Tom Nichols: Covid Trump 2.0

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovny, and Carise Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 17 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 21 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 22 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 24 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 26 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 28 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 30 Master distiller Jimmy Russell knew Wild Turkey Bourbon got it right the first time, mellowed an American oak with the darkest char.

Speaker 30 Our pre-Prohibition style bourbons are aged longer and never watered down. So you know it's right too, for whatever you do with it.

Speaker 30 Wild Turkey 101 Bourbon makes an old fashioned or bold fashion for bold nights out or at home. Wild Turkey Bourbon aged longer, never watered down to create one bold flavor.

Speaker 30 Copyright 2025 of Party America, New York, New York, never compromised, tried responsibly.

Speaker 32 Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
It is Friday. We have survived another week, barely.

Speaker 32 And I am here with one of your faves, Professor Emeritus at the Naval War College. He's a staff writer at the Atlantic.

Speaker 32 His books include The Death of Expertise, which has an updated and expanded edition. Go get it.
It's Tom Nichols and maybe Cat Lily. We'll see.
How's it going, Tom? Good, Tim.

Speaker 32 Lily's sitting right here. She's waiting for her.

Speaker 32 She's waiting for her close-up. So we may have a Lily sighting.
All right. So.

Speaker 32 Somehow, I went back and looked at the archives. Time is a flat circle.
I feel like I'm living a lifetime every day. I also feel like I'm hearing from you constantly and all your various platforms.

Speaker 32 And so I was like, when was Nichols last on the pod? And it was the day after inauguration. Oh, yeah.
That was a

Speaker 32 real upper for people. So it's been six weeks since then.
And I wanted to start by just kind of asking you your biggest takeaways from this in terminal six weeks. What has surprised you?

Speaker 32 What has outraged you most? I think a lot of things have not surprised me because, you know, we lived through the first term, but also because we knew he's doing what he said he would do.

Speaker 32 He's trying to get even and get revenge and troll the country with this bizarre slate of cabinet officials and, you know, letting Elon Musk loose on, you know, federal workers who were just trying to do their jobs.

Speaker 32 I think the speed with which he betrayed Ukraine was a little bit surprising.

Speaker 32 I thought he would sort of ease his way into that with, you know, Kellogg over going overseas and doing something shaky at the negotiating table.

Speaker 32 I didn't expect him to basically like just reorganize American foreign policy into a de facto alliance with Vladimir Putin. Yeah.
Well, that's a good place to start then.

Speaker 32 There is a frog-boiling element of this. It's hard to say what is surprising.

Speaker 32 I guess I thought that the Elon element has been a little bit more surprising to me, just how much he's run roughshot over everything.

Speaker 32 And I think the way that he's fucked up the economy was a little quicker than I expected. But I don't know.
This is like something that Nicole and I talked about a lot.

Speaker 32 Nicole Laws and I talked about, which is like, we were the only ones that took him seriously, it seems like.

Speaker 32 Like, there were a lot of people that were his supporters that didn't really expect him to do all the things.

Speaker 32 And so, like, there'sn't been anything in particular that shocked me, but like you, the speed of some of it has surprised me.

Speaker 32 I wish I could go back and, you know, the Trump folks that I talked to just before the election and one in particular just swore to me, he's not going to do tariffs.

Speaker 32 That's, you know, that's just, and I said, he loves tariffs. This is, he is going to rattle the economy.

Speaker 32 This wasn't hard to see coming, but it was hard to predict both how fast and how completely nutty it is.

Speaker 32 You know, it's, oh, it's someone, actually, a few folks have asked, like, who's out there who, who knows what he's about to do, who's like shorting the market? Like, this is a day.

Speaker 32 If you have any insight information, it's a day trader's paradise, right? It's like, okay, there comes the tariff, you know, thing. Oh, now he's going to roll it back.
Oh, now the market's back up.

Speaker 32 The one thing I remember you and I talking about, I remember cautioning and saying, well, Elon Musk, he doesn't have that much power yet.

Speaker 32 I didn't imagine that Trump would deputize him to do this, that he would be able to pay Doge staffers six-figure salaries, which

Speaker 32 just always proves the point that these folks aren't about

Speaker 32 getting rid of government waste. They just prefer that it goes to them.
And that Congress and the courts courts would just say, okay, Article I doesn't operate anymore.

Speaker 32 The appointments clause doesn't operate anymore. The president can just pull a guy off the street and say, hey, go fire people.

Speaker 32 And the Constitution and the law just don't operate.

Speaker 32 That, I guess, surprised me a little bit. Yeah.
I guess we'll have to give ourselves a grade.

Speaker 32 I punish myself a lot with the amount of information that I'm consuming and the various sources I'm consuming them from.

Speaker 32 I don't re-listen to myself, but maybe I'll punish myself by re-listening to our January 21st 21st one to see how it stacks up. On to the Ukraine news.

Speaker 32 So, over the past 24 hours, Russia has carried out massive strikes across the country using drones and ballistic missiles. It happened a day after the U.S.

Speaker 32 stopped sharing intelligence with Kyiv that had previously given advance warnings of attacks. Just before we got on, I interviewed a reporter, Kalen Robertson, who's on the ground in Ukraine.

Speaker 32 People can check that out on either on YouTube or on the Bulwark Takes podcast.

Speaker 32 You know, he was reporting from Kyiv and says basically, like in the last 24 hours, like the amount of air attack material that has gotten through onto the ground has been unlike anything previously.

Speaker 32 The air raid sirens were going off in Kyiv more often than they had been in the previous months. And all of this is just a direct one-to-one correlation.
Like Trump just decided to flip the switch.

Speaker 32 We're no longer going to share intelligence with Ukraine. He told the Brits they can't share our intelligence with Ukraine.
And Putin has taken advantage of it.

Speaker 32 And there's been deaths and destruction, targeting of energy, infrastructure. And it is an astonishing, sick betrayal of our ally.

Speaker 32 And just to make the point that it's not about some sort of strategic calculation, he's also decided to send home Ukrainian refugees. He wants to take that refugee status away from them.

Speaker 32 You know, this is basically operating in concert with Vladimir Putin. My colleague David Frum had a great line.

Speaker 32 You know, the Trump-Russia theory is like now one of the most durable theories in political science because you're watching it play out in real time.

Speaker 32 You know, we're getting confirmation of it every day.

Speaker 32 Was there any

Speaker 32 overwhelming strategic or American interest reason to do this? And the answer, of course, is no. And it's amazing because MAGA World always reacts to this, like, well, we have to bring our boys home.

Speaker 32 Yeah, right.

Speaker 32 You know, it's like, what? What boys? What are the boys? Where are they going? What are you talking about?

Speaker 32 Here's the reason to do it.

Speaker 32 Just to be blunt.

Speaker 32 If you're just looking at the facts on the ground and you look at what happened in the Oval Office, we haven't touched since then. And the reason to do it is...

Speaker 32 is if you are essentially on Putin's side and you're trying to force Zelensky to the negotiating table. Like that is what this is.
It's like we're going to force Zelensky to negotiate.

Speaker 32 And you see he sent a tweet this morning that was basically thanking France because they still did have some F-16s to protect their air that were French that they had borrowed.

Speaker 32 And he said basically he wants to go to the negotiating table to try to get a ceasefire for air and sea because he can't protect his country.

Speaker 32 And like that is, I guess if you're going to art of the deal this and say that it's something besides just

Speaker 32 capricious Trump advance temper tantrums, it would be that he is in league with Putin and trying to push Zelensky to the table. It's not trying to achieve a just peace so that people stop dying.

Speaker 32 It's trying to achieve an unjust peace on Vladimir Putin's terms so that the people who do the dying are going to be mostly Ukrainians from here on out.

Speaker 32 The Macron press conference, I guess it wasn't a press conference, it was an address to the nation earlier this week. Was just, it's just, it still is astonishing.
Again, like we all saw this coming.

Speaker 32 We all saw the Trump of it coming, but like sometimes you just watch a video and you're like, how is this the world that we're in?

Speaker 32 We're like, the president of France is giving an address to his nation that's like, don't worry, the French nuclear umbrella will protect the rest of Europe from Russia if it comes to it.

Speaker 32 Like, we hope that the Americans are on our side, but we will go forth to help defend Ukraine as if they're not.

Speaker 32 To get across to your listeners, just how astonishing this is, I'm going to go into like nuclear professor mode for a minute and say, Okay, you know, remember that the French created their own nuclear force because they felt cut out of the U.S.-British kind of nuclear duumvirate, right, back in the 50s.

Speaker 32 And they literally said, one of their leaders said, we can't have our security be at the sufferance of lays Anglo-Saxons, you know, like France will have a nuclear force that is not for anybody but France.

Speaker 32 And they literally did things like, they had a couple of ICPMs, they're gone now, but they had a couple of ICPMs.

Speaker 32 They put them on the French border so that they could say to the Russians, listen, you know, no matter what you do to the rest of Europe, once you roll in here, you're going to roll over these things and we're going to fire them.

Speaker 32 And that's separate from NATO and the Americans and their little cousins, the Brits.

Speaker 32 And this has now turned everything on its head where the French, they haven't made a policy decision yet, but for France to say, okay, basically, we'll take over as the nuclear guarantor of NATO.

Speaker 32 What?

Speaker 32 Wow. And considering that the French nuclear force is relatively small,

Speaker 32 that doesn't mean

Speaker 32 nuclear warfighting or tit-for-tit. I mean, that basically means that

Speaker 32 if war comes and I shouldn't say if war comes, if Russia starts another war, that this is going to be the French

Speaker 32 responding to nuclear force with nuclear force. And it's going to be...

Speaker 32 you know, it's going to be World War III. And the idea that somehow this will exclude us, that Americans will just say, okay, we're out of it, you know, that's not going to happen.

Speaker 32 That's not how it goes in the international.

Speaker 32 I'm sorry. Trump told Zelensky, don't tell me how to feel about this.

Speaker 32 It might not affect us. I've not read a history book.
I don't know anything that happened outside of my field of vision right this second.

Speaker 32 It's boring at this point to do the wither the Republicans thing, and I'm sick of doing it. And yet, sometimes you have to.

Speaker 32 And I do think this is a moment where Ukrainians are dying, Ukrainian infrastructure is being attacked for no reason except for, I guess, us helping Putin pressure Ukraine to the table.

Speaker 32 And you had these guys, Roger Wicker is wearing a Ukraine pin during the confirmation hearings.

Speaker 32 Brian Fitzpatrick, Don Bacon, the guys that I'm supposed to like, the Republicans that I'm supposed to like, who are out there saying, oh, I will go to bat for Ukraine no matter what.

Speaker 32 John Thun,

Speaker 32 nothing, nothing, you know, and we're not hearing anything that they're not, they, they're not using the power of the purse, they're not pressuring Trump, they're not, you know, Don Bacon is like meekly criticizing him, using no, but, but not using any of his power.

Speaker 32 I mean, it is astonishing. Like these guys are just going to let Ukrainians wither and die because of Trump advance's whims.
And they're doing nothing. And because they don't want to get primaried.

Speaker 32 And because, you know,

Speaker 32 I keep thinking about Tom Tillis saying, well, you know, I got, I wasn't going to vote for Hagseth and I got threats, you know, like they're off the record.

Speaker 32 You know, you're hearing or unattributed, you're hearing Republicans saying things like, well, you know, I fear for my family and my staff. And, well, you know, I'm sorry, but if you're a senior U.S.

Speaker 32 senator and you're, you're not going to vote your conscience because you're afraid of Donald Trump and people in your district, then go home. Don't be a senator anymore.

Speaker 32 You know, I'm sorry, you know, if it's that's, and I understand, I mean, you know, everybody who's ever criticized Trump, including two guys sitting right here, has gotten death threats.

Speaker 32 It's just part of life in the 21st century with Donald Trump. But if you're a senior U.S.
Senator and you're saying, well, I couldn't really vote this way because I'm worried.

Speaker 32 Well, then, you know, then come on home with the rest of us, you know, and

Speaker 32 just get out of that business. But I think the bigger issue is that they really just love being in Washington and they don't want to go home.

Speaker 32 I mean, Susan Collins, very concerned, very, very concerned. She's running again next year at 74 years old for another six-year term.

Speaker 32 So this kind of incredible amount of political cowardice and careerism and opportunism that says, yeah, in my heart, I know it's wrong to let all these people die under Russian bombardments.

Speaker 32 But, you know, I got to, I'm 74 and I got to run next year. And, you know, and my constituents are mad at me and we're getting ugly phone calls.

Speaker 32 And so, you know, that is not the Republican Party that you and I knew 30 years ago. Yeah.
No.

Speaker 32 And number one, Tom, Tilla, people get, sometimes people get mad at me when I say this, but like, I have no sympathy for their fear. Like, are you kidding me?

Speaker 32 You're not going to do something about this because you're scared that you've gotten some empty death threats. Like, literally, people died.

Speaker 32 Like, Ukrainians died yesterday because of what Donald Trump did. And you're a fucking U.S.
senator. So do something about it.

Speaker 32 I tweeted a version of this complaint, and somebody sent me this tweet by Representative Joe Wilson from South Carolina. You might remember him from ULI fame, Simple Times.

Speaker 32 It was retweeted by Don Bacon. So when I was like, yeah, so when I was like, where is Don Bacon? People are like, well, here's Don Bacon.
Here's this retweet he sent. Here's what Joe Wilson said.

Speaker 32 War criminal Putin launched a ballistic missile at a hotel where American, UK, and Ukrainian aid and health volunteers were staying. Four dead, over 30 injured.

Speaker 32 In his deliberate bombing of children's cancer hospitals, maternity wards, etc., Putin further confirms his cowardice and contempt for life, including the lives of the Russians he sends to die in his pointless war.

Speaker 32 Great tweet, but fucking do something about it.

Speaker 32 Like the ballistic missile hit a a hotel where Americans' aid workers live because your president that you supported stopped giving intelligence aid to Ukraine. So fucking do something about it.

Speaker 32 Don't tweet. Call Donald Trump.
Mention Donald Trump in the tweet. This is virtue signaling.
This is the shit that Republicans and conservatives make fun of. That's all this is.

Speaker 32 This is virtue signaling. That's the equivalent of holding up a little paddle.

Speaker 32 It's worse than holding up a paddle, actually. Putin is bad.

Speaker 32 Putin is bad.

Speaker 32 Like you don't even, at least if he held up the paddle when Donald trump was in the room it would have sent a message that he was speaking about donald trump like this is just an empty critique of putin great

Speaker 32 these guys just fucking boil my blood so much so anyway i since we haven't talked since friday before we move on from this any other any other thoughts and you wrote about it uh called it one of the grimmest days any other thoughts about that scene

Speaker 32 well i mean it was a setup I mean, it shows you what JD Vance's real role is in this administration, which is sort of chief internet troll.

Speaker 32 You know, hey, bring JD in and let him rile up Zielinski so that Trump can then say, I couldn't do it. He said, he's disrespectful.

Speaker 32 But to know that you're just being brought in to be, you know, the kid throwing spitballs from the back row is really, it was just embarrassing.

Speaker 32 I felt a little nauseous watching it, but I could feel, I felt like embarrassment by proxy. I was like, just, oh my God, this is so, these are grown men.

Speaker 32 You know, I find myself with this administration so often just saying, these are grown men and women acting this way. Like these are, these are adults.
And it's pathetic.

Speaker 32 It's just, it really is pathetic to say, to watch people that are, you know, in middle age acting like they're 15 during study hall, you know, trying to piss off all the other kids.

Speaker 32 I mean, it's really astonishing. But I think it, you know, once again, I mean, I, you know, I've criticized J.D.

Speaker 32 Vance comprehensively, but I think it really brought home that, you know, Trump runs the country.

Speaker 32 All the lights are plugged into the Oval Office at this point, which means eventually it all breaks down because nobody can manage that way. Musk is his

Speaker 32 number two, you know, running rampant. And J.D.
Vance is just brought in to like be, you know, the guy who is the living embodiment of snarky tweets. Petulance.
Yeah, petulance of snarky tweets.

Speaker 34 Greetings from my bath, festive friends.

Speaker 37 The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money. Getting 5% cash back when I pay in four.

Speaker 32 No fees, no interest.

Speaker 38 I used it to get this portable spa with jets.

Speaker 39 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body.

Speaker 40 Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 32 Save the offer in the app.

Speaker 41 NS1231, see PayPal.com slash promo terms.

Speaker 42 Points give your renewing for cash and more paying for subject to terms and approval.

Speaker 43 PayPal Inc. and MLS 910-457.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 17 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 21 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 22 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 24 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 26 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried.

Speaker 27 So keep your enemies close.

Speaker 28 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 32 My blood is still boiling from that Joe Wilson tweet. So anyone who moves to someone else that we both hate and try to get you to do it.
It's Lent and I'm a Christian.

Speaker 32 I don't hate anyone, but I do have severe reservations.

Speaker 32 Someone else that we have some very severe thoughts about, severe Christian, godly thoughts about. David Sachs.
I don't want history professor Tom again. again you task me tim

Speaker 32 task at least i didn't have you on on ash wednesday so you don't have to talk about him with the ashes on your on your forehead like marco

Speaker 32 orthodox we don't do that

Speaker 32 you don't you guys don't do that not like marco with the biggest ashes i've ever seen on his head talking about how donald trump has moral authority that was significant yeah i'm like hey i get it i did that and with big ashes on his forehead talking about the moral clarity of donald trump luckily we have confession so you know so you can get the ashes lie about Donald Trump, then go back to confession.

Speaker 32 It's a full day. Sears the ball sacks on Ukraine.
And you tweeted about it, but I want to get you going a little more. He writes, interesting historical analogy.

Speaker 32 The Korean War was another three-year war with tremendous losses on both sides. It was largely stalemated.
The American client, South Korean leader Rhe wanted to keep fighting.

Speaker 32 Eisenhower made him sign the armistice. Great leadership.
Tom wrote, a dumb comparison, but naturally attractive to diligence.

Speaker 32 So please, please extend those remarks. I mean,

Speaker 32 right, with by unanimous consent, I'd like to revise and extend my remarks.

Speaker 32 You know, Sachs is just, I mean, Sachs and Vance.

Speaker 32 And they're all part of this small circle of plutocrats who have convinced themselves that they are deep thinkers, that they are, you know, deep geopolitical thinkers, when when in fact they are, you know, exactly like, you know, again, the kid in your dorm at 2 a.m.

Speaker 32 who says, you know, I have big thoughts. Or Cliff Clavin at the end of the bar.
Well,

Speaker 32 let me explain to you how Ukraine works here, Diane. That's a good Cliff Clavin.
Thank you. You know, I'm from the area.
It was such a dumb analogy.

Speaker 32 For one thing,

Speaker 32 thousands of Americans were fighting and dying in Korea. Hello.
My snarkiness and sarcasm fail me. So let me me go into a more serious professor mode.

Speaker 32 I also believe, just as one other thing, just throwing it out there, that there was this kind of security guarantee

Speaker 32 as part of that stalemate. Something that we weren't going to do.
We were going to steal their rare earth minerals and then not give them a security guarantee. So there were some other differences.

Speaker 32 Let's count all the ways in which David Sachs was wrong. For one thing, Stalin and Mao cooked up this war.
And again, by the way, this was also a war that became possible.

Speaker 32 As we now know from documentary, again, I'm sorry to be professorial, guys, but from documentary history, from Cold War documents that were released from the Soviet archives, that the thing that motivated Stalin to say yes, because he had said no to an invasion of the South repeatedly, it's when the Americans left.

Speaker 32 When the Americans left the peninsula, exactly everything that Sachs and others want us to do. That's when Stalin said, go for it.
And they almost made it.

Speaker 32 They get all the way down to the Pusan perimeter. The North rolls to the very tip of South Korea.

Speaker 32 And the Americans, at the expenditure of great blood and treasure for two years, not only pushed them back, but reestablished the status quo ante.

Speaker 32 There wasn't like, okay, we're going to have an armistice and the North Koreans are going to keep an extra 200 miles.

Speaker 32 No, it went back to the 38th parallel. There was a demilitarized zone.
And the Americans, who had, I mean, South Korea is,

Speaker 32 you know, full of the bones of American servicemen were still there. Yeah.

Speaker 32 it's just one of those things where I'm sure it must have, you know, while you were on your way to a meeting somewhere, you thought, hey, I just had a microdosing, whatever they're doing out there these days.

Speaker 32 I will not speculate.

Speaker 32 But, you know, that you, you're walking down the hall and you're saying, hey, I just had a deep thought tweet. It's one of those things.
It's like, you know, have you read a book?

Speaker 32 I think you read one, it seems like, or maybe an article.

Speaker 32 I want to stick with David's ball sacs for a little bit because not only, and I I was just so excited as soon as I saw that Korea tweet, I was like, I want to get Tom Nichols to start talking about Soviet documents.

Speaker 32 I was like, I just want to get him going on that. But yesterday made some more news.
There's a strategic Bitcoin reserve now in the country.

Speaker 32 I've been hoping for some strategic reserves of some other things, baseball cards. Mardi Grabides, et cetera.
But we've chosen to have a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

Speaker 32 David Sachs in his tweet about this says it doesn't cost anything. It doesn't cost taxpayers anything.
Now, that's interesting. Why does it not cost taxpayers anything?

Speaker 32 Well, because it's funded by Bitcoin seized from criminals, which I think raises a few questions about what is cost and why there are there are so many criminals using this product that we need a strategic reserve of.

Speaker 32 But go, I wonder your thoughts on that. Well, again, you know, somewhere somebody's investing and watching all this and having the time of their life.

Speaker 32 I have all these like crypto people now send me stuff. But like he was like, there's some guy like who made 10 million on the announcement.
You can't tell who it is, but they were like 50x long.

Speaker 32 Anyway, again, Trump is going through and he's kind of checking boxes and paying dues, you know, of, yeah, if you help me get in, I'll set up all these schemes.

Speaker 32 You guys can, I mean, Trump, in a way, I don't want people to attribute too much purposefulness to this, because I think what he's really doing is saying, I achieved the thing I needed to achieve.

Speaker 32 You and I talked about this after the inauguration. I'm not in jail.

Speaker 32 I've defeated all my legal cases. Thank you all.
You may all now indulge yourselves.

Speaker 32 Just go do what you want. And I think that's what's happening.
Hey, can you give us a crypto reserve? Sure.

Speaker 32 I mean, it's a lunacy to have a reserve of crypto. I also love, just not to be pedantic, but like this idea that this doesn't cost anything.
I mean, you know, if the U.S.

Speaker 32 government is investing in an FBI, and I guess we're probably not going to do this anymore, or we'll only investigate foes of the crypto guys that are close to Trump.

Speaker 32 And maybe we'll investigate them and seize their Bitcoin as part of the corrupt state that we're now engaging in, where

Speaker 32 you only investigate political enemies. Otherwise, I mean, the president himself is on top of a crypto scam, so he's not going to be investigated.

Speaker 32 But like this notion that it doesn't cost anything, it's like, well, no, if the FBI and the DOJ put money, put taxpayer dollars into investigating criminals, and then they seize their assets, like we get that money.

Speaker 32 Like, that's that is something.

Speaker 32 And so, if instead of using the money for the federal government, we're putting it over here in a federal reserve, in a strategic reserve, like, yeah, that does cost something, actually. Right.

Speaker 32 We're paying to get it.

Speaker 32 We could have sold it and used that money to pay down the debt or used it for whatever. You don't exactly kind of get it.
We're paying to get it, and we're paying to administer holding it

Speaker 32 and with all of the attendant risk. And, and, you know, for what? I think this is the part where I'm supposed to say, and I hold no crypto, So, you know, I am not in this game.

Speaker 32 It's a solution to a made-up problem that benefits a very, I mean, this could be, you could say this about a lot of Trump economic policies, a solution to a non-existent problem that benefits a very small number of people very handsomely.

Speaker 32 Among those people, there was somebody put out a graphic of like the crypto holdings in Trump's, you know, scam company.

Speaker 32 And 12% of the holdings were from this guy, Justin Sun, who I've talked about a couple of times on the podcast. He runs the Tron exchange.
He's a Chinese national.

Speaker 32 He was investigated by the Biden SEC. The Trump SEC has stopped investigating him.
Shocking. And life's pretty good for him.

Speaker 32 So, you know, we've got a crypto reserve now, and he's not being investigated. And he's, you know, about 12% of Trump's holdings he put in there.
So not a bad return.

Speaker 32 I want to live in that alternate universe where Democrats did all this, where George Soros was brought in to like slash the government or Bill Gates or somebody and you know that they set up a crypto fund with you know shady and shadowy you know figures on the left I mean they would be going up this would be deep state conspiracies Biden has to go I mean it's just the double I know you know we've been doing this for 10 years almost 10 years about the double standard but it really it really is remarkable

Speaker 32 Ah

Speaker 37 greetings from my bath festive friends the holidays are overwhelming but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money, getting 5% cash back when I pay in four.

Speaker 32 No fees, no interest.

Speaker 38 I used it to get this portable spa with Jets.

Speaker 39 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body.

Speaker 40 Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 32 Save the offer in the app.

Speaker 41 Ends 1231, see paypal.com/slash promo terms.

Speaker 42 Points give you renee for cash and more pay in four subject to terms and approval.

Speaker 43 PayPal Inc. and MLS 910-457.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 17 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 21 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 22 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 24 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 26 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried.

Speaker 27 So keep your enemies close.

Speaker 28 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 32 We're going to keep moving through the parade of horribles here. It's time to embrace the horror.

Speaker 32 Pete Hagseff, the Secretary of Defense, the merit-based Secretary of Defense, no DEI there at all, just the best qualified person for the job.

Speaker 32 He gave the military until Wednesday to remove content that highlighted the diversity efforts in the ranks.

Speaker 32 There was a little problem, though, as people started deleting various things through the program. They got rid of everything with the word gay, including the Enola gay.

Speaker 32 The plane that dropped the bomb on Topia. Tom's going to do the hosting job for me.

Speaker 32 We got rid of the Enola gay. That is a faggoty plane.
That was one gay plane.

Speaker 32 That was one.

Speaker 32 They loved Dolly Parton on that plane. And I told me to tell you,

Speaker 32 they did a lot of makeup. That plane flew over Japan wearing a fruit basket on its head like Garmin Miranda.

Speaker 32 Oh my God. After I stop having fun with you, I got to get off the internet and go write about this.
And I don't even know where to start. I mean, it's like, it's so strangely homophobic.

Speaker 32 It's a cross between the closeted kernel in American beauty,

Speaker 32 you know, which everybody's been kind of crapping on lately.

Speaker 32 And I re-watched it the other day and I was like, Yeah, that's a pretty old home of the trope, but also, but also an element of truth in it. I kind of liked American Beauty.
I know, bad take.

Speaker 32 I know that's an inappropriate take, but I like to give people my full candor. And I don't, I don't mind how much of that.
I was okay with it

Speaker 32 until that last scene with Mina Suvari. And I'm the dad of a

Speaker 32 college-age girl, and I just didn't, I hadn't hear that.

Speaker 32 But

Speaker 32 I do love the last line of the movie, which is that I loved every moment of my stupid life, which I thought is a kind of a nice ending.

Speaker 32 But this whole DEI thing at the Defense Department is kind of like a cross between that and Homer Simpson in the John Waters episode where Marge comes home and he says, he didn't give you gay, did he?

Speaker 32 You know, I mean, there is just this weird kind of like

Speaker 32 scrubbing of everything that is, to be a little more serious about this, it's, it's, it's Stalinist. Yes.
I mean, it's just kind of a Stalinist, you know, throw everything in the memory hole.

Speaker 32 And, you know, I say this as,

Speaker 32 especially as a longtime federal employee to sit through a lot of these, you know, a lot of the training and all the other stuff. I could have been a natural ally about too much DEI stuff.

Speaker 32 You know what I mean? Like, I had to sit through,

Speaker 32 I had to take a morning out of my life as a federal employee while a professor came in and tried to explain to people, like, guys, I still remember this.

Speaker 32 You're guys like much older than me, you know, sitting there nodding, trying to figure out. She's like going, okay, so this is what cis hetero means.

Speaker 32 And I'm like, oh, for Christ's sake, you know, we really have work to do today. And, you know, okay, I get it.
That's, you could say, look, we're not going to, we're not going to do that.

Speaker 32 We're not going to spend money on that.

Speaker 32 But scrubbing the Defense Department archives to like make sure that somebody who, you know, was gay in a 1990 story or something gets like, you know, vanished, it's panicky.

Speaker 32 It's like a gay panic almost yeah what is even the point of deleting so like what are they doing they're just going through their website control fing every page like control f gay control control f trans

Speaker 32 control i don't know

Speaker 32 what control f queer like what are you doing like what is the point of that i mean it's just it's it's a weird kind of panic stop during the programs it's fine i i just sent through one of these things the other day and i was like if you're a guy and a and a new young woman comes in on the staff like you're not are you supposed to say nice knockers, babe?

Speaker 32 Like, yes, no, maybe. It's like, no, that would be sexual harassment.
It's just like, who is this for? That's a red light.

Speaker 32 Who is this training for? Like, people that are morons. Like, anybody that doesn't know this, like, probably shouldn't have had the job in the first place.

Speaker 32 So I guess there should have maybe been a better vetting. So whatever.
Like, yeah, they're stupid shit, you know, and change some of the stuff. Like, that's fine.
But, like,

Speaker 32 this is ridiculous and Stalinist. That's the thing.

Speaker 32 There's a Stalinism to it. I mean, again, I could have, you know, if Hegseth had had a quick press conference and said, listen, these things cost X dollars a year.

Speaker 32 We're not bringing any more guest speakers to explain to, you know, old retired colonels what it means to be cis. Fine.

Speaker 32 Fine. That was a waste of taxpayer money.
I mean, I'm not going to support Pete Hegseth, but I would have nodded and said, okay, I guess, you know, you could save a few bucks there. This is different.

Speaker 32 This is something really different and almost like it's a larger point. It shows you that MAGA world thinks of itself as this embattled minority.

Speaker 32 Even though they control everything right now, they still think of themselves as like Christians hiding in the catacombs, you know, and drawing fish symbols on doors.

Speaker 32 And so while they have the power, they're going to, you know, they're going to set the timeline right.

Speaker 32 You know what I mean? Like, if only we can go back to 1989, the last time we had a real president, and say,

Speaker 32 okay, we're going to just scrub the timeline so none of this happened. And all the gay and trans soldiers will go away and everything will be okay again.

Speaker 32 And it'll be just like when I was a kid in 1966.

Speaker 32 Two thoughts on that. One is just on the serious.
We can make fun of the stuff, but like on the serious side,

Speaker 32 I haven't confirmed this, but there's no reason to believe it's not true.

Speaker 32 I received a note from a reader about, you know, a couple of soldiers that they are aware of that have been kicked out because of gender dysphoria or whatever, people that had done nothing else.

Speaker 32 That is fucking outrageous, like for a draft dodging, makeup-wearing, bonespurs TV star to like kick people that were voluntarily serving the military out for no reason.

Speaker 32 It's fucking outrageous and it's maddening. And your point on the embattled minority, it's funny.
I was watching this video, this kind of viral video that was going around.

Speaker 32 It's a guy in a MAGA hound at Disney World.

Speaker 32 He's walking around. He's by himself at Disney World.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 he looks, he's kind of a weird looking guy. He's got his phone up and he's like videotaping everybody that walks by him.
And like people are giving him a look.

Speaker 32 And the point of this is this embattled minority thing. Like, look at me.
I'm so brave. I went into the lion's den and wore this hat and people are giving me weird looks.

Speaker 32 And it's kind of like, well, for starters, you guys won. So you have a majority of the people.
They may not have a majority of the country.

Speaker 32 We're made up of a plurality, a bare plurality of the people. So they're going to be a lot of people that agree with you.

Speaker 32 And number two, maybe these people are fucking looking at you because you're at a children's park by yourself. Filming people.
Filming strangers.

Speaker 32 Like, I think it might be your behavior, not your hats.

Speaker 32 Or maybe a little bit of both, you know? Even though I live in Blue New England, you know, we, this is, we're a divided

Speaker 32 state, you know, it's like 60, 40.

Speaker 32 And there is always this kind of, you know, I dare you to say something.

Speaker 32 Look, if, you know, like, why like the guys in the local supermarket here you know having these really loud conversations about you and it's like

Speaker 32 all right i guess i have to say something

Speaker 32 can you move so i can get the butter

Speaker 32 can you just but there is this there's almost this um this thirst for attention and engagement these performative stunts that are almost like pay attention to me engage with me listen to me i mean that's really unhealthy no matter what your politics are.

Speaker 32 You shouldn't be going to the grocery store to exhibit your politics. And we, you and I, when we were concerned, we used to criticize the left about doing this.
And rightly so. Yeah.

Speaker 32 You know, the people standing and saying, I'm buying the, you know, sustainable stuff that wasn't, you know, that was made by campesinos.

Speaker 32 You know, I mean, just buy your fucking coffee and go home, will you? You know?

Speaker 34 Greetings from my bath, festive friends.

Speaker 37 The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money, getting 5% cash back when I pay in four.

Speaker 32 No fees, no interest.

Speaker 38 I used it to get this portable spa with jets.

Speaker 39 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body.

Speaker 40 Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 32 Save the offer in the app.

Speaker 41 Ends 1231. See PayPal.com/slash promo terms.

Speaker 42 Points give you a need for cash and more pay in four subject to terms of approval.

Speaker 43 PayPal Inc. at NMLS 910-457.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 17 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 21 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 22 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 24 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 26 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried.

Speaker 27 So keep your enemies close.

Speaker 28 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 32 Let's talk about the economy. We had a jobs report this morning.
It was mid. You know, it was a little short on jobs.
Joe Biden's fault. Yeah, things ticked up a little bit.
It wasn't great.

Speaker 32 It wasn't horrible. But a lot of bad signs on the economy.
I mean,

Speaker 32 the stock market has been tanking. You know, there have been some other signs that

Speaker 32 there's bad jobs news to come ahead. We'll see.
Consumer confidence reports, very bad. Atlanta Fed projections, very bad.

Speaker 32 The Treasury Secretary yesterday said that cheap goods are not part of the American dream.

Speaker 32 I think that this,

Speaker 32 I think it might be time for somebody to meet some real Americans. The rich hedge fund guy.
Maybe some media training.

Speaker 32 You know, like, wow, Mr. Secretary, cheap goods.

Speaker 32 Let me take you to a magical place that you and i will go it's called walmart walmart and that is central to the american dream actually we are going to go over to the tv section um you know and then we're going to go over to best buy

Speaker 32 and maybe stop you know at an aldi

Speaker 32 I mean, it was just, it was so tone-deft. It was exactly the kind of thing a rich guy says on a private jet.
People don't care about cheap goods. No, you don't care about cheap goods.

Speaker 32 People are just looking to pull themselves up in the dude's heads and get a good general up. And I'm for all that.

Speaker 32 But, like, hey, there's a lot of people out there that actually don't have the ambition or desire to become a rich guy with a house on Sullivan's Island. All right.
Like, and they do.

Speaker 32 Cheap goods are kind of important for them. And they would like a 65-inch TV if that's their one thing in life that they're going to put in the man case.
It's very American, actually. Yeah.

Speaker 32 But it's Joe Biden's fault. I heard this was just before we started today.
Kevin Hassett was on, and he's like, Yeah, these jobs numbers, no, well, they're good because they represent.

Speaker 32 I I mean, he, Kevin Hassett is really a kind of, you know, that genial smiling ability to just spin anything where he said,

Speaker 32 well, yeah, there was, but, you know, these were basically jobs that were created by Joe Biden and their government jobs.

Speaker 32 So really, the jobs report is just us.

Speaker 32 I mean, I'm not making this up, right? It's just us correcting the Joe Biden government jobs boom. Good luck with that.

Speaker 32 Again, you know, you're going to have people in a lot of red parts of the country saying, I don't recall Joe Biden giving me this job that I'm losing.

Speaker 32 And I think with the market going up and down, again, the rationalizations are incredible. Oh, well, buy the dip.
You know, this is a good time to buy.

Speaker 32 Okay, but if you're retired, it's not a good time to withdraw and say, I don't know, eat or warm your home with what's in your retirement.

Speaker 32 It is a remarkable inability to ever criticize Donald Trump or even to say what you just said in in a kind of measured way, that, you know, the jobs report was kind of meh, but there are some bad signs, but it's not horrible, but there's some clouds on the horizon.

Speaker 32 And instead, you just get, you know, the leader is, the leader is good. The leader is great.
We surrender our will as of this date. It's totally incoherent.
So you have the tariffs.

Speaker 32 So on Monday, they're on. On Tuesday, they might be off.
On Wednesday, they're on.

Speaker 32 On Thursday, it's like, well, we're going to take them off for things that are already in the trade deal that some idiot me signed like five years ago.

Speaker 32 And then it's like, well, but they might be back on in April and they might be lower. But then I saw a report today where they indicated they might be higher.
25% might be too low.

Speaker 32 And you just got at something, Tim, which is all of this is happening.

Speaker 32 We talk about memory holes and Stalinism.

Speaker 32 All of this is happening as if Donald Trump had never been president. Yeah.
Right? It's like, I'm finally going to make America great and end this terrible situation where you look familiar.

Speaker 32 You know, weren't you the

Speaker 32 and you know, we've got to do something with this terrible deal with Mexico. Who signed it? It's incoherent.
Who knows?

Speaker 32 Who can speculate like how long it'll last or for whatever, but like it doesn't feel sustainable. I mean, any sentient person has to look at this and just be like, what are we doing?

Speaker 32 You know, it's like, you're going to put on tariffs because it's going to bring about a golden age. But no, the car manufacturers are pissed.
We'll take the cars off.

Speaker 32 And then it's like the farmers are pissed. So it's like, oh, the potash, the potash, like we're going to do a carve-out for the potash.
Like what,

Speaker 32 how do you even, you can't defend it without sounding like an idiot because there's no rationale to it. It's just random, arbitrary president, the king fiat and like whatever he says is good.
Right.

Speaker 32 You can't defend it without finding yourself saying things like Americans don't care about cheap goods. Right.

Speaker 32 As with Ukraine, as with all the other things we've been talking about, you can't defend it without completely sort of staring into the middle distance while your body and your mind, where your mind dissociates from your body like an accident victim, and you end up having to say things that you know

Speaker 32 are

Speaker 32 just bonkers. I agree with you, but I disagree with you.
I agree with you, this is unsustainable.

Speaker 32 In a normal world, in the first Trump term, we would say these things are unsustainable.

Speaker 32 And sure enough, you know, Tillerson or Mattis or even Mnuchin or whoever would kind of say, all right, all right, you know, we we got it.

Speaker 32 But this bunch, this is just kind of a sort of, you know, looting the ship of state and pointing out that the masts are breaking and the ship is listing and we're taking on water.

Speaker 32 They're like, look, we don't care. We're just going to take as much stuff out of the hold as we can, jump into little lifeboats and paddle away.

Speaker 32 And, you know, all the circuit breakers on this stuff are gone.

Speaker 32 And ironically, and I know, you know, people really enjoy the Schotten Freud about this, but these are our fellow citizens, you know, like the policies or not.

Speaker 32 These are our brothers and sisters as American citizens. The people that are going to really pay the price for this are ordinary Americans, and most of them are going to be Trump voters.

Speaker 32 It just astonishes me how much he punishes his own voters and convinces them that they like it. I totally agree with that.
And it sounds like you're with me. And I just,

Speaker 32 who knows? I don't have a crystal ball. I'm not an economist, but I just looking at the tea leaves, like I, it's like, it seems like we're going to be in a downward spiral here.

Speaker 32 I, I just, it seems bad. Like, I don't, I don't know how he gets out of it.
And I, my, I guess, my guess is the worst it gets, the worst he gets. Like, you know, just like during COVID.

Speaker 32 Well, normally he pays attention to the markets, but in part because he had to pay attention to the markets because that was a, he wanted to get re-elected. Right.
Now he doesn't have to care.

Speaker 32 I mean, now it's, am I doing good? Are my enemies, are my enemies yowling?

Speaker 32 Remember, you know this, Tim, The one rule in MAGA World: that the test of a policy being good or bad is how loudly someone else yells about it.

Speaker 32 That's all they care about. If David French is mad about it, then that means it's a conservative policy.
That's the new rules.

Speaker 34 Greetings from my bath, festive friends.

Speaker 37 The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money, getting 5% cash back when I pay in four.

Speaker 32 No fees, no interest.

Speaker 38 I used it to get this portable spa with jets.

Speaker 39 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body.

Speaker 40 Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 32 Save the offer in the app.

Speaker 41 NS1231, see PayPal.com slash promo terms.

Speaker 42 Points keep your renewed for cash and more paying for subject to terms and approval.

Speaker 43 PayPal Inc. and MLS 910-457.

Speaker 4 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 17 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 21 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 22 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 24 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 26 One thing's for sure: the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 28 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 32 You mentioned about about how, you know, the area where you disagreed with me slightly is just about like

Speaker 32 there could be constraints if we're in normal times. We might not be in normal times.
And you wrote for The Atlantic this week about how the Democrats are acting like things are too normal.

Speaker 32 I agree with that. I think it's sometimes hard to figure out exactly what to do.

Speaker 32 I find myself in this situation where I'm like, the Democrats should be out there more and trying new things and be, you know, trying to reach people in different ways. And then they do stuff.

Speaker 32 And I was like, eh, maybe not that.

Speaker 32 So I don't know. So maybe normal is better than abnormal.
But what do you say? Normal is better than TikToks of female congressmen in fighting stances, which,

Speaker 32 you know, it was a good try. That one was a good try for me.
No, no, no, no. I was, I was cringing.
I was, my, I felt my cheeks get warm and embarrassment at that point. We don't want that.

Speaker 33 It was bad, Tim.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 again, it's bad. It's not just cringey.
It's evidence of a kind of unseriousness.

Speaker 32 Like, that's the kind of TikTok you put out when a normal Republican president says, I'm going to lower the minimum, the marginal, you know, tax rate from 37.9 to 30. Like, we're going to fight.

Speaker 32 He's like, all right, we're going to fight that. You know, what I said, and I took some static, I took some grief from Democrats.
Look, Senator Slotkin gave a very good speech.

Speaker 32 It was clear, it was direct, but it was a very 2017 speech. And when I think about Democrats, you know, getting more into fighting Trim,

Speaker 32 they really should ask, always take an opportunity to put it out there to say, we're, you know, fighting for working families, don't want to give tax cuts to plutocrats.

Speaker 32 Did you really vote to have Cash Patel run the FBI?

Speaker 32 Yes, in MAGA World, we know you did, but the voters were talking to, did you really vote for the, did you really vote for to have the president of the United States publicly draw the link from autism to vaccines and put Bobby Kennedy in charge of it at HHS?

Speaker 32 Really? You have children. You voted for measles.
Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, instead of saying, well, we have a different vision for jobs for the future, you know, is just,

Speaker 32 it doesn't move anything.

Speaker 32 It does in 1998. It does in, you know, 2007.

Speaker 32 It does not do it now. So I like to be constructive in these cases.
I hear you. It's easy to nipic.
What do you want? What do you want from them, the Democratic-elected leaders?

Speaker 32 You know, I am always loath to give, I'm not a Democrat, so I can't advise the Democratic Party, but no more TikToks and, you know, kind of seriousness about

Speaker 32 both the policy issues. Because part of the problem is that every time you challenge Trump on a policy issue, you realize that Trump doesn't care about policy.

Speaker 32 So you end up sounding like a wonk and he ends up sounding entertaining.

Speaker 32 One of the things that I've got on my to-do list is to talk at some point about Trump's missile defense plans, you know, which sound great, right?

Speaker 32 But they're not, if you want to talk about cutting government spending, we're not going to create a golden dome over America.

Speaker 32 It's not, we're not going to, it'll be billions and billions of dollars to defense contractors. It's not going to go anywhere.

Speaker 32 I worked for a defense contractor that worked on the original Star Wars plan. I know something of those days.

Speaker 32 But I guess it's always a tough thing to tell Democrats that they should have more unified messaging because they're Democrats.

Speaker 32 And I don't know what the legislative response is, but to act like an Article I power and to say, no, we're not going to allow, you know, we're going to put in bills, even if they die every time that they have to keep putting them out there and getting on talking to the american people about the scary stuff and i think they're loath to do that because trump has been so effective at providing his surrogates with sneering, dismissive talking points.

Speaker 32 If you say, listen, did you really vote to let Donald Trump leave the Ukrainian people defenseless? And then what they hear on Fox or wherever is Russia, Russia, Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia.

Speaker 32 Oh, it's Russia, Russia, Russia. You know, did you really vote for tariffs? And, you know, then it's, again, this kind of Jedi mind trick of, well, it's not really tariffs.
It's equal. It's fairness.

Speaker 32 And I think Democrats have just kind of thrown up their arms. Now,

Speaker 32 I'll say one last thing about this and get off. That soapbox Tim.
There is a good argument and I've made it myself. Let him drive the car off the cliff.
Let him fuck everything up.

Speaker 32 You know, just bring the pain. Let people experience what tariffs really do.
I wrote this in his first term.

Speaker 32 I I said, if people really want to trade more and they want to touch that hot stove, then let's get on with it and get it over with.

Speaker 32 The Elizabeth Slonkin strategy could work if you're just basing it on him fucking everything up. And that's not a terrible bet.
In the meantime, I just want more righteous anger.

Speaker 32 That's just what I keep saying. I just want more righteous anger, like righteous anger, not silliness, not goofiness, but righteous anger.

Speaker 32 Cold and clear and sharp as a knife instead of, you know, kooky TikToks and ping-pong paddles. That's, I guess, that's the most you can hope for.

Speaker 32 I'm going to leave people with some shot and Freud they'll enjoy. Elon had a pretty bad day yesterday.
I just want to go tick through it. The Tesla stock is down 5.6% on Thursday, 29% for the month.

Speaker 32 He was demoted.

Speaker 32 Had to have a meeting where he was like, you don't get to fire people anymore, actually. The cabinet secretaries do.
We'll see if that holds. Yeah, we'll see if that holds.

Speaker 32 Not really a great sign, though.

Speaker 32 I guess it was the first sign that, like,

Speaker 32 maybe that there will be a leash put on here at some point they had a second failure in a row for space'starship there was a spectacular shower of debris on the test flight and this was kind of a double whammy for him because i think he's also trying to to redo the faa and the faa had to halt flights to several florida airports to avoid uh the debris he's being tweeted at by multiple baby mamas and as i mentioned to james carville on tuesday i was at a parade on monday where all the cyber trucks were getting pelted with beads so you know i don't know and he had a French senator call him a buffoon on ketamine, which was also kind of a put a little cherise on the top.

Speaker 32 That was the righteous anger I've been looking for. I watched that speech.

Speaker 32 That speech was awesome. So, you know, I mean, obviously, he's still the richest guy in the world, like, whatever.

Speaker 32 But there's certainly some signs that maybe he's bit off a little more than he can chew. And being the richest guy in the world is not what's important to him anymore.
I mean, that's the thing.

Speaker 32 You know, it's like Tesla could crash. SpaceX could and did blow up again.
It doesn't matter to him. He is fine.
I think you see this to go back to him and Sachs and Teal and the others.

Speaker 32 It's like, look, we're not the rich nerds anymore. We're important.
We matter.

Speaker 32 We have power. I was watching an interview with Warren Buffett the other day, which was so reassuringly normal, you know, but unlike somebody like Buffett.

Speaker 32 You know, for them, the money was never enough. It's about affirmation and self-actualization.
And

Speaker 32 I don't think it matters to Musk anymore. I mean, I don't know the man, but I don't think it matters to him very much anymore if Tesla tanks or, you know, SpaceX doesn't work.

Speaker 32 Eventually, it's going to matter to his shareholders, and eventually he's going to have to get called back to the office.

Speaker 32 I guess he could, and he could say, fine, you know, I quit. I'm still the.

Speaker 32 I mean, all of this could go away, and it's still like Jeff Bezos, you know, everything could go wrong at the Washington Post. That's a rounding error in his pocket at this point.

Speaker 32 You know, all of these guys are fantastically wealthy. I'm telling telling you, they've, to quote our friend Bill Kristol, you know, this level of wealth is starting to bring out my inner socialist,

Speaker 32 you know. I think he says democratic socialist, to be fair to Bill Kristol, but he might be able to do that.
I don't know. I think he said,

Speaker 32 we're going to have to go check the quote. But I mean, you know,

Speaker 32 but this is an object lesson in what happens when you are so fantastically wealthy beyond, you know, any comprehension in a normal capitalist economy that you become ungovernable.

Speaker 32 You say, I don't, you know, do whatever you want. I don't care.
I'll go buy an island. I'll go, I'll be Mark Zuckerberg.
I'll build a bunker somewhere.

Speaker 32 I don't know how you reason with folks like that other than to, again, take legal and legislative steps to basically curtail their power and say, no, the government is not your actual.

Speaker 32 I've been thinking about this. I'm going to totally jump tracks.
I'm thinking about this because I've been watching a show called Paradise. Have you been watching it? No.

Speaker 32 All right, I won't ruin it for you.

Speaker 32 It's what happens when multi-gazillionaires go completely nuts. And it's a fantastic series.
So if anybody out there hasn't watched it yet, the first season is now over.

Speaker 32 Can you just leave us with any hope? Can gazillionaires eventually suffer the consequences of their actions? Is there any hope in the show? It depends on what you mean by suffer. Financially, no.

Speaker 32 I think what Musk and the others really fear more than anything is ridicule. Yeah.
You know, like that's the, like, that's why they're in this game. This is the ridicule, though.

Speaker 32 I mean, if the spaceship's breaking up and that your car company is imploding and you have to report to Little Marco now before you can fire people, you know, eventually the ridicules can pile up.

Speaker 32 This is my hope. Don't take this from me.

Speaker 32 Dude, I'm not taking it away from you.

Speaker 32 And I actually think that there is a, I think that there are several people in this administration who are headed for some kind of major emotional break sooner rather than later, because I think they're all in over their heads and working at an unsustainable pace beyond their already fairly limited talents.

Speaker 32 How's that? We can only pray.

Speaker 32 That was a great way to end. Thank you, Tom Nichols.
Everybody, enjoy your weekend. We'll be back here.
Actually, Bill Crystal, I forget what he's doing on Monday. He's doing something else.

Speaker 32 I have a new guest for the Monday show, but me and Bill are going to be hanging out on Substack Sunday afternoon.

Speaker 32 So if you can't wait till Monday for me, you can come on over to the Bulwark Substack on Sunday afternoon, get a little bit of Tim and Bill. And Tom, you'll be back in six weeks.

Speaker 32 Who knows what horrors will await us then? I will see you in some fresh hell next month. Sounds good.
Tom Nichols, thanks so much. Everybody else, we'll see you soon.
Peace.

Speaker 32 It shouldn't have to end this way

Speaker 32 It's 8:15

Speaker 32 And that's the time that it's always been

Speaker 32 We got your message on the radio.

Speaker 32 Conditions normal, and you're coming home.

Speaker 32 You know, Lake

Speaker 32 is mother proud of little boy today.

Speaker 32 Oh, this kiss you give,

Speaker 32 it's never gonna

Speaker 32 fade away.

Speaker 32 The Bullwork podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 32 This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culture East.

Speaker 33 This is with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. Get ready for your next TV obsession, All's Fair.

Speaker 33 Starring Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts, Nisi Nash Betts, Tayana Taylor, with Sarah Paulson, and Glenn Close, a team of fierce female divorce attorneys leave a male-dominated firm to start their own.

Speaker 33 Filled with scandalous secrets and shifting allegiances, both in the courtroom and within their own ranks, these ladies know that lawyers are a girl's best friend.

Speaker 33 Don't miss All's Fair now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

Speaker 44 What if your drive was fueled with more?

Speaker 44 Shell V Power Nitro Plus Premium Gasoline gives you more protection, more power, and more performance with every drive across the Bay Area.

Speaker 44 Shell v Power Nitro Plus 93 delivers improved performance and responsiveness. Shell V Power Nitro Plus Premium Gasoline gets more performance with every drive.

Speaker 31 Compared to lower octane fuels in gasoline-directed injection engine fuel injectors, actual effects and benefits may vary according to vehicle type, driving conditions, and driving style.

Speaker 45 What does Zinn really give you? Not just smoke-free nicotine satisfaction, but also real freedom to do more of what you love, when and where you want to do it. Why bring Zinn along for the ride?

Speaker 45 Because America's number one nicotine pouch opens up all the possibilities of right now.

Speaker 32 With Zinn, you don't just find freedom, you keep finding it. Find your Zinn.

Speaker 45 Learn more at Zinn.com.

Speaker 45 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.