Trump’s Trade Win or Spin?

Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start?

Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to.

Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is?

With thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro.

You just have to hire one.

You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app.

Download today.

Adobe Acrobat Studio, so brand new.

Show me all the things PDFs can do.

Do your work with ease and speed.

PDF spaces is all you need.

Do hours of research in an instant.

With key insights from an AI assistant.

Pick a template with a click.

Now your prezzo looks super slick.

Close that deal, yeah, you won.

Do that, doing that, did that, done.

Now you can do that, do that, with Acrobat.

Now you can do that, do that with the all-new Acrobat.

It's time to do your best work with the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio.

Welcome to Raging Moderates.

I'm Scott Galloway.

And I'm Jessica Tarlov.

Jess, we need to talk about your blouse.

Is this the real Housewives of Tribeca?

What's going on here?

I am like luau chic for the day.

I think it's going to be like 98 degrees.

I had to do camp drop-off.

So Brian got this for me.

It's actually, I mean, I don't want to like defend it if you just don't like it.

I do like it.

It's a very nice dress, actually.

And it's flouncy, which is good for breathability and the heat.

But I don't know how often you buy your partner clothes.

But Brian relentlessly buys me oversized clothes.

And I don't know what that's about.

Oversized clothes.

He likes a big, flowy dress.

So here we are in the heat in a big flowy dress.

A 6'4 handsome guy that's really into buying his partner clothes.

This gets dreamy.

I mean, I did well, especially, you know, for a later in life pickup.

Later in life, you're still pretty young.

I love that later in life.

How are you?

I'm good.

I, too enjoy women's clothes.

I buy shoes.

I'm definitely...

You're a shoe guy.

Yeah.

I'm, as my ex-wife said, gay by day, straight by night.

I love women's clothes and fashion.

And no, you look lovely.

I didn't mean to imply anything otherwise.

No,

it's a bold print, to say the least.

Like, you couldn't wear this on cable, but because I'm a podcaster in the morning, I can wear this to come and record.

If you showed up like that, you'd look like

straight out the door.

You'd look like the Democrat who's just back from, you know, sitting under a weighted blanket, complaining into TikTok before her ayahuasca trip, and they just brought you on to make the other conservatives look smart.

Yeah, you can't show up with that.

No, I'll be wearing a plain-colored pantsuit by the end of the day, don't you worry.

There you go.

In today's episode of Raging Moderates, we're discussing Trump's deal with the European Union, the mass starvation crisis in Gaza, and if Trump will pardon Jelaine Maxwell.

Ghislaine, Ghislani, Gislane, it's Ghelane is

not that I I care that much about getting her name right, but yes.

All right, let's bust right into it.

After months of threats, walkbacks, and last-minute meetings, Trump says he struck a trade deal with the European Union.

Standing next to the EU Commission President at his golf course in Scotland, of course, Trump unveiled a framework agreement that includes a 15% tariff on most EU imports, cars, medicine, semiconductors, and in return, the EU has committed to buying hundreds of billions in U.S.

energy and defense equipment.

Trump calling it the biggest deal ever made.

I'm not sure if maybe the Marshall Plan or the treaty here at Versailles.

But anyways, although the details are still murky, what's clear is that this move avoids what could have been a major transatlantic trade war, especially with a Friday deadline looming to slap 30% tariffs on EU goods.

But the new 15% rate is still a big jump from the previous 10%,

and some countries, including France and Germany, aren't exactly popping champagne.

Jess,

what is your overall takeaway from this deal?

It's not even a deal.

This framework, let's say that, but this framework.

Well, that is the takeaway.

And I know that the motto for the administration is supposed to be MAGA, right?

Make America Great Again.

But I think it could shift to the details are still murky.

Yeah.

Because that's what you hear about every single trade agreement that has been floated.

And I wanted to

talk to you, and I know that you've spoken on your other pods about this, but we haven't yet on Raging Moderates.

You know, this conversation that's going on now about why the economy is still chugging along, that we were expecting end of days situation, we're basically business as usual-ish, right?

Like the market is unbothered by this.

I know that we had the whole taco theme and conversation.

I think that that is applicable to what's going on.

The Wall Street Journal had a great chart about what was promised, right?

What he said would happen on Liberation Day, and then what has actually been executed.

And that he's 166 tariff letters short of what he said he was going to send by this Friday, August 1st.

I think he's only sent 25 at this point.

But can you break down why you think it is that everything, I won't say that it's fine because we have seen a lot of enormous companies report billions of dollars of losses, especially in car manufacturing.

Walmart with the headlines, they're raising prices up to 51%.

But why do you think that the market and the economy has been, I guess, more resilient than you would expect in the face of the damage that the Trump Trump team has at least been promising to bring.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: So I've said for a long time that I think two of the most damaging metrics in the Western economy are the Dow and the NASDAQ, because they give us sometimes cold comfort that the economy is doing well or that people are doing well.

10% conservatively of Americans own 90% of the stock.

50% to 90% own the other 10%, and the bottom 50 just have debt.

So essentially, the NASDAQ and the Dow have become not indices on the economy, they become indices on the economic well-being of the wealthiest Americans.

And shocker, the wealthiest Americans keep hitting 17 new highs so far this year.

They're killing it.

And I worry that we're studying to the wrong test.

And that is we believe that because the NASDAQ is up, that everything is fine.

And what you effectively have in the global markets right now is that 50 to 55 percent of global market capitalization is represented by the S ⁇ P 500 or by U.S.

publicly traded stocks, which is just incredible when you think about it.

And then if you add in debt, the way you value a company is you say, what is the equity value of the market capitalization, which is the price of the share times the number of outstanding shares.

So if a company has a million outstanding shares and it's trading at $100 a share, okay, it's got an equity value of $100 million.

But if it's got debt of $30 million on some plans, property, office base, then technically you're saying the enterprise value is the market cap plus the debt, $130 million.

Because the market's saying, even though it owes $30 million, it's worth $100 million more.

So we're saying this company company is worth 130 million.

If you add in debt of American companies, the total enterprise value of U.S.

companies represents 70% of the enterprise value of every company in the world.

So effectively, if someone came to you, Jess, and said, all right, Jess, you can own every company in America for $70,

or you can own every company in the world that's not in America for $30, which would you choose?

Wait, oh, actually?

Yeah, you can either own every American American company for $70 or you can own every company that's not in America, China, Brazil, every company in Europe.

Sorry, I thought it was rhetorical, the second option, right?

Yeah, I would argue that's a better deal.

Yeah, okay.

Well done.

Sorry, no, I thought it was one of those.

You turn the same color as your blouse in about three seconds.

That's like 80 different colors.

I didn't know if I was getting like a Scott Galloway TED Talk thing, like, come on, you idiot.

Or it was actually.

Where I ask questions, but I don't want an answer.

I just want to talk to myself.

Well, that happens sometimes.

That happens a lot.

I'm guilty.

Anyways, you're right.

You're correct.

Ding, ding, ding, you advance to the lightning round.

So American stocks are just quote-unquote conservatively fully valued, and a lot of people would say massively overvalued.

And of the stock market that represents 50% of the total market cap of the entire world, 40% of that value is represented in just seven companies.

And of those seven companies, they are basically being driven by the promise and unbelievable performance so far and the understandable excitement around AI.

So AI is not subject to tariffs.

AI just churns on.

Trump just announced basically that his new quote-unquote AI regulation is no regulation and says that AI can crawl this podcast or your books or your TV shows or recreate a Rihanna song.

And there's not a lot of recourse from the artists.

It's basically a giant transfer of value, as I read it, from New York and LA and the creative community to his buddies in Silicon Valley.

So the economy grinds on.

When I got off of Twitter, what struck me was one, I didn't miss it.

And two, how small a world it is, that it's a small number of very vocal people in the chattering class.

I didn't miss any economic opportunities.

I didn't miss out on any information.

All that happened was my mental health got a lot healthier.

And what I think we're seeing with the Trump administration and generally in government is that the economy grinds on and that maybe these policies don't have as big an effect.

And also, because of the taco effect, where people don't believe Trump anymore, the economy kind of grinds on.

If you look at the real economy, Consumer Price Index, that recently came out, there's something in it for everybody.

What do I mean by that?

Catastrophists like me who don't like Trump look at the more inflationary subject items and they are starting to spike.

Okay, that's evidence that inflation is starting to kind of register or get traction.

And it was going to take six to nine months as it worked through the supply chain.

General Motors just announced a billion-dollar reduction in profits, and they squarely blamed it, as did Stellantis,

on tariffs.

So you're starting to see the tariffs kick in.

But at the same time, inflation was only about 2.7%.

And the majority of the world would pray for 2.7%.

So, and to be clear, the markets went down and then have ripped back.

It looks as if the markets are doing one of two things.

They're either saying these tariffs aren't that bad, the economy grinds on,

you, Sky Callow, and other people, you're catastrophist, and there was no reason to be this worried.

Or, quite frankly, the markets and these companies, specifically AI companies, who are immune to this, are just fine.

But the real economy, the stress on families, supposedly this EU deal is going to result in about $2,000 in incremental costs for American households.

So I worry more generally that we are studding to the wrong test.

I would love to see a mental health index.

I would love to see the number of people, the index around self-harm self-harm among teens.

I would love to see an obesity index.

Most people know can tell you where the Dow or the NASDAQ is approximately, but they can't tell you that, oh, 70% of Americans are obese or overweight and that, you know, X percent of households are single parents.

I feel as if we're tracking the wrong metrics, but of the metrics we track,

The companies being largely driven by AI continue to march on, and the underlying economy is showing signs of strain from the tariffs, but it really hasn't shown up yet.

There's There's nowhere near the catastrophe that people like me were predicting.

Did that help?

No, it definitely did help because there was something for everyone in there.

And you admitted the potential that what we were talking about on Liberation Day and for the month afterwards may not come to fruition and that a lot of people may have had an unnecessary meltdown, but that

we don't know what this will look like in two to three months.

And there are a lot of very smart people who are the heads of these companies, the other great businessmen and businesswomen who are saying that they can't even do their Q2, Q3, Q4 predictions because we live in perpetual chaos.

And that is not the job of the commander in chief.

It's one thing to say, I want someone to come in and shake up the status quo.

It's another thing to say, I want someone to come in and make it impossible for me to run my business effectively.

And we're not even talking about the impact of the immigration policy on running these businesses effectively, which is absolutely massive.

But you're seeing this break between what the average person, the everyday Americans are feeling and what the talking heads are saying, whether they're catastrophizing or saying he's God's gift, which is what it looked like on CNBC yesterday.

I think Jim Kramer even cursed on air.

He was so excited about this EU deal.

But the American public has been beating a consistent drum about tariffs, saying there are attacks on Americans, that they disapprove of how Trump is handling it, you know, 60% disapproval.

You were right, the Yale Budget Lab are the ones that are saying this is going to be about $2,000 extra dollars per household.

And Donald Trump really showed his hand with this idea.

Now, did you see that he's floating rebate checks?

I didn't.

He realizes that he needs a good PR stunt, like the COVID checks, right?

Where he put his signature on something and sent it to them.

So they're talking about $600 rebate checks.

Josh Hawley, our favorite flip-flopper, wants to get in on it because he knows that that's the only way he'll be able to run as an economic populist if he undoes the damage that his votes do all the time by rewarding you with something.

And there's just no way that Donald Trump would be talking about a rebate check unless he was doing something to screw over the American public.

It's just impossible.

And so when I get that $20 billion in revenues floated to me and I heard it yesterday on the five, I said, well, what's up with the rebate checks then?

Right.

Why is there a direct correlation between us quote unquote doing well and us having to say to the American public, oh, don't worry, we're going to figure this out for you.

And because it's early stages, $600 would feel like a lot to people when you get up to $2,000.

And then factoring in also the premium hikes that you're going to have from your health insurance deductibles going up.

And then, you know, after the 2026 midterms, that you're just going to lose your health care generally, they're going to owe people a lot more than that.

One thing that I was thinking about with the EU deal, and the French and the Germans in particular, have come out absolutely fuming at the European Commission for accepting this, is we now live in a world where what's good for us has to be bad for the people that we do business with.

Yeah, there's awesome.

That's right.

And there's something so, I mean, the cruelty is the point, right?

There's no bigger or more apt truism about this administration because you hear Donald Trump out there saying this is, you know, the biggest deal and this is the best deal that could have ever been imagined.

By the way, the deal that we had, which was, you know, 1%, that seems a lot better than 15%, which is what we're going to be paying.

But there's something about stomping on the economic graves of people who have been great allies with us who have been great trade partners with us that feels so short-sighted and low and crass and i just can't get used to it you know the scene of him sitting with i always mispronounce her name Ursula Van Leyen, Lyon.

Yeah, her.

And just barking at her about how good it's going to be.

And you can see the abject terror in her eyes because she knows not only does she have to make an economic deal, but also she has to protect NATO, which is being really under discussed in this because he showed up at the NATO summit.

He got a 5% pledge from a lot of these countries.

And the Europeans are having to do a very delicate dance to make sure that he doesn't pull out of NATO completely because he's pissed about whatever happens in his manufactured trade war.

You touched on a lot of important points.

So with respect to Ursula, I think it was less terror than it was disgust and disbelief that the greatest nation in the world decided that this village idiot should represent us.

And

I mean, there's a few things here.

One, your zero-sum game analogy is a fundamental flaw in his approach to business.

And I always like to try and turn this to a learning.

Up until about the age of 40 or 45, I thought that business and capitalism was about I get the better end of every deal, that I negotiate everything.

And if I can hire someone who's really good and pay them $150,000 and their market value is $200,000, I'm winning.

And the moment I'm paying them above market, I'm losing and I need to have a conversation with them.

And every time I talk to a vendor, every time I try to buy a car, everything, trying to negotiate the best deal possible, hoping that the person on the other end is almost a little bit pissed off and disappointed because I got the better of them, that it was a win-lose.

And what you realize is that the amazing thing about capitalism is it's a construct.

And Pat Connolly, one of my mentors, who was the CMO of William Sonoma, one of my first engagements was to do William Sonoma's internet strategy back in the 90s.

And we wanted to charge him, I think, a quarter of a million dollars.

And I called Pat and said, look, you're an amazing client.

I need mastheads.

I'm a 27-year-old running a strategy firm.

We'll do this for 100 grand.

He's like, no, we're going to pay you a quarter of a million dollars because we want our partners to do well.

And that struck me, that this was a great company that had said, okay, our partners need to make money too.

We want good partners.

We want them to thrive.

And that that slowly but surely started changing my mindset.

And the ultimate pivot in geopolitics that recognized the opportunity for win-win as opposed to zero-sum game is we said we can't have Versailles again.

We can't put the defeated armies in a box and bankrupt them because we're so fucking angry.

And we took Germany, which had obviously unleashed horror on all of Europe.

We took Japan, who quite frankly doesn't get the credit it deserves for butchering and brutalizing Asia and Southeast Asia through World War II.

And we said, here's an idea.

Let's flip the script.

Let's massively invest.

Let's borrow from American households and let's rebuild them.

And what do you know?

Germany and Japan are now just such extraordinary allies, not only because they like us, but because let's be honest, folks, Germany and Japan have outstanding cultures.

You can level their countries and within 20 or 30 years, they are back in an economic powerhouse.

Whereas the majority of the countries in the world can't get out of their own fucking way.

This country country can literally be decimated, either of these cultures, and they build back to be economic powerhouses.

And now they are outstanding allies.

That is the definition of capitalism or the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

And Warren Buffett just said something really dramatic.

He said, when kids, if you believe that your economic policies start extracting so much value from other nations that those kids starve, to believe that our kids won't at some point be a threat from other starving kids, look at the most unstable, violent nations in the world that are thinking about terror cells and how to bring down our buildings and kill our soldiers overseas.

They have a disproportionate number of people who just aren't doing very well.

And this is one of his fundamental flaws as he sees it as a win-lose.

I mean, a couple of things.

One, right now, France and Germany are saying, if you look at this deal on its face, you have to give the Trump administration a win specifically on this deal, not on the philosophy of win-lose, but it looks like they have the better end of this deal.

According to analysts, if this framework becomes actual law, which it may not,

this will reduce EU GDP by 0.5%.

That is a big deal in a place that's hoping for 2% growth.

That's a pretty big reduction.

The Prime Minister of France came out and said this is a dark day.

And it kind of goes to game theory, and that is when you're trying to organize 27 EU member nation states to an agreement, it is very difficult to speak with one loud, stern voice.

There is an advantage to being being a united states.

And then the other point you brought up really is, if you will, the elephant in the room.

And it's the following.

They're our largest trading partner.

This is the largest trading relationship in the world.

So getting back to business, getting on with it, trading again, letting businesses plan their business, knowing, okay, it's the devil.

This deal is the devil, but it's the devil we know.

We need to get back to work.

That's a good thing.

The elephant in the room also was that I do think that the EU or the U.S.

had this hammer that basically I would imagine part of this agreement is an informal or formal agreement to say the U.S.

is going to continue to ship arms to Ukraine and defend Europe against an invader and two, stop this nonsense bullshit talk about potentially withdrawing from NATO.

And Trump fans are correct in the sense that his reputation for being a little bit fucking crazy occasionally comes in handy sometimes.

These nations were not going to increase their military budgets to the extent they're planning to under the Biden administration or Harris administration because they were never going to believe that our rich, benign uncle was going to cut us off.

They just didn't believe it and they kept not paying or not paying their fair share.

So, to his credit, you know, you are seeing a massive increase in military spending among European nations, which I think is good because they are for the first time believed it's a credible threat that he just might stop sending arms to Ukraine or supporting NATO.

And I think this was an attempt to ensure that

continues to happen.

And then just the final thing here, and I want to get your response, is there is a bit of a conspiracy theory or a Machiavellian play.

And my co-host on Profit Markets had Elson pointed this out, that they have no intention of doing any of this shit.

They're just delaying 18 months until the midterms when there's a Democratic Congress.

None of this shit, which arguably should have congressional approval, none of it goes through.

And the EU has just basically said, let them put out a press release.

And the most ridiculous part is they're planning to invest, you know, $600 billion

and then $750 billion into energy.

How do you even measure that?

What counts for that?

That's just a big fucking number to put in his press release that he can say it's the biggest deal ever.

And they may have said, okay, just tell the ugly fat kid he's good looking and that he's going to get to play on the varsity basketball team and we'll deal with him later because we have math and English and we want the class focused and getting back to their schoolwork.

There's a theory that all of this, even the protest from Germany and France, was planted.

And they're just saying, just placate this idiot, and it's never going to happen.

Your thoughts?

I'm not mad at it.

And certainly, once I read the pushback from the EU Commission, where they said, none of this is a guarantee, it's our intention.

I'm intentional about a lot of things.

I've been meaning to work out.

I am actually doing a juice cleanse right now.

So if I get a little nasty, it's because I'm starving.

But like, we all

want to do things, right?

I'm sure that you would love a world in which they could invest more in American-made, et cetera.

But the truth of the matter is, is that they can't compel private companies.

And everything that he wants shows his desire to be an authoritarian, right?

He wants to live in a world where governments can push private companies to spend hundreds of billions of dollars.

But guess what?

They can't do that.

They can say, oh, it would be nice if you did a little more of this.

The same is true with the Japanese, who I love when you see the differences in the readouts.

And the Japanese have been some of the most transparent about it, where they just say, no, actually, that didn't happen.

We couldn't even get a meeting.

Right.

What?

Yeah.

Or we showed up and they sent a lower level guy and we don't really know what's going on.

I mean, Japan said basically the same thing as the EU.

There's no guarantee of any of this.

We're glad that we're at the table.

And if you keep him at the table and if the table happens to be at his own golf club, even better.

I mean, the optics of having this kind of summit at his personally owned golf club, which he continues to profit from throughout the course of the administration, his family getting richer and richer and richer as we go, is such a perfect summation or representation of what this administration is.

It's just about him and personal profit and grift and ritual humiliation of other people who are much more qualified for their jobs and understand

how the world works better.

Now, I'm a bit of a Pollyanna in life.

I know that I would not do as well in a boardroom as a shark necessarily, like Donald Trump.

And he does get a lot about human nature.

I've turned into a Hobbesian on this.

It's nasty, brutish, and short.

I think that was an infinitely female statement, and you should stop that bullshit.

You'd be outstanding in a boardroom, and no man with a little dick and arrogance and Dunning-Krueger would ever say that can i wear this you're absolutely going to be on boards and you're measured and you're smart anyways i'm being sexist no but in the good way only thoughtful self-aware women would make that statement a guy would be like i'd be great in a boardroom i'd show those mothers i know let me at them anyways you'd be just fine in a boardroom i those stats about applying for jobs and what men see when they look at a job listing if they're missing like 80 of the criteria they're like that's a job for me qualified and the women see that they're missing maybe 10% and they're like, oh, God, I got to rethink.

You know, the flip side of that, I'm going way off script here.

That's somewhat of a negative.

Is if you present women with a guy that has 80% of everything they want, 80% of them say that's not enough.

If you present a guy with a woman who has 80% of what he wants, 80% say that's enough.

Really?

Women have a much, much higher bar than men.

Different talk show.

Anyways, I mean, this is about human dynamics as well.

There you go.

And you know that if we could have a podcast only about dating dynamics and things like that, sign me up.

I don't know if you've been noticing all these editorials in the New York Times about mankeeping and how men are asking too much of their partners now because they don't have enough friends.

So they're actually talking to women about their feelings, which I thought was the goal.

Like my dream scenario is that Brian has no friends and has to talk to me about everything because I stay up later than he does and just want to talk all the time.

Oh, you're an eye person?

You like to chat?

Yeah.

And he works market hours.

So he's like, I am going to sleep.

And you can watch The Hunting Club by yourself, which is just softcore porn.

I don't know if you've seen it.

I haven't.

I'll watch it twice.

This is so off-track.

I think we should explore this, though, because I think it's super interesting.

My TikTok or whatever it was that has kind of gone viral.

It's so weird.

You never know what's going to go viral.

But the latest one is one I did with this really talented podcaster named Liz Plank.

Oh, yeah.

And she does, it's kind of a dating thing.

And I went on it.

No one wants to hear a guy my age talk about dating.

It's very cringy, but I like her.

So I went on.

And I said, I think men should pay for everything initially in a relationship.

And I just did the math.

Okay, so women have a much shorter window for gestation.

If you would like to have sex at some point, and that's the reason most men

most men date the prospect of sex.

In addition, the downside of sex is so much greater for women than men.

The big point that it kind of punctures a myth is that men get more from relationships than women.

If you look at the data, a man needs the guardrails and the emotional support of a relationship more than a woman.

When a woman doesn't have a romantic relationship, she pours that energy into work and friends and can still have quite a nice life.

When a man doesn't have a relationship, doesn't cohabitate, or isn't married by the time he's 30, there's a one in three chance he's going to be a substance abuser.

He pours out additional energy into things like video games and porn and nationalism and blaming immigrants and blaming women.

He just goes to a very dark place.

Widowers are less happy than when they were married.

Widows are happier after their husband dies.

So the reality is a woman's time, quite frankly, is just more valuable.

The downside potential of sex on that date is much greater for her.

And you are going to benefit more as the male from a potential relationship, which says to me that a means of establishing that you recognize the asymmetry and trying to compensate for that asymmetry and the fact that her time during her mating years is more valuable than yours, as your window for mating, quite frankly, as a man is about 50 years versus, say, 20 for a woman.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Is, in my view, to start by paying.

And what I tell my boys, and this sounds sexist and people are horrified, that when you are in the company of women, you pay for everything.

And they're like, dad, that's lame.

That's boomer.

And I'm like, yeah, maybe it is, but

it's as old as time.

Women are attracted to power and someone who can take care of their kids.

And a way you show that you're serious about that is you make an economic sacrifice called paying for the date.

And it exploded.

And a lot of people agreed.

And a lot of people disagreed and say, this is the patriarchy.

You're trying to own us.

We don't want to owe you anything.

And I'm like, that's not what I'm saying.

But I still hold to that.

I do think that

men should pay on dates.

I don't know how we got here, Jess.

Do you have anything else to say about the EU tariffs

this spring?

I have something to say about men paying.

Yeah.

I agree with you.

And what I would say is that I think too many men think that the first date or early dates have to be this extravagance in terms of how much it costs.

It just has to be thoughtful.

So you should just live within your means.

Like a lot of my friends are doctors and they dated other doctors.

And no one is earning any decent money for the first kind of 15 years of your life.

But there are ways to have a great cheap bowl of faux, for instance, and take someone to a restaurant that they may not have had on their radar or to do something thoughtful.

We want to laugh and have a good time and have a non-threatening sexual encounter.

Not that difficult to figure out.

So, I totally, I'm totally with you.

And I think it is a nice gesture.

And then you figure out your lives together.

You figure out what, you know, who earns what and how to make this fair and equitable.

That's right.

I've said around dating, I'm like, it doesn't have to be fancy.

It doesn't have to be nice.

You don't want it to be fancy.

Just what you said.

But you, you need to take charge.

Yeah.

This is where we're going.

It's not, well, what do you want to do?

No, no, no, no, no.

You are a player.

You have an idea.

You're going to take her somewhere fun.

This is what we're doing.

How does that sound?

I'll pick you up at this time.

But you're the dude.

You take charge.

You're in charge here.

All the date needs to know is that she's going to have a great time, that you're polite, you're considerate.

she can feel safe around you, but you take charge.

The worst thing I think, in my opinion, well, what do you want to do?

Well, fuck you.

You're the dude.

Figure it out.

How are you going to take charge of our life and protect our children?

And you have the rest of your life together to say every night, what do you want to eat?

Yes.

Because that's all we do, right?

That's right.

What are we going to watch on Netflix?

We need a show.

What are we going to watch?

Oh, you're asleep already?

No big deal.

There we go.

All right, Jess.

Let's take a quick break.

Stay with us.

For a limited time at McDonald's, get a Big Mac extra-value meal for $8.

That means two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun, and medium fries, and a drink.

We may need to change that jingle.

Prices and participation may vary.

Attention, all small biz owners.

At the UPS store, you can count on us to handle your packages with care.

With our certified packing experts, your packages are properly packed and protected.

And with our pack and ship guarantee, when we pack it and ship it, we guarantee it.

Because your items arrive safe or you'll be reimbursed.

Visit theupsstore.com slash guarantee for full details.

Most locations are independently owned.

Product services, pricing, and hours of operation may vary.

See Center for Details.

The UPS Store.

Be unstoppable.

Come into your local store today.

Say hello to the next generation of Zendesk AI agents.

Built to deliver resolutions for everyone.

Zendesk AI agents easily deploy in minutes, not months, to resolve 30% of customer and employee interactions on day one, quickly turning monotonous tasks into autonomous solutions.

Loved by over 10,000 companies, Zendesk AI makes service teams more efficient, businesses run better, and your customers happier.

That's the Zendesk AI effect.

Find out more at Zendesk.com.

Welcome back.

It's been another week of devastating updates out of Gaza.

Local health officials there say people are dying from mass starvation and malnutrition with the toll rising over the past week.

This, despite Israel's daily pauses in military operations, which haven't translated into meaningful relief.

Roughly 100 aid trucks made it into Gaza over the weekend, but experts say that's a fraction of what's needed.

In a policy shift, President Trump now says the U.S.

will open food centers in Gaza.

He even went as far as say Israel has a lot of responsibility for limiting aid.

A direct break from Netanyahu, who continues to deny there's any starvation happening at all.

And in another sharp foreign policy turn, Trump announced he's shortening the the deadline he gave Vladimir Putin to strike a peace deal with Ukraine.

What was originally a 50-day window is now just 10 to 12 days.

Yeah, good luck with that.

Jess, Trump is now openly contradicting Netanyahu on starvation in Gaza.

Is this political calculation or a genuine shift in how he plans to approach Israel?

I think that it's both.

And I've been eager to have this conversation with you for the last few weeks because I'm not sure if you're feeling what I'm feeling as an avowed Zionist.

People are very supportive of Israel, but I feel like everything has changed.

And I don't know if my algorithm flipped because there were certainly people saying that Gazans were starving for a long time.

And I obviously knew that there were mass civilian casualties, but I was

stuck on October 7th, which I think is important and a righteous place to be stuck.

And that control is in Hamas's hands.

They could give back the hostages and we could end this.

But considering who the players are, and it's a terrorist organization and it's the Netanyahu government, that I have been pushed to feel that there's no choice but to acknowledge that Israel is playing an important role in making the lives of these Palestinians absolutely untenable and impossible to carry on.

You look at that just in the deaths and, you know, on a monthly basis, I think it was like 48 last month, 20 of them children.

And since we've seen the shift to Israel administering the aid, the establishment of this Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the reduction in aid that's getting into Gaza is 250,000 tons less from the last ceasefire.

And that comes from the Wall Street Journal, right?

This isn't coming from the Gaza Health Ministry.

We need more independent monitors in there.

We need the press to be allowed in.

And I feel like I'm going through a period of complete re-evaluation of what I thought had been happening there the last 18 months.

And it's heartbreaking for the Palestinians, for the Israelis, many of whom have been saying this themselves.

And I feel like American supporters of Israel have to some degree just been having this bubbled conversation about the realities over there.

And

I don't know, it's not a mea culpa.

I just, I feel really lost and so sad about what's going on and understanding why this sea change is happening.

And I hope that President Trump keeps leaning into it and that we make it possible for everybody who needs to get food and aid to get it.

And that there's also some way to hold Bibi Netanyahu back because he is taking full advantage of every opportunity that he gets to bomb somebody else, to consolidate more power.

And

I'm just, I'm really sad.

Yeah, it's

so I've been accused of whitewashing the situation in Gaza.

So I just want to acknowledge

some of the data here.

Of the 74 malnutrition-related deaths that have occurred so far this year, 63 of them happened this month.

This includes 24 children under the age of five, a child over five and 38 adults.

About 20% of the children under five in Gaza are malnourished.

So one in five kids.

This month alone, over 5,000 children under five have been hospitalized for malnutrition.

Since May 27th, more than 1,060 people have been killed and 7,200 injured while trying to access food.

On Sunday, Netanyahu, who directly contradicted these reports, he said that there is no policy of starvation in Gaza and there's no starvation in Gaza, which doesn't seem to foot to the data.

It's been 190 days since Trump was inaugurated on the campaign trail.

He repeatedly stated that he'd end the war on his first day in office.

Obviously, that's not going to happen or about the same time the Ukraine war is going to end or inflation is going to come down.

So when October the 7th happened, I was very comfortable and felt like I had decent moral clarity going on a lot of talk shows.

And as someone who's seen, I think, as a moderate and someone who's an atheist and doesn't have a huge amount of connection to Israel or Judaism, other than my mother was Jewish, and I feel as if I benefited a lot from Jewish culture.

I was called on a lot to go on these shows.

And I felt very comfortable stating that, look,

if you come in and butcher a nation with a superior military infrastructure and take the equivalent, you know, on a population-adjusted basis, the population of the University of Texas, you butcher them the way they butchered them, and then you take the freshman class of SMU hostage and hide them under tunnels.

the response that we would have levied on that nation would have been as or more severe.

And And I felt very comfortable stating that war is hell, and they have invited a severe and warranted response.

The problem for the diaspora now, and that is Jews overseas, including in America, and I'll lump myself into this group, is this is becoming increasingly difficult to justify or defend.

And that is, I get the argument, well, okay, Hamas lays down their weapons and releases the hostages and it's over, but the reality is they're not going to, or they don't appear that they're going to.

And Israel now appears to be engaged in a wag the dog situation where you have an individual, a prime minister who is effectively running to stay out of prison.

If he loses to the election, he may very well likely go to prison.

And he realizes the only way he can rally people around him is to rally them around the flag and be in a constant war footing.

And also, we need to distinguish...

the military operation against Iran and Hezbollah and what is going on in Gaza.

I think there's different levels of legitimacy and justification for each of those things.

What is happening now in Gaza is just near impossible for us to defend.

And I have been an ardent defender of Israel.

And the bottom line is it just feels as if it's gone too far.

And personally, I lay the majority of this at the feet of Hamas, who tried to inspire a multi-front war against Jews and Israel, who are committed to the extermination of the Jewish people and invited a terrible response.

But I also do lay some of it now at the feet of Trump.

We are the only nation that can pull and bully and pressure Israel and Gulf states into what, in my opinion, should be happening right now, and that is a pan-Arab and American security force that takes control of Gaza and opens supply routes for aid and begins to talk about a thoughtful plan for reconstruction.

and at least locks it down and stops the starvation.

And I feel as if, yeah, it woulda, shoulda could have, but I feel if Biden were still in office or Harris were in office, I think we would be closer to that.

I hope that Trump is sincere about his concern around Gaza and that he has a plan in place.

But I think a multinational peacekeeping force in there, ensuring people are getting aid and beginning the process of reconstruction, whether that involves a two-state solution, I don't know, but at a minimum stops the starvation.

You know, it's time and there needs to be leadership.

France is fed up.

They've decided to recognize Palestine as a state.

And what people don't realize is there's hard power and soft power.

And one of the stupid things about USAID cutting it off is that hard power is very expensive and rarely used.

Soft power is actually a better ROI.

Soft power, whether you think it's brand or philanthropy or foreign aid.

The soft power and the perception of Israel around the world right now, it's a story of two brands.

In one sense, they see what's happening in Gaza and Israel has gone in my my lifetime from being the good guys to the bad guys.

That's just the reality.

That is going to cost them in terms of aid, how people feel about them, et cetera.

Their military strength and their unbelievable precise military operations, whether it's taking out Iran's air defenses or the Pedro operation, which took years to plan against Hezbollah, there's just no doubt about it.

I think the states in the Gulf just look at Israel and go, okay, love them or hate them, these guys come to play.

So, but what's happening in Gaza, I think it's become

near impossible for Jews.

I'm not sure I've earned the right to call myself a Jew, a Zionist to defend Israel.

It's just gone too far.

I agree with all of it.

And I would just say that the military precision of, you know, Project Grim Bieper, the Iranian strikes, that is to some degree a champagne story, right?

That's people who are sitting around and have the time to talk about it

when they see starving children.

That's a regular person problem.

And you look so out of touch when you do talk about those kinds of operations, which I think left the world a safer place.

And I think it's important.

And, you know, you need to talk about the alliances in the region and what is the potential for a second round of the Abraham Accords, which I think were an incredible achievement of the first administration.

But you show someone the back of a kid, the one from the New York Times story, that's all that they see and that's all that matters.

Because we know if you don't have food, you can't function.

And shame on anyone who's saying, well, that kid had genetic abnormalities on top of it.

He also has no food.

And there's no denying the fact that these people have no food.

And Ross Duthat, who I always like, even though our politics aren't the same, wrote an op-ed over the weekend, how Israel's war became unjust.

And this line really stuck out to me.

One can have a righteous cause.

One's foe can be wicked and brutal and primarily responsible for the conflict's toll.

And still, under any coherent theory of just war, there is an obligation to refrain from certain tactics if they create too much collateral damage, to mitigate certain predictable forms of civilian suffering, and to have a strategy that makes the war's outcome worth the cost.

And

that doesn't exist anymore.

There is no strategy, and they have been admitting as much for up to a year, right?

There are Israeli generals who have spoken out to say this is not winnable.

And that's the problem with an intractable war, right?

That region, I hate to say it, no one is really going to figure it out.

So you have to just get to a best case scenario.

And I think that the one that you propose makes a lot of sense.

And hopefully, Israel has garnered enough goodwill with other partners, or frankly, is important to them enough economically that they will help sort this out.

More Arab states states need to take refugees than they are.

They have a thing against the Palestinians and they're going to have to get over it.

And maybe this pushes us in the direction.

But this inflection point, you're seeing it on every single level.

average defenders of Israel, my text messages are full of people who were unrelenting in this.

You know, bring them home.

This is Hamas's fault.

Who are saying either that this actually is a genocide, which I am not comfortable using that terminology, but there are people who think a lot like me who are using it to, we have to be able to do more.

The presidents of five Israeli universities sent a letter to Netanyahu.

They've never done this before about addressing the hunger crisis.

Israeli human rights organizations, now two of them released reports calling it a genocide.

That has never happened before, that an Israeli organization has done that.

I think also Netanyahu's not going to do it, but when you have people like Ben Gavir and Smotrich in your government, you are not acting as a good faith actor at that point.

Like these people that are saying that if 2 million people die, so what?

We need to bring the Israeli hostages home.

They are hurting your cause more than helping them and they should be out.

On Friday night, I was invited to a Shabbat dinner in Riverdale here in the Bronx, and Richie Torres represents the district and he was there.

And the conversation was around just this, you know, what's going on with Israel and Gaza, what's going on with our politics of this at home here.

And there were a lot of very concerned Jews sitting around that table saying that we are surely losing public opinion at this point.

You know, Netanyahu is at record lows, deservedly so, in my opinion.

But within the Democratic Party, it's even more bleak.

And you've seen Representative Torres, who, you know, we were lucky enough to have on the podcast, doing more and more interviews where he's saying this is unsustainable and that the damage done between the Netanyahu government and the modern-day Democratic Party is irreparable at this point.

And that's very concerning to me.

There was an Israeli at the table, left-wing guy, has lived here for a long time, but he was talking about the protests when Netanyahu tried to do the judicial overhaul.

Remember, there were hundreds of thousands of people on the streets on a daily basis protesting against it.

He said that there were moments actually where Israelis were wearing MAGA hats because they feel like Trump is the only person that can actually stand up to Netanyahu.

And that Biden would have been a lot more lax about this, that Kamala Harris would have been a lot more lax about this.

And that story about Axios reported it, that after Netanyahu bombed Damascus for seemingly no reason last week, that Trump got on the phone and basically said, what the fuck are you doing?

That's right.

That that isn't a call that Biden would have necessarily made.

And that stuck with me because those are liberal-minded Israelis, right?

Those are people who probably loved Obama, wanted Hillary to win, et cetera.

And the

imagery of seeing hundreds of thousands of Israelis sporting MAGA hats is something that sends, you know, a real shiver.

up my spine and almost indicates that there might not be time left for us to be able to repair this relationship.

I'm saying this as a Democrat, and to be able to do the right thing in Gaza.

Yeah, I wonder if coming out of this, I believe Netanyahu is likely going to do more damage to Israel or has done more damage than Trump hopefully will do to America.

One, on the front end, Netanyahu's deal with the Israeli public was always sort of this unwritten deal of,

I'm violating the Constitution.

I'm not very Democratic.

You may not like me, but I'll keep you safe, right?

Like every strong man.

Yeah, I'm a hard ass.

I'll keep you safe.

Well, the bottom line is he failed.

I went to the Gaza envelope.

I toured some of the affected kibbutz.

And the first thing you think, you look out over this field and across the field is Gaza.

You think, how the fuck did they let this happen?

Why were there not helicopter gunships here within about eight minutes?

The day before

the Israeli listening service that tracks communications registered that 1,500 Hamas fighters were changing their SIM cards.

Why would they be doing that?

And yet they were totally caught flat-footed.

So he failed in his promise to keep them safe.

And then I believe there's just going to be a flow of ill will towards Israel and a flow of goodwill towards people who are looking to harm Israel because of his actions.

I think he has been an absolute disaster for the the well-being of Israel, not only on the front end.

He should be accountable.

Golden Mair was brought into office because there was a reckoning, and Israel's good at this.

They're better at this than us, of after the situation is addressed, having a reckoning and really looking hard at what happened and who should be responsible.

That's actually what brought Golden Mair to power is the prime minister before her was held responsible for tactical errors.

That's going to happen here.

And quite frankly, the ramifications are probably that he's going to go to jail, jail, not for that, but for, you know, just assembling the Supreme Court and all sorts of other shit.

But I just can't imagine anything that has been worse for Israel right now than Netanyahu.

Anyways, with that, any closing thoughts before we move on, Jess?

Just to say that the strongest argument for a changing course on this has been actually returning to Jewish values and that it is not Jewish to be withholding aid from people in complete crisis and through no fault of their own.

And Hamas is an evil terrorist organization that did one of the most unthinkable attacks in history, what they did on October 7th.

And they hide amongst civilians.

They don't care if they use as a human shield, schools, hospitals.

It doesn't matter.

But our Jewish values demand that we rise above and that we do the right thing here.

And I'm glad to see that there are the beginnings of a policy change.

And I hope that that continues and that we see a world in which we can have a two-state solution.

There's that Pollyanna again, but that people like Netanyahu and Ben Gevere are no longer in power.

That's a good place to end it.

Let's take a quick break.

Stay with us.

de Votes is the format perfect in pasad elia conto family.

Cono juelas crucientes and verdict qual niños les encantas.

Ademas delicios estrosos degranola nuesces y fruta que todos vanadis frutad.

Honey punches de votes para todos.

Tod para sabermás.

This podcast is supported by Progressive, a leader in RV Insurance.

RVs are for sharing adventures with family, friends, and even your pets.

So if you bring your cats and dogs along for the ride, you'll want Progressive RV Insurance.

They protect your cats and dogs like family by offering up to $1,000 in optional coverage for vet bills in case of an RV accident, making it a great companion for the responsible pet owner who loves to travel.

See Progressive's other benefits and more when you quote RV Insurance at Progressive.com today.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates Pet Injuries and additional coverage and subject to policy terms.

At blinds.com, it's not just about window treatments.

It's about you, your style, your space, your way.

Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right.

From free expert design help to our 100% satisfaction guarantee, everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows.

Because at blinds.com, the only thing we treat better than windows is you.

Visit blinds.com now for up to 45% off with minimum purchase plus a professional measure at no cost.

Rules and restrictions apply.

Welcome back.

Before we go, we're going to check in on the never-ending Epstein saga because things escalated again last week.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump was personally briefed that his name does in fact appear in the the Epstein files.

In response to growing backlash over how his administration is handling the case, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche spent two full days interviewing Jelaine Maxwell.

She's also been subpoenaed to testify before Congress the week of August 11th.

Then on Monday, Trump told reporters he can pardon Maxwell, who's serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, but insisted that nobody's asked him to do it.

He added that it would be inappropriate to discuss, well, of course, discussing it.

Speaker Mike johnson called the idea of a pardon outrage outrageous outrageous chess what what are your thoughts here

if he pardons maxwell it's end of days kind of stuff like i posted on twitter because i haven't had the mental strength to uh remove myself from there but that you know pardoning maxwell makes pardoning violent january sixers look like good judgment you know this woman participated in what epstein was doing.

She wasn't some administrative assistant.

She was there in the room.

The Republican Party are obsessed with groomers.

There's your groomer.

And she's sitting in a cell for 20 years, which frankly seems short.

And Mike Johnson said that as well, that he thinks that she actually should have had a life sentence.

And I don't know, you know, Trump regularly says, well, you know, I'm allowed to do it.

I'm allowed to.

I don't know.

I haven't really thought about it.

And he did that with everyone that he pardoned from the quote-unquote Russia collusion hoax, right?

Roger Stone, Manafort, et cetera.

Because of how bad the Epstein saga has been for him, I actually think that the pressure will be enough that he is not going to pardon her.

She's also a known liar.

She's a terrible witness.

She's a perjury as well.

So, you know, when her lawyer says she spent nine hours telling the truth about up to 100 individuals, there's no way.

that she actually was telling the truth about all those individuals.

And you can see it reflected if Trump says, you know, I never had the privilege of going to Epstein Island, which is such a weird way to talk about this.

Like he got left out of the trip to the Maldives or something like that.

But, you know, he's still focused on everybody else that would be in the Epstein files or known associates, especially the Democrats.

They're beating the drums as well about, you know, the quote-unquote new intel, which is just recycled from before anyone actually did any investigating what Tulsi has been rolling out.

And basically anyone who's an honest broker, which is limited these days, has said this is so dishonest.

That was Dan Abrams' phraseology.

And, you know, this has always been a wild goose chase.

But they have a real problem on their hands because this is week three, going into week four of it being the top story.

Donald Trump can't do anything.

He can't even announce this enormous win of a trade deal with the EU without someone asking him about Epstein.

It's following him to Scotland, whatever trip he takes, whatever movement he makes, makes, wherever he goes, there's going to be a question about this.

The American public is pissed.

You know, he's minus 37 in approval on this.

And 75% of Republicans, that's the biggest number you're ever going to get of Republicans, are dissatisfied with the way that he's handling it.

Does that mean that they hate Donald Trump?

No, he still has like a 90% approval rating within the party.

But 75% is a force to be reckoned with.

And these influencers who are, you know, they're not actually in the cabinet, but they sure seem like they have the level of access and influence as someone who's in the cabinet, or at least with a lower level cabinet job, are still beating this drum.

And they're talking about it on their shows constantly.

Joe Rogan, he said like that this is the hard line in the sand and that the administration is gaslighting them.

And he's not wrong.

Okay, first off.

They just decided to go interview Jelaine Maxwell.

Right.

She'd been sitting there available for a while.

Though there was no reason to get information from her before,

The fix is in.

Basically, it has been communicated indirectly.

They don't even need to communicate to her.

Her own lawyer has said, hey, Jelene, would you like to get out of prison in less than 20 years?

Yeah, that would be nice.

How can we do that?

Well, anything that you give to the Attorney General's office now in this two days of interview that sounds credible enough for them to release and to the extent it can, exonerates the president from pedophilia would have a likelihood, a high probability of not getting you a pardon tomorrow, but getting you a pardon in about 31 months before he's about to leave office.

And a lot of people have said, well, that would just cause a shitstorm.

And I don't think he cares.

In three and a half years, he's going to be an 82-year-old obese man who has pardoned himself.

He could give a shit how many of his own party or Democrats are clutching their pearls and saying, this is outrageous.

So I think the fix is in.

I think this is obvious.

They're about to announce that she has information and it'll be something along the lines of while he was there and they were good friends and I did see him in the company of women.

There is nothing that shows, oh, and by the way,

he never ever or maybe even made some comments that he wasn't interested in underage.

I've stopped using the term underage women.

People have, in the comments, reminded me repeatedly, these are girls, these are children.

But the fix is in.

There's absolutely

no reason to interview her unless they saw a political advantage in interviewing her.

The Department of Justice is not like our traditional Department of Justice where it attempts to go up the food chain and convince people along the way to turn in and to indict and to prosecute.

This is the opposite.

This is, we're going to do everything we can, gymnastics, to try and figure out a way to

turn this chicken shit of a scandal into chicken salad for the president, knowing, and this is the problem with an autocracy and a corrupt president.

Think about this.

The president is scared shitless.

That's pretty obvious.

He wishes Jelaine Maxwell well.

He said that about her.

He didn't say, I wish the victims well.

He didn't say, I hope the trauma that they have experienced, that they find closure in this prison sentence.

The only person he has wished well in all of this is Jelaine Maxwell, because why?

He's fucking terrified of what she might say.

And so to think that she and her defense attorney haven't done the math here, and to believe that this entire apparatus that was one of the greatest apparatus in the world, the AG and the Department of Justice, which had been totally perverted and had turned it into a weapon, I mean, this is just too obvious.

And then the pushback I get is, well, the base will go crazy.

He's going to do here what I would do, and maybe it won't work, is what he did around his taxes.

Of course, I plan to release my taxes.

Of course.

And then he never does it, and he's never going to.

So, of course, I'm going to release the files, or he releases the files in the names Bill Gates and Bill Clinton aren't redacted, and then everything else is redacted.

And Larry Sumner's and all these famous Democrats.

But the idea that he's worried about the backlash of what's going to happen to him, I just don't think, I don't, I think Honey Badger don't care.

I think if he gets to the end of his administration, he's going to pardon her and then he's going to go play golf and die an obese old man alone, which is some compensation.

Well, I think, you know, putting the timeline on it makes it a lot more feasible that this could be the running out the door thing.

I think people are thinking about it in terms of what could happen in the next few months versus what am I going to do as my final act when I get thousands of people coming out of the woodwork, right?

Saying, I need a pardon or, you know, my friend needs this.

So I guess that that is possible.

And I agree with you that he doesn't care.

And you see that even in the way that he treats people who could be or should be the heir appearance for the next administration.

Remember how you wouldn't even say like J.D.

Vance would make a great president.

He's like, yeah, no, I'm in charge.

And that's how people who are smart analysts about the modern Republican Republican Party look at things.

Like when I had Kellyanne Conway on, asking her about the future of the GOP, she said it's going to be pretty much lost in the wilderness, right?

Because they have no organizing principle besides Donald Trump.

And he is the kingmaker for everybody, even if he doesn't necessarily help you electorally, as we've seen over and over again in tight races.

But he's the guy.

And he's also shown an incredible capacity to be able to live in a bubble quite happily.

So if his bubble is going to be Mar-a-Lago, which, you know, it should be, you're 82 years old, you got a bunch of grandkids, you have a members' club where people come just to adore you all the time, like I would want to live in that bubble too, then he especially wouldn't care about something like that.

So, I guess I could see a pardon if it was a final act.

I cannot see a pardon happening right now.

And you brought up, we need to make sure that we say that these were children.

Teresa Helm, who was one of the girls' children who was abused by Epstein and Maxwell, did an interview with MSNBC, and she said it would mean the complete crumbling of this justice system that should first and foremost stand for, fight for, and protect survivors.

This crime is different than every other crime that we have talked about in reference to Donald Trump.

This is not a white collar situation.

This is child abuse.

And I am in no way saying that he participated in that.

I have absolutely no idea, but we know Jeffrey Epstein did, and we know that Kohli and Maxwell did.

Well, Well, whether smoke, there's fire.

Can you imagine anyone sounding more guilty than this guy right now?

He has no crisis comms.

A hundred percent.

Person or ability.

He's not used to being held accountable.

That's the thing, because even with January 6th, getting impeached, et cetera, the Supreme Court came and bailed him out anyway.

And then the electorate came and bailed him out.

and put him back in office.

And he will not suffer the consequences of any of the actions that he's taken.

And so I think that this is genuinely shocking to him to have run up against something that seems to matter in a substantive and enduring way to his base.

And he's floundering.

He doesn't know what to do.

And suddenly words matter.

They have never mattered before.

When he was with Jonathan Swan and he made the comment about, I wish her well, about Colleen Maxwell.

I don't think he really thought about it.

I don't think he genuinely wishes her well.

He's just never been held accountable for a single thing that he's said.

You know, Muslim bans, bad ombres, everybody moves on.

It becomes baked into the Donald Trump cake, and we just continue to eat it over and over again, maybe until now.

Yeah, but even that, the words do matter because he's not a guy who gives people the benefit of the doubt.

The ordinary Donald Trump, with something like this, would have said, oh,

horrible woman.

Hope she rots in prison.

Yeah.

Ugly, too.

Instead, he's, I wish her well.

Logically, the only reason he would say that is to try and curry favor with her so she doesn't narc on him.

I mean, or because they were genuinely friends, or they liked each other.

To your point, the guy has such incredible instincts for the media, and it's as if his comms people

said to him, I want to come off as guilty as possible.

What do I say?

What is my body language?

Because if he had just said, in my view, this is insane, these pedophiles, all these Democrats, Bill Clinton.

I think I saw the ghost of Jimmy Carter down there.

I mean, if he just like went fucking crazy, right?

Yeah.

And angry, and we're going to release this thing.

And then we need to make sure we need to vet it.

And then released it in six months.

And it was all redacted.

It would have been bad.

Oh, but people would have taken it.

Nobody.

His base would have taken it, maybe thrown, like left a couple names in there, like, oh, Bill Clinton's on a flight.

Let's leave it there and go there, whatever.

Instead, he's like, I don't think we should, we should move on.

Like the first time ever that he's been thoughtful about anything.

Yeah, it's just measured.

All of a sudden, he's gotten very measured.

Yeah.

And it's just like, Jesus, this guy looks absolutely so guilty.

More importantly, is this the last show of the summer that I'm on?

Yeah, I'm sad.

I mean, I'm happy for you.

Well, I like you and I have fun

during the podcast.

And I'm excited that you're taking all of August off and recharge your proverbial batteries, but it will be raging moderates lonely without you.

So, folks, and this is a story of blessings and privilege, I've decided from this point forward in my life, and I've done this the last couple of years, I take August off.

I closed the office the last two weeks of August because people who work for me should work harder than me.

It's gotta free August.

I take all of August off.

And the reason I bring this up is that we have some very exciting co-hosts.

Can you talk about any of them?

One of them is my, literally my hero.

If someone, the other day, I'm Pierce Morgan, they said, who are your heroes?

And I mentioned this person and the comments were like brutal.

Can you mention who our co-hosts are?

Well, I don't think this was your hero one, but I think you like him a lot.

We have James Carville next week.

Amazing.

We're going to have us an election.

We're going to count some votes.

Yeah.

We're going to have this election.

That guy's a fucking gangster.

He's not my hero.

Okay.

We have Hillary Clinton, who I think.

My hero.

Yeah.

I mean.

Incredibly smart, does the work, never lost her focus.

And that is always hoping women.

Would have been the most qualified president in American history.

Literally.

the most impressive person in my view I'm so excited I'm so excited about this Secretary Clinton Secretary Clinton is going this is what you call a major upgrade secretary Clinton is going to be no well yeah no let's be honest yeah

let's be honest yeah anyways folks that's it for this episode thank you for listening to raging moderates our producers are David Toledo and Eric Jenicus our technical director is Drew Burroughs going forward you'll find raging moderates every Wednesday and Friday subscribe to raging moderates on its own feed to hear exclusive interviews with sharp political minds this week.

Oh my God, another hero.

Literally, another hero among Senator Warner is a hero.

Senator Warner.

I wanted him to run for president.

He invited me down.

He wanted to know about big tech.

Oh, great.

First off, he should be president.

He's big and he's handsome.

That's the primary consideration to be president.

Definitely.

The guy's a baller, made a shit ton of money, went into public service, is so smart, understands technology, just a fantastic public servant, a great leader, represents Virginia really well.

well.

Great gets.

How are we getting all these people?

We're charming, Scott.

We're a hit on the hill.

We're a hit on the hill.

Dozens and dozens of fans on the hill.

Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts.

You don't miss an episode.

Just have a fantastic August.

I'm going to text you.

I don't know if you're going to reply.

I will read them all.

I'll see you Labor Day.

Thanks, everybody.