Lovett or Leave It - The Doctor is In…voking the Fifth

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

Anthony Fauci gives Republicans the silent treatment, Mitch McConnell somehow says even less, and Joe Biden overshares enough for both of them. Daveed Diggs stops by to talk supervillains and elaborate musical contraptions, then we get just dumb enough with the great Anthony Michael Hall. The Egg of Truth turns up the heat but forgets to turn it off, and we decide if we regret that in a round of Second Thoughts.Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.To watch this episode with subtitles, click here and turn on closed captions (CC).You can also request a transcript by emailing [e-mail]. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.

We just had stand-up comedian, documentary filmmaker, and professional truth-teller W. Kamau Bell joined the show where my own writers helped him destroy me. Why does this keep happening? Kamau is a new show, too. Who's with me? Where he breaks down the current cultural and political dumpster fire and sits down with someone he genuinely admires to give them their flowers, ask the questions he actually once answered, and land on something real we can all do to make this hellscape a little more livable. He's recently had conversations with Leslie Jones on turning pain into comedy, Robert Reich on the fight for democracy, and David Diggs on chasing creative projects. It's funny, it's got heart, and is a reassuring pat on the

shoulder for anyone who needs it right now. Watch new episodes of Who's With Me on YouTube or listen to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, did you hear? Watermelon is back at booster juice all summer long. Nice. I love the watermelon explosion. And the watermelon wave.

Yep. They even got a new watermelon asaipole this year. The one in a melon bowl. And what does that sound like? Mmm. Like that. Loster Juice. Canadian-born, blending since 1999. It's love it to leave it live it from Hollywood. I'm John Lovett, and tonight I'm pretty and pink.

That's not me. I think I put the emphasis in the wrong place. And tonight I'm pretty and pink. All right. We've got a great show for you tonight, but first let's get into it. What a week. In a contentious hearing on the origins of COVID-19 and the government's handling of the pandemic, former national health official Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times. I'll just let this guy do the talking, said Fauci as he opened his bag and released a coughing Chinese bat into the hearing room. But first, Fauci explained why he wouldn't be answering questions, saying this of committee chair Rand Paul. The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up in

his words, quote, behind bars, unquote. Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion. Damn, Fauci, 85 years old and still administering jabs. Fauci's silence gave the Republicans an opportunity to do what they basically wanted to do anyway, which is yell at him for a while. Here's Josh Hawley. You were so focused on getting every award and every drop of cash that you could,

all because you wanted to be on TV, you wanted to be the sun god of science, you wanted to be the guy who was in charge of it all, you wanted to blambass Trump, you wanted to make sure that nobody else stole your spotlight, you wanted to be the guy. You had time to sit for in-style magazine. Somewhere along the line, it became all about you. You became a narcissist and a megalomaniac and a liar.

And you know what? Holly's right. Having a lying narcissistic megalomaniac obsessed with the spotlight and charged during a pandemic was a disaster. Also, there's something about his tone that's like, like it's a mix of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park that's like, you only have, if you could. You never stop to think if you should.

Plus, he does a little bit of a, like, theater kid version of Tom Cruise, being like, Fouchy, did you order the code red? You know? Here's Ohio Senator Bernie Marino. It was about six years ago today that I decided I'm gonna give up my businesses,

sell them all, run for office, run to the United States Senate. Here I am sitting in front of you six years later, saying, who the fuck do you think you were for doing that? For six long years, I've sat down sacrificed and campaigned and fought to finally have the chance to sit in this chair, across from you to say to your face what I've wanted to say since the dark days of the pandemic. Fuck you, bitch!

I yield my time. Moreno recounted a specific story about a mother who was arrested at her son's football game for not wearing a mask. If you're curious, it made the news at the time. It was from September of 2020. Of course, at the time, Ohio's mask mandate was issued by the state's Republican governor, Mike DeWine. And the guidance wasn't Fauci's alone. It came from the White House under Donald Trump. All of this is an effort to rewrite the past in order to turn Fauci into some sort of supervillain, even suggesting Fauci was responsible for the virus itself.

Here's Tommy Tuberville. And we're going to go after him with everything we've got because the guy killed or had something to do with killing 9 million people. It's an example. Yeah, we can't prove that, right? So, but that's yet to be determined how many people are due to that. We can determine it. Now, we can determine it because he was in on the gain of function. He was a guy that funded this.

We understand that, yes. You can always tell when the reporters over at Fox News attended that mandatory defamation training after the Dominion lawsuit, she's like, I'm not going down for this. Now, if you're not a consumer of right-wing media, you might be confused. You might think, I know they don't like Fauci, but I don't. didn't realize they have decided he's a mass murderer, but maybe I ran out of Free New Yorker articles. What gives? Great question. The answer is a little long, but I've promised the producers of this program that I can whip through it in about two minutes. Start the timer.

The claim is that when Fauci was at NIH, its agency funded a research grant at an organization that in turn issued a grant to the Wuhan lab where some believed the virus emerged, and that grant funded a project in which scientists created a version of a coronavirus that was more infectious in mice, which could be considered the kind of gain of function research that Fauci denied was taking place. So far, not a great set of facts for Anthony Fauci, who, and this is neither here nor there, is not Jewish. But scientists believe this research cannot be the source of the pandemic, because genetically the virus in this study is just not closely related enough to COVID-19, which is certainly a relief for Fauci, as is the evidence that points to the virus emerging

from the nearby market and spilling over to humans from animals at least twice. At the same time, there is no question that the Chinese government had engaged in a massive cover-up. The only question is what they were trying to hide. Did COVID escape from a lab or from a nearby market? We may never know, but the experts who called it a conspiracy theory were wrong, as were the efforts to protect us from uncertainty and bad facts throughout the pandemic. And that is to me the most important lesson of all of this that the Republican grandstanding prevents us from actually learning.

And I'm sorry there aren't more jokes in this part. Not every day can be Lindsay Graham's funeral. Fauci and public health officials were in an unconstitutional. unprecedented emergency, terrified that the health care system would come apart, trying their best to communicate with a scared country with rapidly evolving evidence about a novel disease at a time when the president of the United States was spreading misinformation from the White House podium on a daily basis, lying about case numbers, about hydroxychloroquine in bleach, lying about mask, about the severity of the pandemic. Even so, many officials acted like pundits,

gauging how much truth and nuance we could handle in order to elicit the best behavior from the public. That was because anti-vaxxers and right-wing trolls undermine faith in public officials and acted like basic steps to protect each other was the second coming of Mao, but it was also because of a lack of faith in the rest of us. It was true of public health officials and a lot of journalists who, from a place of better or safe than sorry, downplayed their own uncertainty and preferred simple directives to ones that more clearly reflected the actual complicated evidence. It may have come from genuine concern, but there was a cost. This hearing is obviously part of a fucked up Republican agenda to smear an 85-year-old doctor who devoted his life

to public health so that they can perform for an audience that wants to be told that the pandemic and all that pain and trauma was really the fault of liberals. But that doesn't mean Democrats, with all of our respect for experts and institutions, aren't susceptible to a kind of condescension that is not only counterproductive, but politically toxic. And if we fail to learn that lesson at our peril in the next pandemic and every election in between,

stop the timer. Okay. Now, thank you for bearing with me. Here's a joke about Lindsay Graham that I thought of after the show on Tuesday. Lindsay Graham is a lot like a Trojan, horse. He'd love to be filled by a bunch of Greeks before killing a bunch of civilians. Speaking of dead guys, Mitch McConnell has now been absence from Congress for over a month as he

recovers from what he claims was a fall. For comparison, Lindsay Graham, who is dead dead, has missed fewer than three weeks. McConnell's office released this new proof-of-life photo, once again showing the Kentucky senator smiling next to his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chow. This proves nothing. any AI image generator could produce a comparable image with the prompt, quote, Elaine Chao pretending her husband is alive. The photo was accompanied by a statement supposedly by the senator, which said, I'm still working hard to get back to my full schedule of work in the Senate, though a bad sign that the statement began with, as the late Mitch McConnell once said. His office also released a statement from his physician saying that McConnell continues his recovery from a fall at home in June and that he is not yet

medically cleared to leave the rehab facility and return to the office. Here's the problem. This statement might make sense if Mitch McConnell was a baseball player with a torn ACL or an astronaut with a bad case of ate lettuce. But he's a senator. The job of the senator has literally zero physical requirements. You just need to be conscious and able to communicate a yes or a no. You don't even need to be able to raise your hand in the Senate.

Being able to raise your hand is considered showing off. Even Diane Feinstein was still physically at work. She didn't know she was there, but she was there. And speaking of elder abuse, newly released audio tapes appeared to show then Vice President Joe Biden sharing classified information with his ghostwriter in 2016. I would say, though, from here on out,

as long as Biden's problems are with a ghostwriter and not a ghost buster, I think he's in pretty good shape. The tapes were released by a conservative group connected to the Heritage Foundation after Biden lost a legal battle to keep them private. You can see why. Said Biden in the tapes to the ghostwriter who did not have a security clearance,

and this is real, quote, the next thing I have here is classified. You can hear Jill Biden yelling, Joe, no, and then what sounds like her squirting in with a spray bottle, but it was too late. Speaking of abuse by an elder, President Trump on Wednesday announced a $22 billion renovation of Virginia's

Washington Dulles International Airport at an Oval Office event alongside Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Thank you for being here as we unveil exciting plans for a major and long overdue renovation and reconstruction of Washington's really horribly thought of Dulles International Airport. We are announcing plans to add more than 5 million square feet of new or renovated space. We'll replace the current C&D concourses, which are basic disasters all the while preserving the iconic original terminal. By Thursday, Dulles was completely covered in algae.

This guy moves fast. Here is the President of the United States in the midst of an ongoing war getting deep in the weeds of the planned airport parking garage. So we're going to have a magnificent garage. What would you say, Sean? How many, how many cars?

30,000 and 32,000. 32,000. It'll be actually the largest garage in the world. 32,000 is big. Oh boy, you could hold a lot of classified documents in there, said Joe Biden. The president, believe it or not, went into even further detail about the garage. Mostly above ground, we don't like down. People don't like going down underneath. I'd guess Trump has gone his entire life without going down underneath.

Usually the kind of crass stuff kills. But not today. A sophisticated crowd. Here, the president continued. It's an impossible airport. You get off a bus, you go into a train, you get from a train, you get onto another bus. It's a worse airport. He says this like he personally experiences airports. The last time Trump went through an airport, you could smoke in there with a gun in your carry on it

and a full-sized shampoo bottle in each hand. And look, we've had a lot of fun tonight, but here's the thing. Trump is getting rid of the dullest airport people movers. And I don't know if you're familiar with the dullest airport people-movers. but they are terrible. And so I guess what I'm ending on is make America great again? All right, we've got a great show for you tonight.

And we'll be right back with DeVee Diggs. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. Love or Leave It is brought to you by Zazel. Gift giving can be tough for a lot of us. There's nothing worse than showing up with something generic that you're not even sure you're gift to you will like.

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dot com slash love it today to get started. And we're back. We'll be joined by the great David Diggs in a moment. But first, if you haven't gotten tickets for CricketCon, here's another reason why you should. We believe the answer to right-wing authoritarianism is a big, welcoming fun, pro-democracy movement. So we've invited some exciting new people to join us at CricketCon,

a bunch of creators, a bunch of folks you probably know from YouTube. who makes sense of the news with humor and just sort of pipe and hot takes, you'll be able to spot them at CrookedCon and meet them at happy hours and Q&As and workshops. Check out a few of the many joining us at CrookedCon.com. And you can grab your tickets there too. We will see you in D.C. And if you're in L.A., you can still get tickets to love it or leave it at crooked.com slash events where we're always adding new guests.

Check out our lineup, including comedians, Elliot Glazer, Lisa Trager, and California Congressman Ted Liu. All right. Please welcome to the stage. She's a Tony and Grammy-winning actor, rapper, singer, and objectively, a man who does not have time to be here. But we're glad he is. It's David Diggs. See you.

Thanks for being here. So, hi. Hi. So I want to start by talking about the boys. On the final season, your O Father. You're nominated for the song you sing as the character, and the song is so fucking good. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great song.

It's cool when a silly song that you get to help create about turning a superhero into God instead of God, like, ends up being a bop, you know. Were there any villains that you were inspired by? Were there any villains you loved growing up that you brought to this? How fun to get to play a godlike story. super villain. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, what was interesting, and I was sort of aware that he was going to be one of the villains on the show, but you can't think about your characters like that, right? So I really, like, actually just studied a whole bunch of televangelists, which was a wild rabbit

hole for a Jew to go down. It was super fun. I end up, like, really appreciating the performance aspect of that. It is, like, I spent a lot of, yeah, my YouTube algorithms got all fucked, man. Can I tell you something? I used to watch, I used to be fascinated by Joel Ols-Osteen. Yeah, yeah. He's good. He is good. Yeah, damn.

Winks a lot. Yeah, yeah. But very, like captivating. Yo, that's what I'm saying. And, yeah, the, I mean, the performance, look, it's not an easy sell, God. Yeah, yeah. You got to get them, you got to get them. You got to really get people hype.

It's a lot of, it's a lot of smoke and mirrors, a lot of pomp and circumstance, a lot of weird, all the good stuff. But what's funny about the boys is it's like this, it's very, like, it's very silly, but like, the boys is an amazing show because it figured out a way to parody what's happening, even though it often feels like what's happening can't be parodied. I know, I know. And I imagine that's one of the reasons. I mean, I was talking to some of the writers before the season started and they were saying that how it was progressively getting harder as real life got more and more through the looking glass. that, like, you know, you don't want it to feel like a documentary, but it's pretty close. Yeah, without the kind of being able to explode people's heads. Yeah.

Which I think is good. It's, yeah. I think it's good that you can't do that. Yeah. I think we couldn't handle it. If there's one lesson from the boys, it's good that we don't have these powers, among other lessons. Right, right. And there are other lessons.

Some, but yeah, that's the main one, the main takeaway. So you're also in, I Want Your Sex, which is directed by Greg Araki, who's on the show. Yeah. Now, you are kind of in, you are in between the, Greg has strong feelings as a Gen Xer about Gen Z and like what has happened because of them living online and being afraid of kind of discomfort. What was it like for you kind of navigating what he was doing as like a millennial? Yeah, I mean, I think I'm like the first millennial also. I was class of 2000, right? So, like, I sort of skew closer to Greg's views anyway, I think.

Oh, you think of your, see, because I, I, I, okay, you're, you, you feel like your first wave millennial, but you have a, you think you have a Gen X energy? I do, well, I just think I'm, I think if we're going to compare us to Gen Z, I'm closer to that, that side of it. And so, yeah, so I, I, I definitely, when I read the script, I was, I was like, yeah, you're right. What, what, why aren't kids having more sex more? Why are we so hung up about this? Yeah, so I, no, I think Greg, what's so wonderful about him is just that he, as a filmmaker,

he is awfully concerned with the experience of the audience as opposed to the film, right? I feel like sometimes you work with filmmakers and they're very fussy about the film itself. He is a genius and brilliant at structuring the film and all of that, but what he's super concerned about is like, I wanted to make this film really fun, and I want to talk about sex in a really fun way. I want people to leave this film, like, having had a great time, and maybe horny. Not so horny enough to get home, you know? You know?

Who, I guess maybe not. Who cares? Let people have a good time. I don't know. Yeah. This is all part of the problem. Why aren't we doing it in the theater? Yeah.

That's part of the problem. Hey, you do, you people might not know this, but you have a hip-cop group called clipping. I do. And that you've been part of basically. longer than anything else. I know. Does anybody here know this fan? You know about clipping? Oh, shit. Okay. That's always, that always makes me very happy. So you have to be kind of a weirdo to be in that band.

I think it's cool. I am a weirdo. Yeah, yeah. You check. You'd be part of it. Yeah, it makes sense. Let's check out a clip rather than explain. I want to show people a clip from the tiny desk concert you did. I gotta admit that look like fun. That looks like fun. The fuck is fun when a war ain't done. If a war ain't done, then the war ain't won you swore to uphold of the pillars of the federated something. Um, um, um, that song you do. So for people, listening, that is the Tiny Desk concert, and you've taken

a bunch of objects like a mug or ball bearings or other things, and there are these mechanisms that are basically turning them into drums and backing instruments. Why'd you do that? We, you know, we've been fans of the Tiny Desk

series since it came out, but it and it's gotten so big, right? They used to happen maybe like once every couple of months, and now there's, you know, for a week or something. They've gotten huge. And as they've expanded, we were like, this is great. I love all of these, but there's not enough desk for something called tiny desks. So we were always like,

if they ever invite us on, we're going to use as much desk as possible. And we start, like, the actual desk in there. And we would always joke about this idea of trying to program little MIDI-controlled robots to like play junk, like their own, their coffee mugs and their little

awards, whatever, statues. Whatever was on their messy-ass desk, we were going to try to convert our beats to be played by that stuff. And then they invited us on and we were like, oh, shit. All right, we got a chance to do this. And it was way too much work. It was really, really hard to do for a one-off. For everyone involved, I mean, we had to sort of, Bill and Jonathan, my bandmates really had

to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to program those things. And then the whole staff of Tiny Desk, they usually don't. You come in for a few minutes before the show and they do a sound check. We forced them to all come to work the night before. and stay there until like midnight setting the shit up. Build them and then they have to mic all of that crap individually.

You know, so it was a much more technical undertaking than they were ready for. But they asked us to do the fucking show. You knew what kind of band this was. There's something about like, I feel like what part of the reason Tiny Desk is appealing. I think part of the reason it's so fun to see you

kind of just manipulate these real objects and make something cool. and imperfect is we're all like the like the like what do humans do like what are what are humans up to these days and like kind of proving kind of proving our like hey you can't do this without you can't do this yet yeah your robot freaks you know but also just like the like the kind of the ingenuity and kind of a DIY like creative process as like what that adds to it yeah yeah I love one of the things I love so much about this band is we're always trying to do something new. And it is experimental music in the sense that like, we don't ever know if it's going to work or not when we start doing it. And so every single idea is like, let's see what happens. And what we've gotten really good at is we know when a thing is done, when we've completed the idea. We don't always know if it's good or not. But we know we've completed the idea. And usually we'll put that out. So yeah, I like that.

What doesn't, what, what have you been like, you know what? This didn't work. We tried something interesting. And actually, we learned a lot. And if you don't ever miss a flight, you're getting to the airport too early. But nevertheless, that's not going out. There's only maybe, so the rule is all three of us have to agree to put it out. And it's only, there's only really two songs that we like argue about that two of us are like,

this is done. And one of us is like, absolutely not. We can't put this out. And so what that means is there's not a ton of back catalog, which for our fans is sometimes upsetting because it takes us a long time between albums to put stuff out. But yeah, and it just, this process is slow. But yeah, there's not like we have a ton of songs we're sitting on. Most of them are already out. What's like a disagree?

What are you disagreeing about on a current song where two of you want it to go out and one of you's like, no, it's not ready? Like you don't have to get that. What is something that is, what are you disagreeing about? That one is, um, it is lyrically and sonically referencing like a really specific and very, very brief trend

in like Chicago gangster rap music. And if it's not, A, if you're not from that scene and also, which none of us are, and if you're not now, you know, nine years ago, it sounds

silly. It does sound like goofy, but it was a real thing at the time, and we, and we, I think, mimicked it pretty well. But I think it's mostly, one of us is like, you waited, we waited to, this had to come out then, and even then, we shouldn't have been the ones doing it.

And he's not wrong, but I still think it's a really good song. So I'm not the one who doesn't want it to come out. Isn't it? There's something interesting, though, about, like, I think about it with movies and whether they get a release in the theaters, because I obviously will never see the godfather in theaters or

or any of the movies that most movies spend every every day after a movie is out of the theater is another day it will live in the world and never be in the theaters again but there's something that matters about when it happened and what happened when it happened right because if that song

if you had released that song when it was at the time it would still be now and as relevant now as it would be now were released today and yet it feels wrong to not release it today because it didn't exist then but if it was now it wouldn't matter what happened then because there's only now. Fuck.

You know? Isn't that an interesting thing? It is. Or is it? If I were a little more high. No, it is. And I actually think music is one of these things that they are, it's very particular to music because everything is a time capsule of the,

all music is this is what we were thinking right now. They are like, and I think in a way that even movies aren't because just because we're watching people and we still have relationships with those people, but something about having this captured audio, your voice was only this way, this time when you recorded it on this take, and you only, this person mixed it and this, all of these things only happened that one time. And I do find albums, people don't care about albums anymore, but in particular, like, albums tend to be these time capsules that I find really fascinating.

And, yeah, yeah. So it is this constant battle of like, did we miss the boat on that and does that matter? But I think, in some ways it does, I think, because it's no longer what we're thinking about. Right. So we should have, it wouldn't be part of the same time capsule. I don't know. I'll tell you who's not thinking about this. Claude.

Thank you to David Diggs. Go see I want your sex in theaters today, July 31st. Then maybe you have sex if you want. Do it. But only if you want. David will be joining us again at the end of the show and we'll be right back. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.

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Thanks for being here. Yeah, that's great. Nice to meet you. Thank you as well. You know, we were talking about you. That's what you have to do to get ready for a show. It wasn't weird or anything. But that you managed to transition from nerd to jock.

Any tips? Just eat good. Eat good. Yeah, and I don't know. No tips. It just took a while. I went from being too young in the industry to now I'm a guy that's 50s. You know, so it's interesting.

It's been a long run. No tips, really. No. I don't really have any tips. What was that period like when you were, like, you're no longer young, but they're not seeing you as an adult. You know, there's kind of a trope of like, for, like, Disney stars. They do something super sexy to prove that they're, that they're, that they're, That's like the Hollywood thing.

Like they like have to do their... Or they could be that, but like something that's like, I'm no longer Disney. Prior trope. Prior trope. Like, I'm no longer Disney. All right. I'm an adult now.

I've made the switch. But what was it like for you? Honestly, just decade by decade. It's always been a challenge. You know, I chose a business that gives you no guarantees, of course, as we know, right? So I've just had to scrap out of decade by decade, you know. So in the 80s, I was a teenager. You know, my 20s, it was more.

challenging, I think, to get work. And then you just keep going. You know, you have to have a thick skin in the industry for sure. So I'm just grateful for the journey. You know, I've had a long career and I enjoy the work that I do. But yet, truly, it comes with no guarantees. So you've got to really want it and just kind of keep scraping away at it. Was there ever a moment, because a lot of people don't, don't keep at it. They say, they say, I've had enough. Did you ever have a moment where you're like, you know what, I'm going to become a lawyer. Or you know what, I'm going into market, whatever. Not where I made that decision, but certainly that self-doubt can creep in for any of us in any industry, absolutely.

So that's part of which you battle, I think, you know. But I think at a certain point, you just have to decide to become unstoppable. So that's how I felt for myself, because, again, with no guarantees, there's no company to fall back on. There's no team. There's no, you know. So Shopus is interesting in that regard. But I'm just grateful, and I thank God I've had a creative life and have been able to, you know, persist and keep going. I think it really requires a certain tenacity though, for sure.

But to consider yourself unstoppable. You said that was such a nice sort of like kind of... Well, because you deal with so much rejection, I think, and a lot of different aspects of the industry that are tough to deal with. And a lot of that sends people packing, I think, a lot of times, you know, to deal with that sort of outlast uncertainty to some degree, I think is important. Did anybody ever tell you to stop? Did anyone ever say, like, that's enough, Anthony Michael Hall.

You gave it a good run. You gave it a good run. He gave it a good run, but it's over for you. Yeah, no, no, no. Maybe they could have helped me. No, no. No, I just, you know, I just, I love what I do, and I've learned to, you know, I appreciate the work. And at the same time, it doesn't define me who I am.

I'm still, I'm a person outside of all the work that I've done. I don't agree. It's okay. So, so you're on nation. How did you start writing speeches in Washington? That's what I want to know. Oh, boy. Is that a long story?

No, well, what, I was trying to be a comedian. Were you? And that's something where, boy, a lot of people have told me to stop. And yet I won't. But no, but I was right. I was doing stand-up. I was thinking about being a lawyer. I didn't know what I wanted to do.

And I ended up interning on the Kerry campaign in 2004. And there had been several hurricanes that year. And they needed somebody to write statements about the hurricanes. Like our thoughts go to the people of Louisiana. Sure. And so I did those. And that led to a job. and then I ended up writing some jokes for Hillary Clinton

when I was in D.C. for a roast of Barbara Walters. And that was the thing that kind of got me in the door to start writing speeches. I ended up becoming hired as a very junior speechwriter. And then I was off to the races. I was off to the races.

Very cool. Now, you're on... I'm trying to think of a transition. But speaking of Washington, D.C., you're on Nation's dumbest on Fox. in which celebrities compete in a series of challenges and try to be eliminated first. Like I said, show business can be rough at times.

You know what, to be honest with you, John, this really took me by surprise. I'm a happily married guy. I've been married for five years. And as we know at home, you've got to have more than one TV. So I'm not someone who loves reality shows. My wife loves a lot of the dating shows

and a lot of reality space stuff. So this was really kind of funny for me. When I first heard about it, I was like, wait a minute, I don't know if this is me. But I started hearing about the people. people that are involved, and I just really embraced it. I just kind of reframed my thinking and went up to Toronto

and shot this a couple months ago. And I had a great experience with all these people. I really did, you know. It was really fun. It was an interesting cross-section of people. We all got along great, and it was really fun and goofy. And Fox paid me a boatload of money. But anyway.

Nice. I didn't get that much for being on Survivor, to be honest. So, but I wasn't there very long. So, yeah, the day rate was not great, given how much time I spent getting ready to go and then being stuck there because I got. got out so soon. We can call SEG.

They're nearby somewhere in home. Yeah, I don't, I think that they wouldn't help me. Now, did you have a mindset? Like, it has to be strange to all of a sudden find yourself on a reality show. You're very comfortable in front of cameras, but you're traditionally a character and it gets edited after. Sure. It was a little bit more.

No, it was. It was awkward because typically I have to prepare something and have a role, you know, and I have work to be done before I get to the set. And this was just like, come as you are, you know. And it was really kind of funny getting to the set and there was about literally an army of cameraman. There was about 25 to 30 people and the cameras in the hallway and the whole thing.

But honestly, it was very well produced and thought out. It was a show that was, I guess, it hit in Norway and some other countries in Europe. So it's sort of a proven model. And we had a great time with it. There were about four challenges per day. Everything from, you know, trivia to math, science, all kinds of stuff, some physical stuff.

It was really a lot of fun. So I really enjoyed all the people. And that was a real nice surprise for me. I didn't expect to have as much fun as I did. And you were seeing backstage that you were bullied by Jojo Siwa. But that iced tea and Carmen Electra and Andrew Yang came to your defense. Very funny. No, you know, it's like the things that you learn about someone, like ice tea, for example, right?

You know, at some point he's shared some stuff with this, which is amazing. You know, he's like, you know, I never did a drink or a drug in my life. But I was robbing jewelry stores since the Ayes. You know, and then he was also an Army Ranger, you know, interesting things you could learn about someone. And, you know, Dr. Drew, I'd been on one of his shows in years past. Steve-O is a great guy. I had a lot of fun with Steve-O. All these people were great.

And they were surprises from everyone. Everybody surprised me with their sense of humor and knowledge. It was a lot of fun. It was really cool. What's the dumbest thing you did this week? Agreeing to the show. No, I'm kidding. No, the dumbest thing I did this week?

Let me see. I put my swiffer pads in the fridge. Really? Well, I have a three-year-old, so we're just kind of exiting the potty training thing. We're just trying to get into potty training. Now it's tough. It's tough. I've been changing diapers for three years straight.

I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted. What's it like having a three-year-old right now? Oh, he's kicking my ass. It's a lot. It's a lot of work. It's incredible. Because, I mean, you're, you know, look, you're in your 50s.

You're an older dad. I mean, if I become a dad, I'll be an older dad. I know that. I'm thinking about that. Life cardio is what I'm getting out of it. Because, like, when we were getting ready to the show, I, like, bent down in front of the desk to talk to Sarah and Rahman about a joke. And then I realized I was just stuck down there.

Very nice. Because I occasionally get my, body into the position of someone in their 20s, but getting up, I'm in my 40s. You can sit like you're in your 20s, but I get up in my 40s. I agree. So what's it like getting down to pick up a three-year-old? How's that back doing? A lot of work. You got to do, got to get a core. Got to get some going. Definitely do. Part of the fitness thing we were talking about, about being a jock. Good thing you're not a nerd anymore. We might have some problems. You're a jock dad, a jock dad in his 50s. That's it. That's it. But it's a lot of fun. I mean, my kid is great, you know. He's all

Google and Gaga over mom, and then he just comes over and promptly like Swift kicks me in the nuts or, Drop kicks me in the shins. It's a lot. It's fun. It's a great time. Honestly, I'm loving being a parent. Speaking of combat, you're on SWAT. Transitions for 800.

Now, on SWAT you play a badass. A nation's dumbest. You ever thought about, you know, throwing Jack Whitehall, the host into a paddy wagon or something? Really kind of like make, you know, really kind of like be a crossover up or something? Hey, you know, I had a lot of fun with Jack.

You know, there was a lot of people that I didn't know much about them. Like Jojo, for example. I'd heard about her for years. I knew she kind of grew up in the reality space. Jack turns out as an actor on top of being a stand-up comic. I had seen his series that he did on Netflix with his father, which is a lot of fun. But he was really cool, too. He was really invested in the show, too.

He was really kind of going through the motions with us, and he was really in there in the trenches. It was a fun shoot. It was honestly, we did it in 12 days, and each day represented like one episode, and there were like four challenges each episode. It was a lot of fun. Now, Anthony Michael Hall, you've been in this industry a very long time. You've been bopping around L.A. since you were Butta boy. we have to imagine you know a lot

all the ins and outs at this town and so we want to know them too which is why we're going to pick your brain for a best of the best in a rapid fire segment we're calling Anthony Michael Hall of Fame first up where do I get the best sandwich in Los Angeles

I go to a place called New York Pizzeria in the Marina Pizza place and I get a nice sub over there it's not so healthy but I don't know what's your favorite? Oh man there's a lot of great sandwiches in LA LA's a great sandwich town is it It's becoming a great sandwich town

What's your favorite Diatia? is great. I love that. I love the sandwiches there. Uncle Pauli's deli. Those are great. A lot of great sandwich options. Who is the best director you've ever worked with? I've worked with some good ones. Christopher Nolan, I had a small part

of the Dark Night years ago. He's pretty good. He's pretty good. He's pretty good. He's pretty good. He's pretty good. You know, when I worked with David Gordon Green, I did a film Halloween Kills a couple years back. He was great. He was a lot of fun. That was with Jamie Lee Curtis. She was great to work with. But David Gordon Green reminded me actually a lot of John Hughes. Very loose and very easygoing,

very collaborative, fun guy to work with. Cool. Yeah. I like him a lot. Who's the best actor to be stuck with for a long day in which you don't have much to do? Hmm. Who did you have a good hang with over the years? Well, Downey years ago, we worked on a bunch of stuff together, but it's been a long time since I work with

Robert. He's a lot of fun. Yeah. He went through a phase where he was too much fun, and now he's the right... Yes. And then the right amount of fun. You know? Right, right, right. That's part of it too. What's your favorite movie? It's coming back is Dr. Doom, I guess, yeah.

Yeah, Dr. Doom. Dr. Doom. What's the best movie theater in Los Angeles? I'd see the Centorama Dome. I think it's coming back. It's coming back. How exciting is that? Yes.

What's your favorite movie theater snack? I'm a popcorn guy, even if I've eaten lunch. You gotta have some popcorn. Got have some popcorn. I'm not going to popcorn. I'm not going to popcorn every goddamn time. Yeah. You know what I'm doing?

I'm buying a racist pieces. I'm throwing them on top. Not you go there. Just put them in. Shake it up. There is. Shake it up. What's the best restaurant for a power lunch?

An old school power lunch. Power lunch. I never have power lunch. I ate a slop bowl at my desk. Yeah, nice. I don't have too many power lunches, but I've had some interesting, you know, sort of business lunches.

The grill, classic. The classic. Beverly Hills, yeah. Wow. You at the grill and a power lunch. Yes. That's so cool. See, Anthony Michael Holland Nation's dumbest on Fox, Hulu, or Disney Plus.

You can also watch SWAT exiles this September on Stars. Yes. When we come back, we have a golden egg. Okay, let's do it. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save.

Get a quote at bellairdirect.com. To the stage, DeVeed Diggs. Come on back. We're on back. We're back. We're back. Come on through. All right. Great. All right. Thank you for joining us once again. And it's time for the egg of truth.

The egg of truth. It's too long. Too long as sting. Still going. Fuck. Here's how it works. We have a collection of conversation starters, dinner party cocktail

conversation starters that we've made up. And we're just going to ask them, and we have to answer them honestly, because it is the egg of truth. First up, when you feel a pain in your elbow, where is that pain? Is the pain in your elbow, in your brain, or does it not have a location? I actually, I was at the doctor today, because I'm a hypochondriac,

and I was complaining about elbow pain. Mine was like on the inside, but it would sometimes rotate to the outside. Anyway, my doctor definitely told me it was in my brain, like most of us. That would have been my guess, too. You think the brain? You think the brain? but it's not because it's in our elbows but then it's also in our brains so maybe it's nowhere does it the shit hurts

right but where is the hurt where is the hurt it's societal yeah next question would you rather lose your sense of smell or have a sense of smell so powerful that you're basically in a perpetual smell prison I'd rather lose my sense of smell I think yeah I think that's probably right I think I agree with that

would be bad it would be bad but it's it's the absence of something versus the presence of something. I know. But do you, when you, do you also lose taste, right?

You lose a whole bunch of taste when you can't smell things. That's, I don't know. Maybe I'm taking smell prison. Wow. I don't know. I should ask my dog about it, right? That's how they live.

Isn't it? Yeah. He seems all right with it. Right, right. But they are a bit confused sometimes because they're like, I smell a neighbor, you know? Right.

He also eats poop, so. Right. Right. That's an important part of it. of it as well. I was once on an airplane and it smelled really bad and so I put earplugs in my nose. And then I sucked up one of the earplugs into my sinus cavity and then I thought I was going to have to tell them to land the plane. But I couldn't bring myself to do that. And so I went into the bathroom of the plane and I, with every fiber of my being, did a kind of fma, like a

like holding one side, like jumping up in the air and falling and screaming out of my nose as hard as I possibly could, and it flew out of my nose and hit the mirror and fell down. And if you could bottle the relief, you could be a billionaire, because that was the greatest fucking feeling in my life. Because I went from, I need to tell the pilots to land to nothing's happening. It was terrible. I knew people on the plane, too. It would have been horrible.

I was in agony. We were still taxiing. That's something that happened to me once, Anthony Michael Hall, that I did to my myself. What do you do to go back to sleep when you wake up in the middle of the night? I've started, uh, I've started listening to podcasts. Really? Yeah, not this one. Yeah, well, this is, this is too exciting. That's a compliment because you're not trying to fall asleep when you're listening to the show. You're being entertained. You're laughing too hard. Getting adrenaline from all the jokes. I listen to a podcast that I do really like, but that are like,

I listen to like sports podcasts that tend to use a lot of numbers, you know? That seems to do it for me. Yeah, I like it. I'm paying, but it also. puts me right out. I used to do C-SPAN for that. I would put on C-SPAN and just have the droning of the floor noise and that helped me fall asleep to quiet the demons, Anthony Michael Hall. I actually turn on like the ocean wave sounds from my son. My wife and my son is sleeping with us for the last few months. So that helps when I'm up. Put the waves back on. That's good. One thing I saw on TikTok that I've been stealing and doing is trying to like get my brain in a sleep mode by saying random words by using the first letter

in the last letter. So you'd be like, Abacus, September, Rotodendron, November, two months. I fucked it up already. That works for you, though? I think so.

I feel like that's just how I write my next song, probably. I'm up forever once I start that game. Final question. Do you eat food off the ground? Of course.

I'm a toddler. What do you mean? Do you eat food off the ground? Do I go in my own kitchen occasionally. Yeah, if something falls, we'll see. Yeah, I think in my own kitchen. I just don't know how I would know.

Doesn't make it better. Because he... That's a good rule. He is constantly giving me the end of something, the crust of something that he doesn't want. And I'm just at the point where I'm just eating it, whatever it is. Because there's so much just waste. But how would I know?

He drops shit all the time and picks it back up and starts eating. I don't know. I didn't even think about it until you asked that question. A kid will pick a penny up off the ground and put it in their mouths. I eat off the ground. Not if it, but not outside and not if either the ground or the food is wet. Oh. And we'll be right back.

And we're back. And we've now arrived at the end of the show, which means it's time for second thoughts. Here's how it works. We've all been laughing it up. But my producers have been keeping a meticulous list of everything they wish I hadn't said or done. during tonight's recording. Occasionally, and it clearly hasn't happened today, I can also receive a rare kudos.

None today. None today. So that's sad for me. And I welcome anything that you might regret from tonight's show that you want to express. Fauci isn't Jewish, but to be clear, we'd be happy to have him. I got mad at the audience

for not laughing at a joke about Trump not going down on women. which does force you to picture Trump going down on a woman, which means you guys were right. Oh, one regret that they think I should have about my conversation with you, DeVeed, is my question was, about your tiny desk concert, why did you do that? That seems appropriate.

No, and so I probably could have come up with a better question. No, no, no, I liked it. I didn't ask Anthony Michael if he liked my pretty and pink joke. I wasn't in that film, but I didn't take offense either. It's 16 candles. It was kind of like the second coming of... I'll tell you what happened. But you do look pretty and pink.

Thank you for saying that. I have a new regret. Here's what happened. Five minutes before the show, we deleted the joke there because it wasn't working. And we were like, it was like an off the cuff like,

Pretty in pink. John Hughes, get it in there. I did also admit to inhaling an air plug, airplug through my nose into my sinus cavity and then having to force it out in the airplane restroom. I'm just going to be laughing about that story for a long time.

So I think... Any regrets Anthony Michael Hall? Other than not asking more questions about what this was. I'll take the fifth and leave it there. And that's our show. Thank you so much. You DeVee Diggs and Anthony Michael Hall. There are 95 days until the midterms.

Have a great night and have a great weekend. Love and Related is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Kendra James, Bill McGrath, Kelsey Gante, and me, John Lovett. Our production team includes Hallie Keeper, Sarah Lazarus, Roman Borsolino, Peter Miller, David Tolls, Claudia Shang, Jay Banks, Gavin Purcell, and Matt DeGrope. And our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. There's no shortcut for saving time. But saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellairdirect.com.