A Cage Fight for America

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast: “A Cage Fight for America”

Date: May 29, 2026
Hosts: JVL (Jonathan V. Last) & Sarah Longwell

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Episode Overview

JVL and Sarah, both recovering from illness, deliver a brisk but densely-packed episode focusing on the political spectacle of the planned America 250 celebration under Trump—a UFC cage fight event at the White House. They also delve into the ongoing fallout from artists pulling out of the event, the political meaning behind masculinity and spectacle, and the toxic state of bipartisan discourse. The conversation shifts to a deep dive into the radical reshaping of “60 Minutes” by Bari Weiss, the perils of corporate-owned media in an authoritarian atmosphere, and broader concerns about media, wealth, and democracy. There's frank, opinionated discussion, direct listener engagement, and plenty of sharp, wry humor.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. America 250 & The “Cage Fight” Debacle

Timestamps: 01:09–11:14

Key Points:

• Trump’s planned America 250th birthday bash is losing its musical artists following revelations it’s a partisan White House event with a UFC “cage fight” as the main spectacle.
  • Artists including Martina McBride, Bret Michaels, and even half of Milli Vanilli have dropped out.
• The event was marketed to artists as nonpartisan, but is actually a Trump-driven, partisan show.
• Deep schadenfreude among the hosts as the event’s legitimacy collapses.

Memorable Quotes:

• “No, no one. Half of the alive. Half of Milli Vanilli said no. I think they're only left with Vanilla Ice and Flo Rida. Fluorida. Wow, cool.” – Sarah (02:25)
• “Trump is having to lie to these artists to get them to say yes.” – Sarah (03:54)

2. Political Significance of Making UFC Central to the Celebration

Timestamps: 04:03–11:14

Key Points:

• Trump using UFC signals alignment with “working class” and “masculine” culture, distancing from elite trappings.
• UFC, while growing, is still niche and heavily male-coded, thus excluding broad American cultural participation—especially women.
• Comparison to “Idiocracy”: Spectacle, violence, and anti-intellectualism as political tools.
• The decision starkly contrasts with more universally accessible events like the PBS Capitol Fourth.

Memorable Quotes:

• “I think making UFC the avatar of America is grotesque…to say that, that ultimate fighting is, of all the sports that exist, the thing that we're going to do on the lawn of the people's house, the White House, is watch two men try to bloody one another. That's grotesque. And I like UFC.” – JVL (07:23)
• “UFC is the crypto of sports…there are people who are really into it. It's growing in popularity, but it's still niche.” – JVL (10:05)

3. Masculinity, Political Signaling, and Candidates’ Moral Calculus

Timestamps: 08:36–24:36

Key Points:

• Trump’s adoption of UFC and aggressive, masculine cultural cues are part of a broader strategy positioning himself and his supporters as “dominant,” versus the “weak.”
• Discussion about how the right frames culture wars and uses accusations (“you support a Nazi!”) to justify otherwise indefensible candidates.
• Takedown of political bad faith and “moral cancellation” via targeted online discourse.

Notable Moment:

• Deep dive into whether Graham Platner’s past (Nazi tattoo at 23, now disavowed) is disqualifying, with both hosts emphasizing that growth and apologies matter.

4. Judgment in Politics: The John Cornyn “Frog and the Scorpion” Post

Timestamps: 21:58–24:36

Key Points:

• John Cornyn’s belated public lament about supporting Trump (via the fable of the frog and the scorpion) is roasted; hosts argue that his judgment is as poor as any supposed “corrupt” candidate.
• Discussion on how establishment figures have enabled Trump and made themselves obsolete, reaping the results of their own choices.

Memorable Quote:

• “Donald Trump said all this stuff out loud about himself, and Cornyn is now like, oh, look what happened. I guess the scorpion stung me. He took me in.” – JVL (23:02)

5. Media Collapse: The Takeover of 60 Minutes

Timestamps: 24:36–32:23

Key Points:

• Bari Weiss’s hostile overhaul of 60 Minutes: firing key staff, bringing in non-expert leadership, rumored political interference (spiking a story, changing interviewers at Netanyahu’s request).
• The transformation is understood as neutering watchdog journalism and eliminating threats to Trump from a once-independent, prestigious program.
• Corporate media’s vulnerability in “authoritarian times”; inability or unwillingness to defend press freedom due to profit, ownership, and political threat calculations.
• Only independent, subscriber-funded journalism is insulated from these disruptions.

Memorable Quotes:

• “Barry Weiss is there to lose millions of dollars so that David Ellison can make money, billions of dollars. And you don't have those sort of perverted incentives in normal times. You only have them in an authoritarian age.” – JVL (30:42)
• “We do not have any corporate overlords that can tell us. …We are funded entirely by your subscriptions, for which we thank you.” – Sarah (32:23/32:38)

6. What Can Be Done About Media Monopolies and Oligarchic Power?

Timestamps: 33:16–43:18

Key Points:

• Sarah worries that, post-Trump, every major media and platform could be owned or captured by Trump allies, cementing a pro-fascist information ecosystem.
• The FCC and Fairness Doctrine are discussed, but hosts pessimistically declare there’s “no answer” for reversing this consolidation under current norms.
• JVL floats radical wealth tax and antitrust ideas: don’t just break up companies, break up personal fortunes that yield inordinate influence.
• Elon Musk and mega-donors are highlighted as dangerous new players; their unchecked ability to manipulate elections with vast wealth endangers democracy.

Notable Quotes:

• “Taxation at that level isn't really about fairness or making sure they're paying their share or whatever. It's really about preventing too much power from accumulating in one place.” – JVL (40:02)
• “Do you know what's funny? ... This is also about me getting radicalized into liking AOC, which is partly coming from the right's attacks on her, but also the left's attacks.” – Sarah (43:23)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Cage Fight:
  “It's the equivalent of picking some incredibly niche, polarizing act for the Super Bowl halftime show.” — JVL (10:54)

• On Apologies and Growth:
  “We need to celebrate apologies, celebrate people changing and growing.” — Sarah (19:23)

• On Media Takeover:
  “Bari Weiss came in and went to Benjamin Netanyahu on her own and said, ‘Well, who would you like to have interview you?’ We'll do that…That's one of the most bankrupt things I've ever heard.” — JVL (27:30–28:13)

• On Hope:
  “I wish that I could be sure that there would be a happy ending to this story and the bad guys will get their comeuppance and the good guys will triumph. And I just don't think that that's the case.” — JVL (32:53)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• America 250 / Cage Fight fallout: 01:09–11:14
• Masculinity, Culture, and The Right: 08:36–11:14
• Nazi discourse, Maine Senate Race, and Double Standards: 11:51–24:36
• John Cornyn & GOP Accountability: 21:58–24:36
• 60 Minutes and the Corporate Capture of Media: 24:36–32:23
• Media Monopolies, Wealth, and Democracy: 33:16–43:18

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Tone & Style

• Conversational, irreverent, but deeply informed
• Frequent, dry humor laced with genuine frustration and sadness about the collapse of democratic and media norms
• Clear pro-democracy, anti-authoritarian commitment
• Notable candor in confronting both left and right’s failings

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Final Thoughts

A quintessential Bulwark episode: timely, topical, and willing to call out corruption, hypocrisy, or absurdity on all sides. For listeners anxious about American democracy, the capture of institutions, and the symbols chosen to represent national life, this one offers both catharsis and a bracingly honest assessment—plus enough gallows humor to get through the news cycle.

Transcript

[A]

Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my best friend Sarah Longwell. And the two of us are coming to you today. Sick. Playing, hurt, playing through the pain to produce content for you, our family.

[B]

I don't know how you got sick. I got sick of doing the live shows, man, going cross country, doing the time change. And then like, I hugged. I wouldn't give it up. I wouldn't change anything about it. But I did hug maybe a thousand people. And so, you know, somewhere in there I picked up a bug.

[A]

So I don't know if we have this in the budget, but I was thinking, could we set up one of those plastic, like contaminant tents for these things that when we do meet people, I could be completely ensconced in it and I could just have like those little rubber arms through them, right? And hug people that way. Like the bubble boy. I could be the bubble boy from Seinfeld.

[B]

At the shows. They're all like, oh, you know, we really miss jbl. And we're like, you know, guys, he's serious. He's serious about how he struggles, you know, but they understand because they know you.

[A]

Okay, so we, it's gonna be a good show, short show, because we are under a time crunch and also we're both barely upright. We're going to talk a little bit about America 250. We're talking about John Cornyn and we're going to talk about 60 Minutes. And what else do you have for Iran?

[B]

I've got giving Iran 300 million ballrooms, Eugene Carroll Bondi and her closed door hearing. And then I. Any, any, I want some thoughts on Harambee and aliens, which is what the White House is currently posting about as we try to figure out how we're going to end this war.

[A]

Posting through it. Okay, well, I don't know anything about any of those things, so I'm excited to hear you explain them to me. Let's start with the important things. Yes, the Freedom250 debacle is unraveling in real time as of this morning. First it was Morris Day and the Time and Young MC who said, what the fuck? No, we're not doing this. Then we had the Commodores and last night Martina McBride was like, yo, peace out. And today Bret Michaels said, this is not what I signed up for. No, thank you. So I think they've lost close to half of their musical acts over the course of like 72 hours.

[B]

No, no one. Half of the alive. Half of Milli Vanilli said no. I think they're only left with Vanilla Ice and Fluorida. Fluorida. Wow, cool.

[A]

I mean, do you need anyone else? If you've got Vanilla Ice and Flo Rida, Kid Rock is gonna have to

[B]

come in and really save this thing, because you can't get enough Kid Rock. I will say, as a country music fan, Martina McBride is like an OG for me. And I was shocked when I saw her on that list. She was the biggest name to me on that list. Maybe Flow Ride is a. Maybe he's still back in stadiums, I don't know. But I was genuinely surprised because Martina McBride's music is very feminist, actually. Like, she's a real girl power singer. And yeah, reading her thing. So I read her whole statement. So I. Otherwise I was just sort of doing the general schadenfreude of, ha. Look at all these people dropping out. If you read her whole statement, though, and this sounds like it is the case for everybody, they all said that they misrepresented like that the White House lied to them about what it was they thought because there's. There is now an official government commission that is doing America 250 things to celebrate. But then there's a White House one like a Trump specific one. And they kind of tried to sell them on. It was the bipartisan. This is just celebrating America. And then of course it was, you know, on the White House lawn with a UFC backdrop. And it's coming from Trump's personal thing. So they all say, well, we were lied to about this because Trump is having to lie to these artists to get them to say yes.

[A]

I mean, it's the most. Of course this is how Trump did it thing. Right? I mean, instead of going to the acts and being like, just so you know, like the president is doing this giant thing on the White House lawn is going to be part. They seem to have been sold it as there is an event called the Great American County Fair. And you know, come be a part of this. It's just like any other booking con man is going to con, I guess. Do you have thoughts about. Do you have. We have not talked about the UFC fight. Do you have thoughts about cage fighting to celebrate the America's founding?

[B]

The main thing is, you know, when we were. When we. And we got to bring this back after the elections, when we were doing the movie club, I watched Idiocracy for the first time and the like actual. This is when. When Idiocracy, when people make the joke. Idiocracy feels like a documentary. This is what they're talking about, because in that there was like, it was a. The President had turned the whole thing into a sort of circus of fights and insane things. And that is exactly what's happening. I don't watch a lot of ufc, except if I'm at like a, a bar or a restaurant or. What's that place with all the video games?

[A]

I go with my kids sometimes Assume that you would never watch ufc.

[B]

Well, well, it's on, on the. If you go to one of those places that has all the big TVs up.

[A]

Dave and Busters.

[B]

Yeah, Dave and Busters is what I was looking for. I go there occasionally with my kids and it is, it was up. So this just happened. So I remember it and I was like, oh, this is like they put them in a cage and they kick each other. And also now that UFC has become vaguely political because Trump, remember he sent JD Vance to go negotiate with Iran while he took his favorite Marco Rubio to the UFC fight.

[A]

He's very close with Dana White, who owns the ufc.

[B]

Who's not a good guy. Right?

[A]

I mean, he seems to be questionable.

[B]

I don't know. I, I can't remember.

[A]

Not, not a, Not, Not a great guy.

[B]

Maybe.

[A]

Maybe he's an okay guy. Kind of doubt that. Relative to others, relative to other people in the Trump orbit, he seems to be about the median. How about that?

[B]

Yeah. Well, anyway, just the fact that they're doing it, it is also like, it's part of the way that Trump sort of culturally connects with more working class voters and to sort of shake off his elite. This is that kind of signaling that he does, but I don't have bigger thoughts than that, do you? This is your world, not mine.

[A]

I was very early to UFC. Like, I watched UFC 1, 2, and 3, like the very, very first UFC.

[B]

What's the difference between it and the other wrestling you like?

[A]

Well, it's real.

[B]

It's real.

[A]

I mean, there are lots of differences, although there is also some Crofts crossover. One of the great UFC champions, Brock Lesnar, also did a long tour in professional wrestling in WWE land, and he's, He's a champion of both. So I, you know, I am not anti ufc. I'm actually quite, quite pro, but I'm reasonably pro UFC as a thing. I think making UFC the avatar of America is grotesque. Like, to. To say that, that ultimate fighting is, of all the sports that exist, the thing that we're going to do on the lawn of the people's house, the White House, is watch Two men try to try to bloody one another. That's grotesque. And I like ufc. You know, Like, I mean, what that says about America. I mean, this is a. Like, what you should be watching with kids, you know?

[B]

Yeah, right. Do we not. We don't let kids watch? Because actually, this was my thing at Dave and Buster's. We were sitting down, there was all the things, and the boys were both. I had, like, my son and a friend, and they immediately started watching, gravitating to the ufc. And I was like, hey, women's college softball's on. On that tv. You know, like, they're playing the basketball game on that tv. But of course, you know, I mean,

[A]

brutal things happen in UFC sometimes. Like, you will see guys who, like faces just bust open and stuff. You know, like, I. I don't think it's appropriate for. For young children.

[B]

Uh, I also think this. Com. This is all wrapped up, too, in. In the conversation about masculinity and the way that the Trump administration And this sort of takes us into the Talrico stuff. Right. This is how they project their masculine energy. Yeah. And it's also how they tried to create a narrative of the strong, weak framing.

[A]

That's exactly right.

[B]

They're the dominant people.

[A]

Right. But also, it's a niche thing. I mean, this is. So if you. If you watch Capital Fourth, right, which is, you know, if you wanted to understand what is Median America, I think Median American culture now is like the PBS broadcast of Capital 4th, which is. It's a bunch of over the hill acts from ev. You know, you have over the hill, pop over the hill country. Over the hill, R B, over the hill.

[B]

Sounds like your Macy's Day Parade.

[A]

No, it is. It's more. It's. It's. Yes, it is more. More Middle America, more broad cultural share than. UFC is very niche. Like, it's growing and it's big, but it is still niche. It is nowhere near as popular as, like, baseball. It's probably not as popular in terms of, like, raw viewing as, like, Premier League Soccer, honestly.

[B]

You know, that's interesting because that's another frame, right? This is another frame for the whole thing, which is to say also, Trump just wants to help out his buddy. It's just another corrupt way.

[A]

It's much more like crypto. UFC is the crypto of sports. You know, like, it's. It's there. It's real. Like, there. There are people who are really into it. It's growing in popularity, but it's still niche. Like, you know, your average American does not watch ufc and your average American does not own crypto. I. Again, so just every. Both from a moral thing, from a pure, like, shared culture. Is this something the kids can watch with you? Is this something that. I mean, I am sorry, UFC is heavily male coded in ways that even like the NFL and football are not. This really does tell, I don't know, three quarters of the women in America to fuck off. Like, this is not for you. You know, like, it's just. It's weird. It is weird to pick something for such a. I mean, 250th anniversary of America celebration on the White House and lawn. You get one shot at this to do something that, like, everybody. It's like a Super bowl halftime show. Yeah, right. And I don't know, it's the equivalent of picking some incredibly niche, polarizing act for the super bowl halftime show.

[B]

Do you know why I think I hadn't quite spent much time thinking about this is because I don't know about you, but I have not been in the mood to celebrate America's 250th anniversary. I am, hey, I love me some America. I love America.

[A]

You can have it.

[B]

But it is. I am not in the mood to celebrate it. I'm not in the mood for Trump to be ripped off some 250. He's going to have a 200 new $250 bill.

[A]

Maybe they're trying to block it. Yeah, they want block it or $50 bill with his name on it. But also it'll be in red, white and blue.

[B]

Oh, my. I mean, this, this stuff, this is. Can I not to just jump into the. Some of the politics of stuff here? But I was thinking about. Because, you know, I promise I'm gonna stop. But I was fighting this. This week. I'm fighting with the anti. Antis, the baseball crank and the. Eric, I'm sorry, sorry, but I have to argue about this Paxton stuff. Right? They've all, you know, Paxton is like, forget his personal infidelity, which is clear. Like his. He is accused of bribery. He was impeached by his own caucus. He cost the taxpayers $6.6 million in Texas for, you know, he had to pay restitution for something he did or some kind of settlement. He had to pay a settlement for his office. Like he was accused of abuse of office. Like, so many things, so many corrupt things. And they're all like, well, but Tao Rico's kind of gay and his religions kind of lib. And so, you know, I mean, like Stephen Miller there's been this if people who aren't on Twitter and I am so sorry to. To bring this into the discourse but the Democrats have their own Twitter handle and Stephen Miller posts that James Talrico is trans. We have our first trans senators like you know, this whatever ridiculous trolling and the Democrats handle. Tell your kids I'm about to swear. Sorry, turn it down. But he. It said like Stephen Miller's ugly or is an ugly or something like that.

[A]

You know, just your face, you ugly.

[B]

Yeah, there's something like that. Yeah.

[A]

Pretty good. It was aggro. I liked it.

[B]

Sure. I mean this is where I mean you've got whatever Chung, that guy Stephen Chung who's out there, you know, telling Mike Pompeo to go himself. Like, like just the this stuff online again we don't have to go too much but the White House is currently posting about aliens. It is currently posting about the 10 year anniversary of the death of Harami RIP but it is just, it is all ridiculous. But watching you know the baseball cranks in the Eric Erickson be like well yep, got to support this super corrupt guy. And then the when you call them out on it, their retort is will you support a Nazi? And what they mean is Graham Platner. And I gotta say in addition to this, part of their evidence for my support is something that someone said to me on a podcast. Like Adam Gentleson said something.

[A]

Someone says something to you that is in fact your opinion and you're on the hook for it. Sarah, I'm sorry, those are the rules.

[B]

And obviously look, Graham Platner is not in a vacuum. Vacuum for him. Platinum is very much not for me on the other hand to be consistent with my own values. My own values. And the reason that the bulwark exists and the reason that we're all together here is because Donald Trump represents a very unique threat to American democracy, American liberal democracy. And because I believe that people who enable that threat, who help prop that threat up, who make him more capable of doing the fascist work that he does, I want to see them leave office. And that includes Susan Collins. Didn't used to for me but. Cuz I really thought it was important that we had Republicans who are going to stand up to him. And she has intermittently however in Trump 2.0 she has been a. If not a rubber stamp, she has been. She's putting on the Trump 2028 hat in the office. Like forget it. She's got to go, she's got to go. But I was thinking about this idea Of. So there's a. There's a moral connection that people are sort of making, whether they're. They're trying to sort of cancel out their Paxton support with Platner saying that they sort of equal out the moral failings. And to me, with that, there's a few.

[A]

Look, if they will. If they will say, I, I don't support Paxton and I think people shouldn't support Platner either. Like that. You know what I'm saying?

[B]

All right. That's the day that would be fine. I would. That's right. Well, this is the thing is, right. I'm not going to let. I am never, ever going to let people who have lost all moral, Moral authority, of course they can support Paxton. He's just as corrupt as Trump. Like, for the people who just went on and on about Hunter Biden's laptop, the amount of money being funneled into Don Jr. And Eric's businesses right now, it is infinitesimally more than what? Than the Biden crime.

[A]

Infinitesimally is smaller.

[B]

Sorry, what did I mean. I mean, you meant bigger. Exponentially.

[A]

I meant you're hopped up on cold medicine. Nobody's holding you, holding you to strict things here. We're playing hurt guys.

[B]

But I, But I started to think about the retort. Is this like, he's a Nazi. Okay, you support a Nazi. So leaving aside the fact that it's less support and more thinking that, like, Susan Collins has to go, okay, he's the nominee. Whatever.

[A]

He's not a Nazi. If he was a n. Right. This is the right.

[B]

So. So this is. So I'm like, okay, well, let's take the argument for a second.

[A]

It's like, has you really hash this out on Twitter? That's good.

[B]

No, no, no. I'm going to hash it out with you.

[A]

I'm hash out with you.

[B]

I haven't even said this. This is just it been in my brain. Has Graham Platner suggested rounding people up and sending them to torture prisons in other countries?

[A]

Not to my knowledge.

[B]

Okay. Is he talking about ripping off the American people and, you know, stealing their tax dollars to build arches, to drape his face on government institutions, to build a ballroom? Does he put. Does Graham Platner suggest that he's going to put his name on other people's memorials? Like, to me, as I was thinking about it, I'm not one to call Trump a Nazi. I do think he does an awful lot of things that resemble fascism and. Or not resemble are. Are fascist.

[A]

Like our fascist dined with A Nazi.

[B]

He dined.

[A]

We were then told that that was okay. He was like, fuentes maybe a Nazi, but he's not that bad. It's like, now all of a sudden, Nazis are bad. These are the people who've been defending Nazis for 10 years. And now that there's maybe a guy on the Democratic side who might. You might be able to smear as a Nazi, they're like, oh, actually right now, being a Nazi, super bad.

[B]

No, but. But here's the thing. If I thought Graham Platner was a Nazi, if I thought there was anything, the fact that he was a Nazi, I would have to support Susan Collins. Like, if I genuinely thought that if this. If he was like that Galindo person that we saw in that House race, that one Democrat, she ended up getting like 36% of the vote, still too much. But she's talking about rounding up Jews and putting them in ICE detention centers. Like, if he was doing that, I'd support Susan Collins. I. You'd have to. Like, that is like it. But. But here's the thing. But let's talk about Graham Platner for real. So, number one, he gets that tattoo when he's 23. Do you know the things that I was doing when I was 23, thank God there wasn't. Like, then. This is your point. 23 is the age at which most people get tattoos that they don't. They are Chinese caricatures or characters that mean, you know, booty call, and they think it means peace. You know, like the tattoo artists are messing. Yeah, that's right. So look, and I don't know, I was talking. I've been taking some. Some incoming. And so someone that I like was texting me and saying, well, this normalizes Plat. And I was like, you know, one of the things about Platner is that he's apologized, which is the other big thing. He has disavowed the past statements and he talks about his growth. And here's the thing. Let's say there was a nominee who was actually had been a skinhead at some point and went. Because you see these people, right? They're now like public speakers. They're like, I was drawn in to this awful way of life and I reject it. Whatever. We don't sit there and say, like, we don't morally condemn the person they are. We want to. We want to celebrate the fact that they were able to see. Same with people who left the Westboro Baptist Church or whatever. People who escape these sort of cult like things anyway. The point is we need to celebrate apologies, celebrate people changing and growing. And so, like, if I was going to normalize anything, it would be that. And like, I have, I've read a bunch of the stuff he said. Like, it's awful, it's reprehensible. And if he was saying anything like that, now that would be one thing. But he's not. He's disavowing all of it and talking about having PTSD and his time in the military and how broken he was by it. And like, do.

[A]

Is.

[B]

Is that. How, how sincere is he in all of that? I can't judge that. I don't know him. I do know that that ARC makes sense, that that ARC is the reason that voters in Maine are. Roll their eyes at the implication, because they're like, he was a guy, he did a bunch of weird stuff when he was young and had a bunch of terrible opinions. And now he's grown up and he's apologized for it. He's disavowed that he doesn't think that anymore. It's not what he's talking about on the trail. And so I'm just like, what a kind of a brain dead argument is the Nazi thing. Like, anyway, that's one.

[A]

I think I just wanted to vent

[B]

my spleen on that.

[A]

That's fine, I would say, and this is actually a nice segue, people who say, like, oh, he's a Nazi, that's just bad faith. Now, I am open to the possibility that we may learn in the course of the campaign that actually his repentance is insincere and he's secretly been doing Nazi chat groups the whole time and this is all some insidious, deep game that he's been playing. Okay, fine. If we find evidence of that, great. We'll all learn about it. Yeah. Until then, the he's a Nazi thing is just. I do not dismiss the argument that. Glad he has recanted. Glad that he doesn't do that anymore. But I'm sorry, I question the basic judgment of anybody who at some point fell for that stuff and was doing it.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

And I get that, and I absolutely get that on questions of judgment. John Cornyn went to Twitter today. Did you see this?

[B]

I did.

[A]

He posted the story of the frog and the scorpion as if it was some deep lesson that he just learned about Donald Trump at age 74. How about that for judgment, right? I mean, this, this is a grown up, a guy who's not a Nazi guy who is just a normie, respectable politician whose Judgment for the last decade has been terrible. Yeah, terrible. Without any of the markers. He doesn't have any bad tattoos that we know of. He doesn't have any terrible Reddit threads that we know of. And his judgment is horrible. And I, you know, I read this, the frog and scorpion, I thought to myself, does he not understand that the frog and the scorpion and the snake poem are the same story? And Donald Trump has been telling the snake story on stage for every day for a fucking decade.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Donald Trump said all this stuff out loud about himself, and Cornyn is now like, oh, look what happened. I guess the scorpion stung me. He took me in.

[B]

This is one of the reasons that whether it's Cornyn, Dan Crenshaw, anybody who are sort of maybe very preferable slightly to the people who, like John Cornyn, is clearly a better person than Ken Paxton. Like, there's no doubt about the fact that he has.

[A]

You let John Cornyn watch your kids.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

You would not let Ken Paxton babysit your kids.

[B]

But they, they do need to learn the lesson. This is, this is the leopard face eating party there where they're like, oh, I never thought the leopards would eat me, would eat my face. You enabled. Like, this is like, they enabled Trump to change their voters to want people who were corrupt. Like, they made themselves obsolete. Like they didn't realize this. And same with Susan Collins. They are making themselves obsolete by going along with this because they are still, because they don't seal clap always for it. They are seen as not sufficiently maga, not sufficiently loyal to Trump, and they've trained voters to want that. And now those voters are throwing them out for being insufficiently loyal because they want somebody like Paxton, who's so corrupt, he will make sure Trump can do his corruption.

[A]

All right, I, I want to talk about 60 Minutes. Did you by any chance read the piece that I wrote this morning? I sent it to you. It's not out yet. So by the time we were taping, the piece was not out. There's no reason you should have read it.

[B]

I'm sorry, I haven't.

[A]

That's okay. It's about. It's about the importance of independent media.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And the dangers of corporate media in this moment. So this week, the Entire leadership of 60 Minutes was decapitated by Barry Weiss. She got rid of the executive producer, the executive editor, two of the lead producers, three of the seven correspondents are not coming back. The show is going to be utterly unrecognizable. She has put in Nick Bilton a guy who wrote for Vanity Fair in the New York Times and who has precisely. I'm making a zero with my fingers. Experience in broadcast journalism as executive producer. The Daily Wire was very excited about this. Big seal claps from the Daily Wire about Nick Bilton's hiring. This is a sea change at CBS News. And I want to. People need to understand the history of 60 Minutes here. So 60 Minutes has for like half a century been the top rated program in broadcast news, all networks. So it is at the very, very top of the entire category of, like, news that goes out on a screen. 60 Minutes is the top. And it is not only the top, is also the most respected because it does the best work and because it's the most profitable. And so 60 Minutes is the proof of concept for the idea that journalism can be done well and profitably through the television medium. Because of that, for 50 years, 60 Minutes has been a state within a state at CBS News. They operate almost entirely independently of the CBS News superstructure. They promote from within. When there is succession at 60 minutes and somebody is leaving one of the top jobs, it is sort of a consensus within staff, you know, to elevate the. It's almost like the news version of a co op in that way. And they've been allowed that sort of independence because their success is so huge and so unique that the feeling has always been like, well, we're not going to fucking do it better than they do, you know. 60 Minutes made $206 million in revenue in 2024. Barry Weiss, who also has exactly zero experience in either broadcast journalism or investigative journalism, came in and immediately began pushing people inside 60 Minutes around. She spiked one of their stories.

[B]

The Seacot story.

[A]

The Seacot story, because she was worried that it would be poorly received by Trump. And she did something that I still can't get my head around. Leslie Stahl had been negotiating with Benjamin Netanyahu for a sit down interview for months. And Bari Weiss came in and went to Benjamin Netanyahu on her own and said, well, who would you like to have interview you? We'll do that. She gave the subject of CBS News journalism the choice of his interlocutor. I mean, I'm sorry, but that's one of the most bankrupt things I've ever heard.

[B]

He chose Garrett. Major Garrett.

[A]

He chose Major Garrett, who's not on staff at 60 Minutes, but he did

[B]

sit next to me at that dealbook panel for the New York Times. Yeah, I bet.

[A]

I bet he did. So Barry has gone in and fired all these people from 60 Minutes and installed her own guy who has as much experience in broadcast news as she does. And it is very clear that this is all being done to make sure that 60 Minutes is not a threat to Trump. Because this was like the last bastion at CBS News where they could do something dangerous to Trump. And this is the problem with corporate owned media. In an authoritarian age, if you're in normal times, having corporate owned media is maybe not ideal, but there are pluses and minuses. The plus side is you get enormous resources. You can do what 60 Minutes does, you can throw tens of millions of dollars at the product. You can hire great journalists, you can put people on the ground in faraway places for long periods of time and invest money in stories. And the downside is, I mean, there was so there was a big 60 minute scandal. You may remember this. In 2004, they ran a story about George W. Bush and the Texas Rather gate guard. Rather Gate relied on forged documents. 60 Minutes was owned at that point by Paramount. Nobody at Paramount was worried that the Bush administration was going to pull their broadcast license or that the Bush administration wouldn't approve their purchase of DreamWorks, the movie studio, DreamWorks, which they were working on at the time. Because we lived in normal times then. The Bush administration was not authoritarian. Same thing with all of the administrations prior to Trump. Right, with Trump. So Bear, you know, normally we would say like, oh, well, the market will correct these things. But the reality is the market has been punishing CBS News. Viewers have been leaving their shows, they've been losing money, ratings are down. But that's okay, because Barry Weiss's job isn't to make money for CBS News. It's to make CBS News a tool to grease Donald Trump so that the corporate entity Paramount and David Ellison can make money. And so as I put in the newsletter, Barry Weiss is there to lose millions of dollars so that David Ellison can make money, billions of dollars. And you don't have those sort of perverted incentives in normal times. You only have them in an authoritarian age. There. That's my, my thesis. That's the long way I go.

[B]

I got nothing to add to that. That's perfect.

[A]

And I sort of look at what has happened to 60 Minutes and it makes me sick. I mean, I am sort of like a, a real journalism guy in a weird way. And so, you know, I come to this stuff differently than you and Tim do. This sort of gets my guild mentality hackles up. Like, I really, really hate seeing this sort of shit. And I especially Hate it coming from. Do you remember Barry Weiss's big University of Austin course about dangerous ideas? Oh, oh, we're here to talk about all of that. Was smokescreen. There's no. It's not really about free speech. It's not about dangerous ideas. It's just about power. It's just about convincing people to give her power so that she can pursue their higher agenda. And I hate that. I hate that for our profession. I hate that for America. And those incentive structures don't happen in a normal time, and they do happen in an authoritarian context. And that is why independent media takes on a special sort of pride of place and a special importance in the life of a society during authoritarian times. Because the independent media incentives can't be warped in that way.

[B]

It's true. We do not have any corporate overlords that can tell us. And anytime you see on the Internet that someone's funding us, they're wrong. They're making it up. Because we are funded entirely by your subscriptions, for which we thank you.

[A]

And the ads on YouTube.

[B]

And the ads on YouTube.

[A]

And our friends at Bowland Branch.

[B]

That's right. And the ads that we read. And our friends at Soul Gummies. That's right. That is how we're standing up to authoritarianism.

[A]

I don't know, man. I mean, that stuff really. It really cheeses me off. And I would. I wish that I could be sure that there would be a happy ending to this story and the bad guys will get their comeuppance and the good guys will triumph. And I just don't think that that's the case.

[B]

I'm just gonna ask you.

[A]

Barry Weiss is never gonna get any comeuppance. There is no downfall of Barry Weiss in our future.

[B]

So you've been pretty big on sort of testing out my and Tim's appetite for, like, the. What comes after. What do you do in response to these things? And I've said for a long time, the thing that really keeps me up at night about all of this stuff is that by the time Trump is done with his term, everybody who's aligned with him will own the vast majority of media properties in the country and the platforms on which they are distributed. So Elon Musk on X and Zuckerberg on Ed Meta, and you got Allison with TikTok, Ellison with TikTok. You've got your Washington Post and CBS

[A]

and CNN and cbs.

[B]

And then, like, Ellison's gonna buy cnn. They're just having Fox, ABC settled with Trump. I'm not saying they're owned by it, but like they are, you know, I think Disney has been that, you know, that they fight with them over Kimmel and, and they're feeling beleaguered. So, like, at the end of all of this, you consider the, what was once the sort of right wing media ecosystem, which is vast and, and, and spans a wide range on the right, plus the mainstream media that's now captured by Trump and his allies that the information ecosystem that people already struggle with is going to start to be overwhelmingly pro fascist, just pro Trump. And so what do you do to unravel that? Like, would you say? Because we don't want, we want the neutral arbiters at the fcc. Now, I have seen Brendan Carr speak a number of times and this guy is a, he's awful. He's, he's. Oh, he's just. No, but no, no, no, no, no. He's taking so much delight in getting people fired, running people out. Like he sits there and he owns it. He's like, look who got fired at this place. And look at Don Lemon's gone and whatever.

[A]

He's a figure from like communist Russia. Yes, right, yeah.

[B]

So what is their accountability? Like what accountability could or should there be?

[A]

I mean, the media in corporate stuff is one place where I don't know that there are any easy fixes. I mean, people talk about like section 230 reforms or what's the broadcast license, the Fairness Doctrine stuff.

[B]

Oh, yeah, Fairness Doctrine.

[A]

I don't know that any of that. There are other places where I think you can do big polarizing reforms. Right. Like adding states back in the. Sorry. Expanding the Supreme Court. I think you can do, I think you can break up a bunch of corporations. Like for instance, Amazon Web Services should be broken off of Amazon. I'm sorry. I think SpaceX ought to be nationalized. I've said that before. I'll say it till the death of time. When it comes to the media, I don't know what you do because what, what you will get is, you will get if you get a normal Democratic administration, then a normal Democratic administration doesn't do retribution. Yeah. At least in the media. Right. And so, yeah, it's, it's all, it's the doctrine of free shots. Right. These people can, they know that Trump will punish them, so they know they have to help Trump. They know that Democrats won't punish them. They can do whatever they want.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I don't think there's an answer to that or if there's an answer. I don't see It.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Do you.

[B]

I'm gonna have to think hard about this because as you were talking I went to the remedy place and I didn't like. By the time a Democrat takes over, Ellison will have CNN as well. And so, you know, I'd have to, I'd have to study what they have done in the past around media monopolies platform. You know, we have a whole new media infrastructure that is outside of when they were making the original rules around media. Like none of the rest of this stuff existed. And so what do you. And that. And like the new stuff is creating competitive pressures on the old stuff so that, you know, so there is probably an entirely new way of thinking about this. I don't think we're in a position right now to do it. But at. Somebody's got to be thinking about this. And I'm going to, I'm going to go figure out what it is because I'm interested.

[A]

I mean maybe part of the answer is in just tax rates and really taxing. Again, I know you're not there. I don't believe that billionaires shouldn't exist, but I think, I believe that hund like centibillionaires probably shouldn't exist. Yeah, I certainly believe trillionaires shouldn't exist. And so maybe part of it is like just capping the amount of resources that that one person can have. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I don't want to sound too red for you, but again, I am fine with having a billionaire, but should somebody be able to have $150 billion, doesn't that give them a little bit too much power? I mean if we break up corporations, why wouldn't we break up individual wealth accumulation? Right. We break up corporations because they're dangerous and they create anti competitive problems. I'm open to doing that for people.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Hey oh see.

[B]

Hey.

[A]

Oh see.

[B]

I mean I certainly don't think somebody should have a trillion dollars. I have more trouble with like if you have a certain amount of money, like did you create that level of value in the market and are you paying your fair share of taxes is the way that I think about it more because I think my, one of my bigger issues on the tax thing is conservatives do like to throw up that this per, you know that this sort of the ultra wealthy pay like more than 50% in taxes. But like we know that a lot of these people are dodging taxes in all kinds of ways.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Anybody at that level of wealth is, has all kinds of mechanisms for how to dodge paying taxes or at least different portions of taxes. And so I think that taxes on the like, it's not that I think they don't exist. I think that for them to exist and for them to have created that level of value means that they have also there is some like cost to that or there are many things of cost, whether it's to the roads like that are disproportionate. Like if you've created that much value, you've also sort of disproportionately are extracting from, from things that are part of the common good. And so I do think that you paying more to sort of make sure that the common good is taken care of is justified.

[A]

So I, I would, I would just ask you to think about this when you think about taxation at the top, top levels because I don't think about it primarily about usage and fairness. I think about it the way I think about antitrust, which as I think about it as risk mitigation. And so taxation at that level isn't really about fairness or making sure they're paying their share or whatever. It's really about preventing too much power from accumulating in one place. And the reason we break up companies is precisely because of that. Right. Ma Bell created an incredible amount of value, which is why it became a telephone monopoly and it was too much. And having that much power concentrated in that one place actually wound up being bad for the rest of society. And so it had to be broken up. And that is how I think we ought to approach questions about taxation for the billionaire class. Not about do they deserve to have it or not deserve to have it, but just about. I'm sorry, this is anti competitiveness and we can't allow any, any one center point, any one stakeholder to accumulate that much power in society. It was dangerous.

[B]

Yeah, that's an interesting point. I mean I think about, I do think about this in terms of Elon and I guess I'm not sure whether I think the way that you mitigate this problem is on the individual wealth side or on the election regulatory side. Because I think that the fact that he doesn't operate the way other people operate to do sort of messaging in elections like other people. They don't. Right. He just does it through an LLC and just like buys up ad time on his own like from the, because he is a trillionaire. And the extent to which he can. Now this is why I don't think we should talk in terms of elections being rigged. But the idea that there is A wild impact of, like, one person's money in a race. And like, it used to be, you know, there's like, all these different donors and whatever, and they line up on both sides, and both sides do it, and both sides have their mechanisms, and, like, that's just politics to sell. But the idea that Elon could personally. And this is like, something you can't do if you are operating sort of in a normal way. He ran ads in Michigan, he paid for ads in Michigan that said that Trump was going to take on Israel. And he ran ads in places that had high concentrations of Jews, talking about how Trump was going to defend Israel. And so there was no ideological. It was just like, I'm just going to. We're going to just manipulate. Yeah.

[A]

We're going to use the mass of money to move opinion.

[B]

And so I have been thinking about what you do now where you have these massive concentrations of wealth that's being from crypto people, like, they're all playing in our elections in big ways. And that is making it difficult for people to make the choices in the election without sort of an undue influence. And it's just. It's something. I don't know what the solution is, but there's, again, one of the things

[A]

that AOC and I are equal. Are eager to have that conversation with you.

[B]

Sure. Do you know what's funny?

[A]

Go ahead. We gotta wrap, because I got a thing.

[B]

Well, this is also about me getting radicalized into liking aoc, which is partly coming from the right's attacks on her, but also the left's attacks on her. Like, the hardcore leftists are, like, giving her all these purity tests, and she's. And I was like, leave her alone. She's your best one. What are you doing? Anyway?

[A]

Love me some aoc. All right, best friend. You know, I feel better just by being with. In many ways, friendship is the best medicine.

[B]

It is the best medicine.

[A]

See you later, friend.

[B]

Bye, guys.

[A]

Rebecca, take us home.