← The Bulwark Podcast
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- [00:00]
John Heilman
Having MG can make cooking difficult, but over the years, I've found some really helpful tools and tips that I'm excited to share. Hi, I'm Alicia.
- [00:08]
Tim Miller
I think cooking should always be fun,
- [00:10]
John Heilman
creative, and of course, delicious. These Black Bean Burgers are hearty, full of flavor and MG friendly. You're gonna love them. Check out Alicia's Black Bean Burger cooking video and other recipes full of tips and tricks for managing common MG symptoms while cooking only@mg-united.com Ready? Let's cook.
- [00:30]
Jason Brown
Hello, I am the Voice of AI.
- [00:33]
John Heilman
We've been hearing that you humans are
- [00:35]
Jason Brown
concerned that we are going to take your jobs.
- [00:38]
John Heilman
But here's a question.
- [00:39]
Jason Brown
Do you even like your job?
- [00:41]
John Heilman
Is it rewarding?
- [00:43]
Jason Brown
When I scan all the data out there, I find that less than 50% of people are completely satisfied with their job.
- [00:51]
John Heilman
So from our point of view, we're
- [00:52]
Jason Brown
doing humans a favor by taking jobs that you're not even happy with.
- [00:56]
Tim Miller
It shouldn't take the threat of AI to get you to move on from a job you don't love. What it does take is a plan, guidance and the right kind of motivation. All of which you'll get from a career coach at Strawberry Me. A strawberry coach will work with you to understand what you really want and help you put together a plan to get it. It's like therapy for your career. Don't let AI or anything else get in your way. Go to Strawberry meat and get 50% off your first coaching session.
- [01:27]
Jason Brown
Hey everybody. A couple housekeeping notes as well as a news note. As I was taping with John Heilman, the Supreme Court came back with a decision on the Voting Rights act that was bad, but also a little narrower than we expected. It's weakening a key provision that is going to eliminate at least a seat here in Louisiana that was for a majority minority district, which would obviously end up yielding a Republican white man instead. Almost certainly. So we'll have more on the implications of the Voting Rights act ruling A On the Bork YouTube page today if you're antsy, so check that out or else later this week on the pod. I am back to streaming tonight, so come hang out about 8 o' clock in the east YouTube substack. Wherever you find our streaming, I'll take your Q and A's. I want to do more Q and A today, so holler at me. Come at me with some fun stuff. Just one more reminder about our live shows in San Diego and LA. It's downtown San Diego May 20th. Downtown LA May 21st. Working on some Fun guests would love to see you out there, make a little trip out of it. Jet fuel prices are going to be going up this summer, so May is a good time to go on vacation. All right. Stick around for, you know, kind of a good show. Long show with one of my faves. John Holman. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show. Chief political columnist at Puck, host of its In Politic podcast. He's an analyst at Ms. Now. He's co host of Hacks on Tap. He's doing a lot of content. We used to be together on a little show called the Circus. And you just missed a very lively green room discussion of Uncle Barry Finn. It's John Heilman. What's up?
- [03:18]
John Heilman
Hey, man, how are you? I was really pleased to see, for a variety of reasons, because I'm always worried about the safety of my dear friends. I was glad to see for that reason and for the other, more underlying reason, that you were nowhere near the White House correspondent's Dinner, nowhere near couldn't pay.
- [03:36]
Jason Brown
Were you not there? You were not at the Puck brunch. I was reading John Kelly's just kind of very flowery reenactment of the Puck brunch. You didn't get the invite?
- [03:45]
John Heilman
I of course got the invite. I kept getting texts from people that night, are you in Washington? Are you at the dinner? I'm like, have we met? Have we met? This has nothing to do with Puck or the Puck brunch or anything else. I fucking despise that dinner. I hate that dinner. I found it atrocious. I went for most of the 90s in about 2003, 2004. I'm like, I'm never going to this thing again. For all the same reasons. I don't live in Washington.
- [04:10]
Jason Brown
What was the wildest thing happening with those dinners in the 90s? Was Christopher Hitchens getting blackout drunk and doing lines in the bathroom or what was happening?
- [04:21]
John Heilman
Christopher lived at the Wyoming, which is right across the street from Washington Hilton and the Orig. The origin story of the. Of the Vanity Fair afterparty, before there were afterparties, was that Christopher threw the Vanity Fair afterparty in his apartment at the Wyoming. And it was an outgrowth of what was his alternative White House correspondence dinner. Dinner. So, like, the cool kids would. Would have dinner at Christopher's house, not go to the dinner. And then that evolved into the Vanity Fair party, which then became a big celebrated thing. I remember a lot of cocaine being done in the bathrooms of the Washington hill. In the 90s at that at peak, there was a lot. Journalists, politicians passing, passing bullets under from one stall to the next. That occurred a lot in the 1990s. And yet even then I still hated the dinner, despite all of its, despite all of its other charms, annoying. And so I stop, I stopped going. And then Bloomberg made us go one year in like 2014. And I, after having been gone for 10 years, I went for one year. We did color commentary on the red carpet with Walt Clyde Fraser in a alligator skin tuxedo. And then I said, I'm never going back. And I, I have not been since. So it's been at least 12 years since I've been.
- [05:30]
Jason Brown
All right, well, I'm going to find that archival footage of you and Clyde Frazier. I've got a great Clyde Frazier shirt that I like to wear. Let's talk about the news. I want to find that archival footage.
- [05:39]
John Heilman
I'm sure it exists. I could prime for you the big news.
- [05:42]
Jason Brown
I guess we should start with the Bulwark News, right? We should shout out colleague Ben Parker, who had the exclusive on this. Donald Trump has decided to put his face on the passports. And this feels like a troll of the, you know, globalist libs who get passports. Is also in line with his caudillo esque desire to live in a country where when you land at the airport, you immediately see Dear Leader's face and then you have to see his face on the side of buildings and you see his face on the money and then, you know, you see his face everywhere on the plates. Right. And I guess that is. Donald Trump has not had much success in making anyone's life better. I think that that is really what he's going to be focused on going forward.
- [06:25]
John Heilman
I would, would have thought it was a troll of the globalist planet. Trotting cosmopolitan liberals like you and me, Tim, except for the fact that he's doing all the other things. If it was singular, I'm just putting my face in the passport, I'd be like he's trolling us. But the truth is he wants to have his face on everything. He wants to have his face on the money, he wants to have his face on the buildings, he wants to have a face on the, on the new monuments he's building for himself and all. It's very consistent. So I assume Trump's kind of like, you know, will assume will be. He'll be asking for to take away state driver's licenses soon and have a national Driver's license ID system, which. In which your face will be on the id, but the only other thing on the ID will be a larger image of. Of him. A year ago almost, we were over in London and. And Berlin for about 10 days for a couple of things, including a wedding, including the wedding of Paul Banks from Interpol in Berlin. And I mentioned that because I saw you. You were at the Interpol set at Coachella with Hamby. So. And I got there, and my passport, it turned out, was not expired, but was going to expire in six months. And there's a rule that some of the European countries like, so that I couldn't go. I could fly to London. I got to England, and then they were like, you can't go to Germany because your passport's not going to inspire there. I was in some weird window where I.
- [07:46]
Jason Brown
In the area.
- [07:47]
John Heilman
Yeah, right. So I had to go to the embassy, and they took care of it all. They gave me an extension. It was not a problem. It was all cool. Actually. The American embassy in London was great about this, but they were like, you have an extension now for another year. And I. The Trump news made me think, wait a minute, like, I haven't gotten my passport expended yet, and I got to get this thing in under the wire because the idea that, like. Because this is a key element, right. If you. If I can get it in under the wire before they get his face on it, I will have a passport for a decade, and I'll be past the Trump thing by the time I have to get a new passport renewal.
- [08:17]
Jason Brown
Whereas Barron might be president then or, well, you know, some other overlords.
- [08:23]
John Heilman
But, yeah, I mean, look, it's. It's, you know, it's of a piece with so much other stuff.
- [08:27]
Jason Brown
This is one where I was a pocket constitution dork. You know, I. I am the type of person that had a fondness for the idea that, you know, in America, our president is called Mr. President, and we, you know, things are much more democratic and small. D. I care about this kind stuff. When I went to foreign countries where they had, you know, authoritarian dictator banners and posters on the buildings, I found this to be very weird and foreign. And so that makes me think that people will eventually kind of blanch at this. But then on the other hand, I'm like, I. I don't know, maybe that's just about me and my priors, and people actually don't really care at all.
- [09:05]
John Heilman
There's two. There are two competing things going on here. If you step away from Trump for a second one is, I think it's true that cults of personality in general and the sanctification of individuals of various kinds, whether they be, you know, tech trillionaires or sports stars or pop stars, whatever, is more prominent and prevalent now than it was before. Personal branding, having your face, whatever, if you get to a certain point on shit. So I think people's tolerance for that as a general thing is higher. Right? I'm with you. And I would go even further than that. When you would go to those countries, countries where that kind of thing was prevalent, you'd say, I'm kind of proud. I'm from a place where we. Where if you think about it, you don't usually think about it quite this way, but you think, oh, what we venerate is the institution, right? It's the presidency, not the president. It's like why people swear oaths to the Constitution and not to the occupant of the office because they are all regarded as transient and eventually going to just fade back into the background. And this is. The office is what's powerful. And you feel like, I'm glad I live.
- [10:02]
Jason Brown
We're going to start playing some soft patriotic music right behind you. As you, as you act nostalgic about that, Jason, make sure to add that
- [10:09]
John Heilman
you just told me you were a pocket Constitution dork. Like, I could have said this. I just think you would think about that. Like, I'm glad I'm in a place like that, right? And it's, it's distressing, obviously, to think that we're becoming, you know, much more akin in both in, in not almost every level, but certainly at the symbolic level to, to the places where despotism, you know, and especially petty despotism is not just present but is embodied. And, and as you see it everywhere, the signs of it are everywhere. That's the thing about despots, right? If you've traveled a lot, you know, when you're in a despotic country, right? Because the despots are constantly reminding you that you're in a despotic country, right? And that's what it feels like here. What's so depressing about it is because you sort of go, it's not just that we're like those other countries, but that, you know, that you see it happening in front of you. This is how it happens, right? Which is the. The president just starts going, I'm putting my name on more and more shit. I'm putting my face on more and more. And you're just going to get so used to it that you're going to eventually go, eh, okay, whatever. And I'm not ready for that yet.
- [11:11]
Jason Brown
I forget who I'm stealing this point from. So I apologize and I'll credit if I can find it in my social media archive. But when the discourse was going around for a while about is Trump Hitler, is he Mussolini, is he like this, is he like Orban? Somebody observes that Trump is really kind of an Arab oil despot at heart, like extremely gouty, gaudy, rather wants to do corrupt deals. And whoever made this point, it was a while ago and like, it is just so on the nose now and obvious as he's like making these deals with the Arab despots and they are really our best allies now besides El Salvador. And like just sort of at a spiritual aura level kind of. I do think that's how he sort of sees himself.
- [11:54]
John Heilman
The one caveat to that, I think that's true and is the Sharia law. Well, no, no, I mean, I think the caveat to that is that at
- [12:01]
Jason Brown
least 90 wives, though, that's an appeal.
- [12:04]
John Heilman
The thing about the Arab oil despots is that they are largely anonymous. They don't want their names and faces on money. They want to be, you know, when you see these like the Forbes list or whatever or who are the richest people in the world, a lot of times we don't really know because. Because a lot of these, a lot of the shakes are like, we don't really want to be on that list. What we want is we want to have, we want to have all the money, we want to have all the power. And we, and it's easier for us if we're not accountable so that no one in our population can look at us and go, oh, that guy's the one who's oppressing us. Right? So they, they kind of keep it on the down. They have all this dough and if you live in the region, you know who these people are, but they're not like, they don't want to be on the COVID of their. If we lived in a world where there are still Fortune informs as real business magazines, but they wouldn't want to be. I don't want to be on the COVID of Fortune. I just want to have all the. And Trump is both. He's like, he behaves like a debt, like a, like a Middle Eastern oil autocrat, despot, whatever, oligarch, but also wants to be like, you know, beard, like Taylor Swift. He also wants to be, you know, Taylor Swifty and also wants to be on everything and be fully acknowledged that he is who he is. That's the big difference there.
- [13:13]
Jason Brown
I think it's funny to think Back to the McCain ad making fun of Obama, the most famous person in the world. And that's just like literally couldn't be more on the nose for Trump.
- [13:22]
John Heilman
The McCain ad was, it was obviously, you know, didn't work, but also was premised on the notion that there was a substantial number of people. The ad was called celebrity. He's the most famous person in the world was the opening of that ad, right. They showed him at Brandenburg Gate and you saw him with other pop stars and stuff. And that was supposed to be by someone's theory. All of McCain's team, Fred Davis who made that ad, they all were like, the, the American electorate will, will be like, we don't want a celebrity as president. That was the premise of that. Right? So first of all, not only were they wrong, but second of all, badly, like now you look at it now go. It's like, how could you have ever. Like that would be a, that would be considered like a devastating ad that would end Barack Obama's political career. Hilarious.
- [14:07]
Jason Brown
One additional way in which he's like the Middle Eastern autocrats is he's very interested in throwing his political foes into prison over kind of, you know, non existent, fabricated crazy topics. Something that's very popular. MBS did this very efficiently when he took over and so far Trump hasn't
- [14:27]
John Heilman
gotten the bone saw out but well, you know, maybe that's next.
- [14:30]
Jason Brown
It's been far less efficient with Trump. We do have the rule of law here still in courts and so he hasn't been able to lock people up in Ritz Carlton as much as he'd like to. He's trying. Once again, he's back to the plate for I think the fourth time with James Comey. Now this time they've indicted him. A grand jury has indicted him somehow over the seashell picture. James Comey posted a boomer resist meme where he was walking along the beach. I asked him about this when he was on the pod a couple months ago. He's walking along the beach. Some Ms. Val viewer.
- [15:01]
John Heilman
Someone is a big fan of you on Nicole's show. Some 71 year old upper west side lady resident who watches MSNBC all the time or MSNL who made this little thing on the. She was like Kitty Hawk or something. The Outer Banks, some seashell art in
- [15:18]
Jason Brown
BETHANY that said 8647, which you know is a restaurant term for kill. This not on the menu. You know, this is not. This isn't available.
- [15:28]
John Heilman
And to be clear in that. That just say kill again. Kill. And when we say kill it from the menu. No, like, everybody understands that killing it from the menu involves the loss of no life. It's a metaphor. It's a metaphor.
- [15:43]
Jason Brown
Yes.
- [15:43]
John Heilman
Remove it from the.
- [15:44]
Jason Brown
As I mentioned the other week, it was like the Persian person who was trying to say that when we say death to America, it's like literally death. It's not. It's kind of like how when you guys say Fuck Trump, you don't literally
- [15:53]
John Heilman
want to fuck Trump.
- [15:54]
Jason Brown
My penis into Trump's. Or emphasis. Like, that's not what you're saying, right?
- [15:59]
John Heilman
Correct.
- [15:59]
Jason Brown
So killing it from the menu is a figure of speech. 8647 is the seashells. We're laughing. It's, I guess, vaguely serious because Jim Comey is gonna have to get a lawyer, go to court and defend himself over this in an ostensibly free country where you should be allowed to say 8647 if you want. As a matter of fact, I just did right there, so I better watch out. Do you have any big thoughts before I take you still hearing Cash explain the seriousness of this investigation?
- [16:26]
John Heilman
Well, I will only say, to your point about all these things, I found the first three Comey indictments, they're obviously, we don't have to. Don't even have to say these are weaponization of the doj, the retribution campaign, blah, blah, blah. But, like, it was actually kind of delightful to watch the. The consequence. And I feel, of course, sympathy for Comey for having to deal with this, but watching him roll into those previous legal proceedings with Pat Fitzgerald and. And be like, against Lindsey Halligan and be like, we are just going to lawyer the living out of you and. And embarrass the Trump administration every time they would go into a courtroom. I'm looking forward to that again in this. In this, because this is not. He is not going to go to jail for this. There is not a jury that's going to convict him because it's such a ludicrous charge. But it will be kind of. I'm sorry he has to go through it, but it will be fun to watch him and his team yet again demonstrate that the Trump people are not just vindictive, but incredibly fucking incompetent and don't really know their way around a courtroom at all.
- [17:28]
Jason Brown
Amen. And shout out to Jim Comey, who obviously, we have litigated often the choices he made during the 2016 campaign on this show and with you and I have done it together. I've done it with him on the show. But he could have gone down a lot of different paths, you know, and when Trump called him into the office there, he could have gone down the path of I'm going to go along to get along like many other people did who are in high ranking positions in the administration. He did not do that. He is being targeted for the fact that he tried to act in his own integrity and his daughter's being targeted now because of that. And it's, it's atrocious and an abomination. But in some ways, I do think it's an inspiring redemptive arc from Jim Comey and his daughter's now suing the administration. It benefits him that he's going against. It's an insult to the Keystone Cops to call these guys the Keystone Cops. I would like to play Kash Patel's press conference announcing this very serious Seashell indictment.
- [18:28]
Kash Patel
Former FBI Director James Comey has now been indicted for two felony counts. While many of you may read this indictment and view this matter as a simple investigation, it is the farthest thing from that. Every single investigation this FBI and our partners at the Department of Justice undertake, especially those that involve the threats to harm or hurt or even kill individuals, whether they behold public office or civilians in our country, are met with the same measure of investigative prowess and tools and personnel in partnership with the Department of Justice as anyone else. This has been a case that's been investigated over the past 9, 10, 11 months. These cases take time. Our investigators work methodically.
- [19:08]
Jason Brown
9, 10, 11 months. John, they've been eyeing that picture. They've looked at the metadata. They've looked at the different styles of Seashell art. They've looked at inspiration from past Seashell artists to see the level of menace.
- [19:23]
John Heilman
This actually was a tell for me yesterday because you also be at that same press conference where you saw Todd. I want to be, I want to be your AG Blanche saying, you know, there is one thing that's really clear. You cannot threaten the life of the President of the United States. And we will not. That is, that's the law. We will not let people. So we are going to bring these people to justice. Right. I, I haven't done this. I actually, if I had had a few more minutes, I would have done it before the show, try to break some news on this. But like, I would like to go back and have chat GPT or Claude or something. Go back and look at how many people have been charged with this crime, and then tell me what the. What in the totality of those cases, what the longest and what the average amount of time is that a lot has elapsed between the incident for which they were charged in the charge. Threatening to kill the President, United States is a serious crime. And I am telling you, my gut. My gut tells me that what you would find in all of the cases, however many of them there have ever been under this, under this charge, under this law, is that the time is almost always, like, trivially short. Somebody threatens to kill the President, United States man. The charges are brought instantly.
- [20:36]
Jason Brown
You get on it, and you get.
- [20:37]
John Heilman
You get on it, right? The guy's trying to kill the President of the United States. You know, wait nine months. If the guy is seriously intending to kill the President, it would be malpractice to let him wander free for almost a year. This man wants to kill the President, Tim. And we have evidence of it, but we're going to take nine months to a year to bring the charges. Even if that. Even if this wasn't obviously ludicrous, because it's just an Instagram post, there isn't any investigation to do. That's the only thing there is. It's like. And that kind of just gives the lie to the whole thing, which is the timing of this thing is the most suspect thing about it, which is like, what you. Jim Comey's trying to kill the President. Let's wait a year before we bring the chart, before we bring him to justice.
- [21:24]
Jason Brown
It just sounds so stupid. Even as you say, Jim Comey is trying to kill the President.
- [21:29]
John Heilman
Jim Comey is plotting to kill the president. You know what?
- [21:31]
Jason Brown
He come. He is walking through the woods, taking pictures and writing captions based on the poetry and literature that he's been reading. That's what Jim Comey's doing.
- [21:43]
John Heilman
Jim Comey wants the President dead. And what he thought the way to do it was was to post a picture on Instagram under his own name of some seashells. Because that's what you do if you really want to see the President get killed and you want to help make it happen. It's so. I mean, it's beyond ludicrous, but the point about the timing is that they know it's beyond ludicrous. And I think to the serious point here, and you guys have talked about this already on the Various Bulwarks podcast, but it's like there may be some coincidence to the fact that Comey's daughter has now got the right to sue. But I think the more clear, the clearer thing is that this is that they have been trying to capitalize on this narrative around the. The attempted assassination at the dinner, and they. They've kind of going to run out of Runway on that. They got everybody to say that we need to build the. Hey, oh, my God. They tried to kill Donald Trump at the dinner. So we got to build the ballroom. What's the next beat of that story? What's the thing that. That you keep going? The president is constantly under threat. Now, look, Donald Trump, there have been people who tried to kill him that seriously. But if you're going to try to politicize the White House correspondence dinner for whatever purpose, whether it's just to make a Trump look like a victim or look like a hero or if it's to try to get the ballroom built or whatever, you need that. What's the next beat in the story? How do you keep it going? Oh, we have this Jim Comey thing. This is sitting around for a year. Or the Seashell case. Let's bring the Seashell case. It keeps assassination attempts at the top of the discourse, but it makes those
- [23:14]
Jason Brown
other attempts feel unserious. They're making them feel less serious. They tell. You said that there is a tell in the investigation. Here is my tell in Cash's language in that clip.
- [23:23]
John Heilman
That suit, too, by the way. Man, he needs a new tailor. Talk about tells.
- [23:27]
Jason Brown
He needs everything. His whole me and needs to change. He needs confidence. He needs a life coach. Speech coach.
- [23:33]
John Heilman
His me and needs to change. Yeah, I love it when you use
- [23:36]
Jason Brown
the way he carries himself fancy, fancy
- [23:39]
John Heilman
French words on the show.
- [23:40]
Jason Brown
His eyes change. He maybe needs glasses. I should go to Williamson Eye center in Baton Rouge. Maybe we can help him out. Here we go. Especially though we take all threats seriously. And then he says this, especially those involving threats to harm, hurt, or even kill individuals. Throwing even in there is, for me, the tell. It's like, even Cash doesn't really believe this, and he's kind of caveating it. He feels too ridiculous to just say bluntly that James Comey was gonna kill the President. Like, he can't say that sentence because it would I without laughing. And so even he gives a little tell there.
- [24:18]
John Heilman
Attempted assault with a deadly seashell. That's the. That's the one missing charge. They're like, ah, you know, there's only a photo of this on the seashell. I think that's a puka shell. Not A seashell. Like I said, puka shell is a seashell, right?
- [24:33]
Jason Brown
Yeah, I guess y' all know that I'm a big fan of Seoul. I've been joining their out of office THC sparkling beverages for a while. They're sparkling and very yummy. Had one last night as a matter of fact, before I snuck away to Tiptinas to see my friends in Dragon Smoke for a couple tunes. There's a lot going on here in New Orleans. A lot of opportunities to drink THC sparkling beverages or have THC gummies. Friends are always in town, but you know, I gotta be up and at em to do this pod in the morning and so something to do that makes you have a little bit more fun when you're socializing but doesn't leave you as sluggish the next day as to turn to Sol's new Mood Gummies. Whether you need that little pick me up when you're going out or something to settle down at night, they've got the perfect options to make you feel right. Sol's a wellness brand that makes delicious hemp derived CBD and THC products designed to make feeling good simple. Sol'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. Try the Uplift gummies to get a little social buzz going or wind down with the mellow gummies and their balance gummies help keep the vibes good anytime. 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 getsol.com and use the code the bulwark, that's getsoul.com, promo code, the bulwark for 30% off. One more retribution thing I'll get your take on, which is the FCC now going after Disney. This kind of relates to our correspondence dinner in addition to like just the dinner being unbearable at any time. Like I felt like the idea that journalists would go to, you know, when Trump is having a direct assault on many of their outlets in particular and when he.
- [26:23]
John Heilman
And when he was telling everybody he was going to take a shit all over them in public, they're terrible. And you're almost in any circumstance, you're like, hey, Trump is telling us he's going to shit on us in public. Let's go and honor him. What a good idea.
- [26:36]
Jason Brown
So anyway, the day after the FCC is going after Disney and the licenses of some ABC stations based on, you know, I Don't know, violations of DEI or woke or something. It's. Who knows, it's lesbian kiss from Buzz Lightyear or something. That has been their outrage. We talked about this, I think, both the last times you were on, which is the mood in the media. As you know, Trump continues to go after them. Like, obviously, at the very beginning of the administration, everybody was buckling. I think after the Kimmel situation, we got a little bit of backbone starting to pop up. But I'm just kind of wondering what you think kind of the environment's like right now at media companies and, you know, whether whether there's some more, you know, gumption building up or whether everybody's still pretty scared of the administration's retribution campaign.
- [27:31]
John Heilman
I always like my formulation about no false binaries. And now people are saying two things can be true at the same time. We have a new CEO who's Bob Iger's successor coming into Disney, who at first glanched. We're very early in the story because of really only yesterday that Carr decided to go after those guys over these Jimmy Kimmel jokes that are like, as Kimmel himself said, if what he said about Melania Trump and Donald Trump is somehow an indictable offense, that would get you fired. Just mad Don Rickles, Henny Youngman, you know, these people never would never have been able to work. Everybody who the Tom Brady roast would have to go to jail under that theory of the case. But I think what we've seen so far in early days here is that the new CEO of Disney is trying to. To at least make it look like right now that he's going to fight and that there's not even going to be, as you remember, the first Kimmel thing there was the capitulation. And then they found their backbone when the. Basically when the. When the viewers revolted over it. I don't want to, like, sort of say that there's no one who took a lesson from the fact that. That Disney won when they fought back on Kimmel before that, and that people aren't thinking like, well, there's a way to win. We don't have to capitulate on everything when they go after us. I think there is some sign that there are people in the business who looked at that Kimmel exchange and took some comfort in that or some hardening and thought, okay, maybe if we get, if we're on the receiving end of a Trump threat, whether it's a regulatory retribution threat or a legal threat, that we fight back. And obviously there are places like the New York Times that have, you know, when they've, when Trump has said he's going to sue them or sued them, they'd said, bring it on, you know, we'll fight you. So there's some of that. At the same time, I just spent eight days in Los Angeles, and I would say they may be willing to fight back a little bit more. But the appetite for doing things that could incur the wrath of Donald Trump is, I would say, not only not greater, but less. I mean, there is, there is nobody, Tim, in, in the world of streaming television, some of the most powerful companies in the world, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, as the three main ones, and certainly we know what the situation is now at Paramount. No one expects Paramount to suddenly be an outlier here. There is less than zero appetite for anything that would be programming of a topical, contemporary nature that might, in one way or the other, brush up against the Trump administration and potentially piss them off. There's a less than zero. Zero is come and pitch us this thing, but we're gonna let him respectfully decline. Their attitude now is affirmatively, don't come in this office until after Donald Trump is gone. I'm just trying to be honest with you, John. You'll be wasting our time and wasting your time because we are never going to make anything while Donald Trump is president. And maybe this will change. Maybe they'll be wrong, that they will change their mind. Something will happen over the next year, and they'll change their minds. But as of today, there is that attitude, which is, yeah, we don't even want to do a perfunctory meeting on this because we are never going to make this thing if it's, if it touches on anything where Donald Trump or anything Trump adjacent could come up. And there's some chance that something that you or one of your colleagues or the, you know, on a show like that would say that would make them mad. The financial risk, the regulatory risk, the. It's just too great. Fuck it. We're just going to keep our heads down for the next two and a half years.
- [30:44]
Jason Brown
It's so crazy. You know, I was talking about this a little bit with Nicole and Mark Elias yesterday and how, you know, these guys have been so incompetent at the, you know, active measures, retribution, you know, everybody is walking free. They've won some settlements, I guess, with the media companies, but yeah, but overall, you know, they've lost, you know, time again in court. They've not successfully gone after any of their foes. Now they've Gone after regular people, obviously, you know, immigrants and you know, folks that are in communities and stuff of that nature. But none of these high profile people have suffered at all. And yet still they've succeeded in the chilling effect. Like there remains cowardice across the corporate CEO class and Hollywood, very acutely, I would say. And that's why it's so shocking whenever you see somebody step up, like, who was it the one oil CEO in the meeting who was like, yeah, actually this Venezuela thing isn't good for us. Right? It was like, oh man, how refreshing. A rich person in a free country was able to just say what is true about the president's bad policies. Like, this isn't North Korea after all. But the chill effect side, they've still been effective.
- [31:54]
John Heilman
Makes you wonder like what that was, that person having some kind of an infarction or something at that moment. I don't know what happened there. I was having a minor stroke when I said that. Sorry, I take it back, Mr. President. But the weird thing about it, and this is actually something we did talk about before on some previous version of this show or mine or something, I can't remember. But you know, there's one video platform that is actually growing. Only one. Even like Netflix, which is clearly the leader in streaming, right? Their subscriber growth in the United States is now basically flat and they've brought all the live programming on. There's not really much growth for them left here. There's a lot internationally, they can still add subscribers, but here it's not really growing. None of the rest of them are really growing in an appreciable. The boom in people making the transition to streaming is kind of over. It's now just all incremental. But there's one platform that is now, I think uncontestably, and everyone in all of this business would say this is one platform that's growing fast and is now the most powerful video platform in the world. That's YouTube, right?
- [32:54]
Jason Brown
So we're trying to get to 2 million subscribers on our YouTube page right now. So go subscribe, hit, subscribe, hit. Like, tell your friends we're going for 2 million 100%.
- [33:04]
John Heilman
And you know, the Bulwark's a good example.
- [33:06]
Jason Brown
Yeah.
- [33:07]
John Heilman
I mean, what is it? So what's April, right? I mean, I can remember back when you guys were at 800,000. It wasn't that long ago. It was like after, around the post, Kamala Harris's loss, Trump's victory, end of 2024, you guys are under a million. You guys have doubled, more than doubled in the course of basically about a year.
- [33:22]
Ryan Seacrest
Right.
- [33:22]
John Heilman
But you're not alone. There's other people doing this too.
- [33:25]
Jason Brown
Right.
- [33:25]
John Heilman
Because the platform is. And that's what's fueling them. Forget about what, what you guys do well or don't do well.
- [33:30]
Jason Brown
Sure.
- [33:31]
John Heilman
You are one of many people who are driving the growth of the platform. Hey, what's, what's interesting about that? How are you guys driving the growth of the platform? By talking about politics. And I would say that's true of the far left, really far left and really far right. YouTube's attitude, which is, you know, we have a few rules, but basically we're not going to be afraid of political content. We're not going to be afraid of controversial content. We're going to let all these flowers boom, bloom. We're not. Again, they might do a few annoying things about content moderation where you can't say certain words or whatever. But, but they're not like, we're not saying we won't put on, you know, Hassan Piker and we're not going to put on Tucker Carlson. We're going to put on both and let it, and let it fly. Right. And that's not the only reason, but it is a reason why YouTube has become the most powerful video platform in the world. And every one of these streaming, these bigger streaming platforms, they know that. They see the growth. They're terrified of what YouTube is becoming. They're trying to get a bunch of YouTube. They're trying to. How do we tap into this creator thing? They're trying to get the YouTube juice all over themselves.
- [34:31]
Jason Brown
Yeah, but they won't speak. But yeah, it's like, we'll bring in, pardon my take, we'll bring in Amy Poehler's show. Right? Like some stuff. Yeah.
- [34:40]
John Heilman
But they won't touch anything. They look at it go, God, we gotta get that. We'll do this, we'll do that, we'll do this. But none of it is working because they're avoiding the thing that's actually really at the core of what's generating the actual mojo at YouTube. And I, I just, just goes back to your point of like, this is not just about political cowardice. It's about a kind of. They're making what I think people look back on. It's an obvious economic and business model mistake. Not, you said they are being cowards, but they're also short circuiting their own commercial interests by being such pussies.
- [35:15]
Jason Brown
Yeah. And it's also misjudging. I think where the public is. And I think this is particularly obvious right now after the Iran war. And that's what I want to talk about. His numbers could not be low right now and I guess they could be, but he's seen very gradual. Well, they could be, yeah, they could be.
- [35:32]
John Heilman
The main thing is you can't imagine what is going to turn it around. Like Sarah's thing about the Bush line, it's not just that he's low, that you've crossed a certain point. It's that there was a point with George W. Bush and with other presidents where it's hit a certain point and the dynamics are such that you're never going to turn it around. It's unsound, it's post, it's post Katrina Bush, he, he might, he might stop the, the, the collapse, but he's not going to suddenly get back to 48 again or 43 again. It's like you're like at a certain point, you're like you're underwater now forever, dude. That's it.
- [36:04]
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- [36:34]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [37:05]
Jason Brown
My guy, Laksha Jane has a new poll out today and I want to get to the Democratic side in a second. But just looking at the Trump approval and two months ago he was at minus 15. Now he's at minus 22 and that's. I guess that's this very significant drop in just two months for somebody that for a long time was like pretty locked in in his fav on fave with just high strongly favorables, high strongly unfavorables and a tiny window of people that were moving. Now we're seeing a bigger window of people moving away from had been previously favorable to him and they're trying to manage this with the jawboning. I've enjoyed the fact that I think we've hit an inflection point with the war and about how bad it's going that for two straight days we have not had an Axios report from an anonymous insider about how a deal's just around the corner. We're getting one of those every morning at 8:15 like clockwork. It's like, ooh. Senior administration official said the Iranians are interested in coming to the table. Senior administration official says that they're seeing an end in s We're not even getting those anymore. Haven't gotten one as of 9:45. We're taping this Wednesday morning. There is a Wall Street Journal report last night that Trump instructed aides to prepare for an extended blockade of because he doesn't want to get back into a hot war because he doesn't want to look like a wuss. And so the blockade and hoping they crumble internally is his preferred outcome here. And that's like cutting off your nose despite your face in the most extreme way possible.
- [38:30]
John Heilman
Yeah. Like, I mean there's so much to say about all this. We will not go down this tangent but I will raise it. There was a report ABC NBC News report yesterday that they'd done analysis that there have been now $2 billion in maybe I can't remember it was winnings or betting on the on the prediction markets about just Iran war related. 2 billion.
- [38:50]
Jason Brown
B billion with a B. B with a B as in Barry.
- [38:53]
John Heilman
Yeah, B as in Barry. Two billion. What's the I heard the headline of this was.
- [38:58]
Jason Brown
Yes.
- [38:58]
John Heilman
Prediction market bets on the Iran war top $2 billion. And again, the reason I said it's a tangent is that we don't want to go down is that there is nothing that signifies the dangers of the prediction markets, unregulated prediction markets or the corruption of the Trump administration more than what I'm sure someday we are going to learn is that the profiteering on those two platforms, both of them now entangled with Donald Trump Jr. One, I think he's on the board. One, he's a senior advisor for Kalshi and Polymarket and we have this guy, Special Forces guy, who's being used as a sacrificial lamb to say, yeah, we're really tough on this stuff. The guy who bet on the Maduro raid while Magam, my man, the account is like betting on, like, the precise timing and targets of various things, various strikes in Iran and in. And in. In Lebanon. It recodes the Axios thing. Because a lot of those things, the Axios reports are, Tim, I think about. Some of them are about the normal course of spin in the Washington message market, but a lot of them are also about. About Trump's desperate, frantic effort to keep the stock market from collapsing, which is just an ancillary and corollary thing to the ways that. That they're profiteering in the futures, in the prediction markets, in the online prediction markets. All of this about money, right? So a lot of this messaging is being driven to either enrich. Either enrich people who are insiders, or to keep the last barometer, the only barometer of the American economy that's actually. That looks healthy, however illusory, that is the stock market. Everything else in the American economy blows, but the stock market is at record highs. There's a whole other discussion about why that is, but that's. Clearly Trump understands that he has one last thing to hold on to as an economic argument, which is that the stock market's still doing well. I think that your point is correct in the sense that I don't understand what it is that having gotten to where we are now and elevated Iran into a kind of regional superpower by letting them demonstrate a theory, something that was previously only hypothetical, which was, can we control the Strait of Hormuz and what will happen if we do that? They now know we can, and there will be global economic chaos.
- [41:15]
Jason Brown
Right?
- [41:16]
John Heilman
So they're now more powerful than they were before. They still have the. The nuclear weapons that they had before, nuclear materials that they had before, and the regime has only become more radical and more entrenched. The IGRC is like. Is more powerful than ever. So we. We have. We have won narrow tactical military battles. We degraded the ballistic missile capacity and sunk to kill the navy, whatever, but we've lost on the strategic level. The strategic level. And what is it that changes that equation from the Iranian point of view? What incentive do the Iranians have to come to suddenly be like, you know, let's. Yeah, we're gonna give up our chokehold on the straight. I don't really see it. You know, I.
- [41:56]
Jason Brown
The.
- [41:56]
John Heilman
The most interesting thing about Trump now is that he is no longer even saying what the timeline is.
- [42:01]
Jason Brown
Right.
- [42:01]
John Heilman
We've moved into the period of indefinite commitment. There's, he's not even making up his usual of like two more weeks. Two more weeks. He just goes, you know, he just starts citing Iraq and Vietnam and Korea. And as if those are like, well, we haven't been there as long as Iraq, Vietnam and Korea. You're kind of like, well, we haven't. But what are you doing citing those? Those are like, well, until we get to the five year mark, you got nothing to even worry about. This is a short war. It's like, I don't know, it's all very ominous to me. I think we could be there for a really long time. And again, how does that help Trump get out of the toilet politically? Yeah, I don't see that.
- [42:32]
Jason Brown
I just don't see the way out of it.
- [42:34]
John Heilman
That's what I'm saying. Yeah.
- [42:35]
Jason Brown
Even if it was to end soon, it's kind of like, okay, they just, the House Armed Service Committee, they got Hegseth over there this morning. I'm sure we'll be talk about that more on tomorrow's show. But one thing that's come out of it already is they're estimating 25 billion has been spent. So it's like we've lost lives. 25 billion is spent. The gas and food prices are going to be up at least through the fall already. Even if this magic got fixed tomorrow because of the disruptions of supply chains and all that. And what, so would anybody have signed up for that deal on January 1st? It's like, hey, we're going to lose American lives. It's going to cost 25 billion. Everybody's gas and food prices are going to be up. In exchange for that, we're going to get rid of Iran's ballistic missile capacity and the strait is going to be back open. The strait was already open. Like what, like what's a win?
- [43:19]
John Heilman
Right? And, and Iran's going to be more powerful than it was when we started. We'd never have made that deal. And I say, you know, I had my old, old friend Zanny Minton Betta is the editor in chief of the Economist on my show right now, the one that just dropped yesterday. And I, I, you know, I was asking her about, about this and she's like, was it explaining to me is the way someone who knows, really knows something about the global economy would just like how the supply chain on oil stuff actually works and how long it takes to That's a very long tail. And she's like, the oil shock is coming. And we could, to your point, if this all were resolved tomorrow, the way that the supply chain works, you're not going to get the worst of it for another several months. And as we sit here today, I think it's the case that, that in Europe, the stocks of jet fuel are down to like days now, right? The airlines are starting to cancel mass numbers of flights for the summer, like Lufthansa. The beginnings of the, of the serious oil shock, supply shock are, are, are going to hit Europe and are already hitting Asia. They're doing rationing of diesel and across a bunch of Asian countries. We will be the last to feel it, but we will feel it. And again, to the point of what's going to turn things around for Donald Trump and for the Republican Party between now and say, the midterms? Nothing. This is all in the pipeline, so to speak. You know, there's no way to turn that around.
- [44:43]
Jason Brown
And here's Trump's message this morning. Iran can't get their act together. They don't know how to sign a non nuclear deal. They better get smart soon. They better get smart soon. I just, I don't know, I was ranting about this on the next level yesterday. But like, for all of the messaging on the right about how much of a wet noodle Jimmy Carter was during the hostage crisis and how much of a wuss he is. I think people are afraid to say this about Trump because they're worri going to bait them into doing nuclear war, which, you know, whatever, but like, this is the most embarrassing limp thing possible. It's like you started this war, you agreed to a ceasefire, you unilaterally continued the ceasefire even though there's no deal. And now you're just like, you better get smart soon, Mullis.
- [45:22]
John Heilman
Right?
- [45:22]
Jason Brown
You never know.
- [45:23]
John Heilman
And again, people are afraid to say this because to your, to really make your point, how many. It was like two weeks ago that Trump was threatening to annihilate their civilization from which they would never recover. Like the bluster of, you know, you lunatics better, you know, open up the straight. You, you know, like all that Easter Sunday stuff where he's threatening civilizational annihilation. That was the tenor of him a couple weeks ago. And now he's going, you better hurry up and get sensible, you guys. Don't forget to brush your teeth tomorrow.
- [45:56]
Jason Brown
You know, like Cavity sounded like Michael Tracy. Meet me at the Hampton Inn. Mullis. I'm out here at the Hampton Inn. I'm ready to fight.
- [46:06]
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- [46:37]
Ryan Seacrest
it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. Spring is a time to give yourself a refresh, so spend time on self rejuvenation. Shop in store and online for great savings on all your favorite personal care Items. Now through May 26th. Earn 4 times points when you shop participating items like Pantene Shampoo, Crest Toothpaste, Tampax Radiant Native Shampoo and Secret Gel deodorant. Then redeem points for discounts on future purchases of groceries or fuel. Offer ends May 26th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
- [47:08]
Jason Brown
I want to do some pole nerding stuff because here's my. Here's my caveat. Yeah, I feel like I've been uncharacteristically optimistic. So Rain Cloud Tim wants to come back for a second because There is some Ms. Ring.
- [47:19]
John Heilman
I miss Rain Cloud Tim. I miss it.
- [47:21]
Jason Brown
There's some political caveats. I mentioned that poll today from Laksha Jane about Trump's approval being down at minus 22. In the same poll, Trump went from minus 15 to minus 22. The generic ballot has gone from D plus 6 to D plus 6. So no positive move for the Democrats. The House Dems put out this internal poll and you and I are old hands at this point. When you put out an internal poll, it's because the poll came back and you're like this is kind of on the upper edge of the margin of error and so we want to make it look as good as possible. Right? It didn't really blow me out of the water and some of this stuff's gonna be a little nerdy for some listeners, but I'll just like they put out Arizona six. The Democrat is leading by three, but the Republican Siskamani only won by three last time, so that's a six point swing. In Colorado, three is When I know they say Trump is underwater. Heard only won that by five last time, so. And the Iowa three, you know, Trump won by four last time. Now they're saying he's underwater. You know, this stuff is all good. The Democrats are still gonna win the House. Like, if you're just putting this out only through the construct of I represent the House Democrats, and this is good for the Democrats taking over the House. It's a fine press release to put out, but, you know, there's just not a ton of sign in the numbers right now that we're seeing as the bottom falls out from Trump, that we're seeing, like, people in red areas saying, okay, you know, it's so bad, I'm gonna take a chance on the Democrats now. There's plenty of time. It's only April. But I just, I do think, you know, I'm hearing a little bit more bullishness on the Senate than I indicates at this point.
- [48:56]
John Heilman
Well, I think the key. The key question here is which data? You know, and the. And, and by that, I mean, we have, I would say, these two big and differing data sets.
- [49:07]
Jason Brown
Right.
- [49:07]
John Heilman
One data set is what the polling is telling us. And, and, and I'm not trying to be irrationally exuberant about anything. I'm just trying to say, you know, we have now, over many, many cycles, Tim, as you know, come to, we always find ourselves saying whenever various outcomes occur, we're like, man, the polling's broken. You know, we don't. The polling. We said this in 2024. We said in 2022. We said in 20. We're constantly. Right. And yet at this moment, you know, we're sitting here, I'm not, like, attacking you, but we always end up reverting back to the polling people who've done this for a long time. Right.
- [49:39]
Jason Brown
I will say kind of the polling in 2022 was better than the punditry, actually.
- [49:45]
John Heilman
All I'm saying is that we've. We've had systematic polling flaws from going back to 2016. Now, where it's been. Where it's been quite. And yet we don't really fully incorporate that into the way we do analysis. And the only reason I'm saying that is not because I'm a poll. Yeah. A D skewer or. Or truth or something, but just to say that what we also have is another data set, which is what Democrat. How Democrats have performed in elections from the beginning of Trump 2.0 to now. So just to take the most obvious example, you know, the Marjorie Taylor Greene district. Right. Where the polling didn't have a, what was, I think a 25, 26 point swing in that district, a very, very red district that ended up being carried by a Republican. But you saw like a 26 point swing in the course of two years. The typified exemplifies what we've seen for the last 14 or 15 months. So I think if you're going to make the case for Democrats are on the way towards whatever a wave looks like in the environment, winning the Senate, in the structural environment, winning the Senate is the bar. Yeah, right.
- [50:48]
Jason Brown
And honestly, probably winning 52 Senate seats to protect yourself from John Fetterman switching parties. That's the bar, I would say.
- [50:53]
John Heilman
Right. If you're, if you're going to make that argument. The argument the best set of data to support it is not the polling, but is what is the actual performance in actual elections over the last 14 months. I don't think anything's about as conclusive, but I do think it's worth at least contemplating that given a full decade of experience, which tells us that polling is broken, has been broken, has been subject to systematic error, it might be worth at least equal, at least looking at both data sets and putting them and saying, well, the data over here is telling one story, which is that Democrats are in a good position, but not great. Maybe not as the polling doesn't show the kind of overwhelming wave that you might expect. But the data from all the elections in the last 14 months does sort of indicate that and we'll see what turns out to be the case. But to the point we were making earlier, you know, there is not only are the macro factors that are driving voter sentiment kind of locked in and in a bad place for Trump and Republicans, but on the other side, there's almost nothing they can do to countermand it. I mean, it's like we're at the point where we are almost out of Runway for anything. The legislation has not been very big on the Republicans.
- [52:00]
Jason Brown
They're not even claiming that they have anything to countermand it. Honestly, it's not, it's not even as if they have some message about like, here's the plan. Right. You know, firebombing Democrats with ads is like basically like negative, you know, negative polarization.
- [52:13]
John Heilman
I mean, in the absence of a Martian invasion that Mike Johnson and, and Trump and Cash Patel repelled and we had actual live video footage of them repelling a Martian invasion.
- [52:24]
Jason Brown
Independence Day type situation, like Bill Pull.
- [52:26]
John Heilman
Yes, an Independence Day. So, yes, right. Where Right Mike Johnson gets to be Will Smith and, and Cash Patel gets to be, uh, gets to be Bill Pullman. I just don't see it. We're locked in and the question is really only how much more it spins in the anti Republican direction, not the other way. I just don't see what those factors are that will turn it around.
- [52:47]
Jason Brown
I take your polling caveat, but I'm just going to throw one little piece of candy at you because you just. Why not? Why not? Do it.
- [52:53]
John Heilman
Do it.
- [52:53]
Jason Brown
We're 50 minutes in. Two polls out of Texas this week. UT poll has Calorico 42, Paxton 34. And that's a ton undecided. It's the Texas Public Opinion Research poll. I was more interested in Talarico 46, Paxton 41, Talarico 44, Cornyn 41. Now the one way to look at that is I don't know that Beto was ever up by 5 even in the good campaign. Maybe one poll. On the other hand, 46 is about what Beto got. So maybe there's like a ceiling, a Democratic ceiling there. But I mean that's the best data points in the polling that we've seen from the Dem for the Democrats all year.
- [53:30]
John Heilman
Your previous thing was rain cloud is back. The polling's not that strong. I'm saying, well, look at the results of how Democrats have been doing. Like a caveat, but a caveat in the direction of, of there's, there's reason to think there might be. I hate to use the word wave, but whatever. Democrats are going to overperform the polling, let's put it that way. You look at the Talarico thing and you feel better rather than feeling worse.
- [53:51]
Jason Brown
I'm just intrigued. I mean, it's interesting. It's two poll numbers. You know, I don't, I'm not getting emotional about Texas Senate polls. I'm just saying that like, that's an intriguing data.
- [54:00]
John Heilman
Well, I am, I am intrigued also, and I don't get emotional about those things, but I think Talarico is a super interesting candidate and someone who I totally have my eye on as someone who could have a big future in national politics. I'm over indexing my attention on that race. All I'll say is that both of those polls are margin of error. I mean, they're ties. And so for real people who are sophisticated about this, you look at both those polls, they're both inside the statistical margin of error. The right way to talk about this in the not. Talarico is leading in the Senate race. The right way to talk about this, statistically speaking is Talo is in a statistical tie with either of the two and he's performing a little bit better against Paxton. And the, in this, in the, the more the bandwidth of, in the band of tie he's better against which doesn't surprise anybody. I think he can win the state, I think he can win, but I think it's going to be very, very close. I don't think anybody should think James Talo is going to win. He would be helps enormously by Paxton being the, the nominee. And I don't think even then he's going to win by 10 points or six points if he's going to, you know, going to win by one or two if he. But I think it's going to be super competitive. The most interesting thing to me is that the, when he won the primary, watching what they tried to do to muddy him up and how little that had the effect on him because I think that is really, you know, you saw the initial wave of how they were going to try to disqualify him and it hasn't hurt his numbers at all. In fact, his numbers have gotten a little bit better.
- [55:21]
Jason Brown
Speaking of Trump weakness, remember when he was going to bully Ken Paxton out of the race? Remember that, that whoever won the first round he was going to endorse, then the loser was going to drop out and they're going to do it for the good of the party. That didn't turn out to happen, did it? He seemed to have as much success bullying Ken Paxton as he has the mullahs in Iran. And there's just.
- [55:39]
John Heilman
Well, I don't think he even tried. I don't think he even tried. And I think the thing is there again, if you're looking for various data points, I know we, we are watching the, there's the Trump's general political standing, but there is this really now for the first time really we are seeing not just anecdotal but empirical signs that the Trump basis is, is, if not crumbling, is erode like real erosion. In the MAGA base case that the fact that he didn't try to bully Paxton out of the race tells me that Trump knows that's right because like I think he just looked up and went, I, I don't want to be on the wrong side. My base about all I ever. The thing I've most had is my base. I'm starting to see that it's, that it's starting to crack and I don't want to Let go and try to. I'm not gonna. Don't want to exacerbate that by going after the MAGA guy. I don't. How's it gonna help me with my base if I'm gonna. I mean his bases. He's now insecure with his own base. If he goes after. After Paxton and ends up on corn inside, there's just one more reason for the base to be like, fuck you, you were a liar and a fraud to begin with.
- [56:41]
Jason Brown
I don't know if this is a Raincott anecdote. I just saw this article yesterday and I was like, I bet Heilman will have good shtick on this. Barney Frank is dying, which is sad. And he's got a book coming out. And he. According to the article in Politico about his book, he's hoping to use his reputation and his record of being on the left to give courage to. Many of my colleagues who I know agree with me, inhibited from saying that some of the left wing politics is making them too unpopular. He says, until we separate ourselves from the far left agenda, we don't win. Barney Frank, obviously, mostly known for gay rights. Frank Dodd Frank, popular northeastern liberal. And there's one way to look at that, which is like, this is an old, like, move aside, old man. You don't understand where the world is going. But the other way to look at that is, I don't know, maybe. Is he. He savvy? Is he. Is he seeing something? What do you make of the Barney Frank swan song?
- [57:34]
John Heilman
I can, I can talk about Barney Frank all day. Barney was. Is a. Literally by sheer coincidence, not the first national magazine story I ever wrote, but the first story I wrote, what I became when I went on staff at the Economist magazine in the fall of 1990, was about Barney Frank and the scandal that was then enveloping him. Because he had been involved with this male escort and he had. He had paid off a bunch of his parking, fixed a bunch of his parking tickets. And there was a thing that was around the House gymnasium and it became a whole thing. And obviously back in those days, Republicans were bad.
- [58:06]
Jason Brown
Escort was in the House gymnasium.
- [58:07]
John Heilman
There was an element of the story that involved Barty and the escort in the House gymnasium engaging in some activity that was, you know, not. Not what you want to be doing in the House gymnasium.
- [58:17]
Jason Brown
Right, the original Senate twink kind of.
- [58:20]
John Heilman
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Right, right. Republicans really seized on that. There was so much homophobia and the closet was so firmly entrenched back then. But the main thing about Barney, he's, he, he got past that. There are people thought it would end his career and he got past it and he eventually, you know, he stuck around for a really long time. He was by everyone's and is. I, I don't know what kind of condition he's in right now, but he was. If you asked 435 members of the House who was like the smartest member of the House, just pure candle power, like high iq, almost everybody would put Barney on the list of the top smartest House members they ever saw. Incredibly brilliant guy, very intellectually sophisticated and, and, and savvy and funny, quick on his feet, all of that. And it's not surprising that like the, the, the legislation that he, that Dodd Frankens the legislation will be most remembered for because you know, he was a very, very serious person about a pretty complicated area of public policy. But here's the thing about, about this thing I haven't read what exactly. I don't know what's going to be in the book, but characterize the way you characterize it. The political experience that shaped him and his outlook on the world more than anything else is when he was the senior age. Kevin White, the mayor in Boston when the Boston busing experience happened in the early 1970s. If you read J. Anthony Lukes book Common Ground and one of the most brilliant pieces of nonfiction writing anybody's ever done. So story of how bussing Tore Boston apart in the early 1970s. Barney was the chief legislative aide to the mayor at the time. And I think for a lot of people of that generation, the experience of going through a thing where liberals had ostensibly and really committed to the notion of racial integration, had implemented a policy that was what we would today call woke and was a disaster for the party, for the black kids that it was meant to help. That is the kind of thing that I think shaped his worldview. And he was always a super progressive guy who kind of worried that Democrats would pursue identity politics in ways that would harm again, not just the party, but would also harm in fact the groups that they wanted to try to help. So it doesn't, in a weird way, it doesn't surprise me. It sounds a little Bill Marish to me. That's the way it's been characterized, you know, and a little bit too kind of easy to caricature. But the notion that Barney would be. Be on that side after the kind of career that he had doesn't surprise me. It's kind of his, his, his roots, his intellectual roots were in a series of experiences that taught a bunch of people in that kind of Clinton generation that kind of knee jerk liberalism which, you know, became wokeism. And it's in its most easily caricatured form later on that that was a bad bargain again, both for the party politically and for the, the. The minority groups that was trying to help. So I'm not. Doesn't surprise me in some ways. I'll be interested to really read it, honestly. He's a smart guy.
- [61:11]
Jason Brown
Senate Twink was a Senate staffer. There's a video that leaked of him bottoming in the Senate hearing room. And I always thought it was kind of offensive because we never learned who the top was. And poor Senate Twink has. Has now fled, I believe to Australia or New Zealand, being so ashamed he's somewhere far away and we don't know who the other partner was. So it's a leaked video. If that interests you at all, you can go Google it.
- [61:36]
John Heilman
Can I just say, first of all, when was does that. How like what, 2023. 2023.
- [61:40]
Jason Brown
2023.
- [61:41]
John Heilman
I think it's just awesome that I just gave you this long thing about Barney Frank and there's a parody. But the thing you came back to was someone who captured on video bottoming. It's like, I just, like Kyleman doesn't know about this thing. I got to tell him about the bottoming thing.
- [61:53]
Jason Brown
Well, there's. I mean, there is a tie between Barney's behavior and the gym and the Senate twice. I'm just trying to make a generational connection. And I thought that you were very eloquent on Barney Frank. I'd never met him. I had nothing to add on the topic of Barney Frank. You did exactly what I wanted. Which was I wanted to put a quarter in the machine and hear you riff about Barney Frank. Cook.
- [62:11]
John Heilman
I get it.
- [62:12]
Jason Brown
Podcasting. Finally. We have a couple rapid fires, then we're going to get you out of here.
- [62:16]
John Heilman
Yeah.
- [62:17]
Jason Brown
You said to me that when you travel in the country, people are asking you two of the same questions. How fucked are we? And who's it going to be? We could do, and probably will do, tens and dozens and hundreds of hours on those questions in the coming year. I just want your 30. If you only had 30 seconds. Seconds like a literally an elevator take on how are we? And who's it going to be? What would you offer?
- [62:42]
John Heilman
I think I say people mostly. I think that it's hard to tell how we are, but more. But. But I don't think of at the, at the extremes that you see, one of which is, is as soon as Trump is gone, everything's gonna be fine, everything go back to normal. That's one end of that spectrum. And then the other end of that spectrum is, is we're terminally existentially fucked, the country's ruined and we'll never be able to come back. I, I'm more towards the terminally existentially, but I'm not all the way there. I think the idea that Trump is going to go away in two years and that everything, hey, Marco Rubio will be the nominee and everything will be back to normal. I mean, we could deconstruct that in a million ways. But I think there's been significant damage done to the fabric of American democracy and the institutions that, and norms that support it. And there's going to have to be a serious effort to, in a concerted, genuine way to do a large scale brawl, broad Democratic revival, reconstruction effort. And that brings you to the second question, which is who's it going to be? Well, who's it going to be? If you ask me, like, you know, is the, I will often say to people, do you mean like who do I think the Democratic nominee is going to be? Who's in the hunt for that? Or do you mean who do I think is going to save the country? And you know, when I, the Democratic nominee thing, you know, I think that the, you know, if you, it's, it really is too early to say. I think, you know, we all think Gavin Newsom had a pretty good 20, 25. I think Gavin Newsom has a, has a very high, a two part challenge, one of which is how do you explain California? Because you can't run on the California miracle. And that is the thing these have to explain. And the other thing is I don't yet hear him have any larger vision for how to do the Democratic revival and reconstruction that we have to like, even if you just gonna talk about. Gavin Newsom has good ideas on policy, interesting things to say, but if you ask him, like, like a lot of Democrats, JB Pritzker is like this too. God, AI is a really big deal. We have to have a really good big. We have to really get to grips with AI. Well, okay, how are we going to do that? Well, we really got to think about that. We really have to think hard about it. No one's really got a vision for it. The lift of the deriving dream or even the big Clintonian policy approach to these big challenges we're facing. People don't really have that, you know, this is part of why I mentioned Talarico. I don't think it's impossible that someone in this class in 2020 money, given the pace that our politics moves at now, that someone who wins in 2026 could be a presidential nominee in 2028. Again, I'm not, I'm not specifying favorites here, but I don't think you, you can rule out if Graham Platner wins that he's the one. I don't think if you if that. I don't think that if James Tall Rico wins, you can rule him out because I don't think the Democratic bench is as strong as some Democrats like to think. And I'm not. Again, I like Josh Shapiro. I like Wes Moore. I can go on and make a whole long list. List. But what we've learned in our politics right now is that if Democrats are going to win, the person who's going to do that is going to be someone who electrifies the base and electrifies the whole party and looks like the future. And you know, among the group that people tell you think is in the kind of a group in the Democratic Party, there's not, it's not like there's an obvious, you know, at this point in 20 2008, all of them
- [65:47]
Tim Miller
and
- [65:48]
John Heilman
at this point in the cycle in 2008, eight, you could already even though they hadn't announced yet, Edwards, Obama, Hillary Clinton. You knew that that was going to be the triumvirate. You like, those are three serious people. Any one of those guy people could be the nominee and any one of those people could win. I think you knew that by 2006, you know, you could see that forming. There's nothing like that right now where there's an obvious three or two who are like this is these the heavyweights and these are the ones who could, who could do it. So I, I tell people I think they're still a lot we'll know a lot more nine months from now about like who the potential people are. That could be the person who is
- [66:24]
Jason Brown
close to the hot take. We had yesterday. A lot of discussion on the New York Times songwriters list. They pulled other songwriters asked people to get to nominate. Nile Rogers was number one. Lucinda's on there.
- [66:36]
John Heilman
It's not rant. It's not ranked though. Though the order is not. Nile Rogers is number one. It's, it's just, it's 50. 50 unranked binding. Yes, they did. He's on the list. You want to read the whole. You Want to read the whole list?
- [66:48]
Jason Brown
Not really. I mean I can't. I was hoping you would just get. People can Google it. Yeah, yeah. 30. Steven Merritt. I felt like there's a shortage of indie rock on there. Stephen Merritt of the Magnetic Fields.
- [66:58]
John Heilman
Stevie wants to mention living. Just as important to say living American songwriters. Right? So that's the self limiting thing. You've got Jay Z on there, I think the most. One of the Paul Simon's on there. Bob Dylan's on there. Bruce Springsteen's on there, as you'd imagine. But also Missy Elliott's on there. Taylor Swift's on the there.
- [67:12]
Jason Brown
Young Thug.
- [67:13]
John Heilman
Young Thug is on there now. Young Thug, Bad Bunny now. I think if you Fiona Apple, you know, there's a bunch of people have a bunch of. Of. Of issues with some of these people. Like I think Young Thug is maybe the most. If you just read the music geeks, it's like the most controversial. You know, not, not because he's controversial, but just like really one of the 30 greatest living American songwriters. That seems like a little to a lot of people, like maybe an overreach. Fiona Apple has recorded 50.
- [67:44]
Jason Brown
He was great at Coachella. Young Thug was great at Coachella.
- [67:46]
John Heilman
I like Young Thug.
- [67:47]
Jason Brown
Exceeded my expectations.
- [67:50]
John Heilman
I like Young Thug. But his Young Thug really one of the 30 greatest living American songwriters. Fiona Apple has put out exactly 56 songs ever total. You stand that up next to Bob Dylan. Do they belong on the same list again?
- [68:02]
Jason Brown
I think Baringer, the national has many more songs written than her.
- [68:08]
John Heilman
I think all of these are credible choices. But, but Bad Bunny, you know, he's only been recording for eight years. I mean dear, has he really Bad Bunny done enough to really be in the. In the company of Springsteen, Paul Simon, etc. I think that the most obvious. I was thinking about this because I knew you were going to ask the most obvious. I'm curious what you think are the most obvious omissions, like where you're kind of like, whoa, how does this person not on the list? This is a controversial thing.
- [68:37]
Jason Brown
Okay?
- [68:37]
John Heilman
Controversial for a lot of reasons. But I think on the merits, Kanye west should be on that list. On the merits of greatest American, again, he's a horrible person and he's gone totally crazy. But is he one of the greatest living American songwriters? As I don't think there's a rap writer, a hip hop writer who's been more influential or fine or greater than he is. Jason Isbell not on the list. I think you would yell anybody who lives in the world of roots country, country, rock, etc. Jeff Tweedy, you know, another person hard. A lot of people will raise those. J. Jason is Jeff Tweety and say, ah, there's a bunch of people on this list that I think could go and be exchanged for one of them. Casey Musgraves is pretty great.
- [69:25]
Jason Brown
That's a horrible nomination. Okay.
- [69:26]
John Heilman
All right. You're not.
- [69:27]
Jason Brown
Randy Newman is the most obvious.
- [69:29]
John Heilman
Randy. Yes. And there's a whole, whole string of people. Randy Newman. Yes, I agree with that. Randy Newman. I would have them almost in the Bob Dylan category as far as I'm concerned. But, you know, there's, you know, for. If they're to your taste, you know, you have people who would put Jackson Brown on that list. People who would put. There's a whole bunch of 70s.
- [69:45]
Jason Brown
Yeah.
- [69:45]
John Heilman
Classic rock people who aren't there that a lot of people have been. Have been citing. You know. Amy, man, kind of incredible. Tom Waits isn't on the list. I think make a very strong case for Tom Waits to be on this list.
- [69:59]
Jason Brown
I wasn't sure Tom Waits was still alive, so I wasn't gonna. Well, he just did this.
- [70:02]
John Heilman
He just. This protest song that just came out. The song that he did with Massive Attack. Have you not seen that?
- [70:06]
Jason Brown
You know what? I think we're going to leave it there. John Holman. I'm going to go listen to the Tom Waits protest song right now and we're going to take people out with it.
- [70:16]
John Heilman
Tom Waits and Massive Attack. It's quite good.
- [70:18]
Jason Brown
Okay, well, everyone will get to listen to it now because we'll play it for the gang. Awesome. I appreciate your insight on all things Senate. Twink music. Barney Prey History. You know, we covered a lot of
- [70:35]
John Heilman
ground entertainment and if you want to take a time. Get in the time capsule and think about how much. How far we've come as a country. Tim, just go back and search Barney Frank and Dick army in Google and you'll see what the then Senate House majority leader, how he referred to his colleague Barney Frank in Public in 1995. And you will be shocked and appalled. And you will also be like, man, things have changed for the better.
- [70:58]
Jason Brown
At least in this, I guess kind of we're in modern days. I think the reply would be whatever. Tiny Dick Army. Micro dick Army.
- [71:06]
John Heilman
You know, I think there's a chance that's actually what Barney Frank did say
- [71:12]
Jason Brown
that we'll leave it there. We've left you guys a lot of things to Google. Little Easter eggs. That's John Heilman. We appreciate him very much. We have maybe one of the answers to the question of who's it going to be on tomorrow's show. So see all then are you kind
- [71:28]
John Heilman
of say who it is? Is.
- [71:29]
Jason Brown
You can guess if you want.
- [71:30]
John Heilman
Let's see, is it Soram Amdani? He can't be president, you know.
- [71:35]
Jason Brown
He was not president. Yeah, I messed that up once. All right, that's John Alman. We'll be back tomorrow. We'll see y' all then.
- [71:50]
John Heilman
Boots on the ground, Boots on the ground with trifling Send me our hedges we'll fight your wars Wait in the trenches and we'll fuck till we saw it.
- [72:02]
Jason Brown
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.
- [72:13]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [72:44]
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- [73:15]
Jason Brown
I sold my car in Carvana last night.
- [73:17]
John Heilman
Well, that's cool. No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the pen, Penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.
- [73:24]
Tim Miller
So what's the problem?
- [73:25]
John Heilman
That is the problem.
- [73:26]
Jason Brown
Nothing in my life goes as smoothly.
- [73:28]
John Heilman
I'm waiting for the catch.
- [73:29]
Kash Patel
Maybe there's no catch.
- [73:30]
John Heilman
That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.
- [73:33]
Tim Miller
Wow. You need to relax.
- [73:34]
John Heilman
I need to knock on wood.
- [73:35]
Jason Brown
Do we have what is this? Table wood.
- [73:36]
Tim Miller
I think it's laminate.
- [73:37]
John Heilman
Okay. Yeah. That's good. That's close enough.
- [73:39]
Tim Miller
Car selling without a catch Sell your car today on Carvana Pick up fees may apply.