Trump & Putin’s Alaska Date, Gay Marriage Challenged, and Guest Co-Host Rachel Maddow

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Speaker 18 Support for this show comes from Upwork. If you're overextended and understaffed, Upwork Business Plus helps you bring in top-quality freelancers fast.

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Speaker 22 In case you're interested, a report from WeWork, every white woman in America is doing a skincare line.

Speaker 26 Just say. Kara, that's the one thing we haven't done together yet.

Speaker 25 I know.

Speaker 26 Let's launch a skincare line for people who don't care about skincare.

Speaker 27 Hi, everyone.

Speaker 28 This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 29 Welcome back to

Speaker 30 Scott Free August.

Speaker 27 This is possibly the most badass day of Scott Free August.

Speaker 25 My co-hosts and I are the Al Pagino and Robert De Niro of lesbian journalists, respected, feared, and often confused for one another because of our hair, our fantastic haircuts, let me just say.

Speaker 38 welcome to the host of MSNBC's, the Rachel Maddow Show.

Speaker 39 Rachel Maddow.

Speaker 26 Oh, Kara. I'm so glad.
And when we made that decision to go bulk at the barbershop, where we would always go two for one, I just think it was great for both of us. I mean, we were both 24.

Speaker 26 You could have foreseen that it would have been the start of our paths in life. Right.

Speaker 40 And we often dress like each other, too. And people are always like, Are you Rachel Maddow?

Speaker 42 No, I'm not tall enough.

Speaker 43 People don't know.

Speaker 44 Rachel's quite tall.

Speaker 26 That's the thing. That's the secret.
That helps us twin in a way that will help us ultimately commit great crimes. That is correct.
Because we will need the alibi for one another.

Speaker 24 We should do crimes.

Speaker 45 Should we solve crimes or do crimes? Yes.

Speaker 25 Both. Yes.
Yes. Do crimes.

Speaker 25 Yes. Yes.

Speaker 20 All the things.

Speaker 23 We have so much to talk about.

Speaker 37 This is so good.

Speaker 22 This is, everybody, let me just say we're going to gay it up for you here a little bit, but we're going to, we have a lot to talk about.

Speaker 23 But how is it going on your show?

Speaker 28 You're back to once a week.

Speaker 25 Is that correct? Yes.

Speaker 26 So I'm once a week Monday nights on MSNBC, and then I spend every other day of of the week working on stuff that people can't see yet.

Speaker 26 And so it seems like I'm doing nothing, but actually I'm working harder than I've ever worked.

Speaker 20 So you're not lazy.

Speaker 48 I'm not lazy.

Speaker 20 No.

Speaker 25 No.

Speaker 23 So can I just ask, I'm just curious, how do you plan that day?

Speaker 30 Would you do it on Sunday?

Speaker 50 I was trying to think, when do you plan it and how do you decide?

Speaker 34 Because it's the one day.

Speaker 44 You're like the Jon Stewart does the same thing, the one day, both Monday.

Speaker 26 I read all week and then Sunday is a full, full bore, like 10 or 12 hour workday when I'm like reading intensively and prepping and making decisions, including about guests and stuff.

Speaker 26 Although I don't like to pre-plan guests before the day of the show if I don't have to. I don't

Speaker 44 because you want it to be fresh.

Speaker 26 Yeah, because I'm not trying to do a weekend review. I'm trying to do a good,

Speaker 26 here's your Monday newscast.

Speaker 26 And so I'm never great at like lining up the big guests for the big get interview weeks in advance. I just don't do that.
So, but I read all day and then Monday I work all day.

Speaker 26 And that's, I mean, it's, it's kind of, it's, it's not that different from when I was, the prep time is not that different from when I was doing five days a week.

Speaker 26 It's just that my whole Sunday is dedicated as well.

Speaker 40 You went from one day a week to five during part the first hundred days of the presidency.

Speaker 28 Do you feel like you need to come back and do more?

Speaker 55 I know a lot of your viewers think that.

Speaker 26 I mean, I think doing the 100 days was the right thing to do.

Speaker 26 I think a lot changed in our country very rapidly over those first hundred days, and I was glad to be there every day for it.

Speaker 26 I also think it was, you know, MSNBC kind of signaling to the audience, like, hey, this is, this is not a normal presidential transition.

Speaker 26 This is potentially, if this is going to be a transition from one kind of government and one kind of country into another, we need to cover it in a way that is not pretending that this is normal.

Speaker 26 And so I like the instinct at the company to ask me to come back and do that to signal that this is a special sort of time, I think was, was correct.

Speaker 26 But

Speaker 26 I don't want to do five days a week and I won't.

Speaker 25 And they don't want to.

Speaker 26 They've moved on.

Speaker 56 They moved on.

Speaker 33 They have gotten more people, but do you ever feel like, oh my God, something happens and I got to get in there?

Speaker 25 Oh, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 26 And, you know, and I'm a guest on other people's shows. And if it ever, we ever tip over into special coverage, I'm able to come back at any time and lead that stuff.

Speaker 26 So I just, I think it's a pretty, it was hard to arrive at the system that we're in. We had to iterate a bunch of sort of different attempts at it before we arrived at this.

Speaker 25 But I think this is, I think we're in the right.

Speaker 26 I think we're in the right place.

Speaker 25 I think this is the right place.

Speaker 26 I think this is stable and sustainable, and this is going to be what it's going to be like for the foreseeable future.

Speaker 42 Right.

Speaker 28 Now, may I ask you, are you excited about your spin-off of Versant?

Speaker 22 What a great name.

Speaker 26 Versent.

Speaker 26 Talk to your doctor.

Speaker 25 Results may vary. You could have a rash.

Speaker 26 You know, in terms of the practical impact of it, it's been all kind of upside so far.

Speaker 25 Yeah.

Speaker 26 I mean, we're hiring. What other news organization is hiring tons of reporters and correspondents and editors?

Speaker 26 And we're standing up this whole news gathering operation, which was funded as part of, well funded, as part of the spin. And

Speaker 26 in the end, once that is stood up, we will no longer have to compete with NBC News's properties for the news gathering, the product of the news gathering organization, which we otherwise had to.

Speaker 26 I mean, if it's, we're all, if we're all covering the same outbreak of war or whatever it is, you know, if we're competing with Nightly and The Today Show and Meet the Press, and it's the NBC News news gathering organization, we're always going to get whatever's left over in this case it's all we can apply our own instincts our own queries our own priorities to getting stuff that we need um from reporters and correspondents and so it's gonna it's gonna be better once that's all stood up it has to be I like the cut of your jib here because a lot half the people I like that expression I like to say it a lot sounds like what's like

Speaker 26 what is I like the cut of your jib I didn't even know I had a jib everyone has a jib right where it's the sailing metaphor, a jib.

Speaker 52 Do you ever sail?

Speaker 64 No, obviously you don't.

Speaker 25 A jib.

Speaker 26 More of a robot type.

Speaker 56 I like robots too.

Speaker 43 When I was in,

Speaker 65 I went out with someone and they bought me a robot once and we called it a relation dinghy.

Speaker 66 But

Speaker 25 it's not a relationship.

Speaker 25 Anyway, thank you.

Speaker 23 Thank you.

Speaker 28 I'm here all week.

Speaker 68 One of the things I think is exciting, actually, I've been doing a few shows on the podcast about what works in media now versus the whole doomness of it.

Speaker 34 And I had Oliver Darcy on, I had Katie Drummond from Wired, I had a bunch of different people on it.

Speaker 28 And the whole idea was that things are working, like whether it's Mehdi Hassan, even on the right, whether you like her or not, Megan Kelly, there's all this exciting kind of stuff.

Speaker 23 And one of the MSNBC people either split into two groups, people who are sort of, this is the end kind of thing, or this is an opportunity to be entrepreneurial, which I think you're talking about, right?

Speaker 32 And it's an opportunity to make things people want.

Speaker 25 It's A,

Speaker 26 first of all, we make a ton of money. Second of all, we're spinning off with a huge standalone, newly built news gathering organization that is designed specifically for our purposes and nothing else.

Speaker 26 We have an incredibly loyal, very large audience, and we've got, and we're, and we're universally platformed on a device called the television, which Americans use despite the media reports to the contrary.

Speaker 26 And so I just feel like I'm super, super happy to see, in particular, the success of some of the people you just described. Like Wired has just been killing it.

Speaker 26 Oliver Darcy doing his status media stuff is great. It's better than anybody else who's doing the media beat from any of the legacy news organizations.

Speaker 38 Absolutely.

Speaker 53 That's because he's not just writing down what the big say.

Speaker 39 Exactly.

Speaker 26 And that is forcing, I actually think it's forcing. media reporting in legacy news organizations to kind of up their game a little bit because he's so scrappy and good at it.

Speaker 26 And I think there's a lot that's positive. The business side of it is a challenge for everybody, but it's also unique to everybody.
And MSNBC on that side has a bunch of unique advantages.

Speaker 26 We're in a spin that is very well funded, that is, once it's going to be public shares eventually when Versent does that, that means that's going to sort of lock into a system where there's several years where they can't do anything dramatic.

Speaker 26 like sell us or anything like that. But right now, we're going to...

Speaker 73 The e-on time is not yet.

Speaker 26 No, we make a lot of money. We have a big audience, and

Speaker 26 we're growing substantively in terms of what we can offer the audience. I just think

Speaker 26 that's nothing to sneeze at.

Speaker 25 And

Speaker 26 I'm excited to see how it develops.

Speaker 69 Good, because I think that's the good attitude.

Speaker 34 I think if you sit around and doom scroll about your industry, they're just not true.

Speaker 74 There's all kinds of entrepreneurial stuff, and it gives you the opportunity if you pull away from bigger organizations to like, you have to make stuff people want.

Speaker 26 Anyway, speaking of-before we move on from that, you yourself are a media mogul, Kara Swisher.

Speaker 26 that's do you call myself that's but what do you feel like you've wired you've figured out what makes the most sense for you in terms of owning stuff and multi-platforms and the kind of partnerships that you have well rachel if i if i were advised like i i got i helped dave jorgensen leave the washington post because he he's the one who makes all those videos and he also was on on the podcast um because he's different he's doing videos and trying to create a video oriented tick tock oriented media company uh yes i feel much better as i often say i was a terrible employee.

Speaker 42 I was like, you fucking idiot all the time.

Speaker 69 And I was tired of saying that to people, especially a certain kind of guy, right?

Speaker 42 It was often a guy,

Speaker 73 sometimes a woman.

Speaker 28 And I just was like, I'll make what I'll make. And if people want to eat it, they can eat it.

Speaker 50 Like, and then I get to make all the decisions.

Speaker 44 I also own everything.

Speaker 55 If I were you, I would own everything. You do own a lot of your stuff, Rachel, but I would own like everything I make.

Speaker 73 And that way I can make decisions.

Speaker 67 And then you partner with people.

Speaker 34 In my case, it's Fox Media.

Speaker 50 But, you know, over time, for example, in Pivot, Scott and I have gotten a bigger piece of the pie because it's our pie, right?

Speaker 24 And, but it's great to have partners that help you do things like advertising and distribution and producing that you may not want to do or they can do better.

Speaker 61 And so it creates a really great ecosystem of everyone's interests are aligned.

Speaker 26 And then you and when you own it, you can make decisions that are both temporally specific and specific in terms of equity and all that other stuff

Speaker 26 and control as needed. But you can enter and leave those partnerships while you still own everything.

Speaker 30 Right. And that's what I'm advising everybody.

Speaker 68 Like everyone who, like, I get a lot of, like, when they wrote that very nice piece in the New York Times about me, which was a little too nice, Rachel, I'll be honest with you.

Speaker 20 It was a big thing.

Speaker 26 You're the backlash to your own profile?

Speaker 28 Myself.

Speaker 49 I'm like, come on. You couldn't find one bad thing.

Speaker 41 I'll give you a list of people that don't like me.

Speaker 73 But they're always blind quotes, so they're not any good.

Speaker 70 You know, I would say one of the things that was important in that piece was getting people inspired.

Speaker 50 But one of the reporter came to me and said who's lovely ben mullen and he said um you know i've heard you're being paid to advise people to leave media like i get a fee i was like if i got a fee i'd be so rich i have a lot of people calling me right now on my telephone i have seven people who want to leave media and want to try something and so what i try to do is the ones i think are going to be good i say here's what here's what it takes like a jim acosta or whoever you got to be entrepreneurial you've got to be you've got to work hard or than you did because it's all for you right and i think that's the hard part and some people who come to me i'm like you know you should stay where you are you should stay where you are you're giving people the the Rosetta Stone here to interpret your advice in future anybody it's only a few people but you know like I just was with Dina Brown and she's done amazing stuff at her sub stack and I think her writing is better

Speaker 44 Paul Krugman I think has really come alive he's suddenly really great

Speaker 50 there's all kinds of people and I think you once you find your voice it's if it's really good people will buy it.

Speaker 26 And it's all and media is not all one thing. I mean,

Speaker 26 I have a production company now, in addition to being an employee at MSNBC. But at that production company, I'm not doing cable news.

Speaker 26 At that production company, I'm doing documentaries, scripted shows.

Speaker 26 Actually, podcasts are all through MSNBC. So it's the documentaries, scripted shows.
I'm producing a play with them, some other stuff,

Speaker 26 feature films.

Speaker 26 But that's all, it's all different. So my employee status is podcasts and TV shows at MSNBC, which is all the stuff for which I'm still best known.

Speaker 26 Everything else that I'm doing, I'm very low on the learning curve and I'm figuring out how to do it.

Speaker 26 And I don't know if I will succeed at any of those things, but I'm trying, but I'm doing that on my own steam.

Speaker 28 Which one do you like better?

Speaker 26 I like them both. I'm better at one than I am at the other.

Speaker 80 I mean, I'm

Speaker 80 used to it. Yeah.

Speaker 26 And so,

Speaker 26 but I like working at something that I'm not great at in learning. So that's what I'm.

Speaker 26 The problem is, is that I, I can't, once you're better at something, it's easier to turn it on and off to compartmentalize now I'm working now I am not when you're not good at something there's the constant panic about failure which means you work 24 hours a day which means your girlfriend gets mad at you

Speaker 26 I've heard wait a minute I've heard that I have that issue with my wife too speaking of Hollywood I just want to note the New York Times just called my all-time favorite movie Roadhouse the best bad movie I don't know if you know that's my all-time favorite oh wow movie Roadhouse was Patrick Swayze not the Jake gyllenhall that was pathetic was was the jake gyllenhall is the remake the remake and was in the patrick swayzee version was there also a lot of shirtlessness yes of course obviously he did tai chi and the shirtlessness are you kidding and it was mostly him by the way it was not the ladies there was a lot of shirtless ladies also but he was the the prime piece of beefcake there going on and i love that movie largely because of the lines like we can do this the hard way or the easy way just stuff like that um which is i i i say that a lot and no one was was, it was profound.

Speaker 25 It's a profound thing.

Speaker 26 People go, look, where's that in the Bible?

Speaker 23 I love Patrick Swayze.

Speaker 74 He was such a great fire that I don't understand it myself.

Speaker 26 Have you ever seen the

Speaker 26 amazingly like crazy stars TV show called High Town, which is about drugs in Provincetown?

Speaker 64 Yes, the lesbian. Hello.
Yes. Hello.

Speaker 26 So what about in

Speaker 26 the pimp, the terrible, like evil, shirtless pimp character, Swayze.

Speaker 26 And there's no reason in the the entire, there's, there's a lot of things about High Town that are inexplicable, but one of them is that why is the pimp shirtless?

Speaker 26 Like the pimp is shirtless at night, the pimp is shirtless during the day. I'm convinced the pimp is always shirtless because he is Swayzey.
Because that is Swayze.

Speaker 25 Patrick Swayze. You're right.

Speaker 26 Yes. Yes.

Speaker 26 It's a meta.

Speaker 25 Yes.

Speaker 28 Yeah. Tom Cruise always takes his shirt off, too.

Speaker 23 There's several actors, but in Patrick Swayze's case, I see the point. I get the point.

Speaker 82 I understand why there's no shirt.

Speaker 23 Let me ask you a question.

Speaker 75 Do you have a best bad movie or show you like lately?

Speaker 26 I like Hightown. I got to say.
High Town.

Speaker 26 Yeah. You know, I'm a real old lesbian who doesn't see a lot of movies and stuff.

Speaker 26 Like my favorite movie is Suddenly, which is an assassination movie starring Frank Sinatra that all takes place in one room and really ought to have been a play.

Speaker 25 Like I, I, yeah.

Speaker 76 Frank Sinatra. Like the original man.

Speaker 25 Back to Sin Sinatra.

Speaker 26 Yes.

Speaker 25 Like that's my favorite.

Speaker 20 That's my era.

Speaker 76 I love Patton.

Speaker 26 I love Lawrence of Arabia.

Speaker 48 Like I'm

Speaker 26 a lot older than I seem. I was born 74 years old.

Speaker 52 Excellent.

Speaker 68 That is from the beginning, from the get. From the beginning.

Speaker 26 I came out nearsighted.

Speaker 72 I was 37.

Speaker 61 Interesting.

Speaker 36 I was born.

Speaker 78 I was like, here's how we're going to do things.

Speaker 34 But 37 and real bossy.

Speaker 28 So suddenly, I'm going to watch that now.

Speaker 76 It's good. It's really good.

Speaker 26 I like political thrillers is kind of my thing. I like psychological thriller stuff.
And, you know, it's great.

Speaker 25 It's really good.

Speaker 26 Frank Sinatra actually did some. I loved him in the first Manchurian Candidate thing.

Speaker 36 Yeah, he's great.

Speaker 25 That's a creepy movie.

Speaker 54 Angela Lansbury is so good in that movie.

Speaker 75 Oh, God.

Speaker 26 She's fantastic.

Speaker 25 She's so good.

Speaker 26 I love an evil,

Speaker 26 like a totally

Speaker 26 villainous to the core pretty lady. Pretty lady.
She has my favorite.

Speaker 59 She should be a villain. Has she ever been a villain?

Speaker 30 That's sort of in that genre.

Speaker 26 Hello, Julie Andrews fans of the pivot audience.

Speaker 25 Tell us what Julie Andrews is.

Speaker 60 I'm sure she's listening very closely right right now.

Speaker 33 Although I do have a lot of weird celebrity fans, which is strange.

Speaker 85 I'm sure you have a million of them. They love the Rachel Maddow.

Speaker 60 Let me give you one recommendation, which I mentioned to every show.

Speaker 77 See Hunting Wives, please, on Netflix.

Speaker 26 Do your share. So this is a new reality series?

Speaker 28 No, it is not.

Speaker 42 It is a series, Malin Ackerman and Britney Snowstar.

Speaker 39 And it is about

Speaker 30 MAGA ladies in Texas who shoot a lot of guns.

Speaker 65 And they're very Christian and very MAGA and trumpy.

Speaker 44 And they dress up in what you'd imagine Texas ladies would dress up in and it's they're all lesbians.

Speaker 60 Suddenly they take this turn into lesbian and you're like, but then they do it too much.

Speaker 68 You're like, stop with the lesbian.

Speaker 43 Like there's way too much. And then there's murder.

Speaker 26 It's not you just like reading a lesbian vibe into it. They actually in the show.

Speaker 20 No, my friend.

Speaker 41 Go get it. No,

Speaker 27 it's it's moving towards softcore porn in a way that's really good.

Speaker 34 I actually was like, you need to stop. You need, we need some more plot here.

Speaker 65 Like, stop make it out, you two.

Speaker 71 And Malin after me.

Speaker 29 He dives into the role, dives into the role.

Speaker 82 Like, you've never seen it.

Speaker 26 So when Scott did his last episode of Pivot Before Scott Free August, his advice to you and your co-hosts while he was away was he wanted a lot more lesbian content. There we go.
And now here you are.

Speaker 20 Here you are. We've done it.

Speaker 26 You're bringing me new lesbian content I didn't have.

Speaker 45 I'm just telling you, just text me after you watch it. All right.

Speaker 68 Trust me on this one.

Speaker 23 All right.

Speaker 67 We've got lunch.

Speaker 27 Now we're getting to serious stuff because Trump is having quite a week with his federal takeover, D.C., a review of the Smithsonian and a meeting with Putin.

Speaker 31 First, you know,

Speaker 65 I am a huge fan of your work on the 30s and 40s, all the stuff you've done.

Speaker 26 I just re-listened to Prequel, which I adore, and all the characters.

Speaker 21 And I assume that's what you're making movies about because there's so many great characters there.

Speaker 34 We've been hearing Trump using this America First line for years, but it's coming into play more than ever in his second term, as if it's fresh and new.

Speaker 33 He slapped the label on foreign policy, trade, immigration.

Speaker 34 He told The Atlantic a few months ago that the America First means whatever he says it does.

Speaker 27 He said that he was the one that developed it.

Speaker 69 Obviously, not so.

Speaker 33 In both Ultra, your podcast, and your, which we've, you've been on

Speaker 34 talking about this in your book Prequel,

Speaker 42 you, you talk a lot about this and the deep, deep roots of this, what's happening now in the U.S., which we have forgotten about in a lot of ways.

Speaker 42 So talk a little bit about the backstory and this rhetoric at this moment in time.

Speaker 26 So the America First Committee was a real thing. It only existed for about 15 months, but it was 15 really important months.
It was from, I think, September of 1940 until December of 41, Pearl Harbor.

Speaker 26 But they formed, it was one of the largest anti-war organizations ever in the U.S.

Speaker 26 And they formed to basically try to block FDR from affording any assistance to Britain when Britain was fending off a Nazi invasion. And

Speaker 26 their basic idea, at least their public-facing idea, was that we were impregnable. We were protected by by our oceans.
Nobody was ever going to attack us.

Speaker 26 And who cares if the Nazis took all of Europe?

Speaker 26 Europe kind of sucks anyway.

Speaker 81 It doesn't give money to them.

Speaker 76 Why should we give them to them?

Speaker 26 We shouldn't give money to them. And if we give any money to them, they're going to plow under every fourth American boy.

Speaker 26 It'll get us into the war. And we don't want to be in another war after World War I.
That was the public-facing line.

Speaker 26 The problem the America First Committee had is that even as they were huge and they had all these really respectable people associated with them, most founded by the guy who was the heir to the Quaker Oats fortune.

Speaker 26 They kept slipping into kind of liking the Nazis and blaming everything on the Jews.

Speaker 26 And the American public eventually came to see that, especially when Charles Lindbergh, who was the most famous man in America, not named Roosevelt, when Lindbergh became their spokesman and started it flat out saying, this is just the Jews trying to get us into the war and the Jews are the big problem in the world.

Speaker 26 So the America First Committee,

Speaker 26 I mean, has it as a short, very pungent history. And then what the idea of America First became after that is even worse.

Speaker 26 After the America First Committee disbanded following Pearl Harbor, we then later got other iterations of that concept, like the America First Party, which in 1944 campaigned explicitly on the promise of deporting and or sterilizing all Jews in America.

Speaker 26 So that's the history of America First.

Speaker 34 And there were senators that put these things forced, the forced sterilization of Jews, of blacks, of things like that.

Speaker 58 The insidious nature of it, even if it wasn't called America First, was the thing I was thinking of, is the idea that, first of all, there was Nazi infiltration in

Speaker 73 our country very significantly through Congress and also throughout media and everything else.

Speaker 34 But that it was much more insidious America First in a lot of ways because there are all things attached to it.

Speaker 26 Yeah, I mean, that phrase, that plowing under every fourth American boy,

Speaker 26 that originated in Berlin in Goebbels' office, and then it made its way into

Speaker 26 the

Speaker 26 speeches of an anti-FDR, America First, American politician. And there was a huge, one of the things that Ultra and Prequel are about is

Speaker 26 this

Speaker 26 huge multi-million dollar at the time, which makes it, I mean, in 1940s dollars, multi-million dollar secret Nazi propaganda effort that was shunted through Congress.

Speaker 26 They used the congressional franking privilege to mail out millions of pieces of Nazi propaganda to American homes using members of the Senate and members of Congress who were on the Nazi payroll

Speaker 26 in the lead up to World War II. And it's a forgotten history, I think, because of World War II.
It seems to overshadow that overshadows everything that went before. But

Speaker 26 we had a big Nazi sympathizing and and American fascist movement here in this country.

Speaker 34 That continued after the war through McCarthy, which is what the second season of Ultra is about, correct?

Speaker 53 I mean, that it didn't stop.

Speaker 58 So this never stopped.

Speaker 29 This is one of the things that I took away from your book is that so much as, you know, it begins with Gogols, who was, you know, I think they had stolen some ideas from us and Jim Crow.

Speaker 80 and or borrowed or whatever and thought that was a great thing.

Speaker 73 And then they put it back here and continued.

Speaker 71 That's what the lost history part.

Speaker 23 I mean, the biggest figure, there's two figures in your books that I think are so McCarthy gets all the attention, right?

Speaker 38 Always, because he's such a tragic and horrible figure. But two people I thought was Lawrence Dennis

Speaker 50 and O.

Speaker 58 John Roghy, two opposites.

Speaker 25 So similar.

Speaker 26 Lawrence Dennis was considered to be the intellectual godfather of American fascism

Speaker 26 and was like, he was receiving money from the Germans and they brought him him over to like observe Nuremberg rallies and blah blah blah

Speaker 26 He was connected to all sorts of American politicians and to these fascist movements including the violent fascist movement and he was also half African-American correct he was he was secretly black and and passed until the very end of his life while meanwhile you know articulating the beautiful fascist American future, right?

Speaker 26 The Nazis, when you say that they got ideas from Jim Crow, the Nazis

Speaker 26 used

Speaker 26 they actually sent an agent to the University of Arkansas Law School to study Jim Crow,

Speaker 47 the legal, the liminal legal world,

Speaker 26 how to set it up. And then they used it as the basis for the Nuremberg Laws, the idea of second-class citizenship based on racial purity.
So

Speaker 26 that's

Speaker 26 on the dark side. And then Ojan Raghi was a Wunderkind

Speaker 26 prosecutor who brought sedition charges against Dennis and against these American fascists who were both working with the Nazis and trying to undermine the American war effort.

Speaker 26 And he was all but destroyed for having done it, including being fired in the Justice Department for having had the temerity to name the members of Congress who were involved in this scheme.

Speaker 33 And write a report that got lost, really, to history for 25 years.

Speaker 74 Yeah.

Speaker 30 That's and then it didn't matter by then because everyone had moved on, right?

Speaker 26 Yeah, it wasn't, they didn't publish it until the 60s.

Speaker 72 I got to tell you, the resonance to today, it's you're that prepole particularly sticks with, has stuck with me so hard because it feels like there's so many links to today.

Speaker 43 How do you, and one of the things, you have these heroes like O.

Speaker 33 John Roger or Leon Lewis in Los Angeles, Leon Lewis, right, in Los Angeles, who also did all this sort of secret spy work against these people, against these, these fascists and militias and things like that.

Speaker 31 Who is that today?

Speaker 28 And could you link them to what's happening now?

Speaker 26 I don't think there's any,

Speaker 26 You sound like you're, is there a problem?

Speaker 21 Yes, there's a noisy man, but go ahead.

Speaker 25 A noisy man.

Speaker 26 Yeah, sorry. I just saw you kill him with your eyes.
It was amazing.

Speaker 36 I'll stop doing that.

Speaker 26 I don't think there are exact parallels, but I do think that there are sort of inspirational currents. So

Speaker 26 one story that hasn't had a lot of attention that I've sort of been watching percolate recently is that there's been a lot of

Speaker 26 stealing from armories and military bases that's been happening recently.

Speaker 26 That was something that happened in the lead up to World War II, as well as violent fascist groups like the Silver Shirts and the Christian Front and others not only recruited from the military and from the National Guard, but also used essentially insider threat people inside the military to steal U.S.

Speaker 26 military weapons for the use and what they hoped would be a violent overthrow of the U.S. government.
And so that happened. That's happening now, very sort of quietly.

Speaker 26 It's only getting a little bit of attention. That happened there.

Speaker 26 That was in part what led Leon Lewis, who was a World War I veteran, to get other World War I veterans, German-American World War I veterans, to go infiltrate those groups to figure out what was happening.

Speaker 26 They could not get law enforcement interested in it because these guys proclaimed themselves to be anti-communists. And so therefore...

Speaker 26 Law enforcement liked the idea of them. They couldn't get law enforcement interested in, so they pursued it and pursued it and pursued it themselves.
They publicized their findings.

Speaker 26 They ultimately went to U.S. Navy intelligence, which was willing to prosecute them in part because it was military facilities that are being burgled in order to get these guys their weapons.

Speaker 26 So that sort of intrepidity by a self-styled civilian spy, I don't know that we've got that sort of singular hero right now.

Speaker 26 But when I see people who are building apps and building online networks to watch what ICE is doing and to monitor effectively the secret police operations that we've got going right now.

Speaker 26 I see some of those same instincts sort of in the American character.

Speaker 20 Yeah.

Speaker 24 You were saying they aren't the same. I mean, right now, for example, Trump, let's go right to this.

Speaker 40 Trump says he's looking to extend the 30-day federal takeover of Washington, D.C.'s police and could bypass Congress declaring a national emergency.

Speaker 53 I guess he could decide what a national emergency is.

Speaker 50 His comments come as National Guard troops arrive in D.C.

Speaker 33 with 800 guards and 500 federal agents set to be deployed in total.

Speaker 21 They're often in places that are very loud, although they're over on 14th Street where they're being punneled with sandwiches.

Speaker 37 That guy.

Speaker 26 A felony for hurling the sandwiches.

Speaker 25 I know.

Speaker 27 I'm like, I would, I would, I feel like I wish I had done that.

Speaker 58 D.C.

Speaker 44 Mayor Mirambowser is calling all of this an authoritarian push, although she initially said the city could benefit from it.

Speaker 57 She's being a little bit quiet about it.

Speaker 34 U.S. Attorney for D.C., Janine Piro,

Speaker 52 she of the box of wine, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that she's working to overturn some local laws so juvenile offenders would be prosecuted.

Speaker 58 I just, you know, a lot of the stuff you wrote about was implicit.

Speaker 71 It was quietly being done.

Speaker 55 Although the Silver Shirts, they appeared, all these people appeared in Madison Square Garden.

Speaker 73 They had all kinds of rallies.

Speaker 43 It was very explicit, but nothing like, it wasn't the government doing this.

Speaker 21 Now he's also focusing his attention on DC's landscaping, saying we need to redo the grass with the finest grasses.

Speaker 25 I agree with that. I'm going to agree.
We have shitty grass.

Speaker 26 I think America can actually come together around the idea of fine grass.

Speaker 49 Fine grass, yeah.

Speaker 67 So talk to me a little bit about what's happening here because this is explicit.

Speaker 67 In the time you were writing about it, the government itself wasn't doing things like that, or was in a way in certain areas, like concentration camps and things like that for the Japanese.

Speaker 26 Yeah, I mean, fascist groups in the United States before World War II wanted an authoritarian takeover of our country, in which there would not be in the American system of government anymore.

Speaker 26 There would be a strongman

Speaker 20 who would

Speaker 26 run things at his own whim,

Speaker 26 with autocratic capabilities, and would

Speaker 26 serve the white Gentile population above all else and kick everybody else out of the country.

Speaker 26 That's what fascist groups before World War II wanted in this country, which is why they wanted us to not only,

Speaker 26 to either not fight the Nazis or to fight with the Nazis rather than to go over there and fight them.

Speaker 88 And they didn't like democracy explicitly.

Speaker 35 They talked about it, Lawrence.

Speaker 26 They thought democracy was decadent and it was a way for liberals and women.

Speaker 26 Women and, well, minorities of any kind to have any say. Like they don't, these are folks who don't want, don't believe in sharing power with people different than them.

Speaker 26 They think that they should be able to have a say on their own terms of what happens, not only in government, but in everything. And so now in our...

Speaker 26 generation, in our time, we have an elected authoritarian leader who doesn't just want to control the executive branch.

Speaker 26 He wants to control, you know, universities, their curriculum and their admissions and their, you know, student discipline policies. And he wants to decide what economists work at what banks.

Speaker 26 And he wants to control

Speaker 26 businesses. He wants to control the Smithsonian.
He wants to control high school sports. He wants to control the legal profession.
He wants to control what's on television and what's in the news.

Speaker 26 And guess what?

Speaker 26 Like

Speaker 26 this is what they were after.

Speaker 26 And this is a, this is a president who does not see bounds on the presidency set by democratic processes, but he also doesn't see bounds on the presidency set by what counts as government.

Speaker 26 He wants to autocratically rule the country

Speaker 26 in every aspect of the country, both to shut down the possibility of criticizing or opposing him, but also because he believes that he should run everything.

Speaker 26 He should be handing out the Kennedy Senator honors and he should be administering the police force of Washington, D.C.

Speaker 26 And he should should be choosing the CEO of Intel, and he should be setting the recipe for Coke. And that's what they were after.

Speaker 23 And that's what we have.

Speaker 24 Are you more alarmed by any part of it, or is it part of the same idea?

Speaker 44 And for people who don't know, the White House plans to review the Smithsonian Museum expedition's materials and operations for America's 250th anniversary next year.

Speaker 24 The administration sent a letter to Smithsonian this week explaining how the museum content is in line with Trump's restoring truth and sanity to American history executive order.

Speaker 45 And recently the National Museum of American History removed a placard that mentioned Trump's two impeachments, which has since been replaced.

Speaker 56 Is there one thing, like this is like a cornucopia of stuff for you to focus on.

Speaker 69 What do you look at?

Speaker 43 What do you think is the thing that troubles you the most?

Speaker 71 Or is it in whole?

Speaker 27 Is it the takeover of the city or the attempted takeover of the city?

Speaker 69 Or is it the museum?

Speaker 44 I assume it's all of it, but is there something you find most disturbing?

Speaker 26 Well, it's all of a piece in the sense that I

Speaker 26 guess I have two answers to this question. One is that what Trump is doing is so textbook.
Like, there's not anything that's very surprising about what he's doing.

Speaker 26 And we now know who he is and what his intentions are. It's not, there isn't going to be a big reveal.
Oh, he has authoritarian inclinations for our country or intentions. Like, we now know who he is.

Speaker 26 He is, he is Victor Orban, he is Vladimir Putin, he is Duterte, he is Berlusconi. You know,

Speaker 26 pick your poison. They all do the same thing, right? We're only lucky that Trump isn't taking his shirt off in photos.

Speaker 26 But so on that, that, to me,

Speaker 26 sorry, I just put that image right in your head, didn't I?

Speaker 37 You did.

Speaker 36 I just totally saw his chest.

Speaker 25 Sad. Anyway.

Speaker 26 Swayzy.

Speaker 37 He's not Swayze.

Speaker 44 I take this shit from Twayzey, but not from this guy.

Speaker 26 But because he's predictable, because he is playing to type it, it is A-type, and it's a very noble thing i feel like there's only so much value in focusing on every new thing he does um because it's predictable what he's going to do we know what this is it makes me more interested in the question of the the country's durability um and how we're responding and the strength of our institutions in standing up to it so that's that's one thing there but the thing i'm most worried about is the is the military stuff the military the meaning the the takeover of the city or well i mean he's using the military to project force inward inward, you know, domestically, everywhere.

Speaker 26 They've, you know, immigration enforcement doesn't just look militarized. They're integrating with the military.

Speaker 26 They're building these immigrant prison camps with no due process, and a prison with no due process is a camp.

Speaker 26 They're building them on military. bases.
They've got hundreds of miles of territory in Arizona and New Mexico, in Texas, they're calling military zones, where they're giving U.S.

Speaker 26 active duty troops the authority to stop and search and arrest people on U.S. soil.
He threw himself a military parade for his own birthday.

Speaker 26 They're using military flights, incredibly expensive military flights inexplicably for deportation flights.

Speaker 26 We've just found out that they've got a, they're building, they're considering building a new rapid reaction force where they've got 600 troops on one hour standby, 24 hours a day, to go deploy into American cities.

Speaker 26 They put the National Guard and the U.S. Marines in LA, and now they've got the National Guard and he's threatening active duty troops in D.C.
I mean, he is reimagining the use of the U.S.

Speaker 26 military as his own Praetorian Guard facing his critics and facing his citizens and normalizing.

Speaker 26 He's already, in this many months, normalized the presence of American troops in American cities with us at the end of their guns.

Speaker 88 Right.

Speaker 72 And when I think of any country I go to where there's troops on the streets, I'm always like, I'd like to get out of this country, right?

Speaker 88 That's the, like, it makes you feel, I just interviewed Jason Stanley, who you know from Yale.

Speaker 38 He left this country.

Speaker 45 He's written about propaganda and fascism.

Speaker 61 I'm sure you know him well.

Speaker 45 And one of the things he said is he's, he's sort of a kind of a cloddish playbook of a fascist.

Speaker 23 And I was like, well, does it matter if he's clownish and cartoonish, if he's effective in some way?

Speaker 56 Do you find all this effective?

Speaker 25 Well, he's doing it, right?

Speaker 26 Yeah. I mean, the thing that makes him effective is not any genius on his part or even any ambition or speed on his part.
The thing that makes him effective is the

Speaker 26 cowardice and collapse of American institutions that should be saying no to him.

Speaker 26 That's the problem.

Speaker 58 Do you see any heroes emerging?

Speaker 26 Yes. The heroes that are emerging are emerging from not the leadership class, but the people.

Speaker 26 I mean, the fact that there's protests against Trump on every day of the week in every state in the country is important to me.

Speaker 61 And I think I've featured that on your show quite a bit, which is.

Speaker 26 Yeah. And I'm doing that not

Speaker 26 because

Speaker 26 I think

Speaker 26 that's what everybody's talking about. And I want to get in on that conversation.

Speaker 26 I recognize that it's not getting a ton of attention, but I do think that shows you that the people in this country, you look at the opinion polls and you look at the ongoing protests, especially the small protests in red states and stuff against him, and you realize that nobody's into this.

Speaker 44 Poor individuals, when someone's taking someone away, they start filming.

Speaker 42 I find those really powerful.

Speaker 24 Like some lady coming out of yoga, like suddenly saying, what the fuck are you doing to this man?

Speaker 26 Exactly. Which is interesting.
And that instinct in the American people is really healthy and is unafraid and is uncowed and is repulsed by this.

Speaker 26 And that's why Trump has such terrible approval ratings. He's upside down, even with men, even with, you know,

Speaker 26 with the number, the way he's dropped with young people, it's a stunning drop. And that, to me, is very important.
The crisis that we've got in our country is a crisis of elite cowardice.

Speaker 26 The law firms, the universities, the politicians,

Speaker 26 and the business leaders in particular.

Speaker 59 Were they ever courageous, Rachel?

Speaker 54 I mean, I would make the argument they weren't.

Speaker 44 You know, they're saying that universities were woke.

Speaker 34 I'm like, have you met a university president before this all happened?

Speaker 33 They hated those professors.

Speaker 74 They hated law firms, hated those, you know, pro bono people on their staff.

Speaker 45 And I don't know.

Speaker 30 I just never thought they were particularly courageous.

Speaker 26 But they're big, prestigious

Speaker 26 institutions with a lot of capital and a lot of connections and a lot of money and a lot of people who have a lot of room to maneuver without ever putting themselves in real danger.

Speaker 26 And those are the people that are failing us.

Speaker 26 And I actually think that if we're going to like kind of protest and try to put steel in the spines of people and try to appeal to conscience, which is what nonviolent direct action does, some of that protest should be probably usefully, strategically directed at the institutions that are failing, not just at Trump.

Speaker 72 Well, one of the things Jason was saying is one of the things the civil rights things work is those people became empathetic given the visuals of civil rights, right?

Speaker 38 The hoses and everything else.

Speaker 34 And you've got to, he was wondering if the immigration raids will make everyone else who is comfortable angry enough or empathetic really enough in a lot of ways, if you think about it.

Speaker 26 Yeah, but you need to see not just the rage. You need to see people standing up against them.

Speaker 26 So what you remembered about that woman in the yoga clothes in the parking lot there yelling at those guys was not just what was happening to those guys that was, that had,

Speaker 26 that had inspired her to action. It was seeing her be courageous and outraged and unafraid that stuck with you.
Right.

Speaker 25 Even the sandwich guy, all joking aside, I was, when he did that, I'm like, oh, dear.

Speaker 73 And then I thought, well, good for him.

Speaker 43 Like, you know, and I was talking about it with my, my wife was saying, what should I do now?

Speaker 56 Like, should I go throw a sandwich?

Speaker 79 Should I, you know, get her myself, you know, a tate.

Speaker 53 They're in front of tate.

Speaker 35 That's the best part.

Speaker 38 Like, they're just like, like, grab as their sandwich and throw it at them.

Speaker 58 But what do you, what is the action you take?

Speaker 32 I think is a lot of people are trying to figure out of those people who become empathetic to what's happening.

Speaker 26 I mean, I don't, I don't think the sandwiches deserve this. I mean, I think sandwiches deserve to be treated with respect.

Speaker 26 And that, you know, like, I'm sure that guy, that was like probably a meatball sub, like with exactly the right kind of cheese and just the right, I mean, he probably had that scooped out, you know, which took a lot of time.

Speaker 25 It's often weak lately.

Speaker 25 I'm sorry, you shouldn't attack police.

Speaker 46 Let me just say that.

Speaker 25 No, no, no.

Speaker 44 So it does not encourage attacking police.

Speaker 67 But if you insist, a sandwich is probably the best.

Speaker 26 No, no throwing anything at anybody.

Speaker 81 Rachel and I do not recommend throwing sandwiches, though.

Speaker 26 if only for the sake of the sandwich only for the sake of the sandwich but that it's like let me give a bite or you i mean we've we've got one of the things that's different between now and what um americans were facing in the in the 30s and 40s is that we have the example of the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s to show the the the apogee the moral apogee of what it means to take incredibly difficult action against incredibly violent entrenched opponents, and to win on the strength of your moral case.

Speaker 26 And that is, that's a moral cornerstone of our country. And we would be remiss to not learn from that in this moment.
I mean, there's not going to be a civil war in this country.

Speaker 26 There's not going to be a violent confrontation. There's, I mean,

Speaker 26 all Trump wants is for somebody to, you know, throw another sandwich or do something that they can consider to be a crime and use as a provocation.

Speaker 26 Nonviolent, direct action gets the goods always. And it's our American inheritance.
And

Speaker 26 it's the thing that will ultimately push them back.

Speaker 25 Ultimately,

Speaker 79 and also time.

Speaker 23 Let's go on a quick break. We come back.

Speaker 81 Trump's warning to Putin ahead of their Alaska getaway.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odo.

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Speaker 14 Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?

Speaker 16 Try Odo for free at odo.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odo.

Speaker 4 Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

Speaker 89 One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Speaker 13 Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

Speaker 91 This is where ODU comes in.

Speaker 11 It's the only business software you'll ever need. ODU is an all-in-one fully integrated platform that handles everything.

Speaker 9 That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

Speaker 17 No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier.

Speaker 6 And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 93 It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up.

Speaker 14 Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

Speaker 99 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business.

Speaker 14 Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?

Speaker 16 Try Odoo for free at odo.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odoo.

Speaker 4 Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

Speaker 89 One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Speaker 13 Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

Speaker 91 This is where Odoo comes in.

Speaker 11 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 7 ODU is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything.

Speaker 9 That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

Speaker 17 No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier.

Speaker 96 And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 93 It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up.

Speaker 14 Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

Speaker 99 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters: running your business.

Speaker 14 Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?

Speaker 8 Try Odoo for free at odo.com.

Speaker 16 That's odoo.com.

Speaker 33 Rachel, we're back.

Speaker 27 President Trump and Vladimir Putin are about to meet in Alaska, and Trump is warning that Russia will face, quote, very severe consequences if Putin doesn't agree to stop the war in Ukraine.

Speaker 34 The White House downplayed expectations for the summit earlier this week, describing it as a listening exercise.

Speaker 42 He's talking about feeling people, feeling people out, which was relatively creepy in the efforts.

Speaker 25 Feeling people up, out, up, feeling out, feeling out.

Speaker 26 Feeling out, feeling, feeling out.

Speaker 61 You might feel them up.

Speaker 36 That's fantastic.

Speaker 53 Trump also, you've already gotten like lots of pictures in my head, and I don't appreciate it.

Speaker 28 Trump also spoke with European leaders and Ukraine's president Zelensky ahead of the summit.

Speaker 43 European leaders asked Trump not to strike a unilateral peace deal, so gave him some key points of negotiation.

Speaker 34 Zelensky said he warned Trump that Putin was bluffing on pursuing peace, obviously.

Speaker 43 He's called this meeting Putin's personal victory.

Speaker 25 What are you looking for?

Speaker 77 I just had David Remick on the last episode, and he said,

Speaker 54 you know, as long as he doesn't fuck up or give anything away right away, it'll be a victory.

Speaker 32 Like if he has a second meeting, if there's a, and he's been talking that way recently.

Speaker 26 I mean,

Speaker 26 this is all just so embarrassing. You know what I mean? I mean,

Speaker 26 Jimmy Fallon had that very good line where he was like, oh, listening and exercise, two of Trump's favorite things.

Speaker 26 He is funny. Do you remember the

Speaker 26 red line? Obama and the red line with Syria.

Speaker 25 So this was like 2012, I think it was.

Speaker 26 Obama gave a speech where he described Bashar al-Assad potentially using chemical weapons as a red line, that that's how the United States would treat it. And then in 2013, Assad absolutely did that.

Speaker 26 And

Speaker 26 Obama responded by saying, all right, I'm going to Congress to get authorization for the use of military force against Syria.

Speaker 26 And Congress debated it a little bit, and then it kind of looked like it wasn't going to pass, and then it fell, and then they didn't do it.

Speaker 26 They did not pass the authorization for the use of military force. That went down in political commentary, common wisdom, as like, Obama was such a wuss.
He blew it on that red line thing.

Speaker 26 That was such an embarrassment. First of all, Obama didn't do anything wrong there.

Speaker 26 He went to Congress for an authorization for the use of military force, which is how it works in our system. And it was Congress that blew it.
But that.

Speaker 26 That supposed failure, which wasn't a failure at all by Obama, 12, 13 years later, people still talk about that as like a nay-dear, a terrible thing about the Obama administration.

Speaker 26 Well, meanwhile, here's Trump. Wasn't it going to be like if by Friday the war wasn't over,

Speaker 26 it was going to be the end of days for Putin, and there was going to be sanctions, ooh, and there was going to be tariffs. Oh, that's the worst thing in the world.

Speaker 26 It was going to be all of this terrible stuff. And instead, what does Putin get? Putin gets a trip to Alaska, go visit the former

Speaker 26 Russian Empire and a one-on-one meeting.

Speaker 26 trump will fly as far as you're flying to come have a one-on-one man-to-man summit with you the first time that you've been in this country except for the un since 2007 and we get to talk about the war in ukraine without ukraine here i mean that's i mean talk about Talk about a red line moment.

Speaker 26 I mean, I think it's what I'm just worried that we don't end up in the post-press conference with Trump in his lap or like

Speaker 26 delicately like touching his hair, you know, or like cupping his face, spooning him.

Speaker 25 What would you consider a success?

Speaker 28 Is there no success here?

Speaker 21 It's already given away.

Speaker 26 The success here would be if the U.S. government

Speaker 26 arrived at this summit, which has been put together on, what, four days' notice? A bilateral summit between the American and Russian president.

Speaker 26 If we arrived at this meeting and then somebody opened a door from a supply closet and Vladimir Zelensky walked out and sat down and Trump said, you guys talk, I'll be right outside this door.

Speaker 26 That would be a victory, right? That, but as it-I'm giving the Nobel Peace Prize for that.

Speaker 48 Well, I don't know that they allow us to vote.

Speaker 26 But I, I mean, Trump is the right word here is lick spittle.

Speaker 26 He is so afraid of Vladimir Putin. He is so afraid of him.
He will do absolutely anything. I mean, we've got a 35% tariff on Canada, and Russia has what percent tariff? Right.

Speaker 26 Russia is

Speaker 26 mysteriously missing from the whole tariffs on even uninhabited islands that only have penguins, but not Russia.

Speaker 26 And

Speaker 26 the way the media responds to Trump as if his word is his bond, right? Oh, Trump is explaining that he now has a new feeling about Putin and he's very upset with Putin. Oh, he's very disappointed.

Speaker 26 He's really changed his tune. I think he's soured on Putin.
Really? Watch what he does, not what he says. He's literally in the man's pants.
Right, right. And

Speaker 26 there's no distance here.

Speaker 72 There's no distance between them.

Speaker 44 So you think just the fact that he's flying there is just, it's already given away.

Speaker 26 This is something that no American president has done in 18 years. In many countries in the world, if Vladimir Putin stepped foot on their soil, he'd be arrested and dragged off to The Hague.

Speaker 26 This is an abject humiliation for the United States of America and for the U.S. presidency that we will be reading about for 75 years.
So what is the best thing that could come out of this?

Speaker 25 A story of the story of Zelensky

Speaker 25 jumping out of the supply closet? Right.

Speaker 26 What did the janitor say when he jumped out of the supply closet?

Speaker 25 What?

Speaker 25 Supplies!

Speaker 25 Sorry. Oh, my God.

Speaker 25 What is that?

Speaker 36 That's not even a dad.

Speaker 25 That's a dad joke.

Speaker 26 That's a bad dad joke. It's like a stepdad joke.

Speaker 25 Anything good?

Speaker 47 Anything. No, no, I don't.

Speaker 26 No, I don't. I mean, what the Ukrainians say is nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.

Speaker 26 And so if this is being negotiated, this is like, if you're like getting a divorce or something and the person from whom you're getting a divorce is going through the court proceedings without you.

Speaker 26 Like, how do you, how do you think it's going to, how do you think your side of the divorce is, you know, you think you're going to get your alimony?

Speaker 26 You think you're going to get your custody agreement? No, like this is this, there's nothing, there's nothing good about this.

Speaker 25 I will also say that. Trump

Speaker 26 always,

Speaker 26 always, after he talks to Putin, although now he admits he he talks to Putin without telling anybody that he's doing so, every time we know he talks to Putin, he comes out after those discussions and starts parroting a new Russian line.

Speaker 22 Just like we're going to plow the boys under, right?

Speaker 21 Where it went from goeblels to senators, U.S.

Speaker 61 senators.

Speaker 26 Yeah, things like that.

Speaker 26 He repeats any, he's absolutely, he will just parrot whatever Putin tells him to say, which he has done. I mean, back to Helsinki, back to the very beginning.

Speaker 26 And he also adopts whatever position was last presented to him. And so in this case, he'll adopt whatever.

Speaker 25 Whatever Putin says.

Speaker 28 Have you ever thought of calling him on the phone, Rachel, yourself?

Speaker 23 There is a cell phone that he's.

Speaker 61 Yeah.

Speaker 26 I did speak to him on the phone once during the 2016 campaign, which was funny. I was trying to get an interview with him.
This is early in the primary process. And

Speaker 26 they had gone through this whole big like swearing me to secrecy thing that in order to get the interview, I needed to call him personally. And even the fact of the call had to be off the record.

Speaker 26 And they made us like swear there was no listening, there was no recording device and then like going through all this rigmarole.

Speaker 26 And so then I have, I call Rona, like I get, I have the appointed time, I get on the phone with him, I ask him to do the interview.

Speaker 26 And at the end of my conversation with him, he goes, well, you can air this.

Speaker 25 This was nice. I was like, first of all,

Speaker 25 this is off the record.

Speaker 25 I didn't tape it.

Speaker 26 I can tell you now. I agreed to it being off the record, but because he said that, I can now tell you, Karis Wisher today, that he said it was, it was now, I was allowed to air it.

Speaker 26 And I was like, my dude, like, do you, are you aware when you are in the media versus when you are having a no, he doesn't care.

Speaker 42 If it goes well, he wants it out there, right? If it goes, you know, if it's a very good call and stuff like that.

Speaker 34 So you're not expecting anything here.

Speaker 54 You just, it's going to be a roll.

Speaker 69 It's already a rollover.

Speaker 26 No, this is a, this is a bad thing. This, the meeting itself is a bad thing.

Speaker 26 Vladimir Putin being invited to the United States of America to meet one-on-one with the American president is all I need to know. And that's a bad thing.

Speaker 26 There's nothing substantively that's going to come out of this meeting except for Trump getting more of his instructions, right?

Speaker 20 I think he's going to have an idea.

Speaker 79 I'm telling you. We're going to lose Alaska.

Speaker 78 We're going to lose Alaska.

Speaker 79 They're going to trade Sarah Palin and

Speaker 38 you know, you can see Russia from her.

Speaker 67 porch.

Speaker 66 Anyway, let's bring that one back.

Speaker 88 I'm going to move on to something totally different.

Speaker 34 The U.S.

Speaker 44 Supreme Court has officially been asked to overturn the 2015 decision that granted equal marriage rights to same-sex couples.

Speaker 21 If you remember, Kim Davis, Heinus Kim Davis is what I call her, the former Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for six days in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to a gay couple.

Speaker 33 She's filed an appeal in July for the compensation she was ordered to pay that couple.

Speaker 42 Davis is taking her case to the court on the grounds that

Speaker 86 Obergefell v.

Speaker 34 Hodges, which established marriage equality, was wrongly decided and infringes on her First Amendment rights.

Speaker 33 Davis has been unsuccessfully appealing the order for years to lower courts.

Speaker 58 She is the only one standing to do this, from what I understand.

Speaker 50 I did

Speaker 21 project an attack on marriage equality back in January.

Speaker 40 Let's listen to a clip.

Speaker 31 And that's all they're doing is a naked grab for overturning the gay marriage Supreme Court decision, like they overturned Roe v.

Speaker 84 Wade.

Speaker 83 And it's very vulnerable.

Speaker 86 Two court justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, said it should be reconsidered.

Speaker 27 So we'll see.

Speaker 83 It's theater.

Speaker 51 It's theater, but they're going to try to do this.

Speaker 31 They're trying to get a case up there that will make it happen.

Speaker 25 Are you concerned about this at all?

Speaker 26 Well, on this, I'm sort of of two,

Speaker 26 I'm of two minds about the, about the decision. I feel like I agree with your prediction from January that they want to overturn.

Speaker 26 At least there are parts of the court that want to overturn it. I mean, remember, Obergefell was 5-4

Speaker 26 decision. And now, yeah, and now the court is 6-3 in the direction that had been in the minority.

Speaker 26 And so I think they want to.

Speaker 26 But I also feel like the sort of legal common wisdom on this case, as I understand it, I'm not a lawyer, but the legal common wisdom is that this is not the case, that while Kim Davis is appealing to the Supreme Court her illegal actions in denying a marriage license because she says God told her to,

Speaker 26 she is, in appealing that part of her case, she is also asking the court to overturn Obergefell. And this doesn't just doesn't seem like legally the right vehicle.
to do that.

Speaker 26 The court also doesn't have to take up any of this. And even if they did take up the Kim Davis part of it, they don't have to address the Obergefell request in it at all.
So I think, yes, the

Speaker 26 anti-gay movement in this country senses it's got the wind in its sails. They've got a newly reactionary Republican Party on these issues that's getting really demagogic on these issues.

Speaker 26 And they think that they've got victories ahead. I just don't think this is the case by which they're going to do it.

Speaker 26 That said, I mean, they've been doing all sorts of stuff that isn't warranted or necessitated by the material that's being put before them. That's the whole shadow docket idea.

Speaker 26 So, this is a pretty radical court. And

Speaker 26 I don't really want to stand here on plant two feet and say it's not going to happen, but

Speaker 26 it would be a weird way for them to do it if they were going to do it.

Speaker 48 Weird way for them to do it.

Speaker 39 Well, I think they, I mean, they go through trans people and then to gay.

Speaker 33 Like, ultimately, marriage really chapped their ass.

Speaker 63 They really did.

Speaker 59 A lot of these people.

Speaker 57 And I think that was

Speaker 26 more than two-thirds of the country

Speaker 26 is in favor of same-sex marriage, which is a reversal from from what it was when they decided it.

Speaker 69 Right.

Speaker 30 But still, look at abortion, gun control, all that stuff has the 80-20 rule on so much stuff.

Speaker 87 There's so much stuff that is an 80-20.

Speaker 42 People are for it, and it doesn't matter.

Speaker 26 That's part of the reason they don't like democracy is because they actually don't have the people with them on this stuff on which they're making some of the worst

Speaker 26 the largest advances, at least.

Speaker 85 Yeah, I'm not getting gay married again.

Speaker 61 That's all I have to say.

Speaker 66 Anyway,

Speaker 53 good luck taking away my marriage.

Speaker 87 Honestly, it's so ridiculous.

Speaker 72 It's such a waste of time.

Speaker 51 All right, Rachel, let's go on a quick break.

Speaker 31 When we come back, we'll talk about what the women of the right are up to.

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Speaker 34 rachel we're back with a quick update of the women on the right let's start with katie miller wife of stephen miller former employee of elon musk she launched her own podcast the katie miller podcast and kicking it off with a jd vance interview that charmer let's listen to some of the hard-hitting journalism happening over there oh god if you could only eat one condiment for the rest of your life what would it be?

Speaker 103 One condiment? Does barbecue sauce count?

Speaker 25 Yeah. Okay, barbecue sauce.

Speaker 103 Not mayonnaise?

Speaker 103 No.

Speaker 104 No, mayonnaise is like in low doses is good, but it's kind of like I had a buddy who used to eat French fries with mayonnaise.

Speaker 25 I thought that was disgusting.

Speaker 42 It's the only thing my husband eats.

Speaker 103 With french fries or like period? Period. Okay.
Wow. I didn't realize.

Speaker 25 He's only a mayonnaise guy. Okay.

Speaker 104 I learned something about Steven I didn't know. Yeah.

Speaker 103 It's whatever.

Speaker 25 God. Oh, Kara.

Speaker 26 Why did you put that in my head?

Speaker 25 Because you put naked Donald Trump in my head. Oh, my God.

Speaker 26 I don't want to think about mayonnaise at all. And I don't want to think about Stephen Miller at all.
Now Stephen Miller and Mayonnaise are the same when they're on.

Speaker 25 Oh, my God.

Speaker 36 What's your favorite concern?

Speaker 26 Whatever the opposite of this moment is, is my favorite thing.

Speaker 23 Oh, my God.

Speaker 25 Is she going to steal our thunder?

Speaker 26 Good God.

Speaker 26 So

Speaker 26 why does Katie Miller have a podcast?

Speaker 26 There you go.

Speaker 25 That's the question. I think that's

Speaker 26 a miracle what was katie miller doing for elon musk i don't i don't know

Speaker 32 wasn't she working she was she was working from pr presumably there were other comments about their relationship but um i don't i allegedly was she was she working for tesla or she was working for doge him personally no she worked for doge remember she was the doge lady and then when he was knocked out um she went with him and that was the big like what's happened here you know and because obviously miller is the most significant player in that administration at this point and then she's left she stopped doing stuff for him she had to get out because she's she knows where her mayonnaise is buttered

Speaker 25 i'm gonna sue i'm gonna sue i've been irreparably damaged

Speaker 29 i want a temporary restraining order from any more mayonnaise talk out of you anyway she's having she has a podcast everyone has a podcast there's all these ladies of the right that are now pushing there's this whole movement of ladies of the right you know she's a she's like, we need to be heard.

Speaker 25 I'm like, you need not to be heard.

Speaker 57 You've been heard enough.

Speaker 25 I love that.

Speaker 26 Just the idea of ladies of the right is also great because the whole Lord of the Rings thing was so weird, but I think that if we could change the acronym so it was ladies of the right

Speaker 25 rather than Lord of the Rings and

Speaker 20 name all our companies on that, you know?

Speaker 23 They just, they're getting into podcasting and some are more successful.

Speaker 56 Like I said, Megan Kelly is very popular.

Speaker 57 But there's a whole, there's a whole movement of these people.

Speaker 44 They feel like, oh, I got a microphone.

Speaker 85 I can say whatever I want.

Speaker 88 Like, I just fit in a movement.

Speaker 26 it's not specific to them though i feel like everybody like every every every homeowners association and pta has a podcast now too yeah it's just it's the way that people are um it's the it's the blog it's remember when everybody had a blog yeah it's the blog of today that everybody has well she'll get she'll she's sort of a house organ for these people so they can come on and say adorable things and it'll get so to speak eaten up like mayonnaise did you listen to more of the podcast than the mayonnaise clip i did does she have an ⁇ does she have a lot of fun?

Speaker 69 No, it was literally that was the highlight of it. The mayonnaise was the highlight.

Speaker 26 It was sort of like, so what do you do for fun?

Speaker 37 Like it was, it was, it was painful.

Speaker 26 Do you remember in the first term, first Trump term, when he appointed

Speaker 26 Jared to a job at the White House? And then it was like, Jared's in charge of Middle East peace. Jared's in charge of, like, Jared's in charge of everything.
Jared's in charge of COVID.

Speaker 26 He's in charge.

Speaker 26 And as he was accruing all of these jobs and more jobs and more jobs and more jobs, Jared Kushner was starting to really loom as maybe this is the person who's actually kind of running the federal government.

Speaker 26 Jared Kushner, oh, and like lots of things are being ascribed to him and dark things being ascribed to him. And he's really seen as the power behind the throne, especially post-Bannon and everything.

Speaker 26 And then it occurred to sort of the collective mindset at some point that like nobody had ever actually heard from Jared.

Speaker 26 And then they rolled him out and they had him do a White House press briefing, a White House press conference statement at some point. And everybody's thinking like, Jared Kushner is the man.

Speaker 26 Jared Kushner is the power. He's the Sith Lord here.
And he walks up to the microphone and he says, Hello, everybody.

Speaker 25 It's like, open his mouth and it was like, oh, no.

Speaker 25 All illusions have gone.

Speaker 26 There's something about his presentation, in particular, his voice, that was like, oh, yeah, I don't have to worry about this guy.

Speaker 26 I felt the same way about Ron DeSantis and his much-heralded presidential campaign. It was real on paper.
It looks fantastic. And then he walks up to the microphone.

Speaker 25 Yeah.

Speaker 56 Yeah. Looks and sound.

Speaker 26 well do remember uh what's his name howard dean had the same problem right like there is an element of looks and presentation that matters to people yeah although with howard dean i think that was a little bit of a it was the scream right that it was the scream and it was just like a weird pickup it was a weird pickup thing but he didn't otherwise speak like a weird no i think that he got he got mumdanied he got yes democrats were scared of him because

Speaker 26 he's doing pretty well getting yeah well howard dean was for a while too but democrats got all scared because he actually had class analysis right that's true that's a fair point So you're not worried about Katie Miller taking a show from you, right?

Speaker 25 Oh, no.

Speaker 48 Yeah.

Speaker 44 You still haven't answered the condiment issue.

Speaker 26 The weird thing about me and condiments is that I put mustard on my eggs.

Speaker 36 Oh, that's okay.

Speaker 26 I like things with vinegar in them, and mustard has vinegar in it. And so when I get like a bacon, egg, and cheese,

Speaker 26 I put mustard and hot sauce on it.

Speaker 25 That's acceptable.

Speaker 87 And by the way, many people in Belgium eat mayonnaise with, many people in Europe eat mayonnaise with fries.

Speaker 26 There aren't that many people in Belgium, though.

Speaker 25 Well, let's be straight about.

Speaker 22 Enjoy their mayonnaise.

Speaker 65 And we're not even going to get into Aioli.

Speaker 59 All right.

Speaker 58 Some more ladies of the right.

Speaker 71 Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene are beefing.

Speaker 23 And the last week, Laura Loomer claimed that Trump White House can't stand Marjorie Taylor Green in a deposition lawsuit against Bill Maher.

Speaker 69 By the way, please go read that whole deposition.

Speaker 24 It's one wacky thing after the next.

Speaker 71 Marjorie Taylor Green suggested Laura Loomer was bankrolled by Israeli intelligence, and Loomer is called MTG a rabbit dog and a lying fake Christian whore.

Speaker 69 I don't think we could do any better better from that.

Speaker 67 What is happening?

Speaker 24 I think a bigger question is on the right, what happens post-Trump?

Speaker 33 Because there will be eventually a post-Trump unless they weakened Bernie's this guy.

Speaker 62 What happens? Because there seems to be so many fishers in this gang of like

Speaker 26 one of the things, you know, I've done a lot of work in the past few years on like the far right and the far right in American modern history and what they've, what they've done and who they are and how they network with mainstream and elected right-wingers and stuff.

Speaker 42 And they're good at it.

Speaker 35 Let's just be clear.

Speaker 26 Yeah. And it's always been much more seamless between the far right and the center right than it is between the far left and the mainstream left.

Speaker 26 But one of the things that has limited the ascendance and the power and the sustainability of the very far right in the past is that they're all crooks and mean girls and they steal from each other and get in fist fights and set each other's houses on fire and sleep with each other's wives and husbands and there's so much infighting that they can't keep it together for more than a single generation ever.

Speaker 26 And that's true in everything from the American Nazi Party where we have George Lincoln Rockwell assassinated by one of his own people to the Liberty Lobby, which was a Holocaust denial

Speaker 26 neo-Nazi organization that was very integrated with the elected right in the Reagan era, where they descended into incredible like fist fights and smashing each other over the head with iron bars.

Speaker 26 Like there's all this and there's all this stuff. And it always goes that way.
And right now,

Speaker 26 we do have, with an authoritarian in the White House, we do have greater and more scary, more powerful integration between the very far right and the right than we've ever had before.

Speaker 26 But it doesn't expunge that dynamic, which I think always exists on the far right, which is your

Speaker 26 Israeli intelligence. No, you're Israeli intelligence.

Speaker 47 And you're a whore and you're a

Speaker 32 buying fake Christian whore.

Speaker 77 That's the name of my band, but go ahead.

Speaker 24 Actually, the name of my band is Pregnant Women Smoking, but go ahead.

Speaker 26 I would buy merch from either.

Speaker 25 Yeah.

Speaker 71 So you feel like a crackup is inevitable in that regard, without the organizing glue of Donald Trump.

Speaker 26 I just feel like the constant cracking up. Like, I feel like constant warring and cracking up and,

Speaker 26 you know, they're polygraphing each other in the defense secretary's office right like and they're all the same people they're all on the same side and you know and and bannon is out there denouncing you know ex you know bannon and musk are they're gonna kill each other and

Speaker 26 and these these guys are fractious by nature because they're conspiratorial and um purist and they're not awesome when it comes to rational argument and compromise.

Speaker 26 And so they're always denouncing and beating one another to death. And I don't think that will change.
And I think that's to all of our benefit. Right.
And I hope they never change.

Speaker 29 Right. Cause they will continue to do so.

Speaker 24 Yeah, you're going to see more of that no matter how I agree with you.

Speaker 35 I'm always like, the minute Trump leaves the picture, it degenerates really rather quickly.

Speaker 26 The conspiratorial right is inherently fractious. And that's part of why they're a bad bet for governance

Speaker 26 because they're constantly schisming and they're not.

Speaker 54 Well, they're bomb throwers by nature, right?

Speaker 86 And they're shitsterers and breakers of things.

Speaker 48 They're sort of like toddlers, almost almost like the tech bros.

Speaker 34 But you know what I call tech bros now?

Speaker 68 Technically broken.

Speaker 39 I keep repeating that stuff.

Speaker 24 It catches on. You can use it anytime, Rachel.

Speaker 76 Please

Speaker 63 popularize it, if you will.

Speaker 61 Technically broken.

Speaker 22 All right, Rachel, one more quick break and we will be back for our last seminar on predictions.

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Speaker 27 Okay, Rachel, let's hear a prediction.

Speaker 81 I can make one too, but I would like you to.

Speaker 26 Do you want? You go first.

Speaker 88 Well, I'm living for two things.

Speaker 78 I think Gavin Newsom's done very well with his tweeting of Trump, fake, you He's mimicking Trump, which is really great.

Speaker 24 But I'm really enjoying the AI boys fighting. Elon Musk and Sam Altman are going at it again.

Speaker 31 Musk alleged that Apple engaged in antitrust violations, making it impossible for AI companies other than OpenAI to reach the top of the app store.

Speaker 32 Musk says XAI will take immediate legal action.

Speaker 31 Altman responded to a claim saying, this is a remarkable claim, given what I have heard allege that Elon does to manipulate X to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn't like.

Speaker 38 And Musk responded saying, you know, you had 3 million responses to this and I have many more followers and I didn't have nearly as many.

Speaker 43 And Sam Altman delivered the fantastic and only gay people can do this slap, which was skill issues.

Speaker 36 I predict this war is going to get worse because I think that Elon will do anything.

Speaker 50 There is a weird anger that he has towards Sam Altman, who he used to be a line, not a line with, they did open eye together, and he will not rest until he is somehow sullied.

Speaker 34 You can have your opinions about Sam Altman all you want or any of these tech people, but this is going to get, I think, worse

Speaker 27 as Grock continues to crater, a founder just left.

Speaker 73 And so Elon's going to sort of focus his attention away from Trump, although I do think he did start the Epstein thing, and continue to like go at anything that has to do with open AI and try to kill it.

Speaker 26 Does Musk have stick-to-itiveness problems, though? Does he?

Speaker 37 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 72 Absolutely.

Speaker 54 He is, he is like a, like, you know, like, what's a bird that a hummingbird?

Speaker 26 He just flits.

Speaker 36 He flits, he flots.

Speaker 23 There's a song. What is that?

Speaker 21 Oh, it's in from Sound of Music.

Speaker 36 It's a sound of music song.

Speaker 42 It goes back to Julie Andrews, the villainess.

Speaker 25 I was just going to say.

Speaker 26 We're back to Julie Andrews.

Speaker 81 No, the villainess is my favorite character of all time, the Baroness.

Speaker 25 The Baroness.

Speaker 23 Remember her?

Speaker 76 The Baroness. The Baroness.

Speaker 25 She was.

Speaker 26 Susan watches the sound of music like three times a year.

Speaker 62 As she should.

Speaker 26 Yeah, I just.

Speaker 26 I go get on the exercise bike. Do you?

Speaker 20 You watch it?

Speaker 60 It's such a brilliant thing.

Speaker 26 It is, but three times a year, really?

Speaker 42 You know, there's an idea that it's anti-gay because all the Germans are gay,

Speaker 36 gay coding, and all the Austrians are like hikers or something like that.

Speaker 25 I just heard that. I'm like, what are you talking about?

Speaker 44 Rolf is just an asshole.

Speaker 86 He's not gay.

Speaker 25 Goodness sake. Also, there can be gay assholes.
It happens. I agree.

Speaker 56 Oh, hello.

Speaker 25 Nazis had a whole division of them.

Speaker 38 They did get killed, as you know, as you well know, as a studier of the Nazis.

Speaker 35 They did kill Ernst Röhm and his band of gays before they got into power.

Speaker 25 Anyway, I didn't call them the band of gays. The band of gays.
The mean gays.

Speaker 60 Sounded better in the German.

Speaker 71 I know.

Speaker 63 There's way more mean gays than we realize.

Speaker 52 Okay, let's hear a prediction from you.

Speaker 26 Okay, I have a couple of things that are just like a heads up in terms of things that I think are going to get more important.

Speaker 76 Okay.

Speaker 26 One is the U.S.

Speaker 25 attorneys scandal.

Speaker 26 So this started in Albany, Northern District of New York, and then New Jersey with Alina Haba and then in California and then in Las Vegas. Trump is

Speaker 26 it seemed, it would appear to be illegally installing U.S. attorneys.
And U.S.

Speaker 26 attorneys doesn't sound like that big a deal, but these are the people who prosecute federal crimes in these states and districts. And there's a real question as to whether or not

Speaker 26 it's possible to have federal law enforcement legally in any of these states where he's effectively illegally installed these U.S. attorneys.

Speaker 26 So, this is a slow burn story, but it's going to become a bigger one because he's trying something that isn't working and it's going to result in a confrontation with the courts and with federal judges.

Speaker 37 Which it has in New Jersey, with the Lincolnshire.

Speaker 26 Which it has already, and that's just that's going to break one way or the other. And Trump is, it's just, it's just worth watching there because that could be an important constitutional moment.

Speaker 26 I would say it's also really worth watching Trump's threat that he wants to redo the census. And again, census sounds boring, but

Speaker 26 there is a universe in which Trump is worried that he's going to lose the House in the midterms in 2026.

Speaker 26 And so he says, okay, we need a new census because actually the last census, I'm nullifying it because it had immigrants in it. And therefore, it doesn't count.

Speaker 26 Therefore, all the congressional districts nationwide that were set by that last census, those are no longer in effect.

Speaker 26 Therefore, we cannot have the 2026 midterm elections the way we're supposed to because those congressional districts are illegal and we'll have to delay it.

Speaker 26 I mean, it's a sort of doomsday scenario in terms of the technical part of our democracy and continuing to have elections. But that census part of it is a key piece.

Speaker 26 So those are worth paying attention to.

Speaker 25 Of course, it's going for the census.

Speaker 26 It's going for the census, but it's a way to... It's a way to go for elections.

Speaker 25 Right. Right.

Speaker 74 Over-under on how, 50-50, 40-30, what would it be?

Speaker 26 I don't know. I mean, I think that they've floated the let's have a new census thing in part to see what the reaction to it is.

Speaker 26 And people have treated it like that's weird or that's like a techno, techno, a technical, in technically infeasible thing. Hey, guess what? He doesn't actually want a new census.

Speaker 25 It's not that he's not to slow it down.

Speaker 44 That's a very good point.

Speaker 50 It's not to get a new census.

Speaker 26 Don't assume any good faith on the part of these arguments. The tampoo for DC is not about crime.

Speaker 26 The attempt to nullify the census is not about the quality of the census.

Speaker 26 All of these things are all about what everything he does is for, which is to accrue more power and to make it more dangerous and difficult to oppose him or criticize him.

Speaker 32 And slow down the possibly inevitable, which is his defeat. Yeah.

Speaker 26 And so that's one of the things. One

Speaker 26 potentially positive thing to look for is that I do think the mRNA funding decision has to be reversed. I think that that was, I think they blew it.
I think RFK Jr.

Speaker 26 blew it in terms of the announcing the cutoff of mRNA vaccine funding. mRNA technology, it would be like us opting out of penicillin, right?

Speaker 25 I mean, it just doesn't.

Speaker 25 Right, right.

Speaker 34 Did you see that thing, the Washington Post, which is the new house organ for parastalesis from the Trump administration?

Speaker 32 The opinion section ran a piece by why we tabled mRNA.

Speaker 26 And we tabled mRNA funding because the American people, for some reason, have suspicions and they don't trust mRNA.

Speaker 26 It says, right, we just appointed, Trump just put a guy in the health department who says that Wi-Fi gives you leaky brain, says that HIV doesn't cause AIDS and that COVID was genetically engineered to spare the Jews.

Speaker 26 Yeah, I wonder why people have weird ideas about vaccine technologies.

Speaker 26 So it's, I think, I actually think the mRNA decision is

Speaker 26 bad enough. And

Speaker 26 that pushback in the Washington Post is part of the reason, I think, actually, that they are going to have to reverse the public.

Speaker 56 Oh, no, the Post didn't push back.

Speaker 29 They published a positive piece by the guy who did it.

Speaker 26 Yeah, the op-ed. But that op-ed was so weak.
If that's that's the argument for why you're doing it, they feel the need to make the argument. The argument is wrong.

Speaker 61 That's a fair point.

Speaker 88 The post-production.

Speaker 26 And it's such important technology. They also

Speaker 39 had an auditorial.

Speaker 24 It's such a heinous public.

Speaker 39 David and I talked about it this week, but saying that, hey, maybe the DC needs more crime fighting.

Speaker 67 Like, I was literally, I nearly walked over there and slapped them.

Speaker 49 I just was like, I need to now go down there and slap them at this point.

Speaker 26 Turns out having a billionaire running stuff doesn't make it good.

Speaker 56 Technically broken, Rachel.

Speaker 34 I think actually your prediction was going to be that you were going to the UFC fight at the White House.

Speaker 26 Oh, well, I was wrong. Yeah, I don't know.
Not unless they're going to use me as a prop, like a, you know, like a chair.

Speaker 25 Oh, yeah. Breaking a chair over somebody's head.
Yeah.

Speaker 32 You'd be a great UFC fighter.

Speaker 59 You'd be a great wrestler.

Speaker 47 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 26 Remember, I'm taller than people expect. That's true.

Speaker 48 I'm noodly para.

Speaker 25 I'm taking the shit out of people, I think. Anyway, I really appreciate you doing this.

Speaker 68 I'm enormous, besides someone, I've gotten to know you a little bit.

Speaker 82 I think you're a wonderful person, but you are, you're doing God's work, I think.

Speaker 84 And I think people don't realize how funny you are and everything else and how substantive you.

Speaker 33 Please read her books, all of them.

Speaker 35 They have changed my life in a lot of ways.

Speaker 34 I wrote stuff I didn't know, and I'm a very big student of history, both ultras.

Speaker 30 And is there another season of ultra coming?

Speaker 26 There is a new podcast coming. It is not a season of ultra, but for fans of ultra, you will find a lot that you like.
Great.

Speaker 21 That's really good.

Speaker 39 Stuff I didn't know. And I knew a lot of stuff.

Speaker 49 And Prequel is a wonderful book.

Speaker 59 Everybody read it.

Speaker 86 They should.

Speaker 33 That's the part of, I love your show, but that stuff I just adore.

Speaker 35 I think it's amazing.

Speaker 26 Kara Swisher, I'm very thankful for you. Thank you very much.
Thank you.

Speaker 28 I'm going to read us out.

Speaker 27 We want to hear from you.

Speaker 38 Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind.

Speaker 44 Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.

Speaker 62 Okay, that's the show.

Speaker 28 Thanks for listening to Pivot.

Speaker 27 Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Speaker 42 We'll be back next week.

Speaker 84 Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver.

Speaker 31 Ernie Enderdott engineered this episode. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.
Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.

Speaker 31 Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod.

Speaker 31 We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. And Rachel, a jar of mayonnaise is on the way.

Speaker 26 Thanks, Kara.

Speaker 25 So gross.

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