Trump Details His Dictatorial Plans

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Peace.

Speaker 6 Welcome to Pond Save America. I'm John Lovett and joining us.

Speaker 6 you know him from the Bulwark.

Speaker 6 You know him from MSNBC.

Speaker 4 You know him from being a little drunk alive with Lovett a little bit. That's right.

Speaker 6 It's Tim Miller.

Speaker 4 Thanks for being here. How are you doing, bro? Thanks for being here, Tim.

Speaker 4 I'm so excited. I think this is it.
This is official now.

Speaker 4 I just, for listeners, you know, you might have somebody in your life that was maybe a friend of me at one stage and maybe you had a little tension with at one point.

Speaker 4 And over the years, you grow and you grow a bond and appreciation for one another, and it blossoms into a

Speaker 4 real friendship. And I feel like that's officially happened right now.
Wow.

Speaker 6 At this moment. And just so everybody knows, his audio did

Speaker 6 break up for a second. He's had sexual tension.

Speaker 4 Yeah, well, that's what we had at one point. But I'm just saying, and now it's blossomed.
It's just like, it's so nice.

Speaker 4 It is nice. It's something that

Speaker 4 you don't know that this is coming. 20-year-olds out there, this is happening for you in your 40s.
There's somebody in your life right now, and you're like, that guy, never.

Speaker 4 But then when you're 40, 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 uh let's talk about gaza but speaking of

Speaker 6 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-down interview with time magazine laying out his vision for a second term and it's it's it's worrying.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Plus, the vice president sits down with Drew Barrymore and it makes everyone a little uncomfortable. Okay, first up, Trump.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 All the pomp and circumstance, the description of the room,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And then they did a follow-up 20-minute conversation. So

Speaker 6 we'll get to all the details, but just... Were you surprised, Tim, to see Donald Trump spend an hour doing this?

Speaker 4 I was. I have to be honest.

Speaker 4 There is a print Time magazine that appears that you can get now. Is that it? That still exists? I believe that's it.
Like an airport.

Speaker 4 So that was,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Trump might be an idiot, you know, and he might have had the wool pulled over his eyes a couple of times, but he certainly would not do an interview because he wanted a fake digital cover.

Speaker 4 I mean, this man would require a real physical cover.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And then once I interviewed the reporter this morning, Eric Cordelessa, and great reporter, tough interview.

Speaker 4 So please don't take this the wrong way, Eric, but he does give off like, I got drunk with Madison Cawthorne at a a Duke Lacrosse Party vibes.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 You know, he's going to get his cover and, you know, consequences be damned.

Speaker 6 Yeah. So,

Speaker 6 you know, the, the, the, 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.

Speaker 6 And it, yes, it, I do, I also associate Time Magazine now with the kind of downfall of Newsweek

Speaker 6 and U.S. News, 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.

Speaker 6 The idea behind sitting down for a long print interview, like there's no video, there's no audio, there's just a transcript,

Speaker 6 was that

Speaker 6 there was some value to getting out to elite news followers, to journalists, to close watchers of politics,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I don't believe they were doing anything as sophisticated as that. But if they were,

Speaker 6 what on earth were they hoping to accomplish by having the president, the former president, walk through all this stuff?

Speaker 4 Yeah, they wanted to accomplish the physical.

Speaker 4 He wants the framed.

Speaker 4 I just cannot emphasize this a lot. 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.

Speaker 4 Okay, granted that. Now moving on, what was their strategy beyond that?

Speaker 4 I do not know.

Speaker 4 I do not know. It doesn't seem like he went into the interview.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 But we would at least have like a proactive message we were trying to get across, right?

Speaker 4 That you would, 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.

Speaker 4 That was not what this was. It is total stream of consciousness, Donald Trump.
It is indistinguishable from his rallies,

Speaker 4 except for the fact that the reporter, Eric, got to kind of direct him into some, you know, into like a briar pit a little bit on abortion in particular, but also some on some other issues.

Speaker 4 And And there was no sign that they had like a proactive message that they were trying to get across.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so let's go through this. So it was wide-ranging.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 He wouldn't say he supports a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. He wouldn't commit to supporting Ukraine's defense.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 On abortion, what jumped out at you? And then, and we can go beyond that.

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 But he personally

Speaker 4 obviously doesn't care. And so he doesn't know how to speak the language of pro-lifers.

Speaker 4 Somebody who's a genuine pro-lifer, I think, would at least be astute enough to be able to move around the question of,

Speaker 4 are you comfortable with states monitoring women's pregnancies?

Speaker 4 And he feels like... Just by saying, oh, well, states get to decide, that's some amulet that protects him from all criticism on this, right? That he's like, oh, I don't know.
I guess I'm comfortable.

Speaker 4 If the states decide to do do it, the states decide to do it. And that is a crazy view, right?

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 That is...

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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 this stuff. He hasn't thought through any of this.

Speaker 4 And so he's just like, yeah, I guess if the states want to monitor women, they're going to monitor women.

Speaker 6 Yeah, he also, I think,

Speaker 6 he views himself as being very adept. at it

Speaker 6 at these politics. Now, at one point, he says, you know, did you see everyone adopted my IVF position? You know, he was asked about what his policy position is going to be on Mifipristone.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 What else jumped out at you?

Speaker 4 No, the Miff of Pristone thing was funny because he says in the first interview, which is Poolside with the Cougars at Mar-a-Lago and the Well Dunstakes, during that first interview, he's asked about his position on Mifipristone.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And the first question is, Are you ready to share your Miffopristone? Another two weeks. It's just like the Obamacare, the healthcare plan.
So he still doesn't have that.

Speaker 4 But again, I think part of that, I did wonder if during the first interview, if he knew what Miffopristone was, you know, and he was buying himself two weeks, but you'd think by the second interview, he would.

Speaker 4 And maybe he's just trying to dodge. And by talking, because it was similar to the IVF, and this takes you out of into even

Speaker 4 pro-life people, right? Like are horrified by the idea that women might not have access to Mifopristone in like the first days after,

Speaker 4 you know, having sex, right? Like, like, there are people that are, that would support a 15-week ban that think it's crazy that the states want to ban, you know, access to Mifopristone, for example.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And he did it over the course of 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.

Speaker 4 But obviously, once you get, once 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.

Speaker 6 Yes, and his ignorance on this is a feature for the

Speaker 6 kooks around him who are already planning to put in place use use an old federal law to make it impossible to mail

Speaker 6 abortion drugs to people and to use and deploy the federal government 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.

Speaker 6 So it's, you know, 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?

Speaker 6 Of course not.

Speaker 6 Will he stop some

Speaker 6 Schedule F flunky from doing something

Speaker 6 horrible in an agency? Of course he won't. He won't have the discipline or attention span to focus on it.

Speaker 4 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 like random blurts out are on these various policies

Speaker 4 in some ways.

Speaker 4 Directionally, we should care, but like on the details.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Like, should that be a litmus test for people that would be hired into your administration? And Trump says essentially yes, in kind of garbled Trump words.

Speaker 4 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, if somebody is too stupid to realize that the election was stolen from me.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Right.
And like the types, yeah. And so I thought that to me was as revealing as any of the policy stuff in the interview.

Speaker 6 And And as considering that. Yeah, so I want to get to that in one second.
Before I want to get to the implementation, because I do think that is, I agree with you. It's just as important.

Speaker 6 Before we get to that, were there any other policy points that he made or that the piece makes that jumps out?

Speaker 6 For one, that his number one agenda item when he comes in is going to be extending the Bush tax cuts,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Were there any other policy positions that jumped out at you?

Speaker 4 Yeah, well, two. As a free market capitalist, the thing that stood out to me was the 10% across the board tariffs,

Speaker 4 which is an absolutely insane policy that if people are concerned about prices will be disastrous.

Speaker 4 And he has no, just in general, like, I think it's frustrating to get this across to people, but like.

Speaker 4 You know, he says that he want he's going to fight the inflationary, the bite inflation, right? And like his policies are going to stop inflation, but every policy he has is inflationary.

Speaker 4 Extending the Bush tax cuts is inflationary. Fewer immigrants into the country is inflationary because that affects

Speaker 4 the number of people that we have in the workforce. Tariffs are obviously inflationary.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 But to me, maybe that's something for Nikki Haley voters that we can use.

Speaker 4 And then as someone who has has feelings and compassion, the deportation plans are absolutely insane. Insane.
And he keeps, and he goes along.

Speaker 4 Every step, the reporter asks him, 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.

Speaker 4 We're going to have local cops being our

Speaker 4 deportation

Speaker 4 troopers.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Like, we're going to not give funds to police, you know,

Speaker 4 to local police. So we're going to defund the police that will not do illegal deportations.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 that's the one area where he already has a team of competent sociopaths around him, led by Stephen Miller, who would be able able to execute on it.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And they already, by the way, you know, when they did family separation, it was

Speaker 6 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, you know, sort of second guess what they were doing.

Speaker 6 I don't think those guardrails exist in a second term.

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 I mean, and you could see like that great, I forget who wrote it.

Speaker 4 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, like the TikTok of it.

Speaker 4 What it revealed was it really only took Stephen Miller, Sessions, and there was one other person who were adamant about it and who just kept pushing and pushing at every restraint

Speaker 4 in the bureaucracy. And so if you now just imagine a situation where those bureaucratic restraints are, you know, mostly excise through the Schedule F changes that they've talked about.

Speaker 4 And they've, and they, instead of just having two or three people who are really get off on child separation, you have three or four times more of that

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 scary. And it's really kind of hard to calculate how much more damage they could do to immigrants than migrants.

Speaker 6 And by the way, using Schedule F to threaten people who might otherwise have to go along.

Speaker 4 And by the way, on top of that, using the pardoned power to give cover to people who are worried that they're doing something that's illegal.

Speaker 4 And I think that's the most pernicious thing about his pardoning, you know, about how I'm going to pardon all the January 6th folks. Last time I pardoned Bannon, I pardoned Manafort.

Speaker 4 Now, he basically would be sending a signal to

Speaker 4 the shock troops, as Bannon calls them, that they can go ahead and not worry if they're running afoul of various immigration laws while they execute these deportations.

Speaker 4 Because if some rogue liberal judge that Joe Biden appointed or some prosecutor goes after them, Trump will just pardon them.

Speaker 4 So I think the combining of the pardon with the Schedule F, I think it like really creates a very different environment for them in a second term.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 mercenary about it.

Speaker 6 One of the challenges, right, is you want to tell people on imports, right?

Speaker 6 hey if if if 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 yeah uh but it but but but i i worry a little bit that when we fight back against uh um that kind of a policy, it's tough to do because you end up sound, you don't want to sound like a 2000s-era Democrat talking about how good NAFTA is going to be.

Speaker 6 And then you got Ross Perot talking about the sucking sound of American jobs. Like,

Speaker 6 how do you talk about a policy that I have a feeling at the very least is one that like maybe people have mixed feelings about because they do worry about

Speaker 6 manufacturing and they do want jobs to be in the U.S.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, and Joe Biden kept a lot of his tariffs, right? So, and he doesn't have a clean message on that.

Speaker 4 To me, I think it's a negative message that is specifically targeted towards my people, like the Haley voters, the former Republicans, right?

Speaker 4 That's like, I don't know, maybe this is, maybe you're running these ads just on Brett Baer's show or something, I don't know, or in the Wall Street Journal. But I think if you combine.

Speaker 4 that 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.

Speaker 4 I don't think can be seen as a reliable partner for Israel based on his comments in this interview.

Speaker 4 The tariffs, if you combine the threats to take out of NATO, you know, this is not a huge segment of the population, but I think that you can micro-target some people in the Atlanta, Philly burbs, you know, that have been traditional Republican voters that also are responsive to the democracy message.

Speaker 4 And you can layer on top of that, this guy is going to do a 10%.

Speaker 4 They do like that. For that crew, like the 10% tax on tariffs, they respond to it like I would.
Like, this is going to be horrible. This is, you know, anti-market.
It's going to increase costs.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 It feels like a bank shot and that the campaign probably have better arguments.

Speaker 6 He was all over the place on Israel and Palestine. He was all over the place on BB.
It's actually very hard to figure out what he's even saying.

Speaker 6 This is always the problem when anyone tries to kind of, I don't know,

Speaker 6 mediate what Trump says into something coherent.

Speaker 6 And by the way, that's not a judgment of the journalist or the piece because the piece is very clear. Like he is contradictory.
And I do think

Speaker 6 the reporter really does follow up and push back and come back to things. Trump is just, you know, he's just, it's, it's sand through your fingers.
But he's, but just

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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 a two-state solution.

Speaker 6 Two-state solutions seem seem to be the idea that people like most, the policy or the idea that people liked above. Do you like it? says the reporter.
It depends when.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 4 He goes on to mention that Sheldon Adelson was against two states, I think, later on, in a different digression. We're not sending our best here.

Speaker 6 You mentioned this a few minutes ago.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 including the danger of being surrounded by anyone who has their own reputation to protect.

Speaker 6 What jumped out at you in terms of

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You mentioned schedule, ridiculous, ridiculous, but you mentioned schedule F.

Speaker 6 What jumped out at you?

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 to me, it's really that litmus test thing just because it's so insane.

Speaker 4 It's so insane.

Speaker 4 It is, you know, we say this, it's like almost cliche to like throw, to be like, oh, it's a cult. But like, it is kind of a cult.

Speaker 4 You have to, you have, in order to join this administration, you have to at least pay lip service to denying reality.

Speaker 4 And like that sets a tone. And it sets a tone with the pardons.

Speaker 4 It sets a tone with the for the existing people that they know that they could be fired, where it's like, now you have to watch yourself. And I think I might have told this on this podcast before.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And on a couple of conference calls, he's, you know, he's like, I don't know about this thing Mr. Trump is saying.

Speaker 4 You know, it's a little crazy. I don't know if the RNC needs to echo this.
He did it like two or three times.

Speaker 4 Jared Kushner was out on any of these calls and he gets gets a call from Jared Kushner out of the blue one day. He's like, Are you good? Are we all good? Is everybody on the same page?

Speaker 4 And like that kind of mafioso attitude, um, you know, which they had in the first term, but they were not, they didn't know how to implement.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Like, they're not going to have, they might have people around who aren't true believers, but they're, they're going to be the types of people who are sociopathic enough to

Speaker 6 not ever reveal that they're not a true believer yeah i also think it does something else that's also uh pernicious which is it makes signing on to be part of this administration a door that locks behind you you know ran on 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 that even see even nbc higher-up executives thought oh they sorted her into the serious old school Republican bucket, not the mega maniac bucket.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 be part of polite society, right? And so now you say to these people, if you want to be part of this of Trump world, you've got to sign on to this.

Speaker 6 He kind of,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 4 Totally agree.

Speaker 6 The other piece of this is there there are a lot of people thinking very hard around Trump, not Trump, about how he can better use federal power.

Speaker 6 I saw a blast from the past phrase, the unitary executive theory, back from the Bush administration.

Speaker 6 They also talk about trying to get the president more authority to not spend money Congress has appropriated, right?

Speaker 6 This would be for everything from not sending money to the police to not funding social safety net programs. Did any of that come out to you?

Speaker 4 It's not been a good quarter century for the libertarians among us.

Speaker 4 I think I'm actually using Jerry Executive Theory.

Speaker 4 Look, it did.

Speaker 4 And I think that, again, when I talk to, there's a hand, like my old friends don't talk to me anymore, you know, because there is the

Speaker 4 betrayal.

Speaker 4 obviously some of the mega folks will talk to me um though and um you know because they just whatever they always saw me as an enemy and uh the one of them uh as an enemy within, and now I'm an enemy without.

Speaker 4 In some ways, I'm less threatening.

Speaker 4 And so when they, I talk to them, this is what they talk about all the time, right? Like that they have had to have learned from the first term, right? That,

Speaker 4 you know, consolidating power within the executive, that there was a lot of deferring. Trump didn't know any better.

Speaker 4 Trump was utterly 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.

Speaker 4 And the mindset is totally different now.

Speaker 6 Couple quick things before we go to break. Are you ready to get into the good, the ad, and the ugly?

Speaker 6 In the latest episode of Political Experts React, Dan is joined by MSNBC host Alex Wagner to break down viral political ads from Gavin Newsom, the Biden campaign, and Republican voters against Trump.

Speaker 6 To watch this hit series, type Pod Save America into the nearest YouTube search bar.

Speaker 6 Also, from Trump's hush money trial to some pivotal Supreme Court hearings, the last few weeks have been a whirlwind. Want to keep up with it all, but have a life we can't relate.
But we've got you.

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Speaker 10 Hey, weirdos, I'm Elena, and I'm Ash, and we are the host of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 9 Each week, we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 10 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 9 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 10 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 9 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts. Yay! Woo! Aye!

Speaker 6 All right, while Trump was apparently dozing off in court, President Biden and administration were having a big week.

Speaker 6 Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that the DEA is taking steps towards reclassifying marijuana.

Speaker 6 Anonymous sources said that Attorney General Merrick Garland will formally recommend moving marijuana from a Schedule I drug to a Schedule III drug that puts it alongside testosterone and Tylenol.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Because we tighten him.
Yeah, we're going to light it up. Are we going to do a blunt together right now to celebrate? Yeah.
Look, man,

Speaker 4 this has felt like a no-brainer from the start. And that Joe Biden has been resisting.
I don't have any internal,

Speaker 4 you know, Joe Biden's a teetotaler. Joe Biden's from a different era.
I don't know if you noticed that. And so I think that he

Speaker 4 has been somewhat resistant to this. But like, it's a political matter.
It is fucking obvious just based on what has been like, look at what happens on ballot initiatives anywhere.

Speaker 4 I mean, like in Missouri, they passed a, you know, kind of marijuana decriminalization or,

Speaker 4 you know, maybe it was medical, but like Missouri has moved like basically into Alabama territory when it comes to like voting for Republicans, you know, and voting for far-right Republicans in blowout elections.

Speaker 4 And like on the same ballot, they are voting for liberalizing marijuana laws.

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 4 Like, to you, like, like, there was like a period, like in 2015, it'd be like, let's get the youth excited by talking about legalizing marijuana.

Speaker 4 I don't know that the youth really care about that anymore.

Speaker 6 Yes. Well, I think part of the problem is that, well, it depends on where the youth are, right? And also, it depends on

Speaker 6 what this actually does.

Speaker 6 You know, we 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.

Speaker 4 Like California. It's kind of like a weed gummy.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But it's like two hours after you ate it.

Speaker 6 You almost forget why.

Speaker 6 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 I drug.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I remember though, I wanted to, I was reflecting on something, which is, I think we owe

Speaker 6 certain old school conservative pundits from the 90s an apology because I vividly remember Robert Novak.

Speaker 6 Robert Novak was a curmudgeonly

Speaker 6 conservative television pundit. And I remember there was this debate about medical marijuana.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And this is supported, blah, blah, blah. And then they get to Robert Novak and he goes, this is the hippies.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And I think deep down we all knew that at the time, and you were being guestlit.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 6 You're dead now, Robert Novak. But nevertheless.

Speaker 4 You were right about that in 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.

Speaker 4 I was walking into Janice Fest last week, and there were some, you know, some young, young progressives, you know, kind of multi-hair colored, look at me and maybe think, maybe I could be somebody they could win over on the issue of gay rights.

Speaker 4 I don't know. I guess wasn't, 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, whoa, like my old instincts came back out.

Speaker 4 I was like, wait a minute, there's no gay agenda.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And the 90s Republican pundits were right about that.

Speaker 6 Yeah. They just, you know, they saw what was coming.
Yeah. One other note on this.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 4 Hey, Tim,

Speaker 6 maybe we do need a Trump's cleansing bureaucratic fire.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, I do think that

Speaker 4 we could probably get rid of a few bureaucrats. I do.

Speaker 4 I maintain that view. I do have to say it.
I'm discussing, I have, I'm talking with Josh Shapiro here in a few hours.

Speaker 4 And one thing I want to ask him, which I'm excited to hear, is like, you know, I-95 collapses. I'm like, it's fixed in two days.
It's fixed in two days.

Speaker 4 And I'm like, over in California, they've been trying to build a train for like 20 years now. And like, we spent $800 million and we haven't even put down any tracks, you know, because we have CEQA.

Speaker 4 And so, I don't know. Yeah, we could, 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.

Speaker 4 I don't want to fire too many people, but I don't know, maybe do less. How about do less, bureaucrats?

Speaker 6 Well, how about do more faster? Do cheaper?

Speaker 4 Or do less. Yeah, do less review.
I want to do more faster.

Speaker 6 I want to do more faster and cheaper.

Speaker 6 For the record,

Speaker 6 if there is any place where we can

Speaker 6 do faster, it was not to gut the government

Speaker 6 2010-era Tim Miller style. All right.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 slowlier.

Speaker 6 I do think Biden being out there on marijuana ultimately, like I, I, I think that put aside the, like, the, the policy taking time

Speaker 6 and the fact that,

Speaker 6 to your point, it does feel like weed has legalized itself. Uh, I do think that there's value to having, like, I think for people, people who know that this policy is

Speaker 6 just completely indefensible, I would like to see President Biden saying that I'm out there trying to do this.

Speaker 6 And by the way, I've taken steps on behalf of people that have been locked up for non-violent marijuana offenses. I think that that's all really positive.

Speaker 4 Yeah, we've been joking about this, but it is the criminal justice side of this is serious. Like, you know, the weed might be legal in our hearts as like rich whites, but like it has

Speaker 4 maintained,

Speaker 4 it is still a problem for people that have less advantages. And there are still people in jail

Speaker 4 for weed crimes. And so on that side of things, I think that is a good argument to make.

Speaker 4 And maybe that can be more motivating also to progressives when it's framed that way and less about like, you know,

Speaker 4 you know, smoking spliffs or whatever. Yeah, I think that's right.

Speaker 6 I just, I also just, it is like

Speaker 6 the fact that we have had this

Speaker 6 quasi-legal status for so long is it is so.

Speaker 6 morally bankrupt that we have people in jail in one place in one 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 i like it it does to me it's outrageous and we we we we could talk about it in auspicia but I do think it speaks to like you know you

Speaker 6 a larger conversation but like how does the society become kind of soft enough that 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 snapping at you like I'm in the New York Times break room please please do please do speaking of the youth overnight A lot of developments in the campus protest movement in New York.

Speaker 6 NYPD officers in riot gear and riding an armored vehicle moved in on Hamilton Hall.

Speaker 6 The Zionists have taken back Hamilton Hall.

Speaker 6 While protesters had occupied it and barricaded it, officers also cleared out an encampment at City College. Nearly 300 people were arrested, according to a very satisfied Eric Adams.

Speaker 6 A lot is happening everywhere, Tulane, Yale, University of Wisconsin, here in LA.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 There's 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 4 What?

Speaker 6 And it was, I was glad to see you had a back and forth with Mehdi Hansen, who we had on Love It or Leave It last week.

Speaker 6 And the fact that I think that there was so much comedy between the two of you, I think, speaks to the fact that

Speaker 6 there really hasn't been that space during this moment, in part because I think Republicans don't want want it to be. They want to talk about the chaos.
They want to exploit this.

Speaker 6 But I also think the media owns this. I think Democrats own this.
And the students themselves, by the way, who have agency and are

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 4 Yeah, we're doing it right now.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 yeah, look, I think that there are a lot of people that are afraid to say what they really think about this.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And I feel like that there are a lot of people that have the views about this conflict and these protests.

Speaker 4 And there's some, and, and, and, and I think that we need to make it okay for people to express their views without immediately going to ad hominem and, you know, saying, oh, that means you're on BB's side.

Speaker 4 That means you're on the terrorist side. Like when it comes to BB and when it comes to Hamas, I think about, are you ever on Reddit? You know the from time to time?

Speaker 4 You know the Am I the Asshole Reddit feed? Yes. Right.
So on the Am I the Asshole, somebody writes a story about how they've been a jerk to their colleague or something.

Speaker 4 And 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.

Speaker 4 And like, that's how I feel about the Hamas BB situation. Like everybody sucks here.
Okay. Like obviously not the innocent people that have been killed or

Speaker 4 whether they were in a kibbutz or whether they're in Gaza. But when it comes to the leadership of Israel, pretty much everybody sucks here.

Speaker 4 When it comes to Hamas, who is still holding hostages and still using their own people as human shields, everybody sucks here.

Speaker 4 And unfortunately, I feel that way a little bit about the Colombia situation, where I think there are many protesters who are very earnest in their protest against the war.

Speaker 4 And I think Mehdi, and this was part of me and Mehdi's exchange yesterday, where Mehdi's like, well, Tim, the reason why they're not protesting Hamas is because we're not giving weapons to Hamas.

Speaker 4 And they're only protesting Israel because that's, you know, where we have some, you know, control in our democratic government. And I'm like, okay, I guess that's fine.

Speaker 4 But it'd be nice to have if the protests also included some people with signs that said, by the way, Hamas sucks too.

Speaker 4 And unfortunately, what I see in those protests are a couple people that have like Hezbollah flags or a couple people that are like, Jews should go back to Europe or America where they came from, which is just ahistorical, or glory to our martyrs.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 a little bit more, you know,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And it's only in America and third world countries. Like there's, this is not happening in Germany or in, you know, Sweden if there if there are protests.

Speaker 4 You know, 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.

Speaker 6 Yeah, there's a, 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.

Speaker 6 Yeah. 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

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 now I have to think in both, right? Like you are correct. Like it is both, I think, less effective and I think less

Speaker 6 morally defensible to not make denouncing Hamas's holding of hostage a part of

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 However, they have successfully drawn attention to what is the urgent

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And then I think, well, you know what?

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 to achieve what they claim to be their goals.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And I don't want to 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?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I'm with that. I get it.
I think about that for sure.

Speaker 4 And maybe you could argue there's been some success there. The fact that there's some more,

Speaker 4 you know, food trucks are getting in. You know, would that have happened without the, I don't know.
Would that have happened without the protests? You know, it's hard to do that counterfactual.

Speaker 4 I will say this, though. There's just not another situation for a group besides Jews where it would be acceptable

Speaker 4 in polite liberal society to hold a protest where people are just, where there are members of the protest that are dehumanizing and personally attacking people from a specific religious or ethnic group.

Speaker 4 Like it's 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.

Speaker 4 There's not, it's a protest, right? There are going to be a lot of people out there. You can, you can nut pick one sign.
Like, sure. Like,

Speaker 4 there's no way to totally control every protester's sign or chant. And there have been some gross chants from the pro-Jewish counter-protesters, by the way.

Speaker 4 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 widespread condemnation about that.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 6 I agree with that. And, and, and at the same, you know, and now the response is, right, well, there are also Jewish students who are part of these protests.
But

Speaker 6 I think that the issue, right, is like,

Speaker 6 why, right?

Speaker 6 Why does this happen, right?

Speaker 6 Why does this, why does there, even if you, 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,

Speaker 6 they are not shouting anti-Semitic statements. They are not shouting slurs, but they're but people that do do that are drawn to the outskirts or are inside of these protests.

Speaker 6 We saw one of the leaders in Colombia, which has also gotten an absurd amount of attention,

Speaker 6 but nevertheless saying horrible things

Speaker 6 came to attention, shocking that that person is still uh um uh walk was shot was walking around until uh it drew national embarrassment for the school.

Speaker 6 Um, but I do think that that's a question, right? Why did why does this draw this kind of anti-Semitism?

Speaker 6 And I think it is because this line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism 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

Speaker 6 it does get my backup because it's so quick to be thrown as a slur.

Speaker 6 And so, I just, in the end, I just like, this is really fucking hard.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's a liberal Zionist. It's the liberals.

Speaker 4 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 like, and have moved there and love being there.

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 they're being treated like shit

Speaker 4 by their friends, like on social media and by some of these protesters. They're being treated terribly.

Speaker 4 And so, yeah, sure, they're anti-Zionist Jews that are part of the protests, but like that group, they didn't do anything wrong. Like they're not bombing Hamas.

Speaker 4 Their friends or relatives or acquaintances got killed by Hamas, right?

Speaker 4 And all they're trying to say is we 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.

Speaker 4 Those people aren't doing anything wrong, and they're being treated very poorly by the protesters. Is that the acute problem? Like, as compared to

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Every time you say that, yeah, everyone sucks here. A lot of people are getting screwed here, but it's worth saying, though.

Speaker 6 I think it's worth saying for another reason, which forget us, forget the tone policing in addition to the baton policing that's going on.

Speaker 6 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...

Speaker 6 you know, chanting from the river to the sea,

Speaker 6 making it this Manichean struggle between colonialists and anti-colonialists, none of it puts actual peace for actual human beings closer. And actually, I think

Speaker 6 if it is effective, it puts those things farther away because there's no answer to this problem

Speaker 6 that involves ratifying those kinds of ideas. They are is far from it.
And that to me, I do think is important.

Speaker 6 And more, and not just because I don't like what they're saying, and I don't like how it makes people feel. How Americans currently feel is not the most important thing.

Speaker 6 I think it is because the larger struggle that peace in this larger struggle requires rejecting those kinds of ideas. Yeah.

Speaker 4 You just have me on. You just want to just peel away the onion and just, you know, find you're like, I want to bring up tariffs.
I want to, I want to dunk on progressive protesters.

Speaker 4 Like, let's talk about Steve Motoro. Every time I'm on the bottom,

Speaker 6 you're trying to

Speaker 4 do it.

Speaker 4 It's intentional. I get it.
That's fine. I'm happy to do it.
I'm happy to be your little, I don't know, token.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 9 Hey, weirdos!

Speaker 10 I'm Elena, and I'm Ash, and we are the host of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 9 Each week, we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 10 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 9 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 10 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

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Speaker 6 One last crass political question about this situation, which is

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 4 Many constituencies, not just the Jewish constituency, youth,

Speaker 4 Arab,

Speaker 4 just broadly people of color, I think. There's a lot of folks that have genuine unhappiness and concerns.
Situation, it's a wedge.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Our friend Jessica Mosh is gone, so maybe there aren't any good ones left.

Speaker 4 You know, they don't mind seeing the cops with their batons going in there and knocking some heads. They think that's a winner for them.

Speaker 4 Donald Trump,

Speaker 4 I think, bleeded and the protests now. Like there is no nuance here.

Speaker 4 You know, Jared Kushner's talking about

Speaker 4 building Mar-a-Lago on the strip in Gaza. So they think it's a winner across the board.
They might be right.

Speaker 4 And I think that it's concerning. You know, it's like it is concerning.
If there are, you know, young voters, like

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 you know, who left the Republican Party over Trump

Speaker 4 that are not. happy with him.

Speaker 4 The young voters are in his coalition. Dearboard 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.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 6 Yeah, well, that's, it is,

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 potentially alienating key constituents Biden needs, like Arab voters and

Speaker 6 young voters, while at the same time,

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 4 For sure. Yeah.
And I think it's working.

Speaker 4 It's alarming to me.

Speaker 4 But anecdotally speaking,

Speaker 4 you know, this 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.

Speaker 4 But it could be important in Atlanta, could be important in Philly, which is, you know, Wall Street Journal reading conservatives who are either Jewish or, you know, 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.

Speaker 4 Trump will defend us.

Speaker 4 Maybe I have to go back to Trump. There's a whole Dan Senor who works for Paul Singer, who used to be a Never Trump or who is a big donor who went back to Trump.
Paul Singer's already back at Trump.

Speaker 4 It seems like Dan is sympathetic to that.

Speaker 4 You see this.

Speaker 4 And I was actually just with someone today

Speaker 4 who said that

Speaker 4 who's Jewish, who said that their friends,

Speaker 4 they have friends that feel this way. So is that going to change by November? You know, will cooler heads prevail? Hopefully.

Speaker 4 But I do think that there is a small demo of group voters that were traditionally Republican, that were gettable for Biden, that are,

Speaker 4 you know, that are starting to lean back towards Trump over this.

Speaker 4 I find that asinite, just to be unboundedly clear, I find that asinite and insane that you would, that on the issue of anti-Semitism, you would, you would go back to the person that had lunch with Nick Fuentes and Kanye.

Speaker 4 I find it ludicrous in the extreme, but that doesn't mean that it's not happening.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 square to circle here. He needs to assuage the concerns of

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 4 Man, and this is going to be a very untimed thing. This is on the Pod Bro podcast.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And this was his whole bit starting in 04. Like there are red states and there are blue states.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Like, he's 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?

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 If you read the Biden administration, White House's written statements, they usually are very empathetic, very nuanced, very thoughtful. Um,

Speaker 4 but but they're not letting him loose on it. Um, and maybe for, maybe for good reason.
I don't know, I think that it's really, it's dicey.

Speaker 4 But I do think that he needs to speak out more. And you could speak out from first principles.

Speaker 4 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 the inverse of my original statement where we started this, everything's an asshole.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 I'm worried about free speech rights.

Speaker 4 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,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I think that's right. I do think that in moments like this when

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But this moment, I don't think you've seen it, and I think we'd like to get your live reaction.

Speaker 4 I've not.

Speaker 14 I've been thinking that we really all need a tremendous hug in the world right now,

Speaker 14 but in our country,

Speaker 14 we need you to be mamala of the country.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I don't like that.

Speaker 4 It made me very uncomfortable.

Speaker 6 It made me very uncomfortable.

Speaker 4 It made Kabbalah very uncomfortable. I know, I like that.
I like this.

Speaker 6 What is going on?

Speaker 4 Is she about to touch me?

Speaker 6 It's

Speaker 6 everybody, we don't need any politician to be mom. We don't need to be mamala.
We don't need to be dad-a-law. We don't need a national dad.
We don't need any of that shit.

Speaker 6 It's a city where they go to write laws and regulations and to implement policies that affect our lives. They're not dad.

Speaker 6 They're not mom. I hate that shit.

Speaker 4 Me too. We need a head of government.
By the way, this was like, this is fundamentally American, love it, where you're getting at. Like, this is John Adams.

Speaker 4 Like, John Adams wanted to name the president His Excellency excellency or some and george washington was like 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 are not like the royal family they don't need to be anything special that does

Speaker 4 that i'm with you on that also the touching also the touching yeah because you had a moment where carrie late touched you during it was very it was kind of similar it was kind of similar she i don't mind if you touch me on the shoulders shoulders, I don't know.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 And it's like, you can touch me on my shoulder. We can hug.
But there's something about the four, like eight fingers.

Speaker 6 Remember when George W. Bush lost himself for a second and tried to give Angela Merkel like a shoulder rub?

Speaker 6 Truly was just like he like miscategorized.

Speaker 6 Like he just, he just did something he might do like to to a relative or a loved one but he just he just like kind of as he was passing gave her a quick energy shivered like i've never seen a person shiver the other piece of this too is like politics is emotional because it's serious and the stakes are very very high but we actually don't need these figures to assuage

Speaker 6 it's actually the mirror of the people people who say like oh they don't find joe biden inspiring okay

Speaker 6 i get wanting joe biden to inspire other people because you want politics to have outcomes 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 XIV being like, bring me a show.

Speaker 6 I'd like to see something.

Speaker 6 Bring me a lovely cake and a show. It's like, that's not what this is about.
Like, if you're feeling worried and anxious about politics, it's not Kamala Harris's job to assuage you.

Speaker 6 It might be valuable. for others, but if it's for you, it sort of should be an embarrassing thing to request.

Speaker 4 Yeah, go volunteer if you want to be inspired. You know, go out in society and and find somebody inspiring.
That's not what the,

Speaker 4 you know, the head legislator of the country necessarily. It's nice.
It's a nice bonus.

Speaker 4 You know, if you get a little tingle up your leg when the president talks, like, that's not, that should be a bonus, you know, a little cherry on top. That's not the median requirement.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 4 It's one of those things.

Speaker 6 People need hugs from their loved ones in their own private lives. The country needs effective governance

Speaker 6 and to defeat a despicable authoritarian movement. That's what the country needs.
Hugs after.

Speaker 4 Go watch Finding Forrester. That's nice.
You know,

Speaker 4 go watch a movie about a young man overcoming challenges. You know, whatever.
Go find something. That's fine.
You don't need a mom from Kamala.

Speaker 4 We're very aligned on this, John Lovett.

Speaker 6 Look, you and I,

Speaker 6 you began to.

Speaker 6 Tim Miller, you know him from the bulwark. Uh, send all your negative comments at him.
Uh, as always, great to see you, Tim. And, uh, that's great.

Speaker 4 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. All right.
See you, John.

Speaker 6 I miss you. And if Tim isn't your cup of tea, don't worry.
Dan and John, back Friday morning.

Speaker 4 Peace.

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Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.

Speaker 5 Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and and Farah Safari. Kira Wakim is our senior producer.
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Speaker 15 The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

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