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[00:00]
A
I don't think people talk enough about how batshit crazy the government's official tweets are. Their accounts are insane and say insane things.
[00:16]
B
Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my best friends Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of the Bulwark Guys. It is Wednesday, and Jimmy Kimmel return to the.
[00:28]
A
Feel like I've lived a whole lifetime this week.
[00:30]
B
Tell me about it. Jimmy Kimmel returned to the air last night, which I don't really care about. I mean, that's not true. I do care about it. It's great victory for free speech. It's important to push back. Yay, liberalism. Yay, First Amendment. What interests me most is that our president then tweeted out on Truth Social. I think we're going to test ABC out on this. Let's see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 million. This one sounds even more lucrative. So I guess I have questions. The first being, are they testing out whether or not they're going to pull FCC licenses, which would not be lucrative for Trump, I don't think. Or is he going to test out a civil. Like, what does any of. Am I. Tim, you're, like, shaking your head at me. Am I just being too literal in trying to accept what the President says as, like, face value, being serious?
[01:31]
C
No, I was kind of. I was shaking my head like that, sure. That could be it. I just been, like. I was trying to think about, like, the right word to use because I think that he's testing out, like, a new form of, like, trial lawyer authoritarianism. I don't know. We can spitball this exactly how to lawsuit authoritarianism. Right? Because it's like, he's not. Is he really trying to get him taken off? I may be. You know, it's. It's. You got to, like, do the Kremlin ology of all these tweets. Or is this Trump just being like, I just am gonna bully people, bully these corporate suits to squeeze as much money out of them for as long as possible. And this is just a straight. I guess maybe it's just straight kleptocracy, you know, I don't know. To me, that's, like, the thing here. I don't know if anyone's tried this. I guess this might be a new innovation for Donald Trump where rather than pure. Rather than, you know, shutting down newspapers, he doesn't, like, just gets them to pay him bribes, like, in a kava bag.
[02:32]
B
Protection money.
[02:32]
C
Yeah. I don't know, Sarah, now, you were shaking Your head at me is that.
[02:36]
A
Yeah, well, I think that what Donald Trump is trying to do, right? So, so people, he has invented a new thing around campaign contributions. He made this argument about 60 Minutes. Like 60 Minutes is giving Kamala Harris a campaign contribution by editing her interview to make her sound better. So he's talking about. It's so, I mean, everything's projection with this guy. For a guy who did the whole Stormy Daniels cover up, which was adjudicated to be an illegal campaign contribution, he's now like, oh, illegal campaign contributions? Or anybody on the media who says nice things about the Democrats and bad things about me, those are, those are campaign contributions. So they should be categorized as such. And the reason that this is in his mind now is because CBS caved on this particular notion. So now he thinks, he either, he either thinks that it is a good argument, which it is not. It's a preposterous argument. If being kind to one candidate and mean to another was a form of campaign contribution and not free speech, Fox News wouldn't be allowed to exist. Right? Like this is, this is not okay.
[03:51]
C
Now I'm intrigued, actually. I mean, you're speaking my language.
[03:56]
A
Yeah, no, this is. So this is not a thing like his. It is, it is. Then he's just like, so then it's like, well, can I bully them the same way I was able to bully ABC the first time with Stephanopoulos, bully cbs? Like, I've, I've been successful. And this is where people got to learn the lesson. There's two lessons here on the Kimmel thing. The first is when you cave to this guy, he will come back for more. The second is when the public pushes back hard enough on companies that cave, they uncave. Because what Iger knew is that this was wrong, right? And so like his temptation to go along with it was because he was only getting one way pressure, they need pressure the other way. And he was getting it and he was getting it hard. And so he uncaved on the Kimmel thing. And that is an important lesson. We can and should fight these things and let Donald Trump just sit there and bleat about it in his angry way. I'll just say a third thing just really quickly. I need to just, I do have to do a quick disclaimer that my brother in law writes for Jimmy Kimmel. I didn't have any information about anything going on when this whole thing is happening. But, but I, I, I think it's Sam and I did a whole take on the Kimmy Jimmy Kimmel monologue. I was quite moved by it. I know we just blew by it in the intro, but I thought it's. I think it's very much worth your time to go listen to it. Not only is it funny, but it is defiant in going after car. It is compassionate. In terms of Charlie Kirk, I think that he talks about comedians on the front lines of free speech in a way where I think that there. It reminds me of another comedian named Volodymore Zelensky, whose first name I'm probably butchering.
[05:50]
C
Campbell 2028. Is that where you're going?
[05:52]
A
No, no, no. I'm. I'm. It's. It's the opposite only that or not the opposite only to say that I don't know that comedians are prepared often to find themselves in, like, serious positions of defending constitutions and country, but they're not. Their. Their comedy work doesn't exactly make them ill prepared for it because there is something about, like, pushing the boundaries, about standing up to people about whatever they. That I think has made. Like, Jimmy Kimmel was actually like a uniquely strong spokesperson for this in a way that other people have not been, in a way that the lawyers and like everybody else has been, has seemed to not be capable of articulating clearly how the First Amendment works and what it is that we do here in America. But he is very clear on that, and it's quite good.
[06:42]
C
Can I just add on to that really quick and just say, are you sure you're closed the door totally on Kimmel 2028? Because I do think that would make a good YouTube headline.
[06:50]
A
I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie that on the way down, as I was listening to his model, because it was not aired in Washington, D.C. because Sinclair wouldn't air it. And so. So I was. I was sort of watching it, listening to it in the car, and I was thinking to myself, only because as we get to Ukraine, Ukraine is also on my mind for a couple reasons. And I was thinking about Zelensky's previous career as a comedian. Like, that's what he did in his country before he came the president and led them through a war. And there was part of me that was like, why? Why not somebody like Kimmel in 2028? Like, why not somebody who a, has the stomach to stand up? I feel like in this moment of bleakness, the way that he does his monologue, which marries the seriousness of the moment around authoritarian threats, but also the compassion with which he treated both Erica Kirk and Charlie Kirk's death and also the humor with which he sort of made fun of the moment and how serious it was. But like with comedy, I'm not sure that's not what America needs right now.
[08:02]
C
Right, there we go. We got what I was looking for. I just might have just thought. I agree with everything you said.
[08:09]
A
So Jimmy, if you're listening, campaign manager.
[08:11]
C
Right here, I thought it was powerful because the humor is funny. It was really legit funny at times. And I like how he brought in conservatives which he also didn't mention. And saying this is one thing that I'm with Ted Cruz. And I guess my one note was he name checked Candace Owens and I'm like I don't know if we need to introduce 68 year old normies in Kansas City watching this to the existence of Candace Owens, but he mentioned others who are aligned with him on speech. I, I thought it was extremely well done and in a way nothing against Colbert who I appreciate and like Colbert has like gotten extremely strident in a way that is, is certainly powerful but like is maybe potentially less effective at like at, at, at bringing other people into the fold than, than I think what Kimmel did last night, which was really I think deft. So anyway, I concur with that.
[09:01]
B
Can I just add though, just, just a quick piece of praise for Kimmel because this, this I think we shouldn't gloss over. The sine qua non here is that he has to refuse to bend the knee because when this whole thing happens and he gets called into the principal's office at Disney again, I don't know him. Never, never no connections to this guy or anybody on his staff. I'm just relying on like the reports I've read from Matt Baloney and various entertainment media reporters. But there was a, a great deal of pressure on him to like go clean this up. Just say whatever you have to say, apologize, make nice, make this problem go away. And he said no. And without that and that takes a yard of guts.
[09:46]
C
Yeah. So I agree, yeah, I agree with that. The other subtext of the story that's a little bit less of the feels. I like having positive feels. It's nice these days to do things. It gives us nice feels. But the more ominous side and I think the more interesting political fight to come is over what happens with this merger and nextar. And you know that he was not, it wasn't just Sinclair Sinclair story is, is what it is. It's not great that some percentage of the country is getting Newsmax for their local, local news That's a bad thing, but it's also, it's not a complicated bad thing. The next thing is more interesting, right? It's not, it's, it's straight corruption, right? It's not, it's not really a free, I mean, it's free speech kind of, but it's not really an ideological project. It's a corruption project. And I do keep coming back to the Navalny side. Like, a lot of the researchers, the anti authoritarian researchers always say that the thing that Navalny had going for him before Putin killed him was that he was really going after that regime on the issue of corruption. And I just think that now there's so many of these stories that are adding up with the home in 50 grand in the paper bag. And now it's like, we're going to push Jimmy Kimmel off the air so that we can get our merger, the crypto stuff. Eventually that starts to add up in a way that I think could be a potentially fruitful way to push back and undermine this administration. Because there's some percentage people that don't like that that are in the Trump voting coalition. A smaller percentage than we would want, I would imagine. Well, I'll be interested to hear what focus groups say about this question, Sarah. But like, I think that, you know, that just generally there's kind of this American notion of like, no, we're not one of those banana republic countries. We're not a country where we shut people up, you know, unless you pay off the big guy. You know, that kind of goes against the American spirit in a way that I think is potential vulnerability for them, but also potentially ominous if they, if they get away with it.
[11:47]
A
Yeah, I'm sorry. And another thing, please, which is I will say when Trump's bleeding, which is very important to think about, when he says, like, I'm coming for you guys, like ABC told me you were fired and I you right. The intervening period where Carr said, we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way, there was still a bunch of right wing influencers and Fox News people and administration officials being like, this is just because Jimmy Kimmel's not funny and his audience and Late Night is dying. And no, no, it's not because President Trump is threatening them, even though Carr did it completely straightforwardly. And I even like, the more responsible people were like, it is unfortunate that Carr chose to say that, but this.
[12:35]
B
Is really just private businesses making their own business, a private business decision.
[12:39]
A
My favorite genre of Trump tweet is where he hangs all those people out to dry by saying, I did it, I'm going to do it again. I am threatening people because I don't like when they criticize me, which he 100% says in this tweet. Like, that's just the whole thing. And so just remember, guys, he's meant to make a fool out of you, and you deserve it.
[13:00]
B
I'm sure they all feel really guilty.
[13:02]
C
Though, now and are going to change.
[13:04]
B
Their behavior going forward. Right now, where do we go to get our apology? All right, more Trump, Rich. More Trump. So yesterday, kind of a big day in foreign policy, which I know is something our audience cares deeply about.
[13:21]
C
We have audience that cares deeply about foreign policy.
[13:25]
A
Give people some credit, man.
[13:27]
C
Just not on the same numbers.
[13:29]
B
You know, I see the numbers. So two parts. Donald Trump went to the UN And I think the message was to everybody in attendance that the American order is over. We could talk about that if you like. He. He was making a. As our colleague Andrew Egger said in his newsletter this morning, Trump's ideological message was that liberalism and law are no longer equal to the challenges facing nations. And so you should all do what I'm doing. Lawless nationalism. That's the only way to survive. And it is possible that some of the people in attendance took that lesson away. But I think the bigger lesson was, wow, America's fucked. Their day is done. We gotta figure out how we're make nice with the Europeans and the Chinese. But then Trump, after doing some study, realized that Ukraine actually has all the cards and completely reversed his policy on the Ukraine Russian war. Which one do you want to start with? Do you want to start with Ukraine or do you want to start with.
[14:42]
C
The U.N. i think Ukraine is one, and the U.N. thing is just kind of a continuation of what he's been doing. And it's like another data point, I guess, where he's lecturing all these people about how they should respect their heritage, how the US Isn't going to be their policeman anymore. I don't know. I mean, this is pretty of a piece of what we've been getting from. If you have thoughts on it, I'd be happy to hear them. The Ukraine thing is interesting. And also I'm kind of like, is it new? And it's new. He's saying something new. Ukraine can get their land back. Watch out, Russia. But the question is, did any actual policy change? And I guess it's still kind of status quo. It's just Trump is yesterday giving less aid and comfort to Russian Propaganda and sounding more like, at least directionally, like what you would think a leader in the west would sound like.
[15:44]
B
Yeah, I believe the policy change is we will sell the EU countries all of the weaponry they want, and they can do whatever they want with it after it's in their hands, which I think is a yes, good luck to everyone. We were selling them many weapons already, but there were always, you know, strings attached and whatnot. And this is a, like, hey, you guys.
[16:07]
C
I guess my point, Sarah, I'll let you go, is I hope that there's a positive policy change here and this is permanent. I'm, I just, I'm withhold. I'm withholding judgment because he, like, the only consistent policies had over this on nine months. Over nine months is like, I'm going to keep stalling. We're going to think, we'll. We'll see how things look in two weeks. We'll see how things look in a month. And meanwhile, Putin is, like, bombarding Ukraine continually. And, and, and, and we just sort of keep kicking the can down the road. So if that changes, great, but I'm going to withhold full judgment on it.
[16:39]
A
I have thoughts both about the UN and, and Ukraine. And here's the thing about Ukraine. His tweet was actually extraordinary. And I don't think it's a change so much as an evolution. I think that. Remember when he met with Putin recently and there was reporting afterwards that the team was sort of shell shocked, and he's had several different sort of bleeds that were like, maybe Putin's a bad guy, you know, like, maybe he's not an honest burger. And I do think that Trump has figured out two things. One, that Putin is playing him for a fool, and two, that Ukraine might not lose this war. I think Trump was like, let me just read you the sentence that I found wild and extraordinary in this bleat. He's just now, and I quote, getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine, Russia, military and economic situation. Somebody give this guy a Nobel Peace Prize. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm screaming, people in your microphone. But, like, this is insane. Like, I do. Like how he just tweets it out. Like, we're all. We all know that he's an idiot who does not understand what is happening in the world. But, like, for him to just be like, huh, now that I'm nine months in, it occurs to me that, you know what? Maybe Russia was the aggressor. Maybe they're the ones who did this. And so Anyway, I do think that is just incredible stuff. Incredible stuff. And mainly comes down to he realizes maybe Putin's make making a fool of him, which he is and has been, and two, that Ukraine could actually win this war.
[18:17]
B
You know, Sarah, speaking of people getting hung out to dry for defending Trump, shit, JD Vance has spent the last nine months running around saying that Ukraine can't win. Not possible for Ukraine to win, huh? Now his boss says, oh, yeah, they could take not just this war, they could roll back everything, go back to 2014, they get Crimea back. Is JD gonna go out and say, oh, I had that wrong? Are we gonna get that? No, I don't.
[18:49]
A
Yeah, I don't think we're gonna get it wrong. But it will be interesting to see how he responds to it. But it does seem that Trump has discovered that perhaps Ukraine does have some cards. But also, I just, I do also want to know, like, there's so much contained in this bleed. This thing about NATO, like arming NATO. What a coward Trump is. Like, he somehow manages to both recognize these. These new things, say them out loud, but then also be like, we're going to send NATO as much as they want, not America. We're not going to help. We're going to let a third party do it. This third party that I crap on all the time, we're going to let them do it. Good luck to everybody. I'm still not taking sides, you big baby. Which, by the way, brings me to the UN he was as orange as I have ever seen him. But if you watch that speech, I did a take with Andrew on this right afterwards. He is up. He. He spends. He goes into a big, long, rambling thing about how he wants bid on the contract to build the U.N. oh, yeah, but didn't get it. And he's like, you could have had marble floors, but. But instead you've got zing zang, zoom or whatever it is. They use whatever material. And the whole time, I do think there's like a marble green kind of backdrop that is just absolutely Oompa Loompa ing him to the highest degree as little white eyes. And people are kind of laughing as he says stuff because he's complaining, too. He complains the whole time. He. He's talking about the fact that the escalator stopped working and that his teleprompter stopped working. And I would just like to say it is wild. I watched sort of live doing the take, that the escalator does stop working. Like when he and Melania walk up to it it just stops working. I think those are good acts of resistance. I salute you, elevator or escalator operator who just stopped it and made him walk up the stairs. You didn't hurt him. You didn't do anything. You just, just, just made him walk up some stairs. But I still thought that was good on you. I see you. Hey guys. We are getting closer and closer to the Bulwarks live shows. We sold out one of our shows in Toronto, but when we added another one for Saturday, which is September 27th, that is this Saturday. If you've got any questions about the news for me, Tim and Sam Stein, I want you to leave them in the comments for today's show and we might answer them. We. When we're in Toronto later this week, JBL won't be there because he won't cross America's borders right now.
[21:24]
B
That's right.
[21:26]
A
But he will be there for the big shows we've got coming up in America. We have got one on October 8th in Washington D.C. with Tim, JBL and myself as well as Congresswoman Sarah McBride and the Bulwarks own Mona Charon, Will Sommer and Andrew Egger. The gang will all be here. And if you really want to get all the time you can. VIP tickets are included in the sale of the DC show and that will give you an earlier entry to the show to sit in the audience for an intimate Q A with jbl, Tim and myself where you can flip the script and ask us your questions. Okay, we're gonna. You guys can come in, hang out with us. We'll just, we'll shoot the, Shoot the stuff. JBL will, he won't even be Xanaxed up yet and you can ask him things.
[22:15]
B
Not yet. Do people know that if they do the VIP thing, you're then going to also hold them hostage and force them to become a focus group?
[22:23]
A
I don't think people know that you.
[22:25]
B
Can'T go a night without doing a focus group. And so if we're there doing a show, you're going to be asking them questions. I'm kidding.
[22:30]
A
What do you guys, what do you guys think? What do you guys think of this?
[22:33]
B
Are you a flipper?
[22:34]
A
You a flipper?
[22:37]
B
Can I start spamming the comments with questions for Toronto?
[22:41]
A
No, let their.
[22:42]
B
I want to ask the question.
[22:43]
A
You get to ask questions all the time. All right. You host half these shows.
[22:47]
B
Your questions have to be better than mine. Otherwise they're use my questions instead.
[22:51]
A
Great point. All right, guys, check out the bulwark.com events for more information and we will see you out there. We didn't actually mention the New York show in this little promo, but I know we're having a New York show too, although I think that might almost be sold out. I think there's only a few tickets left for New York, but we have a very big venue here in D.C. so there's still tickets available. Go get yours. Come hang out with us. We'll see you guys out there.
[23:16]
B
I got some politic questions for you guys. So I think we can break American public opinion on Ukraine into three buckets. There are people who oppose Donald Trump and support Ukraine because they believe it is vital to global security and America's interests. Right. People like us. Fair. Yes. There is a very tiny group of people who support Donald Trump and also want Ukraine to succeed the Lindsey Graham caucus. So there's, you know, a good four or five dozen Americans there. And then there are the MAGA supporters who are isolationist JD Vance types who are at Duke best, they don't care. At worst, they're pro Putin because they see Putin as a culture war ally against like the gays and woke. Is this a fair. Some summation of the, the pie chart?
[24:15]
A
I. No, I think there's a lot of people in that middle bucket and also in that third bucket a lot. I think that there's a fair. I think there's a lot of normie Republicans. And your thing about people who don't care, I will just say a main tenet of America first. It's not that they don't care. It's that they don't want us spending money on other things outside of us. And so like they have, they may be like, I think I want to root for Ukraine against Russia, but I don't think America should be involved because we shouldn't be sending our money to these other countries. Like that is a, I would say if there's a biggest contingent in the Republican Party now in the MAGA movement, it is that.
[24:53]
B
That's interesting. I have not heard that opinion expressed.
[24:56]
A
Very often because I think it's the normie Republican opinion. That's the one that comes up in focus groups constantly.
[25:01]
B
Interesting, because I, I again, this is me doing armchair psychologist. I think if your position is that America shouldn't be helping Ukraine, you have to rationalize it by saying that Ukraine doesn't deserve help because they're probably the bad guys.
[25:20]
A
No, that's.
[25:21]
B
I think it's hard to, it's hard to be like, yeah, it's really terrible that all These Ukrainian kids are getting killed. It's really bad. I wish him all the best, but, you know, I just don't think we should spend money on it.
[25:32]
A
That's sort of Donald Trump's position. I mean, not like often. Yeah, right. But, but I'll just tell you, and when I say Normie Republic, I think what I mean is people who aren't paying a super amount of attention to this, there is like, let me just say America first, again, not just a slogan. It is a, it is a prioritization. It is, it is about. So when you say you're America first, what you mean is. And they'll just say this. It's not about. They'll say Ukraine. I don't think we should be involved in Ukraine, Russia. That's what those guys are doing. We need to help people in this country. That is a, that is replete through the movement as sort of general accepted wisdom.
[26:12]
B
Interesting. Okay, well, so maybe I've slightly misstated it.
[26:15]
C
I just think that, I guess, just really quick. I just think that the biggest percentage of people are. Folks are very malleable on this. I think that the. I think that there is.
[26:23]
B
Oh, of course.
[26:24]
C
Yeah. The percentage of people that have strong priors on this is. Is some, but is not. Is not a plurality.
[26:30]
B
Well, and this is my. So this is my, my politicky question. Is Trump going to pay a price with any of the MAGAs who basically were at the J.D. vance position of at least tacitly pro Putin and pro Russia? Are they going to be like, wait a minute, hold on. Because there have been a lot of people who've been like, yeah, look at that, Ukraine's losing. Like they're getting off on the Ukraine losing. And the idea that, I mean, that is a thing that exists out there in MAGA world.
[27:02]
C
I think it's pretty small. Really.
[27:06]
B
It's just.
[27:06]
C
Yeah, I mean, I don't, I mean any, anything that's small in this country, like 5% of the MAGA movement is still 3 million people. So, like. Yeah, I'm just saying. I think that that's okay.
[27:18]
B
So, so do you, I guess this is my question. Do you think any of them are going to look at this and be like, well, crap, Trump is selling us out?
[27:27]
C
No.
[27:29]
B
What is he, what is he sucking up to, this track suit Nazi movement of the language?
[27:36]
C
And it depends how things turn out. That could happen. Yeah. And it could happen if we ended, if Trump ended up going, you know, if we were being more aggressively involved. But I don't see that happening now?
[27:46]
B
All right, well, I guess you're not going to play along with my leading questions, because all of this was me leading you up to reading a headline from the Spectator, the United Kingdom's most manga publication.
[27:58]
A
Who's trying to play gotcha with us.
[28:00]
B
Yeah, that's right. Trump has called Europe and Ukraine's bluff.
[28:09]
C
So what?
[28:11]
A
I don't get it either. What is his point?
[28:12]
B
Well, so his. His point is that this is all 5D chess and that Ukraine and Europe are awful, and in switching sides like this, he's really just letting them hoist themselves on their own petards.
[28:27]
C
Who wrote that?
[28:28]
B
Owen Matthews over at the Spectator.
[28:31]
C
Okay, I.
[28:33]
B
So I think that's basically where we're headed. I think we're headed to 5D chess. Slash. It was all art of the deal. This isn't a reversal. East Asia was always at war with whatever. Trump is the best. And that drives me a little crazy, because a lot of the people who are going to be relieved that Trump has finally stopped being actively hostile to Ukraine are also the same people who were criticizing the Biden administration for not doing more, faster. And so, again, it's like these separate sets of standards in how we evaluate things, where you have a normal administration and you feel like, yes, well, we should criticize them for. For not pursuing the perfectly optimal policy. And then with Trump, if he puts down the flamethrower, people are like, oh, thank God he stopped.
[29:27]
A
I do think that's true. And they do try to reverse engineer it into, see Trump. Trump made all the right calls. He really understood this situation. But I got it again, I just. I refer you to his own tweet in which he tells us all he's really just getting up to speed on this whole thing. It's really all just. He's really just figuring this out right now. So that should be very alarming to people.
[29:49]
B
Should that not be a thing where we all get to say to the president, well, wait a minute then. So all of your other statements were made while you didn't understand what was going on? And if so, then why do we assume that now you really understand things? Why is it that five more weeks from now, you're not going to flip again and say, well, now I really, really understand?
[30:11]
C
We are saying we should?
[30:12]
A
Yeah.
[30:13]
C
Who are you doing this for?
[30:16]
B
People.
[30:17]
C
Okay.
[30:20]
B
People, I'll tell you in the green room.
[30:24]
C
Okay.
[30:25]
B
All right. Well, I guess that's all we're doing about foreign policy. Thank God.
[30:31]
C
Tim, let's face it, after a night out with drinks. None of us bounce back the next day like we used to. It's true for jvl. After he has half a glass of wine, he doesn't bounce back quite the same as when he used to. And it's true for me when I have quite a few more beverages than that. So you've got to make a choice. You can either have a great night or a great next day. That was until I found Pre Alcohol Zebiotics. Pre Alcohol Probiotics Drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was admitted by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's a buildup of this byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for rough days after drinking. Pre Alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. While you guys are listening to this, when this publishes on Wednesday evening, simultaneously to this coming in your ears, Zebiotics might be going down my throat because I'm going to go see Vampire Weekend tonight and I'm pre taping tomorrow's podcast. So my rule where I'm not drinking on weeknights, you never know. Maybe I'll break it tonight, maybe I won't. But if I have Zebiotics, it'll give me the option. We'll see how much I'm enjoying Ezra Koenig. So just remember, like me, to make pre alcohol your first drink of the night. Drink responsibly and you'll feel your best tomorrow. Go to ZBiotics.com NextLevel to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use Next Level at checkout. ZBiotics is backed with 100% money back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to zebiotics.com nextlevel and use the code next level at checkout for 15% off.
[31:57]
B
All right, so Kamala Harris making the rounds. Sat down with Rachel Maddow earlier this week and was asked about the passage in her book where she tell me if I'm characterizing this correctly. Says that Walls guy was not my first choice. Much rather much would have rather have had Pete. But you know, America wasn't wasn't really ready for it. Again, this is me paraphrasing, maybe unfairly, but here is what Kamala Harris said to Rachel Maddow.
[32:33]
D
That's not what I said. That that's that he couldn't be on the ticket because he is gay. My point, as I write in the book, is that I was clear that in 107 days, in one of the most hotly contested elections for president of the United States, against someone like Donald Trump, who knows no floor, to be a black woman running for President of the United States. And as. As a vice presidential running mate, a gay man, with the stakes being so high, it made me very sad. But I also realized it would be a real risk no matter how. You know, I've been an advocate and an ally of the LGBT community my entire life.
[33:28]
C
So it wasn't about.
[33:29]
D
It wasn't about. Yeah, right. So it wasn't about any. Any prejudice on my part. But that calculation. We had such a short period of time, and the stakes were so high. I think Pete is a phenomenal, phenomenal public servant, and I think America is and would be ready for that. But when I had to make that decision with two weeks to go, you know, and maybe I was being too cautious, you know, I'll let our friends. We should all talk about that. Maybe I was, but that's the decision I made. And I. As with everything else in the book, I'm being very candid about that, with a great deal of sadness about also the fact that it might have been a risk, folks.
[34:29]
C
I mean, I just wish. Just tell us what you mean. You know, like, it's sort of. It's just. It's a very meandering kind of like. Well, I didn't say that we weren't ready for it, but I just. I did say it. And to me, like, the whole. This is the frustrating part about identity being so centered in the Democratic Party and everything for me, where it's like, on the one hand, there were folks out there, including some Kamala Harris supporters. I'm not saying it was Kamala herself who are out there saying, we can't pass up Kamala after Joe Biden dropped out because she's the first black woman. And it would be mean to pass up the first black woman. And then by the same logic, they say, well, we can't pick the gay guy because we've already picked the black woman, and people hate black women, and people are racist and misogynistic.
[35:17]
B
The scorecard is full.
[35:18]
C
Yeah, people are racist.
[35:20]
B
We're all full up.
[35:21]
C
Okay, you can have one. I was like, I'd rather you have neither, but you could. You can only have one or the other. Right. Which is. You had to pick Kamala because of her identity. And we wouldn't want to, you know, do anything to upset black voters or upset the coalition, upset female voters. You can have that, like, and that's a smart thing to do because it's important that we have at the top of ticket. You can have that or you can have. I don't think we can pick Pete Buttigieg because he's gay, but you can't really have both because it's like, if we weren't picking Pete Buttigieg, if we weren't picking the person you say is the strongest candidate for the job, whether or not that's true or not, I don't know. I'm open to hearing the other side of that. But if we can't pick the strongest candidate for the job because the person at the top of the ticket has all this baggage, then maybe we should have rethought about who the top of the ticket should be. And I'm not saying that either. I was for. I, like, I thought Kamala was going to be probably the best choice, all things considered, But I don't like the, like, weaponization of identity that, like, works only when it's, like, convenient. Right. It's like, we had to pick her because she's black, but also because she's black is such a big problem. So we can't pick somebody else who's gay. I just. I don't like any of it. I had. It was interesting. I had Angie Craig on the daily pod this morning. Lesbian congresswoman from Minnesota running for Senate. I didn't bring this up at all. I forget what the topic was, actually. I was bringing up a totally separate. We were discussing something totally separate, and she volunteers out of nowhere. She's just like. As far as I'm concerned, I don't. You know, I won. I did pretty well in Red America, and I'm a lesbian. And so, you know, I did better than Kamala did in my district. And I just thought. I thought that was noteworthy, that she just volunteered. Volunteer at that. Because it's like, you know, it's fine with me. Like, can I ask you to picture.
[37:10]
B
Analytical hat on that?
[37:11]
C
Sorry, just last thing. Yeah, sure. You can ask. If you're making that strategic point, that's fine, but it's just, like, the manner in which it's happening, I don't really love. And it'd be. I think. I think it would be better to have just been more. More blunt.
[37:25]
B
Okay. And I want to hear from both of you on this, though, putting aside that you don't love it, etc. Etc. Is it as an analytical correct matter, do you think? Is she correct?
[37:37]
A
No, I think she would have been much better off with. Because it's so funny the way people think about what balances a ticket. Right. So in her mind, again, and this is. Tim is absolutely right. When you look through things through the lens of identity, you end up thinking about the ticket as black woman, gay guy. That is not how I would think about it. I would think about it like not the strongest communicator with the best communicator in the party is actually quite a good pairing especially. And this is, this is the main thing though. It was her judgment that he was the best pick. And I think that her inability to trust her own judgment is the question that voters had about Kamala Harris. Right. They didn't trust her judgment either. And it was like the Tim Walls thing ended up being this incredibly safe. Try not to offend anybody. Also fake, like. And this is, this is a, A key piece that I think Democrats do. The voters do it in focus groups all the time, especially Democratic ones, because they too think about identity and they don't give their brethren on the other side of the aisle, like, credit on these identity issues. Right. And so they say to themselves, I don't think I. I would vote for a gay man. I think Pete's the best. I think Pete's awesome. I'm not sure America's ready for a gay man. And I, I guess maybe that's true. Like, it's. I do think. I certainly think in a Democratic primary, Pete Buttigieg, like, he never gets black voters, like voters, Black voters never say they want to vote. He is, he just like does terrible with black voters now. Is that because he's gay? Is it because he is not. He's like kind of a. He's kind of a. Like he's a McKinsey guy. And so like just. It's not resonating with that audience, like, maybe. But like, to me, actually the balance on that ticket of having a black, like, that was a good. That would be a good balance. Like Pete brings you college educated suburban voters who are like interested and he been able to talk really persuasively about policy. If they'd actually put him out there and not played it so safe like they did with Tim Walls, who they clearly also then like, didn't have confidence in. Like, the thing about Kamala and about Walls is that you could sort of read just under the surface that the people around them didn't have Confidence in him or in them. Like Biden, clearly. And his team did not have confidence in her and she didn't have confidence in Walls, which is why they were all playing it so unbelievably safe. And she didn't have the confidence in herself or she would have been out there everywhere, all the time.
[40:24]
B
There is an abused becomes the abuser aspect to this story, which I find very disheartening. Like the Biden people did Kamala dirty and now she's doing like Tim Walls dirty.
[40:37]
C
Yeah.
[40:37]
B
I have no brief for him.
[40:39]
C
I don't know how dirty she's doing too. I think she is pretty nice doing the book though, like saying this is doing a little dirty for sure. Here's what I, here's, here's. I think I'm going to take my own advice. I just want to be blunt about this. I'm on the other side of Sarah, but for a different reason. I also think she shouldn't have picked Pete. And here's why. Because the Democrats have had a major problem in this last election with non college voters of all races, but non college black and brown voters who are in their coalition in particular. And if you look at folks that still maintain bigotry or ill feelings about gay people or discomfort with gay people, it maps across a lot of our other culture war stuff right Now, I'm not saying that everybody didn't go to college as a bigot. I'm just saying that, like, you just, you tend to see that folks that are lower on the education spectrum also have higher, you know, also have more negative views about gay marriage, gay issues. And so I think that given the stakes of the election and given that this was such a key demographic where Democrats were bleeding, I think it probably was smart not to pick people to judge. Can I say that? Here's my problem with all that. They didn't do anything else to appeal to that fucking demographic. Okay? So like, don't. You know what I mean? And so that's why she's not saying that, because she doesn't want to offend. She doesn't want to offend people by saying that, oh, like, oh, non college black voters have, have more negative views of gay. She doesn't want the backlash. That. So she won't say that. But that is what was under the surface. And that's just in the data. Like, that's just in the data. Democrats have this data. I've seen it. And could Pete have overcome that because he's such a great communicator? Maybe I Don't know. Like he went into that bar, he did that Andrew Schultz podcast and those guys seem to like him at the end. So it's possible though I think those are all college educated guys, but, you know, so it's possible. So I think that as a strategic thing, that's fine. But again, to me that goes to like this fun. To Sarah's comment where I agree about the caution, it's like the stakes were so fucking high. Like we needed to do everything possible to make sure there was the best person at the top of the ticket and the best person at the second part of the ticket. You need to do stuff that was maybe uncomfortable at times, maybe that doesn't mean it was Pete. Maybe somebody else outside the box you need to do. You need to go out there and program yourself to like try to win back and win trust from the voters the Democrats are losing trust with. And they just didn't do any of those things. Like there was no effort to distance from Biden. There was no effort to distance from the Democratic cultural issues that have held them back, whether, you know, on whether it's crime, whether it's trans issues. And I'm not saying that they, whatever they need to like move to the center and run a Liz Cheney campaign. That's what I'm saying. I saying that they needed to try to reach the voters that they were worried that they were losing and that Pete wouldn't help them with. And they didn't do it. They replaced him with Tim Walls. He can fix a carburetor so non college men will like him. And it's like, no, actually, no. You need to actually try to reach those voters. Make an effort to do it. If you make the determination that Pete hurts you, then do something else to do it. And that is their sin from.
[43:34]
B
They kept pro Palestinian people out of the convention. They talked a lot about the endless lethality of the American military and crime. I mean, I, I just don't. They may not have done everything that you wish they had done, but I don't think it's quite right to say they didn't do anything.
[43:52]
A
Well, hold on just one second. I want to go. I just want to push back on.
[43:55]
C
Tim, one sentence on this. I think that they reached out to. They tried to reach out to college educated Republican voters like us, which is fine. My point is. Yeah, my point is how do you reach out to culturally right. Non college people that are in the coalition without. I'm sorry, just to clarify.
[44:08]
B
Understood.
[44:08]
A
Yeah, yeah. And also just to clarify on my end, I'm answering the question right now whether Pete would have been better as a calculation than walls. And I'll maintain that because I think that walls, to me, as I argued at the time, and go back and check the tape of what I was saying right around this, this mistakes were number one. It shouldn't have been common like with the stakes. Like, I'm sorry, listening to her, even in that interview. I have been in the, in the, in the position between Biden and Kamala. I was always very pro Kamala and I thought she ran a good campaign. And I have defended her throughout because I do not think the blame for what happened lies with her. I believe it lies with Biden. But at the time, I said two things that I stand by today, which is I think they would have been better off if they held a like shotgun primary because even if she had come out of it as the winner, people would have viewed it with legitimacy. There is a reason that Democrats only have a two point advantage over Republicans right now on defending democracy and is because they didn't hold a primary. They people view her as having been installed. And it was one of the things that made people not trust her. The second thing is I didn't necessarily. I didn't think Pete necessarily. I didn't. I was. I remember Pete for vp.
[45:23]
B
Who, who did you like? I forget. Sarah?
[45:25]
A
Yes. Josh Shapiro. And you know what? As all of you guys who want to yell at me and say, sarah, let Shapiro go, it'll never be him. Okay, guys, if you want to overlook the person with the highest approval rating in the biggest swing state, fine. I don't know what to tell you. Like, there are some. That is. And, and the way that they talk about it in the book where she does nag on Josh Shapiro, she does this and it's terrible and it's true.
[45:56]
C
The thing that Shapiro did is kind of cringy, I should say. But she negs it where he starts talking about the art. I mean, if that's a true statement, that's a crazy story all around. It's crazy for Josh to have done it. It's crazy for her to have mentioned it.
[46:07]
B
Can you give me more time? I don't know.
[46:08]
C
Apparently she writes in the book that Josh Shapiro asked the docent of the vice presidential residents who he would speak to to get Pennsylvania artists in there, which is like an insane thing to. To ask. It's an insane thing to write about in the book if you're Kamala. Like, the whole thing is kind of.
[46:27]
B
Crazy, honestly, why would she include that even if it were true?
[46:32]
A
Well, that actually, that I think is a good central question for this book to me, actually is quite a bit of evidence about why she needs to just let politics go. Like it is not for you, this score settling. And look, I was with her, like the thing that came out about Biden, I was like, she got done dirty by Biden. I'm with her on that. But this book is a burn the boats, all you guys type book. And if, if she thinks that she comes back as the nominee by doing this, I would say that this is the kind of instincts that really ste.
[47:10]
B
I don't think she thinks that. Do you?
[47:14]
A
I don't know. I. I hope, I hope. I assume this is the burn the boats of I settle my scores and I move on. Because Josh Shapiro does have a political future and the fact that she did try to shiv him on the way out, it's not, it's not because I'm so pro Shapiro in this regard. It's because it's. I mean, you guys, the Democrats, if you guys cannot figure out how to be on the same team in this way, it is, it is wild how much Democrats tear each other apart in the face of the sort of authoritarian. You think we, you think we, by being critical at times of Democrats, are the ones trying to get like, sorry, guys, nobody is doing a bigger job of crapping on other Democrats than the Democrats are in these internas and fights.
[48:03]
C
And by the way, I'm actually okay with, I'm okay with that. I mean, as long as it's being productive, which it isn't in some of the cases. Right. But to me, one of the biggest criticisms I have, the Democratic establishment, and I lump myself in there, all of us is like, the fear of Trump brought about a lot of caution. Right. I just think that, I think that the fear of Trump led a lot of people to be like, you know, I don't want to say what I really think about Biden or Kamala because I don't want to be seen as helping Trump, which is, I think, a totally defensible thing. And this is my advice, by the way, to Pete or to any Democrat who gets asked these questions about podcasts about why didn't you say anything about Biden? Is to just be like, bro, it was a tough situation. I'm sorry, it was a tough situation. Like, obviously, I wish we didn't have an 82 year old candidate and I wish you would have done it one term at the same Time. The threat from Trump was great. He'd already beaten him once. Like, like creating a lot of indecision or creating a lot of chaos didn't seem like a good alternate option in retrospect, as we saw the debate, obviously, I think he, you know, it would have been better for him not to run. When I saw him in person, like, he wasn't knocking on all cylinders, but, like, he seemed like he was doing the job. And in retrospect, it was a mistake, but I think it was a close call. And, like, and, and I just. And that's where we are. I think that's a legitimate thing for people to say, because I just think that's the truth about what happened with Biden.
[49:25]
A
Well, it's true. We know it's true because we were in this position, right? Like, I, I listened to voters over and over again. Jbl and I would have this argument on the secret pod where I was like, he shouldn't run. The voters don't want him to run. They think he's too old. But, like, you turn over, like, but he's the incumbent and like, incumbency matters and name id and like I said, he shouldn't run. He shouldn't run up until they basically, like, they came out and they're like, he's doing it once they. And this is why the blame lies with them and the people around them. They forced it. And people who didn't want Donald Trump to be president had no choice, basically, but to, like, okay, like, he's the guy.
[50:05]
C
Except for.
[50:06]
B
Yeah, I'm sorry, I need to.
[50:07]
C
I think it was defensible. But I just mean in retrospect, I guess. JVL Sorry, just really quick. In retrospect, he won. So now with the benefit of hindsight, looking back on it, probably the right thing to do was for more people to have been speaking out about Biden before the debate and doing what Bill Kristol and others were doing. And probably the right thing to do was for more people to be doing what Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi were doing after Biden dropped out and say, hey, let's kick the tires on this. Let's be careful. But, but there was a big pressure campaign and a big social pressure campaign to not do that because you didn't want to be seen as helping Trump. And I'm. And I don't. Again, I think that that's all really defensible. I just mean that, like, now we know. So the lesson, I think, should be that probably we, everybody should have been More self critical and more.
[50:50]
A
It was not defensible after the debate.
[50:52]
B
I'm sorry, I need to step in, I need step in here because, Sarah, I think you are selling yourself short. And I want to be very clear because I did sit with you for like nine hours of podcasts a week. During this period of time, you thought that Biden shouldn't run because, A, he was too old, but more importantly because voters thought he was too old.
[51:15]
A
Yeah.
[51:16]
B
And then once he said he was running, you did not suddenly stop saying that.
[51:22]
A
No, that's true.
[51:23]
B
You did not. So, no, I just want to, like, it is not the case that you swallowed the whistle and changed your tune. This is what I'm saying. You were telling the truth the whole time. I just want to, I'm just trying to defend you here because it is what. I don't want anybody to get the sense that once he decided to run, you just decided to say, well, I guess everything is great because you didn't do that. No, you are totally honest the entire time. And that, that is not. You were not switching and just being like, well, I gotta be on side because we don't want to help Trump. That is not how you conducted yourself. And I don't think it's how any of us conducted ourselves. But you were absolutely truthful and transparent about your analysis at all times. And I just don't want anybody to get to say that you weren't because I'm very sensitive about that.
[52:10]
A
I actually think you're right that the whole time was like, they hate them both. They all think he's too old. No, I told the truth, certainly around the voters, but I did feel the pressure of like, the way that I wanted him to perform at like the State of the Union and what I wasn't doing, what I wasn't doing. So I'm always honest about what I hear from voters. What I wasn't doing was what Bill Kristol did, which was when Dean Phillips ran against him. I was like, what the shit is this guy doing? Like, what are we going to do this right now? Like, actually, that's the part that I would say. I was like, and I think I said at the time, which is like, what are we going to do? Dean Phillips was out there being like, joe Biden is, is, is. What did he say? He's like, he's attacking democracy or he's a threat to democracy. And I was like, having somebody in the Democratic primary just constantly crapping on Biden is unhelpful for Democrats. Like I thought they should get the cane out for him.
[53:16]
C
That was also true, though, at the time. That was unhelpful.
[53:18]
A
Yeah, no, no, no.
[53:19]
B
It was unhelpful and it wasn't true. Like, Dean Phillips was saying things that simply weren't true and also that ultimately didn't move the needle. If Dean Phillips had never decided to run, Biden still would have wound up dropping out because he had a health event at a national debate in front of 50 million people. So again, like, I don't want to give Dean Phillips any credit for, for this. I mean, I guess good for him for running. I know you do, but he ran in a counterproductive way by making charges about Biden that were at best uncharitable and at worst not true. Biden wasn't a threat to democracy. What he was, was he. He was a guy who was too old to do the job of waging a vigorous campaign.
[54:03]
C
I want to say one more thing about the Kamala book. The last 15 minutes of this podcast is a nice case for. Against doing the book. It's a nice case against doing the book. Yeah, like, we weren't playing. I don't, I didn't want to fucking relive Dean Phillips today. But, like, you just keep going down this path, right? Like, you know, and nobody did. And so she has a right to do what she wants and speak. But it, And I would, I would love to talk to her about it. Like I said in the Kamala vs Biden part of this, I could not be more on Team Kamala. And I think in the grand scheme of things, her, like, performance as a candidate was quite good. I think some of the strategy around the campaign was not in retrospect, but this book. It's just like, why there aren't a lot of good examples. People say, well, candidates always write a book after not like this. I mean, usually what you would do in a book is kind of talk about the future, talk about, like the fight against Trump. Maybe you do a little bit of this. Maybe you throw in a couple of the. Couple of the Biden things just because you want to get it off the decks. You know what I mean? But for the most part, candidate books aren't like this. For the most part, the books like this are the books that like Alex Thompson or John Heileman write. John Heileman writes this book.
[55:16]
B
This is a score settling book.
[55:17]
C
Yeah. And that's. I don't. And I'm just not sure the value of it, I guess is my point. I would be Happy to hear from her on what the counterargument to that would be.
[55:26]
B
Second question, final question for both of.
[55:29]
C
You still on this.
[55:30]
B
Yes. Do you think there's anything that could have been done different that gets you to a different outcome?
[55:37]
C
I think yes. I talked to Bakari about this yesterday.
[55:40]
B
Okay.
[55:40]
C
I think absolutely, yes. I don't know what it is, actually. I have theories. I have theories for sure. But I think.
[55:48]
A
Wait, where do we start? Like, do you mean if Biden. Everything happens the same up until Biden's health event on stage, he. Is there a way to get dive bombs the debate?
[55:59]
B
Right.
[56:01]
C
I mean, I think it's possible. I think. I don't like. Right. Could we do a political science experiment where we rerun Shapiro Whitmer? Sure. Is that a loss? Probably. I think that's probably a loss too. I just want to say I don't know for sure, but I don't. I think we should. I think it would be interesting. We should have at least tried it. We should at least thought about it. That stifled the conversation around that. I think that Kamala doing something more dramatic to shore up concerns around people that are traditionally in the Democratic coalition, non college voters of color, men in particular, like, they knew. They didn't. It wasn't a secret. They were weak. We talked about this a lot. Like I said at the beginning, I think that there was a lot. There's this feeling of box checking and now I feel like we kind of get blamed, which is. Well, Kamala did a good job of reaching out to the Never Trumpers. The whole time I was saying, like, we're only one little part here. Like I. And we're probably already with you. Like, like the Never Trumper types, college educated suburban Republicans were like Kamala's strongest soldiers. Right. So, like, they didn't need to work that hard to get us, you know. And so I just, I don't. Like, I threw this out with Bakari. I'm like, and this is. I know people are like, me and JBL's version of Shapiro is Mark Cuban. And I'm like, had she picked Cuban and had him going out there doing fucking Theo Vaughan and Rogan and just talking dude talk and talking crypto talk. And would that have helped? Would that have maybe been enough to sneak out four of those seven states? I'm not going to say no to that. That maybe would have helped if Kamala, like, gone. You know, Kamala did so well in that debate. If they'd been. Put herself in more situations to be outside to prove her mettle because I think that she did it on that one debate stage. I said this at the time, so this is not a new thing. I said she should have accepted the Fox debate. Like, could you imagine if she'd gone in there and Brett Baer is moderating a fucking rigged debate against her and she still does. Well, might that have changed views? Maybe not. But I just think that, I guess anybody that says, oh, I don't think we should have done anything differently, it was hopeless, I think is wrong. I think that had somebody from the future gone back and told David Plouffe and Commonwealth that they're going to lose if they run their playbook, I think maybe they try something different that would have worked.
[58:18]
B
Sarah.
[58:20]
A
I agree that I think she could have done. I think they could have made much more bold VP choice than a unknown governor with a pretty progressive record, because they already had someone with a pretty progressive record. But more importantly, I just think the biggest mistake that they made, although I gotta say, watching her do Maddow, I was like, she, these are not her best. Like, this is not her best format. Like I actually, in my head now, she is better than she performs in those conversations because she really rose to the occasion in some of those big high pressure moments. But she wasn't visible the rest of the time. Like they really did play a super cautious campaign. And I think at the end of the day, had she just been out there, wheels off and there's sort of two things. One, she goes everywhere, does everything, doesn't prep for the debate for two weeks behind closed doors, that kind of stuff. Like you didn't have that kind of time, everyone needed to know you. And then two, you take a flamethrower to Joe Biden's record. Like he, you say like the stuff she says in the book. And, and I'll tell you this, actually, speaking of analysis that I feel like I missed on, somebody called me after the View thing and was like, do you think the fact that she's not distant herself from Biden is like, you know, like, and about that specific answer. And I was like, I don't know. I think people think she's pretty different from Biden. But in retrospect, I think that was wrong. I think that the extent to which voters felt lied to by Biden and the people around him about his age was all over the data. They felt lied to, they felt betrayed. They felt like that people weren't being straight with, with them. And I understand, like the easy answer to that is like oh, so they chose a con man who'd been indicted all these times and tried to do an insurrection. That is. I'm sympathetic to that response, Extremely sympathetic to that response, but still, like, that was. That was the problem.
[60:25]
C
I want to throw out one more that I was wrong on because I did get my dander up when she was talking about lethality, and I was for all that. But, like, again, and knowing what we know now with a retrospect, should they have had a Gaza person on the. At the convention? And could and should she have. It was a way to distance herself. I think there are ways to distance herself from Biden on popular things. And. And I know that people in our circles wouldn't have liked it that much, and there would have been, you know, railing people on cable news on the center. Right. Talking about whatever, how she's a commie, but with actual voter numbers. My night, distancing from Biden a. She should have distanced from Biden. This was something I had. Right. We were saying at the time she should have. And it's horrible that Biden didn't let her. And the one. If you could ask me to change one thing, I would say I would force Joe Biden to have a meeting with Kamala Harris in Delaware the day she takes it, where he says, kid, throw me on the train tracks. You gotta go win this for the country. That's the number one thing I would have changed. And he's like, I'll help you do it, by the way. And I'll go do an interview with my favorite interviewer where I tell them that you were telling me behind the scenes that I was. I was wrong on this one, but maybe Gaza should have been one of the things that he threw in. She threw in there. Maybe not. But I just. I think that's. I think that bears mentioning is another thing. So I don't know all those things. Could. Could one of the. Could that have mattered? It wasn't that big of a blowout. It could have mattered. I don't. I think the idea that it was a fait accompli is. Is wrong.
[61:53]
B
Sarah, before we go to hour six of this show, would you like to give us a word from our next sponsor?
[61:58]
A
This show is sponsored by Remy. Look, we're all busy and a bit stressed right now as we try to save democracy and keep living our lives. And when I'm stressed, I can be a bit of a teeth grinder, a teeth clencher.
[62:11]
C
Me too.
[62:13]
A
Yeah, it's a bad. But I was able to find A night guard that very conveniently did not require a dentist visit with Remy. In fact, my producer and I did it together in my office. So approximately 30% of US adults grind or clench their teeth at night. Remy's custom night guards are clinically tested to prevent teeth grinding, reduce jaw tension and facial muscle strain, and improve your sleep quality. You'll get the same professional quality and comfort as a night guard from the dentist, but remy costs you 80% less and is much more convenient than having to go into the dentist's office and get one. And as an added cost benefit, you can use your HSA or FSA credits toward your night guard at checkout. Here's how it works. You get your impression kit straight to your door. That's what happened. It came to my office. You follow Remy's step by step instructions to get your perfect impression. It's just, you know, they. You put the stuff in. You put it in your mouth, you close your teeth, and then Remy crafts and ships you your custom fit nightguard. So you, like, mail it back. You mail it to them, and then they, like, get it all ready and they send it back to you. So no waiting rooms, no overpriced bills. Just a better way to protect your teeth while you sleep. Try Remy risk free. So go to shopremi.com thenextlevel and use code thenextlevel to get up to 50% off your night guard at checkout. And I gotta say, Remy, as somebody who has given myself TMJ with my horrible gnashing of my teeth, and I do have jaw pain, including up here. It hurts up here from I'm clenching my teeth so hard. And so this was a great, great sponsor to get. Thanks, Remy, for sponsoring this show.
[63:54]
B
Theo Vaughn is a person whose name I often hear and who. I have no idea who he is, but I think he's a friend you haven't met yet, Tim, Are you and Theo buddies yet or.
[64:05]
C
No, we've met.
[64:06]
B
Isn't he in Louisiana?
[64:07]
C
Yeah, we've met a couple times. I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that. We're buddies. We're not. Not buddies. You know, we've met at big group social settings and chatted a little bit, and I find Theo very funny. I wish that he did less politics. I wish he did no politics. He's got a podcast, like an interview show, basically like a Rogan show that is, like, quite good when it's just weird stuff like where he's interviewing. Like, he interviewed this Amish kid recently, and that was hilarious. Like he interviews comedians. You know, I listened to the whole three hours he did with Mark Cuban before I interviewed Cuban and I thought it was like kind of an interesting and fun interview when they were talking about like whatever, basketball and crypto and being dudes and whatever. But he just isn't a politics person. And he got thrust into politics by, you know, getting by the Trump campaign. Smart effort to reach out to this world and put Trump out there and have him do these interviews. And, and he found himself, I mean, basically pro Trump, essentially. I mean, being pro Trump, not like maga hat pro Trump, but pro Trump. Because like Trump and them were coming on and like they were working them and he was promoting them and he's not great at those interview because he can't do what you have to do with politician interviews, which is when they tell you alive to be like, well, that's not right. That's how you do a politician interview. And Donald Trump lies all the time. And the ovan never says that's not right. That's not the nature of the interview. It's supposed to be a fucking comedy show where he makes quips and stuff. And so anyway, it was noteworthy this, this thing this morning just because it's part of this broader. What do we want to call it? Broader sense of disillusionment. I think among the softer, more bro y parts of the Trump coalition, like not, not Ben Shapiro, right. Not. Not turning Point people obviously we saw over the weekend. But like the comedians, the frat bros. I had a guy from barstool on the YouTube page this week. I'm going to try to do more of that. He's kind of a non ideological person. He voted for Chase Oliver. I find this very eye rolly. But frankly, if more of the Barstool bros voted for Chase Oliver instead of Donald Trump, maybe we'd be in a better shape right now. So, you know, anyway, Theo, on his list of things that he's pissed about is the DHS put out a tweet that just said bye and then plays a clip of him talking about saying at the top, heard you got deported, dude. By. And I, I can remember this clip of him. I think he's being funny. I don't like, I don't think it was actually about like a person that was actually deported. I don't actually know the, the what the. But I remember seeing it. He's making a joke. He's like, heard you got deported, dude. Bye. DHS plays that clip and then lists all the people they've deported 2 million people, and they do the stuff, Film stuff that they're doing. And Theo quote, tweets that with, I didn't approve to be used in this. Please take this down. Please keep me out of your, quote, banger deportation videos. When it comes to immigration, my thoughts and heart are a lot more nuanced than this video allows. Bye. And I just, I think that stuff is good and we should encourage it and we should remember that there are big parts of the Trump voting coalition that are, you know, maybe didn't use the best judgment in the last election and have some views we probably don't agree with on a bunch of stuff, but also aren't really on board for a maga, a MAGA dictator, aren't really on board for the grossest parts of the deportation regime, aren't really on board for a series of the types of policies that they're putting forth. And so, you know, I would just.
[67:47]
A
And just before JBL goes, I would just like to say there's a lot more Theo Vaughans, I think, in this country than there are, like, fascists. Like, I think Trump and Jason Miller and that whole cabinet are filled with fascists. But, like, I actually think a lot of the people who voted for Trump, like, Theo Vaughn's kind of the purse kind of person that I. I don't defend exactly, but that I think is sort of a. Well, like, they lie to him, right? And he doesn't know enough to know he's being lied to, which I think is a lot of voters, right? They don't know when Trump says, but I'm going to lower grocery prices and I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. And, like, and. And they hear things like, well, I'm just going to deport criminals. Like, you can judge Theo Vaughn for his poor choices. And I have, I have some judgment there, especially for people who go ahead and jump into the fray and inform other people's opinions. But I do think he's pretty representative of a lot of voters who voted for Trump who were like, I don't know, man. I got two bad choices in my, like, in their heads, I got two bad choices, and I'm gonna choose the one who's more free speech and the one, like, more free speech, who I think's better for the economy and more free speech. No, I know, but. But that's what they told themselves, right? And that's how Donald Trump ran. And like, I will say just then, I guess my pushback on Tim, though, Is like, yes, we should be glad. We should be. But he's really saying something because he's getting pulled into this, right? And so, like, that is good. Honestly, though, I think that the Theo Vaughns and the Joe Rogans should be hair on fire because Donald Trump is making them look like idiots right now. Like, they should be really pushing back and being like, guys, this was my bed. Like, what is happening? I. I did not realize this is where, like, I think they have an obligation as people with big megaphones. Like, I don't think they can retreat into a. Just. But I'm a comedian or. But I just. I'm only mad because I'm getting thrown into this video and it's personal. Personally affronting me. Feel like they should be out there saying this is wrong and, like, Rogan is doing some of that, but not in a my bad, fam. We got it.
[70:02]
C
We got it.
[70:02]
A
We got to push back.
[70:03]
C
He's dumb on a bunch of stuff. Epstein not being the war president. You know, the deportation stuff. I guess free speech. Free speech on a big series of issues. Trump's made them look very dumb. Like, that was their core. This is what I asked Kirk Minahan when I had him yesterday. I was like, the core issues of all these guys are like, were the free speech stuff. Right? And then they also cared about Epstein. I think a lot of them were really drawn to Trump over the no war stuff. And then I think also they like, kind of the traditional get the government off my back elements, and I'm like, three of those four things. Trump is making them look really fucking dumb. And maybe four out of four.
[70:39]
B
Yeah, well, I don't. I don't want to be in the business of pushing away somebody who might eventually be an ally against fascism. So I have nothing else to add about Theo Vaughn. Welcome, Theo. Friend I just haven't met yet.
[70:58]
C
I'm not sure he's. Well, I'm not sure he wants to be welcomed quite yet. So I don't know if we're quite unwelcome, but maybe.
[71:03]
B
Great to have you on our side. Do you understand how the Internet works? That DHS doesn't have to ask you to sign off on shit you've published to include it in their tweets? Do you. Do you understand how that works? They don't owe you a check. No, no.
[71:14]
A
But actually, you raised something. Can we. I don't think people talk enough about how batshit crazy the government's official tweets are. Their accounts are insane and say insane Things. It's like, yes, but fascist, but also just like childish, dumb, irresponsible. Like all of the things. They are like these little snuff films. They're insane. No, no serious government would be putting this stuff out.
[71:50]
B
Well, I mean, we don't have a serious government.
[71:52]
A
That's true. But I just, I just. The fascism by meme thing that we're living through, I think is this is why it's like more disorienting. People are like, we're in 1932 or whatever. I'm like, kind of. But like, this time it's all like wrapped in a layer of irony and memeified. And it's very difficult to get a handle on the same way.
[72:17]
B
There was a lot of that in 1935 too, though. A lot of cartoons of guys with huge hook noses and the creation of the Volkish movement and the elevation of the. The Norse God Zoltan as a, you know, an avatar of the German people. I mean, that's the thing. These. When you get up close in history, a lot of this stuff looks ridiculous. Like, you know, the. When you get to see it, to see to its pores, you know, and that's something that I think I did not. I think I know I did not fully appreciate soon enough in this moment.
[73:05]
C
Big learnings I had when I started reading Nazi Nazi material again as a grown man.
[73:13]
B
All right, so, you know, I'm glad the Avon is upset that DHS didn't ask his permission to use his video. He might have gotten upset over the Secretary of Health and Human Services and Commissioner of the FDA and the President United States standing around and saying that they're ready to cure autism and that Tylenol causes autism and that women shouldn't be weak when they're pregnant by taking Tylenol. This seems to me to be a pretty bad moment for the federal government and another data point in the fact that our government is no longer a vector, a vector for reliable, like, information about, like, not just like political information, but just normal information about medicine and disease and those sorts of things. Am I the only one with my hair on fire? The three of us have not talked about this at all.
[74:07]
A
Tylenol should sue him to Timbuktu and back. Acetaminophen is in like 600 different things. And so he's name checking, like, one brand. And yes, the level of irresponsibility. And like, also not rigorous science. Like, and it's not even. It's just like Trump is just like. I heard a rumor I feel the biggest megaphone in the world. You should all be embarrassed for voting for this guy.
[74:39]
C
I thought we were just welcoming Theo Vaughn into the club. Sorry, sorry.
[74:42]
B
You know what? I take it, Theo, I am so sorry, buddy. Let's go get a Bloomin Onion. We'll talk about all this stuff. Maybe talk some sports, talk some World Series.
[74:50]
A
You do get to come back in. We should welcome people. But they should feel ashamed that they voted for this freaking moron.
[74:58]
C
Yeah, it's bad. I have talked about it a bunch. I mean, it's just. I don't even know what else to say. And it's dangerous. It's. It's like it's the most vipish thing that they've done. I worry that it's the kind of thing that in, like, 10 years, people go back and they're like, that will. That happened. Like, that's the weird part about our time. Right? Like, if that. If this had happened in the Bush administration, like, we should still be something everybody talked about, you know, I. You know, it'd be a memorable tent pole event. And I wonder if it will be. I hope it will, because we talk.
[75:22]
B
About the grocery scanner. We still talk about the grocery. Scanner. Remember that?
[75:26]
C
Yeah. You didn't know how grocery scanner worked. Meanwhile, we have the President of the United States just spitball. And I'm hearing what's happening in Cuba is that they don't have autism. It's like, what? From who? He can't even say the word. Acetaminophen, which was the premise of the press conference. Apparently they looked at, like, 20 different studies of various things and. And Trump and just wanted to do something on this, and RFK did. So they just. This is one that they went with. You know, they didn't pick the one about the geriatric sperm, obviously, the old man. Old men's sperm. That may be an issue here. They didn't pick that one. They picked this one because it goes after women and whatever. But Trump didn't even take the time to learn what it's called.
[75:58]
A
So.
[75:58]
C
I don't know. Jbl, I think you've been really good on this. I'd like to just put a quarter in your machine and hear what you have to say.
[76:03]
B
It's. Maybe I'm. Maybe I am going too far with this, but this feels like it is of a piece with the broader ethno nationalism and that this is part of this dysgenic movement, which I think is behind a lot of the hatred of gay and trans people as well. Like they just want these people to go away. And a thing which I forget which one of them it was. I think it was the FDA guy said at the press conference that it's, you know, it's hard to look at some of these kids with severe autism. I'm just like you, fuck you. It's hard to look at these kids any. Again. This is not a straight line. He repeated it a few times. They're, they're just kids. This is, they do not have autism. They are autistic. They did not catch a virus. They did not. Nothing happened to them. They do not have a disease. This is who they are. And what I don't get over your own discomfort and just like open your arms up and love people. I, ah, it makes me very, very angry. And this idea that like autism is an epidemic which they talked about over and over and over again is rfk. It's so self evidently stupid that I don't understand why people fall for it.
[77:34]
C
Right.
[77:34]
B
So, so autism. We have four times the rate of autism diagnoses as we did 30 years ago. And that is because we've expanded the diagnostic criteria of what we count as asd, Autism Spectrum Disorder. And, and also we have radically increased the screening now. It's, it's largely done through school systems. It is like saying, well, nobody before 13, the year 1300 ever got pancreatic cancer because we didn't know what pancreatic cancer was. But it's all, and this is what gets me. It's all exactly like the. Well, if you don't test for Covid, there are no Covid cases.
[78:15]
C
Yeah.
[78:17]
B
And I don't. But it's the reverse. It's the reversed idiocy. And I don't understand why people accept it, like why anybody accepts it, why anybody falls for this bullshit. And it makes me pretty mad because like life is tough enough. Like if you are a totally normal person in every way, like you are 5 foot 8 and with the average IQ and if you are a perfectly normal person, you're right handed. Average IQ to family, home, median income, et cetera, et cetera, like it's still hard finding your, your way in the world. For anybody who is an outlier along anyway, if they're neurodivergent, if their parents are divorced, if they grew up poor, if they're seven feet tall, fuck, if you're left handed. Right. There are these little things about the world, necessary system around us that make finding your place harder and for people with the most power and privilege to try to other and make it even harder for these kids and their families. It just, it drives me nuts and it's something I see in my life. I told a story in the Triad yesterday about a. A church I used to go to where there was a grown woman with who's autistic and she and her mother would come to mass every Sunday and they would sit in this chapel in the back of the church which had these glass doors in front of it. And it was a lovely little place. I think it's because this, this woman did a lot of stimming, right? So she had a lot of tics and grunts and motions. I think they felt a little self conscious about that. And I used to like to go and when I was at the 10 o' clock service, which is when, when they used to go, I would just go and sit in the chapel with them. Like not like next to them or creepy or anything, but just sit around because I thought like, I don't want to feel alone. Right? They don't feel like, like they've been bothered. And we got a maga priest who came in and he just really didn't like it. He didn't like having these women around and he drove them out. And that is the thing you see from priests even. And I would say this is not the only time I have seen other instances in which priests are not super into having special needs people in their lives. And I just, it. It drives me nuts because if you even get that from, from the Catholic Church, my people, like what hope is there for any of us? Like what hope is there from society? Yay. That's all I have. Sarah.
[80:43]
C
Yeah, they also have been lying about it too. There's. They're smearing it and othering them and also. And that top of it, it's like they're not just going after. I just like to add that they're not just going after the autistic people, they're going after the mothers.
[80:57]
A
The mothers, yes. This was, this was the only thing I was going to add, but Donald Trump telling women to tough it out. Pregnant women. Donald Trump, Captain Bone Spurs. Captain Bone spurs, who said that avoiding gonorrhea was his personal Vietnam. Talking to women not only who, like it's not just the way he talks about them. Like you shouldn't take this, you know, if you've got a fever while you're pregnant, et cetera, et cetera. There are a lot of people I know, I've got friends who've got autistic kids and those parents fight for those kids every day. And many of those kids, some of them will get to live on their own, some of them won't be able to. And those parents sit with fear all the time about whether or not it was their fault and what's going to happen to their kids when they're gone. And for Donald Trump to just pop off, just be like it's this thing. No real evidence. I'm hearing and I'm hearing and just because, and then he, and then he provides a mountain of like disinformation evidence. Like Amish people don't get it. Cuba, just insane stuff to put that pain in people's hearts, thinking that maybe they did it through some casual thing and also for it to turn them again against scientific community. Like why wasn't somebody telling us this? Why didn't we know? I just think this is stuff is like the banality of evil where like it's stupid and it's idiotic, but like it is evil and causing people a lot of pain right now. And as is always the case, people of good faith. Like I see some of the anti antis again pipe up once to say he shouldn't do this and they go back to defending.
[82:54]
B
Somebody used the word messy to describe it was a messy press conference.
[82:58]
A
No, this is what he does every day. Today it's autism or it's, or it's, it's just figuring out Russia and Ukraine or it's bragging to the world leaders about how he's, there's a hat that says he's right about everything and how he's mad he didn't get to build the marble floors or he's trying to take people off the air. Like all of our topics today, they're all part and parcel of the same thing. These things are not taken individually. Together they amount to the worst human being to ever hold this office and who is doing an enormous amount of damage to individuals and the world. World.
[83:33]
B
Can I ask just, just a very quick forward looking question, then we'll get out of here because it's been a long show. How does a country, a government and a society, which are three different things, climb back from something like this? Because it will be all of our ministries of health and science which will have been corrupted by this. Right. We will have gotten to the point where these offices are riddled with people like Bobby Kennedy and they will be in positions all up and down the line throughout HHS and the CDC and the nih. We will have had to set up basically adversarial private organizations for getting out correct information, like physicians, groups, and scientifically, which are, which will be functionally adversarial to the government. We will have had to say to the entire country, you cannot trust the things the government is saying about this stuff. And so what, like a switch flips four years from now or eight years from now or something, and everyone's just like, hey, we're all good. We're back to normal. I don't, I just, I don't understand. I don't understand the climb down.
[84:50]
A
It's a fair question and a fair concern. Here's my 1.
[84:54]
C
It's also a big question to ask 82 minutes into the podcast.
[84:57]
A
It is. It is.
[84:58]
C
Can you guys do that one on Secret? Can we just do this on Secret? Why don't we do that? This is a tease. We have a secret podcast for members only, and this is a great topic for you guys to discuss on that.
[85:08]
B
And, Sarah, your baseline answer is, yes, we can. And I'm going to tell you how on Friday.
[85:15]
A
All right, fine. Sure. We can leave it there.
[85:19]
B
Good show. Long show, everybody. We'll see you at the secret show on Friday. Good luck, America.
[85:25]
C
Bye.
[85:25]
A
Bye.

Summary9 min read

Podcast Summary: The Next Level

Episode: 1018: Theo Von is DONE with Sicko ICE “Snuff Film”! Kimmel Says HELL NO! | The Next Level
Date: September 24, 2025
Hosts: Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller, Jonathan V. Last (JVL)

Episode Overview

This episode dives into a whirlwind week in American politics and culture, focusing on President Trump's ongoing battles with the media (notably Jimmy Kimmel), free speech issues, Trump's evolving Ukraine policy, Kamala Harris's new book and the VP selection debate, the administration's handling of autism and Tylenol, pop culture intersections (Theo Von and DHS), and the dangers of governmental propaganda. The hosts bring their trademark blend of sharp analysis, frustration, and wit to break down the news and its broader societal implications.

Key Discussion Points

1. Jimmy Kimmel, Trump, and Free Speech

Trump’s “testing ABC” and FCC threats: The hosts unpack Trump's veiled threats toward ABC after Jimmy Kimmel’s return, suggesting attempts at intimidation for personal or political gain ([00:28]-[03:51]).
- Quote (Tim Miller, 01:31):
  “He’s testing out a new form of trial lawyer authoritarianism…squeezing as much money out of them as possible. Maybe it’s just straight kleptocracy.”
Campaign contributions as projection: Trump labeling positive media coverage of Democrats as “illegal campaign contributions” reflects his recurring projection tactics ([02:35]-[03:51]).
- Quote (Sarah Longwell, 03:01):
  “If being kind to one candidate and mean to another was a campaign contribution and not free speech, Fox News wouldn't be allowed to exist.”
Lesson from the Kimmel pushback: When companies don't cave to Trump's pressure and the public backs them up, his attempts fail ([03:55]-[05:49]).
- Quote (Sarah Longwell, 05:12):
  “The first is when you cave to this guy, he will come back for more. The second is when the public pushes back hard enough…they uncave.”
Kimmel as a “front-lines” free speech voice: Praise for Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue as compassionate, defiant, and effective; discussion compares comedians' roles in resistance to figures like Zelensky ([05:52]-[08:08]).
- Quote (Sarah, 06:49):
  “Why not somebody like Kimmel in 2028?... I’m not sure that’s not what America needs right now.”
Contrast with other late-night hosts and the importance of refusing to bend: Kimmel’s refusal to apologize under pressure is highlighted ([09:00]-[09:46]).

2. Corruption, Media Mergers, and Populist Blowback

Potential media corruption and the Nextar merger: The conversation frames current media consolidation and political bullying as corruption, evoking the anti-corruption legacy of figures like Navalny ([10:00]-[11:47]).
Trump’s open admissions: Trump’s frankness about bullying and threatening those critical of him is called out; his “own goal” tweets make it hard for media defenders to claim plausible deniability ([12:35]-[12:59]).
- Quote (Sarah Longwell, 12:39):
  “My favorite genre of Trump tweet is where he hangs all those people out to dry by saying, I did it, I'm going to do it again.”

3. Foreign Policy: UN Speech & Ukraine Flip-Flop

Trump’s UN message: The perception that Trump is signaling the end of the “American order at the UN” and championing lawless nationalism ([13:28]-[14:41]).
Ukraine policy shift: Trump suddenly expresses public support for Ukraine’s right to win back territory, contradicting prior administration stances ([14:41]-[18:48]).
- Quote (Sarah Longwell, 17:14):
  “He’s just now, and I quote, ‘getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine, Russia, military and economic situation.’ Somebody give this guy a Nobel Peace Prize.”
Host skepticism: Doubt about policy permanence. Trump’s self-admitted ignorance is called “alarming” ([16:39]-[18:48]).

4. GOP, Ukraine, and Public Opinion Buckets

Three groups described:
- Pro-Ukraine, anti-Trump
- Pro-Ukraine, pro-Trump (tiny)
- MAGA/Isolationist, skeptical or hostile to Ukraine
Nuance within MAGA: Many “normie” GOP voters are “America First”—they just don’t want to spend money abroad, not necessarily rooting for Russia ([24:14]-[25:32]).
Malleability of public opinion: Many are at the mercy of Trump’s cues, unlikely to hold him accountable for the flip-flop ([26:11]-[27:46]).
- Quote (Tim Miller, 27:06):
  “If 5% of the MAGA movement gets mad, that’s still 3 million people... but I don’t see that happening.”

5. Kamala Harris’s Book, VP Drama, and Identity Politics

Kamala’s comments on picking Pete Buttigieg: Harris discusses her rationale for not choosing Pete, citing possible risk with two minorities on the ticket ([31:56]-[35:17]).
- Clip (Kamala Harris, 33:28):
  “I think Pete is a phenomenal, phenomenal public servant, and I think America is and would be ready for that. But…maybe I was being too cautious.”
Host critique of Democratic identity balancing: Tim and Sarah criticize the “scorecard” mentality—balancing tickets for optics rather than capability ([35:17]-[37:37]).
- Quote (Sarah Longwell, 37:10):
  “Not the strongest communicator with the best communicator in the party is actually quite a good pairing.”
Did the VP decision reflect demographic data or excess caution?: Tim argues it was a rational, if uninspired, move considering the risk aversion and concerns about backlash from non-college/non-white/male voters ([40:37]-[44:07]).
- Quote (Tim Miller, 40:38):
  “Democrats have had a major problem with non college voters… [and] higher negative views about gay issues map across a lot of our other culture war stuff.”
Primary process and blame allocation: Sarah maintains that a primary or “shotgun primary” would have positioned the ticket better, improving legitimacy and trust ([44:08]-[45:55]).
Kamala’s “burn the boats” memoir: The hosts find her book overly focused on score-settling and suggest it’s a wrong move politically ([46:32]-[55:15]).

6. Could Dems Have Won? The Monday Morning QB Section

What could have changed the election?
- Bolder VP pick (Mark Cuban, Shapiro floated)
- Kamala more aggressive in distancing from Biden
- More direct outreach to non-college, non-white, and male voters
- Taking public stands on divisive issues like Gaza ([55:28]-[61:52])
- Quote (Sarah Longwell, 58:19):
  “She wasn’t visible the rest of the time…the biggest mistake…they played a super cautious campaign.”

7. Theo Von & Government Propaganda

Theo Von protests ICE’s use of his video: DHS used his comedic clip in a deportation tweet. Theo objects and expresses nuanced feelings about immigration, highlighting how entertainers get enfolded into political controversy ([63:54]-[67:46]).
- Quote (Theo Von, 66:24):
  “Please keep me out of your ‘banger deportation videos.’ When it comes to immigration, my thoughts…are a lot more nuanced than this…”
Populist/“bro” disillusionment: Discussion over the kinds of Trump voters represented by Theo—non-ideological, easily misled, not hardcore MAGA. These voters may now be alienated by the most extreme policies ([67:46]-[70:38]).
Call for influencers to do more: Sarah urges these figures to use their platforms to correct the record and state broader moral objections, not just protect their own brands ([67:46]-[70:03]).
DHS’s “batshit crazy” social media: The hosts lament the memeified, childish nature of official government comms under Trump ([71:14]-[72:17]).
- Quote (Sarah Longwell, 71:14):
  “I don’t think people talk enough about how batshit crazy the government's official tweets are. Their accounts are insane and say insane things. It's like, yes, but fascist, but also just childish, dumb, irresponsible…”

8. Depressing New Low: Government Spreads Autism Disinformation

Trump, Tylenol, and Autism: The administration claims Tylenol causes autism, standing alongside FDA/HHS officials, and referencing Cuba/Amish communities as evidence ([73:12]-[75:57]).
- Quote (JVL, 76:02):
  “This feels like it is of a piece with the broader ethno-nationalism and…dysgenic movement. They just want these people to go away.”
Profound harm to autistic people and parents: Personal stories and anguish over the misleading, stigmatizing, and cruel rhetoric from the highest levels of government, especially blaming pregnant women ([80:56]-[82:54]).
- Quote (Sarah Longwell, 81:00):
  “Those parents sit with fear all the time about whether or not it was their fault…For Trump to just pop off, just be like it’s this thing—no real evidence—it is evil and causing people a lot of pain.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

Tim Miller on Trump’s “Kleptocracy” | [01:31]
- “He’s just gonna bully these corporate suits to squeeze as much money out of them for as long as possible…maybe it’s just straight kleptocracy.”
Sarah Longwell on Free Speech | [03:01]
- “If being kind to one candidate and mean to another was a campaign contribution and not free speech, Fox News wouldn't be allowed to exist.”
Sarah Longwell on Public Pushback | [05:12]
- “When you cave to this guy, he will come back for more…when the public pushes back hard enough on companies that cave, they uncave.”
JVL on Kimmel’s Courage | [09:00]
- "The sine qua non here is that he has to refuse to bend the knee…And without that—and that takes a yard of guts."
Sarah Longwell’s Satirical Nobel Nomination | [17:14]
- “He’s just now, and I quote, ‘getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine, Russia…’ Somebody give this guy a Nobel Peace Prize.”
Sarah Longwell on Trump’s Admission | [12:39]
- “He says, I did it, I’m gonna do it again. I am threatening people because I don’t like when they criticize me, which he 100% says in this tweet.”
On the Cautious Kamala VP Strategy | [40:38]
- “Democrats have had a major problem with non college voters…And so I think…probably was smart not to pick Pete Buttigieg…But, they didn’t do anything else to appeal to that demographic.” (Tim Miller)
JVL’s Lament on Autistic People Stigmatized by Government | [76:02]
- “They did not catch a virus. They did not. Nothing happened to them. They do not have a disease. This is who they are…life is tough enough…and for people with the most power and privilege to try to other and make it even harder…it drives me nuts…”
Sarah Longwell on Government Memes vs. Seriousness | [71:14]
- “Their accounts are insane and say insane things. It’s like, yes, but fascist, but also just childish, dumb, irresponsible…They are like these little snuff films. They're insane. No serious government would be putting this stuff out.”

Flow & Tone

Throughout, the discussion is direct, occasionally dark, but leavened with biting humor, personal anecdotes, and moments where the hosts try to keep each other's morale (and the audience's) afloat. There is a clear sense of exhaustion with the “cacophony of crazy”—from the meme-fascism of government agencies, to the Trump camp’s constant projection, to the culture war fallout among the political classes and even comedians. The show cares deeply about calling out both dangers and absurdities, aiming to hold public figures accountable while wrestling with the limitations of the American political and media landscape.

Important Timestamps by Segment

Trump & Jimmy Kimmel Free Speech Battle: [00:28]-[09:46]
Corruption/Media Mergers/Nexstar/Nextar: [10:00]-[12:59]
Trump UN & Ukraine Flip-Flop: [13:28]-[18:48]
Ukraine, MAGA, GOP Voter Breakdown: [23:16]-[27:02]
Kamala Harris, VP Selection, Identity Politics: [31:56]-[55:15]
Could Dems Have Won? What Went Wrong/right: [55:28]-[62:12]
Theo Von, Bro Disillusionment, DHS Propaganda: [63:54]-[72:17]
Autism Disinformation & Societal Harm: [73:05]-[83:33]
How Does America Recover?: [83:33]-[85:18] (Preview for secret pod)

Closing Reflection

The episode encapsulates a week—maybe a year—where lines between political spectacle, moral panic, and dangerous policy have blurred. The Bulwark team analyzes why resistance to Trumpism matters, laments the failures of the Democratic establishment, scrutinizes shifting coalitions and public apathy, and focuses on the human cost of policy, all while continuing to push for accountability, nuance, and (occasionally) hope.

Visit www.thebulwark.com for more, and catch the next secret show for their take on possible paths out of the current crisis.

Loading summary

Transcript200 lines

[00:00]
A
I don't think people talk enough about how batshit crazy the government's official tweets are. Their accounts are insane and say insane things.
[00:16]
B
Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my best friends Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of the Bulwark Guys. It is Wednesday, and Jimmy Kimmel return to the.
[00:28]
A
Feel like I've lived a whole lifetime this week.
[00:30]
B
Tell me about it. Jimmy Kimmel returned to the air last night, which I don't really care about. I mean, that's not true. I do care about it. It's great victory for free speech. It's important to push back. Yay, liberalism. Yay, First Amendment. What interests me most is that our president then tweeted out on Truth Social. I think we're going to test ABC out on this. Let's see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 million. This one sounds even more lucrative. So I guess I have questions. The first being, are they testing out whether or not they're going to pull FCC licenses, which would not be lucrative for Trump, I don't think. Or is he going to test out a civil. Like, what does any of. Am I. Tim, you're, like, shaking your head at me. Am I just being too literal in trying to accept what the President says as, like, face value, being serious?
[01:31]
C
No, I was kind of. I was shaking my head like that, sure. That could be it. I just been, like. I was trying to think about, like, the right word to use because I think that he's testing out, like, a new form of, like, trial lawyer authoritarianism. I don't know. We can spitball this exactly how to lawsuit authoritarianism. Right? Because it's like, he's not. Is he really trying to get him taken off? I may be. You know, it's. It's. You got to, like, do the Kremlin ology of all these tweets. Or is this Trump just being like, I just am gonna bully people, bully these corporate suits to squeeze as much money out of them for as long as possible. And this is just a straight. I guess maybe it's just straight kleptocracy, you know, I don't know. To me, that's, like, the thing here. I don't know if anyone's tried this. I guess this might be a new innovation for Donald Trump where rather than pure. Rather than, you know, shutting down newspapers, he doesn't, like, just gets them to pay him bribes, like, in a kava bag.
[02:32]
B
Protection money.
[02:32]
C
Yeah. I don't know, Sarah, now, you were shaking Your head at me is that.
[02:36]
A
Yeah, well, I think that what Donald Trump is trying to do, right? So, so people, he has invented a new thing around campaign contributions. He made this argument about 60 Minutes. Like 60 Minutes is giving Kamala Harris a campaign contribution by editing her interview to make her sound better. So he's talking about. It's so, I mean, everything's projection with this guy. For a guy who did the whole Stormy Daniels cover up, which was adjudicated to be an illegal campaign contribution, he's now like, oh, illegal campaign contributions? Or anybody on the media who says nice things about the Democrats and bad things about me, those are, those are campaign contributions. So they should be categorized as such. And the reason that this is in his mind now is because CBS caved on this particular notion. So now he thinks, he either, he either thinks that it is a good argument, which it is not. It's a preposterous argument. If being kind to one candidate and mean to another was a form of campaign contribution and not free speech, Fox News wouldn't be allowed to exist. Right? Like this is, this is not okay.
[03:51]
C
Now I'm intrigued, actually. I mean, you're speaking my language.
[03:56]
A
Yeah, no, this is. So this is not a thing like his. It is, it is. Then he's just like, so then it's like, well, can I bully them the same way I was able to bully ABC the first time with Stephanopoulos, bully cbs? Like, I've, I've been successful. And this is where people got to learn the lesson. There's two lessons here on the Kimmel thing. The first is when you cave to this guy, he will come back for more. The second is when the public pushes back hard enough on companies that cave, they uncave. Because what Iger knew is that this was wrong, right? And so like his temptation to go along with it was because he was only getting one way pressure, they need pressure the other way. And he was getting it and he was getting it hard. And so he uncaved on the Kimmel thing. And that is an important lesson. We can and should fight these things and let Donald Trump just sit there and bleat about it in his angry way. I'll just say a third thing just really quickly. I need to just, I do have to do a quick disclaimer that my brother in law writes for Jimmy Kimmel. I didn't have any information about anything going on when this whole thing is happening. But, but I, I, I think it's Sam and I did a whole take on the Kimmy Jimmy Kimmel monologue. I was quite moved by it. I know we just blew by it in the intro, but I thought it's. I think it's very much worth your time to go listen to it. Not only is it funny, but it is defiant in going after car. It is compassionate. In terms of Charlie Kirk, I think that he talks about comedians on the front lines of free speech in a way where I think that there. It reminds me of another comedian named Volodymore Zelensky, whose first name I'm probably butchering.
[05:50]
C
Campbell 2028. Is that where you're going?
[05:52]
A
No, no, no. I'm. I'm. It's. It's the opposite only that or not the opposite only to say that I don't know that comedians are prepared often to find themselves in, like, serious positions of defending constitutions and country, but they're not. Their. Their comedy work doesn't exactly make them ill prepared for it because there is something about, like, pushing the boundaries, about standing up to people about whatever they. That I think has made. Like, Jimmy Kimmel was actually like a uniquely strong spokesperson for this in a way that other people have not been, in a way that the lawyers and like everybody else has been, has seemed to not be capable of articulating clearly how the First Amendment works and what it is that we do here in America. But he is very clear on that, and it's quite good.
[06:42]
C
Can I just add on to that really quick and just say, are you sure you're closed the door totally on Kimmel 2028? Because I do think that would make a good YouTube headline.
[06:50]
A
I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie that on the way down, as I was listening to his model, because it was not aired in Washington, D.C. because Sinclair wouldn't air it. And so. So I was. I was sort of watching it, listening to it in the car, and I was thinking to myself, only because as we get to Ukraine, Ukraine is also on my mind for a couple reasons. And I was thinking about Zelensky's previous career as a comedian. Like, that's what he did in his country before he came the president and led them through a war. And there was part of me that was like, why? Why not somebody like Kimmel in 2028? Like, why not somebody who a, has the stomach to stand up? I feel like in this moment of bleakness, the way that he does his monologue, which marries the seriousness of the moment around authoritarian threats, but also the compassion with which he treated both Erica Kirk and Charlie Kirk's death and also the humor with which he sort of made fun of the moment and how serious it was. But like with comedy, I'm not sure that's not what America needs right now.
[08:02]
C
Right, there we go. We got what I was looking for. I just might have just thought. I agree with everything you said.
[08:09]
A
So Jimmy, if you're listening, campaign manager.
[08:11]
C
Right here, I thought it was powerful because the humor is funny. It was really legit funny at times. And I like how he brought in conservatives which he also didn't mention. And saying this is one thing that I'm with Ted Cruz. And I guess my one note was he name checked Candace Owens and I'm like I don't know if we need to introduce 68 year old normies in Kansas City watching this to the existence of Candace Owens, but he mentioned others who are aligned with him on speech. I, I thought it was extremely well done and in a way nothing against Colbert who I appreciate and like Colbert has like gotten extremely strident in a way that is, is certainly powerful but like is maybe potentially less effective at like at, at, at bringing other people into the fold than, than I think what Kimmel did last night, which was really I think deft. So anyway, I concur with that.
[09:01]
B
Can I just add though, just, just a quick piece of praise for Kimmel because this, this I think we shouldn't gloss over. The sine qua non here is that he has to refuse to bend the knee because when this whole thing happens and he gets called into the principal's office at Disney again, I don't know him. Never, never no connections to this guy or anybody on his staff. I'm just relying on like the reports I've read from Matt Baloney and various entertainment media reporters. But there was a, a great deal of pressure on him to like go clean this up. Just say whatever you have to say, apologize, make nice, make this problem go away. And he said no. And without that and that takes a yard of guts.
[09:46]
C
Yeah. So I agree, yeah, I agree with that. The other subtext of the story that's a little bit less of the feels. I like having positive feels. It's nice these days to do things. It gives us nice feels. But the more ominous side and I think the more interesting political fight to come is over what happens with this merger and nextar. And you know that he was not, it wasn't just Sinclair Sinclair story is, is what it is. It's not great that some percentage of the country is getting Newsmax for their local, local news That's a bad thing, but it's also, it's not a complicated bad thing. The next thing is more interesting, right? It's not, it's, it's straight corruption, right? It's not, it's not really a free, I mean, it's free speech kind of, but it's not really an ideological project. It's a corruption project. And I do keep coming back to the Navalny side. Like, a lot of the researchers, the anti authoritarian researchers always say that the thing that Navalny had going for him before Putin killed him was that he was really going after that regime on the issue of corruption. And I just think that now there's so many of these stories that are adding up with the home in 50 grand in the paper bag. And now it's like, we're going to push Jimmy Kimmel off the air so that we can get our merger, the crypto stuff. Eventually that starts to add up in a way that I think could be a potentially fruitful way to push back and undermine this administration. Because there's some percentage people that don't like that that are in the Trump voting coalition. A smaller percentage than we would want, I would imagine. Well, I'll be interested to hear what focus groups say about this question, Sarah. But like, I think that, you know, that just generally there's kind of this American notion of like, no, we're not one of those banana republic countries. We're not a country where we shut people up, you know, unless you pay off the big guy. You know, that kind of goes against the American spirit in a way that I think is potential vulnerability for them, but also potentially ominous if they, if they get away with it.
[11:47]
A
Yeah, I'm sorry. And another thing, please, which is I will say when Trump's bleeding, which is very important to think about, when he says, like, I'm coming for you guys, like ABC told me you were fired and I you right. The intervening period where Carr said, we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way, there was still a bunch of right wing influencers and Fox News people and administration officials being like, this is just because Jimmy Kimmel's not funny and his audience and Late Night is dying. And no, no, it's not because President Trump is threatening them, even though Carr did it completely straightforwardly. And I even like, the more responsible people were like, it is unfortunate that Carr chose to say that, but this.
[12:35]
B
Is really just private businesses making their own business, a private business decision.
[12:39]
A
My favorite genre of Trump tweet is where he hangs all those people out to dry by saying, I did it, I'm going to do it again. I am threatening people because I don't like when they criticize me, which he 100% says in this tweet. Like, that's just the whole thing. And so just remember, guys, he's meant to make a fool out of you, and you deserve it.
[13:00]
B
I'm sure they all feel really guilty.
[13:02]
C
Though, now and are going to change.
[13:04]
B
Their behavior going forward. Right now, where do we go to get our apology? All right, more Trump, Rich. More Trump. So yesterday, kind of a big day in foreign policy, which I know is something our audience cares deeply about.
[13:21]
C
We have audience that cares deeply about foreign policy.
[13:25]
A
Give people some credit, man.
[13:27]
C
Just not on the same numbers.
[13:29]
B
You know, I see the numbers. So two parts. Donald Trump went to the UN And I think the message was to everybody in attendance that the American order is over. We could talk about that if you like. He. He was making a. As our colleague Andrew Egger said in his newsletter this morning, Trump's ideological message was that liberalism and law are no longer equal to the challenges facing nations. And so you should all do what I'm doing. Lawless nationalism. That's the only way to survive. And it is possible that some of the people in attendance took that lesson away. But I think the bigger lesson was, wow, America's fucked. Their day is done. We gotta figure out how we're make nice with the Europeans and the Chinese. But then Trump, after doing some study, realized that Ukraine actually has all the cards and completely reversed his policy on the Ukraine Russian war. Which one do you want to start with? Do you want to start with Ukraine or do you want to start with.
[14:42]
C
The U.N. i think Ukraine is one, and the U.N. thing is just kind of a continuation of what he's been doing. And it's like another data point, I guess, where he's lecturing all these people about how they should respect their heritage, how the US Isn't going to be their policeman anymore. I don't know. I mean, this is pretty of a piece of what we've been getting from. If you have thoughts on it, I'd be happy to hear them. The Ukraine thing is interesting. And also I'm kind of like, is it new? And it's new. He's saying something new. Ukraine can get their land back. Watch out, Russia. But the question is, did any actual policy change? And I guess it's still kind of status quo. It's just Trump is yesterday giving less aid and comfort to Russian Propaganda and sounding more like, at least directionally, like what you would think a leader in the west would sound like.
[15:44]
B
Yeah, I believe the policy change is we will sell the EU countries all of the weaponry they want, and they can do whatever they want with it after it's in their hands, which I think is a yes, good luck to everyone. We were selling them many weapons already, but there were always, you know, strings attached and whatnot. And this is a, like, hey, you guys.
[16:07]
C
I guess my point, Sarah, I'll let you go, is I hope that there's a positive policy change here and this is permanent. I'm, I just, I'm withhold. I'm withholding judgment because he, like, the only consistent policies had over this on nine months. Over nine months is like, I'm going to keep stalling. We're going to think, we'll. We'll see how things look in two weeks. We'll see how things look in a month. And meanwhile, Putin is, like, bombarding Ukraine continually. And, and, and, and we just sort of keep kicking the can down the road. So if that changes, great, but I'm going to withhold full judgment on it.
[16:39]
A
I have thoughts both about the UN and, and Ukraine. And here's the thing about Ukraine. His tweet was actually extraordinary. And I don't think it's a change so much as an evolution. I think that. Remember when he met with Putin recently and there was reporting afterwards that the team was sort of shell shocked, and he's had several different sort of bleeds that were like, maybe Putin's a bad guy, you know, like, maybe he's not an honest burger. And I do think that Trump has figured out two things. One, that Putin is playing him for a fool, and two, that Ukraine might not lose this war. I think Trump was like, let me just read you the sentence that I found wild and extraordinary in this bleat. He's just now, and I quote, getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine, Russia, military and economic situation. Somebody give this guy a Nobel Peace Prize. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm screaming, people in your microphone. But, like, this is insane. Like, I do. Like how he just tweets it out. Like, we're all. We all know that he's an idiot who does not understand what is happening in the world. But, like, for him to just be like, huh, now that I'm nine months in, it occurs to me that, you know what? Maybe Russia was the aggressor. Maybe they're the ones who did this. And so Anyway, I do think that is just incredible stuff. Incredible stuff. And mainly comes down to he realizes maybe Putin's make making a fool of him, which he is and has been, and two, that Ukraine could actually win this war.
[18:17]
B
You know, Sarah, speaking of people getting hung out to dry for defending Trump, shit, JD Vance has spent the last nine months running around saying that Ukraine can't win. Not possible for Ukraine to win, huh? Now his boss says, oh, yeah, they could take not just this war, they could roll back everything, go back to 2014, they get Crimea back. Is JD gonna go out and say, oh, I had that wrong? Are we gonna get that? No, I don't.
[18:49]
A
Yeah, I don't think we're gonna get it wrong. But it will be interesting to see how he responds to it. But it does seem that Trump has discovered that perhaps Ukraine does have some cards. But also, I just, I do also want to know, like, there's so much contained in this bleed. This thing about NATO, like arming NATO. What a coward Trump is. Like, he somehow manages to both recognize these. These new things, say them out loud, but then also be like, we're going to send NATO as much as they want, not America. We're not going to help. We're going to let a third party do it. This third party that I crap on all the time, we're going to let them do it. Good luck to everybody. I'm still not taking sides, you big baby. Which, by the way, brings me to the UN he was as orange as I have ever seen him. But if you watch that speech, I did a take with Andrew on this right afterwards. He is up. He. He spends. He goes into a big, long, rambling thing about how he wants bid on the contract to build the U.N. oh, yeah, but didn't get it. And he's like, you could have had marble floors, but. But instead you've got zing zang, zoom or whatever it is. They use whatever material. And the whole time, I do think there's like a marble green kind of backdrop that is just absolutely Oompa Loompa ing him to the highest degree as little white eyes. And people are kind of laughing as he says stuff because he's complaining, too. He complains the whole time. He. He's talking about the fact that the escalator stopped working and that his teleprompter stopped working. And I would just like to say it is wild. I watched sort of live doing the take, that the escalator does stop working. Like when he and Melania walk up to it it just stops working. I think those are good acts of resistance. I salute you, elevator or escalator operator who just stopped it and made him walk up the stairs. You didn't hurt him. You didn't do anything. You just, just, just made him walk up some stairs. But I still thought that was good on you. I see you. Hey guys. We are getting closer and closer to the Bulwarks live shows. We sold out one of our shows in Toronto, but when we added another one for Saturday, which is September 27th, that is this Saturday. If you've got any questions about the news for me, Tim and Sam Stein, I want you to leave them in the comments for today's show and we might answer them. We. When we're in Toronto later this week, JBL won't be there because he won't cross America's borders right now.
[21:24]
B
That's right.
[21:26]
A
But he will be there for the big shows we've got coming up in America. We have got one on October 8th in Washington D.C. with Tim, JBL and myself as well as Congresswoman Sarah McBride and the Bulwarks own Mona Charon, Will Sommer and Andrew Egger. The gang will all be here. And if you really want to get all the time you can. VIP tickets are included in the sale of the DC show and that will give you an earlier entry to the show to sit in the audience for an intimate Q A with jbl, Tim and myself where you can flip the script and ask us your questions. Okay, we're gonna. You guys can come in, hang out with us. We'll just, we'll shoot the, Shoot the stuff. JBL will, he won't even be Xanaxed up yet and you can ask him things.
[22:15]
B
Not yet. Do people know that if they do the VIP thing, you're then going to also hold them hostage and force them to become a focus group?
[22:23]
A
I don't think people know that you.
[22:25]
B
Can'T go a night without doing a focus group. And so if we're there doing a show, you're going to be asking them questions. I'm kidding.
[22:30]
A
What do you guys, what do you guys think? What do you guys think of this?
[22:33]
B
Are you a flipper?
[22:34]
A
You a flipper?
[22:37]
B
Can I start spamming the comments with questions for Toronto?
[22:41]
A
No, let their.
[22:42]
B
I want to ask the question.
[22:43]
A
You get to ask questions all the time. All right. You host half these shows.
[22:47]
B
Your questions have to be better than mine. Otherwise they're use my questions instead.
[22:51]
A
Great point. All right, guys, check out the bulwark.com events for more information and we will see you out there. We didn't actually mention the New York show in this little promo, but I know we're having a New York show too, although I think that might almost be sold out. I think there's only a few tickets left for New York, but we have a very big venue here in D.C. so there's still tickets available. Go get yours. Come hang out with us. We'll see you guys out there.
[23:16]
B
I got some politic questions for you guys. So I think we can break American public opinion on Ukraine into three buckets. There are people who oppose Donald Trump and support Ukraine because they believe it is vital to global security and America's interests. Right. People like us. Fair. Yes. There is a very tiny group of people who support Donald Trump and also want Ukraine to succeed the Lindsey Graham caucus. So there's, you know, a good four or five dozen Americans there. And then there are the MAGA supporters who are isolationist JD Vance types who are at Duke best, they don't care. At worst, they're pro Putin because they see Putin as a culture war ally against like the gays and woke. Is this a fair. Some summation of the, the pie chart?
[24:15]
A
I. No, I think there's a lot of people in that middle bucket and also in that third bucket a lot. I think that there's a fair. I think there's a lot of normie Republicans. And your thing about people who don't care, I will just say a main tenet of America first. It's not that they don't care. It's that they don't want us spending money on other things outside of us. And so like they have, they may be like, I think I want to root for Ukraine against Russia, but I don't think America should be involved because we shouldn't be sending our money to these other countries. Like that is a, I would say if there's a biggest contingent in the Republican Party now in the MAGA movement, it is that.
[24:53]
B
That's interesting. I have not heard that opinion expressed.
[24:56]
A
Very often because I think it's the normie Republican opinion. That's the one that comes up in focus groups constantly.
[25:01]
B
Interesting, because I, I again, this is me doing armchair psychologist. I think if your position is that America shouldn't be helping Ukraine, you have to rationalize it by saying that Ukraine doesn't deserve help because they're probably the bad guys.
[25:20]
A
No, that's.
[25:21]
B
I think it's hard to, it's hard to be like, yeah, it's really terrible that all These Ukrainian kids are getting killed. It's really bad. I wish him all the best, but, you know, I just don't think we should spend money on it.
[25:32]
A
That's sort of Donald Trump's position. I mean, not like often. Yeah, right. But, but I'll just tell you, and when I say Normie Republic, I think what I mean is people who aren't paying a super amount of attention to this, there is like, let me just say America first, again, not just a slogan. It is a, it is a prioritization. It is, it is about. So when you say you're America first, what you mean is. And they'll just say this. It's not about. They'll say Ukraine. I don't think we should be involved in Ukraine, Russia. That's what those guys are doing. We need to help people in this country. That is a, that is replete through the movement as sort of general accepted wisdom.
[26:12]
B
Interesting. Okay, well, so maybe I've slightly misstated it.
[26:15]
C
I just think that, I guess, just really quick. I just think that the biggest percentage of people are. Folks are very malleable on this. I think that the. I think that there is.
[26:23]
B
Oh, of course.
[26:24]
C
Yeah. The percentage of people that have strong priors on this is. Is some, but is not. Is not a plurality.
[26:30]
B
Well, and this is my. So this is my, my politicky question. Is Trump going to pay a price with any of the MAGAs who basically were at the J.D. vance position of at least tacitly pro Putin and pro Russia? Are they going to be like, wait a minute, hold on. Because there have been a lot of people who've been like, yeah, look at that, Ukraine's losing. Like they're getting off on the Ukraine losing. And the idea that, I mean, that is a thing that exists out there in MAGA world.
[27:02]
C
I think it's pretty small. Really.
[27:06]
B
It's just.
[27:06]
C
Yeah, I mean, I don't, I mean any, anything that's small in this country, like 5% of the MAGA movement is still 3 million people. So, like. Yeah, I'm just saying. I think that that's okay.
[27:18]
B
So, so do you, I guess this is my question. Do you think any of them are going to look at this and be like, well, crap, Trump is selling us out?
[27:27]
C
No.
[27:29]
B
What is he, what is he sucking up to, this track suit Nazi movement of the language?
[27:36]
C
And it depends how things turn out. That could happen. Yeah. And it could happen if we ended, if Trump ended up going, you know, if we were being more aggressively involved. But I don't see that happening now?
[27:46]
B
All right, well, I guess you're not going to play along with my leading questions, because all of this was me leading you up to reading a headline from the Spectator, the United Kingdom's most manga publication.
[27:58]
A
Who's trying to play gotcha with us.
[28:00]
B
Yeah, that's right. Trump has called Europe and Ukraine's bluff.
[28:09]
C
So what?
[28:11]
A
I don't get it either. What is his point?
[28:12]
B
Well, so his. His point is that this is all 5D chess and that Ukraine and Europe are awful, and in switching sides like this, he's really just letting them hoist themselves on their own petards.
[28:27]
C
Who wrote that?
[28:28]
B
Owen Matthews over at the Spectator.
[28:31]
C
Okay, I.
[28:33]
B
So I think that's basically where we're headed. I think we're headed to 5D chess. Slash. It was all art of the deal. This isn't a reversal. East Asia was always at war with whatever. Trump is the best. And that drives me a little crazy, because a lot of the people who are going to be relieved that Trump has finally stopped being actively hostile to Ukraine are also the same people who were criticizing the Biden administration for not doing more, faster. And so, again, it's like these separate sets of standards in how we evaluate things, where you have a normal administration and you feel like, yes, well, we should criticize them for. For not pursuing the perfectly optimal policy. And then with Trump, if he puts down the flamethrower, people are like, oh, thank God he stopped.
[29:27]
A
I do think that's true. And they do try to reverse engineer it into, see Trump. Trump made all the right calls. He really understood this situation. But I got it again, I just. I refer you to his own tweet in which he tells us all he's really just getting up to speed on this whole thing. It's really all just. He's really just figuring this out right now. So that should be very alarming to people.
[29:49]
B
Should that not be a thing where we all get to say to the president, well, wait a minute then. So all of your other statements were made while you didn't understand what was going on? And if so, then why do we assume that now you really understand things? Why is it that five more weeks from now, you're not going to flip again and say, well, now I really, really understand?
[30:11]
C
We are saying we should?
[30:12]
A
Yeah.
[30:13]
C
Who are you doing this for?
[30:16]
B
People.
[30:17]
C
Okay.
[30:20]
B
People, I'll tell you in the green room.
[30:24]
C
Okay.
[30:25]
B
All right. Well, I guess that's all we're doing about foreign policy. Thank God.
[30:31]
C
Tim, let's face it, after a night out with drinks. None of us bounce back the next day like we used to. It's true for jvl. After he has half a glass of wine, he doesn't bounce back quite the same as when he used to. And it's true for me when I have quite a few more beverages than that. So you've got to make a choice. You can either have a great night or a great next day. That was until I found Pre Alcohol Zebiotics. Pre Alcohol Probiotics Drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was admitted by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's a buildup of this byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for rough days after drinking. Pre Alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. While you guys are listening to this, when this publishes on Wednesday evening, simultaneously to this coming in your ears, Zebiotics might be going down my throat because I'm going to go see Vampire Weekend tonight and I'm pre taping tomorrow's podcast. So my rule where I'm not drinking on weeknights, you never know. Maybe I'll break it tonight, maybe I won't. But if I have Zebiotics, it'll give me the option. We'll see how much I'm enjoying Ezra Koenig. So just remember, like me, to make pre alcohol your first drink of the night. Drink responsibly and you'll feel your best tomorrow. Go to ZBiotics.com NextLevel to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use Next Level at checkout. ZBiotics is backed with 100% money back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to zebiotics.com nextlevel and use the code next level at checkout for 15% off.
[31:57]
B
All right, so Kamala Harris making the rounds. Sat down with Rachel Maddow earlier this week and was asked about the passage in her book where she tell me if I'm characterizing this correctly. Says that Walls guy was not my first choice. Much rather much would have rather have had Pete. But you know, America wasn't wasn't really ready for it. Again, this is me paraphrasing, maybe unfairly, but here is what Kamala Harris said to Rachel Maddow.
[32:33]
D
That's not what I said. That that's that he couldn't be on the ticket because he is gay. My point, as I write in the book, is that I was clear that in 107 days, in one of the most hotly contested elections for president of the United States, against someone like Donald Trump, who knows no floor, to be a black woman running for President of the United States. And as. As a vice presidential running mate, a gay man, with the stakes being so high, it made me very sad. But I also realized it would be a real risk no matter how. You know, I've been an advocate and an ally of the LGBT community my entire life.
[33:28]
C
So it wasn't about.
[33:29]
D
It wasn't about. Yeah, right. So it wasn't about any. Any prejudice on my part. But that calculation. We had such a short period of time, and the stakes were so high. I think Pete is a phenomenal, phenomenal public servant, and I think America is and would be ready for that. But when I had to make that decision with two weeks to go, you know, and maybe I was being too cautious, you know, I'll let our friends. We should all talk about that. Maybe I was, but that's the decision I made. And I. As with everything else in the book, I'm being very candid about that, with a great deal of sadness about also the fact that it might have been a risk, folks.
[34:29]
C
I mean, I just wish. Just tell us what you mean. You know, like, it's sort of. It's just. It's a very meandering kind of like. Well, I didn't say that we weren't ready for it, but I just. I did say it. And to me, like, the whole. This is the frustrating part about identity being so centered in the Democratic Party and everything for me, where it's like, on the one hand, there were folks out there, including some Kamala Harris supporters. I'm not saying it was Kamala herself who are out there saying, we can't pass up Kamala after Joe Biden dropped out because she's the first black woman. And it would be mean to pass up the first black woman. And then by the same logic, they say, well, we can't pick the gay guy because we've already picked the black woman, and people hate black women, and people are racist and misogynistic.
[35:17]
B
The scorecard is full.
[35:18]
C
Yeah, people are racist.
[35:20]
B
We're all full up.
[35:21]
C
Okay, you can have one. I was like, I'd rather you have neither, but you could. You can only have one or the other. Right. Which is. You had to pick Kamala because of her identity. And we wouldn't want to, you know, do anything to upset black voters or upset the coalition, upset female voters. You can have that, like, and that's a smart thing to do because it's important that we have at the top of ticket. You can have that or you can have. I don't think we can pick Pete Buttigieg because he's gay, but you can't really have both because it's like, if we weren't picking Pete Buttigieg, if we weren't picking the person you say is the strongest candidate for the job, whether or not that's true or not, I don't know. I'm open to hearing the other side of that. But if we can't pick the strongest candidate for the job because the person at the top of the ticket has all this baggage, then maybe we should have rethought about who the top of the ticket should be. And I'm not saying that either. I was for. I, like, I thought Kamala was going to be probably the best choice, all things considered, But I don't like the, like, weaponization of identity that, like, works only when it's, like, convenient. Right. It's like, we had to pick her because she's black, but also because she's black is such a big problem. So we can't pick somebody else who's gay. I just. I don't like any of it. I had. It was interesting. I had Angie Craig on the daily pod this morning. Lesbian congresswoman from Minnesota running for Senate. I didn't bring this up at all. I forget what the topic was, actually. I was bringing up a totally separate. We were discussing something totally separate, and she volunteers out of nowhere. She's just like. As far as I'm concerned, I don't. You know, I won. I did pretty well in Red America, and I'm a lesbian. And so, you know, I did better than Kamala did in my district. And I just thought. I thought that was noteworthy, that she just volunteered. Volunteer at that. Because it's like, you know, it's fine with me. Like, can I ask you to picture.
[37:10]
B
Analytical hat on that?
[37:11]
C
Sorry, just last thing. Yeah, sure. You can ask. If you're making that strategic point, that's fine, but it's just, like, the manner in which it's happening, I don't really love. And it'd be. I think. I think it would be better to have just been more. More blunt.
[37:25]
B
Okay. And I want to hear from both of you on this, though, putting aside that you don't love it, etc. Etc. Is it as an analytical correct matter, do you think? Is she correct?
[37:37]
A
No, I think she would have been much better off with. Because it's so funny the way people think about what balances a ticket. Right. So in her mind, again, and this is. Tim is absolutely right. When you look through things through the lens of identity, you end up thinking about the ticket as black woman, gay guy. That is not how I would think about it. I would think about it like not the strongest communicator with the best communicator in the party is actually quite a good pairing especially. And this is, this is the main thing though. It was her judgment that he was the best pick. And I think that her inability to trust her own judgment is the question that voters had about Kamala Harris. Right. They didn't trust her judgment either. And it was like the Tim Walls thing ended up being this incredibly safe. Try not to offend anybody. Also fake, like. And this is, this is a, A key piece that I think Democrats do. The voters do it in focus groups all the time, especially Democratic ones, because they too think about identity and they don't give their brethren on the other side of the aisle, like, credit on these identity issues. Right. And so they say to themselves, I don't think I. I would vote for a gay man. I think Pete's the best. I think Pete's awesome. I'm not sure America's ready for a gay man. And I, I guess maybe that's true. Like, it's. I do think. I certainly think in a Democratic primary, Pete Buttigieg, like, he never gets black voters, like voters, Black voters never say they want to vote. He is, he just like does terrible with black voters now. Is that because he's gay? Is it because he is not. He's like kind of a. He's kind of a. Like he's a McKinsey guy. And so like just. It's not resonating with that audience, like, maybe. But like, to me, actually the balance on that ticket of having a black, like, that was a good. That would be a good balance. Like Pete brings you college educated suburban voters who are like interested and he been able to talk really persuasively about policy. If they'd actually put him out there and not played it so safe like they did with Tim Walls, who they clearly also then like, didn't have confidence in. Like, the thing about Kamala and about Walls is that you could sort of read just under the surface that the people around them didn't have Confidence in him or in them. Like Biden, clearly. And his team did not have confidence in her and she didn't have confidence in Walls, which is why they were all playing it so unbelievably safe. And she didn't have the confidence in herself or she would have been out there everywhere, all the time.
[40:24]
B
There is an abused becomes the abuser aspect to this story, which I find very disheartening. Like the Biden people did Kamala dirty and now she's doing like Tim Walls dirty.
[40:37]
C
Yeah.
[40:37]
B
I have no brief for him.
[40:39]
C
I don't know how dirty she's doing too. I think she is pretty nice doing the book though, like saying this is doing a little dirty for sure. Here's what I, here's, here's. I think I'm going to take my own advice. I just want to be blunt about this. I'm on the other side of Sarah, but for a different reason. I also think she shouldn't have picked Pete. And here's why. Because the Democrats have had a major problem in this last election with non college voters of all races, but non college black and brown voters who are in their coalition in particular. And if you look at folks that still maintain bigotry or ill feelings about gay people or discomfort with gay people, it maps across a lot of our other culture war stuff right Now, I'm not saying that everybody didn't go to college as a bigot. I'm just saying that, like, you just, you tend to see that folks that are lower on the education spectrum also have higher, you know, also have more negative views about gay marriage, gay issues. And so I think that given the stakes of the election and given that this was such a key demographic where Democrats were bleeding, I think it probably was smart not to pick people to judge. Can I say that? Here's my problem with all that. They didn't do anything else to appeal to that fucking demographic. Okay? So like, don't. You know what I mean? And so that's why she's not saying that, because she doesn't want to offend. She doesn't want to offend people by saying that, oh, like, oh, non college black voters have, have more negative views of gay. She doesn't want the backlash. That. So she won't say that. But that is what was under the surface. And that's just in the data. Like, that's just in the data. Democrats have this data. I've seen it. And could Pete have overcome that because he's such a great communicator? Maybe I Don't know. Like he went into that bar, he did that Andrew Schultz podcast and those guys seem to like him at the end. So it's possible though I think those are all college educated guys, but, you know, so it's possible. So I think that as a strategic thing, that's fine. But again, to me that goes to like this fun. To Sarah's comment where I agree about the caution, it's like the stakes were so fucking high. Like we needed to do everything possible to make sure there was the best person at the top of the ticket and the best person at the second part of the ticket. You need to do stuff that was maybe uncomfortable at times, maybe that doesn't mean it was Pete. Maybe somebody else outside the box you need to do. You need to go out there and program yourself to like try to win back and win trust from the voters the Democrats are losing trust with. And they just didn't do any of those things. Like there was no effort to distance from Biden. There was no effort to distance from the Democratic cultural issues that have held them back, whether, you know, on whether it's crime, whether it's trans issues. And I'm not saying that they, whatever they need to like move to the center and run a Liz Cheney campaign. That's what I'm saying. I saying that they needed to try to reach the voters that they were worried that they were losing and that Pete wouldn't help them with. And they didn't do it. They replaced him with Tim Walls. He can fix a carburetor so non college men will like him. And it's like, no, actually, no. You need to actually try to reach those voters. Make an effort to do it. If you make the determination that Pete hurts you, then do something else to do it. And that is their sin from.
[43:34]
B
They kept pro Palestinian people out of the convention. They talked a lot about the endless lethality of the American military and crime. I mean, I, I just don't. They may not have done everything that you wish they had done, but I don't think it's quite right to say they didn't do anything.
[43:52]
A
Well, hold on just one second. I want to go. I just want to push back on.
[43:55]
C
Tim, one sentence on this. I think that they reached out to. They tried to reach out to college educated Republican voters like us, which is fine. My point is. Yeah, my point is how do you reach out to culturally right. Non college people that are in the coalition without. I'm sorry, just to clarify.
[44:08]
B
Understood.
[44:08]
A
Yeah, yeah. And also just to clarify on my end, I'm answering the question right now whether Pete would have been better as a calculation than walls. And I'll maintain that because I think that walls, to me, as I argued at the time, and go back and check the tape of what I was saying right around this, this mistakes were number one. It shouldn't have been common like with the stakes. Like, I'm sorry, listening to her, even in that interview. I have been in the, in the, in the position between Biden and Kamala. I was always very pro Kamala and I thought she ran a good campaign. And I have defended her throughout because I do not think the blame for what happened lies with her. I believe it lies with Biden. But at the time, I said two things that I stand by today, which is I think they would have been better off if they held a like shotgun primary because even if she had come out of it as the winner, people would have viewed it with legitimacy. There is a reason that Democrats only have a two point advantage over Republicans right now on defending democracy and is because they didn't hold a primary. They people view her as having been installed. And it was one of the things that made people not trust her. The second thing is I didn't necessarily. I didn't think Pete necessarily. I didn't. I was. I remember Pete for vp.
[45:23]
B
Who, who did you like? I forget. Sarah?
[45:25]
A
Yes. Josh Shapiro. And you know what? As all of you guys who want to yell at me and say, sarah, let Shapiro go, it'll never be him. Okay, guys, if you want to overlook the person with the highest approval rating in the biggest swing state, fine. I don't know what to tell you. Like, there are some. That is. And, and the way that they talk about it in the book where she does nag on Josh Shapiro, she does this and it's terrible and it's true.
[45:56]
C
The thing that Shapiro did is kind of cringy, I should say. But she negs it where he starts talking about the art. I mean, if that's a true statement, that's a crazy story all around. It's crazy for Josh to have done it. It's crazy for her to have mentioned it.
[46:07]
B
Can you give me more time? I don't know.
[46:08]
C
Apparently she writes in the book that Josh Shapiro asked the docent of the vice presidential residents who he would speak to to get Pennsylvania artists in there, which is like an insane thing to. To ask. It's an insane thing to write about in the book if you're Kamala. Like, the whole thing is kind of.
[46:27]
B
Crazy, honestly, why would she include that even if it were true?
[46:32]
A
Well, that actually, that I think is a good central question for this book to me, actually is quite a bit of evidence about why she needs to just let politics go. Like it is not for you, this score settling. And look, I was with her, like the thing that came out about Biden, I was like, she got done dirty by Biden. I'm with her on that. But this book is a burn the boats, all you guys type book. And if, if she thinks that she comes back as the nominee by doing this, I would say that this is the kind of instincts that really ste.
[47:10]
B
I don't think she thinks that. Do you?
[47:14]
A
I don't know. I. I hope, I hope. I assume this is the burn the boats of I settle my scores and I move on. Because Josh Shapiro does have a political future and the fact that she did try to shiv him on the way out, it's not, it's not because I'm so pro Shapiro in this regard. It's because it's. I mean, you guys, the Democrats, if you guys cannot figure out how to be on the same team in this way, it is, it is wild how much Democrats tear each other apart in the face of the sort of authoritarian. You think we, you think we, by being critical at times of Democrats, are the ones trying to get like, sorry, guys, nobody is doing a bigger job of crapping on other Democrats than the Democrats are in these internas and fights.
[48:03]
C
And by the way, I'm actually okay with, I'm okay with that. I mean, as long as it's being productive, which it isn't in some of the cases. Right. But to me, one of the biggest criticisms I have, the Democratic establishment, and I lump myself in there, all of us is like, the fear of Trump brought about a lot of caution. Right. I just think that, I think that the fear of Trump led a lot of people to be like, you know, I don't want to say what I really think about Biden or Kamala because I don't want to be seen as helping Trump, which is, I think, a totally defensible thing. And this is my advice, by the way, to Pete or to any Democrat who gets asked these questions about podcasts about why didn't you say anything about Biden? Is to just be like, bro, it was a tough situation. I'm sorry, it was a tough situation. Like, obviously, I wish we didn't have an 82 year old candidate and I wish you would have done it one term at the same Time. The threat from Trump was great. He'd already beaten him once. Like, like creating a lot of indecision or creating a lot of chaos didn't seem like a good alternate option in retrospect, as we saw the debate, obviously, I think he, you know, it would have been better for him not to run. When I saw him in person, like, he wasn't knocking on all cylinders, but, like, he seemed like he was doing the job. And in retrospect, it was a mistake, but I think it was a close call. And, like, and, and I just. And that's where we are. I think that's a legitimate thing for people to say, because I just think that's the truth about what happened with Biden.
[49:25]
A
Well, it's true. We know it's true because we were in this position, right? Like, I, I listened to voters over and over again. Jbl and I would have this argument on the secret pod where I was like, he shouldn't run. The voters don't want him to run. They think he's too old. But, like, you turn over, like, but he's the incumbent and like, incumbency matters and name id and like I said, he shouldn't run. He shouldn't run up until they basically, like, they came out and they're like, he's doing it once they. And this is why the blame lies with them and the people around them. They forced it. And people who didn't want Donald Trump to be president had no choice, basically, but to, like, okay, like, he's the guy.
[50:05]
C
Except for.
[50:06]
B
Yeah, I'm sorry, I need to.
[50:07]
C
I think it was defensible. But I just mean in retrospect, I guess. JVL Sorry, just really quick. In retrospect, he won. So now with the benefit of hindsight, looking back on it, probably the right thing to do was for more people to have been speaking out about Biden before the debate and doing what Bill Kristol and others were doing. And probably the right thing to do was for more people to be doing what Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi were doing after Biden dropped out and say, hey, let's kick the tires on this. Let's be careful. But, but there was a big pressure campaign and a big social pressure campaign to not do that because you didn't want to be seen as helping Trump. And I'm. And I don't. Again, I think that that's all really defensible. I just mean that, like, now we know. So the lesson, I think, should be that probably we, everybody should have been More self critical and more.
[50:50]
A
It was not defensible after the debate.
[50:52]
B
I'm sorry, I need to step in, I need step in here because, Sarah, I think you are selling yourself short. And I want to be very clear because I did sit with you for like nine hours of podcasts a week. During this period of time, you thought that Biden shouldn't run because, A, he was too old, but more importantly because voters thought he was too old.
[51:15]
A
Yeah.
[51:16]
B
And then once he said he was running, you did not suddenly stop saying that.
[51:22]
A
No, that's true.
[51:23]
B
You did not. So, no, I just want to, like, it is not the case that you swallowed the whistle and changed your tune. This is what I'm saying. You were telling the truth the whole time. I just want to, I'm just trying to defend you here because it is what. I don't want anybody to get the sense that once he decided to run, you just decided to say, well, I guess everything is great because you didn't do that. No, you are totally honest the entire time. And that, that is not. You were not switching and just being like, well, I gotta be on side because we don't want to help Trump. That is not how you conducted yourself. And I don't think it's how any of us conducted ourselves. But you were absolutely truthful and transparent about your analysis at all times. And I just don't want anybody to get to say that you weren't because I'm very sensitive about that.
[52:10]
A
I actually think you're right that the whole time was like, they hate them both. They all think he's too old. No, I told the truth, certainly around the voters, but I did feel the pressure of like, the way that I wanted him to perform at like the State of the Union and what I wasn't doing, what I wasn't doing. So I'm always honest about what I hear from voters. What I wasn't doing was what Bill Kristol did, which was when Dean Phillips ran against him. I was like, what the shit is this guy doing? Like, what are we going to do this right now? Like, actually, that's the part that I would say. I was like, and I think I said at the time, which is like, what are we going to do? Dean Phillips was out there being like, joe Biden is, is, is. What did he say? He's like, he's attacking democracy or he's a threat to democracy. And I was like, having somebody in the Democratic primary just constantly crapping on Biden is unhelpful for Democrats. Like I thought they should get the cane out for him.
[53:16]
C
That was also true, though, at the time. That was unhelpful.
[53:18]
A
Yeah, no, no, no.
[53:19]
B
It was unhelpful and it wasn't true. Like, Dean Phillips was saying things that simply weren't true and also that ultimately didn't move the needle. If Dean Phillips had never decided to run, Biden still would have wound up dropping out because he had a health event at a national debate in front of 50 million people. So again, like, I don't want to give Dean Phillips any credit for, for this. I mean, I guess good for him for running. I know you do, but he ran in a counterproductive way by making charges about Biden that were at best uncharitable and at worst not true. Biden wasn't a threat to democracy. What he was, was he. He was a guy who was too old to do the job of waging a vigorous campaign.
[54:03]
C
I want to say one more thing about the Kamala book. The last 15 minutes of this podcast is a nice case for. Against doing the book. It's a nice case against doing the book. Yeah, like, we weren't playing. I don't, I didn't want to fucking relive Dean Phillips today. But, like, you just keep going down this path, right? Like, you know, and nobody did. And so she has a right to do what she wants and speak. But it, And I would, I would love to talk to her about it. Like I said in the Kamala vs Biden part of this, I could not be more on Team Kamala. And I think in the grand scheme of things, her, like, performance as a candidate was quite good. I think some of the strategy around the campaign was not in retrospect, but this book. It's just like, why there aren't a lot of good examples. People say, well, candidates always write a book after not like this. I mean, usually what you would do in a book is kind of talk about the future, talk about, like the fight against Trump. Maybe you do a little bit of this. Maybe you throw in a couple of the. Couple of the Biden things just because you want to get it off the decks. You know what I mean? But for the most part, candidate books aren't like this. For the most part, the books like this are the books that like Alex Thompson or John Heileman write. John Heileman writes this book.
[55:16]
B
This is a score settling book.
[55:17]
C
Yeah. And that's. I don't. And I'm just not sure the value of it, I guess is my point. I would be Happy to hear from her on what the counterargument to that would be.
[55:26]
B
Second question, final question for both of.
[55:29]
C
You still on this.
[55:30]
B
Yes. Do you think there's anything that could have been done different that gets you to a different outcome?
[55:37]
C
I think yes. I talked to Bakari about this yesterday.
[55:40]
B
Okay.
[55:40]
C
I think absolutely, yes. I don't know what it is, actually. I have theories. I have theories for sure. But I think.
[55:48]
A
Wait, where do we start? Like, do you mean if Biden. Everything happens the same up until Biden's health event on stage, he. Is there a way to get dive bombs the debate?
[55:59]
B
Right.
[56:01]
C
I mean, I think it's possible. I think. I don't like. Right. Could we do a political science experiment where we rerun Shapiro Whitmer? Sure. Is that a loss? Probably. I think that's probably a loss too. I just want to say I don't know for sure, but I don't. I think we should. I think it would be interesting. We should have at least tried it. We should at least thought about it. That stifled the conversation around that. I think that Kamala doing something more dramatic to shore up concerns around people that are traditionally in the Democratic coalition, non college voters of color, men in particular, like, they knew. They didn't. It wasn't a secret. They were weak. We talked about this a lot. Like I said at the beginning, I think that there was a lot. There's this feeling of box checking and now I feel like we kind of get blamed, which is. Well, Kamala did a good job of reaching out to the Never Trumpers. The whole time I was saying, like, we're only one little part here. Like I. And we're probably already with you. Like, like the Never Trumper types, college educated suburban Republicans were like Kamala's strongest soldiers. Right. So, like, they didn't need to work that hard to get us, you know. And so I just, I don't. Like, I threw this out with Bakari. I'm like, and this is. I know people are like, me and JBL's version of Shapiro is Mark Cuban. And I'm like, had she picked Cuban and had him going out there doing fucking Theo Vaughan and Rogan and just talking dude talk and talking crypto talk. And would that have helped? Would that have maybe been enough to sneak out four of those seven states? I'm not going to say no to that. That maybe would have helped if Kamala, like, gone. You know, Kamala did so well in that debate. If they'd been. Put herself in more situations to be outside to prove her mettle because I think that she did it on that one debate stage. I said this at the time, so this is not a new thing. I said she should have accepted the Fox debate. Like, could you imagine if she'd gone in there and Brett Baer is moderating a fucking rigged debate against her and she still does. Well, might that have changed views? Maybe not. But I just think that, I guess anybody that says, oh, I don't think we should have done anything differently, it was hopeless, I think is wrong. I think that had somebody from the future gone back and told David Plouffe and Commonwealth that they're going to lose if they run their playbook, I think maybe they try something different that would have worked.
[58:18]
B
Sarah.
[58:20]
A
I agree that I think she could have done. I think they could have made much more bold VP choice than a unknown governor with a pretty progressive record, because they already had someone with a pretty progressive record. But more importantly, I just think the biggest mistake that they made, although I gotta say, watching her do Maddow, I was like, she, these are not her best. Like, this is not her best format. Like I actually, in my head now, she is better than she performs in those conversations because she really rose to the occasion in some of those big high pressure moments. But she wasn't visible the rest of the time. Like they really did play a super cautious campaign. And I think at the end of the day, had she just been out there, wheels off and there's sort of two things. One, she goes everywhere, does everything, doesn't prep for the debate for two weeks behind closed doors, that kind of stuff. Like you didn't have that kind of time, everyone needed to know you. And then two, you take a flamethrower to Joe Biden's record. Like he, you say like the stuff she says in the book. And, and I'll tell you this, actually, speaking of analysis that I feel like I missed on, somebody called me after the View thing and was like, do you think the fact that she's not distant herself from Biden is like, you know, like, and about that specific answer. And I was like, I don't know. I think people think she's pretty different from Biden. But in retrospect, I think that was wrong. I think that the extent to which voters felt lied to by Biden and the people around him about his age was all over the data. They felt lied to, they felt betrayed. They felt like that people weren't being straight with, with them. And I understand, like the easy answer to that is like oh, so they chose a con man who'd been indicted all these times and tried to do an insurrection. That is. I'm sympathetic to that response, Extremely sympathetic to that response, but still, like, that was. That was the problem.
[60:25]
C
I want to throw out one more that I was wrong on because I did get my dander up when she was talking about lethality, and I was for all that. But, like, again, and knowing what we know now with a retrospect, should they have had a Gaza person on the. At the convention? And could and should she have. It was a way to distance herself. I think there are ways to distance herself from Biden on popular things. And. And I know that people in our circles wouldn't have liked it that much, and there would have been, you know, railing people on cable news on the center. Right. Talking about whatever, how she's a commie, but with actual voter numbers. My night, distancing from Biden a. She should have distanced from Biden. This was something I had. Right. We were saying at the time she should have. And it's horrible that Biden didn't let her. And the one. If you could ask me to change one thing, I would say I would force Joe Biden to have a meeting with Kamala Harris in Delaware the day she takes it, where he says, kid, throw me on the train tracks. You gotta go win this for the country. That's the number one thing I would have changed. And he's like, I'll help you do it, by the way. And I'll go do an interview with my favorite interviewer where I tell them that you were telling me behind the scenes that I was. I was wrong on this one, but maybe Gaza should have been one of the things that he threw in. She threw in there. Maybe not. But I just. I think that's. I think that bears mentioning is another thing. So I don't know all those things. Could. Could one of the. Could that have mattered? It wasn't that big of a blowout. It could have mattered. I don't. I think the idea that it was a fait accompli is. Is wrong.
[61:53]
B
Sarah, before we go to hour six of this show, would you like to give us a word from our next sponsor?
[61:58]
A
This show is sponsored by Remy. Look, we're all busy and a bit stressed right now as we try to save democracy and keep living our lives. And when I'm stressed, I can be a bit of a teeth grinder, a teeth clencher.
[62:11]
C
Me too.
[62:13]
A
Yeah, it's a bad. But I was able to find A night guard that very conveniently did not require a dentist visit with Remy. In fact, my producer and I did it together in my office. So approximately 30% of US adults grind or clench their teeth at night. Remy's custom night guards are clinically tested to prevent teeth grinding, reduce jaw tension and facial muscle strain, and improve your sleep quality. You'll get the same professional quality and comfort as a night guard from the dentist, but remy costs you 80% less and is much more convenient than having to go into the dentist's office and get one. And as an added cost benefit, you can use your HSA or FSA credits toward your night guard at checkout. Here's how it works. You get your impression kit straight to your door. That's what happened. It came to my office. You follow Remy's step by step instructions to get your perfect impression. It's just, you know, they. You put the stuff in. You put it in your mouth, you close your teeth, and then Remy crafts and ships you your custom fit nightguard. So you, like, mail it back. You mail it to them, and then they, like, get it all ready and they send it back to you. So no waiting rooms, no overpriced bills. Just a better way to protect your teeth while you sleep. Try Remy risk free. So go to shopremi.com thenextlevel and use code thenextlevel to get up to 50% off your night guard at checkout. And I gotta say, Remy, as somebody who has given myself TMJ with my horrible gnashing of my teeth, and I do have jaw pain, including up here. It hurts up here from I'm clenching my teeth so hard. And so this was a great, great sponsor to get. Thanks, Remy, for sponsoring this show.
[63:54]
B
Theo Vaughn is a person whose name I often hear and who. I have no idea who he is, but I think he's a friend you haven't met yet, Tim, Are you and Theo buddies yet or.
[64:05]
C
No, we've met.
[64:06]
B
Isn't he in Louisiana?
[64:07]
C
Yeah, we've met a couple times. I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that. We're buddies. We're not. Not buddies. You know, we've met at big group social settings and chatted a little bit, and I find Theo very funny. I wish that he did less politics. I wish he did no politics. He's got a podcast, like an interview show, basically like a Rogan show that is, like, quite good when it's just weird stuff like where he's interviewing. Like, he interviewed this Amish kid recently, and that was hilarious. Like he interviews comedians. You know, I listened to the whole three hours he did with Mark Cuban before I interviewed Cuban and I thought it was like kind of an interesting and fun interview when they were talking about like whatever, basketball and crypto and being dudes and whatever. But he just isn't a politics person. And he got thrust into politics by, you know, getting by the Trump campaign. Smart effort to reach out to this world and put Trump out there and have him do these interviews. And, and he found himself, I mean, basically pro Trump, essentially. I mean, being pro Trump, not like maga hat pro Trump, but pro Trump. Because like Trump and them were coming on and like they were working them and he was promoting them and he's not great at those interview because he can't do what you have to do with politician interviews, which is when they tell you alive to be like, well, that's not right. That's how you do a politician interview. And Donald Trump lies all the time. And the ovan never says that's not right. That's not the nature of the interview. It's supposed to be a fucking comedy show where he makes quips and stuff. And so anyway, it was noteworthy this, this thing this morning just because it's part of this broader. What do we want to call it? Broader sense of disillusionment. I think among the softer, more bro y parts of the Trump coalition, like not, not Ben Shapiro, right. Not. Not turning Point people obviously we saw over the weekend. But like the comedians, the frat bros. I had a guy from barstool on the YouTube page this week. I'm going to try to do more of that. He's kind of a non ideological person. He voted for Chase Oliver. I find this very eye rolly. But frankly, if more of the Barstool bros voted for Chase Oliver instead of Donald Trump, maybe we'd be in a better shape right now. So, you know, anyway, Theo, on his list of things that he's pissed about is the DHS put out a tweet that just said bye and then plays a clip of him talking about saying at the top, heard you got deported, dude. By. And I, I can remember this clip of him. I think he's being funny. I don't like, I don't think it was actually about like a person that was actually deported. I don't actually know the, the what the. But I remember seeing it. He's making a joke. He's like, heard you got deported, dude. Bye. DHS plays that clip and then lists all the people they've deported 2 million people, and they do the stuff, Film stuff that they're doing. And Theo quote, tweets that with, I didn't approve to be used in this. Please take this down. Please keep me out of your, quote, banger deportation videos. When it comes to immigration, my thoughts and heart are a lot more nuanced than this video allows. Bye. And I just, I think that stuff is good and we should encourage it and we should remember that there are big parts of the Trump voting coalition that are, you know, maybe didn't use the best judgment in the last election and have some views we probably don't agree with on a bunch of stuff, but also aren't really on board for a maga, a MAGA dictator, aren't really on board for the grossest parts of the deportation regime, aren't really on board for a series of the types of policies that they're putting forth. And so, you know, I would just.
[67:47]
A
And just before JBL goes, I would just like to say there's a lot more Theo Vaughans, I think, in this country than there are, like, fascists. Like, I think Trump and Jason Miller and that whole cabinet are filled with fascists. But, like, I actually think a lot of the people who voted for Trump, like, Theo Vaughn's kind of the purse kind of person that I. I don't defend exactly, but that I think is sort of a. Well, like, they lie to him, right? And he doesn't know enough to know he's being lied to, which I think is a lot of voters, right? They don't know when Trump says, but I'm going to lower grocery prices and I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. And, like, and. And they hear things like, well, I'm just going to deport criminals. Like, you can judge Theo Vaughn for his poor choices. And I have, I have some judgment there, especially for people who go ahead and jump into the fray and inform other people's opinions. But I do think he's pretty representative of a lot of voters who voted for Trump who were like, I don't know, man. I got two bad choices in my, like, in their heads, I got two bad choices, and I'm gonna choose the one who's more free speech and the one, like, more free speech, who I think's better for the economy and more free speech. No, I know, but. But that's what they told themselves, right? And that's how Donald Trump ran. And like, I will say just then, I guess my pushback on Tim, though, Is like, yes, we should be glad. We should be. But he's really saying something because he's getting pulled into this, right? And so, like, that is good. Honestly, though, I think that the Theo Vaughns and the Joe Rogans should be hair on fire because Donald Trump is making them look like idiots right now. Like, they should be really pushing back and being like, guys, this was my bed. Like, what is happening? I. I did not realize this is where, like, I think they have an obligation as people with big megaphones. Like, I don't think they can retreat into a. Just. But I'm a comedian or. But I just. I'm only mad because I'm getting thrown into this video and it's personal. Personally affronting me. Feel like they should be out there saying this is wrong and, like, Rogan is doing some of that, but not in a my bad, fam. We got it.
[70:02]
C
We got it.
[70:02]
A
We got to push back.
[70:03]
C
He's dumb on a bunch of stuff. Epstein not being the war president. You know, the deportation stuff. I guess free speech. Free speech on a big series of issues. Trump's made them look very dumb. Like, that was their core. This is what I asked Kirk Minahan when I had him yesterday. I was like, the core issues of all these guys are like, were the free speech stuff. Right? And then they also cared about Epstein. I think a lot of them were really drawn to Trump over the no war stuff. And then I think also they like, kind of the traditional get the government off my back elements, and I'm like, three of those four things. Trump is making them look really fucking dumb. And maybe four out of four.
[70:39]
B
Yeah, well, I don't. I don't want to be in the business of pushing away somebody who might eventually be an ally against fascism. So I have nothing else to add about Theo Vaughn. Welcome, Theo. Friend I just haven't met yet.
[70:58]
C
I'm not sure he's. Well, I'm not sure he wants to be welcomed quite yet. So I don't know if we're quite unwelcome, but maybe.
[71:03]
B
Great to have you on our side. Do you understand how the Internet works? That DHS doesn't have to ask you to sign off on shit you've published to include it in their tweets? Do you. Do you understand how that works? They don't owe you a check. No, no.
[71:14]
A
But actually, you raised something. Can we. I don't think people talk enough about how batshit crazy the government's official tweets are. Their accounts are insane and say insane Things. It's like, yes, but fascist, but also just like childish, dumb, irresponsible. Like all of the things. They are like these little snuff films. They're insane. No, no serious government would be putting this stuff out.
[71:50]
B
Well, I mean, we don't have a serious government.
[71:52]
A
That's true. But I just, I just. The fascism by meme thing that we're living through, I think is this is why it's like more disorienting. People are like, we're in 1932 or whatever. I'm like, kind of. But like, this time it's all like wrapped in a layer of irony and memeified. And it's very difficult to get a handle on the same way.
[72:17]
B
There was a lot of that in 1935 too, though. A lot of cartoons of guys with huge hook noses and the creation of the Volkish movement and the elevation of the. The Norse God Zoltan as a, you know, an avatar of the German people. I mean, that's the thing. These. When you get up close in history, a lot of this stuff looks ridiculous. Like, you know, the. When you get to see it, to see to its pores, you know, and that's something that I think I did not. I think I know I did not fully appreciate soon enough in this moment.
[73:05]
C
Big learnings I had when I started reading Nazi Nazi material again as a grown man.
[73:13]
B
All right, so, you know, I'm glad the Avon is upset that DHS didn't ask his permission to use his video. He might have gotten upset over the Secretary of Health and Human Services and Commissioner of the FDA and the President United States standing around and saying that they're ready to cure autism and that Tylenol causes autism and that women shouldn't be weak when they're pregnant by taking Tylenol. This seems to me to be a pretty bad moment for the federal government and another data point in the fact that our government is no longer a vector, a vector for reliable, like, information about, like, not just like political information, but just normal information about medicine and disease and those sorts of things. Am I the only one with my hair on fire? The three of us have not talked about this at all.
[74:07]
A
Tylenol should sue him to Timbuktu and back. Acetaminophen is in like 600 different things. And so he's name checking, like, one brand. And yes, the level of irresponsibility. And like, also not rigorous science. Like, and it's not even. It's just like Trump is just like. I heard a rumor I feel the biggest megaphone in the world. You should all be embarrassed for voting for this guy.
[74:39]
C
I thought we were just welcoming Theo Vaughn into the club. Sorry, sorry.
[74:42]
B
You know what? I take it, Theo, I am so sorry, buddy. Let's go get a Bloomin Onion. We'll talk about all this stuff. Maybe talk some sports, talk some World Series.
[74:50]
A
You do get to come back in. We should welcome people. But they should feel ashamed that they voted for this freaking moron.
[74:58]
C
Yeah, it's bad. I have talked about it a bunch. I mean, it's just. I don't even know what else to say. And it's dangerous. It's. It's like it's the most vipish thing that they've done. I worry that it's the kind of thing that in, like, 10 years, people go back and they're like, that will. That happened. Like, that's the weird part about our time. Right? Like, if that. If this had happened in the Bush administration, like, we should still be something everybody talked about, you know, I. You know, it'd be a memorable tent pole event. And I wonder if it will be. I hope it will, because we talk.
[75:22]
B
About the grocery scanner. We still talk about the grocery. Scanner. Remember that?
[75:26]
C
Yeah. You didn't know how grocery scanner worked. Meanwhile, we have the President of the United States just spitball. And I'm hearing what's happening in Cuba is that they don't have autism. It's like, what? From who? He can't even say the word. Acetaminophen, which was the premise of the press conference. Apparently they looked at, like, 20 different studies of various things and. And Trump and just wanted to do something on this, and RFK did. So they just. This is one that they went with. You know, they didn't pick the one about the geriatric sperm, obviously, the old man. Old men's sperm. That may be an issue here. They didn't pick that one. They picked this one because it goes after women and whatever. But Trump didn't even take the time to learn what it's called.
[75:58]
A
So.
[75:58]
C
I don't know. Jbl, I think you've been really good on this. I'd like to just put a quarter in your machine and hear what you have to say.
[76:03]
B
It's. Maybe I'm. Maybe I am going too far with this, but this feels like it is of a piece with the broader ethno nationalism and that this is part of this dysgenic movement, which I think is behind a lot of the hatred of gay and trans people as well. Like they just want these people to go away. And a thing which I forget which one of them it was. I think it was the FDA guy said at the press conference that it's, you know, it's hard to look at some of these kids with severe autism. I'm just like you, fuck you. It's hard to look at these kids any. Again. This is not a straight line. He repeated it a few times. They're, they're just kids. This is, they do not have autism. They are autistic. They did not catch a virus. They did not. Nothing happened to them. They do not have a disease. This is who they are. And what I don't get over your own discomfort and just like open your arms up and love people. I, ah, it makes me very, very angry. And this idea that like autism is an epidemic which they talked about over and over and over again is rfk. It's so self evidently stupid that I don't understand why people fall for it.
[77:34]
C
Right.
[77:34]
B
So, so autism. We have four times the rate of autism diagnoses as we did 30 years ago. And that is because we've expanded the diagnostic criteria of what we count as asd, Autism Spectrum Disorder. And, and also we have radically increased the screening now. It's, it's largely done through school systems. It is like saying, well, nobody before 13, the year 1300 ever got pancreatic cancer because we didn't know what pancreatic cancer was. But it's all, and this is what gets me. It's all exactly like the. Well, if you don't test for Covid, there are no Covid cases.
[78:15]
C
Yeah.
[78:17]
B
And I don't. But it's the reverse. It's the reversed idiocy. And I don't understand why people accept it, like why anybody accepts it, why anybody falls for this bullshit. And it makes me pretty mad because like life is tough enough. Like if you are a totally normal person in every way, like you are 5 foot 8 and with the average IQ and if you are a perfectly normal person, you're right handed. Average IQ to family, home, median income, et cetera, et cetera, like it's still hard finding your, your way in the world. For anybody who is an outlier along anyway, if they're neurodivergent, if their parents are divorced, if they grew up poor, if they're seven feet tall, fuck, if you're left handed. Right. There are these little things about the world, necessary system around us that make finding your place harder and for people with the most power and privilege to try to other and make it even harder for these kids and their families. It just, it drives me nuts and it's something I see in my life. I told a story in the Triad yesterday about a. A church I used to go to where there was a grown woman with who's autistic and she and her mother would come to mass every Sunday and they would sit in this chapel in the back of the church which had these glass doors in front of it. And it was a lovely little place. I think it's because this, this woman did a lot of stimming, right? So she had a lot of tics and grunts and motions. I think they felt a little self conscious about that. And I used to like to go and when I was at the 10 o' clock service, which is when, when they used to go, I would just go and sit in the chapel with them. Like not like next to them or creepy or anything, but just sit around because I thought like, I don't want to feel alone. Right? They don't feel like, like they've been bothered. And we got a maga priest who came in and he just really didn't like it. He didn't like having these women around and he drove them out. And that is the thing you see from priests even. And I would say this is not the only time I have seen other instances in which priests are not super into having special needs people in their lives. And I just, it. It drives me nuts because if you even get that from, from the Catholic Church, my people, like what hope is there for any of us? Like what hope is there from society? Yay. That's all I have. Sarah.
[80:43]
C
Yeah, they also have been lying about it too. There's. They're smearing it and othering them and also. And that top of it, it's like they're not just going after. I just like to add that they're not just going after the autistic people, they're going after the mothers.
[80:57]
A
The mothers, yes. This was, this was the only thing I was going to add, but Donald Trump telling women to tough it out. Pregnant women. Donald Trump, Captain Bone Spurs. Captain Bone spurs, who said that avoiding gonorrhea was his personal Vietnam. Talking to women not only who, like it's not just the way he talks about them. Like you shouldn't take this, you know, if you've got a fever while you're pregnant, et cetera, et cetera. There are a lot of people I know, I've got friends who've got autistic kids and those parents fight for those kids every day. And many of those kids, some of them will get to live on their own, some of them won't be able to. And those parents sit with fear all the time about whether or not it was their fault and what's going to happen to their kids when they're gone. And for Donald Trump to just pop off, just be like it's this thing. No real evidence. I'm hearing and I'm hearing and just because, and then he, and then he provides a mountain of like disinformation evidence. Like Amish people don't get it. Cuba, just insane stuff to put that pain in people's hearts, thinking that maybe they did it through some casual thing and also for it to turn them again against scientific community. Like why wasn't somebody telling us this? Why didn't we know? I just think this is stuff is like the banality of evil where like it's stupid and it's idiotic, but like it is evil and causing people a lot of pain right now. And as is always the case, people of good faith. Like I see some of the anti antis again pipe up once to say he shouldn't do this and they go back to defending.
[82:54]
B
Somebody used the word messy to describe it was a messy press conference.
[82:58]
A
No, this is what he does every day. Today it's autism or it's, or it's, it's just figuring out Russia and Ukraine or it's bragging to the world leaders about how he's, there's a hat that says he's right about everything and how he's mad he didn't get to build the marble floors or he's trying to take people off the air. Like all of our topics today, they're all part and parcel of the same thing. These things are not taken individually. Together they amount to the worst human being to ever hold this office and who is doing an enormous amount of damage to individuals and the world. World.
[83:33]
B
Can I ask just, just a very quick forward looking question, then we'll get out of here because it's been a long show. How does a country, a government and a society, which are three different things, climb back from something like this? Because it will be all of our ministries of health and science which will have been corrupted by this. Right. We will have gotten to the point where these offices are riddled with people like Bobby Kennedy and they will be in positions all up and down the line throughout HHS and the CDC and the nih. We will have had to set up basically adversarial private organizations for getting out correct information, like physicians, groups, and scientifically, which are, which will be functionally adversarial to the government. We will have had to say to the entire country, you cannot trust the things the government is saying about this stuff. And so what, like a switch flips four years from now or eight years from now or something, and everyone's just like, hey, we're all good. We're back to normal. I don't, I just, I don't understand. I don't understand the climb down.
[84:50]
A
It's a fair question and a fair concern. Here's my 1.
[84:54]
C
It's also a big question to ask 82 minutes into the podcast.
[84:57]
A
It is. It is.
[84:58]
C
Can you guys do that one on Secret? Can we just do this on Secret? Why don't we do that? This is a tease. We have a secret podcast for members only, and this is a great topic for you guys to discuss on that.
[85:08]
B
And, Sarah, your baseline answer is, yes, we can. And I'm going to tell you how on Friday.
[85:15]
A
All right, fine. Sure. We can leave it there.
[85:19]
B
Good show. Long show, everybody. We'll see you at the secret show on Friday. Good luck, America.
[85:25]
C
Bye.
[85:25]
A
Bye.