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Donald Trump, Empath in Chief · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 2: Music Music Music.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: Music Welcome to Pod Save America.
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: On today's show, we got another chapter of MAGA in
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: disarray as Candace Owens spreads some truly insane conspiracy theories
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: about Charlie Kirk's murder. And separately, the MAGA base is
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: getting more and more disappointed with Donald Trump. We'll also
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: indulge in some harmless 2028 speculation coming out of the
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: DNC winter meetings here in LA last week. And bad news,
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: if you were counting on the Washington Post's new AI-generated
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: podcast to stay informed... You may want to double-check the
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: quotes and facts you're hearing, if you can believe that. Then,
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: CNN's Jake Tapper talks to Tommy about the fate of
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: his network now that its parent company is for sale,
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: the decimation of the Pentagon Press Corps, and his new book,
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: Race Against Terror, Chasing an Al-Qaeda Killer in the Dawn
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: of the Forever War. But let's start with how our
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: government is responding to the onslaught of horrifying tragedies over
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: the weekend, both here and around the world. On Saturday,
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: we found out that three Americans, two Iowa National Guard
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed in Syria during
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: a counterterrorism mission against ISIS. Trump has promised retaliation. Hours later,
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  Speaker 3: there was a mass shooting in a Brown University econ
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: classroom that killed two students and injured nine. While paying
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: respects to the victims, Trump responded to the shooting by saying, quote,
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: things can happen. In fact, things like that happen so
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  Speaker 3: often that it became the 389th mass shooting in America
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  Speaker 3: this year. Meanwhile, FBI Director Kash Patel once again bragged
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: about detaining a suspect who turned out to be the
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: wrong person and has since been released. So as of
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: this recording, the shooter is still at large and hasn't
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: stopped Kash from tweeting. Now he's tweeting about the reward.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Nothing can stop him.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: Any thoughts on the Brown shooting and Kash Patel just,
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: this is like the third or fourth time now, the
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: second or third time he's done this?
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: The idea that we should have the FBI director kind
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  Speaker 2: of live tweeting through active investigations.
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: No need.
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  Speaker 2: No need whatsoever. It doesn't do anything to help the
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  Speaker 2: investigation clearly because you're putting it out there that they've
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: caught someone when they haven't caught the right person. And
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: then he looks like a fucking fool. Every few hours,
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: he has to kind of adjust whatever he's put out
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: into the world. It's just this intense need for social
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: validation online from the head of our most important national
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: law enforcement agency. And it's just a reminder that he's
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: an incompetent who doesn't belong in the job.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, he could so easily avoid these mistakes by just
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: following precedent and shutting up. I mean, I think the
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: first time he tweeted about when he tweeted about Charlie
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Clark's assassination, it was reportedly from a dinner table. At
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: an ultra exclusive restaurant in New York City called.
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: Rao's or Rao's.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Rao's.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Rao's.
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  Speaker 1: So just don't do that. It's very easy, Mr. Patel.
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  Speaker 3: Also, the person who was the suspect briefly, that person's
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: name was out there, all of their information. And as
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: one of the local authorities said, like hard to put
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: that toothpaste back in the tube.
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: After you do that.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I will say also just reading about the Brown University event,
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  Speaker 1: like it's horrifying for all of these kids, but also
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: you keep noticing in stories about mass shootings that there
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: are now students involved who are uh in previous mass
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: shootings who survived previous mass shooting and it's just like
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: we have failed these kids over and over and over
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: again it is fucking horrifying.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah uh trump was asked about patel and the in
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: the shooting and the investigation later when he was at
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  Speaker 3: the white house and he said it was a um
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: a school problem it's not a fbi problem it's a
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: school problem what yeah.
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  Speaker 1: The security guards are going to run this one down
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: and not the fbi.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: Even though The original suspect was a suspect because of
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: a tip that the FBI got. And of course, it's
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  Speaker 3: not the FBI's fault that they brought in someone who
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  Speaker 3: ended up being the wrong person. It is the fault
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  Speaker 3: of the FBI director for announcing that. People bring in people,
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: you know, the FBI brings in people of interest all
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: the time, and then they just let them go.
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: Like, that's not a.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: I was baffled by what he's saying there. Is that
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: just his way of subtly sort of indicting Brown for
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  Speaker 2: being a liberal institution?
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  Speaker 3: No, I think it's just deflecting blame from him and
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  Speaker 3: the FBI, from the FBI and him by extension of
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  Speaker 3: the FBI.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, Jesus. I mean, also just, it's a different issue,
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  Speaker 1: but I mean, this attack on these service members in
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  Speaker 1: Syria is awful and these people lost their lives. Um,
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  Speaker 1: I'm very nervous about what this like retaliation that Trump
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: keeps previewing will look like. But also I do hope
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: this starts a conversation of like, why do we have
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  Speaker 1: troops in Syria? What are they still doing here? Right.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Can we bring them home? Can we end this mission?
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  Speaker 1: Like what, why?
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  Speaker 3: He didn't really have a good answer for that when
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  Speaker 3: someone asked him in the Oval.
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  Speaker 1: That one stumped him.
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  Speaker 3: Uh, so then on Sunday we woke up to news
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: of an anti-Semitic massacre at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: They killed at least 15 people, including a rabbi and
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  Speaker 3: a Holocaust survivor. The shooters were a father and son.
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  Speaker 3: The son was known to authorities as at least tangentially
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  Speaker 3: related to some kind of local ISIS cell. And one
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  Speaker 3: of the shooters was tackled and disarmed thanks to the
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: heroics of a fruit shop owner named Ahmed Al-Akhmed, a
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  Speaker 3: Muslim Syrian immigrant who's in critical but stable condition after
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: sustaining a gunshot wound himself.
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  Speaker 4: Just fucking awful.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, news reports say the victims included a
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  Speaker 1: 10-year-old girl and a Holocaust survivor. So the victims were
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: from 10 to 87, I think. It's just like an
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  Speaker 1: unimaginable evil. And so it was at Bondi Beach was
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  Speaker 1: the site of this Hanukkah celebration. And it's also, I think,
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  Speaker 1: like maybe the most popular tourist destination of all of
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  Speaker 1: Australia and filled with just families playing outside. And so, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: these guys are murderers. They're evil. I was reading another
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  Speaker 1: article about this couple who got separated from their three-year-old
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  Speaker 1: as the shooting started and they couldn't find their three-year-old kid.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: And then they found their little girl, underneath a stranger
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: who had shielded her with her own body and took
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: a bullet in the process. So just like amidst the
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: stories of these two evil monsters, there's just unbelievable heroism.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: The Holocaust survivor that died is an 87-year-old guy who
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: shielded his wife with his body. I mean, it's just.
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: Who was also a Holocaust survivor.
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  Speaker 1: Just a hero. But, you know, this is... For the
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  Speaker 1: people of Australia, they have not had to deal with
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  Speaker 1: a mass shooting like this since 1996 because the last
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: one that happened, there's a massacre that killed 35 people
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: and they passed really strict gun control laws and it
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: has been far less of an issue. So it's horrifying
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  Speaker 1: for them. It's also in particular awful for Australia's Jewish
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: community because they have been crying out for help because
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: of this growing number of anti-Semitic threats and incidents, including
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: like attacks on synagogues, arson attempts and things. And they
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: just feel like they were ignored. And for Jews around
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  Speaker 1: the world, I mean, it's just like another You're trying
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  Speaker 1: to celebrate Hanukkah with your family, and it's another reminder
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  Speaker 1: that there's people who want to kill you for your religion.
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  Speaker 3: The Executive Council of Australian Jewry had a statistic that 37,000
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: anti-Semitic incidents in Australia have occurred since October 7th. That
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  Speaker 3: is five times the number in the decade than were
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: in the decade before.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was on the first night of Hanukkah, so
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  Speaker 2: it is a night where a lot of Jewish people
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  Speaker 2: go and have, you know, they have latkes with their
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: family and with their friends, and you're celebrating, and everybody
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  Speaker 2: was talking about it as just a reminder that it
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: continues to be dangerous to be Jewish, that there is
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: a feeling that anti-Semitism is rising here in the US.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: We see these surveys that show anti-Semitism and conspiratorial thinking
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  Speaker 2: and anti-social thinking is rising among the young. It's true,
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  Speaker 2: by the way, of young Republicans. It's true of young Democrats.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: There was one Manhattan Institute survey that found that actually
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  Speaker 2: it is more common amongst college-educated young people, which tells
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  Speaker 2: you something about the ways in which this really is
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: not that this is a, some kind of a kind
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: of ideological radicalization that's happening online. That's something very sinister
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: is happening when people are exposed to these kinds of ideas.
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  Speaker 2: And this was just a reminder that, that it is
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: a scary time for a lot of Jews who are
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: worried about this every day.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: Your Rosenberg and the Atlantic wrote a piece about this,
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: how it's generational more than it is partisan. And, um,
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: Alec McGillis and other journalists posted some of the portions
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: of the piece, and J.D. Vance jumped in to basically say, J.D.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: Vance's argument, for which he offered zero evidence or data whatsoever,
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: was that actually you should have looked at the demographics
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: of the younger people because the reason that anti-Semitism is
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: growing here is only because of immigration and the failure
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: of immigrants to assimilate. I assume he means Muslim immigrants, again,
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: with no data whatsoever that the Manhattan Institute poll that
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: you just talked about, Levitt, was cited in the piece.
• 10:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: So I don't know if all those college educated young
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: Republicans just happened to be Muslim immigrants that came over
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: here and joined the Young Republican Club.
• 10:11
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: Well, I saw that too. And it's sort of, obviously
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: he doesn't say it, but he means, I guess he
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: means some combination of Arabs or Muslims. Maybe he means
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: a few other specific countries, but certainly he can't possibly
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: mean the actual shift in demographics we've had in this country,
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: which is rising Hispanic immigrants, rising Asian immigrants. Like the
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: numbers are such a big change.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: It's so stark, right?
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Like you can't account for it with just a increase
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  Speaker 2: in antisemitism among a small part of the immigrant population.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: So he can't really defend it. There's no facts that
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: would defend it. And also, by the way, I just
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: want to say, it would be a surprise, I think,
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: to American Jews to discover that antisemitism in America is
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: a recent fucking import.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 10:48
  Speaker 5: Yes.
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  Speaker 1: It's a centuries-old problem. And also, J.D. Vance has still
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: not said a word about Nick Fuentes, a vile antisemite
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: of growing stature on the far right who was platformed
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: by his friend Tucker Carlson, who attacked J.D. Vance, attacks
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: him all the time by name, calls his wife and
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: kids a racial slur to do with Indian people, And J.D.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Vance is silent.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: And the piece in The Atlantic doesn't say that it
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: is just a problem on the right, either, among young people.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: It acknowledges that it's a problem on the left as well. But, like,
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: that's not enough for J.D. Vance, who just, like, goes
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: on and loves to shitpost. He just has to jump
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: right to, no, no, no, the problem is purely immigration,
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: like every other problem.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Well, and it's like, it's just a, it's the same
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: kind of response to any event to try to make
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: a comport with your priors, right? And It's another example
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: of someone looking at the complicated world that we live
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: in and deciding that the answers are simple and it's
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: what I already believe. Because if it is just a
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: foreign import of ethnic grievances, I suppose we don't have
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: to deal with the fact that people are being radicalized online.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: We don't have to deal with the fact that getting
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: your information algorithmically is leading people down all kinds of
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: rabbit holes, that there isn't a problem among young people that,
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: by the way, isn't partisan, right? That does affect young
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: people that are on the left, that are on the right.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: You don't have to worry about that because once we
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: cut off the immigrants, then all of our problems will
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: go away. We're back to being the kind of pure
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: American culture in which anti-Semitism wasn't a problem.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: I have bottomless contempt for politicians who take a crisis
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: or an evil event like this and say, actually, the
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: solution is my personal political project or hobby horse.
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: J.D.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Vance just did it right here with immigration. Bibi Netanyahu
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: did it and said, actually, the real problem is Australia
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: is recognized a Palestinian state. Like, I'm sorry, I do
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: not believe for a second that that is connected to
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: these individuals, one of whom was linked to ISIS in 2019. Yeah.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: What we know is that anti-Semitism is related to the
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: attack and we can all talk about that, right? Like
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: that is the fact that we know so far. Beyond that,
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: it's all just speculation and garbage.
• 12:58
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• 14:15
  Speaker 3: As if all this wasn't enough, the weekend ended with
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: the tragic news that the beloved director and political activist
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle had been found stabbed
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: to death in their home by their own son.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Just awful.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: After condolences poured in from political leaders like Barack Obama,
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: Gavin Newsom, figures from across the political spectrum, the current
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: president weighed in with a statement Monday morning that reads
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: as follows, quote, A very sad thing happened last night
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: in Hollywood.
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: Rob Reiner.
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: a tortured and struggling but once very talented movie director
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife Michelle,
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding,
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: and incurable affliction with a mind-crippling disease known as Trump
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: Derangement Syndrome, sometimes referred to as TDS. May Rob and
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: Michelle rest in peace. A sick, deranged, sociopathic response that...
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: Official White House accounts also reposted. But maybe the one
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: real surprise has been the number of Republicans in Congress
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: who've criticized Trump for it. People like Marjorie Taylor Greene,
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: Mike Lawler, Don Bacon, and Thomas Massey, who even issued
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: a direct challenge to J.D. Vance and White House staff
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: to denounce it. Spoiler, they have not taken him up
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: on that challenge. In fact, J.D. has been tweeting all
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: day about all kinds of other stuff, but not about this.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: Trump's original post on Truth Social said, has also been
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: flooded with responses from MAGA fans saying they don't agree
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: with what Trump said and that he should take the
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: post down.
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: He has not.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: Not only has he not, he was asked about it
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: in the Oval Office on Monday. And here is what
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: he said.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: A number of Republicans have denounced your statement on True
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Social after the murder of Rob Reiner. Do you stand
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: by that post?
• 16:00
  Speaker 5: Well, I wasn't a fan of his at all. He
• 16:02
  Speaker 5: was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned.
• 16:05
  Speaker 5: Trump derangement syndrome. So I was not a fan of
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: Rob Reiner at all in any way, shape or form.
• 16:11
  Speaker 5: I thought he was very bad for our country.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: That's the thing that's worse. I thought he was bad
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: for our country. So does that mean you support killing him?
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Because it sure sounds like it.
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: I just like.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: It was one of those statements, too, where when he
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: first posted it, there were so many people on Twitter, journalists,
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: everyone else being like, is this real? Are you sure
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: this is a real post?
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was gobsmacking. You know, like, hey, do you
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: feel sympathy when terrible things happen to people that are
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: not on your team is like the marshmallow test for empathy?
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: It's like the most basic thing. And I actually think
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: most people pass it.
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: Most people pass it.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: And then the loudest people online often struggle with it.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: That's what we see.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: And that's what we've seen with Charlie Kirk's murder. It's
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: what we saw with the UnitedHealthcare murder. It's what you
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: see in this case. And then you see a bunch
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: of people try to defend Trump. Well, actually, Rob Reiner
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: would have said something horrible if something happened to Trump.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: But actually, Rob Reiner deplored political violence, talked openly about it,
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: deplored the murder of Charlie Kirk. the impulse to defend
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: this or to not obviously just say clearly, you don't
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: need to say murder is bad, but you just don't
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: have to. And the fact that there's a whole clique
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: of people online, which includes the president, they can't seem
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: to stop themselves from doing it.
• 17:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: That was, it was, it was barely a, but there was,
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: there was a murder is bad, but it wasn't even,
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: it was just like, it was a joke. Well, yeah, he,
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: he basically blamed him. He died because other people were mad.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: First of all, it's like, it's, it's, It's deranged in
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: its inaccuracy, right? Like, it's just an insane thing to say.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: It's disgusting, but it's also like, what are you fucking
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: talking about?
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: And are you suggesting someone on your own side?
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: Crazy fucking old man.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Like, did somebody on your own side do it? Are
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: you saying he was killed for, like, are you saying
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: killed by someone on your team? Like, what are you
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: talking about?
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: It's like the umpteenth example of his narcissism to suggest
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: that two people who were murdered randomly did it. because
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: of you somehow? Like, I can't even wrap my head
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: around it. But yeah, I mean, it comes after all
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: this outrage from Trump and JD Vance and the White
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: House and the mega media world about genuinely like offensive,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: insensitive comments made by usually some rando person on TikTok
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: whose comments got surfaced. This is the president of the
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: United States. And like, of course. None of these people
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: have a goddamn word to say about what Trump says.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: We had Fox News on all day. Did you guys
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: see any segments?
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: That's why we wanted to keep it on.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I didn't see a single one.
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: Not a single one.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: And remember, this administration was getting people suspended from their jobs,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: fired from the military, like Reuters had a big report about.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: They found that 600 people were fired, suspended, or otherwise
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: disciplined by their employers for the comments about Charlie Kirk.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: And then Donald Trump says this. It is.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: I was like somewhat... I don't know if I would
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: say like pleasantly surprised, but the number of Republicans in
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: Congress who just didn't do the usual.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: I didn't see it. Yeah.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: Now, the two most important ones or the two the
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: two leaders in Congress basically did that. Mike Johnson ran away,
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: said something like he felt bad. And then Foon said, well,
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: I I have nothing more to say about Trump, but
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: I think it's awful and blah, blah, blah. So the
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: the two the two leaders of the party in Congress
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: took a pass. Certainly the vice president, who's the putative
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: frontrunner in 2028, he took a pass. The Secretary of
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: State took a pass so far. So we'll see.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: I think it also, by the way, does matter, too,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: that there are the Thomas Massys willing to just say
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: the obvious truths about it, that Marjorie Taylor Greene had
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: the right sentiment about it. Even Nancy Mace had the
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: right sentiment about it. And the way Marjorie Taylor Greene
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: described it, I thought it was well said. And Thomas Massy.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: I think it was a week ago, two weeks ago,
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: that Trump posted that horrible thing about Thomas Massie getting remarried.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: And I do think- Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah,
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: that matters, I do think it really does. It matters
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: that these are people that are just like, no, because
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: these are right-wing people. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a right-wing person.
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: And this is gross.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: It's fucking gross.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: There's like cracks in the mega base. And then every
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: time it kind of rains and it fills up, it
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: like erodes a little bit more. Like you can feel
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: it happening. There's less fear of him. Courage begets courage.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: And people are just like, no, that's disgusting, man.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: This is also something that could break through beyond sort
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: of just the politics stuff.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: Because, like, Rob Reiner, nothing, except for the fact that
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: Rob Reiner was a very committed activist, not just a donor, but, like,
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: ran ballot initiatives and did, like, a lot of good work.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: Aside from that, it was nothing about the killing or
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: anything else had to do with politics. And, you know,
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: young people might not know who Rob Reiner was, but
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: most people do. One of the more famous directors... So
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: there's going to be a lot.
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: Of news on this.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: And then you hear the president of the United States
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: was like, oh, good. He hated me. Like, most Americans
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: are going to hear that and be like, what the fuck?
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: And by the way, like, people are going to be
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: reminded of how much they love When Harry Met Sally,
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: the American president. This is Spinal Tap.
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: Misery.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: Like, he's part, like, he's from the era of the monoculture.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: He made things that everybody loved, you know, the non-political era,
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: non-partisan era. And then to have him be, like, vilified
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: by the president and turned into a political cultural.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: It's just disgusting.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: The Washington Post and Politico both had big stories over
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: the weekend about the growing disappointment with Trump among elements
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: of the MAGA base over a host of issues, including,
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: according to the Post, quote, focusing too much on foreign affairs,
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: failing to address the cost of living issues he pledged
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: to fix, aligning himself too closely with billionaires and tech moguls,
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: and resisting the release of the Epstein files. Trump himself,
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Friday,
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: said that he wouldn't have done anything differently over the
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: last year and admitted he's not sure if his party
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: will win the midterms. What do you guys think of
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: those pieces? And how real and consequential do you think
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: the MAGA disappointment with Trump is?
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's real. I think it's consequential.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, I divide it into a couple of parts.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, the first is the economic piece of this.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: And it's very funny that they say he's too focused
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: on foreign affairs and they did a big event on
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: like the border and the military and it got a
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: bunch of foreign affairs questions today. But I mean, that
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: AP poll last week was brutal for Trump, 36% approval,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: 31% approval on the economy. And his response is to
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: blame Biden or to call it a hoax. But odds
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: are things are going to get worse, not better with
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: the economy this coming year because of inflation, because tariffs
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: really start to bite. And I think Trump just sits
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: around in Mar-a-Lago or sits in the White House and
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: he talks to people worth seven, eight, nine figures. And
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: then he picks out furniture for his new $ 300 million ballroom.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: And he's divorced from the reality on the ground in
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: the world. And it shows. And then the elected officials
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: hear him talk and they're like, well, 2025 was a disaster.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: 2026 is looking worse. Now it's time to get some
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: space from this guy. And then we'll get into the
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: MAGA media class in a minute. But they're just chasing clicks.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: They go where the clicks take them Please subscribe to
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America on YouTube also. But like they're positioning
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: themselves to be the leader to like to be the
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: leaders of the MAGA movement in the wake of Charlie
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Kirk's death and the kind of void that will be
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: created by Trump being a fully lame duck. They're all
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: kind of eyeing Nick Fuentes in his rise and seeing
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Fuentes say MAGA is dead. Trump is over. And so
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: like this feels like it's it's moving one direction.
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: What?
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: What really made the Washington Post piece was the participation
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: of Rasmussen pollster Mark Mitchell in the piece. So it's
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: a really great story here.
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: J.D.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: Vance follows him on Twitter and reached out to him,
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: to Mark Mitchell, and said, hey, like you're an outside pollster.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: It's not like you work with the White House. Could
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: you maybe come in and talk to us and to
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: Trump about what you're seeing in the numbers? And so
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: Mark Mitchell then talks to the post about his whole
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: conversation with Trump.
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: And he told the president, In Butler, you said, fight, fight, fight.
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: And right now, you're fight, fight, fighting Marjorie Taylor Greene
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: and not actually fight, fight, fighting for Americans. And then
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: he said, he's talking to the reporters, he said, you know,
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: to the extent to which we were talking about the
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: economic populism message, he wasn't as interested as I.
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: Would have hoped.
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: And then he said that eventually Trump pivoted the conversation
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: to golf and talked about how much money he raised
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: for Lindsey Graham during a recent golf outing that doubled
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: as a fundraiser for Lindsey Graham.
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: Just perfect.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just Mad King wandering around in the road. But yeah,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: the Marjorie Taylor Greene piece of it, I do think,
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: is really important because I think she is speak like
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: she is as good a validator as you could hope
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: for if she's on his side and as bad of
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: one when she's not. Because what she's describing, I think,
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: is just accurate about what he's been doing. And I
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: do think that like part of this is like democratic
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: legitimacy is hard to measure, but it is real. And
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: so he had like I think there's that you can
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: blur your eyes and say there was a mandate to
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: go after the border. There was there was even an
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: anti-woke mandate. He talked about that a lot on the
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: campaign trail. There wasn't one to, like, fuck up the
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: national parks and get rid of a bunch of, like,
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: you know, land management jobs and a bunch of other
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: stuff that is.
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: Tear gas one-year-olds.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: Not something that was a mandate.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: Or to, like, put on tariffs that are going to
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: raise goods prices for goods and hurt businesses that do
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: a lot of exporting or any business that relies on
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: any kind of goods that are coming in from abroad.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: And because he doesn't have a mandate to do those
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: things— A, like you're seeing this in all the polling,
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: but B, it also leads to a bunch of other weather, right?
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Like he's more, there's more likely to be leaks from
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: inside of these agencies. There's more likely to be judges
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: willing to stand in his way. Like there's just a
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: bunch of, more likely you have members of Congress speak
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: out against it. There's just like the fact that he
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: is more and more unpopular and what he is trying
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: to do is so unpopular is grinding the gears down.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: So even on the places where he's trying to do
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: things that Like he might have had some kind of
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: claim to a mandate for like his everything is getting
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: harder because he has pursued this agenda that nobody really wanted,
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: even in his own base.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Did you guys see the story over the weekend about
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Trump's new passion project?
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: What's this one?
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal reported that they're trying to figure
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: out what to do with all the dirt from the
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: East Wing renovation. Someone suggested they make a big mound
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: on the Ellipse to better see the UFC fight that's
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: coming up there.
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: Oh, I didn't see that part.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: But then Doug Burgum said, no, sir. What if we
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: bring it over to this golf course over some nearby
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: and we can refurbish the golf course? So Trump's new
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: passion is redeveloping D.C. golf courses. Yeah.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: You mentioned the AP poll. There's also like an NBC
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: News poll over the weekend. Overall approval, 42-58. The two
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: groups that show the largest drop in strong support for
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: the president since April- those who identify as Republicans, and
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: in particular, those who identify as MAGA Republicans. Still highest
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: with those voters, but he was 78% approval with those
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: voters in April, and now he's at 70%. That's an
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: eight-point drop. It's the biggest drop of any group. They
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: also ask people in all these polls, do you identify
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: yourself as a MAGA Republican or a regular Republican? And
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: it used to be MAGA Republican by 10, 20, 30 points,
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: and now it's 50-50. among Republicans, mega Republican versus regular Republican.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say my, I saw that and I thought, well,
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: is that an actual difference or is that just a
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: brand distinction, right? Because there's Trump's, there's MAGA, MAGA leaves
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: its residue on the Republican party. Because that's also what's
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: happening is you see like the Vances and the gnomes,
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: all of them are also jockeying for what a post-Trump
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: world will look like. And for some of them, it
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: is not moving anywhere towards some kind of old school republicanism.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: It's like it's gnome going out there and being like,
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: I told the president we're gonna get every darn immigrant
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: out of this country. So they're all kind of jockeying
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: for what the future will be. But right now it
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: looks a lot like MAGA just without Trump.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: MTG says, I'm not MAGA, I'm America first. And that's
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: an interesting.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: And I do think that's going to be the split
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: because MAGA is so identified with Trump and America first.
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: It has overlap, but not the same. There's also plenty
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: of MAGA infighting these days that doesn't involve Trump. Most recently,
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: the feud that Candace Owens started by spreading some truly
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: batshit conspiracies about Charlie Kirk's assassination. Owens has implied that
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: Israel was involved in the murder, that French assassins hired
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: by the Macrons were involved and are also now trying
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: to kill her.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: That is what happened.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: And that Kirk was even, quote, betrayed by the leadership
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: of Turning Point USA, going so far as to criticize
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: Erica Kirk, his widow, for not responding to Candace's crazy
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: conspiracy theories. So right-wing influencers from Ben Shapiro to Nick
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: Fuentes have gone hard at Candace over this. Erica Kirk
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: herself has publicly and quite pointedly asked Candace Owens to stop.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: And on Sunday night, she announced that she would be
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: meeting privately with Candace on Monday and that, quote, public discussions,
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: live streams, and tweets are on hold until after this meeting.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Boo.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: Tommy, thoughts on how much this insanity matters? I think
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: MKUltra made an appearance, too.
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: Really?
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Actually, a few times, if we're being honest. I actually
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: think this does matter. I think it gets at a
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: couple things. First, it's like how... how viable and effective
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: is Turning Point USA going to be going forward? Because
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: this is an organization that Charlie Kirk, whether you like
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: him or you hate him, he built this thing based
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: on his vision. He had a ton of big donors,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: but like he created an organization that was very impactful
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: and his death created a vacuum. And it's not clear
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: yet whether Erica Kirk can carry the mantle and keep
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: it as politically powerful in part because of these attacks.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: Then there's also just like I think this infighting is
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: just consuming the MAGA media world. And they're not talking
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: about whatever Trump wants to talk about, like how bad
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Democrats are, you know, the things he's doing. And the
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: majority of it is Candace Owens. And for those who
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: don't know, she was at TPUSA, then went to PragerU
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: for a while, then was at the Daily Wire where
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: they fired her for being anti-Semitic. And now she's on
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: her own. And she does huge numbers. Like I looked
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: at some of her recent live streams. They were getting
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: like 1.5 million, 2 million people on YouTube. Yeah, she's
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: regularly like a top 10 podcast. So like a ton
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: of people watch the stuff and they believe it. And
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: you're right. Like she was focused on Brigitte Macron being
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: a man. Then she went to Charlie Kirk assassination world.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Those two conspiracies converged at one point and the French
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: were behind both of them, but there was always an
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Israeli in there. Cause you know, you got to work
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: in some Jewish people somehow. But I do think like
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: this has become like this all-consuming thing and it's spiraling
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: out of control. Like now there's like Tucker versus Nick
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Fuentes and Heritage versus Tucker and Tim Pool's mad and
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: his beanie's all askew because he's mad at Candace.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: Do you guys know why the French and Israelis are
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: supposedly– or supposedly were part of killing– were in on
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: killing Charlie Kirk and might now want to kill.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: I think the French were trying to kill Candace to
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: silence her about her conspiracy theory. And I think they
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: took out Charlie to get to her was the suggestion.
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: And I also, but they're in cahoots with the people
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: that work at a turning point in USA. I would
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: just say, you know, whatever the kind of cathedral of
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: logic Candace is building, I'm not super interested in entering,
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: but strong foundation, but I will say it like it just, it's,
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: You know, J.D. Vance is going on and on about,
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: you know, how it's actually immigrants that are causing anti-Semitism
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: in this country. And then you see somebody like Candace
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: Owens getting like kind of a million people watching it.
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: Calls coming from deep inside the house.
• 30:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: And just like this is like the most extreme voices.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: Like there's the most extreme voices gain a bigger audience,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: but also being extreme either by self-selection or by algorithm
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: that exposes you to more extreme things. And all of
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: that pulls you further and further online and more and
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: more outside of the real world, whether you're a content
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: producer like Candace Owens or the president of the United
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: States or a content receiver. And the end result, it's
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: a bunch of people that are just sort of completely
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: divorced from everyday life. And that may get a lot
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: of interesting eyeballs and get a lot of people that
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: also maybe feel alienated, but also for everybody else, you
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: see a Candace Owens, who the fuck would believe that?
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Or you see JD Vance blame it all on sort
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: of like an ethnic import like well that doesn't comport
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: with with reality or trump says this crazy thing about
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: about about uh rob reiner it's like god what kind
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: of a fucking maniac would say something like that well
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: it's people whose brains are broken by in one way
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: or another the internet and.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: And candace isn't just like for political obsessives you know
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: it's not just like a show about politics like she
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: was really into the um justin baldoni blake lively world
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: so like People who come for that stuff are then
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: getting like the crazy French conspiracy theories, the TPUSA stuff,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: the right wing politics. So that's why she's got this
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: really big reach and impact.
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: Cultural entertainment on ramp to politics for Candace Owens.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: And what's funny too, like they're all like this, there's
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: one path that leads you to Candace Owens, but there
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: is this sort of natural cycle with a bunch of
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: different Like if you start watching videos about the pyramids,
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: the pyramids, you will eventually, it won't take too long,
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: get to videos about how the pyramids were built by
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: aliens and actually it's tied to Atlantis. Like there is
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: a kind of natural honing that happens and it leads
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: you down these paths to eventually you get to some
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: kind of.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: The Jews. Usually them. Usually us. Where it ends up.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: So interested to see how that meeting goes with Erica
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: Kirk and Candace Owens. I'm sure we'll get a full
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: readout and... that the readout will be uncontested by both sides.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine how weird and uncomfortable this is? Like,
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: Erica Kirk has been through hell. Her husband was assassinated
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: on live TV. Now she has to go have a
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: meeting with this person who is not subtly suggesting that
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: she might have been behind it. Candace, by the way,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: is not the only one who's just really attacking Erica
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Kirk in some pretty gross ways, too. So this has
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: got to be, I don't know, just awful.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: It also speaks to just, like, like this is a
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: person that has gained a lot of influence in part
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: because until they had the wrong enemies, they were embraced
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: by a lot of figures on the right. Not a
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: lot of people calling for big tete-a-tetes when they were
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: going after the Macrons.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 33:32
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• 35:01
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• 35:06
  Speaker 4: So you may have missed it. We sure did.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: But the Democratic National Committee's annual winter meetings were held
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: in L.A.
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: On Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I guess our invite got
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: lost in the mail.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: Party leaders were here. JB Pritzker stopped by.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we saw him on his way. He made a
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: drop by.
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: Anyway, the party leaders were here and as Politico reported, quote,
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: for the first time in a long time, the mood
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: was warm. Optimism coursed through the hotel ballrooms.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: Is that what that was?
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: Taking a hit of optimism.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: We've got good weather out here.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: What actual business is transacted at these meetings? I've never
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: been clear to me.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: I think it's just go. You go. You mingle.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: You talk. Rules and bylaw votes.
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: A couple of non-acknowledgements.
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Everybody gets it.
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: I was thinking about this.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever been to a DNC meeting.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that's a me problem. Maybe my
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: job didn't overlap.
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: I went once with Obama in like 07.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: I might have gone to DC.
• 35:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: I feel like we both.
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: Some random hotel. I'm sure. When he was first thinking
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: about running. I don't know what else is going on.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: When he was first thinking about breaking his promise.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: Anyway, the whole thing led to a predictable series of
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: speculative stories. One was an Axios piece about how Kamala Harris,
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: who spoke on Friday night, is, quote, working to keep
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: another White House campaign viable based on the fact that
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: she's trying out some new applause lines and extended her
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: book tour. Another, also from Axios, featured anonymous advisors to
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: potential 2028 contenders acknowledging that Gavin Newsom is the current
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: frontrunner and discussing their plans to highlight his past scandals
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: and paint him as too liberal. Well, it really feels
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: like 2028 is kicking into high gear. What do you
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: guys make of the Kamala story?
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: I would say it was pretty thin. The evidence that she's...
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: The headline said gearing up for a run, but the
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: actual article said gearing up for keeping her options open
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: to run. And then you got to think that if
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: your goal was running for president, you would stop the
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: book tour, not extend it based on, I think, the
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: reaction to the book tour so far, which I don't
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: think has been very good for her.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the evidence, in quotes, was she added stops to
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: her book tour. She went to a DNC meeting... down
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: the street from her house. Ken Martin made a quip
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: that Doug could be the first gentleman someday, not just
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: the second gentleman, and that there are some new lines
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: in her stump speech. And so that's pretty thin. I'm
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: imagining the narrative if Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic Party nominee,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: refused to go to a DNC meeting in her hometown.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: That probably wouldn't be pretty bad for her. Now, I'm
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: not trying to hate on Alex Thompson here, because I
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: do think there is a world where this kind of
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: story gets written because a bunch of advisors are off
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: the record. She's keeping her options open here, and he
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: strings together a story kind of based on available evidence.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: That's politically kind of a smart thing to do, right?
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: If people think you're running for president, you get invited
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: to speak, people write down what you say in the newspaper,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: they talk about you on the Sunday shows. Now, if
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: I were an advisor to Kamala Harris, I would be like,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: ignore that crap, but let's figure out, like, let's lay
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: the foundation for what you want to run on and
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: do as president, because I still think that is lacking. Like,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: she was obviously put in a bad position by Joe Biden, both,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: you know, with their record, but also with 107 days
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: to run a campaign. But I think if you were
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: to ask most voters, what would Kamala do? What's her
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: big thing? Most of them would not know. And just
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: to use an imperfect example, I worked for John Edwards
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: in 2004, and then we ran against him in a way.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: We know a lot about his big thing.
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: We know what his big thing was.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: He decided to make 2008 about ending poverty, universal health care,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: attacking corporate power, and attacking shitty trade deals. He was
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: a populist before Bernie made it cool, and he was anti-Washington.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: I think she needs to fix this problem pretty quickly
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: and So that people know like, oh, this is her identity.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: This is her lane if she runs.
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the new rhetoric that she trotted out that they
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: were treating as like kind of a big deal. It
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: was the quotes they used were like, both parties have
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: failed to hold the public's trust, Harris said. People are
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: done with the status quo and they're ready to break
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: things to force change. We cannot afford to be nostalgic
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: for a flawed system that failed so many. And that
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: she added arguing that President Trump is a, quote, symptom
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: of a bigger problem.
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: Imagine if you read a speech from October 2024.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: What, are you supposed to not add new lines?
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: Well, those are just like, but this is the, this
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: is why what you just said was really important, Tommy,
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: is that like the Edwards stuff was like very specific,
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: like poverty issue. You know, saying that both parties have
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: failed to hold the public's trust is like a, all
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: you need to do to say that is just reflect
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: the current polling and punditry that's out there. It's like
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: the next question. is, okay, then what are the Democrats
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: done to not hold the public's trust? Like specifically, you know?
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: Right, right.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: That's the question. So like in that story, one of
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: the proof points that she might run for president, she's
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: going on Jimmy Kimmel this week. And if Jimmy Kimmel
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: were to say, where's the Democratic Party gone wrong? Like
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: maybe she has a good answer, but to be honest,
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: what I expect right now is just a word's out.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: That's what I would expect because I just have, Not
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: seeing her lay out any kind of a specific point
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: of view.
• 39:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: I was hoping for a little more. I haven't listened
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: to too many of her book events, but I listened
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: to the one with Tim in Nashville. And it was just,
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: you know, she's funny, got some good applause, but it
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: was just like, you just want, like, okay, what's your,
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: how do you see the country? Where do you see
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: the country going? What do you care about right now?
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: I do think, back to the piece, like one piece
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: of evidence in the piece that I do think is
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: legitimate is expanding the book tour to go to South
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: Carolina and to, and she's been doing a lot of
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: Southern states.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: And she, she talked about this on some other podcasts too,
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: that she, um, they were going to go to like
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: the regular cities that you go to on a bookstore,
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: but she really wanted to go, uh, to a whole
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: bunch of different places in the South. And I do
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: think that is that, that is her and her campaign
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: being like, okay, she wants to be strong with the
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: black vote. She's going to South Carolina thinking that it's
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: still going to be in the early state lineup. Um, so,
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: you know, I guess that, That warrants the piece, to me,
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: the South Carolina thing. But not as much the rhetoric.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: That's smart.
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: Or the meeting that's in her backyard.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: When she shows up at a party dinner in New Hampshire,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: that's when I'll be like, okay.
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a big one.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: You guys think Newsom's earned the frontrunner spot in the
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: ire of the contenders who think they're going to take
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: him down with his liberal record?
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: I'm on frontrunner. I would say he's done the most
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: to make himself the anti-Trump figure in the Democratic Party.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: I don't think anybody's done as much as him to
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: kind of take that spot. And he's tried things that
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: I think have not made him necessarily the person everybody
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: thinks should be the candidate, but he's definitely assuaged a
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: lot of, I think he's.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of people that were,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: that are or were.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: Skeptical of Gavin Newsom that are less skeptical today than
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: they were a year ago.
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: I think he's done more to improve his image with
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: the base of the Democratic Party than anyone else by
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: a landslide. And some of it is like the tone
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: and the tweets and kind of the silly stuff that
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: people see on the internet, but mostly it's, his willingness
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: to use the power he currently has as governor of
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: California to advance the Democratic Party's interests and fight Trump.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: The biggest piece of that is Prop 50 and redistricting.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: We would be fucked right now if not for getting
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: those five seats. But also, he was the highest ranking
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: American official to go to the UN COP meeting in
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: Brazil a couple of weeks back to talk about climate change.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: I think that was a very savvy move. It was
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: one that was planned about a year ago, I think,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: but it was great timing. Now, the It hasn't all
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: been smooth sailing, like the early days of the podcast
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: rollout with Charlie Kirk, with Steve Bannon, like that didn't
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: go over well, but he's course corrected and adjusted.
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: They listed in the piece, the different areas that, that
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: opponents are thinking about in terms of how to like
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: make the case against him. And, you know, they have
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: like old scandals, they have French laundry and that kind
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: of stuff. I'm like, you know, I don't expect that
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: to be as effective for someone like him who has,
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: first of all, the way the media information environment is now,
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: but like everyone knows about those scandals. He owns them.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: He talks about them. I think him doing the podcast
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: and him just being out there so much, much like
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: it did with Trump and many politicians since Trump, actually
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: helps him get through that kind of stuff. I think
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: the biggest weakness for me, at least, is sort of
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: the he's a liberal from California. And I don't think
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: this is necessarily specific to just Gavin Newsom himself. I
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: think any governor of California for the last eight years
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: is going to have to answer for a lot of
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: very very liberal legislation even if it's not their responsibility
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: as governor but it's just been through the legislature and
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: it's been passed and there's this city ordinance and that
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: and he's gonna have to own the housing stuff and
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: affordability and all that kind of stuff and he's been
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: good on a lot of it but like your record
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: is still your record and you know hearing him defend
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: it on ezra's pod he just sat down with with
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: ezra klein last week you he has a he has
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: answers for everything but it you know over the course
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: of a campaign i think that's gonna be the test
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: for him whether he can.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you look at the contrast between, like, so Newsom,
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: you have Pritzker, you have Josh Shapiro, right? These are
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: all sitting governors, potential presidential candidates, and they have just
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: very different profiles. Josh Shapiro has just a much smaller
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: one right now. And that's perhaps maybe that's a political strategy.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's a consequence of governing a purple state in
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: which you are working with a legislature that's much more divided.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: You have, I think, Pritzker, who comes from a liberal state,
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: but has kind of defined a smaller set of issues
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: with which he's kind of picked some big fights with Trump.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: But I agree. I think it's funny because there's the
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: attacks from the left that, oh, he's been bad on
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: homeless people or that he's thrown trans people under the bus.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: And I do think he'll have an easier time talking
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: about that than he will be, say, like healthcare for undocumented.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: I can't tell yet if it's going to be like
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: you're voting with your heart or your head election. 2008
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: was like people were fired up after 06. We felt good.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: We thought we could win. They voted with their hearts
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: for Barack Obama, even with considerable kind of concerns about electability.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: 2020 was a vote with your head like Joe Biden
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: is the most electable. Let's get this guy in there.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: We got to beat Trump. I don't know where the
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: headspace we're all going to be in in 2027 and 8.
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a great question.
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, I guess you could argue that Obama won
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: Part of the reason he won the primaries, he successfully
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: prosecuted the electability argument against Hillary.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: By winning Iowa.
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: And Iowa.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: So like maybe it's maybe it's both.
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: But yeah, it's a good question. How was how was J.B. Pritzker?
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: I'm 10 minutes into that one. I haven't listened to
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: the whole thing.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: It was really interesting talking to Pritzker because I do
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: just he has a like a and I said this
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: to his face. Like if you would have told me
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: that this was like one of the richest human beings
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: in America and the richest person in public office, like
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: that would be surprising because it's not how he carries himself.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: He has a much more, I don't know, like just
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: not what comes to mind. And it was an interesting
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: conversation about how he does come from all this privilege,
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: but that he was shaped by a lot of loss
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: when he was a kid and the tension there. But
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: he has something that I think a lot of Democrats
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: don't have, which is similar to Obama, which is a
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: feeling like they could just walk away.
• 45:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: Right like he doesn't have that like i don't know
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: i've been planning this since i was seven years old
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: kind of a thing.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: Uh like if he loses he'll just go to vegas.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: And yeah just push it all forward yeah yeah yeah
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: i i popped.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: In the the conference room when he was waiting there
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: just shot the shit for a minute about like the
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: bears and chicago weather and he just he seems like
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: a completely normal guy he also looks like to your
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: point about um being a very very rich guy but
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: not reading that way like Even his suits look like
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: a guy who has lost 20 pounds and not gone
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: to a tailor, right? Which is not a very rich
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: guy move.
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: Like normally you just get that stuff brought in, trim
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: it up a bit.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it was a good conversation. I think people
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: should check it out. I mean, one thing he said
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: that I thought was interesting just about the future of
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: the Democratic Party was because we didn't have a primary
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: in 2024, we really didn't get the like vision shaping
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: that would have happened if we were switching between candidates
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: and a midterm election usually just isn't that, right? Like
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: you might have a set of proposals you're all rallying behind,
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: but for the most part, it's a anti-incumbent message. And
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: so all of this sort of like, what do we
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: stand for? We don't know what we stand for. Like
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: that is a real feeling people have. But in part,
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: it's just because we never had that big debate in
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: which one person's vision becomes the thing we coalesce around.
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. All right, last thing before we get
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: to Tommy's conversation with Jake Tapper. We all know the
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: media business is in rough shape right now, especially the
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: news business. Well, Jeff Bezos' Washington Post has decided to
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: make a big bet on AI-generated podcasts, uh-oh, which the
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: Post has dubbed, quote, your personal podcast, in which users
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: of the paper's mobile app can, quote, shape their own briefing,
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: select their topics, set their lengths, pick their hosts, and
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: soon even ask questions using our Ask the Post AI technology,
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: end quote. The rollout's been a bit shaky, to put
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: it mildly, with Semaphore's Max Tanney reporting that the Papers
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: journalists are frustrated with the feature's error-riddled episodes and fictional quotes,
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: and that the post went live with it even after
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: internal tests revealed that the AI-generated scripts failed to pass
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: editorial standards two-thirds of the time. Got to work out
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: those kinks, huh?
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot of errors.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this to me is a good example of a
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: lot of times what we describe as the threat of
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: AI is actually the threat of the people in charge
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: of the AI. Because if you had a journalist whose
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: hit rate was 30%, you would say, oh, you got
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: to go do some more practice. You got to get
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: some more reps, but we're going to put this on
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: the website. But for whatever reason, because AI is this
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: sort of magical future box, somehow you're allowed to just
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: sort of roll it out and hope for the best
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: and put the word beta over the top and treat
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: people to something that has like the incredible inaccuracy rate.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: And like AI can be a great tool. It can
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: be a harmful tool. It can be a parasite. But
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: this is people choosing. to put AI out there into
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: the world before it is ready, before it makes sense,
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: before it is worthy of the institution.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: OpenAI says, join the club. Yeah, I don't like what
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: this idea means for me personally or for us at
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: this table or Crooked Media. I love the idea behind
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: the product. If I could be a subscriber to the
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: New York Times or the Washington Post, tell it what
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: I like, and then every morning have a bespoke, I guess,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: AI-generated podcast that kind of summarizes for me All the
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: stories I would be most interested in. That is a
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: really cool idea.
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: Is that a podcast? I don't know.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: It's more like an AI-generated voice reading me an article,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: which I think the New Yorker is doing. And that
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: shit works.
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: And I love that, by the way. That's actually a
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: useful additional feature, right? Because it's not something you would do, right?
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: They don't have somebody read.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: But like, well, that's such lower lift tech from a
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: technological standpoint, right? Because you can't fuck that up. Cause
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: it's just a voice reading the text.
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: It's a, it's a fuzzy line. Now, some of the
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: errors they referenced were like mispronunciations, which boy, if that's
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: a problem, don't listen to my shows. But, um, you know,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: it's a fuzzy line between like, what's a podcast, what
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: is AI and, what is going to kind of eat
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: into all of our brain share, right? I mean, we
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: were talking about this with the Warner Brothers Discovery, like
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: the way that, you know, some of these companies now,
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: like if you're Netflix, you view TikTok as your primary
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: competitor because it's just about aggregate, you know, leisure time
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: people have. And I worry about this for other podcast creators,
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: but not right now.
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: But see, I have a, like, I agree with you actually, right?
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: Like if you said that to me, like, oh, you know,
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: I would love like for my 20 minute drive in
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: the morning, oh, there's like a 20 minute product. It
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: walks me through the biggest stories of the day. it
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: helps me prep based on real journalism from real people
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: that are being paid, that are working on the paper.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: That all makes sense to me. And then I think, well,
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: if The Daily didn't exist, if The Daily didn't exist
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: and The New York Times made this, we think, oh, wow,
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: that's a great product. But human beings using the capacity
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: for imagination, creativity, make a product that takes The Daily's,
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: the newspaper's work and make something interesting and new and special.
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: And I do worry about the shortcut of AI to
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: synthesize and aggregate when often what is most needed is
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: something you couldn't describe because someone creative had to invent it.
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think about it as I would tell myself
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: that this would be great and I'd want to listen
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: to my 20 minutes of vegetables, which is like going
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: to get the news of the day and just the news.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: But in practice, when I got in the car, I'd
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: still want to hear people joking around about the news
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: and just talking like humans about it and having a conversation.
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: than just hear the reading of the news.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, fingers crossed, boys.
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: I was just thinking about it because I'm like- We
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: have value, right? Like the random AI voice that's just
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: spreading out knowing it's AI versus like Jane doing what today,
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: you know, on my commute.
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: It's like, that's not a competition.
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: And it's all, but like also too, like all of
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: these AI, this kind of an AI product is predicated
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: on a world in which most things are made by people.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: And this is a synthesis of that human.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Work, right?
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: You still need the journalist at some point.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: Well, that's what I mean.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Which is good news, right?
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: For now.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: But that's why it's about what the people are making
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: and not what the computer is doing. It's the tool user,
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: not the tool a lot of the time.
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: Get back to work, Jeff Bezos.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a tool.
• 51:47
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: When we come back, Tommy's conversation with Jake Tapper.
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  Speaker 1: com slash crooked. Free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: slash crooked. Joining me today is CNN's lead DC anchor
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: and chief Washington correspondent and the author of the new book,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: which I'm holding up right here for our YouTube viewers,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: Race Against Terror, Chasing an Al-Qaeda Killer at the Dawn
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: of the Forever War. Jake Tapper, welcome back to the pod, buddy.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: Good to see you.
• 53:43
  Speaker 6: It's great to be here. Great to see you again.
• 53:45
  Speaker 6: Please send my regards to all the others, Favs and
• 53:49
  Speaker 6: Love It or Leave It, Fife and.
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: All the others. I'll tell everybody hello.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: And congrats on the book, by the way. I was
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: texting you yesterday. that it's fascinating, it's an amazing story,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: and it deeply triggered me because it brought me back
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: to all these incredibly important and contentious counterterrorism debates from
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: the early Obama days that I want to get into
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: in just a minute. But first, I have to ask
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: you about the corporate media elephant in the room. Paramount
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: and Netflix are waging a battle to buy Warner Brothers Discovery.
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: CNN's fate will be determined by that process in some
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: form or fashion. President Trump weighed in on all of
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: this the other day. Here's a clip.
• 54:25
  Speaker 5: I just think that the people that have run CNN
• 54:28
  Speaker 5: into the ground, by the way, nobody watches, very few
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: people watch. I don't think they should be entrusted with
• 54:33
  Speaker 5: running CNN any longer.
• 54:35
  Speaker 7: So I think any deal should it should be guaranteed
• 54:40
  Speaker 7: and certain that CNN is part of it or sold separately.
• 54:44
  Speaker 7: But I don't think the people that are running that
• 54:46
  Speaker 7: company right now and running CNN, which is A very
• 54:50
  Speaker 7: dishonest group of people. I don't think that should be
• 54:54
  Speaker 7: allowed to continue. I think CNN should be sold along
• 54:57
  Speaker 7: with everything else.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: Typically kind and generous media criticism from our president. So, Jake,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: I know you can't comment on merger talks, but I'm
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: just curious what it's like for you and your team
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: and everybody in the newsroom who are used to covering
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: the story to now be a part of the story. Well,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: let me just bring it back to a moment that
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you remember. in October 2009, when the Obama
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: White House was declaring Fox News not a legitimate news organization.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: And I, in a gaggle, asked White House communications director,
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: or was he press secretary? Press secretary, Robert Gibbs, why
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: is it appropriate for any White House to say any
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: credentialed media organization is not legitimate? And I got, and
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: still get to this day, a lot of crap from
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: the left about that, as if I'm defending.
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: Fox, which I'm.
• 55:48
  Speaker 6: Not, I'm defending the principle of should a White House
• 55:53
  Speaker 6: be not criticizing a story or criticizing a particular anchor
• 55:58
  Speaker 6: or whatever, but just labeling an entire media organization not legitimate.
• 56:02
  Speaker 6: And what that was, and I think it was just
• 56:07
  Speaker 6: Anita Dunn and Robert Gibbs, I think Anita was the
• 56:09
  Speaker 6: communications director at the time, is so small compared to
• 56:13
  Speaker 6: what President Trump is currently doing in terms of not
• 56:16
  Speaker 6: only labeling one channel fake news or illegitimate or whatever,
• 56:23
  Speaker 6: but like everyone, except for the most flattering, obsequious channels
• 56:31
  Speaker 6: and coverage, and now weighing in on a potential merger
• 56:39
  Speaker 6: that his Justice Department and the FCC and others have
• 56:46
  Speaker 6: are supposed to objectively assess. I don't think the FCC
• 56:52
  Speaker 6: has a role if it's what Netflix wants to do,
• 56:55
  Speaker 6: because the FCC doesn't cover Netflix, and Netflix is buying
• 56:58
  Speaker 6: studios and a streamer, not any TV. But be that
• 57:01
  Speaker 6: as it may, it's just all unprecedented. And as with
• 57:05
  Speaker 6: everything in this era where President Trump says and does
• 57:09
  Speaker 6: things that would cause huge damage outcry from Republicans and
• 57:15
  Speaker 6: conservative media, if it were done by Obama or Biden
• 57:18
  Speaker 6: or whatever, president, whoever, Newsom, AOC, whatever, these precedents are
• 57:24
  Speaker 6: being set. And it's like, as they say at weddings,
• 57:28
  Speaker 6: speak now or forever hold your peace. This is the
• 57:31
  Speaker 6: time for conservatives to say, that's not appropriate. It's not
• 57:35
  Speaker 6: appropriate for a president to put his thumb on the scale.
• 57:37
  Speaker 6: And just in terms of our coverage, What is dishonest?
• 57:41
  Speaker 6: What specifically is dishonest?
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: That Daniel Dale guy.
• 57:45
  Speaker 6: Like, honestly, as we know, President Trump thinks that coverage
• 57:50
  Speaker 6: that isn't flattering is fake.
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: He has said.
• 57:54
  Speaker 6: Before in the past that polls that show him trailing
• 57:59
  Speaker 6: are fake. So, you know, it's never fun to be
• 58:03
  Speaker 6: the story. That's not what we like to do. We
• 58:06
  Speaker 6: like to cover stories, not be part of the story.
• 58:10
  Speaker 6: One other thing I'll just say, Tommy, is that the
• 58:15
  Speaker 6: Paramount deal, for people who don't understand, Netflix is just
• 58:18
  Speaker 6: trying to buy the studios and the streamer. They're not
• 58:22
  Speaker 6: trying to buy the cable news channels. We would be
• 58:24
  Speaker 6: spun off into our own thing called Discovery Global. But
• 58:29
  Speaker 6: Paramount wants to buy everything. That's why President Trump wants that,
• 58:32
  Speaker 6: because he wants new management at CNN. Paramount that is
• 58:39
  Speaker 6: doing the deal that President Trump presumably is in favor of,
• 58:43
  Speaker 6: their money is not just their money. It is also
• 58:46
  Speaker 6: coming from the president's son-in-law.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: Jared Kushner.
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: Jared Kushner.
• 58:51
  Speaker 6: And perhaps most alarmingly, the Saudis public investment fund.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: And the Emiratis and the Qataris.
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: Yep. Yeah.
• 59:01
  Speaker 6: And I, you know, you could talk about foreign ownership
• 59:03
  Speaker 6: and that's one subject, but beyond that, I mean, it
• 59:06
  Speaker 6: is interesting because conservatives have for years been decrying Al
• 59:11
  Speaker 6: Jazeera as like terrorist news because they're out of Qatar
• 59:16
  Speaker 6: and et cetera, et cetera, Qatari money to buy CNN.
• 59:19
  Speaker 6: Nobody has a word of objection on the right, but
• 59:22
  Speaker 6: beyond that, We know what MBS, Mohammed bin Salman, the
• 59:26
  Speaker 6: crown prince of Saudi Arabia, thinks about independent journalism or
• 59:29
  Speaker 6: critical journalism because he has had a journalist killed, according
• 59:33
  Speaker 6: to the CIA.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: Not a big fan.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: Killed. Yeah.
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: Jamal Khashoggi.
• 59:37
  Speaker 6: So all of this is a longer answer than you wanted.
• 59:41
  Speaker 6: All of this is part of this situation. And again,
• 59:46
  Speaker 6: to my friends on the right, speak now or forever
• 59:48
  Speaker 6: hold your peace because everything I've ever seen covering politics is,
• 59:54
  Speaker 6: A president gets a new toy of an expanded presidential power,
• 59:58
  Speaker 6: and the next president takes it and goes wild. Bush
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 6: did drones. Obama went crazy with drones. Now Trump is
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 6: using the same justification to go after drug traffickers. It's
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 6: all just, it keeps going and going and going and
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 6: going and going. So, I mean, I don't want to
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 6: get into the, you know, the drones, obviously.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: We'll get there. We'll get there in a minute. I
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: want to ask you about drones. Look, I agree with you.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: And by the way, Jared Kushner, I think he's got
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: like $ 5 billion under management at his firm, Affinity Partners.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: I think 99% of it is from foreign entities, all
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: the same ones you just mentioned. So he's just a
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: pass-through for them. He gets to invest their money in
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: an investment these sovereign wealth funds would already be in
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: and then takes a fee. So why is he there? Clearly,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: just someone thinks he's one way to grease this deal
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: and get the political support they need from the administration
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: to make it happen.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 6: And I should note Paramount says that they would be
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 6: non-governing partners. That presumes that the Saudis and the Emiratis
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 6: and the Qataris are giving $ 24 billion out of the
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 6: goodness of their hearts. They don't want to impact whether
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 6: or not I can say in a broadcast that is
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 6: seen internationally that MBS.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: Ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, according to the CIA.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 6: They have no opinion on that. They want to give
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 6: $ 24 billion and they don't want to prevent me from
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 6: saying that, which is true. According to the CIA, MBS
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 6: had Jamal Khashoggi, an American resident, killed and butchered.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: Like, okay, you can believe that.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: If you want, you know. I find it very unlikely
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: that any sovereign wealth fund is going to spend $ 24
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: billion without, or sorry, $ 12 million, whatever it is, without
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: some sort of string attached. But you're right. Look, it's
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: unprecedented times with this merger, unprecedented times even before this
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: for the media generally. I want to ask you about
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: some of that. I mean, back in October- the Pentagon
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: press corps essentially just staged a walkout of the building, um,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: because Pete Hegseth and his team, the secretary of defense
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: demanded that they sign some document outlining this whole series
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: of new rules, including one that basically prohibited the act
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: of reporting. Could you just help listeners understand the impact
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: of a policy like that on the journalists like yourself, um,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: kind of day to day.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 6: So I did a vertical video that lays out in detail, um,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 6: what exactly this list was, this list of demands.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: But basically, it was.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 6: Opening the door to the Pentagon being able to label
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 6: a journalist who reports anything they don't like a security risk.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 6: And it would criminalize not just the handing over by
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 6: anybody in the Pentagon of classified information, but basically anything,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 6: any information not approved, not previously approved by the Pentagon.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 6: And I mean, one of the things that's, there are
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 6: two things that are very interesting about this. One, they
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 6: have replaced all those actual journalists with a bunch of
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 6: sycophantic partisans who are just there to make Pete Hegseth
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 6: and Donald Trump look good, which is not what journalism is.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 6: And second of all, This move, like if you listen
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 6: to what Hegseth says and his spokesperson, Sean Parnell, they're saying, oh,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 6: we need to do this to prevent classified information from
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 6: being reported, which makes us weaker, et cetera, et cetera.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 6: Pete Hegseth, the inspector general of the Pentagon, said that
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 6: his disclosure of pending attack information. literally put pilots at risk.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 6: That's what the inspector general report that he said, you know,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 6: completely exonerated him, which it did not.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: That's what it did.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 6: So like, if he can point to something that we
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 6: in the media irresponsibly shared that put pilots at risk,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 6: I'd love to see it. But I can point to
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 6: something that he did that put pilots at risk. So
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 6: it's all just, again, I hope that the people on
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 6: the right who are accepting this are excited for the
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 6: next Democratic press secretary of the Pentagon to do the
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 6: same thing and only allow in the most sycophantic coverage.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 6: And yes, of course, that means that whatever Mike Lindell media,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 6: MyPillow media leaves and we get in some left-wing version
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 6: of the same thing.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: Sign me up, baby. I'll be there. I'm just kidding.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: Are they even good pillows?
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know if they're good pillows. No, but what
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: is kind of, I find funny about this in the
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: near term, Jake, is that all these, this like sycophantic
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: group of influencers went to the Pentagon. They all took
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: photos from the same cubicle and said it was like
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: some Washington, Dan Lamont at the Washington Post cubicle. But
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: they were doing this, they were doing this like preening
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: right at the moment when the actual Pentagon press corps
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: was breaking blockbuster stories about these boat strikes off the
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: coast of Venezuela. So these, These guys look like complete
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: fucking idiots. Now, in the long term, we don't really
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: know exactly how bad these restrictions will be for Pentagon reporters.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: Does it mean they won't be allowed in the building?
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: Will they not be allowed to travel with the Secretary
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: of Defense? Will they not be allowed in military installations
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: around the world? Will they not be allowed to cover
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: international conferences, you know, the Munich Security Forum or like whatever?
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: So I think over time, it really will sort of
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: erode and chip away at their ability to do the job.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: I think it's a big deal.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 6: So I will just say, just to toot my own
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 6: horn and CNN's own horn last week, a reporter named
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 6: Zach Cohen and I, CNN reporter Zach Cohen and I,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 6: we broke the story of what was in the inspector
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 6: general report about Hegseth a day before it was released.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: Over Signalgate.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah. For Signalgate.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 6: And, you know, and that was just a clean kill.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: We just, you know, whatever.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 6: And there's not one of those people in the Pentagon
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 6: press corps or whatever they are, the Pentagon.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: Fluffers.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 6: There's not one of them even came close to, you know,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 6: and that, Whether you like Hegseth or not, that is news.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 4: Let's say you love.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 6: Pete Hegseth, you know, and you wanted to put the
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 6: nicest spin on it.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 4: You could, you know, like Hegseth did.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 6: But the point is they didn't even do that because
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 6: they can't even do that because they're not breaking any stories.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: They're not journalists. I mean, there also have been some
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: kind of less draconian but impactful changes to media access
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: at the White House. The short version is, you know,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: the media, the White House changed the process for deciding
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: who attends these smaller events are called pooled press events. Now,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: more often than not, you have like events at the
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: Oval Office includes a bunch of more sycophantic kind of
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: overly partisan questioners, dudes like Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend. What
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: do you think the impact of those changes has been
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: over the last several months?
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 6: I have less of an issue of expanding the press
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 6: pool to include new media, quote unquote. I mean, you know,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 6: people want to ask. This doesn't outrage me. Um, you know, I, for,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 6: you know, I have seen good journalism in unlikely places. Uh,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 6: I have seen good journalism in partisan places. I mean,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 6: the free bacon and the daily caller. And I mean,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 6: there are a bunch of right-wing sites that I've read
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 6: actual breaking news stories in. Um, so it, that doesn't
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 6: concern me. I know a lot of them were already
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 6: part of the press pool and had been added. During
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 6: the Obama years. But beyond that, like, that just, that doesn't,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 6: it's the exclusion of people that bothers me more than
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 6: the inclusion.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like stripping out the wires, preventing the AP from
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: entering the Oval Office for months and months, stuff like that.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 6: Look, Caroline Leavitt, whatever people think about her, she does.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 6: And President Trump, whatever people think about him, they take
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 6: questions from the legacy media.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: They do.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 6: And so if they want to expand the circle, that
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 6: doesn't really bother me. It's the exclusion that bothers me. Look,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 6: when you see Secretary Hegseth or Attorney General Bondi, they
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 6: only do interviews, generally speaking. There are a couple exceptions
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 6: here and there. But let's just stick with Hegseth. Secretary Hegseth,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 6: I've only seen him taking questions from Fox, period. He
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 6: doesn't do press conferences, generally speaking. And when he does
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 6: an interview, it's only with Fox.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 4: To me.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 6: That doesn't demonstrate strength. To me, that doesn't demonstrate confidence.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 6: If I only agreed to do interviews with pro-Jake people
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 6: on a book tour, then that would, I think, be
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 6: indicative of me being scared.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it's literally his former employer, too. It
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: looks ridiculous. All right, Jake. So the book is called,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: I got it right here, Race Against Terror. you trace
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: the story of the prosecution of this one Al Qaeda
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: terrorist and what it tells us about the broader war
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: on terror. I want to dig into this, but can
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: you just start, like, how'd you find this story? Why
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: did you, how'd you get onto this beat?
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 6: So um, I hadn't written a nonfiction book in a while.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 6: I wrote the outpost about Afghanistan came out in 2012.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: I'm sure you remember.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 6: Um, I, I keep alluding to this, but I was
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 6: the white house correspondent for ABC news in Obama's first term.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 6: And Tommy was the national security council spokesman. So like I,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 6: just for people who don't know, uh, so like I
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 6: would deal with Tommy and, uh, fabs.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: And everybody else.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 6: And so I wrote The Outpost in 2012, as you remember.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 6: And I hadn't written it. And that book was so
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 6: meaningful to me. And it was such a powerful experience.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 6: There was just nothing that interested me as much. And
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 6: that book, I was inspired by the fact that my son, Jack,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 6: who's now 16, he'd been born October 2nd, 2009. And
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 6: The Outpost that I wrote about had the deadly attack
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 6: with 400 insurgents attacking 50 American soldiers the next day,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 6: October 3rd, 2009. And there was something Profound in the
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 6: moment of holding my son and watching TV and hearing
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 6: about eight American sons taken from this earth that set
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 6: me on this path to try to find out what happened.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 6: Fast forward to Jack's 13th birthday in 2022. We're out
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 6: doing paintball.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: Nice. Do you smoke a teenager?
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 4: No.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 6: I had in previous years participated, but then one time
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 6: I shot one of his kids, one of his friends.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: And the kid got really upset.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: Like a mom yelling at you.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 4: I stopped participating.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: That's good advice for me.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 6: So, yeah, just don't– let your little boy just play.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 4: Do not get involved.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 6: Because, yeah, that was very controversial. So, the kid's fine.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 6: Just so anybody out there worried about him.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: It just stings.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: It was paintball.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: It was not actual shooting.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 5: Fine.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 6: But he did, you know, he did one of this–
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 6: he thought I was too close.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: Anyway.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: Got it. Got it.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 6: So I'm having this paintball party. It's October, 2022. And
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 6: because it's so far away, I had like refreshments and
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 6: pizza for the grownups as well as the kids. So
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 6: the grownups could just come drop their kid off, hang
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 6: out for a couple hours, then leave instead of having
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 6: to drive all the way back and forth, back and forth.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 6: And one of the dads comes up to me and
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 6: he starts talking to me and he says, Hey, I
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 6: know so-and-so from the outpost.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 4: And I said, Oh, great.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 6: And I said, like, you know, that, but that book
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 6: was really tough to write because the Pentagon keeps such
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 6: shitty records and they're so reluctant to share anything. And
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 6: he said, tell me about it. And then he starts
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 6: telling me this incredible story. He's an assistant U.S. attorney
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 6: in Brooklyn. He gets a phone call.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 4: It's 2011. It's during the Arab Spring.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 6: And on one of these refugee boats full of Tunisians
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 6: and Libyans is this guy who walks up to an
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 6: Italian who is in charge of the boat and asks
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 6: for water. The guy notices he has a bullet scar
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 6: and says, how'd you get that? He said, I got
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 6: it fighting Americans in Afghanistan. I'm with Al Qaeda. And
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 6: they detain him. And then they call the Americans and say,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 6: have you ever heard of this guy? He claims he's
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 6: killed Americans in Afghanistan. And they call the FBI. And
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 6: the FBI calls this dad that I'm talking to at
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 6: this party, Dave Bittkower. And Dave Bittkower tells me this
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 6: incredible story about they fly there. They hear his confession
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 6: in Italy. And then because it's the Obama era. And
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 6: Gitmo is not taking in any new people. And the
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 6: Italians wouldn't have turned him over anyway. At that point,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 6: Europe was just so fed up with how the Americans
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 6: were doing the war on terror. They wouldn't turn over
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 6: anybody if they were going to Gitmo or going to
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 6: be subject to a military tribunal.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: So the only option was take him and prosecute him
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 4: in the U.S.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 6: In a criminal court, which is what Obama wanted to do.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 6: He wanted to try terrorists in criminal courts. And this
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 6: was a big sticking point. And anyway, they had to
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 6: prove this case. That's the thing. And so the story
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 6: that Bittkower told me was all about the sleuthing, all
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 6: about like, how do we prove this? How do we
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 6: prove that this guy who claims he killed Americans in
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 6: Afghanistan in like the early days of the war on terror, 2002, 2003,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 6: how do we prove that.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 4: He did this?
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 6: And he just told me this unbelievable story about the clues.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 4: And the evidence. And then that's how this book came about.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 6: I just thought it was just, fascinating story and ended
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 6: up also being about the war on terror from Bush
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 6: to Obama to Trump. And what are the best tools?
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 6: Is it good to, is it, you know, criminal courts
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 6: the best place or whatever? And also allowed me to
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 6: revisit this era of, you know, that I had covered.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 6: But when you're in the middle of it, you don't
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 6: see it as clearly as, you know, 10 years later,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 6: which is why you got so mad when you were
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 6: reading the book about like the response from the public,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 6: not just Republicans, the public to, you want to bring
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 6: terrorists to the country to prosecute them? The response was
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 6: as if they were like superhuman and were going to
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 6: bust out of prison and kill everybody with lasers coming
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 6: out of their fingers. And I had completely forgotten all that.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: We've lost our fucking minds. This is such an important topic,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: I think. First of all, let's talk about this question
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: of whether the courts, the Article III courts, the US
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: judicial system can be used as a tool to prosecute
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: terrorists because for a long time it was. And then
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: Republicans just demagogue the shit out of it. And now
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: it's kind of like off the table because just again,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: just to wind back the tape, you kind of alluded
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: to this. Initially, Obama comes in and makes this big
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9-11
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: hijackers in a court in New York. And there's a
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: huge political blowback. There's the kind of, there's legitimate security risks.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: There's legitimate fear, but there's a lot of just like
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: kind of insanity. Like you were saying that Jake, like
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: these guys are like, You're literally going to bust out
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: of a prison and kill people in Manhattan. And ultimately,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: Obama was forced to shift the trial from the U.S.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: court systems to a military commission at Gitmo in 2011
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: because the writing was just on the political wall. And
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: so you and I are talking today, December 11th, 2025,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: KSM hasn't even gone to trial yet.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 5: No.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: These cases are still struck and they're in pretrial proceedings still.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: There's no end of those pretrial proceedings in sight. And yet, Jake,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: there's no like, discussion about this or political fallout over
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: a decision that delayed justice for these individuals.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 4: And for everyone impacted by 9-11.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: And it's just kind of like not discussed. Yeah, no,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 6: One of the reasons that this happened in this book,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 6: I mean, again, one of the things that was interesting
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 6: about writing this book is just like, you really get
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 6: a sense of just the unrelenting nature of terrorism. Just like,
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 6: Because it's like, oh, and then this guy happened. And
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 6: then Zazie was going to blow up the subways. And
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 6: it's just like, man, to be in charge of protecting Americans,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 6: whether Bush or Obama or Trump, what a weight on
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 6: you to have to constantly... They only.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 4: Have to succeed once, right?
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 6: So one of the cases that I had completely forgotten
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 6: had to do with a guy named Galani.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 4: This is in the book.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 6: Galani was the first, and I believe to this day,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 6: only terrorist from Gitmo tried in a criminal court. He
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 6: was the only one taken from Gitmo tried in a
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 6: criminal court. He was picked up after 9-11. He was
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 6: tried for his role in the 1998 embassy bombings. And
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 6: what happened during that trial was that the judge excluded
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 6: the key witness from because the prosecutors had only learned
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 6: about his name from Galani being tortured by the CIA.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 4: Right, right.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 6: Or enhanced interrogation, whatever people want to call it. I'm
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 6: just using torture colloquially.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: It was torture, yeah.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 6: So that eliminated a witness. And so that jury in Manhattan,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 6: then U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara under Obama, acquitted Galani of
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 6: 284 out of 285 charges they convicted him on one
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 6: and so he did go to prison but the idea
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 6: that he almost walked scared the shit out of everybody
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 6: in the obama administration and the justice department and you
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 6: know whatever like in the national security apparatus they thought
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 6: oh my god uh this has real consequences. And that
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 6: was one of the most instrumental actions or happenings in
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 6: terms of why the Gitmo is still open and those
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 6: guys still haven't gone to trial.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: And just bigger picture. I mean, the book reminded me
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: of those early years, the Obama administration and how terrifying
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: it was. Like, look, there's a lot of commentary now
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: about drone strikes. There's criticism of them, especially the volume
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: of drone strikes. And a lot of that, I frankly
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: agree with. But I also think that people do forget,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: like you said, how many very serious terrorist incidents or
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: near misses there were during that time. For example, there
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: was 2009, there was the Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: who only because of user error basically failed to bring
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: down a plane over Detroit. There were the attempted subway
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: bombings that you mentioned. There was Najibul Azazi and his buddies.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: we're going to blow up the subway. There was the
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: Times Square bomber. They just chickened out, by the way.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: I think we were following them, right? The FBI was
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: following them.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 6: But then somebody screwed up on the George Washington Bridge
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 6: and let him in. And then he disappeared in Manhattan.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 6: And like, if he, he could have done what he
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 6: was going to do and blow up these subways, him
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 6: and his two accomplices. At the end of the day,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 6: they just got spooked and went back to Denver.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: It was a near-miss disaster. There was a Times Square guy,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: Faisal Shahzad, which is similar, like, see something, say something, right?
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: Like that, some, like, you know, someone being very vendor
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: vendor was like, Hey, this looks weird. Call the cops. Um,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: and so I bring that up, Jake, because like, again,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: when I look back at the totality of the war
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: on terror, it is an, catastrophic failure, abject failure, right?
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: The Taliban are running Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is not defeated,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: not even close. It's in more places that just change
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: its name and metastasize. Right. But there also hasn't been
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: another nine 11.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 4: You can say it's a total thing.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: This is the nuance I want to get. It's like,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: there hasn't been another nine 11, right? There aren't as
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: many near misses. And you have to at least partly
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: credit counterterrorism efforts, including drones and other military efforts for that.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: So where did you land on the war on terror's
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: efficacy after writing this?
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 6: Well, the good news is, as a journalist, I don't
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 6: actually have to land anywhere. I could just report what's true.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 6: But I will say this. First of all, it's funny
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 6: that you talk about wanting to remind people of how
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 6: terrifying it was. Because I was thinking about this interview
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 6: last night. In bed, and I was thinking about, I
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 6: should confess how terrified I was after 9-11.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 4: Me too.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 6: Because a lot of your listeners are either too young. Well, yeah,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 6: a lot of your listeners are too young to remember
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 6: 9-11 or even have been alive during 9-11. And let
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 6: me just say, I remember having lunch with my girlfriend
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 6: at the time, Sarah Feinberg, who you know, and Mike Feldman,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 6: who you know.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 6: And I remember like, I was just a complete nihilist,
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 6: like a month or two after 9-11.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 4: I was just like, what's the point? We're all going
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 4: to die anyway.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 6: Like I, it was a traumatic event for the American people.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 6: My dad worked at a company called Marsh McLennan.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: Uh, they were on like the hundredth floor of the
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: second tower. I think they lost 358 employees. Um, thank
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: God my father wasn't there. He wasn't one that only
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: even worked in that building. But like, you know, I
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: was still one of those kids walking around campus, like
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out what the fuck was going on.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: Not able to reach anybody. It was absolutely.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 4: Were you a Kenyan at that time? Yeah, I was
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 4: a Kenyan.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: I was sitting in the middle of Ohio. Like, boy,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: I've never been happier to be in the middle of
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: nowhere and like rural Ohio.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 4: But, but yeah, I was here.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 6: I was here in DC and we were being attacked.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, it was crazy.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 6: So like, I just, the only reason I say this
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 6: is because people need to, it's such an important part
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 6: of this story. How scared everybody was. And when I
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 6: say everybody, I mean everybody. I mean like people in
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 6: the middle of like Kansas were convinced that Al-Qaeda was
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 6: going to come and poison their water supply.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 4: Like it was so traumatic.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 6: I mean, I imagine it must have been what like
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 6: Pearl Harbor was like. Just like, oh my God, like
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 6: we're not safe.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: Or Israel after October 7th, right? Like try to put
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: yourself in their shoes. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 6: So that's an important part of it. I don't want
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 6: to belittle how scared people were by the idea of
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 6: bringing terrorists to the United States.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 4: It's just different now.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 6: Trump, to his credit, although I don't even know if
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 6: he knows the debate about this, but they are trying
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 6: to try the second foreign terrorist in a criminal court
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 6: for killing U.S.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 4: Service members abroad.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 6: Jafar is this Pakistani who's part of ISIS Khorasan, who
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 6: was part of the Abbey Gate bombing in 2021.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 4: Oh, right.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 5: Yep.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 6: And Trump announced during the address to the joint session
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 6: of Congress that Jafar is coming to the United States.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 4: He's here. He's in Virginia.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 6: He's a few miles away from me. And he's going
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 6: to be tried in a criminal court. Now, I don't
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 6: know whether Trump and.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 4: Sebastian Gorka and all the others.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 6: know that this was a very controversial thing to do
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 6: if they had tried to do it in 2011.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, God. Lindsey Graham would have lit himself on fire
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: in front of the White House. Yes.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 6: I mean, like people, not just Lindsey Graham, Chuck Schumer,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 6: Michael Bloomberg, like people were scared. So that is, you know,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 6: that's an important part of the story.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally agree.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 4: So where did I land?
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 6: I landed that, well, I don't actually have to have
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 6: a position is the truth. Like, is it better to
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 6: do the military tribunals? Is it better to do criminal court?
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 6: I mean, I guess, you know, if the case can
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 6: be tried in criminal court, those cases have proved effective.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 6: More than 300 terrorists have been convicted and put in prison.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 6: And hypothetically, if Spingool, this particular terrorist that I write about,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 6: if he had been picked up in 2007 instead of 2011,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 6: and he had been sent to Gitmo, what do I
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 6: think would have happened? I mean, it's it's you know,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 6: it's entirely speculative, but I think it's entirely possible that
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 6: he would have been freed because after a while in
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 6: the effort to clear Gitmo, somebody would have said, well,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 6: we don't have any evidence. He just confessed to this
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 6: that we don't we have nothing. And since there wouldn't
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 6: have been the investigation that the U.S. attorney's office in
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 6: the Eastern District of New York did and all the
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 6: sleuthing that I write about in the book. Maybe they
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 6: would have let him free, and then maybe he would
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 6: have gone and killed as many Americans as possible, which
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 6: is his life's goal.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 6: So I don't know. But there's also the problem that
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 6: war is not law enforcement. And the merging or the
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 6: morphing or the blending or whatever, that's where– I mean,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 6: it's not crazy that the Bush people came up with–
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 6: you know, enemy combatants and everything they did. Like it's not,
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 6: it's not out of nowhere. You know, this, this is
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 6: all of a sudden, like it's, it's not, they're waging
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 6: war on us in a way that is not, they
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 6: don't abide by the laws of warfare. So how are
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 6: we supposed to address it?
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 4: Is it a criminal?
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 6: Do we come up with new case law? I mean,
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 6: I understand why it all happened. I just think at
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 6: the end of the day, like, it was effective to
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 6: lock up Spingool and try him into criminal court.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, look, I have empathy for the fear. I have
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: empathy for how hard the choices are. I just like,
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: I find the politics of it so frustrating because like
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: there's just decades and decades of like established case law
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: and processes for trying and putting in jail terrorists.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 4: And demagoguery is the thing also.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 6: It's like when you, anything that we do in the
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 6: media or any questions anybody has on Capitol Hill about
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 6: whether You know, this extrajudicial killing of drug dealers, drug traffickers, or,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 6: you know, which Trump is calling narco-terrorists.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 4: Is legal or right or effective.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 6: Immediately the argument like, oh, you're on the side of
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 6: the terrorists.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 4: It's like, it's juvenile. Charles Cook, who writes.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 6: For the National Review, wrote an entire column about this.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 6: Like it was very clever and very well done.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 4: But yes, I'm on the side of the drug dealers. Yeah.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 4: You know, it's just along those lines. I mean, come on.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 4: Can we can we be adults here for a second?
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: It's absurd. And so, like, you know, to these bigger points,
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, I think a lot of Trump's appeal
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: in both elections was he ran against the Iraq war.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: He ran against nation building abroad. He ran against regime
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: change wars abroad and like the mistakes from the war
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: on terror. But now, as you said, the administration is
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: murdering people in boats off the coast of Venezuela.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 4: Well, I didn't say they were murdering.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: I said they were murdering people. There's this slow-moving regime
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: change campaign to push out Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro that
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: included– we're talking on, again, Wednesday, December 11th. On Tuesday,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: the day before, U.S. Special Forces captured a tanker off
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: the coast of Venezuela. And I just keep watching this news.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: I'm like, what is happening here? Who is driving this?
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: What are the Republicans you talk to say– about this
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: sudden thirst for, I don't know, this new Monroe Doctrine
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: in Latin America, where I guess we're just the emperor
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: of all these countries?
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 6: So I don't know that the seizure of the oil
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 6: tanker belongs in the same bucket because Beth Sanner, who
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 6: used to, as you know, a pretty straight shooter who
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 6: used to work in the Director of National Intelligence Office,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 6: I think she was deputy, she was on my show
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 6: yesterday and she said that she really just sees that
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 6: seizure in the same light that she sees other seizures
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 6: of other oil tankers in countries that are sanctioned by
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 6: the United States, whether it's the.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 4: Iranians or others. And apparently.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 6: This operation, they had a warrant that, you know, there
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 6: was actually.
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: They papered it, right? And they, look, they did some things, right?
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: Like I texted some friends who worked in Venezuela policy
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: and I was like, how is this not an act
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: of war? And they were like, well, you know, actually
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: it wasn't coming into the port. It was leaving. So
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: they're not blockading the country. No one knows where the
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: vessel is flagged. So there's all these technical ways.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 6: It didn't have the Venezuelan flag, which is a law
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 6: of sea. You have to be flagged. But in practice.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 6: It's a ghost ship. In practice, the U.S.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: Just stole a Venezuelan tanker, right? At least full of
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: Venezuelan oil.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 6: Okay, not to justify it, but I think that this
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 6: has been done in previous administrations, including Democratic administrations, not
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 6: of Venezuela, but of Iranian tankers. And I think that Again,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 6: I'm not justifying it, but I do think that there is,
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 6: as you say, they papered it. There is a legal argument.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 6: It wasn't just like out of nowhere. But that said,
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 6: so let me just differentiate that. Let's just remove that
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 6: for one second. And again, I'm not defending it. I'm
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 6: just saying I think it's different. The idea of what
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 6: the United States is doing when it comes to attacking,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 6: killing individuals on these boats. First of all, we should
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 6: make it clear. And neither of us are in favor
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 6: of drug traffickers. And neither of us think that like
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 6: members of drug cartels are good people. But that said,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 6: like these people on the boats, this is not El Chapo.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 6: These are not like the brain trust. These are not that.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 6: this is not the commander. It's not the general. It's
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 6: not the colonel. It's not the major. These are the privates.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 6: These are the people at the bottom of the totem
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 6: pole that you put in a boat and you send
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 6: them to like go to Suriname and drop off all
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 6: this cocaine.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: Fishermen doing another job often.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 6: And the cocaine is important also because What's killing Americans is,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 6: by and large, opioids, which we make ourselves, and fentanyl,
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 6: which is basically the ingredients are coming from China, and
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 6: they're not going to Venezuela. So, you know, when you
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 6: ask Republicans about this, they're likely to say it's all fungible,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 6: it's all drug lords, it's all the same thing. But
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 6: this idea that the only reason why it's significant beyond
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 6: the conceptual idea of, like, well, they're all drug lords
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 6: and all drugs are bad is... Because the argument, the
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 6: legal argument is for all the strikes, forget the second strike,
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 6: you know, the double tap or whatever. For all the strikes,
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 6: the legal argument is they are killing Americans with drugs. Therefore,
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 6: they're terrorists. And therefore, we can kill them. They're attacking
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 6: us with drugs.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 6: And, you know, you can have tremendous sympathy and think
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 6: that we should be doing more about the war on drugs,
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 6: et cetera, et cetera. And also say, it's not really
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 6: the same thing as 9-11, is it?
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: No.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: It's insane. The whole policy is insane and illegal.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 4: And by the way, it's not the cocaine.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 6: It's not the cocaine that is killing people in the thousands.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 4: It's the fentanyl.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: I think that someone is going to get prosecuted for this.
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: It probably won't be Hegseth or people at the top
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: because Trump will pardon them. But Hegseth and that team
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: is putting U.S. service members in the position of committing
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: daily war crimes. And it's awful. And it's just hard
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: to watch. Final question for you, Jake. Your last book,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: Original Sin... which you wrote with Alex Thompson from Axios,
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: made a lot of waves. It was about, you know,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: President Biden, his age and decline and the ways that
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: people around him prevented the disclosure of that decline.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 6: I've noticed that the Biden people didn't- Some of your
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 6: fellow podcasters were in the book.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 6: Favreau was a character who weighed in seeing some of
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 6: that debilitated.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, I was at that event. Yeah, I was at
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: that event too.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 3: It was rough.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: So- I have noticed the Biden people didn't love your book.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: Biden's offenders didn't love your book. I've noticed that every
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: time like Donald Trump stumbles or slips up or falls asleep,
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: you often get attacked and kind of tagged in these tweets.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they tag me because they associate us as friends
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: or us, you know, because the positive America said that
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: the debate went badly for Biden. We're bad now. How
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: do you think the media is handling kind of these
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: growing instances of Trump falling asleep in meetings or maybe
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: seeming like he's losing a step? Like, When is it
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: a critical mass that it becomes book-worthy, right, for example?
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 6: So it's a great question. I mean, we cover it
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 6: all the time on my show, all the time. And
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 6: I think that is to a large degree because we
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 6: saw what happened with Biden. And while we covered it,
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 6: we didn't cover it. Maybe we didn't ask as many
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 6: questions as we should have at the time. And I
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 6: think it is a legitimate question. For any president of
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 6: any age, but particularly anybody who is in the range
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 6: of being an octogenarian, we cover it all the time. Now,
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 6: I didn't write a book about Joe Biden's missteps. Alex
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 6: and I wrote a book about an unprecedented event happening,
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 6: which was Joe Biden having such a horrible performance at
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 6: a presidential debate where his only job was to convince
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 6: people he was up to the task of being president
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 6: for another four years. His performance being so bad that
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 6: people thought, oh my God, should he drop out of
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 6: the race? His not being able to do anything to
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 6: disprove him, which is like a really important part of
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 6: this because we're all sympathetic to the idea that like
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 6: anybody in public life can have a bad day, a
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 6: bad performance, especially if you're tired. The question wasn't even
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 6: about the performance of the debate, although it was unprecedentedly horrible.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 6: It was that he wasn't able to go out anytime
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 6: in the following weeks and make any Democrats feel, or
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 6: sufficient numbers of Democrats feel better that he could do
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 6: this job. And frankly, I understand that there are a
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 6: lot of people out there who think I would take
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 6: President Biden in a coma over Donald Trump.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: Count me among them, yeah.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 4: I understand that.
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 6: First of all, it's not up to individual people who
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 6: already love Biden. It was up to a bunch of
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 6: swing voters in like seven key states and they didn't
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 6: feel that way. But beyond that, I don't know anybody
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 6: who thinks that he could be president right now and
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 6: all the way through 2029 in his current state. If
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 6: you see him speak, if you see him walking, like
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 6: I feel bad for him.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, he's fighting cancer too. Yeah, he's got some real
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: radical challenges.
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 6: But beyond the cancer, and obviously we wish him well,
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 6: and I hope he lives to be 100.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 4: But like, I don't know.
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 6: Anybody who thinks today that he is able to be
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 6: president until 2029, which was the argument. So we were covering,
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 6: and then basically he was chased out of the race
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 6: by Democrats, not by me, but by Democrats who thought,
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 6: oh my God. And they saw the polling that suggested
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 6: that not only was Joe Biden going to lose hugely,
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 6: but you know, they were going to lose states that
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 6: Democrats hadn't lost in a long time, like Minnesota and
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 6: New Mexico and Colorado and Virginia, New Hampshire. So that's
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 6: what we covered. It wasn't like, Oh, look at all
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 6: these examples of Joe Biden being old. What we covered
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 6: was like, should he run for reelection? And why did
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 6: they hide what they hid? Um, And it was just
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 6: about the story of Biden being chased out of the
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 6: race because of that. In terms of what we cover
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 6: about Trump, I mean, I literally cover it all the time.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 6: Like literally yesterday, I covered that crazy truth social rant
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 6: when he was mad at the New York Times for
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 6: covering his aging and he called it sedition or treasonous.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: And it's hacked the appearance of the woman, the journalist.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 4: That was a few weeks before.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: Sorry. I mean, like lost track of my crazy truth,
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: social screen.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, it's tough to keep them straight.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 6: But, but I mean, we covered, I covered it on
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 6: social media and I also covered it on my show.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: Um, and like, I do, I cover it. No, I know.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: I agree. I assume you see the tweets too. And
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: it's sort of like, I.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 6: Don't, I don't, it's the truth because I have quality
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 6: filters up because I've just for years, it's just, To
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 6: be completely candid, a lot of it was started during
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 6: the Trump years, the first Trump years, when if you were.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 4: Jewish, the Nazis would come at you.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: Fun.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 6: And so those filters were up. And then after October 7th,
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 6: a lot of the Hamas sympathizers would come for you.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 6: So I don't see most of it is the truth,
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 6: but I'm aware that it's out there. And I'll just say,
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 6: I cover it all the time.
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 6: And- So I don't take the criticism very seriously because
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 6: I do cover it.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I see you covering it. Jake, thank you
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: for doing the show. The book is called Race Against Terror.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: Everyone should pick up a copy, give it a read.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: It's really an incredible story, this one individual case, but
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: what it tells us about a couple decades of a
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: war on terror policy that I guess the story is
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: yet to be written. But great to see you, buddy.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: Thank you for doing the show.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Tommy. Say hi to everybody else.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 4: I will.
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 3: That's our show for today. Thanks to Jake for coming on.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 3: Dan and I will be back with a new show
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 3: on Friday. Talk to everybody then. If you want to
• 1:36:33
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• 1:36:44
  Speaker 3: That helps boost this episode and everything we do here
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 3: at Cricket. Pod Save America is a Cricket Media production.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 3: Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illich-Frank, and Saul Rubin.
• 1:36:53
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• 1:36:56
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• 1:36:59
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• 1:37:02
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