Tangle - The Sunday Podcast: Isaac and Ari talk about campus protests, the electoral college, and Donald Trump's flip-flop on mail-in voting.

Episode Date: May 5, 2024

Isaac and Ari talk about the ongoing protest on college campuses, the value of the electoral college, and Donald Trump's flip-flop on mail-in voting. Plus, in this week's Airing of Grievances, Ari wants more work and the saga of Isaac's W key on his computer comes to an end.You can watch our latest video, Isaac's interview with former Congressman Ken Buck (CO-04) ⁠here⁠.Check the next episode of our new podcast series, The Undecideds. In episode 2, our undecided voters primarily talk about Trump’s legal troubles. How do they feel about his alleged crimes? How would him being convicted - or exonerated - change the way they vote? What about his claims he should have immunity as president? You’ll hear how they consider these major themes of the race, and also what they made of Haley dropping out and Biden’s State of the Union Address. You can listen to Episode 2 ⁠⁠here.⁠⁠Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. 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.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

That's what's coming up. I hope you guys enjoy. Do you think you should do one that's like a little more succinct for the first few? Do you think I should do one that's a little more succinct for the first few? Do you think I should do one that's a little more succinct? I do think that, yeah. That's really passive-aggressive. Sorry about that. I think we should put this in the podcast, you passive-aggressive piece of shit. All right, coming up, Will says the media is over-promising his story and me and Ari think he's right.

We talk about the protesters' free speech and protesters not always being right. We debate the electoral college. Trump reversed his course on mail-in ballots. And I complain a lot about my computer. And then Ari says something mean about how I need to be more succinct in the intro. Hope you guys enjoy. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a 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, joined by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman. Ari, how are things going for you? You're always setting up your microphone in the very beginning, I feel like. You know, people can't see that, so you don't even have to say anything. And yet here we are. I'm doing all right. Just my co-workers always coming at me for no reason. How are you doing? I'm doing pretty well. There's a ton of stuff going on. We are recording this on Thursday afternoon. I am on my brand new fresh MacBook Pro, which I'm so pumped about and yet also so pissed about. We'll get to that in the grievances section of today's podcast. I couldn't even wait a minute. Yeah.

I had to get it out there right away. Yeah, I had to get it out there right away. Look, the thing everybody's talking about right now is the protest stories just all across the country, it seems. Campus stuff is going totally bonkers right now. I obviously have a lot of thoughts, and we've talked about this before, how we don't want to spend all our time on this issue that I think gets inflated a little bit in terms of how much coverage it gets

in ratio of how important it actually is. But we're going to be talking about it in tomorrow's newsletter because I want to write a little bit about some of the kind of free speech opportunists who are out there who seem to only believe in free speech when there's something being spoken about that they want people to exercise their free speech rights around. And then also just this thing that's been irking me that I'm seeing literally everywhere, which is this meme about how the Vietnam protesters were right, the civil rights protesters were right, the Iraq war protesters were right. Maybe you're on the wrong side if you oppose the protesters on these campuses, which is a good meme. I have to concede it's a good meme

if you just ignore all the times throughout history that protesters have been wrong about stuff. So I'm going to write a little bit about that tomorrow, which is not to say at all that I think these college students who are protesting what's happening in Gaza are wrong. In fact, I probably am aligned with them on a lot of things, most primarily and significantly the call for a ceasefire, which I support and have written about and talked about on this podcast a ton. a ton, but it's just starting to piss me off. If a group of college kids all believe something and are protesting some political thing based on history, we should all think that they are right, which is just, I mean, you have to be historically illiterate to believe that in my view. So I want to talk a little bit about that, which by the time you're listening to this, the newsletter will be out tomorrow already. So I'm looking forward to that. But you had another little take on some of the protest stuff that I wanted to chat a little about and hear your perspective on. Because I think it's kind of almost more a media story than a story about the protests.

than a story about the protests. Yeah, and I have to credit this to our colleague, fellow editor, Will Kabak, who messaged me with this idea. And I said, this is a good point, Will, we should talk about it. The media trying to make a story almost climax or to tease importance that will come in it to reach farms in Southern California and Arizona that need to irrigate it. People in Mexico, the southern portion of it, who rely on it. And it's not to say that that's no longer a threat, but that in the summer when we're experiencing a lot of record heat, things about water security were really top of mind. And we were told this was a pressing issue, and then it pressed away. Another example that he cited was Elon Musk and Twitter. We were told that Twitter was going to go away away as we know it, it was going to disappear as a useful tool. And I think even in the immediate aftermath, we had some comments on

Tangle about how it's becoming less usable, but it persists. People still use it. It's still a useful tool, even though it's still undergoing one of the worst name changes in history. I still have a hard time calling it x it doesn't help that when you say when will pitch the story he said we should be talking about how whatever happened to x and it's a little confusing when x is one of the things that could mean x but he means it is whatever happened to whatever the story is so elon musk please change it back but it matters in this instance uh the way it pertains to campus unrest is he forwarded me this piece from the hill which is a pretty center media organization about concerns that campus unrest could or unrest at campuses could undermine the democratic national convention

or at least peak with tension at the national convention which is months and months away so it's the sort of lead up to anticipation of something big that could happen. Whereas I think the smart money is this isn't going to last after graduation. I don't know how it could. After the spring semester ends, I would bet money that we don't hear this story very much in the newsletter. I put a calendar reminder for myself for June 2nd, a month from today when we're recording to double check on this uh the story to see if it is still in the news but i think will is right i think we'll probably be hearing a lot about this and then slowly less and then a month from now nothing and i don't think we'll hear much about follow-up from media organizations that are promising something. I think it's just going to drift away. Okay, so first of all,

before I respond to Will's thesis, which I think is really interesting, I just want to point out that I do think X has gotten way worse, and I blame Elon Musk for it. And I've not let go of that story yet, I just want to say. Yeah, I'll throw that out there.

Basically, I tweet something about Israel or something really serious, that story yet i just want to say um yeah i'll throw that out there basically i like tweet something about israel or you know something really serious and the first response to every tweet is some robot being like links in bio to my nudes and i'm just like how like this is not how it used to be it's just like the site is full of spam and people who are just engagement hunting. They have a term for it, like these people who they reply to videos now with just content that's nothing to do with their content. And it's like these really big robot systems. I genuinely think Twitter is getting worse and worse every day, even though I still use it because I'm an addict. But it's still the best place to get breaking news, which is why it's great. But just throwing that out there. Anyway, I think it's a really good thesis. And I think it's one of the things that

there's very little accountability for in the media space. It's one of the reasons that I really love doing our kind of look back at the end of the year. And one of the reasons I started doing that is because I feel like there's just so many short memories, like everything just gets memory hold. this new YouTube series, which I totally think we should do. And I want to do, which is like the, the what happened to X series, which is not about Twitter, but is about, you know, all the different news stories that have happened, um, over the last few years that there was a ton of attention around. And then they sort of just faded into the background without much information about how they got resolved or what happened. A few that come to mind for me are like the baby formula shortage, the shipping crisis. I mean, I wrote an entire piece about how at Christmas, I think in 2021, basically global shipping was going to collapse because all these experts were saying that you aren't going to get your Christmas gifts for a month until after Christmas,

and there was going to be this huge hit on the economy and all this stuff, and then it just didn't happen. Which, you know, we never really did a story about the fact it didn't happen. We just did a story about the fact that it was coming. So that idea for a YouTube series really interests me. And I think Will had a good nose for that kind of thing. I will say, I could see a world where the campus protests are not happening in June or July, but the Democratic convention is still a total shitshow. And the reason I could see that happening is because I think we have all

signs that Netanyahu is actually going to go through with this Rafah invasion, which is, in my opinion, just totally horrifying and insane and counterproductive. And if he does do that, regardless of how capable and moral Israel's army is, like wherever you land on that, they could be the most moral capable army in the world. You have like a million people squeezed into an area that is not fit to hold them. And if you go in there trying to suss out militants and quote unquote, uproot Hamas from their last stranglehold or whatever the mission is, a lot of people are going to die and it's going to be really, really horrific. And it's going to be live streamed across the globe. And I think whatever we're seeing now,

the anger and resentment towards Israel and the Israeli administration is going to go up a notch, which is kind of hard to imagine. So that would be my big fear is that, and Netanyahu publicly at least is signaling that this is going to happen, but I imagine in terms of U.S. politics, it's going to have a big impact for us too. I think I do want to try to briefly leave aside the personal feeling about the need for a ceasefire or an armistice in Gaza, with just the comment that it does seem like the two major parties in these negotiations, being Netanyahu and Hamas, are just entirely recalcitrant. Netanyahu and Hamas are just entirely recalcitrant. Netanyahu saying we're going to go into Rafah either way is, yeah, I don't have anything to add to what you're saying other than it's horrific and stubborn and pigheaded. And Hamas countering that we'll sign a ceasefire if you agree to a permanent removal of troops from Gaza, it's not terms for a ceasefire.

Those are now you're negotiating terms for an armistice. It's counterproductive. But all of that aside, I think the thing that I'm thinking about are just the logistics of protest and how it will affect the DNC. Because it's one thing to say the convention is going to be hampered or in some way disrupted by protests. I think that's true. I would suspect that. But I don't think there's a direct line between the campus protests and the national convention, which is, when is that? It's late summer, right? I believe it's in late July, but I could tell you in about three seconds. It is in Chicago. It is actually late August. Yeah, you're right. August 19th to 22nd. I thought it was late July. And where is it also? Is it the United Center? Yeah, it's at the United Center in Chicago. Not really close in terms of geography to any campus in Chicago, nor is it close in terms of time to when campuses would be filled with students. We're talking months after graduation.

Northwestern is not even in Chicago. It's north of the city in Evanston. University of Chicago is very far south in the city. UIC, I don't think, has had an issue that I know of with disruption at their campus. And it's just like the straight line isn't there. I think the idea of protests affecting it for sure, but to try to say student protests are going to be responsible for this, I just don't see how that happens logistically. It doesn't make sense. Yeah, that's an interesting point.

I mean, the student protests on the campuses that are happening right now are so communal. And they're so, like from the videos and everything that I've seen. And I'm actually hoping to get over to Penn's campus because they have encampments now. And I'm really interested to see what that's like and maybe talk to some people who are over there and actually do a little bit on the ground reporting, which I always enjoy doing, it feels to me, like you said, there's no way this persists through the summer. I just imagine most kids are going home and this is such a kind of group unified community thing. I think a lot of kids are there because of the community element of it as much as they're there because of, you know, any like in-depth understanding feelings, strong feelings about this conflict. Not that the feelings aren't genuine, but that's part of it.

Right. No, exactly. Like I said before, and I said this, you know, there was definitely something a little condescending about the piece that I wrote last week when I said, you know, I don't really care what 20-year-old kids think about this conflict. I care what Netanyahu and Biden and Hamas leaders think because they're the ones that matter. But I think it's not hard to understand why they're out there doing this. They are turning on Instagram. They're turning on Twitter. They're turning on the news.

And they see horror. The war is horrific. And what's happening in Gaza is horrific. There are kids being buried in bombs. I don't know. People try and unpack all this stuff when I think a lot of it is actually really simple. It's just like these kids just see horrible stuff and they feel terrible and they want to do something about it. And like I also said, I know that a lot of this, not a lot, but I know that some of this stuff

is tied to antisemitism or disproportionate attention on a country like Israel or misunderstanding about the contours of the conflict or the history of urban warfare or whatever it is, you know, like, but I think fundamentally the most important thing or the biggest driving force of all this is just like, there's a bunch of young kids who are seeing something that seems unambiguously awful to them and they want to feel like they're doing something about it. And I don't think we should condemn them all to hell for that or slander them or they should lose their jobs or

whatever. I think for the most part, it's probably pretty good-hearted and comes from a genuine place. And I know a lot of people think I'm naive for believing that, but I haven't been any of these encampments yet. I've spoken to a number of college students, including a number of friends who I've seen posting stuff from protests. And I can tell you affirmatively with certainty that these people who I know who are participating in this stuff, they're doing it out of a genuine goodness in their heart that they feel like they're pursuing a humanitarian issue, a just issue. And I think in a lot of ways they are, because war is always unjust and awful.

So I don't mean to demean all this. I do think I would be surprised if in a month, like you said, it's still going on. And that's not so much about their commitment to the cause. It's just the reality of who we're talking about, which is a bunch of college kids. And maybe they'll prove me wrong, but that's kind of how I'm feeling right now. I think we're going to be seeing it peak actually in this coming week or two, because that's when graduations happen. Something that I haven't heard people say a whole lot is, or something I haven't heard people remark on a whole lot, comes from the images that you see coming out of Columbia, where always in the shot in the background are the rafters that they're setting up for the graduation ceremony that's going to be on the campus behind them. I just think that's kind of the obvious climax. There's going to be disruptions during graduation. There's going to be a flood of takes. There'll be some people

that are instigating. There's going to be some escalations. There are going to be some big moments, but I think the DNC is not the climax. It's a week or two from now, and I think I'm comfortable making that prediction. And then I week or two from now. And I think I'm comfortable making that prediction. And then I'll come here and say I'm wrong if I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. Well, you've got that calendar alarm set, so we'll definitely have to deal with it at some point. True. The stuff about the DNC convention is actually a nice little segue into this other topic that we wanted to chat about today. So I'm going to take it because

we are about to head into election season. And I think there's a reasonable, I mean, fair chance, maybe better than usual chance that Joe Biden wins the popular vote and loses the election and or gets tied in the election, which is also a possibility. Not enough people are talking about that there's going to be an electoral college tie, which seems kind of possible to me. And we have to get another crash course or give another crash course in electoral college politics. And we answered a reader question about the PAC that a lot of states are joining and the sort of merits of a popular vote presidential election. You and I had some disagreements, I think, in the sense that, you know, I am a little bit more skeptical of moving away from the electoral college. I think there are other fixes and you felt pretty strongly about the upside of

just a straight up popular vote, uh, popular vote election. And we have this little shared Google doc where we suggest topics about what we're going to talk about on the podcast. And you just wrote into the doc, let's debate the electoral college question mark, which was an awesome note to leave. But I feel inclined since I changed your answer a little bit that you had edited and helped draft to this reader question into something that reflected more of my own views to give you the floor on your national popular vote pitch? Sure. I think let's remove all the partisan arguments. It does not matter to me who wins the electoral college and who wins the election in terms of

this discussion. I think if a candidate that I like ends up winning the electoral college, but not the popular vote, easier said than done. But I'm telling you, I'd be here making the same argument. It doesn't matter who the president is and who benefits from it. It's just in theory, abstract. Let's talk about why this matters or what the case is and who benefits from it. It's just in theory, abstract. Let's talk about why this matters or what the case is for it. So that's the first thing. Really quick before, before you get into that, I just want to say to just put an emphasis on that point, this debate, because of where we're living now, the people who are most commonly arguing for abolishing electoral college are Democrats and liberals. A, that wasn't always the

case. And B, it wasn't that long ago that Republicans were winning the popular vote. And also, I think Republicans could very easily win the popular vote if they wanted to, if they changed their election. Trump's pulling ahead of Biden right now. Right. And in 2012, when it looked like Mitt Romney was going to win the popular vote and Obama was going to win the Electoral College, Trump was tweeting about how we had to abolish the electoral college. I mean, people literally just take the position that benefits their preferred candidates. So very much appreciate the thought experiment of let go of what this means for the results and just talk about it from a fairness and ethical perspective?

So I'm going to get very, very broad to start, which I don't like doing, but I think I want to be honest about what's informing my point here and sort of where my biases come from, and then we can get into specifics. But let's start with why the Electoral College exists, which is as a representation of the mindset that the founders of the United States had when the Constitution was drafted. The first union of states was under the Articles of Confederation, which was a weaker confederation of states that was left for the current United States that was drafted under the Constitution, which imagined the United States more as a union of nations. That's the first conception that we had for our country. And that's changed over time.

I don't think people right now would say that we are a union of countries as much as we are a country of unified states, which are more like provinces. I think that's the way we conceive of our country. I think anytime somebody refers to our country as a union, it's rhetorical and it's archaic, and that's evolved over time. And my broad position is I think in general, we're too religious with the way they quote our founding documents as if they're scripture. Our constitution is meant to be a living document that gets updated, so we can change it. It's fine. If we feel like it doesn't make sense anymore and there's an argument to change it, we should. So electing a president as the leader of our country as one unified country rather than an executive appointed to by the leaders or the electors from a collection of states that comprise the union, I think that's changed. I think it makes more sense conceptually, the way we think of the United States, to directly elect the head of the executive branch. We already have proportional representation in our legislative branch. We vote for two senators from each state. We vote for our representatives. We try to make

sure we don't have an imbalance of power in terms of how we comprise our legislative body. And I think that distribution gives a little bit more. I don't think this, this is just true. It does give a little bit more influence to the states that are smaller. And I think that those states can easily be steamrolled, the states that are small, like where I live currently, which is Vermont. And I don't think we need to double weight that. If we make the electoral college what represents the elect, or sorry, if we make the electoral college what appoints the executive, then we're doubly weighting the amount of power that we're giving those smaller states. And I think that just is disproportional. It waters down the voting power from people who live in states, and those states are generally, sorry, waters down the voting power of people who live in cities, and those cities are not

a monolith. Every city is different. There's plenty of mid-sized towns that are currently just as conservative, if not more conservative than they are liberal, especially when you take into account metropolitan areas and suburbs. So it's not as if there's this concept of we have to protect the rural part of the country, which means everything that's not a liberal city from having their voice overpowered. I think that's a gross oversimplification. And I think it's much more the case that people who live in or near cities, including suburbs and metro areas, are having their voting power diminished. So that's my broad statement behind why I think it makes sense to remove the Electoral College. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. Yeah, I'll put some more points in your bucket, I guess, too, and just pointing out that, points in your bucket, I guess, too, and just pointing out that, you know, the way that the Electoral College got navigated in its inception is one of the most classic instances of just,

you know, U.S. racism skeletons in the closet. And, you know, I know I have some objections to just like how a lot of people on the left tend to talk about the founding of the United States and that we're like a country founded on, you know, slavery and racism and all this stuff. It is undeniable that there are institutional things about how our country was formed that were just like overt racism. And the three-fifths compromise is literally one of those things where, you know, we built a system that was based on representation and slave owners in the South wanted to count slaves as part of their populations in order to have more weight in Congress and more representation in Congress and more delegates. And the way that we resolved this was basically like, oh, we'll count them as three-fifths of a

person. And the Electoral College was a compromise in a lot of ways that favored slave owners. So from its very inception, it was designed to sort of benefit one region over the other in a way that's quite obviously problematic. And the best argument for it, which we articulate a little bit in the answer to this reader question we did, or the best argument against it, I should say, is that there's a legitimate mathematical equation here where some people's vote is just worth a third as much as other people's. And there's nobody who on the face of it sees that and thinks that that's the right way to do it. Now, would I support abolishing the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote? I feel really resistant to that. I'll say part of it, I'm sure, is like just an emotional attachment to the system

that we have and the, you know, like the familiar kind of makeup that we have. I think nationalizing the vote creates some issues that could be resolved, but definitely like, you know, right now we have state run elections and states make laws about elections. And if you had a situation where we were just doing a popular vote presidential election, it would incentivize the executive branch to do everything it could do to basically overpower the states and create national voting laws that benefit whoever was in office. So for instance, you know, President Biden's running now, he's in office. If we were in a national popular vote election, I think the obvious outcome of, you know, that would be that Biden would be creating laws that increase the chance of him,

you know, becoming president. And maybe those are, maybe it's a national holiday for voting because this feels like a year where turnout's going to benefit Democrats or maybe it's mail-in voting or whatever it is, you know, maybe it's, you know, doing what Democrats in New York tried to do, which is making it so non-citizens can vote in elections. You know, there's a lot of different ways that I could go south that concern me. And then I do think there is the general concept of sort of finding a way to counterbalance the fact that people who live in more rural areas might run into representation issues if all of our presidential candidates are just focused on winning the big cities, which I do think would be a byproduct of this. And I think the Electoral College is a well-conceived kind of construct to

address that that has gone too far in the sense that now we're at a place where actually it's the people who live in these really urban areas whose vote is being watered down. So we've kind of like gone the other direction. So those are, I guess, would be like the biggest concerns that I have. And then, you know, we talked about this in this reader question. I mean, my solution is basically that I think we should get rid of winner-take-all electors. Like, every state should do what states like Maine does and Nebraska does, where there is an electoral vote for winning the whole state, and then there's electoral votes for each individual district that exist inside the state. And that creates this sort of, I think, a different kind of balance where, you know, if you are a presidential candidate who wants to win Pennsylvania,

you don't just have to go win Philadelphia and the suburbs. You also have to do really well in Harrisburg, and you have to do well in Harrisburg and you have to do well in Pittsburgh and you have to do well in, you know, Pennsylvania, as we call it, the space between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. And, you know, that feels like maybe a potential solution, but I really, it's hard for me to tell how much of this is like my emotional attachment to the system and working backwards from that versus how much of it is like my emotional attachment to the system and working backwards from that versus how much of it is that I genuinely recognize the benefits of the electoral college system. The thing I get really stuck on is just this idea that everybody's vote should just be

one vote. And right now it's hard to argue that's how it is. And I have a hard time getting over that. Yeah, true. And I think those are decent, for sure, decent rebuttals. When I was drafting some points to that reader question before you put it in the newsletter and gave it your answer and filled it out, I didn't end up in the same place that I was pretty sure that you were. I wasn't drafting you something that fit what I thought was your position because when I considered those rebuttals and then I asked what's the counter to those rebuttals, they all sort of won. So you gave me three points and I'll take them in order. The first one is we should have state-run elections to which the response is, yeah, we can still do that. If we have a popular vote election, we can still have the states responsible for them. I don't see why we wouldn't.

The state compact where a certain number of states sign on to this agreement where if those states who are signatories to this compact have their electoral votes tally more than 270, they say that snaps in a place we're all going to make our electors choose the person who won the popular vote. That's going to de facto just make our election a popular vote election. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history,

and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. Let's leave that all aside, but whether it's through that mechanism or through an amendment

or through a law that Congress passes, it can be done in a way that says the states are still responsible for running their elections. There's no one centralizing federal authority. In fact, I would support that. And this concept that you had, or the two things that you had a concern with, what if there's a national holiday for voting? That could happen now. What about a state passing rules where non-citizens vote? That could happen now.

And the idea of we should have states responsible for their own elections to protect against those things getting too broad, we should maintain it. The second point that you had was underrepresentation in campaigning. My first counter is I don't really think that matters too much, first of all. So it's hard for me to overcome that. I don't know who the people are that are undecided that are like, well, let me go to a Trump rally and see what he's talking about and if he raises any good points. I think campaign rallies are for supporters and they are energizing to the base and then that base goes out and tries to engage with people in the community. But I don't think that it's for the undecided voter. For one. For two, where are these campaign rallies that are happening in the middle of an unpopulated county? They're happening near mid-sized towns because those are central hubs for people who live in smaller areas to go to or larger cities as it is. It's not going to change. If you make it a popular vote, people are still going to campaign in those same spots. If anything,

the campaigning power that gets increased is mid-sized cities. Because those larger cities, LA, New York, we kind of have an idea of where those votes are going to go anyway. But your Tulsa's, your suburbs of Pittsburgh, your Central Valley in California, Sacramento, Grants Pass, for instance, in Oregon, Sacramento, Grants Pass, for instance, in Oregon, these are going to become places that get more interest in terms of electioneering. And that's probably better. And something that you said was worrying about underrepresentation of people in rural cities, rural areas having their power watered down. Right now, like we just said at the top, their power is enhanced. Right now, like we just said at the top, their power is enhanced. So yes, it will be watered down. And there's that old saying that equality feels like oppression to the privileged. bit does feel like a knock to me, but it is just

something that's trying to distribute it to the people who currently have their voting watered down. That's just the nature of it. The third thing you said was the winner-take-all electors should go, give it to the regions, to which my response is, why not go smaller? Give it to the municipalities. Why not go smaller? Give it to the individual districts. Why not go even smaller? Give it to the individuals. Let's just extend that all the way. Make it a full popular vote. But I think addressing the issues that we might get from the popular vote are all things we can do through how we talk about the primary system. And I think the same is true with the Electoral College. We can do both, but we can keep the Electoral College while addressing problems with the primary system. But at the end of the day, I think the counterpoints to why we shouldn't adopt a popular vote kind of don't hold up to me. Now, that is a good argument. Well, all of those are very good points. But I would say the one that has me most hooked in is the idea of a compromise, so to speak, of a sort of a popular vote presidential election in exchange for some course correction on how our primary system works.

And maybe another point for you, not to argue the other side against myself, but I guess that's what I do every day, is that we have primary systems at state level elections, and then we have Senate races and congressional races that are just straight-up popular vote races. Exactly. Like, it makes no sense that we wouldn't do that for every election. Let me throw one more at you, which I think maybe we talked about in the comments

but didn't make the final cut into the newsletter, which is this idea that the Electoral College kind of reduces the likelihood that there's third-party candidates who get onto the scoreboard. And some people might be listening, certainly a lot of our readers who really want third-party candidates and say, what's the problem with that? But basically, the idea is that you don't have a break on the viable presidential candidates. So you could imagine a scenario where 15 candidates are running for president, and then the winner needs 10% of the vote, and that represents a really small share of the vote and that represents a really small share of the electorate and then that person becomes president which i think in a theoretical where you know it is truly an open presidential race and it's just a popular vote race that is maybe a real issue but i don't know if you have

thoughts about that because that was an argument that stuck out to me as well. I do. And I'll start with, I'm going to start by annoying you a little bit, which is by telling a joke. And it's a joke that I remember putting into a piece that I wrote about climate change a couple years ago. And I remember you commenting on it. I don't think we should have a joke here. And then you read it, and you're like, okay, actually, I see why that's here. It makes sense. The joke goes like this. There is a man walking home from a bar late at night, and he's sort of stumbling around the street, obviously drunk, and a passerby is following him

behind, sort of curious, watching him stumble around. The drunk gets to his doorstep, starts to kind of struggle with his door, which is locked, and then turns and searches the ground and starts getting on his hands and knees. The passerby stops and says, hey, what are you doing? And the drunk says, oh, I'm just looking for my keys. I dropped my keys. And the passerby goes, okay, I'll help you look. Gets on his hands and knees, joins him in helping to find his keys. After 10, 20 seconds of this, the passerby says, do you remember exactly where you dropped them? And the drunk goes, yeah, I dropped them two blocks back by the bar. And the passerby says, then why are we looking for them here? Drunk says, because the light's better. Point of that is we are trying to solve a problem by looking in the place that's more comfortable.

So when you say, what about third party representation? One, changing to a popular vote, make it harder for a third party candidate to be elected or just an independent party candidate to be elected. The answer is the problem is the two-party system. Whether it's the electoral college or whether it's a popular vote won't change the fact that going through a winner-take-all primary system with closed primaries is going to result in two dominating candidates when it comes time to the election. I favor having open primaries. We can do some other solution, but there's nothing in the constitution about parties. There's nothing that says we have to have a two-party system. And I think we can have reform through the way that we elect the candidates through our major parties. I think that's where we have to have the fix. The problem the candidates through our major parties. I think

that's where we have to have the fix. The problem is the light's worse. It's just harder to look for solutions there. But if we want a real solution, that's where we have to look. Yeah, I like that position. And I think I'm more amenable to that than the idea of just moving to a national popular vote without some other reforms. So I don't know, maybe this is something I'll change my mind about. I have to kind of sit with it a little bit more and let it marinate. I do want to stay on elections for a minute because I had in mind something else I wanted to talk about, which is a little bit related to all of this, which is the Trump flip-flop on mail-in and absentee voting. I honestly struggle to find the words.

I am so— It's tough because this is a podcast. You're going to have to figure it out. Well, I don't know where to start. I mean, first of all, I guess I should explain the story for those who missed it or didn't see it or are under the radar story. Basically, Donald Trump is now promoting a...

He's begging Republicans, basically, to vote early, to vote by mail, to vote via absentee voting. And he's begging Republicans, basically, to vote early, to vote by mail, to vote via absentee voting. And he's doing this after, I mean, literally five years of telling voters, longer than that, I guess, really since 2016, eight years of telling voters that mail-in voting is corrupt, years of telling voters that mail-in voting is corrupt, it's riddled with fraud, that your vote won't be counted, that it's totally corrupt, all this stuff. I always feel like I have to throw it clear on Donald Trump because I know we have many Trump supporters who listen to this podcast and read our newsletter. And they're always, understandably, their radar is just on for Trump derangement syndrome and people who just like can't say anything nice about Trump or anything

that he does good or whatever. I hope by now I've proven I'm not one of those people. I've been dealing with this personally because I wrote a lot about election fraud and covered a lot of the election fraud stuff. And I have been inundated so often from so many people with just echoes of the stuff that Trump has been telling people. That's total bullshit, has always been total bullshit, which is that mail-in voting and absentee voting and all this stuff is basically the way that elections get stolen. When it's almost the complete opposite, mail-in voting is basically one of the most secure ways to vote because you have the best paper trail. And there's all these steps in the process and, you know,

identification, verification in order for it to happen. And people, I understand why it gets spread because, you know, you move into a new apartment and then you get a ballot mailed to you that's for somebody else. And it's like, oh, I could just fill out this ballot and send it in. Like, it must be really easy to fraudulently do a mail. And it's like, no, that's actually not how it works. You can't just send that ballot in and that ballot wouldn't get counted and whatever. I'm just like, we wrote about this or I wrote about this in 2020 leading up to this election, which is part of the reason, not the reason, but part of the reason that Republicans lost in 2020 was because Democrats smoked them on the ground, organizing, getting

the early vote out, which does a lot of things. It gives all these campaigns data before election day on who's engaged, on who the voters are. It gives voters a chance who have screwed up their ballot to correct it. So you can cure a ballot if it's submitted a month early and it has some kind of mistake on it or the machine can't read it or whatever. They get that ballot back to voters. They alert voters. When that happens on election day or something like that, or something happens in person, it can create different problems. Basically, if you're a political organization, it is just a huge, huge advantage to have people voting early, which is why Democrats try and do it, because it's just a way to win elections. And by the way, Republicans are really

good traditionally at organizing mail-in voting. In Florida and Ohio particularly, they have really good organizational state-level infrastructure to do this. Part of their advantage is in those states still to this day. And get this, like the cherry on top of all of this is when a bunch of people vote in early or mail in their votes early, the results of those votes comes back really quickly on election day. And one of the things that throws the most fuel on the fire of all the election fraud claims is when the count is delayed or there's discrepancies or we have to have a recount or all this stuff, which like it doesn't happen in states like Florida and Ohio or Washington, where we have really robust mail-in voting systems and people send in their votes early and they get counted and verified, you know, the week before the election.

And then the election day happens and the tally gets in really quick and you get the results really quick. Mail-in voting is awesome. There are a lot of reasons I think that everybody should just vote by mail or whatever. We can't feasibly do that, but it would be great if we could. So to just see this about face, like I'm getting fired up because I just literally don't know how to explain it. I mean's a huge disadvantage for them that he's, you know, has always told voters not to vote. He's been telling his base not to vote early, but he posted in all caps on truth social this week, absentee voting, early voting, and election day voting are all good options. All capital letters, Republicans must make a plan, register and vote. And, you know, a lot of news organizations have had to cover this in like their attempted even handed ways. So, uh, Axios said, you know, uh, president Trump abruptly shifted his public messaging this month, which is such a nice, like newsy watered

down way to be like, he completely fucking flip-flops. He did a total 180 and, and like, it just flushed down the toilet, eight years of rhetoric. And, you know, and I just saw, I could not believe it. I was just like, I cannot believe he's doing this finally, which so obvious he should have done it years ago because it's good for him. It's good for the party. And then Donald Trump jr. is now running ads in Pennsylvania. And he said, you know, quote, Pennsylvania, I need you to join the mail-in voting list today. He's saying this in like a direct to camera video on skip the line, PA dot vote, uh, which I guess I just inadvertently ran a political campaign ad here, but you know, I it's, it's totally, it's it's totally it's totally nuts. In February, Axios had this this quote that in February, it is May 2nd.

On February 27th, he was posting on Truth Social, mail-in voting is totally corrupt. Get that through your head. That was like, I mean, literally two months ago. So I don't know. It's just like, it should be a bigger story. We put it under the radar section. I think it's totally bonkers. I would love, I would read an article

about the person who convinced Trump that mail-in voting was good for him and good for the party and why it took eight years for that to get through to him. But one of the most incredible politician flip-flops of all time that I've ever seen or can remember, basically. So I don't know if you knew this, but my dad has been a judge of elections for a number of years. And for decades, he said that we should be doing mail-in voting, and he supports it. And anybody who distrusts it, which there have been people before Trump, for sure, people have been skeptical about mail-in voting.

ballot in case you're not here. And even if you're not, it's more convenient. It's better for all those reasons you stated about being given the opportunity to cure a ballot. And if anybody pushes back on that, his gotcha argument is, oh, so you don't want military service members to vote because that's the only way people deployed overseas get to, which is a really good gotcha argument. But I understand your frustration as somebody who was in the trenches on voting fraud theories that were online four years ago. And I can sense that. And I think, honestly, the thing that's weirdest about this, about FACE, is how completely, other than the all caps, how completely normal of a politician message this is that he posted. Because if you read it, just without the all caps, it's just absentee voting, early voting, and election day voting are all good options. Republicans must make a plan, register, and vote. That sounds very sanitized.

It sounds like just an ad. It doesn't sound like Trump. So I do wonder about that person who was in the room who convinced him to do that. And I wonder if he's like, I can't even, you do it, and just gave them his phone. And that person just wrote it. But yeah, I'm interested to hear that story too. it. But yeah, I'm, I'm interested to hear that story too. I, I, somebody has it. I know there's a journalist out there who's paying close attention and has this story and I'm so interested in it coming out. I, you know, maybe, maybe it's just like the general realization that they're winning the popular vote and they're not winning on the ground on the organizational side. And it just finally, I mean, I, I don't know, like, I don't

know. It just seems like he was so stuck on this thing that I don't know how he would have shifted out of it, but it felt worthy of a rant on the podcast and I couldn't really let it go. It was, it had been bothering me all week. Um, so I'll see one thing I will say. And like, I, I'm trying to think what I would put the odds of this at maybe like 20% that he flips back before the election.

Just keep an eye out for that. I'm going to, I'm going to just keep an eye out for that, which is like one story that gets in front of him about fraud or somebody stuffing ballots or whatever. And I could see him blasting off like an unchecked truth social post that's just like, mail-in ballots are totally corrupt. We should never be using these fake news that they're safe. And, you know, maybe it's not as high as 20%, but he has great instincts as a politician. He

has always had incredible instincts as a politician. I would never describe him as disciplined. So like, I don't think he believes what he's saying right now. I don't think he believes that mail-in voting is safe and secure. I think somebody has convinced him this is important for him to win. And I just wonder how long he can stay on that message. And, you know, if he gets asked about it, I could see a world where he's like, well, you know, everybody knows that mail-in voting is totally corrupt and it's how they stole the election from me in 2020. But I do think that we have to steal it back now. And this is, like, well, you know, everybody knows that mail-in voting is totally corrupt and it's how they stole the election from me in 2020. But I do think that we have to steal it back now. And this is,

you know, that'll be the way he frames it, basically. I could see it being something like that, like a slip and like a little diversion, and then he gets back on message. But I think the cynic in me, which is large in this instance, since it is a total about face, would say that the reason why he was on the messaging of trying to discredit mail-in voting in the first place was that he was the incumbent then. And if he could find a way to make the election discredited, he would get to retain his seat as president. And now, as the challenger, he's not the incumbent. So he doesn't have that lever to pull. Cynically, I think that's a pretty direct response. Yeah, that's a fair read. I don't

necessarily think that is not true. That should be the title of the episode. Yeah, I don't necessarily think that's not true. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. I got a nice little meeting scheduled after this podcast, and I need to get to writing on this Friday edition where I'm going to have lots of thoughts about what's going on in the protest world. So if you have not read that yet and you're listening to this on Sunday, I encourage you to go check it out on our website, readtangle.com.

Before we get out of here, I do want to do a little grievance session. The airing of grievances. Ridiculous. I'll show you. Uh, you are, are you skip? Are you skipping? Let me go first. Cause I got a small one and it's going to be something that I think you could actually probably help me with, which is when we do these live events, I'm looking for more things to do. So we have done two now, one in Philly and New York. And on the day of, there's a lot of energy. And I think with you, it's infectious. You're on stage and you're preparing a lot and you're cramming every minute you can to try to get prepped to

be on stage and moderating this event. Our AV guy, our producer, the person who has to edit this podcast, John, sorry again for the bad audio, John. He's busy as hell. He's running around trying to do as much as he can to set up cameras, get good audio for it, set direction, everything. Every moment he has, he's busy. Will maybe has the same thing I do, but I know he's trying to help with guests the day of. So he's got a role just trying to make sure all the people that are coming to be on stage are taken care of logistically. And then otherwise, it's Ruben's show, your brother, who's an event coordinator professionally. He's kind of the head guy in charge at that time. So I'm just like, I will help John set up cameras, but I don't know anything about cameras. I will try to put in dinner orders. I just want to feel busy. I want to be helpful. But it gets to about an hour before showtime, and I'm like, I don't know, maybe I can copy over your note cards more.

I just want to do something. I want to be part of the team here. What do I do? That's a good grievance. Yeah, I didn't register it until now, but you did bust into the green room before the event in New York, and you were like, can I transcribe your cue cards? And I was like, yeah. You just had to print a piece of paper and Phoebe's like, it would look better on note cards. It's like, I'll do it. I'll just copy it over. Yeah. All right. I'll think about that. Put RE to work. Maybe we can, uh, it's crowdsource and answer. People are listening and love to hear

like as a person who goes to these events, what kind of things do you want there to be that maybe I can help with? Yeah, that we're missing. Uh, maybe the pre-screen question thing could be interesting though. I really like when people ask questions related to what happened on stage. Uh, okay. That's a good one. Totally different tone than what my grievance is going to be. You're like, how can I be a team player? I'm going to bitch. I am going to complain. Kvatch, as we say. The great W incident of 2024 has finally come to a close. For people who have been listening to the podcast for a while, I don't remember what episode it is, but you can go back and find my very long-winded, angry grievance that basically amounts to the

fact that the W key on my MacBook Pro stopped working and created this unbelievable cascade of problems, just completely destroyed me. The W was your biggest L, for sure. Yeah, the W was my biggest L. I ended up getting the whole keyboard replaced, which then created a problem with the fan system in the MacBook, which then made me use this program to control the fan system, which basically I think crashed my computer. And I just was operating with a computer where I could not have more than three or four tabs open. And this is like a two or three-year-old computer, but it was in really good condition before all this stuff started.

Aside from the keyboard, just it ran really well. And I just- Aside from one key, honestly. Aside from one key. So Apple has this total, total fraudulent, I'm gonna get fired up again. This complete, this is like, it is like unbelievable bracket that you can't

replace a single key. They're all attached on this switchboard. So you have to get the whole thing replaced. So I spent like 300 bucks replacing the W key and the replacement effectively ruined my computer. So I finally caved this week and I decided to just buy the new MacBook Pro, which I should have done anyway, because it has a lot more computing power and we're doing all this podcast and video stuff and it's going to be good long-term. It's just like, it's a beast. And, uh, but, and again, as I'm saying this, I really can't pinpoint why I'm loyal to Apple, but I got this new computer and, you know, it's like the, it was like the grand finale of all the issues that this one single W key caused me, which was

I go to the Apple store and I'm like, Oh, I got to transfer this. And like, Oh, well, you can leave your computer here. It's a 24 to 48 hour service. I'm like, oh, I run like a breaking news organization. I can't leave my computers here for 48 hours. Not an option. Like, all right, you could, you know, go home and do the internet transfer, but like for eight to 12 hours, your computer's just going to be a brick, both computers. They'll be, you do it via wifi. It takes a little while. I'm like, okay, well, I could try doing that overnight. But if it takes 12 hours, that's going to really screw me up too. I basically work 12 hours a day. I can't do that. And then they're like, oh, well, if you get the Thunderbolt cable and connect the computers, then it's like, I don't know, insane megabytes per second.

You can transfer like 100 gigabytes of data per minute. megabytes per second. You can do all that. You can transfer like a hundred gigabytes of data per minute. And it'll take like three minutes to do the whole transfer. I'm like, all right, that sounds great. Like, yeah, the cable is 60 bucks. I'm like, okay, like, all right, I'll buy the cable. And the guy was kind of like, you could just return it tomorrow. Just bring the receipt. It's a two day return on these. Nice tip. Thank you. Apple store guy. Definitely that dude's not getting commission. I was like, all right, great. Like I will, I'll take this home, just do it and return it. So I do the migration assistant thing, which is like the classic MacBook transfer. I hooked them up and the MacBook is refusing to connect on the Thunderbolt cable. It's only connecting on wifi. So they're connected,

but I can't get it to switch. And so I typed this into Google, like, how do you get Thunder, like Thunderbolt Mac to Mac, not working. And there's just forums, Reddit threads, articles, all this stuff about like how this doesn't work for so many users and all these little tips about how to get around it. And like, oh, so one of them is like, turn your old MacBook into like startup disk drive, you know, like you shut it down, you start it up in a way that's like just the disk. So it's basically acting as an external hard drive and then you move everything over. So I try that. But when I go in to do it, it's a different process than what all the articles are telling

me because it's the new Intel, there are the new silicone chips, not the Intel chips. So I have to find a really recent video and then I do the recent video and then I follow the steps exactly. It's still not working. And then every time it's just going, it's overriding, going to the internet. Somebody was like, oh, if you disconnect one of the computers from the internet, it'll automatically go to the ethernet cable. So I was like, oh, nice, sweet tip. Sounded totally legit. So I turn off the internet, start the whole process over again, hook them up. And after disconnecting from the wifi and forgetting the network,

my computer starts automatically remembering, overriding me, remembering the network and connecting to the internet. And then, and I'm like, I like, there have been times when my computer has forgotten a network that I wanted it to connect to. And I couldn't get it to do it. And the one time I actually want it to forget a network, it's refusing to forget the network and only connecting over the internet. So I'm like, I spent, I mean, literally two and a half hours of my day yesterday trying to do this. I am like getting really, really angry. And then I find this one thread that's from like a month ago on like the apple support thing that had a bunch of uploads and it was like a 15 step process where i'm like changing the ip address and like network stuff and i mean like they were using i'm like not a very technical person with computers like phoebe my

wife thinks that i'm like a computer genius because i can figure some stuff out. I am like basically technically illiterate. And there are like words and commands that this person is describing that I am, I'm like, I literally don't know what that means. So I get like four steps in and then I realize I'm not going to be able to do this thing. And I like go back and try and reverse all the changes I made to the computer. And then ultimately, I just back up my computer onto an external hard drive, and then transfer the external hard drive onto the new MacBook. But it's like a four or five hour process, which all the websites and the Apple Store guy told me would take like eight to 12 hours. And if I had known it would only take three

to four hours, I would have just done that from the very beginning. But instead I wasted three or four hours trying to get to the thing that would take me five minutes, which I never actually got to. And then I go back to that MacBook store. I go back to the Apple store today to trade in my MacBook, which I got $820 for. And I spent, you know, $300 and like three work days getting the W key repaired. So basically a $500 trade in, and I got the money back for the Thunderbolt cable, thank God. And then at the very end of this process, there's this thing where I have to be logged

out of Find My on the Mac for them to complete the trade-in. I'm not allowed in my Apple iCloud to be able to see where the MacBook is. And the woman at the store can't get me logged out of Find My. There's three different Apple geniuses. They're logging into their networks. I had to put my Apple ID in like four different times. And every time the computer I'm trying to trade in keeps showing up, even though they wiped the whole computer clean and like none of them could figure out what was going

on. And I had a doctor's appointment right after the meeting. So I'm now late for the doctor's appointment. I'm stuck in the Apple store. I've been there for like 45 minutes for this appointment. That should have taken like three and a half minutes. And then like somebody just presses a button or somebody does something. They're like, oh, you know what? We'll just like delete them manually from here and you can go. And I'm like, what the fuck? Like, where was this answer like 35 minutes ago? But you know, whatever. They're all super nice and it's not their fault. But in my head, I am just boiling, just like all I can see is just this faded W key

that no longer worked on my MacBook that created a four month saga of issues. And now I am the very proud owner of one of the new black MacBook Pros, which is super slick. And I'm very, very happy. I'm going to forget all of this happened, but it was unbelievably infuriating.

I can't believe how many issues and problems were caused by a single W key not working. The ultimate butterfly effect grievance that I'll hold on to for the rest of my life. And is now immortalized in audio format. I have questions, but I almost don't want to ask them. I almost, I think I just want to let this stay dead. So that's what I'm

going to do. I'm going to let it stay dead. And I'll ask about your new computer. What does Marquez think about the new black MacBook? Oh, that's funny that you asked that. I, because today at lunch, after all this got completed, I went to my doctor's appointment. I had a similar thought. For those of you who don't know, Marques Brownlee, known as MKBHD, who's kind of going through a sick villain phase right now. He's a good friend of ours. We played on a team together. Yeah, the three of us played on an Ultimate Frisbee team together. We're all buds. And he is also a very famous YouTube star who is incredibly good at what he does. He reviews every new tech product that comes out. And yeah, in the last few weeks, he's been getting more attention than he even gets usually because he gave a couple of really harsh reviews to a couple of really couple. Now I won't say bad companies, but a couple of companies who put out some really bad products and he tanked one of them basically.

I mean, he didn't really tank one of them, but a cascade of really bad reviews helped tank them. And, and we, uh, we put his response to that in the Sunday last week, which was, um, typically thoughtful of him and kind of showed why he's the class of the reviews yeah he is incredibly thoughtful and an incredibly classy dude and uh yeah nothing but love for marquez and so i was curious what he thought i watched about half the video he he spent like two minutes in the video reviewing it just explaining how the computer's not actually black which was hilarious he was basically just like, he's big on matte black stuff. Yeah. And he was like putting it in the sun, just like, this is,

looks kind of silver to me. And it was pretty funny. So, um, he did talk about how it's a beast and, and, uh, my impression was he was giving it a pretty positive review, but he, the intro of the video, like the first couple of minutes was him kind of like, he was like, I I'll show you a black computer. And then he like puts it next to another black laptop he has at his studio. That's actually black. Um, but I love how it looks. It's pretty slick. He did point out one thing that's really funny, which is the charging cable is black. They kind of leaned into that, but then the box that the cable plugs into is still white. So it just looks so dumb. You have like a white charging point, but you don't have a, you know, black cable into the black computer. I'm like, just finish the job and get the black,

whatever. Like I said, these are like, now we're really in first world problem territory, but I guess that's what the grievance section is all about. All right, we got to get out of here. I have more important things to do than complain about my MacBook, I guess. You wouldn't know it. Yeah, you definitely would not know it. All right. Thank you guys for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Have a good one. Take care. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul saul and edited and engineered by john wall the script is edited by our managing editor ari weitzman will k back bailey saul and sean brady the logo

for our podcast was designed by magdalena bakova who is also our social media manager music for the podcast was produced by diet 75 and if you're looking for more from tangle please go to rettangle.com and check out our website. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web,

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