The Bulwark Podcast - John Heilemann: The Year Is Ending a Lot Better than It Started

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

Only six months ago, the wheels felt like they were coming off of America, and our democracy experiment. But since the Epstein case broke wide open, the wheels started to come off Trump instead. And he's not just lost his way in politics but in the broader culture too—with his despicable words about Rob Reiner, his trying to get Jimmy Kimmel fired, and his pedophile cover-up. At the same time, we are likely stuck with his family grift, which will last for generations. Over on the Democratic side, the left has the momentum but there is room for a McCain-style reform candidate. Meanwhile, JD may be too repellant to win the presidency and the expectations for Mamdani are likely unrealistic. Plus, some love for Oasis, Geese, and Cameron Winter—and some hope that people are longing for something tangible in their music again. People need a rock star. John Heilemann joins Tim Miller for the year-end pod. show notes: John's "Impolitic" podcast John's columns at Puck Tim's 2025 Music Year in Review Filmmaker Charles Curran's recut of the Melania trailer with Miss Piggy Shane Gillis on how we got Trump Tim's playlist

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. This is the last one of the year. And so we brought an old friend who's going to make me not have to work that hard because he's just going to talk and give you a lot of thoughts. He's got a lot of thoughts and a lot of takes. He is doing a lot of stuff. You got the Impolitic podcast.

Is that what it's called now? Yeah, baby. Your co-hosts of Hacks on Tap. Oh, yeah, baby. You're writing for Puck. You're an analyst of MS now. You used to be on Showtimes of Circus. Miss now.

MS now. Are you still saying it that way? Are you still saying it? Now, yeah, it's the only way I can say it. Right. Like I heard when we talked about this when you were on my pod, mostly, it's just impossible for me to resist the MS now. MS now. MS now.

MS now. We're going to be there. MS now. MS now. No. No. I'm off this podcast for the week. I am going to sneak by MS now on Friday because I'm taking my child in New York for eighth birthday. We're going to see a show. We're going to go ice skating. We're going to take a swing or bye, see the crew. So that'll be good. What are you going to see? I think the Lion King, we're kind of on the fence. We're rolling through a couple different things. We think the Lion King, but I don't know. I haven't decided yet. If you were in the mood. Okay. I haven't seen it. But my friend Danny Strong, who wrote, game change movie and people know from a lot of other things Slumdog Millioner. No, not Danny Boyle. Not Danny Boyle. Danny Strong.

How many Danny's could that really be? Who was on Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Oh, right. You're dope sick. He was dope sick. He did, yes, he did. He wrote and produced, he was on the young Gilmore girls. Yeah, Danny's been on a lot of things. He was in Justified for one season where he played a baddie on Justified. Have you ever seen Justified? I love Justified. Oh, Justified. It's great. Danny plays the, a rapist prison warden who does all kinds of bad things to Walt Goggins's girlfriend, love for his

life on that show, which is really not a character for Danny. Anyway, Danny is producing, directing a revival of chess, the Tim Rice musical that has like with music from Abba in it that has like one night in Bangkok and all those songs on it. And the guy, my friend Ian Weinberger, who used to be the musical director in Hamilton, is the musical director on that show. And it's supposed to be really good. And it's a musical, which is kind of what you're looking for. Now, I don't know if your daughter would appreciate a cold war.

Yeah, it's 8-year-old. I don't know, like him, it would be more fun. My grandson's a big chess savant. So maybe I should take him to New York and do that with him. Seems like a good idea to me. Hey, how was your birthday, by the way? We'll talk about politics in a second. Or why.

Who cares? Do we have to? It's my podcast. Well, I heard these people like parisocial. Like your viewers all love the parisocial thing, you know? Is that what you're hearing? The parissocial, so that's what it says. Parascial is supposed to be big in our world now, so I'm just parisocial.

I'm as parisocial as I get down here in New Orleans. My birthday was great. It's Christmas Day. Yeah. Eight year old is perfect Christmas Day for a child because she's just still so happy about everything and enchanted by the whole deal. Yeah. It was a beautiful, it was a warm day.

We had the top off the Jeep. Christmas in the South I love. I don't need a white Christmas like some others. You know, that's not necessarily my cup of table. That's not your jam. And then at the end of the day, like when everybody's kind of winding down, I left her with my in-laws and we're like now it's my birthday

we went down to Lafitte's blacksmith shop had a purple drink ended up at the casino where I was rolling I heard you shot some craps There's word out in the cramps Yeah with the Nuggets game on The Nuggets game was on the big screen They won an overtime

I was hot on the craps table Next to a lady like a Creole lady Who's birthday was St. Patrick's day Mine was Christmas we felt like we were a lucky duo And we were crushing We crushed How much you make you know enough that i'll spend it all in new york this weekend but uh but it was good up up's better

than down ups better than down up's better than down well congratulations i always think of you as kind of my kind of alt babe in a manger kind of thing because of the christmas birthday thank you yeah me jesus and col rove for the christmas birthdays um carl roves birthdays on christmas day yeah turdblossum we're texting carl christian rove maybe that helps explain the middle name i want to get on the pod and argue two Christmas babies every time I think he's about to do it and do it the fact that we can have this first five minutes and just laugh like this is it's kind of related to my first topic which it was I had noted for you which is just the vibe shift from now to last year like things are bad obviously yeah but this time if we had gotten together to set well we were

together in election night last year and I got to tell you the vibes in your house were not I'll just say I would say I would say like you were in full rain cloud I mean you were it was like a torrential downpour. There was tension in house, I would say, and not a lot of laughs. And then even by December 30th, 30th of last year, there was a lot of foreboding. I'd say a sense of foreboding would probably be the word that would come to mind for me. And then through the first half of the year, there was kind of like, this could be over. This whole little experiment we're doing could be over.

Like the wheels are coming off the country. And the vibes feel like they've shifted. Kind of like maybe the wheels are just coming off of Trump. and that the people who are kind of the latecomers to Trump are like, eh, this was fun for a minute. Yeah. And they might be looking around. And the business guys who are really excited to suck up to them are now kind of like,

well, maybe I'll just do this and do this for a couple more years as long as I have to. Right. Like, that's not all good. None of those are like, that's not courage or anything, but it's a notable vibe shift in my perspective. Are you sensing that? 100%. You know, the Epstein story was the first break, right? I mean, up till then, from January 20th, until the Epstein story, you know, Trump is on offense.

He's doing all this. Tariffs, maybe. There was a brief hit with the tariffs got bad for a second. Yeah, but it was only for like 48 hours when the markets look like that. And then he backed off enough to get the markets back on track. That didn't ship my vibes at all. I think, you know, the first moment when people were like, oh, huh, this is doing something to him that's different than anything else that we've seen so far. And I just remember the day I was in New York City in July to see Wu-Tang on the last tour,

Trump had, I'd say, attacked Republicans who were on the side of Epstein-File disclosure. And he was like, you're idiots. Anybody who's on this side is a moron. I mean, Trump has attacked Republicans before, but the whole thing was so evinced to kind of panic about how he was losing the thread and didn't understand what was happening to him that made me think that that was the first moment where I was like, oh, okay, there's a chink in this arm. armor, right? And obviously the fact that Marjorie Taylor Green and Nancy Mason, all these people were involved in the resistance to him on that was part of it. But then, you know, you get into

the fall. And I think, you know, I mean, the election's the huge thing, Tim, right? I mean, in the end, the reason there's a vibe shift in January is that even after that De Epstein files proved to be a thing that was tormenting him in a long-term way, he's still launching politically motivated prosecutions against Comey and Letitia James. And yeah, the courts eventually beat those back, but he's still doing that. The Venezuelan boat strikes, which, are among the worst things in a very bad year, those are happening in September where we're just basically like killing people

on the high seas with no legal justification or any evidence to suggest that anything that they're saying about it is true. That's September, right? So they're still rolling in bad, to me, in bad vibes bill. You know, the combination of Democrats showing down the government,

and I would say, we could talk about this in more detail, but I would say now something that progressives didn't see immediately when they eventually climbed down, having won that fight in a pretty dramatic way, plus the election results, which is the giant thing. And then just seeing all of it, you know, the variety of different things we could all

point to different stories, including the tearing down the East Wing, et cetera, et cetera. But just the numbers at 33, 34, you know, on approval rating and the economy at the end of the end of the year, he's appreciably weaker. The cumulative effect of all this is that he's appreciably weaker. So I'll just say that, you know, there's a moment at the end of the new Chappelle special. Have you seen it? I've seen close. I've not watched it.

The very end of the Chappelle special, and he comes home to Washington, D.C., at a time when the ICE presence there was still, the National Guard presence there was still at its peak. It was like, they'd just taken control away from the mayor, and he's like, I'm going to go out of my hometown and do the show. I mean, it's not full on, like, just Trump-related special. There's a lot of other stuff going on in that set,

but the level of alarm about some elements of this are, like, pretty high. And at the end, he says, as he's not leaving, he says, you know, something to Washington. He's like, we're going to wait out this orange motherfucker. Everybody just, you know, like, stay sane. stay reasonable like and we're going to wait out this orange motherfucker which i think is the kind of thing that you wouldn't have said was anybody could say and not have people who are as alarmed as you were i was a lot of people were throughout the year with good reason you would have been like wait out this orange

motherfucker like that's that's not even a tenable plausible kind of suggestion to help you get through where when you hear that now he can say it's like the end of the year and you're kind of like people are like that doesn't seem impossible we might be able to wait out this orange motherfucker you know to use Chappelle's phrase. Yeah. I'm thinking about getting that Tim was right once t-shirt about the shutdown

since I was the person banging the drum the hardest about how the Democrats won the shutdown. Everybody told me I was an idiot. Tim was right once. I had a lot of als, but Tim was right once was right. Dot, dot, dot.

That one's line about the Democrats winning the shutdown. Even when Joachim didn't even really believe it. I was like, no, bro, you won't actually. Anyway, the the obscene thing to me in the ship Appel thing tied together in that like the vibe shift is sure partly about the politics and like his political fortunes feeling like they're they're waning and that he's not as strong politically

as he was but the cultural element is big and the Epstein thing I think is like part of it is oh yes it's a cover up obviously it's bad we Julie Brown on yesterday like the victims like the facts of it are bad but the other part of it was why it heard him so much was like the people that were kind of carrying that vibe element for him in this culture in podcast world in this in sports and the media they all cared about this right like the people that are doing the trump dance you know the pod bros the comedians and those guys it kind of gave those guys an off ramp to be like wait a minute right i don't want to be on the side that's like covering up the child sex crimes like he's the man now i kind of liked it when it was making people it was triggering people for me to put on the red hat but

now all of a sudden I'm like, wait a minute, no, he's the man, and this is bad, and now I could kind of come back into the more traditional role that the culture has played, contra, you know, right-wing strong men. Totally. And just to give you a sense that, like, Trump isn't, not that we need more of a sense, because both of us, like, would laugh uproariously at the suggestion, but there were people, not stupid people who would say things occasionally in the last X number of years, including when he made this incredible comeback and won the election in 2024, which is, you guys

don't appreciate Trump's playing with like three-dimensional chess, four-dimensional chess, whatever. And like the best evidence against that is to your point about why, you know, culture, upstream from politics, culture more important than politics, not just to the vibes, but I think the vibes are kind of almost everything in a lot of ways now because it is really so much of what Trump has been about when he's been strong, it's been about having control over vibes. and when he's been weaker as when things have gotten away from him, right? Culture matters more, right? So how do you know he's not playing three-dimensional chess?

Jimmy Kimmel. How do you know he's not playing three-dimensional chess? Rob Reiner. And look at the reaction to that. Those are like things in the culture that normal people understand. Forget about, you know, Tim, Tim, you were right more than once, but you were definitely right about the shutdown. I think the election is a big thing in the culture,

like because in the way of the 2024, all those graphics that had just red arrows going, where every county getting redder, right? People see that and go, wow, man, Trump's like on the, they're on the march. It's like the visual grammar of that is, okay, you know, these people are really in charge now. And the election in November, which had the same thing only in a much more limited way, but every arrow is pointing blue, you know, into the different direction. Normal people get that.

Like, okay, they overreach. That's the message of that. They overreach. They haven't delivered on their promises and they overreach. I get that. Yeah. And then you have things like in the culture, things like they're trying to get Jimmy Kimmel fired. You don't have to like Jimmy Kimmel to be someone who's like, that's like fucked up.

Like that I don't want to be part of that. And to your podcast, bro friends, your, man, forget Andrew Schultz. Andrew Schultz. The of, uh, Jim Della. But Andrew Schultz is an incredible barometer for this, right? Who's someone who was like, you know, a Democrat, you know, raised a Democrat, a Democrat, got sick of the Democratic Party. It was for Bernie Sanders, then was for Donald Trump. And now it's like the biggest Zoron Mamdani booster in the world.

That's like a good avatar for that. And that guy, you know, he doesn't want Donald Trump shutting down stand-up comics. Right. You know, I mean, the outrage over the Reiner thing across all the way, you know, to Nick Fuentes is a sign that, like, if Trump really understood that cultural dominance was the key to his dominance, he's just doing a lot of stupid shit. know, and that I think is the stuff that if you're talking about like the vibeship, what comes through? What comes through is at the end of the year he did this heinous thing about Rob Reiner and six months earlier, I don't know whether everybody on the right would have condemned

him. But in December, everyone on the right rallied around Rob Reiner as far to the right as you can go in American politics, that's like a sign that someone has lost their cultural sway. Because again, six months earlier, would you have like been like, everyone's going to condemn him for this? We're going to hear from Megan Kelly about this. We're going to hear from Lori Ingram about this.

You wouldn't have said that, six months. months earlier. Six months later, it happened. I was surprised by how vociferous they were and how broad that condemnation was. But I wasn't like, oh, this is unthinkable. I'm like, this is a sign of a guy who's, who's lost the plot, lost the thread, lost the traction. Here's the other thing related to that. Yeah. He doesn't feel like he has the energy or the juice to fully get it back on track. This is not to say that he won't have good moments or good months or good. Or that he won't do about some terrible shit. Yeah, right. But I don't know. I don't look at this guy right now and think, boy, at 82 he's going to orchestrate a plot to stay in power against the Constitution.

Do I think it's a 0% chance? No. Like if you're asking me a year ago, what percent chance is it versus now? It's gone down considerably. I've downgraded my priors considerably. And it's in part because like, watch him. Watch him. He looks like an old, tired man that cares mostly about getting his name on shit.

And adding to his net worth. And making much money. Adding to his network. Yeah. Yeah. And building a giant ballroom that, you know, still my favorite. I know you were on with John Stewart the other day on his show. I still think that the ballroom looks like the inside of Marie Antoinette's vagina

is like maybe one of the best lines I heard all here. It's incredible. But he's just interested in hanging out with rich people and getting his name on stuff and slapping up gold leaf here and it's like he just, the fact of his travel schedule for the year where like from June, May, June or whatever, until that rally, until that Pennsylvania event that he did at the very end of the year, he hadn't done a MAGA rally in America. Yeah.

He's legs flying around the world. People roll out the red carpet for him, you know, giving him fake, made up trophies and shit and hand jobs under the table. But he's not like... Finger jobs, we call him with Trump. You don't need the whole hand. It's the pinky of the thumb. It's the pinky of the thumb together.

But it's like he's not out there like, I got to win back the maga faithful. He had the eye of the tiger, Tim, for the worst, obviously. But when he was fueled by vengeance and wanted to make his way back and be able to take out his critics and prove that he, was right and not go to jail and become president again, he was like, I'm climbing my way back from Elba. I'm throwing my way back from Elba here.

You know, like, I'm going to do this. And right now it just looks like all he's doing is kind of like, he looks like, I want to hang out with my rich friends and, you know, it's like kind of jerk off, basically. You know, that's like kind of what he looks like. And occasionally Stephen Miller, because he has so much power, is able to get Trump to do some horrible shit in the world that we have to deal with. But it's like, I don't know how Trump has invested in any of that stuff at this point. I think he's much more invested in just like, I'm doing another.

bathroom remodel in the we got the we got the marble armrests now everybody excited about these marble armrests i love this bathroom but there are a few things that are missing we need like a pneumatic tube that we'll shoot a hamburger out at me when i asked for it you mentioned the corruption part of the other thing he cares about making much money for himself the other thing just like on the look back part of this you just listed all the things like mattered for this year to him i wonder in like 2040, when we look back at this year, 2035, like what will actually have mattered and what will actually have staying power. And I do think that the family grift is the thing that comes to mind at the top of the list for me. And then also this sort of tech mega merger that is

ongoing. Those are the two things to me. Well, I think, you know, like what will the history books remember? I remember at the very beginning, speaking to things you remember from the year. I was glad that you mentioned on one of these programs, the interview with Terry Moran and his insistence over the... I've now played that on a couple of my ear and my best to like... I played it for Fabro and love it. And they... Thank you. I appreciate it.

Throughout the entire thing, like, this goes on forever. It's like just Trump's insisting over and over again. Those are actually written on. And Terry tries to get him off the hook, like several times. And that goes to a deep thing. I don't want to go on a digression about this, but it does go to. He clearly believes that, which is an information. interesting fact, right? He believes it. He's not bullshit. Trump lies about all kinds of things,

but in that moment, he's fighting with Terry because he's like, you're wrong. They were wrong. Kilmar, Breger-Garcia has Ariel Fond's MS-13 on his knuckles. Exactly. He's, he is absolutely convinced. It opens up the door to a discussion of how much like he's getting played by people like Stephen Miller and Russ Vote and other people inside who have serious agendas and are able to convince him of shit that's just false in the world, including like a lot of people convincing him. The economy is better. I think he's think he believes the economy's not that bad. He doesn't, he's been told by a lot of people that what the liberal media is saying is wrong and then in fact, everything's fine. It's all these

statistics or lies or whatever. And he's come to believe it, which is different from knowing you're wrong, but like putting a good face on it. Anyway, the thing you were talking about, going back to the very beginning of the year that I remember so well is in that first like couple of days when he was in office, he did one of his first many rolling gaggles somewhere in the White House. And someone asked him if he knew what is mean. coin had risen to like what the price of it was now. And he said he had no idea. And this reporter said it's now at $2 billion or something, $2 billion. And Trump was like, really, it's a $2 billion. He's like, yeah, it's up to $2 billion. It's spiked yesterday. It's up to $2 billion. I'm making

these numbers up that it's rough order or magnitude is correct. And Trump said, well, that's great. And then he said, but you know, compared to some of these guys and he waved his hands at a bunch of CEOs who were surrounding him, occurred to some of these guys, that's chicken feed. That's like nothing, right? And I was like, to your point, this is so far outside the norm of any president. We have had corrupt presidents. Yeah. We've had criminal presidents. We've had presidents who've done bad shit. Some who've been forced out of office, some who should have been forced out of office. There are, we have some presidents who've done some bad shit, Tim. Yes. This is the thing we've never seen before. The open profiteering off the office, you know, we never seen anything like that. And so I think 40 years

from now history will remember that because either that will become the new norm for how presidents behave in the White House, just like what we're here to profiteer. Or we'll go back to what the norm has been in the past and we'll look at that and go, wow, that isn't one of the most incredible outliers about Trump, like a thing that really is wildly at variance with anything else. Because even some of the bad stuff that you and I think is really scary, you know, on my low lights of the year, the season control of national guards deploying of Marines to Los Angeles, what happened in Chicago, all that stuff. Yeah. We have had presidents in the past who's done stuff. that is in the same category of that.

Sometimes for good reasons, like during this white's movement to enforce integration of colleges in the South, and sometimes for bad reasons. You know, the National Guard shot those kids at Ken State. It's like that's not a thing that we've never seen before.

Or even El Salvador, like, as horrible as that is, it's like we did Japanese internment, you know. Exactly. There's a terrible precedent somewhere that, it's like Trump isn't doing this something. He might be doing it for worse reasons. He might be doing it more perniciously. He might be doing it more severely.

he might be doing it but it's not something that we've never seen before and the and the self-enrichment thing really is you know not to say that there hasn't been any president ever who's had like been a little cash on the side i don't know there might be from the 1800s but it's not like what they roll into office and stand in front of the world and say i am going to hang with a bunch of billionaires i am going to make a bunch of money in this office there's nothing you do to stop me my kids are running around the world i don't give a shit fuck you bring the fucking dollars in i just finished watching that james garfield show it seems like chester arthur made a couple bucks on the side but you It's not the generational wealth.

And here's the thing, even if they, even if this gets fixed by a reform-minded Democrat or Republican or whatever in the future, it's like Eric Trump's stupid kids are going to have hundreds of millions of dollars and nuclear fusion money and money and money from the, you know, the palaces that they're building in Saudi Arabia and in the Philippines and the VN. Right. Like, it's like the Trump family were stuck with. as a result of this. That's one thing that won't be fixed.

I was watching the Cy Hirsch documentary, Laura Poitras's SciHirch documentary on Netflix. And there's this moment where when Hirsch transitions from doing political investigative reporting to a brief spell doing with Jeff Gerth doing a bunch of business investigative journalism and then he gets in trouble with the Times, they did an investigation of a company called Gulf and Western. And Gulf and Western, they're describing how in their mid-70s, there was a new kind of corporation in which the various divisions

didn't really have anything to do with each other. and Western was a energy company, a chemical company, and then they decided to buy Paramount. And there's like a different kind of, the conglomerate, create all kinds of opportunities for corruption. And I'm listening to this kind of thinking, man, I mean, no one back then would have ever envisioned the future in which the president would own while as president would be the controlling shareholder in a social media enterprise that was now being merged into a holding company with someone who's promising that they could do nuclear fusion or nuclear cold fusion or whatever the fuck it is. It's like a Futurama kind of version of this. Like, Matt Grainning got a hold of the timeline and, like, he's writing this thing out. Let's talk about the murders. Then I want to go forward into, like, future, you know, crystal ball stuff.

But this is more than your wheelhouse and mine, both because of the puck remit and covering all what's happening with our urges very closely. But then also, just because you're, you know, having done the circus and having the circus get canceled and trying to repit shows. And it's like the implications of the studio. mergers and I think you're a little closer to than everybody else. Kara was on last week and I have I think an unpopular view out there which is like we kind of need a couple

of murder like as a normal person I think that normal people's biggest complaint right now is that they can't figure out where to find the fucking show that they want to watch because they've got 19 apps and like their cable where they just press the power button seemed preferable to the current situation but obviously there are a bunch of risks

particularly on the political side associated with all that so I'm just I'm just going to want to put a quarter in and let you cook on what's happening out there. As much as we all loved, and I mean, we all, I don't mean just people who have made television or whatever, but people who are like just out there, viewers, smart viewers, right? The era of peak TV was amazing, you know, that period from the mid-aughts to the first big Netflix downgrade of their stock, which was like 2017 or 2018, whatever it was, when the stock had really tumbled because they didn't hit their subscriber.

Like the Sopranos to Squid Game, basically. Sopranos to the pandemic. Yeah, yes. That era produced some incredible things and also way too much television, like way too much. Too much. I mean, hours and hours of series you have never heard of and will never see. And that really no one really ever heard of or ever saw.

Things that Netflix made in particular where they spent incredible amounts of money on things that then they put on the platform, didn't promote them, didn't the algorithm, they pushed them, and like they're just, you know, they stay on the server for a little while and then they're gone. there's just a lot of way too much TV that got made. The notion that there should be that the correction towards less of that television is like just market forces. Like the notion of the platforms, right, that Netflix way ahead of everybody else,

Prime is like in a clear number two spot. And then there's a bunch of middling like where they're at the third of the subscribers of Netflix and then there's a few that are really laggards. The fact that some of those should combine, the post-industrial logic of them combining, I think it's like unequivocally right. If this were happening under a normal president, you'd be like, this is just, you know, Chimbatarian- Industry talk for Matt Bellany and John Heilman and a handful of other people. Grand destruction, but you would, people wouldn't be alarm.

It wouldn't be, they wouldn't have the same pitch sense of alarm. I mean, the reality is the president we have is the president we have, who's demonstrated over and over again in a willingness of metal in free markets and corporate behavior and to exercise either fear or favor to get what he wants, either things that he doesn't want to see happen, make them stop, things that are in process, change the way the process works, so it's less likely to be damaging to him, or to amplify things that are positive for him, as in, you know, this, this Melania series that's about to come out that Brett Radner made for Amazon that's like, you know, basically just a big, they gave her like, what, $40 million or something to do this thing? It's ridiculous.

Are you planning a watch party for the premiere of Melania? Or do you think that it's going to be the kind of thing that the kids bring their friends over to, you know, every week. It was like the O.C. for me in college. Everybody got together and the new O.C. You think that's going to be happening for a lot? For sure, but there'll be giant, huge barrels full of gummies for everybody. Like, you'll just take a full handful, like, as if they were like the herobo gummy bears and like, just eat them all before you watch it.

Did you see the guy that remade the trailer for Melania, where Melania was Miss Piggy? No, I haven't seen it. This is an AI. This is the only AI thing I've seen that has made me really, really laugh. I have a deep appreciation for it. I'll put it in the notes for people. I definitely want to see that. So the answer to the question is, like, you've got this president who's willing to do all these things, and you've got the owners of all these of these platforms have made more or less craven idiots of themselves over the course of the year.

And, you know, we'll basically abase themselves in a variety of ways to basically make the same way, hey, the bazaar is open. We're open for business here. We'll do what we need to do. So I think people are worried about that. And they're rightly worried about it. And, you know, you see what's happening at CBS. And if your question is like, is there an outcome here that's like a better or worse? outcome, I just think we don't really know.

I mean, there's some things that are obviously disconcerting about the notion of Paramount taking over Warren Brothers' discovery because of the way the Ellison's behaved and because of the nakedness. And the Ellison's owning CBS, TikTok, CNN, and, like, major movie studios, like, does seem to be obviously, like, a problem. Yes, I think, and I think this is where we get back to waiting out the orange motherfucker, right? Which is, like, you know, again, I'm always quoting Chappelle where necessary here is, like,

the effect of that on people's ability to put things on platforms that have the kind of reach that Netflix and Amazon have now is close to zero. Like there's whether Netflix wins the battle for Paramount or not is secondary in some ways to the climate that's been created whereby everybody is terrified of doing something on air that will incur the wrath of the administration. So there's people who are sucking up to it to try to get things they want, but more broadly, there's this, there's this climate of we do not want to touch anything that relates to news or topical politics or anything where the word. And that's one place where the vibe shift isn't changing. There's, you sense no thought in that, because that's obviously tied to the circus, you know, getting canceled, but also a million other things not getting green, like new ideas.

Yes, a million. Yes. There's a little bit of this dipping of toes in water related. the podcast space because obviously those platforms are super hungry to try to get a hold of what you have, which is they want the, they want YouTube view. But it's pretty noticeable like Netflix just did all these deals and it's, you know, it's sports, it's culture on podcasts on the streaming podcast. It's not politics. Politics. No, it's not. And it's like if you look at, it's pretty noteworthy though. Like if you look at the top 50 Apple podcasts, a lot of politics in there. And it's

like those are the ones that they're not making deals with. And if you looked at the top 50 YouTube streamed podcasts. There's also a disproportionately high degree of them that touch on, if not straight politics podcast. I mean, Rogan is not really a politics podcast, but there's a lot of politics in it. There's a lot of things that are either politics or politics adjacent that do really well. And, you know, for those companies, seeing that the place where new, younger eyeballs and minutes of consumption and plays and all of that, that YouTube is growing at such a tremendous clip to the point where it's arguably more powerful than any of these platforms, and that's new, in our world right and it's just new yeah you know that is where if your

netflix or any of these other streaming platforms you're thinking where do we go we bought up all the live sports rights that existed out there right there's no there's nothing else to buy they all went on a spending spree to get live sports rights because that's how they could grow their subscribers and their engagement and now they've got all that that's going to play out through the through their they're going to digest that over the next few years but the next big pot of all of that is what youtube is is doing where do we go for growth we have to figure out a way to tap into that. And to your point, you know, they're tapping into a bunch of it. And it's interesting they're doing it. The way Netflix is doing it. But you're right. They're also like, we don't want

a part of some of this whole, this giant category that's growing really fast. Like, not really. You know, like, Netflix is not going to be putting, I mean, I'd be a look like an idiot about this a year from now. I don't think there's going to be a bidding war for, for putting Joe Rogan's show on any of these platforms. I mean, he's an economic juggernaut. Why isn't there? It's, you know, he's a perfect television. Certainly there's not. going to be a bidding war for Prodive America. No offense. My buddies. You know what I mean? Like probably not for Joe Rogan, but certainly not for lefty politics. Right. I agree. But I think the pervasive thing previously was that Netflix and Apple had the Michael Jordan

attitude towards contemporary topical political things, which was... Republicans buy shoes, too. Right. Republicans buy shoes shoes or Democrats by shoes or whatever. We just like, we don't, we don't, they buy a lot of stuff. Our main business is not this business. are secondary to selling iPhones in Beijing and selling toilet paper everywhere. So why would we do stuff that might alienate some of our customers? That is now the prevailing view across all of these platforms because they're worried about either regulatory retribution where Trump doesn't let them make a deal they want to make going forward or a lawsuit that they may end up having to write the check and then look like an idiot

over having written the check because, hey, guess what you get if you're Disney ABC, if you capitulate on Stephanopolis, you get Trump comes back after you and tries to say guy Jimmy Kimmel. It's not like the king goes, you know, thank you for the tribute. We're done now. The team goes, oh, you guys are a pushover. I'm not going to come back and take your wife and children. You know, it's like, that's what you learned in that transaction.

I want to go forward. I've been, I've been chomping at the bit to play you this clip. And it was like, I wanted just to start the podcast with it. But it's like, you know, we can't, we can't really start a year-end podcast with the political prospects of the current vice president in the first year of the thing. But now the time has come. We have to. I just can't wait any longer.

I can't wait any longer. Are you familiar with clavicular? Does that name ring a bell to you at all? Clavicular. I'm familiar with Caligula. As a role model, as a role model in my various times of my life. But no, I'm not clavicular now. I don't know that.

Clivicular is Caligula-esque. He's a young man, very handsome. I seem to maybe if he had some help, like some work done. He's what they're calling now, a looks mexer. A looks maxer. do you know that that's a that's a phrase it's like uh looks mixer yeah looks maxing and a looks maxer looks maxer looks maxer yeah he's like a guy goes to the gym all the time but also gets like jaw enhancements like he almost looks too handsome to the point where he's like starting to

look non-human a little bit he's starting to look like an AI generated AI generated so clavicular exists on the border of like based on my pretty limited knowledge to be honest what I can tell is he exists on the boardage of like workout content and like you know young men broing out and like getting muscles and also like alt-right groiper stuff okay so he was on the daily wire doing an interview with michael knolls and michael knolls asked him about jd vance and here was clavicular's assessment of the vice president's political prospect awesome yeah but i mean like this next election cycle who's going to win it's going to be gavin newsome against jd vance because jd vance is subhuman and Gavin Newsom Muggs.

J.D. Vance is subhuman? Yeah. What makes you say that? He's got a very short, total facial width to height ratio. He's a beast, very recessed side profile, whereas Newsom is like 6'3, Chad. He has, can we just hear it one more time? I got to hear the whole bit. I got to hear the whole thing. He has a recess side profile. Let's play it one more time. Yeah, but I mean, like this next election cycle, who's going to win? It's going to be

Gavin Newsom against J.D. Vance because J.D. Vance is subhuman and Gavin Nussam Muggs. J.D. Vance is subhuman? Yeah. What makes you say that? He's got a very short, total, facial width to height ratio. He's obese,

very recessed side profile, whereas Newsom is like 6-3-Chad. Six-3-Chad. Very recessed side profile. I don't want to hear a equivocalist to say about me. Go ahead, Josh. Well, there's three things. there. And I'd like to know, like, is he putting him in order of dehumanization or were those just

random? Because the width to height ratio, I think he's saying his basically his face is, his head's horizontal. That's what he's saying, like a sideways egg, right? Because he's just the width to height ratio's off, right? Okay. So he's basically saying he's got a sideways egg ahead. Yeah. And then the second thing was just he's obese. He's obese. After obese, he moved on to this recessed side profile. Yeah, he has a recess. I think that's a weak jaw line. I think that's a fancy thing. He's got an extremely weak jaw line. Yeah. Right. How many people are like, what's the audience for clavicular? I got to tell you, this is one of the things.

Is he a big deal? Well, in our new society, like, where there are all these different, you know, kind of so, like little mini cultures. I don't know about you, but this happens to me all the time. Like, someone will appear, you know, because this happened to me with clavicular this week, where he, like, he made this very funny thing that made me laugh about J.D. Vance. And the next thing, you know, I just noticed him. Like, oh, he also did an interview with Nick Plentes. And then I was reminded of a clip of just a generic looking guy that I had seen a couple weeks ago. I'd forgotten who was telling a story about how Peter Thiel had invited him to a party. And now he said no, because that made him uncomfortable. And so he seems popular.

I don't know. He's just a round. He's now appeared in my life and now he's in my for you page. But he appears popular. And Sneiko, who I've been following for a long time, is extremely popular. He did a riff on this where he agreed. read with clavicular's assessment of J.D. Vance, but then added in some pretty negative comments about Usha that I'm not going to be playing because

this is a family podcast. All of this to say, I don't know, man. It feels like the alligator might be eating their own here with this kind of deal that these guys have made between the alt-right and the pro podcasters and what is supposed to be like a serious party with policy objectives. Well, so much to say about that. I will say just very quickly in passing the current world we inhabit where social media has basically eaten everything is that like back in the old days tim you're younger than me but you will remember it wasn't that long ago that when you noticed a band or an actor or an author or a pundit for the first time and you're like well that person that's whatever is interesting i like that or you know that's

something worth a noteworthy in some way whether there was positive or negative. And then they suddenly started turning up all the time in your field of consciousness. You would say to yourself, that person's always been around. I'm just noticing now. Like I was just kind of blind to that now. Oh, now that I know who that person is, that band, that artist, that whatever, they're around more than I thought. Or you'd go do self-research.

If you got really excited about one of them, you would, you know. Right. But you didn't, but you didn't do what you do now, which is, is it really that they were always around? And I just, they were just outside my field of vision or I just did. was looking past them, or is it now because of one thing that I watched on my phone, that it's now the algorithm is now feeding me a bunch of stuff that was never feeding me before. And I never, it's not like I didn't notice this person. That person was not in my feet.

My feet is the only existence I have. And the algo caught me watching one thing on YouTube of this person. Now it's just going to jam clibicular down my throat. I'm like, okay, clavicular was not in my life before. It's not like I missed him. I just like, I now, but somebody's now forced feeding me. Clavicular. Anyway, here's my question about all of that J.D. Van stuff for you. Well, my answer, which is, yes, the infighting piece is interesting. Like, yes, and we could talk about that,

you know, the pod bros versus the, versus the MAGA podcasters, et cetera, et cetera. But more fundamental is that the thing that Clavicular said in his very unique way is something that I think like many, many millions of Americans will think of if JD Vans runs for president. They won't say it that way, but they'll be like, I find this person kind of repellent, like on some, on some basic level. And, you know, you and I have talked about this before. His abilities as a shapeshifter have allowed him to rise to an extraordinary height in American politics with all of the infirmities that you and I would associate with him. But I think like running for president is different, you know, that thing of like, I'm a good

inside game player, I have shapeshifted. I've mastered the art of not just policy flip-flop, but of characterological flip-flop. I've somehow managed to be able to do that well. I just think that one of the few places in our culture where it doesn't work is presidential nominating contests and presidential campaigns. I think the Axelrod, you know, MRI, the sole thing is still right. Maybe we'll get to a point where that's not true anymore, but like the thing is so, there's so much exposure, so much scrutiny, as you know, it's not like running for Senate or running for

governor or there's anything like it. The magnification is so intense that, like, people really get to look at you for what you really are on some level. And like, all of the politicians you've worked for and all the ones I've ever covered have been involved in some, here's my public image. I'm projecting that, right? But I think one of the things that's true is that the most successful ones that we've ever seen are the ones where the gap between public image and private reality is the smallest, where they're like being something pretty much close to themselves, even if they are saying certain things that aren't true, the basic thing of like the real George W. Bush kind of the real Barack Obama kind of comes through. Bad and good, that the real Bill Clinton kind of

comes through. And I think with J.D. Vance, there's so much about him that's unappealing that I think a lot of people will have the kind of reaction clavicular has, but with just different terms, like why it is they find that not someone they would want to put in the White House. I think he's nothing like Donald Trump. Like, he had managed to attach himself to Donald Trump, but like, can you think of two politicians who in some ways are more different than Donald Trump and J.D. Vance? Personality-wise, for sure. I'll only throw you this counter.

Disagree. I mean, if you think I'm wrong. This is not a disagree. This is just something in my head. This is something I'm interested in for your reaction to, which is, as we've discussed many times, we'll continue to discuss a lot far into the future, I find J.D. Vance so repellent, like whatever the maximum of repellent is is what I feel about J.D. Vance. I just, he's sickening to me. That makes me think, okay, well, I want to challenge

my own prior on this. Like, am I missing something about this because I just, when I look at this person, I might be missing something. And the thing that I think of when I try to challenge my own prior is, well, there's this infighting happening within the Magaside that's like basically around Israel, like honestly, it's around other stuff too, but it's like basically around Israel poor butler it's like you have kind of the neoconish maga versus the america first maga is like basically the short hand of what it is or the more strong foreign policy maga versus fuck everybody in the world let's just care about our own maga basically and uh the leading figures on both sides of that still kind of like jd vans i mean erika kirk like endorsed him at the thing uh ben shapiro like

kind of likes jad vans it seems like all the tucker and has jay has his kid on jadivance's staff so to this point we're very early but he's navigated that which showed some kind of political skill. And I do kind of wonder if he's like an evil, bizarreo George H.W. Bush, you kind of were swimming in the wake of this like political figure that was a very, you know, Reagan, like these two terms. He's an actor. He's this huge personality. And everybody's kind of looking around after Reagan leaves and they're like, we want to keep the good times flowing.

And they're like, we don't got anybody else. And it's like, well, this guy's right there. He was the vice president. And I don't want to get on his bounce side. Maybe he wins. So I'll just get in line behind him. and we'll see if we can mold him to my liking. And then he kind of gets in there and then eventually, you know, there's this lag, right?

Like there's a lag. And then four years after we suffer through J.D. Vance's presidency, like some actual new figure comes forth that remakes our politics again. That doesn't feel crazy to me, that kind of sequence of events. Does that seem crazy to you? No, no. I mean, do you think of Donald Trump, like, were to take his hands off of J.D. Vance and lay them on somebody else that there would be any of that support would still exist? No, it would disappear in a second. Right.

If Trump was to lay his imprimatur on Marco, I think that the J.D. could kind of ride with the Groyper's and the Tucker wing and, you know, kind of lean in and fight it out. I mean, now we're just getting into kind of crazy, you know, what a fantasy politics. But that would be the only group that he could have any possible. I guess my only, my only point is just that like so much of it is like really, Reagan had a lot of political power in the Republican Party in 1988, although he was the declining figure by the time of Iran Contra. And people were kind of like, you know, the 1980 election was not an. obvious, like, Republicans were just going to keep it rolling in 1988 in the general election until, you know, until September of that year, right? DeCoccus was up in that race. And I guess I say that just because Reagan's power was diminished. Trump's power maybe by the time we get to the end of this term diminished in that same way. But right now, in the end of year one, Trump 2.0, you know, Trump is still powerful enough

that the perception that he's behind Vance and that Vance is the era parent. It seems to be accounts for way more of J.D.'s considerable throwaway, right now as a prospective nominee, but it's way more that than anything he's done that's been skillful, right? He has some skills, but a lot of that, those skills would be not up to the task of holding all that together if Trump were to even just turn away from him, let alone lay his hands on somebody else. And if he laid his hands on one of his kids, he could go back to calling him human heroin again or whatever he said. Or no, he'd probably be the VP. Has anybody ever done? He could stay on, stay on in the role. There's no constitutional amendment that keeps from being

vice president forever. Yeah, right. You can just be vice president. It's like Barron's, you know, in 2042. It's Barron and J.D. And I guess I think the thing is when I say the MRI of the sole thing is I think it's a general election thing. And I just, I find the notion that somehow J.D. Vance is going to be able to cross that, you know, that hasn't that somehow managed to cross that allowed him to get, you know, not a majority, but a plurality

of the votes in 2024. I just like, I just don't think there's a ton of like. instinct of a middle of American appetite for that kind of the personality, the shape-shifting, the smarmingness, all that we can think of a lot of everyone. There's no joy. There's no joie. There's no joan de vivre. Like there's nothing.

Right. The thing about, you know, I mean, look, I've been getting a lot of trouble talking about these kind of things. But look, Trump is a fun candidate. Trump is fun. Trump is fun in the way, again, take your ideology out of it and think, I mean, Trump is off of terrifying. Okay.

Yes. But also, you know, he's hilarious. And, you know, even if you hate Zoroam-Donna, you can't fight the fact that the guy has a certain juanabeave about him right there's a joy to that there's like in a weird dark twisted horrible way there's a there's a joy to what trump is doing and a joyfulness to that and that's part of what it was why he's appealing to a lot of people even if not to us yeah and jade doesn't have that jade doesn't have that he doesn't have that any of that there's none of that like he's the fun candidate that's i want to ride with that guy you know i don't see that i don't see where you

get that across the ideological spectrum even people who who are going to endorse him now because they think he's inevitable, are not like over there going, yeah, this is going to be fun. I want to be part of the Jannie Vance movement, right? Which a lot of people said about Trump of the Republican Party, unfortunately, over the course of the last decade. If we hadn't had so much hate the last 10 years, JD is good at like being nasty towards opponents.

That resonates with certain people, but I wonder if people are sick of that in a couple years. But whenever we bring up the Trump funny thing, I'll try to find a clip and put it in the show notes, but like Shane Gillis, who's one of these comedians, who's like pretty liberal, that is kind of in the pro world. He does a bitch about the Trump debates and like

watching with his dad the first debates in 2016 and because Trump is so gross and we don't want to laugh at him. Me watching Shane Gillis talk about why he thought Trump was so funny, opened the little brain wave. So the grooves in my brain to be like, oh yeah, okay, I get it. It's not for me, but I see it. I get it. Let's talk about the Dems and Zoran for a second. There are two parts of the Dems I want to talk about. You've invoked Zoran twice. Are the Dems just 16 years or whatever behind Republicans and it's kind of inevitable? that there's a kind of a DSA like it can't be Zoran because

he was born in Uganda but like inevitably there's a kind of a DSA wave that overthrows the establishment or do you think it's incumbent upon like how good of a job he does as mayor or do you think that's not actually very comparable at all because the Democratic coalition is so much more

heterodox and diverse where do you fall on that? I don't think that it has anything to do with whether he does a good job or not I shouldn't say it has nothing to do with it. If he does a terrible job it could I think it could really heard of. He's like a San Francisco level bad job. Like San Francisco objectively got way worse. Really, really

destroyed the city or really somehow elevated the city to Nirvana. I'm an admirer of a whole bunch of things about him. And I'll get to the most important one at the end. But you know, the reality is that a lot of the stuff he's promised, the stuff that's

been perfect for the information economy we currently live in or the attention economy we currently know. The fact that he can get his supporters to be able to name what he was for as like a call and response chant at the end of his campaign where, you know, it was, you know, freeze the rent, you know, the health care thing and the free fast buses. Like the odds that he achieves any of those are very low under the way in which the

mayoralty works. I mean, it's just like, can't you just make the buses free? That part's, I don't know. He can make them free, but he can't make them fast because that's what he promised was free fast buses, right? So it's like, I mean, he's got to budget for it if he makes it free. There's a budget hold of fitness. to fill, but he's not going to make them green fast. That's the whole thing. Free fast buses.

I mean, I hope he does it. Hope he does it. Yeah. But, you know, the constraints, the political constraints, the having to work with Albany, and the city's really hard to run for even the best people. People forget that when Mike Bloomberg was the mayor, he was really good at running the city in a way that almost no one has been ever in terms of managing it. And people are like, well, Mike Bloomberg was a great manager. I'm like, yeah, he also was like paying the deputy mayors and the heads of the administration. was giving them not in a corrupt way, was topping up their salary so they'd be competitive with private sector wages out of his foundation so that he could get top people who would never have left like a job in investment banking to go and like be whatever.

He was able to attract a kind of level of talent that was unusual. And so will Zoran do a good job? I don't know. But here's the thing, if you really love him and you love what he stands for and you love his aspirations and you love his style of politics and you love his ability to move young voters, all of that, your fear is not. that he's going to, like, set up a few city-run grocery stores and that those are going to infect the city with communism

and we're going to have Sharia law. You're worried that, like, he's going to let everybody down. Right. That over four years, he's not going to be awful, and he's also not going to be great, but that the main promises aren't going to get fulfilled and all those young voters who turned out from are going to be go out, just another guy who was all talking, no action.

And they're not going to see all the constraints that are on him and that that went up with a large deflating effect. But I think when they look at it, who are sympathetic to him, they're worried that that's where this is going to end up and that all that enthusiasm's not just going to dissipate but actually be kind of shit on if it seems like he just was all talking no action. That is a is a possibility. But the thing that I think to your original question is that he exemplifies something that's been true before him for like a couple cycles

now is that the only people in the Democratic Party with a big set of ideas that feel like they're commensurate to the size of people's, not just our common ailments or places where our policies have failed or the large challenge of the country faces, but like to the actual thing, which is deeper than any of that and goes to this pervasive sense of like what the fuck is going on, like that the world is changing in ways that people are finding really hard to process and are really discombobulating to people and whether it's on a question like AI or these other things, people who like feel like they've lost their sense that they understand what the fuck is going on in their city, in their state, in the country, in the world.

And the left are the only ones in the Democratic Party who are like, yeah, these are really big world-changing things. There's a lot of anxiety and alienation out there. And there's also huge systemic social and economic problems. And we're going to swing for the fucking fences and try to put ideas up on the board that are as big as all of that is. And in the absence of somebody else who has an alternative set of ideas in the progressive tradition that aren't that far to the left, social.

is what that is what's going to happen because in the end these problems are going to get bigger and worse and people are desperate for someone or for an institution or an individual who is in tune with that and talking about change on the scale that seems like I say commensurate to that and the left are the only ones doing that right now you know in 1991 Bill Clinton was doing that in a way that a lot of people on the left think now is it was horrible neoliberalism and all the shit that he put forward. But he had a big set of ideas about a big set of challenges, and it all fit together into a worldview that made people think, okay, globalization. Globalization, the information age, dude, you're talking about the big things we see out there that are freaking us out,

and you have a worldview and a set of policies to try to address it that seemed to commensurate to it. That's, you know, at that time, the market-minded Democrats were in that position in the party. And now the left is, like kind of the only ones who were talking on that scale. So I think that's why you could easily end up where you're talking about. I don't think that means we where Republicans ended up with like a strong man dictator. Like are not going to get necessarily we're going to have Fidel Castro, you know. I just meant where there's an overthrow of the established order to such a degree that like people that were part of the Democratic establishment in the past are all washed away. Well, and that the center of, and it's at the center

of gravity and the party is being driven ideologically. The Clintons did in fact, I would even say this true of Obama. That Clinton worldview, that set of policies, which, if you were being super gliby, you'd just be like neoliberalism, that dominated the Democratic Party from through Obama, I mean, all the way up until 2016. It was a 25 years of dominating the Democratic Party. You could argue that the party has not had a center of gravity since then, and that if you had to guess about whether the center of gravity was going to be back in that direction or a more moderate direction or in the direction of the left right now, you would bet your money

on the left, not the moderate direction. I agree with all that. And this takes me nicely into my other proposal about or something. something that's flummox me. My brief windup for this is this is why I'm happy. I don't have to run for president or work on campaigns anymore because I'm like, I feel like our problems are pretty much Trump. I feel like we have a locus of problems. And like I kind of think incremental positive change is fine actually. And like and big, big changes, risks big bad outcomes. And that's just me. That's my small C conservative nature that I concur to you with

you that like the base of the Democratic Party absolutely does not want. And a lot of people who are young aren't a part of the base of the Democratic Party right now, but are the rising cohort of people who are out there waiting to be led somewhere, who are not going to ever be like hardcore Republicans, but are people who are, you know, they actually hate what the old Democratic Party represents, but they're desperate for someone to to inhabit some kind of new space that makes them feel hopeful and gives them a sense that there's a path forward. Again, that seems plausible, given the chaos of the world around us, that's not just Trump related. That's, you know, I mean, we would have chaos around AI whether Trump was president or not.

There's nobody who has a really good handle on what to do with that policy-wise. Trump is more corrupt about it, but it's not like if, I think if Kamala Harris was president, we'd be like, we'd have our shit together on dealing with the AI challenge. Oh, no. So I think there's a whole generation of young people who are really politically homeless right now. They're more progressive than conservative, but they're not part of the base of the Democratic Party today. They're the Zoron voter that exists in big cities all over the country. And they do care to people about Gaza.

They also are economically, you know, like the job market is awful right now for 23-year-olds. I've been spent a lot of the break out through for some resumes. And it's just like, it's awful out there for people graduating college. Good for you as someone who's going to go through resumes. There's a lot of very talented people out there willing to work for almost nothing. Yeah, I know. It's nice. That is nice.

Overwhelming kind of. It's like the resume we got for the Columbia grad and chemical engineering. I was like, it's not that bad out there. Okay, there's got to be a job for a chemical engineers. Chemical engineer Columbia grad that's better than podcast. but boy i'll say i'll tell you if that's true if it really is that bad we're fucked we are fucked we are fucked so i want to ask you though about this you i would ask this but i'm gonna be what's the end of the year so i'm gonna be cliche tim

you covered early mccain like straight talk express mccain you've been you're with yeah okay yeah and and to me if i'm like a democrat who is like i'm not dsa i don't think those are the answers they think there's things about that you know whatever i i like Medicare for all we want it or, you know, there are various elements from the left that I would take, but I'm not going to go full leftist, right? Right. What is a path that could feel like you're offering something that's commensured for the moment that is that gives people what they want that's not that.

And to me, it's just like the model is McCain of 2000, really, 2000, also made 2008, which is more like a reform, anti-corruption that's like kind of of the center, but take some lefty stuff. This is, I'm not talking about Neocon McCain, by the way, everybody listening. This is not about McCain's foreign policy start. It's about McCain-Feingold and campaign finance. And it's about how the establishment is corrupt and how we've got to go fix the system. To me, that is at least an interesting lane that could potentially work that no one seems to even be trying to fill, which I find perplexing.

And so I'm wondering how you'd react to that. I find it perplexing also. I mean, I find it perplexing in the sense that among the many chivalets of our time, you know, in politics, was that like talking about kind of process stuff was like always kind of political death and that, you know, if you are looking for big ideas that don't involve, you know, one degree or another state. Overthrowing the capitalist system. Right.

One degree of state control of various things is that reform of these institutions in a pretty radical way. You can be pretty radical and get that change juice all over yourself, like where you're really proposing to change fundamental things like how we finance our elections, I think you would want to steal some stuff from the progressive side, Supreme Court. All of that political reform stuff would also reforming institutions in other areas. You'd steal the health care piece. You know, you would want some kind of a thing where you tried to take some of the significant market forces out of the health care system that are unique to America and look to be not

Cuba, but look to be Germany. And go and look at that system. Why, I was about to say West Germany, but you know what I mean? Now, Germany, you know, where they run a very, like, that's a very private sector-oriented, very business-friendly European country that's not France, not Spain, not even Britain, but that is still largely a nationalized health care system that's like where there's a state and private sector collaboration that is like way more deeply integrated than what we have the United States that takes out some of the worst aspects of market forces out of the health care system. So you can do radical reform of various institutions that you would make part of your thing would be a pitch about constitutional reform to do things to make sure that, you know, we did a little

bit of this after January 6th. We have learned where what Trump has shown us, again, as a Democrat pitching this, you'd say, Trump has shown us where the guardrails are really weak, where the guardrails are only theoretical, where their norms, not laws. Actually, you know what? We need laws of those places now. Like what Trump constantly has proven is that a lot of these things, these constitutional norms, precedents are really just norms and they're not really laws. And so, hey, let's go through and go figure out all the shit that Trump has done. Again, if you were making the primary pitch, all the shit that Trump has done that's tested the basic structure of American democracy and go firm those guardrails up where they need to be firm to build them where they don't exist, turn things of their norms that we want to, like, barely make permanent, we got to turn those things as a loss. That's what we're going to do. There's a big wide field for that. I couldn't tell you why no one has seized on that as at least part of what they're doing. But I think part of the answer is it's early. Is there anybody you think had a good year on that front besides Gavin? And Gavin's really the only name that you could say. It would be like you could say had a good year.

I think Gavin had a great year and didn't touch this. I don't mean just the reform agenda. I mean, in general, if you go and listen to Ezra's thing with Gavin Newsom for an hour and 45 minutes or whatever, it's very long. I've known Gavin since he was mayor of San Francisco. I like him. I think he has a huge political upside and I think he had a great year. But the thing he doesn't have most definitively yet, and I think yet is really important is he doesn't have that Clinton, like he's not projecting a worldview. He's not, you know, not saying he should be, but there's nobody who's become the abundance

candidate, you know, so she's like to decide, I'm going to seize that. And that's what I'm going to wear. I'm going to really flesh it out and I'm going to do it. If you listen to Ezra's conversation with Gavin, he's great on attacking Trump. He's great on setting stakes. He actually, because of his dyslexia, knows a ton about policy and is really good at digging deep on some particular policy area. What he doesn't have is a worldview of like, here are the challenges we face.

this is the way in which all of my shit fits together to give you a sense of like, you hear the problems, here are the policies, here's the rhetoric that ties it all up together and creates a vision that you can all like now march to. He hasn't done that yet. I think he can, but that's his challenge, I think, for 2026, is how to, like, go from the stuff he's dominating on,

attention economy stuff, getting in Trump's face. He understands the environment incredibly well, and he's really good as an antagonist. But the only things we were talking about earlier in this conversation is the thing that Lovett said to me, which I think is so on the money, is that Trump is a great antagonist and not a great protagonist. He's great at being on the outside attacking, whether it's a Republican establishment or a Democratic establishment or the in power government. He wasn't good in his first term in office, and he was not good in this term in office in terms of being like the protagonist in the story. And what Gavin was great at this year was being an antagonist and he has to figure out now how to make that.

ship to protagonist because in the end that's the ball game for what you're president you're in hawaii so i want to let you get to the beach uh i just posted my least red column of every year it's my music year in review this is my sixth i think and it is the six lowest red things i've ever written for the bulwark and that's okay because you know you just got to love what you love all sick wait you've done six of them i've done six of them i've done this is the six Bullark year, right? Am I wrong? Really?

Six years? 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25. Six years. And who thought, got, got the bulwark is like, starting to get a little long in the tooth there, Tim? I know. I know. Well, luckily, a lot of the people, I really just found us last year.

So for a lot of people, it is fresh. I think it's new. They're like, oh, the bulwark is this one. That's not really new site. Anyway, don't go back and see my stuff I wrote six years ago. It's been great. We're fresh. We're cool right now.

Like geese. There's my transition. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Well, you're saying you've done six of these columns, and every year, this is the least red column you do. Yes, by far. Okay. Okay, I just want to be clear about how just what kind of dregs we're talking about here. Okay.

Yeah, my attempt to cross over into cultural writing, nobody cares and nobody wants it. And I'm going to feed it to them anyway. Good. And so I wrote this year, and you're obviously big music guy as well. We saw geese together. We did. I thought Oasis was the best thing I saw this year. I spent a lot of time writing about Oasis, but also about geese, which was my number one record of the year.

I think the most interesting thing about geese this year is that, like, there's this period of time where us, you and me, who come from the guitar rock era, you know, I'm like towards the end of that and you're in the middle of it. And like these bands would pop up where we'd be like, ooh, this will be the next thing, like the thing when we were in college, like where the youngs will get into it. Then you'd go to the first show and it'd be like wet leg or something. And it'd be like, I would be the youngest person there. you know there'd be one teenager there with their dad you know and it's like it's just not happening like it's fine it was fine geese broke that there are a lot of young gen z kids that really got into camera winter and geese both records are unbelievable and if you look next year at like cochella and the big at the big festivals edm is still dominant of course but like there's something about it the rock beans

or something come back and it's kind of like hip hop is like kind of now in a little bit of its wane as like it gets into it's long in the tooth era where like the big hip-hop artists are like in their 40s. You know, it's like Kendrick Lamar and stuff. And I do wonder if there's, if you're seeing that change, if you have any other thoughts,

anything else that enchanted you this year besides our friend Cameron Winter. I think the Oasis thing and the geese slash camera winter thing are totally related. And I think, you know, going to see those oasis shows, you went to a bunch, right?

You went in Britain, in Chicago, right? Chicago. And that's Chicago. Yeah, twice, yeah. They both spoke to.

And there were different demos. in those audiences. I will say that the night after seeing Oasis, we saw a 9-inch Nails. And that show was incredible also, but a different kind of thing. It had different kinds of meetings. I think you're trying to rest there's a genius,

and that show was genius. I mean, it was great. And the stadium show is never going to move me the way, like, you know, it's just too big. Like, you know, that having said that, I think the Oasis thing in the camera, winter thing, slash geese thing are part of the same thing,

which is like, I'm long in the tooth now enough to have gone through this cycle you know, since the mid-1990s, really, certainly the early aughts, or the late 90s, of rock and roll is dead, you know, and pop is big, hip-hop is big, this is big, that's big, country obviously has its own center of gravity

and its own kind of cultural and economic space that it occupies. But like the rock is dead thing. And then it turns out not to be like the strokes show up and you're not going back to the heyday of where rock and roll is dominant culturally. or economically or financially. But where there's a, this cadre and not a small cadre, people who are like willing these bands into existence.

You know, like, and when the strokes appear, then a scene around the strokes blows up. And it's like rock and roll's rebirth in New York City, in the shadow of 9-11 happens, and Lizzie does meet me in the bathroom. But it's a scene because people want to- Shout out, make me in the bathroom. Because people wanted to be there, right?

They want it to be there. I just like, at those shows at the Oasis show and at the geese show that we were at, I saw slightly different demos. Obviously more geysers at the OASIS show, but a lot of people all the way down, like that was a very cross-generational show. A lot of,

some of the people I saw singing OASIS songs the most fervently were like 17, 18 years old, like just screaming, like just knew the words to every song. They probably learned them from their parents. I don't care, but they were there, they were out there like kind of because dad dragged them or mom dragged them. They were there because they were into fucking Oasis, right?

And it was the reaction to those shows as much as the music itself and the way in which the audiences in those two different spaces were seen to be like desperate to invest importance in some rock band and the unifying kind of qualities the rock has in their minds, right? It's like one of them is throwback and one of them is the future. But the geese thing right now is just, is just wild and it's so much that. It's like, and the way you could see it, for what it's worth, I did not go to this show, but Lizzie did, was Cameron Winter, after that show that we saw in Brooklyn, he did these solo shows at Carnegie Hall. And the Carnegie Hall shows, I think the solo album is, I mean, for my taste, I like, I like the solo album better than I like the Geese album, although I like, they're both great, but I love the his solo album. The crowd at Carnegie Hall, it's like, Paul Thomas Anderson is there shooting him, and one of the Safty brothers is there. And Michael Stipe is there. And it's like there's this like moment of the older generation now seeing like that like geese is everywhere among everybody you know in your 20s in New York in particular.

But those are kind of important cultural. We talked before about Trump imprimatur. Those are big imprimaturors of like cool people of a, it's Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Stipe and I forget which one of the safeties, but one of the safeties. And PTA is on stage shooting Cameron Winter for God knows what. it's like people want there to be a rock star people want there to be a new a new neil young people want there to be a new bob Dylan people who want there to be a new take your pick of like Leonard Cohen Lou Reed whatever it is you know they did this show where they did this corporate show like the few days before we saw them in Brooklyn geese did where all they did

was like play Stoge's covers and Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen things for like some corporate audience that like you hear the audio about it's like it's incredible and And the combination of the moment that's kind of calling them forth is super interesting to me and that they're leaning hard into it now. And they're going to be, I mean, who knows how long it will last because there's these things we live in this world where, you know, things don't. But, you know, we're going to get a lot of geese in Cameron Winter next year, too. That's not going to fade from view.

Yeah. I'm hoping that it's something. I'm hoping that it speaks to, I don't feel like me as a, you know, as a 40-something with an eight-year-old can say this with any. I'm hoping it speaks to something about that that out there there's this desire for something tangible again. And the EDM's not going anywhere. It's too fun to go to a big fucking hall and do drugs and have the lights and stuff. Like that's not going anywhere. But like that people just yearn for it. That's what I'm saying. I mean, it doesn't matter that I like them. It doesn't matter

that you like them. It doesn't matter. My opinion is. Doesn't matter anybody like. Right. But what I again, what I saw what you see around them right now is what's hopeful is why I find hopeful about Like, I believe in rock and roll, so, and I'm, and I think it has certain qualities that these other genres of music don't have. I love some of those other genres of music. Like, you know, I mean, I'll go all day with you about the value of, about hip hop, but it's not the same, it doesn't have that same kind of galvanic force that rock does. And so I want there to be, again, my reaction to it matters way less than what is observably true about the reaction of young, like these larger cohort of younger. what you see is them willing this forward for it forth right now and so that is the thing that gives me hope not like that i like them you know i just want there's some decent guitars back at coachella

so i'm excited about that yes a few guitars back not all it doesn't have the whole thing just a few guitars no just like just some fucking guitars and you know songs do you have a uh do you have a new year's resolution for yourself do you do this um i i i'll give you a custom news resolution just for you. In 2026, I want more face-to-face Tim Miller in my life. I'm resolved to see you in the flesh in person for, you know, whatever purposes. I'm going to allotted to see you more than I saw you last year. We are aligned.

I mean, well, that does mean, you're going to have to come to New Orleans. So it's your obligation. We're aligned on our kids. My New Year's resolution for myself next year is that I'm going to force myself, not force, because I enjoy fun, as you know, and I enjoy good times as much. anybody. I'm not going to force myself to take a little more vacation time from this podcast next year because I think 27 and 28 are going to be crazy as fuck. And so this is it. We're going to have some guest hosts. And so, you know, hopefully some of that vacation time can overlap

with John Heilman time. How about that? Yes, I 100% endorse, co-signed that. I don't think your audience recognizes. Like, I don't think people generally, this is not like a pity party thing. This is the reality. If you do a daily television show, you know, I did one for three years where it was on there. It was on the every day at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, five days a week. And you do your daily thing. It's a grind, man. And it's not like, you know, it's not breaking rocks in the hot sun.

You're a blessed person. You're like, this is not like a moaning, whining thing. Yeah, no, exactly. But there's a, you know, the relentlessness of having to not doing some routine thing, you know, like you're having to do guests every day and engaging in being all that kind of stuff. Thank you. Yeah. They would get a better Tim.

Your audience would get a better Tim. And you would be happier. If, like, you know, you could just work in a few guest hosts now and then and, like, you know, take a little, just give yourself a little bit more room to, you know, have a day where you aren't making a podcast and where you're absorbing things and reading things and watching things and listening to things and, you know. Or none of those things. Or whatever, or whatever, but or just resting or just resting or just turning, it's just switching off. This is not a critique of the show. I'm just saying, I'm making the case to your audience. I'm saying people, when Tim takes off some days next year, occasionally brings in a guest host or misses something, he is doing.

he is doing it for you as much as for himself he will be you will get a better tim miller when you get a more rested more tanned more ready more chill tim miller you will so just keep that in mind when he takes time off next year people john halman i love you man thank you for that endorsement and on that note i'm taking off friday shelf so i'm going to see everybody back here next monday i have a wonderful new year's eve with your family halman you enjoyed the beach happy new year motherfucker and we'll see people in 2020 Thanks, peace. I thought I'd ask you just the same.

What are you doing? New Year's. New Year's here.