Will Sommer: Across the MAGA-Verse

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Speaker 26 Hello, and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
Today's guest is the newest senior reporter here at the Bulwark.

Speaker 26 He joined us from the Washington Post, where he covered the media and conspiracy theories and other such matters.

Speaker 26 He's the author of Trust the Plan, The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America. And he's the former host of one of my favorite pods.
It was called Fever Dreams at the Daily Beast.

Speaker 26 It's Will Summer, and right now he's living that fever dream.

Speaker 26 Your fever dreams are our reality, I guess, is what I meant.

Speaker 27 Yes, we're all in the fever dream now, right?

Speaker 26 I want to start by, before we get to the news, by doing your backstory. I mean, I guess we all imagined that Trump could possibly win again, right?

Speaker 26 It was not like we were totally blindsided by that possibility, particularly here at the bulwark. But I mean, did you ever imagine when you were covering the fever swamps of QAnon,

Speaker 26 you know, back four or five years ago, doing this podcast that like these people would be literally running the country? I mean, it's true now, even in a way that it wasn't in 2018.

Speaker 27 Yeah, I mean, it's, it's difficult to imagine.

Speaker 27 I feel like sort of every step on the road, and I'm sure a lot of people feel like this is that it's like every step is like, wow, I never would have thought it would have come to this.

Speaker 27 The idea that we're at the point where Dan Bongino getting appointed to the FBI or Cash Patel even to head the FBI,

Speaker 27 I think it's like, oh, Cash Patel, the recurring Steve Bannon guest. And it's like, oh, of course, now that that's such a common thing, I mean, it's a lot to grapple with.

Speaker 27 And I think it sort of alarmingly raises questions about what's going to happen in two or three years from now.

Speaker 27 But at the same time, I think that's why there's such value in kind of keeping up with these characters.

Speaker 26 And I say this to people who are not of this world, which include you know, kind of my normie former Republican friends, as well as like liberals and progressives.

Speaker 26 I'm like, I know these people and it gives me a different perspective on what we have to come. I guess I won't jaundice you by telling you what I think.

Speaker 26 The fact that you have just entrenched yourselves in these fever swamps, does that make you more alarmed, more concerned, more feeling like it's going to just be a clown show?

Speaker 26 Like, you know, how does your perspective inform what you think is ahead here?

Speaker 27 Yeah, I mean, well, well, you know, I grew up as like a young teen Republican in Texas. I mean, I was like obsessed with like Bill O'Reilly and Ayn Rand and all this stuff.

Speaker 27 And I, you know, I would stay up late listening to talk radio. And it really sticks out to me.
I was like in eighth grade listening to Michael Savage.

Speaker 27 And he was like, we just got to nuke China, just nuke those dams and flood the whole country.

Speaker 27 And I thought, man, if this is what like one of the main voices in the party wants or, you know, in the right-wing media, I feel like there's this disconnect between the voters and what the politicians are doing, which is, you know, like cutting Social Security, trying to balance the budget, stuff like that.

Speaker 27 And ultimately, we saw that contradiction resolved by Trump, who, you know, is giving the voters all these kind of atomistic, giving into their urges.

Speaker 27 And so, yeah, I mean, I think it is ominous for me to be keeping up with this stuff so closely and then think, well, geez, you know, it seems like Trump is really willing to do a lot of things for the base.

Speaker 27 And so what is he going to do next?

Speaker 26 So, Will, the shorthand to that is what you're telling me is that what the realization I came to about the dangers of my party like in my 30s was something you realized in eighth grade.

Speaker 26 was that the short summary?

Speaker 27 It went on for a few more years.

Speaker 27 And then I was, I was like very, I was working for this, um, this like state senate primary campaign in Texas, and Dan Patrick, who's now the lieutenant governor, he won and he beat my candidate.

Speaker 27 And I thought, well, that guy's like a total lunatic. If this is what, and he went in a landslide.

Speaker 27 And I thought, if this is, that was kind of like my crisis moment with the GOP where I thought, if this is what the voters want, I mean, that's not what I want, you know, and so I think I have to go another direction.

Speaker 26 I wish I had my crisis moment in high school. Yeah.
I mean, look, the thing that I tell you is I don't want to judge, you know, lest I be judged, you know, in these sort of situations.

Speaker 26 I try to follow the, you know, guidelines and the morals that I was taught as a youth. But like, what I tell people is these people are worse than you think.

Speaker 26 You know, and I, and I, I had an opportunity to hang out with, you know, one of these kind of bro podcaster guys recently, you know, who obviously doesn't know anything about politics and has been having, you know, Republicans on the pod.

Speaker 26 And that's that's like what I tried to get through to him. I was like, I don't think you actually know these people.
I don't think that you're necessarily a bad person.

Speaker 26 I said that a lot of these people are very bad and their intentions and motives are bad. And if you follow them over time and see the way that they act,

Speaker 26 you know, and the way that they change their tune to meet the moment and the way that they're needlessly cruel to people to advance them.

Speaker 26 So like I just, the evidence piles up that there are many people, maybe not the entire Trump administration, but many people who are ill-motived.

Speaker 26 And that, to me, is like the most alarming thing that I try to get through to people. I don't know.
Am I being too harsh?

Speaker 27 Well, no, I think there's a lot to that. I mean, you think about Trump's interview on Joe Rogan, where people said, oh, he just came off like a normal guy.

Speaker 27 I thought he'd be kind of foaming at the mouth or doing Hitler salutes or what have you. And so you have to kind of, as you said, you have to kind of build up as I, as I do.

Speaker 27 I mean, I build up kind of files on these people and build up kind of like what they're that's why I'm so fascinated by kind of the feuds and the kind of these inflection moments where people really have to sort of reveal themselves.

Speaker 26 Yeah. All right.
Well, we're going going to do an around the world with some of the people that you've built up files on over the years at the end of the pod, but we've got to do a little bit of news.

Speaker 26 And I guess this is news in the world that we live in now. But Trump is out with a bleat.
That's how we find out what's happening in this country.

Speaker 26 And today's announcement is kind of an interesting one. He says that he's going to buy a brand new Tesla today as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk.

Speaker 26 He does that on the heels of an interview last night that Elon Musk did with Larry Kudlow. I'm about to play the clip.

Speaker 26 Musk in this clip is, it seems to me on the brink of tears, and he's withering and hemming and hawing in the face of softball questioning from Kudlow, who worked in the Trump administration and could best be described as a lick spittle.

Speaker 26 So here's Musk responding to Larry Kudlow's very tough questioning.

Speaker 28 How are you running your other businesses

Speaker 27 with great difficulty?

Speaker 27 Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 27 But there's no turning back, you're saying.

Speaker 26 I'm just here trying to make government more efficient,

Speaker 27 eliminate waste and fraud, and

Speaker 27 so far we're making good progress.

Speaker 26 The pauses are longer every time I listen to it.

Speaker 27 That sigh,

Speaker 27 that mic, really crisp mic for the sigh there.

Speaker 26 What do you make of this? I mean, obviously, Elon's, like the Tesla stock is crashing. The rocket was shooting debris over the Gulf of Mexico.

Speaker 26 I do have to say, producer Jason is wearing a Gulf of Mexico shirt today. So it's another message to you, Eagle Ed Martin.

Speaker 26 You can come at this podcast if you want, if you think that it's worth targeting over Wrongspeak. But he has the...
some failings in his private businesses. I guess Trump is trying to bail him out.

Speaker 26 The folks that you're monitoring, what do they make of the fact that Elon is like pretty obviously unraveling?

Speaker 26 Like, I don't think it's TDS to look at that interview and be like, this is a man that is losing his grips on things.

Speaker 27 Well, it's interesting to see, you know, as you pointed out, I mean, Larry Kudlow is not really like grilling Elon.

Speaker 27 He's just saying, how do you do such an amazing job saving the country and running all these businesses? And Elon goes, oh my God, I don't know. It's not going well.

Speaker 27 You know, I mean, it's, it's remarkable. I mean, it's just crazy to think about the Tesla brand, even just since this administration started.

Speaker 27 In December, I had a family member who was like, well, you know, kind of California Democrat. Well, maybe I'll buy a Tesla.
I don't love Elon.

Speaker 27 But now, I mean, the idea of buying a Tesla just seems crazy, I think, for liberals at least.

Speaker 26 For sure. Yeah, no, I've been discussing about how much joy I got on Lundy Grawl watching people pelt the cyber trucks with beads.

Speaker 26 It was a big father moment for me, having to tell my child, my seven-year-old, that she couldn't participate in that. You know, I was like, we've got to be the bigger people.
Okay.

Speaker 26 We can't pelt it with beads while silently inside. I'm beaming.
As part of this, right, like there are the people in MAGA world who are just, they're on board for everything.

Speaker 26 Like, we're so excited for Doge, whatever Mr. Trump says, we're on board with.
You have the more

Speaker 26 ideological MAGA, if you will, the Bannon wing, the people that have an actual view of nationalism, maybe a skepticism of the big tech oligarchs, a skepticism of the fact that there are like so many South African billionaires around the president right now.

Speaker 26 And then you have people that just like want to succeed.

Speaker 26 Like I've seen in my feed some, you know, just like random like MAGA people that I follow that are just kind of like a little worried about like just that the Elon thing is hurting Trump, right?

Speaker 26 That he's just not that effective. Like, what are you kind of seeing out there? Do you see any fissures?

Speaker 26 Obviously, there doesn't seem to be fissures between Trump and Elon since he's trying to boost his company right now, which is, I guess it shouldn't go without saying is like not very presidential material.

Speaker 26 Like in the past,

Speaker 26 if Reagan was like holding up the product of his biggest, his biggest donor, I think that would have been maybe a scandal in the newspaper the next morning. But anyway,

Speaker 26 what are you seeing out there?

Speaker 27 It is striking. I mean, I feel like we're so just through the looking glass, but the idea of the president being like, look, my buddy's company's in trouble.
You've got to go by, bye-bye.

Speaker 27 Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. I mean, there are, it strikes me as a sort of a weak point, a weak moment for Elon.

Speaker 27 A lot of these agencies previously did not have heads or people were kind of the cabinet heads were just getting in control of them.

Speaker 27 Now we're starting to see, obviously, the Times reported on the Sean Duffy Elon fight.

Speaker 27 And I think there's a lot more of that, like, all right, buddy, like, back off, stop sending the 12-year-olds into my office to fire everyone.

Speaker 27 I think there's this kind of classic challenge between what you describe as the Bannonite wing, perhaps, and their main focus is immigration, deporting people, building the wall, sort of, I think, Russia tilting foreign policy as secondary.

Speaker 27 But they don't really care that much about the budget.

Speaker 27 And so they don't care about these kind of hack and slash things that they know are going to just anger people and get them kicked out of office or lose control of Congress quicker.

Speaker 27 And so that's kind of the fracture point.

Speaker 26 Bannon would be happy to tax the Elons of the World. Where they come into alignment is they do both want liberal, deep state bureaucrats to suffer.
Yes. Right.

Speaker 26 And so they're getting a little bit of joy out of that. Right.
Like, but again, this is where the Trump line about the using a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

Speaker 26 Like, I mean, like, when I was interviewing Bannon, I asked him, like, who do you want him to go after?

Speaker 26 I knew he was like talking specifically about the T V lawyers because they annoy him because he watches a lot of cable news.

Speaker 26 And it's like the FBI, you know, the FBI officials and the DOJ officials that investigated Trump and like the random liberal boogeymen at, you know, the EPA and the Department of Education.

Speaker 26 It's not like they were out there clamoring for

Speaker 26 the people in Los Alamos to get fired, right? Or like the VA to be unraveled, right? Like some of the VA people are like, are listening to Bannon, right?

Speaker 26 I mean, like, it's just been totally indiscriminate in a way that I think is not helping him on the one area where they might have been aligned.

Speaker 27 Yeah, I think that's right.

Speaker 27 I mean, I think they're missing the, or there's a sense of like, that's why USAID made such a tasty target for them, because it's like, you know, it's these, these liberal pencil necks who are helping people in other countries.

Speaker 27 It is surprising to me that the VA has been such an immediate target because, you know, you would think of that as something you wouldn't really hit to avoid alienating Trump voters.

Speaker 27 The other thing about Bannon is like, I think it's important to keep in mind how much of his agita towards tech people is motivated by his belief that we're going to become robots, essentially.

Speaker 27 I think a lot of people underscore, like, he has a singularity correspondent, a guy who comes on the show every couple of weeks.

Speaker 27 And the singularity being, by the way, the moment our consciousnesses are uploaded into the Matrix, essentially, and we all become robots. And so, I mean, this is like a very pressing issue to him.

Speaker 27 On the other hand, Elon is implanting chips in people's brains. So he's really on the, they're on the opposite sides of like, do we become cyborgs?

Speaker 27 And for both of them, they see this as like a very, like, these very relevant issue. Okay.

Speaker 26 Well, had Kamala won and had there been no news today, I would have just derailed the entire podcast and we would have spent the rest of the time discussing the singularity versus cyborg war between Pannon and Musk.

Speaker 26 But unfortunately, we have other stuff to get to. So we'll come back to that on another show.

Speaker 26 Right, a lot of people have been following the drama related to Aretha, the neighborhood cat that became our cat that is now maybe the neighborhood cat again. I'll give you a quick update here.

Speaker 26 So during the 100-year winter storm, while I was stuck in New York City, my husband and child invited the neighborhood cat that we'd been feeding Aretha into the home.

Speaker 26 They thought they pulled one over on me because I'm not really, a pet man myself, but they were so delighted. And, you know, I just, I accepted it.

Speaker 26 I accepted it, accepted that it was going to be my reality. But the cats still like to go outside sometimes.

Speaker 26 My daughter really loves the Lion Kings, we used to joke about how sometimes the cat likes to roam the Pride Lands, sometimes it likes to come back.

Speaker 26 As the weather's gotten warmer, as we've moved into spring, what we found is that Aretha actually prefers the Pride Lands to the home.

Speaker 26 And so while it still comes back from time to time to get his smalls, and it's still occasionally persuaded to come back by a jiggling of the smalls treats by my daughter, I'm finding out that maybe I didn't get the house cat that I thought I had agreed to after all.

Speaker 26 So to me, it kind of feels like a win-win. Aretha is getting its smalls cat food.
And, you know, I'm getting a part-time pet. I'm getting the credit.
Everybody's happy.

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Speaker 29 Politics, culture, you name it, we're talking about it and we're keeping it 100% real right here on the Michael Steele podcast. I'm Michael Steele.
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Speaker 29 Each week, I'm having conversations with political analysts, writers, and activists who aren't afraid to shake things up a little bit like yours truly.

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Speaker 26 I wanted to get your take on the Maha wars. I mentioned on yesterday's podcast that RFK had been kind of quiet, which I'm happy about.
Less RFK, the better, I think.

Speaker 26 The more dilettante RFK, like hanging out with the rich people that had snubbed him, the better.

Speaker 26 The more RFK,

Speaker 26 meeting with researchers and the NIH and telling them that they

Speaker 26 have to look into different solutions for the mumps, the worse. But RFK came back out in the public yesterday.
He's at Stake and Shake. This hurts me.
As a St. Louis native, born in St.

Speaker 26 Louis, Steak and Shake was very formative to my childhood. A lot of Stake and Shake rewards after my report cards came in.
And Steak and Shake has gone maha, allegedly,

Speaker 26 at least for branding purposes. We'll get into that in a second.
And been posting about how they are now making their fries beef tallow.

Speaker 26 And as appreciation for that, Hannity and RFK went to a steak and shake and did an interview yesterday. I want to play you a clip from it.

Speaker 27 Steak and shake has been great. We're very grateful for them for RFKing.
The French prizes turned me into a verb.

Speaker 27 But also, Popeyes.

Speaker 27 By the way, a plastic straw. Thank you.
Thank God. I can't stand those paper straws.
I hate them.

Speaker 26 Okay.

Speaker 26 You can see RFK uncomfortably kind of laughing there. I think RFK probably would be on the side of paper straws.

Speaker 26 He's not sure exactly where he is on the culture wars here. And also in the interview, the waiter, the poor waiter, brings RFK a free shake.
It is called Steak and Shake.

Speaker 26 And RFK freaks out and has a moment where he stares at the camera like it's like one of the TV shows with the confessional. And he's like, I didn't order this.
I didn't order this.

Speaker 26 He stares right at the lens.

Speaker 26 It's a very uncomfortable moment. But But talk to us about the Steak and Shake affair and what's been happening with the beef tallow.

Speaker 27 Yeah, so this is an unusually controversial choice, I guess, for a fast food stop.

Speaker 27 Yeah, so last week, Steak and Shake tried to rebrand as the sort of like anti-woke fast food chain.

Speaker 27 They put up some stuff with like kind of suspiciously kind of like Nazi type font, like a lot of like gothic font about their burgers.

Speaker 27 And they said, well, we're going to start doing our fries only in beef tallow. And so there's sort of like this paranoia about seed oils.

Speaker 27 So like canola oil, other oils, this idea that they're like introducing some sort of like impurities into your body. This is very big on the right.
They call them the sinister oils.

Speaker 27 They call the hateful eight. So it's like, you know, it's good they're not getting over dramatic about it.

Speaker 26 But the hateful eight oils?

Speaker 27 Yes. Yeah.
So it's like the eat the oils. It's like, you know, canola oil, pizza.

Speaker 26 Is there olive oil in the hateful eight, or is that on the good side?

Speaker 27 I was curious about this, actually. The olive oil is safe, I guess.
Okay. So that's all good.
And so they say what the, what instead they want to cook things in is beef tallow, so beef fat.

Speaker 27 Now, when Steak and Shake said, well, we're doing beef tallow, people said, oh my gosh, this is amazing.

Speaker 27 But then some of these like Maha influencers, this woman named Alex Clark said, well, actually, no, it's pre, their fries are pre-treated in seed oil, which seems to, and I mean, this is getting to the point trying to figure this out that I need to go to a steak and shake and just go in the kitchen because I asked Steak and Shake about this and they didn't get back to me.

Speaker 27 But they said to Alex Clark, they said, well, supply chains are hard, essentially. They basically said, you're right.
They said, well, well, who's to say? You know,

Speaker 27 we're trying to get the beef tallow in. Another guy, a Maha guy, showed up at a steak and shake and said, I want to see the beef tallow.

Speaker 27 And they said, well, here's a picture on our cell phone of what it looks like. It's very like citizen journalists.
Like, you know, they're trying to figure it out.

Speaker 26 It doesn't seem like RFK really cares. He's just happy that he's been verbed.

Speaker 27 Yes, exactly. They said, yeah, we've RFK that's the same thing.

Speaker 26 Maybe they'll send inspectors. We fired most of HHS.
I don't know if they've got any staff yet.

Speaker 26 We can can reapportion some of the people that were supposed to be doing research on infectious disease and have them go to random steak and shakes to test whether any of the hateful eight oils, I've pulled them up just for people who are concerned.

Speaker 26 Soybean oil, corn oil, canola, sunflower, cottonseed, safflower, grapeseed, or rice bran.

Speaker 26 Boy, I'm sure some of our soybean farmers will probably be unhappy to learn that they're part of the hateful eight.

Speaker 27 Well, you know, they really hate soy. I mean, soy is probably the most hateful, right? Because that's why they call you soy boys.
They think it's feminizing and all that. Yeah.

Speaker 26 Huh. Do you sense

Speaker 26 like any when you're following these because my influencers is one area that I've not really delved into?

Speaker 26 Do you think that there's going to be an awakening moment where they realize that like the other the people that they have now aligned with actually don't care about them at all?

Speaker 27 You know, it's a good question. I mean, there is this tension where they say, oh, yeah, you know, it is time we get America healthy again and all this.

Speaker 27 But I mean, you think back to Michelle Obama's, you know, let's get moving, let's give kids like a piece of lettuce exactly for lunch and just the huge reaction and the idea that, you know, we're going to tell all these gigantic food conglomerates that, you know, back the Republican Party to, you know, suddenly get into, you know, ditch the hateful aid and et cetera.

Speaker 27 I mean, just seems very slim. And so, but for now, I mean, I don't know.
It seems like RFK is probably skeptical enough of vaccines and all that. That'll probably keep them happy.

Speaker 26 And also during the interview, Hannity orders a Coke and then like, he kind of apologizes to RFK for it. And he's like, ooh, this guy might get mad at me.
He's like, I won't drink the whole thing.

Speaker 26 And it's just like,

Speaker 26 this is very, very opposite to the fact that Fox Primetime

Speaker 26 paid their bills on anti-nanny state thing. Like making fun of the nanny state was like the bread and butter of Fox for a while.

Speaker 26 And like here you have like the signature Fox host, like literally apologizing to the nanny sitting across the table from him for ordering a Coke.

Speaker 26 I just don't know how long that marriage is going to last. I want to get into Pam Bondi drama because we haven't talked about it at all on the pod.

Speaker 26 Bondi, you might think that some of the things that people would be concerned about are the fact that she's basically said that we're not investigating foreign interference in elections anymore.

Speaker 26 We're not investigating a lot of different white-collar crimes. It's going to be a really golden age for white-collar criminals right now.

Speaker 26 And that the controversy might circle around that from the working man.

Speaker 26 But instead, people are mad at her because she has not fully publicized the documents around a couple of key conspiracies that they have. The Seth Rich conspiracy and the Epstein thing.

Speaker 26 We'll get into the Epstein binders. She did kind of a half job on that.

Speaker 26 But what's the deal with the Seth Rich thing?

Speaker 27 So there's this whole demand for disclosure and like, we're going to get the documents.

Speaker 27 In the Seth Rich case, there's a lawyer who's been suing for several years now to get the FBI files on Seth Rich, who, of course, was murdered in 2016, a Democratic staffer.

Speaker 26 Just really quick, for people who don't know, it's such a fucking horrible story. It's so sick.

Speaker 26 This poor guy is murdered coming home from the bar late at night, and his family has been harassed for years because he became the center of

Speaker 26 this controversy that the Clintons had murdered him because he had the secret document that knew that Bernie should have won or whatever.

Speaker 26 And there's this really great book, Murder on W Street by Andy Kroll is a great reporter about this. And it's just the way that this family was treated is horrific.

Speaker 26 And so anyway, they're now trying to, I guess, resurrect that.

Speaker 27 Yeah. So, right.

Speaker 27 And the key to that would be that if you proved, I mean, there's no evidence, but if you proved that Seth Rich leaked the DNC emails to WikiLeaks, then that would mean the Russia hack was fake.

Speaker 27 And so Trump would be exonerated. And so that's kind of like why they pursued it.
So this guy has been pushing for these documents forever.

Speaker 27 I suspect the documents are just, you know, the DC police saying, yeah, we think it was a botched robbery and that's it.

Speaker 27 But now that the FBI has continued to withhold the documents and said, well, maybe we'll give you a list of the documents.

Speaker 27 So now that we see these pro-Trump influencers saying, you know, Pam Bondi, god darn it, you got to release this stuff. And let's say she does release it.

Speaker 27 They're still going to be mad because there's not a document that says Hillary Clinton, here's a picture of Hillary Clinton shooting Seth Rich. And so that's going to keep going.

Speaker 27 And I think she's, I mean, it depends how much Trump cares about this stuff, probably not hugely, but I do think she's really being set up to take the fall for a lot of these conspiracy theories not coming true.

Speaker 26 To this point, also on the Epstein files, she tried to split the baby, I guess, on this.

Speaker 26 We covered this a little bit on the podcast last week, but just to set the stage, like there's this demand i don't really understand me and matt iglesias are aligned on this i don't really understand how the left let the jeffrey epstein prison murder become a right-coated conspiracy theory when like if jeffrey epstein was murdered in prison Like it happened during the Trump administration and Trump and Epstein were friends and Barr and Epstein, that barr was AG, they had connections and Acosta, who was in the Trump cabinet, had very deep connections to Epstein.

Speaker 26 I did a long interview with the best reporter on this a while ago, Julie Brown. We'll put it in the show notes if people want to go and listen and learn more about the Epstein conspiracies.

Speaker 26 But anyway, despite that, it's become this conspiracy on the right that it's like the left, the deep state, was covering this up to protect deep state left-wing people.

Speaker 26 And so they demanded a list of all of the Epstein associates, even though much of that list has been reported by Julie Brown. And they demanded some other materials, I guess.
So that's the backstory.

Speaker 26 So take us to kind of what has been happening since then.

Speaker 27 There's this real focus on they imagine that there's this huge like client list that's going to be, you know, Oprah, Tom Hanks, and whoever. I mean, it's going to be very vindicating.

Speaker 27 But on the other hand, as you said, I mean, Julie Brown, who knows this better than anybody, and other Epstein reporters have said there isn't really a client list.

Speaker 27 The names have been redacted to mostly victims or people who weren't really involved, but just who come up in the documents. Nevertheless, I mean, Pam Bondi was kind of ramping this up.

Speaker 27 She said, I've got the list on my desk. We've just got to review it.
And so then a few days later, all these influencers, these MAGA people come to the White House for an unrelated meeting.

Speaker 27 And according to ABC's reporting, Pam Bondi then was said, won't we? We'll surprise them with the Epstein documents. And so she and Cash showed up and said, like, hey, we got them.

Speaker 27 And then, as we know, it turned out to be nearly entirely previously released files, but it still occasioned this kind of like, you know, in retrospect, kind of sick photo op.

Speaker 27 Everyone's like, look, you know, we got evidence of the child trafficking.

Speaker 26 Yeah, they're the smiling.

Speaker 27 Yeah,

Speaker 27 very happy about it. Because they say that they were sending the message to the press.
They were taking pictures of them like, we're the media now.

Speaker 26 Yeah, it's a bizarre thing. I mean, like, stepping back from everything, like the people that they chose, right? Like the DOJ, I mean, if you were going to do something like this,

Speaker 26 you know, I don't know. I'm trying to think about like back when I was a flack, you know, way in the before times.

Speaker 26 I remember, for example, we were going to give a select group of reporters Jeb's tax returns, right? Because it was, you know, to try to pressure Trump to put out his tax returns.

Speaker 26 This is, you know, simpler times and obviously was a strategy that backfired. So the communications director gets a negative mark on that one.

Speaker 26 But, you know, it's like we picked a couple friendly reporters, right? So hopefully they'd focus on the nice stuff where he gave money to charity or whatever.

Speaker 26 But then you give a call, you know, you have the AP in there, like give a finance expert in there. So, so, you know, they lend some credibility to it.
Like, that is not at all what happened here.

Speaker 26 Like, just talk about the group that was included and that was given these binder full of sex offenders.

Speaker 27 Yeah, and in this case, these are even more sensitive documents. Let's make sure that they're treated with the discretion and the respect, you know, that this issue deserves.
Right.

Speaker 26 Think about the victims, right? On respect, right, yeah.

Speaker 27 Yeah, instead of a sort of a party favor for visiting the White House.

Speaker 27 And so instead, we get, we have Mike Cernovich and Jack Pisobic, who are kind of like notorious Pizzagate promoters and sort of right-wing media characters.

Speaker 27 I guess when it comes to the credibility of their claims, perhaps I would not give them the Epstein documents. We have a woman named Jessica Reed Kraus, who I think, you know, put a pin in that.

Speaker 27 I think she's going to become like, this is one to watch.

Speaker 27 So she's a,

Speaker 27 yes. And so she's called House in Habit on Instagram, and she kind of emerged.
She was kind of like a lifestyle blogger in Orange County.

Speaker 27 And then she got really RFK pilled and then, you know, kind of became part of his entourage and had kind of like a feud with Olivia Nuzzy over RFK and all this stuff. And so she got one.

Speaker 27 And now she's kind of like a citizen sleuth.

Speaker 27 But this sort of backfired because the influencers who weren't invited, like Laura Loomer, then start digging up things on the ones who were to prove that they're, you know, deep state shills.

Speaker 27 And that's why we didn't get the real news. And they found this picture of the Krauss once wearing a free Ghelane Maxwell shirt.

Speaker 26 This is the house inhabit lady from Instagram. Yes.
Okay. I'm just trying to get my character straight.
She was wearing a free Ghelane shirt.

Speaker 27 Yes. And so I don't know the situation where you ever think that's a good idea.
You know, she said at the time, she was like, look at my provocative shirt, which it certainly is.

Speaker 26 DC Draino was also there.

Speaker 27 Yeah, DC Draino, Chad Prather, who were kind of like MAGA meme lords.

Speaker 27 This is kind of like the equivalent of like Carpe Donctum, if people remember him, kind of, you know, people who make like funny little, little video edits or, or memes.

Speaker 27 Yeah, it's interesting because,

Speaker 26 you know, in addition to just like the absurdity, right, that the Department of Justice gives like random lifestyle Instagrammers like these, these sensitive documents.

Speaker 26 It is just telling like who they are trying to cater to. That's something I was working on to kind of hit the cutting room floor, but it was the New York Young Republican dinner, gala dinner.

Speaker 26 This is like one of the MAGA Young Republican groups. I remember being struck by like Trump is at the head table.
I'm like, who was with him at the table?

Speaker 26 It was like some people that people will know of, like Banna and Pesobiak.

Speaker 26 But then it was like these folks. Like, he goes on stage and he's like,

Speaker 26 he name checks DC Draino and he's name checking right like all these other people and it's like that is this circle right like this is why this is so important like I think I've said this before but it's like this it's like the men in black where where the tabloids have the real news it's like these are the people that they are gonna give

Speaker 26 special access to over the next four years and so not that they're gonna be offering real news but like you'll be able to learn things that will not have been provided to actual journalists.

Speaker 27 Yeah, I mean, there's sort of like a criminal analogy to it. And so you can see, like, it's like, oh, well, everyone is turning on, for example, after this debacle on Pambondi.

Speaker 27 And so that seems to be reflecting some anger within the administration or the idea that she's been set up as the scapegoat.

Speaker 27 One of, you know, these Twitter accounts that obviously have the verified thing and it's just like, you know, FBI real news.

Speaker 27 Last week, they reported, or I should say, loosely reported, oh, Cash wants private bodyguards. He's concerned about his security.
That's the kind of thing that obviously I discounted.

Speaker 27 It got 10,000 retweets. And then last night, some real news outlets tweeted that.

Speaker 26 There you go. That's men in black.
It's happening. The tabloids have the real news.

Speaker 26 The random blue checks have the real news.

Speaker 27 Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 26 The cash, as you mentioned it, that's the other thing I've been noticing in the scuttle. Cash is already kind of taking some shots at bonding,

Speaker 26 even though he like sort of works out for her, right? Like there is already some sense there that like he wants her to be the fall fall guy for this stuff.

Speaker 27 Yeah. Well, within hours of this, the binder debacle, you know, she sent him a letter saying, you know, cash, ooh, you, you held back the good documents.

Speaker 27 And then they sort of seem to have triangulated it on like, well, let's blame SDNY and the, um, and the, the FBI office there because maybe we want to purge them anyway. Yeah.

Speaker 27 I mean, there's definitely this back and forth where then he says, well, you know, I gave you the documents. Now there's supposedly more documents to come.

Speaker 27 I mean, but this is a, this is sort of a, going to be a fruitless journey, but one that I think continues going on with that, the JFK files, all these sort of files.

Speaker 26 It's just the reality of what we are that, like, this is probably

Speaker 26 something that makes Bondi more vulnerable than like legitimate scandals, right? Like, if something is going to cost her her standing in the administration and in MAGA, it is going to be

Speaker 26 getting on the wrong side of like these mega influencer weirdos, right? Like, not, you know, the way that she's dismissed people within the DOJ who are just doing their job.

Speaker 27 Yeah, certainly. I, I, I, I think these kind of scandals or the idea,

Speaker 27 many scandals, perhaps, the idea that, like, if it just becomes reflexively like, oh, you know, she's a rhino, right?

Speaker 27 Like, as you know, I mean, that is kind of like once you get hit with that, then every time anything goes bad in the Justice Department or they don't indict, you know, some random Democratic member of Congress they don't like, they're going to say, you know, this is because Pam Bondi is running interference for them.

Speaker 27 And And once you get hit with that, it's kind of hard to get back in their good side. And, you know, certainly not something like not enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Speaker 27 They don't care about that.

Speaker 26 Well, the scary thing is, no, the way to get back on their good side is to do ridiculous things on their behalf. And so, like, this takes us to one, which is not Bondi, but it's the administration.

Speaker 26 But it's like this explains the Tate Brothers stuff. Right.
And so I know you'd written about them at the Washington Post, and now there's a little bit of this intro MAGA divide with them.

Speaker 26 But we've been talking to these guys so listeners know, but like they're, you know, this becomes a priority of the administration, I guess, allowing them travel and a reprieve from the legal targeting, not legal targeting, like the legitimate investigations that the Romanians and the UK had been doing against them.

Speaker 26 And now they're like paling around with Dana White and Vegas. Cash is there, Zuckerberg's there.

Speaker 26 And, you know, one way to kind of signal to the MAGA audience that like you are on on their side is to be like, I'll defend, I'll do the most ridiculous thing possible.

Speaker 26 Like I'll defend these guys who are unapologetic, misogynist,

Speaker 26 sexual assault, conspirators, et cetera.

Speaker 27 Yeah, I mean, the Tate thing is, I think, so fascinating.

Speaker 27 When the Tates were first under investigation for human trafficking a few years ago, it was striking to me how few ties they did have to the MAGA movement at the time.

Speaker 27 I mean, they were living in Britain and then Romania. They went to the Trump Hotel with kind of some right-wing influencers.
But other than that, they weren't huge figures.

Speaker 27 It's only after, I mean, you would think that this would have been the fall of the human trafficking investigation, but they actually become stars since then. And so, this idea that the U.S.

Speaker 27 pressured Romania to let them travel. And then, you know, once they're here, and particularly if they get on a plane to Dubai or something, I mean, they're going to escape justice.

Speaker 27 I mean, they're also wanted in the U.K.

Speaker 27 And so you have this interesting divide where I think kind of more of your classic conservative types, Ron DeSantis, the Ben Shapiro crew, et cetera, they, I think, understandably do not think conservatives should embrace alleged human traffickers.

Speaker 27 People who are on video, I mean, it's not even an allegation. I mean, they said all this stuff about sort of entrapping women into being cam operations and all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 27 Andrew Tate is wanted on rape charges in the UK.

Speaker 27 And then you have kind of the more, you know, whatever will get me clicks or the more Trumpian types who are more than happy to host them on their podcasts. As you said, Dana White embraced them.

Speaker 27 It was striking to me that not really a Trump figure, but someone from Vanderpump Rules also took pictures pictures with them. And then he said, oh my gosh, I didn't know who those guys were.

Speaker 27 You know, I denounce them. Mario Lopez did Slater.
Yeah, exactly. What's up, Slater? What are you doing? It's really,

Speaker 27 it's interesting also to have this kind of focus on Epstein and human trafficking and all that's the worst thing you can do, but then also say, oh, come on in, Andrew Tate.

Speaker 26 Yeah, it's just, it's a good type of human trafficking. It's the MAGA human trafficking.

Speaker 26 The Shapiro part is interesting because I think, work with me here on this theory, but it goes to like the vice signaling of all of this.

Speaker 26 Like, in order to get the MAGA audience to really feel like you're on their side, you have to take positions that are anathema to like elite sensibilities, right?

Speaker 26 Or to even moralistic sensibilities, forget elite sensibilities.

Speaker 26 So, while Shapiro is holding the line, if you will, by saying that the Tate brothers are bad, like he's simultaneously doing like a MAGA media tour right now, talking about how Trump should pardon Derek Chauvin, the cop that killed George Floyd with the knee to the neck.

Speaker 26 And this media tour is like pretty, he's on Charlie Kirk's podcast talking about this, in addition to talking about it on his own. Like he's really been pushing this.

Speaker 26 And Trump doesn't even have a lot of jurisdiction here.

Speaker 26 It's a local charge. Like there is a more minor federal charge, but it wouldn't get him out of jail.
And so to me, like Ben is just betraying that, like, okay, it's a calculation, right?

Speaker 26 Like to demonstrate that I'm still on the mega culture war side of things, like, I'm just going to take an outlayer position.

Speaker 26 And if I'm not going to do this on the tates or on what, on whatever, on being pro-Putin, then I've got to find some other thing to do it on. And I'm going to do it with Derek Chauvin.

Speaker 26 What do you think about that theory?

Speaker 27 I think there's a lot to that.

Speaker 27 I think each of these people kind of evaluates their audience and their reputations and say, okay, well, it's going to be a little difficult for me to endorse an alleged human trafficker.

Speaker 27 Maybe on a women's issue, I'll have to shy away. But on a race issue, I can, you know, just say, yeah, you know, pardon Derek Chauvin.

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Speaker 27 All right.

Speaker 26 As I tease at the top, I want to do around the world of Trumpistan for people because we've talked about all these people, but unfortunately, well, you don't have to.

Speaker 26 I guess everybody has the option to just not care about this and live your life and tend to your garden. And I honor that choice if you've chosen to do this.

Speaker 26 But if you want to know what's happening in the Trump administration, unfortunately, you have to understand these people. And so a couple of characters, I mentioned him earlier in the pod.

Speaker 26 You've been covering all these guys for a while now. So I just want you to give us a little nugget on them, a little, a little backstory.
The Washington, D.C., the U.S.

Speaker 26 Attorney, Ed Martin, Eagle Ed Martin.

Speaker 27 Yeah, Ed Martin's a fascinating guy. I don't think he has any experience as a prosecutor.
No.

Speaker 27 I was previously aware of him because Phyllis Schlafly, sort of the anti-feminist icon who died maybe a decade ago or so, he was kind of like her chief crony.

Speaker 27 And there was this big flap over like control of her legacy. And so I was familiar with, you got this memo that was just like, here's how we wrest the control of Phyllis Schlafly's image away.

Speaker 26 I'm going from memory. Is it not true? Wasn't he on the side of the gay son? But like the gay son was kind of like a self-hating gay or something?

Speaker 27 I think it was Andy Schlafly. Yeah.

Speaker 26 I feel like they aligned against the more, against like, because they went mega and they aligned against the more religious children. I'm going just from memory.

Speaker 27 I think that's exactly. Yeah, I can't remember

Speaker 27 the disposition of the other children, but it was like they went with sort of even like a more kind of aggressive like name. It was sort of a more aggressive like MAGA type brand.

Speaker 27 And so there was that. And then when he got appointed, I was like, wait, like the Philosophy guy? You know, because I think I talked to him at the time when I was writing about it.
And U.S.

Speaker 27 Attorney is also a uniquely important role in D.C. because it also prosecutes sort of street crime and drugs and gun stuff, unlike other jurisdictions.

Speaker 27 And so I thought, oh, geez, I thought there was supposed to be this, like, we were going to take crime in D.C. really seriously.
I thought that that was part of the administration's job.

Speaker 27 But instead, we get him. This is the guy who's posting the letters people may have seen.
Elon, I heard that they're coming after Doge.

Speaker 27 You know, I'm working on the president's behalf, or I think he described himself as Trump's lawyer in one case. And so it's kind of a clown show so far.

Speaker 26 Yeah. You bring up a good point.

Speaker 26 I talked about this a little bit with SE Cup yesterday. Like the crime was allegedly one of the kind of core tenets of what they were running on.
And so this U.S., this DC U.S. attorney pick, right?

Speaker 26 Like,

Speaker 26 you know, Crime DC is up. All the Trump people are living there now.

Speaker 26 Like, you could have imagined a route that they went where they picked somebody that was like a very draconian, like aggressive, like crime-stopping U.S.

Speaker 26 attorney that was like going to clean up DC or whatever. And instead, they've like done the opposite.

Speaker 26 Like, and this guy is like writing letters to Georgetown about how they have too many DEI offices in their college and, you know, sending off letters attacking the AP for not using Gulf of America and right like and like a total clown with no prosecutorial experience

Speaker 26 who is clearly not focused at all on actual crime in the District of Columbia.

Speaker 27 Yeah, I mean this is the same prosecutor who sent the letter to, I believe, Chuck Schumer and another member of Congress for saying

Speaker 26 something like, you got to bring a, don't bring a knife to a gunfight, like these kind of like rhetorical gambits and saying, you know, were you threatening to kill someone yes it was chuck really was he was threatening he was threatening murder you got him ad we'll see in court chuck all right you mentioned him earlier deputy fbi director deputy fbi director dan bungino before i give you get to give give your backstory because i don't think i've gotten to this on the pod yet I have actually two facts that I want to share from my side.

Speaker 26 Number one is I have on good authority that, or I guess this is public now.

Speaker 26 Yes, this is public now, that cash met with like the FBI union, like the bureau, the agents union, met with the leadership and promised them that he was going to have a deputy that was somebody that had experience and there were certain kind of metrics that they wanted the deputy to have.

Speaker 26 Cash agreed to that. Cash suggested.

Speaker 26 I hate to hand it to Cash, but Cash suggested, apparently, a couple of people that would have fit this bill. Trump says no, overrules him, picks Bongino, who has no experience,

Speaker 26 has never been an agent.

Speaker 26 And then Bongino can't join for a week because he's got to keep podcasting to fulfill the obligations to his advertisers, including one advertiser that's like, we protect you from the deep state, which Dan Bongino is about to be.

Speaker 26 The whole thing is just so fucking ridiculous. So anyway, I'm sorry.
Balls in your court. Dan Bongino.

Speaker 27 Well, I mean, you know, it's important to have your priorities straight. You know, get those referral codes out, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 27 Yeah, I mean, Dan Bongino is a guy I became aware of just sort of like driving around D.C. and listening to the local talk radio.
And this is, this was like a local talk radio guy.

Speaker 27 I mean, 13 years ago, 14 years ago, and he was a former Secret Service agent. And he would call in and say, you know, oh, Obama's a scumbag.

Speaker 27 And then he had this kind of failed run for the Senate in Maryland. And I thought that was the last we would hear of him.
And then I said, oh, he got a talk radio show.

Speaker 27 And he filled the Rush Limbaugh time slot for a lot of people. And now he's going to be the FBI deputy director.

Speaker 27 And as you said, I mean, this is traditionally sort of a grizzled old hand, sort of someone who's in a way sort of represents the line agents.

Speaker 27 And instead, we are getting a guy who's never been in the FBI and obviously is most recently a podcaster.

Speaker 26 I'm curious. The Bongino show never hit for me.

Speaker 26 I'm an amateur in your space. You're monitoring all this stuff for profession.
I do it kind of as a side, as a side hustle because I'm a sicko.

Speaker 26 But I get the bannon appeal. I get the Candace appeal.
I find Ben Shapiro totally revolting, but I understand it. Like, I understand what people like about it.

Speaker 26 I don't get the Bongino thing. Like, why did his Little Talk Radio show thing succeed? Like, this person, when I listen to a show, I wonder if this person is literate, if he can read.

Speaker 26 I mean, is it just a show for really dumb people? Is there something that he does very well that I miss? Like, is there, like, as a podcaster, is there something I could learn from him?

Speaker 27 You could pick up a couple tips. I mean, you're right.

Speaker 27 I mean, there is, you know, for those of us who consume this content, but don't share their politics, I think we can tell tell when there's a, you know, someone who is a gifted broadcaster or is entertaining or, or you kind of figure out what niche they're fitting into versus Dan Bongino.

Speaker 27 And that's why I was surprised when a lot of stations picked him up to replace Limbaugh because I thought Limbaugh was a fun guy to listen to.

Speaker 27 Whereas, I mean, Dan Bongino is kind of, there's kind of like a classic, like replacement level talker type who's just like a mad guy, kind of like Mark Levin.

Speaker 27 And you listen to these guys and it's like, this guy's just mad about it, you know, and like Kennedy too, where

Speaker 27 he's just giving you the talking points. There's not like a lightness to it, but I agree.
I'm not a huge listener.

Speaker 26 Yeah, okay.

Speaker 26 So the madness, you think, is what his, is what his hook is, that he just gets mad and people want somebody that's mad.

Speaker 27 It's sort of a community of, obviously, the sort of the MAGA universe. It's a world that's not short on people who are mad.
And so I think it's kind of funny when someone stands out for being mad.

Speaker 27 I mean, he sent like my colleague at the post an email that was, you know, oh, you dip shit, all this stuff. So, you know, there are certain guys who are just like, I'm mad.

Speaker 26 He's the hottest of the hotheads.

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Speaker 26 I need to take a pause from around Trump's stand because we do have some breaking FBI news per Bill Mitchell.

Speaker 26 Bill Mitchell is another figure on the online right. And so we'll see whether this ends up being fake news or real news, but it is important that

Speaker 26 we, I feel like we got to find like the old men in black music or something.

Speaker 26 I need like we need a segment for the Will Summer segment about, or just maybe an audio clip of Tommy Lee Jones talking about how this is where he gets the real news. I'll work on that.

Speaker 26 Me and Jason will work on that. In the meantime, Bill Mitchell, breaking FBI news, FBI Director Cash Patel has requested a direct line from his home and office to Trump's Oval Office bypassing A.G.

Speaker 26 Pambondi.

Speaker 26 This goes to exactly what we were just talking about. I mean, who knows if this is true or not, but I think it's pretty telling about what they're doing here.

Speaker 27 I mean, it kind of seems like Cash is going to be the next Attorney General, right?

Speaker 26 And he already runs the ATF.

Speaker 27 Yeah, right. I think it makes a little more sense because, you know, initially it was like, wow, it's a real reach for Cash to be the FBI director.

Speaker 27 But now you say, well, he's already been the FBI director.

Speaker 27 How far is Attorney General? So I do think Pam Bondi, I think you can tell that she's not as adept in this world of right-wing influencers. Like she should be the one leaking to Bill Mitchell.

Speaker 27 All these people are from Florida.

Speaker 27 And so there was this claim that after the binders thing happened, just briefly, that basically she gave them these binders to butter them up because she knows she has this deficit with these kind of fame ball types.

Speaker 27 And you know what? She's right because they threw her under the bus immediately.

Speaker 26 Do you know anything about the Cash living with the timeshare guy in Las Vegas? Have you read this story?

Speaker 27 I have read it. I don't know a ton about it, but it is sort of another, it's just like another really weird thing.
Yeah.

Speaker 26 It's very strange. It's something I've got my eye on.

Speaker 26 Cash wants to live in Vegas while he's running two very large, complicated bureaucracies.

Speaker 26 He wants to live in Vegas part-time, and I guess have a direct line from Bill Mitchell says his home, but reportedly, based on the Nevada Independent, it's not actually his home.

Speaker 26 He lives in some rich timeshare scammer's house. I asked David Frum about this last week, and he's like, He's like, I hope that it's sexual in nature because

Speaker 26 if it's not something really bad is happening,

Speaker 27 that was a good take.

Speaker 26 All right, back to Around the World of Trumpistan. I don't know if I've mentioned him since he got this job.
This is how fucking ludicrous this administration is.

Speaker 26 The counterterrorism chief for the United States of America is Sebastian Gorkha. Tell us about Sebastian Gorka.

Speaker 27 Yeah, I mean, Gorka, as you said, at this point, it's like, oh, thank gosh. Thank gosh, the adults are in the room, right? You know, Gorka's here.
That's how I felt, you know, amid everything else.

Speaker 27 I mean, Gorka, Gorka is another, it's good to do him after Bongino because Gorka is like another like classic mad guy, but in kind of like a more, a more gentlemanly way, an old world sensibility.

Speaker 27 You know, obviously, we know we know he has in the last administration, there are all these questions about his ties to kind of like neo quasi-Nazi European groups and did he get a medal from one of them or what have you.

Speaker 27 But these days, you know, he, he too was in talk radio.

Speaker 27 I mean, it's, it's a sign, I think, you know, we're talking about the second administration versus the first Trump administration of how things have changed that in the past, you know, five years or so, I think Gorka has kind of presented himself as like somewhat of a voice of reason.

Speaker 27 I mean, he had this like really long-running feud with QAnon people where he was like, you're not cases and this kind of stuff. I mean, so it's still, I would say, disturbing.

Speaker 26 He's not a guy that

Speaker 26 is, I would call, judicious, even Kiel. I mean, he lashed out at me one time in the hallway of CPAC, started shouting me down.
He's taller than you think.

Speaker 27 He's very tall. He's a tall guy.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 26 Not great breath. And I kind of forget.
It's in the circus archive somewhere. I forget what he's calling me.
Not a nice name. He's come after you, too, I think.

Speaker 27 Yeah, I sent him a very nice email. I think maybe it was a story about his feud with QAnon, and I sent him an email.

Speaker 27 And then I was just a few hours later, I was just sitting around and he called me, and I'd never talked to him before. And he said, Is this Will Sommer? And I said, Yeah.

Speaker 27 And he said, Stick your head in a bucket full of eels. And I was just, I was so shocked that I had to have him.
I said, Can you say that again? Like, I need to get that quote down.

Speaker 27 And he said, Stick your head in a bucket full of eels. And I thought really nothing of it.
I said, Okay, well, that was a little weird.

Speaker 27 And then he played it on his show, and he played it as sort of like kind of a crank yanker situation, where he sort sort of said, I had a clever little call.

Speaker 27 So it's, he's an unusual guy.

Speaker 26 It's the counterterrorism chief of America.

Speaker 26 And you, I mean, like, okay,

Speaker 26 I guess. I guess do you feel safe, listeners?

Speaker 27 He's going to prank call Hamas. All right.

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Speaker 26 I want to close by getting into the grifting world.

Speaker 26 I want to really close with the greatest grift that's going out there. But before we get to that, I just wonder if you have any thoughts going to

Speaker 26 open

Speaker 26 season on either the crypto griffs and all the various crypto characters that are around. It's very different from Trump 1.0.

Speaker 26 And another thing, Bloomberg is an interesting story on this 1789 capital, which Donald Trump Jr. has gotten his hands in.

Speaker 26 And just like the madness of the fact that there's now this MAGA VC firm, and like in order to get in the good graces of the administration, like huge companies are now like raising funding rounds.

Speaker 26 And it's like, we're going to include Sequoia and we're going to include BlackRock and then we're going to include Donald Trump Jr. and Blake Masters' firm and give them a little taste.

Speaker 26 I don't think people have really just kind of appreciated how deep that grip is going. So I'm just wondering if you have thoughts on any of those characters or what's happening there.

Speaker 27 Yeah, I mean, just jumping off the 1789 thing, I mean, it is fascinating that we just have these situations and where, you know, people with connections to the administration or with the ability to sway the president are just sort of really have their pockets.

Speaker 27 They're saying, hey, you know, come on through. If you want to butter up to me, you know, donate to my VC fund.
The Bloomberg article is interesting.

Speaker 27 Basically, I guess the pitch is that this is kind of the anti-ESG, this is the anti-like woke capital situation.

Speaker 27 But I think in practice, it's, as you said, it's interesting that they're having these, their companies having these massive funding rounds. And then also Don Jr.
is coming.

Speaker 27 In terms of the crypto stuff,

Speaker 27 I follow the crypto world relatively closely.

Speaker 27 I think it's been interesting that in some ways, it seems like the main, like, real, like, real heavy bag holders, as they say, are getting frustrated that Trump seems to have been captured by what you might call shit coins.

Speaker 27 Like when he announced the Bitcoin reserve or the crypto reserve, and he said, look, we're going to have Bitcoin and we're going to have Ada and Seoul and Luna, I mean, or these various kind of minor coins that made people concerned, I think, that he was just trying to pump the bags.

Speaker 26 Don't you fucking downgrade Solana, okay?

Speaker 26 All right. Don't you lump Solana in with all of these other shit coins, all right? Like, this is serious business.

Speaker 26 That's a real coin there. It's a lot of value underneath there.

Speaker 27 Yeah,

Speaker 27 are you holding on to that one? No, I'm not holding on to any stuff.

Speaker 26 All of the crypto listeners get so mad at me.

Speaker 26 You are correct that there are some serious crypto people that are expressing annoyance with Trump because it is, you know, obviously Bitcoin is down, ETH is down, and it's at some level, I think they rightly see undermining the credibility of their product.

Speaker 26 And I think that there is clearly some difference between what Bitcoin and what ETH are trying to do and what some of these other

Speaker 26 total scams are. That said,

Speaker 26 they're not that mad. I mean,

Speaker 26 if it keeps going down, they're going to be mad. You know, there have been a lot of people who've been making money off of this and getting in on it.

Speaker 26 And there doesn't seem to be, like honestly if i were like a big bitcoin advocate right or a ceo of coinbase i would be in a panic over this like i would be out there like trying to you know do anything i could to protect myself from the shrapnel of the just of this just naked grift that the president of the united states is running with his coins and like you're not really seeing that yeah no i agree i mean they think they are i mean they they obviously realize I think this administration is friendlier to crypto than any Democrat would be.

Speaker 26 So they all got fucking rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams during the Biden years. So I understand that Gary Gensler is like, whatever,

Speaker 26 the greatest devil that history has ever known to the crypto world. But, you know, all of those guys are going to vacation in Tulum thanks to the money that they made during the Biden years.

Speaker 26 But anyway, I'm sorry to interrupt.

Speaker 27 I just think it's interesting that like this, this frustration they're having, that basically it's like they were kind of playing like three card Monty or something.

Speaker 27 And then Trump came and set up a way bigger table to do his own three card Monty, but he's doing it a lot clumsier.

Speaker 27 So people are like, wait a minute, I can see this is a con, you know, they're like, hey, cut it out, Trump.

Speaker 26 The 1789 Capitol thing.

Speaker 26 I'm looking forward to future Will Summer reporting on this. It's astonishing that Don Jr.
is at these tables. Have you seen the meme of like the

Speaker 26 with the dragons?

Speaker 26 And it's like the two angry looking dragons and the one dragon with like the eyes, tongue going sideways, like the one dragon that looks like they're, the, they're, the, they got hit hit on the stupid tree and they fell all the way down.

Speaker 26 Like, that is what is happening in these investment rounds. It's like, it's like there are four serious investing companies at the table, and then there's Don Jr.

Speaker 26 And I don't know, who knows if the guy that got, well, I guess he didn't get fired from the administration, but one of the cast offs from Doge are sitting there getting paid.

Speaker 26 The greatest gift of all, though, the ties to, you know, you said your youth as a

Speaker 26 religious man. Everybody who

Speaker 26 believes in God and believes that we should follow the righteous path, they should feel comfort knowing that the leader of the White House faith office, the leader of the White House faith office, Paula White, offered this video to her supporters this week.

Speaker 43 So what are you going to do? You see, I have to be obedient to God.

Speaker 43 And you must sacrifice in some way during this prophetic season because it's through sacrifice that your spirit opens up so wide that that you can receive divine direction.

Speaker 43 This is a deliverance seed that needs to be sown now to be in position to see increase, to activate God's promises.

Speaker 43 And if you're able, I challenge you to sow $133 because we sow in accordance to the word. I love to get a word from God and put my faith with it.
And 133 stands for Proverbs 133.

Speaker 26 proverbs 133 you just give me 133 bucks and man

Speaker 26 this moment of divine prophecy in trump's golden age will shine on you will summer i was just about to say where's she getting the 133 but it makes sense now proverbs i feel like that's a little cheap i feel like she could have maybe

Speaker 27 maybe punched it up a little bit what what the paula white sort of where did this lady come from yeah i mean she's been around the administration for a while i think the previous administration i mean she's kind of like a just a sort of one of these charismatic ministers.

Speaker 27 I looked her up. She, every, every couple of years, she gets like a big viral, you know, viral clip where, like, she was saying, you know, she's trying to get Trump re-elected.

Speaker 27 And then she just said, and strike, and strike, and strike for like about a minute. Um, but I guess it worked.

Speaker 26 All right, Wendy Thayer. I am, uh, I'm super looking forward to all of the reporting on these weirdos and characters that you're going to do to educate us.
You'll be kind of like a layer of

Speaker 26 the tabloid news, right? You know, kind of translating the tabloid news news for all the rest of us. I really appreciate it, Will.

Speaker 27 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 26 One more thing before I leave. I just wanted to

Speaker 26 shout out Kevin Drum. He's a longtime blogger, a longtime liberal blogger that died this week.
I've gotten to work with him a little bit.

Speaker 26 We'd sparred a couple times when he wrote something when I was a flak of the RNC.

Speaker 26 Then we sparred again when I was a writer for the Bulwark, and we disagreed about a culture war column that he had written. But he's always fair-minded, always serious.

Speaker 26 I'd recommend going out and checking out his archives if you weren't familiar with him. I wanted to honor Kevin Drum a little bit.

Speaker 26 But there's a story that my friend Ben Dreyfus wrote about him that I wanted to share with you guys. Ben writes the Calm Down substack, which is advice that I don't take from him.

Speaker 26 But his substack is usually quite amusing, if nothing else, and insightful.

Speaker 26 And he wrote about Kevin that they had worked together at Mother Jones at the height of kind of the awokening in the cancel culture world on the left. And Kevin was more of an old school liberal.

Speaker 26 And he'd written a couple things that some of the younger progressive staff didn't like.

Speaker 26 And this came to a head when he wrote a blog post about the movie Parasite of all things and how he didn't really prefer subtitles.

Speaker 26 And some people on the staff, some of the young progressive staff, decided that was racist, I guess.

Speaker 26 And, you know, this thing snowballs and eventually results in Kevin leaving and going out out on his own. All this happened.
He had already been diagnosed with cancer at the time.

Speaker 26 The thing that Ben shares about Kevin is that

Speaker 26 at the time, he was driving most of the traffic to the site. He set up 1.33% and then it went up and up and up and was the second biggest driver for Mother Jones of revenue to the site.

Speaker 26 But every time they tried to give him a raise, he wouldn't take it. He said he didn't need it and he wanted to put that money back into the fellowship at Mother Jones.

Speaker 26 He wanted to support the mission, he wanted to support the salaries of the very people that ran him out on a rail.

Speaker 26 And he didn't say anything about that. He didn't tell anybody.
He went out on his own and continued writing, continued to be true to himself. And I thought it was a lovely story.

Speaker 26 It is a model that all of us should try to live up to about being true to oneself, about

Speaker 26 not being bullied about trying to support a cause that is greater than yourself even if you don't agree with every single

Speaker 26 person that is associated with the cause and um

Speaker 26 man he's a good he was a great writer he influenced a lot of writers that i like and uh he'll be missed so rest easy kevin drum Thanks to Ben Dreyfus for sharing that story.

Speaker 26 And everybody else, we'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bullard Podcast. We'll see you all then.
Peace.

Speaker 26 You lost your eyes burn in the dolphin

Speaker 26 when you went to your location.

Speaker 26 And now there is no vacation

Speaker 26 for you

Speaker 26 back home.

Speaker 26 Feel

Speaker 26 up,

Speaker 26 feel

Speaker 26 love

Speaker 26 in the summer of feel,

Speaker 26 feel

Speaker 26 love

Speaker 26 dream

Speaker 26 kiss

Speaker 26 I don't stay away

Speaker 26 and play in real games

Speaker 26 But go the same

Speaker 26 race

Speaker 26 We need more nuances

Speaker 26 We need more teachers

Speaker 26 And try to assist us

Speaker 26 in the summer of the

Speaker 26 feeling

Speaker 26 In the summer of the

Speaker 26 feeling

Speaker 26 Deep

Speaker 26 into

Speaker 26 feeling

Speaker 27 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason

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