Sam Stein: We Got Ourselves a Mad King

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Hello and welcome to the Bowlers podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
I'm in DC. So who else is I going to bring in here

besides the repugnant, the interrupting, the managing editor of our here outlet, Sam Stein? What an intro. Thank you.
Interrupting Cal, Sam Stein. Move.
Move. I got you very funny.

As I have been all week, I'm taking personal privilege to begin by talking about New Orleans. The invasion of my city has officially begun now.
I saw images of the wee little guy. Yeah.

Little Nazi guy.

Bavino. Bavino, yeah.
The haircut and the hand signals.

He was walking through the French quarter. I gotta tell you if any of my friends who are like Nader Ds in the French quarter,

you just give this guy the Sarah Huckabee Sanders red hen treatment okay

no fucking no fucking gumbo or jambalaya for this guy okay

anyway that's the funny part uh the bad parts are actually happening it's mostly out in the suburbs but I got this text from my buddy that I want to read basically every Hispanic person legal or not has completely stopped working in New Orleans my friend

I'm gonna redact his name can't get anyone to do any work at all he's a contractor He's a ton of clients who needs roofs done. All the people he works with at other companies in the city say the same.

I don't think anyone's thinking about the impact it's having on the economy of the Republicans here who are trying to run their businesses. Womp womp.

Then he sent me pictures of a random crew that was on a roof in the New Orleans suburbs. Mass dudes jumped out, surround the house.
For YouTube guys will put up the picture here.

And Amanda Moore, who is down, there's a reporter covering this, saw the same incident.

I asked her what she observed, and she said that the only silver lining here was that there was one guy who refused to come down from the roof.

And so they just left him up there and brought the other guys in, which shows you, I think, the limits of their powers here.

They don't have a ladder. They did have a ladder.
Did you see that?

I should have showed you.

I don't think that these guys actually know how to use a ladder. They had a ladder and they're like holding it up and they had guns.
The guy is climbing the ladder carrying a gun.

Like, this feels unsafe. Like, is this really necessary to have mass dudes drawing down on guys in

the crochet regulations

up on the roofs? But there is no probable cause happening, as evidenced by the fact that the one guy got out of this.

Like, they just are driving through the neighborhoods where there's a lot of mostly Hondurans in New Orleans, but also Mexicans and others. And

going up to people doing yard work. Show me your papers.
Yeah, wearing masks.

This is like essentially what happened in Chicago. I remember Adrian was there for a couple of days where

it's not that they're just grabbing people indiscriminately. They're doing that, obviously, but people just stop showing up.
Like, people just don't show up at their businesses.

People stop bringing kids to school.

There's a lot of fear, obviously, but the ripple effects are pretty astronomical from an economic standpoint. Because why would you leave your house?

Like what is the, if you, if, if you could be detained and you could be a U.S.

citizen, but you would have three weeks of just absolute horror, not knowing what's going to happen to you, why would you leave your house? Yeah. And or if you're mixed family, right? Right.

You know what I mean? Like you have one person in the family that is, you know, gotta be aware of that. Why are they in your home city?

Because of that, because the other little guy, small, Napoleon syndrome, is I guess the governor, which is appropriate for New Orleans, the French, Napoleon syndrome, yeah, the governor.

He just wanted it? Yeah, he's been asking for it. And I think that Trump basically,

I think that they did see the limits of what they're able to do in Chicago.

Having Pritzker there did matter. Sure.
It was terrible what happened, but they were looking at places where there were red states

where the governor was going to let them come in and act with impunity. And so New Orleans is it.
It's scary stuff, man. And they're just going to go from city to city to city.

It's sort of tongue-in-cheek. My buddy is texting me about the Republican business owners who don't have employees.

The economic ripple effects are real. Why is that tongue-in-cheek? I feel like that's a very real thing, right? These are small.
Yeah, it's like tongue-in-cheek and then he's like, oh, yeah.

They're not the real victims here, obviously.

Shed some tears for these guys that asked for this. Yeah, I get it.
But it is going to, it will hit them, right?

Like, this, I remember sort of the first moment that was like semi-viral around this stuff was that it's either Fort Lauderdale or the Miami Keys where the guy, like the six-time Trump voter, whatever the hell is like all his construction crew had like been taken away from the site.

And he's like, What the hell? It's like, I didn't vote for this. He's like, No, you voted for this.
Like, this is it. By the way, not to Adam Smith.

Like, you know, this is, this does have an affordability effort, right?

Like, you know, if you don't have people to, if we're worried about housing affordability, you don't have people to construct the homes. That is going to have an impact on affordability.

I had a remark that you, Adam Smith. Did you say not to Adam Smith? Yeah, you know, supply and demand does matter.

You know, economics still works.

On top of that, the healthcare, I think I mentioned this earlier in the week, but it's just worth mentioning again, like, you know, you just don't think of all the downstream effects.

I was talking to somebody at Thanksgiving who works for a company that does like the dialysis services and stuff.

And it's like, they don't show, you know, if you are undocumented or have an undocumented family member, you're not showing up for your appointment. And so

I was thinking you're going a different direction because Jonathan Cohen's been talking about this. It's like, you know, the caregiving industry.
Oh, yeah, no, that too. Like that, that is.

Either both ones. Yeah, it's like they're going to be decimated by this.
So there's incredible downstream effects. You know who doesn't care about that? Our buddy? Phil Mickelson.
Lefty? Lefty.

What a guy.

Before we talk about what a guy is, I got to say, sometimes, you know,

I know I have this like hard candy shell, Sam, you know, where I seem like I'm a dick. But deep down, I'm softy.
Okay. I am.
Softy. And I get, and it allows me to sometimes.

I know, I think it's in the inverse, buddy. You think it's in the inverse?

What's the candy with the soft exterior?

Almond Joy? Yeah, you're the nugget. You think that I'm an almond joy? You're the nutty sniper.
Okay, well, the nougat part of myself did get snowed by Phil Mickelson as a child, I want to bet.

Yeah, I was a huge Phil fan. Huge Phil fan.
And he was the guy at the local golf tournament in Denver who'd hang out, sign the golf balls for the kids. Yeah, well, he probably had Phalbot.

He probably had an over-under bet on how many balls he could send.

So, you know, I don't know if he's changed or if that was just part of his megalomania. This was his tweet yesterday, which was,

I think, pretty the most appalling.

I think it's more appalling than anything Megan Kelly has said for me. I think I'm putting it below Megan Kelly in the Dante's Inferno.

If we're going to make some, if we're going to do Dante references this week, what level is this?

Here we go. The U.S.
is way too lenient on illegal immigration. Singapore, six months in prison, caning, then deportation.
Malaysia, one to five years in prison, caning, then deportation.

Qatar, three years in prison, forced labor, then deportation. Russia, two years in prison, forced labor, then deportation.
North Korea, no deportation, just execution.

Wow, that's the good stuff, right? It goes on from there. It's like, what?

These guys want to be like, oh, we're pro-America, like USA, USA. Like, this is, you want us to copy the most repressive regimes in the world? You want us to do fucking caning? Phil Mickelson?

What's the punishment I wonder for insider trading and illegal gambling does he think we should do? Singapore. Should we do behanding? Maybe we should behand his left fucking hand.

If that's what he wants, if he wants Old Testament justice for people, maybe we should look into Phil Mickelson's. I was thinking, does he know that these posts go public?

Is he aware that Twitter is a public posting service? Because it seemed insane.

Also, it seemed like probably like some AI-generated stuff. He's like, what are the punishments for illegal immigrants and all the repressive routes? It did seem like a grok.

Tell me how nasty I can be towards illegal immigrants if I lived abroad.

I mean, I don't want to make fun of it because it's like, if this is an honest reflection of how he thinks, like, he's a disturbed dude.

Like, if you're thirsting over the idea that you can cane somebody because they're here illegally, then you need to like go get help, honestly. Just go move to Riyadh.

Yeah, yeah, that's the better person. Just go move to Riyadh.
Exactly. You want to be paid by the Saudis.
You want to play in their golf courses. You want to yuck it up with them.
And

go live in their repressive regime and have fun.

Just enjoy it. You can make a lot of money.
You can play in a lot of golf tournaments. Only basis.
Come back for the masters. You can come back for the masters.
Okay. I'll allow it.

If you make some bad bets, some bad illegal gambling bets

and you can't pay off your debts, I'm not sure you're going to like the.

I just wish someone in his life would just say, yo, you made hundreds of millions of dollars. You live, you play golf for a living.
Like, that's the envy of every dude out there.

You don't need to be a dick to the least fortunate people in the world, a lot of whom came here because they were fleeing the repressive regimes that you're now thirsting over. So not.
Caning. Yeah.

I'm interested in caning Phil Mickelson. You know what else I'm interested in? Denaturalization.
That was something that has come up this week. Denaturalization.

That's like the new fad for the Trump guys.

What do you think, Mickelson? That feels Irish origin. Scott Irish.
Yeah. Something like that.
Fucking denaturalize him. No.
Go back through.

I wonder if all the paperwork was filled out perfectly about his ancestors. Maybe we could sort of start looking through that.

The Saudi idea is the best one.

If we win again, get back in 2029, I'm going to have a Bill Pulte in the Immigration and National Naturalization Services.

They're going to look at all the MAGAs and we're going to go through your family history and just we're going to look through how everybody got here. And

if the T was not crossed on every immigration paper going up through your grandparents, I'm sorry. We're going to fucking have to send you out.

It's a good idea to have everyone, every party needs their own Bill Pulte, just a shameless hack willing to use the levers of the government. And also be public about it.

Do you have any other immigration texts before we move on to party? No, that was a good one to end on.

I was really upset by Phil's tweet last night. Me too.

I've been, my blood's been boiling this week.

Sorry.

Who's your favorite golfer now? Do you have one? Rory, obviously. My brother from another world.
Yeah, exactly. Rory's the best.
He also stood up to the Saudis for a while. He got a little weak.

Did he get weak? Well,

I actually think what happened to Rory, I'm sorry for the non-sports people. You can just fast forward a minute, but there's a moral lesson here, even if you're not a golf person.

It's kind of a sad statement about our culture, actually. And Rory is sort of a, what's that word? Like

synecdoche?

Synectochy. Synectochy?

People make fun of me for my pronunciation. People couldn't know the word.
Synecdoche, sure.

For our societal rot.

Let's spend 20 more seconds on this word. Synecdoche.

For our society.

For societal rot. And that is that the Saudis came in and offered this alternate golf tour where they're to give all the golfers way more money.

And a lot of the PGA guys were like, great, let's merge this in. We're going to take all this fucking Saudi blood money.

Rory was like, I think the most vocal golfer, though, saying, no, like, we're doing well.

Well, my favorite Rory quote was when he was trying to explain why he's, he's like, I have a huge house and I spend all my time in three rooms. Like, I don't need a second house.

We loved that. And then

it was like around the time that Trump is,

running again and getting back in.

And basically the PGA just sort of folds to the Saudi live tour. And Rory gives a press conference where he just

half-heartedly kind of apologizes for taking a moral stand. And apologize to the other golfers for impugning them, saying to them, I was judging you and blah, blah, blah.

And it's like, they fucking deserve to be judged. And it was kind of a statement, I think, about what has happened to our culture in Trump 2.0.

Yeah, you can't.

you can still be you know moralistic and judgmental of them. It's fine.
Especially no I'm not judgmental. I love no I'm saying he can still be moralistic and judgmental of them.

I'm saying virtue signaling is good. It's one of my best articles I've ever written for the bulwark.
People can go find it.

Virtue signaling is good actually, I think was the title.

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I've got a section on pardons coming. Great.

I mentioned this yesterday with Jonathan Lemire, your buddy, but

I feel like it deserves just a little more focus.

President Trump formally pardoned President Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras Monday evening.

The ex-president was at the center of what authorities characterized as one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world. Yeah, that was a weird one.

But that wasn't even like the weirdest of the week. I know we're going through the rest of them.
But

I'm just,

how do you do this the same week that you're bombing boats in the Caribbean because they're allegedly drug dealers? Tim, if there was like a consistent through line to this,

the only through line I actually can think of is that,

actually, it doesn't even make sense.

Like, he's clearly got like a little addiction to issuing pardons like he kind of likes it uh and he sympathizes i think with if if you're gonna say i was unlawfully prosecuted and it was like you know a political prosecution it was rigged or it was a hoax against me he'll probably be empathetic to your cause like you don't even i don't even know if you need to now give a million dollars to his pack or like buy all the crypto his family's offering it's like you and me buddy we were both prosecuted illegally right and it's like how i give the benefit of the doubt to gays you know what i mean like it's sort of like you have a...

You have an affinity for it. Yeah, you have empathy.
Yeah, he has an affinity for political criticism. Is there any gay that you would not give the benefit of the doubt to?

Yeah, Rick Grinnell comes to mind.

And that's like Bob Menendez.

We're going to get to Bob Menendez. One more thing on the Honduras thing, though, because I've just been thinking about this.
If you're Democrats, how do you make the best use of this?

Because the argument,

I just, I don't, people just don't, I don't know if they care about the hypocrisy. Like, and I feel myself rolling my eyes at myself when I'm like, well,

he's bombing these guys because he says they're drug dealers, but he's pardoning this other drug dealer. What a hypocrite.
It's kind of like, okay, we're past that.

I wonder if the actual better way to go into this is like, this guy got a pardon because he was in league with the fucking oligarchs.

And he was giving them, he wanted to give them their little Bitcoin city in Honduras. And I think this is how you get into the MAG rolls.
You saw some of this from Marjorie Taylor Green and others.

And Spannon has been saying this, which is like, is Trump looking out for regular regular people or is he looking out for the tech billionaires that actually hate MAGA Americans yeah and and I think maybe that is it's a little bit more of a bank shot but I feel like that's what the Democrats should be really well I agree with you the the the hypocrisy no one gives a shit like who the fuck cares about hypocrisy at this point right so there's either doing it your way which I think is probably the smart way or you just say like we got a mad king on our hands folks like this guy's out of control like he's just he's handing pardons to drug dealers and drug lords and like you know, George Santos and shit like that and J Sixers.

Like the J Sixers doesn't fit into your rubric because they're not like crypto billionaires, but it does fit into the Mad King umbrella, right? It's like this guy has just like lost his marbles.

That's fair. Tim Lai Wiki.
Yeah, this was a good one. This guy was

charged with doing basically insider deals on the Austin, on the new stadium down there in Austin. Yeah, yeah, for Texas.
The U Texas stadium. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The UT stadium. And

he was indicted by. I liked his.
I read about what he would do, which is kind of clever.

He had someone who was bidding against, and he'd just go to them and be like, yo, I'll give you money for my subcontract. Just let me win this contract.
Brilliant. So easy.

Why don't more people do that? Yeah, that's a great idea. Because it's illegal.

You can't do that. Yeah, you just want to make sure you're screwing the

taxpayers of Texas as much as possible. The competitive bidding process.
Wringing every cent possible out of the people of Texas.

Another time where Trump doesn't care about the MAGA Americans that were paying this rich fuck. There you go.

Indicted.

It's worth noting by the Trump Justice Department. Not the first Trump justice department.
That's just when I read it, I was like, oh, yeah, he was indicted in

2019. And then I looked at it.
I was like, oh, wait, no, it was. July.
He was indicted in July. That's so ridiculous.
By Pam Bondi.

And so, obviously, this is the principle of this, but I'm on like... Like, where was Doge on this?

Like, like, the amount of money that we get spent to prosecute this person, our Justice Department goes after this guy he was robbing the taxpayers and then we spent it's like we kind of compounded the crime we're spending taxpayer dollars then to prosecute him yeah that's a really good we prosecute him and he and we let him off the hook a condition of the pardon should be that he has to pay back

all the money we spent prosecuting him yeah do you think that's going to be in there i don't i have to check the findings there might there might well i guess maybe if it goes to the ballroom yeah it's got to go to the ballroom add one more layer story to the fucking ballroom why are we doing this why is he doing this i don't like what was the upshot of this?

This guy's because you're mad king, but like,

he kind of likes it. It's like one area where he's got actual control.
He can't make prices cheaper, but he can make people say, thank you, sir.

And he can make rich guys come to the Oval Office and say, sir, you are the greatest president of all time. And I'm going to contribute to Michael Dell and his weird wife's like Trump bond.

Yeah, the 6.25 billion gift to the Trump accounts. But like, why? It's like, why George Santos? Like, do you really need to get George Santos to come kiss your ass?

Is that so you can do a cameo for you?

Five cameos in exchange for the pardon, George.

Here's the most interesting one on the pardons because there's just a lot of. Do you want to rank your pardons? Like, what's the most outrageous?

Is that we should do that at some point, but I'm not prepared for that right now. The Henry Quayar pardon, he's a Democratic congressman from Texas.
He was accepting bribes from Azerbaijan, allegedly.

Allegedly, $600,000, allegedly, in 2024. Also, there's a Mexican company that might have been throwing him some cash, too, through a wife's LLC, throwing a wife's S-Corp, allegedly.

Democratic Congress

rubbed in on this. Yeah, like Benendez, yeah, like South Texas.

The political layers of this are so, like, there's so much to unpack. Why did Trump do it just because he's tired of people saying he's biased?

Did he do it because, like you said, anyone that's targeted by the government now he sees as a comrade in arms, and so he's going to defend any corrupt politician of any kind.

The House GOP got cucked by this. That's the best thing.
Mike Johnson found out on Twitter, so did Richard Hudson, the NRCC chair.

That's the group that is in charge of the campaigns for the Republicans in the House.

Hudson said this pardon certainly makes it tougher for the GOP to flip clear as South Texas seat because he's going to run again as a Democrat. Yeah, that was everyone's waiting to see what the...

Quid pro quo was here. It's like, oh, yeah, surely he's going to switch parties.
And then he like ran it. He filed literally like 10 minutes later.

And when he did the filing,

he did an attack on Joe Biden. He's like, I want to thank Trump for the pardon.
I'm sure this one wasn't done by the auto pen.

You see that?

Maybe that was the condition. Maybe that was the condition.
You had to make an auto-pen joke. But that gives him more credit with MAGA people.
I mean, like, Trump.

It's interesting. So they do.

Back to my Mad King theory. What is the point of this? They have this whole plot to rig Texas.

This whole gerrymandering thing is all based on this corrupt plot to rig Texas districts in the mid-cycle redistricting. This was one of the seats that they were trying to steal.

They made it more Republican in South Texas.

And now Trump pardons the guy that is the most likely to win it for the Democrats. It doesn't make sense.
And he didn't tell Mike Johnson. I was like, I'm bad.
It's like, it's bad.

It's like, you're being a bad criminal. Like, I was like, at least, you know, I'm upset.
It's like, if you're at least going to do this, at least do it pure so I can look the evil in the face.

It's like so incompetent. Yeah, no.
Maybe now I'm coming to the belief that he did it so he could like avoid the criticism that it's purely Republican.

Like he needed one Democrat and they found this guy. Yeah.
Yeah. But why not Menendez then? Menendez would have been a better person for that.
He's not going to win in New Jersey.

I don't know. God, you're asking me to get into this man's head.
I have no idea. It's wild.
Menendez might be coming. We don't know.

You can't just, the other thing is, you can't just do them all at once. You got to kind of like, you know,

if you're like, you got an itch, you got to scratch it, but you got to wait until it starts itching again. I have to pick on Hakeem Jeffries just a little bit.
That's fine.

He's on CNN yesterday yesterday on this, and he says, Quair is a beloved member of the House of Representatives. The indictment was very thin to begin with, in my view.

I think the outcome was exactly the right outcome. No, you didn't need to say that.

That's not right.

Now you're giving cover to what is an absolute abominable abuse of pardon power. Like, you cannot, that's just not appropriate.

And frankly, look, we're joking a lot about this, but I've talked to the ex-pardon attorney at the DOJ who was fired because she wouldn't give Mel Gibson back his guns. That was why she was fired.

And, like, this is, yeah, this was early Trump's second term. They pushed her out because they wanted to restore Mel Gibson's gun rights.
I missed that bowler cake with Sam Stein. I don't know.

It was a great one. She's like, why are we doing this? And they're like, go.
So we were talking a lot about that. We'll link to that in the show notes.
So I can remember what I link to that.

This is like a real problem because this is a constitutional right. There's no one who's arguing that he can't do this, but everyone basically with a sane mind thinks that they have to fix this.

Like, there's no,

like, a functioning society cannot have one man, like, just undoing all of the Justice Department's work because he's, like,

wakes up and feels like it's not.

There is constitutional ways to do it. I forget who I'm stealing this from, so my apologies.
Are there

would you have to do an amendment to the Constitution? Yeah, well, yeah, but I think it was

Jonah Goldberg. If it wasn't Jonah, I apologize to whoever I'm stealing this from.
But he made a point that

when the pardon power is put into the Constitution, saying that, because he can only do federal pardons, right?

Like, Like simultaneously to why he's doing all these pardons, he's ranting about my boy Jared Polis for not

trying to dictate the meters out. Transferred to a federal prisoner, and Polis isn't doing it.
Good on him.

And Jonah's point, I think it was Jonah was saying that when this was put in the Constitution, there were like three federal crimes. You know, it was basically like treason,

you know, not paid.

I don't remember what the other two were. Forcing a soldier to live in your home.

And so it's like, are there ways to kind of do pardon reform that kind of just just like defines within the Constitution like what constitutes it? I don't know. And there's probably somebody

there who might. Yeah.

Look, the point I guess with Jeffries is

like it is just from a fundamental moral ethical standpoint, like what Trump is doing with the pardons is horrible.

And like he should not be doing anything to like make it seem like he's doing justice, right?

Also from a political standpoint, to the point of what we were getting to earlier, like making the case against him on corruption is critical. Sure.
And so,

you know, this is, it's a minor thing, but it's, it's undermining it in a minor way. And it's like, I understand that Hakeem, this is, I don't understand that Hakeem has to like manage the conference.

Yeah. And it's, to me, it's kind of like, you know, call Henry if you need to.

If you're on CNN talking about this, you're like, I spoke to him privately and, you know, we're going to, we're looking at it. You know what I mean? You can avoid.

Yeah, I agree with that.

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a little bit on pete hegseth uh we've been talking about this a bunch this week there's another new data point in this whole conversation about the you know war crimes in the caribbean and this is that the wall street journal confirmed something that we've kind of suspected for a while back in october admiral alvin halsey was at the time they said resigned um he was the head of southcom which was overseeing these attacks he's only one year into his command so raised some eyebrows uh the journal is reporting that hegseth asked him to step down.

Hagseth met with Holsey on a secure video conference and, according to notes from a participant on the call, told the Admiral, you're either on the team or you're not.

When you get an order, you move out fast and don't ask questions.

So I think that brings some interesting context also to the conversation about the Mark Kelly and these congressmen who are saying why they're encouraging people to not follow legal orders.

Hagseth has basically said to him, you will follow an legal order, and if you won't, you should leave.

He left. Yeah.
And i do think that's pretty interesting context around the whole mitch bradley discussion and what's been happening with the when are they going to call this guy before the hill

wouldn't that make sense yeah like he have you called roger wicker about that have we got roger wicked i asked so i asked um was it kelly mark kelly about it or was it it was either kelly or mark warner i think it was warner actually right when it happened i was like are you guys reaching out to to this admiral and they were like we can't get in touch with him that was a couple that was a couple months ago so we'll see i mean obviously, this is like,

I keep saying like, I got to stop saying that. This is a really serious matter.
And

it's been interesting to see the fallout around this double tap strike. So obviously we want to know if they are doing something illegal, if they're committing war crimes.

That really does matter, obviously. And there's been another slew of reporting that's added more nuance to the situation.

But I think we're losing a little bit of the forest for the trees here, which is that we are engaged in acts of war, but there's not really a war. I mean, we are actively.
This is not a war.

There's no war. There's no war.
We have a pretend war. We've killed 80 people.
We have killed 80 people. And there's been almost no.
We don't know who any of them are. We don't know any of them are.

We don't actually have really good evidence for why,

whether they were smuggling drugs or just supposed to take the deod's word that there's drugs in the boats. And maybe there were.

The sheer lack of inquiry, oversight, hearings, explanation, briefings is staggering to me.

This is going on for months. 80 people are dead.
We've launched multiple missions. Now we have a highly controversial double-tap strike that we don't really know about.
We have an admiral that left.

I mean, this is not minor stuff at this point. The piling up of very important stuff to get to the bottom of is now a mountain high.

And I can't think of one actual hearing that's happened.

Maybe I missed it. Maybe I just don't know.
I've not seen anyone be held to account for this. We have a Pentagon Press Core that's filled with, like,

you know. MAGA bloggers.
Yeah. And they asked interesting questions, but we...
Did they? Well, some of them were interesting. Yeah.

They were whatever.

It was in their own head. What about the guy doing the selfie with Pete Eggs? That was not interesting.

Yeah.

Okay, we don't need to get it. But you get my point.
I do get your point.

I actually want to think

your perspective from back when you were were doing, you know,

full-lib journalism, yeah, full-lib journalism at HuffPoe. You might have some insight on this.

Um, but you know, some of the defenses I've seen of this, uh, Dan Crenshaw was out basically being like, we do war crimes all the time.

He's like, we always kill people and you know, do double taps. I don't know that's a great defense, but that's where Crenshaw was.

Then you see other people like trying to do the Bud Obama defense, which was what about the drone strikes, you know, um, Alaki and his, was it his kid or his nephew? Whatever.

It was his family member that was killed in the drone strike.

And

it was like, well, this wasn't a big, you know, there wasn't a big oversight over this. And I was like, I was like, my recollection is like, this was a massive scandal at the time.

There was Democrats on the Hill that were calling the administration over.

Rand made some major speech on the floor. I think he shut down the Senate for a while.
It's funny that you mentioned the sort of liberal perspective at the time. So I was at HuffPost during this.

Yeah.

And

this was our cause celeb. Like this was like the thing that, and it was mostly led by Ryan Grimm, who was sort of intellectually consistent about this stuff.
But

we spent weeks railing on the Obama administration over these drone strikes. We went after Holder incredibly hard.
We were

doggedly in pursuit of what the justification and rationalization was for doing this. And the Obama White House hated us for it.

They hated us for it. And so, so, you know, yeah, I mean, obviously we had a perspective politically at the time, but we were very much willing to just stick it.

There were some Democrats, that's what I'm trying to remember. It's hard for me to remember, like, that were all.
Yeah, there was definitely.

So, look, of course, there's some deferentialness in the party to the president. And you're going to get lawmakers who rally around him and defend him.

But there were people speaking up at the time who said that this is an abomination and also, you know, potentially illegal. And

wasn't this guy running like someone who was going to end the wars and all that stuff.

There are some analogies, actually.

I had it right. It was Al-Olaki's son, his 16-year-old son.

That was like the biggest, because he was American.

And there are other examples of that, but that was kind of

the most memorable one.

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Okay, I want to do, we'll just do any, just a brief economy talk. Not great.
Payroll process company, ADP's latest jobs report is out. We don't have real numbers.
I know, I know.

I want to hear you caveat ADP. That's what I'm asking you.
But we should just say, private sector employment, according to ADP, fell by 32,000 in November. Right.
Third decline in four months.

There's some issues with ADP, but usually we're able to compare it to government data, which we don't have because of this government. Yeah.

I mean, even if the ADP is off and they're almost always off, it's obviously the situation is not great. And it's going to get worse.

Like that, I think people are kind of, I mean, I don't want to, you can hold me to to it, whatever I said it, but

people are going to be about to have healthcare premiums just skyrocket.

Millions of people are about to have health care premiums skyrocket because Congress can't figure out what to do about this stuff. You mentioned the immigration stuff.

That will matter. I mean, that will matter.

And then, of course, everyone's just sort of waiting around to see how much of this economy is just propped up by artificial intelligence and people blowing smoke about how important they are.

What we really need is we have to get EJ and Tony at the BLS

because if there's one way to fix this, it's by finding someone to fix the numbers. Yeah.

And if he pulled him, they pulled him. They pulled him.
Do they have a replacement for him yet? No. Why would we need that? Yeah, we don't need numbers.
You mentioned the AI.

I want to talk just a little bit on the Dems, and I've got some funny stuff we can get out of here.

The funny stuff is I always say it's funny, and that's kind of like it's dark. It's darkly funny.
It's my cob. But anyway, we'll get it.
That's my specialty.

The

Democrats, just because you mentioned AI, it sparked a thought about our colleague Lauren Egan's newsletter, The Opposition, which is about this.

It feels real that the Democrats are starting to.

I feel like there's like a pundit class Democrat that's like really excited about the idea of going after AI and these AI executives and thinking that that's going to be a useful political tool.

And then I think that there's a lot of like traditional establishment Democrats that I think are going to be very hesitant to do that. Do you need their money? Well,

you just said. And it's also hard, I think, when when they're created, when a lot of the jobs are being created that way.

You know, I think that this is going to be real tension in the Democratic Party, but

how to engage with that. I don't know what you think.

And the tension's furthered by what we were just talking about, which is if they're all aligned with Trump or if Trump's rewarding them, or

how do you then say, hey, we like you too.

I read Lauren's pieces a little bit sort of broader than, hey, we're going to go after these tech oligarchs. It's also like

phones and schools, right? It's the idea that our lives are just being sucked into our screens and that maybe there is a sort of nostalgia for a life when we weren't just doom scrolling all the time.

I don't have any nostalgia for it.

I want to scroll more. You're a poster.
Yeah.

Which is why I'm so excited about Lane Kiffen. People are like, are you upset about LSU's DoCoach Lane Kiffen?

And I was like, Lane Kiffen, after Olemes beat LSU this year, posted from the locker room shitting on us three minutes after the game ended. And I was like, that guy's my soulmate.

Well, so I don't, he's not laying kiffin because he's not texting 19-year-old girls, but Dan Hurley has got a similar vibe. We just beat Kansas and he tweeted afterwards,

was the Ted Lasso guy in the attendance? Because Jason Sendegas had gone to the last Kansas UConn game. I was like, this man's in his 50s, and he's just,

he can't help it. He needs to ship us.
Back to the point. No, that's me, yeah.

But I think the idea here for Democrats is that maybe there are parents who are really worried, and they should be, honestly, about the funds and schools.

And maybe there are people who are really worried about AI companies taking over all the energy in their town and building these database systems.

And you're seeing sporadically here and there that this pops up in campaigns. Could you tie it holistically together?

And can you put it under this populist umbrella where it's like, these guys are full of shit and they're promising the world.

And in fact, they're taking all your energy and they're, you know, poisoning your kids' brains. And we need to be different.
Sure, I can see that. that.
I can too.

And despite being a poster at heart, I am very sympathetic to that point of view. And it's interesting.

That seems right now, I guess this is my point, like way more popular in the liberal podcasting class,

like us, than it is among politicians. And it'll be interesting to see how much politicians actually really embrace it.

Someone actually told me they're like, you know, there's been a lot written about these data centers and that's really not a big deal.

Like it's a couple places where they actually exist, but it's not, you know, it's not.

I think it will be a local issue in those places for sure. Yeah, yeah.
I'm not like the next president's not going to run in a house. But maybe they might.

And I guess, and that takes me to the other hot stove thing I wanted to talk to you about with the Mad King.

I'm reticent to do 2028 hot stove.

I know, I know. I just want to make one

point, though, because I've been thinking about this.

And it's related to how the Democrats should act.

And it's a little bit counter to what I think has been the bulwark conventional wisdom on what we want from Democrats, which is like, fighting, fighting, more fighting.

And it's like, in the contrast to the Mad King, you know,

there's an Atlantic article in Josh Shapiro, maybe the case is people looking for stability. I was thinking about maybe a different way.
Tim Alberta wrote that article. It's quite interesting.

I bumped into Wes Moore at the airport. Yeah.

And

the guy is just like,

happy. Yeah.
Happy, handsome,

nice. friendly, able to talk.
Yeah. You know,

and

I'm kind of wondering, you know, we do all this and it's like, well, gosh, the Democrats are really going to need to take on the oligarchs. Like, the Democrats are going to need somebody

as backbone going up to Trump. And I do wonder just at first blanche, like, what is, is that right?

Or like, is it possible that really politics is very simple and we usually elect the handsomer person and the Democrats really can just kind of like go back to like somebody that doesn't seem crazy, that seems stale, seems happy, affable, can go in the bro pods, and it's really not much more complicated than that.

It's just a counter theory I'm throwing out there. People have always pointed out that

the more telegenic candidate almost always wins. I don't know if that's like causation, correlation.
It probably has something to do with our mediums of communication, right?

I think it's unimpeachably true up to 2016.

I just, I don't know how you judge who's more telegenic between Donald Trump and

Joe Biden. No, and Hillary doesn't, like, because they were both in the basement.
I feel like 2020 doesn't count because of the COVID election. Then 24, it's like, I think Kamala is objectively more

telegenic than Trump, but it's like, it's like,

are we counting Biden also as part of it? Okay, fair enough. But up to 2016,

the other theory that is at play here that you're talking about is how this is all reactive, right?

And I've mentioned this a million times, but George Bush begets Barack Obama because Obama's not, you know. Well, you go back, Clinton begets Bush.
Sure, right. But Obama, I mean, people,

I don't know.

I mean, the Obama allure was, we're tired of all this shit. Like, we don't need to be in the Middle East, but also we don't need to have politics that is just cutthroat.
I'm going to be a reconciler.

And then, of course, Obama begets Trump, which is the, you know, absolutely we need to cutthroat. Like, this, this, this lunatic's actually Muslim.

And then, you know, then Joe Biden does that. And so it's all whip.
So if you look at it from that perspective, then yeah, you want someone who is just,

oh, you're normal. Affable.
Yeah, affable. And I can like not have to be staring at my phone every two minutes to wonder who you pardoned, right?

So maybe that is the case.

I think the, and I can't believe we're already talking in 2028, but does that get you through a primary? I mean, that was the issue.

Obama was able to get through that 2008 primary, not because he was promising a new type of politics, but because enough new voters believed that you could get a new type of politics.

And I don't know if that's the case now, where, you know, let's say Josh Shapiro Westmore comes in and say, we got to do politics differently. Are like the youth going to get jazzed about that?

I don't know. No, probably not.
Probably not.

Yeah, that's a tension. I'm with you and not want to do this early.

I have a job for a listener, whatever listener wants to do this. I'm going to give myself like a buzzer where I have, I get like, I get like 10 minutes a week.

allowed to talk about talking about 2020 and that's it and once we hit the 10 I get buzzed okay I think that's a smart smart idea. And then when we get to the year 2026, you can go to 15 minutes.

We'll just keep it. You don't want to overdose.

You got to up it in gradual increments here.

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All right. We're going to end with Tucker.
Great. Somebody sent me a text.
I've not seen this. Just to be able to do that.
You've not seen this. First, I just want to pull this up.

This is pretty, this is pretty alarming.

I'm just going to pull this up live here.

Everybody had their Spotify rapts out yesterday. You can see mine on my Instagram if you want.

I'm obviously an indie gay, so it's pretty uh, pretty trendy, trendy indie gay music is what I'm listening to. But in the route, they're also the top 10 podcasts in the U.S.
Okay.

I'm not on there yet. We're working on it.
I thought you were. No, not there.
We're working on it. We're going up.
Rogan, Theovan, Caller Daddy, blah, blah, blah. Number seven, Tucker.
Okay.

Are you surprised by that? No, it's just alarming. Yeah, it's well, yeah.
This is why that's why you got to tell your friends about this podcast. We got to make it, we got to go up the list.
Yes.

Tell your friends.

It's a pretty alarming list. Amy Poehler, good hang with Amy Pohler's number 10, so she seems sane.
But the rest of the list, it's a little shaky.

Tucker last night, get home back to the hotel, scrolling as I do. Had the nuggets on the bottom.
You and me both, baby. The nuggets came on the TV.
Two Michelson said what? Scrolling on the phone.

I see Tucker has his new drop. He's got Milo Yiannopoulos.
Remember Milo? Of course.

He did the Dangerous Faggot tour back when you were at HuffPost. That was was his big thing.
Then he got de-platformed.

It was like the only actual case, like successful deplatforming.

I tried to slap all that out. I think ended up, the whole de-platforming move was a failure.
With the exception, he's the exception that proves the rule. It was the one deplatforming that worked.

I don't know. Do you remember that woman who made the terribly offensive AIDS joke

when she was boarding a plane? She was de-platforming. Okay, but we didn't know her before.
So deplatforming didn't make any difference to society. Success.

When does she land? That's what that was. When

fall into so-and-so land.

That was a really horrific joke. That was bad.
Anyway, Nyla Tucker's trying to bring Nyla back. And they did two hours on homosexuality.
Oh, my God.

And so I was like, I got to watch this, obviously, at 2x speed.

You went 2x? Oh, yeah. Well, it was 2x with just Tucker.
1.5. Well, yeah, no, with just Tucker, it's 2X.
And I like doing it, especially because his laugh is even funnier at 2x.

It's really funny at 2x. I do like him in Tucker.
But then Milo talks really fast, so I had to move it back down to 1.5.

Anyway, the premise was about the Ugandan interviewer who was like, why are you gay? And about how that person was correct, the Ugandan interviewer and the anti-gay Ugandan bill.

Tucker's pro that now, the death penalty

for certain gay acts. So Tucker explains why he has issues with homosexuality, then Milo explains his.

I want to play the Tucker one first tucker tucker's trying to demonstrate how he's being reasonable but how he's not really anti-gay he just wants to bring us back to a different year okay let's listen let's listen and what does it mean to live as a gay person in the united states what exactly does that look like like what's your life like

how many people do you have sex with How are those unfair questions?

Since you're the one throwing it in my face and telling me I'm not allowed to be against it, maybe I'm allowed to ask the questions I don't really want to ask, don't really want to know the answers to.

But since you've made it the North Star of our moral system in the United States, since you're willing to starve an African country because they disagree with it, maybe it's time for me to ask those questions because you push me to.

On this and a lot of other issues, if you just back off a little bit,

if we could just return to the status quo of, say, 1985, where, yeah, they're gay people, they're great, they're off, you know, whatever.

They're here, they're there, whatever, but they're not pushing gay sex on my kids in school.

1985. We're just going to go back to the glory days.
I was listening to it last year.

Those are the best years. I had to do the rewind because I was like, did he say 1995? Because at least we could start as a, like, we'll have a debating point.
I'd have some disagreements.

I couldn't have my family in 1995, so I would be opposed to that. But 1985 is what he chooses to say.
When gays were dying from AIDS and nobody was helping them. Yeah.
No, that was.

Let's just go back to that status quo. You guys, we don't bother you.
You don't bother us. You die.
We don't give you healthcare services. And that'll be fine.

And you have to tell me how many people you're fucking, by the way. Well, sorry, I couldn't, at one point, I was having trouble just following who he's talking about.
Like,

who is telling him he can't talk about gays or AIDS or something like that? No, he is saying that, he's arguing that the gays, we're all pushing it on every face and

that we've made gay the moral cause.

Okay, so we can't, we cannot critic, he's upset because we can't do it. It can't be a moral good.
Like, it's like if it was a moral news.

So Tucker is upset that we cannot ask questions about gays, basically. Well, he's upset that we are doing...
Yeah, he's upset you can't ask questions about why

that's rude. He's upset about that.
I also want to know how much sex they're like.

This is like the most.

This is clear projection, right? Like this is someone who's...

wants to explore homosexuality.

It seems like it. I don't know.

Has he talked about whether he's had a gay experience before? Has anyone asked him? Someone should ask ask him.

That seems like an obvious question. It's like, hey, you seem like utterly obsessed with homosexuality and your desire to be mean to them.
Have you ever tried it? Like, is that why you're upset?

That feels possible in a little prep school.

I'm not trying to be Freudian about it, but it does seem like, you know, perhaps one of the reasons he is like, can't get over this and wants to go back to a time where gays were dying from an unknown disease and didn't talk about it.

Like, maybe it's because something happened to him. It makes him uncomfortable.
Yeah.

Maybe, or maybe he's just being a prick. Well, that too.
Those can be totally related. Yeah.
Yeah, I think it's interesting.

There's a substantive element of like, just like how he's mainstreaming anti-Semitism, he's like trying to bring this back. He's like, okay, you know, he's

like, yeah, what do you think his booking process is? Like,

no one told him he had to bring Milo on. I'm sure Milo's not like the most, you know.

I don't think Milo's getting him huge numbers, but.

I don't think it's actually that hard if you look at his recent guess to figure it out tucker wants to he's like what is the thing that everybody says i can't do and i'm gonna do it he's like a baby and so that's i'm like i don't know if it's actually

but maybe he had a gay sex experience in prep school we should ask him but i think it's less about that than just like like i'm a brat like tucker is really like the prep school element of him is like i'm still i'm just embracing my 17 year old self and i'm going to say whatever thing is because like he's done it's been like that forever right yeah

he's done like night 9-11 stuff recently. Hitler was the good guy in World War II, obviously pro-Putin.

Chemtrails recently, I believe that he did.

Well, I understand. Yeah, now it's like, why are people gay? So anyway,

yeah, I don't know.

I think that's a good follow-up for him.

Maybe it's we do a trade. Maybe I'll send him my body count if he tells us if he ever had a gay experience.
Because

he does seem interested. Yeah, it seems sad.

One more thing that they went up that's sorry, we're going to be be up to our 10 minutes because it's slightly related to 2028, but we're going to end there.

He asked Milo his thoughts on Mayor Pete.

I mean, isn't it Buddha just the most interesting character of our age?

Like, I mean, he doesn't look like he looks like an intensely boring homosexual, like everything gay people shouldn't be, but it's so interesting the fact that, I mean, clearly he wasn't gay, like at the beginning.

Well, he had girlfriends. Right.
So he wasn't gay, but he made himself gay. I made that point because actually I had gay men who worked for me who were more in tune with this than me.

I'm not in tune at all. I'm not in tune at all.
I think that's all. Again, I'm telling you.

They said, well, he's not really gay. And I was like, no.
So, what does that mean?

Well, his sexuality,

like all homosexuality, is a function, a product, a symptom. What is his homosexuality a symptom of? It's of his vaulting ambition.

Butagic timed it perfectly so that post-Obama,

the gay guy with the black kids, perfect presidential candidate.

I'm not sure Miles got his finger on the pulse of the public.

The timeline is also a little off there. The gay guy with the black kid, I mean, his kids are like two.
Yeah. So, I mean, when he ran for president,

he didn't have black kids, actually. So, I mean, I'm just, I'm just, so if we were to take this theory at face value, the key is pretending to be gay.

He's pretending to have sex with Chastin just because he's so ambitious that he's like, I've got to do it. It's honestly quite the long conversation.

at this point.

You can break character. And the only way to do it is to adopt kids.
It's really, it's sick. And then they go on to do a lot of negative stuff about gay adoption, which is really sick and disgusting.

I'm not saying

I feel a little icky about this. Like, these people are not well.
And, you know, again, I think a lot of this is just projection.

The idea that, you know, oh, of course, Pete Buddigig would, like, engage in this.

decade-long fake cover-up where he's gay and has black kids and it's because he wants to be the president. It's like, it's because you think in this way, and not everyone thinks like this.

Yeah, that is right. That is right.
And you know, it is interesting. Tucker's like, I'm gonna have a gay sex expert come on, and works

gonna be like, Well, if he had girlfriends before,

I do get credentials, yeah. I don't know, bring on Dan Savage, baby.
If he's like, I had girlfriends before,

that means that he must be faking it. And I can just say, Yeah, no one's ever, no one's ever had difficulty figuring out the sexuality.

I know, uh, I know that you don't really know.

I know you don't know at all. At all.
I know at all you don't want to care about this. You don't have any issues.
But I just want to say, I also had a girlfriend once.

It's not fake.

Is this fake right now? I'm going to do it. It's all.
I know. It was just to write the podcasting charts.

Exactly. Straight never checked.
He's going to get to number six, and then he can finally get back to being straight. That's true.
This is why I was beating Michael Steele in the podcast charts.

Okay, if Michael Steele had pretended to be gay, okay, then he would have touched all the buttons.

We love you, Chairman.

That's amazing. Sam, anything you want to leave us with? No, I got to go.
I got to go.

Where do you got to go? We got big business today. Come on, you know that.
All right. Well, the people just the people like the banter, though.
I know. All right.
Well, I love being here.

Everybody else.

I don't know who the guest is tomorrow, so hopefully they'll be good.

It might be Sam. We got to figure that out.

But I promise you we'll do a great job with it. We'll see you back here tomorrow.
Appreciate y'all. Peace.
Peace.

So hold your head up, girl, and you'll go far.

Lance and I'm there.

I'm beautiful in my way. Just I'll make no mistakes.
I'm on the right track, baby. I was born this way.
Don't I still don't regret the smell of yourself and instead I'm on the right track, baby.

I was born this way for this world. There ain't no worry,

baby. I was born away.

Baby, I was born this way.

On this world, there ain't no way,

baby. I was born this way.
Right track, baby, I was born this way.

Don't be a drag, just be a queen. Don't be a drag, just be a queen.
Don't be a drag, just be a queen.

Give yourself prudence and love your friends.

Subway can rejoice it through

in the religion of the insecure. I must be myself, respect my youth.

Artist

is not saying,

But he capital HIMA.

I love my love, I love this brand good and

me, I'm on it for labor, yeah.

I'm beautiful in my way. This got me close to takes.
I'm on the right track, baby. I was born this way.
Don't have to tell me to regret. Just love itself and it's dead.
I'm on the right track.

Baby, I was born this way.

Oh, there ain't no one way. Baby, I was born

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