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Casino Politics · Political Junkie Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because we've done so well and because our country is making so much money
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: that only I can make this promise to you.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: And here is my promise.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate,
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: both of them,
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: because of our economic,
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: tremendous economic success,
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: like in history, we've never had anything like what's happening.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: But because of our tremendous strength and success economically,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: for $5,000.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: Every
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: time it rains, it rains.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: Pennies from heaven.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_03: We began with Donald Trump's pledge to send a $5,000 check to every adult citizen in
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: the United States.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: Neil and I are going to be exploring the role of money in the White House today.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And a number of other things that are associated with it,
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: like corruption and,
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: you know, oligarchy and all of those things, not to mention gilding everything.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm Claire Potter.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Neil Young.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the Casino Politics edition of the Political Junkie Substack.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it is episode number two of season four.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Neil, I have been doing this forever.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you've been with me for two seasons now.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it's just been so exciting.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just flew by.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, Neil, before we get to the news summary, I just want to ask you something.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Did you watch Kash Patel's testimony in front of the Senate this week?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't, but I've, of course, seen, you know, the clips that have gone viral here and there.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, since I'm trying to sort of clean up my own language,
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to say the word of what they were talking about,
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: but apparently the FBI has removed certain kinds of,
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: shall we say, poison pills from an agent's application, one of which is...
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm just not going to say it,
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: but it's a kind of sex act that is done with animals that both you and I abhor.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently people who have been involved with this are now eligible to become FBI agents.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's so weird.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is the clip that I was seeing over and over again, as one can imagine.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's wild that this is under discussion.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And his...
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Justification for this was really I mean,
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: he kept sort of tying it to folks who had been potentially human trafficked
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: and I guess would have been forced into this type of act was that was the logic
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: behind it or that he was putting forward.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: is that really something that's affecting so many people that would be applicants to
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: the FBI?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: What's what's the bigger story going on here, Claire?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think the bigger story is trying to distract us from all kinds of other things,
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: which is the collapse of the FBI.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was sitting there watching it and thinking, okay,
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that being in porn was an affirmative action category in
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: the Trump administration now, but okay, that's fine.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: What I thought John Kennedy, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, his response was hilarious.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't figure out whether he was trying to be funny or
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  SPEAKER_00: whether he was just confused because he wanted to know if the animals themselves
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: who had perhaps also been trafficked would be eligible to be part
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: of FBI training programs.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, Kennedy is a character in himself, but I think he I think it's kind of both.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Funny and confused a lot of the time,
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: but he seemed to actually be using that to really just,
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: put a finger on it and make Kash Patel really sort of clarify the position.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: But I think you're right.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: This is about distraction and about a sort of broader,
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
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  SPEAKER_01: I think it ties into a lot of the themes we want to get into
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: of this corrupt administration, although this is a sort of different example of it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens when you actually aren't doing anything that government is supposed to do?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think conservatives of a certain stripe have always believed that
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: if government just sort of got shut down,
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  SPEAKER_00: somehow the world would come back into alignment in some magical way.
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  SPEAKER_00: We would all be happier.
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  SPEAKER_00: We would all be more prosperous.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it turns out, surprise, surprise, that's not true.
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  SPEAKER_00: That when you stop doing the work of government, things just go haywire.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you're right.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is part of what we're going to be talking about today.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into the news summary, Neil.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Mitch McConnell, he's back.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: On Monday,
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  SPEAKER_00: the Kentucky Republican and former majority leader showed up on the Senate floor in
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: a wheelchair, to be sure, but alive.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he seemed to be talking and he seemed to be waving a little.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So he was last seen on June 11th.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And a statement issued by his office said, well,
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: he's not yet 100 percent, which at 84, are you ever going to be 100 percent again?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: He will still be doing physical therapy and he will show up for important votes.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: What was the scene like there on the Senate floor as they wheeled Mitch in, Neil?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, sort of macabre, don't you think?
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  SPEAKER_01: I mean, New York Times said that he could be heard speaking
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: in his characteristically low tones with both Democrats and Republicans
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: who were coming over to wish him well.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I feel like,
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: do you feel a little bit of a guilt about how you've talked about McConnell in
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: the past?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: I certainly did,
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: because I think when we've talked about it before,
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: I maybe didn't say explicitly,
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: but certainly hinted that I did not think this man was still alive.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: He is, and he's back reporting to duty in some quite diminished capacity.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I really didn't think that we would see him again in any form like this.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I am feeling a bit guilty about that.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't feel guilty because I actually didn't think he was dead because my contact
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: on the right wing assured me that he was not dead.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this contact may be right wing and he may be a lot of things,
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: but he's never dishonest with me.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually did know that Mitch was alive.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: What is peculiar,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I guess a reflection of our political times,
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  SPEAKER_00: is that Andy Beshear,
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  SPEAKER_00: the governor of Kentucky,
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  SPEAKER_00: who's been asking for updates on McConnell for three months,
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: still has not received one and hasn't heard anything from McConnell's office.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: But Neil,
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  SPEAKER_00: was McConnell's absence,
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: was that really sort of a figment of Yeah, certainly not unprecedented.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't think that means necessarily it's not important or shouldn't be taken seriously.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, there's precedent for this.
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  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
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  SPEAKER_01: Robert Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat, he was like 91 years old.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: He was away for two months in 2008 because of illness.
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  SPEAKER_01: Senator Joe Biden at the time,
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  SPEAKER_01: he had a seven-month absence from the Senate after he had an aneurysm surgery.
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  SPEAKER_01: There's other examples.
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  SPEAKER_01: South Dakota Republican Carl Munt,
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  SPEAKER_01: he was like three years after Out of office,
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  SPEAKER_01: essentially, before he resigned after he had a debilitating stroke.
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  SPEAKER_01: This is back in 1969.
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  SPEAKER_01: Another example was Carter Glass, who was a Virginia Democrat.
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  SPEAKER_01: He simply stopped coming into work in the spring of 1943,
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  SPEAKER_01: and that seat was vacant for like three years when he finally died.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: I do think a lot of these examples,
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  SPEAKER_01: even the ones from back in 2008,
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: seem to belong to a different historical moment than ours.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Social media and constant cable news,
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think, changes how Senators are covered and certainly how news is tracked.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so to think of someone being absent for three years
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  SPEAKER_01: in 1969 feels quite different than McConnell going absent for,
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: what, three months this summer?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it does.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you're right about social media and the media atmosphere.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: I would throw another couple things in for our listeners to think about.
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  SPEAKER_00: One is the very,
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: very small majority that the Republicans have in both the Senate and the House means
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  SPEAKER_00: that everybody is keeping an eye on everybody all the time.
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  SPEAKER_00: I would also say conspiracy theories.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the number of otherwise normal people who just turn to
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: a conspiracy theory immediately nowadays sort of astonishes me or
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  SPEAKER_00: who repost them constantly on Facebook.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: I was also thinking,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I think Biden's a good example of this because his aneurysm was discovered right
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  SPEAKER_00: after he came off the campaign trail and
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  SPEAKER_00: And it was an emergency and they didn't know whether he was going to live.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Biden,
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  SPEAKER_00: both at that point and in his first year in the Senate,
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  SPEAKER_00: after his wife and children were killed or child were killed in a car accident,
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  SPEAKER_00: he was the object of so much kindness from people.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it was very difficult to muster kindness for Mitch McConnell.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, and why was that, Neil?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because you and I are actually nice people.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think McConnell is someone who, like, produces a lot of empathy in other people.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: You know, lots of folks think he is the face of evil.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I think even if you don't feel that way,
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: you can Certainly,
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: appreciate how this man has been such a cold political actor through his career and
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  SPEAKER_01: that that just doesn't generate a lot of warm response,
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  SPEAKER_01: even in a time like this,
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  SPEAKER_01: that it just seems to sort of be more proof of his cravenness and the way
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: that he's just been such a sort of
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, two things stand out to me as well in this.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: One is you're mentioning that his office felt no need to respond to the governor
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  SPEAKER_01: of Kentucky's inquiries.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: just a complete
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: refusal to respond to the governor of your own state about something
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: that is quite critical.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of folks have been pointing out on social media
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: that this man had medical leave for a period of time that was quite extensive
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: and quite beyond what women are granted when they give birth, for example.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact,
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: that Mitch McConnell has been a senator who has voted time and time against
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: the extension of medical leave to Americans.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: All that feels really relevant to this question
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: about why he may not have received much empathy around this.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: I agree with you.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And let's also remember that Kentucky is one of two states that when
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: a Democrat got elected governor,
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: the legislature,
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: which is overwhelmingly Republican,
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: met and stripped most of the powers of the governor's office and put them back into
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: the legislative chamber.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so for Kentucky Republicans, it's basically like Andy Beshear doesn't exist.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of what McConnell was saying.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like he would, you know, Beshear would communicate with them and they were like, what?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Who?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Can't hear you.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Calp, are you breaking up?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, the whole thing sort of reflects badly on all of us, I think.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And kind of shows how politics can corrupt our humanness on some level.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: So our next news item is a New York Times Siena poll just out on Tuesday,
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: which shows the Democrats making gains against Republicans in
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: a generic midterm ballot.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to warn you listeners, the generic midterm ballot.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything else in here that MAGA ought to be paying attention to, Neal?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think this is maybe even more important.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Support for Trump among independents has dipped to 27 percent.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's 11 points lower than among those registered with a political party.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly no political candidate wants to know that they're doing that poorly
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: with independent voters going into Trump.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Going into a race,
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: voters overwhelmingly are indicating that they see Republicans as more extreme,
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: more elitist, more corrupt than Democrats.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: 71% of Americans, 71% of Americans, that's an enormous number.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I think your point, again,
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: about sort of the generic midterm and even of these like polling questions,
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: it's important data.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's not one in the same with the question of the average American voter who goes
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: into a ballot box and decides that,
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: you know what, I'm going to stick with the person who's already in office.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see how this shakes out.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I think overall, this is obviously looking better for Democrats than it is for Republicans.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it really is.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things we can tell from the generic ballot is certainly You know,
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have any numbers on this,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: but I think the vast majority of voters only really know who one or two people on
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: the ballot are.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you and I are really plugged in.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And when I get my mail-in ballot, I look at school board and I'm like, what?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know,
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: there are all these sort of weird offices in Massachusetts
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: that I have no idea even what they are.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I vote for the Democrat.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: If there's a choice, I vote for the woman.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: which is a terrible way for someone who runs a Substack called Political Junkies
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: to make decisions about local politics.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, I would also say the vast majority of Americans...
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Don't know who their congressperson is.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Don't know who their senator is.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: But, of course,
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: since Mike Johnson sent everyone home early,
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: which we're going to talk about,
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: maybe they'll get to know who their congressman is because Congress has seven weeks
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: to campaign now.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, in a surprise move,
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Republican Thomas Massey,
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: the outgoing representative in Kentucky 2004,
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Has filed two articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yay, so much to talk about in that one sentence.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: What are the articles of impeachment focusing on, Neil?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Mostly the war in Iran.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: So the articles are contending that a number of things,
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: that the war was begun illegally, that Hegseth...
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Defied Congress by not withdrawing troops,
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: that his actions have caused unnecessary civilian casualties back in March,
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: that March bombing of an Iranian school.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: What's going to happen with this, Claire?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, okay,
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: it was supposed to be voted on today,
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: and Mike Johnson,
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: otherwise known as Speaker Monkey,
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: decided to just wrap up business yesterday afternoon
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: and send everyone home two weeks early.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he had actually decided he was going to let them go home at the end of this week
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: before,
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: but actually Friday wasn't soon enough to So he canceled all the business schedule
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: for Thursday and sent everybody home.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Congress has worked exactly seven days since its six-week-long summer break,
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: and they're not going to convene again until November 9th,
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: which is after the election.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I would imagine that wiser heads than Donald Trump have decided
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: If they just go home,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: they can't do any more damage and they can't be forced to vote
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: on anything like this.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: That is going to put them in a tough position with their MAGA base, right?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's just,
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's just so stunning that this is how Mike Johnson has chosen to operate.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just so obvious what's being done here.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I would guess...
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: First of all,
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: we should do a whole episode on Mike Johnson because I think he's
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: a fascinating figure for multiple reasons.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: But, I mean, talk about a cold political actor.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: This guy has no shame.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that, I mean,
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think that whenever he gets interviewed and he's called out on one
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: of these things, he just has such a self-satisfied attitude.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and in a way it's so sad because being Speaker of the House is such a historic role.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I remember in one volume of Robert Caro's lengthy biography of LBJ,
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: There are several chapters about Sam Rayburn's ascent to becoming Speaker of the House.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, Sam Rayburn was Lyndon Baines Johnson's mentor in the House, one of his mentors.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, Rayburn wanted that job from the time he was like 16 years old.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: And everything in his life was aimed at getting that job.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, Sam Rayburn never married.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Think on that one.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: But he also saw it as a way of taking his place in history in a way
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: that you never could as president,
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: because it was the Speaker of the House that wielded the ultimate power.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Tip O'Neill was another one.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Nancy Pelosi.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker, I cried.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was like day two of my blog.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I blogged about because the idea that a woman could be Speaker of
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: the House, could have this historic role was so wonderful.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like Mike Johnson has taken it and just thrown it in the gutter
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: and ground his tiny little heel into it.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Rant on Mike Johnson over.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: One more thing I want to ask you, Thomas Massey.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thomas Massey became this sort of like loose cannon after Trump dumped him
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: and arranged for him to be dumped by his voters.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is Thomas Massey's last act in Congress, probably ever.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: How will we remember Thomas Massey?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because he's not a nice man.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: How will we remember him?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: it seems a little bit uncomfortable to suddenly be like regarding him as a hero
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: in this moment,
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: because I think,
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: you know, between this and he's been really outspoken about the Epstein files.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Mm hmm.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's sort of it can make one forget a pretty terrible political career that he's had.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I don't know if he'll be remembered at all, frankly.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this may just be a blip in the congressional history,
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: but he certainly made Waves in the last year or so as being someone who almost
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: the lone figure,
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: especially in elected office,
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: who hasn't been completely collapsed into Trumpist loyalty.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what to make of it beyond that.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: But at least he has been a consistent voice for speaking
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: about what's really obvious, just the plain corruption of this administration.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, as he would articulate, in many ways a betrayal of conservative principles.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and I think he has been steadfast on the Epstein thing.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a big deal,
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: for a man in the Republican Party to stand with two women,
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace,
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: and a third woman,
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Lauren Bobert, although none of these women were speaking to each other.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: They were all speaking to Thomas Massey.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: But it was a very big deal for him to stand up for women because nobody in
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: the Republican Party really stands up for women, even as they say they do.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: I would also say that it is going to be part of the legacy of
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: the Trump administration that even when you survive the Trump administration,
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: you don't survive the Trump administration.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: I noted last week that Lauren Bobert is actually in terrible trouble in her district.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: And she may lose to a Democrat, which, yay.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: But two years ago,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: that was a safe district for Republicans,
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: which is why she moved there, because she was losing in her other district.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we're going to look back on this and say everybody who got close
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: to Donald Trump lost eventually, except for Donald Trump.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's usually how it works.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, yep.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we're turning for our news focus today,
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: because Neil and I noticed,
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: listeners,
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: that when Donald Trump promised to send every adult citizen in the United States
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: a $5,000 check if Republicans won in November,
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: and he said, it doesn't matter how you voted, you'll still get it.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it doesn't matter because he can't possibly know.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he's calling this a dividend, which I think is fascinating.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: We need to talk about that.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: But it occurred to us listeners that the presidency
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: under Donald Trump has become this weird shell game of contests,
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: prizes, naming opportunities, gifts and grifts and so on.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's dizzying.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to keep track of it.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we wanted to talk to each other a little bit today and with you today.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: About the role of money in this White House.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, what is $5,000 supposed to do for everyone, Neil?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, first of all, isn't it going to cost like a trillion dollars or even more than that?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Love to hear from the fiscal conservatives out there.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: They seem to be real quiet right now.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: What's it going to do for Americans?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, first of all, this is never going to happen.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the more important thing.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: And we can put this in the long list of other similar promises that are
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: at least proposals that Trump has made about putting money back
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: in Americans' wallets.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's not going to do anything for Americans.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's not going to happen.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: If it were to happen, it would be an incredibly expensive proposition.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think it speaks to a couple of things.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Again, his sort of propensity towards wheeling and dealing as a way
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: of how he has conducted his business as a private businessman,
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: but how he also has tried to do so as a president.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And also this You know,
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: way of basically bribing Americans to produce the election results
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: that they don't seem like they're going to produce.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I really don't see Americans saying,
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: oh, if Donald Trump wins, I'll get five thousand dollars.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: That that makes it clear which way I should vote on everything.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: I want to focus in on this word dividend.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Which is a you know it's what one gets from bond investments and stock investments
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: and dividends of course have become very very important in this economy because
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: so many corporations are paying out so much in dividends in order
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: to juice up their stock values.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: So paying shareholders has been one of the big shifts in our economy.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: But The use of the word dividend also reminds me of nothing more or less than a Ponzi scheme.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because what Trump is saying is that all of his policies have brought in
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: so much money that we,
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: the voters,
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: are stockholders in a thing called the United States,
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: which is really a business and not a nation and not a community that And that
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: because we have so patiently waited for all this money to accumulate,
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: it's now time to dispense some of it to us.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: But there's no proof that that money exists,
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: particularly since the deficit is now over $40 trillion, as you were alluding to it.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: So why does he even think this is believable?
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is he nuts?
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because he believes it or he thinks that Americans ought to believe it.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's part of the longer myth-making that he's been carrying out,
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: that he has produced amazing economic results for the country,
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: even as we know that's not the case.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: And as Americans,
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: feel their wallets with less money and their budgets tightening,
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: it's a way of, you know, just sort of...
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: You would issue those 5000 checks regardless of an election result.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: But all of this is tied together in the particular psychology of this man
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: that believes that you can basically,
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: bribe folks to get what you want and you can also,
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: you know, And let me just say for those of us who pay taxes, a $5,000 check
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Actually becomes something more like a $3,000 check or less.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not $5,000 if you're a taxpayer.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: It also really points to this whole question of what they're calling now
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: the K economy,
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: where some of us actually are benefiting from dividends and the stock market
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: and accelerating home prices and so on and so forth.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: And an increasing number of people are the other arm of the K
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: and they're like going down, down, down, down, down into debt and dispossession.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And Really,
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: $5,000 isn't going to help you,
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: for example, if you've been evicted from your home and they can't even find you.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to point out that Trump has offered to give Americans free money five other times.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: But before I do that, Neil, what does giving people free money have to do with conservatism?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: This sounds like socialism to me.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I don't understand.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I do understand where the fiscal conservatives are,
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: or just sort of your bread and butter Republicans who should be recoiling at this,
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: again, trillion dollar bill or more.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: And also sort of what would...
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: If anyone else proposed it,
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: this would immediately be called a free handout or socialism or all those sort
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: of bogeyman words that are used around anything that even is more legitimate
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: than this.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked over and over again about the collapse of the Republican Party and
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: to blind loyalty to Trump and to Trumpism.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is one of the worst examples of just The fact that Republicans aren't up
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: in arms about something like this and are, I mean,
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that you're hearing too many Republicans like touting this as
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: a good idea, but there's a lot of silence around this.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: There is a lot of silence around this.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: And let me just say what these other things that Trump has promised have been,
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: which have also been greeted with silence.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: There was something called a tariff check.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: That he said he was going to send everybody because all the money that had been made
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: from tariffs, he was going to like send that back to the American people.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he also told everybody that the companies were actually going to pay
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: the tariffs,
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: that they would never have to pay the cost of the tariffs, thus showing that.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: A fundamental misunderstanding of how capitalism works.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: There were the so-called Doge dividend checks,
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: that money that was saved by the Doge cuts would then be redistributed to taxpayers,
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: which is kind of a weird...
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: I guess a kind of weird conservative libertarian fantasy that,
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: if the taxpayers keep the money,
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: they will know what to do with it and they will take care of themselves
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: and government won't have to.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then he said he was going to make direct health care payments to compensate people
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: for losing their health care under the big, beautiful bill.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: There was also the warrior dividend where...
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Where service people were to get a check for $1,776.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was the warrior dividend for being a warrior.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then there are the Trump accounts,
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: which are every baby born during Trump's second term gets $1,000
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: in what is essentially a 401k.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: But But only those three years worth of babies.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you're born after Trump's gone, if you're born before Trump came in, forget it.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you were born in Trump's first term, forget it.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: So now people did get the warrior dividend, but what was that, Neil?
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: it was money that was already budgeted to go to veterans or to enlisted persons,
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think for housing.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wasn't that Housing allowance.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it already existed.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was just sort of rebranding it and I guess claiming it as his.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I suppose like they get credit for at least one of these actually existing.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, kind of, sort of.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, the thing about this is, again, you know, the guy is a marketing person.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it reminded me, you know what, of Land's End, right?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: You go on to Land's End to buy clothing.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I like Land's End, great clothes, exactly my style.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: This T-shirt probably came from Land's End.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: But everything is perpetually on sale.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it makes you wonder, like...
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: What does it really cost if it's always 40% off?
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like the warrior dividend was that thing.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: You get credit for something that people apparently desperately needed,
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: but they were already going to get.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like that had been budgeted under the Biden administration.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: But think about the branding of this, right?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like this was money that was budgeted for them to go towards housing, right?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Which just feels like, you know, some big, boring, big government program, right?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: But then he gets to recast it as a warrior dividend,
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: which is about manliness and honor and duty and like being a killer, right?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's $1776, right?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: $1776, right?
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we know what that means, right?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is perfect for Fox News headlines.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's where the marketing part of this all comes in, right?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's where the rebranding, you know, brain of Trump works here.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: But it's just, it's a sort of like red meat for the base
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: type of deal.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: But it also, I think, puts into relief all these other promises that never were delivered on.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's absolutely right.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Although I would have to say the founders would be kind of impressed
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: because remember during the American Revolution,
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: they were always telling the continental soldiers that they were going to be paid
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: and then they would never pay them.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then they would give them like script or they would say,
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know, here are some Western lands that you can have after the war is over.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then Abigail Adams is running around buying up all the leases on
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: the Western lands because nobody has any money.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so on.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: But in fact, we are a country with money.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a weird, inefficient, and dishonest way of distributing it to people.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not helping people, which is the most serious thing I have to say about it.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let's get back to the shell game aspect of this.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: We knew this about Donald Trump because in 2018-2019 the campaign ran
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: at least 15 different promotions promising small donors that they would be entered
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: in a contest
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: for an all-expense-included evening with Donald Trump.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the Trump campaign insisted that there had been a winner
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: for every single contest, but they were never able to actually produce a winner.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, this was a raffle that nobody ever won.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: What other weird things have been associated with the Trump administration?
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, in the fall of 2024,
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: Elon Musk ran this legally dubious contest, and he was paying out small sums.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: They were like between $47 and $100 to registered voters in schools.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when that happened, it was just unbelievable.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the longstanding Republican charge, the Democratic Party pays folks to vote.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then which there's no evidence of that.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: Musk was just doing it in plain daylight, announcing it, publicizing it.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: And giving away millions of dollars.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and apparently, I mean,
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: apparently he's still being sued by the state of Wisconsin
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: because he tried it again.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: And
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: the Wisconsin State Supreme Court election at that point was,
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think, you know, there was a bare majority of Democrats.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it was very important for a Democrat to win for us, a Republican to win for them.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: And officials tried to bring charges.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: But in both cases, it's unclear what laws are being broken.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because Musk was not exactly paying people to vote.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: He was paying people to register to vote.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: But of course,
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: when you do that,
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: and when you enter the contest, when you get the exchange of money...
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: They get all your data, too.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like it's not just that you're registered,
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: it's that you can be contacted relentlessly until you actually go and vote.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it didn't work in Wisconsin.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it actually, you know, it's unclear whether it had any effect on the 2024 election either.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: But mostly we're seeing money flowing in the opposite direction and specifically
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: toward Donald Trump and his family.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: Who appear to have profited enormously from the presidency.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Neil, how much has the president and his family profited?
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: A lot.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: In his first term.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: The family business took a reported $2.4 billion over those four years.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: It gets worse.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: In 2025 alone, Trump's personal earnings and net worth jumped to between $2.2 and $2.4 billion.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: His current personal net worth is $7 billion.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's largely powered by crypto,
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: but also things like legal settlements,
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: licensing fees, and global real estate ventures.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: The family is making Handover Fest in plain sight.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and the crypto company,
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: which is called World Liberty Financial,
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: there was a bill in Congress that almost passed and then didn't
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: because Democrats got some Republicans on board with opposing it to regulate crypto.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: But The exception to the regulation was the president.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: And there was nothing in that bill that would have prevented people in high office
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: from profiting from crypto.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want to say, listeners, there's not much I understand about crypto.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's not real.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know it has to do with a lot of numbers.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: I know that mining it uses tons of electricity.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing I know for sure is that many of these crypto schemes and
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: the Trump Scheme is one of them are what is called a pump and dump in
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: which you encourage people to buy large amounts of this stuff.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: You drive the price up and then the principals sell what they have,
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: which then causes the price to plummet.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is illegal in the stock market,
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: but because crypto is almost completely unregulated,
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: it's not illegal for World Liberty Financial to do that.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it gets worse, Neil.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us a little bit about Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding and the mysterious wedding guest.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is just stunning to me.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: A big report came out just at the beginning of this week from ProPublica.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: They broke this story that this Russian oligarch,
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: Umar Krimlev, that he paid for Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: Back in May to the socialite Bettina Anderson.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: This was a wedding that was on these private islands in the Bahamas.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: They actually went to several different islands over the course of this three-day extravaganza.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: Hundreds of thousands of dollars paid for by Kremlev.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: Kremlev is the head of something called the International Boxing Association.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: And perhaps more importantly, he is a very close ally of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: He has a criminal past.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: Apparently this money was wired through Dubai.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: None of this looks good.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: And what's actually quite,
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I think it's surprising,
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: but maybe it just speaks to so many of the issues we're talking about today.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump Jr. is not even denying any of this.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, yeah, he paid for it.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: For a couple of years, and they've only met in person one or two times.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: totally normal that you're having a Russian oligarch slash criminal pay
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: for your wedding.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: Also, why are you having that done when you yourself are worth hundreds of millions of dollars?
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I have heard some commentators say,
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: well, I think Donald Trump Jr. is worth like $600 million.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: But somebody said, well, a lot of that isn't liquid.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, well, yeah, but maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: Some of it is liquid.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: And also, you're just right.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he said, oh, yeah, I met him a couple of years ago.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: We bonded over our love of hunting and boxing and other manly blood sports.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, he just wanted to give me this as a gift.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: But Tina, who is just like weeping all over social media and saying it was a beautiful wedding.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was the highlight of my life.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, of course, he didn't pay for the wedding because the ceremony was very private.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was the parties afterwards.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you're right.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: They were like hip hopping between three different islands in the Bahamas.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: But it also, I think, you know, you and I talked about this when it happened.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we wondered why the president was not going to his son's wedding.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the president said, well, I have lots of really important things to do in Washington.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, there are lots of important.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but he never does these things.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: So but he was like, oh, there's a war in Ukraine and there's a war here.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I have too much to do to go to your son's wedding.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Seriously.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: But it makes me think maybe Susie Wiles got to him and said, no, you cannot go.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: You just cannot be photographed near that man.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot be anywhere near that man.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, doesn't that make sense to you?
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's...
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: Probably quite likely part of the explanation here.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: and also like other Trump members of the Trump family are saying they don't know
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: who this Kremlev guy is.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Eric Trump said he's never,
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: you know, a lot of them are saying we've never even heard this guy's name before.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: that's not unusual for someone in a family to know a person that no one else knows.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: But this is not necessarily your normal like friend from college or something or,
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: you know, you haven't introduced your parents.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, I think like Susie Wiles might be part of the explanation here.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: Here, I also think, like, Trump doesn't really care about his kids.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know if he would have gone regardless to this wedding.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's all sorts of bizarre father-son dynamics playing out
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: in this family over and over again.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: And this is perhaps just another example of that.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone in the White House paying attention to this would have probably warned him
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: that this was not a good idea.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: But why isn't there a big,
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: bigger warning, which is just the family shouldn't be doing this period?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think I think and we know,
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: of course, why they're doing it is because they're horrible people.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Donald Trump, you just stopped speaking to his father.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think there are probably some things between father and son that go unsettled here.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a number of basic problems here.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: One is the president is a thief.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: Another is the president's family are all thieves and they hang out with thieves.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: But the big structural problem is that the Trump administration spends money
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: that has never been budgeted in the first place and spends it all over
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: the place doing all kinds of stuff.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just untangling the bills from all of this spending is ridiculous.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: He's using the American treasury and the American taxpayers to Like a piggy bank.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned earlier,
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: the national debt is over $40 trillion now,
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: which comes to about $116,000 for each of us, which is a lot of money.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I know national debts don't get paid that way, but it's just worth thinking about.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: He has solicited hundreds of millions of dollars from corporations and his cronies
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: and I actually asked Claude, the AI.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: Who was the next most corrupt president in the United States to Donald Trump?
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: And Claude said Warren Harding, of course.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to guess.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then Ulysses S. Grant came in third.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, but that's a rather long stretch.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually remember after Harding,
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: there was a huge anti-corruption push in the Republican Party.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the Republican Party was, in fact, the party of reform.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: And they were reforming themselves.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: We also learned this week that employees who were put on administrative leave
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: by Doge in 2025 were paid $9.5 billion not to come to work.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's really just astonishing, I think.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: And this was done with a promise that the layoffs would actually save taxpayers $1 trillion.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: As Senator Patty Murray pointed out,
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: pushing out experts and paying them to stay home was perhaps the most expensive way
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: to make government worse.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: What's interesting is that in the face of all of this,
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: both Democrats and Republicans agree that government is corrupt.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: But do they mean the same thing?
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: No, they don't.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is really what you're talking about here is Republican voters
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: and Democratic voters, right?
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: So Republican voters see government itself as the primary location for corruption, right?
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: Government is corrupt.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that's sort of axiomatic, right?
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: And from that can proceed all sorts of different Arguments and also policies,
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: if that's sort of the foundational premise.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: Government is the source of corruption or the place of corruption.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats tend to be much more focused on examples,
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: specific examples of corruption,
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: self-dealing,
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: lying of crony,
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: no big contracts, appointments and pardons and payouts and things like that.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, the language of corruption seems to have bipartisan usage,
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: but its application and its sort of definitional meaning varies quite substantively.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this moment has only brought that into clearer focus.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: Did you ever read Nancy McClain's book about the economist James Buchanan?
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I've ever read that one.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: No, I've read a lot of McLean's books, but not that one.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was very controversial at the time,
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: and it was attacked by a lot of people on the right as incompetent and wrong
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: and dishonest and so on.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: But Nancy's a friend of mine,
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: and she's not incompetent,
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: and she's hardly ever wrong, and she's a great researcher and a great writer.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I learned from that book is that Buchanan,
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: who was this sort of libertarian economist and It spawned a bunch of institutes,
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: and there's one at George Mason University that I think actually is named after him.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: But he developed this theory that he called rent-seeking,
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: in which he argued that what the New Deal was,
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: was a promise to Americans that as long as they voted for Democrats,
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: they would get money.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that welfare,
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: Social Security,
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: Medicare,
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: Medicaid,
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: All of those government programs that are for the health and well-being and
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: to keep up the American social safety net,
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: as far as Buchanan and his people are concerned,
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: it's basically just a bribe to voters.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's interesting that Republicans have basically taken this up as
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: a central theme and a central way of analyzing government now,
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: that every time the government employs somebody,
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: spends money on something, It is corruption.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: It is a form of rent-seeking.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's a form of cronyism,
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: when actually what's happening in the White House is,
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: as far as I can tell, actual crimes.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: On that note, what do you want to go viral this week?
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: Changing lanes a little bit.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: I want to recommend a limited series on Netflix that I just raced through about a week ago.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's called The Bombing of Pan Am 103.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's so good.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's a six-part British television produced drama about the 1988 disaster
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: of Pan Am Flight 103,
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: the deadliest terrorist attack in British history
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: when Pan Am Flight 103 was released.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: Blown Apart over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21st, 1988.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think it's a really good series.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those sort of I've seen some reviews that thought it was a little slow
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: and dull because it just like really gets into the slow sort of process.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: So like bureaucratic process of investigating a major crime.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I love that.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: A investigative procedural that spends a lot of time just like cataloging evidence
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: and putting those pieces together and figuring something out.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I loved it for that reason.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I also loved it for.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: Sort of making real to me a history that I was generally aware of, but didn't really know.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I would have been 13 years old when the Lockerbie bombing happened.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: It actually happened just a couple of days after my 13th birthday.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I remember hearing about it.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, Lockerbie looms pretty big in the history of international terrorism.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: This was a pivotal moment in that history.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the series does a really nice job of sort
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: of Helping you understand how this is part of a growing development that has ties
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: to 9-11 and other things like that.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: But what I really appreciated about this series,
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: and I think something that I never had really thought about before,
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: was its impact on Scotland and the Scottish people.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: It really...
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: Reside sort of at the ground level of Lockerbie,
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: of the community that was impacted on the ground by this horrific event
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: that happened above them and that, you know, came crashing down on their land.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that that,
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: scarred the physical landscape,
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: but had,
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: you know, huge,
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: huge scars on the psyches of those who lived in Lockerbie
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: and really Scotland writ large.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that sort of The way it really uncovers that history
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: of how this impacted Scottish identity in this period,
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: I found really, really fascinating.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: So recommend it.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's six episodes.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: I just binged it.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's not necessarily a feel-good watch, but I just thought it was really well done.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Neil, that sounds wonderful.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's so easy in the face of unimaginable violence to not be able to think
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: about the people involved and to put ourselves in their place.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's so important.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there was this great essay, I think, in Esquire about the falling man picture.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then that was after 9-11.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a picture taken of a man upside down who had jumped off the building.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that picture was removed from circulation almost immediately as too grisly.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this writer talked about what it meant to actually see someone who had chosen to die.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: And both why it framed 9-11 differently to excerpt that
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: and let everybody be more anonymous or to only see people in reproductions
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: or what they were like in life.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: And thinking about not just what happens to the dead as they fall out of the sky,
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: but what happens to the people who receive them.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's so hard.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's so hard.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'll make sure to watch that, Neil.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I have another one that's kind of grim.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like everyone to read Helen Lewis's Mothers for Sale,
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_00: which was in The Atlantic on September 9th,
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_00: and I think it's in the print edition of The Atlantic this month.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's an essay about surrogacy,
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: and it raises a couple of questions about under what conditions surrogacy is ethical
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: and Whether we should permit it at all and whether
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: if it were regulated,
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: it could be a more successful exchange between those people
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: who are biologically able to carry a child and those people who are not but wish
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: to have one.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that really stands out in this article is that the The market
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: for surrogacy or for hiring surrogates among gay men has just exploded for reasons
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: that are, I guess, seem kind of obvious.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: One being that men can't carry children to term,
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: although I'm sure we could figure that out someday.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: But also that this is a category of people who,
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: because they're men,
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: because they are by and large white, is the group that's being targeted.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: Can afford to pay what is an enormous cost.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's like $150,000 minimum per child to do that.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's one feature of it.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_00: But another feature of it is what happens if you regulate it out of existence.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens,
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: you will not be surprised to learn,
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: is that surrogacy gets exported to countries where women are poorer
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: and more vulnerable and more easily exploited.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: There were stories about Thailand, places where they're just these dormitories full of women.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_00: Who have been impregnated with embryos.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the question is, if there is some kind of regulation, does it not need to be international?
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis also raises questions about human trafficking,
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: which are kind of simplistic on the face of it, and then they're not.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: When you really get into it, what does it mean to actually Pay someone to carry a baby.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: Are you paying someone for that baby?
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, are they selling you a child?
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the pro-surrogacy folks would say no,
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: they're not because it's actually your embryo in the first place.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: We've moved beyond the baby M thing where the The surrogate has also contributed
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: an egg to the process.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: But it's just a fascinating piece that I think raises more questions than it can
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: or is willing to answer,
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: but also should make us think about at what cost are we saying
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: that everybody can have exactly the family they want and who pays the price for
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: that?
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds fascinating.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think the future of surrogacy is really a big open question.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I've watched it have critiques from all sorts of different camps.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: There's a really growing conservative movement against surrogacy that happens
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_01: in sort of evangelical Protestantism and other,
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: you know, sects of religious conservatism.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_01: But it's, yeah, that piece sounds really great.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, and Catholics, of course, don't think you should interfere with this at all.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, strict Catholic doctrine doesn't approve of IVF.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you have to have IVF in order to have surrogacy at all.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I think it's fascinating.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_00: I would say the one bright spot in all of this,
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: and I think if I were a younger historian,
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: I would be working on the history of men, which is that I love it.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_00: That male couples want to raise children with each other.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think that is a turn in masculinity that I never saw coming when I became
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_00: a feminist back in the 1970s.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I just love it that men want to...
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: I offer this as a free compliment to those who do choose to raise children,
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: who do commit themselves to the process because children are great
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: and families are great.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if men have decided to
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: That they're willing to do the work that is, in my view, a feminist act.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: But we have to deal with these other feminist questions, too.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, super interesting.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, Neil, on that note, I think that's it for this week.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I will see you next week.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: See you then.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's it for today's show.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for hanging out with us.
• 1:00:25
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• 1:00:30
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• 1:00:35
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• 1:00:48
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• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: See you next week.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: Pennies from Heaven.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_03: You'll find your fortunes falling all over town.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_03: Make sure that your umbrella is upside.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_03: Trade them for a package of sunshine and flowers.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_03: You want the things you love, you must have showers.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_03: So when you hear your thunder, don't run under a tree.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_03: There'll be pennies from heaven for you and me.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_03: So take a big deep breath of the clean fresh air.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_03: Put a smile on your face, be a millionaire.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_03: The streets outside are paved with gold.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_03: There'll be pennies from heaven for you and for me.