Tangle - PREVIEW - The Friday Edition: Behind the scenes of our time with Rep. Auchincloss.

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Last week, we released a documentary on the 72 hours we spent with Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA).Immediately, questions started coming in about what happened behind the scenes — what you didn’t see on camera, how the shoot came together, and what our impressions were about different elements of what we saw. We wanted to respond to those questions, and also follow up on the story since there was so much that we weren’t able to fit in the video. If you haven’t watched it yet, you can do that here.Tangle LIVE tickets are available!We’re excited to announce that our third installment of Tangle Live will be held on October 24, 2025, at the Irvine Barclay Theatre in Irvine, California. If you’re in the area (or want to make the trip), we’d love to have you join Isaac and the team for a night of spirited discussion, live Q&A, and opportunities to meet the team in person. You can read more about the event and purchase tickets here.Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Tangle Friday edition. This is Will Kayback. I'm Tangle's senior editor. Coming to you on a lovely August Friday here in Brooklyn, New York, where I'm based. And today I'm going to be reading our Friday piece, which is a response to feedback and questions we received after we put out our YouTube video where we followed Representative Jake Auchingloss for about three days in June while he was on the hill. The idea of this video was to get a behind-the-scenes look at what it's actually like to be a member of Congress, the things you might see them do on a day-to-day basis, the people they interact with, the things that they're working on,

and generally give you a peek behind the curtains at what this incredibly important and serious job is actually like. The video generated a ton of feedback, thoughts, questions, criticisms, and when that happens, we sometimes like to dedicate an entire edition to respond into it. So that's what we're going to do today. We also think this will be a great way to follow up on the story since there was a ton we weren't able to fit in that video. If you haven't watched it yet, we'll put the link to it in today's show notes. There's a few points where we reference specific moments.

And if you check this out in the newsletter, you'll see we've linked to specific spots in the video. So it might be a good idea to also check out the newsletter if you are subscribed and read through it there so you can watch the moments of the video that we're referencing. But for the most part, everything should be clear in context. All right, without further ado, let's jump into our mailbag. What happened behind the scenes with Representative Jake Ockincloss? Our first question comes from Jonathan from Omaha, Nebraska.

This was awesome. Will you do more? Will you do a companion piece for a Republican, an independent, or a libertarian perspective? Here's our response. As our team and resources continue to grow, we definitely, want to do more videos like this. And if we can do a day in the life video with a Republican representative, we'd absolutely do it. And we're already looking for a willing participant. I also think it'd be interesting to turn this into a series that explores a wider range of people operating in government. What is a day in the life of a judge like? What about a campaign manager

or a legislative director or a governor or a city council member or a secret service agent? Or even, if we could make it happen, a president. There are a lot of different options. And we had a blast making this video. We're really proud of the result. And so, yes, our plan is to do more. And a small but important note just up front is that we have the video team and the resources to do videos like this because of memberships and donations. So if you're able, please support our work. And if you have, thank you. We'll put a link to our membership page and our donation page in today's show notes. The next question comes from an anonymous reader in Stockholm, Sweden. How did you pick the congressperson? Who else did you ask? And did anyone else accept? If not,

Why not? If so, how did you decide to choose Representative Alkenklaas? Here's our response. We wrote a bit about this question in our introduction to the video when we posted it a few weeks ago. But to recap, Representative Auchincloss is a Tangle reader, and he occasionally writes in or messages Isaac directly with thoughts about a particular issue. During one of his exchanges with Isaac last year, he floated the idea of us shadowing him through a full day in his life on the hill, offering our viewers a behind-the-scenes. video of an average day in Congress. Alkenklaas loved the idea, and that was that.

In other words, we weren't picking from a list of options. The opportunity came together organically with a specific representative who was already familiar with Tangle. With that said, we do want to do this again with a Republican representative and potentially more representatives representing different facets of each political ideology, but we're looking for somebody specifically

who checks the following boxes. First, they can offer us full access to their day, barring reasonable restrictions on what we could and couldn't film. Next, they will give us insight into committees, initiative groups, et cetera, that they're a member of. Next, they work on issues that would be salient to our audience. And finally, they should not have participated in a similar behind-the-scenes kind of profile before, just to make sure that what we're putting out is fresh and unique. The next question comes from Eric from Roslyn Washington.

I've read that congressmen spent at least a third of their time fundraising. Did you see any evidence of this with Ockin-Klaas? Here's our response. This was one of the most common questions we got, specifically that note about spending at least a third of their time fundraising. And I think that's because of a series of stories that NPR did around 2012, exposing how much time members of Congress actually spend fundraising. That's where that one-third figure came from.

But straightforwardly, we didn't see Representative Ockin-Glaas spend any time fundraising, literally not one minute while we were with him. We suspect that was for a few reasons. Number one, he knew we were coming, and I doubt he wanted us to see him spending time on the phone with donors versus doing his actual legislative work. Number two, he's in a very safe district. Auchingloss ran his 2024 primary and general races unopposed, and he got 97.4% of the vote in the general election. Members like him don't need to do much fundraising for their own reelection. Finally, as you see in the video, he did spend some time thinking about what to do with money. He has raised through his political action committee, his PAC. And when he was thinking about that, he was deciding

which rising stars in the party or colleagues of his in competitive districts he wanted to send money to help out. So while we didn't see him raising funds specifically, we did see him thinking about how to allocate money he had already raised. Those are some theories about why we didn't see any fundraising while we were there, but we thought it was worth putting the question to Aucklandlaus himself. So Isaac shot him a note on Wednesday night. Here's what Isaac asked him. Doing a question and answer about our video this week, a lot of people have asked about you conspicuously not doing any fundraising when we were there, given how much time we know members of Congress spend raising money. I have some thoughts, but was curious to give you a chance to

address that. How much time do you spend fundraising? Were you concealing that work when we were there? Thoughts, anything you'd like to share with our readers? And here was his response. Hey, yes, fundraising is part of the job. I don't spend nearly as much time doing it as some readers may think, especially in Washington. It's not unusual for me to go weeks in Washington without fundraising. I write a bit in my substack about some reforms I would support that would lead to more competition and less concentrated raising and spending. All this is to say, I think it's totally believable that for Representative Auchin-Claas fundraising is just not that important, certainly not as important as it is for many other members of Congress.

We'll be right back after this quick break. What's better than a well-marbled ribby sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribby sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribby you ordered without even leaving the kitty pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0.0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver.

The next question comes from Kim in Lugano, Switzerland. How did you reconcile the seemingly perfect reasonableness of, for example, the exchange between Jake Ockin-Claas and the Republican Dusty Johnson? of South Dakota. And how did you reconcile that with what is portrayed of the behavior of most Republican senators in the mainstream media when they're on camera? Our response. First off, I don't think it's just mainstream Republicans, but also mainstream Democrats who are portrayed much differently than we saw in our visit. And I do think members of both parties act differently when they appear on cable news versus in a video like ours. Even Othincloths, who I found pretty genuine, relaxed a bit

when we weren't recording. You can just see someone's shoulders drop a few inches and their personality come out a bit more. This is a human thing. I do it too. We all do it too, even when we're not trying to. A small aside from Isaac, our YouTube executive producer, John's biggest advice to Isaac for our videos and podcasts, has always been to, quote, talk like you talk to me when we're having a bourbon. That's when you're most interesting and approachable. We think that advice would work for a lot of politicians, too. We also spent our time with some pretty reasonable people. Hawkins Lawson Johnson among them, while our national media spends most of its time highlighting the most unreasonable people. This is a major problem with our media right now. Almost every

American liberal knows who Marjorie Taylor Green is. Almost every conservative knows who Jasmine Crocket is. How many Americans could name a single member of the Problem Solvers Caucus? Flame throwers are much more popular. Why? Because they are good for ratings, clicks, and views. Our honest take, of the 535 members of Congress, we think a lot more are like. Auchcloss and Johnson, then Green or Crockett. It's unavoidable that politics is theater. In this case, Dusty Johnson is a smart guy who wants to get things done. He understood who we are and who our audiences and he acted accordingly. He'd probably act very differently during a primetime cable hit on Fox News where he's trying to appeal to Trump voters, the same way Auchinclos took on a very different

tone when he was doing his hit on MSNBC. This is the nature of the business, and I think that's why our video adds so much value and perspective. The next question is from Robert, from Santa Barbara, California. How did the Republican Congressman Dusty Johnson learn of Tangle's presence? Here's our response. When we confirmed that we'd be doing this video, one of the first goals we set for our D.C. visit was to explore how Ockincloss works with members of the other party.

Not only would this be squarely in the Tangle ethos, but we hoped it would also pull back the curtain on how representatives, who seem diametrically opposed in public relate to each other in private. So we put the question to Ockin-Klaas' staff. Was there a Republican member with whom he had a working relationship who we could meet and interview while we were there? Almost immediately, they said we should talk to Representative Dusty Johnson, who recently announced his candidacy for governor of South Dakota.

That's a fun fact. Ockin-Klaas and Johnson previously served together on the China Select Committee, which focuses on U.S. economic and security competition with China. The two have worked on addressing China's role in the fentanyl crisis, and they published joint opinions on strategies to increase U.S. economic competitiveness. Although Ockin Klaus is a strong critic of President Trump and Johnson is a very strong supporter, they're still capable of working together on these issues. We worked with their offices to set up the interview, which you can watch here in the video.

Again, this is a spot where we've timestamped this specific moment. We're also planning to release a full-length version of the interview very soon, so be sure to subscribe to our channel and turn on notifications. so you can see when we post that. Representative Johnson said he wasn't aware of us until recently, but based on what he knew, Tangle is, quote, good stuff. Personally, one of my favorite quotes of the time that we were in D.C. Next question, from Trey in Houston, Texas.

Did you ever get the sense that Representative Ockin-Klaas sometimes has to compromise his values to tow the party line? I feel like some of his comments about voting on different bills implied that sort of political tension. Here's what we said. Our read on Representative Ockincloss is that he's less an idealist and more a pragmatist. To us, thoughtful politicians understand there are battles worth fighting in places where it's okay to give a little. So yes, it's fair to say we got the sense that he might sometimes compromise his values to tow a party line,

but we also got the sense that he was willing to buck the party when he felt strongly about something. To be frank, most effective politicians approach things this way. People who don't understand how DC works can often have misconceptions. about how easy it is to just walk into Congress and vote your conscience every single time. In reality, representatives have to consider compromising on some immediate, smaller battles so they can win allies for bigger future battles. A good example of this was Auchin-Klaas' deliberation over whether to support two congressional resolutions on anti-Semitism, which came following the attack on members of a Jewish community group in Boulder,

in June. In our video, he explains that one of the resolutions is a straightforward condemnation of attack that he expects virtually all members to support, and they did. The second, however, contained, quote, more inflammatory and divisive language, and he said he would not lock in his vote until after he discussed the resolution with his colleagues. Ockincloss eventually voted yes on the second resolution, which to us suggested that he opted not to take a controversial stance on what is ultimately just a statement of principles. That is not something that could become law. In our time with him, Ockincloss spoke a lot about the test he gets.

gives himself on these kinds of votes. And that is, can he explain his decision to his constituents back home? That's politically wise. But he's also someone who wants to get things done. And when you want to get things done, it's smart not to make enemies with powerful members of your party. That's doubly true when you're a young member of Congress like he is, still climbing the ranks, and you don't have as much influence or weight to throw around just yet.

Our next question comes from Marnie. from DuPont, Washington. Could you please explain the term posse comitatis? First, for context, Aachenclos and a member of his staff referred to Posse Comitatis in the video when discussing President Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard to Los Angeles

to counter-protests against federal immigration actions. On his way to MSNBC's studio for an interview, Auchin-Gloss and his communications director discussed how he would frame the, quote, legal argument of Posse Comitatis to explain his opposition to the guards' department. drawing on all the podcast. Hey everybody, this is John, executive producer for Tangle.

We hope you enjoyed this preview of our latest episode. If you are not currently a newsletter subscriber or a premium podcast subscriber, and you are enjoying this content and would like to finish it, you can go to readtangle.com and sign up for a newsletter subscription, or you can sign up for a podcast subscription or a bundled subscription, which gets you both the podcast and the newsletter, and unlocks the rest of this episode, as well as ad-free daily podcasts, more Friday editions, Sunday editions, bonus content, interviews, and so much more.

Most importantly, we just want to say thank you so much for your support. We're working hard to bring you much more content and more offering, so stay tuned. I will join you again for the Daily podcast. For the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Lull. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas.

Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback and associate editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saw, Lindsay Canuth, and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at reetangle.com. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecues lit, but there's nothing to grill, when the in-laws decide that actually they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer.

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