Lovett or Leave It - The Fucking Memo

Episode Date: February 3, 2018

The Nunes Memo is released and it’s even dumber than expected. Trump delivered a State of the Union and then obliterated any memory of it, per usual. Hope Hicks was reportedly too obvious about crimes. And you won’t want to miss a shockingly passionate diatribe about the food pyramid. Sasheer Zamata, Adam Conover, and Francesca Fiorentini join Jon to break down the news of the week. Plus who will win the big game Sunday? Will it be the underdog?

What is up? Great to be back at the improv. Great to be back at the Improv. Pod Save America is going on tour. We'll be in Vegas on Sunday, February 11th. And I got to move some Vegas tickets. I don't know what people are finding to do in Vegas that isn't a live recording of a politically themed podcast at the Hard Rock, but

how are you guys doing over there? I don't see any hummus. That's the worst. I'm going to call out food that's not here. Feminist AF. She works at Abercrombie & Fitch.

She's a feminist. Is that what it is? You work for the City of Malibu, which is the Abercrombie and Fitch of cities. Okay, I want to bring up our panel because we got to, guys, we're living in a post-memo world, okay? Everything is different now.

Everything feels different. All right, we've got a great show. Hope Hicks, Chief Wahoo, and Carter Page are here. All right, I want to bring our panel because we do have a very packed show. She's a stand-up comedian and host of Newsbroke on AJ+. Please welcome Francesca Fiorentini. What's up? How are you?

Good. Stormy 2020, y'all. Let me tell you how it happens. You know what? Wait, hold on that. I didn't know either. You know her from Saturday Night Live

and her hour special Pizza Mind. Please welcome back to Love It or Leave It Sashir Zameda. We hugged, but she's a returning guest. So good to see you.

Good to see you. Thanks for having me back. He's the comedian and star of the TV show Adam Ruins Everything and a podcast also called Adam Ruins Everything. Please welcome Adam Conover. Hello, everybody. Hello.

Okay. Let's get into it. What a week. Great. Okay. Let's get into it. What a week. Great. Okay. So we're going to talk about this memo, the memo that changed everything, the memo that started it all and ended it all, the alpha and the omega. All right. So before we get into it, I just I feel like I don't know about you guys, but I have been having trouble following the path of the memo. So I just want to walk through how we got here because it's bananas. All right. So let's start with Devin Nunes. Devin Nunes. Last March, Donald Trump decided to randomly accuse Barack Obama of tapping Trump Tower and ordering

illegal surveillance of him and his team during the presidential campaign. There was no evidence of this, and people did not believe him. However, a member of Trump's transition team, Devin Nunes, tried to defend him. While no wiretapping had gone on, Nunes claimed that the Trump campaign communications could have been incidentally collected as part of wider surveillance efforts. Nunes needed proof, so he went to a secret meeting at the White House to ask for proof. They did not have any. This looked very bad, and so Devin Nunes had to recuse himself from the committee's investigation, the Intelligence Committee's investigation, into Russia. However, he simply did not actually do that. For the last couple of weeks,

Nunes has been working on a memo that would prove that the FBI investigation was a partisan wish hunt. For days, Republicans have been extolling the virtues of Nunes' memo as the Rosetta Stone for understanding how Deep State and Clinton Obama and Rachel Maddow and Jimmy Kimmel were working together to persecute Trump. Republicans who saw the memo called it jaw-dropping,

sickening, and worse than Watergate, which was also Jeff Sessions' review of Black Panther. He's good! All right. Despite objections from the FBI, the intelligence community, some Republicans like John McCain, and intelligence committee members, Nunes and his fellow Republicans forged ahead and voted to release it.

Today, the memo dropped on Tidal, and... I don't have Tidal, but... So no to release it. Today, the memo dropped on title, and... I don't have title, but... So no one read it. Here's what Nunes claims. He claims that the Clinton presidential campaign funded the creation of the Steele dossier, and the FBI used the dossier as the basis for a warrant to surveil Trump advisor Carter Page in 2016.

Then, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein signed off on extending that warrant in 2017. So they're saying that the entire investigation into the Trump campaign is based on a Clinton-composed dossier and is being driven by the anti-Trump members of the FBI. However, none of that is true. One, the Steele dossier did not spark interest in Carter Page. Carter Page was under FBI scrutiny

long before Donald Trump was running for president. You can tell that Carter Page is someone who belongs under scrutiny because of the way he moves his face. And the sounds it makes. And the guilty way in which the words come out. The FBI has suspected Russian influence on Page and had been watching him

and his contacts with Russian intelligence since 2013. Two, FBI investigators did not base their wiretap on Carter Page solely on the dossier. The warrant was also extended three times, proves that the FBI had found enough corroborating evidence to continue the wiretap. And

finally, three, the FBI investigation did not start because of the Steele dossier and Carter Page. It started because of George Papadopoulos in his own fucking memo. Nunes admits that the piece of evidence that triggered the FBI investigation came from Trump advisor George Papadopoulos,

not loopy, dumbfuck, shitty Groundlings character Carter Page. Didn't start with him. The Republicans and Trump want to undermine Mueller's investigation and to lay the groundwork to fire people like Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein because if he can replace Rosenstein with somebody more favorable to him, he could fuck with Mueller's investigation from the inside, which is why they're enlisting Fox News and other outlets to help.

So now we have the memo and we see how cool it is how stupid does a conspiracy have to get before we don't have to worry about it catching fire with roughly a third of the country you know what i mean like well i mean we will run wild with any conspiracy pizza gate went very far. Is that what we're calling it? When they're like, people are fucking kids in a pizza parlor or something like that. Like, I don't know. I think I had legs. I don't know how crazy

a rumor has to get before people are like, that can't be. We have flat earthers. They're still around. They're still around and new ones are cropping up. The other... It's true. Just think about that.

There's a new flat earther every hour. There's a new one. A new one is born. And the flat earther thing actually reminds me of this memo. Because the thing that I love about this memo is the way that they call Steele's research to be biased. That Steele had a, quote, anti-Trump bias, and he passionately didn't want Trump to be president. But it's like, yeah, because if you're Neil deGrasse Tyson, and you've been researching the Earth and astronomy of your whole life, you're going to

have something against flat earthers, you know? You're going to have an anti-flat earther bent. And that's exactly what Steele had. He was researching Trump for months and months and months. He's probably going to have, you know, privileged knowledge. Right. You know what? It's interesting. You're right. There's not a lot of people who spend two years digging into Trump's financial dealings

and come out saying, I love him. Yeah. On board. What a cool guy. They always come out screaming, get him away from anything important. Adam, you ruin things. Yeah. Everything.

Yeah, as in the title of my show. Adam ruins everything. New episodes back March 20th on... True TV. That'll lift out. Did this work for Nunes or did releasing the memo ruin the memo? Was the promise of the memo a better deal than seeing it? What do you think?

I mean, I feel like it's a, just based on the rhetoric that people were using about the memo, I don't think that you need to have read the memo or analyzed the memo to believe that the memo proves your point. I think the insinuations seem to be enough at this point. The details don't really matter that much as far as what effect it has on people's psyche, whether they're like, yeah, that proves everything I believe about Trump or not, you know?

Yeah, it's a little bit like the shark in Jaws, you know? Like, they held it away from us for long enough to make us afraid of it, and then we got too long of a look at it, and we can tell that it was a machine made in 1980, you know? We could see that it got stuck.

One thing that's been strange about this is liberals have been going to bat for the FBI and the intelligence community. And defending their honor and their integrity. So, Shira, I know you've done work with the ACLU in the past. I thought you were going to say the FBI. And I was like, who told you that? Look, you are the only G-man we've had on the show.

But yes, I do work with the ACLU. What do you make of, like, I find myself wanting to say the FBI needs to be protected as an institution. This is an assault on our democratic institutions. They're trying to destroy an investigation from the inside. But sometimes the FBI is pretty crazy, too, and we should keep an assault on our democratic institutions. They're trying to destroy an investigation from the inside. But sometimes the FBI is pretty crazy too. And we should keep an eye on our intelligence apparatus. And by the way, I don't totally trust the FISA

process myself. Like we're in a position as liberals, as normally people that would be questioning the authority that we've vested in these things, in these institutions. And now we're basically saying it's there. They shouldn't be questioned in this way it's a forthright and fair uh investigation how do you balance the desire to want the investigation to proceed without becoming kind of knee-jerk defenders of institutions that have made terrible mistakes i mean we both do it don't we like conservatives and liberals we both do we it's what's convenient at the time unfortunately i mean i want to be like know, everyone needs to be held accountable for different things. But, of course, when it's like, well, don't look back there.

Don't look behind the curtain. Then we're going to defend it. So I don't know. I mean, we all have those knee-jerk reactions when it's like it's going to make us look bad. it's going to make us look bad. When I was in college, and it was sort of like the political theory, the Edmund Burke difference between liberals and conservatives,

where conservatives stood up for social institutions, that it was like, hey, we shouldn't change anything too fast. These things are all here for a reason. That's like the old version of it. And the right wanted to preserve the order, and the left wanted to destroy it. And it seems like we're in the opposite of that to some extent, which is really weird. That's like, yeah, that's something I've had trouble wrapping my head around. Oh, and one other piece of this, which is so crazy.

This is all to prove a conspiracy that the FBI was trying to help Hillary Clinton become president. was trying to help Hillary Clinton become president. The FBI that sent a letter a week before the election saying that Hillary Clinton was under investigation, while that same FBI kept secret an ongoing counterintelligence operation against the other candidate. And as part of this grand conspiracy, they've been looking into these text messages

from two lascivious FBI agents Who got up to some trouble I don't know what, I can't even remember their names But they had a fiery affair That has become way more public Than they anticipated They were like This is a lot more people knowing about this

Than we expected And they were like They were at a secret society and they were undermining Trump from the inside. The guy is one of the people that wrote the letter that started

the Trump administration. So that's bullshit. This is a guy with a Z in his name. He's like Peter Sturt and then you get to that part of the name and you don't know

how to finish it. It's Page and Sturbs. Schlaz. Schlaz. I want to say Schlaz. Struzik. Straznan. Look, we should get Sean Hannity on the phone,

because he definitely knows how to pronounce that name. Strozik. Stromzik. Do you think that Lisa Page, who, no relation to Carter Page, which was my favorite part of that memo, who you were referring to, is she like, honey, can I post this Instagram photo of us together? Please, we're out now.

I don't know, are they? I don't know what's going on with the two of them. This has probably been a strain on whatever was going on there. You know, it had sort of like a whiff of danger before and now it has too much danger. Now it's too much. The whiff has become whatever more smell is.

I think the hard part about this is that unless you're actually following, I try to avoid partisan media generally because the storylines are very powerful. And so the problem with this is unless you're actually following right-wing media, you can't actually understand what the memo is or what the point of it was. When you just walked through it it was like i was like sitting here like bending my like trying to keep it all in my head and like follow all the twists and turns so like so most people don't even know what the fuck it is except that all these people seem to be mad about it and then just the effort to debunk it you have to

explain all of that first and like no one's going to get through that Rachel Maddow 20 minutes where she's having to set up the thing just to say it's not true. It's so much down a rabbit hole. So it becomes in this world of insinuation. It's mostly because Rachel Maddow starts off every episode with like, phosphorus. Where are we going? Yeah, it tends to start with

and then the earth cooled what happened next have you heard that saying or you know like you you swallow like

eight spiders a year or something like that yeah it's not true it's not true did you do it on your show no okay you should do it on your show oh thank you you know what let me write No. Okay, you should do it on your show.

Oh, thank you. You know what? Let me write that down. I got a notebook. Well, it was, I don't know who did the study, but to see how a lie can become a truth. So they spread that, and then people just say it, and they were like, yep, that's probably it. When you sleep, you just swallow eight spiders

at some point in time in the year. Oh, yeah. So I think it's like that. People don't realize it's eight in one night. It's a family of spiders, one crawling after the other. Sean Hannity. Also, while this was all going on, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe announced that he was stepping down early.

He was expected to try her in March, but his premature departure raised suspicions that he was being pushed out of the bureau. This is somebody that's been under attack by Trump for months and that Jeff Sessions tried to get FBI Director Christopher Wray to fire McCabe on Trump's behalf. Wray had to threaten to resign over it. Trump's team was pushing stories about him, trying to leave on his own accord. Don Jr. tweeted that McCabe was fired because of the... I mean, they're out of control. Also, on the Don Jr. beat, Hope Hicks said emails between Don Jr. and Russians,

quote, will never get out, end quote. I just... We were all bested by the dumbest criminals. Yes. The dumbest collection of criminals and dum-dums and just backwater goons and Republican discards and racists and morons beat every person in this room. They defeated you.

I hope you're happy. The same people who are like, where are the emails? We got all the leaked emails. Look at the WikiLeaks emails. They're like, well, our emails are never going to get out. Impregnable. Yahoo is impregnable. These are the same people.

Don Jr. or Vonker, one of the scams, the fraud in New York they didn't get persecuted before because of systemic corruption. Whatever you want to call it. There's one email where Don Jr. says, how's anybody going to find out? The only people who know about it

are on this email chain. But these people won't stop emailing about their various crimes. They're right. It is worse than Watergate because it's so much more boring than Watergate. You know? It's like there's all of

this, there's all this stuff, but nothing is happening. It's all about... Wait, which part? Because there's a dueling Water nothing is happening it's all about wait which part because there's a dueling watergates right now right the republicans say the memo is watergate obviously we know russia collusion is probably the real watergate uh it's sort of like watergate if nixon had a stream of consciousness on the internet we did where where he described the crimes he committed along the way. Impugned himself. Which is the hardest part about all of this,

which is everything we're seeing not only corroborates other news reports, it corroborates the admissions of guilt the president regularly offers via Twitter and interviews with Lester Holt. Yeah. I mean, my favorite, though, with this whole thing was that Trump, in referring to the memo, had a tweet that was something like, he called this investigation sacred. Like, we have to, you know, get rid of everything that's in the way of this sacred investigation. Like, what?

You've been shitting on this investigation for a year now. And also, nothing is sacred to you. We know that. Your family's not sacred. Your wife's not sacred. He says the weirdest things. He says like sacred investigation. Our sacred flag.

Dude, if he said Big Mac special sauce is sacred, that I'd believe. But like, it. That's the only thing Trump holds sacred. How did they get away with calling that Thousand Island dressing some magical recipe? How has the McDonald's people been doing that for half a century? It's always Thousand Island.

But they don't refer to that. They call it the special thing but it's just literally Thousand Island. It's all it is. It's all it's ever

fucking been. It's got a little bit of mayonnaise. Yeah, mayonnaise, ketchup and relish. You mix them together, you're done. They already have

all those condiments at the condiment bar. You can make your own special sauce. You can mix them together. Work on the ratios. You know? See how far you get.

I like this topic better. Can we talk about this instead? Yeah. Can we talk about McDonald's condiments? Can I talk about something about the Big Mac that has never made

any sense to me whatsoever? The bread in the middle? What the fuck is the bread in the middle? It makes no sense. What is... It's awful. That's the whole point

of the Big Mac. No. No. That wasn't two patties. That's the thing where she's getting two patties. I want two patties. What is Vincent saying? That's the whole point of the Big Mac! No! I want two patties! I want two patties! What is that bread in the middle? It's filler.

It's awful. Have we learned nothing from the food pyramid? Get that bread out of there. The food pyramid was a lie. You know what? I want to talk about this for one second. I specifically want to talk about the only good period of time in history.

And it was a two-year period after the release of the food pyramid before they realized it made America gain collectively a trillion pounds. Because there was a two-year period where the president and the first lady and the surgeon general and other surgeons and the whole doctors and Richard Simmons and all of them were saying, remember to get your six servings of bread. Because it's healthy now.

And so I remember there was this, it was one beautiful year. And I remember like being over at a friend's house and we were having like tuna salad. And these parents are at the counter just dancing so pleased. We're on a diet. And just putting pasta into their bowls, being like, we can't eat that tuna salad. We're on a diet. Pasta.

That was cool. It was at one time where that was possible. They put bread on the bottom of the pyramid. What? That's crazy. It was at one time where that was possible. They put bread on the bottom of the pyramid. What? That's crazy. It was really crazy. It was wild. It doesn't get enough coverage.

It really doesn't. It's a crazy thing. The entire medical community, the FDA, everybody. This is the real Watergate, y'all. They got together and they said, make sure you get six potatoes every day. And no one was held accountable. No one paid a price for that.

America gained a trillion pounds. It's true. Oh, fruits and vegetables, two or three if you're lucky. Six slices of bread. Potato. That's what you need to be healthy. Six to ten. Oh, are you trying to be healthy?

Did you have ten potatoes? Are you crazy? Doctors went on television. They went to schools. They put it up on the wall at schools for five years. No one ever apologized. They just replaced it. They just put another poster over it and pretended it didn't happen.

Six to ten. Potatoes. What the fuck? It's a vegetable. Do you remember the second pyramid? Do you know the second pyramid they made? I don't know. The new pyramid was drawn where,

you have to imagine a pyramid, but instead of the lines being a cross, they came down from the top. So no one builds a fucking pyramid that way. You couldn't figure out how... Okay, so there's a 13-degree angle of fruit and a 17 degree angle of vegetables. You got to make sure you get a cosine of meat every day. Yes, exactly.

And then they had a guy climbing the side of the pyramid to represent that you should exercise. And it was like, I was like, look, I know this is probably better for health, but as a piece of visual design, it's very confusing. Want to know what, John? What? That pyramid's coming back under Trump. Mark my words. He says it. Oh, that's true.

I'm surprised he didn't mention the State of the Union. All right, he's bringing back welding and the food pyramid. He won't bring back the pyramid, because it's like in africa and he just he's like nothing related to africa will be in my country you're gonna it's from a shit country get it out you're gonna say that now three years from now we're gonna be giving him his trump pyramid to get him to allow some children to get health care or something i Yeah, not too real. Too real. We're gonna build a Trump pyramid in the deserts of Oklahoma, in the fields of Oklahoma

to get approval for Medicare. That's, like, gonna happen. Oh, shit. When we come back, a new game. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back.

Today we have, tonight, we have a very special game. This is a lightning round game called the Big Big Game Game. Here's the thing. I don't know if you guys know this, if you're sports buffs. The Super Bowl is this weekend. Or as they call it on ads in which they are not allowed to reference it,

they call it the big game. Have you gotten your pizza rolls for the big game? You wonder why they do that? They're not allowed to say Super Bowl. Huh? Because of politics. So here's the thing I don't know a lot about sports I know very little about it and

so we're gonna reverse things over the next two minutes our panelists will ask me lightning-round questions about football if I can get five questions and I promise I really have not seen these questions not seen them if I can get five correct in two minutes which I believe we have on the clock everyone in the crowd will get a parachute gift card

fiends and just so you understand we only have two parachute gift cards so we're banking very hard understand, we only have two parachute gift cards. So we're banking very hard on my inability to succeed. So you got a little ahead of yourselves, cheers-wise.

Are you guys ready to do these questions? I don't know if you guys know the rules more than I do. I'm starting. You start. What is the name of the NFL team that plays in Nashville? I can't help me. I don't know. I heard it after. Pass. What is the name of the NFL team that plays in Nashville? It can't help me. It can't help me. I don't know.

I heard it after. Pass. What is the color of the helmet of the Cleveland Browns? This is not an audience participation game. It's for John. It's for John. I wouldn't have known. I didn't know.

I didn't know. I heard orange, but I don't know. How many points is a touchdown? I know it's six. It is six. I knew the trick was for me to say seven, but I'm no dummy. I thought it was seven. Two-point conversion.

I know about that. Name four players in the Super Bowl. Tom Brady. Who starred in the 2015 film Concussion? Oh, Will Smith. Tell the truth. That's more of a movie question than a football question. That's not a Super Bowl question.

What's the name of the defensive player generally considered the last line of defense? The position. The position. I don't know. Okay. Linebacker. Can an NFL game end in a tie? No.

Yes. It can? Boring. Who invented the butt fumble? I don't know what that is. I don't know. I don't know. Mark Sanchez.

That was Reince Priebus. What team is often referred to as America's team? Oh, I know that that's the Dallas Cowboys and it's bullshit. Dude, you're too close to getting five. What is that, three? Okay, what is it called when a player is tackled in their own end zone? Oh, is that called a safety? It is.

Okay, okay. What does CTE stand for? CTE? CTE? C-T-E? C-T-E. Five. Can. Four.

Can't touch down end zone. Three. Two. Can't. Oh! Oh, all my concussion heads know that it is chronic, traumatic, say it with me, encephalopathy! I am sorry you did not win your gift cards. All my concussion heads.

What a sport. What a sport. Ends in a tie. When you get tackled in your own home, it's called safety. Yeah. What else did you learn? Your brain hurts at the end. Yeah.

I'm sorry, guys. You have lost the big game game. Oh, I'm sorry. Big game game. Everyone is so genuinely upset. This is a very ill-cons big game game. Oh, sorry. Big game game. Everyone is so genuinely upset. This is a very ill-considered game. You know what we should have done? You should have not told them

they were going to win something. This would have been a fun game in general. Nailed it. A lot of stares from this side. When we come back, okay, stop! Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It, and there's more on the way.

And now for a game we call OK Stop. Here's how it works. We roll a clip, and when it bothers us or we want to discuss it, we say, OK Stop. We roll a clip, and when it bothers us or we want to discuss it, we say, okay, stop. This week, you may not have realized, there was something called the State of the Union. It does feel like a long time ago, because every single time Trump gives one of these things, the next day he participates in some kind of obstruction of justice, which is just bad luck for him.

But Trump gave the speech. He read all the way to the end. And as a result, he did receive a fair amount of praise. And Trump appreciated it when he gave a speech about the success he had. On Tuesday night, let's roll the clip. But we just had, did anybody not see the State of the Union. Okay, stop. they came up with fake polls. You know, they had fake polls, but the fake polls were even good. Okay, stop.

That's confusing, because he used to have a standard, and the standard was there are fake polls and polls that show he's doing well. But it's quite strange to say there are fake polls that show I'm doing well. Right? Yeah. Like I did well even in the fake ones.

Right. It's really interesting when you even in the fake ones. Right. It's really interesting when you cut in on him because you never know if you're what sentence you're in the middle of. Like, cause he never ends a sentence. He's like in the middle, like just in his life he's in the middle of just the millionth deep parenthetical comma

semicolon em dash. He wakes up like, you know I was always on the... By the way. He wakes up like, you know, I was always on the... By the way. He speaks in the form of like a racist Philip Glass fugue.

It just rises and falls, but you don't know. You have no idea where it's going. You don't know where it's going. That's so offensive to Philip Glass. What are we going to do? Took him a couple of hours to figure before they went negative. You know, they got calls from the bosses.

You can't say that about Trump. You can't say good. OK, stop. I just he's doing so well, even though his vocabulary has shrunk to about 150 words now. So his his basically what he's saying is that, you know, CNN, they were all complimenting the speech, and then they got a call from the boss upstairs, and the boss said, as bosses say,

you can't say good. That's how the boss is talking. Be good, bad. Yeah, well, Jeff Zucker is known to hate good. He only likes bad. You know what's messed up about this clip and what you just said? No. Is that we are trained now to understand what he's saying.

Because we've all been five, you know? In some point of our lives, we've been five years old. And we know what that means, but he doesn't actually have to say what he means. It is chilling to think that he has trained us all to understand him. Yeah. That's actually real. Like I'm saying, like a toddler is like, I don't even need to use words. It's just patting their stomach and touching their cheek when they want food.

Fuck. It's been, we've had an incredible time. And just about everybody, and I recognize so many people, but just about everybody in this room... Okay, stop. Stop. For the folks at home, he said, I recognize so many people, and he put his hand, and he looked, and he peered.

He did a sea captain searching for an island thing. He actually couldn't see. Because if he could see, he wouldn't he peered. He did a sea captain searching for an island thing. He actually couldn't see. Because if he could see, he wouldn't have done this. I can see so many... Wait, where are you? It's too bright. We've all read Fire and Fury.

He sees no one. He recognizes. He recognizes absolutely no one. He was at Mar-a-Lago and he wished his dentist, he said to his dentist friend, thanks for all your good work this year. And everyone would brush past that,

but that's a weird thing to say to a dentist that you don't know. He just ran out, he didn't know what to say. Was that Frederick Douglass? Good job, he said good job this year. You just don't say that to a random person at a party. You say that to someone you don't recognize. Also, bad job this year.

We all saw the Jerusalem speech. The United Shaysh. Oh, that's true. I don't know that it's his dentist. He's the guy at Mar-a-Lago who bought Twitter followers. That is a deep cut for maybe one person.

You with me on that? The dentist at Mar-a-Lago who said that Trump told him good job this year is also the dentist in the New York Times story by Nick Confessori who bought followers. It's all coming together. I'll write a memo too, Nunes. I mean, maybe Trump was congratulating him on the followers. True.

For buying. Congrats on the followers. I don't know where I'm going with that. Of this incredible journey. And, you know, we have a few terms. It's always going to be make America great again. That's always going to be our baby. That's his baby.

That's his thunder rod. That's it. Did he mean terms like serving multiple terms as president or like hostage terms? No, I think he meant the phrases for which he is beloved the phrase make america great again is is his baby that's his baby what do we gotta abort that baby on the uh get it out. Here's how he ranks his children. Ivanka, make America great again. And here's the thing. Publicly, it goes Don Eric Tiffany, but the truth is, it really goes Eric Tiffany, big space,

lot of regret for giving Don the name Don. That's what all this is about. They go on television because that's the closest thing they can get to playing catch with him you know think about it huh oh think about it cat's cradle Don jr. this girl grew up too fast someone said Baron yeah there's another kid. Oh, Baron, shit. I don't know where Baron is in the hierarchy. It's hard to say because we have a president with a child who's young,

and everyone just recognizes that he doesn't talk to him or see him or spend time with them or anything paternal at all, and that's fine. That's just part of it. Yo, Baron's Luke Skywalker. He is going to start the revolution. We've got to get into the ground floor right now. What do you think about Melania and Baron up there?

I think they're devils. I think they're body devils. Haven't you seen the pictures? When we come back, a new game. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back. Okay, guys, here's the deal.

We're going to play a new game tonight, and it's going to be a rapid-fire game for somebody in the crowd. This week it was announced that Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and friend of the pod, what, JPMorgan Chase? We'll be starting a... I love JP. Love JP. That dude is so funny.

We'll be starting a healthcare company Try to lower healthcare costs for their employees We love disruption In the healthcare system Like Medicare for all and others But until then We're not going to judge this in advance But a lot of people are rightly worried

About consolidation Especially the growing power of companies Like Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos owns so many companies, you haven't heard of most of them. And so we are going to play a game tonight called Bezos or Pokemon. Would anyone out there like to play this game for a parachute gift card? Hi. Hello.

Hi, what's your name? Allie. Allie? Yes. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Are you from LA or visiting? I'm from Huntington Beach.

Huntington Beach. Dana Rohrabacher. He's your congressperson. Yep. His relationship with Russia is deeply strange. Yes, I agree. It's inexplicable. Except for the obvious explanations.

Are you working to remove Dana Robacher? I've donated to... You've donated? That's personal. Crooked Seven. You did donate to the Crooked Seven? Yes. Guys. We're going to take down the Crooked Seven

two of them have already retired well thank you Allie you're welcome so I'm gonna say names of companies and Pokemon and you have to decide is it a little creature from some sort of a video game slash TV show slash 3D world

experience that captivated people for 15 seconds. Alright, are you ready? Yes. Here we go. Quidzy. Bezos. Correct.

Eevee. Pokemon. Correct. Twilio. What was Correct. Twilio. What was that? Twilio. Bezos. Correct. Ditto.

Pokemon. Correct. Espeon. Bezos. Pokemon. Damn it. I love seeing who knows before she does. Fascinating.

The people who know Pokemon are fascinating. Domo. Pokemon. Bezos. Remitly. Bezos. Correct. Vulpix.

Pokemon. Correct. Songza. Bezos. Correct. Everfi. Bezos. Correct. Onix. Pokemon. Everfi. Bezos. Correct.

Onix. Pokemon. What are you? The crowd has started muttering the answers. Help her again. Help her again. They don't tolerate this shit at Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. They'll break your legs.

Woot. Bezos. Correct. Twitch. Bezos. Correct. Porygon. Pokemon.

Correct. The Washington Post. Bezos? Bezos. It's Bezos. You're correct. I said Bezos. All's Bezos. I said Bezos. Allie, congratulations.

You've won Bezos or Pokemon. Woo! Probably could have put five more seconds into brainstorming the name of that game. Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It, and there's more on the way. And we're back.

Now for a segment we call The Rant Wheel. Here's how it works. We spin the wheel, and where it lands, we talk about it. That's it. We rant about the topic. This week on The Wheel, we have Hillary on the Grammys. We have PolitiFact picking

Alan Grayson as their Democratic fact-checker, we have pollster Frank Luntz, we have Elon Musk, we have MS-13 narratives, we have the phrase open borders, we have airline bathroom etiquette, and Girl Scout cookies. Let's spin the wheel. Oh, a triple bell. It has landed on airline bathroom etiquette. A suggestion that comes from Sashir. That came from me.

When people try to step over you, like if you're like in the aisle or in the middle middle and someone's over here and they want to get out to go to the bathroom, where the fuck do you think you're going? You need to get over my body? Let me get out of the aisle first before you need to go somewhere. I've had too many crotches in my face or butts in my face. If I'm asleep, wake me up. I would rather get up and let you go than have you put your whole being over my space.

Is that fascinating? It's awful. Do you step over people? I'm going to say that I do, but no, but listen. I don't care how agile you are. See, that's what you're not. Don't try to Spider-Man your way over me. See, they think they're doing you a favor. They're not. Because they're like not... Don't try to Spider-Man your way over me. They, see,

they think they're doing you a favor. They're not. Because they're like, I don't want to make you get up, but really they're terrified of asking permission. Yeah, I'd rather you tap me. Tap me and speak

to another human being for once in your life and let me get up. Point of clarification, what if you're asleep? Wake me up. Oh, yeah, okay. Hold on, hold on.

I'll step over a sleeper maybe. Because what if you fall over me? You're going to wake up anyway. Or like yank my headphones out of the TV or something. There's too much room for error. I cannot. Listen. There are many people who have attempted to step over people on airplanes and have failed.

Yeah. And they've woken people up. They've touched them. They've landed on them. It's a horror. Yeah. And they've woken people up. They've touched them. They've landed on them. It's a horror. Yeah. However, I have not spent

the better part of five years turning lasagna and Chicken McNuggets into planks and jump squats to not give it a go. Because

I know that Do that on your own time. I know that others have failed. But I am telling you, if you saw me do it, you'd say, not only should you do it, we should film it. It's art. What's your favorite move?

Because I am like Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment. I would like laser beams to be added for difficulty so you could see what I do. Because I come over. But that's what you think. That's what you think. That's what you think. You could see what I do because I come over. I don't. Honestly, that's what you think. That's what you think. You think you're also disrupting the person who's sitting ahead because now you're like leaning their chair back and they're like, what the fuck? I am telling you, I am telling you, I can do it.

I can do it with maybe I could even do it with one arm rest. You give me one arm rest. I can get up. I can get it with, maybe I could even do it with one arm rest. You give me one arm rest. It's all core. I can get up. It's all core. It is all core. Exactly, Francesca. But you have to go to the bathroom.

Do it. Yes. You want us to stimulate? Okay, okay. I'll narrate. So try to make this work on the radio. Wait, there has to be three. No, no, no, no, no.

It's over three. So Shira's sleeping. So Shira's sleeping. John is sitting next to her. She's sleeping so quietly. She's listening to... Oh, no! He's grouchy, he's grouchy.

Oh, no! John is standing. He's falling! No, he's got... Oh! He did it, but we all felt nervous. Everybody felt that a cataclysm was imminent. Oh, my God.

What do you guys think? I also feel like you stood up way higher than the ceiling would be. Fair point. You definitely crashed into the next aisle. It wasn't regulation. It wasn't regulation. Yeah. Also, by the same token, if you're in the window seat and I'm in the aisle and you don't pee in five hours, I judge the fuck out of you.

Like, there's something wrong with you and you definitely have a diaper on and that's weird. I'm going to take that to another level because I don't understand people who don't do what I do, which is that if I'm on a flight and I do not get the aisle seat, I don't get on the plane and I get on the next flight. I will not fly if I'm not on the aisle seat because I pee three times from San Francisco to LA. We're in there for 45 minutes.

I pee three times, all right? And so if people are in the middle of the aisle, I don't know what crazy motherfuckers are taking those seats. I need bathroom access at all times. Those those those people might as well be from Mars. I don't get it. Well, I usually try to get a window.

What makes you a window person? I like to lean. And it is the only advantage that if someone is in the window and they're not leaning, I'm like, you need to get the fuck out of there. What a waste of this. This beautiful accessory. Yeah. I agree. I love leaning on a wall.

You know what kills me? I'll tell you what kills me. When somebody leaves the window open, shining light in the cabin, and then falls asleep, you know, and you're like, you're like,

shut that, what are you, shut that fucking window. Everybody's sleeping. Shut the window. It's your job. Farm, so that fucking window everybody's sleeping shut the window it's your job farm some just so close the window people are trying to rest

it's the one window open it's a huge difference the first window is the biggest delta in the light experience let's spin the wheel again sing the virgin america song Sing the Virgin America song It has landed On MS-13 Narratives

Francesca This was my suggestion Take it away Because I just think It was so egregious How Trump Scapegoated All immigrants

By basically Eluding And implying That they were Gang members so egregious how Trump scapegoated all immigrants by basically alluding and implying that they were gang members. By the same token, I just think it's a ridiculous strategy to try and eliminate gangbanging by deporting people's parents.

As we all know, the hardest criminals come from really functional families. So, that makes no sense to me. And I think it's ridiculous. Yeah, I mean, it does seem as though, just to get serious, that Trump has signaled to ICE, send a message that nobody is safe. And it's scary, right? I mean, it's just...

And the thing that's so frustrating about... Like, first of all, they've combined illegal immigration and legal immigration because there's now widespread agreement. I mean, there's basically the workings of a deal already, which is just legalize the Dreamers, people that came here by no fault of their own. We'll give you the border security money you're asking for

and then we'll deal with the rest later, right? That is the border security. That is an effort to stop illegal immigration. But he's combining it with legal immigration. And so he's conflating those two issues. But also we spent 30 years building up an extra legal system for people to come to this country. We told them to come here.

We said there are jobs here. Both parties failed for 30 years to create a system to verify who came here legally because the companies wanted people to work here. As consumers, American citizens wanted cheaper food and cheaper restaurants and cheaper hotels and everything else that's been supported by a massive economy of people who came to this country as undocumented people. when there's comprehensive immigration reform, every proposal always includes a guest worker program, which is just a means to enshrine a second-class citizenship basically to legalize the current caste system we have

because that's what the companies that support politicians want more than anything. And so when we have created this giant extra-legal system and we put someone like Trump in charge, all of the benefits have accrued to all of us. All of the benefits that accrued to so many people who pays the price. It's just like people that have been here for 40 years just show one day they're there and one day they're gone. And the failure of 30 years empowered someone like Trump to ruin all these people's lives.

That and the airline seat thing really upset me. Yeah, a lot of tough shit happening. I mean, that's the thing. It's like, again, like you listen to Reagan-Bush 1980. They had the whole debate, and they're basically like falling over themselves to be who can be more humane on the issue of immigration. 1980, I mean, this is how long there's been a failure.

And they're like, even, we're going to talk about maybe open borders, but Reagan's like, we should just have an open border policy you know so people can come and go and blah blah Reagan this is this is their god this is the guy they pray to every night I mean this and so Republicans like have completely lost their heart and I will say it's because xenophobia is winning them elections and and that's why and so i think that's part and parcel is like countering the racist narrative i don't think it's separate from talking about real

immigration reform i think so like sometimes i feel like it's just we just over focus on the racism but i think these completely go hand in hand i think that's right i mean it of course it's i mean when they turn from cracking down on illegal immigration to cracking down on legal immigration from the countries they don't like i I think it's pretty clear what they're after. Let's spin it again. It has landed on Elon Musk. A suggestion from one Adam Conover I don't know if there is anybody

If anyone is more obsessed than Trump With staying in the news cycle Every single moment It's Elon Musk Like this guy is Look, I'll give him credit For half inventing PayPal The shitty Venmo of the 90s

Right? We're switching to the Cash App Go on And for for half inventing PayPal, the shitty Venmo of the 90s. Right? We're switching to the Cash App. Go on. And for... And, you know, Tesla is fine. It's a semi-successful car company, right? SpaceX is a successful contractor for the US government in space but like the the

degree to which this guy just says shit and then it's repeated by the media in this in this hugely blasted way that has no no relationship to reality is insane to me and he is now just in the business of creating you know business of creating publicity stunt after publicity stunt. You know who else did that? Who? Thomas Edison. Continue. Yeah, except Tom. Fame whore. They bear a lot of similarities in some ways,

but let's just talk about the flamethrowers. Everyone's talking about the flamethrowers this week. The flamethrowers are being sold by the Boring Company. The Boring Company is a real company, Musk has, that has a real plan to build sled tunnels to move

cars under the streets of L.A. It's a subway for cars. That is all that it is. It's a subway for cars. And he is trying to convince the city to go along with this plan. Everyone who works in public transportation in LA says this is the worst idea we've ever heard,

but he's got the ear of the mayor and some other people, he takes them on tours of his tunnel he built, et cetera. Oh, he already built the tunnel. He built a one-mile tunnel to show that the boring machine that he bought works. I want to see it. I'm sure it's a very nice tunnel,

but in order to keep attention on him day after day and to distract from Tesla's problems manufacturing the Model 3 and stuff like that, he does things where now the Boring Company... Model 3's cool. God damn it! God damn it! Now the Boring Company is selling fucking flamethrowers that say the Boring Company on them.

It's this public transportation company. For some reason, they're selling flamethrowers. The flamethrowers that say the Boring Company on them. It's this public transportation company. For some reason, they're selling flamethrowers. The flamethrowers are just airsoft rifles that he bought on the market and had a butane tank to. Sounds smart. God damn it! God damn it! See, here's the thing.

If he was just being Richard Branson, I sell CDs and I have a plane, right, and I'm having some fun on my off time, no big deal. But the guy is presenting himself as a genius who can solve all of our problems and all of his solutions are facile sci-fi bullshit that people buy just because he's created

an aura around himself. Counterpoint. Thomas Edison electrocuted an elephant in a PR stunt and that elephant died slowly.

It's real. Oh, the S's are coming up. I was going to say... That was like counterpoint. Counterpoint Puerto Rico. He did do some good stuff right after the hurricane. He did a bit.

Did you say he's hot? Solar cells. Yeah, he's Tesla's. Some AI thing that he thinks may be the end of the world. So Tesla, for example, so what Elon does is he sells the promise of the future, right? But his actual progress towards the future is very limited. So Tesla is a great bit of marketing that uses pre-existing lithium batteries and puts them into a car. Pretty good tech. Great marketing.

This year, their stock price, their valuation was higher than GM. They only make 70,000 cars a year because they're barely a going concern. GM's making millions. There's a touchscreen, and if you say play Pod Save America, it happens. I'm not going to stand for this. Have you been in a

Tesla? Thomas Edison electrocuted an elephant. I don't understand the rules. We made Nikola Tesla mad. We are that elephant, John. You rendered him crazy. We are that elephant. Humanity is that elephant. It's the combination of space. Elon built a spaceship that goes up and then lands on its

butt. It goes right up and it comes back down. By the way, that woman filming you right there, Carrie, she used to work for a place called SpaceX. Oh, very cool. Look, look, Tesla's fine. Electric cars are oversold as a way to help the environment because of the emissions caused by just buying new cars.

But when he's proposing public infrastructure projects that take air away from the actual solutions that would benefit Los Angeles and then sells flamethrowers off the back of them as a publicity stunt, it pisses me off because it's fundamentally unserious when he claims to have a solution to one of the most serious problems facing the city. If he actually put any – if he put just 1% of his fortune towards public transportation in Los Angeles, he could actually help people move around the city. But he doesn't want to do that. He wants to build a sled tunnel to move Teslas around really fast for God knows how much money a ride if he ever actually gets it built. I want to see that tunnel. Let's spin it again. It has landed on

Hillary on the Grammys. I don't know. Can't we just have certain... I thought it was... I thought it was weird. I just didn't care that much. Can't it just be the kind of thing where you go, huh, there's nothing,

no one ever just goes, huh, you have to have such an opinion now. It's like, because no one would ever, no one ever kind of musters the energy to type, I don't have a strong feeling about that. So the whole internet is people reacting strongly to things that you just don't need to have that strong a reaction to.

I can't believe Hillary read from that book. That vile book. I don't care that much. Oh, she's trying to seem relatable. I guess. She's been doing that for a very long time with mixed results. I didn't see it.

How was it? I just read a part of the Fire and Fire. Which part? I don't know. It doesn't really matter. I think the... Hamburger part?

Cardi B read the hamburger part. I love that noise. Yeah, there it is. What is that? It's so nice. It's like a Nextel throwback noise. For me, as a comedy moment, it didn't work

because I think that it was a misread of the audience on the part of the Grammys because I just don't think that many people are... Some people are, but not that big a segment of the population is just generally thrilled to see Hillary Clinton make cameos and things as a light as light entertainment. You know, like it's just a lot of like your feelings. All right. You know, like where happens to.

Oh, there's Bruno Mars. There's Cardi B. That was funny. Oh, OK. I'm back in it. All right. Oh, God. I was trying to not think about this for one night, but I hate love.

You know, it's just like not a good, you know? It wasn't as funsies as, you know, like, oh, yeah, you know, like in 2008, oh, John McCain was cute when he had that one line in the end, you know? Like, it's, we're in a different world. Yeah, it's hard to see her. I'm not seeing politics as pop culture comedy fun right now. Right.

What cameo would you have accepted? Like, if it were like, so you think you can dance with Hillary Clinton? Would that have been cool? Ninja Warrior. Did you see when Corden introduced the president of the recording, what was it?

Oh, yeah. Introduce him as if Barack Obama was coming out and people were like losing their shit in the audience he's like oh just kidding it's the president of the recording I think for the Grammys yeah cool yeah that the most, the most disappointed I'd ever seen an audience until I saw this audience not get gift cards. Yeah. It was a similar reaction. Applaud all you want.

You capitalist pigs. You know, the whole week too, it was like part of the response to Hillary reading from the book. It was like, how could she read from that book? The very week where Michael Wolff insinuated

something about Nikki Haley? Nikki Haley has been slandered by Michael Wolff suggesting she had some sort of affair with Donald Trump. A slander on Nikki Haley. And by the way, Michael Wolff is a piece of

shit. He's a sleazy fucking guy who wrote a book using sleazy people about the sleaziest president we've ever seen. But the audacity of people that defend Donald Trump for a living saying, how could you ever get behind a book by someone who'd say something untoward about a woman in this day and age. Could you imagine? Michael Wolff insinuated something. Donald Trump is president.

Get off your damn high horses, you scumbags. That's all. I guess that's a good place to leave the show. Get off your high horses, you scumbags. Get off your high horses, you scumbags. I want to thank our panel. Francesca Fiorentini, Sasheer Zameda, and Adam Conover.

Thank you guys so much for coming out. Have a great night. Thank you.