Chapo Trap House - 646 - LIV Strong feat. PFT Commenter (7/18/22)

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

@PFTCommenter joins us for a tour around the wide world of sports! We talk the new Saudi golf tour LIV, Cletus the NFL transformer, gambling tips, the horniness of Yankee greats, and the future of sports media. PLUS Rep. Clay Higgins speaks directly to the cartels. Tickets for our Fall tour available at: https://www.chapotraphouse.com/live

Let's speak directly to the cartel that we've done talking to the Biden administration. We're going to replace Biden in November 2024. Harris doesn't have a shot. Our own people don't like it. The cartels that you're watching from your comfortable TV. Cartel member here. We're going to have to change your business model son. I'm telling jokes. We're about to secure one thousand nine hundred and fifty four miles of our border.

Then we're going to get Kamala Harris, the legitimate president of the United States. We're going to control and secure the state and county roads. We're going to seize your vehicles. We're going to chip them, send them back to you. He's giving away the whole game play right now. We're going to arrest and flip your men. We're going to chip them and send them back to you. We're going to chip them. We're going to chip them.

No, we're going to do. We're going to tag them like they're sharks and make them into an app where people can watch from the front to their own home if there's a cartel member near you. You're going to see us spend billions. Put a lot of work in the building, your tunnels. We're going to watch that tunnel. We're going to noodle and spay, yo man. We're going to let you look with your fingers and your nerves into United States territory

in those tunnels. We're going to watch and we're going to arrest and flip those men and send them back to you. And then we're going to shut down your tunnel. You know what we're going to do? We're going to push you into the water. We're going to push you into the Pacific to your east. We're going to push you into the Caribbean and the Gulf to your west. And we're going to track your boats.

We're going to capture those boats and we're going to sink them. No, we're going to stop every ounce of your fentanyl from coming into our country. And listen carefully. We're going to stop every crisp $100 bill from flowing south into your bankers. We're going to identify and investigate and flip your bankers. Real tight. You're not even going to know that they're working for us. We're going to track your money and we're going to seize it.

You've been living fat for a couple of years while your boy Biden stumbles around and your employee, Mayorkas, executes your own policies. But that's done because in November of this year, Republicans will regain the majority in this body and our borders will very quickly be secured. So fair warning fellas, we're coming. Okay. Well, Cartels, you're on notice. The good times are over.

Clay Higgins is coming for you. He's going to find your men. He's going to chip them. He's going to send them back to you. They're going to be chipped. You won't even know. Microchip your dealers, guys. That's right.

We're going to set up a live side version of the Bull Game Mousetrap on the other side of the border. This is the time of year. Fireworks dealers get spooked. Cartel members, they run away from their homes when they hear loud noises. You got to make sure they're microchip. Bring them back safe. Look, if your secarios, look, if you're cold, your secarios are cold. Bring them in, folks.

You did seem a little bit like Coach O in that one from LSU. Boys, we'll come in. We'll come in. Hell's coming with me. I like it. It sounded like the random barks of seals in the background. I think those were his supporters. Yeah, they were clapping.

That's walruses. You're thinking. I don't really know if that's a really smart opsec to tell them what you're going to do. Hey, you guys, you know, you cocktail bosses, you better invest in somebody about chip detectors. We're going to be chipping all your stuff. Okay. Thanks for the warning, man.

That's what's so insane is we're going to take your cars and then give them back to you, but they'll be severely bugged. They steal every car from Cinewola or Julesco New Generation, and they're like, wait, what the fuck? Oh, all our vehicles came back a day later. It's probably nothing. It's also a little disconcerting that a representative from Louisiana doesn't understand that the Gulf of Mexico

is actually on the east side of Mexico, not on the west side. The Pacific Ocean to your east and the Gulf of Mexico to your west. Yeah. All right. So before we get any further into Clay Higgins putting the cartels on notice, I'd like to officially start today's episode. Hello, this is Chapo for Monday, July 18th. And joining us today, host of Part of My Take,

it's our old friend PFT commentator back in the cut. PFT, welcome. Thank you guys. It's been a while. We did a sports episode, what, four years ago? Yeah. Yeah, something like that. Sports have continued.

They've only gotten better. I do one thing I want to point out about the Clay Higgins. The Clay Higgins cartel rant is I have to give a shout out to our friend, Trev Hagelbaum and host of No Cartridge, who pointed out that the Clay Higgins cartel rant has the exact same energy as a sort of mid-90s album skit from the Wu-Tang Clan. Do you know Adon Rodriguez from the Bronx?

Well, I think you do because we chipped him and he's singing like a bird up at the 125th precinct. Oh yeah, Clay Higgins could be, I mean, if he ever loses, which I don't think should be allowed, I think that he should be appointed. He should be the only monarch in America. He should be the viceroy of Louisiana. But if he ever does lose, he has a bright future

as like the head of the police who are pursuing Rick Ross and Lil Wayne to prevent them from rapping together in a music video. He has that type of look. I've long said that Louisiana should be the only state in America that does have a king. I think that would make perfect sense. And it should either be this guy or Coach O

would make for a hell of a king. Yeah, I mean, yeah, they don't like, it just doesn't seem right that they like have elections. In Mardi Gras. They don't have the king cake baby. I mean, that's monarch right there. Just waiting to be crowned. Yeah.

Whoever finds the baby in the cake, then you get a four year term as king until you eventually undoubtedly dive alcohol poison. That's already how they find the Dalai Lama who finds the little plastic baby in the cake. Another aspect of Clay's comments that I very much enjoyed is the strategy of getting the cartels to spend, quote,

millions digging tunnels, which I think he thinks will bankrupt them. And then also the idea he's like, he's like, you've been living pretty high on the hall the last couple of years with Biden mumbling around the White House. It's like, do you think the cartels were not making billions of dollars

while Trump was president? Like did the drug trade stop when Trump was securing the border? Yeah, zero drugs made it across the border during those four years. You don't remember that? We stopped you. In order to cut your profit margins off at the knees,

we are going to execute Hunter Biden. And just once again, always a joy to check in with Clay Higgins. He really is, he's the best congressman by far. Absolutely. And I think another aspect of this video that listeners will not appreciate, but the visual element of him just,

he's like, it's Louisiana, he's sweaty as hell. So he's gripping that podium, but he's got his suit jacket sort of tossed over his shoulder. You know, he's hanging over his back, like a, you know, like a, like a satchel. Just, but you know, just getting ahead of steam up, talking about chipping and chipping cars and chipping men.

All right. Well, enough on Clay Higgins. PFT, like you said, we did a sports episode 40 years ago, but sports, sports continue to go on. Sports is a big part of American life. And I myself took part in some sporting. I was at Yankee stadium yesterday,

last game before the All-Star break. So the Yankees defeat the Boston Red Sox. So heroes, one and all. PFT though, this is, this is something I actually discovered yesterday. I'm sure you probably are aware of it, but I'm referring, of course, to the famous Mickey Mantle blowjob letter.

Yes. Yeah, classic. Okay. All right. Matt and Felix, are you aware of the Mickey Mantle blowjob letter? No. Okay. Not heard of it.

All right. So this is on, this is on New York Yankee's letterhead. They sent him this memo. Dear Mickey, as you probably know, 1973 marks the 50th anniversary of Yankee Stadium, and we are going to have a season-long golden anniversary celebration.

We hope to mark the occasion on old-timers day, Saturday, August 11th, blah, blah, blah. They just said, we thought it would be interesting to learn from you what you considered your outstanding event at Yankee Stadium. In many cases, the answer is obvious, but we are writing it to a large number

of your former teammates. We are asking you to answer this question for us. Okay. Mickey writes back, his most outstanding Yankee Stadium memory. I got a blowjob under the right field bleachers by the Yankee Bullpen. And then it says, this event occurred on or about,

give as much detail as you can. And he responds, it was about the third or fourth inning. I had pulled groin and couldn't fuck at the time. She was a very nice girl and asked me what to do with the come after I came in her mouth. I said, don't ask me.

I'm no cocksucker. So like only, he only got blown once at Yankee Stadium? I think only once in the third inning. Oh, okay. All right. Usually that's more of like a seventh inning stretch type of thing or before it goes into extras, maybe in between a day night doubleheader.

You have a nice little pause there. But the third inning, that's like a once in a career opportunity. If you get horny in the first three innings of a baseball game, I'd say that's noteworthy. Yeah. I like that he says she was a nice girl,

but then he pursuits to basically put her down with the most savage thing you can say to someone who's just sucked your dick, which is, I'm no cocksucker. Yeah, I don't. I mean, don't you think that's just kind of like when you get into a cab and the driver's like, how do I get here?

And you're like, I don't know. I'm not a driver. You tell me as well. It's in your possession. Yeah. You want me to take the Holland or the Lincoln? I'm like, I don't. I moved here like three months ago.

Did you get this? Yeah, dealer's choice. Yeah. And then, you know, as long as you're going through the lore of the horniest New York Yankees players of all time, are you familiar with, of course, Hideki Matsui's 50,000 plus pornography collection?

He had a collection of something like 55,000 pornographic films on the VHS, which he would travel. The way they were meant to be seen. He would travel with kids today. They don't know. And he ran sort of a lending library for the Japanese media. And one Japanese journalist quoted about Matsui's

pornography collection says, Matsui is a horny guy. All of us are horny, more or less. But Matsui doesn't attempt to hide the fact. Yeah. He was open about it. And some might say that there are some questions that go along with the journalistic integrity

of lending porn out to somebody that's supposed to be covering the team. But I mean, guys, we're just horny. That's just a guy looking out for another guy's maintenance at that point. That's more of like a health care issue, I think, than it is like a bribery issue or a blackmail issue. Yeah.

No, that's part of the brother's check-in. Yeah. And I mean, the fact that how much do you think he paid for 50,000 VHS tapes? Because those things weren't cheap. Like his budget, what, do you think like 20 bucks a tape? I mean, I don't know. I would imagine some of these titles are pretty rare.

So, you know, he's happened to dig pretty deep for some of these. You know, God only knows what sort of fetishes were included in this library. But I would imagine he had a fairly wide selection. But yes, some of them cannot have been cheap. But you know, that's where the Yankees pay big money. There was a guy from, yeah, they don't really, you know, they tell you you have to shave your sideburns.

You can't have long hair. They make you cut that off. But there's no limit to how big your porn collection can be. I like that. It's a classy organization. It's well run. There was a guy that played for the Lakers, a few other teams, Lamar Odom.

And he was famous for having said that he's watched every porn video on the Internet. So, like, online porn wouldn't do it for him anymore. He had to go, like, watch porn live as it was being filmed. Because he's exhausted. He's looked at all the pages of U-Porn. And the Internet just doesn't do it for him anymore. So, that would have to be like a full-time job.

Yeah. Like, you would have to have, like, the thing that Professor X has in the X-Men movie. I think he would need to just, like... You would need to sign up to be one of the Facebook content moderators to see the stuff as it was being put online, like, in real time. Oh, man.

A lot of horny athletes out there. But yeah, like, you know, in the off-season, that's when you got to put the training in to just, you know, go into the archives of Pornhub and just, you know, watch every single video. But then you said, wait, he had to go to, like, pornographic movie sets to watch them, like, creating new material before it even gets the

internet. You would just have to see a lot of stuff live. So, I know he spent a lot of time at the Bunny Ranch and he would go out. He was as much like a spectator. He was a fan just like the rest of us at that point. But yeah, he had to tap into some weird, weird parts of the porn industry and of the sex trade

to really be able to even get it up anymore. Jacking off with one of those huge foam number one hands. When he sees one of those videos at TikTok that's, like, watch out for a van that has, like, a lock like this. They're doing sex trafficking. He's like, ooh, like, follows them. Probably bought jerseys of, like, the Milf Hunter. He got his rookie card.

Well, as BFT, as long as you're here, I mean, like, there is an issue in the sports world that has semi-crossed over into the realm of politics. And I wanted to get your take on it, or just if you could maybe explain to us and our listeners, have you been following the saga of the, like, sort of, the Saudi alternative to the PGA? What is it, the LIV tour?

Yeah, the live tour. The live. Yeah, I have. And I've talked about this a little bit, but it's fascinating kind of because it's the public investment fund from Saudi Arabia started a golf tour. That is, I think, it's seven or eight events per year. And they're giving away guaranteed money,

and they're trying to attract some of the top players in the game. And they haven't been that successful in getting the best players yet, but they're starting to get more and more better players. So they've gotten some big names. They got, like, Phil Mickelson. But somebody online called it the tour for golfers

who are either divorced or in debt. And that's pretty much the exact demographic that they're going for. Like, Phil Mickelson, he's a gambler. He bets a lot of money on sports. And he's also got some debts. And so he was a natural guy that was definitely going to chase the money.

But they've gotten, there's rumors that they're going to get the guy that just won the open championship, Cam Smith, the Australian golfer. So they're starting to get players who are at the top of their game to join the tour. And the PGA Tour, they have a stipulation in place where they've said, if you leave to go play in a live tour event, you're not welcome back

on the PGA Tour. So the PGA Tour has long been under fire from some of the players because they're not a very player-friendly league. They don't give any of the image or likeness rights to the players. And it's not guaranteed money. So you have to actually play decently in the first two days

to make the cut. And then you find yourself making money if you play on Saturday and on Sunday. In the Saudi League, they're just guaranteeing just crazy amounts of money. So some of the players that are not household names, some of the worst players that they're attracting, they're still giving them like $20 million guaranteed.

And some of the better, the top-name players, they're giving $100, $150 million, $200 million to some of these guys to come play. The rumor was that they offered Tiger Woods close to $1 billion to go play. And Tiger doesn't need it because Tiger's made a lot of money. And so he said no to them. And a couple other players have said no.

But with that amount of money, it's tough. It's tough to say no if some of the guys like Cam Smith, the guy that just won the open, I think he's probably made somewhere in the neighborhood of like $10 to $25 million playing golf. And that's a lot of money, don't get me wrong, but they're offering them $110 million to play. And it's all guaranteed.

And so that's like generational wealth for him, his family. It's tough to look at the individuals that are taking that deal and say, well, you're taking blood money to go over. And you're essentially playing on a tour that is a propaganda arm of the Saudi royal family. It only exists to improve their image. They're not trying to make any money. So they're not trying to make a profitable league out of it.

They're just doing it to sports wash their image. And it's a crazy thing, because if that's what they're trying to do, so far they've really failed. Because the only thing people are talking about in relationship to this league is, oh, this is just a propaganda arm of the public investment fund, trying to whitewash everything that MBS has done. So so far, it hasn't really played out that well for them.

But they're going to start getting better and better players to go over and play. And my big question is, what happens if I don't think they're giving the money all up front? I think it's, OK, $100 million guaranteed. We'll give you an initial check for $20 million or whatever. What happens when that second check is a couple of days late arriving?

Is Phil Mickelson going to be like, hey, I need to speak to the manager of Saudi Arabia and figure out, that's a tough ask. I don't know what the legal recourse is at that point. And then the other question is, do they then find themselves in the pocket of the Saudi royal family where they need a favor and they've given you $100 million? It would probably be pretty tough to say no to that favor

at that point. Well, better to be in the pocket of the Saudi royal family than their suitcases leaving a consulate in Istanbul. That's a great point. There's something that Phil Mickelson said that I thought was interesting, where he goes, people have criticized me for this, and yes, Saudi Arabia does crazy shit.

But this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change how the PGA works forever. Like, is that anything? Is that him just trying to run the clock out? Yeah, what does he mean? You've seen a few golfers take different strategies for explaining why they're joining that tour. And some of them, the ones that I like the most

are the guys that go, listen, I'm dumb as shit. I'm a golfer. They're giving me a lot of money. I don't know what they do. But don't look to me for any intelligent way to explain this away. They're paying me a lot of money to do it. I almost respect that a little bit more.

Some of the other guys are taking the stance of they're trying to grow the game of golf, which isn't really what they're doing at all by any measure. So if you look at their streaming rights, I think they're getting a couple hundred thousand people watching on a stream occasionally at some of the bigger events. So it's not reaching a wide audience whatsoever.

I think they just like. And the other thing about it is the tournaments are only 54 holes. So it's like 75% of the work that you would do on the PGA tour for one tournament where they play 72. And that's just too many holes of golf. I would respect it if a golfer said, there's just too many holes in a tournament.

And I felt like I don't need to be playing all these holes. I don't know if you guys play golf. I'm very, very bad. I rarely, if ever play, I can't even play 18 holes of golf. It's boring as shit. Like by a hole eight or nine, you're like, OK, I just want to get off the course. I just want to I'll just drink beers, ride in the cart,

and then I'll play like, I don't know, I'll just hit from where your ball is in the fairway for the rest of this round. Another response to the live tour was from the legendary golfer Greg Norman, who said, he was the one who was trying to like offer something intelligent about Saudi Arabia. What he said was, we all make mistakes.

And I don't know if you was referring to 9-11 or sawing a journalist into portable parts. Yeah, that was an all time line. Like we all make mistakes. Who is it for me to judge? I think Phil Mickelson also back when he was doing his, somebody was doing a biography on him, and they asked him about the live tour.

And he said, I think this was the end of the quote that Felix said, but it was like, they've done some crazy shit and I know that they've got, they'll execute you for being gay. And he like listed all of the bad things that Saudi Arabia has done. But then at the end of it, he was like, but you know, like the PGA tour sucks too.

And so maybe the, maybe you like compared them to each other a little bit. He's like, maybe the live tour will push the PGA to get better. And I honestly think that the PGA tour has kind of screwed everything up on this because they put in that policy. And by the way, I'm actually surprised

that you guys got me on for the sports episode. I thought for sure I lost my gig to Nick Adams because that dude is 10 times the analyst that I am. He's really taken my niche to the marketplace and developed it. I don't even know if he's a real person actually. I think he's just like. It could be a bit because like he's the guy

who comes out with stuff about how like the All Star game was a fraud because it has LeBron James and not Enos freedom on it. Yeah, I'm turning in center who averaged like four points a game for the fucking nicks. And he was like, he's the greatest player in the NBA today. I think he likes to talk about Tebow more than I do too. He's like, Tim Tebow, if there's one guy

that you'd want to impregnate your daughter, it's Tim Tebow. That guy, he plays the game the right way. But yeah, wait, I even forgot where I was when I was responding to that last question. I don't know. I mean, I guess like the point with the live tour is that like for these PGA golfers, like whether you have huge amounts of gambling debt

like Phil Mickelson or you're just sort of like a duffer trying to make ends meet. And the idea of getting, you know, millions of dollars just to show up to a golf tournament, not necessarily make it to Saturday or Sunday is very appealing. And it just is sort of like regardless of what Saudi Arabia has done, their money spends.

And it really seems like President Joe Brandon and the US government are pretty much in continuity from going back to the end of World War II has pretty much the exact same attitude towards Saudi Arabia. And I will point to something that happened this week. This was the Atlantic Monthly published an article just a couple of days ago by Graham Wood, who's one of their big journalists and writers

in which he interviews the widow of Jamal Khashoggi and passes along that, you know, according to her, he would have forgiven MBS for what he did. And that's nice. Yeah. And then, Felix, you clock this one. This is also Max Bout, a big fan of the show, we're big friends with him.

He writes here, MBS is a more ambivalent figure than the cartoon villain that he is so often made out to be in media coverage. It's true that he is cruel and repressive, but while illiberal politically, he is liberalizing Saudi society. His reforms are revolutionary. And Felix, I think you pointed out like,

was it next week was like friends with Jamal Khashoggi? Yeah, I mean, I've been a pretty bad friend and continue to be and will be in the future. But this is probably the worst public friendship behavior I've seen, at least by a journalist, at least by like, you know, someone who isn't like a normal celebrity. Like to take, to take like the decapitation dismembering

and like, I mean, really just treated Khashoggi like a cattle. Like just cut up every part of him and put him in like 18 different garbage routes, like in Cleaver and go to like, I mean, it's not like he's a cartoon villain. Like everyone, everyone, I mean, he's a Gemini, I'm pretty sure he's got many sides to him. Yeah, that's that.

If I were to be like dismembered by Elon Musk and then like a week later, big cat gave an interview and was like, listen, he's, PFT was no angel. Let's be honest, that would give me pause. I would hope that he would come out with a slightly more, more forceful stand against that. And also, I like how he says he's not a cartoon villain, which is like, if anyone on earth is like a cartoon villain,

it's him. Well, I mean, he's the most like one out of anyone alive. He yada, yada, yada, his friend's execution. Yeah, he's like, yeah, listen, they did use a bone saw, but he also has some pretty sick Falcons. So who's to say whether or not he's bad? Oh yeah, he's not a cartoon villain, but the interview with Khashoggi's widow was conducted

while she was tied to a train tracks. Yeah. If they really want to make people, you know, like Saudi Arabia, I'd have really just embaffled that they're going with golf. Because this is, as we were saying, boring as shit. At the very least, they should create the first professional like big budget mini golf tour.

Ooh, okay. Where you got like really big, you know, spare no expense courses, you know, like you got to get a hole, to get a hole in one, you got to put it ball through the door of the caba or something. Yeah, massive windmill, the size of the Perch Guifa. Yeah, that would have universal appeal right there.

They're also going for, not just golfers, they're going for the commentators around golf. So David Faraday, who's the guy that stands on the fairway and he talks really softly into a microphone in a soothing Irish accent, they picked him up for the live tour too. And Charles Barkley says that he's actually gonna have a meeting with the live tour to potentially become

a golf analyst. So our most beloved sports commentator, Charles Barkley, might be making the switch. And we talked about the live tour a little bit on today's macro dosing, which is another podcast I do with Arian Foster, who by the way, Arian would be a great guest on your guys podcast.

No, yeah, I did that show. It was a great time. Yeah, folks who came on. We did, what was the episode? It was the Havana syndrome episode. Pets, yes. Yeah, you are a resident Havana syndrome expert on that. But yeah, they're going after our beloved commentators.

And I was talking with one of my co-hosts, Billy Football, about this. And Billy was like, you could actually look at these golfers as like the modern day Robin Hoods. They're going over there. They're taking our money back. And so they're actually making Saudi Arabia more poor than they were before.

All you have to do, if you want to get some of the oil money that you spend heating your home and driving your car, you just have to get moderately good at golf. That is the best argument I've heard for this. He's like, yeah, I debated with Billy Football about Havana syndrome. And he has really grown his contrarian skills. Yes, he's very good at it.

Yeah, no, props to him. Sorry, I was still fixated on the Saudi mini golf tour. And I'm thinking, yeah, like you said, PFT, a windmill the size of the Borej Khalifa. But you know how many golf courses, like the 18th hole, is it's like you can't get your ball back. You just like goes in and you click links down in the bottom. And you're done.

No more mini golf. I think the 18th hole on the Saudi mini golf tournament should be a recreation of the Twin Towers. That pancake perfectly when you dunk your ball into there. If you get a hole in one, the Towers pancake perfectly. Which of course leads directly into the next bit of crossover between the Saudi Royal family and sports. I'm talking about Fox Sports apologizes

for using September 11th Memorial at World Trade Center for baseball logos. Obviously this weekend there's a three game series for the Yankees and Red Sox. And Fox Sports put the logos of the Yankees and Red Sox over the reflecting pools at the Ground Zero Memorial. Now a lot of people are angry about this, myself included.

But I'm angry because they put the Red Sox logo on the Towers. Yankees and Mets, that's fine. That's in fact that's. Lane came out of Boston. Both planes did, right? Oh, OK. I mean, yeah. I agree that's disgraceful because it

reduces in races the more important event, which was the marathon bombing, the real 9-11. It's true. And if you look at Fox Sports' history behind these sorts of things, they actually had a tweet that came out a few years ago that showed how much the Devil Rays, the Tampa organization, how much they were spending on salaries.

And they had like two players' salaries that were most of their payroll. And then the rest of the team that was really tiny little bars. But they made it so the two bar graphs for the most highly paid players were these identically tall towers. And then they had little rays that were swimming into the middle of them.

And it was very obvious what the symbolism there was. Like Fox Sports is addicted to somehow incorporating 9-11 symbology into their baseball updates for the ALEs. I mean, the last Super Bowl that was broadcast on Fox, didn't you think it was tasteless when Cletus knocked down the twin towers? Yeah, it was pretty interesting.

He should have been up in the air flying like Voltron going after 93. That's cool. Yeah. I always, I never liked that explanation, that like whenever you ask Fox about it, they're like, we were getting Cletus to an undisclosed location. And it's like he could have helped that.

Dude, I love Cletus. Cletus is one of my favorite little sports things that nobody really cares about. But he's just the best. He's a giant robot that just loves hanging out around football. I've never seen him actually play football, but he's just always around the sport. He loves the game.

I bought a Cletus outfit, like a mascot outfit, before the Super Bowl back when it was, I think it was when it was in San Francisco. I just walked around slugging Mad Dog out of it and just trying to do interviews and wrestling people on the street. It's shocking to me how few people understand the full mythology of Cletus, which is a little bit ambiguous.

And I wish they'd clear up some of the seedier, more gray area parts of his past. I'm a huge fan of Cletus. I mean, he's essentially. Well, Cletus is like the American neon Genesis Evangelion with the same lot of lore there. I was introduced to Cletus because I'm not like a football guy, but they brought him out for the first UFC on Fox,

which they planned to be like a 25-minute long championship fight and ended in a 67-second knockout. So they had to spend like 45 minutes of Dana White just screaming at a broadcast desk with like every Cletus animation for MMA that they had never planned to use before. But I love him. Didn't Cletus at one point follow Jake Paul into the ring when he was doing one of his little boxing things?

I'm pretty sure they had. It was either Cletus or it was a cheap Cletus knockoff that was just walking behind him. I'm not sure. He's essentially a football-based transformer, though, right? And it's just. Basically, yeah.

Very similar design aesthetic. I like to think that he is sort of like a Robocop-type deal. Like there's a traumatized veteran inside of him or something. That's where Pat Tillman went. Yes. There we go. He snouted Cletus. They took Pat.

They saved his brain and they threw it in Cletus. For a while, Roger Gidell, the commissioner, thought that he was actually like a branch of law enforcement. So anytime that a player would be rumored to be near a strip club, Roger Gidell would like immediately suspend them. And he would actively do investigations and try to become a cop.

And I like to think that Cletus is just like his foot soldier, that whenever a player gets fined like $25,000 because their socks are two inches too high, Cletus just shows up with a piece of paper and serves you your warrant. And when we finally do get those Boston Dynamics robots to be patrolling streets and dispersing crowds at food riots and stuff, I

think they're going to look like Cletus. I think that's going to be the design aesthetic. Yeah, I don't know why they keep going for dogs with the Boston Dynamics robots. Well, they're trying to get people to lower their guard. Like, oh, you don't even love dogs? They're adorable. They have a Gatling gun.

We don't deserve dogs. That'll be the new thing. People will be like, oh, like robot dogs with mini guns attached on both sides of their legs. Some of them have gunned down children before, but that's because they had bad masters. Yeah, there's no such thing as bad robots, just bad programming. What do you guys think about when

Cletus wrote that open letter to Kaepernick? Dude, has there ever been anybody that got open lettered more than Colin Kaepernick? I think he's the champion, yeah. He got open lettered so many times by everybody. Just do a note, sap man. It doesn't have to be an open letter. Well, yeah, that's how you get your name

on the conservative Facebook space, or you did six years ago, was that you were a small town police chief, and you write a letter to Kaepernick. That's how Clay Higgins got started, if I'm not mistaken. You get on that attention there, Mr. Kaepernick. You will be standing up for that, and them. I think that's how a long time. I think she was a gray wolf, Tommy Lahren.

I think that's how she got her name out there. Was that, yeah. I think, yeah. She's a long-time listener of your podcast, right? Yeah, I think she got her start on Blaze TV or whatever, or she would have a different, disfigured look on her face every couple of days and just be doing a rant. Yeah, don't you ever kneel, Colin.

Well, actually, here's another one, Kurt Schilling. Kurt Schilling, a former Red Sock, and also top Facebook-style political commentary. He's weighed in, this is according to him, Britney Grinier should pay the penalty in Russia, quote, obey the fucking law. Kurt Schilling clearly has no problem seeing Britney Grinier's detention in Russia drag on.

The XLMLB star said Sunday night, he believes that WNBA players should pay the penalty for breaking another country's law. Schilling wrote the controversial statement on his Twitter page in a response to LeBron James's plea to bring Griner home. I know this may seem like a stretch, the 50-year-old said, but something like 300 million people understand,

obey the fucking law. Why is this such a challenge? Yeah, that topic is one where you see a lot of Kurt Schilling types, like not really knowing what route to take, with their argument, like, should we be supporting her? Should we be angry at Biden for not getting her back sooner? Should we be going against Putin?

Should we be supporting Putin? And I think the strategy is kind of, is wait to see what LeBron James says, and then take the opposite side of whatever that is. Because that always plays. It clarifies things, it's much easier that way. Yeah. I hate you, LeAmnesty.

Yeah, no, there's, I think, yeah, now it is mostly conservative supporting the Russian court's decision, descendants are. Which, I mean, I know that it's just like, many obvious reasons why they took that track, but I like the idea that Kurt Schilling is like an ML now. Yeah, he supports Putin standing against WNBA style and imperialism in their country.

Yeah. No, we need to denazify her. Well, I mean, I guess the thing with that, like the sort of unspoken aspect to this story that I've seen some people point out, is that she was only in Russia because she has to play in the off season, basically just to make money, because the WNBA, I mean, like, I don't know how much,

because she's a star in the WNBA, I don't know how much she makes, but like, it's not enough. She's like a quarter mill, I think. Well, I mean, I know it's a lot of money, but like, compared to what an NBA player makes. Well, see, that's just it. It's like, if you're a professional athlete, you're not comparing yourself to regular people.

You're comparing yourself to a fellow professional athlete, so the pressure exists. And yeah, it's been going on for a while that WNBA players play over in Russia during the off season, because they've historically had bigger salaries over there for like the marginal players. And so the Russian leagues, have been filled with American players

for probably going on a decade right now. It's actually like kind of interesting to see how the monetary aspect breaks down, because I don't think they're exactly like filling arenas with WNBA players, but it's kind of gone the same way. Some soccer leagues are doing that too, where it's like, yeah, I go over to Russia for the summer and try to earn an extra paycheck.

And I saw some of the security footage at the airport, and so she had like a vape pen, but she had some extra cartridges that she had with her. So now they're charging her with distribution, because they're saying that it was like more than just personal use. And I don't know what kind of cartridges they're used to over in Russia,

but I think she had like four for her own personal use. And that's like, I don't think she was planning on like distributing that. She's not a drug dealer in Russia. And then for a while we were told, don't talk about her, don't even mention her, because the more you talk about her, because the more we talk about her in American media,

then the higher, if we're doing like the NBA trade machine. Her ransom will become. Yeah, that they have like on ESPN, when you go in, and you're like, oh, okay, I can get Kevin Durant to the Washington Wizards, if I give up Kristaps Porzingis, Cal Cusma, and like six future draft picks. That's what they're saying, like if you talk about her,

then her trade value with whatever war criminals we have from Russia, that gets higher. Next thing you know, we're trading Britney Grinder for like the doctor of death. Well, I mean, the guy that they were mentioning was the guy Victor Bout or whatever, the arms dealer, who is that movie Lord of War with Nick Cage was based on.

I'd say that's a good trade. PFT, would you take that trade if it was on offer? Yeah, take that trade, throw in a couple, yeah, throw in a couple first round draft picks, and let's call it a day. But with the Russian like women's basketball leagues, like is this similar, I mean, it's hard for me to imagine it's sort of similar to Saudi and Saudi Arabia,

and that they're attempting to kind of sports wash their image, like is women's basketball popular in Russia, or is this a way to, is this a kind of soft power thing that they're doing? I think it's a soft power thing, because the only time I remember caring about any sort of Russian basketball is like when sports shut down in the United States in 2020, I think it was March,

and I was just looking for something to bet on. And so they're like, okay, yeah, they've got some games going on over there. Okay, I'll take some action, but didn't know where to watch it. That was probably my most degenerate moment as a sports gambler. Well, actually, okay, this is a perfect segue here. Are you guys familiar with the story of the fake cricket

league that was created by a village in India to dupe Russian gamblers and that it worked? Man, if you can fucking get one over on the Russians, if you could scam Russians, India is ascendant. That's amazing. Really here it says, it's not cricket, but a Gujarat village almost pulled off an elaborate con with a fake IPL,

complete with farm laborers, masquerading as players, even an official telegram channel to take punts for a remote audience of Russian punters addicted to betting on the thrills and spills of cricket. The charade played out in a remote farm at Mollipar village of the Masana district reached the knockout quarter final stage before the organizers of the Indian Premier Cricket League

were caught out by the cops. The gang of cons who set up IPL matches at a farm in a Gujarat village accepted bets from punters in Russian cities of Tver, Voronezh and Moscow. The cricket matches were broadcast live over a YouTube channel labeled IPL for over a fortnight. So I mean, yeah, like people are desperate to gamble on anything.

And a fake cricket league for people to gamble on is complete with like a live stream where you have farmers pretending to be cricket players is pretty advanced con artistry. It seems like a victimless crime. I mean, they wanted something to bet on and they gave it to them. What do you want?

Yeah, this just goes to show that nobody really understands the rules of cricket. So you're watching what's supposed to be a professional cricket match and it's just, it's farmers from India and you can't tell whether or not they're good or bad at the sport. Nobody really gets it.

I think cricket is just an elaborate ruse for, like for bachelor parties basically, because some of the matches go for three days. You just show up with the boys and get hammered. That's all we know about cricket. Well, you bring up about, I mean, like sports gambling and obviously like COVID, you know, people were, people were licking the inside of the baggy, you know,

trying to get basketball from Russia to bet on anything. But I'm wondering what your take is on the idea that like, I feel like, you know, when I was watching the NBA finals, like every single ad I saw was just treating you to like join some sort of online sports betting app where you can just bet on your phone, you get free money to make your first bets. And it's not too difficult for me to imagine a future

where like, in order to watch a sporting event on television, you will have to like scan a QR code off your phone and then immediately start betting on it to watch the televised sporting event. I mean, like, what do you make of this? Like the rather rapid proliferation and encouragement of sports betting on a national level. Yeah, it's been like a gold rush.

It's crazy. So back in, I want to say 2015, Tony Romo was hosting a fantasy football convention in Las Vegas and the NFL shut it down. And they're like, we cannot be seen as being tied to fantasy football. It's like everybody plays fantasy football. This shouldn't be like a big deal.

And now the league has official sports gambling partners and every team is doing all these different sports gambling deals with, you know, you name it, whether it's DraftKings, FanDuel, those are the two that I see the most in terms of like team sponsorships. But it's just been very funny to me to watch because every team and every league,

but mostly like for the teams and local markets, they have a pregame show that takes place, you know, 30 minutes to an hour before every game. And they've all had to set up like they're gambling pregame shows now. And so they're hiring people left and right that have zero experience gambling whatsoever to just sit there and talk about like

what their best bets on the game are. So you've got somebody who's like 22 years old, fresh out of college being like, yeah, I think the game's being played in Denver, so the air's super thin. So I think the ball will go through the ring a few more times. So I'm going to take the over in this game.

It's like a bunch of people that really have no idea what they're talking about. And the real sports gambling analysts that you can kind of trust are the ones that are like, yeah, I suck at gambling. Like this is nobody makes money gambling, do it for fun and don't count on it to like be a source of income for you.

Those are the ones that I really trust. It's not the ones that are saying, okay, I'm 10 and 0 in my games of the week. In my, they always segment their picks into like different names that they give them to. They're like, I got three hot soup locks of the week. And so far on the season, they're hitting at 80%. So if you just give each one of your bets a different name,

then you can go back and cherry pick and be like, yeah, look at this, my ride to lightning bet was 90% on the year. You're going to want to take that. I'm the hottest gambler in America. But the truth is, if somebody tells you that they're good at gambling, they're probably full of shit

because if they were good at gambling, they would just be gambling on sports and they wouldn't need to be taking $30,000 a year to do the DraftKings pre-game show for the New York Islanders pre-season games, you know? What if they're really, really good at picking but they have a religious objection to actually betting? That might be, why?

Yeah, that would be a moral conundrum. Yeah, okay, I can make money telling people how to bet and then they can go to hell. Yeah, that's an interesting, somebody should take that standpoint. I would be very entertained by that. I mean, you know, the official shop at Trevhouse Line on sports betting

is that it does make watching any sporting event funner, but just the number one role you have to follow here to be to gamble on sports is to pick winners. If you win, there's no problem with gambling. It's the most important part. Yeah, I mean, you only have a gambling problem if you lose, if you lose money. So just win money by choosing correctly

and sports gambling is great. It's the most noble thing a man can do. That's the trick. Also, sometimes your losses are the most memorable events of your life too. So I've had some pretty bad losses, but I just look at that as a tax to make that day stand out in my memory.

So I took the Broncos in the Super Bowl where they played against the Seahawks. I think on the very first play of the game, they snapped the ball through their own end zone. It was the same thing, right? Yeah, the very first play. And they lost by like 40 points and the game was never close.

And I'll always have that moment to be like, yep, I bet on that game. I took the Broncos. But like, what would be your advice to, like, I mean, what are some ground rules for picking winners? Do you have a system? I actually, I had a system last year.

I've been doing it again this year in baseball season because it's impossible to care about baseball all summer long. Baseball is good for a few things. Baseball is good like the first week of Major League Baseball. And you get to see day games on TV, going to like a weekday game when you should be at work.

That's always fun. And then right around June, there will usually be like a binge clearing brawl that happens. So that's always fun to watch. And then I just kind of forget about baseball until the playoff start. But my system last year was just, is very simple.

It was bet against the Pittsburgh Pirates. And so I did that every game and I ended up, I think I was up like close to 30 units on the year, which is pretty good. It's like, it's unheard of to be that good at gambling on any sport. But if you just bet against the Pirates, it would work out for you.

This year, the bet hasn't been as hot as it was last year. So that's as close to having a system as I'll ever have. I think that's, I think it's an excellent system. I mean, you literally can't go wrong unless the Pittsburgh Pirates win or get good. Yeah. And then now this year, I'm like yelling at my TV. I'm like, you're supposed to suck. You're the Pirates.

You forgot. I'm sure like water always finds its level. The Pittsburgh Pirates, right when the team or the entire city of Pittsburgh switches modes into just only caring about the Steelers. I'm pretty sure that's when they'll go back to flying under the radar and losing every game. But yeah, just the, well, like you talked about,

like just like the gold rush for sports betting that's going on right now. And like the way anyone can do it online, you can do it on your phone. Like, you know, it ups the sort of the ease and addiction factor of it. And I guess like, I'm just thinking about it in the context of, you know, America right now

in which like certain vices are becoming legal or like liberalized, like, you know, marijuana or whatever, like, you know, a lot of state sheets, it's legal now and there's like dispensaries, sports betting you can do now, which you know, used to be the province of, you know, organized crime and degeneracy or whatever. But, you know, nicotine and cigarettes is getting cut back and like, you know, jewels are getting banned.

So it's just, I don't know, it's interesting to me like which vices are becoming liberalized and then which ones are being cracked down on. And I tried to imagine where sports betting files, you know, sort of falls along this spectrum here. So I used to bet with a bookie and that was always, I'm a little bit romantic to that part of my life where you'd have to like meet up with somebody

and you have like an envelope that has cash in it that you have to give them or they have to give to you. That was always a treat. But with sports gambling, now the one thing that I'll say that's probably good about it being legalized and more mainstream is you can't gamble on credit anymore. So you could always bet back in the day with money that you didn't necessarily have,

which leads you into a lot of very sticky situations. But now it's like, okay, you know what your limit is because your bank account is gonna say zero at some point then you just can't make a bet. Are there any, do you have any good prop bets that have paid off for you? Because I mean, like that's one of the features of these sites is that you can bet on almost any outcome

in a sporting event. Yeah, so I had one that I would do last year which I would call the James Winston hat trick and so James Winston is the quarterback of the Saints. He was on the bucks for a while and he's the most entertaining quarterback now to follow because you don't know what's gonna happen on any given play.

Like he could, he could throw a 90 yard touchdown. He could come up with a new way to get sacked and right before he gets sacked, he like throws the ball off the upright and gets intercepted for a touchdown or he could like throw a ball at a referee and blind him. You never know what's gonna happen with him. So I would put a bet in to have him throw a touchdown,

throw an interception and lose a football for a fumble. At some point over the course of the game, you wanna check off all those boxes for the James Winston hat trick. So that was fun to bet on. As far as other props, I usually like, I'm a pretty simple man with simple tastes. I just like points.

So I like to root for more points as opposed to fewer points. So when they announced that the first game of the season was gonna be the Rams and the Bills, I just looked at that and I was like, okay, I don't know what the over's gonna be but I'm gonna bet on the over no matter what it is. And that's how you can tell I'm a really shitty game player.

I don't even wait for the number. I'm just like, okay, you can throw out whatever arbitrary point spread you want. I'm gonna take the over on it. I mean, because you're a sports fan. I mean, who wouldn't wanna see more points rather than fewer of them? So I mean, you bet, you know,

be the change you wanna see in the world. Put your money where your hopes lie, which is seeing a high scoring game. I'm putting it out in the universe. Yeah, I'm sending good vibes. And I guess just like overall, in terms of like American sports culture, like you said, yeah, it is,

we're now in the doldrums of summer where the major league baseball all-star break. I mean, you know, I think playoff baseball is like some of the most exciting sports you can watch because like the tension on each pitch is so palpable. But yeah, in the middle of August, it's kind of dead weight. But like, as baseball's popularity sort of waning,

it seems like football, the NFL is gonna continue to be like the most dominant sport, the most highly watched sport, the most bet upon sport. Like, do you see any other sport coming close to football's sort of purchase on the American public's imagination and attention? I keep saying rugby, but I just say that

because I hope that rugby gets more popular. I keep calling it the sport of the future. And at some point, that will be true. We might not even make the World Cup, but I keep hoping that rugby will get more and more popular because it's so much fun to watch. But no, with baseball, you're right. Like once the NFL kicks back in the high gear,

then people just completely forget about baseball until it's time for the playoffs. And I've long said that the day after the all-star game in baseball, that should be the day that America votes because there's nothing going on in sports. There's no reason to be sitting in your house watching television during the day

on the day after the all-star game. There's nothing going on in sports at that time. And the NFL, it's funny because they know that they can take whatever they want. They can put a game on any day of the week. They can put a game on any holiday and instantly own that holiday. So for a long time, the NBA was the only thing

that would happen on Christmas. And that was their day. They'd always have like three premier matchups against some of the superstars. And that's really when a lot of people think, okay, now the NBA season started on Christmas because that's their first like introduction where they get to sit down all day and watch basketball.

But the NFL last year decided, you know what, the NBA has had it too good for too long. So we're gonna schedule games on Christmas Day too. And then they scheduled teams that were going to be playing in the same markets that they knew the NBA was gonna have. Like they knew that they were gonna put LeBron on TV. So like, okay, we're gonna have either the Rams or the Chargers are gonna play

to capture the Los Angeles market. So the NBA has reached a point where they can just take literally whatever they can, whatever they want, they will steal from you. And it's yeah, between September and early February, they're really, they know that they're the biggest game in town, that nothing can ever touch them. The only thing that could maybe touch them

would be Jim Jordan and Congress who grilled Roger Goodell in a deposition and had some wildly irrelevant questions that I don't even remember what he was trying to ask. I think he did ask about Dave Portnoy being banned from attending like NFL games or something like that. But yeah, the most recent hearing that the NBA

or that the NFL had to go through in Congress was funny because they're trying to get at my man, Dan Snyder, the owner of the Washington Commanders. King, King. All around, all around good guy. And they've been trying to serve him with a deposition for like a month and a half. And his lawyer has just been like,

no, we're not gonna take that. And I didn't know that you could do that. I didn't know that you could just have a lawyer say. The old how we use. Yeah, we'd just rather not testify if that's all the same to you. So what Snyder has been doing, he's been out on his yacht for like the last two months.

And he's just not gonna come back to the United States. He's just gonna be cruising around the world just defying Congress, being like, no, you can't serve me with papers because I'm somewhere adrift off Algeria. And there's really nothing that you can do about it. I just, I need Dan Snyder to testify in front of Congress so that I can just go through his testimony

with a fine tooth comb and find some way that he's perjured himself. When they, maybe when they ask like your height, I'm pretty sure they ask that it's like at the DMV. And he says five nine, I'm gonna be all over that shit. I'm gonna be doing like the Photoshop angles, making sure that, okay, this guy that he said, Tom Cruise is five four and he's staying next to him here.

That looks to me like it's more like three inches taller than Tom Cruise. You've perjured yourself, sir, resign. Howard Hughes avoided process servers regarding a lawsuit related to his sale of his TWA controlling share of the TWA stock that he had. He avoided process servers, I think until he died by having an army of Howard Hughes look-alikes,

just be like spread out all over the country at any given moment, like just sort of dividing the attention of everyone who is trying to serve him a subpoena. So Dan Snyder, I guess the yacht off Algeria technique works as well, worked for Elron Hubbard for a lot of years. So cheer us to the owner of the Washington Commanders. Well like, see, going back to the first half, how can we criticize what Russia is doing

to Brittany Greiner while we're doing this? We're making Dan Snyder hide on his yacht for the entire summer. That's true. Dan Snyder, American hero. I fucking hate that guy, I swear to God, the worst thing about Dan Snyder. He's one of the worst owners in sports by far,

which is saying a lot because they're all terrible, but he's probably the worst, right? He is the worst and I hate him with the passion of a thousand burning sons and the shitty thing is he's going to outlive me because he's a billionaire. And so he'll probably live to be 110 years old, then he'll give the team to one of his shithead sons and nothing will ever change as far as that goes.

He's a bad guy, but I read an article in the Washington Post about him last week, which describes some of the stuff that he did behind the scenes. And some of it is just like, he's not as much a cartoon supervillain as he is just like the biggest dickhead from a 1980s movie where he's a bully. So like, he had one of his team vice presidents

come up in the booth and they were watching cheerleader practice. And so they brought their binoculars out, you know, just guy stuff. And Dan Snyder was looking at the cheerleaders and he's like, man, those cheerleaders are ugly, you must be gay and would like slap his friend. And like, that's the mentality of Dan Snyder.

For making fun of his friend, for hiring cheerleaders that he thought aren't hot enough for his taste. And at another point, he sold one of the suites I forget what they're even calling it right now. It's not FedEx Field anymore, but it's where they play their home games. He sold a season ticket suite to the learner family

who owns the Nationals. And he was pissed off at the learners because he thought that they screwed him over slightly on another business deal. So he had his minions pour milk down on the carpet underneath where they sat. So that by game time on Sunday, it would be like a mildly stinky box.

So this is the level of like cartoon or super villainry that some people think he's going for. He's just kind of a dickhead. He's just an all around dickhead with no redeeming qualities. Well, the milk thing, I can't defend the first thing though. I mean, that could have been like misinterpreted. What if he was like trying to help that guy come out?

And he's just like a little rougher on the edges. Like what if that guy? Yeah, what if that guy actually was like, well, oh, okay. Well, like maybe I am gay. That would have been maybe the best plot twist of all time. Then Dan Suner would be like, I'm a super ally. All right, here's a Washington Alice. All right, here's my last question for you.

This is something I was hoping that you could explain to me. It relates to, it was a clip that was sent around on Twitter a couple of weeks ago. It involved, I don't know the guy's name, but he is sort of a portly gentleman who is an NBA reporter. And he was on ESPN, he does the fingers up kind of thing. And he was describing in sort of like Hal Holbrook and all the president's men's style,

a sort of, never saying outright, but implying some sort of very nefarious conspiracy involving a trade that the Utah Jazz made and why there had coach Quinn Snyder left abruptly. Do you have any, do you know the clip I'm referring to? And do you know what he's referring to with this Utah Jazz based conspiracy? Yeah, it was Brian Winhorse and Brian Winhorse,

he came up because he covered all of LeBron's games when LeBron was in high school. And so then he just kind of became the clearinghouse for all the information that LeBron wanted to leak out. So he would just tell Brian Winhorse and then he would just put it out there into the universe. And that's how he kind of like gained capital in the breaking news of the NBA world.

But he was on, I think it was first take and he just went on this, it was a masterclass in terms of like stringing along all the other panelists that were on the show with him, saying, now why would the Utah Jazz do this? And he made it enthralling, like I need to know what the fuck the Utah Jazz are up to. Maybe like one of the most boring teams in the NBA,

but he made it so interesting. And then about, I want to say eight hours later, the Utah Jazz started trading away all their best players after that. So Winhorse knew something and he was just like letting everybody know like, hey, I know something about the Jazz that you don't know, but I'm gonna string you along and leave you wanting more.

The other panelists on the show were just like, okay, well, do you have a point, Brian? And Brian had no point. He just loved holding court. He's just, he's an absolute king. It was, yeah, it was very much like meeting in a parking lot, meeting in a parking structure and to be handed a briefcase with Utah Jazz written on it.

Yeah, it was delivered with the confidence of a man that knew that he would be proven right by history, but also knew at the same time that the words that were coming out of his mouth were the most inconsequential verbiage that you could put out there. It was wonderful. Okay, actually, one more thing.

I did see recently someone speculate that Stephen A. Smith should run for Senate. And I don't know how serious it was, but as soon as I heard it, I thought that Stephen A. Smith is basically, if he were in the U.S. Senate, would be basically the perfect U.S. Senator. Like, I can't think of someone who is better suited

to the U.S. Senate than Stephen A. Smith. Have you heard this rumor? What do you think about Stephen A. Smith as a future political candidate? Yeah, I say, yes. Stephen A. Smith can do whatever he wants. He can do no wrong for the most part. You remember Jim Trafficant?

Oh, of course. Be me up. Be me up. Be me up, yes. Stephen A. Smith is as close as we'll get to having a Jim Trafficant announcing sports. He's, you hang on every word that he says. Most of it doesn't make sense,

but still enthralling nonetheless to listen to. My only problem with Stephen A. Smith is, he has decided that he's taking a month off at ESPN. I think he gets like 10 million a year. He's taking a month off because he just had shoulder surgery. And like, if a professional basketball player decided to take a month off

for an injury that had nothing to do with their job, Stephen A. Smith would be the first person to talk about their legacy. He's the legacy king. And I still don't really know what a legacy is, but all I know is like, if you talk about somebody's legacy, that will generate, you know, five days of airtime

where you just get to debate whether or not this person is honoring themselves in the moment. So I actually think Stephen A. Smith taking off a month of work with a shoulder surgery issue, that is diminishing his legacy as a talking head. I just think as a US Senator though, like he already pretty much has it covered in the, you know, like the stock meme response

when he says, I'm here to let you know, first of all, we don't care. And I think like, you know, if you have mastered that response to any question, you can be a US Senator. Just let people know. I hear what you're saying, but I'm here to let you know, we don't care.

We don't- He's great at emasculating anybody. That's Stephen A. Smith's real gift. It doesn't matter who you are. He'll just sometimes pretend not to hear you when you deliver your point to him. And then he'll just respond to whatever straw man argument that he's already thought up in his brain.

So yeah, I'd say he's got adequate training to be a United States Senator. I would just want to see Skip Bayless also run for US Senator. Just to have, imagine those two guys debating Roe v. Wade at each other. That would be a tree. You talk about getting people more involved

in their civic engagement and watching C-SPAN. Ratings would go through the roof. It would be incredible. Brett Kavanaugh, he's sealed his legacy. I mean, you talk about, he's a lunch pail type jurist and people are gonna be talking about him for generations to come. Yeah, yeah.

Does Amy Coney Barrett have the clutch gene? And if she does, is it ethical to actually use modern stem cell technology to try to isolate it? Is there anyone in the sports media like coming up right now who is like a legitimate heir to Skip or Steven A. in terms of just being the top blowhard, top blowhard coming up? So I'm a little bit concerned about this

because with the wave of the new media and podcasters, there's not a lot of the old dinosaurs in the game anymore. And I think that's actually bad for the ecosystem. We love having a guy that's like wrong and loud on TV so that we can then disagree with that person and be like, this is such bullshit. I'm no longer watching ESPN. You know, the more that they become targeted

towards more of a younger audience, I think people are gonna find that they miss having the wrong assholes on TV all the time. You have to have somebody that you know is always wrong. And right now, the way that it's going, I don't think there is an heir. I don't think that there's anyone out there that's qualified to be there with the exception

of our great friend, Nick Adams, who I would like to see. I would like to see, just, you know what? I want Nick Adams to stick to sports. When he starts- Stop talking politics all the time. Yeah, when he like gets out of his depth in politics, he loses me. I want him to be on TV telling me like,

yes, Tim Tebow could play any sport and be an instant MVP. I want people being like, Matthew Della Vadova should be an American citizen. We should make him run for office, like that sort of thing. I don't think that there's anybody in the up-and-coming media that could hold any of those guys' jocks, honestly. Well, it's a grim future.

It's a grim future for the sports media if they're not cultivating, if they're not cultivating the next generation of being wrong on television. Yeah, it's an art. I'm pretty good at it, but I do it unintentionally. So that's, I don't even count for that. Like I don't, my takes aren't strong enough.

I just happen to be wrong about, just about everything that I say. I actually had a question for you guys though, because I thought about this last week. This is more in the political sphere. There were a lot of people that made a significant amount of money, being like the former liberal

that now has turned conservative, and then they were welcomed with open arms by a conservative audience. Do you think that there's a market space out there for somebody to be like, I was a big Trump guy, but Biden is fucking killing it? Like I am, I'm massive. I might have to rebrand to being that guy.

It would be good. A good move would be you go, look, I'm glad he stole it. Yeah, great job. The ends justify the means. I was like, I was pissed at first, but then he got in and it's just got, goddamn. He knew better than us. Way to get those mules going Brandon, congratulations.

Everyone's talking about him falling off the bike. They're not talking about the 20 miles of hardcore road cycling that he put in ahead of them. I think, I mean, I think like, I think there's always gonna be, there's always gonna be a spot for, among the, in the liberal media for conservative apostates or like,

I mean, the things are not really apostates. They haven't changed any of their opinions. Like, you know, Bill Kristol is a perfect example of that. They just want someone who's like, like seems like an intelligent conservative to say to them and their audience, like, actually you're very smart and correct. And even I, a Republican is willing to say so.

The problem with the former Trump guy is, as it regards to like, I guess, like liberal fans of the news is, I don't know, like that brand is just so toxic that, I don't think they wanna be told that they're right and correct by a former Trump supporter. They wanna be told that they're right and correct by a former George W. Bush supporter.

So I think like the big money is always gonna be in a liberal going in the other direction. The W project instead of the Lincoln project. That's what we, that's what we gotta get off the ground right now. What about this? What if a lot of people are talking about the next Democrat to run for office for president?

Cause I think everybody's like accepted that something is gonna happen with Biden. What if it was DreamTicket, Hillary as president, W as vice president in the spirit of unity and reaching across the aisle? I mean, I don't think you're, I don't think you're honestly, I don't think you're too far off of that.

At least when it comes to like Liz Cheney, cause I mean like no Republican is gonna vote for her ever again. But I think they're putting a Democrats who would if she was a VP. It would be just very, I'm waiting for that to happen for like the rehabilitation tour of W. Like, you know what, his paintings aren't all that bad.

Yeah. All right. I think we should, we should wrap it up there for today's episode. I wanna thank PFT commentator for joining us today talking some sports, part of my take macro dosing. If people want more PFT in their life, where should they check out your shows?

Yeah, check them out. They're on the internet. So just log on, baby. All right. Perfect. I love it. Gentlemen, until next time, bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Thank you. ["He Was Born In Big Beaver"] ["He Was Born In Big Beaver"] ["He Was Born In Big Beaver"]