Sarah Longwell (3:05)

Yeah, so this is a. This is. This is a problem for me too. I mean, I am. The amount of concealer I've got. Like, my hair loses all of its blondness. My. I become extremely pasty, almost translucent.

JVL (3:18)

And I don't put makeup on for these things. So maybe I should. Which is maybe the answer is, Link, I should what?

Sarah Longwell (3:25)

Yeah, you should have to put makeup on. Because I'll tell you, the most annoying thing is when people are like, Sarah, why isn't Sarah just like, can she. Can't she get on in the next five minutes? I'm like, if you guys are going to move me from PJ territory to regular territory, I got to do a whole thing to myself. I didn't want it to.

JVL (3:41)

Guess you care about how you look. See, I'm just, like, willing to let people take me as I am. Okay, it's all me, baby.

Sarah Longwell (3:50)

Okay.

JVL (3:50)

It's all me.

Sarah Longwell (3:51)

The problem is you. You've lost too much weight and now everything shows on your face. You got to keep the cheeks just a little. You got to keep a little in there, man.

JVL (4:01)

I. No, I want to be thinner. I'm going to run over old gypsy women if I have to to keep getting thinner.

Sarah Longwell (4:09)

I think you look beautiful.

JVL (4:11)

Thank you.

Sarah Longwell (4:11)

Perfect just the way you are.

JVL (4:13)

God bless. God bless you. Okay, so I think we hadn't talked about. We have. So we taped on Tuesday with Next Level, and then Trump did his Greenland back out, which wasn't really a back out. And I have all sorts of wait.

Sarah Longwell (4:33)

I've been reliably told that is. That's he's playing ten dimensional chess on green.

JVL (4:38)

Yes, yes. It's the art of the deal. It is the art of the deal. It is unfortunate that he did the art of the deal, like 48 hours after a bunch of other normie Republicans finally were like, yeah, no, I guess we do have to invade Greenland. Like, they pretended for 10 months that it was all a. A joke being used to trigger the libs. And then they finally like, okay, I mean, I guess we have to say it's Good. Now and then he pulls rug, pulls them.

Sarah Longwell (5:11)

I have a couple.

JVL (5:12)

It is, it is one of his best qualities. It's one of his redeeming qualities, honestly.

Sarah Longwell (5:16)

Yeah. Is that he makes fools out of all the people who go along with him.

JVL (5:19)

Boom. So I have some thoughts about that and about the media coverage of, of Trump and Greenland. I also have some thoughts about Minneapolis and what we're seeing there. There's a general strike. Not a general strike, but a strike being called in in Minneapolis today, which seems like kind of a big deal. That is not something that gets done in America. Like, that is really not a thing that happens. And that's a European thing because of the protections Europe has for, for workers that in America don't really exist. And, and also, DHS seems poised to go into Maine and seems to not be communicating at all with law enforcement in Maine or the governor of Maine. And I don't know. I just have one little thing I'd like to read to you. This is Governor, Governor Mills in Maine. She says, look, Maine knows what good law enforcement looks like because our law enforcement are held to high professional standards. They undergo substantial professional training, and they are accountable to the law. And I'll tell you this. They don't wear a mask to shield their identities, and they don't arrest people in order to fulfill a quota. Great. Love that. If your plan is to come here to be provocative and to undermine the civil rights of Maine residents, do not be confused. Those tactics are not welcome here. To say that that's not welcome in Maine. That doesn't mean anything. That's, that's blather.

Sarah Longwell (6:53)

Yeah.

JVL (6:54)

Right. Because what do you want to say?

Sarah Longwell (6:57)

What do you want her to say?

JVL (6:58)

I mean, she could say it's despicable and we're gonna have local law enforcement mobilized to make sure that you people don't break the law. You federal agents do not get allowed to break the law with impunity. She could say that we will be under occupation if this happens. And, you know, like, nobody should have any illusions about what's going on. But the, the pose of, like, well, that's not welcome here. That is trying to say, like, yeah, we'll push you out with without, like, of course she's not going to push them out. Otherwise she would say she's going to push them out. You know what I mean?

Sarah Longwell (7:36)

Like, why are they going to Maine?

JVL (7:40)

Just to Susan Collins. Yeah, right. I kind of love this.

Sarah Longwell (7:45)

Okay? So I, I, I, not to make it politic. Like, there's the political side of the story. And then there's obviously the reality of ICE going into places horrible. Nobody wants ICE going into places. That being said, Maine is, like, kind of the funniest place for them to go. And also, it's sort of like sending ICE to, like, Alaska a little bit, where you have just a bunch of libertarians, many of whom are armed and are like, what are you doing here, man? And so, and also politically, this couldn't be more toxic for Susan Collins, like, not good for what she has to do. Then Susan Collins, like Janet Mills. I'm not saying she, she's like, come on in, big boys. But I do think there's part of her that's like, I will stay. I will say I'm opposed, but, but it's not the worst if they come in here and create a big problem for Susan Collins, because then Collins has to make a choice, right? She's got to go against, pick a fight with Trump because people will be mad that ICE is in their state, or she's got to defend ICE doing something wildly unpopular. So it's either a break with Trump or like a break with her own state. Either way, good for Democrats. And I gotta say, though, that the, the problem for, on the Democratic side will be it becomes a flashpoint, the Democratic primary. And so you can see a world in which the statement that you just read from Janet Mills ends up paling in comparison with a Graham Platner Henley wearing. I'm going out there to confront Dice, you know, style, who I assume stylistically he would be quite different than that statement. And I could see that playing in a Democratic primary.

JVL (9:40)

I could. On the other hand, this does give Mills the opportunity to just butch up.

Sarah Longwell (9:46)

If she wants to. If she wants to.

JVL (9:48)

I mean, if, if she would like to simply butch up and show that, hey, it's nice to have a bunch of tats and to, to be an oyster farmer who was an edge lord on socials. But, but if you hold power in the government, you can use that power to stop the people who are trying to hurt you. And watch me do that. Yeah, she could do Gavin Newsome.

Sarah Longwell (10:11)

She could. I just, this is. I, I, I, I'm sure I'm overthinking this tactically.

JVL (10:17)

Right.

Sarah Longwell (10:18)

I just, I just am saying that if you, My guess is if she waits till ICE is there before she really butches up, because she wants to. To.

JVL (10:28)

As she should, probably.

Sarah Longwell (10:30)

Yeah.

JVL (10:30)

I mean, she should.

Sarah Longwell (10:31)

And this is where, this is where, you know, I don't know the answer to this question. But when you say, well, she's going to say, you know, our police officers are going to be there to there. I do think the genuine thing that all of the people who are dealing with ice, the calculation they are confronted with is not easy because they have to decide whether they escalate or deescalate. They understand that putting cops into the streets contra ICE is escalatory. Even if they put police on the streets, helping ICE is, you know, or just like protecting people from ICE or sort of, you know, standing with the protesters to keep things kind of separate. All of that is escalatory, essentially. This is why people, people are generally like, don't send more people. We don't want the National Guard.

JVL (11:24)

So, I mean, you're not wrong. On the other hand, at this point, isn't escalatory helpful?

Sarah Longwell (11:35)

I don't know about that. This is where, this is where you and I. Yeah, I know.

JVL (11:41)

Just asking questions.

Sarah Longwell (11:42)

I'm just. This is, this is where I am less willing to do kind of the accelerationism piece because this stuff, this, that, that level of political violence can get out of hand very quickly.

JVL (12:00)

Oh, absolutely. I will say this. If one of the things you care about is increasing the community bonds between local law enforcement and the people, sending local law enforcement out to. With ICE is like the single best thing you could ever do. The people of Lewiston will never forget that they're local cops.

Sarah Longwell (12:26)

I don't know about with ice. I think that, I don't know, they should be out there.

JVL (12:30)

Enforce the law.

Sarah Longwell (12:32)

Yeah.

JVL (12:33)

Stop ICE from breaking the law citizens. Right. I feel like that could have some really beneficial long term consequences for communities. Maybe just. I'm just thinking out loud, just trying to color outside the, the lines. All right, so did you have anything on Greenland in the, the, the final thing. I wrote this thing yesterday. This. All I do now is like yell into my keyboard. I just sit there screaming at my keyboard for these newsletters.

Sarah Longwell (13:00)

Sure.

JVL (13:01)

There is this thing where in America people seem to be like, ah, great, Trump tacoed, everything's fine. Let's all get back to like, it's just another Trump crisis. We're fine. This is. And I, from everything I have read, this does not seem to be the reaction in Europe. This seems to have been a permanent rupture in Europe. And they are going ahead and making alternate arrangements. And the American people for the most part seem totally oblivious to this. They are just like, yeah, Greenland's done. Phew, we dodged a bullet there, you know?

Sarah Longwell (13:34)

Yeah. And, and look, I've been watching the right wing influencer types especially. And the worst ones, like the ones that are semi, supposed to be semi responsible, like an Eric Erickson that come in and they' like oh yeah, what this is, this is deal making.

JVL (13:48)

You know, got such a deal.

Sarah Longwell (13:52)

The thing that we gave away to get Trump's random deal that nobody wanted in the first place was the entire globe's trust in who we are. The he did not like negotiating by saber rattling troops on the ground over a piece of land. And also, I mean look, we, I don't know if you've, I have we been together since his Davos speech because.

JVL (14:23)

You know, Canada only lives because of the United States.

Sarah Longwell (14:27)

Yeah. And also, but also just like the election was stolen, they figured that out. Now we're the hottest country. Like it is. We are, he is, he is trying to make us all live in a parallel universe. We are, we are incredibly desensitized to like, we were focused on the new information because I, I was watching the coverage of the Davos speech and everybody was like, the news coming out of the speech is that we are not going to invade Greenland. And I'm like, can you guys listen to yourselves for a second?

JVL (14:56)

It's insane.

Sarah Longwell (14:57)

We aren't paying attention to the fact that he is saying that the election was rigged against him and that now he has evidence of that and everybody knows it. That's a lie. Completely untrue.

JVL (15:08)

He said that America lived under an illegitimate government for four years.

Sarah Longwell (15:11)

I mean, yeah, it is. And, and so everybody's like, and the news coming out of this is this fake thing that Donald Trump invented that by the way, we were told reliably from these same people who are now calling Trump a genius on it, that he was never going to do any of this. He never really cared about Greenland. Like this is just Trump, blah, blah, blah. It's a joke. You guys can't take a joke. You guys can't take a joke that Trump is saying he's going to run for a fourth term because it's a fourth term now. Jbl, I don't know if you've noticed this. It's not a third term because he already, he should have.

JVL (15:44)

He already won his second.

Sarah Longwell (15:45)

He already won his third term.

JVL (15:47)

Right?

Sarah Longwell (15:47)

That's right.

JVL (15:48)

So this is a, I actually wrote a short thing about this for today. There's this thing that the, the mainstream media does in America. Not, not everybody, I'm just sort of generalizing where they treat the insane stuff that Trump is doing and saying as like, uh, this stuff is happening. Is it real? Is it not real? We don't know. And then he says one time something not insane like, you know, I could do force, but I won't. Yeah. And everyone treats it as. Well, he's ruled it out. He has ruled it out. He said this, these five words he just said are utterly binding and we can take it to the bank, right? Like, so no matter how many times he says, you know, we're looking very strongly into running for a third term and I'm owed a third term and maybe I'll run for a third term. He says once in one interview, no, I'm not going to do it. Everyone's like, ah, you ruled it out. He ruled it out. Guys, we're all set now. And they treat those statements as totally binding when they're. They're not. Why would they be right if everything he does is art of the deal and negotiation and everything he says is only, you know, like he said, America must have complete and control, total control of Greenland. And then 36 hours later he was like, never mind. So none of his words have any meaning. And so there is this. It's not quite sane washing, because I think it's like a self defense mechanism. It is a self defense wanting to think that everything is okay.

Sarah Longwell (17:29)

Well, that's part of it. I do think, you know, people fight the last war and that almost never works out well, but they've told themselves that by being hair on fire about Trump's lies that they alienated viewers and that they lost credibility. And so this idea that they have now is they're like, well, it didn't work when we, you know, screamed and yelled and said it was a threat to democracy. And so I guess we're going to try and do it more subtly or just really focus on what Trump does and not what he says, which, by the way, is them playing to the refs on the right who have tried to beat them into a posture of, you guys are so, you know, you love to chase the bait of what Donald Trump says, but who cares what he says? Just watch what he does. They have moved the goalposts on the American presidency where we are only supposed to take the President's actions into account and never his words, which is an insane proposition for the OR OR to.

JVL (18:33)

Take his words only when the words sound normal. And when they don't sound normal, then it's like, and to be clear, I'm not asking for everybody to be the bulwark, but like, the responsible way to have covered that speech would have been to say, well, 72 hours ago, the president insisted that American national security absolutely required complete and total control of Greenland. Now at Davos, you know, and after weeks of refusing to rule out military action at Davos, he said he could do military action but won't. That's all. You just have to frame it with a tiny bit of context. You don't have to be a crazy person like me. You don't have to have Trump derangement syndrome. Anyway, all of this is taking place in the context of some very bad polling from New York Times Siena, which has been a very good, good polling on Trump for the last four years. They are one of the good polling. I mean, like, they have been, they have, they have dialed in for about four years pretty accurately on the actual state of Trump's coalition and his approval.

Sarah Longwell (19:43)

Yes.

JVL (19:45)

And you've, I mean, I just looked at the top line numbers. You've actually spent real time looking at it. Talk to me, give me hope.

Sarah Longwell (19:54)

Well, I mean, he is. So part of it is that I want to take the Siena New York Times poll and put it in the context of a CNN poll, Wall street journal poll, the YouGov poll. Like there's just been, we just were in, it was like the time for everybody to drop polls and the polling is enormously consistent. And I want to tell you, I want to give you a bunch of good news and then I'm going to give you one piece of bad news. Well, I guess there's a couple pieces of bad news in here, too. The good news is this. They as just an overall net approval. Trump is minus 16. So 56% of the country disapproves of Trump actively. He's got a 40% approval rating. And I find that so and Nate Silver's been doing the aggregate. And so we have been seeing, if you look at Trump's polling tends to go like, kind of like down and then a little spike and then down. But like the trend line is down, but he has these bumps up in between usually when he's not doing something crazy or, or something happens that people like that is sort of dominating the news cycle. But we have the trend line has been entirely in the negative and in many cases it's starting to get below where Trump was even in his first term. Now here's a. I guess this is, I guess this is sort of bad news, but it is reality, which is Trump is also deeply underwater on a whole range of issues across polling. Right. He is well underwater on the economy and let's in this New York Times Sienna poll on the economy, he is minus 18 points. So 58% disapprove and sorry, yeah, this is the economy. 58% disapprove, 40% approve. So he's got the same approval number. But here's actually. Wait, I'll wait. I'm going to say on immigration, he is minus 17 points with basically the same thing. 58 approve or sorry, 58 disapprove, 40 approve. But there's like a 11 point differential on the. Don't know. But you're seeing, right, this 40% is kind of where he is until you get to the cost of living on the cost of living. So the economy, people are going to look at the economy number and just take that one and be like, well, look, it's about the same as immigration. You know, he's minus 18 points, minus 17 points. 40% approval on both. But if you go to the cost of living, which is how people interact with the economy, he's at 34% approval and 64% disapproval. That is a minus 29 on the cost of living. That is super. Like, that's bad. And I think what is when I see the cost of living at 34 and this was what I was talking about when I was saying bad news, that low number, the fact that Trump's approval number isn't in line with the cost of living number is both a problem and an opportunity because what you want is for the 34% of people who think that the economy is fine. Okay, all right, so those are the dead enders on Trump. You want to get there with Trump's overall approval rating. Like that's your kind of floor. I think, you know, 32, 34 is where I've always said those are the Bush line. He is close on that. On the Epstein files, he's also minus 44 points with 22% approving and 66 disapproving. So his numbers have been bad across the board. Some of the polls, some of the big polls have him much lower in the 30s. But the new York Times Sienna poll is just, it's a very good poll. They do a lot of, they are mixed modal, where they both do straight calling on cell phones, but also know they, they just, they mix their landlines, they mix their online qualitative or their, their boards. Like they get it. Everybody, you know, in terms of, there's a massive enthusiasm gap that we're seeing in terms of who wants to vote. Right. So Democrats are, this isn't in The Sienna poll, this is a. A different. These are some of the different polls, but the enthusiasm gap is really large. Democrats are much more eager to vote than Republicans are.

JVL (24:43)

I saw congressional ballot number the other day. It blew my mind. It was like, plus 22. That's not on the congressional ballot. Was that right or is that wrong?

Sarah Longwell (24:52)

I don't. I don't think it's. I don't. I don't think it's that big. But there. But there. Certainly the generic ballot is starting to be like, 47 for Democrats, 42 for Republicans, and it has flipped recently. It was like, for a long time, it was in the red for, for the Republicans, and now it's for the Democrats. I just. The other thing, the Time Santa poll also asked about the. About ICE enforcement specifically. And he's at 36. 36% approve and 63% disapprove. And the Nate Silver aggregator now has him at 55% disapprove. I think it's important for the people who feel. I don't want to say like you exactly, but people who feel despairingly. Despairingly.

JVL (25:44)

That's me.

Sarah Longwell (25:45)

Yeah, I know, I know. And, and hey, I'm not trying to talk people out of elements of despair because it's really, really bad, but the American people are not unresponsive to what's happening. They do not approve of ice.

JVL (26:03)

Yeah. Not to. Well, 36% of them do.

Sarah Longwell (26:06)

Yeah.

JVL (26:07)

Which is a problem. I mean, that is more than a third of the country sees what ICE is doing and it's like, yeah, that gets me horny. That's a problem. Well, a third of the country wants a Gestapo. Yikes.

Sarah Longwell (26:21)

I think that saying 36% approve is different from saying horny, for. They didn't ask that specific question about the level of arousal that ICE causes.

JVL (26:32)

If you could make love to ice, would you.

Sarah Longwell (26:35)

I suspect. I suspect that there's only that it's a lower number that actually actual horny.

JVL (26:42)

For ice number is not. Not higher than 28%. Don't worry, guys. So just real quick on affordability.

Sarah Longwell (26:51)

It is.

JVL (26:52)

It is worth noting that over the last week, Trump has talked incessantly about the price of gas.

Sarah Longwell (26:59)

Yeah.

JVL (27:00)

And interest rates, because those are the two things where he has some power to monkey with prices.

Sarah Longwell (27:08)

Right.

JVL (27:09)

And this is part of, like, I think part of his idiotic Venezuela thing is, hey, we can go down there and just like, get a bunch more Venezuelan oil onto the market. Now I think he's going to discover he can't really. Because their capacity like isn't their, their processing capacity is not what he thinks it was. But there are ways for the President United States to lower the price of gas artificially. Like, the President can do that. He can just like start tapping the strategic reserve he has.

Sarah Longwell (27:40)

We don't know he's doing that. He's not doing that.

JVL (27:42)

No, we don't know that he's doing it. But as you get closer to the election. Right. If you want to blunt the affordability thing, Lord knows he does have some very good friends in the Middle east who I think could be persuaded for 12 weeks prior to the election to increase supply and lower prices a little bit. Right. That's the thing that he can do. God knows the people in Qatar would probably help him out there. MBS probably willing to help him out on interest rates. Like, he's made very clear that his, his next Fed pick has a litmus test about aggressively slashing rates. And so he can bring down the, the price of mortgages temporarily. Yep. So I don't know, like, he has some tools at his disposal and will people. I mean, nothing else will really. That's not true. Nothing else. Right. I mean, if you cut energy prices that does reflect in like shipping costs and can lower grocery prices a little bit. Again, these things are artificial. Do you think people will be like, tricked in that way? Like, will they buy it?

Sarah Longwell (28:49)

It depends on how much. I'm not sure. I just part of it, the big thing that would change the prices is tariffs coming off. And he just keeps announcing more of those. And so I'm not sure those. The marginal things he can do with gas prices and some of the other things, like, would matter right. Enough for people to feel it.

JVL (29:09)

Well, the other thing is he can send checks.

Sarah Longwell (29:11)

He can. And then he can watch the inflation numbers go up. I. That. And that to me actually seems like a much more likely outcome that he just strokes checks to the people he wants to stroke checks to and calls it a tariff dividend.

JVL (29:27)

Right. Yeah, it's great. It's all great. All right, I want to Talk next about J.D. vance and the people who are not horny for J.D. vance because this was sort of interesting to me. But we got to do that on the other side.

Sarah Longwell (29:42)

I got so much to say about this. It was. Some wild things are happening with the voters.

JVL (29:47)

Hey guys, on the Next Level feed, if you're listening to this, come and join us. Just, just subscribe. We don't, we don't do a lot of hard, like hard sells. Not a lot of like, oh, well, we got good stuff behind the paywall. You paywall almost nothing. We're doing this for you, for the people. Come join us.

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