Tangle - The firings at the Pentagon.
Episode Date: February 24, 2025On Friday, President Donald Trump firedthe chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Charles “CQ” Brown Jr., as part of a series of dismissals of top Pentagon officers. Shortly... after Trump announced Brown’s dismissal, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that he would replace Admiral Lisa Franchetti, chief of U.S. naval operations, and General James Slife, the Air Force’s vice chief of staff, as well as the judge advocates general (the military’s top lawyers) for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Furthermore, the Pentagon said it plans to fire approximately 5,400 probationary employees and implement a hiring freeze in accordance with President Trump’s executive orders.Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast here, our “Under the Radar” story here and today’s “Have a nice day” story here.Take the survey: What do you think of the Pentagon firings? Let us know!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place
we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit
of my take.
I'm your host, Isaac Saul, back from
Paternity Leave. In case you missed it, on Friday, we released a rather long podcast that was a big
review of the first month of Trump's presidency. Talked a lot about the stuff that I missed over
Paternity Leave and the good, the bad, the unclear and the abhorrent. It was a pretty,
I thought, kind of holistic look at everything that's happened. We have a newsletter version
of it up on the website at reetangle.com. So check it out. I think it's, I think it's worth
the time. We got tons of feedback and comments, some of which I'm going to address today, but
overall, I'm really happy with how it came out.
And also appreciate the team stepping up.
Big thank you to Ari and Will and John and Magdalena,
who were all filling in here at various times
on the podcast while I was gone.
I'm tired because I have a newborn baby,
but also weirdly energized and excited
to be back in the saddle.
So looking forward to the next few weeks.
And yeah, with that, I'm going to send it over to John to break down the main story for today.
And I'll be back for my take.
Thanks, Isaac. Missed you around here, brother.
Glad to hear your voice again on the podcast.
And for our listening audience, I hope you had a wonderful weekend.
And let's get this week started right, bring our biggest energy and our best selves forward.
Here are your quick hits for today.
First up, federal workers received an email from the Office of Personnel Management
requiring them to respond with five tasks they had accomplished in the previous week or risk being fired.
However, several agencies, including the FBI, Pentagon, and State Department,
instructed their employees not to respond to the email.
Number two, in international news, Germany's center-right Christian Democratic Union
parties are poised to assume power after exit polls showed the coalition winning
the largest share of the vote in the country's elections. The far-right Alternative for Germany party is on track to place second.
Separately, Hamas released six living hostages to Israel, but Israel delayed the release
of hundreds of imprisoned Palestinians in objection to Hamas' public ceremonies during
handovers of Israeli captives.
Hamas also returned the body of Shiri Bebas after initially sending the wrong body to
Israel last week.
The Department of Homeland Security announced it will end temporary protected status designations
for approximately 520,000 Haitians living in the United States, making them eligible
for deportation in August.
Cash Patel was sworn in as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation after a 51-49
Senate confirmation.
Separately, President Trump named commentator and former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino
as Deputy Director of the FBI.
5.
A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration has not fully complied with a court order
pausing the freezing of foreign assistance grants and contracts,
directing the administration to allow the disbursement of U.S. foreign assistance.
Separately, a different federal judge ruled against a group of labor organizations
that sought to pause the Trump administration's move to fire thousands of federal employees
on probationary status or deemed non-essential.
Sweeping changes at the Pentagon. President Trump firing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the country's highest ranking military officer. Air Force General Charles Q. Brown,
Jr., only the second black general to serve as chairman, was serving a four-year term
that was set to expire in 2027. For months, Trump and his allies have vowed to immediately
fire military leaders they deem to focus on diversity initiatives, often referring to
Brown specifically.
On Friday, President Donald Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air
Force General Charles C.Q. Brown Jr., as part of a series of dismissals of top Pentagon
officials.
Shortly after Trump announced Brown's dismissal, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he would
replace Admiral Lisa Franchetti, Chief of U.S. Naval Operations, and General James Sliff,
the Air Force's
vice chief of staff, as well as the judge-advocate generals, the military's top lawyers, for
the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
Furthermore, the Pentagon said it plans to fire approximately 5,400 probationary employees
and implement a hiring freeze in accordance with President Trump's executive orders.
For context, the Senate confirmed Brown
as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
following an 83 to 11 vote in September 2023,
making him the nation's highest-ranking military officer
and the principal military advisor to the president,
the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council.
The chairman's four-year term
typically spans presidential administrations,
though Brown's future had been in question since President Trump's re-election.
Trump thanked Brown for his service in a post announcing his dismissal, calling him a fine
gentleman and an outstanding leader, but did not offer a rationale for the move.
The president said he would nominate retired Air Force Lieutenant General Dan Raisen Cain
to replace Brown, claiming that Kane had been passed over for
promotion by President Joe Biden.
Kane served as an F-16 fighter pilot in the military, then as associate director for military
affairs for the Central Intelligence Agency and the director of special programs at the
Department of Defense Special Access Program's central office at the Pentagon.
If confirmed by the Senate, Kane would become the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to come out of retirement to fill the position.
Franchetti and Sliff were also nominated for their roles by former President Biden, and
Franchetti was the first woman to serve as the highest-ranking official of the Navy.
In a statement, Hegseth thanked them for their service, but also did not specify a reason
for their dismissal. While the firing surprised some in the military community,
they had seemingly been in the works
from the beginning of Trump's presidential transition.
In mid-November, Reuters reported that Trump's team
was drafting a list of top military officials
to dismiss early in his term,
including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Trump had previously promised
to fire woke members of the military,
and he signed an
executive order on January 27th directing the Defense Department to end all diversity,
equity, and inclusion initiatives and programs.
Separately, Hegseth said in November that Brown should be fired due to his purported
support of DEI initiatives in the armed forces.
Senator Jack Reid, the Democrat from Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Senate
Armed Services Committee, criticized the firings.
This appears to be part of a broader premeditated campaign by President Trump and Secretary
Hegsef to purge talented officers for politically charged reasons, Reed said.
Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina, defended the move, saying,
President Trump, like every president, deserves to pick military advisors that he knows, trusts,
and has a relationship with.
Today, we'll share reactions to the firings from the right and the left, and then Isaac's
take.
We'll be right back after this quick break.
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Alright, first up, let's start with what the right is saying. The right is mostly supportive of the firings, though many say Brown's dismissal was the least defensible of the moves.
Some frame the move as a shift in the military's focus away from progressive initiatives.
Others say Trump's pick to replace the chief of naval operations will be a key test.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote, Trump sweeps out Biden's officers.
As commander-in-chief, President Trump has the power to fire and promote military advisors
as he chooses.
The question that occurs after his Friday evening purge of Pentagon leaders is whether
he wants personal loyalty or honest military counsel, the board said.
Such dismissals usually come with a specific reason or performance failure.
Trump and Hegseth offered no reason for Friday's purge, except for a general assertion that
they will make choices based only on merit and warfighting ability.
In that case, firing C.Q.
Brown as chairman of the Joint Chiefs is unfortunate.
He understands the challenge from China and he has thought about how to defeat it, arguing
for more modern equipment and embracing new tech, the board wrote.
Firing Admiral Lisa Franchetti as Navy Chief is a closer call.
The Biden administration did her no favors by making her elevation more about group identity
than her command experience.
The firing of the senior judge-advocate generals, military lawyers, or JAGs, is the least concerning,
despite the media panic that this will lead to an era of lawlessness.
The JAG Corps has had embarrassing prosecutorial mistakes in recent years.
In rules of engagement, they now can lean too far toward risk elimination over mission
success.
In The Federalist, Sean Fleetwood said the firings marked a major step toward restoring
lethality and efficiency to the Pentagon. President Donald Trump fired his Joint
Chiefs of Staff Chair and other DEI-pushing military officials on Friday night,
marking a major step toward restoring lethality and efficiency to the Pentagon," Fleetwood wrote.
Trump's move is welcome news for Americans and service members concerned about the spread
of neo-Marxist ideology throughout the military.
Shortly after legacy media broke the news about his impending nomination, the Federalist
first reported about Brown's promotion of DEI, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, which
military specialists
and veterans have argued hampers the force's overall readiness.
The former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair has also pushed back on Republican criticisms
of DEI in the military and signed off on a 2022 Air Force memo directing the Air Force
Academy and Air Force Education and Training Command to develop a diversity and inclusion outreach plan
aimed at achieving a force more representative
of our nation, Fleetwood said.
Much like Brown, Sliff and Franchetti have not been shy
about their positions to promote DEI
and other leftist ideology in the military.
In Fox News, Rebecca Grant explored
how the Pentagon purge can succeed.
Even with Doge on the move,
the firings of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
General C.Q. Brown,
and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti
stunned Washington.
In part, that's because no one got fired
over national security issues during the Biden years,
not even when they deserved it.
Not for the botched Afghanistan withdrawal,
not for bad estimates about Russia's intentions in Ukraine,
not for the open southern border, not even for the lapse in nuclear command and control
when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was in the hospital, Grant wrote.
The fact is, four-star officers know they can be let go at any moment.
It's a job risk.
To be clear, Brown departs with great credit for the way he rallied American air power
to defend Israel against Iran's two vicious drone and missile attacks last year.
However, Friday's firings at the Pentagon can succeed if they lead to better
preparedness against China. My real concern here is the Navy. This is a
critical moment and the Navy is in dire need of strong leadership," Grant said.
With the chief of naval operations slot open, President Trump needs a carrier
admiral to step in. It has been 25 years since a naval aviator led the chief of naval operations slot open, President Trump needs a carrier admiral to
step in.
It has been 25 years since a naval aviator led as chief of naval operations.
During that time period, China has built hundreds of new navy ships, including three aircraft
carriers, and now poses a serious threat to the Pacific. Alright, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is
saying.
The left criticizes the firings, arguing Trump is continuing to hollow out key checks on
his power.
Some say the message sent by the dismissals will make it harder for officers to give honest counsel. Others suggest Trump is putting loyalty over merit.
In the Atlantic, Tom Nichols called the firings a Friday night massacre at the Pentagon.
President Donald Trump tonight began a purge of the senior ranks of the United States Armed
Forces in an apparent effort to intimidate the military and create an officer corps personally
loyal to him, Nichols wrote.
Trump is the president who nominated Brown to be Air Force chief of staff in 2020.
Biden appointed Brown as chairman in 2023.
Trump gave no reason for the firing and Hegseth issued a boilerplate statement thanking Brown.
Normally, the chairman serves a four-year term, the position that, like FBI director,
is meant to bridge across administrations rather than change with each incoming president.
Obviously, Trump has no use for such conventions and believes that every senior official in
the United States should be a personal appointee of the president, so long as that president
is him, Nichols said.
Now that Trump has captured the intelligence services, the Justice Department, and the
FBI, the military is the last piece he needs to establish the foundations for authoritarian
control of the U.S. government.
In The Washington Post, Senator Jack Reid, the Democrat from Rhode Island, wrote,
Firing military officers for perceived disloyalty endangers the nation.
The implications for our national security cannot be overstated.
A clear message is being sent to military leaders.
Failure to demonstrate personal
and political loyalty to Trump
could result in retribution
even after decades of honorable service,
Reid said.
In particular, firing the military's most senior
legal advisors is an unprecedented
and explicit move to install officers
who will yield to the president's interpretation of the law, with the expectation they will be
little more than yes-men on the most consequential questions of military law.
The firings are sure to create a dangerous ripple up and down the ranks.
Leaders might hesitate to refuse illegal orders, speak their minds about best practices, or
call out abuses of power, Reed wrote. A commitment to provide the best military advice exists at every level in the ranks.
Commanders expect their troops to give them the facts straight and true because lives are on the line.
But firing officers as a political litmus test poisons this military ethos.
It sends an immediate signal to service members that the best military advice might have career-ending consequences.
The Economist criticized Trump's dismissal of America's top military brass.
The sackings have little to do with kindling the warrior ethos, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vows to do.
General Brown has clocked more than 3,000 flight hours, including 130 in combat.
Admiral Franchetti had commanded not one, but two aircraft carrier strike groups, the author said.
Instead, they are casualties of the culture wars that the Trump administration is waging against diversity, equity, and inclusion.
General Brown is the most prominent black military officer.
Admirals Fagan and Franchetti were the first women in their jobs.
The military establishment is also under assault
from the chainsaw of Elon Musk's
Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
The Pentagon hopes to cut five to 8%
of the civilian workforce,
starting with some 5,400 probationary workers.
Mr. Hegseth has also asked service chiefs
to present immediate plans to slice 8% from their budgets to make room for new priorities," they author wrote.
What Mr. Trump demands, though, is personal loyalty, and his administration is sweeping aside norms across the federal government with surprising speed.
Indeed, the sacking of the three-judge advocates general raises worrying questions about how far the Pentagon is prepared to test conventional legal restraints.
All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take.
["The First Man"]
All right, that is it for what the left and the right
are saying, which brings us to my
take.
So in my review of the first months of Trump's presidency, one of the things that upset a
lot of people about my take, including one of my editors, was a line criticizing some
of the overreactions to Trump's unimportant and meaningless nonsense.
And I had a parenthetical that said as many on the left are keen to do.
A lot of Tangle readers took exception to that line
or assigned unintended meaning to it,
like that the left overreacts more than the right,
which is not what I was trying to say.
My point was that when people on the left
blow things Trump says or does out of proportion,
it does three things.
One, it distracts from his more meaningful
and potentially more dangerous actions. Two, it creates a things. One, it distracts from his more meaningful and potentially more dangerous actions.
Two, it creates a boy who cried wolf dynamic that makes urgent warnings appear
unimportant, and three, it also gives Trump exactly what he wants since he's very
good at provoking his political opponents and keeping them focused on less important
things. Around the same time, I was reading the criticism of that line,
the story about Trump firing some military leaders came out,
and then Representative Seth Moulton,
the Democrat from Massachusetts said this, quote,
dictators or wannabe kings fire generals
who don't agree with their politics.
This isn't a banana republic.
This isn't exactly the kind of overreaction I had in mind,
but it's pretty close.
As Vice President J.D. V, and even some Trump critical conservatives have
already pointed out, presidents have the absolute right to fire and promote
military leaders of their choosing.
What's more past presidents, including Barack Obama and Harry Truman,
made similar firings.
President Biden probably should have fired some staff after the
disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, but he didn't. To put this simply, Trump cleaning house at the military is not the stuff of
a banana republic. It's not a constitutional crisis, and it doesn't make him a dictator.
Trump himself didn't even justify his decision with his top-shelf rhetorical fire. He thanked
Brown for his service, calling him a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader, and he
wished him well.
It all felt rather tame, to be honest.
As I wrote on Friday, Trump is serving up plenty of other reasons for us to be concerned.
Trying to clean house at the FBI and Department of Justice, insisting he is above the law,
elevating people like Musk, who then call on journalists to be thrown in prison or fired,
and so on.
But here, Trump is well within his rights rights and even has some precedent to lean on to
justify the firings.
At the same time, the fact that these firings are constitutionally sound doesn't mean I
have to like them.
For starters, the defense by people like Vance is incomplete.
Truman and Obama fired top generals, not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and
they both had cause for their
firings. The Trump administration did not, or at least no stated one. Indeed, Trump nominated Brown
to be the Air Force chief of staff in 2020, and Biden then appointed him to be chairman in 2023.
The only reason apparent to me comes from Pete Hegsett, who suggested in his book that Brown
may have only gotten the job because he was Black. That sentiment was echoed by writers like Sean Fleetwood under what the right is saying,
who insisted that Brown's dismissal was part of some broader triumph over DEI in the military.
I've got to say, a lot of people in Trump's orbit seem to be using DEI as a code word for Black
these days. Legitimate criticisms of DEI and DEI programs, many of which I share, are abundant.
One can reasonably advance the opinion that the programs worsen race problems or elevate
less qualified people to important positions or have tended to exclude or harm Asian Americans.
But again, Brown was appointed by Trump and promoted by Biden.
Yes, he is Black.
Yes, he has opinions about what being a Black person in America is like and he has stated
them plainly. He's talked about how it's impacted his life and his career.
It's also true that on paper, he has all the experience one would want of a chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In a sick twist of irony, of course, Hegseth, the underqualified
secretary of state who has trumpeted meritocracy, has appointed a replacement for Brown who
literally needs a waiver from the president to take the job because he doesn't meet the minimum legal qualifications.
As for the other military leaders and the judge advocates general in the military who
were also fired, I honestly wasn't very familiar with their careers before Friday, so I won't
pretend to be an expert on how impactful replacing them will be.
But within the context of a focus on reduction in staffing at the Department of Defense,
their firing seem incoherent too.
As I've written in Tangle,
if you want to reduce government expenditures and waste,
you must include the military.
So when I saw the news accompanying these firings
that the Pentagon is planning to let go
of 5,400 probationary employees
and implement a hiring freeze,
I thought, well, at least they are consistent.
The bad news though, is that Trump and Republicans
are simultaneously pushing a budget
that will increase the debt and deficit
by trillions of dollars over the next decade,
while also further jacking up defense spending.
I have a hard time following Trump's plan.
What goal or objective is Trump hoping from the military
that those fired weren't helping him achieve?
When fit into a broader context of cuts, it seems like the administration's firings aren't
helping them towards their stated objectives, whether it's releasing functional personnel
to try to balance the budget or hiring amply qualified military leaders to try to improve
the military. So while I think fears of a constitutional crisis are overblown, I also
have no idea what exactly Trump's long-term plan is.
We'll be right back after this quick break.
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Alright, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered.
Today, I'm actually going to use this section to respond to reader feedback that did not
have a direct question attached to it, but caught my eye anyway.
I saw this comment from a reader named Denise on part one of my review of Trump's first
month, and it was voted as the top comment on the article via people liking it.
This is what it said, generally, I agree with much of what she wrote, but I am surprised and disappointed that there
was not even a mention anywhere of his executive orders targeting the freedoms of transgender
Americans, which are devoid of even a basic understanding of human developmental biology,
attempt to take away the responsibility for health care of children from doctors and parents,
and even accuse transgender soldiers in our military of being immoral and dishonorable. He has gone so far
as to attempt to remove the TQ from the general terminology of LGBTQ. I realize this is a small
percentage of the population, but that is precisely why they should not be targeted.
So I'm always of two minds about this kind of feedback. Since Trump got inaugurated,
I've noticed that most of the top comments in Tangle's comments section
are often arguments that strike me as kind of bad faith or straw man points to what we have written,
which as an observer was pretty frustrating.
On the other hand, it's a totally reasonable thing to say, you're looking here, you should be looking there.
In fact, it's the kind of feedback I typically find most useful.
Comments like this are helpful in that way because they give us a sense of the kinds of stories our readers might think are more important or help us uncover stories
not getting enough coverage. So let me respond to the feedback directly.
First, we already dedicated a whole issue to the story and broadly speaking, my take
is not that far off from what Will K. Back wrote. I don't think the federal government
should be dictating rules for every sport at the top level.
They seem to know this, at least in some capacity, as even Trump's order requires representatives
of the governing bodies of major sports to standardize their eligibility requirements
within 60 days.
My ideal situation would be to extend this approach across the country.
Let sporting governing bodies and state and local school districts decide how to handle
this on their own.
To give one simple example, I absolutely agree that trans women who went through male puberty participating in collegiate wrestling would be a major issue for several reasons.
But on a personal note, I play Ultimate Frisbee, a sport that has a very progressive ethos at the rec level and even elite levels. I have teammates in mixed ultimate who are trans women and as a community, the athletes, leaders
and governing body of the sport are supportive of them
playing concurrent with their gender identity.
I don't think that the federal government
should be trying to strong arm those leagues
into doing something that athletes
and community leaders don't want to do.
Second, just to contextualize the absence of this issue
from my review, I think it's worth pointing out
a few other things that also weren't included.
I didn't write a sentence about Trump fulfilling his promise to take executive action that
was supportive of IVF, or the cuts to the Department of Education, or the confirmation
of Cash Patel, or even the early stages of Republicans' massive spending fight.
These are each huge stories in their own right, and their absence is less evidence of apathy
than it is evidence of
how difficult it is to respond to everything from the last four or five weeks. Even when we publish
a two-part 10,000 word edition, we can't get to it all. All right. That is it for your questions
answered. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the pod. Good to be back with you guys
and I'll see you tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Isaac.
Here's your Under the Radar story for today, folks.
On Friday, the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said the Securities and Exchange Commission
had agreed to withdraw its lawsuit against the company without any financial penalty,
potentially ending one of the most significant legal challenges to the crypto industry.
The case began in 2023 when the SEC alleged that the digital currencies sold on Coinbase's
platform were unregistered securities that posed a financial risk to consumers, one of
several legal actions the SEC took against crypto companies under former chair Gary Gensler.
The SEC's commissioners still must approve the lawsuit's dismissal.
The New York Times has this story and there's a link in today's episode description.
Alright, next up is our numbers section.
The year the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff position was created was 1949. The number of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the United States history is 21.
The number of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who had been fired before General
Charles Q. Brown Jr. was zero.
The year the Chief of Naval Operations position was created was 1915.
The number of Chiefs of Naval Operations in U.S. history is 33. Before Admiral Lisa
Franchetti's dismissal, the most recent year that a Chief of Naval Operations did not complete
their full four-year term was 2007, and that was Admiral Michael Mullen. The percentage
of Americans who say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the United
States military is 60 percent, according to a June 2023 Gallup
poll. And the percentage of Americans who said they had a great deal or quite a lot
of confidence in the military in 2013 was 76 percent.
And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. Amanda Borrows has been a park ranger
in San Francisco since 2021, tasked with the specific challenge
of removing homeless individuals living in the parks.
Unlike many park rangers,
Barrows decided against using citations or force,
instead focusing on compassion, patience, and trust,
building a relationship with her clients,
and helping them find more stability and housing.
Barrows estimates that since 2021,
she has helped close to 60 people accept services
to help them both leave the park and better their lives.
The San Francisco Standard has this story and there's a link in today's episode description.
All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode.
As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to reetangle.com where you can sign
up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership,
or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow.
For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, all.
Peace.
Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by Duke Thomas.
Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Will Kavak, Gellysol, and Sean Brady.
The logo for our podcast was made by Magdalena Bikova,
who is also our social media manager.
The music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.
And if you're looking for more from Tangle,
please go check out our website at readtangle.com.
That's readtangle.com.
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Dude, I'm standing right here.
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