Peter Hamby: The Politics of a Firestorm

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast: Peter Hamby on “The Politics of a Firestorm”

Episode Release Date: January 14, 2025

In this episode of The Bulwark Podcast, host Tim Miller engages in an in-depth conversation with Peter Hamby, a renowned political journalist and partner at Puck News. The discussion revolves around the devastating wildfires currently ravaging Los Angeles, drawing parallels to historical disasters, dissecting political accountability, and exploring the broader implications for governance and media.

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1. The Devastation of Los Angeles Wildfires

Tim Miller opens the conversation by addressing the immediate impact of the wildfires on Los Angeles. He highlights the personal connections and the widespread destruction witnessed by those in the community.

Peter Hamby provides a nuanced perspective, comparing the current wildfires to Hurricane Katrina. He notes, “It felt like Katrina just swamped the entire city” (03:08). However, unlike Katrina, which predominantly affected low-income areas, the LA wildfires have impacted more middle-class and affluent neighborhoods, exacerbating existing socio-economic tensions.

2. Comparing Wildfires to Hurricane Katrina

The discussion delves deeper into the similarities and differences between the two disasters. Hamby points out the unique socio-economic landscape of Los Angeles, stating, “The geography of the city and all the incorporated cities within it... slightly more middle class to affluent neighborhoods affected” (03:15). This distinction underscores the complex layering of race, class, and geography in disaster vulnerability.

Tim Miller emphasizes the sheer scale of the devastation, mentioning that the fires have burned an area “four times the size of Manhattan” (06:39). Hamby adds, “Imagine if in Washington, like Georgetown just burned up overnight... It would mean the loss of so much history” (07:55), highlighting the cultural and historical loss alongside the physical destruction.

3. Political Accountability and the Blame Game

As the fires unfold, the conversation shifts to political accountability. Miller raises the question of who is to blame, noting the immediate reactions across the political spectrum. He cites various perspectives:

• Santa Ana Democrats attribute the disasters to climate change.
• Republicans blame blue-state incompetence.
• Marc Andreessen, a Trump advisor, blames specific individuals following the death of Rory Sykes, a former child actor, in the fires (09:02).

Hamby counters by referencing Mike Davis’s Ecology of Fear, arguing that the challenges Los Angeles faces are deeply rooted in historical and structural decisions: “Humans make decisions to live in places that are dangerous” (09:02). He asserts that blaming single individuals oversimplifies a multifaceted issue.

4. Critique of Mayor Karen Bass’s Leadership

A significant portion of the discussion centers on Mayor Karen Bass and her handling of the crisis. Hamby criticizes Bass for her perceived lack of leadership during the fires, particularly her decision to leave the city during critical moments. He states, “If she had gone and come back as soon as possible... 'I'm talking to the president right now, blah, blah'" (17:06), illustrating his disappointment with her responsiveness.

Tim Miller probes further into Bass’s decisions, questioning whether red flags were apparent before her departure: “Was it clear that this could be extremely bad?” (16:24). Hamby responds by highlighting misinformation and the complex political landscape, emphasizing that “there’s such a byzantine politics here” (19:25).

5. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s Stance

The conversation explores the stance of Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, who suggests conditioning federal disaster aid on reforms in California. Johnson is quoted saying, “state and local political leaders were derelict in their duty in many respects” (26:21), advocating for ties between aid and improvements in forest management and resource allocation.

Hamby vehemently opposes this approach, arguing that it politicizes disaster relief and unfairly punishes Californians: “People in Los Angeles want outsiders to shut the fuck up” (27:22). He underscores the necessity of aid regardless of political disagreements, stating, “Federal aid... is agnostic. It doesn’t care what you believe in” (34:09).

6. The Role of Social Media and Tech Giants

Transitioning from local politics, Hamby critiques the involvement of tech giants and their influence on public perception and policy. He lambasts figures like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg for their politicized stances and perceived lack of authentic leadership.

Miller raises concerns about the upcoming TikTok ban, introducing arguments from a TikTok creator named Soupy, who warns against government overreach and its impact on free speech (51:52). Hamby counters by emphasizing national security concerns and the potential for foreign influence: “The information is quite frequently dog shit, lies adjacent” (54:16). He predicts that Trump might seek a deal to keep TikTok operational, reflecting on past political maneuvers: “Ryan Broderick... they don't need us, they want us” (60:10).

7. Predictions and Future Implications

Looking ahead, Hamby speculates on the possible outcomes of the TikTok ban, including political maneuvering by Trump to protect the platform's operations: “A President United States... It's just straight-up fascist” (60:52). He highlights the ongoing tension between national security and free speech, anticipating further political conflicts as the situation unfolds.

8. Personal Reflections and Closing Thoughts

In the closing segment, Hamby shares personal anecdotes about the emotional toll of witnessing the fires and the importance of community resilience. He references a moving TikTok video by a local resident, emphasizing the profound loss of homes and memories: “These aren't just houses, they are lives” (64:20).

Miller wraps up by acknowledging the contributions of community members and reiterates the importance of staying informed and connected during crises.

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Notable Quotes:

• Peter Hamby: “It felt like Katrina just swamped the entire city.” (03:08)
• Peter Hamby: “If she had gone and come back as soon as possible... 'I'm talking to the president right now, blah, blah'” (17:06)
• Mike Johnson: “It does come down to leadership.” (26:21)
• Peter Hamby: “People in Los Angeles want outsiders to shut the fuck up.” (27:22)
• Peter Hamby: “Federal aid... is agnostic. It doesn’t care what you believe in.” (34:09)
• Peter Hamby: “A President United States... It's just straight-up fascist.” (60:52)

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Conclusion

This episode of The Bulwark Podcast offers a comprehensive analysis of the intersection between natural disasters and political accountability in Los Angeles. Peter Hamby provides critical insights into the systemic issues exacerbating the wildfire crisis, challenges the effectiveness of current leadership, and critiques the politicization of disaster relief. Additionally, the conversation extends to the role of social media and tech giants in shaping public discourse and policy, highlighting the complex interplay between governance, media, and community resilience.

Listeners gain a multifaceted understanding of the challenges facing Los Angeles amid the wildfires, the political dynamics at play, and the broader implications for democracy and governance in times of crisis.

Transcript

[Tim Miller]

Hey, y'all. So much happening today. So here are some programming notes. We are taping today's pod on Tuesday morning as the Pete Hegseth confirmation hearing is beginning. I just saw Joni Ernst's kind of lukewarm questioning of the SecDef nominee. The board's live on YouTube all day covering this hearing right now as we speak. Sarah Longwell and Will Saletan are on. Sam Stein and I are going to be on here this afternoon. You can check out an archive of our livestream on YouTube plus for subscribers. We'll have a wrap up out on Tuesday evening. Go to the bulwark.com subscribe. We'll have the team together with a wrap up of the Pete Hegseth hearings. We also have the Jack Smith Report out this morning, which I'm going to touch on with my guest a little bit today. But for the Wednesday pod, we have a favorite on who is perfect for a deep dive on both Hegseth and Smith. So keep an eye out for that. Today we're going to focus more on what's happening with the fires and TikTok. So up next, my pal Peter Hamby. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Today we've got a favorite content man of mine. He's a partner at Puck News, host of Snapchat's Good Luck America. And he lives in a Venice, California home once owned by a cast member of the TV sitcom Wings. He has a new piece out in Puck, the Blood is in the Water for Karen Bass. It's Peter Hamby. What's up, Hamby?

[Peter Hamby]

Hey, buddy. I actually want you to know the first time I used the joke about no longer being a journalist and being a content man, and now content man applies to you. I also was the first person to call you a content man. I use that as a bit at your wedding, as a little toast. I said, is that right? I'm no longer a journalist. I'm here as a content man. Yeah. Fully Snapchat at that point.

[Tim Miller]

I appreciated your beautiful toast to my wedding. I want to do we'll do a little personal talk here. I want to talk a little bit about the fires and then we'll get into the politics of that. We'll get into a little bit of what's happening on Capitol Hill. I said in the intro that this Hegseth hearing is happening right now as we spoke. We've gotten to see maybe an hour of it. So maybe we'll just talk about some initial impressions. But first As I mentioned, you're in Venice. We've got multiple mutuals who've lost their houses. We've got mutuals who are out there delivering supplies to firefighter shout out to my boy Ian and his crew. You know, I mean, it's ugly. The winds kept getting worse yesterday afternoon. So before we get into kind of some rank punditry about the mayor, I just am curious, like from on the ground, your sense of the scale of the devastation and kind of how you're feeling about everything.

[Peter Hamby]

Yeah, I mean, the scale is real. I saw your pal Wendell Pierce, New Orleans slash Angelino, I think. Talk about how this is LA's Katrina. I don't necessarily know if that's the case. LA is famously stratified by race and class and geography, and there are people who are technically unaffected. It sort of felt like Katrina just like swamped the entire city. You would know better than me, I guess.

[Tim Miller]

Well, and, and I guess the parts of hit Katrina the worst were the, were the poorest, were the lowest income areas and, and yet.

[Peter Hamby]

Right. Yeah. The opposite thing is happening here. Like if you think about the geography of the city and all the incorporated cities within it, you know, generally not totally true, not totally true, and this needs to be stressed, but you know, slightly more middle class to affluent neighborhoods affected. You know, Altadena is a hub traditionally of sort of black middle class in the city. Over, sort of near the San Gabriel Mountains over here, near where, where I live in the Palisades in Malibu. There's some wealthy people up there. The traditional flats of la, like where I live, you know, used to be more of a black neighborhood. In Venice, you go over to like, you know, South Central and the east side, more, more black and Latino because they are quote unquote, the flatlands, they weren't as desirable to live in and therefore are unaffected in a way that, you know, having shitty air quality out there because, like the ashes on my house don't look like fine dust, like you would think, like ash coming down like a volcano or something. It looks like the soot in your fireplace, like the end of a fire that you've been burning all night at Christmas time or something. There's like black and brown chunks like around my neighborhood and not in every neighborhood. It just depends where it falls. And that stuff is very, very much unhealthy. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's devastating. The flip side of all this is we all know people who are affected. The other thing that, that happens in Los Angeles and by the way this is the source of the property tax revolt back in the 70s is like, it's not just wealthy people in the Palisades, for instance, who are affected by this. A lot of people in Southern California. And this is true down in, like, I was texting about this when Trump went down to Palos Verdes during the campaign. There are a lot of middle class people who bought houses in the 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s, whatever. And the property values have created a lot of wealth for them because it's such a desirable place to live, Southern California. And so, you know, you see people who have lost their homes, who are, who are rich and famous, some not so famous, some people that used to be famous, but then there's people who just like lived in their house for many generations in their entire wealth is tied up in that. And then you've got people who lost their houses and they own them and they still have to keep paying the mortgage on house that doesn't exist. Like, there's some crazy going on. And I wrote about this for, for Puck, and it's bare. It's, you know, I wrote about Karen Bass, obviously, and we'll talk about that. But there's just so much I've learned living out here. Like the political fights around real estate and insurance and zoning and coastal commissions, they get really, really intense and personal and, and angry because property here is everything. And it always has been, and it always has been. When it comes to rich white people taking water and golf clubs and redlining, it's just property. And real estate in Los Angeles defines.

[Tim Miller]

Its politics and the one way in which it is Katrina. Ask her. I think the comparison, at least based on what I've been hearing from people on the ground, is that just there are just these vast swaths, like in the Palisades that are just gone. Right. And, you know, I mean, I just think that the scale of that, you know, is something that's kind of hard for people to wrap their heads around. From like north Santa Monica up to pch, maybe the most beautiful urban section of the country.

[Peter Hamby]

So I saw somebody reference the amount that has burned so far is like four times the size of Manhattan. Wow. So, you know, not the population, obviously, but in the context of Palisades or Altadena, like, just imagine if like in Washington, like Georgetown just burned up overnight and disappeared. Like the neighborhood just gone. Like gone, gone, gone, gone. Like, what would that mean to the rest of the city, you know? And then how sorrowful would you be about all the history that was lost. Or Altadena is literally the same example. And we should mention, too, it's not just structures. You know, I was watching the sort of daily briefing this morning with all the local officials here, and there are many. The death toll is going to keep rising. It's not just homes. Like, a important part of the city has been incinerated. And at least one of them, when it comes to the Palisades, at least, is also happens to be a hugely important power center for money, influence, political power, fundraising. Like that's what Palisades is. And we'll talk about Rick Caruso in a minute. But that's his backyard, too.

[Tim Miller]

All right, so before we get to the Caruso and the Bass of it, I just at the biggest level, I want to do a little kind of blame game stuff because this is like always, like, what happens immediately on social media. And I think that, like, pretending that it's not happening is wrong, you know, because humans are humans, right? And they're going to, when something like this happens, they're going to want to look for somebody to blame. Right. And so acting like, well, let's talk about this in three months, I think is silly. At the same time, you got to cut through the clutter. I wrote down a little bit of who people might blame here. Joan Didion would blame the Santa Ana Democrats are saying this is all a climate change story. Republicans are blaming just blue state incompetence. I had one of the newest Trump advisors, Marc Andreessen, one of the richest VCs in the country. I saw him on Twitter. He saw a story about Rory Sykes, who people might remember as a former child actor who was born blind and with cerebral palsy. He died in the fire. Marc Andreessen, quote, tweeted that with this is the fault of specific people. You kind of wrote about this in the context of Bass. But the biggest picture, how people in California right now are adjudicating this blame game. Question.

[Peter Hamby]

Yeah, so much to unpack there. And I mentioned this book and I've been tweeting about it. This book, Mike Davis Ecology of Fear, is a fantastic history of, of Los Angeles and the choices made to live on the edge of disaster. Like something Mark Andreessen didn't say because he's rich and can rebuild his house no matter what. You know, there's some human error. Not human error. That's the wrong word. There's just like, you know, humans make decisions to live in places that are dangerous. And historically, humans didn't live like Los Angeles was Not, you know, an irrigated place until the Mexicans and the Mormons figured out how to bring water here and plant orange groves. Like, it's not like if you, if you read your old Oregon Trail history books and play the game. They were going to Oregon. They weren't coming to California because Oregon was, like, green and you could, like, have farmland here. Water is scarce. Joan Didion's Devil winds blow east to west, and that's been happening forever. In this very book, you know, Mike Davis writes about the Clipper ships coming up along Southern California back in the 19th century and seeing flames on the mountains. So this stuff predates climate change too. It's. It's a peculiar climate Angeles basin. It seesaws between rainy seasons and dry seasons. You know, in the rainy seasons, lots of vegetation grows and then it dries out, and that creates tinder for these fires. The individual blame thing is very hard in Los Angeles, and in this sense, it does remind me a little bit of Katrina. So in Katrina, you and I both remember, we were just sort of starting out in our careers. At the time I was at cnn. Like, the first week of I worked on the Situation Room was Katrina. And it was like watching George Bush, but also Kathleen Blanco and Ray Nagin and the New Orleans Police Department. And no one wanted to take the blame. You never would as a political figure or a public official.

[Tim Miller]

I know, it's funny, I was talking to Jeb about Katrina like a decade and a half after, and he was like, my brother gets the blame. Ray Nagin gets all the blame. And there's plenty of things that both of them did wrong. But he's like, Kathleen Blanca was the worst and nobody ever blames her. Like, she got lost in the crossfire of Negan and Bush. You know, he's like, I was governor of Florida. And he said I was calling her, being like, I want to send people to help, like our, you know, our National Guard and stuff. And like, she wasn't returning calls anyway. You know, there always is kind of the finger pointing element, and some of it, it gets political.

[Peter Hamby]

Yeah. And by the way, everyone should go back and listen to that Atlantic podcast, Flood Lines, which sort of.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, so good, so good.

[Peter Hamby]

It was just a. Revisited all of that, like from, from a timeline perspective, but told the story from the people who weren't. Whose voices weren't being heard in the live TV coverage. You know, in particular, a lot of the black community, but also some of the just myths that became facts very quickly. You know, the, the looting or the Gunshots and there was some of that. But you know the stuff that the national media was talking about and that was 2005, that was before, you know, Twitter and a lot of like social media adoption. You couldn't fact check these things and they just became apocryphal. So anyway, here can't blame any single person that needs to be said. As I write in my piece, people here in Los Angeles would like the all in hosts and everyone who has VC founder in their bio and Elon Musk to shut the fuck up. Okay? Like Elon Musk came here on Sunday and like there's this thing about Musk that you probably, it probably grates on you too. He has accomplished a lot, this guy. He is smart, like he deserves credit for a lot of things that he has built and companies he's built. But since like getting the political bug, he has this like, like annoying college sophomore contrarian thing going on. He like just Wikipedia something then postures as an expert. So he goes and live streams on X to the Palisades, talk to these firefighters and he's like, so you guys ran out of water, right? You didn't have enough water, right? And the firefighters are like, well no, we had enough water. It's just the volume of these flames, it was too much to fight with the flow that we had. And so like it's nice to see these firefighters like fact based retorts to Elon Musk who's trying to bait them and they're like not giving him anything. So the other thing to keep in mind about Los Angeles is I'm in Venice, I'm in the city of la. If I was a mile that way, I'd be in the city of Santa Monica, which is not in the city of la. If I was this direction to the west a little bit, so the east, I'd be in Culver City, which is its own city. West Hollywood, own city, Malibu, Pasadena, lots of incorporated cities. For various reasons that I mentioned before, a lot of, you know, white people wanted to sort of protect their neighborhoods back in the day. They don't want to pay LA city taxes. They contract with Los Angeles county for various services. So Los Angeles county has jurisdiction over some of these areas where the fights are happening now to be clear, the fire departments are coming in from all over Southern California. They're coming from all parts of LA to fight these different fires. Like good on them. But there's the Department of Water and Power, there's public utilities which are managed by boards. The county is managed by a board of supervisors. Every city has its own leadership. And then our mayor, you know, even before Karen Bass, not a. They don't have a lot of power compared to other cities. Like, the power in the city rests with the city council. And so the mayor, and we saw this with Garcetti beforehand, a good mayor like a Tom Bradley or Richard Reardon can really set the agenda and show leadership. And this is what Rick Caruso is running on in 2022, because they know there's not much they can do, you know, by the stroke of a pen, to fix everything. You know, the mayor has to work with the city council, you know, bring a point of view, what they want to get done. Karen Bass came in, her thing was cleaning up homelessness, but she built herself as a problem solver because she was a coalition builder in the state assembly in California and in Congress, and she ran the cbc. But, man, I talked to a lot of people yesterday who are like, Democrats, by the way. Everyone here is a Democrat, basically. That's not true. We'll get to that. But they are like, is she built for this? Like, is a member of Congress, a lifelong member of a legislative body? It doesn't feel like she's cut out for this. And that's why Rick Caruso is suddenly driving the political conversation here and has Elaine to run against her again.

[Tim Miller]

So you wrote about this for People could read the full piece. But, like, like, what are the specific Karen best complaints? Like, if we're just going to try to cut through the BS and like the VC posturing and like, the DEI is die, like bullshit, you know, and like, try to figure out what. What are some actual things. Like, one thing that comes up is that she's in Ghana and like, there's a back and forth on this, right? Is like, when she left for Ghana, was it clear that. That this could be extremely bad? And it seems like kind of yes. And I noticed Gavin Newsom sort of ducked this question when he was asked about it on Pod Save America. Do you have a sense for that? Like, when, when she decided to leave, were the red flags already or the red sirens blaring enough that it was like, you should have thought, oh, I don't know, maybe I should stick around and see how this goes. Or is that unfair?

[Peter Hamby]

It's not unfair. And that's the main thing. So there are every. Again, every Elon Musk on the Internet is Googling something and posting about it because they want to. Like, like, oh, I looked up the LA Fire Department budget and it Looks like they made this cut. And the owner of the LA Times, Patrick Sun Xiang, you know, was posting some of this stuff, and it's. You know, I forget what the exact definitions of these terms are from the peak disinformation panic, but I think it's more misinformation than disinformation. Something that's, like, has a kernel of truth to it but isn't totally true. That's what he was posting about.

[Tim Miller]

It's like, maybe the owner of the LA Times should have been reading his own paper before. Before posting about the supposed budget cuts.

[Peter Hamby]

He should have also. I mean, him and his daughter really put their thumbs on the scale for Karen bass in the 2022 race. Like, the coverage, I sound like I'm, like, flacking for Caruso here, and I promise I'm not. But, like, the coverage from the LA Times, the news covers, not just the editorials and the columns was just so. I'll use the word biased. They wrote one critical story of Karen Bass. The entire campaign, they wrote dozens, scores on Rick Caruso, who, by the way, look, billionaire wants to be the mayor fair, but, like, cover her with scrutiny as well. So there are questions about how much she pushed to cut the fire department's budget, which influenced, you know, according to the fire chief, the amount of overtime hours they can pay and also within that, the amount of time they could spend clearing brush and vegetation in certain areas. There are questions about did she do enough to refill the Santa Inez Reservoir, which I think contained 117 million gallons of water near the Palisades, the fire hydrants that ran dry that night, there were three of them, three tanks that had a million gallons of water, and they ran dry. That seems like a lot of water, by the way. And they said the firefighters, that would have been enough water, typically for an urban fire. The Santa's reservoir had been empty since last February. That's 117 million gallons of water.

[Tim Miller]

That's one of the ones that gets me that, like, this is where my, you know, complaints about the Democrats come in. Is that because I was reading on about the Santa Y's reservoir situation before he came on, and I don't want to post strike an expert, but it was empty since February, you know, and it's like, a lot of times I see there's this trend of Democrats saying that using rhetoric that's catastrophic, but then their actions are extremely bureaucratic and limited, you know, and it's like, if so, like, if you believe that because of climate change, like, the Risks to Los Angeles are higher than ever. Like these pre existing risks about the Santa Ana winds are greater than ever because it's been dry. Then you would think that you would have a sense of urgency to cut through certain bureaucratic hoops to ensure that like reservoirs are full, for example.

[Peter Hamby]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

And I think, like, that is where some of the frustration comes in from, like even within the Democratic coalition.

[Peter Hamby]

Yeah, no, I think that's right. And there's someone did a really great thread about this on Twitter X that was sent around our little friendly text chain about how I think it was Lakshya Jane, who's like a pollster on Twitter that I like. He's a Democrat and he was just like ranting about how Democrats are always bragging about, like process, you know, like we're getting things done. Like we sent this many checks out or we have the funds allocated for all of these green charging stations for electric vehicles, but the actual charging stations haven't been built yet. You know, so it's like we will get things done. And we are in the process of getting things done rather than, you know, taking out the machete and clearing out the weeds. So. But this is something else. I asked Katie to like, pressure test some of my assumptions when I was writing this column because she is good at that. And she, by the way, works for a mayor's office. So she's like, this is your wife? Yes, my wife. Yeah. And she was like, look, it will take a while for all of these facts to come out about why the fires started. And by the way, for people on the left who are listening, there have been, as of the most recent press conference, I think three arrests for possible arson. There are video clips of the fire right after it started near the Palisades on the Temazcal Canyon Trail, which is a hiking trail. Some of these fires, I was watching that first overnight Tuesday, like, there's one in Studio City. It was just like a house fire. Like, okay, like some of this stuff could have been man made. And by the way, and this is also an ecology of fear, a bunch of wildfires in 1993 that happened around Malibu and Laguna beach were started by homeless people and quote unquote, vagrants, to use the parlance of the time. So all the facts will come out. Katie's saying, we'll figure that out. So, like, you can't blame a single politician or political figure for any of this because there's such a, you know, byzantine politics here. Like, there's different jurisdictions and whatever. And by the Way Cal fire. I think Gavin Newsom, for all the criticism, has been doing a pretty good job of responding to a crisis. Former mayor himself, he's calling for an investigation into the empty reservoir and very conspicuously copied Karen Bass on the public letter. Like, at the bottom it says, CC LA Mayor Karen Bass. And so, like, Gavin is like doing his political thing where he doesn't want to throw local officials under the bus. But like any. Any of us who've worked in politics can read between the lines, like, her political capital is gone. I'll explain why. It's not because of these various budget things or the reservoir. It's just the leadership thing. And you and I have seen this. We've been around so many dying campaigns and we saw this with Joe Biden in the debate last summer. Once you lose trust and credibility, especially in this era where we don't trust politicians or institutions very much at all, and in our social media era where we're grabbing whatever information suits our priors, it was gone. And she made the decision on Saturday, January 4, a day after the National Weather Service issued an extreme high wind and fire threat warning to go on this delegation trip to Ghana to attend the swearing in of their new president. And so if you think about, you know, New Orleans, a Cat 5 is heading toward you guys. And the mayor's like, well, you know, I already got a trip planned to London.

[Tim Miller]

I'll deportize our current mayor. Our current mayor. I went past our current mayor. She's been spending a lot of time in Paris. But, yeah, no, I hear you. To me, what this reminds me of actually is McCain like the McCain and the economic crisis, right? Like how you lose the confidence, right? Where he said, oh, I'm going to suspend my campaign to have a meeting to, like, how what are we going to do about this economic collapse? And then he went to the meeting and didn't, like, actually do anything, right? And then people are like, wait a minute.

[Peter Hamby]

And that was the thing. Like, that was the one thing, the one thing that people cared about was the economy. And when you, you know, light yourself on fire, to use a bad phrase in that moment, why should I trust you? And like, this is the other thing, too. If she had gone and come back as soon as possible and that Sky News reporter saw her in the airport and said, do you have a message for the people of L. A? Give a response. Act like a human. I'm really worried. My friends are worried. We're running back. I've been talking to the president and blah, blah, Blah. I've been talking to officials, we're going to through this, go straight to whatever, you know, the fire line is. Just go there, be on camera, be present. I talked to somebody who's worked for a bunch of mayors in California and elsewhere when I was writing my piece. And this person made the point that like in politics generally, he called it like the horseshoe theory. Like, you know, you're supposed to like land the horseshoe when you throw it on the little spike, like, and get it perfect every time. He's like, horseshoe theory doesn't really apply to crises. Like they will give the mayor, the governor, the president some latitude if they don't get it perfect. But like she lost it in that moment. And that video, like you can erase like a previous statement, maybe you can fix it, you can tweak it. It's on camera for 90, 92 full seconds. I counted just staring stone faced in silence after she was gone. And we found out later after she chose to leave knowing the threat. And beyond that, Tim, like we had three different fire warnings this whole winter because it's been so dry this winter after the last two very wet winters, she just left. She made the choice. And like that is especially in the, in the climate change era when things are burning faster and hotter, like fires are the thing out here. And yes, homelessness is incredibly important and she has brought more homeless folks indoors and that's been good. I see it in Venice. That's also thanks to our councilwoman, Tracy Park. But there are other things beyond homelessness in this city and fires. The threat was there, she left, no one trusts her. So that's the thing, all the budget stuff, the reservoir stuff, the fire department chief fights. Like, if you don't have any more trust, you do not get the benefit of the doubt anymore. Whereas all these other officials are kind of getting the benefit of the doubt. At least they're trying. And like Newsom, for all his faults, and he comes off as stiff, you know, he's doing interviews, he's signing executive orders, he's bringing in firefighters from Mexico, he's bringing firefighters from all over the state. He's talking about how to hopefully work with Donald Trump. He's pushing back on misinformation. Like, he's there, he's out there, he's doing stuff. I would say he's much more of a leader of Los Angeles in this moment than Karen Bass is.

[Tim Miller]

Your wife said she isn't ready to pin it on any specific politician and we shouldn't pin it on specific politicians until we know the facts. The speaker of the House has a different point of view. He was in the hallway yesterday. Your old colleague from back when you were on cn, Manu Raju, was asking him about whether aid to LA should be conditioned because of alleged mismanagement. Let's hear what Mike Johnson had to say.

[Mike Johnson]

I think we've got to have a serious conversation about that. Obviously, there's been water resource mismanagement, forest management mistakes, all sorts of problems. And it does come down to leadership. And it appears to us that state and local political leaders were derelict in their duty in many respects. So that's something that has to be factored in. I think there should probably be conditions on that day. That's my personal view. We'll see what the consensus is. I haven't had a chance to socialize that with any of the members over the weekend because we've all been very busy. But it'll be part of the discussion for sure.

[Tim Miller]

What about the debt limit increase?

[Peter Hamby]

What about tying the debt limit increase to it?

[Mike Johnson]

There's some. Some discussion about that, but we'll see where it goes.

[Tim Miller]

So Mike Johnson wants to condition aid to California on, I don't know, some reforms and brush management and maybe extend the debt limit throughout the Trump presidency so that they can pressure some Democrats into going along with the gambit to avoid running up against the debt limit. What do you think people in LA.

[Peter Hamby]

Think about that before I empty the clip on the nerd from Shreveport. I have some dim memories of emergency federal aid being tied to, like, budget negotiations or debt limits or something. So that might not be new. Okay. This is disgusting. It's offensive. This falls under the category of what I was saying. People in Los Angeles want outsiders to shut the fuck up. I could go a lot of directions with this. Let's start with his home state and your home state, which I love and adore. And I'll be there in a couple of weeks to see you and Tyler. Imagine if some president or congressional leader said that after a hurricane or a flood destroyed your church and your neighborhood. Mike Johnson. Imagine, Mike Johnson, what California must be like, because I know you don't spend a lot of time out here. Maybe you come out on the Trump jet when you're hanging out with the UFC guys. I don't know. California has more Republicans than any state in the country. California makes up a significant portion of your Republican caucus. It is disgusting that you would put politics and your assumptions about other people in front of helping people here in California, including many Republicans who probably voted for Trump who have lost their houses. Disaster aid helps people. Not just in the way. Like, imagine, like, Hurricane Helene, okay? Like, this is why I get so mad about this, like, Helene and this fire, like, you know, I think. I know you make fun of me for my college basketball coaching tree or whatever, but, like, those are two events that, like, fucked with my people. Like, western North Carolina is where my family's from and, like, here. And so, you know, there are a lot of people who don't believe in climate change that live up in those hollers in western North Carolina and in Florida. So what? They're Americans. And for, you know, as long as we've had federal disaster aid, it doesn't. Like, it's agnostic. What you. What you believe in. Federal aid, you know, it can create jobs. You know, those firefighters and cops that you supposedly adore. Like, I'm sorry, we don't have all the answers yet if this happened in any other state. Like, it's just that Newsom and now Karen Bass. I think Karen Bass deservedly, in some ways, you know, they deserve criticism, but there are a lot of Republican humans here, and I just think it's gross. It's a real. I don't know. I've been watching so much local news out here in la, and it's wonderful, the television coverage, and brave in certain ways. Like, some of these reporters, like, their houses were in jeopardy while they were out covering the fires. I want to see one of my local news friends out here, go over to Arcadia and talk to some people whose house is burned over there in that. In Altadena or elsewhere. And by the way, there was a fire last night, Tim, in Riverside, which is a Republican county represented by Ken Calvert. Ask these people who lost their homes, hey, the government is saying you might not get aid to recover and rebuild your house because the speaker of the House doesn't like Gavin Newsom. What do you think about that? I would love to see. I would love to see a reporter ask a person who lost their house.

[Tim Miller]

That, you know, and I think they fall back on this. Oh, blue state mismanagement. Blue city mismanagement. And it's like. That's the thing that, like, frustrates me, too. It's just such, like. It's just such BS about all this because, yeah, look, there's mismanagement. We can talk about all this. I. Liz Weil, if people miss that on the pod last week, she's awesome. She's been covering this forever in California, you know, forest mismanagement. A lot of that's federal. By the way, a lot of the forests in California, they're being mismanaged.

[Peter Hamby]

Or one more thing on that, on that point, like Elon Musk, one of his tweets during, during the fires while people, while babies, cribs were burning and people's lifelong memories are being incinerated. Elon Musk was blaming Gavin Newsom and saying there's too much, too much government regulation that prevented the clearing of brush and vegetation. So this is the thing. A lot of the solves that these MAGA people are calling for would require more federal money, more state money, more government intervention. The LA county and the Los Angeles Fire Department require we Angelenos to pay for our own brush clearing. If you live in an area and you've got to keep a certain amount of footage on each side of your house clear, especially if you're up there in the hills and canyons, so that not only will it prevent things from burning, but so firefighters can move and fight them and be mobile and help put out these fires. So that isn't too much government regulation. Government isn't doing enough to help clear some of these spaces. And that would require more money and more regulation. And again, there are a lot of Republicans in California and there are a lot of Republicans in Los Angeles and in the Valley. And you know, there's even more of them now after this last election. And you go tell them that, you go tell them, hey, you need to do better to like, clear up all the chaparral outside of your, outside of your beautiful house. And if you don't, we're going to fine you. That's what Elon Musk is asking for. Do you think Republicans want that?

[Tim Miller]

It's also not about deregulation. Like, there are plenty of things. It's not about that in this case. Like, and, and a lot of this is like the federal forests. Like, we're under the Trump Department of Interior four years ago. Right. You know, it's just like, it's all. A lot of this stuff is not even California, is not even California land. You're talking about people's individual properties. But like, a lot of these other fires, like these issues are on federal land anyway. So there's that. There's also just the obvious, like the red state. Ms. Man, you know what I mean? This is just such a slippery slope, man. Like, like we've got, we've got these pumps out my window that aren't working right now here in New Orleans, and that's something that people are concerned about. Here. If there's another hurricane, be insane for, you know, the Whoever's the President AOC in 2032 or whatever to be like Jeff Landry, I'm not going to give you money because you didn't take climate change seriously enough. The whole thing is just, it's gross. And Mike Johnson is a pathetic little twerk.

[Peter Hamby]

People like federal money. People like federal money during COVID They like the Trump checks. People in Boone, North Carolina like the FEMA money. Like people like federal money when it suits them. People like money.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, at this point, everybody knows about my neighborhood camp, Aretha. I was out at the commissary here in New Orleans. If you ever visited New Orleans, they do a great job down at commissary. It's a little market, has a lot of Louisiana food and and one of the employees there spoil work fan was checking in on the cat, was checking in on Aretha because they listened to the ads. So we appreciate all of you and I want to tell everybody the cat is doing great. Aretha was very excited when we came home from holiday break and we fed her the food from our newest sponsor, Smalls. This podcast is sponsored by Smalls. Smalls cat food is protein packed recipes made with preservative free ingredients you find in your fridge and it's delivered right to your door. That's why cats.com named Smalls their best overall cat food. To get 50% off your first order plus free shipping, head to smalls.com and use our promo code, the Bulwark. Here's one review from a Smalls customer, Jennifer M. Said, after every feeding, my cat gets his burst of energy and starts running around the house and his fur is softer and more vibrant with a higher contrast. Honestly, I wouldn't recommend anything else. Smalls was started back in 2017 by a couple of guys home cooking cat food in small batches for their friends. A few short years later, they've served millions of meals to cats across the US. After switching to smalls, 88% of cat owners reported overall health improvements. That's a big deal. The team at Smalls is so confident your cat will love their product that you can try it risk free. That means they'll refund you if your cat won't eat their food. What are you waiting for? Give your cat the food they deserve. Head to smalls.com and use pro code the Bulwark at checkout for 50% off your first order plus free shipping. That's the best offer you'll find, but you have to use my code. TheBullWerk for 50% off your first order. One last time. That's promo code. TheBullWerk for fifty percent off your first order plus free shipping. One last rank political thing about this, then. I want to do social media stuff. Gavin. Gavin wants to be the 2028 guy. And there are things about Gavin that I like, actually. I think that he's pretty deft communicator, which is pretty important in this time for Democrats. I think that a lot of times he has his finger on the pulse of stuff that other Democrats don't, as far as, like, speaking particularly in how to speak to kind of Republicans. That said, he's got so much baggage, man. Like the baggage from All Best. Like, I saw him getting interviewed by on Ms. And you know, they're like, you guys got the Olympics coming, the super bowl coming, the World cup come into la, and Gavin's out there going, we're going to have a Marshall Plan for Los Angeles. And I was watching this, I'm going, well, he's good at that, right? I have this big plan and I have a big message, a big optimistic message. And that's all important in politics. Being able to project positivity and project optimism and communicate and be a leader, all that's important. But are they actually going to be able to do it? I just think this is another kind of straw on the back of, you know, don't California my Ohio or don't California my Michigan? If he, if he were to decide to, to make a run in four years, I don't know how you assess it.

[Peter Hamby]

Yeah, the cultural vibe shift away from a certain kind of blue state, blue city. Politics, culturally is real. I think. I thought about this one. I thought this was silly. By the way, Eric Garcetti was thinking about running for president in 2019, and Ron DeSantis, by the way, did this for. Against Newsom one point a couple years ago. All you have to do if you're an opponent is send some cameras out to skid row and just take video of, like, this is what Los Angeles looks like. And like, that's unfair in a lot of ways, but it's, it's a, it's a astute political attack. And Gavin is also past. There's just a lot of stuff out there to run against him on. And this is beyond his time as mayor and beyond his like, French Laundry thing. And he's like the, you know, California privilege. I saw this clip of Gavin being confronted by, I think, a Palisades resident the other Day. I think a lot of people saw it. And he's like, like, he's not like a huggy guy. He's good in certain ways, but he doesn't like sort of uncontrolled situations, you know, which is why, you know, he went to our pal Jon Favreau and John asked him real questions, good questions, but he, like, you know, instead of going straight to the local news, he went to a place that's a little more of a safe space for him. Anyway, this woman comes up to him on Tuesday or Wednesday. What are you doing? What are you doing to help? And he's like, got his phone, he's got his Panerai, by the way, and he's got, like his shades on. He's like, I'm doing my best. I'm doing my best. We're talking. And he's like, he's doing his best in that moment and saying, I'm talking to the President right now. And he gets in his black suv. The like, he does reek of a kind of privilege that I think is hard in an era where people are concerned about prices and like, like it or not, the attacks on elites, they're potent.

[Tim Miller]

People hate the elites, Hamby. I mean, that is why they've just turned to Donald Trump.

[Peter Hamby]

No, no, I know, but, like, it's a very good point, Tim.

[Tim Miller]

I'm sorry, I do have to just laugh, but I'm sorry, we're at the bulwarks. We have to do this. It's like, I hear this is right. Well, everything you're saying is right. And they're my complaints about Gavin too. But it's like, I'm upset at elites and I'm set it and I'm upset about incompetence. And so what we need to turn to is somebody who is a total chaos agent, who is a Richie Rich man with a gold toilet, who surrounded himself by the world's richest billionaires. Like, they're going to do it. Them and a Fox News weekend host. Competence in the elites. So we need a weekend TV host and billionaires to save us. I hear it.

[Peter Hamby]

I'm with you on that. By the way. I will say Gavin has been tested at the national level. There were wildfires in California in 2019, and he dealt with Trump. He had a line in the White House. Line to the White House during COVID somehow was able to work with the President despite their verbal jousting. You know, I don't know if they respect each other, but they are larger than life political figures. At this point. And so you asked me to like point out the criticisms of Gavin. The upside are really smart guy, like reads a lot, cares about policy, governs one of the biggest economies in the world. Has really, I think, like for all the dart throwing at him on Twitter, responded to this pretty well. He expanded Cal Fire's budget. Like we have a literal army in this state. Like, I think it's the biggest in the world of, of firefighters and firefighting vehicles, aerial and otherwise. You can also bro out. We need Democrats who can fucking bro out. And like he's got a podcast with Marshawn Lynch. They talk about football. I'm not sure he's going to like.

[Tim Miller]

Talk about he's a competitor.

[Peter Hamby]

Yeah, I, I don't know if he can talk about like Jaden Daniels, like running the option and stuff, but I think he'd be better than Tim Walls not knowing, you know, what a punt is on.

[Tim Miller]

On Madden cuts both ways catching strays. It does catch both ways with Gavin. For me. I don't know, I get, I go back and forth on it. We have a couple other things we got to get to before I lose you speaking about all the billionaires around Trump. We have all of the leading social media oligarchs are tossing a salad now we've got Zuckerberg is dressing like a St. Bart's DJ and talking about masculinity and going down to Mar A Lago for his pilgrimage. Bezos is giving Melania 40 million for a documentary about her and going to Mar a Lago. Elon is obviously Trump's shadow president. You, you also work for Snapchat. And so I am curious whether have been any kind of strategic conversations there about ways for Snapchat to ingratiate themselves in for Trump. I have a couple ideas for you. Maybe. Citizens arrests of illegal migrants in Venice by your CEO could be one thing. Company retreats at the Doral Club to get into his good graces could be fun. I don't know. What do you think about the, about social media leaders getting up in Trump's butt?

[Peter Hamby]

Let me stand up for my company real quick. And my boss, Evan. Evan and Bobby, founders and CEO of Snapchat, have already donated and distributed $5 million to the fires in Los Angeles. This is an LA company.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, I thought you were gonna say to the inaugural.

[Peter Hamby]

No, but no, to his credit, Evan has been very consistent about our values and our terms of service over the years. And we have been proactive also about challenges on our platform. With fentanyl, for example, like we're out there saying, like, we have this issue and we're fighting it. We've helped, I think, message that. And brought down. Not brought down. We're not taking credit for it. But fentanyl deaths from press pills have plateaued in this country and we have been part of that campaign. Also, like, we fact check our ads at Snapchat. Donald Trump was removed from the platform back in 2020. Snap has been pretty consistent about our values around politics and news and content, et cetera. Let me say this. I think, first of all, Mark Zuckerberg does not look like a St. Bart's DJ. Like, Mark Zuckerberg looks like a guy. He looks like a DJ in like, you know, like at the University of Illinois, Champaign. Like, wanting to be UC Davis.

[Tim Miller]

UC Davis. It's not too far.

[Peter Hamby]

Yeah, yeah. He wants to be like John Summit and he never will be. But, like, he's just. By the way, there's also something. You see it in Elon and a lot of these tech people who are posturing and like, your interview with the Jason Calcanis was amusing in this sense. Like, I picked up on his body language. Some people are who they always were, you know, and like, there's that. There's a great video of Mark Zuckerberg, like, at a UFC fight where he's like, nervous and he's like, getting ready to go out with like, the fighters and he like, he thinks someone's about to high five him and he like, reaches his hand out and they weren't and he like takes his hand back in and it's like, everyone go look up this video. He's a nerd who wants to be cool. That's it. You know, maybe the Social network movie, like, actually nailed it too. Flattering Facebook things. The Zuckerberg thing is. So I'm really surprised by just how transparent it is. Like, usually large corporations make these subtle pivots and they couch it in certain language. Like, Jamie Dimon has done this a little bit with like, JP Morgan and like, their commitment to like, dei. Like, he just subtly changes language over the years, you know, while remaining to committed to it notionally and building a diverse and equitable workforce. Zuckerberg is just like firing all, all the diversity people. Like, we're going back to quote civic content after downranking civic content. Like, we aren't going to fact check this and like, we're going to do community notes. It's. And then he goes on Joe Rogan to announce it and goes to Mar a Lago to hang out with Donald Trump again. I mentioned this with Mike Johnson, but, like, that was the first thing I thought about with Mike Johnson when he was on the Trump plane going to the UFC fight with, like, Dana White and, like, all these other dudes. Like, he's like, oh, this is cool. I get to hang out with the guys that didn't want to, you know, pick me a gym class to be on the basketball team. And it is very transparent. I think it's larger than just Facebook, though. There is a. Just something in the culture. And this gets to Trump's victory, like, up and down the ballot, you know, not a mandate necessarily, but kind of unlike last time, it was a fluke when he won in 2017 or whatever. Like 2016. This time, like, the Republican victory was robust, Tim. And people are making changes accordingly, whether we like it or not. But the Facebook thing is just. I'm aghast with just how bluntly transparent and political it is. Nakedly political. And, you know, we're gonna have to fucking deal with this guy for a long time. He's our age. Like, when President AOC comes in, like, what's he going to be dressing like then?

[Tim Miller]

I think he's going to be putting on the Kunta. Kunta cloth. Like Nancy Pelosi.

[Peter Hamby]

Pelosi.

[Tim Miller]

We're pivoting back the other direction. Yeah. This is why the whole thing is. Yeah, I mean, I get sure the Republican victory was robust in the context of the fact that it was Donald Trump who was indicted four times as the nominee. You know what I mean? It wasn't robust in the 1984 sense, and it was only a couple hundred thousand votes. And so it's kind of silly. Facebook, one of the biggest companies in the world with billions of people on your platform, and you're like, well, because of the views of 50,000 people in green Bay, I'm going to change my entire policy. You know, like, you would think you would want a little more nuance than that, I think. But I've come around to the view that it reveals that Zuck really, he really resented all this stuff. He resented that he had to do trust and safety. You know, he resented that he had to, you know, care about what government, you know, bureaucrats wanted.

[Peter Hamby]

Why do you have to resent trust and safety, though? Like, this is like your business and your platform and like your quote unquote community, which is a phony ass term because it's such a massive user base. But, like, that's what I'm saying.

[Tim Miller]

It's all fake. It's all fake. He didn't want any of that. Right. He wanted to be able to do whatever he wanted and he wanted people to be able to say the R slur and like, do say pussy and like, whatever. Like, do you see the guy in the FT who's a banker? There's a banker in the FT that was like, now I can say retard and pussy again without being canceled. It's like, it's like what you're, you're a rich banker speaking to the ft. If you have perceived that you are being put upon all this time, that you are a vulnerable, at risk person as one of the richest people in the world, Mark Zuckerberg, or as a guy on finance and Wall street, you've perceived that you were put upon, but when in fact, like, you just didn't like criticism. I just think like, these guys don't like being challenged, they don't like criticism. And this is not actually him trying to protect his company because I think he's putting himself at risk if the Democrats ever get back in. I think what this is is him like venting, right, and saying like, ugh, I can finally be my worst self right now.

[Peter Hamby]

And I agree with you. But I also think there's something else with Zuckerberg which is, and again, I would say this in contrast to Evan at Snap. And Zuckerberg tried to buy Snapchat back in the day and Evan said nah. And Zuckerberg has tried to copy everyone else's cool products. And because he doesn't have original ideas, he attacked Apple the other day. You know, and Apple sort of has a lot of power over social media companies and. But whatever. He like said, Apple hasn't come out with a new product in a long time. This is somebody with no, by the way, from a business, tech and product perspective. But also clearly now with politics, there's no inner core set of values. There's no guiding light, there's no point of view. Evan cares about design and art like he does and he genuinely cares about what Snapchat is at this point, which is connecting closely with your friends. And we saw the value of that during the pandemic. I think Zuckerberg has no core values about what his company should be doing when it comes to politics, when it comes to trust and safety, what kind of products it should build. It's just survive in advance. Like he's like a bad politician who enters a primary and there's no message, there's no there there. He's like, I should Be running for president. Why? What's. What's the message? What's the. What's the thought?

[Tim Miller]

He should be running for president for a while. Zach contemplated that, remember?

[Peter Hamby]

Yeah. And, you know, he hired some of our old friends to, like, you know, maybe fluff him and tell him he should run for president.

[Tim Miller]

But, like, you have to love town hall meetings.

[Peter Hamby]

Yeah, but like, in leadership, in business, in politics, like, having a clear and consistent point of view is the best thing possible. Because you can, if you believe in it to your core, all the other things kind of fall into place around it and you can be successful. But if you're always pivoting, look, he'll be successful because he built something and the time was right. And, like, you know, there's infinite scale and he's always going to be making a shitload of money. But, like, I don't know, it's just. It's just he doesn't have any core values, and that's the issue.

[Tim Miller]

We got to do a little TikTok. The ban. Tic tac ban. Supposed to go into effect here in 5 days if ByteDance is not sold to American company or unless the Supreme Court intervenes. Ed Markey, Democratic senator from Massachusetts, has proposed a bill to delay the ban for 280 days.

[Peter Hamby]

Shoot.

[Tim Miller]

So that doesn't seem like that's going to happen, but that's out there. Some people, as of yesterday or a couple days ago, are fleeing to a different Chinese run app called RedNote, named after Mao's little red book. I guess the Chinese are pushing people to this other app, and now it's number one.

[Peter Hamby]

So is Taylor Lorenz.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, Taylor Lorenz is headed over there. I believe she tweeted Long live China or something. I guess somebody who really deeply cares about free speech obviously appreciates what's happening over in China, and that is now the number one. This red note is the number one most downloaded app on the Apple Store right now. So I want you to assess the state of play. But before you do, I want to play for you a clip from a TikTok creator who's sharing their thoughts. This is soupy.

[Soupy]

Fascist countries ban apps and websites under the guise of threats to national security when every other country knows it's about suppressing the free speech of its citizens. If the government believes that a single app could quote from the hearing on the 10th, skew the perspective of American citizens to be anti American, maybe the real problem is that American citizens are already in such a state of political unrest and unhappiness that our government is scared a single foreign influence could tip the scale and have it all be over. Don't you think that by taking away the, and I quote, key communications channel of Americans, it's going to make those 170 million Americans a little more anti American? Maybe Congress knows and understands that. Maybe the government knows that the backlash it will receive from banning TikTok does not outweigh the threats that come with its existence. Not in a matter of national security.

[Tim Miller]

So my thoughts for if an app has turned your brain into Tom Yum and you're preparing to overthrow the government to save it, maybe you should reflect, reflect on what's influencing you actually. But I think it's important to see what's out there. Supi is viral. Millions upon millions of views. The Gen z brain dead TikTok consumer is very unhappy about the government and they're ready to go red, I think over this. So I'm just, I'm wondering for your holistic view on the on TikTok and on the thoughts shared there by Soupy.

[Peter Hamby]

Let me go narrow first on Soupy. Then there's my holistic view on TikTok. So this clip was amazing. My Snapchat show. Good luck, America. Today we made fun of Soupy. There's some really good Soupy dunks on Twitter. My guy Peter Twinklage, he replied to Soupy and said, call me a bootlicker, but if you side with an illiterate Disney adult named Soupy over a bipartisan coalition constituting 81% of Congress, you should not be allowed to vote. Another one from a guy named Peter.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, we love Peter Twinklage, but I'm not taking anybody's suffrage rights away because they have bad tanks. But we appreciate you.

[Peter Hamby]

Here's a better one for you. Here's a better one for you that I think you and I are aligned with. Some guy on Twitter, James Lippins. I don't know who you are, James, but good tweet. Honestly, one of the most skillful uses of TikTok has been to convince a generation that other governments have been have solely benign intentions while the US government is literally Hitler and every single action it takes is to personally ruin the lives of zoomers. If you are so addicted to this app, which is a Chinese owned giant corporation like young liberals and people like AOC and Jamal Bowman and apparently Ed Markey who thinks he's cool and hip because of that one primary in which he, you know, talked about the Green New Deal and be to Kennedy, you know, it's Just amazing. Like, there are journalists, aforementioned journalists and writers who have bent over backwards to defend TikTok just because they personally like it. There are Democrats who, progressives in particular, who have been defending TikTok because they think Republicans who want to ban it are automatically bad. But also, you know, this is where young people are gathering and getting information. The information is quite frequently dog shit, lies, news adjacent. It is, by the way, lots of, quote, news creators who are ripping off the reporting of actual journalists and doing commentary around it. You and I Both look at TikTok, you get fun basketball highlights, you get cooking recipes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's, there's. The content is good in certain gay drama. Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Indie rock.

[Peter Hamby]

Yeah. I would never, ever look at gay drama. Ew. But like, the macro view on all of this is. And by the way, shame on Ed Markey for doing what. What Trump wants just because he wants his young progressives in Massachusetts to reelect him. The free speech arguments that TikTok made before the Supreme Court were very dumb to begin with, I think. I'm not an attorney, but, like, do you think that Samuel Alito and John Roberts and Sonia Sotomayor are going to, like, one, understand that, like, oh, creators are having their free speech rights removed or agree with that? Because those creators can obviously just post on Snapchat, on Spotlight or reels or YouTube shorts or whatever. Like, you can still stand on an apple crate in this country and scream through a bullhorn. But two, the First Amendment argument that they presented is that TikTok as a private company, has a right to control editorially what's on its platform. And I think it was Alito who I don't like, but Alito shot back like, okay, cool, but that's China. That's not a U.S. company. Right? Like, that's like, why are you making this argument? I think there is a libertarian argument to be made.

[Tim Miller]

Does the CCP not have First Amendment rights? I don't know how that works. Does chair. She have First Amendment rights? We need to get George Conway.

[Peter Hamby]

According to. According to. Yeah, let George answer that. But according to my reading of the transcripts of the, of the, of the Supreme Court hearings, the justices were not open to the idea that China deserves to have editorial control over its company because it's not a U.S. company. And we've had Friendster, we've had vine, we've had MySpace, Tumblr, Withered. Facebook sort of became irrelevant. Like, platforms come and go, they die, whatever. Like, these people need to realize that this company is not Unambiguously good. It is crazy the amount of subtle propaganda on this platform, beginning with their own corporate propaganda. When their CEO testified before Congress last year, before the House and I think also the Senate, you know, there were some dumb members of Congress who, like, didn't get the tech. But most of the questions were actually pretty probing and good. And the popular media coverage of it was tough hearing for TikTok. If you went on TikTok after that hearing, it was nothing but, like, Dear Leader, the CEO, we love you. TikTok is great. Like, even. Even Redbook. Like, there's reports out there that they're also downranking and removing content that's deemed offensive. Like, it's just really gross the way people just like the app and therefore think there are no national security concerns. They can't influence public opinion in the United States. They already are. Based on that one tweet I just read you, I thought that was really great. But also, it's like, one thing I'm interested in, Tim, is Trump. Obviously, he's filed amicus brief because he wants to stay.

[Tim Miller]

What's your prediction? Where does this land? Yeah, we got five days. Trump comes in on the 20th. The day after, there's some discussion that Elon's talking about purchasing it by dance with. I didn't switch back on that. But what do you think? How do you think Trump plays it?

[Peter Hamby]

They want to ban TikTok and Trump doesn't. And he told Charlie Kirk, I will never ban TikTok. I think my prediction is there might be a window where it's not available on the app stores, but Trump will find some sort of, like, US Buyer for it. But I'm not sure the other thing, by the way, I should say this. This can punctuate this conversation just to bring it back to Soupy and her brain soup. It's not fascist that Congress passed a law to ban an app that might be hoovering up data. Not just on you. This is what TikTok does. They get data on Tim, but also data on the people in your contact book. Okay. Like, there's a lot of data collection going on, but I think the influence campaign stuff is worse. You know what would be really fascist? Tim, what's up? Something Trump could do, which is this. Trump could become president the day after the ban and tell Pam Bondi, his new attorney general, just not to enforce the law. That can happen, right? That would be fucking fascist. That would be a President United States. Not to Supie telling his Justice Department not.

[Tim Miller]

That'd be Freedom for Sufi, freedom for Supy.

[Peter Hamby]

But that's actual fascism. A president telling, just ignoring a law that was passed and signed by a previous president without any sort of process to unwind it. So I, I think we're actually in the middle ground. I think we are coming up on a ban on January 19th. TikTok is saying it's not for sale, or ByteDance is saying it's not for sale. And I think Ryan Broderick, who's a good tech writer, pointed this out. They don't need us, they want us. They want our data. But TikTok doesn't make money from advertising. It's e commerce platform and it's available in most other countries except for China because China doesn't want TikTok in their own country. Sorry. It's also banned in India, by the way, and they smartly banned it many years ago.

[Tim Miller]

But I was told by Taylor learns the Chinese cared about free speech and free expression. So I find that hard to believe. I go, yeah, I don't know, man, I hear you. I. This is the one where this is not, this is bad content, man. Bad content creation. I have no fucking idea what Trump's gonna do about this one. I'm kind of intrigued to watch. I have no idea.

[Peter Hamby]

That's what I'm saying. He asked for a 90 day stay so he can figure out a deal because he's a deal maker. His little lawyer said in the brief, Trump's a deal. He's a known deal maker.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, we get Mr. Wonderful to buy it, like all the, all the rich guys, Andreessen and Mr. Wonderful and Peter Thiel and David Ball, Sacks and Elon can all pitch in and we'll see.

[Peter Hamby]

Well, last time, last time this was an issue in 2020, by the way. I think he could have actually banned it then. Now it's much more enmeshed in our culture. I should mention, according to Pew, more young people use Snapchat than TikTok, by the way.

[Tim Miller]

But that's the last free one you got.

[Peter Hamby]

Okay, fine. But I talked to Lindsey Graham in 2020 around that moment and he was like, I saved TikTok. I was like, what are you talking about, Lindsay? He goes, well, so my, my niece called me and she was like, like, like Lindsay, I heard they're going to ban Tick Tock. And so I called Trump and I was like, we got to get a solution to this. So Lindsey Graham took credit for saving it last time. No one talks about this.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, well, we'll have to look into that. There you go. There's Peter Hamby's Southern South Carolina voice. His meme, always from South Carolina. So, you know, you can yell at him if you don't think he did a good job with it. Do you want to take us out with anything? What are the tunes that have been bringing you solace during the fires out there? Do you have a. You have an album you've been listening to, something you can take the listeners out with today?

[Peter Hamby]

I've been on a huge Fontaine's DC kick in. Not just their last album, but like. Like I'm a super fan of them now. Like, I've been listening to them over and over all their albums. I've been listening to a lot of Fontaine's lately. How about you? What's getting you through watching this from afar? What are you going to be listening to on Monday, Tim, when Trump is sworn?

[Tim Miller]

I had. Somebody asked me to create a distraction playlist. I can't do it. I'm not feeling inspired. You know, my creative juices are not being moved by the inauguration. And so I don't think that I can. I can do an inauguration playlist. So I don't know. We've been listening to a little Remy Wolf and, you know, I've been listening to a little. I've been going back on this old Alex Chilton. You'll find this Alex. You know that song Boogie Shoes? It was in Boogie Nights. And yeah, Alex Chilton, I found out he lived in New Orleans after the band was Big Star and he lived in the Mariner, the Bywater. I forget. In like a dilapidated house after Big Star kind of fizzled and he wasn't making any money anymore. And I was reading an article about him. So this has me listening to some old Alex Chilton. So I made some impaired trees. I might go see Larry Parent trees on Sunday. So I've got them back in the rotation. They're good Bad Bunny record anyway. But we want. But everybody want to give them what you want. Fontaine's dc. We're playing some Fontaine's DC for the people.

[Peter Hamby]

I will say this, there was some. So I saw. I hate saying this. I saw a Tick tock the other night and it was a girl who grew up in Altadena, Black girl. And she posted like one of those tiktoks. It's like a slideshow of just pictures. And it was like pictures of her and her big family through the generations and like the fruit tree in their yard and like, like just how much she loved Altadena. And it was set to a song by Cleo Soul, who's sort of like a British singer, songwriter chick. People might know her from Salt S A U L T, that band.

[Tim Miller]

She's like the.

[Peter Hamby]

Yeah, so she's like the singer behind that. And this song, I'll send it to you when we get off here. Like, slayed me. Like it was. I lost it. Like she, this woman, this was posting her memories of her home and her family. And like, you know, these aren't just houses, they are lives. And like homes are, we're proud of them and they're living organisms and there's so much bundled up in them. And like this song accompanied with that sentiment was extremely moving. So if I have Feelings, next time I'll be listening to Cleo Soul.

[Tim Miller]

All right. I appreciate it. I like it when you, when you share feelings. Peter. Well, Fontaine's DC might be a little hardcore for people, so the hardcore listeners amongst us can go find that on their Spotify or Apple Music app. And for everybody else, we'll send you out with some Clio. So we'll be back here tomorrow. As I mentioned, the intro, huge show tomorrow. All Heg Seth all the time. And a little bit of the Jack Smith Report once we've had a chance to dig deeper into that. So make sure to come on back here. And if you just are dying, if you can't wait till Wednesday's pod for Heg Seth analysis, you can go to the bulwark.com subscribe and we will have a Tuesday night recap on our substack with me and Sarah and Sam Stein and the gang so you can check it out there. Everybody else, we'll see you back here tomorrow. Peter. Hang in there in la. To all our other pals in la, hang in there. We appreciate you. We appreciate you, Ian, who and our other bells are out there doing the work.

[Peter Hamby]

Thank you, Ian.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Bringing supplies.

[Peter Hamby]

Thank you Kim and Kath and Haya. Thank you, Addie.

[Tim Miller]

Like we have Gotti who's out there covering the stuff. Our pals out there in la. We appreciate everybody. Thanks for sticking around for the show. Ambie will talk to you soon. Everybody else will be back here tomorrow.

[Cleo Soul]

Peace Listen Listen to it Voice Cuz I'm in love I give love from what God bless and I feel it I I get so clear in my breath I'm not alone and I've had the time to love and let love go I'm loving you gonna Our life is the life that we want.

[Tim Miller]

Let.

[Cleo Soul]

Love in for completion there's got to be more believers.

[Tim Miller]

The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.