What a Weekday: Time for Tim

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Speaker 1 What was your pig's name? Pokey. I was really bad.

Speaker 1 I had a cat named Fluffy and a kid named

Speaker 1 Pokey. I named all my pets for years Padfoot after Sirius Black.
That was just every pet. Oh, right.
I had a cat named Periscope.

Speaker 2 Hey, everybody, I'm John Lovitt. I am here today with producer Kendra and writers Hallie and Sarah.
Hi. Lovely to see you all.
Let's get into it. What a weekday.

Speaker 2 On Tuesday morning, our vice presidential predictions and white guy wonderings finally came to an end. Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Wals to join her on the ticket.

Speaker 2 And on behalf of all Americans, let me just say.

Speaker 2 This was the choice.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 everybody has been saying from the window to the walls.

Speaker 2 what does it actually other than just it having the sound walls, what is window doing for us?

Speaker 1 I don't think it's doing it. It's a dance.

Speaker 1 It's the dance.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 It's evoking a nostalgic time of celebration that feels so distant when in fact it was so recently that little John entreated us to go from the window to the walls. Here's a question.

Speaker 1 For me, that was a bar mitzvah season song.

Speaker 2 Oh, wow. Is it that far back?

Speaker 1 Three years of college.

Speaker 1 That was a firmly sophomore year because that was the same year as, yeah, which was definitely my sophomore year. What a time.
Wow.

Speaker 2 What a time. And now we're having our own time.
And it is brought summer because of Minnesota. Because of brats.

Speaker 1 Okay. It's supposed to brat summer.

Speaker 2 It's so rare to see the internet get exactly what it wants. What's next? Tommy posts feed pics?

Speaker 2 Nice. Waltz wrote on X, I am all in.
Vice President Harris is showing us the politics of what's possible. It reminds me a bit of the first day of school.
So let's get this done, folks. Join us.

Speaker 2 I mean, not the first day at a real school these days, of course. That's just eight hours of active shooter drills.
But you understand the point that he was making.

Speaker 2 Walls was one of two finalists for the position, along with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. We may not have the first Jewish vice president, but by God, we have Doug.

Speaker 1 No one can take Doug away from us.

Speaker 2 No one can take Doug away from us. Doug is ours.
And Doug loves us, whether we believe in him or not.

Speaker 1 I believe. Like Santa.

Speaker 2 Like Santa. Trump wasted no time attacking Walls at a fundraising email, calling him dangerously liberal and saying he would unleash hell on earth.

Speaker 2 First of all, is he talking about Walls' record in Minnesota, which includes free school lunches, legalized wheat, paid family and sick leave, background checks for guns, automatic voter registration, and increased school funding?

Speaker 2 Or me at the Minnesota fair without an e lactate?

Speaker 2 You know, because of all the dairy that they'll likely have.

Speaker 2 I just don't believe it is going to work to try to tag Tim Walls as being some kind of radical extremist.

Speaker 2 There is nothing more comforting than the shape and sounds that Tim Walls puts into the universe. It's like when they tried to call Biden that, they couldn't do it.
They couldn't make it work.

Speaker 2 They couldn't make it stick. So they had to say that Kamala Harris was back there pulling all the strings.

Speaker 1 We were talking about Kiki and a booba at some point. Tim Walls is a booba.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Tim Walls is one who is definitely, yes, he is booba. He is booba.
Is Kamala Harris?

Speaker 1 They want Kamala Harris to be Kiki, but I think they're both booba. I think they're both booba.

Speaker 2 I do think they're both booba. Yeah.
They They're most of the names.

Speaker 1 They do. Like Jim and Kamala.

Speaker 2 JD Vance is booba for sure.

Speaker 1 For sure. What is Trump? Trump is almost like a square.
He's something else. Yeah, Trump is an unknown shape.

Speaker 2 He is pointy.

Speaker 1 Like in a hexagon.

Speaker 2 Trump is one of those shapes where it takes mathematicians decades to prove that this completely

Speaker 2 never before described

Speaker 2 geometric form rolls the same way a sphere does, even though it shouldn't.

Speaker 1 And you're like, you guys couldn't be be working on climate change. You got to be doing all this.

Speaker 2 And then somebody comes and looks and actually realizes that that shape matches the shape of a tortoise shell.

Speaker 1 And you realize

Speaker 2 it has evolved the same shape. Did we talk about this before?

Speaker 1 What? Yeah. My brain immediately went to when they discovered that new shape and you were upset.
Isn't that what we're talking about? We're doing this.

Speaker 1 This is different. It's similar.
Oh, sorry. I don't know.

Speaker 2 It's a similar issue. What is this shape called? Hold on.

Speaker 1 All I know is like Trump shape is like, if you step on it in the middle of the night, you will punch a hole in the wall because it'll be so painful.

Speaker 2 For those of us just finding out, I never looked up the name of the shape. You know what? I think everybody's happy.

Speaker 2 For those of us just finding out who the hell he is, Tim Walls, 60, is a former high school teacher, a veteran, and a gun owner who could help Harris extend her appeal to working-class white voters while somehow also delighting the fruity coastal elite.

Speaker 2 He's our dad and he loves us.

Speaker 1 Yay.

Speaker 2 Also, worst comes to worst, Walsh could probably kick J.D. Vance's ass out back behind the American Legion hall, not that he wants to.
Big meaty fist on that guy, like friendly mallets.

Speaker 2 Walls coached the high school football team while teaching social studies and also supervised the lunchroom. I've been to Minnesota and I've consumed the amount of dairy they eat.

Speaker 2 You need somebody to keep an eye on things, or the whole goddamn place is fit to blow.

Speaker 1 You got to see a doctor, man.

Speaker 1 This is a really, really prevalent subject for you. Pass the Rubicon here.
You got to take care of yourself.

Speaker 1 It is funny that our options for a vice president were a Jewish man or a man whose diet would destroy any Jewish man. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 That's right. That should have been the final test.
Like, like, you know, like seeing if they floated, you know, trial by, trial by fire.

Speaker 2 They just like, whoever drinks all this milk and can get to the fucking event is the vice president.

Speaker 2 I think if that were the test, Josh would have figured it out. He'd have figured it out.

Speaker 2 Wallace also famously sponsored his high school's Gay Straight Alliance in the 1990s, saying it was especially important to be a visible ally as the football coach who was the soldier and was straight and was married.

Speaker 2 Ports a little too much, Tim.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's me.

Speaker 2 But that's Tim Olsporia, the teacher who both sported you in learning the choreography to Genie in a bottle and consoled you after you did it at the talent show by saying that Menkato just wasn't ready for you to serve that hard?

Speaker 2 I don't know that he would have had the term serve back then.

Speaker 1 We didn't know about serving.

Speaker 2 We didn't know about serving back then.

Speaker 2 It's fitting because Gay Straight Alliance also describes the conglomerate of online posters who just memed Waltz onto the ticket.

Speaker 2 Speaking of service, Waltz later served in Congress as a moderate Democrat and a strong supporter of gun rights, but after the Parkland shooting in 2018, his daughter had urged him to do more to prevent gun violence, and in response, he donated all the money he'd ever, and in response, he donated all the money he'd ever received from the NRA to charity.

Speaker 2 That's right, America. He's a dad who actually listens.
Can we make him king? No, John, calm down. That's how these things start.

Speaker 2 First, you think you want a king because you like a Tim Walls? Next thing you know, it's Charles is all the way down.

Speaker 1 So if I'm understanding correctly, we've chosen Coach Taylor.

Speaker 2 That helps you understand.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think that's fair.

Speaker 2 I think that that's translating it into words that

Speaker 1 the average American

Speaker 1 haven't seen it, but

Speaker 2 Buba Coach Taylor. Episode title?

Speaker 1 That's for no one.

Speaker 2 Said Wallace last month, I know basic gun safety isn't a threat to my rights. It's about keeping our kids safe.
I had an A rating from the NRA. Now I get straight Fs and I sleep fine.

Speaker 2 And as someone who still wakes up in a dead sweater for getting an F in a dream, that's pretty impressive. But that's why I have that half a post-nightmare benzo on the bedside table.

Speaker 2 For those exact moments. But it's fine because my therapist didn't object.
But that's because I haven't seen my therapist in months because we record this very episode when I used to do therapy.

Speaker 2 This is my therapy now. And what is happy anyway? It's this.

Speaker 1 You know, there's more than one therapist, right? They kept different schedules for more than one hour of the day. It's not just the one loose.

Speaker 2 This was my window.

Speaker 1 We got it. We got it.
We got to have a big conversation. I really recommend a Sunday morning.

Speaker 1 Sunday morning. Thursday, huh?

Speaker 2 That is the exact moment I don't want to be diving into my problem.

Speaker 1 You get up, you do your therapy, and then you go on about your day. It's like perfect.
I think we got this. He's fine.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Hey, Sarah.

Speaker 1 Thank you. And that's coming from me, who's also fine.
Yeah, we're all fine. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Hey, we're fine. We're fine.
We're fine.

Speaker 1 I am. I go Saturday morning.
I love it. Saturday morning.

Speaker 1 Also, a very good opportunity. I'm loving it.

Speaker 2 I didn't know there was all this weekend therapy available.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 We'll talk. Yeah, we'll get

Speaker 1 it.

Speaker 2 I thought therapy was like a nine-to-five thing. I thought they had bankers out there.

Speaker 1 Hallie and I probably don't go to like the fancy therapists. We just go to your red.
We had

Speaker 1 all the stragglers.

Speaker 2 Do they know about all the illnesses, though?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh, yeah.
I mean, yours are pretty much on the top of the list. They'll know yours.

Speaker 1 You know, I think obscure. I took an ADHD quiz online, and I passed.
Yeah, you did, did you? Wow, three years ago.

Speaker 1 Listen.

Speaker 2 I mean, I don't know that I'm an edge case. Wallace has leaned hard into calling Trump and other Republicans weird in a string of recent news appearances.

Speaker 3 These are weird people on the other side. They want to take books away.
They want to be in your exam room. That's what it comes down to.

Speaker 3 So when these guys get in situations in front of real people and trying to pretend like they know what people are going through, they've got nothing to offer.

Speaker 3 And no one can picture them in their own lives.

Speaker 1 Wow. Wow.
That's a great point. That last question.

Speaker 2 No one can picture them in their own lives.

Speaker 1 It's true. Like imagine Donald Trump like having dinner with his family, like talking to, like, there's no humanness to them.

Speaker 2 It's such a devastating thing to say to somebody, which is like, I can't picture you.

Speaker 2 having a normal life. Because what are you supposed to respond?

Speaker 2 But I do, sir.

Speaker 1 I do all the normal things. Meet Luke.
Lurk.

Speaker 2 Baseball.

Speaker 1 Scheme. Sons.

Speaker 1 Have sons. Many sons.

Speaker 2 Nothing has devastated Republicans more than the reminder that we can see them. Just a perfect messenger for this.
Walsh is the most normal man America has ever seen.

Speaker 2 They're all going to dig deep to find the weirdest thing about him, and it's going to turn out to be a crazy snack he thinks he invented. And that snack will be apples and peanut butter.

Speaker 2 His aptitude for that line of attack, along with his undeniable dad energy, has built enthusiasm and momentum, which is palpable online.

Speaker 2 And seeing the internet's most cynical, nihilistic leftists embrace Waltz unironically is a reminder that 95% of internet anger is from people who are one hug and a loving punch on the shoulder away from sobbing and asking if they're a good boy.

Speaker 2 He could still disappoint us all, of course. We could still dig up a 10-year-old tweet where he uses the word froggini.

Speaker 1 Froggagini, I guess.

Speaker 2 And that would be tough. Assault of the Earth Midwesterner speaking Italian.
I don't buy it. I don't buy it.

Speaker 1 He just misspelled Fettuccini, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 Yeah, probably. Here's Tim Walls holding a piglet.

Speaker 1 Oh, God.

Speaker 1 It's so good. This is like my dream pet.
I really want a pig. I had a pig growing up.
Have we talked about that?

Speaker 2 And here we have a photo of Tim Walls with a pig several hours later.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 2 He's a little pork job.

Speaker 1 You wanted a pig?

Speaker 1 I had a pig. You had a pig? I had a pet pig.
I really, really want a pig.

Speaker 1 And since I guess I'm Kendra for the day in the weird animal venue, we did have to return him to the breeder because he kept getting penis infections. Oh, his pigs' penises are curly.

Speaker 1 So they're actually hard to take care of his pets.

Speaker 2 Yeah, man, that would fuck up your vault too.

Speaker 1 If I saw my pig in the Olympics, I'd be so proud of it.

Speaker 2 How big of a pig? Don't they get quite large?

Speaker 1 Yes, it was a Vietnamese pot belly pig, so they start big, but they end up, I mean, they could be huge. They could be like 300 pounds, but we lived out in the country.

Speaker 1 Kind of like as much room as you give them, like a snake. Yeah, like a goldfish.
Well, it'll get like 20 feet long, honestly.

Speaker 2 But don't people get fooled into thinking they bought something called like a teacup pig lip?

Speaker 1 Yes, and then it ends up being like white, a massive that's Paris Hilton's fault.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 and and but why not a dog?

Speaker 1 Well, we already had dogs, and I was obsessed, much like Kendra, we just share a lot of civilities with weird animals. I don't know.
I was like, I think it'd be cute.

Speaker 2 What was it like as a pet?

Speaker 1 It was so smart. You could teach it to use a litter box inside, so it lived inside.

Speaker 1 Dude, an indoor pig? An indoor pig.

Speaker 1 It could move a little, it can move toys around, like a little fire truck around with the snow.

Speaker 2 So it's very smart.

Speaker 2 So this is what what I always I find that I I simply like part of the reasons I don't like cats is because I don't know cats and I feel like I can't know them because they're not dogs and I think of horses as big dogs and pigs as little fat dogs and I just there's something true that though and we always say like oh they're smarter than or not as smart as but that's not I I want to understand

Speaker 1 their pigness like what was a way like forget intelligence what makes it a pig versus a dog like if your pig wore a dog costume would it be a dog I would say that a a pig is more human than a dog is what do you mean by that it's like it's intelligent it interacts with you in a way that like a little human would in a way like a dog's kind of goofy and like messy and like your dog's always vomiting and stuff like there's an element to that to a pig but a pig is like you could sort of talk to it in a way that you felt like it understood you so you could like train it what do pigs enjoy Eating slop, walking around?

Speaker 1 What do we enjoy?

Speaker 1 But they didn't do fetch. They don't do that.
You could fetch with a pig, yeah.

Speaker 2 And they enjoy that?

Speaker 1 Yeah, they like being around humans. Like they have like that dog-ness where they're enjoying it.
I remember because it would squeal all night because it was a baby.

Speaker 1 I would have to sleep in the mudroom in a sleeping bag.

Speaker 1 And they know what a mud room is. Were you the bed?

Speaker 1 It's not a mud room.

Speaker 1 I know what a mud room is, but it is a funny thing to say.

Speaker 1 Pig had to sleep in the house and I slept in the mud. Well, I slept in the mudroom with it, and I'd wake up and it would have curled itself around my feet in my sleeping bag.

Speaker 2 So you were trying to get away from the pig because it was squealing?

Speaker 1 No, no, my parents made me sleep in the mud room because a pig was squealing. It would squeal until somebody came to sleep in it.

Speaker 1 It needed a roommate. I was pig's roommate.
So I'm sorry. So it was a pig.

Speaker 2 He was already in the mudroom and you joined the pig.

Speaker 1 I was confused.

Speaker 2 I thought the pig was in the living room or the home. No, no, no.

Speaker 1 You were in Howie's bed. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I joined the pig in his bed, basically. It's the pig's house now.
It was, we were both booba, so it made sense.

Speaker 1 Anyways, I have eaten pork since. It's not like I'm against pork.
I just, I don't tend to eat it, though. I will say that.
Also, I'm going to say this once and never again. His name should be Waltz.

Speaker 2 I know.

Speaker 2 I know.

Speaker 1 I think you'd say that again if you wanted to. No, I'll never say it again.
Yeah. It just should be Waltz.

Speaker 2 And thanks, New York Times, for this photo of Tim Walz eating a pork child.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 Here we have Walz tweeting about his dog Scout somehow locking himself in the Waltz bedroom where he was rescued with a ladder. And what is America?

Speaker 2 It's not a dog that has locked itself in a bedroom and can't get out. What's that? It's literally anything else? That's fine.

Speaker 2 I don't know. Maybe we are like a dog locked in a bedroom.

Speaker 1 I did that on purpose once because I was mad at my parents. My dad had to come up through the window.
Did you win the argument? Oh, yeah. Oh, there you go.

Speaker 1 I like how the dog looks friendly and also like a little demon. Yeah, that's also my favorite kind of doorknob, the kind of crystal they're the easiest to mentor.
Oh, yeah, gorgeous doorknob.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they really fit nicely in your hand. Yeah, they're nice.
Tim Wall's gorgeous doorknob.

Speaker 2 Is it the governor's mansion? Might be.

Speaker 1 That might be like the governor's man. Well, from last year.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I was staying in a fancy hotel once and uh with Pundit and I left Pundit there. Uh-oh.

Speaker 2 And while I was out for like two hours, Pundit somehow locked herself in the bathroom and then clawed her way out by break by clawing through the door.

Speaker 1 Oh no, wow.

Speaker 2 And like kind of like, or like, I don't know if she made it all the way out, but like basically had like clawed off huge swaths of the door. I wouldn't have known how to do it.

Speaker 1 I mean, how did it be banned from?

Speaker 2 I wasn't banned from that hotel.

Speaker 1 I wasn't banned from that hotel. That's not the first time, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 I made that right. I made that right.

Speaker 2 That, listen,

Speaker 2 that hotel has seen worse. That's all I'll say.
That's all I'll say about that hotel.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right.

Speaker 2 And, you know, you know.

Speaker 1 Is that the one where Brian broke a shower door? No,

Speaker 1 that was when, where were we on tour with? That was Pittsburgh. That was Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh Marriott. I shouldn't, he didn't, the shower door broke on him.
It was not.

Speaker 2 And legally speaking, for insurance purposes,

Speaker 2 the shower door broke on him. He did not break the door.
Correct. Thank you for clarifying that.

Speaker 2 Both AOC and Joe Manchin praised the pick, with AOC tweeting, let's do this.

Speaker 2 If this house boats are rocking, do come a knocking, as Aceil has probably got in again and is eating all of Joe Manchin's suits.

Speaker 2 AOC, Manchin, and Pelosi meet in the bowels of the Green Briar Hotel in West Virginia. AOC and Manchin seem terrified.
Nancy is resolved. The prophecy is coming to pass.

Speaker 2 They turn the three keys and unlock them all.

Speaker 1 I don't like that Joe Manchin had one of the keys. But I guess he did.

Speaker 2 Well, because the three of them were drinking that night when they hit that woman with their car.

Speaker 1 A lot of that going around.

Speaker 2 We shouldn't have been drinking, says Joe Manchin. Shut up, shut up.

Speaker 1 Shut the fuck up. And you're trapped in the bathroom, listening.
Clogged through the door.

Speaker 2 Harrison Wallace will appear in Philadelphia later on Tuesday for their first rally together. Shapiro will also be at the rally as a speaker.

Speaker 2 I guess there's no way for him to not be there because it's in Philadelphia, but this does feel like inviting your most recent ex to your wedding and seating him in a dunk tank. There was so much.

Speaker 2 Like, no one ever learns about their efforts to predict the future. Like, it's in Philadelphia, so it's going to be Shapiro.
And then it's definitely Shapiro. It's got to be Shapiro.

Speaker 2 Reporters saying it is Shapiro. Shapiro has been selected.

Speaker 1 It wasn't Shapiro.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It's okay.
Just need to know. You don't need to know.

Speaker 1 I was hoping they'd have all, she'd have all four of them speaking at the end and announce it. That's why not just

Speaker 2 open to the most reality show version of this possible.

Speaker 2 Like the other thing, just people were like, oh, like she's already selected, or it's going to be this person, be that person.

Speaker 2 And then they announce that those people are all one by one going to meet with Kamal Harris. Of course, they're going to meet in person before she's made the decision.

Speaker 2 She has to meet with them in person. It's the most important.
It's the first and most important decision she will make

Speaker 2 until she's president.

Speaker 1 And she did it. She's got to find out if they smell wrong.

Speaker 2 You got to know if they get wrong.

Speaker 1 There is a vibe. You got to know.

Speaker 2 The vibe matters.

Speaker 1 Which is why Trump picked J.D. Vance.
Like Trump cannot perceive a vibe. He clearly is not attuned.
So then you meet another crazy person who also can't perceive vibes.

Speaker 1 You're like, ah, yes, we're the same.

Speaker 2 It reminds me like when

Speaker 2 When John Tommy and I first started

Speaker 2 the company, the three of us would interview people together and then then the interview would end. And we'd realize that the three of us had spoken the whole time and not really asked any questions.

Speaker 2 And that's why we do them one at a time. But I imagine interviewing with Trump is a bit like that experience.
Like basically, you sit down, Trump speaks for an hour without anyone.

Speaker 1 He projects onto you the entire time.

Speaker 2 And then leaves and be like, I like that guy.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think he's good.

Speaker 1 That's a secret to success, though, really.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And who do we have to thank for Tim Wallace for VP? That's right.
It's Nancy Pelosi, who reportedly threw her weight behind him in the lead up to Harris's decision.

Speaker 2 And from all of us here at Crooked Nancy, let us just say,

Speaker 1 nice.

Speaker 1 Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.

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Speaker 1 Oh, you're just going to go in with the hard-hitting questions.

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Speaker 2 Look, Trump is in full meltdown mode in response to Kamala Harris's rise, but I have a feeling that story will keep until Thursday.

Speaker 2 So, the only other story I'm interested in today is RFK Jr.'s latest effort to win the weirdest all-around medal at the wealthy Dilettante Olympics. The story starts when RFK Jr.

Speaker 2 took some friends falconing in the Hudson Valley of New York.

Speaker 7 I was driving up maybe, you know, really early, like seven,

Speaker 7 and then

Speaker 7 a woman in a van in front of me hit a bear and killed it.

Speaker 2 So everybody has moved on to how the story gets increasingly deranged from here, but I do want to pause there because from the beginning, look, I've said this before.

Speaker 2 RFK Jr. rightly gets sorted into the maniac category.
Yes. He doesn't get enough attention in the other categories in which he fits, which is dilettante

Speaker 2 and liar. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So I want to make sure we're doing a close reading of what RFK Jr. says.
So what do we know? We know it is early in the morning. We also know that it was a Sunday.

Speaker 2 We know that because we know the bear cub was found Monday morning. The roads would have been relatively quiet.
And here he is saying a woman in a van in front of him hit a bear and killed it.

Speaker 2 We get no more information. Given that he is saying he knows the gender of the driver, it must mean she stopped.
Was she shaken up? Did he pull over to help?

Speaker 2 Did he see the impact or did he just slow down next to a car, pull over on the side of the road and decide to find out what happened? It's all a bit confusing.

Speaker 2 And it would seem to me that if he pulled over and found a woman by the side of the road, having hit a bear with her car, he would have mentioned some salient fact about that exchange.

Speaker 1 It is suspicious. It's a Sunday morning.
Everyone's in therapy.

Speaker 1 There shouldn't be anyone on the roads.

Speaker 2 Yeah, everybody's in therapy Sunday morning.

Speaker 1 I'm shocked you jumped right over at the falconing. I thought you would stop there for a second.
Well, I mean, we do have to discuss the falconing.

Speaker 2 Does anyone have any thoughts in the fact that that is where he was heading on Sunday?

Speaker 1 I mean, it didn't strike me as weird, but I thought it would strike you as weird. Did he have the falcon in the car with him? Well, no, you don't.
You don't. You get the falcon there.

Speaker 1 But you know, he's into birds.

Speaker 1 We know he's into birds.

Speaker 2 I would say that here's about, here's what I think. I think falconing as a hobby is kooky.
Yeah. It's Kendra weird.

Speaker 1 I can see you doing it. We went to like every year in elementary school, we would go to the Raptor Trust for a field trip.

Speaker 1 Of course you did. Common field trip.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, of course. Of course.
And you put it on the glove and had the bird on your arm?

Speaker 1 Yeah, for sure. Lost restings.

Speaker 1 What? There was just always someone who always get stung by a bee and like have an anaphylactic incident at the Raptor Trust. It was like,

Speaker 1 but that's not related to this.

Speaker 2 That doesn't flow down. It is a

Speaker 1 incident. It is very funny.
Not funny. I mean, it's a funny turn of phrase.

Speaker 2 So from the jump, this is a bit, I don't know, odd, hard to make sense of, which is why the New Yorkers reporting by Claire Malone makes more sense. In their telling, which RFK Jr.

Speaker 2 was desperate to get ahead of by sharing this video on social media, Kennedy passed a furry brown mound on the side of the road, pulled over, and discovered that it was the carcass of a black bear cub.

Speaker 2 So that's the New Yorkers' version of this same moment. Regardless, I just want us to keep track of the time here.
It is early in the morning. There is a dead bear on the side of the road.

Speaker 2 He pulls the car over, puts the bear cub in his van, and continues on his way to Falconing.

Speaker 7 Because I was going to skin the bear and it was very good condition and I was going to

Speaker 7 put the meat in my refrigerator.

Speaker 2 So I just, he has found a bear on the side of the road and he wants to skin the bear and eat the meat. Sure.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Let's just clock.

Speaker 1 I'm with him so far. Yeah, I would just keep an eye.

Speaker 2 Let's just keep an eye on it on time here.

Speaker 2 We know it is between 7 and 9 a.m.

Speaker 1 Well, he probably opened that Falcon Real right at 9 a.m.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 he said he was going to meet them at 9. said, he makes reference to seven.
It's roughly probably 90 minutes from Westchester to Goshen, New York. So it's between seven and nine a.m.
The bear is dead.

Speaker 2 It is early fall in New York.

Speaker 1 Beautiful.

Speaker 2 Beautiful. Astung.
The leaves are turning. When he picks up that bear, he is somewhere between New York City and Goshen.
We know it is already about 40 degrees.

Speaker 2 The temperature is already at about 40 degrees. We know this because we know the date.

Speaker 2 We know the date is Sunday, October 5th, 2014, because the story's in the press the next day once the bear is discovered Monday morning in Central Park.

Speaker 2 So the bear is in his van. He then tells us they just had too good of a time.

Speaker 7 We went hockey and I had the bear in my car and then we had a really good day and we went late. We were catching a lot of game and the people really loved it.

Speaker 7 So we stayed late and instead of going back to my home in Westchester, I had to go right to the city because there was a dinner at Peter Luker's steakhouse.

Speaker 2 So the bear is in his van all day. The high temperature in Goshen, New York that day, which was Sunday, October 5th, 2014, was 59 degrees.

Speaker 1 Can't eat that bear meat. Sorry.

Speaker 2 That bear, which has not been field dressed, that bear, which as far as we know, still has all of its blood and guts, has been fucking cooking in the back of that van all day.

Speaker 2 And he says he doesn't have time to go to Westchester. He goes directly to Peter Luger's steakhouse in Brooklyn.
Now, there's also a branching greatneck,

Speaker 2 but he does say the city, so I'm going to assume he went to the one in Brooklyn. You ever been?

Speaker 1 Williamsburg? You bet I've been. Dynamite steakhouse.
I've been to both. Dynamite.
I'm vegetarian, but I just know what's there. It's good.
I've been. Yeah.
What was my uncle?

Speaker 2 Shout out to my uncle, John. Love a classic old steak place.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 The point is, if you are going to Peter Luger from Goshen, New York, it is very, very, very likely that you are driving right by or through Westchester. Here we have the map.

Speaker 2 That is the route from Goshen, New York to Peterluger in Brooklyn. The arrow is pointing to Westchester.
Even if you take this route, it is a 10-minute detour.

Speaker 1 And frankly, you could have gone over the Tap and Z and gone up more of a straight line.

Speaker 2 Exactly, exactly. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, it is at worst a 10-minute detour to Westchester on a roughly 90-minute to two-hour drive.

Speaker 2 I would say it is a worthwhile detour, given that there is a rotting bear bear carcass in your van for the better part of a day, a day in which the high temperature was pushing 60 fucking degrees.

Speaker 1 If you're listening to this on the podcast, Lovet has pulled out a ball of red string.

Speaker 2 But no, but no, but no.

Speaker 2 He goes right to Peter Luger's steakhouse in Brooklyn. And now the dinner goes late because again, everyone is having just too much fun.

Speaker 7 And at the end of the dinner, it went late. And I realized I couldn't go home.
I had to go to the airport. And the bear was in my car, and I didn't want to leave the bear in the car.

Speaker 7 Because

Speaker 7 that would have been bad.

Speaker 2 So first of all, first moment in this, he has hinted at having any sort of judgment, because I think we'd all agree that leaving a rotting bear carcass

Speaker 1 at the airport

Speaker 1 is probably

Speaker 2 not the best move.

Speaker 1 As he says, bad. It would have been bad.
That's the only word for it. My thing about it is, and this is, again, I have ADHD, so my memory is all over the place.

Speaker 1 To put a bear in your car and have a full day plan before a flight is, again, that's why you can't be president because you didn't plan ahead. That's insane.

Speaker 1 Yeah, going from big steak dinner to airplane. Falconing to big steak dinner to the airport.
And you were like, wait a minute, I've got the bear carcass.

Speaker 2 Even if he hadn't stopped and picked up a rotting roadkill bear. Yeah.
Think of the odors wafting off of RFKG

Speaker 2 after a drive up state, a day of outdoor falconing, a full fucking 1950s style steak dinner, then directly to a red eye flight.

Speaker 2 When this guy arrives at his destination, he is wafted. He smells like a fucking bear carcass by the time he got to, I don't know, London.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Where was the rest of the game? Well, yeah, I guess he gave it to other people. That's a great question.
Yeah, because if you can't go home, he said, you're right, he's not taking it. So look at that.

Speaker 1 That's what I wanted. Like, did they do something with the rest of the game that maybe they could have done with the bear carcass?

Speaker 2 That's such an important question. He has said that

Speaker 2 they got a lot of game on the day of falconing and hawking.

Speaker 2 He keeps the bear, but they have all the other meat.

Speaker 1 And I'm assuming, but it's like probably squirrels and pheasants and that sort of thing. Smaller, yeah, whatever you assume is good with me on this question.

Speaker 1 But I think to your point, these are clearly people you could say to them, hey, by the way, I did pick up a bear carcass but you take it and they would say my god man it's been in your car for hours you can't eat that meat anymore and you'd say shut up i'm taking it to both your livers

Speaker 1 you i are

Speaker 1 like i clearly somebody said something and he said i absolutely can't do that you can't eat the meat but like okay i guess i'm gonna put this in the cooler for you because i get that you want the fur yeah maybe you want the fur maybe you want the fur uh

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 1 okay

Speaker 2 Dinner's running late. Got to catch a flight.

Speaker 1 Bears are very cool.

Speaker 1 Is it a

Speaker 2 I think we should presume it's a commercial flight.

Speaker 2 And he has to be there at a certain time. I mean, he has to be there at a certain time.
He's worried.

Speaker 1 He's very rich.

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 1 Yes. He's also insane.

Speaker 2 I think it doesn't really affect what comes next because a private flight would make the story worse, not better. So let's assume it's a commercial flight.
Again, he's got a bear carcass in his trunk.

Speaker 2 He's got to catch a flight. What do you do?

Speaker 2 He decides the only logical next step is to stage a crime scene in Central Park where it is made to seem as though the bear was perhaps hit by a passing bicyclist.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 everybody thought that's a great idea. So we went and did that and we thought it would be amusing for whoever found it or something.

Speaker 2 Far be it our job here to try to make sense of a plan as nonsensical as this. Once you're at the stage of bringing a bear carcass into Central Park to freak the squares, I guess.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's hard to bring logic to it. But again, I must return to the map.

Speaker 2 If you're watching, if you're listening at home, we are looking at a map. On the map, you have Peter Luger circled in Brooklyn.
You have the three arrows pointing to the three major airports.

Speaker 2 You have LaGuardia, which is 15 minutes from Peter Luger. You have JFK, which is in the opposite direction of Manhattan.
And you have Newark, which is in New Jersey.

Speaker 2 There is no way in which to go to any of this airports. You are not taking a significant, silly detour to get to Central Park with this bear.

Speaker 2 It is something that would have added a ton of time to a trip he is claiming he has to make because of how late the dinner went and because he has to catch a flight. It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 Unless he's driving up to White Plains or going to Bergen County.

Speaker 2 But even still, there is no reason to go into Manhattan, into midtown Manhattan, to bring this fucking bear into Central Park.

Speaker 1 At that point, just bring it home to Westchester. Right.
Yeah, yeah. Right.

Speaker 2 If he's going to, which is, White Place is Westchester, he would have dropped it off at home.

Speaker 1 I think it's like when he says we thought it was amusing, I think we have to remember that comedy is all about timing. And it seems like the part of his brain, the worm did eat, was timing.

Speaker 1 Because the timing of this just doesn't make any goddamn sense.

Speaker 2 Though, if what his plan was, was to hide a bear in Central Park, the timing of it taking a decade to find out that he was the culprit is funny.

Speaker 1 That is funny. That is a good job.
Yeah, you're right. That's a good job.
Also, just at Arfka Jr. jokingly, seriously, suggested that this bear is where he got his brainworm.

Speaker 1 So at the point that he's doing all this, he is presumably brainworm-free. Well, we can't.
This is his full brain functioning at full capacity.

Speaker 1 Wasn't there a note somewhere? Are we going to watch where he says, like, everyone but him is drunk?

Speaker 2 So in the moment we've just seen, he does say that the people at Peter Luger have been drinking when this plant is hatched, but not him because he doesn't drink because he had a substance abuse problem.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 The point is, it makes zero sense to say there's no time to go home, so we should go all the way to Central Park. That is an insane detour to make.

Speaker 2 Regardless, if he had a red eye after dinner, which is what it would have to be, that bear cub has been rotting for at least 12 hours without being dressed, without being refrigerated.

Speaker 2 The meat is not edible. Right?

Speaker 2 You had a pig growing up.

Speaker 1 You can't eat that bear.

Speaker 1 I don't even know. I mean, I guess you could eat bear.
You cannot bear. but I think, yeah, you got to get that right in the freeze fridge immediately.

Speaker 2 It's a work or field dresser, right? You've hunted.

Speaker 2 Well, you just talk about guns all the time. You just talked about going falconing.
I don't hunt. I'm not saying you do hunt, but you have gone hunting.

Speaker 1 No, actually, I haven't. Really? No.
But you should all go hunting.

Speaker 2 Hey, guys. Crazy pitch.

Speaker 1 Let's go hunting. But I know, like, in the area where I grew up, which is close to where we're talking about, like, I grew up in an area where deer hunting was very regular.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, I'd want to ask this is Tim Walls.

Speaker 1 Is Is there a correct way to eat roadkill though?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Because this is done.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Yes. I would say that that it is, I think that like, obviously, if it's been, you know, there's a tire track across the center of it, you kind of want to maybe, maybe pass.

Speaker 2 But I think if you just smashed into a deer and it's dead on the side of the road,

Speaker 1 that's why he has to say that he saw someone hit it. Yes.
Because the truth of the matter is, probably it was already lying there dead.

Speaker 1 And that probably by the time he picked it up, he shouldn't have been eating it.

Speaker 2 like it starts from a place of right you should not be eating this thing that you found you don't know how long it's been there unless we are assuming that he saw this woman i do not believe that for a second i don't either i believe that this in the worm ravished mind of rfk jr was an attempt to spin an unspinnable story by the way worth noting if you haven't seen this

Speaker 2 You won't guess who he's telling the story to. He's telling the story to Roseanne Barr, who, by the way, is a fucking nut job.
And she is even like, what am I doing here with this lunatic?

Speaker 1 Yeah, her face only just like falls as it goes on, like, uh-oh.

Speaker 2 Because she can't, because Ardgey Jr. is telling the story, like, can you believe it? Can you believe it? Can you believe this? Don't you hate it when this happens?

Speaker 1 But she's like, I try to spin this now. It's like, uh-oh.

Speaker 2 So I don't know why he decided to pick up that bear on the side of the road, but his version of the story simply does not hang together.

Speaker 2 And thanks to Claire Malone at the New Yorker for uncovering this story and this photo, which shows him pretending to be bitten by the bear on the side of the road.

Speaker 2 My view on all this is he's trying to add this idea that he was going to eat the bear when he just thought it was funny and he found a dead bear. There was never any possibility of eating the meat.

Speaker 2 I don't know what he thought he was going to do with it, but he's trying to make the story seem logical when he pulled over and put a dead bear in his car for no reason whatsoever.

Speaker 1 What do we do with this guy? Again, I just don't think that he should be the president. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2 I agree.

Speaker 1 All right. We have a lot to worry about there.

Speaker 2 And finally, Paul Vaulter Anthony Amarati's Olympic dreams were crushed when this happened.

Speaker 2 That's right.

Speaker 3 What happened here, Coach Joofy?

Speaker 7 On the way down.

Speaker 2 For those listening,

Speaker 2 that sound you heard was the sound of his penis

Speaker 2 ruining his chances of winning an Olympic medal because it knocked off the off the ball the the the the pole there it hit the thing the bar pull on pole violence pull on pole violence

Speaker 2 he's also hot which goes to show God does occasionally give with both hands or from the looks of it

Speaker 1 three

Speaker 2 It's always nice when a public humiliation turns into your greatest personal advertisement.

Speaker 2 Like when my pants fell down on stage last week and everybody could see I'm a funny person who tries his best.

Speaker 1 I think he's been offered $250,000 for like a live.

Speaker 1 How much do they offer you?

Speaker 2 That's in the range.

Speaker 1 Just a loose handful of nickels thrown on the table.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just some, just some Polynesian sauce from Chick-fil-A.

Speaker 1 Just an old dead bear carcass thing like kicking around the back of the van.

Speaker 1 I like, it's cool for whoever found the bear carcass. Did you not like wander through?

Speaker 1 I had a friend whose like backyard bordered on the South Mountain Reservation when I was younger, and we would like go in there and be like, Oh, wouldn't it be cool if we found something?

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it wouldn't be funny. That's what his, like, what's crazy about the pitch is like, oh, it'll be funny if someone finds it.
It's like, I wouldn't feel humor in that moment.

Speaker 1 I feel like it would be sad. It's funny, but it would be awesome.
If you're like a middle school, you find a dead bear carcass while you're walking your dog. Hmm.

Speaker 2 There's a real

Speaker 2 great Gatsby

Speaker 2 roaring 20s

Speaker 2 vibe to this day that he had. Yeah.
This sort of frivolous, careless, reckless day.

Speaker 2 The, the, the, the, like, drunk, the like loose, drunken discussion at Peter Luger in Brooklyn about let's go bring this fucking bear carcass into Central Park and put an old bicycle on top of it to make a joke about

Speaker 2 bicycles, I guess. To leave it for some horrified morning dog walker to discover.

Speaker 1 At the end, the bear's mom shoots him and he falls into a pool. It's a real Rodrigo Duck Phillips lunch.
Yes. Yes.

Speaker 2 What were you saying?

Speaker 1 I just everyone's sweating the whole day. Yeah, they're all

Speaker 1 sweating.

Speaker 2 Always, always sweating. Just imagining the kind of laughter around that table and imagining myself at that table and just hating it.

Speaker 1 And also, you're the only sober one there. I'm just sort of like

Speaker 2 trying to remember that at least I got a good steak out of it.

Speaker 1 It's kind of funny to imagine the Kennedy curse is still there, but it's diluted to the point that it's just like, yeah, it's just weirder and weirder stories come out about you all the time.

Speaker 2 Right. It's like, now that now at least the bodies in the car are that someone else are not our animal.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hey, that's a step up.

Speaker 2 You know, now we're dealing with that. But again, it's like he made this so much worse, right?

Speaker 2 Like if you do the, if you, if you just run the, the alternate scenario where he didn't post this video, where he told this story to Roseanne, and there's just a strange bit

Speaker 2 in the New Yorker story. It probably would have been better.

Speaker 1 Yeah, what if the New Yorker story had just come out and then he just said, that didn't happen? Right.

Speaker 2 Well, they have the picture. That's why he screwed it.
That's why I had to admit it. They have the picture of him with the bear.

Speaker 1 I think it would have been better. Yeah, it would have been better if it just had come out versus it came out anyways.
And now we have you telling this tale to a horrified Roseanne Barr.

Speaker 1 Like it doesn't, it just compounds the story in the imagination of society.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I also just like, I don't know what it's like to grow up as RFK Jr., but you do get the sense that there's a lot of hangers on and people laughing and going with the flow of whatever you want

Speaker 2 and like kind of always having that access to, always having that money, always having that lifestyle. Really, that's the brainworm.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's the brainworm.

Speaker 1 Wealth.

Speaker 2 See you slot Saturday.

Speaker 1 Bear meat.

Speaker 1 Straight shoot tie

Speaker 1 Love it, or leave it, it's not it, believe it.

Speaker 1 Straight before

Speaker 1 size,

Speaker 1 love it, or leave it, it's not it, believe it.

Speaker 1 Straight shoot tie,

Speaker 1 love it, believe it, it's not it or leave it.

Speaker 1 Straight before

Speaker 2 Love It or Leave It is a crooked media production. It is written and produced by me, John Lovett, and Lee Eisenberg.

Speaker 2 Kendra James is our executive producer, Chris Lord is our producer, and Kennedy Hill is our associate producer.

Speaker 2 Hallie Kiefer is our head writer, Sarah Lazarus and Jocelyn Kaufman, Peter Miller, Alan Pierre, Will Miles, and Mohanad El-Sheeki are our writers. Evan Sutton is our editor.

Speaker 2 Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis provide audio support. Stephen Cologne is our audio engineer.
And Milo Kim is our videographer. Our theme song is written and performed by SureSure.

Speaker 2 Thanks to our designer, Bernardo Cerna, for creating and running all of our visuals, which you can't see because this is a podcast.

Speaker 2 And to our digital producers, David Tolles, Claudia Shang, Mia Kelman, and Matt DeGroat for filming and editing video each week so you can.

Speaker 1 Just love it. Believe it.
I also want to say that JD Vance is Buba, but he's like a dark Buba. He's dark.
Buba Wario. It's not quite the same.
Yes. He's like a Langolier from the movie The Langoliers.

Speaker 1 If anyone's seen that, it's top on the show frequently. I love that favorite.
It's one of my faves.

Speaker 2 I really like the way that movie, and it was a book first, I suppose, or a story,

Speaker 2 makes you think about time in a different way. Yeah.
That there is no past, that you couldn't time travel because the future doesn't exist and the paths get eaten by the people.

Speaker 1 Terrifiers.

Speaker 2 I really like it.

Speaker 2 You know, dance like nobody's watching, live like the Langoliers right behind you.

Speaker 1 B is for Bum, Craig.

Speaker 4 What is the secret to making great toast?

Speaker 1 Oh, you're just going to go in with the hard-hitting questions.

Speaker 4 I'm Dan Pashman from the Sporkful. We like to say it's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
We use food to learn about culture, history, and science.

Speaker 4 There was the time we looked into allegations of discrimination at Bon Appetit, or when I spent three years inventing a new pasta shape.

Speaker 1 It's a complex noodle that you've put together.

Speaker 4 Every episode of The Sporkful, you're going to learn something, feel something, and laugh.

Speaker 1 The Sporkful.

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