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- [00:03]
JVL
Hello everyone. Welcome to the next level. I'm JVL here with my best friend Tim Miller. And subbing in for my other best friend, Sarah Longwell, who is on assignment is Sam Stein of the Bulwark.
- [00:16]
Tim Miller
More than just an acquaintance at this point.
- [00:18]
JVL
More than just an acquaintance. I mean, we've lived through an election together. So my bosom friend Sam Stein.
- [00:25]
Tim Miller
Oh, wow.
- [00:27]
JVL
So it's been a week and I.
- [00:31]
Sam Stein
I just love living in American meritocracy. Can I just say that meritocracy is the best. We are no more dei, nobody getting jobs based on their skin color or their sexual orientation.
- [00:44]
JVL
Every job in America, you have a show on Fox.
- [00:47]
Sam Stein
Every job in America right now is given to somebody based solely on the work they put in their work product, the, the results that they showed in those jobs, how many big dick toilets they sold, you know, how many ring boys were molested. Like it's just boom, meritocracy only. And I love that now. And I'm glad Elon Musk is in there to ensure that the meritocracy is happening. I love meritocracy.
- [01:15]
JVL
Look, we should just get into the show. But I do want to say that was one of the tenets of old guard conservatism that I was always very uncomfortable with. Like the. I think it's the Buckley line. Like I'd rather be governed by the first hundred names in the Boston phone book than the however fact. And I always thought to myself, are you fucking kidding me?
- [01:36]
Sam Stein
Have you met anyone?
- [01:37]
JVL
Bill, have you ever been. Has Bill Buckley ever been to the dmv? Like, you know, like, did Bill Buckley sit at the DMV looking around to his left and to his right and think to himself, yeah, I'd like these people to have authority over me. I mean, I understand that he met people from the Harvard faculty lounge all the time and detested them, but again, I don't get the sense he spent a lot of time at the dmv.
- [02:01]
Sam Stein
Did he drop that line before his. He met his brother in law's son, Albrent Bozel, maybe. Oh God, maybe that was it.
- [02:12]
JVL
Anyway, I would like to start out today with rfk because I think that it is. I think RFK is the most politically relevant in the sense of a person within the cabinet who has the potential to actually shape electoral politics. And maybe I'm wrong. I don't think he'll be relevant in the. I don't think he'll be especially relevant in the sense of like lasting harms he can do to the governing structure of America in the way that, like.
- [02:53]
Sam Stein
Matt, Sam might have a disagreement, or.
- [02:55]
JVL
Pete Hegseth could be. But I think, you know, like, RFK is gonna move a lot of people who have been soft Ds and turn them into Republicans.
- [03:07]
Sam Stein
Go ahead. There's so many places to go on that. Why don't you just. Sounds like you have a little riff. Why don't you do that? And then me and Sam can react to it.
- [03:15]
JVL
No, I mean, I want to open this to discussion. As you mentioned yesterday on your show, Tim, RFK is incredibly popular and people like him, and the world is full of cranks. And I think one of the category errors we've made over the last 10 years was thinking that cranks made up like 10 or 15% of the country. And that's not right. It's like they make up like 35% of the country, maybe more. No, but I'm not kidding, though.
- [03:50]
Sam Stein
No, I thought you were going to say 60. That was the mental number I had in my head.
- [03:54]
Tim Miller
It's clearly 50 at least.
- [03:58]
JVL
And if he starts bringing them all. Which is what. This is the anti vax stuff. Right. The anti Vax just 10 years ago was really split between left and right. You had like, the people who were militia members living on compounds in Nebraska with AR15s who were against vaccines because of government conspiracies, et cetera, et cetera. And then you had hippies in Berkeley who were against vaccines because they weren't natural or something. And I don't think that has happened. I believe vaccines have become polarized as a partisan matter and that that is something that's meaningful.
- [04:40]
Tim Miller
Yeah, well, there's a lot to chew on here. Let me just point out that, like, you're absolutely right about the history here. And I remember being in newsrooms like, five, ten years ago, and we'd have these editorial discussions about whether to even write about the anti vax movement. And the reason we had those discussions is that one, they were fringe, but two is you didn't want to. You thought it might be irresponsible editorially to elevate these people, because if you treated them as a either or, then it would give credence to their beliefs, which were so empirically wrong and harmful. We're so far past that place.
- [05:21]
JVL
I think that was a totally sensible policy.
- [05:23]
Sam Stein
Yeah.
- [05:23]
Tim Miller
No, and I remember being. I think it was Kevin Stitt or something like that in Oklahoma was saying some stuff about vaccines, and we were just sort of like, do we cover this? How do we cover this, and I think we did cover it, but it was a legitimate debate and now, of course, he can't. It's impossible not to cover it and it'd be foolish to try not to cover it. I think to a degree I agree with what you're saying that there's plenty of people out there, crunchy, lefty types, who have not felt comfortable in the Democratic Party at all, but have been there because it is closer to liberal values, who will drift with him and who believe that Trump is sort of a heterodox to begin with and that he's. He positioned himself as the anti war candidate in the horseshoes connecting. So I do think there's a realignment that's happening, not one that will happen. Where I disagree with you is that I think it doesn't take much to imagine a real world event really exposing this.
- [06:21]
Sam Stein
Can we, can we actually, let's pause on that because let's do the politics of it first and then we'll get to the real world potential damage of rfk, because I think the politics is the most interesting. And I've been, I've been chewing on this for about 48 hours now. As you mentioned at the end of the podcast, I did a riff on this that was not like, again, not in defense of rfk, but from just a purely political standpoint, a question of how the Democrats have made a mistake in this realignment between trust and distrust. Crank and what's the opposite of crank? Crank. Yeah, crank and normie crank. An elite crank and know it all about. Maybe crank and know it all. Like if you, if you realign into a place where all of the cranks are in one party and all of the, all of our betters, you know, all the book readers, you know, who trust the experts, all of the Tom Nichols, we'll call them the Tom Nichols category. The Tom Nichols is who love the elites are in one party and the cranks are in the other. That is a losing trade. A losing trade for Democrats. And to me, like, for all of this, like, postmortem discussion and you know, this is next level where we kind of test out ideas of like, oh, we need to talk about the economy differently or we need to do this or we need to go on Jero, that trade, like, might be the thing that is actually the most significant because I'm sorry to some of our progressive listeners, I've seen it in the comments, don't like this, but, like, there were a lot of cranks in the Barack Obama Democratic Coalition A lot. There was this particular brand of the kind of health, influencer health in quotation marks, you know, that like, you know, is into like strange ingredients in their foods and doesn't want as obsessed about GMOs and like is very hippie ish, lefty and doesn't want vaccines and you know, doesn't want anything in their body that's not natural except for steroids. And like, like that group was like most like there are a lot of lefties in that group. It wasn't all lefties, but there were a lot of lefties in that kind of space. I mean the first anti vax like little outbreaks that happened were in my old area, the Bay Area. Right. Like it was, it was not, it was not the conservatives in the Bay Area. Right. So, so those used to be lefties. A lot of. And working class people, you know, like who are the types of people that are like reading tabloids and like really into it, you know, it's not all. Again, I'm not trying to make a judgment here about like college educated versus non college. But again there's a preponderance of them or working class voters that like are into conspiracy theories. Who's like into you know, oh, I don't know, the aliens and the UFOs. Sure there's some college educated people that are into all that, but it's it.
- [09:00]
Tim Miller
I need to push back a little because in the Obama era the conspiracists were actually not totally on the left. Like you had people.
- [09:09]
Sam Stein
Of course not totally.
- [09:10]
Tim Miller
I mean the whole Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck took off in the Obama era because he was drawing conspiracies on his whiteboard. Secondly is, I don't think that there's that many people relative to the populace who are purely anti vax. I think there are people who couch it by saying their anti vax mandate. But I think when it comes down to if you look at the polling data, people believe in vaccines. And thirdly, I would just make for now. Yeah, that's true. I know it's true though. And then thirdly, I would just make the case that the one complicating feature here is that I'm not sure that the current Republican Party is the home for them. I mean I've noticed that the people Just look at the senators who have and the figures who have responded to rfk. Yes, obviously Trump is a big fan and his people are big fan. But like, like the people who've spoken up in favor of his health stuff just like the food Stuff are Jared Polis and Cory Booker. Cory Booker didn't mention him. Right. But he basically agrees with that stuff. The people who have been skeptical of it are in the pockets of Big Ag.
- [10:11]
Sam Stein
Right.
- [10:11]
Tim Miller
Like, it's Chuck Grass who's like, hey, you gotta come in here. I gotta tell you all about how great corn is. And I just think there's a. You know, he's going to run into some obstacles as he pushes this stuff because I don't think the Republican Party is fundamentally yet a place where he has a home.
- [10:26]
Sam Stein
I just wanted to. I think the party's gonna. Okay, so we'll get to where the party's going next. But on the Obama thing, just. It was important clarification. I was not saying that all of the conspiracy theorists were in the Obama coalition. I'm just saying, like, Obama had a big chunk of them. They were distributed more evenly. Right. And some of this stuff isn't even conspiracy. When I say I also, I'm lumping in conspiracy and lack of trust in institutions together. Like people that like, I don't know about big pharmacy. What are they putting in our system? I don't know about Big Ag. What are we putting in our system? All those people, like, a lot of not lefties. A lot of those people were lefties in the past. And if the Democrats are now gonna be the place of, like, we have to trust that all of the institutions work and we have to trust the big corporations. That is a loser. That's gonna appeal to me. I'm in that group. Right. Me and Tom Nichols.
- [11:17]
Tim Miller
I agree with that.
- [11:18]
Sam Stein
Yeah, me and Tom Nichols and I had Dan Goldman on the pod today. There's a handful of establishment libs and all of us could have a meeting at the GW basketball gym and not win any elections. You got to have some. At least be welcoming to a flare of contrarian thinking in your coalition or else it's hard to get to a majority.
- [11:39]
JVL
Well, I want to. The decrease of trust is so widespread and across the board, I think we need to narrow it. And really, for the purpose of this conversation, we should probably focus on the vaccine stuff. Because one of the things that I find interesting is that as the Republican Party has become a very natural home for vaccine skeptics and people who are not skeptical, but are just anti vaccine, don't want vaccines of any sort. Like MMR vaccines. They don't want. And I should say almost all of this is recent. Right. There are people who's who 10 years ago, 15 years ago, their kids got The Hep A vaccine, they got the MMR vaccine, they got the chickenpox vaccine. And it was only with COVID that they then suddenly became anti vaccine. So it's not like deeply held beliefs, it's all just political fadism. But what's interesting to me is that we are not seeing the opposite happening. So we do not see the influx in anti vaxxers into the Republican coalition. Making Normie Republicans go, I gotta get out of here. And that is because of something we learned during the pandemic about America, which is that people don't actually care about life and they don't really care about saving lives. They only care about what they've got. And so if you, if you like vaccines and you're a Republican, well shit, you, your kids are getting, your kids aren't going to get polio. So what the hell do you care if you know, if the Jim Bob next to you's kids get polio? Well, that's up to Jim Bob. Right. And the Hobbesian Republican elite. It is. But that is from a coalition building standpoint is a huge advantage. And I think it's something Democrats should emulate. That's what I think Democrats should emulate. That they should stop caring so much about what happens to people who don't vote for them.
- [13:40]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [13:40]
Sam Stein
Or is there, I gotta say out loud, can I do the more positive version of that? Cause this is what I said. Sure. They should not care so much if there are people that are that, that might vote for them that have views that are very bad. Like this is really my main point about the polis thing. It's like, like polis endorsing him for HHS was wrong and people should criticize him for that. But then going to like, you're an idiot, you're a moron, get rid of him. Is he a secret maga? Is he on the other side now? Like all of that shit. It's like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like you need the beef tallow people. Like if there are a couple, Kamala could have used a few more voters who believe that McDonald's should be beef tallow and that might not have been so keen on the vaccine. She might not have lost Michigan had she had a few more vaccine skeptics in the tent. And so it's not like you don't need to put them in charge of hhs, but maybe have a more open minded approach to that.
- [14:38]
JVL
They're not stopping your kids from getting vaccinated.
- [14:40]
Sam Stein
Right.
- [14:41]
JVL
I mean, you know, like reality imposes consequences for you.
- [14:45]
Tim Miller
Right. But that's not real science. Right? Like, if you have a. If you have, like, an outbreak of measles before your kid can get vaccinated, like, you're susceptible to it, and that's a problem, right? Sure, sure.
- [14:56]
JVL
There will be collateral damage. I'm not gonna lie.
- [14:58]
Tim Miller
And it could be your kid.
- [14:59]
Sam Stein
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- [16:32]
Tim Miller
I'm kind of curious, JB like, so the Biden idea was, like, on infrastructure spending, for instance, they were going to build all these projects, set up all these factories in red area rural America.
- [16:43]
Sam Stein
How'd that turn?
- [16:45]
Tim Miller
Should they have just not done it?
- [16:47]
JVL
Yeah, yeah, they should just have not done that. I mean, I think it's just been proven that Biden had a theory of how American politics works and his theory was disproven. We tested it.
- [16:59]
Tim Miller
Yeah. See, I wonder how much of this is that. And my current thinking is that so much of our politics is just backlash to events, big events. So, like, everything that's defined this transition period for Trump to me, is distilled into two buckets. One is backlash to Covid and whatever health protocols are put in place around that. And you can see that in the appointment of RFK and others. And two is backlash to MeToo. And you see that across the board. I mean, it is evident that people just got, at least on the right, just got completely fed up with the MeToo movement and with COVID protocols. And they are having at it and they're saying, fuck this, we're going to push back in the exact opposite directions. We're going to go with anti vaxxers to go. People who have been credibly accused of sexual assault and that's that.
- [17:54]
Sam Stein
Yeah, I think two thoughts on that. One, on the Should Biden have done the factory building? I mean, this, like, this probably doesn't really matter on the margins, but, like, it's worth at least thinking about, like, one of the big crises for the Democrats we're going to be talking about over the coming years is their poor governance, to be honest, in New York and California and some other in Illinois is causing those places to lose congresspeople in electoral votes. Come 2030, it's going to be actually the map gets worse for Democrats and so might not have been a terrible idea for Joe Biden to actually be like, you know, nope, these factories are going to go into Illinois and California and New York and we're going to try to revitalize the economies in blue states a little bit. That would have been a totally reasonable thing to do and maybe would have had some positive impacts because you certainly didn't get anything out of building the factories here in Louisiana or in Ohio.
- [18:48]
Tim Miller
Or Lordstown, Ohio, the big Lordstown, Ohio factory. I looked this up because it was, you know, that they literally had a factory promised them by Trump. He told them not to move. The factory never came. Biden goes inputs an EV factory, 2000 plus jobs. County votes 57, 40 for Trump, for Harris.
- [19:07]
Sam Stein
And obviously you've got the Haitians that took some of those jobs and yeah, that thing around it. So that's that. As far as the back, like the MeToo backlash, though, like, I mean, it's literally a MeToo cabinet. Yeah, the cabinet is a MeToo cabinet. And they add Linda McMahon, which is the most recent one since we last discussed. And like, I literally there. She's in the middle of a lawsuit right now about the boys that set up the ring who were sexually assaulted by some of the gays that were working for Vince McMahon and that they covered it up and didn't do anything. And Vince is under. And her ex. Husband. Husband. Are they still together? They at least live apart. Is under multiple federal investigations for all of the. For sex trafficking and sexual assault. That it's like she isn't directly under investigation, but it's like it was her company and her husband. And so it's like even the women that are being appointed to the cabinet have me. To me too related issues.
- [20:07]
Tim Miller
But kill me about this is it's not just even that. It's like they take it a step further. Like, Megyn Kelly today, I think said something akin to, like. It's the fact that people are mad at Matt Gaetz for these sexual assault allegations that has driven her to support Matt Gaetz. It's like. It's like. It's almost like a badge of honor to be a.
- [20:26]
JVL
You're gonna call me a Nazi? Well, by God, then I'm just gonna decide to be a Nazi. And so it's vice signaling.
- [20:33]
Sam Stein
We've written about this. It's vice signaling. It's like instead of. It's like, I'm so annoyed by your virtue signaling that I'm gonna Vice signal. Like, being bad is good, actually.
- [20:41]
JVL
So this. What. What concerns me here is that these are the sorts of things that happen when a society is irrevocably broken. Because the way. Why is that concern. The way democratic societies work, right, Is that the feedback mechanisms and the incentives are aligned to produce in the long run. Net. Net good. Right? Not. Not all the time. The democratic government has tons of failings, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. One step forward, two steps back, yada, yada, yada. But we're at a point where people's electoral behavior is so untethered from reality, so untethered from economic reality, from any we had. Who is the guy? This was posted by Radley Balcombe yesterday.
- [21:33]
Tim Miller
Oh, yeah.
- [21:34]
JVL
In his home county. They just voted overwhelmingly for this. This dude who had been arrested for sexual assault. And everybody knew that it was maybe not sexual assault. Arrested for assault. I don't know if you can find it, Matt, or it was.
- [21:50]
Tim Miller
It was. It was assault. Yes.
- [21:52]
JVL
Assault.
- [21:53]
Tim Miller
Sexual assault case.
- [21:54]
Sam Stein
Yeah.
- [21:55]
JVL
And. And now it's come out that it was actually against his own daughter. And. But he won overwhelmingly. And everybody knew and they didn't care.
- [22:05]
Tim Miller
They knew he had, had. They knew about the sexual assault case. After the election, it came out that it was against his daughter and he's elected to the local county council. It's like, what. What is gonna happen here?
- [22:16]
JVL
But this stuff is all, it's all broken and. Except that we do have one party kind of behaving according to norms. Right. We had a bunch of Democratic voters who didn't show up because, like, inflation was bad. And so when you wind up with that.
- [22:32]
Sam Stein
I don't think that's true, actually.
- [22:34]
JVL
Okay, well, maybe it won't be when we get all the validated voter surveys and we won't, you know, but it's, it's problematic for like any, any potential solution that gets proposed. I think they all basically rely on the idea that the feedback mechanisms and the incentive structures still work. And I don't know that that's true.
- [22:58]
Sam Stein
And this is my, and this is my optimism and this is why jvl, you and me get in trouble when we bring this up. But like, this is why I really, I think that the cleanest path out is this administration failing. And like them just bungling everything in this total clown reality.
- [23:12]
Tim Miller
Who disagrees with that?
- [23:14]
Sam Stein
Several people. Dan Goldman. I just asked today and he's like, he thinks that the Democrats need to work with Republicans to deliver results for people. And I'm like, I don't think you do, actually. I don't. I said that to him on the podcast. I don't think you do.
- [23:27]
Tim Miller
Those are not mutually exclusive. Like, fine, get some money for your district. I don't give a shit. But like, obviously the only way that Democrats come out of this is because Trump will bungle something or there will be an infectious disease outbreak or something very problematic happens in the first couple of days with these mass deportations. I mean, that's the obvious answer here.
- [23:48]
Sam Stein
Yeah. That is the issue with your feedback loop. JBL is like positive feedback loops that don't seem to be working, but negative ones do or have like, like repelling some people. Yeah. And this, like, that's at least the theory of the case of people upset about inflation. At the margins. At the margins. Because this is a key thing. We'll see on the verified votes. Yeah, we'll see on the verified votes. But just really quick one point on this, because if you're going to now analyze this, there's so much bad analysis out there, you least have to recognize the stat, the Fact. Which is Kamala Harris got more votes than Joe Biden in six of the seven states, the battleground states where the campaign was waged, and more votes than the Democratic Senate candidate that beat the Republican in three of the four. Only Gallego in Arizona got more votes than her. So, like, it wasn't people not showing up. Like, it was like some percentage of people from some combination of not liking trans people or being annoyed by inflation or just really loving gold shoes or whatever it is, was like, no, no, no, no. Other side. I'm going back.
- [24:51]
Tim Miller
That's my point. It's like every cycle now is backlash politics. I mean, Trump is a backlash to Obama. Biden's a backlash to Trump, Trump's a backlash to Biden, and we're gonna keep going. And it's like, obviously, it's accelerated by the pandemic and what it did to us as a society and how that affected inflation. And it's, of course, a response to me, too, because you see it in these selections. But I think if you were a betting person, the obvious next two, four years is that there will be a backlash to Trump because of what he ends up doing in office. And frankly, like, if you look at these margins in the House and in the Senate, it was. It was a fairly close election. It's not like this was. Yes, Trump won all this, all the battleground states, but it's not like this is still a 49, 51 country.
- [25:42]
Sam Stein
And you have one annoying point on this. This is. This is a little bit of liberal cope, which is like, it was a very close election, and people keep saying that it was, it was, it was, it was. But it was like, when people are like, why don't. Why is. Why are people treat. I forget, was it Nate Silver that was like, Heather Cox Richardson was writing about how it was a surprise that Trump won. He's like, why should you have been surprised if you just looked at the data? And I was like, you should have been surprised because Donald Trump was indicted by 4.4times and tried an insurrection and is the stupidest person in the country and was a reality tv totally unqualified, and it's absurd that he was the nominee at all. And, like, it would have been absurd for Kamala to win by one point. So, like, there's that element to it that I think is why it, like, leads to some of the JBL nihilism.
- [26:24]
JVL
All right, so can we talk a little bit? Let's move off the politics of the RFK thing into the real world things, because this is the one cabinet appointment that I'm not worried about at all. And in fact, that I welcome and I hope he does all the stuff he wants, because the truth is, you know.
- [26:49]
Tim Miller
Did you read the Free Press thing or whatever it was about? Oh, compare him to Europe.
- [26:54]
JVL
Yeah, that's right.
- [26:55]
Tim Miller
Oh, my God.
- [26:56]
Sam Stein
I've not read it. I'm not a daily Free Press reader. Could one of you guys characterize it for me?
- [27:02]
Tim Miller
You do.
- [27:04]
JVL
It is if we ignore all the insane things he says and we find five other things he said that are basically normal, then we can just say that he's normal. This is the entire Free Press hermeneutic. Andrew Egger's writing about this for tomorrow. Spoiler that.
- [27:23]
Sam Stein
What they do.
- [27:24]
JVL
Bari Weiss's entire shtick is she finds somebody who is an expert or elite at something and finds one error and then uses that to utterly disqualify them from everything. And then she finds somebody who has a crank and finds one normie thing they've said and holds that up and says, see, why are you listening to the elites telling you that this person is a crank? Here is this perfectly normal opinion they have.
- [27:50]
Tim Miller
So in this piece, it's like, well, that's German. Yeah, it's like, Germany doesn't have fluoride in its water. Ergo, Bobby Kennedy's good. Like, we can. We can live with this. And it's like, no, that's not really how it.
- [28:02]
Sam Stein
How are the teeth in Bavaria? I don't. I don't. I've not spent a lot of time there.
- [28:07]
JVL
I. But this is. This is my point. You know what? Like, if it's deeply important to MAGA to get fluoride out of water. Okay, well, blue state governors can spend money to make sure that they can get fluoride treatments into the hands of parents to. To make sure that their kids are mouthwashing with a fluoride mouthwash every night and stuff. Like, these things are not foundational, and they can all be reversed, and they can be reversed very, very easily by the next administration. So these are. These are superficial wounds.
- [28:42]
Sam Stein
I'm not stopping drug and infectious disease research for four years. I mean, yeah, sure, it could be reversed, but that stuck. That's a semi.
- [28:49]
JVL
Sure, you lose four years, but that is a. You lose four years of it. And sure, he can utterly destroy the bureaucracy inside hhs, which would then have all sorts of downstream consequences. I mean, when you lose the institutional knowledge, admit it. But again, none of those are structural problems for America. Those are all superficial problems. For America. And they are problems for which most people can craft their own remedies.
- [29:20]
Tim Miller
I disagree.
- [29:20]
JVL
Right. Okay, Sam, not everybody, right? If you're immunocompromised, then you rely on herd immunity. If you are one of the small number of kids who can't get vaccinated for whatever reason, you rely on herd immunity. And so for those people, they're getting the short end of the stick and it's terrible. And I'm sorry.
- [29:38]
Tim Miller
Well, let's just take the two examples that we just talked about. Fluoride and infectious disease research. So on fluoride, if the solution is that blue state governors, first of all, I think blue state governors could probably control their own water supplies. So maybe that is fine. But if the solution ends up being that they have to, individual parents have to make sure that they have the right fluoride level in their own taps, that creates the exact problem that RFK was trying to avoid here, which is you're going to end up going above the acceptable level of fluoride in your water treatment. End up. You're going to end up worsening the situation. So it's idiotic to begin with. But two, on the infectious disease research, that is, to me, an institutional problem, because what happens is if you cut off the spigot of infectious disease research at NIH for four years, but let's say they do it for eight, because he said in his video, let's just pause it for eight years, it's not.
- [30:26]
JVL
That we figure out what the hell is going on.
- [30:29]
Tim Miller
Yeah, exactly. We got stop this shit. But it's not just that you, I mean, you're not going to actually lose in those eight years a breakthrough, because breakthroughs take 5, 10, 15, 20 years of research. What you will lose is you will lose the breakthrough 10 to 20 years from now. But more importantly than that, anyone who's in the infectious disease research community has to go look for grant money somewhere. And they will go look at Canada, Korea, China, some of the European countries, and they will find people being like, ooh, we can actually get a foothold in this industry. We'll develop the infectious disease breakthroughs in our country. We will then reap the benefits of that. And then suddenly they're incubators for the next round. And, folks, we are not going to get less infectious diseases. We are going to get more coronaviruses. We're going to get more episodes of bird flu and H5N1. You are going to see this stuff worse and worse and worse because climate change is going to Worsen it. And you want to be at the front lines of that. And to have someone just say, no, we're cutting it off is so idiotic that it baffles the mind. And I do think that qualifies as an institutional damage.
- [31:43]
JVL
Yeah, but not, not the kind of damage that prevents. No, no, I understand. I see what you're saying, and I agree. But not to the institution of democracy. Right. Having the Joint Chiefs of staff be packed with guys who are going to be okay with the Insurrection act, that makes, like, the transfer of power more fraught.
- [32:06]
Tim Miller
Yes.
- [32:06]
JVL
Having an attorney general who's going to use the Justice Department to try to hobble any political opposition to, to Trump, that makes it harder to have elections. And so the institutions of democracy are not really threatened by hhs. And, you know, there will be terrible outcomes for people whose health circumstances are bad and who are protected by the rest of the country behaving responsibly. But you know what? We don't live in a country with responsible citizens. We just don't. And like, I don't know, like what.
- [32:46]
Sam Stein
Maybe we'll get. And why should political capital. Maybe we'll get some good out of it. We can just restructure the fda, you know, like, you know, kind of break through some of the things that are, you know, sort of limiting innovation in that space. Kind of get us off of. Get us off of seed oils, something like, there could be some positive side.
- [33:08]
Tim Miller
See, that's a.
- [33:09]
JVL
But that's bad, right?
- [33:11]
Tim Miller
Yes, exactly. But this is the difficulty. Right. Like, the correct approach would be, like, more incremental change and progress at these agencies. But we've been reduced to this kind of like, bifurcated. Either, like, defend the agencies as is or throw them all out. And it's like, no, there's.
- [33:28]
Sam Stein
This is actually, this is actually a good point. And the, And a lot of what I'm doing here is sarcasm. But the Democrats and polis didn't really hit it right by endorsing them. But I guess my broader point about the whole polis thing is, like, the Democrats could sure use some more prominent messengers that instead of their first instinct being like, defend the bureaucrats, defend the fda, defend the AG companies, Like, that's like, you know, RFK is a freaking crank and a weirdo who is a brainworm and who exhumed his dead wife and put her in a different plot of land that she shouldn't have been in. And, like, we shouldn't really trust this person. He has no expertise, he has no skills. But you know what? The FDA is kind of fucked and Big Pharma and Big Ag do have problems and we need to go fix that. And I'm a reformer, is going to take it on and whatever. Like there could be more of that. And like there is like a natural instinct among Democrats to be like, no, defend the norms, defend the system. And like, that is a loser.
- [34:26]
Tim Miller
Yeah. That's what Trump has done. Trump effectively has done that politically is that he forces you to defend these things.
- [34:32]
Sam Stein
Yeah, right.
- [34:33]
JVL
There is a thing that Democrats are not great at where they want. They want Democratic politicians in different environments to behave like the median Democratic politician. And that's a bad recipe. You need Jon Testers, you need Tim Ryan's. And if Jared Polis has to do this to thrive in Colorado, I mean, let's just pretend he's being totally mercenary. He doesn't believe any of this shit. I think he does believe it, but whatever. If this is what he needs to do to thrive politically in Colorado, well, okay, that's good. And Democrats nationally ought to give their elected officials a whole lot of leeway to do what they need to do to win. Because otherwise I am sorry, but you're never going to get a Senate majority if you can't get a Jon Tester in the world. Right.
- [35:27]
Sam Stein
I mean, how is that ever Kenny villain?
- [35:31]
JVL
Right. And so they need to be recruiting Democrats who don't look like normal Democrats and are going to have different positions than normal Democrats if they want to win in places that you need to be able to win if you are going to.
- [35:45]
Sam Stein
You need some. No fluoride in the water Democrats.
- [35:48]
Tim Miller
John Tester did not look like a normal Democrat. He had two fingers on one hand and he definitely didn't take Normie. I mean, he was much more, especially in the last year, much more centrist and even Republican leaning and he got clocked. So Democrats are kind of fucked. What is the path? They've got like the Great Plains states. They're just fucked. It's like a huge swath of the nation. They're never going to have a Senate.
- [36:10]
Sam Stein
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- [38:15]
JVL
Well, I was going to move on to Nancy Mace.
- [38:17]
Sam Stein
Oh great.
- [38:17]
JVL
Meritocracy.
- [38:18]
Tim Miller
Hell yeah.
- [38:18]
JVL
We don't, we don't have to.
- [38:20]
Sam Stein
No, let's do Nancy Mace. We have some news about Nancy Mace. Have you seen this since we've been on? Nancy Mace made it happen. Nancy Mace. She's the woman that stands up for women. And as a result, Speaker Johnson plans to ban trans women from the Capitol. Bathrooms. That will apply to bathrooms in office building, changing and locker rooms per house rules. Speaker has general control over the facilities. So Sarah McBride, I don't know, gonna have to use a porta Potty or something or go in the boys bathroom. I don't know. Maybe that's what Sarah McBride should start doing. Get dressing up all girly and get up in the boys bathroom and just kind of, like, stand right over the shoulder of, like, some of the male politicians. Like, I don't know, like, well, who's. Who. Who's in there these days?
- [39:08]
JVL
Like, Lindsey Graham.
- [39:09]
Sam Stein
Yeah, like, right while Lindsey Graham's peeing. Like, while Lindsey Graham's peeing at the urinal, she should just stand right next to him, stand, look over there and be like, I'm sorry, you wanted me in the men's bathroom. I don't. Is behavior in the bathroom important, or is it how you present? Because apparently it's not behavior because Marjorie Taylor Greene threatened to assault somebody in a bathroom, and she still gets to go into women's bathroom. And so I was. Sarah McBride. I'd think about going in there and just kind of mixing it up. Hey, Rick Scott, take a look at what you got going down there at the. At the stall.
- [39:43]
JVL
So I guess.
- [39:44]
Sam Stein
Is that a wrong idea?
- [39:46]
Tim Miller
It's wrong in my head.
- [39:49]
JVL
Sarah McBride's conduct over the course of this week has been unbelievably graceful. And, you know, I would say she's her statement on this. Every day, Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different from their own and engage with them respectfully. I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness. I mean, that's really. That's refreshing. It's nice to see. And I have long felt that, like, that is the way for trans rights to succeed in the long run, not like militant confrontations. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm like an mlk. Maybe I'm a Professor X, not a magneto guy on this. Yeah, you like that, Tim? Yeah.
- [40:40]
Tim Miller
Oh, come on, X Men, let's go.
- [40:43]
JVL
But she's, you know, she's done good work, and I. I find the whole thing grotesque. And Nancy Mace, who, you know, has on her website a piece talking about her deep. Her deep respect for LGBTQ people and the need to balance dignity with freedoms and all. Like, there. There are there. You can see a universe in which Nancy Mace could have engineered the exact same conflict over this one member of Congress's use of a bathroom in a way that would have been respectful and in good faith. And maybe she would have been right and maybe she would have been wrong, but none of this was that. I mean, she's like, I'm going to drink your liberal tears with my Pino. And it's just cruelty. It's performative cruelty and bullying. And spoiler. She wins, right? We'll always win.
- [42:00]
Tim Miller
Let me read the exact quote from Nancy mace's website. It's 2021, so not too long ago. Quote, I have friends and family that identify as lgbtq. Understanding how they feel and how they've been treated is important. Having been around gay, lesbian, and transgender people has informed my opinion over my lifetime. It clearly hasn't. To that end, if you were at a workplace that wasn't Congress and you had a colleague who was transgendered and you were uncomfortable with that person being in your bathroom, you would do something like go to the boss quietly, or even go to the person quietly and say, hey, can we work something out? I'm not comfortable with this. This just actually makes me uncomfortable. I don't want to be offensive about it. And I know this is an awkward conversation, but, like, let's find a workaround. Like, that would be the human thing to do. But Nancy Mace. Nancy Mace is a political weather vane. And Nancy May saw that in 2024, Republicans spent tens of millions of dollars on anti trans ads and did so successfully. And she wants to stay in Republican politics. And what she did is she picked on the most vulnerable member of Congress, a freshman member who is the first transgender member of the House, and she decided that she was going to absolutely scapegoat and bully this person in a despicable, hurtful way. And I feel horrible about it. You watch it. And Sarah McBride's just enduring. I mean, just go on any Twitter thread with Nancy Mason. Look at the comments. It's about as low as you can get. It's. It's horrible, nasty, gross stuff, just inhumane stuff. And it makes me feel, like, almost empty inside reading it for. And I feel so bad for Sarah McBride, who has to endure this and who, frankly, has to mostly endure it alone, because every Democrat now is too scared to stand up and say, no, this is wrong. Like, the only Democrat who has stood up recently and said, no, this is wrong is John Fetterman, who's been like, to pick on trans kids makes you an asshole. And I know that everyone's scared about sticking up for trans people at this point, but, like, has some dignity, right? Like, what the fuck is going on?
- [44:15]
Sam Stein
I don't think Democrats should be and should be scared. I think sometimes there's a miss, like, understanding. Like, there's A lot more nuance in all these conversations. And then people want to have, right. Where if like you say on a podcast, like, well, I don't know, maybe Democrats should back off the trans issue. That it's like that means you should never talk about trans people at all. And it's just like, no, like maybe like some of the. More some of the things from 2019 where we're sending out questionnaires and you're asking Democrats to sign on to these obscure, you know, kind of like commitments to let undocumented immigrants, you know, have sex changes at the US Taxpayer dime, like federal prisoners. But yes, sure, whatever. Maybe not do that. Maybe not do that. Maybe you don't need to wait. Maybe you don't need to have an opinion on such a topic. And we've seen the downside of that. But that doesn't mean that you can't stand up for Sarah McBride in this situation. And I think frankly, the big middle of the country, the big majority of the country is probably against taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners and probably wants Sarah McBride, as long as she is not creating any problems to be able to go into the bathroom of her choosing. I think that that is probably a 60% issue in the country. And I don't know that Democrats need to tuck their tail. I think. So, yeah. There was huge backlash to all the trans bathroom bills. It's so crazy. Pat McCrory in North Carolina lost like the conventional wisdom was the opposite six years ago in this issue. Right. Where Pat McCrory lost because the trans bathroom bill in North Carolina, I forget it led to like the final four not coming there or something. I forget what it was some. A big event. And so it was like, you know, there was a blowback in the business community and people are like, you're being an asshole. And like who you know. So I just, I don't. And there is a, unfortunately large element that is all inside the Republican Party that wants being mean and cruel to trans people is a pro. So I don't want to understate the problem here. Nancy Mace is certainly a political winner within GOP primaries sense or from a attention economy within the conservative media sense, it's certainly a political winner. But I don't think that had. I don't think that $100 million, let's just put it this way. If in 2028, whoever J.D. vance, Donald Trump Jr. With Donald Trump as his vice president, run 100. Run $100 million. Yeah. Run $100 million worth of ads targeting Democratic nominee John Fetterman about how he wanted Sarah McBride to use. To be able to use the women's bathroom at the Hill. I don't think that has the same salience. That's all I'm saying. And it's also the right thing to do.
- [47:02]
JVL
Maybe.
- [47:03]
Tim Miller
Yeah. It's like, first of all, yes, I totally agree. Secondly, it's like, to understand how far out there it is. Nancy Mace was actually criticized online for whatever 130 tweets she put up about this because she didn't refer to Sarah McBride as a he like that. People were mad at her because she wasn't anti trans enough. So there is that thread, which is nuts, but there's nothing stopping Hakeem Jeffries from being like, look, we'll sort out this bathroom stuff and we'll make sure everyone feels accommodated, but in the meantime, stop being fucking assholes. Like, she's your colleague. Stop being pricks about it. Like, that seems to me like a decent and fundamentally right thing to do. And I don't see how even if there were.
- [47:48]
Sam Stein
Fuck.
- [47:49]
Tim Miller
Political downside of that. Just be human. Just be human.
- [47:52]
Sam Stein
Concur.
- [47:53]
JVL
It is. There is no explanation for it other than cruelty. Yeah, maybe they're just politics. Right.
- [48:02]
Tim Miller
She wants to be on the right.
- [48:03]
JVL
Side of Republican politics, but because the cruelty is a political winner, and that's deeply depressing. All right, last two. Since we're doing Sebastian, this show should be called all the President's Men. Matt Whitaker taking over NATO, and then Linda McMahon. You know, it's funny, I just did a show about Linda McMahon yesterday because I'm watching the Netflix Mr. McMahon docu series.
- [48:28]
Sam Stein
Yeah.
- [48:29]
JVL
And it was the episode that dealt with the Trish Stratus storyline, in which. I don't know if you guys remember this, but in the storyline, the young diva wrestler, very attractive woman, Trish Stratus, had come into the WWE and Vince McMahon was having an affair with her, sort of out in the open. And part of the storyline that was on television was that Vince and Trish were drugging Linda McMahon into catatonia. And so she was wheeled around in a wheelchair as a prop and would just sort of sit there, staring off into the distance. And this would happen on Monday Night Raw every night.
- [49:09]
Tim Miller
Like, as play, as, like, acting, or. Is this real? I really understand Kayfabe.
- [49:14]
Sam Stein
Gotcha.
- [49:15]
JVL
It's kayfabe.
- [49:16]
Tim Miller
I just want to make sure.
- [49:17]
JVL
I don't really follow, but, you know, so this woman who used to sit in a wheelchair in a wrestling ring pretending to be drugged into catatonia while her husband stood over a young buxom, half naked girl and demanded that she get on all fours and bark like a dog to please him. The woman in the wheelchair who was watching all that is going to be.
- [49:42]
Sam Stein
The Secretary of Education. Secretary of Education again, educate.
- [49:48]
Tim Miller
I thought they were eliminating the dependence.
- [49:50]
Sam Stein
I'm a libertine. I always feel so uncomfortable in all these situations. I like raw. If you want to do fake, I do too. If you want to do sort of this weird, lascivious, cuckolding kind of show for people, okay. But not so okay. If you want to turn the blind eye when young men are being raped by your company, that's not okay. The sex trafficking of the women, also not okay. But like the Secretary of Education, like, do we have no standards? Is there no standard? The person in charge of the schools, like, shouldn't the person in charge of the school.
- [50:24]
JVL
Nothing you can do that is disqualifying anymore except be nice to trans people. That's disqualifying.
- [50:32]
Sam Stein
Like, really, what is? Her. She's also 76. Like we just, we had the whole Joe Biden's too old thing. We have a 78 year old president, a 76 year old secretary of Education who has no relevant subject matter expertise, who has massive scandals hanging around Republican.
- [50:48]
JVL
Politics now for two decades longer, really. But you know, she had her failed Senate run in Connecticut and was a donor to Trump and was, you know, she had, I forget what her job was in Trump 1.0 and commerce.
- [51:03]
Sam Stein
It's an absurd thing. It's just like if you had idiocracy, if you went back to idiocy. And Hector Mountain Dew's Camacho's cabinet was like, that's what this is. The head of the wrestling department, the quack doctor on tv, like the weirdest person in Congress, the morning talk show host. And it's preposterous. I mean, it's like, so what is a big difference if don't look up had done this? Like, if Don't look up, which was widely mocked by conservatives as being like, oh, these lists is liberal fantasy nonsense. And it's like if this had been the cabinet and don't look up, you know, like, who's the movie reviewer at the National Review? Kyle whatever his name is, would be like, this is ridiculous. The Hollywood, the Hollywood left doesn't understand the right.
- [51:51]
JVL
Like, we're not National Review.
- [51:54]
Sam Stein
Who isn't?
- [51:55]
Tim Miller
Ross.
- [51:56]
JVL
I believe it's Ross Douthat.
- [51:57]
Sam Stein
Yeah, Ross. It's ridiculous. So anyway, the Matt Whitaker thing though, can we talk about Matt Whitaker for a second.
- [52:03]
JVL
Yeah, so. So Matt Whitaker, an old friend of Tim's, is now the ambassador to NATO, which I believe is a position that comes with both a driver and a personal chef.
- [52:16]
Tim Miller
Not bad.
- [52:18]
JVL
And all you have to do is live in Brussels.
- [52:19]
Sam Stein
Before I talk about my relationship with Matt, I would like Sam, because in the green room, Sam made a joke about the big Dick, about the big tick toilets, which neither Sebastian nor JBL were familiar with. And so I'd like Sandra Regale JBL in the audience with the big dick toilet story. And then I'll go.
- [52:40]
Tim Miller
You're about to find out.
- [52:41]
Sam Stein
It's something that many of us rely upon. But that's okay.
- [52:46]
Tim Miller
Yeah. Yours is in the mail, Jimmy. So basically, when he was appointed acting Attorney General, I believe I forget the year, it surfaced that he had once been on this advisory board for a company called World Patent Marketing. And basically they had designed a toilet to, quote, help well endowed men go to the bathroom without their genitalia making contact with the porcelain. So, Matt.
- [53:21]
Sam Stein
Or splashing in the water. Or splashing in the water, which is.
- [53:24]
Tim Miller
Like, you know, a thing.
- [53:26]
Sam Stein
Not a problem for Mike Johnson.
- [53:29]
Tim Miller
So. So this was always. So it was. He was always the big dick attorney General and now the big dick ambassador to NATO.
- [53:37]
JVL
Did Arnold Palmer have one of those toilets?
- [53:39]
Tim Miller
Yeah, they call it the Arnold Palmer special. This is where we're at.
- [53:45]
Sam Stein
You're missing, you're missing an important element of the story. I mean, I believe so. Which is that the FTC ended up suing World Patent Marketing and it was all a scam. Like there wasn't even like the Big Victoria wasn't even really a thing. It was like a scam. People didn't get what they, they had ordered and they ended up having to pay 26 million. I think that number is somewhere in my brain memory. I don't know if that's right in fines. So he had a fake Big Dick toilet company.
- [54:17]
Tim Miller
I gotta read you the quote from the marketing company. The average quote, the average male genitalia is between 5 inches and 6 inches. The invention marketing company said quote. However, this invention is designed for those of us who measure longer than this is what we're dealing with. Oh my God. I also had a promotional video that's claimed DNA evidence collected in 2013 proves that Bigfoot does exist. And they help sell Sasquatch dolls called you have been SAs or you have been squashed.
- [54:53]
Sam Stein
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- [57:04]
JVL
I was going to say like, well, it's good thing he's at NATO and not at doj, but honestly, would it he was. No, but I mean, would he be worse than Gates at doj? I don't know.
- [57:16]
Sam Stein
Potentially he's dumber. He's way dumber than Gates. So is that better or worse? I don't know. Kind of depends about how.
- [57:24]
Tim Miller
The point here is that Gates is an operative and a good political tactician, and he and Whitaker is just sort.
- [57:30]
Sam Stein
Of a. Yeah, I guess my point is Gates might be more targeted at going after foes in a way that's kind of clever and made workable. And so that's a problem. But, like, Whitaker might have been like, Mr. Trump wants me to sue Liz Cheney. Okay. Like, you know, there might have been more of that happening with Whitaker. Whitaker is a moron. I cannot overstate this. He was an Iowa football player who ran for office in Iowa. Based on his football lore, probably he was total incompetent in his private sector career. We mentioned the world patent marketing. There were a ton of, like, dumb, you know, companies that didn't, like, really work that he was part of. And some of them were scammy companies that were investigated that he made money off of. And then I encountered him when he was named the head of a, like one of these astroturf groups in D.C. that's like, job was to investigate Democrats, basically. It was like a. What is it? Crew. You know, the crew, which is like a liberal group. It was like, supposed to be the Contra. The. He countered a crew, but more hackneyed and stupider, targeting Democrats with stuff. I encountered him there and he took a salary from that, and I think that's how he made money during that period. And then Trump makes him acting Attorney General after Sessions quits just because he's so pliant and he's looking for the person who will be the most pliant to Donald Trump's whims about the Russia investigation. It's unclear what he's been doing the last few years, but, like, I don't literally. This man has. In the press release. I did some googling in the press release. There's no mention of foreign policy experience. I don't see any evidence that he's had a job related to foreign policy. I don't see any evidence. Like, I'm not. I wouldn't be surprised if, like, his passports only stamp is Cancun. Like, I don't, like, I don't know that he's actually even gone anywhere. Like, what?
- [59:30]
JVL
There's no reason to blame the native NATO member states.
- [59:34]
Sam Stein
No way. I. There's no way he can name the NATO member states. Like, I refuse to believe that he could. Or maybe they've briefed him now and like, he's like, been able to memory memorize them. But there's no way. It is. It's a. It's a ridiculous choice they had to.
- [59:48]
JVL
Make him a mnemonic for it. Like every little girl, every good boy deserves sponge so he can remember on all standards, my dear Aunt Sally.
- [59:56]
Sam Stein
And it's just like, you know, I mean they're not even trying. They're not even trying.
- [60:01]
Tim Miller
It's musical chairs, man. All these people have been in that orbit and they all kind of were waiting for a job. And then so you put the person who has no experience at education at education, you put the TV doc at CMS and it's like, oh wait, we got, we forgot Whitaker. What's Whitaker gonna get? You know, it's like, it's just, it's silly.
- [60:19]
Sam Stein
I know I was joking at the top, but there's no, none of the people. And this will be. I've Sam Harris on the, on the pod tomorrow and so I'll be asking him about like none of the people in that world and the intellectual dark web and the anti woke world and the Ben Shapiro, the Marc Andreessen's Elon, like none of them have any concerns about this. The whole, the meritocracy crowd that are so mad that woke meant that black people got to be in charge of companies and organizations now. They have no issues with the fact that people with no experience at all, who are completely morons, who they would never even talk to in the Stanford cafeteria because they were only there visiting because their smarter sibling went to Stanford or whatever. Like there's no concern that we're gonna have the stupidest people in the country running the government.
- [61:04]
JVL
It's almost like that whole thing was a smokescreen. I will just say I like this appointment for one reason.
- [61:14]
Sam Stein
Great.
- [61:15]
JVL
So if you are thinking in accelerationist terms, having Matt the US Ambassador to NATO will make crystal clear to our NATO allies that America cannot be counted on. Because I think there's a danger that with Rubio a sex state they, you know, people who are alarmed in Brussels and Berlin and Paris and London could have talked themselves into. Well, I mean, look, Marco, we know that he's a hawk, he's one of us. And he, you know, he believes in American leaders. He wanted a new American century. And you know, the Trump thing will pass. He really probably can't run again. And I think having Whitaker over there on a daily basis interfacing with NATO leadership will, will dispel any of that. And they'll realize we've got to start making plans for A post American order. And the sooner Europe does that, the better, because America is not a reliable ally. It hasn't been a reliable ally now for a decade. And we keep papering over this, but the truth is, the American people are not willing to do any of the things that an ally has to do. And the sooner that Europe and then also the Pacific nations realize that and start acting accordingly, the better it is for world stability. Because what you don't want to do is find that out after the tanks roll into Poland.
- [62:55]
Tim Miller
I think that's right. Do you remember who his first NATO ambassador was?
- [62:59]
Sam Stein
Trump's first NATO ambassador was.
- [63:01]
JVL
Yeah, I just don't.
- [63:04]
Tim Miller
K. Bailey. Hutchinson.
- [63:06]
Sam Stein
K. Bailey. Hutchinson.
- [63:08]
JVL
Serious.
- [63:09]
Sam Stein
Exactly. K. Bailey.
- [63:11]
Tim Miller
That's where we've come from.
- [63:11]
Sam Stein
Senator. Who cares about America's role in the world, American leadership who traveled the world. Smart person. Love, kb. Notice I didn't hear much from her, though, about, like, in 2020 or 2024 about, you know, supporting other candidates, so whatever. But, yeah, would have been a better pick.
- [63:32]
JVL
You know, I'm thrilled.
- [63:33]
Sam Stein
I'm thrilled. I just, like, stupider the better is my. Is where I'm at. The stupider the choice, the better. And so using that rubric, McMahon and RFK are good. Great.
- [63:45]
JVL
And our real concerns are with Hegseth and Gates.
- [63:50]
Tim Miller
Honestly, Tim and I did this already. My rankings were different than Tim's.
- [63:55]
JVL
This is a real question. If you had a button that could blow up only one of the cabinet nominees so far, their nomination, their nomination process. I don't mean like a. They have a neck bomb around them, like in Squid Game or something.
- [64:10]
Sam Stein
Tulsi? No, not even Tulsi. No question for me.
- [64:15]
JVL
Really interesting. Okay.
- [64:16]
Sam Stein
Not even close, actually.
- [64:17]
JVL
Sam.
- [64:19]
Tim Miller
Definitely. Rfk. Tim and I have already talked about this. I just have a massive fear, like, a real massive fear in my mind that we're gonna have a really bad Public Health episode, and then suddenly we're gonna be like, oh, my God, this guy is running ship and, oh, he's gonna lean on Dr. Oz to, like, you know, minister. I was like, oh, my. I think the Dr. Oz thing really kind of like, threw me, too, because. And Tim and I talked about this yesterday because the sort of idea was maybe you'd have, like, these really weird celebrity picks up top, but, like, the next level would be kind of more professionalized. And then now Trump's just being like, you know what? The next stupid. We're gonna find, like, even, you know, more celebrities for the next level. And then, like, how far down are we gonna go before we're like, oh, that's a real person. This person has subject matter expertise.
- [65:07]
Sam Stein
There is no bottom.
- [65:08]
Tim Miller
Like, who's. Who's Matt Whitaker's deputy gonna be, you know, the guy who actually patented the big dick toilet? Like, where are we going here?
- [65:15]
Sam Stein
Who. Who's yours, jv?
- [65:19]
JVL
I think it's probably Hegseth.
- [65:20]
Sam Stein
Hegseth is my second one. Second choice.
- [65:22]
JVL
To be. To be honest, those. I really.
- [65:25]
Tim Miller
Wow.
- [65:25]
JVL
Neither of you said, gates, you want to get dark, you want to get nuts? Let's get nuts.
- [65:30]
Tim Miller
Sure. We haven't gotten nuts yet.
- [65:34]
Sam Stein
We still have a weekly standard ethos here. You know, there's still, like, a little bit of a remnant of that, Sam. So we're the foreign policy.
- [65:40]
JVL
It's not foreign policy. It's all domestic policy.
- [65:42]
Sam Stein
Okay.
- [65:43]
JVL
I worry about hex for domestic policy reasons, because at the end of the day, whenever the Supreme Court finally has its big showdown with Trump, and it will, at some point, there will be a real deal constitutional crisis showdown, and the Supreme Court decision will be made in part by a calculation as to whether or not they can force Trump to comply. And if Trump has a pliant military, this is how all through history, Damn. Once the Democratic Party, right. Has control of.
- [66:19]
Tim Miller
Once I figured out where this was.
- [66:20]
JVL
Going, the military decides who takes power next. It's how it is in Egypt, it's how it is in Syria. It's how it is everywhere. It's how it is in Pakistan, and it's how it will be in America if we no longer have a military run by people who are seriously committed to the Constitution, chain of command, et cetera, et cetera, and instead are personally loyal at the top of the organization of Trump.
- [66:48]
Tim Miller
Wait, and you don't trust the Fox News?
- [66:50]
Sam Stein
What? Apologize.
- [66:52]
JVL
I trust the Fox News guy to be. Be very, very good about getting rid of the people who he believes are there for the Constitution.
- [67:01]
Sam Stein
All right, I think we should just leave.
- [67:05]
JVL
We need Sarah back. Boy, we need Sarah back. Have a good turkey day.