What a Weekday: If You're In Line To Be President, Stay In Line

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Get a one-time free Triple Burger when you download the app and join my rewards minimum purchase required new members only within 14 days oh i do recommend seeing stuff at the wga theater though oh yeah so relaxing because everyone knows how to behave during a movie that's great they got big chairs what have they got their regular like nice it's okay it's plush they're not're not like it's not like the reclining ones. They're just like

nice velvet seats. I simply

only I'm like you must recline. I must recline.

Like if I'm going to the movies, I want to

I want to press. I don't like to recline

in public. That's for home.

They have heat in seats. Reclining is for home.

Reclining is for you. Not to be done in public.

Unless you're at the dentist.

What if you were at the dentist in

public? Well, that's the only way to get the dentist. You leave your seat all the way up on the airplane? Yeah.
I also don't recline. That's so rude.
I think it's rude. No, no, no, no.
If you're an economy, how dare you? I'm a five-six woman. Every time someone leads back, my computer almost explodes.
How dare I? No. I'll sit up right now in solidarity.
I don't like thinking about all the people back there. Yeah, that tracks.
Yeah, yeah, that'll end up. Yeah.
Yeah. Welcome to What a Weekday.
I'm Jon Lovett, joined, as always, by Kendra James, Hallie Kiefer, and Sarah Lizaris.

However, this is the final episode of What A Week Day, at least for the time being.

But not to worry, dear listeners, Crooked has already greenlit our prequel, Young What A Week Day.

It's mostly about the family surrounding What A Week Day.

It's just all of us as babies.

It's all of us as babies.

I'm Marci Martin.

Let's get into it.

One last time in 2024.

What a weekday.

As the saying goes, America only has one president, president at a time.

And get this, that president is already Donald Trump.

On Monday, Trump held his first post-election press conference,

joined by SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son to announce that SoftBank

will invest $100 billion in the United States. This was a strange event for three reasons.
A, Donald Trump is not currently the president. B, SoftBank doesn't have $100 billion.
And C, we had moments like this. 200.
Kilder Kinn, 200 million investments. He is a great negotiator.
So basically this guy gets up there and says, Donald Trump is great and I'm doing this because of Donald Trump. And then Trump's like, make it 200 billion.
And then kind of does his sort of alpha male arm grip thing where he demonstrates dominance over this guy whose height Trump definitely enjoys because the South Bank CEO is a short king, as it were. I will just point out, so we don't forget what it was like to live in a nation of laws and not of men, that traditionally the private sector figures would praise the country and not the president that, no, a major company isn't being harangued into making an investment, but sees the value in betting on the country itself, which meant betting on the people, that traditionally when you're even doing events like this, which are always a little bit uncomfortable, right, because it's the private sector and the public sector, they would make it about the American economy and the ingenuity and skill of the American people.
But no, this is an event where Donald Trump is calling it so that this guy can go and praise Donald Trump, who basically this guy explicitly says, because Trump won, America is going to do better and I'm going to invest because of Donald Trump. And sure, that's a quaint and old fashioned critique now.
But there's an old saying by William L. Buckley, and it goes, a conservative is someone who stands athwart history yelling stop at a time when no one is inclined to do so or to have much patience with those who so urge it.
And on stuff like this, I think that's just going to have to be us for a while. And it's not going to be good politics all the time.
And it may not be practical and it may not be what we run on. It be tiresome and but on several fronts there's just gonna be us

because this shit is terrible

and embarrassing

and un-american and

it turns out not a lot

of people care about that and it's

very dispiriting but it doesn't make it less true

and

that's it

he just palmed that guy like

a basketball like he just grabbed it like a

baby I know I know it's

gross also SoftBank is a bad name for a bank yeah i want my i want my back yeah i like my banks rock hard like i like my math tests and my dudes boo boo what a year it's been the president-elect told reporters that he would consider pardoning New York City Mayor Eric Adams if he's convicted on federal corruption charges. Yeah, I would.
I think that he was treated pretty unfairly. Now, I haven't seen the gravity of it all, but it seems, you know, like being upgraded in an airplane many years ago.
I know probably everybody here has been upgraded. They see you you're all stars yeah yeah but in my case it was because i have a lot of delta miles not because i've done favors for the turkish government but for a flight over six hours i would do favors for the turkish government talk about reclining go all the way back go all the way back 360 yeah i wonder what i could do for the turkish government what could i do that be useful to them writes of hilarious one-liners yeah it's all greek to me not camp not constantinople hey there's more where that came from turkey yeah let's get in touch huh i'll tell you this eurocentrism it's for the birds turkey what were we talking about Trump said this about

Tim Cook and other CEOs traveling to meet with him. The first term, everybody was fighting me.
In this term, everybody wants to be my friend. I don't know.
My personality changed or something. People always say that when they know perfectly well, it's just because they got incredibly hot.
He honestly looks okay. I don't know whether it's filler or whatever.
I'm like, he did get something done. I feel like you often say this.
Well, he just looks so different from week to week. It's almost like I see him.
I guess this is a good week on. I think lighting is a huge component.
I think he's well lit. His hair is translucent, but his face looks okay.
He's not been traveling. He's chilling out at Mar-a-Lago.
Also, a chip a chip has fallen off his shoulder yeah it just has true doesn't mean he's not going to be less of a menace doesn't mean he's not going to be less extreme doesn't mean that there's any kind of crisis or protest he's not going to do something evil and illegal he's going to be a terrible president but a chip has felt like the the popular vote win combined with the fact that the legal threat has basically come off of him has like think about how tired you would look if you were facing dozens of felony indictments and then think about how good you'd feel the next day when that all went away think about how good that would be for the skin talk about talk about a vitamin you know here are the things that we know work on the skin. Vitamin C, retinol, sunscreen, moisturizer, and having 92 felony indictments dropped.
That is great for the complexion. Got data behind it.
Yeah, you could take that to the bank. It's correlation, not causation.
Take that to the soft bank. Hey, take that.
In response to a question about the potential TikTok ban, Trump said this. We'll take a look at TikTok.
You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points. And there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with that.
First of all, no, Donald Trump didn't win youth by 34 points. He only won old people.
That's the group that he wins. And sure, you think you're just going to take a look at TikTok and then suddenly it's five hours later.
You're smearing beef tallow on your face while wondering what's going to happen on Molly Rudder's next first date. Oh, I'm waiting for part six of CO to felon right now.
I'm really invested in a woman who got manipulated by a by one of her prisoners and is like now under indictment. But her fiance doesn't know.
It's there. It's there's a lot going on.
Well, then if it's it's on TikTok, doesn't the fiance find out? She's telling a story. She's been to jail and out.
Every once in a while, there'll be like one of those 30 part stories. You just dig in.
Let's go. Let's go on a journey.
I'm in. I'm in.
Also on Monday, Trump said of RFK Jr. that he'll be much less radical than people think and said, you're not going to lose the polio vaccine, but also cited a debunked connection between vaccines and autism, adding there's something wrong and we're going to find out about it.
Trump keeps saying this about the polio vaccine as if it's reassuring, but it's but it's not like, yeah, man, we didn't think that was on the table. It's like you're about to go into knee surgery.
And as the anesthesiologist brings the mask down, he says, don't worry, we won't touch your kidneys. Well, I wasn't.
But what else is going on in here? Why is that reassuring? What else are you going to take? Don't worry, we won't touch the polio vaccine. Well, great, man.
There's a bunch of other ones you shouldn't. No one was talking about that one.
What about the other ones? Mitch McConnell had polio. Also this weekend, Trump and J.D.
Vance attended the Army-Navy game and invited recently acquitted Marine Corps vet Daniel Penny as their guest. Either you hate the male loneliness epidemic or you hate this, but you can't hate both.
These are men finding community. Penny was found not guilty last week of criminally negligent homicide after he put homeless man Jordan Neely in a chokehold on the New York subway last year.
Explained a spokesperson for Trump and Vance, inviting Penny to the game was just our way of saying thanks for putting a homeless man in a chokehold on the New York subway last year. The trio were also joined at the game by Trump picked to head up national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and his prospective defense secretary, Pete Hegseth and Ron DeSantis, who is allegedly in the running to replace Hegseth if Trump rescinds the nomination of the former Fox News anchor.
The competition between Hegseth and DeSantis to win Trump's favor has been dubbed the smarmy Navy game. And as is our new custom, America's oligarchs are finding new ways to pay tribute to our leader.
After Mark Zuckerberg's meta donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund last week, other tech giants have rushed to do the same. Jeff Bezos' Amazon reportedly plans to donate $1 million to the fund and will stream Trump's inauguration on Prime come Monday.
January. What? January.
Just leave it. It is the Monday of the year.
You got to be careful, though. All right.
Amazon also has a bunch of knockoff Trump invogations and they will fall apart the first time you put them in a dryer. Too many vowels.
All those fake brands on Amazon. It's not good.
You just look up anything. It's like, well, this is just going to burst into flames when it gets here.
Yeah. OpenAI told NPR that CEO Sam Altman intends to make a personal $1 million donation to the fund and not to be outdone.
To settle a ridiculous lawsuit, ABC News capitulated to Trump's lawyers and will donate $15 million to Trump's presidential library and pay an additional $1 million for Trump's legal fees. The Trump presidential library, oops, I'll gift shop.
I like that joke. This was a lawsuit over an interview in which George Stephanopoulos asserted that Trump was found liable for rape when he was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation in a case where the judge said that the term rape as commonly understood would apply, but not according to a narrow specific legal definition in New York state law.
Disney, of course, has the resources to fight this kind of lawsuit, whereas many critics threatened with legal action by Trump to intimidate and silence them do not. It's a healthy reminder.
Corporations will not save us from Trump. They will only make us happy.
That's what they do. They're just here to make us happy.
And boy, do they make us happy. We love them.
Thank you, corporations. Word salad weakness.
CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news. Yeah, because of 60 Minutes, nobody ever got the sense that Kamala responds to questions about politically fraught topics with a string of bromides said slowly and with great conviction.
Just before the election, Trump sued The New York Times, alleging three stories on him were deceptive, malicious, intentional, defamatory, disparaging, distorted, fabricated, false and misleading.

The Times stood by its reporting. That's great writing.
It sounds like a Tom Lehrer song. Yeah, it's beautiful.
It's interesting. Yeah, it sounds like Gilbert and Sullivan.
Yeah. And on Monday, Trump sued The Des Moines Register for publishing that Ann Selzer poll that showed him down in Iowa.
I'm going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very,

very good bolster who got me right all the time. And then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by three or four points, and it became the biggest story all over the world because I was going to win Iowa by 20 points.
The farmers love me and I love the farmers. As with the 60 Minutes lawsuit, Trump is attempting a novel legal argument, this time under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, claiming the poll constituted consumer fraud.
As a law professor told NBC News, the odds of success here are slim to none, but winning in court is not likely the real goal of the lawsuit. The true motivation is to intimidate the press and journalists.

And that's disgusting.

The only thing that should intimidate journalists are first dates, dancing, anything athletic,

and social functions where it would be weird to bring a backpack.

Fucking nerds.

I just have to say, like, getting sued for getting some math wrong has unlocked a new

high school, like, fear for me.

Oh, yeah.

No, I think more kids should go to get sued for how bad they are at math. Maybe that would shake some sense of them i don't go look finding a new staff that isn't in jail trump riding high and threatening all these lawsuits fine it's the combination of these ridiculous frivolous lawsuits against 60 minutes against uh des mo Register, combined with the fact that ABC News,

one of the biggest and most well-resourced legal departments, Disney, have capitulated to Donald Trump on this. What is the Des Moines Register supposed to do? What's Olivia Troy supposed to do? These are just individuals or smaller organizations that are going to basically be potentially bankrupted by the cost of defending themselves against this.
And like Disney has the Disney. It's Disney famously has great lawyers, famously has a big legal department.
Remember when this was very sad. Somebody died of an allergic reaction at a restaurant in Disney or Disneyland or Disney World.
I don't remember. And as part of that lawsuit, they withdrew it after an outcry.
But at first they said that they had no right to sue because they had Disney Plus.

because inside of the Disney Plus

terms and conditions, they had, I guess, indemnified

or whatever the correct term is. They had indemnified

Disney in some way. They withdrew

that part of the complaint because there was such a public

outcry over it. But like

these are lawyers that know how to fight.

Like indemnified Disney in some way. They withdrew that part of the complaint because there was such a public outcry over it.
But like, these are lawyers that know how to fight. Like, people in the world understand what's happened when you misuse Disney's copyright.
They know how to defend their people. And it used to be, and look, like, maybe there's some email somewhere where somebody told George Stephanopoulos, don't use the word, right? Maybe there's some like small bead of evidence that could kind of go to the argument Trump is making.
But like every step of it, right? Did George Stephanopoulos do it maliciously? Of course not. Is what he said inaccurate? I don't actually think it is.
Like, I mean, look, I think you could. There's an argument, right, that he was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, not technically for rape.
But the judge said that the that the public understanding of the term would apply. And he's not a judge.
He's describing something. He is free to describe it the way he sees it.
And if he personally sees it as being found liable for rape, even though the technical New York state definition is different, that's completely defensible. And then you have to prove that it was malicious, which it wasn't.
So it's maybe not even inaccurate, certainly not malicious. And then you have to prove that there was some kind of damage done to Donald Trump's reputation because of the difference between being the legal definition of rape in New York State and the judge describing it as colloquially a sexual assault that rises to the definition of rape.
None of that is something a normal newsroom wouldn't want to defend their people against. And he got elected.
So where's the damage? Yeah, right. Yeah.
So tell me the person who can make that separation and isn't just using the word rape. It's just it's and so like.
It was so shocking to see that they had settled it. Right.
And then you think, well, why? Like, OK, maybe there's some bit of email or something somewhere. Fine.
Or then you think, well, it's $15 million as a donation. So they get to write a portion of that off.
There'd be a bunch of costs associated with fighting it publicly. And so they just view it as something they can make go away.
But they're like, they're also supposed to be defending their people. They're also supposed to be having the backs of the journalists that work for them.
Because by the way, let's say it was inaccurate. People are allowed to make mistakes without being destroyed by it.
We want journalists to be able to do an interview without being terrified in the moment that if they make a mistake, they will be sued into oblivion and that their corporate parent will abandon them. You want like that.
That's that's why you have these lawyers. They're supposed to defend you.
And like I remember when Ronan was working on the Weinstein stories at NBC and there are all kinds of threats being bandied about. And I and I may get the details wrong because it's years ago now.
But I remember having this feeling while he was doing it that there was a missing voice at NBC to say, but that's why we're here. Yeah, no, there are threats.
And yes, it's obviously deeply sensitive. And yes, it's a big story.
And yes, it will create controversy. But that's why we're here.
And it is like, there are so many places where there were that Donald Trump has exposed these weaknesses. And this is yet another example that because these important news institutions that develop their prestige and habits and standards and reputations before the modern conglomerate era.
They continue to exist, but they've now been absorbed into these big companies, whether it's a Comcast or a Disney or a Viacom or whatever it may be. And it seems like there's no longer that figure in a place of power who's in it because they believe in the news who says that's why we're here so we're just going to keep fighting because that's yeah i understand that there's a business reason to settle it yeah i understand it'd be better to make it go away but that's why we're here here in sorkin help i know i was about to say that's why you wrote on the newsroom but also like this is the natural end game of capitalism like it's like yeah these are these are capitalists like at the end of the day disney made a someone made a spreadsheet of like it's let's just give them 50 million dollars because we don't want to deal with the cost and that's just what it's going to be like remember the january 6 hearings like it was a bunch of individuals republicans who were like i don't think we could do this i can't allow this to happen those people are all gone much like probably a lot of people who are in these newspapers, those people are gone too.
And whoever's making the decision are not the people who are like, this is a newspaper. We have to be defending these people.
And unfortunately, he is the ultimate capitalist. And he knows that.
He knows that he can exhaust people because we're all exhausted already. So the next four years is going to be him and Cash Patel and all the rest of these guys just threatening everybody and assuming that we are all so exhausted that even those people who still want want to stand up are going to say this one's not worth it and we'll wait till the next one and then the next one doesn't come because it's all not worth it, you know? Yeah.
It's, uh, I, like, this moment of all these wealthy guys supplicating and genuflecting for Trump, disgusting.

ABC News capitulating this way.

I'm sure inside of ABC people are furious.

I'm sure there are great journalists there.

There is an ethic that's in the DNA of these places, and that continues.

And I am sure people inside are absolutely furious that they have lost, they have been allowed to be kind of uh maligned in this way um but i think how you're right it's just like i i i want to think about okay like how do we stop this like how do we find that backbone and who's going to have it and who's going to show it and it may not be these big corporations corporations, but it has to come from somewhere else. Well, it has to be.
I'm sorry. I was going to say it has to come from with someone like the Des Moines Register.
It kind of has to come from our capitalist. You have to hope that unfortunately that like a Mark Cuban, if a suit really shows up at their doorstep and they really need to defend themselves, you kind of have to hope that like a Mark Cuban steps up and says, here's your legal defense.
Yeah, it's true. I think that's part of it.
We do need, you know, they like, I remember when it came out that it was Peter Thiel funding the lawsuit against Gawker. Yeah.
And I like, at the time, I remember feeling like, wow, like, it's amazing how many people are ready to dance on Gawker's grave. And Gawker fucking terrible in a lot of ways terrible in a lot of ways but that was a harbinger of things to come and they took the lesson there that they really can use the legal system to destroy outlets they don't like if they find the opening and it's just we have you're I do think it's going to take big money to get behind protecting these institutions, investigating these institutions.
And and but I don't think there's any way to avoid the fact that, like, already there are. I am sure right now there are stories that journalists are saying it's not worth it.
I'm not going to do it. I'm just not.
It's not worth it. And it's December of the year before he's sworn in.
Happy holidays. Happy holidays.
Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.
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Questions like, can I claim my SUV is my home office if I answer work emails in my car?

If I adopted 12 dogs this year, can I list them as dependents? And, am I doing this right or am I doing this very, very wrong? Our experts have the answers to those questions and many others. Tax Act.
Let's get them over with. Of course, Donald Trump isn't the president right now.
Technically, get this, it's a man named Joe Biden. And fun fact about him, he was born on the same day as Elvis Presley, which isn't true.
I made that up, but that's how old Joe Biden seems to us. Biden's last hurrah should have been the 1 people he pardoned or commuted in one day.
However, people have started to comb through that list. And there are some unfortunate and strange pics.
For example, Biden wrote down the lady from Anatomy of a Fall, even though she had been acquitted. Didn't even make it to the end of the movie.
He must have fallen asleep. The president commuted the sentence of former Pennsylvania judge Michael Conahan, who was convicted in 2011 of the kids for cash scheme, where he accepted kickbacks in exchange for wrongfully sentencing children to for profit juvenile detention facilities.
He took money to fill the jails with children. Some of those kids were so wrecked by the experience.
They ultimately took their own lives. It's a disgusting, cartoonishly evil scandal, like a 30 Rock style joke fucking scandal.
And that sentence was commuted because President Biden commuted all the sentences of people that were released into home confinement during the pandemic at the request of certain outside groups, apparently not going through and checking them.

So that's a bit of a botch, though I will say it's interesting to see people that advocate for abolition or just a general complete overhaul of the justice system, seeing a person like this judge who is an older person and is very unlikely to reoffend given that it's hard for him to become a corrupt judge again, being angry. I feel like there's two pieces to it, one of which is the thing is completely fair, which is like, this is somebody who exploited the very system we despise to destroy lives, that it is in stark relief, a kind of cartoon hyperbolic version of what the justice system does every day, which is destroys people and sends them to these for profit institutions.
And you're going to show this person mercy in a system in which so few people get mercy. And I totally respect that.
There's another part of it, which is people being like, yeah, I'm for prison abolition, but I want this guy to fucking pay. But these people were on home confinement.
Yes. This person was on home confinement.
Yes. Yeah, that's not, like, that part I can, like, get behind.

Home confinement, yes, our parole and probation systems need to be fixed.

Those two things are not the same thing.

And there are definitely inequalities and injustices in those. But home confinement is a much, much better option than the for-profit and also, frankly, like the federal jail and prison systems.
Sure. Yeah.
I mean, I wouldn't have mind this guy brought in jail. He was already out of prison.
Like, to commute a sentence of someone who's already, like, at home. You know what I mean? Like, it's not even like.
Yeah. And he was apparently going to be up in a couple years anyway.
And they're like, they just sort of wiped everybody, including the people that would

have been up in the next couple of years.

Yeah.

But I do think it was like, it's interesting just to see how negative the reaction has

been because like, I felt the same thing.

It's like, I remember that scandal.

It's what it's, it was outrageous.

It was outrageous.

And I do think there's like a, an understatement, like a kind of why, kind of why does this guy get mercy?

Can we make sure his home sucks a little bit?

Can we make sure his dishwasher?

I mean, I like it's also just like will people shout at him at restaurants?

I hope so.

If you ever find yourself involved in any endeavor that could be potentially described as cash for kids, you shouldn't get the clemency treatment. You should get the final destination treatment.
He also pardoned Rita Crundwell. Her name is Crundwell, a villain name, former Illinois controller who pleaded guilty to a $54 million embezzlement scheme.
Crundwell is better known by her street alias Corn Pop. Biden well it does like

this story, too. It had this sort of it fed and it's feeding into the narrative of like Joe Biden is just quiet quitting because it's like, well, the group submitted all these names.
Well, didn't anybody go through it? Did Joe Biden have any questions that anybody we don't know? We not getting insight. Like maybe, but we're just not seeing it.
We're not getting any sense of it. You think somebody political would flag the cash for kids judge? Be like, hey, let's get that guy off the list.
Why? Why is that? Why are we putting that guy? Why is that guy jumping to the front of the line? Is everyone seeing it as cash for kids? Oh, like the commercial? Yeah, I am. For sure.
For sure. In Sky News, the drone mania in New Jersey continues.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told this week, we have not seen any foreign and we know of no foreign involvement with respect to the the sightings in the Northeast. And we are vigilant in investigating this matter.
The Department of Homeland Security with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the lead. And we are vigilant in investigating this matter, the Department of Homeland Security, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the lead.
In other words, this is the work of some kind of local kingpin who's operating out of New Jersey, a droney soprano, if you will. As for why people are suddenly seeing so many drones at once in 2024, Mayorkas actually had an explanation.
And in September of 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA, changed the rules so that drones could fly at night. And that may be one of the reasons why now people are seeing more drones than they did before, especially from dawn to dusk.
My theory is that these things are like the forest clowns people were seeing in 2016. And just as with the clowns, the sightings should die down once Trump takes office.
They're just omens. Nothing to worry about.
Just a terrifying omen. I forgot about the clowns.
When asked about the mysterious drones flying over Jersey on Monday, Trump, of course, knew his job was to calm frayed nerves and avoid feeding into a frenzy of speculation and fear. The government knows what is happening.
Our military knows and our president knows.

And for some reason, they want to keep people in suspense.

I can't imagine it's the enemy

because if it was the enemy, they'd blast it out.

Even if they were late, they'd blast it.

Something strange is going on.

For some reason, they don't want to tell the people.

That's right.

The president sees a story like this and thinks,

I bet I can make people even crazier.

That's his instinct.

That is his instinct.

His instinct is like, I think I can really spin this up.

He's basically Frank from Always Sunny.

It's like my middle school principal who told us that the Sears Tower had been attacked on 9-11.

Wow.

My principal used to wear a belt and suspenders. That's one thing I remember about him what do you do? he'd wear a belt and suspenders so you don't need both no the beauty of the suspenders is you get the loosey-goosey feeling of the belt I want to bring suspenders back I want a loosey-goosey waist yeah you don't wear like actual pants though yeah I will Yeah, with a zipper.
With a jean. Yeah, I'm not going to attach them to my sweatpants.
Yeah. I will see what next year brings.
Someone knows what mental state we'll all be in. And you know what that sound means? The ding that's been reinforced several times because of the hard out.
I know we have Charlotte. It's the end of the year and it is, for the time being, the end of what a weekday, and an end to me having excuses why I can't go to my regularly scheduled therapy appointment that just happened to coincide with this recording.
Maybe therapy's back in 2025. I hope so.
I hope so. So we wanted to mark the biggest and best moments of the last 365 days.
We have several categories, and I'll present you with the nominees and Sarah Halle Kendra, you will choose the winner. First off, we have 2024's biggest scam here.
The nominees, Australia sent breakdancer Ray Gunn to Paris's Olympics in August, despite the fact that she dances like this. Fantastic.
Next up, we have the Willy Wonka experience or Willy's chocolate experience offered through an unlicensed trip through Roald Dahl's world of pure imagination in a Glasgow warehouse this March. It was a total fucking dump.
Remember that? Just a bunch of AI images and like there was a new character called the Shadow. The unknown.
The unknown. Yeah.
To terrify the children. Just an absolute scam.
I think you got like one little chocolate if you were there earlier. Like a half a cup of Sprite, like two jelly beans.
You got two jelly beans and a Sprite. And finally, this year alone, Donald Trump released gold sneakers, guitars, branded Bibles, $100,000 watch and a signature scent named what? Fight, fight, fight.
What is the biggest scam? Was it Raygun? Was it Glasgow or was it the Trump financial operation? I mean, I assume the Trump products are going to show up at your house. They're going to show up.
Something's going to show up. Yeah.
Right. That's a good point.
So in that sense, it's really the price is a scam. Yeah.
You have a grift. It's a grift, not a scam.
Okay. So then do you think Ray Gunn or Glasgow? I got to go Willy Wonka.
I'm going Ray Gunn. I go Ray Gunn.
I think just because they had the world stage. And for all of us to see it, the exact moment go, oh, this woman can't break dance.
There was something about that moment. A collective realization.
Willy Wonka is very special to me because just writing that up for the show, every hour a new detail would come out. It was the best day of my life.
I think that Glasgow was the biggest fire. If you call it a fire fest as a specific kind of scam, which is a group of people, it's like it only tilts into scam because they fail so hard.
Like they didn't intend to fail so spectacularly. They just, they both like kind of.
They were in over their heads. Yes.
It's a combination of arrogance and stupidity and a little bit of malice. And then it all like it's it's the incompetence leads to a kind of malice.

That was also scamming children, which is funny.

Yes, there were a lot of sad kids.

Reagan takes it.

Next up, oldest Joe Biden moment.

Joe Biden bit several babies on Halloween at the White House.

God, that's old.

Commander Biden was off that day.

Next up in February, Biden paused mid ice cream cone to say that he hopes Israel Hunnam Moss will reach a ceasefire. Can you give us a sense of when you think that ceasefire will work? Well, I hope by the beginning of the weekend, I mean, the end of the weekend.
He hoped there'd be a ceasefire at the end of the weekend. That was in February of 2024.
Ice cream surely melted. Next up, during the

presidential debate in June, Biden said this. We finally beat Medicare.
Thank you, President

Biden, President Trump. And just last month, Biden appeared to wander off into the Amazon

rainforest after finishing his speech. For the benefit of all humanity.
Thank you very, very much.

All right.

I'm going to say the sunglasses,

the aviators add a youth that otherwise wouldn't be there.

I have to go still with the debate.

I think ice cream cone. I think ice cream cone.
I think it's the baby, just because it was already after everything had happened. And it was like, everyone's like, all right, well, you know, we've switched out to Kamala.
And it was like, literally the next week, it was like, all right, he's out here biting babies. But he would bite that baby at any age.
No, and I want to be clear. That's a fair point.
I think it's just the baby's expression. It's just the passing on of the next generation.
What do you think of this? I'm going to break the Thomas ice cream. I agree with Lazarus.
I think it is very old. The paws, terrifically old.
Yeah. Looks good, though.
Next up, we have the most unhinged promotional tour moment. On June 18th, Justin Timberlake was arrested and later pled guilty to driving while ability impaired.
According to Page Six, the singer told the police officer his arrest was going to ruin the tour. The officer asked, what tour? Timberlake replied, the world tour.
I was going to say also that world tour started yesterday. Wow.
It did eventually happen. So he is on tour now.
In case you want to see Justin Timberlake, I guess. Next up, while promoting it ends with us, Blake Lively revealed this to E.
The iconic rooftop scene in this movie. My husband actually wrote it.
Nobody knows that, but you now. This was a surprise considering Ryan Reynolds had no role in the making of the film whatsoever.
And they apparently asked the screenwriter afterwards. She's like, I don't know anything about that.
But I guess they did do something. She's like, I thought they were improvising.
So they may have improvised a scene that he wrote. No, he wrote it during the strike.
I think something, look, I'm not saying, I don't know. I think there's something about, there's a few moments where, so there's another point where she was in some interview and she said that she doesn't like writing from a blank page, but she loves writing off of something that's already written.
And it's like- Oh, you like editing? Yeah, editing. That's easier than writing? Crazy.
There was a few moments where it's like, oh man, you gotta keep a few people around you that don't say yes to everything you say. Gotta keep your feet on the ground like lively.
Both of them have kind of overplayed their hand recently, I think. It's like you gotta scale back and maybe disappear for a year and then come back.
Yeah. Run for you guys.
I like some of your work. You know? In Rolling Stone interview in April ahead of the release of her album Hit Me Hard and Soft, Billie Eilish said about masturbating everybody should be jerking it man that's just true and uh dakota johnson repeatedly went viral for her deadpan madame web interviews or madam web if you're nasty like this one why did that go viral i think it went viral because out of context people were just like what does this mean did you did you catch that at all no somebody brought this up and i have no idea what it's about there were lots of memes because i think people were like what is that just out of the context of it it was just a very but isn't any sentence out of context out of context yeah and this interview from wicked in November, the one we've all been talking about, it deserves to be part of the conversation.
I've seen this week people are taking the lyrics of Defying Gravity and really holding space with that. I can't hear it again.
We gotta stop. I just can't hear it anymore.
I love it, but I can't hear it anymore. All right, what do we think? I mean, it is recency bias but i do think the wicked moment is unbeatable blake blake and ryan went on for so long and also there was the justin baldoni of it all there was so much going on there also that movie is about domestic violence and they would have they had like cutouts you could take photos of like in the in like the amc as if it was wicked it's like why would you take a photo of this i will say i kept trying to sell her shampoo too yeah i think what's funny about the billy eilish is like that's where we're at like i feel like society's become so prudish that like 15 years ago a rock star who's like 23 should be like i'm out here fucking and the fact that she's like yeah everyone should masturbate it's like yeah girl you gotta get out of the house you know um i don't know wicked though it's iconic this let's give it to wicked i i think that um uh dakota johnson deserves a honorary mention because i think she was just out there figuring it out and she did oh they let they hug him out to dry well i also just like she was in a godforsaken movie and she came away looking even better which is an amazing achievement she went on a press tour promoted the movie never insulted the movie and came out looking better even though the movie was a big steam pile of of shit.
So good for her. And finally, best animal news.

We got Moodang.

Next up, we've got a leaky fire hydrant that birthed the Bed-Stuy fish pond.

We've got 43 monkeys that got loose from the Alpha Genesis Research Facility in South Carolina.

All but four monkeys have been recovered.

There are still monkeys on the loose.

And finally, TikTok squirrel, Peanut. Who is dead? What do you got? We got the loose monkeys.
We got Mudang. We got the pond and we got Peanut.
I didn't give it to Peanut posthumously for making it into the election discourse. Yeah, that's true.
Peanut made a difference. But Peanut died.
And I feel like so it can't be the best animal news because it ended with their tragic execution by the state. But he did rise above his station.
And isn't that the most American story? All right, let's move into Peanut. Peanut, Peanut, Peanut.
So those are our awards. Congrats to the winners.
Peanut, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo Joe Biden and Reagan

you've done it, you've won our awards

before we go, everybody

exciting news in 2025

Love It or Leave It is going to be back

we have a bunch of live shows

in Los Angeles, come through

you can see what we cut from the unhinged

material that doesn't make it

into the video or the podcast

it's a new season of the show that Derek Gist from Danny DeVito to Amy Klobuchar to ask, what is this? Where am I? Each week, we will break down the biggest and dumbest stories in politics to help you keep up with and laugh along with the news. And this season, stay tuned.
We have some big guests and surprising conversations you won't find anywhere else. In our first episodes, I'll be joined by Rachel Bloom, followed by Joel McHale

and some other big guests to come.

Don't miss out on Love It or Leave It in real life.

So head to crooked.com slash events.

You can get the show dates and grab those tickets.

Also, we had a bunch of amazing limited series this year

that you should check out.

Go to crooked.com slash limiteds.

You can listen to our podcast called Empire City,

which is the true story of the NYPD. You can listen to Dissonant at the Doorstep, which is an amazing true story about a Chinese dissonant that came to the S and went MAGA and a bunch of other amazing shows.
Really proud of the limiteds we've made, the limited series we've made, these amazing, incredibly engaging, riveting documentaries, which we're really proud of. So go to crooked.com slash limiteds to check them out.
That's our show. Thank you to everybody that has listened to what a weekday.
Thank you to everybody who has mad at us for ending what a weekday. We've loved doing that, but we've loved, we've loved doing it.
But certainly at the start of next year, we really want to focus and concentrate on the Saturday show and how we can make that show even better and how it can continue to change and adapt. Like, I'm really proud of how this show has only gotten better over the years and how even though we've now we're heading into year nine, it never feels rote.
It always feels like we're trying to make something new and interesting every single week. And I want to make sure we keep doing that.
And as we head into another Trump era, I want to make sure you know that you can count on us to give you the best understanding of what happened that week in a way

that keeps you engaged and interested and hopeful where at all possible. So we will see you all next

year. Thank you so much for listening.
Have a great break. Thank you to Sarah.
Thank you to

Hallie. Thank you to Kendra.
Thank you to the whole team behind Love It or Leave It here in

the studio.

And we will see you sluts in 2025. Loving or living is loving or living Spreading on all sides Loving or living is loving or living

Straight, straight, tight

Loving or living is loving or living

Spreading on all sides Love It or Leave It is a Crooked Media production.

It is written and produced by me, John Lovett and Lee Eisenberg.

Kendra James is our executive producer.

Chris Lord is our producer. And Kennedy Hill is our associate producer.
Hallie Kiefer is our head writer. Sarah Lazarus and Jocelyn Kaufman.
Peter Miller, Alan Pierre, Will Miles, and Mahana Delshiki are our writers. Evan Sutton is our editor.
Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis provide audio support. Stephen Colon is our audio engineer.
And Milo Kim is our videographer. Our theme song is written and performed by Sure Sure.
Thanks to our designer, Bernardo Serna, for creating and running all of our visuals, which you can't see because this is a podcast, and to our digital producers, David Tolles, Claudia Shang, Mia Kelman, and Matt DeGroat, for filming and editing video each week so you can. We can't reignite the reclining seat debate, but all the seats are designed to recline.
Everybody gets to recline. The issue is not my going bad.
We're back on the airplane now. For airplanes? Back on airplanes.
I want to be on my computer, and when you recline, it squishes that space, and I can't have my laptop off. That's why I don't like it.
That is not my fault to fix or to not use. That is the airline's fault to fix.
Well, I think we have four or two people against, and I feel fine about being on the against side. It's definitely the airline, the airplane maker's fault that the seats are so close together and bad, but I still have responsibility as a person to make the best of it for everyone around me.
But you all collectively, but we all, everybody wants to recline a little bit. And everybody on the plane recognizes there's this much space behind each seat that we share.
I can recline into it, and you can recline into the space behind you. That's your space.
And now you don't have to use it if you don't want to, but you can donate it to the person behind you. But it's your space to use.
It's immoral or unethical about using it. The issue is not the space behind.
The issue is the space in front. I feel very secure about this.
But you have no control over what the person ahead of you does because that's not your space. And I wish that we all collectively agreed that we were reclining.
Because when someone in front of you reclines, you lose this space. Yes.
And even if I recline, I don't get that back. Yeah.
No, we... It's not the same space.
What he's saying is that's not your space to begin with because the chair... That's where we disagree.
And that's where we disagree because I need that space. Yeah.
But it's just the My eyes are in the front of my head.

I want what's in front of me.

Right, but that's not the deal.

We're a front-oriented species.

But that's

and that's true on Spirit.

And on Spirit Airline

you get to keep that space.

And I am flying Spirit to Columbus.

And on Spirit,

I'm really upset.

Oh, no rules.

On Spirit,

I'd recline my seat

and punch someone.

Right.

Right.

Because you're allowed

on Spirit.

All right, yeah. Tax Act knows filing your taxes can be complicated, and that's why we have live experts to help you with any questions.
They can hold your hand through the process beginning to end. Metaphorically, of course.
I mean, they can't actually hold your hand in person. I suppose you could hold your computer mouse while you chat with the expert about capital gains or whatever, which is sort of like holding hands.
Sorry, point is, our tax experts can make filing easier. Tax Act.
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