Ghislaine's DOJ Interview, Cracker Barrel's Logo Change, and Guest Co-Host Tim Miller

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I'm in that zone.

Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher, and welcome back to

Scott Free August.

I never get tired of that.

It's the final week of Scott Free August, though.

He is coming back soon.

He's been texting me lately, so we know he's getting a little jumpy on his vacation vacation and his expensive house, wherever it happens to be.

But I have yet another amazing co-host.

This has been an astonishing month.

Tim Miller, welcome to Pivot.

Hey, Kara.

I've just been kind of warming up some takes about narcissism and the crisis of young men and sialis and stuff to help people, you know, kind of transition back into Scott September.

Okay, go for it.

Do you have anything?

Yeah, well, no, I just, I think it's important to encourage or to encourage older men to use sialis and encourage younger men to get out there in the world and find women to sleep with or men, whatever, because

we don't want incels.

And I think it leads to other problems in society.

And I think Scott's really, really good on this point.

Yeah, okay, good.

Well, thank you.

You be you.

That's the whole point of this

endeavor.

And you are a certain personality.

You were also the host of the Bulwark podcast where you do a great job and former GOP strategist.

I cannot believe that at this point.

Anyway, welcome.

Yeah, of the, yeah.

So talk about your podcast a little bit and what's the most interesting conversation you've had on there.

Oh boy, ever or recently?

Recently.

You know, look,

the podcast, it's a daily podcast, which is a bit of a grind.

So I feel this obligation to like be on the news and get in the news while at the same time, like, if it's fucking Trump is awful porn every day, you know, I'm going to kill myself.

And I think that the listeners will too.

And so you have to kind of have a balance between that.

So I don't know.

I mean, like, for example, on the Trump porn one, I loved my John Lovett conversation recently because I made him cry.

I think he's, I think, mine is the only podcast he's cried on.

So if people want to really get in touch with their feelings, he seems like a crier to me.

Yeah, I know exactly.

So if people want to get in touch with their feelings, you can listen to two gay men who hide our feelings underneath sarcasm, try to expand.

I had your boy J Cal on a couple weeks ago.

I thought that was interesting.

Just because

it's a gag.

It's a gag.

Okay, good.

Look, I don't know if you feel this way.

It's hard.

I really want to, in the second Trump term, like have people on who are less radicalized against him than me just to kind of hash it out.

It's important to hear the other perspectives.

The problem is most Trump supporters are full of shit.

And so it's hard.

And I don't want anybody on the podcast that's full of shit.

I know you guys do.

I just, I want only people on who are going to say what they really think.

And so

I can't have somebody on who like.

will say one thing on the podcast in the green room and be like, you know, he really, he really has gone too far on this thing.

You know, that doesn't work.

And so J.

Coach.

They do, just for people who don't know, they'll come up to you in a green room and be like, I agree with you.

And you're like, you fucking asshole.

Like, that's when I truly hate them.

Jason's an this is Jason Callakanis, right?

Yeah, Jason Calicanis on all-in-podcast.

He at least will say what he disagrees with Trump, which he, uh, which I think he's at least telling the truth to me.

You know, well, well, no, he's an interesting person.

I've known him for 30, 40 years now.

Um, when he, he was a media person, he ran a bunch of tech stuff.

And, you know, he's kind of a, you know, jazz hands kind of fella.

Like that, I don't know how else to put it.

He's really loathsome to Scott for reasons I undetermined, probably jealousy.

We used to be friends, I would say.

I stayed at his house and stuff like that.

And his

need to suck up to power is really quite distasteful to me.

And, you know, he's always sort of like the clown to Elon or whatever that group of people he's on the podcast with all.

And

I feel bad because I thought he was very clever and actually one of the early media entrepreneurs and a really enthusiastic person.

But, you know, one of the things that I always had a problem in our relationship was that he was, he couldn't do hard things.

Like he was a very big proponent of Travis Kalanik until everybody turned on Travis Kalanik.

And then he was against Travis Kalinisk.

And then when he came back, he was for it.

I'm like, do you have any?

lasting values of anything

but it that's what bothers me is that well i thought that was an interesting it's interesting you say that because one of the interesting things about the interview was like

because that's his nature he was totally candid about the fact.

Like, one of the things that I try to get to, I'd be interested in your thoughts on this, is like, why did all of these billionaires become putty in Trump's hands?

Like, I get that in some, in some cases, they want access.

It's about power.

It's about money.

If Trump's going to act like an authoritarian, they need to do it.

But in other cases, they didn't really need to, and they did it anyway.

And why?

And he's just blunt about the fact that Trump

responds to their phone calls.

Biden never did.

Their feeling, their little fifies were hurt that Elon wasn't invited to some summit.

And like, and so I thought that was like interesting just how blunt he was about that.

Like sucking up to power was like the reason why these guys do it.

Like basically, that's it.

It's no deeper than that.

Which he is very good at, let me just say.

And again, I like Jason because I feel bad.

We don't speak now and because he won't speak to me because they're mad at me.

And I'm like, don't you have any fucking balls, Jason?

You know, we had a pretty good relationship.

And he won't because he's like, because it's sort of like the court jester in a lot of ways to those people.

I think, you know, he doesn't have as much money as they do.

He has a lot of money, but not like them.

Like, and so I, I think he's often wanted to monetize that podcast better than they do.

And it's, it's degenerated into, he used to run a bunch of other startup events that I really liked, actually.

I thought they were very clever.

They were sort of, again, jazz hands a lot, but I just feel like he had, he just has made a trade that I don't love.

And I wish you would call me because I'm, I'm like, it's fine to argue, Jason.

But now even he's gotten hurt.

Like you said something and hurt me.

I'm like, oh, fuck you.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, Tara, Jason.

Now I feel bad that I mentioned that.

You put me on the spot about recent interviews.

I'm like, well, I mentioned the Jason when I was like, I should have mentioned somebody who would have, you know, not turning.

No, but he's really smart and insightful.

And you know what?

I'd love?

I'd love him to be Truman fucking compotee and write a book when it's all over, turning.

on all of them.

I would love that because I bet he has some really good insights.

Anybody who's turned on Shamaf, I'm for.

So I saw that another clue.

But I should have mentioned Eugene Carroll.

Her, that was one of my, that was my favorite interview recently because I was worried you never know.

I didn't actually know her.

I'd never met her.

She is such a salty bitch, isn't she?

Oh my God.

The podcast started with her listing all the people that she had had sex with because she included that in her book.

It's the best list I've ever heard.

I forget what it is.

It's like six people, but they're all famous.

Yeah, they are.

Yeah.

She's a salty bitch, as they say.

Like, you know, kind of thing.

You do it daily?

That's crazy.

Yes.

Daily.

Well, now you've revealed yourself as not a daily listener, which is fine.

My feelings aren't hurt.

It's a lot of material.

I listen.

You know where I listen to it?

I listen to it on social media.

Like I listen to pieces and pieces.

Yeah, great.

I definitely listen to it every day because

I go to the shirt.

Yeah, that's how people consume stuff now.

Yeah, no, it's every day.

I think it's important.

Like, look, it's important for people to be in a rhythm.

You guys have a rhythm.

One of the things that people are with media is you've got to be promiscuous in a way that, you know, and in their ear and in their head because,

and in genuine ways, it's very different than a TV appearance, which you're also on

because it's you like this is my take and they get to trust you and that's the critical part of having a daily relationship

one thing you said I want to poke on this Trump porn Trump porn stuff talk about that like that ideas you don't want to just be endlessly reacting to this yeah it's tough I made long dong silver yeah

short dong silver my um my my pledge to myself after he won was like I'm only gonna get mad about what I'm mad about and there's going to be a lot to be mad about, you know, but I'm not going to, like, if he does something that is like, you know, that I know I could do a little bit on, that'd be fake or fun.

I just, I'm not going to do that because, like, A, life's too short.

B, it kind of helps him, I think, frankly.

Um, you know, because oftentimes those topics are things that he wants to be out there.

Um, and I just don't think it does listen, like, people that are tuning in any service, you know, to do that.

So

that's what I think.

It's hard.

Like, look, like, there's, there's so many indignities every day.

And so, like, there's sometimes an obligation to bring up stuff that I feel like that's not getting enough attention that's in the news, right?

But if it just becomes, you know, one day it's like, oh, well, Trump did this thing that's horrible.

The next thing he did this other thing is horrible.

The next thing he did this other thing is horrible.

And there's no, the frequency isn't any different, right?

If it's the same frequency the whole time, then, you know, everybody, you become numb to it.

And so you get acclimated.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I just, I think it's important for everybody.

And I don't even really mean this in a political sense.

Like it's important politically.

I I do think it's important for the Democrats to figure out ways to keep people from becoming numb to it.

But I just mean in like a, now that I've, now that I'm a former Republican, I've switched sides, I can use lib terms like this now.

I mean it like in a self-care way.

Like don't become numb to this and just have it be like, oh, every day I just wake up and I get my fix of how awful it is.

It's like, no, it's like, no, today this thing is actually really fucking bad and we should be really mad about it and focused on it in a way that's different.

I think the problem is Trump is oxygen, right?

At this moment.

He's everywhere.

There's nothing.

Climate change, you could do a thing.

Vaccines, you could do a thing, like all kinds of things.

And he, and it's hard when you're talking about other things not to be aware of it because it's like nothing matters except this.

And that's what he's done really effectively.

But let's see what you get really mad about.

We've got a lot to get to today, including what Jelene Maxwell is saying about Trump.

All good things.

What a surprise.

And Jeffrey Epstein.

And MAGA is melting down over the stupid Cracker Barrel logo.

But I do think that's a much more interesting story than just the logo, which is interesting.

But first, President Trump is threatening to send National Guard troops to Chicago, New York, and Baltimore as part of his effort to crack down on crime.

Pentagon has been planning a military deployment in Chicago for weeks now, according to the Washington Post.

Illinois Governor J.B.

Pritzker is accusing Trump of trying to, quote, manufacture a crisis.

Well, over in Maryland, Governor Wes Moore set Trump off after inviting him to walk the streets of Baltimore.

He offered a golf cart, by the way.

Meanwhile, guard troops are now carrying weapons on the streets of D.C.

A Pete Hegseth directive makes me feel more unsafe as a D.C.

resident.

A CNN analysis of government data found a moderate drop in reported crime in D.C.

during the first week of Trump's takeover, a far larger surge in the arrest of immigrants.

Bill Maher has been talking about a slow-moving coup for a while now.

In his latest episode, he laid out how Trump's recent actions suggest a coup may already be underway.

It's a little long, but let's listen.

First, create a masked police force.

Get people used to looking at that.

Normalize snatching people off the street.

Get them used to that.

Normalize seeing the National Guard and the military on the street.

Then start talking about crime in the capital, which is basically, you know, has always been a fairly crime-ridden city.

This is our nation's capital where elections are decided.

And then have, because the crime is so bad, have other states start sending their troops.

Not just the National Guard there in D.C., but now at least six other states are sending their troops, which then Trump can then federalize.

So you're having many states' troops on the ground there, and now they're under federal control.

So you have in the capital a sort of permanent police presence.

So let's talk about this.

I live here.

I just took my daughter to the first day of public school today.

The images couldn't be different.

It's a very,

it's not a crime-ridden city.

It's actually crime has been improving, as Democrats have been pointing out.

There's crime in every city.

There's a lot of crime in Houston, for example.

There's a lot of of crime in Alabama in the cities and wherever.

It doesn't matter.

Cities are like this.

The second thing is this idea of people on the streets with guns.

But there haven't been a lot of protests.

And it's not because people think this is a good thing.

I know this.

I've talked to lots and lots of people.

There's been a real

icing of the workforce around ICE, people not coming to work.

I just talked to someone who works, does some yard work for me.

They can't come because of ICE,

because they're worried.

Their workers are worried.

Shut down at restaurants, et cetera.

Talk a little bit about this because, you know, and then the threats to go to Chicago,

to Baltimore, to

New York, obviously, if Zoran Mandani wins, for example.

Yeah.

I like that Bill Maher.

I don't, you know, I was, I felt like he was kind of lecturing people about he was mad that people were mad at him for going to visit Trump earlier.

And it's like, this is why.

He's like consolidating power.

And it's important to just be clear about what it is, what he's trying to do.

And to me, like the thing about this that makes me the most upset is this combination of this kind of like military, state military theater, like with the actual, you know, masked thugs, hassling people that are here, sometimes illegally, sometimes not.

You know, and they've, they went and they tear gassed that guy and like banged through his window in California, who is a U.S.

citizen, George Redis.

And so we'll kind of, you know, he's now going to be able to sue.

But like, this is what they're doing, right?

Like it is, they're acting with impunity.

And the imagery of it like feels very un-American.

And it's just, it's wrong.

It's like not, it feels like it's in a banana republic.

It's like, what we have, we've got these new trucks now with Daddy Trump's name on it.

And, you know, like people are walking through the streets in the military uniforms.

And then they're jumping out of unmarked cars with masks.

Like that's not how things should.

You know, that's not what this country should be about.

People should be outraged and pushing back on it.

And I think that to Bill's point, like there's like the slow burn element of it, about like getting people used to it

that I think is really is really alarming.

So I, you know, we'll kind of see how this stuff continues on to Chicago and

Maryland

and what else they decided to do in New York, maybe Baltimore, Chicago.

But like he's not, he's not being subtle about it.

And it's important, I think, at each lever.

So I was happy to see what Wes Moore was doing this weekend to like

stop and say, like, this is no, like, we're going to push back on this now you know because otherwise it just becomes a creep where he is able to do more and more these cities have an ability to do although LA had mixed mixed ability to do it now the DC is a unique entity because it's also a federal center and they don't have states' rights there's no voting our our representative happens to be out of it actually so you're not hearing from her it's a unique situation here in the other states it's going to be harder to try this to try these numbers but how do you,

why aren't there more crackdowns, and especially these visual images of either people, you know, being taken off the street, like on Moped and things like that, or everyone has a story here.

People are not,

I don't quite know what to do, right?

What do you do?

You go yell at these people?

Okay, that doesn't really have an effect.

What is the response beside in cities, I could see them pushing back on Trump,

but not DC.

Yeah, no, and look, A, the response from Democratic leaders is that they have to say no and not, we're going to work with you on this, right?

Like, and that was, I mean, you know, Bowser did that.

Again, the D.C.

thing is a little bit different.

It's a little bit complicated.

But when you get to these other cities, you know, say no, and they have to have showdowns over states' rights.

I mean, like, this was like J.D.

Vance was on the shows over the weekend where he's talking about how this question of the Red State National Guards

coming to D.C.

and how he's like, well, this is our system.

We have states' rights.

If the Republican governors want to send us troops to suck up to Trump, then like, oh, well, we'll just do that.

but that's not how it works and there's other blue states and and even purple states that have democratic governors right you notice philly isn't on the list josh shapiro is there to christian whitmore like what eventually you know you get a showdown in these places um but i i think that's important i think it's important um i i think that the protesting is important itself it's important for people to call their leaders look i

I think a lot of people feel like, oh, the pushback has been limp.

And I get that.

I feel that way as well.

There are things I wish people were doing more of.

But a part of that, I think, is because people feel like the pushback is hopeless, not with, is not with point because Trump has total power in DC and he's total power of Congress.

But I point to this immigration thing in El Salvador as like a prime example of like how pushing back on legal, political, and action in the streets grounds can slow them down.

I mean, like their initial plan was to send lots of people to that El Salvador prison.

But they initially sent the three planes.

There was immediately pushback, political, legal, people in the streets.

And, you know, the courts slowed them down.

And what ended up happening, like about a couple of weeks ago now,

the Venezuelans that they had sent there got sent back to Venezuela.

No more planes have gone to El Salvador.

No more people have been sent there.

And like that is an example of resisting the administration that isn't maybe that satisfactory because it's not like a win for death.

It's going to try everything.

Yeah, but it slowed them down on that vertical.

They got to do this.

You got to do the same thing across all these other

slowdown, the idea of slowdown.

You've heard about the white ladies putting Mexican flags on their cars to get ICE to stop.

I like that.

I like that.

People are making fun of us.

Like, why?

It's wasting their time.

And then the white ladies can chat away with them for the longest time.

And like, that's six hours.

Like, I could talk to an ICE person for six hours and be difficult, but not arrestably difficult.

You know what I mean?

Like, kind of, why are you doing this?

What's happening?

What's your name?

How are you doing?

Like, irritating in the way only white ladies can do it.

Well, they should, you should irritate the local politicians.

Look, I might think, like, so here in Louisiana, I live in New Orleans now.

And so they sent 135 National Guard troops to D.C.

to guard the Shake Shack or whatever.

And I'm like, this is ridiculous.

Like, even Republicans in Louisiana should be calling their legislatures

and the governor and annoying them about this, saying, These are people with lives.

Like, these are 135 people that have real jobs, that have families.

They're back to school.

Like, they've been sent away from their kids to fucking sit outside the Georgetown cupcake.

Like, this is

ridiculous.

It's preposterous.

And, like, and shining light on how ridiculous it is is an important and waste of money

yeah is there any pluses for the trump administration doing this like crime is bad because people do out from outside cities all think crime is like the whole san francisco narrative was so bullshit there was problems they they're starting to really fix them the city is very vibrant now it's just the cycle right the covet cycle the people moving out etc etc and the the more the but you know they're aiming at homeless people which is really interesting here in dc and elsewhere, as if that's really the actual problem.

I think it helps.

I think that

there are people, like Matt Aglesias expresses this view that's like bad for Democrats anytime to be talking about crime and immigration because of crime and immigration are in the news.

That's good for Trump because those are issues that are good for Trump.

And I take that point, right?

Like, I think that you have to be clear-eyed about how the fact that there is a

political benefit to what they're doing.

They're good at picking enemies.

You know, Kilmargreo-Garcia is not that particularly sympathetic as a person, right?

Like John Bolton is in particular sympathetic as a person in different ways.

But

I think that like finding the most extreme examples and winning the fight

on those grounds is better than ignoring it if you're a Democrat and moving on.

And I mean, this happened in the first term on child separation.

Like his numbers tanked on it and they had to backtrack on it.

That was a worthwhile immigration fight.

Is fighting over like border security worthwhile?

Like, no, probably not.

Like similarly on crime, like is pushing back on some of what they're doing on crime and cleaning up cities.

It's not my cup of tea.

Is pushing back on it worthwhile?

Maybe not politically speaking.

Activists or individuals can, but the Democrats should push back on masked guys jumping out of unmarked cars and tackling DoorDash drivers.

Nobody's for that.

And, you know, I was listening over the weekend.

Do you know Tim Dylan?

He's like a comedian, mad comedian.

And Joe Rogan, though.

Yeah, I listen to Tim Dylan's show over the weekend.

And he's like, if you're a libertarian-minded Republican guy, don't tread on me, Republican guy, you can win those guys over with this.

Like, he's looking at this, he's going, this, what Trump is doing is everything Alex Jones warned about, is what he was saying.

It's like, you know, it's, it's, we're giving Palantir our information.

We've got mass, you know, we got, we're militarizing the streets.

We've got massed cops, you know, going after people without due process.

Like, this is a big government security state.

You know, if framed correctly, I think Democrats could use it right.

Yeah, as you know, every accusation is a confession with these people.

So the Trump administration, let's move on to another thing they're grappling with.

The Trump administration has released transcripts and audio from the DOJ's recent interview with Jelaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's longtime associates and convicted sexual offender sex offender.

In an interview, Maxwell, who is seeking a pardon, praised Donald Trump.

What a surprise.

And also downplayed his involvement in Epstein's activities.

What a surprise.

Let's listen to what this heinous bitch said.

I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting.

I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way.

The president was never inappropriate with

In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.

So said the pedophile.

Maxwell also denied the existence of a client list and dismissed a number of Epstein's theories and allegations.

She's also rather kind to Epstein.

He can rot in hell.

She did, however, say she doesn't believe Epstein died by suicide in prison.

Honestly, why are we listening to the?

I'm sorry, she's a heinous bitch.

Why are we listening to her?

Will it appease the MAGA folks?

And

what do you make of the timing?

The DOJ also gave Congress thousands of Epstein documents, though Democrats are pointing out the majority of these documents were already public.

They're trying to sort of slow roll the thing.

A posthumous end quote, unsparing memoir by Epstein accuser Virginia Guffray, who died by suicide in April is coming out in this fall.

And also some of the victims are now and fucking had it with this, again, HB, heinous bitch.

Nobody apologized for saying heinous bitch.

We can say that again now.

Was that what I heard after the election, that those words are allowed again?

So nothing.

Yeah, okay, good.

I can say whatever I want about her.

So, anyway,

you know, I'm hoping Elizabeth Holmes like smacks her a little bit.

They're in the same prison, I guess.

Talk a little bit about this and where it's going.

I still think it's got a lot of legs, this, this story.

I don't know.

I feel like it does.

I do laugh at

hearing her call Trump he was a gentleman in every respect.

Like, even Trump's friends don't think he's a gentleman.

Like, even Trump wouldn't describe himself as a gentleman, I don't think.

Right, yeah.

It's just, it's so, you know, fucking preposterous.

Um, no, she's all and she's awful.

It's like important to just say that, like, and she was involved in the sex crimes.

Like, of course, I've seen some of these reports.

Like, she was there in the room when it was actually happening.

So I couldn't.

She was participating in it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And she was bullying, intimidating these women.

They were just, they were in a quasi-sex slavery with him, like essentially, saying where she was, you know, saying, oh, you know, you're not going to get, you know, there would be financial pressure she'd put over them or access or threats.

So, and she is as bad as they get, uh, and totally, and a liar and totally unreliable.

unreliable in all these cases.

Her only effort here is to get a pardon.

I don't think anything really comes out of this.

I think it's

it maybe should be used against Trump politically, the fact that she's been sent to a club fed as the only sex offender in the entire prison system in such a nice prison with Elizabeth Holmes.

And

so, I think there's maybe some political juice there, not a ton, but there's something.

I think that to me, the potential story here is that

um is it like there is an actual traditional cover-up right like a lot of trump's other behavior is like very is sui generis like it's just trump like he's doing stuff that hasn't really happened before it's different people like like his crypto scheme it's like what i you know like there's not there's not a history of this type of scandal you know for folks to like you know break um uh connect to that's not the case here like this is just a straight cover-up that many other politicians have done like they have a list of all the times trump has mentioned these files they they've admitted it.

They said there's a Microsoft share file with the FBI agents that went through and marked his name.

So this exists somewhere, you know, a file where, of where Trump is in there, and they don't want to release it and they're not going to.

They're going to cover it up to protect the boss.

Like that's just a straight cover-up story.

And I think that I asked Hakeem Jeffries about this when he was on the pod the other week.

And I was like, so will you have a special committee on this if you get back into the leadership?

And he kind of said yes, like he wouldn't commit to exactly to a special committee, but he said we will be investigating this.

And I think they can now then just do a, again, a straight old school cover-up investigation.

They can subpoena the FBI agents that were involved in this, you know, what the D, what Bondi did, what she briefed Trump on,

and who knows where that could lead, right?

And so, you know, the example I always use of this is all those Benghazi oversight hearings.

In this weird, convoluted way, the Benghazi hearing led to the Hillary email server, you know?

And

so you don't exactly know what will come from oversight.

And so I think if the Democrats are willing to actually do it, if they were well first, if they win in the midterms, and then if they're actually to do it, like this is a story that we'll be talking about in August of 2027.

Yeah, they're trying to push it down, and they didn't push down very easily.

I don't think this, this guy continues to resurface Epstein.

He's like the corpse that wouldn't be buried, essentially.

You know, and he keeps showing up in some fashion.

I think the Jelaine Maxwell, I know a lot of them are saying Trump is clean, like Jim Jordan, who's good at defending pedophiles and covering up for them,

you know, would say he's not clean by any stretch of the imagination, like at all, because this lady says it, not so.

I just, one photograph, one,

another accuser, that's all it's going to take to really revive this.

Cause it really does animate the right in ways that it didn't animate the left, by the way.

It doesn't animate liberals, this story.

Yeah.

And I think that was because the right got animated by it.

The pretense was kind of like this concerned about child sex trafficking.

And there are some, obviously, there are people on the right who are genuinely concerned about child predation.

But I think that why it sort of like, you know, tickled their,

you know, the lizard part of their brain was the death side.

It was like the conspiracy side of it.

It's like, oh, was there a deep state effort to protect whoever, the Clintons, you know, you name it, like whoever.

And it was, and that like plot side of it is what like elevated the story from what would have been a very like serious, no doubt, like real story with like real victims and all that, to something that like had this life of its own on the right.

And I think that like for that same reason now, like there's a, there's a, not really a conspiracy, but a cover-up that I think will animate the left that kind of gets lopped on to the more straightforward story about what they were doing to these young girls.

Right.

That's a really good point.

That will be the thing.

This, this, you know,

there are attempts at slow rolling it, and they still fight among each other with Laura Loomer still calling Pam Bondi blondie, et cetera.

I suspect this is still going to keep going with this guy.

Okay, Tim, let's go on a quick break.

We come back.

Trump makes a deal with Intel.

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Tim, we're back.

The U.S.

government is taking a 10% stake in Intel, with Trump calling it a quote, great deal for America and a great deal for Intel.

Under the agreement, $8.9 billion in unpaid CHIP Act grants will be converted into equity, making the government Intel's largest shareholder, but without board seats or governance rights.

It's a turnaround from a few weeks ago when Trump was calling for Intel's CEO to resign over ties to China.

Intel's move also comes on the heels of NVIDIA and AMD agreeing to hand over 15% of their China chip sale revenues to the government.

Not clear whether they should be selling chips to China.

There's also that, quote, golden share in U.S.

steel.

Senator Rand Paul called the Intel deal a step towards socialism.

I, oddly enough, agreed with Senator Rand Paul.

Industrial policy is not my favorite thing.

Even the Washington Post and also the Wall Street Journal, but the Washington Post editorial board came out against this saying the United States should not be trying to beat China by becoming China.

You know, AOC, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders wish they could have this much control over companies, right?

And Mark Cuban.

Bernie endorsed this, actually.

Yeah, yeah, of course.

And Mark Cuban said it's just a wealth tax in a different way, right?

They're taking money.

You know, as part of it, I'm like, I thought the government should have not.

done the giveaways to car companies or banks.

I thought they should have taken a piece of Tesla and then sold it back and made money on it for the U.S.

There's nothing nothing wrong with it, but industrial policy in general is always a bad idea in a capitalist and vibrant economy.

Thoughts about this and how it shakes out?

I'm curious to your thoughts on the tech side.

I'll just give, because this is like also a little bit outside my wheelhouse, but my political, and obviously there is the cheap but true political observation of the MAGA socialism.

Like, it's okay.

If Trump doesn't, we're going to panic about the five city-run grocery stores in New York.

But

we're going to let the government take over a 10% stake in a major company.

So there's like the obvious hypocrisy on its face there.

And it's kind of funny, I think, back to my heyday as a Republican when

back 10, 15 years ago, there was this big controversy on the right over the XM bank, like a federal bank providing loans.

And how that was, oh, government picking winners and losers and crony capitalism.

Like here we are, like literally taking a stake in the company now.

So I mean, I think that is the outrageous.

The thing that worries me about it more than the actual, than like the substance of what's happening with Intel is like

it is another lever for him to use power to bully kind of who knows, right?

Other people, right?

And so whether that be Intel customers, competitors, right now, like, so it's like, well, we aren't going to take a stake.

We're not going to take a, we're not, or excuse me, we're not going to have a governing responsibility in the company.

But the government now still has an interest in this doing well.

And Trump does.

Trump has an emotional interest.

He's posting about how the stock's up and how that's good.

And how does the sign is good.

And so, like, the downstream effects of that is something that is not like all the way to China, but has some of that flavor where the government can start to intimidate certain other companies and decide which are the national winners, right?

Like, but except you don't want the government in your business, essentially.

And one of the issues is Intel's been suffering for years and years, lack of innovation, bad management, et cetera, you know, for a very long time.

It used to be the dominant chip maker and then just got

just just fell by the wayside.

So, there is an argument made for like helping U.S.

companies in the chip area, largely for national security.

So, it was the chips act that was going to be.

Yes, exactly.

But the issue is it's not going to make them more innovative by having the government investment.

It's just going to prop them up, right?

And the problems with Intel run a lot deeper that maybe they should go out of business, maybe they should restructure, maybe they should, we shouldn't have the government deciding to keep them on

life support, right?

And it's not life support, but it's just been, it's been sucking for many CEOs for a long time.

And so, you know, the natural thing is let it die.

And then something else comes up.

The problem is we are chip manufacturers are weaker and they're stronger in Taiwan and China and elsewhere.

And so just the fact that governments make choices like this, they shouldn't.

What they should do is provide research money for all kinds of things.

They should provide encouragement and innovative grants to help people start businesses of all kinds.

Those are fine by I'm fine with manufacturing money, right?

Like we want to make sure that they have loan guarantees to build plants.

So if like there's a reason interest rates are high right now, so like it's it's in the national interest that we're building chip plants.

The companies don't want to do take the risks.

The government backstops that it's not like my ideal free market system, but that's like a defensible thing for

this particular market.

But it's just a hop, skip, and jump to other markets, right?

Like let's own this, let's own that.

Well, they said that Kevin Hassett is on CNBC this morning saying now we might start to take chips and stakes in other companies.

And again, this is the thing that this is the bullying part.

This is the authoritarian part where it's like, oh, if you're another company that took money from the CHIPS Act or from the IRA.

Maybe those were good decisions, maybe they're bad decisions.

I think that there was probably a bunch of wasted money in both of those bills, by the way.

But like

the companies then at that point that made that decision should not now be worried that, oh, I can't do anything, say anything that might upset Trump.

I can't go on TV and have grandpa watching his stories see that I'm critical of some policy or else they might try to take over a stake in the company.

Yeah, it's very meddlesome in a way that's not anti-capitalist.

I can see them in their room.

I can see this, especially that dumbass Howard Luttnick, like we should have gotten a piece of Tesla.

We should have gotten a piece of this.

But they are bad business.

Howard Luttnick is not a bad business person.

Trump is arguably.

Are you sure he's not a bad business person?

He seems very stupid.

Listen, he was sort of the discount guy on Wall Street.

When you talk to Wall Street people, they're like, he built a big business, but what an idiot.

I think that's usually what you, but it was like a business nobody wanted.

They were like, oh, that guy's business.

Like, sort of like Crazy Eddie.

Like, remember Crazy Eddie a long time ago?

You know, of course it went bankrupt, that business.

I think people don't love Howard Luttnick on Wall Street.

They don't have much respect for him.

That said, Trump has...

He actually has built a business that has lasted.

And Trump, of course, has run the, this is the idea of real estate dealers, real estate people running the government.

Like, yeah, what can I get?

What can I get?

Like, what's the big?

And so it feels mobstery.

It feels like, you know, corrupt.

It feels meddlesome.

And it creates, you know, the fact that Tim Cook has to give a gold statue to Trump is a bad thing.

Even if he's doing it for shareholders, it means we live in a banana republic.

That's what it means.

And so it's never good.

Yeah.

And the whole thing is, I laugh at like how those guys are all like,

and I shared some of the critiques of woke identity politics in big, you know, in corporate america but it was funny that it was like cook kind of gave him like a woke right statue like he felt it felt important for him to say in the presentation is like this was made by a yeah

by a mega republican veteran you know and it was like you can imagine the inverse where tim cook comes into combo is like here's a statue made by an indigenous bisexual you know like we felt like we needed to do that like they felt like he had to do the whole identity right politics stuff too the whole thing was very gross Unnatural acts.

They're letting people who should be running their companies do unnatural acts.

And it is bad for shareholders in the end.

It's not, even if they're doing it to help shareholders so we don't get a bigger tariff, it's an unnatural act, Tim.

Stop doing unnatural acts.

Can I ask you one nationalization thing?

Because, you know, I'm a passionate capitalist.

But

there's one moment, there's been one issue kind of in this realm that has tickled my socialist pickle, which was the idea that maybe we need to nationalize SpaceX.

I was like, is that sort of related to this?

That's like a kind of a different conversation where that is in the national security interests.

No?

Yeah, maybe.

They should be working hand in glove.

I mean, I think the issue is NASA sort of got out of control in terms of bureaucratic and not innovative.

The only thing is when you're a government agency, you can't make mistakes the way SpaceX can.

And the minute you nationalize it, it can't blow up rockets.

And as much as it seems like a failure to blow up rockets, the way you get to places or get to better innovation is by taking risks.

And if you're a government agency, you cannot take risks by the definition of a government agency.

So I see that they have to be working very closely with, this is the kind of close relationships.

Not really a free market, though.

You can't have unlimited companies in space.

It's kind of like how NBA team ownership is not a real free market.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I just don't.

I feel like they have brought the cost down because

they're not a government.

There's no interest in a government.

But I don't know.

There's no interest in the government to making things cheaper.

Yeah.

Crazy, Elon, having that much control over the policy.

He does.

That's one of the worries.

Of course, I suspect that's what they're worried about is you got, it's like a bond villain essentially running critical infrastructure.

Same thing with chips.

We have to have a real chip policy, and this ain't it.

Speaking of something that seems troubling, FBI agents raided the home and office of former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton on Friday.

The Trump critic is a subject of national security investigation and search of classified records.

Vice President J.D.

Vance says the raid definitely doesn't have anything to do with Bolton's criticism of Trump, which means it does.

It rather stems from a, quote, broad concern about the, about Ambassador Bolton.

You know, the Wall Street Journal's against this.

Everyone's against this.

Like doing, you know, I think what they're doing is what they thought was done to them.

So if they didn't like it done to them, why are they doing it to others?

Very retribution revenge.

She just threatened Chris Christie, I think.

Today or yesterday.

Yeah, starting to jail Chris Christie, too.

Yeah, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, it's kind of cracked me up since they've been very Trump friendly.

They talked about how one of the concerns of him coming back was that he'd run Vendettas.

And they wrote, quote, it's turning out to be worse than we imagined.

It's like, no, you don't say.

Not me, actually.

It's going quite bright, just about exactly how we told you it was going to go.

Not any worse.

The Bolton thing, I just think it's important to say this because it's obviously preposterous that this is not a political attack.

But if you just replace John Bolton with like

Mark Meadows or Corey Lewis, like imagine it was somebody from the Trump first term that wrote a book that is still in good graces with Trump.

And the accusation is that there were classified materials in that book that was written five years ago.

There's no imaginable world in which the FBI is raiding the home of a Trump 1.0.

cabinet member who is still an ally, right?

Like you just, nobody could imagine it.

If there were a legitimate concern that he had some classified materials they shouldn't have, like there's a process for this sort of thing.

FBI calls DOJ's lawyers, call their lawyers.

You set up a meeting, right like all you know so this is this was purely to either hassle or intimidate just like prosecutorial overreach right that's just the thing that trump complained about and it does i think it brings up what trump did like again like you did it this is yeah well the trump the trump example is it's important to just explain the difference it's like in the mar-a-lago raid which

I would listen to the idea that maybe that could have been handled in a less aggressive way, but like it's a it's not comparable to the Bolton situation.

Like the Marlaga raid, they, the, you know, the archivist or whatever, like, you know, um, said that that Trump brought some materials that, that, you know, are the property of the United States, he shouldn't have.

You know, they asked for a meeting, denied.

Then they provided a list of what the materials were.

Trump lied and said that it wasn't there.

They tried to move some of the materials to a different place.

So Trump was obstructing the effort to do this in like the good faith way that is you, that this is generally done.

And that's why the raid happened.

Like that was not the case with John Bolton.

They just showed up at his house, I think because the statute of limitations, I suspect, is running out on the stuff from the first term, which would be five years now.

And they did so just to intimidate him.

Panvondi puts out a tweet about it.

I don't have it in front of me, but something like, our national security

comes first.

It's like, nobody thinks that America's security was a threat because of whatever John Bolton has in his house.

And, you know, and I think that it ties kind of the Intel thing.

Like, the thing that worries me about everything is eventually,

and it ties to the Bill Maher thing at the top, like, slowly but surely, people just decide it's not worth the hassle, right?

Like, you get into authoritarianism not through violent coup necessarily, but by slow burn towards everyone deciding, you know, I'm going to go bring him a trophy to keep him happy.

I'm not going to say anything wrong because I don't want the FBI to come after me.

And, you know, eventually you consolidate power.

And that's closer to like what you've seen in Hungary and other places.

Yeah.

Well-known centers of innovation.

Yeah, Hungary.

Exactly right.

The economy is really, really thriving in Hungary.

We want the turkey model for our country.

The turkey model.

Anyway, we'll see what happens with this.

I suspect it'll peter out.

They have such little follow-through, but they do cause damage.

What they do, they're like toddlers.

They come in, cause damage, and a little follow-through.

All right, Tim, let's go on a quick break.

We come back, Cracker Barrel makes an enemy of the right.

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Tim, we're back with more news.

Please make sure you're seated for this next emotional topic, Cracker Barrels logo change.

The chain has removed the barrel and the man from its logo, and conservatives are horrified.

Change is hard, conservatives.

Cracker Barrel stock was down 12% in the last five days at the time of taping.

Like, I haven't been in a Cracker Barrel because they're so anti-gay, right?

That's what I remember.

No, they did a, obviously, you don't remember their effort to appeal to you, Kerry, a couple years ago.

They did a rainbow rocking chair during Pride Month a couple of years ago.

Whatever.

You know, this is fucking ridiculous.

This is like, it's just a logo change and the old man seems like old.

Like for they want young people to come.

That's my presumption is they've got too many fucking old people in the place and they need a new, they need a new demo.

It makes sense from, again, meddling in the business.

Like if they want to get rid of the old fucking man, they should get rid of the old man.

And the fact that they're all horrified, like they're so, they're so censorious, the right, when they accuse others of being censorious.

And, you know, they'll either live or die by the stock going down and maybe they'll put the man back or whatever.

But it's just, I don't, I don't know.

I've got to take a contrary video on this one.

Are you ready to fight over Cracker Barrel?

Yeah.

The new logo is off.

When's the last time you went?

Oh, it's an ugly logo.

Correct.

It's an ugly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've been, I haven't been in years.

We every once in a while I'd go, I think on the drive from D.C.

to the beach, there's a cracker barrel somewhere.

But that was many years ago now.

So I haven't been in a while.

So I don't actually have any personal stake or care about this, but I do just as an objective observer of the world, the new logo is awful.

The picture that they put out of the new inside of the cracker barrel, which is more minimalist or whatever, is also awful.

And it is part of a broader corporate trend where every logo has to be minimalist now and every store needs to have clean lines.

And

we need diversity of views.

You need diversity of experiences.

Like the human spirit, you know, yearns for different types of, you know, we don't all want Scandinavian Scandinavian clean lines.

So some places call for

Scandinavian.

They probably realize most of their clients are about to die.

You think new people are going to come in, though, because they want to make it look more like Applebee's?

I don't think the millennials I know are like, I'm excited now that we're, you know, they're changing it from the old man, old southern view to a more of a modern Applebee's aesthetic.

I think at some point you have to change.

It's like, it's, but again, this is, again, it's up to the company if they want to do this and they'll either live or die by it, right?

That's my whole thing.

I agree with that.

I suspect they're looking at the numbers and they're like, all the old people we don't have any young they probably know exactly who's coming into their restaurants and young people are not coming into the cracker barrel they're just not and you know the name itself would probably be changed cracker barrel like who what is a cracker honky barrel honky barrel um you know i kind of like what they're doing at hooters they're going though you'd be what are they doing at hooters i know nothing they're going back to cheesy and booby and like wings I'm vaguely offended by Hooters.

I don't care.

Like if people want to go to those stupid places and they pay those people enough, I don't know what to say.

I think it's gross, but whatever people, if you want to go to, you know, that you want to, by the way, all the Hooters waitresses, in my experience, have been fan fucking tastic people.

And they know the whole fucking deal with the guys leering their breasts, which is like they're toddlers looking at them.

But

there was a great story of a gay guy.

Who was it?

Who talked about going to Hooters?

His Twitter name is Peter Twinkledge.

Yeah.

There was a great story of going to Hooters and the Hooter waitress helping this guy out.

And she knew he was gay, right?

The father didn't.

Of course, the father did because that's why he dragged his poor sorry ass there.

But, you know, I kind of like that they're going back to it because I thought they're like just be hooters, just be hooters.

And if they do a nice job of it and the wings are good, I'm fine with it.

I just think this is a company much like, oh, there's probably a bunch of them facing real secular change in their usage.

So they must have studied this.

And the people that are being noisy are all the old folk.

I guess.

I don't.

Sometimes, you know, you can overstudy stuff.

It's like, I feel this way about political ads.

You know,

I'll be in a meeting where, you know, where a super PAC will be like, we decided to do this ad because we tested it.

And I'm like.

Most of these tests are so dumb.

It's people that are like playing video games or something.

And then they show the ad during the commercial break.

And then you have to say whether you like it or not.

And it's like, people don't know themselves.

We're trusting this.

Like they're just trying to get through the ad.

Like a lot of these, a lot of these, you know, corporate testing testing things is a lot of hooey-fooey.

Um, can I just, can I give you one admission since you've admitted the Hooters, uh, you know, come clean on your support for original Hooters?

The Cracker Barrel thing for me is tied to the new Oval Office design.

And I like the new Oval Office design just like I like the old Cracker Barrel, because I think more is more.

I don't, I don't, I'm, I don't, this whole like minimalist WASP Northeastern

pro-Hooters, pro-Liberace, Oval Office, pro-Original Cracker Barrel.

That's all.

not pro-Liberace.

Come on.

Well, the Oval Office has a Liberace aesthetic now.

I thought it does.

Which I love.

But it's okay with

me.

I think I didn't like it.

When I saw the comparison, I was like, look how awful.

I'm like, the first one was kind of dull.

Like the Blyden one.

Yeah.

Drab, right?

And you know, I like a like, listen, Showgirls is about to have its 50th anniversary or whatever, and I'm up for anything like that.

I like excess.

It's too much over here.

Now there's way too much fucking gold.

Like, gold is best.

If you ever saw that Apple thing.

So I think it's too much.

There should be pomp and circumstance, but there's way too much of that.

It's a little ude-an couce.

It's a little much.

It wouldn't be my preferred aesthetic, but it is definitely an upgrade when you look at the comparisons.

The grayskin.

What else would you put in there?

What would your oval office look like?

That's not really in the cards, I don't think.

I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, kind of like the birdcage.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Like gay.

Yeah, well, gay.

Yeah.

It would combine all of my conflicting interests.

You know, we might have a Reagan portrait, but also a lot of gay stuff that would live in conflict together.

Maybe just Nancy.

You know who I'd design it?

You know, Ken Falk?

He's a San Francisco designer.

I hope I love Ken Falk.

Yeah.

Everything he does is just a little loosh, but I love it.

Like, you know, it's just a little bit too much velvet and stuff like that.

There's an occasional dead animal on the wall.

I kind of love it.

I love kind of it.

I like wall.

I also like the Nancy Myers aesthetic.

That is kind of a nice one.

Do you know, you know, the director?

Those houses that Diane Keaton always lives in.

Those are nice.

They dumb.

They're a little dumb.

No, that's not really for me.

I'm not doing that.

That might be triggered.

It might be this little suburban.

I'm kind of triggered by my suburban upbringing.

I don't want anything, like the 90s suburban, like Tuscan aesthetic.

Anything like that is that I have a natural physical revulsion to.

Yeah, I think I would do more funny stuff, more color.

I like a lot of color.

Same.

Anyway, I think they should have kept the barrel, gotten rid of the old man.

The barrel needs to be there.

And there should be crackers

all right last thing elon musk's ex has reached a tentative agreement to settle a lawsuit filed by former twitter employees who say they are owed 500 million dollars in severance musk fired around 6 000 employees after acquiring twitter and of course he didn't pay them in other musk news he also asked mark zuckerberg to help him finance a 97 billion dollar takeover open ai in early 2025 according to court filings in a case between musk and open ai obviously didn't happen oh thank god but mark sees it coming thank god i guess

Isn't this kind of like an Iran-Iraq war situation?

Who are you rooting for in Altman?

Right, yeah, the bullets.

Zuckerberg.

The bullets is what Scott always says.

You're rooting for the bullets.

You know, I know a little bit about this payment, and I'll just say really briefly, I've met with a lot of the people who they owe money to.

And look, if you want to fire people, Elon, that's fine.

That's your business, but pay them what they're owed.

That's it.

That's, it's just, it makes you like an asshole not to pay them their severance, even if you don't like what they did before.

That was the agreement they were taking over as to his open ai things just stop you know sam altman is not interested in you so stop bothering that company you you walked yourself out of there like an idiot when you were there from the beginning because you of your ego and your need for control you don't have it just try to make a good company on your own that's my feeling i don't have any thoughts on the fluoro filings so i agree with everything you said um while we're admitting to bad opinions that we have about aesthetics i also kind of like the zuckerberg fuckboy rebrand I think that that's been good for him.

So I support that.

Is he a fuckboy?

Kind of.

I mean, the gold chain and the

kids kind of like the lettuce hair.

Yeah.

Okay.

Would you go out with him?

Do you think he's attractive?

Not really for well, not really for me.

No, I don't think so.

I guess I had to pick between him and

I probably originally would have said Sam Altman, but I don't know.

Sam's recent interviews are pretty creepy.

He's starting to move into the Uncanny Valley for me a little bit.

Oh, interesting.

How so?

Tell me, explain.

I don't know.

i just i like the um like i i i get him in my tick tock a lot i guess kind of how you're consuming me like he does all these podcast interviews where he's talking about what we want future open ai like did you see his theo vaughan interview and he's like his projections about what is coming uh you know and how

um you know people are just going to have to get used to a world where they're like robot humans walking around on the street everywhere and where like a lot of people's real friends are computer are computer friends and where he's i i just the whole thing is getting a little creepy for me and he seems to kind of be leaning into that like that he and i i think i just think i'm misaligned with him for what i would like to see an ai future look like it's just one man's opinion for one what's an important man's opinion kind of yeah but there's been open ais have come and gone like i don't mean to be but like remember yahoo was huge and then it wasn't like these things and they are definitely in a more precarious position they're either netscape or they're google right that said Google didn't run the show on everything eventually.

And even they struggled at various times.

I feel like, look, he wants to, he's sort of styling himself like Steve Jobs.

So he's trying to say important, controversial things.

And so nobody is Steve Jobs, but everyone's trying to grab that mantle.

And there will be not another one like that.

And so.

That's what you're hearing.

What's your alarm level and all that stuff on

these guys, these egomaniacs deciding what our future is going to look like?

We've already seen what happened.

So we're going to see this.

I think the government, in this case, needs to be much more involved with guidance, guardrails, and regulations, as you know.

I don't like a small group of people, not diverse in any way, making decisions for the rest of us.

That's all.

Just like I didn't like, you know, as much as I like Train Daddy on the Gilded Age.

They decided where the roads went.

They decided where the things went.

And our whole country has to live in the reality they create.

And I'm not so pleased with that either.

Although I like Drain Daddy quite a bit, oddly enough.

I don't have any takes on Train Daddy, but I'll learn about it.

You need to watch the Gilded Age because all the gays love Drain Daddy, just so you know.

He's really great.

Speaking of which, it cracks me up with Gavin Newson every time that Jesse Waters calls him daddy.

He's like, I'm not interested.

His use of like gay taunts is so, I'm not, everyone's like, aren't you offended?

I'm like, no, I love them.

I don't know about how you feel.

I like a gay taunt.

I I like a gay taunt too.

The only time I get offended on this thing is sometimes I feel like, and maybe it's just because as a gay former Republican, I get a lot of incoming on this.

Sometimes I feel like the liberals in my life are like way too excited to make like gay slurs about Lindsey Graham and like the MAGA gays.

And I like a little joke about Lady G.

I'm fine with that.

But sometimes it's like the tone where like, I kind of feel like you're just, you've just been very, you've just had this pent-up desire to make homophobic jokes.

and now you feel like you can because lindsey graham is the target and and and and it comes out a little too enthusiastic for my taste i guess i would agree i'm a hundred percent on your time i'm talking about more like when they actively go out of their way to like to slap back at it but i agree with you i just look whatever journey lindsey graham is on it's his journey it is hypocritical obviously but when has that not happened you remember during the reagent administration there was crawling with

they were crawling with gays and they were doing anti-gay things but the stakes stakes were, you know, with AIDS were so massive at the time.

It seemed like they are massive now, too.

Their attacks on gay marriage right now are really quite disturbing.

Are you worried about that?

I don't know.

I keep telling people I think that the trans, if I'm acutely worried if I'm transgender, if I'm a migrant, and I think those are very acute crises right now, and we should really focus on them.

The gay marriage thing, I kind of, I just would be, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know.

I think that there are people that are

very intent on still angry about gay marriage.

And

they just sit there and they seethe and they work and they work and they work to overturn it.

That's right.

I think it's a losing fight for them.

The abortion thing, I think a lot on the left thought the abortion thing would be a losing fight for them.

And

they compare the two issues and they kind of conflate them.

And I just, I think for a variety of reasons, like...

Gay marriage is like a 70% issue in the country.

And I think it would be a pretty big

drug control.

I think there is a group of dedicated anti-gay people that have never, I've always thought they'd never gone away.

And everyone's like, now we won.

I'm like, have we?

You know, I think you should be vigilant with these people.

I think they would very much like to do a lot of things to women and gay people that are really disturbing.

And so, and set them back.

And they articulate it now.

And you see it even the things Vance pushes.

It's noteworthy.

the change in how unbridled they are now.

Like they feel totally now unshackled to say their real feelings about gay people.

Like there was a period of time where I think people were like, oh, this is, there'll be backlash against me or this isn't.

And you're not seeing that anymore.

And I think that's, that's revealing.

In some way, I think it's bad.

I worry about it for younger LGBT people.

But I also, in some ways, I think it's nice for it to be revealing that we can see the score a little bit.

See, I've always thought they were like this.

I never thought they were friendly to us for a minute.

And by the way, they are committed to overturning marriage, some of those people.

And guess what?

We're committed not to.

so that's the the part that the i think you'll see how that's going to go trying to take my marriage away from me you know what i mean like i think come and take it um okay tim one more quick break we'll be back for wins and fails

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Okay, Tim, let's hear some wins and fails.

I will go first.

I think

it's sort of a fail.

This Trump's cankle thing.

I know people are like,

it's really odd.

I have to say, Alex Jones is concerned about Trump's health.

He warned last week at the current trajectory, Trump is going to have some sort of collapse within the next 12 months.

Thank you, Dr.

Jones.

You terrible heinous, speaking of heinous bitches.

Trump's hands are also looking questionable with all those odd smears of makeup.

He had a weird walking thing.

The ages, as I have said, the cognitive decline and the age decline is real.

And he, let me tell you, he's a lively old man.

That's for sure.

Like he's the, he's the guy

in the nursing home that's just real lively, but still going to keel over at any moment.

It could keel over at any moment.

I think that's, I think they, I'm not sure why they aren't controlling this,

especially with the makeup and everything else, largely because he's probably very vain and everything else.

But he's he's obviously aged rather significantly in so many ways.

And I think it's taking its toll on him.

It feels like he's rotting.

It feels like when Voldemort was starting to rot, like when he wasn't getting enough dead people that were his poor creature.

We can't see his real face is something that's true now.

The leader will not show us what he really looks like because it's you know, he's he's so fragile now.

He looks like he was onozempic, but now he looks fat again.

I'm like, hmm, something's going on with his health.

I think, I don't think that's a win or a fail.

I just feel like just wanted to mention it.

I don't think, I just want to mention it because I think people are like, oh, let's not mention it.

I'm like, no, no, he looks, if we're going to like, we should have mentioned more things about Biden, and Scott and I did and gotten a lot of crap.

This, he looks, there's something going on.

The cankles are noteworthy.

And if the cankles are as wide as alex jones's neck you know that there's something concerning there remember when they attacked hillary clinton's cankles no i'm just saying i don't recall good for the gander it's good for the gander no it wasn't you it's good for the goose um and my My win is the fantastic.

Once again, we have the new version of Wicked coming, and it's only in three months.

And I think their social media campaign is fantastic.

And they've done a great job.

I love John Chu.

He's going to be here in D.C.

next couple, next week.

I'm going to see him, hopefully.

I just, I'm very excited about

that movie.

And I just, I'm not going to hide it.

I love it.

And I love the actors in it.

And I think they're doing a spectacular marketing job on it.

And I just love to watch people use social media in a really positive way.

And I like that.

And it gives me pleasure.

Your win and fail.

All right.

Well, I wasn't planning this one, but if we're doing musical shout outs, I should win for, I have to give my Oasis guys a win.

I mean, they reunited.

Nobody said they could do it.

They're coming to America now this week.

They'll be back.

Nobody ever thought they'd do it.

Explain why this is a big deal.

It was the brothers, Noel and Liam Gallagher.

They're brothers.

They were very

C-word in the British sense.

I still won't say that in your presence, Kara, but they're kind of Englishmen who drank a lot and fought together.

And obviously, folks will know Wonder Wall or Champagne Supernova, some of their famous songs.

And so they've been broken up for 16 years.

They spent most of the decade and a half shit talking each other in the press.

And the idea was like they never would get back together.

They're back together.

I went to one of their shows in Manchester and their reunion shows.

And now they're now.

Was it good?

Are they good?

Are they sick?

It was biblical.

It was unbelievable.

It was amazing.

He sounds amazing.

I think he must have quit smoking or got a vocal coach.

Because I, you know,

sometimes you'll go to see the aging rock stars.

I hate to, I went to see Pearl Jam at Jazz Fest.

And it's like, ugh, you know, you can just tell sometimes, you know, the last Madonna concert.

That's how I feel.

Yeah.

So

not the case with Liam.

He sounds amazing.

They sound amazing.

Everyone was so excited because people who are into ASIS are really into it.

Like the crowd around me knew every word.

It was wonderful.

So that was a win.

Good.

The one that I planned on doing was I was going to, it was on a more serious level.

I was going to give Putin a win in their little summit in Alaska.

No, I don't really have much to add.

It's just obvious now.

When it had happened, there was like, you know,

I think even some people were like, well, maybe Trump will get like, you know, like maybe this thing will finally start to,

you know,

recede and Putin will, you know, get some deal out of it.

Trump will, you know, give him some crypto or, you know, some parts of Ukraine.

And Trump, and obviously at this point, he was just totally used by Putin in a way that's like really embarrassing at this point, like the red carpet rollout.

My fail is to like the,

as somebody who prefers the centrist Democrats, shout out to my girl, Jerusalem Dempster, started the argument, a new kind of center-left

democratic outlet.

Like, but just my advice to them is like their treatment of Zoron is so bad.

It's such a fail.

I do not understand what they're doing.

They're limiting their own power in the future of the party.

People are like very excited about Zoron.

I've got issues with some of his policies.

I had him on the pod, and we argued about a couple of various things.

And so, you don't have to full-throatedly say you endorse everything, but there's so much enthusiasm for him, and you're going to get overthrown.

If you're Hakeem or Chuck Schumer or any of these guys that aren't like there, people are going to get pissed and overthrow you if you do not at least listen.

When I would the scavenger hunt was brilliant again, he's very canny in a really interesting community.

Someone was like, I went and I met a dozen people.

Like, that was cool.

Like, he really is appealing.

I agree.

I went out to dinner.

I think I said this was the senator.

I'm not going to say what it is.

Who was like bellyaching about him?

I'm like, why don't you go watch what he's fucking doing before you did it?

You also have no other choice.

Who are you going to back?

Eric Adams?

Like, what?

You know,

Andrew Kwan, like a sex pest to have to resign in disgrace, who's already gotten beaten by your own voters?

The whole thing is really frustrating.

Voters said this, and therefore, let's go with the vote.

If young people, you complain and complain and complain about young people's engagement, they're engaged.

You complain about that.

Like, they really are a bunch of wimpuses.

And they could say, I don't agree with him on this, but I kind of think he's cool.

That kind of thing.

Or he's doing this thing well.

Or I'm happy.

Or how about even simply, I'm happy to endorse him just because the other options are so awful.

That's okay.

Like any, like, there are a lot of options besides, you know, just doing the hemming and hawing.

And

one well-known person we both know

was saying, well, I wasn't asked to endorse.

Why are people giving me a hard time for not endorsing?

I'm like, You don't need to be asked, just say what a cool, interesting politician he is.

We don't agree on everything, but pretty cool.

Anyway, we want to hear from you.

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

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

Elsewhere this week, on with Kara Swisher, I talked with graphic novelist Allison Bechdell and editorial cartoonist Ann Telness.

Let's listen to a clip of Anne explaining how how she draws Trump.

My readers are the ones that always point out to me because I never notice I'm changing every time.

They're like, okay, he's starting to look like a big mouth bass now.

And I'm like, okay, I can go with that.

Or, you know, they say he's a pig.

And I'm like, well, I like pigs.

Don't tell me that.

So, you know, like I said, it's just really, I try to find out.

I'm trying to show you what I think.

the insides of that person is more than the outside.

Is there one particular body part that you think is besides the tie?

Little hands.

Tiny, tiny hands.

They were great.

It's really, we don't pay enough.

Cartoonists are doing God's work at this point.

And Anne had left the Washington Post.

Allison, of course, is such a talented cartoonist.

She has a new book called Spent.

Really interesting conversation about the visualization of our politics that goes way back in our history, Thomas Nast and her block and others.

Okay, that's the show.

Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

We'll be back on Friday.

Tim, thank you so much.

You are also doing God's work.

I really appreciate it.

You're always.

Thanks for having me, Kara.

It was such a pleasure.

Interesting and canny.

And I like that you have different takes.

And I like that you like the gold oval office.

That's what you'll be remembered for.

You and I would go to a Liberace show.

I love Liberace.

I also like Don Ho.

I'm in that zone.

All right.

I'll read us out.

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

Ernie Enderdott engineered this episode.

Jim Mackle edited this video.

Special thanks to Kate Gallagher.

Nishat Kerr is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/slash pod.

We'll be back later this week for our last breakdown of all things tech and business before Scott-Free August ends.

We've got a very big name, a very person who

calls himself the most handsome governor in the country.

We'll see what that means.

You'll find out.

Thanks, Tim.

Takes care.