The Bulwark Podcast - Jon Favreau: Why Aren't More People Talking about Nipple-Gate?

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

The vice president of the United States called a meeting in the Situation Room last year to discuss the administration's cover-up of the Epstein files. Never mind that there were allegations in the files that Trump had had sex with an underage girl in Epstein's child trafficking ring—and which somehow involved Trump's alleged nipple fetish. The Epstein victims and the underlying crimes were not a priority in the meeting; getting Ghislaine or Vance on a friendly podcast was. Plus, the perception of a deal with Iran seems to be more important than an agreement itself, cuck John Cornyn is not worthy of sympathy, Dems have got to stop walking on eggshells, advice for making the most effective campaign contributions for the midterms, POTUS thinks he is the culmination of what America 250 is celebrating, Tim likes the UFC Claw, and the worst Spencer Pratt takes of all.Jon Favreau joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod.show notes Jon's 'Offline' podcast Tim's 'Triad' on the most effective campaign contributions Peter Hamby on America 250 Tim's playlist

Welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host to Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show. Co-founder of Crooked Media, co-host of something called Pod Save America. He also has the podcast offline with John Favro. That's been a good nap podcast for me lately. It's John Favro. What's up, man? What's up? Is that replaced Pod Save the World as your nap podcast? Because I know you fall in. They're kind of going back and forth. I was getting bored with the Iran War talking Pod Save the World. Are we all? I'm going to offline. I like both. You know, usually the first 25 minutes are good and then kind of dips in and out. Then I kind of roll back in around minute 50.

Apologize to people. For number one, this could be a long podcast itself that you might want to nap to. And I'm sorry if it came up a little bit late, but Thabs was working out this morning. And he had to get his pump in. And I was just hoping since neither John Osloff nor Raphael Warnock

would tell me what their workout routine is. I was hoping that since you're not running for Senate, you could do that. You could just tell us what you did this morning. Well, because I am old now, I've like stopped running. I used to run all the time.

And now I just lift. And I just do, you know, not too heavy because, again, I'm old, but I'm trying to do like lower way, but more reps. That's what I'm doing. You do back one day. Yeah, you do so you do, you know, you do all the groups. You do front of your body one day and then you do back the other day. So what was today? Today was back.

Yeah, so I did some back stuff. I did some deadlifts. My hammies started hurting during a deadlift. A lot of pulls, some triceps. My ladies weights class, they've got me doing the deadlifts. and the moms are magging me on the dead left. My hamstrings get a little tight. It's tough.

You can't skip leg day. You can't. You can't. It's one of the down and upsides. I guess, how you look at it to the fact that I do a ladies' weights class is that there's a lot of glute work. It's important for women.

I don't know you would know better than me, but it's like, you know, it's something they're interested in and molding. And so I feel like my glutes have gotten kind of a disproportionate amount of attention. lately let's move on to iran i'm done this is why john osloff didn't want to do it that's why john also i didn't want to talk he's smart this is why you could run for president he's smart all right we have a deal

according to the iranians here's what the iranians said this morning you know they put it out into their state news media so their version of barrack revitted the deal says this a permanent and immediate cessation of all war on all fronts including lebanon great uh u.s commitment to not interfere in Iran's eternal affairs. Full lifting of the naval blockade. The U.S. and its allies will be required to present reconstruction plans for Iran worth at least 300 billion. Suspension of sanctions on oil, reopening of Strait of Hormuz within 30 days under arrangements determined by Iran, and a 60-day negotiation period aimed at reaching a final agreement. So Trump said yesterday they had a deal done, and that's what the Iranian said the deal was this morning. He wasn't thrilled

about that, it turns out. He posted a bleat that's saying these terms are fake news. There's no relation to the truth. Iranians are very dishonorable people to deal with. They better get their act together and fast. That's going to work too. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, last night felt like there was a deal. I mean, you know, you taped Pots of America yesterday. We had a deal when you got taped with Alex Wagner. I was trying to think about like how we get out of the cycle and why we're in this cycle. Yeah. And I think it's because the sort of the press around this and the perception of the deal

is almost more important than the deal itself. Right. And what you realize when you're in government and you're doing diplomacy is that sometimes if you want to actually make progress, you're just going to have to eat shit like in the press. And you're going to have to take a hit and people are going to have to criticize you. And by its very nature and definition, a compromise is going to. to have something that pisses off both sides. But for Trump, he cares so much about perception

and so much about sort of the narrative and the show around this that every time they get close and then the Iranians spout off all this bullshit about how the deal is so great, he can't just sit there and eat shit for a while until the deal is signed and then go tell his story. He has to immediately go and bleat something like that. And now what are the Iranians going to do? Well, the Iranians aren't going to sit there and be like, oh, Donald Trump, everything he said is wrong. They're going to now be like, okay, well, I'm going to try to hold out from war. Or maybe we're going to try to make sure that our deal points are included in there. So, like, this is why we just keep going around and around and around.

It does feel like the path out of this would be just to let Trump say one thing and the Mullahs say a completely opposite thing and let them both lie to their people. And then, like, all of us who live in reality could, like, yell about that. But then they just kind of move forward. That does feel like his best path out. The problem with that, the holdup on that strategy, which Trump has been able to get away with similar versions of that in the past, is like he has some people who have genuine things they want out of this around him.

Yes. You know, his allies in Israel, BB in particular, and then the American supporters of Israel, the Hawks, they're not going to let him get away with the, oh, I really won the deal on this and the way that they did on stuff that was lower stakes for them. No, in Trump's mind, what he wants is, the straight opened, and then he's fine lifting the naval blockade if the straight is opened. And then he wants to kick these negotiations over the nuclear material and everything else,

Israel, Lebanon, all of it, down the road, because he realizes probably correctly so, that once the straight is opened, everyone will stop paying attention to this. And if he doesn't get a good deal on the nuclear stuff, no one's going to fucking care, and he can just move on with his life. The Iranians, of course, know this. Yeah, right. Right? They're not stupid.

And the Israel-Lebanon situation is interesting, too, because yesterday, when someone contacted Netanyahu's office, they were like, this is surprised Israel. Israel is not part of this deal. Israel didn't know what's going on. And now the Iranians are saying Lebanon is included in the deal. So that seems like it would come as news to Israel. Right. And so, like, I don't think Netanyahu's going to let him let Trump just be able to turn away from this, even if they reopen the straight, because he's got an election coming up in the fall at some point. And Netanyahu's incentives is to show how tough he is on Lebanon and Hezbollah.

And so that's going to keep going. And then the Iranians, if their proxies are in a war with Israel, you think they're just going to sit back? Or might they close the straight again? Might they start firing rockets into Israel again? And then we're right back into it. So the problem is like there's no deal unless all the parties are involved and everyone's a little pissed off.

And the fact that we're doing this like skinny deal where maybe we just open the street. With Pakistan as the middleman. Like, we're not even talking, really, you know, to them. I don't, doesn't seem like Trump's even actually talking to any of the Iranians. Yeah, and they want to call it like the Islamabad Accord, of course, because like, again, just like Trump and Bibi or something, like, Pakistan's very interesting and getting some good PR for Pakistan. I loved this. They did the briefing this morning that they've been doing for like the MAGA influencers and then all the MAGA influence that then post them to X like, Cyron. Senior administration official tells us no dollars without dust.

And Kaylee McAnney, any former spokesperson posted this morning. 75% there. President's instinct is to give them five, six, seven more days. I'd like that especially because Kaylee two weeks ago was on Fox talking about how they're 95% of the way there. So we've gone backwards now.

But it's okay. It's right around the corner. I'm sure it'll be done by Sunday. I got a kind of a political question about how the Democrats should deal with this for you. I was dozing off to Pod Save the World on Sunday. And Tommy and Ben were talking about this. And you can tell they like really want to call

trump the P word, you know, and just be like, you got into this thing, but you don't want to follow through on it, and now you're stuck, and this deal is humiliating, and it sucks, and it's embarrassing, and you're weak. And, like, Tommy was saying that basically, but then it's like, there's always a caveat in the progressive circles. There's like, well, I don't, I don't want him to actually escalate. You know, like, I don't want to scare him to escalate. Ryan Grimm posted this this morning, just telling me did great, and he won bigly, and we can get out of this, lefty, kind of populist, Graham, who's on a couple months ago. I feel like Democratic senators kind of have this

and they're not as explicit about it as podcasters, but you can kind of tell it's in their internal, you know, monologue, like they don't want to mock them. And I just, I don't know, I kind of want to give Trump the Jimmy Carter treatment.

Like how would Fox have treated Jimmy Carter? You know, like, and I just, I feel like MS now and you guys and Democratic senators and everybody should just be like, you're a fucking little bitch. Like, you saw,

this is humiliate. This is so embarrassing. You started a war and you can't finish it. What's the case against doing that besides, you know, humanitarian, political case against it? My view on these things is you always start with what is true and what you actually believe. And what I genuinely believe is that, of course, I don't want, I want the hostilities to end. I want the straight to open. And so if a deal does that, great.

but he has fucked up so much to get us to this point and cost us so much to get to this point. And it seems like this deal is going to leave so many questions unanswered and so much possibility for future disaster and catastrophe that I don't think, I think you can rightly criticize Trump for every, like deciding to go to war, everything he did leading up to this point, all the money he cost us, all the higher fuel prices he cost everyone. the 13 Americans who died, the thousands and thousands of other people in Middle East who died, like, there's plenty to criticize him on and still say, like, you're glad that the war is over and that hostilities have ended. And I don't think that's, like, being soft on Trump or that we should, like, congratulate him. I don't think you have to do either of those things. I think you just, like, like, I cannot believe we just went through this fucking catastrophe

that has set this country back on every possible front because of this idiot. Yeah. I kind of feel like you to see Denom. one person to be the one caring that Trump's a bitch line. And, you know, like, there needs to be one prominent Democrat who's going to run into it. Because the other, the counter argument to myself on this is I, I simultaneously want Democrats to give Trump the treatment that Fox would have given your boss a fee. Yes.

Did this and the Fox did when, you know, on the red line in Syria. Like, the red line in Syria is such a, like a tiny, quaint. Compared to this, right? Like, we weren't even really involved. Like, that was just Obama saying, if you do this, we would get involved. And then we did it. In this case, Trump, like, started it and then said, you need to give us unconditional surrender or else I'll end your civilization.

And then he didn't do anything. And then he kept, like, tweeting about how please give us a good deal, Mr. Gay Ayatollah. And it's like, okay, so I want him to be mocked on that. I simultaneously to that think that the Democrats should be using this as an opportunity, like, regain the anti-war mantle. And it's kind of hard to do that when you're trying to, you know, bully him into, you know, being tougher, right? So I guess I want one or the other, though, and I feel like I'm getting a little bit of wishy. You know what I mean? Like, I want, I want either code pink, you know,

anti, right? Like, like this Trump's war for oil is raising your brass prices. Like, I want that, or I want Trump's, you know, a little girly boy, right? Like they can't follow back up what he, what he offers. I think we have come to think that painting Trump is weak, you know, unlock some kind of political benefit that we have been missing for so long just because their side is all about, you know, making their opponents weak and that they're strong. But I think that like, I still think in a way that's playing on their field. Like the vision of government we want is not a strong man or an authoritarian who makes all the decisions and just fucking runs into wars all the time. Like, we don't, we don't want that vision of government. We want a vision of government where like people

cooperate. And I think what most people in the country want is they don't want a war like, this. They do want America protected, but they don't want a necessary wars that cost American lives and taxpayer dollars and killing a bunch of civilians all over the world. Like, that's what most people in the country want. That's where they are. So Democrats should be there too. That sounds right. What I'm just trying to do is I feel like it's my role as a former Republican to kind of inhabit the skin of what Sean Hannity would do. So like, I'm not saying that I want like misogynistic attacks on Trump and talking about how he's basically a eunuch. You know, Like, I don't know that that's like I really want the Democrats to do.

Like, I understand why people would bristle at that. But, you know, there's just something that's a little bit unsatisfying that it's not happening. You know, when I know that it would happen and it's on the shoes on the other foot. You know, the guy's, he's at the Bush line. He's going to head down to the dick line. Yeah. Thank you. People are thinking about him in some way that's not great.

And if it's not that, like, he's a weak pussy. Right. Then it is like he's an unbelievable. believably corrupt narcissist who doesn't give a shit about anyone by himself. Like, that's fine. Yeah. That's a good frame too. He doesn't want to care about you.

He blundered his way into this stupid for war. People don't like that either, you know? And also, like, he tried to be strong, but like is his version of strength working out for anyone. I don't think it is. Maybe stupidity is right. Like, this is really dumb. You know, like, this is the stupidest war imaginable. You don't know why he's doing it.

He doesn't know why he's doing it. You're being hurt. People are dying. You said you're bored of listening to the war about the war and around. Like, he's bored. The president who took us to war is now bored because he has no attention span because he's an 80-year-old fucking, you know, narcissist and doesn't know what he's doing. So like, and he just wants to like work on his home renovation projects. Like that, that is enough.

An 80-year-old narcissist was a nipple fetish. I want to talk about that a little bit. Oh, boy. Have you been in the situation room? I have, yeah. You got to go in there? I never won. So I never know what it's like.

Not a lot, but I went in there. sometimes when there's crises like that aren't national security like when Gabby Giffords was shot and we had to write a statement in there we actually went into the sit room for that because it was you know sort of a domestic attack so I was in there for that

so when you were reading the New York Times story Maggie and John Swan story about how J.D. Vance called a Situation Room meeting to discuss the Epstein cover-up and he brought in the Attorney General Deputy Attorney General who's not the current nominee

to be the successor to Attorney General. So the Department of Justice heads are in there. The Twitter posters are in there as well, the Rapid Response Team, Stephen Chung, big boy. And J.D. calls everybody around the table, and he's like, this is kind of a problem. We should discuss what our strategy should be.

And he's like, maybe we should have Tucker Carlson interview Galane Maxwell to, you know, so maybe she might exonerate us a little bit and we should release some documents. Like, what was your reaction to, like, that meeting happening, but then also it happening in the situation room. Yeah, well, I mean, look at who's in the administration. Like, you've got a bunch of shit posters and idiots, so they've got all sit somewhere.

They've sort of like degraded the White House, like, everywhere else. So, like, might as well do the sit room, too. My big takeaway was, of course, the JD-van stuff was fascinating because what a, what a window into his 2028 presidential run with the kind of communications, a strategic mastermind that J.D. Vance has to offer the group, which is to have Tucker interview Galane Maxwell. And then later, when they were going to put Todd Blanche on Joe Rogan to talk about everything, that was going to be the big interview. And then Rogan was like, I don't want fucking Todd Blanche. I want to J.D. Vance or no one. And Vance is like,

you know, I could do Joe Rogan. And the thing is, if I do it, and I'm the vice president, he'll only ask me about the Epstein files for a few questions. And then the rest of the time I can talk about the working class tax cuts that we passed and the progress we're making on the economy. Sure. That's brilliant, brilliant, sir. I also liked when the White House Council, the White House Council raised the idea of pardoning Gleine Maxwell, you know, the piece made sure to note that everyone around the table registered their strong disapproval.

But then big boy, Stephen Chung, his quote was just fantastic, which is pardoning Maxwell, a trafficker of young girls. would create a huge PR problem. You don't say. Wow. This is why he was picked for the job. Also goes right to that, right? Like, not even a shred of like moral appropriation.

Right. Before we get to the nipples, these are the two things that is don't want to gloss over. Number one, there's, it's a very long article. I get no point anywhere in the article is anybody like, you know, we really probably should take seriously the idea that we should go through the Epstein files. and identify people that were involved in the child sex trafficking and that were complicit in the child sex trafficking and have investigations with them, or that we should try to find justice for the victims,

the girls who were raped by these powerful men. Like, that does not come up at all in the situation of a meeting. The partnering of Maxwell is brought up, and Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan podcast interviews are brought up, but nothing at all, even remotely approaching any consideration about the actual underlying crimes. Nothing. And we can talk about, you know, nipplegate and everything. Oh, we're going to.

Yeah. Even on that, it's like we now have an allegation that the president of the United States potentially had sex with an underage girl that was part of the trafficking ring, the Jeffrey Epstein let child trafficking ring. But we don't know for sure, right? All this is uncorroborated. But like, is that an allegation anyone who works for the president is going to take seriously? No.

We're not going to, we're just going to figure out with the fastest way to cover it up, best way to cover it up. Yeah. And then the other thing I want to just. just get to just explicitly is like how insane it is that the attorney general and deputy attorney general in this meeting. And I know that like at this point where we've just become accustomed to the idea that the Justice Department is totally corrupted. But it is great. I was like thinking when I was reading the story about the Bill Clinton tarmac meeting. You don't remember this. This was during the above administration. Hillary's emails are being investigated. Clinton is on the same tarmac as Loretta Lynch. It's in the Justice Department at the time.

Bill Clinton. Yeah, Bill Clinton, not Hillary. Right. gets off his plane, gets on the plane that Lynch is on, they talk. We never really figured out what. It's like a couple minutes. Yeah, a couple minutes. There are accusations that he came on and told her like, you know, go easy on Hillary or whatever. Like that's the worst case scenario, right? That there's some conversation about telling the Justice Department to chill out on Hillary on the email scandal, which, by the way, also this entire administration has no interest or accommodation at all in

FOIA requests and making sure all of their emails are on government servers. And so even that investigation looks ridiculous. But like, this was a campaign issue. Like Brett Baer covered it nightly on the Straight News Fox News show. It's why Jim Comey did the press conference himself because he thought Loretta Lynch was too compromised because of the tarmac thing. And so that asshole went out and did that horrendous press conference and decided to characterize the investigation, which you also don't do in the Justice Department.

And the reason he did that is because they thought Loretta Lynch has to must recuse an house sheet because Bill Clinton said hi to her. There's a perception of corruption here. Like the Justice Department needs to be totally separate from any political considerations. Perception is bad. Here the fucking Attorney General and Deputy General in the situation room being included by this vice president in the cover up plan. If Trump was Obama.

and Loretta Lynch was doing this, it wouldn't have been a like go on to the plane and say hi or pressure in private. It would have been a bleat. There would have been a bleat that said, Hey, Loretta, drop the case against Hillary because you know what happens to people who prosecute my friends.

Treason, death. That would have been it. It would have been a death threat. It would have been a thinly veiled death threat over truth social. So a total disruption of the Justice Department. Okay. Now that we've got that down,

I want to read the section about the nipples. I think because, you know, it's an uncorroborated accusation and because of the prurient nature of it, I don't feel like it's gotten as much attention in the news. Same. So I'm going to read it. So this is from the Virginia Jafri case file. This is tragic stories. She was one of the young girl that worked at Marilago and then Epstein and Prince Andrew others raped her and assaulted her. She ended up killing herself subsequently.

So in that case file, there's another woman, girl at the time, Sarah Ransom. and she wrote this to a journalist. Ransom claimed that she knew a girl in Epstein's sex trafficking ring named Jen, who said she had sex with Trump. Ransom also claimed that Jen had told her that Trump had a predilection for nipples and that he had aggressively flicked and sucked hers. Ransom wrote that she had seen evidence when she shared a bathroom with Jen. They looked incredibly painful.

They were red and swollen, and I remember wincing when I looked at them. So that was discussed in the situation room. Trump's alleged nipple attack on a young girl that was in Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring. Yes. Like, I mean, I do feel like there would have been some coverage for that. And like a little more, you know, maybe it would have been higher in this story in other men. You think? That's a serious allegation, right?

Yeah. Partly because this was not like Trump in his bachelor days with like a consensual sex. if that's like something he was into, like, who cares, right? Like, that's, that's his business. It's really his business because, like, I'd rather not know. No, like, what his kind of nipple interests are. But if they're in the Epstein files and knowing what happened to Virginia Joufrey and this other girl gent, like that, then it's, if they're underage here and this is part of a trafficking

thing, and like that is an incredibly serious allegation. And the team in the sit room, they immediately say, oh, it's wrong, right? Like, oh, she made it up. because I guess this woman, Jen, rescinded her some other allegations because she said she was afraid for her life. And so she's not reliable because she recanted some other allegation. So no worries. Let's move on to how we keep this out of the files that we put on the website, which goes back to then the incompetence, because by keeping it out of the files that they put on the website, obviously people were going to realize that there were some files that included Trump that were missing from the website.

So once again, you have the malevolence. And then you have followed by the incompetence. And that's that's the Trump administration in a nutshell. We're going to stop talking about Trump making nipples get swollen. And I don't know that we need any more unless you do want to do any more on Trump's nipple pro-election. You know, our friend Tommy brought up when we talked about this this week. He's like, you know, remember the Stormy Daniels stories where like the spankings and everything. Like there's it's clearly there's a pattern here if you're just trying to figure out whether to believe it or not.

There's a pattern of these allegations about Trump's sort of... I only really remember the mushroom dick description from the Stormy Daniels stuff. I don't remember in the Shark Week. I could forget. The bulwark is brought to you by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. You hear us talk a lot on this show about Democratic guardrails, the things that keep a free society functioning. And as America approaches its 250th anniversary, one of those guardrails deserves a lot more attention to separation of church and state. This country began as a rebellion against monarchy and divine rule.

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Speaking of trying to do a transition, into John Cornyn. Do you have any ariola or nipple-themed puns that we can use to get over to John Cornyn? So you have somebody who's got spanked by Trump. There we go. There we go. John Cornyn did an exit interview with Carl Hulse

The New York Times. I want to read a couple of the quotes. After his defeat, he says, it does give some of us a little more freedom and certainly leverage. I didn't realize he didn't have freedom before. I thought he was a United States Senator. He didn't have any agency before. as the president, I like this too

as the president told President Zelensky when he was in the office a year ago he said, you don't have any cards well, we've got some cards to play so I guess he was impressed with Trump's cards analogy there Mr. Cornyn says he reserves the right to choose where I'm going to

or going to not defer to Mr. Trump he still reserves that right. That's nice as a free man and a free country he says things are never going to be good enough for Trump other than 100% you know, slavish adherence to whatever he wants. But obviously, that's not what the Senator Strull is supposed to be.

You don't say. Big John? Unfortunately, that is the position that I found myself in for the last several years. And what did I do about it? Nothing really. My final quote, my favorite one. I've always said that former centers look happier, healthier, and they're certainly more prosperous. So I'm kind of looking forward to what comes next.

So just in case you feel sad for Big Bad John, who got utterly humiliated in the most, like, embarrassing S&M way fashion. Like, he wanted to rename a highway after Trump, pretend like he was reading his book. He had to rub Trump's little tiny toe digits. And he, like, did everything he could to get Trump to love him unless Trump said, I don't care about you. And he left him on the side of the road. And now here he is. And he's like, you know, good news is I'll get to make money as a lobbyist stuff to that. And so you better know, I'm not going to be too hard on Mr. Trump now.

I mean, I might not defer to him totally like I was before. But, you know, I'm going to defer mostly because I do want my calls returned. This is probably off topic of what you're asking about here. But when I see things like that, it's like this is why I don't invest a ton of time in like despising people like John Cornyn and thinking that like at some point they are going to retire in some. kind of in misery and be all torn up about this. And, you know, like, we're rooting against these people because, like, Donald Trump is, but like, you know what? Probably Donald Trump is going to, at some point, leave office. And no matter how he is remembered and no matter how much of the country turns against him, he is going to be like, well, I'm rich. I think I did great. And he's probably

going to die happy. And it's like, so just doing this so that we hope that these people are going to feel bad someday is just like not a good motivation like john corin how's he going to retire and get rich i worked on this a lot at yoga love in oak like when i when i was there in 2017 to 2019 and just kind of accepting that internally right that like yeah they're going to you know we can mock them they're going to be fine yeah but in the end of the day they're kind of happy about the choice that they've made yeah they'm happy about the choice they made you're happy about the choice that we've made you know that's exactly right and so we just got it we just got to we just got to beat him because we can't count on

John Cornyn to ever do anything. I read that interview and I was just like, yeah, I'm not surprised by anything. I'm not surprised by any of this. It is funny they all called us cucks, though. It's like Carl Hulse might as well have been in a motel six interviewing John Cornyn while he was sitting in a

cuck chair while his wife was getting fucked by Donald Trump or Ken Baxter. Like honestly, like what would have been any different about this interview of that that would have happened? That would have been a better scene setting, I guess. Or color. The thing that they don't want to say, but is true, and I mean that this is JVL would certainly go here,

which is that like their voters prevented them from having a spine and standing up to Donald Trump. Like that's what Cornyn's saying right now. He's a free man now because he doesn't have to face his voters who he clearly believes. A little more freedom. A little more freedom because he doesn't have to face his voters who he clearly believes are slavishly devoted to Donald Trump. and you know, Trump wants 100% agreement. And guess what? So to his core base of voters.

And so if you find yourself in that party, like, what are you supposed to do? You either agree with Trump or you lose your job and you go make money. Yeah. And for a while, Cornyn thought, and then some of them that they can do both, right? And Cornyn probably thought he could do both for a while. And then now he realized he can't do both. And so he's just going to go and make money. Reserves the right to choose.

Just what? He's just so disgusting. Is that right? How you say it, it's slavish, not slavish? Slavish. I don't know. I pronounce everything wrong. One of the worst parts about being a podcaster is that you find out how many words you don't

know how to pronounce, you know? A ton of them. I guess I was saying scourge wrong. I've been told I was saying scourge wrong. I received several messages. Scur. So that's a tough one. See, that's scourge.

Yeah, I know. I receive several messages about that one this week. Every week I get messages about different words I pronounce wrong. So there's a single hill where I'll die on in defense of candor. us, which is there's the funny X account that, like, makes fun of her for all the words that she mispronounce us. And I'm just like, you know. That's how I am.

She means she read. Like, she learned the word at some ways. It's better than, anyway, that's my only defensive candidate. The funniest one I have heard recently is on your podcast, our friend Sarah, who calls Rob Flaherty, Flaherty. I'm like, it's Flaherty. You've never heard of the word flaredi? No, she's not a fucking Mick like you from Boston, you know?

Yeah, that's true. Flaherty's was probably like the 10 bars that we went to. Clarity is a very common name in Boston. Well, let's do a little politics talk. I have an article out today, a newsletter I sat in for JVL. And I did a big prologue about how I think donating to campaigns is mostly stupid. And I think having been on the inside of campaigns, a huge percentage of the money is wasted. Most of the testing and metrics tools people use to determine whether things,

things are effective messaging is like basically like looking at chicken bones and like bringing in a shaman to tell you like what ad is better. I like literally, I was like shocked when I sat through a first ad test for the first time and I was like, this is how we decide. It's like 20 random people are like playing video games and then watching an ad and they need to vote on it before they get to continue their video game. And I'm like, nobody knows themselves. It's like if you ever go into a philosophy class, like it's a huge journey to actually know

yourself to be able to say, I watch this ad and it motivated. The whole thing is crazy. And there's no incentive to save money if you're on a campaign. You got to spend it all. There are a lot of grifters out there. So, usually people ask me what to donate to. I'm like, donate to a food bank or like, go treat yourself to a spa day. But like, I understand that that's not satisfying, right? Especially for people who are, who want to, you know, use their resources for good and help democracy. So after this long wind up of how donated to campaigns of Stu, I wrote about like where I think you can make some difference on the margins. And I was really pushing towards your kind of these stretch house races in red parts of the country where, you know, Democrats have not done well.

And lately, but like might be able to do well now because of the, because of the wave, you know, particularly Hispanic ones. Talked about Bobby Polito down on the Rio Grande, you know, that was that Republican won by 17 points last time in the poll. I'm saying now is that that's tied, you know. some of these Senate races that aren't going to have as much money in them. Iowa, I'm Josh Turrick on this week. Some of the more stretch races, you never know how you could expand the map maybe in some of these Senate races. So anyway, people can read the article. I'm just wondering where you are on that concept.

If there's any candidates' campaigns that are catching your eye, how you think about where it's worth people's time to involve, get involved. I will say your diagnosis of the problem is one that I share, have come to share, especially after the last couple cycles, which is, I think, you know, the majority of these budgets go to ads. And I think that in the Democratic Party, like, especially, we could use way more creative ads, ad makers, types of ads, the way we place them, the way we deliver them to people. Like, I just think we need a lot of innovation there. And so I think we're spending it, just wasting a ton of money. And it drives me crazy on the question of where to donate. I remember in 2018,

with Votesave America, what we tried to do is the closer we got to election day, we worked with one of these Democratic data groups who we knew from the Obama days, and we had like a list of 10 candidates that we updated every week, House candidates, who were like, like the formula for how we picked the candidates was, how much money do they have on hand, how much money does their opponent have on hand, what's the polling look like, what's the partisan lien, and basically like, what's the most bang for your, buck right like if you're going to do it's like money ball for politics like that's that sort of what we need is what we've

been trying to do with let's save america is that you don't want to tell people to either donate to someone who is the marquee race that it's going to have like more money than god anyway but you also don't want to tell someone to donate to like amy mcgrath and kentucky in 2018 and james and james and harris that are always the ones of people mention i know i feel so i know i do feel bad amy's a good person but yeah that is a good That's true. A lot of money was wasted in that race just is what it is. Right. That's why I picked on Ron DeSanctimonious and Tom Steyer as my examples in the article, you know, to try to mix it up a little bit. That's a good one.

Yeah, okay. Well, people should go to stay in America. So I would do these house races that are, you know, like the R7s to R-9s to R-10s. That's exactly the list that I put together. And then in the Senate, like, I would, again, in the Senate, I would look at not just what they have, how much the Senate candidate has raised, but like what kind of cash their opponents have. you know and I think like I mean it's funny you say this day like we're holding a fundraiser at our home tonight for Sherrod Brown because because you know my wife Emily worked for Sherr that's how we met when she was she was a deputy press secretary right go but share it's down less especially like crypto super packs which did this to him last time are going to dump just an insane amount of money into Ohio and so some of the donating is just to like it's just for defense right because even if you can say that like our ads can be bad like if their ads are running and ours aren't and we can't match that like that is going to have an effect on your low engagement voters well this is why i didn't

include charred brown on the list because the richy riches of west hollywood are handling that okay like they're you guys got that covered all right we too we too so you know let me know what kind of bold face names you're going to have you don't want to leak leak the party list to not many not many to politico playbook you know want to get your names in there with the people that showed up all right people go check out article put the link in the show notes i mentioned this yesterday but i'm only five weeks away for my summer vacation, I can't wait. We're going to be in Europe for a little bit of it. And normally, about this time, before a big

international trip, I'd be getting nervous about my language skills. I might start cramming, but this time I'm a little more prepared, thanks to our friends at Babel. If you're traveling this summer, here's a real hack. Don't wait until you land to start learning the language. Instead, try Babel. Even just 10 minutes a day with Babel can help you start having real conversations in as little as three weeks. Instead of memorizing random vocab, you're

learning phrases you'd use, ordering dinner, asking for directions, or talking with the loks. Babel works the way I like to learn. No memorizing vocabularists or verb charts. Just real conversation practice. Lessons are quick, practical, and built by more than 200 language experts. We've got interactive dialogue, personalized reviews, all designed to get you speaking quickly and confidently. Me and Tulis have been doing it together at the dinner table. A couple minutes a day.

It's fun. If you've got summer travel coming up, now is the time to start. so you can actually use what you learn on the trip. Right now, Babel is offering listeners up to 60% off. Go to babble.com slash bulwark. That's Babel, B-A-B-B-B-B-E-L-L-Slech for up to 60% off. Rules and restrictions upon. Well, talk about MoneyBall for Politics.

I want to do a little bit with you on 2028. I have a self-imposed limit of 15 minutes per week on 20208, but I've done zero. So, you know, we can go for as long as short as you want. Great. And there's a poll out that I created a lot of follow-up. Dan Pfeiffer wrote about the poll. and message box, G. Elliot Morris

wrote about the poll of data analytics, but the nuts of it was this. It was like, Democratic voters are a little schizophrenic on what they want. Like, they want the party to move to the middle, but they also want socialism.

I don't know if they want socialism, but they like socialism. You know, and so G. Elliot Morris was trying to like, I understand that. And there was kind of some jokes about it on social media.

But I don't like think that's that confusing to me. And for me, if I was going to do a Frankenstein candidate, for 2028 and just build one out of a lab. I would have you be the speechwriter for it. So we'd move you off the field of my podcast competitor back into the campaign space. So just prepare yourself for this.

And I would have them basically, it would unfortunately probably be a guide. I think a woman could be a great president, but just for the purposes of having to deal with the realities of living in American society, maybe Hispanic or a black guy. And I would have them, you know, kind of be able to do long things. form interviews such as this, be able to communicate. I would have them talk as much like a normal person as possible. I would have them move to the middle a little bit, not, you know, we want to build the wall even higher, but just move to the little bit, a middle, a little bit on immigration and crime and talk about how, you know, criminals should be punished. Migrant criminals should

be punished to the following son of the law or sent home or a combination of both, right? And actually talk about it, not just like have that as one line on their website, but like have that, that'd be where they strategically make a decision that I am going to show people that I'm moving to the middle and whatever your perception was with the Democratic Party Fair or Unfair on Immigration and Crime. Also, I'm going to issue some of the silly cultural woke stuff that you see. And some of that is racial. Some of it's not, like, for example, in New Orleans this week, my phone alarm will blared at 6.10 a.m. I had a siren go off on my phone.

It was an updated version of what's the Lost Child's Law? Amber Alert. Yeah, it's an updated version of the Amber Alert called Brian's Alert. And it's for autistic kids. I'm concerned about autistic kids. But there's an autistic kid that was lost and the phone blared. Every phone in New Orleans blared at 612 a.m. And the kid was not even lost.

Turned out they found it. Like when that happened, like his brother said, wait, no, he was at my house. That's 7.10. You know, it's kind of like sometimes like there's just like we're going a little bit overboard on the social justice and cultural care. I think we can care about autistic kids and not have people's phones blare at 612 in the morning. It could have been a text, you know?

So just various things like this. Like just kind of some common sense moving to the middle on cultural stuff. And then simultaneously, my Frankenstein candidate is going to do like extremely creative, painful, punitive, rich people taxes. Like, I don't know, you know, I don't know what a private jet cost to rent.

That's not my, I don't have that kind of money. let's say it costs 20 grand. So if you're going to take a private jet flight that costs 20 grand, we have a new private jet tax, it's 300%. So it's 60 grand of taxes. So now it's an 80 grand flight. So if you're a billionaire and you want a flight there, like we're going to take a 300% tax on all private air travel.

And so otherwise, you know, you can take commercial air. You can be on Delta with me, right? You know, just like creative things such as that, punitive socialist left-wing taxation. And as we mentioned earlier, maybe chilling out a little bit on war. I feel like that's my Frankenstein candidate. And so I'm asking how you react to that, how you would message that person, and why you don't think that person exists. I think that's a pretty good candidate. I think that, you're interesting.

You said Frankenstein candidate. I think the challenge is we can't, and I know you know this, but we can't Frankenstein a candidate because the first thing that has to happen is you have to think to yourself, why am I running for president? And what do I want to do for the country? And the other side of the really creative rich people taxes is like, what are we going to do with the money? And I think where you get sort of the economic populist sentiment among the electorate, it's not just in the like let's punish the rich people. It's let's make sure that if we are working, then we like we can see a doctor and like we're going to be able to live somewhere and afford rent and a more. mortgage, just like basic shit. And if people can't do that and the government can't deliver on that, then they're not going to trust the government, then we're going to get more Trump's.

That's just the basic. And like, someone's going to tell the whole story. And someone's also like, be honest in a way, too, which is tricky because Trump has done so much damage that, okay, well, a lot of the money that we get from the rich people is going to, at some point, we are going to have to deal with the debt. I know, I'm not just, not just doing fan service here on the board. Welcome to the ballwork. Not just doing fan service. But no. And, And like, think and... You know, there's that clip of you and you and I are on John Stewart, where you talk about how we meet in the middle.

I still see that. They fucked you. John Stewart's people fucked you. They clicked that and put it on Instagram. Oh, I don't mind. It still gets sent to me. People are like, I told you John Favreau was a corporate chill. He says on John Stewart show he's even to the right of Jeb Bush flunky, Tim Miller.

I get that in my social media like once a week now. None of this phases me anymore. Okay, great. That's great. But yeah, no, look, so I think, that we are lacking is our candidates who know first what they want to do and why they're running and what they believe, and then second, go figure out how to sell that to people, which is still important. I'm not going to be like, all fucking West Wing about it. And you can just go out there

and say what you believe. You still need to figure out how to sell it. But people are just, everyone is so scared and so cautious, probably because they're listening to us too much, reading too many polls, looking at too many focus groups that they think that they have to sort of walk on eggshells to run. And I think that ironically becomes the biggest weakness of most of the candidates

is the caution because they have had all these ad people who are like we focused group this ad and this and that another thing. And so like you get this Frankenstein monster of a campaign and it doesn't work for people. Right. Like again, no one would have said

You're right. I'm self-criticizing. The state senator, black guy, Barack Hussein Obama from Chicago, who lived for a time in Indonesia, was what the Democratic, like on paper, that was fucking crazy, crazy for the Democratic Party to nominate Barack Obama after we just lost with John Kerry, war hero. And yet we did it. And it worked because Obama knew what he wanted to say and knew what he wanted to believe and knew what he believed. And that was that.

and wasn't afraid to lose. You know, this is why you won presidential campaigns, and I didn't, because you're right about this. You do need to have, like, honest, like, it has to be believable, right? And, like, this is, like, what I just offered is a fair critique of Kamlo's campaign, right? Like, my stupid private plane tax is, like, not any different than, you know, they felt like they were doing this. So I'm going to reach a different part of the elector by, we're going to have this proposal

that's going to help what was at the sandwich generation. Or if you have, you know, you're taking care of your parents and your kids so you get a certain tax break. I don't even remember what the exact proposal was, but some gimmick proposal for that group. And that's a legit thing. It's legit that they're, I'm starting to have friends in this boat, you know, taking care of kids and parents. And that sucks and it's hard. But like the rationale people need to buy. Right. And like, there needs to be a broad story that they need to buy. And that is kind of more important than the gimmicks. So I do like my private playing gimmick. But you know, you got to do both kind of.

Well, I was going to say, because it's not like we weren't above gimmicks on the Obama campaign. And in terms of the moderation you talked about, like, if you listen to Barack Obama talk about immigration, it's like exactly the way that you just talked about immigration. And that was just his view on it. It wasn't like where he, but he also knew what the politics were in immigration, but he could talk about his beliefs about why it was a more complex, nuanced issue than many people perceive it to be, or at least that the media talks about it and pundits talk about it. He understood that,

and so he just sort of talked about why he believed what he believed and trusted people and trusted the people were going to be okay with that. Now, it's harder now because of the information environment, it's way harder

because all the incentives are to get attention and everything you do to get attention is, by definition, more black and white, cut and dry than it should be in the context of politics and governing a country of 300 plus million people. And so all the incentives

are pointing in the wrong direction for these candidates, it's the problem. Yeah. And so that is the answer to the question. I guess that's what I don't. Like the Democrats have done, I think sometimes get a bad rap on recruiting the cycle. I've recruited some good people. Mary Peltola is a good candidate. Like I said, I'd Turk on. He seems like a good candidate. Roy Cooper seems like a good candidate. But like there just is the caution across the board. Right. I don't I don't see anybody doing what I just said or what Obama did even on some cultural issues. Like I it's hard to find a Democratic candidate at a statewide level in a swing. who has a policy platform on cultural issues that's meaningfully different from Clinton, Biden, Harris. I think because even if they do, it's because whatever that platform is, as soon as people hear a soundbite of it, it's like touching the hot stove.

And then suddenly everyone descends on you and says, oh, you're like the worst person and you hate marginalized groups. And, you know, and even if. Seth Moulton on the transports thing. And even if even if you are more nuanced. about it, even if your actual belief and record show that you very much stand up for trans, you know, just to use that example, trans rights or immigrant rights or whatever it may be, it doesn't matter.

And so everyone's like, what is the, what is the benefit of saying what I really believe on this if it's just going to be taken out of context and used to screw me even in my own party? It's not, it's like somebody would try. You need someone to try. 20, 28. And it would be nice to have somebody try some different stuff. And I will say like on the other side of it, because, I've seen, and I, and I, Rom is great, but I've seen Ram do this. You also can't look like you are,

you're, you're purposely poking the left because you're like, look, I'm not like these crazy lefties. And so I'm going to say that, like, Ram's line about, people talked about bathrooms and not too much and not enough about classrooms. It's like, no, like, no, we didn't. They talked about bathrooms. We were put on the defensive. We didn't have anything to say. And so that was that. Of course, we want, of course Democrats want to talk about class. classrooms in education and all the good democratic issues. But like, so there's a way to go too far. This is like the Trump issue, right?

Like, this is why Trump was able to do this. And it's like, and maybe this is just like his sociopathie makes it possible in a way that it isn't for other people. But it's like Trump was so hard on going after the left on various things, on fairly a lot in lying and blah, blah. And he was so extreme on immigration and race issues mostly, but on some other stuff. they're like he could make fun of Paul Ryan's stupid Social Security Medicare cuts and not and people would yell out of my mind and he's like who cares right like

and then all those people ended up getting in line and it's like that is the path to doing and that is the failure of the wrong model I agree that's why that isn't going to work and this is I think why Zoron I've talked with this couple of times recently where Zoran you know if you have the credibility of hey I'm going to fight for you on economic issues and I am against the stupid foreign wars

then you can also say well like you know we should hire some more police right and And it's like, well, some people might yell at Zoran and be like, you're a pig now. And it's like, nobody buys it. You know what I mean? And so, like, you have to have credibility. The key is how you respond to the first wave of criticism. And whether you back off or you just say, like, no, this is what I believe.

Right. Like, I take abolish ice, for example, you know. I mean, you and I, on our respective pods have been talking about how horrific ice has been now for a year. And it, like, makes me sick and I, like, lose sleep over it. At the same time, like, abolish ice doesn't make. sense to me not just because I read a poll and say that it's like not enough people support it, but it doesn't make sense because it's like we need immigration enforcement in this country.

I never said that we didn't need that. I just said that we didn't need like masked unaccountable men in the street, beating the shit out of people and murdering protesters and throwing people in detention centers with subhuman conditions. Like we still have to have an enforcement system in this country. And if like you're upset that I didn't go all the way to abolish ICE, then like that's fine. But I just believe we need immigration enforcement. and I just need we need to like rip up the system we have start from scratch but like we still need it. You bring up ice as another little admonition to me a little bit.

So I'm going to get off the 2028 stuff for a second. I guess these two things are related. I just have this sense right now and maybe I need to get offline and go on a vacation and kind of reset. So this might be more about me, but I don't think so. I have a sense that there is like a diminishing anger in left spaces about. Trump and an increasing anger about each other, right? And I think that there is a lot, you know, and I just, I see and hear from a lot of people passionately on the left side of the Democratic Party, the thing that they're really mad about

right now is like the corporate Democrats that went along with whatever, Biden's Israel policy, which is a legit thing to be mad about about. But like, and like that you have center people who like the thing that they're really mad about is Graham Platner's tattoo or whatever. Like, that's legit. You can be mad about that. It's fine. But somehow, like, we've become a frog boiling in water a little bit.

And, like, there was a moment, I think, right around Minneapolis, where, like, everybody did have a lot of righteous rage. And I just kind of sense it dissipating. And I think that it's dangerous. And I don't know how to combat it. I try to combat it with myself. But, I mean, what do you think? I feel it, too. I mean, there's days that we do the pod where we talk about, like, just a parade of horribles.

that like I genuinely you know off mic makes me sick to my stomach but like you have to survive and you have to get through your day without being miserable all the time and so then you use gallows humor to laugh at Trump and then you you do like the whole thing like don't normalize I'm like no no it's it's it's normal it is normal we're here we're living through it and I don't know that it has a like a positive effect or a big enough impact to to be at an 11 all day long I think the reason you see people start punching at each other is because, like, we all want to believe that we have agency. We all want to do something about the situation that we're in. The truth is, we can't for a while, at least not the solution that we want, which is no more Donald Trump

and a Republican Party that isn't like this. We want to just live in a better political system. That's going to take a long time, even under the best case scenario. And so, but like the human, the human brain isn't made for just sitting back and being like, all right, we're going to relax and wait until then. Like, we want to be able to do something now. And the thing that you can do now is to argue with people on your side about how to beat, how to get rid of, yeah, how to fix that. And I think some of that comes from a genuine place.

I do, I think about that sometimes, right? Where it's just like people channel their anger at Trump at something that feels more, something that they feel like they can control more. Yes. Do you talk about your agency, right? Where it's like, I'm fucking mad about all the things that are happening in this country. And if you're, I'm just careful. charactering, but like, if you're a left person, you're like, you know who's fault it is?

The wimpy establishment, like Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, and they want us to continue down the same failed path, and I'm so mad at them. Why don't they get it? Like, maybe they're even on the other side, kind of. Maybe they don't even think it's as bad as I do, right? Like, you can imagine somebody, like, getting yourself riled up and thinking that. Like, that's not irrational. It's not true, but it's not irrational, right?

Or, like, the inversion of that would be like... Hassan Piper is ruining the whole party and the whole, left is in trouble tournament. And he attacked Kamala, which is true, by the way. Right, right. Some of these people voted for Jill Stein. And, like, they didn't even try hard the last election. I was out there in the streets.

I was volunteering. I was working hard. And they were shitting on us. And so it was their fucking fault that we're in this place. And now they want to control the party. Fuck them. And I understand that feeling. Like, if you're a centrist or middle regular Democrat,

looking at kind of more populous Bernie Hassan type, I almost feel like, you know, it's part of a therapy process, which is like, acknowledge. this that that is happening in your brain is an important way to start, yeah, to start to have productive change going forward, right? Like, this is an anger thing that I have in my heart that, like, has some truth to it. But like, what am I really angry about? Like, what is under not lying it? And like what I think everybody is really angry about, maybe not every single person, but mostly everybody is really angry about is what Trump is doing to the country, right? And,

we should try to figure, like, center that. The key is, and I, this is advice that that I need to take and try to tell myself all the time and I don't always follow it. But like, you need to offer everyone the presumption of good faith, which is that the reason they are angry could be the reason that you're angry and you're just manifesting it in different ways. And maybe, you know, a lot of us want the same things and not everyone's perfect. And so, and we're all struggling and we're all under a tremendous amount of stress because of what this man has done to the country for the last 10 years. And a lot of that's very real. And so a lot of people are acting out in ways that we all act out, right? Part of it is recognizing that, like, you do this too, right? It's like, I'm not perfect

the way I do this. I'm failing at this all the time. And so, and I want someone to extend that presumption of good faith to me when I'm having a bad day or tweet something awful. So I want to extend that to someone else. And I realize, like, this is very out of fashion now because when they go low, we're not supposed to go high anymore. But I do think that like, that is the, that is both in line with our vision of what American democracy should be and good for our mental health. That's why I like listening to you, John Fabra, because that's right. And you're putting words to something I feel. I do have to quibble with one point.

We have to offer the presumption of good faith to people up until a point where they have demonstrated that they don't earn it any longer. When they slap it away like the 10th time, then you can, you're going to. good. You know, maybe you are a bet. And just to give one prime example of that, just for fun, it's Friday. We're having some serious talk. So just for fun. Why don't we listen to Kelly and Connolly? Oh, God. And the rest of the Democrats, and they said, is there anything else? Ladies and gentlemen, what else do you need? Is there a magic number in the scandalabber that would make you stop? Would it have to do with Nazis or putting upon women, perhaps underage women, would definitely

women, not your wife of two years? Would it be that you're lying about, that you're insulting heroes, that he's not even fit to lick their combat boots. So I'd ask the Democrats, is power really worth that to you? Because power for power's sake is the definition of corruption. I did like, kudos for scandalabra. That's good. But besides that, that is insane. How does she?

I think she really doesn't realize it? Or does she? It's a troll. I think she does because there's another clip that I was wondering if you were going to play Because I saw that one. The other one, she said, look, I'm a Christian. I believe in second chances. But I think that Graham Platner should, like, go home with his family and get right with them and seek forgiveness there first.

Because the Senate, when you're just one of a hundred people representing this country, that is not the place for this kind of redemption. And I thought it was an interesting tell because she does get that I think most Americans do want to give people second chances because they want to be given second chances themselves and she does think that like this is her, and she realizes that people have given Donald Trump quite a few chances.

The second part of the argument is so off because it's like, but the Senate's not the place for that? Oh yeah, a bunch of fucking moral heroes in the Senate. And then like, what about the White House? Is the White House the place for redemption? It's like, no, you actually got to pick one. You either got to say that no, the Senate, the House, the White House,

Those must be places for absolutely perfectly moral upstanding citizens. Or you can say that, no, everyone is broken in some ways. And we just have to decide who is better and who's going to help us and who's going to abide by the laws that we've written. And who's going to fight for people the most. And that's how we're going to elect people. But you can't have both. You can't have both. I just love the balls on her that it's like, you know, the Nazi thing, okay.

the cheating on the wives. Okay. Throwing the potentially underage, there's no evidence of underage for Grand Pater, though we mentioned Donald Trump in the nipples already today. Right. But then I just feel like the icing on the cake is the insulting our heroes. And he's not even worth, he's not even worthy to lick their combat boots. It's like, Grandpa did have combat boots.

Like Trump insulted the heroes. Like Trump insults our heroes not in a post 30 years ago. Trump does it like all, like he was doing it. Like, you want to believe multiple four-star generals who worked for him told stories about this. Multiple fours, not one four-star general, two four-star generals, one of whom was the chief of staff, one of whom is his defense secretary. We're talking about Donald Trump denigrating people in the military while he was president. Fucking Kellyan. I have a deep question for you on this.

Should we care about people cheating on their wives at all if they want to run for the Senate? What is the extent to which we should care? I'm like, I'm kind of serious about this. Because people do throw this at me, I know you, but me in particular, I never Trumpers over Trump. And I was always like, on the list of things I cared about Trump about, it was always at the bottom. I make fun of him for it because like, why not?

Look, I am consistent on this because the just happened to be the week before all the Platner stuff was Paxton winning. And I set on multiple pods, because I believe this, that like the whole attack on Ken Paxton is an adulterer. I mean, I talked about it from a political angle. I'm like, I think it's the weakest attack on Paxton. And I actually don't want people to hit it too much because I don't think that most people are going to be like, oh, well, he cheated on his wife and therefore he's disqualified.

Like, I don't think cheating is a good thing. I saw Jerusalem. Demsis wrote about this in the argument. And like, you know, most Americans, like it really bothers people when someone, she's like, yeah, cheating bothers me. Like infidelity bothers me. But in terms of the fact that someone, in every situation, is different, which we, again, like, no one can, no one can keep in their heads that different

situations are different, right? But if, like, there is a, you had some kind of infidelity, and then you worked it out with your partner and you've gone through therapy, and, and that's it, then like, okay, that, I don't know, it doesn't, of all the, of all the grand platinum things, that maybe is at, like, the bottom of the list for me. I just don't know what it has to do with being a senator. Like, what I, lying, the dishonesty maybe. This is, like, that's, and this is what I've said about Platter. The thing that I think he has to work on and the thing that bugs me the most is like because honesty and the ability to trust someone, like that does relate to your job as a public servant, right? And it is, look, it is, it is clear now that like, I don't believe

he knew what the Nazi, what the tattoo was when he got it and the people who he got it with his other, the other, it's fellow Marines. He obviously knew before October though. Right. Yes, exactly. And it, and it like, and clearly he's not being honest about that and that sucks. Like, I think that sucks. Like, I think that sucks. Can I have a counterpoint for you for this from a person I don't. This is a private message, so I don't want to out them. But it's somebody that I think that we both respect, listeners respect. We're talking about this topic on text. And they said this, isn't a certain amount of tactical lying important in politics? I know, I know, I know, I know. And so the clipping of this will be terrible and social. So I'm going to try to protect you. I'm going to have a lot of rambling

here of me talking before we get to you talking. But it's, it's, it's. It's, Isn't that something worth grappling with? I don't know. Like, doesn't, don't, like, did Barack Obama really oppose gay marriage in 2008?

Right. He did not. He did not. And so could he have won while still opposing, while still supporting gay marriage? Yeah, maybe, I think,

kind of, actually. Maybe he still won. So maybe this was a lie that served no purpose. But I don't know. How do you react to that? I went through, I've gone through this in my head a few times. And it's like,

so Graham Platner, when first presented with the fact that, you know, it was going to be public but the tattoo one answer was like i got this tattoo with marines and um it was a skull and crossbones and we thought it looked tough and then at some point along the way i realized it was a had this nazi association um but at that point like i was i never thought i was ever going to run for office and my shirt was off in front of all kinds of people and the army uh scanned me for uh bad tattoos before i went off to afghanistan after i had come home from ira

and no one has said anything about it. So therefore, I wasn't going to go get a tattoo covered up that only that I only read about online was this association. But now that I'm running for office and you're all talking about it, fine, I'll cover it up, no big deal. Now, would that have solved his problem politically? No.

Like, clearly because of everything, like everyone still would have been like, well, you should have covered up and the fact that you didn't admit that he didn't. He would have still got shit, but then he would have been coming at it from a primary. Still one in the primary. He would have been coming at it from a,

more honest position. But I do put it in the category of more, if it is sort of tactical line. Like he lied for the purpose of not having a bigger political problem than he did. And I don't think that worked. Or as one of the great scholars of our time, Hunter Biden said, I've

not heard anything in any way that would say that he's misogynistic, anti-Semitic, or racist. I've heard that he thinks we should all have free health care. Yeah. Somebody wants to radically change our politics. Not a bad take from Hunter Biden. Feels like that's what's resonating. And of course, that is the take from Hunter. Biden who has gone through this himself. My position on this is I think, like, I have a personal,

everyone's talking about like moral values and Democrats giving up moral values. And I don't love to play what aboutism on this all the time. Like it is fun to do and it's hard to avoid because of how they are. But I also want to come from a position of like, what do I believe? And like, what are my values? And can they be consistent across both parties? And people who seek forgiveness, I believe should be offered grace. Like that is a foundational value for me. And again, that is not like, that is not infinite. You could extend someone grace and then they could continue to lie and cheat or do whatever

and go back to their, and then, you know, that's a situation that you have to deal with. But like, when someone says, I was wrong, I made mistakes, I lived a tough life, I fucked up, and now I'm trying to change and become better. Like, I want to be open to that. give that person grace to change. And that is true. And so if there are a bunch of Republican politicians out there, if Ken Paxton wants to make a big speech and say, like, I am, I am so sorry that I've done all these things and I've committed adultery. If Donald Trump wants to get up there and be like, I'm sorry for my past sins. If all, like, if they want to do that, then I'll listen.

But like, I don't see any of that. No, they're running on the sense. We're way over. And I promise you we could do Spencer Pratt talk. So before that, I just want to give you the floor for a brief John Favreau stirring commentary on America 250, the Star Spangled Jumbo Claw that we have in front of the White House. I know that you were invited to go to that event. Sadly, had that invite rescinded. And then you're going to go to the Obama Library the next day. And so you'll kind of had some time to ruminate about what it means to be America.

It's almost like it's like too much symbolism. It's like everything is a little too on the nose. the fact that we have a like a 700 foot octagon on the south lawn of the White House right next to the rubble of the East Wing. It's a little too Roman Coliseum. Yeah, idiocracy. It's a little too, Hector Mountain Dew Camacho. Yeah.

And look, I don't want to, like, I don't have a problem with, like, I'm not a UFC person, but I don't have a problem with, like, the White House holding a sporting event like that or even the fact that they're holding a fight like that. What I have an issue with is that Donald Trump has clearly decided to combine his birthday with America's birthday. And what does he have to say about America's 250th birthday? He doesn't have anything to say about it because all he can think about is himself. And so what the country has to celebrate for America 250 is just Donald Trump. It's Donald Trump and a completely airbrushed version of history where every step and every moment in America,

America's history has led us to this final moment with Donald Trump prevailing, which is all he thinks about because he's at the end of his life and is going to die soon anyway. And so he's like, my term, and especially this birthday should be a celebration of me and everything I've done for America and how I'm maybe the greatest American who's ever been. And like, that is my problem with Trump at America 250 more than any of the details of the celebrations or who's in or who's out. Like, there is a version of this where someone who I, a president who I very much disagree with politically and policy-wise, still gets me to feel a little patriotic because for America's 250, they decide to say, like, we're going to make this nonpartisan. We're going to make this about sort of the values that bring us together. George W. Bush would have done that. The ideals of the country. Would have done that, right? I mean, literally every president before this one.

Every single president would have done that. And that is what really bugs me about the American 250 thing. My worst take related to all this, it will be sure to make everyone unhappy, is I think that the UFC Claw on the South Lawn is cool. It looks cool. I mean, it's weird that it's on the South Lawn, but it looks cool.

Yeah, I think Democrats should do cool shit like that. It's fine. And the corruption I don't like, you know, the company they're making money of all this. Like, it should be a non-proper. But just the look, the aesthetic. It's cool to do cool stuff. I think the Obama Library looks cool.

You do. Everyone hates the Obama Library. I haven't been inside yet. I mean, I'm not. the outside. I think it's cool. It's different. It's interesting. It's weird how the speech goes around so you can't really read it. I guess that would be my one architectural note. But other than that, I think that it looks cool. Yeah. As people know, I also like the Oval Office with stuff on it. Yeah, like, I'm not a, not a modern architecture guy. I'm just a, just a douche from Boston.

So, so. So like, I'm something a little more. Like, I would never. You want to like a brick. You want to like a brick building with, you know, the flag on, you know, kind of classical. I'm much more Republican that way. That sounds right But like, you know, I'm excited to look inside, obviously. I was excited to take the tour. I'm excited to hear your read-up. All right, we're in a close with Spencer Pratt.

You said that you've come on the show if we could go through the worst takes about Spencer Pratt, so I've pulled some together. Yes. But before we get to all of the worst takes, I wanted to play one in particular, since it invoked your name. This is from

Nepo Daughter, podcaster. Oh. Wife of one of the worst people in the Her name is Megan McCain. Let's listen. He was handily in second place last week, and now a bunch of mail-in ballots come in,

and he's pushing way low to third. I just don't understand why Spencer Pratt was such a, why he was so offensive to the Obama bros. Like, he's so offensive. When your candidate that you're famous for had no background at all before he became president, they of all people should know that magic can happen in politics,

and sometimes people just come from nowhere. Magic can happen. John, why were you offended? You know I was offended by Spencer Pratt? Because I thought about why it was making me so angry. Is that, like, he gave this interview to Us Weekly, where, you know, he said that this is my destiny to be mayor. And they asked him, like, you know, they said,

one of the questions is, I wrote this down because it really bugged me. You were a political science major in college. Do you have any other qualifications? My number one qualification is I'm not corrupt. My biggest skill is being an actual. outsider. That's it. That's it. He doesn't, and that was the whole campaign. He didn't, none of the things he proposed, or very few of the things he proposed, were doable even within the confines of the law. Like, I'm going to force people into treatment. I'm going to, like, can't really

do that. I'm going to, like, build a, build a camp on the outskirts of L.A. where I'm going to move all the homeless people. I'm going to ship them to Seattle, all this kind of stuff. Like, doesn't have the power. Forget about it being cruel and obscene. doesn't have the power to do any of that. The mayor doesn't have the power to do that. So he went around, and what he did was he realized that a lot of people in L.A. were angry at Mayor Bass and angry because of the fires and angry because of the homeless situation. And what can I do with that anger?

I can capitalize on it and run a campaign and scream about the people in charge, how they're corrupt. And that's all I have to do. I don't have to think about that at all. I'm staying at the Bel Air Hotel for $1,500 a night, even though my whole campaign was predicated on the fact that my house burned down on the palisades and I'm living in a trailer. Also, I have a reality TV crew that I've signed on to so that if I'm mayor, then me and Heidi can have a TV, we can get back to basics and the TV crew can follow us around. And so it's like, no, I don't believe, like, of course, like we said, I wanted to give Spencer Pratt the presumption of good faith. But he doesn't seem like he has grown at all, learned anything, has an idea about why he wanted to run.

All he wanted to do was say, like, I'm an outsider, I'm pissed, and so I'm going to get more famous because of that. That's it. And you know what? That's why he got the vote he did. Some of the worst takes. I don't know if you have any of you want to nominate, but I just pulled some. And, you know, this is friendly fire here.

All right. So nobody shake this personally. I've had some bad takes before, not on Spencer Pratt. I have them every day. Obviously had no chance to win the L.A. mayor's race, and people had their brains totally broken by the Internet. But I've had bad takes and other things. Here's the War Sixth on Pratt. Jeff Bush, my friend Jeff Bush, on one of Pratt's AI ads.

Maybe the best political ad of the year. I think it was maybe a bad sign that his political ads were appealing to elderly Republicans in Florida as opposed to Los Angeles voters. One note. Christopher Rufo. Spencer Pratt has had more airtime than any right-coded Merrill candidate in recent memory. He's charismatic, and his video marketing has been on par with the left. his most viral campaigns like AOC and Mom Dani

Jesse Waters. Wow, Democrats like California was a lock. Then the numbers rolled in. Spencer Pratt just turned the L.A. Mayors raise into the biggest surprise of the night, bombshell Karen Bass. Karen's going to have to fight for her political survival. True.

Not at the hands of Spencer Pratt. Rick Rinell. It's Pratt Summer. Nope. It was Pratt Spring. Redstees. Congrats. 2028 presidential nominee, Spencer Pratt. Guess not.

Bethany Mandel. Sorry if people who don't know these internet characters. This is just a special thing for me and John. Spencer Pratt was doing this well because he was calling out a crooked and flawed system. If this is how they think they're going to stop him, buckle up. They're going to unleash something much bigger. Caitlin Flanning and at the free press, Pratt Daddy's Reventus. Pucks Peter Hamby.

Spencer Pratt was authentically passion, but it's also clear he did a lot of prep before the debate, and he's open to taking advice growing as a candidate, not just doing the Volume 11 social media thing on stage. For all the Trump comparisons, Fred is more likely to invoke San Francisco's popular Democratic mayor, Daniel

Lurie, who has run central plotets, centrist plotts, for cracking down on homelessness. Oh, no, Peter. Yeah, a lot of we love Peter. He had a great article in America 250. People should read a love it. Showdowns.

So good. Just misses all over the place on Pratt. Do you have any others or does anyone particularly tickle you? Yeah. Well, so no. I would just say that I put like the MAGA people aside because, you know, for them to be excited about Spencer Pratt and to get, especially the online MAGA people and for them to like convince themselves that he was somehow going to either win outright, which some of them

bought, or at least, you know, beat Nithia by like double digits. It doesn't totally surprise me because that's sort of how they live their lives in the Trump era online. But I do think like there is, in terms of the media, pundits, other folks, like, Donald Trump has sort of broken all of our brains and there's this tendency to look at like fame-seeking populace on the right who call out things that are pissing people off and do it in a real like authentic violence. way is like that's a genius. And my problem is I just don't think it's that impressive. Like, I think you or I. So if I ran a New Orleans mayor campaign based on that alarm that went off at my phone at 612 and talked about how annoying that was, that would be something people would agree with, but it probably would not propel me to the mayorship. Right. But I think that you, I think that you and I could figure out how to run a campaign where we attacked leadership,

whether it was Democrat or Republican in some city, about fucking everything up. And, and, And we would do great. Like in terms of getting attention, in terms of getting attention. Easy. It's an easy thing to do. It is much harder to get people's attention for some kind of an agenda, right? Which is, by the way, why Mom Dani did great. Or one of the big reasons why Mamdani did great is not just his viral videos.

It's because everyone can remember, like, exactly what Mom Dani wanted to do. And he was also, like, the other thing about Spencer Pratt, too, is there was a path where he could have tried to reach out to demonstrate or centrist or whoever else in the city. And instead he got more MAGA as the campaign went on. He spent the last weekend in New York on Fox and Friends talking about dog raping. And calling for Nithia Raman and Karen Bass to be jailed, to be in prison. Like, that's how we ended the campaign in New York. So it's like, I don't think that, no, I don't think that's that impressive.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Like, I know the Democrats that we're all supposed to like learn from Spencer Pratt and do this. I don't find that impressive. Counterpoint, Dwayne Patterson, Hugh Hewitt's producer. The bottom line is Pratt's ads were too good. Too good.

Hopefully this go-ness decision will mean that this is the last time California can pull this stud. What a show. Good show. Long show. John Favro. This was fun. Anything else? Anything going to leave me with? final words of wisdom, critiques, comments. I got nothing. I got nothing. Spencer Pratt for president. Pratt, 28. Pratt Daddy. Sad that Pratt Summer was over.

Just over before it began. Brat Summer, too, for me. All right, that's John Favre. Everybody else will be back with his buddy Bill Crystal on Monday. Have a good weekend. Enjoy the fight on the White House lawn. Or don't. Or maybe God will have something to say about us with thunderstorms. We'll check in on Monday and find out together. See you all then. video editing by Katie Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.