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- [00:01]
A
Premier hosts on VRBO deliver quality vacation rental stays with fast responses and clear instructions so you don't have to worry about surprises.
- [00:08]
B
I asked our host a question about the house last night and he got back to me super quick.
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A
See, that's the premier host move right there.
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B
I wish I had a premier group chat. I asked them where we should have dinner last night and they left me on red. I know you saw it. It says it.
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A
Classic group chat move. Don't walk into a surprise. Book a top rated verbo. Stay with a premier host if you know you verbo. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next level. I am JVL here with my bulwark colleagues, Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller. We're coming to you live today because we've got a breaking piece of news that Jim Comey has been indicted. Again, we're going to go through the long. The long history of the Trump administration attempt to bring Jim Comey to justice for the horrible things that he has done. Yeah, it's very excited. Very exciting. There may have been law and order, some seashells. Right? This is the Law and Order president, and there may have been some rogue seashells. We're gonna get to all of that very quickly. First, two pieces of housekeeping. Some tickets still left for our South California shows in San Diego and Los Angeles. Go to the bulwark.com events. Get your tickets also for our beloved Bulwark plus members, when you subscribe to Bulwark plus, you get ad free versions of all our shows, except when we're doing the shows live because we have to read the ads while we're. So you're going to have to put up with two ads if you are listening to this live.
- [01:44]
C
And I will say it's kind of a punishment. And we give out a lot of. A lot of great Bulwark plus perks. And not having to hear the ads when Sarah reads them is maybe a perk or, you know, and JBL reads them. But my ad reads are so good. Like the aura frames. Ad read today was just. I knew. I just gave them a little bonus right now. You'd have to go to the daily podcast to listen to it, but I was telling a good story. You know, those inserted right into the ad. There's some jokes.
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A
All right, let's move on. Let's move on.
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B
Great.
- [02:14]
A
Yes. All right, so first, Ed, this episode is brought to you by Robitussin. Sorry, you'll hear me sucking on cough drops because I'm getting over a little cold. So here's the big news. CNN is reporting that Jim Comey has been indicted again. This would be the 1, 2, 3, 4, 4th prosecutor that they've attempted to get to indict Jim Comey. We'll go through the sordid history of all that in a minute or two. I would like to start by just. I mean, how thirsty is Todd Blanche?
- [02:48]
B
He wants the big boy job.
- [02:50]
A
Bad boy. Does he?
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B
Wait, can I. Two quick things and then I'll let Tim Cook. One is not that you are Tim Cook. I'll let you cook Tim Cook. I know, right? What a way to go out. Here's the thing. I actually think this is. This is on. This is because of two reasons, maybe three. The first and obvious one being they didn't get him before. And Todd Blanche desperately wants to Trump to make him the head of doj. So he's like, look, look, I will prosecute your enemies the hardest. Okay, that's point one. Point two, though, is Maureen Comey, Jim Comey's daughter, won a lawsuit today that allows her to sue the administration for a wrongful termination for terminating her for political reasons. So seems odd that on the same day they decided to indict Comey again. The thing is, they're not indicting him for the same thing they indicted him for last time. Right.
- [03:43]
A
Which went to Congress.
- [03:44]
B
Tossed. That's right. That was the thing. This is for the seashells. This is the picture of the seashell.
- [03:50]
C
There's Fox is reporting it. So if anybody knows, it would be Fox. Yeah. If anybody would know, obviously they've got sources, the doj.
- [03:57]
B
Now, if you haven't seen this picture, it is just a picture on the sand.
- [04:02]
A
Oh, there we.
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B
Good job, team. Way to go. The 8647. Now, I gotta tell you, when I
- [04:07]
C
first arrest this man. Wait a minute, sir. You just said it. You just said it. 86. I just said it. Oh, 8647. Watch out, Todd Blanche. You might be coming for us right now. Be careful. Sarah, did you ask your lawyer before you read this? Read those seashells.
- [04:28]
B
I don't know. I think if they're going to get us for something, it won't be this. I'm not, but this is. This is a. This is incredible. But the reason that they're doing it, I think there's Maureen. But also they are on offense right now on the narrative that people are trying. Like they want to use the fact that Trump was shot at, at the White House Correspondence center, which we are. Everybody in the country thinks was awful and that political violence has no place. But they. The way that they have decided to use this moment is to say, see, James Comey is responsible for this kind of aggressive language, this toxic, violent rhetoric. Because if you don't know. 86. I didn't even know this until somebody had to explain this to me when I was like, why is everybody mad at him? It's like 86.
- [05:17]
C
Those dishes job. You never worked in a restaurant.
- [05:21]
B
I did, but I didn't think about it as killing. It was like. Like, I don't. Like, they are trying to act.
- [05:26]
A
Nobody thinks that is killing.
- [05:28]
B
It's like taking.
- [05:30]
A
Yeah, no, no, no.
- [05:31]
B
But they act like this is violent rhetoric. That is their. That is. That is the through line here and connecting it to this moment.
- [05:37]
A
They are looking for reasons threatened genocide. Get very, very offended when somebody says 8647.
- [05:46]
C
You just said it now.
- [05:47]
A
Threatening to end a civilization, calling people vermin, infecting the blood of the nation, calling them trade. Like that's all just gonna let them. Gonna let the. They don't speak like normal politicians. They're not. You know, they just say what's on their mind. That's good. That's one of the things we like about them.
- [06:04]
C
Thing. He's glad the people against him are dead after they die. Yeah. Like the whole thing. I don't. It's nice. I like to be able to feel like I'm a rebel again. You know, you don't get a lot of chances in your 40s to kind of get that rebellious high school spirit. So I just kind of find myself kind of wanting to do 86, 47 a lot. I wish that we could get that little, you know, to get the kids going with it with the hand motion. 8, 6, 4, 7. I just like, this is so unbelievably stupid. We should say that. This did go to a grand jury. So whatever it's worth. They did bring it to a grand jury. The grand jury, you know, which has rejected them many times. Allow them to go forward on this one. Like it is. It is. We talked about this when he first posted it. With love to Jim Comey, who's really grown on me. Made some bad choices. Okay. Back in 2016. Made some truths I disagree with. We've hashed that out before. But just as a person, an earnest guy trying to do the right thing, posting basically a boomer resist, cringe lib post. Like, that's what this is like, a very cringe. Like, this is like something that Your most cringe aunt who watches me on Nicole Wallace every day would post on her Instagram feed and her friends would like it and feel good about it or him. And like, that's fine. There's nothing we. The boomer, the boomer resists. Libs have been right about almost everything. So that's okay. Nothing wrong with being a little cringe. Like, that's what this is like. Like, nobody can look at this and be like, oh, I'm really quaking in my boots. Like, Jim Comey was. Was sending a secret message to. It's not, it's not anything like, hey, for example, maybe Donald Trump being on a debate stage saying to a domestic terrorist group, stand back and stand by. You know, prepare. Like, that's not what this was. Was not Jim Comey saying to antifa, stand back.
- [08:05]
A
You gotta take your country back with strength.
- [08:07]
C
Yeah, exactly. That's wasn't. This was a cringe Instagram post. Okay? And, like, they're really, like, they're using, you know, government resources, our resources, federal resources. People are now having to. Are gonna have to go into a courtroom and try to convince a jury of 12 people that the Seashell picture was a credible threat against the life of the President of the United States and that Jim Comey should be jailed over this. I'm like, how do you even do that? How do you do that with a straight face? How do you walk? You went to law school. You know, you went to Dartmouth Law. We're gonna, you know, and you're gonna get down to Washington and you're like, I'm here to go after the bad guys, the people in charge of the pedophile rings, the drug dealers, the people who are, you know, traitors to the nation. Like, yeah, I'm gonna go after these big, scary criminals. And it's like, okay, new boss is in town. Todd Blanche is in. And he's like, hey, buddy. All right. Your new job is to prosecute the Seashell case. You've got the Seashell portfolio. Now you got to put together a brief on this. You know, you got to go down. You got to put. Shine your shoes. Every morning, probably the floor shines because Donald Trump's going to be watching closely. I. It's just. It's really. It's idiot. It's like malice and funny and idiocracy all in one.
- [09:31]
B
Yeah.
- [09:31]
A
I should note the Posobiak tweet.
- [09:34]
B
Okay.
- [09:36]
A
You know, just something. Or maybe.
- [09:40]
C
And Maybe the Matt Gates 8,646 is what the Sobiac tweet says Matt Gates. Oh, we've now 86 to McCarthy, McDaniel, McConnell. I guess this is. This maybe works in our disfavor because Matt Gaetz might have wanted to kill Kevin McCarthy. Oh, great.
- [10:01]
A
And they're not dead, they're alive.
- [10:03]
C
We've now 86 McCarthy, McDaniel, McConnell. Better days are ahead for the Republican Party. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be pretty tough to file a brief on this one. Sorry, Sarah, what were you going to say?
- [10:14]
B
Only that the chat, you know, gently, was reminding me that I misspoke when I said Trump was shot at. He was shot at in Butler. He was not shot at at this, the White House Correspondents Dinner. Of course, there was an attempt, an attempt to get in to the White House Correspondents Dinner with an armed person, which that is a legitimate. Like that person should be tried for threatening the life of the President, the United States. An armed attempt. Right. That person, James Comey, took pictures of seashells in a joke. And when I said that, people had to explain to me, what I meant was people had to explain the outrage because I was like, but I don't understand, like, why this would be a big deal. And it's because we'll do. And then it's like, no, they think that Comey's suggesting they kill him. And I was like, I don't think that's what those seashells mean.
- [11:02]
A
Yeah. I want to just remind people of how monomaniacal this quest to bring Jim Kony to justice has been. So the, at first, the head prosecutor down the Eastern District of Virginia was named Eric Siebert. He was fired by the Trump administration because he wouldn't indict Jim Comey. He replaced Eric Siebert, a career prosecutor, with a reality TV former contestant and model, maybe. Hard to say. Lindsay Halligan had never actually been a prosecutor before. She was unable to get an indictment. I mean, she, I'm sorry, she did an indictment. But then it was found later by a judge that actually she didn't really have her job. She was only pretending to have the job. She had been appointed improperly. And so when she, when she left her post serving America, her deputy was a fellow named Robert McBride. Trump tried to get him to restart the indictment investigation. McBride wouldn't do it, so he fired him. So this is prosecutor number four that we're on. Although we have moved to separate charges, I do find it hard to believe that any judge wouldn't laugh this out. But who knows?
- [12:34]
C
Maybe we'll get our judge in Florida. Where were the seashells?
- [12:38]
B
What jurisdiction is it going to be in?
- [12:40]
A
If it's in D.C. that I assume Delaware Beach. I assume it was in a Delaware.
- [12:44]
C
It does feel like. It does feel.
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A
That feels like Bethany.
- [12:47]
C
Or Rehoboth. It feels like Bethany. It does feel like Bethany. I think that's right. But it's worth checking out to see which. Which jurisdiction they would have put that in. I. The whole thing, it is. At some level, it's humiliating. And I do think it's important, you know, because there's the malicious side of it and scary, and it sucks for Comey and his family. I mean, Maureen lost her job over this. He has to keep hiring attorneys, but she's gonna sue. So, yeah, obviously, that's not cheap. Right. She. Maureen will sue. And he was vigilant the last time he was indicted and unbowed, and I'm sure he'll be the same this time. It still sucks to have to deal with this, to have these people rifling through your life and targeting you, but it's just so unbelievably humiliating that they come in with all this fanfare that we have this enemies list. We're going to be going after our enemies, and we're going to show that they politicize the government against us. But now we're going to uncover the people that tried to steal our democracy from us, and that did Russia, Russia, Russia gate and Obama gate. We're going to get Obama, and we're going to get. And it's like, this is what they're left with. Sending sad tweets complaining about Jimmy Kimmel monologues and trying to indict Jim Comey over seashells. And it's utterly humiliating for, like, right now, Blanche might feel like he's, like, got some movement and he's doing more than Bondi, but these are all else. Like, Bondi eventually loses her political capital because she was just getting L after L, and he's staring down the barrel of a bunch of L's.
- [14:26]
B
This is a. You're. You're hinging on a point that I think is actually really important about how their posture is right now, which is they. They're acting like they're the tough guys right now, but it's actually them acting like victims. Everything about this is putting them in the victim's chair, and this is what happens, right? They are under. Everything they're doing is going wrong. The Iran war is going wrong. Prices are still high. Like, they're not getting any of the political Prosecutions, they want his ballroom can't get built. And so they are using this moment to try to see, like, look how bad everyone is to us. Aren't we the victims? Isn't the left too mean? Look at what James Comey is trying to do. This. But they don't realize, like, watching them try to, like, strike a pose of the left's incendiary rhetoric. Nobody's cowed by this anymore. Nobody is sitting there being like, Well, I am 100% against violent rhetoric. I oppose basically anyone who uses violent rhetoric, who celebrates violence. And nobody does it more than the president. United States. You want to say that? Oh, well, this podcast or this tweeter on the left uses violent rhetoric. Great. I'm against it. They're a podcaster. This is the president of the United States. Their inability to see the difference in influence and how much it matters. But this idea that they're the victims is, I think, a cover for how lost they are right now.
- [15:57]
A
It would be bad if Jim Comey had threatened the president's life. That would be bad. Yeah, it would be bad. Not illegal, but it would be bad if Jim Comey had just said something like, you know, I wish the president was dead. That would also be bad. Not illegal, but bad. He didn't do either of those things. That's the crazy part about this.
- [16:21]
C
I mean, also, some of this stuff feels, like, almost too obvious and stupid to mention, but it bears mentioning because of how central it was to the campaign and how central it was to a lot of the new people that they brought in. Like, a lot of the tech bros who were not with Trump in 2016, who were with him in 2024. A lot of the podcast world and that were focused on about the free speech. Elon Musk, legalized comedy. Legalized comedy. Elon Mus would post all the time. And so all we know now, obviously, is that, like, this was the artifice where, like, they, they, they. They were annoyed that people complained about their bigoted and racist and crazy speech. They were annoyed about that. But, like, they didn't care about free speech as a principle. Like, they. They were annoyed by the libs. And they also felt like they could do deals with Donald Trump where he would deregulate all their businesses and line their pocket with cash and, like, and a free speech. The principle of free speech argument was the artifice. But it is, like, pretty hilarious, like, now and again, humiliating that this week, like, they're in. The entire message from the Trump administration is like, don't say mean. Things to me like, oh, the rhetoric is so heated on the left. People are so mean. Like, oh, Jim Comey posted seashells. We need to arrest you if you post mean memes. Mean memes, like, mean memes are now possible for arrest. That's an interesting thing to keep in mind. If the left wing authority, I thought that the Biden administration was so authoritarian. Did they, did they target any, any left wings influencers for memes? Is Benny Johnson in jail? Was Benny Johnson indicted? I don't recall Benny Johnson ever getting indicted.
- [18:02]
A
I. So I have a question for you guys just about internal administration politics. The first of which is two questions. The first is, is Cash in trouble? Because, I mean, here Todd Blanche is making progress on getting the real killers and Cash, who just like a week ago, I think, or maybe 10 days ago promised that very close, very close to fingering the people who stole the 2020 election. And he hasn't done that. Right. Like, Cash is sort of on the
- [18:34]
C
clock about this today, which is gonna be up on the daily pod. And she, what she said was the one thing she was very interesting was that the rank and file hate him. It's like the passion of a thousand sons. They hate them to agree to which they didn't really like Bondi. It's like they hate Cash way more. And obviously Trump is sick of the nonsense. He just always has been. He's the one that gets to do nonsense like everybody else.
- [19:01]
A
Not out of central casting.
- [19:03]
C
Yeah, he's out of central casting. So in my own brain, and this is just me talking and theorizing, the only thing that can make sense to me is like, he doesn't have a good, loyal replacement. Like, Cash might be bumbling and embarrassing and incompetent, but, like, Trump knows at the end of the day that like, the FBI director is going to do whatever he's told. Right. And, and so with Bundy, she did have a replacement because Blanche was Trump's personal lawyer and like, would have, would be an in the same vein. And so it's like, who is there an obvious replacement for Cash? That's, that's the only reason. That's. Yeah, sure, maybe like, that's the only thing I can come up with about why he's still in there. I don't know if there's a better theory.
- [19:47]
A
So here's my. The second question then is for you, Sarah, isn't Blanche walking into the same trap that Bondi was in, which is you get the job by promising Trump things that are impossible and then when you're not able to make the impossible things happen. He fires you because he's angry with you.
- [20:08]
B
Yeah. I do think that Blanche has certain things going for him on this. To Tim's point, he was the President's personal lawyer, so he knows Trump really well and I think understands something. He's also the guy who went and met with Ghislaine Maxwell and his friends with her attorney, like, longtime friends. And so I think that he has. He might not be able to get the indictment on Comey, but he's. If he's willing to indict Comey over the seashells. Right. He's willing to do anything, which is really what this is trying to show. Right. It's like, I will go to town for you, and it doesn't matter how embarrassing it is for me, and I'll get you out of this Ghislaine stuff. We'll get her to testify in front of Congress. We'll make a deal with her. We'll get. And that she gets a pardon to say you never had anything to do with Epstein. You hated him. Like, that's what he thinks he can maneuver in this, and he thinks he can get the President some big wins.
- [21:04]
A
Well, he has already put his stamp on the Justice Department because we got a brief filed by the Department of Justice that I'm. I'm gonna give a dramatic reading of. We could just have the text. Dante, this is in the ballroom case. The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a beautiful name.
- [21:27]
C
Hold on.
- [21:28]
A
That even their names.
- [21:29]
C
This is just really quick. Stop.
- [21:31]
A
Yeah.
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C
This is really real. Like, it was really not an AI Thing. We weren't tricked by some blue sky slop account. Like, this is a real file filed
- [21:41]
A
to a court in these United States by the Department of Justice.
- [21:48]
C
Okay, let's hear.
- [21:49]
A
It is fake. Because when they add the words in the United States to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, it makes it seem sound like a governmental agency, which it is not. In fact, the United States refused to continue funding it in 2005 because they strongly disagreed with their mission and objectives. They are very bad for our country. They stopped many projects that are worthy and hurt many others. In this case, they are trying to stop one that is vital to our national security and the safety of all presidents of the United States, both current and future, their families, staff, and cabinet members. They were asked by the United States military not to bring this suit because of the top secret nature of the important facility being built. They were shown detailed plans and specifications of this knitted, unified and cohesive structure by top officers and leaders in both the military and Secret Service. But this did not deter them because they suffer from Trump derangement syndrome, commonly referred to as tds, as noted by Democrat Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and are represented by the lawyer for Barack Hussein Obama, Gregory Craig.
- [23:07]
B
Greg Craig.
- [23:09]
A
Of a filing in which for the first time ever, the Department of Justice sounds like they understand that they are not writing for the court, they are writing for the president so that the president will approve of them. This is a new development and this does bring us like half step closer to like Kim Jong Un territory.
- [23:40]
C
Maybe.
- [23:41]
A
I don't know, maybe that's, it's, it's a little insane.
- [23:45]
C
Certainly a yard or two closer. Do either of you have any real Democrats sending her? John Fetterman said you have tds. It's like, what are they even talking about?
- [24:00]
B
And it was like capitalized just like a truth social thing. It was like fake is in all
- [24:04]
A
caps country, top leaders, top. Good God.
- [24:10]
B
I know, I know that you. When you said North Korea, I tried to check myself because I was like, you're right, this is incredibly serious. On the other hand, I do think that this, I mean, if they're just going to vomit on briefs, like and I, we're all frustrated with the state of the Supreme Court. But the fact is, like, the courts are holding in a lot of places and it is getting like that is just written for Trump. Like that's not going to get through any judges. Nobody. Like that's not going to go anywhere. I like. And I don't know if you've been following because the illegal news with Andrew Weissman, this other show that I do, the. Yeah. The number of judges who are no longer taking the Trump administration as regular order. Like normally there's all this deference that they give to the government. They just like. Yeah. Except that they're going to tell the truth or whatever. They've stopped doing that because the government is lying to the court so often.
- [25:07]
C
Yeah. My main reaction to that filing when I see it is 8647. Time to get rid of these people as quickly as possible. And hopefully that doesn't show up in the filing sometime soon, but we'll see how it goes.
- [25:26]
A
All right, Tim, you're going to bring us a word from our sponsor in just a moment. I'm going to leave you guys with this little thought to put a button on this segment. About the first thing I thought when I read through this filing. It Name checks. John Federman, 4 times 4, which says to me, the Democrats actually have to win the Senate with 52 seats, because if it's 51, Fetterman's gonna switch parties. Tim and now a word from our sponsor.
- [25:53]
C
If you have a friend and podcast co host and colleague who's always catastrophizing, always getting you down, always making you think the worst about things, you have to find yourself pretending to care about the news. And the President of the United States has targeting someone he doesn't like with jail time based on their crin's seashell art. One thing you might want to do is turn to our friends at Soul. It helps balance out my bad habits and my questionable moods. And one product that they've got that'll do that is their mood Gummies Soul is a wellness brand that makes delicious hemp drive CBD and THC projects designed to make feeling good simple. Their mood gummies have precise dosing, clean ingredients, and formulations designed for predictable effects to make sure that you can choose how you want to feel while you're staying in control. If you're looking for a bright social and energizing buzz, go for the uplift gummies. 3 milligrams of Sativa THC, perfect for daytime plans or beating the afternoon slump when it's time to wind down. The mellow gummies deliver 3 milligrams of indica THC plus CBN, ideal for cozy nights and full unplugging. Sarah usually does three or four of those. And if you're looking for that just right anytime vibe Souls Balance gummies, you know, help you stay balanced. I was a jazz fest in New Orleans this weekend, had a great time, but, you know, I had to do content the next day. So you can't just be doing the daiquiris. You can't be doing the pina colada daiquiris all day long. And so one thing to do is maybe a little uplift gummy, though. 3 milligrams. Get the giggles, you know, Watch them, Travis. Travis, watch them. Tyler Childers Sylvanesso came out with them. It was really nice. Make a good day and get yourself some soul gum. Make today a good day, that is. And get yourself some soul gummies. Right now, Soul is offering my audience 30 off your entire order. Go to getsoul.com and use the code, the next level. That's getsoul.com promo code, the next level for 30 off.
- [27:48]
A
Thank you, Tim. And when you're done, go to the bulwark.com and look for our champagne tier because One of the things we're rolling out for champagne tier members is I will do soul gummies while listening to a focus group and I'll just record the streaming. I'll do that live stream, but only for the champagne tier members. Okay. There is nothing I want to talk about less than the White House correspondence dinner, but I. We should just tick past it on our way to note that it has become a lock step. See, this is why we need the ballroom, which like with the Iran war, it would be more convincing if they had said we needed the ballroom for security reasons at the beginning. Like it would have been helpful to say we need the Iran war during the campaign when he was saying no more wars.
- [28:45]
C
Yeah. Or that the threat from Iran was really, was really very great after we'd bombed.
- [28:49]
A
That is strong, right?
- [28:51]
C
Rather after we said that we obliterated them. Yeah. I feel like I've said my piece on it. I know Sarah's. Some thoughts. There's one element to it. There's another news item that ties to Comey that I want to just hit on and then whatever, whatever you want to talk about, Sarah, but. And that is, you know, this kind of ham fisted campaign of retribution that's ongoing. In addition to the Seashell attack today, we're also saying that Brendan Carr is going after Disney because of woke. I don't know. I don't know if it was the, the, you know, the kissing that happened in the Lightyear movie. Still lesbian kisses. I don't know if that interracial lesbian kiss is it. Or if there's something else going on.
- [29:28]
B
Oh, I'm listening all of a sudden.
- [29:29]
C
Yeah, well, it's pretty good. Go watch Lightyear dei. There's some DEI issue that, that now they're reviewing the licenses that ABC and Disney own that Disney owns of eight local ABC stations. And I was watching that story and like obviously it's corrupt and obviously it's urbanism and we should be vigilant and fighting back against it. But in this one instance, as mad as I am about that dwee Brendan Carr, it really got me mad at abc, you know, related to this dinner. And I guess this was a point that I just don't feel like I articulated that clearly when I was saying before the dinner that I did not think that people should go and that news outlets should go and because part of the, one of the reasons I didn't think they should go.
- [30:15]
A
Yeah, of course I thought I was being super puritanical about this.
- [30:18]
C
Yeah, no, I said that was my view. And I, I, I said it and, and, but like when I first expressed it was more of like a personal thing. Like I don't want to sit in a room with these people and pretend like everything's good. And like, and, and that was like why I wouldn't do it on a personal level. But there also is just a level of, you know, having integrity and having backbone and like standing up for yourself and not being a submissive to these people. And like the idea that it's not normal. Yeah, right. The idea that an ABC reporter and this could be true of multiple that's we'll just pick on ABC right now that an ABC reporter would sit in the room while when you know, if it was going to go as planned, where the President of the United States went up there and took an hour to two hours to do insult comedy and shit on you and attack you after he lied and smeared about your reporting in order to get you to pay him a payoff. Like after he went after your late night host and tried to get him off the network, after he went after a competitive network and put and installed one of his allies at the top of it to get better coverage. And now since they're going again after your outlets and trying to get them de licensed and using the power of the government to attack you, why would you just go and be an ornament to that? Like he is, he is instigating a direct attack on the First Amendment broadly, but also on these outlets in particular. And like the outlets themselves were too weak to like stand up for themselves and say no, we are not going to be a participant in this. And for whatever reason, basically everybody except the New York Times just fully went along with it and was planning on like we're going to go along with this. Like it's business as usual. I hated the correspondence dinner before it was Trump. But it's like particularly ineffectual and embarrassing to go and participate when the honored guest is in the middle of a full frontal attack on your industry broadly and your, and in many cases your
- [32:25]
B
outlet in particular, which is, look, I've not gone to the White House Correspondent center, but you know, now we get invited to a lot of the stuff and I was like a hard no on everything because who, what are we celebrating? What is it? And like what are we celebrating? And also is it the lack of self respect? Like the Wall Street Journal is currently getting sued by him? Like he is sued the vast majority of that room or put them into a posture where they have to had to Pay him off or need like a license deal from him. What, what journalist thinks I want to be among these people? I want to be among Pete Hegseth. And look, I think it's a weird time to, to sort of like be patting anybody on the back. Like, like, if you wanna, when you're really hold doing accountable journalism, right. You're holding people to account. You don't want to be seen as chummy with the administration like this.
- [33:23]
A
It's so funny. You said Pete Hegseth. Do you know which journalist invited Pete Hegseth to sit at her table? Barry, do you know who her other guest from the administration was?
- [33:37]
B
J.D.
- [33:37]
A
vance, Stephen Miller.
- [33:39]
C
Miller.
- [33:39]
A
Oh, God, the two worst people in the administration.
- [33:45]
C
It's not like was also there. Remember the opening night of the CB of the CBS News where Tony D. Was out there and was like, we are not going to listen to the elites. We are going to listen to you. And now what we're actually going to do is the night before the Correspondent center, we're going to have a private party where the president talks to us elites for an hour and we don't even report on it. We don't even tell you what he said. It's a secret. And then the next night, we go to the black tie dinner and we sit next to high finance execs or former finance execs, and we invite them as our special guests along with the Secretary of War and the person doing the mass deportation campaign. Because we just. What we're trying to do is reflect on what the people really care about, not what the elites, not those played
- [34:24]
A
right down the middle. Raging moderate, that Barry Weiss. Don't call her a partisan hack. She's not indistinguishable from Greg Gutfeld. They're even the same height.
- [34:38]
B
It's sort of worse. It's sort of worse.
- [34:42]
A
Tell me more.
- [34:44]
B
I mean, look, this, this right now, in this moment where Donald Trump is doing everything he can to chill civic discourse. He's suing all these guys. We're in an active war with Iran. Like, he's put pressure on cbs. He tweets about her when he doesn't like some coverage they do. The way he screamed at Nora o' Donnell when she simply read, when she was reading some of the manifesto. Couldn't even handle it like a normal person. And look, I. Obviously nobody wants to hear a killer's manifesto. But, you know, anyway, Trump, I just think anybody who has decided that they want to normalize, sane, wash or otherwise rub elbows with like, I don't know. I. And I think this is where the Trump administration thinks that they beat on people enough, right? If they go with them hard enough, they'll all sort of. They'll try to, like, buddy up, you know, they'll be nicer. They'll feel like people are looking at them. And I. And I think that is what hap. What's happening. And all it is, is demonstrated how psychologically weak all of this sort of legacy stuff is.
- [35:55]
A
I mean, look, Trump administration has gotten far more favorable coverage by attempting to, like, circumvent the Constitution and, like, aggressively assault and extort the press than the Biden administration did by just sort of assuming the press would be independent and do its own thing. All right, we got more news.
- [36:17]
B
Talk about the ballroom, because that's the real. That's the real takeaway from the White House Correspondents Dinner.
- [36:23]
A
Tell them. Tell. Go ahead, you hit the ballroom for me. And then we'll go to our next ad before we get to even more Kim Jong Un shit.
- [36:32]
B
I mean, on our list of things that are certifiably insane coming out right now. First of all, I love the ballroom stuff. The ballroom stuff is my favorite.
- [36:40]
C
You want a ballroom because you want it.
- [36:42]
B
No, I want to talk about the ballroom. I don't want to. I don't want the ballroom. But the idea that Trump has decided, okay, we are. We're the victims. Somebody was coming to do us harm. We are on full tilt against the Democrats and their violent rhetoric. And the one solution that we need for all of this is for me to be able to build my ballroom. And the reason that I love the ball. And, and also, so this is what happens, right? If you looked, Meghan McCain, everybody, if you looked at social media after this, everyone was like, I don't want to hear anything else. He's got to get the ballroom. The ballroom is the thing that we need to save our democracy. Like, it's a security issue. Right? Okay. Like you guys were saying, I just desperately want him to go on the campaign trail. I want Republicans to say, here's the one thing we did, guys. We built the ballroom. We built the ballroom. Not only that, but before, when we said it was privately funded so that we could find ways to take bribes from people. Don't worry now. We're still going to do that. But Also, we need $400 million of public funding to build it, even though I was reliably promised that there would be no public funding. Trump has said this over and over. No public funding. We can't have classrooms. We got to have a ballroom. We can't have good hospital rooms. We've got to have a ballroom. Yeah, right. And so if they want to run on the idea that the one thing they accomplished was passing a bill, the one bill that they accomplished that that Fetterman is going to vote for and that weirdly, Rand Paul is the sponsor of who has been treated horribly again by Trump. He's going to sponsor the ballroom bill. Go ahead, guys, run with it. I love this for you.
- [38:25]
A
Now, if, if we do get public funding for the ballroom, the private entity which was collecting funds for it will give all that money back, right?
- [38:36]
B
Sure. Yeah, probably. I think that's how it works.
- [38:39]
C
Well, that's why I just be just that, you know, it's the SAVE Act. We're going to prevent you from voting by mail. We're going to build the ballroom and maybe we'll dabble on some transports rules.
- [38:49]
A
Well, hold on.
- [38:51]
C
We know you're upset about cad, but that's the, that's the agenda this year.
- [38:54]
A
There's one more thing. We're going to talk about it after the break. This, this show is brought to you by Brodo. If your morning coffee isn't cutting it lately, start your day with something amazing. Our next sponsor makes bone broth that hydrates, nourishes and wakes you up without spiking your nerves or blood sugar. This podcast is sponsored by Brodo. Brodo's bone broth is the simplest nutrition upgrade you can make to your daily routine. Their broths are made from scratch. No concentrates, preservatives, or shortcuts, so you get the best broth money can buy. Brodo was launched by James Beard award winning chef Marco Conora. 11 years ago. He started serving bone broth out of the window of his New York City restaurant. Now Brodo ships nationwide, so you don't have to be in New York City to enjoy Chef Marco's masterpiece. You won't believe how good it tastes. I've been hearing the most effusive things from people who love it. Hype. So intense they don't know what to do about it. From chefs like David Chang and Bobby Flay to outlets like the New York Times, Good Morning America, Brodo has been consistently recognized as a bone broth pioneer. In times like these, we all need to reach for the things we can count on for comfort. It's not often something comes around that can also be good for us the way that Brodo can. We all need a few win wins right now and that's got Brodo sounding really good to me. Shop the best brome.
- [40:16]
C
Bah.
- [40:17]
A
See, this is what you get by listening to the live reads. You get to see professional Tim Amateur hour. Jvl Shop the best bone broth on the planet with brodo. Head to brodo.com thenextlevel for 20 off your first subscription order and use code thenextlevel for an additional $10 off. Once again, that's brodo.com backslash thenextlevel for 20% off your first subscription order and an additional $10 off if you use my promo code. The next level.
- [40:51]
C
Becoming a broth man myself, I'm getting into broth culture. I kind of, I'm gonna make broth part of my personal identity. I was intrigued by all the different
- [41:01]
B
flavors it was when I had the flu last week. It was a lifesaver.
- [41:06]
A
I brought I'm gonna have broth tonight for dinner. Okay. So our Ben Parker broke a story today that the Department of State.
- [41:17]
C
Yeah, Ben.
- [41:18]
A
Is finalizing putting the president's face onto US Passports.
- [41:26]
B
This was a great get by, Ben. Can we just talk quickly, though, about the process of this where we gave that we, Ben, you know, asked for comment from the State Department. So what did they do? Rather than getting back to us, they turned around and leaked it to Fox News.
- [41:44]
C
I don't know.
- [41:45]
A
No, no. First they asked for an extension.
- [41:47]
B
They asked for an extension.
- [41:49]
A
They said, could you please give us two hours? Can you hold off on your story? Just give us two hours, huh? And then after getting us to hold the story, they went and leaked it to Fox.
- [42:01]
C
Speaking of humiliation, I was talking about how humiliating it is to be the lawyer that has to do the seashell prosecution. How humiliating is to be to Trump to have to win the poor Jimmy Kimmel's mean to me. My wife has to come to my defense. How humiliating does it have to be to be Fox reporter that's like, oh, yeah, I'll take your dog food. I'll take your dog food. Somebody else got this story. But I'm going to rush this out for you and I'm going to do, I'm going to write you up something real nice, Mr. State Department Flaxer. Just whatever you need. That's real journalism. That's got to make that Fox reporter feel good at night, that they're doing real work.
- [42:40]
B
Real journalism also. But let's talk about the actual. There is a photo of President Trump, like a watermarked photo that is now meant to appear on all the passports. Once again, whether it's the ballroom, the ark, the dollar or the passport. Like he's only the only national parks pass. Yeah, the only thing he's going to do, this whole administration is put his name and his face on crap. I cannot wait to tear all this stuff down. I am going to.
- [43:10]
C
You've come around fully to the JVL position.
- [43:12]
B
Not, not that we run on it like that. That's not like the most important thing. However. I never said run on it. All right, well, we can. That's a long. It's a different debate.
- [43:23]
A
It should be a litmus test that any Dem who says, no, I'm not going to tear a ballroom down. That's backward looking. I'm focused on the future and expanding access to health care. Fuck you. That's, that's my position.
- [43:35]
C
Tearing it down. You want to tear down the ballroom?
- [43:38]
A
Well, yeah, just be non committal about it. Right. If you, if you want to say. And we'll, we'll talk about it when we get there. I'm focused on more important things, that's fine. Although secretly you ought to be signaling to people, yeah, I'm gonna fucking tear that thing down.
- [43:50]
B
This doesn't really matter that much. But I would say like I would make modifications to the ballroom that take Trump's name off it. I'd take it off the Kennedy center, whatever. I would tear the arc down if that ark gets built. An arc to Trump in Washington D.C. like, first of all, you'd have to tear it down anyway because that thing will just spend the next three decades being vandalized every minute.
- [44:11]
A
Yeah.
- [44:12]
C
We didn't say the Kennedy Center. Take his name off the Kennedy Center. Yeah, I don't know. I kind of think if this fucking stupid ass ballroom gets built, I think you do probably keep it. You take the gold down and then you rename it the Michelle Obama Ballroom.
- [44:24]
B
Yeah, that's right.
- [44:25]
A
Because if you do that, it gets renamed every four years anyway. You have to raise it to the ground and then salt the earth and then build the East Wing back on top.
- [44:35]
B
This is why I argued with him last time because like, just as a practical matter, there are certain ways in which that's a lot of taxpayer down.
- [44:43]
C
You know what I mean?
- [44:44]
A
I'm for, I will bet anything, anything that a Democratic president could easily privately crowdsource the funds to tear that fucking thing down. Yeah, I rebuild the East Wing. We would all give them 100 bucks to do that. But I want to, I. What if this is actually 4D chess on the passports? The save act.
- [45:09]
B
Say more.
- [45:10]
A
One of the things it wants to do is require people to have passports to vote. If you start a lot of MAGA
- [45:17]
C
voters don't have passports, don't have passports.
- [45:20]
A
And I think a lot of well meaning lib voters who need passport renewal. No, but who need renewal might think, oh, I'm going to put off renewing my passport because I am not going to walk around for 10 fucking years with this guy's mug staring back at me.
- [45:40]
B
I think this is a good argument.
- [45:43]
C
Yeah, don't.
- [45:45]
B
I believe that.
- [45:45]
C
Don't do it. Go get the passport now. If you're one of those well meaning libs watching this live stream, just go and you need to re up your passport. Go do it. Go do it soon. I think the first run is only 25,000 they said. So, you know, I think that there's a way to either get in before, get in after, but it's, it is so fascy and so un American. Right? And I do like, I don't know, I just, Maybe this is wishful thinking. I hate to be the optimistic one on the podcast, but I do just think that like, there's a lot of people out there that are like, really? I mean, on everything. It's not like any one of these things offends them. They're like, I'm really offended that Trump is on the passport, but it's just kind of like this is what we got out of all this. I don't know, I feel like there's a period of time, like right after the election where had Trump announced this In February of 2025, people would have been like, eat shit libs. You know, like, I'm gonna drink your tears from my tears mug while you get your, while you fancy pants libs like to go to Europe in the summer for your holiday, get your Trump passport. I just, I think that with the Iran war being a disaster, with gas prices now, you know, going up to above four bucks, with him not actually doing anything that good, I think all this stuff is starting to feel a little bit sad. Jinx. Yeah.
- [47:13]
B
No, no, I think that's right. I mean they are all desperations, right? This is all, I mean, every single piece of this is a reflection of his brokenness and the narcissism that sort of comes with this of like, love me, let me put my name on things. Like, let me pretend to have value. But the. On the fashy part, you know, I just, the only thing I'll say is that after a weekend of listening to People say, stop calling him a fascist. You know, you libs with your incendiary rhetoric. I'm like, stop doing fascist things and we'll stop calling you a fascist. Like, no, we're not gonna. I, I have. They want to try and use our good hearts against us. Right. Because nobody wants anybody shot. Nobody wants people to use violent rhetoric. But I will not for one second stop calling him a fascist, because he is one. You have to tell the truth. That is also your obligation to tell the truth about who this president is.
- [48:11]
A
Yes.
- [48:11]
C
And stop doing fancy shit. Like, he's putting his face and everything. It feels like, you know, it's a cardillo in a fucking Latin American dictatorship. He puts his fucking face on everything. It's on the buildings, when you get off the airplane, it's at the airport. The. It's on the money, it's on the passport. It's just. It's not American. And I think that it is. He's also a handicake, in addition to the Iran war. It's another thing that he's handing, I think, some real populist rhetorical power to the left, if they can use it correctly. I know you guys talked about the Ossoff speech last Friday. I think he's kind of demonstrating how to do this very well in a lot of ways. And I just, I think that, like, it's very easy to start creating a contrast that's like, you know what he said he cared about you, the forgotten man. Like, I'm putting you first. Like, I. I'm the one that actually cares about the American people first. He put his fucking face on this, his face on that, his name on this building. I'm not going to put my name on anything. Like, I'm going to care about you, not me. Trump cares about him. And I don't know, I feel like that. I feel like there's some power in that.
- [49:18]
B
Yeah, Trump cares about he, himself. I care about you. Like, you can run that ad in reverse now.
- [49:28]
A
Well, what?
- [49:30]
C
Let's hear it. Jbl, take us off.
- [49:33]
B
Just let me feel about John. Two seconds.
- [49:39]
A
The New York Times convened a focus group with disillusioned Trump voters.
- [49:45]
C
Editor a Sarah Competitor.
- [49:47]
A
And I wanted to just read a couple of the responses to you guys and just see if I can get you to react, see what you think.
- [50:00]
B
I bet I could guess what they say.
- [50:02]
A
Nancy. A white independent voter, 55 years old from Arizona, said, frankly, I just wasn't a fan of Kamala. It was the lesser of two evils. I could have written in somebody. But I felt like I had a better chance of a little hope with Trump. I was hoping that Congress and other branches would keep him in check and he'd have better advisors and that maybe the second go around he'd learn some lessons.
- [50:26]
C
Yeah.
- [50:27]
A
So she had a whole thought process which led her to Trump, and her thought process was, this time it'll be better because the Republicans in Congress will stand up to him and he'll have more grownups around him.
- [50:41]
B
Yeah, that's pretty common.
- [50:44]
C
Hopefully it would be nice if somebody in that person's life would have like sent them to the Bulwark Podcast. Could have kindly explained why that was actually the opposite of true, but. Okay, what else do we got?
- [51:02]
A
Okay. Jose, 62, Latino independent voter from Florida.
- [51:09]
C
I thought he'd learned his Florida. Anyway, so whatever.
- [51:11]
A
He was going to prove to everybody that he learned from his mistakes, that he was going to turn the country around and get going and be a stellar president that turned out to be a horror movie. Okay, that's fine. Agree with Jose John, 62, white Republican from Maryland. He did initiate ending the penny, silly as that is. He's listing the good things that Trump has done.
- [51:35]
C
That's what I mean.
- [51:37]
A
And he initiated getting us out of the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement. Two positive things, I guess, if you really look at it on the whole, I mean, that was accounting for a lot of our budget money. Now, I don't think you can actually hang a number on the Paris Climate Agreement budget. Like, it's not like we paid money to Paris for that. We did, we did. Before we were taken out of the World Health Organization, give money we paid due to the World health organization, typically $111 million a year.
- [52:17]
C
It's like a fourth of the ballroom. I just.
- [52:22]
A
When you, when you listen to the people who voted for him, and these are even the people who are like, man, my bad. Like I trusting that people are gonna suddenly become smart. Well, I don't know, man.
- [52:38]
B
No, but I don't think anybody's ever said that. On what plan. It's not like people are gonna. No, no, people are not gonna become. And let's. Instead of smart, let's just say more well informed about the realities of politics. The information environment's getting worse for people. Not easier.
- [52:53]
C
However, we're getting dumber, actually. Probably. Yeah, next time the median, median IQ will probably be dumber in 2028, which
- [53:01]
B
is all like hopped up on short form videos and you know, Anyway, whatever. The point is, I have never Heard somebody give the example mostly when people right now, because we, I talk to a lot of disappointed Trump voters. The main things that they say are, and I don't know if there's any of these in here, but I'd be interested to know. Jbl I haven't looked at them. One is that they thought he was just going to go after the criminals and he thought, they thought he was going to focus on lowering prices. Like, like they heard a very specific thing like, well, I thought he was a businessman and he was going to focus on prices and my prices were too high. That's what I wanted. But he's not doing it. And they, they went from in 2025 being like Rome wasn't built in a day to what the hell is he doing? Which is why the ballroom is important, because it is a contrast for voters in terms of what he is focused on, which is not anything for them. What else you got? Jvl?
- [53:55]
A
You know, I did one more thing from them which I thought was actually very helpful. So the moderator said, what? When you talk to people about this and you say, I regret my Trump vote, how do you wish that they would respond to you? And Kitty, 36, from Pennsylvania, an Asian independent voter said, oh my God, what
- [54:17]
C
the were you thinking?
- [54:18]
A
Kitty says, no. She says, I'm just hoping to hear. Maybe they'll be like, oh, why? First they ask me why and just trying to understand where I'm coming from. That is strikes me as very good advice if you encounter somebody who says, boy, I voted for Trump and I really regret it now, before saying, what the fuck were you thinking? Maybe that's a bad thought. Don't do that. Just say why Tell me more.
- [54:44]
C
Do we learn why? Does Kitty tell us why?
- [54:47]
A
Unimportant. You just want them to feel heard. Other reluctant Trump voters, J.D. vance, who won't stop talking to you.
- [54:54]
C
Okay, just really quick for JD Vance, I just want to say this exercise is important for one main reason, which is there, there remain for some reason a lot of people out there, even smart people, even people involved in politics and political strategy, who do not believe that there exist people that voted for Donald Trump that could be persuaded to vote for Democrats. And like that is not true. There are a lot of people out
- [55:21]
A
there, empirically not true.
- [55:23]
C
Yeah, and there are a lot of people out there and a lot of their reasons are really dumb. But they are persuadable on a wide variety of topics, and it's important to internalize that as you think about going forward. So you Might not like any of these people or think any of them have very, very deep insights into the state of the body politic. But they are gettable voters.
- [55:48]
A
They vote maybe conspiracy theorists out there who are gettable voters.
- [55:52]
C
The 36 year old lady for the Asian 36 year old lady. I just want to know why she did it. So that in 2028, as a 40 year old Asian independent lady, she might consider in the important swing state of Pennsylvania voting for somebody that is not a corrupt ignoramus.
- [56:11]
A
So next time someone tells you the earth is flat, just say tell me more.
- [56:15]
B
Why, speaking of which, jbl, do you have some, is there some JD Vance content there?
- [56:19]
A
So there is some JD Vance, kind of. That's what I want to do before we get out of here. The Atlantic had a piece on Monday. Yeah, well, that's why he stopped tweeting. And it seems like Vance and his office has just got a line of connection open to reporters all over the country telling them how dumb they think this war that he supports fully is.
- [56:46]
B
I love this story.
- [56:48]
A
Can you guys tell me how this is going to end? Because in my heart of hearts, I think he's going to.
- [56:54]
B
Ron or Vance?
- [56:57]
A
I mean both. I meant Vance, but I would love to hear hear whatever thoughts you had on either.
- [57:04]
B
I think that Vance is giving big Ron DeSantis vibes. And when you say he's going to get away with it, I don't know what that means. You think, you mean, you, you mean he will still be the presumptive Republican nominee and will become the nominee when the primary happens.
- [57:23]
C
Yeah.
- [57:23]
A
If Don Jr. Doesn't run and Don Senior doesn't run, then I think Vance probably manages to hold everything together to win the nomination. Yeah, that's getting away with it.
- [57:36]
B
Maybe it, it's getting away with it in the sense, first of all, can't beat something with nothing. So like who's an alternative that you see that would beat Vance? I think to the extent that Vance becomes the guy it becomes because he is a watered down consensus pick. Right. Where he becomes the consensus. But like sort of in a way where everybody kind of hates him and only just likes him a little bit. He's just like better than the alternatives, which I think then creates a very weak Republican candidate who cannot do anywhere near what Trump did in terms of putting together a coalition.
- [58:17]
C
Yeah. So there's a semaphore piece out by Ben Smith about JD Today as well alongside this Atlantic piece where apparently he's keeps leaking that he has concerns about the war and simultaneous to that, he's off of Twitter. And apparently, according to a source semaphore, he took a Lenten break from Twitter. Lent is over now. But he deleted his. He deleted Twitter for Lent.
- [58:41]
A
When did Lent end, Tim?
- [58:43]
C
It's been a couple of weeks now.
- [58:45]
A
I forget. Is this though one of those weird leap years where lent is actually 90 days?
- [58:49]
C
No, it isn't. No, it ended. But Lent did, did happen just by coincidence to overlap pretty closely with the Iran war and so convenient. I don't know. You know, there are other like things that you do around Lent. I know I'm kind of a lapsed Catholic, but, but JD's new to it, so you kind of mentioned like I oftentimes you go to confession during Lent where you talk about your various sins. So like deleting Twitter without simultaneously, you know, asking for penance for the fact that you use Twitter to smear dead people. You know, it's not, doesn't really kind of work like that. Maybe he did or maybe he's, I don't know, he hasn't said so publicly. Maybe he's gone to his, his priest at that Appalachian Protestant church he put on the front of his book and, and, and asked for forgiveness for like being kind of basically responsible for the agents that went and killed unarmed Americans and then going out and publicly smearing them on social media and fighting with anyone that said that they should still be alive. But I got it. We don't, we haven't heard any reporting on that. Maybe Ben can follow up. But you know, like the, the broader political point Ben is making is that J.D. vance continues to like, manage to survive all this. Like he's unappealing personally. And I think that sometimes, like, because he's so personally unappealing, a lot of people in our business and the comment business are maybe underrating his ability to survive it. And I, and I kind of agree with that. Right. Like, just because I could never imagine myself wanting to like, spend a single minute in the present of J. Presence of J.D. vance. It's kind of hard for me to imagine that people might want him to be the President on their TV every day for another four years. But there are a lot of people out there who, you know, for whom
- [60:41]
A
there are scores, scores of trad calves who are semi closeted who want to spend time with J.D.
- [60:47]
C
vance. Yeah, true. And scores of just regular people out in America who are watching Fox who think maybe not young family man, maybe
- [60:55]
A
not, maybe not scores of them. Maybe dozens of those people.
- [60:59]
C
There's Some. Anyway, point being, I do think that he is trying. His goal at the end of this is to be able to unite, as Sarah kind of, you know, writes about it, like, the difference in this America first wing, you know, your Marjorie, tail, Green, Tucker crowd. And like the MAG establishment. And like, JD doesn't need to win a hundred percent of all those people. He just kind of needs a majority of the maga, like, he needs Marco not to run and a majority of the MAGA establishing people for him. And then he needs some percentage of the America first people to think like, oh, you know, I like him good enough. I read some of those stories. He said he wasn't for the war, he'd be better than, you know, he's more America first than Trump is. Whatever rationalization, like the stupid rationalizations that those people came up with, they would come up with some other rationalization. I'm like, I like him better than Marjorie or Tucker because they were too mean to Trump. And I want someone that's a little bit more America first, but not somebody that was so mean to Mr. Trump, who I voted for three times. Right. And that's plausible, I think, for him. And I think that that explains how he's trying to navigate this situation, which is like leaving some Easter eggs for people when this thing goes bad to demonstrate that he was one that thought it went bad while also not getting on Trump's bad side. Now, the big risk in all this, obviously, is that Mr. Is Trump himself, who is erratic and not reliable. And maybe one day somebody, you know, hands him the Atlantic article and says, hey, JD's on you in the Atlantic, and Donald Trump decides that he's not going to endorse J.D. and he's going to pick somebody else. And, and that would be the end. I think that's basically the, my, my view of the state of play with, with old.
- [62:34]
B
I mean, look, we asked about JD Vance in the focus groups all the time, and the fact is, like, they do like him fine, but nobody's loves him. Like, and this is really important that Donald Trump, in a percentage, a stunning percentage, drew people out who had never voted before. He had an entire group of people. I was, I did. I like, pulled my own county at one point and like, there was like a 46% increase. Always a Republican county where I grew up, up. But, like, he supercharged those numbers. Can J.D. vance, with people being like, yeah, he's fine. Like, so when you say pull it off is different than like, can he be the presumptive 90? Probably can he build the same kind of coalition that Trump did in a general election. Can he get the kind of sustained enthusiasm from people? I think that is looking awfully difficult to do.
- [63:32]
A
Lauren, you teased me that you had thoughts about Iran.
- [63:35]
B
Only that, I mean, look, we didn't even get to this, but it's kind of a big thing, which is we went through another weekend where, you know, it's like, Friday, we are not negotiating. Negotiations have fallen apart. Sunday night, Trump's like, we're gonna get it all figured out. The whole thing's being conducted on truth Social tweets, the markets, and through Axios.
- [63:54]
C
We should mention our friends at Axios.
- [63:56]
B
That's true.
- [63:57]
C
Every morning around 8:15 Axios, as a senior American official, Jared Kushner, her senior administration official, saying, you know, there's been a new development in the negotiations. Right before the market opens, there's been a new development of negotiations. The negotiating team has some hope that something is going to happen. We've had one of those almost every morning. You know what?
- [64:17]
A
And Barack Ravid just reports those things straight up every time, no matter how many times they aren't true.
- [64:24]
C
It's just like, just around the next bend, we're going to have another deal. You never know. And eventually they'll be correct. Right. If you say, we're going to have a deal soon, eventually you'll have a deal and you'll be the right one. But I don't know.
- [64:34]
B
It was never infrastructure week, and we've never gotten a health care plan, so.
- [64:39]
C
Maybe not. But this post this morning, he said was that the Iranians are excited to open the strait. They're collapsing internally, and they're excited to open the strait, and they need to figure out their leadership, which Trump thinks that they're going to do. And so that's it. It's another total humiliation. Somebody brought this up. Jbl, you're older. I should ask you about this. How would you compare and contrast the humiliation of this to the hostage crisis? I feel like Trump is not. Carter was treated like he was such a weak noodle after all about all of that. How is this any different than that? Like, Trump literally starts this war. Okay, but you were a smart. You're a precocious six.
- [65:17]
A
I was a precocious six.
- [65:19]
C
No, it was. It was every.
- [65:21]
A
The. The received wisdom was, look how weak Carter is.
- [65:25]
C
Right.
- [65:26]
A
He can't handle them.
- [65:27]
B
And.
- [65:29]
A
And the Iranians helped this because they went and, you know, like, what was it? An hour after Reagan was inaugurated, they released the hostages. Yeah.
- [65:39]
C
But how is this any different? I mean, honestly, like Trump, we don't. They don't have any hostages. I guess it's the one thing that's.
- [65:45]
B
They're holding the Strait of Hormuz hostage.
- [65:47]
A
Global economy hostage.
- [65:49]
C
And Trump started the war and now he keeps his seat. He unilaterally. Then he did it a ceasefire, and then he unilateral. Then it expired. And unilaterally is like, yeah, we're gonna keep it going, the ceasefire, because I don't want to fight anymore. And hopefully they're just gonna figure things out. And it's really, it's just from like a schoolyard bully kind of dominance perspective. I mean, he's looking quite weak, I would say.
- [66:15]
A
It's all, it's all 5D chest. Because you see, the thing is in the internal Iranian leadership, they're going to be so sick and tired of all their winning that they'll decide they want to lose one because they're so bored, you know, like, like Donald Trump promised Americans would be. I mean, I look at it, I don't understand why the war isn't more unbox. I know it's quite unpopular. It seems like it should be even more unpopular than it is because we're getting.
- [66:45]
B
I think it's been, it's been out of the news the last week in part because it has started to hit this pattern where everybody's like, we're in route, but like the gas, gas prices are going up. And we basically, he, he lives with three options now. We just are living with them. One is he's got to pull back and give the Iranians some kind of big concessions that make him look very stupid. Right. Which they are trying to hold off doing. The second is to basically do what he's doing now. Just keep, keep kicking the can down the road, saying the negotiations are happening, whatever. And then the third is to push for total victory, which requires bombing all their stuff. Like, those are his three options and we just live there.
- [67:23]
C
Can I throw out one thing related to that options in the Carter situation? Think about how the Democrats should be talking about this. And this is my. I've been in this position now. I'm just wondering if maybe the posture should, should be changing. And that is because Trump is a madman. Here's an example of where madman theory is working out for him. Because Trump is a madman and because the Democrats are responsible and don't want us to be in war with Iran, there is this kind of posture of like, well, we don't want to call Him a little bitch, you know, because that might motivate him to go into Iran more and do something really terrible. And we don't want to do a White House Correspondents Dinner 2012 thing where Obama makes fun of him and he ends up running for president. We don't want to do that. And so we're not going to point out the fact that this is really humiliating and he's a little bitch and he started this fight and he doesn't know how to get out of it and he doesn't want to escalate, and he's actually extremely weak right now. And all of your problems economically are his fault because he's so weak. And. But, like, when the shoe was on the other foot, right? If this was Carter, if it was Biden, right? Like, the Republicans at this point would have. Because they would know that Carter really wouldn't want to, like, end the civilization of Iran. They would have no problem saying Carter is so weak. Like, we need a strong leader. We need somebody that isn't this feckless. And. And I kind of think that at this point, you know, it might. I don't know that anybody should be acting like, oh, if I'm a Democratic senator and I send a tweet that calls him a wuss, then. Then it will be on my soul if he escalates. I just kind of think that people should stop thinking about it like that. And, and maybe Cuba to press the price, pressing the advantage more. It'd probably be Cuba pays the price, but, like, I just think it's time to press the advantage a little bit more on this. And it's embarrassing. Like, what's happened is embarrassing. And I feel like when he's not doing anything, everybody's just kind of like, maybe if we just don't talk about. You know what I mean? Like, maybe if we just don't talk about it, the crazy guy won't. Won't, you know, won't take the bat to the window. And it's kind of like, well, I don't know, actually, maybe we should treat him the same way they would treat President Biden had he done this.
- [69:38]
B
No, not the least of which is dudes on his heels. Like, this is. I think we should put a finer point on the theme of this podcast, which is Trump right now, he is losing in every regard, right? Even just look at what we've talked about, right? The. The administration officials that are all going to go, because they are all, in one way or another, failing him, failing themselves, failing the country, failing at their jobs. The economy is in free fall. We are at war with no way out to, you know. You know something that happened this weekend that was funny. Our friend. And by friend, I mean one of the worst people I've ever met. Scott Jennings, like, clipped this thing of me and Jessica Tarlov where I was talking about the voters, and the clip made it sound like it was me and Jessica saying our nervous systems can't take it worse. It's so bad. Whatever. But what I was. And. And so. And they wanted to be like, look at all these white liberal women who are so fragile. And I was like, no, I was characterizing MAGA voters. Like, I was talking about what I hear in the focus groups right now from Trump voters, which is that they feel they can even. And these were people who were like, they think Trump is doing fine, but they also think that the world is on fire now. They blame, like, the media for that or they blame libs, but they also are like, we are so divided. It's terrible. No one can talk anymore. Like, the country's in a bad place. Every part of it's in a bad place. And it's in a bad place because Trump sucks at his job. And this is why nobody should be cowed in this moment from telling the truth about Donald Trump and saying how bad he is for the country. Like, go hard right now. Don't be afraid of the. Of them yelling at you. Go now while he's failing. Tell everybody he's failing.
- [71:26]
A
Love that. I love that. For us guys, been a good show. Incredibly long show. We started with Jim Comey. We. And ended with Braveheart.
- [71:35]
C
You will take the seashell art out of my cold, dead hands. Don't tread on me.
- [71:43]
A
Hit subscribe. Follow the channel. We'll be back again soon with more good news, probably. Maybe. Good luck, America.