The Bulwark Podcast - Tom Nichols: Secrets and Lies

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

If anyone in America was still thinking that Trump's ties to Epstein were a nothingburger, Trump’s own behavior this week has probably disabused them of that notion. His panicking and flailing around sure seem exactly like how a guilty man would act. And the sudden firing of Jim Comey's daughter, Maurene—who worked on the Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell cases at the DOJ—isn't helping to tamp down the conspiracy theorizing. Meanwhile, Tulsi and Kash are trying to ferret out the unfaithful, and there are still adults in the room when it comes to the Fed. Plus, our nuclear command and control system was organized around the assumption that we would have a sane president, not somebody who has psychotic fantasies about the Unabomber. Tom Nichols joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes Tom on the McCarthyist moves by Patel and Gabbard The president and the nuclear button, part of The Atlantic's August issue Tom on Hollywood and the fear of nuclear catastrophe James Clapper was banned from a service dog graduation at the CIA Tim's playlist

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller, delighted to welcome back with his gold jacket, Professor Emeritus at the Naval War College. He's a staff writer at the Atlantic. His books include The Death of Expertise. He is the ageless enigma, Tom Nichols. How you doing? You know, we share many things in common, Tim. We do. We do. We do have a lot in common and we're going to explore all those.

So the Wall Street Journal had an article last night that I assume anyone listening to this podcast has already seen. It included what they described as a body card. It felt like they really dialed in on that word body. I felt like there was like a little group chat at the Wall Street Journal. We're bald. They're like, what word can we use here in the newspaper? They settled on Bonnie. The letter was for a 50th birthday card to Jeff Epstein. It was in 2003, so three years before he was indicted for sex crimes. Gillian Maxwell naturally organized this and included letters from such eminence, like

Alan Dershowitz and the Victoria's Secret Man, and also Donald Trump. And Donald Trump apparently drew a picture of a woman, naked woman with breasts, and his signature was the pubic hair. This is what we need to say, allegedly as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Allegedly as reported by the Wall Street Journal, and according to the Wall Street Journal, as provided to the Department of Justice in 2006 as part of their investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. And he wrote, I guess you'd call it a script or a little mini screenplay.

The typewriter, it was on a typewriter, was inside the naked woman drawing. And yeah, as we've mentioned, it says, we have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Donald, enigmas never age. Have you noticed that? It ends with Donald Trump wishing his pal a happy birthday and saying, may every day be another wonderful secret. Yes. Secret, a wonderful secret. What did you make of all that, Tom Nichols? I don't know what to make of anybody

who has a close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and writes little, I don't even know how to describe it, what little fake screenplays. Of course, we do have to say this is all, you know, reporting from the Wall Street Journal. It seems to have panicked Trump. Panicked, I think is very fair to say. I mean, you know, I don't have a good synonym for panic,

like body is for trashy, but I mean, it's just sweaty panic, and you've been seeing it for the past few days. So to me, that says, you know, he wrote it, or signed it or something. He certainly drew it. One thing I didn't actually know, I thought I knew everything about this fucking guy, way too much of my brain is composed with random facts about one of the stupidest Americans who we've elected president twice, but one of the facts I did not know or had lost was that he, he did like to do little Sharpie

sketches, apparently there's a whole catalog of them and you would sell them for charity. And so- When he said, I've never drawn anything in my life, well, except for the, what wasn't the Empire State Building that sold for $16,000? I've never wrote a picture in my life. I've never wrote a picture about- I mean, what? Yeah, that was the one. Yeah, there were several. Someone else sent me a couple of his other

ones this morning. A money tree, naturally, tree with dollars on it, some other skylines. He did like the skyline. I haven't seen any other naked pictures. I don't know what the note means, but it's written in such a way that if, I mean, it's almost written like to trigger conspiracy theorists, you know, back before this whole thing was this thing, this, you know know waving my arms around thing so i mean if you know say let's hope every day is a wonderful secret well there's a good argument for not releasing any more information i mean it's just it's almost like you know you know, there's nothing incriminating in it, right? I mean, he doesn't say, hey, remember when we went criming, you know, in our stolen Cadillac? He doesn't say, and may every day be a wonderful secret, like that 17 year old we flew to your

island in the US, you know, in the USVI. Well, the problem is, it's written in such a way that your brain is going to start filling in all those blanks. In a way, the Trump world is already going to start claiming that in a way, right, this is a nothing burger. This is a little ditty sent, you know, years and years ago. I don't remember it. And I suppose if Trump were better at crisis control, he would say, hey, the guy and I were friends. I didn't know what he was up to. I wrote him a funny little ditty because he's kind of a weird guy.

You know, and instead it's like, I didn't do it. I don't draw. It wasn't me. Everything's fake. Which of course, for most people applying Occam's razor are going to say, well, that sure looks like you actually, you actually wrote it. And so now the debate will become what did it, what did it mean? And, um, I just don't see this going away.

It's not an, it's in itself, you could argue, they could, I suppose some of Trump's allies could say it's kind of a nothing burger, but not in this context, not with Trump's reaction to it, not with everything going on around it. So this is going to keep this alive and it's going to drive people crazy because now he's going to, I mean, he's at war with everybody now. He's at war with the Wall Street Journal. He says he's going to sue them, but I don't know, Tim, what's the over under on that? I want to get to the lawsuit, but just a little bit more on the letter, if we could just sit

on this for a second. I assume little Diddy was not a pun. Was that a pun intended? No. Okay. Tim. Well, we got Diddy out there also pun. Was that a pun intended? Okay. Tim. Well, you know, we got Diddy out there also doing sex crimes.

Oh no, that didn't even, come on. I'm a 64 year old, you know, New Englander. Diddy, P Diddy was not the first thing that occurred to me, God. Okay. I don't know, he said it twice and I was like, it's a little Diddy. Again, just looking at the letter one more time, we have certain things,

you're correct, that there's nothing in the letter that's like, hey, remember when we took Janey. Remember that family we kidnapped in Saskatchewan? Yeah, that's not like, oh, Heather, that we had locked up in your sex dungeon. Like, it doesn't say that. But we have certain things in common, Jeffrey, is like, what else could that be? Maybe they have other things in common. I assume they both have a few restaurants they like. Trump says then a year later, like it's important to do the full context here.

Like I mentioned, like I said, it's only three years till Epstein gets indicted. Doesn't mean that Trump knew about that, but it's like we're in the heat of Epstein's child sex trafficking. This isn't 25 or 30 or 50 years ago. This isn't like, you know, something they wrote in high school. Yeah, right.

So it's three years before. This is three years before he goes to court. And then the next year is when Trump gives that New York magazine a quote that everybody had been talking about before this, where he is like, you know, Jeffrey likes him young and they're friends. And we know that Trump also likes him young. We know that he dated Gabriella Sabatini when she was age 19, in between one of his marriages. So I mean, I think there's pretty good context clues to say that the certain things they have in common is an appetite for younger women, but it could be something else.

What is the inference that a reasonable person would draw from all this is going to be Trump's problem? That there is no smoking gun, but people, you know, this isn't a court of law. People are going to draw conclusions. I mean, you don't, you could argue that it's just bad luck that you find out later that your, that your pal is, you know, a convicted sex trafficker, and that three years earlier, you probably shouldn't have said,

we have a lot of things in common, let's have every day be a wonderful secret. The wonderful secret is the other thing that's like, Jeffrey Epstein does have a lot of secrets at this time, all related to the child sex trafficking. And so, I mean, I guess maybe he has some other secrets. Jeffrey was also, you know, trafficking adult women and, you know, having affairs and all that kind of stuff. But

again, if you have somebody who's known for a specific secret and your wish to them is that every day is a wonderful secret, again. It's just such an odd, I mean, it's an odd thing to say. I mean, I look, I'll pull age rank here and say, I have turned 40. I have turned 50. I have turned 60. No one has ever said to me, let every day be a wonderful secret. I've had people say, let every day be a new adventure. You're only as old as you feel.

It's a new phase in your life. You know, all the things that you say as the approaching fear of death starts to tap you on the shoulder when you get to middle age. Yeah. But so it's just, I mean, the whole thing is just weird. And I can also say that in all the things I've ever signed, I have never used my signature as female pubic hair. I was trying to be more delicate and say, you know, the moans of an heiress or something, but yes,

I have never done that. And I think it's just, you know, you could argue that it's bad. I will say the female pubic hair drawing like is the best fact that Trump has here. Cause you know, at least he was drawing a picture of a woman who is old enough to have pubic hair. Oh damn. Oh, damn.

Yes, okay. Well, what I was going to say- I don't know if that's a gulpatory or not. I was going to say is, you could argue this is all just the worst luck in the world. The problem is that Donald Trump... Look, here, let me draw this to a totally different situation. Why did everybody in the world think that Sanam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? Because Sanam Hussein was acting like he had weapons of

mass destruction. He was like Bugs Bunny, right? You can come in anywhere, but you can't look here in the closet. The problem is that Trump is acting like a man who's afraid and guilty and scared, and that's driving this story because if you're so panicked that you're literally turning on your most faithful followers, I mean, calling them weaklings and stupid and idiots. I mean, that, you know, again, what is the inference a reasonable person draws here is that Trump has something to hide,

that he's scared, that he's panicked. You could also add to that inference not only that he's acting panicked, but that he has a track record of dozens of women have accused him of sexual harassment or assault. Well, there's also that problem, isn't there? He's bragged about grabbing women by the pussy against their will on audio tape and said that they let him do it right. So there's a lot of- And he has been found liable for sexual assault and then defaming the victim and

then defaming the woman who accused him. So, you know, there's a lot of bad context clues. There is a lot of context here. Exactly. Also, has no one sat him down and explained the Streisand effect? I don't think so. I think Trump is like a human counter to the Streisand effect. He feels like if you can just go even bigger, more Streisand helps, I think is his strategy. And see, that's why I had that Bugs Bunny cartoon. People out there, if they know, they know. My friend Rocky was in this stove. Would I turn on the gas? You might, rabbit, you might, it's just like, oh my God, this is like a, this is like a Chuck Jones cartoon of, you know, he's not in here, don't look in here. Well, anyways, we've said, you know,

it does sort of a normal person looks at this and says, I wasn't really interested in this, but now I kind of am. Exactly, that happened to Sarah Longwell this week. You said earlier that- I'm sorry to interrupt, was that a focus group? No, no, no, no, It was just this very long one. She said we were on the other pocket. She was like, I didn't care about this obscene thing.

And obviously she cared about the victims. And it was just like, it wasn't a story that she was following that closely. And she couldn't follow all the various threads of the conspiracies. And it's like, who knows what the fuck. And then all of a sudden, as Trump's behavior this week has made her say, well, actually, seems like there might be some there there, right? Like if anybody is acting this like, you know, this crazy about it, like there is a reason.

That's why I asked because I never thought much. I mean, I, you know, I understood Epstein is what he is, but you know, there's a difference between somebody like you could argue, like somebody who's got Trump's record of boorish, toxic and all that stuff. Somebody like Epstein, who's wrote like a whole other, you know, pedophiles and sex traffickers and all that. They're like 14 year old girls. Class by themselves, right? So I was like, ah, there's no client list.

There's no flight logs. There's none of that. I never, I didn't think much of that stuff when the Republicans were trying to gin it up years ago. But watching Trump over the past week, you know, it's like, well, now you have my attention. I admit it, I'm curious too now. Yeah, I mean, I've been following this story for a while and I've been, I had a lot of curiosities about it. My interest in the missing minutes from the prison cell, I think, has definitely increased in the last week. And just like I'm starting to get increasingly interested in the conspiracies, you mentioned earlier that the letter kind of almost begs

people to have more conspiracies. And I do want to say to some listeners, I've received a series of messages about how the word enigmas is an anagram for gamings. And gamings is also a word for young women. And I do just want to say to those listeners, it's good to have a hobby. All right. But maybe diversify the hobby. I hear pickleball is good. I don't think Donald Trump knows the word gamings. His vocabulary is pretty limited or anagram. So I think there's a lot of incriminating stuff here. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe him and Epstein had a secret anagram hobby. Maybe that's what they had in common. I don't know.

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returns quince.com slash the bulwark. I want to go to his response because you've mentioned panic a couple of times and I think that it's the apt word. I just want to read a couple of the things he sent. He's speaking in third person on his social media here. President Trump has already beaten George Stephanopoulos, ABC, 60 Minutes, CBS, and others. Look forward to suing and holding accountable the once great Wall Street Journal. It has truly turned out to be a disgusting and filthy rag, and writing defamatory lies like this shows their desperation

to remain relevant if there are any truth at all to the obscene hoax as it pertains to President Trump, again, in the third person. This information would have been revealed by Comey, Brennan, Cricket, Hillary, and other radical left lunatics a year ago. He then did another tweet about how he looks forward to getting Rupert Murdoch in court.

He did another bleat about how now he has, he's changed his mind. He's asked attorney general, Pam Bondi, to produce any and all pertinent grand jury testimony subject to court approval. This scam should end right now. This is a guy that's flailing. He's like, I'm gonna sue people.

We are gonna release stuff. We don't know what we're gonna release. It's gonna be some stuff in the future. And like, you guys are idiots. It's James Comey's fault. But again, what does the inference a reasonable person draws here that if you're that scared and you're going to sue and you're

gonna hear let me bend over backwards to be fair to Donald Trump, which doesn't feel natural. It's not usual in the Bullock podcast. But I'm always hoping to try something new. But you know, this is also steel manning the case, right, which is that Donald Trump threatens to sue everybody for everything. So what all you're seeing here is sort of standard Trump playbook, right? That Trump always says, I'm going to sue, and then he does it. Because that's why I

said to you, what do you figure the over under is? I mean, Donald Trump may not understand the concept of discovery, but his lawyers do. And, you know, nobody's going to want to, certainly nobody on his side is going to want to go through that. I still argue that the odds of an actual lawsuit producing anything are going to be pretty small. That's just standard Trump. Now, the problem is to go back, why do you steal man a case? Because then the differences are more obvious when you go back to it which is yeah but this is clearly acting differently this time like yeah he's threatening to sue but the thing that's different is how many times he changed the story. You know it's all fake it was created by the democrats well it's a list that pan bondy has and she can release it i don't have any control over what the DOJ has. I've never seen it. I don't know. But I know it's fake and I know Obama, and it wasn't me. And

if it was me, I didn't use a gun. And if I did use a gun, it wasn't that gun. And if it was that gun, it didn't have bullets in it. I mean, at some point, again, people that weren't going to pay attention to this, people like me and Sarah maybe, are looking and saying, even by Trump standards, again, I sort of washed out or priced in, that's the word, I priced in a certain amount of Trumpian outrage of, oh, there's a story and it's about me and I hate it and Murdoch's a traitor and that, that, that, that, that. Okay, now I'm thinking, no, this is a bigger bombshell than it looks. When the story first dropped, I don't know about you, Tim,

but when I first saw it, I said, oh, birthday, a body, we're gonna love that word. This is a body podcast today. It is. But I thought a body birthday card, that's not much of a bombshell. Watching Trump's reaction to it, now I'm saying, huh, that much of a bombshell. Watching Trump's reaction to it, now I'm saying, huh,

that seems like a bombshell. We called the journal and tried to shut it down. I will say one thing about his response is it made me, it reignited my anger at ABC and CBS over capitulating. Paramount. Because, you know, I'm good on the Wall Street Journal. Yeah, I'm good on Emma Tucker for Push for publishing this. But, you know, it's just like this, it creates the environment for this, right? Where like he feels like he can do this, where, you know, people are probably more cautious. I like this journal

story. The gossip that was coming was going around town for like three days. So I got so many texts about it. And it's because, you know, why did it take so long? Well, you got to figure that they had lawyers, you know, they were lawyered to the hilt before publishing it. That's the other reason I don't think there's going to be much of a lawsuit. Yeah.

Honestly, I mean, if the journals lawyers, I mean, you say, I happen to think very highly of the Wall Street Journal as a newspaper. I mean, the opinion page is what it is, you know, but the actual news organization, you couldn't see them saying, I don't know, it's a little shaky, we could get sued. Let's take a flyer. I don't think anybody at the Wall Street Journal was going to argue for taking a, you know, just like, let's get out

on a limb and see what happens. And I think Trump knows that as well. I suspect that the story of the card itself will probably fade out, but that this is not going to calm the waters for MAGA world. They care about it. I mean, this is just to go back to your point about the press, by the way, about the capitulation. I think the reason Trump also thinks he can get away with stuff, I was watching a White House briefing yesterday and someone I think quite reasonably brought up, you know, Donald Trump claims that his uncle knew the Unabomber and when, you know, that whole Unabomber story, right? Oh, Tom, I was saving that one for dessert.

Okay, keep going. All right, I was going to say we can talk about the story itself, but what really bothered me was Levitt said, I'm so surprised you're asking this. It's a known fact that his uncle taught at MIT. Next question. And I'm like, I'm sorry, that's not actually an answer. And then nobody followed it. Nobody said, wait, wait, you know, that's a non sequitur. You know, if I said, hey, I was, you know, I was walking down the street in Rhode Island, and I ran into Charles Manson, who apparently is still alive, and the only answer that you got from my family was, Tom lives in Rhode Island. What's wrong with you people? That's not really an answer. I think the people around him are thinking,

if we could just get him to that point, this would go away, but it's not going to go away. I'm really surprised at the degree to which this is I mean, I have all the things I would have predicted would have blown up the MAGA Alliance, I don't know that I would have picked this and it shows you that, you know, I have a hard time I still after years of studying and writing about these folks, I guess I'm a little I'm still capable of being surprised that like, of all the things he's ever lied to you about this is the one that's going to do it.

This is the one that really makes you angry. Has Bongino showed up for work yet? Because I was a federal... I think Bongino is back and it's unclear what he's doing. I was a federal employee. I don't remember the anger day exception to going to work. I wish... I thought government work was kind of optional.

I do think there'll be a rally around the Trump effect with now a little bit against the media on this from some in the Trump base. But there's a huge group of people out there, A, in like the Manosphere, who don't care about, who aren't rally around the flag type people. Shane Gillis is this comedian, was making fun of Trump over this at the ESPYs, so the ESPN Oscars or whatever,

the awards for athletes of the year. That demonstrates that it's breaking through outside of the bubble. You know what I mean? It's escaped the MAGA containment field. And that matters because there are things that I keep trying to figure out why this issue. There are a lot of things that MAGA will accept being humiliated on

in public. Like Trump lied to you about tariffs. I mean, I talked to MAGA voters just before they're like, oh, tariffs, he's not going to do tariffs. Nobody does tariffs. Okay. They can say, all right, fine, he's got to do tariffs. I trust the president. He knows what he's doing. This publicly humiliating MAGA world over he lied to you about a conspiracy that is very dear to your heart. Yeah, we know you don't care about tariffs. We know you don't care about abortion or China or Iran or any of that. We know that in the end, you really don't care about that stuff. But lying to you about this is bad.

And then letting everybody in the world humiliate you, like at the SPs about this, that's, I think that one, that's a punch that lands with a lot of these folks. And it makes them feel like they're losing. Like a big part of the Trump is, oh, if he's lying, but the libs are mad. And you know what I mean? And he's embarrassing them.

Like, that's okay, I'll allow it, whatever. We're just, it's all, but it's like, no, it's like we're being mocked now. And the libs are going, you know, they're kind of thrown up there and say, we're on your side. Hey, release the, I mean, you know, you got Hakeem Jeffries out there going, release the Epstein tapes. It's like, wow, that's gotta be a very strange feeling. Magic Spoon makes high protein, zero sugar cereal and treats reinvented from your childhood. Every serving of Magic Spoon high protein cereal has 13 grams of protein, zero grams of sugar and only four grams of net carbs.

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maybe you like them in that sack for you could be magic spoon. Get $5 off your next order at magic spoon.com slash the bulwark or look for magic spoon on Amazon or in your nearest grocery store. That's magic spoon.com slash the bulwark for $5 off. Just really quick on the files because I do think it's important to say, especially for new people who are just trying to follow this, it has been said that Julian Maxwell had like a little black book with a list. I don't know if that's true or not. But generally speaking, when people are talking about releasing the files, it's like all these

different investigations. He was investigated two times in 2006 and then again in 2017 or whatever, 2018. And then he was investigated in the US Virgin Islands too, right? So the files include all of this sort of stuff. So it's like when Trump is in the files, maybe he's in Jelaine's book, right? Probably. I think Jelaine asked him to write this letter for the birthday card. But the files also include all of these investigations, right? And so I thought that was the interesting fact in the journal story beyond the actual letter was supposedly this birthday book was in the DOJ's files about the 2006 investigation. It's a sprawling list of stuff, which I think makes the situation very hard for Trump because

it's not like you can say, all right, well, fuck it, we'll just release everything. It's like, no, it's a huge amount of information over a decade. Because he doesn't know what's in there. Right? That he can't, I mean, that's part of the part you can't know what's in there without a systematic and disciplined examination of these files. And this is not a White House that does anything in that way. I always thought, Tim, that one of the reasons he stole all that stuff, that he just hijacked all these files from the White House, is that he didn't know what was in them. And he said, I better take all this stuff with me just in case.

Just in case. Order. Order style. Bantz's reply, I think it's worth just mulling for one second. JD, the tweeter, the vice tweeter, he writes, forgive my language. I'm not going to actually forgive my language, but this story is complete and utter bullshit. The WSJ should be ashamed for publishing it. Where is the letter? Would you be shocked to learn they never showed it to us before publishing it?

Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump? Doesn't it violate some rule of journalistic ethics to publish a letter like this without showing it to the victim of this hit piece. He loves rhetorical questions. I love that the victim in this case, where there were 14-year-old girls who were raped and young women that were trafficked, is Donald Trump because somebody was mean to him. That's the victim that JD Vance is worried about, not the actual victims of Jeffrey Epstein. But do you have any thoughts on the series of rhetorical questions posed by the vice president?

Does it sound like Donald Trump to sign his name across a woman's genitalia, you know, on a cartoon? Yeah. Sure. Okay. I'll take that one. Yes, it does sound like Donald Trump. Vance is walking in the same trap that they're all walking to.

If this was all a big nothing burger, then, you know then why did you guys all pump it up and demand the release of these files and all of this stuff and claim that there were all these bombshells in it before you were elected? And now, the Times had an interesting little kind of Venn diagram. Vance is way over in the nothing to see here approach, but there's these overlapping like, nothing to see here, but Trump should release and you know big story and I mean it's Vance is kind of an outlier here because he has to be and I don't think Vance can carry that in the same way that other MAGA figures do. It's really important to remember that Vance was gonna be a has-been almost ran Senate candidate until Trump

and he was gonna lose to a guy that was a real, you know, screwball until Trump saved him. So it's not like Vance has this big organic level of cred with MAGA world. So I don't know that it really, that these questions that he's posing matter very much, but it's still a strisand effect. Does this sound like Donald Trump to you? Hmm. Hanging out with a perv. Since this sound like Donald Trump to you? Hmm. Hanging out with a perv. Since you're asking. If you're going to ask.

Sending a pervy message to a perv for their 50th birthday in Manhattan kind of does sound like Donald Trump to me a little bit. But we'll see. We'll see how it turns out, as Donald Trump might say. We're going to look at it very strongly. And I think you should have objected to JD Vance's body language.

There's been another, well, I guess I was about to say victim, I don't want to undermine the real victims here, but there's been another person who's had to suffer because of all this and it is James Comey's daughter was fired from the DOJ yesterday, a prosecutor. There's another move that says, don't worry, nothing to see here. Yeah, it's wild. And so for folks who listened to the Comey interview a couple of weeks ago that I did, we talked about his daughter because she was prosecuting the Diddy case,

which Tom Nichols was following very closely. She also prosecuted Maxwell and Epstein for the DOJ. She had a specialty in sex crimes, tough job. And she was fired yesterday, two days ago, by the DOJ. No reason given. It sucks. It's unclear whether it's because Cash Patel and Pam Bondi can't have anybody working for them who has any relationship with anyone who's ever said anything critical about Donald Trump. And it's a last name thing. It might be related to the Maxwell and Epstein investigations. It's pretty curious timing on that front. But what do you think?

Well, once again, leave aside the resistance libs and MAGA world, right? Sure. Take the average person saying, hmm, he's been accused of being jungled up with Jeffrey Epstein. And now this stuff comes out and he doesn't want to release these files. And oh, by the way, he's going to fire the prosecutor who went after Epstein. Again, what part of the Streisand effect isn't he understanding? Even I, again, I said, okay, it's probably the last name thing, but boy, she's been there for years.

So why now? It's like, let me try and tamp down some of this conspiracy theorizing by firing the sex crimes prosecutor. OK? OK. Here's the other thing about this, just taking it outside of the politics. I do want to talk about her name for a second too, but taking the politics outside of it. It's like people in the MAGA base for accurate, you know, maybe they were wrong about this, maybe it was a conspiracy, but

maybe it was not genuine in certain cases, but many of them expressed that they were very concerned about elite pedophilia, child sex trafficking, sex crimes among elites that are being protected. Here you have a prosecutor at the DOJ who specializes in getting convictions of sex criminals and has successfully targeted elites with indictments and prosecutions and won convictions of sex criminals. And so now you're telling me that the Trump DOJ wants to scuttle somebody that has demonstrated that they know how to go after sex criminals. Just on the merits of that part, outside of everything else,

it's like it underscores the fact that these guys don't care about that at all. Shows you what their priorities are. Yeah. Now, if you're talking about petty stories, I think we should, this was a Shane Harris story yesterday in the Atlantic. This thing about Clapper and his dog, did you see this? I miss this.

You know, Clapper takes this dog, a rescue dog, and you know, Clapper is like 80 years old now, right? And the dog, Susan, becomes a working dog for the CIA. And they're going to do this kind of dog retirement of, you know, Susan that this that Clapper rescued and given to the agency and all that stuff. And, you know, it's very, it's a heartwarming story. You know, old guy is going to go see is this working dog. Susan the dog served her country. No, Clapper couldn't attend. No, no, can't let you be at the ceremony

because the president doesn't like it. It's both comical and terrifying, the depth of the pettiness that a lot of these folks have about their you know, their perceived political enemies. And so, you know, I think it dovetails into the Maureen Comey story to say, yeah, no, we could be losing the Super Bowl, but we will bench our best player because he pissed off the coach, just because we just hate him, you know, and we would rather lose the game and be miserable look at me using a sportsball

analogy by the way that's a big moment okay it was kind of a week it was kind of a it was kind of a strange sports ball now let me go let me go to a military analogy okay we're on the eve of D-Day and I'm gonna and you know Eisenhower pissed me off I think I'm just gonna replace him guy I don't care if he's good at fighting Nazis that That's not what this is about. It's about owning the libs and getting even with people. And it's crazy. I mean, it just makes you wonder,

while they're firing prosecutors and making sure that old men don't go to dog ceremonies, who's running the government? Who's actually keeping the lights on around here? What the hell? It's a deep concern. And this is what we were talking about with Mike Feinberg earlier this week. Because I have to FBI. And I actually want to get to the Feinberg thing next. Who's actually keeping the lights on around here? What the hell? It's a deep concern. And this is what we were talking about

with Mike Feinberg earlier this week. Cause I have FBI and I actually want to get to the Feinberg thing next. So just one more thing on company. It just sucks on a personal level. Like, so when I had Jim on, he was talking about how he didn't, he couldn't go to the Diddy trial to watch, you know,

Maureen because she was worried it'd become a thing, right? For, you know, her dad to be there. And he was talking about how he was worried when she went to take that job that whatever some of his baggage would become an issue for her. And at the time when we talked about it, not long ago, he was so proud that it hadn't. And he was talking about how the opposite has been true and how she's outshined him actually with the success of these high-profile prosecutions. And it just sucks. It's like these guys are gonna do the,

like you're saying, they're so petty and weak and cowardly that they're going to target somebody doing good work in service of the country, going after bad guys just because of their jealousies. It's so sick. It's resentment all the way down. It's, even since It's resentment all the way down. Even since the first time you ran, it really is the, how come I couldn't get into your

club and so therefore I'll burn down the building? This is something I think is worth pointing out, especially in light of the Maureen Comey story. It's not, we want to be in our own great club. We want to replace your club with our club because, you know what I mean? Like, because your club is corrupt and bad or you need to tear the building down because it's full of rats. No, no, that's not the problem with them. The problem is they want to be in the club they claim to hate. These are people who are aspiring

elites who are angry about being denied what they think. The same people that talk about the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and the Atlantic or whatever, these national publications, we hate them. Why? Because we don't work at the New York Times and we want to and we weren't invited. I think it's, you know, it really is, it sounds like a very simplistic explanation, but it explains the pettiness and the resentment. It's not people trying to build. I mean, there are serious guys that are, and I always bring up Russ Valt when we talk about

this, right? You don't ever hear from him. He's busy doing, burrowing in and doing the things that he wants to do. The rest of them really are spending their time saying, how come I never got an invitation to this club? How come I didn't end up at the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or wherever? People shouldn't underestimate the degree to which that is a very powerful political force that creates some very warped

decisions about government because it means you can't put your personal feelings aside. You are so consumed with envy and resentment. By the way, I'm just going to go off subject and say one of the things I loved about the new Superman movie was how they made sure to let you know that Lex Luthor was driven by more than anything else by envy, which I thought was a great little sort of touchstone to our times. So there. Now, sorry, let you get back on track.

That's interesting. My mother always said that she's got a lot of sins, that she was happy she never had the green monster. I agree with that. I got that from her. I don't have envy. I've got plenty of flaws, but not that one. Professional resentment and envy can, you know, I mean, I have watched it consume people.

I mean, I will not lie, there have been points in my life, you know, I've had a 40-year career where I've like been like, wow, hey, how did that guy get that job, you know, in academia? You know, how did that guy snag the Stanford job or the court, whatever it was, you know? But then you, that feeling is supposed to pass. Right. You're a normal human being. You're not supposed to live your life based on that feeling. It's everybody feels it at some point.

Your best friend comes in and says, wow, I just got a huge bonus at work. And you're like, oh, shit, take me out to dinner then. And you get over it. And then you celebrate. And you're like, oh shit, take me out to dinner then. You know, and you get over it and then you celebrate and you're happy for your friend, you know. These people have, they live their lives, you know, sort of with that anger needle just stuck into their necks every day. And I'm, when people are trying to figure out why are they doing these logical things? Why are they doing these counterproductive things? why are they doing these logical things? Why are they doing these counterproductive things?

Why are they doing these irrational things? Go to a simpler explanation than big conspiracies. Go to that they feel like they were denied their rightful place. And that's why Dan Bongino wanted to be deputy director of the FBI because damn it, I should have been. And now they're finding out that it's hard. Yeah. That's a good transition to the story that you wrote this week about how Tulsi and Cash are training their agencies against their own staff. And this is, I think, a real scary

problem, a real problem. We talked to Mike Feinberg about it on Wednesday, where it's like, why don't they want Maureen Comey around? Why don't they want Mike Feinberg around? Right? Because they don't want qualified China experts around, right? They want people that are loyal. They're happy to have other clowns around. They don't have people that will respect them or at least pretend to respect them and say, oh, yes, Mr. Director, sir. You're so great, Mr. Director, sir, because they have... Very handsome, very handsome man. Yeah, because they have imposter syndrome because, for good reason, because they're

imposters. And the results, as you wrote, has wrote has been you know Tulsi is using AI to I guess comb through the emails of our spies to see if any of them are saying bad stuff said any wrong thing about Donald Trump and cash is trying to do lie detectors to make make guys like Feinberg go up to you know HQ and you know get to meet the parents treatment. We're like, oh, sir, did you ever have a bad thought about Donald Trump? On a polygraph machine. Anyway, I don't know. We'll talk about that.

This is why I brought up the issue about envy and resentment and these very petty emotions. FBI personnel are being hooked up to polygraphs to ascertain whether or not they've been snickering about cash patella around the water cooler. Think about that. Think about, I mean, I was never polygraphed because of the nature. I had a top secret at the DOD. They didn't do it. But I've had friends at NSA and CIA and other places have been polygraphed. It's a routine thing, right? Every few years you've got to go in and get your polygraph of are you a communist drug dealing, whatever. But if you're called in, say, hey, there's an issue and we need to polygraph you, that's, as Joe Biden would have said, it's a big fucking deal. And he's doing it to ascertain if people are basically telling cash Patel jokes. It's an abuse of

power that I think is eventually going to backfire throughout the FBI. One of the ironies is there were probably plenty of people at the FBI who thought Donald Trump coming back was okay. I mean, in every law enforcement and Intelligence community, I mean you can find Trump voters everywhere But when you start strapping people to chairs and saying, you know, did you say something funny about cash Patel? Then I think you know the real professionals understand that that you're living in a different that this is KGB level stuff It's not even McCarthyism. I mean you could argue I suppose that what Tulsi Gabbard is doing is McCarthyism, right? As you say, we're rooting out wrong think and we're finding crypto communists and right deviationists and left social revolutionaries hiding among us.

But when you're saying, have you spoken ill of the leader and we're going to watch the needle jump while you answer. That's really, you know, repressive third world regime stuff. And it's embarrassing to even think that it's happened here in the 21st century of America. Given your background also, do we want AI that I assume is some private company's AI going through the emails and files of our spies? That feels risky. That feels like a pretty unnecessary... As I said in the piece, what Gabbard is doing is what the system is designed to prevent someone from doing. The reason that all these boards and systems

are all compartmentalized is so that nobody can just dump them into a big hopper and go looking through them. And for what? As you say, to find wrong think about MAGA policies as if you're going to root out somebody saying, hey, I'm not sure bombing Iran was a good idea. Oh, well, wait a minute, you know, whoa, you know. That's fine.

The woke's we got to root out the woke's. That's going to backfire. I mean, it's, I don't think that they're going to create the kind of compliant intelligence and law because they're not going in there and saying, you know, as some leaders that after Watergate in the 70s and all the craziness of that say, okay, we've got to get back to being a professional service.

We've got to be a, they're not doing that. This is a clown show with very delicate egos and people that are, let us just remind everyone, people who have no business being in these jobs, people who are there purely because of the cowardice of the Republican Senate. Tulsi Gabbard has no business being Director of National Intelligence.

And had she tried to learn the job or become at all competent at it, there might have been a grace period. But when you bring in somebody who's like, I have no idea what I'm doing, this is purely to own the libs and troll everybody into just kind of... Because we all thought it would be a gas to make Tulsi Gabbard the DNI, and then she starts trying to hunt down people in her own organization. Then I think you don't get that grace period.

And it means that the United States is being poorly served by its intelligence and law enforcement communities because of the leadership at the top. Well, good thing that won't have any repercussions, having bad intelligence and law enforcement. You know, there's nothing good, no risks there. Look, it's not like we're about to send B2s into a big country and start dropping bombs or anything. Right now, the headlines are chock full of data breaches and regulatory rollbacks making all of us vulnerable.

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wrote a couple things about it in your area of expertise. I'm just wondering, the things that jump to mind for me as I think about nuclear now and what might be changing or different from 10 years ago is AI threats, one. Two, a belief among countries such as, I don't know, Japan, Europe, Canada, South Korea, that they might need to become nuclear now because the US is not reliable and they don't feel comfortable in the US's umbrella. Those things jump to my mind. What for you is kind of acute in the nuclear space? My colleague Ross Anderson has written about AI and also about proliferation. East Asia has a great piece in this month's edition about proliferation. And I think one bright spot for now is that all of the nuclear powers of the world have

kind of seemed to agree that keeping AI far away from nuclear stuff is a good idea. I mean, do we never learn how many terminators do we have to beat before we don't build Skynet? I worry about AI being just kind of creeping into other kind of warning systems, that they try to say, well, we can use AI to kind of learn to distinguish between a missile launch and clouds reflecting sunlight.

Okay, fine. In the end, you still have to have a human being in that loop. And I really worry that people think AI is a solution to everything. What I think people need to focus on is that the system that exists now here in the United States of nuclear command and control was built during the Cold War. It relies on one man, president of the United States. And the assumption always was that we would elect sane and reasonable people as presidents of the United States, much like the rest of our government. I mean, James Madison said it,

right? I mean, the whole American experiment, the whole constitutional system is predicated on electing virtuous people. And if we don't do that, then we're just screwed. I mean, Madison didn't say we were screwed, but I believe he said we are in a wretched condition. If there is no virtue among us, we are in a wretched condition. Okay, that resonates, wretched condition. When people talk about trying to change the architecture of these things, there's a bill

in Congress to prevent the first use of nuclear weapons without congressional approval. I actually think that's a great idea. But the retaliatory power, if there are incoming missiles, it's still going to have to rest on one person. And I think it bothers me, and it bothered me when I was writing the piece, that Americans just don't seem to care anymore about an issue that was always a presidential election issue, which is, whose finger's on the button? Who's going to get the 3 AM phone call? And changing the system isn't going to matter very much

if we keep, you know, if you keep electing people like Donald Trump. I mean, he just doesn't understand any of this. He has wavered back and forth between nuclear is bad. He calls it nuclear. I'm always worried about nuclear, but also has said things like if we have them, why can't we use them? I think too many people vote now based on vibes and fun and TV and image and, you know and all of that stuff.

It's all fun and games until there's a nuclear crisis. Then you can't swap these guys out and bring in this. You can't halt the taping of the reality show and then bring in the real guys. This is who you're stuck with. I think that's a really worrisome thing. This system was designed, the command and control system of the United States was designed to empower the president. There was a bias, and this is not my phrase and I can't remember who says a bias toward

action in the system because it was created to defend us from an attack. So the system is actually there to enable the president to use nuclear weapons, not to stop him. You mean like the approval system, that's interesting. I don't know if that's a- The whole thing. The whole thing is designed so that when the president says, I wanna use nuclear weapons, boom, it happens.

It happens, it just happens. There's nobody that can countermand it. There's supposed to be somebody in the room who will verify that yes, this is the president that you just spoke to. Sure. That guy can say, I'm not going to do it. The president can say, okay, you're fired.

Next guy. You know, he can turn to that officer and say, bring me the nuclear football. Guy said, no, Mr. President, I'm not going to do that. He said, okay, you're fired. You, you're the new football guy. I mean, he has complete control over that branch of the government. There's a movie coming out that looks really interesting interesting by the way, by Catherine Bigelow, comes out in October, which is... She did the Hurt Locker.

She did the Hurt Locker, right. First woman to win the best director Oscar. It's about a missile strike on the United States and that kind of tick-tock of what happens there. So looking forward to seeing that in the fall. Well, Donald Trump being a coward is something that gives me a little bit of comfort listening to that scary story. I didn't even interrupt him, but except that, you know, problem with guys like Trump is that they suddenly decide that they have to look tough. Yeah.

That's the part I don't, if he says, look, you know, we're not going to do the nuclear, whatever, fine. But it's, I mean, you know, why is he at least temporarily changed his tune on Ukraine? Now I'll believe it when I see it when all the weapons finally show up. But okay, right now the president's doing the right thing and saying Putin's not going to listen. I'm going to have to release these weapons. Okay, fine.

But not because he made a strategic assessment, but because he's pissed off. Right. Because Putin made him look stupid. So I don't know, you know, that's not, I'm glad he's doing it, but that's not really the reason you do stuff like that. It's not a sign of great judgment. It's not a sign of prudent strategy or nothing. Yeah.

What else? Yeah. Ukraine is not going to go to next. I mean, Hurtling has a column in the board today about how Putin belongs before a court, not a peace table. You know, we have this sanctions package that was going to go through, now is on pause. Trump gave Putin another 50 days, but he's also giving Ukraine the weapons. And why 50 days? That's about as many days of campaigning weather as there are left. That's about as many days of what is there are left? Campaigning weather, military campaigning weather. 50 days. In other words, basically,

I'm going to give you till the fall when you would have been ramping down military operations anyway. And so, yeah, so game it out for me. It's hard for me to read what's happening in this situation. You think that Putin is just going to try to get as much land as possible in the next 50 days and then get them to the negotiating table or...? I think Putin hasn't given up at all on conquering all of Ukraine. And what he's going to do is basically murder and terrorize Ukrainians every day until... I suppose the path, if I were sitting there in the Kremlin with him to say, grab as much territory, hold as much of it as you can. But the real issue here is to make life in Ukraine so miserable, so ghastly, that somehow

you can get rid of Zelensky and get him replaced, maybe during a peace process, maybe going to the table as a kind of faint and a respite for a moment, and then hope that you can somehow manipulate things in Kiev to get some kind of government of national salvation, right? To say, okay, President Zelensky is stepping down or he's dead or been removed or whatever, and we need to have a collective leadership that remarkably all believes that we should be in some kind of union with Russia. And I think that's in the end, I don't think, and I don't, you know, I've been wrong before, so I could be wrong with this. I think Putin understands that, you know, driving tank columns through Kiev probably

is not going to be the triumphal thing he was hoping for. But there is a political route to victory for him, which is collapsing the government through terrorism, and then getting through state terrorism, through war crimes. I shouldn't even call it terrorism, straight up war crimes. And then getting some kind of puppet government or pro-Russian government to say, you know, we should have been in a union with you and let's work this out. Well, hopefully, I guess, hopefully in this one case,

Trump's resentments work out in our favor, I guess. That's the best we can hope for in these situations. If he can maintain it. I mean, Putin's played him pretty well. And the fact that he got a 50 day, you know, kitchen pass here tells you that, you know, I mean, I was reluctant to join the, yay, Trump changes mind chorus,

because this is exactly what I was worried about. The sanctions are held up. Putin's got 50 days, you know, of a free pass to create all the mayhem he wants. Trump, I'm sure, is hoping that after 50 days, nobody was, I mean, 50 days, hey, the Trump standard is two weeks, which in Trump world is forever. It's noteworthy. The 50 days is noteworthy. is two weeks, which in Trump world is forever. It's noteworthy. The 50 days is noteworthy. It's long. A lot can happen in 50 days.

So I don't know. I'm glad the weapons are going, but particularly the defensive weapons, but we'll see. Just really quick on in your death of expertise hat, the Fed chair and Powell, there's a lot of chatter about this. The stupidest members of Congress in the Republican side are all agitating Trump to fire Powell. Based around mostly concerned about interest rates, which is legit, but they just passed a massive

debt bomb to the House. I don't think that they really realize how interest rates work. There's a fun stat, not fun, bad for everybody who is suffering with higher interest rates. But just wondering that the mortgage rates bottomed at 6.1 in 2024, a week before the Fed began cutting. Today, they're at 6.8. So they've gone up since the Fed's cuts because there's a lot of other issues in the economy. Well, and inflation has gone up. And I am not usually an inflation bear. And inflation has gone up. And I am not usually an inflation bearer. I suppose as a child of the 70s, when someone says, we're up at 2.7% inflation, I'm like, oh, no. I'm the kid who came of age when inflation was 10%

and was pretty much a 10 year. People forget this. That big run of inflation started under Nixon, it toppled Ford, it ate away at Carter, you know, I mean, it was a big thing. So nonetheless, if inflation, if the target for the Fed is 2% and Trump's bizarre tariff theory has helped to push it back to 2.7. As you point out, do people not understand how interest rates work and how that interacts with the economy?

If inflation is starting to pick up, you don't actually cut interest rates because then you get more inflation. So I don't know whether he's actually going to fire Powell. I think it's interesting, the adults in the room problem, those people are gone with regard to everything, right? The Justice Department, J6ers, Ukraine, you name it. Every adult in the room has been vanquished, except on this, except on economic stuff,

where there are still enough really wealthy guys who can pick up the phone to him and say, for example, don't fire Powell or I need an exception on this big immigration thing because I have a lot of maids who work in my hotel. You know what I mean? Or on this tariff, right? You need to cut me a break on my thing. So is he going gonna do it? I don't know.

I think he's, in a way, your colleague, Jonathan JVL has pointed out, it's almost like the markets now just price in the lunacy and unless something really concrete happens, they don't pay attention to this. And so when he holds up a letter saying, I'm gonna fire Powell, everybody goes, yeah, whatever. You've written a lot of letters, sir. I'm interested to listen to friends of the pod, Derek Thompson and Justin Wolfers, that

a pod this morning I haven't listened to yet about what the theories are for the kind of persisting economic positive news, at least relatively speaking, modest positive news in the face of all these threats. And I don't know, this could be the bad stuff's around the corner, but it might just be the irrational, the JVL irrational markets theory. But they're also hoping, I think, that a lot of the worst stuff comes, that the White House, I mean, a lot of the worst stuff comes after the midterms. And then they don't care. All right, we will close it here. We need a laugh. You mentioned it earlier. The president told a very strange story about the Unabomber. And we're going to break our rule. Just because

it's so funny. It's funny on several levels, like funny point and laugh funny, not him being funny. Let's take a listen to Donald Trump talking about his uncle. Donald Trump When I first heard about AI, you know, it's not my thing. Although my uncle was at MIT, one of the great professors, 51 years, whatever, longest serving professor in the history of MIT, three degrees in nuclear, chemical and math. That's a smart man. Kaczynski was one of his students. Do you know who Kaczynski was? There's very little difference between a mad man

and a genius. But Kaczynski, I said, what kind of a student was he? Uncle John, Dr. John Trump, he said, what kind of a student? Then he said, seriously good. He said he'd go around correcting everybody, but it didn't work out too well for him. It turns out it's a totally fabricated story. It's physically impossible.

It's not even like a slight misremembering of something. I mean, it is whole-clock. Kaczynski didn't go to MIT. His uncle died before anybody knew that Kaczynski, 11 years before Kaczynski was even identified as the Unabomber. There is absolutely, you know, there are very few times. Maybe Trump had a medium. Maybe Trump spoke to Uncle Dr. John through an alternate, you know, universe.

And you know, I know we're yucking it up about it, but, you know, this is really one of the few times where you want to say, now, imagine if Joe, imagine the books that would be written if Joe Biden had said this. I mean, Joe Biden talks about one guy named Corn Pop, who turns out existed. Real. Corn Pop is real. Long wanted to get Corn Pop on the pod. The, you know, the Biden told this story and everybody just assumed that it was real. I wanted to get cornbop on the pod.

Biden told this story and everybody just assumed that it was fake and then it turned out to be true. Here Trump, it shows you how much we've lowered the bar where Donald Trump is. I think that's really part of the tragedy here. I know we were trying to end on a funny note, but to say, hey, Donald Trump's 79, Biden was 81. Yeah, old guys. Listen, I'm 64 and I cycle through names when I'm trying to talk to people. My wife is used to these long pauses where I say, hey, we need to pick up some, and she'll say, you know, chicken.

Yes, chicken. That's the word I couldn't find. You know, but that's different than, again, so, you know, so honey, I was picking up the chicken and there I was talking to George Harrison, you know, about Eric Clapton. I mean, it's like people would like be worried about your mental capacity at that point. And Trump says this stuff and we all go, huh, what are you going to do? It's Trump. Biden goes through this and there are hearings about whether or not there was criminal intent involved in the Biden administration. And Trump says things that are,

that if your dad said them, and I know we've said this before, Tim, but if your dad started talking this way. You'd have some texts with the siblings, which is like, all right. Yeah, we gotta talk about dad. We're gonna have to start playing at some things. We gotta have a talk, you know?

My father lived to be 94 and didn't get things, you know, this wrong. And so I guess it's kind of hilarious. The thing that's always strikes me about Trump's story is that he does it almost in a way to be ingratiating and to show that he's got a command of interesting story. Kaczynski was the guy. My Uncle John, with his three degrees, nuclear, chemical,

and there's this whole thing that is just completely- Nuclear, chemical, and math, the traditional three degrees. Yeah, yeah. And he says it with this kind of aw-shucks, folksy approach that says, this really happened. And if he's just making up stories as a politician, okay, that's bad. But if he actually believes this, and I think the level of detail he goes into says that he thinks it happened, then yeah, where are the phone calls that say we got to have a talk

about this? Ronald Reagan's cabinet met and had a discussion about Reagan's mental acuity based on a tiny fraction of this kind of behavior. Let's put it that way. What a world. Good thing he has his finger on the button, his tiny little finger. Tom Nichols, it's always a pleasure. Everybody go check out that August Atlantic edition. A lot of good stuff on nuclear, which Dr. John Trump is an expert at. It's the issue on nuclear. On nuclear.

And to all of you guys, may this weekend be filled with wonderful secrets. You never know what could happen. I'll see you back here Monday with Bill Kristol. See you, Tom. See you, Tim. Thanks. I'm so blinded, mystery man Woman phantom, pilot lights mirrors The atmosphere, I'm so scared but I'm standing here

Is what I'm seeing real or is it just a sound? Is it all just virtual? We could be lovers, even just tonight We could be anything you want We could be jokers, right to the daylight We could break all of our stigma I'll be your enigma I'll be your enigma I'll be your enigma I'll be your enigma Can't stop staring, I'm so naked Wrapped in shadows, my heart races Dragon's eyes watch, goddess breathing

Give me something to believe in Is what I am seeing real or is it just a sound? Is it all just virtual? Just stay inside Is it all just virtual? We could be lovers Even just tonight We could be anything you want We could be jokers Right to the daylight

We could break all of our stigma I-I'll be your enigma I-I'll be your enigma I-I'll be your enigma I-I'll be your enigma Did you hear what I said? Did you hear what I said? Did you hear what I said? Is it all in my head?

Is it all in my head? Is it all in my head? We could be lovers Even just tonight We could be anything you want We could be jokers Spout to the daylight We could break jokers, ride to the daylight. We could break all of our stigma.

I'll be your headache boy, even just tonight. I'll be your headache boy, ride to the daylight. I'll be your headache boy, even just tonight. I'll be your headache boy, ride to the daylight, daylight. The Bullork Podcast is produced by Katy Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.