Tangle - Suspension of the rules. - Isaac, Ari, and Kmele discuss the 2025 elections, anti wokeness and tariffs.

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

Today on Suspension of the rules, Isaac, Ari, and Kmele talk a lot about the 2025 election this week. They then discuss whether or not anti wokeness is dead or not as well as some chatter about tariffs and their effectiveness. And, as always. the airing of grievances. 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 hosted by: Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75 and Jon Lall.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.

Coming up, we talk a lot about the 2025 election, whether anti-wokenness is dead, some tariffs, and, of course, the grievances. It's a good one. Good morning, good afternoon and good afternoon and good evening. and welcome to the Suspension of the Rules podcast, a place where we try not to talk over each other, disagree amicably, and sometimes even change our minds. What do you guys think about that one? That's kind of close. That's actually pretty strong. Thanks. I workshop that a little bit.

It feels accurate. It's a new era. We're post-2020-off cycle elections. So everybody gets a fresh start, including the Democratic Party. I don't know whose world we're living in. It's either Zohamam Dhani's or Mikey Sheryl's or Abigail Spanburgers, but we're going to talk about what's been happening. Camille, you're sitting inside New York City,

the new center of Islamic jihad in America. Can you tell us what is it like? What's it like on the ground there, my friend? Impossible to get a U-Haul because everyone is leaving and all the billionaires. They need more than one because they have to get all of their shit out of the city. So it's pretty crazy, hairy situation. Must be tough for those of us who use Blade too and are trying to get helicopters out of the city

if any of those people might be on this call. Seriously. That's actively a problem for me right now. I love it. That's tough, man. A lot of sympathy. I don't, everybody's going to talk about New York. I don't want to, I think there's a lot more interesting stuff going on

in the results of this election. but Camille's there. I lived in New York for a long time. I think we might as well just start there, rip the Band-Aid off and move on. Here's what I'll say. I am, since I don't live in New York, I'm very curious and excited to watch Zohran Mamdani.

I am interested to see how much she actually gets done. that he wants to get done. I'm curious to see the degree to which Albany, the state of New York, works with him versus tries to buck him and refuses to give him what he needs in order to implement the policies he wants to implement. I'm curious how the party responds to him,

whether the Democratic Party embraces him, ignores him, uplifts him. I'm really interested to watch the Mondani Trump dynamic, I mean, this morning, Trump was like, I'll help him out a little bit if I have to, or, you know, he was kind of like giving some sort of weirdly positive overtures towards him, which I thought was bizarre. You know, Bill Ackman, who's been like telling everybody that this guy was

Trojan horsing Islamic jihadism into New York for six months. The moment after he wins is like, call me Zoran, let me know how I can help. I'm like, you're a sociopath, dude. Do you know? Like, have you read your. own tweets for the last six months. You know, it's going to be really bizarre. I will say my stake in the ground is, if I had to make a prediction about Zoroamandani,

I think he is going to try to implement a bunch of really huge, massive policy overhauls, like free child care for, you know, kindergartners and youngers and free buses throughout the city. And he's probably going to not get most of it done. And I think, you know, the sort of really, truly kind of socialist policies are going to slowly degrade some of the economic growth that's happening in New York City, which is doing pretty well right now, all things considered. Weirdly, Eric Adams has kind of had a pretty good tenure despite also being super corrupt. And I just don't think it's going to be that eventful. But I'm curious what you guys think. I mean, I'm sort of mocking and making fun of the rights reaction to this because it's just been so over the time.

and hysterical, in my opinion. Just like the deport him and he's a radical Muslim and he hates Jews and all this stuff that I think is obviously nonsense. But I'm wondering what your guys read. And then, Camille, maybe we can start with you. I know you've been talking a bit about this and some of your other shows. You're sitting in the belly of the beast right now. What's your read on where we are?

Well, it's interesting. This week, over on the fifth column, we've had, a number of left-of-center people who've come into the studio for conversations and it's interesting, they're also all moderates and we didn't plan it that way. I wasn't thinking in advance. We should definitely be sure to talk to some people

who are left-to-center because they can give us some perspective on the blue wave that's coming. But it did turn out to be very valuable, I think. Their takes on the election win are pretty measured. They are optimistic about Lamdami and generally have this perspective that he is going to be trying to achieve things that are actually quite difficult and that I was even told by one of them that he is perhaps moderating already and is already looking for more pragmatic remedies for addressing the affordability

concerns that are there. But I think in virtually all of those cases, they're also looking at other races and they're paying a little bit more attention to Virginia, a little bit more attention to New Jersey. And the thing that they think is most important is that it's the moderate Democrats who manage to win in those places who are perhaps pointing the way for the party more broadly. And there does seem to be a real disagreement amongst the kind of more progressive social Democrat inclined perspective where someone like AOC will say on the night of the election when this is the direction the country is going in. The establishment and the party kind of needs to get out of the way

and get on board and understand that this is the kind of bold, ambitious leadership that Democrats need going forward. But a question that I've asked and that I think I know the answer to, but I am very curious what you gentlemen think about it, is if Mandami, who is getting most of the attention nationally with respect to these election results, and is even the person who the president is being asked about directly and calls out the president directly in his speech,

if he'd run in Virginia, if he'd run in New Jersey, could he have won statewide election in those races? And that actually seems really important for actually telling the story of whether or not what the Democrats need to do in order to be viable is to be more like him on policy, which I think is very different than trying to be more like him With respect to this, the undeniable political talent that he has for communicating,

connecting with audiences, leveraging media, I mean, it is extraordinary to look at what he managed to do, to go from virtually no-name recognition whatsoever, to defeat not an incumbent mayor, but a man whose name is kind of legend in New York politics. and, you know, was he a flawed competitor for sure? Cuomo ran a very bad campaign after losing that primary in the way that he did. He kind of disappeared from the scene for a month and a half. So losing is one thing. But it's the way that Mondami managed to win.

That's really extraordinary. It's the volume of votes. It's the enthusiasm of particularly young voters. And it's the fact that he has kind of captured the attention of the entire country. And a lot of people will be paying attention to see. how things turn out, which I think might have some challenges for him because I, you know, folks know my biases here. I'm a libertarian inclined, deeply skeptical of a number of the propositions that he's run on explicitly. I think the overarching concern about affordability is one thing, but the specific

promises of, you know, state-run bodegas and that dramatic minimum wage increases, free child care and tax increases in New York, a place that already has an exceptionally high tax burden, this is going to be a very difficult needle to thread. He doesn't have the power to do most of the things he wants to do unilaterally, and it isn't clear that there are people who are ready to be partners, and it also isn't clear that the best way to address an affordability crisis with respect to housing in New York City is with price controls. Yeah, so I was going to say you actually agree.

with everything, and then he kept going. I think the thing that I agree with the most, and I know, Isaac, you've got something queued up too, so I'll make this specific, is that I think the takeaway, if we're trying to search for what should Democrats be doing, going into the midterms, what should their party direction be when we see moderates are elected in one place, but people like Mamdani are elected in New York with these huge turnouts,

like, what's the stronger signal? And the stronger signal, I think, is just the opponent they're running against, and the place that they're running in affects the candidate that arises in those circumstances. So, Mumdani's running against the incumbent mayor, who is a Democrat,

who had to drop out because of scandals and then prompted a legacy person in Cuomo to assume the mantle of the centrist Democrat in a city that's probably only going to be voting for a Democratic mayor.

So, yeah, he's going to be flanked from the left in that situation. He's a bad, flawed candidate, so that's where he's vulnerable. In other places, in Virginia, in New Jersey, we see people running against Trump in more moderate, centrist ways. I don't think there's any deeper takeaway than that. It's just this is the candidate that's best suited to win in those circumstances. And if Democrats want to take anything from it, it's just run a quality candidate, run somebody who's going to be good at actually expressing their message to voters, not try to package somebody that feel, like the quality of message they want

that inauthenticity will come across. I know that's a word that's going to trigger Camille and I'm trying to cue you up, Isaac, but maybe like, and not a wet bag politician, not somebody who's completely uncharismatic, but somebody who has the believability of their positions and then just like is in the right situation of the right time.

I mean, I want to say I rarely do this. I think I never do this. publicly on Entangler on the podcast, but I would not have, I don't think I could have punched a ballot for Andrew Cromo. I lived in New York City during his gubernatorial time when he was governor, and I lived there through the pandemic. Like, to me, and I think something that is like really an untold story for anybody that's been in the city for five years or longer,

it's just like, it's just kind of unforgivable. Like he, he fell from grace so fast. It was like, I remember those first few weeks being like, oh my God, this is the dude who might save us.

And then a year later, it was just like he's detestable, you know, like he lied, he was so slippery. He screwed so many people. The, you know, the lockdowns,

all this stuff went on too long. The nursing home. debacles. Like, it was just, it got so gross, so quick. And that's without even talking about the fact that he's, like, you know, sexually harassing people along the way, too. Like, he's just a scumbag. And, like, I don't think, you know, I don't know what I would have done,

but I definitely wouldn't have voted for him. And I definitely wouldn't have voted for Curtis Lewa because he's a joke. So, like, you know, I don't know. Like, there, I imagine there are many New Yorkers like that. Now, to answer your question directly, maybe a hot take here. I think Zohamam Dani could have won the New Jersey governor's race, actually. I think Mikey Sherrill ran a terrible campaign. She was uninspired throughout.

People across New Jersey seem to be totally lukewarm on her. I'm sure that the fact that she has, like, centrist, moderate, at politics was appealing to people who didn't want to elect Jack Chitorelli, who's like a guy who's run and failed to get elected now three times in the state. Just like there's something so uninspiring about somebody like that who's just like they're just serially in the race and never winning. And he's just that guy. And I don't think he was offering anything new or whatever interesting. There's a lot of really highly educated people in Mom Dani who he does really well with in New Jersey, which

Mamdani does really well with. There's a lot of wealth in New Jersey, especially in the northern parts of the state that has become Brooklyn South now that he does really well with. And I think he could have turned out low propensity voters in the states. There's huge

populations of like Arab American, Indian American, Asian American throughout New Jersey that he seems to perform pretty well with. I'm actually not so sure that he would have been a bad candidate

in a state like New Jersey. I think he would have run a different campaign. He probably would have focused on some stuff a little differently. But if he did the things that he did in New York where he hit the ground and he had this awesome social media campaign, I actually think it's totally plausible

that he could have won and turned out a different electorate that would have showed up for him. In Virginia, I don't know. But in New Jersey, I think that there's enough unactive, inactive, not activated voters. I don't know exactly what the expression I'm looking for is, but like there are enough inactive voters in New Jersey that he could have gotten off the couch for an off-cycle race with, you know, maybe not this promises he was making in New York, but some big government

affordability centered, I'm going to fight Trump promises. is. And yeah, I'm not at all convinced that that would have been a totally losing proposition for him. I actually don't think that's so hot of a take. I think just part of the equation in New Jersey is that we're going to get bad data out of it because last cycle, a lot of people voted for Trump going against the incumbent dissatisfied with Biden and Harris. So we thought that maybe that race was going to be closer than it was. And a lot of people were voting. on the Trump referendum. So it's just there's a lot of junk data coming out of there that's going to make it hard for us to make a huge read one way or the other. I think maybe a more interesting

question is would Mondani have done better than Cheryl? And I don't know, like that hypothetical, I'm not sure what that would tell us. Because Cheryl ended up winning pretty convincingly, which does sort of tell you probably most Democrats would have done so. And sorry to cut you off, Camille, though. I know this is sort of your neck of the woods, but it's across the river from you. maybe you've got some dismissive classes to attitudes to spew. No, you know, I actually would agree with you. I don't know that it is so much of a heart take.

And certainly when I say he couldn't have won there, I mean running a race like this. And specifically appealing on these particular issues, talking openly about his kind of DSA sort of roots and aspirations. I just don't know if that translates as well, even with the kind of similar cultural proclivities in certain parts of New Jersey relative to New York. And part of that might just be because New York is such a different political environment.

The appeals work, activating voters is a very different sort of thing. The concentration of particular kinds of communities and these younger communities that have been so animated by a lot of online. ongoing foreign policy issues that had these massive mobilizations already who were essentially almost plug-in-play for him. Like, you could just drop yourself into this situation. You align with them pretty tightly. It's almost like a lot of the same political mechanisms could be deployed.

And I don't mean that in any sort of conspiratorial way, just practically speaking, in service of his election. and a lot of the conversations about the things that made his campaign radioactive to certain kinds of Democrats would have probably been more impactful in some of these other places, including New Jersey. And I think the reason to mention it is precisely because there is this rather intense and it's been going on for a while conversation among Democrats with respect to what they ought to be doing, what they ought to look like, the messaging that they ought to have going into the future.

And I do think it sounds like we broadly agree that it's probably the more moderate version of the message that's actually going to resonate. It's probably talking about affordability in particular and in practical ways that's likely to resonate. And I think that's very different than some of the kind of more specific proposals that were floated.

That again, I'm not. at all certain would work in other places. Again, I don't even know how you'd sell a rent control measure in New Jersey because it doesn't have the same sort of history with those policies that New York City does. The one thing I would say to... But it does have incredibly high property rates. Sure. Right.

Well, that's actually, I was going to say, I mean, to argue against myself, New Jersey voters are obsessed with how bad the taxes are there. And I think, like, somebody coming in who in a broad level was proposed. increasing taxes or keeping them the same. I mean, that could be a death now for a mom, Donnie, in a New Jersey statewide race. And it is all, I mean, it's awful. Like, I live in Philadelphia.

My wife's family is all from New Jersey. You know, we've, like, talked about what we're going to do whenever, at some point, we'll probably leave the city and move to the birds. And, like, you know, we go up and look at houses up there sometimes, just, like, drive around neighborhoods and talk about it. And then you look up the property tax and I mean, it's insane, like what it costs to buy a house. Even if you were to go all in and buy a house, all cash, just like just the taxes or like another mortgage, it's a real issue that the state has and you get some stuff for it. Like I think the argument is they have great schools and there's really good public parks and like there are these, you know, there's like stuff that you think you're going to make that's going to make it worth it.

But, yeah, I mean, that could be something that, like, prevents him from ever winning up there. All right. Well, we promised we weren't going to talk about Mom Donnie the whole time. So I'm going to hold us to that promise. Go ahead, Ari. You want to, you look like you have something to say. I have something to say. You could put that on my gravestone probably when I go.

But I think the thing that we're dancing around or getting close towards, that isn't Mamdani specific, Isaac, is that it really does come back to affordability, I think, and I don't think we've seen the last of that as a thread for these elections. Mumdani gave some pitch in New York. Like you said, that pitch would probably have to be tempered in some way to work in New Jersey,

but it is all addressing the same idea, which is the X, Y, Z is too damn high. I'm pretty sure that Mikey Sherrill ran a campaign that was centered on utility rates being too damn high. And we're talking about New Jersey property taxes being high. That's true in California as well. It's a matter of affordability as hitting people in a lot of different economic strata. The issue you brought up by as like of home ownership, that's like a middle class thing.

That's something that I think plays very well with Democrats in space now, which is trending upward in terms of economic mobility. but at the every level it's true, like rent in New York, rent anywhere. Like I live in Vermont, which is a rural state, but has pretty high homelessness because affordability here is also an issue in terms of what you can afford for a home or for an apartment if you're in one of Vermont's major metropolises, which we for sure have. But the cases, I think, if you want to talk about Virginia, like affordability, the way that that looks there, I think, is with the layoff federal workers in North Virginia who show that they were really, really angry and motivated to go to the polls. And that's sort of a different side of the coin, which is their salaries are slashed. But I think that's the thing that's going to be driving people to the polls in the midterms, too, absent this big abortion issue that we had in the midterms, the last cycle.

and it keeps coming back to the old saying, it's going to continue to be the economy, comma, stupid. And that I think we can view it through that lens in any state. I do, I mean, there's something real here, which is that a lot of people were willing to kind of swallow the Trump pill because they felt like quality of life, you know, cost of living got so bad towards the end of Biden's term with inflation that they just wanted a reset.

They wanted, you know, someone who was going to come in and do whatever it took to address the kind of cost crisis as a lot of people talked about, the affordability crisis. And Trump just literally hasn't done that. And it's not even that he hasn't done it. It's that he hasn't paid lip service to it.

He doesn't seem focused on it. I mean, you know, he seems really focused on foreign policy. stuff and has been for several months. Now the government's shut down. The market's taking a ship because the government's shut down and, you know, it's just like, so there's sort of like higher income earning people who are getting squeezed now. Anytime there's like a little bit of a market downturn or some instability there. And you look at the inflation rate.

It hasn't really meaningfully dissipated from where it was headed. when Trump came into office, and now it's maybe ticking back up again. We're starting to see, like, the tariff costs come out and some consumer goods. And it's sort of like, I mean, again, I know it's funny to talk about, but it is this kind of Marjorie Taylor Green argument now.

She's sort of the only one beating the drum, which is just like, we got elected to do this thing and we're not doing it. And if we keep not doing it, we're going to pay. And this election cycle, this little off-cycle thing, this, you know, snapshot we just got could be the first sign of that. I think, you know, if you're a Republican

and you want to sleep well at night, the take is, you know, New Jersey's blue, Virginia's blue, New York's dark, dark blue, California's blue, Pennsylvania's a swing district, but, like, we never, you know, vote to remove Supreme Court justices, judges. You could pretty much chalk all of this up to it's just the low turnout election in all these predominantly democratic

blue places. And this actually isn't that meaningful, which I think is a fair piece of context. I just, the margins actually do matter. And the way certain blocks of voters are moving does matter. And it doesn't seem like Trump has eased anybody's concerns about the economy or anything else at this point, which I think is a really dangerous spot for them to be in. We'll be right back after this quick break. So I don't know. I mean, a question I would put to you guys, like, I'm curious of all the election results we saw. which ones you were kind of most interested in.

I mean, I have an answer for, I have an answer for that, but I'm wondering, like, what stuck out to you guys or what sort of captured your imagination outside of the Mamdani stuff? We won't, if we say his name one more time, he's going to appear, so we have to stop now. Yeah, I was waiting for you to make that qualification because I was going to say, well, we kind of talked about it already. I mean, Virginia is certainly interesting.

It's a race that Winsome had tried to distance herself from Trump did do some embracing of him during the campaign but the president was never interested in weighing in on her race in particular. He is essentially campaigning in Virginia but for people other than the governor and that is interesting on some level.

I've certainly heard some people suggest that race might have. have been a factor there. I think what's much more likely and more consistent with what we've seen from the administration in the past is they don't like backing people who are bound to be losers. They want to have as clean and pristine a record as possible when it comes to their candidates winning. So they tend to draw a line there. But I think they also know that this isn't someone who is truly and meaningfully on board. And she's also a bit of flawed candidate there as well. But Virginia was interesting. Virginia is a place

that is uniquely sensitive to the shutdown, the challenges that have arisen from the shutdown, if any place is going to be kind of a referendum on Trump, that would be. But I think the uniform way in which they moved away from Trump, if you look at the voting numbers, county by county, region by region, the shift away from Trump is difficult to deny. and it seems like something that is likely to be a persistent problem for the administration and for conservatives broadly going into the midterms and certainly into the next presidential election cycle. There's just a great deal of skepticism, perhaps even some buyer's remorse

on the part of a number of voters because of the results that they've seen so far. And to hear the president talking about tariffs now, I heard him suggest in an interview with Brett bear, I think yesterday, that today being Thursday, that if not for the tariffs, we would be in a global recession. I just haven't seen a lot of evidence to support that. And I don't know that most voters find perspectives like that credible. What they're thinking about are matters much closer to the ground. Are prices going up or down? Have you done what you promised to do? and I think increasingly lots and lots of Americans are saying, no, that isn't the case.

And even when I've seen conservatives respond to the loss, and I know we're going to talk about some of the kind of conservative civil war stuff, so I won't go too far, it isn't clear that they're all ready to grasp or grapple with what may have really cost them the election. And I think some of the kind of civil war beefing between the different factions really does illustrate that point. And that only moves me further into my camp

that it is a referendum on Trump's policies as it impacts people's lives and the lives of people that they know or that they've seen. And I think the Republicans would want it to be a referendum on immigration, but it's primarily going to be referendum on economics. And I'm going to say some really optimistic case for, or like the defensive case for the administration,

which I actually think is pretty easy to make, which is you actually have won on immigration. The reason why this election isn't about that is because it's not an issue anymore. So cynically, a lot of political people would want to keep an issue that they know is a winner open like Democrats and abortion for a long time because they know they can run on it.

But Trump came into office, implemented a lot of harsh policies to try to stem the flow of immigration at the border. positioned things in a way where that posture is really foreboding, and we saw the stem of immigration decline. So you don't have that issue now. So now you're going to be pivoting to the economy. In that regard, I do think to sort of disagree with Isaac, and to your point, Camille, a little bit, they do have an economic policy. The policy is tariffs. And yeah, Trump's been focusing abroad and foreign policy, but I think it's all wrapped up together. Like Trump's worldview is

that the U.S. as a whole, as a collective, has been ripped off by other nations that are undervaluing our currency and undermining our manufacturing base. And Trump's solution of that is broad-based tariffs cross the board. And we don't really know if it's going to work or if it has had an impact. Like, that's something that will require time. I think, I know that, like, If anybody's listened to the Fifth Column podcast, especially after Trump's inauguration, you probably know where Camille stands on tariffs, which is he's the world's biggest fan. But I think there's plenty to criticize that stance on, but I'm also somewhat tariff curious myself. I think that if imposed in a way that is sensible and cohesive, I could see the theory behind

at working, going to raise some revenue for the government, going to encourage more manufacturing. If it's going to be reliable, then people can invest in the United States in a way that they can rely on. And that could be a win-win for the government. Without like income taxes that are going to be limiting consumer spending, we still have another way to gain revenue for the government and it might be good for the economy. That's at least a defensible theory. And Trump can say, we don't know about that yet. Maybe by next year we'll have enough data and he's banking really big

on saying this is going to work. This tariff policy is going to get us to the point where by next October, when you're considering who you're going to be voting for in the midterms, you can look back and say Republicans helped. If that's not the case, we will find out and voters will let us know. But I do think that there's a strategy there

and I think that's what they're doing. And it's maybe not going to work, but it might. Yeah. I mean, I'll say briefly on the tariffs, the challenge with what you laid out there that case, which is coherent, is that the same people who make that case will often say, but it's a strategy. He's just using the tariffs in order to try to get better trade deals. And also, we know that when the factories come back,

they're probably not going to be hiring Americans. They'll be putting robots in there. So it's very difficult. or with U.S. investment, perhaps. Yeah, I mean, maybe so. It's a difficult, it is a very difficult argument to make. There is a lot of complexity there, even if I'm going to give them the possibility

that I might be wrong about the general efficacy of tariffs and they might be right. I think the challenge is that they haven't even made the case in a way that is uniform and consistent. Like, the case is being made in a bunch of different ways. These are great. We actually need them. They're reciprocal.

punishing people for bad things, well, how do you have reciprocal tariffs that you impose against people who you already didn't have a trade deficit with? It just doesn't work. And when the courts weigh in a little later, because I'm sure we've all been paying a little bit attention at least to those proceedings, the SCOTUS actual hearings on the tariffs, the federal government is not doing a great job presenting their case. And we may not have a decision there until next year sometime. But it, you know, I think that will, further solidify perspectives on whether or not these were a good idea later. If a conservative Supreme Court knocks them down and knocks down the tariff authority,

it only makes matters worse for the administration. I'm glad you brought that up. Three things very quickly. One, the argument of, yes, tariffs are a tool to try to help investing in our economy and manufacturing, but also their negotiating tactic. I think it's sort of reminiscent of the kind of arguments you hear in front of courts, which is I'm going to argue two things at the same time. And if you're not thinking legalistically,

it sounds like you're arguing against yourself, but you have this backup measure in case your first argument fails. Right, right. I actually think that's somewhat clever. If you're going to say we have this policy, I'm serious. If you're going to say we have this policy

and it's meant to invest in manufacturing, but if people are going to knock it down, hey, we're going to use it, we're going to get something out of it. We're going to use this a negotiating tactic. And I think we can see that we can argue to what degree, you know, it's the best tool.

at least is getting results. It's hard to argue that it's not getting people to come to the table and come up with investment deals in the United States could be overvalued. Right. It might not have a huge effect, but that is happening. Yeah, and the deals could be largely imaginary as well. Yes, and I'm backing up a lot to give a lot of room there because we don't know how much that's going to happen, but there are things that are being inked in paper.

And second thing, Supreme Court case, we covered it today in Tangle. We are seeing a lot of skepticism from the job. about the specific reciprocal tariffs that Trump has been imposing broadly. Industry-specific tariffs are a different matter. If Trump and the Republicans are going to say we're going to be leveling 20% on any chip that's coming in the United States, for instance, or knocking down tariff rates for rare earth materials, but putting every other industry up, just like having the baseline go up,

but the things that they want to import go down, that's really possible. Even when we get this Supreme Court ruling, which may be coming earlier into that, I don't know, there's some suggestion they might expedite it. Even if that does happen, there's probably going to be other ways for the tariffs to be put in. And that brings me to the third thing,

which is that we are still really early in it. The one thing that we can say is that the worst effects that we predicted, we haven't felt yet, with a big underline on yet. And the other thing is the revenues that we're projected to see, we have seen like not to the degree that they're saying

half a trillion dollars a year but Isaac it was what because you were at the take today it was something like $40 billion in revenue this past month in October? Yeah they're going to collect I think $37 billion in October

is what they're estimating the estimated they collected which comes out to like $400 billion a year not jump change yeah but it's also important who paid and where that revenue came from. Is that Americans who are paying that revenue,

as some people suggested, like me? Or is that money coming directly from foreign governments? It matters, you know? And it is coming from, like, it's coming from American companies, but I'm sorry. You and I can have a conversation about this later. I asked you what the most thing in the election result that captured your imagination most is,

and so now you guys ended up talking about terrorists. I answered the question, to be fair. But yes. Yeah, that's true. So bring it back to the election results. Yeah, I want to, I have two. I want to talk about Prop 50 in California for sure. Before you do, I have my own proposition I'm going to throw out there.

And it's actually interesting. It ties into some of this stuff that we've been talking about, which is, you know, already mentioned, like, Trump and Republicans have won on immigration and it's almost like they need to move on and find a new thing in some way. They've like, I feel like they've, you know, whatever. The Trump mass deportation effort, I think, is actually unpopular.

But I think they've at least won on making the issue salient and making it toxic for Democrats. There's something that I think is happening now, that I think could be hurting Republicans and conservatives and the right more broadly, which is, and this is my proposition, is that I think the anti-wokeness stuff might be dead. And it's sort of similar to how the actual woke era ended,

which, like, there was no sort of defining demarcation. It was just like at some point, in like 2022 people just became less scared of like being canceled or like you know conforming perfectly and just sort of started saying like no like shut like screw you kind i'm not gonna like say it exactly what you want or like actually i'm not like an evil person for you know accidentally misgendering someone or it was just like just stop like i just made a mistake relax whatever and it just kind of happened slowly and then sort of all at once

and then it turned into like being anti-woke was really powerful politically and I'm just you know the thing that caught my eye about all this was what happened in Bucks County where I grew up which is that you know in 2021 and 22 Republicans took over several of the biggest school boards in Bucks County, which is a purple county in a swing state.

And they did it. These Republican activist groups won all these school board seats by really truly running on like anti-wokeness campaigns. It was a lot of like gender ideology and DEI stuff. And then in 2023, Democrats and liberals took back some of those school boards, but they were still kind of split. And in this last election, in two of the biggest districts in the county, county, they didn't just take the school boards back.

They removed every single Republican on the school boards in the elections. They just wiped them out. And I just, like, you know, I'm, I think even, I mean, this is weird too, but like the Charlie Kirk assassination sort of started this discourse also about, like, the approach and how to deal with people in this way, like how to fight the left. we had this huge discourse about whether he was like the right or the wrong. And I'm just starting to sense that like, you know, I'm seeing like places like the free press or whatever be a little bit more on the end

of the stick where they're getting mocked, like they're kind of the joke because it's like this obsession with this sort of anti-woke push. And I think it's losing its salience a little bit. Like, I think it falls into the category of, like, you sort of won. Like, I think the left is trying to suppress the quote-unquote wokeness or whatever. And of course, it's all hard to, we're talking about it in squishy terms without defining it. But I just, I get this sense that that is not the salient thing going forward for the right. They're not going to turn out voters with it.

It's not like a super appealing winning. It's just people are kind of like, okay. Like, you've been banging on about, like, the trans people for three years now. Just, like, I'm kind of done with it. And I don't know if that's the right read, but I'm picking up a little bit on that where I, you know, it's coming back to the economy. It's coming back to affordability. And I don't know that, like, conservatives are going to move a lot of voters. I don't think the wokeness feels like a threat anymore.

and they're not going to move voters the way they did maybe when Trump wasn't in power and they were the minority and they felt like their voices were being silenced and they're going to need a new strategy for that so I don't know I was kind of curious if that lands for you guys or if you think maybe that's not the best read of the room

I mean I think it depends on the race there are particular candidates sorry I said of the first of the That's a fair question with anyone else. With me, but in this particular context, I mean, it depends on the context of the particular political race. In New York, Mondami is still running on some of those issues.

The controversy surrounding his campaign pertained to things like, you know, taxing white people more in order to achieve some particular ends and him showing up in these particular kind of interest groups or communities in different ways. And even these concerns, and I'd say legitimate concerns about anti-Semitism that have cropped up in New York in particular, around some of the campus protests and various other things. But then, you know, then just the general like associations and whatnot that have been critiqued with respect to Mondami. In a place, place like that, I think it could actually still be a fairly salient issue for a competitive candidate who is running a pretty good campaign and can continue to make that an issue in

particular ways. I mean, Kamala Harris's inability to get away from what she had committed to in the years prior where she said explicitly, you know, illegal immigrants who are incarcerated convicted felons, should they have taxpayer dollars devoted to their gender reassignment surgeries? The answer is yes and them not backing down from that. That's going to be a problem for you.

And you could still lose a race if you're still running on those issues. And for all of the Democrats' efforts to push back on some of that stuff, it is still there. That said, I would agree with the general instinct, Isaac, that it's insufficient. And in Virginia in particular,

this was an aspect of, the campaign. They tried very, very hard to make that the central issue. And it simply wasn't where voters were. They were not most concerned about that. They were concerned about a lot of these other economic questions, the more practical questions that are closer to the ground. And in that particular case, again, it also helped that you had a candidate who wasn't making that kind of her central issue as she was running for office. So it's going to depend on the context, and I'm not at all certain that Democrats have really extracted all of the right lessons from that particular period. I think it's entirely possible for us to see a resurgence

of the identity issues. And some of that is in response to the identity issues that have become really prominent amongst conservatives and the debates and arguments that they're having there. And I just think that the kind of interaction between the two parties on those issues might keep those things pretty salient. But certainly conservatives are going to need to find more affirmative things to actually build their campaigns around. And I think we will see a very determined pivot towards trying to talk about affordability and more practical issues alongside some of these cultural issues. Speaking of anti-wokenness, Camille, are you still having trouble saying Zoran Mamdani's name?

Is that a thing for you? My name is spelled K-M-E-L-E. I challenge anyone to pronounce that correctly. I don't have so much a challenge saying his name as much as I'm not going out of my way to say it in a particular manner. I just kind of let it come out. It's like you're throwing an M in there

like you're saying M-Domni. Creative pronunciations are my liberty and my license. I think the appropriate adage to adopt when you have a name that is unusual, perhaps even just unusual to a particular region where you happen to live, is to respond with a great deal of grace and not to insist that anyone who isn't pronouncing it in a very specific way is actually attempting some sort of monstrous injury that you simply can't withstand. So I just found the whole discourse around pronunciation of names

deeply frustrating, especially because the people who are usually leading it can often, there's often documentation to support the fact that they all pronounce it in a variety of ways and there's no agreement about this.

Like, pronounced the bodega. Like, what is that word? How does that work? Listen to the various ways Zoron has pronounced that. It's odd. There is a lot of discourse about Andrew Cuomo

who has, yeah, he's been on the Zoron Mom Domni, he's done a lot of that in the debates. He got a lot of, he got a lot of heat for that. Yeah, well said. My mother can't pronounce ours. Like, you know, it is what it is. What did you, you know, the Kamala stuff was big, too,

that she got a lot of, she got a lot of runway out of people not being able to say her name correctly. even her supporters though which I always found really funny you know what I appreciate that I appreciate that response especially because I've heard

people pronounce your name before which is it's Camille right that is the right way to say it no my name is spelled in a way that just makes it phonetically confounding

there is no mispronouncing my name because I don't think there is any correct pronunciation. My mother says Camille, which doesn't really make a lot of sense either. My wife says Camille, and I generally respond to anything that makes it clear that you're trying and you're talking to me because it is a better way to live. Imagine even if I decided on a particular pronunciation that I love above all others, just being an asshole about that. I wouldn't because it's silly. Well, so that's touching on something that maybe is important to this discourse that you want, is like maybe it's

wokeism is sort of became eaten by anti-wokism and now maybe the thing that everyone just doesn't want to do anymore is grievances. I know that will be ironic for us but the idea of I'm going to

interpret any action as uncharitably as possible so I can prove that I'm being victimized like that probably doesn't have the currency that it doesn't. So I agree that I don't think that we've landed on any resolution as a country or even from the left

about what they want to do with racial issues, gender issues moving forward. But that probably the tactic of oh look, you use the wrong word here. We're going to shine the spotlight on you. That tactic's probably not going to work anymore. I don't know if the election results show that.

I think that may be just something that we're seeing and thinking about over the span of the last couple years. But I think that's, you know, that's maybe a reason for optimism, actually. Yeah, yeah. Like a shift away from grievance politics, I think is perhaps a better way to frame it. Certain dimensions of quote-unquote,

wokeness are still very much alive. I certainly think that the notion that there is a kind of woke right that is doing a similar sort of grievance-mongering and policing of, Whether or not you have the appropriate opinions is something that is very active and alive and well. And that entire project gives me a headache, an actual literal headache. But yeah, I do think our politics is demanding something different from people who want to win races now. There isn't the same sort of palpable fear related to that.

We'll be right back after this quick break. All right. Ari, I promised you a few minutes. I want to talk about the Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson interview. But before we get there, you're going to unsuccessful. convinced me that passing Prop 50 was bad. So I want to make sure that you get some time to do that. Great. Yeah, that feels like a totally fair invitation.

Sure. This is suspension of the rules, all right. This is a safe space. It's never been that. Okay. The case that I would make is this. So, Isaac, you were sort of going back and forth on whether or not you thought that Prop 50, which was going to allow California to do a mid-decade redistricting in its state to

redraw its lines to maximally send as many Democrats as they could to Congress and the midterms in 2008 and 2030 to try to counter what Republicans are doing in Texas, as well as other states now, I think Indiana and a few others. I don't have them off the top of my head, but to counter what Republicans are doing in those states and saying if Democrats don't do anything, it's just seen in the ground and it's going to be runaway abrogation to the executive for the next

three years. And so they should be doing something. That's generally the case that you landed on with the heavy asterisk that Prop 50 in California is a temporary measure. It is just to try to draw these lines until 2030 when the next census comes out

and then California's redistricting committee that works So I'm like, it's a system of rules and it's bipartisan. Well, then we'll draw the lines in a normal way as they have in the past for the next decade. The way that I rebut that is to say that asterisk, it's going to be washed away. Forget about it. When we get to the midterms, when we get to the election 2030 or 2028, sorry, wow, I'm really looking ahead. When we get to any of those elections, in fact, I don't think it's going to play the voters the message.

Oh, no, actually, what Newsome and Democrats, did was they just did it for a mid-decade redistricting, and it's just going to be people already tuning you out. They're just going to see Republicans, the Democrats, did it, it's an arms race, both sides are equally to blame, and everyone does it, so it's not going to be a cudgel you can use in those elections. So that's something that's hurting Democrats if they decide to do it. They're leaving that moral high ground, and they don't have it to use in the future. Then, when it comes to this idea of, um, Jerry,

mandering defensively, I think the best solution is to let them overreach. Like it's the Sun Tzu principle of when your opponent is making a mistake, don't interrupt them. Because Republicans, based on what we saw in the last election several days ago, could very possibly have redistricted in a way that puts all of the seats that they're seeking to more of, more at risk now. And you don't get to say that. You don't get to use that cudgel if you're doing it too. So Democrats had this ability to say Trumpism, it's all overreach, it's executive authority,

it's runaway, they're trying to take the Congress back, or trying to take Congress's power completely in a way that we can't grab. You're not going to be able to run on that in those districts anymore. Like maybe you can try, but it's not going to be as potent as it could have been. And now who's going to be taking up the mantle of election reforms? If gerrymandering is the great scourge that we want to try to push against, if both parties are doing it,

I think it's a little galaxy brain to say, oh, if everyone does it, then we're going to push ourselves to the place where we don't do it anymore. The way to not do it is to not do it. So if you want to stop gerrymandering, you stop gerrymandering. And the fear of what Republicans could get

out of the Congress that they have total control of is completely checked by the fact that this Republican Congress that we already see, Republicans already have control of it. The way they've used it is to not be able to agree on funding the government to see their authority to the president

regarding tariffs, regarding the way that they regulate their own the executive departments and gridlock, gridlock, gridlock. So that's our worst case scenario for Democrats. Therefore, like,

what are you pushing back against if the fear is, oh, Republicans could gain like 15 seats in the House. First of all, okay, but they already have the majority. Second of all, they probably won't if they are going to be seen this way, and you can use that against them. And third, push forward on election reform the way that you want it to be. Don't try to say, like, we think that it needs to change, ergo, we're going to do it too, and then maybe in the future we can disarm.

That's not the way disarmment works. has to put their weapons down first. I mean, I guess my evolution on this because I think initially I'm just blanket principally against gerrymandering, so I'm predisposed to think that what you're saying is right

is that I, first of all, I totally disagree that 15 more seats in the house would be meaningless in terms of the issues that Republicans are having. Like a 15-seat swing in the House could actually undo all the gridlock that you're talking about. So could a Senate seat or two, which they're probably going to pick up in 2026 in concert

with whatever gerrymandering they do for House seats. So like that calculation, I think fundamentally changes in the last couple of years of the Trump administration. On top of that, like, I would just say the, like, this particular election that we just had on Tuesday, I do think offers some organic moment for Republicans to look around and be like, oh, maybe this isn't a great idea. Because to your point, if they're trying to turn, you know, five sure thing districts into seven and what they actually do is turn five sure things. districts into seven districts that are like plus five for Trump, if you got a swing like we just had, they could lose most of them or all of them. And that's a problem for them that they have to figure out. But I mean, they probably just end up calibrating the gerrymandering where instead of going for two extra seats in certain states, they go for one. And they still pick up the extra

seat and Democrats are still sitting on their hands not doing anything about it when there's like a very clear power grab happening that doesn't go away in a year or two. I mean, this is like a 10-year, this is a decade of gerrymandering that we'll have to live with and that Republicans will be able to use to their advantage if Democrats

are just not responding in any way. So, I mean, my position is like, I don't see a world where Trump and Republicans, based on everything they're saying and doing, back off this mission to gerrymander every possible seat they can into the House. And, you know, do I want 90% of congressional races in the country to be non-competitive? Of course not. But like, if that is the place that we're headed, I'd rather the scales,

be kind of tilted evenly in terms of how unfairly these districts are drawn than to have one side have a clear upper hand and that side the one that has a clear upper hand also be the one that's pushing the gerrymandering limits as far as possible. Like that to me is not a great outcome to just cede the ground to the bully basically. You know, it's sort of like and this is what I said at the LA event. It's like there's somebody walking around on the playground just punching everybody in the face you can either sit there and not do anything

and hope he stops and if he doesn't everybody gets wrecked or like some other big kid steps up and punches him back and maybe that stops him. And I kind of feel like that's the situation we're in and like Gavin Newsom is another big boy on the playground who's trying to use the power that he has to fight back a little bit. And as much as I loathe gerrymandering and as much as I think Gavin Newsom is a slimy car salesman like Anna Casparian said, I also think that like I prefer people like him exist than they don't in this moment.

And I came to that position honestly. I don't think that's where I was when I started. But I think like I articulated that argument to steal man and then I sort of convinced myself it was right. yeah you uh you you you tricked yourself maybe that's the way i that's what i heard so the the um the idea of like the bully is going to punch back and then or someone some big kid's going to punch the bully and the bully's going to stop that swing that newsome and democrats through in california isn't what caused introspection for the republicans on gerrymandering it was the election losses so the way that

you punch back, like to extend the analogy, if there's a bully that's punching a bunch of people and a big kid steps up, the best way to do it is to like, you know, push the bully away and then go take the ball and play elsewhere. Like beat them in a different game. Like the game here is winning the races, win the elections and the districts that they're trying to draw.

You said that you don't want to see 90% of the districts in the country be non-competitive. If this arms race continues, that's where we're going. And it's better if it's like 60% are non-competitive. Like that, that to me is the lesser evil here. And... Well, maybe this is the other thing...

Just to say, maybe this is other thing that I find I'm unconvincing about this position is, like, it's not like Democrats haven't gerrymandered and they can say, oh, we don't participate in this. Like, they've already done it. The Rubicon's been crossed. It's this mid-decade gerrymandering thing, though. Yeah, but they've done that too.

Like, they've done it. It's not like their hands are clean if they don't match Trump now. Their hands are already dirty. They're already in it. But what outcome are you actually interested in, Isaac? Is it like this arms race of reciprocal redistricting that's all actually geared towards just gaining political advantage? Or is it a circumstance where you actually have things that are more likely, like the model that California is suspending

in a very ends justify the means sort of way. Like, I don't know. Like, there are so many different ways that one could approach this. And I do think that the practical reality is of the flawed effort that the Republicans have undertaken in Texas, as Ari alluded to earlier, like is a really important part of the story here. Like, they're not actually going to get the goal that they're looking for.

and it's because they're not doing a sufficiently good electorally. And ultimately, the challenge with the redistricting thing is it might help you win races, but what ultimately wins you the race is whether or not you are successfully achieving the things that the people who voted for you have. And it is no way to safeguard yourself. And at some point, you start to look exceptionally bad. If you are focusing all your attention on trying to rig the elections, so that you win the eventual race

because you can't compete in the same districts that you just won, you know, only a matter of years or months ago. So I do think that Democrats are kind of both giving away the moral high ground and trapping themselves with a worst narrative and essentially abandoning the project that so many people, people of both parties seem mutually interested in. The idea that the elections can be more

fair and that we can cultivate a greater respect for institutions by getting away from some of the nakedly partisan maneuvering that's been happening across the country for so long. If people are sick of it and you want to see an end to it, then you do just at some point have to say, we're going to stop that here. That's not the way we do things. And they're just, they've abandoned the opportunity to do that because of a particular political threat, a political threat that already doesn't seem to be nearly as bad as they imagined. And I think this is why principles are important in the same way that we would make an argument for norms with respect to, say, some of the conduct of the current administration.

I think that you guys are, I agree with the argument that this election we just had is a signal for like why there's a ceiling on how far you can go with gerrymandering before it gets kind of dangerous and might come back to bite you in the ass. But I think you guys are still underselling how effective what they're doing is going to be. I mean, I don't think this is a world where like they're not going to pick up the seats in Texas that they want. I think they will. I think what's going to happen is we're going to have the 2026 midterms.

And there will be a bunch of analysis about how Republicans have tenants. or 15 more House seats after the election is over than they would have if they didn't gerrymander the way that they gerrymandered. And so there's basically a question of whether Republicans or whether Democrats decide they're going to respond to that in kind or not. And like, I, yeah, I respect the inclination.

You asked a question at the top, which was like, what am I imagining? What's my goal here? And I would just say, I think realistically, there's probably not an end game here until Trump is out of office or we haven't. Because the president of the United States is insisting that everybody gerrymander on his team as much as possible and they all do what he says. So, like, I think the end game is that in three years, Democrats have responded and Republicans have responded and Democrats have responded. And then everybody, including people on both sides, including representatives who were ousted, are all really,

pissed off about this and we see a bunch of ballot initiatives pop up to, you know, undo these gerrymanders or create independent commissions or whatever ahead of the 2030 census. And then that's how it changes and we kind of reset the ballgame. To me, that's the most realistic off-ramp. I think what's unrealistic is for Democrats to not do anything and still be able to overcome the huge disadvantage they would be at by running on they cheated and rigged the system. Like, people aren't going to, they're just going to, Republicans are just going to stand up candidates in districts where they have huge advantages and they'll run on immigration and crime and the economy and they'll win the races. And like, that's what's going to happen. I don't, like, I think it's a fantasy world to be like,

oh, you could turn this into an electoral issue where we hurt Republicans so badly that we can actually win in these districts that are now 55, 58, 42, you know, Republican Democrat. Like, I just don't think that's going to happen. So I think that's a good argument. I'm not going to pretend like I have this position where I believe this passionately and I don't see the merits of that. I think that could very well happen.

This solution that California is proposing of we're just going to do it until 2030 and then we'll ride out the Trump storm, we'll have the next census, and then we'll agree to lay down our arms, but we'll do it in a way where we've gained a little bit more territory so we're not surrendering everything. We're all going to agree to a truce

on mutual terms. Like, that's sensible. I just would want to address two of the counters that you made, which one, the idea of like these 14, 15 extra seats, if they do get them being a major deal, is that the gridlock that's happening in Congress right now is due to intra-party gridlock. So adding more Republicans will emboldened more people

with more leverage who are probably going to stake out positions that are either to the right or to the Senate, and we're going to see a little bit more quibbling, and Democrats will know how to play that game. I still think that that's going to be a Congress that's willing to cede authority to an executive that's willing to take it. But that's a little bit more subtle and hypothetical.

The other issue of, you don't think that's just something that Democrats are going to be able to run on, like the idea of gerrymandering specifically. I think that's true. But it's not the only issue. If I'm a Democratic candidate looking at a race in one of these newly competitive districts that I thought maybe it was going to be shading blue by three, but now it looks like it's been redrawn. So it's shading red by five.

I'm still looking at how I can win that seat. The way that I'm thinking about it is gerrymandering's piece of the puzzle. Another piece is overreach in the courts. Your due process rights. We're sending in the National Guard to cities. Immigration's working, but there's other ways. do it. There's a lack of sanity. There's a lack of restraint, maturity. We have a president who we can't trust to handle the economy if that's something that they want to, that's going to be

pertinent at the time. And if not, you can just talk about executive overreach and he can talk about executive overreach and he can talk about executive overreach and he can bring up example after example. And when you seed ground on even one of them, this is really the point. That's when the waters get muddied. It's really easy as a challenging party who's not in office to accuse the incumbent of one thing or another, of failure or overreach or something. But when you have one action to weigh it against, those actions tend to balance out more than I think you realize. And that's really the point that I'm making is that narrative that you want to sell in those seats where, yeah, most of them are going to go red.

Like, that's going to be a win there. When you look at 2028 after, like with the presidential election that's coming up after Trump and then 2030 for the midterms after that, those still become pretty winnable if you were able to like shift the balance now. And you do that when you have some restraint right now. But without that restraint, then you're looking at 2028, those seats are all gone. You're not going to be able to pick them up if you're muddy. the waters in that way. And it's easy for a Republican to say, oh, that's rich. You're going to tell

me about executive overreach when your party's walking out of the state house and you're not playing ball with us and you're not discussing the government shut down. And you're gerrymandering too. Like, it's just going to equal out in that case. All right. I know Camille has a flight to catch. So we're going to have to wrap here before we get into the Fuente stuff. But that's okay, because I'm going to release this piece of tomorrow, and we'll have plenty of stuff to talk about next week. And it's not going away, unfortunately. Yeah, unfortunately, it's not going away.

So we'll get into the grievances, and we'll get out of here. So, John, you can play the music, my friend. The airing of grievances. Between you and me, I think your country is placing a lot of importance on shoe removal. All right, who's up? Yeah, I can go first because I know we're making the switch to trying to release some snippets in video. So I have a visual aid.

I have a show and tell. I was setting up my setup here in my home office and doing all the things that John asked me to do and getting better audio recording and video recording equipment and shifting out a bunch of wires behind my desk. I rolled my desk out and I walked over to try to dip down to just bring something back from the front and switch a wire. And I have this, like there's this big dormer in this room. It's a little hard to see from this angle, but that's all to say that the roof slopes down pretty aggressively

here. And there's a dormer that allows that level to be higher for most of the room. But On the edge by the desk, there's like this much space above where my head is now and where the ceiling is just above the desk. So when I walked back to switch my wire, I just slammed my head directly into this corner. And I have what I can accurately describe as a trench in my skull. And I can show you. No, no, no. No, no.

I'd like to see it. This big, it's like, and not only that, but I've lost. much hair now. So I get to complain about that. It's this dash that's like two inches wide, two inches long. It's like half centimeter wide, but it's right in the middle of my head.

And because I am going bald or have gone bald depending on your P. Have I think is appropriate. Since I'm going bald. I still see hair there already. Yeah, it's happening. Since baldness is experiencing, I

shave my head with a razor and I can't do it. So now my baldness is more pronounced because I can't like shave over this divot on my scalp. And that is like making me even like answer. I'm like by now I would have shaved my head. And I can't because of this thing that's actually still giving me a headache. And that's what's grieving me this week.

Well, I'm sorry for your suffering there. And I suppose maybe to take up something parallel to that, because I didn't know what I was going to say, but I read a long-ish piece. It might have been in the Times or maybe New York or New York MAG or something, but about Finistrade, like post-Finistrade syndrome. And Finestrade is one of the most popular hair regrowth solutions on the market. And it was kind of terrifying. Just people who are suffering from, and again, it's not clear what percentage of the population, but for a very long time there was no acknowledgement that this was a thing. And at this point, it seems very clear that some people are suffering really profound repercussions

as a result of utilizing these drugs. And to think that the consequences of using a drug that is just supposed to help you regain some self-confidence or a sense that you are perhaps more youthfully looking than you otherwise might be that the consequences could involve the deep depression, suicidal ideation, all manner of other kind of bad outcomes. But again, that's some of the maximally bad outcomes here

is astonishing to me. And I wish that we just had different sensibilities about men and balding culturally because it kind of sucks. it sucks to have to worry about that at all. It sucks to feel weird about it. I just, I remember shaving my head bald at 13 for the first time myself. One, because it was convenient and two, because there were all kinds of great athletes who were bald. And it was like totally fine. And it was just a look. And Tyson Beckford was doing his thing. And it feels like we've retrogressed a little bit when it comes to men.

and our physical appearance and manifestations. And I just want to say, you know, shout out to the bald guys. It's totally fine. It's okay. We don't need to medicate ourselves in order to be good enough for you people. Yes.

I say, as a Finistrade user, who restored his hair lines successfully. I also say taking a shot at John, our producer, who has the most preposterous head of hair I've seen on any man. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah. So maybe you're doing the thing where you're like giving yourself the counter argument that you're going to be convinced of like Isaac did on stage in Irvine. And also I agree with you about like John being a dick and for being too beautiful. But I do want to put you on to this monologue from Craig Ferguson, like the late night comedy host from 15 years ago or so. In my opinion, the last great late night comedy host. And he had this eight minute monologue where he said and it was all he always just was off. the cuff with the stuff. He was an actual clever person. And he said, I figured out why everything sucks now. It's because marketing companies know that the best time to appeal to customers is when

they're younger, so they can have brand loyalty with people for longer. So advertising became targeted towards people who are younger, which meant advertising propped up this idea of youth being a value that we should seek and used in their ads people who are young, which made that image of a young person be the ideal that we want to attain. And that was in the golden age of like the 80s and 90s when we're getting pumped with this stuff and TV all the time in magazine print. And then internet, like that was all part of what made that appeal get so hypercharged. And I think we're still, we're swimming in the wake of that still.

I think Craig Ferguson was right. And I do think that we need to start celebrating the wisdom and, dare I say, the beauty of being a person who's past being 35 years old. Yes, bald is beautiful. Damn it. Here we are. So this is your support group, Isaac, because it's coming up for you, bud. Yeah, my hair line's running, but I'm not quite there yet. I have not centered my fatherhood and my grievances, so I'm going to use this as a space that

I do have a parenting-related grievance this week, which is Omri, my son, has discovered that he can make an incredible amount of noise, which is an awful stage in the development of an infant. He has learned that if he shrieks at the absolute top of his lungs, he's basically impossible to ignore and must be given attention in every situation. So while he's sitting in his chair waiting for dinner and we're cooking him food, he starts shrieking, realizing that maybe that will accelerate the pace with which somebody puts food in front of him. He sits on the ground and wants to be picked up and start shrieking. And I'm trying really hard not to respond, like not to give him what he wants because I know I'm teaching him. But, like, the shriek is actually so maddening and hard to listen to that it kind of works. Like, he's sort of dominating me right now. So despite my best efforts, I think I am actually affirming his worldview that this is a good way to get my attention.

And, yeah, it's awful. I wake up. We just had daylight savings, which is maybe another core grievance here. Never been a big deal in my life. Daylight Savings with kids is a fucking nightmare because now 4.55 a.m. is his 6 a.m. every morning and he's waking up on the dot just standing up in his crib screaming. And it's not, I can't like leave him in his crib to sleep for another hour

because in his body clock is, it's just 6 o'clock and it's up. It's go time, which was a totally normal time to wake up. but 455 a.m. is not. So for the last week, I've also been waking up before 5 a.m. every day to the most insufferable pterodactal, like, mated with a rooster sound I've ever heard in my life. And that's my current existence. So that's my grievance for this week. And I love my son.

It gets better. Man. The awkward does not fall very far. Yeah, no, I was telling my mom, I was like, I was like sharing basically this story with her. And she was like, oh, he's loud. Hi, I wonder where he got that from. And I was like, Mom, what the hell? So, yeah, here we are.

I guess what goes around comes around. Does it make you appreciate your parents a little bit more, do you think? That is all of, I think that's the reason we have children so that we can understand them and forgive them. Yes, definitely. I there nothing has given me a greater appreciation for my parents than uh having a child i don't know my mom raised three boys i've like now i'm just like i can't i don't know how you did this it's insane um i mean my parents did my dad did too he was obviously participating but like he was also kind of one of us by the time we were like teenagers so i just you know i don't know what she did

is miraculous. And we all turned out okay somehow, mostly. So, all right, we got to get out of here. Camille's got a helicopter to catch to the airport. It's not my fault. I'll see you guys soon. Bye. See it.

Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor, 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 reTangle.com.