Mar-a-Lago's Funniest Home Videos

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Speaker 2 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favra.

Speaker 4 I'm the alien Mussolini found, John Lovett.

Speaker 6 I'm Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 2 On today's show, Donald Trump's primary opponents wake up to the fact that they're running against a criminal defendant who's still nearly 40 points ahead of them.

Speaker 2 Sam Alito flips off Congress in the Wall Street Journal. A House Republican screams at some kids.
Kevin McCarthy almost comes to blows with Eric Swalwell. Aliens might exist.

Speaker 2 And later, Tommy talks with Lydia Kiesling about her new novel, Mobility, our very first book from Crooked Reads.

Speaker 2 But first, we are still waiting for Donald Trump to get indicted over his attempted coup. Any minute now.
Maybe by the time you've heard this. I think I even said that before.

Speaker 2 But Jack Smith has given us a few more crimes to tide us over.

Speaker 2 On Friday, he filed what's known as a superseding indictment in the Classified Documents case that charges Trump with two additional counts of conspiring to destroy surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago after it was subpoenaed, and one additional count of violating the Espionage Act for illegally retaining the classified war plans that he's on tape talking about with Mark Meadows' biographers.

Speaker 2 Trump also has a new co-defendant, a Mar-a-Lago property manager named Carlos de Oliveira, who, along with Trump and his valet Walt Nauda, was charged with trying to delete those security cameras.

Speaker 2 Altogether, the GOP frontrunner now faces 74 felony counts with more on the way, which made his entrance music at the Lincoln dinner in Des Moines this weekend a bit too on the nose.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's the election right there. It's perfect.
Could end up going to prison. Could end up being president.
That's it. That's what we got.

Speaker 2 All right, what did you guys find most notable or damning in the superseding indictment?

Speaker 4 So a couple things. I hadn't seen, this came out when we were in New York doing, and I'd seen some, read some news about it, but I hadn't actually seen the document.

Speaker 2 First of all, you were a low-information voter who's now become a high-information voter.

Speaker 4 Yes, absolutely. And so, first of all, there's incredible, first of all, Jack, again, thank you.
Great job. Great writing.

Speaker 2 Scab.

Speaker 4 A couple things. One, Trump spoke to Daily Vera for 24 minutes.
That is a long conversation.

Speaker 5 Yeah, to kick off the whole thing.

Speaker 4 To kick off the whole thing. That's 24 minutes.
What were they talking about for 24 long minutes? The person that it wasn't about what?

Speaker 4 Like the grass isn't, like, the grass isn't where I need it to be.

Speaker 4 The pool isn't good. We got to do a, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta do the gutters.

Speaker 2 Here's what I can't figure out. How do you think they got that conversation? How do you think they know that was 24 minutes between Trump and Oliver? Because he's not cooperating.

Speaker 6 Any cell phone record?

Speaker 2 You just send you guys. So we don't put whip.
The contents of the call, we're guessing are you don't know.

Speaker 6 You just need the metadata of like start stop.

Speaker 4 We just know, yeah, we have that. And then the other, the other, um, the other thing that really jumps out is the lengths to which Nauta was going to keep his involvement.

Speaker 4 I mean, obviously, idiotically, but like

Speaker 4 the shush emoji, that's hilarious. But one thing that must clearly come from security camera footage is the fact that when Nauta meets with De Olivera,

Speaker 4 Nauta comes through the bushes, grabs old De Olivera, and says, come with me. And they go through the bushes to some adjacent property, talk for a minute, and then De Olivera comes back.

Speaker 4 So Nauta didn't want people who worked at Mar-a-Lago to know he was there that day.

Speaker 4 And so he's scurrying around, but clearly getting caught on the footage that their mandate was apparently to destroy, which is a little bit confusing. I love that.

Speaker 4 I love coming in and out of the bushes.

Speaker 6 That's my favorite part, too.

Speaker 6 Doing this sort of cloak and dagger nonsense and getting caught on the security camera footage that you were trying to delete.

Speaker 4 It's perfect. Well, they're getting caught on the footage they're trying to delete.
There's clearly the other side of the text messages have now been given over to the special counsel.

Speaker 4 So because we have the shush emoji.

Speaker 4 So between the first indictment and

Speaker 4 this indictment,

Speaker 4 he was his lawyer. He had the same lawyer as all these guys.

Speaker 4 He clearly, this indictment comes out and he's like, oh, no, thank you.

Speaker 2 He had a target letter.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And he does not, he's like, I don't want to be a part of this at all.

Speaker 6 No, he got a target letter from the FBI saying you're a target of this investigation.

Speaker 6 That's when he clearly started talking because the FBI knew he wasn't being forthcoming about what he knew in some way.

Speaker 4 Yes. And so then they switched lawyers.
And so then he switches lawyers and then he's in this document being like, I don't know. I don't think this is right.
Which is how I, which is I, which I love.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, what he

Speaker 2 you're usually convinced by a target letter to when someone tells you

Speaker 2 the target of the investigation to maybe change your mind on something that you might not have said before.

Speaker 6 Right. And so what he must have provided to the FBI that we've learned in the superseding indictment is the detail of this conversation in the audio closet.

Speaker 6 Which, do you guys know what is an audio closet?

Speaker 5 Does anyone know this?

Speaker 2 The podcast studio?

Speaker 2 I think we're in an audio closet. So currently where we are.
So we're all located. It's where you have some speakers set up.
I don't know.

Speaker 6 That's where they had this conversation.

Speaker 6 But like everything about this superseding indictment makes sense to me because from the very beginning, the problem wasn't necessarily the original crime of taking these documents.

Speaker 2 It was all the moronic ways Trump tried to cover it up.

Speaker 6 And here we are again, like telling Walt Nauda to go fix it and get the IT guy to delete all this footage and all this cloak and dagger nonsense.

Speaker 6 It's, you know, created this open and shut obstruction case.

Speaker 4 Here's the thing that I also don't understand, which is this is all taking place in June, but

Speaker 4 the famous flooding

Speaker 4 is until October. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Interesting. We still don't know about the flooding and

Speaker 2 how that's involved. We know that it's the same thing.

Speaker 4 I'm just desperate for the involvement.

Speaker 2 I know, I know. We all are.
But

Speaker 2 it does seem like

Speaker 2 Taveris, the I.T. guy, also gave them the signal chat

Speaker 2 or multiple signal chats where

Speaker 2 Nauda, Trump's co-defendant valet, asked an employee whether de Oliveira would remain loyal to Trump.

Speaker 2 And then they have Trump calling de Oliveira again, promising to get him a lawyer, which this is the move. This is the move.

Speaker 2 Get everyone a lawyer. And then suddenly, when they don't have the lawyer that was paid for by the Trump organization or the Trump super PAC, suddenly they have other things to do.
Strategy changes.

Speaker 2 Yeah. This is what happened with Cassidy Hutchinson during the January 6th hearings.

Speaker 2 She got a new lawyer, and suddenly she was talking more. So

Speaker 2 this seems to be a pattern. I also think so much of the focus of this last superseding indictment has been on the

Speaker 2 destroying the security footage, but the charge of willfully retaining the Iran war plans seems pretty open and shut because they clearly now have the document and they have Trump on tape not only talking about the document but talking about how he's not supposed to have it.

Speaker 2 And now they have Trump also going out there and lying and saying, Oh, it sounds like I was just showing them plans. I was showing them building plans the whole time.

Speaker 2 What you heard on that tape wasn't true. It's like, well, no, no, they have the fucking document.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and they also have Carlos de Oliveira lying about knowledge of the boxes getting sent to Mar-a-Lago in the first place.

Speaker 6 And the question now becomes,

Speaker 6 does De Oliveira or Walt Nauda, do they freak out and flip and give testimony? Because they're in even bigger trouble than they were before.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 4 that was the other thing that I took away from this, which is like...

Speaker 4 Like Nauda has been around Trump for a long time. This guy, De Oliveira, he just works at Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 4 And he just got roped into this. And you read the transcript of the moment where DOJ is now saying that De Oliveira was lying.

Speaker 4 And he's asked the question, do you, were you, do you ever even, do you, do you even know like if you were even there or where that boxes were? And before the question is even done, he's like, no.

Speaker 4 Like all this stuff was being moved in. Never saw anything.
Never. Never saw nothing.
And it just reads like somebody just completely in a situation they had never, no, didn't plan to be in.

Speaker 6 He needed a little legal guidance before that. I do not recall would have gotten him a lot further.

Speaker 4 And he is, and he is having this conversation. And he is put in this position because he is sharing.
He is, his lawyer is the same as Nauta's lawyer. He is in the same boat as all these other guys.

Speaker 4 And it's, I guess, today he

Speaker 4 didn't actually make a plea because he didn't have a local lawyer.

Speaker 4 But you have to wonder if people in this person's life isn't saying, like, hey, man, you got to save yourself. Trump does not give a fuck what happens to you.
He's destroying your life.

Speaker 2 If he chose to cooperate, or if for some reason NATO chooses to cooperate, undoubtedly it strengthens the case.

Speaker 2 But I will say, Jack Smith, so far, from what we've seen in these indictments, from what we've heard from him, seems pretty damn thorough.

Speaker 2 Like he has locked up this case. So

Speaker 2 if De Oliveira decides not to cooperate, if Nader decides not to cooperate, if they decide to stay loyal to Trump, it's still like this guy's got a lot of evidence.

Speaker 2 That's just what we've seen so far and read in the indictment. There's a whole bunch of stuff that we probably don't even know.

Speaker 4 And the other part of this, too, is there's all these questions around Eileen Kennett and how much she's going to be in the tank for Trump.

Speaker 4 Jack Smith is making her life so much harder if what she wants to do is be friendly to Trump.

Speaker 4 First of all, you had this motion where Trump is like, hey, can I look at classified documents in Mar-a-Lago?

Speaker 2 And they're like, no, you fucking idiot.

Speaker 4 That's what this is all about in the first place.

Speaker 4 And so it's just like, you know, let, like, he is being, he's not putting, he's not putting this Trump judge in a position to be able to help him because this is so fucking embarrassing and damning.

Speaker 2 He has to, he has to, his lawyers ask to discuss them in Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster.

Speaker 2 Like, you know, so maybe not necessarily see the, have the documents there, but discuss the documents in someplace that's not a skiff.

Speaker 2 And again, that is the whole point of why we're here is because Mar-a-Lago was never a skiff, nor was Bedminster.

Speaker 6 You're also reminded in all this, like, Trump tries to operate like a mob boss. He doesn't email.
He doesn't put things in text message. He only does in-person meetings.

Speaker 6 But all the morons around him put everything in writing. They talk on the phone.
They're sloppy. They're ham-handed.
They crawl through the bushes to have a meeting that's being taped in real time.

Speaker 5 It's just...

Speaker 2 So Trump's response to this to the superseding indictment has been to say that actually the tapes weren't deleted and he never told anyone to delete them.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Think his lawyers wrote that one? You think that was on advice of counsel?

Speaker 4 Yes. Well, that's the thing.
Like all the

Speaker 4 evidence that Trump was directly involved is in the conversations that Nauda and De Livera had with all these other people, right? There's no actual text from Trump. There's no words from Trump.

Speaker 4 It's all took place in phone calls. I mean, it's all obviously clearly what happened.

Speaker 2 So his defense is going to be that

Speaker 2 Walt Nauda and Carlos de Livera and the IT guy, they all just made the shit up. They made up the whole thing.

Speaker 4 They They were like, they cared about me so much. Obviously, I was concerned about these, about what was happening, but they were just trying to protect me.

Speaker 2 They didn't delete any surveillance footage, but they thought that maybe they should for some reason. Yeah,

Speaker 2 that's his defense. Well, that's the thing.

Speaker 4 It goes even further than that, which is in this document, the DOJ sent a draft subpoena. All of this takes place after DOJ sent to the channel.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's why he was charged.

Speaker 2 You can delete your own surveillance footage if you don't get a subpoena for the footage.

Speaker 4 But no, but like he gets the draft subpoena and the next day, all of this is spun up.

Speaker 2 No time to waste. No time to waste.
Very sloppy. No time to waste.
And this apps are coming.

Speaker 4 This app broke nothing. But whatever, all these

Speaker 4 damning transcripts, so they have the footage of all these guys running around with boxes, trying to figure out how to delete server videos, which they don't know how to do and can't figure out.

Speaker 4 And then they go and they talk to DOJ.

Speaker 4 They go and talk to the grand jury and they're like, I didn't see anything. I didn't do anything.
I didn't see any boxes. And I know this is...

Speaker 9 Can we just roll a quote from hogan's heroes please oh you went too far i must report this it would be worth my life if i do not report this it's only until tomorrow and he's gonna take it off again uh

Speaker 9 after he steals the tank oh from the panzer division oh he brings it here into the brand oh i see nothing i was not here i did not even get up this morning

Speaker 4 Thank you. That was from Hogan's Heroes.

Speaker 5 1965.

Speaker 2 Time with topical reference.

Speaker 4 You guys love Hogan's Heroes, right?

Speaker 2 I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 2 A little queer-coated, huh?

Speaker 4 He's a little gay.

Speaker 2 He's a little

Speaker 2 nothing.

Speaker 6 I see nothing. Well, Nazi-coated, let's see.

Speaker 2 Also, that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, I think

Speaker 2 I saw some of the MAG idiots who hadn't got the memo yet on what the talking points were supposed to be. We're like, what? In America, you can't be deleting your own surveillance footage?

Speaker 2 It's like, no, when the FBI sends you a subpoena for something, if they try to say, hey, we're going to collect your phone, you don't go, ah, then throw the phone away.

Speaker 4 you can't do that the thing i don't understand the thing i don't can't quite understand so clearly there's some effort to delete the footage

Speaker 4 doj at some point thought they weren't getting all the footage there's some question of like did the footage come from mar-a-lago did it come from the company that was providing the surveillance technology i don't we just there's more to come so we're talking about how everyone got lawyered up thanks to trump uh washington post and the new york times uh reported over the weekend that trump's save america super PAC, Save America, not to be confused with

Speaker 2 this podcast.

Speaker 6 We can sue them for talking our name.

Speaker 2 Because we were first. We were first on that one.
Anyway, Save America is hurting for cash because they have already spent $40 million on legal fees just this year for Trump and his goons.

Speaker 2 I believe they started the year with $18 million cash on hand, and then after this first quarter, they have reported spending $40 million on legal fees.

Speaker 2 What do you think about alleged billionaire Donald Trump asking

Speaker 2 his mostly working-class supporters to pay his legal bills?

Speaker 6 It's so perfect. They also reportedly spent another $16 million in the previous two years on legal fees.
So that's quite a price tag.

Speaker 6 I mean, this is going to hurt him politically, not just because of the facts of the case, but the Save America PAC requested that a $60 million donation they made to another super PAC supporting Donald Trump be returned.

Speaker 6 They're asking for money back. That's how dire the straits are here.
So, you know, they had, I think they raised $100 million after losing the 2020 race. Like you said, they had 18 on hand.

Speaker 6 Trump is now splitting online contributions. 90% go to his campaign, 10% go to the PAC, i.e.

Speaker 2 legal fees.

Speaker 4 I actually, when I saw that, because it was actually, it was originally 99 cents were going to the campaign, then one cent. And the Times, you know, published that the ratio had been switched.

Speaker 4 And I was like, oh, I wonder what it's going to be. 90, 10.
That's a lot of restraint for my boy Trump. Yeah.
Expected it to be one.

Speaker 6 I heard the same thing, to be honest. But still,

Speaker 2 burning money. So I think like, you know, most of his fans don't give a shit that they're giving money to his legal defense fund.
They'd probably like happily give Donald Trump their firstborn child.

Speaker 2 But I do think that the strongest argument against Trump has always been to a general electorate and to skeptical Republicans that he's only in this for himself, right?

Speaker 2 That it's only Trump does not care about you. He cares about Donald Trump and only Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 And I think running a whole campaign where you are trying to stay out of prison, that's why, and you are raising money for your own legal defense fund and not for nothing else. I don't know.

Speaker 2 I think it's a pretty good argument for someone to make.

Speaker 4 Well, Chris, that's the argument Chris Christie was making.

Speaker 2 I heard Chris Christie make that one.

Speaker 4 But the rest of them, not so much. But that's the argument, Chris.

Speaker 2 We'll get to it.

Speaker 6 You see the shady shit Levitt's guy Tim Scott's doing in terms of campaign finance?

Speaker 4 What is Tim Scott up to?

Speaker 6 He paid $5.3 million to two shadowy entities, as the New York Times described them, newly formed limited liability companies with no online presence, no record of other federal election work that were basically just created for him to pay money out from his campaign to to hide how it's being spent.

Speaker 2 What do we think he's doing there? What are we doing?

Speaker 5 Oh, I'm sure he's hiding his campaign expenditures.

Speaker 2 I don't want to have it.

Speaker 6 It's just really like truly pushing the boundaries of campaign finance.

Speaker 2 So, like we said, we're still waiting for this,

Speaker 2 the DC grand jury to act here. Here's what we know.
They sat for seven hours on Friday. Sounds uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 They reportedly heard from no witnesses, and it was the same day that Trump's team met with the Department of Justice and Jack Smith's team.

Speaker 2 So all the legal analysts, they think that Tuesday is the next meeting of the grand jury.

Speaker 2 So they think all signs are pointing to Tuesday as the day they vote on the indictment because it's not like there was a whole bunch of extra witnesses or evidence or something like that on Friday because they would have seen witnesses going in.

Speaker 2 And the fact that they had the meeting means it's probably getting pretty close. We also saw on Friday on Georgia, they were putting up barricades in front of the Fulton County courtroom.

Speaker 2 And the district attorney there, Fanny Willis, said in an interview that they are ready to go.

Speaker 2 They have done the work, and at the very latest, she has promised that indictment or their decisions would be brought before September 1st.

Speaker 2 And then I think Alvin Bragg did an interview where he said that if necessary, he would move the hush money case if Jack Smith really needs to hold his trial on the January 6th stuff before the election.

Speaker 4 What a gentleman, Alvin Bragg. Although just because my indictment was first doesn't mean my trial has to be first.
Thank you.

Speaker 6 Although he also said he's not in control of moving the dates, the judge would be. So sort of like, huh,

Speaker 2 I don't know how this works. Again, there's just so many.

Speaker 4 How this works is no one has five trials at the same time for different issues. Nobody.

Speaker 4 So, what he says is that what Bragg said is like it would actually be up to the judge, and the judges would have to confirm.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Also, in Georgia, there's an August 10th hearing where Trump's team is going to try to disqualify Willis and also toss out a bunch of the evidence she collected and remove another Fulton County judge from the case.

Speaker 6 So, I wonder if she's going to let that hearing happen first before laying out her stuff or wait until after.

Speaker 2 Did you see

Speaker 2 there was an an attempt to disqualify her, another attempt to disqualify her that was just rejected by a judge today?

Speaker 4 Yeah, that judge rejected that, rejected it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's sort of like, well, we're gonna direct this batch of ridiculous claims about why you can't be tried today, and we'll only do it, and you're gonna lose again, but not till August 10th.

Speaker 2 It's hard to keep track. So, Trump's primary opponents had more to say than usual about his latest felony charges.

Speaker 2 Ron DeSantis told a reporter that, quote, if the election becomes a referendum on what document was left by the toilet at Mar-a-Lago, we are not going to win.

Speaker 2 His campaign also hit Trump on the Super PAC story, accusing Trump of spending people's money on his own legal fees instead of defeating Joe Biden. Nikki Haley was on CBS this weekend.

Speaker 2 She said the party needs to move beyond Trump or else, quote, we will have a general election that's doing nothing but dealing with lawsuits. And here's former Congressman Will Hurd.

Speaker 2 Forgot he's running for president, didn't you?

Speaker 2 He's running for the Republican nomination. He's barely hit 1% in most polls, but he went after Trump at that same Iowa dinner over the weekend that we just heard.
Let's listen.

Speaker 14 Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison. And if we elect,

Speaker 13 I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, listen, I know the truth. The truth is hard.

Speaker 13 But if we elect Donald Trump, we are willingly giving Joe Biden four more years in the White House, and America can't handle that.

Speaker 14 God bless you, and God bless America.

Speaker 2 I mean, except for the last part, everything he said was true.

Speaker 6 Truth was poorly received.

Speaker 5 It was poorly received. You're that one person clapping?

Speaker 2 It was a Will Hurts effort.

Speaker 2 It was the one Will Hurts effort. Yeah, maybe it was his wife.

Speaker 4 It just kills me watching, like, what a moment you could make out of being booed. There's so many jokes.
There's so many things you could do with that. These guys just don't have the stuff.

Speaker 6 I will say, this is probably more covers than Will Hurt has gotten on any other day combined. Every other day combined, I should say.

Speaker 2 Except for the first day he in it.

Speaker 6 So I don't know that this is going to help him win the nomination, but it's certainly getting him covered.

Speaker 4 I also don't know if it will help him.

Speaker 5 I mean, listen,

Speaker 6 I don't think you're going to make that argument, and people are going to be like, oh, you know what? He's right.

Speaker 6 But I think over time, if you make it repeatedly over and over again, the doubts creep into these voters' head.

Speaker 6 And the electability argument is the only thing I think that's going to reach the persuadable voters here. They might not be in that room, but I totally agree.

Speaker 2 Good for him for making it.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's a party fundraiser. That's like a hardcore Republican audience.

Speaker 2 That's like, yeah,

Speaker 2 you're not getting a lot of applause there. Why do you think it took felony counts 73 and 74 and 75 or 72 through 74 for these people to finally say something aside from Will Hurt?

Speaker 2 I mean, I was surprised by Ron DeSantis suddenly being like, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute.

Speaker 2 He's not as electable if we have a criminal defendant as the nominee. Yeah, both.

Speaker 4 Both Haley and DeSantis, like the other half of what they said is so cynical and so pathetic and speaks to the hole they've dug for themselves because they both make this point of saying, look, you talk about the charge.

Speaker 4 I mean, they both issued, it was all word salad, but both of them make this argument that, like, look, do I think there's prosecutorial overreach? Do I think it's unfair?

Speaker 4 Sure, but that's the reality we're living in.

Speaker 4 And despite the fact that Donald Trump doesn't deserve any of what is happening to him, the reality is if these charges are what people are talking about, that's going to hurt us.

Speaker 4 So the sin is not overthrowing the government or trying to put in some fake electors or obstruction of justice or deleting footage or whatever it is.

Speaker 4 It's the sin of putting in a position to not win in November. So they're willing to go that far, but it's in this embarrassingly obsequious way.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And the reason why is, you know, Tommy made the point.
It is like that is that is a crowd of sort of the most hardcore Republican activists.

Speaker 2 But almost every poll of Republican voters, including the one we're about to talk about from the New York Times, shows that like upwards of 70% of the Republican electorate doesn't think Donald Trump committed any crimes at all.

Speaker 2 So, you know, when you say he's running to stay out of prison, most people don't agree with that and there are Republican voters. So let's talk about the New York Times poll from today.

Speaker 2 Weighed in with its first survey of the Republican primary in 2024. Trump 54%.

Speaker 2 DeSantis 17%.

Speaker 2 And no one else broke 3%.

Speaker 2 National poll. We pay attention to the New York Times poll, A-plus rated.

Speaker 2 It's basically now up there with Ann Seltzer's Des Moines register poll as the gold standard. Gold standard.

Speaker 2 It had a lot of influence on their Democratic primary in 2020, as poor Elizabeth Warren knows. What were you guys' takeaways from the polls? Any specific findings jump out at you?

Speaker 2 I got a bunch, but you guys go first.

Speaker 2 This was fascinating. Yes.

Speaker 4 First of all, a terrible poll for anyone not named Trump. There's no really good news anywhere in it for any other candidate.
Here are the things that I thought were most interesting.

Speaker 4 One, 17% said that Trump committed serious federal crimes, but of those 17%,

Speaker 4 22% of those voters still prefer Trump to DeSantis. Voters who are woke focused, right?

Speaker 4 Like presumably a group of people DeSantis has been trying to gather, it's the whole premise of his campaign and how he's governed, break for Trump 61 to 36.

Speaker 4 So it's a very pro-Trump poll, but this to me, like above all, was like the most interesting. Above the 43% who had a very favorable opinion of Trump, they vote for Trump 92 to 7.

Speaker 4 So if you have a strong, if you like Trump, you're with Trump.

Speaker 4 Of the 25% who had a very favorable view of DeSantis, presumably the biggest DeSantis fans out there, the best he's doing, the people he's reached, they split 50-50.

Speaker 4 Of the 25% that are the most favorable DeSantis, those are still people breaking 50-50 over Trump. And that just has to be so demoralizing.
That has to be so demoralizing.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, I think the big picture takeaway is a third of the electorate is the MAGA base. Another third is persuadable.

Speaker 6 A quarter of them do not want to vote for Trump, including some who say they will not vote for him in a general election.

Speaker 6 So, yeah, this is a terrible poll for everyone not named Donald Trump, but there is opportunity there if someone can consolidate the 37% persuadable and 25% never Trump.

Speaker 6 Now, like the MAGA base, not, this is my favorite stat, not one of the 319 respondents in the MAGA base section said Trump had committed serious federal crimes.

Speaker 6 2% said he did something wrong in the handling of the classified documents. But in the not open-to-Trump primary, it is more educated, more affluent, more moderate.

Speaker 6 So, the challenge that all of these never Trump folks or not Trump folks are going to have is that's not a very Iowa electorate.

Speaker 6 And so the sequential nature of the nominating process is going to make it hard for them to get momentum early, I think.

Speaker 2 So the other, I'm glad you brought up the like the three different

Speaker 2 segments of the electorate, which is basically the basis of the piece that Nate Cohn wrote a piece off this as well. And so you've got the 37% that are the MAGA diehards.

Speaker 2 And this is the same as what you were just saying, right? Like the people who are very

Speaker 2 favorable towards Trump. This is not just polling stuff.
This is like, we see this in elections. These are like the people who supported him in early 2016.

Speaker 2 These are the people who are still with him after January 6th. This is his base.
Forget about them, right?

Speaker 2 And then you got the persuadables, what he calls the persuadables, which are the 37%, and then the not open to Trump and the 25%.

Speaker 2 The challenge for any other candidate, even if you don't have the amazing political skills of Ron DeSantis, is the persuadables and the people who are not open to Trump completely disagree on issues.

Speaker 2 And so funding for Ukraine, comprehensive and support for Ukraine in general, comprehensive immigration reform, six-week abortion ban, those two groups of voters are on opposite sides of those.

Speaker 2 So if you want to try to get the persuadables who like Trump but are open to someone else and you're a more moderate candidate like a Chris Christie, you're not going to get those people.

Speaker 2 And similarly, if you're someone like Ron DeSantis, who has taken some of those positions, it's going to be hard to get the never never Trumper vote because they don't agree with you.

Speaker 2 They're not as conservative as you on those positions.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and even the group of people that are maybe the most amenable to an alternative, college-educated Republicans, are still only breaking, are still breaking to Trump by 12 points.

Speaker 2 Well, and in this poll, and Nate and the Times does the poll matching the voter file, I looked, they're only 36% of the Republican electorate. That's the problem.

Speaker 2 So, like, even if you consolidated all the college-educated Republicans, which is hard to do, like, you're still, you still have an uphill ballot.

Speaker 6 I do think the electability thing is the only option. This is an actual quote from a voter in the New York Times story.
The best. Actual quote.

Speaker 6 He might say mean things and make all the men cry because all the men are wearing your wife's underpants and you can't be a man anymore.

Speaker 6 David Green, 69, a retail manager in Summersworth, New Hampshire, said a Trump. Of course he's from New Hampshire.
You've got to be a little sissy and cry about everything.

Speaker 6 But at the end of the day, you want results. Donald Trump's my guy.
He proved it on a national level.

Speaker 2 I don't think anyone has ever articulated why Donald Trump gets so much support better. David Greene.
Just like David Green from

Speaker 2 Summersworth, New Hampshire. I didn't even know that was a town in New Hampshire.

Speaker 4 The media that that person is, that guy's consuming. Oh, absolutely.
It's just like newsmaster. Of course, these guys can't break through.

Speaker 4 Of course, nobody believes the charges. Of course, they're having trouble making an argument against Trump.

Speaker 4 Like, all this guy is consuming day in and day out says that Trump is the best and he's being railroaded.

Speaker 2 They did some attributes, too. Which of these attributes better describes Trump, which describes Ron DeSantis, Trump crushing DeSantis on strong leader 69 to 22?

Speaker 2 Tommy made this point at the very beginning of this whole primary.

Speaker 2 Get things done, 67-22, which was like DeSantis' whole thing is getting things done in Florida. Electable, 58-28 again.

Speaker 2 And then the number, the split that matched the actual top-line poll result, fun.

Speaker 2 54% think Trump is fun, 16%

Speaker 2 DeSantis. And the only thing that Trump loses on is likable slightly to DeSantis, which is sort of funny, and moral a lot.
Yeah, the likable issue is a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 I think there's a lot of people who think Trump is, who like Trump and want to vote for him, like him, but think he's an asshole. Yeah, they mean that.
They think he's a fun asshole.

Speaker 2 He's a fun asshole. He's a fun asshole.
He's a fun asshole. That's what they're in this for.

Speaker 4 You know, we've talked about why this primary isn't being fought on policy, but this is the point the Times, this is the point that the poll makes.

Speaker 4 In a head-to-head matchup, Trump was ahead of DeSantis among Republicans who accept transgender people as the gender they identify with, and among those who don't, among those who want to fight corporations that promise woke ideology, and among those who prefer to stay out of business, amongst who want to send more military to Ukraine, among those who do not, among those who want to keep Social Security and Medicare benefits, among those who want to take steps to reduce the budget deficit.

Speaker 4 He just, he is crushing. It's so broad.
It's not about issues.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 4 no, but just, yes, it's not about issues.

Speaker 2 It's almost as if it's a cult of personality. We just assume we do better on all the things.

Speaker 4 It's just better.

Speaker 2 The one interesting thing, because we have spent so much time making fun of Ron DeSantis for his horrible campaign, and we'll continue to right after this section.

Speaker 2 But the favorability ratings are still 76% for Trump and 66% for DeSantis.

Speaker 2 And the way the Times writes it up, it has interviews with voters other than that fantastic quote that Tommy read where people are like, I like him plenty. I like Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 2 And next time, he's the one, right? But he's just, Trump's accomplished stuff on a national level. He's only done Florida.
He's just not ready yet.

Speaker 2 So these are people who actually do like Ron DeSantis, but they're just like, no, no, no, Trump's our guy.

Speaker 4 It's the same. It's just the same trend from like since the very beginning.

Speaker 4 DeSantis makes them feel like their needs are met, and Trump makes them feel like they have no needs. And it has been the same from this entire primary.

Speaker 2 You mentioned the woke,

Speaker 2 the people who think woke is a big deal.

Speaker 2 There was another question in the poll. Which of these two Republicans would you be more likely to support for president?

Speaker 2 A candidate who promises to fight corporations that promote woke left ideology, or a candidate who says that the government should stay out of deciding what corporations can support? The latter wins?

Speaker 2 52 to 38.

Speaker 2 So even when you don't put Trump and DeSantis, just the idea that there is an appetite, even in the Republican Party, for someone who's going to go after corporations because they're too woke, it doesn't, it's not real.

Speaker 6 As this guy is announcing another lawsuit against Bud Light or an investigation into Bud Light because their stock went down because people like Ron DeSantis criticize Bud Light for being nice to one transgender person.

Speaker 2 So I think that just like shows how so online DeSantis is and like the DeSantis Ben Shup like that whole group like that doesn't actually have the support for Trump on the Republican Party is not about that.

Speaker 2 And you can also, there's a question about woke versus like borders and law and order. Like it's still the immigration shit, the law and order shit.

Speaker 2 Like the, that's all the reason that they like Trump, you know, to the extent that it's about any policies.

Speaker 4 And if there's any connection at all between DeSantis' inability to have a human interaction with anyone on the campaign trail and this, it's that like he's just trying to pander, but he doesn't get the people he's trying to pander well enough to make a mark.

Speaker 4 Like, you know, he did this economic rollout and his, he's like, I'm going to fight. I'm going to take a, I'm going going to end Joe Biden's war on crypto.
He's interviewed about RFK Jr.

Speaker 4 and he's like, he'd make a great head of this fucking CDC. Like, who is that a pander for?

Speaker 6 Well, he just stepped on a rake so hard. He was like, yeah, I'm going to piss off all these libs by saying I would make RFK Jr.
CDC director.

Speaker 6 And Mike Pence, of all people, like not the most deft politician, is like immediate press release.

Speaker 6 Yeah, this guy wants to name a pro-choice individual to lead the CDC. Like absolutely hurts himself every time he tries to do something.
Hype on it.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, speaking of DeSantis'

Speaker 2 interactions with voters,

Speaker 2 their new strategy of letting Ron be Ron already seems to be paying dividends. Let's listen.

Speaker 9 Yeah, it's happening too, too.

Speaker 6 Oh, what is that?

Speaker 6 An icy? Yeah, that's probably a lot of sugar, huh?

Speaker 9 Have a beer with, as always.

Speaker 9 Well,

Speaker 9 I'm here. I don't know if you have anyone.
I'm not kidding. I'm not friends.
Okay, all right, all right. It's good.
It's good. All right, we'll say hi to everybody.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the first one was Ron DeSantis trying to tell a little girl to

Speaker 2 put her icy down.

Speaker 6 That's so funny. The fun comment is so telling, I mean, for a lot of people, look, we all despise Donald Trump.
He's a horrible person.

Speaker 11 He's bad things to the country. But a lot of his voters love watching his rallies.
They travel across the country to go to them.

Speaker 6 It's like a carnival for them. And I can't imagine anything less enjoyable than watching Ron DeSantis talk about almost literally anything.

Speaker 2 Or like, imagine

Speaker 2 meeting a kid who's cut cutting icy and being like, whew, a lot of sugar on that. You're at a fair.
That's where you eat sugar, you moron. I got tunnel cake and shut up.

Speaker 4 I got to tell you, Ronda Sanders is growing on me.

Speaker 4 If I see one more interaction of this guy having absolutely no ability to interact with anyone, I'm just falling in love. Look at this poor foot.
This guy, so broken, the hole in his bucket.

Speaker 4 He's got to fill it with politics. He can't make it work.
He can't appeal to normal people. What a curse this guy's living.

Speaker 2 I love it.

Speaker 6 Get him one shirt or one jacket or vest that doesn't have his name on it. You don't have to have your name on all your clothing.

Speaker 2 Are you a camp?

Speaker 2 You're going to lose something?

Speaker 2 What's happening? He's terrible.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It's really.
I mean, I don't have anything. That's why I'm sad.

Speaker 2 We're now at the point where we've done all the Ron DeSantis analysis we can do. We're just playing clips now.
Like, there's nothing else to do.

Speaker 4 I just, I love why. Let him cook.

Speaker 2 The second clip was just somewhat, he was like, some woman's got a beer.

Speaker 4 He's got a beer.

Speaker 2 She's like, here you are, drinking beer. We have a beer.

Speaker 2 I'm drinking beer.

Speaker 4 He really does.

Speaker 6 Having fun on the campaign trail. Like, you really can can feel the difference when a candidate's having fun.
Like, there were times when Barack Obama hated every minute of his day.

Speaker 5 Like, the first time he was going to be able to do it.

Speaker 2 For sure, the campaign.

Speaker 6 Most of his time in New Hampshire.

Speaker 2 Look,

Speaker 4 yeah, I want to see a candidate go to a pie shop, have a charming interaction with some shop owner, say, I'll have an apple and a blueberry, have a huge smile on their face, get in the car, and just throw them in the garbage.

Speaker 4 That's what I'm looking for. That's what you want in a president.

Speaker 2 You know who seems like he's mostly having a good time when he's campaigning? Joe Biden. I will say that about him.

Speaker 11 Even your guy, Chris Christie, like, you know what?

Speaker 6 He didn't agree with you on a lot of stuff, but he was like having fun, mixing it up, fighting back, talking shit, you know?

Speaker 4 Well, he just like, he has a nor, he has this, he's a charismatic, normal person.

Speaker 6 Yeah, like Tim just, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, like, they smile. They smile naturally.
Ron DeSantis smiles like he stepped on a Lego.

Speaker 4 He's just like, it's too big.

Speaker 4 It's too big. His laugh is too big.

Speaker 2 Everything about it. It's just, there's a lot of other stuff.

Speaker 6 There's time, he has money, but my God, man.

Speaker 4 You can't fix that, though. Not to say that.
That's talent.

Speaker 4 That's why I like him now. You can't fix that.

Speaker 2 I will say, Echelon Insights finally just did a poll that just came out today doing head-to-head matchups with Trump and other candidates besides DeSantis because so far they've only done, it doesn't get any better for any of the other ones.

Speaker 2 It's like 70-20s, Tim Scott, 70-20, Nikki Haley. Now, again, this is all early, but

Speaker 4 we're not talking like 20 points.

Speaker 2 We're not talking 30 points. We're talking 50 points.

Speaker 5 Was that a national poll? Yeah.

Speaker 6 I mean, the name ID is probably like so low for Tim Scott.

Speaker 4 The point Nate Cohn made, I believe, is that it's not early anymore.

Speaker 2 It's five and a half months.

Speaker 4 And no candidate that's been up by 20 at this point in these polls has lost the nomination, and he's up by more than double.

Speaker 4 And so does that mean this can't change? No, this is a unique primary. We've never had a candidate who's a former president charged with multiple felonies before.
Let's see how that shakes out.

Speaker 4 But right now, man,

Speaker 2 tough sledding. And you got to be, again, I think the idea that Donald Trump is vulnerable, politically vulnerable, even within the Republican Party, is one that I buy, but you still have to beat.

Speaker 2 You can't beat something with nothing. And so far, we have a lot of nothing.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 there's a, you know, there's a Ron DeSantis in the parking space that's going to have to move.

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Speaker 2 All right, let's do a quick roundup of some other headlines.

Speaker 2 Justice Sam Alito is once again whining in the pages of the Wall Street Journal about how his branch of government should be able to get away with whatever it wants.

Speaker 2 In an interview that ran last week, he said, I know this is a controversial view, but I'm willing to say it.

Speaker 2 No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court, period. He was commenting on recent efforts by Senate Democrats to impose ethics reform on the court.

Speaker 2 And of course, one of the authors of the piece that features the interview with Alito is a lawyer who has business before the court next term. Look,

Speaker 4 there is nothing in the Constitution that says a dog can't be Speaker of the House. That is the level.
That is the level that we're at.

Speaker 6 These guys literally think they're above the law.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 I don't know what happens now. So the Senate Democrats are moving this legislation.
It's going to get blocked by Republicans.

Speaker 2 There was some talk earlier, like maybe there'd be bipartisan ethics reform. Like that was never going to pass the House.
Now it doesn't look like it's going to pass the Senate either.

Speaker 2 John Roberts refuses to do anything. So I guess we're just waiting for Alito or Thomas to retire.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, I think, look, that...

Speaker 6 The core problem with the court is that there's this big conservative majority, and that is not going to change until someone retires.

Speaker 6 I do think there's a medium-term problem, which is that these guys think they're above the the law and they say things like what Alito said in this interview.

Speaker 6 The takeaway for me from all of the most recent rounds of whining from various Supreme Court justices is they really, really hate scrutiny. They hate media scrutiny.

Speaker 6 They're offended by ProPublica's existence.

Speaker 6 And I hope that shames legacy outlets into doing a little less access journalism and a little more digging into these people because they are far too comfortable in these like big donor right-wing ideological circles with Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society.

Speaker 6 And it is, I think, changing the way they vote on stuff. And it would be helpful to have some sort of ethics reform.

Speaker 4 It is remarkable even how far Alito, who's always been one of, if not the most right-wing judge, has how far he's come in terms of his willingness to just sort of defy tradition and speak publicly.

Speaker 4 In his confirmation hearing, he's very clear. You know, judges shouldn't be coming out there and, you know, basically just sort of

Speaker 4 improving about issues that could come before the court. He's out there, not only is he saying that he thinks the Supreme Court can't be regulated by Congress, he's asked, do the other justices agree?

Speaker 4 He says, I don't know that any of my colleagues have spoken about it publicly, so I don't think I should say, but I think it is something we have all thought about.

Speaker 4 And as our friend at Strict Scrutiny pointed out, this is basically like kind of like some version of an advisory opinion saying if you pass a law like this,

Speaker 7 we'll overturn it.

Speaker 2 Strict Scrutiny did a great job on this

Speaker 2 on this week's episode, so go check it out. No, I mean,

Speaker 2 here's what we can do.

Speaker 2 Go donate some money and help out Sherrod Brown and John Tester in some of these really close Senate races and then flip the house. Then, you know, in that sense, we can maybe get some ethics reform.

Speaker 2 But the Senate's even more important because one of these guys retires, we're going to need a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate to get a new justice in there, or else we're going to get more of this.

Speaker 2 Here's a story we can do something about.

Speaker 2 Punch Bowl News reported last week that Republican Congressman Derek Van Orden was giving a tour of the Capitol when he came across a group of teenage Senate pages.

Speaker 2 These are a type of interns for people who don't know. They help out in the Capitol.
They're around 17 years old, and they were lying on the ground in the Capitol Rotunda taking photos.

Speaker 2 Which a lot of people do, which a lot of people do. And here is what the congressman said to them.

Speaker 2 Wake the fuck up, you little shits. What the fuck are you all doing? Get the fuck out of here.
You are defiling the spaces, you piece of shit. I don't give a fuck who you are.
I'm a congressman.

Speaker 2 Van Orton was at the Stop the Steel rally on January 6th and represents a very flippable district in Wisconsin.

Speaker 2 We should probably replace him with someone else, huh?

Speaker 6 Yeah, that'd be good. He was apparently drinking in his office before this.
And also, he's a former Navy SEAL.

Speaker 6 So this isn't some like, you know, bookish nerd screaming in the faces of a 16-year-old that they're a little shit and they're defiling the Capitol.

Speaker 6 It's a big, intimidating veteran who also yelled at a bunch of librarians back in the day because he was very mad about a pride flag in

Speaker 6 a library somewhere in Wisconsin.

Speaker 4 How do you mean more people yell at teens?

Speaker 6 Do you think they're just getting too big for their bridges? Yeah.

Speaker 4 You get a bunch of teens.

Speaker 6 He does get points for novel defense of himself. He said something about how the Capitol Rotunda was once a field hospital during the Civil War.

Speaker 2 What was that?

Speaker 4 Get out of here. This was once a field hospital during the Civil War.

Speaker 2 You can't take pictures. Anyway, we heard about this story.

Speaker 2 We, of course, reached out to Ben Wickler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, and we put together a link that you can donate to Van Orton's eventual opponent because we don't have a Democratic nominee yet for that seat, but we will eventually.

Speaker 2 So we'll tweet out again from all of our accounts if you want to give. I just have to say, so this got like bipartisan condemnation.
It's one of those rare things.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Except, except.
Did you see what Kevin McCarthy said? Yeah. Kevin McCarthy said this.

Speaker 2 It wasn't, first of all, he said it wasn't the norm for that congressman, which as Tommy just suggested is not true.

Speaker 4 Think about all the times he gets drunk and doesn't yell at teens.

Speaker 2 Well, then he he said this, I guess the interns have some ritual of laying down or something like that. I think it's a misunderstanding of all sides.

Speaker 6 This is what happens when you need literally every vote to stay speed. I love it.
You defend everything.

Speaker 12 He is just pathetic.

Speaker 2 Well, we have more to say about Kevin McCarthy.

Speaker 2 The Daily Beast has a story that about a month ago, while Republicans were voting to censure Adam Schiff, California Democrat Eric Swalwell yelled, you're weak, at Kevin McCarthy.

Speaker 2 The next day, Swalwell was on his way to the bathroom when McCarthy got in his face and said, quote, call me a pussy again and I'll kick your ass. To which Swalwell responded, you are a pussy.

Speaker 4 That cadence is documented in the Daily Papers.

Speaker 2 To which McCarthy responded, by walking away. Said nothing.
This story is sourced to two house members who declined to give their names. Do you guys think one of them was Eric Swalwell? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I love it.

Speaker 4 I love the whole thing. I like that.
I like that also.

Speaker 4 We're just sort of like, there's just that part of us that's like, haha, Kevin McCarthy didn't physically fight Eric Swalwell, therefore he sucks.

Speaker 2 Well, it is funny, though. Like, he goes, you're weak, and then he comes up to me.
He's like, don't call me a pussy. It's so weird.

Speaker 6 I also like that this didn't just happen on an average Thursday when they're voting on like renaming a post office.

Speaker 6 This was right before the Prime Minister of India addressed a joint session of Congress. So these guys almost threw down before like the eyes of the world were on the U.S.
Congress.

Speaker 6 My only take on this is I think more members of Congress should just fight.

Speaker 2 Well, we didn't even work it out. Have we talked about the Marjorie, the ongoing Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, will they, won't they fight each other?

Speaker 2 There's been like multiple accounts, I think many of them from the Daily Beast, of those two on the floor, almost getting into blows as well. Or they're in the bathroom, they're on the floor.

Speaker 2 Look, here's the thing: everyone needs to come, everyone needs to, they should go on, get them on vacation, get them, get them out of that place.

Speaker 4 The slow erosion of like every civic virtue in this society has been just really frustrating and hard to experience.

Speaker 4 But if it does result in physical confrontations between the Speaker of the House and a Democrat, or between Lauren Boebert and Margaret Taylor Greene, I don't know. Okay.

Speaker 6 See, I'm not with you there. I think this isn't an erosion.
I think this is a throwback to the old school ways of doing stuff in Congress when we used to cane each other and do other things.

Speaker 6 Also, like, Squadwall's a pretty big guy. I think he played soccer at Maryland.

Speaker 6 So I don't know.

Speaker 2 I like our odds here. Yeah, I do too.
I think we should bring back the Kanings.

Speaker 4 I want to see Kevin McCarthy's hold me back guy.

Speaker 6 Is it like a Chip Roy?

Speaker 4 Toxic masculinity all over the place.

Speaker 5 Absolutely.

Speaker 6 That's what this is coded intoxicating.

Speaker 4 I told the story about the Eric Swamwell thing in New York, and this, like, you know, this progressive audience, they were like, he called him a pussy and he didn't fight. They freaked out.

Speaker 4 They loved it so much.

Speaker 2 We're all just

Speaker 4 a bunch of apes running around wearing suits.

Speaker 2 The other Republican leader on the Hill has had a tough week. Mitch McConnell was in the middle of giving a statement at a press conference when he froze up and apparently lost the ability to speak.

Speaker 2 It's a pretty scary thing to watch. McConnell was hospitalized back in March for a bad fall that kept him out of the Senate for six weeks and reportedly has had another fall since then.

Speaker 2 Of course, President Biden called him immediately after the press conference to see how he was doing.

Speaker 2 And here's what Donald Trump said to Breitbart about the episode. That was a sad thing to see.
He had a bad fall, I guess, and probably an after-effect of that.

Speaker 2 But it was also sad that he gave trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars to the Democrats to waste on the Green New Deal, destroying our oceans and destroying our great, beautiful vistas and plains all over our country with windmills that are very expensive energy.

Speaker 2 So that's a very sad thing also. At the same time, I hope he's well.

Speaker 4 Honestly for him, not bad.

Speaker 2 Mostly okay. He's like, got into windmills? How did we get that? He hates the windmills.
He does hate the windmills. He really hates the windmills.

Speaker 2 You get from, like, what do you think of Mitch McConnell's episode to windmills? Mitch McConnell didn't give the Democrats any money for that. He didn't support the IRA.

Speaker 2 It wasn't the Green New Deal. I think he was referencing the IRA.
Mitch McConnell tried to stop that. He didn't.
It was a budget reconciliation thing.

Speaker 2 Confusing.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I think it was John Oliver who several years ago did a piece where they had some other third party, just a random person, do a reading, not dramatic or otherwise, just a reading of a section of a Trump speech.

Speaker 6 And it is just incoherent gibberish, top to bottom. And I think this is a great example.
In that Breitbart interview, he also, Trump was bragging about his endorsements, and this I enjoyed.

Speaker 6 He said, Ron DeSantis is one. Take a look at Ron DeSantis.
He had no choice until I endorsed him. He wouldn't be, he could be right now at a law firm or working at a pizza place.

Speaker 2 So that was his take.

Speaker 2 I do not think he has the personality to be in a customer service position.

Speaker 4 No, no, he cannot. He cannot interface with the customer.

Speaker 2 Maybe he could be in the back of the kitchen. He could flip the pies.

Speaker 4 No, he can't.

Speaker 4 He does not have that choice.

Speaker 2 He's delivering those pizzas.

Speaker 2 He's basically basically trying to deliver pizzas now without the pizzas.

Speaker 2 Knocking on doors. It's not going well.
It's not going well. No one wants it.
No one wants your pizza. Maybe he should bring some pizzas.

Speaker 2 All right. Finally, in case you missed it, Air Force Major David Grush.
Grush, Grush, made some explosive claims at a congressional hearing last week about UFOs

Speaker 2 or

Speaker 2 if you're real smart, UAPs. That's what they're called.

Speaker 2 I don't know. What's wrong with you?

Speaker 4 Unidentified flying objects was good. It wasn't broken.
Why are we fixing it?

Speaker 2 UAP is unidentified aerial phenomena. All right.
I know. That's if you're, yeah, you think you're great.
Here's a clip of his exchange with Congresswoman Nancy Meese.

Speaker 17 You say that the government is in possession of potentially non-human spacecraft.

Speaker 17 Based on your experience and extensive conversations with experts, do you believe our government has made contact with intelligent extraterrestrials?

Speaker 8 Something I can't discuss in public setting.

Speaker 17 Okay, I can't ask when you think this occurred.

Speaker 17 If you believe we have crashed craft, stated earlier, do we have the bodies of the pilots who piloted this craft?

Speaker 8 As I've stated publicly already in my News Nation interview, biologics came with some of these recoveries. Yeah.

Speaker 17 Were they, I guess, human or non-human biologics?

Speaker 8 Non-human, and that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program I talked to that are currently still on the program.

Speaker 17 And was this documentary reverence, video, photos, eyewitness? Like, how would that be determined?

Speaker 8 The specific documentation I would have to talk to you in a skiff about.

Speaker 17 Gotcha.

Speaker 2 Non-human biologics. What do you guys think?

Speaker 4 Oh, that I want this to be good and true.

Speaker 4 The kookiness, the kookiness of this guy, who's also claimed that Mussolini found an alien craft and through

Speaker 4 the Pope contacted the U.S. government to be part of the original cover-up.

Speaker 4 There's no evidence.

Speaker 4 He doesn't have any evidence to provide.

Speaker 4 Apparently, he did go to the U.S. He was clear to say these things.
In other words, they're not secrets. So he's not divulging any government secrets.

Speaker 4 I just, I think this is a lot of people having fun in a hearing and nobody being the adult who's going to say, none of them, like,

Speaker 4 no one's willing to say, like, this is, this isn't it.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I think even the people chairing the hearing were like, welcome to the most popular subcommittee hearing in history. Like, they're just in on the phone in the press coverage.

Speaker 6 Also, wait a name-dropped the News Nation there.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Sorry, pal.
I said in my News Nation interview, which you apparently missed almost to watch you repeat yourself there.

Speaker 4 I guess you were too busy having premarital sex, Nancy Mace,

Speaker 4 to watch my phenomenal News Nation interview.

Speaker 6 We might have to offer some context there in a second.

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah, no. So, sorry.
So, she said at a prayer breakfast that she couldn't fuck because she had to go to the prayer breakfast. And then she got into trouble for that.

Speaker 4 And then she said she was kidding. And the Republicans are like, we don't like when women joke about sex.
We like what Tim Scott does. Nothing.

Speaker 4 Nothing. He's a Kendall down there, and that's what we want.

Speaker 2 Anyway, aliens.

Speaker 4 Aliens. Too much?

Speaker 2 I mean, no, I think we just rest enough.

Speaker 5 I'm open to aliens existing.

Speaker 6 I believe these two Navy pilots who are at the hearing said they keep seeing weird stuff that accelerate in ways they can't explain. Like, they have no reason to lie.

Speaker 4 But this guy,

Speaker 6 he also said that the program is above congressional oversight and paid for by misappropriation of funds. Again, that would create some sort of paper trail that I feel like someone could find.

Speaker 6 He says he knows of people who have been harmed or injured by efforts to cover up what happened, maybe even killed. Those people would have families.

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 6 I think the government is really bad at keeping secrets and holding together conspiracies. That's why they don't often happen.

Speaker 2 There's one guy who is pretty high up in the government who is famously bad. at keeping secrets or handling classified information.

Speaker 2 And if there was something out there, we would have heard it from him.

Speaker 2 Barack Obama. It is Barack Obama.
Or Donald Trump would have told someone else or he would have leaked it somewhere.

Speaker 2 The other thing is this guy, this guy basically admits he has no firsthand knowledge

Speaker 2 of these purported programs. He hasn't seen any craft or he hasn't seen any

Speaker 2 alien dead pilots.

Speaker 2 He said he's repeating what other people have told him, so it's hearsay. And, you know, he has approached along with others, the New York Times, the Post, the Politico, were all offered the story.

Speaker 2 None of them wanted to run it because they ran it down and they didn't find it as credible enough to run.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and there's been, I think, questions too in the years since the Times ran that story about the provenance of that Times story. That was like the first big story.

Speaker 6 I think they feel burned.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think Dean Bicket was like, oh, cool.

Speaker 4 But sounds neat. Yeah, like

Speaker 4 I agree. Like, yes, there have been kind of unexplainable videos that actual pilots and actual members of the military have seen.
They can't explain them.

Speaker 4 The leap then to there's a government bunker with

Speaker 4 alien ships. I also believe is plausible.

Speaker 6 Yeah, he said we've likely been aware of non-human activity since the 1930s.

Speaker 6 So again, it's just a very long time to keep a secret through various administrations, lots of people that would have knowledge of this, unless it was so secret that whatever they were working on or studying was kept away from all

Speaker 6 presidents and political hires or anybody that would touch this stuff. I just, I find it a little hard to believe.

Speaker 2 I'm just waiting for an RFK Jr. policy speech about this.
He seems seems like he'd be right in on this. That's a good question.
RFK Jr., Elon Musk, I think the all-in guys.

Speaker 2 There's like a nexus of people that I could totally see. Right.
Jumping on me. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 There's also just such a

Speaker 4 human-centric view of all of this. There's such a like, what's the word? like chauvinism about being a person that like the assumption is that like oh there must be a craft with a pilot What?

Speaker 4 Oh, because that's how we'd do it. Yeah.

Speaker 4 You know, that's just, and, and the fact that all of the, like, if you look at the map of reports of, of UFOs, they're very heavily concentrated in the English-speaking world because thinking that there are UFOs is a very big phenomenon in English-speaking countries.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and we also recently learned that the Chinese have been flying gigantic spy balloons over our country at 60,000 feet. Like, there's lots of weird stuff going on up there.

Speaker 6 There's lots of weather balloons. There's lots of unexplained phenomenon.
There's lots of weird new weather patterns. Like, who knows?

Speaker 2 So, Tommy, can you tell us? I know.

Speaker 6 I wish I did.

Speaker 6 Your wife asked me every time she drinks.

Speaker 2 Is that what she asked?

Speaker 2 And I was going to say, and unfortunately, times when she doesn't drink often.

Speaker 6 I'm like, listen, I wish I knew about the moon landing, but no one would have told me for obvious reasons.

Speaker 2 Anyway, no aliens. As far as we know.
As far as we know, as far as we know.

Speaker 2 Hold on a second.

Speaker 4 It's a big universe out there.

Speaker 2 At least this hearing has not proved. This hearing did not prove that they're any of it.

Speaker 4 Proves that this guy wants to write up, wants to make some

Speaker 2 cash money.

Speaker 4 And I support that because it's America, and George Nanda is in Congress, and you get yours.

Speaker 2 All right. Before we get to the interview, two quick housekeeping notes.
On Tuesday, August 8th, abortion rights are on the ballot in Ohio.

Speaker 2 There will be a ballot measure in that state this November to pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion access.

Speaker 2 But since the Republicans who control the state legislature do not want that to happen, they created another ballot measure for August 8th that would raise the threshold for passing constitutional amendments from a simple majority to 60%.

Speaker 2 So if you want to help stop that measure from passing in a few weeks, we have volunteer opportunities to help get out the vote all week. Head to votesaveamerica.com slash ohio to learn more.

Speaker 2 Last but not least, Lydia Kiesling's Mobility, the first novel from Crooked Reads, is finally out. You can get your copy at crooked.com slash mobility or wherever books are sold.

Speaker 2 Here's some advanced praise, a beautifully written and stunningly smart novel, a cautionary tale for our times.

Speaker 2 Tommy, you had a great conversation with Lydia at an event here in LA on Thursday that we're about to hear a portion of. What should people know about Lydia and this book?

Speaker 6 First of all, I love Lydia. We did this event last week, Dynasty Typewriter, the house that John Lovett built.

Speaker 4 It was in my time slot.

Speaker 6 A bunch of folks came out. We talked about the book, about writing in general.

Speaker 6 It's fiction. It's a novel.

Speaker 6 It's a really fun novel that follows the main character, Bunny, from her time as a teenager, as a Foreign Service sprat in Azerbaijan to her adulthood working in the energy industry. And

Speaker 6 it's a human story, but it's also about sort of the lies we tell ourselves when we know we're not doing something that is right,

Speaker 6 the sprawling nature of the energy business. And I don't know, just really great.
She's incredibly smart.

Speaker 6 And I think you'll all love it.

Speaker 2 Where do they come down on windmills?

Speaker 5 I think they're pro windmills.

Speaker 6 Just want to make sure. But I'll double-check with Lydia.

Speaker 2 Anyway, you are all, after the break, about to hear a portion of the conversation between Tommy and Lydia. Everyone, go buy mobility, crooked.com/slash mobility, or wherever books are sold.

Speaker 2 Check it out now. When we come back, Lydia Kiesling.

Speaker 18 What's poppin' listeners? I'm Lacey Mosley, host of the podcast Scam Goddess, the show that's an ode to fraud and all those who practice it.

Speaker 18 Each week I talk with very special guests about the scammiest scammers of all time. Want to know about the fake heirs? We got them.
What about a career con man? We've got them too.

Speaker 18 Guys that will wine and dine you and then steal all your coins. Oh, you know they are represented because representation matters.

Speaker 18 I'm joined by guests like Nicole Beyer, Ira Madison III, Conan O'Brien, and more. Join the congregation and listen to Scam Goddess wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 16 Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving? Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway.

Speaker 16 As a a parent, you can't always be in the car, but you can stay connected to their safety with Greenlight Infinity's driving reports.

Speaker 16 Monitor their driving habits, see if they're using their phone, speeding, and more. These reports provide real data for meaningful conversations about safety.

Speaker 16 Plus, with weekly updates, you can track their progress over time. Help keep your teens safe.
Sign up for Greenlight Infinity at greenlight.com/slash podcast.

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Speaker 19 Thank you so much, Tommy.

Speaker 19 And thank you to Zando and Crooked Media who have worked so hard on this.

Speaker 19 And yeah, I'm just so happy to be here. And thanks to all of you for coming out and to Dynasty Typewriter.

Speaker 7 The book is deeply researched, to Bunny's deeply researched at this point, both the industry, but also the scenes feel so real.

Speaker 7 And you were telling me that you did some pseudo-detective work to kind of make those scenes come to life. Can you tell us a bit about that process?

Speaker 19 Yes. So I,

Speaker 19 you know, a lot of the the book was written, I wrote part of the book before COVID started,

Speaker 19 and then it kind of ground to a halt when the pandemic began. And then I went back to it, but obviously, you know, there was no like going anywhere during those time periods for research.

Speaker 19 And also, you know, when you're writing a novel, you have no idea whether anyone will ever like pay you money for it usually.

Speaker 19 So I couldn't really justify like an expenditure, you know, of going to like travel. So I sort of said I had to try and sell it and then I would go and kind of see some things in person.

Speaker 19 And the timing worked such that right after I sold it,

Speaker 19 I got a, I subscribed to like all these horrible email lists from the oil and gas industry. And I saw that there was going to be a luncheon to honor

Speaker 19 women in energy in Houston, you know, the next month. So, and you could buy a ticket as a member of the press.
So I went to that.

Speaker 19 And I feel I feel kind of bad because I was sitting at a table with like one of the honorees and I was like, I was,

Speaker 19 they put the honorees like at all the tables and I was the press and they're like, so what do you write for? And like, I've written for, you know, some big outlets.

Speaker 19 So I was like, you know, like the New York Times. I didn't misrepresent myself that I just didn't, I didn't say more.

Speaker 19 But, you know, so like some impressions may have been left.

Speaker 19 And I, and I just kind of listened and it was really fascinating because first of all, like apparently some like sexist thing had happened like the night before with among like the organizers.

Speaker 19 And so like the people at the table were talking about this. And I was like, wow, even the fucking women in energy like awards luncheon are still subjected to this.

Speaker 19 And yeah, there was like a keynote by someone who had been in the FBI and there was just a lot like it was.

Speaker 19 And it was sponsored by like Deloitte and Schlumberger and like all the big oil and gas companies. And yeah, that was like my first subterfuge.

Speaker 19 Oh, I also told the Petroleum Club of Houston that I was interested in holding my wedding there.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 7 How'd that go?

Speaker 19 I was like, I'm only in town for this one day, like to see my dream wedding venue.

Speaker 19 And I mean, it was, it was kind of like, once I got up there, I was like, I could have just asked to see it just because I wanted to, but it was way more fun to be like.

Speaker 19 my reception is going to be amazing in the Aramco room

Speaker 19 with the view of the city. I mean, it is, you know, it's got amazing views.

Speaker 19 So yeah, there's a little, a little, a little subterfuge, some light. And then I just drove through like a lot of kind of refinery infrastructure.

Speaker 19 I like, I wasn't gonna really try and sneak into like the works, but um, but offshore rig.

Speaker 7 Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 19 just like go out in a canoe. Um, no, it didn't, it didn't extend that far.

Speaker 7 That's so funny. You said it was your wedding.
They like, they're like having to do a cake tasting in the back. I'm just going to take you guys down, if we're being honest.

Speaker 7 Um, the other parts of the book that felt so real to me were when Bunny's in Baku, um, she's living at the embassy,

Speaker 7 you nailed the like kind of shitty intergovernmental relationships between the State Department people and the CIA staffers who all kind of don't like each other, but have to coexist.

Speaker 7 And then I learned you grew up in a Foreign Service family. So this is something you sort of witnessed yourself over the years?

Speaker 19 Yeah, I did grow up in the Foreign Service. We were not posted to Baku, but we had a number of overseas postings.

Speaker 19 And yeah, I had a, I mean, I mean, a lot of writing this book, I think, is, was the process of sort of like unlearning the

Speaker 19 attitudes. I would call it sort of like American supremacy that you just imbibe

Speaker 19 when that's how you grow up.

Speaker 19 It doesn't, I think anyone who's sort of living overseas in some sort of government capacity like that, you know, whether it's military or foreign service, like that's, that's sort of how you

Speaker 19 think of things. So I was like,

Speaker 19 writing the book was like sort of a nostalgia for that time, but also kind of like working it out of my system to be like, that's, I, you know, I, I no longer like feel that America is like a beacon in the world as I, you know, might once have been.

Speaker 7 You're not projecting American power by virtue of your posting in Greece or whatever.

Speaker 19 Yeah, no, I get that.

Speaker 7 Um,

Speaker 7 so your father, you were telling me your father quit resigning from the State Department in protest in advance of the Iraq war. Um, was that hard for you guys?

Speaker 19 I mean, I was in college when it happened, so my life was hard for other reasons.

Speaker 19 I was just,

Speaker 19 yeah, I mean, that was just a strange time for everyone involved. I mean, I think,

Speaker 19 yeah, I mean, he's like,

Speaker 19 yeah, I think that's so courageous.

Speaker 2 That's all I have to say.

Speaker 7 I mean, it, I remember, look, we were talking about this backstage. I was 23 at the time.

Speaker 7 The drumbeat for war in Washington, where I was living, was so intense. People who objected were silenced so quickly and so harshly.

Speaker 7 The gears of government were expected to ramp up and all just be in support of this thing.

Speaker 7 And for to be one of those lonely voices that stood up at the time when there was the maximum pressure and be like, I'm not going to go along with this is incredibly brave.

Speaker 7 And I imagine quite difficult. But like, I don't know, people,

Speaker 7 the bummer about these brave stands is I don't think that people get the credit they deserve in hindsight when they were right.

Speaker 7 Like look at Sinead O'Connor, we're just now being like, oh, yeah, she had a point about the Pope.

Speaker 19 Well, yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of people now who are like, well, of course, the Iraq war was a disaster. And it's like the same people who were like, this seems like a great idea.

Speaker 19 I mean, there's been, I mean, for that whole era of, you know, American politics and sort of media coverage, there's no accountability for,

Speaker 19 I mean, the war on terror is just, which is, you know, ongoing. There's not.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I mean, we were talking about this. Like,

Speaker 19 that's one of the sort of sub-themes in the book.

Speaker 19 I read a lot about the war on terror years. And, you know, not all of it made its way into the book, but I was sort of thinking of it similarly to

Speaker 19 working in oil and gas above a certain level.

Speaker 19 It's just there's certain kind of like mistakes and like crimes that are so big that they are they're never acknowledged because acknowledging them would mean like accountability.

Speaker 19 And that's people are very eager to avoid that, especially if you look at oil and gas companies. They're all like, we're now green tech companies.

Speaker 19 Nothing's wrong. We're fine.
We're the energy transition.

Speaker 7 We're beyond petroleum. Yes.
Isn't you here? It's literally the name.

Speaker 7 So did you go into the book intending to use fiction and novel and these characters and the story as a vehicle to educate people about the energy industry?

Speaker 7 Or did that just kind of happen along the way?

Speaker 19 That definitely happened on the way.

Speaker 19 I was interested in writing about that kind of upbringing and that sort of like,

Speaker 19 because I think

Speaker 19 I obviously can't speak for like other people who have lived overseas or, you know, in kind of unfamiliar places when when they're kids and teenagers. But

Speaker 19 in my case, you know, there was definitely you, you're, you're, you grow up being told, like, oh, this is such a, this is such an enriching experience that you're having.

Speaker 19 And you, you know, you have so much like insight now because of this experience. But then you realize it's like, no, you're just being an American in like another location.

Speaker 19 It doesn't, you know, there's still like a huge amount of insularity to that experience. And so I always wanted to kind of play with that and think about it.

Speaker 19 And also I'm just interested in teenage girls and I wanted to talk about a teenage girl who was familiar to me.

Speaker 19 But as I was, you know, for a while, it's like, you know, Bunny was there, but I had no kind of justification for her other than that I was just kind of like clowning this teenage girl for no reason.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 19 sort of that kind of like foreign service, like embassy lifestyle. But then as I was reading, because my family had been posted to Yerevan, Armenia in 1997.

Speaker 19 And so I was, you know, I didn't want to write necessarily like directly about that, but I wanted to stay kind of in the zone.

Speaker 19 And I was, I read a book called The Oil and the Glory by the former Wall Street Journal journalist Steve Levine.

Speaker 19 And that was, it's an amazing book. And it's about basically like the

Speaker 19 rush for Caspian oil reserves after the collapse of the Soviet Union and like specifically Chevron and BP kind of like. duking it out.

Speaker 19 And so when I read that, I was like, oh my God, I want to write about this.

Speaker 19 And I went kind of too far in that direction for a while just like writing all these like random weird oil men and then I realized I needed to like take it back to my teenage girl and figure out a way to kind of weave it in and then it sort of went from there then I suddenly had like a justification for Bunny as a as a

Speaker 7 you know main character of a story so you have this sort of spectrum of interesting views of characters in the book like there's literal like the oil and gas executives there's kind of like sort of the parody of sort of the the super liberal critique of the industry.

Speaker 7 And there's Bunny, who's sort of this naive person who brings us through all the years of the story. Why did you decide to have her at the center of everything?

Speaker 19 So actually,

Speaker 19 when my first book came out after in the like year or two after, I had a couple of occasions when I was driving to LA for some sort of book thing.

Speaker 19 and driving there and back from San Francisco when we lived there. And I started listening to the audiobook of the novel Oil by Upton Sinclair.

Speaker 19 They later made, that's what There Will Be Blood is based on, although they have like almost nothing in common.

Speaker 19 I think he used like the first 30 pages and then just like threw away the rest of the book.

Speaker 2 Why option it? That's kind of expensive.

Speaker 19 I mean, you know, I'm sure, yeah, they're both, you know, to, it was like a generative work of art. They created another work of art, but they have no bearing on each other.

Speaker 19 And, but, so, the main character of Oil, the novel, um, is named Bunny. He's a boy, um, and he starts out as like a young, like a tween or a teenager.

Speaker 19 And he's like a little oil scion, and he he follows his father around and watches as he like buys up oil leases and and then he meets like a noble socialist um who kind of teaches him about

Speaker 19 you know workers in the oil fields and and it just sort of follows him for like hundreds of pages and so then i realized like

Speaker 19 he he's kind of i i think useful idiot actually has like a literal meaning that i might not be like correctly using but but he's kind of a blank slate like he just is our guide um through because Upton Sinclair had like big messages that he was trying to get through and he really wanted to educate the reader about all of these different systems.

Speaker 19 So I think that helped me a lot because I was like, well, what if bunny, but a teenage girl and, you know, in the kind of in the neoliberal era and, you know, with a teenage girl's like painful insecurity and powers of observation, which the bunny of.

Speaker 19 um sinclair's novel like didn't have to quite the same extent and so i had it was a balancing balancing act to kind of keep her like in that state of naivete so that we could learn with her and from her,

Speaker 19 which sometimes I think kind of strains credulity that she could be so actually, no, it doesn't, because I meet people all the time who are like exactly like her, but

Speaker 19 and myself have been, have been like her. But yes, she, I needed her to,

Speaker 19 I needed her to be a vehicle in that way.

Speaker 7 She's very fun to follow. I mean,

Speaker 7 challenge that we've had, look, talking about climate change, it can be really hard, right? Because it's such a big problem. It's hard to feel hopeful about it.

Speaker 7 It's hard to feel some sort of agency or help people feel like they still have some agency when things are getting kind of dire.

Speaker 7 How did you wrestle with those challenges in the book?

Speaker 7 And the desire to educate people about this thing happening around us that we still have some time to impact,

Speaker 7 but is not going great?

Speaker 19 Well, I think I really like gave up on the, I don't think fiction is like,

Speaker 19 although I just said all that about Apton Sinclair like educating people through his novel, I don't ultimately think that,

Speaker 19 I think of fiction more as like a, as a documentation project rather than necessarily like a didactic or like educational one.

Speaker 19 I mean, I think, you know, people talk a lot about like fiction as a vehicle for empathy.

Speaker 19 And like, yes, that in some cases like is true, but I don't think that empathy necessarily like spurs action usually. It just more is like cathartic.

Speaker 19 And so I wasn't really like,

Speaker 19 there were some moments where I'm kind of like, people need to know, you know, like that these oil companies are, they're all connected, man.

Speaker 19 But I, I really, like pretty early was like, this isn't going to be a novel that's like,

Speaker 19 because I mean, it's functionally erasing the many people who aren't like Bunny.

Speaker 19 I mean, there are a lot of people who, you know, gestures with some of the characters who are thinking differently than Bunny and actively like resisting this state of of affairs.

Speaker 19 But, but what I felt like I could bring to the page was my knowledge of like, you know, elite white spaces and sort of white millennial woman head in the sand vibes.

Speaker 19 And, you know, that it felt like that was

Speaker 19 something that I could like document in a meaningful way. And that's not necessarily like educational.

Speaker 19 I mean,

Speaker 19 because I don't, you know,

Speaker 19 I struggled with like,

Speaker 19 I don't want to, you know, write a novel that's like, it's, it's doomed, but, you know, the way oil and gas companies are behaving and the way we are allowing them to behave, like it is, I mean, for people who have already died, like that, the future is like foreclosed upon them already, you know?

Speaker 19 So I think it's appropriate to be like. to acknowledge that and and say sometimes things like don't have to be hopeful.

Speaker 19 The way I kind of justified it to myself sometimes, because I was like, well, this, there's some like bleak, there's some really like sort of bleak currents in the book is that you can do like doom on the sheets of paper, but like action in the streets, you know,

Speaker 19 you can put that on your tote bag.

Speaker 7 I love that. Yeah, that should absolutely.
We'll go to brunch and talk about that.

Speaker 7 What are you reading? Anything you like?

Speaker 19 So I just read a wonderful novel called Enter Ghost by Isabella Hamad, and it's about doing a performance of Hamlet

Speaker 19 in Palestine and in the West Bank, and it's a beautiful novel.

Speaker 19 She also wrote a novel called The Parisian, which is a wonderful novel. I also want, I think these people are in the audience, but my book comes out on August 1st, and so does Eden Lepucky.

Speaker 19 Her novel is called Time's Mouth, and it's amazing.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 19 yay! And Carrie Howley wrote a book, who is a genius,

Speaker 19 wrote a book called Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs about the security state and reality winner that came out a few months ago. And that is a

Speaker 19 really like haunting work of narrative nonfiction.

Speaker 19 And then about, you know, I did like, I read so many books for this book and some books that really kind of made me think a lot.

Speaker 19 And, you know, I'm not like many people have read them already, but This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein is a wonderful book.

Speaker 19 a book called Revolutionary Power by Shalanda Baker, who I think now holds a position in the Department of Energy, was really instructive for thinking about how the energy transition might just end up allowing the same people to kind of profit if we don't fundamentally change and sort of dismantle the systems that we have.

Speaker 19 Those were really useful books for me.

Speaker 7 Thank you all for coming out.

Speaker 19 Really appreciate it. Thank you.

Speaker 6 Please

Speaker 4 buy a book, buy two, buy one for a friend's.

Speaker 11 And thanks again.

Speaker 2 All right, thanks everyone. We will talk to you later this week.
Have a good one.

Speaker 6 Buy mobility. You'll love it.

Speaker 2 Had Dave America is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.
Our producers are Andy Gardner-Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 2 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis.

Speaker 2 Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Madeline Herringer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support.

Speaker 2 And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Mia Kelman, Ben Hefcote, and David Toles.

Speaker 2 Subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube to catch full episodes, exclusive content, and other community events. Find us at youtube.com slash at PodSave America.

Speaker 10 What is the secret to making great toast?

Speaker 2 Oh.

Speaker 19 You're just going to go in with the hard-hitting questions.

Speaker 10 I'm Dan Pashman from The Sporkful. We like to say it's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
We use food to learn about culture, history, and science.

Speaker 10 There was the time we looked into allegations of discrimination at bon appetite, or when I spent three years inventing a new pasta shape.

Speaker 7 It's a complex noodle that you've put together.

Speaker 10 Every episode of The Sporkful, you're going to learn something, feel something, and laugh. The Sporkful, get it wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 16 Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving? Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway.

Speaker 16 As a parent, you can't always be in the car, but you can stay connected to their safety with Greenlight Infinity's driving reports.

Speaker 16 Monitor their driving habits, see if they're using their phone, speeding, and more. These reports provide real data for meaningful conversations about safety.

Speaker 16 Plus, with weekly updates, you can track their progress over time. Help keep your teens safe.
Sign up for Greenlight Infinity at greenlight.com/slash podcast.