Pod Save America - 1119: MAGA: Defenders of the Epstein Class

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

Epstein revelations continue. New files reveal that the notorious sex offender had closer relationships than previously known with Trump’s inner circle, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Ghislaine Maxwell pleads the Fifth to Congress, while her lawyer says she’s “prepared to speak fully and honestly” if Trump agrees to let her out of prison. While Jon, Tommy, and Lovett are overseas, Alex Wagner and Ben Rhodes discuss how the files are rattling politicians around the world, and why consequences have been more severe abroad than in the U.S. There’s also the fight to put limits on ICE playing out in the courts and Congress, Trump’s scheme to celebrate America’s 250th birthday with a fresh grift, and why RFK Jr. can’t be trusted with the Super Bowl snacks.

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The government inches closer to a partial shutdown over Democrats' push to impose some kind of checks on ice lawlessness. And Secretary Robert F. Kennedy's absolutely disgusting Super Bowl snack lineup. But first, a New York Times. Times report over the weekend offered another look into how Trump and his allies are turning America's 250th birthday into a moneymaking, influence peddling grift to promote right-wing policies and inflate the president's very fragile ego. The story highlighted Freedom 250, a dubiously legal public-private partnership similar to the one that Trump is using to fund his ballroom monstrosity. Freedom 250 is the vehicle the administration is.

is using to stage a UFC fight on the White House lawn. Yes, you heard that correctly in celebration of, I guess, the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Apparently, it also has its hands in the 250-foot-tall triumphal arch that Trump is hoping to build right outside of Washington, D.C. The Times reported that Freedom 250 is offering, quote, bespoke packages that promise, surprise, access to Trump. For a $1 million donation, you can attend a private reception with the president, but for $2.5 million,

you can speak at a Fourth of July rally in D.C. because nothing says American independence like Saudi billionaire speaking on the National Mall, right, Ben? Yes, that's how I always celebrate, actually, in my house. I mean, if MBS isn't there, it's not really the Fourth of July. Anyway, Freedom 250 has also reportedly received at least $10 million in taxpayer money, which they used to build a fleet of, quote, freedom trucks that are torn in. the country throughout the air. These, I guess we'll call them mobile museums, were created in partnership with Prager You, which is a company that pumps out conservative textbooks that celebrate colonialism

and downplay the harms of slavery, and also in conjunction with Hillsdale College, which is a conservative liberal arts college that is now at the very center of a movement to de-wokify kindergarten through grade 12 education by overhauling curricula and starting charter schools across the country. Here's a little taste of how Freedom 250 is going to be spending more of that donor-slash-taxpayer money, per their Super Bowl ad, that you might have missed, but that aired on Sunday. Generations ago, ordinary people risked everything to begin it. 250 years later, the work continues because freedom is worth it. This year, America turns 250.

Oh, man. I didn't realize. I didn't. I actually maybe had my face too. full of ribs. I didn't really realize what I was looking at at that moment, Ben. But do you have a spare $2.5 million to borrow? Because it's always been my dream to open up for MBS on the National Mall. I mean, just goosebumps thinking about this sincere and earnest patriotism, Alex. I mean, look, the thing about this is, like, first of all, like everything else,

like the grift is a feature, not a bug, right? If there's anything that can be monetized by Trump in some fashion, he's going to do it. America's 250th anniversary is no. different. And, you know, I can expect that the roster of people lining up to write those checks, while they won't include you and me, are going to include people who, you know, are shopping for pardons for their friends, people with business before the federal government, et cetera, right? So it's for sale. I think the other thing that is kind of grotesque about this is you have to see in the context of it's an election year, right? And so this is all going to be kind of part of one big campaign, essentially, that's going to be enormously funded to kind of

buttress maga at a time when people are souring on it where every public opinion poll shows like a precipitous drop right in support for trump well you know he'll try to jim people up with a ufc fight on the south lawn and a bunch of patriotic displays but i think the serious part alex like that i've been thinking about a lot um is it this isn't like a coincidental or secondary part of what's been going on because what they're trying to do that's actually serious is take full custody of the American story, right? So the 250 years of this country are really just about their story of what that is, right? Which, let's face it, excludes, you know, pretty much non-white people, excludes the kind of agitator as an

activist and people that pointed out inconvenient truths about the United States. Whitewashes are passed and glorifies Donald Trump as kind of the inheritor of this 250 years of history, right? And that's deadly serious, right? I think we should take that very seriously beyond just the tackiness and grift of it all. Yeah, and I think it bears some time. We should spend some time talking about the involvement of Hillsdale College and Prager You and all of this because they are the sort of for-profit arm of the whitewashing of America and making it white again. But to just talk about, I think as a public service announcement, we should delineate the difference between America 250. which is the nonpartisan, congressionally run operation to celebrate America's

semi-quincennial. I learned, I was today years old when I realized that's how you call the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the semi-Quincentennial. That is a non-partisan, non-profit organization

that encourages Americans to do crazy shit like public service in honor of the 250th anniversary. Freedom 250, which is increasingly like the best, sort of organization that the Trump administration is spending most of its capital on, or rather political capital on, and that they're encouraging to be the sort of branding lead in all of this is the slush fund for Trump's triumphal arc and also a drag race throughout Washington, D.C.,

which sounds like a really fucking bad – they all sound really like really fucking bad ideas, that in particular sounds like a really fucking bad idea? And I think just on the grift alone, the idea that – I mean, we should just take a moment, a solemn moment to look at the degradation of our legacy from a country that would otherwise encourage civic participation and acts of selflessness to one where the highest office in the land the person charged with shepherding the Constitution forward and our democracy is looking at this moment, this 250th anniversary, as an opportunity for personal enrichment and ego fluffing. I mean, it's just so, it's such a sad state of affairs. Why did the universe have to have

Trump in office when the 250th anniversary came around? Couldn't it have been someone else? Let me try to find a silver lining in this, right? Alex, please. Because yeah, look, the pay-to-play a piece is going to be grotesque. The monuments to himself are scary, actually. I mean, they're silly and tacky, but like they're going to be real things that they at least try to build. It reminds you of what, like, Kim Jong-un does in North Korea to, like, exalt himself. Like, we're kind of at that place. But I think that the opportunity, for those of us listening to this podcast, probably feel some ambivalence about the upcoming festivities in a way that we wouldn't have if, you know,

if Barack Obama was president or, frankly, any normal person was president. Because now it's a little complicated to look at some of these symbols of patriotism, right? Like, the flag is being co-opted by Trump, right? the military flyovers feel a little different when there's like fascism in our streets, you know, it's okay for people to feel a little conflicted about celebrating this 250th birthday. But I think there's an important, like, debate that we have to be willing to have, right? And so this is an organic book plug. You have this book that's about the 250-year history of our battle over American identity.

And I start with J.D. Vance, who gave his speech a few months ago in which he talked about what does it mean to be an American, right? What is American identity? And he said out loud that the declaration of independence and its commitment to, you know, the sentence, all men are created equal is not what it means to be American. Yeah. That that's too loose a definition because then it could encompass. It's an idea. Yeah, it's an idea. And we're not an idea. We are blood and soil, right? We are a heritage-based nation, right? Which is, I think, profoundly wrong. And it's a profoundly fucked up reading of American history, right? Now, it's also been a predominant story, but I think what people need to honor and celebrate, like, is the alternative history of the United States, which is people

fighting against that idea for 250 years, you know? So we're not just a history of presidents and monuments. We are a history of activists, of agitators of the civil rights movement, of the abolition movement, of women's rights movements, of LGBT movements, right? We are both of these things. at once. And just because Donald Trump is going to try to ram one version of this down our throats, that's all the more reason. Look, people should go out and protest around the freaking UFC fight, which, by the way, is—the semi-quincentennial. Yes, the same—well, the UFC fight, which, by the way, is coincidentally on Donald Trump's birthday, too, which is a nice touch. Last year we got a military parade.

This year we got like a Dana White sponsored UFC fight, right? So I think that's what we all need to take away from this. Is sure it sucks to see our institutions co-opted like this, but the American story is like, the parts of it I like are usually about people who are standing up to that. And now it's our turn, unfortunately, to do it in this particularly grim, what do you call it? Semi-Quincentennial, say it's four times fast. No, I think you're absolutely right that the best way to celebrate the rebellion against tyranny is to rebel against tyranny, right? I will just say on the level of corruption, there's, you know, if you look not that hard, you can find a news story. every day about the way in which this president is like the biggest grifter we've ever had in office.

For example, I think the New York Times was reporting that Trump's Bitcoin is largely floated by Binance, which is the crypto exchange that had, founded by, I believe, is Changpang Zhao, who's a billionaire mogul who was in jail who Trump pardoned. And now, oops, coincidentally, 85% of Trump's Bitcoin is held in accounts on Binance, even though the exchange platform is available only outside the United States, right? That's happening and that's clearly corrupt and craven and, I'd argue, part of what would be a hallmark of kleptocracy. And yet there's not real discussion about it. The difference between that and this is that people see the ballroom. People see the maybe plans for the arc to

Trump. People will see, presumably, the drag race. People will see the UFC fight. And all of this is an exercise in the worst, most inflated form of presidential ego, if not outright fascism. Like, the investment is not in the country. It is in himself. And because these are such public spectacles, I am optimistic that the public pushback in turn will hopefully be more pronounced, right? It's so awful. It's such an ugly degradation of everything our democracy is supposed to stand for in the way that him just pocketing crypto funds surreptitiously while he sits in the Oval Office or having his lackeys do that is just not as transparent. to the American public, that level of corruption. This is. The ballroom has not gone over well

with the American public. And something tells me an arc to Trump and a drag race and a UFC fight are not what people want on the south phone of the White House. You know what I mean? Yeah, you and I are old enough to remember the hip-hop barbecue that Obama had on the South on the White House, which spawned the Dan Pfeiffer's favorite Fox News headline. Hip-hop barbecue fails to create jobs. But this UFC fight is not going to create jobs. You know, that's for sure. And look, I think you're right there. What's grotesque about the corruption is that Trump is actually leveraging like the United States for his own interests. So like the other glaring example that came out recently, right, was the story that, lo and behold,

shortly before the inauguration, right, that you had this massive UAE investment in Trump coin. And then lo and behold, Trump lifts off restrictions on American technology going UAE, right? That's him leveraging, you know, national power, national assets for his own personal gain. But it's a complicated story. And sometimes a ballroom or a drag race is a helpful way to just have a symbol that captures for people, how self-interested this is, how grotesque this is, how corrupt this all is. Right. And there's something like pretty un-American, too, about a living leader, right, building monuments

and arcs to himself, right? Like, this is the kind of thing that we're accustomed to seeing. in, you know, unitary dictatorial states in other countries, right? And so I think that the challenge is wrapping this whole story up for people. They're not these separate categories, right? We're mad about corruption and we're mad that he's not doing enough to deal with affordability. And we're mad that, you know, he's got fascist tendencies. No, it's all one big thing, right? All those things are related. He's not dealing with affordability because he's using office to enrich himself, which he's doing, you know, fueling an ideology.

that is fundamentally kind of fascistic and about himself and not the country, right? It's all one story about Donald Trump caring about himself and his rich friends and not you. And he'll even kind of take custody of the most precious and shared history that we have as Americans to get that done. And he'll make use of this kind of infrastructure of right-wing, you know, Prager You or whatever it is, to do so. That shows you this has been building for a long time. They built all this infrastructure. So that's the scale of the challenge you're up against.

But the good news is if you can tell that story, I think a huge majority of Americans are either uncomfortable or outraged by that. Yeah, I mean, just on the freedom truck front, I immediately thought of the mitzvah trucks. If you're a New York City resident, you know what I'm talking about. They come out during the Jewish high holidays, and there are these really loud trucks run in large part by the Lubavich sect of Orthodox Jews, meant to convert unsuspecting bystanders on the streets of New York City, uniformly men. And I always kind of smirk at these things and think, you're not, are you really is, I mean, it's like, it's not like a Mr. Softie truck. There's

not like a line around the block. And are they effective? For those who don't have experience with the Mitzvah truck, I wonder how convincing a freedom truck run by Prager U. and Hillsdale College really can be, these guys are not known for subtlety, like espousing the way in which slavery was effectively good for black people and climate denialism is like a form of patriotism and the way that colonialism had its benefits, all these things. I think people, it underestimates grossly the intelligence of the American public, but I don't know, Ben, how nefarious do you think these things are? Well, you know, I think I won't be hitching a ride on a freedom truck. I think you're not a freedom rider.

Yeah, I'm not yet to give a whole new meaning to Freedom Rider, right? I think one thing that where we and, you know, Democrats have to have more kind of confidence, right, is they've been wearing us down on the culture wars, right, for, you know, decades, right? And the reality, though, is that that whole mindset behind those freedom trucks and the anti-woke stuff and the anti-D-EI stuff and the whitewashing of history kind of felt to the intended audience, which, admittedly is not you and me, Alex, countercultural, you know? It was like suddenly, like, this kind of blood and soil nationalist, like racist, right-wing set of views

was fundamentally countercultural, right? Because it seemed like, you know, they lost the culture wars. But I think part of what people are experiencing in the Trump years is, you know, particularly the second term, is that's not the counterculture anymore. Like, they're in charge. And they are, you know.

And they are doing to us everything that they said we did to them. They're trying to ram their views down our throats. They're trying to stifle free speech, right? They're trying to say there's only one version of American history and there's no other version that can even be taught in schools. And, you know, ironically, you know, it's turned out that their views were projection all along, right? That they were the ones that are fundamentally kind of against the freedoms that they claim to spouse, right? So like I said, this kind of core argument about American identity is one, I think we shouldn't be shy about having because as we've seen in Minneapolis, like that's what it looks like, right? Yeah. And on the one side, you got people trying to ram it down everybody else's throats and

they're heavily armed. And the other end, you've got people exercising what Americans think of as pretty core freedoms. And like that, that's what's going on in the whole country right now. And every time I see a freedom truck, like, that's what I'll see. Well, yeah, and the whole concept of like a freedom truck being run by Hillsdale College is not like a countercultural like own the lips phenomenon. It's like the most sort of like, uh, it's like an incredibly, uh, hands folded in the lap, scoldy kind of version of conservative ideology that does not resonate with, I don't know, Logan Paul, right? Like they've, they've so, like at this moment of, of terrorizing black and brown communities. They're all and, and like insulting bad bunny, right? Making clear

they're just avowed white nationalism and white supremacism, they're sending these trucks out to sort of like seal the deal. And I just think nobody's buying it. I think people see what's happening. They see what the ultimate objective is. And like, you can drive a bus around town as much as you want playing a Trump video. I just don't think that's, I just don't think that's the way you gain converts. And if anything, they should be excusing, they should be offering some explanation as to how they're not white supremacist and going after bad bunny at the Super Bowl. Yeah. And like, it's just like there's no, there is no argument to be made that this is anything other than white supremacist.

Yeah, the whole thing feels akin to like a pre-taped kid rock halftime show set against the bad bunny one, right? Exactly. We can win culture wars, people. Like, we don't necessarily have to hide our heads in the sand about them and repeat, you know, dutiful talking points about, you know, middle class economics. Like, that's important. But fundamentally, all of this is about, like, what does it mean to be in America? American, what should our government be focused on? And, you know, Trump is giving us plenty of arguments for why he is not the answer to those questions. Yeah, and I'll just say one thing.

I think that we should all learn from Bad Bunny. And I know the Super Bowl was on Sunday, but his lessons live on through the week to do, to make the argument for a multiracial, inclusive America using joy as the vehicle is real effective. Yeah, show don't tell too, right? Exactly. You know, he didn't have to give a, he didn't have to say ice out. or something during the Super Bowl. Like he was an affirmative, positive thing. And look, this is something, again, like, you know, Obama didn't do everything right, you know. But one of the things that he did right is he's multiracial case was one of affirmation.

It wasn't like America's horrible. We must, you know, acknowledge how horrible it is in order to fix it. That may have been a subtext of progressive politics in this country for a long time. But Obama would say, this country is so. great that we've been able to change before and we can do it again, you know, and look at what, you know, the promises of multiracial democracy. And like the bad bunny thing, like it, it showed that, you know, and it, and I guess apart from people having to listen to Spanish, like, it's hard to find anything else threatening in that presentation. I'd way rather be at bad bunny's rum bar than

anywhere with Kid Rock. And I'll leave it there. Oh my God. Yeah. Pod Save America is brought to you by Sundays for dogs. When it comes to dog food, seems like you have to make a choice. You can either have fresh and healthy, or you can have easy to store and serve, but never both. But you don't have to choose any more thanks to Sundays. Sundays was founded by a veterinarian and mom, Dr. Tori Waxman, who got tired of seeing so-called premium dog food full of fillers and synthetics. So she designed Sundays, air-dried, real food made in a human-grade kitchen, using the same ingredients and care you'd use to cook for yourself and your family. Every bite of of Sundays is clean and made from 100% meat and superfoods with no kibble. That means no weird ingredients

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Yes. On Monday morning. So far so good on that front, Alex. Congratulations. I feel confident. On Monday morning, the lawyer for Galane Maxwell, that's, of course, Galane Maxwell, the Epstein conspirator, currently serving 20 years. in federal prison. The lawyer said that Maxwell is ready to speak fully and honestly and deliver a complete account that could possibly clear both President Trump and President Clinton of any

wrongdoing. Her only condition, Ben, President Trump must first grant her clemency. Points for ballziness. That offer came during Maxwell's virtual deposition on Monday before the House Oversight Committee, where Gleine Maxwell pleaded the fifth over and over again. Now, both Democrats and Republicans on the Oversight Committee criticized Maxwell's refusal to answer questions, and Democrats, no Republicans, immediately condemned Maxwell's offer. Meanwhile, members of Congress are set to get their first look at unredacted versions of the Epstein files this week. Perpetual thorn in the side of the Trump administration, Thomas Massey, and Roecona,

were the first to view the files on Monday afternoon. I read this. Lawyer says complete exoneration for Trump. in Epstein files if Maxwell granted clemency. And I thought, I mean, even for Galane Maxwell, this is pretty like, there's not even, what do you call a quid pro quo that's just like public extortion? I don't even know, like, what was, first of all, what do you, what do you, what do you make, what do you make of the offer then? Well, you know, what's so funny is that like the interest of Maxwell and Trump so obviously converge too? like the quid pro quo is so evidently in both of their interests, you know?

Right, right. Like she wants out of prison. I think he would, yeah. Although I do think he would face some blowback if he just pardoned Galane Maxwell. I mean, his old people would not be that happy about that. He would, but this is what's been so strange about this whole thing all the time is that none of what he's tried to do in this account has worked, right? So nobody believed when Todd Blanche's personal attorney become deputy AG met with Maxwell

and said, oh, you know, she exonerated Trump. like it made it worse, right? When she was transferred to this kind of country club prison after that meeting with Todd Blanche, it made it worse for Trump, right? And so his efforts to kind of get himself out of this through the normal, like, obfuscate, find someone to lie on your behalf, like tell your followers, there's nothing to see here. Like, that's not working in this case because of like MAGA's long-term commitment to this issue because of the underlying grotesque nature of the crimes being exposed.

And look, I just, I don't think anybody's going to buy this. You know, I can see why she's trying to make this play. But there's no way that she's credible. Like, why would anyone trust someone who was kind of central to a child sex trafficking ring for this long? And, you know, she can try to do what she wants. But I think the other thing that's interesting here is that this kind of, you know, combination of Clinton and Trump is interesting to me. Can we talk about that? Yes. They're not usually part of the same two for one deal. Well, I think, again, like, just to be blunt, Alex, like, Republicans or Trump at least seem to overstate the extent to which Democrats, like, want to somehow exonerate Bill Clinton and all this, right? Do they? Well, they don't. And the way that Trump talks about this, like, recently, like, he had, you know, this thing where he's, how he feels sorry.

Oh, Republicans, sorry, I did not mean to react that way. You're saying Republicans overestimate how much Democrats actually want to clear Clinton's a good name. That's right. I say good in quotes. And so Trump's kind of hot. hugging Bill Clinton, like, you know, look at what they're doing to both of us. You know, it's unfair, et cetera, et cetera. And I think what he's misreading is that, like, you know, Democrats are not like blind followers of a cult of Bill Clinton in the same way that, you know,

Trump has had that kind of support in the Republican Party. We're certainly not willing to kind of trade away our concerns about Trump being in these files tens of thousands of times, right? And clearly being witting based on at least what's come out, you know, the creepy drum. for the birthday book, like a creepy back and forth between the Mar-a-Lago spa and like the Epstein network, right? Like, the fact that Trump believes that we Democrats are willing to kind of put that all aside to defend, you know, Bill Clinton is such a bizarre reading of politics, you know, and the Democratic Party.

And also, I mean, independent of Bill Clinton's tarnished legacy within their Democratic Party, Democrats genuinely, I believe, for the most part, give a shit about holding to account people in power who were involved in the predation of children, right? So there's a genuine, like, ethical fiber that still exists, a moral fiber that still exists in a shared fashion inside the Democratic Party. And on that note, I mean, I think it's really important that Democrats be seen, I mean, not even just be seen, that Democrats hold Clinton to account when he and Hillary have to go testify in front of the House, as we expect them to, though they're still negotiating the terms of that,

Democrats should robustly question him. And we're going to take this opportunity to talk about the relationship between Galane Maxwell and Bill Clinton. The New York Times has some, I think, important reporting about how instrumental Galane Maxwell was in the creation of the Clinton Global Initiative. She took part in budget discussions related to the first CGI conference. She talked through challenges about it with Clintonades and the Publiss Group, which is the company that produced that event. And she arranged to wire $1 million to pay publicists for its work on the, quote, Clinton project. And then, Ben, there's the most cringy part of all of this. The relationship between Galane Maxwell and longtime Clintonade, Doug Band, who had very flirtatious

exchanges that I think our listeners want to hear about just because- I think they need to hear this. I think this is what happens. happens when those guys are in New Zealand is, you know, yeah. That's what happens when John, John, Tommy, and Dan are gone. When the cats away, the mice will role play. That's what we're going to do. I'll just read a little excerpt of these emails between Doug Bant and Galeen Maxwell. And I'll play the part of Gleine Maxwell.

If you Ben, will play the role of Doug Banned as a role I know you were destined to play. Ooh, thanks for that, Alex. You can do it. Here we go. Here's Gleine Maxwell to Doug Bant via email. Boo-boo, are you around? I'm very ill and require immediate medical attention. I'm suffering from booboo-itis, a very serious condition.

Without a boo-boo fix, the symptoms become very pronounced. My bobootitis is also reaching epic proportions. Lots going on, but will be in boo-bovill the second you arrive. They insist. They have never dug-band insists. He has never had relations with that woman. Just kidding. That's what Bill Clinton said.

But he does insist that he had no. physical relations with Gleine Maxwell, which makes me wonder what's Bubuitis? And where is Bubaville? Can you locate it on a map? I'm very pleased that I could not identify Bubuville on a map, Alex. Gets me some hints about future correspondence. I might want to have one day. But anyway, everyone's welcome for that. The point is, Gleine Maxwell interacted significantly with those in President Clinton's inner circles. There are a lot of questions. And I hope Democrats do not flinch in asking them, because this is very much about the truth, and it's also about keeping the victim centered as well. You know, Ben, you said that Democrats need to figure out a way to tie all of this together,

everything from the corruption and the grift and the slush funds to the Epstein files and the inaction on economic concerns. All of it, like, is there a rubric under which it all fits? And I was struck by comments from Georgia Senator and candidate John Ossoff on the campaign trail this week. He went viral after he was speaking about both MAGA and the Epstein files at a campaign rally in Atlanta. And he coined a new phrase that I think we should be hearing a lot more of in the coming months. Let's listen to John Alsoff. Now, you remember, we were told that MAGA was for working class Americans. You remember that?

But this is a government of, by, and for the ultra-rich. It is the wealthiest cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class. ruling our country. Trump was supposed to fight for the working class. Instead, he's literally closing rural clinics and hospitals to cut taxes for George Soros and Elon Musk. Okay, the Epstein class. I just feel like you hear that and you think rich people, corrupt people, lying people, and Trump's people.

And I just think it's a very useful label to affix to all of this that brings home a lot of the issues altogether. What do you think of it? have been. Yeah, I really liked it. And I think, you know, he, you know, we've seen all these different people trying different formulations and that one hit. And it hit for a bunch of reasons, including this one. Let me unpack this, you know. The Trump side of the Epstein class, right, is pretty clear, right, beyond Trump's own predatory behavior. You also have the fact that there are a bunch of fabulously wealthy and unaccountable people on the right who essentially care above all, about dismantling the government, kind of creating chaos and profiting off at themselves, right?

And, you know, we don't even have to detail chapter and verse what those people do. It's on display every day in our lives, right? And it's everybody, you know, if you just look at the Epstein files, sure, like you can find some people on the right, but it's also just kind of the broader milieu, if we will, of the people around Trump, you know, the kind of oligarchs. I think the challenge we have as Democrats that Assoff offers us a way out of, though, is the reason the Epstein files are also very damaging to people, a certain kind of person on the center left, is that it encompasses a lot of people, right? And we should say, we don't know, there's a gradation of crimes and misdemeanors in those files, right? There are men that clearly

participated in praying on girls in the absolute worst way. Then there are people that were just kind of cozy with Epstein or part of his network or informally helped him, and we don't have yet to see that they directly participated. But if you look at all of those people, and I'm just talking about some people prominent names in there, right? Some of those people, and, you know, CGI is a part of this, were the kind of people that went to Davos or, you know, went to the Clinton Global Initiative or went to whatever conference. And they kind of talked about, you know, fixing globalization and trying to help, you know, cure diseases in Africa or, you know, trying to virtue signal about, you know, fighting climate change. sustainable development, all these things. But at the same time, they were perpetuating a system that was fundamentally rigged for the wealthy and well-connected. And some of them were even

flying down to Epstein Island. And it's everything that, you know, people don't like about the kind of globalist elite of which the Democratic Party, you know, has been pretty cozy with over the years. And so what Alsace's formulation does is it loops together. It's a clean break. It's saying we're not just against the right-wing oligarchs or Trump when he does these bad things. We're turning the page on kind of this era of capitalism run amok, of, you know, powerful people, usually men, thinking that they could act without accountability or with impunity, or they could say one thing to virtue signal at a conference and then behave a certain way in their private lives on their private plains and private islands. And so this kind of ties it all together, right?

Because it's the corruption, it's the inequality, it's the excess. is an extreme inequality in our economy all put together into this Epstein class, which, by the way, Democrats can say, like, we need to clean house too. Like, you know, we need to leave that behind. If we lose certain political donors, fine, right? If we don't get invited to certain elite conferences, fine. Like, we actually want to fight for a different America. Yeah, it's the, it really emphasizes the filthy part of the filthy rich, right? The Epstein class. and it gives up an opportunity. And I don't mean to sound dismissive, but it gives Democrats the opportunity to wear the hair shirt as well and say, like, we have work to do.

It's not just, you know, Steve Bannon and Donald Trump who are in these files. It's also Larry Summers and Bill Clinton. And we're going to clean house, as you say, as we should. Because I think it's important to, you know, make sure that it doesn't seem partisan, right? that the anti-corruption zeal is nonpartisan. Yeah, yeah. Can I offer one other thing, Alex here, like on this? I don't normally do this as like listeners of the Pots said the world know,

and I'm willing to be very self-critical about things in the Obama years. I only use this as an example of a political message at work, which is in 2008 when he was running for president. The thing that resonated was that we wanted to turn the page on the failed politics at the past. And the leading example of that at the time was the Iraq war, but the turn-the-page frame that Obama used was about not just George Bush taking us to word,

but all the Democrats who voted for the Iraq war, which included Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and a whole roster of people, right? And because it was a bipartisan critique, it had more credibility, right? It was like, well, this guy's not just limiting his concern for corruption or for bad mistakes to the other side, right?

And that's what I think we need to do with this kind of Epstein-class point, is that because we're willing to include you know, parts of our team in this, we have more credibility to say we actually want to change things. Yeah. I think the Epstein controversy, scandal, saga, whatever you want to call it, is alive in voters' minds, which sort of brings me to what's happening in Europe, right? Because there, it's very much alive, and it's very kinetic, and it holds a lot of electrical power, if you will. And I tend to to think the same is true, regardless of what the media coverage of Epstein is in the U.S.,

but I want to get your thoughts on this and contrast sort of how the British political infrastructure is responding to Epstein files versus how we're responding in America. And it's a good Pod Save the World tease for listeners, because everybody should be listening to Pod Save the World, like as often as they physically can sometimes listen to the same episode twice a week, if possible, because you get something new out of each episode. Anyway, over the weekend, Morgan McSweeney, who's Labor Prime Minister Kier Starmor's closest advisor, resigned. Now, McSweeney had advised Starmor to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States, and it turns out that Mandelson was a close friend of Jeffrey Epstein.

He maintained contact with Epstein after Epstein's 2008 conviction for soliciting sex from a minor. So this is a quickly moving weatherfront. But, like, at various points today, Ben, it looked like maybe. the entire labor government could fall over these Mendelsohn revelations. Starmor may have bought himself some more time here, but it is a stunning contrast with what's happened here as these names have come out. Like, the only Republican to say boo about Epstein is Thomas Massey. And that's happening well.

The president has mentioned, is it 38,000 times in the Epstein files? Steve Bannon has mentioned multiple times. Howard Lutnik is the latest person to make headlines. He's the Commerce Secretary. He's all over the Epstein files, despite protest. that they had stopped contact much earlier. President Trump's former sidekick, Elon Musk, is in the Epstein files. Why do you think that the UK acts so much more swiftly on the Epstein stuff, and it's so much more of a liability overseas in the UK than it apparently is here?

Is it just they have higher standards? I mean, don't even answer that question. I know they do. But what's the difference? Well, I mean, just to illustrate the point, there are two institutions. is the British royal family and the British government, right? So, you know, the two most powerful institutions in the country that have been absolutely rocked by the presence of two individuals in the Epstein Fowls, right? So famously, like Prince Andrew is no longer Prince Andrew. King Charles today said he would support a police investigation into his brother, right? I mean, the guys losing titles and land and whatever the hell they give the world's over there, like, you know, at a dizzying pace. Free, right? Free dental care.

I don't know. Yeah, I'm sure the benefit package is out, the 401K. And then Peter Mandelson, who was this kind of labor insider ambassador to the UK, he's all over these files and he's cozy with Epstein and he's sharing like sensitive market-based information with him. And it almost brought down Kirstarmar the prime minister of the country, even though Kierstrom is not even in the files. And Morgan McSweeney, for people, you know, in follow British politics. I mean, this guy is like the chief political operative and chief, you know, of staff for Stramer, like indispensable to cure Starmor and his politics have the last few years. Like losing him would be, you know, akin to Trump, you know, losing like Stephen Miller and Susie Wiles, you know,

like at the same time. You are we can dream, can't we? We can dream. That's what I was trying to do. Now, like, why is that? And also, where does this go from here? Right. Because Starrmer survived today, but he's weakened and labor could suffer an election loss in upcoming elections. And then there's a, you know, pretext or movement. We'll see what happens. I do think that, in British politics, like, there has not yet been the same removal of shame as a potential source of accountability, you know? Like, I mean... They still feel shame.

Oh, oh, I see what you're telling me. They still feel shame. They can still be shamed. Like, Boris Johnson resigned over COVID parties that he was out. Right? Like, that's unthinkable with Trump. Trump has so removed shame as a source of accountability. They also, frankly, just have a system where you've got to face the music more, right?

Kier Storm had to go and do question time, right? where the opposition basically yells at you and you have to respond and he didn't have good answers, including about Morgan McSweeney. Like Trump never has to face that accountability. In our system, Trump is both the prime minister and the king, right, like rolled under one and frankly, more and more he's the king. So like it's depressing to see that there's been more consequences in the UK over two individuals than there has been in the U.S. over not just Trump's presence in these files, but all these other people. However, I think that part of this furor in Europe is going to be the perpetuation and investigation of these files.

And this is something people should realize in the UK and in several other European countries, investigations are being opened into the people in these files, including Americans. Investigations are being open into Epstein's connections to intelligence agencies, right? Yeah. Like, they're going to pull these threads, even if, like, you know, Republican committees and Congress aren't other countries with lots of resources are going to do so, just like in this country, I think journalists will too. So I think the people who are breathing aside of relief that maybe the last dump of these files has happened are sorely mistaken because it has shaken up

these other countries and they have the ability to do some of the follow-up that is not being done in this country. Yeah, if we won't do it, the Polish Prime Minister will, right? Yes. I feel like Donald Tusk, because the Polish Prime Minister is like, we need a fulsome investigation into Jeffrey Epstein's ties to Russian intelligence, please and thank you, right? Like, the thing about being in the middle of a cabal of global elites is that when that cabal is revealed, the rest of the globe has an interest in getting to the bottom of it. And that's the rub for Donald Trump and his 38,000 mentions. And a lot of them would like to see Trump, you know, cut down to size, too.

Wait, oh, why? He hasn't been good for the global community? Yeah. He's been so respectful of those European countries, you know? Right? It's just like the term wrecking ball, I think, was what was used to describe Trump today by Europeans. And turns out when you go around giving the middle finger to all of Western Europe, there's something, such a thing is comeuppance. And perhaps he is in line for some of that. Potsave America is brought to by ORAFraM.

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Today's presenting sponsor, it's a special one for us. If you listen to this podcast, you may have heard us talk about someone named Barack Obama. Heard of them. Yeah. We're pretty excited to announce that the Obama Presidential Center officially opens this June on the south side of Chicago. It's a lot more than a library. It's an entire campus geared towards helping everyday people realize their ability to make real world change. Beyond the immersive museum exhibits, there's an athletic center, a theater, a media lab, a branch of the Chicago Public Library, a collection of brand new commissioned art, world-class performances, and original programming. The list goes on and on. How cool is that? It's very cool. I'm really excited to see it. I think it'll be very different than any other presidential library you've seen before. I think it'll be interactive and fun to go to, bring your family, bring your kids, learn about history. Oh, man. Look at photos of me and John when we were younger, but also...

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I do want to talk about other sort of reckonings on the horizon because over in Congress, back in Washington, D.C., before the drag race that will hit the city streets in some certain amount of time, there is, the clock is running on a deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Democrats are pushing for immigration enforcement reforms, including upholding use of force guidelines, ending racial profiling, and requiring judicial warrants when agents go on to private. property, you know, the kind of normal constitutional stuff that Senate Majority Leader John Thune called unrealistic last week. I wish he would just like go through the Constitution and highlight the parts he thought were unrealistic. It's just telling them to follow the law. It's just like, I am freedom of speech. Really? Can we really do that? Anyway, on Monday, Thune said that there is, quote, a possibility of a deal, although we are going to see if Democrats are on the same page. As of this recording, everyone is very interested in this, but they're going to have to wait and see what

becomes of Trump's personal paramilitary organization, aka ICE, and they're just going to have to sit tight and watch Jake Sherman's Twitter feed for the Red Siren emojis. I am interested to know what you think. That's no dis on Jake Sherman. When I see those Red Siren emojis, something in my deep lizard brain starts pinging. What do you think of their strategy here? With the benefit of hindsight. I am not in, I think the shutdown strategy over health care premiums obviously did not get us anywhere near a resolution. 22 million Americans, 23 million Americans saw their health insurance premiums skyrocket. We did an awesome episode of this, awesome in the sense that is compelling, not that it was good news on my podcast, runaway country. Just the economic hardship

people are facing, the very real choices they have to make about whether they can afford to go to the doctor or send their children to the doctor, that is a real concern across this country. And it ties into this issue of affordability because if you don't have money for the doctor, you probably don't have money for bacon. Or if you do have money for bacon, it might be going towards paying for the doctor. Whatever it is, it's an issue of pain. And I do think that Democrats, in hindsight, are probably going to gain something from their standoff with Republicans over this issue when it comes time for the 2026 midterms. But what do you think about the fight? And it's a smaller fight because it's just DHS funding we're talking about here. What do you think about this fight over ICE reforms?

I think that like the healthcare thing is illustrative in the fact that they had that fight. They didn't win in restoring the ACA subsidies, but they won and drawing extraordinary attention to it and making it very clear what they were for as against what the Republicans were for. And then ultimately a bunch of Democratic senators got cold feed and the government reopened. But to fast forward to today, I don't think that they should be shy at all from being just as aggressive about ICE as they were about health care. Like, oftentimes it's Democrats. We'd rather talk about health care than ICE. I don't think Americans like what ICE is doing.

The polls indicate that. The kinds of reforms that the Democrats are advocating for, like people not wearing masks, people falling in the law. These are things that are broadly popular. And I would not vote to provide a dollar funding to DHS if all those, like, Democrats. are not met. And if, you know, if that causes some kind of paralysis and shutdown or something, fine. Then let the spotlight be on the fact that these people are defending the necessity of having a paramilitary force in this country that is allowed to be masked and detain American citizens without warrants. Because that's fundamentally the position that John Thune is taking

in support of Christy Noem and Stephen Miller, right? Why not have that fight? And if it may be that you grind it out for a few weeks and, you know, ultimately, like, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they're proven, like, just the lengths to which these people will go to perpetuate something that I think most Americans are deeply uncomfortable about. I obviously, like, we're going further. Like, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I just don't know why you would fund this. It's Christy Nome's DHS, you know, for God's sakes. It's what's been going on in Minneapolis. And, and, and, and frankly, there's opportunities for Democrats to reach some other voters, some of the don't tread on me

crowd that are not comfortable with this either. Well, and I was struck by this and I wrote about it for my substack, how the hell with Alex Wagner, the symmetry and the don't tread on me flags that were both outside of DC jail on January 20th, 2025 when I was waiting for Trump to pardon January 6 inmates and that whole crew and the don't tread on me flags that were outside of the Whipple detention Center in Minneapolis, as I was in Minneapolis like a week and a half ago waiting to see what happened to detainees. There is a real sense that this is the jackbooted government thug that has been war, you know, that has been conjured in, you know, conspiracy fantasies at the other end of the snake's tail. And like, I agree with you. I think Democrats could pick up some support from

libertarians who look at this and are like, this is not the fucking United States. And this has to end. which brings to mind, you know, how Republicans conduct themselves. There's a DHS oversight hearing on the calendar, I think, slated for Tuesday of this week. And that includes the head of ICE, the acting head of ICE, Todd Lyons. Now, my expectations for Republicans doing anything in the true fashion of oversight, my expectations are low. I would say the bar is buried deep in the ground near a well. but the guy running this hearing is Andrew Garberino, who is a moderate Republican from the South Shore of Long Island and has been known to take on the GOP at some points. I mean, like,

do you think both as a matter of political survival and, I don't know, interest in making sure that this ICE doesn't act unlawfully, we might expect some real questioning from Republicans? Yes, but it connects to the previous question, Alex, for this reason, right? It is clear that Trump would like to get this off the headlines, right? So when he finally kind of stepped in and sent Tom Homan to take over for the kind of lunatics that were running the operation in Minneapolis, he didn't change anything fundamentally about how ICE is operating, but it was meant to be this kind of pivot point, you know, meant to kind of show like, let's all move on from talking about this because frankly talking about this has not been good for me or my politics. I don't think

he sincerely gave a shit about what happened to Alex Predier or Regal. A. Good or what's happening in streets of Minneapolis. He just wanted to change the PR around it. And where they're going to try to park this thing is they'll have to continue what ICE is doing because it's so fundamental to Trump and his project, right? But they'll want to kind of park it. Like, let's get our funding. Keep this thing going. Let the occasional moderate republic who's in a tough race say some moderately critical things. And it then looks like, you know, Trump has kind of lowered the temperature on this stuff. And, oh, you know, they're, they're, you know, they're, might be these GOP guys who are like a little bit more reasonable than, you know, Stephen Miller is

on this. And, and that's where they want the issue. That's all the more reason for Democrats to pick and continue to pick a fight about this. Like, Trump is retreating tactically because he knows this is a loser for him. So keep at it, you know, keep after the funding. Keep after Christy Knoam. Like, keep after, like, the Republican parties. Do you hear us, Gene Jeanne? Do you hear us, Gene Chaheen? Because, yes, the Republican Party is not some moderate from New York. It's Stephen Miller. Like, that's what it is. And make that your foil here, you know. And by the way, the more you do that, if what you're interested is in substance, which I am, the more you're going to force other Republicans who are nervous about their own races to potentially agree with Democrats

on these issues. This is the only way that the Democrats of any power whatsoever in the first two years of the Trump administration is kind of commanding attention, using like the minimal leverage of your votes to fund the government and making it as uncomfortable as possible for Republicans, including people you're running against in the House, to continue to stand with Trump. And then that either, like, is going to be something that achieves that list of ICE reforms, or it's going to be something that all those Republicans are going to have to own heading into the midterm elections, no matter what they say in some hearing with the head of ICE.

As much as we talk about Trump's retreat on this and the fact that he pulled 700 ICE officers out of Minneapolis, we should not lose sight on, you know, the way the tactics have changed but are equally as brutal and pernicious. According to the AP, people have reported that ICE agents are, quote, impersonating construction workers and delivery drivers and in some cases anti-ice activists. And then there's the just abomination of what's happening inside the judicial system itself, which is less seen, but no less worse. The New York Times is, reporting that the lead ICE lawyer in the state of Minnesota just left his job, and he is not the only one looking for the exit signs. Government lawyers, like the one John and Dan talked about

last week and the court system in general, are entirely overwhelmed with immigration cases. For my episode, for my podcast, Runaway Country, we heard about the very specific hell these immigration judges work in, and the fact that they're all, many of them are just getting fired with little explanation from the Trump administration. And now the White House with the blessing of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is seeking to sideline immigration judges and just deny migrants' bond hearings in order to hold them indefinitely, or at least until they can be deported. I mean, it just feels like there's ice on the outside and then the inside. So they sort of break the will of the public on the outside using anti-constitutional, lawless, brutal tactics.

And then on the inside, it seems like the design is, crush the system, overwhelm it. and otherwise fragmented. So it's no longer functioning. And you basically just militarize this part of the judicious system to get people out, regardless of whether they're citizens and or whether they actually belong here. What do you think, Ben? Yeah, that's absolutely right. And if you actually look at the history, this is actually not even a particularly new tactic for the Republicans. So over the course of the last 10 or 15 years, one of the things that Republican majorities constantly did in Congress, particularly around any failure of comprehensive immigration reform, remember those ideas, is that they would pour money into enforcement and then they would starve money for immigration judges,

right? So at the precise time that you, and this is even predating the second Trump term, at the precise time that you are rounding up more people and putting them in detention centers, you are starving the funding for the immigration judges who can adjudicate those cases. And it's ultimately in service of this final endpoint, which is you're kind of completely federalizing the whole thing and you want to get to a place where you can bypass the judicial system and just deport people. And we saw this test of strength at the beginning, right, when they were deporting people who had not had a hearing or at least trying to do so and we're occasionally stopped by judges. So like we have to understand like this is the playbook

to stress and ultimately break the system and assume like total executive control. But that's why it's so essential to spotlight this thing because it is not popular. It is not something that like people are comfortable with just getting rid of the rule of law, you know, getting rid of the rule of law for people who could be U.S. citizens or could be children, right? And that's why we have to continue to follow the lead of the people in Minneapolis who spotlight these things. We also have to kind of be for fundamental reforms, knowing that, you know, the bigger reforms are unlikely to happen when Trump is president. But I mean, if you look past that, like, you know, there are things that need to to be on the table. Like, if we actually get a normal Department of Justice again, like getting rid

of ICE and moving immigration enforcement back to DOJ, we're actually. under the rule of law instead of being separate and militarized from it. I think a lot of people don't know that. Yes. Just, and Ben, you wrote an amazing op-ed about this a very useful one, enlightening, I should say. I think a lot of people don't understand the bifurcation of the system that some of the stuff, immigration naturalization is housed at DHS, but then the immigration court judges are all appointed by DOJ and are literally under the purview of the Attorney General Pam Bondi, who's not exactly known for being, I don't know, the paragon of Lady Justice, Blind Justice. Anyway, I digress.

continue forward. No, but that's, the problem is it used to all be a DOJ, right? So immigration enforcement was there and the naturalization process was there, right? And it was done under the rule of law, right? And the agency was equally committed to enforcing immigration laws, but also adjudicating citizenship claims and, you know, managing that process. I think if you can rebuild DOJ, like put it back there, get rid of ICE. But have immigration enforcement by all means, but have it be done by DOJ, which is technically supposed to enforce the laws in this country. And there are other reforms Democrats can be talking about, like, and you've talked a bit about this on runaway country, Alex, but these private prisons, right? I mean, you want to talk about corruption where we started. You literally have people profiting

off of these grotesque detention centers that, you know, children are being sent to. Like, we need to get rid of that, too. I don't want people profiting off of the detention of children who've been separated from their family. So there are bigger reforms that, you know, candidly need to away at the end of the Trump administration. I think, though, you can simultaneously have the fight on these common sense reforms that are very popular, spotlight the absolute abuses of power that Trump is engaged in, frankly, reverse the politics of immigration, as polling shows it has been shifting over the last few months, and then have a bigger vision for what can replace a system that is so fundamentally broken. Also, just read your op-ed because it lays out a lot of this,

and it's just like put it, make it pocket-sized and give it down to members of Congress. POTSave America is brought you by Mint Mobile. Every group has someone who insists on doing things the hard way. That one friend still paying for a subscription they forgot they had. That one who refuses to update their phone because it still works. That one who's still overpaying for wireless. Are you that friend? Then it's time to switch to Mint Mobile.

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See mintmobile.com. You talk about the detention centers, Ben, and, The news we get out of these attention centers is sporadic, but almost uniformly awful. We have reports this week that at least two people at an ICE detention center for families have the measles. What do we know about the measles, Ben? It's highly contagious. We also know that immigration attorneys, at least one, has told the Washington Post

that his clients at that same facility had not been given measles vaccines or been asked about their vaccination status. And to me, this is like the mashup of like Stephen Miller's. grotesque, abusive immigration policies with RFK juniors grotesque, barbaric, anti-scientific anti-vax bent. Like, okay, here you go. Like a terrible, overcrowded detention center

plus an unvaccinated population. Cool. That's Trump's America. Yeah, it's just one big, broken, corrupt enterprise. And inevitably, it was all going to converge. And, like, what is more of a sign of convergence than detained immigrant children getting vizels, you know, because of Stephen Miller's racism and Christy Noam's nihilism

and Robert F. Kennedy's fanciful conspiracy theorizing, right? Like, this is all fundamentally, you know, coming together in a way that, you know, we're not even, we're just over a year into this, Alex. So, like, God knows where we're going to be in a couple years, you know, when you add a little Heg-Seth to the stew and, you know, Howard Lutnik, another Epstein buddy to the stew here, it's not great. I do have more to say on RFK, and we're going to, I don't know, do we call this an up-note? It's a vehicle for me to just talk about the grossness of RFK, although it does conjure some visuals, and I apologize in advance. You may have thought that trashing Bad Bunny was the most appalling right-wing attack on America's Super Bowl?

No. The most appalling right-wing attack, and I'm going to call it attack on the Super Bowl. that dubious honor belongs to Health and Human Services Secretary, RFK Jr., who, unfortunately for us, described his Super Bowl Sunday snack lineup to Peter Ducey of Fox News. And this is what it is. What would you have as a Super Bowl snack? You know, I am on a carnivore diet, so I just eat meat and ferment, and I'm very happy with that, so I'm going to probably have yogurt.

What? What? He just said, first of all, there's a lot to unpack there. He's just going to have yogurt. Yogurt at the Super Bowl. I also had yogurt at my Super Bowl party, except it was mixed with onion dip and sour cream and I put potato chips in it, or I mixed it with blue cheese and sour cream, and I dipped my buffalo wings in it. What's more disgusting than creaky ass Robert F. Kennedy Jr. eating a bowl of yogurt at the Super Bowl? First of all, Alex, I never use ferment to apply to a delicacy.

It's a noun. It's just not something, yeah, it's just, I don't know what, it's not something you're ever going to hear me do. And the second thing I have to say is like, I'm out here in L.A., transplanted New Yorker, you know, very much miss my hometown. And, you know, to me, like, I'm trying to get my head around the kind of, you know, wellness, maha universe. to me, I thought it was like, I don't know, kombucha or like the supplements aisle where I don't know what it is that I'm looking at, the powders at like Arawan or something.

Peptides. I didn't realize it was like, you know, meats that, you know, you, you, I don't know how, I can't imagine how he prepares his meats. I made chicken wings last night, Alex. I always do chicken wings two ways. So I had terriaki and buffalo. I mean, and this kind of like un, you know, pasteurized, like disgusting. I'm just trying to picture like the spread. It's definitely chicken on the raw side.

I'm thinking he wants his meat largely undercooked, right? Exactly. And ferments. Nobody calls them that. Like, you can have kimchi, fine. You can have sauerkraut. You can even have kombucha, high sugar content. But to go around classifying, suggesting to the American public on Fox News, no less.

that you consume only meat and ferns is a betrayal of this republic. Can you imagine if Barack Obama had said, remember when Barack Obama was found to have eaten five almonds and it was like a national crisis? Like, who the fuck is this guy only eating five almonds? He's not a real man. He fucking sucks. What's wrong with him?

He's too tightly wound. Something's wrong with his mental attitude. Robert F. coming, like, he's eating ferment. a bowl of yogurt. If I ever see someone next to me at a Super Bowl party eating a bowl of yogurt, after I finish puking into the trash can, I'll leave. I mean, it is one of those weeks where, you know, when you wrap up the discussion this way, Alex, you're like, all right, we got like an 80-year-old narcissist building a ballroom to himself at a time of a cost-of-living crisis, running interference over his presence in like the Epstein files and his connectivity

to potentially like a child sex trafficker and health secretary giving our kids measles and you know, recommending or boasting about his, you know, Super Bowl diet of ferment and uncooked meats. And I mean, if we can't win a debate, like if we're. Like, if. If we Democrats and everybody else that doesn't like this can't somehow figure out how to craft political arguments that, you know, are for chicken wings at the Super Bowl and Alex Wagner's dip and no ballrooms and, you know, holding pedophiles accountable and bad bunny, you know, crushes. And like, we have like, we're on, we're standing on the right terrain here in this country.

We just have to, like, beckon people over here. with the message that works. And I don't know whether it's John Ossup or anybody else, but someone's going to put this thing together for us. My ferment is beer, and I think a lot of other people out there like it, too. It's quite a good ferment, yeah. Ben Rhodes, we're going to leave it there, my friend. I'm sorry to leave everybody with a visual of Robert Fennedy eating a bowl of fage or fayet or whatever you call it, but sometimes weeks are like that. And I apologize to everybody. Do you think he buns it? Do you think he puts the meat in the ferment? I mean, that would almost be like a Middle Eastern delicacy, like a shish kebab and yogurt, but I don't think so.

But something tells me it would not be as tasty as the Middle Eastern preparations. There's nothing that's happening in RFK Jr's kitchen that's tasty. I think we can say that quite definitively. Oh, God. John, John and Tommy and Dan are going to be back with Australian accents later this week. I kind of want to close out the show speaking in an Australian accent. So I'm going to do one of this script with my best Australian accent, and if it doesn't work, we'll fix it in post. Some quick housekeeping. Lover to leave it is returning to Washington, D.C. Did I do it? That's good, yeah. Keep that. That's, you crushed it. On April 23rd, John Lovett and D.C.'s funniest people, yes, D.C. has some funny people.

We'll be live at the Lincoln Theater. Tickets are on sale now. Grab them at crooked.com slash events. That's our show for today. John, John, Tommy, and Dan will be back in your feeds on Friday live from Melbourne. Given the time change, you should expect that show on your feet a little later than usual. They'll be eating crocodiles and kissing eels in the meantime. See you soon. Thanks, everyone. Good eye. Why didn't they bring you, Alex? I mean, with an accent like that. I'm the designated survivor. I'm the designated survivor. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com slash friends. to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts.

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