Debating Reality with Mehdi Hasan

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Speaker 14 Hello, everybody. Welcome to the weekly show podcast.
My name is Jon Stewart. We're taping this.
It's July 30th,

Speaker 14 which is

Speaker 14 what is that, like a Wednesday? It's got to be a Wednesday. There's so much going on.
I don't want to talk.

Speaker 14 For those of you who are probably listening to this and not viewing it, you might not realize. I have a giant like

Speaker 14 divot in my forehead, red and all that and if you're watching it on youtube you probably do see it i just want to let people know nothing to worry about as you get older uh you find that you have to go into the dermatologist on a regular basis and he takes out uh

Speaker 14 like a freezy ray and he just points it at your face uh a variety of different ways uh to try and keep your face from being consumed by uh metastasizing uh skin condition so for those of you who might be watching this and think to yourself, hey, does he know his face appears to be imploding on his forehead?

Speaker 14 I do know because this morning somebody shot liquid nitrogen at a wide variety of scaly things that are growing on an old man's head. But we're not going to talk about that today.
Today is going to be

Speaker 14 really a potpourri with just, I think, one of the best communicators that I see in the,

Speaker 14 was in the cable world now in the independent media world and i'm just gonna get to him because we've got so much uh to get to within the world from him so i'm just gonna jump in on that

Speaker 14 so we'll get right into it very excited to have our our guest today you've seen him from uh his work on uh msnbc but also uh now the founder and editor-in-chief of zetao metty hassan is here methy john thanks for having me oh my goodness.

Speaker 14 It's so nice to see you.

Speaker 14 How are things at Zatteo?

Speaker 15 Things at Zatteo very well in this horrific media climate that we're in,

Speaker 15 where the media is falling apart. Those of us who are taking a stab at independent journalism, I'm glad to report, are thriving.

Speaker 15 We just crossed a million subscribers on YouTube, which was a big landmark for us a year in.

Speaker 14 Yeah. No, you're, I think this might officially make you an influencer.

Speaker 14 If that's possible, I have to tell you, I was so, like everyone else in the universe, was incredibly struck by your Jubilee episode. Now, I'm not so familiar with Jubilee, but I am familiar with Medi.

Speaker 14 So I tuned in, obviously, because I always love a good Medi debate. Medi goes, he goes hard and he goes fast.

Speaker 14 It was you in the center of what appeared to be a circular... uh firing squad of the cast of footloose like they all appeared to be these lovely you know Midwestern.

Speaker 14 And when they began to open their mouths,

Speaker 14 you know, I understood, you know, it's, it's going to be Mehdi Hassan and it's going to be against conservatives.

Speaker 14 I did not in any way expect

Speaker 14 what I saw and heard, which was seemed to be very focused on the fact that you don't belong in this country and are not a citizen. And it was,

Speaker 14 was there a moment when you were in that environment where you thought, oh, this is not what I had expected?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I think that moment was minute one.

Speaker 14 I think it was all the way through.

Speaker 15 I mean, I went thinking as well, it would be some MAGA folks, some Trump cheerleaders, some people are like, tariffs are great and Donald Trump's a wonderful leader and we hate Joe Biden.

Speaker 15 I didn't expect, you know, the second or third guy saying, well, where were you born? in a discussion about crime. And I'm like, what has that got to do with the crime rate?

Speaker 15 I didn't expect the guy just saying, I'm a fascist and I love General Franco and I don't believe in democracy.

Speaker 15 I didn't expect the woman who said, well, immigrants can't be Americans, except my parents who are immigrants, they are Americans, just you're not.

Speaker 15 I didn't expect the guy saying, get the hell out of my country, you'll be the first to go. No, I didn't expect any of that.
And maybe I should have done.

Speaker 15 Maybe when they pitched it as 20 far-right conservatives, that should have been a giveaway. Who self-describes as far-right, John, at this same?

Speaker 14 And it was, you know, and

Speaker 14 there couldn't have been more pleasant-looking-sounding folks.

Speaker 14 But when they started to get into that sort of i'm not so worried about fascism because i don't think they're going to kill me yeah

Speaker 15 i i thought i'm a good catholic boy i'm a good catholic boy i don't like the nazis because they were mean to catholics i was like what about the jews

Speaker 14 listen that of course you can find some justifications in there uh for those types of actions but i thought in the middle of it there was a a a flip a a switch flipped in your mind which says oh this is not a debate This is a gang beat in.

Speaker 14 And I'm just going to have to survive the bananas nature of like, how do you debate somebody who just says, oh, no, I think fascism, I think that might be the way to go because you'll, you know, the people will vote it in.

Speaker 14 And then from then on, we'll be fine.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it very much was. They were trying to do a beat down.

Speaker 15 As someone who loves action movies and comedy action movies, it did feel a little Jackie Chan-esque where you're kind of running up an alleyway, alleyway, running up the wall, and they're all coming at you at the same time.

Speaker 15 Although they did come one by one, so it was one of those classic fight scenes where you wonder, why do they go one by one? But in this, the rules meant that they had to come one by one.

Speaker 15 It wasn't to one.

Speaker 14 You were Van Dam. You were Van Dam.
I'll take Van Dam.

Speaker 15 I'll take Van Dam. I can't do the splits like Van Dam, rhetorical splits.
But 20 to 1 was the, you know, look, John, I like a good argument. I literally wrote a book about arguing.

Speaker 15 So when Jubilee said, hey, do you want to come and take on 20 people? I'm like, I like those odds. 20 to 1, bring it.

Speaker 15 What I didn't expect was that they weren't interested in debating at all. I'd watched some of the other jubilees with Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk and my friend Sam Seder on the left.

Speaker 15 And in those debates, some of the folks did want to debate and a few of them were crazy. In mine, it was the other way around.
Like two of them wanted to debate and 18 were crazy.

Speaker 15 And that's what I didn't see coming, the ratcheting up. I went with like, one of my claims, John, was Donald Trump is defying the Constitution.
That was one of my four claims.

Speaker 15 And I went prepped with the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, 14th Amendment. I had it all.
22nd Amendment. I'm good to go.
I've got every amendment. Right.

Speaker 15 At first, guys, like, I don't care about the Constitution. Who cares?

Speaker 15 Where do you go with that?

Speaker 14 What do you do next?

Speaker 15 I'm like, I don't have a chapter in my book for that.

Speaker 14 How wonderful, though, Matty, that that is what this has become. That it's such an interesting

Speaker 14 metastasizing of the movement on the right, which is, as you know, it's always steeped in kind of the fetishizing of the Constitution.

Speaker 14 We the people, they've got, you know, the, all the buses are wrapped with that Constitution picture and it's the flags. And it's steeped in

Speaker 14 kind of the rhetoric of we are the Minutemen and the revolutionaries. And it's morphed into actually,

Speaker 14 now that I think about it, now that we are in charge,

Speaker 14 fuck the Constitution. And we don't need like watching them.

Speaker 15 Fuck the Constitution with a little asterisk, John, that says, but we love the Second Amendment.

Speaker 14 But we've the Second Amendment is sacrificed. As a matter of fact, that might be the only amendment that was even put in there.

Speaker 14 If you really look at it,

Speaker 14 but it's such a shocking change. Have you seen in your experience in

Speaker 14 debating

Speaker 14 the right that this has shifted? Was any of that constitutional fetishization good faith? Is this just a subtle shift now that Donald Trump has exposed

Speaker 14 how much authoritarianism appeals to them?

Speaker 15 Look, I think it was good faith amongst a minority of them, but that's the minority that have since become never Trumpers or mild Trump critics.

Speaker 15 So you've got a kind of a Rand Paul in the Senate who will make some noises about, oh, you can't bomb countries without congressional authorization.

Speaker 15 But he really got offended recently when Trump didn't invite him to a party at the White House. So even for him, Rand Paul, it was like the Constitution.

Speaker 15 Yeah, the party invite and then the Constitution. But you know, you're Justin Amashis, who was a congressman from Michigan, libertarian.

Speaker 15 He's been very outspoken, but he's no longer in the party or in Congress. The people who were in Congress and talked endlessly about the Constitution, they were clearly in bad faith.

Speaker 15 Mike Lee from Utah, the senator from Utah, this guy was the constitutional guy. He never stopped talking about the Constitution and Liberty.

Speaker 15 And then it turns out he was involved allegedly in the attempt to rig the, you know, overturn the 2020 election with the fake electors. We know now that he defends anything Trump says online.

Speaker 15 These people clearly were in bad faith. They just confirmed this week, John, a manifestly unqualified, unfit judge to the federal government.

Speaker 14 Emil Bove, who was the president's personal lawyer.

Speaker 15 President Pez allegedly told staff, according to whistleblowers, to fuck the judges, tell the judges to fuck off when they get rulings they don't like. He's now been confirmed to the bench.

Speaker 15 And there are some, like I think there's a guy called Greg Nunziata, I think his name is, former Marco Rubio staffer, who has been very principled on this and spoken out.

Speaker 15 And he said on Twitter this week, if you're a conservative who claims to care about the Constitution, this is it. It's over.

Speaker 15 By confirming this guy, never pretend again that you care about the Constitution or about due process.

Speaker 15 So I don't think it was in good faith and even this shtick about we don't care about the constitution the guy who said i'm a fascist to me on jubilee he was very explicit that he loves the second amendment it's just the other amendments he doesn't love and then he goes on a little uh sympathy tour last week apparently on far right tv saying he lost his job apparently he didn't lose his job he lost his job earlier but he tried to say he lost it because of this to get a fundraiser don't forget a key part of the modern conservative movement is go fund me and he

Speaker 15 interestingly he says well you know my free speech was violated by being fired. I was like, I thought you don't believe in the First Amendment.
I thought it was only the Second Amendment.

Speaker 15 That's right. It's so cynical and self-serving and convenient.

Speaker 14 The victimization. You know, I almost think that the right for all their, it's,

Speaker 14 did you ever meet Roger Ailes? Had you ever.

Speaker 15 Thankfully, I did not.

Speaker 14 Oh, Meddy, you missed out on one of the Lovelier. I had one of those.

Speaker 14 bananas types meetings at fox news in the bowels of fox news behind it was when you were trying to get your primetime show I exactly I wanted to work there so bad if he would only let me I was I used to go on Bill O'Reilly's show every now and again they would bring in the uh you know the clownish uh liberal myself and I would go on there and and one day uh one of the people came down and said mr.

Speaker 14 Ailes would like to see you and I thought why geez I didn't even know he lived in the building so we had to walk through the kinds of like get smart like doors would open and shut.

Speaker 14 And you didn't really know where you were until you got into this one part of the building that was colder than the other parts of the building.

Speaker 14 You almost felt the hair on the back of your neck and the

Speaker 14 chill. And you could see everybody's breath in this one part.

Speaker 14 And he and I yelled at each other in the office for about an hour.

Speaker 14 He wanted me to show appreciation to him because without him, I have no career. And I wanted him to stop

Speaker 14 poisoning the atmosphere around

Speaker 14 her country

Speaker 14 that was killing. But what struck me about Ailes was

Speaker 14 he meant all of it.

Speaker 14 He meant every word of it. Yes.
But the strategy was cynical. So the good faith wasn't what he believed.

Speaker 14 It was the methodology that he would employ. And his methodology was, I am going to discredit discredit all of the institutions or any of the voices that may in any way harm my movement.

Speaker 14 I'm going to make sure that editorial authority is seen as elitism. Yes.
I'm going to, and yet I am going to exercise authoritarian control over my message machine.

Speaker 14 And that's, I think, the genius of that movement. Yes.
They don't play by the rules that they ask you to play by.

Speaker 15 No, not at all. And this is why, and you know, I can go on a long rant here about

Speaker 15 why liberals and democrats and leftists have got to understand that you are not on some ridiculous, even playing field where everyone, you know, I've been hearing this since Donald Trump came down the escalator in 2015.

Speaker 15 I've been hearing this since he won in 2016. I've been hearing this since last year.
You know, just because they don't play by the rules doesn't mean we shouldn't.

Speaker 15 And it's like, no, that's exactly what it means, right? If you are playing a football match or a soccer game, as

Speaker 15 we say here, if you're playing on the pitch and the other team picks up the ball and just runs with it in the middle of a soccer game and you carry on just playing with the ball on the ground, you will lose.

Speaker 15 I mean, there's no debate about that. At some point, you either have to accept that you're going to lose honorably or you're going to say, I'm going to pick up the ball as well and run with it.

Speaker 14 Now, for those of us listening at home, when you said pitch, he means the field. For those, I'm going to translate this into suburban American.
The pitch was.

Speaker 15 I've already confused everyone by saying football and soccer.

Speaker 14 Of course, you can carry the ball and put it in. People have no idea what's happening now.

Speaker 14 I've never understood why you you call it football if you carry it i just don't understand well we don't there's there's so many more things we have to get to in the states that don't make that much sense before we we get to the names of our games but now i'll be told i don't belong here again by the surrounding people

Speaker 14 that was when you were saying that i'm a citizen they're like no that's not my favorite was when he said uh white people are native americans and and everybody starts applauding and he's like i got applause and you just go say to the guy like well they're all so fascist like that's yes.

Speaker 15 And then they voted him out. And I couldn't help but dig it out.
I was like, I think the people who clapped for you have just voted you out.

Speaker 15 They just voted me out. That was the guy who was like in a green t-shirt and going, his opening remark was, I've got this thing where I have to stay calm.
I'm like, where the fuck am I?

Speaker 15 Like, how much security did I need to bring with me? And then it turns out, according to The Guardian, this guy allegedly was involved in all sorts of violent protests a few years back in California.

Speaker 15 So I'm like, oh, okay. Makes more sense now.
Makes more sense.

Speaker 14 I like that he said, you know, my, my family's native here in the 1500s. And I was like, I think, wasn't Jamestown 16, like the first settlement?

Speaker 15 I was like, he was like, did you come with the Vikings?

Speaker 14 I was going to say, how could you have been here from the 1500s? Unless maybe it was the Spanish. He came up from the West Indies.
Maybe he was his people with Cortez, which is

Speaker 15 putting far too much effort into fact-checking the white supremacist.

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Speaker 14 Meddy, you know, it brings up, though, kind of of that interesting point of how does the media handle this moment?

Speaker 14 You've been a part of those institutions, you know, MSNBC was going to be the liberal answer to Fox, but I don't think they had any idea what they were up against. Yeah.

Speaker 14 You know, Fox News was absolutely strategically managed and controlled,

Speaker 14 top down. They understood the assignment.
Every day part working with every other day part

Speaker 14 to create a messaging machine that would make sure that if any Republican fucked up the way Nixon had, nothing bad would happen to them again. Yeah.

Speaker 14 What was your sense of what MSNBC was or what those are?

Speaker 15 When I worked there, look, my thing is wherever I've worked in my career, I've probably been the most lefty person at that institution.

Speaker 15 And there was no different when I joined, maybe with the exception of the intercept, but when I joined MSNBC, that was the case.

Speaker 15 I think Chris Hayes was probably the most progressive host there until I joined. And I was probably to the left of Chris.

Speaker 15 And, you know, I had a great time at MSNBC and I did some great shows. But what's interesting is I always found that critique, both from the left and the right.

Speaker 15 And by the way, it's on the left and the right, you know, oh, this idea that MSNBC is the liberal version of Fox.

Speaker 15 It's an insane because to say that, you have to not understand what Fox is, which you understand, which is Fox is an organized propaganda arm of the Republican Party, always has been, and certainly in the Trump era, of the MAGA wing of the Republican Party.

Speaker 15 And when people say, oh, well, you've got Fox on the right and Memes and Missy on the left and CNN in the center, it's a complete misreading of our landscape.

Speaker 15 First of all, they're all corporate-owned entities which have corporate agendas. Let's just be very clear about that.
So this idea that you're left when you're owned by Comcast is insane, right?

Speaker 15 That's just ridiculous when CNN now has its major shareholder, John Malone, a big Trump donor.

Speaker 15 And then there's the issue of like, well, hold on. Fox is not just the right.
Fox is a propaganda arm. Sean Sean Hannity used to call Donald Trump up after his show every night and chew the fat.

Speaker 15 Rachel Maddow, whatever you think of Rachel Maddow, did not call up Joe Biden to chat with him after her show.

Speaker 15 MSNBC anchors, some of them are ex-Biden officials, but MSNBC serving anchors did not turn up at Biden rallies and introduce Biden in the same way that Fox anchors have done.

Speaker 15 We've seen 20 odd Fox hosts, reporters. become members of this administration.

Speaker 15 Like there is a merger between Fox and the Republican Party and especially the Trump administration, which doesn't exist in any other part of our media.

Speaker 15 And as for MSNBC, look, it obviously has liberal bent. It had liberal hosts.
You know, it was good on liberal issues like abortion, but there was no organized agenda. Nobody sat around going, today.

Speaker 15 How do all the shows make the case for universal health care? Just never happened. I wish.
I wish that happened. It never happened, right? We did our own thing, the host.
I pushed my thing.

Speaker 15 Chris pushed his thing. Joe Scarborough pushes his thing, et cetera, et cetera.
Sure,

Speaker 14 the liberal host of five hours of MSNBC programming.

Speaker 15 Some of the most prominent hosts on MSNBC are ex-Republicans, like Nicole Wallace and Joe Scarborough. That doesn't exist on Fox.

Speaker 15 Prominent hosts on Fox are not ex-Democratic members of Congress or administration members.

Speaker 15 So I just found this equalizing so ridiculous because it A, doesn't understand what Fox is doing, which is pure propaganda.

Speaker 15 B, it doesn't understand how corporate media works, which is in the interests of corporations. And C, it just, it also kind of,

Speaker 15 it's the banality of evil. It makes what Fox does seem normal.
And what Fox does is sui generis. I've worked in the UK.
I've worked around the world.

Speaker 15 There is no media outlet I know of anywhere on the planet, with the exception of maybe India, where cable news is insane. Really?

Speaker 15 Yeah, cable news there is like pure Modi propaganda and they incite violence openly against Muslims, Pakistan, et cetera.

Speaker 15 It's really jingoistic. Arundhati Roy, the award-winning novelist, she said to me once, you know,

Speaker 15 our media makes is Fox on steroids, it's Fox, you know, on times 100.

Speaker 15 But Fox, in the Western world that I know of, I know of nothing else like Fox that pushes the kind of conspiracy theories, hate, and government propaganda in a way that I don't, I just never seen it anywhere else.

Speaker 14 And is able to pivot so agilely whenever there is, you know, so just as you said, imagine this organization that makes its bones morning to night, every single day part with a real directionality about

Speaker 14 Barack Obama, Barack Hussein Obama. I'm sorry, I didn't pronounce his full name.
You got to have all three names, is born in Kenya.

Speaker 14 You know, they make their bones on the conspiratorial nature and sort of very cynically infuse QAnon into their programming and get it all.

Speaker 15 The Fox Cinematic Universe.

Speaker 14 The Fox cinematic universe and all of its tentacles. And then the minute that the

Speaker 14 bomb that they planted needs to be diffused, to watch them pivot so quickly on especially something like this Epstein

Speaker 14 case is they are

Speaker 14 really good at what they do. Yes.
In a way that I think is shocking. Is the idea.
So here's the question.

Speaker 14 We know it's going to be corporate media. There is nothing right now that has the power of those cable channels to amplify and continue

Speaker 14 to spin sort of the circadian rhythms of social media. So social media is the thing that

Speaker 14 first, you know, it's incentivized for these really hateful, really difficult conspiracy theories, right? That's how those things, the algorithm is to that.

Speaker 14 But cable news is the thing that infuses it into the mainstream of American society. Yes.

Speaker 15 And eclipse.

Speaker 14 How do you battle that? And maybe it's not a right-left issue. Maybe it's the thing you talked about earlier, good faith, bad faith.

Speaker 15 Oh, 100%. And I think, well, not just good faith, bad faith, but, you know, reality versus non-reality, decency versus indecency.
This is not about kind of left versus right.

Speaker 15 There is a sense of,

Speaker 15 my critique of Trump, MAGA, Fox, is not about

Speaker 15 conservatism. I mean, I have my issues with conservatism, but like when I object to what Trump and Fox are doing, it's not because I'm arguing about what is the best marginal rate of taxation.

Speaker 15 It's not about what is the best crime reduction policy in major cities. Like those are old debates.

Speaker 14 Conservatism abandoned that a few years ago.

Speaker 15 Yeah, like this, like when I turned up at Jubilee, I didn't think I was going to be having like a debate about the laugh a curve. Like I'm not that naive,

Speaker 14 but

Speaker 15 it is now fundamentally about, do you want a strong man or not? Do you believe in equality or not? Do you think the media should be free or not?

Speaker 15 Like that is the essential questions which you're tackling. And that's why

Speaker 15 it's not just about right-wing propaganda. It's about who here actually believes in the same stuff that we all used to believe in or tried to believe in.

Speaker 15 And I think that's what's so dangerous in this moment. I'm not expecting a left-wing fox.
For many reasons, I don't think such a thing could exist or should exist.

Speaker 15 What I do hope for is a media that still has some kind of independence, some kind of diversity of thought, some kind of adherence to basic journalistic principles of independence, of holding power to account.

Speaker 15 That's what we're losing right now. I'm not some huge defender of CBS news, right? I have my criticisms of CBS like I do of all corporate media.
But do I want to see CBS News become another Fox?

Speaker 15 No, I don't. And that's where it's heading to right now with the recent FCC deal, with the merger deal, with the Trump settlement.

Speaker 15 Like when I see what's happening to ABC and CBS and maybe soon NBC, CNN, that is worrying because, as I say, India,

Speaker 15 we've seen this show before, John. This is a global playbook that Trump is borrowing from.
India. Turkey,

Speaker 15 Hungary.

Speaker 15 What have all these countries done? Orban, Erdogan, Modi. They've all taken over the media in their respective countries.

Speaker 15 And they didn't take over the media by sending tanks and armed men into newsrooms.

Speaker 15 They took over the media the exact same way that Trump is doing right now, through lawsuits, through economic harassment, through defaming and smearing journalists, through violently attacking journalists who are covering protests,

Speaker 15 through all of these methods, through hollowing out public media, NPR, PBS, defunding. This is the playbook in India, in Hungary, in Turkey, in Russia, in Israel, and here in the United States now.

Speaker 15 This is a very, very clear global playbook, and I think we need to wake up to that fast.

Speaker 14 I think you're absolutely right, Matty. And I think part of it is what

Speaker 14 Trump understands, and you have to give, and I have to give credit to him, and I don't know if you've ever interviewed him or anything, Steve Bannon, who I think is in many ways, you know, they always used to call Karl Rove the architect.

Speaker 14 I think he's the architect. He understood this melding of

Speaker 14 populist rhetoric with kind of the more

Speaker 14 authoritarian, anti-woke, Christian nationalist, melding those movements together strategically to gain the political advantage there

Speaker 14 was the way that they went. You know, people always thought, oh, Russia must have something on Trump.

Speaker 14 He doesn't have anything on Trump because they agree with each other on how to govern and what you would want to do.

Speaker 14 You want less gay, you want more Jesus, even if you don't believe in Jesus at all, which I don't think Trump is a religious person, but he understands it it as a really wonderful force amplifier of power.

Speaker 14 And it's almost as though those discussions, you know, you were just saying the laugher curve and all that. All those discussions, I think, are out the window.

Speaker 14 It's no longer capitalism versus socialism or communism or any of those.

Speaker 15 It's, do you agree with daddy or not?

Speaker 14 That's right. And it, and the framework of it is woke versus unwoke.

Speaker 15 That's how they framed it. Yes.
That's right. And more than Steve Bannon, of course, who's now kind of on the outside is the guy on the inside, is our de facto vice president, Stephen Miller.

Speaker 14 Boy, that dude, he's dark.

Speaker 15 He is the guy who's pushing this.

Speaker 15 He's got his hand in every pot. I think he wants to be national security advisor now, too, once Rubio stops acting as national security advisor.
He's obviously the guy pushing the deportation agenda.

Speaker 15 He's pushing the attacks on the media, the irony of being Jewish and being part of a Christian nationalist white supremacist administration.

Speaker 15 Stephen Miller's been kind of cozying up to white supremacists for years. That is very much the agenda.
And again, they didn't hide this stuff. They said it very plainly.

Speaker 15 Donald Trump said, I want to be a dictator for day one, because dictators are only ever for 24 hours.

Speaker 15 Do you remember in his first term he did an interview with Steve Doocy on the White House lawn? And he said, I just came back from North Korea.

Speaker 15 And the way they stand up straight for Kim, why can't my people do that?

Speaker 14 He loves it.

Speaker 15 He loves it. Donald Trump, you know, he's a liar, but occasionally he tells the truth.
And that was a very truthful statement. He does wish for his people to stand up straight and salute him.

Speaker 15 He got his crappy military parade this summit. It was deeply disappointing that he got, that he was desperate for.

Speaker 14 He was angry about his military parade in that he didn't realize that the tanks were all going to be lined up with like safe stopping distance in case it was rainy.

Speaker 14 Like he wanted the, I want all my weapons within two feet of each other. I was like, I want bumper to bumper.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 14 And he wanted the goose stepping, you know, military authoritarian displays and all that. And it turned out to be kind of a nice,

Speaker 14 maybe grade eight to grade 10 little military history parade.

Speaker 15 And you had soldiers dragging their feet and not goose-stepping, thankfully, some of them showing their own actions.

Speaker 14 They were waving.

Speaker 14 When was the last time you saw a North Korea parade where the guys would pop out of the tanks and be like, hey, everybody?

Speaker 15 I mean, we're not.

Speaker 15 So the good news is we're not there yet. The bad news is, as the Jubilee debate showed, there's an aspiration to be there very soon.
And the authoritarianism on the right is off the charts.

Speaker 15 This desperation for a strong leader, for canceling the Constitution, for getting rid of judges.

Speaker 15 You look at the polling now amongst Republicans, the number of Republicans who say there should be no checks on the president. Congress should not be able to block the president.

Speaker 15 The judiciary should not be able to block the president. That is a very worrying sign.
And again, there was this complacency in the United States of America. I came here 10 years ago.

Speaker 15 I became a citizen five years ago. I have a little bit of an outsider perspective, and I have to remind my fellow Americans.
It can happen here.

Speaker 15 This idea that the United States of America is immune to authoritarian, global authoritarian trends, especially when you have a tribune like Trump who is Teflon when it comes to scandal and controversy, that makes it doubly worse for the U.S.

Speaker 14 He has understood that some of the guardrails that were, you know, people always think like, oh, well, the businesses will save us because they don't want the trouble. They don't want the volatility.

Speaker 14 What Trump understands is people don't want friction. And if I can create enough friction in their world, it's the same way he ran his businesses, by the way.

Speaker 14 Like what he would do to contractors, he would pay them about 80%,

Speaker 14 75% 75% to 80% of what he owed them, knowing that

Speaker 14 the hassle and the friction that they would need to go through to get that last bit. So he got himself a savings.
And that's the way he's approaching this entire country. The thing I still can't.

Speaker 15 And he's settling. Look, he's calling for a settlement with Fox.
You've seen that this week, right?

Speaker 15 He said this week, oh, I hope they settle.

Speaker 14 Oh, he said Fox wants to settle with him.

Speaker 15 Yes. which is planting the idea that that is out there.
He's very good at kind of testing the waters. Rupert Murdoch is an old pal of his, so he's obviously put him on the spot.

Speaker 15 We saw what happened in the Dominion case where they settled immediately when they realized Tucker Carlson's techs were going to come out in droves. And look, this is what he's corporate America.

Speaker 15 This idea that corporate America is going to save us is the most insane one of all. Fascism is indeed an alliance between the strong man and big business.
Of course.

Speaker 15 It always has been, going back to Italy, Germany, etc. And that's what's so depressing about some of these corporations bending the knee.

Speaker 15 This idea that they're all being bullied into it isn't actually true. A lot of them are happy to go along with the anti-diversity stuff.

Speaker 15 They're happy happy to go along with the crackdowns on campuses if you're a university leader. They're happy to go along with kind of ending any kind of initiatives to fight racism.

Speaker 15 And of course, he rewards them with massive tax cuts, right? We just passed this big, beautiful, or ugly bill. And who's going to benefit from that?

Speaker 15 The owners of the big tech companies and the social media giants, the owners of the corporate media outlets and the boards of those major networks.

Speaker 15 So he knows how to reward them and also how to bully them. It's a mixture of fear and greed on their part.

Speaker 14 That's right.

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Speaker 14 you know as we look at this and we think like okay this is a function of donald trump but it's it's not there's this ethno-nationalism that is arising you know you mentioned uh modi and you mentioned orbon and and putin it really feels like we move from uh

Speaker 14 and it was never particularly stable there was always conflagration wherever you went but it's it's a new world order that goes back to the idea of and to quote Thomas Shelby from Peaky Blinders, big fuck small, that this is about what you can get away with through your coercion and power and what limits.

Speaker 14 And now you're seeing him apply it mostly to former allies,

Speaker 14 the EU. You know, he is much more willing to, as you said, lionize North Korea and Russia and these other authoritarian governments And much less, you know, to him, the EU is just too gay.

Speaker 14 It's too gay for Trump. He likes those heterosexual countries like North Korea.

Speaker 15 The classic example of that was, of course, Ukraine and Zelensky in the Oval Office, where he and Vance ganged up to berate Zelensky, but they would never dare to behave in that way in Putin's presence or speak about Putin when he's not in the room.

Speaker 15 Like, Trump has said more vicious things about Justin Trudeau than he's ever said about Xi Jinping. That's just a fact, right? It's a demonstrable fact.
And you have to ask the question, why?

Speaker 15 Why is this U.S. president? I'm not saying previous U.S.
presidents were great defenders of liberal democracy. All U.S.
presidents have cozied up to authoritarians and tyrants.

Speaker 15 But I don't remember one that's done so as enthusiastically, as gleefully as Donald Trump in the belief that he too should have those authoritarian powers at home. Why can't I have what they have?

Speaker 15 And I think Netanyahu's cut from the same cloth.

Speaker 15 I think Orban is cut from all of these in illiberal democracies, people who are notionally elected, but would love to be dictators like your Xi Jinping and your Kims.

Speaker 14 And you see, in the different ways that they go about it, I mean, Netanyahu, they try and get it so that there's no Supreme Court now. And if you know, they try and maneuver any of those.

Speaker 14 It reminds me of

Speaker 14 the real triumph of this is

Speaker 14 Trump has shown us where the cracks are

Speaker 14 in our democratic system. And I think that one of the things that's difficult, and I wonder your opinion about this,

Speaker 14 for us constitutionally, is to realize a lot of these excesses and abuses are built into the system. Yes, 100%.

Speaker 14 He's going out and he basically, he's got a couple of historians that sit in the back and go, hey, man, I just wanted to let you know, like in 1803, there was an emergency power we used on immigration.

Speaker 14 You might as well just declare that because you get to do whatever you want. I mean, look, the most progressive president supposedly we'd ever had in this country is FDR.

Speaker 14 And he basically suspended habeas corpus on

Speaker 14 anybody of Asian descent and interned them in camps. Like this

Speaker 14 darkness has always been in the system. Yes.

Speaker 15 And the second most progressive president, LBJ, just did a mass genocide in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Right.
So there's precedent for all this shit at home and abroad.

Speaker 15 Look, I 100% agree with you, John. I've been ranting and raving about constitutional reform, political reform in this country for a long time.

Speaker 15 Again, as an outsider, you come in and you think, this shit doesn't work. And no one else does it like this.
Electoral college, what the fuck is that? Like, no one else uses this stuff.

Speaker 15 You know, the whole gerrymandering, which right now that Texas is doing and now Gavin Newsom says he'll do for the Democrats.

Speaker 15 No other Western democracy allows politicians to draw their own boundaries. None.
Only the U.S. allows politicians to pick their voters rather than voters picking their politicians.
That's a problem.

Speaker 15 There are so many issues. And the problem is the Democrats left this space open, right?

Speaker 15 And I say this about both wings of the Democratic Party are guilty of this. The liberal centrist wing, whatever you want to call it, the Biden wing, and the Bernie wing, right?

Speaker 15 So bernie sanders bless him i agree with him on universal health care i agree with him on taxing the rich and minimum wage but i've never heard from that wing of the party about constitutional reform political reform the important because they're also institutionalists bernie loves the senate the senate's got to go right the senate is a huge problem

Speaker 15 the senate's a huge problem we've got to reform we've got to reform the senate you cannot have a state situation going forward where wyoming has two senators well like if you want to get rid of dei

Speaker 14 The Senate is affirmative action. Affirmative action for Wyoming.

Speaker 14 Old white rural dudes.

Speaker 15 Yeah, like 12 people get two senators, and like 50 million people in California get two senators. Like, the whole thing is insane.

Speaker 15 And I think there's so many things at the Supreme Court, right?

Speaker 15 What we've seen this week is another reminder that the Republicans gamed the system, rigged the judiciary, packed the courts after accusing the Democrats of wanting to pack the courts.

Speaker 15 Every accusation is a confession. And meanwhile, Joe Biden did a report in his first year.
He commissioned an independent report from the great and the good on what to do about the Supreme Court.

Speaker 15 They came up with a bunch of milquetoast recommendations. He ignored them all and kicked it into the long grass.

Speaker 15 And here we are with a 6-3 Supreme Court, maybe 7-2, God forbid, if Trump gets another one, is lucky enough to get four, which would be insane.

Speaker 15 So that complete vacating of the field, the pitch on constitutional and political reform is a huge problem.

Speaker 14 Don't go back to Europe on the bottom.

Speaker 15 I'm going to go to the pitch, the pitch, the pitch.

Speaker 15 My pitch is that on the pitch of reform, we need to fix that. And the next Democratic president cannot simply say, oh, I will be, you know, Harris, we're not going back, was her thing, right?

Speaker 15 It cannot just be, we're going to move beyond Trump and go back to business as usual. It has to be we're going to prevent future authoritarians from trying to destroy the system from within.

Speaker 15 Like the idea that, for example, you know, basic conflict of interest laws don't apply to the president when you have a president like Trump.

Speaker 15 Like, the founding fathers did not anticipate the guy from Home Alone 2 becoming president of the United States. They just didn't.

Speaker 14 It's a fact.

Speaker 15 Like, not to be intent, but if they're intent

Speaker 15 to build a system for Donald Trump, I have to take a second.

Speaker 14 If you look at Federalist Paper 37,

Speaker 14 Hamilton said there will be a sequel

Speaker 14 of a very famous.

Speaker 14 It really speaks to, I mean, think about when we talk about sort of representative democracy. And again, this gets us back to the spirit of the revolution, the people, taxation without representation.

Speaker 14 So we live in a country that is, by all measures, very closely divided politically. But there is one side that

Speaker 14 has 78 million voters, a lot of people that do it, and zero power.

Speaker 14 And I'm talking about like can't call a witness, can't hold a committee meeting, can't do, there is zero power invested right now in the 70-some million people that vote for Democrats.

Speaker 14 They have, and I'm talking on the federal level, obviously within state systems, it's slightly different.

Speaker 14 I don't recall that power-sharing agreement. We really are in a joint custody agreement right now.
And right now, the the country is living with dad.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 it really does.

Speaker 15 But the problem is, the country is living with dad, John. But dad is offering the kids all sorts of fake gifts.
Maybe he'll never give them those gifts, but he's offering them

Speaker 14 pretending to be.

Speaker 15 They like living. He may beat them a little, but they like being beaten by dad.

Speaker 15 And I think the problem is, is mom, to use a British phrase, or mom, gonna offer, what is she gonna offer to get the kids back?

Speaker 15 And I think the problem is the Democrats have had power, John.

Speaker 14 They may not have power right now, but they had power.

Speaker 15 They controlled all three branches of government, right?

Speaker 14 They controlled it. Well, they had it during the Obama administration.

Speaker 15 They had there the House to Senate, not the Supreme Court, but the House to Senate and the White House. And they had it during Obama.
They had it to an extent under Biden.

Speaker 15 And they just didn't use it in the way they should have used it.

Speaker 15 And the question is, can they promise the American people that next time we get those gavels, next time we're in the Oval Office, we are going to fight A, on your behalf, but also B, against those corrupt fools and I think that is a fundamental you know the person I blame most for Donald Trump's existence in the White House right now is not Stephen Miller is not Steve Bannon is not the fascist on Jubilee it is a man named Merrick Garland who sat on his arse for three years oh thank god I thought you were gonna say me I know I don't Benny I'm so pleased that you so really Merrick

Speaker 14 by by his timidity yes but it's sometimes deeper than doesn't that let too many Democrats off the course it's deeper than that it was a rhetorical flourish. But my point is:

Speaker 15 if I'm going to identify, if I'm going to invite a symbol of a symbol, a symbol, a human symbol of the wider fecklessness, abortion, cowardice of the Democratic Party,

Speaker 14 then it is Merrick Garland.

Speaker 15 Yes, Merrick Garland is the tribune and symbol of that.

Speaker 15 He's the guy who, don't forget, they didn't just make him attorney general when he was manifestly not the right person in that moment, but they cheered him. They were like, wow,

Speaker 15 this is an F you to MAGA. They wouldn't put him on the Supreme Court.
We put him in the DOJ. Maybe he wasn't appropriate for the DOJ, right?

Speaker 15 They should have put in someone, an Elizabeth Warren figure, someone who would go into the DOJ and prosecute all these authoritarian. January 6th happened and he dragged his feet.

Speaker 15 Donald Trump never saw the inside of a courtroom for January the 6th. That is, I will never get over that.
I will never, to my dying days, I'll be on the deathbed. I'll say, damn you, Merrick Garland.

Speaker 15 Donald Trump never saw the inside of a courtroom. That is a scandal.

Speaker 14 For that, they tried to capone him. We can't get you on sedition and overthrowing the government.

Speaker 15 By the way, that wasn't Merrick Garland, right? Even New York wasn't Merrick Garland. It was local.
Exactly.

Speaker 14 No, that's Letitia James and it's, you know, everybody else.

Speaker 15 It wasn't the federal government. Right.
It wasn't the federal government. The federal government had to be dragged kicking and screaming.

Speaker 15 The funny thing is, I heard Republicans for four years say, they're weaponizing the government against us. I wish.
I wish they had weaponized the government against you. They did the exact opposite.

Speaker 15 Joe Biden said, I've got to stay above the fray and not say anything about these cases. Merrick Garland wouldn't say anything.
His deputy wouldn't say anything.

Speaker 15 And the federal cases came from Jack Smith. He outsourced that to a special counsel.

Speaker 15 It was just insanity to see the past. The next Democratic administration has to run on a platform of we are going to prosecute the people who did these crimes.

Speaker 15 You know, all those masked ICE agents committing crimes on our streets, they need to be prosecuted by the next Democratic administration, the next Democratic Congress.

Speaker 14 But that's letting the leaders of it off the hook. That's going after the rank and file.

Speaker 15 Of course, and the leaders. I'm taking for granted the leaders.
I'm saying top to bottom. Exactly.

Speaker 15 We can't have a Barack Obama coming in in 2008 and saying, hey, we tortured some folks, but I want to look forward, not back.

Speaker 14 That's a great point. But the other issue with that era of Democratic politics was they ran on the audacity of what was...

Speaker 14 possible and they govern on the timidity of what they think they might be able to get through with the checks and balances. And you can't have that dichotomy.

Speaker 14 But isn't there an opportunity then, Mehdi, in the way that Donald Trump showed the cracks in the Democratic system and that he weaponized our own excesses against us in terms of emergency powers and all the things that were possible?

Speaker 14 Hasn't he also shown the Democrats, and here are the levers of power that you can use for coercion? Yes. That you can actually say, oh,

Speaker 14 do you really think Democrats are the only people that have tax exemptions? that can be threatened? Are you fucking kidding me?

Speaker 14 Do you really think there are no education that you can't bend the will of corporations who don't want friction to do your bidding?

Speaker 15 So I'll just give you a couple of quick examples. Number one, Elon Musk, right? Donald Trump and Elon Musk went to war, most richest man in the world.

Speaker 15 Donald Trump says, I'm going to cancel his contracts. And immediately Musk deleted his tweet saying he was in the Epstein files and has gone pretty quiet by Musk standards.
That's right.

Speaker 15 Why didn't Joe Biden do that? In fact, the opposite. Chuck Schumer hosted Elon Musk in his office in the Senate a couple of years ago.

Speaker 15 This guy declared war on the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party Party said, would you like some more contracts, sir? That was an insane approach to Elon Musk.

Speaker 15 Trump showed that you can actually take on the richest man in the world if you're president of the United States. He did it.
There is a template for it. Another example for Senate Democrats,

Speaker 15 when they were trying to get the minimum wage rise through, the parliamentarians said, you can't put it in the bill.

Speaker 15 I was on MSNBC at the time. We had did multiple segments about the freaking parliamentarian.
No one knows who she is. She wasn't elected by anyone.
Chuck Schumer said, can't do it.

Speaker 15 Parliamentarian said, no. This time around, the parliamentarian said, well, you can't do some stuff in this big, beautiful bill.
The Republicans said, Get lost.

Speaker 15 They wouldn't even meet with the parliamentarian. Right? So, the template is there.
If you want to get shit done, you can.

Speaker 15 The problem is, Democrats don't want to get shit done and they hide behind institutional excuses. They say, We can't do it because of parliamentarian.
But really, they don't want to.

Speaker 14 No, that's interesting, though, because that says something different.

Speaker 14 So, in your mind, they don't actually want because my feeling is let's not make sweeping statements.

Speaker 15 Some do, right? And some are beholden to their donors.

Speaker 14 But this is where we get into the like Merrick Garland is at fault or the way that Democrats govern.

Speaker 14 I still, you know, as much as the ACA got some more people, some health insurance, it never addressed the rot at the basis of our health care system that allowed,

Speaker 14 you know, these insurance companies to make. So basically what the Democrats said was, we understand

Speaker 14 that

Speaker 14 one of the greatest threats to liberty and freedom in this country is poverty and not having health care. And it limits your choices and you can't leave jobs and all these other things.

Speaker 14 But instead of dealing with that, here's what we think we can do, convince insurance companies that if we guarantee you billions of dollars in a fire hose of money,

Speaker 14 that you'll pretend to offer people a good alternative.

Speaker 15 Not just insurance companies. The plan was to win over Republicans, right? Barack Obama was bent on winning over Republicans, and that's why he borrowed a Mitt Romney plan.

Speaker 15 Obamacare was fundamentally a version of Romney care in Massachusetts. And he thought this will win over moderate Republicans.
Instead, they spent the next 10 years obsessing over Obamacare.

Speaker 15 It became a dirty word for Republicans. They never gave him any credit for doing a very moderate, conservative-style proposal for healthcare reform.
And this is the problem.

Speaker 15 They will never give you credit. Stop trying to appease them.
I think that any Democrat who in this current moment says the word bipartisanship should be immediately primaried, right?

Speaker 15 It just shows you're not prepared for this moment we're in. The current modern Republican party will never credit you.
you for anything.

Speaker 15 Joe Biden bent over backwards to his old friends in the Senate, who he hung out in the gym with for decades. They all went against him.
No one gave him any credit.

Speaker 15 All of them voted against his major legislation, which was bipartisan legislation, apart from the infrastructure one. So

Speaker 15 it was a fool's mission to do that. By the way, you said something earlier about exposing the cracks.

Speaker 15 The fundamental thing Donald Trump has shown us is that the rules of American politics don't have to apply if you don't want them to apply.

Speaker 15 And therefore,

Speaker 15 you can be ambitious, over-ambitious.

Speaker 15 Roe Cunner, who I know you know, who is probably going to run for president as a lefty in 2028, he gave a speech recently and he said, look, our ambitions, Democrats, we always limit our ambitions, as you just point out, ACA.

Speaker 15 We can't go there.

Speaker 14 We'll go here.

Speaker 15 Meanwhile, Republicans are like...

Speaker 14 Negotiating against themselves.

Speaker 15 Negotiating themselves. Meanwhile, Republicans are like, well, we're just going to annex Greenland.

Speaker 15 Did you poll test that? Did you focus group it?

Speaker 15 Democrats are sitting there getting every focus group, every policy consultant to check every policy for like costings and how is it going to be received.

Speaker 15 And Donald Trump's like, I'm going to invade Greenland. And that is the difference right now.

Speaker 15 And I think the next Democratic presidential candidate, and I say this only half seriously or only half jokingly, depending on how you want to view it, the next Democratic candidate has to be able to stand up and say, I'm going to do, I'm going to give you a $30 minimum wage.

Speaker 15 And when the press say, well, how are you going to pay for that? Oh, I fucking will. Believe me, it's going to be amazing.
I'll do it from day one. 24 hours.
You will have a $30 minimum wage. Right.

Speaker 15 So you have to be able to take it.

Speaker 14 You have to take that same rhetoric and flip it on its head. Yeah, I think there's no question now.
And I think because one of the things that it exposed is that

Speaker 14 sort of the pace of democracy is not keeping up with the pace of technology and it's not keeping up with the pace of modern life.

Speaker 14 And whatever we want to say about Donald Trump, even when he's going off the rails, the people believe he's doing shit.

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 14 And they want shit to be done.

Speaker 14 And almost to the point where, and now we're stuck with the remnants of these sort of sclerotic institutions that the Democrats have built, not on principle, but on sort of what they thought might be possible.

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 15 And the inability to run on your record, which, of course, Joe Biden was a very poor messenger for his own record. I thought his domestic record was pretty good, relatively speaking.

Speaker 15 I thought his foreign policy was horrific. Although, even on foreign policy, in 2021, Joe Biden ended America's longest war, the war in Afghanistan.
It was a hugely popular move.

Speaker 15 You wouldn't have believed it from the media coverage where it was only sold as a disastrous departure, and everything in the departure and the departure was not

Speaker 15 non-chaotic, I agree. But he ended the war in Afghanistan, something that Bush, Obama, Trump could not do.
It was a hugely popular move.

Speaker 15 Isn't it interesting that Democrats went into the last year's election looking like the warmongering party while the Republicans sold themselves as the anti-war party?

Speaker 15 Donald Trump went to Michigan and said, I'm the peace candidate. I am peace.
I didn't hear any Democrats say we ended America's longest war.

Speaker 14 None of these wars would have started if I were here. But the interesting thing is when that gets exposed, again,

Speaker 14 nothing damages the,

Speaker 14 you know, nothing permeates it. I've always said, you know, the Democrats are Wiley Coyote and Donald Trump is Roadrunner, and they keep thinking we got him now.

Speaker 15 So I want to push back, John. Can I push back mildly? Please.

Speaker 15 I agree with you to a certain extent, and we'll see how this Epstein thing pans out. But I don't think we should fall into the trap of just giving him the inevitability of

Speaker 15 the

Speaker 15 market. So one example I often give is immigration, right? That's the issue he's supposed to be strong on.
He came in, I'm going to cut the border, and Americans apparently anti-migration.

Speaker 15 Look at the polls. He's created on immigration.

Speaker 15 New York Times, Sienapol, a couple of months ago, found that his most unpopular issue, the single most unpopular issue for Trump in his first 100 days, was his handling of Kilmar Obrego Garcia and the deportation to El Salvador.

Speaker 15 We were told by Republicans, that's an 80-20 issue. Democrats are on the wrong side of it.
Nobody wants to be on the side of MS13.

Speaker 15 In fact, no, the American public said, no, we don't want people being deported who haven't committed any crimes. We don't want judges being ignored.

Speaker 15 We don't want people being sent to a gulag in El Salvador. We don't want our American Latino citizens being picked up outside of a Home Depot just because they're they're brown.

Speaker 15 He's hugely unpopular on the immigration issue. And Hakeem Jeffries, allegedly, he denies this, allegedly told Democrats, stop talking about this, stop going to El Salvador.

Speaker 15 Actually, Senator Chris Van Holland and Congressman Maxwell Frost and Democrats who went to El Salvador, they were on the right side of the issue and they did politically hurt Trump.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I guess my point with that is you can politically hurt him. You can drive down his numbers, but nothing changes.

Speaker 14 You can, you know, like you say, he can poll at 35% on immigration, but he doesn't give a fuck. He just goes out there and he continues to raid Home Depots.

Speaker 14 He's never been a particularly popular president.

Speaker 14 Probably the peak of his popularity was during that second inauguration where there was even some level of like he might be above 50 or 51% in terms of pop.

Speaker 14 He's always been a low 40s, sometimes dips into 30s guy. My point is,

Speaker 14 even with all that, there's nothing he hasn't been able to do that he wants to ultimately do.

Speaker 15 and the democrats have not figured out a way how to effectively manage that and that i guess that was or or or replicate it john or replicate it that's right like democrats remain scared of their own shadows right and and in hop to their consultants uh you know while trump just does what he's got to do and sometimes it works out for him sometimes it doesn't i mean kamala harris we know now from all the reporting of the election she started off strong she had a lead she said some popular stuff she had a great convention and then thought what if i hold hands with liz cheney and we just we do, we walk across the country.

Speaker 15 What if I hold hands with Liz Cheney? What if I go on the view and say nothing will change? There'll be no difference between me and Joe Biden.

Speaker 15 What if I listen to my brother-in-law from Uber and stop talking about big corporations and greedflation? Yeah, that worked out well.

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Speaker 14 And I wonder too now, you know, all the talk of I'm the peace candidate and I'm doing this.

Speaker 14 And as we watch the bombings in Ukraine, the horrific tragedy that's happening in Gaza, you know, all that stuff clearly

Speaker 14 was nonsensical.

Speaker 14 But what institutions do we have now

Speaker 14 that have any viability to try and stop these terrible, like the Israel-Gaza situation to me, to have to have that go on and the world seemingly shrug.

Speaker 14 I mean, now you're seeing a little bit of like, hey,

Speaker 14 are those people starving? Like, starvation doesn't happen in a week. This is months and years of a seat.
Like, what mechanisms do we have in the world now?

Speaker 15 Not many. And the few that we had have been undermined by Netanyahu, Trump, Biden, Starma, Sunak.

Speaker 15 I mean, for me, what's so astonishing is we spent decades building a post-war, quote-unquote, rules-based order, which as a lefty, I was far from happy with. A deeply flawed system.

Speaker 15 But we had some kind of system, a UN Security Council, Geneva Conventions, International Court of Justice, an International Criminal Court, which America didn't sign up to, but most of the world did.

Speaker 15 And all of that has been burned down in the interest of protecting one nation, one government, one prime minister.

Speaker 15 And I think historians will look back and think, what an astonishing sight to see all of it burned down.

Speaker 15 All of those institutions, anytime they've spoken out, they have been accused of being Hamas, accused of being anti-Semitic, accused of being anti-American.

Speaker 15 The United States government has sanctioned the International Criminal Court judges and prosecutor. They have threatened foreign governments for doing anything to help the Palestinians.

Speaker 15 They've gone after South Africa for bringing that case to the International Court of Justice. It is really, really problematic.
This is much wider than Gaza.

Speaker 15 Gaza is a tragedy and a horror show, perhaps the worst of our lifetime. But going forward, this is going to have ripple effects that will affect conflicts and peoples all across the world.

Speaker 15 Good luck to any Western government ever lecturing another government about human rights or

Speaker 14 it's just insane oh it sets it sets a permission structure for any other uh bad actors to to basically that's what i said earlier about sort of this you know big fuck small but yes it there is a law of the jungle the law of the jungle that's right and and a permission structure i guess my my question even in that part of the world is uh

Speaker 14 you know why hasn't there been

Speaker 14 you know erdogan will say israel can't do this i'm going to attack and then, like, nothing.

Speaker 14 And there's never any sense that there is a coalition of the willing for the world to step in and at least separate the combatants.

Speaker 15 You know, yeah, do you remember you're old enough, John, like I am to remember kind of the late 90s when we all talked about the responsibility to protect liberal interventionism, Kosovo, Clinton, Blair, all of that.

Speaker 14 It was all about peacekeeping forces. It was all about the United Nations peacekeeping forces.

Speaker 15 Yeah, and that was going into national sovereign countries. This is going into an occupied territory.
No, the inability, remember the first couple of years of Ukraine?

Speaker 15 I spent arguing on my show at MSNBC with people like, should we have a no-fly zone? That was the big debate. Like, should the U.S.
impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine to protect the people of Ukraine?

Speaker 15 I mean, the people in Gaza have never had the benefits of a no-fly zone. The people in Gaza have never had the benefits of peacekeepers.

Speaker 14 And the people in America don't know what's going on. I mean, that's the other thing you have to remember is we're seeing a very different

Speaker 14 We don't see the images in the same way that the rest of the world is watching a very different show than we're watching.

Speaker 15 I think a lot of Americans, thankfully, are watching it on social media. And as much as I loathe Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram has been invaluable for Palestinians getting their voices out.

Speaker 15 And I think people who have seen stuff on social media differ from people who haven't. And I think that's very clear.

Speaker 15 I think people aren't seeing the scenes, obviously, that you see on Al Jazeera or anywhere else. But most people by now do recognize what's going on.

Speaker 15 And I think the real problem, John, is not ignorance. It is the inability to do anything about the knowledge that we have.

Speaker 15 And I think the real democratic, I just talked earlier about the international repercussions of Gaza and what it's done to international law and the Geneva Conventions and human rights groups, all of whom have been discredited.

Speaker 15 Every dictator in the world will say, I can bomb hospitals, Israel did. I can ignore human rights groups, Israel did.
I can keep foreign journalists out, Israel did. All those precedents.

Speaker 15 But worse than that, at home, democratically, it has exposed the United States.

Speaker 15 democratic dysfunction that you have huge numbers, majorities of Americans, big majorities of Democrats saying, ceasefire now, restrict arms to Israel. And that is not reflected in Congress at all.

Speaker 15 That is not, you know, there is polling out this week about how unpopular the war in Gaza is. I think it's only got a 32% approval rate amongst the American public.

Speaker 15 In Congress, it's got a 90% approval rate. So, how do you explain that disconnect? That 90% of legislators support something that only 30% of Americans do? At what point does that become intolerable?

Speaker 15 At what point do people wake up and say, we're just not represented here by the people in power?

Speaker 14 There's such a massive government.

Speaker 14 But that is in a weird way.

Speaker 15 And that's on the Republican side, too, by the way, John. You're seeing Republicans under the age of 50 rapidly turning on Israel.

Speaker 14 But the dynamic that you're talking about, about the consent of the government, is also, though,

Speaker 14 what drove these right-wing populist movements. The only difference is it's not Gaza, it's immigration or migration.

Speaker 14 And as you're seeing that take over in the world, you know, these are the competing things.

Speaker 14 We keep thinking about, well, you know, like I think all the time about 90% of the people in this country believe sensible gun restrictions are a necessity to keep us from every time you hear a pop, running out of malls.

Speaker 14 All of those things that people want. But it doesn't seem to hold the power

Speaker 14 that loss of national identity seems to be holding around the world.

Speaker 14 There's no matter what issue you want to pick on and where the public sentiment is and where the polling is, it all pales into the comparison to the feeling of

Speaker 14 we're going to lose our American-ness. We're going to lose our

Speaker 15 it is a very powerful trend.

Speaker 14 And you saw it not to wrap it back around to Jubilee, but that's what you faced down that day.

Speaker 15 Well, I'm glad you brought it back to Jubilee because I was about to bring it back to Jubilee. What was interesting was not just the power of that identity and the obsession.

Speaker 15 They didn't want to debate anything about immigration. They didn't care about any of my other claims.
They only came to talk about immigration. But what was interesting is I had a claim on Gaza.

Speaker 15 I said said, Trump's plan for Gaza is ethnic cleansing. A lot of those white supremacists refuse to come up and debate me on that.
Why? Because they're anti-Israel.

Speaker 15 And they're not anti-Israel because they care about the Palestinian people. They're anti-Israel because of the people in Israel, right? There's a massive anti-Semitic streak on the right.

Speaker 15 And when you talk about loss of identity...

Speaker 14 I have Twitter. I'm aware of the massive anti-Semitic street.

Speaker 15 Yeah, that's true. But what's interesting is how it's being mainstreamed through Gaza.
And this is why I say to...

Speaker 15 Jewish friends of mine who are supporters of Israel, be careful of the alliances you make.

Speaker 15 The folks on the right, a lot of them are using the same MAGA America-first national identity argument to actually try and disconnect from Israel.

Speaker 15 And a lot of people on the left are like, great, isn't it great that Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene and all these folks are on our side now? And I'm like, I'm not sure.

Speaker 15 I want them on our side because they're not on our side for the same reasons.

Speaker 15 Like, we're on our side because we care about Palestinian human rights and dignity and self-determination, not because we're anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic.

Speaker 15 Unfortunately, a lot of these younger MAGA supporters are driven by this idea of national identity, Christian, national, and therefore Muslims and Jews have no role in America.

Speaker 15 And I would say this, when the pro-Israel lobby is canceling people, getting people fired, pressuring members of Congress, supporting people like Randy Fine from Florida, who says, yeah, let them starve.

Speaker 15 Let's nuke Gaza.

Speaker 14 By the way, you know what? Randy Fine actually went too far

Speaker 14 for APAC. AIPAC was like, hey, you can't say that out loud.
Actually, that part I think we may have to.

Speaker 15 That part you shouldn't say on Twitter. But my point being is a lot of these Trump MAGA folks are like, well, we don't want Israel controlling our politics.

Speaker 15 We don't want these Jews telling us what to do. There's a dangerous trend there, which, I mean, there's so many different fallouts and threads from Gaza.

Speaker 15 And I think that is one of them that a lot of people aren't paying enough attention to.

Speaker 14 Mehdi, where do you see the energy?

Speaker 14 What is going to be the way that this sort of idea that you're talking about on the left, how is that going to coalesce?

Speaker 14 Do you think it's a function of,

Speaker 14 you know, if you look at the Democratic autopsy, they're all like, oh, I think the way, you know, the Democrats can do this is that you just

Speaker 14 go on Theo Vaughan and that should take care of everything. You know,

Speaker 14 Pete Buttigieg is doing. And you see them all sort of positioning now strategically for all this, you know, the variety of things.

Speaker 14 What I love about what you do is there's a tenacious moral principle to everything that

Speaker 14 you put out there. And you do it in a way that is, you know,

Speaker 14 when you argue with people, there has to be a relentlessness to it.

Speaker 14 I don't think that the Democrats have the foundational right now

Speaker 14 moral and principled stand to be able to be relentless

Speaker 14 in a very directional way because the only way to battle these is you have to match their, you know, the one thing that I always gave Ailes was like 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Speaker 14 Like that dude was the great white shark of making his political identity the ruling identity of this country.

Speaker 15 I think you're, first of all, thank you for your kind words. Second of all, I 100% agree with you on the 24-7 nature of this.

Speaker 15 The problem we have, and I mentioned Buddhajej a moment ago, is Budijej won on a podcast recently.

Speaker 15 I saw a clip on my social media where he said he was asked about Mamdani, Zoran Mamdani, who's doing a fantastic fantastic job of actually doing everything Democrats need to be doing in New York right now, in terms of energy, in terms of messaging, in terms of authenticity, in terms of winning over young men and all these groups that Democrats struggle with.

Speaker 15 And he said, oh, well, you know, we need to borrow, I'm paraphrasing, but Buddha just said something along the lines, we need to borrow his style.

Speaker 15 I don't necessarily agree with all his policies, which is kind of missing the wood from the trees or the forest from the trees. I'm getting my British Americanisms mixed up.

Speaker 14 Dude, you go back to the pitch. You'll find it.

Speaker 15 The pitch. I'll find it on the pitch.
And I think the key point there is, no, you need the substance and the style. You can't just pick and choose.

Speaker 15 Mamdani is not just doing well because he has slick savvy social videos which he does it's because he's also pushing authentic messages about affordability about standing up for the little guy he's the guy who went and screamed at tom homan people forget this like he was there as an activist screaming at tom homan the border chief few months ago like that authentic rage and anger and moral outrage has to be there on the part of the democratic party and you can't switch it on and off cynically depending on where and when you are Corey Booker being a classic example from your great state of New Jersey.

Speaker 15 This is a guy who stands for 24 hours, gives this amazing speech, gets us all pumped up. And then he's like, next day, he's voting for arms to Israel.

Speaker 15 Day after that, he's voting to confirm Jared Kushner's dad as ambassador to France. It cannot be on-off switch when it comes to, I mean, it's not authentic by definition, if there's an on-off switch.

Speaker 15 That's right.

Speaker 14 And it has to also, I think, be smartly litigated. And that maybe gets us to our, and I'm cognizant of your time, and I really appreciate the conversation.
But I think what's been lost here is,

Speaker 14 you know, the Fox News and the Republicans, they've been, this is a 60-year plan that they have had to basically roll back the New Deal and,

Speaker 14 you know, the naturalization acts and everything that they felt changed the tenor of this country into something that they don't want anymore, a sort of a nostalgia for an America that never actually was.

Speaker 14 And they're trying to

Speaker 14 rebuild that

Speaker 14 into a, you know, an America that they think,

Speaker 14 you know, and I've always said, you know, make America great again is a demotion. We're supposed to be exceptional.
So if you just make us great, you're actually, you know, giving us a demotion. But

Speaker 14 what the Democrats have been unable to do is to prosecute their case, is to litigate it. And in some ways, I think the news media has to take a lesson.
Where is the one place

Speaker 14 MAGA really usually falls apart, forgetting about the Supreme Court?

Speaker 14 It's in court, where there are evidentiary standards, where there is a process by which you have to litigate the bonds of our shared reality.

Speaker 14 The Democrat, that's, I think, what they don't understand, that this is about prosecuting and litigating a vision for the future.

Speaker 14 that has evidentiary standards and that people can find a that find something to hold on to

Speaker 14 And are there people that you've seen out there that you think, and it can't be fiefdoms. It has to be, there has to be a unity to it.

Speaker 14 And it has to work together with your think tanks and every, you know, you have to have a federalist society. You have to have groups that understand

Speaker 14 that once you get into a position where you can actualize that vision, you have to do it competently and you have to do it quickly.

Speaker 15 I think I agree. I sign off on all of that, especially kind of the federalist society and the the long-term vision of the Republican Party.
Yeah, I mean, Democrats are not playing the same game.

Speaker 15 They're not in the same league when it comes to kind of long-term planning, what they did to the judiciary, et cetera, over decades to get the 6-3 majority.

Speaker 15 What I would say, though, the problem with, again, it goes back to the whole, is the MSNBC the left-wing fox.

Speaker 15 The same issue, the same reason why MSNBC can't be a left-wing fox, and the same reason why the Democrats can't behave like the Republicans is money.

Speaker 15 Fundamentally, it comes back to money.

Speaker 15 MSNBC and all these CNN and all of these outlets are corporate-owned, and therefore they will always have a corporate agenda in terms of profit maximization, in terms of returns, in terms of making sure.

Speaker 14 So, Fox is corporate-owned.

Speaker 15 Corporate-owned, but also

Speaker 15 has a particular ideological bent. What purpose?

Speaker 15 That is on steroids.

Speaker 14 And it turns out their purpose is actually a money-making.

Speaker 15 It's a money-maker, yeah. They get fascism with the side benefit of actually making money, I think.

Speaker 14 Profitable fascism, yeah.

Speaker 15 Profitable white supremacy. That's right.

Speaker 15 And the same applies to the Democrats. I could come up with a wonderful plan of action, a project 2029, all sorts of things.

Speaker 15 But the problem is that as long as they are beholden to corporate donors, they're not going to take that step forward. You know, you can get rid of the Senate parliamentarian tomorrow.

Speaker 15 You can get rid of the filibuster. You can give Democrats a open playing field slash pitch to do what they want to do.
And they still won't do it because they don't want to piss off their donors.

Speaker 15 A lot of them, not all of them, but a lot of them. And until we deal with money in politics, we're simply not going to have a proper opposition.
We are going to have, you know, Coke and Diet Coke.

Speaker 15 Coke. We are going to have kind of fascist, and dare I say, in some degree, a fascist light.
And I think that is a fundamental problem in our system right now.

Speaker 15 It does all go back to money and politics. It does go back to Citizens United.

Speaker 15 It does go back to the ability of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes and Elon Musk and Bill Ackman and all of these people to influence our politics, our media, our culture.

Speaker 15 And that fundamentally, sorry to sound all biblical, but money is the root of all American evil right now.

Speaker 14 And it is. And it has empowered this hostile takeover of we the people.
And again,

Speaker 14 rolling back around to that idea of fetishizing the little guy and we the people when in fact the opposite has occurred and the Supreme Court has empowered really this kind of much more authoritative processing of all those avenues.

Speaker 14 And in some respects then it comes down to is the answer the Democratic Party's ripe for a takeover and they just need to find the right reality host that can get in there and start lining up with all of those interests.

Speaker 15 Please, please, no reality hosts, I beg of you. Unless, John, you're thinking of throwing your hat in the ring, which is probes.

Speaker 14 Maybe Jeff Probst, Survivor.

Speaker 15 I know many people want you to throw your hat in the ring. If that's what you're suggesting, we can talk about that.

Speaker 15 But please, otherwise,

Speaker 15 no TV show hosts.

Speaker 15 But look, I think New York in November will be a very, very interesting result. If Zaron Mandani wins, it will be earth-shattering on so many levels, levels, on multiple levels.

Speaker 14 And I think he has a very, very, I think he's got the energy is there.

Speaker 14 What I would say that Zoran has, that's really remarkable in this moment, he has an opportunity to credit the entire sort of progressive agenda.

Speaker 14 But I think the way that it has to be done is he's got to do the boring shit well. Agreed.
If he can make

Speaker 14 his vision, I think, think is really smart, focusing on affordability and a much more

Speaker 14 equality of economic opportunity, all those things.

Speaker 14 If he can make the city competent, if that can be his focus, if he can bring that feeling of, and I think progressives actually forget this sometimes, everybody deserves the kind of safety and security that the rich Manhattan neighborhoods get.

Speaker 14 Everybody deserves that. If that's his focus,

Speaker 14 holy shit, could this be a rebirth of

Speaker 14 a much more, I think,

Speaker 14 fair-minded society that people feel confident will not, the big fear in New York is chaos, always.

Speaker 14 If he can do both, holy shit, does that guy have an opportunity?

Speaker 15 I agree. And I think it's much bigger than New York.
I think it's going to be national and global. I think the impact of that election in November, if he wins, will be national and international.

Speaker 15 It will be the biggest boost the left has had.

Speaker 15 I'm trying to think in my lifetime. I'm trying to think of when was the last time something this earthquake was.

Speaker 14 Well, I think people were going to be able to do that.

Speaker 15 I mean, AOC winning that primary was big.

Speaker 14 I mean, I think people thought Obama was the boost.

Speaker 15 They wrongly thought that, but yes, in 2008.

Speaker 14 But I think he didn't realize what an institutionalist he turned out. to be and how that damaged the prospects of getting to the finish line.

Speaker 15 But bigger than that, it will also be,

Speaker 15 you know, to go back to your point about Wiley Coyote, the Republican media machine is going to throw everything, already is, at Mamdani.

Speaker 14 By the way,

Speaker 14 so's the Democratic right now.

Speaker 14 Exactly.

Speaker 14 We're going after him, too.

Speaker 15 Let's not give Gillibrand a pass on my horrifically Islamophobic comments about Mamdani.

Speaker 15 But my point is, the right-wing machine, including some right-wing Democrats, are throwing everything at Mamdani. If he wins, it will also be a reminder that you don't have to compromise.

Speaker 15 You don't have to bend the knee. You don't have to roll over.
You don't have to triangulate to win. You can win authentically.
And I think that will be a very scary message for the ride.

Speaker 14 Meddy, just a pleasure talking to you. I really appreciate it.
Meddy Hausen, founder and editor-in-chief of Zatayo.

Speaker 14 Now with, and I hate to throw this out there, a million YouTube subscribers, which is, I think,

Speaker 14 you get some. I don't know if they give you a platinum.

Speaker 15 I want a plaque. I definitely want a plaque.
Oh, you can. YouTube, send me a plaque.

Speaker 14 All right. We'll do everything we can.
Meddie, it's

Speaker 14 great to talk to you.

Speaker 15 Appreciate it.

Speaker 14 Why do you get rid of a guy like that on MSF? Like, what, what are they thinking?

Speaker 17 He's so good. I was saying during, like, I need whatever coffee he's drinking.
I've never been that awake and alert in my life.

Speaker 14 And his specificity and his ability of recall and the way that he is able to

Speaker 14 be present, you know, seeing him surrounded by

Speaker 14 that

Speaker 14 odd group of sort of

Speaker 14 right-wing influencers and just

Speaker 14 like a turret, just spinning and firing back at each one until he ultimately decided, like, oh, this isn't a debate. Why am I even talking to you idiots?

Speaker 17 It was the one man fighting 100 guerrillas

Speaker 18 debate.

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 19 I would love to know the process Jubilee went through to find those people. Like, what forum did they just chat for messages?

Speaker 14 Here's my feeling is: you don't have to do much of a deep dive.

Speaker 14 Like that's not one of those, if you skim any pond in any of the recesses on the internet, you will scoop up hundreds of those tadpoles because they're everywhere. It really is.

Speaker 14 Like it's not an unusual,

Speaker 14 you know, they're feeling their alt-right joy. It's, it's Discord chats come to life.

Speaker 10 Absolutely.

Speaker 20 And it's encouraged.

Speaker 14 Incentivized, algorithmically incentivized. I'm not even sure it would exist if it wasn't, you know, at a certain point,

Speaker 14 getting attention for that on social media becomes, no, I really believe this.

Speaker 18 They get podcasts as Seora Boros.

Speaker 14 It's, yeah,

Speaker 14 that's exactly right.

Speaker 14 But I do think that idea of tenacity and relentlessness built upon a foundation of moral principle is kind of the only way out of this.

Speaker 19 And I think that the authenticity he comes in with is why his independent media is doing well is because not just with politicians, I think across the board, people are looking for truth and authenticity and challenge to the

Speaker 19 establishment. Yeah.

Speaker 14 And I do think, you know, his point about corporate media, I think, is certainly well taken.

Speaker 14 And I also think the point of, you know, is it even right and left anymore or is it just good faith, bad faith? And I think there is an opportunity within media to create a relentless 24-7

Speaker 14 good faith machine. Yeah.
That could still be entertaining.

Speaker 18 God, I hope so.

Speaker 14 Yeah, but

Speaker 14 we shall see.

Speaker 14 Brittany, what do the people want as the summer is going into its last month?

Speaker 19 Oh, boy.

Speaker 20 Do you think the FCC will also be going after shows with a conservative bias?

Speaker 14 Right now?

Speaker 14 Yeah. No.

Speaker 14 Wait, what? Who wrote that?

Speaker 14 No.

Speaker 14 Have you met the chairman of the FCC?

Speaker 14 He's like shit posting Colbert.

Speaker 14 There's no way. No, he's not going to be.
He is going to,

Speaker 14 he is probably right now on a search for more right-wing billionaires that can buy up some more of these properties because there's going to be, you know, an acquisition and merger spree

Speaker 14 for these kinds of things. He wants to add more go after conservative buyers.

Speaker 20 I also noticed like Fox News is getting in on the party now by counting how many conservative guests are on shows versus how many liberal guests are on shows.

Speaker 14 The entire bullshit of the, again, this is them trying to police

Speaker 14 and create rules that they would never follow. The idea that

Speaker 14 by having what may be a more left-leaning or progressive bent or just bringing in, that's how Fox is popular. That's how any of these people, you know, they all talk about Guttfeld's the most popular.

Speaker 14 Yet he's not popular because he's a both sides guy. He's not, you know, a fair use like, you know, the fairness doctrine says, like he's relentless.

Speaker 14 And, you know, after a day of watching Fox News and being bathed in their very purposeful propaganda, it's a great way to top off the night.

Speaker 14 But it's not the Jay Leno, like, hey, no, no, you're steering. I mean, why do you want to thank your audience?

Speaker 14 Why not just do a show about, you know,

Speaker 14 why do you have to talk about things you believe? Why would you, why do you, why do you have to make jokes about things you actually think?

Speaker 14 And you're fucking, I'll just say, you know, I'm just going to go throw myself down a hill and see if I can get a concussion. I mean, the whole thing is fucking ridiculous.
And it's,

Speaker 14 if you look at the social media profile, all the people that complain about the left-wing bias, they're all

Speaker 14 right-wing influencers. They all make their money.
Their entire economy is based on how willing they are to attack and defame and to crush liberals. The whole thing is bullshit.
Anyway, what's next?

Speaker 14 Pivoting from that. Pivoting from that.

Speaker 20 This one is a follow-up from last week's podcast.

Speaker 14 Oh.

Speaker 20 John, do you think Democrats are capable of electing a vindictive prick?

Speaker 14 I do.

Speaker 14 I absolutely think they're capable. But when will a vindictive prick rise? A vindictive prick must rise from the east.

Speaker 14 I think for the Democrats, the vindictive prick must die, and then the new one is reincarnated. And then we have to wait 35 years.
This is, it's like a Dalai Lama situation.

Speaker 9 The vindictive duck is just a little baby right now.

Speaker 14 That's

Speaker 14 cute. It's not even about what they're incapable of is

Speaker 14 using that idea of friction to get real concessions. I always go back to,

Speaker 14 you know, Donald Trump is like, if I catch you transferring the money you're paying for tariffs onto customers, like I'll shut your business down. And the Democrats are like, great news.

Speaker 14 We can negotiate the price of five drugs now. It's not the five that you use,

Speaker 14 but we got five of them. And we've got a whole plan that over the next 25 years, we're going to add 12 more.

Speaker 20 I'll be dead in 25 years.

Speaker 14 Right.

Speaker 17 Jeez. And then Trump said he's going to, what, he's going to like lower the cost of drugs by a thousand percent.

Speaker 14 Trump's not even, yeah, he's not even following the basic laws of math.

Speaker 17 Yeah, they're going to give you money when you need along with your drugs.

Speaker 19 Sounds good, though. Pizza for everyone.

Speaker 14 But the Democrats are like, what does the parliamentarian think? And Donald Trump is like, drug companies are going to pay you $1,000 to take Ozenbic.

Speaker 14 Congrats. What are we going to do? How do they keep sending those questions in there, Brittany?

Speaker 20 Twitter, we are Weekly Show Pod, Instagram Threads, TikTok, Blue Sky, We Are Weekly Show Podcast. And you can like, subscribe, and comment on our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart.

Speaker 14 Boom. Thanks, guys.
As always,

Speaker 14 in the dog days of summer, you guys continue to

Speaker 14 kick crazy ass.

Speaker 14 Lead producer, Lauren Walker, producer Brittany Mamedovic, video editor and engineer, Rob Batola, audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boys, researcher, and associate producer, Jillian Spear, executive producers Chris McShane, Katie Gray.

Speaker 14 We'll see you next week.

Speaker 14 The weekly show with Jon Stewart is a comedy central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.

Speaker 7 Paramount Podcasts.