Lovett or Leave It - There's Just Like So Much Going On (Live from DC!)

Episode Date: June 9, 2017

Trump's response to terror, the war on the war on drugs, the role of the press, Putin's spin on collusion, the impact of unfilled jobs across our government, and, most importantly, Wonder Woman. In the second live show at the Lincoln Theatre in DC, Jon is joined by The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, NBC investigative correspondent Ronan Farrow, and Washington Post humor columnist Alexandra Petri for a conversation on topics that sometimes get swamped by the daily insanity.

Hi guys! Hi, guys. Okay, so you guys aren't, like, that enthusiastic. That's fine. Thank you guys for being here. Thanks for coming out to the Lincoln Theater. it's great to be back in the swamp this is our second show in DC you guys jumped on those ticket sales that was

someone you see kick, that's good I see a lot of friends of the pod I like to check out the shirts Someone used SeatGeek. That's good. I see a lot of friends of the pod. I like to check out the shirts. I see someone holding a sign with small print. Oh, it's a bingo card. That bingo thing is spreading. It's great.

Dottie Old Racist. Check one off early. A lot has happened, even in the last three days, so that's good. Obviously, there's been some serious news out of the UK, which is obviously a tragedy, but we've also learned a lot about the way our president responds to tragedy, which I think is important for us. And so to talk about these latest developments, I wanted to bring out somebody who I respect and admire a lot. He was a Middle East and Washington correspondent at The New Yorker,

and now he is editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. Jeffrey Goldberg, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. By the way, thanks for spending so much on your set. This is really... Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. By the way, thanks for spending so much on your set. This is really... There's a room and board around the corner. It's unbelievable.

That's not the vibe, Jeff. It's a high level of discourse, real low level of furniture. That's sort of what we're going for. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Let's get into it. Obviously, there's been an attack in London.

Seven people were killed. There was a van that drove into pedestrians. There was a knife attack. Police shot and killed the attackers within eight minutes. ISIS has claimed responsibility. I don't yet believe we know if it was directed or just inspired by. But, you know, what that matters, I don't know. Now, the mayor of London issued a very strong statement. He's appalled and furious at these cowardly attacks. There's no justification,

et cetera. And he said, Londoners will see an increased police presence today, and over the course of the next few days, there's no reason to be alarmed. One of the things that police and all of us need to do is make sure we're as safe as we can possibly be. Now, as leaders around the world were expressing their support for the people of London, as they were expressing their condolences to those who had died, our President Donald Trump tweeted, at least seven dead and 48 wounded in terrorist attack, and Mayor of London says, quote, there is no reason to be alarmed. Then he followed up, pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who had to think fast on his, quote, no reason to be alarmed. Then he followed up, pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan,

who had to think fast on his quote, no reason to be alarmed, end quote statement. MSM is working hard to sell it. So I think this captures what we love about our president. Jeff, I think that a lot of people saw what Donald Trump said about the attack in London and immediately turned to what happens when we're attacked here? What happens when we have a president who we can't rely on to act responsibly in the wake of a terrorist attack? Well, that's the, I mean, the interesting and troubling thing about this whole moment is that in this presidency, nothing has actually happened yet. Nothing has, the wounds to the presidency are largely self-inflicted. yet. The wounds to the presidency are largely self-inflicted. And so you have a situation in which the government is not staffed. We know that, right? You have a situation in which the

president's credibility with the American people is somewhat shaky. And I'm being careful in the way I describe that. So when, God forbid, there's a terror attack in Orlando, San Bernardino, or a natural disaster, a Katrina, an earthquake in California, there are two things that a president needs to, three things a president needs to do. One is actually run the operation to make sure that things are okay. The second thing that the president needs to do is calm people down, right? Not hype it, but calm. And the third thing that the president needs to do is calm people down, right? Not hype it, but calm. And the third thing the president needs to do is to dispense credible information about the crisis so that people know what to do. And so we're in a situation right now.

This is not a partisan comment. This is not a partisan comment. I mean, this could be a Democrat who has failed so far to achieve these kind of baseline preparations. So we're in a situation right now where the federal government, I don't think, is ready to manage any sort of serious disaster. Now, there also are some serious adults around Donald Trump, right? That's sort of what these people say, right? You have people like H.R. McMaster, you have people like Tillerson, you have people like Mattis.

You know, these are people who, in particular, H.R. McMaster and Mattis, who know how serious this job is, know their responsibility in a crisis, and yet they have not had the ability to rein this president in and to stop him from retweeting Drudge, recounting what he sees on Fox News. What can we demand from these people? What is their responsibility? What do we do to kind of box our current president in in a crisis? So let me contradict myself a little bit and say that these things, Manchester and this current attack, this most recent attack,

happened outside the borders of the United States. But they are crises for the United States because it's part of one problem, right? One worldwide problem. And so it's very important, obviously, if you are one of the, quote, adults around the president, that you communicate strength and calm and solidarity with your closest ally in the world, Great Britain. And I can't imagine, I mean, it's beyond imagination to think that anyone who's working in the national security complex or foreign policy complex of the United States is happy about the president of the United States trolling the mayor of London while he's out on the streets trying to keep things together. It's a terrible signal, and I can't imagine they were happy with that.

And it's axiomatically true that they failed to prevent him from getting on Twitter, right? And they failed to issue a response befitting the United States government, not only the key ally of the UK, but also the world's sole superpower for another few days, at least, right? That was snarky. I shouldn't have been snarky. I said I wasn't going to be snarky. No, we need a little bit of it. It's important. No, it's not. But anyway, no, it's not. It's not. But no, this is the... So if you're looking for proof points, right, if you're looking for evidence that the system has not figured out a way to manage

some of the president's idiosyncrasies, then here's this last episode as proof that the system isn't managing his idiosyncrasies. Right, right. And not only did he go after the mayor of London, whose name is Khan. I wonder if that's a coincidence. He also started tweeting, this is why we need my travel ban, and I don't care what anybody says, it's a travel ban. Yeah.

You might as well just tweet, keep Muslims out. I dare you, Supreme Court, to find me. To stop me. Try and stop me. I mean, it's not a good strategy if you're trying to get a policy enacted, obviously. It's all such farce. But then Kellyanne Conway... Not fans of Kellyanne Conway. So this is like an anti-Trump crowd. Is that what I'm...

I have to say... You told me that it was a... I didn't mean to troll. Listen, there's something about the hissing That feels very old fashioned in a way that I don't like Hissing Very 30s Yes

But okay I know what hissing is You're animals So Kellyanne Conway tweets I wish people would stop paying so much attention to the president's statements on Twitter. Meanwhile, her husband was quoting the tweet saying, this is very bad.

This is not something that he should be saying. And then a few hours later, he had to apologize on Twitter. So, you know, the war at home. For a moment, something pierced the veil of this opacity that's around them, and finally someone said, wait a second, this doesn't make any sense. Right.

Someone from inside the camp. I wonder what that Kellyanne to her husband conversation like, sweetie. Sweetie, I'm going to take away your Twitter. It's my job to lie for this person. Uh, it's really important that you give me the space to do that.

This is Kellyanne's time to shine. George. His name is George. His name is George. His name is George. So, stepping back, obviously, you know, there's a serious issue here, which is there are these lone wolf attacks or either directed or inspired by

ISIS that they're going after soft targets. They have struck three times in London in as many weeks. We face a threat here at home. Is this more than just the president being a ridiculous figure? Does the president doing this make us less safe in any demonstrable way? Does this make it more difficult for us to cooperate with our allies to get the intelligence we need? It makes it more difficult to defeat ISIS. I mean, I've been writing this for a while, actually. The problem is, his framing is wrong. He's refracting this through the completely wrong lens. Sadiq Khan could be one of the great soldiers in the fight against ISIS

because his existence disproves ISIS's core theory. ISIS argues to Muslims that there is no space for you in the West. The infidel hates you. You should not live in the West. You cannot be a good Muslim in the West, right? So what we in the West want to do is to signal to the vast majority of Muslims who don't subscribe to ISIS ideology, no, no, no, there is a place for you in the West. And you can be a Muslim and you can be respected, but you could be part of our civilization as well. And we can co-mingle these civilizations.

So it's about... And this is about... This is not soft, gauzy stuff here. This is a strategy for defeating ISIS. You have to prove to the mass of Muslims, including Muslims who might be drawn to this particular theology, that it's wrong and that they're lying to you about the gray zone. It's the gray zone, right?

That you can live in both, you can have one foot in both worlds, right? So what Donald Trump does and what people around him do is they are actually doing some of the rhetorical work for ISIS, right, when they paint Muslims with an overly broad brush. This is not to say that we don't have a problem. We have a problem. There are Muslims in the world who subscribe to a particular ideology, a specific variant of Islamic thought, who want to kill people in the West and are doing that. But what we have to do is limit that number. And the way we limit that number is to look at people like Sadiq Khan and not troll him on Twitter, but actually say, no, ISIS, his existence proves you're wrong. He's one of the most successful politicians

in the UK, and he's a devout Muslim and an immigrant and all the rest. And so you want to be very careful to say that the President of the United States is inadvertently or advertently helping an enemy of the United States. But in this case, the strategy is actually counterproductive. Yeah. When we come back, I'm going to bring out our panel. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.

And we're back. I want to bring out the rest of our panel. She is an author and humor columnist, a very funny writer whose work you've seen in the Washington Post, Alexandra Petrai. And he's an NBC News anchor and investigative reporter. You've seen his award-winning investigative series undercovered on the Today Show, Ronan Farrow.

Hi. So I wanted to step back and talk about some of the stories that often fall beneath the cracks of our daily kind of grind of Trump nonsense, because I just think that there's just so much going on. So I wanted to start with the war on drugs. There are these sort of two things going on. We have obviously a mounting opioid epidemic. Every day, 91 Americans are dying from overdoses. The majority of drug overdose deaths now involve an opioid. Since 1999, the number of overdose deaths involving opiates has quadrupled. And from 2000 to 2015, more than

half a million people have died from drug overdoses. Meanwhile, as a country, we've been having this national conversation about drugs generally and opiates. We've seen a kind of backslide on the part of the Trump administration led by Mulvaney and what they've done with the budget and Jeff Sessions at the Department of Justice. Budget proposal cut about 95% of funding to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The Trump administration's Obamacare repeal would cause a reduction in access to mental health treatment and addiction treatment. And then also now Jeff Sessions has issued a memo saying that if

prosecutors wish to pursue lesser charges for low-level crimes, they will need to obtain approval for the exception from a U.S. attorney, an assistant attorney general, or another supervisor. This is a quote from Jeff Sessions. I am astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana so people can trade one life-wrecking dependency for another that's only slightly less awful. I want to start with Ronan on this topic because you just did a series on these issues for the Today Show, and one of them actually spoke to that exact issue, the way that medical marijuana relates to helping people reduce their dependence on opiates. I mean, basically, we were looking at unusual treatment approaches. How do you address this epidemic? We need to.

There are so many people dying. And what we found is, over and over again, kind of the cutting-edge approaches, which, surprise, surprise, tend to emphasize harm reduction, just lessening the problem for addicts rather than trying to wipe out drugs or addicts themselves. And those are approaches that run headlong into what we were just talking about, what Jeff Sessions is doing. So, you know, the practitioners of this, both on the medical side and on the law enforcement side, are really reeling

with what this new administration is doing. And it occurs to me, look, mea culpa, the mainstream media has reinforced this impression. We go around saying everything is unprecedented. Donald Trump tweets, it's unprecedented. He breathes, it's unprecedented. The fact is, we ended up at the end of that primary with a bunch of candidates from the Republican Party who had a lot of overlapping positions. On a lot of these things, whether it's Paris or cuts to the EPA,

you probably would have seen this regardless of what Republican got into office. But the war on drugs really is sui generis. This administration took it to such an extreme, there was such an ironclad consensus that the war on drugs was a failure. You know, I talked to all of these sheriffs of different cities that have been on the front lines of enforcing these laws for years and years and years, and you won't find a person who says the war on drugs worked. Nobody says, oh, Nancy Reagan, yeah, that was great. That was, just say no. That was a real moment of success for us. But Jeff Sessions really does essentially believe that. You know, it's not unfair to him to say he wants to revive that. He is saying it explicitly. Yeah, I mean, Jeff Sessions was outside the mainstream, even in the Republican Party.

He was one of a few people who sank a criminal justice reform bill when he was a senator, along with Tom Cotton, I think one other, and Mitch McConnell went along with it because, I don't know, we don't know what motivates Mitch McConnell. We don't know what he wants out of any given day. But Jeff Sessions is quietly one of the most destructive people from, you know, inside this administration, not only on drugs, but on deportations and a whole host of other issues. So here's something that has not been made public. We actually, so surprisingly, not a lot of people have asked Jeff Sessions about that famous moment where he said, before he was in his current job, good people don't smoke marijuana. That went everywhere.

He really did say that. You know, and people were like, what, are you high when you said this? But he never really had to answer tough questions about it. And we actually did ask him, it never aired, but we asked him when he was on the Today Show about that specific quote. And I will say, maybe this is a way to button up this exchange about the drug war,

he sounded a little bit like he could be moved on that issue. I was shocked. I mean, maybe that's theater. I don't know. But he basically said, look, I was taken a little bit out of context. I certainly, you know, there are moments where I would support medical marijuana. He struck a more moderate tone than I have ever heard in this context. Nobody likes it when you sing the praises of Jeff Sessions.

I don't know. I'm skeptical that you misread the crowd here. No, so the Reef for Madness issue, he can be moved on. You know, I wouldn't go that far, but maybe, maybe, right? No, this crowd just does not want to hear a glimmer of hope. You don't want a character redemption arc for him? Yeah, no. Ronan, we do not.

You just want the Kate McKinnon version. All right, all right. The hissing. Yeah. I don't know what to do. Do I come? You guys are having fun. It's Monday.

You're hissing, and it's 8.30 on a Monday. Jonathan Lovett, you have reinforced the partisan rancor in this nation, and it is here in this room, and I love you all. He's fighting it. He's fighting it. in this nation, and it is here in this room, and I love you all. He's fighting it.

But this is partisan as hell, and you should all self-reflect on that. Who cares? This is how democracy dies. Thunderous applause. No, no, it's in darkness, guys. Democracy dies in the darkness. You guys are quoting the Washington Post. I'm quoting Queen Amidala.

I know. I hate that I'm in a position where I can't be like, Queen Amidala's version is the correct version, but now my employer requires me to say that it's in darkness that democracy dies. Wait, sorry. First and best. Anyway.

Before we move on, I just want to clean this up. The Washington Post says democracy dies in darkness. Queen Amid just want to clean this up. The Washington Post says, democracy dies in darkness. Queen Amidala says... To thunderous applause. But that's actually liberty. This is how liberty dies. Whoa, whoa.

Yup, yup. I just remembered it. Whoa. That was an impressive nerd cred moment. No, but it implies I've seen episode two of Star Wars more than once, which is a sad statement about my life. My God, it was from two. So I want to move on to another topic, thankfully. I want to talk about press freedom and also the role of the press generally in covering this White House. I want to start with some of the more ominous signals that we've seen. These are

some of the reports we've seen that in conversation with Comey, Trump was angry about leaks and said that Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information. And this is the quote, look, you used to put reporters in prison 10 or 15 years ago, and that had some real impact. What is he talking about? Another report said the Justice Department had gotten a warrant from the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as FISA, to conduct electronic surveillance on a group of journalists who had been the recipient of leaked information. And Trump has also issued threats about just putting a stop to the White House briefing generally. a job with Sinclair Broadcasting, which is a pro-Trump media company that owns several local outlets, put him on television in a very kind of failed state vibe, where this guy who has no business being on television started saying that we're going to shut down

the White House briefing because it's not conducive to properly sharing information. Jeffrey Goldberg, you are the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, an American institution as old as Lincoln. Not me. The Atlantic. The Atlantic is as old as Lincoln. Lost track of my noun there. Yeah. You look great. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Day over 150. Where was I? So something about The Atlantic. Yeah Atlantic. The Atlantic is an institution that has obviously been covering presidents for over 150 years. What do you see your role right now in this moment that does feel particularly novel? Well, I mean, the role, one of the things that we are supposed to do or have to do is not lose our shit.

And that means keeping our composure. And going to this point, not everything can be dialed up to 11, and we have to double down on what we do, which is try to put out fact-driven stories about the events of the day. And one of the things that I talk about with our staff is, you know, look, if Donald Trump does something good, does something right, we have to say it because that's journalism. We're not in the resistance. We're a journalism outfit, and that means we cover the world as it

is. I would say that, I mean, I think it's a fair analytical assessment to say that the Trump administration has not provided the media with huge numbers of achievements to write about yet, but when that, when, no, it's a serious,'s a serious... When that happens, we have to do that. We'll lose our credibility if we just try to bring him down. But, you know, right now... I mean, you know this. You look at this audience.

I mean, this is a good time for media because they haven't thrown people in jail. They haven't figured out a way to throw people in jail. We're still in the phase where it's frustrated talk about controlling the media rather than actual attempts to control the media. Yeah. It does feel as though this is, I don't want to say a golden age because there's a lot of shit out there, but there is a kind of sense that this moment is important and requires a great deal

of serious investigative reporting, kind of journalists going back to first principles. Uh, your paper, the Washington post does have the tagline democracy dies in darkness. Um, yeah. Uh,

metal like that, but yeah, no, no. Yeah. As you say, it's important. I feel like if there's a time to do journalism,

now is not that time to continue in the trend of understatement. That was their working tagline before they settled. We're going to go with a triple, we're going to go with a highly ambivalent triple negative for our motto.

This is not the time for journalism. Perhaps at this moment in time, we should contemplate possibly not doing the things that we used to not do. No, I had to say it that way because I'm a woman. But no, I'm kidding. Alexandra, I thought you saw Wonder Woman. I did see Wonder Woman.

And my understanding is that now everything is different. That's true. I don't have to apologize for... Yeah, no, everything's fixed. I'm not Wonder Woman yet. I have things to say about journalism. That's true. I don't have to apologize for... Yeah. No, everything's fixed. Don't move on to Wonder Woman yet. I have things to say about journalism. That's true. We're going to come back to Wonder Woman. Probably. Maybe on the Rain Wheel.

So, Ronan, the other side of this coin of the obligation of journalists to not be in the resistance is you hear criticism from a lot of people in this room that especially on TV news there's a lot of false equivalence. Do you see that when you're covering stories at NBC? Yes.

I mean, look, I have actually been blown away as someone who is, as a first instinct, extraordinarily critical of the mainstream media by the number of earnest, quality reporters trying to out the truth in the fine old school institutions like the Washington Post, I think also like NBC News, where I now work. That said, one byproduct you get of trying to be fair, and especially doing it in a shorthand medium like television, which is admittedly not where the cool kids are. I think we're where the cool kids are.

Television is like playing on the deck of the Titanic. TV is the old, TV is the old economy. Iceberg! Live podcast recordings. This is the new economy. But at least you get free cello music. He's working through something. He's really working through something right now.

I'm working through a lot of personal issues, a lot of dark shit here, guys. And I think that for all the ways in which the resources of these old school institutions are very important right now for making sure the truth outs, especially, as I said, when you're dealing with shorter hand reporting, as you do necessarily in network television, you get into these conversations where it's a little bit formulaic,

even if it's an unconscious instinct in the newsroom. You know, it's a good thing that every investigative story I do, before I bring it to, you know, the 10 rounds of lawyering it goes through before it makes air, I have to ask myself the question, okay, who's representing the other side from the most forceful voice? And are they a persuasive enough response to that? But that works in most political climates. And I think what I've seen in a lot of these newsrooms is now people just grappling with a brand new reality where you can't just use a simple formula because sometimes the facts really are all on one side and there is just a lie on the other side. And, you know, even at NBC, we actually had an explicit debate about, can we call it a lie? And that's a really complicated question for a big news

organization. You also wouldn't retweet or even write about Donald Trump's tweet of unconfirmed drudge report reporting on London, which is kind of an amazing, amazing moment when you wouldn't. It used to be until today when the president of the United States says something, the president of the United States says something, everybody has to deal with it. But no, now it's a whole new kind of response to it. And to the credit of, I think, most of these old school networks and newspapers, too, they have risen to this moment in a range of different ways.

NBC, I think, still does not say lies. We say falsehoods. But we do say falsehoods. The Times says lies. People are calling out a lack of the truth where they see it. And they're filling that void with good reporting. So there's your feel-good story. I mean, I feel like

what I do like are the efforts, though, where people are like, no, but listen, this is the week Donald Trump became president. Like, where you have to have one person whose job it is to say that this week Donald Trump became president, no matter what happened in the news. Or just one person on the panel. Yeah. Whose job it is. Yeah, the Jeffrey Lords,

your Kayleigh McEnany's. But like going back to the Atlantic, like in the 1860s all the newspapers were sort of these scurrilous broadsides that people were putting out from one side or the other. So it could be either we're entering a new age of journalism where everyone's doing like the unbiased thing and keeping the facts going and there's still

demand for that. Or it could be that everyone's sort of splintering off to go into the wilderness and be like, and here we are with the old hickory times and I'm with you and I'm not with Mr. Van Harrison or whatever's going on. But, you know, my old-timey news voice. Look, I don't want to bring Van Harrison into this conversation, okay?

We're not bringing him. I mean, I actually disagree to some degree. I think we might be pivoting back toward proper recognition and appreciation for the idea that there is, that we live in the age of the Enlightenment, that there is fixed truth. And you see that in, look, obviously there are a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump who don't believe the Washington Post, NBC, The Atlantic, whatever. But I think you see in the level of engagement

in what we're doing right now an extraordinary appreciation for the idea that there is such a thing as truth. We're going to make mistakes all the time, but we're trying to reach something, and I think that people are coming together around that idea. I hope they are, at least.

Yeah. You discover your life proceeds better if you have correct assumptions about the world. Well, this is why. You know, this is why. Eventually, see, the theory of the case is that eventually the coal miners of West Virginia We discover your life proceeds better if you have correct assumptions about the world. This is why, you know, this is why. Eventually, see, the theory of the case is that eventually the coal miners of West Virginia will realize that they're not going to get jobs from this administration because of technological disruption and energy reform and all sorts of things.

And then eventually people will come back and say, oh, there's observable truth, empirical truth, and we ought to seek out those sources. I'm hoping that. It's not fair to what's happened to the coal miners, of course, because they're being led on. Well, we're – right. I mean, you know, Alexander, you wrote a great piece about this. Uh-oh. No, but you wrote a piece about –

Most people just say thank you. You should all be aware that Alexander and I definitely got drunk backstage before we came on out here. That's not Fanta. That's not Fanta. I just thought I'd take down her career with mine. We're all going out together. You wrote a piece about people defending Trump when he became a spider. Did I get that right?

Yeah. Trump when he became a spider. Did I get that right? Yeah. The gist of it was that the Republican establishment was sitting there continuing to make excuses as the venom paralyzed them and they were wrapped deeper and deeper in a web. But it was okay, because

the less you can see, the less you have to think about the consequences of your decisions. And as well as that worked in summary, I suggest you read it in full, but the point that I was making is that it was about the fact that what we have seen,

I think one of the hardest parts about the first 130 days of Donald Trump's administration is not just that Donald Trump has done these completely indefensible things, it's that despite that, there's been a group of people willing to defend them. And to Jeffrey's point, we're sort of waiting for reality to catch up with that lack of progress, with the inconsistency between what Donald Trump actually says and what he does. And it's a shame that we're stuck here waiting to say that the only way we'll be able to demonstrate to people that Donald Trump isn't going to do what he's going to do is there has to just be more misery in people's lives so that we can win an election.

I really hope this fact that I've invested all this money in is going to pay off because if the Five Lights team wins, I'm screwed. Bunch of nerds on the panel. screwed but uh a bunch of nerds on the panel one last topic i want to discuss uh before we get uh to okay stop is the failure of the trump administration to fill positions in the government uh this has sort of been an ongoing crisis 136 days in office of the 559 positions requiring senate confirmation 442 have no nominee. Trump has been blaming Senate Democrats for failing to confirm people, but you can't confirm people

who haven't been nominated. We have talked about the hissing. Some of the jobs that have not been filled. A coordinator for counterterrorism, the ambassador to combat HIV, AIDS globally, ambassador at large for war crimes, the representative to the EU, 41 positions in the Department of Defense,

13 positions in the Department of Education, eight positions in the Department of Homeland Security, 21 positions in the Department of Justice, not to mention that there are ambassadorships around the world that have not been filled. Not to mention, thank you, the fact that we do not have an FBI director. Ronan, you spend time at the State Department. What does it mean for the functional work of the State Department that there are so many open positions? Well, there are a couple of things happening at exactly the same time. One is for several administrations in a row, we have kind of slowly strangled the State

Department. We have stripped it of its prestige. We've stopped hiring the best and the brightest to join the Foreign Service. We've centralized more and more power away from the agencies, not just state, but especially state, and into the White House instead. And we've kind of rendered it more and more a mockery of the great institution it once was. I mean, so many of the fundamental liberties we depend on and so many of the things about the world order that we count on stem from old school diplomacy, you know, people getting into a room, getting people to the table and talking through

a problem. So the result of that is we do a lot more shooting first and asking questions later. And I think that's a really dangerous thing. This administration has accelerated that to a frankly astonishing extent. I mean, you mentioned the ambassadorships. 38 of the 50 ambassadorships that need to be appointed are not yet appointed by this administration. So he just tweeted saying, you know, oh, it's the Dems holding it up. But perhaps he actually is not aware even of how behind his administration is in these appointments, because they're way behind where other administrations typically are at this point. And it's more than that. It's, you know, they call the seventh floor of the State Department where I used to work for Hillary. Pandering. Wow. I know how this crowd works.

Look at that. First he scolded you for being partisan and then he used you. Then I tasted that sweet, sweet applause. No, but they call that seventh floor mahogany row. And it's a great old institution where many great diplomats came and went. And when Tillerson first came into mahogany row, the seventh floor employees got calls saying, basically, by my estimation, about 30 odd of the 40 something employees that sat on the seventh floor were going to be relocated out of the seventh floor. Tillerson rearranged his office space so that professional diplomats, the career foreign service officers, sat farther away.

Now, none of this in and of itself is damning, but what it's meant is when he goes on, say, his Asia trip, there's paper flying back and forth that the rest of the State Department, the subject matter experts the people that work on these relationships day in and day out never see, never sign off on and indeed the limitations of the communication they have with Tillerson are

just as extreme, you know, Tillerson amended the bylaws of the State Department so that he won't look at a document that's longer than a page typically to reach his desk. I've seen those new regulations on what memos have to look like to get to him. So I've heard some good encouraging things about how smart he is as an individual, but it is very clear that this is an administration that does not value the business of diplomacy.

And that is just one little sliver of the implications of the empty offices syndrome that you're talking about across the government. What's actually somewhat incomprehensible is the following. Donald Trump likes power. Anybody who runs for president, succeeds, likes power. In order to exercise power, you have to have people around you to carry out your wishes, right? So you have the opportunity to hire all of these people to do these things, and yet you don't do it. And I actually don't understand. What it suggests is a level of chaos in the operations of the White House that preclude this from getting done, because it's in his best interest to have people doing stuff.

Right. I mean, it's one of those situations where it's hard to separate the practical malice from the practical incompetence because if you really want to undo the institutions of our government, leaving them open is actually not as good as putting in ideologues who agree with you. But I mean, and I'll come back to this because I think about this all the time. The real issue for us is that when these jobs are empty, that means that when there is a crisis, whatever sort of crisis you can imagine... How about we don't have an ambassador to London? There are people who could be helping citizens in a natural disaster who just aren't there to help.

And that's when this becomes an actual crisis. I just want to say I volunteer. If you need like an ambassador I think I could do, like if they were closely located, the countries, and not bigger than Texas, I think I could commute between them and really like that's five positions right there. So you could take maybe like

take a Luxembourg, a Spain, a Portugal. You want a backpack. You want to go to hostels. Just Benelux it. If I had one of those passes that gets you to the front of the security. Just stay in hostels. It'll be very cheap. You want that Eurotrain pass that you can get when you're a student.

Yeah. And you can just ride the rails. Exactly. I'll just speak very vaguely. I'll be like, your country's people are the best people, and your ideas are the best ideas. And also, I support you in your territorial dispute, and that'll cover everything. I'm sorry, Alex. Jared Kushner already took that position.

Ah, gosh darn. 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 we're back. It's now time for OK Stop.

Here's how it works. We watch a clip. As we go, we stop it. To comment on it, this week there was a discussion on a little program called Fox and Friends about Wonder Woman. And it was a really sparkling bit of a conversation. Let's roll the clip. Wonder Woman is out in theaters right now. Some are calling it less American, Dion, because, well, her outfit isn't red, white and blue.

And in order to appeal to foreign audiences, very little reference to America at all. I think nowadays, sadly, money trumps patriotism. And, you know, especially recently, I personally feel like we're not really very patriotic the country in a certain sense. And they want these movies to succeed internationally. Okay, stop. The audacity of these people. It's almost like they've been avoiding the Trump-Russia stuff for weeks. They're playing it down. They don't want to talk about it, and they look at this, and it's like, this is a chance to go back to their old hits. This is Thunder Road for these people.

Is Hollywood patriotic enough? I don't think so. Oh, finally. We can go back to that. I have to plead ignorance to some degree here, but isn't Wonder Woman specifically not an American person? She's from like... She is... She's from like Amazonia, right?

She's from Themyscira. Yeah, so she's... Okay, so it's a movie about a foreigner. She is the princess of Themyscira. Right, right, so she's not, so there's no... But, but, let the record note that the original theme song did say, In her satin tights fighting for your rights, and the old red, white, and blue. So, you know. Thank you. How do you know thank you

how do you know that? you don't want to know it's amazing Alexandra any thoughts? what? oh man I guess my favorite thing is you can't see this visually but I'm going to describe it for our listeners

it says now some are calling the movie less American where it's like oh some this person we've hired to now, some are calling the movie less American, where it's like, oh, some. This person we've hired to come on the TV to call it less American. By the way, not to denigrate my fine colleagues at Fox News, but you never put some say in a chyron. Like that, I mean,

come on. People are saying. That's like banner writing 101. Also, not that it matters, but she's kind of wearing red, white, and blue in the movie. How many of you saw Wonder Woman? Banner writing 101. Also, not that it matters. Oh, no. She's kind of wearing red, white, and blue in the movie. How many of you saw Wonder Woman? It's blue and red.

I mean, it's like the muted DC universe. Like, wow, we're so sophisticated if there's no real color in this movie. We're going to talk about it later. It's on the rant wheel. But she's not. It would be stupid if she weren't in red, white, and blue. But she is. She's got some yellow in there, though.

I feel like the yellow negates the red and white and the blue. It's gold. It's gold? Okay. Don't shout. Look at how he's stringing you along with Wonder Woman breadcrumbs and then withholding it until the rant wheel. Let's keep rolling the clip.

70% of the revenues come from abroad. Maybe that's why they don't. There's a difference, though, also between the marketing and the movie itself. If you look at the movie itself, no, the costume's not red, white, and blue. It's red, blue, and gold. The director is American. I think the movie itself. She calls Love an American pilot.

Right. But the global marketing aspect of it is certainly something to explore. I think the Hollywood aspect, and we see this time and time again, it's cool to hate America these days, especially with a lot of celebrities out there, whether it's Lena Dunham, Kathy Griffin, you know what I mean? Gosh darn it, it's just

cool to hate America these days. What are these people talking about? I'm just shaking my head and everyone is staring at me. You have interesting commentary on that. We'll find out when it comes out of my mouth, I guess.

It may just be words, but I think there is an American in it, and there's she's not I'm like it's there is an American in it, and there's... She's not... I'm... Like... It's... I...

I think I broke a little, but, like, Wonder Woman, she's... She's one of those foreigners who likes America, which are rarer and rarer these days. And that should be encouraged. We shouldn't be like, oh, look, this movie showed, like, a cool person. Also, their whole take is, we misunderstood

what the movie was about, and we're annoyed that the movie was not what we thought it was about, but was actually about Wonder Woman, a famous property that's been around for decades and was accurate. And, like, that upset us. It's like me going in here and being like, why isn't this

just serious commentary about terrorism? I mean, shouldn't the conservative establishment be thrilled with the fact that Wonder Woman is now about a really badass Israeli chick? Like, she's basically a Mossad agent. I mean, I thought they would be freaked out that Wonder Woman is Jewish, actually. I thought they were, like, one step away from,

and I don't know, you know. She's got a sheriff's lasso. But shit. You'll be unsurprised to hear that because nothing escapes the wrath of politics, especially on Twitter, she

has gotten into a spot of trouble for some tweets about Hamas and Gaza. We're not touching it. Let's keep rolling the clip. America's got its home down, for the director of his last movie, just saying, now he's just a very honest guy. But you know what is so interesting is the fact that they're changing that in order to make money, right? That's a celebration of free market economies. That's what America's all about. So even if it's not the principal and her wearing a flag, the principal is at work here. They're selling it out though.

They're selling out the work. We have to stop it. But she's right. I mean, she's actually gotten the right idea here. Americans export things, including Wonder Woman, and that's fine. But just the nod of it's un-American

because they're trying to make money, which is the nod of, it's un-American because they're trying to make money, which is fundamentally American and ultimately patriotic. And so ultimately what this panel realized is that capital supersedes a national interest. Anyway, there's a Marxist that could do something with this, but I'm not that person. Right. These are the cultural contradictions of capitalism, right? That's what you're talking about. Not to get all weighty and academic, but I think you've seen, no, no, you've seen this in the behavior of certain people around Washington, people who say support Donald Trump, but lobby for, say, countries that are not pro-American. I mean, the dollar redeems the bad ideology or the person you choose to go help. And it would be so nice if Fox News could have that conversation about a topic in the news

related to this issue of foreign influence that is not fucking Wonder Woman. By the way, that was a good setup. Did I set you up? It was wonderful. We didn't even plan that.

When we come back, a new segment called Is Putin Lying? And we're back. This is a game called, Is Putin Lying? Last night, Megyn Kelly interviewed

Vladimir Putin. Or, last night it aired. She had done it before. What is your name? I'm Julie. Julie? Mm-hmm. You took the mic basically by demanding it, saying, I need new sheets.

Can I tell a little story? Yes, I'm going to. Okay, Julie. Okay, Julie. I just want you to know that there's an hourglass on this moxie. Okay, so I'm trying to start. All right, so I have a new, I have a corgi puppy.

His name is Sherman. His Instagram is at Sherman. Nope, nope, nope, nope. No, Julie, no. And he keeps biting and peeing on my sheets. So I need new sheets. Okay. And preferably parachute.

So that was the story you wanted to tell? You felt that that was worse technically speaking? I say this as an editor. That was not technically a story. Ice cold. Do you want to see pictures of Sherman? No. He's so cute.

We don't want to see your corgi. He's so cute. We just want to get on with the show, Julie. He's big. Julie, here's how it works. We're going to roll a clip, and then you're going to have to evaluate whether or not Putin is lying, okay?

Is this going to get me killed? There's no way of knowing. Let's just roll the clip. We haven't used your last name. You'll be fine. They can be in Russia, in Asia, even in America, Latin America. They can even be hackers, by the way, in the United States, who very skillfully and professionally shifted the blame, as we say, onto Russia. Could you accept that?

In the midst of a political battle, by some calculations, it was convenient for them to release this information. So they released it, calling out Russia. Can you imagine something like that? I can. Julie. Yes. Is Putin lying? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he's lying. Well, you know, he could imagine it. It's true that he said, I could imagine it.

Come on, Goldberg, I'm trying to get some sheets. Julie. You know what? You're a cinch for the sheets. You know that, right? You've already won. You got the sheets. Lovett is like the Sean Spicer of this pod. He keeps lying about

whether there's like, whether it's several pundits or one pundit or it's all true or it's all fake. So I don't know if I can trust it. Thank you, Julie. I would like to keep you focused on this one game and tight answers.

Lady's got sheets on the mind. I feel her. I feel your pain. So we think Putin's lying here or we're saying that technically... He's absolutely telling the truth about the United States. That part is true, right?

I mean, we do manipulate elections around the world in various ways, sometimes for the better. We also manipulate them here. It's called voter suppression. Okay, another topic. Snaps. That is also true.

You got the crowd back on your side. Thanks, guys. But I think Julie's in danger of losing the sheets now. I think if she does that. It's not looking good. Let's roll the next clip. Have you gone back to speak with the ambassador about what was in those discussions he had with Jared Kushner, with anybody else from the Trump campaign?

No. Never? No, I haven't. Aren't you interested? No, because had there been anything significant, he would have reported it to the minister. The minister would have reported it to me. There weren't even any reports. There's nothing to even talk about.

There wasn't even any kind of specific discussion about sanctions or anything else. For me, this is just amazing. You created a sensation out of nothing. And out of this sensation, you turn it into a weapon of war against the current president. into a weapon of war against the current president. Well, this is, you know, you're just, you people are so creative over there. Good job. Your lives must be boring.

It's true, and he hasn't even heard any of the podcasts, so he knows how creative they are. He's very sassy. He's definitely heard this podcast. Thank you, Julie. I feel like between the sass and the juvederm, I'm watching an episode of RuPaul's Drag Race. But also he's telling the truth. He's deflecting, but there's basically, he's choosing to say a truth unrelated directly to the question. I mean, in both of these cases, I think. I have no doubt that he delegated his

dealings with the Americans when they got to the point that she's asking about. So you're calling it a dodge? It's a dodge. I think throughout this interview, he dodged over and over again. I agree. No, he's lying. He's lying. But I mean, they did talk about, he may not have personally, but the Russians did talk about sanction relief with the Trump with Trump associates. So there's, he's right, it's a dodge.

It's sly. But it's like he's like he knows he's in deep shit. Get it out, Julie. Are you having fun, Julie? I'm always having fun when I'm listening to the pod.

She just wants her sheets. Let's do another clip. And yes, when you and I, you and I personally have a much closer relationship than I had with Mr. Flynn. You and I met yesterday evening. You and I have been working together all day today, and now we're meeting again. When I came to the event for our company, Russia Today, and sat down at the table, next to me there was a gentleman sitting on one side. I made my speech, then we talked about some other stuff, and I got up and left.

And then afterwards I was told, you know, there was an American gentleman, he was involved in some things. He used to be in the intelligence services. That's it. I didn't even really talk to him. That's the extent of my acquaintance with Mr. Flynn. So,

I love this clip. I love this clip because this is the baseline clip against which I judge all the others. Because I think it's fun to imagine that Flynn fucked up his entire life and sold his soul to get some

money out of RT, and Putin is like, who is that guy? That's savage. I really like, I mean, there's no one that you remember less than people you're stuck sitting next to at dinner and all they want to do is talk about other stuff and you just want to give your speech and then play Blueberry Hill with one finger on the piano.

Google this, it's fun. He's really good at playing the piano. There's a high likelihood that this is completely true. In other words, that Flynn, it's an insult to Flynn, and it might be true. He might have thought he was more powerful than he was. And Putin really doesn't even know who this guy is. And, you know, so the whole Dr. Evil thing sort of just goes out because this happens. You know this when you're with a president or a principal, there's somebody behind the person saying, whispering the next person in line, this is Mike Flynn. He was a general. And then Putin says, General Flynn, it's great to see you. But that could be the extent of it. And Flynn might have tried to parlay that into something it

wasn't. To round out our game, was he telling the truth about Flynn? So I would say yes, probably because who wants to talk to Michael Flynn for that long? I think you guys are exactly right. If you're sitting next to me and you're just like, I want to give my speech, Flynn is not the charismatic guy you're going to want to talk to. So we're going to call that a yes? Yeah, we'll call it a yes. We'll throw him a bone. Julie, I want you to know

that even though this game really didn't make very much sense, you've won. Yay! Sherman's going to love his new sheets. Thank you for playing Thank you You can sit down now Do I have to?

And somebody who's stronger than Julie please get the mic from her Thank you Julie When we come back The Rant Wheel Hey, don't go anywhere There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up When we come back, the rant wheel. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.

I literally didn't know until this moment that there wasn't a physical rant wheel. I'm kind of crushed. Also, how do we know that this is legit? This is like a Russian election. I'm going to bring us back from break to say, Ronan, that's a fair question. The rant wheel is digital, all right? This could all be fixed.

But I promise you that while I do play a role in the selection of topics on the rant wheel, I have insisted from the very first spin that I do not know what topics it's going to land on and in what order and if it's going to land, because we only do a few per show. So it's a real rant wheel. Do you believe me?

I want a special prosecutor. Jeff, how are you doing? You could invest in a real rant wheel. No, no, no, because... are you doing? You could invest in a real grant wheel. No, no, no, because Will you defend? To my surprise, I found out that people paid to come in here. And they're having a fucking blast.

You could take a buck each and build a wheel. We're working on a physical wheel. We're a startup. All right. We've got a lot of things going on. Look, the wheel exists in our hearts, which I think is where it matters most. Thank you.

That's a very Buddhist thing. You guys know how the rant wheel works. We spin it. We rant about the topic, but it lands up. It's not a wheel. It's a carousel. It's a... No?

Anyone? All right. You know what, Rona? Just because you watched Mad Men this year, the rest of us did not. Topics on this week's wheel. Presidential campaign books, the Apple ecosystem,

terror coverage, the show Twin Peaks, audience choice, Qatar, or Cutter, Bill Maher, and Wonder Woman. Let's spin the wheel. So it has landed on terror coverage,

and I think this is something that Ronan was interested in ranting about a bit. You're blaming me on this? No, but you were specifically bothered by the way in which we do wall-to-wall coverage on cable news, uninterrupted, even without new information. I mean, how do you guys feel about this? I feel personally, as a viewer, but also

as someone who is in these newsrooms sometimes, that the monolithic look appropriately as someone who's in these newsrooms sometimes, that the monolithic, look, appropriately dire tone, but also sometimes hysterical tone, has a lot of downsides. And it's hard to know what the easy solution is, because yes, these are serious stories with human stakes, and you have to cover them to an extent. But I do think that we are getting to a point where these kinds of attacks are a part of life. And we have to understand that part of the psychological incentive is getting the resulting coverage. And we do make it thrilling for anyone in the market to commit this kind of a crime.

So, you know, look, I think it's grim to say, but as these kinds of incidents become more and more commonplace, there is a decent argument for treating them as more commonplace and that the incentives might be better if we do that. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think it's all the more true when one of the people who is using cable news to make decisions is the current president. I mean, he is a Fox News viewer in every way,

including being frightened and being focused on lone wolf terrorist attacks when they occur and giving them outsized proportion in his policies and his general thinking. Yes, and the media is a mirror to that. I mean, I know myself having anchored live terrorist incidents, it's very hard to get out of the trap of gilding the lily, of talking about it in the most intense and extreme terms possible. You really have to work hard and be diligent to avoid that. Because of course, we're all feeling it. You know, you get caught up in the moment. in the moment, and also you're in the business of telling a story

and trying to convey to people why they should care. But the end result can be very dangerous when we're rendering things in the most extreme, high-octane terms all the time, whereas I think this most recent attack, look, there's a way to cover it. It may seem cold, but to say this is a tragedy, it affected X number of people,

and in the scope of these kinds of incidents, it is not worth wall-to-wall coverage. I think that's right. Jeff? I mean, I don't have a rant-level disagreement, but once the die is cast, you have a 24-hour news station. People tune in at various moments of the cycle, and they want to know about the big thing that's happened in the world. These are legitimate events. These are attacks in major world capitals. There's something about the breathless nature of the coverage that probably could be modulated, but it's a news organization. This is news. You can't change the reality that this is happening. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a news organization. This is news. You can't change the reality that this is happening.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's about a balance, right? I think that it's not saying stop covering it or don't come back to it but it is about updating people, giving people some new information and not just holding on a correspondent waiting moment by moment for a new development. Yeah, which I think also increases the chance

that you can get something wrong and really screw someone's life up because you can say, oh, there's these developments happening and Reddit will be aggressively searching for who the perpetrator is, and you'll get stuff shared that isn't maybe gone through many levels as possible. And I know that happens

on Twitter, and I think there's processes in place when you're on television where that happens to a lesser extent. But I mean, it's also, what you were saying is that, yeah, you're making a serious face like there's definitely processes. I mean, in the business, we call it tap dancing. And I respect people who do it well. It's a really hard thing, and it can be important

in a moment when people are struggling to understand a story. There are moments when I can't imagine how Wolf Blitzer thinks of a new thing to say. No, no, no, because it's an amazing... It's an amazing skill. It's a very specific skill. That's right.

It has application in only one field. I am completely useless otherwise. Have you not heard of Congress? Yeah. But here, the stakes are higher. You're live TV, and words must come out of your mouth, and somehow he makes the words come out. And I would just say, I got nothing to say for five minutes,

so go about your business when I got something new. You know, go to the kitchen. This is a good time for a snack. Just Wolf Blitzer sitting at a big glass table lit from below reading a GQ. Here's an article I like. There was that famous

YouTube video of the guy who was trying to narrate the basketball game and he couldn't think of what to say when they're getting it and he's like, boom goes the dynamite. And I, with me, it would be like that, but like a way more high stakes scenario where like literal people would be dead and I'd just be sitting there any, it's like, boom goes the dynamite. And I, with me, it would be like that, but like a way more high-stakes scenario where like literal people would be dead and I'd just be sitting there going, oh my god, there's a thing happening, and I'm

really sorry everyone, but you should get new sheets. Those are important. Let's maybe cut to that commercial. But at the same time, you were saying like, part of the This would be must-see TV, by the way. This would be really something. And I would be waving my arms a lot too, which wouldn't be great, but is a part of the this would be must see tv by the way yeah this would be really something i would be waving my arms a lot too which wouldn't be great but is a part of how i talk there's a great clip that's worth pulling if you are a spectator of the uh the ecstasy and the

disaster of cable news uh in which a young chris jansing a very fine nbc news reporter um a real veteran of the business who knows how to tap dance better than anyone, was covering a NASA launch with a NASA expert. I may get the details wrong, but this is the gist of it. And someone comes in her ear and she says, I'm sorry, we have to break to a live breaking story. And they cut to an aerial shot from a helicopter in some small town in the Midwest. And it comes to pass that an ostrich is on the loose. And she is now tap

dancing on the subject of the ostrich search. And she's like, she's trying her, but she's so good at it, you know, and she's talking about ostrich anatomy and biology and are they dangerous? And the only expert she has on the line is this NASA guy, so she's like, you know, well,

and what do you think? Is this ostrich maybe dangerous? It's an interesting irony. Flightless bird, man in space flight. That's the cruelest thing they could do to that ostrich is show them this rocket. Could it hurt people? How fast can it run? And on and on. And she finally just sort of breaks character and says,

I'm sorry guys, I just have to say I have ten years of broadcast experience. I went to college. I did. I really did. I got into this for the right reasons. And here I am. And that's why we love Chris Jansen. I feel okay about where that went.

Let's spin it again. So Twin Peaks is back. I don't really know why. I can't get through season two. I have a rant on this topic, which is I haven't been watching it, and all of my friends have been, and I don't understand what they're describing to me. And they're like, that's the point. You're not don't understand what they're describing to me. And they're like, that's the point. You're not supposed to understand what we're describing to you.

And I'm like, prestige television was one thing when it was like, all right, here's a straightforward story about a man who does a bad thing, and his life gets a lot worse. I'm like, great. That's what television is, and I'm behind it. And I can fake it. The number of TV shows- It's also what American politics is. Yeah.

In high school, I didn't have TV and I used to watch... I wouldn't watch TV. I would go to the library and I would read online the scripts of Will and Grace so that I could be up to date on what had happened.

Hold on a second. That is the sweetest thing I have ever heard. Going to the library to read scripts of Will and Grace. I could cry. And I'm like, that Karen sure sounds fun. Maybe someday I'll see her. But with Twin Peaks, everyone's like, it's all about the visuals, and the floor is very interesting,

and I feel like I won't get the same experience from it. And also that old man from, like, Sex and the City, but also Dune is there, and I guess this is like a throwback to when he was sexy, but maybe mysterious also. So my understanding of Twin Peaks, let me just describe it to you, and we'll see if I'm anywhere near what it is, is it's like a man goes to a little town that's like Fargo, but not.

And there's a woman, and her name is like Garbage Tree or something. She's like the brand woman. There's a woman, and her name is like a noun. And oh my God, Adriana's gonna kill me because Adriana's like, I've been watching this show so that you might understand it. But yeah, so he goes there and then mystery things happen and everyone's like, this is prestige.

I just want to give that the proper space that it deserves. Because it was wonderful. In a way, I feel like that was the Twin Peaks of rants. I don't know

if that's a compliment. It was a bit strange. It was kind of da-da. It took a few turns I didn't understand. But I'm glad for the experience. Let's spin it again. Let's spin it again.

Jeff Goldberg's like, what the fuck am I doing here? I run the Atlantic Lincoln Reddit. Okay, it's landed on Wonder Woman. By the way, very anti-American movie, just so we're clear. That's what I wanted to focus on. But capitalist.

So I'm sorry, how many of you saw... Decadently, pleasingly capitalist. How many of you saw Wonder Woman? And you guys think it was good? Ooh, that's a hot take coming. Wait, did you see it? Was it good? I'm going to say a phrase from the movie.

All right? This is what one character says to another and that second character's response. It is not a spoiler. It's too stupid to be a spoiler. One character says, I believe in love. And the response is,

then I will destroy you. That's good? That's good now? That's what we're saying is good now. That's how all my relationships go. I would say, here's what I want to say about Wonder Woman. On a scale from Suicide Squad to The Dark Knight,

I'd say it was a Thor. And I think we need to be able to say... What did you say? A Thor, not a... A Thor. Not a four. That's a fucking joke. It's a Thor, not a Thor. Not a Thor. That's a fucking joke. It's a Thor.

He's saying it's a fix. Oh, you said it was a fix. Jeff said it was a fix. I just want to live in a country where we can say that a wonderfully talented female director and an incredibly

talented female-led cast can make Drek as mediocre as any man. And that's really all I wanted to say about Wonder Woman. I think it is completely appropriate that everyone has fallen over themselves to praise Wonder Woman.

And yes, maybe it's because it is the first thing of this kind. Because there are no women directors working in Hollywood. That's a fact. I can literally name both of them. Right. There are two. Patty Jenkins, who directed Wonder Woman, is the second to direct an over $100 million picture after Catherine Bigelow with that submarine movie

like a decade plus ago. Nobody even saw that movie. Ava DuVernay's doing Wrinkle in Time though, so that's good. Yes, she is. That's right. So now there are going to be three after Ava DuVernay does Wrinkle in Time. But you know what? It's okay that we go a little over the line in wanting to like those movies

when they come, because it's cool as hell that they're happening. And by the way, I'm sorry, I'm dopey and earnest. I liked that line. And I liked the movie. He really just plays to the crowd in a kind of a... It's How the Mighty Have Fallen. It's a sight to behold. I'm amazed the crowd isn't hissing you for not liking Wonder Woman.

I'm like, oh, okay. I'm sorry, I started it again. I didn't mean to. I want you to know that your hisses only make me stronger. Wonder Woman is fine. Let's all calm down. I mean, all of my movie judgments have to be graded on the scale that I saw Amazing Spider-Man 2 in theaters twice. But...

I just want to understand a world... I read the script for that in the library. Yeah. Where you're doing your best to keep up with Will and Grace using, like, Wikipedia and, like, a compass. But you've got the time to go see Amazing Spider-Man 2 twice. Right, because my parents are no longer running my life, so I don't make good decisions anymore. But, no, I think, so Wonder Woman, I have to say I liked it.

It had everything that was relevant to my interests. It had World War I music. It had World War I. It had people on horses chasing into guns. It had women with spears. It had women without spears. It had Robin Wright Penn. It had, or just Robin Wright now.

It had, of course, bistros, which are great. It had men named Steve, bistros, which are great. It had men named Steve played by men named Chris. And, like, what was the last movie you heard people singing? It's a long way to Tipperary, like, in the background. Like, not many movies have that. And this is just

turning into a sad referendum on my, like, previous life, but I'm okay with that. Anyway, but most importantly, the floor is yours. But like, I don't know, to get all earnest for a second,

it had like a woman who was succeeding, and the movie was just always about her. Like, it was never like, oh, there's this like, like, there's a cool woman here, and she's here to like stand for all of you women. It's like, no, the's this, like, like, there's a cool woman here, and she's here to, like, stand for all of you women. It's like, no, the character we care about, the character this whole movie's about,

is the lady character. And, like, as a big Star Wars nut, I'm always like, oh, Princess Leia's great, but, like, it's not her story. And this was just, like, I mean, it is if you, like, read the internet, but... But this was just, like, the character you have to read for yourself, and if you're, like, a little boy seeing the movie, you're like, the character you have to read for yourself.

And if you're like a little boy seeing the movie, you're like, Wonder Woman, that's the cool person. Like, Chris Pine is great, and he's a supportive boyfriend, and a man who's comforted in his masculinity. But he's also, like, it's not his story, it's her story. And I love that. So, yeah. I think we melted

John Lovett's cold, icy heart tonight. It grew two sizes. Chris Prine's handsome. And it seems like he's getting younger. I don't know what that's about. How long is this show? I mean, just asking for me. He's a serious person.

Asking for me. Jeff. I'm old and I have to go to bed soon. That's one of the issues here. Jeff, when I asked you to come on a show called Love It or Leave It, you asked me one question. Would you embarrass me in front of my children? And I want to ask you now.

Yeah. Do you regret this? You know I love you, right? You know I love you. I came because I love you. It's true. I came here because I love you. Aw.

No, I do. I do. He's a lovely person and he's a lovely guy. Aw. And that's the only reason that I could come up with why I came here.

I was hoping for a joke to cut the treacle. Is this where you say, so I will destroy you? Thank you. You know what? I was setting you up. That was a setup. I am so sorry, Jeff. Look, you don't have comedy fails that often,

but that was, I have to say, I'm sorry, that was... He's not a good team partner. I have to tell you... That was the easiest layup in the history. I got it. Thank you. Look, Goldberg and I have chemistry. We may take this show on the road. Yeah, we do, don't we?

Honestly, he's experiencing uncomfortable new emotions. I am shaken. I'm getting hot up here. Can we talk about Will and Grace again? We're going to take this backstage. I'm disappointed in myself. Guys, I think this may be the last show. I think we have to shut it down.

No, of course not. I love this. I'm not going to stop doing it. Don't be ridiculous. I want to thank my panel. Jeffrey Goldberg, Alexandra Petri, Ronan Farrow. I'm going to stick around and answer some questions. But I want to thank this incredible panel for a very fun and loose and deeply strange edition of Love It or Leave It.

Hello. Hi. My name is Virginia. Great. And I wanted to ask about the labor movement involvement with the Democratic Party. So I actually work for AFSCME. to ask about the labor movement involvement with the Democratic Party. So I actually work for AFSCME. So I wanted to ask you with your experience working both in the Senate and the White House,

where do you see the labor movement playing with all of these new people coming into our party? And do you think there's room for both? And how do we get millennials involved to keep the movement alive? Yeah, no, I think that's a really important question. I wouldn't call myself an expert in the labor movement by any stretch. But the one thing that I have noticed when you go to, you know, new protests all the time, you know, I was at the March for Truth on Sunday and when you went to LAX when the first version of the Muslim ban was handed down. One of the things that's interesting is a lot of the kind of architecture of the organizing and the protesting, it's Black Lives Matter, it's Occupy, but it's the unions,

right? That a lot of these protests have been organized, even if they're not directly by the union that's running the protest, it's people that have spent their careers doing union organizing that have the experience and just literally just know how to run a protest, know how to sign people up, know how to get people chanting and marching. I mean, it's a small thing,

but it's important. So even in that small way, I think the labor movement is really important. You know, we talked to Elizabeth Warren on the podcast and we were taught, yes. And one of the issues we were talking about is not just a minimum wage, but reliable, predictable hours for people. And I think that's like one of those, I personally think that's like a quiet issue. That's something that Democrats can really lead on. But we were talking about how at Walmart, you know, there are times when at certain stores that hours are used like a weapon and they're handed out very kind of strategically to get people competing even against one another. And why does that happen?

Well, it happens for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons it happened is that they don't have a union. So I think the labor movement is really important. Beyond that, I think it's important that we support unions and we recognize their contribution and try to figure out ways when the economy is changing and you have things like Uber and you have things like Lyft and you have the sharing economy, how do we figure out the way in which unions fit into that new world

and I don't know the answers, I think they're really hard questions Hi Oh, hi My name is Sarah, I work in international development and trade. So the thing is that's really frustrating for me in this sector is that allegedly the GOP is supposed to be like, yeah, this is creating U.S. exports, or yeah, this is really good for the U.S. economy, but how do you convince people of that general mindset that trade and development is good, like, in sort of the same vein, rather, of, like, the State Department cuts, like, how do you tell this administration or supporters of them that that's actually not a good thing? Like, how do you go about that phrasing so that you're able to create an environment where you understand

that, yeah, America first, but you can put America first and also do trade and development? Yeah. I mean, I think that's, again, like, you know, Donald Trump, I think, is a candidate who in many ways emerged because he said a different thing about trade and found that he was getting a really good response to that, that there are people who don't believe that trade is good for the American people. And I think that that allowed him to create a platform for himself. So I think that there's a real sense of mistrust that trade deals don't benefit working people, that they benefit the biggest companies in this country. And I think convincing people that that's not true is also by making sure

it isn't true. I mean, this is something that unites Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren with some elements on the right and that a sense that trade deals have not been good for regular people. And I think there's truth to that, that we've talked about worker training and all kinds of things and people don't see the benefits of that. And they blame trade as opposed to things like automation and other problems that maybe bear more responsibility for manufacturing jobs going away. But yeah, it's a really hard problem to solve. Hey, John. My name is also Dan. And I just wanted to shout out our alma mater, Williams College. Yeah, go Eaps. For continuing, despite being a school in the middle of nowhere that no one's ever heard of, to churn out distinguished alumni like yourself

and friend of the pod, Senator Chris Murphy. Yes, who we talked to today. And who was the man. Will I see you at reunions in 2019? Oh, I'm doing really well. Yeah, I think I'll go. I think I'll show my face. I'm going to leave it there. I want to thank you guys for coming.

This was really fun. I hope you guys had a good time coming out. And have a great night. Show is over. Love and Oliver, it's Love and Oliver. Let's make it all go fast. Love and Oliver, it's Love and Oliver.