An Unbearable Farce

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Next Level – "An Unbearable Farce"

Release Date: January 30, 2025

Host/Authors: Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller, Jonathan V. Last

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Introduction

In the episode titled "An Unbearable Farce," hosts Jonathan V. Last (JVL), Sarah Longwell, and Tim Miller dive deep into the political tumult surrounding recent hearings, campaign strategies, and the broader implications for American governance. The conversation captures their signature banter and sharp political insights as they dissect the day's most pressing issues.

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RFK Hearing Analysis

The discussion kicks off with JVL expressing his frustration with the recent RFK hearing. He criticizes the treatment of the nominee, describing the process as dominated by "incompetent Democrats" and "morally repugnant Republicans."

JVL (00:39): "...it was sitting through two hours of this lunatic being treated like just another political battle with mostly incompetent Democrats and mostly morally repugnant Republicans."

Sarah Longwell sympathizes with the group's exhaustion, highlighting the emotional toll of enduring such hearings.

Sarah Longwell (05:17): "I don't know why you guys are complaining. Doing these live streams during the hearings are the easiest gigs around."

Tim Miller echoes the sentiment, pointing out the nominee's flawed responses and lack of preparation.

Tim Miller (02:57): "...he could never think of a single thing that he said that could not be true."

The trio critiques the nominee's understanding of key agencies, noting misstatements and mathematical errors that undermine his credibility.

JVL (04:50): "...how many children are covered by medication? Yeah."

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Impoundment and Unitary Executive Theory

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to discussing the concept of impoundment and the unitary executive theory. Sarah Longwell breaks down the legal intricacies, emphasizing that impoundment is unconstitutional under the Impoundment Control Act of 1979.

Sarah Longwell (19:28): "It was passed in order to have Congress have the control of the power of the purse, as it is constitutionally mandated..."

Tim Miller expands on the implications, comparing the executive actions to historical overreach and expressing concern over the potential erosion of checks and balances.

Tim Miller (15:26): "We do need to break down the whole constitutional order and rebuild it back up and copy the Europeans."

The hosts discuss the ongoing efforts to implement Project 2025, highlighting internal inefficiencies and political backlash.

Sarah Longwell (27:03): "...they were not prepared for what was a raft of politically unpopular pushback."

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Media and Access Journalism Critique

The hosts turn their attention to the media's role in political discourse, criticizing the prevalence of "access journalism" and its failure to inform the public effectively.

JVL (53:17): "Steely, unapologetic, punchy, unflinching, twisting the knife..."

Sarah contends that media outlets prioritize sensationalism over substantive analysis, leading to a disconnect between journalists and their audiences.

Sarah Longwell (54:51): "I don't know. I'm pretty interested in all the new podcasters and folks that are going to be in..."

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Executive Order on Education and Federal Overreach

JVL and Sarah Longwell dissect the latest White House executive order on education, criticizing its contradictory objectives of promoting states' rights while imposing federal guidelines on educational content.

JVL (18:17): "It's all incoherent because it's all about power. It's just autocracy. That's all it is."

Sarah further elaborates on the dangers of federal overreach, advocating for messaging that emphasizes community-valued social programs rather than bureaucratic control.

Sarah Longwell (34:19): "...talk about Meals on Wheels. Talk about the social programs that people value..."

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Tech Companies and Legal Battles with Trump

The conversation shifts to the settlement between Facebook and Donald Trump, where Facebook agrees to pay $25 million, with the majority going to the Trump Presidential Library. The hosts mock the settlement as a "slam dunk winner" for Facebook.

JVL (43:24): "This case was a slam dunk winner for Facebook."

Tim Miller speculates on the broader implications for big tech companies, suggesting that this trend signifies a shift in how political figures interact with social media giants.

Tim Miller (44:35): "I have a question, Sebastian. Where'd you get this from... What was the case over?"

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National Pro Life Summit and Religious Overtones

Towards the end of the episode, the hosts address a disturbing event at the National Pro Life Summit involving Calvin Robinson, a self-styled priest who made troubling statements and gestures. They critique the performative aspects of such gatherings and the community's response.

JVL (71:20): "Father Calvin Robinson... identifies himself as an Anglican Catholic."

Sarah Longwell emphasizes the performative nature of the event, questioning its sincerity and the crowd's reaction.

Sarah Longwell (75:35): "So but what he is saying, it is a symbol of your overreaction."

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Closing Remarks

As the episode wraps up, the hosts reflect on the overarching theme of political polarization and the challenges ahead. They encourage listeners to remain vigilant and engaged, despite the apparent normalization of extremist actions.

Sarah Longwell (78:56): "I just, I think you probably have to wait for a little bit... But I do think things will matter."

Tim Miller and JVL conclude with a mix of frustration and determination, underscoring the necessity of continued resistance against political overreach.

Tim Miller (79:43): "Hang in there, JVL."

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Notable Quotes

• JVL (00:39): "It was... sitting through two hours of this lunatic being treated like just another... political battle..."
• Tim Miller (02:57): "...he could never think of a single thing that he said that could not be true."
• Sarah Longwell (19:28): "...it was passed in order to have Congress have the control of the power of the purse..."
• JVL (43:24): "This case was a slam dunk winner for Facebook."
• Sarah Longwell (54:51): "...talk about Meals on Wheels. Talk about the social programs that people value..."

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Conclusion

"An Unbearable Farce" offers a critical examination of the current political landscape, emphasizing the hosts' concerns over governmental overreach, media complicity, and the erosion of democratic institutions. Through robust discussion and pointed critiques, Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller, and Jonathan V. Last provide listeners with a comprehensive analysis of the challenges facing American politics today.

Transcript

[JVL]

Hey, everyone. I'm the JVL here with best friends, Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller. It's been a day.

[Tim Miller]

I'm just. I'm happy. This is in our little throuple here. I felt like I was carrying all the emotions last week. And it's like when another person is feeling emo, sort of like in your marriage, you feel like you've got to be this. The. The rock. And I feel like I got to be the rock for you today. Jvl.

[JVL]

I don't feel any emotions anymore. I'm dead inside.

[Sarah Longwell]

Who hurt you today? What happened to you? What was bad?

[JVL]

It was the RFK hearing. It was sitting through two hours of. Of this lunatic being treated like just another, you know, shirts and skins political battle with mostly incompetent Democrats and mostly morally, not mostly entirely morally repugnant Republicans. And this guy sitting there saying things like it is. You know, many people I know had a harder time kicking and getting off of SSRIs than they did getting off of heroin.

[Sarah Longwell]

Well, that sounds that trash or.

[JVL]

Or saying that, you know, it is so important that we. We let parents drive things and get, you know, and get the doctors out of there, you know, to get the Washington bureaucrats out of. Out of health care decisions. And also I want to make sure that I'm looking over the shoulders of your pediatrician. If he is. Is prescribing some form of ADHD meds because kids shouldn't be on ADHD meds because he knows anything. He's less of a doctor than I am. And. And then the. I'm sorry, 17th doctor just starting out filibuster. And then the. The. The thing that got me most was when he was talking about like the. The things he once said that people said were conspiracy theories but turned out to be true. And he talked about how, you know, people COVID vaccine would. Would prevent you from ever getting co. Who the said that? No one said that. That was never a claim with any of the. The COVID vaccines. It was never go. And they just say things like this. They say, oh, everybody said no. No. Was there somebody on Twitter who said that once?

[Tim Miller]

He also said that none of his conspiracies. He can't think of any of the things that he's ever said that turned out not to be true anyway. Never thought about. He could never think. He can't think of a single thing that he said that could not. That is not true. I thought my favorite moment I turned.

[JVL]

Into the joker like, you know, you want to know you don't know how I got these stars. Like, you know, I.

[Tim Miller]

You've been on the path for a while, I thought. Sarah. The best segment for me was Marsha Blackburn was asking Mensa member Marshall. Okay, one of.

[JVL]

One of the most towering intellects to ever serve in the upper. The upper chamber.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. She was asking RFK about Dr. Oz's nomination. Now, you might. You might know that you might not have paid attention. It's hard to keep track, but that Dr. Oz is going to be in charge of CMS, Medicare and Medicaid. RFK talked about his new, soon to be underling Dr. Oz, in the management of our healthcare services, but then misstated the agency that he would be running, and Marsha Blackburn had to correct him. I think you meant. I think you meant cms. It's like when Marsha Blackburn is up there being like, you know what, she's.

[JVL]

The intellectual in the room.

[Tim Miller]

It's like, I don't know if you know exactly the details of what you're talking about, about managing this agency. That's not a great sign that he, you know, he really did his homework. Also, his math skills seem a little off. One of my. There's somebody. One of my. Cullen, a friend of mine was messaging and. And he's been watching a lot of case stuff, and he thinks that the brain worm has prevented his ability to do math at all.

[JVL]

Oh, are you gonna do the number of children covered by medication? Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

He can't do any math.

[JVL]

Number of babies.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And I don't. I don't know if that's true. Sounds good. I'm going to defer to Cullen's expertise on this. He's been following him for a while and he can't do math on the spot. Is his. Is his theory. We should test that out at some point. But no, he was asked how many kids are covered by Medicaid, and he goes, 30 million.

[JVL]

How many births? How many births a year? 30 million. And we have like 4 million total births a year and whatever. Sarah, I just. I gotta hear what. Because Tim and I did, I don't know, six or seven hours on this shit show already, and I. Like I said, my soul has left my body. I'm just a husk. And I am curious as to know what you make of all of this.

[Sarah Longwell]

I don't know why you guys are complaining. Doing these live streams during the hearings are the easiest gigs around. You just have to sit there and let your eyes get big occasionally. Because if you talk during the, like, if you do analysis the people in the chat get mad because they can't hear the hearing. They don't actually want your analysis over the hearing. They just want to hang out. And I appreciate that. I think that's a healthy way to, like, approach this. Like, we're all just gonna, like, be together. So I don't know if you guys did a lot of. I actually had the same problem. I was watching Sam and Will, and Will was talking so much. I was like, you know what? I gotta go watch C Span, so I can.

[JVL]

I just turned off our own guys.

[Sarah Longwell]

I didn't even try. I didn't even try to get into you. But hold on one second.

[Tim Miller]

Why did you. Were you watching. I was being paid to watch. I. That's the thing for me. I don't. Like. If you could just run a video of me looking at the camera instead of me actually watching now movies.

[JVL]

I was like, you know, the hacker taps into the internal security feed and replaces it with an old feed where there's nobody in the hallway.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah, I loved the part where he said ssri. He knows people have had a harder time coming off SSRIS than heroin, and because it's like that scene in train spotting where he has to lock himself in the room and he has to get all the ice cream, you know, and he's got to, like, you know, make sure that that's just him coming down off 10 milligrams of Lexapro. You know, that's just like. I got. I got some citrulline in my system, and I got to get off of it. And it's just. I got to lock myself in for seven days with all the snacks, and. And I'm going to get the chills, and I'm going to, like, nearly die from it. I.

[JVL]

And if. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just have to interrupt because I don't want people to get mad at us. Here it is. Many people coming off of SSRIs do undergo a very difficult withdrawal period. I'm not making. But. But this is the. Comparing that to heroin is like comparing having Covid to pancreatic cancer.

[Sarah Longwell]

Like, guys, there is a whole methadone clinic, industrial complex to help people get off heroin because it's such a problem. Also, that's what opioid addiction is.

[Tim Miller]

We called it the opioid crisis. There was. Kellyanne Conway was in charge of solving that during the first. During the first Trump administration.

[Sarah Longwell]

This is. Yeah. JB no, it's a fair. It's a fair thing to say. This is not about the fact that it can't be hard to come off SSRIs.

[JVL]

It's very hard for many people. This is a known side effect.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah.

[JVL]

Yeah. This is why. I'm sorry. I just want to make sure we didn't sound heartless on this. Please continue.

[Sarah Longwell]

No, it's just, I mean, it's like a doctor. If the doctor's like, oh, you know, you have pneumonia that's very serious. It's a serious thing. You have. And also you have cancer that is stage four and a half, you know, like. And they're. I'm going to tell you, they're the same. Or actually, like, the pneumonia is worse and.

[JVL]

Pneumonia, pneumonia. For many people, pneumonia is worse than stage four liver cancer.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. The hardest thing about these hearings is watching Republicans, like Marsha Blackburn corrected him. The rest of them just do this thing where they're like, we know you're a moron and we know you're a conspiracy theorist. So I'm just going to talk about how much it just warms my heart that we are the bipartisan party that are here to work together and we're going to heal this country, guys. And thank you so much, rfk, for talking about all these things that are so important now, like getting red die out and all this stuff, like, you're going to make America healthy again. I worked in the Republican sort of firmament during the times when, like, Bloomberg was trying to, you know, we.

[JVL]

Oh, the soda ban and all that. He was trying to make. Make people healthy by being the nanny state.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. We ran ads of him in, like, a nanny costume. They were. And people.

[Tim Miller]

The Republicans are into that now.

[Sarah Longwell]

Well, not Michelle, people. Not many people pointed this out, but it is true that Michelle Obama was pilloried for saying kids needed healthier lunches. And today we were treated to a Tom Tillis tale of checking the garbage cans to see all the food that's thrown out by kids. Because actually, I couldn't tell where he was going with this is the food.

[JVL]

Did not make any sense.

[Sarah Longwell]

Enough. Not healthy enough. What?

[Tim Miller]

I can explain it. Can I just explain it real quick? Because this exchange was the thing that drove me over the edge. And luckily, we've boarded up this window right here by me for lighting purposes, so I can't jump out of it. But that. Because it explains your exact point perfectly, Sarah, which is Tom Tillis's point, which he gave in a very condescending like, which he had phrased in a way that's very condescending towards Democrats and towards Anti RFK people, somehow, despite the. That he was completely undermining, his whole argument was that back when he was a Republican that didn't like the nanny state and that hated Michelle Obama or, I don't know, Big Mike, as he probably called her back then, he would go into schools and look in the trash can and see healthy food. And his point was that there was unintended consequences of the healthy food program because the kids, instead of eating their lunch, ate Snickers. That was his point. And so. But that point is in utter contrast with everything that RFK says. But he was trying to tell the story in a way, as if it was in line with rfk. But then he didn't actually ask him a question. All he did was wag his finger at the Democrats who don't understand how smart him and RFK are.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah, and Tom Tillis is on my shit list right now because Tillis is the one, right? Hillis is the one who did that thing where in, in Pam Bondi's hearing where he said, I wouldn't even dane to hit you with a ridiculous hypothetical like the Democrats are trying to say, like you and President Trump would ever pardon the people who committed violence against cops. I walked past those cops at the end of the January 6th, right? I walked past those cops that would never have. I won't even. I will not insult you by suggesting that as a hypothetical. And there Thom Tillis is again lecturing people, I can't. And when Donald Trump did do the pardons, Tillis was like, well, I wouldn't have done that.

[Tim Miller]

You know what it makes me? You know what it makes me? It makes me yearn for Ted Cruz. At least Ted Cruz is fucking shameless and does not insult my intelligence with this shit. You know, I mean, Ted Cruz is just. You see what you get? It's just total snake oil shamelessness all the way down the Thom Tillis thing, trying to pretend like he is on some sort of moral high ground here. And that is the really bipartisan and thoughtful one. I fucking can't.

[JVL]

So, Sarah, do you. Do you have anything to. More to say about this, this utterly unserious farce, this insulting farce that we witnessed today?

[Sarah Longwell]

I guess it's a question of whether I want to do my rant on Madison.

[JVL]

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. There is no either. The answer is both. I want both of your rants, Sarah.

[Sarah Longwell]

Or whether I do it a little bit later. Here's the thing. That is, that is. And I'm sorry to sound Like a, Like a little political science here. Our government is structured so that ambition counteracts ambition. Right. Like a. A big republic like ours. This is like Federalist Papers stuff. This is. Madison says, the way that you secure a republic that is going to be rife with factionalism is that you set up a government with three distinct power centers. Congress, you have the presidency, and the executive branch. And then you have the. You have the courts. If the executive branch controls the congressional branch, if the congressional branch completely abdicates its power and serves at the pleasure of the executive branch. So if, If Mike Johnson, instead of saying, wait a minute, I'm the Speaker of the House, I've got a role here. We have the power of the purse. We've passed a law. Instead, if he says, I just do what Donald Trump says to do, and he abdicates that power, and the Senate abdicates their power of advice and consent in these hearings, which is what I'm watching, and they just do whatever Trump wants them to do. Literally. Our system of government doesn't work. It does not. It is designed to not work this way. And the founders, I don't think, had a plan for Congress just being like, oh, yeah, we're going to do whatever the executive branch wants. And then the only backstop to that is a court, where they're pretty much going to let him do what he wants to. Not always. Amy Coney Barrett, she can be a bit of a maverick on that, but at least there's two votes from the jump. If Donald Trump says, yeah, for anything, I'm telling Congress to put a gun to their heads. And Clarence Thomas will be like, those guys deserve to go.

[Tim Miller]

I have a couple thoughts.

[JVL]

Unitary executive.

[Tim Miller]

There actually is a system for this, which is where the head of a party gets to decide what the party does, and the legislative branch goes along with it. It's a parliamentary system. They've got it. And you're so, like, maybe we should just shut this whole thing down and go to that. Because we wouldn't be in this place.

[JVL]

Figure out what the hell's going on.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, we wouldn't be in this place. So we do need to break down the whole constitutional order and rebuild it back up and copy the Europeans. Because, like, honestly, because Donald Trump would never be the head of a system such as that. Like, we created this. Like, we. We now have the worst of both worlds.

[JVL]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

So, you know, I don't know. I'm. I'm open to that. But the other funny thing about this, I tried to get into this with Mona today. Me and David French talked about it a little bit. Is like the big conservative win in the court of. The last court was Chevron, which essentially says that agencies can't do things that aren't specifically prescribed by Congress.

[JVL]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

That was the big. That was a big win. It takes power away from the deep state and bureaucrats, but now, like two years later, the big thing now is going to be. I had to listen to Ben Shapiro talk about this today. I turned on the Ben Shapiro podcast. He talked about it for like 20 straight minutes. I have no idea how anybody listens to that.

[Sarah Longwell]

You watched RFK grind through that hearing with that horrible voice, and then you were like, oh, I want to hear a castrated chipmunk talk more.

[Tim Miller]

I was, I was, I don't, I don't really know why it came to me today, but I was like, you know, I've never actually listened to his podcast. I haven't listened to it in a while at least. And I was like, I wonder what he's been saying about all this. Unbearable. But anyway, his whole rant was about impoundment and about how the agency should. And the executive should be given the power to stop doing things that Congress did appropriate. So in the new unitary executive theory of these guys, the administrative branch can't do things that Congress hasn't specifically legislated, but they can not do things that Congress has specifically legislated. And that is, And I think that's what I think the Supreme Court is going to.

[JVL]

Yeah, it's just Calvinism, conservatorism. So, you know, the, this evening, as we were getting ready to come out, the White House released its executive order on education. And the party of states rights and subsidiarity and letting you know, trying to put power as close to the parents as possible has all of these dictates for how your school, wherever you live, is going to teach everything, otherwise they will lose federal funding. And so you have a, a party which is at once states rights, also small government. Also we're going to abolish the sec, the, the Department of Education. And also we're going to tell you how to teach stuff because we don't want you telling anybody about Harriet Tubman, you know, and it's, it's all incoherent because it's all about power. It's just, it's just autocracy. That's all it is.

[Sarah Longwell]

Can we talk about impoundment for one second? Because this is, this is also part of where I wanted to, like, center. My rant is around the opm, omb, the freezes. Right. Because it's illegal. It depends. So if your theory. So impoundment. Impoundment is just so people can follow this. Because this is going to be one of our new vocabulary words of the Trump era, where suddenly everyone's going to be like, it's like the Hatch Act. It's like, I didn't know what that was. And then like, I heard it a million times and now I know what the Hatch act is. All right, so let's talk about empowerment. Impoundment is that people who believe in the unitary executive theory, which has been kicking it around conservative legal circles for a long time. But it's like Brett Kavanaugh is a big unitary executive theory guy. It allows potus, the President of the United States, to freeze any spending that Congress has approved. So now here's the thing. It's not actually constitutional. Like, there was a impoundment Control act that was passed in 1979.

[Tim Miller]

It was after Nixon. I can tell you this because I just heard Ben Shapiro talk about why I was stupid for 17 minutes on the way to school pickup.

[Sarah Longwell]

Why the Control act is stupid.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sarah Longwell]

Well, it was passed in order to have Congress have the control of the power of the purse, as it is constitutionally mandated, just the way the Senate's advising consent role is constitutionally mandated. And so it is illegal for the President to just freeze things that Congress does. But that happened today. I mean, although I don't know what state of. Are we thawed or we froze. We froze it. We rescinded it. We froze it again. We rescinded our recension. I learned another new word, which is what was precision, I think was the one rescissioned.

[Tim Miller]

So, yeah, the memo that was drafted and then amended and then rescinded and then resist.

[Sarah Longwell]

Can you imagine about if the Democrats, a Democratic president, were just freezing congressional spending and just like taking all the stuff out they didn't want to do.

[Tim Miller]

It's kind of like, you know, we.

[JVL]

Don'T have a line item veto, so we're just going to create a line item veto. That's what this is. What the line item effectively trying to create a line item veto, which was.

[Tim Miller]

Also declared, which is also. The Supreme Court also said it's unconstitutional. They tried to do that in the 90s, right?

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. Anyway, so that's what, that's what impoundment is. And it's illegal and so. And unconstitutional. But here's what he's just going to test everybody he's going to test the courts, he's going to test Congress, and he's going to say, congress, you want to give me your power, don't you? And guess what Republicans are saying? They're saying, yes, please take our power.

[JVL]

Don't make us come up with any ideas.

[Tim Miller]

Can I talk about this OPM thing, though, for a second? Because we've all been guilty about this a little bit. And our friends at the Atlantic who wrote this today, Paul Rosenweg, who I really like but like, wrote an article about how it's not amateur hour anymore and how these guys know what they're doing. And like, I get the impulse and I have found myself dabbling in it from time to time because russvote does at some level know what he's doing and isn't an idiot and has thought about this. And it's not like the, the nominee for OBM has control over what every court in the country is going to say about their orders. And so at some level, it's, it's somewhat more organized than the last round, which my old buddy Reince was in charge of. But, like, it's not that much better. I mean, like this, the whole story with the, with these freezes is like just basically the Muslim ban again. Right. And it's like the same thing. It's like we're going to, we're going to, it's like a slightly, it's a Muslim band of like, slightly more legal rationale behind it. Right. Like, we're going to do this thing and we're going to be kind of vague about it and we're going to let your lawyers interpret it. And then when it gets objected to, we're going to narrow it and then we're going to keep narrowing it until we get a friendly judge and then we're going to basically do what we wanted to do originally, but in a slightly different form. Right. Like I get, isn't this actually the same as 2017? Aren't we in Groundhog Day? I don't know, JBL, you're making a face like, I think it's different.

[JVL]

I mean, so I think in 2017, what happened was everybody was thinking about what to do for the very first time beginning in November because absolutely nobody, including Trump, thought he was going to win.

[Tim Miller]

That's true.

[JVL]

This time you have a coterie of people who have spent four years thinking about what they want to do. It's just that those people are a bunch of heritage dweebs who were basically in a four year blunt Circle with Curtis Yarvin and the Bronze Age pervert. And like, what you have is their. Their slash fiction. And so it's like they've thought it through. But these are people who don't, you know, many of a few of the. The people there are subject matter experts. A lot of them are just like, I read the cube in the cathedral 15 times.

[Tim Miller]

And then also the next layer down from the rust votes is like, it's hard to find people for this sort of thing. I mean, they're building a bench slowly but surely. But, like, if they succeed in the authoritarian project, by 2038, they'll have some people who know what they're doing. But like, I mean, it was. Was it who was advice or one of the Wired. Wired had an article where they found out who the. Some of the. Like chief. The deputy chief of staff at the.

[JVL]

It's like a high school senior was.

[Tim Miller]

So young they didn't include his name.

[JVL]

Yeah, they're like, we cannot put his.

[Tim Miller]

Name in the article.

[JVL]

And yeah, and they are, they are like, it's like a kid who interned at Neuralink who I guess, like, bumped into Elon in the hallway and said, man, I love you on Diablo 4. And Musk was, you know, was like, oh, you seem like a small boy.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, so he's the deputy chief of staff at the, at the acting opm. But so. Yeah, right.

[JVL]

Is that any more ludicrous than Robert Kennedy being Secretary of hhs?

[Sarah Longwell]

No, it's not that it's ludicrous. Here's. Here's my question on this because I had the same thought that JBL did, which is like, okay, Vaught, this is all the Project 2025 stuff. Like, part of what part of this is they did publish this in advance. We did. It was coming. They tried to pretend like they weren't going to do it, but of course they were and we all knew that and now they're doing it. And so you do have all these heritage weirdos who are trying to implement. Yes. Like an actual ideological vision of which Trump cares very little. Right. And so. But to do what they're doing. And I think this was the thing that's happening today. So like, to just to Tim's point, I also saw Rosenzweig Atlantic article and I went, no, I don't think so, man. Like, I agree Velociraptors have learned to turn the doorknobs a little bit. They came in prepared with like the Project 2025 plan, but their implementation is still being done by Morons like, it was moron this. It was embarrassing and should be embarrassing for them. And we should be pointing and laughing at them today because they had no idea what was getting cut and what wasn't. Like, when they froze it, they didn't know what was going to be frozen. And so they were not prepared for what was a raft of politically unpopular pushback. The reason they caved on this one quickly is because it was like people were suddenly like, wait, Meals on wheels. Wait. 85% of the federal government doesn't live in Washington, D.C. and you're talking about a bunch of people who are like the civilian military, people who support them. You know, you're talking about everybody's retirement check who's ever worked in the government, like, the amount of pushback they must have been getting and hearing. And so Trump does not like things that are extraordinarily politically unpopular and make him look like an asshole, which is why he distanced himself from Project 2025. And so just like so many of the things where the Trump promises, like Doge. How does Doge square with Trump saying he's not going to cut touch Medicaid or Social Security? It doesn't. Like, you know, this has a contradiction in it as well, where, like, they just did a bunch of stuff that are politically unpopular. And I bet Trump went, what do you. What do you clowns doing? Knock it off. And, like, there's nobody to fix that.

[JVL]

I think that it's. I actually think it's likely that both of these things are Elon directives, because, but, like, people, People have cotton onto the idea that the, the. I'm gonna, you know, the separate, the attempted buyout of the entire federal workforce is exactly what he did at Twitter and even used the same title of the memo. But the other thing people have forgotten, I haven't seen anybody say this. One of the things Elon did was when he came into Twitter, he stopped payments for everything. And, you know, the, the people who worked in the Twitter, you know, like, finance division were like, no, you see, we have to pay our bills, and if we don't. And Elon was like, I don't care. Let people sue us to collect their money. They're not going to do that. It'll take forever. And so Twitter just stopped dispersing money. And that is what Elon is trying to do with, like, the federal government. It's the same thing.

[Sarah Longwell]

Can I just, on a point of order on this, I read your triad today, and I think that I don't know where the Buyout language came from. Exactly. Like who first called it a buyout? That's not what it is. They are not actually.

[JVL]

So I have, I have part of this wrong. I'm doing a correction tomorrow.

[Sarah Longwell]

Okay. Because it is, it is just that they are going to pay people through September maybe. Well, true.

[JVL]

Well, no, there is nothing buying the. Just security people. Just did a, like tonight did a long, long piece on this. It is absolutely must reading for anybody in the federal workforce, which basically is. Don't believe any of this. None of it is legally enforceable.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yes. So this is, this is the one thing I did want to hit just as a. If, if anybody in the federal government's listening, do not resign. Don't resign. If they want to fire you or move you, make them. Because what will happen is you will accrue the time that you work there until they get to firing you. Right. And that will go toward your pension. That will go toward obviously your public service. So that's, that's one piece of it. But also then if they fire you, you will get severance. And so you want that like it would be. This is what they're trying to do is be like, if you tell us you'll resign, we won't make you come back in. We'll let you continue to work from home. You will continue to work and we will pay you until September. It's not a buyout.

[JVL]

But also there's no guarantee that they will do that. There's no guarantee. They could just that they will accept your resignation. This is the other piece of the other thing, the justice.

[Sarah Longwell]

No, they do have clear severance, though. The severance is right.

[JVL]

But they don't have to accept. So you could say I resign and they could say, great, that is nice to know and write that down on a list and not accept your resignation and then use that to target you down the road for termination. This is another reason not to write. I mean the whole, the whole thing is again, like, I'm sorry, hitting reply to an email and typing the word resign in the subject line is not a legally binding contract. That's not how this works. It's not how any of this works. So don't. Even if you really want to do this thing, don't do it right now and don't do it this way. Talk with your lawyer or your union rep.

[Tim Miller]

It definitely was Elon, it definitely was Elon on the whatever non buyout, buyout thing. But the OMB stuff was just, again, it was just these Project 2025 guys and there is a, like, if it wasn't for the fact that we're living in hell and there's no way to possibly enjoy anything about this. There's something delicious about the fact that Trump was distancing from Project 2025 in the campaign because he correctly intuited that these ideological dweebs, political project was about as popular as fucking hemorrhoids and he doesn't need to be associated with it. Right. And so he won. Then in with that tactic contributed to his victory. And then he gets in on the transition and like, while he's golfing and getting visited by the richest people in the world who are gargling his nut sack, the team that is doing the hiring then goes and hires all the Project 2025 people with the unpopular policies that he was trying to distance from. And then those people begin to implement Project 2025, which is unpopular and there's a backlash to it. And then Trump today is like, whoa, according to John Swan report that came out like two hours ago, it's like Trump's. Trump was, you know, it's back to the Jared and Ivanka stories from 2017. We, like, we literally are in Groundhog Day where it's like, whoa, Trump and Javanka didn't know about this thing that Bannon was doing over here. You know, instead of Trump and Javanka this time, it's whatever. Trump and his shadow president. So, like, so that, that's where we're at. Right. And. But the question is, like, they will continue to do a lot of their unpopular stuff and it's just only going to get stopped when there is a kerfuffle about.

[JVL]

Pay attention. So. So people ought to be making kerfuffles.

[Tim Miller]

Exactly. That's where I was, that's where I.

[JVL]

Was landing the opposite sense of like.

[Tim Miller]

Saying, you should do nothing. Yeah, yeah.

[Sarah Longwell]

Can any. Can I just hit with one message piece of messaging advice on this, though, please? The Trump guys are smart in that they, they know to go after, like, they started with DEI as like a target. Like, anybody who's doing DEI stuff like you're. It's the same way they really focus on the criminal immigrants who are, who've committed crimes. Not just the crime of crossing the border, but an actual additional crime. And. Right. They know that those things are unpopular and that nobody's going to fight them. Nobody's like, oh, yeah, and Democrats right now won't. Right. They, the Democrats just lost on these issues. They just, they, they are sitting there being like, I'm not going to bat over, like, the DEI and the government. That's what they. That's what. So don't focus and don't focus on a bunch of federal workers and don't focus on DEI or the. The environmental justice stuff. Don't do that. That's what progressives will get wound up about those things, and it will trap them into talking about the stuff that basically is unpopular about Democrats right now, who are currently enjoying the lowest approval rating in the country that the Democratic Party has experienced in a very, very long time. So don't do that. Talk about Meals on Wheels. Talk about the social programs that people value and that are so much a part of the firmament that people don't even realize it's government run. Like, there's all these things that people have taken for granted for a long time that are part of what the government does and where there's real harm to real people. Not that, of course, the people in the D.C. federal government are real people. And I don't mean to suggest otherwise. I just mean that is not your sympathetic group. Right. You are talking about a bunch of people who are career civil servants in D.C. like, there's a lot of people in D.C. who will care about that. There are not a lot of people in the country who will care about that, but they will care that these guys.

[Tim Miller]

Abigail Spamberger should talk about that in her governor's race.

[Sarah Longwell]

Sure. Because they're talking about Northern Virginia, but that's not. That's not most everybody else. So focus on the harm done downstream.

[JVL]

There's a lot of it, nih, Maybe, like, grants going out to cancer research.

[Sarah Longwell]

Kids, pediatric cancer research. There's a ton of things that are extraordinarily harmful about this.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. A lot of. I mean, basically all hospital workers. Right. Again, so, like, when people have bureaucrats in their head or people that are affected by this, like, they're thinking about, like, whatever, you know, like people that work in the Department of State, you know, and have houses in Georgetown. It's like, essentially, anybody that works at any hospital at some level is associated with the government system. Right. And so in addition to people that go to hospitals. Right. Which is everybody. Right. Yeah. But, yeah, just think about. Yeah. All of this stuff. Like, you know, because they don't know if the Medicaid system is down, like, that is creating chaos and, like, meetings at all. At all these places. And, you know, it's not like, not all the doctors voted for Kamala or nurses or people that are working in these systems. So that's Just one other example. Like, it isn't even necessary. My point is it isn't even necessarily just people that work for, for the government and for NGOs. It's also people that work for other parts of the system that, that touch those programs.

[Sarah Longwell]

Hey, Tim, just. I want to go back to the Rosenweg thing for one second just to say people are succumbing. Look, it is true and people should live in reality. Republicans are at a high water mark in popularity. Donald Trump is at a high water mark in popularity. Democrats are at a low ebb in popularity. And a bunch of things that they've been holding on to for a while got blown up in terms of people thinking like, Democrats lost the fight on immigration. They are. There's a lot on the trans issue that they've lost and on a lot of this DEI stuff, like, it's. It is deeply unpopular and they're going to have to grapple with how they sort of reconfigure a message to the American people that resonates. They are still clowns and morons and they are failing and we should hit them over this. They're like, no, this, this thing today, they failing. This today was a reminder. I. Not that I was happy about it, but I did watch it and go, yeah, they still can't do this. They are still the most unserious, clownish people.

[JVL]

They're going to do something about RFK or the omb.

[Sarah Longwell]

All of it. All of it.

[JVL]

Okay.

[Sarah Longwell]

You know, a few weeks ago when you were like, let them get it. Let them, let them experience it good and hard. I mean, we're sort of in that, like, they are. It's like the scary thing, right, is if they come in and they look just buttoned up and polished, they know exactly what they're doing and they are executing it ruthlessly and vigorously. And instead it's like, oh, no, no, we're still a bunch of idiots who have no idea what we're doing. Like, yes, they're a little bit better. But like, we should not overstate this idea. Like, they are now in here knowing exactly how everything works and they're like, crushing it.

[Tim Miller]

No, Well, I tell you, the, the thing that they are really going to crush is the deportations to Guantanamo. I guess my one area of disagreement with your point, there is. I'm not even sure that their immigration agenda is going to end up being popular. I mean, there are going to be elements of it that are for sure elements of that I don't like. That'll be Popular, but I mean it is already such a shit show. And Adrian's reporting on this today is so good. Like how it is trickling into communities. I had a text from a friend. We're trying to run down a story about almost. It's too delicious to share actually who, the type of community leader that might be getting deported. And the Guantanamo thing, like I don't think people. I googled this, so I'm just gonna assume everybody else was not quite as informed as me. He was like, we're put 30,000 people in Guantanamo. I was like, how big is Guantanamo again? Like how many people? I was googling this. There were 860 people in Guantanamo at its peak. Like they had built it in such a way where if they had to, if they had to house 1500 terrorists, they could have, they could have done it. And Trump is just like, we're gonna send 30,000 people to Guantanamo.

[JVL]

Good real estate. Couldn't you put a Trump tower down there and just turn it, I mean it's near a beach, it's, there's water views. I feel like there are better use. I mean, surely our great businessman president.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, I guess. But you know, even Donald Trump, the most efficient builder that the world has ever known, you know, even him, I don't know that like it takes a little while to build, put the burge.

[JVL]

To buy down there.

[Tim Miller]

28,000 units, housing units. I don't know. I just, I think that, I think that the early moments, because let's just be serious, up to level set. Like even I was thinking this, right? I was like, you know, the, the area of this that will be that they'll know what they're doing is immigration because they, they had a lot of time to practice the first time. There's, there's continuity with Homans and Miller. They'll figure it out and they'll do this thing to really put the Democrats in a bind where they'll just deport criminals from prisons in blue states and stuff and they'll get the low hanging fruit and then this dumb left wing activists will protest and they'll have this big winning issue. And like, I don't know, we're 10 days in and I'm not really seeing that. I see, I see Adrian reporting that they accidentally arrested some Puerto Ricans. They, you know, accidentally detained a veteran in Newark and, and Trump's proposing a concentration camp in Cuba. It just, it doesn't seem like the things are, you know, run, you know, trains are running on time, so to speak.

[JVL]

Trump hasn't proposed trading.

[Tim Miller]

Dr. Phil was involved. That's true.

[JVL]

Straight up for Greenland. Because it seems to me that it would. It would really actually mesh pretty nicely with the America first objectives to do. Unload. Unload. Puerto Rico. Just a straight swap with Denmark. Puerto Rico for Greenland.

[Tim Miller]

Do you think Denmark wants Puerto Rico?

[JVL]

Who wouldn't want Puerto Rico? Puerto Rico's great. I'm sure the magas don't love having Puerto Rico.

[Tim Miller]

It's a little.

[JVL]

You know what I mean?

[Tim Miller]

It's a little misaligned with Denmark geographically, I think.

[JVL]

I'm just saying. All right, listen, we got to move on.

[Tim Miller]

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[JVL]

The. The Facebook. Sorry, Just Facebook. It's cleaner. We got word a few hours ago that they have settled their lawsuit with Donald Trump from. Sued them for kicking him off the platform for $25 million, of which 23 goes.

[Tim Miller]

22.

[JVL]

22 goes to the Trump presidential library.

[Tim Miller]

You need a clean 10% on the vig there in his actual pocket. Good enough.

[JVL]

This is a. This case was a slam dunk winner for Facebook. Facebook like this is. This is one of those things where there is. There is no universe in which they lose this case.

[Tim Miller]

I got to tell you. Jbl, I'm sorry to interrupt. I wasn't paying attention to this case. No, no, I do care. I wasn't paying attention to this case. I just, I saw the thing come across, the ticker that Mark Zuckerberg is paying a, you know, quarter hundred million dollar bribe to Donald Trump. And I didn't, I didn't, I don't know anything about it. What was the case? What was the case over?

[JVL]

It was. It was election interference, fraud, defamation, all of the things because there isn't an actual crime, but it was, they just, they kicked him off the platform.

[Tim Miller]

It was just over the deep platform. It wasn't over, like being slimed or anything. Yeah.

[JVL]

And so wait, do other people have.

[Tim Miller]

Been kicked off the platform now get to sue Facebook and give money? Because many people have been kicked off the platform.

[JVL]

This might not be the way.

[Tim Miller]

This might be the way to take down meta, but I haven't because I behave online. But I know, I know a number of people. It's not. The trust and safety division was pretty. Was pretty tough for a little while there.

[JVL]

We now, Sarah, have this new. I mean, this is a real innovation where Trump has realized that a way to legalize bribery is to file ludicrous suits against people whose interests correlate with the federal government and overlap with the federal government so that he can then accept money from them in a perfectly legal fashion. In order to then do them favors and get the benefit of A, doing it all out in the open and B, having the entire thing then cloaked in the mother of all NDAs. Yeah. So this is now, like, this is a thing he does now. This is a mode of operation and nobody live, be real with me. No one is ever going to care about this, are they?

[Sarah Longwell]

No. Well, especially not Facebook. I mean, like, ABC was go away money. Right. Just like, we can't.

[JVL]

I don't think so. I think it was Disney. Disney just wanted to make sure that, like, hey, yeah, like, this is Disney. Like, you know, we're good with maga.

[Sarah Longwell]

They weren't trying to. I think the difference is.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Sarah Longwell]

So they were suing him. They didn't want to be in an active fight with the President of the United States. They were like, we'll settle this. Here's your money. Whatever.

[JVL]

CBS did it because they have a merger pending with Skydance.

[Sarah Longwell]

That's right. Zuckerberg. Imagine how the Zuckerberg thing happened. He ponies up a million for the inauguration. He goes in and says, like, we're boys now, right? And Trump was like, yeah, well, you know, you guys kicked me off your platform, and I, I, that, that made me angry, so. And Zox, well, yeah, you gotta go.

[JVL]

Kill a guy for us first.

[Sarah Longwell]

We got.

[JVL]

If you want to get in the.

[Sarah Longwell]

Gang, we could put that thing to bed. And Trump says, yeah, It'll cost you 25 mil. And Zucker's like, yes, sir, Mr. President, sir. And. And that's how you get back in the good graces. I feel like it's a. It's a different level of groveling with Zuckerberg, like, a different level of. Because the other guys just want to be, like, in business and not have Trump targeting them. Zuckerberg wants to be in the Elon. Trump, like, boys.

[JVL]

Will anybody ever care about this, aside from the three of us and, like, the people listening to this? Well, unbelievably corrupt.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah, right.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, I guess. I don't know. I don't. I. As. As, you know, jbl, I'm just going to have to keep reminding you about this every week. I don't care whether people care. And I'm not. Maybe in 2027, I'll start caring about whether people care, but I'm done caring about whether people care. People are stupid. Among people that might care, though, or that haven't demonstrated that they care is Facebook employees. It's like, on the list of people that are on my shit list. It's hard to get through despite all the hours of content we're producing a day. All of the people on my shit list right now, because it's such a long list, but in 2017, in January 29, 2017, employees at all of these big tech companies were organizing, like, there were mass protests. There were protests in the cafeterias. These fuckers had to do, like, struggle sessions in front of their staff where they, you know, hit them, where they put on the hair shirt and, you know, kind of hit themselves with one of those, like one of those things called, like, the plants that you hit yourself with and the BDSM movies anyway. And they're not. They're not doing any of that now. They're not doing any of that. Like, there's nothing. There's no. Like, where are they? I think I. Somebody forwarded me one thing. Like, one guy at Facebook quit. It kind of felt like he was already on the way out. And his letter was kind of like, where. What's happening in the Facebook Slack or the Microsoft Teams or whatever they. Whatever they use over there? Like, isn't that. It is pretty strange SpaceX, with all.

[JVL]

These idealists at SpaceX who, at least.

[Tim Miller]

The SpaceX people are actually doing something, I don't know, that's potentially good for humanity. But, yeah, sure, But Tesla, I don't know. There are a lot of people that have a lot of RSUs. The Facebook stock. I know that Joe Biden was so hostile to big tech, so hostile that all these guys got radicalized and had to support Donald Trump and ruin our democracy.

[JVL]

Seen that big tech lost so much money over the last four years.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, but the Facebook stock went like this during the Biden years. So, like, there are a lot of people that work at Facebook that had a lot of RSUs that are doing great that could just say right now, eat a dick, Zuck. Even better. They could leak to me their emails with Mark Zuckerberg, but if they don't want to do that, they could just say, eat a dick, Zuck. I'm going to go work for a nonprofit or I'm going to go, whatever, buy a ski chalet and bring my kids there and where they're going to order to put them in school in Park City. I don't know. Like, all these people have a lot of options and there's nothing. I've heard nothing. Basically nothing, Right?

[JVL]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

That's pretty depressing.

[Sarah Longwell]

Because we're in a different kind of collective illusion than we were in 2017. I mean, I don't Want to belabor some of the stuff we talk about often, but like a people.

[JVL]

People have.

[Sarah Longwell]

Nor people have normalized, right. Their nervous systems have normalized to Trump. And also, I think there's like a real, like physical self protection to going back to the same level of urgency that people felt in 2017, 2018. And I think because Trump is a lame duck, there doesn't feel like an obvious thing to do. Right. It's like if you're. If it's 2017, you're like, okay, we gotta win the midterms and we gotta defeat Trump. Right. And. And Democrats at the time were feeding off the energy and we're trying to like, be like, I'll be the hero. I'll be the hero. And this time there's no leadership on the Democratic side. Nobody's trying to present a contrast.

[Tim Miller]

And I was also, I was watching from Phyllis Fong.

[Sarah Longwell]

Who?

[Tim Miller]

Phyllis Fong. Phyllis Fong, yeah, about her. You're gonna know her name soon. You know her name soon. She was the inspector general that got escorted out of the USDA today by security. And I'm starting to. I'm starting to whisper her name like. Like a cat. Like what. Who's the character in Silo that everybody starts writing her name on the walls? I'm gonna start doing that for Phyllis Fong. She might lead us out of the wilderness. She's the one that has shown courage.

[Sarah Longwell]

I just, There was. There was just such a rush last time to sort of like capture the energy and to be leaders of movements, and it's not. That's not happiness. I did see Schumer talking about how aroused people were, and I thought, that's great.

[Tim Miller]

I'm aroused, man. He's.

[JVL]

He. This guy's up for the. Up for the.

[Tim Miller]

So speaking of Juliet. Thank you, Juliet Nichols. Thank you, Silo watchers. Juliet Nichols, philosophy.

[Sarah Longwell]

All I'm saying is I think it's on us. I think we're the leaders that we're looking for.

[JVL]

We are now producing 97 hours of content a day. So we are destroying. We are eating our souls from the inside out for. For the good of this country. So let's. Maybe it'll all pay off. Speaking of normalization, yesterday Caroline. Leave it, Levitt, whatever her name is, held her first press conference. She, I believe, floated the now we know as a lie about $50 million in spending for condoms in Gaza and didn't have any idea about 72 million Americans being kicked off of Medicaid. But the New York Times ran a big old piece about her press conference. I want to, I want to read for you the headline and then just some of the words that are in this piece. White House press secretary makes steely and unflinching debut.

[Sarah Longwell]

Modern day Joan of Arc Caroline Leavitt.

[JVL]

Used her first briefing in the role to warn veteran reporters that they were increasingly irrelevant. See, I, I don't know if you guys understand. I'm a wordsmith. And so that sentence means that veteran reporters are increasingly irrelevant and that Caroline Leavitt was simply warning them of it. It is a true fact. She was. Anyway, some other, some other things, words from this piece. Steely, unapologetic, punchy, unflinching, twisting the knife, wasted no time, betrayed, no fear. This is how access journalism works. Why does a piece like this get written? It does not contribute anything I know to the audience's understanding. Go ahead, go ahead, Ms. Longwell.

[Sarah Longwell]

Is it so the new press secretary will give them scooplets?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Sarah Longwell]

Better White House access.

[JVL]

And this, this is why I really think the media, the media bears so much responsibility in all of this. And it isn't because they like carried water for Democrats or what. It's because they, they practice this again, utterly bankrupt access journalism. And they, they exist to serve their own interests and not the interests of their audience.

[Sarah Longwell]

I don't know. I'm pretty interested in all the new podcasters and folks that are going to be in like, that's if I were the New York Times, like what it is, it is a. They've now got to compete with what Charlie Kirk gets to come to the White House.

[Tim Miller]

Tpusa got a question at the briefing. Turning Point USA got a question.

[Sarah Longwell]

So this is New York Times has to get extra access now.

[JVL]

These people, Gaza condoms. So she, I believe. And then Trump mentioned it today and nobody has provided any evidence that this is true at all. And the evidence we do have is that the spending on this, like the spending numbers we have on these things make it seem utterly impossible.

[Tim Miller]

I'm sorry, this was, I. We haven't seen any evidence yet, but I think it is of a piece with what we know to be Genocide Joe's ethnic cleansing strategy for Gaza. He didn't, it's anti natalism. He didn't want them to have any children. And this is why the people, the wise people of Dearborn put Donald Trump into the White House because, you know, it's all, it was all part of the Genocide Joe effort. So, you know, I'm sure things are going to be great for the people of Gaza under the Trump regime.

[JVL]

Can I can I put in a. Do you, do you ever take requests for the focus group?

[Sarah Longwell]

In what way?

[JVL]

Just like, you know, like listeners call in and say, Sarah, could you put on a very special focus group for me consisting of XYZ Gaza protesters?

[Tim Miller]

Is that going to be.

[Sarah Longwell]

I do time to time, actually, here's my request. Okay.

[JVL]

Making a long distance dedication. I would like Dearborn Trump voters and I would like you to ask them about Donald Trump's belief that the west bank should be ethnically cleansed and Gaza should be ethnically cleansed so that they can build like high rises and stuff and that all of the Palestinians who live there should be shipped to what, Egypt and Jordan? Was that where you said Egypt? And somewhere else. Anyway, I, because I would really love to know these people's thoughts about this stuff. Could you do that for me?

[Sarah Longwell]

I can tell you without doing that focus group what'll happen.

[JVL]

Go ahead.

[Sarah Longwell]

They will say that's not true, I haven't heard that. And then you'll show them maybe a clip and they'll be like, I don't know, I doesn't mean it.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, well, we'll just see. May we wait a couple of months on this because I think that the news eventually is going to pile up in a way that's going to just.

[JVL]

Reauthorize the 2,000 pound bombs. Like I, I do think that maybe this is the kind of like these are people are single issue voters.

[Tim Miller]

That news will trickle.

[JVL]

This is, there's this.

[Sarah Longwell]

I do, I just, I think you probably have to wait for a little bit. Like here's the thing, I have been doing focus groups.

[Tim Miller]

How are they going?

[Sarah Longwell]

It's bleak, man, it's early. And here's the thing, and I don't know that this is the right time to discuss this, but obviously I've been thinking a lot about strategically what is the right way to think through this moment. Because I think there's from a lot of us, including me, I have this desperate desire to do something. But there's just no doubt that Donald Trump's going to get his hundred day honeymoon from voters. And they're going to be like, let's see. Because right now people are very much like, well I'm optimistic and things were so bad and you know, I'm going to see what he could do. And here's the other thing. Jbl, let me just, let me throw something about. I know, you know, one of the reasons I love focus groups is that you can gauge intensity in a way that you can't in a poll. So in polls, it shows that pardoning the January 6th people is very unpopular. But I asked a bunch of these voters who, who voted for Trump, but in a very transactional way. They were actually Biden to Trump voters. They had passed over Trump in many cases, twice, at least once, and this time they went for him. And I asked them, you know, what they thought about him pardoning the January 6th people, and they were like, yeah, I love it, but whatever. They got too harsh a sentence. Like, they maybe weren't for it, but they also did not care. They just didn't care. And I think that, that apathy only changes once. And I. This is sort of why I was saying the thing about opm, you got to get to the part where people feel personal consequences and we're just not there yet. Like, we're in this, and so it's not that nothing matters. And I think that things will matter. I just don't think they're going to matter yet.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, also, I just, again, I don't know. I'm sorry to keep doing this. What I don't understand why we have to care about this right now. Like, we don't. I don't. You know what I mean? I just, like, there's not a fucking other election for 13 months. I do think that there is. Like, I think it's part of the Democratic depression right now. Is that everybody. I don't know. I just feel like everybody has trained themselves to think about politics as if it is. Like how I watch the Nuggets, where I'm like, I'm down because the Nuggets lost on Monday. Well, the good news is the Nuggets play again on Wednesday, so maybe we'll win and I'll be up. Right. There's not another election for 14. For, what did I say, 11 months, 23 months, whatever. 20 months. Like, there's not another election for a long time, except for Abigail Spamberger and whoever wins the New Jersey Democratic governor primary. So, like, I just, I do think eventually people will start to be upset, and if not, we'll cross that bridge when they get there. But I do think that, like, people should probably detrain their minds to, like, only. Only let their hat, only let happiness in if the polls show Donald Trump is unpopular next week because it's going to take a little time. Lot.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah, it's more that. And, and here's. I am not suggesting that people don't fight right now. I think every day and every day they should be taking the things like happen today and trying to tell people, see, this is what clowns do. But also so much. But I just for but if people are thinking, man, aren't voters really regretting this choice right now? The answer is no, not yet. Like there he's going to get a honeymoon phase this time in a way that he didn't last time. Which doesn't mean give up or doesn't mean feel depressed. It just means like understand the dynamic is different this time.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I agree with that. And I just. And some people are misunderstanding in the comments too. My comment is, does not mean like just sit around and do nothing until two years from now. I'm like, yes, yell, create, create kerfuffles. That was my point at the beginning. Be mad, shout. But like, don't I we can't expect that to there to be some total vibe shift in the country by Valentine's Day. Like, that's just not realistic. And it also doesn't matter if they're like, you know, we're a long way away from any of that. So anyway, I guess I'm just trying.

[Sarah Longwell]

To on JBL's lol, nothing matters. I'm like, don't think that it won't never matter. Right.

[Tim Miller]

I agree with that. Are the Catholics.

[Sarah Longwell]

Does that cheer you up? Does that cheer you up?

[JVL]

My wife and Flash, my oldest, both asked me prior to coming on the show to specifically not say some things. And so I'm going to specifically not say those things right now. Other news, we'll get to Catholic stuff in a minute.

[Sarah Longwell]

What were those things?

[JVL]

I'm not saying them because I'm not thinking them either. Nothing to do with measles.

[Tim Miller]

So we had something whooping cough. I see the whooping costs have been making a comeback.

[JVL]

Other news today because these are again, things that would have been administration ending events that now nobody even notices. The Department of Justice filed its intent to stop pursuing the case against Trump's two conspirators in the classified documents case down in Florida.

[Tim Miller]

Because.

[JVL]

That is, I guess classified documents mishandling of things are no longer interesting to Republicans and it's no longer a matter of national security. I bet like less than 1% of America even knows this happened today. And again, this would have been a right like George W. Bush takes office and the first thing he does is he directs the Clinton Justice Department to stop pursuing the. That's it. Right. We, we then have months of investigations.

[Tim Miller]

And I mean we, we know this to be true because the George W. Bush attorney general had to resign over political firings of career attorneys. Like that happened in some. Some point in the mid 2000s.

[JVL]

But I want to. I want to throw. Throw something else on the. The fire. We. We also have word that the Trump Justice Department is in talks with Mayor Eric Adams, my mayor of. Of the five boroughs in New York City about maybe making that case go away. And then Bob Menendez shuffled out with his gold bars today and said President Trump was right. This process is political and it's corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cess and restores the integrity to the system in his little muppet voice. And so this is now a thing. If you are a criminal in politics, doesn't matter what party you are, if you just go maga, maybe Donald Trump will pardon you. And again, no one cares. The Republican Party is now literally the party of crim, criminals and crimex. Yeah, man, no one cares.

[Tim Miller]

And kooks and all the anti vax conspiracists have all lined under the party, too.

[JVL]

Yep. I am not saying that.

[Tim Miller]

President Trump cleaning up the cesspool. President Trump restoring integrity. A guy that was a Democratic senator two minutes ago was like, yeah, Donald Trump might restore some integrity.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yes. This is from a guy who was stealing gold bars from people. Of course he thinks Donald Trump is good. He has terrible judgment and is probably a bad person and a criminal himself. So Donald Trump is basically like, you know, his. His king. You know what's funny is that I saw the news about him getting 11 years, and I just, like, ripped off a tweet, being like, yeah, he's just gonna say some nice things.

[JVL]

You did do this, didn't you? Yeah.

[Sarah Longwell]

I was like, he's gonna say some nice things about Donald Trump. Punch a cop in the face and go seek, try to get a pardon. And I was like, joking. And it was like eight minutes later, he held a press conference to be like, Donald Trump really had this. Right. The only thing missing was him punching the cop in the face.

[Tim Miller]

You know, the funny thing couldn't reach.

[JVL]

He's a very little man.

[Tim Miller]

Well, and. And he wouldn't want to do. I mean, that has already happened, actually. From a released January 6th prisoner who did try to resist arrest and then got killed by a cop. That already happened.

[Sarah Longwell]

There's another January 6th prisoner that also got killed today.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, yeah, two, one. Another was in a shootout. So. Yeah, so he wouldn't. Bob wouldn't want to get killed because he still wants to stay alive and get. And get us parted. You know, the thing I was thinking about was what a sucker Bob Menendez was because had he just created a Bob meme coin. Turkish.

[Sarah Longwell]

The Turks.

[Tim Miller]

The Turks could have run that baby up to the moon, you know, and he could have cashed out, filed some.

[JVL]

Lawsuits against some Turkish import export businesses for defamation. Right.

[Tim Miller]

What was he thinking of gold bars? Settled them. What was he thinking? He need to learn from the king. It's.

[JVL]

I don't know, Sarah. Like, why shouldn't I say nothing matters? Because again, these things are so superficially.

[Sarah Longwell]

It's not the end of history. So.

[JVL]

No, but the fact that the American citizenry looks at this to the extent they can even be bothered to look at it, just shrugs like, I don't know, like why? Why?

[Tim Miller]

I don't understand how this is changing your life. I guess this is my question for you, jvl. I don't know. I don't know that Sarah is successfully making you feel better. So maybe I'm going to take a swing here. Well, I don't understand that. You hated people before. You don't speak to anybody except for your children and your lovely wife and us. When we're on a live podcast, those are the only people you speak to. You don't like community. You have a very negative view of your fellow man. And they've all proved you correct. Okay. Over the last three months. So I don't understand why this is getting you down.

[Sarah Longwell]

This is happy about being right.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, you're. You're correct. This doesn't change your life in any meaningful way. This is all the people that I.

[JVL]

Want to be wrong.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. The seven people you talk to are all stalwart still. You know, I'd understand you were sad, a favorite, came home from school in a red hat, but that hasn't happened yet.

[JVL]

Yeah, well, you know what? Well, let's go. You know, we're gonna try to make it to the post just for you, Barry. Sebastian.

[Tim Miller]

I do have to put my child to bed eventually, so let's. Let's close on this.

[JVL]

Sebastian.

[Sarah Longwell]

He's still up.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I'm in trouble. I said we. Remember when we were trying to schedule this, I was like, I'm supposed to do bedtime tonight. My husband's out of town. But I was like, whatever. I will just let her stay up late. Don't tell Tyler. So nobody tell Tyler.

[JVL]

The National Pro Life Summit. A man of the cloth. And I'm just going to call him a man of the cloth. His name is Calvin Robinson. Was a speaker and this happened. This is the last stand for Christendom it's make or break time. The whole of the old world is crumbling. Every country in Europe is embracing death. America, as far as I could see, is the only country fighting for life. And that's down to you guys. So God bless all of you for what you're doing.

[Tim Miller]

Please keep doing it. I hope that I can encourage you.

[JVL]

And my heart goes out to you.

[Sarah Longwell]

God bless.

[Tim Miller]

Who is that person?

[Sarah Longwell]

Who is that guy? Get it, get it.

[JVL]

The shipwrecks think he's doing a Nazi salute. And the Pepe face.

[Sarah Longwell]

Does that guy matter? Who is that guy?

[Tim Miller]

He's just a random priest.

[JVL]

No, not a priest.

[Tim Miller]

So an Anglican priest.

[JVL]

Father Calvin. Well, not really an Anglican priest either. So Father Calvin Robinson, not really a father, not really a priest, you could tell, was trying to dress himself like a priest. He's actually wearing the Nicholas Cage costume from the opening scene of Face off where Nicholas Cage is the priest setting the bomb in the airport. And he, he, he's a Brit. He was in the Anglican Church, left the Anglican Church, sort of bounced around and is now at like a breakoff. Break off of the broken off Anglican Church and identifies himself as like an Anglican. Catholic. Catholic. The answer is like he's basically, he's a priest the way Dr. Phil is a doctor. You know, he's just like, he just. You put on the cassock and you get a church that'll pay you to be, to be the reverend and you know, you can call yourself prime candidate.

[Tim Miller]

For deputy HHS secretary to me.

[Sarah Longwell]

Is Dr. Still a medical doctor?

[JVL]

No, I'm, I have no comment about that. Allegedly. There. See, we just say the word allegedly and you can say maybe.

[Tim Miller]

I don't think so.

[JVL]

But here is, here is what gets me. What gets me is the reaction from the crowd. So you have all of these supposedly earnest pro lifers who just care about babies. And I'm an earnest pro lifer. I care about babies. And you have this guy up there who is representing himself as a priest even though he's not really, and he does this Nazi salute and he knows exactly what he's fucking doing. Because you see again his Pepe smirk and the people there just think it's fan fucking tastic. These people are a bunch of ghouls, ghouls and monsters. And I, I don't know, like, I look at that and the world is full of performative. This guy is just another one of them. The crowd reaction to this, I don't know, jbl.

[Tim Miller]

I just think that, you know, we should probably turn to somebody who, like, really understands what the mission of the Catholic Church is, like, recent Convert Vice President J.D. vance, who, like, who's really focused on it, like, and he's just out there saying, you know, the Catholics are really this new church that I joined. They need to look in the mirror because I think they're on the take for the illegals. All right. That's what he said on. Was it? Did you see this, Sarah?

[Sarah Longwell]

No. What?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. J.D. vance is like the Catholic Church.

[JVL]

The Margaret Brennan U.S. conference of Catholic.

[Tim Miller]

Bishops, the USCCB Margaret Brennan asked him about the U.S. conference of Catholic Bishops, criticizing the immigration plans that the administration has. And J.D. vance, in the same smirk as that, was like, you know, I think the Catholic bishop's got to look in the mirror. They've been getting a lot of money for repatriating illegal migrants. And they might. They might.

[JVL]

Money for repatriation.

[Tim Miller]

They might just be doing this for the cash.

[Sarah Longwell]

But I actually just didn't understand it because I don't. Do they get cash? Like, I didn't even understand the point.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, yeah, they got their fan those. They got their fancy shoes, and they have a nice little house.

[JVL]

Anybody who's ever spent any time with Catholic Charities, the people who work at Catholic Charities are rolling up in their Lexuses. And this is. I mean, the truth of Catholic Charity World is that everything is done on a shoestring and most of the heavy lifting is done by volunteers. Absolutely nobody is making any money off of this shit.

[Tim Miller]

I have a question, Sebastian. Where'd you get this from? Sebastian, trying to help us out here, gave us the exact quote, but he quotes that whoever wrote this writes Vance, comma, a devout Catholic, sharply rebuked cbs. That's CBS News. There you go. There you go. Great. A devout Catholic. CBS News tells us, I'm sure, that JD is just following the catechism to a table. Loving thy neighbor. That part of it. And that's kind of the woke Catholic stuff. That's not the real. That's not the real good stuff. The real good stuff is just the.

[JVL]

Eye for the eye. Trans people clothe the naked, feed the hungry. That's woke socialist.

[Tim Miller]

No, to be a devout Catholic, all you got to do show up with the old trans people.

[JVL]

Yeah, I. So that's part of it. That's part of it. I mean, Sarah, do you see any, like, what you give me. Give me a little. You're just. You're being very quiet here. Are you sundowning? Are you. I mean, it's very late.

[Sarah Longwell]

I was trying to Decide whether to argue with you over like what he was doing and decided oh my God.

[Tim Miller]

No, I need to go to bed. I need to put my child to bed. We can't do that.

[Sarah Longwell]

All right.

[JVL]

Just that I won't.

[Sarah Longwell]

Just calm down. I just. It's. It's a very. It's like we're. They were in like let's go Brandon territory now where that's going to become.

[JVL]

Yes.

[Sarah Longwell]

A symbol that is. It's a meta symbol. It's a symbol.

[JVL]

Yes.

[Sarah Longwell]

So but it. What he is saying, it is a symbol of your overreaction. Jbl. It is a to him and what the crowd is responsible.

[Tim Miller]

Now.

[Sarah Longwell]

I agree. Like this is supposed to be like religious people. But it's. It's a. It's a. It's a. It's now an in group joke over libs. Tears over things that they are misinterpreted.

[Tim Miller]

You know here's the thing though. As somebody used to participate in this. You know what else was an in group joke among me and my 16 year old buddies at the all boys high school. Yeah. Jokes with this K word. Like those are all racist jokes. Were in group jokes among. At my. At my white school. Like we are.

[Sarah Longwell]

What is the K word.

[Tim Miller]

My point is that when you're. When you're within a group of people that are all making racist jokes but the joke is that like we're not really racist. It's a meta joke about how other people overreact to us being racist. Like the line between that and actual racist jokes like becomes very blurry. The blood brain barrier begins to. You know, you get to get lost. There's. And as somebody that. That participated in that when I was 15 and didn't know any better, I can tell you that. That it's. It's.

[JVL]

Let me.

[Tim Miller]

It's a dangerous game.

[JVL]

Let me. Let me throw this out there for you. What is what it. And it's just a.

[Sarah Longwell]

You're right. I should have known better.

[JVL]

A nice way to end. Maybe. Maybe what we need to do is take the power of the Nazi salute ourselves and adopt it. And the Nazi salute should be the resistance symbol to each other. We need people who are doing. We give them the Nazi salute as our like. Yeah. Yeah. You guys think you're. We're. We're gonna go Nazi on you.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, you go first, Sarah. No, I agree with jbl, but since you're the publisher, I think you should do it first and then lead the way.

[Sarah Longwell]

Here's. Here's what that guy did. That was smarter than Ian, which is. He said, my heart goes out to you as he did it.

[JVL]

That's what we should do all the time.

[Sarah Longwell]

Salute. And then, and then following it up. Okay, hold on. This is what I was going to say. Something to try to make JVL feel better and our audience, because I have a real thing.

[Tim Miller]

It's really past my kids bedtime.

[Sarah Longwell]

This, everything is overreach and backlash. And we've had long overreach and backlash swings throughout history. And that time frame because of the world we live in now gets shorter, smaller. And I believe that the backlash is coming. The overreach is happening. I believe the backlash will come. I don't think it will be like. I don't think it will feel like it feels right now forever.

[JVL]

Okay, so that's nice, but I would like to not have to wait for the overreach of Operation Barbarossa before we get the backlash of Stalingrad. Like I would, I would like to avoid going that far. But you know, our, our fellow Americans, the great and good American people, they want to. They want to see exactly how far we can write this over. It's great. It's great. Great, great, great.

[Tim Miller]

This has been great. That's been another great Dax.

[JVL]

We should do a lot of these nighttime live shows on YouTube. This is a fabulous idea. I really think that our guys, thank you for supporting us. Although maybe you want to reconsider that now after this. 90 minutes. And we gave you the super.

[Tim Miller]

Stop saying it's 90 minutes because we have several things we have to cut off for the regular people tomorrow. So it's not actually going to be 90 minutes.

[JVL]

You know what? When the regular people get to this part, they're gonna go, crap. I, I should have listened to the live thing. Then I would have heard it all.

[Tim Miller]

That's true.

[JVL]

All right, friends. Thanks, Sarah. I'll see you on Friday. Tim, I'll talk to you later. Thank you. To our friends.

[Tim Miller]

Hang in there, jvl.

[Sarah Longwell]

Thanks, guys. You're the best.

[JVL]

Good luck, America.