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- [00:00]
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- [01:02]
Lost Traveler
I'm gonna pull over and ask that man for directions.
- [01:05]
Sarah Longwell
Hi there.
- [01:05]
Lost Traveler
We're looking to get to the campground.
- [01:07]
T-Mobile Representative
Well, you're gonna take a left at the old oak tree end of this here road. No, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.
- [01:13]
Lost Traveler
How are you getting a signal out here?
- [01:14]
T-Mobile Representative
T Mobile and US Cellular decided to merge. So the network out here is huge. We're getting the same great signal as the city and saving a boatload with all the benefits. Oh, and a five year price guarantee. Okay, here's those directions.
- [01:26]
Lost Traveler
Actually, can you point us in the direction of a T Mobile store?
- [01:29]
T-Mobile Advertiser
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- [01:45]
T-Mobile Commercial Voice
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- [02:00]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
I'll make fun of whoever I want to. Hello everyone. This is JVL here with my best friends Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of the Bulwark. We are intermediated by screens and in three separate parts of the country the way God intended. Because being together on a stage in real life. Very disturbing. Did not care for it.
- [02:23]
Sarah Longwell
It was great.
- [02:24]
Tim Miller
I didn't give either of you my cold. So congrats. You're welcome. Stayed here. I apologize. We went into this crowd. Me and Sarah did not jpl. He stayed in the move.
- [02:33]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Yes.
- [02:34]
Tim Miller
And we had a bubble. Our biggest fans rant and I hope I gave, I hope I didn't give any of them a cold. But it was nice to hear from them.
- [02:41]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Okay. We are taping on Tuesday afternoon. The State of the Union is a few hours from now. So we're going to talk about it. Not at all. Ignoring State of the Union entirely. And instead we're going to do this PTI style. We've got a smorgasbord of topics and we're just going to do a rundown and we're going to start with Jeffrey Epstein News, everybody's favorite. NPR reports today that the Justice Department withheld and removed some of the Epstein files related to Trump, including notes from a conversation with a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexual abuse when she was a minor. 13 I would say my own assumptions, and this is tentative, my own tentative assumptions throughout this ordeal have been that Donald Trump certainly knew. Donald Trump certainly was around this stuff.
- [03:39]
Tim Miller
But did Trump certainly participated with adult
- [03:42]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
women and certainly participated women over the age of 17 against their will at
- [03:48]
Tim Miller
times, as evidenced by the fact that he admitted as such and that a jury has convicted him of such, at least in a civil proceeding.
- [03:54]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
But I have mostly, again, tentative assumptions that it was unlikely that young Donald Trump was participating with minors. Do we have to revise those assumptions?
- [04:14]
Sarah Longwell
I don't think we know. Look, and here, this is clearly we don't know.
- [04:17]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
But I'm saying, do we have to revise them to like, I don't know.
- [04:20]
Tim Miller
Maybe.
- [04:20]
Sarah Longwell
Well, maybe. I mean, look, I've been working under my own, I think I would call it like a Joe Paterno theory of the Epstein stuff with Trump.
- [04:31]
Tim Miller
Not a compliment to be compared to Joe Paterno.
- [04:34]
Sarah Longwell
Right. I mean, this is, this is like he knew about it and for a variety of reasons, you know, didn't tell people when it was happening. Was sort of a facilitator in his own way. Right. They're going to mar a lago for people. So he's in the mix. I don't, I don't think the point of this is about exactly whether you can't adjudicate whether or not the things are true. What you can adjudicate is whether or not Pam Bondi's Department of Justice is following the law as written about the Epstein files in their release. Okay. So in, in her letter to this administration, she said it was on February 14, Valentine's Day. Bondi and Blanch insisted that no records were withheld or redacted. And I quote, on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary. So I think that if they did take these down or keep them, and also keep in mind, there are about, there are millions of other files that have still not been released. Now you could argue over whether or not they should have released them in the way that they did, which is like, you know, just in these massive tranches and there's all these people being brought into them. Obviously they didn't do a good job of redacting them. They made a bunch of the victims names public while keeping a bunch of the potential co conspirators names private. Like there's all these things they did wrong with it. But I think at minimum what the story shows you is they are not following the law as it was passed by Congress, which is the only thing in this question, and that it seems to be, in part, things were put out and then they realized that they were about Trump and they pulled them back off to spare Trump. So this, it still looks like a cover up to me. Like the question here is about the covering up of these files to spare Donald Trump, whatever, further scrutiny, embarrassment. And that's the problem with this to me.
- [06:39]
Tim Miller
Yeah. So I want to talk about both the crime and the COVID up. Okay. On the crime side of things, obviously this matters deeply to the victims, whoever was victimized. And we know that Donald Trump has adult female victims, a bunch of them. Okay. And so I just think that's important to State because, you know, sometimes when you get into the. Well, we don't know, like that part gets lost. Like, Eugene Carroll won in court, Right. That Donald Trump admitted that he grabbed women. But you know what? Right? So that part we already know that he's a sex criminal. We've known it since he was elected the first time. The, the stuff with the, the underage girls obviously would be very important to them. Right. If they were victimized by him or by anyone to get justice for that. I think in the political scheme of things, this reminds me a little bit of like the Russia collusion element, where like the Trump defenders are always trying to define that as narrowly as possible, which is like, did he really actually ask Vladimir Putin in private to hack Hillary Clinton? And did they coordinate on timing and were they on phone calls together? Like that was what the Trump defenders Always wanted to do it was like, define collusion as narrowly as possible. In fact, throughout that whole time, what I always said is like, he's guilty.
- [07:55]
Sarah Longwell
He stood on stage and said it publicly.
- [07:57]
Tim Miller
Russia, go find them. I was like, yeah, I don't know what the details are. I don't know what the back channels look like. That will be interesting to find out at some time, just like this will be interesting to find out. But like, as far as the court of public opinion is concerned, I just think it's important just to be clear that like he was guilty then, that like we knew a hostile foreign power was trying to help him and he encouraged them to do so publicly. It was totally unacceptable on its face. You know, he shouldn't have been elected the first time. And, and I think that's true in this case. Right. Like we know his behavior with Jeffrey Epstein was unacceptable. Right. Like the details of which we're continue to learn more. Okay. On the COVID up part of it, I just, I do want to shout out Roger Sullenberger who's been like, like a dog with a bone on this on his substack and was ahead of the, of the mainstream media on this and so good on him. I'm, I think talk to him for this page soon. So keep your eye out for that video. But yeah. Now over to our friends at Oversight, Robert Garcia. Congressman Robert Garcia. He just put this out right before he came on. Looking at this case, this, this girl that you were referencing, the top JVL that Roger has been reporting on for the last few weeks. Oversight Dems have been investigating the FBI's handling of allegations from 2019 of a sexual assault on a minor made against President Donald Trump that was made by a survivor. Yesterday. I reviewed unredacted evidence logs at DOJ Oversight. Democrats can confirm that the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused Donald Trump of heinous crimes. So again, you know, by the time he's president in 2019, I think it's okay to just to be candid with everybody. Like people were making fake, you know, you're the president, any president, it's not just Donald Trump. Like people call the FBI and say insane things about the president all the time.
- [09:40]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Yes.
- [09:40]
Tim Miller
But in this case, this then girl, you know, young girl at the time, woman, when she is making these cases, like there were interviews, it was in the initial files, they purposefully covered them up and redacted them. Why did they do that? Like, we don't know why, but again, like To Sarah's point out of the COVID up, like this is a cover up and like that is the rel, you know, not the only relevant thing, but that is enough to convict him in the court of public opinion.
- [10:08]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, and that's, that's where like to adjudicate, whether or not this happened, somebody has to go look at it in a real way. We can't adjudicate it on a podcast. What we can adjudicate is that they are covering this up. That that report that that woman who came in and made had multiple meetings. It was in the FBI's own briefing about what was in the files or in the DOJ's own briefing about what was in the files that implicated high profile individuals including Donald Trump. So, like, why did they brief that? Why was it taken out? Like, those are questions people should run down and that the government should be transparent answering. And so that's the story here.
- [10:49]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
So when do you think Pam Bonnie will appoint an independent counsel to look into this?
- [10:54]
Tim Miller
Any minute now, probably. I mean, maybe by the time this publishes.
- [10:57]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
I mean, it is, it is funny to me that we live in a world where nobody has even suggested that we have an independent council investigating what's going on at the DOJ here because everybody knows that it's preposterous. It's like suggesting that we teleport to Mars when this would in any other presidential administration. Like, by week one, we would have been at independent counsel.
- [11:24]
Sarah Longwell
This is actually a really good point about DOJ in general. What do we. We also know a bunch of things. We know that Trump has hung a banner with his face on it on this supposed independent agency. We know that Trump sent a DM slash public bleat to the head of DOJ saying that she needed to investigate Leticia James and James Comey, his enemies. Like, again, to Tim's point, we know it, it's there, it's in public, it's this. It's not up for discussion. And I do think that people should press a lot harder on what we know to be true and run those things down.
- [12:05]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Is there anything to be done if you don't have an independent counsel?
- [12:08]
Tim Miller
Right.
- [12:09]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
I mean, this is the thing. Like, so they're violating the law, but they're the Justice Department and so who investigates that?
- [12:16]
Tim Miller
Well, SDNY conceivably hasn't felt right. Like there's state and offices.
- [12:24]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
That's a federal. All right, Southern District of New York. Like, they're not going to investigate this.
- [12:29]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [12:30]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
You're saying because they're Part of the Justice Department.
- [12:31]
Tim Miller
Right. You're saying that they'll get fired if they look into it. That's right.
- [12:34]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
This is what I'm saying.
- [12:36]
Sarah Longwell
Ask me this question. Who's investigate. This is why Donald Trump is going to do everything he can to try to keep Democrats from winning. Because really when the oversight comes is if Democrats take the gavel back. And this is where jvl, this goes to something you said on the stage the other night in Minnesota, which is Democrats do have to. I'll use language that they understand. I do need Democrats to make space for the investigations that need to be done on this front while they also focus on the affordability issues, health care. The other things that obviously I would always argue matter more to voters, but they should be as a political matter and as a moral matter. Right. They should say we are going to. And they should campaign on it. We are going to find justice for people. We're going to find out what happened. We're going to get to the bottom of this. Because Trump is, is using his Department of Justice to cover things up. Whether it's for him or his friends, we don't know, but they are certainly engaged in a cover up.
- [13:37]
Tim Miller
And the other thing is, I would just say in the meantime, it's an important question, jbl, because sometimes politically I think it would be wise for people to step back and be like, what would I do if it was in normal times, Right. And I don't think that there's anything wrong, even though we know it's not going to happen. Like why pre submit, right? Like why wouldn't Hakeem Jeffries or whoever, like have a press conference say we should have an independent council. That is the demand. That's the request. Is that going to like move the needle with your average voter who doesn't understand what an independent council is like? Of course not. Of course not. Right. But it continues to advance the narrative and like this is a thing that again, the MAGA side is good at. Like a lot of times they do it with fake shit. Like they just make shit up to create another new story for everybody to talk about. Like it gives more fodder to if nobody else. The class of like independent podcasters that have been Trump curious that do care about the Epstein thing, all of them I think would be foreign independent counsel on this. And so it's like give them some chum throw, you know, and, and start to demonstrate that when you get back in you will take this seriously. I think that would be smart. All right.
- [14:54]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Moving on tariffs. So the big tariff decision from the Supreme Court came down last Friday as we were all leaving Minneapolis. Is anybody else concerned that there are three votes for literally any fucking thing Donald Trump wants to do? I mean, I understand, like, it's nice that the Supreme Court reigned him in.
- [15:13]
Tim Miller
I'm pretty happy that there are only three.
- [15:16]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Sure, that's one way of looking at it.
- [15:17]
Sarah Longwell
You know what, Jamie? You're like such a glass half empty kind of guy that you want to focus on the three instead of the six.
- [15:24]
Tim Miller
Let's focus on the three.
- [15:26]
Sarah Longwell
The Supreme Court, two thirds full right now.
- [15:28]
Rocket Money Announcer (Alternate)
Okay.
- [15:29]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
But there is a third of the Supreme Court which are simply partisan operatrics.
- [15:35]
Sarah Longwell
Well, I think there's two partisan apparatrics and one not very smart justice. Like, I just think, whoa, Kavanaugh.
- [15:44]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Oh, okay.
- [15:45]
Tim Miller
Do you think he's dumber than Clarence
- [15:47]
Sarah Longwell
Thomas and experience Thomas is phoning in just a partisan whatever. I mean, the, the, the extent to which. So I don't know if you guys listen to the illegal news with Andrew Weissman, but we dropped on Saturday. Yeah, well, it was a really good episode. But, but one of the things that he really pulled apart was if you see, if you go look at John Roberts wrote in his decision, he made fun of Kavanaugh for like, Cliff noting, like, he just took the government's argument and like dropped it into his argument. And they were like, that is not our job to take wholesale this like, BS from the government. And so like the, the fact that Roberts was shitting on Kavanaugh for being such a hack, I was delightful to me and not something that I think a layperson might notice. And so I think, but like, I think there's two votes. And I think Kavanaugh is somebody, he likes to try to split the difference. Like, he wants people to like him, but he's not a very smart or thoughtful jurist. And I think over time, if he sees the winds changing, I think he could too. But I definitely. The other two are just full on in the tank.
- [17:00]
Tim Miller
I mean, it's a crazy vote. Like, I think it was Matt Lewis who was posting. I was like, does anyone think that any of those three justices would have affirmed Joe Biden's tariffs because of a climate emergency or whatever? Like, no, it's for Fosters even think about. We have three hacks, total hacks. Here's the thing, though. Here is my glass half full like that. Look, that is concerning. And I think that we should take Donald Trump's complaints seriously also about the fact that there might be some foreign interference in the Supreme Court. And that might be a rationale for Democrats to make some pretty.
- [17:30]
Sarah Longwell
This is my new favorite bit of yours. I like this bit.
- [17:34]
Tim Miller
I mean, the president of the United States says that the Supreme Court is compromised and corrupted and that there are.
- [17:38]
Sarah Longwell
We should probably get a whole new court.
- [17:40]
Tim Miller
I think so. And we should at least clean house and have probably some impeachments. I don't know. Anyway, something to think about. But the spin that I want to make people happy for a second because we have so many only these small happinesses is like, if Donald Trump was a better authoritarian, we would be in really worse straits right now. Like, those fucking Republicans would have folded if Donald Trump would have put Judge Box of Wine on the court instead of Gorsuch and that was a seat that they stole. And then if he would have put on whoever. I don't, you know, Matt Gaetz on instead of Coney Barrett, they. Well, I guess maybe not Matt Gates because he didn't get through the center, but like some version of that. Like they could have put Judge Napolitano
- [18:26]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
or whatever way to get to her. Get to her. Don't jump the rundown.
- [18:31]
Tim Miller
Canon Piro Kavanaugh, it could be like, that's not crazy. Like, the Senate would have gone along with him on most any appointment. He fouled it up by outsourcing it to the Federalist Society who he thought was corrupt. He was correct that they're corrupt, that they're corrupt in their own ways, not in. They weren't in the Donald Trump business. So they had their own little corrupt deal going on over there. It was a big mistake by him. He's gotten a lot of the Supreme Court, like, the immunity. I don't want to understate that the Supreme Court has been very friendly to him. But, like, the gap between, like, being able to become president for life and ending birthright citizenship and being able to tariff anybody you wanted and like, there's a whole host of powers that he could have had if he had just been even more shameless and he had it. We should be happy. Yeah, we should be happy. He fucked it up.
- [19:23]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
All right, so let's talk about the tariffs. I think they're back to 10% as of when we're taping.
- [19:29]
Tim Miller
We're back down to 10.
- [19:29]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
No, no, no.
- [19:30]
Sarah Longwell
So there was. He said, he said first it was going to be 10%. Then he bleeded over the weekend it was going to be 15%. And then when they came out, they are actually at 10%. Unclear. Why? Unclear what's going on. But I will say again in my glass half full, I was always a little concerned about the Supreme Court saving him from himself politically. Right. Like. And not concerned. They made the right decision. It's an. Obviously the right decision. But I was like, oh, man, the tariffs are, like, the most unpopular thing. The thing that, you know, is killing. It's. They're inflationary. And also, the Trump guys have raised the stakes so much in the tariffs, we're going to use it to pay off our national debt. Guys, you're getting a $2,000 check. Well, now what's he going to do? And so. But the idea that Trump has taken his worst issue and he is doubling and tripling down on it right now, I'm like, good on you, sir. Because you know what? I think this is, like, my over. It's a global take. I think Trump's political instincts are getting worse and worse. It is on the tariffs, on invading Greenland and Canada, on like. Like, nobody asked for any of this from him. And they're not popular. They're deeply. I think he's, like, losing touch on. Normally, Trump is a little better than this in the broader scheme of things. And these are terrible positions to take.
- [20:57]
Tim Miller
No rallies.
- [20:59]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah.
- [20:59]
Tim Miller
Bannon and Kellyanne are gone again. This is, like, all in the margins. Right. It's not like there are any great Svengalis or whatever, but, like, some of the people that were really more in touch with, like, the populist Volk are out of there, and he's got ideologues and morons around him, and he's not doing the rallies. I do think that is. There's something to that. I am thrilled. I also was slightly worried that the Supreme Court would bail him out, but I'm not really sure why, because I was always kind of of two minds about it. Like, my initial instinct was always like, I'm a little worried they're gonna bail him out. And then I would think, like, Tim, why are you. Why are you just saying that? Like, Trump's insane. Like, he'll just do some other. He'll just keep doing illegal tariffs and making it go up to the Supreme Court again, just like he has with all of his appeals to his various crimes. And I think that's what's gonna happen.
- [21:46]
Sarah Longwell
I don't even know that these ones are illegal, like, the new way. So here's what it is, actually. It's 150 days for 150 days. And then they'd have to get an extension from Congress, which is a fun thing to put in front of Congress in 150 days for.
- [21:59]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Let's, let's let them, for the election.
- [22:02]
Sarah Longwell
Let's let them take that vote. I think we should take a second to appreciate Mike Johnson's role in all of this because, you know, obviously Constitution says Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and exiles. Right? So that's like they're, this is the Congress's job. And his response is to tell is like, it's not telling the President to kick rocks, which is what he should be doing. He is instead saying it is good and proper for the President to sidestep his branch of government altogether. Mike Johnson's just like, we, we should not have to vote on this. It is good that President Trump is doing this. This is insane. Like, this is him. First of all, that is not how any of this works. This is not how our government is set up to work. Like. And Mike Johnson is basically saying we render ourselves irrelevant and the President should do this. Great, great position, man. Anyway, I'm fine with it. I think, I think where we landed on the tariffs is Trump is still going to be to blame for them. He's not going to be able to do any of the things he said he was going to do for people. And this time he's going to do it legally for 150 days, forcing Congress to vote on it, to vote on an extension a few months out before the midterms.
- [23:17]
Tim Miller
Thrilling.
- [23:17]
Sarah Longwell
Good stuff.
- [23:18]
Tim Miller
That's a great pitch I'm with.
- [23:19]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
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- [24:03]
Tim Miller
I don't know if it was a luxury hotel.
- [24:05]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
The sheets were not bowl and branch and I noticed. It was noticed and logged. My friends, I was very happy to get home to get onto my bringing
- [24:16]
Tim Miller
our own sheets to Dallas. See you all there. March 18th. We're taking bowl and branch on the
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JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
road and the best part of my bowl and branch sheets is they just get softer every time you wash them. It's great. Sleep sound with bowl and branch, get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at bowlandbranch.com nextlevel with code next level. That's Boland Branch B O L L a n d branch.com next level code next level to unlock 15% off exclusion supply. So while we were talking about things that the next Congress might have to do, this is sort of a little bit of a twofer. Judge Eileen Cannon is going to keep the second part of the Jack Smith documents from coming out because that would be double badge. Can't allow that to happen. And I do wonder a, if you have any thoughts on this, but B, if you think that we might have to do a Supreme Court confirmation between now and the election, if it turns out that it looks like the Senate is possibly in play, maybe Judge Cannon gets her shot at the big chair.
- [25:25]
Tim Miller
I don't think that's crazy.
- [25:26]
Sarah Longwell
I don't think it is either.
- [25:27]
Tim Miller
And I think that ties to maybe some topics we're going to get to later about how important the Senate is in this election this year. I think that there's probably, you never want to put too much hope on old Lisa Murkowski, but like it's probably, it's kind of hard. Like if they Dems could even get to 50, they wouldn't take the Senate. But then Lisa Murkowski would be the tiebreaking book. It's kind of hard. It's not impossible. I wouldn't say there's a 0% chance that she would do Eileen Cannon, but that would take our odds down significantly. But if it's, if it's 51 or 52 Republican senators, you have to say she's the favorite. If a seat opens now, this would be Thomas or Alito, so it'd be kind of like changing like for like you would assume it would be one of them trying to leave under a friendly administration. So it's not as bad as, I
- [26:19]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
mean, it's shaving 40 years off of that seat.
- [26:22]
Tim Miller
Shaving 40 years off the seat. That's true. And you know, I don't want a fair number. I don't want to bring anything into the universe. But some of us suggested that Sonia Sotomayor resign last couple years ago.
- [26:34]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
I was chastised for that.
- [26:36]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Hopefully that doesn't become an issue. But it's worth, I think it's a fair thing to be worried about. And adds even. And by the way, maybe finally for once the Democrats could have the energy to vote on the court. Republicans have. And I got to tell you, 2016, this has been kind of memory hold because we think about all the other things, but that Supreme Court really thing might have been the decider for Trump in the Electoral College. And I'm only speaking anecdotally, but there are a lot of folks that eventually got excited about Trump. I'm thinking, particularly senior citizen Wall Street Journal Republican types that eventually came fully on board that really weren't excited about it and they hated Hillary and they weren't going to vote for Hillary, but they were going to write in who, I forget who's running that. Evan McMullen or whatever, Gary Johnson or write in Ronald Reagan. And the seat I had several people that I was trying to convince in my life that were like, that Supreme Court seat, we're going to have to risk it with Trump. So in bringing that type of energy to a Democratic electorate would be nice.
- [27:37]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Sarah, do you think they would move on that seat before November?
- [27:41]
Tim Miller
Like, it seems like it's going to be a blowout, like try to push
- [27:44]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
or if it's close, like if it looks like it's close, that they could lose the majority, do they muscle Thomas out?
- [27:50]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. Although I was just, I was, I was balancing that against the inverse of what Tim is saying, which is like, you bring the Democrats energy, but also do they use it to motivate Republicans who are totally unmotivated.
- [28:01]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Yeah.
- [28:02]
Sarah Longwell
I'm not sure which they'd do. You could make a case for both. Can I just say, I, I'm like, fine talking about the story. I don't think. It's not important. I just, as a political matter, I'm going to go back to something Tim said earlier about like, things we already know, like the idea, the Jack Smith, the fact that Eileen Cannon is blocking Jack Smith's report. Sure, we'd all like to see it. But also like, we know, we know what, there's nothing that's going to come out. Or maybe there's like little things here and there. Like, we know Trump stood publicly and said, you know, fight like hell, you're not gonna have a country anymore. We're gonna go down to the Capitol. He tried to go down there with him. And we all know what happened next. And we also know that it was all predicated on a lie he was telling over and over again for which he has no proof and which he's currently seizing records.
- [28:47]
Tim Miller
So, like, we know the docs, they do this to.
- [28:49]
Sarah Longwell
To spare Trump the news cycle, but not the public. Right. They don't want to re. Raise the salience of it, and I get that, but there's nothing in there we don't already know.
- [28:59]
Tim Miller
We know maybe some of the details of the classified docs or whatever, but again, like, we know the broad brush of this.
- [29:05]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
All right, moving on. Laura Loomer. Back in the news, our friends Laura Loomer. She got the president to call for Netflix to fire Susan Rice. So this is.
- [29:19]
Tim Miller
I thought we were going to congratulate her on her engagement. That's not the topic.
- [29:24]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Mazel tov. Did she find a lucky fella?
- [29:27]
Tim Miller
She did. That's what I understand. Yeah.
- [29:29]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Is he Muslim?
- [29:31]
Tim Miller
I don't believe so, no.
- [29:33]
Sarah Longwell
Okay.
- [29:33]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
I mean, I'm just asking because he could be. So. Sarah, I just have a question. Is this free market stuff, when the president tells private companies which executives they should hire and fire, is that a. Is that. Is that. Or is that. Is that communism?
- [29:50]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. This is not a free market administration. There's nothing free market about. This is an authoritarian administration. This is a mafia administration where they go around trying to make it so they won't approve deals because you've made the White House mad by having a person on your board that the president doesn't like. But I would like to say two quick things. One is good on Susan Rice for saying something that I think more Democrats should be saying, which is I do think there needs to be in this moment, sim. A similar attitude toward the gerrymandering, which is to say that Democrats should be like, look, I don't think we should be weaponizing the government against people, but Trump has been weaponizing this whole time, and Democrats are not just going to stand by and let them.
- [30:39]
Tim Miller
And if you want to be the banker for the Board of Peace, then guess what? We're going to be looking at your books.
- [30:44]
Sarah Longwell
That's right. And I think that they should be pretty vocal about the idea that what is happening right now is corrupt and they will be investigating it when they are in charge again. And I just. I think that they shouldn't allow for people to think that the Democrats are so weak that they will not participate in any accountability in the next phase. They need to remind people that there is a war, that Donald Trump will not be in charge forever.
- [31:10]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
I mean, I love what you're saying, and this is what I would like Democrats to say. To everyone. Both private businesses, potential criminals.
- [31:23]
Tim Miller
Yeah, yeah.
- [31:25]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Foreign regimes. I. I feel like they should be
- [31:29]
Tim Miller
saying, hey, not a good sign that it's Susan Rice. I mean, Susan Rice is like the ultimate establishmentarian, you know, and she has been through in the system her whole career. For her to be out there being the one. And she's on the Netflix board. So, you know, Amanda Switzeras are good on her for having cojones to do that.
- [31:48]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
And good on Ted Sarandos from Netflix because they didn't really flinch on this. That's encouraging.
- [31:57]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Though the chilling effect, which we talked about a lot last year and I've talked less about recently, is real.
- [32:04]
Sarah Longwell
Yes.
- [32:05]
Tim Miller
And it's just. And I just think it's worth saying because it's like, especially given that Trump came in on the wave of a bunch of free speech absolutists like that. A lot of. A lot of times the threats to free speech and the assaults on speech are not like the government is going to delete the post that you posted on Facebook or whatever. Like, that is different. It is intimidation. It is threats. It's silencing. And we've seen this in other authoritarian regimes. And you know, the fact that the president of the United States went at a board member of a company that is going to have antitrust review before the government, you don't.
- [32:44]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Which is trying to get regulatory approval for purchasing something for mergers.
- [32:49]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Like, there are other people on other boards who do not have Susan Rice's passion and backbone, you know, who might want to say something, who just aren't. And like, and that is going to continue throughout corporate America, that we see that cracking a little bit. And that's good. But even if Netflix does win and they merge and it gets approved. Right. That doesn't abdicate like Trump. Like, that doesn't make any of this acceptable. Like, it is exactly how bully dictators act in other countries.
- [33:25]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
I'm really interested in what our. What our true conservative friends think about this. I. I confess I have not read the Wall Street Journal editorial page on this. But the people who are so concerned about socialism, do they. Do they have any thoughts about.
- [33:41]
Sarah Longwell
Or crony capitalism, I mean, or like the idea that Sherry Redstone and Ellison. And by the way, Ellison is on the other side of this. Like, one of the reasons that they want to take Netflix out of this is because they want the deal to go to Paramount and the Ellisons, who are Trump's buddy, and it's crony capitalism or socialism. We could quibble over this. But like what they're basically taking. Capitalism was used to build these businesses. They are real capitalist enterprises. But Trump is using crony capitalism slash socialism, slash mob boss tactics to try to dictate how those businesses thrive going forward. There's nothing free about this market whatsoever.
- [34:23]
Tim Miller
They're doing another column on the Ex IM Bank. Jonathan, a lot of problems with the Ex Im Bank. Yeah, a lot of crony companies.
- [34:30]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Are they concerned about the five borough owned grocery stores that Mumdani is going to do?
- [34:36]
Tim Miller
We're stalling on that. I think I heard we're going to do a trial during the World Cup, I think of the free buses.
- [34:42]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Well, I mean, that's. We got to draw the line somewhere.
- [34:45]
Sarah Longwell
I hope that Netflix stays strong and I hope that they do what Trump does, which is like they drag this shit out until Trump no longer has carte blanche to do this stuff.
- [34:55]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
That'd be nice. Their stock price has been in the toilet since they announced the merger. Okay. The administrator. We've done a lot of good news. So you know what? I'm gonna skip the bad news.
- [35:05]
Tim Miller
We've done a lot of bad news. We've done the brighter side of bad news.
- [35:12]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Let's do more brighter side. Jeanine Pirro waved the white flag in her little attack on the members of Congress who said that soldiers should obey the constitution and decline to follow unlawful orders.
- [35:26]
Tim Miller
I want to do like a scoreboard thing because no one else is doing this. Oh, maybe we'll do a video. We'll get the graphics guys together and just like dunk on them for their failed record here at investigating their foes. I feel like people are afraid to do that because it's like, you know, you don't want to jinx it. It's kind of like a knock on wood element to this.
- [35:46]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Right.
- [35:46]
Tim Miller
You know, you don't want to be the first one that ends up going behind bars before the regime. But I mean, it is just L after L after L. You know, sandwich
- [35:56]
Sarah Longwell
guy, James Comey, Letitia James. Now we. They can't get the seditious six.
- [36:06]
Tim Miller
Tim Walls and Jacob Fry still walk free. The lady in Colorado still in jail and free. Yeah, Obama's walking free. They can't get Tina Peters out of jail. She's still rotten behind bars. I mean, it's just a total zero.
- [36:22]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Well, but I mean, if we were going to take this seriously for a minute. While they have been not as successful as we feared at jailing their opponents, they have been more successful than we feared they might be at preventing Any sort of legal accountability for their allies. Right. And, I mean, I don't think most people. Most people did not think that Trump would just pardon all the January 6th insurrectionist. Yeah, he just did.
- [36:49]
Tim Miller
Every white collar criminal now can just do whatever you want.
- [36:52]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Every white collar couldn't do whatever they want. I think if I had told you that federal agents were gonna execute people on the streets in Minneapolis and the FBI would absolutely prevent any sort of investigation into the shooting, if I told you that in 2024, you'd have been like, oh, there's your TDS, I think.
- [37:10]
Tim Miller
I don't.
- [37:11]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure we would have, but.
- [37:13]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [37:14]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
So maybe not as successful as he wanted to be in using the prosecutorial powers, but pretty successful in using it as a shield.
- [37:22]
Tim Miller
Well, I would up it to utter abysmal failure at using the government to go after his enemies, but unfortunate levels of success at using the Justice Department to protect friends, I guess would be where I would.
- [37:39]
Sarah Longwell
Because he took over the Justice Department.
- [37:41]
Tim Miller
Right.
- [37:42]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Just remember, have his face on.
- [37:44]
Sarah Longwell
Joe Biden's Justice Department prosecuted his own son. Now, we can. We can dislike the pardon or whatever, but, like, just know that his Justice Department, he kept his hands off of it, and they prosecuted his own kid.
- [37:59]
Tim Miller
It kind of is like a finger in his eye, really, like, to be fair, like, kind of like they did it almost to, like, demonstrate, you would think. And it seemed to me like it was kind of a political prosecution of Hunter Biden. Not that he didn't deserve it, but, like, if his name was Hunter Jones, probably wasn't getting prosecuted.
- [38:16]
Sarah Longwell
No chance.
- [38:17]
Tim Miller
Right. And so it was a political prosecution of his own son to demonstrate independence.
- [38:22]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
It's pretty stark, which I'm in favor of.
- [38:24]
Tim Miller
Yeah, sure. Great. That's basically. Okay, fine.
- [38:26]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Yeah. All right. And finally, Kristi Noem, who had said that I stood cannibal, turns out not to be true. Who would have thought it turns out that. Is it a problem? I see here's not a problem. Is there any precedent in our political lifetimes of having a key agency be so totally untrustworthy with the truth that literally nothing they said publicly could be trusted to be true in any sense? Like, not shaded, not like a little gilded, but, like, they'll just say stuff, which is all the time, which is just false? I can't think of one.
- [39:13]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, you're very correct in your analysis on this, but I don't think you set this up adequately. I really think it's important to understand what Kristi Noem alleged, which is. She told this preposterous story demonizing immigrants in these high profile public remarks. Stupid. In next to Donald Trump. Right. She's alongside Donald Trump and Fox News last summer. And the story was about an immigrant who was detained because he was a cannibal.
- [39:40]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Okay.
- [39:41]
Sarah Longwell
He was a cannibal who ate other people. And then on his Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation flight, he began to eat himself. He began to eat himself. Jbl. They're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats. They're eating their own bodies. Okay. That's what's happening here. And three officials from the federal law enforcement agency came forward to say so. It's from Gnome's own Department of Homeland Security. From her own department. They came forward. They had knowledge of the allegations and said the entire story was fabricated. It is completely false, said one senior law enforcement official who's familiar with the allegation but not authorized to speak publicly on the subject. So they are just making things up about everybody eating things. Like they, they just. These are lies. The idea that this was an immigrant you had to deport because he was a cannibal. Who was such a big cannibal. I don't think cannibals eat their own bodies. I don't think they start chewing on their own toes. I'm not sure that's how cannibalism works. But it makes sense that that didn't happen.
- [40:52]
Tim Miller
Who had the. Who had the cannibal eaten besides themselves? What was the allegation that they just.
- [40:59]
Sarah Longwell
Other people.
- [41:01]
Tim Miller
Generic. There wasn't a specific person or anything.
- [41:03]
Sarah Longwell
No. But Kristi Noem said this was. This was an example of the kind of deranged individuals that are on our streets in America that we are trying to target and get out of the country.
- [41:13]
Tim Miller
My daughter is really into Ke$song Cannibal. And now I can't get it out of my head right now. That's all I can think of. I'll eat you up. When we were in Minnesota, I turned on the local news in the hotel rooms, kind of see what local coverage was. Everything happening. And they were telling the story, which some of you might have heard of a Mexican immigrant who was hospitalized with these horrible head injuries, very serious head injuries. And DHS had said that he ran into a Walt himself. He had run into a brick wall. He just. Maybe he was a cannibal. I don't know. He was so crazy. He went so crazy he couldn't help himself. But he just.
- [41:57]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Cortisol spiked.
- [41:59]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Cortisol Spiked, sprinted headfirst into a wall. Obviously that was not true. The news story is kind of covering that. They were backtracking on that story. And then when we went out to Whipple Building, we talked to one of the guys there, happened to work at that hospital and was like, you know, we looked at, well, you know, the doctors at the hospital were the ones in this case that, that, that basically, you know, can said the story is bs. I came to the press and they're like, this is crazy. Like, we see people with head wounds all the time. We see people that have been battered. You know, like, you don't get this kind of injury by running into a wall. You get this kind of injury because somebody beat your ass, you know, and like that's what happened was like these agents beat up a guy and then tried to blame it on him. So. And this stuff's happening all over the place. Like it's hard to even keep track
- [42:43]
Sarah Longwell
of all their lives again, stuff. We have already seen them do that we know. This is the same person who called Alex Preddy a domestic terror and Renee Good domestic terrorists before the, before the, the wounds were cold like, or their bodies were cold before we even knew anything about it. In any world even close to this, she would have been fired so long ago for these things.
- [43:06]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
It's amazing. Tim, how about a word from our other sponsor?
- [43:09]
Tim Miller
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- [44:25]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
All right, let's talk a little bit of politics. We are about a week and a half out from the Texas Senate primary between Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico. And do either of you guys have a read on this race?
- [44:39]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [44:40]
Sarah Longwell
Tell me feelings about it.
- [44:43]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I have strong feelings. Here's a read I have. Here's. I guess I have a few things to say. Here's a read I have on the race is that there is a lot of interest in it. And we've seen the early vote numbers are spiked like the cortisol levels of the cannibal all over Texas. They're spiked in, you know, Dallas where, you know, Jasmine Crockett's district is, you know, heavily black district. A lot of big turnout, but they're spiked, you know, across kind of the Austin, San Antonio area where people presume Tel Rico will do well. So, you know, I, I think that folks are going to be turning out about. About it for sure. These two candidates have certainly enamored the imaginations of Democratic partisans. And so congratulations to them for that. I don't think that the primary has done anything to help Democrats win the seat. It's done a lot to damage it. I think I have two observations about Crockett, though, that are going to be totally contradictory. So if you're pro Crockett or anti Crockett, I'll give you something to like, the anti Crockett thing is I think that she's run the worst Democratic Senate campaign that I've seen since Cal Cunningham Law cost the Democrats at North Carolina Senate seat by being a weird sexter. You know, it's kind of hard to not be a weird sexter. Sexting by nature is weird. But Cal was like, particular. Even in a category where everything was weird, he was, he was particularly weird. And that didn't really help for that to leak in the weeks before the election. But I don't, I still don't know what Jasmine Crockett's message is. Jasmine Crockett this weekend, like, did a lengthy diatribe about my friend Liz Smith alleging that she works for James Talarico. If she did work for James Talarico, I don't really understand why Texas voters would have cared about that, that she doesn't work for James Talarico. So it's a, it's pretty crazy thing. It's like, it's a very online thing. It's not, you're not talking to any voters about something that matters. It's impossible to imagine Barack Obama, a week and a half before a primary, doing a side about Mark Penn or whatever, some random Hillary Snapper. I guess just, it's just bad politics. That said, you know, look, the numbers are the numbers. I mean, she's turning out people. And I'm about to say something that's going to blow Sarah's mind. But if somehow Jasmine Crockett comes out of this primary and wins. And I think it's. I would bet on James Talarico today, but very narrowly, I think it's very close. They're going to be very close. If she comes out and wins and this happens in politics, sometimes she is the right place at the right time. She rides a wave. The economy gets way worse. Donald Trump invades Iran. Donald Trump gets down below the line and she gets swept into victory into the Senate In Texas, Jasmine Crockett becomes, I think, the front runner in the Democratic campaign for president in 2028 because there is nobody. There is, there's nobody right now that could dominate. Yeah, I'm sorry. The black vote is very critical in the Democratic primary. There's nobody right now that would have a stranglehold on that. And if a black woman won in Texas, I think it would be impossible to stop her. So how about that? This is why politics is fun. I simultaneously think she is running the second worst Democratic Senate campaign of the last decade. And if in spite of that, she wins, I think that she's the front runner in 2028. So there you go. Those are my Texas Senate hot takes for you.
- [48:21]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Sarah. Hit me.
- [48:22]
Sarah Longwell
I'm not taking that bait.
- [48:24]
Tim Miller
Oh, come on.
- [48:26]
Sarah Longwell
I got a different. I'll say some different things. So it's, it's interesting to me. I'll get around back to it a little. But it's been interesting to me to watch this campaign a, because it's a bit of a microcosm of what's going on in the Democratic Party especially. There's just like some fun things about it that, for example, the way that people have decided that she codes progressive and Tal Rico codes moderate, neither of those things true. Like, she's actually despite the way that, you know, because she's a fighter but like, policy wise. And it's a really interesting Rorschach around vibes versus policies. Because she's a vibes candidate.
- [49:09]
Tim Miller
Right?
- [49:09]
Sarah Longwell
She is. I, I go out there and I say the things that are all. You are all thinking it's a Trumpy kind of campaign. It's. I'm not listening to consultants. I'm doing weird things. You know, who would, who would make a meal out of somebody's campaign manager that they could shit on Donald Trump.
- [49:26]
Tim Miller
Great point. This is.
- [49:27]
Sarah Longwell
That's exactly what he would do.
- [49:29]
Tim Miller
Very good.
- [49:30]
Sarah Longwell
And but Tom Rico is like, like the reason I've, like the thing I've seen from Tao Rico that has always concerned me the most is one of his statements saying that because he's running, talking about religion, he uses a lot of Christian terms. Interesting to test that theory out on Texas voters. But he also at one point said God is non binary and that's going to come back to haunt him in these things. And of course, God probably doesn't really have a gender, but it's the kind of wokish type.
- [49:57]
Tim Miller
God has a huge schlong. 16 incher.
- [50:01]
Sarah Longwell
Great.
- [50:01]
Tim Miller
Okay. There's none of this.
- [50:04]
Sarah Longwell
Is that Catholic? Is that what you learn in catechism?
- [50:07]
Tim Miller
That's what we learned at Catholic school in Texas. Everything's been bigger in Texas.
- [50:11]
Sarah Longwell
I got it.
- [50:11]
Tim Miller
Including God's manhood, the priests at Regis.
- [50:15]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
The father's there. Very proud of what they taught. Demi.
- [50:18]
Tim Miller
What's up, Mr. Broderick?
- [50:20]
Sarah Longwell
If God is a spirit that lives in all of our hearts, I'm not sure it needs a gender. I've always. But whatever. Anyway, the point is, is that James Tal Rico can get when he runs, he'll get hit with some woke things. I, I did the focus group podcast about the Republican side of this ledger and just so to Tim's point, it's also interesting to see and test around. Ken Paxton is the front runner, I think on the Republican side. And he has a laundry list of corruption and scandal, both personal and professional, all over him. The voters know it. But he's the MAGA guy, he's the Trump guy. I mean the voters in the focus
- [51:00]
Tim Miller
groups are like, I saw an ad, a Trump Ken Paxton ad during like the basketball game last night. So they're playing it nationally. Yeah, I'm in Louisiana.
- [51:07]
Sarah Longwell
That makes sense. And because that's what the right. Both Cornyn is trying to butch up, trying to MAGA up, but nobody believes it. No one's buying it. And so it will be interesting to see in Taurico's case, you know, in both cases they're going to try to turn them into hyper progressive libs. And ultimately which one of them can sort of run away, like, can best triangulate against that. Obviously my money would slightly be on tell Rico for that. I just think to win over Trump voters, Jasmine Crockett has been like, tail. Rico is running a campaign that says, I don't care if you voted for Donald Trump. Like, come vote for me. And we can still. And she, I think mobilizes more magas against her than he mobilizes Magaz against her. It's not that he's more persuasive to swing voters. There's a reason Republicans want it to be heard. They think they can beat her. They worry more about him.
- [52:05]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Depressed magazine and the pitches. Because I agree. I don't think Talrico has been like, you know, what is like, you know, David French was one that said this. So like evangelicals, conservative evangelicals hate liberal Christians more than they hate atheists. Right. He's like, this guy's. This guy's a phony. Like, you know, he's trying to Bible me. He's trying to judge me with his talk about how Jesus wanted to feed the poor. That's not what Jesus wants.
- [52:30]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
I don't go in for that.
- [52:31]
Tim Miller
Woke Jesus.
- [52:32]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Yeah.
- [52:33]
Tim Miller
Jesus wants deportations. So anyway, I agree with that.
- [52:36]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
As Jesus said, it's an eye for an eye.
- [52:39]
Tim Miller
But if you can imagine yourself as an off year Texas MAGA that is unhappy about whatever it is, you know, whatever your personal bugaboo is with Trump, you're like, am I going to go vote? And it's like, Ken Paxton or Uncle Rogan is in Austin. Right. Like, I don't think any of these people are. Democrats are going to be excited about Crockett or Tel Rico. But it's like, meh, this Ken Paxton guy is a boob. It's a Senate race. Trump isn't on the ballot. Tall Rico, Sal, whatever. I don't care. Who cares who wins that election. Right. Like, I'm not going to vote. So, like, that's what you're like, you know, Jasmine Crockett's case is that she's going to bring more people off the couch who are pro Crockett and maybe she can do that. I don't know. The proof would be in the pudding. I'm a little skeptical. Like Sarah's face is. But. But we won't know till it happens. But like, maybe the answer is to keep more of those people. The Republicans on the couch.
- [53:33]
Sarah Longwell
Yes.
- [53:34]
Tim Miller
Right. Or the soft Republicans. Just like, it's a Midterm, you don't gotta turn out.
- [53:37]
Sarah Longwell
If I was running the strategy that would. That would sort of be what I would think. Just because that's where the wave is going. Like to get the wave. The wave is a. Is a function of motivated Democrats subtracted from like whatever Maga Republicans that turn out in Texas, you can get to stay home and not care. I think that Democrats will be motivated regardless of whether it's Tower, Rico or Crockett. And I think Magas will be more motivated by Crockett, less motivated by T. Rico. But even there, I'm not sure, like, it's a tough race no matter what. I will say what's interesting too about both of the way that they've run this. This primary, which is enormously messy and where they really are going hard at each other is the way that they both are presenting as sort of victims of cancellation or victims of. Sorry, not that that's part of it, but also victims of the Democratic establishment. Right. Like what. What Jasmine wants you to believe. They both have this. Like, they don't want you to hear my message. Like, part of the Colbert thing for Tao Rico was, you know, they don't want you to see this. They don't want. And. But Jasmine's running a. Yeah, they want to keep me from doing this. You know, there's this cabal of Democrats who are trying to keep me from doing this. And so both of them are kind of doing a. I'm an outsider that they don't want to see. And they're hoisting it, throwing it at each other, which is to me just a function of the moment where people really want to run as people the party kind of doesn't want. Like, they're not the establishment. 1.
- [55:04]
Tim Miller
A minor quibble. Jasmine Crockett's been going very hard at James Talrico. On the record, James Talrico has not been going hard as he's been being very nice and pastry about Jasmine Crockett. There was the accusations of what he said in private that got public, which we don't know if those are true. But anyway, I just wanna feel more
- [55:22]
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- [56:29]
Lost Traveler
I'm gonna pull over and ask that man for directions.
- [56:32]
Sarah Longwell
Hi there.
- [56:33]
Lost Traveler
We're looking to get to the campground.
- [56:35]
T-Mobile Representative
Well, you're gonna take a left at the old oak tree end of this here road. No, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.
- [56:40]
Lost Traveler
How are you getting a signal out here?
- [56:42]
T-Mobile Representative
T Mobile and US Cellular decided to merge so the network out here is huge. We're getting the same great signal as the city and saving a boatload with all the benefits. Oh, and a five year price guarantee. Okay, here's those directions.
- [56:53]
Lost Traveler
Actually, can you point us in the direction of a T Mobile store?
- [56:57]
T-Mobile Advertiser
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- [57:12]
T-Mobile Commercial Voice
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- [57:28]
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- [57:53]
Tim Miller
Start your free trial today.
- [57:57]
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- [58:56]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
All right, listen, we got a heart out here. And so I'm going to call an audible. I want to talk about Team USA Hockey. Tim and I did a little thing on this yesterday. Sarah.
- [59:04]
Tim Miller
Good, because I haven't had another thing with you on this.
- [59:07]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
I'm sure you heard it when you listened to the show. So this was the USA men's hockey team who celebrated with their good friend Kash Patel in the locker room after winning the gold medal. They guzzled beers with him and they draped their gold medals around his neck and they just had a great time with this guy who.
- [59:26]
Tim Miller
I need to go. I'm interrupting you. I'm going first.
- [59:28]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
But the women's team, the women's team said no thank you, we're not going to go to the White House.
- [59:32]
Tim Miller
Great. Here's the thing. And Sarah can adjudicate it. So I feel like I'm Sarah now because every in yesterday's podcast JBL is mad at the men's hockey team. And I was like, that's an interesting take. I'm mad at Cash. Well, I don't, I don't think we really need to get that, that exercise. About the men's hockey team. Every commenter says Tim doesn't know what time it is. JVL's maximalist position is correct. Congratulations. JBL is always right. And so I'm going back in. I don't care. I just want to say this. These fucking guys. If you're 24 years old, okay, you've been waking up every morning at the 4:30 in the morning and it's dark to go practice hockey and to get better. And you go to alone to do skate before school starts. I'm one of my cousins was fucking in hockey. Like they're playing all the time. He smells all the Time because he has, like, jerseys on. You know, you're sweating out there. You're going before school, you're going after school. Your whole life has led up to this moment. You weren't supposed to win. You're the underdog. You beat Canada, which is the great hockey power. You.
- [60:37]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
You.
- [60:37]
Tim Miller
You celebrate with your comrades. You bring out the jersey of your dead comrade. You shake their hands. You go into the locker room. Some doofus is there. That is the FBI director, and he is jumping up and down and celebrating. And what JBL and the commenters want in that moment is for these guys who have given their whole career to have this one moment in the locker room to be like, sir, you have not investigated the Nancy Guthrie like, like investigation hard enough. And it's like, no, leave these guys the fuck alone. Yell at Cash Patel. Yell at Donald Trump. I congratulate the women's hockey team. If they. If you want to do a different, go a different path, that's great, too. Both of these teams won great victories. Please, my God. Like, Cash Patel and Donald Trump are awful. Why are we getting mad at Jack Hughes? You people have lost your mind.
- [61:30]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
If you walked into the locker room to celebrate with them, Tim, they would have just sort of politely given you side eye and be like, yeah, great.
- [61:39]
Tim Miller
I don't believe that is true. I don't believe that is true. I don't think that they even know about.
- [61:43]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
They made him the center of the celebration. They put their gold medals around his neck.
- [61:50]
Tim Miller
Here's another version of this. Let's say that our buddy's the pod Bros. Barack Obama wins in 2008. You're in Grant Park. He's given his speech. You go back into the hotel room, everyone is drinking. Jon Favreau is guzzling a beer, and in walks Bill Ayers from the Weatherman because he was Obama's old friend. Would there be an expectation in that moment for people to be like, I'm sorry, we can't celebrate with Bill Ayers. He's part of the. He was part of the weatherman. Of course not. Just let these. Let these guys have. Please, people be mad at Trump. But it's fine if everybody wants to be mad at Jack Hughes and the hockey team. Great. Good luck. Great. That's great. Let Donald Trump have.
- [62:34]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
You know who didn't celebrate with Cash Patel? The USA Women's team.
- [62:37]
Tim Miller
And good for them. I'm happy for them.
- [62:39]
Sarah Longwell
Guys, I do think. Here's where I really agree with Tim. Obviously, it hurts. It hurts to watch Donald Trump call them and for them to be like pumped about it at the same time. Like, I agree with Tim about. These are 22 year old guys who, for all that they're getting professional players.
- [62:56]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
They're all multimillionaires. This is not 1980. This is not a bunch of high school and college players. Yeah, they're NHL stars.
- [63:05]
Sarah Longwell
I'm sorry, you've just won a gold medal for your country. Like, and the president calls you and. But that's not the point. Like, and I hated it. Like, I hated it as me. But the thing that I got angry about. And this is what. And this is where I think when it's like to me, focusing on the voters when you should be focusing on like the people really doing the bad thing. Just Cash Patel used our taxpayer dollars to be a super dork. Like, he looks like the neediest, thirstiest loser going in there, jumping up and down with beers. He lied about it. Like, they spent all this time being like, he's not going to Italy to do this. He's. This is all he does in his job. He's not investigating anything. He's doing two things. He's covering up the Epstein files and he's jet setting around and causing like Secret Service and FBI people to like, deal with him going to sporting events and go watch his girlfriend, I don't know, MC wrestling matches or whatever it is she does.
- [64:05]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Do you think if Cash had gone into the women's locker room, they would have put their gold medals around his neck?
- [64:10]
Sarah Longwell
I'm not sure they would have known who he was. I'm not. I'm not entirely sure that the men knew exactly what he was.
- [64:16]
Tim Miller
Who cares? What, they're running the country. Probably not. And that would have been great for the women. If they told Cass to pound sand. I would have really liked that. And I would have shared that clip versus the other clip. My point is that what are Donald Trump and Cash Patel trying to do? They are running a failed administration. Kash Patel has arrested nobody. He's not found Nancy Guthrie. He's not arrested a single Epstein collaborator. He's not arrested a single person that stole the 2020 election or any of his other conspiracy theories. He's done nothing. He's failed. He's been the worst FBI director ever. Donald Trump's administration is in tatters. So why are they calling the hockey team in the locker room? Because they want to share in the glory of what these other guys did.
- [64:54]
Sarah Longwell
It is stolen valor.
- [64:56]
Tim Miller
Stolen valor. Stolen valor. And we should be mad at them for trying to Steal the fucking valor and focus on all of their failures. And instead to be mad at the people that are happy that they just, like. It's just, like, it's dumb. I just. I can't. I'm sorry. I think that it's crazy. I think it's a. I think that it's a mind virus. I'm just, like, why. Expecting people to. To react like this? Like, why would they. Why should everything have to be. Why should they have to react like I would react? I am a anti Donald Trump content creator. If Donald Trump called me after the Nuggets won, I'd be like, fuck you, pound sand. But that's me. I'm in politics, guys.
- [65:35]
Sarah Longwell
Somebody in that locker room, though, took a video of Cash Patel and sent it to narc on him to be like, look at this freaking tool right now. I don't.
- [65:45]
Rocket Money Announcer (Alternate)
And this is.
- [65:46]
Sarah Longwell
There's a difference between. Look, I'm glad that the women's team said they didn't want to go and they took that principled stand, but even they were like, with it. We are. We.
- [65:56]
Tim Miller
We.
- [65:56]
Sarah Longwell
We're. Sincerely. Appreciate the invite, whatever, like, which is the right thing. Sure. And so, like, these guys in the locker room in the immediate thing, just being, like, drinking champagne straight from each other's chests or whatever you do when you've won a gold medal after all of this and Cash Patel comes in and starts, like, drinking. I don't know. I just agree that that is too much to demand of them. And we don't know how many of them. Some of it's just, like, politeness.
- [66:23]
Tim Miller
Good on the women's team, by the way. Great. I appreciate the women's team.
- [66:26]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Great.
- [66:26]
Tim Miller
Good on them.
- [66:27]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Soft bigotry of low expectation. You know, you guys. You guys turn me around on this. There's.
- [66:31]
Tim Miller
Don't say you turned around. No, no, no. Take it.
- [66:33]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Because they're great.
- [66:35]
Tim Miller
The commenters are going to be 90.
- [66:37]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
USA, USA. They're fantastic men. And we should take our political cues from them because they have great.
- [66:44]
Sarah Longwell
I don't think we should take either
- [66:45]
Tim Miller
cues from them at all.
- [66:46]
Sarah Longwell
Nobody argued.
- [66:47]
Tim Miller
We shouldn't care.
- [66:48]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Great.
- [66:48]
Sarah Longwell
We should just make fun of Cash and the fact that he's doing.
- [66:51]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
I'll make fun of whoever I want to.
- [66:54]
Sarah Longwell
That's true. You can. I just. But I won't. I probably won't come along on that one.
- [66:59]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Yeah, you don't come along on any of it.
- [67:00]
Sarah Longwell
That's not true.
- [67:02]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Good show. Long show. We're out.
- [67:03]
Tim Miller
Bye. Love you guys, though.
- [67:06]
Lost Traveler
We're Lost. I'm gonna pull over and ask that man for directions.
- [67:11]
Sarah Longwell
Hi there.
- [67:11]
Lost Traveler
We're looking to get to the campground.
- [67:13]
T-Mobile Representative
Well, you're gonna take a left at the old oak tree end of this here road. No, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.
- [67:19]
Lost Traveler
How are you getting a signal out here?
- [67:20]
T-Mobile Representative
T Mobile and US Cellular decided to merge. So the network out here is huge. We're getting the same great signal as the city and saving a boatload with all the benefits. Oh, and a five year price guarantee. Okay, okay, here's those directions.
- [67:32]
Lost Traveler
Actually, can you point us in the direction of a T Mobile store?
- [67:35]
T-Mobile Advertiser
America's best network just got bigger. Switch to T Mobile today and get built in benefits the other guys leave out. Plus our five year price guarantee. And now T Mobile is available in US Cellular stores.
- [67:51]
T-Mobile Commercial Voice
Best mobile network based on analysis by Oogle of speed test intelligence data 2H2025 bigger network become combination of T Mobile's and US Cellular's network. Footprints will enhance the T Mobile network's coverage price guarantee on talk text and data exclusions like taxes and fees apply. See t mobile.com for details.
- [68:07]
Tim Miller
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- [68:19]
Rocket Money Announcer
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- [68:21]
Tim Miller
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- [68:36]
Lost Traveler
We're lost. I'm gonna pull over and ask that man for directions.
- [68:41]
Sarah Longwell
Hi there.
- [68:42]
Lost Traveler
We're looking to get to the campground.
- [68:43]
T-Mobile Representative
Well, you're gonna take a left at the old oak tree end of this here road. No, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.
- [68:49]
Lost Traveler
How are you getting a signal out here?
- [68:51]
T-Mobile Representative
T Mobile and US Cellular decided to merge. So the network out here is huge. We're getting the same great signal as the city and saving a boatload with all the benefits. Oh, and a five year price guarantee. Okay, here's those directions.
- [69:02]
Lost Traveler
Actually, can you point us in the direction of a T Mobile store?
- [69:06]
T-Mobile Advertiser
America's best network just got bigger. Switch to T Mobile today and get built in benefits the other guys leave out. Plus our five year price guarantee. And now T Mobile is available in US Cellular stores.
- [69:21]
T-Mobile Commercial Voice
Best mobile network based on analysis by Ookle of speed test intelligence data 2H 2025 bigger network. The combination of T mobile's and US cellular network. Footprints will enhance the T Mobile Network's coverage price guarantee on talk, text and data exclusions like taxes and fees apply. See t mobile.com for details.