Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V. Last: The Lonely Boy Club

Speaker 1 This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culturalists with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. Get ready for your next TV obsession, All's Fair.

Speaker 1 Starring Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts, Nisi Nash-Betts, Tayana Taylor, with Sarah Poulson, and Glenn Close. A team of fierce female divorce attorneys leave a male-dominated firm to start their own.

Speaker 1 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 1 Don't miss All's Fair, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers.

Speaker 2 Terms apply.

Speaker 3 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 3 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 3 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal. Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 3 Why is Adam after the Tanner family? What lengths will he go to? One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried. So keep your enemies close.

Speaker 3 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 2 All right, hey, everybody. I wanted to give you a quick scheduling update about what to expect from this podcast.
Today, we had one of our favorites not get their calendar right.

Speaker 2 And so we had to have a change of schedule. So we had to do something special today.

Speaker 2 Uh, usually, Sarah Longwell and JVL, uh, my faves, my colleagues, have a secret podcast for Bulwark Plus subscribers only on Fridays.

Speaker 2 We're going to do a double dip of that, where I have Sarah and JVL on this podcast, and we talk about the news of the day.

Speaker 2 And then we're going to go over to the secret podcast, and all three of us are going to talk about our feelings and JVL's newsletter from yesterday about fear and being afraid.

Speaker 2 Something we've been texting about, sorting to bring it to podcast land. If you're not a Bulwark Plus subscriber yet, you can get that by going to thebulwark.com slash subscribe.

Speaker 2 We'd love to have you. You know, that's how we're paying the bills and bringing on all these new great people to the team.
So I appreciate everybody who's been supporting us through Bulwark Plus.

Speaker 2 Rest of the schedule, we will have a podcast next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. There will not be a Thanksgiving podcast.
There will almost certainly not be a Friday podcast.

Speaker 2 But if Trump, you know, picks macho man Randy Savage to be in his cabinet or something, and

Speaker 2 I absolutely need to come here and give you 20 minutes of thoughts. Then I'll do that next Friday.
So that's our schedule.

Speaker 2 Other stuff on guests, polarizing Sam Harris yesterday, which I knew would happen, but I find him interesting. And I want to continue to have interesting people that I disagree with on various things.

Speaker 2 Even though me and Sam agreed on a lot of stuff,

Speaker 2 he was a little overboard on some of the trans stuff for me. But besides that, we have a lot of agreement.

Speaker 2 I have some people in the hopper that I totally disagree with that are very Bernie-ish about what they think the party should do going forward.

Speaker 2 And I'm going to try to have a wide range of guests, obviously keeping our core Never Trumpers in the rotation too. So look out for that.

Speaker 2 If you have recommendations, suggestions for guests, send them to me.

Speaker 2 Speaking of sending things to me, the Substack messaging platform is like, I mean, so many people are messaging there that like my Substack messenger is crashing.

Speaker 2 So You can always email me, timothbulwark.com. If I haven't gotten back to you, if you're a Bullwork Plus subscriber and you're messaging me on Substack, I'm sorry.
I'll try to get to it.

Speaker 2 Hopefully, it'll chill out at some point. But FYI, Tim at the Bullwork.com, is my email.
Shorter emails are more likely to get responses because I'm just doing my best out there, people.

Speaker 2 Lastly, it's Friday. We put up the playlist.
People ask, we put the playlist for the outro songs in the show notes.

Speaker 2 I'm slowly moving away from trying to make you cry, but I'll bring some crying songs back probably between now and January 20th. So that's it.
That's what we got on tap.

Speaker 2 Up next, Sarah Longwell and Jonathan V Last.

Speaker 2 Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. The gang is all here.
It's my BFFs, the editor of the Bulwark, JVL. What is a JVL?

Speaker 2 And the publisher of the Bulwark, Sarah Longwell, fresh off a holiday across the pond.

Speaker 2 Sarah, I saw a report today that Ellen DeGeneres and Porsche have moved to rural England and they are, quote, never coming back.

Speaker 4 And I'm just wondering, why didn't you stay and start a lesbian conference that is where I was with them no I was there I was visiting Portia and Ellen they are our leaders and so we pilgrimage there in moments of crisis

Speaker 4 and so are they in Coventry governance it was great to see them you know Ellen looks amazing she must be using one skin one of our sponsors

Speaker 4 she just looks outstanding so anyway marrying Portia DeRossi for Ellen, that was just, it was huge. It was huge for all of us, I gotta say.
No, that's not what I was doing.

Speaker 4 I was giving a series series of speeches that i had agreed to prior to the election results in um in italy do you have to rewrite those london

Speaker 4 nope i'm the same no matter what happens no matter where i go it did force me to clarify uh my feelings about the election why it happened it was a lot of i'll tell you what looking the europeans in the eye right now though is tough because there is just it's look they're looking at you like but how could you guys do this

Speaker 4 how could this happen so that part was hard the being in italy and london part was not hard that was That was nice. I never make jokes about leaving America because I don't like those jokes.

Speaker 4 I think you stay,

Speaker 2 I do love America.

Speaker 4 I also think you stay and fight. That's just, that's, that's who we are.
So I'm not actually that happy about Ellen and Portia leaving. They need it.
That's not a good example to set.

Speaker 4 You guys need to come home, stand up here.

Speaker 2 Come home to Montecito. That's you know, put down their flag in the

Speaker 2 capital of the resistance.

Speaker 4 I just think that we're, Ellen and Portia were going to be okay. And, you know, we will get to this later, but I have have words for everybody who are consumed with fear at the moment.

Speaker 4 We're going to buck people up.

Speaker 2 Okay. We're going to get to fear in the bonus part.
Now is not the time for fear, Doctor. That comes later.
This is a.

Speaker 2 This is a Bane joke, Sarah.

Speaker 4 I didn't get it.

Speaker 2 Sarah, I want, though, from you, because you haven't been here, like, as we've just been grinding out YouTube hot takes about every former wrestler and former and like C-list Fox News guest host that's going to be joining our meritocratic cabinet.

Speaker 2 And so I'm just kind of wondering your biggest picture thoughts. Has anything evolved since I last saw you and you're thinking about the election or what's to come?

Speaker 2 Any open, open end for you to just give us your tight five?

Speaker 4 Look, I'm glad that Gates went down.

Speaker 4 I know we're going to talk about him later, but one of the things that has been remarkable to me about this cabinet is how many people accused of sexual assault, incredibly accused of sexual assault make it up.

Speaker 4 I'm sure you guys have covered this, but I do just want to say that one of the things that eats at me, because I came up in my career abutting many social conservatives who lectured us a great deal about sexual morality, about why gay people shouldn't be allowed to get married.

Speaker 4 And it was for them, sort of sexual morality was very much linked to character. And

Speaker 4 that was a function of the time in which I became politically conscious, which was sort of in the wake of Bill Clinton and the sex scandals that he had.

Speaker 4 And that was what conservatives were sort of marshaling against, right? Was this

Speaker 4 idea that not only was Bill Clinton accused of sexual assault and certainly was using his power. Actually, I don't understand why Dems haven't canceled Bill Clinton harder, by the way.

Speaker 4 This is like a real problem for me that annoys the shit out of me. Excuse me.

Speaker 4 I started swearing in Europe.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry. I just swear in Europe.

Speaker 2 No, you're on the Daily Bullwork podcast. So it's swearing that's happening.

Speaker 2 It's my influence.

Speaker 4 I usually try not to. Anyway, it is, it wasn't just Gates, which was flat out trafficking, right? It is also Linda McMahon.

Speaker 4 It's like the women, like you actually have the women who are sexual assaulters. Okay, and then there's, there's Heg Seth and an RFK.
I mean, and these are serial.

Speaker 4 But here's the thing about the social conservatives that is wild to me.

Speaker 4 It is like they went from seeing sexual morality as a mark of character to like, sexual assault is cool, y'all, and we're fine with it. And to me, that's like in two decades.

Speaker 4 And to me, that is a wild swing. And that doesn't even bring in Donald Trump, obviously an adjudicated rapist.
And then you just have like the regular old.

Speaker 4 And look, I'm not, I don't even care about this stuff, but like you've got your, your Christy Noam with the dog shooting and the Corey Lewandowski of it all.

Speaker 4 So like this is a messy reality TV show with an enormous amount of power. And it is like very much the clown with the flamethrower.
That's just been what this is.

Speaker 4 So it was interesting to watch it from abroad take shape, like to watch these nominations get rolled out and have people, you know, from other countries be like, I'm sorry, she, she's a wrestler.

Speaker 4 Like what?

Speaker 4 Like, we don't understand. Oh, Dr.
Oz.

Speaker 4 This is the other thing. In conservative world, the one I grew up in, in fact, the one that I dedicate, the one where I worked for so long, I can't, it was oriented around anti-nanny statism, right?

Speaker 4 It had this real libertarian streak through it, the anti-nanny statism, you know, don't tell us how to live our lives, what food we can eat. I mean, they called them freedom fries for the love of God.

Speaker 4 And so, like, the weirdness.

Speaker 2 No beef tallow in the freedom fries. Let me tell you that much.

Speaker 2 Just good American seed oil. That's right.

Speaker 4 So I'm excited to talk to you guys a little bit more. I'd like to grapple with the thing that I am not sure of, which is.

Speaker 4 How much better is it if you knock some of these guys out versus, to JVL's point, sort of letting them get the full experience?

Speaker 2 Yeah, let's talk about about that with Case. I want to just revise and extend your point on the sexual morality thing, just even one step a little further.

Speaker 2 Because it's not even just about their personal life.

Speaker 2 We saw this week at HHS, they're putting through RFK Jr., who's pro-choice and who wants to do all the nanny state stuff you're just talking about.

Speaker 2 And they're blocking one of the Project 2025 guys that was going to be a deputy at HHS that wrote the Project 2025 section on, I don't know, like preventing people from mailing birth control or something through HHS.

Speaker 2 They're blocking him because they think he's too extreme. They're worried that there will be like blowback to have like the Project 2025 pro-life guy in HHS.

Speaker 2 And so it's also on the policy point that the supposed social conservatives have completely folded. It's not even just on the personal morality.

Speaker 4 But here's the thing is that actually I don't care very much.

Speaker 2 So no, no, me neither. It's just a point.
It's just a point.

Speaker 4 I literally don't care about that. What's interesting is how much social conservatives cared about it for so long.

Speaker 4 I do care a great deal, though, about normalizing, negating, deciding that people in power, that it is fine that they have committed sexual assault against people.

Speaker 4 Like Pete Hegseth, the idea that he is going to be in charge of the military that only brought women in, you know, within our lifetimes and is still kind of working out culturally what that means.

Speaker 4 Not only does he not think women should be in combat, he thinks it's okay to assault them.

Speaker 4 I don't care about

Speaker 4 none of that. I care about the fact that he commits violence against women and that he's a- He also had three marriages and a love child before he turned 40.

Speaker 2 Okay. But, you know, to me, I don't know a lot of people on their third marriage at 39.
You know, I mean, it doesn't show a lot of stability in one's personal life.

Speaker 2 I can think of one right off the top of my head.

Speaker 4 Trump?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 Tim knows exactly what I'm talking about. I know.
I want to ask you something, Sarah, though.

Speaker 2 Are Republican voters fine with it, the sexual assault stuff,

Speaker 2 or are they into it?

Speaker 2 No, I understand that like the answer is that the Republican coalition is big and there are there are going to be, you know, there's a segment of the Republican coalition, which looks at it and just has to put its, you know, close its eyes and put its fingers in its ears and pretend it's not there.

Speaker 2 Fake news. Fake news didn't happen.
Then there's another segment which is like, yeah, I know it's not great, but, you know, ultimately it's the policies that matter.

Speaker 2 But isn't there a segment which is quite large, at least a third of it,

Speaker 2 which is into it?

Speaker 4 So this is a little bit tough to parse because you have to like really get inside somebody else's motivations. But I will say that

Speaker 4 I've talked a lot about the unholy alliance with the new sort of red-pilled Republican Party that comes from kind of the barstool sports, but also Elon, Manosphere, podcasting world.

Speaker 4 And I think that misogyny is a pretty regular feature of that world.

Speaker 2 This is what I was trying to get at.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And so like, I don't think people in that world would be like, I am into sexual assault.
But I do think they certainly wouldn't admit that out loud. But I do think that they have a real like,

Speaker 2 well, a guy who puts women in their place.

Speaker 4 You're a famous guy and like you should be able to go like reap the benefits of that fame. And, you know, these are all lying B words.
And like, I see what these women do.

Speaker 4 And yeah, I think there's a real strain of that that is deeply gross.

Speaker 4 And I guess this is why I get hung up on the social conservatives, just because it was such a, such a significant part of my sort of 20s and 30s listening to these guys lecture us on things.

Speaker 2 And you don't like being lectured.

Speaker 4 I don't like being lectured.

Speaker 2 You don't. I don't either.
We don't. I should have said we.
We don't like being lectured. So if you're going to fucking lecture us, you better have the the moral high.

Speaker 2 You better actually have the high ground. Okay.
You better at least be lecturing us from a place of honesty.

Speaker 4 Well, it just, it just the JBL sort of always talked about this.

Speaker 4 And I think that there's just a real strain of, you know, where I would have defended people against sexism or racism, like sort of the whole party.

Speaker 4 I would have been like, of course, some of that's there, but I wouldn't say it's like animating in a way that I think

Speaker 4 the obsession with strength and manliness that has sort of coursed through the right-wing right-wing dialogue is steeped.

Speaker 2 It's not 2%.

Speaker 4 Yeah, is steeped in a kind of hatred for women.

Speaker 2 Real hatred of women. Yeah.
And again, I'm not saying it's all Republicans, but it ain't 2% either. No.

Speaker 4 And part of it is like, we as a country are having to pay for sort of the lonely boy pathologies of a bunch of broken oligarchs who got stuffed in lockers when they were kids and who now can father nine children across the board with a bunch of women, which is now I'm talking about Elon.

Speaker 4 I I don't know if that's who you were talking about before.

Speaker 2 No, we were talking about Ben Dominich and P. Teg stuff, but continue.

Speaker 4 Okay, I don't know.

Speaker 2 But Tim, good call.

Speaker 2 Pick up. You were picking up what I was putting down.
I know.

Speaker 2 Do you know the reason why?

Speaker 2 As I was preparing this rant, I was like, do I know anybody that is actually on marriage three that cheated on the wife and had a love child by 39?

Speaker 2 And I was like, it took, and I, and I also had prepped that one example. Continue.
Not a love child. No love child for Ben.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Just.
I just, I do think about what it says to women. I'm sad for girls who are watching gates and like the idea that you are somebody who has committed assault against women.

Speaker 4 And like Trump has been credibly accused and adjudicated

Speaker 4 tons of times, talked about walking into the Miss USA room, like talked about grabbing women by their generals.

Speaker 4 And America said, yep, we're going to elevate all of these people into positions of power and they are going to be over you.

Speaker 2 Including a majority of white women.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so like imagine Pete Hexeth is your boss. What do you know? You know he holds women in contempt.

Speaker 4 It just really is gross and I can't get over the dads, like the dads of girls who are just like, and the thing is, sorry, and then I'll stop ranting.

Speaker 4 I have a lot of pent up feelings about a lot of things.

Speaker 2 You're coming back across the pond and you're hot.

Speaker 4 Which is, then they dare to try to. butch up their defense of women with the, well, I have daughters and I don't want her playing against trans people in sports.

Speaker 2 Now, because that's a thing that's happening everywhere.

Speaker 4 We can have a real conversation, and I will, I will have a complicated view.

Speaker 4 It's a complicated issue, but watching all of these guys who I know have done nothing but make fun of women's sports, suddenly be like, oh, I really care, and who are willing to elevate these, these sexual assaulters, try to then take some kind of moral stand around women's sports, like is so gross to me.

Speaker 4 It's also gross. That's how I feel.

Speaker 2 I feel like I want to take a shower all the time because it's also gross watching this happen i feel like i don't want to shower hold on can i take over my show can i make one one can i take over

Speaker 2 just so somebody like pete hegsef could not be hired to be the ceo

Speaker 2 of a

Speaker 2 large private sector corporation because he's an immediate legal liability Sure. Right.
But like you, you simply

Speaker 2 put somebody in charge because you'd be like, I'm so like this. We do this.
We are opening ourselves up to an entire universe of legal action because this guy is an HR nightmare. And

Speaker 2 we are automatically creating a hostile work environment for like every woman who direct reports to him. We can't do that, but we can sure make him Secretary of Defense.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Three million people will be in charge of it. That's what I was thinking when, Sarah, was like, imagine that Pete Hex is going to be your boss.

Speaker 2 He's going to be 3 million people's boss if he gets this job. And a lot of them are women.
Yeah, a lot of them are women.

Speaker 2 This guy from Breaking Point, Sager, I talked to Bill about this on Monday, unironically sent out a tweet this week that was like, this is the Me Too Backlash Cabinet.

Speaker 2 I don't have the exact tweet in front of me, but like, you know, it's like, okay,

Speaker 2 is that a brag? Is that like a good? Is that like a good?

Speaker 2 He meant that in a good way.

Speaker 4 Oh, he did mean it in a good way.

Speaker 2 It's like it's a real observation.

Speaker 2 He's mad, so I think he meant it in a good way. I can't get inside his head.
So anyway, that's where things are. I'm going to teach you little ladies a lesson about opening your mouth.

Speaker 2 Good thing this is a double dose podcast today because we're 17 minutes in and I haven't even made it to the number one item on the agenda. All right.
Matt Gates.

Speaker 2 Matt Gates. I don't know if you saw that with Drew yesterday.
His nomination for the Attorney General. And so I want to get into what that means.

Speaker 2 And I guess my opening question about this is to Sarah. Are you ready to be Lucy with the football again on these GOP senators? Are you getting that hope again that that spine is growing?

Speaker 2 Tom Tillis and John Curtis and Mitch McConnell and John Thune are going to be standing up to Trump? Or is this just a one-off?

Speaker 4 I don't know. That's why I asked, and JBL should get to talk now.
He hasn't gotten to talk very much. This is what I wanted to grapple with, though, is is killing the Gates nomination,

Speaker 4 does it give them more of a backbone?

Speaker 4 And I don't know if the Pam Bondi as the next in line, if these Republicans go, well, that's a big improvement.

Speaker 4 Although I will say, considering where they started with Gates, Pam Bondi is an improvement, like an objective improvement.

Speaker 4 And this is where they're all saying, well, this is why, this is how Trump plays 14-dimension chess, right?

Speaker 4 He's just over there eating the pieces, but everybody is there to make sure you guys know that this is all to plan, which is he's going to get people through by giving them a sacrificial lamb like Gates, who is going to go down anyway.

Speaker 4 And by doing that, they sort of got him out of Congress before that report comes out and just tortures him forever. That's how they think he's playing 14-dimensional chess.

Speaker 4 I think that Trump really wanted him and that he's been delivered a defeat, and we should treat it as such. So I think it is good that the Republicans have stood up to him.

Speaker 4 And I think that we should tell them: all right, we're exercising some of our advising consent power. Keep it up, guys.
And look, they don't have as big a majority as you would think.

Speaker 4 And if you lose two with each of these, with Murkowski and Collins, like, can you pick up two more? You don't think there's another two or three people who might say no to RFK?

Speaker 2 Yeah, this is a shit question, JBL, because I appreciate that report for Lucy. And I have been thinking about it myself.
And you got to admit,

Speaker 2 you got to update your priors when you miss something. I thought Gates was going to get through.
I did.

Speaker 2 And so a piece of information has been delivered to me that is making me rethink what did I have wrong? And the answer could be simply that Gates is so noxious personally.

Speaker 2 And that they were able to do this privately. So they didn't actually have to show backbone.
They just got to show private backbone. Like when they talked to Bob Costa,

Speaker 2 Bob Costa's like, GOP senators are whispering that they're unhappy about this. They kind of got to do that,

Speaker 2 get rid of Gates while still just being on background. So maybe it's just that.

Speaker 2 Or maybe

Speaker 2 they are looking at this differently and seeing Trump as a lame duck. And to Sarah's point, if maybe Mitch McConnell is like Yosemite Mitch right now and he's like, F you guys.

Speaker 2 And if you get Collins and Murkowski and McConnell, you can stop basically anything. You just need one other person.
It could be a different one person every time.

Speaker 2 Maybe there might be more constraints than I expected. Which side of that do you fall down on? Like you, I thought it was likely that Gates would be confirmed.

Speaker 2 And this has me questioning that as well. I don't think we know what the answer is yet

Speaker 2 because it could be one of three things.

Speaker 2 It could be that the Gates thing is just personal animus,

Speaker 2 that they just hated Matt Gates so much. Yeah.
And that

Speaker 2 also they viewed Matt Gates as bad for the Republican Party,

Speaker 2 which is a thing that they do care about. They don't care about the country so much, but they do care about the Republican Party.
It could be that,

Speaker 2 isn't it, that they had real objections and that they were willing to stand up to Trump because they could do it without voting on it.

Speaker 2 As you say, this, you know, because they're working in the shadows, they were able to kill the nomination without anybody having to actually put their asses on the line. Right.

Speaker 2 Or it could be that

Speaker 2 maybe

Speaker 2 they really are taking this stuff seriously and they're going to be willing to draw the line on

Speaker 2 nominations which are really, really bad, of which the other three are Tulsi, RFK, and Hegseth. all of which are very, very bad.
Matt Whitaker for NATO ambassador doesn't qualify.

Speaker 2 I mean, the big dick toilet man man for NATO ambassador. If you want to

Speaker 2 say three and a half, I guess. I mean, it does that.
I don't know.

Speaker 4 Linda McMahon is totally unqualified to be the director of education.

Speaker 2 Dr. Oz.

Speaker 2 No. Compared to, I mean, those are, they are in an entirely separate category.
Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 There are three others that are really bad and in positions of like grave importance to the system. But the question of should, you know, is it good that Gates

Speaker 2 went down? I think the answer is unambiguously yes. That doesn't mean that his replacement will be much better, but

Speaker 2 would Pam Biondi be 1% better? Yes, I think so. I want to get into Bondi, but I guess that does go to your question, to Sarah's question, though, is

Speaker 2 do you want it to be better or do you want it to be worse?

Speaker 2 What I want is I want it to be better at the power ministries.

Speaker 2 And so this is why I,

Speaker 2 Sam doesn't like this, but I have no problems with RFK.

Speaker 2 I think RFK should get, just sail on through. I think he should do all the crazy shit he thinks.
And people should discover when they take their children to their five-year-old.

Speaker 2 It looks like Sarah's on Sam's side of that for people who are just on audio only. For their five-year-old checkups, and the doctors aren't even allowed to offer the MMR vaccine.

Speaker 2 Parents should be like, wait a minute,

Speaker 2 isn't it time to do the polio vaccine? The doctors should say, sorry, we don't do that anymore. And parents can go, what the fuck? I think that's what America needs.

Speaker 4 Okay, but do you think America needs an outbreak of polio? Like, does it need a return? Okay.

Speaker 4 So, and this is, can I just say, you know, you know who's, you know, whose, whose life was saved by the polio vaccine?

Speaker 2 Mitch McConnell.

Speaker 4 Mitch McConnell.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I bet there's one more.

Speaker 2 That's not actually true. He was like one of the last people to come through before the vaccine, but his life was impacted by polio.
Okay. But at the level of DOD and justice,

Speaker 2 those are two posts where these guys could have made the continuation of democracy itself

Speaker 2 very contingent.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 we should attempt to deny Trump that power. You're just looking at the tail outcomes, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 You're basically saying, right, like, look, if the thing that we absolutely need to do is make sure the Republic survives, what you don't want is people in DOJ and DOD that might go along with a Trump coup in 2028 if he tried to do it.

Speaker 2 So like even if you only think that's a 5% chance or a 2% chance, like you still want to anything that moves that number down from four to three to whatever, or whatever your number is is better.

Speaker 2 And DOJ and DOD are the main swats where that could happen. It's basically what you're saying.
Yes.

Speaker 4 JBL raises an interesting point here, though, because so Pam Bondi, I don't think is 1% better. I think she's significantly better on a scale still of terrible.
But what's interesting about JBL.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry. I just meant, is she 1% or greater? No, no, no, I didn't.
I didn't mean she's only one.

Speaker 4 Okay. I know, I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 That's not really my point. My point is, I actually don't trust Pam Bondi for one second to defend against a Trump coup.
I don't.

Speaker 2 However,

Speaker 4 the idea of Matt Gates, who was clearly going to get indicted or have a report showing that he was sex trafficking women, he was paying young women who were underage, taking them across state lines for like sex parties.

Speaker 4 That he was going to be in charge of prosecuting sex crimes.

Speaker 4 Like, this is where I sort of feel like people might not be paying enough attention to the idea of having these people who assault women, who are horrible to women, who have treated them allegedly.

Speaker 2 I'm just trying to, you know, the Pam Bondi's coming. She's the Pam Bondi might be 1% better than that case, but she's not 1% less likely to

Speaker 2 indict you. So

Speaker 2 just FYI.

Speaker 4 Not 1% less likely to indict me personally.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't, yeah. Like, you know, to target.

Speaker 4 Yeah, no, she'll come after us too.

Speaker 4 This is why I'm saying, like, what's crazy about the scale of badness that JVL is laying out is that I would take

Speaker 4 her over Matt Gates in part because like, like, whoever's the part at

Speaker 4 AG is going to have to prosecute the P. Diddy

Speaker 4 sex trafficking horribleness. Right.
Matt Gates is going to let him off. Can you imagine if Matt Gaetz had been prosecuting this? Like, anyway.

Speaker 2 I don't know. Diddy's black.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 You're making great points.

Speaker 2 I just think maybe he could let him off, but I just thought, who knows? I don't know.

Speaker 4 I just really wish people would

Speaker 4 think about the idea of him being our nation's biggest law enforcement person at a time. Like at least she, not only was he unqualified, but everything he did is like flies in the face of the law.

Speaker 4 Whereas at least she was AG of Florida.

Speaker 2 A lot of our listeners might not know a lot about Pam Bondi. If you are not a watcher of Fox, you'll be surprised to learn that Pam Bondi's on Fox a lot.
It's just the key criteria for this cabinet.

Speaker 2 If you're not a watcher of Fox or not, we're not like super engaged in politics between 2014 and 16, or she was more of a main character, you might not know her.

Speaker 2 So, I want to play people a couple throwbacks so you get a sense for how much better the better option is. Let's listen to Pam Bondi at the 2016 Donald Trump Convention.

Speaker 6 And by the way, she deserves no security clearance.

Speaker 2 Tell her she's talking about here.

Speaker 6 How do you become president of the United States when you have no security clearance?

Speaker 2 Such a good question. This lawlessness must stop right here, right now.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 Donald Trump

Speaker 2 will stop it.

Speaker 4 Lock her up. I love that.

Speaker 2 So that's what we're turning to on the politicization of the Justice Department. I've got a couple more clips, but any initial reactions to that? I mean, I don't know.
She sounds great.

Speaker 2 She's in favor of the rule of law.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 So here's Pam Bondi last year,

Speaker 2 15 months ago, in August of 2023, talking about what an incoming Trump administration should do with regards to prosecutions.

Speaker 7 The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones.

Speaker 7 The investigators will be investigated because the deep state last term for President Trump, they were hiding in the shadows, but now they have a spotlight on them and they can all be investigated.

Speaker 2 So the investigators will be investigated. Prosecutors will be prosecuted.

Speaker 2 Lock up Hillary Clinton. I mean, not great.
Sarah, I don't know. Better than Gates, but not great.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it is bad. Here's, can I tell you one thing that has made me

Speaker 4 this is going back to your senator's question and like, could they maybe stand up?

Speaker 4 One of the things that we saw, Caputo was reporting this about how Gates said, I'm not going to do things like investigate Liz Cheney.

Speaker 4 Now, he felt compelled to come out with that statement because he's going into senators' offices who are like, if you do this shit, I'm not going to confirm you.

Speaker 4 Sorry, I swore for the second time.

Speaker 4 That cheered me up slightly because it means that the senators are providing some decent litmus tests for these candidates saying, you do not go prosecute Liz Cheney.

Speaker 4 Like, you're not going to do that. You say, if you're going to do that, we're not confirming you.

Speaker 4 So I do think it looks like they may wrest some assurances out of these people that they will not go full banana republic.

Speaker 4 And they'll probably do it in a way that's gross, like you will not behave like Democrats and prosecute your political enemies.

Speaker 2 I feel like I've heard people tell senators that

Speaker 2 they won't do things like have litmus tests on abortion or that they will respect starry decisis. And that once they get the job, they're not really, these aren't legally bound promises.

Speaker 2 They aren't signing in their own blood on a contract, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I guess Sarah's point simply that the prospect that they're concerned about oversight from the Senate is preferable to an alternative world that we all...

Speaker 2 I think if you quizzed us, everybody on this podcast, I guess I won't speak for anybody else, on the Wednesday after the election, and we're like, is the Senate just going to totally roll over for this guy and let him do whatever he wants?

Speaker 2 I would have thought, yeah, probably, right?

Speaker 2 And so, even if we've had some signals in the ensuing two weeks that there will be some things they won't roll over for, that is an improvement, I guess, is all Sarah's saying, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah. I'm just saying that I don't view

Speaker 2 something a candidate says privately to a senator in their office as anything other than kabuki theater.

Speaker 4 Maybe, but to Tim's point, I thought that they very likely would go do recess appointments. Like, it seemed like it was heading in that direction.

Speaker 4 And now it actually seems like he said he was going to do it.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 4 And now it seems like they are intent on hearings where they get to say some things.

Speaker 4 And I think that you're going to see public hearings, a bunch of Republican senators get assurances publicly that they will not go prosecute political enemies.

Speaker 4 Now, it'll be interesting because there's a lot of Republicans, a majority of Republicans who want them to prosecute political enemies, right?

Speaker 4 Like Tuber, like there's a bunch of unserious clowns in there now. But the upside to having a narrow majority is that with just a handful of Republicans, you can do a lot of damage now.

Speaker 4 And so the question is not, and this is where you do get, go back to Sarah circa 2018, where it's like, can you get five?

Speaker 4 Because if you can get five, which by the way, really good that we still have that filibuster. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I don't even know if it's actually more than half that went political targeting.

Speaker 2 You forget that, like, the Senate, if you go look at a Senate roster, if you have, listeners, you haven't done that in a while.

Speaker 2 Like, there's an insane number of Republican senators who have just disappeared since Donald Trump came along. Like, Mike Crapo was on TV yesterday, and I was like, is he a former senator?

Speaker 2 Is he still in the Senate? Yes, Mike Krapo is still in the Senate. Like, who, like, is Mike Round still in the Senate? I'm surprised he's still in the Senate, right? Like,

Speaker 2 Roger Wicker is apparently still in the Senate. I saw him in an elevator yesterday.
And so there's a lot of these people that will go along with 95% of Trump's stuff.

Speaker 2 But again, when you get to things like worst-case scenario type things,

Speaker 2 open question.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying that they won't. I'm not saying they will, but like more of an open question on worst case scenario.
That's great, though, right? Yeah, no, that's not great.

Speaker 2 What's his name who did the immigration bill? Lankford was there.

Speaker 4 I mean, like, there are.

Speaker 2 I was just talking about the imaginary ones, but yeah, also Lankford.

Speaker 2 Tillis. People mention Tillis in Langford, I guess what I'm saying.
Like,

Speaker 2 there's an additional cadre of people that are not MAGA, that have been there forever, that have gray hair, and have just basically shut up. And they're like, I just, I'm happy to be a senator.

Speaker 2 I like the people from my state come to my office and suck up to me. And I, you know, get to ride in the cop cars from the airport, and they escort me.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Like, that's what they're there to do. And they vote on their, you know, parochial issues.

Speaker 2 Anyway, I have one more Pam Bondi because I want to take us back down a little bit, though, to worst case scenarios, because people might not remember this.

Speaker 2 Let's play Pam Bondi in Pennsylvania somewhere near four seasons total landscaping.

Speaker 8 It is about the integrity of this election and every vote, as Mayor Giuliani said, in every state must be counted fairly. We need to fix this.

Speaker 8 We need to remedy this now because we've won Pennsylvania and we want every vote to be counted in a fair way.

Speaker 2 And just to be clear, that was in 2020, not in 2024. Why don't you talk about how we, being the Trump campaign of won Pennsylvania?

Speaker 2 I don't even know how much needs to be said about this, but it should be disqualifying that the incoming Attorney General was an active member of the attempted coup in 2020.

Speaker 2 But I guess that we don't even, like, that almost doesn't bear mentioning anymore at this point.

Speaker 4 It should be disqualifying that the guy who did the coup can't be president again.

Speaker 2 So I don't know that we need to continue on that anymore. He says so in the Constitution.
This is more of, I feel like we should at least play that for the listeners.

Speaker 2 I don't know how much more can be said about it.

Speaker 3 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 3 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 3 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal. Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 3 Why is Adam after the Tanner family? What lengths will he go to? One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 3 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 5 We know no one's journey is the same. That's why Delta Sky Miles lets you do it your way.

Speaker 5 From earning miles on reloads for coffee runs, shopping, and things you do every day, to connecting you to new places and experiences, a Sky Miles membership fits into your lifestyle, letting you do more of what makes you, you.

Speaker 5 It's more than travel. It's the membership that flies, dines, streams, rides, and arrives with you.
Every great journey deserves a great story.

Speaker 5 And when you have a membership that's as unique as you are, there's no telling how your story will unfold or where that journey will take you next.

Speaker 5 Sky Miles is the membership that will be here for all your big and small moments. The membership that's there for every solo adventure or family trip.

Speaker 5 The membership that comes with the power of partnership from brands you love. The membership that moves with you.
Learn more at delta.com slash skymiles.

Speaker 2 JVL, I want you to explain to Sarah, because she's been gone, and I'm a little bit also unclear on it, the Doge department that our oligarch Elon Musk is in charge of.

Speaker 2 I guess he's maybe in the government. He's not.
He's quasi-in the government. He's weighing in on the Attorney General.
He's also a government contractor. He's also a donor.

Speaker 2 He's also trying to intimidate Republican senators to go along. Like he's wearing a lot of hats, but you wrote a little bit about Doge, and they've kind of put out some early

Speaker 2 outlines of their plans for government efficiency. And I'm for government efficiency.
So I was like, maybe I'll like some of this. But your...

Speaker 2 Your newsletter indicated maybe I'm not going to like it as much as I thought. So why don't you talk about it? So Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, is a joke.
Not a real department.

Speaker 2 Not a real department. Is it a real department?

Speaker 2 No, because it's already

Speaker 2 up and running, right? I mean, they.

Speaker 2 So, here's the thing: it can't be a real department because the government has all sorts of rules about staffing and how positions are posted and how long they have to be posted for, and the number of people you have to interview, yada, yada, yada.

Speaker 2 And Elon isn't doing any of that. He has said that people who want to apply for jobs just have to send a direct message on Twitter.

Speaker 2 Cool. Okay.
Cool. Also,

Speaker 2 you have to pay Elon Musk in order to have the ability to send direct messages on Twitter because only verified accounts can do that.

Speaker 2 I think that that is the sort of pay-to-play thing that various federal hiring regulations would probably preclude.

Speaker 2 But the idea is that, you know, they're going to slash headcount is what he and Vivek are saying.

Speaker 2 The headcount is where they're at. They're really, you know, they're going to get in there with their green eyeshades, and these are guys who know how to make things happen.

Speaker 2 This is nonsense.

Speaker 2 So, payroll for federal employees is roughly $290 billion a year. That represents 5%.

Speaker 2 5%

Speaker 2 of the federal budget. So, if you fired literally every single government worker,

Speaker 2 you would save 5%.

Speaker 2 It's just Trump. It's just Elon as an unpaid volunteer as his viceroy.
It's literally Trump is just wandering around the White House by himself, right? And like, where's the money spent?

Speaker 2 The money is spent on defense, debt service, and entitlements, mostly Social Security and Medicare. And so anybody who is actually

Speaker 2 Medicaid because that's

Speaker 2 going to end up getting it. And Medicaid.
If somebody was actually concerned with government efficiency and figuring out how to streamline the budget and stuff, then you have to start there.

Speaker 2 That's where all of the money is spent.

Speaker 2 And the fact that that is not even something that, you know,

Speaker 2 Elon is

Speaker 2 asking some progressive YouTuber for his ideas on how to cut the Defense Department. And I'm just like, great.
Okay, good luck.

Speaker 2 But it isn't serious.

Speaker 2 It is an elaborate, I mean, A, it's an elaborate joke because Elon Musk is obsessed with a meme coin known as Dogecoin. Just a dog, a picture of a dog.

Speaker 4 It looks like the Paw Patrol logo.

Speaker 2 It's a Paw Patrol dog.

Speaker 4 It looks like a children's cartoon. Yes.

Speaker 2 And this is also the logo for his department. Right.
So the Department of Doge has the same logo as the Dogecoin.

Speaker 2 I just want to just cut that last 15 seconds and like send it in a time capsule to somebody from the past.

Speaker 2 So, Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that Elon Musk has long championed. And at first, it was kind of a joke that he championed it, but then it wasn't.

Speaker 2 And it's like the only currency you can buy Tesla stuff with.

Speaker 2 And he frequently does his thing where he talks about Dogecoin on the Twitters and then watches the value of Dogecoin goes up. And I love capitalism.
Elon is also, we believe, believe,

Speaker 2 a large scale, a whale, as they say in the business, which is to say somebody who holds a large percentage of Dogecoin.

Speaker 2 I mean, we're talking real money. The total market cap of Dogecoin is $55 billion.

Speaker 2 And so if Elon owns like, I don't know, a tenth of Dogecoin, that's $5 billion.

Speaker 2 It's real money. And so the weirdness of having this guy who is using the government as a joking way to help increase that.

Speaker 2 And, you know, when he announced the Department of Doge, the price of Dogecoin went up. Oh, you're kidding.
This is, it's the, it's one of the most corrupt things I've ever seen in my life.

Speaker 2 And he's using this quasi-government appointment to then get people to pay him money to apply for jobs.

Speaker 2 I understand like, whoa, he's worth $300 billion. He doesn't need any more money.
Well, you know what? Fuck you.

Speaker 2 Like, this is, you know, then he shouldn't be trying to use the government to make more money if he has enough. Sorry.

Speaker 4 My only thought on this, because I don't know anything about Doge and I almost fall asleep during cryptocurrency conversations, which is crazy because I liked being a degenerate gambler and things.

Speaker 4 You'd think this would appeal to me, but I can't get myself to care about it. But here's what I hear.

Speaker 4 So as a creature of Twitter for a long time, I watched Elon Musk come into the company and do just this thing.

Speaker 4 right he just like he just went for skulls how many skulls can we kill in the words of what's his name from succession how many skulls do i get right so they get rid of everybody and they're like see look how great it's gonna run without all these people you don't need all these people and then what happens to twitter it is overrun with sex bots and russian trolls and revenue down 90

Speaker 4 yeah like he destroyed it he destroyed it as a public forum through which discourse thrived. He destroyed it as like a usable platform and he turned it into sort of a scammy pay-for-play like thing.

Speaker 2 And as a business. Right.

Speaker 2 Again, the most important thing. He destroyed it as a business.
Yeah. Twitter was a break-even concern and now it is just a sink for money.

Speaker 4 Which is why he needs to make the new money on these other things because he's got to figure out how to pay off all the Twitter losses.

Speaker 4 But anyway, my point is that if he seems to take the same approach to the government as he did to Twitter, I don't know that I think the outcomes, and look, you can get me excited about trimming the government down.

Speaker 2 Government efficiency.

Speaker 4 But the idea that Elon Musk is going to do it in some way that is useful or productive is silly. All of it's silly, right? That's all completely unserious.

Speaker 2 The basic question is like, is fundamentally, is this the wall again?

Speaker 2 Were they like fire a couple people and then say it was the greatest reduction in government staffing in history and it is the best?

Speaker 2 And now we have the most efficient run government in the entire world?

Speaker 2 Or do they actually cause harm? Or is there like actual real

Speaker 2 departments within the government that get totally slashed? And so there are real worlds. Why can't it be both? I guess it could be both.

Speaker 2 I guess it's a sliding scale is what I mean.

Speaker 2 As far as like, do they cut so few people that there's not any real harm? And there's a lot of press releases and a lot of tweets about it? Or do they actually cut things to the point where

Speaker 2 the FAA does not have the data that they need anymore or whatever? You could pick any random government service. We don't know is the answer, and we will find out.

Speaker 2 But my guess is that this will be part of

Speaker 2 the effort to transform the federal government into a personal tool of Donald Trump and that the people they will cut will be at key switches, like, you know, in choke points within the government.

Speaker 2 And the cutting them will really be just an excuse to eliminate a person who is a non-partisan bureaucrat so that they can then move somebody into, you know, like you eliminate the position, but then you recreate another position, which is exactly the same thing, but it's staffed by a political appointee.

Speaker 2 So I think that's probably where we're headed. Like the FAA doesn't get cut, but somebody over at the FDA who

Speaker 2 was going to carry out his function diligently and has a lot of institutional knowledge gets pushed out so you can get a MAGA person in there.

Speaker 3 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 3 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 3 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal. Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 3 Why is Adam after the Tanner family? What lengths will he go to? One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 3 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 5 We know no one's journey is the same. That's why Delta Sky Miles lets you do it your way.

Speaker 5 From earning miles on reloads for coffee runs, shopping, and things you do every day, to connecting you to new places and experiences, a Sky Miles membership fits into your lifestyle, letting you do more of what makes you, you.

Speaker 5 It's more than travel. It's the membership that flies, dines, streams, rides, and arrives with you.
Every great journey deserves a great story.

Speaker 5 And when you have a membership that's as unique as you are, there's no telling how your story will unfold or where that journey will take you next.

Speaker 5 Sky Miles is the membership that will be here for all your big and small moments. The membership that's there for every solo adventure or family trip.

Speaker 5 The membership that comes with the power of partnership from brands you love. The membership that moves with you.
Learn more at delta.com slash skymiles.

Speaker 2 All right. I have one more piece of JVL bait.
And then

Speaker 2 we've done no Democratic reflection on this podcast. So I want to end on that.

Speaker 2 But before we do, while we're having fun with Doge, because this is in some ways, my mind, these stories are connected, just kind of the absurdity of the oligarchs supporting Trump.

Speaker 2 There's a Wall Street Journal story this morning. My father hadn't sent it to me yet.
I'm just waiting.

Speaker 2 And it says, the headline is this, Trump's oil and gas donors don't really want to drill, baby drill. Fossil fuel tycoons helped return the president-elect to Washington.

Speaker 2 Now they're seeking to lock in use of their product for years to come. This is my favorite quote because I know this guy, Brian Sheffield.

Speaker 2 Quote, our stocks will be absolutely crushed if we start growing growing our production the way Trump is talking about, said Brian Sheffield, a Texas oil man who contributed more than a million to Trump's latest campaign.

Speaker 2 It's like the whole bit, the whole liquid gold. Remember the liquid gold that we talked about? The whole thing that like the Biden administration, the libs, and the socialists were preventing us from

Speaker 2 getting our liquid gold right underneath our feet. And we just needed Donald Trump to unleash it.
And all the oil guys are going to give him millions to his campaign so he can help unleash it.

Speaker 2 Now that they've got it and the dog has caught the car, and the oil guys are like, wait a minute, we don't want to, we like the liquid gold where it is, actually.

Speaker 2 That is how we maximize our profits. So, JBL, I just kind of wanted to give you a two-minute hate on that topic.
Yeah, it's

Speaker 2 a great thing because

Speaker 2 what they really wanted from him is they wanted him to do a bunch of regulatory stuff adjacent to energy production in order to lock in fossil fuel usage for

Speaker 2 long term, which is funny in a way because it's going to be locked in long term anyway.

Speaker 2 Oil is incredibly useful. And if it didn't exist, we'd have to invent it.

Speaker 2 But the extent to which these guys are now like shitting themselves over the prospect of the things that Trump is going to do, like tariffs, there's another line in here where he's just like, if he does tariffs, the price of steel is going to to go up.

Speaker 2 And that means we can't build fracking stuff and the stuff we need to build. It's going to drive up all of our costs.
This is really bad. We got to stop him from doing tariffs.
Like, no shit, dude.

Speaker 2 So they're terrified about

Speaker 2 tariffs. They are really, really against raising production.
They don't want to raise production because then prices will fall. And

Speaker 2 I just want you guys not to worry because at the end of the day, Brian Sheffield is is going to be all right, I think.

Speaker 2 One of the quotes further down in the piece says that they were very concerned about their, as they're talking with the incoming Trump administration about tariffs.

Speaker 2 They say, you know, we're really worried that if you have tariffs, it could make the price of gas here in America domestically go up.

Speaker 2 And there's like a blind quote from Trump and some Trump administration staffers like, yeah, no, we really care about that too. Don't worry.

Speaker 2 So I think these guys will ultimately get everything they want and nothing they don't

Speaker 2 because that's the way

Speaker 2 in America with our new oligarch class.

Speaker 2 To me, the thing that I love about it is like the degree to which the Trump support at elite levels, and we're going to get to the working class folks next, but at elite levels.

Speaker 2 Like the Trump support is almost entirely predicated on people not believing he was going to do what he said he was going to do. Yes.
And this is the thing that just bugs me personally.

Speaker 2 I know we're getting into feelings on the secret podcast. We'll just give a little little tease right here.
It's like,

Speaker 2 that's why the devil inside of me wants him to do the things that he said he was going to do. Oh, I want that.

Speaker 2 And there's just this tension inside me that everyone is going to be able to listen to over the next four years. I want RFK and I want tariffs.
Believe me. Yeah, right.
Which is like, I don't,

Speaker 2 it'd be good if they didn't do tariffs, but these fuckers deserve tariffs. They deserve it.
They deserve 15 million deportations. I know.
I know. I know.
It's tough. It's tough.

Speaker 2 It's a tension inside of me. But Sarah, I want to talk about the Democratic side of this coin with you, unless you have any thoughts on the oilman keeping the liquid gold under our feet.

Speaker 4 Only to remind JBL, lest he want to do this later, that crony capitalism is not capitalism and that under Trump, all capitalism will be crony.

Speaker 2 That's the same

Speaker 2 thing I kind of disagree with.

Speaker 4 I know you do. I know you do.

Speaker 2 I wanted to end the main version of the podcast with this topic because I was listening to our friends over at Pound Save

Speaker 2 on Dan Pfeiffer's interview with John Tester, and I was like, this section of this interview is going to warm Sarah's cockles.

Speaker 2 And I know that she was in Europe, she was in Italy, I don't know, listening to whatever lesbian podcasts that you listen to, not politics podcasts. And so she probably didn't hear this.

Speaker 2 And so I'm going to play it for her. Let's listen to John Tester.

Speaker 9 You know, Democrats always pride themselves in being the party of the working man and woman.

Speaker 9 We might be trying to sell that, but they ain't buying it.

Speaker 9 And so I think that

Speaker 9 things like

Speaker 2 giving away money

Speaker 9 to people who really didn't do anything to earn it is not something that people buy. And it's not something that I personally buy either, by the way.
I think you appreciate the money you've earned.

Speaker 9 You don't appreciate money that's given to you. And by the way, instead of giving loan forgiveness for college education, let's figure out how to reduce costs for college education for everybody.

Speaker 9 You know, lower the rates so you get the bank rate on

Speaker 9 all our college loans and make it retroactive for everybody that's got a college loan.

Speaker 9 So you're not just picking out a select few at this moment in time and saying, you know what, you guys are going to get your loans forgiven, and everybody else that pay for their loans or people who are going to come up later and have loans aren't going to get advantage of that.

Speaker 9 I think people see that as patently unfair, and I think it hurts Democrats.

Speaker 2 Got to tell you, Sarah, there's a lot of discussion since you've been gone on what Democrats need to do. And there's a lot of,

Speaker 2 you know, gosh, they got to moderate on cultural issues, or we need economic populism. We need to do the full Bernie.
We need to do socialism.

Speaker 2 I was listening to John Tester, and I was like, Democrats used to sound like that guy. That's what Bill Clinton sounded like.
And it worked.

Speaker 2 And they don't, there aren't any Democrats that sound like that anymore. Maybe that should also be another option to consider.

Speaker 4 You know, like many artists that I like, you know, Zach Bryan, Ani DeFranco. No, no.
No, usually the male ones. I would like to cancel Bill Clinton the man,

Speaker 4 but I would like to recapture his political centrism,

Speaker 4 his way of talking to working-class voters. And here's the thing: so people will be annoyed.
I mean, first of all, I'm going to miss John Tester, miss John Tester in the Senate. Sad that he lost.

Speaker 4 But the thing that Democrats are going to have to get their heads around is that, and I think that this is where something

Speaker 4 too,

Speaker 4 as we sort of have a longer conversation,

Speaker 4 it's too much to get into right now, but about the political realignment where Democrats are now capturing more of these college-educated voters and they're losing these working class voters of all races and ethnicities,

Speaker 4 is that people forget how few college educated voters there are, right? Like you just, you max out on them at some point.

Speaker 4 Like most of them, probably close to 100% of them, voted in this last election.

Speaker 4 Whereas there is an almost endless supply, I think it's like 70, 30, 30% college educated, 70% working class, non-college.

Speaker 2 I think it's less than that, but among non-voters and non-voters, that's a huge gap.

Speaker 4 So like one of the things that we kept asking as an unknown, as we thought about this election, was like, is there more squeeze in there? Can they get more juice out of these non-college voters?

Speaker 4 And the answer was yes. And so Democrats are going to have to figure out how to compete for non-college voters.

Speaker 4 And I think that there's a lot of people who think like, well, that means throwing trans people under the bus.

Speaker 4 Not really. It's sort of the inverse of

Speaker 4 what I think some of the ideas were that were driving Democratic strategy this election, which was they basically had the idea of like, well, we're just not going to talk about the issues on which we're vulnerable, like immigration.

Speaker 4 We're going to change the subject to places where, you know, we're in good shape.

Speaker 4 No, you got to talk to people about jobs. You can talk about protecting trans people, but you don't have to say it's the great civil rights issue of our time, because I'm not sure that's true.

Speaker 4 But like more importantly, more importantly, people are, I don't want to set it up like it's a binary between like defending trans people and attracting working class voters.

Speaker 4 I think that's a false choice. It's not what we're thinking about.
Talk about jobs. Talk about people's earning potential.
Talk about helping them, you know, get a leg up.

Speaker 4 Like focus on that relentlessly. And then you'll have less time to do the things that are damaging you.
Right.

Speaker 4 Like the idea that you wouldn't focus and talk in language that working class people understand. Like we make fun of Donald Trump and the way that he talks and we should.
It's stupid.

Speaker 4 But like we also should be aware, and this is what I like about doing the focus groups, that he has made politics accessible to a lot more people who just feel like they understand what he's talking about when he's talking about politics in a way where they don't understand what Democrats are talking about.

Speaker 2 I think that there is is a binary, though, that's not the binary you gave, and that is we're going to keep having to discuss about how the Democrats talk to working class people.

Speaker 2 There's a big movement among the Democratic coalition to be like, the answer is to give them more free stuff,

Speaker 2 to do more socialism. And John Tester is offering the counterexample, which is more of a 90s-style democratic economic message.

Speaker 2 I want to have more, particularly on the cultural side of this and on the trans question and how that has become kind of weirdly central to the conversation over in the secret podcast.

Speaker 2 But JVL, I want to give you a last word on this.

Speaker 2 I want to say two things. The first is that

Speaker 2 on the matter of what do the Democrats need to do, I believe very, very strongly that we don't know the answer. Nobody knows the answer.

Speaker 2 And most of what you hear, not here, we're actually very good about this at the bulwark, but out there in the world is people saying the Democrats need to do this thing that I like and then they'll do better.

Speaker 2 And we don't know that that's true.

Speaker 2 Secondly, I listen to Tester, and I just don't think that that's correct.

Speaker 2 When he says that people don't like the idea of people being given free money, that's not true. People love the idea of being given free money to them.

Speaker 2 And this is why you didn't hear anybody complaining about the Trump bucks. Do you remember those checks that Donald Trump put his signature on? Do you remember all of the spending Trump did?

Speaker 2 All of the infrastructure spending that Biden did?

Speaker 2 You know, people are showing up. All of his, you know, all the Republicans were showing up in their districts to those ribbon cuttings and taking credit for that stuff.

Speaker 2 What they don't like is they don't like money going to groups who they don't like.

Speaker 2 And so that's why, like, when we talk about spending, the thing that always comes up is the student loan forgiveness, which again is a very small, small number,

Speaker 2 but it's the idea of who is getting that that they hate, right? They love the idea that a bridge is going to be built in their district. They think that's great.

Speaker 2 They love the idea of getting rural broadband internet. That's great.
They love their social security and their disability checks, and they want the government to do more against fentanyl.

Speaker 2 Like all this, they like what they get. They want to get theirs, but they really don't like it when others get it.
And you see this with like the child tax credit, right?

Speaker 2 So, I mean, Biden did the big pro-family thing that Republicans have been talking about for 25 years. And when he did it, Republicans suddenly hated it.
Why?

Speaker 2 Because some of the money might be going to brown people who had babies. I can tell in Sarah's body language that she disagrees with this.

Speaker 2 And that's why it's a good teaser for you guys to come join us on the secret podcast. I want to talk about that.

Speaker 2 I want to talk about some of the feedback we've been getting on this question around how important the trans issue was in the election.

Speaker 2 Mostly, though, we want to talk about our feelings and our fears. JVL wrote a beautiful triad yesterday, headlined referencing my favorite Catholic hymn, Be Not Afraid.
We've been texting about this.

Speaker 2 We're going to be talking about whether we're afraid, whether we should be afraid, whether you're afraid, how you should deal with your fears.

Speaker 2 And I hope you'll come join us with that on the traditional Friday Secret podcast with Sarah and JVL. Everybody else, we'll see you back here on Monday with Bill Crystal.

Speaker 2 Thanks to Sarah and JVL for doing Double Duty. We'll see you soon.
Peace.

Speaker 2 The sense of time catching up with me.

Speaker 2 Well, I see a new day. who's driving this anyway? I picture my own grave, cause fear's got a hold on me.

Speaker 2 Yes, this fear's got a hold on me.

Speaker 2 Yes, this fear's got a hold on me.

Speaker 2 Yes, this fear's got a hold on me.

Speaker 2 Yes, the spirit's got hold of me.

Speaker 2 Yes, the spirit's got hold of me.

Speaker 2 Yes, the spirit's got hold of me.

Speaker 2 Yes, the spirit's got hold of me.

Speaker 2 Yes, the spirit's

Speaker 4 Life with CIDP can be tough, but the Thrive Team, a specialized squad of experts, helps people living with CIDP make more room in their lives for joy. Watch Rare Well Done.

Speaker 10 In all-new reality series, Rare Well Done offers help and hope to people across the country who live with the rare disease CIDP. Watch the latest episode now, exclusively on RareWellDone.com.

Speaker 2 Ah,

Speaker 11 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 2 No fees?

Speaker 12 No interest.

Speaker 12 I used it to get this portable spa with jets.

Speaker 11 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body. Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 2 Save the offer in the app. NS1231, see PayPal.com slash promo terms, points give your renee for cash and more paying for, subject to terms of approval.
PayPal Inc. and MLS 910-457.

Speaker 13 What does Zen 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 Zen along for the ride?

Speaker 13 Because America's number one nicotine pouch opens up all the possibilities of right now.

Speaker 2 With Zinn, you don't just find freedom, you keep finding it. Find your Zen.

Speaker 13 Learn more at zinn.com.

Speaker 13 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.