Ryan Grim: An Unconscionable Reaction to a Summary Execution

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast – Episode Summary

Episode: "Ryan Grim: An Unconscionable Reaction to a Summary Execution"

Date: January 8, 2026

Host: Tim Miller

Guest: Ryan Grim (Reporter, co-founder of Dropsite News)

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Main Theme and Purpose

This episode centers on the recent shooting of Renee Good, an unarmed American citizen, by ICE agents in Minneapolis, exploring the facts of the incident, the government’s reaction, the disturbing public discourse surrounding it, and the broader political and cultural patterns such responses reveal. The conversation branches into analysis of US foreign policy (with a focus on Venezuela), right-wing "populist" foreign policy contradictions, Epstein revelations’ impact on political factions, evolving identity politics, and intra-left/Democratic Party disagreements.

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Key Segments & Discussion Points

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1. ICE Shooting of Renee Good: What Happened? (01:40–07:23)

The Incident

• Tim introduces the tragic shooting: Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother, was killed by an ICE agent while sitting in her Honda Pilot, leaving behind three children—including a six-year-old who is now orphaned (01:40).
• Grim details how the incident fits a familiar pattern from his years reporting on police shootings: “You have a situation where a person is trying to comply, but tense, nervous and angry officers are shouting contradictory orders at them. This happens, unfortunately, way too often.” – Ryan Grim (02:37)
• Both note the chilling detail that the agent who shot her was filming or scrolling on his phone with his non-shooting hand during the incident. “There’s no training manual that would say, oh, and also you should have your iPhone out in the other hand. Just absolute rank amateur nonsense.” – Ryan Grim (04:37)

Systemic Critique

• Both Tim and Ryan forcefully reject any justification for the ICE agents’ actions, noting Renee was not a criminal suspect and her car was stationary, not threatening officers: “Frame by frame analysis is a trap because it almost acknowledges the legitimacy of what they're doing to begin with. They have no business confronting an American citizen on an American road just going about her business. Leave her alone.” – Ryan Grim (06:53)

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2. Political & Media Reaction (07:23–15:25)

Right-Wing and Administration Response

• Trump’s and other administration officials’ statements falsely depicted Good as “deranged,” “violent,” and a domestic terrorist, despite clear video evidence to the contrary (07:23–08:33).
  • “That’s just a totally hallucinated story. Like that isn’t even anything resembling what happened.” – Tim Miller (08:33)
• Noem and others falsely assert ICE officers were "attacked," twisting facts to fit a law-and-order narrative.
• Grim notes: “If this was like 2004 or something and there was no video of this… [people] would be like, wow, I guess… in such a situation, we know there are such things as car rammings… Then you see the actual video. It’s like, no, it’s a traffic jam these idiots created that she’s trying to get out of. And then they murdered her.” (09:35)

Broader Societal Concerns

• Tim highlights how quickly many citizens defend summary execution if an order isn’t followed: “It’s been pretty… jarring to me that there are a lot of our citizens out there… who basically think the punishment for not listening to a cop's orders in a stressful situation is that you should be summarily executed.” – Tim Miller (13:21)
• Ryan adds, “When you're defending something that most police officers won’t defend, you’ve taken a wrong turn… They hate those people so much that they don’t care.” (14:32)

Notable Quote

• “Fuckery is an expression of your power, the power imbalance. That I can say this completely outrageous thing and all you can do is just like spit and rage about it.” – Ryan Grim (12:05) [On officials knowingly lying]

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3. Escalation and Political Risks (15:25–16:17)

• Both express concerns that such an incident could lead to further violence, protester backlash, and increased government crackdowns, as in recent years. Grim: “We’re early 2026 now… This is a dark moment.” (15:25)

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4. U.S. Policy in Venezuela: Motives and Contradictions (18:08–25:34)

Administration Moves

• Ryan details the administration’s confusing handling of Venezuelan oil: “It’s a really bizarre situation… It’s not a regime change operation. It's a president change operation… What he's doing now with the oil is so bizarre and in some ways very, very Trumpian.” (18:08)
• U.S. actions are no longer couched even in the language of democracy—just overt resource extraction: “This is just gangster stuff.” (19:07)

Domestic Political Drivers

• Tim and Ryan discuss how South Florida’s Cuban/Venezuelan diaspora and Marco Rubio’s ambitions are influencing U.S. policy more than national interest.
  • “You're, you and Rubio are trying to use the American government to settle your own scores over in Venezuela and Cuba… not something the American people are on board for.” – Ryan Grim (21:05)

Economic Irony

• Trump’s pressure to expand oil supply is devastating the domestic oil industry, despite rhetoric of protecting U.S. energy (22:22).
• “I don’t think he’s trying to destroy American manufacturing… but that’s the consequence of his policies.” – Ryan Grim (22:48)

Macro Perspective

• U.S. is retreating from global hegemony, focusing on “our backyard,” which Ryan finds problematic: “It’s such a weird term. It’s not our backyard. These are our neighbors.” (25:34)

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5. Populist Right, Machismo Foreign Policy & Contradictions (25:55–32:21)

Horseshoe Theory & Non-Interventionism

• Tim notes how some right-wing populists sounded like “the left” on foreign engagement, but fold fast when military action is “successful” or jingoistic: “With the Matt Walsh strain… there's a macho element to his politics that is going to dominate over whatever claims he has to non interventionism.” – Ryan Grim (28:45)
• “That's not a principle. That's just being a thug.” (29:33)
• Consistent isolationist voices, like The American Conservative, tend not to have real power once the right governs; their figureheads, like JD Vance, become “defanged” (32:10).

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6. Epstein Files, Conspiracies, and Political Fallout (32:21–48:08)

Disillusionment with Trump

• Grim explains how the “manosphere-podcast” world, which includes figures like Tim Dillon and Joe Rogan, is disappointed not by lack of economic populism, but by Trump’s cover-up of Epstein-related files: “What that means is that giving us the Epstein stuff… that's what they want… you can actually do that.” (33:11)
• “To see him become an obstacle to that, I think is extremely demoralizing… radicalizing.” (35:27)

What Did We Learn from New Epstein Documents?

• Confirm the “gray area” conventional wisdom: Epstein operated with links to U.S. and Israeli intel, serving multiple personal and institutional interests, not as a pure “puppet” for a single agency (37:10–43:14).
• “What people need to understand… he was able to deliver material benefits to his allies that were not raping young girls… If you wanted… a million-dollar retainer with [an oligarch], Epstein got you that deal… He was making these people rich and getting them meetings.“ – Ryan Grim (41:47)
• Trump’s motivations to keep files secret are self-serving and/or under pressure from powerful interests, but Trump is hard to embarrass due to his own public history of predatory behavior and shamelessness (46:44).
  • "He's very hard to shame… What more is going to embarrass him?" – Ryan Grim (47:02)

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7. White Identity Politics and the Left’s Reckoning (49:32–59:46)

White Solidarity on the Right

• Elon Musk’s embrace of explicit white-identity rhetoric alarms both hosts: “White solidarity is the only way to survive” – Elon Musk (read by Tim, 49:59).
• Grim: “It's 1850s Southern white… ‘we should end slavery, but if we do, they’ll kill us all.’ That level of fear and projection.” (50:44)

Left’s Dabbling with Anti-White Rhetoric

• Viral controversy aids the right’s narrative: Tim lists tweets from lower-level Democratic figures making blanket anti-white statements, prompting concern about left-wing identity excesses fueling right-wing backlash.

Academic Jargon, Reckoning, and Organizational Dysfunction

• Grim explains how academic language about “whiteness” as a sociological structure led to reckless or literal attacks on actual white people (53:02).
• “The left took several wrong turns to find themselves in this place… You probably need to retrace your steps at that point and figure out how you got there.” – Ryan Grim (53:02)
• Tim: “We should just judge people as individuals.” (54:33)
• Grim confirms there’s been little explicit reckoning or sufficient pushback from the left: “There's been a homer quietly walking back into the hedges.” (58:36)
• Both hosts agree on not “giving scalps” over youthful social-media excess—“We all said a lot of crazy things and we're not going to eliminate everybody from public life who said crazy things during late teens and early 20s. Because that's the entire left. Everyone, for the most part.” (55:14)

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8. Intra-Dem/Liberal vs. Populist Progressive Discourse: The Liz Cheney Example (60:07–end)

The Kamala Harris Campaign and Left Discontent

• Tim vents frustration that Never Trumpers and figures like Liz Cheney were blamed for Trump’s win, even though the left didn’t fully support Harris due to her Gaza policy, while the interventionist wing supported her despite disagreements (60:09–62:47).
  • "Liz Cheney was like, I support Kamala Harris... All the folks that came from more of an interventionist side recognized Trump for the threat that he was, opposed him, tried to help. And a lot of people on the left spent the whole campaign pissing in the tent. And then at the end of the campaign, they're like, fucking Liz Cheney's fault." – Tim Miller (62:47)
• Grim presents the left’s view: it needed actual concessions or symbolic support (such as a DNC speaking slot for a Palestinian-American lawmaker) to mobilize turnout, but Harris offered nothing (62:47–67:47).
  • “They have said this publicly, we cannot deliver these left anti war votes just by virtue of our charisma… we need something to tell them… and they decided to give nothing.” – Ryan Grim (62:47)
• Miller responds with pragmatic frustration about the double standard of demands on Dems’ center-right vs. the left.

The Limits of Influence

• Grim emphasizes: “Even if Hasan Piker is out there begging people to vote for Kamala… it wouldn’t have landed. If you don’t give Hasan anything to tell his audience… he then stops being the person that’s going to influence them. Now you need other, more radical people to do what you want them to do. There’s a reality to these people’s views that aren’t going to be changed by influencers.” (70:55)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Fuckery is an expression of your power…” – Ryan Grim (12:05)
• “When you’re defending something that most police officers won’t defend, you’ve taken a wrong turn.” – Ryan Grim (13:43)
• “White solidarity is the only way to survive.” – Elon Musk (quoted, 49:59)
• “The left took several wrong turns to find themselves in this place where they're attacking 11-year-old white children. You probably need to retrace your steps at that point and figure out how you got there.” – Ryan Grim (53:02)
• “[Epstein] was making these people rich and getting them meetings… You don’t even need blackmail to explain a huge amount of what he was able to accomplish.” – Ryan Grim (41:47)
• “That is how you feel. And throughout history there are… people who do not fit in that category. There always will be. And you can't hector them to be otherwise.” – Ryan Grim (69:10)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 01:40 — Breakdown of the ICE shooting
• 04:37 — Analysis of officer’s use of phone during deadly encounter
• 07:23 — Dissection of political, administrative, and right-wing reaction
• 13:21 — Public psychological response to summary execution
• 15:25 — Concern about escalation and societal tension
• 18:08 — Venezuela US policy deep-dive
• 28:45 — Populist right, “machismo” foreign policy, and hypocrisy
• 32:21 — Trump, Epstein, and the podcast “manosphere” world
• 37:10 — Epstein files: What we actually learned (vs. conspiracy theories)
• 49:32 — Identity politics, Musk’s white solidarity tweet, left-wing anti-white rhetoric
• 60:07 — Democratic infighting: Liz Cheney, Kamala Harris, and left/progressive frustration

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Closing

The episode is a rich, unflinching interrogation of both right- and left-wing failures and excesses—showcasing the dangers of authoritarianism, the moral perils of law enforcement impunity, the contradictions of both populist right and left, and the ongoing struggle for moral and strategic clarity in U.S. politics.

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Transcript

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[Tim Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Boulder Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome for the first time to the show reporter and co founder at Dropsite News. His books include the Squad and Deformity with the Intercept as well as suffering the indignity of working with Sam Stein at the Huffington Post. It's Ryan Grimm. What's up man?

[Ryan Grimm]

No indignity at all, man. I'm jealous that you get to work with Sam. I, I miss, I miss my time with all with old Sammy. It was about a decade that we were partners in crime over there.

[Tim Miller]

Is that right?

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, it's like almost, almost 10 years.

[Tim Miller]

Time flies. Yeah, we got a lot to get to. I want to do a little bit of like at the end just for the real sickos, like you know, intra Democratic party narrative wars between the Liz Cheney wing and the populist lefties. But unfortunately the news gods have given us a bunch of sad shit to talk about. So first, yesterday morning during a nice encounter in Minneapolis, Renee Good, a 37 year old mother, was murdered by an ICE agent. She was sitting in her Honda Pilot waving officers by when three masked agents descended on her car, tried to open the door. They're shouting instructions at her. She tries to pull away. One of the agents draws down on her and shoots her three times in the head. She leaves behind three kids, including a six year old son who had previously lost his father and is now orphaned. I want to get into kind of the reaction but just on the actual events of what happened? I was wondering what your thoughts were.

[Ryan Grimm]

I've done a lot of police shooting reporting over the years, and this was sadly a very familiar scene, which is where you have a situation where a person is trying to comply, but tense, nervous and angry officers are shouting contradictory orders at them. This happens, unfortunately, way too often. And in this case, if you look closely, you have one person saying, get out of the car and pulling on her door handle, and then you have another officer saying, get out of here. And it's hard to, I think, put yourself in a place where you have masked armed men surrounding you and your situation has gone from 0 to 60. Because as you said in the video right before that, she was waving some ICE officers past her.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

And then she's about to leave, and then somebody kind of cuts her off. So she lets that person go. So she's waiting to exit this area, and then this other vehicle comes storming up. And the officer that killed her was not in that vehicle. He's kind of off to the side filming. And this is what really struck me. Did you notice this?

[Tim Miller]

I didn't notice it till this morning. I'd seen this video like, two times before we published yesterday and did a little commentary on it. You know, it was like the ninth time I was watching, I was like, wait, what is in his left hand?

[Ryan Grimm]

He has his phone.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, it looks like he's. I don't know if he's filming, but his phone. His phone is.

[Ryan Grimm]

His phone is out. He's either scrolling.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

Or. Or filming. And it's so cold.

[Tim Miller]

You can.

[Ryan Grimm]

You can tell from the video. It's so cold. He's got his bare hand. One of those just phone addicts that is willing to get, like, hypothermia to have his phone out. And so there is a. There are a couple stills where you can see he's pointing the phone at the window, at the driver's window, while he's drawing his weapon. Like, set aside that you're not supposed to shoot at a moving vehicle for many obvious reasons.

[Tim Miller]

This is like Department of Justice policy.

[Ryan Grimm]

By the way, and all local police forces have it too, because shooting a driver of a car does not stop the car. Most people don't need to be trained.

[Tim Miller]

Opposite, actually, in a lot of times.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right. Yeah, exactly. It does the opposite. They usually, like, their foot hits the. Hits the gas pedal and they accelerate. But there's no training manual that would say, oh, and also you should have your iPhone out in the other hand, like, looking through your, like, just absolute rank Amateur nonsense. Attorneys who have defended police officers in police involved shooting cases have almost unanimously been coming out and saying this is indefensible. Like what I would try to do is cut some kind of a deal if this were my client. Like the fact that she's turning the wheel, but also like, why are they harassing this American citizen?

[Tim Miller]

There's no reason for them to be there.

[Ryan Grimm]

That's kind of why there's no authority to, to deal with her.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I spent a lot of time like, which I shouldn't have probably getting social media fights with people like going through the frame by frame on all the stuff you just broke down. And you know, and I can do the most generous possible. Maybe it is possible that the officer ended up shooting or the agent the shot or was scared in that moment. It does happen fast. But I, you know, then the car does turn because you turn the wheel. Then he shoots her two times to the side window when he's out of any danger.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

The point I kept trying to make to people was like, it's stupid to even get into the frame by frame analysis argument. Like what was happening here? This is a 37 year old woman in her Honda Pilot. You know, she's got stuffed animals for a kid sitting in the passenger seat. The car is not moving, it's stationary. And a bunch of masked officers like storm the car and start shaking her door. And then one of them draws their weapon. It's like there was no need for any of this. Right. Like she was not a dangerous. It's not like they were like that. She was a suspect. And this is one of these tragedies where like they were told that a murderer is in a Honda Pilot or something like this and they converge on a car. Right, Right. She's not a criminal suspect. She's not even an undocumented immigrant. If that's the purpose of them being there. Ice like she is, I guess maybe protesting. We don't know the whole backstory at this point about like what she'd been doing, but the car is not in any way a threat until these guys converge on it.

[Ryan Grimm]

I think you're right that in some ways the frame by frame analysis is a trap because it, it almost acknowledges like the legitimacy of what they're doing to begin with and then says, well, that, but they made some mistakes here. And so that rises to, you know, some type of homicide. But no, like they have no business confronting an American citizen on an American road just going about her business. Like, leave her alone. Like you, you don't have any business being there. Like, stop.

[Tim Miller]

The administration's reaction is just unbelievably unconscionable. I just wanna read through a couple of the things the President said this. The woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting. She then violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE officer who seems to have shot her in self defense. Based on the clip, it's hard to believe he is alive but is now recovering in the hospital. So Trump said he's recovering the hospital. This is obviously not true. You watch the officer walk away. Vance this morning says every congressional Democrat should be asked a simple question. Do you think this officer was wrong in defending his life against a deranged leftist who tried to run him over? Says again, this woman, American citizen who gets murdered, Vice President's now calling her names and making accusations about her motives without knowing anything. And then we had Kristi Noem dressed up as Indiana Jones yesterday in a press conference. Let's listen to that.

[Advertisement Voice]

It was an act of domestic terrorism. What happened was our ICE officers were out in enforcement action.

[Ryan Grimm]

They got stuck in the snow because.

[Tim Miller]

Of the adverse weather that is in Minneapolis.

[Advertisement Voice]

They were attempting to push out their.

[Ryan Grimm]

Vehicle and a woman attacked them and.

[Tim Miller]

Those surrounding them and attempted to run.

[Advertisement Voice]

Them over and ram them with her vehicle.

[Tim Miller]

That's just a totally hallucinated story. Like that isn't even anything resembling what happened.

[Ryan Grimm]

And it's also, what's this Keystone Cop nonsense of like getting your car stuck in the snow? You're cops. Like cops are supposed to be out helping people who can't handle inclement situations. Like these are absolute amateurs. Like, so, so they started the traffic jam by getting their car stuck in the snow in Minnesota. Like you were surprised that there was ice and snow in Minnesota. You don't have snow tires on your car in Minnesota. Like if you have snow tires, you should not be stuck in the snow in, in Minnesota. So what are you doing? So you started this entire thing. Now you've created a traffic jam. It's chaos. She's waving people through. Instead of going through, you run up on her and surround her vehicle and give her contradictory orders and then shoot and kill her. If we, if this was like, you know, 2004 or something and there was no video of this.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Ryan Grimm]

Like the lie in some ways is less offensive. It's, it's more absurd because all of us know it's such a blatant lie. But like imagine if we didn't have the video and all we had is eyewitnesses versus what Noma's saying. And Noma's saying she tried to ram them with her vehicle and she's a domestic terrorist. You people be like, wow, I guess, you know, in such a situation, we know there are such things as car rammings that happens. This is terrifying. I feel for those officers. Then you see the actual video. It's like, no, it's a traffic jam that these idiots created that she's trying to get out of. And then they murdered her.

[Tim Miller]

I guess I'm gonna have to quibble with you on it being less offensive because for me it's more offensive because it's like, interesting.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. Trying to make it just washes over.

[Tim Miller]

Not like, what is truth, what is anything. You know, it is pernicious, right? This idea that like they can just make up a totally false story when we all have seen it and you know, again, that she's a deranged leftist, she's trying to ram them. There are a lot of right wing accounts that are posting and coming out for me this morning and saying things like, well, the car is rolling up on them and they didn't see. What are they supposed to do? And I'm like, this is like one of those situations. The car is stumped and it's like, I don't know, back when you were a teen, if it's one of those situations, like you're standing in front of your buddy's car, then they hit the gas a little bit to give you a little start. That's what this was. The guy easily got out of the way.

[Ryan Grimm]

It's on ice. Like he could push the car backwards.

[Tim Miller]

Right. The idea that this is not a car going 35 miles an hour swerving at a cop or a car that started and then presses the gas and jams across the parking lot aiming at the cops. This is a stopped car and they are yelling at her. And the idea that then that our government would call this person names and smear them. And it's not like this is unprecedented. Obviously went through this all before. It's a white woman. It's a little bit different than some of the past situations, but I don't know, it seems like especially egregious to me in this case.

[Ryan Grimm]

Back when Sam and I were at HuffPost, we published a viral essay that described the term that comes from hip hop for this phenomenon. It's called fuckery. It's when you tell a lie that you know is a lie. You know, the person hearing it knows It's a lie and they know that you know it's a lie and it's a power move. Like it's, it's beyond a lie.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

Because a lie implies some attempt to deceive. In this case, there really is no intent to deceive because we can all see what happened. Fuckery is an expression of your power, the power imbalance. That I can say this completely outrageous thing and all you can do is just like spit and rage about it.

[Tim Miller]

I like fuckery a lot better than gaslighting. If I'm just gonna be choosing a word, it feels more on point. Yeah, I don't know, man. There's definitely fuckery happening from the administration, but I was pretty shook by the amount of people, real people, not bots, people I know in my life on social media who are basically just like, yeah, she deserved it. Like, I'm sorry, if a cop tells you to do something, you should do it. I was thinking like, I was kind of shook when Charlie Kirk was killed and there were a lot of people that were kind of like, well, he deserved it. He had what was coming to him. The people in my life said that it's been pretty, I should say, jarring to me that there are a lot of our citizens out there, a lot of people in the country, a lot of people in the political space who basically think the punishment for not listening to a cop's orders in a stressful situation is that you should be summarily executed. I don't know if you have any thoughts on this, on the psychological status of our fellow Americans, but it's pretty.

[Ryan Grimm]

Disturbing, extremely disturbing that that element of it is, is dark, you know, seeing people who you disagree with on some things, agree with on some things. Defending the indefensible for no reason. Like, you don't have to do this.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, her kid is orphaned. She has a six year old orphan. Why are you doing this? Like she didn't, you know, you could just grab her license plate.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right. When you're defending something that most police officers won't defend, you've taken a wrong turn. Like any police officer who's gone through training, watching that would say, none of that is how this should be done. This is an embarrassment to us, this is a shame. This person should be punished and prosecuted to not agree with those police officers because you hate. And I think this is where the darkness comes in. They might not even agree with it. They just hate that woman so much that they don't care. Like a 37 year old liberal poet, like who may or may not. Like they assumed that she was like an observer at the protest. I don't even know if that's true in this case, but that's what they believe, that this was a protester.

[Tim Miller]

It seems like she probably was, but even. It doesn't matter.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. So let's say she was. They hate those people so much that they're okay, that they're. That they're glad that this was done to her. That's where the darkness, I think, is. Is seeping in.

[Tim Miller]

I have escalation concerns from all parties here. And I've just. People are right to be rage. I'm fucking enraged. You know, I was living in Minnesota, protesting. I saw some videos of protesters. Good reason. Righteously shouting at some of these ICE and CBP officials. You know, one of those guys gets upset about that administration cracking down, you know, reliving Kenosha or other things for 2020. There are some 2020 elements to this. This is January, not the summer, which is maybe in some ways going to tamp that down. But do you have concerns about escalations from all parties?

[Ryan Grimm]

Yes, because we're early 2026 now. We're looking at three years at least a long way until this term expires. Who knows what comes after that? Time is moving much more slowly than I think we would like it to. If we do believe we're going to move through this period. Yeah, this is. This is a dark moment. And your point about DHS and. And the others, like, rallying around. You had people just immediately. And Trump, like, immediately defending him rather than, we're going to look into this, you know, we're going to let the.

[Tim Miller]

Investigation go to Minnesota.

[Ryan Grimm]

Tom Holman was like, we're going to let the investigation play out.

[Tim Miller]

Tom Holman is the moderate actor in this administration right now.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right, Right. Yeah. When Tom Holman is a voice of reason. We're in a bleak place.

[Tim Miller]

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[Ryan Grimm]

It's a really bizarre situation, right? It's not a regime change operation. It's a president change operation which ahead of time there were people that were predicting that he would do something like this because he had built up such an armada and now had got himself stuck and had to climb down somehow and so the only way out would be through. And those predictions seem to have been pretty on point. What he's doing right now with the oil is so bizarre and in some ways it's very, very Trumpian as well. Usually the United States, when it goes around the world extracting resources from people, does so with glossy language about democracy. So we'll say we're doing a great thing for people. And in fact we're actually doing a pretty cynical thing for ourselves, though sometimes both. Sometimes both, sure.

[Tim Miller]

Sometimes a cynical thing for ourselves is a great thing for people. Sometimes every once in a while.

[Ryan Grimm]

In this case it's the reverse in that they have so much oil stored and blocked because of US sanctions and because of our blockade, you know, not allowing it out, they're in a crisis because they're making oil and they have nowhere to send it. This is an engineering crisis that we have created. And so they need to sell this oil. But we took their license, you know, took the Chevron license at the request of these South Florida members of Congress and, and, you know, pushed by Rubio and his, his gang. And so now what he's doing is reinstituting that license without doing it. Like, the terms of this oil seizure are weird and unprecedented. And there's, it's going to, the money's going to go in offshore accounts before it goes to, like, pay these, the debts or this, that. But it is not that dissimilar fundamentally from what the terms would have been under the license. So Trump's saying we're going to steal all your oil, but what he's actually doing is kind of reissuing the license, but without issuing the license. License implies, like, some type of law and regulation being followed. This is just gangster stuff. But for pdvsa, the oil company, this is a lifeline. Like, they need that oil out of their storage tankers, and Trump's saying they're going to sell it and split the proceeds, which is exactly what would happen under the licensing regime if you then lift sanctions. Because if Rubio is running the country and Trump is running the country, then why would you sanction Rubio?

[Tim Miller]

And Trump said to the Times this morning, we might be running it for a few years.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. So got to lift the sanctions at that point.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Ryan Grimm]

So the South Florida crowd is actually very upset about all of this.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Ryan Grimm]

Because they're like, no, no, no, we don't want the US Running Venezuela. We want to run Venezuela. But then that doesn't pass the sniff test for the American people because it's like, wait a minute, who's we? I thought we as the US Government, aren't you Americans? It's like, oh, no, you're not. You're like Venezuelan right wing folks who want to, like, take the country back over. And then it exposes the entire scheme. Like, you're, you and Rubio are trying to use the American government to settle your own scores over in Venezuela and Cuba, which nobody. Like, that's not something the American people are on board for. American people. You want to steal the oil? Okay, fine. Now, and separately, Trump is destroying the domestic oil industry, like, if you read the oil press the last several months, and now accelerating. He's pushing supply so high because he wants to push oil prices down that it is making the Texas oil industry Basically go bankrupt. This would be like the final nail in the coffin of the Texas oil industry.

[Tim Miller]

Well, in theory, depending on how much oil we're actually taking out of Venezuela.

[Ryan Grimm]

But even his pressure on OPEC to increase supply and drive down prices is killing the domestic shale.

[Tim Miller]

And it's having an impact. Yeah, yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

Which is fascinating. I don't think he's doing it on purpose. He's just kind of an idiot. No, the same, same way with the way the tariffs are destroying the farms and, you know, and, and destroying American manufacturing. Like, I don't think he's trying to destroy American, American manufacturing. I don't think he's trying to destroy the American oil industry. But that's the consequence of his policies.

[Tim Miller]

Is your takeaway from this that this is like a confluence of events where Marco has this ideological ambition and Stephen Miller wants to use it as an excuse for his immigration stuff. And Donald Trump just likes will to power. I just want to have the pictures for my TV show of this guy who attacked me in handcuffs. And it's kind of this one off and we'll see how things stabilize. Or do you see this as part of a broader, you know, there'll be follow ups on this.

[Ryan Grimm]

It's, it's, it's Rubio. I think this was a unique historical circumstance where if Rubio himself, like, if anybody, any other Secretary of state comes in, you probably don't get this. And also Rubio was boxed out of Ukraine, Russia and boxed out of Israel, Palestine.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Ryan Grimm]

People talk about all the work that he has. It's almost compensating for the fact that as Secretary of State, he's not, he's not actually involved in what were the two most important issues, those two. And so he was then able to just focus exclusively on his pet project, which is exercising the grievances of the South Florida Cuban community and the Venezuelan community and go after those countries.

[Tim Miller]

Some legitimate grievances, very legitimate grievances.

[Ryan Grimm]

I would say they're upset. Not our problem if you ask me. That's between y'. All. Why are we being asked to settle.

[Tim Miller]

These scores for you in MAGA world? There's a lot of fake grievances out there. So I sometimes like to distinguish between the imaginary made up grievances and the real grievances. That's all.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yes, sure. But like they're un American, they're non American grievances. Like it's, there are different, you know, beefs within the like Minneapolis Somali community between, like that are literally organized around tribal beasts from back where they came to Somalia. Like, imagine if they became so powerful as a lobby that they could then get the American military to go into Somalia and smash their rivals for them.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, that's good.

[Ryan Grimm]

I think we'd be like, no, actually, like, yeah, I'm sure that, like, there were human rights abuses carried out against, you know, your family and your, and your people there. And I don't really want to get in all the details because, like, they've got their side of the story too. We're not going to send the American military to Somalia to, like, enact your vengeance, adjudicate that. But, like, doing it on behalf of South Florida, Cuban and Venezuelans is like just an acceptable use of the American military for whatever reason. And then the second thing is the obvious one, which is like, China is a rising power and we're backing off our global hegemony. So we're focusing on what we call our backyard, which is such a weird term. It's not our backyard. These are our neighbors. Like, imagine if you called your neighbor's house your backyard.

[Tim Miller]

It's not even really my neighbor. And it'd be like me talking about people in Shreveport and saying, that's my backyard. Concerns about what's happening in Shreveport, right?

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, Shreveport. Be like, yeah, this is not your backyard. You're welcome to visit, like, and hang out and, like, come watch, watch a game.

[Tim Miller]

Let's talk about something no one wants to talk about. What happens when you die. That's brutal. I don't know. It's not really true for me. My mother loves talking about death. My mother is just very comfortable talking about death. It's a good Catholic trait. So I'm okay. I'm good on talking about death. And it's not the best. You get emotional, but I'm happy to talk about it. But for some folks, it's a little uncomfortable. You don't think about it happening to you, but it's still important to be prepared for it. With Trust and Will online real estate planning, you can do exactly that. I took a look at it and it's super easy to use. You can create an estate plan with Trust and Will in as little as 30 minutes. Trust and Will's online platform provides a step by step guided process. They offer optional one on one support from attorneys in your state. Trust and Will believes estate planning should be accessible to everyone. So they're committed to making it affordable today and valuable tomorrow. They also have amazing customer support with real people, not AI chatbots. So don't wait until it's Too late. Protect your loved ones today, tomorrow and beyond with trust and will. The most trusted name in online estate planning. Go to trustandwill.com bulwark and get 20% off. That's trustandwill.com bulwark to get your 20% off. Trustandwill.com bulwark I want to talk about the political, like what this says about what's happening on the right. You've kind of lived at this nexus of the horseshoe, if you will, with breaking points people don't know. It's has kind of hosts that are kind of populist righties, populist lefties essentially for shorthand. Also some other people with weird heterodox politics in there as well. But part of the populist right that has been kind of rising is folks that are rhetorically saying, sounding a lot like how you just sounded. We shouldn't care about stuff that's happening over there. I don't care about tribal conflicts in the Middle east or Africa or South America for that matter. And we shouldn't out with the neocons. And there's been some common cause. We've seen people like Glenn Greenwald, as a fearless lefty, become very friendly with the populist right crowd on MAGA media. And now we're a year into the Trump administration where he was supposed to be kind of representing that populist right foreign policy and we're bombing people everywhere basically, and we just opposed a leader in Venezuela. And it has revealed some strains of people that were legitimate in that view. But a lot of these folks, you know, have turned out to be fake. And one of them was a Daily Wire guy named Matt Walsh was on your show talking about how he is non interventionist by nature, but also he's like really thrilled that we're fucking up Venezuela. So you're living in this world even a little more than me, actually.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

How do you assess that kind of strain of what's happening on the right.

[Ryan Grimm]

With, with the Matt Walsh strain? I think there is a, there's like a macho element to his politics that is going to like dominate over whatever claims he has to non interventionism where they're saying they're against previous wars that didn't go well, like Vietnam and bad, you know, didn't go well. Iraq bad. Didn't go well. Afghanistan bad. Didn't. Didn't go well. We should not be in these forever wars that we're not winning. But you show them like a military adventure that like that you go in you do some, you bang, bang and you get out. They're like, oh, that's great. Like, there are four military adventures that they think are working, which is not a. That's not a principle. That's just, Just being a thug.

[Tim Miller]

Well, in part because you can't predict what's going to work and what's not going to work. Libya looked great at the beginning.

[Ryan Grimm]

You know, for example, Saddam Hussein fell in like three days or something.

[Tim Miller]

Right. Ukraine looked terrible, on the other hand, for the Ukrainians. Right. Like for the first couple of days. Right. And, you know, it was conventional wisdom that Russia was going to run roughshod over them. So, you know, that shows the limits of that kind of mindset.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right. And then you've got people like Tulsi Gabbard who just did pure cynical power plays like, where is she?

[Tim Miller]

Have you heard from her? You and Tulsi are pals. Is she.

[Ryan Grimm]

She doesn't, she, she doesn't respond to me anymore. I covered her first congressional campaign. So I knew her before she was even in Congress in like 2014. And she was this very strident and principled opponent of like regime change wars. Now the fact that she always qualified it as regime change wars and was always comfortable with basically drone campaigns against what she saw as like Islamist forces and her links with like the right wing Modi folks who are like virulently hostile to all Muslims, basically, that was always like a red flag in her politics. I think she finally said something about Venezuela where she figured out some way to applaud the thing that she like, she's the classic case. Because you can go back and find all of these posts. 2019, slamming Trump for trying to do a coup in Venezuela. There's a Tulsi tweet for everything. There is a warmonger and a isolationist faction in both parties and they're jockeying for position constantly throughout history.

[Tim Miller]

I guess my question is on the right, is it even possible for the isolationist side of the party to ever truly succeed? I guess my point is there's just something about the nature of being a right wing party that, sure, you could move away from the type of foreign engagement that Bush and Reagan and others engaged in because you don't care about democracy abroad, et cetera, et cetera. But it does feel like there's some. You use the word machismo. It's just something about the strain of kind of a will to power, right wing nationalist. Like it's kind of hard to imagine at the end of the day, them Ever being fully pacifist as well, right.

[Ryan Grimm]

When the chips are down, it's very difficult, I think, on the right to stand up for the, like, let's not do this war, right? But there are people. No, the American, American conservative, for instance, like, they've been, they've consistently the last couple years, like really pushed hard against that. You know, that magazine has pushed hard against your stuff and.

[Tim Miller]

But like, look who's in the administration, you know what I mean? It's like it's not Kurt mills, right?

[Ryan Grimm]

And J.D. vance was like their lead champion. Like he was their guy and he's just completely defanged in all of this.

[Tim Miller]

One of the things, and this kind of gets us into a couple of different topics. Like one of the groups that bought into that was kind of this like manosphere comedian, culturally rights kind of podcast universe, however you want to describe that. And they bought in to like Trump as being a non interventionist candidate. And they also were in most cases like following the Epstein stuff very closely, which you guys have been following. You went on one of those shows recently, Tim Dillon, which is what inspired me to invite you over here. I was like, fuck, if he's going to be on the Tim Dillon show, we got to expose him to the Bullock audience. But so I want to talk about kind of both, like how that intersects with both those worlds. And when you're talking to Dylan, do you think, well, actually, let's table the foreign policy side of this. Let's talk about the Epstein side of this first. Did you sense that that world is really starting to become disillusioned with Trump over the Epstein stuff and that you think that there's something there?

[Ryan Grimm]

Extremely, extremely. Because these are also the kinds of people who don't really believe that the government is going to deliver materially, you know, for, for people, right? Somebody like a Rogan. And I, I don't actually know Dylan's like Tim Dillon's domestic politics, but like, you know, Rogan, you ask him, he's for, he's for like Medicare for all. He's for higher minimum wage. He supported Bernie in 2020 and now he's drifted bright. So I don't know where he stands with that stuff now. But he's also very American in the sense he's very cynical that the government is actually going to deliver on those things. And maybe he's right. Like maybe that cynicism is grounded in something. But what that means is that giving us the Epstein stuff and doing those things, that's, that's what they want, because that they're like, you can actually do that. Like, I don't think you're going to lower, you know, healthcare costs. I don't think you're going to actually reverse climate change. You're not going to do any of this stuff. You should, but you won't. But you have the files.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

You ran on transparency and against pedophilia, because that's the other thing. Like, you know, these aren't QAnon people, but the QAnon vibe around, like, there are these. This is a cabal of pedophiles that are, like, running the world. Like, that's seeped into broadly MAGA. A lot of MAGA wouldn't adopt the whole QAnon thing. They might not even know what Q is. But that idea, sure, that these reptiles are running the world has purchase. So it's like, okay, you're not gonna. You're not gonna do anything to necessarily make the world and my life better, but you're gonna expose these reptiles. Like, you're gonna. You're gonna lock up the pedophiles, or at least you're going to shame the pedophiles, even if you're not going to prosecute them. And so to have that, which is the thing that they actually thought he was going to do, to see him become an obstacle to that, I think is extremely demoralizing. And for many of them, radicalizing, taking them not to just a place of ambivalence around Trump, but, like, deep hostility and then embarrassment, too.

[Tim Miller]

Embarrassment, I think, is key. Embarrassment, yeah. Right. Because, like, you know, they have listeners, too. They see the feedback, see the comments, right? Like, they've been promising this, you know, and like, in Megaworld, you get away from the embarrassment because you just be like, oh, well, the other guys are bad. You get straight back into team sports. If you're like a Fox News wing, they don't have that.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right? They don't have that.

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[Tim Miller]

Let's just talk about the Epstein stuff more broadly, and then we'll get back to the politics because you've been going through these files really closely. What's your sense for what we've learned from the limited amount of information we've got that is new or maybe different from what, you know, maybe conventional wisdom would be from people who are only kind of following this lightly?

[Ryan Grimm]

Ironically, I think what we're discovering probably actually affirms people's conventional wisdom around this, because I think people assumed that this was a guy who operated in the gray area of the kind of the elite political economy as an asset for various intelligence services. That was kind of the assumption about him.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, in certain parts of the universe, though, there are other places that they would say that's crazy. Like, that he is an intelligence asset. That's a conspiracy theory, right?

[Ryan Grimm]

New York Times readers.

[Tim Miller]

Well, that's a pretty big audience.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, it's a very big audience. But for the, like, what I think of now as the centrist person who has, like, wildly eclectic politics and listens to, like, Joe Rogan or Tim Dillon, like, that, to me, is the actual American center, not you. Like, you're not like, you. You are kind of, I think, like, for Washington, like the epitome of like a centrist or center leftist.

[Tim Miller]

This is so. This is such a good point. I always, like, whenever I do like, a panel with rich people, which I tried to do as little as possible because I hate them. But whenever I, Whenever I do, for whatever reason, like, the question, like always, the. The first or second question is like, why can't we have a center party that is like somebody like you, that's like socially moderate and physically conservative? And, And I'm, I'm just like, a. Like, there are. Those people do exist right now. They're just Democrats. Like, that's the governor of a couple states, like, for example, starters. And like B, like, if you were to get a third party center person, they would. They would be who you hate. Like, they'd be the opposite of you. Right. Like they would be somebody that is socially kind of conservative and fiscally a little Bernie flavoring and. Right. Yeah, I mean I, so I, I with your political assessment on that total.

[Ryan Grimm]

And so for that type, type of person, I think they assumed, I guess you could call it a conspiracy theory, but I think they just assumed that that's who this guy was. Like that's what they sniffed on him, is that there's no way he gets away with all of this stuff and has all these major connections without some type of relationship. And how that relationship was defined remains a mystery. But what we find in his correspondence in particular are deep ties to Israeli government figures and American intelligence figures. Doesn't mean he's getting a W9 from the CIA.

[Tim Miller]

But he's not on staff for Mossad necessarily.

[Ryan Grimm]

That's not how it works. He also has his own personal agendas that are overlapping and he's a figure within this Davos set and he is at times deploying Mossad or his own assets like in the American government for the benefit of himself or his allies. I think people looking for a room where global strategy is set and then executed upon and him being taking notes there and being part of it. That's not how the world is organized. The world is organized around these competing factions of oligarchs and elites who wax and wane in their power within that set. And he kind of swam in that world and did so since the 80s.

[Tim Miller]

The stuff is all kind of murky and gray. But I'm going to try to kind of create a line between what I think is maybe conspiracy mongering and true a little bit. Right. Like on the conspiracy side of the line is like this sort of puppet master, like the puppeteer theme. Right. Where there is a government, whether it be the US or Israel or France, if you're Candace Owens. Right. That it's like puppet mastering him and like telling him you go after this guy and you co opt them and then blackmail them because we need that. I don't think we have a lot of evidence for that yet.

[Ryan Grimm]

We don't have that.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. No evidence for that. And then the other side of the line is like this kind of human frailty that does seem to be particularly common among the kind of elite networking set. Right. Which is if somebody says that they can do a solid for you, you kind of look the other way about their behavior, even if that behavior is.

[Ryan Grimm]

Disgusting or especially if you've engaged in that behavior with him.

[Tim Miller]

Right. So now this is where the gray area parts align. And that's what I think has been frustrating about the release. It's like, okay, but who are the other guys that have engaged in the behavior? Because Peter Thiel is on these emails with him on the networking side of it, based on what I know about Peter Thiel, I don't think he was raping young girls. You know what I mean? And so I think we can safely.

[Ryan Grimm]

Acquit him of those charges. Yes.

[Tim Miller]

Right. So some of the people are on these emails, I assume, are raping young girls. And some of them just like the fact that this is a rich guy who's giving them favors. What do you like, what have we learned?

[Ryan Grimm]

I think what people need to understand and add to their, or add to their understanding of who Epstein was, was that he was able to deliver material benefits to his allies that were not raping young girls. Like, if you wanted, like Ehu Barak, for instance, when he as. As he's leaving the Ministry of Defense, Epstein gets him a million dollar, two million dollar bonus to a million dollar retainer with Renova Group, the Victor Vexelbergs, who's a giant oligarch and close ally of Putin. Like, he gets him that deal and he helps get him like a million bucks from Wexner to not write like a memoir. So if you're at Ehu Barak, like, he delivered that for you. He even set up Barack with a meeting with Sarkozy, set up Barack with a meeting with Putin after declining Epstein himself declining a meeting with Putin because Putin wanted to meet him on the sidelines of this conference. He's like, no, no, no. If Putin wants to meet, it's gotta be in his palace. We need like 90 minutes. We've got serious business to talk about. Like, that's the level of guy that we're talking about, like chiding world leaders. And he bailed on the Sarkozy Barack meeting is in Paris. They're having dinner last minute. He's like, I don't feel well. You guys go. And that's where the disgusting, like, layer of his life gets into. What do you think he did in Paris instead that night? I think he was feeling fine. I think he wanted to do something else.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, right.

[Ryan Grimm]

But the point is that because he was this like, college dropout fired from Bear Stearns, that not really a tax guy yet giving all this tax advice, people are like, he's not doing anything of professional value to these people. So therefore the only thing he can be doing is delivering them young girls. And what we found in his correspondence. That's not true. He had deep ties with all of these shadowy networks. And if you were somebody who wanted to operate in a gray area, which is most of these elites, he was helpful to you. How many people in the world can get you a meeting with, you know, the president of France, the president of Russia, or the former president United States? Like, there are not a lot of people who have that level of Rolodex and ability to get people to respond to them. So I think the fact that he was engaging in this foul behavior with so many men meant that they implicitly knew that if something went south, he had dirt on them or if he asked them for something, like, they should probably just go ahead and do it because they know what he's got. Yet. You don't even need that to explain a huge amount of what he was able to accomplish because he was making these people rich and getting them meetings that were leading to security agreements that were even like state level security agreements between Israel and code Ivor, Israel, Mongolia, these Nigerian diamond mines. He's like getting things done for people. And I think that has been missing from the understanding of Epstein. And when you understand that, then you can maybe contextualize the sex trafficking a little differently.

[Tim Miller]

So it takes us to the COVID up and the question of, you know, whether this is just a straight Donald Trump. There's embarrassing information about him in there. Like, the degree to it is unknown, but obviously he was engaged in gross behavior with Epstein at some level. And he's like on the, you know, it's like, oh, we've learned, at least he's on the plane more times than he said. He lied about how many times he's on the plane, that he's on the plane with a girl who was a victim of Maxwell's. Right? Sort of. There's only four of them on the plane. So the COVID could just be straight Trump. Right? Or when you tie it into the security services conversation, there are other people out there that kind of say, well, no, I mean, the COVID up is related to that and Right, like the CIA and who the hell knows? BB and Sarko, who knows, like, is leaning on Trump as well and saying, no, bro, you got to hold the line here on this. Like, where do you, where do you fall on that?

[Ryan Grimm]

I think it's a combination of both, you know, and Melania knows New Epstein as well.

[Tim Miller]

What do we know about that? I've not followed the Melania Epstein line that closely to, if I'm being candid.

[Ryan Grimm]

We know that they knew each other. She's very litigious. I think we can. We can leave it at that.

[Tim Miller]

Can we leave. Can we do one more sentence between that and litigiousness? I don't know.

[Ryan Grimm]

I don't think. I don't think I want to do any more sentences on. On that in particular. We're working on some angles, and, you know, when we. When we know more. But there's been some contention about whether or not Epstein was the one who introduced them. There's other people who said, no, actually, somebody else introduced Melania and. And Trump. And she also knows that world of, like, exploitative modeling from her own experience.

[Tim Miller]

In it, which they both engaged in. Again, when you're talking about the bad things that Trump did, like, the exploitative modeling, something. Both Trump and Epstein. Exactly.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. It's also the part that makes me think there's got to be other people leaning on him is that he's very hard to shame. Like this. This is a guy who bought Miss Teen USA and went on Howard Stern to say, like, he bought it so that he could, like, creep on these teen girls naked in their locker room.

[Tim Miller]

Yes.

[Ryan Grimm]

Like, he said that out loud with the cameras running.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

He wasn't joking.

[Tim Miller]

No. And the teen girls in the locker room have testified that he did that, right?

[Ryan Grimm]

Exactly. Yes. They have said, like. And his daughter, they asked. They asked Ivanka, and she's like, yeah, like, that's. He would. That's the kind of thing he does. So at that point, like, what. What mystery is left to how this guy interacts with teen girls? You know, what more is going to embarrass him? You know, he also has a virtue of often being, like, open about how he's thinking. When he was asked during the campaign if he was going to release the, you know, the Kennedy files and the Epstein files, he was like, I think we should definitely release the Kennedy files, and we should release the MLK and rfk.

[Tim Miller]

Moon land.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, I think it was on NPR somewhere. They followed up. They're like, notice that you didn't. Pledger's a little short there. What about the Epstein one? He's like, you know, there's a lot of people are in there. They're gonna be. There's gonna be some guilt by association, and not everybody in there did something wrong, and it's gonna be embarrassing for people.

[Tim Miller]

Like, he.

[Ryan Grimm]

He. Even during the campaign, he was giving this rationale for why he didn't want to release all of the Epstein files while saying, like, Epstein's a creep. I never liked him. We've had a falling out. I think you should take him seriously in that when he says that that like he's trying to protect people whose names are in there and who he who he knows. The holidays are expensive. You're paying for gifts, travel, decorations, food, and before you know it, you've blown way past what you were planning to spend. Don't start the new year off with bad money vibes. Download Rocket Money to stay on top of your finances. The app pulls your income, expenses, and upcoming charges into one place so you can get the clearest picture of your money. It shows how much to set aside for bills and how much is safe to spend for the month so you can spend with confidence, no guesswork needed. Get alerts before bills hit. Track budgets and see every subscription you're paying for. Rocket Money also finds extra ways to save you money by canceling subscriptions you're not using and negotiating lower bills for you. On average, Rocket Money users can save up to $740 a year when using all of the app's premium features. Start the year off right by taking control of your finances. Go to rocketmoney.com cancel to get started. That's rocketmoney.com cancel rocketmoney.com cancel I want to do some.

[Tim Miller]

I want to do some white people discourse with two white guys. Is that okay? Can we do some little white people discourse?

[Ryan Grimm]

Representation matters. We have the. We have the right white people here, right?

[Tim Miller]

I'm going to tie two items together that are in the news and I just want to say very clearly up front, I'm not creating an equivalence between these two people. I just want to talk about two news items in the context of identity politics and the dangers of identity politics from my point of view. Are you ready for this? Okay, here we go.

[Ryan Grimm]

Elon Musk, let's see where you're going.

[Tim Miller]

With the biggest donor to the president. One of the richest men in the world is owner of X.com, he posted this this morning or maybe overnight. Seems like he might have been on an academy binge. I don't know. Allegedly he writes this or someone else writes this. If white men become a minority, we will be slaughtered. Remember, if non whites openly hate white men while white men hold a collective majority, then they will be a thousand times more hostile and cruel when they are a majority over whites. White solidarity is the only way to survive. Elon Musk posted that with like a 100 sign. Totally agree. So that's where Elon Musk is He wants white solidarity. The white South African.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yep.

[Tim Miller]

We'll just start there and just have a brief sentence that's very bad and alarming. You concur with that?

[Ryan Grimm]

It's an 1850s, like Southern white we should end slavery, but if we do, they'll kill us all. Like it's that level of like fear and projection too.

[Tim Miller]

It's, it's 1950s South Africa, maybe also.

[Ryan Grimm]

1980S while he was in school there.

[Tim Miller]

He's trying to parallel.

[Ryan Grimm]

He's bringing the Afrikaner, the bad elements of Afrikaner then turned out that wasn't true, by the way, even in South.

[Tim Miller]

Africa, white solidarity is the only way to survive. That was the top donor to the president. That's pretty alarming. So that's bad. There's also a scandal going around where one of Zoran's staff are much less prominent person. But I just want to use this story as kind of a way to talk about some of my concerns about Sia Weavers or anything she gets posted to a housing role in the Mandani administration. We have a milkshake duck situation where they go back through all of her past Twitter accounts, something I'm generally not that fond of. But she wrote a bunch of things about whites. She's white. She writes private property is a weapon of white supremacy. I endorse a no more white men in office platform. We should impoverish the white middle class. Homeownership is racist. I wish I believed in God. So I believe that all white men who take credit for the work of women of color would one day burn. I came across a mob of 11 year old white boy children. I don't know why we keep procreating. Delta should kick all white people in Christmas outfits off planes. All right, that one's funny. I'm not saying that it's Sea Weaver's fault that Donald Trump's top donor and advisor is a white supremacist. I'm not. But I think that we get into a very dangerous spot sometimes with folks on the left who get very comfortable in the identity politics space and then start just throwing around pejorative, pejoratives about white people all the time. And I think that it's right to be a little judicious about this, both because we're in a pluralistic society and it's just wrong, but also because the backlash. I don't think we want to encourage white identity politics and I think that we want to disencourage that as much as possible. So I wonder if you have any thoughts about that?

[Ryan Grimm]

That certainly does encourage white identity politics, which I don't think anybody other than Elon Musk and his fans think is.

[Tim Miller]

A good idea, or Nick Fuentes maybe. Unfortunately, there's a growing number of people actually who think it's a good idea. And so I think that's why it's very important to be conscious of trying to disincentivize it as much as possible.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, and the left took like several wrong turns to find themselves in this place where they're like attacking 11 year old white children. You probably need to retrace your steps at that point and figure out how you got there. And one way they got there was, you know, this academic jargon taking over the left and the idea of white supremacy as a, as a structuring force of, of society being kind of divorced from whiteness itself like that, you know, things could become white. How the Irish became white, how the Italians become white, how whoever. Yeah, sure, that non white people can like become white. Because whiteness is not actually a racial structure anymore. It stands in for the oppression of people within American society. So you've got that academic argument which then you get loose with and then you start just talking about white in this. Because now you've defined like the, the structure that you're against as white. You've tried to explain in your seminar that you don't actually mean white. It can be lots of other things that fall under this rubric. And then you start doing what she's doing, which is like going after like actual like individual white people or 11 year old white boys. And you can trace backwards how you got there, but you should probably like head out and take a different turn. Even if it's just pragmatically for the reason that you're talking about, but also.

[Tim Miller]

Just because it's like a moral and ethical framework. We should just judge people as individuals. People should just be judged as individuals. And I just think if you get into a space where you're getting reckless with doing pejoratives about people based on their group identity, how do you know white people can have a thick skin? As a white person, I could say we can have a thick skin, but it's just, you know, I mean, it's a lot. It becomes a lot.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, like why are you going after 11 year old white boys? Come like, come on. Like what were those kids doing? Like now on the other hand, middle schoolers in general are awful.

[Tim Miller]

11 year old boys can be tough.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yes, you have some experience with that. It's like, I get it, I'm not there yet. But come on, I'm about to be.

[Tim Miller]

Coaching a 7 year old girls team and I'm very excited about that. That'll be a bunch of chiller.

[Ryan Grimm]

But. So anybody who was a millennial or trying to act like one throughout, starting in the 14ish, but accelerating in 2020 up into say 2022 or 3 is going to have all sorts of like, bananas posts, including Mayor Mamdani. And so I do think it's an interesting moment where I think there's an argument for Mom Donnie, or let's say Sia. We were like, I think it'd be fine to say, look, this is embarrassing and I don't actually hate white people. But then mom Donnie's standing behind the person and being like, look, we all said a lot of crazy things and we're not going to eliminate everybody from public life who said crazy things during the late teens and early 20s. Because that's the entire left. Everyone, for the most part.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, well, do you feel like there's been enough of a reckoning within the left part of the left about that? I mean, what you just said was that's a pretty common opinion among center left abundance bros. Right. What you just laid out. Right. Was it like a lot of people got kind of Crazy in 2019 and started saying too much identity stuff. We should stop doing that.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

But on the left of the left, I don't hear people saying that quite as explicitly. And I think it's a potential danger. I think if I was a populist leftist or a squad person like AOCs, I could crush an AOC presidential campaign. I mean, her like, rhetoric kind of weaves back and forth between more of a Bernie is, you know, kind of populist, left, culturally neutral. And then she goes through phases where she starts sounding very identitarian, you know, woke, ultra woke. You know, if you're watching some of her old clips.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. And on that point, then, yeah, I proudly bear the scars from being somebody who was on the left throughout that period. People can search and try to prove me wrong. I did not do that. And I pushed back pretty consistently against it. And if I had it to do over again, I would push back even harder than I did. Even though, you know, back before Musk bought Twitter, I was getting dragged multiple times a week for like pushing back against, against this kind of thing. I, I even remember I defended in 2013, this poor young lady told a joke about AIDS in Africa. She'd lived in Africa for years.

[Tim Miller]

And she tweeted or something or she's on a plane.

[Ryan Grimm]

Justin Sacco. Yes. Justine Sacco.

[Tim Miller]

Why am I wasting my brain on that knowledge instead of like learning Mandarin.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yes. She. She tweeted, going to Africa. Hope I don't get aids. She was satirizing the. Like a provincial racist American.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, right.

[Ryan Grimm]

And then didn't have service until she landed in Africa and was a global name by the time she landed. Fired from her job. And I remember I even defended her at the time, like, guys, you're being idiots. She was telling a joke about racist provincial Americans.

[Tim Miller]

So do you worry about that? There just was a political item that, like, the squad types haven't really embraced.

[Ryan Grimm]

I don't think there's been a reckoning. I think there's been a homer quietly walking back into the hedges.

[Tim Miller]

Got it.

[Ryan Grimm]

And there has been some reckoning, like after. And I saw that on the rundown. You had the story. I did in 21 or 22, whatever. It was about the elephant in the zoom about all of these.

[Tim Miller]

We're running out of time already. But this is such a good story. So I'll just put a link in it in the show notes so people can go read it. But yeah, it was from three years ago. It was about how these activist groups, basically all the infighting over various WOKE.

[Ryan Grimm]

Arguments, they were imploding over this kind of thing and they were weaponizing this language for their own internal grievances. And so there was a reckoning there among organizations of like, how do we continue to be an organization? Like, how does more than one person function collectively together? Because if they can't, like, there's no left. So there's been some reckoning, but nowhere near enough. But yet, on the other hand, I actually think Mom Donnie should, like, hold a line if you start firing these people.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I agree. Don't give scalps, right? Yeah, don't give scalps. I mean, I don't know anything about this person. Maybe she was. She was a bad hire and would not be good for other reasons. But, like, you know, not over.

[Ryan Grimm]

I've heard great things about her, like, other than the, like, you know, mouthing off crazy anti white stuff, which sounds great.

[Tim Miller]

Okay. I have a whole list of things I want to argue with you about, but fucking. An ICE agent shot a woman inside a car, which is something we passionately agree about. So we're going to have to do a. We're going to take a. Yeah, we're going to have to, you know, take a little whatever rain Check to argue later about yimbyism or various things. But can we just do two minutes on Liz Cheney discourse? Because I have to do it with you. Can we do two minutes on this?

[Ryan Grimm]

Where are you on Liz Cheney?

[Tim Miller]

So here's what I get very frustrated with. Okay, this is. And for folks who are not very online, it's been a great show. We'll see you back tomorrow. I've got some great guests lined up. For folks who are very online, there's this argument between kind of the establishment or whatever, Democrats and the left, populist types, where you spend a lot of time where a big criticism of the Kamala campaign was that she allowed Trump going back to where we were at the top, she allowed Trump to get to the left of him on her on foreign policy. This is part of the argument I agree with and that she allowed for. And the Democrats, broadly allowed for the Tim Dillons and Joe Rogans of the world and all of the people they represent, just regular people that don't want war throughout the country to believe, wrongly, that he was gonna be the peace candidate and that a series of choices reinforce that. That narrow argument I agree with, and I wasn't saying this at the time, so I'll just say I'll throw myself on the mercy of the court. I was wrong about that. I should have been saying that. I think more clearly at the time, but I think that obviously Trump was able to pull the wool over people's eye on this. The area where I become when I get in disagreement is part of the reason Trump was able to pull the wool people's eyes, because a lot of big, prominent people on the left were going along with his fake bullshit argument. And I get very defensive and get my backup when it's like, Liz Cheney and me and my fellow never Trumpers and Bill Kristol and whatever. We did everything we could to help Kamala win, because we saw Trump for who he was, and we're just like, put me in, coach. You know, Liz, Janie wasn't like, I need to be in the cabinet, and Kamala must support bombing the Middle east for me to be on her campaign. Me to be on her campaign. It's a litmus test. Liz Cheney was like, I support Kamala Harris. And I know personally from being behind the scenes that, like, the Harris campaign didn't even call Liz Cheney for months. And she just, like, endorsed her and just. And then eventually, at the end of the campaign, they made a strategic decision to have an event with her. But all the Folks that came from more of a interventionist side recognized Trump for the threat that he was opposed him, tried to help. And a lot of people on the left spent the whole campaign pissing in the tent. And then at the end of the campaign, they're like, fucking Liz Cheney's fault. And I'm over here going, no, it's fucking your fault, Hasan for saying that they were gonna be the same and it's your fault. Other Glenn Greenwald for going on Fox and shitting on. And, you know, this was all predictable. We all knew who Trump was. So anyway, now you see me getting my blood pressure up. So I'm wondering, I would like for you to adjudicate that dispute between me and your brethren.

[Ryan Grimm]

All right, so the counter argument would be, well, and I don't blame Cheney for being Cheney either. Like blaming a leopard for being a leopard. It's Kamala for putting her on stage, who would be the one to blame? And who you put on stage matters. So here would be the counter argument. If you talk to and you know, Waleed Jahid, I'm sure I do know, like you probably know other people who are involved in the uncommitted movement in Michigan. This was a very precise strategic move that was criticized on the left for being too friendly and too open to the Democratic Party. Because what they were. And they have said this very publicly, they have said, we cannot deliver for you these left anti war votes just by virtue of our charisma. Like, Wale is an amazing person, but him just going on Twitter and saying, please vote for Kamala Harris because I, Waleed, say that you should, is not actually going to deliver those votes he needs. And the people that he was allied with needs something to tell them something like some argument that he can make that XI is better when it comes to foreign policy and in particular Gaza than Trump will be. Because Trump is saying things that some people can glom onto and say he's going to be better. And so they came up with this idea. They're like, how about you give a Palestinian American lawmaker a two minute speech at the DNC that is vetted by you and that is supportive of Kamala Harris. How about you do that? If you do that, then that gives us a way to say, look, you don't like everything she stands for. But we're in the tent, she's listening to us, and we. And so we can fight for the change that we want when she's in office. The speech, you can find the speech, it's online. Here's the speech, it's slobbering over Kamala the whole time by a Georgia state lawmaker who's Palestinian American. And she said no and gave nothing else. Like, okay, you're not doing that. Like, okay, what? Give us something here that we can tell people whose sole issue here is ending this genocide, give us something. And they decided to give nothing. In fact, every time she was asked about it, she would lead with a long recitation of October 7th. At the time, I could verbatim, I can't do it anymore. But at the time, I could verbatim give you her answer every single time she was asked about it. And that was the decision that she made.

[Tim Miller]

I agree with the decision. I agree with you. I agree with the critique. She should have let that person speak. She should have let the Georgia lawmaker speak. I've since texted with that lawmaker and she should have let. I also just think fundamentally, Ms. Jane didn't speak at the convention and she didn't go with lesser demands that I want a pro life activist to be on stage at the convention before I support you. At the end of the day, she went out and gave speeches that was like, Donald Trump a great threat. And at the end of the day, there was not a lot of folks from that uncommitted movement and from the left who were prominent who were out there saying, you know what? You know who Donald Trump's best buddy is? Bibi. And this sucks. And I hate the Kamala's doing this and I wish that we had done this and that, but, like, we have no choice here. Like, you have to vote for her because Donald Trump is about to turn Gaza into fucking, you know, high rise buildings and let Israeli settlers do whatever they want in the west bank and blah, blah, blah. And that wasn't that. They didn't do that. They didn't do that. Instead they're like, ah, sorry, that's Cheney's fault. And that's because.

[Ryan Grimm]

Because that wouldn't have landed with people because Netanyahu was already doing that. Like, Netanyahu is doing it. So, like, I'm sorry, they won't let a Palestinian speak. Sorry, they won't make any commitments to doing anything differently than Biden. Anything. Even Kamala says she was wrong on that school.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, no, she was obviously wrong on that. I asked her that when I interviewed her. I was like, why didn't you distance from him more?

[Ryan Grimm]

If you elect Trump, XYZ terrible thing is going to happen. If XYZ terrible thing is already happening. That's my point, you could have surrogates who would go out and say that, but it's not going to land for people who are watching it in real time unfold on their phones. And so, yeah, that's why we get the. Well, I guess we need to buy TikTok and have Instagram censor everything. So my point is, even if, like, Hasan Piker is out there begging people to vote for Kamala, would have been a try.

[Tim Miller]

Would have been a try, I guess. I hear you. No, I hear you. I hear you. I hear you. I'm just saying that, like, sitting in my boat, it's like I would get calls all the time from Politico reporters who are like, what are the demands of the Never Trump movement on Kamala? And I was like, nothing win. That's the demand. And like, I don't, you know, there might have been a handful of, might have been two or three commentary writers who or whatever who are extremely pro Israel that would have abandoned her if she said that. But, like, Liz wasn't going to. You know what I mean? Like, the people that were supporting her weren't going to because we were supporting her because we didn't like Trump. And so I get, I get frustrated by that.

[Ryan Grimm]

So then, yeah, it's, it's mystifying to me, like, how she didn't see the importance of it given the stakes. You know, Ta Nehisi Coates has said it better, which is that it's all a proxy for this. If you won't stand against genocide, how do I trust you to stand up for democracy? Like, and that's the point. Like, you have to convince people that you are worth voting for and you have to do something to earn that. You, like, you just, ah, it says it's a fact that there are people in the country that need to be convinced. Like, you could say that you don't like that, that they, that they should already be convinced by the terribleness of the opponent. But it is a fact.

[Tim Miller]

That's how I feel.

[Ryan Grimm]

That is how you feel. And throughout history, there are, there's a chunk of people who do not fit in that category. There always will be. And you can't hector them to be otherwise. You have to either decide, okay, I'm going to try to do something that will win their votes or I will find votes elsewhere. But just like wishing that those kinds of people don't exist is not going to, is not going to do it.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I'm not wishing they don't exist. I just think that the People that were at influence.

[Ryan Grimm]

I just think you're overstating. I genuinely think you're overstating their influence and ability to change those people's minds.

[Tim Miller]

But then I think the counter is true. Sure, maybe I'm overstaying their influence. But then simultaneously doing one event with Liz Cheney where they had a roundtable or whatever when she didn't even speak, also over states. Sometimes I feel like, okay, really, what's Liz Cheney's name ID in the country? 30%. That was the thing. Adults, you know what I mean? I think that could work. That cuts.

[Ryan Grimm]

We embed symbolism in these moments. That's why. Is a two minute speech from a Palestinian speaker that big of a deal?

[Tim Miller]

Absolutely. She should have done it.

[Ryan Grimm]

Of course not. But we embed it with, with extra significance. So the fact that, and I think that, that actually, that Liz then getting the stage, not at the convention, not giving it. What's that at the convention?

[Tim Miller]

She wasn't at the convention.

[Ryan Grimm]

Not at the convention. Getting ace.

[Tim Miller]

Some things people don't remember. I just want to.

[Ryan Grimm]

Which, you know, what if Kamal was like, look, look, the convention is booked. And I heard from DNC people that are like that there were all these pedestrian reasons they couldn't do it because.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, the climate people are going to.

[Ryan Grimm]

Want somebody or the Oregonians are going to want somebody. It's like, okay, fine, then say we'll do an event next week with her.

[Tim Miller]

Sure.

[Ryan Grimm]

And we'll go to that. Go to Georgia together. You could do that and be like, oh, and, and the uncommitted folks be all right, you know what? Annoying that you can't find two minutes in this like, endless affair. But okay, you're gonna get on stage, then fine, like that's, that's something. But my point is like the second that Hassan, if you don't give Hasan anything to tell his audience and he still then comes and says, well, look, Trump's so bad, he then stops being the person that's going to influence them. Like he's now a different person. So now you need other more radical people to do the thing that you want them to do. So there's a reality to these people's like, views of the conflict that aren't going to be changed by influencers. Influencers don't have the influence that we think. I think they then get it rejected by their audience.

[Tim Miller]

I'm glad we did that. That was a 14 minute. I should put this behind the paywall. 14 minute sickos only bonus discourse over the DNC convention. All right. I appreciate you taking the extra time. My fighting list includes yimby. It includes other Middle Eastern policy stuff. Includes the investor houses. The big investor houses. I'm going create a whole list for us. We'll just do a little. We'll figure something out.

[Ryan Grimm]

It's on.

[Tim Miller]

All right, Drop site news, everybody. Go support it. That's Ryan Grimm. We're back tomorrow. It's going to be a good one, I promise you. We'll see you all then. Peace.

[Ryan Grimm]

I've been wasted, angry and sad since you left Minneapolis.

[Tim Miller]

I wish my thoughts were pure like the driven snow.