Pod Save America - Trump's Perfect Interview (plus Jake Tapper!)

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

Donald Trump employs the novel legal strategy of confessing his crimes on television. Hunter Biden strikes a plea deal with a Trump prosecutor. RFK JR’s anti-vax, anti-wifi candidacy gets a boost from Joe Rogan and Elon’s VC fanboys. And Justice Sam Alito is mad we all found out he got free rides on a billionaire's private jet whose hedge fund he later ruled in favor of. Then, CNN’s Jake Tapper stops by the studio to talk about Trump, CNN, Fox, and his new novel “All the Demons Are Here.” 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 Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Donald Trump employs the novel legal strategy of confessing his crimes on television. Hunter Biden strikes a plea deal with a Trump prosecutor. RFK Jr.'s anti-vax, anti-Wi-Fi candidacy gets a boost from Joe Rogan and Elon's VC fanboys. And Justice Sam Alito is mad that we all found out he got free rides on a billionaire's private jet whose hedge fund he later ruled in favor of. Then CNN's Jake Tapper stopped by the studio to talk to Tommy Lovett and me about Trump, CNN, Fox, and his new novel, All the Demons Are

Here. First, a few quick housekeeping notes. Crooked's award-winning podcast, This Land, is back with a bonus episode. It's going to be out this Friday that delves into the recent surprisingly good Supreme Court ruling on the Indian Child Welfare Act. Host Rebecca Nagel discusses this pivotal court case in most of season two of This Land, which reveals how the far right is trying to use Native children to chip away at American Indian tribes and their sovereignty rights. In this case, they failed, which is great. And you can find out why this Friday on This Land, wherever you get your podcasts. Also, a reminder that Crooked Media reads first ever book, Mobility, by Lydia Kiesling is available right now for pre-order. Vulture included Mobility on its 14 books.

We can't wait to read the summer list. Head to crooked.com slash mobility to pre-order your copy today and be the first to read when it's released on August 1st. first. Finally, quick thank you to all the Vote Save America volunteers who made nearly 1,000 voter contacts to help defeat anti-abortion Virginia State Senator Joe Morrissey in Tuesday's primaries. Democrats currently hold a slim majority in the Senate, while Republicans have the majority in the House of Delegates. If Republicans win both chambers of the legislature this November, these are off-year elections. Glenn Youngkin is expected to pass new abortion restrictions in Virginia, bills discriminating against LGBTQ plus youth, rollbacks of voting rights, and more. So everyone's got to get

involved in Virginia for this November. Head to votesaveamerica.com slash Virginia to help out today. All right, Dan, lots of news to catch up on. The Republican presidential frontrunner got himself a court date to stand trial for 37 felony counts of violating the Espionage Act and obstructing justice. It's August 14th of this year, just a week before the first Republican primary debate that Donald Trump is threatening to skip, though we should note that most legal experts expect Judge Cannon to move the date back, due in part to complications that come with any case about highly classified secrets. CNN has the first post-indictment poll to show that Trump's support among Republican voters has

declined in the last month. 47% say he's their first choice for president, which is down from 53% in CNN's poll in May. His favorability rating among Republican voters has gone from 77% to 67%. And now about a quarter of Republican voters say they won't vote for him under any circumstances. That's up a few percentage points from their last poll. Trump is navigating these legal and political challenges like any careful criminal defendant would by going on television to confess his crimes. Here's a clip from Trump's two part interview with Fox's Brett Baier. Because I had boxes, I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don't want to hand that over to Nara yet. And I was very busy, as you've sort of seen.

I don't want to hand that over to Nara yet. And I was very busy, as you've sort of seen. Yeah, but according to the indictment, you then tell this aide to move to other locations after telling your lawyers to say you'd fully complied with the subpoena when you hadn't. But before I send boxes over, I have to take all of my things out. These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things.

Golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes. There were many things. I would say much, much more. Not that I know of, but not that I know of. Iran war plans? Not that I know of. Not that I know of. But the golf shirts were in there. You can't. Look, I realize the government sends out subpoenas sometimes, but you don't have to cooperate with law enforcement if you have a box with your golf shirt in there. Everyone knows that. It's a notable exception to the law,

the golf shirt exception. Before we get to the political damage this interview may have caused Trump, let's talk about the legal damage. You think Jack Smith might want to show jurors this clip of Trump admitting that he personally went through the boxes and held on to classified secrets in defiance of a federal subpoena? Even judging this on the scale of abject Trumpian idiocy, this is an astounding clip. It's astounding. He admits to the crime with the excuse, as you pointed out, that his golf shirts had not been sorted in time. And therefore, he refused to abide by the subpoena.

And then when Brett, and this part gets less attention, but then when Brett Baer says that according to the indictment, he told his aides to hide the boxes and then lie to the FBI about it. He does not deny it. He just asserts he had to do that because the golf shirts and the pants and the shoes were so with them it's it's wild it is just i love it it's great it's great do more do more i mean i mean they were his favorite golf shirts um no like it's interesting because his defense is basically i had every right to keep classified information as a private citizen even though he's on tape admitting that he didn't declassify it when he was president.

And by the way, I don't have to cooperate with law enforcement because I'm Donald Trump. That's it. That's his defense. It's also interesting that he seems to be he basically seems to be trying to do his own defense and convince potential jurors in the court of public opinion. Like, it seems like his legal strategy is to just, you know, do as many interviews as possible and convince as many potential jurors in South Florida that this is all bullshit and he's going to do his own defense and he's going to do it on TV.

And honestly, like, who knows? It might work. I think the use of the word strategy there is a lot well however whether he stumbled into it or not yeah it is i mean if you really want to take like one serious takeaway from this is he truly does not believe the law applies to him yeah i mean that's yeah he i mean he thinks that the law, politics, government, they're just, it's something to be gamed like everything else, like business, right? He can just kind of bullshit his way through it, con his way through it, and it doesn't apply to him. And to date, that's been a very effective strategy.

Because people who follow the law, people who think that the rules apply to them, they're suckers. You know, that's his whole deal. So Trump said plenty of politically damaging things as well in this interview. Here's a sample. Your vice president, Mike Pence, is running against you. Your ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, she's running against you. Your former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said he's not supporting you. You mentioned National Security Advisor John Bolton. He's not supporting you either.

You mentioned Attorney General Bill Barr says you shouldn't be president again. Calls you the consummate narcissist and troubled man. You recently called Barr a gutless pig. Your second defense secretary is not supporting you, called you irresponsible. This week you and your White House, called your White House chief of staff, John Kelly, weak and ineffective and born with a very small brain. You called your acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, a born loser. You called your first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, dumb as a rock. And your first defense secretary, James Mattis, the world's most overrated general. You called your White House press secretary, Kayleigh Kennedy, milquetoast. And multiple times you've referred to your transportation secretary,

Elaine Chao, as Mitch McConnell's China-loving wife. So why did you hire all of them in the first place? Because I hired 10 to one that were fantastic. In your mind, did the COVID vaccine work? It's such an interesting question, because not only that, I also did the Regenerons of the world. You know, the whole we did a tremendous job on that. But we had a vaccine. Now you have difference. You have different COVIDs. You had COVID-19 and then you have different COVIDs.

But we had original was COVID-19, which was the roughest one. I said, I really don't want to talk about it because as a Republican, it's not a great thing to talk about because for some reason, it's just not. For some reason? Yeah, for some reason, because people love the vaccines and people hate the vaccines. I focused on nonviolent crime. As an example, a woman who you know very well was in jail.

She had 24 more years to serve. She served for 22 years. Alice Johnson. Alice. She was in the Super Bowl. High quality. I said, how many years? And she was on a telephone call, and they were involved in selling marijuana, mostly marijuana.

And she got like 50 years in jail. But she'd be killed under your plan. Huh? As a drug dealer. No, no, no. Under my, oh, under that? It would depend on the severity. It would depend on the severity.

Here you run this ad. She's technically a former drug dealer. She had multi-million dollar cocaine ring. Any drug dealer. Look. So even Alice Johnson in that ad? She can't do it, okay? By the way, if that was there,

no, she wouldn't be killed. It would start as of now. It's just, there's a lot, there's a lot to unpack there. I mean, we could do, we honestly do it all day, every day for a month, just that interview alone.

I mean, I guess my first question is, how do we get Trump to do as many interviews as possible between now and when people start voting? Because this is it for me. Like, I don't think people, swing voters, whoever else, I don't think they have voted against Trump in 2016 or 2020. Mainly because of what they heard about him or what other people said about him. They just listened to him. They just listened to him or they read his tweets, which are now truths, and they made up their mind. And this is why the more Trump wants to talk, the more he wants to do

interviews, the more people want to put him on TV. I'm completely fine with that because, you know, all you have to do is ask him a few questions. Yeah, I mean, we can get into the Brett Baer of it all in a minute. But like, all you have to do is ask him a few questions. They don't even have to be that pointed. And he will just do that. Do what we just heard. No one does a better job of making a case against themselves than Donald Trump by opening his mouth. no one does a better job of making a case against themselves than Donald Trump by opening his mouth.

It's also just, he says, he's so, he's so honest about what a bullshit artist he is. Like when he was like about the COVID vaccines, he's like, yeah, you know, I can't really talk about it because the base is crazy and there are a bunch of anti-vaxxers and I want to piss them off. I don't know. It's not my problem. is the least hurtful thing he says in these sort of interviews. Cause it's like, yeah, that sounds right. You know, or when he said the other thing he said in that town hall about why he feels different now, he felt about something else. Cause he's not,

he was president then he's not now like, that's just how people think politicians are really thinking. And he just says it out loud. And that's, and that is mildly helpful for him. But the rest of it, that is a small silver lining in a very dark cloud of idiocy surrounding all these interviews.

Yeah. It's like when he, when he's asked about the first debate and skipping it and he's like, why would I participate? I'm ahead in the polls. You know yeah it's like when he when he's asked about the first debate and skipping it and he's like why would i participate i'm ahead in the polls yeah you know everyone's like oh yeah that seems that seems right no but i think that the you know his proposal to give all drug dealers the death penalty seems like it wasn't that well thought out by donald trump uh and how it might uh how it might work with the first act, which he was they were referencing there, which basically gave, I believe, clemency to certain nonviolent drug offenders. You really think that through and how it would work with the with the death penalty for drug dealers policy that he is now pushing. And I do think that that is like him getting caught up in that.

I think that's a little that's problematic for him, like because he's got to take one taking both sides of a position in the same sentence. That's tricky for Trump. Yeah, he there has been reporting. It's like whoever knows like what is real in Trump reporting, but there was a lot of very fan-ficty reporting after 2020 that one of the reasons he blamed his loss was that Jared Kushner tricked him into doing the First Step Act, including nonviolent drug dealers, including the ones that he gave clemency to as a way to overcorrect for that. Yeah. Yeah. Because he saw authoritarians do that in other countries. Right. And he's like, oh, yeah, they did that. And then there was no crime. It's great. We should do that. Perfect. Baseball love that. All right. Second question about this. Will you admit that you have been wrong about Brett Baier and that America's greatest newsman didn't deserve your typical knee-jerk partisan attacks?

Well, John, I will say that I was prepared to come on this podcast. And despite my long history of calling out Brett Baer as a partisan hack, and just having a general well of rage at all the people in Washington, D.C. who hold them up as the one good worker in the propaganda factory at Fox, I was going to come on this podcast and say, job well done, Brett. And then you know what happened? And then I sent you the puck piece yes then i read an article from puck by dylan byers with the headline brett hot summer filled with a bunch of democrats talking about how amazing brett bear is holding him up as the paragon of journalism and that was a bridge too far for me. I just can't, I can't do it.

He did a good job. He did one good interview, which I would state is his job. He is a journalist. That's what he is supposed to do. And I will just say every Democrat so excited about this, talking about how this is how journalism covers. This is how we bring down Trump. Go take a cold shower. We do not need a Republican savior. I don't know why so Democrats want that. It's like the Lincoln Project. We got Brett Baer now. You're probably going to start selling Chris Christie merch in the crooked store. Just slow down, people. He did a good job. I will give him credit for that. That does not erase 30 years of being a propaganda beard for the racism for profit industry at Fox

News. You know, it's just, look, I know that you are just a partisan lib. All right. Straight shooter. A resistance warrior here. No, I like, you know how I feel about this. I think the debate over whether we are praising or looking skeptically at Republicans, conservative pundits, whoever, who come around and decide that Trump is in fact unfit for office. don't think it's like necessary the debate is it like why did brett bear do one good interview i don't know maybe he felt maybe he felt some level of shame after all the dominion shit came out maybe he just wanted to get back in the good graces of his dc establishment republican friends who knows who cares he did the interview that's great. Chris Christie, did he do a bunch of horrible things up until 2020? Yeah, of course. Now he's kicking the shit out of Donald Trump. That's awesome.

Great. We don't need to give these people Profile in Courage awards or even debate whether they should get them. They're just tools to help us defeat Donald Trump, which is what we're trying to do here. That's how I think. I don't disagree with that. And I also can't stand the debates about Bill Kristol did these terrible things. And now you're you have a brief, lukewarm alliance with him to defeat Donald Trump over a temporary basis like that.

I don't care about. Let's see Brett Baer do something. Let's see if he really is going to try to pretend to be a real journalist for the next period, next several years. We'll see. Maybe he changed. Maybe he hasn't. Let's see. I'm not electing Brett Baer to anything.

I'm not giving a Brett Baer a podcast on the Crooked Network. I'm not casting a vote for Chris Christie, you know. But, like, great. They're out there kicking the shit out of Donald Trump. Didn't you just volunteer to give Chris Christie $10 the other day to get him on the debate stage? That's different than voting for him. I'm going to put him on the debate stage. All right.

That's fair. I haven't done that yet, but I do think people should get Chris Christie on the debate stage. That is fucking, first of all, let's talk about the political value in that. Yeah. Maybe it's limited. Maybe he takes her down. Maybe he doesn't. Think about the fucking content value.

that yeah maybe it's limited maybe he takes her down maybe doesn't think about the fucking content value i should just be saying i should just be having this conversation directly with elijah but last question about trump i don't want to make too much of a single poll but do you see anything in the overall trend that makes you think trump's political baggage might be catching up to him after you read that CNN poll? I think there is very little evidence to date that the indictment has dramatically impacted Trump's chances of winning the nomination. That CNN poll shows maybe there's a possible opening, but it still shows him beating Ron DeSantis by 21 points, which is a lot of points. A lot of points. And there's a Yahoo News poll out today, which shows that Trump's approval rating is 79% among Republicans, which is unchanged from January,

continues to hold a big lead in all polls. If you want to look for some possible signs of weakening, there's also a Quinnipiac poll out today, real poll-palooza out here, but that shows that 79% of Republicans think that it would be a serious problem if someone showed classified information to someone who did not have a top secret clearance. Boy, do we got news for them. Yeah. Wait till they read the indictment. And so it could be, if that becomes something that is proven in court, then yes. The big thing about Trump and these polls and the indictment is, I don't think we should expect that the mere fact of the indictment is going to hurt Trump. He has framed on his terms.

It's something like less than 20 percent of Republicans in the Yahoo poll thinks he should be prosecuted for these crimes. Most people think he didn't do very much wrong. It will be if the full weight of all of the indictments and all of the images of him getting arrested, getting arraigned, sitting at a defense table, add up to change the electability equation for Republicans. Maybe that will change. But right now he's still he's sitting pretty strong in the Republican primary for a man just charged with 37 felony counts related to violations of the Espionage Act. Yeah. felony counts related to violations of the espionage act yeah i don't like this but i would wager that voters hearing his interview with brett bayer would judge him more harshly for that than they would hearing that biden's doj is prosecuting donald trump republican voters yeah yeah like i'm talking about republican voters who have an open mind about who they're supporting in the primary.

There's obviously the MAGA fan base, which is like locked down at 35, 40 percent of the Republican Party. But then we know there's a bunch of voters who, you know, might end up with Trump or but they're looking around. And I think for those voters, again, just more Trump, the better. Let's hear straight from Trump. I also think what's notable in that CNN poll is what Trump lost in favorability and support did not go to DeSantis. DeSantis did not gain in that CNN poll. It sort of went to, you know, the support kind of spread around to different candidates in the field, which might tell you that, you know, there's a bunch of candidates out there now, voters. And I'd love to see some Iowa and New Hampshire polls, but voter Republican voters are now being exposed to other candidates and campaigns and they're hearing from them.

So, you know, it also might be a function of just the field is pretty full and people are looking around and, you know, that's that. But I think we're still in status quo territory right now. One more thing before we move on. Just this morning, former Texas Representative Will Hurd announced he's running for president. He's now probably the most moderate Republican running. And he criticized Trump in his announcement video, called him a lawless, selfish, failed politician politician what do you make of a will heard candidacy i think there's a wide lane within the republican party for people who find asa hutchinson too exciting i will just i'll tell you like will hurt right i wish I wish we lived in a country where Will Hurd was, like, the center of the Republican Party, right? Like, that's, I don't agree with Will Hurd on a bunch of issues, but, like, that would be a good country, you know?

But, like, that video, whew, man, was that boring. That's the problem is, like, all of these other candidates that not donald trump and to a lesser extent not ron desantis they need a theory of attention like how are you going to get attention for your candidacy and you know the other one of the other anti-trump candidates in the primary chris christie he's got a theory which is he's gonna like go out there and kick the shit out of trump even will hurd's attack on trump which is like just him calling him, you know, a lawless, selfish, failed politician. Even the way he said it was just boring. You know, and it's like quiet, boring video. I'm like, dude, no one's who's gonna,

who's gonna pay attention to you. You got to get some attention. I hope I don't get this wrong. But the if Will Hurd is a Republican nominee facing Biden, it will be a contest between two candidates who have been on Crooked Media podcasts. Yeah, maybe the same number of times. Yes, one, one each. Yes. No, that's not true. Joe Biden has been on Ponce de America twice.

Twice. Okay. Will Hurd just once. Yeah, no, I mean, look you know wish him all the best again i want uh want people to take down donald trump good for him for doing it i think it's going to be like i said i think it's hard to get attention in that republican primary if you're not going after donald trump or if you're not donald trump you know like have you seen that nikki haley and tim scott have basically been spending a week attacking our old boss, Barack

Obama, for something he said on Axe's podcast, which is on Axe's podcast, he was asked about Tim Scott's candidacy and also just basically howama reconciles his own hopeful rhetoric about this country and racial progress um with uh you know the realities of of what we're living through and basically obama said like people like not only people like tim scott and nikki haley but even his own rhetoric about this has to be undergirded with like an honest accounting of our past and present. So if there's a Republican who doesn't have a plan to address crippling intergenerational poverty, then, you know, people may not believe that rhetoric. And that's all Barack Obama says. And it has caused a furor on the right. Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, they're going around saying like Barack Obama, he doesn't,

he used to believe in racial progress in America. Now he thinks the country's racist and bubble. And they're doing this because this is like the only way they can get any sort of attention for their candidacies. Well, I have bad news for them because this is the first I'm hearing of this. Really? Wow. This is my terminally online moment. Yeah. I knew that Obama said that, and I knew there was a blowup on the right. The fact that Tim Scott and Nikki Haley have been going after this. They've been making it their whole campaign for a full week. It's wild. That's how desperate they are for attention.

I follow the news for a living. News to me. This is what I'm saying. And Will Hurd's going to have the same problem. Doug Burgum, my boy Doug Burgum, he's going to have that problem. Doug Burgum at least has untold amount of money to spend on ads. He is one of the leading spenders to date in early state primary ads. I don't think Will Hurd's going to have that opportunity.

Yeah, that's true. All right. In other news, Donald Trump and his MAGA pals are furious that one of the U.S. attorneys he appointed struck a deal with Hunter Biden where the president's son will plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges for failing to pay his taxes on time and avoid prosecution on his illegal handgun purchase by agreeing to remain drug free for two years and never own a firearm again. The five-year investigation by the Trump-appointed prosecutor will result in no jail time for Hunter, which of course led to this reaction from the party that thinks stealing nuclear secrets isn't a crime.

When you look outside the Capitol, you see the Supreme Court. And you see a statue of Lady Justice. She has a scale that's supposed to be equal, but she's wearing a blindfold. I wonder if there was a blindfold on to the prosecutor when it came to Hunter Biden. He's Hunter Smith. He's doing hard time. It is only because daddy is president that he gets this sweetheart deal with no jail time whatsoever. So I don't care if they're Trump appointed. I don't care if they were part of his former administration. Those people that have known about these Biden crimes and

sold our country out, they should be held accountable to. The scary thing for me is it's not just about the president going after President Trump. It's going after parents and school board meetings. If you're a pro-life Catholic, you're an extremist. If you're a journalist, for goodness sake, they went after Matt Taibbi. I just learned a lot just now

that like if I'm going to commit crime, I should do some crack first, right? Because then if I do the crack, then I could say I have a problem and then they do this diversion thing. So always have crack with you when you're committing a crime. Well, then wannabe dictator Joe Biden

let a prosecutor appointed by his political opponent charge his own son. Should we impeach this lawless thug? What do you think? I've been thinking about how Trump is going to respond to this. I think he's going to pivot seamlessly from Joe Biden wannabe dictator

to Joe Biden so weak that he let his own attorney general arrest his son. Yeah, I was going to say, Trump would say, I wouldn't have let that happen. But Trump's kids, he probably would have let that happen. He would have protected Ivanka and maybe Donald Trump Jr. But Eric and Tiffany, he would have let Merrick Garland haul them off a long time. They'd be in Gitmo right now if he thought of it. You want to explain the truth of what happened here for people? Yeah, we should be very clear. Five years ago, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney began a wide-ranging investigation into everything having to do with Hunter Biden, including his

international business dealings, how he made money. And at the end of that process, and even after Joe Biden was elected, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney stayed on the job to continue on this investigation to ensure there was no political interference now that the father of the subject of that investigation was now the President of the United States. And at the end of that, they didn't find any of all the conspiracy theories, all the things that Jim Jordan and Jim Comer and Donald Trump and Fox News have been talking about, what they found out was that he failed to report some of his income and therefore underpaid on his taxes. And there was a gun crime involved from the time in which he was dealing with problems with addiction. So after all of that, the Trump.

Even that, though, what he did was he went to go buy a gun. go buy a gun and when you buy a gun it says on a form are you addicted to drugs or have you been have you done drugs in the last two months and he said no and that was a lie and so they gave him the gun and that was it also what did not what a system we have people i know yeah you could do a whole other thing on gun laws and whatever but yeah was that right next to the that said, I don't intend to commit a crime with this gun? On your honor. Yeah, you just got to, that's it. That's all we need. We just need you to fill out this form.

And you know what? I'm sure the NRA is trying to get rid of that form altogether. Wow. We should not make people go through the process of having to fill out this cumbersome form. Give them the gun when they walk in. Anyway.

And so at the end of that process, he played guilty of those crimes. He agreed to pay his back taxes and he's entered a diversion program and agreed to never purchase a gun again. That is a completely normal standard outcome for a process like this. There is no evidence of favoritism. There's no evidence of involvement from Joe Biden. If there was, do you think the Trump appointed U.S. attorney would say something about it to someone? Perhaps.

Yeah. The only thing truly unusual about the way this case was handled is the fact that the said in a public letter at the beginning of this whole process, this Trump-appointed U.S. attorney has the full authority to investigate this case, to make charging decisions, to decide when he's going to bring charges, what kind of charges, which is extremely unusual because Merrick Garland is the guy's boss. But because of the potential conflict of interest, Merrick Garland said this guy is in charge. He gets to make all the decisions appointed by Trump, started the investigation under the Trump administration. and Kevin McCarthy that he didn't charge Hunter with a bunch of crimes that comport with the conspiracies you've come to believe because your heads are stuck in the fucking MAGA media echo chamber with a whole bunch of conspiracies about how Hunter did all these international crimes with China and Burisma and everything else. Like, I know that's what you think he did,

but we had actual investigators who were not democrats in fact our trump appointed republicans look into it and they didn't find anything so like someone should ask them like what would you have done would you have just made up charges for hunter biden yes would you have done what question is that but that's of course but like someone should ask that that's a good question from a reporter. I will see if Brett Baird does it. Our only hope. Our only hope. Also, guess who would have gotten a similar deal to Hunter Biden? Had he just pled guilty or made a deal with prosecutors?

Donald fucking Trump, who is being tried for crimes that are a bit more severe than hunters stealing nuclear secrets and a lot of legal experts were saying that if donald trump struck a deal with the prosecutor he could have avoided uh what's about to happen to him as well but he doesn't want to because he doesn't listen to his fucking lawyers. He listens to, you know, Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton. That's who Donald Trump listens to. Also, IRS lawyers have said, like, that this is typical of what happens to people who don't pay their taxes on time. One IRS lawyer told Politico, like, if we prosecuted for failure to pay taxes the jails would be full oftentimes they don't even prosecute cases like hunters so that's why there was a deal and a lot

of people say oh weapons charge that that you know people do time for weapons charges a first time weapons charge like this that doesn't involve any violence which is just you know lying to buy the handgun this is what you usually get and the way, if the judge really thinks this is some sweetheart deal, like Kevin McCarthy says, like all these Republicans are accusing him of, the judge doesn't have to approve the plea deal. The judge can say, oh, no, this was a sweetheart deal. I don't want to do this. So we'll see.

We'll see what the judge does. But I'm sure whoever the judge is, even if it was a Trump appointed judge, you know, they'll get attacked as just some Biden's dude. Because that's their deal. That's what they're doing. Where does the story go next politically and legally? Is this the end of this or what? Well, it's certainly not the end of it politically. The Republicans, as evidenced by the clip we played, are in a lather about it. There's going to be investigations into the investigation. There are going to be hearings. Jim Comer, the famously incompetent chair of the Government Oversight Committee, has promised to dig deep into this. There's this FBI whistleblower who seems to be a complete fraud

involved. There is no chance that the Republicans are going to let go of their conspiracy theories and just say, I was wrong. Good for justice. And so this will continue to be part of it. We'll see it all the way through the election. But for the vast majority of people who live outside of the MAGA bubble, this is probably resolved, which is politically what Democrats want. Yeah. Okay. So another awful story that's been clogging up our feeds this week is Joe Rogan's three-hour conversation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who's running for president in the Democratic primary. who's running for president in the Democratic primary.

Kennedy has accused the U.S. government of, quote, knowingly poisoning kids because of a debunked conspiracy that vaccines cause autism. He accused Dr. Fauci of launching a, quote, coup against Western democracy because he promoted COVID vaccines. He claimed school shootings happen not because of access to guns, but because of access to antidepressants. He said chemicals in the water are turning boys trans, that AIDS might not be a virus, and that gay men in the 80s actually died from poppers. And here's what he told Joe Rogan last week about the dangers of Wi-Fi.

Cancer is not the worst thing. They also, you know, it opens up wi-fi rate radiation opens up your blood brain barrier and so all these toxins that are in your body can now go into your brain how does wi-fi radiation open up your blood brain barrier yeah now you're going beyond my uh my expertise but up to that point up to that point the expertise was vast and deep yes yes the effects of wi-fi on our blood brain barrier um he went on to call it uh leaky brain look it up leaky brain and then joe rogan has like one of his producers google and then he got some google oh yeah i'm seeing right here on the google yeah you get leaky brain it's a real problem and then jordan's like we should get the wi-Fi out of this studio.

Yeah, I mean, that's a very important point. What the fuck is happening? Do you know what? That's an important point. You know where there's a lot of Wi-Fi? Podcast studios. Yeah, it's tough. I don't even know why RFK Jr. was in there.

He's putting his blood-brain barrier on the line for this race. All right, so the interview was bad enough. But afterwards, when vaccine scientist and pediatrician Peter Hotez tried to fact check Kennedy on Twitter, Rogan, then Elon Musk, and then his fucking VC fanboys demanded, demanded that Hotez debate Kennedy on Rogan's pod, which led to, among other things, a right-wing anti-vax nut stalking Hotez at his home. Polls, of course, show that an astounding 20% of Democratic voters are considering voting for Kennedy. And the New York Times just ran a long piece about why he's a real headache for Biden.

Real blood-brain barrier headache for Biden. Good. Great work. Do you agree? And what, if anything, should the Biden campaign and other Democrats do about it? I mean, once the New York Times is writing a story about how something is a headache for you, it's become a headache. Maybe a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If it wasn't before, the story's a fucking headache. I mean, of course, it's going to be annoying. It's going to be quite annoying. There's no Democratic primary. The press is bored with it. They're going to cover it. Biden's political adversaries are going to use Robert Kennedy as a cudgel to try to make Biden look weak. It is important to note that one of the people that Robert Kennedy talked to before he got in the race was Steve Bannon. And Steve Bannon encouraged him to run because Steve Bannon reportedly thought that RFK Jr. would be a chaos agent in the Democratic primary. The reason, I mean, it's wild, these anti-Biden VC yahoos supporting Robert Kennedy, these

guys make all their money in tech. And they are pretending to elect a guy who thinks that Wi-Fi should be banned, should be president of the United States. Think about that for a second. So it is going to be a pain in Joe Biden's – like the year before the presidential election started is always a huge pain in the ass for a largely unopposed president like Biden because there's just mischief to be had, right? The press needs something to cover. Kennedy's got a famous name. He becomes someone who becomes this manifestation of whatever struggles Biden may have

among Democratic voters as a way to cover that story. What should Biden do? Do the work he was going to do whether Robert Kennedy was running or not, which is he has to spend this year strengthening his standing among Democratic voters. We know from polls there's a percentage of Democratic voters who are a shockingly high percentage who think he shouldn't run, who are concerned about age, who don't know enough about what he has done or

what he plans to do. And the advantage of being an incumbent is you spend that off year strengthening your base. You do that through ads, you do that through campaigning, you do that through using the bully poll. But he was going to have to do all of those things. I think he would do those things whether Robert Kennedy was a subject of New York Times stories or not. chemicals on the water are turning young boys trans. Is that a key segment that he's going to have to, he's going to have to do some events with those folks? Or what about the folks, what about the folks who think that the poppers are killing gay people and not AIDS?

That AIDS is just sort of a conspiracy. He's got to go on Rogan's podcast. He's got to go on Rogan's podcast. He's got to debate. He's got to debate. I will say, unfortunately, I listened to about half of the kennedy rogan podcast which is still an hour and a half because it's a three hour three hour podcast i realize i'm saying this

on a day where we have a long tapper interview and this podcast is probably heading to two hours today but three hours so you before don't give yourself too much credit you told me you listened to it at 1.8 speed. Yeah, I did. I did listen at 1.8 speed. I can still hear everything. Yeah, I'm just saying that half of three hours at 1.8 speed is not an hour and a half. Look, any amount of time I devoted to this was a problem. But I hadn't really heard RFK Jr. talk a lot, and I wanted to get what the deal was.

I can see why he's both – he can be appealing to people and thus dangerous because what he his whole shtick is he has a whole bunch of scientific studies memorized he's got the authors he's got the papers and he does this whole like look don't take my word for it i think x i think it's bad when you just take experts word for it or politicians or whatever else just look at the science i'm for science and i think you should look at the science and this is what it's bad when you just take experts' word for it or politicians or whatever else. Just look at the science. I'm for science, and I think you should look at the science, and this is what it's saying. And by the way, corporations are out to get everyone, and this is a conspiracy because, you know, he started as an environmental lawyer. And he, you know, he went after a lot of corporations that were poisoning people, and that's what, you know, corporations do are irresponsible, right? They are out for profit. And so he's sort of using people's skepticism with corporations and corporations bad behavior in the past to then make people think,

well, then also farmer would do this to vaccines and all this other kind of conspiracy. And, and, you know, these companies would do this with Wi-Fi and all this shit. And then everything's dangerous and everything's a scam and everything's sort of a conspiracy. And, you know, he doesn't sound, except for the clips we played, he doesn't sound crazy all the time. Right. And so I get why people are some people could be like, oh, yeah, maybe he's making some sense. Maybe I should start Googling some of this stuff. So I do think it's something to I do think it's something for Democrats to take seriously. I also think that if we act freaked out or worried or about his views or start freaking out about it,

that will sort of play into people feeling like, well, I should be able to make my own decisions and form my own opinions. people feeling like, well, I should be able to make my own decisions and form my own opinions. I think the most effective way to deal with this is to just make sure people understand what his views are, what he has said, and what he is saying now and what he will do. Like, I think that's important, just information to get out to people. I think he is a greater danger to public health than to Germany's political standing. Yeah, no, I mean, look, I do think it will get, we've talked about this a bit, but if Joe Biden is not on the ballot in Iowa and New Hampshire,

because Iowa and New Hampshire will continue to put their primaries first, even though Joe Biden and the DNC have decided that South Carolina is going first, if New Hampshire and Iowa decide to hold their primaries anyway, and Joe Biden does not participate because that's the rules, but RFK Jr. does and Marianne Williamson does, so you could have RFK Jr. winning the first two primaries. Now, again, is that an actual threat to Joe Biden's candidacy? No, but will that suck for a couple weeks for the

Biden campaign? Maybe. I don't know. With that, we can, let's put a pin in that and come back to it later. Yeah, we'll put a pin in that. So one concern is that RFK Jr. could run as a third party candidate once he loses the Democratic primary. He's not the only one. Political activist Cornel West, who's been a prominent Bernie Sanders supporter in the last few elections, has said he's running for the Green Party nomination. The Green Party is on the ballot in 16 states, including swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin. The grifters at no labels have raised tens of millions of dollars to run a bipartisan ticket that Joe Manchin is flirting with. They are on the ballot so far in four states, including the swing state of Arizona.

How much of a threat are these potential third party candidates to Joe Biden's reelection? And what, if anything, can be done there? They're a huge threat. They're absolutely a huge threat. Donald Trump has never received more than 47% in either of his two elections. And the more people are on the ballot getting votes, it lowers his win number from 50.1 to something closer to 47. He won in 2016, largely because in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the combined third party vote from Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, who was running on the Libertarian ticket, exceeded the margin by which he beat Hillary Clinton. So it is a big problem. And I made this point in a message box. Nate Silver really decided to

take that on and say I was wrong about that and say he said that if Joe Biden loses, it will not be because of a third party or because of health age problems, health problems or the economy sucking. And sure, that's all true. If everything's going swimmingly. You got silvered, huh? Yeah. It's just like that. Is that a verb now? I've just decided it was.

I guess you could get coned too, I guess. That's another option. But of course, if everything is going swimmingly and Joe Biden has really high approval ratings and the economy is roaring, then a third party won't matter. But in a close election, it matters. And we know this because Data for Progress released a poll yesterday which showed that in a head-to-head race between Biden and Trump, Biden wins 47-45. In a race between Biden, Trump, and a generic,

moderate third-party challenger, the race becomes 44-44 immediately. And if it's 44-44 nationally, that probably means in the battleground states, Donald Trump, which skew a little more Republican in the country, Donald Trump wins the Electoral College. Yeah. I mean, all people need to know is if the people who voted for Jill Stein, just Jill Stein in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania had voted for Hillary instead, Donald Trump would have never become president. That's it. Right? And so, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of Cornel West fans out there. You live in a swing state.

You vote for Cornel West. You're helping Trump become president. That's it. And you can say, oh, well, it's Joe Biden's fault. He did this or that. No, no, no. It's your decision. You get to decide whether you want to help Donald Trump become president or you don't. And if you want to help him, then you should vote for Cornel West or you should vote for Joe Manchin and his no labels ticket, or you can vote for, you know, RFK Jr. if he decides to run third party. But if you don't want to help Trump become president,

you gotta vote for Joe Biden. That's it. Very simple. Now, I think messaging to voters who might actually make this decision is probably a little different, I would say, because I- No, chastising works.

Like, I do think you need to explain why these candidates would not be good candidates for president. I really do. And I think we could get tripped up in that because I think if you are one of these voters and you hear a bunch of people yelling at you to vote for Joe Biden because you have to, I don't think it's going to be very effective. And I think you have to say why RFK Jr. is not a good choice. Why Cornel West is not a good choice. Why Joe Manchin, whoever it may be, is not a good choice. So that is something that I think Democrats are going to have to figure out in the next year. Finally, another week, another corruption scandal for the Supreme Court. Here is the ProPublica headline. Justice Samuel Alito took luxury fishing vacation with GOP

billionaire who later had cases before the court. Yikes. Here's what happened. In 2008, hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer flew Alito on his private plane to Alaska, which the justice did not pay for nor disclose, as he is required to do by law. In 2014, Alito cast a vote in a case that awarded Singer's hedge fund 2.4 billion dollars Alito refused to respond to ProPublica instead he ran to the Wall Street Journal before the story was even published and got them to run a whiny pre-buttle op-ed where he argued that he wasn't actually required

to disclose the private jet ride that he never discussed business with singer and besides the seat on the plane would have otherwise been unoccupied so no big deal look the guy is just trying to fill empty seats on private planes this is a public service it's good for the environment. He cares about climate. That's why he wanted to do that. What is your reaction to this left-wing assault on one of our greatest public servants? I mean, what is the world coming to that a Supreme Court justice isn't allowed to take secret trips on a billionaire's private jet without getting harassed by the liberal media just because he later sided with that billionaire's hedge fund in a case that made him even richer. Look, who among us hasn't flown on a private jet owned by people with business before the court? It's just a commonplace thing.

Alito's reaction to this, it just speaks to the absolute arrogance of Alito Thomas. How dare you question me? How dare you question the idea that I can't fly on private jets as a public servant? Well, you can. You just have to tell people. You can fly on your fucking private jets. Go for it. Disclose it. And recuse when it comes.

And recuse. Unbelievable. I mean, it's also, it's just, it is exceedingly rare for Supreme Court justices to write op-eds at all, let alone what is basically a glorified letter to the editor bitching about a story in another publication. It's just a temper tantrum. It's about you. It's a temper tantrum. He threw a temper tantrum in the Wall Street Journal, which then today ran an editorial defending Alito. Paul Singer's hedge fund appeared 10 times before the Supreme Court after that trip, 10 times. And

then, of course, there was the one in 2014 where he got $2 billion from the ruling. So the Quinnipiac poll you mentioned earlier, Supreme Court approval is down to 30%, the lowest on record. 63% of all voters favor term limits for Supreme Court justices, 29% oppose. What do you think? Sound good to run on? Absolutely. I think the corruption in the court is a real problem, and Democrats should look like they're addressing it. And they have the open door to do so because of the conduct of Alito and Thomas and the way in which the Republicans rigged the court over recent years, when then you add to that the decisions like Dobbs that have dramatically affected people's lives. So you have a corrupt, rigged court that is

operating from politics, not law. Therefore, if we have an agenda to address the corruption in that court, we should take it on immediately. It should be a central part of our campaign. in that court, we should take it on immediately. It should be a central part of our campaign. I think court reform, obviously, I support expansion. The country is not there yet, but the broader court reform agenda, including term limits and ethics reform, should be a big part of what we talk about. Well, so Democratic leaders are now saying they will force a vote this summer on ethics legislation for the Supreme Court. Obviously, not going to pass the Republican House, but what do you think of that move and what they're proposing? I think it's the absolute right thing to do politically. It's also the right thing to do

substantively. It's fucking bananas that the Supreme Court is this completely unaccountable body. There are no repercussions. And we have not just we should vote on it. We should try to get it done. We should make the Republicans vote against it. We should attack them for voting against it. There's also another benefit here, which is we need to put more pressure on John Roberts to do his fucking job because he is the administrator of the court. He is the person in charge of how the Supreme Court runs. He has allowed the reputation and trust in the court to be absolutely damaged by the conduct of his justices. And he's refused to speak about it. he's refused to do anything about it. He could get involved here in some way, shape, or form. And we have seen before how efforts at court reform, dating back to the days of FDR,

have influence in how the Supreme Court runs itself. And so I think this is 100% the right thing to do. Yeah. I think that if they could somehow pass ethics legislation, which I imagine they could, if we win back the house, if Biden wins reelection, if we keep the Senate, maybe we could pass some Supreme Court ethics legislation. And I think that would be a good thing. I think substantively, it's crazy that they don't hold themselves to the same standards every other public servant does. And there's no reason for that. It's not the Constitution says about the Supreme Court that those judges and all judges should keep their jobs barring bad behavior. Basically, that's it. That's all it says. And so this is bad behavior. And it doesn't say anything about how, you know,

I think Roberts and some of these justices are like, oh, Congress has no role in regulating the court or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, it doesn't say that in the fucking Constitution. It does not say that Congress cannot pass laws affecting the court. And in fact, in like you said, in the New Deal era, they did like and many other times they've changed the makeup of the court. They fund the court. They pass laws to fund the court. Checks and balances is not a one way street. Right. The whole point of the court they fund the court they pass laws to fund the court checks and balances not a one-way street right the whole point of the system yeah and in the constitution it basically gives congress the full authority to um create courts that are not the supreme court uh when they want to but of course like of course congress can regulate the

court yeah they can add justice to the court that's not in the constitution either but so anyway i'm i'm all for the ethics legislation but, but now I'm really eyeing the term limit thing now because I think that – and look, do I want to expand the court? Do I want to change the – yeah, I'm all for that too. actually have the biggest impact is term limits because you know we are going to be fucking stuck with amy coney barrett and brett kavanaugh for most of our lifetime with this is another thing we should put a pin in because i spent a lot of there's a real like we should this is a it's a i spent a lot of time researching this for when i wrote uncharming america which talked about court expansion and court reform and the term limits thing is fascinating questions around it, we should do this with strict scrutiny one day. The constitutional questions around it are fascinating. They are, they are. And yeah,

just the short answer there is, there is a belief that the constitution does grant justices lifetime tenure unless they have, you know, engage in bad behavior, which is, you know, in the eye of the beholder, I guess. But one way around that would be to say, once you've hit your term limit, you go on senior status and either you go to an appellate court or a federal court if you're a Supreme Court justice, or you just do what a lot of senior judges on senior status do now, which is just sort of sit back. You're still a judge. You're just not involved in cases. Yeah, you sit back and you wait until a case comes up in which one of the justices flew on a private jet on a luxurious vacation with one of the people before the court and then you that person steps down you step in that's how that

works that's it that's the way it works all right uh when we come back uh we will talk to cnn's jake tapper about his new novel about cnn donald trump fox news whole bunch of good stuff right after this. Here to talk about his new political thriller, All the Demons Are Here, which is out in July, CNN's Jake Tapper. Hey, guys. Good to see you.

Welcome back. Good to see you. A fellow straight shooter respected on both sides. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. He's the original. You were the original straight shooter. I don't think I was.

Is that where it came from? That's where it came from. That came from. I asked because I said that Jake and I were both just two straight shooters respected on both sides. That's not true. That is true. That's really? I was the actual?

Well, that's where we began referring to you and then me as that. You sold a lot of t-shirts, Jake. Yeah, you used a lot of merch. Thank you for your help. I didn't know it was me. I didn't know I was the original inspiration. Was it from when he was on the pod last?

It was from when he was on Keeping It 1600, I believe. Oh my gosh. Keeping It 1600. That was the original Pod Save America. Holy smokes. I know, it's been a long time. Hillary's gonna win, right. Hillary's going to win. Right?

She's got this. Everybody cool it. I mean, speaking of that, so last few weeks have made it pretty clear that the Trump show is back. It sure is. I don't know if it ever went on hiatus. Yeah. It's different in this season.

Yeah. I was going to ask, this is now your third presidential campaign you've covered where the former president is a candidate. Difference now is he's been indicted twice, possibly more on the way, related to his role in trying to overturn the last election inside a violent riot. How are you feeling about going through all this again? It's weird, right? It's very weird. It's weird, right? It's very weird. And it's strange to see who is deciding to be honest about what's going on and who isn't, right? I mean, the Bill Barr activism, talking about how serious this is. The Mark Espers. And then on occasion, you have a Nikki Haley or Mike Pence, I mean, talking about these charges. And then, of course, Donald Trump giving these interviews and talking in front of audiences in which he admits everything.

Everything. Strange legal strategy. It's, it's, it's, oh, not to mention Chris Christie, I should say. I mean, but that's not, that's not, I guess, not as much of a surprise. But yeah. And I mean, it was always throughout so much of this. It was always like, well, who is going to speak who in the Republican Party is going to speak against this? And it would be in 2016. Well, early on, everybody spoke against it. And then he started winning and then they all shut up. And then, you know, it's it's just odd seeing the cat because it's like once you criticize him, it's almost like you then get put in a category as a Republican and a category of, oh, well, you're just a Trump hater. Yeah, right. I'm not saying it's fair, but like by Trump and by the base. So like they stop listening to Liz Cheney as if she's like some flaming liberal.

Same thing with Mitt Romney. Same thing with Adam Kinzinger and on and on and on. But so it's always like now we see who are the people who are now going to try to say something. And, boy, I saw, I don't know if it was the bulwark. Somebody did a list of like everybody who had served with Donald Trump in his administration who had come out against him one way or another. Brett Baier read it to him live on TV, I believe, on Fox News. Yeah, it's quite a list. It's a long list. I mean, if one of those equivalent people in the Obama administration

or the Bush administration or the Clinton administration, they would be huge. Big story. Yeah, like, oh, can you believe that? they would be huge. Big story. Yeah. Like, oh, can you believe that? I mean, Al Gore did tepid criticism of Bill Clinton

after the Lewinsky scandal. Tepid. And it was like big news. Same thing with Joe Lieberman. But this is like, this is not that, obviously. This is, he's a narcissist. I mean, psychological names. Bill Bartz has said he's a narcissist.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not disagreeing with the assessment, but like- As said he's a narcissist. I mean, I'm not disagreeing with the assessment, but like- Asper said he's a threat. Right. He shouldn't be elected because he can't be trusted. Oh, and when I did the interview with Asper on Sunday, this was really surprising to me. I said, well, in the last few days, I've asked Stephanie Grisham, the former comms director, the question is always why? Why did he take these documents? Stephanie Grisham said, oh, he's like a little boy and he has his toys.

Mine, mine, mine. And then Michael Cohen had a much more conspiratorial way of looking at it. Like, no, he wanted to do something with these, whether it was money or this, but he was going to – and I don't mean conspiratorial in a pejorative sense. I just mean like he thought there was actually a conspiracy of some sort. And I asked Esper what he thought. And he said both were legitimate possibilities. Like, think about that because of the Michael Cohen thing, you know, he's a little, he's a little aggressive, even when it comes to the spectrum of people who used to work with Donald Trump and have now disassociated themselves. He's even on the more aggressive side of that.

But even Esper was like, oh, it seems like that's a credible possibility. Michael Cohen was a bad lawyer for Trump, and he's a bad lawyer against Trump. Yeah. But he also has the best window into his business dealings. And I guess, I don't know, it's hard to tell now what, if he's playing, he was playing a role for Trump as this attack dog. He called himself a fixer. I don't know that he fixed much. Now he's like a resistance hero.

But he does know how the guy operates. And if he thinks sincerely that Trump might be selling secrets to somebody or leveraging them for some sort of economic gain. I mean, it's interesting. It's worth listening to. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Nothing would surprise me at this point. Right. That's the problem. What do you think about, Bill Barr is someone who went through a cycle of this covering for Trump around the Mueller probe. Right. And now has done a full reversal. You know, you've been, you've interviewed all of

these people, many of whom have been on both sides of being defenders of Trump and then antagonist to Trump. What do you find describes the moment that some of them have shifted? Is there anything that, that any connection you make between who has a line and where they draw it? I think, I can't really explain it. I mean, obviously personal experience plays a big role. A lot of these people think, and I understand why they think or thought, well, this is the situation. He is the president. So I'm going to try to steer the ship and so the country doesn't go to war or whatever. And I understand that.

and so the country doesn't go to war or whatever. And I understand that. I can't explain Bill Barr's position because what is it about the national secrets that is so beyond the pale that so many other things were not beyond the pale? Like he didn't... Like January 6th, I would think, would just be like, okay.

Yeah, that would do it for me. Yeah, I mean, like, even if you're like with him on the policies or like trying to steer the ship, and so many people broke with him on January 6th. And then some of them kind of like crept back secretly. Yeah. I don't know. I can't really explain it.

I mean, I do see the, I was inside trying to make it work and like, now I just can't be silent or whatever, but there's still people, plenty of people who are still relatively silent. So there was this moment on your show last Tuesday where you told your colleagues in the control room to stop looping the B roll. It was before, yeah, it was before they looped it. That's it. They showed, they showed it once and I'm like, okay, we've seen it, but you guys know how cable works. It's like, we have these live new pictures. Let's show, let's just keep showing them. And I, before they started looping, I'm like, okay, we got the news finally out of that done. And this is, this is for people who don't know about B roll of Trump at the Cuban bakery. He

went to Versailles, very famous Cuban bakery in Miami. And he went to it after his arraignment. And your point was that he's just trying to make a campaign ad out of it, right? Right. How do you decide when it's worth showing your viewers what Trump is saying and doing and when it's not? It's such a good question. And when it's not?

It's such a good question. I mean, I think as a general note, I am wary of showing any campaign event live for anyone. I just don't really necessarily see the news value of it. And if you're going to do it for this candidate, then you should be doing it for every candidate, like just out of fairness. This was something I didn't know about. And like all of a sudden it was happening. And I was kind of surprised and not really sure what he was doing. And I was like watching it in real time and figuring it out. And I just think as a general rule, there's

obviously there's a difference if somebody is the president of the united states whether it's joe biden or donald trump or whomever because they're the president and you know inherently it's important what they do which is not to say that we cover every single public thing that anybody does including president biden i just think that our bar has to be pretty high and if they say something that like we did cover his speech that night but we had discussed it and we were not going to cover it live and when when he said something, we were going to find a chunk, bring it to people, put it in context before, show the clip, put are a lot of candidates running and we have to think about fairness and B, you know, he's incited violence and it's not just theoretical. It's, we saw it on January 6th and the death threats have always been going on, but, you know, we've seen actual violence and bloodshed. So I just think it's something we all have to, all of us in the media

have to think about. So now that we are a few weeks out from the infamous Trump-CNN town hall, do you think it was a useful exercise? I guess the questions I would ask you this. Do you think that town halls, having a candidate take questions from voters, are worthwhile? Just as a general note. Absolutely. Okay. Do you think that the person who is the number one in the polls by far for the Republican presidential nomination, forget Donald Trump for one second, just whoever that person is, should be included in that? I do, yeah.

Yeah. So then- Look at he's he's got us on the ropes no i mean because i've thought a lot about this because i i i didn't play any role in it other than um which was the fucking problem i didn't play any i didn't play any role i disassociate myself from that comment i didn't play any role in it except for like covering it afterwards but like so what would you have done differently at all? Would you not have done it live? The friendly crowd, really.

I mean, I agree with you, though. Like, as a general matter, so much time has been spent talking about this. I feel like there are a few formatting problems. Like, everyone cheering and then jeering Caitlin Collins was not great. Yeah. The live part, I don't have a strong feeling. Yeah, my view on this was the democratic operative in me was happy to have it up there because he said a bunch of stuff that is extremely

unpopular that's just gonna come back to haunt him probably in the general election so like the strategy to me didn't really care thinking about the journalistic value i actually i do think if there was if there was an audience of undecided Republican voters, maybe throw a few independents in there. Maybe someone had warned them ahead of time, don't, don't be hooting and hollering during the whole thing. Maybe that would have been better. Other than that, I don't know that there was anything else you guys could have done.

So the audience is the same audience we have for all these town halls and always have, which is Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents for a Democratic town hall and Republicans and Democratic-leaning independents for a Democratic town hall and Republicans and Republican-leaning independents for a Republican town hall. And it wasn't stacked with Trump supporters. It was New Hampshire Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. And, you know, I did a Nikki Haley town hall a few days later, a few weeks later in Iowa, and it was the same definition of the audience. And, you know, by the end of it, she had really charmed them. She had really done a good job with them and they were cheering for her, but, you know, they were cheering for what she was saying, which was not,

you know, belittling somebody who had accused her of sexual assault and, you know, won in court and not, you know, I mean, it was just, I think what people reacted to was the fact that a lot of Republicans are still enthralled with this guy. Yeah. And I think that's really what honestly what people were bothered by. And my view on that is like, hey, everyone, this is what we're dealing with. This is like the reality of the situation. That is the reality of the situation. And, you know, he's he is a 67 percent approval rating with Republicans and Republican leaning independence, according to a CNN poll today. Now, that's down in a month from 77. But 67 percent approval rating is still pretty damn good. And there's also just, I think, a kind of viewer who's engaged on social media, paying a lot of attention, who watches what happens on CNN like a sociologist and can't separate Trump saying things that are deeply unpopular with a lot of people, basically open to a national abortion ban, wanting to overturn the next election, a bunch of heinous things about the sexual assault claims against him, and are unable to separate that from people cheering for

it, as if someone at home who might find that heinous would be like, well, people applauded. I guess it must be pretty good. And I do think that Nikki Haley in your town hall, she said a lot of similarly unpopular things. She also said, I think, she had some outlandish things to say about LGBT issues and what have you. And there was not nearly the same level of outcry or attention or concern, which I think speaks to an obsession with Trump that isn't particularly healthy on like sort of the media

watchers either. Right? I mean, there is just sort a a focus and concern about the way he's covered that doesn't apply to the other candidates i mean i think one of the things that people were reacting to was um people who don't like trump were oh did have we really are we really going to do this all over again yeah ptsd feeling um and also you also, you know, frankly, you know, the way he talked to Caitlin, the way he talked about E.J. and Carol, like, you know, it's rude. And it's not pleasant for people who don't like him to watch him be rude. If you like him, then you like who he's being rude to.

I don't know. Look, I don't think there's any easy answers to any of this, but I don't think pretending he's not the Republican, the leading Republican candidate for president and that he has a decent chance of being the next president again. I don't think that solves anything. caitlin fact-checked him you know a ton she knew a ton about the classified documents investigation like she was way i feel like she was like way ahead of the country because like all of a sudden now we're all experts on classified documents right but caitlin was there fact-checking him knowing all the details and he said a bunch of stuff that wasn't true then i don't know i mean like i'm not gonna pretend any of this is easy it's it's it's a it's Bewitching I mean it's it's troubling but he is the leading you know the fact that he'll go up and tell all those lies I would rather he go up and be calm and normal and talk about his

policies You know that would be much more pleasant as a viewer and as a journalist So you guys have done Trump H Haley, I think Chris Christie. Pence, we did Pence too. Everyone forgets about Pence. Poor Pence. So I assume they'll try to get Joe Biden to do one. Do you think?

Yeah, everybody. Tim Scott, Ron DeSantis. Do you think on the Democratic side, you would do a town hall with someone like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? I would not. Okay. Why? Because he spreads

dangerous misinformation about childhood vaccines. And I had a personal experience with him in 2005 when he became, well, a professional experience personally with him. In 2005 was when he began in earnest his anti-childhood vaccine campaign. He wrote a story for Salon.com that was jointly published with Rolling Stone, both of which have since retracted the articles. And Rolling Stone just completely disappeared. It was like it never happened. Salon has a page where they acknowledge what happened and et cetera, et cetera.

But Rolling Stone, it's just like, you know, it's like Hoffa. I don't know where it's gone It's just gone. Under the J. It might be. It might be. So the, I guess it's a death reference, a metal answer. So, anyway, I just dealt with him and he was so dishonest in that experience. And since then, he lies about the experience frequently as an example of how the media is co-opted by big pharma. I did a story about the piece that he did for Rolling Stone. This is in 2005 when all this vaccine stuff

was still kind of new. All these lies about vaccines causing autism in kids. And it's completely discredited and it's not true at all. But anyway, we did a story about it. I called him and told him we were going to hold it a day. We were going to hold the story a day and we were going to just do some more due diligence on his claims. And then we ran the piece the next day. In his retelling of the story, he and I were working closely for three weeks on a terrific documentary about

his discovery and corporate America killed it. And I called him up and I said, it's never happened to me before that I've had a piece killed. I can't believe this. And again, none of that's true. And like he's out, he literally just said this the other day on a podcast it was it was like a minute 45 piece it ran on world news tonight with peter jennings the next night i had had a million pieces killed i was a i was a new abc i'd been at abc news for two years i'd had a thousand pieces killed by abc news like i mean and it's just like he's so dishonest and like so no, I wouldn't. This is such a media story though, right? Because like, that's an example of the system working.

You had editors, you had gatekeepers, you had fact checkers doing the right thing, doing due diligence, killing stories, retracting them if need be. Now we're in 2023. There's this RFK boomlet. 20% of the country, Democrats apparently like him because of his last name.

But you have Jack Dorsey, a billionaire, founder of Twitter, propping up RFK. You've got Aaron Rodgers. Yes, a bunch of Republicans are propping him up because they view him as a valuable foil to attack Biden. But you've got Aaron Rodgers propping this guy up. You've got Elon Musk and David Sachs doing these spaces with him. And there's no, there's no filter or layer in between these sort of credible sounding lies and anecdotes and stories that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. riffs off and an audience of people who are believing they're true. And I'm just like wondering what you as a journalist, how you feel about that, what you think people can do about it? Because to your

point, I mean, like there have been resurgences of measles, you know, like diseases that. Google Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Samoa and measles. He, I mean, there was a horrible incident in Samoa where some nurses screwed up and the anti-vax people turned that into this vaccine kills kids or this. And he went to the island and he propped them up and then there was an epidemic of measles. I mean, kids died. Yeah. And I mean, I don't know what there is to do about it other than do what I do as effectively as possible, which is just fact check and make sure people understand what he's saying isn't true. He's still out there claiming that thimerosal is in, thimerosal was this preservative that was in some of these vaccines and there was false accusations that this is, this had some,

but it's been out of vaccine since like 1999. And the rate of autism continues to climb. A lot of this is just people being more aware of diagnosis, but there might be some chemical, I don't know, you know, all the reasons, but it's not thimerosal in vaccines. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, I think he's dangerous

and I think, and when I say he's dangerous, I don't mean like his ideas make me afraid. No, I think he's dangerous because he tells parents not to get their kids vaccinated and the kids get sick and die.

We should also tell people, though, that Jake did, he was wearing an Eli Lilly hat and he gave everybody a Tempic, which I think was like a weird move well take the hint

the good news is he just he just says this shit on podcasts you know nobody takes that seriously but he said no but he said i'm now in the i'm now a big pharma show that's his argument like and it's just like i don't even know what you mean i'm a big farm what does that even mean but i i sort of got it so i finally i'm halfway through the joe rogan interview i don't know why i did this to myself why would you because i have not i've never listened to him so i like wanted to see what what was going on here and i get why he's both dangerous and why some people find him like because he looks exactly like his dad well but also he sounds exactly like his mom he goes on and on and on about like this scientific study

and this and this and he does this whole thing like don't don't take my word for it i think experts are bad i don't want to be one of those experts just read the science read the science he's wrong about all this i know but like how many people are you know and then jorogin's like hey uh can you google what he just said there about 5g causing leaky brains and then someone someone's like oh it popped up on google that's my problem i got 5g leaky brain but see like this is a small this is one example of a larger problem you know there's been there's been so much attention on cnn in just the past couple weeks a lot of just what there has been like navel gazing around cnn and its management and the ideology being represented on its shows.

But that is a tiny conversation taking place as this massive shifts take place. And it feels as though the power of an institution like CNN, MSNBC, major news outlets, that that power itself is all collectively shrinking. Yeah. news outlets, that that power itself is all collectively shrinking. Yeah. As the gate, like with, so there are fewer gatekeepers around information and everyone in those sort of, those legacy outlets are kind of chasing the lies and misinformation that are being spread all the time by people like RFK Jr., by Trump, by any of a number

of figures. And, you know, you just said, I don't know what I can do except go on television and try to correct it and be accurate. Or just bring the right information to people. Bring the right information to people. But how do you see your role when you are one little star in a firmament of information, most of which is now not fact-checked at all? I mean, I can only do what I can do. I mean, it bothers me a lot, the state of the media. It bothers me a lot, you know, what Fox, you know, the $787.5 million settlement that they had to pay Dominion. And that's just one of many such settlements. There was the whole secret settlement to the family of Seth Rich. I mean, there's just, and there's more

stuff coming with Smartmatic and other, and it's just, and they're just, other than the financial penalty, there seems to be actually no punishment. There's no disincentive for um these networks that just like openly lie to their viewers for ratings i mean what that's what we had here in the dominion texts and emails was an open admission that fox was lying not just giving a conservative spin on something but lying we are we are lying because we don't want to lose these viewers because they're going to Newsmax because they want to be lied to. And like, uh, there was a $787.5 million disincentive structure, I guess. But like, I mean, who lost their job? I mean, it was, I don't know if Tucker losing his job was part

of that or not. There's like whispers that it was, but I don't know. It just, I don't know what the, I don't know where the disincentive is for these people who have just openly decided to exploit, you know, the freedom of the press and the freedom of speech that we have. It's depressing. And this is not me trying to make an awkward turn to my book, but it is one of the reasons why one of the subtext or one of the plots of the book is about the rise, because the book takes place in 77. And one of the points of it is the rise of tabloids and the rise of the Murdochs of the world in the 70s, because that's when it happened. Do you feel at all hypocritical given that much of what happens in the book is not real? No, because it is fiction. Oh, it's fiction.

It is fiction. It's a good, it's an excellent question though. I appreciate that. Sorry, that's stupid. Okay, it's fiction. So in the book, in All the Demons Are Here, I have a similar type of Murdoch character moving to DC, starting a tabloid called the DC Sentinel.

But one of the things that when I researched Murdoch for the character of Max Lyon, who was based on Murdoch, it was just amazing the stuff he would say, just openly admit about what he thought sold and why it was important to do that and what he had been doing in Australia and the UK. And it's rage and fear. Do you think Fox should be treated as a legitimate news organization after all this? I know you're saying this because in 2009, a week after my son was born. Wow, putting on him. What did he do? He wasn't insane. That was my follow-up. In the haze of seven sleepless nights.

Wow. Seven sleepless nights. Wow. The, you guys, the Obama White House had launched a campaign saying the Fox was not a legitimate news organization. And I asked Robert Gibbs in a gaggle, why was it appropriate for the White House to label this organization, which I, in my, I was looking for the world, looking for the fellow credentialed member of the White House Press Corps, but what I said was sister organization, which I regret very much. Why, you know, why was it, why was it legitimate? Why was it responsible or appropriate for a White House to say that about a credentialed news organization? That was the question. Yeah. Which I've been...

Did Bobby Gibbs take it well? What did he say? He basically asked me to turn... He said, you should turn on... And then he alluded to when Glenn Beck's show was on. Oh, yeah. You know, you turn on whatever. And I'm like, I'm not saying why...

And this transcript's out there for anybody who wants to read it, but I'm not saying, why would you not say that show? I'm saying you label the whole thing. And also, the other context is, who the white house who were the major garrett who's a legitimate journalist with cbs news now was the white house correspondent for fox at the time they always have a beard they kind of hang out there to look at i do remember that incident

i just asked the question because i was interested in what you think now. Yeah. I should have known that you would remember that I would remember that. I think that the Fox of 2009 is not the Fox of 2023. I understand why Obama and the White House were going on the campaign. I still think it is a fine question for a reporter to say,

why is it appropriate to do this? if i were in the white house press corps now and you guys were doing it and whatever i don't think i would ask that question yeah i do i mean even reading through all the dominion stuff i was i was like what all the like the opinion stuff you get so like but just like the coordination sort of the like you know just admitting that it's for money and ratings and i mean it's just it was wild and no journalistic standards at all like maria bartiromo's the source for all that stuff was some crazy woman who talked to ghosts yeah yeah it was a forwarded email essentially and um and it bled into the news side like you know 100 percent no the so i think the most shocking thing to me was reading uh you know quote unquote straight news anchors

talking to the opinion people and saying like i i told the decision desk to put arizona back in the trump column um and it's like first first of all, Arizona was never in the Trump column. So what do you mean back in the Trump column? Second of all, what are you even talking to the decision desk? It would never even occur to me to think it was appropriate for me to reach out to the decision desk. But in that wild world where like, let's just say that I want to reach out to the decision desk, I wouldn't even know how to do it. Like there is such a firewall, I wouldn't even know the first way to do do it i would never want to do it it's crazy to me and then that same anchor uh said that he told them to slow slow roll the nevada call i i just like

this is crazy stuff to me it does it you know this idea though and i and i do agree that there's you know something has shifted but like this idea that you can have serious news people on one half of your channel and then fomenting like rage and nonsense and fear and misinformation on the other half of your channel, as if that that's sustainable, seems to have been like a larger problem for Republicans, this idea that they can have their serious policy, Paul Ryan types while winning elections on the backs of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene and the kind of the racialized and sort of, you know, the fear mongering that has sort of become the main way in which they draw people out come November. Like the idea that these two things could exist in parallel forever. It just seems like it wasn't true. It wasn't true for Fox. It's not true for Republicans. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I wouldn't ask that question today. I mean, I think they're, I think that they are, I think that they are different, uh, which is not to say that they were

great in 2009, but I think that, uh, I think that it is, it is a different situation now. And again, I really felt like I was kind of standing up for Major Garrett, who I thought was a really good reporter and a friend and was a colleague. And the other White House reporter was Wendell Goeller, who passed away in the last year. May he rest in peace. Also, just like, I can't say straight shooter without looking at you and laughing, but like, just a solid reporter. They were good reporters and good guys. Yeah, no, but I wasn't even coming at it

from the perspective of that 2009 question. But you're saying, right, you're saying- I'm saying that there's a larger bit of, there's a self-deception that seems to go on, on the right, that tries to separate their kind of, whatever, their intellectual, serious policy operation that has sort of conservative values from some bygone era, and then this sort of rage machine. And the idea that they kept them separate was never true. It was never possible.

I'm open to the argument that the Wall Street Journal news organization and the Wall Street Journal opinion pages can coexist. And I'm open to the argument that you can have a serious news division or news shows and then opinion shows at night. I'm open to that argument. What has changed or maybe I'm just, I don't know, maybe I'm just more aware of it or, but it seems worse is just the degree to which it's just based on lies. Just lies, not conservative opinion. This is how I view the world because I'm a conservative, but just lies. And I, like, for instance, you know, MSNBC is opinion at night. It is.

I mean, Chris and either Rachel or Alex and then Lawrence, I mean, and then Stephanie, like, it's opinion generally. And, you know, I don't, you could argue, like, I don't know that it's the healthiest thing in the world to have preaching to the choir television. But it is based in fact uh and what they you know and what what i you know i mean i hear the way hannity like hannity attacks me or goes after me and i i don't you know i'll hear about it like a day or two later or whatever and like he says things that just aren't true it's just insane and i't like, you can't even combat it. There's no even attempt to try to get anything in the realm of real. Can I ask you about a moment of radical candor on the air with you?

We were thinking back on your storied career and it is storied. You were interviewing a gentleman named John Bolton. Yeah. And you made a comment that you don't have to be a genius to stage a coup in a foreign country. And he got offended by that. No, I said, you don't have to be a genius to stage a coup. I was talking about in America. Sure. Okay. Sorry. And he took offense to the idea that you don't have to be a genius and said, I've staged coups in many places. What was that like for you to have someone just admit to staging a coup on air?

places what was that like for you to have someone just admit to staging a coup on air well he i mean he kind of retracted a little bit but it was it was a kind of i didn't really know what to say yeah you want to be more specific like where let me tell you someone who staged a few coups yeah it takes some serious preparation yeah that was that was an odd moment that's just like the the perils of not or the perils of the the opportunities and perils of live tv where people just say things and like what roll that back yeah i and sometimes you don't necessarily catch it or even know how to react to it because it's so bizarre and like you might like come back to it like 30 seconds or a minute later because your brain is still kind of like i don't think i followed up immediately i think i followed up like

a minute or two later. I think I had to be like, can we go back to something you said like a minute ago? Because my brain in real time was like, wait a second, I think he just admitted that he did a coup. It was odd. I will say that if you look at the way that Donald Trump attempted to undo the election, it wasn't for lack of planning.

It was like there was a lot of different avenues he went. Right. I mean, he did the challenges in the election boards, then the courtroom cases, then the state legislatures. I mean, there was a whole bunch before they got to the violent overthrow. There was a whole bunch of so I mean, like, I don't think there was a lack of brain power there. They were trying all sorts of ways. They were. They were.

Just the guardrails held. But you know something? We did a documentary called American Coup after in 2000... Either 2021 or 2022. And something Adam Kinzinger said was really interesting. And I don't know if he made it up or what, but it was the first time I ever heard it from him. It's like you see a guardrail that a car has hit. And it's like all mangled, but it's there.

And you're like, okay, so it held. It held. But that doesn't mean it's going to hold the next time. Yeah. When a car hits it the next time. It's been battered so badly it might actually break. I think about- It's like a very tight

pickle jar. A what? Like, you know- Elaborate on that. It was just a- You open the pickle jar? It was just like, ah, I can't get it.

Someone else gets it. You're like, I lose it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn't that enough for you? Is that helpful? Do you need a second metaphor, you think? Is that-

I like the guardrail one better than this one. No, I think, you know what? Let's- Hey, let's just fix this. Make mine the guardrail one. Give Jake the pickle think, you know what? Hey, let's just fix this. Make mine the guardrail one. Give Jake the pickle one. You're fixing it in post?

Yeah. I feel like you take, first of all, I don't know how many pickles you're consuming at your home, but it does seem like you're arguing a lot to your certain other person. You seem stuck on this for some reason. But you loosened it. I think we should move on. But you loosened it. I think we should move on.

I feel like you are one of the few reporters who, when you've interviewed Trump, has really held him to account, really elicited some interesting stuff from him. Well, I haven't. He hasn't let me interview him since the summer of 2016. I thought you interviewed him in... No. No, in Judge Curiel, it was like June 2016. He was going off on how there was the Trump University case and Judge Curiel couldn't be fair because Judge Curiel is a Mexican. Right. I remember that. I like he's that's just like the definition of racism to say somebody can't do their job because of their heritage or race. And and I just I kept on going until I finally got the question out. And that was the last time he let me interview him. Is that like talk a little bit about your strategy with someone like Trump?

Is it I've got to just keep asking follow ups. And even if I sort of go off my plan and don't get enough questions in, I've got to get keep asking follow-ups. And even if I sort of go off my plan and don't get enough questions in, I've got to get them on this one thing. I think, I think he's not somebody that you'd like, you come with, like, I have to cover all these 15 different topics. You know, I have a question on energy and I have a question on like foreign policy and a question on treatment. You just have to come and ask questions. And then when there's something that you think is important, just drill down until you, until you get there. i think that's um that's been that's the most effective way not just him but like anybody who is a difficult interview anybody who is not

um who doesn't come to like actually answer questions and like is does a lot of i mean he there are other people i've interviewed who are like this, but he's definitely, you know, a quality unto himself, but just like the filibuster, the change, the subject, the insult, the, the, the interruption. I mean, he, he does it all. And it's, it's a challenge. It's a real challenge. It's tough to do. Yeah. I mean, you saw it like, so you saw the bear interview, he interrupts bear the whole time over and over and over and uh you know yeah that's it's this is part of the part of what you get jake you're doing the lead five days a week yeah you're doing sunday shows every other week you're doing dana does half of them you're doing the town halls you're writing three fiction three novels well since 2016 why thousand fuck down sixteen why do

I do you decide to become a writing book novelist I always um was interested in fiction I went to film school after college and then I wrote a novel in my 20s and it didn't it got me an agent but it didn't get published and then I kind of just took a break um and focused on reporting and then after the outpost i wrote this book about afghanistan called the outpost which was so non-fiction it was so meaningful to me and then people the publisher wanted me to write another non-fiction i said like that book was so intense and it meant so much to me to tell the story these soldiers if i find something i care that much about i will but i it really it took so much out of to tell the story of these soldiers. If I find something I care that much about, I will. But it really, it took so much out of me emotionally.

And then this was just, honestly, it was just like, I've been thinking about a plot for the Hellfire Club, the first book in the series. And it was just fun. It was just an escape. And I think I started writing in 2015, 2016. And it was really nice to get out of it. And also, like, the first book takes place in the McCarthy era, and Joe McCarthy's a character in it.

And I felt like I could say something about the era we were in by looking at Joe McCarthy. Just like in this one, All the Demons Are Here, I felt like I could say something about charismatic demagogues and mobs and yellow journalism and tabloid journalism today by looking by like making something up fun about the about the past and you you go into a room and you start writing you stay there for hours do you guys you don't take a escape i mean my god i guess i don't understand that's not what i do what do you do how do you do it so i do an outline first

uh-huh and then i mean what time of day is this seriously i'm like what are you fucking writing a book you're on television every goddamn day i do two podcasts a week i'm exhausted i don't have a computer in front of me i didn't even prepare for this um i uh i i can't really explain it i know that i'm very driven and it's kind of crazy i don't i can't really explain it i know my staff I'm very driven and it's kind of crazy. I can't really explain it. I know. My staff gives me shit about it. Like, how do you have time to do this?

How do you have time to do that? All I can tell you is I find it enjoyable. I find it fun. What kind of coffee is that right there? Just an iced coffee, black. Okay. Black, nothing in it. I thought you were going to ask a question about the book.

Speaking of driven, Trump called you fake tapper. Do you feel like he mailed that one in? Yeah, that's kind of lazy, right? Yeah. Can you give us one final pitch for All the Demons Are Here? Are we done? Okay, so I think that you guys would like it because it takes place in 1977. And in addition to having these plots that have to do with resonant things today,

like tabloid journalism and mobs and the like. I think you'd like it because it's a wild year and 1977 was just crazy. Like there were so many insane things that happened. Evil Knievel is like a big character in the book. Elvis dies, Summer of Sam. Tommy and I were talking about this. We're like, do we think people who listen to this podcast

will even know who Evil Knievel was? Because I remember him being a kid. Is that right? You do? So i was not a fan of evil kenevil i it didn't do anything for me but like i had friends uh who were fans of his and but he's just a great very american character he's he's a horrible motorcycle rider just not talented but like that pilot who crashed into the like the the hit the swans then crashed into the hudson like that was cool sully well yeah sully sullenberger no i'm just saying he was famous for crashing the thing that's a weird thing to be famous for as a pilot no he's more sorry you know what i mean it was more that he was think about all the pilots that didn't hit ducks that day okay okay so he was uh he was willing to do these insane stunts.

Right, that's right. And he lived in Butte, Montana, and he stayed in Butte, Montana, and he was just like this completely self-made creature. This would only happen in the United States and maybe only in the 70s. Yeah. And I just think it's a wild era that's fun to explore. That's so cool.

See that Tom Cruise rides a motorcycle and then uses a parachute in the new Mission Impossible movie? I've seen that little skit, the little clip. I wouldn't call it a skit. The man really did it. He's nuts. That's cool. He'd die for us.

He does his... He would die for us? I think so. The Thetans will keep him. Scientology guys will protect him. Anyway, the book is All the Demons Are Here it is out July 11th

but you can preorder it now yes absolutely go get the book Jake Tapper thanks guys come back again soon I appreciate it

alright thanks to Jake Tapper for joining us today everyone have a fantastic weekend and we will talk to you next week. Bye everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producers are Andy Gardner Bernstein and Olivia Martinez.

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