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Mar-a-Lago's Funniest Home Videos · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm the alien Mussolini found, Jon Lovett.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: On today's show, Donald Trump's primary opponents wake up to
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the fact that they're running against a criminal defendant who's
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: still nearly 40 points ahead of him. Sam Alito flips
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: off Congress in the Wall Street Journal. A House Republican
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: screams at some kids. Kevin McCarthy almost comes to blows
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: with Eric Swalwell. Aliens might exist. And later, Tommy talks
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: with Lydia Kiesling about her new novel, Mobility, our very
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: first book from Crooked Reads. But first, we are still
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: waiting for Donald Trump to get indicted. over his attempted coup.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Any minute now. Maybe by the time you've heard this.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I think I even said that before. But Jack Smith
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: has given us a few more crimes to tide us over.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: On Friday, he filed what's known as a superseding indictment
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: in the classified documents case that charges Trump with two
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: additional counts of conspiring to destroy surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: after it was subpoenaed, and one additional count of violating
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: the Espionage Act, for illegally retaining the classified war plans
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: that he's on tape talking about with Mark Meadows' biographers.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Trump also has a new co-defendant, a Mar-a-Lago property manager
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: named Carlos de Oliveira, who, along with Trump and his valet,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Walt Nauta, was charged with trying to delete those security cameras. Altogether,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the GOP frontrunner now faces 74 felony counts, with more
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: on the way, which made his entrance music at the
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines this weekend a bit too
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: on the nose. I mean, that's the election right there.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: It's perfect.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Could end up going to prison. Could end up being president.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: That's it. That's what we got.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: What'd you guys find most notable or damning in the
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: superseding indictment?
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: So a couple of things I hadn't seen. I, this
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: came out when we were in New York doing, and
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: I'd like seen some, read some news about it, but
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: I hadn't actually seen the documents.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Um, First of all, you were a low information voter
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: who's now become a high information voter.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely. And so, first of all, there's incredible, first
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: of all, Jack, again, thank you. Great job. Great writing.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Scab.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: A couple things. One, Trump spoke to Daily Bearer for
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: 24 minutes. That is a long conversation.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, to kick off the whole thing.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: To kick off the whole thing. That's 24 minutes. What
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: were they talking about for 24 long minutes? The person that,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: it wasn't about what, like, The grass isn't where I
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: need it to be. The pool isn't good. We gotta
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: do the gutters.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Here's what I can't figure out. How do you think
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: they got that conversation? How do you think they know
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: that it was 24 minutes between Trump and Olivera? Because
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: he's not cooperating.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: Any cell phone record.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: So we'd have both whipped the contents of the call,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Guessing or.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: You don't know.
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: You just know the metadata of like start, stop.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: We just know. Yeah, we have that. And then the
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: other thing that really jumps out is the lengths to
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: which Nauda was going to keep his involvement. I mean,
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: obviously idiotically, but like the shush emoji, that's hilarious. But
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: one thing that must clearly come from security camera footage
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: is the fact that when Nauda meets with De Oliveira,
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Nauda comes through the bushes and grabs old De Oliveira
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: and says, come with me. And they go through the
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: bushes to some adjacent property, talk for a minute, and
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: then De Oliveira comes back. So Nauda didn't want people
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: who worked at Mar-a-Lago to know he was there that day.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: And so he's scurrying around, but clearly getting caught on
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: the footage that their mandate was apparently to destroy, which
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: is a little bit confusing. I love that. I love
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: coming in and out of the bushes.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: That's my favorite part too.
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: Doing this sort of cloak and dagger nonsense and getting
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: caught on the security camera footage that you were trying
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: to delete.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: It's perfect.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Well, they're getting caught on the footage they're trying to delete.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: There's clearly the other side of the text messages have
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: now been given over to the special counsel. So, cause
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: we have the shush emoji. So between the first indictment
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: and this indictment, he was, his lawyer, he had the
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: same lawyer as all these guys. He clearly, this indictment
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: comes out and he's like, oh, no, thank you. You
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: got a target letter.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: And he does not, he's like, I don't want to
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: be a part of this at all. No, he got
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: a target letter from the FBI saying you're a target
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: of this investigation. That's when he clearly started talking because
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: the FBI knew he wasn't being forthcoming about what he
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: knew in some way.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: And so then he switched lawyers. And so then he
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: switches lawyers and then he's in this document being like,
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't think this is right. Which is,
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: which is, which I love. Yeah.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, what he, you're.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Usually convinced by a target letter to, uh, when someone
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: tells you to target the investigation to maybe change your
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: mind on something that you might not have said before. Right.
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: And so what he must have provided to the FBI
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: that we've learned in the superseding indictment is the detail
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: of this conversation in the audio closet, which do you
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: guys know what is an audio closet?
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Does anyone know? Is it a podcast studio? I think
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: we're in an audio closet.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: Is it currently where we are?
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Is it where we're all located?
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: Is it where you have like some speakers set up?
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: I don't know. That's where they had this conversation.
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: But like everything about this superseding indictment makes sense to
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: me because from the very beginning, The problem wasn't necessarily
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: the original crime of taking these documents. It was all
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: the moronic ways Trump tried to cover it up. And
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: here we are again, like telling Walt Nauta to go
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: fix it and get the IT guy to delete all
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: this footage and all this cloak and dagger nonsense. It's,
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: you know, created this open and shut obstruction case. Here's
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: the thing that I also don't understand, which is this
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: is all taking place in June. But the famous flooding
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: is until October.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: Interesting.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: We still don't know about the flooding and how that's involved.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: We know that it's this.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: I'm just desperate for it to be involved.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: I know. I know. We all are. But it does
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: seem like it does seem like Tavares, the IT guy,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: also gave them the signal chat or multiple signal chats
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: where Nauta, Trump's co-defendant valet, asked an employee whether de
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Oliveira would remain loyal to Trump. And then they have
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Trump calling De Oliveira again, promising to get him a lawyer,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: which this is the move. This is the move. Get
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: everyone a lawyer. And then suddenly when they don't have
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: the lawyer that was paid for by the Trump organization
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: or the Trump super PAC, suddenly they have other things
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: to say. Strategy changes.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: This is what happened with Cassidy Hutchinson during the January
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: 6th hearings. She got a new lawyer and suddenly she
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: was talking more. So this is a... This seems to
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: be a pattern. I also think so much of the
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: focus of this last superseding indictment has been on the
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: destroying the security footage. But the charge of willfully retaining
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: the Iran war plans seems pretty open and shut because
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: they clearly now have the document and they have Trump
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: on tape not only talking about the document, but talking
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: about how he's not supposed to have it. And now
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: they have Trump also going out there and lying and saying, oh,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: it sounds like I was just showing them plans. I
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: was showing them building plans the whole time. Newspapers. What
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: you heard on that tape wasn't true. It's like, well, no, no,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: they have the fucking documents.
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and they also have Carlos de Oliveira lying about
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: knowledge of the boxes getting sent to Mar-a-Lago in the
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: first place.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: And the question now becomes.
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: Does de Oliveira or Walt Nauta, do they freak out
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: and flip and give testimony? Because they're in even bigger
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: trouble than they were before.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the other thing that I took away
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: from this, which is like, Like, Nauda has been around
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Trump for a long time. This guy, De Oliveira, he
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: just works at Mar-a-Lago. And he just got roped into this.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: And you read the transcript of the moment where DOJ
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: is now saying that De Oliveira was lying. And he's
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: asked the question, do you, were you, do you ever even,
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: do you even know, like, if you were even there
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: or where that boxes were? And before the question is
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: even done, he's like, no. Like, all this stuff was
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: being moved in. Never saw anything. Never. Never saw nothing.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: And it just reads like somebody just completely... in a
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: situation they didn't plan to be in, way out of depth.
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: He needed a little legal guidance before that. I do
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: not recall would have gotten him a lot further.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: And he is having this conversation, and he is put
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: in this position because he is sharing, his lawyer is
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: the same as Nauta's lawyer. He is in the same
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: boat as all these other guys. And I guess today,
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: he didn't actually make a plea because he didn't have
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: a local lawyer. But you have to wonder, if people
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: in this person's life isn't saying like, Hey man, you
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: got to save yourself. Trump does not give a fuck
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: what happens to you. He's destroying your life.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: If he chose to cooperate or for some reason now
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: to choose to cooperate, undoubtedly it strengthens the case. But
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: I will say Jack Smith so far from what we've
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: seen in these indictments, from what we've heard from him
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: seems pretty damn thorough. It's like he has, he has
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: locked up this case. So if, if Dale Avera decides
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: not to cooperate, if not, it decides not to create,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: but they decided to say loyal to Trump, like, It's still, like,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: this guy's got a lot of evidence. That's just what
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: we've seen so far and read in the indictment. There's
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of stuff that we probably don't even know.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: And the other part of this, too, is all these
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: questions around Eileen Cannon and how much she's going to
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: be in the tank for Trump. Like, Jack Smith is
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: making her life so much harder if what she wants
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: to do is be friendly to Trump. First of all,
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: you had this this motion where Trump is like, Hey,
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: can I look at classified documents in Mar-a-Lago? And they're like, no,
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: you fucking idiot. That's what this is all about in
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: the first place. And, uh, so it just like, you know, let,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: like he, he is being, he's not putting, he's not
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: putting this Trump judge in a position to be able
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: to help him because this is so fucking embarrassing and damaged.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: He has to, he has to, his, his lawyers has
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: to discuss them in Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster. Like, you know,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: so maybe not necessarily see that, have the documents there,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: but discuss the documents in some place that's not a skiff.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: And again, that is the whole point of why we're
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: here is because Mar-a-Lago was never a skiff nor was Bedminster.
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: You're also reminded in all of this, like Trump tries
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: to operate like a mob boss. He doesn't email, he
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: doesn't put things in text message. He only does in-person meetings,
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: but all the morons around him put everything in writing
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: they talk on the phone they're sloppy they're ham-handed they
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: crawl through the bushes to have a meeting that's being
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: taped in real time it's just.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: So trump trump's response to this uh to the superseding
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: indictment has been to say that actually the tapes weren't
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: deleted and he never told anyone to delete them yeah
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: i think his lawyers wrote that one you think that
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: was uh unadvisive counsel.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: The yes well that's the thing like all the the
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: the The evidence that Trump was directly involved is in
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: the conversations that Nauta and de Oliveira had with all
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: these other people, right? There's no actual text from Trump.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: There's no words. It all took place in phone calls.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's all obviously clearly what happened.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: So his defense is going to be that Walt Nauta
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: and Carlos de Oliveira and the IT guy, they all
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: just made this shit up. They made up the whole thing.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: They cared about me so much. Obviously, I was concerned
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: about what was happening, but they were trying to protect me.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: They didn't delete any surveillance footage, but they thought that
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: maybe they should for some reason.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: That's his defense.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing. It goes even further than that,
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: which is in this document, the DOJ sent a draft subpoena.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: All of this takes place after DOJ.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why he was charged.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: But that like.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: You can delete your own surveillance footage if you don't
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: get a subpoena for the footage.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: But like he gets the draft subpoena and the next day...
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: All of this is spun up.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: No time to waste.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: Very sloppy.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: No time to waste. The feds are coming.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: This is out of nothing.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: But whatever.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: All these damning transcripts. The footage of all these guys
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: running around with boxes trying to figure out how to
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: delete server videos, which they don't know how to do
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: and can't figure out. And then they go and they
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: talk to DOJ. They go and talk to the grand jury.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: And they're like, I didn't see anything. I didn't do anything.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: I didn't see any boxes. And I know this is.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Can we just roll the quote from Hogan's Heroes, please?
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, you went too far.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: I must report this.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: It would be worth my life if I do not
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: report this.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: It's only until tomorrow and then he's going to take
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: it off again. After he steals the tank.
• 12:13
  Speaker 5: Oh?
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: From the Panzer Division. Oh? And brings it here.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Into the background.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: Oh, I see nothing.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: I was not here.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: I did not even get.
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: Up this morning.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Thank you. That was from Hogan's Heroes.
• 12:25
  Speaker 5: 1965.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Timely topical reference. You guys love Hogan's Heroes, right?
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know that reference. A little queer-coded, huh? He's
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: a little gay. He's a little like, ooh, I know nothing.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: I see nothing.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: Well, Nazi-coded.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, also that.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I think I saw some of the MAGA
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: idiots who hadn't got the memo yet on what the
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: talking points were supposed to be were like, what? In America,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: you can't be deleting your own surveillance footage? It's like, no,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: when the FBI sends you a subpoena for something, if
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: they try to say, hey, we're going to collect your phone.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: You don't go, ah, and then throw the phone away.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: You can't do that.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: The thing I don't quite understand, so clearly there's some
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: effort to delete the footage. DOJ at some point thought
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: they weren't getting all the footage. There's some question of like,
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: did the footage come from Mar-a-Lago? Did it come from
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: the company that was providing the surveillance technology? I don't,
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: we just, there's more to come.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: So we're talking about how everyone got lawyered up thanks
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: to Trump. Washington Post and the New York Times reported
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: over the weekend that Trump's Save America super PAC, Save America,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: not to be confused with the name of this podcast.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: We can sue them for taking our name. Because we
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: were first. We were first on that one. Anyway, Save
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: America is hurting for cash because they have already spent
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: $ 40 million on legal fees just this year for Trump
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: and his goons. I believe they started the year with
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: $ 18 million cash on hand. And then after this first quarter,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: they have reported spending $ 40 million on legal fees. What
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: do you think about alleged billionaire Donald Trump asking his
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: mostly working class supporters to pay his legal bills?
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: It's so perfect.
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: They also reportedly spent another $ 16 million in the previous
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: two years on legal fees.
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: So that's quite a price tag.
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: I mean, this is going to hurt him politically, not
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: just because of the facts of the case, but the
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: Save America PAC requested that a $ 60 million bill donation
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: they made to another super PAC supporting Donald Trump be returned.
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: They're having, they're asking for money back. That's how dire
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: the straits are here. So, you know, they had, I
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: think they raised a hundred million dollars after losing the
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: 2020 race. Like you said, they had 18 on hand.
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: Trump is now splitting online contributions. 90% go to his campaign,
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: 10% go to the PAC, i.e.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: Legal fees.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: I actually, when I saw that, cause it was actually,
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: it was originally 99 cents were going to the, to
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: the campaign, then 1 cent. And the, the times, you know, uh,
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: published that the ratio had been switched. And I was like, oh,
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: I wonder what it's going to be.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: 90-10.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: That's a lot of restraint for my boy Trump.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: I expected it to be worse.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: I thought the same thing, to be honest.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: But still, burning money. So I think most of his
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: fans don't give a shit that they're giving money to
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: his legal defense fund. They'd probably happily give Donald Trump
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: their firstborn child. But I do think that the strongest
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: argument against Trump has always been to a general electorate
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: and to skeptical Republicans that That he's only in this
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: for himself. Right. That it's only Trump does not care
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: about you. He cares about Donald Trump and only Donald Trump.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: And I think running a whole campaign where you are
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: trying to stay out of prison, that's why. And you
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: are raising money for your own legal defense fund and
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: for nothing else.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: I think it's a pretty good argument for someone to make.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Well, that's not an argument Chris Christie was making.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: I heard Chris Christie make that one.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: But the rest of them, not so much.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: That's their argument, Chris.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: We'll get to it.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: You see the shady shit Levitt's got Tim Scott's.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: Doing in terms of campaign finance?
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: What is Tim Scott up to?
• 15:47
  Speaker 6: He paid $ 5. 3 million to shadowy entities, as the New
• 15:51
  Speaker 6: York Times described them, newly formed limited liability companies with
• 15:54
  Speaker 6: no online presence, no record of other federal election work
• 15:57
  Speaker 6: that were basically just created to for him to pay
• 16:00
  Speaker 6: money out from his campaign, too, to hide how it's
• 16:02
  Speaker 6: being spent.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: What do we think he's doing there?
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm sure he has reasons. He's hiding his campaign expenditure.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: I don't have it.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: It's just really, like, truly pushing the boundaries of campaign finance. So,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: like we said, we're still waiting for this, the D.C.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: grand jury to act here. Here's what we know. They
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: sat for seven hours on Friday.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: Sounds uncomfortable.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: They reportedly heard from no witnesses. And it was the
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: same day that Trump's team met with the Department of
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Justice and Jack Smith's team. So all the legal analysts,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: they think that Tuesday is the next meeting of the
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: grand jury. So they think all signs are pointing to
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Tuesday as the day they vote on the indictment because
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: it's not like there was a whole bunch of extra
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: witnesses or evidence or something like that on Friday because
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: they would have seen witnesses going in. And the fact
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: that they had the meeting means it's probably getting pretty close.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: We also saw on Friday on Georgia, they were putting
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: up barricades in front of the Fulton County courtroom. And
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: the district attorney there, Fannie Willis, said in an interview
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: that they are ready to go. They have done the work.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: And at the very latest, she has promised that indictment
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: or their decisions would be brought before September 1st. And
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: then I think Alvin Bragg did an interview where he
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: said that if necessary, he would move the hush money
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: case if Jack Smith really needs to hold his trial
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: on the January 6th stuff. before the election.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: What a gentleman alvin bragg although just because my indictment
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: was first doesn't mean my trial has to be first
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: thank you.
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: Although he also said he's not in control of moving
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: the dates the judge would be so sort of like
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: huh yeah i don't know.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: How this works again there's just so many.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: How this works is no one has five trials at
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: the same time for different issues nobody so no so
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: what he says is that that what he what bragg
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: said is like it would actually be up to the
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: judge and the judges would have to confirm.
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah And also in Georgia, there's an August 10th hearing
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: where Trump's team is going to try to disqualify Willis
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: and also toss out a bunch of the evidence she
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: collected and remove another Fulton County judge from the case.
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: So I wonder if she's going to let that hearing
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: happen first before laying out her stuff or wait until after.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Did you see there was one there was an attempt
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: to disqualify her, another attempt to disqualify her that was
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: just rejected by a judge today?
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that judge rejected that. Rejected.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: It's sort of like, well, we're going to direct this
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: batch of ridiculous claims about why you can't be tried today.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: And we're going to do it and you're going to
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: lose again, but not till August 10th.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: So Trump's primary opponents had more to say than usual
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: about his latest felony charges. Ron DeSantis told a reporter that, quote,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: if the election becomes a referendum on what document was
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: left by the toilet at Mar-a-Lago, we are not going
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: to win. His campaign also hit Trump on the Super
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: PAC story, accusing Trump of spending people's money on his
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: own legal fees instead of defeating Joe Biden. Nikki Haley
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: was on CBS this weekend. She said the party needs
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: to move beyond Trump or else, quote, we will have
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: a general election that's doing nothing but dealing with lawsuits.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: And here's former Congressman Will Hurd. Forgot he's running for president,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: didn't you? He's running for the Republican nomination. He's barely
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: hit one percent in most polls, but he went after Trump.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: at that same Iowa dinner over the weekend that we
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: just heard.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: Let's listen.
• 18:59
  Speaker 5: Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison. And
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: if we elect, I know, I know, I know, I know,
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: I know. Listen, I know the truth. The truth is hard.
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: But if we elect Donald Trump, we are willingly giving
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: Joe Biden four more years in the White House, and
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: America can't handle that. God bless you, and God bless America.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, except for the last part, everything he said
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: was true.
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: Truth was poorly received.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: You hear that one person clapping?
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: It was a Will Hurd staffer. It was the one
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Will Hurd staffer.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: It just kills me watching, like, what a moment you
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: could make out of being booed. There's so many jokes.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: There's so many things you could do with that. these
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: guys just don't have the they don't have the stuff.
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: I will say this is probably more covers than Will
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: Hurd has gotten on any other day combined every other
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: day combined I should say except for the first day
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: so I don't know that this is going to help
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: him win the nomination but it's certainly getting a cover it.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: I also don't know if it will help. I mean, listen,
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: like I don't think you're going to make that.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: Argument and people are going to be like, oh, you
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: know what? He's right.
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: But I think over time, if you make it repeatedly
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: over and over again, the doubts creep into these voters
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: head and the electability argument is the only thing I
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: think that's going to reach the persuadable voters here. There
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: might they might not be in that room, but.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: I totally agree. I like good for him for making.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a party fundraiser. That's like a hardcore Republican audience.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: That's what. Yeah, you're not getting you're not getting a
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: lot of applause there. Why do you think it took
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: felony counts 73 and 74 and 72 through 74 for
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: these people to finally say something aside from Will Hurd?
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: I was surprised by Ron DeSantis suddenly being like, oh,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: wait a minute. Wait a minute. He's he's not as
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: electable if we have a criminal defendant as the nominee.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, both both Haley and DeSantis, like the other half
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: of what they said is so cynical and so pathetic
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: and speaks to the hole they've dug for themselves because
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: they both make this point of saying, look, you talk
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: about the charge. I mean, they both, it was all
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: word salad, but both of them make this argument that like, look,
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: do I think there's prosecutorial overreach? Do I think it's unfair?
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: But that's the reality we're living in. And despite the
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: fact that Donald Trump doesn't deserve any of what is
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: happening to him, the reality is if these chargers are
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: what people are talking about, that's going to hurt us.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: So the sin is not overthrowing the government or trying
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: to put in some fake electors or obstruction of justice
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: or deleting footage or whatever it is. It's the sin
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: of putting in a supposition to not win in November.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: So they're willing to go that far, but it's in
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: this embarrassingly obsequious way.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And the reason why is, you know, Tommy made
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: the point. It is like that is that is a
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: crowd of sort of the most hardcore Republican activists. But
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: almost every poll of Republican voters, including the one we're
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: about to talk about from The New York Times, shows
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: that like upwards of 70 percent of the Republican electorate
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: doesn't think Donald Trump committed any crimes at all. So,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: you know, when you say he's running to stay out
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: of prison, most people don't agree with that. And there
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: are Republican voters. So let's talk about the New York
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Times poll from today. Weighed in with its first survey
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: of the Republican primary in 2024. Trump, 54 percent. DeSantis,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: 17 percent. And no one else broke 3 percent. National poll.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: We pay attention to the New York Times poll, A-plus rated.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: It's basically now up there with Ann Seltzer's Des Moines
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Register poll as the gold standard. It had a lot
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: of influence on their Democratic primary in 2020, as poor
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren knows. What were you guys' takeaways from the polls?
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Any specific findings jump out at you? I got a bunch,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: but you guys go first. That was fascinating.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Yes. First of all, a terrible poll for anyone not
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: named Trump. There's no really good news anywhere in it
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: for any other candidate. Here's the things that I thought
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: were most interesting. One, 17% said that Trump committed serious
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: federal crimes. But of those 17%, 22% of those voters
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: still prefer Trump to DeSantis. Voters who are woke-focused, right?
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Presumably a group of people DeSantis has been trying to gather.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: This is the whole premise of his campaign and of
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: how he's governed. Break for Trump, 61 to 36%. So
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: it's a very pro-Trump poll, but this to me, above all,
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: was the most interesting. Above the 43% who had a
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: very favorable opinion of Trump, they vote for Trump 92
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: to 7. So if you like Trump, you're with Trump.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Of the 25% who had a very favorable view of DeSantis,
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: presumably the biggest DeSantis fans out there, the best he's doing,
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: the people he's reached, they split 50-50. Of the 25%
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: that are the most favorable to Santas, those are still
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: people breaking 50-50 to vote for Trump. And that just
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: has to be so demoralizing. That has to be so demoralizing. Yeah,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think the big picture takeaway is a
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: third of the electorate is the MAGA base. Another third
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: is persuadable. A quarter of them do not want to
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: vote for Trump, including some who say they will not
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: vote for him in a general election. So yeah, this
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: is a terrible poll for everyone not named Donald Trump,
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: but there's opportunity there if someone can consolidate The 37%
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: persuadable and 25% never Trump. Now, like the MAGA base, not,
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: this is my favorite stat, not one of the 319
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: respondents in the MAGA base section said Trump had committed
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: serious federal claims. 2% said he did something wrong in
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: the handling of the classified documents. But in the not
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: open to Trump primary, it is more educated, more affluent,
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: more moderate. So the challenge that all of these never
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Trump folks or not Trump folks are going to have
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: is that's not a very Iowa electorate. Uh, and so
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: the sequential nature of the nominating process is going to
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: make it hard for them to get momentum early, I think.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: So the other, I'm glad you brought up the, like
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: the three different, um, segments of the electorate, which is basically,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: it was the basis of the piece that Nate Cohn
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: wrote a piece off this as well. And so you've got,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: you've got the 37% that are the MAGA diehards. And
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: this is the same as what you were just saying, right?
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Like the people who are very, very favorable towards Trump.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: This is not just polling stuff. This is like, We
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: see this in elections. These are like the people who
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: support him in early 2016. These are the people who
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: were still with him after January 6th. This is his base.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Forget about them, right? And then you got the persuadables,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: what he calls the persuadables, which are the 37%, and
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: then the not open to Trump and the 25%. The
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: challenge for any other candidate, even if you don't have
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: the amazing political skills of Ron DeSantis, is the persuadables
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: and the people who are not open to Trump completely
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: disagree on issues. Yeah. And so funding for Ukraine, comprehensive
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: and support for Ukraine in general, comprehensive immigration reform, six-week
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: abortion ban, those two groups of voters are on opposite
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: sides of those. So if you want to try to
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: get the persuadables who like Trump but are open to
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: someone else and you're a more moderate candidate like a
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Chris Christie, you're not going to get those people. And similarly,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: if you're someone like Ron DeSantis, who has taken some
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: of those positions and It's going to be hard to
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: get the never-Trumper vote because they don't agree with you.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: They're not as conservative as you are in those positions.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and even the group of people that are maybe
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: the most amenable to an alternative, college-educated Republicans, are still
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: breaking to Trump by 12 points.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Well, and in this poll, and Nate and The Times
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: does the poll matching the voter file, I looked, they're
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: only 36% of the Republican electorate. That's the problem. So, like,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: even if you consolidated all the college-educated Republicans, which is
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: hard to do, You still have an uphill battle.
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: I do think the electability thing is the only option.
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: This is an actual quote from a voter in the
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: New York Times story.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: The best quote.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Actual quote.
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: He might say mean things and make all the men
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: cry because all the men are wearing your wife's underpants
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: and you can't be a man anymore. David Green, 69,
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: a retail manager in Somersworth, New Hampshire, said to Trump,
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: of course he's from New Hampshire. You've got to be
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: a little sissy and cry about everything. But at the
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: end of the day, you want results. Donald Trump's my guy.
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: He proved it on a national level.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: I don't think anyone has ever articulated why Donald Trump
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: gets so much support better.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: David Green.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: David Green from Summersworth, New Hampshire. I didn't even know
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: there was a town.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: In New Hampshire. The media that that guy's consuming is
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: just like, of course these guys can't break through. Of
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: course nobody believes the charges. Of course they're having trouble
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: making an argument against Trump. Like all this guy is
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: consuming day in and day out says that Trump is
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: the best and he's being railroaded.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: They did some attributes to which of these attributes better
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: describes Trump, which describes Ron DeSantis. Trump crushing DeSantis on
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: strong leader, 69 to 22. Tommy made this point at
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: the very beginning of this whole primary. Get things done, 67, 22,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: which was like DeSantis' whole thing is getting things done
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: in Florida. Electable, 58, 28 again. And then The number,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: the split that matched the actual top line poll result, fun. Yeah.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: 54% think Trump is fun, 16% DeSantis. And the only
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: thing that Trump loses on is likable slightly to DeSantis,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: which is sort of funny, and moral a lot.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: The likable one was confusing. It says more about Trump
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: than I think about. I think there's a lot of
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: people who think Trump is, who like Trump and want
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: to vote for him. like him, but think he's an asshole.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: They think he's a fun asshole. He's a fun asshole.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: That's what they're in this for.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: We've talked about why this primary isn't being fought on policy,
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: but this is the point that the poll makes.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: He just He's crushing. It's so broad.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: It's not about issues.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Well, no, but well, just yes, it's not about it.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: It's almost as if it's a it's a cult of personality.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's just better.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: It's the one interesting thing, because, you know, we have
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: spent so much time making fun of Ron DeSantis for
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: his horrible campaign and will continue to right after this section.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: But the favorability ratings are still 76 percent for Trump.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: And 66% for DeSantis. And the way the Times writes
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: it up, it has interviews with voters, other than that
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: fantastic quote that Tommy read, where people are like, I
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: like him plenty. I like Ron DeSantis. And next time,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: he's the one, right? But he's just, Trump's accomplished stuff
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: on a national level. He's only done Florida. He's just
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: not ready yet. So these are people who actually do
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: like Ron DeSantis, but they're just like, no, no, no,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Trump's our guy.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: It's the same. It's just the same trend from like
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: since the very beginning. But DeSantis makes them feel like
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: their needs are met and Trump makes them feel like
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: they have no needs. And it has been the same
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: from this entire primary.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: You mentioned the woke, the people who think woke is
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: a big deal. There was another question in the poll.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Which of these two Republicans would you be more likely
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: to support for president? A candidate who promises to fight
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: corporations that promote woke left ideology or a candidate who
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: says the government should stay out of deciding what corporations
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: can support. The latter wins 52 to 38. So even
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: when you don't put Trump and DeSantis together, Just the
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: idea that there is an appetite, even in the Republican Party,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: for someone who's going to go after corporations because they're
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: too woke, it doesn't, it's not real.
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: As this guy is announcing another lawsuit against Bud Light
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: or an investigation into Bud Light because their stock went
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: down because people like Ron DeSantis criticized Bud Light for
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: being nice to one transgender person.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: I think that shows how so online DeSantis is.
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: For sure.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: The DeSantis, that whole group, that doesn't actually have, the
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: support for Trump on the Republican Party is not about that.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: And you can also, there's a question about woke versus
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: like borders and law and order. Like it's still the,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: the immigration shit, the law and order shit, like the,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: that's all the reason that they like Trump, you know,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: to the extent that it's about any policies.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: And if there's any connection at all between DeSantis's inability
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: to have a human interaction with anyone on the campaign
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: trail and this, it's that like, he's just trying to pander,
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: but he doesn't get the people he's trying to pander
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: well enough to make a mark. Like You know, he
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: did this economic rollout and he's like, I'm going to fight.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: I'm going to take I'm going to end Joe Biden's
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: war on crypto. He's interviewed about RFK Jr. And he's like,
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: he'd make a great head of the fucking CDC. Like,
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: who is that a pander for? Well, he just stepped
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: on a rake so hard. He was like, yeah, I'm
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: going to piss off all these libs by saying I
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: would make RFK Jr.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: CDC director.
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: And Mike Pence, of all people, like not the most
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: deft politician, is like immediate press release. Yeah, this guy
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: wants to name a pro-choice. individual to lead the CDC. Like,
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: absolutely hurts himself every time he tries to do something.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Hi, pundit. Well, I mean, speaking of DeSantis' interactions with voters,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: their new strategy of letting Ron be Ron already seems
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: to be paying dividends.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: Let's listen.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, what is that?
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: An icy?
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's probably a lot of sugar, huh? Yeah, the
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: first one was Ron DeSantis trying to tell a little
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: girl to put her icy down.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: It's so funny.
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: The fun comment is so telling. I mean, for a
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: lot of people, we all despise Donald Trump. He's a
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: horrible person. He does bad things to the country.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: But a lot of his voters love watching his rallies.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: They travel across the country to go to them. It's
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: like a carnival for them.
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: And I can't imagine anything less enjoyable than watching Ron
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: DeSantis talk about almost literally anything.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: Or like imagine meeting a kid who's got an IC
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: and being like, whew, a lot of sugar on that.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: You're at a fair.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: That's where you eat sugar, you moron. I got tunnel
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: cake and shut up. I got to tell you, Ron
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: DeSantis is growing on me. If I see one more
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: interaction with this guy having absolutely no ability to interact
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: with anyone, I'm just falling in love. Look at this poor,
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: this guy, so broken. The hole in his bucket, he's
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: got to fill it with politics. He can't make it work.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: He can't appeal to normal people. What a curse this
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: guy's living. I love it. Get him one shirt or
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: one jacket or vest that doesn't have his name on it.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: You don't have to have your name on all your clothing.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: Are you at camp?
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Are you going to lose something?
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: What's happening?
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: He's terrible. Yeah. It's really, I mean, I don't have
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: anything else to say. We're just, we're now at the
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: point where we've done all the Ron DeSantis analysis we
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: can do. We're just playing clips now. There's nothing else
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: to do.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: I just, I love what, let him cook.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: The second clip was just somewhat, he was like, some woman,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: she's got a beer. He's got a beer. She's like,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: here you are drinking beer. We have a beer. He's like,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: ha ha, I'm drinking beer.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: It really does, having fun on the campaign trail, like
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: you really can feel the difference when a candidate is
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: having fun. Like there were times when Barack Obama, hated
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: every minute of his day.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Like the first year.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Didn't want to be there.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: First year of the campaign.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: Most of his time in New Hampshire. Look, here's the thing.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: I want to see a candidate go to a pie shop,
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: have a charming interaction with some shop owner, say, I'll
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: have an apple and a blueberry, have a huge smile
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: on their face, get in the car, and just throw
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: them in the garbage. That's what I'm looking for. That's
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: what you want in a president.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: You know who seems like he's mostly having a good
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: time when he's campaigning? Joe Biden. I will say that
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: about him.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Even your guy, Chris Christie, like, you know what?
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: He didn't agree with you on a lot of stuff,
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: but he was like having fun, mixing it up, fighting back,
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: talking shit, you know?
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Well, he just like, he has a, he has this,
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: he's a charismatic, normal person. Yeah, like Tim Scott, Nikki Haley,
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: like they smile. They smile naturally. Ron DeSantis smiles like
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: he stepped on a Lego. He's just like. It's too big.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: It's too big. His laugh is too big.
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: Everything about him.
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: It's just, there's a lot of other stuff. There's time,
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: he has money, but my God, man. You can't fix
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: that though.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: There's no talent. That's why I like him now. You
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: can't fix that.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: I will say Echelon Insights finally just did a poll
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: that just came out today doing head-to-head matchups with Trump
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: and other candidates besides DeSantis because so far they've only done...
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: It doesn't get any better for any of the other ones.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: It's like 70-20 Tim Scott, 70-20 Nikki Haley. Now, again,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: it's all early, but we're not talking... We're not talking
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: like 20 points. We're not talking 30 points. We're talking...
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: 50 points.
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: Was that a national poll?
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, the name ID is probably like so low
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: for Tim Scott. The point Nate Cohn made, I believe,
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: is that it's not early anymore.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: It's five and a half months.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: And no candidate that's been up by 20 at this
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: point in these polls has lost the nomination and he's
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: up by more than double. And so does that mean
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: this can't change? No, this is a unique primary. We've
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: never had a candidate who's a former president charged with
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: multiple felonies before. Let's see how that shakes out. But
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: right now, man.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: Tough sled.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: And you got to be, again, I think, The idea
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump is vulnerable, politically vulnerable, even within the
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Republican Party, is one that I buy. But you still
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: have to beat. You can't beat something with nothing. And
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: so far we have a lot of nothing.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: And there's a Ron DeSantis in the parking space that's
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: going to have to move.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: All right, let's do a quick roundup of some other headlines.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Justice Sam Alito is once again whining in the pages
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: of the Wall Street Journal about how his branch of
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: government should be able to get away with whatever it wants.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: In an interview that ran last week, he said, I
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: know this is a controversial view, but I'm willing to
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: say it. No provision in the Constitution gives them the
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: authority to regulate the Supreme Court, period. He was commenting
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: on recent efforts by Senate Democrats to impose ethics reform
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: on the court. And of course, one of the authors
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: of the piece that features the interview with Alito is
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: a lawyer who has business before the court next term.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: Look, there's nothing there is nothing in the Constitution that
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: says a dog can't be speaker in the House. That
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: is the level. That is the level that we're at.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Guys literally think they're above the law. I mean, I
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: don't know what happens now. So the Senate Democrats are
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: moving this legislation. It's going to get blocked by Republicans.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: There was some talk early, like maybe there'd be bipartisan
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: ethics reform like that was never going to pass the House.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: Now it doesn't look like it's going to pass the
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: Senate either. John Roberts refuses to do anything. So I
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: guess we're just waiting for Alito or Thomas to retire.
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think, look, that core problem with
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: the court is that there's this big conservative majority, and
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: that is not going to change until someone retires. I
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: do think there's a medium-term problem, which is that these
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: guys think they're above the law, and they say things
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: like what Alito said in this interview. The takeaway for
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: me from all of the most recent rounds of whining
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: from various Supreme Court justices is they really, really hate scrutiny.
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: The hate and media scrutiny.
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: They're offended by ProPublica's existence. And I hope that shames
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: legacy outlets into doing a little less access journalism and
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: a little more digging into these people because they are
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: far too comfortable in these like big donor right wing
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: ideological circles with Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society. And
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: it is, I think, changing the way they vote on stuff.
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: And it would be helpful to have some sort of
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: ethics reform.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: It is remarkable even how far Alito, who's always been
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: one of, if not the most right wing judge, has
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: how far he's come in terms of his willingness to
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: just sort of defy tradition and speak publicly in his
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: confirmation hearing, he's very clear, you know, judges shouldn't be
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: coming out there and, you know, basically just sort of
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: improv-ing about issues that could come before the court. He's
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: out there, not only is he saying that he thinks
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: the Supreme Court can't be regulated by Congress, he's asked,
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: do the other justices agree? He says, I don't know
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: that any of my colleagues have spoken about it publicly,
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: so I don't think I should say, but I think
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: it is something we have all thought about. And as
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: our friend, the strict scrutiny pointed out, This is basically
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: like kind of like some version of an advisory opinion
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: saying if you pass a law like this, we'll overturn it.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Strix Rootney did a great job on this. I highly
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: recommend it. So go check it out. No, I mean,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: here's what we can do. Go donate some money and
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: help out Sherrod Brown, John Tester and some of these
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: really close Senate races and then flip the house. Then,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: you know, in that sense, we can maybe get some
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: ethics reform. And but the Senate's even more important because
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: one of these guys retires. We're going to need a
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Democratic president and Democratic Senate to get a new justice
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: in there or else we're going to get more of this.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Here's a story we can do something about. Punchbowl News
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: reported last week that Republican Congressman Derek Van Orden was
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: giving a tour of the Capitol when he came across
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: a group of teenage Senate pages. These are these are
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: a type of interns for people who don't know. They
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: help out in the Capitol. They're around 17 years old.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: And they were lying on the ground in the Capitol
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Rotunda taking photos.
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: Which a lot of people do.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Which a lot of people do. And here is what
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: the congressman said to them. Wake the fuck up, you
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: little shits. What the fuck are you all doing? Get
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: the fuck out of here. You are defiling the spaces,
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: you piece of shit. I don't give a fuck who
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: you are. I'm a congressman. Van Orden was at the
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: Stop the Steal rally on January 6th and represents a
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: very flippable district in Wisconsin. We should probably replace him
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: with someone else, huh? Yeah, that'd be good.
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: He was apparently drinking in his office before this. And also,
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: he's a former Navy SEAL. So this isn't some like
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: bookish nerd screaming in the faces of a 16-year-old that
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: they're a little shit and they're defiling the Capitol. It's
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: a big, intimidating veteran who also yelled at a bunch
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: of librarians back in the day because he was very
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: mad about a pride flag at a library somewhere in Wisconsin.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: I think we need more people to yell at teens.
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: Do you think they're just getting too big for their britches?
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: You get a bunch of teens.
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: He does get points for novel defense of himself. He
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: said something about how the Capitol rotunda... was once a
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: field hospital during the Civil War.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what was that?
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: Get out of here. This was once a field hospital
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: during the Civil War. You can't take pictures.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Anyway, we heard about this story. We, of course, reached
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: out to Ben Wickler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: and we put together a link that you can donate
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: to Van Orden's eventual opponent because we don't have a
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Democratic nominee yet for that seat, but we will eventually.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: So we'll tweet out again from all of our accounts
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: if you want to give I just have to say,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: so this got like bipartisan condemnation. It's one of those
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: rare things. All the Senators, yeah. Except, except, did you
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: see what Kevin McCarthy said?
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy said this. It wasn't, first of all, he
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: said it wasn't the norm for that congressman, which as
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: Tommy just suggested is not true.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: Think about all the times he gets drunk and doesn't
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: yell at teens.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Well, then he said this. I guess the interns have
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: some ritual of laying down or something like that. I
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: think it's a misunderstanding of all sides.
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: This is what happens when you need literally every vote
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: to stay speaker.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: You defend everything.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: He is just... Pathetic. Well, we have more to say
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: about Kevin McCarthy. The Daily Beast has a story that
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: about a month ago, while Republicans were voting to censure
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Adam Schiff, California Democrat Eric Swalwell yelled, you're weak at
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy. The next day, Swalwell was on his way
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: to the bathroom when McCarthy got in his face and said, quote,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: call me a pussy again and I'll kick your ass.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: To which Swalwell responded, you are a pussy.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: That cadence is documented in the Daily Beast.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: To which McCarthy responded, by walking away.
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: Said nothing.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: This story is sourced to two house members who declined
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: to give their names. Do you guys think one of
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: them was Eric Swalwell?
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: I love it. I love the whole thing. I like
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: that also we're just sort of like, there's just that
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: part of us that's like, ha ha, Kevin McCarthy didn't
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: physically fight Eric Swalwell, therefore he sucks.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Well, it is funny though, like he goes, you're weak.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: And then he comes out and he's like, don't call
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: me a pussy.
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: So weird.
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: I also like that this didn't just happen on an
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: average Thursday when they're voting on like renaming.
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: A post office.
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: This was right before the prime minister of India addressed
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: a joint session of Congress. So these guys almost threw
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: down before like the eyes of the world were on
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: the U.S.
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: Congress.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: My only take on this is I think more members
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: of Congress should just fight.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: Well, we didn't even... Work it out. Have we talked
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: about the ongoing Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, will they,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: won't they fight each other? There's been like multiple accounts,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: I think many of them from the Daily Beast, of
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: those two on the floor almost getting into blows as well.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: Or they're in the bathroom, they're on the floor.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: Look, here's the thing.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Everyone needs to come... They should go on... Get them
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: on vacation. Get them out of that place for a
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: little while.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: The slow erosion... of every civic virtue in this society
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: has been just really frustrating and hard to experience. But
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: if it does result in physical confrontations between the Speaker
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: of the House and a Democrat, or between Lauren Boebert
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: and Marjorie Taylor Greene, I don't know, okay. See, I'm
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: not with you there.
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: I think this isn't an erosion. I think this is
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: a throwback to the old school ways of doing stuff
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: in Congress when we used to cane each other and
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: do other things. Also, like, Swalwell's a pretty big guy.
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: I think he played soccer at Maryland's.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Um, so I don't know.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: I like our odds here.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do too. I think we should bring back
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: the canings.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: I want to see Kevin McCarthy's hold me back guy.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: Is it like a chip Roy? It's toxic masculinity all
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: over the place.
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: That's what this is.
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: We're coded in toxic masculinity.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: I told the story about, about the, the Eric Swalwell
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: thing in New York and this like, you know, this
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: progressive audience, they were like, he called him a pussy
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: and he didn't fight. They freaked out. They loved it
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: so much. We're all, we're all just a bunch of,
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: we're all a bunch of apes running around wearing suits.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: The other Republican leader on the Hill has had a
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: tough week. Mitch McConnell was in the middle of giving
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: a statement at a press conference when he froze up
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: and apparently lost the ability to speak. It's a pretty
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: scary thing to watch. McConnell was hospitalized back in March
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: for a bad fall that kept him out of the
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Senate for six weeks and reportedly has had another fall
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: since then. Of course, President Biden called him immediately after
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: the press conference to see how he was doing. And
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: here's what Donald Trump said to Breitbart about the episode.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: That was a sad thing to see. He had a
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: bad fall, I guess, and probably an after effect of that.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: But it was also sad that he gave trillions and
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: trillions and trillions of dollars to the Democrats to waste
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: on the Green New Deal, destroying our oceans and destroying
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: our great, beautiful vistas and plains all over our country
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: with windmills that are very expensive energy. So that's a
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: very sad thing also. At the same time, I hope
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: he's well.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: Honestly, honestly, for him, not bad. Mostly okay.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Got into windmills?
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: He hates the windmills.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: He does hate the windmills. He really hates the windmills.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: You get from like, what do you think of Mitch
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: McConnell's episode to windmills? Mitch McConnell didn't give the Democrats
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: any money for that. He didn't support the IRA. It
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: wasn't the Green New Deal. I think he was referencing
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: the IRA. Mitch McConnell tried to stop that. He didn't.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: It was a bunch of reconciliation thing.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: It's very confusing.
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it was John Oliver who, several years ago,
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: did a piece where they had some other third party,
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: just a random person, do a reading, not dramatic or otherwise,
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: just a reading of a section of a Trump speech.
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: And it was just incoherent gibberish, top to bottom. And
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: I think this is a great example. In that Bright
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: Party interview, he also, Trump was bragging about his endorsements.
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: And this I enjoyed. He said, Ron DeSantis is one.
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: Take a look at Ron DeSantis. He had no choice
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: until I endorsed him. He wouldn't be, he could be
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: right now at a law firm or working at a
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: pizza place. So that was his take on DeSantis.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: I do not think he has the personality to be
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: in a customer service position.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: No, no, no.
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: He cannot.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: He cannot interface with the customer.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Maybe he could be in the back of the kitchen.
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: He could flip the pies.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: No, he can't. He does not have that human touch.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: He cannot be delivering those pizzas. He's trying to, he's
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: basically trying to deliver pizzas now without the pizzas. He's
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: knocking on doors. It's not going well. It's not going well.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: No one wants it.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: No one wants your pizza, sir.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Maybe he should bring some pizzas. We can start. All right. Finally,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: in case you missed it, Air Force Major David Grush
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: made some explosive claims at a congressional hearing last week
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: about UFOs, or if you're... if you're real smart, UAPs.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: That's what they're.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: Called these days. I don't know. What's wrong with you?
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: Unidentified flying objects was good. It wasn't broken. Why are
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: we fixing it?
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: UAP is unidentified aerial phenomena. All right.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: That's if you're, yeah, you think you're great. Here's a
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: clip of his exchange with Congresswoman Nancy Mace.
• 46:46
  Speaker 7: You say that the government is in possession of potentially
• 46:48
  Speaker 7: non-human spacecraft. Based on your experience and extensive conversations with experts,
• 46:55
  Speaker 7: Do you believe our government has made contact with intelligent extraterrestrials?
• 47:01
  Speaker 8: Something I can't discuss in public setting.
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: OK.
• 47:06
  Speaker 7: I can't ask when you think this occurred. If you
• 47:10
  Speaker 7: believe we have crashed craft, stated earlier, do we have
• 47:13
  Speaker 7: the bodies of the pilots who piloted this craft?
• 47:17
  Speaker 8: As I've stated publicly already in my News Nation interview,
• 47:20
  Speaker 8: biologics came with some of these recoveries. Yeah.
• 47:25
  Speaker 7: Were they, I guess, human or non-human biologics?
• 47:29
  Speaker 8: Non-human, and that was the assessment of people with direct
• 47:32
  Speaker 8: knowledge on the program I talked to that are currently
• 47:33
  Speaker 8: still on the program.
• 47:35
  Speaker 7: And was this documentary references, video, photos, eyewitness? Like, how
• 47:40
  Speaker 7: would that be determined?
• 47:42
  Speaker 8: The specific documentation I would have to talk to you
• 47:45
  Speaker 8: in a skiff about.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: Gotcha.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: Non-human biologics. What do you guys think?
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, that I want this to be good and true. Uh,
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: he's the, the, the kookiness, the kookiness of this guy,
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: who's also claimed that, uh, Mussolini found an alien craft
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: and through, uh, the Pope contacted the U S government
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: to be part of the original coverup. There's not, there's
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: no evidence. Um, he doesn't have any evidence to provide. Uh,
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: apparently he did go to the U S he was
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: cleared to say these things. In other words, that they're
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: not secrets. So he's not divulging any government secrets. Um, I,
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: I just, I think this is a lot of people
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: having fun in a hearing and nobody being the adult
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: who's going to say none of them, like the, no
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: one's willing to say like, this is, this isn't it.
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: I think even the people chairing the hearing were like,
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: welcome to the most popular subcommittee hearing in history. Like
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: they're just in on the phone and the press coverage. Also,
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: way to name drop the News Nation there.
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: Sorry, pal.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: As I said in my News Nation interview, you talked
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: to Chris Cuomo.
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: Don't want you to repeat yourself there. I guess you
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: were too busy having premarital sex, Nancy Mace, to watch
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: my phenomenal News Nation interview. We might have to offer
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: some context there in a second. Oh, yeah.
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: No.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: Sorry.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: So she said at a prayer breakfast that she couldn't
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: fuck because she had to go to the prayer breakfast.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: And then she got in some trouble for that. And
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: then she said she was kidding. And the Republicans were like,
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: we don't like when women joke about sex. We like
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: what Tim Scott does.
• 49:13
  Speaker 9: Nothing.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: Nothing.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: Nothing.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: He's a Ken doll down there, and that's what we want.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: Anyway, aliens.
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: Aliens.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: Too much? I mean, no. I think it's just right.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: Just enough.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: I'm open to aliens existing.
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: I believe these two Navy pilots who are at the
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: hearing said they keep seeing weird stuff that accelerate in
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: ways they can't explain.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: They have no reason to lie.
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: But this guy, he also said that the program is
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: above congressional oversight and paid for by misappropriation of funds. Again,
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: that would create some sort of paper trail that I
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: feel like someone could find He says he knows that
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: people have been harmed or injured by efforts to cover
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: up what happened, maybe even killed.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: Those people would have families. I think the government is
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: really bad at keeping secrets and.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: Holding together conspiracies.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: That's why they don't often happen. There's one guy who
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: was pretty high up in the government who is famously
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: bad at keeping secrets or handling classified information. And if
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: there was something out there, we would have heard it
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: from him. Barack Obama. It is Barack Obama. Or Donald
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Trump would have told someone else or he would have
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: leaked it somewhere. The other thing is this guy, this
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: guy basically admits he has no firsthand knowledge of these
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: purported programs. He hasn't seen any craft or he hasn't
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: seen any alien dead pilots. He said he's repeating what
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: other people have told him. So it's hearsay. And, you know,
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: he has approached along with others, the New York Times,
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: the Post, the Politico, were all offered the story. None
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: of them wanted to run it because they ran it
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: down and they didn't find it as credible enough to run. Yeah.
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: And there's been, I think, questions too in the years
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: since the Times ran that story about the provenance of
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: that Times story that was like the first big story.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: In the Times. I think they feel burned.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: I think Dean McKay was like, oh, cool.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: But, yeah, like I, I agree. Like, like, yes, there
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: have been kind of unexplainable videos that actual pilots and
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: actual members of the military have seen. They can't explain them.
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: the leap then to there's a government bunker with um
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: uh alien ships i also believe is plausible yeah he said.
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: We've likely been aware of non-human activity since the 1930s
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: so again it's just a very long time to keep
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: a secret through various administrations lots of people that would
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: have knowledge of this unless it was so secret that
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: whatever they were working on or studying was kept away
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: from all uh presidents and political hires or anybody that
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: would touch this stuff i just i find it A
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: little hard to believe.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: I'm just waiting for an RFK Jr. policy speech about this.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: He seems like he'd be right in on this.
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: That's a good call. RFK Jr.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: Elon Musk, I think the all-in guys. There's like a
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: nexus of people that I could totally see jumping on.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Hiding it with Bitcoin.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: There's also just such a human-centric view of all of this.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: There's such a like, what's the word?
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: Like chauvinism about being a person that like the assumption
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: is that like, oh, there must be a craft with
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: a pilot.
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: What?
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, because that's how we do it. You know, that's just, and,
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: and the fact that all of the, like, if you
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: look at the map of reports of, of UFOs, they're
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: very heavily concentrated in the English speaking world because thinking
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: that there are UFOs is a very big phenomenon in
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: English speaking countries.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: And we also recently learned that the Chinese have been
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: flying gigantic spy balloons over our country at 60,000 feet. Like,
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: there's lots of weird stuff going on up there. There's
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: lots of weather balloons. There's lots of unexplained phenomenon. There's
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: lots of weird new weather patterns.
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: Like, who knows?
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: So, Tommy, can you tell us?
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: I wish I did.
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: Your wife asks me every time she drinks. Is that
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: what she asks you?
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, and unfortunately, times when she
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: doesn't drink also.
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: I'm like, listen, I wish I knew about the moon landing,
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: but no one would have told me for obvious reasons.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: Anyway, no aliens. Well, hold on a second.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: It's a big universe out there.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: At least this hearing has not proved. This hearing did
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: not prove that there are any.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: It proves that this guy wants to make some cash money.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: And I support that because it's America and George Sanders
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: is in Congress and.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: You get yours. All right. Before we get to the interview,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: two quick housekeeping notes. On Tuesday, August 8th, abortion rights
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: are on the ballot in Ohio. There will be a
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: ballot measure in that state this November to pass a
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion access. But... Since the Republicans who
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: control the state legislature do not want that to happen,
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: they created another ballot measure for August 8th that would
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: raise the threshold for passing constitutional amendments from a simple
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: majority to 60%. So if you want to help stop
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: that measure from passing in a few weeks, we have
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: volunteer opportunities to help get out the vote all week.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: Head to votesaveamerica.com slash Ohio to learn more. Last but
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: not least, Lydia Kiesling's Mobility, the first novel from Crooked Reads,
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: is finally out. You can get your copy at cricket.com
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: slash mobility or wherever books are sold. Here's some advanced praise,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: a beautifully written and stunningly smart novel, a cautionary tale
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: for our times. Tommy, you had a great conversation with
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: Lydia at an event here in LA on Thursday that
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: we're about to hear a portion of. What should people
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: know about Lydia in this book?
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: First of all, I love Lydia.
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: We did this event last week, Dynasty Typewriter, the house
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: that John Lovett built.
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: It was in my time slot.
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: A bunch of folks came out. We talked about the book,
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: about writing in general. It's fiction.
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: It's a novel.
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: It's a really fun novel that follows the main character, Bunny,
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: from her time as a teenager as a foreign service
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: brat in Azerbaijan to her adulthood working in the energy industry. And,
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: you know, it's a human story, but it's also about
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: sort of the lies we tell ourselves when we know
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: we're not doing something that is right, the sprawling nature
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: of the energy business. And I don't know, it's just
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: really great. She's incredibly smart. And I think you'll all
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: love it.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: Where do they come down on windmills?
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: I think the pro windmills.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: Just want to make sure.
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: But I'll double check with Lydia.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: Anyway, you are all, after the break, about to hear
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: a portion of the conversation between Tommy and Lydia. Everyone
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: go buy Mobility. crooked.com slash mobility or wherever books are sold.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: Check it out now. When we come back, Lydia Kiesling.
• 55:23
  Speaker 9: Thank you so much, Tommy. And thank you to Zando
• 55:27
  Speaker 9: and Crooked Media who have worked so, so hard on this.
• 55:31
  Speaker 9: And yeah, I'm just so happy to be here. And
• 55:34
  Speaker 9: thanks to all of you for coming out and to
• 55:36
  Speaker 9: Dynasty Typewriter.
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: The book is deeply researched, Bunny's deeply researched at this point,
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: both the industry, but also.
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: The scenes feel so real.
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: And you were telling me that you did some pseudo
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: detective work to kind of make those scenes come to life.
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: Can you tell us a bit about that process? Yes.
• 55:55
  Speaker 9: So I, you know, a lot of the book was written,
• 55:57
  Speaker 9: I wrote part of the book before COVID started. And
• 56:02
  Speaker 9: then it kind of ground to a halt when the
• 56:05
  Speaker 9: pandemic began. And then I went back to it, but obviously,
• 56:07
  Speaker 9: you know, there was no like going anywhere during those
• 56:10
  Speaker 9: time periods for research. And also, you know, when you're
• 56:12
  Speaker 9: writing a novel, you have no idea whether anyone will
• 56:14
  Speaker 9: ever like pay you money for it usually. So I
• 56:17
  Speaker 9: couldn't really justify like an expenditure, you know, of going
• 56:21
  Speaker 9: to like travel. Um, so I sort of said I
• 56:23
  Speaker 9: had to try and sell it and then I would
• 56:26
  Speaker 9: go and kind of see some things in person. And
• 56:29
  Speaker 9: the timing worked such that right after I sold it, um,
• 56:34
  Speaker 9: I got, uh, I subscribed to like all these horrible
• 56:37
  Speaker 9: email lists from the oil and gas industry. And I
• 56:40
  Speaker 9: saw that there was going to be a luncheon to honor, um,
• 56:45
  Speaker 9: women in energy in Houston, you know.
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: The next month.
• 56:48
  Speaker 9: So, and you could buy a ticket as a member
• 56:50
  Speaker 9: of the press. So I went to that. Um, and
• 56:54
  Speaker 9: I feel, I feel kind of bad because I was
• 56:55
  Speaker 9: sitting at a table with like one of the honorees and,
• 56:58
  Speaker 9: and I was like, I was, they, they put the
• 57:01
  Speaker 9: honorees like at all the tables and I was the
• 57:03
  Speaker 9: press and they're like, so what, what do you write for?
• 57:05
  Speaker 9: And like, I've written for, you know, some big outlets.
• 57:08
  Speaker 9: So I was like, you know, the New York times,
• 57:11
  Speaker 9: I didn't misrepresent myself that I just didn't I didn't
• 57:14
  Speaker 9: say more. But, you know, so like some impressions may
• 57:18
  Speaker 9: have been left. And I and I just kind of listened.
• 57:23
  Speaker 9: And it was really fascinating because, first of all, like
• 57:26
  Speaker 9: apparently some like sexist thing had happened like the night
• 57:28
  Speaker 9: before with among like the organizers. And so like the
• 57:31
  Speaker 9: people at the table were talking about this. And I
• 57:33
  Speaker 9: was like, wow, even the fucking Women in Energy like
• 57:36
  Speaker 9: awards luncheon are still subjected to this. And yeah, there
• 57:40
  Speaker 9: was like a keynote by someone who had been in
• 57:43
  Speaker 9: the FBI. And there was just a lot like it
• 57:46
  Speaker 9: was and it was sponsored by like Deloitte and Schlumberger
• 57:49
  Speaker 9: and like all the big oil and gas companies. And yeah,
• 57:53
  Speaker 9: that was like my first subterfuge. Oh, I also told
• 57:55
  Speaker 9: the Petroleum Club of Houston that I was interested in
• 57:58
  Speaker 9: holding my wedding there.
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: How'd that go?
• 58:03
  Speaker 9: I was like, I'm only in town for this one
• 58:05
  Speaker 9: day to see my dream wedding venue. And I mean,
• 58:10
  Speaker 9: it was kind of like once I got up there,
• 58:12
  Speaker 9: I was like, I could have just asked to see
• 58:14
  Speaker 9: it just because I wanted to. But it was way
• 58:15
  Speaker 9: more fun to be like, my reception is going to
• 58:17
  Speaker 9: be amazing in the Aramco room with the view.
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: Of the city.
• 58:23
  Speaker 9: I mean, it is, you know, it's got amazing views. Um,
• 58:26
  Speaker 9: so yeah, there's a little, a little, a little subterfuge,
• 58:29
  Speaker 9: some light. And then I just drove through like a
• 58:31
  Speaker 9: lot of kind of refinery infrastructure. I like, I wasn't
• 58:34
  Speaker 9: going to really try and sneak into like the works, but, um,
• 58:38
  Speaker 9: but offshore rig. Yeah. I just like go out in
• 58:41
  Speaker 9: a canoe. Um, no, it didn't, it didn't extend that far.
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: That's so funny. You said it was your wedding. They like,
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: they're like having to do a cake tasting in the back.
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: They're like, I'm just going to take you guys down
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: for being honest. Um, the other parts of the book
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: that felt so real to me were, um, When Bunny's
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: in Baku, she's living at the embassy. You nailed the
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: like kind of shitty intergovernmental relationships between the State Department
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: people and the CIA staffers who all kind of don't
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: like each other but have to coexist. And then I
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: learned you grew up in a foreign service family. So
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: this is something you sort of witnessed yourself over the years.
• 59:16
  Speaker 9: Yeah, I did grow up in the foreign service. We
• 59:18
  Speaker 9: were not posted to Baku, but we had a number
• 59:22
  Speaker 9: of overseas postings and yeah, I had a, I mean,
• 59:25
  Speaker 9: I mean, a lot of writing this book, I think,
• 59:28
  Speaker 9: was the process of sort of like unlearning the attitudes.
• 59:32
  Speaker 9: I would call it sort of like American supremacy that
• 59:35
  Speaker 9: you just imbibe when that's how you grow up. I
• 59:41
  Speaker 9: think anyone who's sort of living overseas in some sort
• 59:43
  Speaker 9: of government capacity like that, whether it's military or foreign service,
• 59:47
  Speaker 9: that's sort of how you think of things. So I
• 59:52
  Speaker 9: was like, writing the book was like sort of a
• 59:55
  Speaker 9: nostalgia for that time, but also kind of like working
• 59:57
  Speaker 9: out of my system to be like, that's, I, you know, I,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 9: I no longer like feel that America is like a
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 9: beacon in the world as I, you know, might once.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: You're not projecting American power by virtue of your posting
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: in Greece or whatever.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I get that.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 4: So your father, you were telling me your father quit,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: resigned from the state department in protests in advance of
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: the Iraq war.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: Was that hard for you guys?
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 9: I mean, I was in college when it happened, so my,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 9: my life was hard for other reasons.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: Um, I was just, yeah.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 9: I mean, that was just a, a strange time, um, for,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 9: for everyone involved. I mean, I think, yeah, I mean,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 9: he's like, yeah, I think that's all I have to say.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: I mean, it, it, I remember, look, we were talking
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: about this backstage. I was 23 at the time.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: Um, The drumbeat for war in Washington where I was
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: living was so intense. People who objected were silenced so
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: quickly and so harshly. The gears of government were expected
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: to ramp up and all just be in support of
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: this thing. And to be one of those lonely voices
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: that stood up at the time when there was the
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: maximum pressure and be like, I'm not going to go
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: along with this. Incredibly brave. And I imagine quite difficult.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: But like, I don't know, people, the bummer about these
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: brave stands is I don't think that people get the
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: credit they deserve for in hindsight when they were right,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: like look at Sinead O'Connor. We're just now being like,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, she had a point about the Pope.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 9: I mean, I think there's a lot of people now
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 9: who are like, well, of course the Iraq war was
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 9: a disaster. And it's like the same people who were like,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 9: this seems like a great idea. I mean, there's been,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 9: I mean, for that whole era of, you know, American
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 9: politics and sort of media coverage, there's no accountability for, um,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 9: I mean, the war on terror is just, which is,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 9: you know, ongoing. There's not.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 9: I mean, we were talking about this, like I, that's
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 9: one of the sort of sub themes in the book.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 9: I read a lot about the war on terror years and,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 9: you know, not all of it made its way into
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 9: the book, but I was sort of thinking of it
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 9: similarly to working in oil and gas above a certain level.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 9: It's just, there's certain kind of like mistakes and like
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 9: crimes that are so big that they are, they're never
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 9: acknowledged because acknowledging them would mean like accountability. And that's, um,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 9: people are very eager to avoid that. Especially if you
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 9: look at oil and gas companies, they're all like, we're
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 9: now green tech companies.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: Um, nothing's wrong. We're fine.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 9: We're the energy transition.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: For beyond petroleum. Yes. And you hear it's literally the name.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: So did you go into the book intending to.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: Use fiction and novel and these characters in the story
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: as a vehicle to educate people about the energy industry?
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: Or did that just kind of.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 9: Happen along the That definitely happened on the way. I
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 9: was interested in writing about that kind of upbringing and
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 9: that sort of like, because I think I obviously can't
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 9: speak for like other people who have lived overseas or,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 9: you know, in kind of unfamiliar places when they're kids
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 9: and teenagers. But in my case, you know, there was
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 9: definitely you. you're, you're, you grow up being told like, Oh,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 9: this is such a, this is such an enriching experience
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 9: that you're having. And you, you know, you have so
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 9: much like insight now because of this experience, but then
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 9: you realize it's like, no, you're just being an American
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 9: in like another location. It doesn't, you know, there's still
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 9: like a huge amount of insularity to that experience. And
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 9: so I was wanted to kind of play with that
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 9: and think about it. Um, and also I'm just interested
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 9: in teenage girls and I wanted to talk about a
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 9: teenage girl who was familiar to me, but as I was,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 9: you know, for a while I, I, it's like, you know,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 9: Bunny was there, but I had no kind of justification
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 9: for her other than that I was just kind of
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 9: like clowning this teenage girl for no reason. And sort
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 9: of that kind of like foreign service, like embassy lifestyle.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 9: But then as I was reading, because my family had
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 9: been posted to Yerevan, Armenia in 1997. And so I was,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 9: you know, I didn't want to write necessarily like directly
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 9: about that, but I wanted to stay kind of in
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 9: the zone. And I was, I read a book, um,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 9: called the oil and the glory by the, um, former
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 9: wall street journal journalist, um, Steve Levine. And, uh, that was,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 9: it's an amazing book and it's about basically like the,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 9: the rush for Caspian oil reserves after the collapse of
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 9: the Soviet union and like specifically Chevron and BP kind
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 9: of like duking it out. Um, and so when I
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 9: read that, I was like, Oh my God, I want
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 9: to write about this. Um, and, and I went kind
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 9: of too far in that direction for a while um
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 9: just like writing all these like random weird oil men
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 9: and then i realized i needed to like take it
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 9: back to my teenage girl and figure out a way
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 9: to kind of weave it in and then it sort
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 9: of went from there then i suddenly had like a
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 9: justification for bunny as a as a um you know
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 9: main character of a.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: Story so you have this sort of spectrum of interesting
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 4: views of characters in the book like there's literal like
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: oil and gas executives and There's kind of like sort
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: of the parody of sort of the super liberal critique
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 4: of the industry. And there's Bunny, who's sort of this
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: naive person who brings us through all the years of
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: the story.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: Why did you decide to have her at the center
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: of everything?
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 9: So actually, when my first book came out in the
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 9: year or two after, I had a couple of occasions
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 9: when I was driving to L.A. for some sort of
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 9: book thing. and driving there and back from san francisco
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 9: when we lived there and i started listening to the
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 9: audio book of the novel oil um by upton sinclair
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 9: they later made that's what there will be blood is
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 9: based on although they have like almost nothing in common
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 9: um they it's like i think he used like the
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 9: first 30 pages and then just like threw away the
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 9: rest of.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: The book i option it that's kind of expensive.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 9: I mean you know i'm sure he had it they're
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 9: both you know to it was like a generative work
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 9: of art they created another work of art but they
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 9: have no bearing on each other um And, but so
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 9: the main character of Oil, the novel is named Bunny.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 9: He's a boy and he starts out as like a young,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 9: like a tween or a teenager. And he's like a
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 9: little oil scion and he follows his father around and
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 9: watches as he like buys up oil leases. And then
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 9: he meets like a noble socialist who kind of teaches
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 9: him about, you know, workers and the oil fields. And
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 9: it just sort of follows him for like hundreds of pages.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 9: And so then I realized like, he's kind of, I
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 9: think useful idiot actually has like a literal meaning that
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 9: I might not be like correctly using, but, but he's
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 9: kind of a blank slate. Like he just is our
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 9: guide through, cause Upton Sinclair had like big messages that
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 9: he was trying to get through and he really wanted
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 9: to educate the reader about all of these different systems.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 9: So I think that helped me a lot because I,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 9: I was like, well, what if funny, but a teenage
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 9: girl and, you know, in the kind of, in the
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 9: neoliberal era and you know, with a teenage girl's like
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 9: painful insecurity and powers of observation, which the bunny of
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 9: Sinclair's novel, like didn't have to quite the same extent.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 9: And so I had, it was a balancing act to
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 9: kind of keep her like in that state of naivete
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 9: so that we could learn with her and from her,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 9: which sometimes I think kind of strains credulity that she
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 9: could be so actually, no, it doesn't. Cause I meet
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 9: people all the time who are like exactly like her,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 9: but yeah, And myself have been like her. But yes,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 9: I needed her to be a vehicle in that way.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: She's very fun to follow.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 4: I mean, the challenge that we've had, like talking about
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: climate change, it can be really hard, right?
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: Because it's such a big problem. It's hard to feel
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: hopeful about it.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: It's hard to feel some sort of agency or help
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 4: people feel like they still have some agency when things
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 4: are getting kind of dire. how did you wrestle with
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: those challenges.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: In the book?
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: And the desire to educate people about this thing happening
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: around us that we still have some time to impact,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: but is not going great.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 9: Well, I think I, I really like gave up on the,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 9: I don't think fiction is like, I don't, although I
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 9: just said all that about Upton Sinclair, like educating people
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 9: through his novel, I don't ultimately think that I think
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 9: of fiction more as like a, as a documentation project
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 9: rather than necessarily like a didactic or like educational one.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 9: I mean, I think, you know, people talk a lot
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 9: about like fiction as a vehicle for empathy and like, yes,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 9: that in some cases like is true, but I don't
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 9: think that empathy necessarily like spurs action usually just more
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 9: as like cathartic. And so I wasn't really like, there
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 9: were some moments where I'm kind of like, people need
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 9: to know, you know, like that these oil companies are,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 9: they're all connected, man. But I, I really like pretty
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 9: early was like, this isn't going to be a novel
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 9: that's like, because I mean, it's functionally erasing the many
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 9: people who aren't like bunny. I mean, there are a
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 9: lot of people who, you know, gestures with some of
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 9: the characters who are thinking differently than bunny and actively
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 9: resisting the state of affairs. But but what I felt
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 9: like I could bring to the page was my knowledge
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 9: of like, you know, elite white spaces and sort of
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 9: white millennial woman head in the sand vibes. And, you know,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 9: it felt like that was possible. something that I could
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 9: like document, um, in a meaningful way. And that's not
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 9: necessarily like educational. Um, I mean, um, because I don't,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 9: you know, I struggled with like, uh, I don't want to,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 9: you know, write a novel that's like, it's, it's doomed,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 9: but you know, the way oil and gas companies are
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 9: behaving and the way we are allowing them to behave,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 9: like it is, I mean, for people who have already died,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 9: like that the future is like foreclosed upon them already,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 9: you know? So I think it's appropriate to be like,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 9: to acknowledge that and, and say, sometimes things like don't
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 9: have to be hopeful. I, my, the way I kind
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 9: of justified it to myself sometimes, because I was like, well, this,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 9: there's some like bleak, there's some really like sort of
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 9: bleak currents in the book is that, you know, you
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 9: can do like doom on the sheets of paper, but
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 9: like action in the streets, you know, it's, You can
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 9: put that on your tote bag.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: I love that. That should absolutely, we'll go to brunch
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: and talk about that. What are you reading? Anything you like?
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 9: So I just read a wonderful novel called Enter Ghost
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 9: by Isabella Hamad. And it's about doing a performance of
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 9: Hamlet in Palestine and in the West Bank. And it's
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 9: a beautiful novel. She also wrote a novel called The Parisian,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 9: which is a wonderful novel. I also want, I think
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 9: these people are in the audience, but my book comes
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 9: out on August 1st and so does Eden Lepucky. Her
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 9: novel is called Time's Mouth and it's amazing. And Carrie
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 9: Howley wrote a book who is a genius, wrote a
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 9: book called Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs about the
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 9: security state and reality winner that came out a few
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 9: months ago. And that is a um, really like haunting
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 9: work of narrative nonfiction. Um, and then about, you know,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 9: I did like, I read so many books for this
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 9: book and some books that really kind of made me
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 9: think a lot. And I, you know, I'm not like
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 9: many people have read them already, but, um, this changes everything, uh,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 9: by Naomi Klein is a, is a wonderful book. And
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 9: a book called Revolutionary Power by Shalonda Baker, who I
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 9: think now holds a position in the Department of Energy,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 9: was really like instructive for thinking about how the energy
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 9: transition might just end up like allowing the same people
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 9: to kind of profit if we don't fundamentally like change
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 9: and sort of dismantle the systems that we have. Those
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 9: were really useful books for me.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: Thank you all for coming out. Really appreciate it.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: Please buy a book, buy two, buy one for a friend.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: And thanks again.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: All right. Thanks, everyone. We will talk to you later
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: this week. Have a good one.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: Bye, Mobility. You'll love it.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez. Our producers are Andy Gardner Bernstein
• 1:12:16
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• 1:12:20
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• 1:12:23
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• 1:12:27
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