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us to realize the future America needs, we understand what's needed from us to face each threat head on. We've earned our place in the fight for our nation's future. We are Marines. We were made for this. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I am delighted, but not as delighted as you. The audience is to welcome back to the show host of Crooked Media's what a Day podcast, which is now daily coming for me. But it's shorter. It's shorter. Okay, you can do both. And she's also, as I mentioned yesterday, you people like her so much. She's the current record holder for most audio downloads of a single podcast. And I think it's just because people wanted her Melania take so bad. It's Jane Coston. Hello.
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It's good to see you, Tim.
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Jane, High bar for you to clear.
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I know, I know. Regrettably, we don't have Melania Trump explaining how we should have just read her book. But no one read her book. I'm so sorry. I still haven't.
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I should have pulled a clip just for fun. We should have just done a flashback. I had nothing to do with how
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I met my husband, which I detailed in my book. And I'm like, no, we didn't read it.
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I did not do sex trafficking with Jeffrey Epstein. Okay. Anyway, we've got a grab bag of fun Tim and Jane topics at the end. We are going to have to talk about chud Catholic convert JD in the middle at the beginning, we have to start with some angry news. Is that okay? Can we do mad stuff first?
B
Yeah, I think that makes sense because, I mean, there's a lot of angry news. Before we get into how Usha Vance didn't have any issues growing up and she doesn't really get what JD's ordeal is. But that's neither here nor there.
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We'll get back to Ush. I feel like I can call it that. We're kind of on that sort of nickname level. I'm trying to decide which thing I'm more upset about this morning. I think the thing I'm most upset about is the Supreme Court ruling on the temporary protected status for the Haitians. We're going to do legal nerdery next week when we get all of the Supreme Court ruling rulings in. And so I don't know that we need to go through the ruling of the fine tuned comb. But in short, what the practical effect is is that over 300,000 Haitians who fled horrific conditions in their country and are in America under legal status have now been made illegal by the Supreme Court because of some Calvin Ball style decision. And now they are subject to Mark Wayne Mullen and Stephen Miller and their goons and who knows what's gonna happen. So I've got some rage on this. I'm wondering what your reaction is.
B
Yeah, I mean there are a couple things about this because it's not just folks from Haiti, it's folks from Syria, it's folks who are here on temporary protective status. And there's a split screen which a couple of people have been sharing, I did as well, which is Samuel Alito saying like Trump's comments, you know, you can say anything about someone's country, you can just like dislike people's country. Like what? Fine, like so it's not racist. And then you have, if I remember correctly, you have in her dissent, Elena Kagan being like, here is all of the things Trump said about Haitians and talking about how they're bringing aids, how they live in a shithole country, how they're just terrible people, how, you know, we should be able to get more people from Norway and Sweden. And it was interesting how Samuel Alito's whole thing was. Doesn't look like anything to me. And this is someone who once decried the Sopranos for promoting anti Italian, Italian racism. So like there's this weird, like it, it's interesting because I just keep thinking about how like the Supreme Court, the conservative justices on the Supreme Court can see racism if it impacts them directly. Everybody else, they're like, oh, what? Who? Like, it's like if, if horse blinders worked like this. And it's telling because I just keep thinking of moments in which people on the right have decried anti white racism or what they believe to be anti white racism, which really just makes it so clear that there is a swath of the American right that knows what racism is but can only identify it if it is happening to them.
A
Or I think maybe in the Case of anti Semitism, for example, like on Fox, they're like, very keyed in on any signs of antisemitism if it comes from a DSA leftist.
B
Right, Right. But it just, again, you go like, you know, anti Semitism on the right. They're like, who?
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What?
B
I don't know what you're talking about. I got nothing. And I'm like, yeah, your, your hands are in front of your face and your eyes are closed and you've just been going la, la, la, la, la, for the last several years. Or you've been saying like, oh, it's okay, because I'll never forget the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro basically saying, like, Ann Coulter may be anti Semitic, but she likes Israel. So it's cool. Don't worry about it. You know, no need to worry about that. Like, it's totally fine. Also, you can say whatever you want about a liberal Jew. That's fine. But conservative Jew, no, Not allowed.
A
Here's the thing, and like I said, I'll get more into the court stuff next week, but this is what people voted for. And, like, this is what we were going to get when Donald Trump came back in. And it's a heinous, disgusting, un American, like, fundamentally un American policy. But, I mean, it's what they campaigned on. This was not. They did not hide the ball. I mean, they campaigned on these people being kicked out of the country and they made lies about them. They ate cats and dogs.
B
They wanted to pay a bounty. Christopher Ruffo offered a bounty for proof that Haitian immigrants eat cats and or dogs. This was a thing that actually happened.
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Did he ever get that? Did he pay out the bounty?
B
Unclear. I'm guessing no. I will also note that there's very specific groups that apparently were very mad about animal cruelty, and that group does not include white people who apparently can do animal cruelty all day long. There's kind of this overarching thing I have where it's like, oh, you know, you had on CNN last night somebody ranting about a Haitian immigrant who, you know, hit and killed a child in a truck or something like that. And basically just.
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I remember the story.
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Yeah. Which, I mean, one, the parents of the child went to a city council meeting, if I remember correctly, and begged people to not use their child's name as a political cut. But also it's so obvious, this idea of, like, one person did something that was terrible and horrible and awful and evil, and that's just one person did something. And then it's like, obviously this is endemic across this Entire large community, which is just like such obvious bog standard evil racism. That's just how that is. There's a temptation to want to do a tit for tat of just being like, look, clearly we don't care about criminality coming from any other group or any other number of people. But to your point, this is what they campaigned on. This is what they said they would do. And there really is something about, like, there are people who can say in some ways that the Trump administration, you know, this isn't what I voted for. I didn't vote to go to war in Iran. I didn't vote for him to be obsessed with a fucking reflecting pool. I didn't vote for him to be obsessed with, I don't know, arches and ballrooms and be like, you know, like, if, like, whatever, the actual stereotype of Marie Antoinette, who, side note, seems like she was a fine person, it's fine. We can get into that as another conversation. But, you know, actual Marie Antoinette, fine. But like this. You knew. You knew the whole time. You wanted it to be the economy of 2019, and you said, this is also fine.
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This is fine. We're gonna send these Haitian kids that are just trying to live a life in our countries, are going to school, people that are working in the factories, and you have all these. All these anecdotes, and you shouldn't even have to say them of people that are going to work.
B
And also, like, people who have been here for, like, 16 years at this point, since the 2010 earthquake, like, to
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send it back to what?
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Well, also, like the idea that this is somehow a good thing for us. Like, it doesn't do anything good for us. It doesn't add anything to remove people from this country. It just doesn't. Like. Like this, like, it doesn't. It doesn't add anything. It detracts from us and it detracts from who we are, who I want us to be, more accurately, because this is actually who we are right now.
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I have to give you a counterpoint, Jane. Megyn Kelly, who's usually right around us in the podcast rankings, so people are listening to that show. She had a different take than you on the Haitian.
B
Of course she did.
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Immigrants. And I'd like to play that for you.
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Look, this has been going on for over a dozen years. Go home. Get out. We know our country's better than yours. That's because we filled it with our work ethic and our culture and our values. You being here only dilutes it for us. Those who Built it and live it. And half of you people, more than half, you won't assimilate. We don't want you, we don't care if you're offended. Get out.
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Go home.
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Go back to fucking Haiti. Sorry, I'm just, I'm thinking about our friends in Ohio who've been dealing with these tps, Haitians for years now who are drunk driving all over their towns and killing people. This is the whole cats and dogs thing. Like they don't want to live like Americans live. You know how Americans stand athwart drunk driving. That is something. Americans don't drunk drive. That's why there hasn't been a years long campaign to get people to stop drunk driving. And there isn't a little device that sometimes court officers will put in your car that you have to blow into before you can start your car. Because Americans don't drunk drive. Like, what she's doing there, and this is kind of a wider thing, is she is vice signaling. This is like, yeah, fuck you. I hate everybody. I'm a terrible person. And I'm gonna perform that because, oh, I'm just standing up for our friends in Ohio, like, because, you know, Megyn Kelly, who is a extraordinarily wealthy woman, who has been an extraordinarily wealthy woman for a very long time, is also got her ear to the ground in Springfield, Ohio, because I am sure that she is spending a lot of time just with everyday folks in Springfield, Ohio. And I'm sure she's not just getting emails from people who are already mad about it, who are also listeners of the Megyn Kelly Show. You know, she's getting like real deal contextual information from the good people and of Springfield, Ohio. This is a woman who once complained about a trans woman appearing on Kim Petras pop star appearing in Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue because she was upset, because what if her sons wanted to masturbate to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and they saw Kim Petras and they couldn't do it? Wouldn't that be sad, Tim? Wouldn't that be so sad? It would be very sad.
A
I thought you're kind of nice to Megyn Kelly there. Because what Megyn Kelly is doing is she's being a rancid bitch. That's what she's doing. I'm sorry. Like that is all she's doing. She's like, you can call it vice signaling. That's just like the Winnie the Pooh and the tuxedo version of what she's doing. But she's being a Rancid bitch. And she.
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This notion, it's a performance for a performance that is like, this is what we want. Like, this is what we want to hear from you. We want to hear from you yelling at Mark Levin about his micropenis, God knows what. And it will benefit you financially to do this. If it didn't, she wouldn't be doing it. And you will recall, I mean, the thing with Megyn Kelly specifically is that we have evidence of all of this, because. Do you remember when she was working for NBC?
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Yeah. It was a totally different character. She's playing a totally different character.
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Totally different character.
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She was like loving trans children, very character, having them on the show. Yeah. She's like the soft morning mom after school drop off.
B
Yeah. Lots of clapping.
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Clapping. She did the wine dancing. But she is perpetrating a lie that is underscoring the tragedy that's happening to these people that are being sent back to Haiti for no reason. They're being menaced by our government for no reason. People in the country working hard, going to church, raising their families. That's what was happening about most of the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. And like, this idea, I'm going to. Can I steal a line from Barack Obama? The idea that, like, there's this great American culture and it's like, we built this. It's like, Megyn Kelly, you didn't build shit. Like, she has not built any lasting cultural touchstone. She's added nothing to the culture. All she's trying to do is rip the country apart, undermine what made America special. Like the idea that Haitians haven't contributed anything to American culture. As a New Orleans resident, I do have to object to this notion because New Orleans is Alabama without Haitians. That's what New Orleans is like. The Creole culture is New Orleans. And that, I think, has enriched the country quite a bit. It's added a lot of, you know, a lot of spice to the gumbo. You know, there have been a lot of great Haitians. Bascot, Blake Griffin, you know, there was the Pierre Toussaint she might be familiar with. She lives in New York. She pretends to be a Catholic, founder of Catholic Charities. And it's just like this fucking idea that it's like, oh, we did that. We did that. She hasn't done anything. You sit in your basement, in your mansion and you yell at people for money.
B
Yeah. No, there's something, you know, a concept that I find. I mean, it's, you know, you see it across different groups, but it's kind of Like a stolen valor thing. And this is stolen white people valor?
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Yes, Correct.
B
It's like, you know, my ancestors. I'm like, did they.
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Maybe they did. I don't know who your great grandma is. She probably contributed more than Megyn Kelly has to the culture.
B
But I don't know, you see this with kind of like, you know, like, you get stolen penis valor, where it's like, men are like, oh, we are all universally stronger than every woman. And I'm like, sir, I've seen you get bested by a large bag of rice at Costco. So let's just. Let's simmer down a little bit on this one. But, yeah, no, it's awful, but it's awful and it's garbage. And it's what we're doing right now, and it's what we're performing again to the world. And I mentioned this on my show yesterday, that we have this simultaneous. People are here for the World cup, and everybody's having a great time, and people are getting along and doing stuff.
A
And this is in conservative media, too. For people who don't consume conservative media, this is like a big shtick for them right now. It's like, it's a segment on every
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show to that point, including fans of Haiti's national soccer team, which they've not been able to play at home in years. And you have Haitian Americans who are here supporting their team. They are, you know, they're celebrating. They, you know, they're having dance offs with Scottish fans. Like, it's great. And it's like, that is. And yet you have conservative media being like, yeah, everybody loves us. It's so great. But, like, you gotta get the out of here. It's a fascinating duality.
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It is. Our mutual friend Larry, Haitian descent. Was that one of those games? I think he's brought more to the culture than Megyn Kelly.
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100%.
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Y' all know I love Souls out of office Sparkling beverages for an easy way to unwind without drinking. And if you haven't tried them by now, you need to get yourself some of those or some of their new mood gummies as well. If you're anything like me, your day and night routines are not really routine. Whether it's doom scrolling, keeping you up, something I'm still doing, or whether you went to the Geese concert last night like I did, and so you're a little bit sluggish the next morning, bad habits can throw you off your rhythm. Soul's Mood Gummies can help balance that out. Soul's Wellness brand that makes delicious hemp derived CBD and THC products designed to make feeling good. Simple Soul's new mood gummies have precise dosing, clean ingredients and formulations designed for predictable effects so you can choose how you want to feel while staying in control. They have something for every occasion. Uplift gummies that are perfect for your social plans. Mellow gummies that are ideal for cozy nights and fully unplugging. Or the Valance gummy for an easy anytime vibe. Three moods, three intentionally crafted formulas. Same great taste, less filling. That's an elder millennial joke about the Xers. An Xers joke too. Anyway, make today a good day and get yourself some soul gummies. Right now. Soul is offering my audience 30% off your entire order. Go to getsoul.com and use the code. The bulwark. That's getsoul.com promo code. Thebullwerk for 30% off. Okay, let's move on to another terrible story. This has been something I've been wanting to get to. This is related to an ICE protest in Prairieland. It's one of the stories that's like, it's kind of complicated and. How do you say this? Like the victims of a story, like, are never pure. You know, you want your victims to be Mother Teresa. The victims in the story did some things that were wrong, but the way that they're being treated by the government is fucking outrageous and so on.
B
It's also like the way that they are being portrayed in media, which is, again, outrageous. Yeah, it's all, you know, it's outrageous. And especially because, like, one, it's led to some of the most irritating people on earth gloating about it. But also the degree to which. So what we're talking about.
A
Let me just get the breakdown.
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We're actually talking about.
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Sorry, yeah, our fucking dander is up. Okay, listeners, sorry. Sometimes our dander gets up before we tell you what we're talking about. 4th of July last year, protesters went to the Prairie Land Ice facility in Texas for protest. It was disruptive. They were shooting fireworks. They were doing graffiti. They slashed some tires on the government van. You should not do that. They were asked to disperse. Many of them did not comply. A federal agent arrived, pulled out a gun. One of the protesters who had taken a rifle to the protest. Second Amendment, Hell, yeah. Shot and wounded, but didn't kill the officer that pulled the gun. You should not do that. The government Prosecuted then, though, 22 protesters.
B
Not just the one, including people who were not there. That's something that's important here people who were not present for this event.
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Nine of the protesters were prosecuted under this material support for terrorism executive order that Trump signed last year, which is
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going after, which has gotten very undercovered. The reporter Ken Klippenstein has been all over this. But yeah, it's gotten very undercovered.
A
But yes, so they're getting hit with these terrorism charges. So these nine people, their sentences range from 30 to 100 years. 30 to 100. Many of the listeners got mad at me for what they considered one of my worst takes besides the decoration of the Oval Office, which was that I thought that the Qanon Shaman sentence was too harsh. He got like three years. Okay, these people got 30 to 100 years for antifa terrorism. The government alleged that eight of the convicted protesters belonged to North Texas antifa. In the case of one of the couple the government relied on as evidence they owned a printing press. Story from like the Weather Underground used to print Anarchy zines. Yes, Anarchy zines. One of the defendants. This is the guy you mentioned. And then I'll let you go. One of the defendants which you just mentioned, Daniel, he goes by Des Sanchez. Estrada didn't even attend the protest, as you mentioned. His wife did. She called him from jail after the arrest. The government recorded the call. Soon after he was stopped by police. He was moving a box of these zines from his home. Many of the illustrations, there were stickers, you know, they had tattoo flash sheets. They're entered into the prosecution's exhibit files. And like now this guy has been convicted of terrorism for the zines.
B
Again, one zines. It's extremely like 1993, which. Okay, that's fine. Again, this person was prosecuted for moving a box of anarchist zines.
A
Now I, I mean, I can't laugh. You want to laugh?
B
No, no, no. You want to laugh because of the word zines. Because it makes me feel like we are having like, we're doing like a very special episode of Blossom. Would watch that episode of Blossom, to be clear, but we are talking about someone who was prosecuted for terrorism for moving a box of zines. And it's been interesting how this case is discussed in conservative media and in the media more generally where it's just like, ah, like, you know, they were colluding to do Marxist terrorism, which like one, it is legal to be a Marxist, just like it is legal in the United States to be a white nationalist. Completely legal. Now will the FBI spend a lot of time listening to your phone calls and trying to encourage you to like move guns across state Lines. Yes. So remember, if anyone is excited about you doing crimes, it's always a fed every time. No one wants to help you do crimes. That's like a really important lesson that I always want everybody to take away. Nobody wants to help you do crimes. But also it's completely legal. It is completely legal to have a politics that I think sucks. It's totally legal. And the idea that this is doing anything to foment national security writ large is mind bendingly stupid. Like it just is. This is all happening also while there still is to be clear, as far as I know, that MAGA slush fund for Jan6people, Jan6 Defenders. Well, I mean, of course they will. They're all make the point of like, you know, so many of them didn't even do anything. The cops just let them in and all this other stuff and then they had to deal with like years and years of prison. And there is a version of all of this and I'm reminded of how like just after January 6th you get, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene complaining about like jail conditions and a bunch of like libertarians being like, yeah, yeah, yeah, wow.
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There were some people that got too harsh of sentences that didn't do anything on January 6th that just were there and walking around. That is true. That happened. That was not the vast majority of
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the people that happened. There were lots of people who were tasing cops and then telling the victims of their sexual abuse of those people that they would be getting money from the government and they would just pay them off. That's a side note. So you have all of these people who are like, oh, the government went so hard after us after this and then you have this happening and they're like, but that's fine.
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Do, do, do.
B
That's all.
A
Have we heard from Julie Kelly? Have we heard from any of the. No, like big activists on behalf of the January 6th choir. Have we heard from Matt Gaetz? What about Marjorie? She's out. Have we even heard from MTG about this? So maybe I don't have. I might want to give MTG the benefit of the doubt. If you have MTG's email or phone number out there, please ask her about this story. I don't, but like, this is crazy.
B
No, it is insane. It's objectively insane. When you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And when you believe that you have this thing antifa, you have created it into being an overarching terrorist network the likes of which we have not seen since Al Qaeda or isis. Well, Everything starts to look like evil antifa, al Qaeda, isis, including someone moving a box of zines out of their house. Now, we could easily do this for any number of groups where, you know, they're moving white nationalist literature. You know, there's lots of that. You have some guy moving, like, printed copies of Siege or the Turner Diaries or any number of things like Atomwaffen Division, any number of these things. And then I'm sure you would see people arguing, many of these same people that, like, you know, it's not a crime to have these beliefs. You know, this moving, this like, the
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First Amendment's under threat. Remember this whole thing about how my extremist views, my First Amendment views are under threat because Facebook, a private company, deleted my post or canceled my account because I was.
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And that's why we have to get rid of section 230, because, you know, life is very hard for me personally.
A
This is a very commonly expressed view on the right, including by, like, the richest man in the world talks about this a lot. This is great censorship. It's an attack on the First Amendment. This is a guy who's been put in jail for 30 to 100 years for leftist zines. Where the fuck is Elon? Where is the outrage about this? It is.
B
He's very busy attempting to foment race war in the United Kingdom. He's got a lot to do over there.
A
And so, I don't know. I mean, the guy that shot the cop. Let's see if the details are of this. And all this, obviously, this was very stupid, and this was not something you should do, and you should be punished if it was in the law. But it's, like, for the same people that came to Kyle Rittenhouse's defense when he showed up to a protest with a gun that are doing the stand your ground nonsense that are talking about how their rights are being abridged by the government to now want to throw the book at kind of some weird lefty guys that wanted to do earnest protests outside of the ICE facility. I mean, talking about the hypocrisy, I guess, is stupid.
B
Yeah, it's a personal libertarianism. It's like, I should be able to do whatever I want, and you should have to do whatever I want you to say.
A
Whatever I say?
B
Yeah, whatever I say.
A
No, that's right.
B
Yeah, that's it.
A
That's really good. Okay, well, I want to keep talking about this because, unfortunately, we're gonna need, I don't know, a July 4th Texas choir, probably for these people. So they can get pardoned by President Jon Ossoff or whatever in 2029, God willing. But it's a fucking sick story. Really quick aside, I just wanted to mention another story. It's kind of hard to get everything happening in the news, but there's also this pretty shocking New York Times story about one of the Minnesota protesters, Paul Johnson, a couple days ago. Now, this is, according to Johnson, no reason not to believe him. Plenty of reason not to believe dhs. Johnson says he laid for hours in a hospital bed in Minneapolis, woozy from pain pills and addled from the head blows that he said he received from federal agents. He was alone. He's unable to communicate with anyone. He was strapped in place by shackles on his leg. He was there in the hospital for five days. And the story is. It's horrific, it's monstrous, and they're just examples of this stuff happening everywhere.
B
It's interesting how you go back and forth. I mean, the overarching message I keep having over the last couple of years is that the people are full of shit this whole time. And so the same people who were like, you just can't trust the Biden administration. You can't believe what the government says to you. That kind of like New World Order, Alex Jones thing where they're all like, well, DHS said that they were all very dangerous and that this is all. This is all 100% true.
A
Well, no, this is the Tim Dillon line, which is like, Alex Jones was right. It's just everything he was warning about
B
when he's completely fine about he's 2.0. But, yeah, no, it's uncool.
A
I want to move on to one quick news item because I haven't mentioned it all week. Is this housing bill drama. People haven't been following it. Basically, it's like the one bipartisan thing that Congress has done in the year 2026. Great job. To our friends on the Hill. They've been working hard. They got in. They did like, I think, a good 42 days of work this year in the Senate. I'm making the number up. It's something like that. Now they got one bill. Work together on it. It's for housing. Includes some good stuff to. It's a lot of compromises, a lot of compromises. It includes a little bit of slop. Popular slop. But that's what you got to do these days to get things through.
B
That's how you do it.
A
On balance, pretty good bill.
B
And it's funny because on balance, it was so good. That you have Elizabeth Warren being like, yeah. And the Trump White House, until everything changed very quickly saying, yeah. And then that changed.
A
And even like some middle people like everybody else. So I think it had like four.
B
The Yimbys were happy. So I was like, yeah, okay.
A
Yeah, okay. So this week, Trump is like, panties are in a bunch because he's in a couple of pissing matches with random senators like Bill Cassidy in others, and he's mad that the SAVE act isn't passed. He thinks that the SAVE Act's gonna help him steal the midterms. I'm, like, skeptical about that. We could talk about that if you want, but it's a really bad bill. But I don't know. I don't even know if Trump really understands what's in it. I'm pretty sure Trump just thinks it's a. This will help me steal the elections bill.
B
Yes. Which he keeps saying that even though, like, just like one aside is that, like, part of it is that, you know, you would need a passport or a birth certificate to register to vote. And I don't know. And I think Matthew Iglesias has made that point. I don'. Know if Trump knows who in America has passports. Just gonna say that.
A
I'm interested in that count. I feel like if we can only do two compromise bills all year, the housing bill and passport only voting are things that I would be interested in. We'll put that. Tell me more, tell me more, tell me more. I'd like to learn more about your passport only voting idea. I just see how that turns out. We should give that a test run because the SAVE act hasn't been passed. Trump said, no, fuck it, I'm not gonna sign your housing bill that his administration said they supported. They literally had, like, all these House Republicans want is to get into a picture with Mr. Trump and have him pat them on the head and be able to show the picture to their friends and post it on their Instagram so they can be like, see, Daddy likes me. That's all they want in life.
B
They want to go and they want something to campaign on. They want something to campaign on because everybody's fucking furious.
A
Exactly.
B
They're gonna have to go. I mean, they're probably not gonna do town halls. Cause they don't wanna get screamed at about are going to, I don't know, kill our children or something like that. They don't want to deal with this. Like, if you live in Utah, you're aware that that Kevin o' Leary data center has caused everyone to lose Their minds completely. And it's scrambling everything. You don't want it. You just want to be like, housing. We did it. You said you were worried about affordability. Here, here.
A
We did it.
B
They had this whole event set up. They had the flags, they had the stanchion. People, like, Republicans were showing up. Republicans were like speaking at the same time being like, we did it. We did it. This is so awesome. We're so excited. And then Trump's like, nah, nope, not
A
going to show up to that. You got to do the save act first. So that went back and forth this week a little bit. Where it landed is Speaker Johnson showed maybe like the tiniest little bit of stood up for himself, the wee little man. And so they ended up just going ahead and without fanfare, passing the bill. Johnson, he's going to. He sent it along to the White House. Whatever. I don't. What do you have to do to do that? I was never a hell guy. I said this yesterday. I'm a little bit out of my depth on part parliamentarians.
B
He said he transmitted it to the White House. I don't know. Mike Johnson lives in hell.
A
Do you got a hand?
B
Mike Johnson lives in hell.
A
So it's been transmitted. I don't know. My husband will tell me after the podcast how a bill transmits to the White House, but it gets transmitted somehow. Transmitted over there to the White House. Now Trump has 10 days and he can veto it. He could sign it. They could do a press conference. He could do nothing. And the bill automatically becomes law. He could do nothing. If the House is not in session, then it becomes a pocket veto anyway, who knows? We'll see how this turns out. I think Trump likes it as a cliffhanger for the next episode of the Apprentice. And that's where we're at on the housing bill. Okay, let's do some JD talk.
B
Fun.
A
So where should we go first? You had mentioned the vice signaling with Megyn Kelly, and it was. What she was doing was an example of vice signaling, but maybe not quite as apt of an example as what JD Offered yesterday.
B
Right.
A
So the Vice President was giving an interview at the Richard Nixon foundation, and he has some updated thoughts on Tricky Dick. Let's listen. I think that his historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, but I think deservedly so. As I joked with Robert backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12 hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy. And by the way, if you look at the story of how the Deep State took down Richard Nixon. It's not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump and the first Trump administration. There is a parallel. So you know, there he's at the Nixon Foundation. So this was a planned bit. Yes, he had planned it. He was like, you know what? I'm go to the Nixon foundation and I'm going to talk about how Watergate, not a big deal. Most of our listeners are my age or older. Not at all. We appreciate all the youngs out there. And so they either remember, learned about or lived Watergate. There are some who might not have. So I just want to give a quick refresher, just a one paragraph refresher on what happened at Watergate, because I don't think J.D.
B
vance knows. That's the other thing. Like, I don't think he has any idea what.
A
Because the Deep State did play a role. The Deep State did play a role in Watergate. I just the opposite of the role that he thinks. So Richard Nixon's aides authorized a break in of the DNC headquarters to install bugging equipment. They were going to bug their opponents. They hired some really motley characters to do this and they weren't particularly good at their jobs. So they got cuts. Then the Nixon White House enlisted the CIA to help create a cover story because news of this got out and there were investigations into it. They didn't want the FBI, they don't want the cops looking into it. So the CIA are like, guys, don't worry about this. This was part of the plan. We're doing some spying on some terrorists, maybe they're antifa, who knows? The whole operation was paid for by a slush fund out of the White House. The Chief of Staff knew about it. The AG knew about it. They both were convicted, went to jail. The President knew about it. You know how we know? There were tapes. The President was talking about it. So the President was colluding with the Deep State to help him cover up his plot to spy on his political foes. That was Watergate. That's what happened at Watergate. So pretty big story, pretty bad.
B
I think, personally, if Donald Trump colluded with the CIA. And the thing is, the more I say this out loud, I'm like, yeah, this seems like something he'd do 100%. Like the. But you know, hiring. I mean, based on this whole reflecting pool thing, yeah, he would hire a motley crew to break into the DNC and install. But like all of this 100% checks out. But it also like the idea that that would just be like a 12 hour story one. I don't really think that there are like 12 hour stories anymore. Like I think that JD Vance desperately wishes that there were. But like, you know, we're still talking about Jeffrey Epstein, for example. Jeffrey Epstein is not a 12 hour story. Jeffrey Epstein has been a multi year saga and it's Donald Trump's fault.
A
I mean, I guess Donald Trump keeping his classified docs in his bathroom was a shorter story than maybe if past presidents had done that because he's done so many other crimes. So J.D. vance is maybe accurate. The narrow sense that it is true. The boss that he works for has done so many crimes that they end up not getting the attention that they might have gotten in a past era. And that if they did Watergate right now that it would get maybe less attention than it did for Nixon. In part because they're doing so many other crimes and in part because they have a massive propaganda apparatus that would have tried to make it seem like it wasn't a big deal. Like that part is true. So he is correct about that. I don't know if it's the compliment that he thinks it is.
B
No, no. Also like, it's just funny because Richard Nixon, they're just like the right wing rehabilitation of Richard Nixon which has been going on for a while. Like Roger Stone has like some giant Nixon tattoos, but not very well.
A
Also I would like to object to that. I don't think that there's a renaissance. I don't think that there is not a renaissance.
B
Also because you just have to like, if you're on the far right, you just have to strategically be like, yeah, and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and Nixon having his own like cabinet of African American Advisors and doing a lengthy profile and interview with Ebony magazine about how, you know, how much he believes and wants to do more for African Americans and he thinks that Republicans have left African Americans behind. This is entirely true. You can go find that article. There's just a lot of stuff where you just have to pretend that Richard Nixon is the Richard Nixon of like the campaign of 1968 and also not the Richard Nixon of what his presidency did or anything else about him. And also the Richard Nixon who again hired dipshits to break into the dnc. Like the break in is not like, you know, obviously it's very interesting. But like, if you follow like the TikTok of how all this happened, you're like, I think that the quote from All The President's Men is just, you know, from Deep Throat is pretty much like, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but it's basically like these were stupid people and it just went too far.
A
I used to know it.
B
It got out of hand.
A
It got out of hand. Got out of hand. These weren't very smart people and it got out of hand. That's what I have in my memory. I don't know if that's exactly right, but it's something like that. I'm sorry to be stuck on this. The Vice President, United States doing a bit where he's like, you know this crime that a past president committed where they tried to spy on their opponents, they tried to break into their opponent's headquarters, they used the CIA to cover it. Not a biggie. Like that is pretty shocking in itself. That should be a 12 hour story on its own. The sitting Vice President of the United States, what he's signaling there is he's like, you know, we can do crimes. It's not a biggie anymore. We're post crime now. We used to be a country where people cared if the President and Vice President did crimes. We're not that country anymore. Thanks to the greatness of Donald Trump, thanks to the Trump Vance administration, the government can be corrupt and do crimes and we're not even.
B
We don't have to hide the ball about it.
A
We can do it. Now. People in the streets, if you're protesting with your zines, you can't do that. But we can do crimes. That's their stated position.
B
Yeah, we can. We are pro US crime. It's pro US crime. It's also striking, like showing up at the Nixon foundation and then talking about the most controversial, worst thing Nixon ever did. It would be like going to like you know, the Ronald Reagan Library and being like a Rom. Contra ruled, ruled. It was great. Also, remember how we helped to fund El Salvadorian right wing death squads that raped and murdered a group of nuns and laypeople and then Jean Kirkpatrick lied about them. That was so cool.
A
Look how great that's turned out. Things are going great in El Salvador now, right? While we're on, J.D. i've covered this quite a bit, but because we have the Catholic thing together and people just really loved your ruminations on your favorite epistles and saints eucharistic rites last time you were on. We should also just bring up the book discussed earlier this week. A key part of his conversion story is that God sent him an emissary from heaven to Help open his eyes to the fact that smart people could be religious. That messenger was Peter Thiel. God works in mysterious ways. And he learned about Peter Thiel. He learned about Rene Girard. He started doing some reading, and he's like, you know, maybe looks like I can be rich and bad and Catholic. That's neat. And so he's gone on the faith journey simultaneously to his faith journey to Trumpism. He's written a book about it. His wife not on board.
B
That's a fascinating timing for a faith journey.
A
Yeah. Wife not on board. Just wondering if you have any thought. The bell hooks thing is also kind of weird. Bell hooks is first book was elegy. Second book, Communion. That's his. So this is a strange subplot. I just kind of wanted to give a Let Jane Cook period. In response to J.D. vance's Communion.
B
I have obviously many thoughts on this. I will say I'm not sure if I mentioned this last time, but the Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity was less obvious, less of like, Christmas, like, seeing the cross in the sky and just being like, yeah, I gotta do this. In a related note, like, it's really.
A
Honestly, I wish he gave me a miracle. I wish, like, honestly, this is insulting. I wish he gave me, like, at least zhuzh it up a little bit.
B
Yeah, no, at least. I mean, it's just like, there's a lengthy history of people converting to Catholicism for political reasons. People have converted to Catholicism in order to gain control of Paris, for example, because Paris is worth a mass. But, like, this may be one of the stupider ones. Like this, like, oh, yeah, I converted. Rod Dreher was there. Like, I converted to Catholicism. And the timing just happened to line up for when I believed that a cultural Catholicism would be most politically advantageous. And that's not just me saying this. The Wall Street Journal was like, yeah, the conversion narrative seems a little politically incentivized. Which I'm like, yeah, yes. Yeah, Perhaps. Perhaps it was. Perhaps it is a bit. But again. But actually, I want to get back to.
A
To Usha.
B
I want to get back to Usha, because I think Usha Vance has, in the last couple of days, worked her way up to be, I believe, a comedy queen. Unintentionally, I think maybe.
A
Can we play the clip of Usha that you're about to reference where she talks about why she has not converted in a recent joint interview?
B
Well, I think in some ways, it has been a very personal journey for him. I grew up in a household, a Hindu household, a very Stable household. And I've not felt the same sense of need to seek something different that he has. So I think the journey has been more in our relationship.
A
Right.
B
Trying to understand where he is, the different ways he's thinking about things, how that fits into the life that we have together. And less a religious journey of my own.
A
There you go. Deadpan.
B
It's just like.
A
Deadpan.
B
Yeah. My family wasn't fucked up, so I didn't have this whole need to go into, like, you know, have a whole journey. We were actually just fine. Which one? I love that. Usha obviously knows that her family and her herself are targeted by some of the worst elements of human society and people on the right for being not white and not Christian. There are people routinely who are like, like, invaders. Bullshit. And I just love that she's like, actually, we were solid and stable and normal, unlike these fucking weirdos over here.
A
Not like the white Appalachians. I was like, people. My husband has been saying that it's created some issues with, you know, continuity in the country, you know, having all that. No continuity issues in our house, our Hindu household. Just my parents. It was good. We ate Indian food, vegetarians at our.
B
I'm very. I'm Personally, I'm very successful. I have done all the right things. Yeah.
A
I didn't need, like, a satanic tech demon to be a spiritual guide for me because I was spiritually fulfilled.
B
Already has an energy that says there's a lot going on here that I don't need to know more about. Didn't need any of that. I'm all good. Yeah. Which, again, I respect her for just having the, like. Actually, he's the problem.
A
Yeah.
B
Which, you know, I respect that. I will respect that. You know, like, people make choices and I respect that.
A
Have you suffered through any of Communion?
B
No, I have not. I'm good. I'm good.
A
I wanna make you. Can I give you an assignment? I kind of wanna make you.
B
Oh, okay. You can give me an assignment, but adult. I will read two chapters if you provide me with a copy of this book without me having to purchase it via using currency. Because adult man.
A
I didn't read it either. Producer Ansley read it and created a document for me.
B
Okay.
A
We're gonna send you some selects.
B
You just send me whatever you'd like. I love adult man. Converts to Catholicism, and you'll never guess why.
A
Okay. To be continued on that. Do we want to do politics stuff? We have the Tim Jane. We're going to end with the Tim Jane potpourri. Do you have any deep takes? I have here on the DSA wins in New York and DAC Chevalier or deep takes on. I've been wanting to get to the Roy Cooper ad all week where Roy Cooper's just like, there's all this discourse out there about how the Democratic Party's becoming socialist and going off the deep end and weird. But I'm Roy Cooper, and I'm just a good old boy from North Carolina. And you know what I think? I think criminals should go to jail. This is Roy Cooper, and I have proven this message. And it's like, you're in. He's winning by numbers not seen in North Carolina in decades.
B
For one thing, I think, like, others have made this point. I think that, like, New York, I know, holds a massive place in the American cultural and global cultural imagination. And it's been interesting to see how, like, these elections have for, like, either either if you're supportive of them or if you're, like, terrified of them. You're like, this is the future of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, you've got lots of other people running in lots of other places where they're just like, we're doing something very different, and that's fine. I think that it is important for Democrats to be like, we run where we are, and we work towards what we need. And so, like, something that, you know, to dac. There was some reporting talking about how there were a couple of people who mentioned that they voted for her after a moment in which, during a debate with her primary opponent, they asked her like, oh, you know, how often do you go to the Dominican Republic? And she's like, you know, I haven't been in a couple of years. You know, I'm here. And her opponent was like, oh, I go all the time. And, you know, people were like, why would you go all the time? And it kind of gets like, do you remember during Mamdani's debates, this is
A
best known for the debate where everybody's like, when are you gonna go to Israel? And I'm not gonna leave New York.
B
I'm the mayor of New York. That's like, that's my job. That's the New York. That's the thing. I am not Jewish. That is a experience.
A
You covered that.
B
Yeah, but the degree to which people, you know, Jewish Democrats voting for Brad Lander, who is a Jewish Democrat, and people are like, you know, he's a capo. He would be like, what was the quote from the Republican gubernatorial candidate that, like, he would be running a concentration camp and it's just like, it's interesting
A
because actually somebody has been running a concentration camp. We sent people there. That's who said, I don't think it was Brad Lander. Brad Lander was protesting. It actually is what happens.
B
Yeah. And it gets at like, you know, I made this comparison that like, you know, the right gets very mad about how sometimes people, Democrats talk about black conservatives. They've gone, I hate this term because it's repulsive. But like, oh, they've gone off the plantation or something like that. And there is a degree to which you see this kind of like, hey, why are you making decisions? I don't like? And like, it's a weird dynamic. But there's something, I mean, to the point with the Roy Cooper ad where it's just like, North Carolina is not New York now. I think that what you saw in New York and what you're seeing in a lot of places is that Democrats are like, hey, stuff's really expensive. We should do stuff about that. Yeah.
A
And we're sick of the old. We're seeing this in Colorado right now. Stuff's really expensive. And they're just sick of the old politicians that don't feel like they're doing anything.
B
And it's like, I mean, that's something
A
like Michael Bennett coming back to Colorado right now and he's getting the Janet Mills treatment here, like giving this gubernatorial run.
B
It's like, I think that an understated thing about the Plattner Janet Mills thing is that Janet Mills is.
A
Yeah, right.
B
Like people. I mean, it's been talked about, but maybe not enough. Like the Gerontocracy thing is real.
A
Yeah, I know. I mean, here's the thing. It makes for good discourse. There's legitimate concerns about the views in particular that Chevalier has. And I think that there's legitimate concerns about rising anti Semitism. We cover that a lot.
B
Oh yeah. To be clear, also dac, the whole thing of like, like interracial marriage, like being against interracial marriage, but like leftistly, I'm like, girl, like.
A
And just as a general thing, also, this is kind of an underappreciated part about the campus protests. It's like she was there and she's in the. I was like, she's 30. I mean, like, okay, like you're allowed to go to school for 12 years if you want, get a doctorate. I have nothing against anybody that wants to do that. But it feels a little bit against the spirit of the campus protest to be a 30 year old as a key campus protester. One man's opinion. Anyway, closing the loop on Roy Cooper. I just want to offer because we have a lot of discussion. You guys do it crooked. What should the Democrats do in the future? How do you win? And I know that what we want to be true is that people want to be inspired, that we need a new path forward and some creative ideas that will make life better for people and we can aspire to a better politics. And I hear all that, but like, Maybe it's a 350 electoral vote win just to be like, I'm Roy Cooper and I think you should. We should love our neighbors as we love ourselves. And I think we should put criminals in prison. And I approved this message and I was. Maybe that's good enough. Seems like it's doing pretty well in North Carolina. Democrats haven't won North Carolina in a while. Roy Cooper just wants to follow the golden rule and make sure bad guys are behind bars. Don't hate it.
B
It.
A
All right, here's the potpourri. We're not going to get to everything. Podcast has already been long.
B
Okay.
A
I've created eight topics that are in the Tim Jane Hobby Horse. And we'll go back and forth until the podcast is over. We won't get to all of them. We want to leave people with, you know, we leave people a little bit something to want to come back for the next time. Okay. Topic one is Caitlin Clark discourse. Topic two is Jane Costen nostalgia theory as evidenced by Vanilla Ice. Topic three is the anthropic economist talking about the log utility of human beings. Topic four is Congressman Abe Hamade, Republican from Arizona's Interesting living Arrangement. Topic five is Haral Bob, famous gambler and podcaster and sports team owner. He wants to repeal the 19th Amendment. Topic 6 is a Jane favorite about how Republicans want to start prosecuting women who have abortions. Topic seven is Brandon Sorsby's gambling scandal. And topic eight is Diana Rossini love affair with Mike Vrabel. Eight great topics. We're not going to get to all of them.
B
You want to start?
A
No, you start. You're the guest. You pick the first of the eight.
B
Okay, so coaster Nostalgia theory. I will start there.
A
Okay, great.
B
So coast of nostalgia theory. And it has proven time tested, which is a funny way to refer to it. Do you miss this time or were you young and or hot at the time? So Vanilla Ice, you remember.
A
Can I read the quote? Do you have it in front of you?
B
I do not have it in front of you.
A
I want to read the Quote of Vanilla Ice. And I believe it was in the Atlantic or Friends of the Atlantic did some important reporting on this. And Vanilla Ice is one of the two people that said that they would go to Donald Trump's stupid fair. He said this. I am complete American through and through, all my bones. To every TV show, to Blockbuster Videos, to ripping our back seats out and putting in subwoofers, to having Z Cavarici pants, to even having a bolo. You remember what a bolo was?
B
Yes. So the article makes it clear that Vanilla Ice believes that the early 1990s were the zenith of human civilization. Now, could it be?
A
What's a great time? Good time? Pretty good.
B
I was six, so. And I was not good at being six. I think just. Just to preface this, I am the kind of person who like I was born to be between the ages of like 35 and 38. Okay. Like, that's what I, I was meant to do that. I was meant to like read the New York Times and complain about it. Like that's what I was meant to do that. It's just that you should. People don't like it when you do that when you're seven. They get very annoyed by it Anyway, so Vanilla Ites reached his, his personal zenith in the early 1990s. Most fame. He was dating Madonna. He was like in the like blasphemy teenage mutant 2.
A
People who dated Madonna mentioned in the show. That's interesting.
B
He was in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. I mean that's, that's, you know, go ninja, go ninja, go. Like he had a great time and then he stopped having such a good time as the article details. And it makes total sense to me that he would find the time at which he was young, hot and really famous to be incidentally the greatest time in American history. And he is not alone in thinking that. And like I love. And you can tell this because when the greatest time in human history has slowly moved forward as people get older and talk on the Internet. So if you read the comments on different centrist, right leaning, left leaning websites, the commenters all tend to be in general of what I've seen. Like from like National Review to the Free Press or even like left leaning sites, the commenters who comment a lot all tend to be in like early 70s, which means that they were in their 20s in the 70s, like you know, just about right. You will never guess when they think the greatest time to be alive was Tim. They believe firmly that the greatest time to be alive was like 1977. I consider myself to be an amateur cultural historian. I happen to be aware that in actual life, 1977 was not a great time in America. A lot. A lot of problems. We had some blackouts. We had the Son of Sam stagflation. A lot of stagflation. A lot of issues. My favorite example of movies that if you didn't really know what they were about, you'd think were super happy, but they aren't. Like, Saturday Night Fever is actually an incredibly depressing movie. Banging soundtrack. But, like, it is telling. When people talk about, you know, you see this with comments like, there's a lot of Internet slop about, like, remember how great things were? Nikki Haley did this. Like, do you remember being a child and how free and awesome things were? We just gonna get that back. And I'm like, well, you can't, because people can't be 10. There's a user on Bluesky who talks a lot about, like, everyone is 12 theory of just people just attempting to get back to, like, being 12. Or as I'd argue, when they were young and hot. And it's like, everything is centered around when people were young and hot. The cultural norms. Like, oh, you know, When I was 22, I was young and hot and dating all these people. I don't understand why Gen Z isn't just doing that. And I'm like, well, you are not 22. And your memories of being 22 might be a little off. So coaster nostalgia theory never fails. It's always correct.
A
I love coaster nostalgia theory. And it isn't. There's the exception that proves the rule. And it's a handful of people such as myself, who have Peter Pan syndrome. And here's the thing, and this allows us, we get a thick skin against having to deal with the consequences of coast. And nostalgia theory, it has its own side of problems. And some of the commenters on this very podcast have mentioned that they noticed some of the negative side effects of Peter Panther. Nobody gets out of this world without some issues. But I was listening to Joe Rogan yesterday for the first time in a while, and he has. It was just a classic coaster nostalgia theory. He's just become grumpy old rich guy now. There's no joie de vivre. There's no love of life. There's no joy in the podcast. It's just him bitching about how LA isn't as cool as it used to be. And it's like, you know, and you'll
B
never guess when LA was out as
A
when he was hot.
B
And young.
A
And it's like, you know, here's the way to avoid that. If you want to do the Steve Buscemi how do you do fellow kids meme. It might look embarrassing, but it makes you stay current. Because for me to acknowledge that the was better would mean that I'm not having a good time now. And it's important to me to pretend as if I'm having a better time now than I was having when I was 22. And in order to do that, I have to look at the positive things that are happening in society. And there are many because in any culture there are going to be some good things and bad things happening at the same time. And so that is how I combat coast and nostalgia theory. I think other people should look into it.
B
It's very important too.
A
Which one should I choose? I'm going to choose Abe Hamade because I've received so many texts about this. He's a congressman from Arizona.
B
The Aaron shock of our time.
A
He is the Aaron Shock of our time. If people do not know Congressman Hamadei, I would just recommend that you just Google him really quick. It's just important to just get a visual of who we're talking about. I've got to meet Abe several times I was kind of the de facto circus correspondent for the state of Arizona during, God, I don't know, times a flat circle. What would it have been? The 22 campaign? And so I was in Arizona a lot was covering Arizona. He's been a figure. It's always been. I've always had some questions, but I'm not an outer. I'm not, you know, I think everybody should live their truth. So I was interested to see the story came up today or yesterday rather, and I just want to read a little bit from it. First term Arizona Republican Abe Hamaday had been living with a senior male advisor at his Capitol Hill residence. People described the relationship as closer than a typical member Stafford dynamic. The Stafford had been a Realtor previously on May 5, 2025, how many day Ms. Flor votes while on vacation in California with the staffer, a trip he posted about on his private Instagram. So people are asking me what do I know? I don't know anything besides what is in the story and besides what I can see with my eyes and what you can see with your eyes if you Google it. And so up until the moment where Abe Hamade sends me a dick pic in DMs, I'm going to assume that he is straight and having a really weird relationship with the former realtor, that is a senior staffer in his office. And I'm taking no further questions at this time. Jane, do you have anything to add?
B
I would just say that at no point is living with and having a close relationship with senior staffer. Good. I think that that goes across all orientations. I think we can all agree, like, there's a version of the story in which the senior staffer in question is a woman. And I'd still be like, well, that's screwed up. Don't do that. None of it. Also, like, again, part of the reason why I make the Aaron Shock comparison is because there's a real looks maxing thing going on here. And also because the Aaron Shock story may be one of my absolute favorites. It is a congressman brought low. Brought asunder by an interior decorator who. So there's. This is like 11 years ago. So Aaron Shock representative, he decided to. He has redecorated his office and a Washington Post reporter is there to do something. And the interior decorator is also there. And she's like, hey, do you want a tour? And. And that resulted in.
A
And it was a Downton Abbey theme.
B
It was a Downton Abbey themed, which I, you know, again, not casting aspersions, should have been a tell. You might be stunned to know that Aaron shot came out, like, several years later.
A
He came out. Yeah. Now he's like an insta gay with muscles. And he got into a weird. There's a weird Venezuela scandal with him. He's trying to get in on the Venezuela cash.
B
Of course.
A
Much love to the people of Venezuela by the horrific earthquakes.
B
Absolutely. But, yeah, the interior decorator brought his entire political life down, which is funny.
A
All right, we're over. But I don't want to deny people six of the topics. We'll go rapid fire on the final two. We each get to pick one short. We're gonna have to just try to contain ourselves and we'll leave the other four for a future date. WNBA AI Utils 19th Amendment prosecuting women Brandon Sorsby, Diana Rossini, Jane Coston. What is your. What's your final choice?
B
WNBA needs to do a better job of cutting down on fouls. They've been trying to, but not really. Also, it's telling. Whenever people talk about Caitlin Clark, it's always people for whom I'm like, can you name other white, heterosexual WNBA players
A
or any WNBA player? The Caitlin Clark discourse pisses me off so much because it's like, hey, maybe it is true. I try to watch the WNBA My complaint for the WNBA is, like, the season timing is weird. I'm a prime possible audience member, and I do make it kind of challenging for me to get into it. I think that the marketing. There could be ways that they could improve on the marketing side of things. It's a fair critique.
B
And I will also say their games are blowing up. The viewership. Everything's up. They're doing great.
A
They have all these old white guys, the degree to which that are like, hey, I don't watch the wnba. But they seem mean to come. Caitlin Clark. Boomer Siason did a rant. It was like, girl, Caitlin Clark should go to Europe because the WNBA is too mean to her. I was like, do you know any other WNBA players? Boomer Siason?
B
Also, this idea of, like, no. Oh, like, Caitlin Clark should go start her own league. Does Caitlin Clark want to do that? No, she does not. She does not care about any of that. But the WNBA needs to do a better job of Fallon because it's not just a Caitlyn Clark issue. Like, there was, like, an Angel Reese, Brittney Griner wrap up a couple of months ago. Like, or a couple of weeks ago. That was like, the fouling issue is a problem. They have either been calling no fouls and then things go really hard, or they're calling too many fouls and the games get slow. It's not great. But also, there's lots of interesting and great play going on. Shout out to the Washington Mystics.
A
I have one more thing on Caitlin. Okay. Caitlin Clark. My daughter has Caitlin Clark jersey. Watchdon college. I'm more into college women's hoops. I kind of only know the players if they were famous in college. And I Googled this because. Because I try not to on this podcast and on Twitter. Make race rage. Baiting comments about things that I don't know anything about, which is like, the entire Caitlin Clark discourse. People that know nothing about the league that, like, have decided that people are reverse races against her. I googled it. She's currently the second leading scorer on her team. They're in third place in the conference. It's like, okay, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. That's fine. It's good. And she's just. She's kind of like the Jamal Murray right now of the NBA. And that's okay. And on the actual numbers, and so we'll see how it turns out. And I feel like if the Indiana Fever win the championship and she has a Jalen Brunson run, she's gonna get lots of love. The whole thing is crazy. This idea that people are so.
B
It's absolutely ridiculous. And it also like the degree, like I am bound to say this, the lesbophobia just jumps out where it's just like all these evil lesbians are just coming at her like a straight girl. Yeah, this. Yeah. Because there's no other straight women. And also that like it's just, it is indicative where it's like, you know, there, there's a permission slip. People write themselves to be lesbophobic because it's like. No, no, no, no. I'm doing it because I'm defending someone defending women cases. I, I do also want to jump. Speaking of defending women and defending just like normaly, there's like to our gambling mavericks owner, Repeal the 19th Guy, who actually he then shared that he lives in a principality with an actual prince who doesn't care about democracy. Anyway. There's been this kind of boomlet, not just him, of people talking about repealing the 19th Amendment. A thing that will not happen.
A
Can I just pull up his tweet and if we're gonna do it, we should at least pull up his tweet. It's important to read it. Me and Haralba have gotten to a couple fights on social media. He used to be on the Bill Simmons podcast. He now owns us.
B
He's on public.
A
Yeah, he owns a soccer team in Europe. He was a Mark Cuban guy. Okay. So he's a figure for people who are kind of in. Pay attention to that world. All right. He was replying to somebody talking about how terrorist sympathizers are taking over the Democratic Party. Naturally he goes, this is a direct result of the 19th amendment. It permanently altered the electorate, empowered the politics of emotion over order.
B
Because that's what I think of when I think of Trump.
A
Trump, no emotion accelerated the march towards open borders, welfare, statism and the erosion of every traditional institution that once made the country governable. Democracy went wrong when it made the lonely individual the basic political unit. The family should be the unit of representation. One vote per household and all the households raising children. You will be surprised to learn that Haral Bob has not found a mate. You will see him frequently sitting courtside at NBA games with. With younger looking women, which great, good for him. Hot young women. But he has not found a mate. And I don't know, I think that's just an interesting fact to mention in connection to his opinion about the 19th Amendment.
B
It's interesting that people are deciding that it's you know, it's been 106 years since the passage of the 19th Amendment. And then they're like, this is the issue. This is the problem here. So I'm like, so we need to conclude that, like, every election from 1920, like, you know, things really Herbert Hoover, okay, now they're best president. But like, every election since the greatest Generation, like the, every, every midterm election, like, you know, the election of 1948 or the election of 1952, like, ah, if only women hadn't voted then. I want to meet the people also who are want to repeal the 19th Amendment. When something they do like happens, like, it really is just the most like, fuck this, I'm taking my ball and going home argument. Like, one, it will not never happen. It's like tankyism, but somehow stupider. Like, this idea of, like, this politics that is so pure that and so perfect that it will just simply never happen. But also it, like, it's telling that, like, could I convince women of my political views? Because lots of women vote for Republicans. Lots of women are on the right, fewer than they used to be. I wonder why? But it is telling that the idea of, like, oh, you know, we cannot, you know, women are just too emotional to understand how important it is that we vote for extremely emotional Republicans. Like, Republicans who just rant and rave all day emotionally on the Internet, like, like, it's like a failure of imagination. Like, there's just no way we could convince these people to vote for us. Like, I mean, that's. It's loser talk. It's like, we can't win, so we just won't. We just won't do it. And it's, you know, I will point out there's a National Review piece from a couple, like, from after Mamdani won that actually made this point that, like, Democrats are trying to reach out to young men. It might not be working a lot of ways, but. But, you know, I think that they're getting better at it. They're working on it. There's a whole thing Republicans have basically decided, like, we just really don't like women. Like, we just don't like them and would prefer they don't vote. And then they basically want. Yeah, they basically just want to neg women into voting for them. Just being like, oh, you know, you, you. Like, we don't like women except for, like, these specific women who all talk about how terrible women are. I mean, it kind of goes with the, like, we're going to punish women who have abortions thing, which, you could everybody and their dog could have seen. Like, you could see this in the conversation about, like, even in conservative writings, the reason why they don't support imprisoning women for having abortions isn't because that would be evil and wrong, but because the polling is bad. Like, you know, if. If it were evil and wrong, like, then there was a. You know, the whole house of cards would fall down. But it's like, no, no, no, we can't say. We can't do that. The polling is bad. And so now you have all these people in the right who are like, well, you know, it just makes sense. And I'm like, you know, I wrote about this in 2022, like, how will we punish the women who have abortions? Like, you know, if. With the. That was when the leaked UPS decision came out and there was actually a National Review piece that was like, responding to that question. And the answer was like, well, that's never happened. So it just won't. We just don't even have to think about it. It's just so far away. We don't even have to think about it. And now the only answer you get from the right on this issue is it would be unpopular to do so. Not that it would be wrong, but that it would be unpopular. Once again, these people are ridiculous. This is all very stupid. And women are cool.
A
All right, so. Well, I agree with all that. I will leave you with this. We won't do any takes because I'm just going to leave you with the quote because I think it speaks for itself on the AI utels topic. If you're concerned about any of the topics me and Jane have been discussing today, I've got something to ease your mind for the weekend. The new economist at Anthropic did a paper a couple years ago that included this summation. In other words, with log utility, it is optimal to take a 1 in 3 chance of ending human existence in exchange for a 2 in 3 chance of dramatically raising living standards by a factor of 55. So great. Great, guys. Two thirds chance that everything's gonna be wonderful. Milk and honey. Unlimited bounty. 1/3 chance we're all dead. We'll see you all next week. Thank you to Jane Coston. Appreciate you so much. Now you can see why you're such a popular guest. We'll be back next week with some less popular guests in the lead up to our 250th anniversary. We'll see you all then. Bye, Jay.
B
Thanks, Tim. Bye. If there was a problem, yo, I'll solve it. Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it.
A
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.
Host: Tim Miller
Guest: Jane Coaston (Crooked Media, What a Day Podcast)
This episode dives deep into current political, legal, and cultural controversies, focusing on the Supreme Court’s decision on Haitian immigrants, the broader pattern of racism and hypocrisy in right-wing politics, abuse of anti-terror laws against leftist protesters, and recent political developments including the "vice signaling" of conservatives like Megyn Kelly and J.D. Vance. Tim and Jane also critique the incoherence of certain Republican legal and rhetorical strategies, discuss housing bill gridlock, and close with quick takes on cultural trends, including nostalgia theory and the WNBA.
On Supreme Court and right-wing racism:
“There is a swath of the American right that knows what racism is but can only identify it if it is happening to them.” — Jane (04:45)
On Megyn Kelly:
“She hasn't done anything. You sit in your basement, in your mansion and you yell at people for money.” — Tim (14:30)
On government crackdown on protesters:
“Nobody wants to help you do crimes. But also it's completely legal. It is completely legal to have a politics that I think sucks.” — Jane (21:15)
On JD Vance’s Watergate take:
“We used to be a country where people cared if the President and Vice President did crimes. We're not that country anymore.” — Tim (39:45)
On Usha Vance’s deadpan response:
“Yeah, my family wasn’t fucked up, so I didn’t have this whole need to go into...a whole journey. We were actually just fine.” — Jane, paraphrasing Usha (43:57)
On Roy Cooper’s pragmatic appeal:
“Maybe it’s a 350 electoral vote win just to be like, ‘I’m Roy Cooper…Love our neighbors...put criminals in prison.’” — Tim (51:31)
This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in the intersection of law, politics, media, and culture in the Trump era, with a particular focus on hypocrisy, performative conservatism, immigration battles, the abuse of law enforcement powers, and generational divides in politics and nostalgia. It will especially reward those who relish fast, funny, and deeply informed back-and-forth.
End of Summary