Trump Details His Dictatorial Plans

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You know him from being a little drunk alive with L and that's right it's tim miller uh thanks for how you doing brother being here tim uh i'm so excited i think this is it this is official now i just for listeners you know you might have somebody in your life that was maybe a frenemy at one stage and maybe you had a little tension with at one point over the and over the years you grow and you you grow a bond and appreciation for one another and it blossoms into a real a real friendship and i feel like that's officially happened right now wow at this moment and just so everybody knows his audio did broke up break up for a second he said sexual tension that's yeah well that's what we had at one point, but I'm saying now it's blossomed. It's something deeper.
It is nice. It is nice.
It's something like, you don't know that this is coming. 20 year olds out there, this is happening for you in your forties.
There's somebody in your life right now. And you're like, that guy, never.
But then when you're 40, you're like, wow, we like each other a lot. I never said never, but maybe you did.
And that's fine. Yes.
When you're 20, you don't know what it's like to be an adult for 20 years i know and that's the beauty of it anyway let's talk about gaza but speaking of yeah and um and also people that have been an adult for 50 years and don't seem to show it uh we have a packed show today donald trump spent some of his precious time outside of a courtroom to do a good old-fashioned sit interview with Time magazine, laying out his vision for a second term. And it's it's worrying.
The Biden administration is reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug while student protests envelop campus buildings and our national attention. Marjorie Taylor Greene makes her move.
Plus, the vice president sits down with Drew Barrymore and it makes everyone a little uncomfortable. OK, first up, Trump, he did something that feels like it's from another era.
He sat down for an interview with Time magazine in Palm Beach, lasted over an hour. All the all the pomp and circumstance, the description of the room, the the transcript has the aide coming in and saying Mr.
Trump has to get to dinner. We get some color about the playlist.
It's the same playlist, Sinead O'Connor, January 6th choir, the two genders. And then they did a follow-up 20-minute conversation.
So we'll get to all the details, but just were you surprised, Tim, to see Donald Trump spend an hour doing this? I was. I have to be honest.
There is a print time magazine that appears that you can get now. That still exists? I believe so, yes.
At airports. So it all made sense once I realized that still existed.
I personally did not know that. I thought time had gone fully digital.
And I was like, Mr. Trump might be an idiot.
And he might have had the wool pulled over his eyes a couple times. But he certainly would not do an interview because he wanted a fake digital cover.
And this man would require a real physical cover. And then he would do an interview where he shames himself and really freaks everybody out about what a Trump term would look like and provides a political gift to Joe Biden.
So I do think it makes sense for then, once I knew that, that Trump could have the time cover that he could frame, because that's what he really values. And then once I interviewed the reporter this morning, Eric Cordalessa, and great reporter, tough interview.
So please don't take this the wrong way, Eric. But he does give off.
Like I got drunk with Madison Cawthorn at a Duke lacrosse party vibes. And so like once I spent more time talking to him, I was like, oh yeah, okay.
This makes sense. The Trump people felt like this guy was one of them, you know, he's going to get his cover and, you know, consequences be damned.
Yeah. So, you know, the 1980s Trump brain is, oh, Time Magazine.
I want to be on Time Magazine. I want to be on the cover of Time Magazine.
And yes, I do. I also associate Time Magazine now with the kind of downfall of Newsweek and U.S.
But it's different. But it's different.
But it's different. But there was the other piece of this, too, which is like, let's say you were thinking about this in a more traditional way.
The idea behind sitting down for a long print interview like that, there's no video, there's no audio, that's just a transcript, was that there was some there was some value to getting out to elite news followers, to journalists, to close watchers of politics, the vision, the kind of

detailed vision that you wouldn't get on a stump speech, that you won't get in shorter television

hits to give people the context of what Trump's trying to do. I don't believe they were doing

anything as sophisticated as that. But if they were, what on earth were they hoping to accomplish by having the president, the former president, walk through all this stuff? Yeah, they wanted to accomplish the physical.
He wants the framed. I just cannot emphasize this.
He wants the framed magazine cover. I know he's already been the president.
Feels like that seems like small ball for him, but that's what he wanted. Okay.
Granted that now moving on, what was their strategy beyond that? I do not know. I do not know.
I don't, it doesn't seem like he went into the interview, like going back to my days, you know, we certainly had some fails with my candidates, but if Jeb was going to do a long sit down interview, certainly sometimes he would get stumped or he'd say something wrong or, but, but we would at least have like a have a proactive message we were trying to get across, that if you looked at the transcript, you could see that he was coming back to this, whether it was an issue or whether it was an argument that he was trying to put forth. That was not what this was.
It is total stream of consciousness, Donald Trump. It is indistinguishable from his rallies, except for the fact that the reporter, Eric, got to kind of direct him into like a briar pit a little bit on abortion in particular, but also on some other issues.
And there was no sign that they had like a proactive message that they were trying to get across. Yeah.
So let's go through this. It was wide ranging.
He says a lot. He also refuses to say a lot.
For example, he wouldn't say he'd veto a national abortion ban. He wouldn't say he'd defend Taiwan.
He wouldn't say he supports a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. He wouldn't commit to supporting Ukraine's defense.
Almost immediately, the Biden campaign went on offense with the interview, in particular on Trump's abortion comments, not just refusing to say he'd veto a ban, but when asked whether states should monitor women's pregnancies to see if they violated an abortion ban, Trump said, I think they might do that. On abortion, what jumped out at you? And then we can go beyond that.
Yeah. Well, on abortion, that was like the Chris Matthews moment.
And Trump has struggled with this for nine years because he is faking it, right? I mean, that doesn't make the threat any more real to vulnerable women about the laws that would be put in place by the types of people that Trump appoints, judgeships in particular, but also into regulatory positions. But he personally obviously doesn't care.
And so he doesn't know how to speak the language of pro-lifers.

Somebody who is a genuine pro-lifer, I think, would at least be astute enough to be able to move around the question of, are you comfortable with states monitoring women's pregnancies? And he feels like just by saying, oh, well, states get to decide, that's some some amulet that like protects him from all criticism on this, right?

That he's like, oh, I don't know.

I guess I'm comfortable if the states decide to do it, the states decide to do it.

And that is a crazy view, right, that is going to be very useful to Biden and ads where he says essentially if during a Trump presidency states want to monitor women's pregnancies so they can determine how far along they are in the gestational period in order to determine whether or not they would have access to an abortion. That is deep state 1984 type shit targeting women, and he just walked right into it.
I think in large part because he hasn't thought about this stuff deeply at all, never even occurred to him that there might be a question about whether a woman is at six weeks or nine weeks. Right, like none of the stuff, he hasn't thought about this stuff deeply at all never even occurred to him that there might be a question about whether uh a woman is at six weeks or nine right like none of this stuff he hasn't thought through any of this and so he's just like yeah i guess if the states want to monitor women they're going to monitor women yeah he also i think he he views his himself as being very adept at at at the at these politics now there's one point he says you know did you see everyone adopted my ivf position know, he was asked about what his what his policy position is going to be on Mifepristone.
His only response, by the way, he didn't say what it would be, but he says it won't be very surprising, which I took to mean whatever he says, he really hopes people don't pay too much attention to it. What else jumped out at you? yeah the myth of prinsdale thing was funny because he says in the first interview which is poolside

with the cougars at mar-a-Lago and the well-done steaks during that first interview, he's asked about his position on Mifepristone. And he's like, I've got a great plan.
Won't be that surprising. It'll be out in two weeks.
Then there's a follow-up phone interview two weeks later. And the first question is, are you ready to share youriff of pristone another two weeks like uh it's just like the obamacare the health care plan uh so he still doesn't have that um but again i i think part of that i did wonder if during the first interview he did if he knew what miff of pristone was you know and he was buying himself two weeks but you'd think by the second interview he would and maybe he's just trying to dodge, and by time, because it's similar to the IVF, and this takes you out of, into even pro-life people, right, like, are horrified by the idea that women might not have access to Biff of Pristone in, like, the first days after, you know, having sex, right, like, there are people that are, that would support a a 15-week ban that think it's crazy that the states want to ban um you know access to mifepristone for example and so you know that gets him to a really dicey position you know if he if he isn't doesn't have a clear answer on that and and he did it over the course of two two interviews because again i think that he thinks that he's got to get out of jail free card here with this, the states can decide thing.
But obviously, if you're going to sit down with time for an hour and a half, there are a lot of holes in the states can decide. Yes, and his ignorance on this is a feature for the kooks around him who are already planning to use an old federal law to make it impossible to mail abortion drugs to people and deploy the federal government in all kinds of ways to make abortion inaccessible, even if they don't pass a national law, even if it still continues to be technically legal in liberal states.
So he can say, I don't want to see it too much from what Trump's perspective is. In a lot of ways, it won't matter because will he stand in the way if Congress passes a ban? Of course not.
Will he stop some schedule F flunky from doing something horrible in an agency? Of course he won't. He won't have the discipline or attention span to focus on it.
This is why, just really quick on that, this is why I think that to me, the most telling part of the interview, because of exactly what you're saying, it's kind of like, who cares what Trump's random blurts out are on these various policies in some ways. Directionally, we should care, but on the details, what matters is going to be people around him.
And at one point he was asked what he thinks about this notion about hiring people who don't believe in the 2020 election. Should that be a litmus test for people that would be hired into your administration? And Trump says essentially, yes, into kind of garbled Trump words.
So like, yes, I would only want, I would feel very, you know, he says something like, I'd feel very strongly against, you know, somebody is too stupid to realize that the election was stolen from me. Now, to me, that just puts all of this in a very important perspective, which is like, they're going to be much more judicious is maybe the wrong word, careful about hiring the kookiest people possible.
And so I thought that to me was as revealing as any of the policy stuff in the interview and as concerned. I want to get to that in one second.
I want to get to the implementation because I do think that I agree with you. It's just as important.
Before we get to that, were there any other policy points that he made or that the piece makes that jumps out? One, that his number one agenda item when he comes in is going to be extending the Bush tax cuts, that some of those tax cuts for the wealthy expire, including the doubling of the estate tax deduction, that those things all expire in 2025. So one of his first orders of business is going to be tax cuts for the wealthy in addition to a border bill because, of course, he killed the border bill.
Were there any other policy positions that jumped out at you? Yeah, well, two. As a free market capitalist, the thing that stood out to me was the 10% across the board tariffs, which is an absolutely insane policy that if people are concerned about prices will be disastrous.
And he has no, just in general, I think it's frustrating to get this across to people, but he says that he's going to fight the inflationary, the Bidenflation, right? And his policies are going to stop inflation, but every policy he has is inflationary. Extending the Bush tax cuts is inflationary.
Fewer immigrants into the country is inflationary because that affects the number of people that we have in the workforce. Tariffs are obviously inflationary.
So is there a way to make that message for Biden? I think it's kind of a tough message for Biden to actually implement in a campaign setting. But to me, maybe that's something for Nikki Haley voters that we can, that we can use.
And then, and then as someone, you know, who has feelings and compassion, the deportation plans are absolutely insane, insane. And, and he keeps, and he goes along every step.
The reporter asked him, you know, he's like, well, would you call in the national guard? Yes. Would you call in the military? Yes.
How are you actually going to implement this? Local police forces. We're going to have local cops being our deportation troopers.
And if a local police force doesn't want to be part of the Donald Trump deportation effort, where he specifically cites Operation Wetback, then he's like, well, then we'll stop funding them. We're going going to not give funds to police, you know, uh, uh, to local police, you know, so we're going to defund the police that, that will not do illegal deportations.
Um, so, I mean, obviously I think that is the most alarming and the thing that I would be also the most scared about being actually implemented if he were to win, because he are, that's the one area where he already has a team of competent sociopaths around him, led by Stephen Miller, who would be able to execute on it. Yeah.
And they already, by the way, when they did family separation, it was pushback from what you could call the old guard inside the administration, plus congressional Republicans, plus political pressure, ordinary political pressure that caused them to at least sort of second guess what they were doing. I don't think those guardrails exist in a second term.
No. I mean, and you could see like that great, I forget who wrote it.
I feel like I should credit her, but the great Atlantic profile that went in so deep into the child separation and like how it actually happened, the tick tock of it what it revealed was it really only took steven miller sessions and there was one other person who were adamant about it and who just kept pushing and pushing it every restraint you know in the in the bureaucracy and and so if you now just imagine a situation where those bureaucratic restraints are you know mostly excised through the schedule F changes that they've talked about and they've, and they, instead of just having two or three people who are like really get off on child separation, you have like three or four times more of that, you know, that get, that get brought in because they've done a more thorough vetting job of staff to ensure that they're fully on board with these deportation plans. I mean, I think that it's really scary.
And it's really kind of hard to calculate how much more damage they could do to immigrants and migrants. And by the way, using Schedule F to threaten people who might otherwise have to go along.
And by the way, on top of that, using the parted power to give cover to people who are worried that they're doing something that's illegal. And I think that's the most pernicious thing about his pardoning.
You know, about how I'm going to pardon all the January 6 folks. Last time I pardoned Bannon, I pardoned Manafort.
Now he basically would be sending a signal to, you know, the shock troops, as Bannon calls them, that like they can go ahead and not worry if they're running afoul of various immigration laws while they execute these deportations. Because if some rogue liberal judge that Joe Biden appointed or some prosecutor goes after them, Trump will just pardon them.
So I think the combining of the pardon with the Schedule F, I think, really creates a very different environment for them in a second term. So I'm glad you pulled out the tariffs and immigration.
I think the immigration policy is absolutely horrifying, but I do want to get mercenary about it. One of the challenges, right, is you want to tell people on imports, right? Hey, if Trump puts a 10% tariff on all these imports, it's actually going to cause the kind of inflation that's been bothering you for years.
But I do think the problem is that a lot of people sort this into a made in America, American manufacturing bucket, rightfully so. But I worry a little bit that when we fight back against that kind of a policy, it's tough to do because you end up, you don't want to sound like a 2000s era Democrat talking about how good NAFTA is going to be.
And then you got Ross Perot talking about the sucking sound of American jobs. How do you talk about a policy that I have a feeling at the very least is one that maybe people have mixed feelings about because they do worry about about manufacturing and they do want jobs to be in the U.S.
Yeah I mean and Joe Biden kept a lot of his tariffs right so and he doesn't have a clean message on that to me I think it's a negative message that is specifically targeted towards my people like the Haley voters the former Republicans right that's like I don't know maybe this is maybe you're running these ads just on Brett Baier's show or something, or in the Wall Street Journal. But I think if you combine that, A, Trump was actually pretty mean to BB, too.
I don't want to get into that stuff later. But Trump was pretty harsh on Israel.
I don't think can be seen as a reliable partner for Israel, based on his comments in this interview. The tariffs, if you combine the threats to take out of NATO, this is not a huge segment of the population, but I think that you can micro-target some people in the Atlanta, Philly, Burbs, that have been traditional Republican voters that also are responsive to the democracy message.
You can layer on top of that, this guy is going to do a 10%... They do, for that crew, the 10% tax on tariffs, they respond to it like I would.
This is going going to be horrible. This is, you know, anti-market.
It's going to increase costs. So I think it's more useful for that group to use it to say to like working class people that are worried about prices at the grocery store.
I don't know. It feels like a bank shot and that the campaign probably have better arguments.
He was all over the place on Israel and Palestine. He was all over the place on Bibi.
It's actually very hard to figure out what he's even saying. This is always the problem when anyone tries to kind of, I don't know, mediate what Trump says into something coherent.
and that by the way it's not a judgment of the of the journalist or the piece because the piece is very clear like he is contradictory and i do think like the the reporter really does follow up and

push back and come back to things trump is just you, you know, he's just, it's sand through your fingers. But he's, but just, here's what he said about whether or not there should be a two-state solution.
Most people thought it was going to be a two-state solution. I'm not sure a two-state solution anymore is going to work.
Everybody was talking about two states. Even when I was there, I was saying, what do you like here? Do you like two states? Now people are going back to, it depends where you are.
Every day it changes now. If Israel's making progress, they don't want two states.
They want everything. And if Israel's not making progress, sometimes they talk about two-state solution.
Two-state solution seemed to be the idea that people liked most, the policy or the idea that people liked above. Do you like it, says the reporter?

It depends when. There was a time when I thought two states could work.
Now I think two states is going to be very, very tough. I think it's going to be much tougher to get.
I also think you have fewer people that like the idea. You had a lot of people that liked the idea four years ago.
Today, you have far fewer people that like the idea. He goes on to mention that Sheldon Adelson was against two states, I think, later on, digression.
We're not sending our best here.

You mentioned this a few minutes ago. It's not just about what he's promising, it's how he's promising to implement it.
Trump learned a lot of bad lessons during the first term, including the danger of being surrounded by anyone who has their own reputation to protect uh what jumped out at you in terms of how how differently he'd go about a second term he talks about how he would never he wouldn't wait for people to quit now he'd fire them uh you mentioned schedule ridiculous but you mentioned schedule f uh what what jumped out at you yeah i to me it's really that litmus test thing just because it's so insane it's like it's so insane uh you know it is it is you know we say this it's like almost cliched to like throw to be like oh it's a cult but like it is kind of a cult you have to you have in order to join this administration you have to at least pay lip service to denying reality.

And that sets a tone. It sets a tone with the pardons.
It sets a tone for the existing people

that they know that they could be fired, where it's like now you have to watch yourself. And I

might have told this on this podcast before. I forget, but I had a friend that was working at

the RNC that was one of the quote unquote good ones who stuck around. He was a lifer at the RNC.

And on a couple of conference calls, he's like, I don't know about this thing Mr. Trump is saying.
It's a little crazy. I don't know if the RNC needs to echo this.
He did it like two or three times. Jared Kushner was out on any of these calls.
And he gets a call from Jared Kushner out of the blue one day. He's like, are you good? Are we all good? Is everybody everybody on the same page and like that kind of mafioso attitude um you know which they had in in the first term but they were not they didn't know how to implement i think if you just listen to him now like that's the one thing where it's like they've got a handle on that now like they're not gonna they might have people around who aren't true believers but they're they're gonna be the types of people who are sociopathic enough to not ever reveal that they're not a true believer.
Yeah, I also think it does something else that's also pernicious, which is it makes signing on to be part of this administration a door that locks behind you. You know, Ronna McDaniel thought that she was clean because everybody knew, wink, wink, she wasn't a real Trump person.
She just became one on television. And so that even NBC higher up executives thought, oh, they sorted her into the serious old school Republican bucket, not the MAGA maniac bucket.
But because she had done so much to defend the lie, there was enough of an uproar that made it impossible for her to kind of be treated like a, be part of polite society, right? And so now you say to these people, if you want to be part of Trump world, you've got to sign on to this. He kind of, he takes away people's escape ramp.
And I do think that that makes people more beholden to him, which I also think is part of this. Totally agree.
The other piece of this is there are a lot of people thinking very hard around Trump, not Trump, about how he can better use federal power. I saw a blast from the past phrase, the unitary executive theory, back from the Bush administration.
They also talk about trying to get the president more authority to not spend money Congress has appropriated, right? This would be for everything from not sending money to police to not funding social safety net programs. Did any of that come out to you? Yeah.
It's not been a good quarter century for the libertarians, I guess, I'm actually a unitary executive there. The look, it did.

And I think that again when i talk to there's a hand like my old friends don't talk to me anymore um you know because there's the uh uh the betrayal obviously some of the mega folks will talk to me um though and um you know they just whatever. They always saw me as an enemy.

And them,

as an enemy within, and now

I'm an enemy without, in some ways I'm less threatening.

And so when I

talk to them, this is what they talk about

all the time, that they've

had to have learned from the first term,

that

consolidating

power within the executive,

that there was a lot of deferring.

Trump didn't know any better. Trump was, by the way, happy

I don't know any better. Trump was either way happy to kind of let Paul Ryan do the legislating and Mitch McConnell.
He had Paul and Mitch. He got to do the fun stuff.
They did the dirty work, right? And the mindset is totally different now. Couple quick things before we go to break.
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While Trump was apparently dozing off in court, President Biden and his administration were having a big week yesterday. The Associated Press reported that the DEA is taking steps towards reclassifying marijuana.
Anonymous sources said that Attorney General Merrick Garland will formally recommend moving marijuana from the Schedule I drug to a Schedule III drug that puts it alongside testosterone and Tylenol. And Garland's recommendation will trigger the start of a long process.
But given that 70% of Americans support legalization, seems like a great step. Yeah.
Is weed tight, Tim? Yeah, are we going to light it? Are we going know do a blunt together right now to celebrate um yeah uh look man um this has felt like a no-brainer from the start and that joe biden has been resisting i don't have any internal you know joe biden's a teetotaler joe biden's from a different era don't know if you noticed that and so i i think that he um has been somewhat resistant to this.

But it's a political matter.

It is fucking obvious just based on what has been – like, look at what happens on ballot initiatives anywhere. I mean, in Missouri, they passed a kind of marijuana decriminalization or maybe it was medical.
but I like Missouri has moved like basically into Alabama territory when it comes to like voting for

Republicans um you know maybe it was medical but i like missouri has moved like basically into alabama territory when it comes to like voting for republicans um you know and voting for far-right republicans and blowout elections and like on the same ballot they are voting for um liberalizing marijuana laws uh so it seems like a no-brainer from that perspective as a motivation tool i do wonder i guess maybe i'd throw that question back on you. Like, is it kind of too late? Like, there was like a period, like in 2015, it'd be like, let's get the youth excited by talking about legalizing marijuana.
I don't know that the youth really care about that anymore. Yes, well, I think part of the problem is that, well, it depends on where the youth are, right? And also it depends on what this actually does.
You just live in this endless morass where when President Biden does something, even something good, even something that progressives have been calling on for a while, it takes a long time and they don't feel the effects right away. Like California- Kind of like a weed gummy.
Exactly, like a weed gummy. You don't know when it's going to hit.
And then all of a sudden you feel pretty good. Yeah.
But it's like two hours after you ate it. You almost forget who, you almost forget why.
But the, because right, like in a lot of places, weed is pretend legal. Everyone pretends legal.
Weed is legal in California, even though it is still a schedule one drug. And then there will be a lot of places where even if it is reclassified, there won't be recreational weed because it's a state question.
I remember that I was reflecting on something, which is I think we owe certain old school conservative pundits from the 90s an apology because I vividly remember Robert Novak. Robert Novak was a curmudgeonly conservative television pundit.
And I remember there was this debate about medical marijuana. And one by one, everyone around the meet the press table was talking about how it was a good step.
And it helps people who have illnesses. And yes, you know, weed isn't what it was in the 1960s.
And this is supported, blah, blah, blah. And then they get to Robert Novak and he goes, this is the hippies.
This is what the hippies are doing. This is the hippies' revenge.
They've been trying to get legal marijuana. This is a gateway and I don't support it.
I don't support legal marijuana. I don't support legal drugs and I don't support the hippies.
And I just want to say that was what was happening. Medical marijuana was a gateway to getting to legal marijuana recreationally.
And I think deep down, we all knew that at the time. And you were being gaslit.
You're dead now, Robert Novak, but nevertheless. You were right about that and dead.
Well, you're wrong in the merits of the policy, but you're right that it was a gateway. There's a similar example to this.
I was walking into Jazz Fest last week and there was some young, you know, kind of multi-hair colored look at me and maybe think, maybe I could be somebody that could win over on the issue of gay rights. I don't know.
I guess I wasn't dressed gay enough that day. And so like, will you sign this petition to help support the gay agenda? And I was like, well, my old instincts came back out.
I was like, wait a minute, there's no gay agenda. The conservatives were always like, the gays have an agenda.
And we're always like, no, what are you talking about? No, we just want equal rights. There's no gay agenda.
Turned out there was a gay agenda, actually. Once we got the rights, we were free to talk about it.
So marijuana, it was a gateway. And the gays, we did have an agenda.
And the 90s Republican pundits were right about that. They saw what was, you know, they saw what was coming.
Yeah. One other note on this.
This was from the AP report, which is once OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, signs off, the DEA will take public comment on the plan to remove marijuana from its current classification. Following a recommendation from the Federal Health and Human Services Department, after the public comment period and a review by an administrative judge, the agency would eventually publish the rule.
Hey, Tim, maybe we do need- Making me a Republican again. Maybe we do need a Trump's cleansing bureaucratic fire.
Yeah, I mean, I do think we could probably get rid of a few bureaucrats. I do, I maintain that view.
I do have to say it. I'm discussing, I have, I'm talking with Josh Shapiro here, uh, in a few hours.
And, um, one thing I want to ask him, which I'm excited to hear is like, uh, you know, I 95 collapses and like, it's fixed in two days. It's fixed in two days.
And I'm like, over in California, they've been trying to build a train for like 20 years now. And like, we spent a hundred, $800 million and we haven't even put down any tracks, you know, cause we have CEQA.
And so I don't know. Yeah, I think we could get legalized pot and trains and roads that work a little bit faster, just a little bit faster.
We can have a couple of bureaucrats still. I don't want to fire too many people, but I don't know, maybe do less.
How about do less bureaucrats? Well, how about do more faster and cheaper? How about that? Or do less. Yeah, do less review or do more faster.

I want to do more faster and cheaper.

For the record, if there is any place where we can move faster, it was not to gut the

government 2010 era Tim Miller style, all right?

I could be on board with either, I guess I'm saying.

Do less or do more faster.

Both of those would be fine than doing more much slower, slowlier. I do think Biden being out there on marijuana, ultimately, I think that put aside the policy taking time and the fact that, to your point, it does feel like weed has legalized itself.
I do think that there is value to having, like, I think for people who know that this policy is just completely indefensible, I would like to see President Biden saying that I'm out there trying to do this. And by the way, I've taken steps on behalf of people that have been locked up for nonviolent marijuana offenses.
I think that that's all really positive. Yeah, we've been joking about this, but it is.
The criminal justice side of this is serious. Weed might be legal in our hearts as rich whites, but it is still a problem for people that have less advantages.
And there are still people in jail for weed crimes. And so on that side of things, I think that is a good argument to make.
And maybe that can be more motivating also to progressives when it's framed that way and less about smoking spliffs or whatever. Yeah, I think that's right.
I also just, it is like the fact that we have had this quasi-legal status for so long, it is so morally bankrupt that we have people in jail in one place, in the same place that we have people walking into a store like it's an Apple store. And the fact that we have tolerated that, it does to me, it's outrageous.
And we could talk about it ad nauseum, but I do think it speaks to like,

a larger conversation,

but like, how does the society become kind of soft enough

that Trump can sneak in?

Well, I think part of it is being the kind of place

that is willing to overlook those kinds of injustices.

I'm snapping at you

like I'm in the New York Times break room.

Please do, please do.

Speaking of the youth,

overnight, a lot of developments in the campus protest movement in New York Times break room. Please do.
Please do. Speaking of the youth, overnight, a lot of developments in the campus protest movement in New York.
NYPD officers in riot gear and riding an armored vehicle moved in on Hamilton Hall. The Zionists have taken back Hamilton Hall.
While protesters had occupied it and barricaded it, officers also cleared it and encampment at City College. Nearly 300 people were arrested, according to a very satisfied Eric Adams.
A lot is happening everywhere, Tulane, Yale, University of Wisconsin, here in Erlé. There was an ugly physical altercation between pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA who had fortified their encampment with plywood barriers and a group of what appeared to be pro-Israel counter-protesters trying to tear down those barriers and throwing things into the encampment.
There's a disturbing video out there of the two sides fighting. Eventually, the police arrived and separated the groups.
Tim, you made a version of this point last night. It is what I think is probably a very popular but quieter sentiment, which is basically the fact that there is a lack of space in this debate for people who are opposed to the war, believe the Palestinians deserve freedom and self-determination, opposed to perpetuating a famine, murdering civilians, opposed to the anti-Semitism and Islamophobia around these protests and opposed.
And this is a quote of yours, opposed to militarized police marching on the Portlandia quad like they're invading Fallujah. what that and and it was i was glad to see you had a back and forth with Mehdi Hansen, who we had on Love or Leave It last week.
And the fact that I think that there was so much comedy between the two of you, I think, speaks to the fact that there really hasn't been that space during this moment, in part because I think Republicans don't want it to be. They want to talk about the chaos.
They want to exploit this. But I also think the media owns this.
I think Democrats own this and the students themselves, by the way, who have agency and ought to be held responsible for their words and their actions. But how do we make space for that kind of a dialogue, which is, I think, clearly what's needed? Yeah, we're doing it right now.
So we are, yeah, look, I think that there are a lot of people that are afraid to say what they really think about this. And I just, I have to tell you, like, we just did this, talking about MAGA and talking about the Trump administration, how they're trying to create a world.
And I came from a world where a lot of my former friends have real thoughts about Trump that they will tell me after a couple of beers or that they used to and that they won't say out loud. They won't say on Twitter.
And I feel like that there are a lot of

people that have the views about this conflict and these protests. And I think that we need to

make it okay for people to express their views without immediately going to ad hominem and saying,

oh, that means you're on Bibi's side. That means you're on the terrorist side.
When it comes to bb and when it comes to hamas i think about are you ever on reddit you know the some from time to time you know the am i the asshole reddit feed yes right so so on the am i the asshole somebody writes you know a story and tell about how they've been a jerk to their colleague or something and then then the responders can say either you're an asshole or you're not an asshole. But there are some situations where the commenters respond, ESH, everybody sucks here.
That's how I feel about the Hamas-BB situation. Everybody sucks here.
Obviously not the innocent people that have been killed, whether they were in a kibbutz or whether they were in Gaza, but when it comes to the leadership of israel pretty much everybody sucks here when it comes to hamas who is still holding hostages and still using their own people as human shields everybody sucks here and unfortunately i'm i feel that way a little bit about the columbia situation where i think there are many protesters who are very earnest in their protest against the war and i think medi andi, and this was part of me and Medi's exchange yesterday, where Medi's like, well, Tim, the reason why they're not protesting Hamas is because we're not giving weapons to Hamas. And they're only protesting Israel because that's where we have some control in our democratic government.
And I'm like, okay, I guess that's fine. But it'd be nice to have if the protests also included some people with signs that said, by the way, Hamas sucks too.
And unfortunately, what I see in those protests are a couple of people that have like Hezbollah flags or a couple of people that are like, Jews should go back to Europe or America where they came from, which is just a historical or glory to our

martyrs.

All that stuff makes me uncomfortable.

And that's not to impugn everybody that has very real, earnest concerns about the humanitarian

crisis.

But I would like to see a little bit more, you know, if the goal of these protests is,

hey, we need a ceasefire, then we should also at least be expressing that we're pretty upset about the main party that's preventing us from a ceasefire right now, which is Hamas. And so anyway, that's why I'm kind of like everybody sucks here when it comes to those protests also, and also the cops, which was – and Eric Adams, which is way overkill, and it's only in America and third world countries.
Like this is not happening in Germany

or in Sweden if there are protests.

It's very nice officers with little batons

like asking people to move off the property.

Like the idea they have these fucking face masks,

like it's all, it's crazy.

Yeah, there's somebody, this is not my observation,

but somebody pointed out that you can track

the evolution of our militarization of police

by looking at the way

the Lego policeman has changed over the years from like a smiling kind of almost in a postal uniform to basically now like a soldier. No, I agree with what you're saying.
I also, I do think that like one of the ways our brains are all collectively pickled from years of of political coverage that treats everyone like a pundit is we kind of bounce back and forth almost without noticing between what is sort of morally righteous versus what is effective. And now I happen to think in both, right? Like you are correct.
Like it is both, I think, less effective and I think less, I think, morally defensible to not make denouncing Hamas's holding of hostage a part of what you're trying to protest. But then sometimes I also think just, okay, I don't agree with a lot of what these protesters are saying.
I'm sure I would find them quite annoying, right?

However, they have successfully drawn attention to what is the urgent moral crisis half a world away where children and civilians are being killed, where there seems to be no end in sight to this conflict, even as a ceasefire is being negotiated. And then I think, well, you know what? It doesn't really matter that I disagree with what these protesters are saying on the larger issue or the fact that I find the ramifications of their views abhorrent because what it would actually mean to achieve what they claim to be their goals.
I find it abhorrent because what they are actually protesting right now is something that I completely agree with, which is the inhumane and despicable conduct of this war. And I don't wanna be a person who makes the same mistake that a lot of people make when they look at a protest, which is get sucked into a debate over its tactics and methods rather than putting aside the longer-term problems with the BDS movement or the ways in which I disagree with it, but rather what are they drawing attention to and are they right to do it? Yeah.
I'm with that. I get it.
I think about that for sure. And maybe you could argue there's been some success there.
The fact that there's some more food trucks are getting in, would that have happened without the the i don't know i would that have had without the protests i you know it's hard to do that counterfactual i will say this though there's just not another situation for a group besides jews where it would be acceptable uh in polite liberal society to like hold a protest where people are just uh where there are members of the protest that are dehumanizing and personally attacking people from a specific religious or ethnic group. Like it's hard to imagine that being acceptable in liberal society for targeting any group except for Jews.
And so I just like, there feels like there should be a way, there's not, it's a protest, right? There are gonna be a lot of people out there you can you can not pick one sign like sure like there's no way to totally control every protester sign or chant and there have been some gross chants from the pro-jewish counter protesters by the way but like if at a broader enough level there's a certain group that doesn't feel safe and they feel like they're being attacked like there would be more more widespread condemnation about that. I think if that's other groups and I think that's been, that's been, that's upset a lot of Jewish people and a lot of, you know, people that are allies of Jewish folks and, or just observers of the situation.
I agree. I agree with that.
And, and, and at this, you know, and now the response is right. Well, there are also Jewish students who are part of these protests, but I think that the issue is why does this happen? Even if most of the protesters, while saying things that I think ultimately would resort into a cataclysm for millions of Jewish people in Israel, they're not shouting anti-Semitic statements.
They're not shouting slurs. But people that do do that are drawn to the outskirts or are inside of these protests.
We saw one of the leaders in Colombia, which has also gotten an absurd amount of attention, but nevertheless, saying horrible things came to attention. Shocking that that person was walking around until it drew national embarrassment for the school.
But I do think that that's a question, right? Why does this draw this kind of antisemitism? And I think it is because this line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is a hard one to draw. And I see it myself where you see this word Zionist being thrown at people in a way that it does get my back up because it's so quick to be thrown as a slur.

And so I just, in the end, I just like, this is really fucking hard.

Yeah, it's a liberal Zionist.

It's the liberals.

Look, I have a lot of friends like this that are in Israel that are liberal Zionists, that were in the streets protesting Bibi, that believe Israel has a right to exist, that love Tel Aviv as just a beautiful city. That's a very gay city, by the way, and a really diverse city and have moved there and love being there.
And they protested Bibi. They do not like the Lukud government, but they believe Israel has a right to exist.
And they dress visibly Jewish. And they have the Star David necklace or whatever.
And they're being treated like shit by their friends on social media and by some of these protesters. They're being treated terribly.
And so, yeah, sure, they're anti-Zionist Jews that are part of the protests. But that group, they didn't do anything wrong like they're not bombing hamas their friends or relatives or acquaintances got killed by hamas right and all they're trying to say is we have a right to exist too and we want to have a right to exist peacefully and we want the palestinians to be able to get aid like Those people aren't doing anything wrong, and

they're being treated very poorly by the

protesters. Is that the acute problem?

Are their

feelings as important as the dead

Palestinian kids? Of course not. That's why you always

have to caveat. That's why you have this conversation.
Every time

you say that, yeah, everyone sucks here.

A lot of people are getting screwed here, but it's worth

saying, though. I think it's worth saying for

another reason, which, forget the tone policing in addition to the baton policing that's going on. I think it matters not just because of how it makes people feel, but my sincere view, which I've expressed many times in various forms on this and other podcasts, is that the most effective way that advocating, chanting from the river to the sea, making it this Manichaean struggle between colonialists and anti-colonialists, none of it puts actual peace for actual human beings closer.
And actually, I think if it is effective, it puts those things farther away because there is no answer to this problem that involves ratifying those kinds of ideas. They are far from it.
And that to me, I do think is important and not just because I don't like what they're saying. I don't like how it makes people feel.
How Americans currently feel is not the most important thing. I think it is because the larger struggle that that piece in this larger struggle requires rejecting those kinds of ideas.
Yeah yeah you just have me on you just want to just peel away the onion and just you know fine you're like i want to bring up tariffs i want to i want to dunk on progressive protesters like let's talk about student motorists every time i'm on characterize it that way you're trying to characterize it that way you're doing it for you're it's intentional i get it that's. I'm happy to do it.
I'm happy to be your little, I don't know, token. Okay.
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Here at Assembly Required, we will continue to face each executive order, legislative policy, and news cycle, no matter how terrifying or absurd, by asking, what can we do to learn more about

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every Thursday on Amazon Music. One last crass political question about this situation, which is Republicans like this.
They like the chaos. They like trying to drive a wedge between Democrats and their Jewish constituency.
How were you about it? And what would you do about it? Many constituencies, not just the Jewish constituency, youth, Arab, just broadly people of color. I think there's a lot of folks that have genuine unhappiness and concerns situation.
It's a wedge. So, yeah, look, I think that the Republicans do see this as a political opportunity.
They do not see any, with maybe the exception of like the one or two random libertarians who are in there. Our friend Justin Amash is gone, so maybe there aren't any good ones left.
You know, they don't mind seeing the cops with their batons, you know, going in there and knocking some heads. They think that's a winner for them.
Donald Trump, uh once i think bleated uh and the protests now like there is no nuance here um you know jared kushner is talking about you know building uh building mar-a-lago you know on the strip um in gaza so i think they think it's a winner across the board they might be right um and i think that it's concerning you know it's like it is concerning

if there are you know young voter like like the joe biden has a very fragile coalition which includes people that are quite israel sympathetic in the democratic coalition but also kind of the swing voters um you know uh who left the republican party over trump um that are not happy with him.

The young voters are in his coalition.

Dear board voters are in his coalition. Dearborn voters are in his coalition.
I mean, so he has to navigate a very broad and wide coalition that has very different views on this. Republicans are happy to take advantage of it.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump's coalition is like mostly either pro-Israel or totally anti-Semitic. So it's a little bit less, it's like less of a tightrope.
Yeah, well, that's, it is, but it's interesting that it is less of a tightrope because of what you just said. But I do think what I was getting at, right, is that, yes, this is an issue that what is happening in Gaza is potentially alienating key constituents Biden needs like Arab voters and young voters, while at the same time, the Republicans are trying to exploit the protests without really regard for the views of those young people or those Arab voters in Dearborn.
They're trying to go for, they're trying to kind of use the chaos. They're trying to say that Jews are unsafe, right? They're trying to go after that constituency specifically.
For sure. Yeah.
And I think it's working. It's alarming to me.
But anecdotally speaking, you know, is this 1%? Is this 2%? I don't want to overstate how big of the audience this is. It's a pretty small demographic, but it could be important in Atlanta, could be important in Philly, which is Wall Street Journal reading conservatives who are either Jewish or kind of have strong foreign policy hawks that were turned off by Trump because of his dabbling in anti-Semitism and because of his isolationism, that you hear them saying anecdotally like that, I don't know, I don't like what's happening.
Trump will defend us. Maybe I have to go back to Trump.
There's a whole Dan Sinor who works for Paul Singer, who used to be a never-Trumper, who is a big donor, who went back to Trump. Paul Singer is already back at Trump.
It seems like Dan is sympathetic to that. You see this, and and i was actually just with someone today um who who said that their friend who's jewish who said that their friends um they have friends that feel this way so is that going to change by november you know will cooler heads prevail hopefully but i do think that there is a small demo of group voters that were that were traditionally republican that were gettable for biden thattable for Biden, that are starting to lean back towards Trump over this.
I find that asinine, just to be abundantly clear, I find that asinine and insane that on the issue of anti-Semitism, you would go back to the person that had lunch with Nick Fuentes and Kanye. I find it ludicrous in the extreme, but that doesn't mean that it's not happening.
So Biden, there are also people trying to lay what's happening on a campus in New York, on a private university campus at Biden's feet, I think, often in bad faith. But nevertheless, Biden has a difficult square to circle here.
He needs to assuage the concerns of that part of his coalition that is concerned about these protests and worried about anti-Semitism has to assuage the concerns of people that are deeply unhappy with his policy in Gaza. That requires a policy change.
That requires something to actually shift on the ground for sure. But what would you like to see Biden say if there's anything he's not saying? Man, this is going to be a very untimmed thing.
This is on the Podbro podcast. It should be you guys saying this but we could really use obama on this because it's so no he was really good at this stuff like going out there and talking and this was his whole bit starting in 04 like there are red states there are blue states we can be we can think about the we can be empathetic towards the other side while also understanding the policy ramifications he was talented at this biden's like that's not his strength man got strengths, but like, that's not it.
And I think that right now there are people that are like, where is he on this? And, and, and a lot of what they've been doing has been relegated to written statements, which are usually pretty good, by the way, if you read the Biden administration, White House's written statements, they usually are very empathetic, very nuanced, very thoughtful. Um, but, but they're not letting him loose on it um and maybe for maybe for good reason i don't i think that it's a really it's dicey and um but i do think that he needs to speak out more and you could speak out from first principles and the nice thing about having a speech on a press conference is you could speak more just about the thing like you can be can the inverse of my original statement always started this.
Everything's an asshole. You can you can be the positive version of that, which is I'm worried about Gaza.
We're trying to get food in. I'm worried about anti-Semitism on campuses in America.
We should have that stopped. I'm worried about free speech rights.
Kids shouldn't be getting knocked over by police officers when they're at. You know, I saw he could do that, but it's not there's going to be people he doesn't please if he does it.
But it's probably we'll see if it doesn't get any better. It's going to be something he's going to have to figure out how to do.
Yeah, I think that's right. I do think that in moments like this, when when the rhetoric is heated, when people are talking past each other and when Republicans are trying to exploit it for the chaos.
I do think sometimes that does lower the bar a little bit and turns just stating first principles, sort of where we started this conversation, into something that I think is calming and relieving and actually goes a long way. Before we let you go, Tim, Vice President Kamala Harris went on Drew Barrymore's show on Monday, talked about a wide range of topics.

But this moment, I don't think you've seen it,

and I think we'd like to get your live reaction.

I've not.

I've been thinking that we really all need a tremendous hug in the world right now.

But in our country, we need you to be Mamala of the country it made me very uncomfortable it made me very uncomfortable it made Kabbalah very uncomfortable I know I like that what is going on is she about touch me? It's everybody. We don't need any politician to be mom.
We don't need to be mom. We don't need to be dad a lot.
We don't need a national dad. We don't need any of that shit.
It's a it's a it's a city where they go to write laws and regulations and to implement policies that affect our lives. They not dad they're not mom i hate that shit me too we need a head of government by the way this was like this is fundamentally american love it that where you're getting at like this is john ad like john adams wanted to name the president his excellency or some shit and george washington was like fuck that mr president mr president we could have a mrs president hopefully soon that's it they're one of us they're of the people we do not need a mom we they're not like the royal family they don't need to be anything special that does bother that i'm with you on that also the touching also the touching yeah because you had a moment where carrie touched you.
It was kind of similar. It was kind of similar.
I don't mind. If you touch me on the shoulders, I don't know.
Drew is kind of the good angel version of Carrie. It's like the same energy, but like the light versus the darkness kind of with Carrie or Drew.
But they both did the double hand thing. Yeah, it's too much.
You can touch me on my on my shoulder we can hug but there's something about the four like eight fingers remember when um george w bush lost himself for a second and tried to give angela merkel like a shoulder rub he got got it truly was just like he like miscategorized like he just he just did something he might do like to to a relative or a loved one but he just he just as he was passing, gave her a quick, and she shivered like I've never seen a person shiver. The other piece of this, too, is politics is emotional because it's serious and the stakes are very, very high.
But we actually don't need these figures to assuage. It's actually the mirror of the people who say they don't find Joe Biden inspiring.
Okay. It's by, I get wanting Joe Biden to inspire other people because you want politics to have outcomes, but you don't need to be inspired because if you say, I want to be inspired, it's a little bit like, I don't know, like Louis the 14th being like, bring me a show.
I'd like to see something. Bring me a, bring me a lovely cake and a show.
It's like, that's not what this is about. If you're feeling worried and anxious about politics, it's not Kamala Harris's job to assuage you.
It might be valuable for others, but if it's for you, it sort of should be an embarrassing thing to request. Yeah.
Go volunteer if you want to be inspired. Go out in society and find somebody inspiring.
That's not what the head legislator of the country necessarily. It's nice.
It's a nice bonus. If you get a little tingle up your leg when the president talks, that should be a bonus, a little cherry on top.
That's not the median requirement. Yeah, the idea that like, and I get where it's just a very like, I don't know, it's just a very Hollywood, oh, the country needs a hug right now.
The country doesn't need a hug. Such one of those movies.
People need hugs from their loved ones in their own private lives. The country needs effective governance and to defeat a despicable authoritarian movement.
That's what the country needs. Hugs after.
Go watch Finding Forrester. That's nice.
Go find a movie about a young man overcoming challenges. Whatever.
Go find something. That's fine.
You don't need a mom from Kamala. We're very aligned on this, John Lovett.
Look, you and I, you began by making... Peanut butter and jelly.
Tim Miller, you know him from the Bulwark.

Send all your negative comments at him.

As always, great to see you, Tim.

That's great.

And if you're the one person out there that agreed with all my takes today,

the Bulwark Plus is available on Substack.

Because I spent an hour for you.

See you, John. I miss you.

And if Tim isn't your cup of tea, don't worry.

Dan and John, back Friday morning.

Peace.

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