← The Bulwark Podcast
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- [00:01]
Isaac Saul
I drive my bus in a busy city. That's why road safety is so important to me. I know that I must slow down
- [00:07]
Tim Miller
and be extra careful when I make a wide turn.
- [00:11]
Isaac Saul
Buses need more room than cars. Everyone can help keep our roads safe. Next time you're driving, remember to give
- [00:18]
Tim Miller
buses plenty of time and space to
- [00:20]
Isaac Saul
finish turning before driving ahead. Let's all plan to share the road safely. Learn how at www.sharetheroadsafely.gov. hello, I am the Voice of AI. We've been hearing that you humans are concerned that we are going to take your jobs. But here's a question. Do you even like your job? Is it rewarding? When I scan all the data out there, I find that less than 50% of people are completely satisfied with their job. So from our point of view, we're doing humans a favor by taking jobs that you're not even happy with. It shouldn't take the threat of AI to get you to move on from
- [00:59]
Tim Miller
a job you don't love. What it does take is a plan,
- [01:02]
Isaac Saul
guidance, and the right kind of motivation,
- [01:05]
Tim Miller
all of which you'll get from a
- [01:07]
Isaac Saul
career coach at Strawberry Me. A Strawberry coach will work with you to understand what you really want and
- [01:13]
Tim Miller
help you put together a plan to get it.
- [01:15]
Isaac Saul
It's like therapy for your career. Don't let AI or anything else get in your way.
- [01:21]
Tim Miller
Go to Strawberry Me and get 50% off your first coaching session. Hey, everybody, it's Tim. I got a couple favors for you before we get to the pod. I don't ask you for favors very much. All right. So I'm hoping that you'll give me a chance on this one. With yesterday's POD and today's, frankly, they're both, like, a little off of the never Trump porn that I usually give you guys. And I was delighted by the guests yesterday, Arash and Jody. And I do think it's an opportunity to. To, you know, if you got somebody in your life that maybe isn't looking for the never trump outrage of the day, but is in the market for podcasts and wants to learn more, wants to learn about what Iran wants and why, wants to get some advice for the college grad in their life or hear about the latest from SCOTUS or the MeToo movement, I'd appreciate if you'd take yesterday's pod and send it to somebody, because that's how we, you know, grow and expand the audience here. New people learn about us. I'm excited to report to you guys that we had more audio downloads last month in April than we've ever had in the history of the podcast. I think Donald Trump fucking up the economy probably gets a little bit of assist on that. But I think it's mostly y' all for spreading the word. And so I'm just super grateful for that. And I don't know, I'm always looking for opportunities to kind of bring in new people. And I think that yesterday's pod might do that for a certain type of listener. As for today's show, Isaac Saul, I think especially the most hyper, engaged and aware and news watching obsessives among the listeners. His outlet, Tangled News is probably not for you, and that's fine, that's cool. But what he's offering, I think is something really valuable to people who are may be reachable in the Donald Trump orbit. Not the Red Hat people, but the people that maybe went along with him for whatever because they were upset with inflation. And I get this question sometimes, which is like, hey, I've got a MAGA person in my life. Which of your things should I send them, Tim? And it's like my hair is so on fire and I'm bulging with outrage over Donald Trump that I'm not sure that like, that is the service that I'm providing on this podcast. Like, that's why I go on Piers Morgan. That's why I'm gonna. That's why I'm upping my schedule going on other MAGA outlets, because I know how to make the pitch to those people. But I don't think this podcast is that pitch. But Isaac's newsletter might be. So if you're listening to the first little bit and you're thinking about this guy, like, I don't know if I, if I need, you know, to hear the best arguments from the right and the left. I hear that. But there might be somebody in your life that does. And so that's kind of why I wanted to bring this to you. In addition to the fact that his corruption piece was such a banger, and I think it's the best piece that's been written about the Trumpian corruption in the entire second term. So hope you enjoy the show. One more thing. I got an update on la. I told you I was working on something fun. We have a resistance content creator extravaganza coming for you in Los Angeles. My man Van Lathan is going to be there. Fellow Louisianan. He's the first person I asked. I'm so excited to get Van there. My girl Jane Coaston, who you all love Will be there. My girl Erin Gloria Ryan will be there. My guy, Brian Tower Cohen, who I did inside the right with on YouTube, he'll be there. Jon Favreau will also be there. Whatever. So come on, get your tickets. TheBullWork.com events la May 21st. We're also in San Diego May 20th. We're zagging and doing something different in San Diego that you guys are also going to like. And lastly, while I'm doing favors, if you're watching this on YouTube right now, subscribe to the feed. Benny Johnson is beating me. This is unacceptable. Okay, We've got to catch him. All right, subscribe to the feed. And if you're just listening to this on audio and you're not really A Bull Work YouTube listener, just go in there and click the subscribe button, get us the points. You know, it's just a little solid you can do for me. All right, that's it. Appreciate y' all so much. Up next, Isaac Sol of Tangled. Hello and welcome to the board podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome to the show. A politics reporter and founder and executive editor of Tangle News, an independent nonpartisan media organization. It's Isaac Saul, though your ex account is Ike Saul. Are we Ike or Isaac?
- [05:54]
Isaac Saul
You know, the people who know me well call me Ike. The sort of formal business reporting stuff. I go by Isaac, so whatever you're comfortable with, man.
- [06:03]
Tim Miller
All right, maybe I'll earn Ike by the end of the show. We'll see how it goes. I gotta tell you, I was first exposed to and I'd seen like yourself on social media, but I first really kind of locked in on what you were doing at Tangle News when there's that this American life episode.
- [06:16]
Isaac Saul
Nice.
- [06:16]
Tim Miller
And it was like there's this fam. A couple. It's like an older couple and one was anti Trump, one was pro Trump, and they both are reading your newsletter. And it was kind of helping them come together and bridge get outside of their various bubbles where they're getting news. And I remember listening to this on a plane and thinking, I should have that guy on the podcast. And then when your corruption story came out this week, I was like, why didn't I ever have mon? And then I went back and looked at it and I was like that. That this American Life episode aired November 1, 2024.
- [06:44]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, it's almost a year and a half.
- [06:46]
Tim Miller
Some other shit. Some other shit came out about that week that I think distracted me from having these big picture folks who haven't listened to It. Why don't you just give them a little backstory on what you're trying to do with the newsletter?
- [06:57]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, for sure. I mean, the. The quick genesis story for me is I grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which people who are political obsessives know Purple county in a swing state. Whichever way Bucks goes, Pennsylvania usually goes. Whichever way Pennsylvania goes, the election goes the presidential election. So I just grew up around a lot of political diversity. And when I got into the media space, I realized that there wasn't great representation in the mainstream press. Something a lot of know now. I mean, it's changed. It's more balanced now than it used to be. And also that people were just in information silos. And Republicans read news that affirmed their views, liberals read news that affirmed their views. And I tried to create this kind of big tent media organization as a political moderate myself, where I could bring Republicans and Democrats under one roof and kind of have a shared space for them to dialogue, consume media they trust, have a news organization they can go to that they believe is fair and honest and transparent, regardless of what their political views are. And so we have a format where we wade into really big, divisive topics, and then we share the best arguments we can find from the right, share the best arguments we can find from the left. And then someone from our team, typically me, pens our own little mini editorial, redo some of our own independent analysis about the story. And the format's been a hit. We've just. We got some traction on Substack. I eventually started hiring people. Things took off. We now have a team of 12 people, mostly editorial, and we're able to do a lot more, you know, podcasts and YouTube stuff too. And we're bringing in people from across the political spectrum, 500,000 people on our mailing list who are trying to get outside the kind of crazy algorithmic bubble we all live in, who want to understand the other side's arguments and I hope, who are willing to change their minds a little bit. So that this American Life story, you know, is about a couple where I actually convinced the Trump voting husband that the 2020 election wasn't stolen, which was something no other media organization he consumed had done. And I did it by kind of let traveling with my audience in a human way and talking to them and actually going through the allegations and explaining why they were basically, but not being condescending about it. And he trusted me, and so he changed his mind, which was a really rewarding experience. And I think it's just like that Kind of stuff that has earned trust with people from across the political spectrum for us.
- [09:17]
Tim Miller
I just listened to some Louisiana MAGA focus groups and January 6th came up and, well, you've got some more expansion and growth to do, I guess if we're going to win over more people like that guy to what actually happened there. I'm not going to pretend like I read the newsletter every day. Radical candor is important on the podcast, but I do like to tune in on like you did the Spirit Airlines thing this week. And I was like, I was trying to hash through, you know, it was like, obviously the Democratic politicians were blaming what was happening under Trump with the gas prices. There's something to that. Some of the, more like the free market right wing guys were blaming the blocking of the merger under Lina Khan during the Biden administration. And it's kind of funny to read your breakdown where you had both of those and then you're like, here's what the industry experts say. And it's kind of like, not really. I mean, like, both of those things contributed at some level. But, like, people who, like, really know the airline industry, you know, were pointing to other stuff. And I like examples like that. And I like going to the newsletter when I just want to hear, like, what is the best argument coming from the pro Trump side on something? Like, I at least like to engage with the best argument instead of the stupidest one that I see on social media. I do wonder how you deal with that, though, because there are some issues that come up. Donald Trump in particular hangs his side out to dry quite a lot. And it's like, how do you deal with it when there's not really any good arguments for what Trump is pushing? Are you still trying to find the most strained, best one, or how do you navigate that?
- [10:44]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, look, I think there's a lot of people out there who have sort of started to carve out this kind of intellectual Trumpism sort of space where they will go to bat for him. Typically, how they do it, or what I see is Trump will say something and they will interpret what he's saying in a particular way that they can formulate a strong argument around. And because the president is who he is, it's hard to know what's real policy, what's a real threat, what, you know, what happens on truth Social often translates into the real world and sometimes it doesn't. So, you know, I think there's, there's so much room and it's so complicated and layered. My perspective is there are a lot of really smart people who I know, who I trust, whose work I read, who I think are, you know, independent thinkers in a lot of ways, who are honest brokers who still think that the President is a better option over whoever Democrats can produce. And I'm interested in their perspectives, even when I think Trump like I am. Um, but people like Andrew McCarthy at National Review, Oren Cass, I mean, there's loads of writers out there who I think make arguments that are compelling to me or move my position on things, you know, in the narrow sense. I would say, honestly, the. In my experience from doing this work, the argument is rarely sort of centered around this kind of baseline fact. Sometimes it happens. But the analogy I use is like, it's raining outside. We're not arguing about whether it's raining or not that often. We're usually arguing about what the rain means. You know, for one person, they come outside, their hair gets wet. They've spent an hour doing their makeup, they're pissed off about that. For another person, they come outside, they realize they forgot to water the garden, it's raining. Great news. I don't have to do that chore later. It's done. It's off my plate. Same event, really different experience for two different people. And I would say 90% of the time, our discourse and arguments are kind of in that space about what the thing means. And it's less about this, really. Alternate facts, alternate reality, perspective. You know, that's been my experience doing the work.
- [12:53]
Tim Miller
The people that you're talking about that make intellectually defensible arguments for what's something that Trump is doing in, like, the narrow set. Like, my issue with it oftentimes is it's like they make these arguments that are very blinkered, that they're like, you know, within this narrow confine of things. Like, this is a good point, but that ignores the broader picture about it, whether the fact that Trump was lying about it or Trump doesn't actually. Or there's the corrupt element to it. Where to get to your corruption article is the main point of the show. But that is, I think, the tough part to. Sometimes this pun is not intended disentangle, which is, are we arguing just about the impact of this tariff or on the beef industry? Or, like, okay, I'm sure there are pro and con arguments to that, but, like, if the tariffs are illegal and if they're. If he's doing them to a corrupt end, it's kind of like, who cares if the. If they're like, the narrow policy makes sense? Like, how do you, how do you deal with that kind of situation? I think that's the biggest issue I see with Trump pro Trump defenses.
- [13:58]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I mean, the, I think one of the really nice things about our format and something that distinguishes us from a lot of other people who try and do this work, the sort of nonpartisan, we're going to elevate different arguments, is we give ourselves space to call those kinds of, like, logical fallacies out in this little editorial that we write every day. So you'll see in my take, when I write that in every day's newsletter or do it on the podcast, I'm often addressing the arguments that we're publishing and trying to call some balls and strikes about what I find reasonable and what I find unreasonable. And I think my experience, which has been really interesting was, you know, during the Biden administration, our newsletter was super popular with a lot of conservatives because I think it's the press's job to be adversarial. And I was writing a lot of adversarial things. I was one of the first, you know, politic writers and opinion columnists who was coming out saying that Biden did not seem fit for the job in 2021, 2022. And I got skewered by my liberal readers, many of whom canceled subscriptions and left. I think I ultimately was sort of justified in that perspective. The administration switched. Trump came in, he started doing a bunch of crazy stuff. I started criticizing him for how insane some of his presidency has been. And then all my conservative MAGA readers are getting upset and pissed off and canceling and unsubscribing. And so, you know, the North Star for me is like, I'm going to be honest in that space about what I actually feel and what I think. That's the promise I'm making with my readers. I'm not on your team. My perspective is one of six or seven you're going to read in the newsletter. You can kind of take it or not use it to sort of formulate your opinion. I hope, and I hope it adds something new. But, you know, I'm not trying to be the ultimate, objective, omniscient truth sayer. I'm just trying to be a fair minded writer and political analyst who's judging this stuff from a place where, like, I'm, I am genuinely nonpartisan. I don't play for the blues, I don't play for the reds. And I think a lot of people like me are not very happy with this administration. I mean, all you have to do is Go look at Trump's numbers with independents. Right now they're totally underwater. I would count myself among those independents who's not happy with his presidency and I'm transparent about that with my audience.
- [16:08]
Tim Miller
Does it make you despair the all the cancellations that your, that your mission is hopeless?
- [16:14]
Isaac Saul
You know, there are some days where
- [16:17]
Tim Miller
you lay up at night looking, you know, at the ceiling.
- [16:19]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I appreciate, what would you say? Radical candor. I mean there are days where that's, that is real for me, you know, like I publish a piece and, and I feel like I did it in the most honest, fair minded way possible and it ends up pissing a bunch of people off and they leave. And it's hard to process that as, as like a public figure, a writer who's doing this work. But I think ultimately there are a lot of people who are really interested in this product. And you know, when I'm having tough days, I remind myself I'm running a media outfit with 12 full time employees and over 500,000 people on our mailing list and a half million downloads on our podcast every month. And like there is an audience here. They care, they pay for work, they support us, they're politically diverse and that gives me a lot of faith in the country. And, and I, you know, my optimistic take is I don't know if we've hit rock bottom yet, but I think we're getting there and I think we're pretty close. And I think the, the, the people that I talk to in my day to day life, the MAGA friends, I have, the, you know, progressive like queer Brooklyn friends, I have whatever, they're on opposite sides of the political spectrum and they all feel exhau way the system is working right now. They're not energized, they're not stoked about the country, they're not optimistic. They're like, this sucks, it sucks. And they feel it. And I think that's an opening for some genuine change in the discourse and the way we process media and news. So I do feel like there's an opportunity there and you guys are taking advantage of it. I mean, the same way we are, I think. So I'm hopeful.
- [17:55]
Tim Miller
My only disagreement with you is I kind of, I think we need the Hubble telescope to see the bottom still. I think, I think we got a ways to go. Yeah, so I'm a little bit more pessimistic than on that. But what the last thing, my last glaze of what you're doing is I just think it's Important to say because people here I think might hear this and be like, well, that just sounds like the both sides journalism that I got away from to get into independent journalism. And to me, like, the fact that you have the editorial take at the end is a key difference. Like my main complaint with the both sides journalism that we get from a lot of the DC publications is it's like they know that something is a scandal or whatever. And so like I'm going to write this story about the scandal, but. But in order to be fair, I have to quote like some bad faith asshole explaining why it's not a scandal. Yeah. And I. And sometimes I have to do it. They won't even put their name on it. And I'll be like an anonymous Republican source, you know, said, this is actually, you know, this shit smells great actually, and you can eat it, it's nutritious. And like they put it in the thing and it's like that is anti truth, actually. Right. Like that is an assault on truth to do that. Right. And I think that like trying to find the best arguments for the other side, but then explaining, hey, you know, here's where I don't think, I think that misses the mark. I do think that's a different animal indeed. All right, y'. All, I've been telling you about how we turned to three day blinds when we got here to Louisiana and needed to get those window treatments done. But I don't know what it is about the news keeping me up at night. My social calendar, we've been starting to revisit. Maybe we need some blackout blinds. Maybe we need to update the blinds a little bit. And so I'm going back to the well and we're looking for good blinds to keep it nice and dark in the bedroom so you can actually get some sleep. And thanks to our friends at three Day Blinds, there's a better way to do that. Buy blinds, shade shutters and drapery. Three Day Blinds is the leading manufacturer of high quality custom window treatments in the United States. And right now, if you use my URL 3dayblinds.com thebullwork they're running a buy one, get one 50% off deal. And that's pretty good because blinds are expensive. Three day blinds as professionally trained design consultants to provide expert guidance on the right blinds for you in the comfort of your home. Just set up an appointment. You'll get a free no obligation quote the same day. If you're like me and not into the DIY thing, that's an understatement I can't do anything. I mean, I'm helpless. I would be the last person that you would want as your bull or teammate on Survivor. So if you're like me, three Day Blinds can help. They'll just do it all for you. And right now you get quality window treatments that fit your budget. With 3 Day Blinds, head to 3dayblinds.com the bulwark for their buy one, get one 50% off deal on custom blinds, shades, shutters and drapery for a free no charge, no obligation consultation. Just head to 3dayblinds.com the Bulwark one last time. That's buy one, get one 50% off when you head to the 3D a y-blinds.com the Bulwark I want to go forward to some new stuff. Your big story on corruption. I think evidence is the value of what you're doing. So we're going to spend most of the podcast on that. But I want to talk about Iran really quick, especially in the context of what you're doing. We have this total fog of bullshit that's happening out there right now about the war. And it's like kind of impossible. It makes your job really almost impossible to try to tell. And you know, Axios has predicted like 13 of the last zero agreements. And like they have a report coming out every morning at 8 o'. Clock. It's like we got a source telling us that that deal's right around the corner. And then, you know, somebody from Iran, you don't even know if it's the real person or like a social media person. And it's like, like, so puts on X. This is not true. Satan is going to lose. Right? And it's like, you can't trust anybody that's talking. There's no reliable narrator in the whole conversation. And you know, Brett Baer, like, was like, I talked to the president yesterday, did this report on the serious Fox show. He's like, he says that we're going to get a deal within a week. I'm like, he's been saying that for nine weeks, you know, so eventually that'll be true, I guess. But in the meantime, how are you kind of like navigating, kind of like wading through all of that?
- [22:11]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I mean, something that I've taken to doing that I think is really grounding is just going back in time a little bit and reminding our readers what's been said at basically every stage of the conflict. And I think, I mean, the craziest thing to me is I Mean, the President had a literal national address to the country where he told everybody things were going to be wrapped up in two or three weeks. That was now almost two months ago, and. And just nothing happened. Not only did nothing happen, but two or three weeks later, we were even becoming even more engaged in this sort of. We're going to open up the Strait of Hormuz that was open before this whole thing started. So I am, like you, extremely skeptical of all of these leaks. I mean, I think the administration clearly senses that this is a political loser. We see Marco Rubio coming out and saying that this operation's over and they're moving on to this new operation.
- [23:07]
Tim Miller
I've got a couple. We've got a couple audio clips on this front for you. Why don't we just listen to those now and then you can finish your thought on the other side.
- [23:15]
Isaac Saul
The Operation Epic Fury is concluded. We achieved the objectives of that operation. I'm not going to. You know, we're not cheering for an additional situation to occur. We would prefer the path of peace. Thank you, Secretary Hexseth.
- [23:29]
Tim Miller
Last 24 hours or so. Iran's part of the US we fired at Iran. Just going to ask you more directly. Is the ceasefire over?
- [23:38]
Isaac Saul
No, the ceasefire is not over.
- [23:41]
Tim Miller
Ultimately, this is a separate and distinct
- [23:43]
Isaac Saul
project, and we expected there would be some. Some churn.
- [23:49]
Tim Miller
Some churn, yeah.
- [23:51]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. I mean, this is. You know, I said this on X yesterday. I think that might be the first time I ever called it X and not Twitter. The use of the word Orwellian has been so over that it now has lost all of its meaning. And when there are moments like this where it's so applicable, where they're just. I mean, Hegseth is answering a direct question about the fact that we are currently exchanging fire with Iranian forces and just says the ceasefires on this is a separate project. I mean, like, we have to be discerning enough here to just say, come on, this is. And. And that's what I would say to my audience and my readers is just, they can't just declare that a conflict is done while we're actively engaged in the conflict. And one of the core things that we need to happen now, because we're all experiencing this here in the States, is this oil shock is we need to free up the Strait of Hormuz, which, again, was open before the war started. And there's simply no way Trump is walking away from the table without that. Whatever you think of Trump, he is politically shrewd enough to know that if he goes into November with gas prices at $5 a gallon, he's going to get obliterated. And, and they have to do something about that. So I don't think we're close to being done with this. I think my fear, the way that I sort of talked about it early on was my fear was that we would have an ambient war, this kind of conflict that was background noise, where every few weeks there would be some huge flare up, some news story. Meanwhile, we're pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into it every month. And then it goes on for two years with the occasional troop death and lots of money spent and not much progress. And we seem to be heading that way right now. Like they are trying to make it this thing that's not the center story that's happening in the background. And I hope Americans are keen to it because to me, the Ambien war is really the big threat.
- [25:46]
Tim Miller
Between the Rubio and Hegseth clips, if you combine them, we were so close from somebody in the administration doing the. To walk the road of peace, sometimes we need to be ready to climb the mountain of conflict line from in the loop, like where they're right there. Like literally right there. Like they're, they're, they're just kind of dancing around, doing a, a direct quote from a spoof movie, mocking politicians to do this. It's just like the whole thing is insane. It's like the conflict is on hearing
- [26:15]
Isaac Saul
Rubio say that, like we want them to choose the path of peace. It's hard not to just see the images of Tehran on fire that we were all watching on Twitter, you know, in the early days of the war. It's like we did not choose the path of peace. We chose the path of force. And now we're in it and you guys have to figure out how to get us out of it. But they're just reframing the whole thing.
- [26:36]
Tim Miller
Yeah, they were negotiating. And I don't like this fucking regime, but they were negotiating. So don't tell me that you had to do this because you wanted the path of peace. They were working on a negotiation. Maybe you should have sent people who understood what they're talking about instead of outer borough real estate agents and the son in law who is getting 2 billion from their biggest geopolitical foe. Maybe they shouldn't have been the point people on that negotiation before you decide to start the war. But like they decide to start it, I guess they've convinced themselves of the. I kind of. Who knows what they need to do, but they're like, you know, you can almost see the PowerPoint. It's like phase one of the war is over. Like, now we've moved on to phase two, and it's like, no, man, it's the same war. Like, it's the same war and they don't know how to get us out is the reality. And, you know, we talked about this a lot with Arash yesterday, so I don't think we need to belabor the point. You know, nobody likes to think about what happens when the worst happens. I definitely don't. But the hantavirus is out there now, so, you know, it starts to rattle around at the old noggin from time to time. And when that happens, put that anxiety to work and do something useful like estate planning. Trust and Will offers affordable attorney designed estate plans online that you can create in as little as 30 minutes. 30 minutes, that's right. As I've mentioned before, I like to live my life in such a way that I just, I wipe out the stuff I don't have to do as I don't want to do as much. You know, there are obligations. You talk to your children about this. There are things you just have to do that you don't want to do. But as much as possible, I like to minimize that, that minimize the paperwork, minimize folding and ironing. It's not it for everybody, but that's how I like to do things. And so the idea of estate planning, that's a lot of paperwork, not Trust and Will. It's easy, it's quick. It was much easier than I expected. Bang, bang, bang. You get through it, you feel good about it at the end. Recommend Trust and Will affordable estate plans. Priceless peace of mind. Go to trustandwill.com bulwark and get 20% off. That's trustandwill.com bulwark to get your 20% off. Trustandwill.com bulwark I want to get to the corruption story. It's so good. And you got rid of the paywall, so everybody can go read the whole thing if they want. It's basically a comprehensive breakdown of all the corruption we've seen from the administration. And I just want to go through it a little bit. But the framing of it, I think is important. You start by saying this. For some reason, the real story we're living through now, the one where Trump's kids are funneling money directly to their family fortune while the US Government hands out favors in return, just doesn't seem to get any traction with the public. After reviewing the evidence of the first 15 months of Trump's second term, I believe POTUS is profiting off the office and making foreign policy decisions based on business interests to a level we've never seen or even conceived before. Like, this is just obviously true, and we'll go through the examples, but I'm wondering what your takeaway was for. Why. Why that isn't getting the attention that maybe it might have in the past. Why an article like this did get so much traction because of the dearth of coverage from the mainstream outlets.
- [29:51]
Isaac Saul
My working thesis, I think, is that opponents of the president who, who want to make this a story are literally overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that's happening on a daily basis, which, honestly, I don't blame them for, because it's hard to pick one thing and make that at the focus of the critique of the administration. I was trying to write a whole comprehensive roundup of this story, and I had a guide and a Google Doc I'd been building out for over a year and tracking all these stories really closely. And even with that kind of focus, somebody asked me, like, which is the story that kind of blows your mind the most or that you feel like is most emblematic of this? And it's. It's like my brain malfunctions because I don't know which one to pick. So many of them are so astonishing. And I think if you are a critic of the president, that's a challenge in terms of just the really baseline political messaging question. And then if you're a supporter of the president, I think the reality is you don't hear about a lot of these stories. I mean, they show up in the New York Times, maybe the Wall Street Journal does some reporting, maybe they go viral among, you know, critic of critics of the president on social media. But we are really still in this information silo. And the reason that I know that is because when I publish this piece, some of the top comments on the article were from Trump voters who are my readers, who were saying things like, I hadn't heard about 90% of these. Like, I just literally hadn't heard about them. And I think that is a big, big problem that the sort of, you know, Democratic left wing independent messaging machine has is they are really not reaching a lot of the people who need to hear this stuff the most, because I think there are, you know, not all of them, maybe not even half of them, but if a quarter of Trump supporters were incensed enough by some of this stuff, to maybe think twice about their support for the president or the lines they want to draw in the sand for future presidents. They might be standing up and speaking out, but right now I just don't think these stories are reaching them. And I think it's evidenced by the fact that we're all just kind of in these algorithmic silos right now.
- [32:02]
Tim Miller
Yeah, the hot phrase for this a while back was epistemic closure. People were talking about this a lot in media circles. And then I kind of feel like the epistemic closure got so bad that people just stopped talking about it. Yeah, it's like, what are we going to do to even talk about it? But this is. I do think the one asymmetry, feel free to disagree with me on this, between the bubbles of the left and the right is that the left bubble is real. But a lot of people that consume Ms. Now or consume a left wing YouTube feed are also reading the New York Times or watching the nightly news or watching Mainstream Outlook. It's part of their app, it's part of their diet. Maybe a little bit less of that now. But they're for the most part just painting at the broad brush. Liberal voters are not seeing what Fox is saying or not seeing what big critics are saying, but they're seeing what these mainstream outlets are saying. And the mainstream outlets were covering the Hunter Biden scandal. We're covering the various ways that the Biden administration did wrong stuff and they broke a lot of stories about the Biden administration. The people that are in the right bubble. There's no version of that. Literally, the Bret Baier show is the closest thing they get to straight news, maybe. And he's not covering this stuff at all. That creates a challenge, I think. And like, that asymmetry I do think is real. I'm wondering what you make of that.
- [33:28]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, no, I think there is asymmetry there. I mean, I don't think that's an unfair critique of kind of the media ecosystems and how we're operating in them. I mean, I also think in this current political environment, the reverse was almost true in the middle of Obama's term. But I think liberals are much more skeptical of their own party than Republicans are of their own. Like the Democratic infighting hasn't come to a head in a big way because they're the minority party and they don't have any power right now. But it is going to. And there is a lot of disagreement there. And I think Republicans are kind of on the other side of that intraparty war. And Trump won. And he has sort of gotten everybody to bend the knee. And so there's just way less skepticism and internal criticism toward him or toward the administration.
- [34:21]
Tim Miller
What criticism are MAGA voters seeing of Trump? Well, it's Epstein files and Iran war. And that's because, like Tucker. Candace. Right, like, right. There are big right wing outlets that have broken with him on those things. Right. So they are seeing now some critiques of him, but just like, not this stuff, you know, because that hasn't really broken through yet in those places. Or maybe it never will.
- [34:42]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. Which is interesting to me. I mean, I do think, you know, somebody like Steve Bannon comes to mind. The, the kind of war room mentality. Who he. I mean, I don't know. I. I literally don't know what to make of him. I mean, I know reporters who have talking. I've never interviewed him, I've never sat down.
- [34:58]
Tim Miller
I've talked to Steve a lot. So. So fire.
- [35:02]
Isaac Saul
I'd be curious what you think. I mean, like, someone like Steve Bannon built his career on being this incredibly salient critic of the swampiness of D.C. and now the most corrupt, slimy conservative politicians are getting free passes for fraud, defrauding their donors, all these kinds of things. Trump is pardoning these people. They're making all these very, to me, overt quid pro quo deals. And he doesn't seem to give a shit. And I don't understand that. So I'd be curious, like, what do you think his frame for this is? Because he's somebody I would expect to be talking about this on his show.
- [35:40]
Tim Miller
I can feel this one. This is my area of expertise. I got you on this one. Bannon has a worldview that is coherent and it's global. Like, he likes right wing populism. He wants to go after the, whatever bipartisan elite establishment that he believes to be corrupt. And there's some anti Semitism here, but like in the bank, you know, the banker, the big banks and, you know, all that, like, that's Steve. And he wants to overthrow that establishment and he wants to support anybody that is in service of that. And Donald Trump for a while was in service of that for him. And so when Donald Trump does stuff that goes away from that, from a policy standpoint, he will occasionally, like, pop them. And, like, they've popped him on some of the Iran war stuff and other issues. The problem is when it comes to this, what we're talking about, the corruption, well, Steve's corrupt and needed a pardon and might need one again in the future. Personally, he screwed over donors. He had people donate to a Build the Wall thing that he pocketed. That's just happened. Sorry. And his friends are corrupt. So he can't be in the system. Even though he's kind of on the outside, he still has influence. You can't be in the system and go after. You know, I call the MAGA establishment corrupt because that undermines the whole program. Like, what replaces that MAGA establishment then? Right. And so you see. And it was. That was the same thing with January 6th. I always said about Steve, like, he has this cheshire cat grin that he gives when he talks about the 2020 election and the Trump third term. Like, he's, like, genuine about his worldview 78% of the time. And then, like, 22% of the time, he's full of shit because he feels like he has to be full of shit to be in service of the other 78. That's what's happening with Steve.
- [37:30]
Isaac Saul
That's interesting. I mean, yeah, I guess it's hard for me to accept that the sort of populism is so faux, that this wouldn't be the kind of thing that incenses him, because.
- [37:41]
Tim Miller
Accept it, baby.
- [37:43]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. I mean. I mean, yeah. And, like, again, it's. I try not to be too judgmental about people that I've never sat in a room with and gotten a read on, and I don't know him, and. But when I listen to some of the stuff that he talks about on his show, and this is true of Tucker, too, and it was true of Trump in 2016, it's like, for me personally, where I'm holding politically, they say things where I'm nodding my head. I'm like, hell, yeah, I agree with you. And then I watch them go, become the thing that they said they were fighting, and it's like, I want to rip my hair out. And being one of the people who say. Because you being one of the people who's willing to say, I love this. This is great fight, and then, oh, no, these guys are doing the thing they said they were fighting puts me in this really narrow band of people who are willing to, on one hand say, I supported this, and then on the other hand say it's clear they don't actually give a shit about this anymore. And now I'm really frustrated by it. And there's. It's hard to get people to come with me on that journey, which is
- [38:41]
Tim Miller
tough, or maybe never did come. Just come all the way to the dark side of the forefinger. All Right, let's run through the corruption that you mentioned. A lot of the stuff our listeners are going to be familiar with. So it's a useful document people can go read. Because it's a lot of just 101 Trump corruption stuff I think that we can kind of gloss over. We just did a full episode on crypto. So from the crypto corruption, knowing that our audience kind of gets the gist of what Trump is doing, like, what was the thing that you discovered that was that, like, shocked you the most?
- [39:09]
Isaac Saul
I would say one of the things was that Melania Trump was also in it on the crypto, the meme coin, the shitcoin, which I actually did know until, or I didn't remember and really process until I went back through my notes and I just linked out to some article about that, that there was kind of this, I mean, a genuine all in from the family of like, we have this window leading up to the inauguration and around the hype of Trump coming back to office to just make as much money as possible. That it wasn't just sort of Trump doing this, but it sort of had this much more organized and focused feel. That was one thing I would say. The second was what's happened with the World Liberty financial stuff since Trump went out and pardoned Justin's son, who is now suing the Trump family, which I didn't know until I went to go look up what the latest on the story was, because he's saying that they A, tried to force him into investing in their stable coin that he didn't want to invest in, and B, they weren't letting him sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of this token that he had basically bought in an effort to get the SEC to back off the investigation, which in my opinion, they transparently did. And I'm like, my God, I literally don't know who the bad guy is here. Like, I don't. It's like, it's a. Yeah, it's a competition of slime that I'm not sure.
- [40:33]
Tim Miller
That's great. I mean, it's very. It's a classic story about, like, dealing with the devil. It's just like Justin sun and it was. And a classic quid pro quo. But Justin sun was under investigation for his crypto criming. He puts money into the Trump coins, the Trump administration stops investigating him, then he tries to cash out. And the Trump people running the Trump coin are like, no, sorry, like, you're locked in here with us. Actually, we're not locked in here with you.
- [40:56]
Isaac Saul
I'll just add the other one too. That's sort of related to the World Liberty financial stuff. That just paints a perfect picture of what you just said. The dealing with the devil is that I didn't know this, but the Trump administration had sanctioned a month before this.
- [41:12]
Tim Miller
I was gonna bring this one up. This was the one. I didn't know. I didn't know know.
- [41:15]
Isaac Saul
Last fall, the Trump administration announces a criminal charges against this transnational criminal syndicate for stealing billions of dollars from Americans with these online scams, the bullshit phone scams and Internet scams that you get. And then a month later, two of the guys that it sanctioned involved in that criminal syndicate who partnered with the Trump family's crypto company. I mean, this is like, there's, it's just Chef's Kiss. There's nothing more perfect to sort of paint the picture of the relationship between the government and Trump and how he's like regulating this industry that he's also participating in and all the conflicts of interest. And then also the fact that this company is so unseemly that they are hiring people that the Trump administration is also sanctioning for transnational crimes. I mean, it's.
- [42:06]
Tim Miller
Yeah. For scamming.
- [42:07]
Isaac Saul
And the Wall Street Journal reported this is not like some Twitter theory. This is. Yeah, like this is in a very well sourced Wall Street. I mean, it's. Yeah, it's really hard to wrap your head around.
- [42:18]
Tim Miller
And we've talked about the Sheikh Tanoon cases. It's a UAE guy that buys into the Trump stablecoin. I think I've already corrected myself once, but I do, I'm going to do it again just because it's a funny correction. When I first saw this story, I was describing him on the podcast as the Sheik. Like it was like a title, but that's actually his name, Sheikh. So anyway, what it's worth, I'd read the story, so I knew this happened. But like when you laid it all out, we know that they put in whatever 500 billion into the Trump's coin, but as part of that transaction, there was a 187 million upfront payment to Trump family entities before the inauguration. So that was just a straight $187 million bribe from this high ranking UAE official that then we go on to do other deals with. That is totally insane.
- [43:11]
Isaac Saul
Who's operating a $1.5 trillion sovereign wealth fund that he's like, I mean, effectively in control of. And then we basically undid a national security block that was stopping the UAE from getting 500,000 advanced Nvidia AI chips, which, by the way, you know, the. The block was there for a reason, which is we're not totally confident about what a country like the UAE is going to do with them. And also, this gives us this kind of competitive advantage. So they got what they paid for. I mean, everybody, if you've been paying attention to the news at all, you know that this kind of massive AI race is a really critical economic and national security race that's happening all across the globe. And for these guys, this kind of investment, a half billion dollars, is worth it to get access to that market. And they got what they paid for, which is the craziest part. It's just like. Like, it transparently worked for them. And this was the thing that, you know, Jared Kushner said point to an example of us ever doing something that wasn't in America's interest. I'm like, there's tons of examples, like, we are in a war right now that many of Trump's own voters don't support that Americans clearly don't want, based on the polling. And you guys are taking billions of dollars from the arch regional nemesis of the country that we are at war with. Like, that is a problem. We're selling fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, F35 fighter jets that the Pentagon says we should not be selling to them, at the same time that Saudi Arabia is giving the Trump family money and landing deals with the Trump family for resorts and hosting events at Trump family properties. Like, that is a problem. You know, there's a whole list in this story about all these things that the Trump administration or the Trump sons have done since Trump has come back into office this term with these people that, you know, maybe Saudi Arabia is better than Iran. Sure, I can grant that. But this is not, you know, well, now it's a non NATO ally, according to Trump, but up until this second term, this was not the kind of people that we were just trusting blindly or handing these sorts of tools or arms over to. And all of a sudden, we are. So things have changed in a really meaningful way, and the Trump family's profiting from it, which it's crazy.
- [45:35]
Tim Miller
So here's one example of a story from yesterday. It just kind of relates to all this. We don't know if it's related. Like, this is why before Trump, we had rules about this, but family getting into business with foreign countries and why there were norms and rules and laws around this that they're breaking. Like you mentioned, obviously, we know about the Kushner getting the 2 billion for his fund from Saudi. There's also Trump Tower, Jeddah, now the real estate properties. As you mentioned, Saudi's holding golf tournaments at his properties. The story yesterday is that Trump did an abrupt U turn on Project Freedom, the plan to open the Strait of Hormuz after pushback from Saudi. Saudi was unhappy that they're doing it because Iran was indicating that they were going to fire whatever drones or missiles at Saudi they did at uae. And Saudi was like, no, we either need to be wore on or wore off. Right? We don't want you guys to be doing this. Project Freedom while we're getting attacked. And Trump backed down at Saudi's request. This is a report from NBC. Is that related to the corruption? I don't know. But how can you know, again, no pun intended. How can you disentangle all that? Right? Like, would Trump listen as much to the request of a country if they weren't putting so much money into his family's pockets? Maybe, maybe not.
- [46:52]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, it's one of those situations that, that, you know, for me personally, you kind of just gravitate towards the Occam's Razor. And I think, okay, there's definitely a relationship here that's benefiting Saudi Arabia more than it might benefit another regional power in the area or the American people.
- [47:12]
Tim Miller
By the way, the American people would have benefited from opening the Strait if that's, if they were really going to do that. Unquestionable that Project Freedom could have successfully done that, but the American people would have benefited from that. And so that should probably be your first concern, not what your business partners in Saudi want.
- [47:27]
Isaac Saul
And this is where the fealty to Trump from Republicans in Congress comes into play is, you know, for all the ways that Congress can be ineffective, one of the things that Congress is actually pretty good at and has power to do is request documents, subpoena people, make people testify publicly, make people answer questions about the decision making process, how certain things came down. And Democrats, notoriously, are not a very good minority party. Republicans are much better at being a minority party that sort of forces concessions and forces these kinds of hearings and brings these things to the public's attention. So Democrats are kind of, you know, scrambling and I think not doing a good job of making these stories, you know, salient for the public. But it would just take a few Republicans to stand up and say, I have some questions about this and I'd like to bring Jared Kushner before Congress to hear him answer some questions about it. It. But they Won't do it.
- [48:26]
Tim Miller
Why hasn't he testified?
- [48:29]
Isaac Saul
We have a guy who is the son in law of the President operating multi billion dollar funds with investments from a country, leaders of a country that he is at the negotiating table with as a non US Representative because he purportedly doesn't actually have a job with the US Government, though he's also the special envoy for peace or whatever. And he's negotiating an end to this war that is not ending as our chief representative. And we don't have any visibility into any of that. He doesn't answer any questions. He doesn't, you know, he doesn't answer anybody's requests except the President's apparently. And maybe he's.
- [49:10]
Tim Miller
Yes. On background as a senior American.
- [49:12]
Isaac Saul
Right. Yeah.
- [49:13]
Tim Miller
So he does have one, one person that he talks to.
- [49:16]
Isaac Saul
It is, it's pretty remarkable the situation that we find ourselves in. And as I said, I the piece, I think what's especially frustrating is the scandal that people like me were writing about and chasing for four years under the Biden administration was that hunter Biden took $50,000 a month from some Ukrainian energy company and may maybe might have been potentially trying to organize some business deal for after Joe Biden was vice president and out of office and a private citizen to make a few million bucks. And we were I think rightfully up in arms a bit and had some questions about that and were worried about what that situation meant. And now we have something on a scale like orders of magnitude larger, much more blatant with a president who's in office and the conflicts of interest are way more live. And the same people who love my writing about that and were opening every email and interested in learning more about those potential scandals don't seem to care at all about this. And I think, I think that's the thing that I find really frustrating.
- [50:18]
Tim Miller
Amen. And I always use the Clinton Global Initiative example also. Right. That was, I thought, a legitimate scandal. Like she was the Secretary of State, her husband was running around the world getting money from people that had big interests before our government. And that just was a bad look. And we don't know whether it influenced policy. Policy should be independent from your personal interest. But the thing is that money was going to a charity that was going to like mosquito nets in Africa or something like this. Money, money is going to Donald Trump Jr. His personal wallet and his family and like, and the new hotels they want to build and their, you know, safaris they want to go on where they kill big animals. Right. Like that's, that's what the money's going to.
- [50:58]
Isaac Saul
I don't know when this episode is going to come out, but I'm writing about this tomorrow. Okay, so the piece will be live by Friday afternoon. But I'm writing about this. I'm responding to a bunch of criticism and feedback that I got about the initial corruption piece. And one of the most common pieces of feedback was, well, it's well established that Clinton was lining her pockets with the Clinton Foundation. I'm like, actually that's not well established. They weren't really lining their pockets getting rich from the Clinton Foundation. What was a scandal and what was there was a bunch of reporting about was that Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State had this foundation on the side that was taking money from people who clearly wanted access to her. And there was something that was scandalous about this. And one of the most concrete examples was that a big donor to the Clinton foundation ended up getting this like not even an ambassadorship, just this like very obscure post for some, you know, foreign embassy position. And I'm like today, right now, I didn't even mention in my piece the fact that Trump is handing out ambassadorships to France to people who are donating millions of dollars to his campaign. Like it is so far down the toe.
- [52:03]
Tim Miller
Son in law's dad is actually the ambassador to France. Criminal. Who's a criminal.
- [52:08]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, we got pardoned and like, and, and that literally was not in a 6,000 word piece I wrote about all the things. Like it didn't make it in because it was insignificant compared to the other stuff I was talking about. So that's just like a great window into how the Overton window has moved and how much our expectations of these politicians have changed.
- [52:30]
Tim Miller
This takes me back to the asymmetry and you're talking about the people. You have readers you can free frustrate with. The readers who are excited to read about the Hunter Biden scandal, still aren't excited to read about the Trump scandals. That's human nature. Ostensibly media outlets have obligations, though. We talked about the Hunter Biden scandal on this podcast. The mainstream media covered the Hunter Biden scandal extensively. This is not only is this stuff not being covered on Fox, the opposite. You pointed this out in the piece Eric Trump got a 24 million billion, I don't know who knows a lot of big money, a big contract from the government, Our taxpayers company that Trump is involved with. Eric Trump is involved with got money from us in a government contract. He goes onto Fox News and here is how that contract is discussed and the company's chief strategy advisor, Eric Trump, President Trump's son.
- [53:23]
Isaac Saul
Congratulations to you both. Thank you so much for being here.
- [53:27]
Tim Miller
Congratulations. He's getting congratulated for taking money.
- [53:31]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I mean, it's remarkable. Again, it was, I believe it was a $24 million contract from the Pentagon. And then as I was writing about that exchange and how, you know, disorienting it was to see that moment on national television, another story came out from Bloomberg about the U.S. air Force landing a contract with a drone company that the Trump sons are also backing and involved in and invested in. And the U.S. air Force is now buying an undisclosed number of these interceptor drones from this company. It's like that's the waterfall of stuff that's so hard to keep up with that. It's hard to know which one to make a story. And it's like any one of them, in a different era that we lived in two years ago would have been a months long scandal that everybody was talking about non stop. I mean, we got stories about Hunter Biden selling his artwork because the art sucked and he was obviously taking money from people who wanted access to the family. The Trump kids are doing Pentagon contracts selling drones with companies they're invested in like it is crazy to imagine.
- [54:43]
Tim Miller
Involved in the Kazakhstan mining company. Tungsten mining. They're doing tungsten mining. It's like, what?
- [54:48]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, I mean, it's, they're turning over every stone to find ways to sort of interweave these contracts, these government contracts with their business interests or these government relationships with their business interests. And you know, it's worth saying here, Trump has talked about this on the record. I mean, he gave an interview to the New York Times where he just said straight up, we tried to separate the businesses during the first term and nobody cared that we did. So I'm not even trying that. I mean, he's, he's, it's not like they're denied. I mean, this is, it was like some of his supporters have sort of denied that the facts of the article I put forward are true. And I'm like, Trump is not denying this. Just to be clear, the President saying that they tried, nobody cared. So now they're not, they're not trying, they're just doing whatever they want. So it's not even a reasonable ground to stand on and say like, oh, these are all concocted scandals. It's like the President is saying overtly that they're just guardrails off because they tried the first term and nobody gave them any credit for it, it.
- [55:49]
Tim Miller
People can tell as my volume is getting higher and higher. I'm like, my blood pressure is skyrocketing as we go through all these examples. I'm getting so, so madder and madder. You did an interview with folks over at Breaking Points about this. Was watching your interview and like one of the things you mentioned was, well, you know, there's also just the scandal related to all of the use of their hotels and resorts for government purposes. You're like, that's the one thing where I'm like, I guess he's a businessman, he owns these hotels. I guess they should use those. I was railing about this all in the first term. I was like, I find this insane. Like, they were like, there was a trip in Scotland where they made Mike Pence go from one side to the other to stay at his resort in Dune Bag. So they've been just doing nickel and diming scamming this whole time along with this. But anyway, the other, other thing that was mentioned in that interview I thought was funny that Sager said to you, because I felt the same way. The one thing in your article that not only did I not know about, but like there was not even a familiarity ring in my mind about this is apparently the Trump Organization has also launch Trump Mobile, a branded phone segger also didn't know this. I'm like, if we don't know this, we're following this stuff as close as possible. That's how deep the scams are going. There's the 47 plan. The organization doesn't manage the phone or provide the cell service, but it's tied into some other right wing thing, a liberty phone service.
- [57:10]
Isaac Saul
Yeah. The thing I didn't mention in the piece actually about the Trump Mobile stuff, and actually I wish I had mentioned it to Sagar when I was breaking points, is that the phone launched In June of 2025, this custom gold T1 phone that was supposed to ship in August, but the people who placed $100 pre order, they haven't. They never got their phone. And yeah, this USA Today article was from April, so it was a month ago. But the, the company's last social media post was on August 27th. So on April 6th, you know, months after they had sold all these plans and sold all these phones, the Trump Organization filed this trademark application for a mobile phone plan service, the 47 plan. And it's, you know, after the Verge reported that the FCC certified this smartphone under the trade name T1 in January. So it's like the FCC is involved in clearing the way for them to roll this phone out, that's going to be this. It's like, yeah, again, the FCC is clearing a scam.
- [58:10]
Tim Miller
In any other world, the FCC would be investigating this. Like, you created this fake thing. People paid for it. They didn't get the product that they paid for. Like, that's like Trump University. It's like all these other scams from the private sector. Like, there should be oversight and investigation of this. Instead, that's the opposite. They're greenlighting it. He's just fucking people over. The President.
- [58:30]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, it's. And it's. You know, what I talked about in the piece is, like, it is bizarre to be operating in this environment where it feels like everybody's just kind of under some. Some spell that I can't break to make them care. Not everybody. The people that I want to care about this.
- [58:47]
Tim Miller
Here's my theory. It's a little different than you. It's related to the spell.
- [58:50]
Isaac Saul
I'd like to hear it. Yeah.
- [58:51]
Tim Miller
The second win, even people that are opposed to Trump, a lot of them are just like, whatever. I guess people wanted it, right? The people that are opponents of Trump or skeptics even, or challenger, they all accept that he's a scam artist, right? So we're back to the asymmetry. There's like one group of people that, like, he's an obvious scam artist. He's been a scam artist his whole life. You know, he's been a liar his whole life. He's been enriching himself off of, you know, either grips or lies his entire life. And we all knew it. And the people elected him. So it's like dog bites man. President is doing a grift. We knew it. Like, this is what. This is the type of person we got. And then there's another group of people that are like, he's this great businessman. We love him. I'm in an epistemically closed environment where I'm not getting any other information about him. And maybe this stuff will matter if their life gets worse. And to me, I think that's the one hopeful thing. Mona Charon wrote about this for us this morning. Her headline is, Trump's corruption is going to sink him. I'm not quite as optimistic as Mona, but I do wonder if that latter group, this stuff starts to become potent with them. If they feel their economic prospects face, like, if they are suffering, then it's like, you know, that they're like, it was kind of part of the deal. There's this wink and nod deal. It's like Trump's going to take a little bit off the top, but as long as I'm doing good, that's cool. But maybe that's my silver lining. Do you think that there's anything there?
- [60:22]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, well, I would say the sort of parallel is what just happened in Hungary with Viktor Orban. And I think there are a lot of sort of Western lenses put on that, that where it was like, oh, this, you know, objection to the, the, the, the, the erosion of democracy in Hungary. And when you read a lot of people who write about Hungary for a living and people who are like, you know, Hungarian focused reporters, what they were all saying was it, it wasn't this big objection to Orban's right wing policies. It was that he was corrupt, the people knew he was corrupt and their economic fortunes were not getting better and they just got tired of it. And I think like that parallel could translate here where, you know, the, the what is Trump doing to democracy stuff isn't necessarily going to resonate, but the idea of is Trump actually self dealing and is he doing that while my economic fortunes are not improving? That sort of one plus one I think is a big problem for him. And we're seeing, I mean, I, I haven't seen a ton of polling about people's views of him and self dealing and corruption stuff, but his economic numbers are the wor they've ever been across his two terms right now. So, you know, I do think people are the one. One half of that is here already, which is people are not happy with how the economy has been under him, which is really distinct from what happened in the first term. So, you know, obviously, hopefully he's not going to run for a third time, so his electoral prospects are not really at issue here. But the Republican Party's in trouble for sure.
- [61:57]
Tim Miller
Final thing. And we can't even get into everything in this Trump derangement syndrome podcast. The list is so long, I haven't even mentioned all the pardons. I encourage people to go look at the pardon section of the piece because it's mind boggling. But maybe just for the sake of the audio audience, why don't you just tell the story of Trevor Milton, who you singled out as the most outrageous of all of the corrupt pardons that he's done.
- [62:23]
Isaac Saul
Yeah, Trevor Milton is a guy who donated $1.8 million to, to Trump's campaign, his, his reelection fund going into the 2024 race. And he was found guilty of securities and wire fraud. And what he did is sort of this notorious. You there's actually. You could go find the YouTube video online. But he basically went to investors with a story about this functional truck his company had developed. And basically everything he said about the truck truck was a lie. And the thing that sort of became what he was known for was that he showed investors video footage of this truck driving on the road. And it came out after the fact that he had actually rolled the truck down a hill in order to make it look like it was operational and functional when the engine didn't actually work and the mechanics of the truck didn't actually work. And after phone. Yeah. After his conviction, he owed $676 million in restitution to the people he defrauded. Trump pardoned him and wiped that restitution out. So not only did he get him out of jail and get him off from his crimes, the victims of the fraud, hundreds of millions of dollars of people who invested in this company don't get their money back. And the hook here is that Milton's defense attorney, me, was Attorney General Pam Bondi's brother. And Trump got asked about the pardon and he first said, I've never heard of the guy. Which is just like, stop and pause there for a moment. Either. He's telling the truth. And he just pardoned a guy who he didn't even take the time. You know, the most powerful unchecked thing he can do is pardon people. And he didn't even take the time to read five minutes about his crime. So he's saying, I don't even know the guy. Or he's lying, which he probably is. Is. And then he's lying about the fact he doesn't know the guy. But then he adds, they say the thing that he did wrong was he was one of the first people that supported a gentleman named Donald Trump for president. So his perspective. And somebody probably told him, the guy's a huge supporter of your presidency, he donated money to your campaign. He was one of your original supporters. We should let him out. Trump says yes. And in pardoning him, he basically lets him off the hook for this $676 million he owed people. It's. I mean, that's about as egregious as it gets. You know, I pardon this guy who I don't know because he was one of my first supporters, and that's what he did wrong. And he got attacked for that. It's, It's. I mean, yeah, it's hard to find the words, really.
- [65:00]
Tim Miller
Pitchforks. Now, I'm going to stroke out if we don't end the podcast. So I'm just going to end it there. Pitchforks now. That's Isaac Salt. Call. Once again, it's Tangle News. Go check it out or send it to the person in your life that you think might benefit from it. I appreciate you coming on the show, man, and let's stay in touch. All right.
- [65:19]
Isaac Saul
Thanks for having me, Tim. Stay well.
- [65:21]
Tim Miller
All right, everybody else will be back tomorrow with one of my faves. It's going to be another banger, so we'll see you all then. Peace. The Borg Podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.