Pod Save America - "Dine Kampf."

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

Donald Trump gets dinner with a Nazi, a new special counsel to investigate his crimes, and his Twitter account back. Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock talks to Lovett about his runoff election on Dec 6. And the guys play a round of Take Appreciator. 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.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Levin. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Donald Trump gets dinner with a Nazi, a new special counsel to investigate his crimes, and his Twitter account back. Dude, iced coffee at 3 p.m.? My God, that's a bull move. How do you get up early? I don't think it's just an iced coffee, Tommy. I think there's probably a few shots of espresso in there. Just a cold brew. Just an afternoon cold brew. Good for you. Sorry I interrupted you.

It is 3 p.m. I had to interview Raphael Warnock this morning. There's the segue. There we go. He needed it because at 9 a.m. this morning, John Lovett interviewed Senator Raphael Warnock about his December 6th runoff against Herschel Walker. You'll hear that a little bit later.

And then after that, Elijah Cohn is back for another round of Take Appreciator. So many takes in the queue. A lot of takes in the queue. But first, check out our new limited series podcast that we released with Duolingo called Radiolingo, which is hosted by audio journalist Ahmed Ali Akbar. Radiolingo investigates all the ways that language shapes our world

and how the world shapes our language. Each episode explores a different way language plays a role in our life, from swearing to subtitles and everything in between. Everything in between swearing and subtitles. Many people are raving about that show. It's a great, great show. New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Also, the Crooked Store has launched brand new merch inspired by your favorite shows just in time for the holidays. New items include sweatshirts inspired by Love It or Leave It and Hysteria, a Bake Appreciator apron. Good one. I hope Elijah's wearing the Bake Appreciator apron during the game today. I hope so, too. And a magnetic poetry kit that lets you make your own terrible notes app apology.

Go to crooked.com slash store to get some stuff. Also, every order from the Crooked store will support Vote Save America's Every Last Vote Fund, which is already helping to get out the vote in Georgia for the December 6th runoff election. If you are a Georgia voter, head over to votesaveamerica.com to make your plan. And if you want to help out no matter where you live, you can donate and find remote and in-person volunteer opportunities to make sure the Warnock campaign has the resources it needs. And he wins. So go help out. All all right let's get to the news while you all may have been enjoying thanksgiving dinner with friends and family the republican frontrunner for 2024

was at his beach club breaking bread with a white supremacist holocaust denier named nick fuentes nick fuentes came with kanye west who recently threatened to go quote defcom 3 on jewish people along with other anti-Semitic comments, lost most of his endorsement deals as a result and then announced a 2024 presidential bid of his own. Trump later denied knowing Fuentes, but still has not condemned him or his views. And most Republican politicians have been completely silent about the dinner. So welcome back, guys. Good to be back.

It is gone on, on like not remarked upon enough that it was thanksgiving dinner yeah it was it was tuesday before thanksgiving it was tuesday it was like your tuesday before nazi dinner before thanksgiving okay okay i gotcha on thanksgiving it's like your high school reunion it's wednesday night then not it's nazi tuesday thanksgiving thursday cyber mond. Is that how it works? I think that's right. You know, not enough is also being made of the fact that Kanye went to DEFCON 3 with the Jews, which just means increase in force readiness above what's required for normal readiness.

So you weren't impressed? You went one beyond. He also, he tweeted DEFCON 3. Well, right. Which is not quite how, it's not DEFCON. It's not DEFCON It's not death con. A lot of people gave him the sick, which I think is presumptuous that he didn't mean death instead of death. Yeah, that is also true.

Anyway, let's start with what we know about how and why this dinner came together and what actually transpired during this meal at Mar-a-Lago. Tommy? So with the caveat that every source, every narrator in the story is completely horrible and unreliable, it seems like the purpose of the dinner was that Kanye wanted to ask Trump to be his VP, right? Yes, that is correct. Okay. I'm just making sure that I'm not making this up. Kanye wanted to ask Trump to be his VP. So we asked for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago and he traveled with a neo-Nazi incel named Nick Fuentes. We'll get into that character later. Uh, Trump says that it was supposed to be one-on-one with Kanye, but we know it ended up being Trump, Kanye, a former Trump staffer named Karen Giorno, who now works for Kanye, an alt-right racist dipshit

named Milo Yiannopoulos, who got fired from his job at Breitbart in 2017 for supporting pedophilia. You can't make any of that. I didn't make that up. You can't make any of this up. And Kanye, the way this all went down is apparently that Trump, Kanye, we know what we know about this mostly from videos released by Kanye on Twitter that were since deleted. We know that they all dine together. Kanye says Trump got mad at him when he asked him to be his VP, but that Trump really hit it off with Nick Fuentes. Milo Yiannopoulos said Trump was dazzled by Fuentes, the Nazi. speech sucked that needs to go back to the 2016 team and vibe that they weren't doing enough for the january 6th rioters who got arrested and it ended with trump being mad at kanye for saying that he's going to run for president saying i'll beat you i'm going to kick your ass calling kim kardashian some sort of vulgarity that was bleeped of all of this story the part that they bleeped was the specific swear words Trump used and seen.

These are people that should be putting flyers on cars outside of baseball games. The only reason we're discussing this is because they're meeting with the former president of the United States. I'll be your VP. No, you be my VP. This is for a broken- Also one of the most successful rappers of all time. And a former president of the United States. I'll be your VP. No, you be my VP. This is for a broken- Also one of the most successful rappers of all time.

And a former president of the United States. And some trolls. There's a movie with James Garner and Jack Lemmon called My Fellow Americans, where they both go on the run because they're being framed for a crime by, I believe, the current president. Spoiler for the movie My Fellow Americans from the 90s. and at the end of the movie they end up in a quite a little argument over who's going to be the presidential candidate who's going to be the vice president candidate um i think it's a remake i make in the offing i just can't believe how stupid this is it is impossible this is this is low on the list of concerns but i do love the conversation

between trump and fuentes about uh trump's announcement speech and how Fuentes likes the old stuff. And he just wants him to riff more because he said his supporters, meaning the Nazi ones, the white supremacist ones, they really like when Trump just goes off the cuff. And they thought the announcement speech was boring, which also is a just real shot at Stephen Millerer there and it must be hard for stephen miller because like you know it's gonna be his that's gonna be someone he admires you know in the west wing when leo wrote let bartlett be bartlett on a little napkin what if it was a what if it had a little not swastika on it that's kind of what happened you're right love it who is uh nick fuentes and do you believe that trump didn't know who he was does it even matter so uh uh you know look um so he's a nazi and you believe that Trump didn't know who he was? Does it even matter? So, you know, look, so he's a Nazi and, you know, that term gets bandied about. But he's just a Nazi.

He's a racist. He's an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier. He's pro-segregation. He's for banning contraception, banning not just gay marriage, but gay relationships. He wants Jews out of the country, openly hopes to create what he describes as Taliban rule in the U.S. He calls the Taliban conservative and religious in America as liberal and godless.

He's been kicked off of every social media platform, even some of the far right platforms. He's been ejected from some of the most heinous right-wing organizations in the country. I mean, other than...

He was in Charlottesville. He was in Charlottesville. And then he called it an incredible event right after Heather Heyer was murdered. He he just this is the lowest of the hate women pro-violence hates women said rape isn't a big deal other than dining with like jeffrey epstein and the bad guy from room you can't get lower like this is the absolute lowest of the low dregs of human society meeting with the former president of mar-a-lago

you just you don't get lower this is the bottom yeah for sure what about the what about like yeah i didn't know who i didn't know he was first of all there's a long list of people trump has known who he claims not to known to know you can look them up one by one so people he hasn't claimed not to know david duke lev parnus, Prince Andrew, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, right? You can just make the list. He claims not to know people when he'd rather not know them than denounce them. It also doesn't matter.

Either you were willingly dining, having a Nazi dinner party, as you described before recorded, or your organization is so feckless and stupid you have a a kind of deranged uh a celebrity traipsing through your home bringing whoever he wants to meet with you the former president and there's no one checking or caring enough about your time walking by the place where you stash all your nuclear secrets and by the way another point we've you've been you've told us that this building is quite secure this is where you keep your the documents you couldn't flush it doesn't matter it doesn't matter because he it's now been how many days since the story and he's put out how many truths won't announce and will not denounce the guy or his

views that's all that matters that he refuses to denounce him yeah i mean here's my take fuentes is very much on the maga radar screen because he gets kicked out of CPAC and he makes a scene about it. He did this event with Marjorie Taylor Greene. So he's like, he's really a known quality on the right. I think the left is, we're not as familiar with him, but like they know who he is because he trolls them, including the TPUSA kids. There were videos going around Twitter of Kanye walking through the Miami airport with Fuentes. Now that Trump is running for president again, I imagine the Secret Service processes kick up a notch, including at Mar-a-Lago. So someone saw this guy's ID.

Someone knew he was there has to be some level of vetting. One would hope. It's not the Secret Service's job to keep untoward people away from Trump. But there's some sort of process. And Fuentes got verified on Truth Social back in February. So I don't believe Trump. I agree with you that like no matter what, like either you dazzled a Nazi that you didn't know or you knowingly had dinner with one, neither is a good story. But I do think overtly seeking out political advice from a neo-Nazi tells you something pretty scary about where the campaign is headed. from a neo-Nazi tells you something pretty scary about where the campaign is headed.

Fuentes thinks Trump kind of knew who he was, but not the extent of it. That's what he said on his little green screen show. I just think like, it just takes you from a phase of dog whistles to like white power neo-Nazi movement has a literal seat at the table. I could see him absolutely knowing who he was. I could also see his pathological narcissism preventing him from knowing who anyone is except for him. He's not asking a lot of questions, but either way, it's like it happened.

The dinner happened. You were impressed by him. He was impressed by you. You then see the news that he's a neo-Nazi and you, you see all, and then you don't say anything about it. That shows you where the campaigns go. Is that like he,

the reason he didn't say anything about it is because he wants his supporters and he wants his supporters to vote for him and the more he is isolated from some of the mainstream republican kind of like the wall street journal the more he is seen as trying the more he has painted himself as an outsider kind of running against the the people that want ron de santos in the more the fewer guardrails there will be and the more he will feel reliant upon and afraid to alienate the worst elements of the right wing uh the other just it's also we know and we know this is also true from maggie haberman's book when she reported that he said this about the david duke thing which he goes oh those people vote oh for sure remember those people vote and david duke supported Remember those people vote. And David Duke supported,

meaning David Duke's racist supporters. And like at the end of the day, he should have denounced them. But I think like, I think he knowingly had dinner with this guy and he's worried about his right flank. And so he's bringing them in more and more and more. The worst part about all of this is like,

we're all talking about it in the Trump context because we're talking about politics, but these little neo-Nazis are having the best week they've had in a long time. Their ideas are spreading everywhere on social media. They feel important. They feel emboldened. This is like hugely impactful for the white power neo-Nazi movement either way.

It's like really an incredibly damaging event no matter what. Wouldn't this be a great opportunity for a Ron DeSantis or any Republican who wants to rid the party of Donald Trump to take a shot at him over this. Like we have now heard something from Bill Cassidy. Senator Cassidy tweeted something out that mentioned Trump's name. Mitt Romney had a very strong statement. Susan Collins said something Susan Collins, but it was good. Christie was good. Christie was good. But then there's a small selection of Republicans who's just said said uh anti-semitism is bad like mike pompeo just without putting trump's name in it or the context of why they're saying apropos of nothing right yeah that's

what ron mcdaniel did that too yeah ron mcdaniel that too but then you've got like nothing from ron desantis nothing from most major republican politicians nothing from kevin mccarthy nothing from mitch mcconnell like what what why do you think that is? I really tried to think about this from the perspective of a potential political opponent in 2024. I obviously don't have my finger on the pulse of the Republican primary electorate. You listen to Steve Bannon's War Room. What the hell? I, not in a couple of days. But I guess if you're DeSantis, maybe you're thinking if you're going to go after Trump, it's got to be part of like a sustained messaging effort. You can't just sort of like slap the guy and back away because Trump is going to punch, punch, punch, punch,

punch. And I think ultimately what we saw from the midterms is the message against Trump that seems to be the most impactful right now is just about losing, that he's a drag on the ticket, that he'll hurt them and they'll lose to Biden again. So maybe you keep this in your back pocket until you're ready to make it part of that broader case. I want to be clear that I don't believe anything I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just strawmanning here. But like, yeah, I would absolutely there seems to me no cleaner shot than condemning dining with Nazis. Well, I think there I think the problem is it the point that Trump is making

is not wrong. These are a voting part of the Republican base. And a lot of these like if you're going to pick a fight with Donald Trump, you want to do it on an axis that, as you're saying, could be sustained over the campaign. And you're not going to want to say he's too extreme. You want to say he's incompetent. You want to say he's a loser. I think there's a way to attack Donald Trump on this. There's an incredibly damaging, destructive, losing move. But I think for a lot of these guys, they just have two settings. With Trump, he's either too powerful or too irrelevant to engage. Right. That's it.

It's either they're afraid of him, so they don't want to bring it up or they think, oh, this is the Trump problem will take care of itself once again. And so they don't have to do it. He's self-destructing. And that's sort of been their their two settings for avoiding commenting on Trump for a long time. Yeah. It's such a too cute by half kind of thing. Because it's like you're if it unless we're in're understanding this is just not thinking about running, right? Like maybe they're all going to, I mean, it won't do it, right?

He does inaugural in the shower. Right, exactly. So therefore, it's like, you're not going to be able to dodge this question until you announce for president. You're not going to be able to just keep it in your back pocket. Like someone's going to ask you a question and then what are you going to say? You know, it's like, it's not, this is dining with the nazi there's no halfway on this one there's no gray area you're not gonna be able to get around this one you're gonna say i didn't see the tweet like it's just it really is also

like you know uh uh they asked biden about it and biden said uh you don't want to know what i think it's like yes we do yeah i'd love to know what you think first of all that reporter's asking you they do want to know what you think what are you going to come on too strong it's a fucking nazi this is the this is they they are the villains they are the villains of every movie like i was i'm reading this book uh uh rise and kill first about the about the uh early the massad and the early assassination campaigns that the massad ran first 50 pages you've been reading this book for a year now. It's a slow going. It is so long.

It's so long. 700 pages. I've heard this discussion. Let me tell you, let me tell you, the first 50 pages, it's Holocaust survivors hunting Nazis around the world.

Couldn't turn the pages fast enough. 10 out of 10, no notes. It's every single time. Oh, they dropped the Hungarian to say in German, be quiet or I'll kill you to a fucking Nazi who killed their

family? Yes. Unequivocal. When it gets to the morally complicated parts later in the history of Israel, I'm reading more slower. The point is take a shot at the fucking Nazis. Everybody loves it. Well, the only people who found gray area were people with political concerns like the Zionist organization of America. It's a pro-Israel, pro-Trump group. They had just literally given him an award that week. They condemned the shit out of the dinner. The Republican Jewish Coalition, a partisan group, only condemned Kanye and Nick Fuentes and did not name Trump. Since you brought up the Zionist Organization, did you see the quote from Mort Klein, who's the longtime president? So he condemns them, like you said, and then he goes, this does not in any way detract from trump's extraordinary accomplishments in helping israel un-fucking-believable but then he ends with but this does sully his general pro-israel record

i bet it doesn't sully the record doesn't sully it a little bit trump's former ambassador to israel said something my friend donald trump you're better than this. He's not your friend. No, he's not. You fucking weasels. Unbelievable. And then he threaded it with a second tweet where he attacked Obama and spelled his name wrong. I do think like for Kevin McCarthy, one issue is he's about to put Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar back on their committees after they got kicked off their committees because they were hanging out with Nick Fuentes. And he also doesn't have the votes he needs to be speaker.

So that's probably why we haven't heard much from Kevin. Yeah, last time this happened, he had a march. You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene had a march in front of the Holocaust Museum and read a hostage statement. It's just... It's bad. Well, let's talk about the Biden thing, though, because I have to imagine this was shouted at Biden as he was, like, walking out of the helicopter or something. He was in N as he was like walking at the helicopter or something he's in nantucket i think he was

in nantucket sorry he was he was walking around and it was shouted at him so i imagine maybe he's thinking like i gotta because the white house then responded with a tough statement yes but maybe they're gonna i'm gonna i'm guessing they're gonna have biden take another go at this one i hope at some point and and let us know he thinks, because I'm guess usually when Joe Biden talks about stuff like this, he's pretty good. Yeah. You know, I mean, he in America, it's the core of his core of his candidacy, the democracy thing. It worked out well. Yeah. That's what I heard. I think Democrats should all be like, it's obviously the right thing to denounce this. And I think like you got to hammer people like this when they pop up. But also there is political upside to drawing a

bright line in the sand here. I think the response will be what about is, um, it'll be both sides crap, but that's fine. Like have the conversation. I would go absolutely nuts on this. I would be holding press conferences. I would get every single, I would ask reporters to get every single Republican on the record about it. I would not let them forget it. This is again, this is just such an easy one. It's so clear. You don't get issues this clear. The Republican front runner for the 2024 nomination

and previous president of the United States had a Nazi meet with him to give him political advice and the leaders of the Republican Party are refusing to denounce it. It is a scandal. And then after he left, all he said was,

oh, I didn't know who he was. He's a Nazi. What do you think? Nothing. I guess, again, did not see that that coming that's all that he could come up with uh getting lost in all of this episode title is that trump was like yeah i'll take the dinner with kanye right after he had very publicly said a bunch of wildly anti-semitic yeah that is also yeah he's like i didn't know nick fuentes you did know the other anti-semitic guy it's not like

kanye was on his way from a bar mitzvah also right out of control milo got kicked off of twitter for for a racist bullying campaign and then he got pushed out of the republican party in like naga world for uh coming out in support of 13 year old boys having relationships with adult men i mean it's like talk about grooming what are we doing here also nick we we forgot this part too nick fuentes is there with kanye because kanye hired him for his campaign nick fuentes is working on kanye west presidential campaign and i really just want to come back to the moment where Kanye asked Trump, the most egomaniacal, narcissistic human being in public life, would you be my running mate? And the fury that must have come from Donald Trump realizing that this was the purpose of this dinner, how low he had fallen, how disrespected he was. And then Nick Fuentes is like, I like your old stuff.

And Donald Trump said, according to Jonathan Swan's source's source he gets me he gets me all right so um trump's legal troubles have also taken a turn for the worse uh his pal lindsey graham was finally forced by the courts to testify before georgia grand jury about trump's scheme to overturn the election in that state his right-wing supreme court ruled that he has to hand over all of his tax returns to Congress, finally, which led Trump to truth that the Supreme Court has, quote, lost its standing and become nothing more than a political body. When he's right, he's right. Hit the nail on the head there. Stopped arguing.

You know, broken clock. And Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to oversee the criminal investigations into Trump over the nuclear secrets he hid in his beach house and his attempted coup that led to a violent insurrection. So let's start there. Why do you guys think Garland did this? Why didn't he just decide to oversee the investigations himself? Basically, what they've said is once Trump announced and once Biden had basically said he intends to run, he felt he was compelled to do a special prosecutor, even though he had said for a while that that was not necessary where you can appoint a special prosecutor. And also part of it is this allows them to link the two investigations together in a cleaner way, because there's the January 6th investigation, there's the document retention investigation, and now those both run under one prosecutor. Yeah. I mean, I've heard some experts,

some experts have argued that Merrick Garland should not have done this. Other legal experts have argued that he had no choice but to do this. Basically, the idea is like this independent prosecutor can create a little bit of political space between the AG and the case against the guy who's running against his boss. In practice, not a lot there. The special counsel still reports to the attorney general. Garland will be briefed on and ultimately decide big decisions like whether or not to prosecute Trump. But we'll see. I don't know. There's no chance this convinces anyone politically. For sure. I mean, I think the best way to judge this is let's imagine if he didn't do this. The guidelines say the attorney general can appoint a special counsel under extraordinary

circumstances that include situations when an investigation would raise the appearance of a conflict of interest for the department. So if you don't do it and someone points to that and say, well, why didn't you, why didn't you appoint a special counsel? This is, you don't think this is a potential conflict of interest for the department? Like your boss is running against the guy you guys are investigating? It's just such a classic norms fig leaf. Norms went on this one. You know, it is, I will say it's sort of, I think everybody's memories of this are still affected by the Clinton investigations, which were under an independent counsel, which was a much more strident division between the Department of Justice and the powers of the independent Council had, which everyone allowed to lapse because everyone, some loudly, some quietly recognized that that had gone too far.

So in a lot of ways, a special counsel is kind of, it's like it is more of a norm than anything, because whether or not to prosecute still rolls up to Merrick Garland. And now what people are saying is Merrick Garland will likely defer. He deferred to Durham on prosecuting, even though those were ridiculous prosecutions that ultimately came to nothing. And he will ultimately defer to this special prosecutor whether he wants to indict or not. But we don't know. And if there's a disagreement, it gets reported to Congress. So it'll become public.

Right. And I mean, so what are the concerns here about Merrick Garland doing this? I've heard that one concern is, oh, it's going to delay the investigation. So Garland said it would not in any way. Jack Smith, who is the special prosecutor, then put out a statement saying, absolutely not, I'm going as fast as I can. Like, I'm going to just pick up right where this left off.

So I don't think the delay is a real issue. Yeah, and I've also heard people like Preet Bharara say that actually like putting this all in one place kind of could simplify things and speed it up. Yeah. So we'll see. Unless we think like Jack Smith is some secret Trumper. Doesn't seem like it.

Doesn't seem like it. So then like. Not my Jack. If Jack Smith doesn't think that there's a case there, then maybe there's not a case there. And listen, it's not like all of us have been feeling like Merrick Garland was galloping ahead at full speed, wandering around the Justice Department in like an Ebeneezer Scrooge sleeping outfit with a little candle. That's how I picture him. That's literally how I picture Merrick Garland

with one of those sleeping caps and the little gown and the candle wandering around. Who's the ghost of Christmas future? Oh, yeah. I think it's Muller. It's Muller being like, ah, you're fine. You're doing great, bud.

See, I'm hoping this Smith guy is like kind of Mull Mueller without the rounded edges. That's my hope. This made me just feel like America's in a rut. You know what I mean? You think? We're watching reruns. We need some new storylines.

Have you seen our bridges? Jennifer Coolidge, she can come along to this new season, but we need some new narratives. Yeah, for sure. I agree with that. She was so good last night. Come on. Spoilers. I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to say anything.

She was good. As you noted, Tommy, Trump and the MAGA crew have unsurprisingly attacked special prosecutor Jack Smith as a partisan political hack. Do you think this matters at all that they're doing this?

I mean, it's... I mean, he's a career prosecutor. He ran the Public Integrity Division of DOJ, went after a bunch of corrupt politicians, and most recently jack smith was investigating war crimes at the hague so like that's not a fun gig no but that's

that's a cool one i don't think yeah it is cool i mean i don't think his bio matters at all i think what was the thing we saw earlier today like he is registered as an independent but but his wife helped produce what a documentary about Michelle Obama. Okay. Okay. That's what they're going with. I mean, some of Trump, I think, today attacked Jack Smith's sister-in-law. His sister-in-law.

His sister-in-law is tough. Listen, you don't have to agree with your sister-in-law, famously. That's a thing. You know, you fight at the table. Sister-in-law's politics are not your own. Yeah. I mean, listen, like, MAGA people. You don't choose your sister-in-law. That's the whole thing about sisters-in-law's politics are not your own. Yeah, I mean, listen, like, MAGA people... You don't choose your sister-in-law. That's the whole thing about sister-in-law.

Famously. Famously. Love my sister-in-law. I'm not saying you don't. Every MAGA person thinks this is a witch hunt. Nothing's going to change that. One piece of potential good news for Trump is that he now has his Twitter account back. Elon Musk originally promised that he wouldn't reinstate

any suspended accounts until he convened a content moderation council that included people with diverse views. Instead, he took a very scientific Twitter poll and decided to allow first Trump, then Kanye West, and apparently every other suspended account that hasn't, quote, broken the law or engaged in egregious spam. Oddly enough, Trump has not yet tweeted and continues to truth his ass off over a truth social. How long do you guys think that lasts? You think Trump can resist Twitter forever? So he's stuck. He's stuck between

near-term financial interests, meaning the success of truth social and then his long-term political interests that I think would probably be benefited in the short term, at least by getting back on Twitter because it's such a huge megaphone. But like the gist for people to understand is they're trying to take truth social public on the stock market via SPAC, a special purpose acquisition company. That's basically when a SPAC is like a shell company,

it IPOs to raise a bunch of money, and then it buys a real business that does actual things, in this case truth social This is quote real thing real quote unquote real things if this goes through Trump could suddenly own like 80% of a three four maybe more billion dollar company so that's a big chunk of change, but that only works if Trump the truth social maintains its like sole piece of value Which is the place where you can find Trump exclusively, or at least I think the letter of the law,

he's technically legally obligated to use Truth Social first, and he can't post the same thing on another platform for six hours. Which is an eternity for Trump. But the SEC is looking into the SPAC and whether it violates the securities law. So that's like the mood music here. Yeah, so there's a distinction here right there's the financial gain and if trump just started um tweeting then the stock price of the spac could fall because basically people are investing in that spac

thinking it's going to become you know it's going to merge with truth social so it's to keep the price up but also legally there's something now legally though he's legally bound to post exclusively on truth social until july of 2023 and there's also a loophole in the contract where he can tweet quote political messaging without breaching the contract and but if he does that that could hurt the stock price of the spot yeah well one thing he could do is go on twitter and tell everybody to come on over to True Social. That's where the real fun is. There's a lot of mischief you can get into. Or you could say, everyone, buy a few shares of this company. Here we go. I just think there's no chance.

I don't know. There's no way you get people to migrate over to True Social. Look at all these people trying to desperately convince everyone to go to Mastodon. It's just very challenging. Now, Mastodon is easy. You can find me on Mastodon. Now, if you want to read my toots on Mastodon, you got to choose the right server. Ben Wittes controls my server and he's a nice guy, but I don't know.

I might migrate over to the other one. Have you heard about post? There's a waiting list. What the fuck is going on out there? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's madness. I'm not doing it.

And then they're tweeting about what's happening on Mastodon on Twitter and they got the Mastodon handle in their name next to the Ukraine flag and the mask. And to everyone tweeting, we've had a great couple of years together. If you'd like to keep talking with me, I'll be on this platform or this platform. Don't look for me anywhere. No. Don't look for me anywhere. It ends for us here. This is it for us.

If this dies, our relationship is dead. Twitter people. Anyway, so I don't think he can last forever i i really like money is more important than anything especially since he doesn't have a lot um yeah but i i think that he he's he's going to reach a breaking point of his frustration that his truths aren't getting covered his speech didn't get as much coverage as he probably wanted to he's not getting the attention to control right now i mean right now He's not getting the attention that he craves right now.

I mean, right now he's frustrated by the coverage of his meeting with Kanye. He's sitting there. He's truthing up a storm, but there's no one. The truth falls in the woods. Is anyone there to hear it? He had four truths about the Kanye thing. This is not enough. How do you feel about Trump being reinstated?

Do you think it's good? Do you think it's bad? You said that long-term for his political ambitions, it might, or short-term it might be good. Would it be good? Uh, yes, for sure. In terms of winning the primary, I do think it would be good. Oh, primary. I think, I look, I think that the same, the, the, the, the fundamentals are the same. Uh, the noise that he makes helps him in the primary. It helps, it hurts him more broadly. Trump is never less popular than when he is in people's faces. That is always true. He doesn't wear well. No, he's best in small doses, as you might say.

So I don't know. I think that Trump being off of social media has been a mixed bag. It's allowed people to forget how heinous he is while he continues to maintain his control over vast swaths of the Republican machine. So, you know, I don't know. It also I think one of you pointed out earlier it has pushed him into further extremist rabbit holes. Right. Because since there is all QAnon, it's all he's now. Yeah. Now he's truth and QAnon shit all the majority of his. Yeah. And there's just we're not seeing it as much. We're not hearing about it as much because he's truthing QAnon shit all the time. Like the majority of his retweets. Yeah. And there's just, we're not seeing it as much. We're not hearing about it as much because he's not getting the coverage.

But like, we'll see how this plays out in the Republican primary. Right? Like, if he doesn't win the Republican primary, who the fuck cares what he does? Right? Go do whatever you want. I hope to never see you again. But if he wins the Republican primary, then he's, you know, 40, 70,000 votes away from being president.

And he's back. And the more people are reminded about the aspects they find deplorable and horrible, the better a position we'll be in. And I think that is harder to do, harder to remind people of that when he's not in their faces. So Elon Musk has been baiting Trump to return and tweet again. He's, you know, trying to do, he's giving mass amnesty to all these suspended accounts. He's today picking a fight with Apple and Tim Cook because they're you know, there looks like there might not be advertising as much if at all on Twitter anymore. What what the hell is Elon Musk doing?

I genuinely don't know. I don't get it. Does anyone have a take on this for the last couple weeks? Because it is obviously like Jack Dorsey was a terribleo who like let the place languish for years and didn't like twitter today is well twitter pre elon was better than the 2016 version in terms of targeted harassment and just like tools to keep horrible people out of your life but like i just elon seems to think his job as ceo is just to tweet the most and like engage with every right wing troll and then like Stephen King every week or so. And I don't know what he's like, but there's a financial gravity here that's going to catch up to him.

He's got $13 billion of loans against the company. Yeah, I feel like you have to separate out Elon as a kind of whatever. Elon as a CEO and Elon as a public figure Elon as a public figure is baffling He has managed to convince a lot of smart people that he's stupid which is an achievement for someone who's Had as as much success as Elon Musk is convinced a lot of people that he's stupid So his public persona is awful and he's done a great deal of damage how people see him. As a CEO, I don't understand. The problem is when you're

building rockets and electric cars, you can be told that it's going to fail. You can tell all your critics to eat shit and then you can disappear for five years and you can come back with a rocket. You can come back with a car and say, look, see, I told you I could do it and I did it. With this, the public persona and the CEO are in conflict because you can't be what you you can't be the mayor of what you're describing as like a global town square while also its biggest troll. And you can't ask people to model best behavior and say you're going to build a utopia for free speech while tweeting conspiracy theories and heinous innuendo and engaging with some of the most

despicable people in our society. These things are in conflict. You can't be the mayor and the troll. I don't know what his business model is going to be. It seems like it's very, very difficult to find a way to turn Twitter profitable. They were already struggling before you added a ton of debt that requires service. But he can't do it if every step he makes, he's going to be alienating core users by being such a prick all the time and advertisers being such a prick all the time. He is in the customer service business now. And with Tesla, right? Like, if you like the car, that's great and i do and look

alissa milano you can give up your tesla great job mine self drove to the office it was cool as hell i turned it on in my house it took me all the way to work so that's the product that he sold you and you're a happy customer i am the product he's selling now is a good experience on twitter which the advertisers are no longer having right because there's not brand safety there for them no and increasingly users aren't having a good time either and he's not used to the reason he can't deliver good customer service is because he has been an arrogant ceo surrounded by sycophants who have never told him no right he's got like a bunch of yes and that's how he ran tesla and and the reason

he could do that is because of what you said love it is because when it comes to science he's a genius right and so he he's gotten by by being a genius and inventing shit and having a bunch of people around him that he can treat kind of shittily and it doesn't really matter the kind of that and there's a there's a treat very poorly and it doesn't really matter because he's the boss and he's a genius well and can't do that here and there's there is a there's a way in which having terrible people skills can be a feature when you're saying to a bunch of people i have a vision i think this is possible some people say it's impossible i think this is possible. Some people say it's impossible. I think this thing that I'm aiming us towards is possible. And there's a kind of there that requires like an ability to

synthesize a lot of information, but also the ability to bear a lot of people being fucking pissed at you while you set a crazy target. This this his public persona and his kind of way of treating people is in conflict. And the fact that nobody around him can say, hey, man, if you want Twitter to be a place people want to come, why don't you model some good behavior? But again, like he's a guy who understands space. I keep coming back to like the financial gravity. $13 billion of loans from these big banks against Twitter. By the way, these banks are offloading these loans at 60 cents on the dollar because they have so little faith in them being repaid.

He sold billions of dollars worth of Tesla shares to buy a personal stake in the company. He paid taxes on that that he will never get back. He has investors who have billions at stake. They've lost all these advertisers. The Twitter blue rollout was hilarious for a week, but also a disaster. I'm just wondering, like, at some point, his second biggest, the second biggest shareholder, the Saudis, come to him. They'd say, like, hey, we have a way of dealing with people who lose us a lot of money. You know, come to our consulate. You know what I mean? Like, someone's going to put some leverage on him. So I asked this question to Nilay Patel when I interviewed him for Offline about the financials there because I'm like, maybe.

So they're going to bring back Twitter Blue, Twitter Verified, whatever. He's going to launch it again. He thinks 50% of the revenue could be subscription. Yeah, so that's what I'm saying. So I thought maybe there's math where he makes up for the lost advertiser revenue with the subscription. But no, if you're $8 a pop, how many people are going to have to sign up for that way too many many and it cannibalizes advertisers considering how he's treating everyone servicing the debt costs you a billion dollars i think i think to your point that he's that he's twitter's biggest troll

twitter has also broken his brain yeah in a way like he is also a victim of twitter and so he is in this feedback loop he is he is trapped in twitter replying all day he thinks that he's doing great because that's what he's getting back on twitter he's fighting he's fighting his villains and all of his allies are you know he he's just his his mind is warped by this yeah there's um the other just uh he's also hurt a ton of people like we like he because of his takeover and his mismanagement of it like thousands of people have lost their jobs he's tried to make an example of people he's claiming this is going to be a bastion of free speech but then people that work at twitter that

were critical of him suddenly find themselves fired people who are on uh visas that require them to have jobs stayed because he took me and like agreed to stay and would have had a better offer if they had left earlier than only to be summarily fired because of the kind of the kind of frenetic kind of chaotic way in which is done. Like he's hurting a lot of people as he does this. And like all of that is meaning not only does Twitter not have a business model, like who knows how Twitter like this is a jury rigged fucking thing. The fail whale was a big deal for a while. Twitter was barely working for a really long time. The thing survived despite itself.

Like who knows what's going on, like beneath the hood of this organization where half the people with institutional knowledge were just frog marched out of the building. There are like historic protests happening across China right now. And the Chinese government is able to bury news about it by dumping random like porn and bots and just like crap on Twitter because all the teams that would help sort of

keep that stuff out of there and help surface the real news were gone. Yeah. It's, anyway, if anything happens to Twitter, you can find me.

I mean, just remember, with Elon, you can find me nowhere. Elon's hit rate is not that good. Like SpaceX, Tesla, incredible,

amazing accomplishments. But like the Boring Company, what's that up to? Hyperloop, how'd that go? All the features he launches from Tesla. Like the guy just like announces a lot of shit and half the time he's full of shit and people kind of move on from it. Managing complex human interaction.

Not a single one. Well, it's also like, it even just, it was doomed from the start because he has clearly like kind of glommed onto this. Like it's a global town square and like analogies are very dangerous because they're metaphors and they trick you into thinking certain things are more important than other things and like this metaphor that what we're all doing is meeting together in a town square is not real it's not true it's never been it's not largest leveraged buyout in history it It's a fucking chat room. Good luck. All right, so your mass gen handle is...

Yeah. Have you tooted today yet? No toots for me, sir. Tooting? This is Kanye walking into Mar-a-Lago. There he is. Walking in. Everyone's looking around.

The maitre d', the concierge. Who is that? When we come back, Raphael Warnock gives us his take on last night's episode of White Lotus. No spoilers. Joining me now, he is the senator from Georgia, where voting has already begun in a runoff election that will determine whether or not we hold this seat, increase the Democratic majority and never have to say Senator Herschel Walker. Senator Raphael Warnock, welcome to the pod. Great to be here with you.

So, you know, we're in this runoff race. It was an incredibly close election. But that means a lot of people went into that voting booth, having paid attention, followed the news, having come to understand the difference, the incredible difference between you and your opponent, not just on policy, but on character, on integrity, on who you are as people. And a bunch of those people may have had misgivings, but they still went into the voting booth and decided to vote Republican. In this home stretch of the runoff, how does character matter in the argument that you're making? And how do you view this as,

what is the importance of character in this closing week? as what is the importance of character in this sort of in this closing week? It matters a great deal. And this race is about character. And it's also about competence. It's about who's ready and who's fit. And on both of those fronts, the differences could not be more stark and more obvious between me and my opponent. Herschel Walker is manifestly unprepared to serve in the United States Senate, unfit to represent 11 million people for six years. And that is the case that we intend to prosecute over the next few days. I'm proud of my lifelong commitment to service. You know, I didn't set out to be in politics. I'm a pastor. And it's really my work over the years focused on health care, which I

believe is a moral calling and a human right, focused on a livable wage for workers, standing up for ordinary people. This run for the Senate, serving in the Senate, now running for re-election is an extension of that lifelong project. I think part of what Georgians are asking themselves is what has Herschel Walker's life been about? I think a clear indication of what someone will do in office is what they were doing before they ever served or ran. And we have no evidence at all that Herschel Walker has spent any time thinking about how to help veterans, how to make healthcare more accessible. So speaking of character deficits, Donald Trump announces he's running for president.

Your campaign puts out an ad basically saying, stop Hershel Walker. You can stop Donald Trump. basically saying, stop Herschel Walker, you can stop Donald Trump. Why do you view that as an important part of the case you're making in this week? What does this tell us about how some of these swing voters are thinking about Trump, thinking about Walker, thinking about this race? Well, what we all know about Donald Trump is that he is well practiced and quite skilled in the politics of division. He knows how to stir up the fault lines that have been a part of our complicated and wonderful American story for a long time, for his short-term political gain. And Herschel Walker is his acolyte. Neither of them has a vision for the people of Georgia, that's for sure. I'm focused on representing the people of Georgia. And so I'm glad on that score that I was able to cap the cost of insulin to no more than $35

of out-of-pocket costs for folks on Medicare. I think I can get that done for folks on private insurance as well. After all, there are 20 states that already cap the cost of insulin. A lot of them are red states. And so I think the only reason we didn't get it done back in August is politics, quite frankly. The closer we got to the election, folks are doing the political calculus. In fact, I had someone, a Republican senator who was going to work with me on the insulin cap. And all of a sudden he got quiet after indicating an interest. And I asked him, hey, buddy, what happened? He said, winked at me, said, I'll see you after the election.

And, you know, it's sad, but that's kind of how too often that's the way Washington works. And it turns people off from politics. I tolerate politics because every now and then you're still able to get a big win. And I think there's a bipartisan path to getting an insulin cap for folks not only on Medicare, but people with private insurance. You need somebody who knows how to work on both sides of the aisle. I've demonstrated I know how to do that. Hershel Walker hasn't demonstrated any understanding of the issue. So when we were last in a Georgia runoff, control of the Senate was at stake and it motivated people not just in Georgia, but across the country to do everything they could to get you and Senator Ossoff over the finish line. How are you describing the stakes now? I think there's a lot of people who thought,

oh, now that the Democrats have the Senate majority, Republicans aren't going to turn out for this Walker guy. We've got this thing in the bag. We don't have to worry about it. How do we light a fire under Democrats to understand how important this is? What's the argument you're making and how do you deal with that complacency? It's hard to overstate how important it is, how urgent it is for folks to show up. Now, I'm heartened by the early vote turnout that we're seeing so far, but we cannot afford to let up on the gas, not even for a moment. We should all know in the world of a post-Trump election that we can wake up in this country to the unthinkable if we don't show up. So we need people all across Georgia to show up. This election is not about short-term thinking.

The problem is that people too often have very short-term thinking on this issue. This is about who's going to represent 11 million Georgians for six years. So it's not even just about this Congress. Senators serve a nice little term, six years. That's pretty good. You're going to go through three cycles, if you will. And so I think that's very important. Who are you going to have represent you? And the issues are urgent. The stakes are high. And in my case, the differences are so stark that I really do think that people who are looking at this honestly, if we just be honest with ourselves, know that my race, my race is not about the difference

between Republican and Democrat. It's not about right and left. This is about right and wrong. This is about what's the basic requirement to represent people in the United States Senate. It's a special thing for your neighbors to say, when we take stock of our families and when we consider the future of our children, and as we take care of our aging parents, we trust you. We trust our families in your hands to do the right thing.

Can you honestly say that about Herschel Walker? So, you know, look, you may not know this, but you and I have a very personal email relationship you've emailed me quite a bit even today here are some of the things you've said to me you said please don't scroll away please read this uh i'll keep this short john which i'll appreciate it i'll be blunt let me explain and i'm humbly asking for your help and these have all meant the world to me uh uh so thank you for reaching out so frequently. I sat and I thought of you at 5 a.m. this morning and I sat down and I wrote you that email, John. Yeah, and I get that.

And the personal touch is what means the most about it. But look, a lot of people listening to this are engaged. They're paying attention. They've donated. They're getting texts. They've been getting emails. They've been doing that for months. You've emailed them a few times while I've issued this sentence. What does money do in this last week? What does it help you get done? So people understand that they're not just being asked because money is better than not having money. No, it's a great question. And I want to say to that person who just got an email, even while you and I've been talking, that the resources that they send for this runoff are focused on getting out to vote. We all know, sadly, from elections, that it's not always the best person who wins. It's the person who manages to get their people out to vote, the folks who

believe in them and believe in their vision. And so we can't take anything for granted. We're pulling out all the stops. We're leaving it all on the field because there's so much at stake. You know, I was thinking about this. Obviously, I want to serve. After all, my name has been on the ballot five times in less than two years for the doggone job. This is the fifth time George has got a chance to vote for me. So clearly, I want to do this work. And it really is an extension of my lifelong commitment to service. I don't personally need, I don't, I got, I'm a pastor and I was loving doing that work. I still lead my church. I'm doing this because of that, that commitment, but also, you know, I'm not just a candidate. I'm not just a Senator. I'm also a citizen. And I have to say,

I can't have Herschel Walker representing my mother or my children. It matters. It matters. And I think integrity matters. I think truth-telling matters. I think character matters. And here's a man who can't even tell us the truth about the basic facts of his life. Claimed to have been a police officer. He's not. Claimed to work for the FBI. He did not. Claimed to be valedictorian of his class. He was not. Claimed to work for the FBI, he did not. Claimed to be valedictorian of his class, he was not. Claimed to have graduated from the University of Georgia, did not. Claimed to have started a not-for-profit that helps veterans. As it turns out, he didn't start it. It's not a not-for-profit. And rather than helping veterans, it literally exploited veterans, and they had to be called to task for that. Is that somebody you want to trust

with the office of the United States Senate? I think not. And I'm asking you not just as a candidate, I'm asking you as a citizen who cares about who represents my mother and my children, let's show up and let's make sure that we secure the future for our children. So, you know, Ira, when you won the runoff in 2021, it was this incredible moment. We had managed to do this very difficult feat of winning the majority in the Senate. You won, Senator Ossoff won, first black senator since Reconstruction, first Jewish senator. And that was January 5th.

Yeah. And the feeling was short-lived. Yeah. Because we wake up January 6th and all of a sudden we're confronted by something ugly. How did that shape how you approach these years in the job? And, you know, after we just had this midterm where I think a lot of people feel like in a number of very important races, we kept anti-democratic, authoritarian minded people out of some very key jobs.

How do you think about the fight for democracy in how you approach the job being a senator? Well, it's a potent and scary reminder that democracy really is on the ballot. And, you know, who would have thought that we would be here? But as you point out, Georgia did an amazing thing, elected its first African-American senator and its first Jewish senator in one fell swoop at a moment when there were those forces still at work trying to divide us. driven by racist and anti-Semitic and xenophobic tropes and sentiments. And therein, in 24 hours, January 5th and January 6th, you see the two sides of our beloved, beautiful, and complicated reality as Americans. I'm honored that I'm a part of the newest generation of Americans who gets to decide which way we're going to go. Because if we're honest, both of those days say something about who we are.

We don't get to say that January 6th is not who we are. It happened and it is who we are. In fact, it's part of who we've always been, if we're honest. But the good news is you can look at me and say that January 5th is also who we are, a kid who grew up in public housing, first college graduate in my very large family. And I sit in the United States Senate. This is an amazing country. And we're standing here, I think, at a crossroads. And we have to decide if we're going to be the America of January 5th or the America of January 6th. I choose January 5th. I choose to push us closer towards our grand American

covenant, E Pluribus Unum, out of many one. I choose the U.S., if you will. I choose us. And that's why I'm putting myself through the craziness of running for the United States Senate, because I do think it's worth it. I think our children are worth it. I think our veterans are worth it. I think our mothers and fathers are worth it. And I'd be deeply honored to represent the people for six more years. Last question. It is Monday. Thanksgiving was Thursday. How much time is left for the food in the fridge? When do we give up? Oh, I gave up on that food a long time ago.

Do you think it's too late? Can I not eat it today? What's today, Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, five too long? You know, some people are better at that than me. Saturday, Sunday, five too long? You know, some people are better at that than me. You know, turkey sandwich, turkey casserole, turkey hash. Look, I'm turkey.

All right. Well, Senator, thank you so much for being here. And everybody, do everything you can to support Senator Warnock in this last week. And, you know, good luck in the home stretch. Thanks for being here. Thank you, brother.

Keep the faith. All right, we're back before we go. Chief take officer, Elijah Cohn is here and he's back for another round. I don't see an apron. Of Take Appreciator. Yeah, where's your Bake Appreciator apron, Elijah? The merch team needs to send it over to me.

I mean, I am, in fact, a Bake Appreciator. Shots fired. So. Under the bus. How was your honeymoon? It was fantastic. Thank you for asking. But I'm very jet lagged and, like, brain fogged

because of Z-Quil right now, trying to get back on the same page. So get ready for that throughout this segment. Okay. That's exciting. Great. That's something to look forward to. Let's do it.

You take it away. Yeah. Enjoy. Okay. Let's do it. Thanksgiving is over, but I have a couple of leftover takes for you guys to feast on. I'll explain how this game works for

people who haven't heard this segment in the past i'll share these takes with you the producers have seen them john john and tommy have not they'll react and then rate them on a scale of one to four politicos with four being the worst are you guys ready to feast yeah let's feast all right let's get started this first one needs a little bit of setup it's so stupid i might not like get the explanation fully right here but joe biden's granddaughter naomi biden got married uh last week in the ceremony at the white house the ceremony was closed to the press but the bidenens invited Vogue to do a photo shoot before the wedding, which sent the press corps into a tizzy because they're like, why didn't you let us in to cover the wedding? You let Vogue in, but they're like, no, Vogue is just there for the photo shoot.

That led us to this tweet. Quote, I spent four years covering the Trump White House and two years covering the Biden White House. What's fascinating is that they both lie, albeit in the different ways. Have you not seen the Trump team was shameless, whereas Biden is too cute by half. Oh, that's who wrote it, man. That is on. I haven't seen that. That is unbelievable. That is unbelievable. Do you know who it is? I don't know who it is, I haven't seen that. That is unbelievable. That is unbelievable. Do you know who it is? I don't know who it is.

I don't know who it is. You know who it is. Yeah, I do. And you're going to feel bad in a second. It was Ashley Barker, The Washington Post. Come on. Four Pinocchio. Sorry, Ashley.

That's four. I like you. That's four. I think she regrets her tweets. End of sentence. In fairness to Ashley, I thought it was going to be someone much worse. Yeah, no, it's like, I mean, look, first of all, the Biden White House obviously did not owe any invitations to reporters. Even if they wanted to invite Vogue, that would have been fine, too.

They told the reporters that Vogue wasn't going to be present at the wedding. They weren't. They got like a day before thing. They just decided not to tell reporters that. Whatever. You could dig them for that. Be like, oh, you should have told us they got something the day before. But to say that you got...

It's a tough tweet. It's a tough tweet. I think it seems to me... Look, I dug in like an inch deep and then refused to dig further on this topic. It seemed like maybe reporters thought that because Vogue got those photos that they were present at the wedding and thus they'd been lied to when the reality is much more complicated. My take on this is honestly, I think that if you're going to host a wedding at the White House, it's completely fair and reasonable for the white house press corps to want access um it doesn't mean you have to give it to them but they don't have to be happy about it i think comparing that to the lies of the trump administration is obviously not remotely um

close to the same thing no and i also like it's you can have a closed press family event at the white house and whether or not vogue takes pictures of it doesn't change the fact that the event was closed press. I don't really get that controversy. Just an easier. You can complain about the Biden White House not giving you access without comparing. Yeah. Without comparing it to the Trump lies. You can do that. It's a miss. yeah, comparison made,

not fully thought through in a moment of peak that I think undercut a genuine, understandable concern of being like, hey, there's not often White House weddings, and we want to cover it, because that's our job. Therefore, we want to cover it, so we're going to be annoying about it. Love it. Can you imagine the ratio? I have some numbers here, John. I'm glad you

brought that up. Come on. Let me do that. Ratios. Look, here's the thing can we just i don't want to hear about the ratio i am so sick of forget this it is the ratio thing uh prepare for the ratio a broader point though like to your ashley parker is a good person she's a good reporter yeah everyone shut up calm down you don't have to be the 10 000th person to dunk on her i say ironically i can't have no more dunking about000th person to dunk on her, I say ironically. I can't.

No more dunking. This is why if Elon destroys Twitter it won't be so bad because this kind of shit doesn't fly on Mastodon. It doesn't get you the R2s.

All I'll say is when... It doesn't R2t. When Andy Gardner Bernstein sent me this tweet, she slapped it and said, check out the ratio on this baby. She slapped it and said, check out the ratio on this baby.

We are all creatures of an environment. There's no one, I think, more ready to jump to Mastodon than producer Andy. She's born to toot. She's over there tooting. It's Mueller time. What else you got, Elijah right are we just all agreeing full full i'll give it three it's i think it's four for me it's four

i was shocked i didn't hurt it i missed this i skipped this whole scandal over the break i can't avoid it from the context in the person i think it's three yeah michael said that one hurt we We do like Ashley Parker. We do. Okay. Well, this next one is from Politico itself. A piece titled, Republicans paid a price for overturning Roe. It may have been worth it. So this piece makes an argument that it was worth it for Republicans to have underperformed in the midterms because they achieved a big policy goal with overturning Roe. It notes that Democrats have paid a similar price in midterms in the past. Here are the examples from the piece.

Quote, in enacting the Affordable Care Act, Obama and congressional Democrats were making good. Yeah. Wait for the next example. We're making good on something that had been a party goal for decades. Similarly, the civil rights movement was not particularly popular among the bulk of americans when democrats pushed civil rights bills in the 1960s guys who wrote it i have no idea i have no idea uh

john harris what what what no what publication was politico politico i was in the politico magazine so oh the magazine rich lowry i've never heard of this guy it's not rich lowry uh uh it's not i've been zero political zero politicos i i respect that it's actually like that is what they if they're this is the political goal they wanted this horrible fucking goal is something they've been working hard to achieve despite the fact that they pay a political price. Sure. Yeah.

That's where I am too. I think the only thing I disagree with is that it, um, like that it will wear well over time. Like the difference with the affordable characters, you could say like, okay, maybe 10 years from now when it's fully implemented,

it's going to be more popular. I kind of think this is a, this is where we are on public opinion over uh yeah no chance it wears well over time right yeah but other than that i would say it's a it's a fair comparison give us the name seth maskett is uh no idea poly sci guy from university of denver like the why this piece was submitted is one like comparing overturning road of the the Civil Rights Movement, like, go fuck yourself. But then also, these are things that the Affordable Care Act and Civil Rights Movement passed through Congress, where Roe was passed through this stolen Supreme Court seat gross mechanism.

That's why it got submitted. I'm just sharing my thought process here. That's fair. No, you know what? No, look, The legislative process versus Supreme Court. Some of these have to get zero politicized? Yeah, like the fact that this person doesn't understand the distinction between expanding

access to healthcare and projecting fundamental human rights with removing fundamental human rights is why he's wrong. But I do appreciate that Republicans fought for a very long time to do this, and they won. The ones that don't care about paying a political price, or at least being more I do appreciate that Republicans fought for a very long time to do this and they won and they,

you know, and they'll pay and they don't, if the ones that don't pay a political, don't care about paying a political price, or at least being more honest about the political damage they did to themselves to achieve this end. So, you know, zero politicals and they can go fuck themselves. There you go. That's my, that's my take. All right. Well, let's move on. This last one is a tweet. The Senate is about to move forward with the Respect for Marriage Act, codifying protections for same-sex marriage. And here is the take. Quote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that thanks to America's low birth rate,

we need to amnesty 11 million illegal immigrants. I know this one. Meanwhile, the Senate passed a bill enthroning same-sex marriage definitionally into federal law. These facts are not disconnected. The death of marriage is a key component in the withering of Western civilization. Wait.

Who said it? So people would be procreating if not for all this gay marriage? Is that the point? It sounds like that. How many kids does this guy think I'm going have if i marry a woman it's gonna be zero what was the publication that's a tweet it was a tweet and if i told you he also wrote this up sorry spoiler it's a he he also wrote this up but if i told you the publication it would be a spoiler

oh is it ben shapiro yes it is congrats yes yeah ben no not no connection there pal what oh you know ben uh does he kanye attacked him yeah i gotta say well where's the don't come out of my mouth often credit to ben shapiro he called out kanye's anti-semitism and he called out trump's anti-semitemitism by name and was a harsh critic now this is what we do on the Thursday pod sometimes are we just going to cut credit to Ben Shapiro just put that out as a clip yeah clip it

Tommy's saying credit to Ben Shapiro clip it hey Ben okay you seem to understand that this is anti-Semitic from these people and that they're bigoted on these issues. Can you take a step back and maybe look at some of the other things they're saying and figure out why you're not so offended by the rest of it? Or is it pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants to low birth rates? I know. No, I get what they're trying to do here.

When we allowed gay people to enter into marriage contracts, we disassociated marriage from procreation. We disassociated marriage from procreation. And so that for everyone now, marriage isn't doing what it's supposed to do, which is get people to stick together, even if they fucking hate each other, to have seven kids. And as a result, we need to replace people with immigrants. Because once the gays got married, you people stopped making babies. We got to replace them with immigrants. Why? What is going on?

I think they're talking about a worker. I mean, it's just convoluted. None of it makes sense. They're very stupid people. None of it makes sense. It's completely ahistorical. Facts don't care about your feelings, Ben. Anyway, I think that gets a full playbook. Yeah, that's pretty good.

That's a full playbook. I mean, it's just nonsensical is what it really is. Yeah. It didn't get my ire up. I think it was pretty good. That's a full boy book. I mean, it's just nonsensical is what it really is. Yeah. It didn't get my, it didn't get my ire up. I think it was pretty stupid. Anyway, that's why,

that's our, that's why we have our rating system. That's why we have our rating system. We have it three. That was the risk. I knew that the Naomi Biden one was really going to get that, the happiest reaction here. Love it has Ashley Parker worse than Ben Shapiro.

That's what. Take wise, take wise. Just in the kind of the, in the, in the politico nature, the politico qualities. Not in the nature of the take itself.

Yeah. I'm still getting tweets about having Maggie Haberman on. This is going to be a whole... You know what? Again, another reason that this thing can all burn to the fucking ground.

I do find it very frustrating that people... The ire people have for Maggie Haberman is absolutely unhinged. Yeah, sometimes our friends on the left view Twitter as a vehicle to primarily attack journalists in the mainstream media and not see that that's what Trump uses it for, too. You know what that gets?

A couple politicos. A couple politicos. Elijah Cohn, thanks for another round of Take Appreciator. Always a pleasure, guys. Next time, don't show your face on this video without that apron on. Yeah, thank you. All right, and thanks to Senator Raphael Warnock for joining us today. We'll talk to you soon. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.

Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producers are Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Sandy Gerrard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim,

and Amelia Montuth. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash podsaveamerica.