No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Fox News drops BAD NEWS for Trump

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

Trump hit with a barrage of dismal polling ahead of midterms. Brian interviews Jon Lovett about the future of the Democratic Party in Los Angeles, CA.Order THE DAY AFTER: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/thedayafterWritten 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.

Trump gets some nightmare polling ahead of midterms, and I'm joined by John Lovett for a live show in Los Angeles. I'm Brian Taylor Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. I'm not sure Trump could have gotten worse news with midterms just around the corner. So a whole spate of new polls just dropped measuring Americans' responses on the generic congressional ballot, meaning who they'd like to see in charge of Congress. And here are the responses. This is five different polls. Democrats are up six points, seven points, eight points, nine points, and 11 points. And that includes, I should add, a poll by Fox News, where Brett Baer gives a pretty bleak outlook for Republicans on air.

You look at our polls and you look at the condition of the economy, and this is the one for midterms we look at closely. And that is excellent or good, 24%, only fair or poor, 76%. And that has got to have Republicans, Senate and House, concerned. Absolutely, Brad, and the truth is there's not much good news for Republicans in this whole poll we did. Underwater on the economy, as you showed, underwater on affordability. Those two issues are front and center for sure. Republicans have a little bit of a lead on national security and, I guess, law enforcement. But everywhere you look, Republicans are down.

Now, there is a bit of good news. As you mentioned, the redistricting will help them with seats in the House, and they will probably need every one of them and they can get from that. And Fox News's poll showing Democrats up seven points on the generic congressional ballot, 53 to 46, is the biggest lead either party has had in Fox's own polling since 1996.

Like, Tomogachis weren't even invented yet. And of course, the usual caveats apply here. Polling isn't a measure of what will happen in the future. It's just a snapshot of a specific moment in time. But five polls all showing Democrats up on average more than eight points is a clear trend line and one that does not bode well for Republicans. Now, unsurprisingly, what's driving these numbers is the fact that Donald Trump's approval is sitting at about 39% on average, with disapproval climbing to 57%.

Voters trust Democrats over Republicans on income inequality, on health care, on inflation, on the economy, just on issue after issue, a disaster for Republicans. But in terms of how we got here, it really isn't complicated. the entire Republican Party made a conscious decision, a choice over and over again to put their allegiance to Donald Trump ahead of their own voters. And now the bill has come due. Like, take Epstein, for example, voters across the spectrum, not just Democrats, but Republicans, independents, wanted those files released. And what did we get? Months of stonewalling, we got a DOJ that, quote unquote, accidentally left out names of some of the most powerful

people connected to Epstein while the survivor's names were released. And Republican, who spent that entire saga, either running interference for Trump or getting punished by Trump for stepping out of line. Nancy Mace said that her push for the Epstein Files bill cost her Trump's own endorsement. Thomas Massey, who led the bipartisan push to force a vote, got primaried. He's out in the most expensive primary in American history because Trump wanted him gone. Marjorie Tiller-Green resigned from Congress. And after that, guess how many of other Republicans spoke out? None. Or how about Iran? You know, this brand new foreign war that Trump swore up and down would never happen when he was on the campaign trail.

A Reuters Ipsos poll found that just 27% of Americans approved of the strikes. A Washington Post poll found 52% opposed them outright. Even a data for progress poll found that a majority of likely voters, 52% believed Trump at least partly launched the strikes to distract from the Epstein scandal. A quarter of Republicans agreed with that. Thomas Massey himself said, quote, bombing a country on the other side of the other side of the the globe won't make the Epstein files go away. But did that stop the party from, of course, falling in line? No. On Thursday, Senate Republicans voted against legislation that would end the war. They voted against it. They had an off ramp. They've had multiple off ramps,

multiple opportunities where they could have said, we work for our constituents who are against this, not for one man's continued political survival. And at every single juncture, They chose him. And now here we are. The most Democratic-leaned generic ballot Fox News has measured in 30 years. An 11-point Emerson deficit, the biggest deficit that they've seen on their own polling. Trump's approval rating is underwater by double jidges. I got to ask these Republicans, is it worth it?

Is covering for Epstein worth it? Is marching Loxep into a war that most Americans oppose worth it? Because here's the thing about hitching your entire political identity to one guy. When his numbers crater, so do yours. You spent years telling your voters that loyalty to Donald Trump, to dear leader, was the platform, that questioning him was betrayal, that the base would never forgive any independence. And now those same voters that you were so afraid of are the ones about to hand you a wave election, about to usher Democrats into power. So maybe, just maybe, this is the warning shot every Republican in a competitive district needs to actually listen to. Trump is a lame duck, not in the ballot again.

He doesn't have to answer to these numbers. You do. Every Republican who chooses to protect him on Epstein, who chooses to rubber stamp a war that the public doesn't want, who greenlights a trade war that sent costs surging around the entire world, is about to find out that the voters they ignored are the ones who are going to decide whether they keep their jobs in November. Because these Republicans might lie, but the numbers clearly don't. Next up is my interview with John Lovett.

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Start your free trial today at Shopify.com slash BTC. That's Shopify.com slash BTC. Thank you all for coming. Appreciate it. Hi, everybody. Thanks for being here. Brian is good to see you. must be nice to be in front of people as opposed to kind of making content in your content cube

for the world. You hear in the world. Just in this isolation, blacked out room. Yeah, it can get, you know, well, we'll talk about it. So let's start with the book. What is the goal of the book? And what would you like Democrats or the people that yell at Democrats to take away from it? So I started writing this because right now I think that we have already in the immediate aftermath of 2024, we have a very disillusioned left. And that's why so many people started moving to the right. We obviously saw a massive realignment among every demographic group, every age, every gender, every race toward Republicans. Now we have a disillusioned electorate on the right because Donald Trump and Republicans absolutely refused to deliver on any of the right. their promises. They promised that costs would go down. They're going up. They promised inflation

would sink. That's rising. They promised no new wars in the Middle East. We have a new war in the Middle East. They promised to release the Epstein files. That's not happening. So you've got disillusioned folks on the left and then disillusioned folks on the right. I think that, first of all, I think that Democrats are going to win in midterms. But I think that we're going to have a rare second bite of the apple here. That frankly, we have no business having, if not for the abject incompetence of these Magu Republicans. But when we get that moment, we have to prove that it's actually worth it for people to give Democrats their votes. It can't just be enough to have symbolic victories or get caught trying. You actually have to deliver for people. And

the Democrats have for so long been the party of strongly worded letters. And that's not good enough. So I think here what my goal with the book was was to push forward right now while we have this opportunity, the idea of not deferring to norms or institutions or traditions or processes or the filibuster or the parliamentarian and just have it in our minds that if and when we gain power again, that we use that time not to impanel commissions or think about what the best path forward is, but to just get shit done. So I feel like you can think about what getting shit done looks like in three buckets. And I want to take each one at a time. But I'm going to tell you the buckets are in advance.

Bucket one is delivering on people's fundamental material concerns, whether it's cost of housing, health care, college, et cetera. The second is reforms, democratic reforms that protect the right to vote, fight gerrymandering, defend against a right-wing court. And then the third would be ways of holding the Trump administration and people who decided that all their friends were jumping off, the laws don't matter, bridge, and they would do it too, and how we look back and address and hold accountable people for the crimes that took place in this era.

Let's take, sure. So let's start at the end. So what do you think it looks like? Because I know there's going to be a bunch of polls that come out that say, if you ask voters, do you want people to look backwards and go after Donald Trump for mistakes and crimes or do you want to look forward? The polls are going to say people want to look forward. So I'm of the belief that we have both an obligation and like a moral obligation and also practical obligation to make sure we get to the bottom of what happened. How do you make the

best case for that? So this was something that I wrestled with while I was writing the book itself because on one hand you have to have a forward looking agenda. You know, there are people for whom the political bullshit, the minutia of politics just doesn't. doesn't fucking matter. They don't care who hates who. They just want to go home, be able to afford their rent, be able to afford their groceries, be able to afford health care, and move on. They don't want to turn on CNN or MSNBC or Fox News and see who landed the latest gotcha or who's clapping back to who. And so I think for those people who don't have partisan affiliations, who aren't driven by team loyalty, you just have to have a forward-looking

agenda. And that's going to be on health care. That's going to be. on doing the things that Trump said that he was going to do when he was doing his popular schick about housing and rent and all of those things. But at the same time, I think for those of us who are so unfortunate to be in this world where we are steeped in the toxic cesspool that is politics, we understand that government can only work if people actually have faith that we're going to uphold the laws on both sides for Republicans and Democrats. And the rule of law matters.

And frankly, it's not even just a platitude. I mean, you're seeing right now the consequences of Joe Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, refusing to wield the law against Donald Trump in a timely manner. They got this sense that they can basically act with impunity because where's the deterrent effect? There was so much criminality in Trump 1.0 that Trump never faced any accountability for, because for Merrick Garland, it was more important to put the optics of politicization aside, which in effect politicize the DOJ even more, because now you know you can get away with it as long as you have an R-next to your name.

But right now, we're in that moment where there is corruption, and look at how that's taking precedence over our own interests in this country. I mean, Donald Trump is trading tariff favors for foreign real estate deals. We're seeing a war in the Middle East that we don't know why he's doing it other than to maybe look at the fact that his kids are invested in drone companies. And so much of what's going on right now is a direct response to the corruption that this government is engaged in. And frankly, so that we don't end up in an even more corrupt government moving forward, we have to hold those people accountable right now.

So I think you have to walk and chew gum at the same time. There is no reason not to do both, to both embrace a proactive agenda where you're, you can actually deliver things for people that they have been begging for delivery on, but at the same time, recognize that you need a DOJ that's going to actually restore some faith in Americans' idea that the government can actually operate without being steeped in just abject corruption. No lie is brought to by Select Quote. Life insurance. We all know we need it, but we keep putting it off because we think it's complicated or expensive or that we'll live forever.

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in about, you know, 30 months or so. So what are you talking about? What do you think Democrats need to be calling for, whether it's the courts or in other kind of pro-democracy changes? So I think the biggest thing that I call for, the biggest structural change that we need to see, is we need to expand the court. So right now, There is a historical imperative and a moral imperative. So first of all, the number of Supreme Court justices, being nine Supreme Court justices, is not sacrosanct. It's not in the Constitution.

We have seen throughout history that the number of Supreme Court justices has comported with the number of federal court circuits. In the 1800s, there were six federal court circuits, six Supreme Court justices. Eventually, that number went up to eight, and then nine. Now we have nine Supreme Court justices. Since then, we have 13 federal court circuits,

and we still have nine Supreme Court justices. justices, it does not make historical sense to have nine Supreme Court justices. There's also been a change in the number of Supreme Court justices in modern times. Mitch McConnell changed that number from nine to eight when he was holding that seat open for a year to prevent Merrick Garland from being seated on the Supreme Court. So to pretend that that number, nine, as sacrosanct, is to ignore what Mitch McConnell just did a few years ago. But there's also a moral imperative to do so. And that is that if we do all of the work that it takes to be in a position where we can actually change something, which is to say elect Democrats to a majority in the House, the Senate, and the White House,

a pretty Herculean feat unto itself, and then actually pass progressive legislation, another Herculean feat unto itself, if we decide to make the conscious decision to leave in place a Supreme Court, a 6-3 conservative court, that can and will strike down any and all progressive legislation, then we're basically just telling ourselves, it's good enough to notch that symbolic victory for as short a time as it lasted. It's good enough to just get caught trying, and the American people are going to be fine with that

because, hey, that's the institution of government. That's just how it works. For me, it's not good enough to get caught trying. We actually have to have some changes here that make it so that we can have meaningful, lasting change. And the only way to do that, knowing that we're not going to leave in place voluntarily, a veto on anything that happens in the federal government

is to expand the Supreme Court from 9 to 13 justices. But what happens when they win and they want 17 justices? Yes. What do we say then, Brian, Tyler Cohen? Look, I am of the mind that you don't prevent yourself from taking steps right now

for fear of the Republicans at some untold point in the future abusing their power. When they are abusing their power, right fucking now. Yeah. I see what works here. It's sort of like,

our blessed court expansion, their depraved court packing. Yeah. And look, it would be one thing if the court itself was actually acting in good faith, if these were neutral arbiters of the law, but it's not. I mean, we know

how this Supreme Court operates. We know that they will create out of whole cloth provisions of the Constitution if it helps them. like, for example, this idea that Trump can commit crimes with impunity and nothing happens, that's not in the Constitution. That's made up. But on the other side, they ignore provisions of the Constitution when it doesn't serve their political party.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment prevents you from running for federal office again if you've engaged in or give an aid or comfort to those who've engaged in insurrection. Donald Trump did that, and he was allowed to run for office again. This was even after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that he engaged in insurrection. So these are not neutral arbiters of the law. They're not acting in the best interest or in adherence to the Constitution. They're just acting in blind deference to their political party. And so that's the difference between just expanding the court because you're salty and expanding the Supreme Court because you know that these are not fair arbiters of the law.

Maybe we just, maybe just it can be looming. And then that causes Roberts and some combination of Kavanaugh and Barrett to kind of be afraid. to overturn some of the stuff that the Newsom Buttigieg administration is doing. All right, calm down, everybody. Through the, yeah, okay. All right, well, 2028, boy, how do we fight back after Trump? A champagne problem, for sure. We're about to have a midterm.

We're fighting like hell to try to, at the very least, win the House. We have a shot at taking the Senate. either way, there will be a presidential veto for the next two years for anything Democrats want to do if we win both houses. What does the lessons that you're trying to apply to the day after? How do you apply them from 2026 through before we get to that election? So like I said, I think that we are going to be in control in certainly the House, but hopefully the Senate too. I'm bullish on the Senate. I think that in this moment where we will have the ability.

to show people that it's worth it to vote for Democrats, but as you mentioned, we're still going to have a presidential veto, and so we won't be able to pass any proactive legislation. I mean, hell, Trump wouldn't even sign his own housing bill, which he campaigned on, and his party passed. So the notion that he's going to be a champion for whatever other populist issues, the Democrats are going to be able to pass,

I think, is probably not going to happen. But I think in that moment, there's one thing that we can do, and that is investigate the abject corruption that we're contending with right now. And I mentioned before the extent to which this corruption isn't just, it's not just investigating corruption because, you know, in a theoretical sense, corruption is bad. It's investigating this corruption because it's impeding on the government's ability to be able

to act in the best interests of its own people. We don't know why we're at war, but it's definitely worth noting that the president's family has interests in companies that sell war stuff to the government. The military. So, you know, there is so much to dive into, whether it is the absolute glut of crypto funding that is going to Donald Trump. You know, there are foreign countries like UAE and Qatar that are investing via World Liberty Financial with Trump and his kids are involved in that go right into his pocket

and have resulted in him tripling his net worth in a year and a half. We have seen We have seen We have seen Yeah, anyway All of the instances Sorry, that We've seen a dog.

We've seen a dog crawling onto laps. So we have seen all of the instances Oh, short sales that are happening Five minutes before some big announcement where all of a sudden a stock pops or plummets And now we find out that somebody Had some insider information And bought something or sold something

just before the announcement happened. Donald Trump's teleprompter operator is now under investigation for, you know... Can I just say something about... As a former speechwriter, I find it so offensive that this teleprompter operator was selling...

was like making money on bets on what words Trump was going to say in the speeches because he only made $100,000 and he should be embarrassed. I mean, I'm sorry, but like, you know where the ball is going to go in the roulette wheel

and you only got a hundred grand. That's, I like, shame on you. What was it? Donald Trump is stealing billions of dollars. You're going down for a hundred K. What was it? There was one, somebody kept making money, thinking or betting on the fact that Trump would say praise Allah

in his, in his truth social posts, oddly specific, and then it happened twice. Unbelievable. I don't think these betting markets are good, but that's for a different talk. Yeah. going back to all of the corruption that we're seeing right now, look, it would be one thing if we just investigated the corruption because it's the right thing to do and it's illegal.

But consider, too, the fact that this is a Republican Party that has groomed the country into recognizing that corruption at the hands of a president's family is bad and disqualifying. It was bad when Hunter Biden was doing it for like $50,000 paintings. But then when the Trump kids are making billions of dollars in military defense contracts and cryptocurrency, somehow that's not okay. This is a country that has been groomed to recognize that this stuff is disqualifying. If this is investigated by Congress,

that also lays the foundation for a future DOJ to use that information, this fact-finding information, to begin prosecutions in the future. So let's not waste time. Let's actually do something because there's a moral imperative to do it and a legal imperative to do it. I went to a Hunter Biden art show once.

Surprising amount of pathos. But moving on from that. You know, I think sometimes, one thing that I've just been thinking about, especially in the second Trump administration, and I think it's something that is driving a certain subset of liberals and progressives batty and I think with good reason,

which is a lot of this is about strategizing, theorizing, plotting for how to use, power in a society that doesn't seem to care enough or as much about corruption, basic democratic values, treating people with empathy and respect, not taking a shit on Nancy Pelosi's desk. I'm not saying these things are popular. I'm not saying there's a majority that cares about them. But I think part of the reason we're in this mess, we like to talk about the media,

we talk about Republicans, is this nation didn't care enough about those crimes in order to make a clear final decision. on Donald Trump. And so how do you just think about like stepping back from what we're going to put on the Democrats or on the media? Like as someone who is in the content minds every single day, like how do you think about that fundamental disconnect? That's in large part like the impetus for the book. I think that there is a continued insistence on thinking that you need to compromise with those people. And these are people who don't want to be compromised with and would not reciprocate when they have power and when we ask them to compromise.

And so for the people who have no empathy, who don't care what happens to immigrants in this country, who want to vilify people in the LGBT community, the people who are so depraved and as such get so much of a spotlight in this country, in our media ecosystem, online. I think that the goal then is to get into office and not say, how do we give everybody on that side who's doing those things a seat at the table, is to say, look, for lack of a better term, is to say, fuck that, let's just do what we're going to do and not water down our morals and our values and what we want to see done in deference to a political party and a movement that wants to see you killed.

And so I think in that sense, in that sense, you go in and you don't, say let's get 50%. You say, let's wield power like we're actually going to get something done. And, you know, the difference between Republican governance and Democratic governance is, is like, Republicans platonic ideal of governance is, is, you know, you have Trump that decides that elections are only valid if Republicans win. It's cutting all the health care that they can. It's privatizing Social Security. It is heaping money onto fossil fuel companies. It's denying the existence of climate change. It's refusing to raise any wages for any work.

workers forever, and they do it. And when Democrats get in office, it's, okay, how can we change laws so that we can get buy-in from Republicans? If I'm not mistaken, and you can speak on this better, there was a lot of deference when Obama got elected to how to make the ACA, for example, more palatable for Republicans, and he made changes to it, and then none of them voted for it. And so I think that's instructive in saying, instead of seeking compromise and being the only party seeking compromise, go in and start wielding power in very much the same way that Republicans do, but do it for virtuous reasons, not for self-enrichment, not for vanity projects, but to help people. Yeah. On the Obamacare front, there was a long process between the Democratic and

Republican chair of one of the Senate committees that did come to nothing. But in the end, the challenge with that process slowed it down. But, in the end, Obamacare was weakened by Democrats. It was weakened by Joe Lieberman, who, and actually, Joe Lieberman is often blamed for the removal of the public option, and he is, but that was more of like a murder on the Orrin Express situation where, like, he, like, sort of nine people did it, nine people killed it, and they were pretty thrilled that Joe Lieberman became the face of it, but what Joe Lieberman really personally killed, which is a bugaboo of mine that I bring up too frequently

given it is he's dead. And we're alive is he killed the Medicare buy-in for people below retirement age, which would have allowed the most expense, the people that have to buy the most inexpensive insurance. I'm sure how many people here are approaching Medicare age and would have fucking loved to buy into Medicare a few years early? See? See these hands?

Like that hurt everybody because that would have made insurance for everybody cheaper. It would have made life better for retirees or people that are approaching Medicare age and would have made insurance cheaper for everybody else. Democrats killed that, which goes to a broader point that you're making. But like when I, so I'm taking what you're saying, and I hear you. I have a theory, you know, whatever, about what it looks like for a Republican Party that rationalizes in some way. And what it looks like is you have to beat them. You beat them, you know, when Mitt Romney loses, it's Marco Rubio leading an effort to create a more cosmopol. diverse pro-immigration GOP.

It's one of the reasons he didn't make it very far in that primary because he didn't understand the kind of simmering rage going on in the Republican base. But regardless, their take on losing to Obama twice was, and failing to win the popular boat so many times, was we need to figure out a new way to broaden our coalition. Then Trump wins and says, we don't have to do that. He's sort of like, forget everything you thought.

We can be the worst version of ourselves. We don't have to do that. So you have to beat the Republicans that are so cynical. There are true believers in Trump, but what is his coalition? It's a mix of true believers and people that have forgotten what it is to be a moral and righteous person, not listening closely enough in church, whatever it is. There's a whole collection of reasons why people make deals with the devil, a lot of great books about it.

You should see The Odyssey. It's been going on for a long time. You don't treat your neighbor like you would want to be treated? Oh, no, there's a cyclops, that kind of thing. I just came from The Odyssey. But I have less of a... So you beat those people enough. The craven ones will moderate because they want power,

and the less craven ones will be a bit more sheepish for a while. Fascism is a demon in every heart. You fight it every 60 years. I understand that. What I understand less is not the diehards on either side, but this big group of people that determine the outcome of every single election who just are cynical. They are not paying close attention to the news.

The news is not as accessible to them because it used to come to you passively. Now you must actively seek it. The degradations that we are watching are quieter and less salient in their lives. How do we begin building what is, I think, at root what led us here, which is a culture that just doesn't think enough, care enough,

talk enough about basic democratic and moral virtues? I think in large part that will come from a government that seeks to deliver on the things that it promised to do. You know, I think, you know, I think that is the difficult part. I mean, that is why we see the disillusionment that we see right now. I mean, people told Democrats that they wanted it in the lead up to 2024. I think, for example, the Biden plan to lower drug prices is a good example of this, because it's a great idea, obviously. The whole world, the whole industrialized world does it. We don't.

We were finally going to be able to do it. We find out that it is 10 drugs, and if I'm not mistaken, it was going to be implemented 100 years into the future. Yeah, no, it was going to be a beauty. Drugs were going to be so affordable after Haley's comet goes by. And well-meaning, well-intentioned, absolutely. And I do think, you know, it is sad that in large part a lot of the accomplishments of the Biden era, which were great are going to be forgotten because they've been rolled back. But there was disillusionment as the result of that because this is what Democrats do. It is like the plotting bureaucratic implementation where it always seems to be done scheduled for a time

when the president or the party in power will be out of office, setting up the opposition party to take all of the credit for what the previous party has done, but also done on such a small scale that it's almost impossible to feel it. Meanwhile, if Trump is, like, able to take a shit on the toilet in the morning, he'll send you out like a $17 check, and he'll put his face in his signature on it.

So I think the disparity there is so great between how one party takes credit for its accomplishments and how the other party takes credit for really not accomplishing much at all. So I think that that can be instructive. But as I was saying, there is great disillusionment as the results of a failure to deliver meaningful change. And now there's disillusionment, again, with the right, because of their refusal to deliver on meaningful change. Because the Trump administration just wants to heap money, power, influence, and resources onto themselves and their donors and their families. And so I think if we are in a position where, again, we get that second bite of the apple, we use it to show people that if you implement,

implement these reforms in a real meaningful way, then that's half of the battle. That does the work for you in terms of making sure the people vote for you again and recognize the importance of government. I actually think that it is the inability, even the Trump administration's failure to deliver kind of inures to their benefit because people become disaffected in politics, disaffected in outcomes, and lose their faith that government can work. And there's only one party that advocates for government to be shrunk, and that's the Republicans. So in a weird, kind of perverse way, the Republicans failing people kind of benefits, redounds to the benefit of the Republican Party because people lose full faith in government that it could ever work.

And that's in Democrats and Republicans. So I think we have a vested interest in this rare moment that we will have, and I think it will happen, to make sure that we actually deliver so that we don't have this vacuum of civic participants. a vacuum in which autocracy thrives because there's only one party that wants to embrace autocracy and it's not the left. No lie is brought to you by Factor. Now, I know that we've all been there where you're exhausted and starving and probably hungry. You go into the fridge and you can and should cook a healthy meal, but you don't have it in you so you just opt for the quick junk food instead.

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all of which is ready in two minutes. Factor shops, preps, cooks, and delivers straight to your door so that you have more time for everything that you love. If you don't have the time to cook, you absolutely cannot go wrong with Factor. My go-to for prepared meals. Head to FactorMeals.com slash BTC-50 off and use code BTC-50 off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box with new subscription only while supplies last until 92726. See website for more details. I think about when I was a speechwriter and the level of attention that went into the words that the president uses. And, you know, we would work on a speech with a policy team.

And you had a lot of confidence that those policy makers were not betting on the outcome. Among other strengths. Not the policymakers, but have you checked the teleprompter technicians? I'm also curious, I didn't dig into it because when I was in the White House, the telemark operators were White House military officers. It was through that. I wonder if that has changed under Trump, that he has sort of his guy to it. One of his...

I think it's the guy who did the pool. Oh, it's the guy that... Yeah, that's right. Yeah, green water and teleprompter solutions. Yeah. The problem with the teleprompter is there was... There's a 350-foot gash. Right, that's right.

That's right. Or 351-foot gashes. But you would work on these speeches with the smartest and best policy people. Then it would go through a research process, and they would check every word, and the lawyers would look at it, and the political people would look at it, and legislative affairs would look at it, and go through round and round and round. And it was annoying. Can I butt in and ask you a question here? What was the best joke that you ever wrote for the president? You know, it's funny, I don't, it doesn't seem fit my personality, but I don't really remember to take credit.

But I do remember one that we cut. There was a lot of jokes we cut. Other than Pokemon Go to the polls. Pokemon Go to the polls was for Hillary. And again, I did not write that, but believe it was a great line. But, so I'll tell, so I remember I was traveling with President Obama and he had to go to a fundraiser with Whoopi Goldberg that was going to take place after Sister Act the Musical. So they were all these big donors, we get to watch Sister Act the Musical, and they were

going to hear from President Obama. And I was on the trip doing some, it was a bunch of economic speech. It was sort of a trip that was somewhat political and then also had official parts to it. But he saw him, he said, oh, do you have a joke for me? And I, forgetting myself, I just like, well, let's pitch. I'm a comedy writer, I'll pitch. Should have just said, let me think about that, sir. Nope, I just opened my big stupid fucking mouth. You know, I've gone far, but man, a lot of things I flinch about walking down the street. You know, you have those things that you flinch about walking down the street. That's the price of being me. I have a lot of them. But so, I said, now that you've seen Cister Act, again, I'm just going to address the elephant

in the room. I'm a Jewish guy, the President of the United States, first African-American president in American history. And I said, now that you've seen sister act, I have my brother act. It sucks. Brutal, right? Brutal thing to say out loud. Fuck. Bad. Stupid. I confess. I say it. I reveal this to you. I know. He looks at me like, oh, I, and you, you haven't disappeared. You still seem to think you belong here. And he said, no. think of something else. And so then I, I, full body sweat, sweat through my suit completely, just wet.

Just a wet Jew wandering around. Everyone's eating, chilling, and I'm freaking out. And so finally, I was like, I need something that's going to kill that it's going to like, it's got to work, it's got to work. And so, it's like, well, covenant, you know, what dad of teenagers,

convent, all right, I got it. And so the joke I gave him was, I have it, sir, right here, right? And he looked at me, like, you better fucking... A lot of people want to sit in the chair, you're on, and I'll forget you. I said,

I'm so glad I could be here with all of you to see Sister Act the Musical. It's a wonderful opportunity for all of us to be together to raise money. Also, I'm doing research on the convent I want to send Sasha and Malia after high school. I would say the politics of that joke are iffy at best, but it's right in the fucking

strike zone for a dad teenage women, you know? And so he like gave me a fist bump. He went out there. He did the joke and I redeemed myself. And so that's that story. But to the serious point, those processes are annoying. They are invisible, but they're important. And they're important because they are from an institutional, they respect that the president's words have meaning and that it may be slow and stodgy, a bit technical, a bit lawyerly, but a society in which people respect that is a society that maybe moves slowly, but it moves well. And I struggle with the balance.

I know, Brian, you're not advocating that we do what Donald Trump does, but at the same time, it is easy to say, we have to learn the lesson of Trump and not be so bogged down by the rules when part of what we're trying to do is not just beat them in a game, but prove that the game is great, right? Like we're trying to win a game. They're not, they're cheating, you know, they're double dribbling. I don't know.

But we're trying to say, no, like, basketball is not just, we're not just going to win this game. We're going to make you remember how much you love basketball. And so, how do you think about that? I think about that in terms of, look, we have those institutions in place and look at the position that we're in. And so clearly something isn't working. And I think it's okay to both have respect for the institution that is government, while also reworking the processes that prevent government from actually delivering. And so I think that that's what we need to look for.

I mean, it's okay to not have blind adherence to the filibuster if it means that we can actually deliver on climate, on health care, on the minimum wage, on all of the things that are actually preventing us from doing those things right now. There feels like there was a moment, you know, I know that everybody remembers the Kirsten Cinema, you know, her and I think it was one other person who mansion yes refusal to eliminate the filibuster and like we would have the freedom to vote act right now which first of all bans partisan gerrymandering nationwide so we wouldn't be in this race to the bottom uh to redraw the maps it makes election day

a national holiday uh it would it would um deliver on so many of the reforms that we need to make sure the foundations of government actually work and we don't have that and now we're watching the Rights Act get gutted. We're watching every black representative in the South get drawn out of their seats. We're watching voter suppression bills take path. We're watching the administration officials refuse to rule out the prospect of ICE appearing at the polls. We're watching Donald Trump try to ban mail-in voting, try and usher through the Freedom to Vote Act, which would basically amount to a federal takeover of state-run elections. And so that's with the system in place. And so obviously, I understand how, you know, in theory, it makes sense to say we need these institutions in place as they are, but the institutions are in place in practice and look at the position that we find ourselves in.

Yeah, I think that's right. Also, there's something else that I think underlies a lot of this, which is, yes, it's about these specific places where we can make changes. but it's also, I think, and I think that's part of the reason people are so receptive to this is you kind of want Democrats that just have a fire in their belly. There has been a decadence in how Democrats

approach using power. In part, I think, because of success, right? I think one reason we've seen this rising, forget the like the MAGAPE base, but kind of intellectual right-wing authoritarianism take hold is because they were sick of losing, right? They view it,

as a group, look, I don't think it does a lot when American Airlines makes their symbol a rainbow over pride, right? But they felt as though they lost for a very long time. And we won elections, we lost elections. They took the Supreme Court, but gay marriage is legal, the social welfare state, Obamacare is in place. They felt that they were losing for a long time. And so when they took power, there was a fire in their belly. And I think there's something with Democrats where it's like, whether it's wanting to hold hearings on crypto scams in the next Congress or taking power and being like, we have 100 days to get a bunch of stuff done that people will feel. Yes, it's about changing rules, but it's like a, it's a kind of like a mode of being that we

look for ways to, to describe in policy, but in reality, we know it when we see it. And then when you have people like Janet Mills or Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries or some of these more establishment figures and they're trying to figure out how to connect with the base and they're looking for specific ways to do it at Root, I think there's some feeling of like, like, why aren't you guys forget the strategy? Why aren't you so angry you can't stop yourself? Like, why aren't you so upset and enthusiastic and engaged in this that like, is it the hearing on what the Trump crimes doesn't pull well? Give a fuck. We got to get to the bottom of this. Right. Like, that's the thing I think is sometimes missing in a deeper way. And by the way, on that point, I know that people talk about like the brand of the Democratic Party.

I don't think that the solution to that is taking the existing slate of people who, I don't know, maybe it's because they have D.C. brain rot. And, you know, their kids go to school with the Republicans kids and they work out at the same Senate gym. that they don't really feel that urgency. They're certainly, you know, wealthy enough that they're going to be protected from the impacts of all of this stuff. But I don't think that the solution here is just to kind of teach an old dog new tricks.

I think the solution is for those people, in large part, to make way for a new generation of politicians who are younger, who are more dynamic, more tech-savvy, who are more progressive, and can actually communicate with people in a way that people appreciate and can relate to. And finally, you know, who consume information

in a way that those people grew up consuming information and not trying to stick a tiny microphone in Chuck Schumer's hand hoping that, like, that will fix all of our problems. Chuck Schumer here, fam. Do you see that Chuck Schumer farted? Can I tell you something? I mean this sincerely. First of all, did you see that?

He farted. giving a speech about Iran. And this is seen as embarrassing. I actually fundamentally don't understand that. Everybody farts. And it's a funny part of our culture that if you fart in the wrong place at the wrong time, humiliation,

as if like what, everybody poops. You guys don't know, but Lovett has just been ripping it up here. No, I understand where the embarrassment and shame comes from my guess on some level. But I feel like Schumer used to be the guy that was like at the gas station every Sunday to do a press conference.

That was his thing. He was like relentless. when he was first in the Senate in the House. And I feel like I want a Senate Majority Leader that calls a press conference based around the fart and saying we need to talk about the real gas crisis. Like, and I know that sounds like a joke, but I'm not joking.

And I know I'm wrong because I don't, I know what I just said is stupid, but is it? Brian, you brought up. Did you see Zornamom Dani was giving an interview to the New York Times and he had like a coughing fit in the middle of his interview. And he took a drink of water and said, sorry, I have a bad cold. And this is why we need Medicare for all.

You know what, though? That is how you stay relentlessly on message. Good for him. What's so funny is, you know that if, like, if Schumer farts, the whole world's like, that goober. Mom Dani farts is like, is farting the new cool thing?

Everybody's farting these days. If farting is cool. consider me Miles Davis. Guys, get your heads out of the gutter. This is a book event. Brian, you brought up the way people are consuming information. I often lovingly refer to you as YouTube's best boy. You're in the content trenches.

You are trying to figure out how to get good information to more people mediated by algorithms that are based around engagement, endorphins. How, first of all, are you okay? And then second of all, what are some of the lessons you take away from what you've been doing by building this huge audience on YouTube? So I think in terms of like the mental health implications, what I do to keep myself okay is five milligrams of Lexapro, 25 milligrams of X, and then a relentless stream of weed. Wow. Okay.

And that's just breakfast. Yeah. And then he clocks in. Yeah, then I clock in. No, I mean, I appreciate you asking that. And, you know, that is the, I used to be really good at compartmentalizing. And I remember when I first started doing this work in 2017. I started doing video content full time at the end of 2018, beginning of 2019.

And it used to be easier. And I think slowly as this stuff got more and more kind of, entrenched and real and started impacting people's lives and it's you know it's impossible to look at you know everything from the the immigrant detention centers that were happening in trump 1.0 to the ice killings that are happening now in trump 2.0 it's impossible to look at that stuff and not have it slowly chip away at you and your mental health and so you know that that part is difficult but but in a way you know the i think it underscores the need for for human connection in a big way.

You know, the reason that my podcast is hosted with you guys at Crooked Media, and the reason that I did that, it actually wasn't the most, it wasn't the best business deal for me, but for me to be able to have community with John John and Tommy and the whole team at Crooked Media, that meant a lot to me. And so I wanted that community. And that was far more important

than finding the best deal for my podcast. And so signed with Crooked Media and now I get to spend time at their studio and spend time with these guys who, in large part, inform how I do my politics and who I listened to before I even had a show. I mean, you know, you and the guys were a huge inspiration in terms of my own politics.

So first off, thank you for doing that. But it does underscore the need for community, and that's why I'm so grateful that everybody, you know, left their house and in the middle of the summer, in the middle of the day, at the same time as the World Cup, to be here and, you know, partake in this conversation. I think especially as people go online more and more, it feels like, it almost feels like that's a replacement for real community, but it's not. And I think that a lot of the the extremism that we're seeing right now is because, you know, that's what obviously proliferates online, but if there was more in-person community, people wouldn't feel the need to supplement,

supplement this stuff by engaging in, you know, online hate speech or whatever it may be. So I think, you know, that's, I think, what, even for somebody who works online 12 to 14 hours a day, my goal is to try and make sure that I can, you know, if not seek out that in-person community, at least force myself to get it and plan stuff so that I'm forced to be pulled away from my computer. And I have a group of my friends here that are at this show and tell them to come over even though I'm working and it forces me out of my room. And I think that kind of stuff is important. But what do you think? Like how have you contended with being immersed in a space that is not only toxic but almost engineered to be toxic?

I mean, the algorithms are not there to amplify moderation or measured responses. They're there to amplify or even give an instructive, an incentive for you to be as extreme as you can. Absolutely. So what I do is I step outside of it, and I have like a sort of not an ironclad rule, but a rule of thumb, which is I am always reading something that is out of the present in one way or another. It can be a novel, it can be science fiction, it can be a history book,

but I am always consuming in my time outside of Crooked something where I'm really invested in a story that's from another era. And I find that very, very helpful, and I think more people should be doing that. Yay, books. Yeah, books. Books.

And so, reading a lot of history, and it's just helpful to be in history. The other part of it, too, is I think about it in terms of what we do at Crooked. When we started, we've almost been around 10 years now, which is wild, but you didn't get me a thing. But when we started, when we started, we worked on a mission statement for what we were trying to do, and we really defined ourselves against the mainstream media. in the sense that we felt like there's a lot of great journalism,

but also a lot of pretty empty analysis that treated politics like a game, and there were a lot of people that were hungry for people that talked about politics more honestly, more open about their point of view, and that was, yes, serious and understood the stakes, but didn't take itself as seriously. And we defined ourselves against what we saw, the punditry on television to a large degree. And now all of these years later, I feel much more like, because the stakes have become about the future of democracy, it is much more about figuring out ways to build a coalition

and get everybody to understand their role in it. And that does actually include a lot of mainstream journalism. That part of is, and I do think a lot of mainstream outlets have come to see their role as they are not refs in a war between Democrats and Republicans, but in fact are players on the side of democracy. And I think reminding people that is very important. What happens to a free press if you slide into autocracy,

where there is no deference to a free press. Right, like you're not a ref, or if you are a ref, did you notice that you were just punched in the face by one of the other players? But then also modeling what it looks like to talk about politics and think about politics when what the internet wants you to do

is become the worst version of yourself. That is what the internet wants. It wants you to become the absolute worst version of you. Not a different person, and I think that's part of what makes it, so tantalizing to hate people on the internet. Because it's not them. It's just the worst version of them.

And I don't think it is a coincidence that Donald Trump's great skill is making the worst thing about people more true about them. And the internet's great skill is making you the worst version of yourself, that those things happened at the same time. And so my way of thinking about it

is remembering, is trying my best and I do not succeed, to keep that in mind and understand that, yes, we're covering politics and we're trying to get, give people good information, and we're trying to find to help people get a spotlight on the most important races, but also I think part of it is

like trying, especially for a younger generation of pundits or thinkers or influencers or creators or creators, whatever, like showing them that there's a way to, that like long term like there's a, I'm sorry, a siren song that you need to fight against.

And that is something that it gives me a little bit of a sense of purpose. And also, like the Hulk, I'm angry all the time. The whole time. I'm angry right now. All the time. And the weed helps. The weed does help. Yes. No, I think that's right.

And I think, you know, I think in large part, you know, it's helpful to, it's, yeah, no, that's all I got on that. That's all I got on the mental health stuff. I'm looking forward to a point where, where I think I view, my role is like not taking, not taking time off, which is not great, not taking time off until we've achieved some semblance of solution to what we're doing. Because we need you on that wall. Right. You, you, you sleep soundly in your beds protected by Brian on the content wall. He uses words like, honor. These words are a joke to you. Yeah, that's what I got on the mental health front.

But on to the actual, like, what, like, how do you think about trying to sustainably give people good information when one aspect of what it means to get information to more people, like, if you go to some of the more kind of like, I don't know, the cloud chasing, kind of algorithm chasing outlets, if you go to their website right now, it's like, Trump on the verge of total collapse, the end is near for Trump. Can you believe it? It's over, over and over and over again. And that, you know, hitting people with that cattle prod juices the numbers. But over time, you're trying to build something that people can trust. So in large part, I mean, I think there's also a separation between the packaging that gets people in the door and the content that they actually consume. There's no doubt that with the way that the internet is constructed right now, you need to have a certain degree of saucy packaging that the thumbnail, or the title has to be enough to lure people in because you're going up against other content that does it. And so you can be as measured as you want, but you do it to your own detriment because somebody else who has better packaging, more inflammatory packaging, is going to win. And so I think you have to both be savvy in this digital media environment to know how to get people to tune into your content. But then I think that the onus is on the content creator. The onus is on you and me to make sure that once

people are in the door that you give them stuff worth staying for. And that's the hard part. You know, I think that in large part for some people, it's enough to just do one or the other, but it's not. I mean, that's how to really, I think, succeed in this media environment, which is a little bit like behind the curtains, behind the scenes for like what you have to do to make sure that people tune in. The other part of this, too, is you said you're working 12 to 14 hours a day and you're not taking vacation, which is roughly the schedule, the routine of a clothing maker in early 20th century lower Manhattan. How do you, like long term, you know, we go through these cycles, right?

First, things were being kind of rolled up into these giant media conglomerates. Now we have substack. We have people like you working independently. Do you see, like, is that a good outcome? Would you like to see some of the, like, is it a better style of gathering news and media if a lot of these sub-sackers all work together for one outlet? And then it was they had editors that worked on it together

and published it pretty frequently, but it had oversight and kind of a collective view kind of a thing. Yeah, so like we, it's funny because, like, I mean, you just advocate for a return to like a newsroom. and then we can do that. Everybody works together. It'd be brilliant. I think we should do it.

Look, will it go in cycles? I don't know. I learned to stop trying to predict what the future would look like. Interestingly enough, when I first started political content online, my goal was to be on TV. I wanted my own show,

probably on MSNBC, because I don't know where else I would be able to go. And that was the goal. And, you know, I did my YouTube videos at the foot of my bed and, you know, to an audience of tens and, you know, 20s of people and just kept my head down, kept doing the work, and eventually it reached critical mass. But that was my goal initially. And then the media landscape changed so much.

And we start seeing all of these MS hosts and CNN hosts or CNN expats and MS expats and legacy media expats desperately trying to get onto YouTube. I mean, hell, we see existing MSNBC or MS Now shows and hosts and anchors try to get on to YouTube and into the digital media space. And so it felt kind of weird because, you know, those pictures where there's a hurricane and everybody's trying to drive out of Florida? And then there's like one lunatic who's driving in. I felt like the lunatic. And so I had a contributor contract with MS for 18 months. And when it came time to re-up, I was just like, it just doesn't.

doesn't feel like it's the right thing to do. I also don't like having having a boss or anybody to tell me what to say, specifically the word allegedly 100 times for a script. I would get, like, I would submit my scripts for, I would do some digital content for them, and you have to submit your scripts to make sure they pass legal muster, because now it's not just, you're not just some punk kid on your YouTube, you're representing MSNBC, and it would come back with like the word allegedly put into, put into these scripts 150 times. Good lawyering. That's good So, you know, eventually I bailed on that, and I have nothing but love and respect for the folks who, I think, do great work at MS. But, you know, I don't know what the media landscape is going to look like a few years from now.

I don't know if there's going to, if we're going to have, you know, a consortium of independent media creators who get together and basically do what you do, which is reconstitute legacy media, but it's independent legacy media. So, you know, I've learned that this whole landscape moves so quickly that it's impossible to predict what anything is going to look like. I've already seen the transition from long-form content to primarily short-form content. And, you know, people are watching more on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube shorts than even the eight-minute videos that I was doing on average on YouTube, much less the hour and a half videos that were, you know, that were big a few years ago when podcasting in RSS feeds were all the rage. So things are moving so quickly. I'm not sure what things are going to look like.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on that. I just think eventually we'll get to the point where it's like, you know, people do not have the attention span for these YouTube shorts. So we've introduced a new format. It's just you get one syllable. It's a guttural, it's a guttural screeving. And you just scroll through and like, you know, in the same way. like right now on TikTok, you'll watch like a recipe and then a joke and then a murder.

You'll get like happy scream, sad screen. And that's just one video. Yeah, there's one video. It's a happy scream, sad scream. Oh, a lot of angry screams today. Something must have happened. Yeah, I don't know what's going to happen. And I think sometimes again, like I I struggle with it because it's how do we get like underneath all of this, right? It's like it is obviously not good for us that we have our adela. our attention spans. It's so seductive. It's so enjoyable. TikTok is a, it's a dream. It's a pleasure to watch. It can eat a whole, you know, an hour without blinking. But it's, it's, on that point of like, of like, I actually, I mean, there is, there is absolutely like a biological

component to consuming this content. And the time that I realize it is, um, if I, if I do smoke weed and I start to go through Instagram reels or YouTube shorts or TikTok, I find myself incapable of putting my phone down. And so I realize, like, a lot of the reason I'm able to put my phone down during the day is I have some discipline. But when you have these, you know, if you have something that's going to inhibit your discipline, like, you know, just smoking, then you realize, like, at a biological level, this stuff makes you tune in. And it's hard to put it away. It's a little bit like when you've had an edible and you're in a really gluttony,

this mindset. Let's say you'll have like a bag of chips and Oreos in front of you. And you'll have an Oreo and then you'll have a potato chip. And you'll be like, wait, I have an idea. And then you'll put two together and you'll be like, that is excellent. You've done it again. What about two chips, two Oreos or two chips, one Oreo with more frosting, whatever? And you're trying to build some imaginary perfect bite that's going to be the, ultimate satiating bite of food, but you're only hungrier once you've had the next one. And I sometimes feel with those, like, when are you going to stop scrolling? It's like after you've gotten to that perfect thing, that perfect feeling.

But of course, there's no such thing. And so you just sort of eventually kind of like put the phone down and like squeeze your eyes shut and then wonder why your dreams are weird. Does anybody else have the child timers on their apps that they just click ignore for today over and over on a daily basis. Just me. Well, that must explain all of the Lexa Pro. Yeah. And yeah, no, great shout out, shout out Lexa Pro. Shout out Big Pharma. So before we go, before we wrap up this wonderful conversation, obviously it's a dark time. I joke about being angry all the time, I guess. But like, I think a lot of people do feel,

anxiety and a kind of sense of uncertainty about whether any of this effort is worth it. How do you keep yourself motivated? How do you keep yourself believing that there is value to what we're doing? I think in large part in this moment, there are a million reasons to check out. And, you know, it's not just despair. It's engineered despair. I mean, Steve Bannon says that his strategy is to flood the zone with shit. and that is to make us feel like we are completely helpless.

Like the only option here is to throw up our hands. And there's no way that we would be able to contend with the behemoth that is not only the federal government, but a federal government unmoored by any, again, norms, traditions, laws, the Constitution, you name it. But I think even in spite of that, whether we have moments like the No King protest or moments like this right here, where in the middle of the summer you can get a group of people together who are still willing to fight for the future of this country, I think that is in large part that even in front of the worst of conditions in what I think might be one of the darkest moments in our history,

the fact that we can have so many people still willing to fight for what's right, I think that is in large part what gives me hope in this moment. So, you want to take it? Yeah, the, it's, I often feel too, like the, how do we get people to like kind of like clock back in and like re-engage even. Like I think because of a lot of our audience, they've been knocking on doors. They've been doing this for a very long time. And part of it to me, you know, often we'll go on the road and we'll be doing a show and, you know, Madison, Wisconsin or we'll be in whatever, Minneapolis. And somebody will have a question.

and I'll say, oh, where are you from? And they'll be like, oh, I'm from Ohio. And the audience will boo the ever-loving fuck out of that person. No, there's nothing wrong with Ohio. There's nothing wrong with Ohio because what I'm getting at is there's a nice agent in every heart. Oh, you don't like to hear it.

You don't like to hear it. But that we are, like, we are as a culture, like removed a lot of the moral language and a lot of the values language. And maybe it is because I'm, I try to step out of this a lot to try to kind of get my head into something a little bit more longer lasting. Like part of, I think, what makes this moment hard is we all,

what is, I think, compels people to be involved is a, it's a moral, it's a moral compulsion. It's a, it's a values thing. That's, that's the reason you're here. And I've come to appreciate the value that came from inspiration in politics when I was never motivated by that.

As I've said, I'm motivated by rage. but that if Trump appeals to the worst in people, like inspiration calls on people to make the better parts of themselves more true. And those aspects have won out just as many times as they have lost. And when things feel dark, I remember that, that at root we are in a battle against people that are appealing to their worst instincts, but people have good instincts to even people who feel we may feel have been lost.

And as long as we don't forget that and put that in the context, of a long history in which we have made a lot of progress. I think in the end will be okay. Yeah. Brian Tyler Cohn, everybody. You should buy the book because honestly, one way in which we beat right-wing media is by proving that there is an audience for progressive news, progressive coverage, that putting this book up on the bestseller list against the right-wing books

and all the people that bought Joe Biden's book, I think would be a helpful thing to do. Sorry to bring it down at the end. Brian Tyler Cohen. Thank you. I want to thank a big thank you to the team at Writers Block, including Andrea. A big thank you to John Lovett

and his whole team at Crooked Media. And a huge thank you to everybody here, again, who took time out of your busy schedules to be here and to be part of the fight. We are going to win midterms. We're going to get the House and the Senate, and it's in large part owed to this kind of participation. So thank you.

Thanks again to John. on Love It. That's it for this episode. Talk to you on Sunday. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellsey, 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 and a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to bryantylercoen.com to learn more.