Latest / Pod Save America / The 2025 Pundies: Highs & Lows from a Long Year

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The 2025 Pundies: Highs & Lows from a Long Year · Pod Save America

• 0:00
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• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Favreau.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I'm Tommy Vizor.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: And this is the Pundies 2025, which means I'm going
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: to throw it over to Elijah Cohn.
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: Oh, thank you, John. Lovely throw. Great to be with
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: you guys again for another edition of The Pundies, a
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: time to stop and celebrate the last 12 hellacious months
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: in America.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: For those listening, not watching, I want to make sure
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: you know that Elijah is wearing a tuxedo and a
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: bow tie. It's a clip on We've Decided, but he
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: looks fantastic. You should also subscribe to Pod Save America
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: on YouTube so you can actually see his pretty face.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you don't have to just imagine Elijah in
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: a tuxedo.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: You say fantastic.
• 2:25
  Speaker 5: I say it looks like if he pulls his arms up,
• 2:26
  Speaker 5: there'll be two symbols attached to each hand.
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: Well, thank you, Tommy, Dan, and John. This is the
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: biggest night of the year for me. A chance to
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: celebrate the pundits. It's like we've been treading quicksand since
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: January 20th, but only some of us were able to
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: poke our sandy little lips out of the quagmire and
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: speak into existence. A truly brain-melting take. You guys can
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: tell which line Tally wrote. This year, we've had a
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: breadth of horrors from the Trump administration. So we have
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: more than just takes to present you. It's a comprehensive,
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: horrifying look back show, but we're going to have fun
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: as horrifying as it is.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: We'll have fun.
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: Uh, we're using the dog show format again, and boy,
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: what a bunch of dogs it is. Uh, we'll go
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: through a bunch of categories and at the end, we'll
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: have one from that category, move on to a chance
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: to win the best in show pundi of 2025. Now, look, I've,
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: I know what's coming and I know we're going to
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: have a process fight at some point in this episode.
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: Do you just want to get it out of the
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: way now or let it happen organically?
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: Just remind us of the rules again.
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: You go through, we're going to go through the categories
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: and you will pick a winner from each category. Then
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: they'll go to the best in show at the very end.
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: Our last thing for Pundi of the year.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: And then we have to come to a conclusion, unanimous conclusion,
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: like the UN security council, or are we voting? What
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: are we doing here?
• 3:45
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: Consensus. And last year, the best in show was, came
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: from the polling category, it was Alan Lichtman's 13 Keys.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Was a good one. I feel good about that.
• 3:57
  Speaker 5: I would say, Elijah, that instead of shadowboxing your perceived critics,
• 4:00
  Speaker 5: why don't we just get into it?
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: Well, I look forward to our process fight. And like
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: Jeffrey Epstein said to Bill's Clinton and Gates when his
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: jacuzzi finally reached 100 degrees, are you guys ready to
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: get into it?
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: Amazing.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Amazing joke. Great job. All right.
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: Let's kick things off with a hot category.
• 4:25
  Speaker 6: Start with a bang.
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: This is the self-inflicted wound political scandal of the year.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: Our first nominee is Signalgate. Of course, this was when
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: Atlantic reporter Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a signal chat
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: with several Trump officials discussing plans to bomb Yemen. Here's
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: a dramatic reading of the text discussing Operation Rough Rider
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: performed by some of our Pod Save America producers.
• 4:48
  Speaker 7: J.D. Vance, at Pete Hegseth, if you think we should
• 4:52
  Speaker 7: do it, let's go. I just hate bailing out Europe again.
• 4:56
  Speaker 7: Let's just make sure our messaging is tight here. And
• 4:58
  Speaker 7: if there are things we can do up front to
• 5:00
  Speaker 7: minimize risk to Saudi oil facilities, we should do it.
• 5:03
  Speaker 8: Pete Hegseth, VP, I fully share your loathing of European freeloading.
• 5:07
  Speaker 6: It's pathetic.
• 5:09
  Speaker 8: But Mike is correct. We are the only ones on
• 5:11
  Speaker 8: the planet on our side of the ledger who can
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  Speaker 8: do this. No one else is even close.
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: Michael Waltz, fist emoji, American flag emoji, fire emoji.
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: Next up, we have Trump's ballroom gate. Seemingly out of nowhere,
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: Trump announced that he was demolishing the east wing of
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: the White House to build a massive ballroom. This one
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: is ongoing. And the latest update is that Trump has
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: fired his original architect because that architect said the ballroom
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: should be smaller than what Trump wanted. and that the
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: project is already over budget and behind schedule. Next up,
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  Speaker 4: we have Kimmelgate, when the Trump administration pressured ABC and
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: its affiliates to pull Jimmy Kimmel off the air. Here's
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: FCC Chair Brennan Carr talking about this openly with Benny Johnson.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, we can do this the easy way
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: or the hard way. These companies can find ways to
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: change conduct to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there's
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: going to be additional work for the FCC.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Tough, tough talk.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: It's good you said Kimmel. I thought you said Camelgate
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: at first. I was like, what was Camelgate?
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  Speaker 1: Little known.
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  Speaker 4: This, of course, had a huge blowback, and Kimmel is
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: still on the air. And last, of course, we have
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: the Epstein files. The year started off with the administration
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: inviting a bunch of influencers to the White House to
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  Speaker 4: pose with binders of the Epstein files. They promised a
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: bigger release, only to backtrack and say they weren't going
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  Speaker 4: to release anything. Dan Bongino roided out and almost rage
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: quit the FBI. The rest of the year has been
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: a steady drip of emails and documents implicating Trump and
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: his friends in the files, culminating in an embarrassing vote
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  Speaker 4: to release them. Here's a dramatic reading of a note
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  Speaker 4: that Donald Trump wrote to Jeffrey Epstein.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Voice over. There must be more to life than having everything. Donald.
• 6:52
  Speaker 9: Yes, there is, but I won't tell you what it is.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, my God. Nor will I, since I love you.
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  Speaker 9: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, we do. Come to think of it.
• 7:06
  Speaker 9: Enigmas never age.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Have you noticed that?
• 7:10
  Speaker 5: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me
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  Speaker 5: the last time I saw you.
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  Speaker 1: Pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday. Epstein's is Voldemort,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: I guess.
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  Speaker 6: What is happening?
• 7:21
  Speaker 5: What are the fucking Smeagol?
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: Why is it turning into Gollum in Lord of the Rings? Listen,
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: I'm going to say this. I mean it. Hey, do
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: not quit your day job.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I like a big swing. I like a big swing.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: Really appreciate that.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: That swing was very big. Is that the full category?
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: That's the full category. Self-inflicted political scandal.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: I feel like at the end of the day, this
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: was not very competitive at all.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Epstein. Epstein, yeah.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we have a group chat that went awry in
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: a year-long... scandal involving the covering up of a sex
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  Speaker 3: trafficking ring? Yeah, I'm going to go with the latter.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: All were bad scandals, but yeah, I agree. You've got
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: to hand it to Mr. Epstein. Speaking of ballroom, remember
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: when manspreading was a big issue that was always written
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: about in style pieces?
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  Speaker 3: How long have you had the ballroom manspreading joke.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: In your back pocket? Like 30 seconds.
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: I didn't even understand it.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Tommy's got his laptop, so we're still going to get random...
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Sorry for trying.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: Did you manspread someone once and get trouble for it
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: on the line?
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Did I manspread someone?
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Not that I remember. So I just want to.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: zero in on who's responsible for the scandal here.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: You said Mr. Epstein.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: This is a Pam Bondi scandal, right? This is not
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: even Donald Trump's scandal. Because if she hadn't dropped the binder,
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: the initial binder with all the fucking influencers, invited them
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: to the White House, given them a binder, it still
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: would have been brought up, I'm sure, at some point.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: But don't you think that if they looked into it
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: and realized like, oh, there's not much more we can
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: put out or Trump's in some of this stuff that
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: like it might have gone differently for them.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah. There's several junctures here. There's JD Vance declaring on
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: Theo Vaughn's podcast that all the files should come out.
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: Important part, Trump allowing people around him to keep calling
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: for all the way up and through the election. And
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: then Pam Bondi deciding to release portions that without actually
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: looking at what was in the files. But that was like,
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: that was probably the most, the key moment that put.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Us on this path.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: But she definitely, I was ready to say that, um,
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Up until I heard Epstein, of course. Brendan Carr would
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: have been my next nominee.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: I would have gone Signalgate. Really?
• 9:26
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: I would have said.
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: But what's interesting is I would have said Ballroom only because.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of mattered a lot.
• 9:31
  Speaker 5: The ongoing... The thing is, that's going to continue. And
• 9:35
  Speaker 5: if he can't build anything, it's going to take longer
• 9:37
  Speaker 5: than he thinks. It's just going to be a kind
• 9:39
  Speaker 5: of ongoing little kind of motif throughout the next year
• 9:42
  Speaker 5: or two.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: I thought about Brendan Carr because it's like, again, they
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: could have... potentially gotten what they wanted had he not
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: been so fucking stupid to say that out loud on
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Benny Johnson's.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: But nothing happened. We missed like three episodes of Jimmy
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: Kimmel and.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: We were back.
• 9:58
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Right. But would they have.
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: I mean, just for the sheer stupidity of Signalgate, there
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: were 300 million people in America and the one person
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: they accidentally add to the group chat about bombing Yemen
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: is the editor of The Atlantic who's written more stories
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: with disclosures of Trump and national security than almost anyone else.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm thinking- The guy who did the- Because
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: we just focused on Hegseth, I forgot that Hegseth isn't
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: the one who.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Added him, right? Mike Walsh got frog-marched out of the
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: White House, sent to New York.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: But Hegseth made it much worse by having that group chat,
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: having other group chats on his personal phone where he
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: was sharing this sort of information.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: It's clear that everyone in the government now, they're all
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: on Signal.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: They're all doing this.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Everyone is using government. Yeah, that's long gone. Foya's dead.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Foya's fucking dead. Dead anyway, man.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: Just stomping on the PRA.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: The PRA, that shit. All right, so how do we
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: do this? How do we award it?
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: Well, Pam Bondi accepts on behalf of Jeff Epstein. We
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: don't do posthumous awards here in the Pundies.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Well, do we know? That's true.
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: And now the Epstein scandal moves on to the best
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: in show category, which we will revisit at the end.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: Our next category.
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: An inappropriate release about a bunch of inappropriate releases.
• 11:10
  Speaker 6: Let that breathe.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Okay. Or don't.
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: Let's move on to our next category, Fluffer of the
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: Year for Worst Trump Administration Official.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: This is a- It was more of a, it was
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: a motif on, instead of choose your fighter, choose your fluffer.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: In terms of the cabinet meetings, the lavish praise, embarrassing, obsequiousness.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: Are we judging them on their obsequiousness?
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know. We'll find out.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: I guess that's a good point.
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: You guys can choose style, obsequiousness, negative impact on the country.
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: So many great things.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Okay. So we can.
• 11:41
  Speaker 7: Okay.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Sick.
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: First up, we have Pete Hegseth. He's weirdly obsessed with appearances,
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: gave some weird speeches about our generals being fat. He
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: did Signalgate already, and now he's allegedly committed several war crimes.
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: Here's a recent tweet responding to those allegations. It's the
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: children's character, Franklin the Turtle, shooting an RPG at a
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: bunch of boats.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Cool. Selfie. Cool, Pete.
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: Next up is Kristi Noem. There are so many clips
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: we could play of Kristi Noem.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: It's hard.
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: Took content in front of C-Cod and awkwardly pointed a
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: gun at a nice agent during a video she released,
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: but I like this video.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: Welcome to the Team Recruits.
• 12:24
  Speaker 6: I'm Kristi Noem, head of Homeland Security.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Well, she seems nice and kind and pretty.
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: A few years ago, I had to put my puppy
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: down by shooting it in the face.
• 12:34
  Speaker 11: Because sometimes doing what's important means doing what's hard.
• 12:37
  Speaker 12: Yeah.
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: We can just stop it. We don't have to watch
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: the whole thing.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: So much dog murder. It's so funny that that's the
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: runner for her.
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: Well, and South Park was really good this season. That
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: was probably the funniest bit. Next up, we have Stephen Miller.
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: He has amassed a ton of power in the administration.
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: He plays significant roles in both DHS and DOJ and
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: in crafting domestic policy. He's also awful on TV and
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: spouts white nationalist talking points. Here's a clip of both.
• 13:08
  Speaker 13: So you see with a lot of these immigrant groups,
• 13:10
  Speaker 13: not only is the first generation unsuccessful.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: Again, Somalia is a clear example here.
• 13:16
  Speaker 13: Not only is the first generation unsuccessful, but you see
• 13:18
  Speaker 13: persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent
• 13:24
  Speaker 13: high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity,
• 13:28
  Speaker 13: consistent failures to assimilate.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: But this shouldn't be a surprise, Will. It's just common sense.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Wilking is so fucking stupid, by the way. Also, if
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: this is the way we're going to judge people, I
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: think we should lock up your parents, Stephen Miller. If
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: we're doing generational punishment. Yeah, because they committed generational punishment
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: on the rest of us. And we're all going to
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: have to deal with this.
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: Next up, we have JD Vance. Look, Vance sucks. We've
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: talked about it ad nauseum. Here he is discussing fully
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: employed adult Republican staffers celebrating Hitler and being super racist
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: in private group chats. as performed by our producer.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: J.D.
• 14:03
  Speaker 7: Vance voice. I really don't want us to grow up
• 14:06
  Speaker 7: in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke,
• 14:09
  Speaker 7: telling a very offensive, stupid joke, is caused to ruin
• 14:12
  Speaker 7: their lives.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: That video exists. We don't need.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Why is he like a valley girl kind of vibe?
• 14:25
  Speaker 5: And also, by the way, when you're reading a script,
• 14:27
  Speaker 5: you don't read the name every time. Everyone's reading the
• 14:31
  Speaker 5: name and then the line. You just do the fucking lines.
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: It's a scene.
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: We were right up against it for recording these.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Tough category. Yeah.
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: We have one more, I think, that we should. I'm
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: going to skip Cash because Cash is so funny, but
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: I don't think he's going to be the worst. And
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: rounded out with RFK Jr., who has done unbelievable damage
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: at HHS. He's rolled back vaccine mandates and has done
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: more damage just by disparaging them. Here's a weird-ass clip
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: of him talking about Tylenol.
• 15:01
  Speaker 11: There's many, many other confirmation studies. There's two studies that
• 15:09
  Speaker 11: show children who are circumcised early have double the rate
• 15:12
  Speaker 11: of autism. It's highly likely because they're given Tylenol. So,
• 15:17
  Speaker 11: you know, none of this is positive, but all of
• 15:20
  Speaker 11: it is stuff that we should be paying attention to.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: I never noticed Doug Bergman in that clip.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: He's like... I think... Are you talking about baby penises?
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: No one wanted to read RFK.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was going to say. Missed opportunity.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Cowards.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: Not in your repertoire, people. Just speak through a fan.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, so how do we judge this one? In terms
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: of aggregate deaths, I think RFK is going to be
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: the winner. You know, long term. But is this a
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: lifetime achievement award or is this a this year category?
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: I will make– I know what you're going to say.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: I'll make the case for Stephen Miller because he– Because
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: his wife's podcast sucks.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right. That's number one.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Because he controls everything. Because he has– where do you
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: think the boat strikes idea came from? Stephen Miller in 2018.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Where do you think everything bad that Christine Ohm has
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: been doing came from? Stephen Miller. So, like, he is
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: the most powerful person in the administration who is not
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump. And is behind all the bad things. So
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: that's my case for Stephen Miller.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with that.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Maybe RFK Jr. is doing his own thing. So I
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: guess that could be an exception there.
• 16:29
  Speaker 5: I think RFK is a kind of singular bad actor
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: who didn't need to be as bad, right? You can
• 16:35
  Speaker 5: imagine a bunch of other people having gotten that job.
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: Like had the Olivia and Nutsy story broke, you know,
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: a couple months. Like there's a whole bunch of paths
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: which we have someone slightly less terrible at HHS.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: American different though. American?
• 16:47
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: Don't yeah.
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: Those who those who can't teach. But yeah, but like
• 16:57
  Speaker 5: no one you could swap out and some other fucking
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: person will be in there executing what Miller wants.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:02
  Speaker 5: Like a lot of people could leave and the machine
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: would still turn.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: I think I agree. It's Miller.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's probably right.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: And J.D.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: Vance has got many opportunities to win this award.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Well, and also he just he's just a shit poster.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: He doesn't have any real power.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: I'm going to zag and say Kash Patel because his
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: climate footprint from all those FBI plane uses has got
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: to be through the roof.
• 17:21
  Speaker 5: Well, then Taylor Swift is the worst part of the
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: administration by that standard.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's fair.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: We didn't even get to hear Kash Patel as a nominee.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't want to hear that voice.
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: Yes, it was. I'm entitled to a personal life just
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: like my other agency counterparts with their partners. Do I
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: support my girlfriend?
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: And do I take trips with her? Absolutely.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: The fuck was that?
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: That was Michael.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: That was Mike.
• 17:46
  Speaker 6: Hey, by the way.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: You know what? You know what?
• 17:49
  Speaker 5: Everybody, go listen. That was performance. He was an actor.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: He didn't just read the lines. He brought something to it.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: There was a character behind that. That was excellent.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: He inhabited Kash Patel. He did.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: He did.
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: Are we warming up to these intense performances?
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Do we think we're warming up to the voiceovers?
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: The audience is going to just adore this.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Mike, I'm impressed. You're real binary.
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: The rest of these fucking.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Sounds like Stephen Miller's our winner, huh? Yeah.
• 18:17
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Pod Save America is brought to you by Rocket Money.
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• 19:37
  Speaker 4: Let's move on to the next category. Republican beef is
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: just like a real hamburger. Bloody Raw and Marjorie Taylor
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: Greene is going to push Mike Johnson through a meat
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: grinder to make it.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: Here are the nominees for best political beef. Best political
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: beef of 2025. First up, God, I like this category.
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: We have Elon Musk versus Donald Trump. Elon Musk crashed
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: out at the White House. He got into a physical
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: brawl with soybean farmer Scott Besson. Doge largely failed. He
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: left and then went on a bit of a PR spiral,
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: posting the following about Donald Trump.
• 20:13
  Speaker 9: Time to drop the really big bomb at real Donald
• 20:17
  Speaker 9: Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real
• 20:21
  Speaker 9: reason they have not been made public.
• 20:26
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: Trump responded by threatening to end government contracts with Musk companies.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: Next up, we have Scott Besant versus Bill Pulte. At
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: a fancy dinner hosted by Alan Chamath, things got heated
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: between Scott Besson and mortgage fraud fanatic Bill Pulte. Here's
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: a dramatic reading of an abbreviated version of the confrontation
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: between Besson and Pulte.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: That would be real abbreviated.
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: Why the fuck are you talking to the president about me?
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: Fuck you. I'm going to punch you in your fucking face.
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: We could go outside.
• 20:58
  Speaker 6: Pulte.
• 20:59
  Speaker 8: To do what? To talk?
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: Besson.
• 21:03
  Speaker 5: No, I'm going to fucking beat your ass.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: The reading the names.
• 21:10
  Speaker 14: What was happening when you were reading the names?
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: It's like they're in the room. Turn to camera. Exterior.
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: It's clubby. It's like Chuck Schumer with the Democratic Messaging Clan.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Good stuff.
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: There are many more dramatic readings, so I mean.
• 21:26
  Speaker 6: Oh, wow.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Gird your loins, everyone.
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: Next up, we have Marjorie Taylor Greene versus Donald Trump.
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: Marjorie Taylor Greene went against the president several times, culminating
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: in her announcing her retirement from Congress at the end
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: of the term. She felt sorry for the president, or
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: so she said, and he gave her a nickname. Here
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: is a dramatic reading of one of Trump's truths about her.
• 21:45
  Speaker 9: Lightweight Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Green grass turns brown when
• 21:52
  Speaker 9: it begins to rot. betrayed the entire Republican Party when
• 21:57
  Speaker 9: she turned left, performed poorly on the pathetic view, and
• 22:01
  Speaker 9: became the rhino that we all know she always was.
• 22:05
  Speaker 9: Just another fake politician more different than Rand Paul Jr.,
• 22:10
  Speaker 9: Thomas Massey, who was caught again being a full-fledged Republican
• 22:15
  Speaker 9: in name only.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Rhino, make America great again. That is you, Ryan, right? Yeah,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: of course. Okay, thank you.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: Well, I know you've been playing a couple people, so
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: I just want to.
• 22:26
  Speaker 5: Well, because I think in that one, one of the
• 22:29
  Speaker 5: people he was playing was Pennywise the Clown.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: I heard some of that.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: I thought we got Alec Baldwin to do it.
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: Some real 2017 SNL.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: Just setting a note for myself for my notes for
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: next year's Bundies.
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: Last, let's get some Democrats into the mix. Andrew Cuomo
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: versus Zoran Mamdani. This kind of went beyond the campaign
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: when Cuomo decided to enter the general as an independent
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: after he lost to Mamdani in the primary. Cuomo ran
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: all kind of racist, Islamophobic ads against Mamdani. And here's
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: how Mamdani said goodbye to Cuomo after his victory.
• 23:03
  Speaker 12: I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: But let tonight be the final time.
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: I utter his name.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: Ryan, good job with Mom Don.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: That was great.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: Your best one sounded just like him. Good job.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Then he took a big shit on Cuomo's dad, too,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: later in that speech. That was a good one.
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: That rounds out the category. Who do you guys like
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: for best beef?
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: This is really hard.
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: It's funny because the Scott Besant versus Bill Pulte was
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: my favorite in terms of the humor of it.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: It's also like the most purely WWE.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He literally threatened to punch him. Also Scott Besson
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: getting in multiple altercations. Also with Elon. Yeah. Yeah. Didn't
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: see him as the fighter in this administration. Listen, you
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: want to be a gay kid?
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: Don't fuck with a farmer. Don't fuck with a gay
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: guy from New Orleans.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: Having rehashed the Trump-Elon beef though, that was a big one.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a big beef.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: And it did get pretty, like Trump's in the Epstein
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: files turned.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Out to be true.
• 24:07
  Speaker 12: Yeah.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: That was a pretty big one. But you're right.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: It's more.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: I'm between Besant, Pulte, and that one. I feel like
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: the MTG Trump one was too civil.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: But also probably the most significant.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 24:21
  Speaker 6: Interesting.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, the breakup with Elon is pretty significant.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: But they're back together again.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: They're back together. But like the first three, four, five
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: months of the administration was defined by Elon Musk. He
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: was like a shadow president.
• 24:33
  Speaker 12: Yeah.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Doge was everything. And now he's just gone. Yeah.
• 24:36
  Speaker 7: All right.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: I'm with that. I'm with that. Okay.
• 24:37
  Speaker 6: We can do it.
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: We should do it long ago.
• 24:39
  Speaker 11: Okay.
• 24:39
  Speaker 7: Great.
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: Trump versus Elon.
• 24:43
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: Next category. We're up to our groins in beef this year.
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: So we took some extra time in the kitchen to
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: whip up a secondary beef category. Best Pod Save America
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: host public fight with a Trump administration official or back-up personality.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: I wonder who's going to be leading this category.
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: Let's take a look at this diverse group of nominees.
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: First up, Jon Favreau versus Elon Musk. In a dispute
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: over USAID, Musk called Jon, quote, dollar store Jon Favreau.
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: Next up, we have Jon versus Olin Chamath. In a
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: dispute over the legality of SECOT, Chamath called Jon, quote,
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: probably not a total arse-ler who should brush up on
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: his con law.
• 25:27
  Speaker 11: Arse-ler?
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: I'm not saying it on the pod.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: The word. I've seen. The R word.
• 25:32
  Speaker 5: Oh, oh, oh.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: Arse-ler.
• 25:33
  Speaker 6: Got it.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: It's the thing that all those Republicans fought to be
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: able to say.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: I thought it was like arse, like A-R-S-L-E-R.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: He's like a Scottish asshole.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: I remember that over here.
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: Chamath was community noted for not knowing the Constitution. Next,
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: we have Jon Favreau again versus Stephen Miller. Stephen called
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: Jon's objections to his immigration policies, quote, shocking and heartless,
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: because in their view, Jon is on the side of murderers, rapists, etc.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: etc., Well, he's right. True.
• 26:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah, got you there. Got your number.
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: Jon Favreau again versus Megyn Kelly in a dispute about
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: Sidney Sweeney's jeans ad. Megyn pretended to.
• 26:15
  Speaker 5: Not know who's Jon. That was a low moment for you.
• 26:19
  Speaker 5: That was a low moment for you. The rest I'm
• 26:22
  Speaker 5: on board with. That one made me a little sad.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: Okay, what's the next one?
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: You'll never believe this. This is the last one. You'll
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: never believe it. It's Jon Favreau versus J.D. Vance in
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: a dispute about Vance's fast and loose way of reporting information.
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: Vance called Jon a dipshit.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, you won that one. That was a great one.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: That was a great one.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: Did you get a New York Times story out of it?
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Fatality.
• 26:41
  Speaker 15: Oh, yeah.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: And that's the goal. That's what we have.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: More media. Tweet your way into the Times.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: I'm glad you found your calling. As opposed to... Well,
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: last year's New Year's resolution was to post more.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: Shockingly, it turned out to be free.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Careful of what this.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Who knows what... I'm taking suggestions.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: We have to direct your resolutions carefully. I think back
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: to around, like, 2018. We were on a flight somewhere,
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: and we were.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Red Steez.
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: We all remember this one. We were rushing to get
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: to our show, and John stopped because he had to
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: respond to someone called Red Steez. And that was a
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: little moment. And then you backed away from the wars.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Well, I blocked Red Steves.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: He wasn't retreating.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: He was reloading.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: Also named Stephen Miller.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: It's a different Stephen Miller.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Stephen Miller. Tough name.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: I think it's Vance.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's Vance. Called you a dipshit.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: It was great. You get the vice president and I say,
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: let's call you a dipshit. That's impressive.
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: Nice. I was ready to have him back, John.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure Joe Biden said that about all of
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: us behind closed doors.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah. There's some AOL chat rooms where he's doing it.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: And his son did it quite publicly.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Very publicly. Yeah, yeah. All right.
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: Next up, we have Well, I got to read the
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: jokes first. I'm so bad at this.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump is like the HBO series The Last of Us,
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: barely watchable after the first season. I haven't watched the
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: second season, but I like that joke. Also, he sees
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: some sort of hideous fungus sprouting more and more moments
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: of moral decay across our political landscape. Which of the
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: following is 2025's most corrupt corrupt date?
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Stacked.
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: First up, there's the Qatari jet. Earlier this year, Trump
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: accepted a massive plane from Qatar to be used alongside
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: Air Force One. It could cost taxpayers over a billion
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: dollars after it's re-outfitted. Here's Trump talking about the plane.
• 28:26
  Speaker 12: I think it's a great gesture from Qatar. I appreciate
• 28:29
  Speaker 12: it very much. I would never be one to turn
• 28:32
  Speaker 12: down that kind of an offer. I mean, I could
• 28:35
  Speaker 12: be a stupid person and say, no, we don't want
• 28:38
  Speaker 12: a free, very expensive airplane.
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: Not free.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Again.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: Can we just hang around for a second? Just take
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: me inside. What was the thinking in which live video
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: to have a producer read and which to use the
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: live video?
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: Most of the live videos we had, we went with
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: the live video and then some we couldn't find the
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: live video at the time. So we were like, well,
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: this would be a good producer read. And look, last year,
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: the producer reads, they were just straight reads.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: They were great.
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: Now we've veered into some theater I'm not sure I'm
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: comfortable with.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: Just throwing your colleagues under the bus right here live
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: on the podcast.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: We throw lives under the bus a lot.
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: What a safe space for drama. What a safe space
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: for actors to bring their best selves.
• 29:19
  Speaker 6: Do the next thing.
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: Next up is Trump's World Liberty Financial Venture. This crypto
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: venture that Trump's family runs. It's just a vehicle for corruption.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: One example this year is that a Chinese billionaire named
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: Justin Sun bought $ 75 million worth of World Liberty Financial Tokens.
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: shortly after the SEC stopped investigating Sunset.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Companies. So is this category all crypto, all World Liberty?
• 29:44
  Speaker 6: No, no, no.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: We're going to jump to some other stuff now, which
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: is corrupting the DOJ.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: No, I'm saying the last one, the World Liberty one.
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: Is that- Yeah, we call this all the crypto scams.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: All the crypto scams.
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: Next up, we have corruption at the DOJ. Trump is
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: using the DOJ to go after people he doesn't like,
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: like Tish James and James Comey. On the other side
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: of that, he's pardoning a bunch of people who are
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: loyal to him, like the January 6th writers for crimes
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: they didn't even commit during January 6th, crypto mogul and
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: Binance founder CZ, and the Chrisleys, a reality show family.
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: Here's Trump talking about pardoning CZ.
• 30:23
  Speaker 6: CZ had caused significant harm to U.S.
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: National security, essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to
• 30:30
  Speaker 5: move millions of dollars around.
• 30:32
  Speaker 6: Why did you pardon him?
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, are you ready? I don't know who he.
• 30:37
  Speaker 7: Is.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: That would have been for a great clip if we
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: had Nora's voice, but then Ryan played the part.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: Can Ryan also do a good Nora?
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: I've heard it. It's really strong. And last up is
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: ass kissing and knee bending. We have ABC and CBS
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: settling suits for millions of dollars, law firms and universities
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: bending the knee, CEOs like Tim Cook giving weird little
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: gifts with gold on them. And recently, FIFA created a
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: peace prize and just gave it to Trump ahead of
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: the 2026 World Cup. Here's a clip of that.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: We saved millions and millions of lives.
• 31:12
  Speaker 12: India, Pakistan, so many different wars that were able to
• 31:17
  Speaker 12: end in some cases a little bit before they started,
• 31:20
  Speaker 12: just right before they started.
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: It was going to be late, but we got them done.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: We were able to end some wars before they started.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: It's just so triggering.
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: So which is the most corrupt? I know some of
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: them are specific instances. Some of them are more broad
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: trends of corruption.
• 31:38
  Speaker 5: Right, especially because the crypto-corruption includes the pardons. It's all
• 31:43
  Speaker 5: one and the same. Hmm.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: There's the crypto. There's the pardons. In some of the pardons,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: there's crypto. But like it's pardons, right?
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Right. And political prosecutions.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: So it's pardons versus crypto versus what was the first one?
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: FreeJet.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, the jet versus.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: Political prosecutions and non-prosecutions.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, and the folding.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: Oh, the folding.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: The bending. Yeah.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: I don't think it should be the folding.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: No, I agree.
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: Because that's really more.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Like a Bob Iger. It's not necessarily corruption.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: Sherry Redstone scandal.
• 32:15
  Speaker 5: Right, and that's a calculus based on the corruption that
• 32:18
  Speaker 5: Trump has. You can disagree with the calculus and the
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: mistake of it, but they're reacting to a very real thing.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: I kind of feel like it's crypto.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the Qatari jet is the current, I think,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: biggest ticket item that we know of. But the crypto,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: I think, is the most systemic, ongoing avenue for corruption
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: that includes getting paid off by the Emiratis in exchange
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: for AI chips, like the truly buying and selling of U.S.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: national security.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: I will say the most egregious example of corruption in
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: terms of Donald Trump just stealing directly from taxpayers is
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: the Justice Department lawsuit. Trump suing Trump, Trump suing the
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: government and Trump in the government role deciding he's going
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: to settle with himself.
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: Which is if he had done that. if he had
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: actually done it.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: He hasn't got the money yet.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: So when he gets the money in 2026, put it
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: on the list.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say crypto otherwise.
• 33:16
  Speaker 5: I don't agree. I think it is the DOJ. I
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: think it's the corruption of the DOJ, the use of pardons,
• 33:22
  Speaker 5: the political prosecutions, because all these other things, they're all bad.
• 33:27
  Speaker 5: They're all enabled by, like it is not possible for
• 33:29
  Speaker 5: him to be bribed without a DOJ that's not going
• 33:31
  Speaker 5: to look into anything and without a Congress that's not
• 33:34
  Speaker 5: going to look into anything. But the DOJ is the
• 33:36
  Speaker 5: kind of core of the rot. If right now, Pam
• 33:39
  Speaker 5: Bondi was replaced by Eric Holder and he was in
• 33:42
  Speaker 5: that role. It would, they would all be half, they
• 33:44
  Speaker 5: would have to behave differently. I think it's the DOJ.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: You sold me. You sold me. I'm persuaded. So we
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: got to vote. So who votes crypto?
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: I'll vote crypto.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Who votes, um, what Lever Levitt just said?
• 33:55
  Speaker 15: DOJ.
• 33:56
  Speaker 10: DOJ.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: I think I'm going to go Qatari Jet.
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: Oh.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: So you guys win.
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: Well, should we go to a runoff? No, no, no.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: I think two to one. All right, great. This episode
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: of Pod Save America is brought to you by Grazza.
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  Speaker 4: Next category. Every week at this company, I crawl out
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  Speaker 4: of the scorching sands of the Maga Desert, searching desperately
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: for one tiny drop of living out to keep me alive.
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: It was a real dune situation this year, but we
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: squeezed out a few drops. Open your mouths to wet
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: your whistle for these, for the most live-outable moments of 2025.
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: There are pretty few and far between, and a lot
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: of them were Zora and Mamdani. But first up, we
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: have Gavin Newsom starting to tweet like Donald Trump. It's
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: been nearly a decade of people trying to figure this out,
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: how to counter Trump on social media. Hats off to
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: Gavin for kind of figuring it out. Here is a
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: read of one of his tweets from a Bonsai America producer.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: I'm going to blow my brains out before this ends.
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: Fox hates that I'm America's favorite governor. Ratings king.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Saving America.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: While Trump can't even conquer the big stairs on Air
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: Force One anymore, Fox is losing it because when I type,
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: America now wins.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: A very teeny tiny speaker.
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: Well, the post is in all caps, to be fair.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Got it.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: Thank you for picking that up.
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: Austin, did Austin do high school theater?
• 37:14
  Speaker 5: No.
• 37:15
  Speaker 15: Okay.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: The answer was no.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: Seems clear.
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: Next up is Zeron's primary win. Mamdani completed one of
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: the most innovative and interesting campaigns in recent memory to
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: defeat Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for New York
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: City mayor. We have a clip of him kicking off
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: his campaign by interviewing people on the street, but I
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: don't think it's going to translate that well to audio,
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: so let's skip it. We've all seen it. It's a
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: great clip. He ran a great campaign. That primary was cool.
• 37:37
  Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: Next up is just election night 2025. We won everything.
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: Zoran in New York, Spanberger and Sherrill in Virginia and
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: New Jersey. We flipped those commission seats in Georgia. California
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: got- Or did we? California got redistricting. That was awesome.
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: We really needed it. And last, we had this nice
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: little moment of Zoran Mamdani visiting Trump at the White House.
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: Here's a clip.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: He asked about your comment calling the president a fascist.
• 38:03
  Speaker 7: And your answer was.
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: Both President Trump and I have been clear about our.
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: Positions and our views.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 38:08
  Speaker 6: Are you affirming that you.
• 38:10
  Speaker 5: Think President Trump is a fascist?
• 38:12
  Speaker 6: I've spoken about... That's okay. You can just say yes.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: It's easier. It's easier than explaining it. I don't mind.
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: That wasn't living out. That was Trump's moment.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: You know what I was going to say?
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: It's comforting to know that no matter how much the
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: four of us may like Zoran Mamdani... Our staff at
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Crooked is always going to glaze him just a little
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: bit harder.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Three of the four.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: I think you said glazing in four of the last
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: nine podcasts.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: I think it's the off year.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: It's election night. It's a runaway. Best night of the year.
• 38:46
  Speaker 12: Yeah.
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: I mean, look, it was not a great year for
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: living out. What other moments were there?
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Crooked Con? Jesus. Crooked Con was cool. Unbelievable. You know what?
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: The Indiana redistricting loss that Trump just was served was
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: pretty big.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll tell you. The Epstein Files release vote, that
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: was good.
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I want to attack the whole premise of the
• 39:06
  Speaker 5: year being hellacious and not a moment. Like, you know,
• 39:10
  Speaker 5: Trump came in like a lion, leaves like a lamb.
• 39:12
  Speaker 5: You know, it's like things, he came in fast and
• 39:14
  Speaker 5: hard and that caught us all off guard. But I
• 39:16
  Speaker 5: feel like we end the year a little bit better
• 39:19
  Speaker 5: place than how it started. What?
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: What?
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: Things better than how they started this year? We'll get
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: some most horrifying Trump moment of the year and maybe
• 39:28
  Speaker 4: we'll look back at that statement.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: How many categories we have left?
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: We can skip a bunch.
• 39:33
  Speaker 6: Look.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: No, no.
• 39:35
  Speaker 5: I'm asking.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: We had a.
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: Production meeting about like, hey, is 12 too many categories?
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: I'm not judging my question. No need to be so defensive.
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: There was something behind that question.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: Be honest.
• 39:48
  Speaker 10: Okay.
• 39:48
  Speaker 15: Okay.
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: Most irritating discourse of the year.
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: A perennial favorite.
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: Let's start off strong with abundance and Ezra Klein in general.
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: This year saw Ezra and Derek Thompson's book transform from
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: a suggestion of some reforms into, according to some, a
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: straight-up embrace of eugenics.
• 40:10
  Speaker 7: Sorry.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Did someone go for you, Johnny? Yeah, we won't.
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: John did three tours in the Abundance Wars.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: I have a purple.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: Heart.
• 40:25
  Speaker 15: He threw it over the fence. He threw it over
• 40:29
  Speaker 15: the fence at Cap. Mira, spit on me.
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: Next discourse. Next discourse. The Maine Senate primary. Obviously, Graham
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: Platner is a polarizing guy.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: Give that to a bunch of Platner bros.
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: Next, we're going to skip the Texas Senate primary because
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: that's bad discourse that's just getting started. It's not quite mature.
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: No bad discourse there. uh next we have sydney sweeney's
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: jeans ad this was oh that's a really good one
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: the kind of quintessential woke is dead woke is alive
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: discourse of the year and at one point donald trump
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: himself uh weighed in saying that he loves sydney sweeney
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: jeans are flying off the shelf she has the hottest
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: ad on the market this this went for months uh
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: next up we have that one clip about Joe Biden
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: from Crooked Con and the Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson book
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: and all the continuing zombie discourse about Biden dropping out.
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: Here's a clip of a pro Biden influencer talking about
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: Crooked Con.
• 41:40
  Speaker 16: I just saw the most ludicrous thing I've seen in
• 41:43
  Speaker 16: a long time. And that's that their main theme of
• 41:46
  Speaker 16: their little event that they had over the weekend was
• 41:48
  Speaker 16: that anybody wanting to run as a Democrat in 26
• 41:50
  Speaker 16: or 28 has to distance themselves from the Biden years.
• 41:54
  Speaker 7: Really?
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: This guy?
• 41:56
  Speaker 16: You know, most Democrats think that Joe Biden was one
• 41:59
  Speaker 16: hell of a president. And most historians agree with that, too.
• 42:02
  Speaker 16: In fact, last year, he was ranked 14th best.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: 14th.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: That's Christy Jackson.
• 42:08
  Speaker 6: That's Christy Jackson.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. I've never seen that person. Often frequent tweeter.
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: First time, long time.
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: And last up, we have Olivia Nuzzi and Ryan Lizza, basically.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: We all know it.
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: Remind me what the category is. Most irritating discourse.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: For me personally, it's abundance because the stakes couldn't be lower.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: It's endless.
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: Oh, someone doesn't care about housing stock.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: And it's just so fucking pedantic and boring. I could
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: not care less.
• 42:40
  Speaker 5: You think the stakes couldn't be lower in a category
• 42:42
  Speaker 5: that includes Ryan Lizza and Olivia Nuncy?
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying the stakes of this argument, abundance versus anti-abundance,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: people mad at a book versus a book, the stakes
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: couldn't be lower. It's like, who gives a fuck?
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: Tommy cares about journalism. Integrity and the Mass Ted Divinity Fair.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying the Sidney Sweeney gene discourse is higher stakes.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying all of it is stupid.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: I agree with Tommy, not for the stakes thing, but
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: just because it is the most annoying to me.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: It's so stupid. It's the most annoying.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: And it's not the fault of Ezra and.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: Derek at all.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: It is the fault of the left.
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: Enjoy that.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go. A little extra poke there. There you go.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: Most of the criticisms have been completely insane and grounded
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: in nothing.
• 43:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's certainly true. Yeah, I just think
• 43:21
  Speaker 5: the Sidney Sweeney thing was stupider.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: It was funny.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: And bigger.
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: That's true.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: Bigger.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's just sort of fun.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: The Sydney Simony thing to me is like total kayfabe.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: It's manufactured. It's like plug and play culture war. The
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: abundance thing was genuine and crazy and like so angry.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: I'm like, what are you nerds fighting about? Please stop.
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: I can go along with that.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: Sure. Cool. Abundance.
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: Straight out of Arkham Asylum, it's Batman's nemeses. If they
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: were all tedious, unfuckable losers. That's right. It's the worst
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: MAGA media figure of the year award.
• 43:56
  Speaker 6: Nice.
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: Wow. I like that joke.
• 44:00
  Speaker 6: All right.
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: First up, Katie Miller. She's Stephen Miller's wife and a
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: horrible podcaster.
• 44:05
  Speaker 13: He inserted a line that says, the Miller plot.
• 44:08
  Speaker 6: Is that not coded language? Or therefore we are Jewish?
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: Next up is Benny Johnson. Benny Johnson was already featured
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: in the self-inflicted wound segment, and he had an awful
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: clip in front of alligator Alcatraz, where he was talking
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: about how awesome it was.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: Three, two, one.
• 44:36
  Speaker 10: Welcome to alligator Alcatraz. I'm getting swarmed with my mosquitoes
• 44:41
  Speaker 10: right now. And we saw at least 30 alligators on
• 44:44
  Speaker 10: our way in, driving. And there you go, ladies and gentlemen.
• 44:47
  Speaker 10: As far as the eye can see, you go in,
• 44:51
  Speaker 10: you don't come out.
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: Next up is Tucker Carlson, Tommy's pal. He had an
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: up and down year where he ripped apart Ted Cruz
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: in one of the most satisfying interviews ever, showing that
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: he's capable of doing that. And then gave the softest,
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: gentle embrace of neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. Let's take a listen.
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: the main challenge to that, a big challenge to that
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: is organized Jewry in America.
• 45:12
  Speaker 13: It's the most popular self-evidently true idea you could have.
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: Don't let foreign powers, especially tiny ones far away, control
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: your country.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Like, of course not.
• 45:23
  Speaker 15: Hmm.
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: There's Nick Fuentes himself. He's a gross neo-Nazi, racist, anti-Semite, misogynist,
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: and he had a huge year, unfortunately. And if you
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: dig into it a little bit, he's just a huge loser.
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: Here's a rare interview where he didn't get sucked off
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: the whole time by the interviewer.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ.
• 45:40
  Speaker 6: Just to clear up one of the many theories about you,
• 45:42
  Speaker 6: I have no idea what the answer is, and you
• 45:44
  Speaker 6: haven't got an answer. But are you actually attracted to women?
• 45:48
  Speaker 6: I am attracted to women. You're not gay?
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: No.
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: But I will say that women are very difficult to
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: be around.
• 45:57
  Speaker 6: So there's that. And do you think they should have
• 46:00
  Speaker 6: the right to vote? I do not. No, absolutely not.
• 46:05
  Speaker 6: They should stay at home? Well, yeah, absolutely. So basically,
• 46:11
  Speaker 6: you're just a misogynist old dinosaur, aren't you? Have you
• 46:13
  Speaker 6: ever had sex? No, absolutely not.
• 46:16
  Speaker 5: Wow.
• 46:16
  Speaker 6: Says the guy who's never got laid.
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: And last is Candace Owens. She's currently at the center
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: of the MAGA media civil war for pushing conspiracies about
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: Charlie Kirk's death. She's also getting sued by the president
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: and first lady of France for repeatedly claiming that the
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: first lady is a man. Here's a clip of Candace
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: Owens with one of the Tate brothers.
• 46:36
  Speaker 17: It's not a coincidence that Justin Trudeau is gay.
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: Obama, gay.
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: Zelensky, gay.
• 46:41
  Speaker 17: Emmanuel Macron, gay and married to a trans man who
• 46:45
  Speaker 17: molested him when he was a child. And that despite...
• 46:49
  Speaker 17: The overwhelming evidence. For me, the litmus test now is
• 46:52
  Speaker 17: like Brigitte McCrone. I'm like, if you want to figure
• 46:54
  Speaker 17: out who is a fraud in media, there's no way
• 46:57
  Speaker 17: to read that six-part series and go through it and.
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: Come out of it being like, no, totally legit.
• 47:03
  Speaker 5: These are just rumors.
• 47:04
  Speaker 17: It's like one picture of yourself in your first 30
• 47:07
  Speaker 17: years of living, please.
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: Show me her brother.
• 47:10
  Speaker 5: Where's your brother?
• 47:11
  Speaker 6: Where is he?
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: I'll show you my brother.
• 47:13
  Speaker 10: Wow.
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: Wow.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: This is a tough category. Is it the worst? What
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: is the category?
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: It's overall worst.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: Overall worst.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Okay. Okay.
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: So if it's just like worst impact in the world,
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: it's probably Nick Fuentes, right?
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: I would argue like Nick Fuentes being dragged into the
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: mainstream sort of MAGA discourse or even Piers Morgan is
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: like one of the worst things that's happened in a
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: long time.
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: It can't be Katie Miller.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: No.
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: Having a bad podcast is not really the worst thing
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: you can do.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Benny's been a tool forever. Tucker's been Tucker forever. Candice...
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: She genuinely lost her fucking mind.
• 47:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but I think that she's lost her mind so
• 47:47
  Speaker 5: much that she's getting kind of cordoned off. I think
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: Fuentes is dangerous. Nick Fuentes hasn't lost his mind, which
• 47:52
  Speaker 5: is the problem. Yeah, I think it's between, for me,
• 47:53
  Speaker 5: Tucker and Nick Fuentes, because Tucker is also kind of
• 47:56
  Speaker 5: acting as kind of a gateway to this stuff.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: And he has more, and I do think he still
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: has more reach. So I might say Tucker, but I'm
• 48:03
  Speaker 5: fine either way.
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: I think Nick Fuentes.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: Fuentes.
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: Fuentes wins. I get what you're saying, Lovett. I was
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: thinking Tucker needs to go in because he kind of
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: is a big part of Fuentes' rise this year.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: Pod Save America is brought to you by UNHCR, the
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: UN Refugee Agency. Displacement at its highest level since World
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: War II. More people have been forced to flee than
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: at any time in recorded history. UNHCR can only reach
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: half of those facing life-threatening emergencies due to funding cuts.
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: Humanitarian aid cuts are forcing UNHCR to make impossible choices
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: about who receives help. As wars escalate in Ukraine, Sudan,
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: and elsewhere, the number of refugees is at a record high,
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: just as the help they need is vanishing. Sick children
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: suffering from dehydration and disease can't get access to clean water.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: Sick and elderly populations are unable to get medical care.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: Families arrive at overcrowded camps where diseases like cholera are spreading. UNHCR,
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: the UN Refugee Agency, has operations in over 130 countries worldwide.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: Donations are critical in funding aid to save lives across
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  Speaker 2: the globe. Once a donation is made, relief can reach
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  Speaker 2: cold nights of winter.
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  Speaker 1: Donate at un.org.
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  Speaker 2: Refugees.org slash pod to help save lives. Help families survive
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  Speaker 2: the deadly winter ahead. Donate at UNrefugees.org slash pod.
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: All right, this is a downer one. Worst Trump moment
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: of the year. Just going to whip through. There are
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: so many bad ones, but what was actually his worst
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: moment of the year? I'm trying to just make it.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: Worst for the country.
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and maybe worse for the world.
• 50:02
  Speaker 6: Oh, for the world.
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: But not like worse for him.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but.
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: Ambushing Zelensky at the White House, number one. Seacott and
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: Alligator Alcatraz in his prisons. Sending troops to American cities
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: like D.C. and Chicago. Doge and cutting USAID. And as
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: we noted before, basically everything with vaccines, which we don't
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: know how big that's going to be.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: This is tough.
• 50:28
  Speaker 15: Huh.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: This is really hard.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: I don't think it's Zelensky.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: No. And I don't think it.
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, the USAID stuff has probably has led to
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: the most death and destruction.
• 50:40
  Speaker 5: I think it's a combination of it being the most
• 50:42
  Speaker 5: destructive just on the kind of on the numbers, plus
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: the kind of socializing us to like a lawless administration
• 50:49
  Speaker 5: that doesn't have to distribute the money Congress has spent
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: and turning that into like an actual debate and allowing
• 50:56
  Speaker 5: Trump to use it as a cudgel in government shutdowns.
• 50:59
  Speaker 5: I think all in all, that has been the most
• 51:00
  Speaker 5: dangerous thing he's done.
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just think it's it's tough, though, because The
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: abuse in Seacott and Allegory Alcatraz and all that has
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: been quite significant, but it's not death.
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: None of these are good.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: None of them are good. Let's vote on it. It's USAID.
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: And he got turned back on the Seacott thing.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, USAID. They are out, yeah. USAID.
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: Okay, USAID. The last category before we get to best
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: in show, worst take by a Pod Save America host.
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: You guys have graciously offered to self-report yourselves after you
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: guys got so defensive about your bad takes last year.
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: Uh they weren't bad.
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: Uh are you ready john favreau you're up first.
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: Oh well this was hard because my takes are awesome
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: so i think my overall take that the government shutdown
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: should have been about damn it That was mine too.
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: You thought it should be about healthcare.
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: No, no, no. You wrote an entire essay, so you
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: deserve this category.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: It was more than a tweet. I thought it should
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: not be about healthcare. I thought it should be about
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: something in the authoritarian category. You were kind of an
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: everything bagel. The ICE detention, mostly around immigration. I was
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: hoping for something around immigration. No, that was bad. I
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: was going to do a corollary and It's more controversial,
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: but I also think that they reopened the government at
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: the right time. Oh, interesting. I think that the criticism...
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: Is that.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: I think that if we had helped.
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: So wait, your really bad take is they opened at
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: the wrong time or your bad take was that they
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: didn't open at the wrong time?
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: My bad take was that the criticism of the time
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: that like, oh, the Democrats caved and this is the
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: worst thing ever, blah, blah, blah. It's like, I actually
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: think that it was... If we were in a... I
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: don't think they would have gotten anything else by waiting
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: any longer. And I think right now... The worst thing
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: that has happened from the government shutdown and then reopening
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: the government is not getting what we wanted on healthcare,
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: which I don't think that would have changed anyway. And
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: I think politically, any argument that it was bad politically
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: is just now proven to be wrong because Democrats have
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: only done better and Republicans have only done worse since
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: the shutdown.
• 53:13
  Speaker 5: I think you can also, by the way, add, this
• 53:14
  Speaker 5: is going to be a subset for me, but I
• 53:16
  Speaker 5: think you can also add that we all were like, oh,
• 53:18
  Speaker 5: and all you got was a vote on subsidies and
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: And I actually do think the political value of getting
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: that vote on subsidies turned out to be more than
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: we thought.
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: Everyone was like, oh, it's just a vote.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: What could it do?
• 53:28
  Speaker 5: But it actually turned into a whole political moment in
• 53:30
  Speaker 5: which they had to come up with an alternative to
• 53:32
  Speaker 5: put it against it. It ended up actually being a
• 53:34
  Speaker 5: bigger deal to get that vote than I think people
• 53:35
  Speaker 5: acknowledged at the time, myself included.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Who's up next?
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: John Lovett.
• 53:42
  Speaker 5: So I had a feeling we were going to talk
• 53:44
  Speaker 5: about the shutdown. And so I did the health care
• 53:47
  Speaker 5: being the right path for the shutdown, I think, was
• 53:50
  Speaker 5: something I came to late.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: As in today.
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: But what I was going to say is this was actually, I.
• 54:00
  Speaker 5: Remember when Mamdani announced and I actually was having a,
• 54:05
  Speaker 5: this is, I'm just earning points inside of my relationship
• 54:08
  Speaker 5: where Ari was like, Mamdani is going to do really well.
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: I really think he can win. And I remember feeling
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: really nervous. It was like, oh fuck, this is the
• 54:16
  Speaker 5: person they're going to put up against Cuomo? Like, Cuomo sucks.
• 54:19
  Speaker 5: Like he's going to like, that makes me really nervous
• 54:20
  Speaker 5: that someone like Cuomo is going to be able to win.
• 54:22
  Speaker 5: And I was too, and I was too cynical.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Can I follow on that? Cause mine is adjacent to that.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: Mine wasn't in like a tweet. It was in a meeting.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: I think we all talked about whether we should book
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: Zoran Mamdani in a meeting. And I was like, no,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: cause this guy's never going to win. There's a thousand
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: people in that race. And then we're gonna have to
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: have all of them on. No one wants to interview
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: Andrew Cuomo because he's a total piece of shit. And
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: in hindsight, Not the best take, since especially if I've
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: been paying attention to the race, I would have known
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: that Andrew Cuomo was doing zero interviews, and that wouldn't
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: have been an issue. So, related.
• 54:54
  Speaker 6: And Dan?
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: So, my original take was, John's take was, I think
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: I was, yours take was, it should be on these things.
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: And my take was that making it just about healthcare
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: was a mistake, and I disagree with that choice.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I agree with you and.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was more of a, yeah.
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: Like I understood why they did it, but I thought
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: that was a strategic error. I was sort of in
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: the Chris Murphy camp there. Yeah, that's where I was.
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: And that was 100% wrong. They were right. Schumer and
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: Jeffries were 100% right about that. And like all the
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: data shows that they've made healthcare affordability a highly salient issue,
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: which is a very, like just changing the direction of
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: the issue of conversation in America is almost impossible for
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: a part of the minority, and they did it. So
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: full kudos to them. So I think my other... take
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: is that, I'm doing this on the fly here, but
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: where I was wrong earlier in this year is, like,
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: you and I have this conversation many times on the pod,
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: but being very sort of dismissive of the people who
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: are saying affordability, affordability, affordability. That, like, that had the set, like,
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: the sort of the data nerd argument message testing that
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: affordability is a thing. And My argument against it was like, yes,
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: obviously everyone cares about affordability, but it's sort of impossible
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: to make affordability the central issue in politics because it's
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: not the sort of culture identity issue that drives discourse.
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: And so that's why always the immigration stuff, just the
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: general authoritarian anti-democracy stuff always trended more on social, got
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: more coverage. But like Mondani showed that you can, if
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: you are smart and good, make affordability the signature issue.
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: And the shutdown showed that if you are smart and good,
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: you can make affordability the central issue. And that we
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: have to, instead of being so dismissive of the idea
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: that you can't sort of make, like alter the political weather,
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: is we have to be more aggressive and think about
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: how to actually alter the political weather and make the
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: issues we care about front and center.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: I will say we've got a huge boost there from
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump himself, because if you did not have the
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: insane Trump corruption, the tariffs, the big, beautiful bill, and
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: refusing to extend the Obamacare subsidies, I don't know that
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: you could have made affordability in a national issue as
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: big as, Mamdani obviously could have in New York because
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: it's a smaller race, but.
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, obviously you gotta, like, you have to operate.
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: We had some real help.
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: You have to operate in the political environment around you,
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: but basically Democrats were able to make Trump change his
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: message and just like step on a rake repeatedly talking
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: about affordability for like a month now. And that's a
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: pretty impressive thing.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. On September 14th, I tweeted, Drake May is good,
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: but the Patriots are not. The Patriots are now 11-2,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: number one in the AFC East, and tied for the
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: best record in the AFC.
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: Are we doing bad sports takes? Because I got a
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: lot of those.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: I just brought another one.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: Leavitt and Tomek both did bad takes that are private.
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: They didn't even go with public takes.
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: Well, I would say that, like, we all— That was
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: a good public take. I mean, that's fucking public now.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. That's why I'm glad you did that.
• 57:52
  Speaker 5: I figured we were going to end up talking about
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: the shutdown, and I think, like, Whatever though, if you
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: go back and listen, we thought through every single side.
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: I think we were pretty even-handed about the whole thing,
• 58:01
  Speaker 5: but I think fundamentally we just underestimated that choosing healthcare
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: could work.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: As well as it did.
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: We all did, I did, everybody did.
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: This is a take I haven't really workshopped yet, but
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: maybe Chuck Schumer was right back in April?
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know. It was more about how we did
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: it thing.
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: Everything he said would happen, Did happen.
• 58:24
  Speaker 5: That Trump's approval would drop. It would allow Republicans would
• 58:26
  Speaker 5: feel once he went below 40.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: Well, the shutdown helped kill the approval rating.
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: And then it dropped below 40. Also, that he's not
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: going to give. He's just going to lay off a
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: bunch of people, do a bunch of terrible things. And
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: you're not going to get what you want.
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: So James Carville's op-ed about rolling over and playing.
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: But that wasn't right, though, because like the one other lesson, too,
• 58:47
  Speaker 5: for me, like and just in how this unfolded is
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: we spend like what's the Democratic message going to be?
• 58:51
  Speaker 5: And like the message is obviously really important. But like
• 58:55
  Speaker 5: you have to pick the right fights because the fight
• 58:57
  Speaker 5: is the message vehicle, like whatever the like the fight
• 58:59
  Speaker 5: becomes the thing that gets the coverage and gets Trump
• 59:01
  Speaker 5: to respond. And that's what people pick up on. We've
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: had people doing Federalist Papers on the Senate floor and
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: the House floor for months, but then you have a
• 59:11
  Speaker 5: group of members film a video and they say, don't
• 59:13
  Speaker 5: follow illegal orders and then you kick up a real
• 59:15
  Speaker 5: debate and that like gets it more salient. So I
• 59:17
  Speaker 5: think it's about the fight that they picked and they
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: chose not to do that in April.
• 59:20
  Speaker 11: Yeah.
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: That's the, that is the argument and why I think
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: Schumer was ultimately wrong was you had to have a fight.
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: Like the, the, he was right about what the outcome
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: would be if he went down that fight, but the
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: actual shutdown show that having the fight, even if you
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: do not win the substantive thing you're going for still
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: has value. Like fighting is better as I'm fighting and
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: losing is almost always better than not fighting. So who's
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: fallen on the sword? Tommy's Patriots take is obviously the worst.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: Objectively the worst. Patriots are fucking awesome.
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, let's, should we?
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: Drake May is really, half my tweet is right.
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: By the time this podcast comes out, they may have
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: lost like 56 to nothing to the Bills on Sunday.
• 59:58
  Speaker 5: Hmm.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 12: Hmm.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: I'm leaving it to you guys. I mean, I'm not sure. Tommy,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: you're obviously the most quantifiably wrong. And then you and
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: Lovett are also, you know, you were also quantifiably wrong
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: about Mamdani. So on aggregate, you know.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: I'll take it.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: All right, there you go.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: Zoran can't win. Patriots are bad. Neither can the Patriots.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: Brutal takes.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: Soren and the Patriots suck is Tommy's take.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: Brutal. Brutal takes. Put that on a quote card for me.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 5: I was going to say, actually, we could just say
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 5: we were collectively wrong about the Schumer strategy on the shutdown.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's the way to do it. I
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: think that's the way to do it. That works.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: All of you about Schumer?
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: Okay. Send this right to him.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: If the staff could do a dramatic reading of this
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: part of it and send it to him, that'd be good.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, someone do Chuck Schumer.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 5: Just print out the transcode of this and just put
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 5: it next to his bagel on Saturday.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 12: Okay.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: Greenblatt.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: Too much?
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: I was going to say, the way the staff's been
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: doing their impressions, the ADL's going to come after whoever
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: does that impression.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: You're next, pal. Very good point.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 12: All right.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: It's time.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: The Best in Show Award for the Pundi of 2025.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: From the political scandal group, we have the Epstein scandal
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: as our scandal of the year. From the fluffer group,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: we have Stephen Miller. He's the worst Trump administration official.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: From the beef group, it's Trump versus Elon. From the
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: best pod Save America beef group, it's John versus J.D.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 6: Vance.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: The most corrupt group, it's the corruption of the DOJ.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: The most lib out moment of the year was the
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: off-year elections. The most irritating discourse was abundance. Mega media
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: figure was Fuentes. worst Trump move was USAID. And the
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: worst PSA take is all of you about Chuck Schumer's
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: strategy on the shutdown. What's the pundi of the year?
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: This is like, so it's so hard to pick among
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: these different categories.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: This is what our process thing was going to be.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: Because it worked better in the take version of this
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: because they're all takes.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: I know, I know. That's the truth. If I may.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: Have you worked on any criteria, Elisha?
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: If I may, it's just like I listened back to
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: last year's show and an election really structures your year
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: where you have these discrete moments, takes, results, that kind
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: of thing. This was just a one note year. It
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: was kind of getting punched in the face over and
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: over again until we had that off year win.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: Elijah, professionals make content. They don't make excuses.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Honestly, just for pure comedy, the funniest thing we
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: could do would be to create a graphic about this
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: and then have the winner out of this list just
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: to be the abundance discourse of all these things. It's like,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: name that as the worst. It's so stupid.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: It's like, Yeah, like, this is what's hard to pick
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: about this. I don't even know if we're doing worst, best.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: What are we even saying here?
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: Hey, what is more? Trump attacking the DOJ? Abundance? Or
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: John tweeting a GD van? Or Chuck Schumer being right?
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: There's no best. There's no... I think we should just
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: go Epstein. Sure. I don't even know what we're doing.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 14: Yes.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: Clear favorite.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Clear favorite in the whatever the final category is.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: Of the year. Pundi.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 4: Pundi of the year.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: Epstein gets the- The Epstein scandal. Epstein didn't win himself.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: The defining political thing of 2025 was the Epstein scandal.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: Feels right. It feels right.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: Thank you to the PSA team for your- With abundance
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: coming in close second. Thanks, Hallie, for writing those great jokes.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 5: That is interesting about it, though. We can stop. But
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 5: it's like, what was the most defining story from that
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 5: list of stories of 2025? Was it Epstein? Was it
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 5: the midterms? What was like the, what defined.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: The year more?
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: I actually think that the, I mean, this is the
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: living out thing, but I think that the off-year election
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: probably has set, has changed more about the future than
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: anything else.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: Should we do 2025 elections?
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 16: I do.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: Why not? Sure.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: Pundi of the year.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: Pundi of the year, off-year elections.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 5: The year ended better than it started. As I fucking said, Elijah,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 5: through your shit-eating fucking smirk.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: He quickly moved past his bad take.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: He goes on the attack.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: I'll tell that to every.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: Is that not another lesson of the era?
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: We'll tell that to every kid who has measles, but.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 14: Not saying it's all good not saying we're not gonna
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 14: get our hair must a little bit not saying there
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 14: won't be some fucking setbacks like the measles making a comeback.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: Pundi of the year goes to living out over the
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: 2025 elections credit to the psa team for your wonderful voiceover.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: What else do you expect from the pod bros beautiful
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: what gives.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: You hope Alright, which one do you guys want to
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 4: take us on?
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: 2025, what gives you hope award?
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: Alright, who's going to close us out with a reading
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: from abundance?
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 5: No, we should do a reading from American Canto.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: Alright, that's all for the pundies. Thank you, Elijah. Thank you,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: our staff for Whatever that was. Hopefully we can keep
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: you all and you're not going to leave to go
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: join SAG.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: Fortunately for us, Hollywood's dying.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: Do some voiceovers.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, the consolidation will reduce the number of opportunities for
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 5: some of these actors, unfortunately.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: We'll be back in your feed next week with a
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: holiday mailbag and some New Year's resolutions.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: We're going to do those too.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 6: Hell yeah.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: We'll see you then. Beautiful.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 11: Bye everyone.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com slash
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: please consider leaving us a review. That helps boost this
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pod Save
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: America is a Cricket Media production. Our producers are David Toledo,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: Emma Illich-Frank, and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: Austin Fisher is our senior producer. Reid Cherlin is our
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: executive editor. Adrian Hill is our head of news and politics.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Matt DeGroat is our head of production.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Carol Pelleviv,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our production staff is proudly
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 10: Thank you.