Chapo Trap House - 284 - Dave & Busters feat. Dave Weigel (1/27/19)

Episode Date: January 28, 2019

Maverick political reporter Dave Weigel drops by to discuss Trump's shutdown cave-in, Roger Stone's arrest, the potential candidacies of Bernie and Howard Schultz, and of course, Pizza Ranch.

I You got personally owned by the president. I did. Oh, one more. Oh, right. Wow. When his power really started to get in question is when he called people to be fired. They weren't fired That's like literally the first time he done that I think but Oh, I would like to have your name in the president's mouth. What would you like to lie about the proud sides of one of the fine president's rallies? What would you like to do the deep state's bidding? That was like a weird night because I found so the president's hacked me for tweeting something snarky and actually it was great because I've learned to really hate reply guy culture where the president says something and you do a user.

I don't care anymore. I mean, it's a statement. He makes it. I just had seen a photo of this rally that wasn't filled in yet, but you could see Trump like scouting in the background. I thought it was him walking in to something that wasn't full and he does like say like it's a great crowd and there's 20,000 people outside and there aren't like no people outside. So I just snarked once and didn't really think about it and then I actually deleted it and hours later, six hours, seven hours later. I was at like a friend's Christmas party and people to start texting me but just like, you know, how Twitter is insufferable in a football game because everyone just says like, damn. Shit. Whoa. And like they explain what they're talking about. It was like that. Just text like, oh, shit, Dave. What was this? And it was weird because I checked. I was like, hey, I don't need to delete this tweet. Did I do anything wrong? They said, well, you know, don't tweet things that are wrong. But this doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world. But the key thing is here, you were wrong.

I was wrong. You lied about the rally. I was trying to bring down the president. Yeah, that's true. It was a classic Trump moving the goalpost because first he said, I can't believe this. They haven't even retracted this. And then he said, yeah, I'm sorry about that. He's like, and he hasn't been fired. Just like any bed will be met by another demand, which is why you can't give him anything. Why you can't give him as the speaker of the house.

But yeah, that was the first time he said somebody should get fired and they didn't fire. Well, that is the beginning of the end of his power. I guess the lesson here is, you know, never snark without thinking or if you snark, you better not miss. I think it's just never tweet. I don't know when I've benefited from tweeting this much. I'm here now. I guess that helps. Imagine benefiting materially from tweeting. From tweeting? Absurd.

Absurd. Will is petting his ascot, right? And the links cat that I've just bought from. No, without further ado, I should formally introduce our guest for this week. It's political reporter for the Washington Post, Dave Weigel. It's good to be here. Dave. Thank you very much.

Scoops Weigel. Yeah. He's got a hat with a press card in the brim. I feel bad because there's this reporter, Jimmy Vilkin, that the Daily News, who actually does that. And I pointed at a photo, no insult. It was like a photo of the Gillibrand announcement. Everyone looks like crap. There's wearing like a shell suit and a t-shirt.

And there's one guy who's like, I hear there's news on the scene. And it's Jimmy and he's a good reporter. And I think he took it personally. I didn't mean that. No, everyone should do that. I would never, ever criticize someone for doing the press, the press badge thing. That rules and everyone should do it. Instead of having a fucking lanyard.

You know, that's what we're so cool. We instead have like a neon lanyard with like a big picture that's like your driver's license with blurrier and like a chip on it. That's way cooler than a hat. Yeah. What? Oh, you've got a badge and you're rakeishly cocked hat. I'd rather you have a fucking giant necklaces, like a boner medicine on it.

You've got it a trade show. That's way cooler. So Dave, you know, political reporter, let's, let's talk some, let's talk some dang politics. Yeah. Man, oh man, there's been a lot of politics going on this week. So many. There's so many politics folks. Check this out.

It's only January. Did you know this? I can't believe it. I even stopped. I used to be one of the people who do that. I can't believe it's Thursday still on Friday. And it's just, it's so exhausting now that I'm going to try. It's everyone feels like hell all the time.

Some people who will be feeling a little less like hell, federal workers. All right. Yes. They begin to see those paychecks begin to trickle in as we now have a temporary reprieve to the longest government shutdown in history. Trump announcing he would reopen the government for 30 days to give some breathing room, I guess, for the negotiations, but, you know, bottom line, no, no money for the wall. Pelosi basically just she's firm.

She's slaying. She's slayed. We do not question the character. She has. She's current right now. She's wearing four pairs of sunglasses. You knew this was swinging when people were sharing of their own volition. Memes of her just wearing a coat.

Like when she became a hip figure, but, but no, this people, too many Republicans went on the record saying that exactly this scenario would be a huge loss for him. So watching them kind of scramble back is, is difficult. Like Lindsey Graham lost for Pelosi or the Democrats for, for, for Trump, like this exact scenario is anything, anything but wall money. Cause she, she mocked him pretty incessantly. She's one of those people. It's like, you know, is it two towers, the one where the king has been infected by worm

tongue and they pull them, they pull them out and then he like, like age deages 30 years. That's kind of her when she has power. So she went from somebody who was kind of mumbling, no one showed her press conferences to somebody who really relishes this and has just been making fun of him. Like the one press conference where she just says, somebody asked like, but how, cause reporters, even though, even, even though I think people think some of the wall demands are stupid, they would say like, but sir, compromise, ma'am, aren't you going to compromise? How much for the wall?

And she'd say a dollar. How much is that? Is a dollar good for you? She just made fun of the demands the whole time. So Republicans were like, if we lose to her, it's humiliation. And they, you know, the wall, the wall just got 10 feet shorter. The outset of this quite a bit wrong, Pelosi offered something on the level of one and a half to $2 billion, just out of general border security.

And earlier this week, a lot of the discussion was that the Dems were about to cave and support some kind of moronic high tech wall compromise that would just mean billions and billions more money, more dollars to militarize the border. And in this deal, in this, in this continuing resolution, they got what, zero? They got zero. I mean, let me bring in the politics knowing, I guess here, because the way that just Congress works, if you're reporting on it, is you can amble around anywhere. The White House is like 13 levels of security to get near to Kellyanne Conway.

Congress you just go up to a Congressman and shove your recorder and be like, what do you think of this deal? And so it was amazing that very few of them had done it, but like most of the Democrats breaking or like they were caught on the way back from lunch or something. People say, what do you think of the deal? And James Clyburn be like, that sounds fine. But the only thing that mattered was that she wouldn't let them. Like the second anyone was on like TV, like rambling about what would be, we get a bull,

she called them back. She actually, you know, I don't know how much you want to stand for her, but she is good at that part of the job. Just being like, shut up, get in line, you're never going to be on a committee again if you break on this. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what about then?

What about, and this was the other story, Republicans in the Senate and apparently earlier in the day when the deal was announced, a contentious behind closed doors lunch. Oh yeah, the closed door lunches. Well, they're doing a closed door luncheon. Well, I mean, most of the times you go into a room, you do close the door. I don't know why that part of it is so secretive. More importantly, what kind of spread we talk? They get this huge catered spread.

They get lots of the multiple cookies with like not that many oatmeal raisin. They actually get the chocolate on chocolate kind. You see the roll. Taxes are paying for this. You see these people roll in this food for people, you know, seething contempt because they're not actually doing anything in these meetings. But look, like I think the dynamic that Democrats are right about was that Mitch McConnell didn't care about the wall and never has.

But he liked that Donald Trump has a hand with which he will sign a paper that's like I appoint these 30 Federalist Society clerks to the district courts. That's all he cares. Literally, I'm not even being glib anymore. It's all he cares about. Well, he also cares about, you know, going for pieces to wait on those giant tankers full of cocaine. Oh yeah.

All the shipping containers from China. The cocaine bitch. The cocaine speedboat dope. Yeah. Well, if that's all McConnell feels, what about the rest of the Senate Republican caucus? Well, there's like six of them who are kind of worried about getting reelected. Well, there's a few like Cory Gardner from Colorado. He's fucking done.

What does he even care anymore? He does feel low, but like the Dean Heller situation where he just you have to kind of twist around for two years or how do you head camp? I mean, like we're getting to the point where there's, you know, 23 states that will only like Democrats and 27 that only like Republicans. But he didn't want it and he's really talkative and reporters like him, but McConnell just didn't care about the wall because he knows it's a skit. He's very good at identifying what like the rubes want to hear.

And because all he cares about is getting enough judges to like strike down campaign finance law, strike down gun law, strike down health care, et cetera, et cetera. It makes it weird to cover it. You were like, what's going on in the master's mind? All of his brilliant tactics are like, what if we don't have a vote on this? What if we just sit here for two years and don't have a vote on this? On the wall? Like what if we don't do that?

What if we just don't do that? Everyone would go away so I can confirm more judges. I mean, Trump obviously is going to go ahead and he's going to confirm the judges they want. But as far as like, like legislation and like like Trump, like the sort of the headline or like the phrases being thrown around a lot is like after the midterms, Trump is pretty much a spent force politically, like that even, I mean, obviously a running joke on this show is that like there's nothing Trump could do to like, you know, alienate his base

except for I would say save for having him perceived to have lost to someone like Nancy Pelosi on the question of the wall, especially and like, because like this is the lib ownership economy and you only like it only must go the water must flow downhill, the libs must be owned. Yes. But if you put that dam in there and it took, wait a second, no money for the wall. It does seem like like the base, you know, to put it or the MAGA people do seem to be pretty pissed off.

You know, it's the first time that there seems to be a generalized anger at Trump, at Trump, not at the Democrats, but like at Trump, particularly for selling out, being a trader, you know, he's just like the swab. He's just like the rest of them. I've seen the phrase commander in soy being thrown around on Twitter. I didn't say it for if the president is listening to this, this one was not me attacking you. This was someone else on Twitter. I did see Mike Cernovich tweet today.

Pelosi is alpha. What is happening? So you say like he said when I lose Mike Cernovich, I lost the American Napa Valley mindset. Yeah. Yeah, it just seems like they're being cocked, you know, they got cocked. There's no way around it. And there was Democrats by miraculously not folding after this long period because you just kind of, I think everyone just assumed they were going to blink.

I know I did. But then their brave act of just not doing anything was matched by the actual bravery of some federal workers and people in allied industries finally putting their fucking foot down and saying, we're not going to fucking go to work anymore without a goddamn paychecks. It was like two hours of LGA having delays. Yeah. Yeah. Philadelphia and the head of the air storage union.

Yeah. Because they would not go to work that the air. Little point of this out, but if you want to fuck with rich people, if you want to fuck with the ruling class in this party, you got to fuck with air travel. Like that's what they do all day is just go from, from fucking Delta, a sky elite lounges to first class cabins to other lounges to pizza gate dungeons. That's their life. And they all tweet if there's a delay.

There's an exact. Yeah. Exactly. It's like there are, they're, they're, they're serving order on dipped in a Drita Chrome in the fucking Paris catacombs in 24 hours. And if I'm not there, I will fucking have you all kill. And so yeah, like infrastructures, how you actually grab them by the balls. And it really is inspiring.

You remember all of Charlie Kirk's tweets at United? Yeah. Yeah. Those are good. So it's just, it's kind of, it was, it's, it's dispiriting to think that it took them a month to mobilize and get the, you know, the, the commitment to do this. And that all it was really is in the service of maintaining a status quo, but it really does speak to the, the genuinely disruptive potential of organizing key industries, which

will be very important in the future because it's not like these institutions are going to get any more cooperative once we reach crisis points with shit like climate and healthcare and things like that. And it's good to know that there are places where you can squeeze those Puevos. But I do hope that they have made some sort of commitment that, that they're not going to wait another month if there's another fucking shutdown after the end of this, this negotiation period, if they don't get somewhere with it, because they have to be committed to being like, no, we're not going through this again.

You know, Trump, when he, when, you know, we all saw him like, you know, shuffle out there on Friday in the Rose Garden, you know, looking like, like a high school student who had just been caught smoking weed or something. And like, has the, you know, your parents are like, are you high right now? You know, you have to just be like, yes, but you know, I mean, obviously Trump, the idea that, you know, he, you know, he gets up the next morning, he watches his four hours of executive time TV and everyone's saying, Trump cave, Pelosi won and he can't stand that.

And like, you know, I saw him tweet the other day, like everyone's saying that this is a cave. No way. I just want to, I genuinely believe like we need to help like the workers and this will make the good negotiations. But if after 30 days, there's no deal for the wall. Okay. It's a grotto, folks.

He goes, he goes, he goes, we're off to the races again. So what do you think the likelihood is that we just go a month and then they do it all over again? I don't think it would be like this. I think, I think Matt is correct that now that, that like labor leaders have had these meetings and they have a plan for if things get screwed up again, there's also going to be a couple of weeks of here's what it's like to wind the machine back up. Like here's the, here are the million people, like literally million people who didn't get

paid and couldn't spend money and here's the money lost in the economy. It just didn't work. Like he had one shot to do this so he could keep, there are, they keep doing it. But what was like a nerving for the White House is that so many times in so many ways they, they're impervious to anything, but what's on Fox news, right? And this is, I didn't have, every week I feel like people forget like, oh, the polls are going to be bad. And every week I say, he doesn't care.

Like Lou Dobbs is going to tell him he won, Sean Hannity is going to tell him he looks amazing. Genean Pirro is going to tell him it's time, it's like time to cut the tall trees, et cetera. Like he has this different, it's like, it's really cliched, but just like the essential truth is he watches TV and they say you're doing great. And this time they were still saying he was doing great and it just was like untenable because other people around him were saying, actually the polls are bad. And also, I never get into the whole like Jared Navanca or secretly saying this and

backing away. But this is like the 90th time that Kushner has said he had a plan and it blew up. And he's still there. So the next time he says like, oh, you just need to give an oval office speech and it's well, that's not how he talks. It's a much higher voice. You got to get in there. Yeah.

Christopher's plan was to bust out blue star airlines until the stock hit 20. But then the union reps walked in his office and pulled support. So Dave, out of those two competing narratives, and as far as I could tell at the, by the end of the day, Friday, those were the two basic narratives for why the shutdown ended. Republicans in the Senate revolting versus grassroots labor action. What do you believe actually ended the shutdown? I think the labor in the airport moves, sorry, the air traffic controller moves, that was the moment when things became real and they had to bail on it.

But no, it was like the country would not function anymore. Yeah. But Pelosi pulling people back was important and there's a really stupid fight happening on Twitter, which is everyone said, let that settle in for a second. All right. Now that your mind's blown. No, but there are people like the Pelosi stands who used to be Hillary stands that kind of moved over are like, how dare anyone not give her all the credit?

It's like, no, I think this discussion here has laid it out. She got people not to break. But if people were still were just working without pay, this would probably still be going on because there's this theory that the daily caller anonymous op-ed, did you guys read that? So there are many like why the shutdowns good takes the most the one that actually circulated was. Oh, I remember this.

Yeah. So there's this guy who I assume guy didn't identify who he was, but I am it was like the bizarro version of the New York Times. I'm the I'm an anonymous Trump official. And it was I'm anonymous Trump official. The deep state sucks. The government sucks too. And the shutdown proves that 80% of these people are useless.

So we should use the shutdown to fire them all and prove that you could shrink the government down to the size of the bathtub and I'm like barely paraphrasing it. Yeah. That was the take. And that was a Mick Mulvaney ass take. Yeah. And that that was still in the bloodstream until it was like, oh, you can't fly anymore. Yeah.

Imagine what would happen if you just shut down the air travel system in America. Well, that's the thing. It says, oh, not essential. Look, you guys, you guess, you don't really need these people. Yeah. They were still working. They just weren't getting paid. Yeah.

They were still going to work. They were volunteering. That's what Larry Kudlow said. That was the best news cycle. That was the real garbage time was not just him, but even like the space of an hour, both Wilbur Ross and Larry Kudlow, both of whom look like Thomas Nass cartoons, but like both like vests and bow ties and literally just a money bag head. But both of them saying, actually, you know, these people are just volunteering their work

because they love the government so much. And you know, if they if they if they don't have groceries now, they can just, you know, tell them they're good for it. Because that's what her house on the market because he think it is funny. I remember that quote. If you look at that, that quote where they asked Trump about Ross and then he just started free, free styling. Yeah.

People's you get out of it. The broad idea that he's thinking of maybe like an episode of the Andy Griffith show or something where, you know, the nice, the neighborly grocer has a little list with everyone's name on. He's like, oh, Mrs. Kravitz. How you doing? Oh, yeah. I know you're a little light this week.

You could get, you know, a pound of butter and a quarter of milk. But you still had to really work to get that out of it because there was no there was no like subject in that sentence. Like there was no like if a teacher had tried to diagram the sentence, he said they wouldn't have been able to find anything. It was he was just saying there's grocers and, you know, the people they know you and that they they they make allowance and they do a thing. I mean, it was barely English.

He really is sundowning now before noon at this point. But that was an amazing news cycle where him and the rest of the billionaire assholes who in his administration were just telling people who hadn't gotten paid in the month that it was okay. Either they should take out a loan or that like Floyd the barber should float them some credit at the at the fucking dry goods store because Trump thinks that America every part of America is either a Mad Max hellscape of people getting decapitated by MS 13 or it's the it's the town from fucking green acres.

Those are the only two places in America. Well, he also had no backup on this because like, I don't he didn't have many good moments in the shutdown. But one they tried was pulling out. Remember the press conference where he's surrounded by like seven bald men he's surrounded by the border guards and they're like, Mr. President, we're willing to take this for the team. We're willing to not get paid.

Our members stand behind you, etc. etc. And I think he might have expected there'd be like waves of that of people who've been waiting for the the blue collar billionaire president, which is the thing that is. Mr. President, sir, I will gladly pour out water in the desert meant for refugees on my free time. Yeah, of course. They'll work for free.

Their job is pushing people around. They get to enact their violent fan. They will pay for the privilege of doing that shit. Yeah, they really thought there'd be more of that. And there wasn't like he went. Everyone forgets the Oval Office speech. He said like, call your congressmen. And you know, it's weird.

They kind of have to tell you the truth. When you ask a report calls the office, they do track it for some reason. It's not it's I don't know why they do. I would lie if I was a congressman, but they don't lie. And no one called like no one was melting the switchboards to say we want the wall. Just like he didn't have this public support. He didn't have people on the other hand were a million people who are like who they kept making fun of.

Like Republicans kept going on CNBC and making fun of like the elite liberal federal employees who make like $30,000 a year to process social security checks and stuff, right? And they were like vocal and protesting and stuff. But like the CBP guys just like disappeared. I think it's funny, like to the question, like to the anonymous daily color thing about like, you know, what what federal employees really are non-essential. And I would say like the bald guys who like the back of their neck looks like a pack of hot dogs who are like, I will I will patrol the border.

I will pay you to do that are genuinely non-essential. But then like forget the TSA people, terrified to think like, OK, there's just no air travel or God forbid, like, you know, someone gets a bomb on an airplane or something like that. I was more like think about like FDA, like food instruction and things like that. Like it all. But by the end, it was like the Simpsons educational film where the world has no zinc. The guy tries to like blow his brains out and the bullet doesn't work. Come back, zinc.

It felt like that because it's like, oh, all these things that I just take for granted. Some sad bureaucrat in like a processing center in like Dubuque. He does this and he started to realize that. People get like making low at 30, 40 grand a year to like make sure that like arugula doesn't kill you. Sir, I am proud to die of arugula poison before your wall, sir. I am proud to shit my guts out. So Dave, looking forward in the next three weeks, do you think that the Democrats will try to cut some kind of deal or will they will just come

and come back to this point and say, we won last time. We'll win this time. So fuck off. Like they've got a serious body high from how this ended. Yeah. It really felt like because, you know, like the 2018 election was a little bit like midterm night, it wasn't clear how well they did. So they were nervous.

In 2016, they still wake up like screaming like the Sigourney Weaver flashback alien. But then this was the first time they just were like straight up gloating. And I feel like even when that wears off, there might be a little bit, because the debate among Democrats is it used to be border security money, not for a wall means whoever who cares. Yes. But since Trump became president, it means that's free money for CBP agents, for ICE to round people up.

And that's like untenable. Yes. And I don't know. I think people, activists need to like be clear. They don't want any border security money. Yes. There are some people who are going to break and say, we'll beat them on the wall.

So just like, give them some drones who cares. Give them some like your own personal minds. That's arguably worse in my view. And I was afraid that that's what the Democrats compromise would be. Oh, we'll just spend a billion dollars. We'll hire a thousand more border guards who we can never fire. We can never lay these people off because we would look so bad. You give them money for fucking security fencing.

Well, that can just be destroyed, never built or fall into disrepair. Or the immigration or immigration courts, which is like a liberal thing, not liberal. Democrats say they want more immigration judges because the courts are blocked up and that's bad. But that would mean like you're processing even more, even more quickly, people you're separating and kicking out of the country where there are all these little,

because Jeff Sessions is gone, it's not clear if the Trump administration like knows what to do with this border money. Steve Miller's still there, he knows what to do. Oh, yeah. But like that's the next phase of this is, well, the wall's gone, he's embarrassed, but like are Democrats going to accidentally let him fund,

double the size of the border patrol? But like because they keep kind of doing that and every immigration bill they pass, the reason there's the fence now is Bush was like, well, I'm going to do something later. But in the meantime, you have like just 700 miles of fence. Is that a Hillary and Obama vote for that? You're serious people, yeah, yeah.

I mean, the trap Obama kept falling into was like I will eventually get immigration by just deporting people more than any other president ever so that people take me seriously. I think Democrats mindset is still kind of there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously we said we were surprised that they held fast on this and gave up nothing,

but obviously like I was expecting to do that and I'm expecting them to come to like some kind of bad compromise rather than just doing the Michael Corleone thing. Like here's my offer, Senator, nothing, not even the money for the bribe. But like do you think like their behavior, you know, like Pelosi and Schumer, they're feeling their oats?

Like what do you think that has to do with like 2016? How do you view like the Democratic Party as they are now versus like just even two years ago? Has like some sort of internal gravity shifted? Do they feel a little bit more like with their, I mean, obviously they have like a little pressure on their left flank from some of the like AOC, obviously the more popular young people in the party now?

No, they totally do. And when it comes to immigration, because Trump is so unpopular and everything that he talks about becomes less popular, this consensus they used to have where we can't possibly do immigration reform without being convincing that trucker hat guy at our town hall that we're serious,

that's quieted down just because Trump's made it so much less popular, like pulling on the wall, like it peaks at 42% or something. And you ever see that like Matt Boer's cartoon where people are like looking and watching for like the gay marriage polls? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how they, that's how they all think.

That's how every Democrat thinks. So immigration is now, it's gone from a thing they're constantly worried about to where this Congress, they have, you know, they don't have the Senate, but like there's no one they elected the House who has to go home and answer to angry people about immigration, especially the ones in like the suburbs of Houston hate the wall,

like all their constituents hate this. So on this, they've actually, I think they've moved left probably for good until like some future president needs to sign like the Robocop project in order to get like amnesty for people, right? Yeah. So do you sense a real realignment

within the Democratic coalition on border security overall? Well, it's like a version of what happened under, like when Obama becomes president, like half of Republicans are like, well, of course climate change is real and we need to do a carbon tax or something. There's like the Newt Gingrich doesn't add with Nancy Pelosi, where they're sitting

for some reason on a couch, like in the middle of the mall, which is not there, if you go look for that couch. They're in two separate bathtubs, like a Seattle commercial. We're looking a sunny field. But then Trump, Obama's president is like, well, let me be clear, climate change is real and every Republicans like, you, sir, are a communist.

We're not for this. Like a version of that has happened with Democrats where if Trump does it, they're like, our base hates this guy. If he's for it, we like, we're done. And that's like blown up 10 or 12 things they would have compromised on, I think. But it's like on the other side,

like we talked a little bit about Trump, at least as far as like Congress and like passing any kind of like agenda seems to be kind of a spent force as other than just a rubber stamp for like vampires from the Federalist Society basement or whatever. But like, yeah, like, as we said, this thing on the wall does seem to be like the red line

for like the real die hard. It's like the real MAGA nation. And I'm wondering like, what do you think a post Trump like MAGA movement or like that part of the, which is I think the majority of the Republican party, like where do you see that going? Like, do they continue their like momentum and vision like without Trump as a figurehead

or did they kind of fracture or just become even more sort of like insular and poisonous in their own little conclaves? It's a good question. Cause when people thought he would lose, I thought that the momentum would continue in like President Tom Cotton in 2021. Yeah, that's what we were talking about.

That is why Martin Sheen dead zone fucking scenario. But like, they were going to be more strategic and say the new Republican position is like 1920 immigration levels and like kicking out people who got here because of the Haitian, Haitian boat people and Cuban things that Trump has done, but kind of like half hazardly. I thought they would, they would be more explicit.

And it's like, they've stumbled on it. Like the whole, well, the whole point of punishing Steve King was to create running room to like attack Rashida to lead. Yeah, and Louis Farrakhan, Democrats like him. Yeah, but I think they're actually a little bit listless right now and don't know what to do, but that's where I thought this was going to end up.

I don't know if Trump's ruined it, but there's like the, the, the, the, the Steve Miller wing of the party runs things and I don't know when they were going to give it up. Even if Trump loses, conservatism can never fail. It can only be failed. So even if you just did it wrong. Yeah, if he loses in 2020,

it's hard for me to imagine the animating force, the idea of like the wall and what it symbolizes for these people. It's hard for me to imagine that going away or them moving on to something else. After Trump is defeated, he will, he will die on the toilet, but he will, they'd be processed as sort,

he will, they will believe that he is the occluded Mottie who will return one day on a golden horse to bring the wall with him. It's gonna happen. I think what happens is all of this energy there gets dispersed and there's, there's no one with the sort of magnetic appeal of Trump for, you know, all of these white wingers to climb on.

It's like the energy will be there. The ideology is not going anywhere, but the thing that made Trump able to break through and reorient the whole base was the fact that he was this, in this incredibly unique position of being an incredibly wealthy and more importantly, super famous outsider who didn't have any institutional buy-in

with the Republican party or, or, and they had no leverage over him. And that gave him this unique position. If he falls, presumably everyone who's gonna be trying to grab his mantle is just gonna be an RNC slug and they're not gonna have the freedom of movement he had. So none of them are gonna really be able to give him the real resin that he was given.

I think when I was at the short-term, we go back to this, this period of, of Republican just pandering to those people. And, you know, we'll get maybe more not Romani's like McCain or Romani. The base knows is fundamentally not on their side, but they, you know, sing the right notes for them. And I think kind of we'll see more

ludic right-wing billionaires just running for president. Why not? But they will, but they're gonna realize that the missing ingredient is not being independently wealthy. It's being famous. Mm-hmm. And like Steve Forbes is a billionaire.

Nobody gave a shit. They, they, they, what, what animated them is that he was a guy on TV who did deals. Well, think about Trump as he is the real deal. He is also just a sundowning old white man. Right. He is, he is as dumb as them. He said, he says things that are word for word free republic posts from 2002.

Like he lives with his Fox and Friends. Even we're to know it's like a DVR Fox and Friends and he will just quote what they said about him and say, thanks. And they're not going to get that again. I don't think like if not many lose Cheney, they're not going to do that. Yeah.

I mean, nobody's not Trump coming. Who knows? You combine the money of some right-wing billionaire with a right-wing celebrity. Yes. James Woods. Robert. Robert Davi.

Are you out? The Dean Cain? He's got presidential looks. So what either has to be an old white man who's extremely unwell and famous or an extremely talented character actor? Yeah. Yeah.

James Woods. James Woods. James Woods. James Woods. How about James Woods? If he could, but the problem is he would need, he would need somebody to back him. I think the Mercers might have gotten burned now.

Yeah. They might end up having to pay some of those tax money. Sheldon, you get Sheldon Adelson's money. Yeah. James Woods is brain disease because he's out there tweeting about race war like every day. Oh, yeah. No, he's at the furthest edge.

He's pretty famous, but what thing is this? He's not really famous anymore. That's the thing is who's as famous as Trump was when he declared. And it's famous for being famous for 30 years and was famous for being the deals guy. Yeah. Yeah.

The golden toilet real estate. No, the member like the member that they tried to continue the apprentice with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah. And it's one of the most famous people in the world and it didn't click. Yeah. Who would also had his own like sex scandals and everything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were like this. It made sense. Like often something fails and they're like, well, of course that wasn't going to work. I thought it was like Trump couldn't carry on. Schwarzenegger bears a lot of similarities with Trump. However, but like late era Schwarzenegger,

he's like his whole brand is like positivity. Yeah. Like like he's like he's like he's been working with a special Olympics forever. He's all about like, you know, if you have the discipline, you can achieve anything. And like he just does Twitter videos or he's like lifting weights.

His big issue is getting rid of gerrymandering. Getting rid of gerrymandering and climate change. But like, you know, he does like Instagram videos where he's like congratulating people on like, you know, meeting their weight loss goals or like bench pressing 300 for the first time. I mean, Trump did do that with Steve Scalise. Because he congratulated him for losing weight

by getting shot. That's a thing that happened. Oh my God. I remember that. That reminds me. Does he have a classmate bag? I don't know. I don't think he does.

I would not look. But no, the read. But this read the Schwarzenegger apprentice filled this because like Schwarzenegger didn't have like the spike and cruelty that Trump has when you fire. Yeah. When you're just firing people. And originally, originally, the apprentice

was supposed to have a different host every year when they originally pitched it. They're going to have a different billion every year. And then the first season they had Trump. And yeah, we can't have anybody. You know, the guy who hosts the British apprentice is Lord Sugar. Lord Sugar, who is like threatened to leave the country.

He's the sugar fortune. What are you playing your coffee? He's the guy who stole. He's the guy who stole a hober sugar at the end of the episode. But like from the raw doll story, who's like Lord Sugar? Lord Sugar. His name is Lord Sugar. He's some sort of say that those two words to you

and you close your eyes. You can conjure a man in like a purple top hat. Ninety nine percent chance. He's a pedophile. The one percent is to avoid getting sued. No, he is. He has said that he will take his fortune and leave the UK of Corbin becomes prime minister.

Cool. That's why you need capital controls. Yeah. And then you got isn't the one in Canada. Mr. Wonderful, the guy who Kevin O'Leary, the short tank guy who ran for he he came at like five votes away from leading a conservative party. Yeah, I did.

Yes. I don't know why he didn't. I know. I guess Canada. Maybe they just didn't want to take the plunge all the way and become us. Well, they're like beta testing it by having the Fords run the biggest province.

Yeah, that's true. How many Fords are there? Because it's one of the two main ones. One of them is dead. Now his brother is a premier of Ontario. That's it. There's no more Fords. Yeah. I mean, they have kids, presumably, but those are the

main Fords. If anyone has like a large large sons, I'm sure the Ford family has some large. They were the original large sons. Yeah. They were Bobo and little devil from nothing but trouble. The brother also a drug guy. Yeah.

No, they both sold. They both sold drugs when they were kids. That's confirmed. They were drug dealers. But I mean, is he like party now? He's doesn't party like his brother did now. No one parties like his brother. No, he was he's not smoking crack while the provincial

about being provincial governor now. But no, that's the thing is like you think about it. You're like, how do you recreate this? How do you? Who who becomes the standard bear? And it really does remind you of how unique a figure Donald Trump is in American history. Like he is a sui generis, you know, sui generis.

There's nobody like Trump. You nobody meets all the criteria. There are people who are like three out of four or whatever. Nobody hits every tick the way that Trump does. And as a result, he's the only guy who could have come into the political scene and just upended it. And just destroyed everything.

Speaking of guys who do party for sure. I'd like to I'd like to second out to the other, you know, big news story from this weekend. Roger Stone. Roger Stone, folks. Roger Stone. We're talking about essential and non-essential government employees.

Boy, the FBI without a paycheck certainly turned out like, I don't know, a platoon of men and tanks to fucking raid the Fort Lauderdale home of a fucking agent. That's kind of how they raid everybody. Yeah, exactly. I mean, like if you just commit some light Medicare fraud, it's like you get a fire team with like the sticking the MP5 and Elion Gonzalez.

Again, they have a fun job. So who gives a shit that they work for free? They get to push people around with guns. They do. Like, well, you know, you see them with all that in that gear with the with the helmets and you think that's not necessary. But you you go in that house, you could easily slip on

some lube and smack your head. Well, not only that, I also every surface is viscous. If anyone has like a Dick Tracy villain suit that's like Kevlar coated and stuff, it would be Roger Stone. So the first precautions were necessary. Yeah, if Roger Stone were a pinhead villain, he'd be like pinhead. Yeah, yeah.

And I also I also do like, you know, we all have a ridiculous like repelling in through his window. Be like, put down that sex kimono, put down the sex kimono, put your hands in the air. Has anyone put that music that they use for the we got a meme, by the way, over that because they should. But I do like it whenever like an elderly conservative gets the SWAT team treatment.

They're like, this is a disgusting like overreach of, you know, law enforcement powers. But like Dave, as right like, not just the FBI, like local cops do that to people who like, yeah, a nickel bag of weed or whatever. Like this is just what they do. Oh, yeah. It's like, save this treatment for the black guy bought a

cigarette. Yeah, that's based on the mode. But all the things, even my favorite part of the stone story was it was one of the things you could see kind of you could see this happening. You like the, you know, the bad Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movie where you can see like the seven punches come in.

Cause like Greta Van Susteren tweets like, how did CNN know that he might get raided? She said this about a guy who was giving media interviews every day saying on a Friday, he was probably going to get raided and arrested. Like he'd have Instagram posts with like himself and in like in suits and like giving a thumbs up saying, come get me Mueller to there.

So like CNN sends a guy from their bureau an hour away. Greta Van Susteren was like, they had to be tipped off. And then that gets amplified by other people who are like, she's asking questions. She has credibility. And I was like, when is Trump going to, and then two hours later, Trump is like, well clearly, was there collusion?

It just says that we kind of move on. But like that was my favorite part of this was a thing that all local news is based on, which is assuming that the cops are going to raid somebody that happens to Roger Stone. It's got to be the pizza gate. It's got to be the world elite, the lizard people who tipped him off.

So like Dave, he's being indicted by Mueller for acting as a go between, between WikiLeaks and the Donald Trump and the Trump campaign. And like, it's more repeatedly lying about it. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. Most of the accounts were lying to what?

Congress, right? Because this is the spin is like the very serious spin by the, there's like a cohort of conservative writers who kind of didn't like Trump, but bought in and they're now like wondering what to do. So they're just going all in saying, I don't see how this proves anything given that just all it says is he repeatedly lied to federal and investigators in

Congress, which is not the same as rigging the election. That's the spin they're going with. But isn't that like, I mean, anyone who's seen the Roger Stone documentary, which is very entertaining. That was a very fun watch. But like this stone's whole MO is talk like pretending to be a master criminal, but really being like a

level one crook. Like he's like, he's on that boss shit. He like, he loves people thinking that, you know, he's the penguin. I mean, not only does he love it, he's a level one guy in the mafia city. Yeah, yeah. But not only does he love it, it's the cornerstone of

his business. Yeah, exactly. Scams political operatives into thinking that he has more influence than he does. And like, I take it as read that he is a criminal and has broken the law. But like the question is like, what is, what does he ever actually do?

You know, like, like what's, what's really there? And it's again, almost impossible to tell with someone like Roger Stone, who is just an inveterate bullshit or a liar. Well, during the election, so remember Trump, like he emerges and a lot of people in the press are like, oh, it's going to happen with this, going to drop out at some point.

But Roger Stone is the only connection everyone knows to him. And he's very like, he gives everyone his email address and his number. So all these reporters would call and text him. And I would, during the campaign, call him sometimes for stories. And I like, I've always gone back and wonder, I

didn't take it more seriously, but it was always befitting when it came to like WikiLeaks. He would just like tweet mysteriously that he knew something that was coming from WikiLeaks. It would come out and he would take credit for it. So now he's like trying to dial back and say he never did this thing that like a million reporters talked to him during the process of

him doing it. He was like, he loved, especially because I don't think he would have been as excited about Julian Assange if he was not in the Ecuadorian embassy. But the fact that Assange also had like rape charges and was a fugitive just made him more badass.

So he, that was his role. It was like the media friendly go between on stuff being stolen from the Clinton campaign. Right, isn't that the root of this all of the insinuation that in some way shape or form the Trump campaign directed the hacking of the Clinton campaign, the DNC? Well, Trump is on video saying he hoped it

would happen, but then like just the people connected to Trump knew about this. Also, there's, you know, Trump more than most people, there's official people who work for him. And then everyone knows he's on the phone with Sean Hannity like an hour a day and Sean Hannity doesn't work for him.

So everyone knows that they'll like deny he talks to Stone, but Stone like again spreads his credibility. Like, ah, Stone got him to go on info wars. Yeah, that's right. And so like they can't really dial this back because they just all live streamed. They had this like long periscope and Twitter

record of the crime, of like crime doing. And they, I don't know why they're trying to spin it back now. Stone is smart because Stone's not spinning it. Stone's just saying I was framed and now this was illegal and literally doing like the Nixon V for victory.

Like he's going to, another famously innocent guy and he's going to just like expect to be pardoned like January 20th, 2021. Right. Yeah. That's his play. How many forensic investigators do you think the FBI loses because they pass them with

going through hours of info war footage and they just learn too much about the truth and their mind and they realize I can't be a part of the deep state anymore. That's why the frogs are gay. Yeah, I can imagine that. This is just, this is a little bit of a trivia here.

I found out today that Roger Stone's lawyer, a guy's representing named Robert Bachel, is also an author who wrote a, A fellow author. A fellow author who wrote a novel that came out in 2016 called Bysilent Majority. It's called Bysilent Majority and I want to, I want to just read you the, the, the jacket

copy for this book. President Daniel Carson is the most popular president in history, but he has a secret big enough to bring down his whole administration. It wasn't the marijuana he smoked after graduating from Harvard. It wasn't the fact that he won the

presidency with the help of computer phenoms hired to hack into an electronic voting source code. It wasn't that his family, his political family wasn't pure. Electronic source code? Continue. Electronic voting source code.

A little bit overwritten, but okay. It wasn't that his political family wasn't pure. Only days before the vote for his next election, his chief of staff informs him, they know Daniel. Dreams will be shattered. Lives are in danger.

Can America handle the truth? Yes. So I, I had to look around a little bit, like I was like, what's the secret? Yeah, I need to know the secret. It seems like hacking voting roles is a pretty big secret. I looked into it.

The secret is the president is gay. This is just a review from a review from best thrillers.com says here, the precise era in which the book takes place isn't clearly defined, but it seems to be sometime between 1980 and the fall of the Soviet Union. The novel's successor failure hinges,

at least in part, on one question. If Carlson's secret had been Ronald Reagan's, would Reagan have made it to a second term? What if Reagan was sus? So he's doing the speculative, like counter history of like, what if, yo, yeah, what if our Reagan was sus,

though? What if instead of selling arms to Iran, he was gay? The real crime. If you give it a real crime like that. Oh man. How much is this? Yeah, it is actually out of stock on

Amazon right now, but if you're, I think of Prime Kindle Unlimited Electronics source code, you can get it for free if you're a Kindle Unlimited member. Thank you, Jeff Bezos. So here's the thing about Stone that I don't get. And for a lot of these guys, Stone is

not someone in the government. He is not accountable to anyone. Why the fuck did he not just talk to investigators but testify to Congress? I mean, I think I identify. He just, that's his brand. Like if he was hiding from the press and not like, swaggering in front of people,

going on TV immediately after being arrested. But you can lie to the press. That's not illegal. You can't lie to Congress. I've heard of it happening. Yeah, like I don't know. Maybe I'm just doing Occam's razor that this is always what he's done.

He's that way with it. But after seeing Manafort go to jail for like, Manafort who he was a partner with who had done this for years, I don't know why he didn't get a little bit more careful. But like, on the right, remember he, so his connection, Info Wars explains

so much because he's all in on the deep state and how no crime anyone in this orbit commits is real because we're trying to under, we're being undermined by agents of chaos who are trying to stop us from making America great. Like, to the extent he believes that,

I don't know. But like, he's the voice who goes on to who went on, he co-hosted Alex Jones all the time. But I mean, even Jerome Corsi, he was subpoenaed and he went to Congress and he just pled the fifth. And that's it.

He didn't, he didn't do any lies. You shouldn't talk to the, you shouldn't talk to the police even if you're innocent and don't intend to lie to them. Like, like drug dealers know that. But all of these guys are like, yeah, I'll talk to, I'll talk to Mueller.

I'll talk to, I'll talk to Congress. What the hell? I've got nothing to hide. No, you've been doing billions of crimes. It is amazing. Like, you, you don't have to. You don't have to. Just saying.

I'm not cooperating with. You don't, all of these guys have gone down for lying and none of them had to do it. Papinopoulos didn't have to talk to anybody. I mean, Manafort's was fucked because they

uncovered the fact that he was just doing massive amounts of financial crime. But if you're subpoenaed though, like, you have to like, Yeah, but you complete the fifth. You complete the fifth. That's not necessarily like a ironclad

like protection against going to jail. But it protects you against going to jail for perjury, which is what they're all getting caught for. They're not getting caught for crimes. They're getting caught for lying about crimes. So don't say anything and you can't go

to jail for lying about crimes. Roger, if you're listening, don't talk to anybody. Stay strong. Roger, if you're listening, I'm six feet uncut. I'm a military man. But he's not going to listen to that

because he was on a CNN that fucking night after he made bail. He can't not talk. He's compulsive, but I gotta say, it's because it's the way he's been able to keep a career going because he never has had the influence or abilities or connections he claimed he had.

His career is entirely based on bluffing and bullshit. And now it's finally in an incredibly delicious irony caught up to him. Well, because he's he's the original like lib owner because he never cared about what happens after you win. No, he just he just likes making the

left sad. But he was he was on that in the 60s, like really early. Oh, yeah. Because there was like, how can we break up the great society? He didn't care. He just wanted to make liberals lose

stuff. So he never wanted to join administration. He just wanted to do mischief, which got 50 years of it. That's not that. But now there's dozens of guys like that.

Yeah, hundreds. M. M. W. M. Seeks rough trade with FBI. No, but like actually on that, what the what is up with both Roger Stone and Paul Manafort or like sex maniacs? Yeah, get off and their wife like Manafort is. Yeah, man of their leaf test.

Manafort is way worse because from what we understand Roger Stone and his wife are both kanky. Yeah. She likes to watch her have sex with man and she's into it. According to his kids, Manafort basically made his wife have sex with

other men in one film. And like drug chair, like oh Jesus. No, he was way worse. It's very, very dark, but yeah. He's a real, real piece of work. Man, I remember when Manafort joined the Trump campaign and this is when Trump was still considered a sideshow

and at best an embarrassment at worse. Even though he's leaving the force. And everyone got mad at him because he's a because Manafort is a professional. He's a professional Jew. He worked for Bob Dole, the greatest Republican of the era.

He's an upstanding guy. How dare you lie down with his filth? And then it turns out, oh, he was just doing nothing but crimes for the last 30 years. Nothing but crimes. So, Dave, I do want to talk a little bit about, you know, because we are the

official, you know, mouthpiece for Bernie Sanders. Yeah. You know, can't. And for racism, I'm told. Yeah. Well, they go, it's like chocolate and peanut butter.

They can't have one without the other. So, there seems to be some, you know, muttering today like Bernie is going to announce for 2020. If he books a flight to Philadelphia, Mississippi. That's how we'll know he's going to announce. But you were saying earlier that

like the people are jumping the gun on this is pretty much or just he's not ready to do it. He wasn't ready to do it like yesterday. So there's this Yahoo story. I'm not going to like knock the hustle because you do this. You talk to reporters.

You talk to people around a candidate because they're not going to admit stuff. If you just like wait for a spokesman to say stuff like you're not doing journalism. So Yahoo News have this like scoop. He's about to announce imminently

and imminent's like a word that literally means about like it right now. But it's very loose in this headline. He's like he's been leaning more towards it. I'm told that like a month ago he had some more doubts about it.

It wasn't just like the sexual harassment allegations because like every campaign for 2016 was hit by that. It was just like people got into the race with similar positions, which is not the case last time. We're getting ahead of steam polls

show he's like popular, but he's like not where he was in 2016 like toward the end. And so I mean I talked to him this week on Tuesday and just asked him like so why would you why would you run against Elizabeth Warren? Like I know the difference between

their philosophies, but he said what people who like him like Amber's essay frankly says like his philosophy is very different. His philosophy for what you need to change dismantle is different than hers. Like he's for breaking up the banks

and she's for smarter regulation. A number of these things. He is for like a total rethinking of our economic system. He's for Medicare for all in four years as opposed to public options. So he's like there's still the space where like it's going to be hard, but

he always prefaces it like in this conversation too. He prefaces everything. It's going to be incredibly hard, like harder than last time. And I think he believes that. He's like unlike last time where he comes in he's just the fun underdog

until the very end. This is like he's more hated than ever by wealthy people who like thought he was a goof last time. The polls show that Trump is like weaker than ever. So he was like he's anticipating like 200 million dollars beaten him up

exposing his and he's also very protective of his family. So he watches what and the crimes that their life is done. All the college, the colleges she stole. She stole a university in upstate Vermont. Investigators believe it's hidden at

the bottom of Lake Champlain. Yeah. I was her frog man trying to find the location of the stolen university. They found part of a dorm with her name etched in it. But that that drove him nuts the tension on that which is apparently

over. But because it got like the the anti-Bernie Twitter was like couldn't stop talking about that for a year. Not that he reads Twitter, but he's aware that he made enemies. But he's like if he comes out the

conversation I had was you know if he feels like he can win and no one else is going to do what he's going to do he's going to run. Which is he's probably going to run. He's got to do it. Yeah. But I you know but you I think you

mentioned on Twitter or you know people got you got some stick for this. You mentioned that like if you compare where they were in 2016 it does seem like he has pushed the Democratic Party on like that every Democratic like Kamala Harris is saying I'm for Medicare for all now.

Like cooling Castro. Who knew? Castro who like no one thought that he did really have anything against him. But he was like currency man. Yeah. I mean he was like a Clinton guy who

was doing whatever was pop at the party and he's entered politics of 2019 by saying I too am a Democratic Socialist basically right. Which tells you that yeah Medicare for all means nothing now and the fight over the next two years is going to be actually defining it and

having real parameters and a real structure to it that you can't just make an amorphous gesture. Yeah that's the issue but it has clearly become like a. No it's a huge movement forward to to make it something people are talking about even co-opting is huge

but that's what this process does. It's supposed to reveal what these what these are beyond the slogans. Beyond them being like you young people you like these three words in a row right. But you know also to Amber's point like this is something he's been on

for like decades now his entire political career not like two weeks ago. Yeah I mean he trusts Warren more than he trusts Gillibrand and Harris. Like he'll never trash them on the record or even off he just hates that crap.

But he does feel that there are people who have credibility on this and people who you know he's been here with Obama like Obama gets elected and he got all this stick in 2015 for just saying things like Obama's a great guy but didn't do it like didn't build a consensus and go hard enough.

Which was like proof that the first evidence that he was a racist. He clearly was Russian funded. Yeah. Compromise. H.P. Lovecraft like metaphors about no like about the races like tucked in his speeches.

You know he the first proof that he was a he was truly evil was that he was like you know Obama could have done more. So but he that's like in the back of his head is like what if we elect Obama to and I'm here and I'm arguing for this and that they're like the first

meeting they have with pharma. Like they're like I guess we can't go that hard. We're going to like lower the Medicare age by three years for cops and that's it. Yeah. He's very worried about that.

Well you know he doesn't have to go on the record to attack people because you know he pays us money to do that for him on our podcast. Yeah. Chuck was late this month. Uncle Bernard. What are you doing?

It's difficult as the road ahead is for him. I think he has probably the greatest asset of any of the 20 or so people who are going to run this year which is that he has I from where I'm saying the highest floor out of any of the candidates I think there's something

on the level of 15 to 20 percent of Democrats and Democrat leading voters who could be expected to turn out in these primaries who are Bernie right or die. Yeah. I think that's true. I think he's I mean I think everyone

else's support is either nascent still or incredibly soft like Biden or something like that. Yeah. Biden support seems to me just people like I'm really that guy. The guy from the memes. Oh yeah.

He's so funny. No it's the evidence of how strong Biden is is like how many people are piling in just ignoring him. They're just a total confidence that once he gets in the race he's he's going to start collapsing. Yeah.

Even yeah amongst Democrats with Bernie it's like a weird thing where they think there's a hope that he'll have his own pocket of voters and no one else compete for them. And that like Warren can unite the other factions. But everyone was so wrong about this

stuff last time that I hear less like chin stroking analysis of how they will outsmart him. It's more I think what you hear a lot is because I've been like three times this year and you hear people who voted for him before as a protest against Hillary and they're not

actually all in for the agenda. They're like they like a thing about him. I mean if you're talking to real voters is illustrative because most people don't know a lot about politics. And they'll just they think Bernie and Biden like believe the same stuff and

they like them both. They want a young person who also believe and if you if you go down like well here are the six issues that are different on they just glaze over. That's a problem for him. I mean like he's no longer the protest candidate but yeah I don't there are

people who are who are hardcore and have never have never bailed. He might be a little bit too confident about that like by not moving so fast. I want people who might have worked for him are already team Warren and Warren's like Warren's campaign right now whatever you think of her is like

actually really taught at the at the signing people up getting people to show up at for stuff getting not just a crowd of like seven old white guys interested in her setting the policy agenda that's a kind of a cliche as I say proactive you know yeah like the wealth tax she comes out with a wealth

tax is like there's a discussion about that and if Bernie was doing the same thing right he could have been doing the same thing he's not like she'd be you should get a better one. That's the thing about it because as much as as much as the average voter who's not you know terminally online has the

brain poison like all of us here and all the all the Hillary stands or whoever as much as they're ostensibly concerned with matters of image like I guess I want a kid who's young and maybe black whatever. Yeah that's a real thing. I do that is no that's absolutely real

thing and that's part and parcel with with electoral politics. I do really believe that this campaign once it heats up and once the candidates are going after each other I really do believe it is going to be about substantial matters of not policy but I would say broadly political morality.

Yeah I think so. You know where I brought ideological issues. Like it's one of those things that you can imagine rolling the tape back a year from now and they're debating some something utterly stupid like who stiffed the bill at like a Iowa diner but there's I mean there's always gonna be

that but what I found with like and I might be a Pollyanna like I wasn't last cycle I was all doomed last cycle but just because they've gone through a cycle where they just respond to every Trump thing with like a Hillary would just like scrap her policy speech for the day to be like a man who tweets

that can't be in charge of our armed forces like no one wants to do that anymore. Like people like so I've seen Warren get like why'd you do the DNA test question she's like yeah and she gives like a 10 second response he's like well we need to focus on other stuff so they're not

like gonna be whipsawed by everything Trump does which is gonna drive him friggin nuts. I guess what I'm trying to say is in this election I genuinely believe there will be an open debate and this is this is unique in our lifetimes an open debate about things that have

been part of a consensus about capitalism and society about whether or not billionaires should exist about whether or not we should have a 70 percent top marginal tax rate and whether there should be you know a massive federal jobs program whether the government should through

intervention break up the large banks should become the only healthcare you know insurer in the country. Not just break up large banks but also break up Google and Facebook as well which is becoming a big issue at least as they begin to eat all of your profession Dave or like shut every local

news you know outlet in the country. And what I like people are more bold about that and also that because Trump won like there isn't no one knows anymore what's the thing that's going to knock you out off the stage and be crazy. So I think people are a little more

willingness to just I hope they're all doing dean screams all day just to see what happens just a bunch of guys going just and more than and also I think what's interesting I think we will have a discussion about where these campaigns are taking money from. I think like people will actually go

in and start accusing each other of oh well you take such money from the energy industry you hold these fundraiser defense industry or telecoms or so on and so forth. Yeah this is why I don't know how Cory Booker is going to do when he gets out there and talks to those

voters. He said terribly. I don't know. Yeah it's kind of ominous. It doesn't make any sense the campaign. So you've been you were saying you've been in Iowa three times already one question what is pizza ranch like.

Oh you've never been to one. No I've never been to a pizza ranch. There apparently are pizza ranches in Wisconsin but I've never seen one. So it's it's it's pizza hut plus fried chicken plus christianity. Okay see now that sounds good. It is like an explicitly patriotic

Christian chain like there are murals on the wall of the pioneers and stuff and but the feature is on mcnaughton paintings but the feature is like an all day buffet which has all the pizzas you want that are like not dominoes quality not amazing really buttery crust which is like you know

kind of covering up how much have to mass produce it and then also for some reason fried chicken. Oh fried chicken and pizza. But it's mostly you go in you pay like five dollars for a buffet five dollars and I don't think it's going to be a thing this time because republicans

love it for the the aforementioned christianity reasons and not the democrats or anton you know maybe they are now who knows yeah god is dead but uh is christ is going to be a part of Harris's campaign letter it never hit the bumper sticker do it thou wilton it never hit like the the

chick filet level of like stigma if you're going to one they just don't go to them like democrats go to every smallish town now has like somebody who came back to start like a coffee shop that has like lavender latte is they all go to that they all embrace the cliche now is going to be at the pizza

ranch because it's all the democrats well if we go to iowa at some point i'm still going to go we should go to iowa good i'm getting the pizza ranch you you okay i'm not standing in the way of that they're worth trying trying once i don't miss them i definitely all my members of

pizza ranches are just feeling just like i've been swimming through grease after having one slice of it it doesn't sound good no yeah but a plate with a piece of pizza and fried chicken is it ranch because it's like uh ranch dressing or is it like a ranch theme you know like

the pioneers like the pop the peopleing of the west through you know manifest destiny and massacres and detail on the ground is it one of those as we all know uh during the wagon trains cookie often had a neapolitan brick oven that he brought with him to make the freshest pies for all for all the

cowboys and you that that's a mean margarita there cookie and maroney said unto joseph smith bury unbury these pizza stones they have the true word of god on them they took that to utah and it worked out great well uh i guess the round things out today um you know speaking of um uh dead

enders i i did see today that uh uh hillary clinton uh weighed in on the quote unquote attacks on kamala harris saying of them it feeds into sexism and monop misogyny she's been being attacked by the left enough if you don't want to support democrats go somewhere else

okay probably not a great move for her to do that uh vote for third party yeah but do not do that i never understand that because like yeah do what like well because i cover you know i cover bernie a lot uh and there's like a contingent of twitter that things seem like his spokesman

and i'm not sure that bernie likes the coverage that much but it's like oh it's useful to talk to him and if he wanted to he could like blow up the party by just saying i'm out i'm credited like there are people lobbying him all the time yeah like uh cornell weston a bunch of his

delegates set up a third party for him if he wants it and he said no so i don't know what the people the people who are like if you don't like this get out no he's like the only thing saving you the fact he's gonna like take his lumps if he doesn't win the nomination and not endorse the

green party that's um that's great take it i don't i i don't understand it is amazing they say he's not a never gonna fuck you and then if he were to run independently their heads would explode they would they would all they would just turn to be scanners they'd be like how dare you yeah for

many of the candidates right now i don't think if they were to win the nomination uh there would be a a left third party moving not a serious one if it were bloomburg or something sure but that's that's really in the exception yeah even even biden i think would be just because people are so it's very

hard to have a third party active like when there's an incumbent republican president who the base really hates yeah like look at nadir's uh look at the nadir vote in 2004 just collapsed so i don't think that's a threat but the threat is more if a bernie bernie's the nominee than herald schultz is gonna

yes that's right country saying folks it's time for serious talk about the debt this wild socialism is out of control did you remember the that's the threat we're talking about bloomburg running as an independent uh which which he said he would do it if if trump and bernie were the nominees oh yeah now

fucking coffee man is thinking about doing it mr mr starbucks guy and every fucking donut who voted for who would vote for howard schultz uh in it and split the vote and get trump back in there you you couldn't say to them well look at you you just did the thing you've been yelling about since

2000 or don't you feel like an asshole they would say no uh bernie was an asshole by first taking the nomination and and splitting the party and making me do this but we do it but my argument here is where i said is like one is just like as you observe you know a third party left would probably fizzle out

like nader didn't know for i don't there's no i think there's a broad agreement that there just isn't the infrastructure there or really the need for a left third party uh i think it would be a better thing for bernie to take control of the democratic party and for those uh schultz fans to leave well the problem

of that is then you might reelect trump hypothetically if all the schultz fans are like in new york and what else is safe like massachusetts and stuff if they all if it's like 200 000 super hot super fans of herald schultz who just really care about the deficit in like the detroit suburbs then then that would

swing the election right i honestly don't think it would be i think i mean i'll for as much as i hate bernie i think most of these people are such a democratic loyalists that they wouldn't be able to bring themselves to do the do the one worst thing in the world that you can do in their mind until that

moment the pressure would be two events yeah there's no actual public demand for it either like you'd notice sometimes if you like this would have there were been efforts every four years to set up the centrist third party and they just have to like pay a bunch of people that they find at bus stations to to like go get

signatures for the third party it's always americans elect or uh there was even it was a worse name than that but there've been like these efforts and like no one wants to run because there's not actually enthusiasm they don't know the the polling that's like people are dissatisfied with the parties like well

yeah like people are dissatisfied with their jobs and they're not like that's why i quit and joined a monastery like well especially dissatisfied they're like we have the system and they just vote especially since the things that they don't like about the party would be embodied by the centrist third

party it's like the centrist third party pitch is let's take everything you hate about party politics and condense it into two assholes right which is why i forget me if it's a tautological that anyone who would actually do that who would actually uh uh be so repulsed is is a concerns himself a democratic

stalwart but so repulsed by bernie they're gonna vote for howard schultz or mike bloomberg is an independent or whoever uh the democratic party is better off without those people but the thing's gonna happen if if that if there's like a bernie nomination or warren nomination and herald schultz runs like

all the herald schultz support will come from republicans we're like nudge nudge like aren't you tired of the party that's gone out of your uh going too far to the left and they'd be a cat's paw for the trump campaign which is it's all so obvious like this is what 19 months away like i can't believe i'm glad if if he

like does a listening tour no one shows up like tom steyer did this already yeah he he was like oh yeah no one knows why i already gives a shit yeah i'm not running he had his down though he spent two years collecting millions of emails seven million seven million people on his list so what it's an email my bank has my email i don't

show up when they're offering free pizza or whatever well wait wait the our bank is offering free pizza yeah like next week but you got it but you gotta listen you gotta listen to this talk about buying their uh some kind of high interest account or whatever is this are you sure this is a timeshare thing this is a bank

thing yeah they do it at the bank or maybe that this that's the net i'm sure we had the deregulations reached the point where like timeshares have merged with yeah your bank just sells you time shares now yeah well we're talking about um you know third parties and how we

can see you know 19 months out you can already see what's coming so i want to close thing out with uh an example of features both of these phenomenon i'm we're speaking of course about a tweet thread that's been you know burning up the timeline this comes courtesy of virginia heffernan who is a contributing

editor wired in a column this for the la times you may remember virginia heffernan back from the very early days of choppo like choppo mark one we did a reading series on that article she wrote for lenny letter that was one of the funniest things i've ever read this was just her fresher memory

she and this is almost a direct quote she said hillary is light itself yeah and compared her to athena i think you know emerging fully formed from the the the skull of zeus uh she's a fan of hillary i did see today she was someone's talking to her about opera and they were like well the

problem with opera was she was you know mild to tepid on hillary and virginia responded i know i did it i did a quiet ritual by myself to forgive her for that so she's back at it again and i don't remember her being this crazy on king of queens

uh so she's out today with a new tweet about you know hillary and bernie of course so i'm just going to read it here it begins uh between the lines hillary clinton raising pointed questions about bernie as an op consider the complicity to see complicity in his campaign of bots trolls bros who still bully

threaten and harass hrc and democrats when did everyone start saying op because that was originally like a 4chan thing as you know like chief kief started it but no they're like there were russian troll farms and they amplified this stuff but like alex jones existed already and all of it

this all of it comes he ran of the democratic primary like and she like everything he did was popular and got her to a more popular position and i've been endorsing it just like the polls exist and it's like yeah once he she came like the minimum instead of like mumbling and not coming with a

minimum wage position they forced her to like at least 12 dollars and that was popular like i don't i don't get it maybe i might i like conspiracy theories i'm not good enough putting my my mind in in the in i don't like i think this is like not like so much a conspiracy theory as it is like we're seeing in

these like you know like i said mirror image of what's going on with like maga people and qanon and just like as a returning theme on this show like what happens when you expose baby boomers to just the internet yes completely uncut unfiltered uh and it's not for it it's not a conspiracy theory

it's just like a way of uh explaining why people disagree with you online right or why why why because like to these people the idea that there are political differences between democrats and like liberals and people to their left is unthinkable like they can't countenance that like

there is a political position further or more liberal or further to the left than they are and i think this is all this like kind of massive coping mechanism so that like yeah the people like uh who are making fun of you or disagreeing with you like you can immediately stamp them as an op it's all

an op they're like they're not real they they're not speaking for an actual point of view that's held by many people they're all it's all just disinformation and that you're all living in this kind of like you know escher drawing of like you know inverted perspective and illusion i mean like the election was

weird but lots of things are weird without being a a a Byzantine conspiracy i guess it's just like uh the the the russians are behind bernie thing i don't understand position because he followed that up by campaigning more than anyone else for democrats and helping them them win stuff but it's just that if so

there is like a cohort of people who don't i i guess they're not appreciated because they end up going online saying this kind of stuff who really did love hillary clinton it's like worshiped her for years like a remember the first season of gilmore girls rory's really in that was a documentary rory was really

into hillary clinton that's these are real people for whom like something was robbed from them and uh like more than other candidates who've lost like that there's not like a john carrey like kids didn't have like john carrey's inspirational photo on their wall there were girls carry him in my heart always

i you windsurfs around my soul i think what it is is yeah that's a real thing it was a real trauma and they put a name on it and it's russia yeah it's like like the the russia is the all consuming explanation for why it happened because it can't be her fault uh and they can't credit an oaf like trump so there had to

be a third option and the third option is the evil machinations of the foreign dictator and so everything sub every element that was part of her failure and in their mind bernie running against her and therefore making her less popular by pointing out her connections to wall street and her her past bad positions on

other issues reminding people yeah i don't actually really agree with her very much that is part of the vast kremlin operation everything that led her to be less popular than she should have been was the fault of russia but why is it so hard to broke the idea that uh maybe other people don't like the

things i like this also eight years after hillary herself had like run against barack obama making him less popular with a certain number of white people in swing states like not i was not enough to matter but that's what that's what campaigns are uh but i don't know the only thing that i i i circle around this

and mostly ignore it because there's a theory early early 2017 that this like democrats are just going to yell about russia and not change anything yeah and the real democrats have to win stuff change things so this crew has been like drifting the life raft is going further and further away from normal conversation

and into although they don't really have four-chan right where does this stuff at is it just live on twitter i think i think i think i do really i think there's blog comment sections yeah that they're all at oh yeah i don't know why i'm still around amazing yeah one oh yeah the wonkat crew uh probably daily coasts

they have a very old demographic there as far as i can tell closing it out she says i mean the bernie botts and bros even the ones who believe they were acting on principle certainly gave trump and the kremlin a mighty assist and as hillary clinton says in that interview they did a virtuoso job of ritually humiliating

clinton supporters online gamer gait incel style opa gamer gait incel style gamer gait incel style yeah they've uh yeah this is like a fridge someone i was gonna say someone has certainly done a good job humiliating hillary clinton supporters online but you know we're

we're only responding to what is already out there you know this is we're on this is just it's like saying mystery science theater like humiliated the makers of those movies you know i don't know why they don't focus on comey because like comey is like you you could get bipartisan hatred of him going on because republicans

hate him now uh that actually had he not released the letter she probably does win oh no he redirectly let her to lose that was it i don't think you can't bipartisan hate that doesn't exist it is a total seesaw it's total zero sum if someone is that's why they went from hating him to liking him overnight

after he was fired because if they don't like someone you have to like them like that is the title gravity of it now so as soon as comey was out and trump didn't like him and started badmouthing him and all of his supporters started saying yeah fuck that guy then just you are by the nature just like by by law of nature

just you are driven by like the strong and weak nuclear force and gravity to say he's actually great i love him which is what they all did amazingly and they hate bernie with the fire of a thousand sons the guy who campaigned for her and said hey i'm gonna go to michigan maybe you should come uh and who'd say ignored

but the guy who wrote a letter that absolutely destroyed the news cycle in the last week of the election took everything from being about the pussy tape to being about all right the emails we vaguely understand yeah and probably cost for the election given the small number of votes at play yeah no doesn't

matter means nothing because they don't like him now and because if they don't like him i have to like it they're gonna be really weird about it i would like at least like a good russian kgb conspiracy that behind anthony weiner like because that oh yeah that's like the the the the but they're like for the one

of a nail like the origin of all this stuff i don't want they never gone after him yeah he is the guy his horniness single-handedly ended the clinton campaign creating a good like russian style conspiracy surrounding anthony weiner that sounds felix is going to do that tonight not without even listening

being on this episode it's already going on and his the gears are because i mean how hard is it we know what what what is the russian what is their mechanism they use the internet right and honey pots are one of the key old kgb strategies you know the you seduce the guy and then you record him having sex with i mean

drew pierce and famously of the washington press corps do you know the washington press corps was notorious to have had kgb comprat sky about his gay ass ignations that he had in mosca uh you could just say that they're still doing it now and then that weiner was actually talking to some 60 year old

fucking gru operative when he was like i'm horny now it's cool see that's just way more fun to me if you're gonna go if you're gonna go down uh the conspiracy hole just do that do like the do the russian sex conspiracy that the like there's a guy in st petersburg he's like retweeting pictures of hillary falling

down like people are going to see the pictures of hillary falling down anyway who cares uh one final thing uh before you let you go like this is just like a random political thing could you explain what's going on with richard ojada right now oh man yeah uh we're to start with that so like richard ojada if you if

you're not familiar extremely large and cut uh veteran six look cut like but um roger stone are you listening but like tattooed like his campaign videos all show him working out um he was like uh running in west virginia right uh he was just that there's a state senator who won like a 99 percent trump district and

ran for congress was doing really well and they just beat the hell out of him with ads and the final like they i remember one republican saying we can buy that race which they did they spent like three million dollars saying this guy's a democrat pelosi exists trump trump trump trump and they like they beat him by 12

points but interestingly out of every single democratic house candidate last time around he ran for further yeah he improved on clinton's margin the most by something like 40 50 points she lost the district by like a saddam hussein reelection margin like and he by which you mean ferrant square and he came and

he is the bath party nominee came within like 12 12 points um but then he immediately began running for like a week like days after the election like because we were all tired and we were starting to write our who's my gonna and he jumps in kind of surprising everybody mostly because uh and the thing that's

weird and and not weird enough to be interesting just just weird enough to be dumb was like uh crystal ball this democratic strategist who had like her project in the site she lives in louville when her project the cycle was like getting real real solves of the earth populist democrats like she eggs him on

to run for president so he runs for president quits his state senate seat which he had no other democrat could possibly win it lets a republican governor appoint a new senator 10 days later just decides actually i can't win this race so he just

leady bales and that was crazy that he dropped he left the state senate to do yeah what do you think was gonna happen i mean we saw him in the new michael moore movie yeah he's featured in that and you know like which they used against him in the yeah the campaign and yeah he does he does come across as that kind of

like you know as you said salty dirt by populist democrat you know like he's like i'm a redneck and redneck stands for like you know union power yeah you know the mind strike breakers or whatever and you know he's like say the right thing but i remember i couldn't help when we watched that movie just thinking

like he just seems a little touched and in some way everyone had like mixed feelings about him because everyone kind of liked parts of his whole deal but others like wait who is this guy what is this going yeah they like something was a little bit uh a little bit not not off but like you can imagine

him going down a rabbit hole but you did he's like ran for president but he'd like he'd voted for trump and he was like it was because i was lied to which was relatable in west virginia but then no other democratic for president voted for trump how do you get around that it made no sense but he was just like this

likable character who was going to liven up the race and then then bailed immediately and the question is like whether the strategist around him we're going to try to make money off him uh which we kind of need to untangle but it's it's really rinky dink one thing i will say like

grifting on the left it's real and it's hilarious uh but not to the level of it was the right by this point had like two years from obama had like 20 tea party organizations that were basically uh like money laundering schemes and the the closest you have here is like this consultant probably egged this guy on too

far to like maybe make some money but yeah it's kind of sad because i don't know interesting weird guys who yell and every sentence by saying airborne which was richard ojeda i like covering them yeah he got like way too many profiles considering he was not going to be in congress

um but uh like and then it was an interesting race and he was interested like because the worry is the dream of his race was like oh if the democratic party is the party of the suburbs they're never going to do anything interesting in left wing if they're the party that like wins the hollers by talking about

medicare for all and then like yeah that was the dream idea was because he was the guy who was going to defeat the growing thought the demographics is political destiny now and it's it's your politics are determined basically by like where you grew up and your educational attainment and that's it yeah like if

you're a white guy who doesn't have a college education you are a republican and there's really nothing to be done about it and no jada was saying that that's not so fast and i mean despite losing i mean just the fact that he outran hillary glenn by such a strong extent i think shows that there is

something there but it's not something you could repair in one way you don't have to run for fucking president that's what someone's saying yeah it's like i understand it everyone kind of understands that barring uh you knows unforeseen things whoever gets the nomination will probably be trump uh

because he just has not been able to break out of his uh his area his his his uh support base and and a lot of those states that he won just by the narrow margins have turned on him and they now have democratic governors maybe aren't going to allow the same level of electoral shenanigans they did

last time uh but so everyone wants to run but it's the only one person can get it you're probably not going to get it and meanwhile you're squandering the chance to do something interesting somewhere else all these guys from texas running for president what are you doing it's like texas this is the first

time there's been some sort of viable democratic machinery in texas in a generation and you're all going to fucking run for president against each other and waste that time instead of maybe running against uh john cornyn or something like that and then ajeda is going to give up a fucking state senate

seat and give it to some republican i don't just just settle down everybody yeah that his decision was like the ultimate example of that there's a bunch of like popular democratic governors who could run for senate like in montana and stuff and instead they're just like you know i really want to go

to iowa in negative 20 weather in january and talk in front of six people and then must make myself unelectable in my state ever again they you know that the party can't really convince them to stop doing that they're pretty good at shepherding them in some ways but they cannot tell them to stop running for

president the only time they can ever stop into running for president is when hillary clinton is the only one that's the case then they can clear the fucking deck with a really smart cagey move oh well dave i'm sorry we didn't get to our plan discussion about prog rock oh it's okay everyone just buy the book

buy uh buy two books and that's all you need there's the one there's the chap of book there's mine no overlap whatsoever uh dave have you seen mandy speaking of prog it's amazing it's fucking awesome it's like and i've uh i really wish art half like art house movie was the thing most if people if like you try that

movie a hundred more times probably 90 of them would be bad yeah that movies like immaculate oh especially like the sequence at the the sequence midway through the hypnotism scene where it just keeps like phasing in between oh okay dave forget about it dude like i yeah watch that movie we were falsified are we

are we that scene we both of us were suspecting that we've been dosed uh no that mandy's amazing but uh dave weigal political reporter for the washington post uh thank you so much for joining us man that's been great oh it's not awesome thank you thanks thanks for coming through till next week guys bye

you