amy Cooper and complicated the story a little bit, did you encounter the blowback that these outlets you spoke to expected to encounter themselves? Like, how did it actually play out for you in the end? Feels like an important part of that story that, you know, like relating it to what we're talking about now. I mean, Alex Thompson benefit greatly from what he did. He won an award, he gave a speech at the White House press correspondence. Him and Jake Tapper about to sell a best selling book. Like they did the hard thing. Maybe they did it later than people wanted or in a different way people wanted but ended up working out quite well for them. Which, like. Yeah, I'm curious how that played out for you or what you learned from that, I guess by actually not being afraid of that.
- [24:38]
Camille Foster
Yeah, well, I mean, it worked out for Alex and Jake has so thus far worked out anyways. But it was certainly wasn't guaranteed that it would work out. You know, it wasn't clear that there was a book deal here. It's the sort of thing where there have been unusual things that have happened that deserve a serious retrospective and interrogation and that might be embarrassing to one political party or another, but we just don't talk about them anymore as opposed to presenting the people who did talk about them at the time with awards. So that wasn't a foregone conclusion, I'll say. In my own experience, I definitely received a fair amount of criticism when that thing was published. I also received a fair amount of applause. And you can imagine that this kind of broke down along party lines. Republicans were very happy to see a narrative that didn't support the kind of accepted wisdom about that situation, that it was a kind of racial justice thing narrowly. And progressives who were much more inclined to believe the initial account and saw a 30 second video and thought they knew exactly what happened, were a lot less inclined to accept that. There were some complicating details here that were worth considering and that dynamic really hasn't changed. And I don't know that it even really broke through to be totally mainstream. The one thing that really surprised me about the piece that we produced, which wasn't so much about making Amy Cooper look like a hero, it was more about the media and the way in which there seemed to be this just kind of inclination to not look at the things that might complicate the story. And that wasn't what people took away from it at all. When I would see coverage of the story that we produced and the details that we uncovered, for the most part, the only thing anyone wanted to talk about was the fact that Amy Cooper was saying that Christian Cooper scared her in that moment. I would see that over and over again in headlines. And that was hardly the most interesting thing to come out. I mean, there was brand new audio and revelations about the fact that Christian Cooper had been involved in multiple physical altercations in the same park with other people who were walking their dogs. And he attested to that. Like there's audio of him attesting to that. And that doesn't really get mentioned in any of the coverage of the. Of the additional reporting that we did. So it's entirely possible for someone like to complicate narratives in a way that is unpopular and not receive much in the way of kind of applause for having done it.
- [27:13]
Isaac Saul
I want to add two little nuggets to this Biden story before we move on, just because they both. They really stuck out to me. The first one that I just found hilarious was Tapper and Alex. In the book, they do this funny thing where they're introducing the moment that Biden doesn't recognize George Clooney. And they just spend like paragraphs explaining Biden and George Clooney's relationship, which I was just like, that could just be like, Joe Biden didn't recognize George Clooney. It's one fucking sentence. Just. That's the only thing you need to say. There's like no, like, I get it. Their friends, decades old. It's just like, no. What's actually crazy is Biden just like walked up to George Clooney and said hi to him. Like he was just some regular Joe. Some regular, I think is what. What they.
- [28:09]
Ari Weitzman
I don't know. I thought that was good context. It was like he recognized his wife at a dinner two years earlier. Just to say, like, this is not normal for Biden even. Like, I thought that. Would that strengthen the point of it?
- [28:21]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, there was just something kind of that I just like, I couldn't help but laugh. Yeah, it's just like it's. Yeah, like, I don't know, whatever. It's like the most recognizable face in Hollywood. The other thing that nobody really talked about is there was this little one, like, off. I mean, I know both you guys are kind of movie buffs. The article said that Steven Spielberg was prepping Joe Biden for the debates. Did you catch that? I was like, what? Nobody's. What the hell are you Talking. Why is Steven Spielberg prepping Joe Biden for debates and what is the context of that? That struck me as very bizarre. And I have no idea if there's more to that story.
- [29:01]
Ari Weitzman
It sounded like he was doing audio editing and advice for how to make the speech sound more natural because Biden would sometimes speak softly and mumble in a way. And he was giving advice on how to set up the AV so that it would minimize that effect. That's what it sounded like to. I don't know if he had a different way of Camille.
- [29:22]
Isaac Saul
They were like, changing the lighting to make him look less dead, I guess, was the goal.
- [29:29]
Camille Foster
Yeah, I think it's the thing that Biden began doing where he would drop into this whisper for emphasis. And. Yeah, in a debate setting and plenty of other contexts, it's just not going to go over as well. So one can imagine using your Hollywood connections to try and have a more dramatic performance. But that didn't always work out well for the Biden administration. I mean, you remember the Dark Brandon thing with the red lighting at the White House. Like, that was some Hollywood stagecraft that didn't really work the way it was intended. Made him look kind of angry and scary, or at least it was eminently memeable if it didn't actually do that. But I wonder if you remember that there was also a story maybe a year ago about Steven Spielberg directing a Biden biopic, like, about his rise to power, his lifetime of service. I wonder if that project is still going on now that there are some revelations about him being involved in helping to obscure Biden's limitations. You know, one thing that I should mention, the wheelchair thing, I did not know anything about before I read that excerpt.
- [30:34]
Isaac Saul
That's good, too.
- [30:35]
Camille Foster
And you know, that at least gave me a moment of just kind of feeling a bit of sympathy for Biden. I mean, I can imagine myself getting up there in years and because I'm doing it anyways and beginning to feel the aches and perhaps not being able to get around as well anymore and needing a wheelchair and the people surrounding me insisting that I can't do that because it just won't look good. There's a kind of cruelty in that. Even if there's some vanity on your part as an individual letting someone do that, I don't know, it just seems like a. It seems like a lot. And that just stuck out to me.
- [31:25]
Isaac Saul
We'll be right back after this quick commercial break.
- [31:31]
Camille Foster
Still listing your home address on business documents. Stable gives you a permanent business address. One you can use for the irs, banks, vendors, you name it. So you can keep things professional and keep your personal address private. Stable also digitizes all the mail that comes to that address accessible from our secure online Dashboard, which makes it easy to manage your mail from wherever you are. No P.O. boxes, no Ms. Mail. Just one less thing to think about as you scale. Sign up for a virtual address today@usestable.com pod and get 50% off your first three months of a grow or scale plan. That's use stable.com pod your business moves fast. Your mail should too.
- [32:12]
Farrah Pets
My husband and I recently realized that neither of us were getting the sleep we deserved. So we sat down and talked about our ideal beds for him, soft as feathers for me, firm as a plank. This would be a huge issue if it weren't for the Sleep Number Smart Bed. Thankfully, with our new Sleep Number Smart Bed, we can each dial in our desired Sleep Number settings to our ideal comfort and finally get the sleep we deserve. Plus, the Climate Series feature makes sure our bed stays nice and cool through the warm summer months. Why choose a Sleep Number Smart Bed? So you can choose your ideal comfort on either side. And now it's the Sleep Number Everything Smart Bed Sale. Every Smart Bed and base are on sale during our Memorial Day event. Up to 50% off limited time, exclusively at a Sleep Number store near you See store or sleepnumber.com for details.
- [33:09]
Isaac Saul
I had a thought I was going to ask you guys kind of related to that, which was how do we feel about that dynamic? Like I think on the right conservatives that I talked to in like conservative media commentary actually again, I even think Megan Kelly said something about it yesterday is there's like this real disdain for Jill Biden and the family and like for like forcing him into, you know, and I don't really know what to make of that. Like, I think I'm very, my, I'm very split minded about it. Like on the one hand I, I like what you just said, Camille. I feel a great deal of sympathy for him. It was clear that he was aging and if there were people around him sort of forcing him into doing things that he didn't wasn't physically capable of doing. Like there is something about that that feels a little bit like, like icky. Like it makes me feel weird. And then there's the other side of me that's like, I mean I just watched Joe Biden on the View just basically talk about how he would have won and he didn't want to drop out and he knew Kamala wasn't going to win and et cetera. And it's like, oh, no. Like, he totally wanted this. He wasn't like, nobody was, like, twisting his arm to try and stay in the race till the four came out. And I don't know. I'm just. So. I guess I'd be curious what you guys think. Like, I don't really know how to feel about it, but I. Yeah, so I feel that inclination sometimes. Like, yeah, it's kind of nasty what they did. Like the family, the social circle did with him. I don't know if it's reasonable.
- [34:40]
Ari Weitzman
I think the key thing there is that we don't know, and therefore it's hard for us to make statements about that. And my personal stance, where I start from, is family's off limits unless they've got their own skin in the game and, like, their own, like, media campaigns or races they're running or what have you. So I think saying this is Joe Biden's fault, like, we don't really know much about the family dynamics. I understand that she's a doctor, Dr. Joe Biden, so maybe she could have provided more insight. But at the same time. Yeah, at the same time, right. Doctor of Education. But at the same time, like, we don't know what the relationship was there. Like, maybe Biden was extremely obstinate and the best she could do is be supportive. So saying it's the family's fault, we really, really shouldn't be jumping to conclusions about that. And we also don't know this. The amount to which Biden was the one who was being emphatic as opposed to his staff giving him partial information. That's another thing that we really should get more information about so we can make these assertations that will allow us to understand how to avoid things like this in the future. It's the best thing that we can do right now is if there is a staff around, a precedent who's feeding him fake poll results that's making him draw wrong conclusions that are making him make bad decisions for himself, that his family has the support, then we should revise that process. But until we know that, until we get more information, it's hard to say.
- [36:07]
Camille Foster
Yeah, I mean, I mostly agree with that. I think Jill Biden, being someone who was presiding over Cabinet meetings and who was frequently there, there were certainly reports at the time about her role advocating for the president in different contexts, it feels like it's fair game to at least ask questions about this. And I'd go further and say that the most generous assumption that I could make that would offer a kind of redeeming light for Jill is the one that you alluded to there, Ari, that Joe Biden is the one who was uniquely obstinate. And rather than pushing back because she could tell what was happening there, she acquiesced and she supported him and did what she could in her capacity as a wife and kind of confidant and advisor to try and give him as good a shot as he could and to support him in his belief. But that. Actually, I feel like I have to be a bit credulous to embrace that perspective. I mean, we've all had people in our lives who we've watched decline in different ways. And. And if I'm married to someone and I see them almost every day, I think it would just be hard to ignore the kinds of things that we've seen reported, especially over the course of this, this past week, and to be able to see it up close and to not do something about it. I would hope that if it were me, even if I thought the election was on the line, that I would have said the correct thing there. And try to look, you're getting up there. You can't do this. You should enjoy the last years of your life. This is going to be a disaster. Also, I think you've got a duty to the country. He can't do the job. If that's the case, people need to know it. It is of urgent importance and a kind of situation. Sycophancy is a word that has become very popular with respect to our politics. I think it might be the second time I've used it in this very conversation. It is a kind of sycophancy to have a candidate who imagines that they are capable of doing something that they're not really capable of and no one being willing to tell them the truth for fear of how they'll respond. And you saw some attributes of that in the New Yorker's piece as well. I think even Barack Obama suggested, hey, if you say it publicly, he's just going to double down. Okay, all right, that's a good point.
- [38:37]
Ari Weitzman
But I guess I just end by thinking that even though we can't say it was the incorrect thing to not push back more as a family member, we also don't know how much that happened and was filled with resistance. And also that's a really tough thing to do. So you're talking before about extending grace to people who are making decisions in the fog, like George Clooney. I think it's fair to do in this situation, too, so we could be critical. But I think it's like seventh or eighth on my list is to say, where was Joe Biden here when we have a room full of aides and a Democratic machine and all that.
- [39:12]
Isaac Saul
While we're doing some lambasting of the Democratic Party and, you know, 2020 era, 2021 era politics. I think we should lean in here. I'm gonna. I'm gonna read to you guys a headline from the New York Times and then a couple excerpts to introduce the next topic, which is the headline is DNC takes step to Void election of Hogg and Kenyatta as Vice chairs. And then the lead of this story is that the credentials committee of the Democratic National Committee voted on Monday to void the results of the internal party vote that made David Hogg a party vice chair, ruling that the election had not followed proper parliamentary procedures. The decision, which came roughly three hours, roughly after three hours of internal debate and one tie vote, will put the issue before the full body of the Democratic National Committee. It must decide whether to force Mr. Hogg and a second vice chair, Malcolm Kenyatta, to run against each other in an election later this year. The ruling by the credentials committee on Monday was not technically related to Mr. Hogg's plan to engage in primaries because David Hogg's been threatening to primary challenge a bunch of Democrats. He thinks they're older with his fun that he has. Instead, it was the result of a complaint from Caitlin Free, one of the losing candidates in the vice chair race. Miss Free said the party had wrongly combined two separate questions into a single vote, putting at a disadvantage the female candidates because of the party's gender parity rules. There's a lot to unpack here. I'm gonna start. Yeah, I'm gonna start with a tweet from Robbie. So. Which I. I just made me laugh. He said, let me get this straight. David Hogg started complaining, loudly and rightly, that the Democrats alienated young men and have no plan to win them back, and in general are too deferential to older establishment figures and identity politics. And the DNC is now voiding his vice chairmanship to humor a 61 year old native American woman who claims the process was not sufficiently rigged in favor of women. That's a pretty good roundup, honestly. Yeah.
- [41:17]
Ari Weitzman
Yes and no. Like, the DNC's doing great job of throwing lobs up for people to dunk if they're interested in going up and slamming it like that. That is ripe for the taking but at the same time, David Hogg was talking about there not being a home for young men in the Democratic Party and talking about funding primary challenges to incumbent Democrats before he was elected vice chair. So it's not like they elected him vice chair. And then he started saying shit about stirring the pot and shit about the young men not having a home at the party. And they're like, you know, actually we're going to use this arcane rule and like weaponize it in the same way that we see people weaponize like environmental reviews to stop projects they don't like and just say, we're use this process to call your vote into question and just redo it instead. They, they knew that and then they elected them anyway. It's a, it's an interesting. I think if I were to dunk on it, it'd be easier for me to say the Democratic National Party. That's reminded us, or in, you know, reminded us in some quotes about the importance of democracy and democracy being on the line is not doing a democracy when it comes to their own elections. Like, they, they knew this, they knew the guy and then they elected him and then he started being more public. It wasn't that he started saying stuff that he was in more forward facing position. So people were hearing it more and they're like, you know what, maybe we redo this reverse Brexit it, put it back on the ballot and get him out of there, which like, yeah, maybe run a better campaign in the first place against them.
- [42:50]
Isaac Saul
I mean, I do, I do think there's a read of this that is like the party is upset that he's threatening to fund people and fund people outside, you know, primary challenges. And so they are using a technicality to remove him rather than actually giving a shit about the technicality that was allegedly violated or whatever. But it's still insane. Like, the formulation of we are going to use this technicality based on a rule that is just like the manifestation of all the identity politics that have been killing Democrats for the last four years in order to remove power from this, like, young, clearly popular new age Democrat who wants to shake up the party a little bit. It's just like, have they really, truly not learned a fucking thing? It's, it's, it's like, it's, it's kind of infuriating. It's even as somebody who doesn't care about the future of the party, it's just like, how, how is this the circle that you guys are running yourselves in? I really don't Understand?
- [43:46]
Camille Foster
Yeah, yeah. It's obviously a bit of speculation here. We don't know the degree to which Hogg's public conduct and comments and the controversy he was creating played a part in this. But it's hard for me to believe that it didn't play some part in it. And at a minimum, it reminds you, just as coverage of the actual election itself did, that footage of them having conversations about the rules and disputing all these questions, adjudicating all these questions about whether or not they'd had sufficient number of minorities and women in all these different roles. That just contrasted against the fact that you just lost an election where a lot of these identity related issues were almost certainly a substantial part of why you lost. It stinks that they're having to remind people of this. Again, from a political standpoint, the perception is just very bad. There's a possibility that you end up with David Hogg anyways. And I'll go further and say that I don't know that I have a particular affinity, affection for David Hogg's politics from a personal standpoint. But I do have some sympathy to his project of trying to make the party more responsive, of trying to do something about the fact that so much of the congressional delegation on the Republican and Democrat side is about seniority and not whether or not you're meaningfully relevant to the majority of the base in the direction that it's headed in. And to the extent Hogg is willing to do some controversial things in service of making the party more relevant nationally, more responsive to the most important segments of its voting population, it seems like a very good thing to do. And you kind of embrace that, I think that conflict he'd been having with James Carville in the weeks before this happened, this kind of open debate about his primary strategy, was really interesting to watch. I think Carville was right about a lot of things and had Democrats listened to him early on, they might have done better. But I also think that Hogg kind of has a point and that Carvel himself would do well to listen to the things that Hogg is saying.
- [46:04]
Ari Weitzman
So, yeah, I mean, I totally agree with that. I think the tough thing is that there's this base conflict of interest between David Hogg having a project that he's funding and trying to promote, of putting forward new challengers to incumbent Democrats to try to bring new life in the party while also being in a position where his job is to support the Democratic candidate, whoever that person may be. So to do those two things at once, to Say we're gonna push. I'm gonna push as DNC chair, whoever the nominee is in the general election. But before that, I'm also going to try to undermine them. That's really, like, that's. That's tough to say. You're going to do both. And as such, this creates this perfect Rorschach test of. Anything that you want to criticize the Democratic Party for is in this one story. It's young people coming into leadership positions getting pushed out. It's people making bad decisions against one another to try to like infighting in the party that's destroying the base. It's woke politics over representation of what the popular whale was. It's failure to acknowledge past mistakes. It's more of the same in every direction. And in that. In that sense, it's almost this perfect storm that's hard to look away from.
- [47:27]
Isaac Saul
There's also, like, this interesting element of this that's just classic Democratic Party circling fire squad, which is. Which is. Malcolm Kenyatta is like a young black man who just got this. Who won and, like, got way more votes than David Hogg and now is being thrust into this thing where he's basically having his chairmanship removed and having to have this revote and is going to be challenged again and could lose the seat. I don't think he will, but he could, you know, on account of this technicality that was built to make sure there was this gender parody. And so he's on Twitter just like, I. Why am I like, why is this story about David Hogg? Why is nobody talking about, you know, I did this? He had this huge campaign. He spent a whole year sort of. And now he's just being completely screwed over, which, like, is. Yeah, it's just like, you know, chef's kiss. Perfect. Just. They're going to fix this technicality to follow this gender parody rule and in the process remove two actual needed elements of diversity if they want that, which is a younger chair and a black man serving in the role. It's just like, that is a great encapsulation of kind of where identity politics gets you in the end and the sort of truly absurd outcome when you have this kind of setup. Also a little bit of Rings of Hillary Clinton stuff, you know, where it's just like the machines working in the background in a way that you just, if you're a Democratic voter, has to make you feel really, really icky. I don't know how you feel good about this when you read about it in the New York Times. Even In a piece that's not intended to be particularly damning of the party, it's just like, like, woof. Like, I can't believe this is where they're at.
- [49:27]
Camille Foster
One of the questions worth entertaining in, in the context of all of this is the degree to which the Democratic Party is doing something that I'm sure the Republican Party would like to do, which is trying to reassert its ability to have meaningful influence on the direction that the party is going in. And the candidates that get selected, they, they had some of that with Biden. They were able to kind of clear the decks, so to speak, behind working behind the scenes to make him the guy the first go round. But Obama broke the system just as Trump broke the system with the Republicans. And the relevance of the parties going forward has a lot to do with the kind of reforms that the Democrats are able to implement now and what exactly the landscape looks like after several more years of Donald Trump when Republicans have to run someone else, presumably presuming there isn't an attempt to secure a third term, which I know Donald Trump has said he doesn't want, and some other Republicans have insisted they would like to see. I think both parties have a lot of questions to ask and answer with respect to how they're going to maintain their relevance in a world where social media and vibes are all important in ways that they simply were not before the party decides is what I was told in university when I was taking my government and economics courses, and that just doesn't really seem to be the case anymore.
- [50:55]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, I don't, I don't have a whole lot to respond to with that. I think I, I had something queued up to talk about how there is very little votes that were actually given to the female candidates at the dnc. Had a hard time finding the vote tallies. You can find the vote tally for the votes for chair, but for vice chair, I was having a little bit more difficulty. I believe the person, the person who ran for a chair who received the most votes as a woman was Marianne Williamson with zero. So if we're, if we're saying, like, there's this thing in the back of my head where I'm thinking, okay, so Kyla Free, who's making this challenge? Maybe she's got a point. Maybe she was close. I don't think she was. I don't think that there's, like, this was the one thing, this procedural rule preventing the party from gender representation. I think just the batch of candidates, people were more excited to vote for this time didn't include many women. And that's, you know, to try to relate it to what you're saying, Camille. It seems like that's what the party's trying to decide right now, is who are the best candidates out of the current batch that they want to see represent them. And I don't know, it may include David Hogg, it may not, but I think if it doesn't, honestly, I think it's fair to blame him a little bit for that.
- [52:14]
Isaac Saul
That.
- [52:14]
Ari Weitzman
For not thinking about how his. His conflicts of interest are preventing him from moving forward with one thing or the other.
- [52:22]
Camille Foster
Yeah, no, that's. That's true. I mean, if you're going to have a bold strategy you want to implement that you already know is going to be controversial, like figuring out how to do it with a deft hand is part of the job. This is politics, after all. Perception matters a great deal. Sequencing matters a great deal. Building coalitions matters a great deal. Reaching out to the people you're offending matters a great deal. And, you know, he was trying to do some of that, but he was also, because the party is having a bit of an identity crisis out there in the field, going on Bill Maher's show, castigating his own party, and it just makes things a little bit more challenging for you. But we'll see. We'll see how things shape up. I am very, very, very interested in how this election shapes up. I think that David Hogg's influence, for better or for worse, could be pretty profound with respect to the just direction of the party going forward and where the energy is going to be coming from. It's still anyone's guess who the real leader of the party is at this point and who's likely to emerge as the real leader of the party in the next three to four years.
- [53:25]
Isaac Saul
For what it's worth, I, for years, have really had a kind of distaste for David Hogg. I just, you know, he's sort of one of these, like, Twitter activists that I find just posting constantly misleading and sensational stuff on the Internet and doing it in a way that I find really grating and thought he was going to kind of enter Congress, like, you know, the sort of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, like, doing zero legislating or anything interesting, just, you know, instead fighting the wars online, which maybe is important. And I do think at some point that's in his future. He'll be a member of Congress one. One day. But I find him much more sympathetic now after watching how this went down.
- [54:12]
Ari Weitzman
I really do like fighting against the dnc.
- [54:15]
Isaac Saul
I like what he's saying. I like what he's selling. Like, I appreciate the messaging he's putting out. And I'm like, oh, maybe I kind of. And maybe he evolved in some way too, but I feel like I've left this frakas just feeling much more positive towards him. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break.
- [54:45]
Camille Foster
G' day, America.
- [54:46]
Isaac Saul
It's Tony and Ryan from the Tony and Ryan podcast from Down Under. Today we want to talk to you.
- [54:50]
Ari Weitzman
About Boost Mobile, the newest 5G network in the country.
- [54:54]
Isaac Saul
These guys are no longer the prepaid wireless company you might remember. They've invested billions into building their own.
- [55:00]
E
5G towers across America, transforming the carrier.
- [55:04]
Isaac Saul
Into America's fourth major network alongside the other big dogs.
- [55:08]
Ari Weitzman
Yep, they're challenging the competitors by working harder and smarter. Like this amazing new network they've literally built.
- [55:15]
Isaac Saul
The Boost Mobile network together with their roaming partners covers 9.99percent of the US.
- [55:20]
E
Population, but 5G speeds not available in all areas.
- [55:23]
Camille Foster
Yep, they have a blazing fast Internet.
- [55:26]
Ari Weitzman
And plans for all the latest devices. Visit your nearest Boost Mobile store or.
- [55:30]
Camille Foster
Find them online@boostmobile.com when you're starting off.
- [55:33]
E
With something new, it seems like your to do list keeps growing. Finding the right tool helps. And that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of US e commerce. And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com retail. Go to shopify.com retail.
- [56:08]
Isaac Saul
Pop quiz. I have a question for you guys. What percentage of Democrats in the House of Representatives do you think are women if you had to bet?
- [56:17]
Camille Foster
Huh?
- [56:18]
Ari Weitzman
Good question.
- [56:21]
Camille Foster
In the House, I'm gonna take a guess. I don't even think this is right above 50%.
- [56:27]
Ari Weitzman
I'm gonna say 40.
- [56:29]
Isaac Saul
It's 44%. So you're both fairly close. Yeah, but I won the Senate. In the Senate, in. In the Senate, it's. It's 34% of Democrats are women. And in the House, it's 14% of Republicans are women and 17% of Republicans are women. And overall in Congress, 25% of all members are. 28% of all lawmakers in the 119th Congress are now women. I that. That number surprised me. At least in the House, I think I would have guessed something in like the 30s or high 20s, something more akin to what the overall percentage is. But just in terms of the gender parity question, it's pretty interesting that at least the Democratic Party now is at a place where there's nearly a 50, 50 split in terms of representation. I'm curious, I guess, to sort of put a bow on this conversation. Do either of you think that matters? Like, should there. And I say this, like just to.
- [57:31]
Ari Weitzman
Put a bow on it. Yeah, a little small question to open.
- [57:34]
Isaac Saul
A can of worms of fresh mana worms. And I'm asking this question and maybe I'll add a little additional framing, which is generally speaking, I am, you know, I've written about this before, like DEI initiatives and stuff, and why I have a lot of skepticism about them and why quotas and like these sorts of things become increasingly problematic. We just talked about like in regards to selection, like the gender parody that, that identity politics. It just introduces all these bizarre weird outcomes all the time. That is the, the firing squad that I was talking about. But like Congress is supposed to be representative and does that like pledge to try and be representative extend to sort of things like gender and race and religion? And do we want to see a Congress that is not exactly, but maybe somewhat closely representative of these sort of features of people across the country, or do we not care about anything aside from the political and ideological questions and that representation? I don't know. I'm interested in how you guys parse that or think about that.
- [58:46]
Ari Weitzman
I think it tells us where there may be biases in the system. I don't necessarily think it has to be an outcome goal to achieve population based parity, but at every step, when there is not that parity, it tells us there could be some, some gates that we're not thinking about. So when it, when we say Democrats in Congress or in the house or 40% women and we know the population's about 50% women, then there's bias in the selection process somewhere there. It could be that fewer women are getting into politics, they're just not interested in getting into politics as much. That may be the case. I'm not sure. It could be the case that fewer women after 40, because that's generally when people are getting into the House of Representatives, want to further a career in the public sector or in the limelight in any way. That could be the case too. What I do know is that we have a society that has a lot of different roles for genders in it. And at some point on the many, many steps from you Are a person living in the United States to you are a person in Congress. They're going to be things that change that selection process in some way and introduce some bias. And it does not need to be the case for me that we have proportional representation of every demographic that we can think of in the way we select our leaders. But I do think when there isn't that representation, it should inform us a bit about where those biases may be. So we can ask, is there something deeper happening here that we should have a conversation about? Because if we're saying we want to have 50% women in Congress and then we end up making that the proportional representation, we may end up be over biasing because there are fewer women getting involved in politics at that stage. And if that's the case, then we're sort of hurting ourselves with our representation at that level. And the right solution isn't we have to have this outcome in the way that we select the final candidates in the final Democratic or Republican primary process or in the general election. But in the process of who are we encouraging to get into the system? That seems to me to matter a great deal. And we should be careful not to learn the wrong lessons from that data.
- [61:08]
Camille Foster
Yeah, there's so much there. I mean, we've got 435 different federal congressional districts. So all those races being run independent of one another, all the outcomes of those races through the primary process and everything else. I think if there's any information to be gleaned about the presence of bias in the system, it's probably not coming from there, really. I mean, in some senses, you're shaking it up. You're shaking up the distribution so many times through all those processes. I would expect it to look a little bit different for a variety of reasons, especially because the states that people are coming from aren't even representative of the broader national population. But a more fundamental point from my standpoint is what's the percentage of pro life Democrats in the House? I imagine it's exceedingly low. And there are plenty of women who are in fact pro life. And to the extent we care about diversity, I don't know that the kind of shade and genital obsessed notion of diversity that has become particularly prominent in our politics in recent years is one that is particularly good. And when I say that, I'm not even just underscoring the kind of defects of the Democratic Party. Republicans do it as well. There's all kinds of conversations about black conservatives, et cetera, et cetera. So I tend to look at A lot of the diversity talk with a bit of a jaundiced eye. And to the extent I care about diversity, I really want to see meaningful diversity. And I think even within the party, there's something very healthy about that, about knowing that in their caucuses they actually have the ability to understand the best possible argument that's being leveled for a different point of view. And there are robust debates within the Democratic Party on a range of issues, but on another range of issues there aren't. And I think as a party, they'd be better served by trying to cultivate some of that diversity in the party as opposed to, you know, worrying about the optical landscape, the Benetton ad qualities of the party. And much the same is true for Republicans, in my estimation. I think the parties are stronger not when they march in lockstep, but when they have really resilient coalitions that are responsive to what their voters want and are capable of forging really great policy that is striking the right sort of compromises. And at the moment, neither party seems to be able to do that particularly effectively.
- [63:48]
Isaac Saul
To answer your question, Representative Henry Queller is the only pro life, openly pro life Democrat in the House of Representatives. So there's one. And According to Gallup, 3% of all Democrats say abortion should be illegal in all cases, and 31% say it should be legal only under certain circumstances. And 65% say legal under any circumstance. So I think between that 31 and 3%, we could probably surmise, you know, there's somewhere between 3 and 30% of the party that's kind of more pro life inclination with one representative in Congress, which is a really interesting point. I mean, I, I think that is, I think what Ari said is a really thoughtful way to kind of approach it in the sense that it's not great to use it as this quota, but it's reasonable to say this is a barometer, if it's one of many barometers that you're using to kind of judge representation. I definitely lean towards the camp of all I care about is the ideological representation in the country. And that being true. But it's a. Yeah, it's a. It's clearly something that at least the Democratic Party still cares a great deal about is the, as you put it, the genital and shade obsessed identity, identity politics, diversity.
- [65:13]
Camille Foster
I have a more potent phrasing, but I chose not to use it today.
- [65:17]
Isaac Saul
I appreciate. Yeah, we'll put it in the show notes. All right, we've got one more thing on the docket today. Before we get to our grievances section at the end of the podcast, which is this speech that Donald Trump gave in the Middle East. And I want to talk about this in part because we didn't get to it in tangle this week. Though I suppose as Trump does his deal making across the Middle east, there might be an opening too. I had an inclination, honestly to write a Friday edition about it and then a reader wrote in with a question question about it, which I'm answering in tomorrow's reader mailbag. That kind of scratched the itch. But for those of you who maybe didn't see it or didn't hear about it, Trump gave a foreign policy speech in Saudi Arabia, I believe, about his kind of vision for the future. And man, it was a tour de force, I gotta say. First of all, I loved it. I'm going to talk about the reasons I hated some parts of it in a minute. But, but I'll say up front that I loved a lot of the stuff that he said. I thought it was a beautifully written speech delivered by an orator who can't help but get distracted by all the shiny things in the room. If Trump could just read from the teleprompter for 40 minutes with some of his speech writing, he'd be an all time speech giver. But instead he does his the weave where he leaves and goes on some insane diversion and then comes back to it. But yeah, he said this, I'll read from this and you can imagine it in like, you know, John F. Kennedy's voice instead of Donald Trump's, if that helps you. He said, before our eyes, a new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts, entire divisions of the past, and forging a future where the Middle east is defined by commerce, not chaos, where it exports technology, not terrorism, and where people of different nations, religions and creeds are building cities together, not bombing each other out of existence. Later on, he says, you know, openly criticizes the failed nation building of past US Administrations, emphasizes that strides have been made not by Western interventionists citing the neocon nation builders or the liberal nonprofits, but, quote, by the people of the region themselves. Developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions and charting your own destiny. I'm sorry, I don't care what you feel about Donald Trump. That's a damn good speech. That's some nice rhetorical flourishing. Definitely plucking at my heartstrings. He lambasted everybody from the kind of neocon conservative nation builders of the past to some of the failed ngo nonprofit. We're going to dump a bunch of money into the problem as outsiders who don't understand these countries and pat ourselves on the back for it without making meaningful progress. And I think there's probably more nuance to that stuff. Certainly some of those wars have maybe had good outcomes, better outcomes than we like to imagine. Some of the NGOs and nonprofits do incredibly good work, as we talked about with some of the USAID stuff. But there's this element of it, this very Trumpian American element of it that I just love, which is like. Like, you have to do this. He's speaking to the people. I mean, he's in Saudi Arabia. He's just like, this is up to you guys. This is not. We're not going to come in and, you know, get involved in these wars anymore, dump a bunch of money in here. You have the means and the creativity and the intellect to sort of forge this path forward. And that was the theme of the whole speech. And I don't know, I. I was surprised. I watched it, I read it, and it resonated with me in a pretty deep way. It felt like there were some banger lines and some really nice, beautiful, kind of visionary framing of how people in the Middle east should be thinking about it. So I don't know, I'm curious if it landed similarly with you guys before we get into maybe some of the things that. The context that we probably need to add to a lot of that.
- [69:35]
Ari Weitzman
Yeah, and I'm sure we'll do that in a second. I think when it comes to any criticisms about Trump's speeches, it's always, I think, can the focus be there in one, three, six months, let alone a year, the rest of the term to follow through on that vision? Because we already voted as a population to elect a president based in part on his platform to disentangle us from foreign wars and start to make deals to get us out of commitments in the Middle east, among other places, and lower our spending on national defense. And I don't think we've seen any follow through on those commitments. Those are really good speeches in the summer and early fall from Trump when he talked about doing that. And speeches are one thing, inactions are another. Something that actually a lot of Trump supporters said during his first term was just look at what he's doing and don't judge him by what he says. So if we do the same thing here, I think this is just step one. You know, let's look at it and let's keep it in mind. And then let's see what policy follows it. As regard the actual words, I love it. I will say that I think this is absolutely a foreign policy that I support. One of we're going to get out of your way, express your autonomy. We'll have some control. I'm sure when it comes to sanctions and making trade agreements and trying to normalize relations, ways that democratic entanglements and free trade tend to produce better outcomes for everyone, which maybe is another thing he should think about when it comes to tariffs and what all. But I think that'd be a great foreign policy that guides decisions. I just wonder how much of a principle it will be in guiding decisions.
- [71:20]
Camille Foster
Yeah, I mean, the phrase that I've used when describing my own foreign policy is having an aversion to foreign policy central planning. And I think that's what Donald Trump was describing. You know, this project by which the American policymakers and various NGOs imagine they can create these wonderful outcomes by sprinkling money here and there or otherwise getting involved in conflicts that are genuinely domestic contexts for those other countries, but are weird international interventions on our part, and taking a realistic look at the limitations of our ability to influence foreign governments and the many misadventures that we've gone on recently is totally appropriate and worthwhile, I responded in a sort of similarly positive fashion. I wish, Isaac, that when you did your Trump readings, you tried to do it with a little bit more of the voice, maybe throw in a few of those flourishes. Yeah, obviously the best. Only the best. That would just make it even more real for me. But, yeah, it's a circumstance, though, where there is this. There's multiple shadows being cast. I mean, one is stuff that was covered very capably in this week's Tangle Dispatch about just kind of the specter of corruption with the administration and the various controversies that has surrounded his Middle east trip. But the other is exactly what Ari was highlighting. Just the lack of focus and the various ways in which the administration can kind of seem a bit schizophrenic. They'll say one thing and then do something very different. But at least here, some of the other news that we've seen recently about the Israelis, for example, saying we don't know if we want to take US Aid anymore, we prefer to fund these things ourselves. That's kind of delivering on the same promise in certain respects. He's received a bunch. Trump has received a lot of criticism for the way that he's handled the US Role in Ukraine. But again, consistent with the promise in some respects, even the negotiations with the Houthis, which is interesting, is seemingly him keeping the promise of all of the places where he has said things and done something different. I can imagine him like actually trying to stick to purpose here. This represents the view, I think the stated view of more than a couple officials in the Trump administration, particular J.D. vance. So I think that it is an interesting signal, a welcome change. I think I said to Megan when we talked about this that this might have been a. This could have been a real high point for the Trump administration in the first months of this second term were it not for the long shadow that's being cast over the entire trip, in my estimation.
- [74:14]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, the kind of interesting undercurrent and context here, I guess, and sort of the damning one, I guess, in Trump's case, is he is saber rattling with Iran, threatening war with them, that we seem to be inching closer and closer to that with this threat of like a nuclear negotiate negotiations or else. Guys who are very well connected to the administration, like Tucker Carlson, have very clearly and loudly been ringing the alarm bells, like there are people in the building who want this to happen and we need to speak out about it now or it's going to happen that, you know, there is, there's enough momentum there where we could have some sort of hot war with Iran. You know, he's the speech he's talking about not bombing each other into oblivion while, you know, he's just unambiguously backing anything Israel wants to do in Gaza, sending them weapons, totally hands off, like Netanyahu sort of doing whatever he wants to do. I mean, you could pretty easily turn that language around on and be like, no, that you want to solve this with diplomacy and commerce and open free trade, like apply that ideology to Israel and in Gaza, which he's clearly not doing. And then, yeah, just there is a particular focus and friendliness with the Saudis and the Qataris in particular. And Trump is, I mean, enmeshed is it doesn't quite do it justice. Like there are Trump organization properties, hotels, golf courses popping up across these places. He's taken the $400 million plane that he's going to donate to his presidential library afterwards. There's like the opaque crypto stuff where who knows how much money he's pulling in from these places through that. I suspect it's a lot where it's just hard to really. Yeah, it gets hard to square a little bit. And if you're going to look at the administration skeptically, which you should which everybody should, and every administration. You're, it's pretty easy to quickly, to just quickly kind of undermine the, the words with his actual actions and what we know about his kind of foreign entanglements. So I think that's the thing that, you know, really does cast a long shadow over all this. And it's just, it's the perpetual frustration with Trump. You know, it's like if he was just a slightly different guy, if you just, you know, if he was saying the things he was saying and he was doing the things he was saying he's going to do and he just like, didn't bring the baggage, we'd be so close to this, like, kind of interesting, you know, awesome president who is maybe really rocking the boat a little bit on these issues that I think a lot of other presidents are frankly scared to rock the boat on. But he's just not quite that guy. I have to read one more little excerpt from this. I do, I really do. I was impressed. Listen, listen to this. The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so called nation builders, neocons or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Kabul, Baghdad in so many other cities. Instead, the birth of a modern Middle east has been brought by the people of the region themselves, the people that are right here, the people that have lived here all their lives. Developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions and charting your own destinies in your own way. It's really incredible what you've done. In the end, the so called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built. And the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand, understand themselves. They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves. Peace, prosperity and progress ultimately came not from a radical rejection of your heritage, but rather from embracing your national traditions and embracing that same heritage that you love so dearly. And it's something only you could do. You achieved a modern miracle the Arabian way. That's pretty good, man. A few minutes later he said, few minutes later he said, I believe it is God's job to sit in judgment, comma, my job to defend America and promote the fundamental interests of stability. Prostrate. It's like, I believe it's God's job, my job to defend stability. All right, a little Freudian slip there, but that's all right. I still like the guy. Yeah, it's tough. It's tough.
- [78:57]
Camille Foster
I do. I mean, I think most of that is quite good. I also think that, and maybe you can't say this as president in a foreign country, but the moderation of traditional views is also a huge component of the progress that they've been able to make in these countries. And it's important to qualify that progress. I mean, to the extent we care about things like economic stratification in these countries, it is more palpable than any other. And they've got, the Saudis in particular, have this amazing surplus of money, and they are deployed, deploying it at an astonishing clip in the hopes of ensuring their country is politically and economic economically relevant in a world where fossil fuels don't matter nearly as much as they used to. And we'll see if that project is successful. There's a heck of a lot of that, precisely that kind of central planning going on there. And it is interesting that a lot of the language that Trump uses to criticize these NGOs and policymakers who've tried to be interventionist and intervene in complex systems they don't quite understand is totally applicable to the Trump administration's approach to virtually everything related to the economy. That is a kind of singular individual, great man who imagines he can have a profound impact on everything and only he can do it. As he said in the past about various things, a little bit more modesty in those other areas would, Would probably serve him pretty well, too. I don't suspect he'll figure that out, though.
- [80:31]
Isaac Saul
I mean, it is worth saying Saudi Arabia, these countries in the Arabian Peninsula, the uae, Qatar. Well, Qatar has kind of been criticized a bit more. But, I mean, since the early 2000s, they've done a great deal to kind of root out extremism. And the, you know, these, like you said, moderating their society in a way that allowed them to kind of enter the, not the west, even, but just like a more modern Middle east that some of these other countries, Israel, Jordan, whatever, we're already living in. I mean, it makes a huge difference. And that is. Yeah, I think you're right. That's like a little too third ray for a president to say in front of the kingdom. But, you know, certainly is. Feels like a point worth highlighting. It's not just about selling goods, although.
- [81:18]
Camille Foster
Although, maybe not, because you've got MBS in the room. And to the extent he has a claim to fame that isn't notorious and murdery, it is that he is supposed to be this moderating, reforming force in Saudi politics. And in many respects, I think that is true. But also Clearly, a lot of the proclivities of the past still exist in Saudi Arabia, and a lot of that will have to change if they are going to be successful. In my estimation, it.
- [81:47]
Isaac Saul
All right, gentlemen. Well, we've convinced everybody we're MAGA Trumpers in the last hour and a half, so we might as well wrap this up. We've done a good job just an hour 15 straight on why the Democratic Party sucks, the media failed us, and Trump is a beautiful orator. That's the way to kick things off with Camille Foster on the team. Oh, gosh, we got to get into some grievances. John, play the music, my man.
- [82:16]
Ari Weitzman
The airing of grievances.
- [82:22]
Camille Foster
You don't know what the hell you're doing.
- [82:23]
Isaac Saul
All right, Ari, where do you want to go? First, second, last? How are you feeling today?
- [82:28]
Ari Weitzman
I go first because mine's kind of lame, which I know is always a great way to start. Get them hooked with undersell, over deliver.
- [82:37]
Camille Foster
Yours is lame, mine is obnoxious. So, yeah, I should totally go last.
- [82:42]
Ari Weitzman
Great table set. Then we got the batting order. So mine's just Slack notifications kind of in general. It's a constant war that I'm fighting. I don't have the sound on Isaac to preempt that, but the thing that I do most in the morning, if.
- [83:01]
Isaac Saul
You have Slack sound notifications on, that's psychotic behavior, and you should get that dealt with. Just. I said that to the team. Anybody who has Slack notifications on, you have a problem, problem, deal with it.
- [83:11]
Camille Foster
Amen. Amen.
- [83:13]
Isaac Saul
Yeah.
- [83:13]
Ari Weitzman
Or you have a less chatty team also as possible. Like, maybe you're getting a Slack notification an hour instead of one every minute.
- [83:21]
Isaac Saul
But we chat.
- [83:22]
Ari Weitzman
We chat. And in the mornings, we're chatting and we're waking up and we're sharing stuff and responding to things, and it's pretty. It's good, good stuff. It's normal, healthy behavior. And the thing that annoys me about it is most of my time in the morning spent editing a document where a lot of the actions that I'm taking as an editor live in the top right of my screen. And that means I'm looking at comments, comment threads, trying to resolve them, bringing a bar up that lets me manage that in Google Docs. And that is exactly where the toast message for Slack notifications come up. So the number one perpetrator of disrupting my workflow when I'm editing, in terms of giving me Slack messages in succession is Isaac. Saul. What will happen is I'll get a message from Isaac. I'm like, okay, cool. Dismiss it. So I'll read it later. Bring my mouse back to the action. I want to do another message from Isaac. Another message from Isaac. Like, the thoughts will come three words at a time. Like, I like fragments. Hold on. You could. You could hit shift enter there and maybe just, like, pause and then do the whole message. But instead, they're like little toast notifications that show up, and I don't think I can change where they go. If I can put them in a different corner, I would, but I don't think that I can.
- [84:41]
Isaac Saul
I. I love that. It's great to hear that I'm such a tremendous part of your morning. I slack message the same way that I text. It's just like, dude, enter. You won't believe this. Enter. Something insane just happened. Enter.
- [84:57]
Ari Weitzman
Like Beatty journalist. It's his.
- [85:00]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. Maybe get into it. All right, that's good to know. Yeah. I guess a reasonable person would adjust their behavior now that you've shared this feedback, but I'm just going to lean in, probably.
- [85:12]
Ari Weitzman
I don't know. I believe in you. I think you're a person who's capable of being introspective and changing when they hear actionable feedback.
- [85:21]
Isaac Saul
Oh, yeah. I'll. Thank you. You're appealing to my better nature. I'll think about. I'll reserve my peppered Slack messages for when I know you're maybe not too busy in the morning. I can do that. All right. Interestingly enough, mine's sort of slightly related adjacent, I would say. Mine is my personal Gmail inbox. I don't know if you guys still use your personal email. I guess. Camille, you do. You forward everything to your personal email, which is techie and cool of you. You have eight different emails. They all go to the same place. It seems like I have a work email that I have manicured to perfection and is like a. I see everything that comes through Lindsay, who's on the team, who's kind of like an editor and also does some, like, executive assistant stuff for me. She's met. She has, like, built this incredible system for my inbox. I never miss a thing anymore. It's awesome. My personal email is just madness. It is like every newsletter I've ever signed up for, every business I've ever bought something from all. Some of it in my primary, some of it in my promotions. The spam is so unbelievably out of control that, like, I get a hundred emails an hour and I miss incredibly important stuff. Like, just in the last Month. I was like a week and a half late on an email from the daycare that we tried to put my son into that I almost, like, missed the notification. I needed to pay the deposit to reserve our spot because it came to my personal email, which would have been like a $30,000 mistake. And then last week, the thing that sort of brought this to, brought my frustration ahead was I have a butcher box subscription. We should really get them as a sponsor for the podcast because I love their stuff. So I'll do this one for free. But Butcherbox is awesome. Great meats comes in the mail, you know, once a month. You sort of select whatever you want. It's frozen. And they send an email when like, oh, your thing is your box is. Is being processed. Your box is at the shipping facility. Your box is being shipped, because when it gets to you, you have like eight or 12 hours to get it unboxed and into a freezer before the meat goes bad. So, yeah, my butcher box notifications just got completely buried in spam. And then on Monday, I went into the office, which is where I send the butcher box stuff, because my packages get stolen here in Philly and at my home, and there's just this giant butcher box box, like, sitting right at the. At the inside of the office when I got there. And I was like, fuck, I really hope that came this morning. And then I went to go look at my Gmail and it had showed up on Friday. And I opened the box and the meat was just all warm and GROSS and, yeah, $150 of, you know, American grown meat just out the window. So I emailed them, and to their credit, they sent me a new one for half off and said they were sorry, but, you know, it was your fault. So we can't give you a full refund, but we'll send you a new box because you're a loyal customer, which I appreciated. So, yeah, my personal inbox has been crushing me, and it's like my final frontier. I need to climb and figure out how to organize it, which at some point I'm definitely going to have to do.
- [88:41]
Ari Weitzman
I want to get introspective with you guys here. Like, do you think that there's part of you that. That has this task that you know you want to do that you're clearly capable of, like, with. With organizing your inbox is a perfect example. You've done it for your work email. It's clearly not something that requires a superhuman amount of effort is the thing you can do, but you don't do it because it's more comfortable to have something in the back of your mind to do instead of being done with work and having a completely free list.
- [89:14]
Camille Foster
I can't relate to that at all. Spoken like a man who doesn't have children. Perhaps I don't need to.
- [89:21]
Ari Weitzman
Well, I've spoken like a procrastinator. More like it's the thing that I've been my entire life as a procrastinator, there'll be a thing that I have to do and like, well, I'm just.
- [89:30]
Camille Foster
Procrastinating on so many things, I suppose that I can't relate to that at all.
- [89:36]
Isaac Saul
I struggle to relate to Isaiah. I think you might be sick. That reminds me of something my brother Noah said to me once.
- [89:44]
Ari Weitzman
He about a much better man than you. So go ahead.
- [89:46]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, competitive ultimate, he said. He said that he always loves having like a little bit of an injury, just like something on his body that was hurt in games. So he had something he could think about and, like, give attention to during the whole game and just sort of like give him something to do and let him just like get into the flow of the game. He could just focus on the injury instead of all the little pressures and nuances of playing. And I said, I think there's something really wrong with you. I think that's you have a problem. You should talk to somebody about that. That's how I feel about your email story.
- [90:22]
Ari Weitzman
It wasn't my email story. That was your email story. I was just responding to it.
- [90:27]
Camille Foster
Slack notifications Emails Similar yeah, okay, so now I feel even worse because this is not about work at all, and it's not about me getting things done. It's not about my personal inbox. This is about my preposterous habit of buying really expensive toys and in this particular case, falling in love with them. So I looked at the Wall Street Journal today, as I do on many days, because the Wall Street Journal still manages to be a good publication worth subscribing to, and was surprised to encounter a story about the Apple Vision Pro. And the headline of the story is they paid $3,500 for Apple Vision Pro. A year later, it still hurts. Subhead the Mixed Reality headset launched last year with great promise, but all these buyers got were dirty looks and sore necks. Quote I don't need that. I have to say that I read this with interest because I want to know who these people are who can't appreciate the spectacular wonder of the Apple Vision Pro, which I I bought a new backpack So I could travel with the thing every damn where I go. I don't fly on planes for more than an hour without that thing in my bag. Because even if I have work to do, I want the option of visiting Arrakis or whatever it is I'm watching, because it is the single greatest cinematic experience that any human can have. I think Apple has not done a great job of marketing this product, which is weird to say because they haven't played up its single best attribute. And it's nice to be able to link it to your laptop and all that other stuff. But even the one killer application, being able to watch amazing movies, IMAX at IMAX scale in 3D with spatial audio headphones on a plane is unbelievable magic. And I had to really resist the urge to swear for emphasis there, because, you know, I know some children may be listening, but yeah, the Apple Vision Pro is great and people need to stop complaining about them and actually try them. I have never had in a time where I've let someone who was skeptical of the device put it on and watch their experience of wearing this thing for the first time and not have them be kind of blown away by it. It's a very cool device. Now, if you bought it, imagine, and you could work in it every day, that's going to be a problem for you. If you bought it and you imagine you could work in it for five or six hours, that's also going to be a problem for you. It is a bit heavy. It is first gen, but it is a really cool piece of tech. I'm excited for the next one and I use it, but definitely every week, almost every day. Stop it. Leave the Apple Vision Pro alone.
- [93:05]
Isaac Saul
All right, so we've got Wall Street Journal sponsor, Apple Vision's Pro sponsor, Butcherbox sponsor, all in one episode.
- [93:13]
Camille Foster
I will say, maintain your tangle subscription.
- [93:15]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. Two weeks ago, I might have had something different to say, but Camille did bring his Apple Vision Pro to the Tangle retreat in Philly. I did, and I put that thing on for the first time and it blew my top off. I was like, this is crazy. Yeah, I did a little bit of we just lost Ari. Ari's disappeared. I did a little bit of media viewing. I think I went to Dune. I went to the moon, and yeah, it was beautiful. I don't know If I'd spend $4,000 on it, but I also don't spend as much time on airplanes.
- [93:58]
Camille Foster
That's true.
- [93:59]
Isaac Saul
Yeah.
- [93:59]
Camille Foster
I fly a lot, but you don't have to spend that much anymore. This is the other important fact, you can buy them refurbished. And apparently there are legions of people who are excited about the opportunity to part ways with their Apple Vision Pro at a steep discount, presumably, since they just have them collecting dust someplace. Buy one from them, but get your hands on one of these Things. Leverage Apple's 14 day return policy, try it for yourself, and then write in and tell me that I am correct, because I know I am.
- [94:26]
Isaac Saul
Well, we appear to have lost Ari to some kind of Internet crash or something. He just texted me and said I'm completely dead right now. I don't know what that means, but he just disappeared off our screen in the middle of me talking. Well, Camille Foster, you've replaced Ari Whitespin. That's how it ends today.
- [94:46]
Camille Foster
Always a pleasure.
- [94:46]
Isaac Saul
Thanks. Yeah, thanks for being here, man.
- [94:52]
Ari Weitzman
Take care.
- [94:53]
Isaac Saul
Peace. Our Executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our Executive producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered by John Lal. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will K. Back and Associate Editors Hunter Caspersen, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay 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 website@readtangle.com.
- [95:38]
E
When your workforce, tech stack and business needs are evolving all at once, you need HCM software that moves just as fast. That's why Paylocity builds what's next? Providing innovative and simplified solutions for clients to tackle the real challenges they face every day. From AI driven insights to automated workflows across hr, finance and it. Paylocity's platform doesn't just keep up, it leads. It's time to to simplify complexity, drive results and move forward together. Start now@paylocity.com Simplified Mic Check 1, 2 Are we recording?
- [96:14]
Ari Weitzman
Hi, I'm Michelle Bernstein, an award winning chef, restaurateur and mom. I have a lot on my plate.
- [96:20]
Isaac Saul
Including my psoriatic arthritis symptoms.
- [96:23]
Camille Foster
That's why I was prescribed Cosentix.
- [96:26]
E
It helps me move better.
- [96:28]
Isaac Saul
Cosentyx Secukenumab is prescribed for people 2.
- [96:30]
Camille Foster
Years of age and older with active psoriatic arthritis.
- [96:33]
Ari Weitzman
Don't use if you're allergic to Cosentyx. Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur like tuberculosis or other serious bacterial, fungal or viral infections. Some were fatal. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills.
- [96:49]
Camille Foster
Muscle aches or cough.
- [96:51]
Ari Weitzman
Had a vaccine or planned to, or if inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen serious allergic reactions and severe eczema.
- [96:57]
Isaac Saul
Like skin reactions may occur. Learn more at 1844cosentics or cosentix.com Ask your rheumatologist about Cosentix.
- [97:09]
E
Trying to plan a trip and already need a vacation from it? EF Ultimate Break makes group travel easy and affordable for anyone 18 to 35. Everything's handled from accommodation to daily breakfasts to an expert Tour director will show you the local secrets. Go island hopping in Greece, eat your way through Tokyo, or take your pick from over 120 trips perfectly planned for your kind of adventure and with flexible interest free payments, you can book now and pay over time. Just head to Efub Co Travel, fill out your info and get $100 off your first trip.