Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Krystal And Saagar REACT: Trump On Rogan

Episode Date: October 26, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump making an appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast!   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. On Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, you'll hear about these heroes and what their stories tell us about the nature of bravery. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everybody. Happy Saturday.

It's Saturday morning here, and we got the long-awaited Trump-Rogan interview clocked in at exactly three hours long. There's quite a few. Let's just say the weave, the weave was in full effect for the entire thing. I would both now listen to the entire interview. They ended up dropping it around. What was it like 10 o'clock last night? It's got about 10 million views now on YouTube. So we pulled some of the sections that were the most newsworthy that we thought. And we're going to go ahead and start with some of them. The big, big one that you're probably going to hear from most media and others is this one on the election from 2020. Rogan asked Trump about specifically some of these, quote, stolen election claims.

So let's take a listen and make sure the two point speed's not on. And let's take a listen to how that all went. I want to I want to talk about 2020 because you said over and over that you were robbed in 2020. Totally. What how do you think you were robbed? Everybody always cuts you off. I'm going to allow. Well, they not only cut you off. Well, what I'd rather do is we'll do it another time. And I would bring in papers that you would not believe. So many different papers. That election was so crooked. It was the most crooked election. OK, but give me some examples of how. Well, let's start. Let's start at the top

and the easy ones. OK. They were supposed to get legislative approval to do the things they did, and they didn't get it. In many cases, they didn't get it. What things? Anything. Legislative approval of? Like for extensions of the voting, for voting earlier, for this, all different things. By law, they had to get legislative approvals. You don't have to go any further than that. If you take a look at Wisconsin, they virtually admitted that the election was rigged, robbed, and stolen.

They wouldn't give access in certain areas to the ballots because the ballots weren't signed. They weren't originals. We could go into this stuff. We could go into the ballots, or we could go into the overall. I'll give you another one. Are you going to present this ever? Like, do you think? Let me just give you one more before. 51 intelligence agents.

Should I stop it there? Because that's basically it. Yeah. Are you going to present this ever? Well. He actually came back to it twice so there was more at the end as well uh that they went into but i mean i thought that was uh you know in terms of that's the one mainstream media and others are going to be picking up on and i mean it genuinely was it's a problem for him because what you see there is that even in a

setting where rogan's like i won't even cut you off like he could just go just go into it. He's like, well, I still have to look back. I mean, look, I don't want to say this is like the entire interview. This is obviously three hours, but we're trying to pick out the most newsworthy bits here. And specifically also the ones that the campaign will try to highlight from the Kamala Harris side. And because this is a political vulnerability for Trump, that was, in my opinion, one of his weaker moments. Yeah. I mean, it was also I mean, this was maybe the most even like theoretically adversarial part of the interview. Most of the interview was just kind of like bullshitting about whale psychologists and windmills.

I enjoyed that one. Whatever. And most of the interview, too, too as you said this wasn't the only place where stop the steel came up and frankly rogan was like pretty sympathetic in most of the interactions where he was like oh yeah like it's just like hillary totally denied the results this is not unusual putting the framing around what you're doing which involved fake elector slates and januaryth and, you know, trying to get the National Guard to seize ballot boxes, et cetera, is just the same as Hillary, who conceded

literally the next day. So the framing overall was very, like, friendly. He also, you know, indulged a lot about, of course, the Hunter Biden laptop and indulged a lot about, well, of course, voter fraud is real and it's non-zero, blah, blah, blah. But even within that context of a very friendly interviewer and an audience that is overwhelmingly friendly too, he still comes off looking like a fool and a madman because he cannot explain anything that makes sense about why he thinks there's fraud. He just, you know, throws a bunch of stuff out there. It's relatively incoherent, says this thing about they were making legislative changes, but they didn't go through the legislature. I know one of the things I don't even know what he's talking about with Wisconsin, but with Pennsylvania, one of the things that they

were pointing to is they had changed some of the rules. You know, it was during COVID to try to enable more mail in balloting. It was a pencil. It was a Republican legislature that passed those rules. So in any case, obviously there's no there there. And Trump continues to insist that there is, there was another interesting moment, Sagar, I'm sure you caught as well, where Trump said like, you know, I lost by 22,000 votes. And he goes, well, I didn't lose, but they said that I lost by 22,000 votes. It was very, well, I didn't lose, but they said that I lost by 22,000 votes. It was very Lex Friedman-esque. Yeah. I mean, the reason why, the reason why I think, and I'm sure Trump people will be furious they were even starting on this, but look, this is first of all, consequential, right? In terms of whatever happens in, what is it? 10 days now. But it's just like,

if you've had four years, don't you think you would come up with something better than i would love to come back and present with so many papers it's like come on man and like this again this is the part where it just is uh it's it demonstrates the fundamental weakness of trying to actually play in this in a serious manner at the end he's like well there's this phenomenal book by molly hemingway but again if you actually read that molly hemingway book or if you're familiar the molly in a serious manner. At the end, he's like, well, there's this phenomenal book by Molly Hemingway. But again, if you actually read that Molly Hemingway book, or if you're familiar, the Molly Hemingway book is specifically about big tech and influence on the election.

And by the way, that's a very different conversation than talking about mail-in ballots or fraud or whatever. So anyway, you know, and you can't articulate that properly. So I was like, bro, and look, J.D. But how can you at this point when your biggest donor is explicitly running a big tech platform on your behalf? So like spare me at this point your complaints about the Hunter Biden laptop when at your request, Elon Musk is censoring documents that you find to be unfavorable to your campaign and running the algorithm, et cetera, to benefit you. So, you know, if if that constituent has stolen election last time with Hunter Biden laptop, like tell me about what's going on right now.

Yeah. And I mean, again, it's it is also this is to where like talent comes into play, like with J.D. You know, look, people know J.D. and i very vehemently disagree about this whole 2020 election thing but he smartly usually comes back to tech and or censorship because that's about as good as you're gonna get i mean you're still not gonna look great but that's as good to go with trump as i always tell people he believes it all right he actually believes it and so yeah this is the evidence well the last thing i don't i actually don't agree that he believes that i don't think that he really believes no i don't think that he believes it. No, I don't think so. I mean, all the people that told him over and over again that, no, there's no there there. I don't actually think that he believes this.

But I think he just can't admit that he lost because it goes so against his image, et cetera, et cetera. The last thing I'll point out, and you gestured towards this, Sagar, is that it's not just consequential because of what happened in the past. It's also consequential because they're, and we're going to cover this this week, you know, they are laying groundwork for if the election is close, especially, and Trump loses, to assert once again that it was stolen. I mean, he's already making comments in that direction at the McDonald's photo op thing. He said, hey, you know, I'll accept the election results if they're fair. But and then goes on to say, hey, I'm I'm up in the polls and I've got a 93 percent chance of winning, which is, of course,

utterly preposterous. So, you know, it's very possible that he is going to win. But if he doesn't, I think we're going to see another. It's almost a guarantee. We're going to see another organized effort to gaslight and try to convince the country that it was stolen from him yet again. And, you know, what the consequences of that would be hard to say. All right. So this next part, this was interesting to me. This was Trump on what he did wrong while he was president. Let's take a listen to that. The biggest mistake I made was I picked some people. I picked some great people, you know, but you don't think about that.

I picked some people that I shouldn't have picked. I picked a few people that I shouldn't have picked. And neocons. Yeah, neocons or bad people or disloyal people or people that were just bad. You got bad advice. Yeah. I mean, look, I mean, you're reading about him a little bit today. A guy like Kelly, who was a bully, a bully, but a weak person.

You know, you know more about bullies than anybody probably around because you deal in a certain sport where the bullies are exposed very quickly. Yeah. But, you know, he's bad. Bolton was an idiot, but he was great for me because I'd go in with a guy like a John Bolton. You know John Bolton. A friend of mine called me up. I was picking Bolton. He's a very smart guy. His name is Phil Ruffin.

He's a very rich guy from Las Vegas. He's a great card player. He doesn't play cards, but he's a great player. You know, he's just a natural. He's got poker sense, right?'s a great player. He's just a natural. He's got poker sense, right? Good old poker sense. Phil Ruffin is a very, very wise kind of a guy, and one of the richest people around, and has had great success and understands people. It was in that I was picking Bolton, or I picked Bolton. He called up. He said, don't pick him.

He's a bad guy. Now, he wasn't in politics at all. He's in various businesses. He said, he's a bad guy. It always works out bad with that guy. I said, oh, man, I wish you told me this two weeks ago. I already hired him. You know, he's here.

And he was right. All right. So I wanted to share that part because there's two things that go on here. Yeah. Number one, it gives us some insight into the hiring decisions, I guess, of the past, which was basically like fielding calls from whoever Phil is. Random rich people. Yeah. Phil, whoever has card sense, by the way, he's looking for card sense is the the terminology. But, you know, second is this acknowledgement about how bad things went in the first administration.

And specifically, you know, Trump, you know, Joe was actually trying to get him on neocons and even to try to list people out. But this remains if Trump does win, there's a decent chance that he's going to win. This is the singular question around what is going to happen the next time around. Because as people saw by his own admission, he literally was like, I got there and I didn't know what I was doing. And a bunch of people called me and they ended up wanting the job and I ended up hiring them. And like this time around, it's like, well, what are the assurances that it is actually different here? You could look on two sides of the coin. You've got J.D. You had Project 2025, but now they say they won't hire anybody from Project 2025. You've got Johnny McEntee.

You've got Don Jr. But you also have this thing called the America First Project. And so I enjoyed this clip for a couple of reasons, the internal psychology of just like how exactly the staffing administration was made last time, which was obvious to everybody as we were covering it. And, you know, it always a fundamental question was people being like, hey, why do you keep hiring people who don't agree with you? And it's like this was a good view. If I recall with Bolton, he liked Bolton because he was on Fox News. But a huge part of the at least finally admit it now is one of the reasons why a lot of things that didn't get done last time that he said he wanted to get done was because he would hire people who actively did not agree with him. So whether he's learned or lesson is not obviously is an open question.

But I did think at the very least it was an interesting answer. Well, so, you know, a lot of people are sharing this on the right of like see trump regrets hiring these neocons and it's like it's actually if you listen to what he says joe suggests was the problem that they're neocons and trump chimes in yeah but they were bad and disloyal right for him it's not about John Bolton had a bad ideology that disagreed with him or John Kelly or, you know, Mattis or Millie or Mike Pence. It's that they were disloyal, that in the end they criticized him and they came down on the wrong side of the only issue that matters to Donald Trump, which is how do you feel about Donald Trump? How do I know that? Because in the same interview, when he's asked about, oh, my cat just arrived, when he's asked about, you know, the releasing the JFK files, he goes on and on about how great and wonderful Mike Pompeo is and how much he loves Mike Pompeo,

who, by the way, is the guy who wanted Julian Assange to literally be assassinated and who is as much of a neocon as you could possibly get. But there's Kitty. That's Salem. Hi, mister. But because he is correct on the only issue that ultimately matters, he's still in Trump's good graces. You know, another example I'll give you is that they confirmed Tom Cotton is on the list of potential.

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culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be.

These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Voice Over on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant,

and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Secretaries of Defense, Tom Cotton is the most hawkish neocon person in all of elected Washington, D.C., period. So that's why you shouldn't let, I'm not saying you, I'm saying people out there that are sharing this as like, oh, look, he understands we're not going to have neocons this time. Like you're fooling yourself. He's talking about, he understands we're not going to have neocons this time. Like, you're fooling yourself. He's talking about he's upset with these people because they ultimately criticized him.

That's it. It had nothing to do with their ideology or, you know, blocking him on something that was important to him. They got crosswise on the only thing that matters to him. And, you know, so you should not have any expectations that he's not going to go ahead and chalk the next administration full of neocons once again, because he's already floating, you know, new neocon names to be part of the new administration. You should be very realistic, folks, as I've laid out in my monologue. The case, again, the only case for why it wouldn't happen

is if somebody inside actually tried to make sure. But the Tom Cotton thing on the list, that was very, very disturbing. The next one that I wanted to share here was an interesting clip with Rogan talking about Kamala Harris. And this was specifically Trump brought up here. He was like, can you imagine Kamala doing this interview with uh joe rogan and he was like well yeah i can i actually think i would have a conversation with her so this gets to the whole like should kamala have done rogan or not let's take a listen this can you imagine kamala doing this show i could imagine she could be laying i would be lying on the floor she was supposed to

do it and she might still do it and i hope she going to do it. I will talk to her like a human being. I would try to have a conversation with her. If she did this kind of an interview with you, I hope she does because it would be a mess. She'd be laying on the floor, comatose. She'd be saying, call in the medics. I think we'd have a fine conversation. I think I'd be able to talk to her. I wouldn't try to interview her.

I'd just try to have a conversation with her and hopefully get to know her as a human being. That was my goal, having her on, trying to get her to express herself just as I don't know if these I don't think these formats are good. I don't think that two people. First of all, I hate the idea of the presidential debates because I hate the idea of it. OK, it goes into the debate there. But that was specifically about having Kamala on. So Kamala is also going on a podcast. She's going on the Shannon Sharp podcast, which actually is quite big. People might remember it from the the Cat Williams viral. Right. Yeah, it is actually a big audience. No, it's it's very big. And obviously, look, it's you know, it's a big black male audience. That's what they're trying to go after. But

OK, so young men in general. Yes. My take after watching the Trump Rogan interview actually was that Kamala should have done it because I mean, it's pretty clear when he was like, I'll let her have a conversation. He would let her just talk. I don't think it would have gone badly for her. You know, I still, I really don't. I really believe that, especially look, look at the posture, you know, that Rogan took. And in general with Rogan, like whenever he talks with people, like he's not the most challenging person. He might ask a challenging question per se, but he's going to give the space to talk. And he's not Brett Baier, at least is what I would say.

So if I'm watching this, how and how this went down, I actually don't think it would have gone badly for her. I'm curious what you think. Yeah, I agree. She should she should do it. I mean, it looks like they've turned it down. And her dude, Ian Sams, on her campaign, he said they're not going to do it. I listen. I understand why, because it's definitely more fraught and risky situation for her, because I do think Rogan would be somewhat more adversarial with her.

At least there's a risk. Yeah, I mean, he laid out several things that he disagreed with her on. So the idea that it would be as friendly. I mean, look, Joe, he can do whatever he wants. It's clear throughout this, like there's a lot of things that he disagrees with the modern left about. And he brought a lot of that out to Trump. And it was. Yeah, no, I mean, he came off as just like, you know, partisan pro Trump guy. That's how he came off. And I think that's probably pretty fair assessment at this point. And that's also who his audience is. You know, we've seen the polling.

It's like 65 percent of his audience is pro Trump. So, you know, it's also like responding to where his audience wants him to be. But all that. So, you know, it's also like responding to where his audience wants him to be. But all that being said, you know, Trump and Kamala are engaged in tactically two different goals at this point. Trump's goal is to humanize himself to, you know, try to buck the like, you know, multiple people who serve with him coming out and being like, hey, this guy, he is a fascist. And also to undercut his own comments, like he just sent out a very, you know, disturbing truth about the cease and desist and I'm going to go after all my opponent's donors and

supporters, et cetera, et cetera. So he's trying to soften that with, hey, look at me. I'm just one of the boys like hanging out on your favorite podcast, Kamala. And this was why I want to give credit to Weigel, who really laid out this dichotomy. It really landed with me. Kamala has to cross this threshold of like, we can see her as commander in chief. And, you know, for anyone who hasn't been president before, that's always a challenge. And of course, because she is a woman and, you know, we've never had a female president, that makes the part of Americans imagining that even more challenging. And she also has not done herself any favors at certain points is coming off as a lightweight

and making it even harder for people to imagine her. So that was the decision. That was the thinking behind things like going on with Bret Baer, which, you know, where she's like, I'm tough. I can go into the lion's den and I can take whatever you have to throw at me. And I think doing a Rogan interview would send a similar message of, I, you know,

I know this is not friendly territory for me at this point. I know there's an audience here that's deeply skeptical of me, but I don't care. I'm not afraid. Like I can go in. So for Trump, sitting with Rogan accomplishes his goal of, like, humanizing him, blah, blah, blah. For Kamala, it could accomplish that goal of I'm not afraid. I'm tough.

I can handle myself, even in difficult circumstances. So I agree with you. It's a mistake. We're going to talk a little bit more later after we get through all the clips about the sort of meta thing, meta like podcast election thing. But I do just have to say the podcast election has left me very depressed because, look, it'd be one thing if, you know, conversation with Rogan and Theo Vaughn and Shannon Sharp and Alex Cooper and whatever, if that was part of an ecosystem in which many adversarial, difficult conversations were also happening. But especially on the Trump side, like when is the last time he sat for an adversarial interview? If you don't count, I mean, the debate, which, you know, it's a different thing and he wouldn't agree to any more debates after the first one i'm trying i think it might be that one back in what july when he did that national association of black journalist event that's the last time i remember him sitting for an adversarial interview

so that means that these things are not like compliments to you know oh let's get to know them a little bit better and who they are underneath the hood. This is it. Like, so you're putting putting the, you know, traditional role served by like, journalists whose job it is to learn how to, you know, conduct adversarial interviews. And we've got all kinds of like, you know, grievances with some of these journalists and how they conduct themselves and what they focus on. But, you know, I think it's fair to say, like Anderson Cooper on CNN, whatever we Cooper on CNN, whatever we think of him, that town hall with Kamala included much more adversity.

It was much more edifying in terms of how she would actually conduct herself, what she's actually focused on, which included both audience questions and Anderson Cooper asking difficult follow-ups that his own audience was honestly very unhappy with. Yeah, they got furious with him. Versus this.

Yeah, it's funny. You saw that with Charlemagne, right? I mean, look, yeah, if we want to talk meta, it is true. Do you know, open kimono here. I tried very hard to interview Donald Trump, you know, as part of this whole podcast, you know, thing. And at the end of the day, it just looks like it's not going to happen.

And that's fine. I did point out, you know, I interviewed him on four separate occasions when I was a White House correspondent. But I mean, if I'm looking at it from their perspective, they don't really want that. Right. Because they want the humanization. And, you know, you know, you could call me partisan or whatever, but I would actually have asked some pretty serious stuff about Ukraine, foreign policy, Social Security, the economy. You know, I wouldn't necessarily like cut him off the way that nbc news or whatever would want me to but i'm not gonna just sit there and like let some of this

stuff right go by and it was clear i mean it has become clear now that uh that that you know they just didn't want that to happen again i i get it i know if i'm running for office it's probably what you want as well coming back to what you said and i do think this is the most important analytical framework is that and i brought this up you know know, credit to this guy, Rubin, who I stole it from. But, you know, the Trump McDonald's thing and Rogan interview talking about whale psychology, you cannot imagine a person in a McDonald's interview and on Rogan just fucking around talking about ear scars as a Hitlerian dictator. Like it's just simply not possible. And that is the card. Rubin calls it like Trump being a cartoon. And that really is like both

his political superpower. And I think it fundamentally explains a lot of the you know, everyone's like, oh, well, nothing sticks to him. I'm like, yeah, this is why it's because the camp, the celebrity, the humanization here now with the podcast format and others, and especially in the absence of some of the stuff that you were talking about, especially the adversary. And also, look, he's been gone for a long time, has not been in office. So a lot of people don't really remember what it was like, you know, whenever he's behind the podium or in the in the oval or if they do a very different perhaps view than what it was like to actually live through at the time. So I think that is one of the major things. And one of the reasons why, I think this will probably be his last podcast interview, and from here on out it's just going to be a stretch, get out the vote and the rallies.

And even at the rallies, you know, we see all these Ave Maria and the opera and the dancing. I'm giggling because, I mean, what else can you do? It's funny. And that is fundamentally not in line with what Kamala's closing message will be about January 6th about fascism. And I do think it's very effective as a counter. It's one of the reasons why I wouldn't do it if I were her, especially closing argument. I mean, just based on all the polling, all the stuff that Matt Karp and all of them have put out there, but they

seem to believe it. I mean, I'm sure we'll cover a New York Times, Sienna, the final poll crystal, but I don't know if you saw, like, you know, in terms of this strategy about getting Republicans not to vote for Trump, like there are less Republicans not voting for Trump than Democrats not voting for Kamala Harris. I mean, what are we talking about here as an early critic of the liz cheney strategy like you know and and since she has leaned into liz cheney strategy is when the polls have started to you know really tighten move against her um i do want to go back to what you were saying about you know why trump wouldn't sit with you and by the way it wasn't even with me involved it was like you know maybe with you right and, I mean, they can go back and look at your interviews

of other Republican contenders and see that you ask them real questions. Because if you are a person, I don't care who you are, how much I like you or hate you, you can go look at my interviews of Bernie Sanders, right? You are seeking the highest office in the land. You want to be the most powerful person on the planet. I don't care who you are sitting with highest office in the land. You want to be the most powerful person on the planet. I don't care who you are sitting with that person. At this point, you have a responsibility to ask them some, you know, challenging questions about how they intend to use that power and how they use that power in the past in the case of Donald Trump.

And so but in the like podcast new media arena. Yeah, all the incentives are to not do that because let's say that the trump people deluded themselves into thinking they could get a softball interview with you and he sits with you and that's not what he gets he's never coming back yeah he's never coming back or if you think in the by the common people that that was never an even remote possibility that that was going to happen right the um and also like think of in terms of Rogan's audience or any of the like you know right-wing audiences that you know he's been going to these these podcasts for if Rogan did do a aggressive adversarial interview with Trump his his audience would be mad at him.

Yeah, they would. There is no incentive for him or anyone else. And this is not, you know, personal man. This is anybody in the ecosystem. We think a lot about corporate media incentives and where those lie, right? There is no reason for anyone in that sphere to be adversarial because they will never get the interview again and their audience will be pissed at them. And in some ways, I think the incentives are actually worse in the new media landscape than in the old media landscape, because number one, you're so much more there is so much more audience capture because it's so much more direct, you know, like whether or not that video clicks or not, whether or not you lose premium subscribers or not that video clicks or not whether or not you lose premium

subscribers or not like that's your whole thing not to mention if you even think about the corporate part of it zooming out from the political lens like at least in traditional media there's a alleged firewall between the people who are selling ads and the hosts who are on air and the journalists who are doing the work like in new media there's none of that buffer which is why we've decided not to do any direct ad reads, never to interface with a corporate sponsor, because we don't want even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Now, if you're a comedian in general, there's no reason for you to like worry about that as much. It's a different ethical quandary. But if you're going to

be the only game in town in terms of interviewing our would-be presidential candidates, then that creates a very different ethical landscape. So in any case, I'm kind of, like I said, the podcast election, it's very depressing to me because obviously we work in this space. I had a lot of hopes for new media, and I see the incentive landscape as at least as bad and corrupting as legacy media. And like I said, if it was if it was part like if this Rogan interview was part of a broader framework where he's sitting for tough questions with New York Times editorial board, the Wall Street Journal, whoever. Oh, that was a relatively adversarial interview he did was with what was it, Bloomberg? That was at least somewhat adversarial. so we'll give him credit for that but it's by and large not by and large this is what we're getting there's no other debate there's you know so it's that's why to me it's very uh it's very depressing yeah i mean look you know i don't want this to be too navel gazing but it is certainly important

and it's what you're talking about, too, is important for people to understand, like you were talking about there with incentives and incentives do obviously matter. And this is way bigger than Rogan because it's not just about him. It's what Trump has been on a million of these podcasts. In fact, the mystifying part to me is whenever he does much, much smaller podcasts and you're like, OK, this is literally just so you can feel good while you're talking. That's different. Like here, I see the strategy. With the rest, planet Tyrus, I'm like, what are we doing here? All right, so sticking with that and just that general theme of adversarial questions, incentives, and all that,

I always tell people, too, in terms of why that matters. And we saw a lot of that during that whole insanity around Lauren Chen and the lying to a bunch of creators like dave rubin and tim pool that this was some like french businessman or whatever eduardo gregorian or whatever his name was and they like okay i i'll take them at their word they didn't know that this wasn't some random french businessman but the very fact that you would be like, sure, I'll just take in millions of dollars in certain cases for doing very little work and not ask any questions shows you how much like shady sleaziness and lack of scruples there is in the business in general.

Right. Last thing I wanted to show here was this UFO clip, not just about UFOfos but was about the jfk files as well and it revealed uh importantly what you talked about crystal about the mike pompeo connection and kind of how that worked with government let's take a listen a lot of interest in uh the people coming from space you know yes and i know you're interested oh very interested in that how much, very interested in that. How much did they tell you about that?

A lot. Really? Yeah. What did they tell you? How much can you tell? How's that work? Is it like super top secret? I can tell, you know.

Tell me. Well, based on Hunter Biden, I can say whatever the hell I want, right? But no. But I interviewed a few people. It's never been my thing, I have to be honest. I have never been a believer. I have people that Area 51 or whatever it is. I think it's the number one tourist attraction in the whole country or something.

Area 51 or something. You know that, right? Sure. I know what it is. It's a big tourist thing. So I interviewed jet pilots that say they saw something. If you saw them, you'd love to have them as you've seen them. I've had a couple in here.

Commander David Fravor, I had him in, who had that sighting in 2004. Very, very compelling with visual, video evidence, radar evidence. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family

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totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover,

to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high.

And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Voice Over on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day.

It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts

of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brian Graves. I don't believe his name, but I interviewed jet pilots

that were solid people. Perfect. I mean, great pilots. And they said, we saw things, Sarah, that were very strange. Like a round ball, but it wasn't a comet or a meteor. It was something. And it was going four times faster than an F-22, which is a very fast plane, you know. Okay, that was just the UFO section.

I guess I hadn't pulled that full clip, but there was also a JFK section part of that. Specifically where they taught, he was like, well, why didn't you release the JFK files? And he was like, well, Mike Pompeo and a few other people called me. The only interesting part on the JFK answer is he said, well, there's addresses and some of these people are still alive. And I was like, what? How can some of these people still be alive? In terms of the main conspirators, right? I mean, this was it was 1963.

Like, I mean, theoretically, I guess it would be extraordinarily old. But anyway, he said he was like, well, this time around. I can pull it up if you want i've got it yeah hold on let me pull up that part because at the first while i'm pulling it up what did you make of the the ufo part i mean to me i i have a rule of thumb um this is a kyle and i's rule of thumb every time he tells a story that's like sir i'll tell you yeah every time it starts with sir it's a lie like you're just making this up right now. Really? No. Yes. Well, OK. I will say that's the first time I've ever heard of this so-called the so-called interview with jet pilots. I hope it did happen. I hope more of those jet pilots

come out, be classified and speak to people. I mean, the unfortunate part for me was just like, I'll believe it when I see it. So if I recall with Trump, there was this whole thing. People probably don't even remember this, but it was FISA declassification. And there was this Trump pledged to do FISA declassification. Oh, OK, here we go. Let's listen to it. You can finish. Go ahead.

So FISA declassification. And it was like Trump was like, I'm going to do it. And then, you know, we just kept waiting and waiting. And I was covering the White House. We would ask the secretary. We were like, when is FISA declassification going to happen? And this and this and this. And finally, it just like never happened.

And a lot of it came back to exactly this whole Mike Pompeo thing. In my opinion, I mean, it's kind of like with everything with the executive, unless the executive really, really wants something to happen and is willing to follow through on that every single day for his presidency until it finally does. Then it's not going to happen in terms of the deep state. So, yeah, I mean, he could have done it last time. He didn didn't he could have done the jfk files last time he claims he said this time that he will do it now hopefully at this point he's been pressed mike pompeo might tell him not to again this time it could be tom cotton my hope would be that this time uh that you've had enough people and he's had enough times that he said it on the record uh that he might do it so that would at the i have a little bit more hope than I did last time,

but not as much as some people do. Okay. Let's see. Let me, I'll play, I'll play this part. Okay. One of the things that I want to talk to you about is the JFK files.

And one of the things that you said was that if they showed you what they showed me, this was your quote. You wouldn't want people to know it either. So I, I opened them up partially i was met with from good people i mean you know look i mean good people people that were well-meaning mike pompeo was one of them he's a good person uh they called me. They said, Sarah would rather, have you not? And I did open them, but I was asked by some people not to open them. There's a Martin Luther King file too,

by the way, that they'd like to see. I don't know if you know, but there is that. But JFK in particular. So they called me, a lot of good people called me, people that you would find reasonable people. And they asked me not to do it. So I said, well, we'll close it for another time. But if I win, I'm going to open them up. I'm just going to open enough times. Why didn't you open it up the first time? Because a lot of times addresses people that are still living.

There are people that are affected. And there could be some national security reason that I don't have to necessarily know about. But some very good, talented people asked me not to do it. I opened it up, and then they said, would it be possible for us to do that a different day? How much of it did you read into? I think it's going to be just fine to open it let me put it that way i think it's fine it's going to be time it's a cleansing you know it's really a cleansing so i'm going to do it i'm going to do it immediately almost immediately upon entering office well the thing

when people look at it from the outside all right uh so anyway what do you make of that because to me i'm just i know people are like reading a lot and does well he said there's addresses and people are still alive i just think he's making shit up like reading a lot and just, oh, he said there's addresses and people are still alive. I just think he's making shit up. Like, I think he's just coming up with an excuse for why he didn't do the thing last time. And the real reason probably is something more like, like, well, Mike Pompeo said I should.

No, that is the real reason. Yeah. I just want, look, he said he would do it. Let's, let's hold his feet to the fire if he wins, folks. Let's get it done. Because, and it's funny too, if you've talked. Because the MAGA movement is really good at holding Trump's feet to the fire over his failed promises we'll try uh we'll try our best my uh I'll bring it back to Jefferson Morley who when we interviewed

him we were like why why and he's like it's just all narrative it's just that they can't have the information out there about the direct CIA involvement it I don't think it has to do with addresses or people alive you know like he said he like, it really is about mythos and about how the CIA and how foundational, you know, the assassination is to like the American myth and how they don't want, you know, the the imagery of the CIA to be diminished. Now, I mean, the ridiculous part is that everybody knows that if you were to ask people, you know, the vast majority of Americans believe that it was a conspiracy. They believed it at the time. They still believe it today. If anything,

they know even more than they've ever known. So yeah, we'll see. We'll see if it happens this time around. The last thing I wanted to show, I don't know, Sagar, if you have it or I can pull it up, but is the I think it's worth reflecting on because I actually think there were some real insights here from Rogan when he was asked by Lex Friedman previously if he would interview Trump. And he was like, absolutely not. And actually, Lex to his car was like, no, you're going to do it. And, you know, I suspect that Rogan was reluctant to do it. But then once you see, you know, the Ovan and all these other people do it, it's like, all right, well, whatever.

I guess this is just what we're doing now. But in any case, let's take a listen to this clip of how he explained previously. By the way, I'm not a Trump supporter in any way, shape, or form. I've had the opportunity to have him on my show more than once. I've said no every time. I don't want to help him.

I'm not interested in helping him. The night is still young. We'll see. If I have him on, the night is still young? You think I'll have him on? I think you'll have him on. Really? Why do you think that? Because you'll have Putin on? helping the the night is still young we'll see if i have mon tonight is still young yeah i think you'll have one really why do you think that because you'll have putin on and you're competitive as fuck no i i think ultimately um i mean you had you've had a lot of people that I think you may otherwise be skeptical,

would I have a good conversation, which I think is your metric. You don't care about politics, so can I have a good conversation? And I think you had people like Kanye on, for example, and you had a great conversation with him. I think you – Yeah, but Kanye's an artist. But Kanye doing well or not doing well doesn't change the course of our country. Yeah, but do you really bear the responsibility of the course of our country based on a conversation?

I think you can revitalize and rehabilitate someone's image in a way that is pretty shocking all right that's the end so yeah what do you make of that because i mean i think he's i think he's pretty accurate there like if you says i don't want to help i mean i think for one thing you know joe's politics have shifted like you know the the guy who was like i I'll vote for Bernie Sanders is now like just pretty partisan, like pro Trump guy and happy RFK juniors in that camp and whatever. So that's one thing. But but yeah, I mean, I think he was correct there that you look at Trump's approval rating now.

It's the highest it's ever been. And I've been skeptical of how much these podcast appearances will actually like move voters that are watching like in the audience, like young men, you know, many of whom probably just aren't really going to vote. They might they might be like, yeah, Trump's cool. But then are they going to actually vote? Like I'm a little skeptical of it from that perspective. I'm not skeptical of the benefit is provided him in terms of raising his approval rating and undercutting the messaging of like, you know, rehabbing him post January 6th and utter undercutting the messaging of like, this is a dangerous person to put back in the White House. I think on that front, it has already been profoundly successful. And I think Joe is, you know, now also just accepted his part in playing a role in that rehabilitation.

If you're interested, if you listen, there are a couple of things that he says. And he said he changed his mind after Trump got shot. And he also said it's because of Dana White. That's the number one reason that this is happening. So clearly there was a major effort from Dana behind the scenes to get Trump. Dana, by the way, doesn't get enough. It's funny. If you look at the genesis of this podcast stuff, it's all Dana White. So, for example, Dana was the one who Trump told Trump to do the Nelk Boys, which I believe is the very

first podcast that Trump ever did. This was back in 2022. If you listen to Trump with Aiden Ross, so Dana and Aiden Ross have gambled before together in previous interviews. And Dana and apparently Barron as well were the two who were like, you got to do this. And obviously, Dana and Joe have been friends for 23 years. And this was clearly an area of disagreement or whatever behind them. I also think, you know, you can't underestimate the fact where you just brought up with Theo Vaughn. It's not novel at this point. Like this isn't the only podcast Trump has done. I believe that this is the eighth or ninth. Obviously, it's the biggest one, and it could be the one that most people pay attention to than any others. But within the context, and specifically because

these guys are all friends with each other, this is not outside of the norm out of all of those podcast interviews. So that's the last part. But then, yeah, I mean, I think part of it too, and I guess to Joe's credit, he said, I want to have Kamala Harris on, you know, and so he's like, look, you know, if I'm going to do Trump, it seems that he obviously extended a, you know, like a olive branch or whatever to Kamala to have her on. And I guess I'll just close with I hope she does it. I don't think that she will, but I do hope that she does. And so, you know, you know, it is difficult. And we've talked to him about this like he never necessarily wanted to be a role which could move the country or whatever he slowly found himself there and i

think maybe he's just shifted his mind of like yeah i am i'm in this position it is what it is right yeah i just listen i think that as i said before since this podcast strategy you know whether it's alex cooper or theovan or andrew schultz or joe rogan or shannon sharp or whoever the hell it is on whatever side of the aisle they're on like if this is going to be the bulk of the questioning and insight that we get into candidates you do have some responsibility here like as much as you want to be like i'm just a you know an influencer an athlete a comedian whatever um you know or like a whatever you want to call alex cooper i guess like a cultural figure

we'll call her influencer yeah influencer i mean as much as you want to hide behind that of like oh well no one should expect me it's like well we kind of have to rely on you because this is all we're getting so you do have to take on if you're going to interview Kamala, if you're going to interview Trump, you do have to take on some level of responsibility of like this is in terms of our like brittle, broken down, depressing, democratic process. This is kind of all we're getting. So it does put maybe an unfair burden, but it does put an onus on you it's very to do your best to you know to get insights and to be a little adversarial and to push them in areas where

they're not comfortable especially like you know you got three hours of this man's time how precious is his time oh very how who is the last i mean when has he ever given anyone three hours of time and this is it like you said this he's probably not going to do anything else yeah my understanding is that this is probably the last one so this is your last chance to you know get from him like what what are you gonna do and what about the failures of last time and what about the middle east and yeah you say none of it would have happened but like okay it did so what now and so anyway that's what would say is like, as much as it would be nice to just kick back and be like, let's chill and have a conversation.

I think because of the direction that I'm under no illusions that any of any of these influencers or whatever are going to shift their approach because all the incentives are in the direction of doing the like, you know, softball, let's hang out interview. It's easier. Your audience likes it more and you're more likely to get the candidates back. But I do think it's it's depressing and unfortunate and is further degradation of like our democratic process and the ability of voters to assess who they're voting for. I honestly, it's a tough position, especially if you've never had any experience doing this. You know, you and I came up in a more traditional background.

So, you know, you get kind of used to it, like in terms of pressing people, oh, so-and-so senator, so-and-so's pissed off at you. OK, whatever. Don't be a senator then. You know, it's one of those where it's weird. Trust me, it takes years of social conditioning to be able to push past that. And you need a certain personality type. And like you said, it's also not necessarily fair to expect people maybe who've been acting or doing like this for

a lifetime and now are suddenly thrust into the position. So I do sympathize. It's a very difficult kind of position to be in. And yeah, finally, you know, really what I would say, and this is to our audience as well and to everybody else who is out there, is part of the issue with podcasts of people who are non-political it is conditioned people to think that you should quote let people talk which is fine my general theory is if you're an author or whatever um yeah like the stakes they're not that high but when you're a politician i do think you should have fundamentally different standards and specifically for when people are running for president. And part of the issue is that people will listen to a podcast or even maybe an interview that you or I have done

with others where you just kind of like let them talk like whatever, because, again, the stakes are not necessarily all that high, but it should be very different. And there were different expectations for politicians that were there in the past. And if it's complimentary, it's fine. I have no issue with it, like you said. But I do think that there are way too many people out there who only want to see this type of interview. And by the way, that doesn't work for you at all. It really doesn't because, you know,

just flip it around and say, for the person you don't like, you know, when I watch, you know, that Alex Cooper thing or whatever with Kamala, I'm like, what the fuck am I getting out of this? Like, it's like- But I mean, I feel the same way watching that. It's like,

okay, well, this is like just a propaganda puff piece. Waste of time, you know? Yeah. She's gotten much more difficult questions. Even the ladies of the view gave her more difficult questions than I've seen thrown at either candidate in like the podcast setting space.

So, yeah, I mean, if, if it's part of a broader thing and then you can just like have the conversation and see who see who they are on the inside. That's one thing. But that's not that's not where we are. And it's only going to go more in this direction. It's because if you're a politician and there's no public pressure on you to do otherwise, why would you like? Why would you as Kamala, subject yourself to potentially difficult questioning from Joe Rogan and a hostile audience?

Why would you do that outside of some, you know, narrow tactical goal of proving that you can? For most politicians, we already see this trend. Like, they'll just go on the partisan networks and friendly podcast circuits and never really get pressed. And that's just more and more the direction that we're heading in. And now we've basically normalized having effectively no debates as well. So, you know, that's where we are.

All right. Buckle up, folks. 10 days to go to the election. We will see you all on Monday. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.

Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. On Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, you'll hear about these heroes and what their stories tell us about the nature of bravery. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.