The Adam Friedland Show (Cumtown) - OLIVIA NUZZI Talks Trump, Scandal, American Canto

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

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And that's why I'm fucking up now. I don't know. I'm just asking you. Maybe. Do you think you have to catch up on like 24 now? Because you were chilling with Trump the whole time? No, I think I'm good on like fucking up for now. I don't know.

I don't know. What do you guys get up to? Zach? What's like the vibe over there? Back here? Yeah, no, no. I mean like for what you do. Like what kind of stuff do you do?

Okay What's that? He plays guitar. Are you going to learn guitar? I really want to get my pilot's license. Oh, pilot's license? Yeah. That's my goal for 26.

That'd be cool. Yeah. Welcome back to the Adam Friedland Show. Oh, I'm Adam Friedland. I'm Adam Friedland. I'm going back on the road with Caleb Pitts. Emerald City Comedy Club, Seattle, Washington, January 22nd to 24th. We're doing five shows. Get tickets at emeraldcitycomody.com. There's also a link in the description. And guys, tickets are going fast. They will all be selling out because I'm fucking famous. And Caleb's famous, Caleb's famous, we're, it was that.

Also, as always, I want to thank our members here on YouTube.com. You make the show possible. Guys, seriously, you have supported us all year and we could have done it out without you guys. If you're not a member and you'd like to join, members get access to all the episodes

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Show. Check it out. Holiday season. Presence. Presence. Get your dad, a hat. I think people's parents might have seen some of the show. My guest this week is Olivia Nuzzi.

Nuzzi, if you're not familiar, made a name for herself as a course. correspondent for The Daily Beast, where she covered Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and subsequently, she was hired in 2017 by New York Magazine, where she published various well-regarded profiles on the present. In September 2024, news surfaced that she had been engaged in an inappropriate relationship with current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., that was described as emotional and digital in nature. She was subsequently fired from New York Magazine, and has just released a book about the experience American Canto,

which has been overshadowed by a five-part substack published by her ex, Ryan Lizza, alleging that Nuzzi had acted as a de facto political operative for Kennedy, among other accusations. Guys, the lesson here is that journalists should not be famous, and I stand by that statement, and I will die on that hill. So let's get to it. Please enjoy my interview. I don't know why I hit her.

So let's get to it. Please enjoy my interview with Olivia Nuzzi. Scandalous. I think it was. I hope you like it. I hope it. Was it good? You guys liked it? I wonder if people are good. Yeah, okay. All right, good. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome journalists, author, author of the new book on Simon & Schuster, American Canto. Olivia Nutsi. Olivia. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you for doing this show. Thank you. You have a nice outfit.

She didn't want to do the walkout and... Well, you asked. You know, you're a good guest. I'm, it's my house and you have to... It's like I'm being like the guy who asked his friend to come over and play video games and then he doesn't let him play. Is that a type of guy? No, I'm sorry.

I'm scared, right? Why am I scared right? I don't know. Why are you scared? I don't know, because I'm like, because you, what, you yelled at me about, what was that the Hitler thing we were fighting about on the phone? You just kept talking. over me. No, you said something insane

and that... Oh, yeah. I said, you said that Donald Trump is selfish. Are you afraid of women? When I get yelled at by them, I am, yeah. I don't want to get yelled at. I wouldn't say it yelled. I don't know what's... In that situation, I'm just constantly like, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. It feels terrible. Anyway, I've heard your name a bunch. You're a journalist. You've interviewed the president multiple times. You're attached to various political campaigns. You've made a name for yourself very young and you've recently just published this book. How does it feel to get it out?

Fine. Fine. Yeah. Yeah, I felt like I was sort of, I started covering Donald Trump in 2015. I guess I interviewed him for the first time in 2014. And I didn't know that when I signed up to do that, then it was going to become a whole era, right? You caught a big one. Yeah.

And so I felt like this book was sort of completing this thought. completing this thought that I had begun forming 10 years earlier you know correct me if I'm wrong like journalists you guys all hate each other is that the deal is it a band of brothers or is it I don't hate anyone I think that like what one thing that kind of I've been I'm resistant to is that I just had a sports journalist on and he said that we're a pundit actually he's not a journalist but he said that the I was like is it kind of like is sports coverage kind of celebrity gossip at this point

You know, and he said some of the things that get the highest engagement isn't even related to the players. It's it's one pundit being mad at another pundit, right? And that's kind of become the news, where it's like the people covering the news kind of are the, like stars, if anything. You know, is it, am I off there? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of manufactured public drama. Yeah. And there are a lot of people who are sort of operating in bad faith in public spaces who are just, just trying to perpetuate it for, you know, personal gain of some kind.

But if you see two journalists popping off against each other, if you see our girl, if you see our girl Taylor just going out another one, people are like, people are like locked in on it, you know, on Twitter or something, you know? Yeah, although, I mean, I think going back, I mean, it's not a new thing for journalists to have, like, sort of a personal brand, right? I don't know. I mean, Edward R. Murrow, like, his most famous... Cigarette.

His most famous moments were often when he deviated from the straight news stuff, and he expressed an opinion, right? And it expressed something of his character. So I don't think it's totally new. It's just a new medium. Well, that was new in that era, right? In this day and age, it feels like kind of more. And I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but people are up front about...

Well, it's a bad thing, probably. Yeah. But I think just there's always going to be sort of friction when different practices. are evolving on different mediums. Yeah. One thing I know is like when I've read your profiles and they're like I really loved them. But like the way you write, in your writing, it does track like your, like it could be about Rihanna or something. Politicians are our celebrities now, you know?

It's about character, right? Like what I'm always interested in is understanding the human beings that I'm writing about, right? And for most of the last 10 years covering kind of Trump's rise to dominance. You caught a big one. That's been about just understanding the people like seeking or influencing or clinging to power. And when a character wants something, you know, it's a good engine for a story and a good way to sort of see their character brought into sharp relief. Yeah, I mean, he's the most fascinating probably public character. He's very simple.

I mean, he's very simple. And sometimes I've had the experience talking to him where I'll be asking a question. and something about his psychology. And I'll see him start to lose interest in the question. I realize, like, oh, I've thought about your inner life so much more than you ever have. I love the parts in the book where you write about Trump. Thanks.

They're, like, so three-dimensional. And he is, he is as a character just like... He's fascinating. He's fascinating. Yeah, he's singular. He's strange. I mean, there's this one exchange with him. I think it's in the book where he was talking about how he's not weird.

He's not a weird person. Yeah, and I was like, okay, well, are you? would you say you're unusual? And he's, okay, yeah, I'm unusual, but I'm not weird. I'm the most not weird person. I guess there's a connotation more of, unusual. You could be like the cool art kid. Unusual is more neutral, yeah, than weird is more of an accusation, I think. You're from New Jersey. You know, the thing of your book is like kind of like a shoebox of photographs, right? They're like just little pictures, I feel like. Is that, is that actor?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not like linear as much as like kind of images in different times. Yeah, I was trying to just sort of replicate the experience of the last 10 years and with my, you know, proximity as this like official witness to Trump's rise, what it feels like. You were remarkably successful and remarkably young, right? And unsuccessful. No, I mean, like you were like kind of in the, you know, press pool in the West Wing, like, at like, what, 22, 23? Something like that. Is that, was that stressful at any point? You just took it in It was just, it's easy when you have a mission, like when you, I think there's like a, the stakes of politics are inherent when you're covering it. You never have to wonder if what you're doing matters, because it obviously does.

And that's like a great gift in some ways, right? Because I think, I think you grew up fast, it feels, it seems. Like you became an adult quickly. Well, but he was, it was his first time there as well, right? But he's the president. But there was something sort of, and I felt like I understood. something of his psychology because he grew up in Queens, right? He grew up in Jamaica States. I grew up in New Jersey. But when you're on the periphery, when you're

outer borough trash, when you're on the periphery, when you're on the periphery. He's real estate too. It's disgusting. You're always looking at the center of Manhattan and like his whole life seemed to be about getting there and then you know ascending to whatever Midtown Heights he wanted to ascend. Honestly good for him. But it's the personality of a striver in him, right? And like, um, this kind of resentment that he always had about Manhattan. It was interesting to watch it transported to politics.

One thing I thought was an interesting thing from the book is that you associated New York City from a very young age with Trump. Did you feel like you knew him kind of like, you known him for a while or something? He was just like this great tabloid villain of my childhood, right? And then The Apprentice premiered when I think

I was in like the third or fourth grade. He was always in the papers that my father always brought home New York Post in the Daily News. He's what? He's an intellectual. I mean, he worked for the sanitation department in New York. And I just was used to seeing him every place. And I don't remember a time when I was not aware of him.

Yeah. Right? Like, he's in Home Alone, too. He's in Home Alone too. And there's this scene in the book where I just, I remember being in my dad's truck on Central Park South. I have an exit. And him pointing out that Donald Trump's town car was in front of us.

And I was like six years old, I think. And I knew exactly who he was. I thought he was scary because he was a beauty pageant guy. And I thought beauty pageants were scary. Here's an interesting thing, and this is related to you. It's the toughest interview. Who, Trump? Yeah.

You possessing that ability, just, it's the hardest difficulty setting. And being able to do that from a very young age, did you feel like you became an adult early? I guess, you know, I was a child of alcoholics. It's like a pretty typical response. You have to raise them? response, yeah, not successfully, but it's a pretty typical response to, like, try really hard to appear collected, you know. Yeah, could you just like tell us more about how you just instantly knew how to approach to that subject?

I didn't. He's really, he's a domineering force. I mean, he's sort of like the great force around which we're all oriented, right, in some sense in the culture for the last 10 years, increasingly so. you have to be very like active in an interview with him you have to it's like dealing with a wild animal you know like so you have to just he's sort of assessing in real time like what he thinks that you want or what you need yeah and so he's trying to manipulate you how do you how do you like disarm that you don't really you just have to like meet him on his level and depending I mean sometimes he's just in a bad mood and but if you go in there thinking I would die that you're gonna no he's not I mean, he's not scary. Do you think Trump would like me?

Do I think he would like you? I know. I mean, I'm not politically. I don't like him what he's doing, but you want Trump to like you. You want him to like you. If Trump was like, like the way he likes Zoron. I mean, he was just like in love with,

he was like, oh, my, Zoran, don't ask that question. They're fucking with you. That was incredible. But I thought it was sort of like, it was a perfect example of how he just, he orientes himself around power to him. He responds to energy. And he sort of.

He's sort of like just this wild animal who synthesizes other people's energy and he's very for someone who's so egocentric and so unconcerned with others. He's really interested in others and he's really sensitive to kind of what other people are putting down. He is. Not sensitive in the sense that he has any empathy, right, but sensitive like to... Figuring out someone. Yeah, he feel, I mean, it's like why he has to do the rallies and why like during COVID, for instance,

when he couldn't do the rallies. It contributed to what was described to me by people close to him as sort of his version of depression. And it was... He missed the shows? Well, it was like he was able to... Yeah, he missed the shows. And he's able...

He kind of... He's energized by other people's energy. He's the type of extrovert who just... You know, he requires other people's energy. He feeds off of it in a kind of vampiric way. I mean, you've probably been to a Trump rally, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, they have so much fun at that.

They love it. Do the people there, like, ah. No, not really. It's interesting. It's better than the Democrat ones. Well, they don't try to, they seldom try to replicate anything like that, right? So that made it hard in, like, 2016, for instance, to really know how much value to place in the Trump rallies, right? Especially when it wasn't being reflected in polling, because it's like, she's not trying,

and Hillary Clinton's not trying to host an event at a monster truck arena. so there's nothing really to compare it to. They're just wheel out like Oprah and be like the way of it. I also just think part of it's just kind of about loneliness and boomer loneliness where it's like there is just he's, the show is rolling through town and maybe you're in like Biloxi, Mississippi or something or somewhere in Oklahoma and like you

there are not that many I think opportunities to hang out and tailgate and listen to Elton John and Stones and Poverati and And YMCA. And Shell with, it's funny, for a long time, the song at the end of those rallies was not, the YMCA was, you can't always get what you want, which I thought was very funny. When he came out on election night, right, didn't he come out to the, I remember, I remember, it was the, like, 2016, didn't he come out to, you mean?

Yeah, so you can't always get what you want. No, I don't think so. And I remember his fat body and silhouette, like. Yeah, like a hitchcock. I mean, it was one of the most insane things I've ever seen my entire life. But I talked to him about this, and it's in the book where I, that night, when he came out, we were in Midtown, I think, like the Hilton or something, and he looked, there's a scene in the movie The Candidate with Robert Redford that I think is about Jerry Brown, but he

wins and he has this dumbfounded, I mean, he just looks terrified, right? And he says to his aid, what do we do now? And he looks really scared, and then the crowd sort of comes between them. and while he looks helplessly. And I brought this up to Trump, and I was like, oh, you reminded me of Redford. And he was like, he got very, like. He was a fellow blonde.

He was thrilled to hear that I reminded him of Redford, and I was like, you looked scared. And he went like, you know, kind of sank back into this. He liked that you were blonde, do you think? No, no, I was telling him that he looked like Redford. But was that part of the bond? The bond. Yeah, I mean, a blonde.

Because, I mean, more, I mean, he. It's like, when I say another Jew, I'm like, oh. We're both blonde. Yeah, he likes it. He's like, oh, there's another blonde. person here? It seemed more about New York. Like, I think he really missed New York when he was in the White House and felt sort of, you know, like he was in an alien space. I made a joke to Zoran where I was like, do you think the hang is so bad that like a cool guy came to hang out with him

and then he like just, and it kind of now seems like that's kind of a real thing. I think so, and I think he's like homesick for New York. Does he have no friends? I don't think he has friends in the manner that like you might think of a friend i think there there are people that he he doesn't like hang really you know yeah well it's because i it's like everyone's been he's like he's like it's a very you guys are very similar yeah i was thinking that yeah yeah um you have a number yes do you want to call him no coobee i don't care i do this joke every episode i'm really If this is the first one that actually happens, Olivia. You should call him.

What can you do? I don't want to call him. I don't want to call him. He's not going to pick up for me. Does he pick up? Oh, you said in the book, he picks up every call. Get my phone. Get my phone right now.

This is amazing. No, it's in the, oh my God. Does he pick up every call? I mean, I, in my experience. What if he's like, hello, Adam? Oh my God. Hi, Nate. Nate, may I please have my phone?

Wait, you want to say, you want to just say, you want to say the number so our listeners could also give him a call? No, well, that's, I don't want, oh, I don't really want to give you this number. I feel like that's not responsible. Okay, so I'll call from your number. I have my phone. Where is it?

Oh, it's behind you, I think. So you also have Trump somewhere? No, I don't want to call from my phone. I want to talk to him. I'm not going to pray call Trump when I'm just hanging out with my voice. Actually, I don't even care. Yeah, you can have it. Is this cool?

This is cool? This is awesome. Caleb, why don't you look more excited? I need you guys. This is the best thing ever. This is the best thing of my entire life. Whoa, dude. Oh, no, you have pink.

What? Nothing. All right. Oh, Jesus Christ. What do I say to Trump? Hello. Hey, yeah, yeah. No, I should give him a piece of my mind after all this.

All right, wait, can I have your phone? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Can you unlock it? Oh, yeah, yeah. Do you think maybe he saw the Zora on episode? He might know. Should I ask him up?

I don't know. Is it ringing? No, I can call yet. Your phone's about to die, by the way. That's okay. I'm mad. You're on 4%. You are on 4%.

That's enough for a Trump. Okay. Wow. No, that's not his actual number. That's the number he got? I don't know what's to say. Can I leave you have a message? Yeah.

Okay. I'll probably go back. I just want to. Your call has been forwarded to voicemail. Classic him. The person you're trying to reach is not available. At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up.

Hello, Mr. President. It's Adam Friedland. host in New York City. I would love to extend an invitation for you to come on the show. I just had Zora Mandani, who I know you're quite fond of, and he's a kind of intellectual style of the vade of Dick Cavett talk show show. We also had Stiney, who I think you're friends with as well from the Nelson Boys. All right, thanks a lot. Mr. President, it's a great honor, and I hope you're having a good day. You think it was okay?

Do you think that was good? I dropped Steiney. I also dropped Steiney. He might know that. Why the hell was Trump on fucking Steinies podcast? Anyway, okay. So, I guess like, um... I feel like I'm flying.

Did you... When did you first want to be a writer, you know? I always wrote. I always... I always, um... I was always writing when I was a kid. But I loved comedy. You did?

Like what? I loved Carlin, Pryor, Chappelle, Jeanine Grofflow. Casey calls back. And your book is inspired by the divine comedy. It's sort of in the structure a little bit. Were you always a big John Waters fan? I do love John Waters. You guys just wake up a little bit, guys.

I love Jones. I love John Moore. There's the last interview of the year. This is my six in two weeks. Olivia's, Olivia, let's make her feel like the biggest star. You are the biggest star of the world. You're our favorite. This is the best interview I've ever done.

You always like comedy. Do you write comedy? The first pieces I wrote were like satire. Do you have it yet? Somewhere, probably, yeah. Like what, do you remember? They were really bad satire. Like, what, yeah, like I wrote, I got,

The first, like, letter to the editor that I was the subject of, I was writing for an all-weekly in New Jersey, and they published this letter to the editor that was like, what does Olivia do for America? And I was really upset because I was like, but I write here, like, why are you publishing hate mail against me? I didn't realize how it worked. But it was, I wrote some really terrible thing. It was about the border wall, and it was like, if Republicans are so serious about the border wall, they should send, like, the boy. scouts to go form a human fence why I don't know it was like 17 oh yeah you're 17 with the border wall we've all I mean we've had the border wall oh yeah I guess so I associated with Trump yeah I mean it's early 1900s really it's like a

USDA how could I forget yeah how could you forget yeah um this defining a feature of the country but um and then you know the border wall the border wall itself didn't really become like the point of immigration debates on the left and right until the Obama administration before that it was really about like it wasn't so much about the interior of the country like well it was a bipartisan issue to fund the board wall right 2006 like Hillary Clinton Barack Obama all sorts of Democrats funded voted to fund the border wall construction so it was not like this super contested issue for a long time should I call Trump back maybe I forgot I feel like in there is

I'm just thinking about this. I'm just thinking about this whole. Yeah. How's he? You just like, you just know that here's the thing that's fascinating. You write critically, right? And you still maintain his trust. He doesn't read. He, well, oh.

But he doesn't, he hates the media. Well, he's been mean to me. What's the meanest thing he said to you? He said it was dumb as rocks. Oh, that's all right. He said I was, a little derivative. Yeah, I like, I thought that was funny. He said I was a whack job.

A whack job? Yeah. That's pretty funny. Pretty good. Yeah. He called me. That's so trump to say whack job. Yeah.

Do you ever call you a dog? Because he always calls women dogs. He also says people like have choked like a dog, like Mitt Romney, choked like a dog. Like a dog. He hates animals. Yeah, yeah. And so when he talks, so when he compares people to animals, it's usually just to humanize them in some way, right? To dog human, to dog them, yeah.

Well, Baghdadi, right? When he killed that terrorist. He said he died like a dog. Right. I don't know what that means exactly. To die like a dog. Yeah. What does that mean at all?

I don't know. So do you remember what spurned his anger at you? Sometimes it's a question he doesn't like. Or if he's failing in his efforts to sort of manipulate you in real time, he gets agitated. Who does he manipulate? Who's like... He's very, like, he's charming, right? And he's, like, a good hang in a way.

Like, you can talk to, he wants to talk about, he likes to gossip. Yeah. He loves talking about sort of like, I got a good gossip for him. I should call him back. Yeah, what's the gossip? I'm like, I can't say, I'm a celebrity. You want to talk to him in private? Yeah, I heard that, I just heard that Marilyn Manson got one of his ribs removed.

Oh, yeah. Was that before, after the Richard Gear thing? I heard that Richard Gear. Well, the first one was Rod Stewart was OD'd, and then he got his stomach pumped, and there was two leaders of semen in it, which is so much comb. I mean, it's like an insane amount of comb. Like, take us through his charm a little bit more,

because I think it's just fascinating to hear it. I mean, he's just, he's a performer, right? And so he's always trying to get people to like him. He wants to be liked. I mean, we all want to be liked, right? But with him, it's amplified. And even, like, I think the defining trait of a politician, and I think I write something about this in the book,

is just like a politician is a man who wants to be loved more than other men, and through his pursuit reveals why he cannot love himself, right? And all politicians really want to be loved. But with Trump, it's like the added sort of Elvis quality to him, right, or Liberace quality, the Vegas in him, if you will. Well, he's a television star, too. He's in show business. He's way more that than, like, people think he's like Goldman Sachs.

He's like from New York City real estate and he kind of fucked it up. And not even really, right? It's like a marketing exercise. And, like, he wanted to be in show business. He wanted to be in the movie business. He wanted to go to film school. And I feel like the great lesson, one of the great lessons of the 20th century is if someone wants to be an artist, you have to let them because the consequences are dire.

Oh, okay, because of, yeah, because of... The Hitler. Oh, Hitler. I wasn't thinking of that. Who were you thinking of? I was thinking of George Bush. Oh, also that, yeah. Yeah, if we let him paint.

I love his paintings. The early ones are good. I prefer his earlier work. Yeah, the naive ones. Yeah, where he's trying to wash off his sins. Yeah, he's just haunted by the ghosts of the dead Iraqi. One million or whatever. You kind of your first, I don't know, arrival was you were an internet with a friend of the show.

I would say best friend. Would you guys say best friend of the show? Best friend of the show, Anthony Wheatier's campaign. And then you left the campaign, you wrote, it became a front page story. Is that Trump? No, Gmail. Okay, I'm sorry. So nervous!

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then the New York Daily News, were you recruited from there to become a journalist or did it feel like, oh, now I'm in the game or like, when did it dawn on you that you were like, I'm going to be a journalist? You know, I was writing for this all weekly when I was a teenager in New Jersey and I ran out of opinions really quickly because I didn't know anything, you know.

Garbage weekly. Yeah. Yeah. And then... And then... started like performing acts of journalism and I realized that you could do that you could just ask anyone anything and that there's a sort of like mechanism for my curiosity and like a way to utilize that and it was justified because it's in

the public interest like that was fascinating to me and I was I was interviewing I think it was Rush Holt who's a congressman and rocket scientist from New Jersey he was running for the Senate in a special election to fill the seat vacated by the death of Frank Lawtonberg. And I had all these questions written out, and I was, like, really nervous. And then we started talking. And I just threw the questions out because I realized, like, you have to, if you're in the conversation, you don't need to be nervous.

You don't need, you're right. No, I just, I don't know. Is there an overlap between, like, having a theatrical training early on? Like, is there a performance aspect of journalism? Maybe. I mean, well, certainly, like, going on TV and doing stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, probably. And understanding Trump, I think it was helpful, too.

Yeah, because he's also a show, razzle-dazzle showman. Yeah, I mean, there's someone, like a longtime aide of his, in American Canto, says, you know, in another era, if he was better looking, he probably would have loved to have been, like, a Carrie Grant or something like that. I remember you say that, but also he is way hot. He's one of the hottest. You think he's hot, yeah. F.S. He hasn't called. Okay, that was the bank.

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Lucy products are only for adults of legal age and every order is age verified warning this product contains nicotine nicotine is an addictive chemical guys that's the first ad I've ever read straight through your first place on the Chrissy campaign for with the Daily Beast were you at those like primaries in 2016 because that was the best show of all time the 2016 primary yeah well the debates yeah I guess like what was it like just seeing the R&C crumbling because He was a virus on the system, right? They kept trying to, like, there was one week

where, like, lying Ted would try to take him down. And one week where they were like, Marco, you got to do it this week. And he was just, you just saw this guy like, like, Agent Smith. He was, like, growing in power. Like, it's like, it's a moment of American history that you had a, like, firsthand account of. I mean, there was, in some sense, you could look at it. Like, there was a real democratic process on the right that year,

whereas I think there are a lot of people who, for good reason, feel that there wasn't on the Democratic side, right, that Bernie Sanders maybe would have been the nominee, had the party not put its thumb on the scale. I think she persisted, actually. Yeah, nevertheless. But I, Trump, it was like nobody, there were no experts available to help contextualize what was happening. Because I remember it was my first election year that I was covering, and I would talk to, I don't know, a political scientist or somebody to try and help me understand it, and they would tell me something like, you know, oh, well, people lie to pollsters or people get serious once it really becomes time to vote, and I would go on, like, television and say this, and, you know, I talked to so-and-so, who said this. And as it turned out, there were no experts. Like, there are no political science as a contradiction in terms, and, like, politics is extraordinarily emotional.

and American politics and domestic politics is extraordinarily emotional and he was manipulating that successfully. I mean he knew how to do TV. Have you ever gone back and re-watched some of those debates? Yeah, they're the best. I watch all the time. But you can't, your eyes just go to his center, right?

Like, he is the point. And they're all, they look ridiculous. You remember they were telling the crowds not to cheer and they just couldn't help. They were like, ah! Yeah. Like, when did it dawn on you that this, like, this could be the President of the United States? I remember I had, you know, it was hard because I was mostly covering him. So it's not like I was at every Hillary Clinton event or, you know,

on the trail with her constantly. And I was mostly just trying to understand his supporters and also just trying to understand the kind of machinations of our election system for the first time, formally, professionally. At 22? 21? I think I was 22. Yeah. Yeah, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so I had a feeling, but, like, I remember discussing it with two friends in mine that we all had feelings that he would win, but you can't exactly, like, go report. Like, according to my female intuition, he's going to win. Yeah. But there was no way to, you know, to corroborate that with any data. Yeah. So.

Yeah. And it was also hard to, like, you know, it was hard to know, like, how much value do you put on the sides of his crowds? Are they just there because they're curious and it's kind of like the circus is rolling down and it's something to do? Or are they there because it's an actual expression of how they're going to vote? And it's not as though he won the popular vote, right? Right, and it was razor thin. Yeah, so in the end, it's like this was this marginal victory. Yeah.

And I don't, I still don't really know how much, when you look back at just like the visuals of it, like Hillary Clinton in like a half full high school auditorium versus Donald Trump selling out some big stadium. That wasn't really a reflection of what ended up happening, right? Right. So people were just like, oh, we'll vote for her. Yeah, fine, I'll vote for Hillary. I'm not going to go to the thing, though. Yeah, I'm not going to go to the high school and stand there and listen to her, but I'll vote for her fine.

Well, it's not, like, the types of people who usually show up to political events are unusual. Yeah. Right. They're unusually engaged and, or they are unusually, like, not busy in the middle of a workday. Right. Like, so it's not, you don't really get a great sense of what, like, a quote-unquote average voter thinks by going to, I don't know, a rally in Des Moines or names or something. There's a really funny thing I pulled from the book is, in the Oval Office, you're handed a page with 58 bullet points, typed in large font. and at the top, underlined in bold, all caps, it said, Trump administration accomplishments. Yeah.

Do you still have that piece of paper? Do I, I don't know. My impression of that first term was like he was just, like you kind of, what you illustrated earlier, it was like he's the loneliest man in the world. Because it wasn't, like, classy to work for Trump. It was a lot of people that hadn't been there before either, right? Yeah.

And then there were sort of, like, people who had been in politics, but probably would not have gotten the opportunity to work in the White House. Because most people who work in politics, that's the goal, right? And then you work in the White House for a few years, and your stock rises and you can sort of, you can command much more in the private sector.

It's like this totally cynical, gross. You get a revolving door. Yeah, yeah. But it was, you know, there were a lot of. Was the food good? They let you hit the cafeteria? Or you have to go off campus? If you were, like, meeting with someone, like, dirty, you could go with someone who worked there,

but you can't, like, in the White House, like, press briefing room and behind it where the reporters are, there was just, like, a vending machine. That's all you want? He has his own chef. That's not fair. If I was the president, I'd let all the reporters have the food, so they write nice things about me. Right. President Adam gave us carnitas today.

He's the coolest president ever. Yeah. Yeah. Do you ever watch a movie in the movie theater? No. President Trump sucks, dude. Don't tell him I said that. Do you call my?

No, it's my friend text me. Why did you write the book as a blind item, like as a literary device? Or like, you know, was that just a choice? Like a flourish? I only named, I named Founding Fathers. I named Writers. and I named publications.

But I didn't name most other people. I used, you know. Me and the fellows, we've been having a blast trying to figure out who the people were. Yeah. I think I know who the politician is. It's George Santos. It is.

It is George Santos. I guess you've written it over the last year. Yeah. So what was the, at the outset, what was the book attempting to do? It wasn't really attempting to do anything. I mean, I just was writing it, right? And so I, in September of 24, I had this, like, rapturous event in my life, right?

And I fled New York. Fled New York. Why don't I talk? It's my last interview of the year. September 11th, I saw myself in the middle. I'm like, blah, me. at the end you're like kind of left like there's no triumph at the end right there rarely is but I so I was writing it and you know I kind of fled New York and

went to the West Coast and then the election was coming to a close and like this story that I had wanted to see through of the election I did you not watch no I watched but I was watching from this different vantage point right from from like the edge of the country yeah and it was like you know it was the first time in my life where I didn't have a job and I didn't have anything to really go hurry and do and I was sort of still for the first time in 10 years. And I was able to synthesize the 10-year period and like look back and try and make sense of what had happened in our national politics and to the character of the country. But also what had happened, you know,

in my own life to my own character. And this sort of, this warping of reality in, like, it seemed to me that, like, amid Trump's rise to dominance, there's this sort of sprawl of this distortion field, right? That, like, he is this center, and in, like, the heat around him, everything warped. And I was in that center for a long time,

and it worked for me as well. And that seemed like important and something that I should really try to understand. Do you feel Didio and Sile be in California writing a book? People, you know, I always felt like I was too Italian to understand her, like... Too Italian. Just like too Italian-American to understand that...

You were getting marinara on the book? To understand that sort of like detached wasp ethos. You know, I don't think it's nice to be mean to hip, like, what's, like, what's wrong with wanting peace? But anyway, I, I, I, but then I did understand it, I, um, um, some people in my life were like, You can't be living out there in Malibu and not, you know, be reading that. Dude, like, eat, pray, love. And, well, no, then I read it, and I was like, okay, maybe I'm, like, finally sad enough to understand it. Why is it caused such a stir, I guess, like, in your estimation?

What, my book? Yeah, and just, like, the, why are you, like, in the middle of a fucking controversy? I mean, last year, when I was at New York Magazine, right, like, I fucked up. Like, I, like, those... You didn't disclose. Well, yeah, like, those ethics rules exist for a reason. They're good roles. Did you kill stories on behalf of Secretary Kennedy?

No. That's been alleged, I guess. Yeah, a lot of things have been alleged. Yeah, I've heard so lot of things. I did not. So that's not true. Yeah. No.

But I, those rules are good, and there was a reason why people were really mad at me, and they were right to be. But it was regular folks are mad about journalistic ethics? But I don't care. It doesn't matter, right? Like, it just, what mattered was that I did something wrong. And in that way, I hurt the whole industry. And, like, that's, I take that really seriously. This feels different though, like this current cycle of just uncharitable opinions about me.

I don't, you know, I think it's, I guess it's kind of feel like it's not really my business. It is your business to your life. In your career. Yeah, but I wrote this book that I think is valuable. Yeah, but people are hating on your, I mean, just as for your career, you're writing a book and everyone's saying, fuck you. you. It's like, you're selling, you want to sell a book to people, you know? I wanted the book. And everyone's crap it all over you. But I wanted the book to be like an honest expression

about this 10-year period and about my own experience. And I'm happy with it. And I also knew when I was working on it. Anytime it was sort of like intrude, like how are people going to react to this? I was pretty clear right about the fact that people might just say, like, get the fuck out of here. Are people reacting to the book or are they reacting to what's happening around you? I think they're reacting more to the latter. So that's why I'm saying, like, it's obviously it has affected your abilities to get your book out there to people, right? Yeah, but I, that's all right.

Like, you know, I just wasn't, I felt like... You can't possibly feel like this is fine. Well, it's not going well. Right. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not talking about the book. I'm just talking about, like, the way that people are, like, people are fucking, like, pissed off at you. But I can take it.

Like, I don't feel broken up about it. Yeah, I feel, I think it's interesting. I'm more curious about it than I am devastated by it. Your ex-partner, I read the subsection, I really don't care about journalism. Like, I don't care. I watch sports. I read his thing.

I didn't. And first of all, I don't understand, like, I'll say this for me. This is my opinion, okay? But it's like a little bitch-ass. To serialize details about your, a past relationship and a breakup. for behind a pay wall on your like writing a journal website I mean like just for money to talk about like painful real life experiences I think it's a little bit it's a little bit I don't know I no one's really having that reaction to him I think everyone

seems to be bad at you and then the third party seems to be a sitting member of the federal of the administration and I I I'm an outsider right so I've just learned about this the last fucking four days yeah but um right I feel like an outsider. It's not distributed equally, right? No, I mean, I don't write about that person much in the book, I referenced. But like, I forgot him, you know, and I didn't want to remember. This is playing out in public.

No, it's really unfortunate. And I also just think it's like, I mean, this is this, like, harassment campaign that's been going on for, like, 16, 17 months, right? It started when I, when, during the scandal in 2024. Yeah. And it continued. And now it's like this bad faith effort, I think, to present... Is it sexist? Among other things.

I think it's harassment. I think it's abusive. Like, I think... Who put the target on your back? It's someone that I met when I was 19 years old, right? I was with for a really long time. And it's just like engaging the public and the rest of the world in this... this, like when I left that relationship, I left this abusive dynamic, right? And it seems like

that person is still existing within it. And if that person can't, like, control my life from within my life, then they'll try to control it from the outside. And it was all a way of just, like, stepping on the book, right? And, like, writing over the book that I wrote before anyone had a chance to read that book. Right? It started before the book came out. There's that, but then there's also just like... And also just providing a tell-all that I didn't And if indeed, I'm taking you in good faith. Like, I mean, from what I read, here's the thing that I'm going to ask you directly about because I don't understand why no one even cares, right?

The most absurd allegation that's levied is that there was a recording that was surreptitiously made by an illustrator in New York magazine. It included the president talking about details related to the Butler-Pesslvania assassination attempt that have been hidden from public knowledge. And that you received a phone call from secretary. Terry Kennedy while he's in Mexico on vacation and that you deleted that recording is that true that's not true it's not true no first of all with all this crap coming out no one's talking about that even even the people that

are taking his words like yeah as gospel yeah I'm like listen I'm I'm talking to you right now I'm taking you in good faith but like yeah no one even cares about that one part which is like what it was an assassination attempt yeah so where so is this is this individual like just completely just free solid on this shit? No, I mean, some of the stuff it's like rooted in some fact, right? But then it's like contorted in such a way that it's

unrecognizable. And that's what makes it hard to respond to, right? Because it's, I can't say every single thing that this person said is false. Some of it is like, you know, when you get down to it, there's some truth there, but it's not, it's like, there's just reporters about. But why wouldn't you pursue defamation claims? I mean, this is like, this is like, I don't want to be

involved with this person. not true, saying that you fucking covered up something related to an assassination attempt is egregious. Yeah, I agree. And it's career ending, beyond your failure to disclose your relationship with, I mean. But the things that this person is written are not publishable by the standards of any actual news organization, right? It just would not make the standard.

But that is, he's defaming you in public, even if it's on the internet, right? But from my point of view, it's like, okay, best case scenario, what, I spend several years and probably, like, seven figures to get a substack retracted and some kind of forced apology. To clear your name. But I was with that person for 12 years. Like, I don't want to spend any more of my time. So you make a fucking Jewish guy do it for you in the court. I mean, it's your name, and you have, I mean, if indeed this is like, if indeed you weren't killing stories on behalf of a politician that you were covering. And if indeed, like, you did delete evidence related to a presidential assassination attempt,

you got to clear your name. I mean, I would see no other course of action. My point of view is, like, I don't feel like the onus should be on me to answer for this person's allegations. You know, the book is not about this person. I'm not even talking about the book. I'm talking about the way people are talking about you right now. But this is about the book. The whole thing is designed to write over this book that I wrote.

And I don't want to attack that person. Like, I feel sorry for them. And, like, it freaks me out, and I think it's, like, disturbing. And I hope that they move on. I think the problem was that it was, you know, a situation where, like, I was really, really young when I got involved with this person. And I think that they became accustomed to, like, violating my privacy, my space, et cetera. And I left, you know.

And, like, I didn't leave in a great way, obviously, right? Like, I don't view this person as credible. I think this is obviously this like vengeance campaign, right, designed to inflict harm on me. And it's related to a fucking, the president, someone is shooting him. But there are so many things. It's like James Bond style allegations. This is like an eight, what is it, eight part series? It's five and you're acting like you don't know, but you read all.

No, I haven't read any of them. You're also a better writer than him, too, he's probably. Thank you, but I haven't read any of it. You know you're a better ride the whole time? Just don't date another journalist. A very different type of writing. That's part of like what was so weird. You're being nice to him, though?

I've always been being nice about him. Like, I don't have, I'm not, I've never been in, I'm not in a feud. You know, this person is trying very hard and succeeding, frankly, in assassinating my character. And, like, that's a choice. And I made a different choice. I have to, like, part of getting through this period of, like, being publicly shamed over the last 16 months, right? I had, like, rules for myself of how I would, how I would deal with things. And the first rule is just I would never.

use anyone else as a human shield I would never try to wriggle out of culpability by harming anyone else I would I had to remember anything that was fake is probably ephemeral right that time

if I sort of didn't waste the opportunity of this crisis in my life this fuck up the opportunity to like proceed better and become better than anything fake wouldn't stick around, right? Like, that's my belief about it. Yeah.

And so I wasn't, like, terribly concerned with that stuff. Like, I know it's not true, and, like, you know, I have my lawyer respond when appropriate, but, like... Oh, so you got one. Yeah. Thank God you have one. That's all I'm asking you. If you have a guy.

Of course I have a lawyer. Yeah, he's amazing. Do you have a support system around you? Do you have, like, do you have good friends that, like, are there for you and stuff? Yeah, but also, like, I'm, um, this is not. at risk of shattering me. Yeah. You know, it's just not...

I think it's unfortunate, but I think it's very interesting. But the response to this also is in the book, right? Like, I write about what I did wrong in my book. I write in American Canto about the truth of that affair, right? I write things that don't make me look good. I didn't think anything would redeem me, and I wasn't trying to do that. You said you lied. But I assumed, like, it was kind of vague.

You said, I committed ethics violation, and you also said, and I lied for him, right? for him, right? Yeah, you did lie for him. But it was, yeah. Right, like the spin that. It was with Lizzo. It was with your part. But I, you know, the spin that he and I agreed on was like that it was a flirtation,

nothing more, right? And that was, you know, what it's been, the only thing that I've been surprised by, because I knew, like when I poked my head up from being in this sort of isolation that I might be met by like some madman charging at me with an axe, right? Like I figured that people weren't going to be normal in general about me writing a book. But I didn't know that other people would participate in that harassment, right, or other institutions would participate in the harassment, or in my violations of privacy, or in my being slandered, or, you know, just character assassination. Like, I, that was a surprise to me, but it's been interesting. Why is this

not spurned a political like scandal like it feels like it's all about you and your ex-partner because I my ex-partner is trying to harm me but but it's not but yes but like kind of like a like it seems like the political sex scandals are like one of America's favorite things isn't that everything is so schizophrenic these days and there's just scandal scandal scandal scandal scandal that no one has time there was a scandal about it there's a scandal about a year ago right for it face any blowback from it the the honorable Reverend Dr. Secretary I mean, it was before the election, right?

Oh, he was a candidate or a surrogate for Trump? He, at that point that the scandal kind of sparked, he had dropped out of the presidential race and he had endorsed Donald Trump, yeah. Do you buy all that crap he says about the vaccine, you know, the health stuff? No. You think it's dangerous? Yeah. Yeah.

Some of it, yeah. I mean, I also think that there are some good things that he's done too, right? Like, I think when it comes to processed foods, dyes, pesticides, I thought the work that he did as environmentalist was important, suing Monsanto. That's great. That's great. Like, I think that's great. But when it comes to, like, you know, degrading trust in the medical profession, or when it comes to negatively, you know, affecting vaccination rates,

or sewing confusion about that stuff, or relying on people who are not credible or just not being transparent in the government, Dr. Umar. That's not good, right? And I, you know, among things that we shared, I think, was just like a broad skepticism about power, right? You fell in love with someone? Yeah, I just fell in love at someone. And in the wrong circumstances, in the wrong person, right?

And I handled it the wrong way. When did you first feel like you would fall in love? Um, you know, I write about it in the book. Yeah, but like, um, he's told you he loved you. Mm-hmm. You didn't say it back a couple times. Had it started before your profile of him? No, after.

Because you kind of flamed, you dunked on his ass in that. It was a critical profile. Yeah. I mean, he hated it. Yeah, he hated it. He really hated it. You are able to, like, write critically about subjects and then maintain kind of their trust in an interesting way.

But don't you find, like, if you're critical of someone, but you're being honest about it, and it's not coming from, it's not in bad faith, you're not trying to inflict harm, or just be honest, that not, Not, you know, oftentimes people are all right with that. No, you don't find that. No, no one likes to be criticized, even if it's legitimate.

How did New York Magazine find out about your relationship? Like, how did they tell you about it? They, the editor-in-chief confronted me in a meeting. Had someone leaked it to them? Yeah, Karas Swisher had brought it to them. She later told the New York Times about that. And she became aware of it from, you don't know, I have my suspicions.

I guess so you didn't feel like you were like on a house of cars that could come to something like that. I mean, it just felt really besides the point, which is, you know, my mistake and one of the delusions I was operating under was that it didn't matter, right? And it mattered. Everything matters so much, right? Every little thing that we do here matters. And so I think to me it seemed, and part of what I spent a lot of the last year thinking about was like, you don't just wake up one day and make a big mistake, right? Like, if you're going to make, if you're going to fuck up in some rapturous way, it's probably going to be preceded by, like, imperceptible errors in judgment. And a lot of letting things slide with yourself that sort of amounts to, like, a misconfigured worldview, right? Or, like, amounts to a path before you that's, like, gone awry.

And that was important for me to assess, because a little. lot of people had told me, you know, when I was fired from New York Magazine, a lot of people had said like, oh, like, fuck it, just continue to cover the election. You should take this assignment or that assignment, and you should just pretend that this didn't happen. You should be shameless. And it was like this expectation that I should or that I could assume the sort of shameless posture that animates so much of American life now. Yeah. And certainly animates the kind of powerful social strata

in American life and that I couldn't do that Are you saying you're saying you like chose to remove yourself Because of the The kind of ethics violation or was it because I was fired right? Everyone fucking hated you Both right, right? Both like I was fired

So I also was I also fled out to the West Coast And I was really scared and I was like in hiding And I didn't want to be found And I was scared of the the person who's now writing those sub-stack things, and I didn't really know, like, everything had shifted completely in my life. Like, it had been one way for a really long time, and I didn't know what to do.

And so I just, but it also just struck me that, like, personally, as an interior matter, it was, like, this big spiritual event, and, like, my moral error was important. Like, it was important that I take that seriously, and I became really grateful that it had happened because it felt like I think I write in the book about how it felt like the hand of God had come and like swatted me

off the path that I was on. And I became very grateful for that, that the only thing really lost was public standing and a job rather than something much more serious. These days in any industry, there's a tremendous about a nepotism. You're

self-made individual, you're from a working class background. If you are looking at losing that 10 years of like your work product or that trajectory. Do you could you can you continue to that trajectory or I feel like it's knocked off course and it kind of I was on a different trajectory, right? Like I wouldn't when that happened last year, when I was fired and and when I, you know, was writing the materials at first that became American Canto. Yeah. I was already on a different trajectory at that point, right? And that was okay and I was interested in that and I and that was necessary. for me to have the perspective required to write that book, right?

Like, I couldn't, when you're really, I write about how something can become so familiar, you can become so close to something that it ceases to be familiar, that it becomes, that it becomes a foreign. You're running for president. Yeah. I think you are. And how old do you have to be? 35.

And once the next one? 2028. Yeah, but you're 21. I would be able to do it. I'd be 35, I think. Oh, yeah, you're 32. Right. Jesus Christ.

But, so my point was, it's like I was already on a different path, and I was all right with that. Like, I was grateful to be on that other path and to be, like, interested in to have the perspective to synthesize that 10-year period. So what's the path now? I mean, this book came out like a week ago. Yeah, but like, looking at it, because where the book leaves you

and where you're at right now, sorry to be a Jewish mother and tell you, what's going on. But like you're, it isn't, um, it isn't a place of that's like, but you're talking about career and you're talking about material things. I'm not though, right? Like this book is, to me it was, it was this spiritual, moral event, right? And this book is a creative effort about in some sense the spiritual process of understanding this 10-year thing, understanding my fuck up, understanding where I fit and where the corrosion of my character fit within this broader story about the corrosion of the American character in this 10-year period.

And to me, it's like, I'm not so concerned with the, like, nothing can be taken from you that didn't belong to you, right? Like, nothing can be taken from you that wasn't handed to you unjustly to begin with. And there's no such thing as, like, justice in public narratives. There's such a thing as poetic justice in public narratives. But, like, the only justice is knowing that you do not share the qualities that the people who have behaved unjustly towards you have. Yeah.

Right? So I'm not so worried about all that. Like, I'm proud of American canto. I think it's valuable. But I also was aware the whole time that maybe it wouldn't be considered valuable for, like, or 30 years. But you feel as if you've, like, proud of your work, that's what you're saying. Yeah. What I'm seeing, and maybe I'm reading between the lines, is like, well, do you think being so successful, so young, like, kind of robbed you of an early adulthood? And that's why I'm fucking up now. I don't know. I'm just asking you.

Maybe. Maybe. You know the writer, Annie Hamilton? I know Annie. She's an actress. I thought. Oh, I guess I think of her as right, but she's an actress, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's hilarious. I love her. Yeah, yeah. She said something really funny once. I can't remember who was in, like, a piece or a tweet or something, but that people

always used to say that she was an old soul and then at a certain point, or that she was mature for her age, and then in a certain point they stopped saying that. Uh-huh. Yeah. Do you have to catch up on, like, 24 now? Because you were chilling with Trump the whole time? No, I think I'm good on, like, fucking up for now. I don't know.

I don't know. What do you guys get up to? Zach, what's like the vibe over there? Back here? Yeah, no, no, I mean like for what you do, like what kind of stuff do you do? Zach is a band. Okay, yeah.

What's that? He plays guitar. Nate. You should learn guitar. What? Are you going to learn guitar? I really want to get my pilot's license. Oh, pilots license?

Yeah, that's my goal for 2026. That'd be cool, yeah. Yeah. Trump didn't call me back. Trump didn't oh um should I call him back again you text him um I don't know I'm just trying to like no I'm not saying that's why you're fucking about like was it was I'm just saying for you as a person that's like you're you are busy right you're busy very young right yeah but I'm not um I don't know I just

feel I guess and do you have three time though I'm never bored because I'm interested what kind of stuff you I spent California stuff a lot green juice crystal I don't know I don't drink I don't like cold beverages you don't like cold beverages you drink hot water room temperature room to oh me too yeah yeah I don't like ice water because it hits my teeth I don't yeah yeah we're dressed the same yeah it's crazy I just think it's a yeah I'm annoyed that I had to learn about any of this crap I'm sorry but I'm really glad that we got I got to be you and talk to you because I thank you for having me because I think that um I don't know we just had

Alec Baldwin on the show. Very similar. No, but it's just like the way people that are well known, the way people process their lives fucking up, is there's a revelry that people have in it.

People are kind of like jack off to it, you know? In the same way, it's like, I think like I'd see how talented fucking Alec Baldwin is. And I was saying this to him, it was like, you know, his struggles with celebrity undermine the very reason for him being a It was interesting though because it's like I spent so much of this 10-year period as like officially cast as like a witness, right?

And then to be someone who suddenly becomes witnessed and to like be witnessing the witness being witnessed, right? It created this really, and as someone who has been in the media for this really long period of time. I guess I used to think that there was like subject and chronicler, right? And there were like, there's that vantage point and this vantage point. There's inside the story and outside the story. And then this whole experience has sort of crystallized for me that it's more like this kaleidoscopic thing, right? It's more, there are, there are million facets to a story,

a million different vantage points. It's much more complicated and more interesting than I had kind of given it credit for. Do you like being the subject? It kind of probably sucks. No, it sucks. Maybe you should apologize to Trump. Say, now I understand what it's like to be the subject. It sucks, but it also teaches you about being the chronicler in a way that like, does that make sense?

You need to let Trump write an article about you. You see like when you are written about, right? Yeah. I can't read it. It's really, really hard to read. Are you going to watch this? No. Oh, you come on.

No, I'm going to ask Nate to watch it. You're going to want to see what they... I'm going to ask Nate to watch it. Wait, was it, it was mainly sexting, not on the phone, or it was texting? I don't talk about that in the book. Well, you know what the joke, the obvious joke is. You're going to get mad at me. Obvious joke is that, because he has to text, because he talks so funny.

George Santos. Olivia does he, everyone. He's mad at me. Thank you. You know,