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"Dine Kampf." · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Thanks for watching!
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:22
  Speaker 4: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: On today's show, Donald Trump gets dinner with a Nazi,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: a new special counsel to investigate his crimes, and his
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Twitter account back.
• 0:31
  Speaker 4: Dude, iced coffee at 3 p.m.? My God, that's a
• 0:33
  Speaker 4: bull move.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: I had to get up early.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's just an iced coffee, Tommy. I
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: think there's probably a few shots of espresso in there.
• 0:39
  Speaker 4: Just a cold brew.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: Just an afternoon cold brew.
• 0:41
  Speaker 4: Sorry I interrupted you. It is 3 p.m.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: I had to interview Raphael Warnock this morning.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: There's the segue. There we go. He needed it because
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: at 9 a.m. this morning, John Lovett interviewed Senator Raphael
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Warnock about his December 6th runoff against Herschel Walker. You'll
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: hear that a little bit later. And then after that,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Elijah Cohn is back for another round of Take Appreciator.
• 1:02
  Speaker 4: So many takes in the queue.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: A lot of takes in the queue. But first, check
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: out our new limited series podcast that we released with
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  Speaker 2: Duolingo called Radiolingo, which is hosted by audio journalist Ahmed
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• 1:26
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• 1:28
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• 1:30
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• 1:47
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• 2:01
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• 2:06
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• 2:17
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• 2:22
  Speaker 2: he wins. So, go help out. All right, let's get
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: to the news. While you all may have been enjoying
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Thanksgiving dinner with friends and family, the Republican frontrunner for
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: 2024 was at his beach club breaking bread with a
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: white supremacist Holocaust denier named Nick Fuentes. Nick Fuentes came
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: with Kanye West, who recently threatened to go, quote, DEFCON
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: 3 on Jewish people, along with other anti-Semitic comments, lost
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: most of his endorsement deals as a result, and then
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: announced a 2024 presidential bid of his own. Trump later
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: denied knowing Fuentes, but still has not condemned him or
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: his views, and most Republican politicians have been completely silent
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: about the dinner. So welcome back, guys. Good to be back.
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: It is gone on, like, not... remarked upon enough that
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: it was Thanksgiving dinner.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: It was Tuesday.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: It was like your Tuesday before Nazi dinner before Thanksgiving. Okay, okay, okay, gotcha.
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: I thought you were saying it was on Thanksgiving.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: It's like your high school reunion is Wednesday night.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: It's Nazi Tuesday, Thanksgiving Thursday, Cyber Monday.
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: Is that how it works?
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: I think that's right.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: You know, not enough is also being made of the
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: fact that, uh, Kanye went to DEFCON 3 with the Jews,
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: which just means increase in force readiness above what's required
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: for normal readiness.
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: So you were impressed.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: You went one beyond. He tweeted DEFCON 3, which is
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: not DEFCON.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: It's not DEFCON.
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: A lot of people gave him the sick, which I
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: think is presumptuous that he didn't mean death instead of death.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is also true. Anyway, let's start with what
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: we know about how and why this dinner came together
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: and what actually transpired. during this meal at Mar-a-Lago. Tommy?
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: So, with the caveat that every source, every narrator in
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: the story is completely horrible and unreliable, it seems like
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: the purpose of the dinner was that Kanye wanted to
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: ask Trump to be his VP, right?
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, that is correct.
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: Okay, I'm just making sure that I'm not making this up.
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: Kanye wanted to ask Trump to be his VP, so
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: he asked for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, and he traveled
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: with a neo-Nazi incel named Nick Fuentes. We'll get into
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: that character later. Trump says the dinner was supposed to
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: be one-on-one with Kanye, but we know it ended up
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: being Trump, Kanye, a former Trump staffer named Karen Giorno,
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: who now works for Kanye, an alt-right racist dipshit named
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: Milo Yiannopoulos, who got fired from his job at Breitbart
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: in 2017 for supporting pedophilia. You can't make any of the...
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: I didn't make that up. You can't make any of
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: this up. And Kanye, the way this all went down
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: is apparently that Kanye... We know what we know about
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: this mostly from videos released by Kanye on Twitter that
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: were since deleted. We know that they all dine together.
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: Kanye says Trump got mad at him when he asked
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: him to be his VP, but that Trump really hit
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: it off with Nick Fuentes. Milo Yiannopoulos said Trump was
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: dazzled by Fuentes, the Nazi. They got in a fight
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: after the VP questioned. Fuentes told Trump that his announcement
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: speech sucked, that he needs to go back to the
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: 2016 team and vibe. They weren't doing enough for the
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: January 6th rioters who got arrested. And it ended with
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: Trump being mad at Kanye for saying that he's going
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: to run for president and saying, I'll beat you. I'm
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: going to kick your ass. Calling Kim Kardashian some sort
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: of vulgarity that was bleeped. Of all of this story,
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: the part that they bleeped out was the specific swear
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: words Trump used and seen.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: These are people that should be putting flyers on cars
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: outside of baseball games. The only reason we're discussing this
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: is because they're meeting with the former president of the
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: United States. I'll be your VP. No, you be my VP.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Also one of the most successful rappers of all time.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: And a former president of the United States.
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: And some trolls.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: There's a movie with James Garner and Jack Lemmon. called
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: My Fellow Americans, where they both go on the run
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: because they're being framed for a crime by, I believe,
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: the current president. Spoiler for the movie My Fellow Americans
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: from the 90s. And at the end of the movie,
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: they end up in quite a little argument over who's
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: going to be the presidential candidate, who's going to be
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: the vice presidential candidate.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: I think it's a remake. Remake and the offing.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: I just can't believe how stupid this is.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: It is impossibly stupid. This is low on the list
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: of concerns, but I do love the conversation between Trump
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: and Fuentes about Trump's announcement speech and how Fuentes likes
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: the old stuff and he just wants him to riff
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: more because he said his supporters, meaning the Nazi ones,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: the white supremacist ones, they really like when Trump just
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: goes off the cuff and they thought the announcement speech
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: was boring, which also is just real shot at Stephen
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Miller there. And it must be hard for Stephen Miller
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: because Nick Fuentes, that's gotta be someone he admires.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: You know, in the West Wing, when Leo wrote, let
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: Bartlett be Bartlett on a little napkin, what if it
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: had a little swastika on it?
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: That's kind of what happened, you're right.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Lovett, who is Nick Fuentes? And do you believe that
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Trump didn't know who he was? Does it even matter?
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: So, you know, look, so he's a Nazi. And, you know,
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: that term gets bandied about. But he's just a Nazi.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: He's a racist. He's an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier. He's pro-segregation.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: He's for banning contraception, banning not just gay marriage but
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: gay relationships. He wants Jews out of the country. Openly
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: hopes to create what he describes as Taliban rule in
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: the U.S. He calls the Taliban conservative and religious and
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: America as liberal and godless. He's been kicked off of
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: every social media platform, even some of the far-right platforms.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: He's been ejected from some of the most heinous right-wing
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: organizations in the country and Is it Charlottesville?
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: He was in Charlottesville. And then he called it an
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: incredible event right after Heather Heyer was murdered.
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: This is the lowest of the hates women.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: Pro-violence, hates women, said rape isn't a big deal.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: Other than dining with Jeffrey Epstein and the bad guy
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: from Room, you can't get lower. This is the absolute
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: lowest of the low dregs of human society meeting with
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: the former president of Mar-a-Lago. You don't get lower.
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: This is the bottom. Yeah, for sure.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: What about the, what about like, I didn't know who
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: he was.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: First of all, there's a long list of people Trump
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: has known who he claims not to know. You can
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: look them up one by one. So people he has
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: claimed not to know. David Duke, Lev Parnas, Prince Andrew,
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, right? You can just make the list.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: He claims not to know people when he'd rather not
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: know them than denounce them. It also doesn't matter. Either
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: you were willingly dining, having a Nazi dinner party. as
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: you described before recorded, or your organization is so feckless
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: and stupid, you have a kind of deranged celebrity traipsing
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: through your home, bringing whoever he wants to meet with you,
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: the former president, and there's no one checking or caring
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: enough about your time.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Walking by the place where you stash all your nuclear secrets.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: And by the way, another point, you've told us that
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: this building is quite secure. This is where you keep
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: the documents you couldn't flush. So it doesn't matter.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter because it's now been how many days
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: since the story and he's put out how many truths.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: Won't denounce him.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: And will not denounce the guy or his views. That's
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: all that matters, that he refuses to denounce him.
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, here's my take. Fuentes is very much
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: on the MAGA radar screen because he gets kicked out
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: of CPAC and he makes a scene about it. He
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: did this event with Marjorie Taylor Greene. So he's really
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: a known quality on the right. I think the left is,
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: we're not as familiar with him, but like they know
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: who he is because he trolls them, including the TPUSA kids.
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: There were videos going around Twitter of Kanye walking through
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: the Miami airport with Fuentes. Now that Trump is running
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: for president again, I imagine the Secret Service processes kick
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: up a notch. including at Mar-a-Lago. So someone saw this
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: guy's ID. Someone knew he was... There has to be
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: some level of vetting.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: One would hope.
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: It's not the Secret Service's job to keep untoward people
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: away from Trump, but there's some sort of process. And
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: Fuentes got verified on Truth Social back in February. So
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: I don't believe Trump. I agree with you that no
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: matter what, either you dazzled a Nazi that you didn't
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: know or you knowingly had dinner with one, neither is
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: a good story. But I do think overtly seeking out
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: political advice... from a neo-Nazi tells you something pretty scary
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: about where the campaign is headed. Fuentes thinks Trump kind
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: of knew who he was, but not the extent of it.
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: That's what he said on his little green screen show.
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: I just think, like, it just takes you from a
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: phase of dog whistles to, like, white power neo-Nazi movement
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: has a literal seat at the table.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: I could see him absolutely knowing who he was. I
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: could also see his pathological narcissism preventing him from knowing
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: who anyone is except for him. He's not asking a
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: lot of questions. But either way, it's like, It happened.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: The dinner happened. You were impressed by him. He was
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: impressed by you. You then see the news that he's
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: a neo-Nazi and you see all and then you don't
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: say anything about it. That shows you where the campaign's going.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: The reason he didn't say anything about it is because
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: he wants his supporters. He wants his supporters to vote
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: for him.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: And the more he is isolated from some of the
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: mainstream Republican kind of like the Wall Street Journal, the
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: more he is seen as trying, the more he is
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: painted himself as an outsider, kind of running against the
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: people that want Ron DeSantis in, the fewer guardrails there
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: will be and the more he will feel reliant upon
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: and afraid to alienate the worst elements of the right wing.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: The other just, it's also- And.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: We know this is also true from Maggie Haberman's book
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: when she reported that he said this about the David
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Duke thing, where she goes, oh, those people vote.
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: Oh, for sure.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Remember, those people vote. And David Duke supported, meaning David
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Duke's racist supporters.
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: And I like at the end that he should have
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: denounced it. But I think like I think he knowingly
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: had dinner with this guy and he and he's worried
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: about his right flank. And so he's bringing them in
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: more and more and more. The worst part about all
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: of this is like we're all talking about in the
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: Trump context because we're talking about politics. But these little
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: neo-Nazis are having the best week they've had in a
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: long time. Their ideas are spreading everywhere on social media.
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: They feel important. They feel emboldened. This is like hugely
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: impactful for the white power neo-Nazi movement either way. It's
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: like a really incredibly damaging event no matter what.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Wouldn't this be a great opportunity for a Ron DeSantis
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: or any Republican who wants to rid the party of
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump to take a shot at him over this?
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Like we have now heard something from Bill Cassidy. Senator
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Cassidy tweeted something out that mentioned Trump's name. Mitt Romney
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: had a very strong statement. Susan Collins said something, Susan Collins-y,
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: but it was good.
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: Christie was good, right?
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Christie was good. But then there's a small selection of
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: Republicans who's just said anti-Semitism is bad, like Mike Pompeo,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: without putting Trump's name in it or the context of
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: why they're saying it.
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: Apropos of nothing.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Apropos of nothing, right, yeah.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: That's what Ronald McDaniel did that too.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Ronald McDaniel did that too. But then you've got
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: like nothing from Ron DeSantis, nothing from most major Republican politicians,
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: nothing from Kevin McCarthy, nothing from Mitch McConnell. Like what, what,
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: why do you think that is?
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: I really tried to think about this from the perspective
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: of a potential political opponent in 2024. I obviously don't
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: have my finger on the pulse of the Republican primary electorate.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: You listen to Steve Bannon's War Room. What the hell?
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: Not in a couple of days. But I guess if
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: you're DeSantis, maybe you're thinking if you're going to go
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: after Trump, it's got to be part of like a
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: sustained messaging effort. You can't just sort of like slap
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: the guy and back away because Trump is going to punch, punch, punch, punch, punch.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: And.
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: I think ultimately what we saw from the midterms is
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: the message against Trump that seems to be the most
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: impactful right now is just about losing, that he's a
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: drag on the ticket, that he'll hurt them and they'll
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: lose to Biden again. So maybe you keep this in
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: your back pocket until you're ready to make it part
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: of that broader case. I want to be clear that
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: I don't believe anything I'm saying. I'm just strawmanning here.
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: But like, yeah, I would absolutely, there seems to me
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: no cleaner shot than condemning dining with Nazis.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: Well, I think the problem is, the point that Trump
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: is making is not wrong. These are a voting part
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: of the Republican base. And a lot of these, like
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: if you're going to pick a fight with Donald Trump,
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: you want to do it on an axis that, as
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: you're saying, could be sustained over the campaign. And you're
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: not going to want to say he's too extreme. You
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: want to say he's incompetent. You want to say he's
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: a loser. I think there's a way to attack Donald
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: Trump on this. There's an incredibly damaging, destructive, losing move.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: But I think for a lot of these guys, they
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: just have two settings. With Trump, he's either too powerful
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: or too irrelevant to engage, right?
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: That's it.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: It's either they're afraid of him, so they don't want
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: to bring it up, or they think, oh, this is
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: the Trump problem, we'll take care of itself once again.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: And so they don't have to do it.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: He's self-destructing.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: And that's sort of been their two settings for avoiding
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: commenting on Trump for a long time.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's such a too cute by half kind of thing.
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: For sure.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Because it's like, unless we're understanding this is just not
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: thinking about running, right? Like maybe they're all gonna, I mean,
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: it won't do it, right?
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: He does inaugural in the shower.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Right, exactly. So therefore, it's like, you're not gonna be
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: able to dodge this question until you announce for president.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: You're not gonna be able to just keep it in
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: your back pocket. Like someone's gonna ask you a question
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: and then, what are you going to say? It's like
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: it's not... This is dining with the Nazi. There's no
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: halfway on this one. There's no gray area. You're not
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: going to be able to get around this one. You're
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: going to say, I didn't see the tweet.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: It really is also like... they asked Biden about it
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: and Biden said, you don't want to know what I think.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: And it's like, yes, we do.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: First of all, that reporter is asking you, they do
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: want to know what you think. What are you going
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: to come on too strong? It's a fucking Nazi. This
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: is the, this is the, they, they are the villains.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: They are the villains of every movie. I'm reading this book,
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: Rise and Kill First, about the Mossad and the early
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: assassination campaigns that the Mossad ran. First 50 pages.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: You've been reading this book for a year now.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: It's a slow going.
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: It is so long.
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: It's so long.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: 700 pages. I've heard this discussion.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: Let me tell you.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Let me tell you.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: The first 50 pages, it's Holocaust survivors hunting Nazis around
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: the world. Couldn't turn the pages fast enough. 10 out
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: of 10. No notes. It's every single time. Oh, they
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: dropped the Hungarian to say in German, be quiet or
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: I'll kill you to a fucking Nazi who killed their family. Yes. Unequivocal.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: When it gets to the morally complicated parts later in
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: the history of Israel, I'm reading more slower. The point is,
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: take a shot at the fucking Nazis. Everybody loves it.
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: Well, the only people who found gray area were people
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: with political concerns, like the Zionist Organization of America. It's
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: a pro-Israel, pro-Trump group. They had just literally given him
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: an award that week. They condemned the shit out of
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: the dinner. The Republican Jewish coalition, a partisan group, only
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: condemned Kanye and Nick Fuentes and did not name Trump.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: Since you brought up the Zionist organization, did you see
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: the quote from Mort Klein, who's the longtime president? So
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: he condemns them, like you said, and then he goes,
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: this does not in any way detract from Trump's extraordinary
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: accomplishments in helping Israel.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: Un-fucking-believable.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: But then he ends with, But this does sully his
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: general pro-Israel record.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: I bet it does.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: Does it sully the record? Does it sully it a
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: little bit?
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: Trump's former ambassador to Israel said something, my friend Donald Trump,
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: you're better than this. He's not your friend? No, he's not,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: you fucking weasels. Unbelievable.
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: And then he threaded it with a second tweet where
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: he attacked Obama and spelled his name wrong.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: I do think for Kevin McCarthy, one issue is he's
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: about to put Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar back
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: on their committees after they got kicked off their committees
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: because they were hanging out with Nick Fuentes. And he
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: also doesn't have the votes he needs to be speaker.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: So that's probably why we haven't heard much from Kevin.
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, last time this happened, he had a march, you know,
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: Marjorie Taylor Greene had a march in front of the
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: Holocaust Museum and read a hostage statement.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: It's just... Well, let's talk about the Biden thing, though,
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: because I... I have to imagine this was shouted at
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Biden as he was like walking to the helicopter or something.
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: He's in Nantucket.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: He was in Nantucket. Sorry. He was he was walking
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: around and it was shouted at him. So I imagine
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: maybe he's thinking like I got to because the White
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: House then responded with a tough statement.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: But maybe they're going to I'm going to I'm guessing
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: they're going to have Biden take another go at this one.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: I hope at some point and let us know what
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: he thinks, because I'm guess usually when Joe Biden talks
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: about stuff like this, he's he's pretty good.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: You know, I mean, he's all America.
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: It's the core of his core of his candidacy.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: The democracy thing. It worked out well. Yeah. That's what
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: I heard.
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: I think Democrats should all be like, it's obviously the
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: right thing to denounce this. And I think like, you
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: gotta hammer people like this when they pop up, but
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: also there is political upside to drawing a bright line
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: in the sand here. I think the response will be,
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: what about is, um, it'll be both sides crap, but
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: that's fine. Like have the conversation.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: I would go absolutely nuts on this. I would be
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: holding press conferences. I would get every single, I would
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: ask reporters to get every single Republican on the record
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: about it. I would not let them forget it. This is, Again,
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: this is just such an easy one. It's so clear.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: You don't get issues this clear.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: The Republican frontrunner for the 2024 nomination and previous president
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: of the United States had a Nazi meet with him
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: to give him political advice, and the leaders of the
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: Republican Party are refusing to denounce it.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: It is a scandal. And then after he left, all
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: he said was, oh, I didn't know who he was.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: He's a Nazi. What do you think?
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: Nothing.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: Did Nazi that come in? That's all that he could
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: come up with.
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: Getting lost in all of this.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Episode title.
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: Is that Trump was like, yeah, I'll take the dinner
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: with Kanye right after he had very publicly said a
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: bunch of wildly anti-Semitic things.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is also, yeah. He's like, I didn't know
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: Nick Fuentes. You did know the other anti-Semitic guy who
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: showed up at the dinner.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: It's not like Kanye was on his way from a
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: bar mitzvah.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Also, like.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: Out of control.
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: Milo got kicked off of Twitter for a racist bullying campaign.
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: And then he got pushed out of the Republican Party
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: in like the MAGA world for coming out in support
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: of 13-year-old boys having relationships with adult men. I mean,
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: it's like, talk about grooming. What are we doing here?
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Also, we forgot this part, too. Nick Fuentes is there
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: with Kanye because Kanye hired him for his campaign. Nick
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Fuentes is working on Kanye West's presidential campaign.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: And I really just want to come back to the
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: moment where Kanye asked Trump, the most egomaniacal, narcissistic human
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: being in public life, would you be my running mate?
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: And the fury... That must have come from Donald Trump
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: realizing that this was the purpose of this dinner. How
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: low he had fallen.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: How disrespected he was. And then Nick Fuentes was like,
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: I like your old stuff. And Donald Trump said, according
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: to Jonathan Swan's source, he gets me. He gets me.
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: Unbelievable.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Play the hits.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: So Trump's legal troubles have also taken a turn for
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: the worse. His pal Lindsey Graham was finally forced by
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: the courts to testify before Georgia grand jury about Trump's
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: scheme to overturn the election in that state. His right-wing
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court ruled that he has to hand over all
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: of his tax returns to Congress, finally, which led Trump
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: to truth that the Supreme Court has, quote, lost its
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: standing and become nothing more than a political body. When
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: he's right, he's right.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: He's hit the nail on the head there.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: It's tough to argue. You know, broken clock. And Attorney
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to oversee
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: the criminal investigations into Trump over the nuclear secrets he
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: hid in his beach house and his attempted coup that
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: led to a violent insurrection. So let's start there. Why
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: do you guys think Garland did this? Why didn't he
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: just decide to oversee the investigations himself?
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: I take them at basically what they've said is once
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: Trump announced and once Biden had basically said he intends
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: to run, he felt he was compelled to do a
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: special prosecutor, even though he had said for a while
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: that that was not necessary, that he could run it
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: through the Justice Department. That logic hasn't really changed. The
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: logic before is the same as the logic now. But
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: I understand deciding that creates a moment where you can
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: appoint a special prosecutor. And also part of it is
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: this allows them to link the two investigations together in
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: a cleaner way because there's the January 6th investigation, there's
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: the document retention investigation, and now those both run under
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: one prosecutor.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: I mean, I've heard some experts, some experts have argued
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: that Merrick Garland should not have done this. Other legal
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: experts have argued that he had no choice but to
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: do this. Basically, the idea is like this independent prosecutor
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: can create a little bit of political space between the
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: AG and the case against the guy who's running against
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: his boss. In practice, not a lot there. The special
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: counsel still reports to the attorney general. Garland will be
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: briefed on and ultimately decide big decisions like whether or
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: not to prosecute Trump. But we'll see. I don't know.
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: There's no chance this convinces anyone politically. For sure.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think the. The best way to judge
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: this is let's imagine if he didn't do this. The
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: guidelines say the attorney general can appoint a special counsel
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: under extraordinary circumstances that include situations when an investigation would
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: raise the appearance of a conflict of interest for the department.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: So if you don't do it and someone points to
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: that and say, well, why didn't you appoint a special counsel?
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: You don't think this is a potential conflict of interest
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: for the department?
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: No.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: Your boss is running against the guy you guys are investigating?
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: It's just such a classic Norms fig leaf.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: Norms went on this one.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: You know, it is, I will say, it's sort of,
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: I think everybody's memories of this are still affected by
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: the Clinton investigations, which were under an independent counsel, which
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: was a much more strident division between the Department of
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: Justice and the powers that the independent counsel had, which
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: everyone allowed to elapse because everyone, some loudly, some quietly
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: recognized that that had gone too far. So in a
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: lot of ways, a special counsel is kind of it's
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: like it is more of a norm than anything, because
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: whether or not to prosecute still rolls up to Merrick Garland.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: And now what people are saying is Merrick Garland.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Will likely defer.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: He deferred to Durham on prosecuting. even though those were
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: ridiculous prosecutions that ultimately came to nothing, and he will
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: ultimately defer to this special prosecutor whether he wants to
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: indict or not, but we don't know.
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: And if there's a disagreement, it gets reported to Congress,
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: so it'll become public.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Right. So what are the concerns here about Merrick Garland
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: doing this? I've heard that one concern is, oh, it's
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: going to delay the investigation. So Garland said it would
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: not in any way. Jack Smith, who is the special prosecutor...
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: then put out a statement saying, absolutely not. I'm going
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: as fast as I can. Like, I'm going to just
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: pick up right where this left off. So I don't
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: think that the delay is a real issue.
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: And I've also heard people like Preet Bharara say that
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: actually like putting this all in one place kind of
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: could simplify things and speed it up.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: So we'll see.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: Unless we think like Jack Smith is a, is some
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: secret Trumper.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: Doesn't seem like it.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Doesn't seem like it. So then like, not my Jack.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: If Jack Smith doesn't think that there's a case there,
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: then there's not, then, then maybe there's not a case there.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: And listen, it's not like all of us have been
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: feeling like, uh, Merrick Garland was galloping ahead at full speed,
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: wandering around the Justice Department in like an Ebeneezer Scrooge
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: sleeping outfit with a little candle. That's how I picture him.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: That's literally how I picture Merrick Garland, with one of
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: those sleeping caps and the little gown and the candle
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: wandering around.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Who's the ghost of Christmas Future?
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: I think it's Mueller. It's Mueller being like, ah, you're fine.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: You're doing great, bud.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: See, I'm hoping this Smith guy is like kind of
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: Mueller without the rounded edges.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: That's my hope.
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: This made me just feel like America's in a rut.
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: You know what I mean?
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: You think?
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: We're watching reruns. We need some new storylines.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: Have you seen our bridges?
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: Jennifer Coolidge, she can come along to this new season,
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: but we need some new narratives.
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. I agree with that.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: She was so good last night.
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: Come on.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: say anything.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: She's good.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: As you noted, Tommy, Trump and the MAGA crew have
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: unsurprisingly attacked special prosecutor Jack Smith as a partisan political hack.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: do you think this matters at all that they're doing this?
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's, it's, I mean, he's a career prosecutor.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: He ran the public integrity division of DOJ, uh, went
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: after a bunch of corrupt politicians. And most recently Jack
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: Smith was investigating war crimes at the Hague. So like,
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: that's not a fun gig. No, but that's, that's a
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: cool one.
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: I don't think, yeah, it is cool. I mean, I
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: don't think his bio matters at all. I think what
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: was the thing we saw earlier today?
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: Like he is registered as an independent, but, but his
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: wife helped produce what? A documentary about Michelle Obama.
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: That's what they're going with.
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: I mean, some of Trump, I think, today attacked Jack
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: Smith's sister-in-law.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: His sister-in-law.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: His sister-in-law is tough. Listen, you don't have to agree
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: with your sister-in-law, famously. That's a thing. You know, you
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: fight at the table. Your sister-in-law's politics are not your own.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: I mean, listen, like, MAGA people.
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: You don't choose your sister-in-law. That's the whole thing about sisters-in-law. Famously.
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: Famously.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Love my sister-in-law.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying you don't.
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: Every NAGA person thinks this is a witch hunt. Nothing's
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: going to change that.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: One piece of potential good news for Trump is that
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: he now has his Twitter account back. Elon Musk originally
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: promised that he wouldn't reinstate any suspended accounts until he
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: convened a content moderation council that included people with diverse views. Instead,
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: he took a very scientific Twitter poll and decided to
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: allow first Trump, then Kanye West, and apparently every other
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: suspended account that hasn't, quote, broken the law or engaged
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: in egregious spam. Oddly enough, Trump has not yet tweeted
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: and continues to truth his ass off over a truth social.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: How long do you guys think that lasts? You think
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Trump can resist Twitter forever?
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: So he's stuck. He's stuck between near-term financial interests, meaning
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: the success of truth social, and then his long-term political
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: interests that I think would probably be benefited in the
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: short term, at least, by getting back on Twitter because
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: it's such a huge megaphone. But the gist for people
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: to understand is, They're trying to take Truth Social public
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: on the stock market via SPAC, a special purpose acquisition company.
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: That's basically when a SPAC is like a shell company.
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: It IPOs to raise a bunch of money, and then
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: it buys a real business that does actual things, in
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: this case, Truth Social.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: This is quote real things.
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: Quote unquote real things. If this goes through, Trump could
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: suddenly own like 80% of a three, four, maybe more
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: billion dollar company. So that's a big chunk of change,
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: but that only works- if Trump, if Truth Social maintains its, like,
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: sole piece of value, which is the place where you
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: can find Trump exclusively, or at least, I think, the
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: letter of the law, he's technically legally obligated to use
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: Truth Social first, and he can't post the same thing
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: on another platform for six hours.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: Which is an eternity for Trump.
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: But the SEC is looking into the SPAC and whether
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: it violates the securities law. So, like, that's, like, the
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: mood music here.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's a distinction here, right? There's the financial gain.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: And if Trump just started... tweeting, then the stock price
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: of the SPAC could fall because basically people are investing
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: in that SPAC thinking it's going to merge with Truth Social.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: So it's to keep the price up, but also legally
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: there's something. Now, legally though, he's legally bound to post
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: exclusively on Truth Social until July of 2023. And there's
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: also a loophole in the contract where he can tweet, quote,
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: political messaging without breaching the contract. But if he does that,
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: that could hurt the stock price.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: Well, one thing he could do. is go on Twitter
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: and tell everybody to come on over to Truth Social.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: That's where the real fun is. There's a lot of.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: Mischief you can get into. Or you could say, everyone,
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: buy a few shares of this company.
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: Here we go. I just think there's no chance. I
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: don't know. There's no way you get people to migrate
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: over to Truth Social. Look at all these people trying
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: to desperately convince everyone to go to Mastodon. It's just
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: very challenging.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: Now, Mastodon is easy.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: You can find me on Mastodon.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: Now, if you want to read my toots on Mastodon,
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: you got to choose the right server.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Ben Wittes controls my server, and he's a nice guy,
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: but I don't know. I might migrate over to the
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: other one. Have you heard about Post? There's a waiting list.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: What the fuck is going on out there? Yeah, I
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: don't know.
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: It's madness.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: I'm not doing it.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: And then they're tweeting about what's happening on Mastodon on Twitter,
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: and they got the Mastodon handle in their name next
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: to the Ukraine flag and the mask.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: And to everyone tweeting, to everyone tweeting... We've had a
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: great couple of years together. If you'd like to keep
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: talking with me, I'll be on this platform or this platform.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Don't look for me anywhere. Don't look for me anywhere.
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: It ends for us here. This is it for us.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: If this dies, our relationship is dead. Twitter people.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: Anyway, so I don't think he can last forever. Money
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: is more important to him than anything, especially since he
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: doesn't have a lot.
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: But I think that he's going to reach a breaking
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: point of his frustration. that his truths aren't getting covered.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: His speech didn't get as much coverage as he probably
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: wanted to. He's not getting the attention that he craves
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: right now.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, right now he's frustrated by the coverage of
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: his meeting with Kanye. He's sitting there.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: He's truthing up a storm, but there's no one.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: There are truth balls in the woods. Is anyone there
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: to hear it?
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: He had four truths about the Kanye thing.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: This is not enough.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: How do you feel about Trump being reinstated? Do you
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: think it's good? Do you think it's bad? Like you
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: said that long-term for his political ambitions or short-term it
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: might be good. Would it be good?
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: Yes, for sure. In terms of winning the primary, I
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: do think it would be good. Oh, primary.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: Look, I think that the fundamentals are the same. The
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: noise that he makes helps him in the primary. It
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: hurts him more broadly. Trump is never less popular than
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: when he's in people's faces. That is always true.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: He doesn't wear well.
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: No, he's best in small doses.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: As you might say.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: So I don't know. I think that like Trump being
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: off of social media has been a mixed bag. It's
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: allowed people to forget how heinous he is while he
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: continues to maintain his control over vast swaths of the
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: Republican machine.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: So I don't know. It also, I think one of
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: you pointed out earlier, it has pushed him into further
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: extremist rabbit holes, right? Because Oh, it's all QAnon stuff. Yeah,
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: now he's truthing QAnon shit all the time now. Like
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: the majority of his retweets.
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: And there's just, we're not seeing it as much. We're
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: not hearing about it as much because he's not getting
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: the coverage. But like, we'll see how this plays out
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: in the Republican primary. If he doesn't win the Republican primary,
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: who the fuck cares what he does, right? Go do
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: whatever you want. I hope to never see you again.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: But if he wins the Republican primary, then he's, you know, 40, 70,000
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: votes away from being president.
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: He's back.
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: And the more people are reminded about the aspects they
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: find deplorable and horrible, the better a position we'll be in.
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: And I think that is harder to do, harder to
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: remind people of that when he's not in their faces.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: So Elon Musk has been baiting Trump to return and
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: tweet again. He's, you know, trying to do, he's giving
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: mass amnesty to all these suspended accounts. He's today picking
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: a fight with Apple and Tim Cook because they're, you know,
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: they're Looks like there might not be advertising as much,
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: if at all, on Twitter anymore. What the hell is
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: Elon Musk doing?
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: I genuinely don't know.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: I don't get it. Does anyone have a take on
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: this for the last couple weeks? Because it is.
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: Obviously, like, Jack Dorsey was a terrible CEO who, like,
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: let the place languish for years and didn't... But, like,
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: Twitter today is... Well, Twitter pre-Elon was better than the
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: 2016 version in terms of targeted harassment and just, like,
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: tools to keep horrible people out of your life.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: But, like, I just.
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: Elon seems to think his job as CEO is just
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: to tweet the most and like engage with every right
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: wing troll. And then like Stephen King every week or so.
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: And I don't know what he's like, but there's a
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: financial gravity here that's going to catch up to him.
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: It's got $ 13 billion of loans against the company.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: I feel like you have to separate out Elon as
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: a kind of whatever Elon as a CEO and Elon
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: as a public figure. Uh, Elon as a public figure
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: is baffling. Um, He has managed to convince a lot
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: of smart people that he's stupid, which is an achievement
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: for someone who's had as much success as.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: Elon Musk has had.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: He has convinced a lot of people that he's stupid.
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: So his public persona is awful, and he's done a
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: great deal of damage how people see him. As a CEO,
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: I don't understand. The problem is when you're building rockets
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: and electric cars... You can be told that it's going
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: to fail. You can tell all your critics to eat
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: shit and then you can disappear for five years and
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: you can come back with a rocket. You can come
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: back with a car and say, look, see, I told
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: you I could do it and I did it. With this,
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: the public persona and the CEO are in conflict because
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: you can't be the mayor of what you're describing as
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: like a global town square while also its biggest troll.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: And you can't ask people to model best behavior and
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: say you're going to build a a utopia for free
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: speech while tweeting conspiracy theories and heinous innuendo and engaging
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: with some of the most despicable people in our society.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: These things are in conflict. You can't be the mayor
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: and the troll. I don't know what his business model
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: is going to be. It seems like it's very, very
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: difficult to find a way to turn Twitter profitable once
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: they were already struggling before you added a ton of
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: debt that requires service. But he can't do it if
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: every step he makes, he's going to be alienating core
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: users by being such a prick all the time and
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: advertisers being such a prick all the time.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: He is in the customer service business now. And with Tesla, right?
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: Like if you like the car, Then that's great.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: And I do. And look, Alyssa Milano, you can give
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: up your Tesla. Great job. Mine self drove to the office.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: It was cool as hell. I turned it on in
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: my house. It took me all the way to work.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: So that's the product that he sold you. And you're
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: a happy customer.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: I am.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: The product he's selling now is a good experience on Twitter.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: Which the advertisers are no longer having because there's not
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: brand safety there for them. Nope. And increasingly, users aren't
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: having a good time either. And he's not used to–
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: the reason he can't deliver good customer service is because
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: he has been an arrogant CEO surrounded by sycophants who
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: have never told him no.
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: He's got like a bunch of yes-men. That's how he
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: ran Tesla. And the reason he could do that is
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: because of what you said, Lovett, is because when it
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: comes to science, he's a genius. Right? And so– he
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: he's gotten by by being a genius and inventing shit
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: and then having a bunch of people around him that
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: he can treat kind of shittily and.
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: It doesn't really matter.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: And there's a tree very poorly and it doesn't really
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: matter because he's the boss and he's a genius. Well,
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: I can't do that here.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: And there's, there is a, there's a way in which
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: having terrible people skills can be a feature when you're
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: saying to a bunch of people, I have a vision.
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: I think this is possible. Some people say it's impossible.
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: I think this thing that I'm aiming us towards is possible.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: And there's a kind of there that requires like an
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: ability to synthesize a lot of information, but also the
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: ability to bear a lot of people being fucking pissed
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: at you while you set a crazy target. This this
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: his public persona and his kind of way of treating
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: people is in conflict. And the fact that nobody around
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: him can say, hey, man, if you want Twitter to
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: be a place people people want to come. Why don't
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: you model some good behavior?
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: But again, he's a guy who understands space, so I
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: keep coming back to the financial gravity. $ 13 billion of
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: loans from these big banks against Twitter. By the way,
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: these banks are offloading these loans at $ 0. 60 on the
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: dollar because they have so little faith in them being repaid.
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: He sold billions of dollars worth of Tesla shares to
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: buy a personal stake in the company. He paid taxes
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: on that that he will never get back. He has
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: investors who have billions at stake. They've lost all these advertisers.
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: The Twitter blue rollout was... hilarious for a week but
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: also a disaster i'm just wondering like at some point
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: his second biggest the second biggest uh shareholder the saudis
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: come to him they'd say like hey we have a
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: way of dealing with people who lose us a lot
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: of money uh you know come to our consulate you
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: know what i mean like there's someone's gonna put some leverage.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: On him so i asked this question to neil patel
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: when i interviewed him for offline about the financials there
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: because i'm like maybe So they're going to bring back
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: Twitter Blue, Twitter Verified, whatever. He's going to launch it again.
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: He thinks 50% of the revenue could be subscription.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: Well, that's what I'm saying. So I thought maybe there's
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: math where he makes up for the lost advertiser revenue
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: with the subscription. But no, if you're $ 8 a pop.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: And like most, how many people are going to have
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: to sign up for that? Way too many.
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: And it cannibalizes advertisers.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: Considering how he's treating everyone.
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: Servicing the debt costs you a billion dollars.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: I think to your point that he's Twitter's biggest troll,
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: Twitter has also broken his brain. In a way, like
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: he is also a victim of Twitter. And so he
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: is in this feedback loop. He is trapped in Twitter,
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: replying all day. He thinks that he's doing great because
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: that's what he's getting back on Twitter. He's fighting his
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: villains and all of his allies.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: His mind is warped by this. He's also hurt a
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: ton of people. Because of his takeover and his mismanagement
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: of it, thousands of people have lost their jobs. He
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: tried to make an example of people. He's claiming this
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: is going to be a bastion of free speech, but
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: then people that work at Twitter that were critical of
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: him suddenly find themselves fired. People who are on visas
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: that require them to have jobs stayed because he agreed
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: to stay and would have had a better offer if
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: they had left earlier. then only to be summarily fired
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: because of the kind of frenetic, kind of chaotic way
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: in which this is done. Like, he's hurting a lot
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: of people as he does this. And like, All of
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: that is meaning not only does Twitter not have a
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: business model, like who knows how Twitter, like this is
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: a jury rigged fucking thing. The fail whale was a
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: big deal for a while. Twitter was barely working for
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: a really long time. The thing survived despite itself. Like
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: who knows what's going on like beneath the hood of
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: this organization where half the people with institutional knowledge were
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: just frog marched out of the building.
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: There are like historic protests happening across China right now.
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: And the Chinese government is able to bury news about it.
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: by dumping random like porn and bots and just like
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: crap on Twitter because all the teams that would help
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: sort of keep that stuff out of there and help
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: surface the real news were gone.
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: It's, uh, anyway, if anything happens to Twitter, you can
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: find me.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, just remember with Elon, like find me nowhere.
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: Elon's hit rate is not that good. Like SpaceX, Tesla, incredible,
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: amazing accomplishments, but like the boring company, what's that up to?
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: Hyperloop.
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: How'd that go? All the features he launches from Tesla.
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: Like the guy just like, announces a lot of shit
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: and half the time he's full of shit and people
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: kind of move on from it.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: Managing complex human interaction.
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: Not as well.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: It's also like, it even just, it was, it was
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: doomed from the start because he has clearly like kind
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: of glommed onto this. Like it's a global town square
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: and like analogies are very dangerous because they're metaphors and
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: they trick you into thinking certain things are more important
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: than other things. And like this metaphor that what we're
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: all doing is meeting together in a town square and
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: Is not real. It's not true.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: It's never been. It's not.
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: Largest leveraged buyout in history.
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: It's a fucking chat room.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: Good luck.
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: So your mastodon handle is.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: Have you tooted today yet?
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: No toots from me, sir.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Tooting.
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: This is Kanye walking into Mar-a-Lago.
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: There he is.
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: Walking in. Everyone's looking around. The maitre d'. The concierge.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Who is that?
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: When we come back. Raphael Warnock gives us his take
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: on last night's episode of White Lotus.
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: No spoilers.
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: Joining me now, he is the senator from Georgia, where
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: voting has already begun in a runoff election that will
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: determine whether or not we hold this seat, increase the
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: Democratic majority, and never have to say Senator Herschel Walker.
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: Senator Raphael Warnock, welcome to the pod.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: Great to be here with you.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: So, you know, we're in this runoff race. It was
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: an incredibly close election. But that means a lot of
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: people went into that voting booth, having paid attention, followed
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: the news, having come to understand the difference, the incredible
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: difference between you and your opponent, not just on policy,
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: but on character, on integrity, on who you are as people.
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: And a bunch of those people may have had misgivings,
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: but they still went into the voting booth and and
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: decided to vote Republican. In this home stretch of the runoff,
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: how does character matter in the argument that you're making?
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: And how do you view this as, what is the
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: importance of character in this closing week?
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: It matters a great deal. And this race is about character.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: And it's also about competence. It's about who's ready and
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: who's fit. And on both of those fronts, the differences
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: could not be more stark and more obvious between me
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: and my opponent. Herschel Walker is manifestly unprepared to serve
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: in the United States Senate, unfit to represent 11 million
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: people for six years. And that is the case that
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: we intend to prosecute over the next few days. I'm
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: proud of my lifelong commitment to service. You know, I
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: didn't set out to be in politics. I'm a pastor.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: And it's really my work over the years focused on
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: health care, which I believe is a moral calling and
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: a human right, focused on a livable wage for workers,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: standing up for ordinary people. This run for the Senate,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: serving in the Senate, now running for reelection, is an
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: extension of that lifelong project. I think part of what
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Georgians are asking themselves is what is Herschel Walker's life
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: been about? I think a clear indication of what someone
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: will do in office is what they were doing before
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: they ever served or ran. And we have no evidence
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: at all that Herschel Walker has spent any time thinking
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: about how to help veterans, how to, how to make
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: healthcare more accessible.
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: So, uh, speaking of, uh, character deficits. Donald Trump announces
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: he's running for president. Your campaign puts out an ad
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: basically saying, stop Herschel Walker.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: You can stop Donald Trump.
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: Why do you view that as an important part of
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: the case you're making in this week? What does this
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: tell us about how some of these swing voters are
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: thinking about Trump, thinking about Walker, thinking about this race?
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: Well, what we all know about Donald Trump is that
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: he is well-practiced and quite skilled in the politics of division.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: He knows how to stir up the fault lines that
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: have been a part of our complicated and wonderful American
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: story for a long time for his short-term political gain.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: And Herschel Walker is his acolyte. Neither of them has
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: a vision for the people of Georgia, that's for sure.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: I'm focused on representing the people of Georgia. And so
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: I'm glad on that score that I was able to
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: cap the cost of insulin to no more than $ 35
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: of out-of-pocket costs for folks on Medicare. I think I
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: can get that done for folks on private insurance as well.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: After all, there are 20 states that already cap the
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: cost of insulin. A lot of them are red states.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: And so I think the only reason we didn't get
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: it done back in August is politics, quite frankly. The
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: closer we got to the elections, Folks are doing the
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: political calculus. In fact, I had someone, a Republican senator
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: who was going to work with me on the insulin cap.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: And all of a sudden he got quiet after indicating
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: an interest. And I asked him, hey, buddy, what happened?
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: He said, winked at me, said, I'll see you after
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: the election. And, you know, it's sad, but that's kind
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: of how too often that's the way Washington works. And
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: it turns people off from politics. I tolerate politics because
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: every now and then you're still able to get a
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: big win. And I think there's a bipartisan path to
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: getting an insulin cap for folks not only on Medicare,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: but people with private insurance. You need somebody who needs
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: to work, who knows how to work on both sides
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: of the aisle. I've demonstrated I know how to do that.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Herschel Walker hasn't demonstrated any understanding of the issue.
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: So when we were last in a Georgia runoff, control
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: of the Senate was at stake and it motivated people
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: not just in Georgia, but across the country to do
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: everything they could to get you and Senator Ossoff over
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: the finish line. How are you describing the stakes now?
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: I think there's a lot of people who thought, oh,
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: now that the Democrats have the Senate majority, Republicans aren't
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: going to turn out for this Walker guy. We've got
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: this thing in the bag. We don't have to worry
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: about it. How do we light a fire under Democrats
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: to understand how important this is? What's the argument you're
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: making and how do you deal with that complacency?
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: It's hard to overstate how important it is, how urgent
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: it is for folks to show up. Now, I'm heartened
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: by the early vote turnout that we're seeing so far,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: but we cannot afford to let up on the gas,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: not even for a moment. We should all know in
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: the world of a post-Trump election that we can wake
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: up in this country to the unthinkable if we don't
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: show up. So we need people all across Georgia to
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: show up. This election is not about short-term thinking. You know,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: the problem is, you know, is that people too often
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: have very short-term thinking on this issue. This is about
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: who's going to represent 11 million Georgians for six years.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: So it's not even just about this Congress. Senators serve
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: a nice little term, six years.
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: So that's pretty good.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: You're going to go through three cycles, if you will.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: And so, um, I think that's very important. Who are
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: you going to have represent you? And the issues are urgent.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: The stakes are high. And in my case, the differences
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: are so stark that I really do think that people
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: who are looking at this honestly, if we just be
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: honest with ourselves, know that my race, my race is
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: not about the difference between Republican and Democrat. It's not
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: about right and left. This is about right and wrong.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: This is about what's the basic requirement to represent people
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: in the United States Senate. It's a special thing for
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: your neighbors to say, when we take stock of our
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: families and when we consider the future of our children,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: and as we take care of our aging parents, we
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: trust you. We trust our families in your hands to
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: do the right thing. Can you honestly say that about
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: Herschel Walker?
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: So, you know, look, you may not know this, but
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: you and I have a very personal email relationship. You've
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: emailed me quite a bit, even today. Here are some
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: of the things you've said to me. You said, please
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: don't scroll away. Please read this. I'll keep this short, John,
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: which I'll appreciate it. I'll be blunt. Let me explain,
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: and I'm humbly asking for your help. And these have
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: all meant the world to me. So thank you for
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: reaching out so frequently.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: I sat and I thought of you at 5 a.m.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: this morning, and I sat down and I wrote you
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: that email, John.
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I get that. The personal touch is what
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: means the most about it. But look, a lot of
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: people listening to this are engaged. They're paying attention. They've donated.
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: They're getting texts. They've been getting emails. They've been doing
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: that for months. You've emailed them a few times while
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: I've issued this sentence. What does money do in this
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: last week? What does it help you get done? So
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: people understand that they're not just being asked because money
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: is better than not having money.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: No, it's a great question. And I want to say
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: to that person who just got an email, even while
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: you and I have been talking, that the resources that
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: they send for this runoff are focused on getting out
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: to vote. We all know, sadly, from elections, that it's
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: not always the best person who wins. It's the person
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: who manages to get their people out to vote, the
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: folks who believe in them and believe in their vision.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: And so we can't take anything for granted. We're pulling
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: out all the stops. We're leaving it all on the
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: field because there's so much at stake. You know, I
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: was thinking about this. Obviously, I want to serve. After all,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: my name has been on the ballot five times in
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: less than two years for the doggone job. This is
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: the fifth time Georgia has got a chance to vote
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: for me. So clearly I want to do this work.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: And it really is an extension of my lifelong commitment
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: to service. I don't personally need, I don't, I got,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: I'm a pastor and I was loving doing that work.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: I still lead my church. I'm doing this because of
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: that commitment. But also, you know, I'm not just a candidate.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not just a senator. I'm also a citizen. And
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: I have to say, I can't have Herschel Walker representing
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: my mother or my two children. It matters. It matters.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: And I think integrity matters. I think truth-telling matters. I
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: think character matters. And here's a man who can't even
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: tell us the truth about the basic facts of his life.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: Claimed to have been a police officer. He's not. Claimed
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: to work for the FBI. He did not. Claimed to
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: be valedictorian of his class. He was not. Claimed to
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: have graduated from the University of Georgia. Did not. Claimed
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: to have started a not-for-profit that helps veterans. As it
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: turns out, he didn't start it. It's not a not-for-profit.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: And rather than helping veterans, it literally exploited veterans, and
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: they had to be called to task for that. Is
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: that somebody you want to trust with the office of
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: the United States Senate? I think not. And I'm asking
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: you not just as a candidate. I'm asking you as
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: a citizen who cares about who represents my mother and
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: my children. Let's show up and... Let's make sure that
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: we secure the future for our children.
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: So, you know, Ira, when you won the runoff in 2021,
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: it was this incredible moment. We had managed to do
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: this very difficult feat of winning the majority in the Senate.
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: You won, Senator Ossoff won, first black senator since Reconstruction,
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: first Jewish senator. And that was January 5th. Yeah. And
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: the feeling was short-lived.
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: Because we wake up January 6th and all of a
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: sudden we're confronted by something ugly. How did that shape
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: how you approach these years in the job? And, you know,
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: after we just had this midterm where I think a
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: lot of people feel like in a number of very
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: important races, we kept anti-democratic, authoritarian minded people out of
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: some very key jobs. How do you think about the
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: fight for democracy in how you approach the job being
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: a senator?
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: Well, it's a potent and scary reminder that democracy really
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: is on the ballot. And, you know, who would have
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: thought that we would be here? But as you point out,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: Georgia did an amazing thing, elected its first African-American senator
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: and its first Jewish senator. in one fell swoop at
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: a moment when there were those forces still at work
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: trying to divide us. But January 6th, violent assault on
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: the Capitol, driven by racist and anti-Semitic and xenophobic tropes
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: and sentiments. And therein, in 24 hours, January 5th and
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: January 6th, you see the two sides of our beloved, beautiful,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: and complicated reality as Americans. I'm honored that I'm a
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: part of the newest generation of Americans who gets to
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: decide which way we're going to go. Because if we're honest,
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: both of those days say something about who we are.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: We don't get to say that January 6th is not
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: who we are. It happened, and it is who we are.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: In fact, it's part of who we've always been, if
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: we're honest. But the good news is you can look
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: at me and say that January 5th is also who
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: we are, a kid who grew up in public housing,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: first college graduate in my very large family. And I
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: sit in the United States Senate. This is an amazing country.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: And we're standing here, I think, at a crossroads. And
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: we have to decide if we're going to be the
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: America of January 5th or the America of January 6th.
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: I choose January 5th. I choose to push us closer
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: towards our grand American covenant, E Pluribus Unum, Out of
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: many one, I choose the U.S., if you will. I
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: choose us. And that's why I'm putting myself through the
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: craziness of running for the United States Senate, because I
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: do think it's worth it. I think our children are
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: worth it. I think our veterans are worth it. I
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: think our mothers and fathers are worth it. And I'd
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: be deeply honored to represent the people for six more years.
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: Last question. It is Monday. Thanksgiving was Thursday. How much
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: time is left for the food in the fridge? When
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: do we give up?
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, I gave up on that food a long time ago.
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: Do you think it's too late? Can I not eat
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: it today? What's today? Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Five
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: too long?
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: You know, some people are better at that than me.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: You know, turkey sandwich, turkey casserole, turkey hash. Look, I'm turkey.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: Well, Senator, thank you so much for being here. And everybody,
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: do everything you can to support Senator Warnock in this
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: last week. And, you know, good luck in the homestretch.
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: Thanks for being here.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: Thank you, brother. Keep the faith.
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: All right, we're back. Before we go, Chief Take Officer
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: Elijah Cohn is here and he's back for another round
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: of Take Appreciator. Yeah, where's your Bake Appreciator apron, Elijah?
• 57:08
  Speaker 5: The merch team needs to send it over to me.
• 57:10
  Speaker 5: I mean, I am, in fact, a Bake Appreciator.
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: Shots fired. Under the bus.
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: How was your honeymoon?
• 57:16
  Speaker 5: It was fantastic. Thank you for asking. But I'm very
• 57:20
  Speaker 5: jet lagged and like brain fogged because of Z-Quil right
• 57:25
  Speaker 5: now trying to get back on the same page. So
• 57:28
  Speaker 5: get ready for that throughout this segment.
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's exciting. That's something to look forward to. Let's
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: do it. Take it away.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: Enjoy.
• 57:35
  Speaker 5: Okay, let's do it. Thanksgiving is over, but I have
• 57:40
  Speaker 5: a couple of leftover takes for you guys to feast on.
• 57:44
  Speaker 5: I'll explain how this game works for people who haven't
• 57:48
  Speaker 5: heard this segment in the past. I'll share these takes
• 57:50
  Speaker 5: with you. The producers have seen them. John, John, and
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: Tommy have not. They'll react and then rate them on
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: a scale of one to four politicos, with four being
• 57:58
  Speaker 5: the worst. Are you guys ready to feast?
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, let's feast.
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 58:04
  Speaker 5: Let's get started. This first one needs a little bit
• 58:06
  Speaker 5: of setup. It's so stupid, I might not get the
• 58:09
  Speaker 5: explanation fully right here. But Joe Biden's granddaughter, Naomi Biden,
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: got married last week in a ceremony at the White House.
• 58:19
  Speaker 5: The ceremony was closed to the press, but the Bidens
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: invited Vogue to do a photo shoot before the wedding,
• 58:25
  Speaker 5: which sent the press corps into a tizzy because... They
• 58:28
  Speaker 5: were like, why didn't you let us in to cover
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: the wedding? You let Vogue in. But they were like, no,
• 58:32
  Speaker 5: Vogue is just there for the photo shoot. That led
• 58:35
  Speaker 5: us to this tweet. Quote, I spent four years covering
• 58:39
  Speaker 5: the Trump White House and two years covering the Biden
• 58:42
  Speaker 5: White House. What's fascinating is that they both lie, albeit
• 58:47
  Speaker 5: in the different ways.
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: Have you not seen the Trump team was.
• 58:51
  Speaker 5: Shameless, whereas Biden is too cute by half. Oh, that's
• 58:57
  Speaker 5: who wrote it.
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: Man, that is, I haven't seen that. That is unbelievable.
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: That is unbelievable.
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: Do you know who it is?
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: I don't know who it is. I don't know who
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: it is.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: You know who it is.
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I do.
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: And you're gonna feel bad in a second it was
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: ashley barker the washington.
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: Post come on for pinocchio sorry ashley that's four i.
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: Think i like you that's four gas i think she
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: regrets her tweets end of sentence i thought it.
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: Was in fairness to ashley i thought it was going
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: to be someone much worse yeah no it's It's like,
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, first of all, the Biden White House
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: obviously did not owe any invitations to reporters.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: Even if they wanted to invite Vogue, that would have
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: been fine, too. They told the reporters that Vogue wasn't
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: going to be present at the wedding. They weren't. They
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: got like a day before thing. They just decided not
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: to tell reporters that. Whatever. You could say you could
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: dig him for that. Be like, oh, you should have
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: told us they got they got something the day before.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: But to say there you go is a tough tweet.
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: It's a tough tweet.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: I think it seems to me, like I dug in
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: like an inch deep and then refused to dig further
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: on this topic. It seemed like maybe reporters thought that
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: because Vogue got those photos that they were present at
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: the wedding and thus they'd been lied to when the
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: reality is much more complicated. My take on this is honestly,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: I think that if you're going to host a wedding
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: at the White House, it's completely fair and reasonable for
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: the white house press corps to want access um doesn't
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: mean you have to give it to them but they
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: don't have to be happy about it i think comparing
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: that to the lives of the trump administration is obviously
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: not remotely um close to the same thing.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: No and i also like it's you can have a
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: closed press family event at the white house and whether
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: or not vogue takes pictures of it doesn't change the
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: fact that the event was close-pressed. I don't really get
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: that controversy.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: You can complain about the Biden White House not giving
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: you access without comparing it to the Trump lies. You
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: can do that. It's a miss.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: It seemed like a.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: Comparison made, not fully thought through in a moment of
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: peak that I think undercut a genuine understandable concern of
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: being like, hey, there's not often White House weddings and
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: we want to cover it because that's our job. Therefore,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: we want to cover it. So we're going to be
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: annoying about it.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: Love it. Can you imagine The ratio.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 5: I have some numbers here, John. I'm glad you brought
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 5: that up. I have some figures in front of me.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: Let me do that. Oh, no.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: Ratios. Look, here's the thing. Can we just... I don't
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: want to hear about the ratio. I am so sick of...
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: Forget this. It is the ratio thing. Prepare for the ratio.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: It's so stupid.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: A broader point, though, like to your point, Ashley Parker
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: is a good person. She's a good reporter. Everyone shut up.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: Calm down.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: You don't have to be the 10,000th person to dunk
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: on her, I say, ironically.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: I can't. No more dunking. This is why if Elon
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: destroys Twitter, it won't be so bad. Because this kind
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: of shit doesn't fly on Mastodon. It doesn't get you
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: the R2s.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 5: All I'll say is when.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: It doesn't R2t.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 5: When Andy Gardner Bernstein sent me this tweet, she slapped
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 5: it and said, check out the ratio on this baby.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: Because.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: We are all creatures of an environment we're creating for ourselves.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: There's no one, I think, more ready to jump to
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: Mastodon than producer Andy. There's no more. She's born to toot.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: She's over there tooting. It's Mueller time.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: What else you got, Elijah?
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 5: Are we just all agreeing full playbook?
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: I'll give it three. I think it's four.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: For me, it's four. I was shocked. I hadn't heard it.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: I missed this. I skipped this whole scandal over the break.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: I can't avoid it from the context and the person.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: I think it's three.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 5: Michael said that one hurt. We do like Ashley Parker.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: We do.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: Okay. Well, this next one is from Politico itself. A
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 5: piece titled, Republicans paid a price for overturning Roe. It
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 5: may have been worth it. So this piece makes an
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 5: argument that it was worth it for Republicans to have
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 5: underperformed in the midterms because they achieved a big policy
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 5: goal with overturning Roe. It notes that Democrats have paid
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 5: a similar price in midterms in the past. Here are
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 5: the examples from the piece. Quote, in enacting the Affordable
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 5: Care Act, Obama and congressional Democrats were making good, yeah,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 5: wait for the next example, were making good on something
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 5: that had been a party goal for decades. Similarly, the
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 5: civil rights movement was not particularly popular among the bulk
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 5: of Americans when Democrats pushed civil rights bills in the 1960s. Guys,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 5: who wrote it?
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: I have no idea. John Harris?
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: What publication was this?
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: Politico.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 5: Politico Magazine.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: Oh, the magazine.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 5: I've never heard of this guy. It's not Rich Lowry.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: It's not. Zero politicos. I respect that. This is the
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: political goal they wanted. This horrible fucking goal is something
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: they've been working hard to achieve. despite the fact that
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: they pay a political price.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah. That's where I am too.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: I think the only thing I disagree with is that it, um,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: like that it will wear well over time. Like the
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: difference with the affordable characters, you could say like, okay,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: maybe 10 years from now when it's fully implemented, it's
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: going to be more popular. I kind of think this
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: is a, this is where we are on public opinion.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: Over, uh, no chance it wears well over time. Right.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But other than that, I would say it's a,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: it's a fair comparison.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: Give us the name.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 5: Seth Maskett is, uh, No idea. Polly Cy guy from
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 5: University of Denver. Why this piece was submitted is, one,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 5: comparing overturning Roe to the Civil Rights Movement, like, go
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 5: fuck yourself. But then also, these are things that the
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 5: Affordable Care Act and Civil Rights Movement passed through Congress,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 5: where Roe was passed through this stolen Supreme Court seat
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 5: gross mechanism. That's why it got submitted. I'm just sharing
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 5: my thought process here.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: That's fair.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: No, you know what?
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: Hey, look.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: The legislative process versus Supreme Court. Some of these have
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: to get zero politicos.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like the fact that this person doesn't understand the
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: distinction between expanding access to healthcare and projecting fundamental human
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: rights with removing a fundamental human rights is why he's wrong.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: But I do appreciate that Republicans fought for a very
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: long time to do this, and they won. And they,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: you know, and they'll pay, and they don't, the ones
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: that don't pay a political, don't care about paying a
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: political price, or at least being more honest about the
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: political damage they did to themselves to achieve this end. So,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: you know, zero politicals and they can go fuck themselves.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: That's my, that's my take.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 5: Well, let's move on. This last one is a tweet. Uh,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 5: the Senate is about to move forward with the respect
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 5: for marriage act, codifying protections for same sex marriage. And
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 5: here is the take quote, Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 5: said that thanks to America's low birth rate, we need
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 5: to amnesty 11, a million illegal immigrants, uh, I know
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 5: this one. Meanwhile, the Senate passed a bill enthroning same-sex
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 5: marriage definitionally into federal law. These facts are not disconnected.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 5: The death of marriage is a key component in the
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 5: withering of Western civilization. Wait, who said it?
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: So people would be procreating if not for all this
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: gay marriage. Is that the point?
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: How many kids does this guy think I'm going to
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: have if I marry a woman? It's going to be zero.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: What was the publication?
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 5: It's a tweet.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 4: Oh, it's a tweet.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 5: And if I told you, he also wrote this up.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 4: Sorry, spoiler.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 5: He also wrote this up, but if I told you
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 5: the publication, it would be a spoiler.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, is it Ben Shapiro?
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: Yes, it is.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: Congratulations.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Ben, no.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: No connection there, pal.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: What?
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: Ugh. You know, Ben.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: Did Kanye attack him?
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 4: I gotta say, well, where's the don't come out of
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: my mouth? Often, credit to Ben Shapiro, he called out
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 4: Kanye's anti-Semitism and he called out Trump's anti-Semitism by name
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 4: and was a harsh critic.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: Now, this is what we do on the Thursday Pod sometimes.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: Are we just gonna cut credit to Ben Shapiro? Just
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: put that out as a clip?
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, clip it.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 5: Tommy's saying credit to Ben Shapiro.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 4: Clip it.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: What I wanna say is like, hey, Ben, okay, you
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: seem to understand that this is anti-Semitic from these people
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: and that they're bigoted on these issues. Can you take
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: a step back and maybe look at some of the
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: other things they're saying and figure out why you're not
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: so offended by the rest of it? Or is it just,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: for whatever reason, you just seem to lack the clarity.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: Before we even get to the gay marriage element, connecting
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants to low birth rates? Well,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: I know, no, I get what they're trying to do here, but.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: Well, when we allowed gay people to enter into marriage contracts,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: we disassociated marriage from procreation. And so that for everyone now,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: marriage isn't doing what it's supposed to do, which is
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: get people to stick together, even if they fucking hate
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: each other, to have seven kids. And as a result,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: we need to replace people with immigrants. Because once the
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: gays got married, you people stopped... making.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: Babies we gotta replace them with immigrants why what is
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: going on I.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: Think they're talking about a worker I mean it's just convoluted.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: None of this makes sense none of it makes sense
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: they're very stupid people none of it makes sense.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 5: It's completely ahistorical facts don't.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: Care about your feelings Ben anyway that gets that gets
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: I think that gets.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 4: A full playbook yeah that's pretty good that's a full
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 4: playbook I mean it's just nonsensical is what it really is.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah it didn't get my it didn't get my ire up.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: I think it was pretty stupid Anyway, that's why we
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: have our rating system. That's why we have our rating system.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: We have it three.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 5: That was the risk. I knew that the Naomi Biden
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 5: one was really going to get the happiest reaction here.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: Love it has Ashley Parker. worse than Ben Shapiro.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 3: Take-wise. Just in the politico qualities. Not in the nature
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: of the take itself.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: We're still getting tweets about having Maggie Haberman on. You
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: know what?
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: Again, another reason that this thing can all burn to
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: the fucking ground.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 4: I do find it very frustrating that people.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: The ire people have for Maggie Haberman is absolutely unhinged.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, sometimes our friends on the left view Twitter as
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: a vehicle to primarily attack journalists in the mainstream media
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 4: and not see that that's what Trump uses it for, too.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: And you know what that gets? A couple politicos. A
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: couple politicos. Elijah Cohen, thanks for another round of Take Appreciator.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 5: Always a pleasure, guys.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: Next time, don't show your face on this video without
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: that apron on.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you. All right.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: And thanks to Senator Raphael Warnock for joining us today.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: We'll talk to you soon. Pod Save America is a
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producers are Haley
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: Muse and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show. Thanks
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Sandy Gerard, Andy Taft, and
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth. Our
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash podsaveamerica.