Sam Stein: We Got Ourselves a Mad King

Welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm in D.C., 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, Samstein. Move. I got you. 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. A little Nazi guy. Avino. The haircut and the hand signals. He was walking through the French quarter. I'll tell you, if any of my friends who are like Nader D's in the French quarter, you just give this guy the Sarah Mike Huckabee Bernie Sanders red hen treatment. Okay. What a deep cut. No fucking, no fucking gumbo or jambalaya for this guy. Okay. Anyway, that's the funny part. 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 going to 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 said the same. I don't think anyone's thinking about the impact that'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, we'll 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. I didn't have a ladder. 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 were, like, holding it up, and they had guns. Like, the guy who's 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 suburbs? There's got some OSHA regulations. Up on the roofs. But there's no probable cause happening, as evidence by the fact that the one guy got out of us. Like, they just are driving through the neighborhoods where there's a lot of, mostly Hondurians and New Orleans, but also Mexicans and others. And... And like going up to people doing yard work. Show me your papers. Yeah, wearing masks. This is what, this is like essentially what happened in Chicago. I remember Adrian was there for a couple days where. It's not that, like, 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, you know, the ripple effects are pretty astronomical from an economics standpoint. Because why would you leave your house? Like, what is the, 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. 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, undocumented. Why are they in your home city? Because of that, because the other little guy, small, Napoleon syndrome is I guess the answer, 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, like, I think that Trump basically, I think that they did see the limits of what they're able to do in Chicago. Having J.B. Pritzker there did matter. Sure. It was terrible what happened. But, like, they're looking at, you know, places where their red states, you know, where the governor was going to let them come in and act with impunity. And so the ones is that. 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. Like the economic ripple effects are real. Why is that tongue in cheek? I feel like that's a very real thing, right? These are smart. It's like tongue in cheek and then he's like, I'm mocking them. They're not the real victims here, obviously. Or yeah. Shed some tears for these guys. They ask for this. Yeah, I get it. But it's going to, it will hit them, right? Like, I remember sort of the first moment that was, like, semi-viral around the stuff was that, you either Fort Lauderdale, the Miami Keys were the guy, like, the six-time Trump vote or whatever. That was like, all his construction crew had, like, been taken away from the site. And he's like, what the hell? He'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 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'm just going to remark that you, did you say not to Adam Smith? Yeah, you know, supply and demand. It does matter. So, you know, economics still works. On top of the health care, I think I mentioned this earlier in the week, I, but it's just worth mentioning again. Like, you know, you just don't think of all. the downstream effects. I was talking on some of the Thanksgiving who works for company that does like the dialysis services and stuff. 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. Either both was. Yeah, it's like they're going to be decimated by it. 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 talking 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 town, I'm softy. Okay, I am. Softy. And it allows me to sometimes... I don't know, I think it's in the inverse, buddy. You think it's in the inverse? What's the candy with the soft egg steering? Almond joy? Yeah, you're the nut. You're the nut. Okay, well, the Nugget 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 truck.

in Denver who'd hang out, sign the golf, you know, balls for the kids. Yeah. Well, he probably had, he probably had an over under bed on how many balls he could start. 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. Just read it. It's more, I think it's more appalling than anything Megyn Kelly has said for me. I think I'm putting it below Megyn Kelly in the Dante's Inferno. If we're going to make some... 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. Oh, that's the good stuff right there. It goes on from there. It's like, what? These guys want to be like, oh, we're pro-America, like U.S. USA, 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? In Singapore. Should we do be handing? Maybe we should be hand 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 actions. 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 regimes? Did seem like a grok. Yeah, Grog. 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. Let's go move to Riyadh. Exactly. You want to be paid by the Saudis. You want to play in their golf courses. You want to, like, yuck it up with them. And go, go live in their repressive regime and have fun. Like, just enjoy it. You can make a lot of money. You can plan a lot of golf tournaments. I'll even like this. 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've made hundreds of millions of dollars. 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 like the least fortunate people. In the world, a lot of them came here because they were fleeing the repressive regimes that you're now thirsting over. So not a big. Caning. Yeah. I'm interested in caning, Phil Mickelson. You know what else I'm interested in? Denaturalization. That's something that has come up this week. 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. We could sort of start looking through that. The Saudi idea is the best one. I want a cleanest. If we win again, get back in 2020, I'm going to have a Bill Pulte in the Immigration and National Naturalization Services. They're going to look at all the maggots. And we're going to go through your family history and just we're going to look through how everybody got here. And if there were, if the tea was not crossed on every immigration paper going up through your grandparents, I'm. sorry we're gonna fucking have to send you a good idea to have everyone every party needs their own bill poultry 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 where I move on to parties? No, that was a good one to end then. I was really upset by Phil's tweet last night. Me too. I've been, my blood's been boiling this week. I, um, the, uh, over the last 24 hours. Who's your favorite golfer now? Do you have one? Rory, obviously. My brother from an other brother. Yeah, exactly. Roy's the man. 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, synectity, synectity, synecity, synecchity, synecchic. People make fun of me for my pronunciation. People can know the way. Synecichy. Sure. For our societal rot. Let's spend 20 more seconds on this word. Syneciki. For our societal rot. Okay. And that is that the Saudis came in and offered this alternate golf tour. We're there to give all the golfers way more money. Yeah. And a lot of the PGA guys were like, great. Let's like merge this in. We're going to take all this fucking Saudi blood money. Rory was like, I think the most vocal golfer that's saying, no, like we're doing well. Well, my favorite, Rory Crow was when he was trying to explain why he's like, I have. 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 it was like around the time that, like, Trump is, you know, 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, like, half-heartedly kind of apologizes for taking a moral stand. And I apologize to the other golfers for, like, impugning them, you know, saying to them, like, I was judging you and 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, but I'm just like, yeah, you can't. You can still be, you know, moralistic and judgmental of them. It's fine. Especially now. No, I'm not judgment. I love for it. No, no, I'm saying he can still be more as and judgmental of them. Just saying virtue signaling is good. That'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.

I've got a section on pardons coming. Great. I mentioned this yesterday with Jonathan Lemire, your buddy, but I feel like it just... You like that guy? Yeah, I feel like it deserves just a little more focus. Sure. 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. And he sympathizes, I think, if you're going to 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 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. Yeah. And it's kind of like how I give the benefit of that to gays. You know what I mean? You have an affinity for it. Yeah. You have an empathy. Yeah, he has affinity for political critics. Is there any gay that you would not give the benefit of the data? Yeah. Rick Grinnell comes to mind. And that's like Bob Menendez. We're going to get to Bob Menendez. One more than the Honduras thing, though, because I've just been thinking about this. If you're Democrats, like, how do you make the best use of this? Like, 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 the eyes at myself. And I'm like, well, he's, 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 the actual better way to go into this. It's like, this guy got a pardon because he was in league with the fucking oligarchs. And he was giving them, you wanted to give. them, their little Bitcoin city in Honduras. And I think this is how you get into the MagRoges. You saw some of this from Marjorie Taylor Greene and others. And Spannon has been saying this, which is like, is Trump looking out for regular people or is he looking out for the tech billionaires that actually hate MAGA Americans? Yeah. 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. Well, I agree with the hypocrisy knowing is a shit. Like, who the fuck cares about hypocrisy at this point, right? So there's either doing 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, Jay 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. You Texas? Yeah, yeah, yeah, the UT Stadium. And he was indicted by... I read about what he would do, which was kind of clever. He had someone who was bidding against, and you 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 no more people do that? Yeah. That's a great idea. Because it's a legal. You can't do that. Yeah, you just want to make sure you're screwing the taxpayer of Texas as much as possible. Fuck the competitive bidding process. Ringing every cent possible out of the people of Texas. Another time where Trump doesn't care about the mega-Americans that we're paying this rich fuck. There you go. Indicted. It's worth noting. By the Trump Justice Department. Not the first Trump justice. When I read it, I was like, oh, yeah, he was indicted in, you know, 2019. And then I looked at it as like, oh, wait, no, it was July. He was indicted in July. So ridiculous. And so, like, obviously, this is the principle of this, but I'm on like. Like, where is Doge on this? Like, the amount of money that we get spent to prosecute this person, our Justice Department goes out to 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 them. Yeah, that's a really good point. Then we prosecute them 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 fine. 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 or 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, Matt 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. The $6.25 billion gift to the Trump accounts. But, like, why it's like... Why George Santos? Like, do you really need to, like, 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 in 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. Allegedly. $600,000. Allegedly. In 2024, also, there's a Mexican company that might have been throwing them some cash, too, through a wife's... LLC, thrown at Y's S-Corp, allegedly. Democratic Congress from South Texas. The lines always get roped in on this. Yeah, like Menendez, yeah, like South Texas. The, like, 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. Mike Johnson found out on Twitter, so did Richard Hudson, the NRC 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 Claire as South Texas C because he's going to run again as a Democrat. Yeah, that was everyone's waiting to see what the... quid pro quo is like oh yeah surely he's gonna switch parties and then he like ran it he filed literally like 10 minutes later and when he did the filing he made it he did an attack on joe biden he's like going 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 punchout. But that gives them more credit with the maggot people. I mean, like, Trump, again. It's interesting. So they do this. I'm back to my Mad King theory. What is the point of this? They have this whole plot to rigged Texas. Right. Like, that's like this whole gerrymandering thing is all based on this like corrupt plot to rig Texas districts in the mid-cycle redistricting. This was one of the seats that they were trying to steal. Yeah. They made it more Republican. Yeah. 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. It's like, I'm mad. 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. Now I'm coming to the belief that he did it so he could like. avoid the criticism that it's purely Republican. Yeah. 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 it, 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 on this, and he says, Quayor 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. You didn't need to say that. That's not right. Come on, man. 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-parton 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 second term. They pushed her out because they wanted to restore Mel Gibson's gun rights. So I missed that bull or steak with Sam's time. I don't know. It was a great one. She was like, why are we doing this? And they're like, go. So we're talking a lot about. We'll link to that in the show now. So I can remember to go back 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 the Justice Department's work because he's like wakes up and feels like he wants to. There is constitutional ways to do it. I forget who I'm stealing this from. So my apologies. Would you have to do an amendment to the Constitution? Yeah, well, yeah. But I think it was. I think it was Jonah Goldberg. If wasn't Jonah, I apologize to whoever I'm stealing this from. But he made a point that, like, when the pardon power is put into the Constitution saying that, because he can only do federal pardons, right? Like simultaneously to why he's doing all these pardons, he's ranting about my boy, Jared Polis for not pardoning Tina Peters out. Transfer to a federal prison. He's partner, and Jared Polis isn't doing it. Good on him. And Jonah's point, I think it was Jonah was saying that, like, when this was put in the Constitution, there were like three. federal crimes. You know, it's basically like treason, you know, not paid. I don't remember what the other two are. Forcing a soldier to live in your home. Right. And so it's like, are there ways to kind of do part and reform that kind of just like defines within the Constitution, like what constitutes it? I don't know. And there's probably some lawyer out there who might argue. Yeah. Yeah. And people, look, the point I guess with Hakeem Jeffries is. Like, it is just from a fundamental moral ethical standpoint, like what Trump is doing with the pardon is horrible. And, like, you 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 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 it. Yeah, I agree with that. A little bit on Pete Hegseth. We've been talking about this 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 Holsey was... At the time, they said resigned. He was the head of Southcom, which was overseeing these attacks. He was only one year into his command, so raise some eyebrows. The journal is reporting that Pete Hegseth asked him to step down. Pete Hegseth 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. Hags has basically said to him, you will follow an legal order. And if you won't, you should leave. He's out. And I do think that's pretty interesting context around the whole Mitch Bradley discussion on what's been happening with the... When are they going to call this guy before the hill?

Wouldn't that make sense? Yeah. Have you called Roger Wicker about that? Have you asked Roger Wicker's office? So I asked, 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 this admiral? And they were like, we can't get in touch with him. 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... There's not a war. There's not a war. There's not a really. There's no war. There's no war. We have a pretend war. We have 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 actually have, like, really good evidence for why, whether they were smuggling drugs. We're just supposed to take the deity's word that there's drugs on 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 corps that's filled with like, you know. Mega bloggers. Yeah. And they asked interesting questions, but we... Did they? Well, some of them were interesting. Yeah. Or whatever. It was in their own era. What about the guy doing the selfie with Pete Exoth? That was not interesting. Yeah, I saw that. Okay. We don't need to get, but you get my point. Yeah, I do get your point. I want to actually one thing that would be your perspective from back when you were doing, you know... Full live journalism. Yeah, full live journalism at Huffo. You might have some insight on this. Sure. But, you know, some of the defenses I've seen of this, 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 if that's a great defense, but that's where Dan Crenshaw was. Didn't you see other people like trying to do the Bud Obama defense, which was, what about the drone strikes, you know, all O'Waki? Yeah. 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 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 like 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 Huff Post during this. Yeah. And this was.

Our cause celeb. 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, we spent weeks railing on the Obama administration over these drone strikes. Yeah. We went after Holder incredibly hard. We were, you know, 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, you know, yeah, I mean, obviously we had a perspective politically at the time, but we were very much willing to just stick it to them. And there were some Democrats, that's what I'm trying to remember. It's hard for me to remember that were also. There was definitely, so look, of course there's some deferentialness. in the party to the president. 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 as someone who was going to end the wars and all that stuff. It's like there are some analogies, actually. I had it right. It was Al-Olocki's 16-year-old son. Yeah, I remember this. Because he was American. Yeah. And there are other examples of that, but that was kind of the most memorable one. Okay. I want to do, we'll just do any just a brief economy talk. Not great. Payroll process, the company, ADP's latest jobs report is out. We don't have real numbers. I know, I know. I want to hear you caveat. 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's off and they're almost always off, it's obviously the situation's 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 it, whatever I said it, but. People are about to have health care premium is just skyrocket. Millions of people are about the 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 E.J. 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 cooks the bugs. They pulled him. They pulled him. Do they have a replacement for him yet? No. Why would we need that? We don't need numbers. You mentioned the AI. I want to talk just a little bit on the Dems. I've got some funny stuff. We can get out of here. But, um.

The funny stuff is all. I always say it's funny. That's kind of like it's dark. It's darkly fun. It's macabre. But anyway, we'll get to it. That's my specialty. The Democrats. Just because you mentioned AI at Spark to 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 Democrats 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. We need their money? Well, you just said... It's also hard, I think, 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. When the tension's further by what we were just talking about, which is if they're all aligned with Trump or if Trump's rewarding them or, you know, 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. I know. Which is why I'm so excited about Lane Kiffin. People are like, are you upset about LSU's no coach, Elaine Kiffin? And I was like, Lane Kiffin, after Ole Miss beat LSU this year, hosted 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 Lane Kiffing because he's not texting 19 year old girls. But Dan Hurley has got a similar vibe. We just beat Kansas. And, and he tweeted afterwards, was the Ted Lassow guy in the tennis? Because Jason Sadegis had gone to the last Kansas Yukon game. I was like, this man's in his 50s and he's just, he can't help it. He needs to ship post. 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 phones 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 i can too and i despite being a poster at heart i am very sympathetic to that point of view and um it's interesting that seems right now i guess this is like way more popular in the liberal podcasting class like us, then it is among politicians. And it'll be interesting to see how much politicians actually like really embrace it. Someone actually told me they're like, you know, there's been a lot written about these data centers and it's really not a big deal. Like it's a couple places where they actually exist, but it's not, you know.

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 hay. Yeah, but maybe they might. And that takes me to the other hot stoves I'm going to talk to you about with the Mad King. I'm reticent to do 2028 hot stove. I don't want to do that. 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, from Democrats, which is like, fighting, fighting, more fighting. Sure. And it's like, in the contrast to the Mad King, you know, there's an Atlantic article in Josh Shapiro, maybe the cases people are looking for stability. I was thinking about maybe a different way, Tim Wilburne wrote that article. It's quite interesting. I bumped into Wes Moore at the airport. Yeah. And, um... Guy is just like, chill. 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, like, take on the oligarchs. Like, the Democrats are going to need somebody like really as backbone going up to Trump. And I do wonder just at first Todd 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, it seems steles. seems happy, affable, can go into pro 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... 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, 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 Harris is objectively more. more telegenic than Trump, but it's like, you know, it's like, are we counting Biden also as part of it? Yeah, yeah, okay, fair enough. But up to 2016. The other theory, 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, because 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 cut throw. Like this, this lunatics actually Muslim. And then, you know, Biden does the store. 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 2008, 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 believe 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, Wes Moore comes in and said, 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 want to give myself like a buzzer where I have, I get like 10 minutes a week allowed to talking about 20. And that's it. And once we hit the 10, I get buzzed. Okay. I think that's a 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 up in gradual increments here. All right. We're going to end with Tucker Carlson. Great. Somebody sent me a text. I've not seen this. You've not seen this first. I'm going to pull us up. This is pretty alarming. I'm just going to pull this up live here. Everybody had their Spotify raps out yesterday. You can see mine on my Instagram if you want. I'm obviously an indie gay. So it's pretty pretty the trendy indie gay music is what I'm listening to. But in the rap, also the top 10 podcasts in the U.S. I'm not on there. Yet. We're working on it. I thought you were. No, not there. We're working on. We're going up. Rogan, Theovan, Call her Daddy, blah, blah, number seven, Tucker Carlson. Okay. Are you surprised by that? No, it's just, it's alarming. Yeah, well, yeah. This is why you've got to tell your friends about this podcast. We've got to make it, we've got to go up the list. Yes, tell your friends. This is a, it's a pretty alarming list. Good, Amy Poehler, good hang with Amy Poehler's number 10. So she seems sane, but the rest of the list is a little shaky. Tucker Carlson last night. Get home back to the hotel scrolling as I do. I have the Nuggets game on. You and me both, baby. The Nuggets game on the TV. Phil Nicholson said what? Scrolling on the phone. I see Chuckers has his new drop. He's got Milo Yianopoulos. Remember Milo? He did the dangerous faggot tour back when you were at HuffPost. That was his big thing. Then he got deep platformed. It was like the only...

actual successful deplatforming. He really has a lot. I think it ended up. The whole deplatforming move was a failure. With the exception, here's the exception that proves the rule. It was the one de-platforming 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 deplathing. Okay, but we didn't know her before. So deep-platforming didn't make any difference to society. Success. When does she land? That's what that was. When did she land? That was a really horrific joke. That was bad. Anyway, Tucker Carlson's trying to bring Milo 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 Carlson. No, 1.5. Well, yeah, with Just Tucker Carlson, it's 2X. And I like doing it, especially because his laugh is even funnier at 2X. It's really funny at 2X, so I do like him at 10. But then Milo talks really fast, I'd 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 Uganda bill. Tucker Carlson's pro that now, the death penalty for certain gay acts. So Tucker Carlson explains why he has issues with homosexuality. Then Milo explains his. I want to play the Tucker Carlson one first. Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson's trying to demonstrate how he's being reasonable, but 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 glorious. I was listening to it. Those are the best years for the games. 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'd be opposed to that. But 1985 is what he chose 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. Sorry, I couldn't... At one point, I was having trouble just following who he's talking about. Like, who is... Who is telling him he can't talk about gays or AIDS or something? No, he is saying that, he's arguing that the gays, we're all pushing it on every space and that we've made gay the moral cause. Okay, so we can't, we cannot credit, he's upset because we can't. We can't make it a moral good. Like, it's like if it was a moral neutral, he wouldn't care. Tucker Carlson is upset that we cannot ask questions about gays. basically. Well, he's upset that we, that we are doing, yeah, he's upset that you can't ask questions about like, why are you gay? Like how much sex you're having. How much sex you're having? Because that's rude. He's upset about that. Why does he want to know how much sex they're having? I don't know. This is like the most obvious case of someone. I can send Tucker Carlson my body count if you want. 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 him. It feels like I could prep school? It 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? I feel so possible. I don't know a prep school. I'm not trying to be Freuding 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. 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 Kelly's mainstreaming anti-Semitism, he's like trying to bring this back. He's like, okay, you know, he's like, you know, he's like we're kind of rolling back. Yeah, what do you think his booking processes? Like, you know, no one told him he had to bring Milo on. I'm sure Miles not like the most, you know, I don't think Miles is getting him huge numbers, but I don't think it's actually that hard if you look at his recent. guest to figure it out. Tucker Carlson wants to, he's like, what is the thing that everybody says, I can't do? And I'm going to do it. He's like a baby. And so that's 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 any less about that than just like.

Like, I'm a brat. Like, Tucker Carlson is real, like, the prep school element of it 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? Crossfire. He's done like 9-11 stuff recently. Hitler was the good guy in World War II, obviously pro Vladimir Putin. You know, I mean, like, chemtrails recently, I believe that he did. Well, that one 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 good experience. He does seem interested. Yeah, seems fair. One more thing that they went up that's, sorry, we're going to 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 Buddha just the most interesting character of our age? Like, I mean, it 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. Again, I'm telling you. Something that's going on here. They said, well, he's not really gay. 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. Pete Buttigieg 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. Yeah. The guy with the black 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 saying if we're to take this theory at face value that Pete is pretending to be gay, he's pretending to have sex with Chaston, just because he's so ambitious that he's like, I've got to do it. It's honestly quite the long con here. It really is. Pete, 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'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, of course Pete Buttigieg 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'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 Carlson is like, I'm going to have a gay sex expert come on and work. And it's going to be like, well, if he had girlfriends before. Sorry, but what's a gay sex expert? Do you get credential? Yeah, I don't know. Bring on Dan Savage movie. If it's like I had girlfriends before, that he must be faking it. And I can just say. Yeah, no one's ever, no one's ever had difficulty figuring out their sexuality about it. I know, I know, I know that you don't really know. I know you don't know at all. At all. I know at all. I know at all you don't want to.

care of this. You don't have any issues, but I just want to say, I also had a girlfriend once. It's not fake. Wait, is this fake right now? I'm going to do it. It's all. I know. It's just a rise in the podcasting charts. Exactly. A straight never tropper. Get this man to number six and then he can finally get back to being straight. That's straight. This is why I was beating Michael Steele in the podcast charts. Okay. 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 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. Better not be me again. It might be Sam. We've 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 you all. Peace. Peace. My mama told me when I was young, we're all on superstars. She rolled my hair with my lipstick on in a glass of purple dry. There's nothing wrong.

podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.