Tangle - Suspension of the rules. - Isaac, Kmele and Ari talk about the Trump ads, Jack Smith testimony and the Cornell University sexual assault case.

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

On todays episode of Suspension of the rules, Isaac, Ari and Kmele get into the Jack Smith testimony, a few embarrassing moments for a certain Republican Senator, the Trump ads that were paid with tax dollars and then they get into the details of the Cornell sexual assault case. Last but not least an uplifting grievance section to wrap up a bit of a heavy episode.We're launching something new.In this week’s edition of Press Pass, I wrote about going back to my roots (more writing, more brevity, more personality). As part of that goal, I’m thrilled to announce that we’re launching a dedicated YouTube channel for some video essays about the current happenings in politics. This will be a place for me to get into some stuff we don’t cover in Tangle, and deliver “My take” essays in video form. The channel launched today with a deep dive on the plans for a border wall in the Big Bend region of West Texas, with some personal stories about my connections to the area and why I think it’s a historically bad policy idea. You can watch it here.Ad-free podcasts are here!Get 20% off your first year of ad-free episodes, exclusive interviews, and deep dives with Tangle’s podcast membership!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 audio engineered and edited 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, Bailey Saul, Audrey Moorehead, and Carina Pacheco. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Coming up, the Jack Smith testimony and a few embarrassing moments for one Republican senator. Plus, we talk about those Trump ads that you're paying for with your tax dollars, and we dive into the details of the Cornell sexual assault case. And then we do an inverted grievances section with some just good, happy, feel-good stuff to wrap up a kind of heavy episode. But it's really good. You're going to enjoy it. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening,

and welcome to the suspension of the rules podcast, a political show with three hosts who know the difference between the Atlantic Hawks and the Atlantic Hawks. Oh, no, do you want to start over? The Atlantic Hicks and the I-Lawks guys. I don't know where to go from there, really. I...

We just, we have to get it out of the way. We're in Jack Smith testimony era. There's actually important things that happened during Jack Smith's testimony that we should talk about. I'm fortunate enough to be joined, I should say, by Ari Weitzman, Tangle Managing Editor and Camille Foster, our editor at large. And I, like, this has dominated my feet. I can't log onto Twitter without seeing something about this moment between Senator Eric Schmidt and Jack Smith. which is probably a result of the fact that I've been watching all the videos start to finish, so the algorithm just keeps pumping them to me.

It is compelling. It is hard not to, though. It's really good content. For the people who are not terminally online or maybe haven't opened the New York Times or Fox News or Wall Street Journal in the last 24 hours, quick rundown of what happened. Jack Smith, you might remember, special prosecutor tried to send Trump to jail. for all the things that he did after the 2020 election, came to Congress to testify, invited by Republicans, who I think in a huge miscalculation in my view,

but we'll talk about that later, thought that this was a good time to kind of trot him out and make Trump look like a victim and talk about all the bad things he did as a special prosecutor, of which there are some things, I think, that are a little bit worrisome. And there was this moment between Senator Eric Schmidt and Jack Smith where Senator Eric Schmidt was trying to pin him

and I think trying to get him to perjure himself. And he started this line of questioning by asking Jack Smith if he had ever been to an Atlanta Hawks game or if he recollected, if he recollected being to an Atlantic Hawks game in early February on a day that I guess came the day, after or the day before Fannie Willis, the Atlanta prosecutor, her whole affair news story came out,

which ultimately resulted in her being taken off the Trump case and kind of crumbled this case out against him. And it seemed like he was trying to build this story that Willis and Smith had met. They had something nefarious had happened, whatever. So he's asking Jack Smith, like, did you go to this Hawks game? And he seems genuinely confounded by the question,

like furrowed eyebrow. I'm not sure what you're asking. Have I been to Atlanta? Maybe I've been to the airport. It's like this kind of awkward exchange. And then Eric Schmidt like pulls up his poster board inflated images of these text exchange, which is Jack Smith staff trying to get him tickets to a game or something or ask him if he's good with some seat at this basketball game.

And then they pull the poster board down really quick. And Jack Smith's kind of. of asking, like, can I see that again? And he's like, that's okay. I think you just perjured yourself. He calls him a dirtbag in the exchange. Eric Schmidt calls Jack Smith a dirtbag. And there's this very bizarre weird back and forth.

And then it sort of comes to Jack Smith. He realizes that he was at a basketball game in that time period, but it was Iowa Hawke's, Hawkeyes basketball game against the Maryland Terrapins in Maryland, which is not Atlanta. And he was going there to watch Caitlin Clark play. Yeah, go Terps.

I come from a Terps family. And it was like just so unbelievably cringe this entire interaction where Jackson is kind of figuring this out and Eric Schmidt is being like as pompous as you could possibly be and I think thinks he just had this moment

where he's going to get the special prosecutor charge with perjury. And then actually it turns out that it seems like his staff may be just confused the Iowa Hawkeyes with the Atlanta Hawks, which is like the most embarrassing mistake you could ever make. So all of this leads into this Amy Klobuchar exchange, which is what I'm going to play for us now just before we move on because I think it's actually pretty, pretty funny and worth watching quickly. All right.

So this is Jack Smith kind of figuring out what happened and Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic senator, figuring out, I think, what happened. So there with me, you could check if that was the exact date. It was Maryland playing Iowa, I think February of 2024. But again, you can check that out if that's what we're talking about. Yes. Could it then be that University of Iowa is the Hawkeyes? Could that be it before we show this kind of thing?

I know, but if he was at an Iowa game, is that correct? It was because Caitlin Clark was coming to Maryland to play. I know, but that might be the confusion over the names of the team, but perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully. Who's questioning is this, by the last, Chairman? Are you using your time, Senator? Is this what this is? No.

Are we just having like an open session here? I will begin my questions. I just, I'm glad you're trying to rehabilitate the witness, but it's not your time. calling a witness a dirt bag. I presented him with text messages about him wanting to meet with people that could have obviously been related to the prosecution that was coordinated with his office in Atlanta. I'm going to begin my questions now, but I think that people should have their back straight before they accuse someone of being a dirt bag and not get the team wrong. You have the teams wrong, sir. Mr. Chairman.

My favorite part about this, Chris, It's that... Clavering Char can't. She just has this shit-eating grit on her face. Like, she can't contain herself with just how funny it is when she realizes what actually happened and how wrong they got this.

Tons of embarrassing stuff happened in the wake of this. First of all, Benny Johnson, who's like a conservative influencer, he tweeted out what seemed to be some pre-composed tweet that he had clearly been fed information from Senator Schmidt's office, that was like, you know, we got him. Yeah.

Just buried Jack Smith. We got him. Yeah. And then Axios released this article like 30 minutes after the hearing that was a very clearly planted story from Senator Schmidt's office that he was the VP contender for J.D. Vance in 2028. Capitalizing on all the good press he was about. Yeah, all the good press.

All the buzz. It was like, ah, you guys really, really. fudge this one up. Yeah, just a really remarkable moment for the Senate, the greatest deliberative body in the world. And yeah, I don't know. Thoughts,

feelings. I have other stuff to say about the Jack Smith testimony, but I know everybody has to get just like, take your swing at the pinata and have your moment here for one second. I think an interesting aspect of this is this is not the first time Eric Schmidt has

done something like this. Twitter, I think just a month ago, when AES was talking about him campaigning in Michigan and saying, as a former Michigan student as an alum, saying, like, I can't wait to beat Ohio, which Michiganers refer to as Ohio State. This is very, it's all very, like, home field advantage for me as a lifelong Big Ten fan. Penn State wasn't always in the Big Ten, but for most of my lifetime they were. So knowing about that rivalry, it's like very, like, it's kind of ingratory. It's kind of ingrained. Not for everybody.

I mean, Eric Schmidt's from Missouri. I think he knows his Missouri ball, I assume. But he was like, wow, AES does not know a ball. O'Saii does not know what he's talking about. Beat Ohio, you mean the bear cats? Seriously, bud? And just, like, tried to make him look like an idiot where he was clearly wrong.

So this is like a little bit of a trend now. It's two times it's like a coincidence. Third time, though, if he tries to bury somebody on some sports thing when he's actually talking out of his ass, that might be a problem. Though he is like legitimately, he was the guy who had that dive and catch at the congressional softball game last year. He's legitimately a good athlete still. So I expect him to know a little better.

Maybe it's a no ball. But what's that? Yeah. I mean, he should know ball. There's a staffer that needs to be fired this week for sure. Well, this is there. I was wondering. You can't survive.

Are you sure it's the staffer? Because it could be the staffer using chat GPT and getting the hallucinations or him. We don't know. Yeah. That's true. Either way, he will fire staff report it, you know. I also just think it's worth saying just for the record, like, if Jack Smith had been in Atlanta, when, like, Fannie Wells was in Atlanta, like, that's like a city of millions of people.

Yes. And, like, you're like, you went to a professional basketball game in a city where a prosecutor lives who came for Trump. Tell me more. It's like, I don't know. I go to basketball games. I travel. And like he said in the, about the Iowa game, he was like, you know, I was there with the U.S. Marshals because I'm Jack Smith, a special prosecutor who's like life was threatened every day during this investigation.

So it's not like I was like conducting some hidden meetings on the sidelines of the Hawkeyes basketball. Like anywhere I go, there was people following me with cameras and pictures or like threatening my life. I mean, it's just, the whole thing is just, um, is rather absurd and silly to me, which is unfortunate because we should, oh, one last thing, sorry, before I move off Eric Schmidt, who deserves to be shamed maximally here. He got, Eric Schmidt got up and left the media, this is from the New York Times. The exchange took up to four, took up just about four minutes of the hearing, but it showed how eager the Republicans were to paint Mr. Smith as an out-of-control partisan.

Mr. Schmidt declared that he still stood by calling Mr. Smith a dirtbag, then left the hearing. So he didn't even stick around for the rest of the hearing or to hear everybody sort of litigate this false claim he just injected into the ethos. He just got up and left, which is absurd. Afterwards, Eric Schmidt gets interviewed by TMC. He says it was the only NBA game going on that night. We had to ask him questions. Turns out that's not true. There were four other NBA games going on.

There's like no night in the NBA season. where there's only one game. We are featuring the Atlanta Hawks tonight. Not during the regular season, that's right. Yeah, there's 82 games and there's 30 teams. They cram a lot in. It's just like you clearly don't know anything. So it's very bizarre.

And then he went on the Charlie Kirk show being hosted by Andrew Colvitt now, who I respect Andrew and I follow each other on Twitter. I actually DM them about this because he had Eric Schmidt on, and I guess maybe didn't actually watch the Heard. hearing and literally said, we got to give you your flowers for pinning Jack Smith during this hearing and then played the clip of just Eric Schmidt questioning him without the parts where Jack Smith is like, I wasn't at that basketball game. And as an agent, come on.

Like, this is all over Twitter. You should see this. You should understand that, like, this is not a good look for you. And then, yeah, Eric Schmidt does the, whose time is this to Amy Klobuchar when she's, like, explaining why he's so idiotic. And that's a TMZ was doing that. Well, I was just asking the questions. I think it's my job to ask questions.

Good question to ask. Were you at this basketball game and colluding with Fannie Wallace or not? Fonnie Willis. God, it's been so long. I forgot how to pronounce your name. I kept saying Fannie Willis. I will say there was actually important stuff that came out of this hearing. And one thing that I just want to put on the board

and actually discuss seriously because as fun as this is to talk about it, it wasn't all that important. Chuck Grassley said that nearly 50 journalists communications were collected by the special counsel's probe. He also revealed that Mr. Smith had sought phone toll records from companies on 16 members of Congress. He'd obtained actual communications from the lawmakers when he subpoenaed phone records from the Trump White House,

failed to filter out information that implicated the Constitution's protections for members of Congress engaged in speech and debate. some very controversial stuff here that nobody's talking about now because of Eric Schmidt's conduct. So, yeah, I'm kind of interested to hear your guys' thoughts. I mean, this is a really sort of complicated issue. President Trump did some things in the wake of 2020 that I have a hard time ever forgiving him for. I've written and talked about this a ton. There were members of Congress who I think were, to use a term from the first Trump administration, maybe colluding with him on efforts to change the outcome of the election.

But there's also some really strict rules about the ways in which we can subpoena members of Congress. There are privacy protections that all Americans have that members of Congress are privy to where a special counsel can't just walk in and get all their communications. But it seems like Jack Smith actually managed through many different channels to subpoena and receive communications between members of Congress and also testified before Congress and downplayed maybe even lied. I mean, Senator Josh Hawley made a pretty good case that he lied about what communications he actually received.

I don't know. I feel very torn about it. On the one hand, I'm like, how do you conduct an investigation in the Congress without being able to access some of this stuff? But on the other hand, it does seem like this special counsel, specially appointed to go after Trump on behalf of the DOJ, reached pretty far into the bag. And I don't love him getting communications from journalists.

Them being at conservative news outlets does not make it any better for all the people who just sort of sweep it under the rug because it's not the New York Times. It's not a great vibe. And I didn't love that part of the revelations that came out of this hearing. Yeah. No, the fumbled gotcha is what you would expect. from a hearing that was titled, Oversight of Jack Smith's Abuse of Authority

and the Targeting of Republicans and Related Matters. This is a hearing that presumes the guilt of the person that is being investigated. This is not a serious inquiry into what happened. It's not a serious attempt to provide the kind of thoughtful oversight that you were just alluding to. There were certainly moments in the hearing that looked that way. I think Mike Lee had one of the better exchanges where he was talking specifically about those tolls. the record essentially of the calls to and from people, in which case,

obtaining that sort of information over the course of an investigation doesn't necessarily give you the contents of a conversation. But it is certainly true that if you know that I called this person on a given day, you can have essentially enough contextual detail for there to be a meaningful violation of someone's privacy and for there to be thoughtful oversight of how these investigative powers are being leveraged, even in circumstances where there seems like a legitimate, amid crime is totally within Congress's responsibility. It's totally within the purview of a Republican-led

Congress. And it's something that they could have done in a way that looked even kind of facially reasonable and respectable. But instead, they turned this into a circus. And I think the thing that keeps playing back to me, and I suspect this won't be the last time I mentioned it, is I was in New Hampshire last night for an event with Jeremy Hobson who hosts the Middle on NPR. Great, great show. And just a room full of New Hampshireites who are thinking about the midterms. And at some point, we started to talk about all the things the administration is doing that are not narrowly focused on the specific expressed concerns of midterm voters. Like affordability.

This is an issue that people care about. And instead of addressing that in Congress, instead of there being any sort of serious legislative efforts to tackle that, they're holding these hearings about which they've already made. up their minds so much so that they have these kind of performative, ridiculous, over-the-top circus acts that fall flat on their face and achieve absolutely nothing apart from making the party look ridiculous. That's a good point. We're talking about a circus within a circus, which I think is why it feels so kind of entertaining to talk about, is this was a sideshow from the main event. So the whole stuff with Eric Schmitt-k and Schmitt-based, but it was something that

is not necessarily move the needle and we already had that expectation so that's part of why it feels kind of enjoyable to look at and have fun with the reversal from what they wanted to do here because I agree

I don't see what I'm supposed to learn from this other than what the title of the hearing was supposed to what the title of the hearing told me I understand it does seem like it could potentially be an invasion of privacy.

If depending on the content that was received from these text messages, if it was more than just metadata that was caught up, I haven't seen anything that's telling me a ton of detail about what was received by the Jacksmith probe. There was some implication that there was information about individual donors who donated to the Republican Party and personal identifying information.

But that was more implied rather than shown. So I didn't really see anything here that I would leave home and think, Jack Smith definitely overstepped. But it's enough to say, yeah, I was concerned about the potential for the FBI or the Department of Justice or any government body overreaching their subpoena power.

And I remain concerned about that. And if Jack Smith's investigation was another puzzle piece in that mosaic of concern for me, I'd be unsurprised. But I haven't seen anything specific that would tell me there's a lot of meat here. They very well could be, but I don't think that was really uncovered by this. Well, yeah, I don't think it was really uncovered by this

mostly because these hearings have basically been reduced to monologues that are kind of tied up in one little neatly bowed question at the end. But there's a real question here about, like there's a fundamental question that always circulated the special prosecutor and Trump, which is how much power should someone like Jack Smith have? Which is an important question.

I mean, you know, this was always my argument about the DOJ under Biden investigating President Trump. If you're going to do this, if you're going to come for the king, you better not miss kind of vibe. Like if you guys are going to go after a former president, you need to have all your eyes dotting. and your T's cross, and this needs to be perfect, tidied up as, as, like, clean as it can possibly be. We saw in Georgia with Fannie Willis what happens when that's not the case, you know, when there's

like these underlying issues with the prosecutor's office that aren't even related to the evidentiary case they're putting forward, but undermine it because it's like, you're coming for a former president who's on the ballot now. Like, you have to be perfect. And we don't have great guidelines or guardrails for what somebody like Jack Smith can or can't do, which I think is actually a pretty big issue. And given the way political prosecutions are kind of ramping up, could be a really big issue again in the future. Now, I say all that again as somebody who, I think Donald Trump, I actually think Jack Smith made the case in this hearing at the top of the hearing and in the early exchanges of it pretty well that Donald Trump probably broke the law and was probably guilty of the

things that he was being charged with, but they couldn't land the case because it wasn't perfect. They didn't have it all buttoned up. And there's just like politically, legally, there's all these things that stack up against you that like if you're going to come for a former president, you have to be perfect on. And they weren't perfect on. But yeah, it is, it is, we did not have a productive few hours in front of Congress, I would say. But we need something to talk about at least, right? Definitely. No, there's definitely something to talk about.

I do think that political observers, voters in general, like we should reorient ourselves with respect to this kind of oversight hearing. Like, there is a very real sense in which people who are like you, Isaac, who are like us in general, who were concerned about January 6th, who believe that it's possible that there were laws broken there. that we should be the people who are most interested in a legitimate above-board oversight hearing like this. We want to know whether or not these investigations are being conducted in a totally legitimate way because the possibilities of abuses are very real.

When power changes hands, that possibility is going to be very real. And will there be more investigations of Democrats, of people who are opposed to Donald Trump over the course of the next two years? Absolutely. So again, you want to try and establish that there is a clear process, that there are better processes, perhaps, that could be articulated and put into place. Rather than just kind of look at this and say, well, clearly, Jacksman did all the right things. Clearly, Donald Trump is a criminal. This is a waste of time. No, it isn't a waste of time.

This is how our process works. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about a different kind of. of political controversy, which is an advertisement I saw while watching my beloved Washington commanders beat the former Super Bowl champs this weekend. We'll be right back. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, welcome back to the show. Some controversy here this week involving your tax dollars. I hate to report to you, but what your money's

being spent for. I'll tell my personal anecdote. And then we'll play decided to discuss. I was just enjoying my weekend. I was actually flying home from a wedding in Chicago, watching YouTube TV on the airplane. Incredible thing that I can just stream a football game on an airplane now. And my beloved Washington commanders, I'm a lifelong fan, had a heartbreak a week or two ago, and Jane Daniels relocated his elbow. But they were going toe to toe with the Seattle Seahawks, defending Super Bowl chance, ended up winning the game, keeping our season alive. amazing day, except for this one little part of it that kind of infuriated me, which was in the middle of the game, in the middle of the game on NFL Fox Network, this advertisement comes up, a political

advertisement. It is Donald Trump, seems, feels, everything about it just seems like an ad for Trump. And then at the very end, this little line popped up that said, paid for by the United States government, which I will say caught my attention. I noticed it. I noticed that it said not paid for it by the Donald Trump campaign, but paid for it by the United States government. So I'm just going to play the ad really quick. And then I'll bring it back here. This is the final battle.

With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the war mongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communist, Marxists and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class. that hates our country, we will route the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all. Uplifting stuff.

Just so warm, my heart feels warm. I'm excited to go vote. Wherever this new candidate is, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so this is an ad, I think. I mean, it doesn't say go vote for Donald Trump, but it feels like the trailer for the Donald Trump is going to win in 2028 again movie somehow,

despite the fact he's not running. I was like, whoa, that's weird. And then I went on Twitter and, of course, immediately saw that there were thousands of tweets about this already percolating that Trump had been spending U.S. government tax dollars on these ads. So the Wall Street Journal comes out with this exclusive story

that the money is being taken from DHS, which is odd. And then the White House releases this statement, which we'll pull up on screen on YouTube for people to peruse. But for those of you who are listening to the podcast, the title of the White House press release is presidential public service announcements are nothing new. And the defense that the White House puts forward is that President Donald Trump was releasing a,

PSA. They also have this incredibly AI constructed sentence. That's not partisanship. That's a government that still believes in the country it serves. That's chat cheap. Again, yeah. That's not a Trump

staffer writing. That's chat GPT. So not great. But they list all these examples of former paid for by U.S. government ads, PSAs they're calling them, that have been released. So I'm going to play the one that they cite,

which is from the Washington Post, the videos from the Washington Post. It's from the Biden administration during COVID. And I'm curious what you guys think in terms of comparison here. When the road feels jealous, don't know where your strength is. It's been so long.

You get a call from a friend to remind you that you're not alone Then you know deep down Sorry, I should interrupt For the people who are just listening wondering why this music is swaying. The images on screen If you're just listening to this on the podcast

Are just like Anthony Fauci Getting vaccinated Like elderly people Going to the hospital Getting vaccinated Essential workers Massed up walking around And signs about COVID

And we can do this. etc. And then at the end it says learn more about COVID vaccines at CDC.gov slash coronavirus. So that feels like a PSA. That ad, that paid for by the U.S. government clip

feels a little bit like a PSA. I'm not going crazy, right? These things are pretty different. It does feel like a PSA. And I think we could be specific about the reason why. I mean, there is a particular government service that is being promoted in this ad. But interestingly, and I think we can all acknowledge that there is some gray area here.

At what point is a PSA that is supposed to make you feel good and give you the sense that the government is on top of things and is handling the coronavirus in the appropriate way? Does it maybe blur the line between PSA and campaign ad? or another thing that is also prohibited by law, propaganda, something that makes you like this person feel a little more friendly towards this administration. I think it can honestly be said that is sometimes hard to tell. It's just doesn't really seem remotely defensible in the context of these, this pair of ads that have come out of the Trump administration.

The other one was that ad that had that great song, Love me. I played over and over again, which they didn't even bother to get the rights for, which I think is kind of indicative of their approach. They don't mind approaching what is necessarily a kind of blurry line and just obliterating it and leaving almost no sense that they really honestly care about norms and about the legality of things.

What they care about is the result, which is people talking about the ad, the ad being seen over and over again, and perhaps contributing to this kind of reality distortion field. Everything is fine. I'm totally on top of it. You should keep voting for me, continue to support my party because I'm the guy.

I'm him. Is really the only sensibility that you get after watching this pair of ads? I think we can try to apply the old, I know it when I see it, role about pornography here, but I don't even think we need to. This isn't a matter of,

oh, Hallie Berry had a sex scene in an Oscar-bait movie when she was in Monsters' Ball. But it was like a really racy scene. Is that porn or is it just like a really sexy movie or seen in a movie? It's called it was a movie. It's art. Right?

But we could debate that. But this, like there was a call to action at the end of one of these and the other there wasn't. Like there was an announcement in one and then the other there wasn't. Like there can be something where we have something that feels like that's kind of, it was a little cheesy, if not quite cheesy. Maybe a little cringy at moments. to the Biden PSA.

To be clear, the Biden PSA is awful. It's like, it's, I think it's very, it was, it was cringy at the time. Watching it now, I'm like, I can't believe they thought this was going to get people who are already vaccinated to go get vaccinated. But like, there's no Biden voice. There's nothing about politics in it at all. It is literally just like images of nurses and, you know, Anthony Fauci is the most political thing.

and it's just him sitting down in a seat to get the jab, as some might call it. And then the Trump thing is like Trump doing his thumb speech. I mean, it turned out that the video is actually pulled directly from a literal Trump campaign ad. Yes, yes. If we're applying the porn test here, then like maybe the Biden thing is that scene in Monsters Ball, but the Trump video is something that you would find on the racier sites online.

Like, it just is that thing. just should be something that you know is illegal. It is interesting to me that they put paid for by the government at the end of it. At least there's that. Like, that's a law that's having an effect saying where this funding comes coming from. So we're going to be grateful for that, right? All right. I saw Isaac opening this window, as Ari was mentioning Monsters Ball for the second time.

I wondered what scene was about to play. Yeah. Thank you. I think this is worth playing. This is, in my opinion, the best defense that I've seen of, the Trump PSA being a PSA. It's not great, but it's from our friend Scott Jennings at CNN who does an admirable job, I think, constantly defending things that even, I think sometimes he doesn't totally believe.

But, yeah, this is about... Constantly pairs of twos and fours. Yeah, yeah. This is about halfway through an exchange that he had with Caitlin. Collins, but I think it is like the heart of his argument. So I'll play this really quick. So there with me, you could check if that was the exact date. It was Maryland playing Iowa, I think February of 2024. But again, that's, you can check that out if that's what we're talking about. Could it then be that University of Iowa is the Hawkeyes? Could that be it?

before we show this kind of thing. I know, but if he was at an Iowa game, is that correct? It was because he was coming to Maryland to play. I know, but that might be the confusion over the names of the team, but perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully. Who's questioning is this, by the last, Mr. Chairman? Are you using your time, Senator? Is this what this is?

No. Are we just, are we just? All right, they get into the whole communism thing here. But yeah, he basically said, is in effect, Trump is using a PSA to warn people about the potential fall of Western civilization, and that's something

that they can spend their money on. Not a great defense, in my opinion. But, you know, Scott doesn't always get dealt the easiest hands. Camille... You can seem smirking, too. He's like, ah, I'm gonna... He's laughing. I was just gonna say,

Camille, I think, experienced some of this first hand on the fifth column, Camille's other friends, his other show. Oh, yeah. You guys had a fantastic episode with Scott that I listened to. And we'll gladly recommend it

to our listeners. Where I think he was, you humanized him. It was awesome to hear him talk about his political upbringing and how he views the things that, you know, why he views things the way he does. And I think he has an interesting lens

for everything, which is, I would like to hear him defend this more, but he sort of views the upcoming election as like one party believes in Western civilization and the other party doesn't. I think that's actually kind of low-key of a quite radical view, and I don't think it's true of the Democratic Party.

But if you start there, I can understand how you get to a lot of the positions he has. But he had this funny thing of like, when you guys pinned him, which you did pretty well, you sort of backed him into some corners on some things. He suddenly became very ignorant.

I don't know anything about Bitcoin. So I couldn't possibly comment on how the administration's, I couldn't tell you what it is or how to use it. I'm like, God, it's weird. You seem so smart and well read on everything else. But he is damn good. He is damn good at what he does. He is slippery and he's clever and he's tough on his feet.

And you need that sometimes when you're in the position. he's in, I think. I think I could be candid about things without sort of kissing and telling, so to speak. It's one of those things where if I didn't say it to you in the room when you said the thing, I want to be careful afterwards, like not look like I'm trying to, you know, kind of get a lick in when you have your back turned. But yes, I would agree. Scott is a capable defender of the administration.

He is perhaps the most capable. He tries, I think, as he described it, to always have an original approach to kind of defending these things. And look, you get what role he plays in our politics. If you are a political observer, you ought to be skeptical of the things that Scott says in support of the administration. Sometimes they're going to be perfectly above board and great. In other cases, he's going to be, as you alluded to, Isaac, defending the indefensible. And you should probably just kind of close your ears and go, nah, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, because what he says, is it really going to score? That said, I do think that he kind of makes, as you pointed out,

a rather important point about this kind of binary with respect to the choice between Democrats and Republicans. And while I would agree, I don't think it is the case that the Democratic Party broadly speaking hates America and is working against kind of Western traditions. But there is certainly a segment of the voting population for whom that kind of criticism is very resonant. And I think it is that kind of nationalist, populist, conservative wing of the party who has very real concerns about Democrats who often seem hypercritical of the United States.

It's that old Rush Limbaughism, hate America first. And that is a message that has sold really well for Republicans in the past. And it's perhaps the best message that they have at the moment since a lot of the other things that they promised to do with the exception of immigration. they haven't really managed the deliver on. Yeah, I have a forthcoming newsletter that I think will be out next week about Hassan Piker, which I'm excited to write. You and I, Camille, have exchanged many text messages about him. But I do think there is like an important line to draw on the sand from my political vantage point of like people like him.

I don't want him to be on my team and I don't want to be on his side. And I think he's like a genuinely bad person who is also extremely toxic for our politics. I think there's a reasonable debate about like the degree to which he matters. Some people talk about him way too much. We've never done an addition on him. We've never talked about him. I think dedicating one one Friday edition to writing about his influence on the Democratic Party is worthwhile. And that he's earned it because he is pretty influential.

And I would categorize him as somebody. who is hostile to Western civilization, for lack of a better framework. I mean, I think he is the kind of person Scott's talking about when he says that. Yeah, openly. Which I don't think, I think a lot of people are sort of in denial about

because he's like an edgy Twitch streamer and he's got like a kind of cool vibe. But it's like if you listen to what he's actually saying, it's pretty insidious. All right, we've got one last segment coming up And it's a big, heavy, doozy one that I want to be careful about and make sure we dedicate plenty of time to. So we're going to take one last break and then we come back. We're going to talk about the Cornell sexual assault case and some of the difficult, interesting nuances, stories about it, the charges, what exactly they are, kind of separating the social media fear from the facts on the ground.

and hopefully add something helpful to the dialogue. So we'll be right back. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, welcome back to the Suspension of the Rules podcast. Our last segment today is on some of the new percolating news and information about this Cornell sexual assault case, which I guess entered the ether a couple of years ago now, but is sort of resurfacing in a new way.

and felt like something maybe we could be additive on. So, Ari, you've been kind of the proponent, I think, of discussing this because, I mean, I think you're right. It hits on so many different elements of our current politics, the Me Too movement, the way we handle accusations, the way stuff gets kind of processed in the meat grinder of the daily news. But maybe you could kind of set the table here for us and get us started. Yeah, I think it is that. I think this is going to be looked at as sort of a trial run for the way we're doing stories like this post Me Too because it hits this weird target area of something really bad happened or seems to have happened. It hasn't been adjudicated in a court so you can't say anything with clear certainty. But you also, if you accept the facts as they're presented, it is debatable whether or not what has happened here isn't an illegality.

But I think before we get into what the things are that happen, I should say, like, this is all going to, this is about sexual assault and assault allegations, and it's all going to be sexual in nature. There's going to be drug references. It's going to get pretty explicit. So I don't want to tiptoe around the language. We're just going to use the words for the things that they mean

and be adults about it. So we'll go back to Cornell, October, 2024. The story sort of entered the public consciousness again, recently, after some new facts have been presented, or new developments have occurred. But I'll wind the clock back to talk about what happened at the time. There's a woman who she was a sorority girl at Cornell, 20 years old, and she went to the Kai Phi chapter of the fraternity in Cornell,

at Cornell University. She went with a guy who in the affidavit was referred to as just like, male one. There's going to be a lot of male numbers here. or so from 1 through 7. So I'm just going to keep referring to him as 1. He invited her over. She was feeling somewhat flirtatious with him. This is according to what she reported to police at the time and what she swore to.

She was, when she entered the frat, she was already somewhat a little drunk, she said, and the male one offered to have a threesome with her and another guy, like guy number two. And she said she was about a four. four out of five drunk at the time. But it's something she said she was drunkenly curious about is the quote directly. She said she agreed to it out of drunken curiousness. Again, according to the affidavit here, she said they started having a threesome she consented to. But one of the guys got too drunk and passed out, like the first guy.

Number two started to get sick and dry heaved. And then he's kind of out of the story from there. Then when she was like trying to take care of. of guy number two. A third guy came in because it was also his room. He was the first guy's roommate. And then they started making out. Then he and number two started to have a threesome. Next to the bad word number one, like in the bed where number one was sleeping. So it's like college messiness stuff. And then four other guys come in like guys four, five, six and seven and things kind of escalate from there. After number three like woke up number one and he's like, let's have a threesome or a foursum.

and he's like, she said, no way, we're not going to do that. Then these four other guys come in. And she hid under the covers. She was offered ketamine, which she took. She said one of the guys was being really forceful. But like she was trying to deny his advances. Number four, guy number four is like offering to asking to do drugs off her body. She said yes, and they did.

She did drugs off another one of the guy's penises. Then she started feeling dizzy. Guy number three comes back in, says, I don't know what this is, but whatever the fuck this is, I'm going to shut this down. The quote is, shut whatever the fuck this is down. And then it seems like things stopped for a little bit. Five and six tried to take care of her, and she was feeling a little dizzy and sick. Then some amount of time passes.

Guys number one and four take her to another room. At this point, she says that her intoxications an eight out of ten. Then they started to engage in a threesome, which she consented to, even though she was inebriated. which is a little bit of an asterisk here to come back to. And then at a certain point, and really, really late in the morning, she started to feel tired and then they stopped. I'm going to quote a little bit of the legal analysis here

from the New York State Penal Law, which this is coming from a statement from the district attorney of New York. Because part of the huge context here is in 2024, she brought this case to the state of New York for criminal charges to be put against these fractals. boys. Kai Phi was disbanded after this. So it was a scandal at least at the university.

They were brought up against on charges of expulsion at the university. One of them was expelled. I don't have the numbers right now. I don't know which ones finished their education, but the majority were able to finish. But

to say there were some consequences. At the time, the DA agreed, decided at the time to not pursue the case though. But yes. Just a quick an interjection just to say in the very beginning you said she was like a four out of five drunk she said four or five out of ten is what she said right and not a four out of five just to clarify and then later said eight out of ten when which is just as you said kind of comes up in some of the stuff that happens later and the and the criminal stuff but yeah go ahead right because according

to the state of new york it has a couple characteristics for prosecuting sex crimes. It says, and again, this is from the DA, under New York State Penal Law 130.05, every sexual assault offense requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the sexual act was committed without consent of the victim. As it relates to this case, lack of consent can result from one, forcible compulsion by the actor, two, mental incapacitation of the victim, three, physical helplessness of the victim, and four, or four with certain criminal charges. the DA said these characteristics were present in this case because she consented to sex when it happened

that seemed like there were advances that were forceful but when she said no, she wasn't forced into an act that was against her will. She was under the influence, but there were drugs that she took and she, according to the state, when you're consenting in this case, after voluntarily taking drugs,

then it can count for consent. in New York law, which is a huge, debatable thing in this case. But that's what the DA said. And then three physical helplessness. And she was not unconscious. She was able to stand and move and walk around, even though she did get sick for a period of time, which again is another gray area.

All that said, that's what the DA knew when they decided not to pursue the case. A couple of years later, the new developments that happened are, one, the Cornell student paper has actually been following the story pretty closely since it broke. there's one reporter especially who was all over it. They published something on September 18th. They made the decision to publish the names of the young men involved in this case. The young woman's name has been anonymized.

It's anonymized everywhere in court documents. But they made that decision, so that's out there. And that story kind of got a little bit more attention after the fact for that. One of the young men was also then fired from his job that he got after he graduated. And then we also had some new evidence broke, which was text. from her and the first guy who invited her over where she was saying that she was eager about it. And then after the fact, she said,

she still feels like she had a good time, but she said something to the effect of next time, let's not do this with like the million other guys who'd showed up. And there was also screenshots of a Snapchat group between active rap members at this Kai Phi chapter in Cornell, where one of them said free pussy upstairs, presumably right before those four guys came up. And then she said she was applied with more alcohol,

catamine, marijuana, and was slapped multiple times. She felt like she was physically constrained. She wasn't ever forced down, but she said her phone was across the room, and she didn't feel like she was able to access it or had the freedom to move. So she felt like she was coerced. And that's something that she presented

when she opened a new civil suit in this case recently. And all of that information was something the DA did not have at the time when they made the decision not to prosecute. So that's the stuff that we know. Those are the allegations from her side. And it creates this gray area where is this something that we should be pressing for more consequences for? Does it seem like it's something where these guys definitely went over the line? And even if we take the facts of the case at face value, what do you do with this?

Is this something that seems like it should be prosecuted? criminally or not, because it does seem like there's things here that you could look at in multiple different ways. And, like, how do you handle the disclosure of the identities of the boys, men involved? Well, that's out there. I mean, it's out there now, right? But I'm saying, like, is that good, bad, inbounds, out of bounds, fair, unfair? I think is a reasonable question to ask.

Yeah, it's really interesting, you know, as a parent now, when I read about these stories, I try and do this mental exercise of just how would I consume this story if my son was the one being accused? How would I assume this story if I had a daughter and she was the victim? And it makes all the characters kind of sympathetic to me in a lot of ways, not the guy who, who's like sending the text that there's free pussy upstairs, whatever gross stuff, or like, you know, certainly not the guys who kind of show up late in this story.

And I think seem the most culpable or guilty of some sort of sexual assault type crime. I will say when I read that, when I hear the penal code of the New York State, it makes me feel like this would be a really hard case to prosecute. And I understand why the prosecutors didn't move forward with it. I was actually pretty moved by, or maybe not even moved I, but like intrigued by Sonny Hosten, the host of the View, who is a former sex crimes prosecutor,

who sort of went to bat for the men and the story. story, which I thought was really surprising and interesting. I mean, basically said, this is the New York statutory rules about sexual assault, and these are the facts of the case, and I don't see a way that a prosecutor could make progress here. But, I mean, you know, the text messages the day after, it's like the woman, the Jane Doe, as they're describing her because she stayed anonymous. Like her, her lawyer has said she was really cloudy about what happened.

And so she took, made the tactical choice of approaching the boys, the men with, it's like they all seem like kids to me. I keep saying boys and girls. I'm trying to say men and women. They're above 18 years old. But not fight 20.

Right, but she tried to approach the men in a way that was not deemed aggressive or accusatory so she could understand what actually happened. And that's why her text messages to them were sort of not confrontational, which I actually think is like a totally plausible, believable explanation for that. Sure. Though like, you know, it begs all these other questions. about why this is coming back up now. And I mean, I know the student newspaper played a part in it,

but man, it is like one of those stories that is such a test of where people's biases are because there are so many people who are out there right now getting in front of this story who are just immediately like, those guys are rapists, this girl's a victim. And then so many people who are coming out and getting in front of the story, like these guys are having their lives destroyed by this sexually promiscuous woman who, you know, who regrets these things that she did while she was drunk and they were all messed up and doing drugs and whatever. And like she's not a victim. And it's never that black and white, but it has sort of revealed those dividing lines, at least as I have seen it percolate in the social commentary. Yeah. I mean, every sexual. me, please, Kim. Sorry.

No, go for it, Ari. No, no, no. I've talked enough. I think you should go. I was just going to say, every sexual assault investigation or inquiry, legal or otherwise, is complicated or can be very complicated. You have these incredibly challenging dynamics for actual victims of sexual assault who, in some instances, don't want to believe this thing happened, are looking for ways to kind of rationalize it away, to explain it, perhaps even blaming themselves in different cases, context. There have been so many stories where a story evolves and changes,

where there is kind of contemporaneous evidence that suggests, well, maybe this was consensual, or at least there were questions about this. I think in the recent Platner scandals that we discussed on the podcast, there were some examples of complicated situations like that. These are kind of domestic relationships, people who have, have in some cases of intimate relationships with one another that perhaps had recently ended or something like that. So there can be so many complicating factors that come into play.

I think it's even more complicated once it involves minors and perhaps further more complicated when it involves a university, where as I suspect a lot of listeners know, like Title IX, which ostensibly was put into place in order to prevent sexual misconduct of various kinds, can sometimes complicate things because it essentially gives these universities a really kind of quasi law enforcement, almost judiciary role where they themselves are conducting investigations into things and have a kind of authority that they might not have otherwise had. It's not clear that that is the actual issue here since the police department that operated on campus was a legitimate police department.

But there was certainly collaboration between. the university and the district attorney in terms of sharing evidence. And the university, of course, did, in fact, conduct its own investigation and meet out punishment when the state decided not to proceed here. But yeah, it's very complicated. One note, Isaac, you mentioned Sonny and her commentary and her, as you said, going to bat for these young men. But honestly, just citing the legal statute and acknowledging the complexity here that makes it hard to know whether or not you would score a conviction

is barely even going to bat for them. It's just acknowledging the complexity of the situation. There are a couple of aspects to this that I feel like I get a little worried that the story starts to become simplified to a degree of, okay, bad, icky, but not criminal. We should all wait and be patient,

which, yes, but I think there's still so much more to get into. First of all, there are things that I think are applicable is lessons from the Me Too movement, which were really good lessons that we should keep with us. One is people can have recollections that are fuzzy and they can have feelings that evolve on something, and as they start to come to realizations,

they can have different understandings of things that happen that does not change the fact that those things happen. It just is the way that brains process things, especially under impairment. And that, like, the fact that she kind of had one tone the next day, but then felt differently enough after a couple days and decided that it was worth prosecuting, that doesn't invalidate this.

The fact that years later, she had new evidence to present and wanted to file the suit again, does not invalidate the possibility that something wrong could have happened here. First of all, second of all, a lot of spaces like this, like with young men in college, I think we have seen probably firsthand are filled not exclusively, but certainly with some larger personalities

of people who believe they can get away with things. And it's probably good that there's an atmosphere where you don't feel like you can get away with anything. Obviously, anything is a huge, huge range of stuff. So things, we should be litigating the line, but it's good that there's that concern. The third thing is that it doesn't have to be necessarily a crime

for us to feel like a sense of moral like repulsion at this. And even like the sexual assault, there's this aspect that I'm not a lawyer on this. So I don't know if this is true, but the text in that Snapchat group that said free pussy upstairs and there's four guys came up.

And she said that she was slapped multiple times. She said she felt like she was physically intimidated. I'm sure that she was, If all of that stuff was true, I'm sure that she was. And there's an element to that where I think something about that feels like it could be illegal. I don't know if it's sexual assault, but if somebody got it text, trying to take an example that takes sex out of it. And they just said, like, hey, there's a store where the security guard isn't on duty.

You can just go steal things right now. And then a bunch of people went to steal things. And like, two of them got there and they're like, oh, we probably shouldn't. One of them got there and was like, I'm going to steal. I'm going to, and then was like pushed away by another customer or something and it didn't. But the fourth one was like, fuck yeah, I'm stealing. Let's do it. And then like sort of snuck things out. Like, I'm not saying that for sure one of these guys did sexual assault, but he went there clearly with intent that he was going to do something one way or the other. And there's something about that where I wouldn't feel bad if there is a prosecution in this case knowing that.

But I don't have enough legal context to say why. just seems like something's over a certain line there. Yeah, I know what you mean. I mean, the sort of overarching core reaction I had was like, I went to a state school and partied a ton with a bunch of guys who were like scumbags in some ways. And I, there's nothing like this happened, you know? And they're like, I had plenty of crazy nights in college

like drunken, whatever, and girls involved and that. And these, like, the sorts of exchanges and events that were describing this never happened. And when I read the, like, even just that one single text message, it's like, it's, it is like, it's just really like, ugh. Makes you feel terrible. Yeah, like, there's something like, oh, these guys were like, there was something scummy going on and these guys are scumbed. And that's not a crime. Like you said, like it isn't a crime for a guy to be like a douchebag

and to tweet really like tawdry gross things about a woman who's at a party hooking up with one of his friends. But when that text goes out and then these things happen after the facts, I certainly don't come into the story with like a favorable perspective of them. And I have kind of a hard time shaking that. And, you know, I think the easiest attack on the alleged victim here is just like the sexual promiscuity that she's like, you know, she invited this threesome and she went there wanting this to happen and whatever. And it's like that's a, that's an important detail that like she went to the party intending to have some kind of group sex event or whatever. I do want to push back on that though because she says that she went there because she was interested in one of the guys.

and then after she was there, he offered a threesome and she was like, okay, I could see that. And then that was the attitude. What I was actually getting to was just like the difference between being in like a monogamous sexual interaction and a third person coming in uninvited is the same as being in a three-person sexual action and a fourth person coming in uninvited.

Like it doesn't matter to me that she was, you know, accepted some invitation to a threesome. Like that doesn't make a fourth person coming any better or worse. It's like that's bad because that guy wasn't supposed to be there and wasn't invited into that interaction by her, according to her, you know, under the terms that we have like the details for. This is obviously like a little bit weird and awkward to talk about. But it is like that I definitely feel myself much more pulled to her

to a framework where she's been victimized in some way. And again, to your point, Ari, I don't feel confident about what crime it is or what the punishment should be, but there's something about just like the men in the story that feels really icky to me. At least some of them, you know? Like, not to broad brush it,

but there's certainly some behaviors of some of them that you seem like there should be some consequence. And like it sounds like it was a crazy night and there was a bunch of drugs and, like, you know, there's like all these sexual acts. and everybody's messing around. I'm like, I don't know. And the fraternity was this bandit,

so it's not like there were no consequences. Right. The lines get weird. I will say to make one comment sort of, I mean, explicitly on the side of the men that are involved in the story is like, I do not feel good about their names being published, especially not while she remains anonymous,

and especially not when this hasn't been adjudicated in the court of law. I understand that the school paper probably, like, can frame this as, you know, in the public interest or whatever. But given how much gray area there's and how many unknowns there are, like a guy losing his job at Wells Fargo, you know, for the rest of their lives,

these eight guys or whatever it is, having their names pop up in a Google search result tied to some allegation of a gang rape at Cornell does not feel right to me, given what we know about the story so far. And that is the one element of this where I'm just like, I'm very sympathetic to the men in the story that feels, that part feels really ugly to me. Yeah. Especially considering that they weren't all the same.

Like, they did seem like there are some worse behavior on the part of some of them than others. And I will just say quickly, like two of the other things that I thought, I think that we should remember from me too is that first, like some of some of the men who are accused of or did something sexually wrong to another person to a person to a lot. a woman usually. Facing consequences that are like social is not like, that's not, it still doesn't balance out the consequences that happen to the victim in those cases. So that, like, that's one of the things that we have to remember. And the other side is we don't know if there was a victim for sure. So we have to be careful not to make an extrajudicial judgment in the court of public opinion. We don't have all the facts for certain. And there have been high profile examples of this. I mean, the Duke, the 2006, Duke lacrosse situation comes to mind, which is helpful in creating Stephen Miller

and was an actual hoax. And there was a malfeasance on the part of the actual officers of the court in that case, or at least the prosecutor. And there was dishonesty on the part of the accuser in that case. So these things can be enormously complicated. I think you both said a lot of things that, that resonate with me. The first thought I'm having is I could feel like this old evangelical energy kind of bubbling up inside of me, and by which I'm an evangelical Christian. I went to a university of Maryland College Park. I had a very different experience than yours, Isaac.

When I got there, I actually got very serious about my faith and ended up teaching a Bible study on campus. So I never went to any like drunken ragers. I barely touched alcohol while I was in undergrad. In fact, I may have never done it while I was in undergrad. And I can tell you that I always had kind of an acute sensitivity to the fact that there was this kind of hedonism taking place around me. And I say that in a way that is perhaps more judgmental than I even intended to be. But we just have a kind of sexual permissiveness in our culture, which clearly a lot of these young people are being exposed to at very early ages, that they're not having serious conversations with responsible adults about this.

And as a result, Ari, as a result, Ari, when I hear you, accounts of like slapping taking place in the room. Like, did you imagine that that was consensual? Is this stuff that you've seen in other contexts? That doesn't excuse anything. But it is an attempt to try and understand the dynamic. And the last thing I'd say is we all have sons. I have a daughter as well.

But I both think about, as you do, Isaac, like the role that your son or daughter might play in these circumstances. And for my son, I think the advice there is a bit different. He's perhaps less vulnerable to being kind of the, the subject of an assault here, but he's definitely vulnerable to the influence of friends and the temptation to kind of be in some of these scenes and to perhaps not even be the person who is doing the nefarious act,

perhaps even imagining yourself as the white knight in those circumstances and still finding yourself embroiled in a scandal that can change your life forever. And at 18, 19, 20, when drugs are involved, I mean, these are just not people who are equipped to make very good decisions in these circumstances. So the culpability is there for the individuals, but it certainly should involve the universities themselves

and various officials who are involved who've created these permissive environments that allow for this kind of horrible outcome. All right. You heard it from Camille Foster, local evangelical pastor, no more humanism on college campuses. No, in all seriousness, it's a story that,

I suspect we're going to have to spend many more months processing. And maybe it'll be one of those ones. Are you encourage us to revisit down the road after we get some more details. But certainly one, at least in my experience, perusing some of the commentary and social media stuff around it, could do for a bit more nuance and perhaps charitability towards both sides, I think, to both narratives that are being before it, I think there's a lot of really bad faith commentary about it. So I hope maybe 20 minutes on this podcast

can do some nuance of the story justice. And with that, I think we'll have a difficult transition into our lighthearted grievances section to wrap up the show. Do we have to? Because this might be what I hate most this week, actually. Even the thought of trying to make a transition here. Gosh. Yeah, yeah, it's tough.

Well, I could, maybe we could do a good, an uplifting one. I've an uplifting one, actually. I can kick this off if everybody. I'm not prepared. We'll see what I do. Yeah, we can flip the script. We could do a nice, because I agree. I think a grievance right now feels untoward.

I'll go first, and you guys can think about yours. Mine is, actually, mine starts with a legitimate grievance and ends with a good news story. Legitimate grievance. I'm sitting in this awesome steward. that I built and renovated. Oh, wait, I forgot. John, play the music. The airing of grievances. Between you and me, I think your country is placing a lot of importance on shoe removal.

I'm sitting in this beautiful studio that I am really enjoying and loving. You said I built and renovated a moment ago, which feels like a bit of a nice thing. Go ahead. Renovated detach garage. We want to go there, Camille. Do we want to go there? Yeah, yeah. Camille, I see. Camille earned that one. It's a renovated detached garage.

So I had to run electricity from the house. So we had to dig this big trench to come out here. And little old simple-brained Isaac forgot that I would need internet in the office building that I was building. So while the trench was open and we, you know, had the opportunity to, I did not remember to run a conduit for, Ethernet cable into the building. So that sucked. So I realized that like two days after we closed the trench up and was like, no, you know, I paid the contract, everything sucked. So it's like, you know what?

I'll just do some Wi-Fi extenders and see how it works. It's not been working very well. And today I called Verizon. I was helped very promptly or yesterday I called them. I was helped very promptly. They sent somebody out to today. And the guy who came, the Verizon guy who. came just like he loved his job. He just had a passion. He's just like a Verizon technician.

He came in. He looked at the house. He came back to tell the studio. He's like, dude, unbelievable setup. This studio is awesome. He's like, we got to get your internet blasting out here. Like, we can't be doing 100 megabytes per second upload. Like he was like, I don't accept that. And I'm like, okay, he's testing everything. He's moving extenders around. He's like running speed. He's like running speed test in here, giving me the breakdown of all the different ways that I might be able to run cable out here or make the Wi-Fi better. And like in the middle of all this, he's like, listen, I have like a temporary Band-Aid solution. It involves running an Ethernet cord from like your basement to your porch. We have a screened-in porch that's really close to the attached garage.

We'll put an extender there. It'll increase the speed. I'm going to have to like drill a couple holes in your screened in porch and staple this thing and line the wire on the wall, whatever. I'm like, you know, if this is like a temporary fix and I just have to retrench it, like, I don't want to bother you. And his exact words were I have a two hour

block with you, bro. I'm here to party. And I was like, you are the man, dude. So this guy just like, did this job, extended the Wi-Fi. Right before I got on the show, I had like 450

megabytes per second in the office because the extender's so close now. And he was like, don't even call a contractor about digging that, like doing the conduit. Just like, if you feel up for it, dig like a three inch deep trench, go to Walmart, buy this like 150 foot cable, and then call me and gave me his personal phone number and was like, I'll come out here. You do the trench and lay the cable and I'll come out here and connect it on both ends for you so you can run Ethernet Cable in your house. And I was like, who are you? And why do you love this job so much?

And like, just like, and I love people who love their work. And that's really that. So that's my grievance book ended into an uplifting story about the Verizon guy who came by today. Who's like, I would say his name and thank him personally. But it's possible he did some like vaguely illegal stuff while he was here in my service. So I won't do that. I'll just say, probably didn't.

He's a real hero. Yeah, a real hero. He's the man and I appreciate you. And yeah, made my day. And now I have good internet in the office and better internet coming very soon. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I, so I'm going to take, just run with that example that you've set forth. Renovations are terrible. I mean, just the absolute worse. They always take longer than you expect. They're always more difficult than you expect. You discover problems because you open the wall and suddenly, oh my God. whatever the problem is. Add more zeros to your budget. It's bad. But the best thing about them is discovering, like, and discovering new talents that you didn't know you had. Like, that you are the guy who can do cement, who can put up the beams, who could do the wall,

who can plaster it yourself, who can perhaps even screw around with your electrical stuff, which I would never do because you need a licensed electrician to do that. So I would not do that myself because I don't have the permits for any of that sort of thing. That's not. what's happening. But it's amazing that in the trenches, when things are very difficult, you can also just kind of develop relationships with cool people. And a very good friend of mine, Guyine Jose, he was a former Marine. I've been doing a bunch of stuff with him, like replacing floors in the house, and just

being exposed to his, like, persistent, somewhat aggressive, like, we will get this done energy has been, like, actually, like, life-giving. for me. I feel like I'm learning stuff from him every single day. And I kind of wish I'd been in the service with him, although I'm just not the caliber of human that he is. The stuff he did, the things he experienced there was harrowing and insane. But you can get, you get this sense that he's kind of chasing it, like finding difficult projects to take on and dominate. And, you know, construction projects are some of that. So it's nice to be exposed to that. Get this done energy. I like that.

I'll try to, I'll take the same theme then and put a little bit of a Vermont spin on it. So my wife and I recently found a really nice deal on an airstream trailer, like a 1972 airstream, which is going to be really useful because we've got a house that doesn't have a lot of guest space. We've got some. There's a pullout in the office that I'm in. There's a really comfortable couch downstairs. Just any time you want to come up, Camillo, you're welcome. Isaac, YouTube.

Thank you. And now we've got this space that other guests can stay in, have more privacy, or we can go stay in for the night. It has this cute little woodburning stove in it that takes six-inch logs, which is really cool. And the people who sold it to us are just like such perfect representations of the Vermont archetype, like the best way that you can be it where these two people lived in this airstream, just the two of them, just the trailer for several years. And would go to the gym and shower at the gym and just had everything. they needed there. And the way that they improved it was really impressive. The economy of usage of that space where they have like a couple little hangars on weird sections, and we asked what that's for. And they said, oh, he, the man in this couple would put his computer

underneath one of these seats, like a tower, and then have his keyboard like on the wall here when he was done with it. So he'd take this keyboard, fold out a monitor, and have this workstation here, and then fold it away. So it took up essentially zero space. I've got a whole wall here with the computer on it. So I feel completely just like the opposite of that spatially efficient. And they were just so helpful with being able to hook it up and attach it and give directions to get it out of their really Vermonty feel to get it home. And it's just really nice when you're able to do business with lovely people. And now we've got this really cool airstream because they kept great care of it for several years and were able to pass down something better than how they found it. And

if that isn't a principle to live by, I don't know what is. Let's go. I love it. You said 1972? Yep. Nice. I met because I, it recollected my, the 1982 Winnebago Lecher. I had, which I thought, you said 82 at first. Great year. Seventy-Aughey. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big old. Yeah, love that. Wow, hey, that was nice. We should do that every now and then. Just a nice, uplifting, inverted grievances section. That was basically what Camille was doing for the first year and a half.

He was on the show. Yeah, how we're going to get him back. How the segment works. Yeah, now we're going to have to undo his learnings. All right, gentlemen. Great, great to share some time and space with you. Yes. A little bit of a heavy episode.

Always good to hash it out here together. And I'll see you guys next week. Enjoy the flannel. Peace. Channel the flannel. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wohl.

Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kback and associate editor's Hardree Moorhead, Bailey Saul. 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.