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Trump's War on Blue America · Pod Save America

• 0:00
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  Speaker 1: Being reactive is Mitch McConnell opposing pieces of Trump's policy
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• 0:15
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  Speaker 1: at simplisafe.com slash crooked. That's simplisafe.com slash crooked. There's no
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: safe like SimpliSafe. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: On today's show, the shutdown continues with no end in sight.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: The November elections are a month away, and this week
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about Gavin Newsom's ballot measure here
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: in California to neutralize Republican gerrymandering. And then you'll hear
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Tommy's interview with Ben Smith at Semaphore about the impact
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: of Barry Weiss taking over at CBS News, how Donald
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Trump's media filter may be impacting his decisions, and whether
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: the ABC News Jimmy Kimmel saga has changed corporate media.
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  Speaker 1: But let's start with the president's war against Blue America,
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  Speaker 1: which has now come to Chicago and Portland. I'll just
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  Speaker 1: quickly go through the facts of what's been happening on
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  Speaker 1: the ground. And then you guys can respond. In Chicago,
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  Speaker 1: armed federal agents have been engaged in military-style immigration raids
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  Speaker 1: they're calling Operation Midway Blitz. Last week, Black Hawk helicopters
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  Speaker 1: landed on a Southside apartment building in the middle of
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  Speaker 1: the night where about 100 agents in tactical gear used
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  Speaker 1: flashbang grenades to bust through the residents' doors, drag them outside,
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  Speaker 1: including legal residents and U.S. citizens, including children, some naked.
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  Speaker 1: and zip tied them together for hours. No warrants, no lawyers,
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  Speaker 1: kids crying, separated from their families. They have also deployed
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  Speaker 1: tear gas outside schools and on streets, not just against
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: peaceful protesters, but people who were just passing by. They
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  Speaker 1: arrested a city council member in a hospital who had
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: merely asked to see a warrant. They've shot rubber bullets
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: and pepper balls at multiple journalists who just filed a lawsuit.
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  Speaker 1: They shot lethal bullets at a woman in a vehicle
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: they said was trying to ram them Though just before
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: we started recording, I said that they had the body
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: cam footage shows that maybe they rammed her as they're
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: going through the court proceedings. So, of course, you can't
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: trust anything they say. Some of the raids they filmed
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: for social media. So Kristi Noem could tweet them out.
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  Speaker 1: She was there in person last week in Chicago, whining
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: after local officials in one building didn't let her use
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  Speaker 1: the potty. Then promising that Trump would be sending in
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  Speaker 1: the Department of War, which he did. On Saturday, the
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: president announced he'd be deploying 300 troops from the Illinois
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  Speaker 1: National Guard over the objections of Governor Pritzker. And then
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  Speaker 1: on Sunday, he decided to send 200 troops from the
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  Speaker 1: Texas National Guard to Chicago as well. Governor J.B. Pritzker
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  Speaker 1: and the city of Chicago are suing to stop the deployments.
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  Speaker 1: And the judge scheduled a hearing for later this week.
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  Speaker 1: Here's Donald Trump crowing about his progress on Monday afternoon
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  Speaker 1: in the Oval Office. followed by Pritzker's response to the takeover.
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  Speaker 5: We're going to make Chicago really great again, and we're
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  Speaker 5: going to stop this crime. Then we're going to go
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  Speaker 5: do another one, and we're going to go city by city.
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  Speaker 5: We're going to have safe cities. I believe that Pritzker
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  Speaker 5: and this mayor of Chicago that like to say about
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  Speaker 5: we have it, they don't have it under control. Not
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  Speaker 5: only is it not under control, it's the opposite.
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  Speaker 2: And I believe they're afraid.
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  Speaker 5: They're scared for their lives.
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  Speaker 2: I think they can fool us all into thinking that
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  Speaker 2: the way to get out of this crisis that they
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  Speaker 2: created is to give them free reign. Well, that plan
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: will only work if we let it. The state of
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Illinois is going to use every lever at our disposal
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  Speaker 2: to resist this power grab and get gnomes, thugs the
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  Speaker 2: hell out of Chicago.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not afraid.
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  Speaker 2: I am not afraid and I won't back down.
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  Speaker 1: So last week we had Trump telling an audience of
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  Speaker 1: generals that they're now fighting, quote, an enemy within. Urge
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  Speaker 1: them to use America's cities as, quote, training grounds. Looks
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: like we're seeing that now. We'll get to what's happening
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: in Portland in a second. But what do you guys
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: make of the situation in Chicago, which, as Trump said,
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  Speaker 1: is not only not under control, but the opposite? Which
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: I guess is out of control.
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  Speaker 4: It's the opposite of under control. Over control, that's not right.
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  Speaker 4: That's not right.
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  Speaker 3: Even the terminology is kind of chilling. Operation Midway Blitz.
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  Speaker 3: The blitz was when the Germans bombed the shit out
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  Speaker 3: of London for about a year.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought that was for like foreign military operations
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  Speaker 1: we give names to.
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  Speaker 4: Like just even, you know, you're claiming you're doing this
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  Speaker 4: on behalf of the people of Chicago. Call it something
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  Speaker 4: like safe... Safe dish.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: Deep dish. Hot dish.
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: Deep safety.
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  Speaker 3: Tavern-style safety. Do you see the videos of the Chicago
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: cops who were tear-gassed by ICE, too?
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. There are so many
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  Speaker 1: of these videos that I forgot to include them all.
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  Speaker 3: Look, I just think that the political take-home is this,
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  Speaker 3: to me, is the fight Trump wants. He wants to
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  Speaker 3: call us weak on both immigration and soft on crime.
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  Speaker 3: And I think he wants these images on TV of
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  Speaker 3: what looks like violent and chaotic violence And so he
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  Speaker 3: sends ice into these communities in the most inflammatory way
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  Speaker 3: possible to try to make that happen. And like these
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  Speaker 3: ice raids, like that Blackhawk helicopters kicking down doors at
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  Speaker 3: night with flashbangs, that is like what the special forces
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  Speaker 3: did for two decades in Afghanistan or Iraq. And they
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  Speaker 3: have their social media teams like filming it all and
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  Speaker 3: releasing it. The hype video they did release reminded me
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  Speaker 3: of the video Bukele released when we first sent all
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: the Venezuelan men to Sukkot. And So it's like clearly
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  Speaker 3: a strategy. I don't think it's a smart strategy. We'll
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  Speaker 3: get into some of the polling later, but like 58%
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: of voters in the CBS poll, so they disapprove of
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: National Guard deployments. I'm not sure like they want to see,
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  Speaker 3: you know, people getting brutalized in these communities, but Stephen
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  Speaker 3: Miller does.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, to the point of not being able to believe
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  Speaker 4: the word they said. So first of all, they're rappelling
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  Speaker 4: into the roof. To what end? For what purpose? Like
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  Speaker 4: they're trying to get out of Abbottabad before the Pakistanis
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  Speaker 4: find us.
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  Speaker 1: It's filled with Trende Aragua.
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  Speaker 4: Well, that's the other thing. They're like, we were actually
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  Speaker 4: doing this to get gang members, they've released no information
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  Speaker 4: about that. They can't be trusted. They said a bunch
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  Speaker 4: of people who were innocent were gang members when they
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  Speaker 4: shipped them off to El Salvador. So we can't take
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  Speaker 4: their word for it. All we do see are images
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  Speaker 4: of Americans and legal residents being bound up and complaining
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  Speaker 4: about this happening in their building. It's a completely ridiculous
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  Speaker 4: outside show of force, which they're doing for the cameras
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  Speaker 4: to make their fascist agitprop. And, you know, the defense,
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  Speaker 4: they're going to release information at some point saying, look
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  Speaker 4: at all these people that Democrats wish were still in
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  Speaker 4: these buildings as if it is not possible for our
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  Speaker 4: laws to be enforced without a Blackhawk helicopter over an
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  Speaker 4: American city and people rappelling down onto the roof.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, imagine if, let's take their word for it,
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  Speaker 1: that there were Trenderagua gang members in that building. You
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  Speaker 1: get a warrant from a judge. There's a million ways
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  Speaker 1: that you can go into the building And, you know,
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  Speaker 1: and arrest these people without them running away or knowing
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  Speaker 1: that you're coming.
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  Speaker 3: Stairs. Stairs, right?
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  Speaker 1: Like not Black Hawk helicopters.
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  Speaker 4: It's a five-story building, by the way.
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  Speaker 1: This isn't, this isn't.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: This isn't like two apartment buildings.
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  Speaker 3: This isn't the Sears Tower.
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  Speaker 1: But also like there's a lot of people in there.
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  Speaker 1: They took all the residents out and they're definitely lying
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  Speaker 1: at least about some of the people because a lot
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  Speaker 1: of citizens and legal residents were already, have already been
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  Speaker 1: released because they didn't do anything. but they were out
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  Speaker 1: in the cold for hours. These kids are screaming. The
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: eyewitness was talking to a local television channel there and
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  Speaker 1: just said it was horrifying. These kids, some of them
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  Speaker 1: were naked, some of them weren't fully clothed, and they're crying,
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  Speaker 1: and they're separated from their parents, and one of the
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  Speaker 1: ICE agents is saying, fuck them kids, and they just
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  Speaker 1: don't care.
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  Speaker 3: This is also the war on terror coming home to
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  Speaker 3: roost because the cops now have MRAPs because there's all
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  Speaker 3: this leftover military equipment from Iraq and Afghanistan. ICE has
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  Speaker 3: a Blackhawk helicopter in Chicago for some reason. What are
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  Speaker 3: we doing here? We've completely militarized policing in this country.
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  Speaker 1: And the ICE agents now are acting with impunity because
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: they have good reason to believe they're not going to
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  Speaker 1: be held accountable. And because they are trying to meet
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  Speaker 1: Stephen Miller's quota of 3,000 arrests per day and I
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: guess a million deportations a year. And so they're going
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: to just arrest everyone who they see. and like this
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: is this is what we're getting to your point about
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: strategy tommy like it's definitely it's interesting like their strategy
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: for sure is they want people to see that this
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: is a militarized operation and that they are happy to
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  Speaker 1: use force yeah the difference is like the lie is
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: about who it's directed towards right so they want to
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: keep putting out videos that tell you, yes, it's a
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: militarized operation. Yes, they're using force, but it's against the
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: worst of the worst. These terrible crimes and Democrats are
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: against it. And the videos that we're actually seeing are
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  Speaker 1: them using force against, not the videos they're putting out,
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  Speaker 1: but the videos that we're seeing otherwise are them using
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  Speaker 1: force against cops, kids, innocent people, American citizens, peaceful protesters.
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 3: They drive a tank through the wall and they pull
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  Speaker 3: out Andre the hairdresser from the other side. It's like,
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  Speaker 3: come on guys, this is bullshit.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: The other thing too is it's like, it's all predicated.
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  Speaker 4: Like they do have a siege mentality now, right? These
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  Speaker 4: ICE officers themselves feel like they're under siege. They've internalized that.
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  Speaker 4: Stephen Miller's whole like, there's a country under siege. Our
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: side is under siege. And so they respond with siege-like tactics.
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  Speaker 4: And who does that work for? Well, it works for
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: people that are like it works fully for people that
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: are only imbibing information in their ecosystem, right? Because they
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: see the reports about how these cities are in turmoil
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: and in crisis. And then they see positive reports from
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: Christina and all these people defending what they're doing. If
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: you're outside of that bubble, you see a mix, right?
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: You see what these guys are claiming. You see the
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: local leader saying that this is ridiculous. You see footage
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: of Portland and Chicago being normal places. Yes, there are
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: areas where there've been like a few blocks of protests,
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: even unruly and protests that have turned chaotic and even violent.
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: But for the most part, of course, this is, ridiculous.
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  Speaker 4: And so then you end up with the vast majority
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: of Americans in these polling saying, look, I don't support this.
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: I certainly wouldn't want it in my city. They may
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: not trust Democrats to enforce either immigration laws or to
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: be strong on crime. They see Democrats as weak. That's
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: in the CBS poll. But they certainly don't want this crackdown.
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  Speaker 1: All right, let's turn to war-ravaged Portland, where Trump announced
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: at the end of September he was deploying troops to use, quote,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: full force if necessary against protests outside a single ICE
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: facility that haven't involved more than 20 people since June.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: There have been about 20 people outside this one ICE
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: facility since the end of June. Like a couple weeks
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: in June, it was pretty unruly. And I know that
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: because it's in the court document. It's in the ruling
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about. So, like Governor Pritzker,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Governor Tina Kotek opposed the deployment of the Oregon National
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Guard and sued the Trump administration. On Saturday, a federal
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: judge agreed to block the deployment, at least temporarily, saying
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: that Trump's claims about violent unrest in the city are, quote,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: simply untethered to the facts and that, quote, the plaintiffs
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: are likely to succeed on their claim that the president
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: exceeded his constitutional authority and violated the 10th Amendment. The
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: 10th Amendment, for those who don't know, is... if it's
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: not explicitly spelled out in the constitution as a power
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: and authority that the federal government has, those authorities are,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: they go to the states. The states have.
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: And the people, John.
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: The people.
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: And the fucking people.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: That's us.
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: The judge also said, quote, this is a nation of
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: constitutional law, not martial law. Should note here that this
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: radical left Marxist judge, Karen Immergut, was appointed in 2019
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: by Donald Trump. The White House then tried to get
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: around the ruling by sending troops from California to to
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Oregon instead. Texas is also trying to send troops to Portland.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Judge Emmerich didn't think this move was all that clever.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: She wasn't too happy about this, and she held a
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: second emergency hearing on Sunday night where she clarified that
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: no guard troops from any state could be deployed to
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Portland for the time being. The administration appealed that ruling
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: to the Ninth Circuit. As of this recording, we are
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: waiting for them to rule. Trump had some choice words
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: about Portland and the judge. Let's listen.
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: Portland is on fire. Portland's been on fire for years
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: and not so much saving it. We have to save
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: something else because I think that's all insurrection. You look
• 14:58
  Speaker 5: at what's happened with Portland over the years. It's a
• 15:01
  Speaker 5: burning hellhole. And then you have a judge that lost
• 15:07
  Speaker 5: her way, that tries to pretend that like there's no problem.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: She lost her way. She lost her way. Trump also
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: said on Sunday that he only nominated Emmergut in his
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: first term because he got bad advice. What did you
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: guys make of her ruling and Trump's reaction?
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: He doesn't know why he nominated her. He doesn't know.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: He's like, what?
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: A list he approved that came across his desk.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Leah Littman did a great video breaking down what
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: happened in Portland with this ruling on the strict scrutiny YouTube.
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: I highly, highly recommend it. But in that video, she
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: made the point that sending one state's National Guard to
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: another state is basically an administration orchestrated civil war. And
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: I think that's how we should see this. And, you know,
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: as you mentioned, like the judge in this case could
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: not have been more scathing. You can see these protesters,
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: their videos are all over Twitter. It is like 20 people.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: A lot of them are old. People are in Halloween costumes.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: There's a chicken suit.
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: There's a dude dressed like Yoshi or something. Like it's, look.
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: Lawn chairs are involved at one point. Back in June,
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: some shit went down. Um, but like when people are violent,
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: they should be arrested. But like the idea that the
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: Portland cops couldn't handle that is crazy. If people say
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: mean things, guess what? That's protected speech.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: And that's how it goes. I talked to Ben Smith
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: about this. I do wonder if like comments, like what
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: we just saw do stem from his information bubble because
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: in Trump's world on true social, it's all adulation and
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: like Antifa videos from 2020 of people throwing, you know,
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: bricks through Starbucks windows. And the reality is very different. And,
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: but like either way, the suggestion that ICE is can't
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: do their jobs in Portland without a National Guard deployment
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: is ludicrous on its face. The Trump judge said as much.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: And like, I can't even believe we're talking about this.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: I also think that it was in Ben's piece on this,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: on Trump's media filter bubble. It's the people around him too, right?
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: And so they know what his media diet is. And
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: so Stephen Miller is telling him things are so much
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: worse than they are. And, you know, Ben brought up
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: that quote that Trump told Oregon's governor in late September
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: that am I watching things on television that are different
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: from what's happening? My people tell me different, which I
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: kind of believe.
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: There was a moment too, where in one press conference,
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: Kodak talks about talking to Trump and Trump's like, oh, well,
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: we'll just keep talking. He's very kind of like convivial
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: on the phone. The ruling, by the way, it's just,
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: I recommend reading at least excerpts of it. It's like
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: a beautiful piece of logic and it's actually pretty conservative.
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: It goes through the case methodically and not with any
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: kind of grand hyperbole, but it just starts from principle.
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: And what I appreciate about it is two things. One,
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: uses these exact kind of words from Trump against him,
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: where she basically says, this is not a good faith.
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: Look at how he's describing Portland. That is not accurate.
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: That is not what's happening on the ground. And the
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: other part of it is, you know, there's been a
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: lot of question about how deferential courts have to be
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: to Trump. These words, they're not defined. Insurrection, rebellion, right?
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: And she's very careful of saying, yes, the president gets
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: a great deal of deference, of course, but deference is
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground. And
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: I do think that's really important because even if you
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: are being deferential to the president, no, you do not
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: have to be so open-minded that your brain falls out
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: of your head. There's no invasion. There's no rebellion. There's
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: no insurrection. The laws are still operating. The courts are
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: still operating. This is ridiculous on its face. And you
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: can be deferential to the executive on these matters without
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: giving into that. It's just a very careful thing. argument,
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: including asking as to whether or not this fits into
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: a permitted range of honest judgment, which, by the way,
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: is not just about this law. It's also about the
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: Insurrection Act, which I know we're going to talk about,
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: but I do think is important.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Well, clearly, this is all like the brainchild of Stephen Miller, who,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: by all accounts, is the person actually running the federal government.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: He went a bit further than Trump in a series
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: of tweets over the weekend that sound like a fascist chatbot.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: He used the term, quote, legal insurrection. called the decision
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: one of the most egregious and thunderous violations of the
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: constitutional order we have ever seen in an attempt to, quote,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: nullify the 2024 election by fiat. He also claimed that
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: there's a large organized movement of, quote, left-wing terrorism being
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors, and attorneys general. The
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: terrorism and terror networks. He just, he was on a
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: fucking tear. He's called Sam Stein repugnant.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: Sam Stein, like the least repugnant.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Person right now. Who just basically quote tweeted the legal
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: insurrection quote and was like, what a thing to say
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: on a Saturday night. And he's like, you are repugnant.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: You're a fucking called representative of Dan Goldman vile.
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: Broken clock. We were all watching in our office.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: Stephen Miller on doing this CNN interview earlier today. And
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: you notice he does every interview from kind of a
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: weird angle. And he has this shrieking, shrill, aggrieved tone.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: It's just so clearly a performance. And it's remarkable to
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: watch Stephen Miller rant and rave about domestic terrorism and
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: nullifying the results of an election when the clearest act
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: of domestic terrorism in this country's recent history was January 6th.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: And he defends that.
• 20:05
  Speaker 6: I assume.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: This is the continuation of the post-Charlie Kirk rhetoric where
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: they are trying to build a conspiracy that will allow
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: them to pull in like funders and progressive groups and
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: say that they're somehow providing material support for terrorism and,
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: you know, go after like the Soros Foundation, the Ford
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: Foundation or like Center for American Progress or whatever groups
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: that they decide are their enemies. But it's risable. It's laughable.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. After all of those tweets from Stephen Miller and
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the interview that we saw today in the office, he
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: tweeted something just now that he accused Democrats of raving histrionics.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: It's unbelievable, right? That if you refer to any of
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: this as fascist, you're inciting violence. Meanwhile, the left is
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: an organized terror movement. Our opponents are an enemy within.
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: The cities are war zones and a training ground for
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: the military. Judges who rule against us are legal insurrectionists.
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: And by the way, these are just facts. And if
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: you don't see that, you're the one that's being emotional.
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: It's like, I can't tell what to make of, like Steve, look,
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: there are all kinds of members of the administration that
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: are saying, you know, Kristi Noem kind of is extreme.
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: There's all different versions of this, but Stephen Miller does
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: stand apart, I think, in the rhetoric that he's using,
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: in the extremism, in the language he's using. And I
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: really can't tell, like, is he the boy who cried terrorism, right?
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: Is he like making this all feel less real, even
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: to his own side, right? Like, does it all feel
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: like it's not gonna lead to anything? Or is this,
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: and or, is this just a preview of things to
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: come that now it all feels so crazy and then
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: all of a sudden they start treating these as facts
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: and go from there, including insurrection, like calling the judges
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: insurrectionists is not an accident.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: The language, apart from being extreme and very fascist sounding,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: is also like, there's a lot of legalese in there,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: in that he is, I think when you say, is
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: it a sign of things to come? It's what he
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: wants to have happen. And he is the one who
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: continues to push the envelope within the administration, I think, right?
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: So remember he floated that getting rid of habeas corpus
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: and then he sort of walked, like he keeps pushing
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: and pushing and pushing. And I think that's what this
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: is about, right? Which is every time a judge rules
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: against them, even if it's a Trump judge, now it's
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: legal insurrection. We got to go after the judges. Every
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: time a Democrat says, every time there's a protest out there, it's,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Democrat violence, it's left wing terrorism, all this kind of stuff.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: So he's trying to set the predicate for much more
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: extreme action.
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: And he knows the bounds of what he it is
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: rhetorical because he knows the bounds of where he's not
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: getting ahead of Trump, because actually one of these interviews.
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: He's responding to a question about whether he should be
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: if the president should be ignoring or breaking the rulings
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: that judges say. And he goes, no, I'm just saying
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: factually accurate things. I'm just saying I'm just saying what
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: the facts are. And these are legal insurrections. But that
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: no is pretty important.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: But he's not getting ahead of the president on that.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Well, notably in the Oval on Monday, Trump called what's
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: happening in Portland insurrection. And when asked, said he would
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: invoke the Insurrection Act if, quote, people were being killed
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: in courts were holding us up or governors or mayors
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: were holding us up.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: That's quite a range of activities.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 23:18
  Speaker 5: I know.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Anyone explain like what's going on with the Insurrection Act
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: and how it's different than what's been happening so far?
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: Look, there's the legal scholars for a long time have
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: said the Insurrection Act is ridiculously broad and needs to
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: be reformed. Just missed it. That's a real bummer.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Again, can't even the government is closed right now, so
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: couldn't do that. Let alone reforming the Insurrection Act.
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: Not our biggest obstacle. But that's like when I was,
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: when gay marriage wasn't legal, like that wasn't my obstacle.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: To marriage in the same way.
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: But there are multiple parts of the Insurrection Act. Some
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: of them require state buy-in. Some of them don't. Some
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: of them are broader than others.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Some of them are not.
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: I don't want to like play down the dangers of
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: the president invoking the Insurrection Act. At the same time,
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: if you go back and look at the warnings of
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: how a president could use the Insurrection Act, warnings from 2022, 2021, Right.
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: What you find is a description of what Trump is
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: already doing. And it seems like what they like is
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: the idea of signaling that the Insurrection Act is some
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: like final boss for the libs.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:19
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: But it's not. And the other part of this and
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: Brennan Center talks about this. Legal scholars talk about this.
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: There is no martial law in this country. Even if
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: there's military in our streets, you still have your constitutional rights.
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: Those do not go away. And the court has held
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: that the idea that the Insurrection Act is sort of
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: beyond traditional views is not true. Like, I'm not saying
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: it's a great day. But as I said, the ruling
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: from that judge on the president deploying National Guard references
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: the ruling that says there are limits on the invocation
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: of the Insurrection Act as well. So it's scary, but
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: like it's not some get out of court free card
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: for them.
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, they're just so horny to declare martial law.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: Like Elon Musk was tweeting over the weekend that we
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: need to bukele the court system here. And what that
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: means is basically throw out any independent judges, pack the
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: courts with loyalists. and then declare what Bukele called a
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: state of exception. It'd be called a state of emergency
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: here where they just suspended due process and threw people
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: indiscriminately in jail with no charges, some for life. So
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: that's what Elon Musk is advocating for on Twitter.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: The difference between what Trump has already been doing with
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: the troops and what he could do theoretically with the
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Insurrection Act is, you remember when the troops were here
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: in LA, they were only guarding the federal buildings. And
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: if you listen to Miller and some people in the administration,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: they're saying, well, we're just sending them in to guard
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: the ICE facilities, to guard the ICE facilities, protect the
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: ICE facilities because they're federal buildings. And so what he's
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: trying to do now is basically say he's deploying troops
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: to defend federal buildings and only to be on, to
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: defend things, right? And it's not offensive. It's not, they're
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: not supposed to be able to do law enforcement activities, right?
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: The Insurrection Act theoretically allows them to do law enforcement activities.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: So that would be the the difference. But like you said,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: while there may not be much courts can do to
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: review the invocation of the Insurrection Act, the manner in
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: which it is carried out is definitely reviewable. Meaning that
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: you can't just suddenly have troops in the streets arresting
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Americans and throwing their rights out.
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: I'd also just say, I've seen that distinction and maybe
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: that could turn out to be very important. But if
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: you look at the way in which Stephen Miller and
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: others are describing what they're already allowed to do, they've
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: actually left behind the idea that they're just guarding buildings
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: because now they can be there in support of law
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: enforcement operations.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: But they're defending the federal agents as they get attacked.
• 26:41
  Speaker 6: Sure.
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: Yes, of course.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: But that's what I'm saying. That's the thin reed that
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: they're hanging in.
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: Yes. But even still, it's like, okay, they are hiring
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: vast numbers of new ICE agents. That will be the
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: vanguard for all of this. We're talking about a distinction. Okay,
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: if the Insurrection Act is invoked, if you have troops,
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: but without the radicalized ICE agents with them, is that better?
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: Is that worse? Like I.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: I do think they probably think that the political impact
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: of saying Insurrection Act is probably worse for them.
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, all I'm saying is that we've already gone so far.
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: I don't think anyone knows what it would mean for
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: the president to invoke the Insurrection Act, but we already
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: have troops on the ground, not just to defend federal buildings,
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: but anywhere there's ICE, which is everywhere.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Well, let's talk politics because back when it was LA
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: and DC, there were all these warnings. This could be
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: good politics for Trump. I remember there was in D.C.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of like Democrats are walking into
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's trap. He wants to make everything about crime.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: And here we go. New CBS poll over the weekend
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: shows 58 percent of voters disapprove of the guard deployments.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: They also asked, you know, do you support sending active
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: military to cities? Only 39 percent said yes, 61 percent no,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: including 70 percent of independents said no. Even one in
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: five Republicans said no. What do you guys think about
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: the politics of all this?
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, his immigration handling was only at 45 approve, 55 disapprove,
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: and the deploying National Guard was 42-58. I mean, overall,
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: his polling is just around this 42% approval number. It
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: hasn't really budged for like a decade.
• 28:09
  Speaker 6: Now.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean? I'm a little skeptical. We'll
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: get to this in the shutdown, too. I'm a little
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: skeptical of some of these under-the-hood numbers because I just
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: think most people aren't paying attention. I don't think this
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: is necessarily... I don't think the images of what we're
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: seeing in Chicago of like tear gassing cops and brutalizing
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: kids and random people is like a good political message
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: for them. I don't.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: I guess there was another number there, which is like
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: they did most important issue and crime was only at
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: nine percent. And it was, you know, ahead of crime
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: was immigration, then health care, then inflation, then economy, the
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: most important. So his whole goal of making this about
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: fighting crime, which he'd started to do at least a
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: little bit in D.C., it just hasn't worked. That's not
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: what people think this is.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: And I do think, like to Tommy's point, he's kind
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: of been stuck in the same place for a long time.
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: You look at this CBS poll and most people view
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: Republicans as extreme and strong and Democrats as weak.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: Number one word.
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: Number one word is weak. And so maybe they don't
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: like this, but they don't trust us. And so we
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: think it's bad for him, but maybe it reflects a
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: weakness on us as well. By the same token, every
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: image of Trump and talking about how we're going to
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: liberate the city of Chicago, and Christine Ohm saying they
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: wouldn't let me do a deployment at a facility that
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: I needed to get into, is another moment where Trump
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: is not talking about any issue that people cared about.
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: This poll had 75% of people saying Trump is not
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: focusing on lowering prices enough, which is correct, and a
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: pretty devastating problem for him that is not solved by
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: more attention on these issues, even if this issue is better.
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: for him than others. Yeah.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: In some sense, they might not care. At least they're
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: acting like they don't care, right? That the politics are bad.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: They're just like forging right ahead. I mean, we're still,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: you know, it's important to debate politics in regard to
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: like what Democrats should do. I think in the Trump
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: administration's mind, they're like, you know, somewhat concerned about politics.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Clearly they want to win the midterms, but when you
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: get to people like Stephen Miller, he's like, no, I
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: just want to deploy force.
• 30:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: Scare people. Like, I don't give a fuck about the politics.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: I really think that for some of them, that's what
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: they think.
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: I also honestly think that they have a kind of
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: deeper and smarter relationship to like polling than a lot
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: of Democrats do, because they understand that you can lose
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: on specific issues and specific questions for a long time
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: while building up credibility and in a broader way, in
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: a deeper way that's harder to measure. And like, I just,
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: how have they not been validated by that over the years?
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: So that's what I think is part of this too.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's going to take an election or two for
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: them to, at least some of them to register that
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: this is not popular. Last thing before we get to
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: the shutdown, Noam took the time on Friday to join
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: MAGA's war against Bad Bunny as the Super Bowl halftime show.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: saying ICE will be, quote, all over the Super Bowl
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: and not necessarily seeming to know that people from Puerto Rico,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: which Bad Bunny is from Puerto Rico, are American. And
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: she shares that with many, many Trump supporters or Trump influencers.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: They just seem to not know that Puerto Rico is
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: part of America and they think that Bad Bunny is
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: not a U.S. citizen.
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: It's like on some level, like they know it intellectually,
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: but they can't feel it in their bones. Right. They
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: know it every time.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: It's in there.
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: That's stupid.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: They know it.
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: They don't feel it. They don't feel true.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: There's also a very funny Shane Gillis comedian. His reaction
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: to this whole latest culture war thing around Bad Bunny
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: and the Super Bowl is quite funny.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: Let's listen.
• 31:22
  Speaker 6: Man, I'll tell you what I'm mad about. Bad Bunny's
• 31:24
  Speaker 6: doing the f * * * ing halftime show.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: That's good.
• 31:27
  Speaker 6: Pissing me the f * * *.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: No, of course.
• 31:29
  Speaker 5: Of course.
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: Who gives a f * * *?
• 31:30
  Speaker 6: It was very funny to me that people were upset
• 31:32
  Speaker 6: about that.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Everyone's mad.
• 31:33
  Speaker 6: Everyone's mad. The right gets it so wrong with what
• 31:37
  Speaker 6: they're outraged. Everybody's outraged about everything, obviously. But when it's like, dude,
• 31:41
  Speaker 6: don't lose on this one. Why are they mad about that?
• 31:45
  Speaker 6: I think it's because he doesn't speak any... Speak English.
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to watch football. It's like, who does Kristi
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: Noem think attends the Super Bowl? She thinks it's a
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: bunch of Venezuelan migrants who left everything behind and just
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: made it to the United States. There's like 10 grand
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: sitting around to buy a ticket to go to Santa Clara,
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: to Levi's Stadium to go to the game. This was all.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: Because of a question from that bozo Benny Johnson at
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: TPUSA to Kristi Noem. It kind of like kicked off
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: this manufactured culture war thing. And Benny suggested that the
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: selection of Bad Bunny was clearly a shot at MAGA.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: It was a disrespect to MAGA and not the obvious answer,
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: which is money. The NFL wants to grow the audience.
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: So they had a big artist who might expand the
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: number of people who watch the Superbowl perform at the
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: Super Bowl. That's so clearly what's happening here. And like
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: bigger picture though, like it's hard to imagine a more
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: MAGA crowd than those who physically attend the Super Bowl.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: It's like football fans, rich people. Like if you're worried
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: about crimes in that crowd, like get some dogs that
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: can smell cocaine and then go bust people for solicitations.
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: It's not gonna be like a big ice raid event.
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: Let's not say things we'll regret.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to the Super Bowl.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: The other thing here too is clearly A lot of
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: xenophobia and racism in this movement. I don't know if
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: you guys know that. But I will also say there
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: are plenty of, especially after 24, like prominent Latino Trump
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: supporters now. And if the person performing at the Super
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Bowl was Latino and speaks Spanish, but was like a
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: big Trump fan, it would have been, you wouldn't hear anything.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Bad Bunny has criticized ICE, has criticized Trump, ICE specifically.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: And so it is, it's like if you are disloyal
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: in any way, if there's, they cannot broach any criticisms.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Any dissent whatsoever. And if there is, and it's a
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: prominent person, then it is full war against those people.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: They talked to Noah about this, and I think Benny
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Johnson asked, like, what do you think about the NFL's decision?
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: She says, they suck and we'll win. God will bless
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: us and we'll stand and be proud of ourselves at
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: the end of the day. And they won't be able
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: to sleep at night because they don't know what to believe.
• 33:58
  Speaker 7: Jesus.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: They're so weak. We will win and fix it. This
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: is about the NFL.
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: What are you talking about?
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: It's also like, calm down. It's like, what are you fucking?
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: It's just a performer. I just, these people cannot.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: God will bless us.
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: They cannot internalize the fact that they're winners. They're winners.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Because it's grievance politics.
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: They can't actually just... Imagine Kristi Noem saying, I'm not
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: a fan. He said some stuff I don't agree with,
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: but the NFL is free to do what it wants.
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: It's inconceivable for them at this point to brook any
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: kind of dissent. You guys say, all right, the media is...
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: You just got CBS. You know, CBS belongs to you.
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: You have Twitter. You have social media. You have a
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: lot of the NFL's fucking fans. There's a halftime show.
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: Is there not one thing for the fucking gays and days?
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: Just mute it.
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: It's not Gaga, you know?
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: You realize now there's going to be an alternative halftime
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: show on fucking Rumble or something.
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: No, TPSA, there's some pitch that was going around of
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: like TPSA having creed.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, I did see that.
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: I thought Benny Johnson was going to do something for
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: only the fans. He's going to do an only... Something
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: for only America fans. Something like that. Only fans of America.
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: Something like that.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: I'm out.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: I'm out.
• 35:14
  Speaker 5: I don't know.
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: I don't get it.
• 35:26
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  Speaker 5: Bearded.
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• 36:58
  Speaker 1: So the federal government's still closed, which is somehow only
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: the second biggest story right now because of everything we
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: just talked about. Since Alex and Dan covered it on
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: the Friday pod, Republicans and Democrats in Congress have made
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: no progress on negotiations to open the government, with Republicans
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: maintaining their refusal to discuss Affordable Care Act subsidies until
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: the government reopens. The White House has been trying to
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: put pressure on Democrats by continuing to threaten mass layoffs
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: of federal employees, though it's unclear when or if that
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: will actually happen. They're also trying to, like, cut funding for,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: you know, blue areas of the country, whether it's... Apparently,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: did you see the thing about, like, law... They caught
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: law enforcement in New York City. Trump was not aware
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: of this. Yeah, and then Governor Hochul called Trump, and
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: he was like, again, the filter bug. He was like, oh,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: I didn't know this, and then he reversed it. So
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: they're trying to cause all this trouble, hurt all these people.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: It's also unclear, though, whether Trump is not only on
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: the same page as his staff, but on the same
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: page as Republicans in terms of whether they should negotiate
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: with Democrats or are negotiating with Democrats. Here's what Trump
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: said in the Oval on Monday about the shutdown.
• 38:00
  Speaker 5: If the vote today fails in the Senate, will that
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: trigger layoffs?
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: It could.
• 38:04
  Speaker 5: At some point, it will.
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: Would you make a deal with them on the ACA subsidies?
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: If we made the right deal, I'd make a deal, sure.
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: Would you like to see a deal made for great
• 38:13
  Speaker 5: health care? Yeah, I want to see great health. I'm
• 38:15
  Speaker 5: a Republican, but I want to see health care much
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: more so than the Democrats. Are you speaking with Democratic leaders? Well,
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: I don't want to say that. I don't want to
• 38:23
  Speaker 5: say that. But we are speaking with the Democrats and
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: some very good things could happen with respect to healthcare.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: What do you want to bet he was thinking about Hamas?
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: Just confused the two.
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: Just got confused negotiations.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: To be a fly on the wall in Thune's office
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: or Johnson's office when they saw that clip.
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like, God, fucking damn it.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Schumer responded by saying, it isn't true that Democrats have
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: been talking to Trump. Jeffrey said the same thing. But
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Schumer said that if the president is, quote, finally ready
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: to work with Democrats, we'll be at the table. What
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: do you think Trump was doing there? typical stream of
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: consciousness moment, nonsense, or do you think he might want
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: to negotiate on health care more than Republicans in Congress?
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: So, first of all, it's funny to think, what page
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: is he on? He's not on a page. He's all
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: over the place. I will say like that, there's been
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: a lot of debate about like, you know, are Democrats
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: doing better in the shutdown than people expect? There's reasons
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: for optimism, reasons not to have optimism. This was the
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: best reason for optimism I've seen because whatever he's thinking,
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: whatever's going on, he is feeling the politics around a
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: shutdown that is now over healthcare, and he's really helping
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: making that true. He's acknowledging that.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: He said, I think it's about healthcare.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: And that was part of it.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: We didn't get that part, but they first asked him,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: what do you think? He's like, I think the shutdown's
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: about healthcare.
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: Pretty valuable. Pretty great. And it's also a reminder that
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: like Trump is interested in Trump. When that means standing
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: shoulder to shoulder with Republicans in Congress, he will do that.
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: If he views his interests as being different, he will throw,
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: he will, he will ignore them the damage their position
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: he doesn't give a fuck he doesn't have ideological commitments
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: he just wants a good deal and to seem like
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: a winner and to have as many people behind him
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: as possible so that's what i took from from that
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: what could it lead to anything well immediately you have
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: you know johnson and dune figuring out how to get
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: out of this leading to anything and you have schumer
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: and jeffrey saying no we're not talking to trump um
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: but saying they're open to it so i assume once
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: this conversation once trump was done talking the phone was
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: already on was already already wrong and they're already been
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: walked back internally.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: At least Yeah, I had sort of the same reaction
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: you did. He wants to be the hero of every story.
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: He does not want a huge cut to ACA subsidies
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: that he thinks would hurt him politically in the midterm.
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: He's not Paul Ryan. This guy hasn't been dreaming of
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: cutting the social safety net since he was at the
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: keg party or whatever that weird quote was from 2012.
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: And so if Schumer and Jeffries could just talk to
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: him directly and try to cut a deal, he would
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: ice out Speaker Johnson in a heartbeat.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: But to our earlier conversation about his filter bubble and
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: the people around him, The reason I think it's less
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: likely to lead to anything is, at what other point
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: is he going to get information that Schumer and Jeffries
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: want to make a deal, that the polling is really
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: bad on healthcare, that it's time for him to do something?
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Stephen Miller's going to walk in there and all the
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: rest of them.
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: A Breitbart online poll of Twitter.
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: Users or something. Jeffries and Schumer are going to have
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: to do a paper drop like it's North Korea. They're
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: trying to get information to Pyongyang. Set up giant speakers.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: You mentioned the back and forth about who's winning this.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: What did you guys make of it? polling so far.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: There were some of these questions in the CBS poll.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: I would characterize the CBS poll results as like mixed
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: to positive for Democrats. I think I characterize all the
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: polling like that, but I don't know. What do you
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: guys think?
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: Here's what I think. I think the polling is good
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: if you thought Democrats were going to be blamed the
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: way Republicans were blamed in a previous shutdown. If you
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: didn't come to it with that knowledge, I don't know
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: you'd feel super great about a poll that says Trump,
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: congressional Republicans, and congressional Dems all are around 30%. in
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: their approval for other handling a government shutdown, like a
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: poll where half the country thinks you're making a mistake.
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: And by the way, only half of Democrats think your
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: position is worth a shutdown. Like, I think that's better
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: than it could be. And I think we're in a
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: better position than we should be. And then Republicans should
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: be at, but it's not like great.
• 41:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, the big takeaway is people don't like the shutdown.
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: They're worried it will hurt the economy. A big majority
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: is worried it'll hurt the economy. I'm a little skeptical
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: when you start comparing the kind of like under the
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: hood numbers, like who do you blame? Because I just
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: think most people like don't have an opinion on it.
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: But It's a little better. Like the Democratic Party's rationale
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: is a little better than Republicans. Nine points, by about
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: nine points, people blame Republicans over Democrats. So that's good.
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: But then the thing that like in that poll that
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: would worry me if I was Trump is 75% of
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: voters say you're not focused enough on lowering prices. Like
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: that's bad.
• 42:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: We know there are probably, you know, a handful, if
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: not more, Senate Democrats who were worried about making this decision,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: kind of thought they had to do it because the
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: base was mad. I think if you're looking at the
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: polling now, you'd say at the very least it was
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: right to say I'm not voting for this funding bill.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: And now that we're in it, now you've got to
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: stick to it. So there's definitely nothing in this polling
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: that would tell me if I was a Senate Democrat
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: to cave anytime soon. So it is, I think, going
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: well for them. And look, good thing if premiums don't
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: go up, for sure, right? I think at best, you're
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: not going to get a permanent extension. You're going to
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: get an extension that is qualified with probably not as
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: generous as it was. And then surely for the time,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: we'll probably take them right past the midterms. I do
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: have this fear that Democrats will have done the right thing,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: stand up, help people with health care, and then help
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Trump take it off the table.
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: You know, honestly, we've tried losing on issues for a while.
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: Maybe we try winning for once. It's better than losing.
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: The other thing I would say, I would go further
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: than just to say like, oh, Democrats shooting cave. You
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: look at this. And we talked about briefly earlier, but
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: like if you ask people, 64% think Democrats are weak
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: and 59% think Republicans are extreme. Healthcare is an issue
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: right now where if we hold the line, like we
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: are painting Republicans as extreme. And if we cave, we
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: are giving into the idea that we are weak. If
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: we hold the line, there's an issue where we can
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: prove our bona fides, say that we fought for something.
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: Maybe we win, maybe we don't. But I would risk
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: the benefits on policy plus like proving to people that
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: we're willing to fight, take a stand and actually get
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: something for people. Like, I think that is worth taking
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: an issue off the table. Maybe that's bad politics. I
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: don't think anybody knows, but given that nobody knows, wouldn't
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: we rather like have a win than not? Am I wrong?
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: I agree with you.
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I just don't see a path. Like, I don't
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: see a path to getting a win in this negotiation.
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: I think that's the hard part. There's no end game
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: that's clear here. And like nut cutting time is coming
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: on October 15th when 1.3 million members of the US
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: military will miss a paycheck. And November 1st is open
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: enrollment for Obamacare. So there's a bunch of like challenging
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: moments where like this could really go from a thing
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: that's like maybe you heard about on the news or
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: saw on your TikTok to a thing that's like messing
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: up your life and making you really mad.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: Coming from the other direction, there's also the fact that
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: these notices from insurance companies are going out too. So
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: it could be, and you're sort of seeing this in
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: the polling, that if you talk to the average person
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: about whose fault it is, like all of them, they're not,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: they all suck. And now the premium increases go out
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: and now the troops aren't getting paid. And the feeling
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: in the public could be they have to negotiate and
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: figure something out, which is probably good for Democrats getting
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: something at that point, as opposed to just caving. And
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: then maybe the Republicans, if they're getting some of the blame, too,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: then maybe Trump's like, you know what, guys, just figure
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: it out. Just give him some kind of short extension.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: And let's just call it because we don't want to
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: get blamed. They're getting blamed. It's not helping anyone. Yeah.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: I also like, so that's the only, that's like my
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: optimistic case, but I also take what, take your point.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: I don't think we know what's going to, what the
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: world's going to feel like a week from now. I
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: was like right now, like there's a lot of alarms
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: not going off. Like I am like Democrats feel like
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: they're on offense. Republicans feel like they're on defense. That
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: is like the feeling when you look at like the
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: stories coming out of the, the lack of negotiation, you
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: have a Mike Johnson saying, if a, if a deal
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: comes from the Senate side, we won't take it up,
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: which is something you have to say to kind of
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: like guard your flank against something coming out of the Senate. Like,
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: there's just Trump taking these questions and saying he's open
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: to a deal. All of that puts Thune and Johnson
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: on defense in a way that, like, I think is, like,
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: you know, shows Democrats playing a pretty weak hand better
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: than you would have thought a week ago. So where
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: will we be a week? I have no idea.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: I think they should ask for more at this point.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, having seen... I know I've made this point before,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: but it's just driving me nuts. And maybe it's... I'm
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: just crazy. But, like, having seen the last weekend unfold, like,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: there is a way... I wouldn't even do it with
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: the troops, but it's just like ICE should be able
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: to go about and do their jobs and do immigration enforcement.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: But like you need warrants. No more just like raiding
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: fucking apartment buildings. No flashbang grenades and militarized assaults. Like
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: you could put all this stuff. There's plenty of ICE
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: reform proposals out there. You could make you could put
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: it in a bill and demand that shit. And I
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: get why they have not done that. But it is
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: it is still really off to me that this is happening.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: And then the funding fight is about health care.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: I like, I go, I go, we've gone back and
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: forth a million times, but I, I like, I, I
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: look at this and it's like, it's a core question, right?
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: Do you want to pick a fight? You have a
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: possibility of winning or are you trying to pick a fight?
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: You cannot win because you think it's important for the longterm.
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: And right now we've, we've, the Democrats chose, right? They
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: chose the other, they chose the fight over something they
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: can win. I, my view right now is play that
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: to the end. Try to get a win on healthcare. Let's,
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: let's prove to people we can fight and win. Like
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: you look at what happens with Kimmel, right? There's all these, it's,
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: there was a kind of almost organic protest and had
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: a simple demand, put Kimmel back, we'll get Disney Plus again, right?
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: And it's a win. And it shows people that we're
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: a political force.
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: We got Kimmel.
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: Well, it's small, I know, I know.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: The monologue continues.
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: I know, but in the face of kind of like,
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: kind of a morph, I know, it's just sort of like,
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: we have to be a political force that has power
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: and leverage. And that does mean like, we're not just
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: casting about for a kind of a years long fight.
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: Like we're gonna find a hinge and we're gonna use it.
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: And like, to me, we've chosen that already, so let's
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: play it out. Yeah.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: The other way that this could end that I feel
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: like is being under-discussed is if it keeps going and
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: going and going, they change the rules and get rid
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: of the filibuster.
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they could do that.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Again, make my day.
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Go for it.
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: Because you know what? We're never getting 60 votes in
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: the Senate as long as we're living.
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: Well, they've already eroded.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: So if we ever take power again, we ever want
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: to pass anything, we're going to need to get rid
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: of the filibuster. So might as well do it for us.
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: They're already eroding it bit by bit while claiming it's
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: still there.
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 48:13
  Speaker 6: Anyway.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: For sure. So- The only way to start making real
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: progress here is winning the House back in 2026. That
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: would be at least the start of progress. And the
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: first chance we get to help make that happen is
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: actually just a month from now, because here in California,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: we'll be voting on only one ballot measure in the
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: 2025 off-year elections, Prop 50, which is Governor Newsom's initiative
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: to temporarily suspend our nonpartisan congressional map so that Democrats
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: can partially neutralize the partisan gerrymandering Trump ordered in states
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: like Texas and Missouri to pick up more Republican seats.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: Ballots are already in the mail. Some of you, if
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: you're in California, may have gotten yours already, or if
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: you're a registered voter in California. And the drop boxes
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: to return those ballots open today, October 7th, when you're
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: hearing this podcast. Early in-person voting starts on October 25th.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: What have you guys been seeing? How optimistic are you feeling?
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, the Democrats, you've talked about the kind of
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: Gavin orbit. They feel like they're winning the argument and
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: that they're up, but they're very worried about voter suppression.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: That could be like Trump messing with the postmaster general
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: about mail-in ballots, it could be intimidation at the voting booths.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: The real like X factor is, um, there's a lawsuit
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: in court right now, challenging Texas's plan to redraw the maps,
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: which is the reason GAAP is doing this in the
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: first place. The thing, uh, there's a scenario where the
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: plaintiffs win a first judgment in that lawsuit that will
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: almost certainly be overturned, but kind of complicates the argument
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: because it looks like maybe Texas won't go forward, uh,
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: during the period where Californians are voting. Um, so that's
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: all just a way of saying, um, if that happens,
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: just know that like, it's almost certainly Texas is going
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: to happen. It's going to happen. We might win like
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: one step in the process, but we're going to lose long-term.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: So we need to do this in California. So everyone, uh,
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: vote yes on prop 50, get your ballots in and
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: do it soon.
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: And I would, uh, yes, I'm glad the polling has
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: been reassuring, but also California is a big place. That's
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: hard to pull. And, I like just worry about money
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: coming in at the end.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: A bunch of like a dark money. There's a ton
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: of ton of mailers coming in.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: So just a new coefficient poll. Fifty four percent of
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: California voters support the Prop 50. Thirty six percent opposed.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: And the all the ad spending is having an effect
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: to fifty one percent said they were very familiar with
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Prop 50. And obviously Democrats currently have a big spending edge.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: That's good news. But also, again, it is a Talk
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: about not being able to model an electorate, an off-year
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: election where there's no statewide races, where there's candidates running
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: for stuff, and not even other ballot measures. So you
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: have one ballot measure. So you have to remember, okay,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: the ballot's coming. I got to fill it out. What
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: is Prop 50? It's just, you know, tell your friends.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: If you live in California, tell your friends. Make sure
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: you do it. Put it on your calendar and tell
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: at least five people in your life who live in
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: California that this is coming because I think it's really,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: really important. One more thing, the big focus of the
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: Prop 50 campaign is relational organizing, basically just talking to
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: friends and people in your network about the issue, why
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: they need to get out and vote for it. You
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: can get all the info you need on that at votesaveamerica.com
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: slash prop50. Tommy, I understand that you're hosting a VSA
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: event next Wednesday, the 15th, where everyone's going to get
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: together and reach out to their networks together.
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: And that's in the Action Hub.
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: We're all going to have relations with the people organizing it.
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: Stick with it.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: Stick with it. Stick around.
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: You're the end. You'll understand.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: So you're going to get together and reach out to
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: your networks together. What a cool way to talk about it.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: That's cool. Let's all, ready? On the count of three,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: we're going to reach out to our networks.
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: Tough.
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: So what we're going to do, we're going to hop
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: on a live stream.
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: We're going to have some fun. We're going to hang out.
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: We're going to make it a good time. We're going
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: to text our friends in California to make sure they're
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: voting yes on Prop 50. We know that friends, family,
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: the best messengers.
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: And you're doing this for the fans?
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: Only the fans.
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: Only the fans.
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: And the cam will be on.
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: We're going to make sure everyone understands the stakes involved here.
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: It'll be important.
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: What are you going to wear on your feet, you think?
• 52:13
  Speaker 6: Sandals?
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: Oh, okay.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: Shoes? That's exciting.
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: Can I quickly plug my Riyadh comedy festival?
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. Headlining.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: It's good money.
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: It's good money. Well, yeah, it's the anniversary.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: Anyway, jump on the Prop 50 live stream. It will
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: be votesaveamerica.com slash Prop 50. It's really important. We've got
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: to do this. So reach out to your friends.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: Where are we on whether we have the chance to
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: sort of counter Texas and other states?
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: Yes. So I talked to our buddy Brian Tyler Cohen
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: about all this because he is way deep. on all
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: things redistricting and subscribe to Brian's YouTube if you want
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: to learn more. So the states that are screwing us
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: right now, Texas and Missouri, if California redistricts to Indiana, Ohio,
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: and Florida are preparing to screw us. So get excited
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: for that. We then Democrats could retaliate in Illinois and Maryland,
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: and then longer term New York and make some changes,
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: but that wouldn't go into place until 2028. And then
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: if we win the governor seats in Virginia and New Jersey,
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: maybe we can do make some gains there. And then
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: there's the states that are kind of hoping this conversation
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: goes away are Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. The Dem governors
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: there just like won't step up seemingly. So that's the
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: state of play. I don't think it's a net benefit
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: for us if all those Republican states go, though.
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: Also, one issue that's happening in California, too, is look,
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: redistricting is great, but also states like California have been
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: losing population to Texas and Florida and others. And we
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: can't redistrict our way out of California, not building enough
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: affordable housing. And so I'm very glad Gavin is pursuing that.
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: Prop 50, he has not yet signed, as of this
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: recording on Monday night, SB 79, which will allow people
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: to build more housing near transit and help address our
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: housing crisis. So if you're hearing this and you think
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: Evan Newsom should sign it, I would suggest posting about
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: it or giving him a call because I do think
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: it matters here in the homestretch.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: What's going on there? I haven't been following why there's
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: been a pause and he hasn't signed it.
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: So there's a lot of pressure, especially from L.A., especially
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: from our mayor, Karen Bass, who wants Newsom to veto it.
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: She claims she's for affordable housing and we've got to
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: build more housing, but this law will go too far
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: and it doesn't allow for historical buildings and all these exceptions.
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: Los Angeles currently is not even on track to build
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: half of the housing we've promised to build. It's actually
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: about a third. We said we'd build 456,000 units. We
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: are nowhere near that. We are just completely failing. I'll
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: get the stats slightly wrong, but we've seen the lowest
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: number of housing starts and construction in Los Angeles in
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: more than a decade. We're just, the city is failing
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: and does not deserve the trust. But he's under a
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: lot of pressure. Look, I think Prop 50, fighting Trump,
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: those are unifying and galvanizing issues. This is a slightly
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: divided issue because this is about taking on parts of
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: your own coalition and saying, you know what? I get
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: that there are problems. It's not a perfect law, but.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: We've got to- Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson.
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right.
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: All the abundant bros.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: Gotta fight them.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: All the fascists.
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: But like, yeah, there are democratic interests that want this
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: to be vetoed. And so the goal is not just
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: for him to sign it. I believe he will sign
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: it is to sign it unequivocally without any kind of
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: using bureaucracy to limit it anyway. And that to me
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: is what is important. And it's actually, I think, an
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: important test for him because like, oh, great, you're tough
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: when you're fighting Trump. Like we need somebody that not
• 55:15
  Speaker 4: just doesn't just want to fight Trump, but understands that
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: Democrats have to like be willing to take on our
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: own to like actually do hard governing.
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: You might think it's progressive to make sure that every
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: person can have a roof over their head in this country.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: But I think it's progressive to keep those historic buildings
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: preserved just right and maybe have just a little bit
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: bigger yard.
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: First they came for the historic buildings.
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: And to make sure just a little extra yard. And
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: I don't want. I just don't want a tall building
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: next to my train tracks. Cause then I'm just, it's
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: just too much.
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: Historic parking lots. You got to preserve these historic parking lots.
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: You know what's progressive? A beautiful view.
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: It's progressive. It's been infuriating. And like, and, and Karen Bass.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Fucking Nimbys.
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: Karen Bass, who has like, like I would say like
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: a mixed record on housing. She signed some good EOs.
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: Then she watered them down. Like she's done some stuff.
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: Some of the best, some of, some of the building
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: that is happening in Los Angeles is beyond some of
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: these affordable housing buildings. executive order she signed, but still
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: like this is such an abdication. The city council, most
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: of them, Nithya and others did vote against the city council,
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: which was great. But they are just completely abdicating their
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: responsibility and hoping somebody else solves it. This is the
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: way to solve it. He has to fucking sign the thing.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: So that, and also Prop 50. And if you want
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: more info about Prop 50, votesaveamerica.com slash Prop 50. You
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: can go get all kinds of information that'll help you go,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: you know, try to get as many friends as possible
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: voting the same way. Okay, after the break, you'll hear
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: Tommy's conversation with Ben Smith about Barry Weiss taking over
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: CBS News and lots more. Two things before we get
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: to that. You may have heard that Crooked Con sold
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: out faster than we ever expected. So big news. We
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: decided to move to a bigger location. That means more panels,
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: more guests, and more tickets. The new venue is the
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan Building. You know, I don't think.
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: It's honestly a dream for me to be in the
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: Reagan Building.
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: I feel like it would have been funnier 10 years
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: ago to have us in the Reagan building. Now the
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: Reagan building seems like a potential natural ally.
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: For this movement. An important storm.
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: Win one for the gipper.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: The most scorching opinion about Trump so far just came
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: from a Reagan judge, a judge appointed by Reagan last week.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: So yeah, of course, makes sense. Your favorite Crooked podcast
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: host will be there, plus Ruben Gallego, Andy Beshear, Janelle Bynum,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Sarah McBride, Yasaman Ansari, Anderson Clayton, Sarah Longwell, Hasan Piker,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: Maurice Mitchell, lots more. The full list is up at Crooked.com.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: We'll be announcing even more great guests soon. We're adding
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: a Vote Save America Action Hub, a space where our
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: partner groups will be hanging out and focusing on activism,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: so you can leave with the tools you need.
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: Action Hub.
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: Action Hub. What kind of action?
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: Doing karate?
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: I don't think it's going to be.
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: What are you thinking?
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: Oh, I was talking about intercourse, Tommy. I was talking
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: about fucking. That's what I was saying.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: You know where the Action Hub's going to be? His
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: hotel room.
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: Those pants. That's where the Action Hub is.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: And you know where, it's what it says right here.
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: With all these panels?
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: It says right here, you can leave with the tools
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: you need to fight democracy.
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: There you go. Head to cricketcon.com before this last batch
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: of tickets disappears, and we'll see you at the Action
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: Hub on November 7th in D.C. Also, become a friend
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: of the pod. Uh, it's important. We need independent media is,
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: is more important than ever right now. Uh, you know,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: we're just, Tommy's talking to Ben Smith about Barry Weiss
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: and CBS and all the ways the corporate media has
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: let us down. Here we are. Independent media.
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: Support us. Uh, for the month of October only, you'll
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: get 20% off when you subscribe for a full year.
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: Is that a spooky sale?
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: A deal so good, uh, is spooky.
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  Speaker 1: That's a good one. Check out Love It or Leave
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  Speaker 1: to our Discord community, bonus content like Polar Coaster with
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  Speaker 1: The 20% discount is this month only. Head to crooked.com
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• 59:06
  Speaker 3: You can play Polar Coaster at the Action Hub, you know?
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, hey.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: And love it you have an announcement.
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: Yes there is a new series that just launched today
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: on the love it or leave it feed it is
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: called for legal reasons love it or leave it presents
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: colon bravo america uh i'm interviewing some of the biggest
• 59:23
  Speaker 4: icons in reality tv uh that starts with dr terry
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: dubrow of botched and The Swan and Real Housewives of
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: Orange County. I've obviously been turning off my brain at
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: night and watching Bravo and other reality shows. And I
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: do think you really can't understand politics in this moment
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: unless you understand the world of these shows and why
• 59:45
  Speaker 4: it is more important to be interesting and hated than
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: boring and good.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: And- Any insurrections?
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: None so far. But so Dubrow is really interesting and-
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: He talks about how the parts of filming Bravo shows,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: including Real Housewives, that he fucking hates. And he's pretty
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: shockingly honest about his take on some of the Real Housewives,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: which was interesting. But more than that, this series is
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: about figuring out reality TV, how it changed TV, and
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: then how it changed our culture, and then how it
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: changed politics. It actually, one of the reasons I wanted
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: to do it is because when we talked to Sarah McBride,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: remember she talked about feeling as though these Republicans want
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: to be on a Bravo show. And obviously Trump is
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: a reality star. I'm also one as well, famously.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: Of course.
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  Speaker 4: Shine bright.
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  Speaker 5: Stars.
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  Speaker 3: I feel like I'm stretching the term.
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  Speaker 4: Some stars.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Guest star.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: Guest star. Also featuring.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: We have Terry Dubrow, who is great. I talked to
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: Dorinda Medley. I talked to Parvati Shallow, who gave me
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: some tips about how to do better on Survivor.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: For next time?
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: Bad tips?
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: And there'll be many others. Some we haven't announced.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: Well, I can't do worse.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: I can't do fucking worse. It's on the Love It
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: or Leave It feed right now. I am very excited
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: about these conversations. Every single time we finish one, the
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: producer and I have been amazed by what we've been
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: hearing from some of these people about what it's like
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: to be on these shows and what they've learned. And
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: so please check it out.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 5: Cool.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 6: Cool.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. October 10th is World
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• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: My guest today is the.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: Editor-in-chief of Semaphore and the co-host of the excellent Mixed
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: Signals podcast. He's also a man who tends to be
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: on the the bleeding edge of changes in the media business.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: Ben Smith, great to see you.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 7: Thank you for having me, Tommy.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: So on Monday, Barry Weiss was named the new editor-in-chief
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: of CBS News and Paramount, CBS's parent company, bought her startup,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: The Free Press, for $ 150 million in cash and stock.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: My first question to you is the question that everyone
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: is asking, Ben, which was how much do we think
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: Barry cleared off this deal? Do you know what her
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: ownership stake was by the end here?
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 8: You know, I don't, but I would say that the
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 8: nature of these deals is usually they don't just say,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 8: here's a pile of money, buy.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 7: They say, if you.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 8: Work really hard for us for a period of four, five,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 8: ten years, we will compensate you gradually in stock. So, like,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 8: I would say whatever the actual terms of the deal,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 8: I would think this is a pretty long-term arrangement. Like,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 8: I think Barry Weiss will be there for a long time.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: It struck me as an aqua hire, which is basically
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: they're purchasing her entire company to get her to work there.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: You're right.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: She probably did have a long earn out, but I
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: bet she did okay off it.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 7: Yes. If next time you see her, you should make
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 7: her buy dinner.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: That's what I'll do. I've never met her, but I'll
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: do that. So help me understand why this hire makes
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: sense for CBS. As far as I know, Barry Weiss
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: has no TV news experience. Her print experience was more
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: on the opinion side. I find CBS news to be
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: kind of like the textbook example of the just the facts, ma'am,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: kind of old school journalism. But she has been better known,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: I think, recently, at least for more activism, for being
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: kind of anti what she views as woke, for being
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: a full-throated defender of Israeli government policies. So why do
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: you think CBS decided she's the person we need?
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 7: Well, I would say there's a couple of different things here.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 8: One is, I don't know if you are a regular
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 8: viewer of the CBS Evening News. If you are, you
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 8: are very unusual for our age group. But like, you know,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 8: CBS is a broadcast television network that, for complicated reasons,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 8: kind of missed out on cable and then kind of
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 8: also missed out on digital.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 7: So this is the.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 8: Titanic, like, well after it has hit the iceberg and
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 8: a place that has been in a kind of state
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 8: of real crisis and decline for many, many years. So
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 8: it's not like, I mean, so I don't really, the
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 8: idea that, like, these guys were just doing fine and
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 8: these maniacs are coming and changing everything.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 7: What are they doing? It's ridiculous.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 8: I mean, I think CBS is sort of a poster
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 8: child for a company that really failed to figure out
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 8: the digital transition, lost most of its value, and is
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 8: getting swallowed by some billionaire's kid, which is at a
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 8: discount as a result. And that's true of CBS News,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 8: which is a tiny, tiny portion of a bigger company
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 8: that is now called Paramount, that includes all sorts of
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 8: other things that used to have a lot of value,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 8: and Sherry Redstone, who owned it, managed it gradually downward
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 8: over a period of years.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 7: And the new ownership....
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 8: David Ellison, whose dad is one of the richest guys
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 8: in the world, Larry Ellison, I think both seem authentically
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 8: to share Barry's politics, which are, I don't know if
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 8: you'd call them center, right?
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 7: They're eclectic. They're very pro-Israel.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 8: Very, very upset about the direction the media took in
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 8: the last few years. And, you know, and I think
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 8: Ellison obviously kind of shares those to some degree. And
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 8: CBS News, by the way, is a single digit percentage
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 8: of of the business of CBS, which is mostly the
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 8: movie business. And Allison has spent his career in the
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 8: movie business. And then people say, you know, the news
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 8: is like 4% of the revenue and 95% of the
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 8: headaches of these businesses. But sure, this is like kind
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 8: of one of the first big splashy things he's doing
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 8: is bringing in Barry as the editor-in-chief, not the president,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 8: a new title as editor-in-chief of CBS News to direct
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 8: the editorial back to the center that probably is what
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 8: the owners want in terms of their own political views.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 8: Although that's not going to rescue a dying broadcast operation.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 8: It also comes at a time, Donald Trump loves to
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 8: rage against these networks, is very focused on CBS and others,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 8: and feels that they treated him unfairly, already extracted a
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 8: big settlement for them.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 7: And I think.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 8: This is a company that's looking for another wave of
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 8: regulatory approval to buy WarnerMedia. And the doing things that
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 8: Donald Trump likes seems like a pretty good way to
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 8: get regulatory approval. And honestly, I think if you told
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 8: one of these companies they could pay $ 100 to $ 150
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 8: million to make a big deal go through faster, they
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 8: probably would.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: I'm with you on the problem and certainly wasn't suggesting
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: that CBS, everything was going perfectly. I guess I'm just
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: still not there on the solution. Is Barry Weiss viewed
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: as a Trump whisperer that can get deals through the
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: FCC or whatever? A lot of the reporting is focused
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: on kind of coverage about Israel generally being a big
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: point of tension between the new ownership and, let's say,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: 60 Minutes. But I just can't tell how central this
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: is to the acquisition itself.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 8: Yeah, there are a lot of different things going on here.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 8: And I think that's what you're seeing, which is CBS
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 8: has one problem, which is its business is collapsing. That's
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 8: not because of where it stands on Israel.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 7: They're CBS News.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 8: And in fact, isn't going to be fixed by tweaking
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 8: their political stance because it has to do with the
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 8: fact that they're a broadcast television network with a massive
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 8: cost structure. There's also people, you know, and I think
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 8: there is also a sense of like it will please
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 8: Donald Trump to stick it to the old, the people
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 8: at CBS, whoever they are. And like that probably is
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 8: a good way to, a good like, if it seems
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 8: like they're giving some kind of human sacrifice to Donald Trump.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 8: In order to get regulatory approval, like that doesn't, I
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 8: don't know, in the cynical world of big media, that
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 8: seems like a decent idea.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: Do you have a prediction for how it's going to go?
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: Any sense of like what this is, how this is
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: being received internally?
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 8: I mean, you know, CBS, it's like, I don't know
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 8: if you've ever worked at one of these institutions where like,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 8: which has been like rocked by scandal after scandal and
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 8: leak after leak for longer than you've been alive, but
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 8: everything always goes badly there.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 7: The only story.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 8: So, and I think people underestimate the extent to which like, yeah,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 8: like she, you know, she is being given the job,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 8: maybe not as captain of the Titanic, but as first
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 8: mate post iceberg. And like, That's a very, very challenging situation.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 8: And I don't know, we should all be rooting for
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 8: them to succeed. Because I think the most natural thing
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 8: here is that they cease to exist. That's the course
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 8: that they've been on for a long time.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, look, I want CBS News to succeed generally.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: I really had not thought of it that way. This
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: is being first mate or captain on an iceberg or
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: on a ship hitting an iceberg. That does suck. When
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: Barry Weiss quit the New York Times, she cited bullying
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: by colleagues. She said the New York Times had become
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: an illiberal environment. She said there was a, quote, civil
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: war inside the New York Times between the mostly young
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: wokes and the mostly 40-plus liberals. You worked at the
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: New York Times from 2020 to 2022. Was it illiberal?
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: Was Michael Barbaro bullying you in the lunchroom? Like, what
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: was the scene there?
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 7: So it was, A, look, there was no lunchroom.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 8: It was all slack, which did make it certainly totally insane. And,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 8: you know, I guess I knew Barry there at the time.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 8: And I think maybe I didn't take these things as personally. Like,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 8: I think, you know, people react to things differently. But
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 8: I do think, you know, the Slack became some rough
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 8: equivalent of Twitter. And I do think the culture was
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 8: more dominated by younger people who were more comfortable in
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 8: social media and sometimes really did take on some of
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 8: the crazier features of social media. Like there was a
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 8: 2000 person. I wasn't allowed in most of the Slack
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 8: because I wrote about the New York Times. And so
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 8: like I got tossed out of Slacks and Taylor Lorenz
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 8: created a Slack called Ben Chat where people could come
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 8: talk to me.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 7: But there was one giant Slack with everybody in it.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 8: And that was the one where when James Bennett– there
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 8: was a controversy that I feel like we don't need
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 8: to revisit involving the opinion editor. But people were reacting–
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 8: you can react with emojis and people were reacting with guillotines.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 6: Oh, boy.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 8: Like intended ironically perhaps, but not– I would not say
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 8: that is collegial. And when I– at some point somebody
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 8: complained to the executive editor, Dean Baquet, that my being
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 8: in the Slack made people unsafe because.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 7: I might write about it.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 8: And he, I thought, quite reasonably. And this is a
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 8: sense of like, I don't think, it was not a
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 8: totally homogenous culture. He told them, that's ridiculous. This is
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 8: a slack with 2,000 people in it. Of course it's
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 8: going to leak. But yeah, I mean, I guess I
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 8: think that maybe I don't have as, think it was
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 8: quite that straightforward, but certainly there was the kind of
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 8: like left-wing political waves and social waves swept through there,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 8: swept through all of society. And I do think it
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 8: was pretty, yeah, I think it was I think the
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 8: management has spent the last couple of years pushing that back.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 4: It's interesting.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: I mean, look at what I'm taking, what I'm inferring
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: from your very delicate answer is that you saw some illiberalness,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: you saw some cruelty maybe in this. It's just interesting
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: with some people that radicalizes them. And then there's people
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: like Matthew Iglesias over at Vox who kind of just
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: tweets through the most vicious attacks on a daily basis.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: It seems impervious to it. Doesn't, you know, kind of
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: just like does his thing regardless and just has a
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: very different reaction.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 8: And I think you're probably, I think if you've spent
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 8: a lot of your career being attacked by strangers on
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 8: the internet, as I have, you develop like a kind
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 8: of pathologically thick skin to it. But I don't think
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 8: you can actually expect other people to act that way.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 8: Like that's not normal.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: If your colleagues are.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 7: Being mean to you, like probably you hate it and
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 7: you're going to quit.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 7: I don't think that's an unreasonable reaction.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: No, I don't think it is either. I'm a huge baby,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: and I've had exchanges on Twitter ruin an entire weekend,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: and my wife looking at me like, why aren't you
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: parenting our children right now? Are you really in a
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: fight about the JCPOA with someone with a Twitter egg?
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, yeah, that's actually who I am. That's
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: who you married, so I'm sorry about that.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 8: But I do think the question you asked before, I
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 8: think what this means, what is Barry's role at CBS News,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 8: I don't think it's decided. I think it's very open
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 8: to interpretation. I think a lot depends. You know, in
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 8: particular on how they decide to cover Donald Trump, because
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 8: I talked to somebody who was involved in the deal
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 8: and who was very aware that like they're just now
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 8: dealing with this shadow of this sense that, well, like, oh,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 8: they've made some secret corrupt deal with the president in
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 8: exchange for, you know, get regulatory approval for their real business,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 8: which is the movie business, the entertainment business, in exchange
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 8: for favorable coverage on this tiny little, you know, news.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 7: Thing that they have to own.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 8: And how do you deal– and I asked them like, well,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 8: how do you deal with that impression? And they said, well,
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 8: we're just going to have to cover Trump really. We're
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 8: going to be really tough and adversarial and do great
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 8: journalism that the White House doesn't like when that's fair.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 7: And I think that is ultimately the test.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you're right. And we should not prejudge her
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: tenure there. It is challenging though because it comes in
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: the wake of some major departures at 60 Minutes and
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: a pretty high-profile dust-up over Trump. you know, that show
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: feeling like they were being censored by corporate execs and
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: then the lawsuit and caving to Trump. So a tough,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: challenging time to go into that job, like you said earlier.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: You have a great column out this week in Semaphore
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: about Donald Trump's information filter and sort of information bubble.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: Can you explain how Trump's information diet has changed from
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: the first term to today and why that might have
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: some of his supporters a little worried?
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 8: Yeah. I mean, one thing about the White House, and
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 8: you worked there and you know this, is that just inevitably,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 8: the president is a little bit a prisoner of the building,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 8: a prisoner of what kind of information he's getting, who's
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 8: talking to him, like Eisenhower, Nixon's aides were referred to
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 8: as the Berlin Wall, because they were German, Haldeman and Ehrlichman,
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 8: and they wouldn't let anybody through. But in any case,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 8: Trump in his first term, like almost uniquely among presidents,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 8: like totally busted out of that and was just on Twitter,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 8: engaging everyone. He was like reading like the rage bait
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 8: from you. He was like soaking up the adulation from
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 8: his fans. But he was just seeing the same stuff
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 8: everybody else was on Twitter. And now, I think actually
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 8: sort of like everybody else, he's retreated into much more
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 8: comfortable spaces, in his case, Truth Social, where he sometimes
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 8: goes on these sprees of like re-truthing really weird memes.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 8: and where he posts stuff and where he sees adulation.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 8: And he does watch TV, mostly Fox. Fox is more
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 8: sort of consistently pro-Trump than it was in his first term.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 8: And there's also these other right-wing networks he can watch.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 7: He reads the papers. He reads the New York Post
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 7: and other papers.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 8: But I think people around him, both people who like
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 8: him and don't like him, have started to think like, oh,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 8: maybe he's not seeing everything. There was this odd instance
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 8: where he had talked to the governor of Oregon and
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 8: he got off the phone and said, yeah, you know,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 8: she said one thing to me and I've been seeing
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 8: this other thing on TV and hearing things from my staff.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 8: I'm like, I'm not really sure what's going on. And
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 8: then I've said the other day, but Kathy Hochul, the
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 8: governor of New York, I guess, told him that the
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 8: federal government had cut off funding to New York and
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 8: that was news to him. And it, it is just,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 8: and I think in some sense, the biggest question is like,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 8: what is he hearing about the economy? And like, how
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 8: good is the information he's getting? And I think that's,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 8: I mean, I don't really know, but basically the core
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 8: of this situation is that there's an aide named Natalie
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 8: Harp who follows him around with an iPad and that
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 8: people who really, really, really want to get his attention,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 8: particularly in the conservative movement, have her number and text
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 8: her things and hope that she will go then play
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 8: the video to him. And that's like the key, key
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 8: gatekeeping function.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 6: Oof.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: God help us all. I mean, yeah, he tweeted this
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: video the other weekend or other week about med beds.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you tracked this controversy. It's just
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: like QAnon thing.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I was assuming that's why you looked so ageless, Tommy.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a filter.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 7: It's Barbara Walters filter.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: Med beds, like basically they think it's alien technology that's
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: being hidden by elites that could cure every disease. All
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: of a sudden Donald Trump like tweets or truths this
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: AI video that AI renders his own voice of a
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: made up technology. And I would just kill for some
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: deep reporting into how on earth that actually happens. Like
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: how does that go from creation to his feed to shared?
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 8: You know, I think he's just on true social seeing memes.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 8: And if you look through, he's like re-truthing some like
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 8: really terrible memes that like I think he's just saying like, oh,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 8: here's somebody who likes me saying something nice. And I
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 8: assume that's what the med bed thing was. It seemed
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 8: vaguely positive. It said that he was giving everybody special
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 8: med bed cards. So like, but I don't know, when
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 8: you were in the White House, did you, like, how
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 8: did you think about kind of controlling President Obama's access
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 8: to information?
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: Well, he famously kept his BlackBerry, right? That was sort
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: of an early battle he won to get information. You know,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: I think he certainly would go on at night and whatever,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: you know, a mean David Brooks column would post, Dan
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: Pfeiffer would get an email being like, we need to
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: deal with this or whatever. Um, he, the other way
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: he spent a lot of time was playing, uh, words
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: with friends with, uh, Reggie Love and other people. So
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: he had his own ways sort of getting around us,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: but you're right. Like when you're president, I'd say it's
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: all your jokes are funny. Everything you say is brilliant.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: People stand up when you walk in the room. So
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: that's gotta just kind of fuck with your thinking, whether
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: you're Donald Trump or anybody else.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 8: And I, but I do, and I do think in
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 8: a weird way, this is a return to a more
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 8: traditional kind of presidency where he is trapped in an
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 8: information bubble.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: And probably more so than before, right? With given the security, um,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 3: challenges that come from multiple assassination attempts. But didn't he
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: used to hate watch TV all the time? Like, I
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: feel like he used to routinely tweet about morning Joe. Yeah.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 8: He used to hate watch more because I think there
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 8: was like, it was just Fox and then a bunch
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 8: of stuff he hated, but now he's got OAN and
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 8: Newsmax and all sorts of stuff on social that he
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 8: can watch. And then once in a while, like, like
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 8: a democratic Senator, like made their way onto Fox yesterday
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 8: morning and he freaked out about it on truth social
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 8: and demanded that they not let Brian Schatz back on
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 8: there to lie about him. Um, But I think that
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 8: actually almost is an indication of what you said, that
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 8: he's not rage tweeting, he's not hate watching anymore. And
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 8: in a way, I guess it seems like he is
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 8: all of us, right? Like, like in the sort of
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 8: experience of the media between 2015 and 2020 was that
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 8: this social media machines were so good at finding the
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 8: worst thing that you're the people you dislike had said,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 8: and just like shoving it in your face. And the
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 8: new TikTok world is that like, no, you just get
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 8: like pleasing stuff that affirms your prejudices all day.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah. The biggest surprise in your piece, by
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: the way, was seeing Laura Loomer, of all people, kind
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: of talking about Trump's information diet and sounding like a
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: voice of reason.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 7: She's very concerned.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 4: Is she really? Okay.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: For those who don't know who Laura Loomer is, she's
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 3: like a far right nut, in my opinion. She once
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: tweeted like an applauding emoji over an article about 2000
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 3: migrants dying while trying to cross from North Africa to Europe.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: She chained herself to the Twitter office door in New
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: York while wearing a yellow Star of David to compare
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 3: herself to the treatment of Jews in the Holocaust. My
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: point being, doesn't always, you know, sometimes seems like she's
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 3: got to screw loose, but she was, seemed reasonable there.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: How did that come to be?
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 8: I think, you know, she is somebody who thinks a
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 8: lot about how you get information to Donald Trump and,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 8: you know, and has seen herself boxed out a bit
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 8: by White House staff, although she finds her ways to
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 8: get to him directly. I mean, but the one thing
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 8: is it used to be that like influencers, like right-wing influencers,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 8: who had like a really good fastball, could just sort
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 8: of like get in front of him by tweeting stuff
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 8: and like getting retweeted and going viral. And now you
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 8: have to be like, the only two people I think
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 8: can really do it just because by just absolute like
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 8: intensity and velocity and saying such intense stuff on social
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 8: media are her and the kind of MAGA legal figure,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 8: Mike Davis, who denounces judges very heatedly. And I think
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 8: that stuff makes its way to him. But I think
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 8: the rest of the sort of, right-wing Twitter sphere is
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 8: like really having trouble kind of making their way into
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 8: Trump's personal consciousness.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: Interesting. Bigger picture, like a couple of weeks ago, we
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: were all talking about ABC News and Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: got pulled off the air and then FCC chairman Brendan
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 3: Carr made all these threats that he would hurt the
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: network or we could do the easy way or the
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: hard way if Kimmel wasn't punished for comments he made
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: about Charlie Kirk. Kimmel's now back on the air, but
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 3: Trump threatened to sue ABC again. Now that the dust
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: has settled a little bit, What do you think the
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: impact was of that whole ordeal? Are networks rethinking things
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: or it's just– I don't know.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 8: I mean, I just think that the big kind of
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 8: corporate media executives are really wary of angering the president.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 7: They're thinking about it all the time.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 8: And it's a matter– it's not that they wouldn't ever
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 8: do anything, you know, publish, you know, an accurate, important
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 8: story that was– that didn't make the White House happy.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 8: But it's that they're thinking about picking your battles now.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 8: And this really is familiar to any journalist who's worked
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 8: in complicated places. I mean, I think, for instance, if
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 8: you're a major... I once talked to somebody who'd been
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 8: a correspondent for a great newspaper in Tehran. And you
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 8: kind of know at some point you're going to get
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 8: booted because you're going to write a story that angers
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 8: the regime. But so you think, all right, is this
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 8: one worth it? This is kind of a dumb story
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 8: about somebody's family being corrupt.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 7: Let's skip this one. Let's wait for the one that
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 7: really gets them.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 8: In situations like this, you just start to pick your
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 8: battles and decide, look, we're not going to do this
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 8: story about the president's family.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 7: It's going to annoy him. Let's wait till we... And
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 7: it does change.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 8: The shape of the coverage and means that there's less criticism.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 8: I think the other thing that happened at ABC, though,
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 8: was that I think you saw that there are these
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 8: other stakeholders in these companies who they have to deal with, too.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 8: And in particular for ABC, it's A-list actors and directors.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 7: And for Disney.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 8: And I think you saw that you saw I don't
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 8: think it ever really was a public protest, but people
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 8: clearly called up Bob Iger and said, hey, we're going
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 8: to start pulling movies. We're going to publicly refuse to
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 8: work with you. And these media companies are very, very,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 8: very dependent on talent, and talent does have leverage.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you got to imagine Iger was getting some rude
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: texts from some real A-listers over that weekend.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 7: Seems like it.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Final question for you. I just don't think Democrats
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 3: have fully internalized kind of what the new media landscape
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 3: looks like. We have, you know, Barry Weiss leading CBS News, TBD,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 3: if that matters or not. But Elon Musk owns Twitter.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 3: A group of Trump allies are going to run TikTok.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 3: Fox News is not just the dominant cable player, but
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: like the dominant news channel, period. And then I think conservatives,
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 3: I mean, tell me if you disagree, but they seem
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 3: to be dominating the independent media world and the podcast charts.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 3: There's not necessarily a question there. It's more just like
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 3: an observation of how grim things seem for progressives.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 8: Well, I actually think that, I mean, if you look
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 8: at the sort of new media charts, you're starting to
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 8: see left-wing voices dominate more. I mean, like Midas is,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 8: I think, often the biggest channel on YouTube. And it
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 8: follows to.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 7: Some degree where's the most engagement, where's the most energy. And,
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 7: you know, I think a.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 8: Lot of these, particularly a lot of the really kind
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 8: of independent podcast sphere is really built around this like
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 8: profound suspicion of power, but also of government and of
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 8: truth and of anything. And you saw with the Epstein
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 8: stuff that There's just this like intense tendency to eat
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 8: their own. But no, I think there's a real kind
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 8: of like conservative control of the mainstream media now. And
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 8: it's not exactly MAGA conservatives. I think people like David
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 8: Ellison and Jeff Bezos are kind of– I don't really
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 8: know what their politics are. Kind of like center– I
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 8: guess it's what you'd call center-right and probably– But, you know,
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 8: I don't really know. But I think that, like, the
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 8: thing that is– actually, I think there are two things.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 8: One is that you have people with right-of-center views owning
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 8: and running some of these media properties. But I think
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 8: the much more important thing is you have people who
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 8: are scared of the government and of Trump making decisions.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: Definitely. Lots of scared people making decisions for financial reasons. Ben,
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: thank you for joining the show. Everyone should check out
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 3: Semaphore and subscribe to the Mixed Signal podcast. It's excellent.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: Who do you guys have recently? You had the new
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 3: head of MSNBC.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 8: Yeah, we had the new CEO of Versant, which owns MSNBC,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 8: and he spent the whole time talking about how he
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 8: wants to buy Crooked.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 7: So watch out, everybody.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 3: Come on in. I'll be your Barry, sir. Whatever it takes. Ben,
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 3: thank you again. Great to talk to you.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 7: Yeah, good talking to you.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: That's our show for today. Thanks to Ben Smith for
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: coming on. Dan and I will be back with a
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: new show on Friday. If you want to listen to
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