No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Biden now considering PREEMPTIVE pardons

Episode Date: December 8, 2024

Biden considers issuing preemptive pardons and the media misses the mark with its coverage of it. Brian interviews Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan about the state of independent media, the impact that Israel/Gaza played in the election, and why Harris was punished when Trump is already assembling a Cabinet of pro-Israel hawks. And Congressman Ro Khanna joins to discuss where Democrats should spend their political capital resisting Trump, why he supports Trump’s DOGE commission with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, and his thoughts on the DNC chair race.Shop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about the prospect of Biden issuing preemptive pardons and how the media is missing the mark with its coverage. And I've got two interviews. I'm joined by Zateo's Medi Hassan to discuss the state of independent media, the impact that Israel Gaza played in the election, and why Harris was punished when Trump is already assembling a cabinet of pro-Israel Hawks. And I sit down with Congressman Ro Khanna to discuss where Democrats should spend their political capital resisting Trump, why he supports Trump's Doge Commission with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and his thoughts on the DNC chair race. Keller Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So we're in the aftermath of Joe Biden granting his son Hunter a pardon, and yet now there's talk about Biden issuing preemptive pardons for people who are possible targets for Trump's retribution campaign, people like Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, Anthony Fauci.

Here's the deal. And this applies to Hunter Biden the same exact way it applies to Schiff and Cheney and Fauci. If you are more upset with Joe Biden being forced to consider the extraordinary step of preemptorily pardoning his own officials, then you are about. about Donald Trump appointing someone who has promised to use the federal government to exact personal retribution for him, then you are simply not paying attention. These Republicans who are trashing Biden as some lawless thug for pardoning Hunter act as if it's happening in a vacuum.

It's not. It is happening expressly because the guy who Trump tapped for FBI director has a literal enemy's list of people that he would try to prosecute. You can't have fainting spells about the prospect of pardons without also acknowledging why those pardons are being considered in the first place, which is not to say, by the way, that Biden having come out beforehand and promising not to pardon Hunter wasn't a bad move because it was. Like, I'm not going to defend him lying. He lied. And he should have known better than to make some sweeping claim about how he would wield

the pardon power, given that Trump was probably going to staff his own cabinet with people who would carry out his vengeance tour. So, no, that's not acceptable. But with all of that said, let's not fall into the same both sides bullshit trap that legacy media falls into. Yes, Biden lied, but no, him pardoning Hunter for lying on a gun application form is not the same as Trump's promises to pardon the January 6th insurrectionists for storming the Capitol and looking to kill Nancy Pelosi. No, him pardoning someone like Adam Schiff preemptively for the crime of Schiff presiding over Trump's impeachment trial is not the same as Trump having pardoned Michael Flynn and Roger Stone and Paul Manafort and Charles Cushner and Steve Bannon and George Papadopoulosos, Rod Blagoevich, Joe Arpaio, Elliot Broody, Dinesh D'Susa, If you are acting in anything even resembling good faith,

you will recognize that the two sides here are not the same. Granted, that won't stop these right-wing operatives from coming out and saying, ah, well, Biden pardoning Hunter now establishes the precedent that Trump will be able to use to pardon everybody. Right, because Trump needed a precedent. Because Trump wouldn't possibly have done anything corrupt unless he was absolutely sure that his actions were firmly rooted in precedent. I mean, honestly, the only thing,

worse than Trump's overt corruption are the people in the media who pretend that somehow that corruption wouldn't exist if not for the precedent established by the left. Again, the real story amid all of this is not that Biden pardoned his kid, which yes, he lied about, and it was a shitty thing to do, but let's be honest, all of us would have done if we were in his shoes, left, right, and center, or that he's considering preemptorily pardoning other Trump enemies. It's that he has to because Trump's presidency will be predicated on his willingness to seek revenge on those people. That is the story here. That's the part the media is missing by refusing to look at the bigger picture. That's where the both sides is a narrative drives me nuts. That's the part that lets me

know that the media won't learn its lesson heading into another Trump term. If you can't say that Joe Biden lying about pardoning Hunter was bad, but that him being forced to pardon Hunter and consider pardoning a raft of other people because they will very likely be the victims of political persecutions by Trump and his cabinet is objectively and exponentially worse than it's clear that you are just not able to meet the moment that we're in right now. Next up are my interviews with Medi Hassan and Rokana.

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when you use BTC at checkout. Zbiotics is backed with a 100% money-back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to Zibiotics, dot com slash BTC and use the code BTC at checkout for 15% off. Now we've got the founder of Zateo News, Medi Hassan. Medi, thanks for coming back on. Thanks for having me, Brian. So I do want to get into a broader conversation about the media, about the election results, where we go from here.

But first, I want to get your reaction to the allegations against Pete Hegseth and whether the pressure that he's feeling right now and that Trump is clearly feeling right now might suggest that perhaps Republicans aren't as immune to the whole Teflon Don of it all, as this moment might suggest. It's such a good question, because I've thought long and hard about the Trump era and what Trump gets away with, and one of the only silver linings of all the dark clouds of this era is that he is sui generous, Trump. There doesn't seem to be anyone else like him.

No one else, even in his close orbit, can get away with the kind of crap that he gets away with. So we have this whole issue of Matt Gates, accused of child sex trafficking or whatever it is, which he denies. You have Peter Hegson accused of rape. But hold on. The guy appointing them was for. found liable for sexual abuse, what a judge said could be called rape, by a jury of his peers in

New York. So the whole thing is absurd, right? If you think about it, who is Trump to sit as any kind of judge jury executioner of his cabinet? But that's the world we're in. Trump gets a pass. He's been elected. The public don't care. But they do seem to care about cabinet officials. The media do seem to care. It's been a feeding frenzy since he's nominated all these people. The hex of stuff gets worse by the day. He had his mother come out to defend him on Fox, where else, his old channel this morning. I love the idea that we're going to be strong in the world and have this strong defense secretary

who's going to go up against China and Russia. But he needs his mom, he'd come help him on TV. The same mother, who, by the way, wrote an email to him saying, you know, to, he, you know, demanding accountability on behalf of all women. He said, many women, she said, who he had abused in some shape or form. She's now taken that back.

Surprise, surprise. But not just that. There's the allegations of rape. There's the stuff about his own views. colleague Premtacker at Zateo just published a piece last night going through four of his books and some of the stuff he said about women in the military abortion rights Muslims immigrants you just go down the list Israel America's role in the world he's a real hawk pretending now to be this kind of peace-knick anti-war guy like Trump he's a hardcore neocom so look there's a lot going on I think

you put your finger on it by saying can the others get away with what Trump gets away with We're now hearing reporting for the Wall Street Journal that he might swap him for DeSantis, which is hilarious because Trump suggested Ron DeSantis grooms young girls. And it was also Trump himself who branded Ron DeSantis Tiny D. So you brand this guy Tiny D, and now you want to put him in charge of the Pentagon and 1.3 million active duty troops? I mean, talk about undermining your own case. But, Medi, more broadly, does this suggest that maybe in a post-Trump Republican party

that we might revert back to the mean here, and it might not feel like the same Trump party if they recognize that they can't get away with all the shit that Donald Trump gets away with. So I think half, halfway I agree with that. I'll tell you the 50% I agree with is yes, they will realize that they can't get away with what Trump gets away with. Only Trump can get away with what Trump's gotten away with

in terms of personal morality or lack thereof and all of the other stuff. Having said that, one thing I do worry about is Gates went because of his personal shit. Hegson may go because of his personal shit. But what about the others who don't have personal shit, but are actually scarier, more dangerous in many ways? Right. It's their politics. It's not their past. It's their politics. Cash Patel being classic example of it. We don't know what Cash Patel's private life is like. I don't really want to know what Cash Patel's private life is like. But we do know what he said on the record.

We do know that he said he's going to go after the media. We do know what he said he's going to do to the FBI. We do know what he said he's going to do to his political opponents, right? We do know he's a sycophant and a bag carrier for Trump who will allow Trump to use the Federal Bureau. of investigation as a political weapon. That's all there. And Cash Patel probably has the vote unless kind of Makowski, Collins, McConnell, can stop him.

So that's what I'm worried about. Yes, I get the personal stuff still clearly does, you know, derail nominations even in 2024. But what about the non-personal stuff? By the way, there's one character, RFK Jr., who's got the personal stuff and the policy stuff,

both of which are equally crazily bad. I want to talk a little bit about the media right now. So you run an independent media company. What do you think is the state of independent media on the left right now? I mean, we're doing well, but as a big picture, it's not great compared to the right. One of the reasons, Brian, and you know this because you and I talked earlier in the year, one of the reasons I set up Zateo back in February, March, April, was because I left MSNBC and I saw there was this gap in the market, the people on the right, you know, whether it's your Tucker Carlson,

whether it's your Megan Kelly, whether it's your Barry Weiss, Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire, monetizing their right-wing outrage politics and grievance-mongering and are building huge audiences online, paying audiences online, with subscription business models. And I was looking around at the left, and I think no one's really doing it on the left. You've had huge success on YouTube. You've crossed three million subscribers.

Congratulations. But you're not running a subscription business. And we know that Cheng and the Young Turks have been on YouTube for a while. And there's been attempts to do things on the left. And just narrowing down to the subscription model, No one had really tried to do a subscription model. We've tried to do it. I think we're doing a good job.

We just crossed 300,000 subscribers globally in eight months. We're very pleased with that. We're making some good money off subscriptions. We have over 40,000 paid subscribers. I saw that gap in the market from a purely commercial business point, but also from an ideological point of view, why aren't more people doing this on the left? Given the left in the mainstream media, it's kind of non-existing.

MSNBC, where I used to work, is not left wing. People get annoyed when I point there's that. It's not, right? it's kind of at best center left it's kind of at best centrist liberal it's not it's not supporting the kind of causes that the left cares about um and that's a problem and the same with the new york times the same with the washington the conservatives are so successfully branded all mainstream media is liberal left that actually there hasn't been a real space for actual liberals and lefties to go well these are our offerings in an right because because they're they're so afraid of being branded as liberal that they have to overcompensate to prove that in fact they're not yes and and and that then follows through into independent media because then you're like, well, why do we need all this independent media? You already have the New York Times and MSNBC. No, they're not. My politics, the tale's probably very different to New York Times and MSNBCs.

So I think, look, to answer your question, it's not in a great shape because financially the support hasn't been there, either from ordinary people being willing to put their hand in their pocket and say, I'm going to subscribe, I'm going to value the content that Brian does or Mehdi does or whoever else does. And also from the big investors, the big donors, the big money folks. I mean, it's a truism, but we've got to point this out. Right-wing media is catering to wealthy people. So it's easy for them to raise money off of wealthy people, right? Left-wing media is saying, hey, let's have some more regulation, a bit bigger government. Higher taxes on the wealthy. That doesn't naturally attract a lot of people outside of the Soros of this world.

So it is an issue when it comes to funding, when it comes. I mean, we've been very lucky. I raised $4 million from kind of friends and family around and from, you know, people interested parties, small business people who wanted to support the mission. But, you know, I didn't go big, big. But people who do want to go big, big, it's much easier on the right. I mean, Ben Shapiro turns up and says to a fracking magnet in Texas, give me $4 million to launch, and that's how Daily Wire launches.

Totally, totally. Well, okay, so that's the money perspective from the left-wing independent media. But what about Democratic politicians? Because there is an onus. I think the right has been really successful and really effective at getting their politicians, their elected officials, to lay hands on right-wing media so that they can then prop them up and allow those people to act as emissaries for the right-wing mission.

We don't have or we haven't had for a very, very long time anything like that on the left because I think the left wrongly to your point for exactly the reason that we were talking about before views mainstream media as their message distribution system. Notwithstanding the fact that mainstream media is bending over backwards to prove that it is not an arm of the Democratic Party

in anywhere close to the same way that right-wing media is an arm of the Republican Party exist to serve as a propaganda arm of the GOP. So do you think that there's some acknowledgement now about where they went wrong and that will move toward a world where Democratic politicians, Democratic elected officials are going to embrace independent media,

recognizing that we need them to close the gap, the asymmetry that exists in our media ecosystem? I think you answered your own question. It's the asymmetry is the issue. It's the inability of the left-wing media, which is a good thing to act as a propaganda arm for a political party in the way that the right does. I mean, the right has a very specific model, right?

It is propaganda from Fox down to the Daily Wire, down to your independent, you know, YouTubers. It is very much propaganda. And people don't like saying this because they think there's both sides, both sides. No, I have my criticism of MSNBC. I worked there for three years. I have my praise for MSNBC. I worked there three years. But one thing that annoys me when people go, well, the left has MSNBC and the right has Fox,

they're not the same thing, right? They're just not. MSNMBC does not, whatever. I know it's going to sound crazy to right-wingers who may come across your YouTube channel, Brian. But MSMEC does not act as a propaganda on for the Democratic. I know that because I used to work there, right? You just, Sean Hannity called Trump every night of his presidency. He was on stage with him at rallies. Rachel Mana did not call Joe Biden up every night to chat to him and act as a de facto chief of staff. I'm not saying they're not pro-democratic. Of course they

are. But it's not the same propaganda. They'll still cover the news. Fox wouldn't even cover Hegis until today. They didn't cover anything to do with Peter Hexon. It's not a news network. So we should stop calling it Fox News. But to go back to your broader question about Democratic politicians, So there's two things here. Number one, they are to blame partly, as you say, for not propping up a left wing space and treating the ABCs and NBCs as, well, that's our message distribution platform. Big mistake. I 100% agree with you on that.

And I wouldn't just say Democrats, you know, mainstream Democrats, Bernie, as someone who's criticized the mainstream media, has not supported left-way media. Chank Wiga did a great monologue the other day I saw on my social media where he was saying, you know, Bernie's right to come out and say, we need a new working plus vehicle. we did an alternative to the mainstream Democrat, but he's not done anything to build it up. Bernie Sanders loves mainstream media. He's always on the Sunday shows.

Will he do an interview with me? Very rarely, even though I'm probably the only cable host between 2020 and 2023 who would endorse Bernie Sanders, who had a show on cable, never came on my show. So that was a problem. And I think you've had the same problem with a lot of mainstream Democratic Party leaders who you have a huge audience,

but they'd much rather go on a Sunday morning show, which has way fewer viewers than you do. So I think that's one problem, is that they just are not smart enough, savvy enough, to see the opportunities here. They're very old school, very conventional, very cautious. The one thing I always say about liberals, it's not about the ideology,

it's about the mindset of caution that permeates the entire movement. And then number two, I think there is something we should be proud of, which is one of the reasons they don't just want to turn up on left independent media, is because we're not propaganda arms, even if you are pro-democratic party,

as you clearly are, you don't deny that. If Robert Menendez came on your show, you would ask him about the gold buzz. cars, right? Correct. But the equivalent of Romanendez turns up on Newsmax, they won't. And I think that's the problem, right, fundamentally, is that this comes back to the reality-based universe. The end of the day, no matter what our biases are, no matter what MSNBC's politics are, people on the liberal left are still going to live in a reality-based universe, still going to try and do the basics of journalism, matter what our personal opinions are. That's gone on the right.

I mean, we saw that, and that's not my opinion. That's fact, right? Fox went and settled the Dominion case, proving that they're not a news network. Mindy, you had said something that really caught my eye, and that was this idea of a mindset of caution among Democrats. This election was in large part a referendum on, on, I think the authenticity and relatability in their politicians. I mean, you have somebody like Trump who objectively is not, has much lower threshold for caution than somebody like Kamala Harris does. And I think that we're seeing that more broadly in the kind of, um, And the kind of media figures that are promoted on the right versus the media figures that are promoted on the left, there is a degree of like throwing caution to the wind.

Of course, that's all on a backdrop of, you know, pushing back against political correctness. And so inherently you're going to have more of that on the right anyway. But do you think that this election is going to kind of reverse the Democrats embrace of, of caution that we've seen, you know, from, you know, the days of Hillary Clinton all the way to this campaign, which, you know, was probably less willing to go on certain shows because it would pose some risks. Well, first of all, I'm glad you dated back to Hillary Clinton because Barack Obama was actually a very cautious president. But when he campaigned, he wasn't cautious.

I've always found the interesting dichotomy. When you talk about Obama, you have to divide between the campaigner, the candidate Obama and the president Obama. Obama as a president was super cautious, too cautious from my liking. But as a campaign, if you remember 2012, he didn't run as an incumbent. He ran almost as an insurgent and portrayed Mitt Romney as the establishment capitalist bane guy who had to be stopped. Democrats haven't run like that for a long time, as Obama ran in 08 or even 12.

Hillary didn't run like that, and Joe Biden certainly this year before he pulled out, wasn't running like that, and Kamala Harris with her Uber brother-in-law didn't run like that. And I think why I'm pessimistic about whether Democrats are going to embrace kind of boldness and drop some of their caution is twofold. Number one, we've seen no evidence of it since Election Day. We've seen Flath and all at Qatar and all the team of advisors around Harris doing the Pod Save America interview, doing the Atlantic Ron Brownstein interview, and basically saying we got nothing wrong. We did nothing wrong.

We're not contrite. We have no apologies. We do it all the same. And the worst part of these interviews they've been doing these post-mortems is they keep going, well, you have to understand we inherited a really bad situation. The internal polling was really bad. Joe Biden was more unpopular than even you knew. Why, though?

F, did you not break with Biden then? As some of us said, it actually makes it even worse for them, not breaking with Biden, by them now admitting that they knew he was more unpopular than the public knew. Because then the arguments were, oh, well, we can't break with the sitting president.

You can, if your internal polling is telling you that he is toxic and pulling you down. So that's number one. I don't see them going bold when even in their post-waters, they're not willing to accept what they did wrong. And number two, it's a personnel thing, right until you are able to change the pundit class the consultant class and of course the actual

members of congress you're not going to be able to have people willing to take chances when i look at people like you know someone like a gregg casar in austin uh i like him not just because i share his politics and because he's a member of the squad i like aOC not just because she shares my politics clearly we have similar politics why i like these kind of politicians is because of their approach to messaging their approach to politics is not to take share from anyone is to go out there, take risks, test out messages, right? That until you have more politicians willing to do that within the Democratic Party who aren't just willing to turn up, play it safe, keep their heads down,

that's going to be a problem going forward. Well, I think one thing from that interview, from the Potsave America, Kamala leadership interview that I think did actually suggest that there was something that needs to change within the Democratic Party is Quentin Fawkes said that there's a lot of apologizing happening and tiptoeing around certain special interest groups and making sure that they don't say anything that they would then have to, you know, turn around five minutes later for and apologize and get on the phone and explain to these people. And that does, I think, present itself or manifest itself in a way where then the campaigns are a little bit more cautious because, you know,

the Democratic Party is a big tent party, but we're also the party that's going to stand up and protect trans people and is going to protect special interest groups. And so I think the way that we're seeing that now is that that has manifested in more of of a desire to be or a need to be careful. The reason they didn't come out more economically popular is not because of some pressure group. It's probably more, we can't prove this, but from the reporting, it's people like Tony Harris, her brother-in-law from Uber, who were telling her, tone down the stuff, stop bashing big business, right?

And who knows what Pluff was saying. And the problem is that's what it comes down to. I mean, I hear all this analysis and the Adam Gentleson piece in the New York Times, the groups, the special intro, the pressure groups, the activists. Fundamentally, though, Hillary, Joe, Kamler, they weren't listening to those groups as their number one, you know, sounding board in the morning every day. They were listening to donors. They were listening to pundits. They were listening to consultants.

And I think that's where the problem lies in the Democratic Party right now, fundamentally. With that said, then, do you think that there is going to be a higher threshold for, for dissent within the Democratic Party. I know that basically we're in a moment right now where you have a lot of, you know, the more moderate Democrats who are saying that that progressivism was the problem and they can point to the fact that Jared Golden won his district

and ran far ahead of Kamala. They can point to the fact that Marie Glucon-Camp Perez won ran far ahead of Kamala. But then progressives to the same point can say, look, Kamala ran a campaign where she had Liz Cheney on the campaign trail in more instances than she did embrace progressive. at the end. So what do you think that the Democrats do moving forward in terms of figuring out

where they're going to, I guess, whether the party tax right or whether the party tax left? But that's the problem. I don't think it's about going right or left. I think it's about whether you're going to have a fight or whether you're not going to have a fight. And this is what I've said for a while. Like, I like Congress members like Eric Swalwell, not because he and I are on the same page ideologically. He's way to my right. But I like Swolewell because he has a fight because he knows who the enemy are. He knows how to make the case. You mentioned Jared Golden and Maria Glouceston-Camperez. Yeah, I don't share their politics. They're definitely to the right of me. But did they run right-wing campaigns? Or did they run populist authentic

campaign? Did they say right to repair in her case, you know, anti-monopoly in his case? This is what we need to be talking about right now. It's not about whether you sign a tick box of I'm left, I'm right, I do these policies on it. It's about who you're fighting for? Do you have a fighting spirit? Do people know what you stand for? Are you, authentic, or are you just a kind of poll-tested, focus group-tested, bland person who no one thinks is going to fight for them in Washington, D.C.? Right, right. I mean, in large part, this was, strangely enough, it did feel like a refer. I mean, you even hear somebody like Chank come out and say that this is, this election result is the result of the establishment

losing and more of the anti-establishment forces winning. And so moving forward, moving forward, I mean, Democrats have, Democrats don't generally nominate for their, for their party standard bear, somebody who is anti-establishment. Because by saying we have to protect our institutions, we have to protect our democracy for so many people out there for whom democracy and our institutions isn't working, that is not the message they want to hear. That is the message that's going to push them away. And so how do we take that into account in our candidates moving forward for a party that, look, in one wing, wants somebody like Joe Biden, who is as establishment, as it gets. He's been in politics for 50 years. But by that same token, we're missing out on a broad swath of people for whom the establishment and democracy in our institutions is actually the polar opposite of what they're looking for and something that they won't

pull the lever for in the ballot box. I think you put your finger on it where defending democracy in abstract, it's fine. But when you're defending institutions that people hate for good reason in many cases, you know, nobody wants to go to the map for the Senate, right? Like, it's just No. And the polling shows the American public are not happy with the state of democracy in this country, not just in terms of Trump undermining democracy, but how democracy works itself. Campaign finance reform, money in politics. All of this is that minority rule, gerrymandering, et cetera, et cetera. And actually, during the campaign, one of the big mistakes, and people are going to laugh at me because it sounds so niche, but I actually think it was symbolic. First, they buried Tim Wals, who I thought was a great addition to the team. I preferred him over Shapiro. But now it's fashionable to say, well, he cost her votes. Actually, I think they wasted Wals, right? They picked him, and then they silenced him. He was doing a great job with the weird attacks when they were polling highly, and then suddenly they stopped saying weird, and they put waltz, you know, put him under a blanket and hit him away. And then when he does come out and go, you know what, we should get rid of the electoral college, hugely popular idea

with the American public, across the board, Republicans and Democrats, don't like the electoral college. The Harris team disowned it, slapped him down and said, nope, he wasn't speaking for us. So there's just an example of one way where you talk about institutions. Nobody likes the electoral college. Democrats should not associate themselves with the electoral college. In terms the broader point about anti-establishment candidates, you're right to go back. And actually, I would argue if you take Joe Biden and the COVID election 2020 out of the picture, yeah, you do go back and you see they pick establishment people like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry and they lose and Al Gore. And they pick Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who are Washington

outsiders in the eyes of many people, and they win. Right. So I do think that, you know, correlation not causation, but I do think there is worth having a conversation about who are the right candidates going forward, given we've failed. That's what the Democrats should be asking with. We failed with the Hillary's and the Bidens and the Harris's and the Kerry's. Who can we have? I don't know who that person is, by the way, as people are doing horse race stuff, runners and riders for 2028.

I don't know who that person is who has that authenticity. Because as much as I think Whitmer and Newsom are solid candidates and Shapiro, and they're all going to be in the mix, I don't think any of them could go on Joe Rogan. If the Joe Rogan test is now the test, people are like, oh, Carmen Harris should have gone on Joe. I'm glad she didn't go on Joe Roan. It would have been a disaster. From everything we've seen from Harris's performance, she would not have been authentic. She would have not had answers to basic questions like how you're different to Joe Biden. She would not have been able to connect with his audience. I'm actually thinking it's a good thing. For whatever reason, whoever you

blame, she didn't go on Rogan. It would have been car crash TV. But the question is who can go on a Joe Rogan? And I use Joe Rogan more broadly. Who can go on shows? Speak freely. Where you talk in an authentic about it? Why do people love Bernie during the primaries in 16 and 20? Because he spoke in authentic fashion. Who is the democratic version of John McCain 2000, right? McCain, the maverick image, the bus, the talking to reporters freely without, you know, being controlled by consultants, making corruption and anti-establishment your actual guiding spirit. And I think that that could be a model as well. Again, it's not about left-right. I don't agree with John McCain's 2000 campaign in its substance, but in its tone and focus. Yeah, that's the kind of campaign

Democrats should be running. Yeah. And the irony of that is that we have spent so much time fostering a bench, but a bench that is more establishment, is more, does feel more political. I mean, look, I get it. Like I was a big Elizabeth Warren supporter. Her whole thing was plans. This is somebody who is a legislator. And for a lot of Democrats, I feel like that is what's attractive to us. But at the same time, again, we're in a moment right now where I think people are just so sarved for authenticity, especially in the political space, because let's be honest, they've gotten fucked by politicians for so long. Right. And I said this in 2017, well before the Warren, Bernie, Biden primaries in 2020. When Trump won in 2016, I said to a friend

of mine, and I don't know if I said this publicly, but like, I think I may have joked publicly, like the next Democratic person who runs for president shouldn't do Hillary Clinton's, here's my 24-page child care plan, fully costed proposals. And you remember, Carmen Harris got hit a lot, unfairly in my view for not having enough plans even though she had way more than Trump who couldn't even come up with a health care plan in two weeks his famous two week deadline but I do think like I'm only half joking

when I say the next Democratic candidate should say I'm going to give you all a $30 minimum wage and when the reporter said well how are you going to do that just wait and see it's going to be a maid yeah seriously I mean why the fuck not you're right though I mean you're right if Trump can go and I'm going to build a beautiful wall I'm going to give you the best health care but never give me details I think at some point you've got to fire with fire.

And Carl Kaczynski, I know you know, another independent left broadcaster. He's been saying that for a while. It's not about establishment, anti-establishers, left, right? You just need a fighter who's super confident and doesn't give a shit. Right. I mean, part of the thing that holds us back, I feel like, is that we feel like we, like, we, the way that the media holds Democrats to a different standard than Republicans, we validate that by virtue of continuing to humor them.

I mean, you know, like, that's the asymmetry. The asymmetry is there, and it persists. I don't think you can underestimate the damage that was done to Harris during that period where, A, she wouldn't do an interview where the media got obsessed with her not doing anything, she probably should have done. And B, the whole policy thing, right? It became like a meme, you know, lazy talking point from DC journalists. Like, where are her plans?

Where are her policies? She hasn't laid out. She copied and past it from Biden. It was like, whatever she has is 100 times better than what Donald Trump is offering. Right. But that did a lot of damage. So the next Democratic presidential has to be ready for all that. It has to have a plan for the media because Biden didn't have one by avoiding press conferences.

Harris didn't have one by avoiding interviews. Trump had his own plan, which is I'm going to avoid everyone, even in Fox, and just do podcasts, which works for, I'm not saying that's replicable, but there has to be some strategy for the media environment. Because, look, one thing that's really bothering me, and you know this because I've told us many times, when people say, well, you know, the real reason they lost the election is in company. Biden was very unpopular president, and the economy was really, you know, viewed negatively. And no one steps back and goes, but why? Because the Republican successfully over four years convinced people

that the economy was better under Trump. It wasn't. They convinced people that we're in the middle of a recession. We're not. And they convinced people that Joe Biden's the worst president ever. And he wasn't, right? So this is the problem. I have my own issue to Joe Biden.

You know my criticism on Gaza will never go away. I think that's a stain on his record and will define his presidency. And actually, from an electoral point of view, also screwed the Democrats, but a conversation for another day. But my point being, up until, let's say, the summer of 2020, pre-Gaza, pre-October 7th, when you're looking at his domestic record, it was a very, very strong domestic record, but people didn't know about it or didn't believe it. And that's what Democrats need to be post-morteming around.

How do we produce such an amazing economy? How do we get so much shit done? Going back to LBJ, no president's got this much shit done. We got zero credit for it. I don't hear people actually discussing that. For me, that's at the core of this. And to kind of bolster that exact point, I mean, the minute that Donald Trump Trump was elected, we then saw consumer sentiment flip.

And so, you know, now we're at a point where... Oh, he's also going to get credit, Brian, all of these infrastructure projects that happen on his watch, all of these Medicare pricing deals that happen on his watch. He's going to be taking credit for it all. And, you know, in large part, I mean, that is the benefit. That right there is the benefit distilled into having a right-wing media ecosystem that acts as a hermetically sealed bubble.

And so I guess the worry for me is when we move forward in an immediate environment, where you can do the American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips Act, the Pact Act, the Gun Safety Law, the infrastructure law, add 16 million jobs, bring the unemployment rate down to a 50-year low, the stock market up to a record high, and where the vast majority of Americans still think that the economy is terrible, that right there is the benefit of having a right-wing media ecosystem

that exists to serve the Republican Party. And also puts on full display the need to have something to counter that so that we're not in an environment where suddenly it doesn't matter what Democrats do. They're always just going to get hit for doing the complete opposite. Yeah. And the problem is, of course, there was a big debate you remember on the left where do you, and John Favre and I had this conversation, Chris Hayes and I had this conversation. What do you do as a center-left politician running for re-election on a record that's good

economically in the big terms, but in a country where people are clearly still hurting. And do you want to, do you, there's a whole debate about are you tone deaf? I remember Hillary was attacked for saying We don't need to make America great again America is great and people said well that That didn't resonate with people because people are suffering And I think that is a real problem Because Democrats are like

Well do I run on what you just said Amazing 50 year unemployment low stock market at a high Growth at a high blah blah blah But then people are like well hold on But I'm struggling paycheck to paycheck Hold on I have a friend who whatever Or do you go I hear your pain I hear your pain we need to do more

Which is the Bernie argument But then you're actually not running on your record It's not there's no easy answer I just want to be fair I bash Democrats a lot, but that's not an easy problem. The Democratic Party is not Trump. Trump shamelessly will just run on. It's the greatest economy in the world.

I'm the greatest president in the world. We've never had growth so good. Democrats aren't going to do that. Democrats and the media still live in a reality-based universe where they're going to say stuff like, well, yes, the economy is doing really well. Yes, we're the fastest growing economy in the G7. Yes, we have the lowest unemployment 50th. But inflation is really bad.

And then Democrats say, yes, we acknowledge that. Trump would never acknowledge that, right? In his presidency now, things are going to go bad. You think he's going to go, you think Trump and his team are going to sit around and going, well, we need to kind of acknowledge American voters pain. We need to reach out and say, we get it. They're going to do that. And they won't be expected to do that because they're graded on a curve.

And you're right that it's not an easy answer. And I think that if we look to the Biden administration, I think very much aligned with the Obama administration, there is a glaring lack of willingness to beat our chest about our wins because we don't want to seem tone deaf in the face of so many Americans out there suffering. But you look at what Trump is. done to the same point. And, you know, he, he can wake his, wake up in the morning and tie his shoes correctly and they'll throw a parade on, on Pennsylvania Avenue. And so there has to be. And I don't know the answer to this either. And I don't know the answer to this either,

but I do know that what we're doing right now ain't it. Medea, I do want to talk about the impact because you had brought this up about Israel, Gaza, and whether you think in an election where we did see such a pronounced swing to the right, but all across the country, to what extent you thought that the situation, the war in Gaza had an impact on, on Kamala's loss. And I asked this because we saw, we saw swings, you know, we saw swings in, in Michigan, but at the same time, we saw commensurate swings down in Alabama over in Utah. And so, and so how do you kind of think about this? It's a great question.

I'll be thinking about it. I think there's many layers to this. And I'll just keep it very simple. And I've actually changed my position a bit on this brand. So after, on election and after election, when I saw those swings, I said, said to a few friends of mine, including Muslim friends of mine, I don't think you can say Gaza made a difference this way or that way. She lost so badly, so across the board, so across every demographic that you can't just say it was Arab Americans in, you know, Dearborn,

Michigan or whatever it is, that swung it. I've actually changed my position a bit for two reasons. Number one, I do think Gaza was actually bigger than I thought it was. And I'll tell you why. Number one, look at the narrowness of the Rust Belt states, right? You can talk about national trends, great. But we all know national trends are irrelevant to who wins or loses. For Harris to win this election, all she had to do, say all she had to do, was when Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Trump won those states by 230,000 votes, ballpark across those three states. So if 115 or 116,000 votes had switched from Trump to Harris, she would be president. She wouldn't have won the popular vote. It would have been a great irony. The Democrats would have won the electoral college, but not the popular vote.

Republicans would be screaming about the electoral college. but she would be President-elect right now if $115,000 switched from Trump. It was very, very narrow. Now, in that kind of narrowness and those kind of Rust Belt states, yeah, I'm going to say, in place like Michigan, she clearly could have won Michigan when it was that narrow

had she given something to the people there, some kind of hope, some kind of change on an issue that was central to their very existence. They were losing family members by the day in places like Gaza and Lebanon. So I do think it played a big role in some of those swing states, clearly not national. And number two, it's not.

about Gaza the policy? Let's say you're not someone who pays attention to the Middle East. You're not someone who cares about the fate of Israelis or Palestinians. And you live in one of these swing states. You know what Gaza means? It doesn't mean a policy issue. It means change. Harris, just by switching on Gaza, would have showed she wasn't Joe Biden, right? That was one of the many areas where people were asking, well, where are you going to be different to Biden? And she couldn't answer the question. In fact, she doubled down on Biden policies on the Middle East. So even if you don't care about Gaza as a substantive topic, as a policy area, just the symbolism of her coming out and saying, I'm going to do this differently. I'm going to actually criticize Netanyahu public.

I'm going to suggest that I'm going to enforce the law when I'm president on armed sales. Just that would have had an impact on the general tenor of her campaign, which was no change. I'm going to be the same as Biden. So I do think it played a big role both directly in those swing states with those key voters and indirectly in terms of a big picture image in a very close. election, a change election. Mandy, we'd spoken about the asymmetry in the media and Democrats being graded on a curve while Donald Trump kind of gets a pass. Trump had signaled in the campaign where his stance was on Israel versus Gaza. And now that he's in office, he's appointed, you know, pro-Israel

hawks to his cabinet between Marco Rubio, Elise Zephanic. And so can you explain, like, why, a little bit of why Kamala Harris took the brunt of the blame when it comes. to Israel, Gaza, but Trump, who is either the same or worse, why he gets a pass or why so many Arab American voters swung toward him. And I think, well, a couple of things. One is, I hear this all the time, and I understand why a lot of liberals, white liberals, who don't follow this issue closely, are confused. I get it.

Yeah. And just factually, just be clear, he did win in Dearborn, but overall, according to the Fox exit poll, 65% of Muslim Americans voted for Harris. The majority Jews and Muslims voted Democrat. The only religious group that voted majority in every sect Trump was Christians. Christians voted

for Trump in every type of Christian group voted Trump. Super majority, except for Catholics who were just a simple majority. So, slightly frustrates me when I see people say, oh, Muslims do not vote for Trump. The majority of Muslims voted Democratic. Now, did he get a swing? Yeah, like you did in every demographic. And did in places like

Dearborn, clearly they went from because of Gaza, yes. And the simple answer is, people don't play counterfactuals. Voters don't do that. They base it on what's happening in the here and now. And in the here and now, Joe Biden was president, Kamala Harris was vice president, and 42,000 people were killed on their watch with American weapons. And they showed very little empathy and very little support for these people. And I think that is fundamental. So when I said to people, I said what you said, Brian, I went, I spoke to Muslim crowds in Philadelphia, in swing states. And I said, you know Trump's worse. And they very legitimately said, maybe he is.

maybe he's not we'll find that out right now today biden's the one who's allowing our people to be killed and i think that's a problem the democrats have to recognize and and the funny thing is the bar was so low people here who've lost family members were not asking for joe biden to take benjamin net and yahoo to the international criminal court to be punished they were just saying number one feel our pain just have some empathy you're supposed to be the empathy president he didn't biden number two just criticize israel publicly like you would any other country. Like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are criticizing Israel.

Why couldn't Joe Biden? And number three, yeah, on the policy front, if you're not going to do an arms embargo, at least talk about the importance of international law, American law. Kamala Harris ran as a prosecutor. All she had to say was, of course, I support the President of the United States. I'm not undermining Joe Biden. But when I'm president, I'm going to enforce the law.

That's all she had to say. Enforce the law because our arms sales to Israel are violation of American law. They're a violation of the Leahy Act. they're a violation of the Foreign Assistance Act. That's all she had to say. The bar was solo. People were not asking for that much. They were asking for just a bare minimum.

And that Harris and Biden couldn't give them the bare minimum is both a moral outrage and electoral insanity. Yeah, I think that that's such a good answer, such a smart answer in terms of how voters operate. And I think that we saw that not just with Israel, Gaza, but the economy as well. People are looking at what's right in front of them. They're not looking, they're not doing counterfactuals. imagining, okay, based on the policy, you know, policies that are laid out by another candidate. In large part, this election was also a referendum on high prices and on inflation. And people

are just looking at who's in office and looking to punish them. And they're not thinking about the past or the future. They're looking at the moment that they're in right now. It was very much a punishment election, both on inflation, on what they perceived to be the border failures and, of course, on Gaza for a faction of people. And people, yeah, people don't realize that sometimes voting, you know, a lot of pundits and, you know, politicians see voting is very rational, you know, it's very empirical. No, it's just, it's, it's not here, it's here. And a lot people are just voting, as you say, punishment. They just want to, Rostafray, throw the bastards out. Like, that is fundamentally what voting is for a lot of people. And that's why the

anti-incumbency effect is so strong. Although we've never seen it like this in our lifetimes. We've now had three elections in a row for the first time in modern American history, where the sitting president has been thrown out. Yeah. Medi, we have spoken a lot about the How can watchers and listeners support you guys at Zateo News? Well, Zateo is right behind me. It's a funny spelling. It's an old ancient Greek word, which means to seek out the truth. Zateo.com is where you can go to subscribe.

We're on substack there. We're on YouTube. We don't have your numbers yet on YouTube, but we're trying. Join our half a million subscribers on YouTube. Join our 300,000 subscribers at Zetaio. Try and become a paid subscribers. You can support the work that me and Brian and other independent journalists do, because as I keep saying, a free press isn't free.

Well, Medi, I couldn't give you higher praise for the work that you were doing. So thank you so much for taking the time. For those who are watching right now, I'll put the link to Zateo in the post description if you're watching on YouTube and in the show notes if you're listening on the podcast. Medi, thanks so much for taking the time. Thanks, my friend. No Lie is brought to you by Lumen. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach.

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combe. me slash BTC to get 15% off your Lumen. That's L-U-M-E-N-D-C for 15% off your purchase. Lumen makes a great gift, too. Thanks, Lumen, for sponsoring this episode. I'm joined now by Congressman Rokana. Thanks so much for taking the time. Thank you for having me. Let's start off with Donald Trump's nominations.

in terms of these nominations to cabinet positions, and especially in light of Cash Patel's nomination to lead the FBI and knowing that Democrats have limited political capital to work with here, given that we're in the minority in both houses of Congress and, of course, the White House. Who do you think it's most useful to spend our time resisting here? Well, we need to ask tough questions of at least three of the nominees. First is Cash Patel, and what we need to make sure is that there's not retribution

in the FBI. I mean, that he commits very clearly to following norms and not using the resources of the government to go after Trump's enemies. The second, in my view, is our FK to make sure he doesn't start firing in mass NIH officials for doing research on vaccines and that he doesn't interfere with schools giving vaccines. And the third would be Tulsi Gabbard to make sure that we have a clear sense of her views on Ukraine and our views on Putin. Well, you know, the pushback to that would be, let's start with Cash Patel, first of all. I mean, he's already come out and said what he intends to do at the FBI. So do you think that it's enough to just hope that he, when he needs to answer questions for a certain audience, just says, oh, yeah, of course I'll defer to protecting the norms.

When we have quotes from him, you know, coming out and saying outright, we will go out and find the conspirators. Yes, we are going to come after the people in the media. So this is his promise to enact Donald Trump's retribution to even against journalists and lawyers for the crime of the crime of. of acknowledging objective reality about the 2020 election. So is it enough to just say, well, okay, as long as he answers to our liking, when we ask him about norms, then there's not going to be a problem. Well, Brian, first of all, I'm not clear that he'll answer to our likings. That's fair also.

Let's have him in there and let's confront him with these questions and then make a determination. The one thing that the one hope that people will follow somewhat the rule of law and not just be left out for Donald Trump is there is going to be a future administration. They saw the consequences for everyone other than Donald Trump for many people who engaged in criminal or wrongful conduct. And I hope that is some check on these people. I want to move over to the prospect of the next DNC chair. You've come out and said that the next DNC chair should swear off corporate PAC money. So what's your rationale for that?

Obama did it. The American people are sick of corporations having the kind of influence they have in our politics. Too many corporations sold American jobs offshore for the cheap prices and low wages. And I think they want to see a party that is ultimately not beholden to large interests. I agree, but I want to play devil's advocate for a moment and just say, is there any worry about unilaterally disarming if Democrats don't accept corporate PAC money, but Republicans, by contrast, have a blank check. I mean, just with Elon Musk alone, they basically have carte blanche

in terms of how much money they would need. So isn't being subjected to self-imposed purity tests kind of part of what landed us here in the first place? Isn't winning and having the money to be able to get our message out more important? Sure, but the question is, how do you win? We had more money than the other side this talk. No one is saying unilateral disarmament

on super PACs in a general election. What I'm saying is, first of all, no super PACs in a Democratic primary. That doesn't help us win in any way to have super great money being spent in a Democratic primary and have the DNC focus on grassroots fundraising and building actual constituencies and real small dollar donors, as Obama did it, as Bernie did, instead of relying on a small group of people to write big checks, which may be easier, but is it doing the 50-state party-building strategy? I think we'd be a stronger party if we're trying to get.

get the DNC funded from individuals. Now, in a general election, if someone billionaire is writing Dick Super PAC checks, then of course we need to respond to that. And we still can do that as long as Citizens United isn't overturned. No one is saying, and Obama had Super PACs to fight back against Romney. But all I'm saying is let's go at least back to where Obama was. Remember, he had ran as a candidate of reform. Bernie was a candidate of reform. We want to be the party of reform. I would tend to agree with everything that you're saying. Is there anybody that you like for DNC chair? I don't want to come out with a specific person because I just want to see where they're going to stand on corporate pack money, where they're going to stand on getting super packed money

out of politics, where they're going to stand on the main initiative. That was a brilliant initiative. Larry Lessig and I had an op-ed in Boston Globe about it. They basically restrict billionaires from contributing to super PACs. Why should a billionaire be able to give 50 million to a super PAC, but only $6,600, say, candidate, have the same restrictions that you could do even under Citizens United. I'd like to see a DNC chair take those pledges. And if they're for getting money out of politics, I'll be for them. Now, there's some good candidates, Ken Martin, Ben Wickler, who've done grassroots work. There may be others that emerge. On the money front, I want to move over to Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency. What do you hope that Doge

could accomplish? And what are you worried about when it comes to Elon Musk? and what he might be able to accomplish. Well, first of all, Democrats shouldn't just reflexively be opposed to cutting waste and fraud and abuse from government. Agreed. FDR famously talked about that to get his new deal passed.

I mean, he literally would talk about, we got to make government less wasteful, and that's what gave him the confidence to do the new deal. The biggest place is our defense budget, which is 56% of spending. You got five primes that have huge cost overruns. I mean, the F-35 was a $1.7 trillion cost.

over on handout to Lockheed Martin. So if Elon Musk can go after that and get more competition and lower the defense budget, good for him. I was the first person to say that. He tweeted back. I got in some criticism from the left. Why are you engaging Elon? And then Bernie said the same thing. I mean, look, people on the progressive side on the Democratic side have been talking about cutting the bloated defense budget for years. Let's see if Elon can do that. Now, if Elon is talking about cutting the consumer financial protection bureau, I will stand up against that with tooth and yell. And I will talk to him about how that actually has stayed of $20 billion for Americans, as protected Americans from obscene credit card fees and

mortgage fees. But we need to be rational about our opposition, not just blanket in our opposition. Yeah, I think that's correct. Is there some sense then, you know, moving over to the media front of this. Is there some sense among your Democratic colleagues in the House that as it relates to the media, conferring all of this attention and energy and validation onto legacy media is actually a losing strategy? Well, absolutely. I mean, here's the point. People know that you've got to get out there and talk beyond the legacy media. I mean, when I go on MSNBC and I like going on, 100,000, 200,000, maximum 500,000 people are seeing me. And it's often the same. It's often the same people. Now, if I want to make a good impression of my mom and dad or in their

70s, I can go on. But if I want to reach a broader audience, I've got to go on places like you, Brian, and you were a lead in being in the independent media space. And also the issues you're talking about are different. If I go on MSNBC today, which I may, I'm going to get asked about Cash Patel and unabided. No one is going to be talking about money in politics. no one is going to talk about Doge as much. And so you get to have more substantive conversations often on podcasts. And to your credit, you have been a leader in the space of embracing independent media. A lot of folks in the Democratic Party aren't.

And I mean, look, I understand for Kamala Harris's campaign, they had 107 days. And so it's a different kind of campaign where they don't necessarily have the freedom to be able to confer some legitimacy or validation onto independent media because they're is just to reach people right in front of them in every, you know, everyday matters, basically. But is there some sense among Democrats more broadly, in your opinion, that they do have to broaden their horizons? I mean, you know, aside from what you've been very effective at doing, is there some sense more broadly among the folks in the House that, or the Democratic Party, that it is important to make sure to embrace independent media?

Yes, there has been. And I remember when Bernie Sanders went on Joe Rogan, and the backlash he got, even for progressives on our own side. And now everyone is trying to get on Joe Rogkin. And they're trying to get on your podcast to have on. But I think there's been a wake-up call for the Democratic Party that we've got to be on these podcasts. We've got to engage with independent media. But more than that, you've got to be willing to mix it up

and not be so afraid of a gaffe. You know, the reality is if you make a gap, and I'm sure if people play everything I've said, I'm sure there are things I said that I regret saying, but the news cycle is so fast, people get over it. They understand people misspeak. But you've got to be out there and being yourself. And I think that's what people want more than anything. Well, and the flip side of that is that if you are so careful not to make a gaff, you risk not even sounding human. And then that's the whole problem in an immediate ecosystem where authenticity, relatability are the most important

things. That is your capital. Then making sure that you speak in a way that you'll never get in trouble is going to have the complete opposite effect that you're intending. No one is going to, no one is going to run over to your side if you don't even sound like a human being because you're so worried about a gaff, you know, bubbling up, you know, at some untold point in the future. You said something that I thought was interesting, and that was about the backlash that Bernie received for going on Joe Rogan. Do you think that it's incumbent upon Democrats right now to kind of drop any supposed purity tests that are being imposed and drop some sense of like whoever we spend our time with, whoever we validate has to like, you know, meet every

threshold that we've imposed has to be perfect and we can't talk to anybody outside of our bubble of people who are just exactly who we find are the right messengers. Yes, we should drop it, but not just for politics, but because it's substantively. the correct way of bringing change and respecting people. Let's look at our great leaders. Of course, I was influenced by my grandfather, who spent four years in jail alongside Gandhi as part of India's independence movement. Gandhi's entire Satyagra movement where he was dealing with British colonialism was about engaging in trying to find the good in everyone and persuading them. And then, of course, that influences Dr. King. Dr. King did the same thing. John Lewis did the same thing. These are people,

three figures were greater than the entire Democratic Party today put together. And so who are we to cancel people when leaders far greater than us didn't do that? It is a, it is a morally obtuse approach. It's not just a politically deficient approach. It is morally deficient. Well, I appreciate your time and I appreciate your willingness, your longtime willingness to embrace independent media and talk to folks, you know, on both sides of the ecosystem, left and right. And I know that you've been a leader in terms of doing that. So, Congressman, I appreciate your time today. Brian, thank you. Thank you for being a leader yourself. Thanks again to Medi and Roe. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week.

You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating in a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to bryantaylorcoen.com to learn more.