Tangle - The Sunday Podcast: Isaac and Ari talk about the assassination attempt on Trump, if Biden is in or out, and political rhetoric

Episode Date: July 21, 2024

In today's episode, Isaac and Ari discuss the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the use of conspiracy theories, and the justification of political violence. They also talk about the ongoing calls for Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race. And, as always, the Airing of Grievances.Imagine this:There are over 100,000 people on this mailing list. If every person got one friend to sign up for Tangle, we could double our readership overnight. We have made it incredibly easy. All you have to do is click the button below and you'll get a pre-drafted email pitch — then you just type in a few friends or family member's email addresses and click send. Give it a shot!You can catch our trailer for the Tangle Live event at City Winery NYC. Full video coming soon!Check out Episode 5 of our podcast series, The Undecideds. Please give us a 5-star rating and leave a comment!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 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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since our last Sunday podcast nearly a month ago, the Trump assassination attempt, a discussion about political violence and if or when it's ever justified. And will Joe Biden actually drop out? We can't believe he hasn't yet. We've got a lot on the table for today. You guys are going to enjoy it. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle.

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where 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 Ari Weitzman, our managing editor. Ari, it's been a while since we got on the mics together, man. The last time we did this was post-debate, I guess, technically. We were joined by Will Kabak. But the last genuine Sunday pod we did with just the two of us was June 20th, a little less than a month ago. It'll be a month by the time this podcast comes out. We're recording this on Wednesday, July 17th. Quick recap of all the things that have happened since the last time you and I did a Sunday podcast a month ago. We had Biden's debate performance, which obviously

started this incredible cascade of events where now we don't even know if he's going to be the nominee in November. SCOTUS grants Trump partial immunity. We have the Trump assassination attempt. Trump's classified documents case gets thrown out. And then Trump announces J.D. Vance is his running mate. That's about three and a half weeks of news in 2024, which is kind of hard to wrap your head around. 2024, which is kind of hard to wrap your head around.

And yeah, I think to even add to that, we don't even know if the DNC is going to nominate Biden at the convention. You mentioned this whole cascade of events. The events are cascading now. So there's not a break for us to be had in the executive branch, in the judicial branch. for us to be at in the executive branch, in the judicial branch. The only thing that we get a respite from is Congress is not doing much right now. I think they're just prepared to go on recess or I believe have just entered one of their recesses. I can barely tell the difference, Zing, but that's the only thing where we're getting a break right now. Yeah, those guys never work. It reminds me, I have a funny joke with Phoebe. Whenever we pass a group of construction workers who are clearly unionized, and there's like eight guys standing around a pothole with one of them smoking a cigarette,

I roll down the window and pretend I'm going to yell, get back to work. And then Phoebe gets really nervous that I'm going to yell at all these big grizzly men, but I obviously don't. But it kind of reminds me of that a little bit of like, oh, these guys are, you know, they're on recess. Wow. Like never heard of Congress being on recess. It seems like they spend a quarter of the year not at work, but I guess that's important. They have to go home and talk to their constituents and do all that stuff, just like unions are important and so are labor protections. But I still like the joke. You really took us on a walk there, Isaac.

I'm going to quit that before I get in any trouble. I do want to talk about some of the stories that have happened since the last time we got to chat, because I think the podcast offers a little bit of a different forum to have these conversations outside of the exactness of the writing that often comes out in the newsletter. First of all, I just gut check for everybody. I mean, I say this all the time. I brought it up in the newsletter when we covered the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. You just can't really fathom what's coming. I always say this in the newsletter that a month is an eternity in politics. A week is a long time. A few days is a long time. We're still three or four months out

from the election. A lot of the people who are telling you assuredly what's going to happen just have lost sight of the fact that so much can happen in such a short period of time. I mean, in any other kind of political era, Donald Trump announcing his vice president, his running mate, would be a huge deal. Biden's performance at the debate would end a candidacy without question. The Supreme Court granting Trump partial immunity would be weeks on end news coverage. And now it's just like we have five of those stories in three weeks, which is genuinely hard to wrap your head around in terms of how it impacts the politics of all this. So we have another three to four months until the election. A lot of stuff is going to happen between now and then that we can't possibly wrap our head around. But I think very clearly the frontrunner for the

biggest story of this cycle and the thing that I think we'll be talking about for a very, very long time is the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. And I'm not 100% sure where to begin. I'd be curious what your experience was of learning about it. I mean, mine was quite jarring. I was actually- I think they're going to be similar, honestly. Yeah, we were both coaching Frisbee tournaments, I guess, that weekend separately. But yeah, I was in Virginia. I was in a hotel room in Virginia. And funny enough, I was with the players who I coach on this Ultimate Frisbee team. And I take a news cleanse on Friday to Saturday night. So I'm typically for Shabbat, I am offline. I am just like totally checked out of what's going on. But we were in this hotel room and everybody was watching Mr. Beast videos, which like sort of, yeah, ironically watching Mr.

Beast videos, the YouTube star. And also because Marques Brownlee, who's one of our teammates and also a YouTube star, was featured in one of his videos recently. And so we're all watching this video that Marques is in. Marques is not present. He was coming down to the tournament late, but having a blast, joking around. And then somebody had their phone open and just said, Somebody had their phone open and just said, oh my God, Donald Trump just got shot. And I was like, what? I can think of a couple instances in the last couple years where I've broken this news online Shabbat break. One of them was October 7th, because I woke up to a million text messages from people telling me that there was just an attack in Israel and over a thousand people had been killed. And it was a Saturday morning in the US, and I actually went online and logged

onto the news, which I, again, almost never do. And this is maybe the second example that I can think of that's happened in the last year where I just couldn't help myself. I thought maybe the person misunderstood what had happened. I went onto Twitter, was immediately confronted with all the videos of it. I mean, it had only been 15 or 20 minutes since it had happened. And I mean, it was like really genuinely shocking. It was, it was really genuinely terrifying. I like the whole scene was so surreal and it looked like it almost was hard to get your head around. Like it looks so fake kind. I mean, I don't know how to describe it exactly. It wasn't, it didn't look fake. It, it seemed so beyond reasonable that when I first watched the video, I thought maybe like, did he just get hit? Did

he just duck because there was loud sounds? I mean, I had a reaction sort of similar to some of the early headlines, which, you know, a lot of news organizations got criticized for, but the way he kind of like grabbed his ear, I mean, it was hard to fathom that he had been so close to being shot that his earlobe got hit and he collapsed to the ground and covered his ear based on that. And I'll never forget it. I mean, for me, it's one of those moments that, you know, I don't think it's like 9-11 level. I mean, I remember that as a kid, but it is one of those things where I will always, always remember where I was. And the image of him kind of grabbing his ear and hitting the ground and genuinely terrifying and seeing the diagrams of everything about the shooting that has happened and the moment he turns his head and the sound. I mean, he really, I don't blame him or his supporters or anyone for thinking there was some divine intervention that kept him alive. I mean, it was that shockingly close and lucky,

truly lucky that he wasn't shot in the head and killed. I mean, it was, we were right there. So I don't know. I just like, I didn't really write about that or talk about that in the newsletter, but the kind of human element of the experience was really genuinely jarring and unforgettable in a truly terrifying way. I mean, he's lucky. We're all lucky. I think there's no way that Donald Trump getting shot in the head helps anybody. You imagine for a second that there is a world where that bullet goes two inches the other way. And we are, I don't even want to get into that, honestly. Just what could have happened would have been so much worse for a political moment.

And yeah, I think it's great that we're all taking a breath and expressing relief. And I definitely feel super relieved. It's interesting to hear you talk about your experience and comparing it to the last time you broke your no Shabbat news rule. Because I was thinking, what other historical events do I kind of remember experiencing in the last six, eight years or honestly since 9-11? last six, eight years, or honestly, since 9-11. I think there was a period of time, other than Hurricane Katrina hitting, where it seemed like we didn't have personal tragedies happen to popular public figures in the US, other than the major news events that I can imagine happening in the last six, eight years, all happened on a Saturday, weirdly, because it was the Trump shooting. And then before that was October 7th. And before that, for me, it was the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, which was also on a

Saturday morning. And that's a weird trend. I don't know if there's anything to that. But I think it was something that added to it for me, since we're talking about the human element, was that I'm from Pittsburgh, and I also lived in the North Hills and in the suburbs for four years before moving most recently. And I know that Butler is about 40 minutes from where I lived. I'm sure that I had some neighbors, some people that I know who were at that rally. So it's something that is pretty close to home in the literal sense. And it was surreal watching that. It's surreal watching the video that shows the hydraulics being shot by a stray bullet and the array of speakers get dropped because of it.

I think I agree with you when you say that it's easy to believe in some sort of divine intervention. But on the other side of that, I think you also need to push back and say, there's no way that this was something that anybody would stage. I know that's something that we've been getting a lot of people writing in with, and we've seen a lot of commentary on Twitter about it. But you think about the collateral damage here, and there's no way that somebody would say, this is going to help Trump's election. Let's put a guy up there. Let's have him be an elite marksman who also misses seven times and kills a civilian and injures another and comes with an inch of shooting the former president. And we'll just sacrifice this guy who's going to be an elite

marksman. That's not what happened. When you start thinking about it for a minute, you realize that that's not what happened. It's an incredibly hard to believe event that took place, but it beats every other interpretation of what happened. Yeah. The left, one of their core talking points about conservatives in America today is that they are conspiracy theorists, that they're basically, you know, prone to believing absurd, ridiculous lies. And, you know, the election stuff is probably number one on the list now. And it's become a core talking point that you'll hear Democrats say Donald Trump is the party of conspiracy theorists and whack jobs and all

this stuff. And this event was a beautiful, pitch-perfect reminder that the left is equally, and I genuinely mean this, people are going to say I'm like both sides in this, equally susceptible to believing conspiracy theories in the right conditions. I was shocked by the number of like blue check mark, and I know that means less now, but like, you know, people on Twitter who were genuine political analysts or commentators, writers, also a lot of just like idiot TikTok, YouTube stars, whatever, spreading this nonsense. But like, there were so many people online who in the first 48 hours of this were just guaranteeing that we were going to find out this

was a staged event. Some of them are still doing it, but especially in the first 48 hours that, you know, look at how Donald Trump's able to stand taller than the Secret Service agents and pump his fist. Do you think they'd ever let him do that if they thought there was a genuine threat? I had some guy like tweeting at me saying, show me the bodies, you know, 45 minutes after the shooting happened. And he had a real account, like a file. He was a like lefty democratic activist lawyer with five, 10,000 followers or something insisting that I proved to him that people were dead. And I was like, hey, I proved to him that people were dead. And I was like, hey, actually, there are literally videos on social media of a dead person being dragged out of this rally and of the shooter dead on the

roof. So not only are you an idiot for suggesting that that's necessary for you to believe that this was a real shooting, but also those things exist. It was really scary. It was scary to watch it happen, to watch the conspiracies kind of happen so rapidly. And of course, the obvious question is, I mean, the stupidest, most simple thing is he got hit. Are we really saying that he cut this conspiracy so close and staged this thing that he dodged a bullet by like a quarter of an inch that some, you know, this wasn't, I mean, it's just so ridiculous. It's just so even hard to, it's so dumb that it's hard to argue against. Maybe there's some like plausible or not plausible, but maybe there's some more rational theory of like, oh, this kid was some patsy and there was like second or third shooters or some organization behind this, whatever. And if you want to hang on to that for like a few more weeks, I guess go ahead.

But you're just going to look like an idiot in the end. I mean, we have a pretty good profile of shooters like this. I mean, we have a pretty good profile of shooters like this. Unfortunately, this was in a lot of ways a fairly common kind of, you know, I guess the boundaries of who this kid was and what we know about him fit very neatly into a really common profile of people who take rifles and shoot up crowded areas. He targeted the president, clearly, the former president. But there's a lot of similarities between this kid and a lot of what we've seen with gun violence in the United States. So that stuff was really scary. It freaked me out. And now I'm also seeing something else that's kind of scary. At least it's scary to me because of how quickly it's happening. And I knew it was going to happen. I'm cynical and skeptical enough that I knew it was going to happen.

But there's just like a new brand of article, new genre coming out now that is basically like, actually, no, don't turn the rhetoric down because the blaming the rhetoric for this shooting is falling into, you know, Republican conservative trap. Basically it's going to insulate Donald Trump from criticism. insulate Donald Trump from criticism. I saw on Reason Magazine, Robby Sov posted a piece who I really love and respect. I think he's a great writer, a good mind. He had a story headline, Stop Blaming the Attempted Assassination on Heated Anti-Trump Rhetoric. I get a newsletter from a climate change reporter who basically said, she writes a newsletter called Heated, which is quite good, Emily Atkin, a lot of really valuable, just genuinely valuable information on her newsletter. And she sent something out that

literally the subject line of it was, don't turn the rhetoric down, and is basically all about how if a person poses an existential threat to the planet, i.e. Donald Trump in her view, it's okay to say that. In fact, it's our responsibility to. And I've seen maybe three or four other articles like this, which feel like a direct response to what I wrote and said on the podcast earlier this week, which was that we must do it. And I think it's worth just delineating a little bit here, which is if you want to say that Donald Trump's actions in the past make him a threat to, you know, democratic norms and the institutions that many of us value. And if you want to say that, you know, J.D. Vance is an extremist on abortion or

these things are fine. They're common, normal kinds of political attacks and rhetoric that have been part of the ecosystem forever that I think we need to debate. I think they're conversations worth having. I think everybody who listens to this probably knows by now my number one biggest egg on the face stain, not egg on the face, biggest black mark on Donald Trump, I should say, is that he rejected the results of the 2020 election when he very obviously lost fair and square and helped push the country and the rhetoric to such a degree that we ended up with January 6th, which I don't blame on him entirely or even majority, but I think he played a role in. And all of this stuff is appropriate and worthy conversations to have. This is not the

rhetoric that I'm talking about. The rhetoric that I'm talking about that needs to be turned down comes from both Republicans and Democrats. It's different in kind. I'll give you that. I think Republicans are much more prone to this military this like military cosplay, you know, commercials, campaign commercials of them taking out guns and shooting cars like Marjorie Taylor Greene that then, you know, have the word socialism on them and then explode. I mean, that is a breed of it. But there's also the kind of less bombastic, more intellectual breed of this extreme rhetoric, which is telling your supporters that Donald Trump is the next Hitler, that he's Mussolini, that he's a dictator who's, you know, going to destroy everything, all the freedoms and

everything you hold dear, which is not a legitimate political attack. Donald Trump is not Hitler. He's not worse than Hitler, which some Democratic senators have said, literally. That is the kind of rhetoric that it's very easy for anybody to hear that. And step one is they believe it. And step two, they think, well, if somebody had killed Hitler five years before World War II, that would have been a really good thing and would have helped the planet. And I agree. If I thought Donald Trump was Hitler, I wouldn't be upset that someone tried to shoot him in the head, but it's very obvious that he's not. And like, this is, this is the core issue with the kind of rhetoric that people are throwing around out there. And it's part of why I think that we live in such a scary time is because things are not as bad as they seem. Genuinely, I don't think things are as bad as people believe them to be, but so many

people believe them to be that bad. And so many mainstream people are relying on injecting that belief into their supporters in order to gain support. And it's just, you know, whether this shooter was motivated by politics or not, which I have no idea whether he was, and I think it's maybe even likely that he wasn't, it's very logical to me that more people like him are more likely to take actions like this into their own hands the more we use this kind of rhetoric. So we should stop, and they should come back from the abyss. And I'm just shocked that people are already arguing against that. I think I want to really be careful with my words here and how I respond because I know this is sort of a tightrope that we try to walk all the time of seeing reasonable things from multiple

points of view and seeing ways that people can disagree. But talking about political rhetoric and if you actually believe that Trump is Hitler, what does that then logically imply? Because, so there's kind of a two-step process I want to go through here, both of which are going to require a little bit of grace from the listener and from you, I think, to try to make. The first is when people are talking about Trump is Hitler, which obviously I agree with you. I don't think that's true. It's not true. He hasn't suggested invading the Sudetenland or anything like that. I think what they are the best argument to support that claim is he does not do nearly enough or did not during his presidency to oppose factions in the alt-right

that were blatantly and openly anti-Semitic. I think that's the best claim. I think that's a far cry from saying he is Hitler, obviously, but I think that's the best claim. And when you make that argument, that's a very different argument to say you need to oppose the alt-right more, very different argument to say you need to oppose the alt-right more. You need to do more as a leader to oppose anti-Semitism. And I think it's okay also to say a second Trump presidency or this Trump as a candidate is probably making steps towards the middle more. If anybody wants to raise that claim to him now, it'd be interesting to see how he responds to it. But I think that's still something that people would say is an open concern. When you take that with the actions of January 6th of saying, this is another example of him seeing a threat

and not doing enough to oppose it, and sort of willingly or willfully supporting his supporters because they're his supporters, what does that then imply? What could his supporters be capable of doing that he would stand up to? And that's a fair criticism, I think. On the other hand, um, when you make claims like this is a person who is capable of that, it is similar to me as the claims that were made by the alt-right that led to the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that said, on the left that are trying to import immigrants to replace white people. There are Jews that are behind the scenes trying to make this happen. That's an outrageous thing to think. It is false in every possible way. But when a person who does not know any better, whether they be an outright fool or disturbed in some way, hears that when they believe it, fool or disturbed in some way hears that, when they believe it, that's when bullets fire.

And I don't like to make this an emotional appeal. I try not to do it as much as possible. But my cousin was shot on that day in Pittsburgh. It's something that I'm pretty familiar with. So I don't want to minimize that. I don't even want to equate these two things as one-to-one. It's just to say the thing that is similar in these events is that you have claims that are being advanced that say that the political enemy is your existential enemy. And that is where you have to be, that's a red line that you have to be careful not to cross. If you want to say policies of Donald Trump or policies we think he might support could lead to existential threats, even that is different in a way that I think is substantive and matters than saying Donald Trump is an existential threat or he's going to usher in one. That level of certainty and that level of

vitriol is something that I think leads us to dangerous paths that make bullets fly. And again, I think it's really, really, I'm asking a lot from you and from the listener to make sure you're making sure I'm not hearing me say these things are equal, but that some of the logic is similar. And I think we should be really careful about the way we phrase people as our existential enemies. That makes me really uncomfortable. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. A Real Pain is a comedy about mismatched cousins who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the pair's old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. A Real Pain was one of the buzziest titles at Sundance Film Festival this year,

garnering rave reviews and acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. See A Real Pain only in theaters November 15th. Whether renting, renewing a mortgage, or considering buying a home, everybody has housing costs on their minds. For free tools and resources to help you manage your home finances, visit Canada.ca slash It Pays to Know. A message from the Government of Canada. So I'm sort of cautious cautious almost even weighed into this i think this is a really dangerous

conversation to have to be honest but i'm i genuinely think maybe it's important and interesting which is sort of like is political violence ever justified question? I mean, I think, you know, that like, that's the standard. I was careful not to say this in the newsletter. I didn't know where did I say political violence is never justified, which is kind of, it's what Barack Obama said. It's what Joe Biden said. It's, you know, it's like, it's been the talking point, the kind of of thing we hammer which i think is a good thing for our political leaders to say because when you say that you remove you take away any kind of agency from people who follow and support you to decide when political violence matters and so like i think that is what they should say. But as an intellectual exercise, it occurs to me that like, there are some obvious counterpoints to that claim. Like, you know, the Hitler thing, I, you sort of made a face when I said this a few minutes ago, like, if I believed Donald Trump was the next Hitler, I could certainly find it justifiable to shoot him in the head to prevent 6 million people

from being thrown into gas chambers and killed. That is actually rational to me. I think even more recently, if you were a Black American pre-civil rights movement in our country in the 30s, 1940s, 1950s, political violence is never justified. Being treated as fundamentally less equal than the white people around you. I mean, if I were Black and grew up in the 1930s, I think I would have been moved to political violence quite easily, and I would have felt justified in it even now, retrospectively. So I guess my question or thought is just, is, you know, while I think it's the right thing to say, is it a true thing to say? And like, how do we grapple with that part of this conversation, which feels really kind of dangerous and sticky to me. Man, we're waiting into the minefield today.

Yeah, that's mostly my fault. That's why I took us there, so I'll take my blame too. It occurs to me that I want to make sure before I get into that, that I very strongly clarify that I don't think the claim Donald Trump is Hitler is equal to the claim Jews are importing minorities to replace white people. I don't think those things are equal, nor do I think the viewpoint that you just raised up of pre-civil rights or in the 1900s people saying that different races were inferior i that's obviously an unequal thing so can i just say really quick to how ridiculous it feels to have to say that donald trump's not hitler i just like i know they're like if i were conservative trump supporter listening to us say this to each other, I imagine I'd be like, you guys are insane.

Like, this is such a ridiculous. We are talking about kind of ridiculous things. Right. These are detestable ideas. Yes. I just want to be clear that, like, I recognize having to defend that notion is absurd. That's why I'm sort of fired up about the state of the question you're getting to in a very vague sense is, if somebody is making a political statement, when does it get to the point where it requires a different kind of response? to George Washington in the 1770s because that was a rebellion that led to a new country that's definitively political violence. So, if you accept that, there's going to be a line at some point,

but I think it depends on the definition of what you mean by political violence. Because I think when I read responses from people that are pretty mainstream politicians saying political violence is never justified, I interpret that to mean us disagreeing over either policy or even something as innate and visceral as the direction of the country or what our ideals ought to be that guide our governance. When we disagree with those things, violence isn't the right tool to solve that. If we disagree about whether or not a state has the right to self-determination and governance, like self-determination, that is, if there's a state that so strongly disagrees with some

foundational principles in our constitution, and they think that they are being oppressed by their lack of voice, that sounds like a political rebellion. It sounds like justification for a war, but it's a hypothetical. And it's sort of almost ridiculous to imagine what that hypothetical would be. It's fanciful in a way. So like there are some theoreticals where I guess it could be, but if we're talking about ways to like battle an ideology you disagree with, I think that's what they mean. And it actually kind of goes, I mean, I'm going to add another mine to the minefield if you don't mind. It goes pretty hand in hand with what you were consistently writing about and have been writing about with regards to Israel's war in Gaza, saying that if you want to defeat an idea, you don't do it with bullets and bombs. And if you're Israel and you're trying to combat this idea that you are in apartheid state or that you are unfairly,

or that you need to justify yourself, your right to self-determination to Hamas is the thing that we're talking about here. Then you're not going to convince Gazans that Hamas is wrong by adding more bombs to the landscape. And these are all really, really tough things that we can have really strong disagreements about. But I think these disagreements are things that don't get solved with violence. And I think in this case, if you did imagine that there is a third-party candidate that is actually squinting, you see it, this guy looks like Mussolini to me, is there a way, a reason to want to assassinate him? I could advance the argument that it is counterproductive too, because it just strengthens the resolve of people who follow that idea. cogent, but it's just that you don't want a population that is grown to sort of emotional mob rule deciding when political violence is or isn't appropriate. And so therefore, taking it off the table as an option is always preferable. And if you are someone who's considering political violence, it's worth remembering that it's typically counterproductive. And this latest example of it is maybe going to

end up being one of the best examples we have of that historically, because I mean, the Republican party today is more unified than it was a week ago. Donald Trump's odds of winning in 2024, I believe are better. I think the polling will show that pretty soon. And the entire political climate is worse because of what this kid did. And it's more dangerous. It's more icky. It's it favors the people we can presume he hates, which like I assume he tried to shoot Donald Trump. I think, you know, again, we don't know his motivations. I use the example of, you know, the guy who shot Ronald Reagan wanted to impress Jodie Foster. We have no idea why this kid did this. But if I had to bet, I would bet he did it because he hated Donald Trump and he hated Trump

supporters. I think that's like a reasonable thing to think is a high probability. And if that's the case, then, you know, he did not help the cause that he cared about by doing this. He heard it. the cause that he cared about by doing this. He heard it, which actually is a good segue to the other really big story that I want to talk about today. I just got a push notification while Ari was justifying political violence. No, I'm just kidding. I just got a push notification while Ari was sharing his views about political violence from the New York Times, that Representative Adam Schiff has said that President Biden should end his campaign and drop out of the race, which is a huge deal. Adam Schiff is the most high-profile Democrat to take that stance. No offense to Vermont Senator, but I think Adam Schiff's probably more of a household name.

Sir, how dare you, sir? And he makes 20 House Democrats now who have said that Biden should drop out. And the last time we were on the podcast together was immediately after the debate. And at that time, I think I was 40, 60 that he was going to leave the race. And then by the time the weekend had happened and I had heard, seen everybody's responses to it, I went to more likely than not that he was going to leave the race. And now we're sitting here a couple of weeks later and, um, he's still in it and still promising that he's going to stay in. And I mean, I said this in my take when we covered this question, when we wrote about this in the newsletter and talked about on the podcast, in the most apolitical way possible,

I think Joe Biden should drop out. I'm at this point surprised that it hasn't happened yet because the donor dollars are freezing up. The major donors in one faction of the party have revolted. You have 20 members of Congress, Democratic members of Congress saying he should drop out. some of the most prominent pundits in the country saying he should drop out. The whole Obama crew, like the, you know, the, the Tommy Vedder and John Favreau, whatever those that they're like the, uh, what's their podcast they have. I should know it off the top of my head, but I forget. Um, they're all, they're all, all the, the whole like pro Obama, they were in his crew, worked in his administration. They're all saying it out loud that Biden should drop out.

I don't know how he's staying in this, um, at this point. And I think maybe this starts the floodgates of like another big push now that we're kind of past the assassination stuff or not past it, but a few days away from the news cycle. Yeah. I just don't know how he, I mean, I think he's cooked. I think, you know, I, I, again, I hate to undermine my own position at the top, which is we have three or four months to the election and anything could happen. I guess a better way to say is if the election were today, he would lose. And I think the best argument that he should drop out is actually the latest polling numbers. This is from an average from real, real clear polling.

And this graphic was put together by the New York Times that I'm looking at. If you compare Joe Biden to the Democratic Senate candidate in the five swing states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. I'm just going to read this out to you. In Arizona, Biden is polling 5.7 points behind Trump. The Democratic Senate candidate is polling three points ahead of the Republican Senate candidate. In Michigan, Biden's 1.3 points behind Trump. The Democratic candidate is five points ahead of the Republican candidate. In Nevada, Biden's five points behind. The Democrat Senate candidate is 5.2 points ahead. In Pennsylvania,

Biden's four and a half points behind. The Democratic Senate candidate is 6.2 points ahead. In Wisconsin, Biden is 3.4 points behind. The Democratic Senate candidate is 6.2 points ahead, and Wisconsin Biden is 3.4 points behind. The Democratic Senate candidate is 4.8 points ahead. The Democratic Party is not weak. I've been saying this all year. This is why up until a few weeks ago, I thought Biden was going to win. The Democratic Party is strong in swing states. They're strong across the country. They've been winning election after election since 2016. They've won the vast majority of close contested races. And they are about to weekend at Bernie's, one of the worst candidates that we've had in political history, and drag him across the finish line. And they're going to lose if they do it. And I'm, I'm kind of shocked that this is,

that this is really what the party's deciding to do. I mean, um, I thought Republicans were, were kind of silly for rallying behind Donald Trump in 2024. Not that they had much choice. He, he just smoked everybody in the primary but the party really did basically coalesce around him um i think this is even i mean just based on the polling strategically it's even dumber uh i think trump legitimately was the republican party's best chance of winning maybe nikki haley if you really believe some Trump voters would have come home. But I mean, this is like political malpractice, and I just can't believe it's what they're doing. And speaking of Weekend at Bernie's, in case anybody heard Isaac at the beginning of this response say that he was referencing a Vermont senator, he was talking about Vermont's other Senator, Peter Welch, who called out Joe

Biden to drop out. And yeah, except unlike Weekend at Bernie's now, this sort of like Bernie wagging the dog, I guess you could say, where the animated body of Joe Biden is sort of puppeteering the Democratic Party and saying, I'm not dropping out. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. It's not happening. It's not happening. It's not happening. And the party's like, convey strength, I guess. Let's, uh, let's just do that. And we're going to have people send their delegates votes tech, like using technology electronically ahead of the convention and potentially nominate him and get his delegate delegates wrapped up before we even get to Chicago. And then we could just announce it. And let's, yeah, let's just do that, I suppose. And it really did seem like, I mean, we've been back and forth on this already over the past two weeks since the debate. It seemed like, oh, this has got to be it. And then it seemed like, oh, nothing's going to happen. And then we thought, well, we're hearing reports that there's going to be a push at the end of the week, last week, by Friday, there's going to be a decision made. And then the NATO conference

came and went and seemed like nothing was going to happen. And now we have this news about Adam Schiff. So if the Democrats are trying to convey strength, they're doing a pretty bad job. And I agree with you, the party has conveyed strength with their election results. And clearly the candidate choice here matters. And that's something that we said a lot in 2020 and 2022 about Republicans. So it should be pretty easy for Democrats to try to learn that lesson. lesson. A way to try to distill what you said with all of those numbers that you gave is Pennsylvania is a key state. If Biden wants to win the election, he cannot afford to lose it. And there is a gap of over 10 percentage points between him and the Senate candidate in the state. Writing's on the wall. I agree with you about both aspects of what we're going to be talking about. One is if you're a democratic strategist, you got to try to push as much as possible for a different candidate. And the second thing that I agree with you on is it's really hard

to see the pathway and every day that goes by the pathway for how the Democrats actually make this change narrows. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. 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.

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better than expected in the 2022 midterms with Joe Biden at the head of the party and with Donald Trump as the figurehead of the Republican Party still. The polls are bad. They were bad in France. They've been bad in the 2022 midterms where we heard about a red wave. Conservatives have underperformed over and over again in a lot of big elections in the US recently. Maybe the polls are a little bit of a mirage. If you replace Joe Biden, you step into a huge, high-risk, maybe high-reward, but high-risk scenario where you have no idea who the candidate is that's going to come out on the other side, if you anoint Kamala Harris, given that she's the vice president and the rational person to pick biggest household name, you risk riding your political, betting your political future on a candidate who traditionally

has had some trouble connecting with voters nationally. I'm making no judgment on her as a legislator or what she believes in. I have a lot of independent criticisms and all that about her history and her record and the bills she supports and the bills she opposes. I just mean the politician Kamala Harris. I think you can make a very good argument she's underrated. I think you can make a really good argument she's rated appropriately and that like she has a an authenticity issue when she does her national stump speech stuff and she would get obliterated by trump that could be true i don't know but i think that's a good argument about keeping biden in the race and if you go to the open convention, then, you know, it's warfare, basically. It's intraparty warfare. It would take an incredible amount of tact and grace for the

party to suss out a candidate in an open convention without kind of eating each other alive. And, you know, this is the, just bookmark it, file it away, DNC. This is what happens when you don't run a real primary, when you don't test Biden's strength, you know, as a as a second term president. And now there's all this nonsense that they're going to try and set up this virtual delegate voting to basically ram Biden in before any real opposition can kind of coalesce and force him out. I mean, this is not like a democracy. This is, you know, the party that's so worried about democracy is presently forcing a candidate down everyone's throat that,

you know, like 50% at least of their own voters based on the polling don't want. So it's a really bad position for them to be in. That is like, I think the best argument for keep, those are the best arguments for keeping Biden. I'm not convinced by them wholly. I think the Biden's biggest weakness is obviously his ability to communicate his agenda. It's the sort of mental acuity, age, fitness questions. And time doesn't go backwards. I think those things are correlated to his age. He gets older every day. I do not think they're going to get better in the next three or four months. I saw him. He just did basically a friendly YouTube interview with this guy who I think is associated with BET's network.

It was on their YouTube channel. It's like a 25-minute sit down. And he's not capable, man. I don't know how else to say it. Like he, he can't answer a lot of softball questions in a coherent way. And before you know it, he's talking about, he's like the best, he's a Zionist, but also the best thing that's ever happened to Palestinians. And he's just like riffing on some stuff that is not going to land well with a lot of voters. So I'm pretty convinced that he should step down. Again, we're sitting here recording this Wednesday afternoon.

The Adam Schiff news is intriguing to me. I think that's going to open up a new wave, a new push. But if he's going to do it, he has to do it soon. Similar to how it's not going to get better every day, the odds of him stepping down go down every day that passes without him making a decision. And I think for his legacy and the good of the party and the good of democracy and the good of the country, I think he should just say, I'm not up for it and walk away. I hope he does. But I'm really, really, really genuinely not sure what's going to happen.

I think it's basically a coin flip at this point. You're kind of ending with the same point that I ended with, which was every day that goes by, it becomes harder to see the path for how that happens. And the ball's mostly in his court. I think before we head home to our last stretch here, I just want to add, to steel man the counterpoint to something that you made about how it's not democratic to stick by this choice is the main argument Biden has been making is, I was elected. We had a primary. The primary chose me. I have the delegates. This is what the party chose.

And that's the response that he has. I think that ends up being more of an indictment of the lack of democracy inherent in our primary systems, in my opinion. And it's part of why I've pitched you behind the scenes, and now I'm doing so in a very slimy way semi-publicly to let me write a Friday piece about the way that the primary process needs to change, because heck, it's got to change. Yeah, no, consider you invited to explore that. I mean, I think it's something I have a good deal of thoughts on too and maddie iglesias actually just had a piece in his newsletter um yeah right which i kind of oscillate between really loving and hating he's he's a difficult writer for me uh i i just i don't know i just like sometimes i'm like oh this is interesting and made me think

and challenge some of my views because he's you, you know, he's not, he's very clearly more progressive, more liberal. And then sometimes I read his characterizations of his own views that I find hard to believe. But this newsletter that he wrote was pretty interesting. It was, I think it was a reader mailbag where he answered some questions and he basically made the argument that a lot of the proposed changes to our primary system would actually make it worse, which is counter to what I think.

And so it challenged me in that way. All right, well, with that, we're coming up on an hour here. We should probably pivot to our favorite part of the podcast, which is our grievances for the week. The airing of grievances. You got the hen, the chicken, and the rooster. The rooster goes with the chicken.

So who's having sex with the hen? All right. So maybe you want to take the reins first, Ari? Yeah, I have a very small and niche grievance, which is that

I kind of think that we deserve better movies than what we've been getting. This is something that... Oh, yes! Inject this grievance into my veins man you know i think we have lived recently through one of the best eras of television not too long ago and i think after the pandemic sometime maybe with the marvelification of mainstream movies whatever you want to call it the end of the blockbuster era,

people are just kind of, it seems like producers are looking for only big blockbusters. And that's a take that's been made a lot. That's a little different than my take here that I'm making. That's something people have talked about a lot. I think we haven't had a good comedy. People just can't make good comedy movies, haven't had a good comedy. People just can't make good comedy movies, it seems like. I have a friend of mine, whom I've not spoken to in a good bit of time, but somebody I was familiar with more so in college, who's an independent filmmaker. He makes really good stuff, and he's really funny, and his movies do not get enough attention. His name's Jim Cummings. He's great. And he's a really good dramatic and comedic writer and performer and director. And we don't know about him. The comedies we get are like cartoonishly oafish,

lowest common denominator, John Cena stuff. And I think the reason is that we're trying to appeal to the Chinese market. I think that's what's happening, that it's trying to get into international markets and comedy doesn't work across cultural divides. And wow, blaming it on China. Yeah, man, I'm blaming it on kowtowing to China on just like trying to suck up those dollars. And it just doesn't work, man. I can't remember the last good comedy that I saw in theaters. I have to get independent comedies online.

I can't either now that you've said that. That's a really good point. I am bracking my brain right now. I'm trying to think of the last... You know what i did like even the just the last thing like the last show or even that was new that made me laugh and you know what it was it was uh it was shane gillis's new show on netflix which was actually pretty funny um his comedy's obviously pretty on the line for a lot of people but um i thought it was good. I really genuinely can't think of a funny movie that I saw in theaters in the last few years. So totally rubber stamp that grievance. Also, just like, there's just so few original movies these days. It's all just sequels. It's just like remakes, franchises, sequels, which is really

tough for me. I do think there are good independent movies that aren't terribly hard to find. Katie, my wife, and I just watched a small niche horror film called No One Will Save You that had five words spoken throughout the whole thing. It was really, really good and kind of fun and weird. And there are movies like that. Like my friend Jim starred in a movie called Last Stop in Yuma County, which is a great watch. They're like big comedies, they're cultural events. And, you know, a lot of people blame that on sensitivity and cancer culture, blah, blah, blah. And I think that's probably a bit of it. But I think a lot of it's just like producers don't know what's funny and they're afraid to invest in taking a risk on something they don't understand. And a lot of comedy only sort of works once you get the finished piece.

I'm sure there's more to it, too. And I welcome other people to support me, but not to disagree with me. I think there's plenty of other stuff that we can disagree with today. We had a pretty touchy podcast. Maybe this is the day to like not write in. I don't know. That's fine too. Yeah. Keep your opinions to yourself today. Speaking of which, yeah. All right. My, my grievance for today is actually directly related to Tangle. And I was trying to think of the most simple way to say it, and I guess it's this.

My grievance is that everybody who listens to or reads Tangle hasn't listened to or read everything I've ever published. Reasonable grievance. And that's what sucks. Yeah. A totally unreasonable position for me to take, but manifests itself in ways that is so frustrating, which is basically that the most common thing I ever get from people is sort of the, oh, you criticized JD Vance for being inexperienced. Well, what'd you say about Kamala Harris? And I'm like, I literally wrote a 4,000 word piece about how her vice presidency was a joke, but they haven't read it. So it's just like, I'm a biased lib and whatever. And it cuts the other way too. I give Donald Trump credit, reining in some trade loopholes with China or something. And then people are like, well, have you ever like written anything about what Joe Biden's done on trade? I'm like, yeah, actually I have, I've written a lot about the positives of, you know, him bringing jobs back to the U S and manufacturing work and all this stuff. manufacturing work and all this stuff. And so it's just this never-ending carousel of explaining to people or sending people pieces or podcast appearances or whatever that I've done,

where I've articulated the very view that they're telling me as if I'm an idiot for not believing that view. And I'm like, actually, we agree. And you're angry at me because, you know, you read one thing and you made a bunch of assumptions based on this one thing. And I think the thing that's most grievancy about it is that I know that my position's untenable. Like I, I have writers and news outlets that I'm fans of, and I don't read everything that they put out. I don't keep up with every, you know, I don't, I haven't put to memory every sentence that they've ever published. So like, it's absurd of me to expect that of our readers. And I know it's unreasonable, but at the same time, it's so deflated. Like it makes me,

there are days where it's like the thing that makes me not want to do the work where I'm just like, all right, I get, forget it. I quit. Like I'm done. I just like, like if I get one more email about somebody like asking if I've like, I'm going to bother mentioning Donald Trump's role in January 6th or something. I'm just like, mentioning Donald Trump's role in January 6th or something. I'm just like, I wrote 10 editions about that, you know? And then at the same time, getting people upset who are like, you implied that Donald Trump was responsible for January 6th. And I'm like, actually, I've written a lot about how like, you know, I think he played a role, but I don't blame him for what happened on that. It's just like, anyway, it hit a boiling point for me this

week with the JD Vance stuff, but it started on Monday because we did the assassination coverage and I got it from both sides about, you know, you're like liberals writing in saying it is absurd that you are characterizing, you know, the liberal rhetoric with an equal, you know, both sides in it with Republicans, like having guns and campaign ads, like clearly what Republicans are doing is worse. And then a bunch of conservatives writing in saying the day, two days after Donald Trump was almost shot in the head by the people, them, who have tried to put him in jail and lied about him for eight years, whatever it is, you blame the victim for what has happened by criticizing Trump's rhetoric. And it just makes you want to throw

your hands up and quit. So I usually try and make these grievances, nothing to do with politics or my work, but this is truly genuinely the thing that's just eating at me today. And if you're listening to this, I guess my, my request is just, I don't just like Google it or don't assume the worst immediately just ask or ask. Yeah. Yeah. Just ask. That's a good, that's a good way to handle it just say hey have you written anything about x y or z or you know do you believe x y or z before assuming the worst of me and accusing me of being a you know hack or whatever so um yeah let me add a little bit of kindling to your fire real quick as you wrap us up. This is maybe just a little hate mail corner. So this is a piece of feedback that we got to our Sunday email, which came out Sunday at 9am. So only hours after the assassination attempt that said this is the entirety of the email. No goddamn mention of the assassination attempt on Trump. Piss poor. You're just as pathetic as establishment media to response to our Sunday.

Yeah. God, dude. Uh, that's so tough. Yeah. Yeah. The Sunday email that Ari sends out, um, 24 hours later, we publish a 5,000 word piece on it, but, um, that person probably unsubscribed before it came out. Yeah, be patient, my friends. All right, we got to get out of here. Ari, good to have you back in the saddle, man. Nice to be back. Yeah, we'll do it again as soon as possible, I presume. Everybody else, stay cool.

Turn the rhetoric down. It's bad for the country. Take care. Peace. Our podcast is written by me isaac saul and edited and engineered by john wall the script is edited by our managing editor ari weitzman will k back belly 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 Diet75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website.