Pod Save America - "Kevin Can Wait.”

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

The House descends into chaos as Kevin McCarthy fails to win the race for speaker on the first three ballots, Republicans prepare to swear in a new member of Congress who made up his entire life story, and the last Congress ends by making Donald Trump's tax returns public and asking the Department of Justice to charge him with multiple crimes. And later, Jon, Jon, and Tommy kick off the new year with 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 Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Happy New Year, guys. We're back. Welcome back, Tommy. Thank you. It's Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Happy New Year, guys. We're back. Welcome back, Tommy. Thank you. It's great to be here. I missed you guys. You have a child.

I do. She's very cute. She eats a lot. She poops a lot. So far, so good. That's the whole thing. There you go. But enough about Lovett. Let's get to the news. We have a lot of news. Let's get to the news. On today's show, the House descends into chaos

as Kevin McCarthy fails to win the race for Speaker on the first and second ballot. Republicans swear in a new member of Congress who made up his entire life story. And the last Congress ends by making Donald Trump's tax returns public and asking the Department of Justice to charge him with multiple crimes. And later, we'll kick off the new year with a round of Take Appreciator. But first, the Crooked store is having a post-holiday sale.

Shop bestsellers and more and get up to 75% off. Head to crooked.com slash store to shop. And also, don't miss the season finale of Radio Lingo, the newest podcast from Crooked and Duolingo. In this week's episode, host Ahmed Ali Akbar takes you on a journey through the world of secret and invented languages. Listen to new episodes of Radio Lingo today, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get to the news.

For the first time in a century, the House of Representatives failed to elect a speaker on the first ballot and the second ballot, thanks to a small group of right-wing extremists who accurately believe that Kevin McCarthy is an empty suit who can't be trusted. So absolutely nothing can get done in the House until at least 218 of the 222 Republicans agree on a speaker. They can't even swear in the new Congress. swear in the new Congress. Here's a clip of anti-McCarthy Congressman Matt Gaetz and pro-McCarthy Congressman Dan Crenshaw that gives you a flavor of the substantive ideological debate that's splitting the Republican Party right now. If you want to drain the swamp, you cannot put the biggest alligator in charge of the exercise. I'm a Florida man and I know of what I speak.

We will not vote for anyone else but McCarthy. These people think they're stubborn when we're stubborn. If they think they're not going to get the committees, then obviously they won't. But it's going to be so much worse than that. You know, they are enemies now. They have made it clear that they prefer a Democrat agenda than a Republican one. Just wonderful. Off to a really great start. There was some member described to CNN that this is like a game of chicken, but both sides have ripped off the steering wheel. That is so good. So we are recording this at 3.30 Eastern time on Tuesday. We pushed the recording time a little bit later because we wanted to see what would happen in the second ballot.

So there were 19 Republicans who did not vote for Kevin McCarthy in the first ballot. Those same 19 didn't vote for McCarthy in the second ballot. Only in the second ballot, they all voted for Jim Jordan, who was nominated to be speaker by Matt Gaetz after he gave a speech, Jim Jordan, in favor of Kevin McCarthy. That's where we are right now. And right before we were recording, we said, all right, let's watch the second vote. And Andy, our producer was like, well, how long is that

going to be? And it was like, well, we don't know, Andy. There hasn't been one in 100 years. 100 years. And between 1945 and 1995, not a single member voted for anyone other than their party's nominee on that first ballot. So this is incredibly unprecedented. So let's talk about what's going on here. McCarthy has spent the last few weeks, while we've all been gone, trying to win over these holdouts, specifically the five Republicans who announced that they were going to vote no, no matter what. But then there was an additional nine that sent a letter the other night saying that the concessions weren't enough. And there's a few others that popped up today. What did McCarthy offer these holdouts and why hasn't anything worked just yet? that he would never say yes to a couple of weeks ago, one of which is this ability for Republicans to vacate the chair,

which is basically redo the speaker vote at any time. Now, originally, McCarthy said he obviously couldn't do this. Now he's agreed to do it as long as any five Republican yahoos at any time say they'd like to have a vote on a new speaker. There are obviously five votes at any time to remove him from speaker. There are 19 people who don't want to make him speaker now. So he's basically conceded to that in full. But then this very, very UK parliament is doing improv. And he conceded on a whole bunch of other things was actually hard this morning to figure out what he hasn't conceded to. And then you go dig into the details. And basically, this group of Republicans has said, we want to know before this vote that you're going to basically put each and every one of us in charge of each and every subcommittee that we're interested in. They wanted a budget bigger than the January 6th committees and their own legal entity to sue the Biden administration. I didn't understand what that meant. I have no idea what it means. What is a legal entity? I was hoping that no one would ask more than just

what legal entity is because I couldn't understand what that means. is it a legal entity i was hoping that no one would ask more than just what legal entity fair enough because i couldn't understand what google it listener it's but i think this goes like brendan buck who uh used to work for paul ryan has an op-ed in the new york times today and bayner where he's in bayner right sorry uh who where he said um the embarrassment is the point yeah and i do think that speaks to like they're just making up demands at this point they don't want because he conceded to everything and then they just made up a new set of demands. The no was they were always working hard to get to now. The more pedestrian things are defunding. He will allow these legislative terrorists, as John Boehner once called them, to defund various parts of the executive branch they don't like.

He's going to get rid of the mags outside the House chamber because nothing violence happened in the Capitol lately. Getting rid of the fines for wearing masks. He said he promised to put conservatives on important committees, get rid of proxy voting, virtual committee work in love. Like you're saying, the big thing is this motion to vacate, but he already completely caved on that. And so he has nothing left to give is the point. There was also a promise for him to to stay at a primary so that the Republican campaign committee, congressional committee, doesn't support more establishment Republicans when there are right wing Yahoos running in a primary. They also said they wanted this church style commission to look at the federal government's

war on the American people, which he basically said he would do. He said he would do that, right. I mean, I think the point here is that McCarthy gave up everything he had to give without a guarantee for votes in return. And it seems like maybe that was his only option because the arguments against him aren't substantive. They just don't like him. Yeah. I don't think Matt Gaetz is like, I really want to be on X committee so I can deliver for my constituents. And it's just, it's deeply satisfying and ironic because Kevin McCarthy is the one who empowered and appeased these people for the last several years, basically since he was John Boehner's whip. Yeah. He has been empowering these people. And now it's, you know, it's like that, um, the, uh, the Twitter meme there about the, uh, the leopards.

Yeah. I didn't expect the leopard-eating party to eat my face. Yeah, that's right. But the face-eating party to eat my face. But the other piece of this, too, is it's like, this is something we've been talking about for years, that these people demand concessions, and McCarthy gives, and he gives, and he gives. Now, if these were people that really were interested

in getting the fruits of this negotiation, they'd vote yes on McCarthy at this point. They got a ton out of him. They did a negotiation. They got a ton out of him. There's still a no, right? And so there was some Republican member was quoted saying, I'm worried that these defectors are not acting in good faith. Oh, are you? Right. They never were. Is that your fear? That's their whole thing.

They never have been acting in good faith. They don't like Kevin McCarthy. And they're nuts. These people are not interested in governing in any way. They are only interested in becoming the next Tucker Carlson or Alex Jones. They're in it for themselves. They don't really care about governing. They don't have an ideological agenda. They don't have a policy agenda. They just like to embarrass the people they can embarrass, which in this case are, you know, what they consider establishment Republicans. Like McCarthy and his goons keep saying, you know, our strategy is you can't beat something with nothing. They don't have an alternative candidate who can get 218 votes. So our plan is to just stay on the floor for as many votes as it takes.

But like, these aren't rational people that they're dealing with. Look, you're arguing over a parking spot with a person that has nowhere to go after. You've got places to go after. They will stay all fucking day. They're the kind of people that will stay for that parking spot till they die. They will have family and friends bring them food. Smart lawyers never ask a question they don't know the answer to. Nancy Pelosi never scheduled a floor vote that she knew she couldn't wasn't going to win. Kevin McCarthy's just like YOLO. This is all I got. Let's go to the floor and try to wait it out. It's just like, what about these people make Kevin McCarthy or anyone think that they're

going to be amenable to political pressure. Right. That's what that's not what they're all about. And they're in like Trump plus 40 districts. They're safe. They can do whatever the fuck they want. And it's it is it is satisfying to watch the same dynamic that we've been decrying between the parties playing out within this party, because we've been saying this for years, that this is not a party acting in good faith. You can negotiate with them, but there's never going to be enough. They'll never get to yes on whatever issue you want and shouldn't it take more arm twisting and all this bullshit?

It's like, no, they can't even, the leaders of their own party can't even fucking get them in line here. It's funny. It's also a bit ironic too. It's like, why can't this group of insurrectionists get together and pick a leader? Don't they care about democracy?

Oh, no, famously not. Famously a tough group to wrangle so so people are probably wondering what happens now um and you know this could be resolved by the time you listen to this podcast but it seems unlikely this could end today they could figure out a consensus candidate or mccarthy could somehow get all let's see there's 19 no votes i think he can only afford to lose four so yeah he's 15 15 people by the end of today. Or a bunch of people could not show up for votes and reduce your win number. And that's sort of the X factor in all of this.

Yeah. Hopefully that doesn't happen. Or people vote present. That would be very stupid. Yeah. But it could theoretically go on for weeks. The House of Representatives cannot function. They can't even swear in new members until they have a speaker.

So this could last for who knows. Just because what happens is you pick a speaker, then you pass a set of rules. That set of rules is what allows the House to function. Otherwise, everything gets a full majority vote. This is just a group of people without a set of rules that pass everything they do by majority. That's why they're going to all these other ballots. That's why nothing can move forward without a speaker. That's why they're going to all these other ballots. That's why that's why nothing can move forward without a speaker.

So let's talk about who the possible McCarthy alternatives are. Wouldn't they all be worse? Worse is hard to define here. Potentially. Yeah. I do think that like I think that there is one threshold question about who the Republican speaker will be is some of them are people that will, for the sake of the country, allow a vote on a debt limit or budget bill to go through. Now, there are ways that a bipartisan group of Democrats and Republicans can get around that. But I do think that's important, right? Like who is who is the person that's going to relent and say, we got to raise the debt ceiling without, you know, putting the country into default. No one who can get Matt Gaetz and Scott Perry on board here. Yeah. I mean, well, so there's lots of talk about Steve Scalise as potentially being someone who could pull enough votes. I don't know. Like he once described himself to a reporter in Louisiana

as being like David Duke without the baggage. Honestly, that sounds perfect. So not a great quote. It sounds like a great fit. Yeah.gs from arizona is the stalking horse for the auntie mccarthy crowd i saw patrick mchenry from north carolina bandied about the nightmare scenario maybe is jim jordan the the anti-suit jacket zealot from ohio so that's who all the no votes have coalesced behind at least in the second ballot al Alyssa Farah, who was Trump communications director, left the White House. She had previously been a spokesperson for the House Freedom Caucus. Great resume. She was just saying that in 15, the plan was if Hillary Clinton won the presidency, what

was going to happen is the Freedom Caucus was going to challenge Paul Ryan and they were going to put up Jordan to challenge Ryan to show that Ryan couldn't get the votes. And also when they realized that Jordan could also not get the votes, then they were going to have a consensus conservative that they all got behind to be the new speaker. And back then it was going to be then House member Mike Pompeo, who of course went on to bigger and better things.

Deeply triggering. Basically, she said that because maybe Jordan is sort of the stalking horse now to show that McCarthy can't get the votes because it is hard to believe that all of these Republicans, the 18 House Republicans who are sitting in Biden districts, districts that Joe Biden won, are going to back Jim Jordan. Yeah, I find that hard, which makes you think that maybe Steve Scalise is the play here or Patrick McHenry or Elise Stefanik. Or the MAGA fantasy scenario is Donald Trump. Or the Aaron Sorkin West Wing fantasy scenario is some moderate unity candidate that the two sides come together and put forward.

A moderate like Liz Cheney? There you go. Yeah, it's hard to get. I would say it's hard to get towards the West Wing scenario when Jim Jordan didn't pick up any votes on this second round either. So McCarthy didn't didn't pick off anybody who was doing a protest vote, which is a very bad sign for him. But it's not like a lot of people jump for McCarthy. So it's pretty stuck. So I do still think like, look, we don't know what's going to happen. But like one scenario that is just sort of like less fun but still a real possibility is mccarthy

you know he puts on you know he gets down hands and knees and he crawls across broken glass and he puts in the ball gag and he takes the photos and he just gives in to whatever they want that's their kink their kink is making him suffer so that he just really goes through the whole thing but that's to me that speaks to a Scalise win here because Scalise is McCarthy's number two. He gives them everything McCarthy would have given them. Yeah. No more.

But because he's not Kevin McCarthy, he wins. The funniest thing is some of these people who are voting against McCarthy saying, it's not personal, it's not personal. Actually, it's the definition of personal. It is so personal. Because it has nothing to do with policies or rules or concessions or anything like that. It's purely that you think Kevin McCarthy is full of shit, which he is.

Which they're all saying on the record. And also it's a demonstration that if they make it someone who is any, whoever was the first person, if they defeat the first person, it has demonstrated their power, regardless of the difference between Scalise and McCarthy, who might ultimately look the same in terms of what their speakership would look like, which is probably true of any of these people that end up as being speaker, because this is the dynamic. What we are seeing now is the dynamic that will play out over the next two years. Well, that's a good, that brings us to the next topic here, which is like what, we can't predict what's going to happen right now, but what does all this say about both the Republican Party and how this house will operate over the next two years? Yeah, well, I think the simple biggest thing it says is that there are not 218 Republicans who want to govern.

That's it. politics, pass normal bills, conduct business, that they would much rather grind the Congress to a halt than let anything through if it is not purely and perfectly conforming to their ideological priors. And so what that means is for anything that we have to get through this Congress and through the Senate and to Joe Biden's desk, it is going to require a bipartisan group of people and a way of getting that vote to the floor, either with the speaker's permission or outside the speaker's permission to get things through. Otherwise, we will be at a situation in which these 19 people or 15 people or whatever number ultimately joins whatever fight have a gun to the head of the country, basically. And again, I think you talked

about their ideological priors. I think there's only one ideology that these people have, which is to own the libs. That's it. That's their policy. That's their ideology. There is no there's no more policy agenda or platform for the Republican Party. the fringes of the party, the Matt Gaetz, the Lauren Boebert of the world. And Kevin McCarthy, if he becomes speaker, he is weak and feckless and can't deliver. If someone else becomes speaker, he or she is probably in the same boat. And again, like John Boehner called this legislative terrorism. And I think that's what Joe Biden and the Democrats should expect going forward, which is starting with the debt ceiling vote. Well, so, Lovett, remember we talked to Brian Schatz right before the break and we asked him, like, what are you going to do here? What's the plan of the debt ceiling if we don't, if they didn't lift it during the lame duck? And he said the message is you get nothing.

Yeah. Right. That basically you don't negotiate with legislative terrorists. Yeah. And at the time I was like, oof, we're going to go with that. And it totally makes sense to me now because watching Kevin McCarthy offer all these concessions to people in his own party and just failing miserably at it. Now we're going to have the Democrats and Joe Biden offer concessions on the debt ceiling. No, I think that is the message. You get nothing. And then hopefully, Lovett, you were alluding to a way around sort of the debt ceiling debacle. I saw this in Playbook the other day that people close to McCarthy

were saying that there's maybe a get out of jail free card for him if he ends up being speaker, which is Democrats and a couple moderate Republicans or sensible Republicans, whatever you're going to call them, could file a discharge petition to force a vote, a clean vote on a clean debt ceiling on the House floor. And then McCarthy could say, I'm against this. A lot of Republicans could whine about it, but there would be a majority in the House to pass that bill. So like you, maybe there's hope that we could get the debt ceiling situation solved. But you're right. These people have no intention of governing. No, and you do see it in their demands.

You see it in what Jim Jordan said when he was nominating McCarthy, but also giving what seemed to be an inaugural address, which ultimately led Matt Gaetz to nominate Jim Jordan. Their ideology is around attention. They want attention. That's why they want the heads of these committees. They want attention to these issues. He was already conceding. The issue is them. Well, it's them. It's them. And it's there. It's Hunter Biden. It's the manufactured attack on the American

people by the IRS. It's their invented idea that the federal government is targeting people, all the nonsense that they whip up in the right wing echo chamber. But like, that's what they want. They want the ability to have that microphone. And he even conceded in that speech. He But like, that's what they want. They want the ability to have that microphone. And he even conceded in that speech. He's like, well, even though the things we pass will die in the Senate, we'll make them pay for that in 2024. So he's basically already saying the job of the next speaker is to pass a bunch of message bills, grind the government to a halt and then do investigations and get attention. That's why their demand is for these subcommittee chairs. They want they just want control over C-SPAN. They want control over these sort of television opportunities. Yeah. I mean, I think they're also doing the bidding of Donald Trump. I mean,

Trump could call Matt Gaetz, I think, and say, do vote for Kevin. Yeah, I was wondering about that. I mean, it is it is he's noticeably silent. He's been truthing up a storm today and nothing on this. Yeah. Yeah. He ejects himself in every single race, but not this one. And I don't think it's it is he's noticeably silent he's been truthing up a storm today and nothing on this yeah yeah he ejects himself in every single race but not this one and i don't think it's because he wants the job he just sort of like i don't think you trust mccarthy um for biden i mean i think you have to lift these clowns up and run against them i mean it folds to this broader narrative like joe

biden's the adult in the room he's more moderate than these kind of nutty fringe Republicans who are clearly controlling the Republican Party and run on that. These Republicans are giving Joe Biden and the Democrats the opportunity to run the same play they just ran in the midterms. We just had an election where swing state voters rejected MAGA grifters up and down the ballot because they thought they were too extreme. And now Republicans in Washington have essentially put them in charge of the House. Whether Kevin McCarthy pulls this out or not, they are in charge. There are 18 House Republicans in districts that Joe Biden won. Many of them are in New York and California, two states where the difference

between turnout in the midterm and a presidential turnout in 2024 will almost certainly help the Democrats. And if I'm the Democratic Party, if I'm Democrats running like Joe Biden or Democrats in the House and the Senate, I would run against the chaos and extremism of the Republican Party and use the House as the prime example of that over the next two years. And who knows what's going to happen over the next two years. But what's happening today going to happen over the next two years. But what's happening today, I think, does set the tone for exactly what we're going to see, whether it's the debt ceiling, whether it's the government funding, whether whatever it may, whether it's the investigations into Hunter Biden. These are not serious people.

I have obviously been half tuned into politics in between diaper changes. Why is Joe Biden doing something tomorrow with Mitch McConnell in Kentucky? So, you know, the infrastructure bill. I heard of that. Yeah, I remember that thing. So now they're finally doling out the money and they're finally,

you know, starting projects. Remember the Brent Spence bridge between... How could I forget that? Kentucky, you know... For the listeners at home,

tell them. We did so many events there. It was a broken bridge between Cincinnati and Kentucky, between the Ohio and Kentucky side. And you'd go there there and you talk about why infrastructure in the country was was broken and we need to fix it and rebuild and but then we'd never pass an infrastructure

bill sure sure so now the bridge is finally going to be fixed that's great i'm glad we could do that solid what a nice story so biden is going with sherrod and mcconnell and like the senators in congress and members of congress from ohio and from Ohio and Kentucky to do that tomorrow. So his plan, at least, you know, they have an on the nose metaphor, kind of an on the nose metaphor. Sure. So The New York Times said that this is part of their plan to sort of, you know, Biden's plan is to stay above the political fray. Let all this, you know, craziness in the House go on and show that, you know, he's been bipartisan and actually gotten a lot done. Cool. I like how McConnell's trying to do a big event today about himself, being like,

I'm the longest serving leader since Mark Mansfield. What? That's pretty good. So we'll see what happens there. We'll see what happens. Hey, watch the space. Listen here. All these predictions are wrong.

Speaker fiasco isn't the only embarrassment facing House Republicans. They're also about to swear in, again, if there ever is a speaker and they can start swearing in members, a new member of Congress who's been caught lying about his race, religion, heritage, education, employment, philanthropy, marital status, the circumstances of his mother's death, and even his name. George Santos, also known as Anthony DeVolder, won a Long Island seat in an upset so surprising that he escaped even the most basic scrutiny until the New York Times began to unravel his entire life story a few weeks ago.

Santos has admitted to some of his lies, is now being investigated by federal prosecutors, the Nassau County District Attorney, and Brazilian law enforcement for potential financial and campaign fraud. But as of today, he's about to be a member of Congress. So first of all, this guy flew too close to the sun. All right. He just went too far. You can't just too big of a scam.

You tried to pull too big of a scam, buddy. One thing that's really funny is he's literally sitting. First of all, Kevin McCarthy can't criticize this guy. He needs his fucking vote. And so he's sitting there voting for Kevin McCarthy in these speaker votes by himself. Nobody will go near him. He's basically like radioactive. But one one member of Congress walked up because I think he didn't recognize him, walked up and said, hi, I'm so and so. What's your name? Said, I'm George Santos. The guy just turned around and walked away. He's a pariah that can't go near him. So he's been avoiding, for that reason, he's been avoiding reporters. He's been avoiding people. And that's been ever since he went on Tucker Carlson's program. Huge mistake.

And was grilled by Tucker Carlson's understudy slash protege, Tulsi Gabbard. We have a clip. We can debate my resume and how I worked with firms such as Goldman and Citigroup. Is it debatable or is it just false? Is it debatable or is it just false? Is it debatable or is it just false? No, it's very debatable. No, it's not false at all. It's debatable.

I can sit down and explain to you what you can do in private equity, in capital intro, via servicing limited partners and general partners. And we can have this discussion that's going to go way above the American people's head. But that's not what I campaigned on I campaigned on delivering results for the American people this is not about settling scores and I think you just you just kind of highlighted I think my concern the concern that people at home have you're saying that this discussion will go way above the heads of the American people basically insulting their intelligence

so not only are you now that'sacking on these lies that you've told, but you're saying that you can't explain it in a way that your constituents would actually be able to understand. I can explain it in a way that these lies are debatable. If you give me the time, I can easily explain it for you. So just the full list. He claimed he earned a college degree. It wasn't true. Claimed to be Jewish.

Two college degrees. Two college degrees. Neither true. He didn't even attend either college. Claimed to be Jewish, but now said he meant he was like Jewish. Even Yahweh was like, I never heard of this guy. Didn't work at Citigroup. Didn't work at Goldman Sachs.

He claimed he had multiple coworkers die in the Pulse nightclub shooting. Made that up. I missed that one. He said he owned 13 properties doesn't own any any said he ran a pets charity that claimed to rescue thousands of dogs as far as we can tell the charity doesn't exist uh he also has said he was gay for a decade is he because he was married to a woman until 2019 his divorce wasn't finalized until 12 days before he announced i think we know that doesn't mean anything no but the part that so maybe look whatever whatever whatever journey he's on good for him

but the point is that he said he was openly gay for a decade but he was married to a woman until days before he filed he was evicted from his apartment for not being able to pay rent but then soon after he loans his campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars and that to me is the part that like he got a bunch of cash somewhere. Where is this money coming from? And he paid for rent at a house that he said his staff lived at. But apparently he was living there. And ultimately went from being broken and unable to pay rent to claiming a net worth of $11 million in a short span of time.

So that is where I think the police got to start looking. This is all great, but you missed my two favorites. Okay. Which was they came from his own responses on Twitter. One, someone said, what races are you? And he said, Caucasian and black. That's not true. And then he said that his mother died on 9-11.

But then years later in 2016 said, oh, she just died. Well, also that he also had someone claim that she was in the towers on 9-11, but didn't die. That's the... I think he has multiple claims about his mother's connection to 9-11. I think she did work in the towers and then died in like 2016. And he

tried to say it was because of exposure. Like soon after. But there's absolutely no evidence that was the case. So the question is, how did none of this come out during the campaign dropping balls yeah like new year's i mean this everybody dropped the ball here yeah i'd say that um like when a car crash when a car crashes one thing can go wrong when a plane crashes everything went wrong and it just seems like every single person dropped the ball media like like except the new york times new york times cover it but it was in december now i went back and looked the zimmerman i heard maggie saved it all for her book oh my god the people the people who were yelling at the new york times

when they read it it's like guys i don't they don't have time to cover literally everything anyway i do i do think that there's something something was happening during the campaign because the zimmerman campaign put out a statement after the time story came out like this doesn't come as a shock we were trying to draw attention to some of this. Like, OK, buddy, if you go back and look at what the DCCC was saying about Santos. So they had some of this in a research doc. They had some of it. You've seen some of it.

But I just think it's worth, like, the way that they were talking about Santos, they kind of treated him a bit more like a normal candidate. Basically, this was like the Maloney statement on their big kind of like oppo dump about him, which is that like he was from joining insurrectionists to overturning Roe. Santos has a radical record. He's not there. You know, like he was sort of going through the litany and then says Long Island voters will once again make sure George Santos fails in his effort to get to Congress. And they describe him as like his shady dealings. And so like on a litany of things, the fact that he was lying about some of his shady dealings was like part of the story. But they never hammered him. But as just a fraud, a straight up fraud.

Here's the thing. When you're in like a Democratic primary and you're trying to be subtle with your oppo hits, you pitch them to reporters, you try to launder them through news outlets, you get people to write things for you. When you're in a general election running against a guy who said, I went to NYU, but he didn't. I started a dog and cat rescue charity that doesn't exist. You just tweet it out. You know what I mean? Just put the story out yourself. And the fact that they didn't do that suggests to me, they didn't know the extent of it. They somehow hadn't found all of this. Like, listen, opposition researchers, self-researchersers they miss things i remember reverend

right i'm sure you guys too took us a little too long to remember it as a challenge back in 2008 but like this is just a catastrophic failure that's a good point because there's i've noticed quite a few stories that sort of folds this into a larger story about the decline of local news you know and they said that also true news day was like busy covering a lot of the other races on long island and and look george santos ran in 2020 lost by 12 points so there was on the republican side democratic side and media all thinking like no quantity this is not there's too many races to cover that are close this isn't one of them right but you're right like you you're the democratic campaign you have this stuff tweet it out he also said he was an early covid survivor i think he said he got there in march i actually didn't when i was reading about santos all of a sudden i

realized that we were introduced to george santos uh uh years ago because he was the gay guy at mar-a-lago that said the times covering his mass list attendance to a Mar-a-Lago party in January 2021 forced him and his fiance to leave their home and cause his fiance, a pharmacist, to lose their job. I don't remember this at all. I don't either. It was just in this story at the time. He was just like, oh, the media is attacking me and destroying my life. Probably wasn't true at all. He was probably making it all up. Incredible. But he was just, it was just at the time, he was just another random Trumpy congressional candidate. I do like describing him as a shady Wall Street bro does feel like the paint by numbers version

of how you attack this guy. And they never really flipped the switch to really hammer home that what they were finding that he was a fraud. Because even when they were putting out this oppo, they knew that he had made up this charity. Listen, as a card carrying bro, I think we're letting that,

the aperture on that term, just get too broad. You know what I mean? Just be like, it's a general matter. We just got to be more specific with our criticisms. Hashtag not all bros.

You know what I mean? Like, this guy is just a serial fabulous. Go with that. I don't even like the word. Fabulous is such a, it's the connotation. It's fun, man. He's amazing.

Even like the talented Mr. Ripley stuff, I'm like, yeah, don't... Yeah, the talented kind of... Yeah, exactly. Colors it. All right, so a handful of House Republicans have called on Santos to resign, but most have just refused

to say anything about him per usual. Nancy Pelosi seems to think Republicans could pay a political price for this. She told reporters that Santos is now, quote, tattooed on the party. Is she right? I mean, clearly they got bigger fish to fry today yeah santos is sitting there all alone you know making up more stories but kevin kerthey can't even win the speaker they got a lot of look if if they're tattooed by their

worst members there's like very little space left to get more tattoos they got marjorie taylor green they got lauren bobert they got jim jordan they're the worsted all over. Tattooing with Jewish space lasers all over the place already. A lot of Jewish space laser tattoos. Hard to do. They're certainly trying. House Democrat Richie Torres introduced a bill that would require candidates to disclose under oath their employment, educational, and military history. It's called the Stop Another Non-Truthful office seeker act anyone know what that stands for santos that's pretty good that's pretty great that's pretty great i do think what they do with

this guy will be another chapter in the republican party's uh just total disregard for facts and character and credibility i mean donald trump is i think still going to be the uh the lead case when you're prosecuting that one, but Santos adds to it. Yeah, exactly. I think this fills in the story that we've been trying to tell, right? You throw him in the bucket of

here's another kooky right-wing extremist who's not fit to govern, just like the rest of them in Congress. Yeah, I do. I also, I think the, there's a lot of, the math here, the money doesn't make sense.

And so there's criminality here that's going to be exposed. And the Brazil piece, too. Yeah, he's got problems back in Brazil, too. The party's got sociopaths, they've got criminals, they've got both. Yeah. Man, that's a lot. He's both. One sociopath Republicans won't be able to run away from so easily is Donald Trump.

Since our last episode, the January 6th committee voted unanimously to refer criminal charges against the former president to the Justice Department for four charges, obstructing an official proceeding, conspiring to defraud the United States, making false statements and inciting an insurrection. Democrats in Congress also released six years of Donald Trump's tax returns. Yeah, there's a deep cut. Tax returns. After the Supreme Court ruled that he could not keep them private. Anything noteworthy to you guys

in Trump's tax returns or the January 6th committee's final report? On the tax returns, I mean, I think it had been out there, but I don't know that it was totally confirmed that he had these foreign bank accounts. Like, he had to have had some sort of foreign

banking presence in places like the UK, I think, because he had the Scotland course. But the fact that he had an account in China is notable, is weird, I think is politically dangerous for him. That was part of the debate, one of the Biden-Trump debates, because it was a New York Times story. It came up, but then we confirmed it. And then I do like that Trump promised every year to donate his presidential salary to charity and then he just refused to do it in 2020 so i do think along the line of the um the secret chinese bank account which i just remember is just a fun yeah fun obama line in 2017 trump paid more in foreign taxes than he did in u.s taxes that was good america yeah i mean first he

just inherited all his money and then his business is running to us yeah yeah i do uh i feel like you put a lot more we had a little bit more information on some of the more like nefarious attacks avoiding strategies that trump uses uh making big loans to his children that they pay interest on which is really just a way of giving them a tax-free gift. Like these deductions that he's taken for not developing land, which is a pure fucking scam. He buys a bunch of land and then he says, I'm not putting a golf course on it. I can deduct that because if there were a golf course, I'd make a bunch of money. There are scams like that all over his tax return. And the only question is whether or not, actually not even specific to Donald Trump, whether the IRS as an institution cares about these big ticket violations versus

what they normally do, which is go after small time, kind of like kind of normal income taxpayers. But the whole point of the money we just gave the IRS was to make it possible for them to investigate and look at cases like this. The only reason he pays any taxes is because of the AMT. Yeah. Anything to close the book here on the January 6th committee, which is now wrapped up. So now we're just waiting for Merrick Garland to see what he does on the criminal referrals, even though they're sort of on their own track anyway.

But there was a final report released, and there was just an av avalanche of documents texts every evidence that the uh that the committee also released uh along with the report i would say for a committee that i think for the most part was masterful in using the media to get their information far and wide a news dump like three hours before christmas was like a huge fucking mistake it just like it's over like i think that the as a result I don't know what else could they have done uh got it out earlier yeah I mean something it was just a time like they yeah either I you know listen I I'm I have two minds about this

I agree with you I mean a lot of these may just be unfortunate it may just be an unfortunate what would it have I guess I yeah what would it have done if it was I mean it's the damage is it's all out there I mean they got it out there for history. I mean, we now know that like the will be wild tweet he wrote himself and that he ad-libbed a lot of the most incendiary stuff at the January 6th rally. More details about the fact that he himself was like wanted to go with them to the Capitol. Talk about walking there. Walking there. The Sorkin approach.

The Tony Ornato, you know, secret service thing. That was that's all the color we needed on that. Well, I think we were pretty clear. I think I think what I took away from the final release is the January committee's report was the friends we made along the way. It was it was what we got out of these national hearings and the attention it brought to it before the midterms. I think it's good to put all this stuff out there for history, for reporters to comb through. I mean, look, the whole process shows you that obstruction of justice is frustratingly effective. You know, like Dan Scavino just refused to talk and he will not be prosecuted. And I'm sure that

guy could have filled in a lot of holes, a lot of people that I don't recall and just kind of lied their way through it. But we did like some loops were closed, like Trump does the call with Brad Raffensperger where he asked for just a few more votes. And then he jumps on a call with Rudy Giuliani, then another one with Mark Meadows, another one with Steve Bannon. So like the closed circle of who he was really collaborating with on that georgia approach becomes clearer because of these this release i don't know you have hope hicks whining about her image and becoming unemployable like a little anecdotes that live with this i don't think anything i mean i don't think they released anything that was more damning than information that we already knew i think there was some fun color like there you know trump wanted a trademark rigged election right and then the

hicks the hicks ivanka chief of staff stuff was great these texts between hope hicks and ivanka's chief of staff carly kloss supermodel who uh is married to josh kushner jared's brother she tweeted during the insurrection that trump's response was anti-american and so ivanka's chief of staff sends that tweet to Hope and they start complaining about it. And they say, I can't believe her. She's unreal. Ivanka's so pissed. And then they start going back and forth. And Hicks says, in one day, Trump ended every future opportunity that doesn't include speaking engagements at the local Proud Boys chapter. And all of us that didn't have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed

i'm so mad and upset we all look like domestic terrorists now this has made us all unemployable like untouchable god i'm so fucking mad it's just just great fun so selfish also just like an amazingly perfect you know what honestly and sadly she was wrong yeah that's the worst part she made like a million and a half working at fox news that's the worst part it. It's also the exact, yeah, everybody was wrong about what the consequences were. But in the same way Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy spoke out against it. The great sin that Donald Trump committed was making them less electorally successful. And the great sin for Hilp Hicks is that she couldn't get another job. Mark Milley said he had to talk the Trump administration out of court-martialing retired military officers who criticized Trump.

Oh, right. Lots of just color, a lot of anecdotes that, I don't know, remind you of how completely out of control that period was. Well, so Trump's been taking all this in stride after a truth the other day where he wished a happy new year to radical left Democrats, Marxist lunatics, clueless rhinos, and China-loving Coco Chow and her obedient husband, Mitch. Yeah, it's just he said it wasn't his fault that Republicans didn't do well in the midterms. It was, quote, the abortion issue poorly handled by many Republicans. He specifically criticized them for taking a position on abortion that was no exceptions. Is he right? Is he right that that was a problem? Sure. These are two

problems. He's two. He's they were both problems problems he was one of the problems and this was the other one there were two big problems he was one and this was the other absolutely true and yeah and also uh his judges uh allowed the other to happen so congrats i think it is interesting um for what that says about the primary that we're about to see if there is a republican primary, if someone else announces against Donald Trump, because you have Trump who clearly sees that abortion and the way that Republicans handled abortion did not go too well and seems willing at least to take a position on it that is a little less extreme than some of the Republicans did in the midterms. And then we've talked about DeSantis before, Trump's potential biggest challenger, who has only signed the 15 week ban in Florida. And you wonder if abortion politics in the Republican primary is going to be different than you might expect based on what happened in the midterms. My guess, I think that the far right sort of anti-abortion people are some of the most transactional human beings out there.

They're sort of right wing evangelical Christians, and they are thrilled to work with an imperfect vessel with imperfect views in history. Yeah. As long as he will do their bidding. And Trump did their bidding for four years and gave them the courts they wanted. I think that's right. And which is why I think we could see could see a different kind of primary than we might expect on that issue. You also see it, I mean, if it's a DeSantis-Trump debate, you can see it kind of falling by the wayside as DeSantis always goes back to a line about the bill he passed in Florida. Right. Right. Something that neither of them actually want to bring up. And Trump taking credit for appointing these judges. Although Trump has for years, for years, been like, look, this is what these wackadoos want. They want me to do these judges.

I'll do these judges. But I'm a little worried that it's going to be bad for us. Like, he's always said that. For us and me personally. And for me. And especially, well, I mean, me. I don't, you are just meat zombies that wander around to serve me. I'm a person.

I don't care what happens to any of you sacks of flesh. I was going to say. Servile tools to my own mind. No one hates Trump base more than Donald Trump. That's exactly right. But you did see, I mean, to your point about the primary, John, Mike Pence was, quote, tweeting some group called SBA Pro-Life who were out there saying the approach to winning on abortion

is to have the clearest contrast with extreme Democrats. And Pence retweeted that saying, well said, SBA pro-life, whatever that is. Again, these guys are trying to subtweet their way to victory against Donald Trump in a Republican primary. And I just don't think that's going to work. Unfortunately, the base is not pro-life when it comes to Mike Pence. Well said. Yeah, that's too bad. We'll leave it there. But I do think like there's, there as an,

outside of Trump and DeSantis, there is an intra-Republican debate about abortion amongst those who have recognized that it cost them votes in this, which is on the one side, you have the people who said it cost us votes and good. That was the,

we said we would do this and it was worth it. And there's the people like Mike Pence who are trying to make an argument that we just got outplayed. They painted us as extremists on the issue. Our position is actually popular. They're the extremists. We need to run harder on abortion. Anyway, it seems like the Republican Party is in great shape. Cheers. Happy 2023.

All right. When we come back, Elijah Cohn will be here, our chief tech officer, to get us through another round of Take appreciator. All right, we're back. Before we go, our chief take officer, Elijah Cohn, is here with us once again to play a game of take appreciator.

Elijah, how's it going? Happy New Year. It's great, guys. Happy New Year. Good breaks. You got some takes? Yeah, I got some takes. You just been collecting takes for the last couple weeks?

Yeah, people have been throwing at me. There's no off button for takes. Content never sleeps. I love the banter we do before. Let's go. All right, let's do it. Let's set the tone for the upcoming year in takes. Do I still need to explain how the game works? Does everyone know? Should I still explain it for the audience? in takes. Do I still need to explain how the game works? Does everyone know?

Should I still explain it for the audience? Okay, let's just get right into it. If you don't know how it works, you'll figure it out. It's pretty easy. Let's start by looking backwards from the Washington Post. We have a piece titled, The 10 Worst Things Joe Biden Did in 2022. Oh, wow.

Yeah. I got this one. I know who it is. Yeah, well, it's great. Is it Mark Thiessen? Come on. It is Mark Thiessen. oh wow yeah i got this one i know it is yeah well it's great mark peason it is mark it is he also wrote the 10 best things uh biden did he's trying to be uh oh wow both sides okay look at that yes uh i'll get to that for a new york times column huh but sorry elijah continue a preemptive strike against David French. For our excerpt, we'll just jump straight to number one.

The worst thing Joe Biden did in 2022 was, quote, he slow rolled military aid to Ukraine out of fear of provoking Vladimir Putin. Here's the kicker. As Tommy noted, there was a 10 best things list, but the number one best thing Joe Biden did was, quote, he saved Ukraine.

Yeah, I mean, consistency is not high on Mark's list of things he cares about. Also, did he slow roll? Maybe. Look, we're not in nuclear war. It seems like it's going pretty well

with the Ukrainian side compared to Putin. It's a low bar, but it's a bar we got to clear. Yeah, we're not in nuclear war. It seems like it's going pretty well with the Ukrainian side compared to Putin. It's a low bar, but it's a bar we got to clear. Yeah, that's my bar. You know what? I think that was just pretty dumb. Weak effort on Mark Thiessen. I'm saying no politicos. Oh, definitely give him one.

No. I can never give Mark Thiessen. He did the 10 best. What, we're not going to applaud Mark Thiessen for doing 10 best? Are we going to applaud Roger Stone for putting Joe Biden on his top 10 best dressed list? That was weird.

That was weird. What do you call Bannon? Like a slob Johnny Cash or something like that? I usually can't get on that list without sleeping with him. Oh, boy. One politico for me. Yeah, same. Me too.

It's good. Bipartisanship is back. So says Paul Gosar. All right. So we'll move on to number two. This is very requested yesterday. It's a piece from The Atlantic titled, The Senate Needs More Kirsten Cinemas.

Oh, boy. This piece- I think I saw this. I couldn't click on it. I couldn't recognize the author either. I don't know who that was. I didn't click i couldn't recognize i couldn't recognize the author either i don't know who that was i didn't click on it i saw that i saw it go by oh was it connor frees fursdorf you don't even want to hear the excerpt we're just going straight to guessing yeah getting ahead of the game i mean you're two for two i know what i think about the

take it sucks i think you do need to explain the rules elijah yeah god let's hear the respect for the take let's hear the take okay let's go the format. Let's hear the take. Okay, let's go for it. Here's the quote. Although three independents who caucus with the Democrats may not be enough of a change to make Congress more popular or less dysfunctional, 10 independent senators could wield real clout as a swing block. 15 or 20 independent senators would transform the institution and offer encouragement to the many American voters whose policy preferences

do not neatly align with Democrats or Republicans. We already know it's Conor Friedersdorf, so... No, you got it. Oh, you got it. I just couldn't say his last name. I'm going to go two politicos

on this one. It's not really getting my hackles up. It's pretty stupid, though the the oh imagine if there was 10 or 15 independents what were you getting this from where are they coming from where what has made you think this is a possibility yeah i'll give it two but i also i i too am exhausted by um takes that describe some sort of fantasy land politics well it's very Aaron Torkin sort of. And it's also like, finally, all the Americans that look and think like me

will finally have their tribune. And it's like, you are alone, my friend. There's no one, there's a cosmopolitan libertarian type. You have no one. There's no one with you. Also, wheeling and dealing, Joe Biden is leading the Democratic Party right now. He's cutting deals. type you have no one there's no one with you also wheeling and dealing uh joe biden is uh is is

leading the democratic party right now he's cutting deals he's uh passing bipartisan legislation what are you talking about we need more independence in the center the republican party's fucking crazy and we just and he's had like you could have done maybe you're writing this nonsense a year ago there's been an incredible week months of bipartisan legislation passing over and over again infrastructure right the chips thing that we love and care about so much three and a half got me wow got me angry i worked myself up from two to three and a half he's got three and a half politicos can i get you to can i get you to four the no you cannot you absolutely cannot i was just gonna say the common criticism of this was that you know it's like oh

the three parties democrats republicans and independents who are a uniform group with policy positions they agree on also true also true well yeah that's what's silly about this whole thing is i know we've all decided the parties are bad just sort of by definition but really what they are is just a way to group people based on what they believe. I think politicians should believe in things and vote accordingly. So you're kind of going to end up ending up in groups. Just how it goes. Most of the people that argue for some kind of broader independent movement or independent party are people who want a democratic party with a new name that isn't getting attacked by

republicans yeah yeah forward something like that they want they like you know there's they're always saying they want a center-left political system they just don't like that it's democrats doing politics to actually make that happen there should be no labels no labels so we're at three and a half we're staying at three and a half okay well i staying at three and a half. Okay. Well, I am. I'm at two. I'm sticking with my two. Same. Okay. Well, now we're coming to a fork in the road, where instead of just going to a third take,

ahead of you are four takes. Some of them are normal take appreciators. Some of them are just fun topics that we thought would be good to talk about, and also I think we'll do well on TikTok, if we talk about them. The first path will lead you to Andrew Tate slash Greta Thun it. The first path will lead you to Andrew Tate slash Greta Thunberg.

The next path will lead you to Glass Onion, the film. The next path will lead you to height, like how tall you are.

And the final path will lead you to Southwest Airlines and Pete Buttigieg. Which path would you like to take? Oh, wow. I've been familiar

with all four examples of all four of those takes. I have not. I have not. I have avoided Glass Onion News because I still need to watch it. I haven't finished The Crown yet, so I'd like to skip that one.

Okay. Well, then I'll just say I saw it and then I did read the Ben Shapiro thread on it. Oh, my God. Say no more, please. We can talk about it, Elijah. His take was the take. I'm sure that's...

Elijah resisting a Ben Shapiro take? Come on. That's not possible. Mark Thiessen's my new fave. Anyway, okay. So that one's out. So the short thing was sort of just that one op-ed. Not that interesting.

It's a good time to be short? I will say, Southwest is is tempting let's do southwest okay okay although i kind of then want to know what your yeah let's do southwest you know what there's no rules we're doing we're doing southwest and we're doing greta thunberg yeah let's do it let's do it all right southwest we'll go to southwest first i gotta down. So this is a piece from foxnews.com titled, Is Pete Buttigieg's Political Future Grounded Forever After Southwest Holiday Travel Disaster? That's good. That's good. This piece is about the disastrous meltdown that Southwest Airlines had over the holidays. I witnessed it firsthand. It resulted in a huge amount of delays and canceled flights.

And naturally, the implications for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Here is a quote. even in the private sector, gone are the days of free markets and letting consumers punish Southwest by choosing other airlines. For a Democratic Party soon in search of its next leader, Christmas 2022 could be a make-or-break moment for one of the potential contenders. I don't know if you guys are going to get this from this author.

What is this argument, even? They're saying that they shouldn't blame Pete Buttigieg? Well, I... You kind of zagged where I thought they were going to go. Me too. That they're saying that they shouldn't blame pete budaj well i you know kind of zagged where i thought they're me too that they're saying that we shouldn't depend on the government to do anything about the airlines fucking up and we should just uh just put our money in what i guess they're saying that because democrats are responsible for why the government is so involved in the airlines therefore the Democrats are responsible for what happens when the airlines fail. Regardless, no, Pete Buttigieg will not pay a permanent political price for a weekend of weather-related Southwest issues, even though there is a real issue in which

for years, for many years, having nothing to do with Pete Buttigieg, we've allowed too many airline mergers and we've allowed the airlines to get away with murder. We did deregulation. And as a result, these airlines can now run. They're running much fuller flights with much fewer backups or rooms for problems. They cancel with impunity. They mistreat passengers with impunity. There is a big problem here, but it's really, really hard to blame Pete Buttigieg. Like, there is a big problem here, but it's really, really hard to blame Pete Buttigieg. Well, to the point of whatever this was, we can't just have consumers punish the airlines or vote with their wallets here because they don't have that much choice because of all the mergers. The mergers that should never have been allowed to go through that reduce competition and put people at the whims of these horrible giant airlines.

It is not a competitive market. If I'm going to get in a tin can that goes to 30,000 feet, I'd like the government to be involved in the regulation of that. It's either the government or Elon. That's the only people that I'm trusting. All right, good point. I'm saying three politicos for that. That gets three for me.

See, I'm going down to two because I just think it was so poorly. It didn't make sense to me. Yeah, I'll go three because it didn't make sense to me. Yeah, this guy's, his thing is that Pete's most intense criticism came from the left. So they could like affect

him maybe in a primary. Yeah, well, there's certainly some people who hate Pete. Yeah, some of the Bernie folks from the primary who are far more focused on, you know,

airline specific issues during that time period than they might otherwise have been. But that's fine. There have been a lot of people on Fox News that like went after Pete for this. Like, oh, so you want the government to step in

and more heavily regulate and control the airlines. Fine, let's do that. Great. Good. Yes. Should we go down the Greta Thunberg, Andrew Tate path? Let's do it. This is the grand finale here.

All right. So this requires some setup because I know a lot of people here are less online than we are over the break. An internet shock jock misogynist named Andrew Tate sent a tweet mocking climate activist Greta Thunberg. He basically said he has a lot of gas guzzling cars and he asked for Greta's email so he could give her more information. She replied, quote, send it to smalldickenergy at getalife.com. Reply that way.

Just to spread them. Mega viral. Imagine, you're trying to troll a teen, and you get absolutely bodied. Yeah. That's great. To make this discourse crazier, Andrew Tate was shortly thereafter arrested

for human trafficking in Romania. You guys with me so far, and do you want to comment on the story generally before we get to the actual take here? No. Extremely bad human being. He's way worse than Shock Chalk. I think he's like a really

he probably will do some time. I was going to say as the human trafficking charge shows. He is despicable. I also will just say that like this is one of the people that Elon wanted to have their platform back. Yes, of course. This is somebody that Elon felt was needed in the discourse. And granted him such a platform.

Yeah, his sanctuary. Yes, I wrote the beginning of the paragraph before the end, and in hindsight, I should have described him at the top as a convicted human trafficker, or, you know, arrested for human trafficking. Anyway, here's one of the most viral takes to arise from this incident. If you aren't familiar with Andrew Tate, again, he's an extreme men's right activist and misogynist.

Quote, the Andrew Tates of the world would not exist if men were demoralized, degraded, and confused about what masculinity is and isn't. Thanks, feminists, for the absolute shit show you created. Wow. Disgusting. There you go full that's the full playbook i know it's like the playbook scale is like the wrong scale for this

that's just horrible you know that's it's the um childish it's the you i took my extremely disgusting position because you made me i'm always the victim right i did not i did not choose this this horrific lifestyle myself this is the yeah this is the uh you drove me to it drove me to it you know you drove me to it that you see this with like the you know uh the andrew sullivans of the world say this is what's driven people to the right it's because of what the left is doing but taken to just such a disgusting extreme uh where's that from yeah who did it who did it? It's not just a random guy. It's kind of a random guy.

He has a sub stack. He refers to himself as a non-woke poet, which is just like a huge L. Oh my gosh. I'm not going to say his name. Yuck. But he's got tens of thousands of dollars himself. Got it.

Non-woke poet. Non-woke poet. That's cool. I also understand that the Taliban expressed their concern about how Andrew Tate's been treated. So it's a real who's who's of the fucking worst human beings on Earth

chiming in. They did have Twitter spaces, right? And also there was a whole thing that the Andrew Tate video that he posted in which he goes after Greta is what led the Romanian authorities to him. That's not true. Completely baseless. That wasn't true, huh? Was not even close to true. People just wanted that to be authorities to him that's not true. Completely baseless.

That wasn't true, huh? People just wanted that to be true but it wasn't true. It didn't make sense when they said it. Why would they wait for the pizza boxes? It'd be cool if it was. It didn't make sense. I saw people saying that and I was like, but that doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I mean it was one Twitter account just sort of stated

it as fact and it was too good to check. And then a bunch of actual outlets wrote it up without doing a lot of checking. If you went to Andrew Tate's social media feeds, you saw him post a series of videos and messages before that. They were like, look at me, back in Romania. So it was not. And then as people were correcting it, then there was a group of people who were like, why are you defending Andrew Tate? It's like, what? No, it's just saying

that this is the real story. This is why, this is why, this is why the whole thing is, Twitter needs to go away. This is why I was not on Twitter and why I was focused entirely on building a magnificent

TikTok? Dexterity-based bleed build in Elden Ring. Oh my goodness. I don't know any of that. Ugh. I don't know. I'm gonna use,

Elijah, I'm gonna use one of my larval tears and I'm going to respect it. Oh my gosh. I think I'm going to put some of my points towards, I'm going to do an intelligence dex build. Huh? Did you win? Did you complete the game? No, but I want to respect before I get into the final. I'm in the land of the giants. We just lost.

I really want to respect my character and I want to have some sorceries going so I can do a little bit more range battle because I've been just all dex. I've been dumping all my points into decks. Lovett just lost the third through tenth ballot. And I'm still looking for some of the talisman that help you with the bleed build, and I don't have them.

If you're still listening, that's our show for today. But I've been using... I appreciate it. Thanks to Elijah Cohn. I used the talisman to increase my ability, my equipment load. So I'm using heavy armor

but with a medium roll. To John Lovett. To Matt Case. And I've been actually just using the hook clause. Just the good old hook clause. This just in. This just in.

Kevin McCarthy's set to lose the third vote. Wow. And more Republicans defect to Jordan this time. See, that's not good. See, that's not good. That's some,

that's the writing is, the writing is beginning to be written on the wall. That got us off Elden Ring and now we're out. Bye everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producers are Hayley 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 Gerard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash Pod Save America.