B (1:59)

Ms. Now.

C (2:00)

Ms. Now. It's not Ms. Ms. Now. It's Ms. Now.

B (2:04)

Now. Now I'm off this podcast rest of the week. I am going to sneak by Ms. Now on on Friday because I'm taking my my child to New York for eighth birthday. We're going to see a show. We're going to go ice skating. We're going to take a swinger by, see the crew. So that'll be.

C (2:17)

What are you going to see?

B (2:19)

I think the Lion King. We're kind of on the fence. We're rolling through a couple different things. We think the Lion King, but I don't know, I haven't, I haven't decided.

C (2:26)

Yet if you were in the mood. I haven't seen it, but my friend Danny Strong, who wrote the Game Change movie and people know from a lot of other things.

B (2:35)

Slumdog Millionaire.

C (2:37)

No, not Danny Boyle.

B (2:38)

Danny Boyle.

C (2:39)

Not Danny Boyle. Danny Strong. Danny Strong.

B (2:42)

How many Danny's could there really be?

C (2:43)

Who was on Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

B (2:46)

Oh, right. Dope sick. He was dope sick.

C (2:48)

He did. Yes, he did.

B (2:49)

He did.

C (2:50)

He wrote and produced. He was on the Gilmore Girls. Yeah, Danny's been on a lot of things. He was in Justified for one season where he played a baddie on Justified. Have you ever seen Justified?

B (2:59)

I love Justified. Watch that.

C (3:00)

Oh, Justified is great. Danny plays a rapist prison warden who does all kinds of bad things to Walt Goggins girlfriend, love of her life on that show, which is really not a character for Danny. Anyway, Danny is producing, directing a revival of Chess, the Tim Rice musical that has like with music from ABBA in it that has like One Night in Bangkok and all those songs on it. And the guy, my friend Ian Weinberger, who used to be the musical director at Hamilton, is the musical director on that show. And it's supposed to be really good. And it's a musical, which is kind of what you're looking for now. I don't know if your daughter would.

B (3:37)

Appreciate a Cold war eight year old. I don't know, like him. More fun. My godson's a big Chess savant, so maybe I should take him to New York and do that with him.

C (3:45)

Seems like a good idea to me. Hey, how was your birthday, by the way?

B (3:48)

We have to talk about politics in a second. Or why, who cares? Do we have to? It's my podcast.

C (3:53)

Well, I heard these people like Parasocial. Like your viewers all love the parasocial thing, you know?

B (3:58)

Is that what you're hearing? The parasocial? The parasocial stuff?

C (4:01)

That's what it says. Parasocial is supposed to be big in our world now. So I'm just parasocial.

B (4:04)

I'm as parasocial as I get down here in New Orleans. My birthday was great. It's Christmas Day. Yeah, 8 year olds old is perfect. Christmas day for a child because she's just still so happy about everything and enchanted by the whole deal. Yeah, it was a beautiful warm day. We had the top off the jeep. Christmas in the South, I love. I don't need A white Christmas, like some. Some others, you know, that's not necessarily my cup of tea.

C (4:26)

That's not your jam.

B (4:26)

And then at the end of the day, like, when everybody's kind of winding down, I left her with my in laws and we were like, now it's my birthday. We went down to Lafitte's blacksmith shop, had a purple drink. Ended up at the casino where I was rolling.

C (4:39)

I heard you shot some craps. There's word out in that.

B (4:43)

With the Nuggets game on. The Nuggets game was on the big screen. They won an overtime. I was out on the craps table next to a lady, like a Creole lady who's. Her birthday was St. Patrick's Day. Mine was Christmas. We felt like we were a lucky duo. We were. We were crushing. We crushed. How much you make, you know, enough that I'll spend it all in New York this weekend. But it was good. Up's better than down.

C (5:07)

Up's better than down. Up's better than down. Well, congratulations. I always think of you as kind of my kind of alt babe in a manger kind of thing because of the Christmas birthday.

B (5:16)

Thank you. Yeah. Me, Jesus, and Karl Rove for the Christmas birthdays.

C (5:19)

Karl Rove's birthday's on Christmas Day.

B (5:22)

Yeah. Turd blossom.

C (5:23)

We were texting Carl Christian Rove. Maybe that helps explain the middle name.

B (5:28)

I want to get on the pod and argue two Christmas babies every time I think he's about to do it and do it. The fact that we can have this first five minutes and just laugh. Like, this is kind of related to my first topic, which I had noted for you, which is just the vibe shift from now to last year. Like, things are bad, obviously.

C (5:45)

Yeah.

B (5:45)

But this time, if we had gotten together to set. Well, we were together on election night last year, and I got to tell you, the vibes in your house were not hot. I'll just say.

C (5:55)

I would say. I would say like, you were in full rain cloud.

B (5:58)

I mean, you were.

C (5:58)

It was like a torrential downpour.

B (6:00)

There was tension in the house, I would say. And not. Not a lot of laughs. And then even by December 30th, 30th of last year, there was a lot of foreboding, I'd say. Sense of foreboding would probably be the word that would come to mind for me. And then through the first half of the. There was kind of like, this could be over. This whole little experiment we're doing could be over. Like, the wheels are coming off the country and the vibes feel like they've shifted. Kind of like maybe the wheels are just coming off of Trump and that the people who are kind of the late comers to Trump are like, yeah, this was fun for a minute and they might be looking around and the business guys who are really excited to suck up to them are now kind of like, well, maybe I'll just do this and do this for a couple more years as long as I have to. Right. That's not all good. None of those are like, that's not courage or anything. But it's a notable vibe shift in my perspective. Are you sensing that 100%.

C (6:51)

The Epstein story was the first break. Right. I mean, up till then, from January 20th until the Epstein story, Trump is on offense.

B (7:02)

He's doing all this tariffs, maybe there was a brief hit with the tariffs, got bad for a second.

C (7:06)

Yeah. But it was only for 48 hours when the markets looked like that and then he backed off enough to get the markets back on track. That didn't shift my vibes at all. I think the first moment when people were like, oh, huh. This is doing something to him that's different than anything else that we've seen so far. And I just remember the day I was in New York City in July to see Wu Tang. On the last tour, Trump had, I think, attacked Republicans who were on the side of Epstein file disclosure. And he was like, you're idiots. Anybody who's on this side is a moron. I mean, Trump has attacked Republicans before, but the whole thing was so evinced a kind of panic about how he was losing the threat and didn't understand what was happening to him. That made me think that that was the first moment where I was like, oh, okay, there's a chink in this armor. Right. And obviously the fact that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace and all these people were involved in the resistance to him on that was part of it. But then you get into the fall and I think, I mean, the election's the huge thing, Tim. Right. I mean, in the end, the reason there's a vibe shift in January is, is that even after that, the Epstein files proved to be a thing that was. That was tormenting him in a long term way. He's still launching politically motivated prosecutions against Comey and Letitia James. And yeah, the courts eventually beat those back, but he's still doing that. The Venezuelan boat strikes, which are among the worst things in a very bad year, those are happening in September where we're just basically like killing people on the High seas with no legal justification or any evidence to suggest that anything they're saying about it is true. That's September. Right. So they're still rolling in bad to me, in bad vibes, Bill. You know, the combination of Democrats shutting down the government and I would say we could talk about this in more detail, but I would say now something that progressives didn't see immediately when they eventually climbed down, having won that fight in a pretty dramatic way, plus the election results, which is the giant thing. And then just seeing all of it, the variety of different things, we could all point to different stories, including the tearing down the east wing, et cetera, et cetera, but just the numbers at 33, 34 on approval rating and the economy at the end of the year, he's appreciably weaker. The cumulative effect of all this is that he's appreciably weaker. So I will just say that there's a moment at the end of the new Chappelle Special. Have you seen it?

B (9:18)

I've seen close. I've not watched it.

C (9:20)

The very end of the Chappelle Special, he comes home to Washington, D.C. at a time when the ice presence there was still, the National Guard presence there was still at its peak. And it was like they just taking control away from the mayor. And he's like, I'm going to go to my hometown and do the show. I mean, it's not full on, like just Trump related special. There's a lot of other stuff going on in that set, but the level of alarm about some elements of this are like pretty high. And at the end, he says, as he's leaving, he says, you know, something to Washington, he's like, we're gonna wait out this orange motherfucker. Everybody just, you know, like, stay sane, stay reasonable, like, and we're gonna wait out this orange motherfucker. Which I think is the kind of thing that you wouldn't have said was anybody could say and not have people who are as alarmed as you were. I was. A lot of people were throughout the year with good reason. You would have been like, wait out this. Like, that's, that's not even a tenable, plausible kind of suggestion to help you get through where when you hear that now he can say it's like the end of the year and you're kind of like, people are like, that doesn't seem impossible. We might be able to wait out this orange motherfucker, you know, to use Chappelle's phrase.

B (10:20)

Yeah, I am thinking about getting the. Tim was Right. Once T shirt about the shutdown. Since I was the person banging the drum the hardest about how the Democrats won the shutdown, everybody told me I was an idiot. And Tim was right once. I had a lot of Ls, but Tim was right once. It was a good shirt, but Tim.

C (10:35)

Was right, dot, dot, dot, that one.

B (10:38)

About the Democrats winning the shutdown. Even. Even when Hakim didn't even really believe it, I was like, no, bro, you won, actually. Anyway, the, the Epstein thing, to me and the Chappelle thing tie together in that, like, the vibe shift is sure partly about the politics and like his political fortunes feeling like they're, they're waning and that he's not as strong politically as he was. But the cultural element is big. And the Epstein thing, I think is, is like part of it is, oh, yes, it's a cover up. Obviously it's bad. We Julie yesterday, like, the victims, like, the facts of it are bad. But the other part of it was why it hurt him so much was like the people that were kind of carrying that vibe element for him in this culture, in podcast world, in this, in sports, in the media, they all cared about this. Right. Like the people that are doing the Trump dance, you know, the pod bros, the comedians and those, it kind of gave those guys an off ramp to be like, wait a minute, I don't want to be on the side. That's like covering up the child's sex crimes. He's the man. Now. I kind of liked it when it was making people, it was triggering people for me to put on the red hat. But now all of a sudden I'm like, wait a minute, no, he's the man and this is bad. And now I can kind of come back into the more traditional role that the culture has played. Contra right wing strongman.

C (11:57)

Totally. And just to give you a sense that, like, Trump isn't. Not that we need more of a sense, because both of us, like, would laugh uproariously at the suggestion. But there were people, not stupid people, who would say occasionally in the last X number of years, including when he made this incredible comeback and won the election in 2024, which is, you guys don't appreciate Trump's playing three dimensional chess, four dimensional chess, whatever. And the best evidence against that is to your point about why culture upstream from politics, culture more important than politics. Not just to the vibes, but I think the vibes are kind of almost everything in a lot of ways now, because it is really so much of what Trump has been about. When he's been strong has been about having control over vibes. And when he's been weaker is when things have gotten away from him. Right. Culture matters more. Right. So how do you know he's not playing three dimensional chess? Jimmy Kimmel? How do you know he's not playing three dimensional chess? Rob Reiner. And look at the reaction to that. Those are like things in the culture that normal people understand. Forget about. You know, Tim, Tim, you were right more than once, but you were definitely right about the shutdown. I think the election is a big thing in the culture. Like, because in the way that 2024, all those graphics that had just red arrows going, like every county getting redder, right?

B (13:13)

Yeah.

C (13:14)

People see that and go, wow, man. Trump's like on the. They're on the march. It's like the visual grammar of that is okay. You know, these people are really in charge now. And the election in November, which had the same thing, only in a much more limited way, but every arrow is pointing blue and to the different direction. Normal people get that, like, okay, they overreach. That's the message of that. They overreach. They haven't delivered on their promises and they overreach. I get that. And then you have things like in the culture, things like they're trying to get Jimmy Kimmel fired. You don't have to like Jimmy Kimmel to be someone who's like, that's like fucked up like that. I don't want to be part of that. And to your podcast bro, friends, your man, forget Andrew Schultz.

B (13:57)

Andrew Schultz, the of the ultimate.

C (13:59)

But Andrew Schultz is an incredible barometer for this, right? Who's someone who was like, you know, a Democrat, you know, raised a Democrat, a Democrat, got sick of the Democratic Party, was for Bernie Sanders, then was for Donald Trump, and now is like the biggest Zoran Mamdani booster in the world. That's like a nor. That's like a good avatar for that. And that guy, you know, he doesn't want Donald Trump shutting down Stand Up Comics.

B (14:26)

Right?

C (14:26)

You know, I mean, the outrage over the Reiner thing across all the way, you know, to Nick Fuentes is a sign that, like, if Trump really understood that cultural dominance was the key to his dominance, he's just doing a lot of stupid shit, you know, and that, I think, is the stuff that, if you're talking about, like, the vibe shift, what comes through. What comes through is at the end of the year, he did this heinous thing about Rob Reiner and six months earlier, I don't know whether everybody on the right would have condemned him. But in December, everyone on the right rallied around Rob Reiner. As far to the right as you can go in American politics, that's a sign that someone has lost their cultural sway. Because again, six months earlier, would you have been like, everyone's going to condemn him for this. We're going to hear from Megyn Kelly about this. We're going to hear from Laura Ingraham about this?

B (15:09)

Of course not.

C (15:09)

You wouldn't have said that six months earlier. Six months later, it happened. I was surprised by how vociferous they were and how broad that condemnation was, but I wasn't like, oh, this is unthinkable. I'm like, this is a sign of a guy who's lost the plot, lost the thread, lost the traction.

B (15:25)

Here's the other thing related to that. Yeah, he doesn't feel like he has the energy or the juice to fully get it back on track. This is not to say that he won't have good moments or good months or good.

C (15:34)

Or that he won't do about some terrible shit.

B (15:36)

Yeah, right. But I don't know. I don't look at this guy right now and think, boy, at 82, he's gonna orchestrate a plot to stay in power against the Constitution. Do I think it's a zero percent chance? Like, if you're asking me a year ago, what percent chance is it versus now? It's gone down considerably. I've downgraded my priors considerably. And it's in part. Watch him.

C (15:57)

You're watching him.

B (15:57)

Watch him.

C (15:58)

You're watching him.

B (15:58)

He looks like an old tired man that cares mostly about getting his name.

C (16:01)

On shit and adding to his net.

B (16:03)

Worth and making a bunch of money.

C (16:04)

Adding to his network.

B (16:04)

Yeah, yeah.

C (16:05)

And building a giant ballroom that, you know, still my favorite. I know you were on with Jon Stewart the other day on his show. I still think that the ballroom looks like the inside of Marie Antoinette's vagina is like maybe one of the best lines I heard all year. It's incredible. But he's just interested in hanging out with rich people and getting his name on stuff and slapping up gold leaf here and there. It's like he just. The fact of his travel schedule for the year where, like from June, May, June or whatever until that rally, until that Pennsylvania event that he did at the very end of the year, he hadn't done a MAGA rally in America. He's like flying around the world. People roll out the red carpet for him. You know, Giving him fake made up trophies and shit and hand jobs under the table.

B (16:46)

But he's not finger jobs, we call him. With Trump, you don't need to haul hand.

C (16:51)

It's the pinky and the thumb. It's the pinky and the thumb together. But it's like, he's not out there. Like, I gotta win back the MAGA faithful. He had the eye of the tiger, Tim. For the worse, obviously. But when he was fueled by vengeance and wanted to make his way back and be able to take out his critics and prove that he was right and not go to jail and become president again, he was like, I'm climbing my way back from Elba. I'm rolling my way back from Elba here. You know, like, I'm gonna do this. And right now it just looks like all he's doing is kind of like, he looks like, I want to hang out with my rich friends and, you know, it's like kind of jerk off, basically. That's like kind of what he looks like. And occasionally Stephen Miller, because he's has so much power, is able to get Trump to do some horrible shit that we have to deal with. But it's like, I don't know how much Trump is invested in any of that stuff at this point. I think he's much more invested. Just like doing another bathroom remodel in the.

B (17:41)

We got the, we got the marble armrests now. Everybody excited about these marble armrests.

C (17:46)

I love this bathroom, but there are a few things that are missing we need, like a pneumatic tube that will shoot a hamburger out at me when I ask for it.

A (17:53)

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D (18:06)

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B (19:09)

You mentioned the corruption part is the other thing he cares about making a bunch of money for himself. The other thing, just on the look back part of this, you just listed all the things that mattered for this year to him. I wonder in 2040, when we look back at this year or 2035, what will actually have mattered and what will actually have staying power. I do think that the family grift is the thing that comes to mind at the top of the list for me. And then also this tech mag merger that is ongoing. Those are the two things to me.

C (19:39)

Well, I think what will the history books remember? I remember at the very beginning speaking to things you remember from the year. I was glad that you mentioned on one of these programs the interview with Terry Moran and his insistence over the. I've now played that on a couple of my year end podcasts. I played it for Favreau and love it.

B (19:59)

Thank you.

C (20:00)

I appreciated that throughout. The entire thing like this goes on forever. It's like just Trump's insisting over and over again. Those are actually written.

B (20:07)

And Terry tries to get him off the hook, like several.

C (20:11)

And that goes to a deep thing. I don't want to go on a digression about this, but it does go to. He clearly believes that, which is an interesting fact. Right. He believes it or believes he's not bullshitting. Trump lies about all kinds of things, but in that moment, right, he's fighting with Terry because he's like, you're wrong. That they were wrong.

B (20:25)

Kilmar Brego Garcia has Ariel font MS.13 on his knuckles.

C (20:30)

Exactly. He is absolutely convinced. It opens up the door to a discussion of how much like he's getting played by people like Stephen Miller and Russ Vogt and other people inside who have serious agendas and are able to convince him of shit that's just false in the world. Including like a lot of people convince him the economy is better. I think he believes the economy is not that bad. He doesn't. He's been told by a lot of people that what the liberal media is saying is wrong. And then in fact everything's fine and all these statistics are lies or whatever. And he's come to believe it. Which is different from knowing you're wrong. But like putting a good face on it. Anyway, the thing you were talking about going back to the very beginning of the year that I remember so well is in that first, like, couple of days when he was in office, he did one of his first many rolling gaggles somewhere in the White House. And someone asked him if he knew what his meme coin had risen to, like, what the price of it was now. And he said he had no idea. And this reporter said, it's now at 2 billion or something. $2 billion. And Trump was like, really? It's a $2 billion? He's like, yeah, it's up to $2 billion. It spiked yesterday. It's up to 2 billion DOL. And I'm making these numbers up that it's rough. Rough order of magnitude is correct. And Trump said, well, that's great. And then he said, but, you know, compared to some of these guys. And he waved his hands at a bunch of CEOs who were surrounding him. Some of these guys. That's chicken feet. That's, like, nothing, right? And I was like, to your point, this is so far outside the norm of any president. We have had corrupt presidents, we've had criminal presidents, we've had presidents who've done bad shit, some who've been forced out of office, some who should have been forced out of office. There are some presidents who've done some bad shit, Tim.

B (22:02)

Yes.

C (22:03)

This is the thing you've never seen before, the open profiteering off the office. You know, we never seen anything like that. And So I think 40 years from now, history will remember that, because either that will become the new norm for how presidents behave in the White House, just like we're here to profiteer, or we'll go back to what the norm has been in the past, and we'll look at that and go, wow, that is one of the most incredible outliers about Trump. Like a thing that really is wildly at variance with anything else. Because even some of the bad stuff that you and I think is really scary, you know, on my lowlights of the year, the seizing control of National Guards, deploying of Marines to Los Angeles, what happened in Chicago, all that stuff.

B (22:39)

Yeah.

C (22:39)

We have had presidents in the past who's done stuff that is in the same category of that, sometimes for good reasons, like during movement to enforce integration of colleges in the south, and sometimes for bad reasons. You know, the National Guard shot those kids at Kent State. It's like, that's not a thing that we've never seen before.

B (22:56)

Or even El Salvador, like, as horrible as that is, it's like we did Japanese interns.

C (23:01)

Exactly. There's a terrible precedent somewhere that Trump isn't doing something. He might be doing it for worse reasons. He might be doing it more perniciously, he might be doing it more severely. He might be doing it, but it's not something that we've never seen before. And the self enrichment thing really is not to say that there hasn't been any president ever who's had a little cash on the side. I don't know, there might be from the 1800s, but it's not like they roll into office and stand in front of the world and say, I am going to hang with a bunch of billionaires. I am going to make a bunch of money in this office. There's nothing you do to stop me. My kids are running around the world. I don't give a shit. Fuck you. Bring the fucking dollars in.

B (23:36)

I just finished watching that James Garfield show. It seems like Chester Arthur made a couple bucks on the side, but you know, it's not the generational wealth. Here's the thing, even if they, even if this gets fixed by a reform minded Democrat or Republican or whatever in the future, it's like Eric Trump's stupid kids are going to have hundreds of millions of dollars in nuclear fusion money and crypto money and money from the palaces that they're building in Saudi Arabia and in the Philippines and the Vietnam. Right. So the Trump family we're stuck with, I guess, as a result of this. That's one thing that won't be fixed.

C (24:14)

I was watching the CY Hirsch documentary Laura Poitras cyher documentary on Netflix and there's this moment where when Hirsch transitions from doing political investigative reporting to a brief spel. Jeff Gerth doing a bunch of business investigative journalism. And then he gets in trouble with the Times. They did an investigation of a company called Gulf and Western. And Gulf and Western, they're describing how in the mid-70s there was a new kind of corporation in which the various divisions didn't really have anything to do with each other. Gulf and Western was a energy company, a chemical company, and then they decided to buy Paramount. And this is like a different kind, a conglomerate creating all kinds of opportunities for corruption. And I'm listening to this kind of thinking, man. I mean, no one back then would have ever envisioned the future in which the president would own, while as president would, would be the controlling shareholder in a social media enterprise that was now being merged into a holding company with someone who's promising they could do nuclear fusion or nuclear Cold fusion or whatever the it is. It's like a Futurama kind of version of this. Like Matt Groening got a hold of the timeline and like he's writing this thing out.

A (25:19)

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D (25:35)

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B (26:35)

Let's talk about the mergers then. I want to go forward into like future, you know, crystal ball stuff. But this is more in your wheelhouse than mine, both because of the puck remit and covering all of what's happening with mergers very closely. But then also just because you're having done the circus and having the circus get canceled and trying to re pitch shows and the implications of these studio mergers and I think you're a little closer to than everybody else. Kara was on last week and I have, I think, an unpopular view out there which is like we kind of need a couple of mergers. As a normal person, I think that normal people's biggest complaint right now is that they, they can't figure out where to find the fucking show that they want to watch because they've got 19 apps and their cable where they just press the power button seemed preferable to the current situation. But obviously there are a bunch of risks, particularly on the political side associated with all that. So I'm just going to want to put a quarter in and let you cook on what's happening.

C (27:28)

Out there as much as we all loved. And I mean we all, I don't mean just people who have made television or whatever, but people who are like just out there viewers, smart viewers.

B (27:38)

Right.

C (27:38)

The era of peak TV was amazing. That period from the mid aughts to the first big Netflix downgrade of their stock, which was like 2017 or 2018, whatever it was, when the stock really tumbled because they didn't hit their subscriber number.

B (27:53)

Sopranos to Squid Game, basically, Sopranos to the pandemic.

C (27:58)

Yes. That era produced some incredible things and also way too much television. Like way too much too much. I mean, hours and hours of series you have never heard of and will never see and that really no one really ever heard of or ever saw. Things that Netflix made in particular, where they spend incredible amounts of money on things that then they put on the platform, didn't promote them, didn't the algorithm that pushed them. And like they're just, you know, they stay on the server for a little while, then they're gone. There's just a lot of way too much TV that got made. The notion that there should be that the correction towards less of that television is just market forces. The notion of the platforms, that Netflix way ahead of everybody else. Prime is in a clear number two spot. And then there's a bunch of middling where they have a third of the subscribers of Netflix and then there's a few that are really laggards. The fact that some of those should combine, the post industrial logic of them combining, I think is unequivocally right. If this were happening under a normal president, you'd be like, this is just.

B (29:03)

Schumpeterian crib industry talk for Matt Bellany and John Heilman and a handful of other people, creative destruction.

C (29:09)

But people wouldn't be alarmed. They wouldn't have the same pitch sense of alarm. I mean, the reality is the president we have is the president we have who's demonstrated over and over again in a willingness to meddle in free markets and corporate behavior and to exercise neither fear or favor to get what he wants either. Things that he doesn't want to see happen, make them stop. Things that are in process, change the way the process works so it's less likely to be damaging to him or to amplify things that are positive for him. As in this Melania series that's about to come out that Brett Ratner made for Amazon. That's like basically just they gave her like what, $40 million or something to do this thing. It's ridiculous.

B (29:43)

Are you planning a watch party for the premiere of Melania, or do you think that's going to be the kind of thing that the kids bring their friends over to every week? When I was, it was like the OC OC for me in college. Everybody got together in the new OC Came. You think that's going to be happening?

C (29:57)

For sure. But there'll be giant huge barrels full of gummies for everybody. Like, you'll just take a full handful, like, as if they were like the Haribo gummy Bears and like, just eat them all before you watch.

B (30:07)

Did you see the guy that remade the trailer for Melania where Melania was Miss Piggy? This is an AI this is the only AI thing I've seen that has made me really, really laugh. I have a deep appreciation for it's. I'll put it in the notes for people.

C (30:21)

I definitely want to see that. So the answer to the question is, you've got this president who's willing to do all these things, and you've got the owners of these platforms have made more or less craven idiots of themselves over the course of the year and will basically base themselves in a variety of ways to basically make the same, hey, the bazaar is open. We're open for business here. We'll do what we need to do. So I think people are worried about that and they're rightly worried about it. And you see what's happening at cbs. And if your question is, is there an outcome here that's like a better or worse outcome? I just think we don't really know. I mean, there's some things that are obviously disconcerting about the notion of Paramount taking over Warner Brothers Discovery because of the way the Ellisons have behaved and.

B (31:00)

Because of the nakedness and The Ellison's owning CBS, TikTok, CNN and like major movie studios, like, does seem to be obviously, like a problem.

C (31:08)

Yes, I think. And I think this is where we get back to waiting out the orange motherfucker.

B (31:12)

Right?

C (31:12)

Which is like, you know, again, always quoting Chappelle where necessary here is like the effect of that on people's ability to put things on platforms that have the kind of reach that Netflix and Amazon have now is close to zero. Whether or not Netflix wins the battle for Paramount or not is secondary in some ways to the climate that's been created whereby everybody is terrified of doing something on air that will incur the wrath of the administration. So there's people who are sucking up to it to try to get things they want, but More broadly, there's this climate of we do not want to touch anything that relates to news or topical politics or anything where the word.

B (32:01)

And that's one place where the vibe shift isn't changing. You sense no thaw in that because that's obviously tied to the circus getting canceled, but also a million other things not getting green. That new ideas is.

C (32:10)

Yes, a million. Yes. There's a little bit of this dipping of toes in water related to the podcast space because obviously those platforms are super hungry to try to get a hold of what you have, which is they want the, they want YouTube to be.

B (32:22)

But it's pretty noticeable. Like Netflix just did all these deals and it's, you know, it's sports, it's culture on, on podcasts, on the streaming podcast. It's not politics.

C (32:30)

Politics. No, it's not.

B (32:31)

And it's like, if you look at. It's pretty noteworthy, though. Like, if you look at the top 50 Apple Podcasts, a lot of politics in there. And it's like those are the ones that they're not making deals with.

C (32:41)

And if you looked at the top 50 YouTube streamed podcasts, there's also a disproportionately high degree of them that touch on, if not straight politics podcasts. I mean, Rogan is not really a politics podcast, but there's a lot of politics in it. There's a lot of things that are either politics or politics adjacent that do really well. And you know, for those companies seeing that the place where new younger eyeballs and minutes of consumption and plays and all of that, that YouTube is growing at such a tremendous clip to the point where it's arguably more powerful than any of these platforms. And that's new in our world. Right? And it's just new.

B (33:17)

Yeah.

C (33:17)

You know, that is where if you're Netflix or any of these other streaming platforms, you're thinking, where do we go? We bought up all the live sports rights that existed out there. Right. There's no, there's nothing else to buy. They all went on a spending spree to get live sports rights because that's how they could grow their subscribers and their engagement. And now they've got all that. That's going to play out through the, through their. They're going to digest the next few years, but the next big pot of all of that is what YouTube is, is, is doing. Where do we go for growth? We have to figure out a way to tap into that. And to your point, you know, they're tapping into a bunch of it and it's interesting they're doing it the way Netflix is doing it. But you're right, they're also like, we don't want to be part of some of this whole. This giant category that's growing really fast. Like, not really, you know, like, not yet. Netflix is not going to be putting. I mean, I. I may look like an idiot, but this a year from now, or I don't think there's gonna be a bidding war for putting Joe Rogan's show on any of these platforms. I mean, he's an economic juggernaut. Why isn't there. He's a perfect television.

B (34:13)

Certainly there's not gonna be a bidding war for Pod Save America. No offense to my buddies. You know what I mean? Probably not for Joe Rogan, but certainly not for lefty politics.

C (34:22)

Right, I agree. But I think the pervasive thing previously was that Netflix and Apple had the Michael Jordan attitude towards contemporary, topical political.

B (34:33)

Things, which was, Republicans buy shoes too, right?

C (34:36)

Republicans buy shoes or Democrats buy shoes or whatever. We just, like, they buy a lot of stuff. Our main business is not this business, or it's secondary to selling iPhones in Beijing and selling toilet paper everywhere. So why would we do stuff that might alienate some of our customers? That is now the prevailing view across all of these platforms. Because they're worried about either regulatory retribution, where Trump doesn't let them make a deal they want to make going forward, or a lawsuit that they may end up having to write the check and then look like an idiot over having written the check. Because, hey, guess what you get if you're Disney, abc, if you capitulate on Stephanopoulos, you get, Trump comes back after you and tries to take out Jimmy Kimmel.

B (35:13)

Right?

C (35:14)

It's not like the king goes, you know, thank you for the tribute. We're done now. The team goes, oh, you guys are a pushover. I'm not going to come back and take your wife and children. You know, it's like, that's what you learned in that transaction.

A (35:26)

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D (35:39)

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B (36:42)

I want to go forward. I've been chomping at the bit to play this clip and it was like I wanted just to start the podcast with it, but it's like we can't. We can't really start a year end podcast with the political prospects of the current vice president in the first year of a thing.

C (36:56)

But now the time has come.

B (36:57)

We have to.

C (36:58)

I just think the bell is now tolling.

B (37:00)

I can't wait any longer. Are you familiar with Clavicular? Does that name ring a bell to you at all? Clavicular?

C (37:06)

I'm familiar with Caligula as a role model. As a role model at various times in my life. But no, not Clavicular. No, I don't know that.

B (37:14)

Clavicular is Caligulaesque. He's a young man, very handsome. It seems to maybe had some help, like some work done. He's what they're calling now. Look. A looks maxer. A looks maxer. Do you know what? That's the phrase.

C (37:28)

Looks maxer.

B (37:29)

Yeah, Looks. Maxing and Molly.

C (37:31)

A looks maxer. A looks maxer.

B (37:33)

Looks maxer. Yeah. He's like a guy goes to the gym all the time but also gets like jaw enhancements. He almost looks too handsome to the point where he's like starting to look non human a little bit.

C (37:43)

He's starting to look like an AI generated. AI generated.

B (37:46)

So Clavicular exists on the border of. Based on my pretty limited knowledge, to be honest, what I could tell is he exists on the boardage of workout content and young men broing out and getting muscles and also alt right groiper stuff. So he was on the Daily Wire doing an interview with Michael Knowles and Michael Knowles asked him about J.D. vance. And here was Clavicular's assessment of the vice president's political prospect.

C (38:15)

Awesome. Yeah, but I mean like this next election cycle who's going to win? It's going to be Gavin Newsom against JD Vance because JD Vance is subhuman and Gavin Newsomogs. JD Vance is subhuman. Yeah.

B (38:28)

What makes you say that?

C (38:30)

He's got a very short total facial width to height ratio. He's obese, very recessed side profile. Whereas Newsom is like 6, 3. Check.

B (38:42)

Yes. Can we just hear it one more time? I gotta hear the whole side profile. Let's play it one more time.

C (38:49)

Yeah, but I mean, like, this next election cycle, who's gonna win? It's gonna be Gavin Newsome against JD Vance because JD Vance is subhuman and Gavin Newsom mugs. JD Vance is subhuman. Yeah.

B (39:02)

What makes you say that?

C (39:04)

He's got a very short total facial width to height ratio. He's obese, very recessed side profile. Whereas Newsom is like 63 Chad. 63 Chad.

B (39:16)

63 Chad. Very recessed side profile. I don't want to hear what clavicular has to say about me. Go ahead, Josh.

C (39:23)

Well, there's three things there and I'd like to know, like, is he putting them in order of dehumanization or were those just random? Because the width to height ratio, I think he's saying basically his face is. His head's horizontal. That's what he's saying. Like a sideways egg. Right. He says the width to. He ratios off. Right.

B (39:40)

Okay.

C (39:40)

So he's basically saying he's got a sideways egghead.

B (39:43)

Yeah.

C (39:43)

And then the second thing was just he's obese. After obese, he moved on to this recessed side profile.

B (39:52)

Yeah, he has a recess. I think that's a weak jawline. I think that's a fancy way of saying he's got an extremely weak jawline. Yeah. Right.

C (39:58)

How many people are. Are like, what's the audience for Clavicular?

B (40:02)

I got to tell you, this is. This is one of the things. Well, in our new society where there are all these different kind of little mini cultures. I don't know about you, but this happens to me all the time. Someone will appear. Because this happened to me with clavicular this week where he made this very funny thing that made me laugh about J.D. vance. And the next thing you know, I just noticed him. Oh, he also did an interview with Nick Fuentes. Then I was reminded of a clip of just a generic looking guy that I had seen a couple weeks ago, I'd forgotten who was telling a story about how Peter Thiel had invited him to a party and how he said no, because that made him uncomfortable. And so he seems popular. I don't know. He's just around. He's now appeared in my life and now he's in my for you page. But he appears popular and. And Sneako, who I've been following for a long time, is extremely popular. He did a riff on this where he agreed with clavicular assessment of J.D. vance, but then added in some pretty negative comments about ushot that I'm not gonna be playing because it's a family podcast. Right. All of this to say, I don't know, man, it feels like the alligator might be eating their own here with this kind of deal that these guys have made between the alt right and the pro podcasters and what is supposed to be like a serious party, those policy objectives.

C (41:18)

Well, so much to say about that. I will say just very quickly in passing, the current world we inhabit, where social media has basically eaten everything, is that like back in the old days? Tim, you're younger than me, but you will remember it wasn't that long ago that when you noticed a band or an actor or an author or a pundit for the first time, and you're like, wow, that person. That's whatever is interesting. I like that. Or that's something noteworthy in some way, whether it was positive or negative. And then they suddenly started turning up all the time in your field of consciousness. You would say to yourself, that person's always been around. I'm just noticing now, like, I was just kind of blind to that now. Oh, now that I know who that person is, that band, that artist, that whatever, they're around more than I thought.

B (42:08)

Or you'd go do self research. If you got really excited about one of them, you would, you know, Right?

C (42:13)

But you didn't. But you. But you didn't do what you do now. Which is. Is it really that they were always around and I just. They were just outside my field of vision or I just was looking past them? Or is it now because of one thing that I watched on my phone that it's now the. The algorithm is now feeding me a bunch of stuff that was never feeding me before. And I never. It's not like I didn't notice this person. That person was not in my feed. My feet is the only existence I have. And the algo caught me watching one thing on YouTube of this person now it's just gonna jam clavicular down my throat. I'm like, okay, clinicular was not in my life before. It's not like I missed him. I Just like I now. But somebody's not force feeding me Clavicular. Anyway, here's my question about all of that JD Van stuff for you. Well, my answer, which is, yes, the infighting piece is interesting. Like, yes. And we could talk about that. The Pod Bros versus the, versus the Maga podcasters, et cetera, et cetera. But more fundamental is that the thing that Clavicular said in his very unique way is something that I think, like many, many millions of Americans will think if J.D. vance runs for president. They won't say it that way, but they'll be like, I find this person kind of repellent on some basic level. And you and I have talked about this before. His abilities as a shapeshifter have allowed him to rise to an extraordinary height in American politics with all of the infirmities that you and I would associate with him. But I think running for president is different. That thing of like, I'm a good inside game player, I have shapeshifted. I've mastered the art of not just policy flip flop, but of characterological flip flop. I've somehow managed to be able to do that. Well, I just think that one of the few places in our culture where it doesn't work is presidential nominating contests and presidential campaigns. I think the Axelrod mri, the soul thing is still right. Maybe we'll get to a point where that's not true anymore. But like, the thing is, there's so much exposure, so much scrutiny, as you know, it's not like running for Senate or running for governor or there's anything like it. The magnification is so intense that people really get to look at you for what you really are on some level. And all of the politicians you've worked for and all the ones I've ever covered have been involved in some. Here's my public image. I'm projecting that. Right. But I think one of the things that's true is that the most successful ones that we've ever seen are the ones where the gap between public image and private reality is the smallest, where they're being something pretty much close to themselves, even if they are saying certain things that aren't true. The basic thing of the real George W. Bush kind of comes through. The real Barack Obama kind of comes through bad and good. The real Bill Clinton kind of comes through. And I think with J.D. vance, there's so much about him that's unappealing that I think a lot of people will have the kind of reaction Clavicular has, but with just different Terms like why it is they find that not someone they would want to put in the White House. I think he's nothing like Donald Trump. Like he had managed to attach himself to Donald Trump. But like, can you think of two politicians who in some ways are more different than Donald Trump and J.D. vance?

B (45:28)

Personality wise? For sure. Let me throw you this counter.

C (45:32)

I disagree. I mean, if you think I'm wrong.

B (45:34)

It'S not necessarily a disagreement. This is just something in my head. This is something I had. I'm interested for your reaction to, which is, as we've discussed many times, we'll continue to discuss a lot far into the future. I find JD Vance. So use the word repellent. Like whatever the maximum of repellent is, is what I feel about J.D. vance. I just. He's sickening to me. That makes me think, okay, well, I want to challenge my own prior on this. Like, am I missing something about this? Because I just, I. When I look at this person, I might be missing something. And the thing that I think of when I try to challenge my own prior is, well, there's this infighting happening within the MAGA side that's like basically around Israel. Like, honestly, it's around other stuff too, but it's like basically around Israel, it's like you have kind of the neoconish MAGA versus the America First MAGA is like basically the shorthand of what it is or the more strong foreign policy MAGA versus fuck everybody in the world. Let's just care about our own MAGA basically. And the leading figures on both sides of that still kind of like J.D. vance. I mean, Erica Kirk endorsed him at the thing. Ben Shapiro like, kind of likes Vance. It seems like all the tucker and as. As his kid on JD staff. So to this point we're very early, but he's navigated that which shows some kind of political skill. And I do kind of wonder if. If he's like an evil bizarro George H.W. bush, you kind of were swimming in the wake of this, like, political figure that was a very, you know, Reagan, like these two terms. He's an actor. He has this huge personality. And everybody's kind of looking around after Reagan leaves and they're like, we want to keep the good times flowing. And they're like, like, we don't got anybody else. And it's like, well, this guy's right there. He was the Vice President and I don't want to get on his bound side. Maybe he wins, so I'll just get in line behind him and we'll see if we can mold him to my liking. And then he kind of gets in there and then eventually there's this lag, right? Like there's a lag. And then four years after we suffer through J.D. vance's presidency, like some actual new figure comes forth that remakes our politics again. That doesn't feel crazy to me, that, that kind of sequence of events. Does that seem crazy to you?

C (47:35)

No. No. I mean, do you think if Donald Trump were to take his hands off of J.D. vance and lay them on somebody else, that there would be any of that support would still exist?

B (47:42)

No, it would disappear in a second. Right. If Trump was to lay his imprimatur on Marco, I think that the JD could kind of ride with the Gripers and the Tucker wing and kind of lean in and fight it out. I mean, now we're just getting into kind of crazy fantasy politics, but that would be the only group that he could have any possible.

C (48:00)

I guess my only point is just that so much of it is really. Reagan had a lot of political power in the Republican Party in 1988, although he was a declining figure by the time of Iran Contra. And people were kind of like the 1988 election was not an obvious. Republicans were just going to keep it rolling in 1988, in the general election, until September of that year, Dukakis was up in that race. And I guess I say that just because Reagan's power was diminished, Trump's power may be, by the time we get to the end of this term, diminished in that same way. But right now, now at the end of year one of Trump 2.0, Trump is still powerful enough that the perception that he's behind Vance and that Vance is the heir apparent, it seems to me, accounts for way more of JD's considerable throw weight right now as a prospective nominee. But it's way more that than anything he's done that's been skillful. Right. He has some skills, but a lot of that, those skills would be not up to the task of holding all that together. If Trump were to even just turn away from him, let alone lay his hands on somebody else. And if he laid his hands on one of his kids, JD could go back to calling him human heroin again or whatever he said or.

B (49:06)

No, he'd probably be the vp. Has anybody ever done. He could stay along, stay on in the role.

C (49:11)

There's no constitutional amendment that keeps you from being vice president forever.

B (49:14)

Yeah, right. You can just be Vice President 2042. It's Barron and JD and I guess.

C (49:21)

I think the thing is when I say the mri, the soul thing is that think is a general election thing. And I just, I find the notion that somehow JD Vance is going to be able to cross that, you know, that chasm that Trump somehow managed to cross that allowed him to get not a majority, but a plurality of the votes in 2024. I just, like, I just don't think there's a ton of, like, instinctive, a middle of American appetite for that kind of the personality, the shapeshifting, the smarminess. Smarminess. All that we could think of a lot of.

B (49:51)

There's no joy. There's no joie de village. Like, there's nothing.

C (49:54)

Right. The thing about, you know, I mean, look, getting a lot of trouble talking about these kind of things. But look, Trump is a fun candidate. Trump is fun. Trump. Trump is fun in the way, again, take your ideology out of it and think. I mean, Trump is obviously terrifying. Okay? Yes. But also, you know, he's hilarious. And, you know, even if you hate Zorabamdani, you can't fight the fact that the guy has a certain joie de bev about him. Right. There's a joy to that. There's, like, in a weird, dark, twisted, horrible way, there's a. There's a joy to what Trump is doing and a joyfulness to that. And that's part of what it was, why he's appealing to a lot of people, even if not to us.

B (50:25)

Yeah.

C (50:26)

And JD doesn't have that. J. Doesn't have that. Have any of that. There's none of that. Like, he's the fun candidate. That's. I want to ride with that guy. You know, I don't see that. I don't see where you get that across the ideological spectrum. Even people who, who are going to endorse him now because they think he's inevitable are not, like, over there going, man, this is going to be fun. I want to be part of the J.D. vance move.

B (50:46)

Right.

C (50:46)

Which a lot of people said about Trump and the Republican Party, unfortunately, over the course of the last decade, we.

B (50:50)

Hadn'T had so much hate the last 10 years. JD is good at, like, being nasty towards opponents. That resonates with certain people. But I wonder if people are sick of that in a couple years. But whenever we bring up the Trump. Funny thing, I'll try to find a clip and put it in the show notes. But like, Shane Gillis, who's one of these comedians who's like, pretty lib, really, but is kind of in the pro world. He does a bit about the Trump debates and like watching with his dad the first debates in 2016 and because Trump is so gross and you don't want to laugh at him, me watching Shane Gillis talk about why he thought Trump was so funny opened the little brain waves, the grooves in my brain, to be like, oh yeah, okay, I get it. It's not for me, but I see it. I get it.

A (51:28)

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D (51:45)

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B (52:44)

Let's talk about the Dems and Zoran for a second there. There are two parts of the Dems I want to talk about. You've invoked Zoran twice. Are The Dems just 16 years or whatever behind Republicans? And it's kind of inevitable that there's a kind of a dsa? Like it can't be Zoran because he's was born in Uganda, but like inevitably there's a kind of a DSA wave that overthrows the establishment? Or do you think it's incumbent upon like how good of a job he does as mayor? Or do you think that's not actually very comparable at all because the Democratic coalition is so much more heterodox and diverse? Where do you fall on that?

C (53:18)

I don't think that it has anything to do with whether he does a good job or Not, I shouldn't say, it has nothing to do with it.

B (53:23)

If he does a terrible job, I think it could really hurt him. He's like a San Francisco level bad job. Like San Francisco objectively got way worse.

C (53:30)

Really, really destroyed the city or really somehow elevated the city to nirvana. I'm an admirer of a whole bunch of things about him and I'll get to the most important one at the end. But you know, the reality is that a lot of the stuff he's promised, the stuff that's been perfect for the information economy we currently live in or the attention economy we're currently now in the fact that he can get his supporters to be able to name what he was for as like a call and response chant at the end of his campaign where it was freeze the rent, the healthcare thing and the free fast buses. The odds that he achieves any of those are very low. Under the way in which the mayoralty works. I mean, it's just like, can't he.

B (54:15)

Just make the buses free? That part's he can make them free.

C (54:17)

But he can't make them fast because that's what he promised was free fast buses. Right? So it's like, I mean, he's got to budget for it. If he makes it free, there's be a budget hole to fit to fill. But he's not going to make them free and fast. That's the whole thing, free fast buses. I mean, hope he does it. Hope he does it.

B (54:32)

Yeah.

C (54:32)

But you know, the constraints, the political constraints of having to work with Albany and the city's really hard to run for. Even the best people, people forget that when Mike Bloomberg was the mayor, he was really good at running the city in a way that almost no one has been ever in terms of managing it. And people are like, like, well, Mike Bloomberg was a great manager. I'm like, yeah. He also was like paying the deputy mayors and the heads of the administration he was giving them, not in a corrupt way, was topping up their salary so they'd be competitive with private sector wages out of his foundation so that he could get top people who would never have left a job in investment banking to go and be whatever. He was able to attract a kind of level of talent that was unusual. So will Zoran do a good job? I don't know. But here's the thing. If you really love your him and you love what he stands for and you love his aspirations and you love his style of politics and you love his ability to move young voters, all of that, your Fear is not that he's going to set up a few city run grocery stores and that those are going to dispect the city with communism and we're going to have Sharia law. You're worried that he's going to let everybody down, that over four years he's not going to be awful and he's also not going to be great, but that the main promises aren't going to get fulfilled and all those young voters who turned out for him are going to be good. Oh, just another guy was all talking, no action. And they're not going to see all the constraints that are on him and that will end up with a large deflating effect. But I think when they look at it who are sympathetic to him, they're worried that that's where this is going to end up and that all that enthusiasm is not just going to dissipate, but actually be kind of shit on. If it seems like he just was all talking, no action, that is a possibility. But the thing that I think to your original question question is that he exemplifies something that's been true before him for a couple cycles now and that is that the only people in the Democratic Party with a big set of ideas that feel like they're commensurate to the size of people's, not just our common ailments or places where our policies have failed or the large challenges the country faces, but like to the actual thing which is deeper than any of that, that and goes to this pervasive sense of like, what the fuck is going on. Like that the world is changing in ways that people are finding really hard to process and are really discombobulating to people. And whether it's on a question like AI or these other things, people like feel like they've lost their sense that they understand what the fuck is going on in their city, in their state, in the country, in the world. And the left are the only ones in the Democratic Party who are like, yeah, these are really big world changing things. There's a lot of anxiety and alienation out there and there's also huge systemic social and economic problems and we are going to swing for the fucking fences and try to put ideas up on the board that are as big as all of that is. And in the absence of somebody else who has an alternative set of ideas in the progressive tradition that aren't that far to the left socialism, that is what's going to happen. Because in the end these problems are going to get bigger and worse and people are desperate for someone or for an institution or an individual who is in tune with that. And talking about change on the scale that seems like I say commensurate to that. And the left are the only ones doing that right now. In 1991, Bill Clinton was doing that in a way that a lot of people on the left think now was horrible. And neoliberalism and all the shit that he put forward. But he had a big set of ideas about a big set of challenges and it all fit together into a worldview that made people think, okay, globalization, globalization, the information age, dude, you're talking about the big things we see out there that are freaking us out. And you have a worldview and a set of policies to try to address it that seem to commensurate to it. That's, you know, at that time the market minded Democrats were in that position in the party and now the left is like kind of the only ones who are talking on that scale. So I think that's why you, you could easily end, end up where you're talking about. I don't think that means we end up where Republicans ended up with like a strongman dictator. Like they're not going to get necessarily we're going to have Fidel Castro.

B (58:31)

I just meant where there's an overthrow of the established order to such a degree that like people that were part of the Democratic establishment in the past are all washed away.

C (58:41)

Well, and that's that the center of gravity in the party is being driven ideologically. The Clintons did. In fact, I would even say this is true of Obama. That Clinton worldview, that set of policies, which if you were being super glib, you'd just be like neoliberalism that dominated the Democratic Party from through Obama. I mean all the way up until 2016. It was a 25 years of dominating the Democratic Party. You could argue that the party has not had a center of gravity since then and that if you had to guess about whether the center of gravity was going to be back in that direction or a more moderate direction or in the direction of the left right now, you would bet your money money on the left, not the moderate direction.

B (59:18)

I agree with all that. And this takes me nicely into my other proposal or something that's flummoxed me. My brief wind up for this is this is why I'm happy I don't have to run for president or work on campaigns anymore. Because I'm like, I feel like our problems are pretty much Trump. I feel like we have a locus of problems. And I kind of think incremental positive change is fine actually and big changes, risks, big bad outcomes. And that's just me, that's my small C. Conservative nature.

C (59:44)

Nature.

B (59:44)

But I concur to you with you that like the base of the Democratic Party absolutely does not want.

C (59:49)

And a lot of people who are young aren't a part of the base of the Democratic Party right now, but are the rising cohort of people who thought, who, who are out there waiting to be led somewhere who are not going to ever be like hardcore Republicans, but are people who are, you know, they actually hate the, what the old Democratic Party represents, but they're desperate for someone to, to inhabit some kind of new space that makes them feel hopeful and gives them a sense that there's a path forward again. That's, that seems plausible given the chaos of the world around us. That's not just Trump related. That's, you know, I mean we would have chaos around AI whether Trump was president or not. There's nobody who has a really good handle on what to do with that. Policy wise, Trump is more corrupt about it. But it's not like if, like I think if Kamala Harris was president we'd be like, we'd have our shit together on dealing with the AI challenge.

B (60:34)

Oh no.

C (60:35)

So I think there's a whole generation of young people who are really politically homeless right now. They're more progressive than conservative, but they're not part of the base of the Democratic Party today. They're the Zoran voter that exists in big cities all over the country.

B (60:47)

And they do care to you about Gaza. They also are economically, the job market is awful right now for 23 year olds. I've been spending a lot of the break going through for some resumes and it's just like it's awful out there for people graduating college.

C (60:59)

Good for you. As someone who's looking to go through resumes, there's a lot of very talented people out there willing to work for almost nothing.

B (61:03)

Yeah, I know. It's nice. That is nice. Overwhelming kind of. It's like the resume we got for the Columbia grad in chemical engineering. I was like, it's not that bad out there. Okay, there's gotta be a job for chemical engineers. Can't get chemical engineer, Columbia grad. That's better than podcasts.

C (61:19)

But boy, I'll tell you if that's true, if it really is that bad, we are fucked.

B (61:25)

We're fucked.

C (61:25)

We are fucked.

B (61:26)

So I wanna ask you though about this. I would ask this But I'm gonna be. It's the end of the year, so I'm cliche. Tim, you covered early McCain like Straight Talk Express McCain, you were with him. Okay. And to me, if I' Democrat who is like, I'm not dsa, I don't think those are the answers. I think there's things about that, you know, whatever, I like Medicare for all, I want it or you know, there are various elements from the left that I would take, but I'm not going to go full leftist. Right, Right. What is a path that could feel like you're offering something that's commensurate for the moment, that is that gives people what they want. That's not that. And to me it's just like the model is McCain of two fennels and really 2000 also made 2008, which is more like a reform anti corruption that's like kind of of the center but takes some lefty stuff.

C (62:16)

This is.

B (62:16)

I'm not talking about neocon McCain by the way. Everybody listening. This is not about McCain's foreign policy start. It's about McCain, Feingold and campaign financing and it's about how the establishment is corrupt and how we gotta go fix the system. To me, that is at least an interesting lane that could potentially work that no one seems to even be trying to. Phil, which I find perplexing. And so I'm wondering how you'd react to that.

C (62:40)

I find it perplexing also. I mean, I find it perplexing in the sense that among the many shibboleths of our time in politics was that talking about kind of process stuff was always kind of political death. And that if you are looking for big ideas that don't involve one degree.

B (62:59)

Or another overthrowing the capitalist system. Right.

C (63:01)

One degree of state control of various things is that reform of these institutions in a pretty radical way. You can be pretty radical and get that change juice all over yourself, like where you're really proposing to change fundamental things like how we finance our elections. I think you would want to steal some stuff from the progressive side, Supreme Court, all of that political reform stuff, but also reforming institutions in other areas. You'd steal the healthcare piece, you know, you would want some kind of a thing where you tried to take some of the significant market forces out of the healthcare system that are unique to America and look to. To be not Cuba, but look to be Germany. And go and look at that.

B (63:40)

Go and look at that system.

C (63:41)

Well, I was about to say West Germany, but you know what I mean. Now Germany you know, where they run a very, like, that's a very private sector oriented, very business friendly European country that's not France, not Spain, not even Britain, but that is still largely a nationalized healthcare system that's like where there's a state and private sector collaboration that is like way more deeply integrated than what we have in the United States that takes out some of the worst aspects of market, market forces out of the healthcare system. So you could do radical reform of various institutions that you would make part of your thing would be a pitch about constitutional reform to do things to make sure that, you know, we did a little bit of this after January 6th. We have learned where what Trump has shown us, again, as a Democrat pitching this, you'd say Trump has shown us where the guardrails are really weak, where the guardrails are only theoretical, where their norms, not laws. Actually, you know what we need laws in those places now. Like what Trump constantly has proven is that a lot of these things, these constitutional norms, norms, precedents are really just norms and they're not really laws. And so, hey, let's go through and go figure out all the shit that Trump has done. Again, if you were making the primary pitch, all the shit that Trump has done that's tested the basic structure of American democracy and go firm those guardrails up where they need to be firm to build them, where they don't exist, turn things that are norms that we want to like, barely make permanent, we got to turn those things into laws. That's what we're going to do. There's a big wide field for that. I couldn't tell you why. No one has seized on that as at least part of what they're doing. But I think part of the answer is it's early.

B (65:05)

Is there anybody you think had a good year on that front besides Gavin? And Gavin's really the only name that you could say that would be like, you could say, had a good year.

C (65:11)

I think Gavin had a great year and didn't touch this. I don't mean just the reform agenda. I mean in general, if you go and listen to Ezra's thing with Gavin Newsom for an hour and 45 minutes or whatever, it's very long. I've known Gavin since he was mayor of San Francisco. I like him. I think he has huge political upside and I think he had a great year. But the thing he doesn't have most definitively yet, and I think yet is really important, is he doesn't have that Clinton. He's not projecting A worldview. He's not, not saying he should be, but there's nobody who's become the abundance candidate. So he's like, decide, I'm going to seize that and that's what I'm going to wear. I'm going to really flesh it out and I'm going to do it. If you listen to Ezra's conversation with Gavin, he's great on attacking Trump. He's great on setting stakes. He actually, because of his dyslexia, knows a ton about policy and is really good at digging deep on some particular policy area. What he doesn't have is a worldview of here are the challenges we face. This is the way in which all of my shit fits together. To give you a sense of, here are the problems, here are the policies, here's the rhetoric that ties it all up together and creates a vision that you can all now march to. He hasn't done that yet. I think he can, but that's his challenge, I think for 2027 is how to go from the stuff he's dominating on attention, economy, stuff, getting in Trump's face. He understands the environment incredibly well and he's really good as an antagonist. But one of the things we were talking about earlier in this conversation is the thing that Lovett said to me, which I think is so on the money, is that Trump is a great antagonist and not a great protagonist. He's great at being on the outside attacking, whether it's a Republican establishment or a Democratic establishment or the in power government. He wasn't good his first term in office and he was not good in this term in office in terms of being like the protagonist in the story. And what Gavin was great at this year was being an antagonist. And he has to figure out now how to make that shift to protagonist because in the end, that's the ball game for when you run for president.

B (67:09)

You're in Hawaii, so I'm going to let you get to the beach. I just posted my least read column of every year. It's my music year in review. This is my sixth, I think, and it is the sixth lowest read things I've ever written for the Bulwark. And that's okay because, you know, you just got to love what you love.

C (67:26)

Wait, all six? Wait, you've done six of them?

B (67:28)

Yeah, I've done one of them. This is the sixth Bulwark year, right? Am I wrong?

C (67:32)

1926 years.

B (67:33)

2021, 22, 23, 24, 25.

C (67:37)

And who thought, God, the Bulwark is like Starting to get a little long in the tooth there, Tim.

B (67:41)

I know, I know. Well, luckily, a lot of the people really just found us last year. So for a lot of people, it is.

C (67:47)

I think it's new. They're like, oh, the bulwark is this thing.

B (67:51)

Anyway, don't go back and see my stuff I wrote six years ago. It's been great. We're fresh, we're hot, we're cool right now. Like Geese. There's my. But you're saying.

C (67:58)

Wait, wait, wait, wait. You're saying you've done six of these columns and every year this is the least red column you do by far. Okay, okay. I just want to be clear about how. Just what kind of dregs we're talking about here. Okay.

B (68:10)

So, yeah, my attempt to cross over into cultural writing. Nobody cares and nobody wants it, and I'm going to feed it to them anyway. Good. And so I wrote this year, and you're obviously a big music guy as well. We saw Geese together.

C (68:22)

We did.

B (68:22)

I thought Oasis was the best thing I saw this year. I spent a lot of time writing about Oasis, but also about Geese, which was my number one record of the year. I think the most interesting thing about Geese this year is that, like, there's this period of time where us, you and me, who come from the guitar rock era. I'm like, towards the end of that and you're in the middle of it, and these bands would pop up and we'd be like, ooh, this will be the next thing. Like, the thing when we were in college where the Youngs would get into it. Then you go to the first show and it'd be like Wet Leg or something. And it'd be like, I would be the youngest person there, you know, there'd be one teenager there with their dad, you know, and it's like, it's just not happening. Like, it's fine. It was fine. Geese broke that. There are a lot of young Gen Z kids that really got into Cameron Winter and Geese. Both records are unbelievable. And if you look next year at, like, Coachella and the big. At the. In the big festivals, EDM is still dominant, of course, but, like, there's something about it. The rock bands are starting to come back and it's kind of like hip hop is like, kind of now on a little bit of its wane as, like, it gets into its long in the tooth era where, like, the big hip hop artists are like, in their 40s, you know, it's like Kendrick Lamar and stuff. And I do Wonder if there's. If you're seeing that change. If you have any other thoughts, anything else that enchanted you this year besides our friend Cameron Winter?

C (69:38)

I think the Oasis thing and the Geese Cameron Winter thing are totally related. And I think, you know, going to see those Oasis shows. You went to a bunch, right? You went in. In Britain, in Chicago, right?

B (69:50)

Chicago and at Chicago. Yeah, twice. Yeah.

C (69:53)

They both spoke to. And there were different demos in those. In those audiences. I will say that the night after seeing Oasis, we saw Nine Inch Nails. And that show was incredible also, but a different kind of thing. It had different kinds of meetings. I think Train Reznor is a genius and that show was genius. I mean, it was great.

B (70:09)

Great.

C (70:10)

And a stadium show is never going to move me the way. It's just too big that. Having said that, I think the Oasis thing in the Cameron Winter thing, Geese thing, are part of the same thing, which is. I'm long in the tooth now enough to have gone through this cycle since the mid-1990s, really. Certainly the early aughts or the late 90s of rock and roll is dead. And pop is big. Hip hop is big. This is big. That's big. Country, obviously, has its own center of grav and its own kind of cultural and economic space that it occupies, but the rock is dead thing, and then it turns out not to be the Strokes show up. And you're not going back to the heyday of where rock and roll is dominant culturally or economically or financially, but where there's this cadre, and not a small cadre of people who are willing these bands into existence. And when the Strokes appear, then a scene around the Strokes blows up and it's like rock and roll's rebirth. In New York City in the shadow of 9, 11 happens and Lizzie does Meet me in the bathroom, but it's a scene because people want.

B (71:18)

Shout out, meet me in the bathroom.

C (71:19)

Because people want it to be there, right? They want it to be there. I just like at those shows, at the Oasis show and at the Geese show that we were at, I saw slightly different demos. Obviously more geezers at the Oasis show, but a lot of people all the way down. Like, that was a very cross generational show show. A lot of some of the people I saw singing Oasis songs the most fervently were like 17, 18 years old, like just screaming, like, just knew the words to every song. They probably learned them from their parents. I don't care. But they were there. They were not there, like kind of because dad dragged them or mom dragged them. They were there because they were into Oasis, right?

B (71:53)

Yeah.

C (71:53)

And it was the reaction to those shows as much as the music itself and the way in which the audiences in those two different spaces, like, were seen to be, like, desperate to invest importance in some rock band and the unifying kind of qualities the rock has in their minds. Right. It's like one of them is throwback and one of them is the future. But the geese thing right now is just wild. And it's so much that it's like. And the way you could see it, for what it's worth, I did not go to the show, but Lizzie did. Was Cameron Winter after that show that we saw in Brooklyn, he did. Did these solo shows at Carnegie hall and the Carnegie hall shows. I think the solo album is. I mean, for my taste. I like the solo album better than I like the Geese album, although I like. They're both great. But I love his solo album. The Crowd at Carnegie Hall. It's like Paul Thomas Anderson is there shooting him, and one of the Safdie brothers is there and Michael Stipe is there. And it's like there's this moment of the older generation now seeing geese is everywhere among everybody, you know, in your 20s in New York in particular. But those are kind of important cultural. We talked before about Trump Imprimatur. Those are big imprimaturs of, like, cool people of a. There's Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Stipe, and I forget which one of the safdies. But one of the Safdies and PTA is on stage shooting Cameron winner for God knows what. It's like. Like, people want there to be a rock star. People want there to be a new Neil Young. People want there to be a new Bob Dylan. People want there to be a new. Take your pick of Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, whatever it is. They did this show where they did this corporate show the few days before we saw them in Brooklyn, Geested, where all they did was play Stooges covers and Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen. Things for some corporate audience that, like, you hear the audio, but it's like. It's incredible. And they're. The combination of the moment that's kind of calling them forth is super interesting to me and that they're leaning hard into it now. And they're going to be. I mean, who knows how long it will last? Because there's these things. We live in this world where, you know, things don't. But, you know, we're going to get a lot of geese in Cameron winter next year. Too. That's not going to, that's not going to fade from view.

B (74:10)

Yeah, I'm hoping that it's something, I'm hoping that it speaks to. I don't feel like me as, as a, you know, as a 40 something with an 8 year old can, can say this with any intelligence. I'm hoping it speaks to something about that, that out there there's this desire for something tangible again and the EDM's not going anywhere. It's too fun. That's sort of what I mean is. And do drugs and have the lights and stuff like that's not going anywhere but like the people just yearn for it. That's what I'm saying.

C (74:37)

I mean it doesn't matter that I like them. It doesn't matter that you like them.

B (74:40)

It doesn't.

C (74:40)

It doesn't matter. My opinion is.

B (74:42)

Doesn't matter to anybody like them.

C (74:43)

Right. But what I, again, what I saw, what you see around them right now is what's hopeful is what I find hopeful about. I believe in rock and roll. So and, and I'm. And I think it has certain qualities that these other genres of music don't have. And I love some of those other genres of music. Like you know, I mean I'll go all day with you about the value of, about hip hop, but it's not the same. It doesn't have that same kind of galvanic force that rock does. And so I want there to be again my reaction to it matters way less than what observably true about the reaction of like these larger cohort of younger. What you see is them willingness forward forth right now. And so that is the thing that gives me hope. Not like that I like them.

B (75:23)

You know, I just want there to be some guitars back at Coachella. So I'm excited about that. Yes. A few guitars back. Not all. Doesn't have to be the whole thing. Just a few guitars.

C (75:31)

No, just like just some fucking guitars and you know, songs.

B (75:36)

Do you have a. Do you have a New Year's resolution for yourself? Do you do that?

C (75:39)

This. I'll give you a custom New Year's resolution just for you.

B (75:48)

Okay, great.

C (75:49)

In 2026, I want more face to face Tim Miller in my life. I'm resolved to see you in the flesh, in person, for whatever purposes. I'm rel to see you more than I saw you last year.

B (76:03)

We are aligned. I mean, well, that does mean you're going to have to come to New Orleans. So it's your obligation.

C (76:07)

Let's Go.

B (76:07)

We are aligned on our. Because my New Year's resolution for my son next year is that I'm going to force my self. Not force, because I enjoy fun as you know, and I enjoy good times as much as anybody, but I'm going to force myself to take a little more vacation time from this podcast next year because I think 27 and 28 are going to be crazy as fuck. And so this is it. We're gonna have some guest hosts and. And so, you know, hopefully some of that vacation time can overlap with John Heilman time. How about that?

C (76:32)

Yes, I, I 100 endorse cosign that. That I don't think your audience recognizes. I don't think people generally. This is not like a pity party thing. This is reality. If you do a daily television show, I did one for three years where it was on there, it was on the air every day at five o' clock in the afternoon, five days a week, and you do your daily thing. It's a grind, man. And it's not like it's not breaking rocks in the hot sun. You're a blessed person. You're like, this is not like a moaning, whining thing. Yeah, no, exactly, but, but there's a, you know, the relentlessness of, of having to. Not doing some routine thing, you know, like you're having a new guest every day and engaging and being all that kind of stuff.

B (77:10)

Thanks.

C (77:10)

Yeah, they would get a better Tim. Your audience would get a better Tim and you would be happier if, like, you know, you could just work in a few guest hosts now and then and like, you know, take a little, just give yourself a little bit more room to, you know, have a day where you aren't making a podcast and where you're absorbing things and reading things and watching things and listening to things.

B (77:30)

And, you know, or none of those.

C (77:31)

Things or whatever, whatever, but. Or just resting or just resting or just turning. It's just switching off. This is not a critique of the show. I'm just saying. I'm making the case to your audience. I'm saying, people, when Tim takes off some days next year, occasionally brings in a guest host or misses the thing, he is doing it for you as much as for himself. You will get a better Tim Miller when you get a more rested, more tanned, more ready, more chill Tim Miller. You will. So just keep that in mind when he takes time off next year, people.

B (78:01)

John Holman, I love you, man. Thank you for that endorsement. And on that note, I'm taking off Friday show. So I'm gonna see everybody back here next Monday. Have a wonderful New Year's Eve with your family. Hellman, you enjoy the beach, Happy New Year, and we'll see people in 2026. Peace.

C (78:17)

Thought I'd ask you just the same. What are you doing New Year.

B (78:28)

New Year.

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