Loading summary
Transcript240 lines
- [00:00]
A
Sam, you came in as a new person. It would have been like if Sarah and I did a coup and decided to fire JVL because he was too negative and then also fired a top editor and then like, also fired Bill Kristol. And then like, we brought you in like you had your first staff meeting and people are like, what do you think about this? Like, I didn't know it was going to happen. It's like, I don't. Don't look at me.
- [00:23]
B
Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my best friend, Tim Miller. My very, very good friend. A guy who I have. He's just, he's grown on me. He's, you know, he's just so handsome. What is the Yiddish term for. For such a handsome face?
- [00:39]
C
Oh, God.
- [00:40]
B
Put him. Is that what it is?
- [00:41]
C
Put him. Is the face. Yes.
- [00:43]
B
Yeah.
- [00:44]
A
Look at the punum on him.
- [00:46]
C
Thank you.
- [00:47]
A
I don't know, the haircut. It looks like you got a little too high and tight for me.
- [00:51]
B
No, it's a good look. Sam, don't let him change.
- [00:54]
A
Borderline balding situation.
- [00:57]
C
Every time I get a haircut. You have the same commentary.
- [00:59]
A
Do you have any sponsors for that?
- [01:01]
C
Where's hims?
- [01:02]
B
Let's begin because Sarah's out today and we have a big news day. The new acting Director of National Intelligence has been named. It's the director of the Federal Housing and Finance Authority, Bill Pulte. I'm just going to read from his Wikipedia background. He studied journal broadcast journalism at Northwest University. Pulte founded Pulte Capital in 2011, a private equity firm, amid a leadership dispute. Pulte was named to Pulte group's board in 2016, serving a four year term. And then in 2025, President elect Donald Trump named his nominee to be Director of the fhfa. Pulte then appointed himself to be the chairman of Fannie and Freddie and seems to have used all of his time investigating the President's enemies to find out if anything they put on a mortgage application was ever of questionable truth. And this detective work is what seems to have qualified him to be the Director of National Intelligence, which once upon a time was a serious job.
- [02:11]
A
I.
- [02:13]
B
Do you want to clown first or do we want to be serious first?
- [02:16]
A
Let's clown first. I think they're kind of related. I think it's the most unserious and unqualified appointment in the history of the American Republic. I think. I mean, I don't.
- [02:27]
C
Come on.
- [02:28]
B
No.
- [02:28]
A
Cash is worse.
- [02:29]
C
Cash.
- [02:30]
B
Cash was worse.
- [02:31]
A
I mean, cash worked in law enforcement. Cash, like worked at the DOJ before Cash was a lawyer. Bill Pulte is a nepo baby that had done nothing rfk.
- [02:44]
C
I would take RFK as a worse.
- [02:46]
A
Well, Bill pull two is competitive category. Pete Hegsbeth was of course the weekend talk show co host. So I mean all of the Trump nominees are there are obviously at the top of the list here. But he was just an EPO baby that became a grifter investor. He took his dad's money, reinvested into other stuff. Then he became a meme stock guy. He was one of the people pushing Gamestonk.
- [03:10]
B
He's really young too, by the way. He's 38.
- [03:13]
A
He looks horrible.
- [03:15]
B
Might be the youngest DNI ever,
- [03:18]
A
being the most unqualified DNI appointment ever. He also is the oldest looking 38 that, well, maybe not you've ever seen. Back in the 80s things were different. But he looks terrible. But like the thing is that grift that he was doing, I just don't lose sight of this like as he gets attention on Trump. He's doing the Gamestop grift. He's doing the grift on social media where he is like gathering people's data by saying that if like you sign up for my list, I'll give you 500 bucks or I'll give you a grand. He was one of those guys kind of giving away daddy's money to people in order to, you know, be able to farm their data. And then he gets this job that he's totally unqualified for and now he gets sent to dni. He has no back. There's no plausible background in this at all. And I guess at least Pete Hegseth was in the military. Like he has nothing, no experience.
- [04:10]
B
Tulsi Gabbard sat on an intel committee as a House member.
- [04:14]
C
Well, and the other thing is both Tulsi and Pete, whatever you say about him, they were confirmed, right? Like the Senate voted for them. This will not happen with Bill because he's being appointed acting, which gives them about 210 days to serve without any confirmation. Then if they actually formally nominate him, he can continue serving while they consider the confirmation. So it's, it's fairly radical. I thought the most ridiculous, not the most ridiculous, but one of the more ridiculous elements of this was he's going to continue to serve on top of the Federal Housing Authority while being dni.
- [04:46]
B
Now DNI is sort of a halftime gig, Sam.
- [04:48]
C
Yeah, These are kind of big jobs and the idea that he's just going to kind of shift from one sphere to the other is really hilarious to that point.
- [04:58]
A
I think that there's some really bad news in here I want to get to. But the only good news is, and Jane Koster and I talked about this in the pod a couple of weeks ago, the one encouraging sign for us avoiding this MAGA autocratic takeover is that it doesn't really feel like they have the guys at level. You need some number of guys, you know, and. And you need them at the state level. I think we were talking about it in the context of, you know, there was a big push for a while to, like, put MAGA people in charge of, you know, various election organizations, and there's been some of that and there's things to be worried about. But, you know, you had all these random people throughout the country. The guy in Michigan that Trump pressured in Raffensberg, like, you. You needed to be able to build a bench of guys to be able to do the dirty work. People who are going to say, yes, sir, boss. You know, when. When, you know, the. The. The head of the SS unit, like, tells the Hitler Youth, you know, that they got to go out there and do a job. And there's some people out there that do jobs, or too many. There's a concerning number of people. Like the fact that, like, they're relying on this joker like that this joker has to be the lead investigator of enemies through the mortgage office. And now when we need a dni, a prominent job, I'm sure there'd be a lot of people who would be willing to go take that job and say, Mr. Trump, I'll go investigate some of your enemies for you. Because I also want to do cool spy stuff. Can't find anybody you can trust to do that job. So you put, you know, whatever, yeah, Animal House bro in there.
- [06:29]
C
I guess I don't know if that gives me. Is that a good sign? Because it just means he's. Yeah, he's an idiot. But, you know, it just means he's also more pliable. Right? Like, if he has. No.
- [06:39]
A
Oh, no. It's really bad for this job. I'm sorry, Sam, just to be clear, in the micro, it's like really, really bad. That's the bad part, what he's gonna do. I just mean, like, in the brain. Broader scheme of things.
- [06:49]
C
That was sort of like. Wasn't that the takeaway from the Watergate scandal? Right. It was like, all the guys are just sort of idiots. But those guys seem pretty accomplished relative to this crew.
- [06:57]
A
Oh, yeah, your boy did that good HBO series GBL on, on the Water.
- [07:03]
B
The plumbers, right?
- [07:04]
A
Yeah, yeah, plumbers and just how pathetic they were. So, no, in the micro on this job, I mean, he seems to only have been put in there. To me, what this says is that there isn't really a dni. Marco Rubio and the head of the CIA are going to do all of the actual intelligence parts of the job and that this person's job is going to be use the powers of the intelligence agency to go after Donald Trump's foes and to fuck with the elections. That's basically going to be his job. Now, he's been pretty incompetent at that under the mortgage remit. He hasn't had any successful scalps. He had a couple close calls, Lisa Cook, et cetera. But he's failed. So hopefully that incompetence will continue over here. But, but he'll certainly have a lot more resources.
- [07:46]
B
I mean, this was previewed with Tulsi over the last. How, how many weeks are we into the war? Right. She, the DNI was completely absent from the war planning execution, but she did pop up like looking at voting machines. Where was that?
- [08:01]
A
Georgia?
- [08:02]
C
Fulton County. Yeah, yeah, Fulton County. Oh, she also put out that weird Hiroshima video. Do you remember that one early on where she was talking about nuclear war? Remember the Tulsi Hiroshima video? Okay, well, early on, right before the war started, she put out a, a video about nuclear annihilation, how he had to avoid at all cost, which in retrospect seemed like a, a signal that she was getting ready for this Iran war. But yeah, I mean, the, the, the most concerning part is, is what's going to mean for election interference. Tulsi was at the FBI raid of F County for reasons that are still not particularly clear to a lot of people, like why is the DNI there? And they were like, well, you know, it's. We were checking out a foreign interference and all that stuff. And I. Such croc. But if they want to get the DNI involved in trying to gin up some conspiracies about foreign interference in this election, they got the guy to do it. He'll do whatever they want, right? I mean, he's not going to say no.
- [08:54]
A
And this relates to Cash too. I, when you, when I was talking to Comey, whenever that was, a couple weeks ago, I was, I asked him about the Tulsi raid and, and he was kind of explaining to me, you know, just how like the process works through federal law enforcement and he's like the head of the FBI actually was during his tenure, was working with the DNI quite a bit. If there was a counterintelligence probe or something they needed approval on from a classified standpoint, et cetera. And so they're creating some vertical integration here on being able to come up with cockamamie reasons to look into voting machines by saying, hey, this is a counterintelligence op. The Italian spy satellites and Hugo Chavez and, and the Uruguayans and French guinea were like, united together and we've got to go investigate X, Y and Z. And like, now you've got people at the FBI and DNI that just kind of sign off on all that, and you probably did before. But. And I think this, you know, they're eliminating any potential institutional barriers on that.
- [10:01]
B
Well, this is. So, as Sam said, this is a signal that the, the remit of the DNI position is being entirely rewritten and it's going to become a domestic spying agency. Right. To the extent that it's not an agency, but you know what I mean? And I feel like, Tim, that's pretty bad. Like, it's, it's.
- [10:24]
A
Oh, it's bad.
- [10:25]
B
Better that. Better that Bill Pulte is the guy in charge of it first. But once you've remade the. The organization and you've rewritten what the. The job title is for, that leaves it open to hire better for the next one. Right.
- [10:44]
A
So.
- [10:44]
B
So Pulte won't be confirmed. He'll be acting for his 204 days or whatever it is. He will try to hurt Democrats going into the midterm election, and then we'll try to lay the predicate for bad things to be done by Republicans after the election, and then he'll be gone. And who knows what the next guy. Right. Maybe the next guy is slightly more competent. Maybe the next guy is Mark Wayne, you know, or they'll move him in to be.
- [11:17]
A
He'll be the acting, you know, head of some other, you know, kind of internal investigative body. Right, right.
- [11:24]
C
I mean, they have so many people in acting positions right now, which does indicate to you that they're kind of running out of people who do want to. Who they trust to do this type of dirty work or who can do it. But like, you have an acting Labor Secretary, acting Attorney General now an acting dni. I'm sure I'm missing a few folks here and there, but it's, it's, you know, this is the bottom of the barrel stuff. Right. We're not like, getting anyone new from the outside who wants to come in at this juncture early in the administration, you might have been able to recruit someone for this, but I think that's another story here, which is they just have to rotate and cast of characters who they're just going to plop into these positions and will live with this.
- [12:00]
A
Well, this is another big question for like two years from now that this relates to directly that I'm interested in. JVL's takes. This is in the JVL specialty place where they kind of exist in this area that's like quasi legal. It's like technically legal, but completely in contrast to the spirit of the law. And we had this at the end of Trump's first term, right. Where like basically everybody was acting. But, but we're really kind of talking about like the last couple months. Right. So like, not to say that that's good but like, you know, there the, the numbers piled up in particular even during the like interregnum, right. When like Bill Barr quit and stuff, we had acting people all over the place for the last couple weeks in
- [12:43]
C
particular, we had one acting DNI by the name of Rick Grinnell, correct?
- [12:49]
A
Yeah, during that period. And so, I mean, so that was alarming at the time. There's good reason to be alarmed. January 6th happened around that time. Right. We are staring down the barrel of a period where like we don't really even have Senate confirmations in the next two years. I assume, like. Yeah, assuming the Democrats, even if the Democrats don't get there, like let's say the democrats get to 49 or 50 and it's tied. I, I don't think that, you know, 260 days is almost a year. You know, you can just kind of like move around the deck chairs and whatever, move Todd Blanche into DNI and Bill Pulte, Attorney General or whatever. Right. Like, I mean they were laughing, but why not, right. Is that any more ridiculous than the currency set up?
- [13:28]
B
Real question.
- [13:29]
A
Yeah.
- [13:30]
B
How much money would you be willing to bet on Kalshee, that for the final year not a single cabinet level position will be held by somebody who is Senate confirmed.
- [13:41]
A
Some people will stay though the through the whole four years. So I mean you're gonna have, you
- [13:47]
C
might also have like the, you know, Mark Wayne was cabinet confirmed. Right. They find some senator who they, you know, because they're collegial up there.
- [13:53]
A
They'll be a couple back the guy. But this will be a massive problem. Right. And I don't like, is there any way to combat that jvl JVL Like, I don't know.
- [14:01]
B
Not that I'm aware of. Right. This is just the new reality. These things, these rules. Yeah.
- [14:07]
A
This is the funny thing this takes us to. I'm already, I've already said beforehand I don't want to keep talking about the main Senate race. And here I am, I'm about to bring it up myself. But this is like what makes me laugh about the moderate Susan Collins thing, which is like, does anybody believe that, like, let's say, for example, that Susan Collins wins because Graham Platner drama becomes so great that he ends up losing in Maine and she ends up being the 50th senator. Right. I do. Does anybody think that moderate Susan Collins will demand that the administration, like, put in an attorney general? Will do. We'll bring up the, you know, we'll, we'll use her power to prevent them from doing things to get, you know, more reason. Yeah. Get more reasonable.
- [14:49]
B
So concerned, Tim.
- [14:51]
A
Senate confirmed officials into these jobs. Like. I don't think so. Yeah, right. Even you saw John Cornyn today. Even John Cornyn, who's just been totally humiliated by Trump, said, well, this guy doesn't seem to have the qualifications for the job, but I'll have to wait and see.
- [15:07]
C
What is he waiting and seeing?
- [15:09]
A
Yeah, exactly. And Big John, you won't even be there for the confirmation because he's going to sit in there for 200 days.
- [15:13]
B
I've nominated my dog. Now. You haven't met my dog yet. So you can't say for sure that he isn't qualified to be the dni. Right, John?
- [15:22]
A
It's like an airbud situation. Yeah.
- [15:24]
B
Okay. So that's great news. There is not terrible news. The slush fund seems to be possibly dying.
- [15:34]
C
I don't buy it.
- [15:35]
B
Unclear. I don't buy it. Totally. So we have reports today that the White House just pulling the plug on
- [15:40]
A
more trouble than that. I'm just deciding. By the way, I'm the Sarah on the pod today. I'm just going to keep pointing to the bright side on every topic. Sounds good. We'll see if I can stick to that. But I'm going to do my best. Get me a Bob,
- [15:53]
B
so to speak. So the. So our. Our body. Mark Caputo reported this from Mark's piece. The Trump administration plans to drop the controversial $1.8 billion weaponization fund. The president sought to compensate alleged victims of prosecutorial conduct under his predecessor. The White House's discussions about dropping the fund came after two federal judges weighed in against the fund on Friday Friday, we're planning to respect the courts. One of the administration officials said this has become a distraction. A second official said the president believes government was weaponized against people. It wasn't just him, but this isn't the time and vehicle for it. So on the one hand, good if true. On the other hand, do you believe that the immunity, past and future, for all people connected with Donald Trump will also be dropped even if this slush fund is dropped?
- [16:59]
C
No. And there's already reports that that's not part of this arrangement, that they're still going to continue with the immunity. It's really just the money. But look, I mean, I talked with Mark. I don't want to betray too much, but, you know, Mark very much included a term in his piece for now, that they're dropping it for now. And there's a reason he did, because it would be totally out of character for Donald Trump to just be like, you know what? That was a bad idea that I was going to enrich a lot of my friends. Like, that just doesn't compute at all. And, and I think that they, you know, there's a couple reasons why they want to get it off the agenda right now. They need to get this ICE money passed, and this was holding that up. But, like, you know, they also were very clever with their wording, Right? They were like, we're going to respect the judge's opinion, but the judge's opinion is. And there's two cases, one in Miami, one in the Eastern District of Virginia. In both those cases, all the judges said is we need until June 12th to, like, have more deliberations on these cases. So what they're respecting is a delay, not a pulling or revoking of the fund. So, you know, if I were again. But this gets back to exactly what we're talking about, the senators who have agency and just forfeit it. Because if you're a senator, you could say, no, we're going to pass a bill that invalidates the fun and that will be the end of it. But they don't want to do that because they don't want to cross Trump. And so they're just basically saying, well, he needs to give us better assurances that this is not going to come back up. And those things don't exist. They just can't exist in, in the Trump universe.
- [18:28]
A
So you think it's coming back next year.
- [18:30]
C
So you're saying, Sam, I'm not putting a time frame on it, but all they said was they're going to respect the judge's opinion. So let's say June 12th comes around and the judge says, you know what? I don't really have. We don't have standing, right? Like, okay, this is like a legal thing. No one's been harmed by this yet. Like, we can't, we can't have a decision based on this. Therefore, it can continue to go on. And the Justice Department says, cool. We now have legal guidance that says it's fine and above board. And, oh, by the way, we passed that ICE funding, so we're cool and we're in the clear. Let's bring it back. Is that an implausible scenario, too? No, it seems pretty likely to me.
- [19:03]
A
No, that's not an implausible scenario.
- [19:05]
C
Come on, you're supposed to be Sarah. Give me.
- [19:07]
A
No, I like Sarah. I don't think it's a plausible scenario. But I'm going to point to you on about the positive signs that we see from it. Number one, them following a convincing or respecting the court ruling is a big step up of where we were in 2025. Like that. Like, there was a lot of discourse on this very podcast about whether we are going to have constitutional crises with Donald Trump because he was just going to tell the Supreme Court to pound sand. And he did that a time or two. And the fact that they're not doing that now is noteworthy. It's not anything to throw a parade over to celebrate, but it's a noteworthy shift. The other noteworthy shift, I thought about this a little bit with Derek Thompson today on the Daily Pod is like, do any of you guys think that if this was June 2, 2025, that this would be stopped? No, because I don't agree. I think the fact that with June 12, maybe June 2, 2026, I think, I think the political realities are coming home for them a little bit. Like, there was more. Again, the Republican senators did not show courage and did have not done the maximum they should do. They did not pass the bill, but several of them bitched about it, which I don't think they would have done in 2025. I think that the administration seems more chastened on going on taking on these direct fights than they were in 2025. I think that they're, you know, they're taking on water in a lot of other areas. So I think that, like, this was an outgrowth of all that. My last positive is like, one of the big things that we all were worried about is that they're going to use this fund not just to pay off the insurrectionists and rapists and child sex predators. But they're going to use it to bribe people prospectively. And if this thing gets delayed till next year and they decide we're not going to deal with this in an election year, then that's like, one less tool. They have to use it to pressure, reward, whatever word you want to use. People that want to monkey with the midterms. So those are just all positive developments. Do I also think that, like, Trump will try to come up with some other scheme or reinvite re bring this scheme back up to pay his family and to pay his insurrection as buddies in 2028? Hell yeah. Like, yeah, obviously, like, Trump is going to fucking raid Fort Knox and take all of our money in 2028.
- [21:16]
C
2020. Insane.
- [21:18]
A
Like, if he decides that he's. If he really does decide to leave, you know, like, he's gonna strip down the White House for parts, no doubt. So, like. Okay, but. But in the meantime, I do think this is a positive sign. So there you go. How's my Sarah?
- [21:36]
C
Fine.
- [21:37]
B
No, I agree. I think this is good. Like, it may not be as good
- [21:41]
A
as it looks, but it's kind of a musical chair. Sam Swing, jbl.
- [21:48]
B
All right, we got to take a break for word from our sponsor, Tim.
- [21:51]
A
The next level is brought to you by Lisa. I've been working on creating a more peaceful nighttime routine for deeper sleep. Not doing that well of that, but I've been working on it. You know what you're not supposed to do? What sleep experts say you're not supposed to scroll x.com as you're trying to go to sleep.
- [22:09]
B
I know that's the worst thing you can possibly do.
- [22:12]
A
I know that's an interesting tip. But you're not supposed to scroll, and you're definitely not supposed to scroll your mentions. And to see if the troll posts you had posted as yielding positive or negative replies. Like, that's something you're not supposed to
- [22:26]
C
do before you go to replying to your mentions. Is that good for you?
- [22:28]
A
Yeah. Or replying to your mentions. That's, like, not something you're supposed to be going to do. And I'm trying to make progress on that. And I am. I'm making a slight progress. But the biggest upgrade I made was moving to the Sapira chill mattress from Lisa. Turns out the best hack to improve your sleep is to address what you're sleeping on. And I'm unwinding easier for my herculean efforts to bring you people more content. They wrote that, not me. And I'm Waking up restored and ready to get back on the horse from night one, you'll feel the difference. Premium materials that deliver serious comfort and full body support no matter how you sleep. Just take the LISA sleep quiz. You'll find your perfect match in less than two minutes. Lisa mattresses are meticulously designed and assembled in the USA for exceptional quality. And they back it all up with free shipping, easy returns, and 120 night sleep trial. Go to Lisa for 25% off select mattresses. Plus get an extra $50 off with promo code. The next level exclusive for my listeners. That's L EE E S a.com promo code. TheNextLevel for 25% off select mattresses during their extended Memorial Day sale. Plus an extra 50 bucks off. Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout. Lisa, go do it.
- [23:35]
B
All right, so Tim got to have his win. That's good because we're now going to talk about Tina Peters, who yesterday was released from jail.
- [23:41]
C
Yes,
- [23:44]
B
she. She is. You may remember the former county clerk from Mesa County, Colorado.
- [23:50]
A
Mesa County, It's a county.
- [23:52]
B
Sorry. Had been convicted. And then Governor Jared Polis did not. Not. Clemency. Not coming. I forget what the. The.
- [24:01]
C
It was technical.
- [24:02]
B
It's not a pardon. Was it clemency?
- [24:04]
C
Yeah. No. Commutation. Commutation.
- [24:07]
B
Commutation.
- [24:08]
A
It's still on her permanent record.
- [24:10]
B
It's on her permanent record. She was not. It was not that she's. She's innocent. But that the Polis argument is. The appeals court had already ruled that the sentencing court had sentenced her improperly. It was almost certain that at the retrial of the sentencing portion of this, that her sentence was going to be cut way down and she would be released at the end of it. But that process could take years. And justice delayed is justice denied. This is the governor's view of this. I'll just read from Governor Polis statement. People must be judged and sentenced for the crimes they committed, not for the public reaction to those crimes, not for the political movements associated with them, and not for the beliefs they have expressed. Some have asked why I did not simply allow the courts to continue the process. The answer is simple. Any path through the courts would likely have taken years of appeals. Yesterday, Tina Peters decided that she should just run and get on Steve Bannon's war room. She said, I know that the Democrats are going to cheat and no one's really addressing the problem that I spent my time in prison as retribution for.
- [25:27]
A
It's a bad quote.
- [25:31]
C
Okay, Tim, do You have any thoughts
- [25:32]
B
you'd like to share the group?
- [25:34]
A
Yeah, here's, here's what I think. I think I am holding what is like a 3% opinion among listeners and viewers of this. And hey to you 3% out there, I see you respect. Here's the thing, like I mentioned this at the live show. I talked to Governor Polis about this a couple of weeks ago now and I was like, look, if you do this, it's going to like I'll tell you exactly what's going to happen. At that time I was like, Trump's going to give her money. Like, forget going to Jared Steve Bannon's podcast. Like she's going to, you know, get a financial incentive for the from this fake weaponization fund. And so just like know that that's the context with which this commutation would come in. Like she is a crazy person. Like she's going to continue to go to MAGA events and on MAGA podcasts. And like the like that is just like was that was the anti stakes of like making this commutation. And I think that the people who are opposed to it would say, well that's why you don't do it because you have to have some kind of regret to be able to earn a commutation. I just think that the other side to that point is like she was in jail for two years for this and like this is just she had accomplice that was only in jail for six months. Like this is not really like the kind of crime that is a nine year sentence type thing. And so I just like that's kind of where I continue to stand. Polis is also a liberal. Terry in the commuted a bunch of other people that did crimes that were very serious. You know, among the many readers who emailed me expressing their concerns about my opinion, most of them were like, but what about the drug crimes? And I'm like, Jared Polis has commuted like four or five thousand people's drug crimes. He did a blanket commutation of people for psilocybin crimes. So shout out to everybody doing mushrooms out there in Colorado, you are in the clear. So I don't know man. So that's just kind of where I'm at. She's terrible. She's bad. I wish she would shut up, but she's not going to. And like the question is, does the fact that she has bad opinions and goes on Steve Bannon means that she should be in jail for nine years. And I just, I still don't really think so. But I. You know, that's just kind of a judgment call.
- [27:37]
C
I don't begrudge Tina Peters for going on banning and doing this. She was gonna do it. She's a believer. That's what she is. And no one should have expected her to just be like, thank you, Governor Polis. I'm gonna just, you know, go away quietly. Like, this is obviously what was going to happen. And I agree with you. She's probably. If the weaponization fund comes back, she'll get money. My problem with this, and I even can concede, like, there's some consistency with Governor Polis and these commutations. He doesn't believe that the criminal justice system is oriented correctly in terms of its sentencing, and he's going to do it across the board.
- [28:09]
A
Fine.
- [28:10]
C
My issue with this is the manner in which he went about doing this, which is he didn't do it in a way that's like, you know, I feel no, you know, you know, she feels no remorse, and I have no remorse for her. He actually went out of his way to sort of defend her. He was like, well, she was doing this in the 2021 election, not the 2020 election. When in reality, she. Yes, she was doing in the 2021 election in order to dig up dirt that she believed exists around the 2022, 2020 election. She was not. You know, it was clear what she was doing, and he sort of just kind of whitewashed that away. And in doing that, he kind of gave her exactly what she wants, which is that she was a victim of the state, that she's now a martyr, and that she deserves to be elevated on Bannon's podcast or wherever as an emblem for, you know, the next fight around election fraud that doesn't exist. I think he made it worse by the way he handled it, not by the commutation.
- [29:10]
A
I agree with that. Had he said, tina Peters is terrible and a liar and a threat to our democracy and someone I disagree with on absolutely everything. But I think that her. Her sentence was unfairly harsh. She shouldn't be in jail for nine. Nine years. And so I commute that. But I also condemn her and all her empty works and all her promises. Like, sure. Like, yeah, that would have been better. I agree totally.
- [29:32]
B
All right, let me. Let me see if I can win you over, Tim.
- [29:35]
A
Me. Okay, first, she should still be in jail, so she should still be in the clink. Is that what you're trying to win me over to? Okay, yeah.
- [29:42]
B
All of what you guys said is true in the Vacuum in which Donald Trump doesn't exist. The thing is that Donald Trump has been issuing threats against, against the state of Colorado and the people of Colorado demanding the polis do this.
- [29:58]
A
Yeah.
- [29:58]
B
For the better part of a year and a half now, he has refused to give money for wildfire prevention to Colorado. In part because of this. He has said he's going to move Space Force and all the attendant federal spending with it out of Colorado because of this. Once that happens, as governor, isn't your job to say, you know what, I was going to commute this thing because I, you know, for all the reasons Tim gave, but I feel like I can't do that now because the president has tainted the public process and made it so that if I do this, it's going to look like the President can come in and blackmail any governor anywhere into doing what they demand. And I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Mrs. Peters, maybe if the president recants and takes all the threats off the table and we have a cooling off period, then, then maybe I'll reconsider. But I, I can't do this in the midst of this. You cannot give like, you, you. When some. You can't negotiate with terrorists.
- [31:04]
C
Yes.
- [31:05]
B
Tim, do I have.
- [31:06]
A
I don't. I. That's compelling. I, I don't, I don't know that that would have actually won anybody over that was criticizing him. But the, I think, I guess in this is all a perception question. Right. And so I guess, like, the, what you're, what you're deciding is like, does the perception of the threat for Trump, should that have, from Trump, should that have an impact on whether this person should be in jail or not? And I guess I still come down on kind of no. And I think that, like, in practicality, Jared Polis is like a little aspie. Like, I don't think Jared Bolas was being pressured by Trump. Like, this is. Jared Wallace is fucking weird. Like, look at his weird Twitter feeds. Like, he's a weird contrarian, liberalitarian guy. And so if he was being pressured, I'd feel differently. The perception of being pressured is bad, though.
- [31:54]
B
He was being pressured.
- [31:55]
A
Yeah. Yeah. But was like, did he feel that pressure? I don't think. I don't believe so.
- [31:59]
B
I mean, everybody in the Colorado government seems to have understood it.
- [32:02]
C
Yeah. How could he not? We're talking about tens of millions of dollars in federal aid that was being withheld. Of course he felt the pressure.
- [32:07]
A
I don't, I don't think that he did.
- [32:09]
C
Well, then he's a bad Governor if he didn't feel the pressure, and I
- [32:12]
A
don't think he is. Colorado is doing great. So I don't know. I just, I disagree with that. And I think that. Should Jared Polis have been meaner to Donald Trump? Like, obviously, obviously, I agree with that. Just listen to me. Every day I think that. And me and Jared Polis have argued about that over the years. So I concur with that.
- [32:26]
B
Okay, so I couldn't get you all the way there. I thought, I thought maybe I could.
- [32:30]
A
I thought maybe I could rot in jail. Tina Lock. I did. I did enjoy the. Did you see the James Talarico crowd shouting lock him up at Ken Paxton? I did like that. I did like that. So, you know, I'm a fickle mistress.
- [32:46]
B
I would just say again, I think lost in all this a little bit is that the default state is that Tina Peters was in jail while the justice system was working. Like, it isn't. Even when you say, like, you want her to be in jail, it isn't that, like, she was free and then we want to like parachute in and take over for the justice system and to put her into jail. It is different.
- [33:09]
A
I also, I feel like this is like the 192nd most important like thing in America. What has happened at dinner, Peters. And I think that, like, there's a certain obsession about it that I think is misaligned.
- [33:19]
B
Fair enough. This show is sponsored by Green Chef. I've got a busy household right now. We're in the midst of graduation festivities. Flash graduating from high school this week. The craziest thing about having children is that you have to feed them every day. What, every, every single day? Three times often is what the child services people recommend. And when you live in Manhattan, as I do, you can't just go out to a restaurant all the time. But in my brownstone, the roasted chicken with lemon crema hits every time. And I also really want to try the sockeye salmon with the cranberry walnut couscous. Oh, I got it sitting in my fridge waiting for me to cook it up with Green Chef. Every week you get over 40 recipes made with organic produce, responsibly sourced proteins and nothing you can't pronounce. Pick what matters to you. Mediterranean high protein or their new longevity line built around brain and gut. Health meals come pre portioned and ready in minutes. And if you want guidance beyond the plate, they include free unlimited one on one nutrition coaching that helps you stay on track. Green Chef is the only certified clean meal kit tested by the Clean label project and the most sustainable meal kit with 20% less food waste and 100% offset delivery emissions. Head to greenchef.com 50nextlevel and use code 50next level to get 50% off your first month. Then 20% off for two months. That's code 50next level@greenchef.com 50next level. Let's do 60 minutes.
- [34:53]
C
Yes.
- [34:54]
A
Oh, isn't that nice?
- [34:55]
C
Much better.
- [34:55]
A
Doesn't that feel good? I'll take a deep breath. Our shoulders.
- [34:59]
B
I've been obsessively writing about this for five days now. And so I would like to sort of step back and not force my opinions on you guys and hear what you guys think about the great Bari Weiss. Who. Please, everybody. Remember I called as a phone like JD Vance when everybody thought that this Bari Weiss, boy, she's, you know, she's interested. She's, she's a heterodox. She's. I looked at her, I said, nope, nope, nope. I know what that is. Same thing. J.D. vance did it with her. And tell me what you think about Barry Weiss and Scott Pelley.
- [35:38]
C
I can start. I'm, I'm, I read your tried and I couldn't agree more about Scott Pelly. Like, he's gonna get fired. I mean, he, he is. Like, I think that's pretty much certain at this point. You can't do what he did and expect that you're gonna get a job. But I think that was the point, right?
- [35:51]
A
Who would be on the show? Who's left on the show?
- [35:54]
C
Well, I think that's the point. Right. I think he, he, I, I, my guess is that Pelly. Well, Pelly's old enough now and he's done it enough that he's, he's in a place where if he got fired tomorrow on these types of grounds, I think he'll be fine. Like, he'd be fine if he got fired. Non, non grounds like this. And he saw where this is heading, which is the show is not, the show's not going to exist, at least as we see it, in a matter of months. It's just going to be gutted. There's going to be new people that they bring in their new segments and stuff like that. And so he had a choice, which was I' take a stand and speak up. And I know this thing leaked very quickly for a reason. It was recorded for a reason. Right. Like, everyone knew it was going to get out and Scott Pelly knew what it was.
- [36:35]
B
This was an organized hit.
- [36:36]
C
Yeah. And, but look, that's the thing.
- [36:38]
A
Maybe murder, suicide, it.
- [36:40]
C
That's possible too. But you do that because you know that you're. You have two options. One is that you just go down with a whimper and you go down anyway. Or two is you go out on your own terms. And he said it, I'm going to do it on my terms. And, and kudos for him. I, you know, I've never been in a situation like that at a newsroom, but I've been in pretty bad situations in newsrooms before. And the incentive is that you usually try to, like, make it work because you like your job and you're a little bit scared about what might come next. And in this case, it's much worse than anything I've dealt with, which is you have someone who's clearly not interested in the editorial, they're interested in the political. And it's this, this is an organized effort to gut the most important element of broadcast journalism in existence. And he saw it for what it was and he said, I'm not going to be part of it. That's that. Good for him.
- [37:30]
A
Yeah, good for him. And I loved. He really put the guy in a tough situation. You came in as a new person at our little spritely little bulwark operation, and it would be like an increase, honestly, it would have been like if, if whatever, Sarah and I did a coup and decided to fire JVL because he was too negative. And then also fired a top editor behind the scenes who runs everything. And then, like, also fired Bill Crystal. And then like, we brought you in, like, you had your first staff meeting and people are like, what do you think about this? You're like, I didn't know it was gonna happen. Don't look at me. I'm the new guy. And it's like, well, wait a minute. You were part of the regime change here.
- [38:13]
C
Fonzie was going to be. Be here.
- [38:15]
A
I was surprised when she didn't show up to the morning meeting, you know, and so it's just like he was in the. So Pelly really, like, had him dead to rights on, like, that and several other things. And it's funny, the, the, the funny parallel to this into the last segment is the case that JVL is trying to win me over on with Trump. It's kind of like the case I feel about cvs cbs about, like, the broader you look at what is happening at cbs, like, the worse all the micro decisions are, you know, it's just, it's kind of just like, look, you know, any of These things. I mean, the 60 Minutes case is special. You were really good on this. On the secret pod on Friday. Jbl, people should listen to that. If they haven't. But just kind of like Talking about how 60 Minutes is like an institution, it's an island on its own. And see, in cbs, it's making money, like for any other media outlet besides 60 Minutes, basically broadcast media, it would be sense. It would be fine in a vacuum for you to bring in somebody with no experience and say, fuck it, we're going to try something totally new. Like, this is. You know what I mean? Like, this isn't really working. We're going to rock the boat. But 60 Minutes was fine. Like, 60 Minutes was making more than fine.
- [39:19]
C
Making shit, tons.
- [39:20]
B
Shit, tons of money. Yeah, best in class.
- [39:22]
A
Yeah, it was best in class. Right. And so to bring in somebody with no experience to rock the boat doesn't make any sense. Right. In this case. And then to do the. To make the change with the seacot story, like, again, maybe if you got into the micro details, was this repetitive of something that already has been reported, maybe you could think about. It's defensible. But. But everything you have to look at in the context of Donald Trump shook down a corporate entity and he forced them to bribe him personally and then to fire people and put in people that were more favorable to him in exchange for that corporate entity being able to get a merger and make more money. All of this happened within the context of that. So if you are a single actor who then says, okay, well, I'm going to do this thing to make the story a little less unfavorable to Trump or a little, you know, you're acting at the context of a massive corrupt scheme. And that, to me is why I think that your focus on Bari Weiss jvl is right, because it's not. Is she the most extreme person in the world? Could you find people at other networks that have more pernicious or more terrible views than her? More extreme views than her, like, sure. But she made herself the central cog of this corrupt scheme, which was allowing the President of the United States to overthrow a media company in order to put his own people in charge. And now she's trying to navigate through that and doing so in a way that I think is pretty incompetent. I think that sometimes, I think maybe at times nefarious. Jvl, I think you're always assuming, always nefariousness. I fall back on the. That don't apply malice when incompetence is a better. When incompetence is an easier explanation. I think that there's a lot of times that she doesn't know she's doing so. I think that there's a lot of. I think there's some malice and a lot of incompetence happening.
- [41:16]
C
But you think not getting a travel visa to China is not incompetence?
- [41:20]
A
I think. I don't think that she is trying to screw Tony.
- [41:23]
B
I think you're bogged down on the details because I don't think she's failing.
- [41:28]
A
I think she is so failing at what?
- [41:31]
B
At getting news ratings. That's not her job. Her job isn't to get ratings. Her job is to make Donald Trump like cbs. And by all indications, she has succeeded at that. Wildly.
- [41:44]
A
Are they succeeding at being able to make sure that this further merger happens, it allows them to also take over cnn, et cetera? Yes, of course. So I hear what you're saying. I do think there's a bigger picture to that, though. I think that in Donald Trump's perfect world or, and in Barry's perfect world and all of his perfect world, they also have a kind of soft Fox counterbalance to the other mainstream media secondary objective.
- [42:13]
B
The primary objective is make sure Trump likes us and after that, everything else is gravy.
- [42:18]
A
I think it's a way.
- [42:20]
C
There is a secondary project, though, which is, and this extends back to Free Beacon, which was. There's always this argument, well, there's a huge audience out there that would like unorthodox or heterodox news that is, you know, totally different than what establishment media has. And if we just do it right, we're going to prove that the business models are all torqued in the wrong directions and we can actually do it better than anyone else has. And on that front, she is not succeeding. I, I agree with Tim. I don't think there is actually the audience that they anticipated. I don't think people right now care for like, you know, our. Is campus cancel culture, like out of control. Like there's so many other big problems
- [42:59]
B
in the world and they can get that on Fox.
- [43:01]
C
Yes.
- [43:02]
A
But they all. I think that they also have a separate interest in promoting kind of pro Israel foreign policy too. Again, I think it's a sec. Is it a secondary motive? Sure. But I do think that they want the project to succeed by, yes, one, allowing the Ellison family to enrich themselves and have control of more media outlets, but two, to inject their ideological perspective into the main, these, these main legacy mainstream media Institutions. I do think that that's a goal of theirs and I think that they're failing at that, I guess. I mean they're not, they're not failing at injecting it.
- [43:41]
B
Yeah, they're succeeding at injecting it. They're failing at getting an audience for it.
- [43:45]
C
Let me ask you, jv, what happened? So what do you think the next month is for Scott Pali or in two months? What, what happens next year?
- [43:51]
B
I don't know. It looks to me like he's daring them to fire him. I mean, the show is on hiatus. So when the show goes on hiatus, the way 60 works is so they're working like full days, but they're working on reporting out the stories for next season. And so all of that work is happening now supposedly. How that's actually going to be happening, nobody knows. And this is like one of the big questions, right? So you've got Nick Bilton coming in here. You've got no other leadership at the top. The guy's never done it before. He doesn't know what the fuck is going on. And they're supposed to. If you're not doing the reporting work now, you don't have a show come next season. And so I, you know, I think there's going to be massive chaos over there and Pelly is just going to sit there and make them be uncomfortable.
- [44:42]
A
And then you have Barry insert themselves. What has she been able to do so far at cbs? Like what has been a noteworthy thing that we've seen at cbs? I would say the answer to that is get high level interviews with BB And Trump administration officials.
- [44:58]
B
Pete Hegseth.
- [44:59]
A
Right, Pete. Donald Trump himself. Trump himself. BB and so to me, I think then you look at 60 minutes probably falling back on that, using Rolodex to get big interviews, less on the investigative side. And, and then, then what you really have is something that's like slowly deteriorating into a slightly better produced like Face the Nation, which has no viewers.
- [45:23]
C
Well, but I think they're going to also do sort of like, like today for instance, they had the big story that they had was on some Medicare fraud investigation on California some and they'll do stuff like that that sort of dovetails with the administrator like the JD Task Force on fraud. Like they'll do stuff which is going
- [45:39]
B
to be Oberlin chapter of students for just. They are going to be all over that shit, man.
- [45:47]
A
I actually, I'll take my bet with the group is that the JD's Fraud Task Force is the season premiere of 60 Minutes. Come back to this. Let's click this.
- [45:57]
C
That's a good call.
- [45:58]
B
Although JD is not sufficiently pro Israel to really get the full tongue bath. That's true, Barry.
- [46:07]
A
I think that's true.
- [46:08]
B
All right, well, that's all great. To primaries today in California and Iowa. We're watching with Javier Bashara and Tom Steyer. Do you guys have thoughts on this?
- [46:20]
A
I do.
- [46:22]
B
And Spencer Pratt too, because I. I'll just start this. My hot take is that somehow Spencer Pratt is the future of politics. I don't know how I want to
- [46:32]
A
end with Spencer Pratt. Let me just talk about the Democrats really quick. I mean, I think the main thing is a special case, but besides that, I think these are the two states. I just have not been fully in love with what the Democrats have been trying to do. We'll see. In the Iowa Senate race, I suspect Josh Turek will beat Zach Walls tonight. They both ran as kind of like Elizabeth Warren Democrats without the woke stuff a little bit, but in the white man skin suit kind of. And I don't know, like, maybe that's good enough to win in Iowa. I just, we haven't had a ton of examples of that. I do, you know, kind of wish that there was more of a Peltola model. Whoever wins, if it's Turk, I hope to get a chance to talk to them and kind of ask them about this. Like, how are you going to appeal to MAGA voters? Because I think that Iowa is gettable for Democrats given how bad the economy is in farm country and how unpopular the one party state is in Iowa. And then we talked about California a bunch last week, but it is kind of the LA mayor's race is just a crazy microcosm of the party that it's like nobody's happy with the way LA is being run. You have an establishment candidate up for reelection that nobody's excited about. You have a progressive challenger that's really been unimpressive. And then you have like a MAGA right guy who has stolen all the juice and I don't think he can actually win. I think that what California is probably like staring down the barrel of managed decline with Becerra and Bass. Maybe Tom Steyer can win in there, but I don't know. And the people, in addition to the Polish thing, the other thing I've gotten the most email about feel big mad about my anti California takes on our during our live shows. And many people writing me were just like, but people just want to live here. And that's why it's so Expensive and like, yeah, we've got problems, but it's because it's so, it's so great here. It's just like that isn't right. Like San Francisco is turning back around finally. But San Francisco and LA, the last 10 years have two of the top four. I think most people leaving. There are people in red, red and blue growing cities. And you just look at Atlanta, Atlanta, like Drew, it has drawn in a bunch of like middle class black folks who like want to go there. It's affordable, like it's doable. You could make, well, Los Angeles, there's plenty of land. Like you could make it a place where like middle class people wanted to move to and you. They just haven't. And Spencer Pratt's going to take advantage of that. It's still so damn that he'll pre. I think he's going to get to the runoff, I suspect and lose. But the California situation is a little bleak.
- [49:05]
C
LA is a four to one Dem advantage. It's like it's really hard for Spencer Pratt to win there. I'm not thinking he's going to. You know, let's take Daniel Lurie out of this. I think San Francisco is. They're very happy with him. His ratings are great. The city is totally unaffordable. But it, you know, everyone was like, oh, this is a cesspool and it's going to hell. And that's clearly not the case. Put that aside for a second on California. I mean, I want to be such a. Like I don't want. I guess I do want to be negative. It's like you get these options at the top on the Democratic side. Anyone who covered the Biden administration knows that Javier Becerra was just not like regarded as a particularly competent or inspiring human being. Okay? It just, he wasn't. And there was a lot of thrown at him because they wanted him to take more of a lead on the border because of Title 42, stuff related to the pandemic. He could throw people out because of a health emergency. He didn't do it. But he still also was just an uninspiring HHS secretary. No one really liked him. And then you have Tom Steyer and this man has thrown over $200 million of his own money to get elected. Okay? $200 million. The idea that like you should be jazzed that someone could do that and win barely by the skin of his fucking teeth. Sorry for swearing like that. Makes me depressed about politics. Is that those are the options. And Star could be fine and becerra might, you know, rise to the occasion. But is this really it? Like, these are the people that you get. And like, the other one was Eric Swallow and like, buffer the grace of God. I mean, this is really bad stuff. Like, why are we producing these people?
- [50:39]
A
You can start a community for the homeless of Venice with the 200 million,
- [50:42]
C
you know, and I'm not asking for like, I don't even need like an inspirational figure. I just want like plain competence and people to reward it as opposed to getting someone to buy it. Right. Like that. That. That's what's troubling here.
- [50:54]
A
The Pratt thing.
- [50:56]
C
Pratt thing's nuts.
- [50:57]
B
It's the answer that we have to break California up into multiple states. Is it?
- [51:00]
A
I am for this.
- [51:01]
B
Governable.
- [51:03]
A
I am for this. I think we need three California. Three California and you. And you talk about what the Democrats should do and you always bring up D.C. and Puerto Rico. But I think gerrymandering California into.
- [51:15]
B
I'm into it.
- [51:16]
A
Nor Cal SoCal and whatever. Something else. Cal. I'm interested in that.
- [51:21]
B
Yeah. I mean, it's a good government thing. So Alex Burns at Politico has a column out today. Slugged the biggest threat to J.D. vance is Spencer Pratt. Tim, would you care to respond?
- [51:35]
A
Well, I just. I allow you to retort. I thought it was funny because you. Maybe you should retort ch. Because there was some negative feedback about your Platinum 2028 analysis. Not rooting piece. Analysis piece. And, and, and this is in Politico. It's like obviously way more ridiculous than Platner. For starters, Plat the favorite to win the main race and J. Spencer is not going to win the. Almost certainly not going to become the mayor of Los Angeles. And so it's hard, I think, to parlay the losing mayor's race into a presidential primary. But like, the premise I don't think is wrong in either case. Like, I don't really think that Spencer Pratt or Graham Platner are going to be major threats for their party's nomination. But the notion that we are in a place where the type of thing that those guys are offering is what people want, I do think increasingly so, like, I do think is right. And I think that if Los Angeles was a 6040 Dem Republican city, Pratt would probably win that race and he's going to overperform Trump by a ton in la. And we'll see tomorrow when. Well, no. Takes California a month to vote, so I don't know, we'll maybe, we'll maybe see around the 4th of July, but I do think that that's where the juice is. I guess it's where the juice is in the politics. People want somebody that is like bucking the status quo, is saying that they're talking about them, can speak compellingly and passionately on short form video. Both Prattner and Platt can. Platner and Pratt can do that. And I don't know. I mean, I think that there is a different world where the political piece is not crazy because he's running someplace where he could actually win. But I just don't think it's this mayor's race.
- [53:25]
B
What is the, the juice that these guys have? Because they're coming out from opposite ends of the political spectrum, obviously. And you're right. I think it's just obvious that you're right. This is what people want. But I can't identify it and I don't understand it. Explain it to me like I'm a golden retriever.
- [53:44]
A
Riz, do you understand the children's. The term the children using Riz, they have risen bluntness. They have. What was, what is, what does RuPaul say? Charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent. Those are the things that she judges drag queens on. I think that they have charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent. I. Spencer Pratt is extremely blunt when he, when he's talking about problems. So is Graham Platner. They both are very unique from other politicians. They both at least present like they have the balls to fight the entrenched forces that are blocking these people. And like they're both talented communicators. I think that. And like, in the modern media age is like what engages people, what gets people excited. So, you know, it's going to come with baggage.
- [54:29]
C
Can we wait a little bit before jumping to these conclusions? I just want to note.
- [54:33]
A
You don't think that that's, I mean, isn't that objectively true, that they're both maybe drawing a lot of excitement?
- [54:38]
C
Sure. But you know who's going to trounce in North Carolina in the center race? Roy Cooper. You see his video that he put up today? It is the most anodyne, boring, conventional bullshit. I grew up on this farm. My dad was a small town lawyer and my mom saw me off to. Football was on Thursdays and church was on Sundays. Literally, that's his video. It's going to trounce in this North Carolina primary. And we're not going to spend, you know, sections of TNL being like, well, is this, this, is this the real thing that's going to challenge Gavin newsome in the 2020.
- [55:10]
A
Because he's not.
- [55:11]
C
No, but he's not. But Alex Burns is saying Spencer Pratt is the person. He's saying it's that type of approach that's going to be the challenge. That's his whole thing is like. And look, maybe it's possible. I'm not saying the C U N T or the Riz is not there with Spencer Pratt, but it's like, you know, these, It's. This is very. And I, you know, whatever you think about the institution, this is very, very politico being like, oh, this thing's happening right now, and therefore it could affect 2028. You know, we don't know. We just don't know.
- [55:42]
A
This is a good counterpoint. Right. And that Roy Cooper and Mary Botola will outperform Graham Platner almost certainly just by how much they perform compared to what the baseline would be in those states. They're more boring, conventional type of politicians. I think that that's correct. But we're kind of talking about two different things, right? What is the type of person that really excites and animates both parties right now that people want to turn to as a standard bearer? And like, what is a six? What is an effective way to win a swing House or Senate seat? And I think it's important to bring up, by the way, because I think those things get conflated a ton. And I think that by the way, on the Democratic side in particular, I think that there's like this weird new conventional wisdom where, like, the right way to win and swing places is to do more of the Riz and cunt populist strategy. When I don't. I don't know if that's true. We'll learn more in November, I think, I suspect that that is not true. But, like, that feels like it's kind of like this easy. It's easier for. As a Democrat. It's easier to be like, hey, Kamala lost. It's not that popular to say, maybe we should shed some of our more pop, unpopular progressive opinions. It's much more popular to say, hey, maybe we should have somebody that's a better speaker and more of a fighter and more of a populist. People love that. Take.
- [57:10]
C
I disagree. I think there's a huge movement in the Democratic Party that's like the questionnaires, the groups, the rigid, you know, tests that these candidates have to go through, all the woke bullshit. We need to shed that. Like, that's been the, that's been the, the Mood in the party for many
- [57:28]
A
on the candidate side, most of them have picked the. The more the populists.
- [57:32]
C
Yes. That's a stand in. It's like we can do populism as opposed to wokeism.
- [57:37]
B
Can I pose an alternative here? Sure. So Mamdani, I think has the charisma, the uniqueness, etc. Etc. But he does not code anything like Platner. I mean the, the. He codes as an aspiring technocrat. Right, an aspiring technocrat who has some more.
- [58:00]
A
More populism, class president, energy, big time.
- [58:03]
B
Yeah, right. And where these other guys do code as a little more like, eh, it's all bullshit. Tear it down. Is that true?
- [58:15]
A
It's the Chris Arnaid thing. The front of the classroom, back of the classroom type thing.
- [58:19]
B
I guess that's right. Let's finish with something happy.
- [58:23]
A
Oh, great.
- [58:23]
B
Amazing story in Axios yesterday about President Trump lashing out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel's escalation in Lebanon. Summarizing Trump's remarks to Netanyahu, a US official said, you're fucking crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this. Trump's anger appeared to be driven by the fact that Netanyahu's decision to escalate in Lebanon was threatening to implode his negotiations with Iran. I gotta say, that report left me fulfilled at every
- [59:06]
A
too good to check type thing.
- [59:08]
C
Yeah, let it be true.
- [59:10]
B
Do you boys have any thoughts about it?
- [59:12]
C
Oh, tons. One, Trump can read a poll. He knows what he's talking about. This is one of those cases where Trump's like, absolutely right. Bibi's. What is Bibby? I would love like a good fresh poll on Bibby standing amongst Republicans and Democrats in America. When's the last time we saw that? I'm bet it's in the toilet. Two is this is the, like, it's. I don't know. I. The first thing I thought about when I saw the story was the Biden administration, which I was helping cover at the time, and how they felt exactly this way, exactly this way. When you talk to them off the record about what was happening in Gaza and they were just like, you are out of your mind. You are, you are just burning any credibility you have with our. With Democrats and also the world stage. What are you doing? And yet Biden could not bring himself to like, just deliver that message to Bibby and Trump. He has no, no restraints like that. And so you Know, this is one of those stories where I was, you know, I came away thinking Trump's, you know, Trump knows what he's talking about. He can read the room, he understands the politics of the situation. Now, was this, you know, was it put out in a way to make Trump look maybe better than he was on the actual call? I don't know, but it still read pretty interesting.
- [60:26]
A
Yeah. I mean, if you take the call at face value, I just, I do love just kind of the image of Donald Trump essentially screaming at bb. I'm supposed to be the fucking crazy one. Like, in all these situations I'm in, I'm the crazy one. Like, that's how this works. That's how madman theory works. I'm the crazy one, okay? Like, anytime I'm talking to Mark Carney or, you know, Frederick mertz or Emmanuel McCrone or whatever, I'm the fucking crazy one. And that's how the power dynamics is supposed to work. And it's not working here because you're the acting crazy. I like that. I mean, it's sad for the country and the world, but. But it makes me happy as, like, as something Donald Trump has to deal with. The. Today noon, an Israel guy or whatever you know, said that the Israel readout was obviously slightly different. And that at some level, a lot of this is a lot of, you know, dust in the air over, like, not much. And I think the status quo is the same today as before the call, which I think is important in Lebanon too. Right. It's like the, the. What they're yelling about allegedly was, you know, Israel is going to go into Beirut and send more troops into Lebanon, and Hezbollah side was going to. Was advancing more into, you know, Israel's cities. And so, like, instead, like, now they're just back to fighting in southern Lebanon. And like, now over on the Iranian side, you know, Trump is. Trump is out there, like, making new announcements, like, negotiating with himself on social media. He's like, negotiating with the bond market instead of the Iranians. It's just like he's just shouting into the ether new deals and new announcements when the, I mean, the reports for the Iranian side is that they've stopped replying for days. Maybe that's a lie, too. It's like, who that. Who knows? But there's not any evidence coming from the Iranian side that this thing is closer at all. I got a kick out of Trump the other day threatening to bomb Oman.
- [62:24]
B
Yeah, you like that?
- [62:25]
A
Because Oman was like, hey, we're gonna be part. We're gonna get in on this environmental fee on the Strait of Hormuz because
- [62:32]
B
they care about the waterway and the health of the waterway.
- [62:35]
A
Yeah. On the other side of the strait. And Trump's like, over to bomb you.
- [62:40]
B
Have you seen what acid rain has done?
- [62:43]
A
It's like, remember when we had stopped nine wars? Now we're adding fronts everywhere. I mean, now the America first thing is that we're going to bomb Oman back to the Stone Age. So he's in a really hard spot that he's got himself into. And I don't know, his out seem no clearer to me today than they did last week when I was talking.
- [63:05]
C
You see Mark Levin's tweet about this.
- [63:08]
A
We wanted to jail Trump.
- [63:10]
C
Yeah. He's got.
- [63:11]
A
It is illegal. This leak goes against federal law and the FBI should investigate it.
- [63:18]
B
They wanted him going after Axios for reporting it. How dare they?
- [63:21]
A
I'm pretty sure who we know who talked to Barack Ravid. And I have to say, Mark Levin and I have not agreed on much recently. But, yeah, I think that. I agree Trump should be arrested. I think so. Or I think that there should be an FBI investigation of his leaking of classified documents to Axios.
- [63:38]
B
Well, I am excited for this because I have not been able to understand why Trump has held the line he's had on Israel because it's hurting him politically. And he could have walked from this war after day three when it was clear where that was headed. It would have been not great, but it would have been a lot better than this. We wouldn't have had the strait closed. And he has hung on for reasons which help no one but Israel. Even as Israel and Netanyahu become increasingly unpopular, not just globally, not just in America, but in the Republican Party. And so this is like the weird. It's like the one place where Trump seems to be acting completely on principle, and I just kind of don't believe that's possible. So something else is happening here, and I want to see it break.
- [64:36]
A
Here's what I think is happening. I think that it's, you know, I don't want to be George Conway. You know, okay. I don't want to be like, it's all the end for Trump always. We love George. I love George's positive attitude.
- [64:48]
B
Walls are closing in, Tim.
- [64:50]
A
I love his commitment to going after Trump. I would be for George in the New York 12th primary. Nothing against Alex. Boris seems like a great guy, but don't we need somebody in Congress the next two years that is going to be solely focused on impeaching Trump once a month. Like, don't we need somebody that's like going to file 24 articles of impeachment on Trump? I think we need one congressman to do that. There are other, there'd be other Congress to do other things, there'd be other investigations, policies, etc.
- [65:18]
C
But we need one version on a campaign ad here.
- [65:21]
A
Get one man, that's George Conway. So I don't want to sound like him, but I do think that it's his mental illness that has caused this not acting principle. I think that Donald Trump, I think he's, I think that he had an ego megalomania thing. He can't possibly do a deal that's worse than Obama's. He's in the forever losing war of a dick measuring competition with Obama. And I think that he's stuck. I think he's got, I think that he's genuinely stuck. And I think he's going to come out the other side of this with basically everybody mad at him among the, and he's never been in a situation like this. I don't think where, where. Because it's not like Trump is principled, so the people around him care about something, be it is, be it hating Israel, loving Israel, America first, you know, foreign policy, hawkishness, whatever. Like, whatever it is. Like they all have that thing they care about and he's going to end up pissing off all of them. And I don't know. Did you watch them at Megyn Kelly Sean Ryan clip podcast?
- [66:22]
C
I saw parts of it, yeah.
- [66:23]
A
I mean, Sean Ryan said to Megyn Kelly that he feels betrayed. He doesn't feel like he can, doesn't know what happened anymore. He thinks that pro Israeli pedophiles are running the government now. It's just like, I think that you come out the other side of this with Mark Levin and Sean Ryan hating you. And, and that's why it's terrible for the world and bad for everyone's gas prices, but also a little delicious. It's a little delicious.
- [66:47]
C
Maybe it's not so much mental, you know, collapse as it is.
- [66:51]
A
I don't think mental collapse, mental illness
- [66:53]
C
or illness as it is. Last man in the room issues here, right? Like, you have one last conversation, it's with someone who loves Israel and they're like, you cannot abandon them. And then you have another conversation. They're like, your, your poll numbers are just getting killed. You have to abandon them. And you just kind of bounce back and forth between those two sides and you end up where we're at, which is we aren't doing anything. Like, what are we doing?
- [67:15]
B
Wherever it is, I love it. Guys, been a good show.
- [67:18]
A
Long show.
- [67:19]
B
Sam, thanks for being here for Sarah. Everybody else, we'll be back with the secret show in your feed on Friday.
- [67:26]
A
An alarm is going off in my house. I gotta go. Bye.
- [67:28]
B
Good luck, America.