Pod Save America - Trump Celebrates High Gas Prices
Episode Date: March 13, 2026President Trump suggests that the high price of oil—surging upward because of his war in Iran—is a good thing, because the United States makes "a lot of money." Jon and Dan discuss the President's... unique affordability message, his claim that the war has already been won, and what Joe Rogan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Gen Z men are saying about Iran. Then, they check in on the GOP, including the party's mass deportation messaging "hiccup," the lengths some on the right are going to in order to pass the SAVE Act, and MAGA's full embrace of Islamophobia. Finally, they react to former DOGE staffers trying to explain DEI under oath, and to Marco Rubio allegedly lying about his shoe size to the President of the United States.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favar.
I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
On today's show, we'll talk about Trump's declaration that we've won the war in Iran,
which is tricky to square with the new Ayatollah's promise to keep fighting and keep the straight of Hormuz closed as oil hits $100 a barrel again.
But don't worry, Trump also said high oil prices are a good thing.
We'll talk about his famed political instincts and how it's all playing with the voters he needs, especially young men.
then the White House warns Republicans not to talk about mass deportations as they run for re-election.
The doge bags are finally being held accountable, maybe, and why little Marco is wearing shoes that are too big.
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All right, let's talk about how Trump's Iran war is going.
2,000 people are now dead, mostly civilians, hundreds of children, including over 100 little girls who our government has now determined a U.S. missile strike killed when it hit their elementary school.
Seven American troops are dead.
140 have been wounded, eight severely wounded, many with brain injuries.
Our government says that the first week of this war has cost us 11.3 billion.
dollars with a B, more than a third of what it would have cost to prevent 22 million Americans
from seeing their premiums double by extending the Obamacare subsidies.
Instead, we spent it on this war.
And our intel agencies say that for the $11 billion we've spent, Iran's leadership is still
largely intact and not at risk of imminent collapse.
This is per Reuters.
On that note, we got the first public statement from the new younger, more extreme Ayatollah,
who vowed to take revenge on Israel and America.
This is a day after the FBI issued an urgent warning to local law enforcement that, quote,
Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack on California using drones fired from a ship off the coast.
And Trump said that he's been briefed on the existence of terrorist sleeper cells in America.
But, quote, we know where most of them are, I think.
Naturally, the president's public remarks this week have reflected the seriousness of the crisis.
at hand. Operation Epic Fury. Is that a great name? Well, it's only good if you win, you know,
you can only do. And we've won. Let me say, we've won. You know, you never like to say
too early you won. We won. We won the bet in the first hour it was over.
Won the best, first hour. First hour. First hour. He's now using the name of the military operation
that has led to a gigantic war in the Middle East,
the biggest U.S. deployment since the Iraq war,
seven Americans are dead,
hundreds wounded,
thousands of people dead in the Middle East,
and he's using it as an applause line at a rally.
You tired of all the winning yet, Dan?
I would middily say that I have pretty low expectations for Donald Trump on any issue,
particularly one as complicated as the Middle East.
but I have to say even I am blown away by what a gigantic cluster fuck this is.
Just at every single level, at every point, they have screwed this up.
The military is obviously doing what it's supposed to be doing.
They are executing the mission, obviously not flawlessly given the missile that hit the girl's school.
But at every, like there is no, it's just the messaging around it is terrible.
There seems to be no strategy.
We are two weeks in and there's still no definition of victory.
Trump can't describe what's happening in any coherent way.
And it seems to be spiraling out of control in a way that has going to have really serious short, medium term implications for the world and Americans, American safety, security, and our economy.
And potentially dramatic long term consequences for the world order, the shape of the Middle East, are allies both in the region.
and in the world. I mean, it's just an absolute mess. And the thing about it is, it's one of the
worst own goals in history. There was no argument for this. There was no strategic imperative,
no threat. We just, Trump just stumbled ass backward and is something that could become
World War III. Yeah. When you listen to some administration officials like a Marker Rubio,
and, you know, the White House has been putting this out as well, they say the objective,
now are to destroy Iran's Navy, which they have almost done, to seriously degrade their ballistic
missile capabilities. So destroy the missiles, destroy the factories that make the missiles. I guess
they have made good progress in doing that. And then the other objective is making sure they can
never, ever build or seek a nuclear weapon again. They have not done anything else on that front.
And that's an impossible test. Like what is that even?
mean because you can't do that with airstrikes alone you'd need ground troops we don't have ground
troops so far obviously that would be a terrible idea but the enriched uranium is still there
and so that hasn't been achieved and you know the goal of regime change which was never an official
goal though Donald Trump talked about it all the time and now there's reporting saying the
Israelis think it's a goal Benjamin Netanyahu wants regime change for sure and now the
Americans are saying, well, it'd just be a, it'd be a bonus, be a bonus. But either way,
doesn't seem like it's close to happening because we got the Ayatollah vowing revenge and the
Strait of Hormuz continue to be closed and attacks from Iran continuing to happen.
There's an Axios story about all this, like what Trump's thinking, because the way we know
what Trump's thinking now is he goes to events like this and says crazy shit. And then I guess
he just takes the call of any reporter who dials him up. He talked to
Axios and someone told Axios, sorry, maybe this wasn't Trump, but someone told Axios, a source who
spoke to Trump on Tuesday evening, described the president as, quote, enthusiastic about continuing
the war for at least three to four weeks before making a decision. Three to four more weeks?
We're going to continue this into mid-April? What's going to happen in that time period?
If this has been a cluster fuck after fucking a couple weeks now.
Thinking about what it's going to do, the oil markets.
Like there's an estimate out today that if the straight is closed through April, oil will reach $140 a barrel.
I mean, this is the greatest shock to our oil supply in the history of the world.
And with a global economy, it's already fragile.
I mean, it's an absolute disaster.
And there's just no, like, you say Marco Rubio has articulated some set of goals.
But he, those aren't, that's not even really goals.
That's just slightly more coherent than the verbal applesauce that Trump is putting out every day.
And he's the person who's supposed to know.
Like, there is a world.
We've seen this in other things with Trump where what he says makes no sense.
But then there are people behind him who are saying things that it's not a worldview.
We would agree with it's not one that we think would even be effective.
But it is a it's like a plan of some kind.
And here there is none.
Would you make of the New York Times story headlined how Trump and his advisors miscalculated Iran's response?
to war. Because there's like, I wanted to laugh and then I wanted to scream when I realized that it was all
reality, even though it sounds so fucking buffoonish, the whole piece. This is one of those things
that I do think is scarier if you've actually worked in a White House and you know how it works.
And like, they obviously seem very stupid. These are unsurious people who don't even take their
jobs that seriously. They, you know, there's a, we've been wargaming and thinking out what a
war with a ring would look like since the day.
The Aya Tolla took over in 1979.
And there's a reason we don't, it hasn't happened in all this time.
It's because these are the consequences.
They can control the straight of four moves.
If that closes down, like everyone, like every game, every war gaming of this has shown this
be the case, but they did it anyway.
They ignored all of that so-called expert advice to go forward.
And there's a part in there to me that's, I think is the most scary.
It is, it says in there that a lot of AIDS think this is going very poorly, but they were
afraid to tell Trump because he keeps saying it's going great.
And if you can't tell bad news to the president, then the president is going to operate from a false set of facts going forward.
And that's an even bigger problem when that president lives in a hermetically sealed right-wing news bubble that tells him what he wants to hear.
So he has no information that actually would allow him to make a decision that would move this in a better direction because he thinks it's in a good direction.
Yeah.
It's incredibly unsettling, scary that we're living through this.
And also the fact that even if Trump wanted to stop the war today, even if he said, okay, we're declaring victory and we're, you know, we've, we've bombed everything we can bomb and all that.
Like, Iran's not going to stop.
The regime is in place.
They're going to stop firing missiles all over the Middle East.
They're going to stop trying to incite terror attacks, have their proxies incite terror attacks all over the world.
Like, it's just the idea that the war stops when Donald Trump says it stops is just.
so fucking stupid and flies in the face of all history.
Also, they have, the reports are the Iranians are mining the straight.
And once you put mines in the straight, it's not countries that decide whether they go to the
straight.
It's companies who have borrowed tens of millions of dollars to buy these tankers.
And what guarantees do they have that their, their tankers are not going to run into mines?
Like it is, like it is.
So even if we were to stop tomorrow, are we going to trust the Iranians?
go tell us where all the mines were, so we can go pick them up? Of course not.
No, they're, so they've, um, it seems like they have laid at least 10 mines, uh, in the,
in the Strait of Hormuz, according to reports. They're also just firing tankers. Uh,
they've had a couple tankers who, uh, are going through the straight anyway. Um, the secretary
of energy, uh, this week posted a tweet saying the Navy has accompanied its first ship, uh, oil
tanker through the Strait of Hormuz and then immediately had to take down that tweet because
it wasn't true. So don't know what's going on there. He just announced again before we started
recording that the Navy will be sort of accompanying tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. I don't
know why that's like a magical solve, especially if they are laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz
because they can lay mines without Navy ships Iran can. They can do it with smaller ships.
So I don't really know that that's going to solve it.
You mentioned, you know, oil prices hit $100 a barrel again.
And the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, has threatened to push prices up to $200 per barrel, which would cause gas prices to exceed $5 a gallon.
So that's something to look forward to.
But, you know, Trump was asked about this complete fucking mess in the Strait of Hormuz the other night.
And here's what he said.
The straits are in great shape.
We've knocked out all of their boats.
I think we're in very good
shape.
The straits are in great shape.
So everyone, that's what people are saying.
The straits are in great shape.
I guess there's a couple now.
President followed up those comments with a post.
Was the post to correct himself?
Was the post to offer more information?
No, here's what the post said.
The United States is the largest oil producer in the world by far.
So when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.
Never thought of it that way, Dan.
Are you impressed with Trump's cunning political jiu-jitsu there?
Actually, higher prices are good.
Saying for months that Trump needed a message on affordability,
and now he has one.
High prices are good.
And just, it is worth just, like, stepping back and, like,
I hate to say this, but dissecting that truth because it does speak to his, like,
how his brain works, which is, if prices go up, who makes more money?
oil companies and how they make more money because prices have gone up on American consumers.
So if big oil is getting rich, that is a win for our country in his mind.
If companies make money and the American consumer has to pay more and higher prices so those companies can make money, then that's a win.
It's so, I don't even know if he really believes that.
Like, part of it is this, he just, he sees everything through his own interests and the country.
He now equates the country to him.
And so if the country makes money, if some people are making money, then he can point to that.
Then everything's wonderful because it's sort of like what he does with the tariff things.
Like we were being ripped off by the tariffs and now all the money's coming in.
The money's pouring in from the tariffs.
It's like even though, you know, Americans are paying the extra tariffs, just like Americans are paying the higher gas prices.
But as long as money's coming into companies, America's great.
Things are going well.
His country's going well.
He did a good job because America's rich now.
But at least with the tariffs, the money does go to the U.S. government.
Here the tariffs just go to the Exxon guy, or the higher prices just go to the Exxon guy.
Like what?
I mean, I think that obviously we think the tariffs are stupid, but you can at least point
to like an increase in revenue for the federal government.
Here the government gets no money.
In fact, we're getting less money than we should because we've given all these tax breaks
and subsidies to big oil anyway, and the big oil companies get rich.
And so I think you are correct that what is happening here is like a heavy dose of
cope to try to explain away the terrible situation and say, oh, no, no, no, don't worry,
$140 an barrel oil in the middle of a rapidly escalating global crisis in the Middle East is
fine. Look how it's good for it. Like, I think that's the main thing happening here, but there is,
I think, something about his mentality, which is, if American companies get rich, that's good for
America. And that is, that doesn't work if the people who are making, if the way the companies
get rich is by charging more money to American consumers who are already struggling with high prices.
And they also don't have a lot of tools in the toolbox left to do anything about this.
they announced a release of like the largest release ever from the strategic petroleum reserve.
And oil still went up to $100 a bit.
So it's like I don't really know how, I mean, I guess they can start doing, you know,
maybe they'll do export controls on oil to keep the oil here.
And that's like a short term solution.
But that's long term, that's even worse for us.
So like there's nothing really to do here except, I don't know, just continue to
ships to sack up and take a chance going through the street of Hormuz, which is basically
what Trump and Brian Kilmead, the Fox and Friends host were doing. He's like, you just got to,
these ships got to have some balls and just go through the straight of four moves. And if you
get blown up, you get blown up. They can't get all of us, right? That's right. If there are
10 mines and 12 ships go through, at least two of them are making it.
I have to say the, we talked about this a little bit yesterday, but the whole, we kind of
skipped over the FBI bulletin about California and the drones.
Yeah.
Now, the White House has since said that this was like unverified intelligence.
Of course, we can believe everything the White House says.
And Gavin Newsom said that he had heard about it and everyone's on high alert.
It seems like this was intelligence from February that the Iranians aspired to do this.
I do think that requires somehow getting a ship out to the west coast of California and then the drones and who knows.
But I do think that one got a lot of Americans' attention.
I think that that might have broken through.
It broke through to the school mom group chat in my house.
Yes.
I had some questions for Tommy and Ben from a lot of people.
They needed good responses.
And then Hallie didn't trust me to do it.
So if you wanted me to screenshot their text and send it to them,
just like proof that things were okay?
I mean, I also saw in that what's resonating newsletter that posts
about and stories about that FBI warning were like one of the most shared stories yesterday by
far. Because I just think that, you know, we Americans right now don't like the idea of this war.
They don't like the idea of spending a lot of money on this war. They don't like the idea
of high oil prices. They certainly don't like the idea of like American troops risking their
lives and potentially dying in this war, seven already have. But if there start being credible
threats to the homeland and, you know, terrorists.
tax, God forbid. That's when
things are, shit's really going to hit the fan.
And, you know, the fact that Trump
was talking about sleeper cells
and terror sleeper cells and oh, we've got an eye
on most of them, I think,
is fucking terrifying.
We're sitting here. And just
today, there was a shooter at
Old Dominion University in Virginia.
And they believe that was
someone who was ISIS inspired
and had been in jail already
for some ISIS-inspired activities back,
I think, as far as 2017, got out of
jail in 2024. There was also just an attack on a synagogue in Michigan. And early reports say it is
a naturalized Lebanese American who was, I guess, just last night posting pictures of relatives
who died in the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, which is just fucking horrific that now we are seeing
potentially attacks or attempted attacks play out across the United States. And I don't know. I just
have a real fear that this is just the beginning of that.
No, I mean, that is the, it's not just that the war is happening.
It's the way in which Tommy, I talked about this on YouTube yesterday, but it's also the way
they're messaging the war, right?
It's like seemed almost designed, it's the video game footage, the triumphalism, the
snuff porn videos of things blowing up that they keep tweeting out as like, if it's like a joke.
And like that is, seems designed to radicalize people against the United States.
whether they're in Iran or elsewhere.
Yes, that is certainly the scariest effect.
I also think, I've been thinking about this a lot
because it's really bothered me, the video game shit,
and they keep doing it.
And some of them are, some of them are like sports-related
and they'll show, like, NFL clips,
and they'll, like, cut it with, like, every touchdown,
they'll cut it with, like, a missile that hit,
like actual footage of a missile that hit.
They did it with baseball, too, like baseball highlights.
and they just keep doing this shit,
I kind of think it's meant to numb us
to the real consequences and risks of war.
And this idea that like, oh, it's all fun, it's no big deal.
You're scrolling through your feed.
You're seeing a million different things anyway.
And when you see stuff about war, it's just one more thing.
And it's a game and we're winning it and everything's awesome.
And America's fucking great.
And let's keep going.
And I realized that like every government uses propaganda to sell war.
but this is like, it feels like it's propaganda for the sake of propaganda, just to like not even sell a war, but just to convey a message that everyone should go about their business and not think this is a big deal and not worry about all the scary headlines that you're reading or all the people who are upset about this. Just like, we're great, we're fucking awesome. Good luck.
I think you are correct. That's the net effect of what they're doing. I think that gives them way too much credit for strategy here. I think it's just a bunch of fucking insolwork.
Grypers who got social media jobs at the White House just doing shit to like get like kudos in
their local discords.
Like it's so stupid.
It serves no actual purpose.
And I think even the, I mean, because of the way the media works now and because of the fact
this is happening at a place where there is essentially almost no Western media at all and
they can shut the internet down in a second.
Like this already could just be happening without us ever seeing anything, right?
it's just, you know, but they put out the, I think they put out these videos because they're
unsurious, terrible people. Like, that's what it. Like, they don't, they're just no. But it has been,
it has, it has, I mean, it has been their digital strategy since their campaign in 2024 that they
have carried into the White House and they've done it around deportations. And yeah, it is a bunch of
insult, Grypers. Like those, those are the people who are now staffing the government at some of the
highest levels, but their view on like communication, if you want to call it, if you, like,
Doesn't have to be like a strategy that was on a whiteboard anywhere.
But the way they do this is just pump out shit, troll people.
Everything's fucking, LOL, nothing matters.
Yeah, that's for sure.
That is their strategy per se.
And it's just, it's fucking, it's nihilism.
And it's really scary.
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Canada, too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash crooked for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash crooked. Despite all these efforts, the war still isn't popular with most Americans, including some prominent podcasters who support for Trump in 2024 probably helped him make inroads with younger Gen Z men. The most prominent, of course, is Joe Rogan, who has been on something of a tear about Iran. Let's listen. It's terrifying, and it's exactly the opposite of what we were
told leading into this administration that it's going to be America first right and no more
unnecessary foreign wars it's going to be bad I mean if oil prices spike we're fucked
yeah you know and the Republicans are really fucked yeah he's 80 he doesn't have much to lose
right last term that's the scary thing about old leaders you know you're making decisions for
babies and children and the future of the world and you've only got 10 maybe 10 years left on
earth.
I mean, the last part is
quite
like telling of our times
in a pretty powerful way.
It is. It also just made me think
you know who wasn't 80,
who's still not 80.
Kamala Harris.
She was a candidate in the last election.
She has
hopefully many, many years to live and make decisions
on behalf of, you know,
the family in her life and everyone
else and other children.
And I can,
much a guarantee with all with every ounce of fiber of my body that we would not be at war with
Iran if she was president of the United States. Yeah. I, as you know, don't like to like scream at
people who scream like I told you so at people who voted for Trump. I think it's a shitty way
to like win people over. And so, you know, welcome Joe Rogan, right, to seeing the light on this one.
I just hope that going to be another presidential election in 2028, and I hope that Joe Rogan and a lot of these other podcasters, you know, just thinks about what lessons can be learned from 2024 and the lies that were told in 2024 and the people who told them.
And it wasn't just Donald Trump.
It was, you know, his vice president who was probably going to be the, you know, frontrunner for the Republican nomination.
many of the other people around him in the White House,
many of the other Republicans who are running for Congress
and running for president.
So I do think that all the people
who are disappointed in Trump,
who supported Trump,
think next time around the next election
that what they're hearing from Republicans,
from MAGA Republicans like Donald Trump,
might not be on the level.
And that every Republican has stood by Trump as he's done this.
You know, with the exception of Rand Paul and Thomas Massey,
every single one of them is totally fine with this war.
So are palpublicians?
Peter Hamby at Puck has a new piece with reactions from young men, including Trump voters,
who participated in one of John Delovobe's focus groups on the war.
Talked to John a couple times in the show.
Spoiler alert, these young men, not fans, not fans of the war.
Would you make of these groups and how big of a problem do you think this is for Republicans
as we look ahead to the midterms?
You know, as we've looked at the polling over the last year,
the group that has abandoned Trump the fastest are young men.
And I think it's primarily been driven by affordability and the fact that Trump ran on lowering prices and that has just found truly diabolical ways to keep raising them.
Like, if you thought the terrorists were bad, wait till you go to the gas pump this week.
But I think there is this level of consistency.
If you listen to the focus groups in 2024, there was this very real concern.
Obviously, it was based on bad information, but this very real concern that Kamala Harris would get us into wars and Donald Trump would keep us out of foreign.
Wars. Donald Trump said he was against Forever Wars all the time. The U.S. people's views in this
were complicated by U.S. support for Ukraine. And I think this fear also unfounded and based on bad
information that somehow we were going to get involved in Ukraine because of our support for Ukraine.
There was U.S. support for Israel and what was happening in Gaza, all was pushing to this. And
Donald Trump was saying, no forever wars, no forever wars, no forever wars. Now, he was also saying
he was going to blow the shit out of bad guys all the time. But, and so you're, even, you know,
when Pierre talks about this piece is that he would like go to colleges and talk to young men,
and they would be worried in 2024 about being drafted.
Like the Trump,
I mean,
that was the thing they got brought up during the campaign that the Kamala Harris would bring the draft back and draft you.
And you're hearing that again.
Like there is this like it is a consistent viewpoint and Donald Trump has broken a core promise.
I mean,
there are three reasons why people voted for Donald Trump who were like,
we're actually legitimately on the fence.
Price is immigration.
And by immigration,
I mean the border.
and war.
And he's raised prices.
He has run a immigration strategy
that went so far beyond anything he promised
and is not what people want.
And now he has gone and started multiple wars
and now has us embroiled in
the greatest conflict we've been in in a decade.
Yeah, and I do think it speaks to the need for,
and I know Ben and Tommy talked about this
this week on POTSave the World
and I've been talking about it for a while.
but like the need for Democrats clearly to become an anti-war party or at least back to a war as a last resort,
military force as a last resort party, because it is clear that the impression that a lot of these young men and other voters had about Kamala Harris and the potential that she might get us into war or start a draft is based on, you know, a lot of lies and misinformation pushed by Trump and his supporters for sure.
it's also true that if you inspected all of Kamala Harris's positions closely,
you would probably come to the conclusion that, yeah, she's not going to start World War III,
nor is she going to bring back the draft, right? That's pretty obvious.
But in the years that Joe Biden was president and Kamala Harris was vice president,
and even in her campaign, did it seem like there was an emphasis on keeping America out of wars
or on keeping America out of foreign wars?
I would say probably not.
particularly with the way that, like you said, Biden behaved in Gaza.
And also the, I would argue, necessary support for Ukraine against Putin's invasion.
But also it was something that was, it wasn't just happening that like, oh, well, you know,
we're going to help defend Europe and we're going to do this.
It was like touted all the time talked about because it was, you know, we connected this fight
against Russia and Ukraine's fight against Russia to sort of like the global fight against
authoritarianism. And again, lots of good reasons to make that connection and to offer that
support. But I do think as Democrats run again in 2026, especially 2028, you've got to be pretty
clear about our stance on war and the use of force it and not do the thing that every fucking
Democratic nominee does, particularly Democratic nominees who don't have military background,
who don't have foreign policy experience and just say a lot of words.
to show how tough they are because we know that strength is important and the only way to,
and we somehow equate strength with talking tough about war.
That is the most important point, which is in the post-Fietnam era, and it's sort of really
exemplified in Carter's presidency around Iran, ironically enough, in the effort and the
seizing of the embassy and then the failed missions to try to rescue.
the people, the Americans held hostage in the embassy,
Democrats became seen as weak.
And we have tried to solve that problem by being pro-war, by being bellicose.
That is how we stumbled into the Iraq war.
That's why so many Democrats thought that they should vote for it.
I mean, the problem was worsened in the 90s when, early 90s,
when a bunch of Democrats voted against the first Gulf War and it ended like in 30 days.
And George W. Bush, H.W. Bush went to a 90% approval.
And so then we're like, we're not going to make that mistake again.
When what takes actual strength is to oppose war, right?
That was ultimately why Obama succeeded in 2008 because he was the candidate who was seen
as strong enough, who had the courage to stand up against war.
And if you think that we are in these messes as a party because we have conflated being
tough with being pro-war.
And that is not how the American people see it.
They want someone who is strong enough and smart enough to get us out of wars to keep us from getting in these sort of fights.
And the media and punditry contributes to this.
Oh, every, they're so fucking pro-war.
Because inevitably, every campaign, there's like a million stories at some point in the campaign about how this Democratic candidate must pass the commander-in-chief test.
And then, you know, dutifully, the Democratic presidential candidate will say things like, I'm ready to be commander-in-chief on day one.
And I will use the most lethal military force and all the fucking shit that the blob who's advising the DC blob who's advising that candidate tells them to put in their speeches.
And no more. No more. Like, and I get why some candidates feel the need to do it because they don't have the background. They don't have the experience. They don't have the military experience. A lot of this is gendered as well, which is why Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton held to deal with it too. But like, you just, it is an artificial sort of facade.
of like bellicose militarism that no one's buying, first of all,
and only makes you look more hawkish when people don't want that.
So that was what the young men thought in that focus group.
Marjorie Taylor Green also tweeted on Thursday.
We've been talking about people like Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly who were against this war.
Marjorie Taylor Green, certainly one of these MAGA folks.
She tweeted on Thursday that she's been talking to other, quote,
America First Conservatives.
She's not MAGA anymore. She's America
First. There's a split.
Tomato, tomato. Yeah. And they all agree
that the party has been hijacked by
neocons and boomers.
And that, quote, an entire generation of elected
leaders, their donors, and controlling interests on both
sides have to be, quote, removed
by outside pressure.
What's Marge got going on there?
Just as a point of fact, I'm pretty sure
Trump's member of the silent generation.
Yeah, that's true. He's older than,
Our problem is that the boomers
Is he not a boomer?
I think he and Biden
were both silent generation
Wow
Yeah
Those are the people
We don't even think
about the silent generation
But they're the ones
Pulling the strings in Washington
these days
On the day that Jim Clyburn announced
He's running for re-election
at age 86
Yeah
It's just a spring chicken
Spring chicken
Yeah
It's just as
I can't
I don't even get into that
It's bad
How about that
That was my take
It's bad
Yeah, it's a good take.
Here's the thing that I think this war is showing us more anything else is that MAGA doesn't really exist as a lot of people think about it.
I think we've talked about how, you know, Trump is the symptom of a larger problem in American politics and that is true.
And we've talked about this idea of Trumpism as a sort of a movement or a philosophy that it would extend past Trump and then, you know, all these discussion, Trump's going on ask people, who thinks is a better leader for MAGA, J.D. Vance or Mark of Rubio.
MAGA is fake.
It's a cold of personality.
If you look at it in this,
like there are definitely elite leaders,
mostly in the podcast space,
who are like true believers of some of the shit,
like the people Marjorie Taylor Green is talking about.
But in the polling,
when they look at MAGA or self-identified MAGA Republicans
and non-Magre Republicans,
the ones who are more pro-war
are the MAGA Republicans
and because they're more pro-Trump.
And so whatever Trump is for, therefore.
So what is going to happen when Trump,
when Trump fades into the background
and there is this, you know,
a 20-20-Rubrican nomination
is not a battle for who's going to lead Trump's movement.
Trump's movement dies with him.
It's what the rest of the Republican looks like
party looks like after Trump.
Right.
And like, I'm not saying it's going to look good
because of the, you know,
decade of radicalization of people
into this sort of depraved,
nihilistic, megalical politics.
But it's not America first.
It's not nationalism.
It's not, it's like,
race-based grievance,
politics, then take it where you want from there.
Yeah, I mean, I think that there, I think you could see an America First movement that is very
nationalistic, xenophobic, populist.
Again, it doesn't look great.
But you could see it stand in contrast with the hawks that are left in the party,
the deficit hawks that are left in the party.
There's not a lot of them, right?
There's going to be some segments of the party that really are driven by more racial
grievance and immigration. There's going to be others that are maybe driven by, you know,
more economic concerns, even though they're not going to end up embracing any decent economic
policies. But like, I do think it is a, I think the point is it's going to be a war for the soul of the
party. Yes. Not, not a war for the whole, for the, to lead the Trump movement, because that's
not a real thing. Right. And I don't think it's going to be a battle between like the never Trumpers
and the rest of the party. I think they're, I think that they're out for good. Um,
I think it's going to be the different warring factions of MAGA that we're seeing right now.
It just it doesn't stand for any.
Like, if Trump came out tomorrow for Obamacare, they'd all be pro-Obomacare.
Like, that's the thing that is here.
And so it doesn't really mean anything.
Like, it is just a, the voters serve, the Republican-based voters serve Trump, whatever Trump wants.
They don't serve a bunch of ideas that Trump then because come to represent for them.
Like, you see this with abortion, right?
Like this is was the, you know, obviously Dobbs happened, but Trump, you know, has not said anything about abortion for years now, right, since the election and no one, and you don't hear anything from the evangelicals about it because that's not what Trump wants.
But if Trump were to pick it as his top issue tomorrow, that would be this top issue again.
It's just, I just think it's important to understand the difference between an America First movement that Trump's the head of and a movement that is about Donald Trump that is sometimes called America First and may have some America Firsters.
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Well, Donald Trump's still here, and Republicans are about to face their last midterm with Donald Trump as president, and they are clearly aware that their prospects aren't looking so hot, which is why this week's House Republican retreat in Florida gave us headlines like this one from Axios.
Quote, White House tells House Republicans to stop talking about mass deportations.
What?
Here's House Speaker Mike Johnson, valiantly trying out the new line on Tuesday.
We got a little hiccup with some of the Hispanic and Latino voters for certain
because some of the immigration enforcement was viewed to be overzealous
and, you know, everybody can describe it differently.
But here's the good news.
We're in a course correction mode right now.
We're going to have a new Secretary of Homeland Security.
Mark Wayne Mullen is going to do a great job in that role.
I'm sure that he'll...
Just a hiccup.
Just a flesh wound.
You know, and it could be some people have described it as overzealous, and it could be described different ways.
By other, you know, just you, you pick your, you pick your adjective.
I'm not, I'm not saying it's overzealous in case Donald Trump is watching this right now.
I'm not saying that.
Some may have said that.
Also, just like what an annoying dupus he is.
It's just like he is just, it's so the way, like this, he's describing mass deportation and the massive political problem the Republicans have because.
of it in this weird
sing-songy Ned Flander's
voice. It's just, it's so bad.
Just a hiccup. Just a hiccup with some Latino voters
over the fact that we have a
paramilitary force hunting them down
in their neighborhoods, regardless
of whether they're citizens or not.
So James Blair, who is the
this is the White House's top political guy,
he's the deputy chief of staff.
They always trot him out
to try to say what the message
should be. And then everyone
else in the White House just ignores the advice
says to do it Republicans.
Remember he did that around affordability. He's like Donald Trump.
After the off-year elections, he's like,
Donald Trump's now going to focus on affordability.
We know that. We get the, it's really important
than the next day, Donald Trump's like, affordability is a hoax.
So he also told House Republicans,
he was the one who said, stop talking about mass
deportations. He told them to turn
the midterms into a choice election
by reminding voters about Democrats,
Biden-era positions on crime,
cashless bail, and open border.
That was the quote.
Would that be your advice, too?
I wouldn't give them advice, John.
But I would point out that the strategy is doomed to fail for one very, very bitter pill for Donald Trump and James Blair to swallow, which is voter.
Joe Biden isn't president.
Well, not only is Joe Biden not president.
60% of voters in a recent NPR Maris poll believe that things were better when Joe Biden was president.
That includes 68% of independence.
And so your message cannot be watch out for Biden's old policies when they, even if they didn't like Biden's old policies, they think your policies suck more.
Majorities think that their life is worse off because of Donald Trump's policies.
And so at a time of war with $100 a barrel oil, do you think cashless bail is going to tip the elections for you?
Like truly, these guys are so far up their own asses that it's like hard to see straight.
someone from Fox called up the White House after that Axio story and asked about the mass deportations policy
and the White House said there's no change whatsoever in the White House's deportation or immigration policies.
So they're still pursuing mass deportation, but they just can't talk about it.
You can't talk about mass deportation.
The war that you're seeing is actually over.
It's going great.
It's going great.
The tariffs you're paying that the Supreme Court said are illegal.
You're not getting a refund.
The extra gas, the higher gas prices you're paying are actually great because, you know, we're all making money.
Oil companies are making money and everything's great.
And I don't know.
What else is there?
That's basically.
Everything's wonderful.
Everything's wonderful.
Check out this ballroom.
Look at that.
It's great.
Yes.
And don't worry.
The president is spending at least three to four times as much time as he is on the war in the economy on decorating the ballroom he's building.
Because his true passion is interior design.
I don't know what I would tell them the message is.
I mean, I guess, and then the other thing, you know, they're like, oh, you got to talk about the prescription drug thing, which, like, he didn't do anything on prescription drugs that's like anything of significance at all.
But he did some, like, fake website and a couple things here and there that might help some people who don't have insurance if they go on the website and get some discounts on prescription drugs.
It's very, very, very little.
But this is their big thing.
They think, oh, if the Republicans are out there and they've done the polling on this and they tell them all the candidates, go out there and talk about what?
Trump has done on prescription drugs, like, that is the key.
Okay.
No.
You know, that's almost like, it is eerie, how similar it is to some of the things we read
about Biden's plans.
And honestly, I don't know what I would tell them either other than to go fuck themselves,
but the, that'd be my advice, James Blair.
But they, if they were going to do anything to be helpful, is they would kind of do what
Biden actually did, which was just be quiet for the last six months.
Like, Biden wasn't out there campaigning for anyone.
He wasn't trying to make the election about him.
Up until he gave that democracy speech at the very end,
it was he just kind of let the kid did it's run.
He showed a lot of discipline,
even though he was unhappy.
Yeah.
I don't think Trump will be showing that discipline.
That's what I was saying.
I also think if you told Mike Johnson to go fuck himself,
it would fly in the face of his covenant eyes app
that he'd raise his son.
So I think that's going to be.
Somewhere his son is just getting an alert on his phone.
Something I thought about that message wouldn't be received as well.
well. So the president basically had one piece of advice for Republicans in Congress. It's become
more of an all-consuming demand, which is to pass the Save America Act, a bill that would require,
as we've talked about, every American to present their passport or birth certificate in person
at a local elections office in order to register to vote. Trump is also demanding that the bill
include a nationwide ban on most mail-in voting and a ban on trans participation in sports
and gender affirming care for minors, because why not?
He said that he won't sign any legislation until the bill has passed,
and yet the votes still aren't there in the Senate without nuking the filibuster,
which Republicans also don't have the votes for,
as John Thune continues telling everyone who will listen.
They did just get one convert, however.
Texas is John Cornyn, who's locked in a primary runoff with Ken Paxton,
who said he'd only considered dropping out of the race if the Save Act passes.
So, because of that, Cornyn wrote an op-ed in the New York Post this week, explaining that he now does support ending the filibuster to pass the Save America Act.
Again, they still don't have the votes.
But Cornyn is having a hard time answering questions about his change of heart after many, many years in politics defending the filibuster.
Let's take a listen.
Previously said that nuking the filibuster would be taking a wrecking ball to Senate rules.
Is that no longer true?
I said I'd be open to reforms.
What would you say to those who say you just change your mind to win the president's endorsement?
I'd say that's not true.
You also said that it's leader.
I think we're through.
Go ahead.
Go away.
Yeah.
Think we're through.
Still seems like there's absolutely no way this thing is getting passed, but am I missing something?
There's some secret trick they got up their sleeve?
I don't, you're not missing anything.
You should be clear.
Trump's made this so much harder.
It was almost impossible anyway if they could just pass the House's past version of the original Save Act.
instead Trump has decided to add all these provisions, including a ban, as you said, like these
completely extraneous things around transports participation and general affirming care, but also
mail balloting, like Susan Collins, who insanely supports the SAVE Act, has said that she is
very concerned about a bill telling states how to handle their absentee ballot programs, which,
I mean, the Constitution may also have a thing or two to say about that.
Yep.
So it seems hard for them to pass the old version.
the new version seems like an impossibility.
I've been trying to think, like, just to like take a dive on the dark side, like, how could they actually do it?
Because they can lose three Republicans, right?
So you assume even if she supports the bill, is Susan Collins really going to nuke the filibuster to pass the Save Act?
No.
Lise Murkowski.
No.
Mitch McConnell's still kicking around.
That's three right there.
And Tillis has said he's not.
going to do it.
So it seemed that seem.
And then the U.
also Kennedy has said that.
So it seems hard.
They just don't have the votes.
Yeah.
It doesn't seem like it is possible for them to do it.
Even if Trump has pulled off with at least House Republicans in the past, like what seemed
to be impossible votes.
But usually that's getting conservatives to vote for something more moderate.
Like, and more moderate, I'm saying with all kinds of air quotes because not,
not particularly moderate.
But it's getting.
There are no moderates here, but getting the less Trump.
be Republicans to come over the Trumpy side is something he's had last successful. It seems
very, very hard as we sit here today. So I'd say that. It seems like where this is headed is it fails.
They have the vote. They try there. All they speak and yell and scream and all the right wing
influencers freak out and all that shit. It doesn't go anywhere, dies. And then Trump announces he's doing
an executive order that is the Save America Act. And he's just going to, you know, claim by Fiat that it is
passed or just, you know, eO the provisions into being and then into law. And then it'll be
challenged in court and thrown out and that'll be that. Yeah, that seems right. And maybe it'll be a
pretext for when they lose the midterms for them to all scream about how Democrats cheated. And if we
had passed the Save America Act and if the courts hadn't, you know, the Supreme Court hadn't
betrayed Donald Trump, then Republicans would have won the midterms. And so now we're going to
see some voting machines. I don't know. But like, you can, you can, you can, you
can see where this is headed. Yeah, that's fair. I think that's a good, that's a good articulation
of what's likely to happen. Yeah, that'll be a real fucking shit show. One other story to file under
Republicans acting fucking nuts. On Monday, Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles tweeted, quote,
Muslims don't belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie. This came after Florida
Congressman Randy Fine tweeted in February, quote, if they force us to choose, the choice between
dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.
Then just on Thursday, after a popular right-wing troll account posted a tweet juxtaposing a picture of the Twin Towers exploding with Zoran Mundani hosting an Iftar celebration,
Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville retweeted it with the comment, quote,
The enemy is inside the gates, referring to Mamdani.
Maybe even more disturbing than those three.
When reporters asked a bunch of Republicans in Congress this week for their reaction to Ogles' tweet about how Muslims don't belong in American society, a lot of them just refused to condemn it.
The number three ranked Republican in the House, Tom Emmer, was asked six times by a reporter whether he thinks Muslims belong in American society.
Six times in a row, each time he refused to say yes.
Just would not say yes.
I don't know.
I'm like, I'm in a complete loss for this one.
Like, it's disgusting.
It is, if, if anyone said that about any other religion, Judaism, Christianity, it would be a fucking national uproar.
This has nothing to do with, you know, sort of Islamic-inspired terrorists or any kind of extreme.
It's nothing to do with any of that, even though some of them in their backtrack can try to make it.
It's just people who are Muslim in this country, they do not want here.
and you have elected Republicans saying they do not want Muslims in the society.
You have elected Republicans saying that Zoran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, should be denaturalized and deported.
You have other ones just calling for just people who practice Islam in this country to be deported.
It's fucking, it's disgusting.
And I don't even know what, like, what should Democrats say about it?
I feel like I've seen a lot of tweets from a lot of Democrats saying that it's disgusting.
I really don't know what else there is to do, but it's something people should realize it's happening out there.
Yeah, I mean, I had the exact same reaction, which is it's so horrifying.
It is an effort to make anti-Muslim bigotry socially acceptable, certainly within the Republican Party, if not in America.
You know, as you said, if you were to substitute any other religion there, there would be a fierce uproar.
And I think Democrats who have called it out are good to do it.
but I always wrestle with this,
which is these people are disgusting trolls
and they want our outrage.
And are we giving them what they want by addressing it?
You know, I just like, I really, like,
it should be called out.
Like, it absolutely should be called out.
And no one should be afraid to call it out.
This is not a situation we're like,
oh, we, you know, this might be politically precarious.
No, you should call.
I think this is terrible.
It's not just disgusting morally.
It's, I think it's also terrible politics.
I think people look at that and think that most Americans,
like that's disgusting.
Like, why would you?
even say that. Like, why would you be so divisive? Like, why would you be so hateful? Like,
I don't think that, I don't think it's good politics. That's why I think it's the right thing to call it out.
I think what to do here is, like, you're never going to get Andy Ogles, Tommy Tuberville,
Randy Fine, to be less horrible. They're not going to have an epiphany one day and not be
these disgusting people they show themselves to be. The thing to do is to deliver fierce, powerful,
political punishment on the people
who are enabling this in the Republican Party.
Tom Em are the number three Republican.
I mean, Mike Johnson, let's just go every single day.
Right.
They could call this out.
They could speak up for their constituents.
There are Muslims who live in every district,
almost every district and certainly every state in this country.
None of them call out is the way to do is to make them pay
a huge political price for this.
To channel our anger and our outrage.
certainly into protecting and thinking about and caring for the Muslims who are being targeted here,
but into efforts to just beat the living shit out of these Republicans in the election.
I think Mamdani had maybe the best response.
He quote tweeted Tuberville and said,
let there be as much outrage from politicians in Washington when kids go hungry as there is when I break bread with New Yorkers.
Yeah.
Which is just bringing the whole thing back onto his terms.
Right, and not having to deal with that.
But it is, it's fucked, man.
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All right, a couple things before we go.
Elon Musk's Doge is back in the headlines, thanks to a lawsuit filed last year to reverse cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Apparently, Elon's Doge Bros fed every NEH grant into chat GPT and asked it, does the following relate at all to DEI, respond factually in less than 120 characters?
begin with yes or no. That was the prompt. The result was the cancellation of $100 million
in already appropriated funding, Congress already appropriated it, and the firing of 65%
of the staff at the National Endowment for the Humanities, which some of the Doge Bros are having
to answer for under oath as part of the lawsuit. Here's part of a video that 404 media put together
with some of the highlights from former Doge staffer Justin Fox.
How do you interpret DEI?
There was the EO explicitly laid out.
The details.
I don't remember it off the top of my head.
I'm asking for your understanding of it.
Yeah.
My understanding was exactly what was written in the EO.
Okay.
So can you...
I don't remember what was in the EO.
So right now, do you have an understanding of what DEI is?
Yeah.
Okay.
So what's your understanding is you sit here today in this deposition?
Well, it was exactly what was written in the EO.
Why is a documentary about...
Holocaust survivors.
D-E-I.
It's the gender-based story.
That's inherently discriminatory to focus on this specific group.
It's inherently discriminatory to focus on what specific group?
The gender-based, so females.
During the Holocaust.
You believe that's inherently discriminatory?
I'm just saying that's what it's focused on.
Sure.
But this is related to the EI.
Oh my God.
I hadn't seen that clip.
No, this is first time.
First time.
What?
The Holocaust is a...
These people are fucking stupid.
Elon Musk is fucking stupid.
The fucking people he hired are stupid.
And everyone, during the whole Doge thing that was like,
these kids are brilliant and they blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And just give them a chance.
No, they're all fucking stupid.
They should have been nowhere anywhere near the government and fuck them.
Just some of the worst, dumbest people were given the most important jobs.
And with incredible consequences.
Oh, because you can code.
Oh, good for fucking you.
Yeah.
Where's that code getting you now?
Yeah.
replace you with fucking Claude.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Chat, GBT, me T my ass right there.
It's just, like, and they're like, we are, like, we are.
laughing this and we should because these clowns should be ridiculed out of
polite society but USAID programs gutted children died people got sick people lost their jobs
I know I know because of a bunch of fucking goobers who had no idea what they're doing
who worked for the world's biggest goober who had no idea what he was doing got in there
back back to the back to the gory per in cells yes exactly put in a bunch of poorly worded prompts
into a old version of chat GPT and fired a bunch of people and cut off
bunch of programs. I just fucking, you cannot run against Silicon Valley hard enough in the next race.
Yeah, there's a story today about a bunch of tech venture capitalists who want to raise a half a billion dollars to shape California politics.
Saw that. Saw that. Yeah. I was just arguing with Chimoth on Twitter. Although, I will say, I didn't, here's the thing, Dan. He tweeted about the Washington, the new Washington state millionaires tax, income tax. They're all been bitching about the wealth tax. I know this is just a, just didn't.
income tax that hits millionaires. That's it. And I just quoted it and said, oh, this billionaire,
you know, this billionaire has a problem with, with millionaires paying a little bit more. It's something
very like anodyne. And he just, like, responded with this long fucking thing and it's just a complete
asshole. And you know what I did? I didn't respond. You know what, John, I feel like it's,
it was two weeks ago we had what some of our listeners thought was a mild intervention on my part.
I think it was more of an inquisition
about your mental health.
But you've grown in those two weeks.
If it's not a senior administration official,
I'm going to let it go,
which is I did.
Does he not enough followers for you
to get your jolies out of it?
Is there a level which is no longer thrilling?
Yeah, like who cares what Chimaut does?
But anyway, I do think that like people like him
and the David Sachs and all the AI fucking, you know,
overlords now.
Like this is, the politics there are so bad for them.
And I do think that like people in this country
are so angry and have fucking had it with like Elon Musk and the tech bros and all these fucking
assholes that like, you know, I, like I said, I do not think you can run hard enough against
that, that whole crew if you're a Democrat or a Republican for that matter running in 2028.
And you're going to get a chance to because between the crypto industry and the AI industry,
there's going to be hundreds of millions of dollars spent in super PAC funding.
And even in Democratic primaries, we're seeing the crypto packs have come in against
Julianna Stratton, who's lieutenant.
Kevin are running in Illinois as soon as she would, you know, got near the top of the polls.
They dropped, you know, I think $5 million in ads on her.
So there's a real, like this is the real thing.
And also, this is a different topic.
But these people are also so fucking bad at politics.
Because like all these AI people who are in there being like arrogant assholes who are, uh, insert
themselves in politics, they do not seem to recognize.
Because even though they're making a ton of money, you know, it's like Sam Altman sweeping in with the chat GPT contract, uh, with the
Pentagon is that they have to get their data centers built in local communities.
And if your brand is in the shit because you're being run by an arrogant asshole who is
keeping up to the least popular president in recent memory, then it's going to be really hard
to get local communities to approve your data centers.
It's like these people are really, they are bad at politics.
They're being advised by greedy people who are.
bad at politics. Like, it's just, they're all fucking clowns. Yeah, agree. That's not the only
Doge story we have. The Washington Post also just reported that a whistleblower has come forward
alleging that a different Doge staffer at the Social Security Administration copied two highly
sensitive databases so he could use them at his new job with a private employer. The guy in
question apparently asked the whistleblower for help in transferring one of the databases off of a
thumb drive to his personal computer so that he could, quote, sanitize the data and said that
he expected to receive a presidential pardon, of course, if his work was found to be illegal.
One of the databases was called the master death file included records for more than 500 million living and dead Americans, including social security numbers, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and parents' names.
Isn't that give you a warm and fuzzy feeling inside?
Should be one of the biggest stories in America because it would be one of the biggest data breaches in the,
the history of the federal government.
Yeah.
And no one, at the end of the story, they're like, and no one knows, was there one
copy made of it, no copies, a dozen copies, a hundred copies?
No one can say.
I'm sure DOJ is looking into it, right?
I guess right now there's an inspector general internal investigation at the Social
Security Administration.
That's how we found out about this story in the Washington Post because they had to notify
Congress that they were doing this inspector general investigation.
but like, I don't know.
Seems a little crimey to me.
Seems like there could be some crimes here.
When you bring up a prospective presidential pardon in the discussion involving how to get something onto a jump drive, you're probably doing a crime.
Yeah, and when the stuff on the jump drive is the private, the most private information for every American.
I can't wait to see what dipshit startup this guy went to go work for.
It's like.
Probably open AI.
Like, you could think it could be something like that, but it's probably.
Probably something just so ridiculous like, I don't know, like Uber for bowling lanes or something.
Fuck.
Finally.
Finally.
This is a light one.
A story about how our wartime president has been extremely focused on footwear.
And not just his either.
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump has, quote, fallen in love with shoes from a company called Floorsheim, which he keeps gifting to, quote,
agency heads, lawmakers,
White House advisors, and VIPs.
So Trump has apparently been checking out people's shoes
during cabinet meetings
and then guessing their shoe size in front of everyone,
which hilariously led to Marco Rubio saying he's in 11 and a half,
which he's not,
because shortly after the article was released,
various photos of Rubio
and a pair of obviously oversized dress shoes
went viral.
And J.D. Vance has told the story as well that, like, Trump said to Marco and J.D. in some meeting, like, hey, you both have shitty shoes. I got these new shoes that I love. What are your shoe sizes? And so they give him the shoe sizes. And J.D. Vance says, he's a 13. He's like, fucking bigfoot over there. And then, and then Marco says 11 and a half. After J.D. Vance says 13. And Donald Trump says, you know, you can tell a lot about a man.
his shoe size.
So Rubio
inflates his shoe size.
Trump gives these shoes
to everyone as a gift
and then they're all stuck
wearing their shoes around
in Marco's case
that don't fit him.
It's so funny.
I mean, just such
small dick energy
for Marco Rubio.
He's like,
Lil Marco, Trump nailed
that nickname.
Yes.
Nailed it.
Marker Rubio measures
his shoe size from the base.
Could you just imagine?
He wore them to Davos.
The man is on his feet like 18 hours a day,
wearing shoes that do not fit
because he's afraid to admit
to the President of the United States
that his shoe size is smaller than he thinks.
He did want to be more than a size and half smaller
than Jady Vance.
Who was also probably lying about his feet as well.
How many purse of socks do you think he's trying to put on
to try to have?
I was just going to say that.
Well, also, the internet sort of did its thing, and sort of they did like a Zapruder-like collection of, like, various Marker Rubio pictures, photos.
So there's one where he clearly looks ridiculous.
There's some others where you can still see a little space in the shoes.
And then they have pictures from before he got the shoes when he was wearing other shoes, which clearly fit him quite well.
So you can just see the evolution, and suddenly Rubio is just walking around, tripping over his feet.
Big dumb shoes that Donald Trump gave him.
Oh, also, by the way,
Business Insider,
helpfully pointed this out that
Floresham's parent company
has sued for a refund on Trump's tariffs.
Fucking perfect.
Perfect.
Well, enjoy your shoes everyone.
Why is Trump...
It really does speak to something
that's going on with Trump
in these...
It's very, like, aging dictator,
declining empire vibes
where he's just like...
It's very in line with the...
caring about the ballroom and the decorations and the Kennedy Center and the armrests.
And it's like, you know, he's just sitting around these meetings, probably like they're talking about fucking missile launches or...
About the street of Hormuz.
Yeah, oil prices or, you know, any number of other important things.
And he's sitting there looking under the table and he's like, what shoe size are you?
I don't like those shoes.
I got to send you some floor shime shoes for $145 a pair.
And will it be your size?
Who knows?
Who knows?
You better tell me a big size.
You better to tell me a big size.
I'm going to think you have a small day.
Do you think we would not be in war with the rain right now if Marker Rubio had shoes that fit?
Unclear.
Unclear.
Oh, boy.
Well, that's our show for today, Dan.
We're going to end on that note.
It's a good note to end on.
Hope everyone's wearing the shoes that fit them.
Love it will be back in the feed on Sunday with a conversation with Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro.
Maybe he'll find out how big his shoes are, huh?
Bye, everyone.
Bye.
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