Doomed to Fail - Ep 147 - Election 2000: Pat Buchanan's Rosetta Stone

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Farz, in his infinite kindness, tries to calm the great American Anxiety (tm) and reminds us what we've been saying over and over. We just live in times. Not unprecedented times; there's a roadmap for all of this. He brings us back to the Y2K election (Taylor's first time voting!). Within the 'hanging chad' chaos in Florida, there was also the third-party candidate from the Reform Party, Pat Buchanan. Tune in to listen to Buchanan's platform and be reminded that history, as always, repeats. Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Don't say that. Hey, Taylor. Hi. Look at this ice I have. I have Sonic ice at my house. How does one obtain Sonic Ice at one's house? I just go to Sonic and ask for a bag of ice. ice. Really? They'll sell you their ice. Oh, wow. Okay. I never knew that. I got it for

Lauren's birthday party was yesterday and I got it for her party and everybody was like, oh my God, you have Sonic Ice? I was like, yes. I had an extra bag. So I'm going to eat slash drink all this sonic ice today by myself. So good. So good. Very cool. How, um, how's your week starting out? Good. Wait. Let me introduce us. Oh, yeah. Right. Hello. Welcome to Doom to Fail. We're the podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures. twice a week every week i'm taylor joined by farce i'm farce joined here by taylor um and yeah uh eager to get up and running and discuss some fun fun topics which i think today i go first is that right yes okay my topic i don't even know what it's about like i don't sorry i know what it's about

but like it doesn't actually play into our themes very well but it plays into some my experiences over the past weekend very very well that's why i thought i wanted to talk about it because It's also a very topical thing to talk about. So I was just in Naples, Florida. And tell you, have you been in Naples? No, but my boss sometimes said something about a city. And she goes, and I've been to Naples, Italy, like saying that that was the worst place she'd ever been. And I was like, I also had a really terrible time in Naples, Italy.

Why? It was just like, it was, half that it was under construction and we were there. So there was, like, nothing to look at. And we had, like, really mediocre pizza at, like, a weird place. And it was just like, I was like, I hate it here. Wait, Taylor, as an aside. So if people haven't been listening to us for a while, I did an episode like, I don't know, a year and a half ago about the tote family murders, which is like the most disgusting murder that I've read about in a very, very long time. Taylor, I went to celebration.

I know. Did you go to the house? I drove by the house. I went through the back side and then the front and took pictures of both. I need to send you the pictures. but like I was just like I was like people are going to look at me and they know what I'm doing like I just felt like the eyes

yeah I felt like the eyes were on me and I felt really guilty like there was one guy on a motorcycle who seemed like you were like circling me like you just love me um and also you're not the only person to do that people do that all the time I know it doesn't make it any less distasteful I know but I did take pictures and I'll send those over to you um also Taylor

celebration is kind of lovely but it was kind of the point Have you seen Sepford Wives? That's the point. No, I know, I know. But I'm saying like there's a difference between like, when I see like an adult like our age with like a Disney tattoo, I'm like there's something wrong with that person, you know? Yeah. And so I assume celebration would just be full of those kinds of people.

Like it was like cool. It was hip. There was young people who were outside having, you know, little little cocktails with their families and friends. And it was like a cool little bustling town. It was very idyllic. Cool. I think that's fine just don't murder your family just don't murder your family okay

and they'd go back and listen to the podcast anyway so I was in Florida this weekend and obviously in Orlando in Naples anyways in Naples I went to a grocery store that was kind of incredible it was basically like if a Whole Foods also had several bars

a half dozen restaurants and like a nightclub inside of it was it Italy no it's called seed to table oh fun you would not like it. Why not? I love getting a glass of wine and going grocery shopping. So this, I'm not going to make this political, but this grocery store was the most pro-Maga pro-Trump grocery store.

Not even grocery store. It was the most political store I've ever walked into. It was everywhere. Like, you couldn't look at any single direction and not see something that was like pro-Trump and anti-Biden and Kamala. Like selling it or just people wearing it? no i mean selling it they just had like food right like i mean it was just like regular food but like they would have like signs like for example they would have like where their cafe was they're like we don't call it a cup of joe here we'll call it something else i forgot what they said oh it's like it's like stuff like that sure sure and it it was nuts like turns into a nightclub it's like two fours and like i went upstairs and i was walking around there was like all these different people

it was it was like the weirdest analogation of different types of people there in terms of like age some looked like old wealthy retirees and some were like 25 year old like it was like kind of everyone just hate out of this grocery store on like a Friday night it was kind of wild um and there's all kind of dovetailed into like my media diet coincidentally like I didn't do it deliberately it just kind of coincidentally ended up happening and it got my mind taking on a number of topics so I was listening to in the middle of this trip my go-to shows one is obviously the Ezra Klein shows the biggest one that I keep talking on this podcast. So he had just released

episode entitled What's Wrong with Donald Trump? And then he also released like three days after that in an interview with Maggie Haberman. Do you know who that is? No. Okay. I'll get into that. So that episode is called How Trump has changed. And then coincidentally, the Joe Rogan podcast

dropped with Trump and they talked like basically three hours in this open the format. I listened to all of this in the middle of this experience in Florida. And on the At the highest level, several things stood out to me that I'll break down by individual podcasts. One is Ezra Klein's kind of armchair psychological perspective on Trump about how he just lacked inhibitions and the fact that he's getting older and that he got shot. He's just like completely removed his ability to modulate himself and inhibit himself. Maggie Haberman is interesting because she's so good. Like everything she says is like, that is a universal source of truth, I think, for anybody that wants to know anything about like.

mega world or the Trump presidency or the campaigns, anything. She's been embedded since like 2015 and gets like exclusive interviews. Like her take on anything related to this world is like what I trust 100%. She was talking about like the distinction between rhetoric and reality and how she was like, listen, there's some things that Trump for sure believes in that he says out loud. And the rest of the time, I think he just says what the audience wants to hear. And then he'll double down if he realized it's going to get media play. and then when he talked to Joe Rogan

again like Rogan being a stand-up comedian he also brought that up he was on at one point he was like hey you're like kind of like a comedian like you hit on something and then you see oh this is working and then just hit it again and then you hit it again and he keep hitting it over and over again

and that's kind of like where this like it kind of started coming to me of like oh like what is there between this like rhetoric versus the reality aspect of what's going on with Magalayan and Trump is and then it seemed like that kind of cross-section She was like, where did all this kind of come from? And what was the origination point?

And it led me somewhere unexpected. And that's what I'm going to talk about today. All right. Let's do it. This is a lot of setup. Okay. Again, you might be thinking that I'm doing an episode on Trump right now. I'm not.

I'm going to touch on a twisted web that encapsulates the 2000 presidential election and the history that led to the outcome we ended up having. Oh, fine. That was my first election that I voted in. Fun. I voted absentee from Nevada in New York, and I had like a piece of paper and a piece of like styrofoam, and then I put a paper on the styrofoam and then punched my things,

and then mailed it back. So if anybody's actually understood in the, the 2000 presidential election, note that I'm going to be touching on like this one micro aspect of it, because the whole, covering the whole thing is going to be like, would be insane. It would be taking way too much time and effort.

Um, but I'm going to touch on one tiny bit of it because it's like, it just, I just had this like flash moment of like, oh my God. Like it all, it all sort of making sense to me. So to brief recap for anybody who wasn't alive or didn't care or pay attention, um, basically this was a election between Bush versus Al Gore. Um, the election day was November 7th. By November 8th, the margin between the two and Florida was narrow enough to trigger an automatic recount. Between November 9th to the 26, both side kind of, issued legal battles over the recount and what standards were being used to measure who voted for who on December 12th, the U.S. Supreme Court stops the recount on December 13th court concedes and Bush becomes president in January. So

that's it. On December 13th? Yes. Okay. So a little bit of background about this tiny little part of this. It's like super, super interesting and super prescient to like modern times. In 1995, I feel like I feel so old talking about this stuff right now. It's not modern times.

It's so old, Taylor. It is so old. I mean, yes, it was 20, yes, it was 24 years ago, but also like, not ancient history. Okay, fine. We're young still. I'll give you that we're young still. There were TVs, I don't know. Okay, it was electricity. In 1995, a guy named Ross Perot formed the Reform Party. He did this after running for president in 1992. And despite having dropped out of the race before Election Day, he actually received 18% of the popular vote, which was the most any independent candidate had ever won before. At that time, he wasn't running on any party platform.

He was literally an independent candidate. Today, at work, I made everyone watch the Phil Hartman when he was Bill Clinton at the McDonald's. That's one of the best. That is absolutely one of the best. When he starts eating everybody else's food. Oh, my God. I'm glad. He's like warlords, intercepted by warlords.

They did they take in their chicken nuggets? He's trying not to laugh. It's so funny. I also did an episode on Phil Hartman. So if you want to go listen to that as well. So anyways, he won 18% of the popular vote. He saw a viable pathway for a third party to run for president. So he founded the Reform Party and ran for president against Bob Dole and Bill Clinton again in 1996.

That time, he only won 8.4% of the popular vote. A little bit about the Reform Party itself. Like, the party platform is like kind of loosey-goosey. Like, it's kind of like whatever. the head of the party wants to make it. It's largely around fiscal responsibility, balancing the budget, a lot of campaign finance reform stuff, a lot of term limit stuff for Congress, a lot of tough on immigration positions. Overall, like, it actually is pretty good.

He's a, he, he's dead. He did? Pro's dead, yeah. But he was like a billionaire, right? Yeah, yeah. He founded a company called EDS and Dallas, Texas. And we would, I remember when I was a kid, we did. drive by it and like that was kind of like a mythical

place where like this guy created this with like a $5,000 loan and like he's a he's a whole he's like the original Mark Cuban basically in Texas and Dallas so going back to 1986 Clinton obviously wins and the reform party is back to trying to sort out who it should run for president

going into the next presidential cycle so Taylor here's my question to you curious if you know the answer to this when did Donald Trump first run for president I'm sure that it's not what I think 1996. 2000.

Really? Yeah. Trump first for a into national politics happened in 2000 as a primary candidate for the Reform Party nomination. Is there still a reform party? There is the vestiges of a reform party, but like basically no.

So in 2000 was when the Reform Party was really kind of up and running. Ninety six had been like a test to gauge viability and you know 8% wasn't a ton but it was something was enough to like start pouring some money into it that's a shit ton of people that's a shit ton of people you know yeah he did end up so he got like he said he did 18% the previous cycle so that was even more impressive um also it's worth noting that at this time politics was was not entertainment in american history and so he actually went out and got the votes like like this was not instagram or ticot people

just telling you to go support somebody like he legitimately went and got this 8% of the vote so at the time the three candidates on the reform party's primary ballot were Donald Trump a guy named John Hagelin who nobody cares about he moved into obscurity and a guy named Pat Buchanan and Pat is going to play kind of the central role here of like how all this kind of dovetails into like modern society and modern times and modern history do you know that name I do okay so Trump was actually doing pretty well in the primary. He and he and Buchanan were basically like neck and neck and the

main draws for the primary election there with the reform party. At the end of it, like several months after the campaign kind of kicked off is when he actually voluntarily withdrew from the race. The reason he gave for withdrawing comes with this quote that he gives. This is a direct quote from Donald Trump in 2000.

So the reform party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Vulani. This is not company I wish to keep, end quote. This is incredible. Again, I'm going to tie this together in a way that makes space a ton of sense. So let's talk about Pat real quick.

So his background in politics really gets going as an opposition researcher working on behalf of the Nixon campaign. For those that don't know, like, this is like the silent assassin thing. Like he, like these people, like they are out to like, they are out for blood. I'm not going to say they're not nice people I'm sure they're nice not personalized but like you have to have a little bit of meanness in you to be a really good opera researcher

he would go on to work in the Reagan White House and he said something interesting during this time which is that the greatest vacuum in American politics is to the right of Ronald Reagan he see the bright problems that are falling here so he would go on to try and run for president in the Republican primary

in 1992 against George H.W. Bush, after Bush basically welshed on his no new taxes thing, he would obviously lose that attempt. Was that read my lips, no new taxes? Yes. Yes. When he was checking his watch while Bill Clinton was talking to the debate, that was like, read my lips. No more tax.

That's Reagan. Go ahead. Dana Carvey. Dana Carvey was the read my lips guy. Remember when he's like, I'm a one-termer and it's crying. there's some show where him and jimmy carter just like hanging out outside of a club while ragan and like obama and clinton go inside so so he would obviously lose and losing that attempt to run for president 92 and the schism with the republican party would continue to keep expanding

the representation of that is in these two this term which is neocon versus paleo con i i obviously know neocom but paleo con was kind of a newer one to me so a neocon on the republican side is what traditional kind of republican position something so military interventionism strong support for alliances like nato america is a melting pot globalization and free market capitalism stuff like that believe in like a strong central government it's like what we know is like regular republicanism by comparison heliocons which you can and became kind of the face of america first like no intervention whatsoever in other countries affairs um america is a Christian and Western nation with a cultural homogeneity, supporting U.S. jobs and industries

as opposed to things like NAFTA and like free trade. That's kind of like, that's kind of it. And like it's amazing because it's like a Rosetta Stone. Like this is like incredible. When he accepted his nomination for the reform party, he said, quote, neither Beltway party will drain this political swamp because to them it is not a swamp it is protected wetland their natural habitat this is pat you can in 2000 jesus so his issues that again i said like the reform party was kind of like a um blank slate for the most for the whoever could put things on so his issues had to do with tax reduction removing government from the health care industry protecting u.s jobs by limiting free trade um he won a national abortion ban

he seemed to oppose the existence of gay people it wasn't really so much that are right i think he just literally opposed they existed wouldn't even talk about it or like was like no he was he was like he seemed to think that like this is like a choice people make and like they should choose not to exhausting he he advocated for a thing he called the buchanan fence on the southern border. Wow. Yeah. Wow.

So the most problematic elements of Buchanan's views that really dovetail into like the 2000 election where it gets super problematic has to do with anti-Semitism. So I'm going to go through some of Buchanan's history with Jews in detail here. Jesus. The Buchanan fence is one of the worst names I've ever heard for anything. And it's, that's all. Exactly. Exactly. Like, you needed someone who was a showman.

You needed someone who was like a, who understands like, oh, this works. And this works. And you don't know, like, you need someone that, that had the, the TV aspect nailed down and just replace these ideas with that guy. But we're not going to that. I'm just so. So here's some of the history of Pat Buchanan's. relations with Jewish people. So in 1982, while he was working

as a communications director to Ronald Reagan, he worked in the background to frustrate attempts to deport a guy named John Demjianjouk, who was the subject of a 2019 Netflix docu series entitled The Devil Next Door. He was a Nazi war criminal that Israel was trying to deport out of the U.S.

to bring him to justice. In 1985, he pushed Reagan to visit a German military cemetery where SS buried their balin and Eli Wiesel who was part of a Jewish coalition advocate against this trip went to the White House. He later

would say in an interview quote the only one really defending the trip was Pat Buchanan saying we cannot give the perception of the president being subjected to Jewish pressure end quote. Why would it even be an option of something for him to do? Because for some reason the German chancellor

at that time was also like pushing for this and so it was like it was like it was a bad idea like not a good book yeah it's a weird vacation spot yeah in in 1990 he wrote a call in the new york post saying it would have been impossible to have killed

the estimated 850,000 Jews in in i think it was docow i can't remember exactly which or triblinka i can't remember which concentration camp i have no idea of any of this his argument had to do that diesel engines simply just do not produce enough carbon oxide to have done this at this scale He once asserted that Capitol Hill is Israeli-occupied terrorist.

He had a history of using coded anti-Semitic language talking about things like globalists, which is like kind of like a dog whistle. Yeah. His rhetoric was very often directly aimed for support for Christian values, which was seen as like being at the expense of other values, namely Jewish values. And he would often refer to American Jews as Israeli. basically implying they're not really American because they're Jewish and therefore they share loyalty with Israel. So it is kind of hard to find any single political commentator from any era, left, right or center that says anything other than Buchanan was outwardly and expressly anti-Semitic. So I bring all this up because it's relevant to the infamous butterfly ballot. so I'm going to articulate how things look so hopefully you can like picture this when I

describe the ballot itself in Florida during the 2000 election so it resembles like a little booklet when it's open and in the middle is like a thin yellow divider which contains a bunch of holes on the left side the very top you have George W. Bush and the number three at the top below that you have Al Gore and the number five so on and so forth it just runs all the way down the left hand side. On the right hand side, at the very top, kind of overlaid between Bush and Gore's boxes on the left is Pat Buchanan. So if you look at the holes, hole one is for Bush, hole two is for Buchanan. Whole three is for Gore. Okay. It's actually not that complicated. The one thing to keep mind is that Palm Beach County is a retirement

stronghold. In the year 2000, over 32% of the population was over 50 years of And what's more, Palm Beach has the fourth largest Jewish population of any county in the country. So what's even more interesting is Pat Buchanan ended up receiving over 3,400 votes on this butterfly ballot, which is four times the number he received on the absentee ballot that did not have the butterfly design. So there was a weird disproportionate quorum of elderly Jews who voted for this guy, but nobody can figure out why they would vote for him, except that's a bit of a mistake. Suspicious. Right. Yeah.

So Gore ended up receiving 268,000 votes in this county. Bush received 152,000 votes. And 5,300 votes were overvotes where the person voted for basically like Gore and Buchanan or Bush and Buchanan. you know it was one of those deals right they just like messed it up or did it on purpose or whatever exactly exactly so once this was all said and done bush had won the presidency the national opinion research center at the university of chicago ran an independent assessment it applied florida's legal standard for like a legitimate hand count of the votes they noted that in the case of overvote i.e someone picking two candidates gore and another candidate received 68 000 to bush's 23,000 whoa those were thrown out. Yeah. Even though you would assume the intent of the person is, oh, I didn't need to vote for the guy who is like literally talking about like the Holocaust didn't happen.

Right. And then and then punching gore. So anyways, they decided not to count those and assume that somebody ended up getting confused. And they basically would throw those votes out. Would they? That actually wouldn't have matter because after running this count. again manually, it was determined

that Gore would have won between 60 to 171 votes and the electoral votes of Florida. So the range is dependent on how scrupulously you would apply the standards. So for example, hanging chads are one that are kind of tough because what will happen is like you push

the paper in and then you slide it forward and then if the perforations haven't ripped the paper off completely, you just place the perforation right back into its spot. And so that's why you have to do this stuff manually. That's why I remember.

Did they have like that piece of styrofoam? Because I clearly remember a piece of styrofoam. And that's what I was like punching into like underneath the ballot. I think it could throw the styrofoam away and then mail in the ballot part. So I. Like how did you pull a hole in it? I'm fairly certain that all of this is state by state dependent. No, I know.

But like I'm like, were they supposed to poke a hole in it? It's like a scantron. Yeah. Yeah, no, no, how do you do that? So you line the thing up, you line your punch card up with the names and then you punch the holes where the names are. Right, but just how do you punch a hole? Well, you slide it into this little receptacle thing and then you have a,

and that has like the cyrofoam in it that does it? I don't know if it's cyrofoam behind it or something. Something presumably is behind it. But the problem is if it doesn't punch all the way out, you can pull it back out and then You just by virtual rubbing against the other thing, we would just push it right back into a spot. And all of a sudden, that's, you didn't vote for anyone.

Mm-hmm. So basically what this kind of all comes to is, what we're seeing today in what happened 24 years ago is like, crazy similar. Like, like it's crazy similar. And the reason I'm bringing it up is because, like, and the reason I brought up,

whole rhetoric versus reality thing is because like as I zoom myself out of this and what I was actually looking up was like when in time has things, when in time has it ever felt like everything is existential and in horrible and whatever and I was like it's literally every

election and when I went when I went back and I looked up Pat Buchanan was like dude he's literally using the exact same playbook he calls it instead of the Buchanan fence he calls a build the wall yeah yeah exactly the same same thing.

Jesus. And I don't know. I just found it really, really interesting. Also, the fact that so much of world history would have been different if you canaan didn't enter. And the fact that Trump was in there, all of it is so insane and all kind of spirals out of like his experience in the 2000 election. And like, I don't know.

It's, it's, there's a lot of like different threads to this. you could pull on and um it's it's tough to even knowing which which started to pull on it but it's very very interesting wilds yeah oh i forgot this one part so after the election pat you can himself would be interviewed later and he would say quote when i took one look at that ballot on election night it's very easy for me to see how someone could have voted for me in the belief they voted for al gore but he himself was like yeah like these votes obviously aren't for me like look at my life and look what I say

how did how did such a shitty design get approved I mean that's the thing to like again like this also dovetails into this cycle right because on what in what world

will one or the other win in not claim election fraud or fake ballots or bad ballots or you're like it's all going to like we were just going to relive the same history over and over and over again because I guarantee you to your point why didn't anybody think about it they probably did and you

know what there's going to be something else we didn't think of this election and then it's something we didn't think of in four years right it's like all the things god do you remember in 2008 yes I was on the Obama election for like the last couple weeks in Pennsylvania and Juan always talks about it because he's so freaking jealous because because I was on the phone with him. I was at a bar at night and when they called the election because they called it that night, you know. And I remember, and we all started screaming. We were so excited while I was on the phone.

He was like, oh, I wish I was there. You know, we had much woman like, it's just what a, what a delight to have it called the day of. I don't know if that's, yeah, I mean. Oh, that was 2012. It happened in 2008 in 2008. In 2008, we were in New York City and we had this big party and we, I got this bar to give us all their space. and they were like, they didn't believe me how many people I was bringing and I brought like 300 people

and then like we had more space in we were right by Times Square. We went out in Times Square and people were like screaming. So it happened that night too. So both Obamas were called that night. But Hillary and Trump wasn't called that night, was it? It was pretty clear, I think, that night.

Yeah, yeah. I remember we had a party. I'm just going to have a party that I just remember progressively watching people like their faces change. It was wild. wild yeah cool this is um i don't know it was this helpful for my anxiety that this has always happened you know that isn't isn't new i guess taylor like that is you are kind of an audience of one for this because i do sense your anxiety about all this stuff i'm dying yes i'm dying and i keep looking at it from like my background in like the historical context of all this and i'm like

it's going to be fine I know you're going to be fine like your kids are going to go to school the next day you're going to work you're going to have your 401k you're going to retire you're probably going to you know like like we're going to be okay

and yes there are going to be things that are going to happen one way or the other that somebody doesn't like I keep talking about Ezra Klein because I'm like I love the perspective of like hey like I'm not on this team I'm not in this camp I want to observe it from like a reporter perspective same with maggie heyerman like it's it's very interesting hearing like you know

new york and california liberals like observing this and like analyzing it through like their intelligence and it's like it like they deconstruct in a way that like you certainly like okay like i i get it like i get this part of it like you fracture this part i don't know if you just listen to like the left perspective on it that it just sounds like insanity manifest i'm saying that like there's a there's this rosetta stone of like having a wide range of ideas that you just say because eventually it'll strike a tone with this person like you care about abortion like that doesn't mean that like every person in America is like literally focused just on abortion like maybe the person is focused more on like you know they keep saying the economy the economy is a stupid

one because the economy's doing great like whatever like that's just that's a packaging problem may think on the Democratic side, but I don't know. I don't know. It's been this has been like a really interesting week for me. It's sort of like observing things and hearing different perspectives on it. I did think that the Joe Rogan

interview, like it was smart of him never to attack Biden on his age because that's all like people are talking about now. And he just like, he brought up in the interview like, this is not an age thing. This is not an age thing. He's he's got like I don't know. Didn't Joe Rogan laugh at him when he said

that he admitted he lost? He, I don't remember that part. He did, he laughed at a few things. He said one thing, like, Trump was like talking about how,

um, he's like, Kamala will never do this interview with you. And he's like, no, I've reached out for her people. They haven't said yes. They haven't said no.

It would be great. He's like, well, she couldn't handle it. She'd just lie on the floor. She'd die. She'd be like a little whatever. Like he just went off and like insulting her.

And it's like, you know, I think we'll just have a really good conversation if she comes on. I think it's fine. Just like, What are you talking about? She's a federal process. She's literally never done that ever.

It makes absolutely no sense. It was very, very interesting. Oh, there was one thing he said I thought was really funny, which was, um, Rogan asked, like, why do you think all these countries didn't invade other places when you were president? And he goes, hey, look, I picked this guy, John Bolton to be my national security advisor. And, um, anytime I go into a room with, with people from these other countries, I bring him with me. And everybody was like, don't hire this guy. Don't hire this guy.

But you know what? That guy was fucking nuts. And any time I brought him into a room, it was like, he's legitimately going to go to war with other countries if we do anything. Did he fire that guy? I think he either fired him or he quit. I can't remember. Like, his whole point was like, I hired him because he was crazy. And so anytime he was going to negotiations,

they'd be like, Trump's unhinged. This guy's unhinged. We better, like, not do what we want to do. And I was like, self-aware. Points for self-awareness. I guess. Anyways, that's the episode so, so weird going back in history and seeing all of this kind of come together. Yeah, we'll see what happens.

I know. I just think I can do. Oh, my God. This is so funny. So John Bolton, he was a possible choice for Secretary of State. But Trump didn't choose him because Trump hated his mustache. how is that not funny as shit like that is so funny

because I'm stupid that's what I'm saying like some of this stuff is just so funny like well it does it affects everybody's life and it's it's can be pair down to these kind of dumb things

you know yeah you listen to a walrus he does look like a walrus I mean I'm not super mad at his mustache I mean that guy was kind of nuts like I mean I remember when he nominated or he like

hired him and I was like all that guy ever talks about is nuclear war with every country yeah he's not but on the episode he's like yeah that's why I hired him because he's insane if you sent an insane guy in to negotiate for you nobody's gonna mess with him because I think he's insane

like really funny he's advocated for preemptive strikes against North Korea and Iran. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm glad that guy doesn't have his finger on any buttons at the moment. I mean, who knows what will happen. Jesus.

But anyways, that was fun. Yeah. I would definitely recommend the Maggie Heyerman as a Klein interview. That's the most recent one that came out. Very, very interesting perspectives. But again, That was the other part of it that this Tommy Taylor because I was like, you go through line by line. It was like, dude, not only was he there in the 2000s, he was paying attention, he was running against the guy and he was watching how that guy was playing off crowds and audiences with what he was saying.

And then he tweaked it. Like, it's the same thing. It's the exact same thing. America first, isolationism. We don't need to go to war. Like, all of it. We get off the stuff that they keep They were hammering

Biden over like all of it Like it's all the exact same playbook It's just being delivered in a slightly different package So crazy that how So I didn't realize All that about Pat Buchanan Like I'd heard the name But I didn't realize all that stuff

Other stuff He literally called it the swamp In 2000 Wild Wild Wild Um Anyways

I hope this was a calming, soothing episode for everyone. It's not. But I mean, whatever. But you're right, that whatever. I mean. Yeah. Trump gets, if Trump gets elected and everybody, like, whatever your issue is, then, like, advocate for that for that issue, right?

Like, for example, like, when abortion, when dogs was struck down, everybody was pissy about, about that. I was like, then fucking elect legislators. Exactly. Like, there's always a mechanism around the thing. Like, the system's actually. working as it should be working right now totally and it's there's so many like i said i think last time there's so many down ballot things that like affect your life so immediately that you need to like

pay attention to as well and also get involved if you're pissed yeah when our last company wasn't it like like like one 15th of all offices go unfilled because nobody even fouls to run for those offices those are all those are all local races those all the things that are like do all of that that's such a good idea. We did this in in New York City when I was the president of the Manhattan Young Democrats. We had a project. What do we call it? It was cute. In New York City, there's like these little elected positions that are like three block areas. And you have to like petition to get on the ballot and then get on the ballot. And then you can like represent your little three block area and like these big meetings. And like 70% of them were open. So we ran, what was it called? We ran a bunch of

young people for it. Like, we stood outside, got 100 signatures from their neighbors, got in the ballot, little person on the ballot, and they had their little elected position in New York City. It was so cool. And they were available, you know? There's plenty of those. Yeah. I'm sure there's plenty of those.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a really, really good point. I mean, there's plenty of stuff that you can do and just make sure you do everything you can. It matters to you. Which is, they're saying the theory of the case with the Trump campaign is they're trying to get people who will not turn out to turn out and that's why he's doing the kind of media

that he's currently doing because he's like he's never going to win the part of the country that like is going to hate him obviously but he can get net new people to come out if he goes to the right place and does the right kind of audiences which is like a well that's the whole point yeah that's what that's all

do TV is no I know but I think that like I guess the point is like there's not that much in the realm of undecided's right now for Trump like either have an opinion or you don't like, I don't know. Which is good because not having an opinion is wild. Ken Bone.

Wild. We got to find the Ken Bone of the 24th cycle. Who's Ken Bone? You remember Ken Bone? He was the undecided voter with the... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I see him. Aw.

Ken Bone is my age? Wait, seriously? Ken Bone. My dear. my dear friend that guy is rage wow um

that's hilarious um who else um oh remember that i don't know i did not see this movie but isn't that this movie with Kevin Costner where he's like swing vote where he's the last person in America who didn't vote and like they have to like go I mean no it's not true but it's as a movie

it's like one guy in like Wyoming and they have to go find him and then both candidates have to convince him to vote for them. I did not see it. Dude, Ken Bone looks terrible. He needs to figure someone out. It says his job as being a personality. I love that.

Well, I mean, I don't have a Wikipedia page for my personality, so good for him. Way to go, Ken. Sweet. So anything else you want to say, Taylor? Yes, I have a note from a listener who, regarding our sleep episode. they have something called delayed phase sleep disorder and that means that usually as you were saying people's natural sleep wake cycle is like 24.1 hours but theirs is 26 hours so like it messes with their like equilibrium and their day to day in their cycles because their sleep cycles

is 26 hours so how long wait how long do they sleep do we know so I think they have to sleep more or just like a different cadence and to like catch up or not catch up and like makes it harder. That's a listener of ours? Yes. Wow. Mm-hmm.

That's got to be rough. I know. It's had to still causes some trouble. So yeah, it delays your circadian rhythm. And it, so you're like sleep and so it messes with your like insomnia. Sleep. Weirdly, all kinds of things.

Yeah, they fall asleep after midnight and have difficulty waking up in the morning. Rough. I know. Social jet lag. These are little little things that you don't know. You should be thankful. For real. But thank you for sharing.

Yes. Thank you. Yeah. And if you have any thoughts or questions, find us at Doom to Fail Pod on all socials. And email us at Doom to FailPod at Gmail.com. Sweet. We'll go ahead and cut things off.