Trump's Trade War Hits Hollywood

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm John Lovitt. I'm Tommy Detour.
All right, on today's show, we're going to talk about Trump's new movie tariff proposal, his plan to reopen Alcatraz.

Speaker 1 It's like a fucking parody. It's unbelievable.
And his big loss in court over his attempt to ban certain law firms from practicing law in federal court.

Speaker 1 Then later, you'll hear Tommy's interview with our friend Chastin, Buddha Jedge. Tommy, what'd you guys talk about? So Chastin's got a book coming out.
It's called Papa's Coming Home.

Speaker 1 It's a children's book.

Speaker 1 We talked about why he wanted to write that, LGBT representation in books, what it's like to be the focus of disgusting, constant right-wing attacks on his family, book bans, their adoption story, being a dad, Pete's beard.

Speaker 1 Got it to that.

Speaker 1 Pete's journey into the manosphere. It was fun to just hang.

Speaker 1 Chaston was kind enough to bring some extra copies of his new book that night. I read it to Charlie.
I told Chaston this, but Charlie loved the book. Like multiple LOLs from

Speaker 1 the back jacket. He was a big fan.
Big fan. Charlie fan.
Charlie's first blurb. Yeah.
Maybe Pete will do an interview with Charlie.

Speaker 1 All right, let's get to the news, and we'll start with the economy, where Donald Trump is doubling down on his message that Americans just need to suck it up and sacrifice for the sake of His Majesty's trade war, especially our kids who've frankly been spoiled with too many dolls, pencils, and strollers.

Speaker 1 It's got a point. The president sat down for pencils.
Who the wizards is such a nice thing?

Speaker 1 Where'd the fucking pencils come from?

Speaker 2 You think he spent a lot of time down on the floor

Speaker 2 playing with the kids?

Speaker 1 He thinks we still have the sharpeners that you could do this to. And maybe most people don't even know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 If we did have those, maybe things wouldn't be so fucking fucked up.

Speaker 1 Okay. Your kids doing this.
Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 2 Make them make a sharpener.

Speaker 1 You're in the Make America Great again, can't they? That's not totally wrong. All right.

Speaker 1 Okay, there you go.

Speaker 1 Sounded more like your dad every day. All right, we're a MAGA Curious podcast.
Wait till we get to the movie tariffs. I know.

Speaker 1 All right. President sat down for a Long Meet the Press interview where Kristen Welker asked him about the recession predictions that have accompanied his tariff policy.

Speaker 1 Here's a sampling of his answers.

Speaker 4 Is it okay in the short term to have a recession?

Speaker 1 Look,

Speaker 5 yeah, everything's okay.

Speaker 4 Are you worried it could happen? Do you think it could happen?

Speaker 5 Anything can happen.

Speaker 4 When does it become the Trump economy?

Speaker 5 It partially is right now, and I really mean this. I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy.

Speaker 4 Are you saying that your tariffs will cause some prices to go up?

Speaker 5 No, I think a tariff is going to be great for us because it's going to make us rich.

Speaker 4 But you said some dolls are going to cost more. Isn't that an acknowledgement that some prices will go up?

Speaker 5 I don't think a beautiful baby girl needs, that's 11 years old, needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls.
They don't need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.

Speaker 1 So true.

Speaker 1 Just in case anyone thought he might have misspoken there, here's what Trump said when asked about this again on Air Force One Sunday night.

Speaker 6 Hey,

Speaker 6 young lady, 10-year-old girl, nine-year-old girl, 15-year-old girl, doesn't need 37 dollars.

Speaker 6 She could be very happy with two or three or four or five.

Speaker 6 Let's not waste a lot of time and stick with myself. What else?

Speaker 2 I'd like Americans to look at an industry, lift it up, and ask themselves, does it spark joy?

Speaker 1 Him just listing off the ages of girls just creeps me out. Especially that voice.

Speaker 1 I get older and older. The number of dolls, the number of pencils, the ages of the girls, it's just changing everything.

Speaker 1 He's doing a weave on this one.

Speaker 1 15-year-olds with dolls, but

Speaker 1 it's not the part that's gotten the most attention, but when she said, you'd be okay with the recession. Yeah, everything's okay.
It'd be okay. Which I think really nails his.
He's like a philosopher.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 1 More than anything else.

Speaker 2 He becomes, I really, when he becomes a kind of sage-like figure, which is we're all a bit too materialistic. In the long run, we're all dead kind of vibe.
It's interesting.

Speaker 1 What do you guys make of Trump's insistence on sticking to this message? Are you surprised he's not just saying there won't be any recession or pain or need for sacrifice?

Speaker 1 The guy is not exactly known for telling hard truths.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I think there's a couple parts of it.

Speaker 1 Part of it is like, it's not dumb to do a little expectation setting when you know your tariff policy is going to create some at least rocky shores financially in the short run.

Speaker 1 But then he's betting that blaming Joe Biden for everything, whether it's tariffs, the economy, Ukraine, immigration, Gaza, all of it, is some sort of get out of jail card, free card.

Speaker 1 And so I don't know, when he gets to the $30 versus $3,

Speaker 1 he doesn't, it's so tone deaf because he doesn't realize that there are kids who can currently only afford $3,

Speaker 1 right? Who will have zero dolls. That's the part he can't compute.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you guys saw this when people were posting a bunch of photos of his kids when they were younger, like driving around like little toy Mercedes's and things, like every toy you could ever imagine.

Speaker 1 Yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 That's the money is love with him. I think

Speaker 2 he knows how to buy his kids $30.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I can't. So First of all, him saying the good parts of the economy are me and the bad parts of the economy are Joe Biden.
That's a joke he's made real.

Speaker 1 Like that's what we were all joking about.

Speaker 2 It's incredible that he's just saying it out loud.

Speaker 2 I can't tell on the $30 front. It seems like he knows he kind of fucked up and didn't say something exactly politically useful.
And now he can't

Speaker 1 let go of it.

Speaker 2 He can't back down.

Speaker 1 Interesting. It's true.
I'm sort of with Tommy's point. I think he's just, I know this is like perfect democratic messaging, but I think he's genuinely out of touch.

Speaker 1 You know, I mean, he's always out of touch, but like, this is like, this is Lucille Bluth, not Lucille with the the Lucille with the candies. This is Lucille Bluth with.
I know Lucille Bluth.

Speaker 1 What is it? Well, this was from last night. So call back from last night.
I get it. I get it.
With the one banana, Michael. What could have cost? What could have cost? It was $10.

Speaker 1 The man covers everything he sees in gold. He's covering the oval office ceiling in gold.
The whole thing looks, it's all covered in gold now.

Speaker 1 He's talking to Kristen Welker in another segment in that same interview about building a new ballroom in the White House. He's throwing himself a military parade for his birthday.

Speaker 1 Like the guy just, he has no, he's not anywhere close to in touch with what people are going through.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there was a, somebody tracked down what the objects were that have been attached to the Oval Office walls.

Speaker 2 And it turns out it seems like they just sent someone to Home Depot to buy kind of little spray-painted objects to attach to the wall, little like lawn decorations. Yes.

Speaker 1 Can I just make a request to Kristen Welker, whoever gets to interview Donald Trump for an hour next?

Speaker 1 The 10th time he complains, just can someone just say to him, sir, do you ever get tired of just constantly whining about the meat? He's so whiny. He's such a bitchy little baby.

Speaker 1 He's like, you never ask the night. You never say things like, the economy's doing, some companies are doing great.
And this is going to happen. I'm like, yeah, because she's not one of the fucking

Speaker 1 right-wing influencers that you let into the briefing now to ask you all the questions.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 You never take a moment in these interviews to stop asking questions and to just praise me.

Speaker 1 Right. He never asks me.
Which is

Speaker 1 what he has become accustomed to, not only from his staff now, but from the reporters that he faces every day. They all praise him.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's

Speaker 1 and so do foreign leaders and so do business people. Everyone is praising him now because everyone's either they're afraid of him or they want to suck up or they're looking out for themselves.

Speaker 1 So it's very rare that he is challenged.

Speaker 2 Well, it is and it isn't, right? Because on the one hand, yes, he's sort of pushing AP and Reuters aside to make room for

Speaker 2 right-wing Gazette and Marjorie Taylor Green's boyfriend

Speaker 2 to slather on the love with him. But he is sitting down for a ton of interviews with combative reporters over and over again.
And, you know, we're...

Speaker 1 he seems genuinely surprised

Speaker 1 each time with the massive challenging question. Like Terry Moran just blew his big break by asking a challenging question about a brand.

Speaker 2 It's a shame. Back to the minors for you, Terry Moran.

Speaker 1 Terry, I chose you.

Speaker 1 Because he didn't know who he was. He didn't know who I was.
Incredible. Incredible.

Speaker 1 Former Congressman Trey Gowdy said on his Fox News show, didn't know until this that he still has a Fox News show, that Trump should triple down on this message with an Oval Office address where he'd presumably talk more about why why our kids need to give up their dolls and pencils.

Speaker 1 Carl Rove had a very funny response to that. I think we have a clip.

Speaker 7 So I thought it was really problematic when he said, well, you know what? The kids at, you know, those little girls at Christmas, they don't need 30 dolls. They can do it too.

Speaker 7 And if they have to pay a couple more bucks for them, you know, okay, well, it sounds like Mr. Scrooge.

Speaker 1 Karl Rove.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's uh

Speaker 2 also, you know, boys play with dolls. And obviously that's not the most important part of this, but, you know.
And shout out to the little boys out there who want a a doll for Christmas.

Speaker 1 And very few young children use pencils. No, none do.
It's weird that Trey Gowdy's kind of become a voice of reason.

Speaker 1 He opened that segment criticizing Trump for talking about invading Greenland and Canada. And then Rove made some smart points, I thought.
He talked about how Trump hadn't visited the border yet.

Speaker 1 Why hasn't he visited the border? It's the only thing you seem to care about, sir. Why wouldn't you just go to the border and take some credit? The Oval Office address idea is absolutely stupid.

Speaker 1 Oh, I disagree. It's an antiquated understanding of the media.
I want to say Trump would own us lib so hard.

Speaker 1 if he gave a primetime Oval Office address on why Americans must sacrifice more for his trade war. I want to see that.
Steven Miller is going to outright you too. Yeah, please don't do it.

Speaker 1 Don't do it. You'll get us.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we'll be gone. It's so like this idea that like, no, no, like we need to sacrifice.
For fucking what? For what? It's.

Speaker 1 Sacrifice to make ourselves poorer. and other nations poorer and basically everyone poorer.

Speaker 1 Does it sound good?

Speaker 1 That is the goal. I guess sacrifice so that Donald Trump can, as he's told the Atlantic, run the world and everyone has to beg him for exemptions and this and this deal and that deal.

Speaker 1 He just wants to be the center of everything.

Speaker 2 I guess it's just sort of like, hey, like, we're going to have a couple Christmases with more expensive dolls because in a few years there'll be American-made dolls.

Speaker 2 Is that what we're meant to like? What?

Speaker 2 From their own point of view, what is the sacrifice for?

Speaker 1 It's just not clear. No.
Also, Rove said that the Pope Photoshop was very offensive.

Speaker 2 As our resident Catholic, were you seeing a lot of chatter about Catholics upset about that Photoshop thing?

Speaker 1 Yeah, on your page.

Speaker 1 There's so much to be offended by.

Speaker 1 Even if you're a devout Catholic, there's so much to be offended by from Donald Trump that I don't think the image of the Pope is going to do much.

Speaker 2 I would say, especially if you're a devout Catholic.

Speaker 1 But it's your religion.

Speaker 1 For example, his immigration policy,

Speaker 1 his policy towards the poor. Yeah, they tend to trade all that stuff for the cruelty to people they don't like.
And the big hats.

Speaker 1 Not Pope Francis. Not pope's ghost

Speaker 2 pope but the uh i i talked about the dan on the youtube uh who made fun of me for saying the youtube like chuck schumer

Speaker 2 but i don't care uh but uh snapface uh uh like i i think it's there are all these dumb things that trump is doing that are worth making fun of i do think when it tilts over into it's going to cost him the catholics in ohio because this is so offensive it's like are you offended or are you just hoping people are offended like i don't know yeah i was just surprised to hear rove say it and there's someone uh fox news asked trump about it today in the press briefing so i just didn't know if there was a critical mass of angry Catholic Photoshop gates.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 There's a few conservative Catholics that are like, this, this is what's going too far. This is not, you know, J.D.
Vance

Speaker 1 thinks it's a joke and just wants to use the opportunity to attack Bill Crystal for the Iraq war.

Speaker 2 How bad of a photo could it be? It is a costume you can buy at Spirit Halloween.

Speaker 1 I will say that JD Vance, he really like stopped posting for a while. And I thought maybe like maybe Usha said to him, like, you got to stop posting so much.
But he's back.

Speaker 1 I think he just took a, he was, he was traveling, must have taken a break because the last last 48 hours he's been he's getting into it with Bill Kristol he's he's posting about all kinds of shit I think all of them they kind of like remember in in the 2008 campaign Bill Burton told all us little young comm staffers that we had to call 10 reporters before 10 a.m.

Speaker 1 I think they have to pick like 10 Twitter fights before 10 a.m. with annoying libs and that's just kind of how this White House operates you know have you figured out a way to post in the shower yet

Speaker 2 there's only a few last kind of frontiers for you

Speaker 1 while you're sleeping posting while you're sleeping I'm sorry excuse me I saw you posting about all kinds of movies today. I'm sure we're going to get that.
I'm sure you're warming up a take for here.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. Okay, great.

Speaker 2 That's where I work things out.

Speaker 1 Just going to wave to you in that glass house over there. Scott Bessant.

Speaker 1 Scott Bessant was out here in L.A. on Monday, just a fortuitous time for him to be here, talking to investors at the Milken Conference.

Speaker 1 This came after he wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal about Trump's economic strategy. Besson's taking a sunnier approach.
He's telling everyone that we're close to making trade deals.

Speaker 1 The economy is going to be, quote, humming during the second half of 2025.

Speaker 1 I don't know. It does feel like this is a play to calm the market, mark, to calm the market.

Speaker 1 That was so marketing. I just believe it.

Speaker 1 Calm the markets in the short term. I don't know if it's the best long-term strategy or maybe it just doesn't matter.
What do you guys think?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it just seems like cleanup because

Speaker 2 steps one and two are undoing the damage from what they've already done. It's like,

Speaker 2 first things first, I want you to stop worrying about all the harm we've already caused. We're in the process of trying to unwind some of that harm.

Speaker 2 Step two is the the tax cuts we've already been talking about for months. And step three is a bunch of, I guess, AI server farms.
I guess that's something to look forward to.

Speaker 1 Right. The policy is like white label Republican policy.
It's like tax cuts and deregulation and then these stupid tariffs that are causing all the problems.

Speaker 1 Let me read you one line from this op-ed, though. Mr.
Trump intends to usher in the most prosperous decade in American history, but not at the cost of the spiritual degradation of the working class.

Speaker 1 Did that give you a bit of like a Joey, a job is about more than a paycheck? I feel like that was an edit from the VP's office. Huh?

Speaker 1 Because that's the, he's going into the sort of right-wing view that like we must bring the manufacturing back because the jobs we have, this is like the Gen Z boss in a mini

Speaker 2 discourse. Email jobs make you gay.

Speaker 1 Email jobs make you gay.

Speaker 1 Right. We're just, we're all too materialist except for the crypto.

Speaker 1 Right, those guys are except for. Yeah, and except for all the billions that we have.

Speaker 1 But otherwise, everyone's too materialist, and what we need is to be making the iPhones and making the shoes again. Besson, was it Goldman Sachs, I believe? You're right, yeah, Bessant, yeah.

Speaker 2 All these rich people, yeah. these are all the wealthiest people.

Speaker 1 A Soros agent, as Elon Musk called him.

Speaker 1 Besson is the most upright person I've ever seen. Sorry to interrupt.

Speaker 1 He almost leaned backwards. I was going to say, not yeah, he's tipping over.
He's tipping over.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he's a southern gay. They have great posture.
You have to. You have to if you're going to be a southern gay.
Anyway, yeah, I was going to like, this comes back to Trump talking about the dolls.

Speaker 2 And I do think it's kind of his ham-fisted hurt it during a meeting, J.D. Vance thing about like the kind of

Speaker 1 thing, too.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's a spiritual crisis thing.

Speaker 1 We need to get back to making things in real work yeah yeah i'm wondering if like as besant was landing in la and saw the hollywood sign outside of the the plane window he saw the truth post from trump sunday night that was a little bit of a surprise where trump announced that he will be expanding his trade war to the entertainment industry president posted that our movie business is quote dying a very fast death as other countries steal our entertainment jobs and make films that are just quote messaging and propaganda so he's directing his administration to implement quote, a 100% tariff on any and all movies coming into our country that are produced in foreign lands.

Speaker 1 Foreign lands is title case.

Speaker 1 Trump was asked about this in the Oval on Monday. Here's what he said.
Our

Speaker 5 film industry has been decimated. by other countries taking them out.
And also by incompetence, like in Los Angeles, the governor is a grossly incompetent man.

Speaker 5 He's just allowed it to be taken away from, you know, Hollywood. Hollywood doesn't do very much of that business.
They have the nice sign and everything's good, but they don't do very much.

Speaker 1 How about this, guys?

Speaker 1 How's it going to work? How are we going to tariff the movies?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's hard when a lot of them come in through ones and zeros.

Speaker 2 It's hard to figure out where to put the little

Speaker 2 tax bill. Yeah, when I saw this story, I swear, the first thing I thought was, this is John Voigt's fault.
I really did. I was like, John Voight.
And it was. And it turned out it really was.

Speaker 1 Although not really, apparently. He met with John Voight, but did you read and it was either deadline or I can't remember which of the trades it was.
Deadline.

Speaker 1 John Voigt talked to him about bringing production back and the tax incentives, but it said that he did not propose the tariffs.

Speaker 2 No, no, no.

Speaker 2 My assumption is that John Voigt has been taking these meetings to try to figure out, there is a genuine problem, which we can talk about, but that he has been like, as Trump's ambassador to Hollywood, been trying to figure out what to do about how to try to bring, about how to bring production back to the United States and to Los Angeles specifically, which is really important and a serious problem.

Speaker 2 And I'm sure he talked to Donald Trump about it. And then it kind of went through the fucking Rube Goldberg's contraption of Trump's brain.
It came out with, we're going to tariff tax 100%.

Speaker 2 And then at some point, that will be kind of squeezed through some fucking broken, chaotic policy process and emerge as his victory, his whatever real policy ultimately lands at the end of it.

Speaker 2 That is not going to be a tariff on films made in foreign lands, whatever the fuck that means.

Speaker 1 Is it films? Is it TV too? Is it, is it some of the production overseas? Is it all of it? Is it where you shoot? Is it where the production company is?

Speaker 1 None of this makes sense.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So what's happening right now is over there's there has been a strike. There was a pandemic.

Speaker 2 It had a terrible impact on the film industry and television industry in California and in the United States.

Speaker 2 Over the last decade or so, lost a ton of production from California to other parts of the U.S. And collectively, the United States has lost a lot of production to Canada, Australia, Europe,

Speaker 2 and the U.K. And

Speaker 2 it's a genuine emergency. I do think California government has been slow to respond, but right now they really are genuinely responding.

Speaker 2 Karen Bass has been talking about this, ways to make it easier to shoot in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 She's a little bit hamstrung because it actually is a big state issue, but they are trying to dramatically increase the amount of money that goes towards subsidizing production through the tax code,

Speaker 2 increasing the number of the types of productions that are eligible to receive it, all of which will go a long way because the real crisis is that there's a ton of people that live in California who are the best at what they do in making television and making film.

Speaker 2 They live here because things were produced here and fewer and fewer productions are taking place here.

Speaker 2 And a lot of the recovery that happened after the pandemic, after the strike, has gone elsewhere, not just to New York or to

Speaker 2 Georgia, but also to other countries. And it's not wrong to say that California Democrats.
collectively have been slow on this, but they're on it.

Speaker 2 They really are genuinely trying to figure out how to fix it right now.

Speaker 1 But it's also a policy question where to be on it is to, like you said, said, offer tax incentives, change the tax code, whatever else. Tariffs are a fucking terrible idea, especially since

Speaker 1 one of the many explanations, rationales for the trade war has been the trade deficit, right? On this instance, we export three times more content than we import in this country.

Speaker 1 So if we went the tariff route at all, other countries might start saying, okay, we don't want America.

Speaker 1 We're going to put tariffs on American movies and American production that come here. Yeah, I mean, Trump throws out ideas and we all sound insane, trying to make sense of them.

Speaker 1 I have a few thoughts. One, industry.

Speaker 1 One soul.

Speaker 1 Not industry. Always.

Speaker 1 Industry. Which means saint.
I know. Two, he's calling it a national security emergency.
He's trying to do this, I think. They're floating, doing this under the typical AIPA,

Speaker 1 the legal authority that are doing all the other tariffs, which would mean he's declaring a TV and film national emergency, which is just so stupid. Again, just to make fun of how stupid this is.

Speaker 1 Also, the Gavin Newsom approach, as you said, Lovett, is to increase the tax credit from $330 million to $750 million annually to try to bring back some of these productions to the LA area, to the Hollywood area.

Speaker 1 But I was talking to someone in Gavin's office today, and they're like, yes, we have to do that part for paramounts, but we also need to do more for like the person who works craft services on these productions and help them find more affordable housing, better schools, better services.

Speaker 1 So they're trying to think of it in a more holistic way. And Trump's just like, I don't know, terrif it.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 at the core of this is, yes, there's just, we need to be competing on the tax structure to get more production here, but there's also just bureaucratic hurdles that need to be lifted that have to do with like, you know, a lot of long-running problems in California.

Speaker 2 And it's just fucking expensive to be in California, which goes to the deeper problem we have about not building enough housing, not building enough transportation.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry, I'm just.

Speaker 1 Klein has entered the chat.

Speaker 2 Abundanza.

Speaker 1 Are we abundant?

Speaker 2 What are you saying about the word industry?

Speaker 1 He says industry. Oh, I see.
It drives me crazy. He said it was the one that the clip we just played, that was the worst I've heard.
Industry. Film industry.
Film industry. Film industry.

Speaker 1 Film industry. It's very odd.

Speaker 2 He's saying saying it like a, are you saying industry? And

Speaker 2 you want it to be industry.

Speaker 1 Industry. Just quick.
Right.

Speaker 2 You want it to be a dactyl.

Speaker 1 I want it to be, I don't know, better. It's interesting.
You don't know which way this is going to go.

Speaker 1 He said, I don't want to hurt the film industry, which the film industry believes they would be hurt by this. So either some of them will come in and meet with him and then he'll make something up.

Speaker 1 Or...

Speaker 1 Some Hollywood stars will go out there and yell about it and he won't like them and then he'll get dug in further and then we'll have a thousand percent tariff. But this would you never know.

Speaker 1 This would kill like a Disney, for example, because they make the Marvel movies and the Star Wars movies in England. So if those movies are getting tariffed at 100%, they are screwed.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's a, there, look, there's a ton of, the other part of this too is like, like the production stuff,

Speaker 2 same problem with the fucking tariffs coming on and off and being so chaotic. Like every other industry, it takes months, years to plan these things to be shot when they're going to be shot.

Speaker 2 Do you know how hard it is to get on fucking

Speaker 2 the schedule of some of these actors? They're busy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're busy people.

Speaker 1 I'm sure, you know, who didn't have a good morning is Ted Zarandos because Netflix, most of their production is overseas. Their stocks all went down like a couple percent.

Speaker 1 I mean, they recovered because one day everyone realized it was made up. It's all so fucking stupid.

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Speaker 1 One person who may get richer because of Donald Trump's trade war? Donald Trump. We have a quick corrupt date for you all.

Speaker 1 We've talked a lot on the show about how the Trump family is basically inviting people to bribe them through their World Liberty financial crypto business.

Speaker 1 Well, the Huffington Post reports that a company called FR8 Technologies, which handles shipping logistics for trade between the U.S. and Mexico, raised $20 million in financing.

Speaker 1 to buy $20 million worth of the Trump meme coin. Makes sense.

Speaker 1 A move that the company is hoping will be a, quote, effective way to advocate for fair, balanced, and free trade between Mexico and the U.S. Just said it.
Just put a statement out saying that.

Speaker 1 Again, the Trump family owns the majority of the Trump coins, and they get a cut of every transaction fee. So this is just a naked form of bribery, right out in the open.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, Trump's headlining a MAGA Inc. super PAC dinner at one of his golf clubs in Virginia Monday night for quote-unquote crypto and AI innovators.
The price tag, $1.5 million ahead.

Speaker 1 Kristen Welker became one of the first journalists to ask Trump about his crypto dealings during his Meet the Press interview. Let's listen.

Speaker 4 You've branded your own

Speaker 4 cryptocurrency. The coin's values actually surged recently after you announced that top holders would be invited to have dinner.

Speaker 5 I don't even know that. What did it surge to?

Speaker 4 What did it surge to?

Speaker 5 Yeah, what's it worth? You might as well tell me because I have no idea.

Speaker 4 Well, $14.32.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 1 Per

Speaker 4 no, dollars per cryptocurrency.

Speaker 5 Billion dollars?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 4 Let me just ask you, what do you say to those who argue that when they hear that, they worry you're profiting from the presidency?

Speaker 5 I'm not profiting from anything.

Speaker 5 All I'm doing is, you know,

Speaker 5 I started this long before the election.

Speaker 4 You're not profiting off of the cryptocurrency?

Speaker 5 I haven't even looked.

Speaker 5 I'll tell you what. Look, if I own stock in something and I do a good job and the stock market goes up, I guess I'm profiting.

Speaker 5 But who really profits is somebody like Nancy Pelosi, who uses inside information.

Speaker 1 Got her. Do you think it's plausible he's not paying attention to any of this?

Speaker 1 Absolutely no chance. I was talking to someone in the crypto industry today who said they believe that Trump's family has probably made around a billion dollars in cash from their crypto ventures.

Speaker 1 We're not talking about unrealized gains of the coins. We're talking about like transaction fees on the meme coin.
So you get fees, as you just said, when they buy and sell the meme coin.

Speaker 1 Do you think they made that much just on the transaction? Yes. Wow.

Speaker 1 And also, when you buy and sell the World Liberty Financial tokens, the Trump family is entitled to 75% of net revenue on those token sales, and the family owns 60% of the company itself.

Speaker 1 And by the way, there's like zero upside for the people who buy these tokens. You don't get any profits.
You don't get to trade them. It just like makes no sense.

Speaker 1 And also in that interview, he's like all up. He's like, we started this long before I ran for office.
They started the company in September of 2024. It was right before the election.

Speaker 1 I mean, this whole thing, it's like,

Speaker 1 the grift is staggering.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And by the way, we just, we also, like all of that is an estimate. We don't know that there aren't people just like putting, just giving him

Speaker 2 money. Like there could be huge amounts that are just being just directly transferred to him into his wallet.
We'll have no idea.

Speaker 2 There's no way to know that he could just, somebody can go to the Oval and just show him their phone and be like, look, look what I gave you.

Speaker 1 The only thing that's surprising is that Frey Technologies is so far the only company that we know of that has just spent $20 million

Speaker 1 to try to influence him on the trade, to get an exemption for the trade war to influence the trade policy. Because I imagine if the tariffs stay in place, we'll be seeing a lot more of that, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, that's the only one on the trade war, but there's a far more egregious example that's out there. So, there's this Emirati state-owned investment firm called MGX.

Speaker 1 The president of the firm is like the president of the UAE's brother or something, runs the company.

Speaker 1 They want to make a $2 billion investment into Binance, which is the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange and one that has gotten into a lot of legal trouble in the United States because they were allowing people to like money launder, evade sanctions, criminal behavior, just like the wild, wild west.

Speaker 1 And the company paid $4 billion

Speaker 1 to the government because of that, and the the CEO did jail time. So MGX wants to buy a piece of Binance.

Speaker 1 Instead of doing it in cash, for absolutely no reason, they are purchasing $2 billion worth of Trump's stablecoin. It seems like some reason.

Speaker 1 The only reason is currying favor with the administration because presumably it will cost them more than $2 billion because there will be a transaction fee on the purchase of the stablecoin.

Speaker 1 So that one transaction will make Trump's stablecoin one of the biggest stablecoins in the world.

Speaker 1 And I think World Liberally will probably get paid on both sides because they'll probably get a fee when you buy the stablecoin from them.

Speaker 1 And then normally, the way these stablecoins are supposed to work is they're supposed to be backed by something which they use to peg the value of the stablecoin to like $1.

Speaker 1 So presumably they'll buy treasury bonds or something, and then they'll get the interest on those. And by the way, that's like the safest version of this scheme.

Speaker 1 We don't know that they'll actually buy treasuries because we don't know how this works. So again, this Emirati state-owned company is just going to buy $2 billion worth of Trump coin for no reason.

Speaker 1 The stablecoin, the Trump stablecoin will eventually be pegged to the Melania stablecoin. Right.
It'll just be.

Speaker 1 You know what? The American people are getting pegged.

Speaker 1 That's what's happening here. I wish.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 But what were we talking about?

Speaker 2 Pegging. No, but

Speaker 2 I was thinking about this too, which is like, there's this kind of,

Speaker 2 I don't know, this feeling of like, they're openly corrupt. And this kind of feels like, okay.
And then because Republicans in Congress don't care, it leads to nothing.

Speaker 2 And I do think we need to be talking about this because I think it's really important. I do think people really care about this.
Just for the politics of it, this is important to our politics.

Speaker 2 But I think long term, we need to be thinking about

Speaker 2 how do we start talking about, A, look, these are crimes people are committing federal crimes every day, all the time. And just because your friends are doing it.

Speaker 2 Doesn't mean it's not a federal crime. Just because everybody's applauding in the ballroom doesn't mean you're not part of a federal crime.

Speaker 2 But then you have to also assume that Donald Trump is going to use the pardon power that they're going to try to find ways to

Speaker 2 wiggle their way out of this. And it would be,

Speaker 2 I think a lot about that, that Jonathan

Speaker 2 last piece around Pascal's wager and the bet that Democrats will never

Speaker 2 seek retribution and will behave really responsibly and always try to look forward. And we really do need to start talking about what we will do to investigate these crimes and make these and

Speaker 2 look back and make sure people pay a price for having been brazenly and openly corrupt, even if Republicans won't do it.

Speaker 1 Aaron Powell, Jr.: So that the crypto industry will then dump a couple hundred million dollars on that Democrat who said they'll investigate the crimes in the next election. It is a tough industry.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's tough.

Speaker 2 But I mean, well, look, we can, how much does that money get you, right? Like, we just went through a round of

Speaker 2 in Wisconsin where Elon's money could not buy them a seat, right? Like, we have to, we have to try. We have to try.

Speaker 1 Well, Senate Republicans have been trying to pass a bill with new rules on the stable coins that they thought had enough votes from more pro-crypto Senate Democrats to pass.

Speaker 1 They had enough to pass until nine of those Democrats just announced over the weekend, led by Ruben Gallego, that they'll oppose the legislation. Republicans were reportedly stunned by this news.

Speaker 1 Are you guys stunned by this news?

Speaker 1 No, I mean, the politics are complicated for the reason you just mentioned, because I think the crypto industry spent like $130 million last cycle on either pro-crypto candidates or to target anti-crypto Democrats, even ones who were not anti-crypto at all.

Speaker 1 Their number one target was Sherrod Brown, former senator from Ohio. I think that one crypto pack spent $40 million to defeat him.
And that was like their head on a pike to send a message.

Speaker 1 And I've been told by someone today that getting Sherrod Brown is like a, is a verb now on Capitol Hill.

Speaker 1 And so Luttnick, Howard Luttnick and David Sachs were tried to ram this crypto bill through Congress.

Speaker 1 Democrats, I think, were trying to figure out how to like be forced something because they don't, there's like, there's not just the crypto money, but then there's a constituency that likes crypto, that thinks it's it's exciting, that thinks traditional financial services are broken and rigged against them, and they're not wrong.

Speaker 1 But we don't need like a worse version backed on the blockchain, right? And like getting that message through is really hard.

Speaker 1 But I think what happened here is Trump's stablecoin corruption with the UAE was so brazen that even the member of the Democrats who are for this in committee were like, okay, we can't do this right now because this would essentially allow, like Trump put out an EO saying he has control of independent financial regulators.

Speaker 1 And this bill would give him the authority to regulate the stablecoin market as he is entering it. And like, that is just insane.

Speaker 1 And it would also give big tech companies the ability to issue stablecoins. So you would see like

Speaker 1 Xcoin from Elon Musk or like Libra, I think, was the version that came out of Facebook. And so that they stopped.
They stopped.

Speaker 1 Because traditionally, like there was an effort in like 2005.

Speaker 1 Someone was reminding me that Walmart basically tried to launch a bank. And we tried to keep those two things separate because it's really bad.

Speaker 1 But now the outcome of this bill passing in a bad form would be you would have like bank-like companies performing bank-like services with no banking regulations. Also, you get crazy.

Speaker 1 You get one bite at this apple on legislation. And Gallego was saying, they should not have been stunned.

Speaker 1 We worked with them for weeks and months to try to make the provisions in this bill have real teeth and have real regulation.

Speaker 1 He's like, and then the version that showed up on the floor didn't happen, like it was just weakened. He's like, so

Speaker 1 he was saying, he's like, I'm happy to continue working with them to make it stronger, but like, don't, you know, they're not going to water down a crypto regulation bill at the same time that the president is just, you know, inviting people to bribe him.

Speaker 2 You look, there's a nuanced debate, I suppose, around crypto, around the technology, the blockchain technology, the ways it can make life better. There are genuine applications.

Speaker 2 But the concern voiced from the beginning is this is going to be a tool for crime and corruption. It is currently the most brazen and grand corruption tool in the history of our country.
That's it.

Speaker 2 I don't, unless, I mean, I don't know if you guys are experiencing day to day the benefits of the blockchain, but what I'm seeing is the most corrupt administration in history using it to enrich themselves to the tune of billions of dollars.

Speaker 2 Donald Trump, never been a billionaire, maybe.

Speaker 2 Whether or not Donald Trump's ever been a billionaire, he is one now because of just complete and total corruption because of crypto.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so the Democrats on the committee, like Elizabeth Warren, they're trying to improve the bill by being like, hey, what if it said the president and members of Congress can't get into the the stablecoin business?

Speaker 1 How about that? Or like big tech can't either. Or we got to apply consumer protections to stablecoins.

Speaker 1 But I think the Republicans on the committee are trying to exempt stablecoin regulations from the CFPB, for example. So there's all the consumer protections are going to go out the window.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and they can't cross the administration or the Trump family in any way. Right.

Speaker 1 They're there to serve. But like the Ruben guy who goes to the world, look, I understand the people who are trying to work on this stuff in good faith.

Speaker 1 But like at the end of the day, the crypto industry fucking hates you, right?

Speaker 1 Like it is run by people like mark andreessen who have a radical libertarian vision of the world they view you as the enemy they will not think twice about dumping tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars on your head in the next election and just go in there eyes wide open because like you're not saving yourself from these people Trump also made plenty of news over the weekend on Meet the Press and elsewhere regarding his continued attack on the Constitution, particularly its separation of powers and amendments protecting free speech, due process, and the right to counsel.

Speaker 1 Those are big ones. Yeah, those are big ones.
Those are big ones. I didn't even mention that.

Speaker 2 S-tier parts of the Constitution.

Speaker 1 I didn't even mention cruel and unusual punishment. I probably should have put that one in, too.
Here he is answering a question about defying court orders.

Speaker 4 Your Secretary of State says everyone who's here, citizens and non-citizens, deserve due process. Do you agree, Mr.

Speaker 5 President? I don't know.

Speaker 5 I'm not a lawyer. I don't know.

Speaker 4 Well, the Fifth Amendment says... I don't know.

Speaker 5 It seems

Speaker 5 it might say that.

Speaker 4 Don't you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as President?

Speaker 5 I don't know. I have to respond by saying again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.

Speaker 5 What you said is not what I heard the Supreme Court said. They have a different interpretation.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Stephen Miller has a different interpretation. He is not a lawyer.
On the bright side, Trump did say that running for a third term in 2028 is, quote, not something he's looking to do.

Speaker 1 And then he name-dropped Vice President J.D.

Speaker 1 Vance, and surprisingly, National Archivist Marco Rubio, who currently holds three other titles as well, Secretary of State, USAID Administrator, and now National Security Advisor, big shoes for little Marco to fill.

Speaker 1 So Trump's now using this talk to my lawyers answer every time he gets a question on disobeying the courts. What do you guys make of that?

Speaker 2 It seems like he went to I have to talk to my lawyers answer too quickly. Like he was still processing her previous sentence when he got to like, you know, you have to uphold the Constitution, right?

Speaker 2 He's like, I got to talk to my lawyers.

Speaker 1 It seems like, but wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 2 That's like, you took an oath. It's like the first sentence of the oath.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, we sort of talked about this last week, too. It's the most beta passive-aggressive way to start a constitutional crisis ever.

Speaker 1 Like, the big strongman who says I alone can fix it is now like, oh, I got to defer to my lawyers. You've been railing against the courts non-stop for years, and now you're deferring them.

Speaker 1 This is just a simple difference of opinion on legal precedent. What are we talking about? Yeah, he's attacking the judges every day.
Every day.

Speaker 1 He's like, he was at the rally in Michigan for 100 days, and he was like, the judges are taking your president's power away. But I defer to my lawyers.

Speaker 2 So he won't, right? It's the FTSE with defying the orders. They're still, look, they see, Donald Trump sees all the polling, and he can pretend it's not real all he wants, but he sees it.

Speaker 2 He knows that defying court order is deeply unpopular.

Speaker 2 Deporting people without due process, deeply unpopular.

Speaker 2 So when he's in front of Kristen Welker and he's asked directly about this, he does not want to come out and brazenly say he is going to violate the Supreme Court.

Speaker 2 So he leaves it to Stephen Miller to go out there and sort of rant about how the order of the ruling really said it was 9-0 in my favor.

Speaker 2 And actually, we are following the order because the order technically doesn't require us to do anything at all.

Speaker 1 And as Stephen Miller did today as a follow-up to this interview, said, no, due process is for citizens. It is not for immigrants who aren't here legally, which is just

Speaker 1 like, it's a lie. It's been litigated for

Speaker 1 hundreds of years. Well, it's a plain language.
Alito said that. It says persons.
It says person, but even if you leave it to the courts to interpret person and what it means, right?

Speaker 1 The most recent ruling in April on Brego Garcia. We even had fucking Alito and Thomas jumped in and said, yes, of course, due process.

Speaker 1 He said, They said due process is afforded to all people, immigrants who are here legally or not, as the government has agreed in this case.

Speaker 1 Trump's own DOJ said that, plus Rubio. But Miller's out there being like, no, it's not true.

Speaker 1 Imagine like the counterfactual. Imagine if it were not the case.

Speaker 1 If you were a green card holder and the government could just threaten to punish you unless you, what, gave them money, supported them politically. Like, it doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 1 What Stephen Miller's argument is is nonsensical. It's completely un-American.

Speaker 1 I mean, the Washington Post did an investigation over the weekend, another one about Seacott and El Salvador and who ended up there.

Speaker 1 And they found two people, at least two men, were sent there, even though they had already been approved as refugees for resettling.

Speaker 1 Four people were sent there, even though they had legal protections to avoid being sent there because they had temporary protected status. So already people who were here legally,

Speaker 1 who had gone through a process here, were sent to a foreign gulag.

Speaker 1 we're only talking about a brego garcio because he's the only one that the government admitted uh in a court filing they sent uh mistakenly it it's so stupid on its face due process is for only people who deserve due process okay how do you figure out who those people are well you have to have some kind of a process the process that they have processes dhs decides now who who's who's a criminal who's not they have evidence tricia mclaughlin puts it out on on twitter and she said we have plenty of evidence and intelligence that said this person's a danger say what is the evidence They go, we're not going to tell you.

Speaker 2 It's even just at face value, it is predicated on the fact that A, the government is acting in good faith and B, if the government makes mistakes, they will try to rectify it.

Speaker 2 They are acting in despicable bad faith without regard for these people.

Speaker 2 And it is their official position that if they even, that even when they admit a mistake, they have no ability or need to rectify it.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 this is dangerous. It's so obviously dangerous on its face.

Speaker 1 You guys find that 2028 answer any more assuring than the previous comments on the topic? It's real weird that you led with Rubio. Rubio's not a MAGA.
He's just pretending. He's real keen.

Speaker 1 He wants to keep the celebrity apprentice going.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you can't have J.D. Vance getting too high on his own supply.
He's got to make it. Everyone's got to feel needy.
They need the boss's approval.

Speaker 2 Look,

Speaker 2 we're at the point where President United States is like

Speaker 2 joking around about violating the Constitution to stick around. He already tried to do that when he committed an insurrection.
So, and then you got J.D. Vance doing interviews.
It was like,

Speaker 2 this is classic Donald Trump humor. All right.
This is the funny guy we all know and love. He dresses up as the Pope.
He threatens to not leave office in a kind of coup d'etat.

Speaker 2 Like, that is fucking hilarious.

Speaker 1 That's

Speaker 1 scolds in the media. You just don't have a sense of humor.
Yeah. J.D.
Vance, too.

Speaker 1 Like, his tone is either the most self-righteous, sanctimonious, insufferable prick you've ever met online, or like, why can't you take a joke, man? It drives me crazy. Legal-ass comedy.

Speaker 1 Some good news from the courts. A federal judge.

Speaker 2 You know who had a great sense of humor?

Speaker 1 Who?

Speaker 2 Ashley Babbitt.

Speaker 2 I just thought, no, because she thought it was really funny when he was talking about staying in office.

Speaker 2 Remember, I remember Ashley Babbitt, she was so, she thought it was so funny when Donald Trump was joking around staying in office. And so she went, she wanted to be part of the joke.

Speaker 2 So she went to the Capitol. I don't remember if you were having it, but like, honestly,

Speaker 2 that joke killed.

Speaker 2 Because if you remember, Ashley Babbitt died.

Speaker 1 A bunch of people died at the capital.

Speaker 1 I say leave it in. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's all funny. It's just really funny.
He's so far. He's funny.

Speaker 1 Yeah, JD got that. Tax dollars are now going to

Speaker 1 payment to the settlement that the government has reached with her family now.

Speaker 1 It's just a funny joke. Like,

Speaker 2 remember the insurrection? How many people were laughing?

Speaker 1 Remember how funny it was?

Speaker 2 All those people that died.

Speaker 1 We also have reparations for the Jan 6th.

Speaker 2 It's just like you guys don't know how to fucking laugh.

Speaker 1 Well, that was because they had that fire jam they put out. That's right.
Jan 6th choir. Yeah, the choir.

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Speaker 1 All right, some good news from the courts. Federal judge permanently blocked Trump's executive order targeting the law firm Perkins-Cooey.

Speaker 1 Judge Beryl Howell said that the order itself was unconstitutional and opened her 102-page ruling with a line from Shakespeare, the first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers, and wrote that, quote, eliminating lawyers as the guardians of the rule of law removes a major impediment to the path to more power.

Speaker 1 In not as good news, Trump renewed his pledge on Friday to take away Harvard's tax-exempt status because it's, quote, what they deserve.

Speaker 1 Harvard's president, Alan Garber, did an interview with the Wall Street Journal calling the move highly illegal.

Speaker 1 And an unnamed Trump administration official did say to the reporter that Trump's post did not constitute a formal directive to the IRS. Got it.
Sure, sure. Sure.

Speaker 1 You guys think that the Perkins win and Harvard's willingness to fight will maybe stiffen the spines of other law firms and colleges and institutions that Trump's targeting?

Speaker 2 I hope so. I think we've been,

Speaker 2 I think two things have happened that have made people realize that there's value in fighting.

Speaker 2 One has been seeing the positive response to the institutions that do fight and the fact that they're winning in court.

Speaker 2 The other is the relentlessness of Trump's attacks on the places that have compromised.

Speaker 2 And the fact that once you capitulate to Trump, he doesn't leave you alone. All right.
He's still going after ABC News.

Speaker 2 He's not going to give them a break because they did their $16 million dirty deal.

Speaker 1 You saw what he did to Terry? Yeah.

Speaker 1 For Terry.

Speaker 2 For Terry.

Speaker 1 Big break.

Speaker 2 Still going after Columbia.

Speaker 2 They're relentlessly going to go after Columbia, even though they did this kind of a deal.

Speaker 2 So I think that, and then all these demands that in interview after interview, he's basically saying that all these law firms that capitulated

Speaker 1 admitted guilt.

Speaker 2 And then there are, then, then some of their clients are starting to think about going elsewhere. It's a report that I think Microsoft, right, is thinking about leaving.

Speaker 2 I can't remember which one of these fucking interchangeable firms in my brain they're going to leave, but hopefully they're going to start to see negative repercussions.

Speaker 2 So I think the combination of not getting what you think you're going to get out of this deal plus seeing the positive response to fighting can't be anything but helpful.

Speaker 1 Obviously, it was unconstitutional, right?

Speaker 1 You know, the judge was,

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, I think the reason the judge used such

Speaker 1 dramatic language here, it's like, she's like, I don't know, the first, the fifth, the sixth amendments violates all of those.

Speaker 1 Also, she made an example of the firms that capitulated is also part of the reason it was unconstitutional because she's like, well, the reason that you know it wasn't for they didn't take, you know, this executive order didn't target these firms for reasons that weren't political is because the ones that capitulated suddenly didn't have the EO targeted at them anymore, which is the same thing where this is why the unnamed official said, you know,

Speaker 1 his post about Harvard, it's what they deserve. That's not going to hold up well in court.
I'm trying to roll back the Harvard's tax exemption. And by the way,

Speaker 2 they didn't need the fucking tweet or whatever, true social post to make clear that this was targeting because Donald Trump has been talking about it and all the administration has been talking about it.

Speaker 2 openly. By the way, there's tons of record in the negotiation between the administration and Harvard that we can't see that would certainly come out.

Speaker 2 And by the way, even if you take it at face value, no, you can't make some claim that we are targeting Harvard because of anti-Semitism.

Speaker 2 And so, and therefore, we're going to eliminate funding across a broad swath of research.

Speaker 2 That's like the definition of an unconstitutional First Amendment violation, not just to liberal judges, but to conservative judges. The problem here, right, is, of course, it's unconstitutional.

Speaker 2 The lawyers knew it was unconstitutional. Disney's lawyers

Speaker 1 because they're lawyers.

Speaker 2 Disney's lawyers knew that the case against fucking George Stephanopoulos was bullshit. They gave in, right? Paramount knows that the lawsuit against CBS is fucking bullshit.

Speaker 2 It's because they're saying it's not worth winning. They're saying it's not worth winning because Donald Trump is such a headache.

Speaker 1 Well, and also the heads of these law firms, I understand there were actual real business pressures.

Speaker 1 Like if you're a head of a firm and some other firm is trying to poach your clients because they think you can't represent them because you can't go into a government building, that sucks. I get that.

Speaker 1 But the people doing these negotiations thought they could be cute and just agreed to do pro bono work on like helping veterans or stopping anti-Semitism.

Speaker 1 And Trump is like, actually, you're defending the coal industry. Yeah.
Here we go. And these guys conduct.

Speaker 2 The QAnon shaman. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 And like, look, the firms that capitulated publicly are getting most of the shit as they deserve.

Speaker 1 But, you know, someone from Paul Weiss was saying, look, when we were first making the deal with Donald Trump or talking to Donald Trump, we were looking for allies.

Speaker 1 We were looking for people who would stand with us and say no. And what the people were, what our competitors were doing instead was poaching our, poaching our clients and taking our partners.

Speaker 1 That's Chris.

Speaker 1 And I do, and I do think it was a like, and from going forward, now that we know that he's losing in court over this kind of shit, like all the colleges and universities, all the other law firms, other media places like should stand together and not be fucking afraid.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Harvard threw the first Brickett Stonewall.

Speaker 1 I've always said that. In Maine, Janet Mills, governor of Maine, remember Trump yelled at her in the governor's meeting because he was going to freeze funding.

Speaker 1 He tried to freeze funding in Maine, education, because she was not abiding by his trans policies. And just one court.

Speaker 2 and uh and the government had to back down and they unfroze the funding in maine so looks like you can take on trump yeah and not have to worry about it um let's yeah i mean look i i yes until there's a fire or flood or natural disaster and like i i everybody should fight but like we should like the the point was never that these people thought they couldn't win in court i think they all believed that they could win in court it's just whether or not donald trump is going to abuse his power and make life difficult on other matters right whether it's in michigan whether there's he will and he will and he will and that's

Speaker 1 the point is is. No, you don't have to.
That's why you need,

Speaker 1 that is the purpose of collective action. Yes.

Speaker 1 That is why you need to go find allies and you need to stand together because he is not as powerful if they all stand together. That's right.
Of course, his favorite target is still immigrants.

Speaker 1 There are now multiple reports that the administration is looking at more places to deport people beyond El Salvador, including Libya, Rwanda, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, and Moldova.

Speaker 1 Even if the people who'd be deported to these countries have never stepped foot in them. Marco Rubio basically confirmed this last week, saying, quote, the further away from America, the better.

Speaker 1 Trump also hasn't forgotten about the people he calls our, quote, homegrown criminals.

Speaker 1 In a Sunday Truth social post that seems to have caught everyone by surprise, Trump directed his administration to, quote, in all caps, rebuild and open Alcatraz

Speaker 1 because our country, quote, will no longer be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and judges that are afraid to do their job.

Speaker 1 In the Oval on Monday, Trump talked at length about the inspiration behind his plan to reopen the notorious San Francisco prison facility. Let's listen.

Speaker 9 How will you use it? How did you come up with the idea?

Speaker 5 Well, I guess I was supposed to be a movie maker. We're talking, we started with the movie making and we'll end.
I mean, it represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order.

Speaker 5 Alcatraz is, I would say, the ultimate, right? Alcatraz Sing Sing and Alcatraz, the movies. You look at it, it's sort of an amazing.
You saw that picture that was put out. It's sort of amazing.

Speaker 5 But it sort of represents something that's both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable, weak.

Speaker 5 It's got a lot of qualities.

Speaker 1 Alcatraz contains multitudes. I've always said that.
He's an artist. Let him cook.

Speaker 1 The Independent reported that Trump announced the Alcatraz reopening just a couple hours after Escape from Alcatraz aired on PBS. That's awesome.
So causation is in correlation. But, you know.

Speaker 2 I would like to imagine he's watching PBS.

Speaker 1 I think he's got the John Voigt. He met with John Voigt.
He's thinking about movies. He's got the whole.

Speaker 2 I just hope hope they don't, they keep the tours.

Speaker 1 Well, you got to keep the tours.

Speaker 2 It's a museum. I've been down

Speaker 2 there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, overall.

Speaker 1 Over a million people a year go there. It makes money.
There'd be a huge loss of tourist revenue.

Speaker 1 But also, they closed a prison in 1963 because it was three times more expensive than normal prisons because you have to take everything there by boat.

Speaker 1 And also, you have to take your sewage back by boat. It's really expensive.
It's a cold-ass boat ride. I remember we went in August and it was so cold.
Oh, well, that's San Francisco.

Speaker 1 That's why you don't want to live there. I really, among other problems,

Speaker 2 a lot of fags. But the,

Speaker 2 but, uh, but it's so funny just like, again, he like proposed this incredibly stupid thing, and then you have to walk through. Well, actually, logistically, it's quite expensive.
It's been a museum.

Speaker 2 It's a museum. It's a San Francisco museum.
Let's not turn this museum back into a prison because we are not.

Speaker 2 Are you boys under the impression that we have a huge problem of people escaping from our jails?

Speaker 1 No. In fact, more people escaped from Alcatraz than escape from any of our super max prisons, which are perfectly fine that have been bigger, on land, easier.
He just needs to, look,

Speaker 1 Democrats

Speaker 1 are not fighting back enough on just, you know, him fighting regular crime. There always has to be another threat, right? This is the whole, because he's an authoritarian.

Speaker 1 And so we always have to be just on the verge of being overrun by criminals. Like, we can put him in our Supermax prisons forever if we want.
Yeah, this one isn't even a threat to me.

Speaker 1 It's just like a headline grab. It's like, I don't know, like, reopen Alcatraz.
I don't care at all.

Speaker 2 No, I like that tour. Yeah, it's a good tour.

Speaker 1 You're right. Kids go there.

Speaker 2 They get to walk around. i was talking to someone in gavin a little bit strange when you think about it it was a little bit strange now that i think

Speaker 1 but but but al capone went there suffering tour that's one of the

Speaker 1 titles it is a great movie the cleanispa movie i was talking to someone in gavin's office today about this and i was like have you seen any like economic assessments of what he's like why are we talking about this seriously this is not a serious idea also the but the rwanda piece of tending migrants to rwanda i just want to point out was a boris johnson idea from 2022.

Speaker 1 They were trying to send people who sought asylum in the UK to Rwanda and then forcing them to go through their legal process. And if they were granted asylum, they would have to stay there.

Speaker 1 So we're stealing this one from the floppy-haired idiot across the pond. Libya, that's a good one.
We're just really

Speaker 1 safe places.

Speaker 2 And so, and this is, you know, like we are constantly conflating what he's doing to people by sending them to El Salvador. This would just be deporting people to these places.

Speaker 2 And that would be where they'd have to rebuild their lives.

Speaker 1 And presumably it would be because their home country wouldn't take them back. Correct.

Speaker 1 Although none of that makes sense, because my understanding is is that Venezuela is now taking deportation flights that leave out of Honduras.

Speaker 1 They just didn't want to send their planes to the United States because there was concern under the Alien Enemies Act that those assets could be seized by the U.S.

Speaker 1 government and claimed under forfeiture.

Speaker 1 Also over the weekend, I believe this was part of the Washington Post reporting, the investigation, is that it turns out their discussions with Venezuela were going well even when they ended up sending people to Seacott.

Speaker 1 Like Venezuela was willing to take some. Well, yeah, Rick Cornell, like

Speaker 1 former human Twitter troll, came to life, became a person,

Speaker 1 wanted to be Secretary of State, didn't get the job, but he was going down on these little missions to go see Maduro and trying to get back people, Americans who were in prison.

Speaker 1 And he tweeted, I think like the day they sent all these Venezuelans to El Salvador that he had gotten a deportations agreement signed with the Maduro government.

Speaker 1 And it really is why, like, I don't like talking about this in terms of immigration because it's not about immigration. It's not even about deportations.

Speaker 1 Even renditions is hard because renditions, like they're trying to, they're trying to get intelligence out of the person.

Speaker 1 This is just literally, just literally sending people to a prison for the rest of their lives in a foreign country based on no trial, no due process, nothing.

Speaker 2 That's what it is. And as the,

Speaker 2 you know, Trump today is saying, oh, we're going to give everybody $1,000 if they self-deport, threatening to send migrants to countries that they have no familiarity with.

Speaker 2 A lot of this is about scaring people.

Speaker 1 Yes, for sure.

Speaker 2 Terrifying people into not coming. They are here to leave.

Speaker 2 I think that's partly why they won't give an inch, even in these, even where they've already admitted, like in Abrayla Garcia, that case that they've made a mistake.

Speaker 2 It is all about instilling fear in people as a means of getting people to never come or leave.

Speaker 1 And there's just a, there's a dehumanizing aspect to this too, whether it's intentional or not. And I believe it's intentional.

Speaker 1 But I mean, there was some, there's some crime on the subway in New York, and they were all out there.

Speaker 1 Stephen Miller, the White House Caroline Lovett like screaming at the New York Times for not detailing the person's immigration status who committed the crime and like demanding that the New York Times so now I guess every time someone commits a crime in this country we need to know exactly what their immigration status is this is also behind the whole he's not he'll never be a Maryland man he'll never be a Maryland father he's the MS-13 so like you can't even now say that immigrants who aren't here legally, you can't say like where they live in the United States or where they're from or the fact that they're parents.

Speaker 1 The only identifier has to be that they are illegal and not here.

Speaker 1 By the way, the crime that they were all tweeting about that happened in the New York subway was a man raping a corpse. Yes.
And the mega people were like, why did you say he was an illegal immigrant?

Speaker 1 I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 That's not

Speaker 1 the part of that story

Speaker 1 that worries me the most.

Speaker 1 That's not the part that shocks my conscience, his immigration status. Also, if we're going to, I mean, we're going to start listing everyone's immigration status that commits a crime in this country.

Speaker 1 It's not going to look good for what they're trying to prove here. Right.

Speaker 1 Since most of the crimes aren't

Speaker 1 talking about that.

Speaker 2 And wait till they hear who commits crimes in women's restrooms.

Speaker 2 No, but seriously, it's like this is their playbook, right? Like if a crime is committed by one of their unsavories, that's really important. If it's not, it shouldn't be mentioned at all.

Speaker 1 It's bad. All right.
We're going to take a quick break. Two announcements before we do that.
We got a new book from Crooked Media Reads.

Speaker 1 Our friend Amanda Lippmann has written When We're in Charge, The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership. It drops next week, May 13th.
Amanda's the co-founder of Run for Something.

Speaker 1 So she has more experience than almost anyone in helping young people get into leadership positions.

Speaker 1 She talked to a ton of people for the book, everyone from Maxwell Frost to Teen Vogues versus Sharma. It's a fascinating book, essential for anyone considering that next step.

Speaker 1 Interviewed Amanda a couple weeks ago on Pod Save America. You can pre-order the book right now at crooked.com/slash books or wherever you get your books.

Speaker 1 Also, some exciting Love It or Leave It shows coming up in LA.

Speaker 1 What do we got? What do you think? On May 8th, I believe you guys are going to be at the Dynasty Typewriter.

Speaker 2 We have a bunch of great shows lined up in LA. We're going to have some surprise, very special guests.
We'll be at Dynasty Typewriter this Thursday. Then next week, we'll be at Flappers in Burbank.

Speaker 2 We have, I think, Sarah Silverman. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You have it.

Speaker 1 Who else is going to be there? Sarah Silverman, Lamorne Murray. Oh, Lamorne Murray.
Lamourne Murray, and Esther Pavitsky. Oh, great.
That's going to be an awesome show. That's a great show.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, we're going to be at Flappers.

Speaker 1 Flappers. That's a fun name.
I never even heard of Flappers.

Speaker 2 It's a comedy club. Cool.

Speaker 1 Grab your tickets now. Yeah, go ahead.
Cricket.com slash events. When we come back, Tommy's interview with Chastin Buddhajit.

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Speaker 1 My guest today is the author of the new children's book, Papa's Coming Home, which is out May 20th, right? But available for pre-sale now. That's right.
Yeah. Chastin, Budigej, great to see you.

Speaker 1 Nice to see you. You're also the best-selling author of a young adult memoir called I Have Something to Tell You.
Yeah. So folks can pick that one up too.
Thanks. Thank you for making the trip to LA.

Speaker 1 Happy to be here. I know it's not an easy thing when you have little kids at home.
In fact, that's kind of the point point of the book in a lot of ways.

Speaker 1 I hope you don't mind if I give listeners just a little peek behind the curtain here. So I called Chastin, was it Monday night? We had just recorded Pate of America.
I called you at like 4.30 Pacific.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And you would just put the kids down and we were kind of like commiserating over the battle that can be bedtime and like patting ourselves on the back for getting it done.

Speaker 1 And I hear this adorable little voice in the back. It's like, Daddy, who are you talking to? Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah. It was like the kids in the shining.
I turned around and they were just two twins standing around. I didn't even hear them come down the stairs.

Speaker 1 Just jailbreak. Yes.

Speaker 10 And they're really into talking about our friends right now. Okay.
So they'll be like, who are you talking? Are you talking to your friends? Or if we're FaceTiming one another,

Speaker 10 if I'm FaceTiming the kids back home, they'll say,

Speaker 10 if I was FaceTiming them right now, they'd be like, can I see your friends? Even if I... They had not met anybody in this room and they would have to say hello to everybody.

Speaker 1 I think that's good. I mean, that's great.

Speaker 1 Do they manipulate you at bedtime the way my daughter does me, just like for extra seconds? Extra seconds. Hours.

Speaker 10 Hours.

Speaker 1 Yeah. The other night, the other night, I think I'd read Lizette like 10 books.
You know, like the stack just gets higher every single night. So I read through all the books.

Speaker 1 Hannah comes in to say goodnight. She has this little stuffed animal called Pink Lovey.
It's a little the bunny, right?

Speaker 1 We sleep with it every night, but we have like four of them because Pink Lovey gets like kind of nasty and you got to watch Pink Lovey, but God forbid you don't have Pink Lovey at bedtime. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So sometimes she'll tell us she wants not that Pink Lovey, but that other identical Pink Lovey. And she she started to fake cry, but then halfway through made herself cracked up.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And we just like had this moment where we like all were laughing about knowing she was manipulating us. And it was just the funniest thing, too.
Oh, wow. Yeah, I'm done.
I'm screwed. Yeah.

Speaker 1 She's got me just

Speaker 10 the floor around Gus's bed is like 30 stuffies.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 10 And like people just give them to you and they just keep giving them to you. And it's really hard to make them go away.

Speaker 10 And then like he doesn't have a a favorite one, though. So every night it's like, I want little bear.

Speaker 10 And like, I have now learned that little bear is the tiny white bear because there's 15 bears in there. But of course, it's always the one that you can't find.
100%.

Speaker 10 You have to turn the lights back on, look under the bed.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's a journey.

Speaker 1 So your book, Papa's Coming Home, it's a very sweet bedtime story about a young family welcoming dad home from a work trip. And by the way, I appreciate that you guys,

Speaker 1 the dog is like like a fully fledged family member. I like that, because that's how we are too.

Speaker 1 Why did you write the book? And what's kind of the deeper message for the parent reading the book?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I mean, our kids are about to turn four, so it's weird to think that I wrote this book, I believe, before they turned two.

Speaker 10 I was coming home from a work trip and had been thinking about writing a children's book because I had asked around for books that looked like our family.

Speaker 10 As you know, you read 15 books every night. It's like, it would be great if just one of those books featured a family that looked like ours.
And we came up short.

Speaker 10 There are a couple good ones out there. And it was also important to me that,

Speaker 10 you know, the lesson in the book was just a family loves each other, unconditional love for your child. It wasn't kind of punching you in the face with like the morals.

Speaker 10 So I was on an airplane.

Speaker 10 And the idea came to me, how excited I was to get home and how excited my kids might be that I'm coming home.

Speaker 10 And that was it. I just wanted a nice, sweet story, especially for bedtime.

Speaker 10 I was kind of thinking of, you know, the book that incorporates that message of unconditional love for your kid, but also with

Speaker 10 some silly things in there that they're going to latch onto. Yeah, it's very cute.

Speaker 1 I think the little kids,

Speaker 1 they'll like the way the story escalates. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I want to ruin the ending for anybody. Yeah.
They helped me write it, right?

Speaker 10 Because there's so many things that they decide to bring to the airport to greet Papa with. And that was fun to work with Gus and Penelope, and I would workshop it and see if they'd giggle or not.

Speaker 1 Perfect. I love it.

Speaker 1 You know, you talk about the need for representation in books like this.

Speaker 1 Republicans, they love to make LGBT parents the focus of their attacks, their culture war, like things they're demagoguing.

Speaker 1 You and Pete get singled out in very terrible ways by some of these horrible people. How do you deal with it? And is that something you have to talk to your kids about?

Speaker 10 Well, luckily, no, right now. I can shield them from the internet.

Speaker 10 They're only three.

Speaker 10 You know, we try in our house to leave the discourse at the door.

Speaker 1 It's very hard.

Speaker 10 It doesn't need to be at the dinner table. It doesn't need to be in the minivan on the way to school.
We don't need to be talking about

Speaker 10 negativity while our kids are around.

Speaker 1 And another thing about Tucker Carlson, Gus.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Well, like, you know, the kids are talking to you and there's like spaghetti flying at the dinner table, right?

Speaker 10 It's like, hey, did you see this crazy thing that, you know, Caroline Levitt decided to say? Say, like, why does that need to be in our kitchen? Why does that need to be at our door?

Speaker 10 And I'm, you know, I'm no stranger to the attack um but i have always believed that the best thing that we can do uh for our community um and our family is just to live our lives authentically to show people who we are we're just like every other family you know going about our day reading 15 books uh at bedtime and you know there's probably a lot of applesauce and mac and cheese stuck to our uh kitchen table chairs just like yours to the dog yeah

Speaker 1 buddy loves it buddy's like a roomba yeah my dog's gained 15 pounds probably but um her fur is just you know finally needs to get her her groomed because it's like, you know, there's constellations in there.

Speaker 1 The book is coming out at a time when books like yours are being targeted, challenged, banned, taken to court. What is it like to debut this book while the Supreme Court is hearing this case?

Speaker 1 It's Mahmood versus Taylor, where parents are trying to pull kids out of lessons with just, you know, LGBT characters like this.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I mean, I started writing it, like I mentioned, two years ago. So I didn't see the Supreme Court case coming.
And now, of course, it's coming out in a couple of weeks.

Speaker 10 And I just keep thinking about what a kid like ours might feel

Speaker 10 sitting in a classroom where someone says, like,

Speaker 10 I don't want to read that. I don't want my kids exposed to that when it's simply a book about, you know, two loving parents going about their day.

Speaker 10 And at the end of the day, loving their children unconditionally.

Speaker 10 So,

Speaker 10 you know, I'm really disappointed, especially to see that the conservative Supreme Court seems to be favoring the parents in this particular case.

Speaker 10 As a former teacher myself, I think that's going to put a lot of unnecessary burden on teachers and schools. I mean, the school district in that particular case already said they tried it, right? And

Speaker 10 it failed. It didn't work.
It was so cumbersome to constantly deal with those.

Speaker 1 Like communicating what's going to be in the lesson and letting people opt out.

Speaker 10 But then like, where does the line...

Speaker 1 you know, get drawn.

Speaker 10 Like, I want to pull my kids out of lessons about, you know, evolution or like how many permission slips are we sending every day or every week to pull our kids out of certain lessons.

Speaker 10 So again, like this book, it was very important to me that this is a Father's Day book. It's just a book about two dads who love their kids.
I think it's like a modern American family.

Speaker 10 And so, I hope that other families will enjoy it. I hope it brings a lot of joy to bedtime.

Speaker 10 But again, I'm not naive and understand like what we're up against as a community and as a country.

Speaker 10 So,

Speaker 10 not to be like, you know, the guy out here hawking his book, but like a great thing that you can do is request books like this at your library and at your school.

Speaker 10 Because I do think it represents who we are as Americans.

Speaker 10 And there's room for everybody at the table.

Speaker 1 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And also it works. You know what I mean? Like it does normalize families that look all kinds of ways.

Speaker 1 As an educator, I mean, I imagine when you were teaching the kind of libs of TikTok, kind of like these assaults on teachers, they probably weren't happening. But I mean, do you talk to educators?

Speaker 1 Are they scared of, I I don't know, being singled out, being targeted?

Speaker 10 Well, I think this administration

Speaker 10 definitely seems to love to go after teachers and families, right? Making it harder for teachers and harder for families.

Speaker 10 Imagine that you're like a 21, 22-year-old college graduate with your bachelor's degree in education, and you're looking around thinking, okay, I'm ready to start my career in education.

Speaker 10 Where am I going to go? Places like Florida, probably not as attractive.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 10 You know,

Speaker 10 places like Oklahoma that welcome libs of TikTok in,

Speaker 10 who bring her to the table to draft policy.

Speaker 10 Just a bigoted real estate agent is now the person who's going to be helping draft education policy.

Speaker 10 But imagine that college graduate thinking, is this really what I want to do?

Speaker 10 Or what kind of environment are we creating as a country that asks people to step up to the call to become educators, right?

Speaker 10 You're underpaid, right?

Speaker 2 It's It's a really hard job.

Speaker 10 You don't get the appreciation, respect. On the way over here in the Uber, I was reading about

Speaker 10 how they want to do away

Speaker 10 with Head Start. Like, you're talking about the most vulnerable kids in our country.
So now you want to take away Head Start. Now you're putting tariffs on baby goods coming from Asia, right?

Speaker 10 So now you're making car seats more expensive, strollers more expensive. And these are the people in Washington who are screaming, like, have more kids, right? It's like their weird thing right now.

Speaker 1 It's like, well, natalism is real real weird.

Speaker 10 We'll give you money to have kids, but then, like, we can't afford childcare. We can't afford a stroller.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Right.
Girls are. Roger Bright's got to be an Elon Musk kid, it turns out.

Speaker 1 To be

Speaker 10 I thought you were going to say an Elon Musk design stroller.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 10 No, I saw a cyber truck.

Speaker 1 Those exploit off the

Speaker 1 truck.

Speaker 1 I have, I've, you know, experienced like the joy and like the wonder of being a parent and also the setbacks and the challenges that go into the process of trying to become one.

Speaker 1 I know that you and Pete have talked about the adoption adoption process and setbacks you guys had, heartbreak.

Speaker 1 Did that like, what was that experience like for you? Did it cause stress between the two of you?

Speaker 1 And do you have advice for other parents like going through the adoption process, which I know can be tough?

Speaker 10 Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 10 It's so weird to think about that chapter in life now that we have these, you know, brilliant, incredible kids running around our house and just destroying the walls.

Speaker 10 But when we were

Speaker 10 crayons everywhere, they just started. Yeah.

Speaker 10 And, you know, I swear, like the other week, I was like, I think they're doing really good with the white walls, right?

Speaker 1 And then just like, boom, like crayon loud everything. Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Jinxed it.
You know, there was a time when Pete and I

Speaker 10 we were on a list.

Speaker 10 We were on an emergency placement list.

Speaker 10 So that's where you sign up and say,

Speaker 10 you know, if there's a call in the middle of the night.

Speaker 10 In our case, where

Speaker 10 a kid is left at the hospital, the hospital works with an adoption agency to make an adoption plan.

Speaker 10 So a parent might need to be called right away. So we had about 24 hours' notice.
And they give you the call and say, hey, you're next on the list. We really need you.
Are you stepping up yes or no?

Speaker 10 And you have a couple hours to decide.

Speaker 10 We had about five adoptions fall through

Speaker 10 in the span of a year. And the really hard part is they tell you not to plan the nursery, don't buy anything because when

Speaker 10 one of those cases might inevitably fail it hurts yeah to look at the crib to look at the room to look at the nursery

Speaker 10 and have it fall through so we you know for Christmas and birthdays and stuff like aunts and uncles and parents like couldn't help themselves right and so they'd start getting things

Speaker 10 And it did. It always hurt seeing those things in the corner.

Speaker 10 You get the call in the middle of the night. There's a situation.

Speaker 10 Are you guys ready to step up? We'd say yes. And then, you know, it'd turn into 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 4 a.m., 8 a.m.
We wouldn't hear back.

Speaker 10 And then ultimately something changed where you think you're going to be parents and then you're not.

Speaker 10 But then it works out.

Speaker 10 And, you know, whatever

Speaker 10 God you believe in, or however you come to religion or belief, I think like the stars just aligned.

Speaker 10 And then one day you're standing in a hospital room and you're holding your kids.

Speaker 1 But there were multiple

Speaker 10 there were multiple nights along the way where there was some heartbreak. But then, my God, as you know, that moment you hold them is, there's nothing like it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, I know exactly the feelings you're talking about. Like, get that stroller out of this house.
I don't ever want to fucking see it again.

Speaker 10 We had that.

Speaker 1 And then there's also the moment you meet your kids. And in a weird way, you're like, okay, everything that came before this had to happen, should have happened because it brought you here.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right. All the heartbreak, everything that gets you to the point.

Speaker 10 It's beautiful chaos now. Yeah.
It's like you want it so bad. And

Speaker 10 we wanted to be parents so bad. And that's the thing that I felt like I kept saying to them when they were, they had some health complications after they were born.

Speaker 10 We were in the hospital for quite some time. RSV? Before the RSV.
So after they were born,

Speaker 10 we were in the hospital for almost two weeks. Then we went home and then I got RSV.
And that's when Gus wound up on the ventilator.

Speaker 10 But I just remember like holding them and thinking,

Speaker 10 you're so loved. Like you are so wanted in this world.
Like just

Speaker 10 looking at them. They were like barely five pounds or premature and just

Speaker 10 thinking how badly we wanted that and how

Speaker 10 loved that they were and that they were going to be. This huge community excited to welcome them.
And then, yeah, you fast forward. It's like, why is there a magnet tile like under my pillow?

Speaker 1 You know, you step on another Lego and you're like,

Speaker 1 did you, do you, do you put in for twins? Was that an

Speaker 1 miraculous accident? Like, how's that work?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I was helping my dad and helping his doing a lot of work here. My dad with a floor in our basement, and I needed to go to Lowe's to get some more tile.
Sure.

Speaker 1 And I was driving to Lowe's, as one does, Michigan. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 10 Just me.

Speaker 1 Hammer.

Speaker 1 Tools and stuff. Yep.
Yep.

Speaker 10 And I get a call from the adoption agency and

Speaker 10 immediately panic. Because whenever I see that number come up, it usually means like there's going to be a heartbreak.
I just know, like, that's, that was my history with it.

Speaker 1 Right. So

Speaker 10 talking to this social worker, and I say, you know, here's the situation. And they said, like, are you sitting down?

Speaker 10 And I was like, well, I'm driving to Lowe's right now. And they're like, okay, well, like, pull over.
Like, don't crash.

Speaker 1 You know, like, it's twins. Uh,

Speaker 1 I was just like, oh, shit, what a curveball.

Speaker 10 So, I had to, uh, so Pete was on a work trip, and I remember like pacing outside this gas station, and I called him, uh,

Speaker 10 and

Speaker 1 he's like, hello, like, very formal.

Speaker 10 It's like, hey, the adoption agency just called, and

Speaker 10 it's our turn. Like, they think it's, and they think it's real this time.
Um, and like, here's the situation. I'm giving them all the details.
I'm like, and by the way, like, are you ready for this?

Speaker 10 Are you sitting down? It's twins.

Speaker 10 And it's just silent.

Speaker 10 And then I just hear him go, okay, well, thanks so much for that information. And I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. And I was like,

Speaker 10 I was like, are you around a lot of other people?

Speaker 1 And he's like, yep.

Speaker 1 He's like, okay.

Speaker 10 Call me back. And then, and then it turns out he's on an airplane.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 10 he's like, he's somewhere out west.

Speaker 1 and he couldn't call me back until he like lands at the next spot and had to like turn around get on a red eye oh my god come home and meet me at the hospital um but yeah that the twins thing really threw a wrench in everything incredible you and pete you know you you walk this tightrope of like you're public figures you're also millennial dads who like spent half your life on social media i know for me i struggle with i you know i get a cute video of my daughter and i want to post it on whatever oh yeah but then i know it's like in the world forever and strangers will see it and my kids don't have a say in that decision.

Speaker 1 I'm like, how do you navigate that?

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 You know, one of the things that bugs me the most about being a public person, like the thing that people say to me that bugs me the most is when they say like, I want to see more pictures of those kids.

Speaker 10 It's like, you don't,

Speaker 10 like, they're not yours. Like, you don't, like.

Speaker 10 You're not entitled to access to them. Yeah.
And it kind of creeps me out.

Speaker 10 And I know that maybe that's coming from a really good place. Right.
Like, they're so happy for you and they want to see how happy they are.

Speaker 10 But I don't know if you've read Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation.

Speaker 1 No, but I've read enough takes on it to feel like I have a good

Speaker 1 sense. Yeah.

Speaker 10 But, you know, my kids can't consent to that. Right.
Like, they can't consent to having their face online.

Speaker 10 And like in a digital age, like, I've seen enough deep fakes of my husband and I that like I don't need to put my kids on the internet.

Speaker 10 One, because they can't consent to like being on the internet. And two, I don't want people messing with them.

Speaker 10 And, you know, even when we were in Washington, I remember we were taking them to the Easter egg role.

Speaker 10 We were so excited and picking out outfits. And Pete's mom was with us.
It was going to be a big family day.

Speaker 10 And the moment we came out of the White House, I sort of had a panic attack because for some reason,

Speaker 10 all morning I hadn't thought about the press.

Speaker 1 It's like open press, yeah.

Speaker 10 And the moment we walked out, there was just a flood of cameras.

Speaker 10 And my heart sank because I just, I didn't think about it. Right.
And then sure enough, the next day they were were on the cover of the Washington Post.

Speaker 1 I got my cousin Easter egg roll tickets in like 2011. And then in 2012, I was like, hey, Jeremy, you want to go back? And he's like, no, we're good.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It was a lot for me.

Speaker 10 Yeah. And plus, like, you're just on.
You know, like, it's really hard to feel like you're having an authentic family experience when people are photographing you. Right.

Speaker 10 You know, just the constant click of the camera. And

Speaker 10 you're just trying to protect your kids. Totally.
So, yeah, it's, you know, you, you want people to see your joy and your happiness. And I like talking about dad life,

Speaker 10 but there's still an element of that that kind of creeps me out. Yeah, it's a fuzzy line.

Speaker 1 It's hard to know where to draw it.

Speaker 1 Speaking of more personal questions on a podcast, I won't be heard by strangers. Who keeps the baby monitoring?

Speaker 1 You didn't ask for pictures. That's right.

Speaker 1 That's my next question.

Speaker 1 Who keeps on the Nanit or the baby monitor at night? Or do you guys, do you trade off?

Speaker 10 Well, we don't need it now.

Speaker 1 I mean, like, is your, you're fully done with the.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I guess they get out of bed and they, they IRL wake you up if they need to.
Oh, yeah. And I've, like, lately,

Speaker 10 I just sleep through it.

Speaker 1 I feel really bad.

Speaker 10 It's like people will be like, oh, Penelope had a really bad dream last night and she woke me up at like two.

Speaker 1 Like, what?

Speaker 1 I didn't hear any of that. That's awesome that you can do that.
Which makes me feel really bad.

Speaker 10 But yeah, I mean, they'll come get us.

Speaker 1 And Gus is like, like,

Speaker 10 you know, up with the sun. It's usually like 5.55 on the dot.
He's up. He's singing.
He goes downstairs and gets his little power tools.

Speaker 10 He's got this little drill.

Speaker 10 Yep. I know that.
And he's fixing things around our bedroom.

Speaker 1 It's helpful.

Speaker 10 Penelope, she's like a teenager.

Speaker 1 You have to drag her out of bed to get ready for school in the morning. Oh, my kids.

Speaker 1 Last night, I think Lizzie was kind of chirping on the nana at like 10, 2:30, 3:30. And then at 5, the whole family was just up.
No.

Speaker 1 We got to get them to sleep in.

Speaker 10 So there's two modes. Like, they will go down at 7,

Speaker 10 like they're wiped and they just go down or they were going to be up till 10.

Speaker 1 Battle. Yeah.
I know the feeling. Um, are you going to enter the Manosphere podcast universe on your book tour the way Pete has?

Speaker 10 Is this not the Manosphere?

Speaker 1 I don't know. Maybe the beta Manosphere.
Uh, the Rogan, Theo Von, Flagrant. Are you doing any of those?

Speaker 10 I don't think I need to. I'm glad Pete is.

Speaker 1 I'm glad he is, too. I thought I listened to the whole Flagrant

Speaker 1 thing.

Speaker 1 Okay, you know, it's 75% of it. Yeah, I opened it.

Speaker 10 I was like, oh, no.

Speaker 1 I got in this weird Twitter back and forth with Andrew Schultz about it, too, because I was like, I tweeted that I was I thought it was good that Pete went on I guess I described it as like unfriendly territory yeah and that was maybe I think an unfair shorthanding of their political beliefs yeah but I do think like I don't know I'm I am glad he's going on these shows I'm trying to force myself on these shows I do think yeah what's the point of talking I think it shows a side of him that a lot of people hadn't seen before like you know

Speaker 10 When he was mayor, you have to talk to everybody, right? We live in North Michigan, you talk to everybody.

Speaker 10 And this is one thing I really admire about him is he can talk to anybody and he can hold his own.

Speaker 10 And I love, I love

Speaker 10 when you hear the host go, oh,

Speaker 10 oh, I had no idea. You know, like he's not only is he like surviving in that environment, but he's actually teaching him something.

Speaker 1 No, he was thriving. He got a fire clip that.
He's also good at,

Speaker 1 that's a quote. He's also good at just pretending he didn't hear like the thing he doesn't want to respond to.
You know, like the

Speaker 1 dude in the fourth row chirping, like kind of sexual innuendo or whatever. And he's like, yep, it's kind of

Speaker 1 like, yeah, that's just, yeah.

Speaker 10 I feel like every time I go to the gym, I'm in the manosphere because it's just like, yes, like innuendos flying and like jokes flying. I can only keep up with like half of them.

Speaker 10 Yeah, that's, that's his professional and personal life because he probably is probably getting that from me too. Like, I'm just like a constant, you know, roll of puns and jokes.

Speaker 10 And so he's, he's pretty good at tuning out what he, what he doesn't want to respond to.

Speaker 1 It's a necessity in this weird world we're all in.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of commentary on Pete's New beard. Yeah.

Speaker 10 I'm a fan. Fan?

Speaker 1 I love it. Yeah.
Okay. I can't grow one.
Me either.

Speaker 10 But now, like, I can usually let it go like two days

Speaker 10 where it's not like terrible. But like, I can go to like the grocery store and go to Meyer and no one's going to say like,

Speaker 10 well, he's really letting himself go. But now I feel like since Pete does have a beard, if I even let my stubble grow for like one day, they'd be like, oh, he's trying to.
Oh, he's dope.

Speaker 10 Like, I'm not. No, I just was really lazy today.

Speaker 1 You're doing like a Samesies. Yeah, I just get like a patchy thing here.
And then.

Speaker 10 Yeah, it's not good. It's not good.

Speaker 1 It's not great. I'm like waiting for it to work.
It doesn't.

Speaker 10 He's like a teenager about it right now. They'll be like, it's really scratchy, though.
Like, well, did you put moisturize on it? Did you like put the beard balm or like beard oil on it?

Speaker 1 No. Oh, that's like, oh, so, yeah.

Speaker 10 It's like, don't.

Speaker 1 I didn't even know. I just told him yesterday.
I was like, stop complaining about something you're in control of.

Speaker 1 Just put the beard balm. Shave it, pal.
Yeah, do whatever you want.

Speaker 1 What do you think? Should he keep it? They look good. I like it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I just, I just wish I could grow one.
Seems cool. Same.
It seems cool. Yeah.
Just have options.

Speaker 1 You know, I've had the same haircut since I was birthed, essentially, and can't grow a beard.

Speaker 1 Sucks. Barely have eyebrows.

Speaker 1 Pete seems like a bit of a workaholic. Does he drive you crazy if he's home too much?

Speaker 10 No,

Speaker 10 when we moved back from D.C., he set up an office in the basement. So it's really just become like the Pete Cave down there.
It's like the Pete office in the laundry room.

Speaker 1 Go hang. Fold some laundry.
Yeah. Do some calls with Biden or whatever.

Speaker 10 Whatever you do down there.

Speaker 1 Whatever you do down there.

Speaker 10 That's good um you guys anything good on tv anything you're streaming oh man we just watched uh was it episode two of the last of us of the new season

Speaker 10 so i don't want to spoil anything for anybody but you know uh and

Speaker 10 finished the white lotus

Speaker 10 mixed

Speaker 10 can i say one thing sure

Speaker 10 he went in on that pod flagrant And they were talking about the White Lotus. And he was like, hot take or whatever.
Like, Lachlan should have died. That was my hot take.

Speaker 10 Oh, and then he just goes on a pod and says it.

Speaker 10 When he came home, I was like, You can't just take my hot take.

Speaker 10 You can't take my hot takes without crediting me.

Speaker 1 You were absolutely spoiler alert. We were absolutely right.
Oh, no, you're right. I just spoiled that one.

Speaker 10 Well, you guys can cut that out.

Speaker 2 We'll just take it back to the last question.

Speaker 1 We'll start over.

Speaker 1 There was nothing to spoil.

Speaker 10 Whatever. It's been out for long enough.

Speaker 1 Everyone can choose. One month.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I thought, I don't know. It just didn't do it for me.
Really?

Speaker 1 It's fine.

Speaker 10 I really liked this season.

Speaker 1 It's beautiful places, beautifully shot, fun to watch. That's halfway to

Speaker 1 the brother candy. Brothers doing that.

Speaker 1 Okay. What a twist.

Speaker 1 But that's Mike White.

Speaker 10 He knows what he's doing on that show.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he does.

Speaker 10 And that's why I like it. It just slowly builds, and then it all just falls apart.

Speaker 1 I've been loving the studio on

Speaker 1 Apple TV. It's like

Speaker 1 Seth Rogan, 30-minute comedy, hilarious.

Speaker 1 Makes fun. It seems like every terrible TV executive that they have ever come across makes a cameo in this, and they're just like, it's like a punching bag, like catharsis for them.

Speaker 10 That sounds like something I would like highly highly. I started the residence on Netflix.
Okay. It's cute.

Speaker 10 It's like a murder in the White House.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 10 It's like a murder caper.

Speaker 10 It's kind of weird. Like this, I know I'm going to hear the words that are going to come out of my mouth, but if you've been to the White House, it is wild.

Speaker 10 They do it well.

Speaker 10 it's done so well you're like yeah when you do walk down that stairwell that's what it looks like it's cool there and it's it's like very fast-paced and it's very funny um but we don't really watch a lot of tv together we commit to one show to watch together and then everything else we're on our own more than one is too many and also it's so hard to find overlap i know what you're saying about um watching these shows and having worked in these places in politics and then becoming the annoying person about realism.

Speaker 1 Like my god, I don't want to be that guy. I'm sorry.
I know. Well, I don't even, my wife got really into like the ambassador or whatever it was.

Speaker 10 Oh, yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I'd be like, this is Carrie Grant.
This is not how it is. And she's like, I don't care.
They would never email that. Yeah.
Shit, like that.

Speaker 1 I remember when Homeland came out, I was in the White House at the time and I was like talking to a bunch of people and Obama was there about it. And we all like loved it.

Speaker 1 We're like, this guy's fucking texting from the sit room. Come on, man.
Yeah. Like, we were.

Speaker 10 That's why this whole like Signal Gate thing is so wild.

Speaker 1 It is so funny.

Speaker 10 Like the ways in which

Speaker 10 I could not communicate with my husband when he worked

Speaker 10 about mundane stuff.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Pete Hexeth is just hammering classified details. He's copying and pasting from CENTCOM.
Nothing matters.

Speaker 1 Mike Waltz is out, though. So some good news.

Speaker 10 But didn't he just get, did he get nominated for a UN ambassador?

Speaker 1 He got sent to New York. Is he out?

Speaker 10 They're like, this was really bad. So we're going to let him go represent our country in front of the United Nations.

Speaker 1 That's a good spot to put him in. It says a lot about what they think about the UN, that they were trashing this guy.

Speaker 10 There's no top secret information at the UN.

Speaker 2 No damage can be done there.

Speaker 10 Imagine meeting him.

Speaker 1 Hi, Mike. What brings you to the UN? Oh, well.

Speaker 1 Humiliated out of D.C. Yeah.

Speaker 10 I was just sharing confidential information.

Speaker 1 Well, geez. Jassin, thank you for joining us today.
You got it. Papa's coming home.
It's out on May 20th. Everyone, pre-order it today.
Oh, thanks. Buy one for your local library.

Speaker 10 I appreciate that. Yeah, support your local library.

Speaker 1 Support your local library. And thank you for coming in.

Speaker 10 Appreciate it.

Speaker 1 That's our show for today. Thanks, Chastin, for joining.
Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday.

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Speaker 1 And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a crooked media production.

Speaker 1 Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farah Safari.
Reed Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer.

Speaker 1 The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis.
Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming.

Speaker 1 Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant.

Speaker 1 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Heathcote, Mia Kilman, Molly Lobel, Kirill Pelavive, and David Toles.

Speaker 1 Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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