Sarah Longwell (2:36)

But were those women in the restaurant inflicting harm or terror or damage by protesting the President of the United States? I mean, they were just shouting basically in his vicinity.

Todd Blanche (2:47)

I mean, repeat what you just said. I mean, honestly. So you're asking whether there's damage done by four individuals screaming and yelling at the President of our United States while he's trying to have dinner.

JVL (3:01)

Yeah, I mean, harm. Terror damage to the country. Because, you know, Lester, later. C' est moi. Sarah, why don't you go first?

Sarah Longwell (3:14)

Well, Donald Trump is the biggest baby in the entire world. And it leads me to basically the only thing that I care about saying throughout all of this, which is that while everybody has decided that Pam Bondi doesn't understand free speech, they are just like, they're like Donald Trump. Who? Donald. Donald Trump. What? He. He's, he's fine. We're just going to criticize Bondi. Donald Trump, champion of free speech, greatest free speech president of our lifetime. Also, rico, for four individuals. What does that even mean? What did they. Did they organize? Probably. They probably texted each other and said, let's go to Joe Stone Crab and tell the President that we want to Free Palestine. Free D.C. i think it was.

Tim Miller (4:00)

That's text. That's racketeering now. It's having a text chain with your other lady friends about where you're going to protest is racketeering.

Sarah Longwell (4:07)

Now, do you know what's an organized crime ring?

Tim Miller (4:10)

Tell me that. The Trump family. The crypto.

Sarah Longwell (4:12)

That's one. But I was going to maybe say Jeffrey Epstein trafficking girls for sex crime and.

JVL (4:21)

Oh, no, only two people charged. Sarah. Yeah, it was just those two people. Nobody else knew anything.

Sarah Longwell (4:26)

One of the most notorious sex traffickers alive in our country today has been moved to Club Fed. But no RICO for them, no releasing the Epstein files. But these four girls who went to Joe's Stone Crab and, you know, got themselves a king crab claw and, and yelled about freeing DC, which Trump is currently occupying. That is rico.

Tim Miller (4:48)

I. I've got a couple of notes on this for, for the, for the video listeners, for the audio listeners. You might want to avail yourself of just the clip on video because Kaitlan Collins, you know, is just like, she is elite at just serving face. Just like, what I. With. She is just like, what? And there's a. There's like a two second pause. Like, what are you talking about, sir? What are you even talking about? This is Dan. Like they're doing damage to the country, shouting at the President, you know, and he's just like, yeah, I listened to what you said. You can't shout at the President. Not in North Korea, not in America, not in China. And oh, wait, yeah, you can shout at the President. Okay, that's fine. That's just. That's perfectly fine.

JVL (5:32)

Vile words did they say, according to Mr. Blanche, the words they Said were vile.

Tim Miller (5:38)

Who knows what they could. I thought we could say vile words again. Now, that was the whole thing. Trump won, so we can't say the P word and the R word again. I thought that was it.

JVL (5:45)

Sorry.

Tim Miller (5:45)

We can't say vowel words in the president's company. So there's that. Sarah, I have some other things. Did you have something on that, though?

Sarah Longwell (5:52)

America's a free speech country. Again, no, sorry. You go.

Tim Miller (5:54)

Okay. I also want to tie this to. I suffered through Kash Patel's hearing in the Senate yesterday. I just didn't have it in me to do the House hearing today. So some of our colleagues are looking at that. So maybe something's happened that's worth missing. We'll do another video on it if it does. But the. In the Senate hearing, he's asked by Adam Schiff about the aforementioned movement from. For Jillian Maxwell from Florida to the Club Fed after her interview with Todd Blanche and Cash. Patel is just like, just refuses to even acknowledge that there's any relationship. He's just like, this was a, this is a paperwork matter for the Department of Prisons, the Bureau of Prisons just, there's just some mid level flunky, maybe even an intern, you know, kind of one of these career guys at the Department of Prisons, you know, working out of Jacksonville, just decided, you know, we got to move one prisoner here, one prisoner there. Why not Maxwell? Why not the country's most notorious alive sex criminal? And maybe that. Why don't, why don't we just move her because we need an extra slot in Tallahassee. We'll move her to the nice prison. And it just happened to be a week after the Todd Blanche interview. The whole thing is preposterous. And Trump puts these guys in this position. I think it's a humiliation. King Trump kind of likes, to Sarah's point, which is, you know, it's the president that's out there being like, John Carl does hate speech. The four ladies that yell at me, they deserve RICO charges against them because they were being rude in a restaurant and they said things I don't like about me. And, you know, the, the sex pest, you know, the sex trafficker that said nice things about me, she gets to go to a nicer prison. And, and like Blanche has just signed up for doing the most preposterous spin possible. And like, that's his job. And that would be kind of funny. And it is kind of funny if it wasn't also for the fact that he's the second highest ranking official in the Justice Department like this is the second highest rate.

JVL (7:52)

The Dan Bongino of main Justice.

Sarah Longwell (7:56)

He was also Donald Trump's personal defense attorney in his private life, just FYI. But actually, this is part of a larger problem in the Trump administration, which is that the people in charge have no goddamn idea what they're talking about when it comes to laws like. Or comes to the way that, like, things. Things work. Right. So we are notoriously on this podcast, not lawyers. Right. I know. Jvl jvla Stazelle Satsatz.

JVL (8:26)

Okay, very close.

Sarah Longwell (8:27)

We are not.

JVL (8:28)

We're being real.

Tim Miller (8:29)

I've met with a lot of lawyers and felt like always the advice that they were giving me, I could have done also. So kind of like an armchair.

Sarah Longwell (8:36)

Well, this is. But this is where I feel like, I don't know, I feel like I've got enough juice to be like, that ain't rico, guys. I just, it's like you don't have to know that much about RICO cases, how they're utilized, what, what conditions you need to meet to be part of a conspiracy or organization like that. And yeah, the four, the four ladies, the 428somethings who showed up at Joe Stone crowd probably isn't going to clear that bar, at least not in our normal country, not in a country with our laws. It is similar on the free speech front where Donald Trump and the highest attorney in the land do not know the fundamental tenets of free speech.

Tim Miller (9:19)

Here's the thing.

JVL (9:20)

You say, like, oh, they can't do that because that's not how the law works. I feel as though we have said those words a lot. For instance, we said when Donald Trump sued CBS News for defamation because they edited Kamala Harris's interview, we said, that's preposterous. When he sued ABC News, we said, that's preposterous. Both those people came when he started firing government employees en masse, including probationary. We said, that's preposterous. And eventually a court did rule against him, but who cares? Because all those government employees were fired. They were gone.

Sarah Longwell (9:58)

If ABC had fought, if CBS had fought, if those stations had chosen to go through the actual legal channels, they would have won those cases. The preposterousness of those situations where that they did not fight. It's like bringing a $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times for endorsing Kamala Harris for doing endorsements. Which, by the way, does also an aside. It made me wonder what kind of phone calls they made to the Washington Post, to the L A Times and other people who decided abruptly just before the election not to do endorsements. And now that we know he's going to sue the New York Times for their endorsement again, First Amendment, free speech, all of those things and the New York Times not going to cave and they are going to win that case just like those other places would have won those cases if they had chosen.

JVL (10:56)

To fight them in the settlement. They're going to give him connections. Wordle and Spelling Bee.

Sarah Longwell (11:02)

No, they won't. Those are the big those, those are funding the entire New York Times. It is a. Yeah, it's a game.

Tim Miller (11:07)

Company now jbl, I take your point and certainly there are examples of ways where they have like pushed far beyond the boundaries of the rule of law in ways that people didn't expect. And, and that has stuck. Right. Like especially with what we're seeing, you know, across the agencies. The CBS case, like to me though it's a more apt comparison to the crypto corruption. The CBS case is just corruption. That's not like a really a failure. That's not really a rule of law breakdown. Like it's just, I guess, I mean, I guess the rule law breakdown in the fact that we don't prosecute public corruption anymore. So that's one of the other norms that he's broken. Right. Like in that case. Right. Like that, that is, you know, I don't know how analogous and it's analogous to these four, you know, protesters in the way that the free speech is the topic. But like the reason why CBS settled was not like fear that they were going to lose the case. It was because they wanted to get a merger and put in Maga Stooges and top the news division. Yeah, essentially, you know.

JVL (12:17)

So this is all part of the larger thing going on this week with we had Pam Bondi, we had JD Vance, podcaster showing up, talking about walking, wanting to people to report, hopefully maybe even do some surveillance on their friends and neighbors, fellow co workers to see what they, if they're having any thought crimes and he wants those things reported. I mean, I guess this is my question. How far can this go before there is a public. We don't like this.

Sarah Longwell (12:52)

I mean I think there's some right we, we at least saw and this again, this is where it's, it's not disingenuous but the right understands when Pam Bondi comes out and does the hate speech thing that is like Pavlovian for people on the right and, and not, not the way that free markets and you know, Limited government used to animate the right. Many just now, you know, many, many moons ago. The hate speech stuff is front and center. And so, you know, they, they are coming for her on that. And I think, like. And they're coming for cash too. Like, part of what is interesting to me about this moment is that there was a moment where they were all on offense on this all the time. How far can we use Charlie Kirk's horrific murder for our own benefit to crack down on the left? And I think that there are some lines that they're running into, one of which is this idea that you can prosecute hate speech. You can't. That has been, you know, certain people on the left have been arguing this now for a while on college campuses. You can't use hate speech in groups like fire. Everybody on the right is very conditioned against this particular talking point. I have been sort of disappointed though, with the way that they're performatively going after Bondi while performatively ignoring Donald Trump doing it. But I don't know that they can get away with the hate speech stuff because again, from their side, they're going to get pushback.

Tim Miller (14:33)

Yeah, I'm going to say I don't know about the backlash would be my answer to that. Like, the question is, would there be backlash kind of outside of MAGA circles? Right. Because there's not going to be in there. Like, would there be backs?

JVL (14:43)

That's what I mean.

Tim Miller (14:44)

Backlash is kind of like the other, whatever free speech faces. The Rogans, the manospheres, the tech world stuff. We haven't seen it.

JVL (14:50)

Or just voters.

Tim Miller (14:51)

Yeah, voters. Yeah. Bondi. There's been some backlash on Bondi in particular, as Sarah mentioned, and that's noteworthy that they had to back down. You know, it's not. Nobody's celebrating a huge political victory or anything, but it was noteworthy. But it's just like stuff doesn't splash up into Trump and you're not. I don't see, I don't see any backlash to the right wing cancel culture campaign, which is running rampant in the country right now with people, some people losing their jobs, quite gross things said about Kirk, some people losing their jobs for things that are really quite innocuous, frankly. And there's a whole organized campaign to go after people. Maybe there will be a backlash set at some point. Like maybe that could reach. Maybe the Charlie Kirk issue is just so fraught right now that people don't feel comfortable pushing back on it and maybe that it happens with something else later that people do. I Don't know, but I think that's been pretty kind of discouraging actually to see the lack of pushback on that.

Sarah Longwell (15:58)

You know, and this is, this is what. It's funny, I was thinking about it sort of in legal terms, but in just like general cultural terms. There's been an inability in the wake, like in the. Everybody's emotions are very high kind of wake of the Charlie Kirk death to sort of pull apart things. So there's an example of a teacher who showed her class, her 10 year old class, the video of him getting.

JVL (16:27)

Killed to 10 year olds.

Sarah Longwell (16:29)

Yes. Uh, and that's crazy, right? And so like, you know, and, and for people who are, let's say in the medical profession, like, I think there's ways in which this sort of hits differently. I've been thinking about this. Some people wrote, I've seen some, some different people writing about this. Like Mary Catherine Hand had sort of a long post on it and she is somebody who I think has, you know, sort of taken what was a norm. She's like a normal conservative who's like gone much more maga. Um, and. But her, her point was, you know, if you go into doctor's offices and, and you think you're sort of afraid to say what your job is because you worry that they won't treat you. I, I thought about that in terms of, you know, giving birth at a Catholic hospital, which was something we did. And for the first time, because I hadn't had kids before, I got hit with this like sense of fear and of. Well, I get treated differently because our baby has two moms in a way where I was as a regular, just a person moving through life. But you feel so much more vulnerable. Right. When it's your kids. And so there's, there's just like different ways that I feel like you can. For when people are like, broadly, it's not cancel culture, it's consequence culture. There are places where people's judgment fails them in their professional. Like they are as they are nurses or doctors and they are now publicly saying something about being glad that somebody is dead. You can see how in that profession that should not be tolerated. Right. As a professional Standard or Teachers vs average Joe Citizen who works for like the gas company and he said something bad and you know, gets that people are calling the employer. I just, I think that there's a way in which everybody's kind of lost their minds. And by everybody, I sometimes, I think right now, I mean a little bit of everybody, but I do think there can be professional consequences in some of these regards.

Tim Miller (18:41)

Yeah. Because like a teacher showing 10 year olds assassination is just crazy.

JVL (18:45)

That's not a teacher showing high school seniors. It would be crazy.

Tim Miller (18:48)

Yeah, that's just horrible judgment. That's just like a horrible judgment. Like there's a literal campaign to go after people. Right. It'd be one thing if it's like, oh, I'm your boss at the doctor's office and I just happen to see you posted on Facebook something crazy and this is not appropriate and we have a process for dealing with, you know, whatever junior doctors and nurses posting inappropriate things no matter what it is. Like that's one thing. That's not what this is though. This is like activists online gathering lists of people that they've found saying crazy things. Like that is. That is exactly what conservatives railed against like for decades now, forever. Right. Like that is. It is a campaign of to chill people's speech and to target them and to go after people and to punish them. So like I hear you on like doctors shouldn't be cheering people's deaths. I agree with that. But. But I just think that don't. Wouldn't maga if a doctor had said I all lives matter or something and people came to get fire him for that and said, you know, if you're a doctor, you can't really be distant saying racist Stu. Or you can't really be dissing black people because you have black people come in that you want them to feel like they're going to get the same treatment. I think feel like the. I feel like that would have been a huge outrage on the right kind of maga. And that's crazy. Targeting doctors for saying, you know what I mean?

Sarah Longwell (20:05)

So hold on. So I think these are two separate issues. So there's the hypocrisy on the right.

Tim Miller (20:10)

Sure.

Sarah Longwell (20:10)

Which is replete on this. Like they don't have any moral authority on this whatsoever. It is. It is. It should be institutionally in opposition to what they say they stand for. So the hypocrisy is a different thing, I think. Or it's just not what I'm talking about. Like of course. That's just. Yes. All stipulated about the hip hop.

Tim Miller (20:33)

Yeah. Baked in. They're hypocrites.

Sarah Longwell (20:35)

Baked in. They are hypocrites. And the campaigns too. It is. There should be. No, what they are trying to do has been pretextual this whole time. Right. It is about how do we chill people, how do we make sure people aren't getting out of line coming after our people making. Because a lot of the pressure campaigns is meant to be upstream too, from not just the individuals, but what anybody can say about anything. Right. They want you to not be able to criticize Donald Trump. They want you to not be able to say that Donald Trump's an authoritarian. They want you to not be able to say that Donald Trump's a bad person. Right, that so. So they want you to say, well, that's incendiary rhetoric because. And so that's why we have to crack down on this, because it's going to lead to violence. That's different to me from the question. And this is like one of those social media things. We're just like, our brains are so broken that people seem to forget that we've lost a societal standard of maybe you don't, as a regular person have to put this out in public that you feel this way. And I'm not saying save it for the text chain.

Tim Miller (21:47)

Yeah, like the searing text change.

Sarah Longwell (21:49)

That's right. It's just that I think is my sort of pushback. And I do think we have a cultural sickness of takes from everybody. And I don't think that people are going to be immune to consequences if their takes are horrific and their employers see them. Like, people have to remember that people can see these things and that cheering violence is gonna violate a lot of professional standards in a lot of places.

JVL (22:17)

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Sarah Longwell (24:10)

Hey guys, just while we were doing the commercial I went and checked and the, the Toronto sun that was reporting the alleged teacher 10 year old. And so it was a, that was a can that was just in Canada. So just FYI, because that's not in America.

Tim Miller (24:25)

That's great news for us though actually. Crazy people and crazy thoughts have gone to Canada and we have a matinee show in Toronto just up here in 10 days. We just added a second show because we sold out the first show. So come see us in Toronto and we won't show you any assassination videos over there. We'll just, we'll just vibe out.

Sarah Longwell (24:42)

We won't. There was also an, it says an allegation of a teacher showing fifth and sixth graders Kirk's assassination in Utah. So it's. There was also an allegation in America, but I just want to be clear that the 10 year old case was in Canada.

JVL (24:54)

Doesn't matter. Still highly inappropriate. Doesn't matter why you were showing it, if you were showing it, to celebrate it or to condemn it. Doesn't matter. You should not show snuff films to 10 year olds or any minors without their parents consent. I mean that's crazy to me.

Sarah Longwell (25:11)

I would like that it had not been all over the Internet for all of us to see.

Tim Miller (25:13)

Yeah.

JVL (25:14)

Okay. So this morning our colleague Andrew Egger wrote a newsletter in which he said, hey guys, the guy who killed Charlie Kirk, he probably wasn't a griper. That's cope, you should stop with that. And I don't know, that seemed like a totally unexceptional, sane thing to say. And Tim, you said that there are some insane people out there.

Tim Miller (25:40)

I just had to cover one particular element of it that I have to talk about because at least anecdotally to me it seems extremely widespread. And this is, I just posted one quote from Andrew's article, like went through several of the kind of crazy theories that are out there about the Assassination. But I posted this one. It said no one is buying these text messages. Said progressive influencer Jojo from jurors. I don't believe these texts were written by Robinson for a second, wrote another influencer, Brooklyn Dad, I think it is. I wrote don't. My advice, don't get influenced by influencers peddling comforting lies for engagement. And the response I got was like pretty crazy from a lot of people being like whoa, these don't sound the texts that are being referenced. There are the text between the assassin and his trans roommate slash girlfriend allegedly and the people. There are a lot of different theories about what is happening with the text messages but the main one was that they don't sound like normal 22 year old. In part they do complete sentences. People don't believe that 22 year olds are capable of doing complete sentences anymore. Several people talked about how he called his the roommate girlfriend my love. They claim that 22 year olds don't use that phrase my love anymore. I'm pretty sure they do. People of all ages. I'm also pretty sure that like assassins from Mormon families in rural Utah probably don't message in the same exact way that the 22 year old in your life messages. You know, something to think about. But like anyway these are just people in the replies and I had. I made some comments on Monday that some people in the replies didn't like about like some. Some crazy stuff about this that I was hearing out there in the world and people could be like Tim, you're just like you're applying to bots and the most crazy people online. And I guess my point is like no, like the, the Charlie Kirk assassination cheering was happening to me at in person from several people and, and this. These text messages theories like I on my Instagram stories people I felt real humans that I know in my life that I follow many of them, maybe not many but a sign. A concerningly significant number. I've seen express that view that like these aren't real, this is some op or these guys aren't. Aren't Tim competent. I just. I do. Yeah, go ahead.

JVL (28:01)

I gotta tell you that I have some MAGA people in my real life that also don't think that any of this is on the level.

Tim Miller (28:09)

Yeah right. Who.

JVL (28:10)

Who are by. This is how they get you there. May this stuff doesn't make sense. Doesn't all add up.

Tim Miller (28:17)

So can I. That is true. Like that is true for like, for a different, you know, different reasons but same. It's the same Jews or whatever. Like Candace Owens doesn't think it add up. I just want to say one thing.

Sarah Longwell (28:29)

You don't say.

Tim Miller (28:29)

Yeah, I still say one thing. Well, she's beating us in the podcast ranking, so she's doing something that's working. I want to just say lying to people constantly. What? Yeah, exactly. Just for anybody out there that believes that there's something fishy about the text messages, I do just want to point out one thing to you. While you do your true crime investigation from your couch and your phone, the shooter and the recipient of the texts are both alive. And this is the most significant assassination investigation in like a half century. And there are a lot of people involved. FBI, local law enforcement, the governor of Utah and his team. For them all to get together and decide to fabricate text messages and put it into charging documents, knowing that the shooter that is being prosecuted would know that they were fake. Like, that is crazy. The shooter's live. He knows if they're fake, if they were fake, the shooter would say. The shooter would use it maybe to get off. Like, it would put the. It would put the prosecution of this guy in jeopardy. It would be a totally bonkers, insane thing to do. I mean, I guess they could have fucked up or something, but the idea that this is a plot is like totally just illogical in the extreme. Like, you just have to think about.

JVL (29:46)

This for arguing against human nature. Tim, we are 24 years past 9 11, and at cash Patel's hearing today, a congressman begged him to get to the bottom of 911 and to really investigate it with truth.

Tim Miller (29:59)

24 years later, a Republican congressman just.

JVL (30:02)

But the point is this is. This is a human nature thing, I think as much as it is a political thing. Like this is just. They're just people into conspiracy theories.

Sarah Longwell (30:12)

Yeah. It's hard to know. And it's probably a little bit of both, like crazy people who've always walked among us and social media allowed us all to see it, and then it also exacerbated it. Here's one thing I'm going to push back on, Tim, though ever so slightly on this point.

Tim Miller (30:27)

Oh, you think it might be you're something, you're smelling something fishy?

Sarah Longwell (30:30)

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think your point about common sense here is very well founded and people should heed that. The thing that I think is underneath sort of the crazy like this is. This isn't on the level is because people don't trust the FBI anymore. Right. Like, there is a part of me that would be pretty skeptical of anything. Cash Patel puts out until I've seen it verified other places, like when the first reports, many of which had to be walked back, right? So part of it is like, we are awash in misinformation that moves at the speed of light. And one of the reasons the. The sort of griper theory was really able to take hold is because of social media and because a lot of people and. And in all of these cases, there's like a little bit of. You can see why it works, right? Because. Can we talk for one second? About what? What are you gonna jump on?

Tim Miller (31:33)

I just wanna just really quick say about your point on the FBI, because a lot of people made this point pushing back on me. And again, I just wanna say again, if it was Kash Patel making a claim, like he made many claims yesterday that are wrong, I would be with you. This is similar to kind of like the January six conspiracies case, where it's like, well, in this case, this has to go to a grand jury. They're gonna submit this text as evidence. And real. Our peer jury of our peers and a judge and a prosecutor and a defense attorney. And so I. I think sometimes when people say, well, I don't trust the system anymore. These guys are liars. I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm with you. These guys are liars. But, like, you can't lump in like the local, you know, prosecutor and you. Right. Like the. Like, we have an actual system of justice that is still working.

JVL (32:15)

No one knows how deep this goes.

Sarah Longwell (32:18)

I agree with that. I agree with all of that. I. Again, I just. I guess this is my. I, like, I am. You can't. You. Nobody can tell me now that, like, I've got Cash Patel stood at that interview yesterday, stood in front of Congress and lied a ton. He lied during his confirmation hearing. He was lying to all the legislators that they're like, I don't trust Cash Patel at all. That being said, I do trust still. Like, it is a. The bigness of our system, it has its own checks and balances baked in. Right? There's lots of layers in this. And to your point, we do have a person who is alive and we have a cooperating witness in the roommate. And so everything we know that, that, that that person is cooperating. And so, like, that evidence could. That person could go public tomorrow and be like, those aren't the text messages. And so. But this was sort of part of my frustration when all of this stuff was coming out in the first place. Once they had the guy I was like why are we all wildly speculating? Or why are our elected officials even, Even Cox I. Him going out and saying, like, this is of the left. In part because I think those were pretty inexact terms and I think played into the whole, like, this is an ideology. Like there's a whole ideology here at play, which I don't think is true. I thought Andrew's piece was excellent. I endorse all of it. And I, and I, this, this piece about, look, people want to on both sides be able to say like, I don't own this. This isn't me, this isn't from our side. Right. And it's the reason. I mean, I don't know how many focus groups I sat through with Republicans around January 6th who said the FBI did it. It was an FBI plant, it was Black Lives Matter, it was antifa. It's a false flag operation. Right? And so like people on the left right now, in a way, because they don't want it, they don't want Trump to be right, they don't want it to be of the left. Rather than saying, hey, this isn't about being of the left. This is about this person who I think, as best we can tell right now, loved a person who was trans and hated Charlie Kirk saying horrible things about trans people. Again, in no way is that a justification. In no way is. But like, as people are looking for a motive, that sort of sounds like the motive. And so. But the.

Tim Miller (34:51)

Also his family taught him how to use high powered.

Sarah Longwell (34:53)

Well, this is the thing, right?

Tim Miller (34:54)

There's a child as well.

Sarah Longwell (34:56)

This is why, like the left thing makes no sense, right? It's different when you're like talking, you talk about the proud boys, you know about. These are organized groups. There was nothing organized about the left from this person. This was a single person who made this decision to go do this. And it was catastrophically wrong. But it is not. Then it's weird to me that even saying like it is of the left because this person was transgender. God, they wanted a transgender angle so badly and they have it. But this was a, this, this person fits the profile of lots of these lone wolf shooters, which is a young white guy who was terminally online. And so there's a lot of like cultural problematic layers in here that led to this as well as the gun conversation. That isn't just like, it doesn't, it's, it's not even that. I'm trying to say, I don't want, I'm trying to protect the left from having to sort of own this guy. It's not even that. It's like, can we be precise in our analysis? Can we talk about this, like, in the world that we live in, with all of its complications, and not create such a reduced binary that, like, we can't even see the real problem anymore?

JVL (36:12)

I don't think there's a lot of interest in finding out what the real problem is. It seems to me, in fact, that. That most of the interest is on obscuring that. Right. This is.

Sarah Longwell (36:26)

No, I think that's right. I think that's right.

JVL (36:28)

So we got to move on, though. But go ahead, Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Sarah Longwell (36:32)

No, no, no. I don't want to do end another thing just because I haven't had a chance to go rip on all this.

JVL (36:37)

I celebrate your choices.

Sarah Longwell (36:39)

I just. There's a lot of this, like, well. Well, you know, we were right. He was a person of the left. It was obvious he was of the left from the. What was written on the casings. If those text messages are to be believed. He's explicit, actually. Right. No, I know. I'm sorry. Yes.

Tim Miller (36:55)

I just want to make very clear for everybody, the text messages are real.

Sarah Longwell (37:00)

Yeah.

Tim Miller (37:00)

The official authorities put him out.

Sarah Longwell (37:02)

I let it up like that because of the thing I'm about to say. Okay, so those reading those real text messages, he's. He makes the point that they're like goofball video game memes and not ideological. Right. And so I just. And I think there's a whole bunch of people who, before they had any facts, before they had information rushed out to say this was of the left in a way that was so deeply irresponsible, including Donald Trump and including all of these podcasters that just because now this guy does turn out to, like, have done it because he hated Charlie Kirk's politics and not from the right, but from. He did not like the. The. What he saw as hateful things that Charlie Kirk said about trans people. I don't. I just don't even think that makes him of the left.

JVL (37:52)

Like, I don't know, like, marginal tax rate.

Tim Miller (37:56)

I'm sorry. I don't know. Why can't everybody just be like, this is fine. It doesn't. Every person that thinks that Charlie Kirk did hate speech is not responsible for this person's actions.

Sarah Longwell (38:06)

Yeah.

Tim Miller (38:06)

Like, I don't know why people feel like this way, that they need to, like, try to pin this on, like, the other. I think we can just acknowledge that there are a lot of. I don't whether this person's on the left or not or whatever. His. I haven't seen a full checklist of his, you know, ideological map on the, you know, you know, right, left axis. But like he said, he went after Charlie Kirk because Charlie Kirk was hateful. Yeah, it's not that complicated. And so, like, people who also think Charlie Kirk is hateful should not feel like, oh, they want to obscure that. It's like, okay, let's be adults, let's be grown ups and let's say, yeah, Charlie Kirk did say some hateful things. I wish that people that share that view would have more successfully fought him at the ballot box and competed against him in the public square and publicized. And I don't condone the killing. Isn't that. That's a healthy response? Not like, well, you never know the tax. He might be a groper. He might be the real. It's real. Have you talked about these other eight assassinations that are all right wing people? They do it more. It's just like, this is not healthy. This is not. You don't have to own every bad decision that everybody that voted for Kamala Harris ever made. Like, just say it.

JVL (39:16)

Just, I mean, the full force of the federal government may try to make people own that.

Tim Miller (39:20)

Yeah. And then we speak out against that.

Sarah Longwell (39:22)

Which, which I think is why Tim, that is JBL is making, I think, an important point. I think that part of the reason that people are pushing back, maybe in a, in a slightly more unhinged way than they might have otherwise, is because Donald Trump is using it as a pretext to come after the full left. And so it would have been, and I think if, if it had turned out that it was a groiper, Nick Fuentes, you know, thing that would have really disrupted like, the narrative he is trying to use protectually to go crack down on people. So it has an element of it. It matters in the context of Trump's bigger project and what he's trying to do. I agree with everything you're saying. I just.

Tim Miller (40:08)

That's a question for the dnc, though. If you're a person, if you're Taylor, who lives in Kansas City, like, posting onto Instagram about how this might be fake, just not do anything to disrupt Donald Trump's efforts to weaponize the government. I just want people to like to process these things in a more healthy way. That's what I'm asking about. I'm with you on the threats of Donald Trump. I'm with you on Charlie Kirk saying bad things. I just think that there's a lot of people out there that are not serving their own mental health interests or serving the interests of the pro democracy anti maga movement by advancing insane conspiracy theories.

Sarah Longwell (40:48)

Right. But everybody ends up playing a little 4D narrative dominance chess in these moments. And what is more helpful, and I think this is what you're saying. You can correct me if I'm wrong. Like using a right left binary as opposed to a true false binary. Like, we need to start living in a true fault. Like, what is true, Say what's true. Like that is our goal here. And then like, fight from where the facts are. But don't, don't falsify. Because you think you can win a sort of a narrative dominance place and because you can't live with the idea that the truth might, like, be what it is.

Tim Miller (41:26)

Yeah, I do agree with that.

JVL (41:28)

Sorry, jv, I'm gonna swallow my very dark question and we're gonna move on.

Tim Miller (41:32)

Why?

JVL (41:35)

Because we're 48 minutes into this thing and I gotta, I gotta.

Tim Miller (41:38)

Yeah, who cares? We're having fun. Having fun.

JVL (41:41)

Now, do you remember the hard deadline we talked about, Timothy?

Sarah Longwell (41:45)

Is it for me, the hard deadline?

JVL (41:47)

No, it's for me. Oh, because I gotta tape that other thing.

Tim Miller (41:51)

Okay, never mind. Let's move on. It was your fault for teasing us with your dark thought. Save it for next.

JVL (41:56)

You know what? That's because I liked it. That's how you keep the audience engaged, Tim.

Tim Miller (41:59)

Okay, great. That's good podcast.

JVL (42:02)

So we got some news this week that it looks like the TikTok deal is happening.

Tim Miller (42:09)

It's possible.

JVL (42:10)

It's going to be Oracle and Andreessen Horowitz among the new owners, which is fantastic. That sounds great to me. I. I guess this is all just a question about corruption. There's a little bit of rule of law, which is the. Again with the. The law says, like, there was this law in 2024 that was passed by both branches of Congress and it was signed into law. The bill was signed by the President, United States, and it was mandating the sale. Anyway, this law just got sort of lost when Donald Trump became president and it didn't matter. The courts said that the law couldn't be lost and he just didn't want to do it. And so the law wasn't enforced. And so now he's going to get the deal he wants. He's going to reward his supporters by giving them TikTok. And I, I guess, I don't know, like, what are you even supposed to do in a world where I Guess I'm a little bit less concerned in a weird way with the corruption of pushing the TikTok asset to his supporters because we don't know the construct of the deal yet than I am with the idea that this was allowed to happen anyway because this law that was inconvenient to the Trump administration simply ceased to exist. Somebody tell me why I'm more concerned.

Tim Miller (43:34)

About the other side. So maybe Sarah can do the law side because I'll just say, I just want to say really briefly, I don't have depthy thoughts on this. It is truly insane. One of the richest and most powerful people in Silicon Valley and Marc Andreessen who was a very influential supporter of Donald Trump and he went from being kind of soft Republican to maybe soft anti Trump actually in 2016 to going all in and MAGA around at the same time. Everybody else had their brain broke in Covid and and, and was influential and was doing staffing and money and like the whole deal. And, and the fact that he is now getting access to this powerful social media platform and you have Trump's biggest donor owning Twitter, the another social media platform. Then you have Zuckerberg has like Andreessen really has gone on the journey towards maga. Like I, I just think that a bunch of Trump acolytes who have financial stake in his political success and in the MAGA political success now owning the biggest technology platforms, throw CBS on top of that by the way too one of the networks is now going to one of his friends. I find it that all deeply alarming and I think that as tying to our last topic to the extent that algorithmic brain poisoning is hurting people and the fact that people can be very influenced very easily by these types of algorithms and companies I think is really bad. I think it's really, really bad that, that, that friendly, friendly donors got. Got this deal.

Sarah Longwell (45:05)

So this is also where I was going to go and so I'm just going to add on to something that Tim said. So because you brush by the. So cbs right that the, the, the Ellison deal where they are now handing Barry Weiss the keys to cbs like and the Barry Weiss purchase was done as a CYA move with.

JVL (45:29)

Is that done?

Sarah Longwell (45:31)

No, it's. But it's on the one yard line, whatever. But like this move is, is. Is like very clear. Anybody who's sort of in the business world, in the media world like understands what this is about. It is about them putting people in charge that they think Donald Trump won't object to. Because if you recall one of the things Donald Trump was trying to demand out of CBS was that they put in a bias monitor.

JVL (45:54)

He got it. He got it.

Sarah Longwell (45:57)

Is that Barry? Is that what you're saying? No, but there's somebody else in the.

Tim Miller (46:01)

That was the guy, Ken whatever from Hudson. Hudson, yeah.

Sarah Longwell (46:03)

Right. But so if you. And then. And then the news came that now that Skydance has their big merger, they're trying to go and buy Time Warner, which owns cnn. And if you think about how big of an influence. You know, I think for a long time, the conventional wisdom was that Elon had made a bad purchase with X by buying Twitter and turning it in his own thing because he spent 40 bill on it. And, like, it immediately dropped in value. Now, he didn't overpay for it. He didn't overpay for it. He got all the influence that he wanted. The manosphere stuff, you can see how he turns the algorithm. You can now see how he gets inside of.

Tim Miller (46:49)

He's crazy in the Kirk fallout, by the way, and I keep forgetting to mention it, so I'm sorry to interrupt it, like, in, like, the stoking violence stuff that he's been doing has been.

Sarah Longwell (46:58)

Well, in the anti free speech stuff. Like, the anti.

JVL (47:00)

Like that can't be true, Sarah. He's a free speech absolutist.

Sarah Longwell (47:03)

Yeah, sure. So. So this is. This. I mean, this is. I was yesterday. I, like, tweeted myself into oblivion and I, like, wanted him to see. I just wanted to, because I just went and found all of the places where the people right now who are talking about hate speech, who are talking about cracking down on the left for wrong thing, whatever, they all have just tweet after tweet about how free speech is the most fundamental issue of our time. And it's like right now, Stephen Miller has like a million of those tweets circa 22, 23 going into the election. And. And Elon Musk convinced a whole bunch of people that Donald Trump was going to be the free speech president. And it permeated the manosphere. And he is right now. Stephen Miller was like, we don't need to be like the 90s era ACU. We're in a fight for Western civilization, by which he means any means necessary.

JVL (47:55)

Any means necessary, baby.

Sarah Longwell (47:56)

Okay? And.

JVL (47:57)

And Elon, he who saves his country breaks no law, Sarah.

Sarah Longwell (48:01)

And Elon, right underneath it says, yes, See, Elon Musk is full on. You know, forget about free speech. We're in a fight for Western civilization, so we got to shut these guys down. The purchase of X or the purchase of Twitter, which he turned into X was one of the, had one of more political significance than just about anything that anybody on the advocacy side could do to combat it. And I think in retrospect, that's very clear. So right now they are trying to see, they see how successful that was. And so they are trying to seize every existing media property that they can and turn it into a right wing propaganda machine. And. Or at least not somebody who lives by objective or neutral rules or certainly has a left wing bent.

Tim Miller (48:47)

Orban style.

JVL (48:48)

It is Orban style. This is the problem that people, myself among them, initially evaluated the Twitter sale as a business proposition when it isn't. It's a fascist proposition. And like that's what it's really about.

Sarah Longwell (49:03)

It's about, it's a narrative dominance proposition.

JVL (49:05)

Yeah, it's about enabling fascism. And somebody is not in business to make money by selling widgets. They're in business by, for, for trying to achieve total dominance over the legitimate use of force that is owned by the state. So they can then extract their rents that way. Then it begins to make a lot of sense. All right, so this also happens at the same time with the New York Times piece from Monday that United Arab Emirates deal where the New York Times had the. The same people negotiating two deals, one is which is to sell AI chips to UAE and the other is for the UAE to invest $2 billion in the Trump family crypto startup.

Tim Miller (49:51)

And that among the same people also included Wyckoff and his kid right there on the wick coughs on both sides.

JVL (49:56)

Right. And they're in the room negotiating both deals at the same time. Sarah, tell me the next, what is the next focus group of independent voters just sort of like non affiliated where if you bring this up, anybody will know what you were talking about.

Sarah Longwell (50:20)

Now people don't know who Witkoff is. And there's a lot of characters in this administration where people are like, they know who they are.

Tim Miller (50:28)

It's the Trump family crypto business too. And it's the Wyckoff guy negotiating it. But. Right, it's the Trump, it's the Trump crypto.

Sarah Longwell (50:33)

Right, but I mean like that's, but I mean like the inside machinations of a deal like this. For the public to be able to wrap its head around it, it needs to be the story and people need to be sort of telling it over and over from these angles. But this is going to cruise by.

JVL (50:47)

No one because Hunter's laptop.

Sarah Longwell (50:50)

Well, this is, but this has always been the problem I mean, I talked about this a lot. When I think about messaging strategies, one of Biden's fundamental problems was that he didn't have like Donald Trump knows how to have. If you have so much corruption, it becomes difficult for them to track. There's one bad thing, they can zero in on it and make every crack and crevice into something. It is. Donald Trump has always been. It's not just that he's like Jello trying to nail Jello to a wall. It's that the corruption keeps going and going and going. And so you were just constantly chasing more corruption. Can't settle in on one story and tell it so that the public can get their heads around it. You certainly can't do that when Donald Trump has now co opted the means of communication, some of the largest means of communication in the country. Which, by the way, just on the TikTok deal. The TikTok deal is nuts. Like, they're going to let China continue to have everybody's data and then Trump's allies get all the money.

Tim Miller (51:47)

Then we continue to control the algorithm. Actually, this just came to my head, so maybe this is a little hacky, but this ties to something I was just saying about the Kirk assassination. It occurs to me that when I came up with a random person out of my head, I was trying to think of a generic name in city. I said Taylor from Kansas City, which means that like Taylor Swift has really just, just inserted herself into all of our brain chips.

Sarah Longwell (52:12)

Into your brain chips.

Tim Miller (52:14)

Kelsey plays for Kansas City. I don't even like Taylor Swift or the Chiefs. So I don't know. That's clearly that was in my subconscious somewhere. Anyway, Taylor from Kansas City. One thing you could do that was useful besides like conspiracy theorizing about the assassination would be what people would be to post about this. And this is something that the right did very well. When you speak about narrative dominance when it comes to Hunter, Hunter's laptop, the Hunter paintings, the Biden crime family. Biden crime family. Sometimes I don't, I don't feel like the Democrats are talking about this that much. It ties to my complaints about the Democrats and the left about how it's like we need to focus on kitchen table issues and Medicaid cuts. I'm like, okay, talk about Medicaid cuts. But like, Trump got $2 billion from Sharia law Muslims. The Trump family got $2 billion and they gave them AI chips in exchange. This is the biggest public corruption scandal in history. It's a more, it's way more direct public corruption scandal than Hunter and Burisma. And let me tell you, if Sarah did a focus group of MAGA Americans, they would have known about Hunter and Burisma. Maybe not independent voters, but the people, the MAGA voters, 100%. And I don't know that a lot of Democratic, I don't know, actually, I suspect that you could do a focus group of Democratic voters and they would be vaguely, if at all, familiar with the Trump crypto scam and with the UAE thing in particular. And I think that, like, that, that when it comes to the nerd out dominance and fighting and just, and this was a lesson from Navalny in Russia, that it's just like corruption, corruption, corruption. These guys are getting rich off your back. These guys are getting rich off your back and they're getting $2 billion from UAE. They got the AI chips they're selling there and they're giving the AI chips to China, our foe. It's not that complicated of a story. It's a little complicated because a lot of people don't know what crypto or AI chips are. And so they maybe start to gloss over a little bit. But like 2 billion bucks for fancy chips is not that complicated of a story. It's certainly no more complicated than Burisma and Hunter Biden being on the board and what the hell that had to do with Joe Biden. So I don't know. I talked about it with Susan Rice today. I'm going to keep talking about it. I think there's probably some value and force it into the dialogue.

JVL (54:13)

Another thing people could do is get off of Twitter and TikTok just saying.

Tim Miller (54:18)

Okay, all right, so just saying I need to be guilty on my own podcast.

JVL (54:21)

I'm not guilting, I'm just saying everybody.

Tim Miller (54:23)

Everybody trying to make comments about my, the fact that I have a couple cigarettes every once in a while too, when I'm at concerts, lecture me about that too.

JVL (54:31)

You know, Philip Morris isn't, isn't trying to do a fascist takeover. No. I would say the part of the problem with this, the narrative dominance thing though also is like the state actors. I mean, it does matter that you have China and Russia spending money on teams of people whose entire job is to try to help Republicans in America like that. And, you know, same thing like there, there ain't no friendlies right there. You don't have in. There's no division of French intelligence which has a warehouse of 23 year old Frenchmen sitting around concocting memes that they're, you know, circulating on 4chan or anything to push back against this stuff. It's a, it's a very asymmetrical fight and the bad guys are all banded together and they get to come at things in, in line, whatever. It's all well.

Sarah Longwell (55:20)

And also because it's corrupt, they're all getting fantastically rich. This is the other part of this that I am, I am, I am so alarmed by the extent to which Donald Trump is using his power of the state to make all of his friends rich and his allies rich that they can go on to fund more right wing propaganda, more Republican campaigns. Like Elon Musk was able to do what he did because he has infinite money.

JVL (55:48)

It is Hungarian. I mean, this is what early urbanism looked like. All right, Tim, word from our sponsor.

Tim Miller (55:54)

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JVL (57:31)

So I would like to trigger Sarah.

Tim Miller (57:36)

Great.

JVL (57:37)

Is that okay? Can we do that?

Tim Miller (57:39)

Yeah, yeah.

Sarah Longwell (57:39)

I don't have no idea where you're going with this, but sure.

JVL (57:41)

So Politico ran a piece this week talking to some great salt of the earth folks from Pennsylvania. Some folks farmers, some three time Trump voters, and they were very, very upset about the President's immigration policies. I would like to read just some. I just want to read some quotes from this piece and get you to react to them, if you wouldn't mind. Sarah. The whole thing is screwed up, said John Painter, a three time Trump voter who runs an organic dairy farm in Westfield. We need people to do the jobs Americans are too small to do. I understand he was here illegally. This is Mr. Painter talking about one of the undocumented immigrants he hired who was driven off. But I also understand that he's human. They want the American dream and they want to work. Painter eventually managed to find another couple, this one from Guatemala.

Sarah Longwell (58:34)

Why are you mocking this guy? Making a totally sensible point.

JVL (58:37)

Oh, you'll see. But the wife is due to have a child in November. Painter is wondering how he and the husband are going to manage to care for their 450 head dairy operation on their own. Painter voted for Trump three times, but said he's very disappointed in how the President has handled immigration policy this term. It's not right what they're doing, he said. All of us, if we look back in history, including the president, we have somebody that came to this country for the American dream. We now go to Tim Wood, a dairy farmer. People don't understand that if we don't get more labor, our cows don't get milked and our crops don't get picked. Excuse me, Mr. Wood. Some of us did understand that. You, you, you didn't understand, Mr. Wood. But you're fucking finding out now, aren't you?

Sarah Longwell (59:24)

I feel like this is more to trigger JBL than Sarah, but go ahead.

JVL (59:29)

Tim Wood, a Tioga dairy farmer who also voted for Trump, said he has been unable to find a consistent workforce for several years. He was urged to reduce stress after being treated for a heart condition in late 2024. And he provided a telling response when asked by a doctor about his biggest stressor. If I'm going to have workers tomorrow, Wood answered, hmm. Again, he voted for Trump. Both Painter and Wood view Thompson as a friend and ally, but neither of them have high hopes that he can deliver a quick fix. Neither of them have a bad word to say about Donald Trump. And this is going to tie into a conversation I would like to have about St. Joseph of the Mansions in a moment. But if. If people like this see their actual livelihoods impacted and they voted for it and they're disappointed, they're disappointed with Trump. They don't blame him for anything and they're just hoping it can all get fixed. What hope is there for anything?

Sarah Longwell (60:38)

Oh, well, I think there's. First of all, your Pennsylvania accent. You said these are Pennsylvania farmers. Terrible. That is not how people in Pennsylvania sound.

JVL (60:48)

I wasn't striving for accuracy, Sarah.

Sarah Longwell (60:50)

Yeah, yeah, thanks.

JVL (60:51)

Verismilitude is not the point of Cletus.

Sarah Longwell (60:57)

So I'm gonna pivot slightly, but I'm gonna weave and come back. So the focus group podcast this weekend is excellent. It's with our own Adrian Carrasquillo, and we did a couple of groups of Hispanic Trump voters and they are like a hundred percent regret their vote.

JVL (61:20)

Oh, that's nice.

Sarah Longwell (61:21)

And a lot of it. It is both on the economy now, as always. The bad news is if you gave them a do over, they're not voting for Kamala Harris. They're just not. They're just not voting or just not.

Tim Miller (61:33)

Okay, that's great. That's a good choice. I'll take it. That's a fair choice. There's a lot of. This is where I go crossways with some in the pro democracy movement. Not everybody needs to vote, actually. Everyone should have the right to vote. You should also have the right to sit home. Yes, that would have been a plus for you.

Sarah Longwell (61:47)

I think there are. Yeah, I think. And this is it. It. I think we're, you know, if you're looking at any of the polling numbers, a lot of the surge in Hispanics like that has. No. Well, that has cratered just about as bad as any other demographic group. And so I think that the fact that there is going to be. We do have these pendulum swings on issues in our country. And Donald Trump seized on a pendulum swing sort of against immigration and certainly then, you know, certainly against illegal immigration. And I think that that is going to swing back and I think that's already happening. Like you are starting to see much more people regaining their sense of broadly, this is too far. Like, I thought he was just going to deport criminals, but he's not. He's deporting people who work on our farms. He's deporting people who've been here for 20 years and it's too much and it's crazy. And so I take people. I understand your point. You want the stove touching. You want it not just to burn because they're being burned. Right? That's what they're saying. But you want them to say, I touched the stove. No, no, they're saying ouch. But then you want to be like, you want them to say Donald Trump, why did you force me to touch that stove? Like, right.

Tim Miller (63:06)

Or Donald Trump, I want a new stove, I'm a microwave.

JVL (63:09)

When they pull their hand away to not say, why does my hand hurt? I don't understand. I want them to say, oh, the stove is what burnt my hand. Yes, I get it now. You should touch hot stoves. That's one. It's all I want.

Sarah Longwell (63:24)

Yeah. And the sunk costs of a three time Trump voter and getting them to say like, I was wrong all three of those times. I understand the emotional satisfaction that you'd like out of it, but it's a, it's a tough ask, I guess.

JVL (63:39)

I also though, I really bristle at the gentleman who said that, you know, people need to know what happened. As if, as if nobody knew. Nobody could possibly.

Tim Miller (63:53)

I guess my only issue, and I hear the story has nothing to do with your guys ongoing fight about the nature of humans and you know, existential. But I do wonder, just as a factual matter, why we're not arresting the farmers. Actually, I don't think they really touched the stove at all. I think those guys have got off easy. I mean, we're deporting all the undocumented criminals. That seems like one of the criminals in that story was a person that knowingly hired a bunch of illegal immigrants.

Sarah Longwell (64:15)

This is a great place.

Tim Miller (64:16)

I do know. I do wonder why that person is not worried about sharing that story in Politico. Because Kristi Noem might send massed ICE agents after him.

JVL (64:25)

Should we call the sheriff and we.

Tim Miller (64:27)

Should call ICE about that?

JVL (64:28)

Or is that only if we find out that he said something mean about Charlie Kerr and then we call the sheriff?

Tim Miller (64:34)

I think we only called the sheriff. He said something mean about Charlie Kerr.

Sarah Longwell (64:36)

Can I just say, Tim, the point Tim is making is such a good one. Not because it goes to the ongoing like problem of illegal immigration, which is we have a market, an existing economic market for illegal immigrants. Like until you address that, there is an enormous demand side to this one that for many, many years, because there was that economic market and because it was a driver of lower prices at grocery stores and other things, everybody just like, looked the other way on it because everybody had an undocumented, like, cleaning person or nanny or like, it is so baked into our society that people are, like, genuinely weirdly caught off guard now to be like, wait, oh, so the unwritten rules changed, huh?

JVL (65:26)

Again, he said he was going to deport 20 million people. What did they think?

Tim Miller (65:31)

I don't know.

JVL (65:31)

All right, Sarah, tell people about our. Tell people about our live shows.

Tim Miller (65:36)

Sarah. I got this one I got in front of me. I've already been pimping these shows. We're on the road, baby. We got upcoming live shows. We're in Canada, we're in New York. We're in Washington, D.C. and I love, I love going on the road. It's very invigorating for me. It's good to see all y' all and hear from people directly. I think that people are much more likely to tell me I'm handsome in person than they are in the comment section. And I appreciate that. And we always have a good time. So I'm particularly excited to go to Canada to show allyship fist in the air with our friends up there, you know, as Donald Trump tries to run a campaign of economic retribution against the free nation of Canada. So we're up there. We had one show already. It sold out so quick that we added another one September 27th. Me, Sarah, Sam Stein, we'll all be there. We're gonna do a Q and A. We're doing a live Q and A for the encore show. We'll be able to hang out. It'll be more chill. It'll be fun. Maybe mimos. We'll see how it goes. So come on up there. September 27th, if you're in Detroit, want to pop over, Want to make a little weekend out of it? If you live in Canada, want to. Want to come by, we've got more tickets for that. And also, just a reminder, we still have tickets left. New York's going to sell out soon. D.C. we got a bunch of tickets for. But jump on it would appreciate. They're all going to be fun nights. Go to the bulk.com events, the bulwark.com.

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Tim Miller (68:45)

Vets.

JVL (68:46)

All right, Tim, you. You sat down with St. Joe Mansion.

Tim Miller (68:52)

I did.

JVL (68:52)

And I was just. I have a lot of questions. I have so many questions. But I wanted to hear your thoughts.

Tim Miller (69:00)

Join the club. Yeah, I want to talk about why I did I picked these guests intentionally. People, this isn't happening by accident.

JVL (69:07)

Oh, you were great. Don't take this. I'm not throwing shade at you. Your interview was great.

Tim Miller (69:11)

No, thank you. I'm telling you this because it's funny. Jb I want to congratulate you before I get to the Joe Mansion. Previously so on YouTube, on this here YouTube page. If you're watching this on TNL, please click the thumbs up button to tell people that you like us. If you're not subscribed to the feed, subscribe to the feed. But we get stats based on the thumbs up and thumbs downs, and that affects the algorithm Et cetera. In the history of our YouTube page, the most thumbs down video ever was you talking about how Alan Lichtman and the Keys were wrong and how he did not want to hear that. And it was just like people did not like that. And it was like a man looking at chicken bones on the ground. He doesn't actually know what he's talking about. And people should not, should stop trusting this person. Now, you turned out to be right, as the T shirt says. Our wonderful listeners in that case turned out to be wrong. They did not like your take on that, though. The next most. No, now that's been passed, actually.

JVL (70:10)

Yes.

Tim Miller (70:10)

The Joe Manchin interview from yesterday.

Sarah Longwell (70:12)

Congrats.

JVL (70:13)

After less than 24 hours.

Tim Miller (70:15)

Yeah.

JVL (70:15)

So really, I mean, you're going to double me up.

Tim Miller (70:17)

Yeah. So thank you. I feel congratulated. The most thumbs down video in the history of the YouTube page. And here's the thing about Joe Manchin, but I just want to say I find Joe Manchin at times deeply frustrating. Like, deeply frustrating. And you could see at the end of the interview on my face in particular, how I was getting frustrated at the very end because I don't have a very good poker face, you know, around mostly what he says.

JVL (70:41)

You know Caitlin Collins?

Tim Miller (70:43)

Yeah, yeah, I know Caitlin Collins. I can't serve a fucking chili stare like her. I couldn't do it in a million years. So I got. I get frustrated. So I understand people's frustration. I do. I also think, though, we have to just. It's important to just say and think about this. In 2018, Joe Manchin won West Virginia in the first midterm after Donald Trump's 2016 election. All right, we're coming up on another midterm. The first midterm after Donald Trump's second election. Right. And for the Democrats to win the Senate, they're gonna have to win in a red state, in a state that Donald Trump won. Right. So I think I was like, it's probably useful to talk to a person who succeeded at this and be like, what'd you do? Like, what do you think about this? What, what can the Democrats do? What should a candidate do that's running in a state such as that? And I asked him that and his answer is, like, varied from kind of interesting and satisfying to deeply frustrating again. And, you know, I think that a lot of people, a lot of viewers have feelings about him because, like, he's a Democrat. They feel like they betrayed him. He didn't vote for this bill, and he was annoying on various things. But to me, like, what I just want to say is, well, a, we can learn that thing from him one, and B, the other thing is, I wonder how many of those listeners could even tell you who has replaced him. That man's name is Jim Justice. And Jim. And the other senator from West Virginia is Shelley More Capito. And if you ask me about the senators from West Virginia, I find Joe Manchin frustrating but at times charming and needed. Like he was very needed for the Democrats. Like, that's what I think about him. He's frustrating and needed. I find Shelley Moore Capito repulsive in every possible way. Because Shelley Moore Capito is me. She knows better. I know her kids. And like, she was a Bush Republican who was a moderate Republican and decided she wanted to stay in the Senate for a million years and voted for every single fucking one of Donald Trump's cabinet members, something that Joe Manchin wouldn't have done if he was in there. She voted for every single bill that Donald Trump has passed. She did nothing after Donald Trump tried to steal an election. So she's in there. Joe Manchin was at least against some of those things, half of them. And Jim justice is going to be for everything. So I think that it's like a little bit misplaced anger to be like, Joe Manchin is evil and then to like not even know Shelley Moore Capital and Jim Justice's name because, like, they're the ones that are actually causing much more significant damage to the country than Manchin did. Even if you disagree with Manchin on several things, which I do. And so anyway, I thought it was a useful conversation to go over that others disagreed. That's fine, Free country. But I was wondering what your thoughts were. Jbl seems like you were more in line with the first, with the, with the aggrieved, with the thumbs down.

JVL (73:20)

No, no, no, not at all. Not at all. I thought it was a very useful conversation. I don't think that Joe Manchin is evil. I thought that it illuminated a man who is very truth averse, like, just didn't want to say the things that he knows to be true and who has an unbelievably low opinion of the people from his state. And I mean, I sort of did a short of. I just went through and did an annotated version of the, the interview. But one of them you, you talked about, one of you brought up the Confederate flags. He said, you know, like, West Virginia is a Union state. I see all these Confederate flags when I'm over there. Why is that? He Says, well you see, Lincoln drew the border and all these Confederates came unwillingly into the Union.

Tim Miller (74:16)

He also mentioned racism. He, he got around to racism after he talked about the, the Lincoln drawing of the border.

JVL (74:22)

So he was, you know, they are resentful over the splitting of the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1863. And those are just people who are still holding on to that grudge. You then, you then asked him about and so you were like, I'm a little confused over this. And he was like, well it could be a racist type situation. We don't know. We don't have a very diverse state. We don't know. We don't know. You then you, then I asked about the Dems, why they're not doing well in West Virginia. You pointed out that it's unified Republican control, it's a one party state now. And, and he says, well, you know, it was in 2008 that Barack Obama got elected. And I'm like waiting for the, like I can see the ellipses, right? And he waged a war on coal. I was like, oh, that's what it was. It was the war on coal. And then, and he, Manchin says that.

Sarah Longwell (75:18)

Was a problem in West Virginia.

JVL (75:20)

Manchin says, well, there's always racial, but there's also the economy. And you then point out, well, under Trump, West Virginia's economy hasn't gotten any better. The R's aren't delivering for people. And he then pivots to, well, that tells me the strength of the personal issues people start talking about. And he then goes on talking about the economics and how the Democratic Party in Washington is spending all of its resources on handouts to an assistance programs and that's what the hard working people of West Virginia really. And I went and looked like West Virginia is smack in the middle of the national average on welfare claims as a percentage. It's a little higher on the disability percentage, I think. So like it's again. And so you, you then went back to him again and you were like, so okay, I see that. You know, the Dems can do better if they get right with some working class populism and economics. And then he mansion like the mask starts slipping a little and he's like, yeah, well the social, social issues are really everything. The only thing I could tell you about this, Tim, is that basically people in West Virginia, you can help them, you can be for them and against them and all this, but they'll decipher that when you start telling them what to think or what they should believe or who they should support on this or whatever. Well, you know, and he's like that. And you then said to him, you said, I spent a lot of time in West Virginia. It didn't seem like anybody there was scared to raise their manga flag or scared to live their Christian beliefs, were scared to have RIA gun. Everybody was living a pretty free in the free state of West Virginia the last 10 years, as best I can tell. And yet people are always saying all this nasty stuff on my Facebook. I don't understand what's the problem. And then he gets to it and he says that what people don't want to see is they don't want to see you mainstreaming the things they don't like. And that's like the key to all of this, right? It isn't. They don't even feel like they're being told that they have to do something they don't like to turning on the TV and seeing that somebody in San Francisco is allowed to do something they hate. And Manchin clearly understands this about his voters, and he feels like he can talk around it, but he thinks they're a bunch of racist fucks. And I thought that was deeply revealing. It is.

Advertisement Voice (77:51)

It is.

JVL (77:52)

Like Trump thinks of Trump voters. You know, nobody has a worse opinion of Trump voters than Donald Trump.

Tim Miller (77:57)

Yeah, I don't know if I'd characterize it quite like that that he thinks they're racist, Fox, But I agree with you that he sees clearly what the problem is. And this was the very end of the interview I thought was like the most frustrating part about it, because when I said to you at the top, well, what was the purpose of having him versus somebody else at any given day? And I was like, well, let's see if he has any insight on how to get to people in these red states to win in the Senate. Democrats need that insight. And, like, the answer is kind of like, shrug him out of cocktail. Like it is, because I went through all those things. It's like, well, if you make like the economy, if you give them populist economics, well, then it's the social issues. Right? Well, it's like. But if, let's say you de. Emphasize the social issues and say, well, whatever we're going to do, live and be live libertarianism. And it's like, well, well, I still don't like that you disagree with them on social issues. You demonize our worldview or that there's someone out there that demonizes my worldview. And like, that was the most frustrating part about it. It was like in the end I was kind of like, I don't know what the answer is this I, I true, like that's the true, my true view of the interview in the end is like, I don't know that me or Joe Manchin has any great idea for how Democrats can do better in West Virginia.

JVL (79:02)

I think he has no idea because he realizes what the people in his state have become. What do you think listening to it?

Sarah Longwell (79:10)

Well, so don't do that. You, I, I, or he's trying to set me up. He knows I haven't listened to it. I am on the.

JVL (79:16)

I didn't know that.

Sarah Longwell (79:17)

Of course you do. I'm on the road. I haven't listened to listened to it yet, but I can't wait to listen to it. I do think, look, the cultural divide between Democrats as a national party and West Virginia is just Joe Manchin was hanging on by a thread to people who knew him personally to a state that he had a connection to. And you know, I think again, we talked about Sherrod Brown in Ohio, but like Ohio's going in that direction too, where the cultural gap between national Democrats and the people of Ohio is going to get big enough that it's going to be tough for Democrats to win there. And that's a huge problem electorally, like a massive problem. And I think the, there's really only two options, which is that you look at states that previously so Georgia, North Carolina, you know, I think, I think Texas isn't going to happen anytime soon, at least not without getting the, the Democratic Party figuring out how to do much better with Hispanics than they're currently doing. But like you basically have to look other plate. Like, I don't, I think that it is just the way that people sort of live in West Virginia, the cultural.

Tim Miller (80:38)

Like tell us about that way the way. I'm just joking. I'm just joking.

Sarah Longwell (80:42)

It's just the culture's too deep even, even for, even for Democrats who sort of would have kind of a moderate position on some of the, the cultural issues, the trans issue, gay issues, they're just not going to fly in a place like West Virginia. They're just not. I mean, you did, you can even, even like I do think Abigail Spanberger is going to cruise there in Virginia, but the polls have been tightening up a little bit and Winsome Sears is a complete lunatic, but is basically running on one thing, trans stuff and that stuff. Like just as a sometimes people take what I'm saying as like me approving of this I'm just doing it as an objective political matter. Like this is. It is. It is a. It is. Democrats are gonna wrestle with this in places like that. And I think that the, the only solution is to figure out how do you find sort of more moderate people to play in states like North Carolina that are changing, where they do have a lot more college educated voters than they do where they've built out big tech sectors and other things that have caused more people to move there. But like, you can't do that in West Virginia because nobody's going to move there because it doesn't have anything. And so it's just going to be how it is.

Tim Miller (82:00)

Yeah, that's really frustrating actually, as somebody that was. Because I don't, I'm, I'm not, I'm not bullshitting this. I think this is a genuine question of like, that, that is, that merits study and confusion, which is like West Virginia is governed like shit. They're only Republicans in charge. The people there, a lot of their lives are pretty tough, right? Like you live in West Virginia. Like their lives are tough just, just economically high, high divorce rate, high drug, you know, overdose rate, all that sort of stuff. Stuff. And it's just like eventually you think people might be upset with that. I guess the one thing that Manchin said that was kind of interesting on this point was like, maybe, just maybe you go the independent route. Like maybe you can find some kind of some person that just isn't tied to any national brand that has an independent and, and you know, whatever, I don't know.

Sarah Longwell (82:50)

And just never talks about social issues because they're not beholden to the Democratic Party and so they focus entirely on more populist economic issues and breakthrough. Or you get a more moderate Republican who also doesn't talk about these things like, like this is actually what they do in Utah. If you go to Utah, there's a ton of people who are Democrats who are registered as Republicans because it's the only game in town. And so like getting a sort of tract of the Republican Party that is more moderate that confused together a coalition with the Democrats. Like you sort of have to be thinking about it that way. But they're. And I. Can I just say one thing about Joe Manchin, just in general, I'm not sure how much this.

Tim Miller (83:25)

I want to do one more thing.

Sarah Longwell (83:26)

To go okay, which is, I don't know how to convince people. Like, I totally understand why people get frustrated with Joe Manchin, but he represents a state, just has nothing in common with California or You know, they have.

JVL (83:45)

One thing in common. Both states get two senators.

Sarah Longwell (83:50)

Yeah. But you know, you just go to a much bluer place and the cultural differences between that and West Virginia are extremely steep. But so he gets screamed at all the time. Right. So like he. The part of. I don't know what to do about the fact that part of what happens is that Joe Manchin doesn't feel like carrying water for the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party hates his guts. And so like when you have that big gap and your vote and the voters in your party, like, all you get is negative feedback. Like listening to him in other interviews where he says things like, like, he didn't endorse Joe Biden. He didn't endorse Joe Biden was like a psychotic thing, in my opinion, for him to do, but it comes from his own feelings of like, this party hates me. I don't need to do anything. Republicans suck up to me. This is happening right now with Fetterman. Fetterman is being radicalized. You didn't.

Tim Miller (84:43)

I forgot to.

JVL (84:44)

Yeah, Joe Biden sucked up to him. Biden treated Manchin. Right.

Tim Miller (84:48)

Really at the end. He sucked out to him for a while and then he got kind of pissed at him, so started snapping him. Just to your point, sir, just really quick about people yelling at him, because I just want to just say this one thing. I think he's such a big category difference from cinema, who is in a state, a blue, a purple state that Democrats could have won. Right. And so he got lumped together and I'm like, cinema has no actual political reason for doing this. Joe. Joe Manchin, a 78 year old dude, got yelled at by young liberals a lot and protested outside his boat and all that. You sign up for all that you're. It's for now at least you don't get arrested if you protest out of politicians boat. Donald Trump's working on fixing that. But you know, he had, he had young liberals yelling at him all the time out on his, you know, outside his boat, whatever. This is not a woe is me.

Sarah Longwell (85:28)

Lives on a houseboat in Washington.

Tim Miller (85:29)

Yeah, exactly. It's not a woe is me. Joe Manchin, whatever. He got criticized all the time. People were shouting out, people said nasty things, but they said he's evil and he's 70 year old white dude. And he comes on the podcast and I'm like, so what do you think about the Confederate flags in West Virginia? And the answer was kind of like, yeah, sure, jbl. It took him a minute to get there. But he comes around and he's like, and then there's the racism factor. And at the end of the podcast, he's like, next time you're in West Virginia, you know what we should do, you and me, we should go up to one of the houses in your husband's county that has the Confederate flag, knock on the door and be like, hey, man, like, why are you still doing this? Like, should we be able to move on? And I don't know, like, isn't that the best we can hope for for a 70 year old white, 8 year old white guy from West Virginia?

Sarah Longwell (86:12)

Probably.

Tim Miller (86:12)

I don't know. Probably.

JVL (86:13)

I'm not, I'm not capping again. I just, it was, it was dark, actually. I thought it was a very dark episode in that way. I, I would say this, though. It might be just simpler than you guys are making it out to be, and it might just be demographics. West Virginia is so white and has such a low secondary education level that that's why Democrats aren't going to do well because the base of the Republican Party is high school educated whites and West Virginia has a lot of high school educated whites, but so does the.

Sarah Longwell (86:51)

Rest of the country. And Democrats are going to have to figure out how to do better with those people.

JVL (86:54)

Not at the level West Virginia does. No, I know, but you know what.

Sarah Longwell (86:58)

I'm saying, Lots of places do like Georgia does and yeah, no, you got.

JVL (87:01)

To do a little better. But what I'm saying is you can do a little bit better. And it wouldn't have any impact at all in West Virginia because of the nature of the coalitions and the way they've fragmented on race and especially education. Yeah, it's great. Another ray of sunshine, another week, another fabulous episode of the Next Level.

Sarah Longwell (87:25)

It was a good episode.

Tim Miller (87:27)

I'm fine. I'm doing okay. Having a Coca Cola.

JVL (87:31)

That's great.

Tim Miller (87:33)

Might have a cigarette after this. Don't tell Mom.

JVL (87:36)

Guys, good show. Long show. We'll see you next week. Good luck, America.

Sarah Longwell (87:40)

Bye.

Advertisement Voice (87:45)

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