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- [00:01]
Mike Pesca
This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. Not everyone is careful with your personal information, which might explain why there's a victim of identity theft every five seconds in the U.S. fortunately, there's LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year by visiting lifelock.com podcast terms apply.
- [00:34]
Alan McPherson
It's Friday, April 25, 2025. From Pete Fish Productions, it's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. And back to Pete Hegseth. That was my big mistake, Mike. When I first got we didn't know we had roosters. The Secretary of Defense is once again embroiled in a scandal. Is it a new scandal? I look at it as scandal 1B point 1. So scandals 2 and 3 might be about leaks or if you want to go back to all the revelations of when he was confirmed. But let' with Hegseth actually being appointed Secretary of Defense, the big scandal was that he discussed not classified, not war plans, just attack plans. Sure. On a signal app you shouldn't do that. And the reason you shouldn't do that is it's not protocol. But and this is important, even though signal apps are secured, the keystrokes on a commercial smartphone might not be. And, and the Chinese are very good at hacking into smartphones. And we've actually scrapped under the Trump administration the programs that monitors big Chinese hacking successes. So the revelation today, broken by the Associated Press and confirmed by others, was that Hegseth was able to get on this signal chat group in his office at the Pentagon because they had installed, or Hegseth had installed, an Internet line to do that. And that line is called a dirty line, which doesn't sound good in terms of avoiding a scandal. A dirty line is like any other public Internet connection and has pluses and minuses. It seems like more minuses in terms of avoiding a scandal, but the plus is it's not a smartphone. So you can't monitor the keystrokes per se. If you are doing that from your office in the Pentagon. The downside is it's just like any regular public line. So there is an opportunity to somehow monitor what you're doing. But there's an asterisk to that in a way, in that it won't show up that you are a Defense Department employee. So that's one way hackers know or can be alerted that you might be doing something. If you are on a Defense Department computer and the IP address shows up as a Defense Department address. Maybe this called could alert hackers to try to monitor you. Anyway, I would say there definitely seems to be more minuses than pluses. How is Hegseth and his spokesman Sean Parnell, dealing with it, as you'd expect, calling it fake news. I think one day there should be a supercut of all the things that Trump and those working for him have called fake news that have turned out to be authenticated news. And here is something else that Sean Parnell said in a statement to the Associated Press. We can confirm that the secretary has never used and does not currently use on his government computer. I heard that and I said, oh, okay, maybe he was using it in a dirty line on a private computer, his own computer. And then I said to myself, well, maybe Sean Parnell is just lying. Why am I just trying to parse the words of Sean Parnell for an escape clause? He could just lie. They very often lie. So the real question, and one that we got to earlier this week, is what does this mean for Hegseth, longevity in that role? And my prior analysis was Trump would not be disposed to dispose of him because he would rather show the media or prove the media wrong in their scoop and prediction that Hegseth was on the outs than actually go through with outing Hegseth. I think the calculation is changing a little bit. I don't know. Maybe Trump views this as I do, as scandal 1b point 1. So it's not really a new scandal. But probably he's a little upset that this is going on. It doesn't help his agenda. And as much as you say, yes, but Donald Trump has a high threshold for chaos. He does, but he likes chaos on his terms. And he likes to be the center of and the creator of the chaos. He either purposefully does it or when it happens to him, he gets defensive and thinks it's unfair. When the Defense Department secretary does it, he might not get defensive. He might be a little angry. And then you have to judge his anger at the media who might eventually be proved right, or his anger at Hegseth. But again, back to the previous reporting. Getting another secretary of defense confirmed will not be easy. And a high profile firing would validate in ways that he does not want. The reporting around Hegseth on the show today. It is an Antoine Tig. I haven't done one in a while, but certain people deserve certain shout outs and certain stuffed lobsters. But first, if you want to talk about a scandalous military operation that the executive was consumed by. Maybe you could talk about the Iran Contra affair. It was an opaque scandal. It was a slow rolling scandal. And it was a scandal that not only didn't stick to the president involved or even the Future President George H.W. bush, who was involved with it, but my guest argues that it was a scandal that set the precedent for future scandals. What White Houses could get away with. The name of my guest is Professor Alan McPherson. Well, his title is professor and his name is Alan McPherson. The name of the book is the Breach Iran Contra and the Assault on American Democracy. And that's up next.
- [06:12]
Mike Pesca
This episode is brought to you by Selectquote. Life insurance can have a huge impact on our family's future with Selectquote Getting covered with the right policy for you is simple and affordable. Selectquote's licensed insurance agents will tailor your experience to find a life insurance policy for your needs in as little as 15 minutes. And selectquote partners with carriers that provide policies for many conditions. Selectquote they shop, you save. Go to selectquote.com SpotifyPod today to get started.
- [06:43]
Alan McPherson
You know that I'm going to be fascinated by the Iran Contra affair because right in the middle of it, and what broke it out to the public was a downed CIA airman named Eugene Hassan Fuss. I'm about 15 years old. Eugene Hassan Fuss is in the news. I'm fascinated, I'm captivated. And then it kind of goes away in the background. It was a thing that dogged Ronald Reagan in the last years of his presidency, mostly written out of his legacy. Same with George W. Bush. Two Republican presidents widely regarded as much more decent than the current spate of Republicanism. But you know, looking back on the Iran Contra affair scandal, a case can be made. And Alan McPherson makes it in his new book, the Breach. A case can be made that there is a direct line from the executive abuses of that period to our own. The Breach Iran Contra and the Assault on American democracy. Alan McPherson, welcome to the Gist.
- [07:46]
Pete Hegseth
Thank you very much for having me.
- [07:48]
Alan McPherson
How old are you?
- [07:50]
Pete Hegseth
I am 54. So I was also 15 when the plane went down.
- [07:53]
Alan McPherson
Same deal, right? We're in high school and I don't know what your world is like, but I just hear this name, Eugene Hasenfuss, and I'm interested in politics. And it was try to try to remind viewers of a different age. It was big news. It's not like this wasn't big news, right?
- [08:10]
Pete Hegseth
No, it was big news. And then a few weeks after the Downed plane. The downed plane was one thing that sort of announced that we were doing some undercover stuff in Central America. But then a few weeks after that comes the news that the United States has been trading missiles to a sworn enemy, Iran, right, in return for hostages, and it's not working. And then a few weeks after that comes the news, once they start looking into things, that there's a diversion, right, of Iranian money or profits to the Contras in Central America, and then that becomes Iran Contra.
- [08:45]
Alan McPherson
So knowing what we know now, we've actually started somewhere in the middle of the story. You and your book go back to the beginning. How did this whole operation, this whole enterprise start?
- [08:56]
Pete Hegseth
Yeah, it's actually called the enterprise. I mean, it starts as two different schemes, right? One in Iran, one in Central America. They start more or less at the same time. The one in Central America begins when the Democrats, Democratic run Congress essentially tells everybody who's involved in intelligence, you can't spend any money on helping the Contras at all. Even people's salaries. Right. And you certainly can't give them sort of military advice, that sort of thing. And so the CIA, who has been doing these sorts of things, goes to the National Security Council and they go to this man who becomes part of, at the center of the scandal, Oliver north, and they say, please take this over. We need the NSC to do this. It'll be more secretive. Right. The CIA is a big machine, the NSC is small. And so take this over. And so he starts getting money from rich Americans from other countries, and they start sending a bunch of money and weapons to the Contras, Right? So it's not really the government that's, that's funding this, but they're facilitating this money.
- [09:55]
Alan McPherson
Yeah. And Oliver north is employed by the nfc, nsc, and he's on the NSC salary. And some days he would take a plane ride to Miami to meet with a donor and then take a plane ride back to the Pentagon to be at his desk in the morning. Such was the nature of his workaholism. So Oliver north isn't the one who decided to do it, though he was the right person to execute it. It was the head of the CIA, William Casey and. Or were there others?
- [10:19]
Pete Hegseth
Well, I mean, the person who decides to do it really is the President. I mean, President Reagan says, okay, Congress has cut him off, but I essentially order you to keep the Contras in live, he says, body and soul, Right. Which.
- [10:32]
Alan McPherson
So you're saying he, it was his idea to somehow keep this happening, and then it was Casey's idea how to execute the scheme.
- [10:41]
Pete Hegseth
Right. Well, I mean, Casey had already been funding them, so they essentially sort of know who to go to. But Reagan is the one who says let's keep this going in some way, but don't break the law. Right. But the Congress has clearly said you can't keep this going. So it puts people like north in an impossible dilemma where he's told not to break the law, but the only way he can do this is essentially to break the law. And Reagan, he, by the way, didn't.
- [11:06]
Alan McPherson
Seem so torn by the dilemma. It wasn't like he was awake at night saying, how can I do this and still be adherence in adherence to the law? He didn't care about the law.
- [11:14]
Pete Hegseth
No. So the other side of this is the Iran part. So another thing that Reagan clearly wants is to free hostages from Iran. And so the only way they're going to do that is by Iran purchasing some missiles from the United States in its war with Iraq that has started in 1980. Right. This is an eight year war. United States is not really on either side of the war, but it certainly doesn't want to help Iran because of the sworn enemy. They have American hostages all over the world. There used to be a hostage crisis and Reagan knew that. Carter was burned by the hostage crisis and goes, president should ever have to go through this again. Let's get the hostages out. The only thing that the Iranians really want is missiles so that sell them missiles. Again, people are telling him inside the government and this is high up, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State are saying, do not do this, it's highly illegal. And we've, we've, we've told all of our allies not to deal with Iran and then we're going to do it to maybe get hostages and then maybe the Iranians will take more hostages so that we give them more missiles.
- [12:17]
Alan McPherson
Yeah, that would be, that would be the obvious trap, right, the obvious incentive. Once you establish that you will sell them arms, then there is a market for hostages, isn't there?
- [12:27]
Pete Hegseth
Exactly.
- [12:28]
Alan McPherson
Yeah.
- [12:29]
Pete Hegseth
Hostages become currency.
- [12:30]
Alan McPherson
So George Schultz, Secretary of State Caspar Weinberger later indicted on this, they were saying we're just reading the law as the law. And was this the Boland Amendment? Is this the law specifically we're talking about?
- [12:43]
Pete Hegseth
No, the Boland Amendment only had to do with Nicaragua, with the Contras. Iran was a bunch of other things. Mostly sort of, you know, not, not being able to sort of sell arms to countries that, that are not allies that you, you know, essentially at War with. Yeah, so a bunch of other laws. There's, there's dozens of laws that are broken here.
- [13:01]
Alan McPherson
Right. But so you have Sec Def. You have Secretary of State guys right in line to be in the order of the presidency way further down the list. And some of these are Senate approved and some of these aren't. You have heads of the security apparatus, William Casey, John Poindexter, who was the national Security adviser, a guy named Bud McFarlane. They seem to be of a different ilk than Weinberger and Schultz. Tell me about that cadre of operators.
- [13:32]
Pete Hegseth
Right. I mean, you've got people like McFarland and Poindexter. They're both national Security advisor one before the other. So they're both Oliver North's boss. And so they've essentially been given this mission, right, by the President to do both of these things at the same time. They give the operational details to north and they say, you handle the details. Just give us a sense that we're funding the Contras, that sort of thing. They're just a little bit less concerned with the Constitution. They have more animus towards Congress. They really don't believe that Congress, even though it's the law that you have to report covert operations to Congress, these guys simply don't believe that they should do that. Right. Bill Casey at the CIA really hates them, calls them nasty names. And we're not talking about all of Congress, right? 535 people. We're talking about eight people, right? The heads of the intelligence committees in both the houses. This is Republicans and Democrats, people who should be able to hold onto a secret. The problem is there are leaks in Washington. There's leaks coming from the Congress, there's leaks coming from the White House. And so the CIA and the nsc, they hate Congress for that reason, and they blame them for all of the leaks.
- [14:44]
Alan McPherson
Some of Casey's tactics were fascinating. First of all, as a genius, he invents essentially events, a lot of tax evasion schemes when he's a really young lawyer, then becomes chair of the sec. Great guy, knows how to evade taxes. Now he's in charge of the CIA. He does this thing. I mean, he does a lot of things, but one of the things he does is he testifies before Congress, before these eight committee chairs, and he actually divulges information. But the way he does it is literally, quickly, quickly and by mumbling. And Congress doesn't even realize that the United States is mining the harbors in Nicaragua because William Casey rushed past it in a mumble.
- [15:24]
Pete Hegseth
Exactly. I think he reads for about two hours, and there's 10 seconds of this that says that the harbors have been mined. He doesn't even say that this is the CIA that did this, because they're sort of CIA assets. So you can see, you can sort of see, perceive that maybe the United States is not in charge of this. But what he's really revealing is an act of war. Right. Nicaragua is involved in what you might call a civil war or regional war. The United States has not declared war on it, and yet the United States government is essentially taking over from the Contras in this instance and putting its own bombs with its own assets on sovereign territory in Nicaragua. This is an act of war. And that's what the Nicaraguans obviously say. And so the Congress, once they figure this out, they erupt and they're quite angry. This is one of the things that was lead the Boland Amendment, right?
- [16:12]
Alan McPherson
Now, many Republicans in Congress, of course, the Reagan administration, all Republicans, they were against this, too. Goldwater was against, just sort of against the national security apparatus, outstripping the power of Congress. This was a time when the Senate was very clear about they had a separation of power. And you can't do things that Congress forbid you to do. Not everyone. There's a great quote in here from Jake Garn, who is the Utah congressman who. Right. Who yells, you're all assholes. Garn of Utah screamed at his colleagues. You're all assholes. The whole of Congress is full of assholes. All 535 members are assholes there by implicating himself in the asshole. But the general premise of why I bring this up is in the current. It has certainly seemed that Congress has abrogated its powers, just given up on oversight. Back then, it wasn't true. So there had to be a lot of chicanery and underhandedness to get around Congress, right?
- [17:16]
Pete Hegseth
That's right. I mean, this is sort of early in the 1980s that this is happening. And, you know, people like Goldwater, he wants some sort of control over intelligence. At the very least, he wants to be told before it happens. Right. So he can be in on it. The fact that he has to discover it afterwards is really shocking to him. And frankly, it's against the law. Right. The law clearly says you have to give notice before you do these things. And so a lot of these Republicans, they kind of want to be part of the game, want to be part of the show. But Iran Contra will sort of erode this. Right? That's sort of the argument in this, by the time 87, 88 rolls around, you've got people like Dick Cheney, who is a representative and is on the committees investigating this. And he's saying, you know, you probably don't, you know, the President probably doesn't really need to even tell Congress about most of these covert operations. And this is his institution, right? And several other Republicans are saying this exact same thing. We don't really need to know. So this is the Executive, unitary executive theory.
- [18:17]
Alan McPherson
It was his institution then, but he had a hankering to join the Executive quite clearly and did. The one thing we haven't established is how the Iranian the arms for hostages deal gets tied into the funding, the Contras deal. And it's that word, funding. There needed to be some money. So arms for hostages then became arms for money, and then the money went to the Contras, Right.
- [18:42]
Pete Hegseth
I mean, they didn't sell the weapons to raise the money, but at some point they sold a bunch of, of missiles. They mistakenly overcharged the Iranians. They were getting thousands of dollars more per missile than they were really supposed to. The Iranians didn't know what the price was supposed to be. They paid it. So all of a sudden you've got something like 12, $15 million in excess profit, right. That didn't go to the arms dealers. And so they say, let's not put this into the treasury where it belongs because this is US citizens property. And they say, let's just use it. And somebody suggests, it's not exactly clear who suggests this. There's a couple different stories, but around the middle of the scheme somebody tells Oliver north, hey, you could actually use this extra money to fund the Contras because we, you know, you know, they're in bad shape, they need this money. And he says, hey, that's, you know, but how, the way he says that, it was a neat idea, right? He saw absolutely nothing wrong with this and so decides to do this.
- [19:41]
Alan McPherson
Yeah, and there are, there are. When you say they were overcharging and didn't realize it, there is many Keystone Cop type elements, like Fawn hall, who is Oliver North's secretary, transposes two numbers. What they had done was they had hit up the Sultan of Brunei for $10 million, was it? And he said, all right, I'll give you 10 million. So here's another 10 million that they're going to use to fund the Contras. But it never gets to them because Fawn hall makes this mistake putting a zero where a four should be or something like that.
- [20:08]
Pete Hegseth
That's right. She Changes two numbers around on a bank account, it goes to the wrong Swiss bank account. And for a couple years, the contrast never get it. It gets completely lost. For a couple years, it goes to some random guy's bank account, millionaire's bank account. And he's wondering about it.
- [20:21]
Alan McPherson
Do we know who?
- [20:22]
Pete Hegseth
No, I can't remember. I don't think I've seen where it went. But they got it back eventually to Brunei.
- [20:28]
Alan McPherson
Yeah. Well, thank God. You'd hate for the Sultan of Brunei to be out 10.10mil. And it becomes exposed because this airman, one of the. One of the fundees of this money was this guy. I always call him Walkenfuss. Hassan Fuss.
- [20:45]
Pete Hegseth
Yes.
- [20:45]
Alan McPherson
Whose name means rabbit foot in German. And Hassan first gets shot down, and then they. He is forced to do a video where he says, my name is Eugene Hassanfuss. I'm from Wisconsin. I'm a Marine, by the way, he was one of four on the plane, and he defied orders and wore a parachute, and that's why he lived. Is that right?
- [21:04]
Pete Hegseth
Exactly. I mean, the idea was that if you go on one of these planes, these highly secret planes, you should not have a parachute because if you go down, we want you dead.
- [21:13]
Alan McPherson
They were right about that, weren't they?
- [21:15]
Pete Hegseth
Exactly. You can't reveal any secrets. And somebody said, you should take this parachute on. These are not great planes. And so it saved his life, but it wasn't great for the enterprise, as it was called.
- [21:25]
Alan McPherson
How long did it take to unravel.
- [21:27]
Pete Hegseth
The entire scheme once the plane gets shot down? It's about a month. I mean, within a couple of days, it's clear that this is a CIA connected plane. Plane. Right. These aren't CIA employees, but it's sort of a subsidiary. And then really maybe three, four weeks later, the Iran story comes out. And so these are two separate stories for about another two, three weeks. And then the Department of Justice is basically told by Reagan. You know, you got to look into this a little bit. And they find this one memo, just one memo that Oliver north had thought he had shredded. And it basically says, we've taken money from the Iranian sales, given it to the Contras, and that's when this becomes Iran Contra. And for some reason, it becomes sort of the central crime of this series of crimes. And the whole question is, did the President know about this diversion of funds? I frankly don't think the diversion of funds is that important. It is a crime. Right. But it's not the most serious thing that he's done. And yet it's also a way to essentially divert attention from the more serious crimes and to basically say, if we can prove that Reagan didn't know about this, then he can't be impeached. Right. By making it so important, you then absolve the President if he's not guilty of it.
- [22:43]
Alan McPherson
Okay, so on that narrow issue, can they not prove it or did it not happen?
- [22:48]
Pete Hegseth
The Republicans say that the documents prove he did not know. That is not true. What is true is that none of the documents prove that he did know.
- [22:57]
Alan McPherson
Right, right.
- [22:58]
Pete Hegseth
You can't prove it.
- [22:59]
Alan McPherson
But what are, in your estimation, what are the provable things that might have been impeachable if it was known fully and if there was the will to do it?
- [23:07]
Pete Hegseth
Oh, I mean, the fact that he, you know, told his staff essentially to keep funding the Contras, to find a way to sort of keep the Contras alive. The fact that he would, you know, if you gave a lot of money to the Contras, Ronald Reagan would have you visit the Oval Office. Right. As a reward for funding the Contras, when clearly the Congress had told you not to do this. Probably the most important thing was selling the missiles to Iran. Right? It was against policy, it was against the law. It angered lots of allies. It didn't, you know, and it was also just bad policy in many ways.
- [23:40]
Alan McPherson
I know what the case exonerating or excusing Reagan is, which is that it all went under him. He may have expressed his wishes about the end result that he'd like to see, but he wasn't, he wasn't orchestrating it. And then there is another layer to it which is most of his defense was, I don't recall, I don't remember. And it became a joke. But few years later, it turns out that he had Alzheimer's and was. Or early onset dementia or wasn't so early. He. And this was perhaps rearing itself during the time he was testifying about Iran Contra. But cut through all that and give me the case or the sentence or one or two things that's absolutely undeniable that shows that Reagan was directly linked to this.
- [24:24]
Pete Hegseth
Oh, the most important thing is that he was told that selling weapons for whatever reason to Iran was illegal. Right? And he basically said, let's go with what my Attorney General is telling me and let's get the lawyers to make it legal. Right? Give us whatever justification. And he makes this joke, you know, if people find out about this, we'll be hanging from our thumbs on the White House lawn. So he knows this is Extremely unpopular, very likely bad policy and probably illegal. Right. We could get tried for this. I think he makes a joke about visiting hours in prison also. Right. I think that's the most serious thing that he did.
- [25:05]
Alan McPherson
So had that been taken more seriously or prosecuted, or had there been consequence. Cut to the argument. Hey, I was just asking my lawyers or people within the administration who knew legalities to overturn the results of the election. We might be able to say that ipso facto, that is not allowed for the executive to pursue.
- [25:29]
Pete Hegseth
I mean, that's true. It's pretty easy to sort of get lawyers to give you almost any justification. Right. I mean, we saw this, right? In 2020, there are plenty of lawyers willing to work with the Trump administration to deny facts that, you know, we had all seen and to invent facts that we know were not true. And even they later said, how could you have believed us? We can't possibly be accused of lying because everybody knew this wasn't true. I mean, it's just these justifications, they've become really absurd, at least at the time. Sure, you could scour some legal books and find some sort of legal justification, but just the fact that it was unpopular, these were unpopular decisions inside the administration should have been enough to say, let's just not do this.
- [26:10]
Alan McPherson
The name of the book is the Breach. Iran Contra and the Assault on American Democracy. Oliver north is a main character. He's on the COVID And I want to tell the audience, lest they exit this interview without knowing this fact, for much of his life, Oliver north went by Larry. Think about that. What if it were Larry north testifying before Congress? Would he be quite so sympathetic? Would there be Larry Mania, not Ali Mania. It's all an interesting thing to contemplate. Alan McPherson, thank you so much.
- [26:41]
Pete Hegseth
Thank you very much.
- [26:47]
Alan McPherson
And now the spiel. In fact, specifically in Antoine Tig Letters, we get letters. We don't really get physical letters. Sometimes we do. We get a lot of emails. They point out my mistakes, I make mistakes. I make plenty to fill up the three week period called the Antoine Tig. And then we let it just inflate. So mistakes aplenty. Here we go. Mark Muscalino writes in hey, in the episode titled While Wicked, Trump is Defying Gravity. Good title. Works on two levels. That's my editorial comment, not Marks. You mentioned Elon Musk in a contentious Oval Office meeting. It was a Cabinet meeting that took place in the Cabinet Room. I'm glad you corrected me. Thank you. Good catch. This now is a good pitch. It's from John Harris, great listener. He once pressed a book on vexillology into my hands at a conference in which I was moderating a panel. But he said, you mentioned the brewers middle reliever, Tedd Hidalgo. I think it meant Teddy Hegera. And it turns out that John Son works for the Brewers. Doesn't it always happen? It is true. I meant Teddy Hegera. And if you need to know, he's sort of the Ricardo Rincon of Esteban Lawizes. Jamie Forrest writes in When Mike was talking with John McWhorter about Yiddish words, about how Yiddish words often get into English and their verbs, which is rare among foreign words. You know, to kvetch, to schwitz, to stop, you said to finagle. But as hard as Jamie Forrest tried, he could not find finagle in the Yiddish dictionary, which is Yiddish. Oi. It's not a good joke, but I stand by it. And it's true. It's true. I looked there, too, and I don't think finagles in the Yiddish dictionary. I think I know what was going on. It rhymes with bagel and in fact is associated with the Finagle, a bagel franchise. Remember that? It was like an Einstein's bagel. Don't know if they exist, but the fact that they rhyme welded that into my head. Sounds like bagel. Finagle. A bagel has finagled this way into the hearts and stomachs of bagel lovers everywhere.
- [28:45]
Pete Hegseth
Fidel a bagel is the best bagel in the world.
- [28:47]
Alan McPherson
You can come into our store and get hot sandwiches, cold sandwiches, salads, and of course, hot bagels right out of the oven. I just came across this. I think it's from 1944. From the AP. New York Police learn what a bagel is. The theft of a truckload of 1560 bagel today. They don't put an S on it. It's plural, like deer or fish. Confronted police with a mystery. They wanted to know what a bagel was. Sam Eater of Fisher's Bagel Bakery explained. He said a bagel, it was a roll with a hole. It was like a roll with a hole in the middle. Some people like them for breakfast.
- [29:25]
Mike Pesca
You do you.
- [29:26]
Alan McPherson
It was Manhattan's first theft of the kind. I got an interesting, detailed letter about my interview with the Alzheimer's researcher Matt Schrag. And it was by someone named Rachel Hendricks. And she said she's at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the director of Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. And her background is she got her Postdoctorate from Washu. She was there from 2018 to 2022. And I said wait, that reminds me, I got a letter from a guy named John Dean. Not that one from Watergate, another one who wrote in about molecular biology and cell biology and working in labs all his career and the cap that the Trump administration wanted to put on labs. And he mentioned I graduated Washington University in St. Louis in 2019. Wait a minute, do you guys know each other? Can I put together to wash you neurologists who know a lot about molecular biology and Alzheimer's? Rachel, John, did you talk to each other beforehand every once in a while or you like. You like to just. I like to just. I wrote him a letter. That guy's wrong. Or do you know each and not even talk about me? Or maybe I'm what brought you together. Anyway, if the gist can serve to bring people together even in hatred of me. I don't like that second part, but I like the coming together part. We got comments on Reddit. Anybody else wonder why Mr. Pesca, thank you, thank you so much. Is unable to correctly pronounce Sebastian Maniscalco's name? I think it is Maniscalco. I think I got it right. But I think in this one ad I was reading I kept saying Manascalo. If so I am sorry to Big Sebastian this was for an ad and I kept. I forgot what I was saying but it was certainly not Maniscalco correctly. But then the next commenter I think his name is shite poster wrote another great reason to subscribe to Pesca plus Indeed. Which gives me a great idea for a marketing ploy. Just make not just mispronunciations but weird off putting sounds in all the ads. Really torture people with the ads thus driving them to the free show. And you know, torturous ads don't necessarily sell poorly. One of the most successful ads was Head on apply directly to the head. That worked well and people hated it. I bet it would have worked even better if the Head on people and who knows who they are, I assume the Chinese Communist Party if half their product or half their income was based on selling the Head on. But more was selling a product that would block Head on ads from coming in. This is I believe the number one Internet ad blocker company is also the number one Internet ad company. One day they were like our ads are so terrible. I think of a better way to make money. Anyway, our ads aren't terrible, our sponsors are wonderful. I don't want to call out one instead of Another. But I'm right now fueled with Marley Spoon. I am clad in true work, and none of that is untrue. Okay, now we get to the lop stars of the Antenn Twig, or if you want to pronounce it correctly, like the Maniscalcos of the Antwin Tig. The other day, I was doing a segment on a couple of segments on the book in Covid's wake, and I was thinking of talking about Ezra Klein. The idea being he is championing the abundance agenda. That's what liberal progressive America is talking about. It's good you should talk about that. Definitely. There is less of an appetite to talk about the mistakes of lockdowns. And I think the mistakes of lockdowns drove a lot of people to vote for Donald Trump. Wisely or unwisely, fairly or unfairly, I definitely get lashing out against the party that you perceive to be unfairly keeping your kids home from school. Fine. But I saw in this David Scharffenberg essay in the Ideas section of the Boston Globe, he quotes Ezra Klein, and the quote is, well, this is a little of Scharffenberg getting to the Klein quote. In one particularly dispiriting column, Ezra Klein, then with Vox and now with the New York Times, concluded that their quote was no good alternative to shutting down life as we know it. So I wanted to make sure I got the Klein quote right. I wanted to read the context around that. I read a lot of Ezra Klein and listened to him, and he seemed pretty reasonable on Covid and was actually grappling with things like lockdown, shutdowns, whatever you want to call them. So I was doing my research. I couldn't find it. I searched Vox, I searched the Times. I even listened to the podcast that was associated with the column on Vox that it might have been. So I wrote to Scharffenberger, I'm like, david, I'm like, I wasn't like that. I wrote, hello, David. Loved your Covid Wars. Incorrectly said it. It's called in Covid's Wake Review. He knew what I was talking about. Can you help me find this Klein quote? It's not a gotcha, I swear. I just want to get it right. And he took that in the spirit it was intended. He wrote back, thanks for the note. The authors quote Klein to that effect in their book. I don't have the book in my office, but I called my wife at home and asked her to look at the book. And she looked in the index, and she found it was this article. And he sent it to me and we couldn't find the quote in the article. But I said, my God, David, thank you so much, or thank your wife for tracking this down. And what I want to say about this reflects well on Scharffenberg, I'm not going to lie, reflects pretty well on me. I do not do this level of research to make sure I get every quote right. But I, I know I'm going to call the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room at one point or Teddy Hidalgo, Teddy Hegera, or vice versa. So I should get these quotes right when I can because things are going to come out of my mouth that are wrong. I think I called J.B. pritzker, J.D. pritzker. Someone writes in you're right, I got it wrong. Just like these flappy gums don't always do my bidding. But thank God for Scharffenberg, for people who take it seriously, for the institution and institution like the Boston Globe. Globe. For as much as, hey, in that Macedo and Lee interview, as much as we criticize the mainstream media for getting big things wrong, they are detail oriented on things like this. And it is great that institutions like this exist. And it is great that a guy like Scharffenberg intuits and absorbs and is just brought up within the culture. If you got to get a quote right, you know, and if you don't, if there's a chance that you don't and it's understandable if he was taken from book and maybe that quote exists out there and something in some form that we didn't track down. But this is something that's really important to a guy like Scharffenberg, a guy like the Globe. And I think when we move on to the substack world and we get away from the gatekeepers, that is lost. It's not that the gatekeepers are going to, as we talked with Lee and Macedo, get everything right about what the scientific consensus was. They're not going to get everything right about how appropriate it is for YouTube to suppress a video about kids masking. I talked about that the other day. This doesn't make up for the big misses, but I do think if you start from a building block of a commitment to getting the small things right, and they're not small things, you're going to be much more effective as a truth seeking institution than not. You would be the Lob star, David Scharffenberg, except as a journalist. You know, I can't mail you a plush lobster. And for you to accept it, you probably Can't. And it's very, you know, it's under $30 or whatever. Most newspapers allow their correspondents and reporters to accept. The real lobster of the antenna twig is the guy who started my Reddit page. My Reddit page started with such joy and hope. It has since been slightly degraded. I find this often happens to long standing Reddit pages, especially podcasters. They become the that podcast criticism page. So a bunch of that has happened with my Reddit page. I have a lot of people who are on Reddit who are always going in to mix it up and defend me. But that's the point. Should you have to mix it up every single day? Because the guy who summarizes the episodes just almost never agrees with what you say and writes that every time, look, that person, the guy who has taken over the job, the obligation, the volunteer work of summarizing my show every day. I'm glad someone does that. I just wish it weren't my second biggest critic. It just makes the Reddit page pretty predictable. And I know if I were a user, and I am a user of other Reddit pages, it's just a bummer. It's supposed to be a fan page. It's not a fan page. It's very predictable. Sometimes the critiques are either fair or I disagree with. Every once in a while, critics will raise a good point. I actually get heartened when people argue against the critics and I say about the person arguing back, well, that's exactly what I meant. And even if the percentage majority of the Reddit page doesn't seem to agree with me, the fact that some people get it, I'm doing my job, but it is just a bummer. It's dragging down which should be a fan page. I'm just going to request that if someone else is out there who wants that job, have at it. If not, I'm just a little bummed out by the entire tone of the Reddit page because it's so dominated by what has been called in some of these discussions, the Pesca police. Fine, have at it. Wish it weren't the case. But then there are the uglier, meaner, consistently unfair critics that I just do not think are helping anyone. And I understand that whenever you're dealing with moderation, there's always tough calls. I'm a big free speech guy. That's not a free speech consideration. In my mind, this is, are you making the experience of this Reddit page unacceptably bad? So the guy who does my reviews every day and always criticizes me in a very predictable way. You could keep doing it, wish someone else would take over that job. But there's another guy who's always calling me an asshole and always calling me a liar and asking if I'm dumb and ask him if stupid. No. Talk to Sean. Started the Reddit page. Like, could we do something about this guy? He said, I'll give you some things that we could do. And that guy's now off the Reddit page. It's a little bit better, right? I have. There is a threshold that if you go beyond, you are just destructive, not constructive. And thanks. Sean, who started the whole thing and has a lot on his plate and now has something else on his plate and it's a lobster. It's a red plush lobster. Sean Nelson, creator of the Reddit page, is now also lobster of the Antoinette. And that's it for today's show that just was produced by Cory Warrow with Michelle Pesca, cbso of Peach Fish Productions, and Kathleen Sykes, who's the doyen of the gist list to Prujee Peru Dupro. And thanks for listening.