Pod Save America - 1118: Is Trump Afraid of Bad Bunny? (feat. Pablo Torre)

Episode Date: February 8, 2026

Does Trump know ball? Is he afraid of Bad Bunny—or did MAGA just fumble the halftime show? This Super Bowl Sunday, Tommy sits down with journalist and sportswriter Pablo Torre to unpack how America’s once-sacred sports institutions have been overtaken by politics. The two dig into Trump’s long and messy relationship with the NFL, MAGA’s Bad Bunny boycott, and the rise of online sports gambling and prediction markets.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

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Brought to you by Access Storage, proud partner of Team Canada. Welcome to Potta of America. I'm Tommy Vitor. Happy Super Bowl Sunday, everyone. Special shout out to Drake May, Christian Gonzalez, who I believe are loyal listeners. Today, I want to talk with you guys about the merging of sports, money, and politics. Specifically, the many ways that Donald Trump uses sports for political gain. That includes the recent explosion of sports gambling, the way it's overtaken professional leagues, our culture, and has even influenced political campaigns.

We are going to cover Trump's relationship with the NFL and its billionaire owners. We're going to explain his embrace of FIFA and the World Cup and the enormous PR value that Donald Trump gets from his friendship with ultimate fighting championship CEO Dana White. Then we're going to explain why gambling, especially sports gambling, has become ubiquitous in this country and how the Trump administration and the Trump family are profiting off of it and fighting against regulations that might protect consumers. Finally, we're going to talk about Riley Gaines, the former NCAA swimmer turned anti-trans activist.

As listeners know, Republicans have weaponized the issue of trans athletes in sports, but there are some very, very important context that has been left out of this debate that I think will certainly make you rethink the motives of everyone pushing this narrative. So my guest today for all of this is Pablo Torre. Pablo is an old school muckraker, a great sports writer, a podcast host who is best known today for his truly excellent show, Pablo Torre finds out. I really, I just cannot recommend the show enough. He does rigorous reporting, deep dive investigations into real fraud, wrongdoing, like very important issues. But then also just tons of fun stuff.

Like, you know, his recent episode is talking with Sir Mix a lot of Baby Got Back fame. Where else are you going to find that kind of range? Speaking of great content, thank you for listening to this episode. but if you want to help us grow what we're doing here at Crooked Media, please consider becoming a subscriber. It is truly the number one thing you can do to help us as an independent progressive media company. We're trying to get bigger. We're trying to do more. We're trying to cover more issues. We are creating a whole bunch of subscription content. There's Pot Save America only friends, which is basically like Pod Save America, but behind a paywall, so it's a little bit looser. There's ad-free episodes.

There's other great bonus stuff. Crooked.com slash friends. It'll tell you all the different ways you can subscribe. We're grateful. You don't have to. You don't have to. but it really is the number one thing you could do to help us grow as a company and just do more and to push back on all the right wing crap that is out there in the media ecosystem. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Pablo Torre. All right, Pablo, I'm very excited to talk with you about how Trump uses sports for propaganda value, his connections with the leagues, his friendships with these billionaire franchise owners, how gambling is taking over our society and much, much more.

But first, I just think we need to establish whether Trump, Trump knows ball. Now, like you, I'm an investigative journalist at heart. So I brought some receipts. So I'm going to play a click for you that Pablo has not heard yet. Let's watch. Also, can we stop pretending Donald Trump knows ball? It's like a weird thing where they're like, man, he loves sports. He doesn't know anything about sports. Every time a team comes and visits to the White House, he's like, and you must be the guy who catches. It's like, look at these guys, big guys, black guys. and Tua tag Ovalia, the quarterback who is really, he's been fantastic. He's been, when he's not injured, he's great.

He's got to stay healthy. Okay. So, Pablo, that was a, that was comedian Shane Gillis. For the folks at home, that was comedian Shane Gillis at the SB Awards. That's ESPN's annual award show. Then you heard President Trump trying to pronounce the name of the Miami Dolores. offense quarterback, Pablo, did Trump nail to his name and does he no ball? Your thoughts?

There has never been a more obvious line read of a word you've never said or heard before than that. I was once, I remember going, when I was in high school, we did the Grapes of Wrath. And like, weeks into the book, one of my classmates was like, so this guy, Tom Joad. And I was like, okay, so you just have been sleeping this entire time. It reminds me of like trying to say mores. You've never actually heard anyone say mores before, but it's Tunga Viloa and now clearly mangled. There are lots of ways that Trump reveals himself to not know anything about sports while wearing the costume of basically being a white guy who loves athletes, which is not the same as sports knowledge, by the way.

Correct. He is somebody who always will talk about that kickoff rule he hates on truth social. he's always talking about how they've like wissified the kickoff and stuff. He has some go-toes. He's like that guy who has half a take and he won't stop giving the take. And then when he meets whatever his aide, I don't know who would do this for him, Tommy. You could give me the White House expertise better than anyone, I guess. But like some kid had to be like, so he's got to know about Tua Tonga Vailoa.

He's injured a lot and his name is Tua Tua Tua by Lola. and Trump's like, got it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, someone just needed to write that out phonetically for him and have him practice it one time because it's a hard name when you look at it, but right, Tungo Vailoa, it's not that hard when he said a couple times. He's correct about the concussion. So we're going to give him medium ball no, or we'll get into the history of Trump and the NFL.

Because in the NFL space, he probably has the most actual knowledge. But real quick, same question for Vice President J.D. Vance. So in August of 2025, Pablo, I was watching Fox News, as I always do. I saw this interview of J.D. Vance live. This was with Will Kane. It was a softball interview, and Kane tried to end with some banter about the upcoming Ohio State, Texas football game because J.D. Vance pretends to be a Buckeyes fan, and Will Kane is a real Longhorns fan. Let's watch. I looked at the line yesterday, and I think Ohio State were 12-point dogs to Texas. No, your favorite. I believe you're favored by three. You're at home. You're number two. We're number one. I thought I, I, I get to be. Somebody sent me a lot. That's what I said, because we're in Columbus.

Pablo, would any real Buckeyes fan think that number three ranked Ohio State would be a 12-point underdog at home to Texas? Who was number one, but 12 points is a lot of points. I just feel like J.D. Vance is secretly listening to the shins and writing in his live journal. And does it want to perform masculinity anymore? But he has to, and he's bad at it. And you knew it when he was at the donut counter, by the way. And he was like, so let's talk about this donut. It's like, no, that's where you talk about sports, man.

Just say some sports stuff. Get in a cab, talk about sports. Go to any store, talk about sports. He cannot talk about sports. And like, there's probably a lot of people listening who don't like sports. But for a lot of us, it is a social glue that helps stick together uncomfortable situations. Right? Like, my kid just went to a new school.

I'm meeting lots of new parents. the thing that I've been able to connect with a bunch of the moms and dads about is sports, the Patriots, the Lakers, we're in L.A. Like, that's what we talk about. It's a way to just briefly connect with someone and find some common ground. And it's just an, it's like a space alien talking about football. And I should say that like my perspective as a guy who clearly did not play any professional sport of any kind, let alone college sport of any kind, is that sports has been the passport for me to connect to all sorts of people who are nothing like me. And that's the magic of it. So it's okay.

And in fact, like, I try to live my life and make this show that I make for people who don't like sports. And the whole premise is you might actually like things that sports connects to. And that's enough. But it's the stolen valor, Tommy. It's the stolen valor of we are the sportsiest administration you've ever seen. And it's those two guys. And that offends me. It offends me too. Okay, so this episode is dropping on Super Bowl Sunday. I will be cheering for the New England Patriots, who most of the country hates, along with the fan base. The Patriots, look, they brought me great joy over the last few decades of my life. But sadly, Pablo, politics has crept into my relationship with the Patriots. So most recently, it's Bob Kraft, the Patriots owner. He's buddies with Donald Trump. Kraft attended the Melania documentary premiere at the soon-to-be-shuttered Kennedy Center.

recently. There's also on top of that, the NFL leadership has embraced Donald Trump. Trump went to the Super Bowl last year. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell did an event at the White House a couple months ago. How would you characterize in sort of broader terms Trump's relationship with kind of the NFL and the business of football? He has always respected it as a country club he was not allowed into. And so that is a that is a genuine and thirst that we're seeing, detecting in all of these relationships. But again, like self-interest and a desire to be in the club does not mean that you love the game. And it's interesting with Belichick, too, by the way, not to go right to Belichick, your boy, Tommy. But remember that letter? Yeah. And Brady, but like there was the, like, there was the letter from, they were like pen pals, like literal pen pals at all point.

They were reading these things out in public. Brady, of course, is somebody who had in the early days when we were so innocent the MAGA had in his locker and had to answer questions about it because that at that point was glaring. His relationship with sports, though, and football in particular is through the perspective of somebody who tried to buy the Buffalo Bills and couldn't. And now because of that, he decided to eventually be the president. And so there is a take here that if only Trump was an NFL owner and not the president, we would be living very, very different lives. I think people listening probably think you're kidding. Trump really was one of like the three final bidders for the bills in 2014. In 2016, he told the Associated Press that if he had purchased an NFL team, he probably would not have run for president.

The quote was, if I bought that team, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. God damn it, Buffalo. It was John Bon Jovi. It was Donald Trump and the guys who actually bought the Buffalo Bills. And either of the other two scenarios, Bon Jovi and Trump, I'd like to roll the dice on. I'd just like to see what would have happened at that point. It has to be better than what we're seeing right now. Yeah, for the bills franchise, for the fans for the rest of the country.

For everybody. Trump was also the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl. He's not going to go this year. He told the New York Post that it was too far away, which is going to crazy. I mean, like, Mara Lago is three hours away. Santa Clara is like six. Like, you can do it. Saudi Arabia is a direct flight, man. You don't get it. Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's really an easy flight. Yeah, he flew, yeah, flew to Budapesh for no reason. He's also not attending the Olympics opening ceremony this week. I'm genuinely surprised by his absence at these events,

because I agree with you. Like, I don't think Trump really likes sports per se. Like, I don't think he has ESPN on in the background. I think he loves the stage provided to him by these events and these games and the PR value. There's been some speculation that maybe he doesn't want to go because Bad Bunny is performing a halftime show is Bad Bunny that maybe he might get booed. Do you have a theory for why he's kind of skipping? My theory is that Trump loves, of course, the attention. I remember when I was at ESPN, I actually interviewed Donald Trump because he was at that point just Donald Trump. I was co-hosting Dan Lebitard's radio show. And Donald Trump at that point, This is 2015-ish.

Donald Trump at that point was just a caller. Like, he actually is a great sports radio call-in guest. And to be clear, you don't need to know anything about sports to be great at that job. Donald Trump, actually, I believe, was calling into Dan Lebitard's radio show because he thought it was Dan Lebitard's television show on ESPN, highly questionable, and just never took the time to discern the difference. So he thought he's on television. But anyway, I remember asking about, and I remember he was telling us like Tom Brady should sue the NFL for $250,000 because of deflate gate and all this stuff. So he likes being sports adjacent. But the thing that keeps happening when he shows up at games, and this happened at the National Championship Games, this happened at the U.S. Open, this happens at all these things, is that he also, because sports are fundamentally a populist exercise insofar as a lot of people are in a room together, he does get booed.

And I think the risk of bad bunny being somebody who dares to say words in Spanish, plus a bunch of people in the Bay Area who might boo him, I think that's enough for him to say, I don't want to look bad. I think that's the only theory that I really can land on at that point. Yeah, me too. I mean, the last Super Bowl that he attended was in New Orleans. So it's like southern, super expensive event to get into. So lots of rich people. And he was sort of at the peak of. of his cultural cachet after the election. So I think it made sense to go there. There were still some scattered booze. The Bad Bunny thing, we should just dispense with this. Like, there is this suggestion in the media that Bad Bunny was selected to perform at the halftime show as some sort of political statement by the NFL.

That is patently absurd. Like, Bad Bunny is a massive artist. And it is quite clear to me that the NFL is trying to reach out to his audience and try to get them to, like, football. No, it's like purely an economic decision. Yeah. Tony Kornheiser of the late great Washington Post Sports Department used to quote Don Olmeyer, the former NBC executive to me all the time. The answer to all your questions is money.

And this is the god, the NFL worships. They do not give a shit about politics. I hate to break it to you, even though they put end racism in the end zone, they didn't really care about ending racism. No. What they're trying to do is expand their audience. And so, look, the bad bunny thing reminds me, because, of his streaming numbers and because that is an audience, a demographic that they're trying to export the NFL to and the way they're trying to export it to Brazil and Spain and all these other places all around the world. They see the world as a risk board for Roger Goodell to conquer. That's why they want access to it. What's funny is that when like Mike Johnson is being interviewed and he's like, I've never even heard of bad bunny. At that point, beyond just making fun of like, what is on Mike Johnson's, you know, iPhone? I think you know. What is, it's the app covenant dies, I believe,

where he regulates his pornography with his older son. But it's also, I think, a lack of recognition of the polling on this is very obvious. There is a parallel to the Minnesota stuff. It's like, that stuff is polling terribly. And Bad Bunny, in a parallel way, is so deeply popular with normies that are just Spanish speakers, as well as just normal music fans, and they don't get it. Like, they should be so good Trump's administration at this point at like sussing out popularity. And weirdly, the entity that is the best at it happens to be the NFL, which is the last monocultural institution we have left.

And they're still like, you know what? We don't really get it. It's like maybe trust the one thing that's popular anymore. That's right. Yeah, the NFL is doing bad bunny. Then the Republican sort of infrastructure is doing like their own halftime show with Kid Rock. And it's like, guys, this is not going to work for you. Pod Save America brought to you by Helix.

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Remember, head to zbiotics.com slash crooked and use the code crooked at checkout for 15% off. Speaking of cynical calls to end racism, so in 2016, Colin Kaepernick, then the San Francisco 49ers quarterback sat and then later took a new. during the national anthem. This was his way of just protesting racism and police brutality. His protest, though, was quickly swept into our politics and twisted into something else. And Trump was tweeting that, you know, players that kneeled during the anthem should be fired. Later, Kaepernick was just essentially blackballed from the NFL. Obviously, that was not the first or last time that race and

racism was an issue in sports or in the NFL. But when you look back at that moment, I'm curious how you think that inflection point kind of changed the way the NFL interacted with sports and politicians going forward? Yeah, I mean, it's, I think, the clearest embodiment of the pendulum that swung 2016 to 2020 when there was actual pressure that was being enacted upon sports and mainstream institutions that they responded to. And now here we are with the pendulum swinging all the way back. My first memory, because I was a moment, because of the mainstream institutions, that's Because I remember, you know, this is Trump saying. I remember talking about this on ESPN all the time.

Trump's saying, get these sons of bitches off the fields, you know. And it's one of his early indications that maybe this guy wasn't really here for the First Amendment. Yeah. Maybe not here for the Constitution. My reaction at the time is even more sort of acute now, which is it's so quaint what Kaepernick actually was doing. He was kneeling and staying silent. He was very silent, almost problematically silent. remember people being like, could you please talk more? And no, he was like, this is what I'm going to do. He was recommended to do it, actually, by a vet, a former member of the military who was like, this is the most respectful way to do this. And now when you look back, it's like classic, nonviolent, as respectful as can be, kneeling during the ceremony of the anthem, which is a strong fraught, of course, military, industrial complex tradition. But nonetheless, it was the thing that,

kind of made sports go crazy. And crazy in the sense of, I can't believe we got to deal with this, this being the people who wanted him and us and me to stick to sports. And then crazier when it came to we can never, we can never abide by wokeism ever again. And it's just crazy that we watch what's happening again in Minnesota. And the version that these woke tarts enacted upon them was they kneeled. Like, that's, that's the juxtaposition. Yeah. Yeah, how dare you politicize the anthem as we fly us a squadron of F-16 and B-2 bombers over the stadium? There's some stealth, some stealth fighter jets, you know. But so it's just, it's not just the NFL, the Trump has sort of like found a marriage of convenience with when it comes to sports.

He is now fully embraced soccer, especially the FIFA World Cup, which will be in North America this year. He's now very tight seemingly with FIFA president Gianni and Fantina, who's his own ball of whack so we could get into. But Infantino has gone all in on kissing Trump's ass, which folks have seen in the form of him creating the FIFA Peace Prize so he could give it to Trump to make his ego feel better about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize. But I think Trump's closest relationship in the sports world is probably with Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO, Dana White. They've been buddies for like 20 some odd years. White endorsed Trump. He spoke at the R&C. He spoke at Trump's election night rally. He's been very present. And White has allowed UFC

events to be used as just pure propaganda by Trump. So here's one example. This is a clip of Trump walking into a UFC event with Dana White back in April of 2025. And making the entrance right now to a standing ovation, the 47th president of the United States of America, like by UFC CEO Dana White and others, Donald J. Trump. Is there anybody else that has a walk-in other than a fighter? He has some music and rock starts playing? He had one at the NCAA tournament, too.

He always gets a walkout. It's like a free record for him coming. Give him the walkout. People love it. They do. What he loves is mixed martial arts, right? I mean, he talks about watching these spike nights when he is not in the building. Very, very subtle commentary there.

So Trump's going to be hosting a UFC fight at the White House later this year. Pablo, how important do you think this relationship between Trump and the UFC was for him in terms of like reaching young males, basically? MMA is such a big part of the story that I think has gotten underrated. In MMA, by the way, you get noted ESPN commentator and the dean of MMA commentary and analysis, Joe Rogan. Yep. That's where he is. Right. Right? So, okay, already you're like beginning to piece together what's happening here.

The man is fear such as it exists, which is to say a bunch of dudes who are typically apolitical, if not anti-political, which is to say all these comedians who you'll also see like ringside, who have podcasts, who have these demographics that are heavily male, who basically are anti-authority, who also, frankly, just want to say words that they used to be able to say in high school. Right. And I went to an all-boys Catholic school. I remember exactly what that felt like, how edgy it felt. They just want to say those things. That's the main political platform. I want to watch mixed martial arts and bro out and laugh at things that I'm not supposed to laugh at. And Trump's friendship with Dana White, who spoke at not one RNC and not two RNCs, but at least three, while also claiming to be not political, that's how he is mentally, cognitively, threading the needle.

of like, no, no, no, this is a culture thing. This is like a sports thing. But of course, for Trump, whether he intended it this way or not, it is the ultimate in political image laundering because he's just one of the guys. He's one of the guys at the fight that you want to hang out with. And Dana White, in terms of what his actual compass is, as a businessman, as a human, is abhorrent.

And I don't say that because I'm against the UFC or MMA. I'm here for the consensual concussions. I covered boxing, love boxing. I'm here for like the violence of football and all that stuff. I'm not fainting onto a couch somewhere because of it. I'm just saying that this is a guy who says that he is a First Amendment absolutist, much like a lot of the names that I've alluded to in this very sort of like answer that I'm giving you. And at the same time, he is somebody who will ardently, ardently regulate the speech of people who dare to speak out against him and also this administration.

It's that perfect hypocrisy of, you know, the Constitution for me, but not for thee. It's the total verifiable dishonesty of a guy who wants to cosplay as I'm here for free speech unless it threatens my business, which is exactly what the UFC has been doing. Yeah, and I just don't think from a political perspective you can overstate the value of being a candidate like that, walking into an arena, getting universal cheers from the people in the room. the people at home are hearing you get fluffed for 45 seconds by the commentators because you're so great and you're just like them and you just love the fighting. Like I just, look, I'm very skeptical that Donald Trump goes home at night and watches UFC matches. I think he probably has Fox News on and just watches cable most of the time. But like, they're happy to sell that fiction because it's a symbiotic business relationship.

Yeah. I mean, look, you alluded to the FIFA stuff before. This is all the same thing. This is the equivalent of Dana White constructing for him that golden spinning like Pimp My Ride trophy that Johnny and Fantino did. And he let him keep it at the White House. There is almost like an Egyptian pharaoh dynamic. It's like here's your gold. Here is your frankincense.

Here is your mer. Here are the things you can be buried with. And it's UFC walkouts and gold trophies. And that's why he does it. But the reason they do it is because it's. It's good for business. And it's bad, unfortunately, for the rest of us. Yeah.

And I think honestly, the biggest business of them all is FIFA and the World Cup. I mean, that will be watched by multi-billions of people around the world. One quick thing on FIFA before we get to gambling, though. I wanted to play this because it drove me crazy. So last year of FIFA, they did their World Cup draw ceremony at the Kennedy Center in D.C. That's when everybody sort of figured out who they're going to be playing when. Trump attended, and he said this at that ceremony. When you look at what has happened to football in the United States,

again, soccer in the United States, we seem to never call it that because we have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that's called football. But when you think about it, shouldn't it really be called? I mean, this is football. There's no question about it. We have to come up with another name for the NFL. It really doesn't make sense when you think about it.

It is really football. Pablo, how was that not career ending? Imagine if it, Barack Obama said that? Six years of Fox News coverage, a decade. It really is. It really is. Yeah, Barack would have needed to wear like a Matthew Lesko question mark suit to get that level of just like what I mean, the, I've long said that the most un-American position that you can have is to go against the NFL in 2026. It reveals you ostensibly to be disconnected from the monoculture as a politician and what normal everyday Americans like the most statistics.

Right. Trump in the clip you just played is this enduring reminder that his performance of what it means to be a dude is unique. No one else can do that. I dare say that whatever he has in his credibility of like, you know, maybe, and maybe, here's a theory, Maybe it's just the relentless signaling of abject racism. There's just no doubt that he's really still on the side of like, you know, the real America. But my God, like, and he's also like doing a bad Seinfeldt unintentionally. Yeah.

I think he genuinely had that thought and was like, this is a good take. And it's what's the deal with football? That was the take. You park on a driveway, you drive on a front. It's just so stupid. Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break, but I have an exciting tour announcement.

Love It or Leave It. It's coming to Washington, D.C. on April 23rd at the Lincoln Theater. We know that you folks in D.C. have been through a lot. You got Trump goons taken over your city. You got snow everywhere that's turning into concrete, apparently. You deserve a night of amazing world-class comedy. And I hope you get that. But in the meantime, go see John Lovett. I'm just kidding. I'm reading this. I didn't write this copy. Tickets are on sale now. Grab them at crooked.com slash events. Pod Save America is brought to you by Wild Alaskan Company. You know, when you're buying seafood, it's always a little tricky. Is this a good store for seafood?

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All right. Let's talk about gambling. So sports gambling has been around for a long. time, right? But until recently, there was friction in the process. Back in the day, you had to have a bookie, you maybe had to drop off and pick up actual cash, or you had to be at a casino or a town like, you know, somewhere in Vegas or something like where gambling was legal. Then in 2018, the Supreme Court passes, there's a ruling that changes everything. And suddenly a bunch of states are just bum rushing to legalize gambling. And so now, in a lot of places, placing a bet is as easy

is sending a text. You can instantly place bets on your phone. You can live bet. You don't have to bet on the outcome of a game. You can bet on like fractional events within the game. I want to get to the event contracts piece of this in a second. But can you help listeners sort of understand the impact of that explosion of sports betting and the kind of like head spinning way that it's been embraced by leagues that once banned it essentially? The first thing, one of the first things that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver did when he took over in 2014 as the head of this sport was right. It was a solo byline in the New York Times, an op-ed that said we should legalize sports gambling. And it was radical then, and now in retrospect, it looks like this turning point.

And I go back to that because in 2014, up until that point, the cardinal, mortal, existential sin that you could do in sports was gambling. Pete Rose has been relegated until Trump posthumously pardons him, which is not a joke in an actual thing he is threatened to do. He has been banished to baseball hell. He cannot be in the Hall of Fame. The Black Sox scandal. All of this stuff. It's just obviously a way to compromise the integrity of a product and a cultural heirloom that relies upon us trusting that what we're watching has competitive integrity, that it is not fixed or manipulated.

But when that op-ed was written, and now to fend, fast forward to what you just described, which is the opening of the official floodgates, it went from, I'm going to get my guy, my bookie, to take my bet to here is a cheesecake factory thick menu of items. Right. So it used to be like, you know, who's going to win or lose, the point spread, the outcome of games. And now the institution of the prop bet means that you can bet on things as obscure as unders, which is to say, will obscure Toronto Raptors?

Jonte Porter hit the under, underperform on the predicted total of rebounds in a given game, which is a thing that is so specific as a microbet that it only would be taken by people who were fixing the game and manipulating it in order to profit off of it. Because why would anyone have interest in it? And of course, that is actually what happened. And that got Jonte Porter banned for life from the NBA and started this whole federal investigation into it. So it's just a radical expansion of what is bedable and therefore a radical expansion of potential conflicts of interest in which players now have the ability or their specific proxies have the ability to profit off of things that don't even require you, Tommy, to throw the game.

Just suck for a period of time. It's a remarkable and dangerous thing to institute. Yeah, I mean, you just have to fake an injury, right, and pull yourself out of a game. before you hit eight points or whatever the over was. Yeah, I think what you're just, just to double stamp this, it's such an important point because, look, I think most people have no problem with betting on the outcome of the Super Bowl, right? Like, that's fun.

Sure. Do it. I have no problem. I bet on props. I bet on like the over under on the national anthem. But to your point, like the cheesecake factory approach of the number of things you can bet on and then you can parlay them together to create higher and higher odds. And we are just not the numerous.

in the United States is not so great. And people don't realize that they are just going to get fleeced over and over and over again. And at the same time, like all the addictive kind of like data science used to make us all on our phones all of the time is being applied to these gambling sites. And so like it just, it feels like we are watching a generation, especially of young men, get addicted to these gambling apps. At the same time, they are like going deeper into debt and having mental health crises. And it's like a massive problem that sort of, I think,

under-discussed. Yeah, and I want the science. I want the research. I think about this kind of like how I thought about the concussion crisis in the NFL in a weird way, where it was like, look, I am tempted now to stop watching football. But if you do the science diligently enough, such that the participants have disclosure and they're told, here are the risks, here are the harms. I think about how in Europe, if you buy cigarettes, they put on the box, like, here are the first. faces of death, right? Do you want this? If you still want to sign up for consensual, possible addiction, cool. Go with God. Let's federally regulate it. And we can make that work.

But I think what's happening is that it happened so quickly, the legalization happened so quickly, with this internet era, cell phone, casino in your pocket dynamic, that people are still just catching up to what's actually scientifically on the table. And so I am not saying we should ban federally gambling. I am saying that we need to be very open and transparent about here's what's happening very often to men in America. And we should tell them that this is what they're risking if this is what the science is suggesting. Yeah. Yeah, there needs more disclosure of the harms. And then the more, even more recent iteration of gambling involves something called event contracts. So there are these companies, the Kalshi and Polymarket. And basically, these services now allow you to

bet on outcomes, even stuff like will a Venezuelan dictator be deposed by the end of the month. That is the thing that actually happened. Someone made a lot of money. That person will probably be investigated, but I guess we'll find out. So these companies, they're even more lightly regulated by the government, or at least by this administration. And they have hired folks like Donald Trump Jr. to be their advisors. You did an amazing episode on all of this with a guy named James Sirwiki that I highly recommend if folks want to go deeper. But can you just give us like the 101 on what the hell an event contract is in how this new form of gambling has exploded, but is powered again by sports.

How dare you call it gambling? These are events contracts. Right. Sorry. But this is actually the legal question, right? So the CFTC, which ostensibly used to regulate commodity trading, they have now decided that actually, under this administration, actually, we have oversight over these event contracts. And so an event contract in a prediction market, like Cali, like Polymarket, is you can,

bet, you can, excuse me, buy an event contract, which is basically yes or no question. Will Caroline Levitt finish her press briefing in under 65 minutes? That was a real event contract. There is also now evidence that you can watch of Caroline Levitt stopping short, like seconds short of 65 minutes exactly. Really weird. And that paid out, right? And so the Donald Trump Jr. part of it is really,

constructive because Donald Trump Jr. is on the board of both Kalshi and Polly Market, which are these billion dollar prediction markets. Seems like a conflict. But okay. Just how dare you? This is just a guy who loves forecasting in this sort of like rigorous data-driven way. But it's interesting because realistically, the prediction market as Jim Surawiki, Wisdom of Crowds, that was his book in 2004, told me, it is an interesting and useful way.

to predict some things. The election in 2024. Predict markets were all over that. There is value to that as an instrument of forecasting reality. The Donald Trump Jr. thing, though, reminds us that there are networks of people with access to information. And now take the Jonté Porter example from before, a hyper-specific microbed that no one would have interest in except for people with inside information. now there is not a cheesecake factory thick menu there is an infinite list of bet truly infinite list of bets you can bet on anything and in that way the question that not enough people are

asking is who knows more about this than me and do they stand to profit if they have a person on the inside and so that's why caroline levin is not merely a funny coincidence but like a deeply disturbing hypothetical example, if she in fact did share this information ahead of time. And it's also something that is, I would say, destructive to the ability that we have as American citizens to trust in anything that we are witnessing. Right. So what happened to sports? We can't trust whether this has integrity.

Is this person genuinely incompetent or are they fixing a game? This is now true of anything happens. in our administration. And the only reason you should feel good about it, I guess, is if you think this administration is a type of administration to be so, so buttoned up on not compromising principle in exchange for money. In that case, then maybe you trust their ability to take care of us in that way. What I think is realistically happening is that they're doing the opposite. And the people who are losing money are the retail investors. And that is something that we're not even, we haven't even begun to measure what they are winning and what the rest of us are losing.

Yeah, I mean, with these event contracts, like, you're not betting against the house. There's another individual on the other side of that event contract. So if the person you're betting against is in the special forces and know they're about to take out Maduro, they have insider information and they're about to clean your clock. It is remarkable, Pablo. I mean, like, I was thinking back to my time in government recently. And the number of kind of like sensitive meetings you end up in with like market sensitive of information about, you know, the financial crisis or the bank bailout. And then we see this email

from a guy named Peter Mendelssohn, who is then a top aide to Tony Blair, where he is giving readouts of the Eurozone debt crisis response to Jeffrey Epstein before they are public, right? And you're like, holy shit. Like when I was in government, the idea of talking about something like that is just unheard of because I'm just like, it's unethical, it's wrong. I'll go to jail. But this guy's just forwarding emails. But now the point you're making is that like, now that you can just just bet on anything with insider information, it creates this whole new avenue of profit making and risk. And just for folks to know, like, the CFTC is just far less onerous of a regulator than the SEC or bank regulators. There's more discretion in how you comply. It's smaller. There's

fewer staffer than the SEC. There's fewer enforcement actions generally. It's why the crypto people love the CFTC. So it's just sort of like, this is where they all want this to be housed, all the folks because they think it'll be the wild wild west. And at the same time, like social media has decided that in the political space, prediction markets are better than forecasting elections and polling. And like there are some examples, I think, at the presidential level that you mentioned where prediction markets have been onto things. But there's also instances in like, you know, Senate races or lower level elections where you can kind of juice those markets with one or two big bets and kind of change the narrative around an election in a way that I think we just have.

haven't really explored yet. No. And so two things. The CFTC, I was just talking to somebody used to work there today because I've been trying to understand this, continue to understand this more. And it's very disturbing how so many of the people, not just responsible for enforcement at the CFDC, but we're like the true believers over there in terms of like, let's regulate things civilly and let's make sure that we can deter market manipulation and all that

stuff, even if it doesn't rise to the level of criminality. it seems very clear to a lot of former CFTC employees that this is all happening. And I was just listening to the head of the CFCC now under this administration be so outwardly pro-crypto, pro-prediction market stuff that it seems to be of a piece with the business dealings that we've been describing now, this whole episode. The second thing that which you're just referred to is a prediction market, because we are not numerate as human. right? None of us. Like we we are also people who like like to use these heuristics to guide our understanding of like what seems normal. And so a prediction market to your point, an election is a really good example of this. Like if you spend a lot of money to move a prediction market for any given race, there is now an expectation that has changed. If this applies

now, and which by the way, can be better and more value added than just buying political ads, right? That's why you might do it, is to change the narrative of like, he's still in it, right? It's not over yet. But the other thing that happens is when everything is bedable like this, you can change the expectations for every governmental action, including foreign invasions, including whether we're going to prosecute a nice officer. It's just like we are, the whole thing of like our perpetual numbness to horror. Humans are so good at normalizing insane conditions. The pandemic taught us that just we all know it.

This is is that but on for loco. It's it's it's just like we are turning to these fixable, manipulatable markets to tell us whether we should expect something. and people with money get to decide in an unregulated way, that is a fucking nightmare. Yep. And a lot of innocent people are going to be the ones who get fleeced. Potta of America is brought to by aura frames. Oriframs is the answer to every gifting moment. Got my parents an aura frame for this last Christmas. They love it. They had had one of these kind of frames like years and years ago. Got an aura frame for them. And it is like the easiest.

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Thank you, Canada. Brought to you by Access Storage, proud partner of Team Canada. Finally, I'm jumping around a little bit here. But yeah, the listeners of this show are probably well aware of how Republicans, you know, led by Trump, have just demagogued the issue of trans athletes in sports. The leading spokesperson for that effort has been a woman named Riley Gaines. She was a swimmer at the University of Kentucky. And then in 2022, she tied for fifth place against another transgender swimmer named Leah Thomas. And so ever since, Riley Gaines has made advocating against trans athletes for, like, life's work.

And you did a bunch of reporting on Riley Gaines that I think provides really important. context that you don't hear very often because it shows kind of the evolution of her rhetoric and also how these attacks that she is making have become about much, much more than sports fairness and have gone to a really cruel, dishonest gross place. So can you just like kind of walk us through what your episode on this was about? Yeah. So the trans athlete issue has been one of the biggest political winners for this administration. And it is rooted. again in a lack of, let alone numeracy, but certainly honesty and reality. And I say that because, in general, to zoom out quickly for a second, there are so few trans athletes that exist. So the president of the NCAA, Charlie Baker, was asked in Congress, how many of them are there? And he said there are less than 10.

Okay. So the odds of you having a near fatal run in with ice is greater than your dad. daughter competing in a meaningfully concerning way with a trans person. But this issue was, of course, ran on. It was advertised. And it worked. I've been hearing the term all over the place that this is an 80-20 issue. We win this 80% of the time. The libs lose it. And I would say that that is not inaccurate because no one really knows how to talk about this stuff. Because there is like this competitive equity concern. And there is a scientific argument there, which we should have. Again, we should have the scientific argument. Are there

advantages by going through male puberty? Yes. Can they be regulated through hormone suppression? Yes, but. And in that yes, but, there is a useful debate about rules. The Riley Gaines story is not a debate about rules. She would like you to think it is. The Republicans, the Trump administration, which has her front and center dressed in all white as they're banning trans athletes by the president's pen would love you to think that this is about protecting women and girls.

It isn't. This is a story if you go through the evolution of Riley Gaines, the character, of somebody who had to tie for fifth place with a trans female swimmer, Leah Thomas,

who is really good at swimming. And the issue is that Riley Gaines' objections went from, I have problems with the rules, but I don't blame Leah, to a series of interviews on Fox News with the Daily Wire with Clay Travis in which she was, and you can hear this happen on tape. I'm not just saying this as a matter of editorial interpretation.

You can hear her be prodded into taking a harder line on how mad she should be. And so it's ramping up, it's ramping up. And what she ends up doing is alleging. that Leah Thomas, this swimmer she competed against, is actually a predator who is committing a version of sexual assault. This is a criminal concern is what Riley Gaines is arguing. And parallel to the rhetoric being radicalized are, according to the reporting we did with Mother Jones, Madison Pauley, an excellent reporter who helped us tell this story with documents, are payments coming in from a range of conservative activists that are creating the Riley Gaines Leadership Center,

and they're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for her to be front and center on this winning political issue because it's working. And it's getting so divorced from where it started and from what the evidence has ever suggested that Riley Gaines is arguing with Simone Biles, who was, I mean, and I cannot stress this enough, an actual victim of sexual violence, sexual assault by Larry Gaines. Nassar who committed the largest sexual assault scandal in American sports history. This was the doctor of the USA Women's Gymnastics team, Michigan State. And Riley Gaines is telling on Twitter, Simone Biles, basically, how dare you talk about your issue, your trauma, but dismiss mine?

And she posts parallel photos of Leah Thomas and Larry Nasser and the testimonies and stuff. it's abhorrent. And the kicker, Tommy, I'll speed it up because I'm just doing the whole episode for you now. No, no, no. It's really important context. It really is. The kicker is this entire time Riley Gaines' teammates at the University of Kentucky are watching this happen. And we spoke to several of them on tape, in fact, in the episode.

We have one particular teammate who went on tape. And the thing that Riley Gaines almost never talks about, has never spoken words with her mouth about on camera, despite all these interviews, is the fact that the person she has called in her book her best friend, the person who was the head coach of their swim team at Kentucky, this guy, Lars Jurgensen, was himself somebody who sexually assaulted several of her teammates, allegedly. these are court cases, these are documented, these are alleged by those women. And so not only is it the dishonesty of the rhetoric, it's the actual substitution of real event happening over here. Let's get that out of here and replace it with this trumped up fake thing while ignoring the actual victims who I was on this team with. And so one of the quotes from one of her teammates is basically, how can I give a shit about Riley Gaines? I'm paraphrasing here.

How can I give a shit about Riley Gaines talking about trans athletes when our head coach raped one of our teammates? Jesus. Like, that's how on the nose some of this stuff is. And that's the story that Fox News does not want you to know about. Yeah. And I think it's such important context because like a lot of your reporting, I mean, you're following the money here.

You are playing receipts and the evolution of her commentary on these issues. And then you are getting at where, look, a lot of attacks on the LGBT community over decades have ended in this place, which is the not remotely subtle suggestion that all gay, lesbian, or trans people are actually predators or after children or want to do harm to people in some way. Right? This is like it always ends in a place that is not about fairness on the playing field that ends in a place that is a totally dishonest, gross attack that is alleging that a crime was committed. where there is actually zero evidence. And as you just said, in fact, it seems like Riley Gaines has been ignoring the crime committed by one of her own friends. Well, and you put it in those ways, and it makes me also want to clarify, there is a problem in locker rooms all across America when it comes to female athletes. And the problem is the men who are around them.

It's not the trans athletes, though, that they say, all these biological men. it's the dudes who are coaching. Yeah. That is a concern very often. And this is real and it should be reported on. And it's very telling that that's not of a concern at all to these same people who are truly profiting off of a minority group that is so vanishingly small that no one wants to stand up for them. Yeah. Well, well said.

Final question. A dumb one. A short one. This is nothing to do with politics. It's just something I saw. The athletic has reported that ski jumpers at the Olympics are injecting their penises with high lauronic acid to fly farther. The world anti-doping agency is investigating. Is that real?

How does that work? Why would injecting your penis with something make you fly farther if you're a ski jumper? This makes no sense to me. How dare you question the wisdom of once again, man? This is real. Oh, no, no, no. So we did it a whole episode in investigation. You, Tommy, have been traumatized by SpyGate Gate, all the ways in which your Patriots have obviously been exposed as ranked cheaters that should not be rooted for by anybody in America with conscience.

Many you're saying. God damn it. God damn it. The gate that we reported on was Crotch Gate because in ski jumping, which is an Olympic sport that is happening now, and we did a whole deep dive into this, part of the physics of ski jumping is, is you emphasize how big your penis is. for this reason. They 3D scan you in order to measure what your suit can be allowed to be, how big your suit can be. And because the edges are so small and therefore big, people who have more fabric on the suit have a performance advantage. And so it used to be, back in my day, the scandal was people were so.

There's a literal video we obtained of like people with a sewing machine creating a bigger. crotch. But these guys are like, what if I told you that we could make the measurements actually reflect the size of our temporarily enormous penises? And I got to say, I did not see that one coming. Pablo, this is why everyone should listen to your show. Pablo Tore finds out nobody has ranged like you. You cover the waterfront. You don't have to like sports to enjoy the show. It's amazing stories that come from sports. It's deep dive investigations. It's really fun romps about my former coach, Bill Belichick, who is 73 and is 24, maybe 25-year-old girlfriend now. But who's counting?

But who's counting, Tommy? Not Bill. Not Bill. That's for God damn sure. So I highly recommend the show. I'm so grateful for you spending this hour with me to release on Super Bowl Sunday. This feels like the perfect way to lead into it. So thank you again.

Anytime I can be your sports correspondent whenever you need, I have a feeling that there will be more penis-related issues in the future. Amen. Amen. Aren't they all? Thanks, buddy. Thanks, dude. Thank you for listening this episode and spending maybe part of your Super Bowl Sunday with me and Pablo. Quick programming note. So we're going to be back on Tuesday, but it'll be out a little bit later than normal because we are going to be in Australia or New Zealand or somewhere where the time zone is so different. It breaks my brain. So things will be a little bit off, but not that much off, but a little bit off. I just can't do math, so I can't really explain it to you. But just don't freak out if you don't see it in the morning, it'll come out.

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