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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments.
- [00:14]
Michael A. Cohen
But that's weird.
- [00:15]
Ryan Reynolds
Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try. @mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for.
- [00:23]
Michael A. Cohen
3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month. Required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com the Gist is brought.
- [00:31]
Mike Pesca
To you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Hi, it's Mike with a major announcement. It is not about the gist. It is about something called the Gist List. So let me tell you, every day I construct the show by reading and listening and imbibing a tremendous amount of information. A lot of it doesn't make it onto the show, of course. So what do we do with that? What do we do with the effluvia, the jetsam, the sods, but also the odds. Enter the Gist List. Every day on Substack, I will be compiling the most interesting, important, maybe unfairly ignored stories that I look at and say, there's something there. You know, we must nurture that which is interesting in this world. Some of these stories do end up as segments. They all start off as ideas. We need ideas. The Gist list is designed to interest you definitely, not to waste your time to make you smarter. To see where I'm heading every day on the gist. So head over to Mike pesca.substack.com today and every day to sign up for the Gist list. It's Wednesday, May 21, 2025. From Peach Fish Productions, it's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca. And today, today is a not even mad day. Wait a minute. Aren't they usually Thursdays? Don't worry, we're going to throw you one on a Wednesday. We're going to keep you on your toes. We're going to stay on top of the news. I got Eli Lake. I got Michael A. Cohen. Whenever Michael Cohen's on, we always talk about those Democrats now that they're in disarray. But Cohen has this really, I think, interesting take where he says, no, the disarray is always overstated. And we'll usually say, don't worry, they'll do fine, they'll win in the midterms, etc. We always get people a little bit of this on the show. But one thing I don't get into on the show is this idea. I've been toying around in my head about all the different ideas that Democrats and the pundits who advise Democrats and the Democratic politicians, they kind of get together and loosely or coherently say, all right, we're going to have a new agenda, and maybe our agenda is just going to be the things we talk about and the things we don't. So Gavin Newsom does some tacking away from his own agenda. And you see Tim Walls actually doing a little loose doubling down of, you know, the COD talking that he could do with football coaches. And the big one is the abundance agenda, which is Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson talking about the bad bureaucracy and the red tape that Democrats have put up. And why don't Democrats just deliver something? Here's the problem. It's not a problem. It's good that you're talking about these things. But I'm not exactly sure that the Democrats quite understand or intuit or just act in life in the same manner that the Republicans do when it comes to winning elections. And it's that in order to win an election, you don't have to solve a problem, you just have to describe a problem. Donald Trump has been described as a guy who's really good at diagnosing problems such that they resonate with the American public. And then he gets into office and makes those problems two or three times worse.
- [03:56]
Ryan Reynolds
But.
- [03:56]
Mike Pesca
But he gets into office is the point. This isn't cynical. This is actually politics, that you have to correctly diagnose the problem. And sometimes solving the problem or knowing so much about the problem and so much about the hurdles that you have to overcome to solve the problem, so much baked into the abundance agenda. It gets in the way of the clarity of your vision. It gets in the way of some of the ambition of what you ask. And I think Democrats do this more than Republicans. They seek first to solve the problem, and then they'll think of ways to describe it. But if you want to win elections, you don't have to solve the problem. You just have to attractively diagnose the problem. It's not exactly the difference between rhetoric and action. It's not words and deeds. And of course, deeds are better than words. It's the misunderstanding of what the goal and aim is with elections. Because the thing is, even if you think you correctly solve the problem or you have the plan solve the problem, you don't. It's going to get thwarted. You might be wrong, things will happen. You have to get into the position to even begin to solve the problem to find that all out. So I would advise the Democrats, here's a practical example. If Barack Obama were elected based on the idea that I have this plan called Obamacare, and here's what the carve outs are going to be and here's the percentage of your salary where the state is going to come in. It's wouldn't really work. If he ran on a plan, it wouldn't have worked. What he did was he ran on a diagnosis and the diagnosis was not enough. Americans have health care and that turned out to be a winner. And there's been a lot of fighting over Obamacare since it was implemented. But he got a chance to solve the problem. It's not perfectly or totally solved. A lot of people would say it's not solved at all. But he got a chance to solve the problem. Not because he ran on solving the problem, he ran the on diagnosing the problem. And there's a big one going on with Democrats these days. Should we correctly solve the problem of oligarchs or is it kings or is it autocrats or fascism? And I would say if all they do is correctly diagnose the other problems, then this will solve their problem of what to call the autocratic tendencies of their enemies. Because they, the Democrats, with their diagnosis that resonates with the American public, they will be the ones to be swept into office. All right, good prologue, right? Good preamble or at least lengthy preamble. And now not even mad. You know, there's a lot of stress out there and sometimes that could have an impact on your performance. You know, like talk about it, you don't like to think about it, and then it becomes a spiral getting in the way of your performance. 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So then True Work started engineering for comfort, for protection, for efficiency. They weigh very little but work very hard. Super soft, stretchy sweat, wicking soft shell work pants, wind and waterproof shells, intelligently placed insulation for streamlined warmth. This stuff looks good. I get a lot of compliments. There are very cool colors involved too. Check out the 50,000 5 star reviews upgrade to True Work for a major change in the way you work. True Work helps you be your best when your best matters. I'm now going to tell you how to get a great discount on True Work. But please listen to the spelling. Check out the full lineup and get 15% off your first order at truewerk.com the gist that's 15% off at t r u e w e-r k.com thegist hello and welcome back to the panel political discussion show. That is big, that is beautiful. But it's also bountiful, beneficent and a little bing bong. Not even mad. Today we speak of Biden, the diminishment, the diagnosis, the alleged dementia and the discussion thereof. Plus Donald Trump does away with foreign policy niceties like adherence to human rights or really any standards at all. We're all better off, right? And we do so as we promise to uphold our reputation for Refutation. While at the same time vowing to be not even mad. I use the pronoun we. Who are we? Well, one of the we is Eli Lake, the host of the excellent Breaking History podcast series from the Free Press, a veteran with expertise in foreign affairs and national security. But how do you like it? How do you like being primarily ID'd as a podcast host? Eli?
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Ryan Reynolds
I love it because I love podcasts. But I do write a bit, still write a column and a lot for the Free Press. We should say Barry's got to be working hard.
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Mike Pesca
I know I do. I just, I just took your. I just took directly from the site and they're elevating the podcast.
- [11:16]
Ryan Reynolds
They love me. We love and yeah.
- [11:18]
Mike Pesca
Michael. Michael A. Cohen is a columnist for msnbc. He writes the Truth and Consequences newsletter. He's a senior fellow at the Fletcher School at Tufts. I don't know, maybe one day podcast or two. An aspiration of yours, Cohen.
- [11:31]
Michael A. Cohen
It is an aspiration of mine. Yes, it is. Someday. Someday. We hope. I hope.
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Ryan Reynolds
I didn't know about the Fletcher's. Mazel tov, Michael.
- [11:38]
Michael A. Cohen
Thank you. Thank you.
- [11:40]
Mike Pesca
Mazel tov on the Fletcher School. So as I went to the New York Times today, they have one of those I guess you call a crawl at the top of the page. And the topic was Joe Biden. And the subtopics were prostate cancer. Memory lapses, cognitive test. This is not good for Joe Biden, who did get a cancer diagnosis or at least revealed a cancer diagnosis in the last two days as Alex Thompson and. And Jake Tapper's new book, Original Sin is everywhere. I'll give you a quote from that New York Times article. It's from. Oh, let's play this game. See if you could name who said it. Donald Trump isn't shy about corruption. But what's so troubling is that what the people around Joe Biden clearly were doing was in some ways more egregious. I don't know if you read the article, but Michael, Eli, do you know who said it?
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Ryan Reynolds
No.
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Michael A. Cohen
No.
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Mike Pesca
Want to guess?
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Ryan Reynolds
No.
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Mike Pesca
Dean Phillips.
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Ryan Reynolds
Wow.
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Mike Pesca
It was Dean Phillips. The Diogenes holding a lantern for that.
- [12:39]
Michael A. Cohen
Is a good example how insane the discourse has gotten on this issue about Joe Biden.
- [12:44]
Mike Pesca
And this is where I want to go to. So you, Michael A. Cohen, wrote an excellent post on Truth and Consequences. How annoyed am I by the coverage of Joe Biden's health. And in that post you correctly point to certain. Certain assertions that go way too far, such as the idea that Joe Biden's Diminishment was not just the most important factor in the 2024 election, but the sole defining reason for Trump's victory. I'll give you that point that's overstated. But there were. And I.
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Ryan Reynolds
You think.
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Mike Pesca
Yes, a little bit. A little bit.
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Michael A. Cohen
I want to be clear that Tapper and Thompson say that, that him, that his health, him staying in the race guaranteed Donald Trump's victory.
- [13:25]
Mike Pesca
Well, that was a review of the.
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Michael A. Cohen
Book, but they say they use the word guarantee in the New Yorker piece that covers this last week.
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Mike Pesca
Yeah, we are still waiting for someone, anyone, to point out where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or make a presidential address where he was unable to do his job because of mental decline. Not the address, but the decision. But Michael, isn't the point. We don't know and it's quite plausible. We might never know. But. But it's quite plausible. The answer was yes, that did happen.
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Michael A. Cohen
I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I haven't seen the evidence.
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Mike Pesca
Does it worry you?
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Michael A. Cohen
I'm sorry, it doesn't worry you that.
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Mike Pesca
The answer is plausibly yes, it doesn't.
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Michael A. Cohen
Worry you that that might have happened? I mean, if I see evidence of it, it would worry me. But as my point that I keep making here is that I am much more worried about the current occupant of the White House who has clearly far worse cognitive deficiencies than than Joe Biden ever had. And one of the points I made in that piece was that Joe Biden had a terrible debate, no doubt in my mind about that one. Joe Biden should not have run for reelection. I would the first argue that considering clearly what we know now about some of the problems he was having, his age shouldn't have run. But when I look at this, and I say at the same time, there was plenty of reason to believe that Joe Biden could handle the rigors of being president. In March of 2024, gave a fantastic mutated union address in which many pundits who now take it as for granted that Biden was unable to do his job, said he appears to be able to do his job. Weeks after he gave that terrible debate performance, he did a press conference July 14 at the NATO summit, spent 49 minutes solo press conference, answered questions cogently, coherently, in a way that Donald Trump simply could never do. And if you, and again, I get this point, if you keep looking at what, what Trump is saying and doing now as president, it is much more terrifying. This didn't get any coverage at all. But on Friday, last week, he was in Qatar at a business roundtable. He gave a 27 minute opening statement to a press conference. A rambling, incoherent, disjointed narrative that I went over makes no sense whatsoever and demonstrates, I mean, to me, evidence of dementia on the part of Trump. I mean, certainly it's kind of disjointed, incoherent narrative, which he sort of skates from idea to idea, is considered a symptom of dementia. And I don't know why we're not talking about that, why we're focusing on a president who's not even president, who didn't even run for reelection, who dropped out of the race in July. I just find this whole conversation about Biden sort of borderline insane. And the only reason that we're talking about is because Jake Tapper and Alec Thompson wanna sell a book.
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Mike Pesca
Eli.
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Ryan Reynolds
Wow. Well, I mean, let me just say, I think the reason why this still resonates as a scandal is because since 1945, or really you could say since the beginning of World War II, the American presidency has become incredibly powerful. We elect one person, and over the last eight decades or so, that one person has gotten enormous amount of power over our lives, war and peace and everything else, as the norms and sort of the balance between the branches of government has kind of gone out of whack in favor of the executive branch. So it matters if the president is only like, kind of all there for a portion of the day because it's a 24 hour job. Second of all, you can say that Trump sometimes speaks in jumbled phrases. You can say that he doesn't know things, all of that is fair. But you can't really say that the voters weren't getting it. They knew that's who he was, it's who he's been. And more importantly, do you really doubt that Donald Trump is in charge of his administration? I mean, yes, I fire people all the time, Michael.
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Michael A. Cohen
He fires people all the time.
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Ryan Reynolds
If I cover this administration, everybody sort of knows that it comes down to, like, what Trump thinks. I really have serious doubts whether Joe Biden was in charge of his own administration. And so all of these questions about his prostate cancer, his dementia, you know, and everything else are just really a way of saying who was running the government under Joe Biden, or at least who was running the government under Joe Biden when Joe Biden clearly wasn't capable. And we saw it during the debate, most obviously, but now in this book from Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper, we're getting all these amazing anecdotes like he couldn't recognize George Clooney, who he knew. I mean, all the. He's a celebrity. There's all these things that say to yourself, wait a second, was this just like a Weekend at Bernie's presidency? In that a lot of the time the guy who is supposed to be constitutionally in charge, the most powerful person in the world, was in fact not all there. So who was it? Was it Jill? Was it Jake Sullivan who was really running the government? And that is a totally fair question given now not only what's coming out now in books like this, but, but kind of like what we were seeing at the time. And the other part of this, I just think it's really important to sort of underline is that it's like, I don't, you know, like, if you want to. I'm against mono causes. So, like. No, elections are complicated things. People have different motivations for voting. But there is something to the fact that like the leaders of the Democratic Party, all these people around Biden were engaged in a massive lie about his fitness.
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Michael A. Cohen
I mean, there's just no evidence.
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Ryan Reynolds
Have you looked back at what Coach Jean Pierre said? She's. I can't keep up with him. Do you believe that? You don't think, excuse me, a 44 year old woman can't keep up with Joe Biden? Are you serious? You think he's training for triathlons? Give me a break. This was.
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Mike Pesca
Hold on.
- [19:16]
Michael A. Cohen
Eli. Eli. Carolyn Levitt said the exact same thing about Donald Trump yesterday.
- [19:22]
Ryan Reynolds
That you can't keep up with Donald Trump. But I actually think that's. He's like, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's some fucking. I'm sorry, maybe it's some reverse. You could energy thing or whatever. But like Eli, like she said, you said he is tweeting at all hours of the evening.
- [19:38]
Michael A. Cohen
Tweeting is not evidence of mental health. Eli, first of all, mental health.
- [19:42]
Ryan Reynolds
Hold on, I got to get a word. Where is he? There.
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Michael A. Cohen
She said yesterday he had perfect health, which is insane. He does not have perfect mental health. Okay, you even acknowledge that a second ago.
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Ryan Reynolds
Second, I said, I said he's got his verbal tics, but I'm not. I don't think. He's not in command. I think Eric knows what he's doing.
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Michael A. Cohen
I read this, I wrote this a couple weeks ago where I pointed out that Trump has been asked repeatedly about the case of Kilmar Alberto Garcia, who's been deported to El Salvador and he has repeatedly stated that his administration won the case in the Supreme Court. He has said this repeatedly. Why? Because even Miller has been saying that at an event with the El Salvadoran president, when asked the question, he couldn't answer it. He and asked Miller to say it. And he has said repeatedly, I would let this guy go free. A Supreme Court ordered me to the report did order him to disgrace.
- [20:36]
Ryan Reynolds
He said, okay, fine, it's a bracelet. Lying is actually evidence of like mental acuity.
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Michael A. Cohen
You have to unaware that the Supreme Court ruled against him on that case. Okay, well that's good.
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Mike Pesca
That's good for anyone who's worried because I assumed he was just lying and ignoring the Supreme Court.
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Michael A. Cohen
No, he is not. It's better has said. I actually think it is better in a weird way. He's not defined Supreme Court. Stephen Miller's defined Supreme Court. He's going along with what Miller's telling him to do. He truly seems to believe that he is a. That he won the decision, which he didn't and that he is abiding by the Supreme Court decision, which he is not. Ok, this is.
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Mike Pesca
Except in his, in his life he has said so many things that are the opposite of reality. And you could make the case that, oh, he comes to be convinced that this is reality or the Occam's razor is he's lying. He's just a liar. But a lie is an is an example of a mind that's working.
- [21:31]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah, like Michael. I just. That's like evidence that he's like spinning in a dangerous unconstitutional way and lying in a dangerous unconstitutional way, which is a separate issue. And I'm happy to kind of. How is that agree with you about that. That's like one of the top things that bothers me. But I'm saying this is different than a guy who is a rumba on stage when he's like giving public speeches, doesn't know where to walk. Is this different than like Joe Biden like not recognizing people? This is different. Joe Biden shaking someone's phantom hand on stage. That is evidence of somebody who is just losing it.
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Michael A. Cohen
No, it isn't.
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Ryan Reynolds
It is.
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Michael A. Cohen
No, it isn't. And I can tell to you example of this he gave Go read the transcript. July 14, 2024 NATO press conference. Solo press conference.
- [22:16]
Ryan Reynolds
Read it.
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Michael A. Cohen
I invite you to read it and tell me that that is the person who doesn't understand the issues he's discussing. Because he does. He clearly.
- [22:23]
Ryan Reynolds
I'm not denying that is way More than not recognizing George Clooney, Joe Biden didn't have some moments of clarity mixed in with an undetermined percentage of moments of pure senescence. So let's be real, okay? You and I both know it's like a lot of old people. You hear this all the time, like, he's got his good days and he's got his bad days. Yeah, okay, the president had some good days, but I wanna know about the bad days. And we're learning about the bad days. That's why it's a story, Michael. And there is what bad days?
- [22:56]
Michael A. Cohen
What bad days are we learning about? We learned about a fundraiser. We didn't realize George Clooney. I read that article in the New Yorker. I found very little evidence in there to back up this idea that Biden was basically catatonic through the second term of his presidency. I mean, I just don't believe that.
- [23:12]
Ryan Reynolds
I think. You don't think that he had moments where he was just not there? Okay, listen. How about this, Michael?
- [23:18]
Michael A. Cohen
Well, I answer your question.
- [23:19]
Ryan Reynolds
I do believe Donald Trump seems to be. He loves talking to the press. He's constantly talking to reporters. He's putting himself out there. Whereas when Joe Biden did it, it was like an event. And when you're talking about, like, oh, yeah, he had a NATO press conference, I'm like, yeah. The reason that was considered such a big deal is because he rarely would allow him self to be put before the press like that. And like, even at that point, the Democrats still had to do the little switcheroo and negate their own party's primary, basically. So I just think you're. I mean, I understand you want to talk about, you know, Trump, and there's a lot of flaws there, but I just don't think you can compare the two. Come on.
- [24:00]
Michael A. Cohen
Flaws, Flaws.
- [24:02]
Mike Pesca
Wait, let me get it. Let me get in. Let me get in. Take Michael. Let me get in. And take the host. Prerogative. So, first of all. First of all, there were many examples beyond George Clooney. And maybe the book is out today on the day we're taping. I've. I've read it. There are dozens of examples in there. The CEO of the Pittsburgh Penguins, who was a guy who worked on the Kerry and the Gore and the Clinton campaign, met him at a fundraiser, was so shocked, he began calling everyone he knew in Democratic politics, saying, this guy is vacant. This guy is not there. This guy told me anecdotes about Gary that I know didn't happen. Eric Swalwell to His discredit. And this was actually in the Amy Parnes and Jonathan Allen book At a Picnic Talk to Biden. Remember, Swalwell ran against Biden. Swalwell says Biden had no idea who he was. Swalwell does not deny that anecdote essentially confirms it, but also ran interference for the Robert her testimony, which is another example that audio was out. It more than matches up with what the transcript indicated, which is maybe he's so extra layers of brilliant that he was doing a run out the clock pretending to be doddering strategies so that the prosecutor couldn't weigh in. So I just want to lay out that one many examples of him. Okay, two, two, the press conference that you cite, which was this great world spanning moment of presidential triumph, this was the press conference where he was asked in the first or second question, do you stand by Kamala Harris as vice president? And he said, look, I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president, but I think she was not.
- [25:48]
Ryan Reynolds
Qualified to be president. So let's start there.
- [25:51]
Mike Pesca
Number one, the fact is that that was not great. But the third, and this is the biggest thing, all of your answer falls into the category of whataboutism. And I'm willing to concede all of it. I will concede anything you want to say about Donald Trump's intellect or ability. I don't want to even get in that fight. But it is what about it is. And when the Soviets used what about ISM to blame America, they were using it as a deflection tactic. And the reason in this case it isn't the perfect analogy is that what about the what about ISM of Donald Trump was caused by Joe Biden's incapacity to pursue the case as a candidate. It would be as if the Soviet Union were there only because the United States made decisions that led to the Soviet Union's existence to enable them to engage in this. What about.
- [26:45]
Michael A. Cohen
So I actually think that the, I mean two points on this. I think first of all, the Biden critics are engaging in much more prevalent version of what about ism? And you mentioned the her testimony. And I was very struck by this reading the Axios article by Alec Thompson in which at the end of the article he does state that for most of this interview, Biden was coherent, Biden was speaking clearly, Biden was making sense. In other words, you just picked out him saying Trump instead of Harris as if that really matters all that much. When, if you ignore the other a.
- [27:17]
Mike Pesca
Little bit when your political life is on the line and you're trying to show that you got all your marbles.
- [27:22]
Michael A. Cohen
It's a much bigger problem, but in a vacuum. Vacuum. I compare that to 49 minutes of speaking coherently about the issues affecting NATO, things that Donald Trump is incapable of talking about in any appreciable way. I don't think that's really relevant. And I think what is happening here, both you and Eli are doing this. It's like we're dumbing this down because it's Trump. That's just how Trump is. Trump is like this. No. Trump literally cannot speak coherently about any issue.
- [27:48]
Ryan Reynolds
Do you think Trump isn't in charge of a man in the military?
- [27:51]
Michael A. Cohen
Let me finish. Let me finish. Let me finish. This is a man who today again said gas prices are $1.99. They're not. They are. 317. He says this repeatedly. He told him elite. It's not true. He says it repeatedly. He has said repeatedly that US doing less trade with China means that we are getting an economic boost for the US which is so clearly unfair.
- [28:12]
Ryan Reynolds
He's economically illiterate, especially in the trade and the tariffs. So that's totally agree.
- [28:16]
Michael A. Cohen
I'm not making. I don't care. We're talking about Biden, but I don't care. That got to be crazy about this is this notion that Democrats have to answer for this, as if we are not dealing with a president right now who cannot. Cannot care the duties of his job and who is being covered for by his press secretary, by his White House staff, by Republicans in Congress. This is exactly what people are complaining about with Biden is happening right now with Trump, and nobody seems to care about it.
- [28:44]
Ryan Reynolds
It's not that Biden flubbed a couple words and had some gaffes. It's not that. Okay, it's like you and I. You know it when you see it, but it's that vacant sort of look. It's the not knowing where to walk. It's the concealed. I don't believe for a minute that we just learned. He just learned of advanced prostate cancer. It's all of that.
- [29:08]
Michael A. Cohen
Well, you don't know that. You're speculating.
- [29:10]
Ryan Reynolds
Okay, I don't. But you know what? I'm basic. You know why I'm skeptical that that's the like of the official story from the Bidens? Because I think they're a bunch of liars. And I'm not saying it out of a partisan reason. I'm saying it because they lied. All right? They lied. I mean, the lying is not just about the acuity of Biden. It was lying about like the family business and Hunter and then why. I mean, it's all of this stuff. It's like they've frittered away their credibility and back to the political point. The reason that matters is, is that the Democrats ran a campaign of restoring democracy and battling the truth decay and all this stuff. And when they're propping up a guy who's basically vacant for at least a portion of the day, it seems, then that's a problem, Michael, you don't see that that's a huge brand killer. It's like that's why I try to get out here.
- [30:06]
Michael A. Cohen
I would say if you want to.
- [30:07]
Ryan Reynolds
Say, like, oh, you know, Trump lies and he does things and he doesn't understand how economics works. I'm like, I'm with Mike. I'm like, I'm not even gonna argue with you. Like. Cause you're probably right about most of that stuff. I'm not gonna quibble. My point is that that is like big quibble. But Trump, that's. He won the election. Okay, but the point. The thing about Joe Biden.
- [30:28]
Michael A. Cohen
Joe Biden won all those primaries, so we should just, I mean, won the.
- [30:32]
Ryan Reynolds
Primaries and when the party realize there's no way this guy can run.
- [30:37]
Michael A. Cohen
But by your logic, Eli, Eli, you're saying he won the election, and I'm saying you're the same thing of Biden, Biden.
- [30:43]
Ryan Reynolds
No, no, but Biden won an election. During COVID hiding in the basement, he won an election.
- [30:48]
Michael A. Cohen
No, no, no, no, no. He won the first of. He went. He won the election. It was, it was a fair election. It was the highest turnout.
- [30:53]
Ryan Reynolds
I'm not saying. I'm not saying. I'm not saying.
- [30:55]
Michael A. Cohen
And in 2024, he ran in the primaries and he won. So to your argument, he won. So we should just say, oh, he.
- [31:03]
Ryan Reynolds
Won the election as an incumbent with the party, basically, as they often do for incumbents, kind of like, you know, doing. Talk to Dean Phillips. Dean Phillips has a hell of a story to tell about how they did everything they could to clear the deck, including RFK Jr. Who was originally running in the primary as a Democrat. So I'm just saying the party itself got lock stuck behind this guy Biden. And their brand was restoring democracy. You know, we're gonna. We're the party of like truth and reason and all this other stuff. And then meanwhile, there are like very fair questions about whether he was mentally had the acuity, had the ability to be the president. And I would Just point out. And I could be wrong. Correct me if I'm wrong here. The Robert, her testimony that had those gaps, I believe was October 7th. So that's the time when you want the president. Okay, fine. October 8th. That's like a crisis moment when you want the president to be totally there. Does that give you confidence that he can't remember, like, when his own son died? And he keeps talking about how he died in Iraq and all this other stuff. That's like bananas to me.
- [32:13]
Michael A. Cohen
I read the section of that in the transcript, and I thought it was the grossest thing that I read in a long time. I mean, he clearly was getting emotional talking about his son, which, you know, I understand. But here's the thing about this. I also don't understand, but this argument.
- [32:25]
Mike Pesca
When it got emotional. But he also said, so when was this? 2017. 2018. You have to remember, my son was either deployed or died then. He was deployed in 2009 and died in 2015. So emotional. The question was, can you tell me when you were living at this address on Rockbridge Road or something like that. And he gets the years wrong by a number of years.
- [32:48]
Michael A. Cohen
Let me get back again.
- [32:49]
Mike Pesca
Maybe this was the. Maybe this was the most sophisticated tactic to evade prosecution, which he did. Look, I'll give you the last word. I will give you the last word because you're someone who I respect, and also you're saying something that causes my jaw to drop on the ground. And I know you're not doing it because you're a partizan hack. I've heard there are some other people who sometimes go on these talk shows who are essentially, hey, say the ideal Democratic Party line and they will. You really believe this? So maybe it's the case that, I don't know, maybe Raymond Shaw was the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being that the guys had ever known in their life. But you do sound a little like the Manchurian Candidate when you're still propagating the line that there was nothing, absolutely nothing to see here. I'm a little worried.
- [33:39]
Michael A. Cohen
I didn't say anything wrong here. And, but, and here's the thing that I find sort of amazing about some of this commentary. When it became apparent to Democrats across the country at the debate June 28 that Biden could no longer do the job of president, the party basically organized itself and said he needs to go. Well, I mean, with a lot of back and forth on that, but they did. I mean, I think one thing that's sort of missing from this is it obviously wasn't apparent to every Democrat that Joe Biden couldn't do this job. But when it became apparent, a lot of Democrats said, we need to get rid of him, and they did.
- [34:13]
Mike Pesca
But wait, are you saying they were wrong? Then they jumped to a conclusion. They weren't basing it on substance. They were just basing it on a performance.
- [34:19]
Michael A. Cohen
A performance. My initial thought was that it was a mistake. My initial thought, I'll be honest with it, it was a mistake after the debate to leave because I didn't know that Harris could run a good enough campaign to win. And I thought you might be right. But as it became clear, as days went on, it became clear that he had lost the confidence of. Of the party and of the press and of the voters, and that everything he did was gonna be seen through the lens of his health. It became apparent he had to drop out. And I wrote a piece saying he needs to drop out of the race. I mean, I think it was Democrats coming to a recognition that this is a crisis and we can't run with this guy. And they didn't run with him. They did push him out. Donald Trump continues to do things that are irrational, that are unconstitutional, that are illegal, and. And Republicans not only don't criticize him for it, they defend him for it. So I just find the double standard here and how we talk about these two candidates, talk about the two parties is just kind of insane. I mean, Trump could throw feces at reporters and Republicans would defend him, and Democrats would never do that. In fact, they didn't do that. They actually pushed for Biden to get out of the race, which he did.
- [35:23]
Ryan Reynolds
I think it depends on the reporters in that case.
- [35:25]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. Also, Sherry Redstone might side with the.
- [35:31]
Ryan Reynolds
Feces throwing as well. Fair point.
- [35:33]
Mike Pesca
Okay, in. In a moment, we will be back to talk about foreign affairs, but first, I have to tell you that the average gasoline price in Sunflower County, Mississippi, is $2.48. 2:48. Drive to Sunflower. Back in a minute with more of Not Even Mad Foreign. We're back with Not Even Mad. We're joined by Eli Lake of the Free Press and Michael Cohen of a little bit of msnbc, but also of himself. America is no longer going to hector its allies about whether women have the right to drive or whether dissidents disappear into dark prisons. This was a subtitle of an Eli Lake piece in the Free Press. And what had happened was Donald Trump had traveled overseas and made it clear that we don't care about all this Moral posturing. So, Eli, let me ask you this. Let us assume an amoral posture. No shining city on the hill, no indispensable nation, no beacon of liberty. None of that stuff, right? It was all a lie. It was all hypocrisy. It all cost too much money. Just on a purely real politic assessment, is the US in its new amoral. We don't care about hacking off the limbs of journalists. In its new amoral posture, is the United States under Donald Trump getting the real politic right just defined by our own self interests?
- [37:06]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, this is. This gets back to like, one of my favorite expressions. I think, you know, it's in the great novel Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. But it's also like an idea that it's like some of these critiques to a point. So if you wish to say it was a mistake to invade Iraq and then impose our advanced democratic ideals on a society that really wasn't ready for it, and that kind of thing doesn't really work, I would even agree. And I'm like the big neocon. But if you look at what they've done in terms of policy in that speech, it goes way too far, in my view. For example, they wanted to. And they finally restored the funding for the National Endowment for Democracy. The National Endowment for Democracy does not impose American values on authoritarian countries. The people in those countries that share our values go to the National Endowment for Democracy and say, hey, could you help us out? That, to me, is totally different than, like, you know, Operation Iraqi freedom. That's 1.2. One of the things that really, you know, grinds my gears and got my goat and grind my goat and all that was that he said, thank you.
- [38:16]
Mike Pesca
For being a brand.
- [38:17]
Ryan Reynolds
Like you guys in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, you got. You did it on your own, and you built these gleaming towers and these beautiful cities. And I'm like, you know what? Like, if America wasn't there to destroy the ISIS caliphate or if America hadn't been there to try to, like, at least, like, you know, just like in the war on terror or for that matter, in the first Iraq war so that, you know, Saddam Hussein didn't swallow Kuwait, then you would not have had the security with which to invest in your own cities and build this infrastructure. So, yes, congratulations for, you know, using your resources and trying to modernize and all of that. But that was, like, underwritten by American power. And for Trump not to understand the connection between those things, I think is kind of an infamy against, you know, America in the world and like, the legacy of, like, of his predecessors. So there. And that's, by the way, both parties. It's not, I'm not just talking about the Republicans. I'm talking about, like, both parties were part of this. And it's also kind of weird to me that, you know, I have my issues with the European Union. I have my issues with the excessive. I mean, I think that in Germany, they are out of whack on free speech. But on the other hand, you send JD Vance and members of your cabinet, like Pete Hex s to basically trash NATO, which, you know, is a formal alliance. And we don't have anything like that in the Middle East. And it's like nothing but hugs and kisses. And it just so happens that it's hugs and kisses for what are basically. I mean, I do think Saudi Arabia is reforming in a good way, but it's like, these are, you know, police states. These are, you know, monarchies. And there is something that feels out of character with America's, like, great tradition of rebellion against monarchies and embracing constitutional republics. So that's where I'm at to a point. Like, if you just want to say, hey, it was really over the top what you were trying to do in Afghanistan. That was a fool's errand. Like, what were you thinking there? Fine. If you are going to say, we don't want to ever talk about democracy in the world again, I don't even think that's even keeping with, like, an American character. And I got a real issue with it.
- [40:23]
Mike Pesca
I think alliances pay dividends. I'm not sure if Trump rejects that or is an operator and just takes advantage of takes or takes for granted the dividends that they pay. You know, thinking, look, they'll be there for us and some other president. Maybe we'll have to do the work of making the dividends pay off. I'm going to reap the rewards. I really don't know what he thinks about that. I think if I like it either.
- [40:46]
Ryan Reynolds
Way, President Trump was like, I don't know, the leader of, you know, I don't know, China or something like that in the 11th century. Be like Genghis Khan, tough cookie, you know, really tough negotiation, tough guy. Genghis Khan, you know, he. He's a serious. He's a serious guy, but he's a softy, like, you know, that seems loves his kids.
- [41:05]
Michael A. Cohen
So can I just say for the record, I think he 100% rejects alliances because he thinks that the US is being taken advantage of. I mean, that is Exactly.
- [41:13]
Ryan Reynolds
His.
- [41:14]
Michael A. Cohen
And he's wrong. He's wrong about it.
- [41:15]
Mike Pesca
Well, it's also complicated because we have formal alliances with the exact kind of countries that he hates culturally. Right. We don't really have. I mean, there are organizations of petroleum exporting countries. Right. But we're not in that alliance. So the alliances that we have with Middle Eastern states aren't as formal with NATO, Right?
- [41:35]
Michael A. Cohen
No, they're not. But can I say one thing, actually, And I'm going to. This is going to be a surprising statement I'm going to make here, but I think one part of this trip he took, the Middle east deserves actually some praise, and that is his embrace of the new leader of Syria, which I thought was the smart political and diplomatic move of the US to give support to this new leader who seems to be doing and saying the right things. And I think probably helps put Syria on a better path because it has US Support. I know there are people inside of his administration who are opposed to this. I know that there were some crazy stories about how their people in the administration are trying to undermine this guy at the same time that Trump is meeting with him. I think on that account, he actually deserves some credit. I also am going to make something else that might seem surprising. I kind of think the way he's dealt with Netanyahu in Israel is probably the right approach as well, which is to basically give him the cold shoulder. And I think in the sense that I think that this administration clearly wants to see progress toward ending the war. And Netanyahu is not going to do that unless pressure is put on him. And this was clearly an effort to put pressure, pressure on him. Having said that, the stuff he's doing on Iran I almost find comical because he's literally going, moving forward to getting a nuclear deal. That's the exact deal that he did away with seven years ago.
- [42:56]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, the latest line from Trump and Witkoff suggests that we're not probably gonna get a nuclear deal, which, hallelujah.
- [43:05]
Michael A. Cohen
I actually didn't think we were. But if we do get a deal, it's gonna look very similar to the one he rejected.
- [43:09]
Ryan Reynolds
No, but he's saying now that there can be no enrichment. And that's been repeated.
- [43:13]
Mike Pesca
Yes, yes. Witkoffer says that the red line is enrichment. I'm like, well, that's the entire.
- [43:19]
Ryan Reynolds
We.
- [43:19]
Mike Pesca
All know reason they're trying to get the follow it.
- [43:21]
Ryan Reynolds
And like, okay, well, if there's no enrichment, then what are the Iranians doing at this point?
- [43:25]
Michael A. Cohen
Exactly.
- [43:26]
Ryan Reynolds
And like, maybe the thinking is they don't have an air defense system because the Israelis took it out a few months back and like me, and they don't have the same proxy network with Hezbollah and Hamas because of Israel as well. So maybe like, they're really up against it and their economy is collapsing and maybe they'll make a deal that they. They wouldn't have made before, but I'm not sure that that's in the cards. So we'll see what happens with that. On the Syria thing, my. Here's my concern. I have. I'm of two minds about it. I'm glad Assad is gone. I only wish he was in a dock right now facing justice for the many crimes he's committed against the Syrian.
- [44:04]
Mike Pesca
People and the region instead of a daca.
- [44:06]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah, there you go. There needs to be. I just would hope that there is at least some active diplomacy and leverage on Jelani to make sure that either the people under him do not conduct these kind of reprisals against the Syrian minorities that were aligned with Assad. So. And we've seen that, by the way, in the aftermath of the revolution. Good thing Assad is gone. But there is something that America can do in terms of trying to bring this broken country and reconstruct it into like the international system, which clearly Jelani wants. But there should be some kind of guarantees. Like, my concern is not that he lifted the sanctions. What did he get for lifting the sanctions? Did he get a promise? Did he get something to make sure that there will not be, you know, a kind of that you won't see the Iranization of this new government. You won't see an Islamic republic that goes after these minorities and so forth. That to me is an important thing. I hope that there is somebody working on that. But I don't trust Jelani on his word. So what's the leverage? How are you gonna do the trust but verify?
- [45:16]
Mike Pesca
Right. Look, we've all done things in our past, right. I had my goth period. I think Michael Cohen followed Fish for a while. Jelani was in isis, sometimes onlyfans. Yeah.
- [45:28]
Michael A. Cohen
You got to do it only fans a different conversation. But the Fish thing that I never.
- [45:31]
Mike Pesca
Maybe to Jelani and the jihadists and. Yeah, but you got to do what you got to do to bring these people into the community of nations, which used to mean something and now doesn't really as much. I want to go back to the entire original premise where Donald Trump is not going to lecture anyone about chopping up Khashoggi. You know, what the United States did. And of Course, it didn't mean anything. You feel like you have to. But then a couple months later, we were doing business with the Saudis because of course we're going to do business with the Saudis. Look at our decades of lecturing the Chinese on human rights. It didn't get anyone anywhere, right? It didn't help Hong Kong would not have doing it changed anything either. No, probably not. The question is the idea, though, that if you dispense with that, then you can finally get to the real stuff, the stuff that we all want. Are we sure about that? Are we sure that in the United States interests, an amorality, and I'm thinking in fact of Russia and Ukraine, let's just be amoral. Let's just look at what's going on in this conflict and not put it in the terms of an aggressor state and an underdog. And those terms are really there and easy to reach for. It's hard not to reach for him. But if we just talk about it amorally, I think there is a good strategic amoral case for opposing Russia and actually helping the Ukrainians in that matter. And being amoral, or as Trump defines amorality, isn't actually helping the United States interest in that sphere of the world. What do you think?
- [47:06]
Michael A. Cohen
I just want to say I agree with that 100%. And look, I think there's lots of reasons to morally oppose what Russia is doing in Ukraine, but there's even greater political opposition and strategic reasons to oppose what they're doing.
- [47:17]
Mike Pesca
We'd be stupid not to, is my point.
- [47:19]
Michael A. Cohen
One of the things I found sort of mind boggling about, and I wrote about this a couple months ago, is that, you know, one thing that's happened in the Ukraine war is that we have supplied Ukraine with billions of dollars worth of weapons they have used to significantly weaken militarily, one of our key geopolitical rivals. Why would we want to stop doing that? I mean, as long as Ukraine wants to keep fighting, I mean, I keep seeing this argument from the Trump administration that, well, we want to end the war, end the bloodletting. And look, I want to end the war, too, but you have to end the war in terms that are reasonable to both sides. And as long as Ukraine wants to continue to fight and you need to resist Russian aggression, I'm not sure why it isn't in our interest to support them. I don't understand actually what the benefit is of a lousy peace deal that sells out Ukraine and benefits Russia just for the sake of stopping the war. I Don't actually see the benefit of that. You can call me, you know.
- [48:08]
Mike Pesca
No, I agree. Absolutely.
- [48:09]
Michael A. Cohen
Real politic.
- [48:10]
Mike Pesca
Moral consideration. I agree.
- [48:12]
Michael A. Cohen
I think it's. Look, the moral side of the conflict, and I think Eli and I will agree on this, is on the Ukrainian side. There's no question about that. The Russians are the bad guys here. Okay. And if you want to make a deal, I want to see a deal. I want to see the war end also, but I want to see it on terms that basically benefit Russia. I want to see it in terms that allows Ukraine to be able to survive and, you know, if you're not.
- [48:33]
Mike Pesca
And also, we as Americans shouldn't have to care more about the lives of Russian soldiers than the leader of Russia.
- [48:39]
Michael A. Cohen
That.
- [48:39]
Mike Pesca
That's not incumbent upon us.
- [48:41]
Michael A. Cohen
That also, yes. And so I guess, I mean, I hate to sound like a. Like a, like a Henry Kissinger clone here, and I don't think I do, but.
- [48:48]
Mike Pesca
But maybe partially do the accent to the accent.
- [48:52]
Michael A. Cohen
You'll know I can't do it whenever the accent just sounds like my dog. But I just.
- [48:57]
Ryan Reynolds
The Cambodians, when we bombed them.
- [48:59]
Michael A. Cohen
There you go. Excellent. Right. I mean, look, I just think that at the end of the day, you know, we are benefiting from what is happening in this war. We are helping and we are on the right and we morally on the. We're morally on the right side and we are strategically on the right side. And Trump's entire approach, I feel like, is that he wants to make a deal for the sake of making a deal. He wants a deal so we can get a Nobel Peace Prize. I think that's what he actually believes will happen. So he's been pressuring Ukraine because I guess he thinks, and I think correctly, we have more leverage over Ukraine. But the result of that is to give Russia a great deal and really demand nothing return. And as you've seen in the past four or five months, he's gotten nothing back from Russia in return. Nothing.
- [49:37]
Ryan Reynolds
Can I address your original question? Because I do think that there's a strategic. There's strategic value in making the moral case. So the first point I would make is that when a president decides that human rights and democracy are important in the list of kind of issues or things that we negotiate with other countries, then that's a point of leverage. So even from a cynical perspective, if you add another thing that you care about, then it helps you maybe get some other things. Second point, though, is that, like, I don't think it's never been successful when Ronald Reagan, it's not the only reason. But when Ronald Reagan decided to name names like Vaclav Havel or Natan Sharansky or Lechwalesa in the twilight of the Cold War, that had a real effect on not only the dissidents, but the populations themselves. And the President was saying these things, it mattered. It meant that their struggle wasn't in vain. They weren't just resisting in the void. And it wasn't, as I said, I'm not a monocausal guy. It wasn't the only reason why the Soviet Union collapsed, but it certainly helped that there were people who, to use the great phrase from Solzhenitsyn, would not let the lie go through them. And there was an American president who recognize that. So I don't think it. I think that there are times when it does work. I mean, I can tell you having lived in Egypt at the time when George W. Bush decided to make a big deal about political prisoners in Egypt, it meant that they were released and Mubarak understood that he got more than $2 billion a year in military aid from the United States and he had to do something about that. Doesn't always work. The concerns that we had about human rights abuses in Pakistan certainly didn't persuade the military dictatorship regime over there to do anything about it. But at the same time, just because it doesn't work all the time doesn't mean it's not worth doing so. Again, I say it's sort of like to a point, you can take this stuff too far and if it leads you into a kind of like we, it's the end of history and we're going to remake the world in our image and we're going to just do it because we're the most powerful country in the world. That was a mistake. And I do think that to a certain extent, you know, fine critique that. I just think he's overcorrecting in this particular way. So which is his nature. That's his nature. Yes, I agree. It is his nature to pick up on Eli's point.
- [51:57]
Michael A. Cohen
I wanna say one thing, you said a second ago, Mike, that on human rights in China, we had no effect on that issue in China. I don't think that's true, actually. We spent decades after, through the 90s and in the aughts basically raising the issue of human rights in China. And it did have an effect on human rights in, in China. Not as dramatically as we would have liked, but it does have an impact. And I think Eli's right that we should keep talking about that because it does give us a certain amount of leverage. And he, and Trump has clearly decided he doesn't care at all and he's not gonna talk about it.
- [52:25]
Ryan Reynolds
It's like the way we used to talk about World War II. It's like, well, we had to make an alliance with Joseph Stalin because the Nazis. Right. But it's like Trump would just make an alliance with Joseph Stalin. He doesn't need the Nazis. You know what I'm saying?
- [52:37]
Mike Pesca
It's like, great head of hair, tough negotiation. I want to ask you one thing.
- [52:44]
Ryan Reynolds
On a hell of a trial, hell of a show trial, very strong iron.
- [52:48]
Mike Pesca
Joe, I want to ask you, Eli, this is an interesting complication. So lest people think Trump goes to Saudi Arabia, throws away any, any requirement that they adhere to human rights, and therefore it's game on with everything the Saudis want. Oh, no, no, no. Weeks before he did a handshake deals deal with the Houthis. And based on, I think some input from the Vance Hegseth side of things. But I think a driving consideration was it was costing too much to bomb the Houthis and maybe not getting there or getting there as his generals would like, would have taken way too long. Now, it is in the Saudi's interest. The Houthis are their great enemy in Yemen. It is in the Saudis interest to keep attacking the, the Houthis. What's your analysis of the pullback of the administration and if you know anything about what the Saudis think about that?
- [53:44]
Ryan Reynolds
I think at this point the Saudis are, you know, they're looking at the American political situation and they, I think they in some ways are torn between wanting to cover their bets. So if there's a way to kind of reach an accommodation with Iran, because it's really Iran, that's the, you know, source of all this stuff. And on the other hand, it's like, you know what? Like, I don't know how close really. I mean, Trump seems to think they're close to joining the Abraham Accords, but that would be a huge thing. We just saw the reporting in the Wall Street Journal that that was one of the primary motivators of October 7th. So that would be a nice rebuke or a nice bookend to this sort of chapter in Middle east history. But I think the Saudis to a certain extent are themselves divided. But it's one guy, really. It's mbs. And the thing I just want to give MBS is by no means perfect. I know that's an Understatement. But he has done some modernization that all the other Saudi leaders before him like, refused to do. He has done something to.
- [54:47]
Mike Pesca
There are some low hanging dates in terms of modernization.
- [54:50]
Ryan Reynolds
No, but I mean, listen, I know this is like, I'm just saying, like you weren't allowed to say this, like, you know, but he has, there are movie theaters in Saudi Arabia and that was him. He's done something about some of the really extreme Wahhabist imams that were kind of cultivated by Saudi Arabia, although largely exported, this poison, this ideological poison abroad. But he's done something about that. They kind of understand that they could no longer play that double game that the Saudis would play, which is behave at home but go crazy outside of Saudi Arabia. And that was a huge dilemma, as Michael, you and I both know. After 9 11. What do you do about this Janus faced ally? Well, finally we have a younger leader, the crown prince who's willing to do something about it. So in some ways it's not like he's not the, it's a more complicated picture with him. And the other thing I just, you said earlier, I think it's just worth saying I don't agree that Trump has given Israel the cold shoulder. I think that that's, I mean, I'm just saying. No, and I'll tell you why. One, he sold all the weapons that were being held up by Biden. That was one of the first things he did. Second of all, you know, like it's night and day. He's not micromanaging how what Netanyahu does on Gaza at least we haven't seen that, you know, as opposed to like under Biden. So I think they've just opened the border, but like they kept, they closed the border for three months, you know, in terms of aid deliveries and so forth. Yeah.
- [56:28]
Mike Pesca
And that was an insistence of the Trump administration.
- [56:31]
Michael A. Cohen
I think not going to Israel on this trip was a pretty.
- [56:34]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah, but like you could argue that like, you know, if he didn't have deliverables or whatever, I mean, I don't know. I just don't think the substance of the policy yet suggests to me that it's a cold shoulder for Israel and then followed up by the fact that the new line at least, and maybe it'll change is no enrichment. And that I think is that's the Israeli position, of course, and it seems to be the US Position now.
- [56:55]
Michael A. Cohen
Well, I think the other issue is that on the Houthis, they made this deal with Houthis to stop basically attacking them and did not request that they stop bombing Israel. I just, you know, I think it's also some of Wyckoff's statements. I don't have a lot of confidence in Wyckoff, but he did say this recently that, you know, he thinks that maybe you should end the war. And I think it's clear they want to end the war now. Again, they don't want to end the war because they're worried about Palestinians being killed. They could give a rat's ass about that. They just care about. He wants to make a deal. And all I'm saying is I think he would sell out the Israelis in a heartbeat if he could make a deal that would make Donald Trump look good. And so I think that there was a belief in Israel that Trump will be better for us than. Than Biden or Harris. And I talked to Israelis about this, and they. And the attitude there is. We didn't. This is not what we expected to get from Trump. I think they are surprised at the lack of support that he's been providing to Bibi.
- [57:50]
Mike Pesca
Well, if you really want the cold shoulder, I'd recommend you go to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, depending on their refrigeration capacity. Time dark. And now I will apologize. The worst joke ever. And I will say it's time to do goat grinders. These are the things that grind our gears or get our goat. And will you bring me out of this morass? Eli Lake, do you want to start first with what's. What's grinding your goat these days?
- [58:19]
Ryan Reynolds
Okay, here's here. I can't choose between two because I have so many goats that have been grinding my gears.
- [58:27]
Mike Pesca
Give me. Give me two, and we'll put one in the bonus.
- [58:30]
Ryan Reynolds
Okay, so my first one. They're Israel related. I would point everybody to a story that the Council on American Islamic Relations recently sort of worked to pressure the disinvitation to Salman Rushdie at. Is it Claremont? I think it's Claremont or Pomona. One of the. One of those. They're all related, those schools for their commencement address. They're related.
- [58:56]
Mike Pesca
They're sisters. But Claremont is very different from Pomona.
- [59:00]
Ryan Reynolds
That's. Well, it's the Claremont Graduate Center. That's the right wing Leo Strausian, the West Coast Straussians. But anyway, this, to me is. It grinds my curious because recently CAIR has kind of wrapped itself in the First Amendment and claimed to be a free speech organization. And here they are on the other hand, basically using as a pressure group to try their best to prevent somebody from speaking on a college campus. Pick a lane. Okay? Like I happen to be a real free speech nut myself. So even though I don't agree with anything Mahmoud Khalil said, I wrote a column saying that it was wrong for this administration to effectively not even grant him due process and try to deport him for what appears to be speech crimes unless they provide the evidence otherwise. I laid it out, you can all look it up, we could link to it. Okay? But then you turn so in that in that particular case, CAIR and lots of other groups that are kind of on the pro Palestinian side all are like about free speech and that the Israel lobby is trying to censor us and everything like that. And then they turn around and do it again. So what you're saying is pick a lane, guys. If you're free speech, be about it, bout it. Don't just use the tactics when it's convenient, cuz you're not seriously free speech. I would say the same thing, by the way, to people who are on the pro Israel side who want to use efforts to try to suppress speech.
- [60:24]
Mike Pesca
Michael Cohen, you gotta go Grindr.
- [60:26]
Michael A. Cohen
All right, so this is kind of a larger theme. I'm just using an anecdote first. I was watching something on Twitter the other day. I saw some clip of Andy Beshear as governor of Kentucky who's maybe running for president. And he said, we Democrats, we need to talk to Americans like we're normal human beings. And I heard this and I thought, have you ever heard Donald Trump talk to Americans? You know, he doesn't talk like as a normal human being and he does fine politically. And this gets to a larger thing that really drives me crazy. And it drives me crazy for the last six months is every single postmortem of the 2024 campaign, almost all of which seem to be wrong, which is that. And they're wrong all in the same way. Because the verdict of what went wrong, what needs to change is almost completely like the Venn diagram is like a perfect circle of what went wrong. And here are my what we need to do differently and here are my ideological priors. And I just would like people to acknowledge that this was a very close loss that every incumbent party in the world, in the world lost Voter share in 2024, that there was a global anti incumbent wave that swept up the Democratic Party in it and that that is the best explanation for what happened in 2024. There wasn't some big vibe check. There wasn't some, you know, enormous embrace of Trump. Although I think that was part of it. This was an anti incumbent people pissed off about the economy. And so much of the postmortems that we are seeing are not only wrong, but they are useless because three years from now, when there's another presidential election, we're talking about a whole different set of issues, a whole different. We're not talking about trans rights, we're not talking about immigration. We're not gonna be talking about Joe Biden's health. Hopefully he's still alive. Then those issues will not be on the table. The issues will be about Donald Trump. And if they're not about Donald Trump or J.D. vance ever is gonna replace him as the Republican nominee, then Democrats are screwed because that ultimately is how they're gonna get back into power. Not rerunning the supposed mistake or addressing the supposed mistakes that they made in November of 2024. That's not how it's gonna work. It never works that way. So please stop with the election postmortems. This will play itself out. We'll figure it out. We'll see where this is going. Democrats only to rebrand themselves. They just need to be opposed to Trump for the next year and a half and they'll be fine. And then we'll worry about 2028 when it comes around.
- [62:50]
Ryan Reynolds
Stop it, Michael. You think Americans like illegal immigration? Is that like your.
- [62:56]
Michael A. Cohen
I think, I think, you know, they're.
- [62:59]
Ryan Reynolds
They're fine with it.
- [63:00]
Michael A. Cohen
I think they don't like it, but I don't actually think it's the reason why Trump won. And I do not think will be the number one issue in 2028. And you're.
- [63:13]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, you know, I'm going to. In a rare, not even mad moment of agreement. I think your, your point that you made in your substack and that you're making now that, like, we don't know what the issues of 2028 are. And those issues are like, you can't. Like, it's like, you can't. It's like preparing for the next war by fighting the last one.
- [63:30]
Michael A. Cohen
You're fighting the last one.
- [63:31]
Ryan Reynolds
Right. And I do think that there is a little bit of Maginot line thinking, and I think that's a totally fair point because there will be a whole different set of issues. You're right. And we can't predict the future. Everything moves very fast. So part of that's fair. But my little pushback, slight pushback, is just like, I do think that there were a bunch of issues where the Democrats were in like 2080 territory. And I mean, I wouldn't even say it's like the idea that like, I mean, my view is like, I think most Americans are like, all right, trans people should be treated with dignity. But it was like youth, gender, medicine. It was like trans and sports. And those were cultural hot button issues that are like 80, 20. And if the orthodoxy of the party prevents the, you know, nominee from just saying, I don't know, I'm not with that, then I do think it's a problem. But I also see your point that there's going to be new set of issues, runaway inflation, you know, who knows? But there's going to be a whole new set of issues for 2028.
- [64:31]
Michael A. Cohen
I guess the one thing I'll just say before I know if you have the one thing I'll mention that is that in the places where Kamala Harris, people saw her the most, where her campaign was the most visible, where TAC ads against her were the most visible is the places where she did the best in 2020. 2024. Right. She outran the national numbers in the swing states. She did better in the swing states than she did elsewhere in the country.
- [64:49]
Ryan Reynolds
What about that stat? Like she hadn't done better in every county. She did worse than.
- [64:55]
Michael A. Cohen
No, no, that's. That was, that's. That was not true. I know that came out right after. She was not true. There were a number of places. I mean, like, for example, in Georgia, she did better than Biden. North Carolina, she did better than Biden. And I would make this point too, about. This isn't a Democratic problem as much as, look, there are four states where she lost and Democratic senators won. So Democrats. Maybe it was Kamala Harris problem, maybe it was a pro Donald Trump vote. But you can't argue that Democrats have this horrible branding problem when in four places where Trump won, their Senate candidates prevailed. So I just think that we just get caught up in these, like, monocausal narratives about what happens in elections, and they're almost always wrong. The answer is always much simpler and less, more, less counterintuitive than I think we even imagined. I mean, this is just. Elections are complicated and there's never lose.
- [65:42]
Ryan Reynolds
That's it.
- [65:43]
Michael A. Cohen
I'm sorry.
- [65:43]
Ryan Reynolds
Voters hate Joy.
- [65:46]
Michael A. Cohen
Look, the last three elections have been backlash elections. I'm not sure why the next one won't be either. But, you know, we will see.
- [65:52]
Mike Pesca
All right, let me lay my go grinder on you. Much more cultural, less political. But it was inspired by a clip I heard in Eli Lake's most recent Podcast where he was talking about Lenny Bruce. He played a clip of the movie Lenny with Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce. And Dustin Hoffman was. Tell me Eli nominated or won the Academy.
- [66:12]
Ryan Reynolds
I know he's nominated. I don't. I have to think he won.
- [66:15]
Michael A. Cohen
I think he was nominated.
- [66:16]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, I think you're right. So great performance and yet terrible performance because as a comedian he doesn't come across like someone actually doing actual comedy.
- [66:27]
Michael A. Cohen
And.
- [66:27]
Mike Pesca
And in fact, this is my go grinder. I do not think any actor who has ever been given a script and said your character is a comedian now perform this stand up comedy has ever actually done a good job. It might seem like a good job, it might serve the logic or the structure of that particular film or TV show, but it's just not comedy. The examples I could think of are every single one. But Lenny is one the show hacks. It works. Or some of the jokes that the Joan Rivers standing character, Deborah Vance delivers, quote unquote work, but they wouldn't work and they wouldn't actually get a laugh from a crowd. The amazing Mrs. Maisel, who I love, who I think in many ways Lenny Bruce is in that show. It's a good show. It doesn't really work as stand up comedy.
- [67:15]
Michael A. Cohen
Now I was going to say, I thought that one works. I think Tom Hanks is pretty funny.
- [67:18]
Mike Pesca
In that movie, doesn't. Tom Hanks is as good. He's great in the movie. He seems like an 80s comic. But it doesn't work as stand up comedy and here's why. Because stand up comedy is not really an actorly performance. The actor can't make the choice. The audience makes the choice. And no actor on stage or on film will ever let someone else, including the audience, make the choice. It's anathema to the craft. But the craft of comedy is doing what you can to try to get around what's funny. And then the audience will tell you which slight gesture, which change in intonation, which cadence break that is unexpected will get the laugh. And if you do the actual thing that would actually make an audience laugh, it will seem weird in a film or a TV show. So that is my go grinder. It never works. It's. There's no fault of anyone's, but it is just the truth.
- [68:17]
Ryan Reynolds
I like Dustin Hoffman's performance in the movie as like, I think I. But I also agree with you that it's. You're right, it's. And it's ineffable. It's hard to know.
- [68:28]
Mike Pesca
Yes. And stand up comedy is a weird thing. It's like 90% art and 10% focus group, and there's really no way around it. And it's kind of. It's kind of nice, though, that that is how we connect, via laughter. Like, we have to literally connect with the people right there in the room. All right, well, I want to thank you both. My guests have been Michael A. Cohen and Eli Lake. You could see and read them in the Truth and Consequence substack. Maybe we could call it a substack. And Eli's writing and doing a podcast for the Free Press. And we are saying that. Well, we're definitely not saying that any of us are right. We're not saying that you're right. All we're saying is we're not even that. And that's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the gist. Astrid Green runs our social media. Michelle Pesca is the CBSO of Peach Fish Productions. Co C being her son is Ashley Khan. And Leo Baum is the intern. The intern. And thanks for listening.