Lovett or Leave It - Pod Save Drag Brunch

Episode Date: June 11, 2022

Lovett or Leave It takes summer by storm with the help of the good people at Los Angeles’s fabulous Dynasty Typewriter. Texas Rep. Bryan Slaton (Brendan Scannell) death drops into the non-debate about children watching drag. Mother Jones’ Hannah Levintova goes public with the truth about private equity. Adam Conover takes a seat to explain the impact of public transportation. Brian Simpson sends his apologies to Sarah Palin in Ok, Stop, and we cool ourselves down after a round of Hot Takes.  For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Hello Los Angeles! Lovely to see you all. We did it. We're out and about. Thank you for coming amidst the summit of Americas, which has shut down all of downtown. Welcome to Love It or Leave It, live or else recording on the eve of what's certainly going to be the most exciting hearing that's happened tomorrow at that time. We've got a great show for you. Mother Jones reporter Hannah Leventova is here to talk about private equity. A lot of KKR executives in the house. Adam Conover is back with thoughts on public transportation. In honor of pride, we flew out Texas State

Representative Brian Slayton to have a good faith conversation about his bill that would ban children from drag shows. It's not him. It's just a person. It's Brendan Skinnell playing him. It's fine. Brian Simpson swings by for OK Stop

and hot takes coming your way. But first, let's get into it. What a week. The California primaries were Tuesday and it looks like

LA mayoral candidates Rick Caruso and Karen Bass are headed to November runoff. If you're a wealthy celebrity who doesn't live in Los Angeles and you mayoral candidates Rick Caruso and Karen Bass are headed to November runoff. If you're a wealthy celebrity who doesn't live in Los Angeles and you haven't endorsed Rick Caruso yet, stay in line. Man, I have often believed that a lot of fancy L.A. people who think of themselves as Democrats are really just sort of cosmopolitan conservatives without a home. What their preference is is to live in a pro-gay, pro-choice, authoritarian state.

And man, how quick they were to get on board with Rick Caruso. Listen, I like the Grove, all right? We all like the Grove. Now imagine you couldn't leave the Grove. You can live in the Grove, but it's locked from the Grove. Now imagine you couldn't leave the Grove. You can live in the Grove, but it's locked from the outside. Not as great.

Maybe it's pretty great. The LA Times called the election turnout dismal, with only 14% of the ballots cast as of Monday afternoon. 14% turnout. We can do better, Los Angeles. This is a mayoral primary, not Adam Conover's birthday party. He's back there.

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said this to Fox News. Meanwhile, I don't know about where you live, Jesse, but in my state, the price of gas is so high that it would be cheaper to buy cocaine and just run everywhere. A plus. A plus joke, you fucking old loon. I love it. Seems like California has some good ideas after all. Isn't that right, Senator? That's why he tried to give Madison Conther and cocaine. They were going to carpool. Addressing the floor, Representative Andy Biggs suggested moving unused COVID relief funds to enforce school doors against potential shooters. The Republicans have also said, let's harden the schools.

Look, you've got $122 billion that you gave in COVID relief to K-12. More than 90 percent of it remains unused. And you say, well, that we don't want to talk about doors. What do we do? We hide behind doors because they work. You can harden schools and make them work. You can armed guards and make them work. Look at me. I'm hiding behind doors rhetorically to avoid talking about gun control. They're amazing things, doors. I know that we live in stupid and important times.

Like, I understand that the reason they're stupid are why they're important. I understand at root that one of the reasons fascism can spread is that it seems so silly and it seems so stupid. I am genuinely surprised that they are talking about fucking doors. That they are actually talking about doors. Like, what if the school shooters had tanks? Would they be talking about

the need to build moats around the schools? They would. There's your problem right there. These doors aren't stopping these bullets. On Tuesday, actor Matthew McConaughey made a surprise visit to the White House to press for new gun control legislation. If you had told me a week ago that there'd be a story with words like Matthew McConaughey, White House, gun, and surprise, I'd assumed it was worse.

It's our next president you're talking about. Melting tub of vanilla ice cream and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson somehow survived a vote of no confidence Monday night, only narrowly avoiding Borkson. That's it. That's it. Borkson. The DOJ charged a man who traveled to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's house with a gun and a suitcase before calling the authorities on himself. It must have been terrifying for Brett Kavanaugh to be confronted by someone who was willing

to go so far as to admit what they did. A study by the Women's Health Initiative found optimism may contribute to women's longevity even controlling for other factors sure women may be facing the end of roe versus wade and a torrent of misogyny from every direction but what if i told you that worrying about it was also killing you i'm gonna just tell y'all something. I saw a recipe for keto pizza crust on TikTok. And I'll tell you, it involves... Just don't... Are you sewing during this show?

Anyway. I saw this recipe for keto pizza crust on TikTok, and it basically was like, you don't need flour in pizza crust if you can use canned chicken instead. And basically, I'm gonna, you know what, let's walk through it. We start with the ingredients.

Starkist chicken in a bag. Mozzarella cheese. Rao's tomato sauce. Parmesan cheese. Eggs, organic. Spinach, didn't make it into the final pizza. And pepperoni over there, but I didn't use it. Step one, you spread the chicken out

and you put it in the oven and you dry it out. Step two, you add an egg and Parmesan cheese to that chicken. You mix it up real good. You mix it real, real good, okay? Step three, you spread it out. All right? In the shape of a pizza. Because the thing you have to understand about food, as we all know,

if it looks like something, it'll taste like that thing. That's how food famously works. As long as your eyes see something shaped like the thing you want, which is fucking pizza, if it's in a circle and vaguely beige, it will taste like it. That's the rule. You then take your chicken, egg, and parmesan mixture. Again, it is canned chicken. You toast it. You get it real crusty. once it comes out you add your toppings which is sauce

cheese and um salami then it comes out and it almost looks like pizza and you think maybe I've done it maybe I've cracked the code then you realize it's stuck to the tinfoil then you use a spoon to eat your chicken salad toasted mozzarella pizza

while watching Drag Race. And then you realize you're going to be sick for the next 24 hours. And then you get yourself together. And you come and you do a show. Thank you. I think the issue is that the chicken to egg ratio is off. I'm going to take another bite at that apple tomorrow. Apple has announced a slate of new changes coming to iOS,

most notably the ability to edit or unsend messages. So don't forget to screenshot those dick pics before they all get raptured. Showrunner Michael Patrick King confirmed Samantha's character will be a part of the second season of And Just Like That. Even though actress Kim Cattrall still seems dead set against being involved, Samantha's scenes will be television's first to be filmed via covert

drone. They're probably filming her like Wilson on Home Improvement, actually. But instead of a fence, she'll just be hidden behind an absolutely monstrous cock. The singer Kate Bush is charty again, thanks to Stranger Things featuring her song Running Up That Hill. Though I can't believe we've already forgiven her for sitting next to Ellen at that football game. Just nonsense. Running Up That Hill has gotten much harder for the kids from Stranger Things who are now 76 years old.

Running up that hill has gotten much harder for the kids from Stranger Things who are now 76 years old. Director Tom Phillips revealed the screenplay for his Joker sequel is titled Joker... Foliadu. Foliadu? Madness of Two. That was my number one complaint about the first Joker, not French enough. I think it's about fucking time the flight attendants went on offense. We need to restore balance. Every flight attendant gets to make one passenger lose it per flight.

They gotta take their power back. It's rough up there. Something is happening. Like, everyone is more rude, right? We all see that, like, in our lives. Like, it's genuinely something happening. Like, I was going to therapy. Why am I telling you this?

So, but there's one row of cars where you don't have to pay the meter, and there was a person sitting in their car in one of the spots that's not metered. Like one does, I pulled up next and I rolled down my window and I said with all deliberate politeness, hi there, are you leaving? And she went, no. What? Okay, okay. And then I talked about it for 20 minutes. Really avoided some other issues which is I think for

the best my therapist about to have a baby so I'm just gonna raw dog the summer shows are gonna go loose I'm just gonna do it here she was like do you want someone else during that time like oh no absolutely not and then she said well we can do maybe one session while I'm on leave. I was like, that's a good idea. Everybody needs therapy. Oh, my God. California's third district court of appeals ruled that bees can technically be classified as fish

in an attempt to protect the endangered bumblebee under the invertebrate class. When asked how she felt about the decision, a local fish said, this one stings. Methuselah, a bristlecone pine tree in California, has been considered one of the oldest living trees on Earth, but the approximately 4,853-year-old tree may have competition with the discovery of a potentially 5,000-year-old

Alerce tree in Chile's Alerce Costero National Park. Now, I don't want these two trees fighting over this. There's room for both want these two trees fighting over this. There's room for both of them at the toilet paper factory. Where do you think it comes from? And finally, New Zealand might start taxing sheep and cow burps and farts as agricultural emissions, which attractors say will affect the price of meat. You'll never catch me charging extra for burps and farts.

We billed that right into the ticket price. When we come back we're gonna talk about private equity. And we're back! Time to get this comedy show started. Can anyone in the audience explain private equity? Alright. No, you can't. Joining me now is someone who actually knows what it is and how it's managed to hollow out the American economy. Please welcome Mother Jones reporter, Hannah Leventova. Hi, Hannah. Hello.

Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Here's something I've noticed. Oh, God. Private equity is in everything. They've kind of like got their little fingers in everything now, huh? Yes. And one thing I found out is that private equity is even buying up veterinarians. They're like buying

up the local vets and then making them part of these sort of conglomerates. Yes, not just vets, but pretty much every kind of health care or elder care that you can imagine. So humans too? Yes, humans and animals. And I guess I want to start by just saying that like people don't understand how much of an impact private equity is having on virtually every aspect of how they interact with the economy. So Mother Jones did this incredible issue that just looks at all the different ways that private equity is affecting our economy. You sort of use one company as an example to tell the story about a leveraged buyout that happened to this kind of construction and supply company called Housdale? It's pronounced Houdai, which is not how it's spelled. It is not how it's spelled, and I wouldn't know that. But can you just tell the story about what happened there?

There's this company. It is a successful company. It is profitable. It makes a product. It sells a product, and it makes more than it costs to sell it, and it has money on the books. And this guy that had run it for a very long time was looking to kind of shepherd it to

its next owner. What happened next? The reason that I used this company is this was the first major leveraged buyout in US history. There had only really been a few. This was the 70s. They were pretty small. This was the first one that was way more than $100 million. So like you said, this CEO, he wanted to retire. This is a public company. He wanted to sell off a stake in the company. Three bankers with last names, the acronym for which is KKR, maybe you've heard of them. They're a massive private equity firm. They still exist. Came to him and said, hey, we want to do this thing called a leverage buyout. And he was like, what's that? Essentially, it is a way of taking a public company, private, by loading it up with debt that the firm, Hudi in this example, not the private equity firm, is responsible for repaying. But the private

equity firm still gets to reap a ton of benefits from it. So this happened in 1979, first major leverage buyout. The fact that it worked, Wall Street sort of lit up and they were like, oh my God, we can do this. We can put hundreds of millions of dollars of debt on a, we're not responsible. They're responsible, but we get profit. It boomed. So just to walk people through what this means, because this is like the heart of what's happened in a bunch to a bunch of different companies. So basically you have a company, all right. And this group of investors comes and said, Hey, we think we can run your company better than the

way that it's running. We think we can get more money out of it. So what we want to do is have you basically take out a massive, massive, massive loan, right? So they take out this massive loan. The company is in a vast similarity of debt. What happens to the money they borrowed? The company has to pay back. But the private equity firm is charging this company a bunch of fees for the privilege of doing this deal, of organizing this deal. But it is on the company. Let's say it's on Houdai to pay off this debt. And the debt is often crippling. In the case of Houdai, the debt essentially killed the company. Business circumstances changed, the business wasn't profitable anymore. And they were just

they were under so much debt, they drowned and the company died. But private equity still the firm KKR still walked off with a major profit. They had collected millions and millions of dollars in fees and all was well. So I feel like there's two pieces of this. There's one is what happens when a private equity firm basically comes in and says, hey, we're going to take over. We're going to load this corporate entity up with debt. Then we're going to sell off all the profitable pieces. We're going to take all the money out of the company and then leave behind this sort of bankrupt husk that can no longer do business and kind of destroy a company just sort of like scrapping it. But then there's another piece of what private equity has been doing, which is actually, I think, a little bit more subtle and more pernicious, which is basically coming into

a company. Like, I mean, can you talk a little bit about some of the impact it's had on, say, like journalism? Sure. So, yes, what you're getting at is a very important element of this. It's extractive, right? The private equity fund pools money from super rich investors, like big institutions like pension funds or just like wealthy people, and uses them to buy up companies, right?

They charge those investors huge fees with the promise that we're going to get you amazing gains. We're going to get you amazing returns. How do they get those returns? They buy up the companies and they extract as much value as possible, as quickly as possible, exactly what you're describing. They strip the company for parts. They're not invested necessarily in making this company grow or be sustainable or all the things that you, you know.

No, they want to get as much out as quickly as possible. So in journalism, for example, why has private equity bought up so many local newspapers? It's not because newspapers are particularly profitable enterprises. It's in large part because local newspapers have incredibly valuable real estate, often in the center of a city, right? These old, big buildings. Think about like the SF Chronicle building in San Francisco. So a great example is like the Chicago Tribune building in the center of Chicago. The Tribune was bought by a private equity firm that immediately stripped of paper for parts and turned their big historic building into luxury condos.

That's a good story. That's a great thing. But then the sort of cherry on the sundae was that they had a whole legal fight about, there was this huge Chicago Tribune sign and they wanted to keep it because it was like cool and interesting and pretty as opposed to like, you know, for the journalism.

They were just like, oh, it's so pretty. And they had a whole legal fight and they got to keep it. They won. So that's just one example. But yeah, it's completely extractive in order to maximize profits. What were some of the most surprising examples in your reporting of like private equity finding its way, not just there's impacts on journalism, there's impacts on healthcare. There's also been impacts on a lot of things I think people would normally consider to be like public services, utilities, and other things people traditionally associate it with either the government or municipalities. Yeah. So actually, one of the most powerful examples to me was in like elder care and nursing homes.

So private equity has in the last decade really increased their investments in nursing homes, in hospice, and other elder care facilities because we have an aging population. So demographically, that makes sense. And in general, it's actually really hard to measure the impact of a private equity investment because it's such a non-transparent industry. Part of why rich people flock to private equity is because it's a place to sort of park their money and grow it outside of, you know, the public eye because private equity funds are not subject to the same kinds of disclosures. So in this, but nursing homes, a group of business school professors were able to get a bunch of data to actually look at what is the difference in care between private equity owned nursing homes and non-private equity-owned

nursing homes. Over a 12-year period, they looked at thousands and thousands of homes. And this is like business school professors, right? This isn't like super progressive people with any sort of agenda. These are academics at like pretty reserved institutions. And they found that private equity ownership of nursing homes increased mortality at these homes by 10%, which amounted to about 20,000 extra lives lost in the time period that they looked at. they're charging taxpayers more money while killing more people and other markers of health also going down like mobility and things like that and they found that the reason for this was because private equity is extractive because the goal is as much profit as possible as quickly as possible what do they do they cut costs so what did they do with these nursing homes they cut back on nursing staff and then the chips fall from there yeah so uh what do we do you just live with warren can she do anything

i'm not a politician i don't have any power to actually change any of this if i could wave my magic wand the first piece I would actually change would be in order to regulate something, and not just private equity, any industry, you need campaign finance reform. Private equity donates so much money to campaigns and elections on both sides of the aisle. Joe Biden got about a little under $4 million from private equity funds. It's true. I'm sorry. Trump got lots. It's bipartisan.

It's bipartisan, right? So this is why politicians don't regulate private equity because they depend on them to run their campaigns. Even Trump had said he was going to close certain loopholes that private equity takes advantage of and they never did. So one aspect of this is that basically private equity provides a service it's no different than a service any other company provides but it's taxed at a lower rate right

right so what you're talking about is this loophole the wonky name is the carried interest tax loophole you don't need to remember that private equity funds get to take a cut of whatever they're buying into all this extraction that they're doing this stripping they're selling stuff off they're taking a cut of that right in addition to their fee they're taking a cut they're taking 20 of all these profits right that's their salary in air quotes so to speak right but it's not taxed the way you and me our salaries are taxed it's taxed at a, much lower rate at the capital gains tax rate. Again, wonky.

What's important about that is the capital gains tax rate is supposed to be like, well, if you've invested and you made money, but they're guaranteed this money. Whether the company makes money or not, it's a fee they get to charge, but they're allowed to have it be treated like it's profit. Exactly. And Barack Obama promised to close it. Didn't happen. Trump promised to close it. Didn't happen. Trump promised to close it. Didn't happen. Biden promised to close it. We'll see. It's really only popular with private equity executives. business models should just simply not exist. That companies shouldn't be allowed legally to load up another entity with debt, take the money off the books, and then abandon the company.

Like, is there any, what are the more radical proposals out there to kind of address this? So exactly what you're talking about, to go back to Elizabeth Warren. So a coalition of Democrats led by her, of course, she's like the main private equity foe on Capitol Hill and has been for years and years. But they have proposed a bill called the Stop Wall Street Looting Act

that would prevent exactly this element of private equity. It would make private equity firms responsible for the debt that they load onto companies. It would also close the carried interest tax loophole. It would also close the carried interest tax loophole. It would also prevent some of the other like really aggressive cost cutting measures. So often when a private equity firm comes in, they cut a ton of jobs, they bust unions, they cut benefits, they lower wages,

they do all of these things. So this particular bill would like prevent them from outsourcing jobs to really cheap countries, right? For like two or three years after an acquisition. So there is legislation. This is their second time trying to pass it. Well, it is thorny, right? Because we're talking about a business model

is the problem, right? On some level, this is a group of people taking some money, trying to acquire a business and make that money into more money by making the business more profitable in some way. But then you look at this specific version of what they're doing and it's like, there are groups of people that pool their money together, they acquire a business, and then they try to invest in that business and make it work. It's a specific part of this business model of basically gaming the

system to use debt, the tax code, and use cost cutting to reap profits. I think what you're identifying is this shift that has happened in the business world. And private equity is sort of at the forefront of it. Which is that if you think in the 50s and 60s, a marker of success, the focus in the business world was creating new value. It was a new product or a new solution to a problem. Pretty simple. you right it was a new product or a new solution to a problem you know pretty simple and we've transitioned to this point where actually the focus is not creating new value but extracting existing value over and over through this like financial engineering like investment strategies

accounting strategies that enable you to evade taxes through like depreciation of asset blah blah blah like it's financial engineering. That's now the focus. It's a real bummer. Yeah. Just to underscore the scope of private equities investments, in 2020, private equity managed $7.3 trillion in assets, which is roughly the value of Amazon, Apple, Tesla, and Microsoft combined. What are some of the biggest name companies that private equity has taken over that people might not realize have been kind of fallen prey to this? So a lot of fast food that you probably enjoy. There's one particular firm that's named after an Ayn Rand character in the Fountainhead that has bought up Dunkin' Donuts

which I'm from New England so I love Dunkin' Donuts Jimmy John's I'm going to tell you when you've hit something that I care about you don't care about Dunkin' Donuts? no it's Boston nonsense I'm hard disagree it's not French and it doesn't taste like vanilla to me the bad taste is the point

do you think that the private equity firms have cut costs on donut quality over there? Great question. No. I think the donuts are fine. I'm sorry. I'm going to have to be like full Boston on this. I'm from Boston. Alright, well some bias there. Some bias, for sure.

The veterinarian thing really bugs me. Also dentists. That's a big one. They're buying up the dentists? Yeah, so a lot of dentists are older and they want to retire. And this is again, a function of just like how much money private equity controls. So private equity firms will come in and they'll say, Hey, I want to buy your dental practice. And they can just offer way more than, you know, a nice new dentist that just graduated from dental school and might want to start a practice. Like they don't have that kind of capital. So private equity comes in and buys up the dentists.

And then what do they do? They just, you know, they, uh. So there was a case that there was like a federal investigation of it where they bought up this chain that focused on providing dental care to like low income kids. The federal investigation found that after it went under private equity ownership, they started essentially like offering tons and tons more procedures again because this is again getting back to the medicare billing like they could bill medicaid or whatever more so just unnecessary procedures depressing the quality of care like it's the same rinse and repeat you know i went to a dentist once in D.C. and he was hot.

But he was kind of mean. And he looked at my teeth and he was like, there's at least six cavities in here. I was like, this doesn't seem right to me. So I went to another dentist. It wasn't hot. No cavities. Oh.

What do you think is the correlation between hot and trying to get you to pay for a lot of fillings? I think Bain Capital might have been involved. That's all I'm saying. Cooley Bono, follow the money. I even remember his name, too, but I'm not going to out him. Thank you so much, Hannah, for being here. Thank you so much. Everybody, go read this incredible series at Mother Jones.

Truly, it's like an excellent look at how private equity has sort of found its way into every aspect of our economy. When we come back, Texas Representative Brian Slayton is here. Thank you, Hannah. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back. The people of Texas have been saddled with their unfair share of ongoing disasters, a failing power grid, devastating shootings, Ted Cruz,

but it takes a brave lawmaker to look past problems that are really just on the surface and confront the deepest, most pressing crisis of all, drag queens. This week, Republican Texas State Representative Brian Slayton announced his plans to pass legislation banning children from attending drag shows, telling cool-ass parents, there is only one way to raise children, the way the worst people do it. Please give a warm welcome to this absolute loser who spicked this non-issue as a sad mission,

Brian Slayton. Howdy, John! Oh, no. Okay. Oh, John, love it! You bet. Yes, he was on stage with you! You are, you are. Come on around. Come on John, love it. You bet. Yes, he was on stage with you. You are.

You are. Come on around. Come on around, representative. That's Mr. Representative to you, John. You bet it is. I'm so sorry. Mr. Representative, please, please join me. I won't sit that close to you, sir.

All right, you can sit there if you'd like. Okay. I mean, like this. Yeah, simply, let's spread it out. I can't. And to any of you homos out there, I came to slay. I mean, I come in peace.

Oh, all right. Brian, you put out a statement this week pledging to introduce a bill that would ban minors from attending drag shows in Texas. Is that right? You're damn straight, John. I'm sorry.

I mean, you are correct. I know you're not straight judging about how you dress. Thank you. Brian, I guess my first question is, what's wrong with you? All the urgent problems

Texas is facing, and you're proposing legislation to raise the legal age for drag performances. John, it's like I said in my statement. I saw a video of kids at a drag show in Dallas this past weekend and it had me gagging. And not the way

you perverts are always talking about gagging, okay? I was literally gagging. Young children shouldn't be watching a queen sissy that walk, John, no matter how fierce she might be. And let me put it in terms you'll understand. When kids are present,

drag queens should be required by law to shashay away. Okay? All right, I have to say, you seem surprisingly well-versed in drag culture for someone who wants to ban it. Oh, no, don't enemy, John. After I saw those sickening videos out of Dallas,

I sat my ass down and watched every last episode of RuPaul's Drag Race for research. You watched 14 seasons of Drag Race? Plus all-stars Drag Race UK, Kanata, Thailand, Espanthia. When will you queers

be satisfied? Drag Race the Moon? I watched that, yeah. I'd be in, yeah. In a heartbeat, bitch. I mean, John, my wife couldn't even tear me away from our biannual marital relations. I was watching so hard. That's how passionate I am on this issue.

I, for one, was glad when the queens voted against Shangela in All Stars 3. They made the right call. That's a dog shit reaction, and you all know it. Y'all know it. I mean, actually, who can remember? I like hunting, John. I like shooting animals with big guns, skinning them, and using their soft pelts to construct

run-worthy-worthy garments. Wait, shoot, hang on. Well, let's circle back to that. Explain this to me, Brian. What outcome do you think parents are risking by taking their kids to a drag show?

I understand that heterosexuality's gravity is so weak that a little lip syncing is all it takes to launch them into gay orbits. First of all,

all orbits are gay. You're just passively circling a larger, dominant body of space Girl, please Moons and astronauts are cooks And I've always said so The sun's a top, planets are bottoms

And comets are chaotic twinks Who need to learn a little respect But to your question You tell me, John Were you wearing skirts in public Before you got bit by your first drag queen? I'm sorry Before I got bit? your first drag queen? I'm sorry. Before I got bit?

They're not werewolves, man. Then why do I want one to bite me so bad? I'm sorry, what was that? I said, we should go fishing sometime. Listen, it's okay to be a straight Republican man who's interested in drag. It's cool even. Oh, John, I'm interested in drag the way liberals are interested in the traditional American family

as a target to be destroyed. Not a single part of that sentence is true. I don't get why this bill is even that controversial, Johnny. I would never take my kids to a drag show. My GOP colleagues would never take their kids to a drag show. If I had any friends outside

of my workplace, I know for a fact they wouldn't either. But there are 29 million other people in Texas. You can't impose your parenting style on an entire state. You know, a couple months ago, a friend of mine... Oh, you're going to go into it. I'm going to go into it for a second. A couple months ago, a friend of mine texted me,

and he said, do you want to meet me at Hamburger Mary's? I'm taking my kids to a drag show. And I said, hell yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And I went with two of the best parents and two of the best kids in the world to Hamburger Mary's and we went to a drag show and it was a blast. It was an absolute amazing time.

The kids were curious and they saw the dancing and they saw the lip syncing and they saw the dresses and they saw the lip syncing and they saw the dresses. And the little boy had this question. The question was, is this a costume like Halloween? We had a really interesting conversation. We're like, well, it's not exactly a costume like Halloween, but it's sort of like a character they're playing, but it's a way in which they get to kind of explore gender and like they like to be this other alternative person. So it's a little bit like that. Yes, we had a really interesting exploration of what it meant, the difference between a costume and drag,

and I think you're a terrible person, is the point that I'm really getting at. All right, John, that was a really sweet, made-up story. But maybe those poor kids thought they were having fun in the moment. But let me question you this. How are they doing now? They're doing fantastic.

Oh, you mean they're doing great for coke-addicted, popper-sniffing, middle-school drop-bats? No, they're doing normal great. Well, give it time, John. One day, they'll be walking around, straight as can be, and then all of a sudden, snap, they'll execute a flawless death drop,

and then it's all over. They've snapped hand tea. I mean, I mean, John. I will say, one of the drag queens just did come up to us when we gave them a dollar and they said,

you brought your kids here? It was fine. See, drag queens get it. Brian, let me be real with you for a second. Have you given any thought to what your drag name would be? No, of course not.

Me? The drag name? You can tell us. There's nothing to tell, John. Come on. Come on, get it off your chest. Nancy Slagan. What was...

I'm sorry. What was it? I said I drive a pickup truck so big I could pancake a Honda Civic and never even know it. All right, Nancy. Here's what gets me about this bill. It's not even consistent

with the internal logic of the rest of your culture war. Your colleagues are trying to ban books from schools and silence teachers on the bad faith argument that parents should have a choice about what their kids learn and experience. But parents already have a choice about whether to take their kids to a family-friendly drag show. You're out here trying to take away that choice. It's actually perfectly consistent, John, in that I believe that people should live and let live exactly the way I live. Or they can live and let die. Where's that lip sync, Mama Ru?

You can dress this up however you want, but you fundamentally just think kids should not be made aware of the existence of gay and queer people. That's what you won't say. You don't believe our existence is age appropriate. I got nothing to hide, John. I'm not the one going out there and deceiving people

with gorgeous makeup and magnificent over-the-top fashions and beautiful, beautiful wigs. Hmm. What is that? What's happening? Seems our producers have gone rogue, Brian. No. Seems they do that sometimes.

Maybe all the time, Nancy. Turn it off. Turn it off, John. Sorry, it's in their hands now. I have no control out here. I guess you'd better work, bitch. Damn you, John Lovett. You're making me turn into a drag queen

and I feel so good. Texas State Representative Nancy Slaygun, everybody. Oh no, it's a death drop. We've got a death drop. We've got a death drop, everybody. Brendan Scannell, everybody. When we come back, Adam Conover ruins the show.

And we're back. As gas prices continue to rise across the country, it's over $6 a gallon in Los Angeles right now. Solutions are elusive, except for the solution used by millions of people every day, taking the goddamn bus. Here to talk about his fervent love of public transportation and how it's more important than ever,

it's the star of Netflix's The G Word. Please welcome Adam Conover. Hello. Good to see you, Adam. Hi, everybody. So, Adam. Yeah. you have a bus fetish you want to you love buses you think they're sexually interesting yeah i'm a bus boy you're a bus boy i'm famously a bus boy did you take a bus here tonight uh no tonight netflix sent like a car like a whole car service for me to come here tonight, because this is officially a stop on my

PR tour for my new Netflix show, The G Word, out now on Netflix. Oh, I didn't realize that you considered this like a work thing. I would spend time with you on a personal level, but no, tonight, right now, I'm working hard. You said that literally, you know, the last time I saw you, you said it on this fucking stage.

We had this conversation on stage, and I said, I don't believe you. We're never going to hang out socially. Yeah, well, I mean, I wouldn't dress this nice if it wasn't for work, you know? You look fantastic. Thank you so much. So do you. Adam, please. You've talked about basically giving up

your car and switching entirely to public transportation, which is rare for somebody in LA who's, listen, a big deal. All right. You're a big fucking deal. You got that.

You're interviewing Obama on Netflix. All right. That's true. So talk a little bit about why you decided like, I'm done driving. I'm going to do public transportation virtually whenever I can. So first of all, an important bit of background is that I learned to drive in my 30s when I moved to Los Angeles. I grew up on Long Island,

which is a place where you need to have a car. One person clapped very slowly for Long Island? We're in Long Island. I'm a Siasa boy. I grew up on Wading River. I've never heard of that. It's on Long Island. It's rare to hear a town on Long Island I've never heard of.

It's in the north shorts in farm country by Shoreham. What was the stop on the LAR? Ronkonkoma. Wow. How power passed Ronkonkoma. It was a while past Ronkonkoma. Ronkonkoma.

Ronkonkoma. Ronkonkoma. A place that exists only in dreams. At the end of the line. So you grew up on Long Island but didn't learn to drive. I didn't learn to drive. I went to college. I didn't learn to drive there. I lived in New York City. Why didn't So you grew up on Long Island but didn't learn to drive. I didn't learn to drive. I went to college.

I didn't learn to drive there. I lived in New York City. Why didn't you learn to drive on Long Island? I have pretty bad eyesight. I'm legally blind in my left eye. I have poor depth perception and have attention deficit disorder. And I think both of those things combined

made me not comfortable generally behind the wheel of a car. That has literally stopped no one from driving. True. Have you seen about this pandemonium out there. My dad also had like a control thing.

He was a bad teacher. You know what I mean? It was very tense in the car. My sister never learned to drive either, so I think it might have been a little bit of a parental thing. But in any case, I was just never really comfortable with it.

But I moved to LA. I learned to drive, and I drove here for three years. My original commute as soon as I moved here was from Echo Park to West Hollywood. Terrible commute. 45 minutes just bumper to bumper. But I did it. I ate it. I was like, this is how you

must live. And then after about three or four years, I was driving home. I had a new commute just from downtown to Echo Park. Nice short commute. And I was driving home and I suddenly, there was a bicyclist next to me on the shoulder. There wasn't enough of a shoulder, so I couldn't go around him.

So I was going kind of slow, but people started honking at me. Yeah, I get angry. And so I was like, all right, I'll get in the left lane so I can go around. So I get in the left lane, but then someone's coming up behind me real fast. They honk at me. And suddenly my heart is pounding. I get home all upset. I've been having a nice day at work, but in the course of my 15-minute commute,

I was like, I almost killed somebody. I'm stressed out. That my 15-minute commute, I was like, I almost killed somebody. I'm stressed out. That day, I looked up. I was like, let me just see, something I'd never done before. Let me just see if there's a bus route from my house to my work. There was.

It's called the Dash Bus. It cost 35 cents, and it brought me to work in like 40 minutes, but I got to fucking sit and read a New Yorker, and you know, like just like look at the people on the bus, nice sunny day, and my life was immeasurably improved,

and I just became, I was like you know what, I'm going to do fucking public transportation in LA, and then when my girlfriend and I moved, we moved specifically to a spot where it was accessible to a couple bus lines, and things like that, and that is how I get around.

I take my fair share of ride shares, depending on where I go. But I avoid doing that as much as I can. I take the buses as much as I can. And I love it. It makes my life better. That's cool. Thank you.

LA recently decided to return to charging full fare, right? Yeah. For people to ride the bus. During the pandemic, they made it free for people to ride the bus. And they went back to charging full fare, which is a terrible decision. The bus should be fare, right? For people to ride the bus. During the pandemic, they made it free for people to ride the bus, and they went back to charging full fare, which is a terrible decision. The bus should be free, right? The bus should be free.

I mean, we have this weird obsession with the idea that public transportation should pay for itself. You know what doesn't pay for itself? Roads. They don't pay for themselves. We're all paying for those with taxes. We're all using them for free. You don't have to pay to get on the road.

You pay for it with your taxes, as you do for public transportation. Roads are a form of public transportation that we all pay into, that we all upkeep together. It's just the least efficient mode of public transportation possible, where in order to get on, you have to pay $15,000 to $30,000 for a vehicle. You have to pay hundreds of dollars a month for insurance to fuel it, repair it. You have to literally buy insurance for your car. Most people can't afford insurance for their own bodies. You have to buy insurance for your Toyota Corolla just to get on the fucking thing. Why not just like literally take away that little bit from the bus system, that little bit of

barrier to it? You talk a little bit about like how cheap it would be to make public transportation free in LA. Oh, it would be to make public transportation free in la oh it would be incredibly cheap the amount of metro's budget that comes in from fares is minuscule it's somewhere around 10 or less of their entire budget and that is pretty close to what they spend on fair enforcement on having people just like you know sometimes you're getting off the train and there'll be people like checking to see if you swed. You're just paying to occasionally give people tickets for jumping a style when we don't need to be. The system is fully funded through taxes in every other way. And so it's bizarre.

The strangest thing about public transportation in L.A. is that in New York City, at least prior to the pandemic, almost everybody took public transportation. Everyone's on the subway all the time. And that's part of why the system works as well as it does. It doesn't work that well in New York, but it's the best public transportation system in America. And it's because everybody takes it. In Los Angeles, we have a mental class divide

about public transportation. Public transportation is for poor people. In Los Angeles, that's how it's perceived. And so that's why when I come places and I do jokes on stage about taking the bus, people are like, really? You really took it? I've never taken the bus before. Why? I've never met anyone who's ever taken the bus before. I thought those were ghost buses. Who are on these things? Like, it's just

people who make less money than you. We have this sort of internalized belief that those people should be punished for riding public transportation they need to pay to get i don't need to pay to drive my tesla on a public street but someone who's making twenty thousand dollars a year cleaning other people's homes they need to pay a buck 75 to take the bus it is interesting this sort of class divide because you know when i lived in new york i rode the subway constantly love riding the subway in new york when i lived in dc i rode a bike. I spilled water all over myself. It's boxed water.

That's why. It's the worst. It says on the side, boxed water is better. Okay, can I just give an aside for a second? Please do. The problem with bottled water is not the packaging material. It's the fact that we're transporting water on trucks, okay? Water comes from taps.

It's free to transport it around through pipes. We're putting it on trucks and we're burning fossil fuels to transport it. Just the fact that you put it in a fucking box doesn't mean you deserve a medal. Also, the box tastes worse than the plastic. And it's time we face that, too. I hate box water. It tastes like the box. And that's my problem with it.

Because it's a stupid way to drink water. The box sucks. Back to the conversation at hand now. You know, when I first moved to LA, one of the first things I did was buy a bicycle because I biked around DC. Like in DC, I took the bus and rode a bike constantly. I loved it.

And then I moved to LA and I got a bike and I took my bike on Santa Monica Boulevard and then I turned around and I went home and I threw the bike away and I said bike on Santa Monica Boulevard and then I turned around and I went home and I threw the bike away and I said goodbye to you. I want to live. I love life

and I want to live. It's the most deadly city for biking in America. It stinks, but I do think that like it's famously a place that is devoted to car culture. What do you think explains

this divide that I think doesn't exist as strongly in other places? Like if you live in D.C., there's a huge kind of cross-section of the city that rides the bus all the time, like young professionals, people going to work at downtown hotels. D.C. has a wonderful subway system too.

Yes, and a great subway system. What do you think is the reason L.A. has this very specific class divide that isn't as strong in places like New York or D.C. or elsewhere? I think it's because I don't understand why this is the case in Los Angeles because it's not the case even in San Francisco, another city that was founded around the same time,

same state and everything. But Los Angeles has never invested in public goods, in things that everybody can use. It's a city based on private property. We have very few public parks. We have Griffith Park, which is mostly a shitty mountain. Hey, hey, no, you take that back.

It's a beautiful place. Fuck that. I'm not gonna have that here. Parks in LA, if you go to a public park in New York City, go into Prospect Park. You'll see a sign up. Activities in the park today. We've got book readings for kids and shit like that. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Is yoga not happening in Laurel Canyon? Am I hallucinating? It is, but it's a private yoga studio as opposed to, like,

parks in L.A. tend to be, hey, we happen to not build any buildings on the side of this mountain. You can go wander around in it if you want. You know? We have private country clubs, private golf courses. We're lucky that we have

a really good public library system, so we're the only few public goods in the city. And as a result, it's a city that was built on the idea that you will be in your private home you will drive your private car to a private place of work and then you will come back and everything public is like shitty it sucks and we used to have ideas we used to have the idea in america that like public things were good right like public goods were were some of the highest things our civilization could build. We have sort of fallen away from that.

It's actually a big part of what my new show, The G Word, is about. It is truly about the thing that government provides that cannot be provided in any other way is public goods. So things like the National Weather Service, which provides all of our weather forecasts. Every weather forecast you see on the news

derives from the National Weather Service, which we all publicly fund. None of us realize that we're funding it, and in fact, the private weather companies are constantly trying to undermine it. But that is literally the only way to predict the weather, is to everybody pools their money together and creates this incredible network of scientists that are all generating data, they're flying planes through hurricanes, all this shit we show you on the show. It's like an important part of how our civilization runs.

There are certain things that you can only provide in that way, and one of them is transportation, and it's something that we have forgotten about as a civilization. It's a big part of the mission of the show to show that. We've forgotten it, but also there was a 40-year campaign to destroy it. Exactly right, yeah. And we go through a lot of that history on the show to undermine the idea of publicly funded anything

as a good thing. Last question. If you could get one promise out of Karen Bass for what she would do as mayor around public transportation, what would it be? Oh, my gosh. Well, so that's a really good question because Karen Bass, were she to be elected mayor, would not have much jurisdiction over Metro because Metro is the county rather than the city.

She can appoint five people to the Metro board. I know too much about this shit. No, you don't. You know the exact right amount. By the way, the longer I live in Los Angeles, the more convinced I am that what I want to do is do some kind of a coup against the board of supervisors. the more convinced I am that what I want to do is do some kind of a coup against the board of supervisors. I feel like these fucking people need to be stopped. I don't like this county-city overlap. I think it's bad, and I think we should stop it. My pitch is what we need to do, make the county and city coterminous,

just make it one city. Like New York County and Manhattan. Culver City, why is this a city? I have a friend who lives there. He said, I voted for mayor of culver city i'm like mayor of what it's like five blocks why do you guy and it causes enormous problems in the city and county so but what would i say to karen bass um the number one thing is that a they should make it fare free number two is we need to massively increase service.

One of the worst things that they did was during the pandemic, ridership went down. And so they cut bus service. Now ridership is back up, but bus service is still cut. So that means that if you're waiting for a bus, instead of waiting for five minutes or seven minutes, you're waiting for 15 minutes or 20 minutes. Now, there's a wonderful app called the Transit App. It shows you exactly when the buses are coming. It can get you around that. and that's what I do. I don't leave my house until I see the buses coming.

Smart. But if you were to run buses constantly, here's a pitch, okay? You folks might know Sunset Boulevard around Echo Park and Silver Lake, right? It's one of these shopping districts. People love to go to brunch. They love to go to all the little boutiques and shit like that, right? Warby Parker. Warby Parker store is there, right?

Traffic is terrible. It's actually worse on the weekends because people are trying to go from brunch to Warby Parker. Warby Parker store is there, right. Traffic is terrible. It's actually worse on the weekends because people are trying to go from brunch to Warby Parker to whatever the fuck, right? Yeah. And there's very little parking. Sweetgreen. You like to eat at Sweetgreen?

No, no one likes Sweetgreen. It's office food. You're eating that on the weekend? I don't know. You're eating your office lunch food on the weekend? Let me get a fucking Naomi Osaka bowl on a Sunday? Are you a pervert? What the fuck is this?

I am a deviant. Sweetgreen is the closest thing the progressive class has found to a feed bag. It truly is. I eat it all the time. I eat it all the time. And the dressing, it's not enough. My girlfriend orders it to our house and I'm like, are we in an office building? Don't do this to me.

I don't want sweet green unless I'm spending the afternoon trying to crack a story. Yeah, it's like, I need to be looking at Twitter while I eat. They should have Twitter just in front of you at the sweet green so you can just read it. So here's my pitch. Traffic is really terrible in that area. There's parking up and down the side of the street, right?

We don't need parking on the side of Sunset Boulevard. It's like five cars per every quarter mile. It's extremely inefficient. There's very little parking, right? Take the parking away, put a bus-only lane, run a bus there

every five minutes. Guarantee the bus will come every five minutes. You will have people say, oh, I don't need to drive from place to place. I can go to Sunset Boulevard and I can just get on a bus

and go up and down. You have to increase the amount of service if you want people to use it. People don't take the bus because they're like the bus never comes. If they think the bus comes very often because it does, then they will take it more often. That's the most important thing. We need a virtuous circle, not a vicious circle. Exactly right. That's what I think.

It is the cheapest way to improve the economy of the city because people will be able to get to fucking work. It's an essential. Becoming reliant on the bus and just, you don't have to think about your car

and you can just, you know the bus is gonna come and you know the routes and it's internalized and it's a better way. It is nice. And it is a freedom. I like my Tesla though.

What I really like, try to, it's a great vehicle. Elon makes a fantastic car. I'm gonna ignore what you're saying. Here's the thing about it is that like,

what's amazing about it is that like, yeah, he didn't invent anything, but neither did Henry Ford. You know what I mean? He just found a better way to do it. And I fucking love my Tesla. My favorite part about it is that none of the parts of the car are sealed properly. So you really can really feel the road and hear the road

because you're basically in a tent. The water gets in. Yeah. You feel like you're part of nature inside of that car because of how poorly it's constructed. I also like that. Can't get it repaired. That's nice. I like that aspect of it.

I also think it's cool how it rattles and that if you stop one rattle, it moves elsewhere. What I really try to emphasize about public transportation is it's not about the cost. It's not about the environment. It's that it really does make your life better. Like, when I came to L.A.

and I was like, okay, I gotta drive to work. Then afterwards, you know, there's a party I wanna go to. I have to drive back to my house to drop off my car so I can take a lift to the party so I can go get drunk at the party. If you just leave your car

at home, you get to the place you're going another way, the possibilities open to you of how you can get home. You can meet a friend and say, oh, hey, where are you going? Let's go to an escape room. Let's go to an escape room. Let's go to an escape room after work.

No, I appreciate that. You have to babysit your car to get it home. I'm glad you made that point because I do think so often on the left, the arguments are from virtue. And that's fine. Like, I'm glad that we want to make the best case we can for why it's a good thing to do for the world.

But what I appreciated about your argument for public transport is like, I like it. My life is better because of it. It is a good thing to do for me. Because I do think that we do plenty of encouraging people to eat their vegetables. You know what I mean? This is like when you put cheese on the broccoli.

You know how I get to my barber? Here's what I do. On a Saturday, I get really high, I get on the bus, and I listen to jazz. It's what I do. And I listen to jazz. I listen to a man named Sam Wilkes and Sam Gendel

they play saxophone and bass and I'm so glad that you think so and dappled sunlight filters through the windows of the bus and I watch

the city go by I look at my fellow passengers and I just fucking bliss out you're sitting in your Tesla white knuckling

white knuckling listening to listening to a podcast you hate. I might as well get through this one too. This is what I'm talking about. That shit's not happening on the bus, man. Nobody's listening to that on the bus. We're just chilling on the bus.

We're just chilling on the bus. Adam Conover, everybody. Everybody. Seriously, I am so excited for the G word. There is nobody who's doing a better job Of telling the story in an entertaining And informative way about the importance of government And the work we need to do to kind of

Restore public good in this country Adam Conover, everybody Check out the G word When we come back, Adam's going to stick around Okay, stop Don't go anywhere This is Love It or Leave It, and there's more on the way And we're back.

It's been a minute, but a minute's all I need to play an OK Stop video, you perverts. What? I think I got the cadence wrong. Please welcome Brian Simpson to the stage. He joined us for OK Stop. Very funny comedian. Brian, welcome.

Y'all sound like y'all never rode the bus. I've been riding the bus for like five years now. It's like, there's more reasons the bus sucks other than that they don't come that often. Yeah, they smell bad and where they don't go, right? Because think about it like this. Wherever there's wealth, there's poor people that have to work for you and shit, and they live farther away,

and the buses don't go out there. But this is a problem we could solve. This is not a problem with the idea of buses. This is a problem with the way that we have arranged our buses so far. I say buses only. Ban cars. There we go.

There we go. Yeah. Just a bus, like you said, a bus on every street every five minutes. Hell yeah. Yeah, we could do it. I mean, I'm going to keep my car. Now it's cyber, okay, stop.

Okay. Here's how it works. It's Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. We're just going to, whenever we want, we just say, okay, stop, and we comment on their nonsense. Okay. It's as simple as that. Let's roll the clip. I would rather give Nancy Pelosi a

sponge bath than to do her one dinner without a shift. Wow! That's a hell of a way to start the clip. I was first shocked that they were talking to each other. That's just too much for me all at once. It's weird to see them in conversation. I do think of

these extremist right-wing Republicans as, you know how children they have to get to a certain level of maturity before they move away from parallel play? You have to get to a certain level of brain function before you start playing with each other. At first they're just little toddlers. They'll just sit and they'll play by themselves.

And you have to grow up a little bit to start figuring how to interact. I don't think of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gates as having the kind of mental and kind of social acuity to interact with I don't think of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz as having the kind of mental and kind of social acuity to interact with each other. They should just be straight to camera. You know, alone.

Giving Nancy Pelosi a sponge bath is a weird thing to pop into your mind of something you wouldn't want to do. I think he wants it. Well, I just, like, he's saying that he would rather give Nancy Pelosi a sponge bath than have dinner,

just a meal, with Adam Schiff. Right? And like, and I think that's, he's trying to say he really doesn't like Adam Schiff, right?

That's the joke. Yeah, but what's bad about having a meal with Adam Schiff? That's not better than giving Nancy Pelosi a sponge bath. Right, because like,

a sponge bath, you gotta get every area. This is also such a hacky joke. Giving old person a sponge bath. Right, because a sponge bath, you've got to get every area. This is also such a hacky joke. Giving an old person a sponge bath, this is an 80s joke. This is like old Leno or something. Yeah, his very first thought, he could punch it up a little bit.

What a disgrace to the foodies out there. He's like, I'd rather eat dinner with anyone than give anyone a sponge bath. Yeah, right. Right. Well, I just don't want to give anyone a sponge bath. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. Well, I just don't want to give anyone a sponge bath and having dinner with someone's not a big deal.

I would rather work in a senior care facility for my job. I would rather give senior citizens sponge baths, one of whom is Nancy Pelosi, rather than, I want to leave Congress and become a nurse in a hospice care facility rather than have one dinner with a guy I dislike. My view is this incredibly important service

that healthcare providers offer, which is taking care of people who need help getting clean in order to kind of not become more sick because of their incapacity. This incredible act of generosity and care and love for a fellow human being, an act of a nurse to kind of take care of someone who's infirm by cleaning

them and helping them in their hour of greatest need. I would rather do that than have a Burger King with fucking shifty shift. How would he feel if we threw in like an exfoliating thing? Instead of a sponge, like a rough bath for Nancy Pelosi. I would rather make sure Nancy Pelosi's skin is glowing.

Right. I would rather help remove all the dead elbow skin and really kind of give her a nice kind of fresh fresh kind of I'd rather rub her neck in emo oil so she gets that glow. No, I'm with Matt Gaetz

at this point because seriously Nancy Pelosi she needs the help you could give her a whole new life you know, you could give her a wonderful

or you could schmooze with Schiff come on that's, oh that's selfish you're gonna chat up the representative from California? Give me a break. No, go help out the old lady who needs a sponge bath. That's the more selfish thing to do.

Would it have blown your mind if he was like, I'd rather give Nancy Pelosi a sponge bath than Adam Schiff a sponge bath? Like, he just really loves nancy but but just to just to bring this i don't have the color for you okay like like a lot of people would say maybe pelosi is their least favorite member no way would you trim her toenails i would trim her toenails with my teeth before I would go to bed. Okay, stop. Sorry, I forgot that this escalates. So, Nancy Pelosi, I assume this is maybe after the sponge bath. I guess, you know,

of course it's after the sponge bath. You want the toenails to be soft. Yeah. So, he's saying, rather than just sitting down having dinner with TJ Fridays with Adam Schiff, he's rather put Nancy Pelosi's feet in his mouth. He's like full spa day mani pedis with Nancy Pelosi than any meal with Adam Schiff.

That's insane. I'd rather clip her toenails, wash her feet, give her a massage, give her a full stretch out, a full Jazzercise class, then give Adam Schiff one of my two Twix bars. Whether it's split or Twix. It is truly baffling to me if we were to say, hey, hey Matt, I know you're hungry, it's like 8pm, we've been working all day, you're really hungry. Adam Schiff got Boston Market. All right? He got a rotisserie chicken. He got some greens.

You can come eat it. Or, over here, we have a bowl of Nancy Pelosi's toenails. Which would you rather eat? You're hungry. He's not gonna eat the Boston Market! Yeah, come on. Adam Schiff is sitting at a table club. There's the cornbread.

There's the chicken. There's the mac and cheese. There's a candle at the center a tablecloth. There's the cornbread. There's the chicken. There's the mac and cheese. There's a candle at the center. He's sitting. It's a beautiful table. No one's close, so you can really feel comfortable. You know, sometimes you sit on a banquette. You're too close.

It changes the vibe. This is empty. Just the two of you. And Adam has promised there'll be less than 10 minutes. Yeah. Just shovel it and go. Yeah. I just don't believe him.

I think the thing is, I don't believe him. I think he would sit down with Adam. And also, by the way, once in a while, a meal with someone you hate is fantastic. Right? Once in a long while, you sit across from someone you cannot stand, and you just go in

with guns blazing, and you're like, I'm gonna make this a conversation. And you know what? You don't want to do it a second time, but it's better than sponge baths. This feels like the beginning of a weird Snickers commercial. Like, are you hungry?

Let's keep rolling it. That's really impressive. So here's how I feel about Adam Schiff. I feel that Adam Schiff is such a liar, and I feel like he has abused his power in Congress so much so with the Russia hoax and now the January 6th lie, complete lie. I think he should be expelled from Congress, and I think he owes a debt to the American people for all the tax dollars that he has wasted. Emotional harm, complete and total. He destroyed people's character through his efforts and he's continuing to do so.

I honestly think that he should actually possibly be prosecuted and put in jail. We've reached our first. She sounds like she's learned everything she knows about politics from binge watching Law & Order. She's using the big words she's learned.

Dereliction of duty. She's just really spitballing. And then I think he should possibly maybe go to prison and perhaps they should put him in the shoe. And now that I think of it, the chair could be good for him. I don't know. Maybe, I don't know, Maybe like, I don't know.

I had this idea, like maybe we make him naked, march down the street from the chapel to the Capitol, shouting shame with a bell, maybe a nun's involved, just spitballing here. She makes me feel guilty about all the shit I said about Sarah Palin. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. I would rather give Sarah

Palin the sponge bath than have the slave. Man, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, disagreement. Because I would not expel him from Congress. I would not allow him to sit on committees. But I fundamentally believe the only people that should get to pick who's in Congress are the people in that district. I respect that. When they did it to you, I did not like like it and I would not expel him from Congress. I would probably just like keep him in that in glass case up in the rafters of the Congress that Nancy Pelosi.

No, they took down the Nancy Pelosi COVID box. I would rebuild it for Adam Schiff. Rebuild it for Adam Schiff. I just want to make one point here, which is he's very much against people being expelled from Congress because that's a principle he feels may be quite relevant to him. Yeah, nobody cares if there's a couple rent boys on your credit card, okay? I'm a Republican through and through. And that's okay, stop.

When we come back, it's time for some hot takes. And we come back it's time for some hot takes and we're back now it's time for hot takes you know how it works we're gonna get I haven't seen these I really haven't I don't see them

Brian and Kendra and Hallie they set this up for us alright and we have to defend these takes for one minute alright let's see who's up first you should always be honest

about what you think of your friends' shitty projects, even if you want to book them later. I've always thought you should be extremely honest with your friends about their shitty projects, even if you want to book them later. So for example, if someone has spent like six to eight months

working on something, and they send you a screener after a picture is locked and they say, what do you think? I think the most important thing you can tell them is, you don't think it works. Because that's how they know you're a true friend.

Because at a moment in which they can't change anything, which every fiber of their being has to be about supporting the work and believing in it so which they can't change anything, which every fiber of their being has to be about supporting the work and believing in it so that they can go on with their fucking life, that's the moment to come in and say, I don't think you got great performances because that's what a true friend would do.

Why are you looking at me? Is this about my show? Nope. It's not about anyone's show because it's never happened. But that's what it means to be a friend. Thankfully it hasn't come up for me because all my friends' projects are fantastic.

Wow. That's Hollywood. That's Hollywood. That's Hollywood, baby. I had to defend it. That was my hot take. I defended it. Let's see what's up next. This is for Brian. The War on Drugs was among our most just successful and awesome wars. Encore. Boo drugs.

Brian, that's your view. Take it away. We have one minute. This isn't going to be hard because this is what I actually think. I mean, listen, where else would we get license plates? What? What? How many jobs have been created in rural America from the prison industrial complex?

The people are always looking at the negative side of things. And not only that, but the drugs are now in a free market where any street entrepreneur can set their own prices. It's not like drugs are gone. They're just not regulated and unsafe or whatever. But stop being a little bitch. Go out there. Buy drugs from a stranger at a festival. Maybe get arrested for it. And then after all that, it's funded the CIA.

I mean, we move cocaine. The CIA is famously a queer space. Yeah, exactly. That was really well done. Great job, Brian. Thank you for sharing your view. Let's see what's next. Todd Phillips' Joker 2 is a necessary sequel,

which I am excited for. Adam Conover, take it away. You have one minute. You know, after you've already ripped off Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, why not do it again? I mean, people love Scorsese,

people love those movies, he's dead, and it's the only way we're going to get more of those movies is if we keep doing rip-offs of them

that everybody wants to see. And the best thing about the Joker movies is the representation of stand-up comedy. That is what it is about. It's a soulless medium that turns you into a supervillain. And I, as a stand-up comic, know that. And it's true that every stand-up comic

has a dark soul inside of them just waiting to come out. That's not at all a insulting cliche about about the medium and i can't wait to see more of it uh thank you for sharing your thoughts i've always felt like i am the sandra bernhard of stand-up comedy in the king of comedy that's sort of what i view myself as just a super super fan. They have never seen the movie. Nobody knows that the Joker is a rip-off of the King of Comedy because no one, no one

has seen the King of Comedy. I've seen the King of Comedy I've never seen the Joker. That's the problem. I didn't see it because I knew it was a rip-off of the King of Comedy. How many people here have seen the Joker? How many people have seen the King of Comedy? Wow. That's the problem. How many people are proud of those answers?

I've never seen a film. And he's never seen a film, and you don't hear that enough these days. Too long. I think it's brave of you to admit that you have not and will not see Fire Island, which is not something you're hearing a lot from people. Never. See my friends work and be jealous?

See a movie I auditioned for and wasn't cast in? Okay. Okay, let's see what's next. There's always the Billy Eichner one, you know? Another one I auditioned for! Marry ventriloquists, fuck magicians, kill comedians. Brendan, take it away. I will say this.

As somebody who looks like a ventriloquist dummy, who's not going to marry this face, okay? Me, Eddie Redmayne. Imagine the two of us. We come up to you in a bar. You fucking us both, girlfriend? You saying, I'm gonna play with these strings. Kill comedians. They're all losers. Narcissists. None of them are very tall. And the ones that are, are probably secretly gay. What was the middle one? Magicians.

What are you doing with magicians? Marrying them? Fucking the magicians. Oh. See, I got this wrong. Well, you can marry the magician if you want. I never have even looked at a magician. I'll tell you this.

I went to the Magic Castle. My boyfriend and I both got blackout drunk and got in the biggest fight, and we almost broke up. So I don't have anything to do with magicians. Ta-da! Why didn't you keep it up there?

He was all about fucking the ventriloquists. Like, all the moans are coming from over there. We can do one more. Oh my God. Hashtag justice for Johnny. Edward Scissorhands is fantastic. And the thing about it is, if you love the work of Johnny Depp,

you know Johnny Depp. Because he is his work. And he is those characters. He is a queer-coded pirate. And I think the most important thing about the news today is not really paying attention. The key thing to do is to kind of skitter along the surface, barely understanding, never allowing yourself to sink

even one inch into the water to see what's happening underneath. That's what life is all about. Now, you really never want... don't stop for a second. We are all the coyote halfway across a ravine. If you look down, you will die. And if you look down, you may find out that this case was entirely fraudulent

and that the jury made a terrible mistake. And ultimately, Amber Heard is being punished for words she didn't even write in a case designed to make everyone not know what happened for the purposes of through noise and mud and bullshit, clearing someone of something he very clearly was doing inside of this relationship that no one really can deny, which is why I think justice for Johnny.

And the point is you don't want to know that. None of us want to know that. It's easier to not know that. It's easier to just have it kind of barely touch your kind of brain and just not kind of have to think about it and then get back to what's happening on Drag Race, which is the most important thing because it is a fantastic season.

And yeah, that's what I wanted to say about that. I'll do another. Let's do one more. What on earth do gays have to be proud of, Brendan? What on earth do gays have to be proud of? The television show Will & Grace. Listen, here's what I'm going to say about gay people.

They're loud. A lot of them don't wear deodorant. This year in L.A., there are two prides because the prides had a schism. And so now there's West Hollywood pride, where I almost died on Sunday. And now there's a new pride. That's too much pride.

You know what we need to be proud of? Straight people for dealing with our annoying voices. How can we talk like this? I wasn't born with this voice. I developed it by being a faggot.

I wish I didn't sound like this. What? What? Come on, hey We like sounding like This is the prison that I exist in I auditioned for 1883 And they didn't let me in it

I'm so sorry Are there really two prides? There's two prides There's another one this weekend. Doesn't make any sense. Bless your heart. I think this one's downtown. We need to have simultaneous parades,

pride and prejudice. And that's Hot Takes. When we come back, we'll end on a high note. And we're back. Because we need it this week, here it is, the High Note. Hi, John. This is Austin from Kansas City, Missouri. I'm calling to leave my High Note saying that eight years ago,

I was randomly paired with my roommate in college. I was a closeted gay kid from Missouri, and he was a very conservative small-town boy. Flash forward eight years, we lived together again, and I walked into my room today to find a present laying on my bed with a note that said, Happy Pride. So the high note is definitely that, you know, people can change and people can progress, and good things can come to people who try. Thank you.

Hi, John Lovett. My name is Jill, and I'm calling from Mercer County, New Jersey, and I'm a volunteer with Moms Demand Action. This was one gut punch of a week, but my high note is that this weekend we texted and we phone banked and we signed up more volunteers for our local Moms Demand Action group than ever before. We're not giving up. We're going to do this. And I can't thank you enough for all that you do. Thanks, John. Bye.

Hi, Lovett. This is Andy from Omaha, Nebraska, calling with a long overdue high note, but one that is still bringing a lot of hope in a pretty dark time. Earlier this year, the Nebraska State Legislature, like many conservative states, tried to ban abortion. A couple different ways, but really pushing a trigger ban that would have made it completely illegal if Roe v. Wade is overturned by the Supreme Court. Thanks to an amazing coalition of organizations and a whole bunch of Nebraskans that support access to abortion showing up and using their voices, we were actually able to block that bill from going into effect.

So for the foreseeable future, abortion is still legal in the state of Nebraska. We're going to have to keep fighting, but this is pretty exciting news in a state that most people considered conservative enough that they would ban abortion the moment they had a chance. So thanks to the only unicameral in the country and a well-functioning filibuster rule, we were able to stop it this time, and we're probably going to have to stop it a few more times before they give up. We're feeling very, very cautiously optimistic that we can do that. So that's my high note.

Thanks so much for all you do. Bye. Hi, love it. This is Juliet in Atlanta. And my high note this week is that my stepdaughter, who has three kids and survived the pandemic in a pretty crappy trailer, homeschooling three kids, put herself through EMT school all of last year and got a job, is supporting herself, was able to apply for and get an apartment and a car on her own credit with her own money. I could not be more proud of her. She overcame a lot of nonsense in her life. And I'm just thrilled, thrilled with the woman that she's become. Thanks to everybody who called in with a high note.

If you want to leave us a message about something that gave you hope, call us at 213-262-4427. That is our show. Thank you so much to Brian Simpson, Hannah Leventova, Brendan Scannell, Adam Conover, everyone who sent a high note. There are 150 days until the midterm elections. Have a great weekend. Love It or Leave It is a Crooked Media production. It is written and produced by me, John Lovett and Lee Eisenberg. Kendra James is our senior producer and Brian Semel is our producer.

Hallie Keeper is our head writer and Jocelyn Kaufman, Pallavi Gunalan and Peter Miller are the writers. Bill Lance is our editor and Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Our theme song is written and performed by Sure Sure. Thanks to our designers Jesse McLean and Caroline Haywood for creating and running all of our visuals, which you can't see because this is a podcast. And to our digital producers, Norma Alconian, Milo Kim, Mia Kelman, and Matt DeGroote for filming and editing video each week so you can.