Latest / Normal Men / Episode 62 - Thinking Like Bad People

Transcript

Episode 62 - Thinking Like Bad People · Normal Men

• 0:03
  Ed: Hey. Hi. Hello.
• 0:04
  Lowtax: We.
• 0:05
  Ed: We got into this a little fast on this one and kind of forgot to do our legally obligated bit, so we're gonna just have an awkward pause and go to the intro. En.
• 0:32
  George: This is Normal Men, a podcast from four men who are clinging desperately to normalcy in an era when that's asking a bit too much.
• 0:38
  Propter: I'm George In Charlotte, in D.C. i'm
• 0:40
  Lowtax: Proctor Malone in outer Florida. I'm Low Tax speedrun enjoyer.
• 0:44
  Ed: And I'm Ed in Boston.
• 0:50
  George: Yeah, I. The straight is closed again. It is Groundhog Day.
• 0:57
  Ed: So at this point, I'm just wondering, is Iran real?
• 1:02
  Propter: Still there, buddy. Still there.
• 1:04
  George: They're very real.
• 1:04
  Ed: I have my doubts.
• 1:06
  Propter: Yeah, you know, like, we've got. We've got this kind of, like, Hormuz uncertainty principle at work here, where either you can have an agreement or you can have the occasional ship going through, but it's difficult to have both at the same time. I'm really pessimistic on where this goes from here. It seems to me that Iran has correctly figured that they can wedge Israel's relationship with the United States by just saying, okay, well, Israel has to do all the. That the US Agreed to on its behalf, and Israel doesn't like that at all. I think that the Lebanon situation, like, yes, obviously it is. It is extremely that Israel is trying to carve off a piece of Lebanon in addition to trying to carve off a piece of Syria as a buffer zone. But also, like, Hezbollah really is an actual military up there, and they really are actually shooting at Israel. Like. Like, that's. That's an ongoing thing that started on. That started, you know, the day after 10, 7, that they started shooting rockets down.
• 2:10
  George: When we say shooting at Israel, like, shooting and actually scoring hits, shooting and actually endangering people, or just ostensibly shooting. Like, I'm assuming there's a spectrum here.
• 2:20
  Propter: But, I mean, they are not shooting and endangering civilians because Israel's had civilians evacuated from the north of Israel for, like, ever. So, like, it's. It's accurate that. That Hezbollah's attacks are not endangering a lot of Israeli civilians, but that's because Israel had previously sort of retreated their civilians out of what is, again, admittedly contested area. Like. Like, that's, among other things, the Golan Heights up there. But they pulled people back out to prevent civilians getting hit. So to just.
• 3:00
  George: Cliff notes that the rockets are not a danger to Israeli civilians, who, if they were a danger to Israeli civilians, would be in internationally contested territory. That is not obviously actually part of Israel. Am I, am I getting that right?
• 3:14
  Propter: Not entirely, because. Because there's also area up there that they pulled back out of that is not Golan. There's, there's area that is, that is 100 Israeli area that's also evacuated. But, like, Iran's entire interest in Hezbollah as a proxy is to apply military pressure to Israel. Like, that's, that's the job. That's not. This is not, this is not Hezbollah. This is not. Hezbollah was just walking down the street and Israel started being a huge dick. This is, that's sort of why Hezbollah exists now. Hezbollah exists in part.
• 3:47
  George: Other stuff, too. There's. There's just Panchea stuff. Right. I mean, it's not just. Yes.
• 3:52
  Propter: Yeah, the specific, the specific interest is, is that, that's, that's the local proxy militia that they had, that Iran had much higher hopes for than, than Hamas to fight Israel. So, like, that's, that's kind of the connective tissue there. You've got some amount of back and forth between Lebanon and Hezbollah because they're partially politically integrated, but they're not the same entity at all, and they're definitely not the same military. I think that it is going to be difficult to get Israel to comply with the terms of the ceasefire as, as written.
• 4:40
  Ed: I mean, particularly for the Trump administration to do that, because they don't know what a lever is. Well, one of the.
• 4:47
  Propter: I made this point on Blue sky, but one of the problems here is that you have to use the lever very precisely right, right now to get Israel to do what you want. Because if you just say, okay, fine, we're America, we're walking away, we're washing our hands of Israel, we're no longer in this mix. Israel goes, well, shit, we're on our own now. We better make sure we have buffer zones.
• 5:07
  George: Does that lead Iran to actually, you know, the bilateral relationship between Iran and Israel if the US goes the maximal route, like if I'm Iran and Israel is now entirely cut off from the United States for the foreseeable future? Because if Trump cuts off Israel, it's really hard to imagine the next president coming in and undoing that. It's possible. I'm not going to say it's impossible, but it's unlikely. Don't you take that as Iran and say, oh, that is the single biggest geopolitical victory we have scored in the past 40 years. So thank you very much for that. And now let's talk about tolls and
• 5:45
  Propter: hormos, because, like, maybe I Mean, maybe that's, maybe that's sufficient. But like, I don't think that that would fully resolve the Israel, Iran antipathy either.
• 5:57
  George: Like it wouldn't. But also are we expecting the US initiated war? I mean US Israel war, but US initiated war. Israel wouldn't have gone if the US hadn't agreed to it. Are we expecting that to also settle the enmity between Israel and Iran? Or is that something that can be side pocketed and say, look like the US just has to do what they want to do? And this is a genuine question. I don't know how Iranian policymakers are thinking about this, but if I was them, I would take it as a massive win if it meant that, okay, we haven't reached any kind of settlement with Israel and in fact we're going to be on the short end of the stick there for a while. But in the long run, their largest and really last remaining major global supporter, with the possible exception of Russia, which gets complicated, is off the table for them. They're toast in the long run. Strategic versus tactical victory. I don't know. I think it's worth thinking about though.
• 6:55
  Propter: Yeah, I mean, yes, Iran would be happy with that outcome. Iran would be happy with outcomes in which, in which Israel's marginalized in, in greater ways Also, you know, like this is, this is the, this is now the regional hegemony phase of the argument, right? Like the Israeli argument for a long time has been that it is important to lever whatever sanctions, whatever general pile of that the international community and specifically the United States is dropping on Iran to prevent Iranian regional hegemony. That, that's, that's dangerous to everybody in the region and at various points essentially everybody else in the Middle east has been on the yes, we must not have Iranian regional hegemony side of that. KSA has been been on side with that. Iraq has been on side with that at various points. Israel has been on side with that. This is Iran trying to carve out a maximum state of regional hegemony for it in future. Which, you know, I mean they're big boys, they're international actors. This is, this is, I'm not saying that this is not within their rights to do, but what I am saying is that it, Israel's resistance to it is not irrational recalcitrants.
• 8:15
  Lowtax: Right.
• 8:15
  Propter: That the situations in which, in which Iran is, has greater regional hegemony unless, unless Iran very, very much changes its tune towards Israel are situations in which security threats to Israel are greater, not less.
• 8:29
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 8:30
  George: So on the, in Transigence though, right?
• 8:34
  Lowtax: Sure.
• 8:35
  Propter: I mean, like the through line through all this is that virtually everyone has acted poorly at every turn. That, that, that there aren't a lot of good guys here.
• 8:47
  George: Are there any who are the, the Omanis, maybe. I don't think it's hard to fault them with anything.
• 8:54
  Ed: Are they basically like looking to be a cutout to bribe Trump? Come on.
• 9:00
  Propter: Yeah.
• 9:01
  Ed: Where do you think that toll money is going to? I mean, is it.
• 9:04
  George: Well, I mean, we don't, to be fair, we don't know what Oman's plans are for that. That's all very gray area stuff. So maybe, I mean, potentially, but like up to this point, what have they done?
• 9:15
  Ed: They don't get a white one.
• 9:16
  George: Yeah, it's a pretty light shade of gray as things go in the Middle East.
• 9:22
  Propter: I can't, I can't immediately think of a reason to be pissed at Jordan. I feel like they've done. All right.
• 9:26
  George: Good point, good point.
• 9:28
  Propter: I'm sure.
• 9:29
  George: Actually the actual government of Lebanon too, I think.
• 9:31
  Lowtax: Yeah, I was going to say the government of Lebanon.
• 9:34
  Ed: Yeah, they're just over here like, what do you want from us?
• 9:37
  Propter: Yeah, government of Lebanon periodically looking up from playing their switch and going, like, what?
• 9:44
  Ed: Hey, give them a little credit at this point. They probably have a switch too.
• 9:51
  Propter: Anyway, peace would be great. Let's get there and then kind of figure out what that means.
• 9:56
  Lowtax: We just wanted to take credit for kebabs and hummus. You guys keep shit over us,
• 10:05
  Ed: though, like with, with the way that a certain. Oh, what is it that Jamel Bowie said. I'm. I'm not going to repeat it because it involves unkind words, but a certain vice president of the United States sure seems to be trial ballooning some stuff.
• 10:18
  Propter: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 10:20
  George: I wonder where those ideas came from. I wonder which part of the political spectrum, which degree of anime avatar we're talking about here that those ideas are sourced from.
• 10:29
  Ed: Because I mean, you know, be fair, be fair. Stephen Miller probably doesn't have one anime avatar.
• 10:38
  George: Yeah, that's true.
• 10:40
  Propter: I'm sure, I'm sure he's mining more than one political camp, if you will.
• 10:44
  Ed: But it's, it's his party and he'll heil if he wants to be fair.
• 10:49
  Lowtax: He's also got, he's also got alts where he's got a statue avatar.
• 10:53
  Propter: The one other thing that I want to say about Iranian detente is that I think that there is maybe a positive path forward here. So Israel's thesis for many years and I have no reason to believe that this is not Israel's actual feelings about it. I think it's more or less true, is that an Iranian nuclear weapon is an immediate and constant existential threat to Israel because Israel is extremely compact and that's sort of the defining characteristic of their military defense doctrine that they don't have any territory. So what that means is that you can't fight a defensive war because there's no, there's no territory to let people in a little bit on. If you're fighting in Israeli territory, you are going to lose. You don't have significant reserves. So you have to fight fast war anyway. If Iran gets a nuclear bomb, then potentially that's one shot, game over it for Israel. So that's, that's why their doctrine has been oriented for a long time towards preventing that. Now it appears that Iran has a different deterrence strategy which is that they can shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which is not an immediate threat to Israel. That's maybe it's a long term existential threat to Israel, but it goes through a much more circuitous route than drop a nucleant Tel Aviv and it's game over.
• 12:10
  George: The big difference is there is a timer on the effectiveness of shutting hormones. Right?
• 12:16
  Propter: Right.
• 12:17
  George: Leaving aside stuff like helium, sulfur, aluminum, I know that's a big leaving aside, but just looking at petroleum products, right. Petroleum demand globally is peaking. I mean it's, we might not be there in this year, next year, something like that, but very good odds that we're looking back 10 years from now. 2025 to 2027 was the peak and we're downhill all the way from here. And on top of that, this is accelerating it for sure. But on top of that you, if this is a sustained issue and everything points to this being a sustained issue at this point, even if there is some sort of stable arrangement for traffic through hormos, you can build pipelines. Like when you're talking about billions of barrels of petroleum, like the cost is not really an issue. Like we've already got close to half of the region's production capacity available for offtake via pipeline. Yanbu's output versus the Trans Arabian pipeline is sort of a gray area there, but you know, you're 40%, something like that. It doesn't really take the end of the world to double or triple that pipeline capacity either through the UAE and Oman or through Saudi Arabia. And then hormones becomes much, much, much less valuable. And you know, the other thing is resources like helium, sulfur, aluminum is the three big ones. I just mentioned even urea on a long enough timeline, like we. Alternative supplies are available. Like, it's not, it's not for everything. It's not like oil where it is where it is. Right. So, yeah, it's a very different deterrent strategy than the nuke approach, which kind of like once you have them, you have to have them forever kind of thing, or at least every lesson we've been taught since 1945 would suggest having them forever is the optimal strategy. And I'm looking at you, Ukraine. So, you know, but if it's a
• 14:13
  Propter: deterrent strategy that works well enough, at least for, at least for the near term, it's a deterrent strategy that is far less threatening to Israel than nukes. So, you know, this is, I guess, I guess for me, if I'm looking for something that is a. There's a more positive path forward, it's that the agreement basically works as it, as it, as it says, which is that Iran gives up nuclear weapons and instead, you know, focuses on conventional regional hegemony and also uses the Strait of Hormuz as its lever against the rest of the world to keep sanctions at bay and otherwise, you know, defend its, its interests and that and that. I think that would genuinely freak Israel out a lot less than the pursuit of a nuclear weapon because it is a far less immediate threat to them. So maybe, maybe there's some hope there for eventual thawing of relations if the basic tension is not Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon because it feels it has to pursue a nuclear weapon to defend its own interests. And Israel feels that if Iran ever gets a nuclear weapon, it's going to drop a bomb on Tel Aviv. And that's existential for Israel. Like you're moving away from a situation where both parties feel the only thing that can protect them is something that is completely unacceptable to the other side, that is an existential threat to the other side, to wear something where the parties have something that can protect them that is not existentially threatening just, just by the fact of its presence to the other side.
• 15:54
  George: Yeah, I broadly agree. I do think too that Israel's window for the kind of support that they got at the start of this war is basically closed.
• 16:04
  Propter: Yeah, I agree with that.
• 16:05
  George: It is really hard to imagine anything other than a deterioration in American support, material, military, however you frame it economic from here relative to the arc we've been on up to this point. And I was talking to former guest and very good follow at diplomat of night, Leila Al Sheikh on Blue sky about this today. And her concern is that, you know, you've got a 70, 30 issue or whatever it is for voters where it's like, why are we investing in these guys? They're nutcases. They're raising the price of our gas. They're, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever. And Congress just is the opposite right now. And like, can we actually change Congress? And I, I do think that that's a valid concern. But then you look at stuff like Vance, who, you know, say what you will about J.D. vance, but he's a lot closer to the 25 year olds in the Republican coalition than just about any other Republican politician I can think of. This is not auditory. Of course.
• 17:14
  Ed: On second thought, I'm not going to finish that sentence.
• 17:16
  George: Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't, don't think too hard about that. Anyhow, there, I mean there is a real coalition on the right and especially the young right, like much more than the old right. That, and by that I mean age, not epoch. But for this not to go anywhere. I mean, same thing in the Democratic Party. You are not going to find a elected official under the age of 50 who is an ardent supporter of Israel unless they are from a very, very specific demographic or like district context for that to be important. And it's,
• 17:54
  Lowtax: that's, that's basically the list.
• 17:56
  Propter: Well, I mean, yeah, even Richie's out now.
• 17:59
  George: Yeah, I mean, exactly.
• 18:01
  Lowtax: Yeah. Or, or Josh Golden, I think is his name. Yeah, the guy in Jersey or Brooklyn or wherever the hell he is.
• 18:09
  Propter: Golden's. Golden's main. You're conflating Jared golden with Gotten Heimer.
• 18:15
  Lowtax: Gotten Heimer.
• 18:16
  Propter: Okay.
• 18:16
  George: Yes, you're right.
• 18:17
  Propter: You're right. Yeah. And I mean like that's, that's, that's gotten Heimer's entire function right. And it's like, it's kind of unfortunate that he's a huge. Personally because it would be useful to have some kind of a bridge between the, I guess, sort of militaristic center left that has traditionally supported Israel in that way and the rest of the Democratic party. But he's just a, he is a uniquely poor vehicle to be that bridge because he's such a huge asshole.
• 18:45
  George: It should just be Secretary of Defense Rock.
• 18:47
  Ed: That.
• 18:47
  George: That should be our bridge. Or Mike Lee or whoever. Which one? Everyone of these defense guy guys, they can. Michael Hammer. Not Mike Lee Black. Not Mike Lee.
• 18:55
  Propter: Sorry.
• 18:56
  George: That is excellent defense poster from Bluesky Dot Social. The Republican politician from the state of Utah.
• 19:04
  Lowtax: Yes, the. The excellent defense poster. Not the crying about the list of religions, Senator.
• 19:10
  Propter: Right.
• 19:11
  George: Right. We actually did mention him last week, so you know that I have. That's my defense for Confederating.
• 19:17
  Lowtax: Gottheimer is about to get run out by Lander, isn't he?
• 19:21
  Propter: No, that's, that's, that's a different guy. That's, that's Goldman.
• 19:25
  Lowtax: Okay, we need to get
• 19:29
  Propter: some flashcards going later, but yeah, we need to
• 19:31
  Lowtax: get a handle on these names.
• 19:33
  Ed: Yeah, yeah, we just need to get like low tax, a flowchart.
• 19:37
  George: Go names like G O Y. Never mind, Forget it.
• 19:41
  Lowtax: No, no flowcharts. People are going to think that's conspiratorial or something.
• 19:45
  Propter: Yeah. Normal men makes charts of Jews. It's not a good look.
• 19:48
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 19:50
  Ed: So
• 19:52
  Propter: anyway, there was something that crap. Something George said that I wanted to. To piggyback on a little bit here. George said that it's hard to imagine what swings public opinion back towards Israel. I mostly agree with that, but I disagree in part. What it would take would be significant blood within Israel. That it would take another successful strike, another successful incursion that killed a lot of, killed a lot of Israelis.
• 20:23
  Ed: Would it?
• 20:24
  George: I'm not sure. I'm not sure that's going to do it at this point. I mean, maybe there's a. It sort of depends. It's context dependent. I'm not, I'm not trying to say like anything's impossible because I am in the business of telling people nothing is impossible.
• 20:36
  Ed: But like, I
• 20:40
  George: was, okay, I was going through my local Reddit, my local subreddit yesterday for Charlotte, and there's this picture of these two Nazi freaks with a banner saying end Jewish wars on the corner of a Charlotte street and okay, just, just first off, that is the most anti Semitic public display I've seen in a long time. Like, I didn't see them personally. That's why I'm not, you know, in county awaiting arraignment on assault charges. But the number of commenters in there who are like, oh, like that's not anti Semitic. That's just true. Right. Like they're
• 21:19
  Lowtax: or saying, I agree with the sentiment, but not the messengers, which
• 21:24
  George: is just as bad.
• 21:26
  Lowtax: Yeah, yeah, I, I, yeah, the sentiment is the problem here, fellas.
• 21:34
  George: And I'm bringing this up, the reason I'm bringing this up is that the sort of stuff that was just completely off bounds because. And rightfully so. Right. Like, I'm sorry, Stop Jewish wars is anti Semitic trash. Like, I, it's, it's an evil sentiment to hold.
• 21:49
  Propter: Yeah.
• 21:50
  George: Stop Israeli wars is not. And I agree with it, people have conflated the two, and it's just generally, like, that's the obvious position. Everyone agrees with it now. And so I am not sure that, you know, having changed that initial condition to whatever might hypothetically happen that involves the drawing of Israeli civilian casualties, I'm not sure that the median voter reaction or like the typical vote modal voter reaction or whatever would be, oh, yes, like, they're the victims. I think that actually might backfire, in fact, and say, well, they at fafo. I mean, y' all started all these wars and now look, it's coming home. Oops, too bad. And now, I don't know. I mean, it's, it's forecasting mass psychology. So my name is not Hari Seldon, but I do, I am a little skeptical that, that that specific feedback loop would work the same as it did in the past.
• 22:43
  Ed: Yeah, I think that one's just, I think that's tapped and like, it's, it is a fascinating level of own goal because it's tapped everywhere. Right. Like, you have, you have certain members of the Trump administration, absolutely getting, getting ready to blame some stuff, and their followers will take their marching orders, but they've also cooked pretty much any substantial whatever, like, residual good feelings might have been in, like, the younger parts of the left and center left, even a lot of the folks. Like, is Chuck Schumer ever going to drift? Probably not, but, like, everyone hates him too. I just don't know.
• 23:25
  Lowtax: Is Schumer even going to be there in 2029?
• 23:28
  Propter: No, he's not. I mean, I, I, I mean, you guys know my, my opinion on this, that I think Schumer's retiring. I think he's been retiring. I think that that's, but even if he runs, I don't think he's going to win. So.
• 23:40
  Ed: Yeah, I think that's true. Like, he's just, he's, he's cooked. So, like, what, what then? Right? Like, this is just a really, really bad situation that they have kind of created it. It turns out when you do a genocide in your own territories, people don't like that, especially when it's on tv
• 23:58
  Lowtax: and when you've, when you've been making yourself a partisan issue for. Yeah, you know, 20 years. Sorry, man. The other party's gonna turn on you eventually.
• 24:13
  George: Yeah, that is big. Not, that is big not understanding American structural political reality right there. Like, if you don't get that, like, betting on one party means you're betting against the other party, and the backlash will come because it's A median voter society. Sorry, you don't get it, you lose. No sympathy.
• 24:34
  Ed: Median voter, parentheses, derogatory. If that was not clear,
• 24:41
  George: that Onion headline, right? Like, we taught this chimp how the median American voter thinks and he hung himself. That is pretty much how I wake up every morning.
• 24:49
  Propter: Yeah, well, I hope we don't get a chance to test that thesis.
• 24:57
  Ed: Yeah.
• 24:58
  Propter: I will say that if we're headed towards a world where Israel thinks of themselves as a pariah state, there are some ramifications to that that I'm not sure people are ready for. Israel is a top tier military power that is also sitting on the Suez Canal. Like they've got their own waterway they can choke. And that's going to be a pretty rough world for a while if that's where we are,
• 25:28
  George: hypothetically, five, ten years from now. Israel seizes Suez. Does the United States intervene against Israel or stay out of it?
• 25:37
  Propter: I mean, I think at this point
• 25:38
  George: this is white, white space. Like, this is way out there. I get that. I'm not predicting anything. I'm just, I think it's a fun discussion.
• 25:45
  Propter: I think, I think you would have to have an attempt to sanction out Israel before, before Israel did that. Like, I think that the, the lessons of, of the last time the Suez was closed are still pretty, pretty present on Israel's mind. But, you know, if it's Trump, who the hell knows if it's somebody else?
• 26:07
  George: If It's Trump in 10 years.
• 26:09
  Propter: Yeah, if it's, if it's Vance, let's say if it's. Or if it's some other personalist authoritarian, who the hell knows? It depends on who bribed who. If it's, you know, a mainstream democratic politician, then, yeah, I think we, I think we do whatever we can to bring Israel to heal at that point. But, you know, we're, we're kind of delving into a new area here in terms of freedom of transit. Like, yeah, that's been an assumption for a long time. And I'm not sure. It's just.
• 26:45
  George: I, I will just say it's just Israel does not currently border the Suez Canal. Right. It's not exactly the same, but, But
• 26:56
  Propter: Israel could clearly interdict the Suez.
• 26:58
  George: Like, sure, sure. But interdicting something that is literally your shoreline is a little bit different from interdicting something that would require pretty significant territorial invasion of a third party to then seize said water and then interdict it. Right. Like, obviously there are other ways to interdict other than physically seizing Suez, but
• 27:22
  Ed: still, Egypt gets a say too. Yeah.
• 27:26
  George: I mean, as does Turkey, Right?
• 27:28
  Ed: Yeah.
• 27:28
  George: It's not just Egypt.
• 27:31
  Propter: I mean, like. And it's the nature of these.
• 27:33
  Ed: Yeah. At some point it starts looking like, hey, who does Turkey bring to the party? Right. Like, this is a good way to start a really bad situation.
• 27:40
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 27:41
  George: NATO is who Turkey brings to the party.
• 27:43
  Propter: And. And we're already seeing. I mean, we're already seeing, you know, Turkey and Israel sort of lining up on opposite sides of a bunch of things that. That's. That's very clearly a cold influence war there that. That I think is going to continue.
• 27:58
  Ed: If you told me five years ago, I'd be like, so that Erdogan guy, I would not have believed this.
• 28:08
  Propter: You know, I think, frankly, that's a little bit underrated as a reason for Fetterman's position on Israel, is that he. His. His Senate election was against a Turkish
• 28:20
  Lowtax: proxy, and he did call for giving Hagia Sophia back to the Orthodox.
• 28:26
  Propter: Did he really?
• 28:31
  Lowtax: Because I remember it because at the time I was sitting there thinking, are there, like, a bunch of Greeks who are still mad about Hagia Sophia? Like, no.
• 28:37
  George: The only people dumb enough to have this opinion are Americans.
• 28:41
  Ed: Yeah.
• 28:44
  Propter: Anyway. Yeah, like.
• 28:45
  Lowtax: Like, it's only been 600 years.
• 28:49
  Propter: I felt at the time that that was. That that was kind of. Turkey is trying to get. Is. Is. Is trying to get themselves a Senate seat versus Federman was, you know, not beholden to foreign powers in quite the same way. And now I'm wondering if, looking back on it, we maybe should have seen that as more directly just to a proxy struggle in Pennsylvania between Israel and turkey.
• 29:13
  Lowtax: If only Dr. Oz had embraced the light of Kemalism.
• 29:22
  George: Oh, man, we gotta get Feta Gul in on a Senate primary ticket somewhere. Let's do this properly. This is Normal Men, a podcast from four men who are clinging desperately to normalcy in an era when that's asking a bit too much. I'm George in Charlotte.
• 29:40
  Propter: In D.C. i'm Proctor Malone in Outer Florida.
• 29:43
  Lowtax: I'm Low Tax Speedrun enjoyer.
• 29:45
  Ed: And I'm Ed in Boston.
• 29:51
  Propter: All right, what do we have?
• 29:52
  Ed: What.
• 29:52
  Propter: What else do we have on the dance card for this week?
• 29:54
  Lowtax: We have to salute Kier.
• 29:56
  George: Yeah, we got to say goodbye to our good doughy buddy, Keir Starmer, those about to die.
• 30:03
  Lowtax: Yes. As. As you all know here, there. There was a by election in Britain in which some guy named Andy Burnham, who looks like a divorced version of the Woody Doll from Toy Story, Ran around something called a Makerfield constituency, which is like three square blocks in Manchester, trying to convince people that he was the right level of racist for the Brits these days.
• 30:35
  George: Andy Burnham is of course the Mayor of Manchester.
• 30:38
  Lowtax: So yes, he is the Mayor of Manchester, or was, because now he's the Member of Parliament for Makerfield.
• 30:46
  Propter: Right.
• 30:46
  Lowtax: And so Andy will be deposing. Andy will be deposing dear Keith and becoming the next poor sod to be Prime Minister of Britain.
• 30:59
  Propter: So the background here, as I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, is that there is consensus within the Labour Party in Britain, which is the party that currently holds power in Britain, that cure had to go. There was nearly no consensus on who the correct replacement for Kir was. The reason why Andy Burnham had to win a by election here is because Andy Burnham was not an mp, which means he can't be the Prime Minister. So it was necessary to figure out how to get Andy Burnham a seat in Parliament so that he could be the designated next man up and replace Keir Starmer. Is that a fair summation?
• 31:37
  Lowtax: Correct. And so he got. He managed to get somebody to step down from a seat. I don't remember the guy's name. The guy won the seat by like 14 points in 2024 at the general election. It is a seat that has been trending reform pretty strongly. That area in general, the area is very white, very awful. Just everything you would expect to be all for Nigel Farish.
• 32:09
  George: It is urban Manchester, isn't it? Or is it suburbs?
• 32:12
  Lowtax: No, it's suburban Manchester.
• 32:14
  George: Okay. I was gonna say, because in the uk, if you can't recall the political geography of the uk, urban seats are some combination of Lib Dem, Green or Labor and skew. Heavily, Heavily labor and then the rest of the country. It kind of depends where you are, but it's right or wing, the further out you get. And then there's some exceptions, etc. And the north especially is where Labour's traditional working class block has really trended rightward.
• 32:40
  Lowtax: The red wall.
• 32:42
  George: Yeah, the red wall. That was so disappointing for. What's his name, the MP from. Oh my God, why am I forgetting all my proper names?
• 32:56
  Lowtax: Jeremy Corbyn.
• 32:57
  George: Yes, Jeremy Corbyn. Thank you. You know, his promise was, you know, very Bernie type stuff. Right. Like we're going to. We're going to win the red wall and do it. And that didn't happen. And it's because everyone voted Tori. Well, now they're all voting reform or worse. What's the other one?
• 33:12
  Lowtax: Restore. Restorer.
• 33:14
  George: Right. So the people at Reform apparently were not racist enough for some segment of the voting population. And we have now Restore Britain.
• 33:22
  Lowtax: Yes, Restore is the party for people who think Reform is too Jewish.
• 33:28
  George: Great. It's going great.
• 33:31
  Lowtax: So anyway, everybody was sort of expecting this to be a competitive election and it was not because Andy Burnham went in and curb stomped. Reform won the seat by 20 points after just a couple months ago, I believe, at the local elections. Reform won every ward in Makerfield pretty strongly. And so now it seems that Andy Burnham may just be coronated as new new labor leader. They might have to go through a leadership contest. I would disagree with George or with Proctor, whoever said it, about there not being any agreement on who should take over. I think there's mostly been agreement on who should take over, with the exception of one person who supports West Streeting and that is West Streeting.
• 34:23
  Ed: Right.
• 34:25
  George: Right.
• 34:26
  Propter: I should say at this point, it's clearly Burnham. Previously, Burnham was off the list again on account of not being an MP and therefore not being eligible. So.
• 34:35
  Ed: And then he fixed that. Cool. Yeah, great. Wonderful. I'm a little unsettled about how much you know about this latex.
• 34:43
  Lowtax: I used to live there.
• 34:43
  Ed: I understand your history, but like, I was not aware we had a senior British correspondent, like. And I would like, I would like to return this to the store. Take it back. We did not ask.
• 34:59
  Lowtax: I said in 2024 that care needed to immediately launch a program promising Brits that he would make sure to deliver hot and cold water out of the same faucet. And that, and that potentially if, if he got reelected and he got 10 years in office, he would promise that they could have electrical outlets in their bathrooms. Finally.
• 35:26
  Ed: I thought they had the, the shaver outlet. That's like electricity.
• 35:31
  Lowtax: My apartment didn't have one. So.
• 35:34
  Ed: Because like they have the, they have the weird legacy outlet because for my sins, I have run electrical and I, I, I envy them. Well, I don't envy them their electrical systems, but I do envy their plugs.
• 35:48
  Propter: What's good about their plugs?
• 35:49
  George: What?
• 35:50
  Ed: Well, one. Well, the downside of their plugs is they will always orient. So all of the, all of the, the prongs are always pointed straight up so you will step on them. But the other side is that they have a fuse in them. So like you, you, you actually can, can cut current before it turns off your house, which is kind of important because they all have ring circuits. Well, not all newer buildings don't necessarily, but like, they all have circuits that traverse the entire building because copper used well, might be Again, who knows? But copper used to be really expensive, so electrical stuff in post rebuild UK is weird.
• 36:29
  Propter: It's always so cool to me how this stuff kind of comes together historically.
• 36:32
  Ed: Yeah, it's just all accidents, right? And then the we, we don't talk about the Euros plugs. Those things are weird. They look like space aliens.
• 36:42
  Lowtax: All I know is that a British guy yelled at me when I made fun of him about the bathroom electrical outlets because he said that our government doesn't want us to die trying to make a fry up in the shower. And I responded that I don't think the government should have to stop you.
• 37:01
  Ed: That, that was really the weird thing in Japan though, because Japan uses almost compatible, almost always compatible with the US it's 100 volt rather than 120. But there are no grounding. Like a three prong US plug has nowhere to plug in there because they're all still two prong outlets.
• 37:19
  George: Ooh.
• 37:20
  Ed: I saw one hotel room that had a three prong outlet and I'm pretty sure it was very much. You know, this is for the Americans. What they actually do is they sell. Do you remember those little orange cheater plugs? Mm, yeah. They sell those everywhere. Those are normal. And then I take it back to the hotel and I'm just like, what do I do with the grounding wire? There's a little flap under the outlet that has a grounding lug. Now the follow up question is where do I get a screwdriver? And I didn't solve that part. I, I risked it. But like what is. I didn't know anyone had that still anymore.
• 37:58
  Lowtax: They got rid of screwdrivers after that guy Merc Shinzo Abe.
• 38:05
  Ed: Oh.
• 38:06
  George: So if you go to Crime island,
• 38:09
  Ed: one, bring a screwdriver and two, figure something out before you go, I guess, I don't know,
• 38:18
  George: to bring it back to Andy Burnham. It's gonna be interesting to see how someone who is not as obviously politically incompetent as Keir Starmer handles things. Because I gotta say, like, like labor is going to lose a ton of seats at the next election. And the question is just. And really that had to do with how the political coalition shifted in the UK and the way labor was able to split the difference as reform and the Tories fought over a bunch of seats in a bunch of voters in the last election. They were also riding the same anti incumbent wave that so many countries around the world dealt with. You know, in this instance, labor was the party that benefited from it. They're not going to have that at their back next time. And the Tories appear to be in permanent collapse. I just, I don't really see how they turn things around. They now have two competitors for the 90ish percent of their party who are really racist or, sorry, 50% of their party who's really racist and 40% of the party who's like extraordinarily racist. So it's, it's tough for the Tories. That leaves you in a position where labor has to fight with. Well, I mean, I guess, I guess the best possible scenario would be that you lose some voters to the Greens and the Lib Dems and then reform and restore, fight over the right and create a similar kind of outcome where labor outperforms massively relative to vote share because they're the plurality in so many seats. Leaving all that aside, they're, they're very likely to lose seats and the question is how many they.
• 39:49
  Lowtax: Even if they were doing well. Even if they were doing well, you have just a, you have so many seats at this point that even like a moderate drop off, you're going to lose a ton.
• 40:00
  George: Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's almost like impossible. But they could still be a convincingly large minority government or something like that with, I don't know, just, you know, at replacement level management that has been completely avoided thus far in the, in the current Parliament. And I just, every time I see something from Starmer I'm like, what are you thinking? What is going on here? It's like you're trying to piss off the people that got you here and doing your best to aid your enemies. I mean, I think from my perspective as a social media addled American, the clearest example of this is how they interface with Elon Musk and Twitter. Elon Musk is spending basically every waking hour trying to turn the UK into apartheid era South Africa. And the UK's government's response to this has been, well, we're just going to keep posting, so that's fine.
• 40:57
  Ed: On the website that he owns.
• 40:59
  George: On the website that he owns. Yes, yes. Yeah, I don't understand what's going on.
• 41:04
  Lowtax: Yeah, Starmer. And this was true before he got elected. Like to be clear, they did not win that election because, because Keir Starmer is like this incredibly charismatic guy or something like that. Right. Tories. The Tories had been in power for 14 years. They were led by a paper boy from the 50s who did not know how to wear a suit.
• 41:28
  Ed: Everything had gone to be a trend among these.
• 41:31
  Lowtax: Yeah, everything had gone to shit. And so labor won with Star. I do love the Stormtroopers, though.
• 41:40
  Propter: Yeah.
• 41:41
  Lowtax: Who get into, like, Stephen Bush's mentions and talk about how we can't. They can't get rid of Starmer because he's their special boy.
• 41:51
  George: I've never. I've never seen a group of people so enthusiastic for a piece of ham.
• 41:57
  Lowtax: Yes, you have. You've seen Gavin Newsom supporters that look.
• 42:01
  George: That's a pretty lean ham look.
• 42:04
  Ed: You can say a lot of things about Gavin Newsom, and we have on this podcast, but you can also say that he hates Republicans. Can you say the equivalent of Keir Starmer?
• 42:14
  George: I can't. Nope.
• 42:17
  Ed: I don't think he knows. I don't think he knows how to. To have an emotion, let alone that one. And like Gavin Newsom, he is potentially a useful homunculus. Right.
• 42:29
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 42:30
  George: I was gonna go with attack dog instead of homunculus, but homunculus works.
• 42:34
  Ed: Yeah, you just summon him when you need him and make sure to get rid of him when you're done. But like, here, Starmer, what. What's he good for? What does he do?
• 42:44
  Lowtax: He's. What he's good for is. He was. He was built in a lab practically to piss off everyone who is not a columnist for the Guardian, I think.
• 42:56
  Ed: Okay, but now when I said what I did sort of imply good things, useful things, positive outcomes for this.
• 43:06
  Lowtax: I mean, making Brits mad is pretty fun.
• 43:09
  Ed: You know, you're not wrong. We've. We've definitely gone over that plenty of times. Oh, no. This is another episode where I'm just gonna have to play God Save the King instead. I'm not. I'm not gonna go believe all these.
• 43:20
  Propter: I'll say this about Keir Starmer, that my. Introduced. My introduction to him sort of as a person was as the leadership election resolved for labor, something from Andrew Sullivan, who I used to read back during the Iraq war years ago, caught my eye. And it turns out that Andrew Sullivan, who is with every justification, no longer on anybody's must read a list, was a classmate of Keir Starmer's long ago. And what Andrew Sullivan had to say about the ascension of Keir Starmer to the likely future prime ministership of his. Of his native country, was really this guy. This is somebody who went to school with him, who clearly did not rate him as a thinker or as a person in any way. Now, again, Andrew Sullivan is a terrible judge of everything, so I did not think that was dispositive at the time, but now I'm wondering If maybe.
• 44:18
  Ed: Blind squirrel.
• 44:19
  Propter: Not a point.
• 44:20
  Lowtax: Yeah. Stopped clock. Blind squirrel.
• 44:23
  George: I will once again direct all listeners to my blue sky Blue sky profile page because that phrase needs to be tattooed onto my body somewhere. The blind squirrels get a nut sometimes.
• 44:58
  Propter: Speaking of blind squirrels and nuts, I've got. I've got a defense I want to make of Republican thinking on a recent issue. Well, not a Republican thinking, but of a nut that the blind squirrel has found on the issue of thinking is
• 45:13
  Ed: pushing it pretty far.
• 45:15
  Propter: So this has been a discourse topic in recent. I don't even know what kicked this round of discourse off, but we have once again been talking about how in the 2012 election, a number of Republicans formerly thought to be centrist, were driven completely nuts by what I think we all felt both at the time and in retrospect was extremely mild pushback on Mitt Romney that, you know, attacks like the binders full of women or whatever was going on with the dog on the top of the car.
• 45:49
  Lowtax: The 47%.
• 45:50
  Propter: Can I just.
• 45:51
  George: Hold on. Can I. Can we just set the stage here with what the binders full of woman women thing was? Because that. Look, there are some political attacks that are just invented memes, right? Like, never happened. Nothing was ever said. Nothing like that.
• 46:08
  Lowtax: Al Gore invented the Internet.
• 46:10
  George: Correct?
• 46:11
  Propter: The dean scream.
• 46:13
  George: Yeah, the dean scream, exactly. Total like there's nothing there. It's just pure vitriol. Pure spin, whatever. Making stuff up. Right? Okay, fine. The binders full of woman women thing is a direct quote from the candidate himself.
• 46:30
  Propter: On stage during a debate.
• 46:32
  George: On stage during a debate.
• 46:35
  Ed: He said that on purpose.
• 46:36
  George: That's all it is. He. He said it out of his own mouth. What are we talking about?
• 46:42
  Lowtax: He said the 47 thing, too. And he strapped the dog to the top of the car.
• 46:47
  George: The dog on the car thing is a little more of a gray area, but that died. Look, he didn't lose the election because of it. I can promise you that.
• 46:57
  Lowtax: No, he did not. I don't even remember Obama going after him about the dog.
• 47:01
  Propter: Didn't. I mean, the objection from certain Republican quarters here is that Romney was treated unfairly by the media. That.
• 47:08
  Ed: Which is the funniest thing I've ever read in my life.
• 47:11
  Propter: Right? I mean, after. After swift boating, after. I mean, he was running against Obama, who I think has a better claim to have been to. To have been mistreated by the media on a number of axes.
• 47:26
  George: The tan suit. Remember the tan. I think that was 2014, but still.
• 47:31
  Propter: Did you guys see the. Stephen Colbert showed up to the, the Obama building dedication wearing a tan suit.
• 47:37
  Lowtax: Yep.
• 47:38
  Propter: Nice little callback there, Legend. Yeah. So obviously I think they're wrong about whether or not the media treated Mitt Romney unfairly. I don't think it would have made a difference. But, but what I think is being expressed there, that is, that is true. That is, that is kind of the kernel of truth here is that Romney was seen by the Republicans as being their compromise candidate at the time. That this is, that this was okay, we are going to go as soft and squishy and as liberal as we can possibly go. We've got Mitt Romney. He is squeaky clean. He is, you know, Mr. Upright. He is a former blue state governor. This is our, this is our olive branch to America. And they still lost with him. I mean, they still lost with him because they were going up against Obama, who is a generational political talent with a head of steam. Like, I, I'm not really sure they had any reasonable expectation of winning that election, even with a, even with a very good candidate.
• 48:39
  Ed: I think we'll have to say something like LeBron in his prime. But they'll probably argue Larry Bird was better. So I'm not going to make that joke.
• 48:48
  George: The argument the Republicans had a shot of winning that election is the economy was still really weak. And that's a fair argument. And I think that, you know, you, you can, you can make that argument, but it leaves out the context, which was that the public perception was that Bush ran the economy into the ground and Obama was getting it back on its feet again. And I think that's how voters.
• 49:07
  Ed: What economy?
• 49:09
  Propter: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 49:11
  George: The problem with that analysis is that it's the same problem with drawing the conclusion that you have to run Trump like candidates every time you have to run, you know, personalist, hyper right wing, however you want to frame it. Right.
• 49:24
  Propter: Whatever.
• 49:24
  George: Your hobby horse is candidates every time. Because that's the candidate that beat Hillary. And he was reelected, you know, at a four year delay, but he was reelected eventually. And so you have to go as extreme as possible. Like if you look at those two Democratic Party presidential candidates, obviously Harris eventually stepped in, but at the very least for substantial portion of the campaign, you're running against one of the weakest incumbents in modern presidential history. Hillary was, as far as polling's favorable, that kind of stuff goes about as weak of a candidate as you possibly could have designed. And so you're conflating, oh, Dems were not putting their best on the board and therefore with, oh, picking that guy will Win every time. And it's the exact same mistake in reverse. Looking at Romney and saying, well, we ran a soft guy and he got cleaned out anyways. Anyone would have gotten cleaned out. It didn't matter.
• 50:20
  Lowtax: And they didn't run a soft guy well, like, I mean, Mitt Romney was.
• 50:25
  George: Yeah, I'm not, I'm not making a defense of Mitt Romney, to be clear here. I'm just saying that, like, by their own logic, they're wrong. Not, not by, you know.
• 50:33
  Ed: No, I get it.
• 50:34
  George: Accepting the fact that Mitt Romney was a lovely human being who. I'm not going to go there with that.
• 50:39
  Lowtax: This, this always happens with Romney where they have this. They think that, that Romney should be entitled to the perception of moderation because, like, he went to, he went to all the, all the best, all the right schools, he's got nice hair, he wears a sweater vest. And we know how Republicans and reporters get horny for sweater vests.
• 51:05
  George: Relatable.
• 51:07
  Ed: Yeah.
• 51:08
  Lowtax: And he's really rich guy who they can see is their daddy figure. But he was not moderate. He was like, he ran as a right wing asshole.
• 51:20
  Ed: He ran as a right wing smug business guy. And yeah, for once, Americans to their credit went, maybe we shouldn't see. He wasn't racist. He wasn't openly racist enough to get the smug business guy thing going. They've learned. They've evolved.
• 51:37
  Propter: Yep.
• 51:38
  Lowtax: Although he did do, he did do birtherism.
• 51:41
  Ed: True.
• 51:42
  Lowtax: Granted, in a fairly soft form, but he did it.
• 51:46
  Ed: I don't think there's a soft form of birtherism.
• 51:51
  Lowtax: No. But not. He definitely wasn't as loud as, like, trumpet stuff.
• 51:55
  Ed: Well, of course not. Can you imagine Mitt Romney yelling?
• 51:59
  George: Although, yes, actually I can.
• 52:02
  Lowtax: He did desperately seek Trump's endorsement, y' all will recall. Sure.
• 52:07
  Ed: No, I actually blocked that out of my brain.
• 52:10
  Propter: He needed to package himself as more acceptable to the frothing right than they perceived him to be because. Because of the same dynamic. Because, because he was perceived as being, as being the leftmost option for the gop. And, you know, this potential disjoint between the reality and the perception, I think is important. Like, we saw that back in, back in 2008, where, you know, Hillary, who I think was, who, Whose voting record in the Senate was more centrist than Obama's voting record in the Senate, was viewed as being the left lane by the general public and Obama was viewed as the centrist, despite Obama being left of Hillary on most things. And, you know, there's, there's a lot of identity Stuff that goes into that, for sure.
• 53:01
  George: Particularly gender, Gender, gender.
• 53:05
  Ed: Can it stop being gender every time? God damn it.
• 53:08
  George: It's always gender.
• 53:08
  Propter: It's always gender.
• 53:10
  George: It's always gender, baby.
• 53:11
  Lowtax: Everything is gender except gender, which is race.
• 53:17
  Ed: Oh, hey, breaking parentheses. Ish news.
• 53:22
  Lowtax: J.D.
• 53:22
  Ed: vance has departed from Andrews Air Force Base to head to Switzerland to participate in negotiations with Iran. He says I can only be there for a day or two. I think we're going to hopefully make progress on the nuclear issue, make progress on the Lebanon cease fire issue. Follow up.
• 53:36
  George: Chuckle.
• 53:36
  Ed: Fuck yeah. What else do you have to be doing, buddy? It's not like anyone in the White House is soliciting your opinion for things.
• 53:44
  George: Actually, I do have an answer for that, which brings us to our next topic, and that is he could.
• 53:48
  Ed: We are not talking about upholstery on this, on this podcast.
• 53:52
  George: No, no, no, no. He could be sat on a couch resplendently munching on lamb and sauerkraut.
• 53:59
  Ed: Right.
• 53:59
  Propter: Let's talk about diet.
• 54:01
  Lowtax: There was a big spread in lamb and sauerkraut. Like, what are we doing, man?
• 54:08
  George: Both things I will say on their own. I, yeah, consume with great enthusiasm. Honestly, I like them both quite well together. I'm not sure I. Maybe I should try it. Look, sauerkraut on a kebab. I could be convinced. Like a lamb kebab with sauerkraut. I, I think that might work. There's got to be a German somewhere that's tried this.
• 54:27
  Ed: Sure.
• 54:28
  George: DM ed.e3d@.net no on blue sky to.
• 54:35
  Ed: Nope. Nope. Not me. Nope. I, I reject the nomination.
• 54:39
  Lowtax: I'm not trusting a German on that. If you find me, find me a Turkish guy in Berlin or something who's maybe tried it. And
• 54:49
  George: I said a German.
• 54:50
  Ed: Okay, okay. Okay. So for the, for the AFD hitman listening to this. That was George.
• 54:57
  George: For the AFD hitman. Listen to this. Come on by.
• 55:02
  Ed: You can lift.
• 55:04
  George: Yeah. I hope you've been doing your squats.
• 55:06
  Propter: Yeah. So apparently, apparently we're doing some weird diet things in the White House and in the environs. So I guess we're on berries, sauerkraut, grass fed red meat, and yes,
• 55:24
  Ed: occasionally a no bun cheeseburger, which I won't knock. I'm. I will do that.
• 55:29
  George: Nothing wrong with the no bun cheeseburger. Look, my, my reaction to this, like, people were dunking all over this on, on everyone's favorite niche microblogging website. Not the one run by the Nazi, the other one. And I, I Gotta say, like, that spread of what Vance was eating struck me as perfectly reasonable. I wouldn't necessarily, like, advocate for it as, like, the optimal diet or choose it to eat every day myself, but if you're a dude on a GLP1, and which, obviously, Vance is on a GLP1, who are we kidding? You're getting a pretty wide variety of micro and macronutrients. You're maybe not getting enough calories, but you're not, like, way outside the ballpark. You're getting fiber. It's not crazy to me.
• 56:14
  Ed: Look, as a. As a GLP1 enjoyer, there's probably some snacks involved.
• 56:18
  George: Yeah. And I. I just gotta say, like, sauerkraut is great. Where this verges into weirder territory is the Secretary of Health and Human Services bringing Ziploc bags of the stuff to red carpets and having his wife put them in her purse.
• 56:36
  Lowtax: Which do you think he. Do you think he ate it on the phone calls with Olivia? Newsy,
• 56:45
  George: Sauerkraut related foreplay is not what I wanted to be thinking about right now.
• 56:49
  Ed: All right, I'm gonna just bleep that whole section.
• 56:53
  Lowtax: It's just, like, falling out of his mouth while he's talking dirty to.
• 57:00
  Ed: All right. I'm not just bleeping it. I'm sorry. I have to go get a gun.
• 57:04
  Lowtax: I'll be back.
• 57:06
  George: George Costanza and Seinfeld bringing a sandwich into bed. But, like, in the worst possible. Upside down.
• 57:12
  Lowtax: Yep.
• 57:15
  Propter: At least get a Tupperware or something, man. Like. Like. Like a baggie of sauerkraut
• 57:22
  Ed: things. You can't have that.
• 57:24
  George: A baggie of sauerkraut is like some sort of protest armament. Like, you're. You're lobbing it at a politician. You're booing or something.
• 57:31
  Ed: Oh, that. That might get some riot cops to open up on you.
• 57:36
  Lowtax: He's putting it in a Ziploc bag and asking his wife to put it in her purse.
• 57:41
  Ed: Yep.
• 57:42
  George: Yeah, that happened in her defense. In her defense. In the. In the piece. It directly. She. She related this story and then said, I told him absolutely not. Are you insane? And so good for her on that. I don't know why she's still married to this man.
• 57:55
  Ed: There is a.
• 57:56
  George: You know, leaving that aside. Anyhow, sauerkraut's good. I'm a fan of fermented for foods. I'm a fan of people eating vegetables as a fad. Like, obviously, fads can be taken, too, but, like, it's tough to eat too much cabbage to be healthy.
• 58:15
  Lowtax: Like.
• 58:15
  George: Like to overdo cabbage. It's tough even for mountain cabbage.
• 58:19
  Ed: I can find a way.
• 58:22
  George: Oh, yeah, you're Irish, aren't you?
• 58:24
  Ed: Yeah. Look, if I'm not going to be housing down potatoes like they are apples, there's, there's only one option.
• 58:35
  George: We are now going to make Ed eat an entire raw head of cabbage like an apple on the podcast. So get excited for that next week, ladies and women.
• 58:44
  Propter: You know, for what it's worth, I think it's legitimate. It's unfortunate that we live in a gendered world where women can carry bags at events and men, for the most part, don't. But as long as we're there, I think it's legitimate to ask your partner to carry your snacks in their purse, but not in their clutch. That's where I draw the line.
• 59:02
  Ed: But like, the thing is, we are no longer in that world. Like maybe, maybe a little bit. But like, have you seen the. Every, every guy seems to now have like a, it's not quite a fanny pack because it goes over the shoulder, but like one of those two liter front pouch.
• 59:19
  Propter: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those things are great. Those things are great. But there's a limited range of events to which you can wear them.
• 59:25
  George: But hold on. Like, a suit has a very large carrying capacity, right? You've got. Most suits have two breast pockets, plus you've got your right and left hip pockets and your back pockets. You have six different pockets.
• 59:35
  Ed: You have sauerkraut into your, into your breast pocket.
• 59:38
  George: Now, depending on the size of the baggie we're talking about here, that's going to be either a breast pocket situation or a side pocket situation. Probably the breast pocket. I would really strongly pull it out
• 59:49
  Lowtax: like it's a dime bag at high school or something.
• 59:53
  George: I would really strongly recommend against doing that in the cheek pocket of your pants. If you're going to be sitting down even once. Don't do that.
• 1:00:02
  Propter: Protect the sauerkraut. No. And, and to George's point, you know, the 6 pocket setup also means that you're quarantining the sauerkraut relative to your other pockets, which is, which is an advantage over the purse.
• 1:00:13
  George: So you, you can. Look, I'm assuming that this man eats a truly disturbing volume of beef jerky. You know what flat packs and can fit into a pretty tight space is beef jerky. And if you need a little snack to get you through the red carpet because you're a cranky 70 something year old geared to hell and back, well, I mean, beef jerky, my friend, it's right there. It's just slide in, slide out. That'll work. But instead sauerkraut. Noble sauerkraut to be sure, but sauerkraut, the mind boggles. I am really worried that they're going to carry this whole thing into the space of kimchi. Hopefully their innate racism keeps kimchi from getting involved. I don't want to have to deal with MAGA being obsessed with kimchi. But the fact that they went for the non spicy. I'm in the middle of something here. The fact that they non spicy version of sauerkraut instead of spicy sauerkraut is a real, real weird turn of events in my opinion.
• 1:01:09
  Ed: All right, you. You rescued it. Good. Good. Because like there's two words there and too spicy. Are those words.
• 1:01:16
  George: Yeah, yeah, but hold on. There's a whole masculinity thing around liking spicy food.
• 1:01:21
  Ed: I mean, yes, but like that's, that's not right wing coded in the same way. Like you, you.
• 1:01:27
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 1:01:28
  George: Really?
• 1:01:30
  Propter: That's kind of right wing coated.
• 1:01:31
  Ed: I know. It's definitely is hot. Not as conservative coated. Do you know what's kind of. I think you could kind of get them to have a claim on something like buffalo sauce, but buffalo sauce is generally not that hot. You are not getting like hot ones has, has taken over the, the, the hot sauce market. Like the hot sauce mindshare and they are woke as hell.
• 1:01:58
  Lowtax: Right.
• 1:02:00
  George: To me, the archetypal version of I can handle the hot hot sauce is like the boat salesman in like Amarillo, Texas or whatever who's like going down to the bar with his buddies for a bunch of wings and always asking them to make it as hot as possible. And then, you know, rubbing his fingers in his buddy's eyes so that they get. So they start crying more from the hot, hot sauce. Like, like that to me is like
• 1:02:26
  Lowtax: a lot of boat sellers in Amarillo, Texas church.
• 1:02:29
  George: I don't know. I just made up a name. I don't even.
• 1:02:32
  Ed: I like, I can't. Everywhere I have ever gone that has done the. We pride ourselves on hot food has had a pride flag outside.
• 1:02:42
  George: Yeah, but that's because you're going to ethnic places. Not like no places that were doing
• 1:02:47
  Ed: like Nashville hot chicken. Right. Like in, in Nashville. Like they were. They were in the most woke areas of town. Right. Like these things. At best it's a push. But I do not think conservatives have, have a claim on this. Especially because all of the good stuff is, you know, of, of. Of extraction. Right. Like, like what do we have in the house right now we have like really hot gochujang. Not going to find, you know, Amarillo, Texas. Maybe they have it now. I'm. This is a global marketplace.
• 1:03:19
  George: But like if they've got a Kroger subsidiary serving them anywhere nearby, you can get gochu Chung there.
• 1:03:24
  Ed: Sure, but is it the extra spicy? That's my point.
• 1:03:27
  George: Probably.
• 1:03:28
  Ed: Like, I just, I just don't think
• 1:03:30
  Lowtax: HEB has it that they have everything.
• 1:03:33
  Ed: They're kind of magic. They kind of ruin the Texas argument because like H E B is just sort of like a wonderland of food. But like, but like I just don't, I just don't see it because like everything, all of the good hot stuff is from places that would be called foreign state code. Fn. Right. Like, I just don't see it. Also, propter is muted.
• 1:03:58
  George: Propter's muted.
• 1:04:00
  Propter: This is interesting to me because, because it's clearly, it's clearly gendered, right? Like, like there's, there's some amount of machismo that is driving, that is driving the, the competition for capsaicin.
• 1:04:09
  George: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 1:04:11
  Propter: But maybe, maybe this is gender laudatory rather than gender derogatory. Maybe, maybe this is, maybe this is something that, that falls on the, that falls on, on the axes of gender where, you know, these are, these are competitions that are not intrinsically unhealthy. These are, these are. Despite it being literally toxic. This is, this is, this is non toxic masculinity like Crayola.
• 1:04:38
  George: It even takes you into gardening if you try hard enough. The, the Carolina reaper. People can probably attest to that. Carolina Reaper peppers are from like 10 miles down the road from my house. And yeah, I mean it's basically a gardening hobby that went a little bit further than it probably should have.
• 1:04:52
  Lowtax: He's got one that's even hotter than that now too, doesn't he?
• 1:04:55
  George: I don't know. I don't follow it closely. I just know the Carolina Reapers from just across the border in South Carolina.
• 1:05:00
  Lowtax: I think it's called like Pepper X or something.
• 1:05:03
  George: Oh, did he let Elon Musk name it?
• 1:05:07
  Lowtax: I.
• 1:05:07
  Ed: No, because then it would be Unicode. Double struck X. I hate that. I know that. But the good thing is now you all can hate that you know it too.
• 1:05:25
  George: Thank you once again, Ed, for breaking our brains with bad information we don't like to use.
• 1:05:30
  Ed: Yeah, that's what I'm here for. I had a really fun one earlier today, so I had to go replace my wife's car's battery. So I was like I'll just use the VIN to look up because I forget what year the car is. And then I pasted it into everything. Like, I pasted into, like, a VIN decoder. Didn't work. It's like, illegal characters. And I'm looking at it. I'm like, no, no, they're not. Then I try again, and still doesn't work. So then I realize she has a Russian keyboard installed, and it turns out that Cyrillic. The Cyrillic letter that looks like a T is not, in fact, the same letter.
• 1:06:10
  George: Can I just. Does your wife speak Russian?
• 1:06:13
  Ed: Oh, she's learning it.
• 1:06:15
  George: Okay. I was going to say that's, That's a choice.
• 1:06:18
  Ed: Yeah. So I'm just sitting over here being like, no, that, that's not a T. That's a different letter. And I had to resist explaining you to code because I want to stay married, you guys. I don't care. I'll torture, I'll torture, I'll torture you people and George all the time. Like, but, but no, like, I, I, I value my wife too much for that. Not you, though, George.
• 1:06:43
  George: Yeah, thanks. I got that.
• 1:06:50
  Ed: Well, you were the, you were the only one who wasn't muted, so you would be able to, like, get. You get it? You get it. Proctor is going to start talking, be muted again.
• 1:06:59
  George: Proctor has frozen entirely. We are.
• 1:07:06
  Ed: I think that might be the episode title.
• 1:07:08
  Propter: Can you guys hear me right now? Because I went, I went to Poly Market to check on the Republican presidential odds, and it crashed my whole machine, apparently.
• 1:07:15
  Ed: I can hear you. Yeah, don't talk to anything.
• 1:07:18
  Propter: Okay.
• 1:07:19
  Ed: Yeah. Good, good.
• 1:07:21
  George: All right, Republican candidate rankings. Let's go. What does. Yeah, I like doing this from the prediction markets as, like, the starting point, and we can advocate why or why not. They're correct.
• 1:07:34
  Propter: Yeah. So they've got, they've got Vance on top. I think that's defensible. The question in my mind is how much of the equity they're assigning to Vance is based on him already being the president in 2028.
• 1:07:46
  Lowtax: So what is, what's his probability?
• 1:07:48
  George: We can actually back that out, Proctor, if we, if we really have.
• 1:07:51
  Propter: That's true, we can. Well, I'd like to dial through these, but every time I hit another page in Poly Market, my computer freezes.
• 1:07:59
  Ed: So I'm, I'm a little disturbed that, like, I, I go to Ballotpedia because I, I'll, I'll eat a bullet before I go to Polymarket. But, like, they're way less unrealistic about the Republican candidate field than the Democratic candidate. Field.
• 1:08:15
  George: Like, it's a lot narrower.
• 1:08:18
  Ed: I mean, they're also at least all, like, kind of plausible. Like, Tulsi Gabbard is not going to win, but she might try to run. Right? Like she's. She's that kind of crazy. Yeah, but like, there's. There's no. There's no, you know, like, junior senator from. From East Fuckdelton. Right. Like, it's. It's a little more reasonable.
• 1:08:37
  Lowtax: There's less bullshit to wade through.
• 1:08:39
  Ed: It's true. Like, Jason Crowe is not walking through that door.
• 1:08:43
  Lowtax: No, he doesn't want that smoke from Seth Molten.
• 1:08:47
  Ed: I hate that I have to probably vote for him because, like Markie, he is approximately 7,000 years old and not a big fan of his policies over the last couple years.
• 1:09:08
  Lowtax: I would vote for Markey just for the accent. Sorry.
• 1:09:12
  Ed: You do make a good point.
• 1:09:15
  George: We are back.
• 1:09:16
  Propter: Hang on a sec. I'm trying to pull back up the polymarket listings.
• 1:09:18
  George: Oh, God.
• 1:09:18
  Propter: At the risk of crashing my computer
• 1:09:20
  George: again, why would polymarket eat your RAM like that? That's crazy.
• 1:09:23
  Propter: I don't know. Okay, so Polymarket currently has J.D. vance at 38% leading the field. Presumably some amount of that equity is based on him already being president at that point.
• 1:09:37
  Ed: Is already being president at that point a good thing or a bad thing for him? Like, I know that incumbency is real, but also, like, think of how many rakes he will have stepped on by then.
• 1:09:46
  Propter: I think it makes him much more likely to be the nominee.
• 1:09:49
  Ed: That's.
• 1:09:50
  Propter: I don't think it necessarily makes him more likely to win the general election.
• 1:09:54
  Ed: And these are nominee.
• 1:09:56
  Propter: These are nominee odds, correct? Yeah. Okay.
• 1:09:57
  Ed: Okay.
• 1:09:58
  Propter: Yeah. So he's a. He's at 38 right now, leading the field handily. They've got Marco Rubio in second at 22% and Tucker Carlson in third at 7%. And nobody else is above 3%. I'm not sure there's all that much useful information here. Honestly, I think that this, you know, I. Vance, Vance and Rubio are definitely the big two. I agree with that, but I think
• 1:10:24
  Lowtax: I would for sure.
• 1:10:25
  Propter: You know, barring. Barring the scenario where Vance is already in the big chair, I think I might take the field over them at this stage of the game. The big advantage they have is that insofar as we're rekeying towards a personalist regime, being part of the current personalist regime means that they're better able to step in and preserve personalist relationships, which means that they're going to have some surprising Portions of the elite pulling for them because they already have cultivated relationships with this personalist, corrupt government.
• 1:10:59
  Ed: If any of them are still alive and unshanked.
• 1:11:03
  Propter: True.
• 1:11:05
  Lowtax: My question is, does Trump intervene in the primary? Because I'm pretty sure Trump is not a believer in JD Whereas I think he is a believer in little Marco.
• 1:11:16
  Ed: I mean, if he has to be a believer in someone, maybe.
• 1:11:20
  Lowtax: And let's not forget Trump has confidence in little Marco because Cubans love gold.
• 1:11:27
  Ed: The worst people. Ballotpedia has a slightly more expansive list of the field. I was just saying while Proctor was trying to fix his computer that it doesn't have any Jason crows on it, unlike the Democratic side. But like, stop me if anyone sounds interesting. We don't need to go through the whole list this time. Greg Abbott, Katie Britt.
• 1:11:51
  Propter: Katie Brit's interesting.
• 1:11:52
  Ed: Okay, tell me why.
• 1:11:54
  Propter: So I think Katie Britt is interesting because she is one of the relatively few young women who might have a shot at, at the big chair. She, There is, there is some reason to think that she represents sort of the moderate faction of the GOP that'll be appealing to people. And I think that the possibility of running a female candidate is going to be tempting to some people in the GOP, particularly if they get their break speed off in 2026 so they can
• 1:12:24
  Ed: get single digit votes. Because all of the crazy people stay home.
• 1:12:29
  Propter: Yeah, I mean like it's, it's definitely possible it could backfire on them. But like the argument for Brit is that she is one of, in my opinion, maybe, maybe as many as three plausible women who could be a future presidential nominee where the other two are Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nikki Haley. And that's, that's pretty much the whole, that's pretty much the whole cabinet there.
• 1:12:54
  Lowtax: Like, so we should, we should preface this by saying we're going through these candidates. Obviously we hate all of these people.
• 1:13:02
  Ed: Oh yeah.
• 1:13:03
  Lowtax: Rather we're talking about these people more in the sense of would the GOP be smart to nominate them and what are their chances?
• 1:13:12
  Ed: And with the commensurate filter that they are not smart.
• 1:13:16
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:13:16
  George: Good disclaimer. Nonetheless, I do like Brit as a nominee because it would be very funny to have a Brit ossoff tilt in 2028 and we just entirely skip Gen X as if they never existed. I would really find that amusing.
• 1:13:32
  Propter: Yeah, like, I mean, there's not a whole lot like Rubio's gen X. Ron DeSantis, who I don't think we mentioned.
• 1:13:39
  Ed: Oh, he. Don't worry, he's on the list later.
• 1:13:41
  Propter: Yeah, you know, he's. He's kind of the other best hope for Gen X is Youngkin. Gen X? I think he's too old.
• 1:13:48
  Lowtax: I think Youngkin is Gen X. Desantis, I think, is kind of borderline.
• 1:13:53
  George: No, DeSantis is firmly gen X.
• 1:13:55
  Ed: Okay. Doug Burgum. I'm going to say he's not interesting, but.
• 1:14:01
  Lowtax: Yeah, you're right. DeSantis is firmly Jet. He's 47.
• 1:14:05
  Ed: Okay. Tom Cotton.
• 1:14:09
  Propter: No, no.
• 1:14:10
  Ed: Spencer Cox. Someone's going to find this guy interesting.
• 1:14:14
  Propter: I kind of like Spencer Cox despite myself, but I don't think it's going to be Spencer Cox.
• 1:14:18
  George: Wait, who is Spencer Cox?
• 1:14:20
  Lowtax: Governor, Utah.
• 1:14:22
  George: Oh, right, right.
• 1:14:22
  Propter: Okay.
• 1:14:23
  Ed: Yep.
• 1:14:23
  Lowtax: I could see him as, like, a vp. Yeah, possibly. He.
• 1:14:29
  Ed: He appeals to the alienated parts of the Republican base.
• 1:14:34
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 1:14:35
  Propter: Yeah. Like, I think they. I think they'd really have to be in a position where they're trying to send an engraved letter of apology to. To lds.
• 1:14:42
  Ed: Yeah.
• 1:14:42
  Propter: To. To get somebody like Spencer Cox in.
• 1:14:44
  George: Hey, I mean, they may need to do that.
• 1:14:46
  Propter: They may need to do that.
• 1:14:47
  Ed: It might not help either.
• 1:14:50
  Lowtax: Yeah, he probably wears a sweater vest, too.
• 1:14:52
  Ed: Oh, guess who's next on the list. Try to hold in your laughter. Ted Cruz. Next up.
• 1:15:01
  Lowtax: He's definitely gonna run, but he ain't going anywhere.
• 1:15:04
  Ed: Yeah, well, his beard might come in third somewhere. Ron DeSantis, scum of the earth.
• 1:15:12
  Lowtax: Yeah, definitely gonna run. Not gonna go anywhere. Yep.
• 1:15:16
  Propter: Like, it's not clear to me he's going to have the kind of money next time around that he had last time around, when he was the last best hope for normalcy.
• 1:15:22
  Ed: That's the saddest thing I've ever heard. Ted Cruz, last avatar of normal.
• 1:15:29
  Propter: No, I'm not. I'm talking about DeSantis Cruz.
• 1:15:32
  Ed: Oh, that's not better.
• 1:15:34
  Propter: Yeah, no, it's not.
• 1:15:36
  Lowtax: Cruise Cruz is much closer to normal than DeSantis.
• 1:15:40
  Propter: I think that's an interesting question. Go on.
• 1:15:42
  George: I actually disagree with that.
• 1:15:44
  Lowtax: Ted Cruz is not going to have a Sonnen Rad running in a campaign ad.
• 1:15:50
  Propter: Yeah, that's probably true. DeSantis is definitely closer to Groiper Nation.
• 1:15:55
  George: Hold on. Neither of those guys are dictating what's in their campaign ads. I don't think that's a good metric to evaluate their normalcy on. If you want to evaluate normalcy, you want to pick out a guy who has a very, very poor sense of how he looks, especially in front of cameras that are seeing his feet and hence the white gumboot situation. Also, I, I will say, like DeSantis
• 1:16:17
  Lowtax: has, as opposed to DeSantis with his, with his boot thing.
• 1:16:22
  George: That's what I'm saying. That's normal. That's. No, it's, it's bad, but it's normal.
• 1:16:31
  Lowtax: No, wearing cowboy boots in Florida is not normal.
• 1:16:34
  George: No, they were gumboots. They were, they were like the, the rain boot things during the storm.
• 1:16:39
  Lowtax: Gigging boots.
• 1:16:40
  George: No, like, like rubber white boots. Don't you remember that picture? It looked hilarious.
• 1:16:44
  Lowtax: Oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah. During the, the hurricane.
• 1:16:46
  Propter: It's like hazmatted out.
• 1:16:48
  George: Anyhow, I will say, of all these people we've, we've sketched out, in terms of people who have publicly tried to draw an alternative to trump, I think DeSantis is one of the most obvious.
• 1:16:59
  Ed: There are better ones on the.
• 1:17:00
  George: I'm not saying there's better. I'm not saying that. Good, bad, whatever. But he's a high profile politician who the GOP has gotten behind in a big way, who has, you know, for a state governor, as big of a national profile as you'll get, he's got some fundraising chops at the very least. He's run for president before and he can pitch himself as a alternative because he doesn't have the stink of the White House all over him like a lot of these other top tier candidates do. He wasn't in Congress when all this was happening. He's been on the record saying, I think some of this is a bad idea. He said other stuff that is horrible was a good idea. But nonetheless, I mean, if you want to pick out a candidate who could shore up an anti Trump lane from the MAGA side of the spectrum, or at least I can do MAGA better Lane. I think that's DeSantis. Now. That's awful. I do. This does not appeal to me as a voter, obviously, but I think if we're, you know, war gaming a GOP primary, I think there's a constituency for that.
• 1:17:56
  Ed: My problem is that eventually you have to hear him talk.
• 1:18:01
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:18:02
  Ed: And he just sounds like the worst puke in the world.
• 1:18:05
  Lowtax: He has a tinny, tinny, whiny voice and he's fat and sweaty.
• 1:18:09
  Ed: Look, fat and sweaty is fixable now.
• 1:18:11
  Lowtax: Yes, that's true.
• 1:18:13
  George: We have people out here melanating themselves with peptides. I'm sure we can put some bass in his voice somehow.
• 1:18:19
  Ed: We, we know a guy, and you can't know him either because we want you to live. Anyway.
• 1:18:23
  George: I, to be clear, I do not know a guy. I don't know anybody. I don't know what Ed's talking about.
• 1:18:29
  Ed: I've. I've worked for companies in San Francisco. How could I not? Anyway, you were saying we want JB
• 1:18:34
  Lowtax: Pritzker to take up smoking. We do not want Desantis too.
• 1:18:38
  Ed: All right. Anyway, don't worry. There, there are, there are better candidates in this lane further down the list. Here's one who isn't. Byron Donalds.
• 1:18:46
  Propter: No. Not going to be Byron Donalds.
• 1:18:47
  Ed: Nope.
• 1:18:47
  George: No, no, no, sir. No.
• 1:18:51
  Lowtax: Oh, don't you mean by Roan.
• 1:18:53
  Ed: I don't know. I've never heard him say his name
• 1:18:56
  Lowtax: as his little griper opponent calls him Gross.
• 1:19:00
  Ed: All right, we're going to skip on from. We're just going to keep going. Tulsi Gabbard.
• 1:19:06
  Propter: No.
• 1:19:07
  Ed: Anyone? Anyone?
• 1:19:07
  George: Lol. Lol.
• 1:19:10
  Lowtax: A problematic would.
• 1:19:11
  George: Didn't. God damn. Didn't she run for President in 2016 on the Democratic.
• 1:19:18
  Lowtax: 2020. 20.
• 1:19:20
  George: 2020. Where are the years? Gone.
• 1:19:23
  Propter: Seems so long ago. I've got, I've got Youngkin on my list here. We should talk about.
• 1:19:29
  Ed: Okay, we're going alphabetically here.
• 1:19:31
  Propter: All right.
• 1:19:32
  Ed: You know, to be fair. So Matt Gates
• 1:19:38
  Lowtax: again. No.
• 1:19:41
  Propter: Gates is interesting because he's got.
• 1:19:44
  Ed: Because you want to break the record for how many scandals to find.
• 1:19:48
  Propter: So Gates is interesting because he's married to a billionaire's sister. That's the thing that makes him interesting. So he's got money if he wants it in basically unlimited amounts for as
• 1:20:00
  Ed: long as it has not tapped out on squelching the scandals already.
• 1:20:03
  Propter: As long as it has not tapped out.
• 1:20:05
  Lowtax: Gates is the candidate for people who think Trump is in the Epstein files and that it's good.
• 1:20:13
  Ed: Gates is the candidate for every libertarian who is mad that they no longer talk about age of consent.
• 1:20:20
  George: Jesus Christ.
• 1:20:22
  Ed: Yeah, so I might bleep that one or I might not.
• 1:20:25
  Propter: I don't think it's going to be Gates, but he's not directly regarded as a self funder, but he kind of is a self funder.
• 1:20:32
  George: To be clear, when we say self funder, we do not mean Venmo payments to escorts. Although he does that too. Yeah, I was gonna say escorts and human traffickers, I should say, to be perfectly correct there.
• 1:20:46
  Propter: But yeah, he married. He married a Palmer Lucky sister. So it's not just a billionaire, it's a politically active billionaire.
• 1:20:51
  Ed: Oh no. Why did you curse me with this knowledge?
• 1:20:55
  Propter: So, yeah, so that's the thing.
• 1:20:58
  Lowtax: What I get from George's comment is that Matt Gaetz is auditioning for the next coach At Liberty University.
• 1:21:04
  George: Jesus. Palmer Luckey, for those of you not familiar, is the CEO of Andreal, which is the Peter Thiel backed defense contractor that is the drones to Palantir's like data side of things, I think is probably the fair way to describe it.
• 1:21:23
  Ed: All you need to know about this guy is he wears Hawaiian shirts all the time and walks around without shoes
• 1:21:29
  Lowtax: and has an incredible mullet.
• 1:21:33
  George: Yeah. Incredible being as derogatory as humanly possible there.
• 1:21:38
  Lowtax: Correct.
• 1:21:38
  Ed: Incredible as in not credible. Somehow he keeps getting money. Anyway, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Talk amongst yourselves for a minute. I need to step away.
• 1:21:47
  Propter: She's interesting.
• 1:21:48
  George: Not impossible, but she reads the New York Times now, so I think.
• 1:21:52
  Propter: Yeah. So, I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene is, despite her many obvious defects, a gifted politician who has positioned herself in the anti Trump way. She's one of the people who's standing in a place where it might be possible for her, for her to catch a rebound, but the ball has to bounce there. I don't think that that's something that she can kind of make happen on her own. She needs the base to blow up at Trump in a pretty specific way that also takes out guys like Rubio and guys like Vance.
• 1:22:24
  Ed: Yeah.
• 1:22:25
  Propter: And even then that's not sufficient that
• 1:22:27
  Ed: just in fairness, like, it's probably the best bet she could have made.
• 1:22:31
  Propter: Yes, I agree with that.
• 1:22:32
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 1:22:32
  Propter: She wasn't going to be playing the inside game. And besides that inside game I don't think is going to promote women to the top.
• 1:22:38
  Ed: Nope.
• 1:22:38
  Lowtax: At any point, I can't wait for her to hold Ossoff accountable on the space lasers.
• 1:22:46
  Ed: Wow. All right. Nikki Haley. I mean, no, but
• 1:22:53
  George: she's run for president before. She's got a plausible argument to make in the anti Trump but conservative. The problem is she's not MAGA. Like, like DeSantis is MAGA, but can still make a case that he's an alternative Trump, whereas she's just not. So it's hard to imagine her coalescing a viable majority in the GOP primary without having that MAGA base flocking to her for whatever reason, you know, by, you know, recall or whatever. I just, I wouldn't. I would assume that if she runs, she goes fairly deep, but ultimately doesn't get more than 25% of delegates.
• 1:23:33
  Lowtax: I don't think when we get to the 2028 cycle, which will start in about a year probably, I. Donald Trump is still going to be extremely popular with Republicans.
• 1:23:45
  Ed: Like, is he?
• 1:23:47
  Lowtax: Almost certainly.
• 1:23:49
  George: I would accept it. I would accept that as the most likely outcome but almost certainly I will. I will sell that all day long.
• 1:23:58
  Lowtax: Almost certain. You don't think so, do you.
• 1:24:00
  George: Do you want to make me. Do you want to make me a market on Donald Trump's popularity with Republicans in 12 months?
• 1:24:06
  Ed: Okay, yeah. What, what, what is his.
• 1:24:08
  George: Hold on. Let me pull up his actual.
• 1:24:10
  Ed: What's his net favorable in 12 months with Republicans or with Republicans?
• 1:24:16
  George: I'm going to, I'm going to pull up what it is right now because I think we need to reference that before we.
• 1:24:20
  Propter: He's at 68 in the current Pew poll, down from 73 in January. That was a May 1 poll. 68 with Republicans with Republicans and Republican leaning independents, which I think is how you have to do it.
• 1:24:33
  George: Okay, so let's set it at 70 then. Let's set it at 70.
• 1:24:36
  Lowtax: So I have real doubts about the validity of that poll.
• 1:24:41
  Propter: I mean, Pew's pretty good.
• 1:24:42
  Lowtax: Like, his approvals. His approval's in the mid-30s. He's not going to be in the 60s.
• 1:24:48
  George: Republicans and Republican leaners are only.
• 1:24:50
  Ed: Are.
• 1:24:50
  George: I mean, everybody else hates them. So if you go 30 divided by three plus. Yeah, like that, that just, I'm just like, he's like negative 75 with everybody
• 1:25:01
  Propter: else, which is for reference. He was at 34 overall in that
• 1:25:05
  George: poll, which is about where the averages are.
• 1:25:08
  Lowtax: Yeah, I, I don't like keeping Republican leaners in there. I always think of it as. He's probably at about 95 to 5 disapproval among Dems. He's probably at like 85, 15among Reps.
• 1:25:21
  Ed: And then YouGov has him at 84.9 positive, 13.9 negative for.
• 1:25:27
  George: We'll use YouGov as the reference and we'll set 85 as the benchmark. YouGov is the benchmark, is the reference. 85 is our current, current level. So will you buy or will you sell me his popular Republicans at $10 a point, at 85. By the way, this is how the interest rate swap market works, everybody.
• 1:25:51
  Lowtax: I would not say that.
• 1:25:53
  George: Okay, so you don't think uncertainty.
• 1:25:58
  Ed: Let's, let's make this easier for people who hate math. Where do you think he is 12 months from now? Just give me a number. In favorables with Republicans, of course. Yeah.
• 1:26:08
  Lowtax: Among Republicans in favor with Republicans, high 70s.
• 1:26:14
  Ed: That's where I would put him. I was going to say 77.
• 1:26:17
  Lowtax: Do you think he's ever going to fall below 2/3?
• 1:26:22
  Ed: Maybe if he's.
• 1:26:23
  George: Do I think he will or do I think. There are a number of scenarios where he could. Because I don't think that's the same thing.
• 1:26:28
  Ed: We're here for the firm prediction.
• 1:26:29
  George: I think you're right, that the most likely, the modal outcome, the most likely outcome is that, yeah, he retains 80% Republican approvals or something like that, and that's how he finishes his term. There is skew to the downside, though, right? Like. Like the wheels can come off this thing in ways that we can only imagine. And like, the Iran stuff is the perfect example. Like, entirely created, massive, massive hit to his popularity across the spectrum. Created for no reason whatsoever. Right. Like, what happens if something that he didn't create is something he has to contend with? What happens if the AI stuff starts to melt down in the stock market? Market drops 40% in three months. Right. Like, what does he do with that?
• 1:27:10
  Lowtax: When was the last time an incumbent president fell that far, though?
• 1:27:14
  George: Carter, probably Bush.
• 1:27:16
  Propter: Bush, Biden, maybe. Was, Was. Was getting pretty well by the end of it.
• 1:27:20
  George: No, I think he.
• 1:27:21
  Lowtax: What was George W's?
• 1:27:24
  Ed: So the lowest point I can find for Donald Trump on this. You have poll at least while he was in office was 2020. Wait, no, he, he. I almost did the blue sky. He was out of office in 2022. The lowest point I can find when he was in office was 79, and that was in 2017.
• 1:27:46
  Lowtax: Okay, I'm going to revise my statement here. I think in all likelihood, Donald Trump is going to be very popular with Republicans. And by that I mean I think a super majority of Republicans will approve of him when we get to the 2027, 2028 cycle.
• 1:28:06
  George: And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you teach someone how to couch a statement.
• 1:28:13
  Lowtax: And with that in mind, it's hard for me to see how a Haley or a Green or any of these people really gets much of anything going.
• 1:28:28
  Ed: Yeah.
• 1:28:29
  Lowtax: With DeSantis to circle back to him for a second. There's also the issue that Trump hates Ron DeSantis.
• 1:28:35
  Propter: Right.
• 1:28:36
  Lowtax: With the fire of a thousand sons, because Ron DeSantis was a traitor very strongly and challenged him in 2024. So if, if DeSantis started to get some momentum, it wouldn't shock me if Trump kneecapped him.
• 1:28:54
  Propter: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:28:55
  George: The real interesting question is what happens if this primary takes place after it happens? And I think that.
• 1:29:03
  Ed: I think that's an entirely different episode.
• 1:29:04
  George: Yes, exactly. So, like, under. Under all this, we're assuming that Trump is still around.
• 1:29:11
  Ed: I got a train to catch. So let's get through this list. A lot of these I think we can just dismiss with a Lull. But there are probably a couple of fun ones. Josh Hawley, lol. Brian Kemp, not lol. But we're not getting into that one now.
• 1:29:26
  George: Same. Same conversation as Haley and everything else. Yeah.
• 1:29:28
  Ed: Yeah. Yes.
• 1:29:29
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 1:29:29
  Ed: Yeah. He's the halfway point between Haley and DeSantis in terms of electability, not in terms of like who he is more credible to a larger audience. But he's still me.
• 1:29:44
  Propter: If you're looking for somebody who has traditional Republican creds and also and we sort of anti Trump creds. Kemp is one of, Kemp is one of a couple people who fit that
• 1:29:54
  Ed: lane and he's a governor.
• 1:29:56
  Propter: Yeah. Well, I mean he won't be at that point, but. Yes.
• 1:29:58
  George: Right.
• 1:30:00
  Propter: You know, I, I think he's, I think he's interesting and I think he's probably underpriced right now, but there's more than one person in that lane and,
• 1:30:12
  Ed: and the Mitt Romney lane doesn't win, so.
• 1:30:15
  Propter: Right. I don't think this is really like, like Kemp's, Kemp's got legitimate conservative bona fides.
• 1:30:20
  Ed: Sure.
• 1:30:21
  Propter: And I think he's probably the most conservative person in that lane.
• 1:30:25
  Ed: I agree. But like it's still Mitt Romney shaped that. That door has a Mitt Romney shaped hole through it.
• 1:30:31
  George: He's a conservative. He's not Maga. There's. They're different.
• 1:30:34
  Ed: Right.
• 1:30:34
  Lowtax: Yeah. He's also got the DeSantis issue of Trump thinks he's a traitor.
• 1:30:39
  Propter: Right.
• 1:30:39
  Lowtax: Because he didn't steal Georgia Freud.
• 1:30:43
  Ed: Anyway. RFK Jr 1 LOL 2 potentially swings it for someone else is I think, where I'm at.
• 1:30:51
  Propter: I mean obviously we've talked about this before. I'm more bullish on RFK than you guys are because I think that the cupboard really is that bear and he's one of the few guys who's inside, who's inside the administration who doesn't have Iran stink on him.
• 1:31:07
  Ed: I also think he will be extremely stone cold dead by then.
• 1:31:12
  Propter: That's a real possibility.
• 1:31:13
  Ed: Like this guy is going to, this guy is going to be suffering from exploded aorta by that point or you
• 1:31:21
  George: know, maybe just an exploded bag of sauerkraut
• 1:31:26
  Ed: that is in fact a, a crime punishable by lethal injection at least 7 states. So anyway, Kristi Noem lol Rand Paul
• 1:31:39
  George: lol Megal
• 1:31:44
  Ed: remember, Mike Pence is still alive,
• 1:31:48
  George: the leading candidate in the 2028 Republican presidential primary. If Mike Pence has the courage.
• 1:31:57
  Ed: Mike Pompeo. Lol.
• 1:31:59
  Propter: Yeah. Pompeo thinks he's, thinks he's got Juice. And he just. He just didn't last time. He doesn't this time.
• 1:32:04
  George: He's confusing having Juice with having lost a bunch of weight, which, like, as a guy that's also lost a bunch of weight in relatively recent history for your confidence. It really does. But that's not the same as having the juice.
• 1:32:17
  Lowtax: I like the idea of Mike Pence running and having to buy this, like, enormous security detail to protect him from the very people he needs to vote
• 1:32:25
  Ed: for him, to protect him from the Secret Service. All right, you guys need to hold on to something before I say this one.
• 1:32:35
  George: Christ.
• 1:32:35
  Ed: Vivek Ramaswamy, he's going to lose the
• 1:32:39
  George: Ohio Senate race, isn't he?
• 1:32:42
  Propter: Governor race. Governor. Governor race. But, yes, I think he's going to lose.
• 1:32:46
  Ed: He will also lose that other race at the same time.
• 1:32:48
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 1:32:50
  Ed: Marco Rubio, the only substantial candidate we have not talked about.
• 1:32:55
  Lowtax: Yeah, yeah, He.
• 1:32:58
  Ed: He could. It's gonna be a slap fight between him and J.D. vance, and I hope they both lose.
• 1:33:03
  Propter: I think Rubio is kind of the institutionalist lane between Vance and Rubio, which.
• 1:33:09
  Ed: That's the saddest thing I've heard in a while.
• 1:33:11
  Propter: Right.
• 1:33:12
  Ed: Like, that's heard this. That's where podcast.
• 1:33:15
  George: It's the institutionalist lane, because Rubio is the head of 18 different institutions.
• 1:33:19
  Propter: That's.
• 1:33:20
  Lowtax: That's the only reason I cannot believe Rubio is the Steve Mnuchin of Trump.
• 1:33:27
  Ed: Couldn't happen to a better guy. Oh, okay. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
• 1:33:34
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:33:35
  Ed: No, no, no.
• 1:33:36
  George: We're in silly season here.
• 1:33:38
  Ed: Tim Scott.
• 1:33:39
  Propter: No, just
• 1:33:45
  Ed: Stefanik. The Jason Crow of this list.
• 1:33:52
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:33:54
  Ed: I feel bad. Like, I'm sure Jason Crowe is a completely acceptable representative, but he was. He's the only name I remember from that list that I. I'm just like, what? So like, now he is. He is normal men. Lore. J.D. vance, we talked about, and Glenn Youngkin.
• 1:34:09
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:34:10
  Ed: That are all going to hurt you emotionally, but we'll get to them.
• 1:34:15
  Propter: I think Youngkin is interesting. He'd be a lot more interesting if. If the. If Virginia Republicans hadn't gotten blown out. But even as it is, I think he's somebody who has the sort of moderate image despite his fairly conservative governorship, you know, business friendly, don't scare the hoes kind of thing. That is not, at least so far, directly involved with the Trump administration. But unlike somebody in the Kemp lane, he's positioned himself as being relatively Trump friendly.
• 1:34:49
  George: He's got a real big Golanzo potential, though, what with Data Center Alley.
• 1:34:53
  Propter: Yeah, that's true. He is going to get criticized for data centers. If that's. That's an accident.
• 1:34:58
  Lowtax: He looks like a poor man's Mitt Romney.
• 1:35:01
  Propter: He does look like a. Right down to the vest.
• 1:35:03
  Lowtax: Yep.
• 1:35:05
  Propter: So I think, I think he's worth keeping an eye on. And if things take a turn away from, away from a big chunk of the Republican base wanting more Trump, he's somebody to watch him.
• 1:35:21
  Ed: I think you should keep an eye on him because he might steal your wallet. Anyway, so now, now we're down to the three outsider candidates. Oh, and the first one, I'm going out of order here because it's funnier. Mr. Stouffer himself, Tucker Carl Carlson.
• 1:35:39
  Propter: Yeah, I mean, he's got a constituency.
• 1:35:41
  Ed: Crazy people. Yes.
• 1:35:43
  Propter: He's good on camera. You know, he's.
• 1:35:46
  Ed: Yes, that. I hate that. He just looks so frigging gormless, though. Like every time he looks at the camera he's like. Right, like, like.
• 1:35:56
  George: What do you mean, Ed, what's going on here?
• 1:35:59
  Ed: What exactly do you mean by that?
• 1:36:01
  Propter: I think it's likely that he runs and I don't think he's gonna win.
• 1:36:07
  Lowtax: I don't think he's gonna run in 28.
• 1:36:10
  Ed: He might not. Yeah, he might. Wait.
• 1:36:12
  Propter: I think. I think the outsider lane is maybe a little. Maybe a little underpriced right now that,
• 1:36:17
  Ed: well, these other two are going to knock your socks off.
• 1:36:20
  Propter: Is one of them Kim Kardashian?
• 1:36:22
  Ed: No.
• 1:36:23
  George: No. One of them Musk?
• 1:36:25
  Ed: No. I mean, I still don't think they'd get that one through though. They might try. If Arnold couldn't do it, Can Elon Musk? Really?
• 1:36:34
  George: Was Arnold a trillionaire?
• 1:36:36
  Ed: No, but people actually liked him.
• 1:36:40
  Lowtax: True.
• 1:36:40
  Propter: Fair. Dems will be behind it if that's a thing that happens. I mean, that'll be like changing. The natural born citizen clause right now is potentially kind of a wedge issue for Dems because that's going to code as Mamdani Sauron. Yeah, yeah, Seriously, for everybody. So it's going to be a straight, you know, Democratic. Do you like Mamdani proxy? Most of us do, yeah.
• 1:37:06
  Lowtax: Oh, my God. How much would you pay to watch Mamdani vs Elon?
• 1:37:13
  Ed: Trillion dollars doesn't buy that much.
• 1:37:15
  Lowtax: Yeah, I mean, make it, make it $5 trillion. Give him the GDP of Russia. He's still not going to beat Zoron.
• 1:37:23
  Ed: All five bucks of it, huh?
• 1:37:24
  Propter: Anyway, next up, an all African presidential championship.
• 1:37:32
  Ed: Oh, the promise of America. Anyway, Steve Bannon,
• 1:37:38
  George: he's not going to be alive in 2028.
• 1:37:41
  Propter: Is he also, like, running for office is not really his thing? His thing, no.
• 1:37:45
  Ed: But I would like to see him do it. Not because he will win or because I want him to win, but just because he will absolutely, like, harm everyone else. He might bring a gun.
• 1:37:54
  George: Yeah.
• 1:37:54
  Ed: Like this might be rhetorical harm or this might be. He brings a gun.
• 1:37:58
  Propter: Yeah.
• 1:37:59
  Lowtax: Yeah. On the outsider lane, I don't think Tucker's going to run in 28 just because I don't think 2028, he's, he's going to be smart enough that he'll know 2028 is not going to be a good year for them. 2032, 2036, I could see it. And he's, he has the advantage that, you know, he's a media personality so he can stay out there and keep people paying attention to him, whereas.
• 1:38:22
  Ed: Well, he's kind of gotten ejected from a lot of that. That stuff. He's. Yeah, but he's a very fringe person. Look, at this point, he's like, I mean, he hasn't hired Alex Jones yet this time, I think, but, like, that's where he's at. Yeah, he's at picking fights with Alex Jones. Territory of relevancy. He just, like, he's Mr. Stouffer. He's got money.
• 1:38:47
  Lowtax: Yeah. It's a, It's a fair point. Well, having money is, you know, that counts.
• 1:38:52
  Ed: Yeah.
• 1:38:52
  George: Yeah, we count those.
• 1:38:54
  Lowtax: Somebody like jd, I don't remember who said it on Blue sky to me, but they predicted that JD would sit this one out. And I'm like, JD's not gonna sit this one out. Like, he's, he's not gonna get another bite at this.
• 1:39:07
  Ed: Nope.
• 1:39:07
  Propter: No chance.
• 1:39:08
  Ed: Nope. That dead, that dead eyed freak has no chance other than this.
• 1:39:13
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 1:39:14
  Propter: I think if you're anyone who's associated with, with the second Trump administration, this is, this is your shot and you take it or you're done.
• 1:39:20
  Ed: Yep. So we might never have to hear about Marco Rubio ever again. Thought. Yeah.
• 1:39:29
  George: Anyway, I welcome it.
• 1:39:30
  Ed: Yeah. Steve Bannon, aside from the comedy option of bringing a rifle to a debate. No, no. And now the last one that they have on this list, and I did say this would harm you. Donald Trump Jr. Oh, Lord.
• 1:39:48
  Lowtax: Even Donald Trump would not be on board with that.
• 1:39:51
  Ed: Like, no, but that's kind of why, like, I read this and I'm like, I hate the plausibility of this.
• 1:39:58
  George: It's the opening scene from Secession where succession. Where what's his name is in the car with the headphones. I like it's just. No, that dog don't hunt.
• 1:40:10
  Ed: You don't want it.
• 1:40:12
  Lowtax: I've never seen it. Trump. Trump would kneecap Trump Jr. Yes, he absolutely believes Trump Jr. Is an idiot. There is a reason why Jared, Ivanka and Eric run everything and Junior just goes out and hunts gazelle and elephants or whatever the he does these days.
• 1:40:33
  Ed: Engages in cryptographs, I believe.
• 1:40:36
  George: I think that's mostly an Eric thing. No, it's both of them.
• 1:40:39
  Ed: Yeah, both of them. There was a recent one that went around, I think that was tied to the, the dimmer of the two Trump lights.
• 1:40:47
  Lowtax: Yeah, that's the one thing Eric is allowed to do is he's allowed to just go and hold his hand out for, you know, golf, monarchs and stuff.
• 1:40:56
  George: Well, on, on that cheery note, I think we're going to wrap it up for the week. We've, we've subjected you to enough of this nonsense. So. From the southeastern tip of Catawba county in North Carolina, I'm George from the District of Columbia.
• 1:41:09
  Lowtax: I'm Proctor from outer Florida. I am low tech speedrun enjoyer from
• 1:41:14
  Ed: Hoping we can save this in the edit. I'm Ed from Boston.
• 1:41:16
  George: Stay normal, y'.
• 1:41:17
  Ed: All. Sa.