Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters
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January 30, 2025
TLDR: Republican senators disregard truth during confirmation process, while some nominees flip on signature issues. RFK Jr., Tulsi and Kash have shown reversals. Nominee Kash was on a Nazi-adjacent podcast eight times. Meanwhile, Democrats should try understanding the programs they'd administer, Fox hosts/reality stars performed poorly post-plane crash, and Tommy Vietor joins Tim Miller.

In the latest episode of Can’t Stop the House, hosts Tommy Vietor and Tim Miller delve into the troubling dynamics of modern political confirmation processes, particularly around Trump's nominees. This summary highlights the pivotal discussions, insights, and expert opinions shared during their conversation.
Key Themes
Deniability Politics:
Vietor emphasizes that for many Republican senators, the confirmation processes have become a mere formality. When nominees are caught lying—such as Kash Patel downplaying his connections to far-right figures—truth becomes secondary to the facade they present.Inconsistent Views from Nominees:
The episode discusses how figures like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard are flip-flopping on critical issues. This inconsistency raises concerns about their competency in managing the departments they aspire to lead. For example:- RFK Jr. has notably shifted his stances on vaccines.
- Tulsi Gabbard has changed her views on essential intelligence operations.
The Trump Effect on Political Discourse
Reacting to Tragedy:
The hosts critique Trump's handling of a tragic plane crash incident, wherein he chose to speculate about its causes rather than address the victims respectfully. Vietor argues that prior presidents like Obama, Bush, or Reagan would have handled this situation with more decorum, focusing on collective mourning rather than political theatrics.The Shift in Communication Strategies:
Vietor reflects on how Trump's approach has fundamentally altered political communication norms, where commanding attention often takes precedence over compassion.
Hearings Under Fire
RFK Jr.’s Hearing:
The discussion highlights RFK Jr. having dubious knowledge about key healthcare programs he would be overseeing. Vietor points out that Kennedy's missteps during his hearing exemplify how unqualified nominees are becoming commonplace, emphasizing a need to challenge these figures on their credentials.Tulsi Gabbard’s Qualifications:
Gabbard's nomination reignites debates about her history and qualifications for national security roles. Critics question her commitment to truth given her past interactions with controversial foreign figures.
The Bigger Picture
- A Broader Commentary on Political Culture:
The episode critiques how the GOP often validates unqualified nominees while exploiting inconsistencies and accusations to further their agenda. Marks highlight a trend where nominees lack accountability and transparency, leading to a public that feels increasingly distrustful of political institutions.
Actionable Insights
For Democrats:
Vietor offers pragmatic advice for Democrats in light of these hearings. To oppose nominees effectively, Democrats should focus their efforts on core issues like healthcare, and look to sway moderate Republican senators by addressing the implications these nominees have on constituents.On Public Engagement:
The episode advocates for a more engaged Democratic response that could include leveraging social media to highlight nominee failures and their consequences for everyday Americans.
Conclusion
Overall, this episode of Can’t Stop the House reveals deep-seated issues in contemporary politics, where the interplay of lies, deniability, and consequences underscores the dysfunction within the political system. Readers are urged to engage with these discussions and stay informed about how these dynamics shape our political landscape.
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Hello and welcome to the board. Can't stop your house too Miller. We have a massive day today. The Cash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard hearings are happening as we speak, as is a press avail that Donald Trump and JD Vance are having about the tragic plane crash in Washington. So we'll get to some of that. For board plus subscribers, we'll do a full wrap up at the end of the day. That link will be in your inbox or you can go to borg.com slash subscribe if you're not a member yet. I don't know why that would be.
And of course, I'll be back tomorrow for a recap. But for today, we've got the co-founder of Crooked Media co-host of, it's something called Pod Save America. I guess there's another podcast I like called Pod Save the World. He was a national security staff spokesman during the Obama administration. It's a man Ben Shapiro calls Tehran Tommy. Tommy Vitor. How you doing? You know, I'm good, buddy. It's great to see you. Actually, I think, I think in like 2018, I emailed Ben, because I used to call him baby Bannon, which honestly was kind of unfair because I think he left the Bannon world.
So we agreed to not be quite as mean to each other online, but I never actually met then, so I should probably do that someday. Yeah, I don't know. I listened to his podcast over a while yesterday, and it is unlistenable. And the fact that he beats us in the ratings sometimes is, well, me always, but you sometimes should really make you have to reflect on some things.
How do you do a show without someone to talk to? I just, I don't get it. It's just a monotone. I want to Sarah call him a castrated chipmunk. He's just like a castrated chipmunk giving you a 50 minute lecture in the same tones. It's an interesting podcast. You know, teach their own, right? You know, everybody, people like different things. Different strokes for different folks.
All right, as I mentioned, there was a just horrific knit-air collision last night outside of Reagan National DCA. There were no survivors. The collision was between a passenger jet coming in from Wichita and an army helicopter. As we're coming on here, I believe still happening in the Brady briefing room is Donald Trump and JD Vance talking about this.
I want to play one clip from the president talking about what he thinks was the reason that this crash happened. They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA's program. Then another article, the Federal Aviation Administration. This was before I got to office recently, second term.
The FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe, intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency's website. Can you imagine?
I guess it's black people and the people with mental health problems that caused us. He went on to say that Pete Buttigieg was a disaster, who's just got a good line of bullshit. And he followed up that by saying, now we mourn and we pray. So thoughts on the president's reaction to this tragedy.
I mean, I have two sort of buckets of thoughts to him. I mean, the idea of blaming this crash on DEI before there's an investigation, and then handing the mic to a real world Boston castimate turned Fox News host turned transportation secretary, with Sean Duffy, who then hands the mic over to Fox News weekend anchor, turned secretary of defense, Pete Hegzeth. It's a lot for me to
Taken you don't feel like that was a meritocracy there having two reality show stars and one weekend host being the like point people for responding to us You don't think that reflect and it they are all white males So I mean they had to overcome the obstacles of the dei to get the opposite They did they succeeded somehow in spite of all the obstacles in front of them So that was one bucket of frustration and then some I just started to think about like
What would Obama have done? What would George Bush have done? What would Reagan have done in a moment like this? I think you go out and give a speech that's thoughtful and that is about the victims and mourning in this sort of like collective wound that the nation is experiencing because of this tragedy.
I don't think any president in history would go out and do like a freewheeling press conference, even if they did have command of the facts. But it's just, this is like the Trump era, right? That used to be you didn't want to own bad stories or disasters. And now he's just puts himself in the middle of everything. And it's just, it's an interesting, I guess it's just how communications is now.
I mean, not really. And it's how communications is for Trump, I guess. Not for Biden. That's another challenge. But maybe there's value to this, right? You are commanding, like you're owning every story. You have the attention on you at all times. Like it goes against my instinct, but I'm wondering, I don't know, is this the right instinct? Yeah, maybe there's political value. I don't know. But just like from a human standpoint, it's just so atrocious. I like for sure. There are people that
Many people that lost loved ones, I saw an interview last night with a local news, a guy waiting for his wife, hoping that she survived. Obviously, she didn't survive. I assume that there were people there who are not white, who are minorities, who have mental health issues in their family. Do I really want to see the president?
the next day, talking about his speculation that maybe it was a black lady that was in the cockpit. I just don't, I don't get that. Yeah, no, the substance is atrocious and that is unequivocal. There's a stylistic and sort of process point that was interesting to me that I guess what we're going to be living with for the next four years.
No, obviously it's atrocious. I just, I guess what is the point? He's also not running again, I guess, you know what I mean? So it's like, what is even the political point, right? Like, this is, this is the one sort of element of all of this. Like, you would think that, you know, he also had a written statement. It was classic Trump that's talking about uniting the country.
Like, we don't even really know what happened. Like, I saw this kind of right wing pilot of somebody that had been a pilot of a Black Hawk helicopter that was the helicopter that crashed into the passenger plane. And, you know, dude, this, like, gave a very detailed list of all the things that could go wrong and how it's more challenging than you think and how there's a watch person, there's two, right? Like, we know nothing, you know? And so to pop off on that is pretty ridiculous. Like, it is Trump, but as you're saying about just kind of how things are right now at some level,
It reflects a little bit of a just kind of breakdown of our entire society that also is maybe Trump's faults, but you know, I saw some other some of our YouTube competitors out there yesterday that were blaming it on the fact that the FAA administrator got fired already and we didn't have a replaced FAA administrator and that's saying that it's Trump's fault Democratic Congressman woman Norma Torres.
said that the families deserve answers because Trump gutted an aviation safety committee, which I think that was really a TSA committee. But again, this happened on the other side. I got into fights with Republicans back during the East Palestinian train derailment, where they were like Rudy Giuliani and other people were out there talking about how Pete Buttigieg's paternity leave was to blame for this. So maybe Trump is just taking advantage of our broken society.
Well, I think you're speaking to a really hard reality in politics in that sometimes really bad things happen in the world. And there's no rhyme or reason to it. And it makes us feel better when we can throw a conspiracy theory around the chaos or around the pain or something to explain this to ourselves. But that's not always going to be the case. And this might have just been a horrible accident here. We'll figure it out, right? But I saw the same things you did, like people blaming the air traffic controller shortage.
or the buyout proposal or like, you know, firing the head of the TSA. And my instinct was to find that gross. And then I saw Trump this morning and I thought, I don't know, maybe I'm not built for politics anymore. Tim, like maybe the south goes gross is what it is. Maybe you aren't built for this. You're kind of a softy. Yeah, I don't know. I do have to tell you my initial instinct to be like, fuck it, blame Trump.
fuck it why not blame trump i mean you know he blamed a new sum for the fires and right pete like caring for his kids in the NICU was playing for like everything that happened all over the country for two years so why not but you know i took a couple breaths and i was like well you know we could probably just see what actually happened we try to see what happened i don't think that like my tweet.
or Norma Torres' tweet is really going to be the thing that fakes Trump down here. So I think we can probably wait to see what actually happened. Somebody didn't wait to see what actually happened on various things is the nominee to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Bobby Kennedy. Were you a big Bobby fan before the last couple? Huge, huge Bobby fan. I also just want to, before we get into substance, again, point out how tan he looks all of a sudden. I know he lives in California, but it hasn't been that nice out. So I'm wondering if there's a
Bronzer adoption is kind of a administration wide thing now. I got to say, despite the fact that he wants to maha, I've seen the shirtless pictures on the golds, and that does not look like a natural human body. No, that looks like TRT. Yeah, that looks like, I don't know anything about TRT, that maybe something you're into. Or do I, but I'm thinking about getting into it, because he looks pretty shredded, for being honest. He looks shredded in some ways, but he has parts of his body that are malformed, the size of which is not natural.
So that's not for me. I like guys with muscles, but I like them to actually look like male humans, not like male humanoid kind of avatar combo. You're a Schlossberg fan living in an RFK world. I do like the noodle voice. I want to listen to some of a RFK's testimony from yesterday. What should we do first? Let's fuck it. Let's do heroin first. Let's listen to RFK talking about heroin. Listen, I know people are letting members of my family
who've had much worse time getting off of SSRIs than they did than people have getting off heroin. It's the withdrawal period is, I mean, and it's really on the label. I have some experience with this myself.
Does he watch a movie about the opioid crisis or like read a magazine article about this? It's pretty kind of a pretty big deal lately, like how hard it is for people to get off of heroin and it caused like a nationwide crisis in many thousands of deaths.
Yeah, I mean, I don't have a lot of experience with either SSRIs or heroin. I'm not aware of them SSRIs causing like a euphoric high or a craving or the need to take another one an hour later. I don't know, maybe you have more experience with these things. Me neither. I've got my own vices and neither of these are them. But like, again, I've read the news, you know, and I've watched OAPsick. Really good. Really good. Yeah. Great.
I haven't heard any stories of people that are like, you know, of course, getting off Lexapro, these sorts of things, I do think is not, I don't want to be like, oh, this is nothing. It's easy. But like, there aren't any stories of people that are so jonesing for their Lexapro that they've turned to fentanyl. I haven't seen anything like that out there. Right. That's exactly right.
Yeah, I mean, certainly your body can adjust to their presence in your system and then getting off them can cause challenges, can lead to withdrawal symptoms. But to your point, I think this is kind of a few days or a few weeks long process, not an addiction that can plague people literally
for the rest of their lives and can ruin their lives in a moment's notice if they relapse so it's uh... it's an outrageous and absurd comment luckily that secretary of health and human services doesn't need to know anything about this there's another thing to be he didn't show a ton of uh... knowledge about i want to play a couple of clips of him being asked about uh... medicaid mister kennedy do you know how many babies born in this country are covered through medicaid uh... i would guess
I don't know the answer, I would guess, about 30 million. I have it, Mr. Kennedy. About 41 percent, 1.4 million babies, births are financed by Medicaid, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Republicans, again, are looking at ways to potentially reform Medicaid to help pay for President Trump's priorities, but to improve outcomes. What thoughts do you have regarding Medicaid reform?
Medicaid is not working for Americans, and it's specifically not working for the target population. Most Americans, like myself, I'm on Medicare Advantage, and I'm very happy with it. Most people who are on Medicaid are not happy. The premiums are too high, the deductibles are too high.
There aren't premiums and deductibles on Medicaid. How many people does he think is in the country if they're 30 million babies on Medicaid? One billion Americans. Matt Iglesias would be happy, but I don't think that's true. We impressed with his command of these very important healthcare policy matters that he's going to be in charge of.
Yeah, I mean, he's such a slippery, terrible person. And it did seem like he crammed for the test, but he kind of skipped like the 101. I mean, if you're going to merge Medicare and Medicaid, which is a proposal he floated, you probably have an idea for how that would work. But when pressed on that, he's like, I don't have a plan. I'd love to work it out with you, a member of Congress. At times, it didn't seem like he understood that it was Medicare, old people, Medicaid, poor people.
He said Medicaid is fully paid for by the federal government. That's wrong. It's actually paid for by a combination of federal and state funds. And again, you made the point about how he was wrong about premiums and deductibles. They don't exist for the vast majority of Medicaid recipients. We're talking about nearly $2 trillion worth of federal spending. I think Medicare was 14% of total spending in 2023. So these are enormous programs that he doesn't understand the basics of let alone how to administer them.
What are your thoughts on what the democrats are supposed to do with this kind of thing? Now again to cash and Tulsi in a little bit that's happening right now as we speak, but about him and Bondi and Higgs Seth.
You know, we get into nitpicking, right, like how they're handling the Q&A and, you know, could they have a better plan? Or, you know, could they coordinate better? If they ask tougher questions, that's on the one hand. On the other hand, I'm like, this is all a farce. RFK is like during the hearing yesterday pretended like he's four vaccines now. He has no idea what he's talking about about the major.
programs that are going to be, you know, under his auspices. So like, what is a useful, valuable use of Democrats' time on hearing such as this? Yeah, I mean, like we're looking, the no votes you're looking for are what Collins, Murkowski, McConnell, and Cassidy, that's kind of like the four that people of ID that you need. So knowing that list, I mean,
Presumably the ways to reach them would be through talking about the fact that he's clearly pro-choice and now he's pretending to be anti-abortion. Maybe they don't believe him. I'm curious what you think about this pitch, Tim. The problem with attacking RFK is you kind of de facto end up siding with big pharma.
the drug companies, the healthcare industry, which is not where I ideologically am. I don't like those guys either. I also don't think it's smart politics. The question is, how do you pick an enemy to counteract that? I've noticed that the Wall Street Journal and their editorial page have decided that the enemy is trial lawyers,
And they're saying that Kennedy is just gonna open up a whole bunch more litigation pathways for his trial lawyer buddies and that he might personally profit from some of those lawsuits. And I'm just curious if you think that angle is effective. Like I remember Atla being an enemy from my John Edwards for president days back in 2004. People didn't love trial lawyers. I remember my dad referring to Edwards as an ambulance chaser and 24 year old me got very offended, but I don't know. Is that an effective approach?
I mean, I love going after trial lawyers. So that works for me. It is confusing to me that like the Republicans are now at the party of trial lawyers and just love, like they love passing legislation that lets people randomly sue. Like that was, that's what underlines the, don't say gay bill in Florida. You know, you can sue the school if a teacher says something too gay. That's what underlines the bounty abortion bill in Texas. You can sue, you know, a woman or the provider if they break the law, right? So there's a lot of new pathways for suing.
I don't know if that's really going to land. I don't know. I'm torn. I think the Medicaid, why I wanted to play the Medicaid clips and the whole hearing was a fucking just farce and clown show. So we could have played many clips. But to me, I think that the Medicaid ones are probably the best bet for Democrats. And I think that like this is a program that serves poor people and it serves a lot of
poor working class whites and red states who are for Donald Trump and Trump has been pretty deft at kind of claiming that he's not actually coming after the services that they like. So I think going after that and I guess going after the Republicans for being phony.
It does create a pickle here on this whole thing, right? It's just like the whole thing is ridiculous. I mean that you have Tom Tillis, you have corporate Republicans out there being like, boy, I really love this guy that sued companies on behalf of environmentalists, sued pharmaceutical companies on behalf of anti-vax cooks. So I like maybe going after them instead of going after.
RFK and trying to wedge is a better strategy because I hear you like defending the status quo Is not really a winner for Democrats. You saw polas try to navigate this a little bit
Yeah, it's not really a winner. I mean, then there's the specific stories. I don't know how much you guys have talked about the Samoa incident on the show, but I do think it is. It tells you everything you need to know about this guy. Like the quick and dirty version, right, is in American Samoa, there was this horrible incident where two babies died because the nurses administering the vaccine mixed the measles vaccine with an expired aesthetic and it killed these two children. And it was this horrible, horrific mistake.
And it ultimately, you know, the sooner nurses went to jail for it, but it led to Samoa stopping vaccinations for about 10 months and then starting them up again. And then obviously people were very hesitant. So into the breach jumps RFK Jr. and the anti-vax crowd and this sort of information vacuum and climate of fear. And according to NBC News, what he was hoping to do was basically set up a study comparing the health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated babies in Samoa.
And when it heavily happens, someone comes from New Zealand, they have the measles, an outbreak starts, dozens and dozens of kids die in response Samoa launches this vaccination campaign. And in the midst of that, RFK is still having this people say, no, no, no, just give them vitamin A and vitamin C. But fast forward six weeks, 95% of kids in Samoa are vaccinated, and there's no more measles related deaths. But just like the fact that what this man wanted was to run
this giant you know eugenics adjacent experiment on babies uh... i think kind of tells you everything you need to know about him and how he will approach overseeing the medical community i mean like this is fucking deadly
completely unethical and moral stuff that he's going to do. And like, this is his approach. This is what he believes. Just a couple of other thoughts are coming to me as you say that. Like on the one hand, I do think vaccinations are just broadly generally popular. I know that, you know, maybe just focusing on the reemergence of the whooping cough is something that is useful. I do wonder though, like, is there a way just to sort of reframe this whole thing back to back to him being a Kennedy?
Like these guys like Trump and Kennedy, like they're pretending that they are going after the status quo, but they're not really like they're taking cash for themselves. They've now aligned themselves with the richest men in the world. I don't know. I'm just spitballing live here, but I do think maybe that's a more fruitful line than I guess going after him for being a cooke. I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, I guess going against, you know, the establishment or American royalty, that could work. But I think, I mean, you know this better than I do, like what the MAGA movement loves more than anything else is a convert. Whether you are a person of color or you're gay or you were one to liberal, like that's why they love Tulsi. That's why they love RFK Jr. Those are the people that prove that they've been right all along over in the MAGA movement and the libs were stupid. So I think that's kind of his entire power is his last name.
It has to be somewhat appealing to you, though, when you think about the incoming administration, that you do have a far left polygamist environmentalist, right? And you have somebody representing Aloha in Hawaii of, you know, a lot of diversity. That's kind of a woke cabinet. It is a spirit of law.
Let's talk about Tulsi for a second. Some of the reporting people in the Hill say that their concern is about Tulsi, but Tulsi had Tom Cotton doing the intro for her. There's ever going to be somebody that was going to be opposed to her and be that. She's totally flipped on all of the things like FISA, the National Security Republicans don't like. I'm wondering what you think about the Tulsi nomination. Yeah, she's not remotely qualified to do the job, but I think it's just
good to remember kind of first principles here is like they're like, oh, she was in the military. She had a security clearance. That doesn't mean she had access to any information. It doesn't mean she knows how the intelligence community works. It doesn't know mean she knows how to manage all of these people. It does seem like her biggest problem is her willingness to believe bad information and discount good information, especially when the bad information is coming from like the Russians or the Syrians and the good information is coming from the US. But then the second biggest problem I see to have with her or I see for her is that she is a liar.
You probably talked about her trip to Syria in 2017, where she met with Assad for three hours. You're not a daily listener of the pod, I take you. Of course I am. Of course I am. I do nothing else. Met with Assad's wife for an hour and then met with Assad again. When she got back to the US, her staff was trying to scramble to report to the ethics committee.
why she met with Assad since that wasn't cleared in advance, and they left like all the Google Doc changes on, so some reporter found the Google Doc and could see all their spins and lies. Long story short, she goes to Lebanon, dips over to Damascus for a meeting with Assad.
and pretended that it was spontaneous. She got there, so I just wanted to meet with her. But actually, the meeting was within one hour of her arrival. So she lied to her colleagues. She lied to her own staff. She lied to the Ethics Committee about all this. And it just leads you to the question, why? Is it general matter? I'm not like...
offended by meeting with adversaries, but meeting with Assad in the middle of this brutal civil war where he's killing half a million people is bizarre and gross. And also, did you know that she brought her spouse and she went with Dennis Kasinich, who brought his wife? Who brings a plus one to a civil war?
Yeah, then she spun for him. That's the other thing. Again, it's like, because that's the quick response you hear from her defenders. I was like, well, we should have open dialogue. I was like, OK, well, I mean, I don't know. I'm probably less keen on open dialogue than you and Tulsi. But OK, that's fine. That's one thing. But then it's like, you have the dialogue, and then you come back, and you're a propaganda tool for a thought. And then our own intelligence services at the time, this was a story I was reading yesterday,
said that they caught chatter of Hezbollah terrorists they were monitoring that were talking about how Tulsi was meeting with the big guy. So Joe Biden, I assume. Joe Biden, 10 for the big guy. We had always a question, who is the big guy out there? So many big guys. To me, it is just it's absurd to think that
That's just security Republicans would go along with this. But at this point, we've learned that they don't actually care about anything besides cycling up to Trump. But I guess it's somebody that has actually had security briefings and then
kind of involved in these conversations where you're getting intelligence and trying to translate it and figure out how to use it and what to do with it. What would be the legitimate concerns that people would have about somebody like Tulsi managing that process? Yeah. Ultimately, Tulsi and the agency she runs is going to be charged with putting together the PDB, the president's daily briefing, which is the most crown jewels of all U.S. intelligence on all the issues happening in the world that
Trump needs to know about. And is she going to bring in credible stuff? Is she going to put that document together in an ideological way? Is she going to continue to disbelieve the CIA or other components of the intelligence community when they say Assad used chemical weapons and blamed somebody else? So I think the question is like,
What information is she getting? How is she constructing that document for Donald Trump and filtering intelligence information to the President of the United States and other top decision makers? And on top of that, every national security council meeting will usually begin with a lay down from the DNI of the most relevant information on whatever the topic is, Afghanistan.
you know, Yemen, like whatever it is. So she's going to be kind of doing the PDB process and then repeating that in every national security meeting. It's like, why her? No one can answer the question. Why does this person make sense for this job other than some kind of payback for a political favor? Well, I mean, she's probably the most in line with Donald Trump out of all of the nominees as far as like processing intelligence.
And would you like turning out something that you like? I mean, Tulsi got tricked by Gateway Pundit, right? And that's kind of what Trump's looking for, I think, in somebody that is going to take the craziest shit that advances his narrative that is out there in the ether and presents that as the main narrative.
you know, blocks out or pushes out things that are contrary, right? I mean, that's what her skill set is, I think. Yeah, and she's also, I mean, I don't know. The things that kind of, the some parts of the MAGA movement liked about her anti-surveillance, pro-snoting, she seems to have flip-flopped on a lot of that. Like, it sounds like she's now in favor of Section 702 Intelligence Collection, which is the US government working with American technology companies to get access to stuff.
It sounds like she was a huge proponent in 2019. I think she went on Rogan and said that she would drop all charges against Edward Snowden if she were president. Now it seems like she has flipped on that position. So I guess I just don't know where Tulsi stands on anything anymore.
Yes, I mean, I guess I'm going to sound like a cliche never Trump cuck, but it is noteworthy in these hearings. I've had to suffer through the like all of the controversial shit that is out there in Maga world that we say are conspiracies and that they are like, no, I don't know. There's there's really something here. We're just asking questions about that.
Across the board on all that stuff, these guys are flipping, right? I mean, Tulsi is flipping her view on Snowden and on the corruption within the intelligence community. RFK is flipping his view on vaccines. When you get to cash next, he's flipped on the January 6 cop theaters. That trend, you would think,
would be noticed at some point. The QAnon cash flipped on. And all of these things, a generic MSNBC watching wine mom who we love, who has no experience on anything, would have been more correct than the people that are now nominated to run these agencies who have now flipped their views to match the view of the generic MSNBC wine mom. I do think that's a noteworthy trend.
Yeah, and I guess that's all that's required for Tom Cotton. He's just like that credulous. He's like, all right, cool. It works for me. Let's have another two support and Snowden's stay in the jail. I'm good. Speaking of credulous, I'm just getting fucking pister and pister as we go on here today. Tommy, I'm going to have a fucking heart attack before I get into this administration. I was just thinking backwards. I am still mad about the
of that Trump and Vance. I'm just like, the more we talk about it, this was happening live, so I'm processing it live. And the poor family members of these victims of this plane crash, like have to watch the president rant about DEI. Yeah. I mean, that's just the whole thing is pissing me off. And all the secretaries and JD, I mean, they just got up there and they just fluffed the president and said how amazing his leadership had been. It's like, I don't know. Sounds like he did a commerce call. He said the worst people.
All right, you talked about how credulous Tom Cotton was. He's got nothing on Jimmy Langford and Tom Tillis. Here's James Langford today. There's a social media, national media persona of who cash is. And then there's who he actually is. There's this cartoon of him that's out there that he's mean, hateful, intense. And then when you meet him, you think, where is that person that's being described?
I don't know, James, have you ever watched a show about a bad guy? Tony Soprano can be pretty charming in a 20-minute meeting. You can be a person that has advanced hateful, intense, and mean material and conspiratorial material and then also be able to pull it together for 20 minutes to suck up to a senator.
Like there. Oh, there's a bad social media perception and persona of Cash Patel out there. Whose fault is that? Maybe him tweeting that he's going to chainsaw off the heads of various elected officials or going on every right wing podcast and talking about his enemies list and all the evil happening in the deep state and lying about his background and pretending he was, you know, the lead prosecutor and Benghazi when he was just like a
junior lawyer, kind of helping out on the edges. Like, yeah, there's a bad sort of sentiment out there about Cash Patel, because he's an unqualified, deeply dishonest person. And that seems like a bad thing for an FBI director. He's a clown that had a podcast on Epoch Times, which is a conspiracy website. I didn't know that.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. He was a competitor of yours. He didn't see him in the charts, but he had a podcast on the Epoch Times with Cash's Corner. I've had to suffer through it a few times. He doesn't even deny any of the things that people say he said. It's just like, well, I guess that's just part of a K-fave. It's like WWE. It's like Rowdy Roddy Piper getting on the mic. And it's like, that's not the real Rowdy Roddy. You know, he's just, he's just, he's just saying what he said about Jake the Snake Roberts because, because that's part of the show. I guess that's their argument.
A lot of people confuse is a good person with nice to me. You hear that with a lot of these kind of bro influencers who like, oh, Trump was great when I met him at UFC 64 or whatever. It doesn't mean he was a good person. The single most troubling story about Cash Patel to me, Tim, comes from his time at the Pentagon at the very end of the Trump administration. Long story short, there was a hostage being held in the kind of Nigeria area.
the Pentagon launched this rescue mission. They had a bunch of Navy SEALs in an airplane who were going to parachute out of that plane, land, traips out, like walk a couple miles and rescue this guy. And to conduct a mission like that, you need to get permission to fly into the country's airspace, in this case, Nigerian airspace.
And they're about to turn on this operation, greenlighted. Cash says the State Department got us access into Nigerian airspace. And then right as the plane with the Navy SEALs in it is about to fly into that airspace, they figure out that he had lied and he just made that up. And so Cash Patel nearly blows up what was ultimately a successful rescue mission. And also, I mean, the worst case scenario is you fly a bunch of US military aircraft into Nigerian airspace and it gets shot down.
And to this day, no one knows why he lied about.
Like Mark Esper, the secretary of defense at the time, writes about it in his book. They were top Pentagon officials screaming at cash, and he was like, who fucking cares? Everything worked out in the end. And it's just the most irresponsible thing I've ever heard. I just want to say, just for the record, in case there are lawyers listening, that story that Tommy shared was shared by Tommy. That is alleged. And this former secretary of defense, Mark Esper, also shared it.
The cash is currently suing Olivia Troy, my friend, for relaying that same story on MSNBC. I just want to say that if there are any lawsuits pending, that was Tommy Vitor that said that. I'm open to any facts that might emerge. I'm very open to any facts. If Cash Patel wants to come on this show, or any of the shows on Cricut Media and correct the record and correct me, I am absolutely willing to listen. This is what I read.
You're a fair questioner. I've watched some of your interviews. Speaking of cash and lying, I've got a clip here from today's hearing that I would like to play. Stu Peters, is that name ring about? I'm sorry. Are you familiar with Mr. Stu Peters? Not off the top of my head. He made eight separate appearances on his podcast. He promoted out of Regis conspiracy theories and worked with a prominent neo-Nazi.
This is like when my mother was like, Sarah, was there a glass bong in your room? Like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. What? Is there a one at the party? I'm like, glass, I'm glass bong. I'm like, ooh, I don't know. That doesn't ring a bell. And she's like, this glass bong. She's like, what?
What eight times you've been on the podcast or a guy named Arjun Modi was a GOP Senate staffer came to came to cash his defense on us I tweeted about this exchange and he came to cash his defense He writes this in context cashed it over 1,000 media interviews submitted to the committee. I don't remember what I had for lunch yesterday. Okay
What do you think about that, Tommy? Do you think there's anybody who's done eight podcast interviews with you who couldn't recognize your name? I am forgettable. You are just a white guy named Tom. Just a DEI.
What that story tells me is the degree to which Republican senators see things happen where they know a nominee that they're about to vote for just lied and just don't care. And they just think it's a game. And they think that deniability is all that matters and the truth is irrelevant. And it sucks. It's incredibly frustrating. Because what do you do there? It's like the worst fight in a relationship ever. It's like when you say to someone,
You know you did this and they just won't give you an inch and they give no quarter or they deny it and you know they're lying, but where do you go from there?
Yeah, I might revisit it, I guess. I don't know. I'm feeling like the Joker, but in the afternoon session of this, I might just kind of revisit cash. I'm sorry, I know this might seem silly, but I've got to go back to the stupidest thing. Is it ring a bell now that we've been reminded you did eight podcast interviews? Yeah, that's a good way to do it. Here is a general matter. What I think love to see every single senator at these hearings do is stop giving fucking speeches and just use your eight minutes for questions, but that's a perennial problem.
I've been torn on this because I've also been giving the Democratic Senator's shit, Ned Mark Kelly, on this pod last week, and I was like, why don't you guys coordinate better? He didn't have a good answer to that, really. I thought his questions were good, but some of the others weren't. That was with regards to the HEG Seth hearing. But I don't know, man, if the Republicans are going to vote for this guy anyway,
Are we sure that given a speech that goes on YouTube or TikTok isn't a better use of time than asking him questions he's going to lie about? That's a genuine question. I'm kind of going back and forth on what is a useful. If you thought that you could stop it, then I think strategy is important. But if we're just accepting that the Republicans are totally shameless and are going to vote in these unqualified people, then maybe the strategy mindset changes a little bit. I don't know.
I look, I think use your time to get information, try to pin them down on things, whether it's policy or perjury. But I mean, if it's a really good speech, it's an incredibly compelling, passionate speech that goes super viral on TikTok, like that's great. But like I was watching Peter Welch spend like several minutes talking about how much, you know, he was like a RFK scholar in college. I really like Peter Welch and he's like good on policies and a lot of great stuff. But I was like, what are we doing here? It's like four minutes of your time.
You also just know your skills, you know? Yeah, Peter Welch is a nice person, he's fine, but maybe give your time over to...
somebody that knows what they're doing. Yeah, Amy Colbychar was pretty good this morning. Well, that's what they did at the Jan six committee, right? Like they kind of gave it to a prosecutor or gave it to one individual and let you really narrow in. It's a much better way to go. You know, it'd be like if the bulwark had a like weightlifting competition against crooked media, you know, I'd be like, I don't probably don't put me in on that one, you know, like put me in, put me in on one of your events where I know what I, what I can add some value. Is JVL your ringer?
Joe perdacon, I think losing kaputo is pretty big on that. Unfortunately, but I don't know. I've been over to crooked headquarters. I don't think the competition is going to be a stiff on the weightlifting. I had one more thing in cash.
I think Tom Tillis might be my least favorite sender now, Tommy. The thing I want the most in the world, which means it won't happen is I want the porn store pizza man to challenge him in a primary and beat him. I want it really badly. Tillis passed out a cash, K money sign, H bingo card game today.
that check the square if a Democrat says subjects such as deep state or enemies list or QAnon. And it's just like,
The problem with him is, you know, some of these guys, Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn't pretend to be serious. So like, give me Marjorie Taylor Greene over this. Tom Tillis is like condescending lectures about how the Democrats are the ones that are asking unfair questions, you know, amidst a hearing. We're like, you have legitimate questions about the incoming FBI director that was producing the January 6 choir.
I like to act like that is some preposterous thing for the Democrats to bring up that you should just mock with your silly bingo card game. Like fuck you, Tom, tell us like what is this? You got a 44 year old guy with no relevant experience. Barely any relevant experience was nominated to lead the FBI for a decade.
because Trump fired the last guy he nominated to leave the FBI for a decade after firing the first one, Jim Comey. Yeah, so we should be asking the dude questions. I mean, the enemy's list thing is the part of that that pisses me off the most. It's in his book. He published a book with a list of enemies. Does that, if that does not bother you?
And he talked about it a lot on several of those 1,000 podcasts he talked about. It is exhausting. Yeah, Tom Tillis, he's up in 26. I guess he must have decided that this is the one he's going to kind of go full naga on. They're never going to like you. They're not going to support you. You're not going to get like, you're not going to be accepted by them.
be your own man. I would say it was interesting. Much more on cash tomorrow. We got Andrew Weiss went on, but just one other thing that was interesting from today, he didn't allow the question about the pardons for the cop beaters. He specifically said he disagreed with that. I did not see that. Interesting. Yeah, I found that interesting. I mean, it's fake. Probably have to say it, yeah, for the building. Yeah, and I'm sure he cuts the deal behind the scenes. He calls it down in June or whatever, and he's like, just tell daddy.
I mean, it calls shadow president on musk. I don't know. I mean, it calls Donald directly, but it's just like, Hey, I'm just gonna, you got to give me one here so that we can get through it. It's a weird one though. Like, who is that for? It's for the building, I guess, for the FBI when you get there. But does it get you anything from the senators who vote on you who give you the job? Yeah, who's the fourth center that would have cared about that? That's a good question. I don't know. Not Tom Tillis.
I wonder your take also on, there's just been this kind of clown, LMB, we're freezing, and then we're rescissioning the freeze, and then we're re-freezing, and then we're unfreezing, and a lot of the stuff, the details are going to bleed out. But the one area where they do seem to be pretty serious about freezing
grants and funds is in foreign aid. Then they brought up a fake story about the Gaza condoms is one of the things that they're going to freeze that that's not true. Actually, the condoms are going to Africa as part of the anti-AIDS programs, part of PEPFAR, which is a Republican program initially. But they're going to cut that, cut all USA idea. So I'm just kind of curious, given your experience in that world, what you think the potential ramifications of this are? Yeah, I mean, I think
They're calling it a freeze. I think we should assume that all of these programs are gone unless otherwise indicated and gone permanently, right? Well, they didn't freeze just to be clear. They did not freeze the aid to Israel or Egypt, which is for Israel. So heck of a job to the Egypt bag men and to our friends who protested genocide job.
Yeah, the Egypt money is all about Israeli security operations. In 2023, there was $63 billion of foreign aid. That's less than 1% of the federal budget. But as you know, Tim, when you do focus groups are polling, people think the foreign aid budget is closer to 10%. So there's political... It's a political winner, for sure.
But the money we're talking about goes to fund things like combating Ebola or Marburg virus outbreaks abroad or monitoring the avian flu or cleaning up mines and cluster munitions that didn't blow up in places like Ukraine or Laos and Cambodia. But there's also money for education in Jordan, the country, which gives us enormous leverage in political influence in these places. And if we just turn that off, that influence is now gone.
And you mentioned, I mean, there is a lot of political attacks on foreign aid, but you mentioned PEPFAR. I mean, PEPFAR is George Bush's greatest accomplishment. It saved 25 million people. It was like universally supported. Recently, I forget which Republican Senator started attacking it because like $4,000 were accidentally spent on abortion services in some country and that money was refunded. And I don't know if that got it on the chopping block, but that sounds like there's, you know,
AIDS drugs on the shelf in clinics that they're not allowed to distribute. It's just, it's insane. There's also the soft power and you're kind of forgetting at this in the Jordan example, but like the soft power element to this, particularly in the context of China. Like the thing to me that's like the most incoherent about this is you've got some elements
of the Trump administration and Trump world that are very, you know, savor rattly about China and China hawks and the threats from China and this great power struggle that we're in. And part of that is the fact that China has been buying influence with a lot of countries throughout the world, particularly some in our hemisphere now, you know, doing programs such as the one you described in Jordan, right? And so if we kind of will get off the playing field there,
You already saw this little dust up with Columbia. If you're petro, like, well, I guess I'll just deal with China. I'll do trade with China. They might feel like a more reliable ally right now. To me, it just undermines the whole China Hawk element of what they're arguing. Totally. I mean, the China infrastructure projects often
are devastating for countries down the road, because they create these debt traps that countries can't get out of. But you know what they don't come with? You're saying you can't trust the CCP. That's not signophobic. Now that you're on the Bullwork podcast, you can say it without any accusations of signophobia. War and pandemic.
We're on the show. We're talking about the CCP. But the Chinese money doesn't come with any strings attached around human rights. So it's a little bit easier. But you're right. It's not just that we're turning off money that gives us influence in places in China can fill the breach. It's that we're actively being dickheads.
to people in Panama, Colombia, Denmark for absolutely no reason. And these are like, Denmark's a NATO ally. We're like, OK, let's play this out for me, Tim. The United States military sends a whole bunch more US military members to our base in Greenland. And we just decide we've annexed that and occupied it. Like, what happens? Does NATO have an Article 5 responsibility to respond to this US invasion of Greenland on behalf of Denmark? Like, this whole thing is just
It's like a farce in some ways. It's insane. But this is kind of the reality of what we're talking about right now. And it makes us look like clowns and unreliable.
When you talk to folks in, like, advocacy world, and is there anything in particular that they're the most alarmed about, I guess, in the first week and a half, particularly kind of what the pod state of the world had on? I mean, the most interesting kind of thread I saw on this was by a guy named Matul Gawande, who got into all the public health projects that were being impacted by this, the funding freeze. And that, I think, was where people said instantly went, just in terms of the risk.
to Americans, like something that could boomerang back on us pretty quickly. I want to do a little politics, and then every time you're on, I like to give you a world leader quiz. We can close with that. But I was talking with Chris Hayes on Tuesday, and he's got the new book about the attention economy and how Trump has successfully leveraged this. And this is, I guess, kind of related to our first topic and the darkest sense of how Trump has leveraged this
Leverage so to speak this tragedy outside of breaking airport, but you know one of the things about where the democrats. I can't just are struggling with this and in part because they have to kind of go through this deprogramming from what what was a smart politician behavior.
15 years ago versus what is smart politician behavior now. And I played him a club of Gretchen Whitburn. And I hate to pick on Gretchen Whitburn because I think this is across the board something that all Democrats are doing. But I just want to use it as an example because she is type of person that might be up in 2028. And because it is just spot on what we're talking about here. So let's listen to Gretchen Whitburn on CBS.
I think this is the story of Michigan, right? We're a very diverse state. We are a state that tends to go back and forth and like some balance in our politics. And I've won twice with big margins within two years of Donald Trump also carrying Michigan. And so as I said in my recent address, I'm not out looking for fights. I'm always looking to collaborate first. I won't back down from an important one. That's for sure. But I got a job to do. And we're going to stay focused on moving forward and trying to find common ground where we can.
What's the lesson in that split ticket situation for you as governor now? I think it's to keep listening to the people. And it's part of what I talk about in my book that we've just made for young adults. These are lessons that you can use at any age, right? Learning how to listen is a superpower that not enough people tap into.
All right, Tommy, I want you to pretend we're at a DNC media training session. We just played that clip and you're talking to the candidates. What kind of feedback do you have for Big Grudge? I guess where I'm struggling with this is I do think that voters want to hear about common ground and working together and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But right now we're an opposition party.
with no power. So it doesn't fucking matter if we work together with them or not. They don't need us. They don't want us. They don't care. And so I think you have to act accordingly and raise the awareness and the cost of some of the most egregious things Trump is doing. And that gets complicated when you're talking about areas where clearly Democrats are off sides like immigration. The Lake and Riley Act got a bunch of Democratic votes. It does things that I find
like indefensible on a policy level, like just deporting people accused of a crime that just discards all due process rights for people in this country. I think mostly it's like be fucking interesting, talk like a human being, pick a fight, go into places that are unusual so that whatever you're doing gets shared on social media. I mean, Tim, you and I both spend a lot of times in safe spaces with people who agree with us, like MSNBC, whatever, but you know, I went on Foxy the other day with Jesse Waters and
That interview is, I heard from more people, it got more pick up than like anything else I've done. So I don't know, maybe we need a little more, a little more combat. Yeah, I've got some feedback for you in the Jesse Waters interview. I'm going to stick with what I burned here first, or not whatever, just with the Democratic challenge, probably, because like,
I don't think you're actually a gamble. So you said, right, that they don't need us, they don't want us. We're hoping it's got to do need Democrats, actually, to get stuff done. And we'll see what they can do. I think that's going to be a big challenge on the hill to get things passed.
Republican study committee put out a statement the other day. That's, I think, 180 House members are like, we're only going to vote for a reconciliation bill if it cuts the deficit. And if you go back and listen to the Liam Donovan article interviewed a couple weeks ago, like you can hear how that's impossible, right? So, you know, they're going to come to the Democrats for bailouts on budget stuff. So get something for them to get to the 60 votes on the Lincoln Riley thing.
Maybe that was the right strategic thing to do, but maybe not. Are people really going to be voting on the Lake and Riley Act in 2026? We're 20 months away from another election. I don't know, actually. I mean, is saying that we're going to collaborate with the Trump administration really
getting you anything? I mean, it's just like the most anodyne talking point. And so whether or not those are the right words to say, who's going to hear that, right? Like when there's, I mean, no pickup of this, of just kind of very boring comments. I've played twice on the podcast now because it was so boring. So there was so good of super that.
Listen, like on the politics question, like, I don't know, the politics for Rubik Iago in Arizona are probably very different than a lot of other members, right? And Ruben was like very vocally for the Lake and Riley Act. And will people be voting on immigration in the midterms? I don't know. I mean, the Trump's goal, presumably, is to lock down the border and solve all our immigration problems. And it doesn't mean they'll stop talking about it or making up caravans. But does that reduce the salience? Like, I don't know, it's an interesting bet.
But yeah, no, I think we're at opposition party and we have to act accordingly and talk like people and be nimble and be interesting. Has anybody done well?
in the last week and a half. Again, it would be one thing that can be complaining about this in December, but he had an inauguration. We've had all these hearings. We had this press conference today. There have been plenty of opportunities to go say interesting things, to go to different types of places. Is there anybody that you think's really nailing it? Yeah, I mean, like Congressman Pat Ryan sort of been saying and doing interesting things, trying to be out there, trying to be
clear-cut clear-eyed. I mean, I think what you're getting at and what Democrats are feeling is that there is a leadership void. We have Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are the leaders in both houses in the Senate or in Congress. But there's not a Democratic leader. There's not a nominee. I mean, Schumer talked about how aroused people were.
That was pretty good. That was hard to watch. I'm all right. We'll flaccid. We'll tap it. Yeah. So, you know, I just go to like, look, there's the thing in 2016, I used to make fun of it. So I'm the person I used to make fun of now. So I'll admit it. But in 2016, when I was working for Jeb, they were like, we would mock like the defense of Trump.
among the Winnie the Pooh and the Tuxedo defense of Trump back then in 2015 was like, but he fights. He might have some issues in his personal life, like we want somebody that fights these evil Obama bros, right? And that didn't resonate with me then because, you know,
Thank you made some mistakes but i wasn't i didn't really feel deep in my core that you need to be fought but stupid as american um but so that obviously is why i'm i'm disconnected from my former party but like now i feel that you could sell me on that like a but she fights or but he fights as somebody that i don't agree with on every issue i want to fight i know is going to go there and go to the mat against this.
farcical shit, this sham that we have to, that we've been subjected to for the last week and a half. And it's like, nobody's really giving me that. I know you see a little bit, uh, you know, you mentioned about Ryan, Chris Murphy, a little bit, but.
But no, no guttural, nothing from the gut. Yes. I want to fight her. I also think obstruction works. Mitch McConnell built an entire career off of that. So the Senator should find ways to bog down everything Trump does. It's also just like when Barack Obama won in 2008, he got 365 electoral votes. We had huge majorities in the House and the Senate. The Republicans
Wipe their hands and give up? No, they fought everything we did tooth and nail and they drove down our favorables into the midterms of 2010. And that to me is the road map. It's just all focus on the midterms.
I've been saying the word sham too much. So people, I gotta get out my, I'm gonna get out my, I've been saying too much, sham too. I don't know. We'll see. There's a lot of bad stuff. Speaking of farsas, you went on water's world, as you mentioned earlier. If we're gonna make fun of the other Democrats and give them some feedback, I've got some feedback for you. So I wanna listen to a clip of you on water's world. I'd love to hear your media training. How many genders are there, Tommy? How many genders are there, Tommy?
The honest answer, Desi, I don't care. I'm a libertarian. I don't care what you want to be. You can be what you want to be. Well, I'm not a Democrat and that we know. What happens?
I didn't know you were a libertarian. I actually run the New Hampshire Democratic Party's libertarian, party speed. First of all, I don't think that anyone who goes on an unserious show should treat, be forced to treat unserious questions like they're serious. The subjects I was sent in advance were like, we're going to talk about Biden's legacy, the pardons and Democrats going forward, so that just gives you some insight. Also though, I am libertarian on most social issues. I think the role of the government should be to leave people the fuck alone.
If you decide your gender is something other than male and female, good, good for you. Live your life however you want. If you want to have an abortion, the government should leave you the fuck alone. I'm very much am a libertarian on a whole basket of issues. The libertarian moment is back. I was just happy to hear it. I'd never heard you say you're a libertarian before. I was like, man, we've got more in common than I thought.
I wasn't expecting that question. I might have used it as an opportunity to go after Jesse to be like, yeah, Jesse, you know, I don't know. I think that there are two genders. Like sometimes people, you know, process like their alignment, which eat with each gender differently. You see this in sex as well, you know, like their men with two balls.
They're men with one ball. They're men who gave both of their balls over to Donald Trump. Wow. Okay. You know, like you, like that'd be one thing to do. Like there are only a couple of ways to do a marriage, right? You can have a clothes marriage, you can have an open marriage, or you can have a clothes marriage where you cheat on your wife with a woman that works for you and you're a sex best at the office. Like that might have been another thing to consider. I'm just spitballing different options. Those are different approaches. And I think they all think it works.
The one thing I thought about after the fact that I should have done was just be like, can we talk about Dominion voting or anything they've been sued for for various defamation cases? Just try to repeatedly bring that up. That's a next time thing. Dominion, all right. I've got, I think you should keep going on there. Is there anything else you want to do? Just generally speaking, like bro pods, crypto, like what do you think could be a useful use of your time now? The Jesse Waters appearance is kind of like a training room.
I want to practice what I preach a little bit, get out some more. I really respect the fact, Tim, that you do a lot of adversarial stuff, like you're kind of at press conferences. That wasn't out of a fish for compliments. No. Well, listen, you found one. Fish on. It's serious. What is actually useful?
Sometimes it's not actually useful. Like me yelling at Clay Travis, I find kind of satisfying, but am I convincing it? You know what I mean? Is that useful? I don't know. I've been thinking about this a lot. I've actually taken your counsel. I'm happy to be public about this. I find Steve Bannon very interesting. I listen to his show often.
When you listen to bad in talk, you're usually like a couple of weeks ahead of the curve on where the MAGA movement is going. I would like to better understand what he thinks Trump 2.0 is like. I'd love to press him on whether the MAGA populism he's voted for is represented when you have billionaire, you know, liberal tech oligarchs sitting on stage and Elon running, you know, huge swaths of the administration. I went on a barstool show when I was in New York.
I want to do more stuff where we're just like I hate the fucking platforming debate I'm done with the platforming debate where people are platformed and I just want to go into places where there's a little more I don't like debate like I hate the like
Ben Shapiro owns a 19-year-old content, but a conversation with someone that disagrees with you, vociferously, like that's a good thing. I agree with that. And particularly the non-pole, this is what I'm trying to think of. I think it's more challenging. But I think it would be valuable for you, probably not love it, but Favreau and other fellow bros, Pat Ryan's, to go on non-pole.
political, conservative, coded shows. Totally. Because I think that there's limited, maybe minor value in me yelling at Clay Travis. I think there'd be very real value, and again, going on the barstools, the Theobons, or some of this other kind of stuff that Aidan wrought, like the streamers doing some of that, I think would be useful. Totally. It is all kind of tied up in crypto.
Do you own any crypto? I own like a little tiny bit. I wish I owned a lot more. Do you have any regrets over that? Because I've been thinking about this lately. Yeah. I'm so fucking pissed about the Trump cooling thing and how this whole thing is just like such an obvious fraud.
How so many of these coins are such an obvious fraud and how these rug pulls are going to screw people over and it's making me mad, but I've been doing some self-examination and I'm wondering if part of my anger is related to the fact that I've left so much money on the table. I'm wondering what you think about that.
Yeah, we all missed a generational wealth opportunity. I lived in San Francisco in 2015. If I just listened to like one nice nerd who said, hey, you should buy Ethereum or whatever it was at the time. It would have been cool. A couple of thoughts in this, Tim. I think we all have to stop saying like bro, tech bro, crypto bros, because it's obviously like I'm a pod bro. It's obviously pejorative and condescending and like, you know, I think they don't like it. It's no mystery why whatever comes after that. Leave it to the libs, more speech codes for
All right. I can't say bro. I've got to say latinxed. I get it. Oh, whatever, Tommy. All right. We can say what we want. We can say what we want, but we should probably not to be surprised when people tune out everything after. Okay, fair. I was talking to Rokan about this the other day. One thing I think Democrats miss is there is a piece of the crypto story that is aspirational. It's not just like get rich quick.
But there is that it's also anti-establishment. It's people who felt like they were sticking it to the big banks in the system and kind of operating outside of the control of, you know, whatever they, they're kind of pushing against. And I do think Democrats can sound overly negative in like assholes who are just oppositional to this stuff. So we have to capture part of that narrative in the hopeful message, but also talk about the fact that Trump coin and meme coins and so much of this stuff is a grift.
is a Ponzi scheme. It is going to hurt people. You're going to have more like kind of SPF collapses and Lunatera collapses, and there need to be like regulations that protect people. So that's the other part of the message. It is tough, right? And that's that's my problem with the whole road talking point on all this, right? It's like, okay, I've got to be more open minded towards the Ponzi scheme. That's getting the worst people in the world, Rich, I guess. All right. Sure. It's just about how you talk to people. It's just about like,
Persuasion trying to like not make them feel attacked. And I think Biden did some good things trying to regulate these tech companies. It was obviously a long past time, but in the process seems like we radicalized a lot of rich people who poured money into Donald Trump and Republican coffers. Finally, before I get you on the where in the world is common San Diego pop quiz, I am curious about, you know, you're monitoring the world. We're looking for positives out there, not a lot of positives happening domestically.
Do you have a favorite world leader? I wish I could like Malay. He'd be right in my actual libertarian bones, but he wasn't such a suck up to Trump. Give me a good lib around the world that I can be excited about. Anthony Albanese in Australia. He's doing anything for you?
I know nothing about that person. That's a good project for me this weekend. Anthony Albanese. Progressive. You can Google him. The problem is right now, things are a little messy internationally. You saw the Canadians. You said Trudeau stepped down. There's a real chance that Pierre Polyev comes to power in Canada, the Conservative leader. It looks like the G7. You got South Korea. They just had a little martial law incident. They're trying to prosecute and peach and remove there.
President, that seems bad. The Germans are about to have an election. We got Elon kick it up dust for the far right party. So things are a little messy, man. I don't know. There's not a lot. I'm especially hopeful. I mean, Keir Starmer and the labor party, they had a rough start, but they're going to be in power for a while. They could do some good things. That helped David Lamie, Foreign Secretary.
in the u.k. i like him a lot no one a little personally. David Lamy. All right. Big New Yorker piece on him this week. I'll check out that New Yorker piece. I'm just looking for hope anywhere. All right. It takes the final topic. You know that George W. Bush was embarrassed when he was asked.
to name random foreign leaders, and all the lips were so excited to make fun of them for not knowing that. And since you have a podcast about the world, I'd like to ask you about that. I've got some friends who are traveling through Asia here this winter. And so I'd like for you to tell us the Prime Minister of Japan or the President of Vietnam or the Prime Minister of Thailand, any of those three world leaders
Can you get any of those? Would you say Thailand is Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam? Uh, Thabason? Thabason is which one? Uh, Thailand. Hmm. No? I don't know. Current with the Prime Minister is, uh, Shinworata.
Actually, are you sure but maybe there's are there multiple I don't know what that I don't know what the tie system I'm gonna Google you know, maybe it's a movie just I'm gonna cheat on this one. You're googling. No, no, I'm just gonna Google Thavison Oh, yeah, no Thavison's been gone since August 24 24. Oh, okay fair to you Thavison just went out August 2024. So that's pretty good We'll give you a half a point for that shin a watra is the new prime minister okay woman
Well, and then, yes, I'm sorry, you're right. That's a good point. And then the Japanese have had like a bunch of leaders very recently. Ishiba is the current one. That's correct. Ishiba. Okay, good. What was the other country you asked about? Vietnam. No fucking clue. No clue about Vietnam. I can't pronounce this person's name, but it looks like since 21, another new one, a lot of turnover over there. General, it's a general.
Uh oh, watch out for Vietnam, Kong, Kwong, General Kwong. So there you go. One and a half points out of three, that's a C. I don't know. That's not good. That's not good. That's not good. But it's pretty much about Sharif. I brushed up. It's good. It's a good podcast though, Pod Save the World. I do listen to it on the plane and I doze off to it, actually, usually. So it's kind of like you and Ben Rhodes in my dreams often times when I'm on flights. So I appreciate you.
Thanks for coming back to the podcast. Do you have anything else you want to promote? Any other final thoughts for everybody? No, let's just come together, Libs. We can do this. We're going to make it through this to yours. I get into some doomer places like I know you do, Tim, usually around 10 p.m. at night on Sundays. And we got to pull up. Yeah. Got to pull up the plane. No Sunday scaries with Tommy Vitor. Guys, we're going to be back here tomorrow with Andrew Weisman. Look forward to seeing you all then. Peace.
I say she wave can't complain if the rooms at large rush at me Walked away to another plant
Gonna find another place maybe what I could stand I moved on to another day Do a whole new town with a whole new way Went to the porch to have my thought Got to the door and again I couldn't stop You don't know where you don't know when But you still got your words and you've got your friends Walking on to another day
Work a little harder, work another way. Well, I'm, I'm baby, I ain't got no plan. I'll flow you down, maybe would you understand? I'm gonna flow you down, maybe would you understand? Well, I'll flow you down, maybe would you understand?
The days be shorter and the nights be cold I lie in the arm, but this place is getting on That dark mind belongs in the head from the coast It might not be a lie, but I feel like I'm making the most The days get longer when the nights are green I guess it's not surprising but it's free and I should leave
I like songs about drifters books about the same The boys seem to make me feel a little less insane Walked on off to another spot I still haven't gotten anywhere and yet I won't get a wrong clue Did I need to know? Life doesn't always feel like I'm carting in London too
The Bullock podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.
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