Chapo Trap House - 630 - Full Stomach, Heavy Heart, Will Lose (5/23/22)

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

Helllllloooo babies! Just as we anticipated, Eric Adams explores a run for president in 2024, so we look at the possibility of New York’s mayor taking his vibe revolution national. We also look at some juicy financial drama going on over at Black Rifle Coffee Company, plus, Tom Friedman’s sad, ominous lunch with the President. Catch us a Pickathon August 6th, tickets at: www.pickathon.com

Hello, friends. Before we start the show today, it's time to plug, plug, plug an upcoming Choppo live event. That's right. We are playing at the Picathon Music Festival on Saturday, August 4th, just outside of beautiful Portland, Oregon. That's right. Choppo is at a music festival. Now, we have, I've heard personal testimony from everyone I've talked to, from bands and festival goers that say that this is one of the best, genuinely one of the best music festivals in the country. A really fun and chill time. So if you're in the Pacific Northwest, or if you wanted to see it perform at a venue that's like sort of a modified barn, and if you want to see us perform inside the Wicker Man, please go to picathon.com

and pick up your tickets. Chris, would you like to, I mean, obviously Choppo at Trap House, it could be a Picathon. But who are some of the other artists that will be performing at this storied festival? I mean, I'm very excited to go to this because I'm a fan of music festivals. I go to music festivals and to get to play at one with such a great lineup, I'm very excited for. We've got 90s indie rock icons built to spill. We've got the jizz of playing with, I believe, the genius, the genius of the Wu-Tang Clan. I believe playing with like a live band that he plays with, which sounds really good. Like liquid swords with live musical accompaniment with an orchestra. I mean, come on, that's

worth the price of admission right there. UK buzz band, wet leg, TV priest, Gorilla Toss, an operator music band. I've seen both of those two bands here in New York. They both rock. The new Gorilla Toss album is fucking awesome. Faye Webster, goth babe, I really like. My good friends over at the Off Book podcast will be there as well. If you want to see a podcast that's like the exact polar opposite of Choppo, but also very, very funny. They're an improvised musical podcast. I learned about wet leg through Chris Wade. We incorporated wet leg into our sort of like, I don't know, like waiting music before we go on stage at one of our live shows. If

you saw us on our latest live tour, you probably heard some wet leg. To all I will say about wet leg is went to school and got the big D. That's what it's all about, folks, is getting the big D. So that's pickathon.com for tickets. The whole festival will also be streamed live over a good with frequency for like $10. You can see basically everything streaming live. If you can't make it to the Pacific Northwest, that'll also be that. And finally, if a festival is not your vibe, I will say that we are also looking, still looking to book another show in the Portland area around that time. However, nothing is

solidified. So if you want to be guaranteed to see us in or around Portland in August, as of right now, it's pickathon.com. Grab your tickets. See you there. Barring monkeypox and explosions, of course. Chas too. We're starting it in Portland, Oregon. Come be there. Come be part of the movement. All right. Let's start the show. Hello, babies. It's the big chopper here. It's a Monday, May 23rd. Sorry, I've been, I was just watching Big Bopper videos all weekend. And I'm just, it's time for the Big Bopper to come back. The Big Bopper fan community is dying. Please like and support

the Big Bopper and Chantilly Lays. You know, he's got a few other bangers. There's a couple of B-sides there in that catalog that could really blow your mind if you give him a chance. Other songs about different kinds of women's underwear that just drive me crazy, baby. Yeah. The Big Bopper was really, he was sort of like the original DJ Khaled, because he was a big dumb goofball who was, you know, a DJ, but not really who got famous for saying things on a song. Yeah. Just talking. And then getting killed alongside more talented people.

Because I actually do think that, you know, as much as Chantilly Lays, a bop, as we would all agree, as much as it's part of the fifties tapestry of popular music, I think he would be less remembered if he was just the guy who did Chantilly Lays and not the guy who died in a plane crash with Buddy Holly and Richie Valance. I feel like I've always, I've always identified with Peter Boyle's ex-files character in that I was always more of a fan of the Big Bopper than Buddy Holly. And ever since that moment, I've been able to predict the future and I can do nothing to change it. I can do, I can see what's coming exactly, but can do nothing to alter the future.

That is my curse. But it's one I'm happy to share with you guys on the show here. And speaking of predicting the future, cursed or otherwise, friends, it's been a long, we spent a long time doing what I feel like is just, you know, shrieking into the darkness. So to no avail. No one's paying attention. No one's willing to step up and follow our advice. Well, that time is over. Somebody up there is finally listening to us. What am I referring to? Yes. Eric Adams, 2024 presidential bid. It's real. It's happening. We were right. I can't wait for this train to leave the station. I love firing up the lathe of having a get. It feels good.

This is according to the New York Post. Eric has told me repeatedly that he thinks he has a platform to run for national office for president in 2024. He has said that repeatedly. He thinks that New York is a national platform. He thinks the national partner he has gotten too far left, and he thinks he has a platform to win. Now, this is contingent on Joe Biden not running or not seeking a second term. But there's another article out this weekend about how he was in D.C. National Democrats are basically courting him to help with a national communication strategy. And if there's one person who can do it, it's the mayor of New York City. He's a man. He knows that we need

a vibe shift. He knows that that is the most important thing. I mean, and if he thought that the special deposit of gems and minerals under New York gave it a special energy and a vibe, imagine when he finds out what Washington, D.C. is very, oh my goodness. Is Eric Adams aware that the street plan layout of Washington, D.C. is a pentagram? I'd like to make him aware of that fact now. It's on lay lines. There's like orphan bones under there. I'm getting a special energy from this pet cemetery. So, but like, you know, I saw the weekend, like a lot of people were saying like, oh, like, you know, Eric Adams, like the Democratic

national communication strategist. I was like, everyone was saying, basically, people who would have gotten that job otherwise are just saying like, this is clown shit. Like, can you believe how stupid the Democrats are? It's like, well, a, like, sorry, you didn't get the job, buddy. But like, out of anyone who would want to or conceivably be qualified to do that awful, stupid job, is there anyone better than Eric Adams? Cause like, I don't see that. I don't see them walking through that door. As we've discussed, New York City is like the third most powerful executive office in the United States. And that means it's functionally identical to the president. And that means

it's equally powerless. It's equally a figurehead position. And it's equally there for someone to absorb the public's anger and also to just provide some sort of narrative to explain what's exactly happening. And Joe Biden's is he's on screen at the Soylent Green Factory talking to Edward G. Robinson. And you know, I don't think maybe people thought that was preferable to Trump, you know, driving the fucking plane into the building. But I think they'd rather have, I think at this point, everyone's like, yeah, we'd rather have some illusions, please, that there's some future here and who can do that better than the man who is so just psychopathically confident and sure of himself, that there is no way

that that wouldn't spill over into all of us and the way we think of our country. Like my, like my best pitch for why this, this does make sense, despite how it appears on the surface is that like, like, as a, as a national candidate or a national communications guru, he has two things to recommend himself in terms of communicating with like the American public at large. One is he doesn't seem to be online at all, or really like have any idea about that's true online social media discourse or like, that's the confidence or take of the day, like, he doesn't compulsively have to put a dipstick in to see how he's coming across like Kamala Harris, which is what ruins her.

Yeah. Number two, and probably most importantly of all, he's not online, but he is also a genuine, genuine weirdo. Yep. Yep. I'll just, I mean, we need, we've proven pretty conclusively that what we really want is, is something, you know, like Joe Biden is the last, will probably be the last ever president who just represented like the democratic party. It's all going to be personalities now and like fragments of a personality. And so, you know, you're either someone who people have already proven they love because of your charisma because you're a famous person

like Donald Trump, for example, or you're just so freaking freaky that you are magnetic that people want to look at you because they just are amazed that someone like you exists and they want to see what you're going to get up to next. Yeah. And like, you know, like, I mean, obviously like, like his thing is like, oh, like the national party has gotten too far left wing and I'm the antidote to that. But like, I mean, like, again, it's not really about like who's more left wing or not, or has the party gone too far? Like, like, nobody cares about that. That's like, that's not how voters think like the average moderate voter has like one or two genuinely left wing beliefs and one

or two like insanely right wing beliefs. And then everything in between is just a mishmash of what other people tell them. But like Eric Adams is like, okay, a, the energy crystals underneath the island of Manhattan, fact, his belief that Gracie Manchin is haunted and that there are quote, ghosts creeping around there. I spent an hour last night in my bedroom talking to feel a little guardian. He's been dead for 50 years. Okay. And then I just like, this is just one other thing. I was like, not funny because there was another horrific murder on the New York City subway this weekend. Some guy just

got like randomly just shot like something insane person, just like going across the Manhattan bridge. His statement on this killing says, it is my responsibility to keep New Yorkers safe. My heart goes out to that family. I'm sorry they lost their loved one. I thank God I'm the mayor right now, which is, that's, that's, that's really what a grieving family wants to hear. It's just like, can you imagine if some other guy was mayor right now? Yeah, it's like, it's, what do you want to be though? Like if crime is going to be going up in American cities, do you want to be the one who's there trying to like say, no, it's actually fine. You know, we're going to, we're going to do something to fix it. Or the guy

who's just going to like be like, fucking a he-man just going to take it upon himself like fucking Charles Bronson. And he could then be like on your behalf, like your frustration and, and he could be your, he could be your hero, baby. He's, he's, you know, he is a genuine street wise Hercules and that's, that's what the, that's what the country needs right now. So like I said, not going to be voting for him, but you know, like it's just finally our advice is being heated. The vibe shift is happening and most people are weirdos, but they can't like you, that weirdness, it can't be mediated by like, like an online point of view. Like that, that's, that's for a different time.

That's, that's, that's mind poisoned. That, that fills you with a self doubt. And that's what gets you to go away from your true authentic weirdness, which is what people relate to and tack towards, uh, you know, the, uh, the party line, the stuff that feels fraudulent. Like the stuff people know, oh, you've got that from the internet. You got that from a focus group. That's not your real freak flag flying. And so yeah, like we need people who are fully so confident, so supernaturally sure of themselves that they have burned their social media ships and are just going off into the fucking wilderness by themselves. Before we move on from Eric Adams, can I relay one other Eric Adams story? Yeah, which is

apparently he was at the opening of a new hard rock restaurant in Times Square, you know, the hard rock cafe. What? They're opening one now in Times Square? Yeah, like a huge, yeah, like a huge complex. There was a big party there and the New York magazine said their party reporter there and that person got stuck in an elevator with Eric Adams, not stuck, but ended up in an elevator with Eric Adams and asked for a statement on it. And he just looked at the reporter in the eye and said, I love the hard rock. Yeah, for those about the hard rock, we salute you. We salute New York City. We salute Times

Square and its hard rock loving mayor. I mean, was he like, oh yeah, there was like partying. Was that was a news partying with Cara Deleving or whatever her name is, you know, the credit card party? Yeah, yeah, nice, nice. Who was she like grinding on the other day? People? She's out of pocket. She's she's like, she was like doing some like model bullshit to Megan Thee Stallion. Like she Megan Thee Stallion was taking a picture in like a complicated dress and Cara Deleving was like, oh, I'm a model. I know how to like flip the flappy part, the tail of the dress. And then everyone was making fun of her presumably because she was like

wearing glasses. It kind of made her look like a creature. But that was that was the thing you're thinking of. Presumably she's like horny horny for Megan Thee Stallion, which like who is who can who is what's happening is she's she is doing serious method acting preparation for the upcoming spin off film about the Enchantress, our favorite character from Suicide Squad. Finally, the character we love more than any other character. Every way after that movie was like, I got to get more of that in Chetris. It's like, why is it so long? There's been a whole nother Suicide Squad movie, No Enchantress. Be patient, folks. This thing is going to be, I believe it's, it's going to be Marvel's

or I'm sorry, it's going to be DC's biggest budget ever, $800 million. It's going to be three separate films released at the same time, each of them three hours long. Enchantress, folks, get ready for it. Well, yeah, that was the character that everyone fell in love with. They're like, I love the bitch who's dirty all the time. Super powers, your super powers that she's is the same same quality of like a girl who goes to RISD's bedroom. I'll never forget, like from the, you know, the canonical Suicide Squad episode, Matt, like when you said, when you saw that movie in theater and like the

big climax at the end, where Enchantress is doing like a luau dance, he's doing a hula. He's doing a hula. He's literally a CGI body. And you just said out loud in the theater, awful, awful. But then of course I'll, yeah, and then I'll also remember from the Suicide, I think I basically had about that same, same moment in the movie. I had given Felix an edible before we saw the movie. I think it was the last time Felix ever did marijuana of any kind, but he just turns to me. He's like, I can't take this.

Donald Trump won because of that. Yeah, he got depressed that he doesn't live in the universe that has Enchantress in it. I tried to find my own Enchantress after, after I saw it, I was just wandering the East Village looking for the dirtiest woman possible. I ended up, I ended up like doing what Hunter Biden did and having like a cross bunk live with me for four years. Every young man, I still have like a dreadlock growing out of my back connected with my spinal cord. Every man who moves to Brooklyn is just looking for his Enchantress.

That's right. That's the, that's the dream, just the dirtiest, grubbiest lady in town. But powerful. I mean, you're, you're, you're in luck because, um, look, if you're, if you're with a woman in Brooklyn, her genetic memories are going to awaken and she will, her crow magnet DNA will activate. And if you successfully meet with her, she'll, she will give you the most oxidized water in the world. Nice, uh, room temperature water that's been on her night stand for seven years.

That stuff gains power though. The longer it's there. Yeah. Women love that. Women love just having the most like air bubbled water ever. They also love opening, uh, uh, carbonated beverages and not finishing them. Oh, ladies, come on. Come on. Yeah. Women like it. Women like it when the like fish with hind legs that started humanity crawls out of LaCroix. Uh, also, uh, average woman has a $10,000 line of credit at Sephora Enchantress. Never even heard of, uh, lotions or, you know, various balms and, uh, pastes and I don't know what else they sell at Sephora, but ladies, it's expensive. It's a fucking,

uh, for lotion. Come on. Get out of here. We all need an enchantress. Let's get enchanted. Let's get, let's get that dirty magic going. You need a moisturizer for when you wash your face, but if you're never washing, because you're just riding around in dirt magic all the time, don't really need that to you. Nope. There's no German dream. There's no French dream. There's no Polish dream, but there's an American dream. And so when you leave it a day, you leave here with that dream and you can go from being a dishwasher to owning a restaurant. You can go from being a person who has dyslexic and become the mayor as long as you dream, as long as you fight for what

you think is right. This country will become the country we want it to be. And in the process, there's going to be a lot of people who will hate you. All I can say, have your haters become your waiters when you sit down at the table. Look success. Thank you. All right. So, uh, moving up from, uh, from Eric Adams and Enchantress, this is like, you know, like, uh, we're checking in on all our old favorites, all our old friends are coming back. I would like to talk now briefly about our friends. Uh, you know, I mean, look, we tried to pursue a sponsorship deal with them, you know, do the ad reads, but it fell through at the last moment. Black Rifle Coffee Company. They're back in the news, folks.

And they're back in the news for a rather, uh, rather eye-popping reason. And, uh, that is according to like, um, a recent allegation of, uh, securities fraud. I did not realize this. The, the, uh, the, the Black Rifle Coffee Company became like public, like, uh, you know, a publicly traded company. And the Black Rifle Coffee Company was, uh, a valuation of $7.3 billion. That's a lot of coffee. And it says like, uh, apparently it posted $4 million of net income in 2020 and a loss of 14 and a loss of $14 million last year.

That, that's that price. I don't know much, but I know the word price to earnings ratio. And I know that's not a good one. So when I first, uh, but I mean, probably better than Tesla, honestly. Well, Tesla's were at 1.200, which is like that. That's kind of like the financial equivalent of building the tower to Babel. Yeah. No, it was, it's when it was hitting $1,000 a share right before, uh, I think he started doing the try to buy, uh, to try to buy Twitter's thing, to knock some actual cash out of this fucking thing while it's still possible. And now he might have pulled

the Django tower apart. We'll see. Yeah. He's about, um, 10 points away from a margin call on the loans against the equity. So if you're out there, uh, and you know, your Tesla explodes, please let people know just to see what happens. Cause this is, this has already been awesome. I know this is about the same phenomenon, you know, yeah. It scams all the way down all like, cause they gave, they gave the government gave them all this money and said, here invest it. And it's like, sure, we'll invest it in fucking what? There's no productive. There's nothing generating profit anymore. So they just have

to sit on it and then fake it until they don't even have to make it as long as the money pump keeps going. Say what you'll about a black rifle coffee company, but you know, no one who has ever brood themselves a cup of black rifle coffee has found themselves trapped in the coffee machine as it catches on fire and kills them. I mean, the founders of the company have done that to people, but not their course, not their coffee. No, no, that, yeah, the coffee literally makes you on the other end of that makes you able to do that to women and children. But, uh, I mean, I got to say, I'm, I will get to black

rifle, but like, I am loving Mr. Caps wild ride. He destroyed his life. He destroyed his like people have done, like all types of people who have done this, who have had like most of their net worth tied up in equity and a company they control have like done this where it's like, Oh, I'm going to like sell it to go into this private enterprise or like borrow against it, but they haven't like destroyed their lives two weeks later. Yeah. Well, it's because of, cause he had this bind where he couldn't start. He couldn't just sell the stock because that undermines his brand, which is the entirety of the value of the fucking thing in the first place. So that's why you had to do this smoke and mirrors

bullshit with Twitter to try to like do a three card money game and sneak money out of Tesla without anybody noticing, but now it's completely falling apart because he had to be the face of it the whole time. And, uh, he's not that fucking smart at the end of the day. He's, he's Robert De Niro hosting aces high. You could have, you could have had the fucking cash or equity, but you have to be a fucking TV. You have to, you have to post your own Kroeper. You have to be based. They can fuck around with me if I'm based, not like they wouldn't. Uh, soy guy, we talked to the guys back home in the Emerald Mine. They think you're going to patch it.

Uh, you know, I got like, uh, the kind of, the Mustang is incredible though. Cause like, uh, uh, seeing, seeing the defenses of what is alleged here, like the number of people who are just like, okay, uh, first of all, uh, he has Asperger's. So like, he just probably just, you know, misunderstood social cues that's doing this or whatever. And it's just like, yeah, like, oh yeah, an autistic person would never sexually harass someone. I mean, that's, that's literally never happened. But also, also like, also like the idea that like people, like guys with Asperger's are just like constantly walking around in bathrooms, being like, Hey, baby, want to suck it?

Yeah. Not, not just like, not just like missing every cue from women who are also at a Nerudo convention. Like it's, it's a comprehensively great defense. The must dick writers are out in full force. Did you see the guy who was like, Elon Musk showed you his wiener and you're complaining? Yes. Yes. Oh my God. He was like, I just don't understand the women. This is the richest man on the world. And then like the weirdest thing is that the guy said, he was like, I just don't understand

women. If the richest man in the world exposes himself to you, like, wouldn't you want to tell all your friends how big his dick was? Yeah. Even if it wasn't, they'd have to believe you. It's what? Oh, and then, and then Musk was just like, he was just like, I challenge anyone to name five fucked up things about my dick. You can't because it's all a made up. And it's just like, dude, like how, how weird would your dick have to be for like someone to like pick, pick out a distinguishing feature about it? They're like, it's, I don't know,

cut or uncut. Those are the options that you can guess on that. But yeah, the, Felix, the, the dick writing that's going on with Elon Musk right now, and I don't even mean like the people defending him against a, you know, sexual harassment allegation. I mean, the people who talk about him, like he's Albert Einstein. And you know, I know this is a little cliche or some might say hyperbolic, but when I see shit like that, I truly understand what it must have been like to witness the rise of Adolf Hitler, you know, like you're in Germany in the 30s and you're like, can you believe this fucking clown? How many people take him seriously? And then like 10 years later, you're freezing to death on the Eastern

front. Well, yeah, yeah, but it's like, if Hitler like lied about being an older one, if he like, like, if he like lied about being like he was never there and then like his supporters were like, well, he like, you know, he like drove an ambulance that was outside the war. He founded the, he founded the war by like buying it five years after it started. That's what it's like. It's like, if it were supporters, like never shut up about him being a good artist. Yeah, like actually, he's a much better painter than Picasso.

Yeah, he actually had a really promising art career and he like gave it off to like solve the new problem. Yeah, they let him into the art school and he just decided not to go. Yeah, he was your base for art. Yeah. And Felix, you pointed this out the other day, we didn't get to just talk about it, but like obviously everyone is like, you know, the allegations of, uh, uh, cajoling a woman into giving you a handjob by buying her a pony. But like, a lot is the weirder detail in this

that like you brought up, which is that apparently all SpaceX stewardesses were, um, pressured to get a masseuse license on their own dime so that they could give massages to, uh, SpaceX executives. Oh, who does that remind me of? That's right. Another great scientist, Robert Oppenheimer, who just, just like Elon Musk. No, it is literally the Ghislaine modus operandi. He's, he's, he's taking, uh, he's taking the Loretta Express, uh, uh, interstellar. It's like, he pressed the button and the Loretta Express turns into a space shuttle. He's extending the thing.

I'm a little confused about here. She's a space ex flight attendant. Yeah. Does that mean that she's like, uh, she's a flight attendant on a plane that goes into space? No. Or is that just what they call their fleet of private jets or something? Yes. I mean, if this worked, he would have come, he would have claimed he invented the Loretta

Express. Like that would have been another thing that he stole and lied about. He's extending the light, extending the light of human trafficking into the cosmos. Yeah. I like that. That it's like a stewardess who's presumably like in a one bedroom apartment, like one day a week. And he's like, Oh, what if I got you a horse?

He's just like putting your fucking pantry. Awesome. Like, what is it with these guys and giving massages? It's like, it's like, it's like, I don't know, like a certain kind of like, uh, rich guy. Like, why do they think that like getting them, it's like getting a massage. Like, I mean, like that, that's the perfect, uh, that's the, that's the perfect way to ex escalate, you know, like a sexual relationship with a woman, like getting a fucking massage.

I don't know. Like, All the, like the last porn they saw that had adults in it was like soft core from 1987. They all get the same manual or something. It really is like written by Jillian, I think it's like, they're basically like their attempt to sexually dominate is just an extension of their, you know, relationship to everyone they interact with, a power dynamic defined by them being the purchaser of their labor, right?

Be it like waiters or drivers or chauffeurs or anybody. This is just the most intimate one of those, right? Like they're actually touching your body. So that means it's the shortest jump to, Hey, grab my dick. Okay. Let's do something sexual. It's the, it's the smallest amount of escalation necessary to take that like, uh, relationship and extend it into like physical exploitation, which is what they get off on getting, having

sex is boring. Having sex when someone doesn't want to have it. That's also an example of your power and that makes it more intense. They're sick. Oh, spokes. These people are sick. Yeah. But it's just also, it's also like, you know, the least creative like showtime scenario.

Well, yes. They're also absolute dollars. I mean, that's the other, that's the thing. It's like this, it's the path of least resistance. Yeah. The only, yeah, the only, it's like the only non porn stuff they've watched is like a movie starring Shannon Tweed and they're like, Oh, that's how I like fuck a woman. Intimate encounters.

Yeah. Red shoe diaries. I fucking hate Teslas, man. Like I'd never been in one until we were in Austin, but like I've never felt less safe being in a car because like they're like, I don't think that like exiting and like an automobile should have like the same feel as like trying to like, I don't know, open an app on my phone or it's just like the Bluetooth isn't connecting or something like. I saw a thing.

I saw a thing today or yesterday since that like Tesla blew up. That was like, Oh, actually there, there like is an escape hatch for the Tesla. There's like a manual escape hatch. It's behind the secondary speaker and you just, you just have to like solve a car, solve a puzzle that has a rage comic in it while your car is filling with smoke to get out. They're, they're, they're bad. They're bad folks and everyone who drives them are equally bad. But yeah, like just, just expective lack of a coffee company recently.

So like basically like, this came to light, this came to light because a guy basically like this guy, I'm looking at this thing says 1791 management sends letters to black rifle coffee company demanding they brew up an action plan to address serious allegations of corporate governance failures and code of conduct violations. And the letter was written by this guy named Jonathan Wellentine who basically like, he seems like like a crank who writes letters to companies that he owns shares in or something like that. But he may be right in this case.

Just a brief thing about, about Jonathan, he wrote another Langer to a California solar powered company named Heliogen and he is sort of a, he claims that he has a degree in what is known as pure mathematics, which is not a distinction that his alma mater makes. He's a pure mathematics expert. But you know, this guy, Wellentine, Wellentine, maybe onto something. He says, dear Mr. Evan Hafer, this is the CEO of black rifle coffee company. I regrettably must communicate with you via this public forum because as of recently, it appears you have decided to cease all communications with us 1791 management LLC manages certain

entities that hold black rifle coffee company shares. Please do not confuse our stake as a vote of confidence in the company's leadership. On the contrary, in just three months of being a public company, in our opinion, you have caused significant harm to your shareholders and military veterans. It is our belief that you may be one of the most dangerous CEOs in America. We have conducted a thorough review of your company, including actions by management and reviews of your SEC filings, combining this with our numerous conversations with black rifle lawyers and executives.

We have uncovered what we believe to be the most harrowing strategy to line your pockets at the expense of others. And yes, chief legal counsel and corporate secretary, Mr. Andrew McCormick. It was us on the phone as you cavalierly describe what I would consider a plan to screw over your public shareholders as set forth in more detail below. It is our conclusion that you're profiteering at the expense of Americans under the guise of helping military veterans reveals your shameless disregard for our most honorable citizens.

Furthermore, we believe your actions as CEO reveals a pattern of gross negligence and dereliction of duty that can expose the company to a tsunami of litigation, which we believe your public shareholders deserve to be made aware of. I'm just skipping ahead here to the end of this open letter that Mr. Wallentine has read. He says here, on a deeply personal level, adding insult to injury, my own military veteran father is one of your victims. Okay.

This is one of my favorite types of guys. The children of veterans who are stealing their own parents' military valor because their dad served in the Cold War. Well, this guy's like a hedge fund manager, right? Which first of all, if you're a hedge fund manager who took a position in black rifle, like, I mean, who are you crying to? You really wrote your own tragedy here. But if he's a hedge fund manager, his dad served in, like, the Spanish-American War.

His dad, like, got to take Dublin's home from the war. I'm not really like sad for him. So, yeah, he says here, my own military veteran father is one of your victims. Unlike you, though, he served this country with honor. He has a CIB and was awarded a Purple Heart, Bronze Star Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Honor Medal, and lost his leg. I don't hear a combat medal in there, so that just means he had an accident or he has diabetes. You can get a Purple Heart for, you know, doing some shit to yourself, like walking

into a trench accidentally, breaking your leg. Sounds like he was a victim of the great soldier Sarah Lee. Sounds like she took another American life. After hearing your story about supporting veterans, he purchased Black Rifle stock and subsequently lost 60% of his value. Now he dubbs you, Crooked Hafer, and would love nothing more than to see you exposed for the criminal he believes you to be. What a bad dad.

You look at this fucking Oaf who, like, lost his leg by accident while serving in Frankfurt, Germany, is like, hey, I know you're busy with your hedge fund, but can you, like, take over the coffee company that I, like, lost my war bonds in? I lost my war bond interest in because, like, I felt some kinship with him as a veteran. Can you just make this the entire focus instead of being Bobby Axelrod? My dad served in the bonus army. Now he dubbs you, Crooked Hafer. I mean, just ripping off Trump.

I mean, very, very low energy there. Crooked Hafer, and would love nothing more than to see you exposed for the criminal he believes you to be. Things are that any money Black Rifle donated to military veterans is much less than what they probably lost in your stock. Personally, I'd be fearful if I were you. Executives have gone to jail for breaking securities laws. Really?

Not really anymore. Recently? Like, I don't know. When was the last time that happened? Black Tuesday? You know, like, Enron is, like, the last one I can think of. I mean, they said the Quest Communications guy to jail, but that was more because he wouldn't just, like, give the NSA tons of metadata.

He closes the letter by saying, what I'm about to say may seem a bit harsh, Mr. Hafer, but I'd have said with some authority, if you don't plan on responding to my letter and are promptly preparing an action plan, then I believe it's best you wind down Black Rifle Coffee, return what public money is left on the company's balance sheet, and retreat to whatever bunker you came out of to do what you do best. Donate money to the Democratic Party and smear conservatives as racists. The irreparable damage I believe your greed likely cause shareholders will never be repaid. We and veterans like my father, former customers and shareholders, must hold you accountable

for any further exploitation of Americans for your personal gain. Very truly yours, Jonathan Wellentine. Oh, so, okay, okay. So this is, I was afraid for a second that this guy was a woke capitalist. No, no. This is an anti-woke catch fund. Okay. Okay.

I take everything back. Yeah. I think I'll remember from, like, this is, I don't know, like last year or something, like the Evan Hafer guy, he had to do some press because his coffee was becoming, coffee in their merchandise was becoming popular among sort of, I don't know, like white nationalists who want to be paramilitary. So he was just like, hey, can we chill on all the politics? And just, just, just by just, can you just enjoy a sick sour dark roast or, you know,

like, oh, yeah, I remember that, he was like, hey, guys, can we take it from a, from a griper down to a faffa? Go down one frog here, guys. Well, I mean, shit, like, I mean, he's still got a, he's still got a $7.3 billion valuation on his company. And when I first read the story, I was like, god damn, I was like, how do you fuck up running a coffee company in that bed? You're selling an addictive product that like most American adults use daily.

But the thing is like, I got it wrong because like, like he, this is the opposite of fucking up. Like he, he's killing it and, and looting and taking money from veterans. So I mean, shit, like, what could be better? Well, the guy, so the guy's saying that he cheated veterans cause like this stock went down, which it like, holy shit, veterans cry about like everything. It's a bit like, they think, they think that they need, they deserve like an FDIC where they never lose money on the stock market.

It's incredible. Well, they serve, they, well, they served our country, Felix. Yeah. You're the dumb ass who thought, oh, a troop branded coffee is going to someday compete with fucking Starbucks because of how much everyone loves the troops. So they're going to want to drink their coffee. Like a fucking child thinks something like that. That's not their fault that you believed it.

Well, Starbucks is the troop branded coffee. Exactly. It's like, they've got everything. This is a niche product for fucking political dorks and tryhards and the idea. So once you see it, get a certain point, you shouldn't expect, oh, that's going to just keep going up, up, up. You should think, let me get out as soon as possible, which is why I can't really fault the CEO dude.

Like if you, you're just watching as people keep bidding up this fucking stock price and you're still just a fucking coffee company that has like cool names for the brand, like, you know, a civilian massacre, dark roast or whatever the fuck. And you think that's cool. You're going to get out as soon, you want to get the money out because you know it's not going to last. So what else are you supposed to do? Just go down with the ship for no reason.

I knew, I knew is a bad sign for black rifle coffee company when like they tried to, you know, sort of branch out with their Milai Machiatos and, you know, just then it didn't catch on. Eddie Gallagher was probably drinking Starbucks from the Florida operating base when he did all that stuff. Yeah. Like, I mean, he probably like, he probably like, you know, now like he probably has his own coffee company, right?

I'm assuming because it's just, it's just all like the Navy seal in their natural habitat is to, they create a company they can embezzle from. So he's probably doing that, but when he was in it, when he made his name, I know what he was drinking. I remember like the episode we did about the Navy Seals where there were like three different guys who wrote three different books all claiming that they, they kept bin Laden. I'm like, I would like all three of those guys to start competing coffee companies, like attacking each other over like, you know, like, yeah, like they're, they're, they're

medium Colombian blend is lies. I'm the one who secured the beans from, you know, Guatemala or whatever. This is unrelated, but do you remember the post 9-11 rumor about Caribou coffee where people were like, oh, they like, they give all their profits to Hamas? I don't know who started that. That's honestly, that might have been like specific to, that might have just been like, like, insane, like North Shore Zionists thought that. Wait a second.

Wait a second. Caribou coffee. I own stock in Caribou coffee. I'm writing a letter to the CEO of Hamas right now demanding to know what they've spent this money on because these Katusha Rockets, they're not getting the job done. All right. Yeah. My dad served at the lot airport.

That was a different group. I know. Don't correct me. Just take that out. I'm sorry. I just said the wrong thing. I always thought that was funny just because it's like the fact that everyone knew about it, like that they're saying that in like their shareholder reports.

Oh, we donated $300 million to Hamas this year. Yeah. But yeah, I guess just like the theme for, you know, like I said, it's just scams and frauds all the way down. There is no going concern in America that makes money anymore that isn't a massive securities fraud in one way or another. It's got to be, right? Like, I mean, it's just...

Yeah. Well, yeah, we're trying to hide the fact that this expansionary engine that's supposed to be undergirding this economy has in a real way shut down that those places that are dynamic are no longer in America. We're just there to consume. I mean, that's why like, you know, the real nerd visionaries love to talk about, you know, like a UBI deal where you're just like, look, we need to recognize that America is just a consumer economy, literally.

That's what we're here to do. And then just direct the economy to give us money to consume things and not expect us to go through the hoops of trying to create, you know, productive economic enterprises because we no longer need to. It's inefficient to let people do it elsewhere. And then we just sit here and consume. But our values, our culture, our politics just cannot metabolize the implications of that.

So we have to keep pretending we have an economy. Yeah. I think for like the progressive visionaries, you know, like Andrew Yang or things like that, I mean, I see the running on the wall was just like, how much of this country's population is just unnecessary to whatever is left to the economy. So like, I mean, like, if you're a progressive, you know, of a progressive mindset, you're just like, well, just pay them off and then, but like, but also like that'll be the justification for just like, absolutely shit canning like every other function of the state.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. You make the state, it writes checks and then you get to use those checks in a fully marketized social structure without any, any, a democratically accountable interaction at all. Like no, no institutions that even theoretically answer to people who are not paying customers. I mean, sounds pretty grim, but I have an idea for like a tangible thing. It's tangible.

It's a real business. It's physical even and it helps children. Are you guys ready to hear it? Spit. Idea. We need more right wing YA literature. We need, we need to be getting younger audiences before the left does and then pretend that I have like a little picture of like a frog reading to other frogs.

Good night, friend. Yeah. I just, I saw that post today and it's like, damn, all Americans are soy. It's true. Yes. It really is just like the, everyone just is the same asshole. It used to be like, oh, like this person is, you know, you, but like he took like three left turns to end up where he did, but now it's just like it's a complete mirror match.

Like it's going to be dueling shitty YA genres. Yeah. My comment on that is that I'm volunteering my services as an insensitivity reader to any YA author. I will, I will edit and vet your manuscript to make sure it's properly racist and based enough. I'm a based insensitivity reader and I can't wait to, I can't wait to the, the based YA genre starts and then they all just start absolutely cutting each other's throats immediately

as, as, as happened in the, in the, in the, I guess, the woke YA genre. Yeah. The author of the griper games, like he has to issue an apology because he has a Jewish grandparent. Yeah. Or just like, you know. I'm so sorry. I thought I could, I thought I could like, you know, absolve my family's sins with my

work, but I should, I need to take accountability or like, you know, the, the, the guy who's written the best selling like Hardy Boys like series, but set in Rhodesia, like he has to apologize because his grandparents weren't actually, uh, white Rhodesian colonizers. He's, he's appropriate. He's appropriating, uh, you know, real Rhodesians. All right. Well, uh, to round things out for today's episode, I have a, a reading series for you guys with once again, an old favorite of the show.

We haven't, we haven't, I think we, I don't think we've done one of these in a while, but it's, you know, you know, the smartest journalist in the world, the smartest columnist in the world, Thomas Friedman. He's back again and I'm proud to report. I mean, like you, he's been pretty boring lately, but he, he's come through today with a real, a real masterpiece of the craft of writing, thinking, and being Thomas Friedman. So you guys ready to jump into this one? It's a, okay.

He had lunch with President Biden. He had lunch with President Biden and he regrets to, he regrets to inform you that the lunch was great, but his vibes are bad. I mean, not Joe Biden's vibes, but Thomas Friedman, he left this delicious lunch feeling bad vibes. So here we go. This is Thomas Friedman writing in the New York Times, my lunch with President Biden. It's the sequel to my dinner with Andre.

He says, President Biden invited me for lunch at the White House last Monday, but it was all off the record, so I can't tell you anything he said. The article ends there. It's just, it was just that one paragraph, unfortunately. He can't tell you anything. No, no, he can. He says, I can though, tell you two things. What I ate and how I felt after.

I ate a tuna salad sandwich with tomato on whole wheat bread with a bowl of mixed fruit and a chocolate milkshake for dessert that was so good, it should have been against the law. How, how would you rate that? How would you rate that lunch order, fellas? It's a fucking weird lunch. That's like, man, that's like, oh, we're letting the people on the psych ward pick their own lunch today.

It was very FLEMMY. That's like, that's like when Texas executes someone that they really shouldn't. You see their last meal. It's like gummy bears and a can of Sprite. Yeah. Exactly. Like, like, okay, so he had fruit salad and a milkshake, but he had a tuna salad sandwich. Tuna salad sandwich and fruit salad isn't that weird, I guess.

But then it's like, oh, you know what would go great with this? A chocolate milkshake. Yeah. The milkshake's kind of out there. Well, you know, I mean, you're at the White House, you've got to take advantage, you know, you've got to get a little, just a little White House treat, you know, I would get a milkshake. Yeah, I admire his restraint, because if I went to the White House for a meal, I would

assume that I would have that prerogative where I could just order anything. Yeah. And I would, I would go ham. So yeah, that was just lunch order. This is what he can read. And when I say I would go ham, I would say, do you have one of those like articulated armatures that hold a Hamon Ibaraco torch? Could you believe one of those out here that just have you slice off like nice, thin bits

Hamon Ibaraco? Have you been wheel out some Manchego for me to put it on? Oh, yes. I would show them I would show them meals cooked by a certain Jamaican American content creator. Secret service would just draw down on you as soon as you pulled off the top, they would like light you up. Yeah. Dumpy eggs in you for presenting that to the president.

I'd be like, could the chef, please prepare a classic dish from New York City. Steak, bone in extra bone, in fact, a slice of American cheese, an entire rosemary plant, five eggs and a bagel. Oh, don't want to, don't forget the shell and the bagel has to have extra wet on it. That actually, I bet that's like probably what Biden would cook if you let him do his own devices. Yes. Yes.

I'm sorry, I don't want to be a pain here, but could you please send back my tuna salad sandwich and just, could you just add a sprig of thyme and some egg shells on top of it, please? Just a little extra flavor. Best movie ever, man. Give me fish. This is the best movie ever, man. Real men cook, okay?

Could he add any fish to this milkshake, please? Yeah, no, sorry, that was his lunch order, but he says, what I felt afterward was that this, for all you knuckleheads on Fox who say that Biden can't put two sentences together, here's a news flash. He just put NATO together, Europe together and the whole Western alliance together, stretching from Canada up to Finland and all the way to Japan to help Ukraine protect its fledgling democracy from Vladimir Putin's fascist assault. So yeah, I know it may not seem like that way if you see him on television, but if you

have lunch with him, you'll notice he didn't say like, he didn't say that Biden can put two sentences together, but he did say he did put, he did add Finland to NATO. It's amazing. He doesn't even intimate at any, like he doesn't say he was sharp or articulate. No, he doesn't. He doesn't say like, he could have certainly added some sort of like detail to reflect. Yeah. You know, the old guys still got it.

Couldn't bring himself to do it. Nope. He says, also like, I mean, didn't like Putin really put NATO together? It's true. If we're really being honest here, like, didn't Putin go, oh, let's have two of them. Let's have 20 more years of NATO because I'm going to be dying next year. Enjoy. Yeah.

If this was just on, on Biden, it would not have occurred. He needed, he needed a chef in the kitchen to help pop that one together. Yeah. He writes, in doing so, he has enabled Ukraine to inflict significant losses on Russia's invading army, thanks to a rapid deployment of U.S. and NATO trainers and massive transfers of precision weapons and not a single American soldier was lost. But the entire country has been turned into a bloody fucking stalemate. It has been the best performance of alliance management and consolidation since another

president whom I covered and admired, who was also said to be incapable of putting two sentences together, George H.W. Bush. Bush managed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany without firing a shot or the loss of a single American life. Now I know George H.W. Bush is remembered for a lot of things or rather not remembered for them, but like, was he ever tagged as being inarticulate? I mean, he tagged, he was tagged as being out of touch and like, no, well, he, he, he, he only had trouble putting sentences together when you asked him where he was in November

of 1963. I mean, he did have a kind of rep for like, kind of relying on sort of airy phrases and a lot of cliches. You know, not going to do it. A thousand points a lot. He, no one thought that he needed to have the clock test. No one was like, does George W. Bush know what day he's living in as with, I mean, it's not comparable.

I'm just, I just imagine giving like a cognitive test to Biden and asking him who's president right now. Like he just got out of a coma. It has been, I'm going to go, alas, though, okay, so without firing a shot or the loss of a single American life, alas, yeah, why do you think so many, why do you think so many soldiers have been dying at Fort Bragg lately? I got news. They probably didn't die in Fort Bragg.

I mean, there's no way to know, is there? Because they lost money on their black rifle coffee stock. Here is the line of the article, though. This is a classic, classic bit of Thomas Rudman. He goes, alas, though, I left our lunch with a full stomach, but a heavy heart. That's, that's the kind of fucking writing. Don't go swimming, Tom, but a heavy heart, full stomach, heavy heart, we'll lose. But I didn't didn't say it in so many words, but he didn't have to, he didn't say it at

all. He didn't say it in any words. He spoke no words, just an aid dabbing his mouth in the napkin after he finished his milkshake. Yeah. Like grandpa Sawyer from Chainsaw Massacre getting wheeled out to gnaw on the fucking tri-tip. I just, I just lived out the entirety of the movie Big Fish with Joe Biden, but here's

what he said without saying it. I could hear it between the lines. He's worried that while he has reunited the West, he may not be able to reunite America. That, okay, that means that America is going to be reunited in like six months. Division's over. It's clearly his priority above any build back better provision. And he knows that's why he was elected. A majority of Americans worried that the country was coming apart at the seams and that this

old warhorse called Biden with his bipartisan instincts was the best person to knit us back together. It's the reason he decided to run the first place because he knows that without some basic unity of purpose and willingness to compromise, nothing else is possible. But with every passing day, every mass shooting, every racist dog whistle, every defund the police initiative. Okay. Record scratch?

Like, okay, we're throwing defund the police initiatives along with genocidal acts of terrorism. Well, also, no one's done a defund the police thing since 2020. Like every fucking, anywhere where Democrats do control, just like every week they pass like a non-binding resolution that they'll like raise the police budget every year. Yeah, like there's not, there aren't really even any voices within the like electoral structure of the Democratic Party that are even talking about that stuff anymore at be anywhere beyond the municipal level.

It's yeah. And the places where they actually have power Democrats, they've done it like that was, that was a 2020 thing. And I think you could argue that it was, you know, it was a branding issue for the Democrats. But the only people who are still talking about defund the police initiatives are Democrats complaining about them to obviate their own responsibility for why they're hated. Yeah. Like people really may have forgotten about it by now.

If like every week Democrats weren't like, oh, by the way, we hate defund the police. Yeah. We're never doing that. Well, something like Amy Klobuchar the other day was like, I'm passing a resolution to honor the 567 police officers who were, who died in the line of duty last year. But like something like 450 of them just died of COVID. Yeah. The rest of them like had heart attacks at Wendy's.

So like, yeah, this is Thomas Friedman's sort of like laundry list of the things that are, you know, uh, rending America apart. So yeah, every mass shooting, every racist dog whistle, every defund the police initiative, every nation's sundering Supreme Court ruling, every speaker runoff campus, every bogus claim of election fraud. I wonder if he can bring us back together. I wonder if it's too late. So yeah.

Well, I got to wonder, I mean, he probably does, right? Because you don't get like this good if you don't like kind of believe it. Did he like really believe the stuff where Biden's like, oh, I'm going to like end division. I honestly bring America together. I see this level, guys like him, guys who have like been paid to have opinions their entire lives and never have to like have an unpleasant or adversarial encounter with anyone that they don't want to. I think that they have convinced themselves that that's true because what's, it's motive.

It's a motivated reasoning. It's a way to stay fat and complacent. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. You're fucking mustache all day. Yeah. No, I think he genuinely does believe it.

I think he also genuinely does believe on a certain level that like you can put things like a Milo Yabba-dabba-dopolis getting yelled at on a college campus or like an activist, um, you know, is promoting defund the police or abolish the police at the same level of, you know, ending, ending the right to have an abortion or, you know, like I said, genocidal acts of terrorist mass murder because like to have that job though, like it's like you have to believe that everything has an equal and opposite reaction and that like America if like America, if people have lost their confidence in America or no one trusts each other, it seems like our society is rapidly circling the drain.

Blame has to be apportioned in a like reasonable both sides fashion. Right. But you, you can recognize polarization, but you have to pretend that it's not an asymmetrical polarization because that, that is in their minds like, uh, imposing, uh, values onto it that you're not being an objective journalist, but yeah, you know, there is an objective reality of the dynamics within the parties that is driving driving both against one another, polarizing both. And in the case of the Democrats, the people doing this polarizing are the least powerful

people within the greater coalition of like democratic voters and people who participated in politics as Democrats like one way or the other, even if they hate the party, they vote for them. The least powerful people are doing the polarization. The Republican party's actual political infrastructure is completely controlled by people who are at the leading edge of the polarization. So it's a, it's a dynamic that has two halves, but is they're not equally, uh, the power residing in the most, you know, uh, confrontational part of the coalition is concentrated with

the Republicans. But they can't, they can't, they can't do anything other than, uh, uh, gesture at that. So he writes, I fear that we're going to break something very valuable very soon. And once we break it, it will be gone and we may never be able to get it back. Once we break it, we buy it. I am talking about our ability to transfer power peacefully and legitimately. An ability we have demonstrated since our founding, the peaceful legitimate transfer of power is the keystone of American democracy.

Break it. And none of our institutions will work for long and we will be thrust into political and financial chaos. I mean, yeah, unlike now, I'd hate to see what that would look like. I mean, it's very funny that he says that there's been this unbroken string of peaceful transfers of power for getting the fucking civil war that was fought over the outcome of an election. That was the kind of a big deal.

Uh, and then now you've got the fact that no election could really be said to be legitimate in the way he's pining for since 2000, because 2000 is when all of these fucking things got broken 2000 smashed this fucking vase. These assholes were the last people to notice because they didn't have to. They're literally in a bubble at the ground though. Some knew and that knowledge has just slowly been marching up the capillaries of, uh, of society up to its upper reaches. And now the very last people to get it are fucking dipshits like Friedman, but, uh,

this has been knowledge on the street since 2000. That was, that was like, yeah, you think that there's one way that we get a president elected and we're going to just in front of you show, no, that's not what does it. And I think like that's probably like the exact same reason why for people like Friedman or like anyone who's been writing about like the Supreme Court recently, I think like they genuinely do believe that like, uh, the, the, the, the terrible thing about Roe v. Wade being overturned is not the like severe abridgment of human rights. It would mean for like half of the country, but it's that like the anger generated at the

Supreme Court or like the loss of the Supreme Court decision and Bush v. Gore. I mean, like I said, from that moment on, like that, yeah, if you didn't realize that the Supreme Court was illegitimate then, then yeah, like, I mean, these people are catching up to it now, but it's, it's, it's the anger at the fact that we have a now more or less openly theocratic, um, you know, like judicial branch of the, of the government, like the reality of that to people like Tom Friedman, who I'm sure is basically pro-choice in his personal beliefs and politics is entirely secondary to, um, the anger and the anger directed at the court, like not at like the ruling itself, but at the court as an institution

in American life that like should not have the authority that it does. Going on, he writes, uh, we are staring into that abyss right now because it is one thing to elect Donald Trump and pro-trump pro-trump candidates who want to restrict immigration, ban abortions, slash corporate taxes, pump more oil, curb sex education in schools and liberate citizens from more mask mandates in a pandemic. Those are policies where there can be legitimate disagreement, which is the stuff of politics. But the recent primaries and investigations around the January 6th into insurrection at the Capitol are revealing a movement by Trump and his supporters that is not propelled by

any coherent sense of policies, but rather by a gigantic lie that Biden did not freely and fairly win the majority of electoral college votes and therefore is an illegitimate president. Thus, their top priority is installing candidates whose primary allegiance is to Trump and his big lie, not to the Constitution. And they are more than hinting that in any close election in 2024, or even ones that aren't so close, they would be willing to depart from established constitutional rules and norms and award that election to Trump or other Republican candidates who didn't actually garner the most votes.

They are not whispering this platform, they are running for office on it. In short, we are seeing a national movement that is telling us publicly and loudly, we will go there. And that terrifies me because in all caps, I have been there. My formative experience in journalism was watching Lebanese politicians go there in the late 1970s and plunge their frail democracy into a protracted civil war. So don't tell me that it can't happen here. Not when people like Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Maseriano, an election denier who marched

through the January 6th crowd at the Capitol, just won the GOP primary to run for governor. Have no doubt, these people will never do what Al Gore did in 2000. Okay, I'll stop you right there. They would never do what Al Gore did in 2000, and that's why they're winning and will continue to win. Right, because they think there's actually stakes involved. Yes. Talk about no one wants to work anymore.

This sucks. This is so fucking boring, holy shit. It's like, I feel like he used to be more interesting. He used to use better, he used to use more and better hilarious metaphors, that's for sure. Yeah, god damn, he is phoning it in. Say that everyone is caught in the well of malaise. They were trapped in the quicksand of non-voting.

Say that we fell into the chocolate river from Willy Wonka of National Division. This is just like, there are 50 other articles that are like this. He's lost it. He doesn't give a shit anymore, it's sad. No, you're right. With his pension for metaphors, he used to be like the little carmine of colonists. He would always come out with some real shit. You know, we're at the crossroads of a great precipice or something like that.

Well, yeah, but with the real hook to him, the only thing I really did find interesting about him is that he always sounded like the most crackhead way of going like, oh, here's why everything that's happening is fine. It is kind of funny to write a column every week for like 20 years and your only opinion is like, most things are fine. Yeah. That is pretty interesting. Everything's moving in a good direction.

Yeah, everything's good. But then like, I get it, theocracy, bad, institutions, failing, democracy, and danger. What are you going to do? Write more articles? I don't care. Well, I mean, I care about the stuff that's happening, but it's like, you don't seem to have any ideas. I'd be more interested if you were like, this is bad, but most things are fine.

Here's why. We're going to make Doug Mastriano watch Frasier. I think everybody at every level of political commentary from us on up to Friedman is trying to reckon with the challenge of articulating like a political moment where there is no reason to believe that there can be any like effective mass action to prevent what's coming. Right? Like that is that everyone has that belief now at every level. And it's only a question of like, how do they come to terms with it?

You can either do what we're, I think, trying to do, which is maybe not accept basically the premise that the political moment seems to have passed. But this is what is actually occurring, like as close as we can understand it, as opposed to people like Friedman who are so close to actual power that they feel the need to absolve them of responsibility. Yeah. Right? So like what he's saying is kind of what we're saying is like, yeah, this is happening

and nothing can really change it, but he wants to, for example, blame the far left of the Democratic Party. Right? He wants to say we could stop these guys, but it's these people won't let us and they have no power over them. They can't think and all they can do is what they have been doing, which is tell them to stop. Well, that hasn't worked.

We have no plan to make it more effective of a pitch. So unless they turn around on their own, it won't be our fault, even though they're the actual ones and actual power. Well, I mean, to that point, Matt, I'll just read the end of this very boring column. But just to get the end of it, he says, Biden is not blameless in this dilemma, nor is the Democratic Party, particularly its far left wing. Under pressure to revive the economy and facing big ticket demands from the far left, Biden pursued expansive spending for too long.

Most Democrats also sullied one of Biden's most important bipartisan achievement, a giant infrastructure bill, by making it hostage to other excessive spending demands. The far left also saddled Biden and every Democratic candidate with radical notions like defund the police, an insane mantra that would have harmed the black and Hispanic base of the Democratic Party had it been implemented. To defeat Trumpism, we need, say, only 10% of Republicans to abandon their party and join with a center-left Biden, which is what he was elected to be and still is at heart. But we may not be able to get even 1% of Republicans to shift if far left Democrats

are seen as defining the party's future. And that is why I left my lunch with the president with a full stomach but a heavy heart. I love that his editor at the New York Times let him use that phrase twice. They thought that bar was fire, and they were like, just bring it back at the end. Bring it back at the end, Thomas. But like his pitches, like even his best case scenario pitch of what to do to beat this is just what they have been doing and what lost them the presidency in 2016. Remember that?

When this was the strategy, the explicit strategy, of course, you can always blame the far left but the thing, once again, if they're already always going to be there and you can't stop them from being extremists, then the things that have happened in the past will continue to happen in the future. And you cannot be, you are not offering an actual plan, you are offering an excuse. And it's like, that's one thing for us to do, you know, down here in the podcast minds. But it's something else entirely for the actual administration and it's like direct media handmaidens to do when they're the ones who actually, you know, are in the White House.

I do like, I do feel like bad for him because it is kind of like, what, what do you write, you know? And if you have to do the fucking Pollyanna bullshit up and you run out of stuff fast. Right. Well, Joe got in there and it's like, oh, he's the best at shaking hands. He's going to get this done. Oh, it looks like Joe didn't get it done. Oh, everything continues to crumble.

Well, if you're Thomas Street Me, you can't do a movie episode. We can. No. You know, that is one thing we have on him. Yeah. Top Gun Maverick coming out, coming out this weekend, baby. Let's go. Oh, baby.

He doesn't get anything like that. He can't do any of that. Like when we're like, I'll be honest, like the Biden news cycle is fucking tough. It is like, it's what I imagine doing this podcast would have been like in 1989. Yeah. Like it is, it is just like, the substitute is out. They have wheeled the TV out of class. There's, you know, it just, we're doing a version of McLaughlet group where no one

believes in God sometimes. That's what it feels like with this news. But we, we have those aces in our pocket. It's like, oh, we can look up, you know, we can do an episode about like, yeah, Navy Seals or like a movie or, you know, I could interview a disgraced governor. But if you're, if you're a Thomas Readman, it's like every single week, you've got to write about this bullshit. And at this point, like you've done everything, like you, you're like, oh, I, I could write

about how I saw Kinko's in the Maldives. No, you did that 10 years ago. Oh, I can, I can write about how like the new business traveler voter, you've done that 30 times. Oh, I can, I can, I can write about the lacrosse election. No, you've done that. So you just, you just got to do this like shitty news. And now it's like, he's in the quicksand of malaise.

I got to say, I would like to hear what Thomas Friedman had have to say about the Franklin Credit scandal. That's interesting. Most things are fine. The fact that William, the fact that William Casey could kill himself this way shows that we have active seniors in this country, man, that old could be canoeing. I think, I mean, like, look, so Frank Bruni made the transition from food columnist to opinion columnist.

I think fucking Friedman should just go in the opposite direction. I just want to hear what kind of lunches he's having around DC. Give me the run chat. That's true. The New York Times needs to have, like on its website or something, like just like lunch chat, like boys chat where everyone just, just is like, you know, hey, Kings, check out this burger I'm having. It should just be DC burger chat.

What kind of burgers are you having? What were the fries like? Tomato on burger? Yay or nay? Let's get this debate started. You know what? I would actually, I would think I would check that out. That sounds like it would be a fun, especially like if you lived in the city or you were

visiting it. It also is like a little impromptu guide to where to get the good grub. I love it. Well, that's like, yeah. I mean, every lunch, every chat really has to have the one guy who's supposed to be the most gruesome food of all time. That could be Thomas Friedman for America. It might be Thomas, but it's like Thomas is married to like a mall billionaire.

So you know, he's like going to the most insane food courts in the world. I think it's like Frank Bruni has the vibe of someone who's always just posting like a miserable bull. I think he would be sort of the object of scorn in that group chat. I would like to see Thomas Friedman's like a gold flake covered Sabaro from the Dubai airport. Yeah. No, I mean, like I said, I think he, I think his job gives him access to some very interesting

lunch and lunch spots, and I think that's the direction he needs to go in. Just tell us what you're eating, King. Sound off in the chat and let's get, just get, like instead of talking about, you know, like, oh, like the four left is hampering the Democrats ability to get 10% of Republican voters. Now fuck that. Just start an interminable debate about barbecue, about barbecue, wet food. Absolutely.

Mustard, dry rub. What are your thoughts? Yeah. Get us up in the comments. Thomas, there is a secret. It's a secret to living, to, you know, being alive in this awful, scary time, a secret to human dignity. How have all these people on Twitter, all of them, who their minds, the world, possibly

their friends and family, they're all telling them to kill themselves? How have they not done it by pretending that they have really vociferous opinions on food and arguing about it all the time on Twitter? You can, you can get out there and be like, oh, if you like St. Louis barbecue, boo, boo, boo, boo. That could be a great use of your time. And it could, more importantly, keep you from killing yourself at one of your wife's sharper images, keep you from sticking your head in a massage chair and just putting it

on a forbidden high, highest setting until your brain liquefies. Just locking your. Committing suicide by mall cop. Yes. I love, I love the idea of him committing like mall, like doing a Benoit thing, but with the mall stuff, locking yourself locking yourself in a tanning bed until you die of cancer. He like takes me like a seat, like the auntie and like pretzel gun and just shoots it into

his mouth until it shoots his organs out of his asshole. Oh, he like pretzels his organs out of his body, getting the, getting the headed with like, what are the dull swords from the mall sword shop? Setting yourself on fire in front of a hot topic. Yeah. Just looking yourself to death on the penis related paraphernalia from Spencer's Gifts. Just trying to cut your own head off through paper cuts of the Tony Robbins book from Brookstone. Oh, there we go.

Well, because for Thomas Friedman and everyone reading the New York Times, Matt, what was Cameron Diaz's last line from Cormac McCarthy's, the counselor, the last line of that movie? Oh, yes. Yes. She says, um, uh, there's nothing cooler than a coward and the slaughter to come is probably will probably be beyond our imagining till next time guys. Bye. Bye.

Bye. It's the big chop. Oh. Chantilly lace. Chantilly lace. All right. Bye everybody. Goodbye.

Chantilly lace and a pretty face and a pony tail hanging down, wiggling the wall, kind of giggling the talk. Make the world go round, they ain't nothing in the world like a big-eyed girl that make me act so funny, make me spend my money, make me feel real loose like a long neck goose like a girl. Oh, baby, that's the one I like. Lose that, baby, but, but, but, but, oh, honey.