1002: ICE Website Goes Full Fascist! Trump’s Personal Army? Epstein Excuse Blows Up!

Summary

The Next Level Podcast - Episode 1002 Summary

Release Date: July 30, 2025

Hosts: Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller, and Jonathan V. Last

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1. ICE's Militaristic Recruitment Strategy

The episode opens with a critical analysis of the newly revamped ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) website. JVL highlights the agency's unconventional recruitment approach, likening it to a "Dungeons and Dragons" character class system. He notes, “[02:21] JVL: So great news, Great news. ICE is recruiting...” The recruitment categories—Deportation Officer, Criminal Investigator, and General Attorney—are portrayed with militaristic and aggressive language, suggesting a preference for individuals with tough, combative characteristics.

Sarah Longwell adds to the critique by pointing out the lack of diversity in the recruitment visuals, stating, “[04:12] Sarah Longwell: I got to say, I don't think it's that weird that you can't see their faces... All seven of them are white men.” This absence of diverse representation raises concerns about the types of individuals ICE aims to attract and the underlying intentions of such a recruitment strategy.

2. Loyalty Over Legal Integrity in Appointments

The discussion shifts to the recent news about four-star generals being required to interview with President Trump to ensure their loyalty. Tim Miller raises alarms about the implications of such loyalty tests: “[07:10] Tim Miller: ...the idea that... they are good war fighters first, sir, not bureaucrats.” This focus on personal loyalty over professional competence and adherence to the rule of law is seen as a dangerous precedent.

Sarah emphasizes the troubling aspect of this trend: “[08:03] Sarah Longwell: ...the idea that we are in power and not them or like Democrats or responsible people.” The hosts argue that prioritizing loyalty to the administration over constitutional obligations threatens the integrity of the military and federal institutions.

3. Concerns Over Judge Emil Bove’s Confirmation

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to the controversial confirmation of Judge Emil Bove to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. JVL points out the problematic nature of Bove’s appointment: “[36:28] JVL: Pam Bondi this week has announced that she has filed a formal complaint and request for censure against Judge Glasberg.” The hosts express frustration over the Senate's swift confirmation despite Bove’s questionable actions and statements, such as lying during his testimony and undermining judicial integrity.

Sarah argues for accountability at the leadership level, stating, “[37:43] Sarah Longwell: ...judge who said he's worried about these things should be censured... This is unbelievably scary stuff.” The discussion underscores the challenges in removing appointed officials and the broader implications for the judiciary's independence.

4. Unraveling Trump's Ties with Jeffrey Epstein

The relationship between former President Trump and Jeffrey Epstein becomes a focal point of the conversation. Sarah delves into the inconsistencies in Trump’s narratives about their falling out: “[23:57] Sarah Longwell: ...Trump is trying to get out from under the Virginia thing somehow, and he's accidentally making himself more complicit.” The hosts dissect Trump's recent statements attempting to distance himself from Epstein, scrutinizing the timeline and motives behind his changing stories.

Tim Miller adds a layer of skepticism, suggesting that Trump’s narratives may be attempts to deflect culpability: “[28:01] JVL: ...Trump is talking about her as if she's his property... the victim here is me.” This analysis highlights the broader issues of accountability and the manipulation of narratives to obscure unethical or illegal actions.

5. The Impact of Political Appointments on Democracy

Furthering the discussion on political appointments, the hosts explore the repercussions of appointing individuals like Emil Bove who display blatant disregard for the rule of law. Tim Miller questions the Senate’s judgment: “[38:15] Tim Miller: ...like Tulsi Gabbard... [they] confirmed Emil Bove... This is an obvious one...”

Sarah reinforces the need for systemic change, emphasizing that accountability should start at the top: “[43:51] Sarah Longwell: ...the people who fashion themselves answerable. This is where... They should be shaming...”

6. Christian Nationalism and Political Discourse

Towards the end, the conversation veers into the realm of Christian nationalism and its influence on political ideologies. Sarah shares insights from interacting with Trump-voting Republicans who equate Christianity with specific cultural and political views: “[56:07] Sarah Longwell: ...they got to fight over a property well documented...”

JVL offers a perspective on the internal conflicts within Christian nationalist groups, noting their antipathy towards liberal Christians rather than atheists: “[53:49] JVL: ...their deepest antipathies are not for atheists and agnostics. It's for liberal Christians...”

This segment underscores the complex interplay between religion and politics, highlighting how certain interpretations of faith can drive divisive and extremist viewpoints.

7. Book Club: Elite Privilege and Moral Responsibility

In a unique segment, JVL introduces a book club discussion on a Bloomberg profile of Luke Ferrator, a prodigious young talent affiliated with Elon Musk. The discussion critiques the intersection of immense privilege, technological prowess, and moral shortcomings: “[58:13] JVL: ...this kid who's unbelievably privileged and is clearly very, very smart about engineering, is very, very stupid about everything else...”

Sarah and Tim debate the responsibilities of elite individuals in wielding power and the potential consequences of their actions, emphasizing the need for ethical leadership and accountability.

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Conclusion

Episode 1002 of The Next Level delves deep into the murky waters of political loyalty, judicial integrity, and the moral responsibilities of those in power. Through incisive discussions and critical analysis, Sarah, Tim, and Jonathan highlight the pressing challenges facing American democracy, urging listeners to remain vigilant and advocate for systemic accountability.

Notable Quotes:

• “[00:00] Sarah Longwell: I want to live in a world where there is deep shame by all the people who worked in the Trump administration.”

• “[07:10] Tim Miller: ...they actually do want people from kind of diverse backgrounds, not just racially, but ideologically different perspectives.”

• “[23:51] Tim Miller: ...if you're just going to lie and make up a story...”

• “[43:51] Sarah Longwell: ...this is outside of any norm.”

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For listeners seeking to understand the current state of American politics and the underlying forces shaping it, this episode offers a comprehensive and thought-provoking exploration.

Transcript

[Sarah Longwell]

I want to live in a world where there is deep shame by all the people who worked in the Trump administration. Like I want to live in a world where 25 years from now when people they've got a gap in their resume because they don't want to put they were part of the Trump administration on their resume.

[JVL]

Hello everyone. This is JVL here with my best friends Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of the Bulwark Guy. Guys, before we get started, a little bit of personal news. I have been waging like Bill Murray and Caddyshack, a war against a bear. Very friendly bear.

[Sarah Longwell]

Like a big hairy gay man.

[JVL]

Who, who has been coming at our trash. It's which is a thing that happens in New York City. They probably get out from Central park and they meander. Anyway, so I have, I have employed a number of anti bear measures on my trash cans which have all failed. And then yesterday I went out with the big guns and I installed. I had to drill into my trash can to a lot. There are carabiners. And this morning the bear showed up. And I don't know, maybe we can even drop some video in here. But I defeated the bear. He went after the trash can and then he gave up. And as he walked back down my driveway, he. He looked actually dejected. And what not pictured in the video is me crotch chopping and telling him, suck it. That's right, dude.

[Tim Miller]

Is the bear alive?

[JVL]

Posable thumbs.

[Tim Miller]

Is the bear alive?

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

He survived though.

[JVL]

So it's not survived. It didn't kill him, but I discouraged him.

[Sarah Longwell]

I actually think jvl, what he did achieve was with the trash can. Right? He didn't. He didn't tangle with the bear. He let the trash can do that for him.

[JVL]

No, but, but basically I was Leonardo DiCaprio in the Revenant.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Okay. And this is why. This is why people need to subscribe to the bulwark here on YouTube because this is our counter to the manosphere. You know, we need a macho, masculine pro democracy podcast where somebody like JVL knows how to just do guy stuff like dominating bears. Yeah, that's videotaping it.

[JVL]

That's right.

[Sarah Longwell]

Okay, well, I get anything for my gay joke. Nothing. Nothing from.

[Tim Miller]

I made a coming joke under my breath that you did that you missed right after you made the. Right after you made the bear comment. So I acknowledged it.

[Sarah Longwell]

Okay.

[JVL]

So great news, Great news. ICE is recruiting. The ICE website is up today with an Uncle Sam on it. They are asking for three classes of applicants. A little bit of Dungeons and Dragons. Ish sort of thing here where they tell you the class, the character class, and they tell you what aspects these things roll for. They're the deportation officer for the enforcers, for the brave, for those who fight to keep America safe. There's the criminal investigator for the protectors, for the analytical, for those who seek the truth. It doesn't say for the pussies, which is what it clearly means. And then for the general attorney, for the closers, for the resolute, for those who represent the usa. I just want to note something before we get into this. These. These ads feature seven individuals who are identifiable by racial and gender markers. All seven of them are white men. Oddly, for recruiting pitch, not one of them features a recognizable face. I literally don't think I've ever seen any attempt to recruit people ever before. Which refuses to show the faces of the people who are doing the jobs currently.

[Tim Miller]

They usually have a smiling person. You know, it's like a Benetton ad. Smiling people of different races and genders talking about how much they love the army, how much they've gotten out of it. You know, how much.

[Sarah Longwell]

That's how you get a woke army, Tim. That's how you get a woke military.

[Tim Miller]

Though this is a little woke. It's like, aren't those personality tests kind of woke? What's that called where you figure out if you're espj? Yeah, the Myers Briggs. Is Myers Briggs woke or anti woke? I don't know. It's a little. Kind of like fascist Myers Briggs? Little bit. On which one of these jobs you want?

[Sarah Longwell]

I got to say, I don't think it's that weird that you can't see their faces. You won't be able to see their faces when they're doing the job. Why would you see their faces when they're advertising the job?

[JVL]

Rim shot.

[Sarah Longwell]

So I. I went my. My team, like, brought it in on a laptop and showed this to me, and then I took it away and started to go through this thing, like all the little tabby things that they have where you can delve deeper. You have to be over 21 and under 37. And that's basically it for what, Master's.

[JVL]

Degree, Though it says preferred master's or graduate level degree.

[Sarah Longwell]

So they wanted a graduate level degree, but then there's like a. There's a thing somewhere else. Yeah. Where it's like, actually no degree. Oh, no. It doesn't say. No, no. They. But they do say they require an undergraduate degree. Except then they're like, but also. No, we don't over here. There's, like, plenty of ways. And I gotta say, I was trying to, when I was looking at it, I was trying to think, if I didn't know that this administration would have, like, a real penchant for, let's say, white nationalists to join, would I think that this website seems as ridiculous as it does, like, as menacing as. And I, I, I honestly don't know. Like, it is hard now to separate, like, Uncle Sam's Uncle Sam. It's not. There's nothing offensive about Uncle Sam.

[JVL]

Kind of an angry Uncle Sam.

[Sarah Longwell]

It is, it is. And it's more the language of, like, it's the way what's his name says war fighters all the time. It's like, over intentionally. Butch is the only term I can think of. Like, they're trying to make it sound. Yeah, you better be a tough guy coming in here.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I mean, we also throw the things like, such as due to the prior administration's disastrous immigration policy.

[Sarah Longwell]

That's true. That's not usually in this stuff. And the be all you can be ads, they're not saying because the last guy screwed it up so bad. Come be all you can be with us.

[Tim Miller]

Because traditionally, I know this, like, feels quaint and such at this moment in our history, but traditionally, if you're a law enforcement agency like ICE or the FBI, you actually do want people from kind of diverse backgrounds, not just racially, but ideologically different perspectives. People that have expertise. Maybe some Spanish speakers. Some Spanish, Right? Spanish speakers, yeah.

[JVL]

Oh, look at Timmy here with his deis.

[Tim Miller]

Traditionally, that's what you. So you wouldn't want to, like, turn off half of the potential applicant pool by talking about how weak all the lib cucks are, you know, like that. Because maybe there is a Joe Biden admirer who also is really good at, I don't know, looking at evidence or, you know, are knowing, you know, the Guatemalan native language. Mom. You know, you might want to bring people in with, with expertise, but that doesn't seem to be what they're going for here.

[JVL]

But, but it does emphasize the extent to which they expect the loyalty of this force not to be towards the law or to the United States of America. It's that there are good administrations and bad administrations. The last administration was a bad administration. We are a good administration. So you should come and put on your mask and work for us. Right. But then, like, what? I don't know. So all of these people who get hired when a Democratic administration comes in if they also follow disastrous policies, well, who should these ICE agents be loyal to, guys?

[Tim Miller]

And that's similar to the other. Another story that I've kind of, I feel like I've underplayed. But like, do you see the story about the four star generals? Now I'll have to have a personal interview with Donald Trump. Maybe that's nothing.

[Sarah Longwell]

I've not seen that.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, maybe that's nothing. I know. I feel like it's kind of gotten, you know, lost in the shuffle like some of this stuff does. Let me pull this up. It just, it feels a little ominous, I would say, you know, this, the idea that. Here it is. This was from, this was with Maggie. It's a New York Times story. So this is a legitimate, real news. I think Maggie and Hebrew, all four star general nominees, must now interview with President Trump. The goal is to, quote, ensure they are war fighters first, sir, not bureaucrats. And you know, I don't. You do kind of wonder what conversations would be have in that meeting. You remember the Comey meeting about how Donald Trump was kind of pretty bluntly, but without trying to get himself into trouble, talking about whether Comey would be loyal to him and the importance of loyalty. And you do wonder if you get that in these conversations with the four star generals, which I think kind of relates to this ICE question about who these folks are loyal to, why that might be ominous if, say, the president decides he wants to do things against the law or the Supreme Court or the democratic system.

[JVL]

I have a question. I feel silly for even asking this, but since our goal is to not get into any wars, because we don't do that with this president who keeps us out of wars. And also another one of our goals is cutting all of the wasteful spending throughout the government. By their own definitions, wouldn't having bureaucrats who could help tame the Pentagon bureaucracy and cut costs be more useful than war fighters? Since my understanding is that those war fighters are just going to be kept on the shelf and not doing any actual fighting of wars under a Trump administration.

[Sarah Longwell]

I understand that you're just asking a, a rhetorical question with, but like, I don't know, we just bombed Iran, so we might need a couple of war fighters around.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I think that there is an internal contradiction at the heart of mega and one of Trump's political skills to take your, take your sarcastic question is seriously, one of Trump's political skills has been like his vagueness as. And his adaptability, let's say, has allowed him to kind of appeal to people that have very different views of the world. And I think that you could find people whose views of the world are like, the US should commit war crimes. Like, war crimes are good. Like, the US should do everything necessary. Like our war fighters should go and do anything necessary to take out terrorists, you know, even if it's, you know, a crime against humanity. And we need a real butch, tough America that, you know, executes these war, this war fighting abroad, you know, without having being limited by stupid things like international law. Right. And though, and there's that group and that person really loves Donald Trump. And then I think that you have another group of people that are like, the wars recently have been stupid. Our, you know, our government is managed by idiots. We, this is none of our business. I don't like brown people. Why should I even care about what's happening over there? Let them fight in the sand together and we should just bring everybody home. And that person, and that person also really likes Donald Trump. And, and I think that he kind of in rhetoric vacillates back and forth between those two. I do think that there's a little bit of a potential opportunity politically and that the, that latter group, I think is starting to get a little disillusioned with Trump. And I think that kind of overlaps with the Epstein group a little bit. But, yeah, it does.

[Sarah Longwell]

Can I just. Because jbl, I think you. Sometimes I will say that people think that we have tds and we're overreacting. This is absolutely one of those issues where I feel like everybody else is underreacting. Like, if you, where do you think that applications for this job are circulating?

[Tim Miller]

ICE or the generals? Both. But I'm talking.

[Sarah Longwell]

But, but. Well, I mean, the, the way the ominous part about Trump Interviewing directly, the four star generals, that's very much on its face. Trump. It's a loyalty test. Trump wants to make sure these are acceptable people who will follow his orders. I would say, though, the ICE thing is different in that JBL sort of called Trump building his own personal army, which I think is not, not a crazy position to take. And, but more importantly, just as a matter of this is what I was saying about the website before. And if it hadn't been Trump, like, if Trump had not said to the proud boys, stand back and stand by. If we didn't know that he had pardoned the January 6th attackers, you know, like, but we know all those things. And so now that website even there are parts that are obviously like him criticizing the previous administration. But then there's the, the parts where you're just like this is circulating among the oath keepers and proud boys right now. Like that is who they are trying to recruit. And they're not being particularly. They're not doing anything to disabuse those people, which is why you would never put a person of color on there. Because then they're like, oh, but then we won't get the right people. And the people that we want are the oath keepers and proud boys.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, there was a really good. I feel bad. Maybe I'll try to find it during when we do the commercial weather. I feel I forget if it was New Republic or Mother Jones series back during the first Trump administration about the hiring of border patrol agents. And all of that stuff you said, Sarah, is. Was like very manifest in that story. Like there was a lot of people, you know, you're getting the wrong types of people. You're getting former police folks who had. Had issue, you know, who had. Had.

[Sarah Longwell]

They got thrown out of being cops.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, yeah, right. Like that kind of thing. And that was a pretty mine minor in scale compared to what they're planning here for ice. I like to find the amount of money that they're going to have to throw around to people and like. And then again, the content on the website is pretty explicit about how they're recruiting. But like Stephen Miller is posting on X like, come work for ice. What kinds of people are going to be replying to that? You know.

[JVL]

And I. So Garrett Graff, who's fantastic.

[Tim Miller]

Garrett was wrote. Wrote this series, was a Garrett.

[JVL]

Yeah, he. When he wrote his version of his piece, what he said was that even in the, Even when you're operating with the best of intentions, when you are hiring rapidly and at scale in law enforcement, it's always, always a shit show. Like law enforcement is one of those sectors where the personnel stuff and the culture stuff is insanely important. And when you're just trying to roust up bodies real fast, like everything always goes sideways, you wind up with unbelievable corruption. And that's even when you're not. That's even when you're trying to do it the right way. Right. And these guys are not trying to do it the right way.

[Tim Miller]

It was from other showns, by the way. We can put the link in the show notes for people. It's really good.

[JVL]

Yeah. My question for you guys is. So we saw the piece from the Guardian was out this week about how a whole bunch of the charges that were filed against protesters in Los Angeles who had been rousted by ICE have been Dropped because it turns out that the ICE agents were submitting false reports and were giving testimony that was disproven by video evidence and in some cases didn't even have, like, the names of the people right or the chronology right. Should another Democratic president undergo an attempt to have accountability for every federal agent during the Trump years who submitted a false report?

[Tim Miller]

We are in such acute crisis place right now that it's hard to even think about this sort of stuff. And these conversations will all be things that'll come up during the campaign. But anytime this comes up. I was in a separate conversation about this recently. Anytime this comes up, it's like the scale of that problem. And if we get through our present troubles and get to a place in 2029 or 2033 where there's a Democratic president, the remaking of the bureaucracy. I think I was talking about it from the concept of the 4 and 8. Do you start USAID again? Can you. Is that even.

[JVL]

Why do it knowing that they'll be just canceled in four years?

[Tim Miller]

So that's one question. But then the other question is, how do you handle the people that have come in without doing what Trump did, without doing a Schedule F kind of Project 2025 thing of your own, where you're getting rid of people that were brought in who have mal intent, who didn't want to follow the law? And this ties in a little bit to the Emil Beauvais thing, which we might get into. This guy who's a total disaster, was just confirmed as a judge. Like what? Like, let's say he had stayed in the government. Like, what do you do with people like that? Right. What do you do with Cash Patel?

[JVL]

Yeah, Cash Patel be fired as director of the FBI.

[Tim Miller]

And then. And then you take it all the way down. Yeah. And you take it all the way down to. What about the random agents, though? Like, now do you become the baddies? Right. Who is like, you know how Dan Bongino and Cash Patel are going after the people that investigated January 6th? And that's bad and wrong. But should. Should then a Democratic administration go after the people that were part of the ice?

[Sarah Longwell]

There's two separate questions in here. And if we can just quick pull them apart, because I think they're slightly different. I feel very strongly that the leadership and this. We'll talk about this later, too, because this is a big part of what I think of when I think about accountability. Do I want to hunt down every rank and file person? Probably not. What I want. What you want is a massive Culture change. And that's going to start at the top. And so for people like Bove, who you just, he lied to Congress when he himself, he said that Trump doesn't have to abide by court orders. Like, that guy's got to go, like, these are not people who are loyal to the Constitution. They've demonstrated that. And so at the top, I think you, Dan Bongino was not qualified for that position to begin with. There's not a point. There are ways in which I think somebody could come in and say, a Democrat, let's say. And again, also, JBL is in best case scenario here. Like, the idea that we are sitting here doing a planning exercise around this is what happens when we're in charge and not them or like Democrats or responsible people.

[JVL]

We should be so lucky.

[Sarah Longwell]

We should be so lucky. And I think that you quickly should not orient yourself towards sort of widespread retribution. But, like, what do you do to correct a corrupted culture? And for me, a lot of that begins at the top. And then I think you go from there. But I don't, I don't know that I actually think this was one of the mistakes of January 6th. And accountability is, I think that they focused too much. And I said this at the time, I wrote a piece about it because I was like, man, they're going to go after all these randos who like, went in there and like, they're accountable for their actions and they should not have done it, whatever. But, like, they're not going to go after the people who fomented this insurrection, who told the lie that brought these people there. And I just think accountability's got to start at the top.

[JVL]

Thanks, Merrick Garland. All right, I guess we have to talk about Jeffrey Epstein stuff because it's another week.

[Tim Miller]

Why do you act like that's a burden?

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah, why do you? What's wrong with you? A little bit of a burden.

[Tim Miller]

It's a little bit of a burden.

[JVL]

I don't know. May maybe this is just me worrying that we're all getting our hopes up. So I, I, I am very excited to see how the Gillette Maxwell pardon dance goes, because I feel like that's the direction we're heading in.

[Tim Miller]

Do you think it'll be a joint pardon with Diddy? You see, the news are strong considering.

[JVL]

Why wouldn't, did he get pardoned? That's like, obviously, why would he?

[Tim Miller]

Would be another question. But sure. Also, why wouldn't he?

[JVL]

Because he's a. Why not do? Why not do Chef Jeff too, right. And Sleepy Hallow. Like, why not? Why not pardon those guys? I guess.

[Tim Miller]

Is Chef Jeff a sex criminal?

[JVL]

No, not. It's not. It's a Chef G. I think you're.

[Tim Miller]

Talking about S E, S H, E, F, F. No, no, no, no. Chef G, the rapper.

[JVL]

Yeah, Chef G, the rapper. I think the reason they can't be pardoned because those are state charges, not federal charges, but yeah. Why can't Diddy? Why not? Why not do all of them? Right? Because you could do favors for people and then people owe you.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. I have some stray observations on this. One is, I think it's funny that JBL is against hope. He's just like, I don't want to get our hopes up. JBL's anti hope. Okay, that's fine. That tracks. You know, I used to. I just had this thought the other day that the term rape culture was like a thing that got thrown around a lot, kind of during the MeToo era, where I was like, you know, like, it wasn't something that I just, like, grabbed onto. Like, yes, I think this is right. But I was thinking, what is a young woman to make of a world in which a guy who was publicly talked about sexually assaulting women and that his fame allowed him to get away with it, who was constantly walking in on women at beauty pageants, who had all kinds of young women around who divorced, you know, all of his wives and slept with prostitutes and paid them off. Whatever. When you elect that guy president twice. Twice. He's. He's close friends with somebody who was at the head of the most notorious pedophile ring. He pardons. Let's say he pardons Diddy, pardons Ghislaine, who was doing the recruiting for this? Like, I don't know. I, I, I. That is a, that's a really toxic environment for women to grow up in their rape culture. It might say a rape culture. I mean, he, he, this guy has been an adjudicated sexual assaulter. And people are like, that's cool. And like, yeah, just, oh, well. And so here's. And it goes to the Jeffrey Epps. Now. Now let's get into Jeffrey Epstein. I know it feels like a burden, jbl, but not to me. Not to good.

[JVL]

This is why there are three of us.

[Tim Miller]

I want to know who killed him. Right? I mean, I'm like, in true crime CBS story. I'm in true crime mode, which. Oh, yeah, did I read the CBS story? I was diagramming every sentence of the CBS story about what was happening with the Epstein video.

[JVL]

It was Hulk Hogan, Hulk Hogan killed him.

[Sarah Longwell]

So here's, here's what I'm interested in from you guys. Trump has made some very strange statements over the last couple days, and not the least of which is how he views the people who are in his employ. And he refers to them just, yeah, the help. Just like, man. Okay, but I mean, it's the, his sins are, are, are so, so many that. That one's not so terrible. But it was crazy to have him saying. And, but his point is, is that he says he changed the story. So he and his people, his people who defend him on Epstein. One of the things they hold on to, this is in my mentions. This is in people yelling at me when I go after him. They're like, trump kicked Epstein out of Mar A Lago because he was a creep. Because he was a creep. And you're like, no, he didn't. Actually. There's a, there's a real explanation and it's because they got to fight over property. Okay, so that was their falling out. They had a falling out because they got to fight over a property. Well documented. Trump has changed that story this week, like now.

[Tim Miller]

Really convenient. Great story for him, by the way, if you're just going to lie and make up a story as a good one to stick with.

[Sarah Longwell]

So this is, this is, this makes no sense to me. It is pretty wild. He says now that he. That Jeffrey Epstein was trying to steal the help and. The help.

[JVL]

Which help?

[Sarah Longwell]

Well, there was a person who was recruited at the age of 15. Who. She was 16. Are you sure?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I literally just read it.

[Sarah Longwell]

Okay, okay, okay, hold on. Was she 16 when she started working at Mar A Lago or was she was 16 when she started working at Mar A Lago?

[Tim Miller]

Maybe. I don't know how old she was when she started working at Mar A Lago. When, when Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her from Mar A lago. She was 16 at that time. So.

[Sarah Longwell]

Okay, so I read somewhere. But, but let's just take 16. Let's be the idea. So, so she is employed at Mar a Lago as like an attendant. And so like, okay, I guess, I guess maybe at these clubs, like you get high school aged people who work there in the summer. I don't know.

[Tim Miller]

You think about it as like a caddy. Like, yeah, sure, there's 16 year old golf caddies at the club clubs. I don't know what a.16. Yeah, I did that. I was terrible at it. So I did it for like one week. But people when they're in High school, worked as golf caddies or like on the landscaping or whatever. What do you do in the Spa at age 16? I don't. I don't. I do. I also found that strange and creepy kind of. But, like, literally, I don't know, maybe there's a.

[Sarah Longwell]

Maybe there's a normal, like a, like a locker attendant. That. That was her job. So, like, okay, but this is where Ghislaine meets her. And the story is that she's reading a book on physical therapy or massages. And Ghislaine basically says, I will. We will pay for you to go, to get certified and if you come over at us. But as best I can tell, this is the person that Trump is talking about when he says they stole the help. And. And here's. I want to throw this out. This is, this is my theory of the case right now. We all know, like, this is not a conspiracy. This is Occam's Razor. This is like, what is the most obvious explanation for all this? The most obvious explanation is that Trump and Jeffrey had known each other since they were in their 30s and 40s, had been partying around a lot of young girls and a lot of young women and been doing all of that stuff. And then Trump balked over Epstein taking one of these young women into, like, stealing them from him. Into the employ of Jeffrey Epstein. But why was. Remember, he also said something about being a creep, but that means that he knew, like, worst case or, sorry, best case scenario for Trump. Trump absolutely knew what Jeffrey Epstein was doing and was annoyed that he was doing it to his people. That's best case scenario. Worst case scenario is Trump and Epstein had been doing this together for a long time, and Trump got annoyed at that. But actually, the reason that they broke up was because Trump was starting to like Jeffrey Epstein. It was like a year later, he gets hit with sex trafficking charges. So that stuff's probably in the water, right? People know that.

[Tim Miller]

Timeline's a little off, unfortunately. Again, I've been diagramming the sentences.

[Sarah Longwell]

No, no, but it's not so far off. So go ahead, we'll say, you say.

[Tim Miller]

Well, but here's part of the problem is I guess there's another potential theory is that. Which I would offer. I don't know where this would fit on your trajectory of best case to worst case. But like, that's the year 2000 that Virginia gets stolen, as Trump calls it stolen from.

[JVL]

Why would he know, Kind of like if Donald Trump is a billionaire, why would he know the HR of what's going on with 16 year old high school spa attendants.

[Tim Miller]

That's a great question. Why would he know that? Also, like, again, it's like Trump is talking about her as if he's her, she's his property. Like it was stolen from me.

[JVL]

But again, this isn't like a general counsel. It's like Jeffrey Epstein stole Michael Cohen from him.

[Tim Miller]

Right, right.

[Sarah Longwell]

So wait, 2000 is when Virginia is, is. And then it's, sorry, in 2002, Trump says, I know Jeffrey for, I've known Jeffrey 15 years. He's a terrific guy. That's when that quote comes out. So two years after the Virginia thing happens and then in two. And then it's 2004 when they have the falling out. You're right.

[Tim Miller]

That he. Yeah, that he claims.

[Sarah Longwell]

That he claims.

[Tim Miller]

But then he was still a member until 2007. Who knows? You know, so, okay, but like that. So to me, what that says is that Trump's making this up or that he's wrong in his memory. He doesn't remember this that accurately and that he's like, whatever, he's just kind of BSing. But like his story seems not true. And so to me, the revealing thing about this that I. Here's my Occam's razor on this. Trump is, has been accused credibly of many sex crimes. Trump hangs out with a lot of people that have been accused of sex crimes. Trump and his coterie of sex criminals don't like it when there's news coverage about their actions. And so Trump has a deep sympathy for the people who get accused of sex crimes. He does not have any sympathy for sex criminal or sexual crime victims or he thinks about them at all, really. And so in this case, like, part of the reason why he's covering it up is because he's in there. I think part of the reason is covering up because he like, feels some sort of bond with other people that are sex criminals or sex criminal or have been accused of that. And he doesn't want them to have to go through this. And then in this case with Epstein and he's talking about this like he thinks back on it. He's like, the thing I'm most upset about is that Jeffrey was taking, taking women from my staff. And that like the victim here is me. And like, I think that is really it. I don't, I think that's what's happening.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. I mean, you just said that sort of better than I did, but it is that. But that is. And sorry. And I'm going to correct my Timeline, just to be clear that I'm. I did because I had it in front of me, but I wasn't looking at it. So in 2000, Virginia Giuffre is approached by Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar A Lago. Trump doesn't dispute that. Right. That that was where this woman was taken from? Trump said, I don't know. I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people. Yeah, he stole her. That was what Trump just said. So then in 2002, so two years after that happened, Trump says, I've known Jeff for 15 years, terrific guy. Then in 2004, Trump and Epstein, that's when they reportedly had their falling out. And Trump is saying that it was also about Jeffrey stealing the help. And so a reporter asked him yesterday, you said yesterday that you're falling out with Jeffrey Epstein was over him taking some of your workers, but your administration in the past said you threw him out because he was a creep. And Trump said, maybe they're the same thing, you know. And then the reporter said, were some of the workers that were taken from you by Epstein young women? Trump I don't want to say, but the story's been pretty well out there and the answer is yes. And then he goes, okay. And then he goes on to say people were taken out of the spa, hired by Epstein. I told him, we don't want you taking our people, whether it's spa or not spa. He did it again. I said, out of here. So he says that's in 2004. Right. Or he said that's like 2004 is when they say they had their falling out. This is what he is saying it was over, which is would be three. This is where his timeline doesn't match up. Like I was getting confused because his limelight doesn't make any sense because it's 2000 when he were. When she gets recruited, it's 2002 when Trump's still saying he's a terrific guy. And then now he's saying the falling out was over that which I think he's trying to get out from under the Virginia thing somehow, and he's accidentally making himself more complicit. But here's the key part. In 2005. So that that's a five year span from 2000 to 2005. And that's when the first criminal investigation into Epstein for paying a 14 year old for a massage. And a federal and federal prosecutor said during that case that the abuse began as early as 2002. So like the level of closeness here is unbelievable. And like the fact that the women that Jeffrey Epstein was abusing, at least one of them came from Mar? A Lago who Trump knew, who he claims to like know about to this day and be upset about this is really bizarre. It's not bizarre.

[Tim Miller]

Be upset that she was taken from. That he was stolen from him. Not upset.

[Sarah Longwell]

Not that she was abused because this woman also killed herself a year ago. That's the other. She killed herself a year ago.

[JVL]

If there is, how far out on a limb would you have to be to say that? One possible reading of this is that Trump didn't want this 16 year old attendant taken away from him because she was his. Like it just doesn't. Again, I am stuck on the idea.

[Tim Miller]

There's reason to believe that is not true because Virginia's talked a lot.

[Sarah Longwell]

She has talked a lot.

[Tim Miller]

So I think because she named a lot of people.

[JVL]

Duck on the why would this titan of industry, this billionaire know about. And if he knew about, why would he care that a high school age employee, like part time employee. This is not a full time job, right. Somebody who's doing like eight hours a week at the spa goes and works for somebody else. That does not make any sense to me. Am I caught? Am I stuck on the wrong thing?

[Tim Miller]

It's interesting. I mean the whole thing, this is why I don't get tired of talking about this. The whole thing is like there's more to know, right? And it's just. Is it reflected in what Trump is covering up? I don't know. I mean, I think that there's a wide range of potential options. I guess what I would say if you have been consuming too much Epstein material yourself and it's having an impact on your mental health, let me tell you. We've got a sponsor I'd like to talk to you about. This is an ad by BetterHelp. These days it feels like there's advice for everything. Cold plunges. Why would you do that? Gratitude journals, screen detoxes. But how do you know what actually works for you? With the Internet, information overload about mental health and wellness, it can be a struggle to know what's true and what actions to take. These days. Using trusted resources and talking to live therapists can get you personalized recommendations and help you break through the noise. I know that therapy has helped me in the past break through the noise. You might have heard. I have a phone addiction myself. So it is nice to have an hour where the phone is away. You're talking to a therapist. This is also not part of the ad sponsorship, but also a nice part about going to the gym. I was asking myself recently, I was like, why am I in this class? Go to a ladies weightlifting class. It's almost entirely ladies besides me. And the answer, I was like, I could just do this at home. And the answer is I actually couldn't do it at home because. Because I need to put my phone away. I need to have my phone locked away. I'm essentially paying her to guard my phone for 45 minutes so that I can exercise without checking the Internet. Anyway, you can do this for your mental health as well as your physical health, and you can use it using our sponsor, BetterHelp. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Talk it out. With BetterHelp, our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com the next level. That's betterhelp.com thenextlevel. And I would tell you which gym I go to because they do a great job, but that would be weird. And I don't want to imagine podcast listeners watching me lift my little baby weights. So unfortunately, that is one endorsement I cannot provide.

[JVL]

Are we done with Jeffrey Epstein?

[Tim Miller]

I think so.

[JVL]

Okay. Pam Bondi this week has announced that she has filed a formal complaint and request for censure against Judge Glassberg. This has happened while yesterday Emil Bove was confirmed to a lifetime appointment on the Third Circuit. It just seems to me that we are operating in, like, two. Again, just another asymmetry, and I don't know what to do about it. And this is, again, like, should Democrats, if they ever attain power again, should they try to have Beauvais removed from the bench?

[Sarah Longwell]

Absolutely.

[JVL]

Or would people say, oh, no, you got to focus on kitchen table issues? Nobody cares out there in America. Nobody cares about email. Bove, how are you going to explain that? It looks like overreach? And you're going to let. You're going to let them grandstand? You should be working on rural broadband.

[Sarah Longwell]

No, it's true that voters don't care about Emil Vo, which is V, which is a perfectly good reason to, like, they're not going to care when the. Josh. What's his name from Pennsylvania?

[JVL]

Josh Shapiro.

[Sarah Longwell]

Josh Shapiro.

[Tim Miller]

I was offering. You know, we're just spitball. Who knows? Maybe North Carolina Governor Josh Stein would be. No, no, no.

[Sarah Longwell]

Shapiro. Shapiro who. You know, whatever. I'm not going to go on a whole Shapiro thing. But when Shapiro is president, if he wants to get rid of Emil Bove, he should. This guy is a, is absolutely, totally unqualified for this job. The Senate has totally abdicated its responsibility and voters will not care about it whatsoever. But it will pay long term dividends for our democracy. Because what Trump is doing right now, I cannot believe Senate Republicans, it's astonishing.

[JVL]

I mean, maybe it shouldn't be, right? They, they confirmed Tulsi Gabbard. They confirmed.

[Tim Miller]

It's still astonishing even for them. Because here's the thing, like there was real, this is not an excuse, it's an explanation. There was real political pressure on them to confirm the Trump Cabinet. Trump had just won. You know, it's like he should get to put his own people in there. You know, when I went to that TPUSA thing in December, that was like the whole talking points I made, big signs up confirmed Trump's cabinet. So you can understand that there's like a political pressure and imperative to do it now. They shouldn't have, they should have resisted that. Many of them are either retiring in the case of Mitch McConnell and he did vote against a couple of them, or they're not up for six years, as you're Davos Dave McCormick, for example, and just got elected and want to be a responsible person, you could just vote no, you're six years away from having another election. But anyway, at least it was some legitimate pressure. There's no political pressure to confirm Emil Bove to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Regular voters don't care about this. Republican voters don't care about this. There's a small coterie of people that will tweet you on X who are super sickos who might be mad at you, but you can just ignore those people because they don't have any meaningful political power. This guy, you can just go listen to my Ben Wittes interview from last week if you want to go to the details. But this guy, inside the Trump administration, there are multiple whistleblowers who are conservative, who are other Trump appointees, right? Like not the deep state people like Trump, people who are like, this guy told us not to follow the law, not to ignore judges orders, and now he wants to be a judge. This guy told us to get rid of documents and not take notes on the criminal conspiracy of helping out Eric Adams. Like it is insane to then after this, after these whistleblower reports, put this guy on the court. There's no political imperative. And I just want to call out two people in particular. Mitch McConnell is retiring. His brain is freezing and claims that he cares about the institutions. And one of his big things about respecting the Senate was about the judicial nominations and how important this is. Why would he support this? He has no imperative. What about Thom Tillis? I thought, didn't Thom Tillis give an interview two weeks ago where he was like, I'm not going to be one of those weak Mitt Romney opponents to Trump. Like, if Trump comes for me, I'm going to really stand up to him. I'm going to have balls in my attack on Trump. Why would Thom Tillis want to support this man to the court? It is a totally absurd nomination. Like, on its face, he's not qualified. He is clearly at some level criminal or like, not interested in respecting the rule of law. And they confirmed him 50 to 49.

[JVL]

Sarah, I want to throw the absurdity to you here. So, so again, we have on one hand Emile Bove, who, who, among other things, including perjuring himself during his, his Senate testimony, has told government lawyers not to follow justices, not to follow judicial rulings, and not to follow the rule of law. But then you have Pam Bondi, the Attorney general, who in her complaint against George Blasberg, says that what he has done that requires censure is that in a closed door judicial meeting, when the Chief Justice John Roberts asked the assembled 20 judges, hey, so what concerns are top of mind for you? Judge Glasberg said, I'm a little concerned that the Trump administration will defy court rulings and won't follow the law.

[Sarah Longwell]

And why did he say that? Why did he say that? Do you remember? It's because he's the one who ordered the planes to come back from El Salvador and they said no.

[JVL]

So, so you, you have the attorney general saying this judge who said he's worried about these things should be censured. And also you must confirm this guy who says he, he wants to do the things that the other judge said.

[Sarah Longwell]

Did you read her tweet? Did you read her? She said today, at my direction, which, by the way, anything Pam Bondi does right now should just be, like, looked at as misdirection from the Epstein stuff. So just today, my direction, the at the Justice Department filed a misconduct complaint against U.S. district Court Chief Judge James Boberg for making improper public comments about President Trump and his administration. This is unbelievably scary stuff. These comments have undermined the integrity of the judiciary, and we will not stand for that. No, we will not stand for the integrity of the judiciary. And then they nominate so she's, she's going after Boasberg, who she perceives as a political enemy. And, like, the thing about Bove is, like, he's an errand boy. He's a political appointee being given a life appointment as a judge right now. Like, the reason you can remove him is that he is beyond unqualified for this job. He has disqualified himself from this job with this behavior.

[JVL]

It's going to require two thirds in the Senate. Right. I mean, getting, Getting rid of him is a heavy, heavy lift.

[Sarah Longwell]

They might get it once Trump's. I mean, maybe you're right. You're right. It's a heavy, heavy lift. I don't know. I don't know where all this is going. I shouldn't be Pollyannish about it, but I just. I mean, the, the, the, the people who fashion themselves Cassidy answerable, this is where. Do not tell me they're like, Murkowski and Collins are the only people who voted no. Okay, so I'll just give them some grudging kudos, I guess. But it shouldn't be. This is an obvious one. This is like a. This is so outside of any norm.

[JVL]

He lied during his testimony. You could just do it based on pure, like, senatorial, like, privilege. Like, how dare this guy come in and lie to us?

[Sarah Longwell]

Right. He's also the one, you know, who doubts he is. He's the one who dismissed the charges against Eric Adams for political reasons. Like, he's the one who said that. That they should be. He would. He dismissed the prosecutors and the FBI agents who investigated Trump at the January 6th riots. Right. I mean, this is. He didn't denounce January 6th like this is. And he said he wouldn't rule out a third term for Trump.

[JVL]

I just.

[Sarah Longwell]

Every Republican should have voted against him. What's the point of somebody moderate?

[JVL]

I just want to take your temperature on this, Sarah, and I know you're going to say no, but I'm going to take your temperature on this once a month for the next three and a half years, I think. Okay, on a scale of 1 to 10, where are you on Supreme Court expansion as of today, July 30th. But a scale of 1 to 10, like, how far against.

[Sarah Longwell]

What's the. Is 10. Is 10 the highest? That's not a temperature.

[Tim Miller]

Let's call.

[JVL]

Let's call 10. Let's call 10. At the level at which you're like, oh, maybe we should do this, and zero. The level of absolutely not. Never. No way.

[Sarah Longwell]

No, we do not need to expand the Court, we need to put term limits on, but not expand it.

[Tim Miller]

Well, I do.

[JVL]

We'll, we'll, we'll check in in another month and another month after that, because I think by 2028, we're going to get you there.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I just want, on the dark 2029 stuff, I just, I do also want to just say, like, listening to the Pam Bondi element of this, there's also part of this, I don't know how you can put the genie back in the bottle on some of the rule of law stuff in this country, and I hope they can't. I don't want to be a total fatalist, but it's like the attorney general is just doing total kayfabe to make the Hulk Hogan thing. It's like it's all ridiculous. Stuff is based on nothing. Words have no meaning. They're just like, we have to go after this judge because he's politicizing things when he's the one that's not politicizing things and they are. And I don't, I think it becomes very challenging to kind of revert back to a place where, you know, people kind of respect, you know, the normal course of business.

[JVL]

Boy, do I have a newsletter coming for you in about an hour's time.

[Sarah Longwell]

Timothy, can I just tell you, it is not, I'm not against adding people to the courts just on a norms basis. I'm not saying that's not part of it, but that is not my primary thing. I just don't think it, I don't think it works the way you intend it to work. I think it becomes a tit for tat type thing. It's not like.

[Tim Miller]

And it ends up at the end of the court.

[Sarah Longwell]

It would be the end of the court.

[JVL]

We're already in a tit for nothing. Right? I mean, we're at a point where Republicans just still want to have a Supreme Court.

[Sarah Longwell]

Like, do you still think a Supreme Court is worth having in the country? And if so, like, what are the ways to, like, to preserve and, or not preserve at this point, but to reinstitute its role in our society, which is, I think, deeply important. I mean, deeply important. And I think the way that you do that is with term limits. And that's, I mean that I do not think you do it by.

[JVL]

Well, for complicated reasons, getting to term limits is harder than expanding the number of seats. And so if the question is term limits are not achievable, you can't do them. So you can either do nothing or you can Expand the court.

[Sarah Longwell]

I don't. Well, I don't grant you that.

[JVL]

Well, okay. But that. So don't grant it for me, but just play along with me. And you know, what if I say actually doing term limits requires amending the Constitution and a bunch of other things that simply can't happen for practical reasons. But like with adding states, you know, you know, making D.C. estate, expanding the court is the thing that you can do with a fairly simple majority. Again, you can't. It's a little more complicated than that. But just. Just play along with me. So the choices are do nothing or expand the court, do nothing.

[Sarah Longwell]

I do think you end the court with expansion.

[JVL]

Okay. I'm not sure I grant that. I need to. To hear your further thoughts on how that happens. All right, moving along. Tim, you teased me in Slack about the FYPOD this week. Oh, yeah. And I just. I need a little more from you. Tell me what's going on.

[Tim Miller]

It's really something. We've taped it already, so it's coming out on Saturday. I don't have a team like Sarah does that admonishes me if I tease things that are coming. So I can just do it without fear of admonishment or retribution, which is nice. We invited the kid. So it was Mehdi versus the 20 Nazis. Turns out it was really, like 14 Nazis and, like, six other people identified as far right conservatives. And if you didn't watch, the thing, like, the way it goes is that the kids run up and then they get to argue with Mehdi for a little while, and then the other kids in the circle get to vote them out when they're like, your argument is boring and we want to move on to the next kid, basically. So the. There was kind of one sort of potentially interesting conversation we didn't get to know. There's a guy who was a DACA kid who identified as a far right conservative who went up to talk to Mehdi, and they had a pretty earnest conversation for about 48 seconds about, like, how his parents came here illegally and how he has more complex views on this stuff. And then everyone voted him off before we got to hear, like, why is this guy a far right conservative? Like, why is he here in the first place? How did he find himself here? And so we invited him on because I was like, I want to do a full hour with this person to just see, like, what maybe his eyes were opened by the fact that he was in a room and he thought he was a far right conservative. And then he heard that 10 of the people in the room wanted all immigrants to go home and wanted to talk about how they smelled and how they're terrible and how they like Hitler. So anyway, we had the conversation was very nice. People should listen to it though. Kind of gets derailed because turns out he's a far right conservative because he is a Christian nationalist and a born again Christian and he wanted to convert Mehdi and then Cam and me to the faith and ensuring that Jesus is our Lord and Savior. So we explored that. We explored maybe some of the limits of Trumpism within the context of Christianity and Jesus teachings and Christian nationalism. And I think people should listen to that question. Question, yeah.

[JVL]

Did he understand that his fellow Christian nationalists want their Christian nationalism without him in it?

[Tim Miller]

Didn't. Kind of didn't seem like he fully had thought all through the implications of all of that. But definitely I think that he was aware that it seemed like there was a disconnect. But not really to your satisfaction probably, I guess is all I'll say. Wow, it's interesting.

[JVL]

Do you play good twink, bad twink with him?

[Tim Miller]

We don't play good twink, bad twink this week though. Cameron is obviously the bad twink, so. Which is an inverse for the Zoran interview because I was trying to engage with this young man in good faith and Cameron's frustration with him was pretty palpable over the course of the episode. But anyway, I don't know the one potentially, besides kind of like the disaster porn of it, which I think people should enjoy in this moment. I do think there's an interesting. Because we talked about Carlos Espina a couple weeks ago, the Hispanic TikTok influencer. And I was trying to get to that of like, why do you think that Hispanics went for Trump more? And the Christian stuff does come up a lot. And I do think that the Democrats maybe understand somebody who is lapsed Catholic deep doubts about the Christian faith and mission. But whatever it's worth just to be strategic about everything. His point was like a lot Obama.

[JVL]

Seems to have gone to church.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And Biden did. And it's kind of like you get. People do immediately go. And I obviously think there's some misogyny and stuff. They immediately go to the gender stuff with Hillary and Kamala. But like there wasn't really an effort to even kind of like pretend they were Christian. I think a lot of past presidents pretended the extent of their. Of their faith, you know, for example. And a lot of politicians do honestly. And I think the Democrats kind of quit doing that. A while ago, potentially to their detriment. Because one of the other things we get into it in both those episodes is like, well, the Republicans are just faking it. And like, yeah, that's true. But, like, for some people, having a pastor there and faking it is better than feeling like they are not, you know, whatever, mocked or whatever. So anyway, those are my thoughts. I don't know, Sarah, if you have any. Any thoughts on that.

[Sarah Longwell]

My only thing is that having listened to a lot of Hispanic voters and this. The Christian thing does come up a ton, and it comes up across voters on the right more often all the time. And what you hear on the left right is a condemnation of Christian nationalism, which is a pretty specific thing, but which does feel like an attack on a lot of people who maybe they. They hear the Christian part more than they hear the nationalism part or they don't really understand. Like, people are kind of talking about different things.

[Tim Miller]

And to be fair, it was unclear if this kid really understood what Christian nationalism was like. He called himself a Christian nationalist, and I don't know that. That his definition of that would be the same is like the New York.

[Sarah Longwell]

Times, what they mean. So what people think they mean is they're like, I am a patriot who's also a Christian is like, sort of what they mean. They don't realize that it means, like, I want to get rid of Jews and other.

[JVL]

I would like to offer a perspective to you both as somebody who is more churched than either of you.

[Tim Miller]

Significantly more. When was the last time you were in church?

[JVL]

You know, a few days ago.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, right, exactly.

[JVL]

So I do not believe people who say that. Oh, I just, you know, I really respond to the Christian message put out by Donald Trump, but I didn't respond to the Christian message put out by Barack Obama or Joe Biden. I don't believe that. I don't believe it is about Democrats not talking about it. And I say this because as somebody who is around a lot of intensely conservative Christians, their deepest antipathies are not for atheists and agnostics. It's for liberal Christians, like Christians, who they believe are not real Christians or who are, you know, who belong to, like, the. The wrong version of the Gospels. That's who they really hate. Like, that's who really grinds their gears. And so I think this stuff is all. It's not like, oh, Democrats haven't done a good enough job about talking. It wouldn't matter. Whatever they would talk about. The Christian nationalist types of are gonna hate them.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, maybe on the margins, though, for among like Hispanic folks who are not people you're talking about, but they just like are churchgoing Hispanics and want the president to also like Jesus. I don't know.

[Sarah Longwell]

Well, I don't know.

[Tim Miller]

I'm just throwing it out there.

[Sarah Longwell]

Like even to JBL's point though, which I think is sort of anecdotal and I do not think is. I would not take that as a broad theory of the case.

[JVL]

Totally true, Totally true.

[Sarah Longwell]

However, I think that when. So we did, I did a bunch of groups where we asked some of these questions and we read the responses. So I asked a bunch of Trump voting Republicans whether or not Democrats could be Christians and they said no, they can't. Joe Biden can't be a Christian because they believe in things like gay marriage, that men can play in women's sports. You know, like, they kind of rattle off a number of things that they're like, well, this is the antithesis of what Christianity is.

[Tim Miller]

This is why Raphael Warnock never comes up in 2028 stuff. But I do. That would be kind of an interesting political science experiment.

[JVL]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Have like a literal pastor run and to see if it gets any better or worse. I think. Yeah. JPL's theory is probably where I'm at. Where like, probably doesn't actually help that much. But I, I'm not willing to say I'm 100 sure.

[Sarah Longwell]

No. But you know where it's going to help is in Texas or. Sorry, Texas, North Carolina, right now, where you've got Roy Cooper running for Tillis's seat and he may very well win it. And when I was listening to Roy Cooper talk, Roy Cooper talked about preying on this decision. And, and a lot of it is. And this is where, why I think Jbail is not quite right about. I think you are talking about people who are deeply faithful and I'm talking about Christianity as a cultural signifier maybe. And I think that, that Christianity is a cultural signal. Like, I think there's a lot of people who use the language of prayer and who are. And, and who. And maybe they go to church or maybe they just go to church sometimes or like they grew up in the church, but they don't really go anymore. But it is almost a linguistic code for one of my people. And so I just think, I think that matters.

[JVL]

Joe Biden talked about a lot about that stuff.

[Sarah Longwell]

And Joe Biden won.

[JVL]

Nancy Pelosi talked a lot about that stuff. Okay. So I wanted to talk about something. We don't do this Very often. But I wanted to do a book club on this gigantic Bloomberg profile of a kid, Luke Ferrator. Luke Ferretor is one of Elon Musk's doge geniuses. And this profile is like 6,000 words. And it's quite good and interesting, and I don't think it's really representative of anything general, but is highly representative of, like, a very specific kind of elite figure in America right now. And I. I guess I'll tee it up by. By just sort of setting the table here. This kid grew up in Nebraska.

[Sarah Longwell]

He.

[JVL]

He is the child of almost unimaginable privilege. His father is a professor, his mother is a physician. He was identified as a boy genius. Basically, by age 12, he had every possible opportunity in the world shoveled in front of him. He was given entree to an incredibly prestigious program at the University of Nebraska, a public college, the kind of thing that Marc Andreessen had just assured us a few short weeks ago was simply impossible and no longer existed in the world. And he has just passed along so quickly up the food chain that by the time he's 21 years old, before he even graduates from college, he has, you know, Peter Thiel giving him $100,000 fellowships. Every Silicon Valley tech titan trying to get him to work for him, I mean, just has money and privilege being shoveled at him hand over fist. And. And he winds up going to work for Doge, where he is part of things like destroying usaid. And it turns out that this kid who's. Who is unbelievably privileged and is clearly very, very smart about engineering, is very, very stupid about everything else, like philosophy, politics, religion. And it turns out that he's basically a walking cliche. Like, there is where he is an interesting thinker when it comes to electrical engineering or circuitry. When you ask him to think about any other subject, he sounds like literally every other person you meet on Twitter. And as if his entire. You know, who. Who does he think is. Is smart? Jordan Peterson. Who are his heroes? Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen. Like, he's just a walking cliche. Who's his favorite economist? Tyler Cowen, of course.

[Tim Miller]

I like Tyler Cowan. Yeah, sure you do. I think there's a paragraph in here that jumped out to me as sort of revealing of JBL's point here. When a former friend posted an article critical of Ferriter and Doge on Instagram, Ferriter replied with a meme of a crying baby and the caption, when the corrupt elites can't access USAID anymore. So like I don't know, I was pretty, I was instinctually wanted to be sympathetic to him because the kid is kind of amazing, honestly, like in the other space. I think you almost underplayed it. Like frankly like his, his, like what he did with the like the scrolls, figured out an AI to figure out how to read ancient scrolls and he worked on an art project that's like pretty, pretty impressive. And like there are several other elements of his backstory that are like it was super impressive. And so to me the lesson is less like he doesn't have interesting takes but about like how easy it is for people in this world to get co opted into doing extremely dark things. I mean like this guy, like you mentioned, he's at the University of Illinois or Nebraska, excuse me, Andreessen went to Illinois Nebraska and part of this computer science program that has this funding from the government and among the other things they cut was like the National Science foundation. And among the other things the dogecot was literally the program that was funded. The funding for the program that was giving out the awards for that for the scrolls. So like he cut the program that he had benefited from.

[JVL]

Well, because he had gotten it, you're right.

[Tim Miller]

So all that stuff takes you to a place where it's like, you know, I mean I didn't have great judgment at 23. I think that you can see how people get sucked up into this stuff. But it's pretty like you could imagine, I guess. I guess my main thought about this is like you can imagine like a good angel version of all this. Technologist Elon Musk goes into the government and brings in a bunch of wonder kids and they figure out how to make things more efficient actually. Or they figure out how to, to, to. To use AI tools to fund projects like the ones that he worked on that advanced scientific findings beyond anything that we had in the past and they didn't do that. And I think it would probably be good and incumbent upon opponents of this regime to instead of just totally mocking this program and saying that these guys are all little white nationalist fucks, which they are, to say that and also to say it would be really cool if we could, if the government could actually do good things again. And like we actually used found really smart people around the world and brought them into the government and focused on, and focused on doing good rather than focused on tearing down. I guess that'd be my thought. It's an unpleasant story to read.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah, look, my main takeaway is that there is A reason that people who often are doing immoral things use very young people to do the work. And it is because they are too excited and blinded by like, this guy Elon Musk is one of his heroes. He wants to go work next to Elon Musk. He doesn't know. He's not stupid. He just doesn't know jack about the world. He knows nothing. He's never thought about USAID for five.

[Tim Miller]

Seconds, but never traveled outside the world.

[Sarah Longwell]

Is one of the anecdotes outside the country. Right? So this is what you do. And this is, this goes back and this is why I was preempting this a little bit before the adults. When you are a young person in a new job, you look at the adults around you to teach you how things are done. And if you move into a world very young, where the Peter Thiels of the world and the Elon Musk of the world are like, go ahead, bro, go tear it down. Like, I blame the grownups. He is, you know, there's a phrase you're old enough to do to know better. He's not quite old enough to know better. Not, not about these big complicated issues.

[JVL]

Jbl, he can go to war, he can vote. I'm sorry.

[Sarah Longwell]

No, no. This is, I think, the idea, the blame for these things, like they use young people. I'm not saying he's not accountable for what he's doing. I'm just saying that there are people a lot more accountable than the 23 year old who's getting his head turned by all of the, like, all of the, like, oh my gosh, I'm right next to Elon Musk and Elon Musk is telling me this is my job. Like, there's a reason that a lot of the people who do, like, they enlist really young people because they, they're, they're not fully formed enough to totally be able to evaluate the moral implications of what they're doing. They just want the people above them to tell them that they're doing a good job.

[JVL]

I strong, strong disagree. One of the hallmarks of this piece is this kid's dis. Disinterest in authority figures. And so like, he doesn't even, especially want to go to this program at Nebraska that he gets into that's so special. He doesn't do a lot of the work there because it bores him. He does his own work. He doesn't seem to really care what teachers think about him. So it isn't that he's like, his head is just Turned my attention. His head only seems to get turned when it's Elon Musk asking him to do evil things. You know, he is happy to do to shirk other assignments.

[Tim Miller]

The other shit he was doing before was not evil. Like the scrolls, the guitars, the art that wasn't evil. Like, so his head, he worked on that.

[JVL]

Those were things he want. The guitars and the scrolls were projects that he wanted to work on. And he seems to have been resistant to doing what he viewed as like, you know, like assignment work. And so the USAID stuff must have been something that he wanted to do because you look in his past life, you know, again, which is like 10 months before he went to take, take this job. He had, had avoided doing just like assigned work. He only did work that seemed meaningful to him. That's one of the hallmarks that he's not easily impressed by authority. But he was impressed by Elon Musk and he was impressed by Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen. And he did seem to want to do the work of dismantling usaid. I, I gotta say, and I sort of blame his parents too on this too. One of the anecdotes in this is his father gave a ted talk, a TEDx talk, the title of which was. It's. I may have it wrong, but it's something like, uh, don't cut. Don't measure cut twice. You know, the, the idea was all these things about measuring twice cut once. Those are for, for bad thinkers. People who don't do things in the world. You gotta just gotta go out and do stuff. That's how you, that's how you do things. You do things by doing things. And I, I don't know, man, like somebody who contributes to pulling down a program which is gonna cause probably like 13 million excess deaths over the coming decade. Like that seems close to war criminal status. Like, I just don't.

[Tim Miller]

Well, color me in between war criminal and just a boy. I'll find some space in between there. I guess I just say one thing, the war criminal thing, you know, I don't know, but he should be shamed. I agree with Sarah that the accountability should be people at the top. But there is this thing in our culture now where it's like, oh, if in three years from now he's out there in the world and wants to go to some, do some fabulous thing and some person says, actually no, you can't be on this board, it's like the least Stefanic thing. You're banned from the Harvard board or whatever. I don't care if you've been here. No, you can't come to this party or you're can't be on this board or you can't do this just because your past actions are too noxious. There'll be a group of people, many people who will come to his defense, be like, this is stupid. This is liberal cancel culture. This is finger wagging. And that is the part where I don't agree. I think that you learn, he should learn by a. There should be shunning and there also should be, who knows, maybe he's a sociopath like Stephen Miller, maybe he's not. And it would be probably helpful for him to experience the actual consequences of what happened in these cuts and see and actually hear and feel from the people who are suffering because of it. I guess that'd be my last thought.

[Sarah Longwell]

I want to live in a world where there is deep shame by all the people who worked in the Trump administration. Like, I want to live in a world where 25 years from now when people, they've got a gap in their resume because they don't want to put they were part of the Trump administration on their resume. I'm fine with shaming people, but I do struggle with people who have their harshest critiques for the tools that are being this kid is, he has agency, he has accountability and what they are doing is wrong. But like, I just think about myself at 23, if somebody'd given me a White House job and been like, we're gonna, you know, clean house on, you know, the Department of Education and the grip that the teachers unions have on it, I would have been like, hell yeah. Because I would have believed that that was a good thing to do. Now I don't know what I would have thought about USAID, but I guarantee you at 23, I, I would have had so little context, so little perspective. And I think that the problem is that Elon has been treated like a genius, like the President of the United States. Everybody that was part of that thing. He's a 23 year old kid and you're saying he's the war criminal as though there's not a million people above him. An entire media ecosystem that he's grown up in. Ten years, the President of United States are all telling him, like, you're doing a good thing, bud. You're doing what we want, you're carrying it out and like, we're going to focus on this kid as the war criminal. I don't think so. That's. He is not the problem. It is the entire culture above him, the entire political party above him. Like it took a lot of people to raise that kid into this place.

[JVL]

I got enough accountability in my heart for both. All right, guys, good show. Long show. Another long show. We got to get these things back down to a tight 50 minutes. Very sorry I will not be here next week. You will have the handsome and talented Sam Stein in for me while I am at the beach. Good luck, America. If you're a lineman in charge of keeping the lights on, Granger understands that you go to great lengths and sometimes heights to ensure the power is always flowing. Which is why you can count on Grainger for professional grade products and next day delivery. So you have everything you need to get the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgrainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.