The Bulwark Podcast - Tom Nichols: There’s Something Wrong with the President

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

p’s recent insomnia-induced, Obama-obsessed posting spree showed a level of paranoia and delusion that should be raising real concerns about the mental health of our commander-in-chief. The new blotch on his neck to go with the giant bruises on his hands is not helping matters. Is the DOJ mulling a $10 billion IRS settlement with Trump to try to ease his emotional distress over his seeming loss in Iran? Plus, Gorka’s half-baked “official” counterterrorism strategy, Tim did ask Comey about the Hillary email investigation in a previous interview, and the poll numbers for POTUS are worse than they were after Jan 6.  Tom Nichols joins Tim Miller for a special LIVE pod.show notes Tom on the administration's counterterrorism strategy Tim's interview with Comey last year Just announced: San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and our own MAGA culture expert, Will Sommer, will join the gang on stage at Bulwark Live: San Diego on May 20. And on May 21 at Bulwark Live: LA our friends Jane Coaston, Jon Favreau, Erin Ryan from Crooked Media, The Ringer’s Van Lathan and progressive commentator Brian Tyler Cohen will join Sarah, Tim and Sam on stage. Grab your seats today at TheBulwark.com/Events Join at functionhealth.com/THEBULWARK or use gift code THEBULWARK25 for a $25 credit toward your membership.

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We are doing it live today. We're doing it live. We had an all-hands meeting. Thankfully, it went better than the Iranian all-hands meeting a couple months ago. We're all live and well, but I could not take the pod in the morning. And since we're doing it live, I wanted to bring in our resident guest whose temperament

most matches Bill O'Reilly, and that is Atlantic writer, Ray, Rale. Radio free Tom, Tom Nichols. How you doing? Oh, that, that stinks, but hell, do it live. Doing it live. Thank you for those you with us live on YouTube and Substack. Everybody else will be in your ears a little late today. And then we're back to our normal schedule tomorrow. We've got a great lineup the rest of the week.

Tom, we've got a bunch to discuss. We'll do a little music at the end, as is our want. But I kind of wanted to frame up the whole conversation just by taking a look. at the bleats that Donald Trump sent on Monday night between 10.15 p.m. and almost 2 a.m. Luckily, a friend of the show, Harry Sisson, kind of summarized each bleat. There were 45 of them from our totally insane and sleep-deprived president.

And we're just going to go through a few. 1015 accuses Barack Obama of attempting a coup. 1015, says Obama worked with the CIA to overthrow Trump. 1015 reposts the tweet saying Obama is a traitor and he should be arrested. 1022 attacks dominion voting systems. There's been some lawsuits about that. 1023, back at Obama, accuses him of personally making $120 million from Obamacare. I don't know how that happened.

1027, demand Senator Mark Kelly resign. 1030 demands Jack Smith be arrested. It's kind of lucky for Mark Kelly, just resigned for him or jail for Jack Smith. 1030, Obama Clinton and yesterday's guest, Jim Comey, are guilty of treason. 1039 or reposts a tweet from a MAGA account saying they have secret intel proving Clinton and Obama committed crimes. 1039, repost a MAGA tweet saying Hillary Clinton should be sent to Haiti. I'm going to fast forward because there's so many. 1041 accuses Obama and John Brennan and Clinton of sedition and treason again.

Then he starts posting some like boomer post. 1042 is a picture of a man on CCTV footage knocking over food a waiter was carrying. 1047, Obama is the most demonic force in American politics. 1049 brings up dominion again. 1051 reposts a fake Charlie Kirk account that claimed Obama blocked Hillary Clinton from being prosecuted. 1128 claims the senior Democrat

just testified under oath that Senator Adam Schiff leaked classified information, not true. 113 a.m. attacks the New York Times for their report on his reflecting pool remodel. So we're in the middle of a war with Iran, major economic uncertainty, three hours of deranged posting

from the president of the United States. You post a lot, but boy. Yeah, I post a lot, but I'm not actually holding the codes to the nuclear arsenal. And I don't have early morning briefings from the CIA on the condition of the world. And I'm not required to make any major decisions about, you know, the fate of billions of human beings. So you'll have to forgive me if I do a little late night posting. But if that were my dad, you know, I said, and I were watching. you know, my dad or my grandfather posting like this, I'd want to, I'd be out there the next day.

Dad, are you okay? You're sleeping enough? You know, because then the next day, of course, when there is the actual business of government taking place, you know, he's doing touch and goes, you know, or the military guys, he's called snap rolls, you know. and, you know, he's just not there. I mean, there's something, look, there's something wrong with the president. I think there's, he's having health issues, which is not unusual for a man who's almost 80. The neck bruises is kind of, the hand bruises of moves to the neck. I mean, he's walking out of makeup on his hands.

I'm pretty sure it's not a hickey. Or we don't know that. Let me, let's be responsible and say he's walking around with what looks like makeup slathered on his hands. There's something wrong here. And I think, you know, it's a fair question to ask. American citizens have a reasonable concern about the mental stability of their commander-in-chief. But we're not getting those answers because everything in this White House, you know, when you're reading through those tweets, Tim, it's a reminder that no matter how powerful he gets. no matter, you know, he's the president, he's got his second term, he's got complete control

in the Republican Party, everything that he's ever wanted. And yet he just radiates this, this paranoid insecurity that he can't stop thinking about Barack Obama, can't stop thinking about, you know, John Brennan and Joe Biden. I mean, it's just, it's incredible, you know, how unbelievably insecure and freaked out this guy is all the time. And, you know, probably being awakeful to in the morning when you're, you know, 79 years old and you're in a demanding job probably isn't helping any of that. Yeah. And again, we're not doctors sort of be responsible.

But, I mean, he is demonstrating paranoid delusions. And he appears to have insomnia, at least at night. He's judging off a little during the day. It's not really a great, like, pairing of traits. Just even putting my Trump Drainment Syndrome aside, like, you know, in the middle of a hot war kind of. whatever we're calling it, a decrease fire. You wouldn't really want somebody posting paranoid delusions all night long, I wouldn't think. Well, you know, and the thing is, of course, his supporters always say, well, he knows what he's doing.

He's just goofing around and, you know, he's having fun. He puts up tweets about making Venezuela the 51st state, you know, and he knows it's just a joke. And then, of course, someone says, so what was that about? And he goes, no, no, I mean it. You know, the one of the most, I mean, it would be funny if it weren't so terrifying. One of the, one of the most amusing things about the entire Trump era, Trump says something crazy. His supporters get way out on a limb to say, he didn't mean that. That's not what he said.

It's a joke. And then the next sound you hear is Trump behind them while they're on that limb going, you know, sawing it off, saying, no, I really meant it. No, I really want to do this. No, I'm not kidding. No, I really believe this. And then boom, you know, they all, they all fall off that limb. There is, I mean, I don't, I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't know if these are paranoid delusions. But I keep referring back to the book. He's paranoid and he has delusions, I guess. Whether it's a clinically paranoid delusions, I don't know. But like, yeah, just using a definition. I'm not a clinician. He seems to, he seems to think that everybody's out to get him and he believes things that are not true. Let's put it that way.

I keep referring back to this book, Night of Camp David that was written in 1965 about by the guys who wrote seven days in May, about a president who, you know, goes, like they said, and Dr. Strangelove, goes a little funny in the head, you know, and wants to take over, you know, all of Europe and form a confederation with the Russians. I mean, it's just a crazy stuff. And the stuff Trump is putting on social media is nuttier, is crazier than the stuff that was in a book that 50 years ago, 60 years ago was considered a political thriller that was too outlandish to be made into a movie. So that's where we are. I mean, I keep saying this is, the guy in the book is President Mark Hollenbach. And I keep saying, okay, this is, I used to say

this is Mark Hollenback behavior. This is beyond what's in a book that was written as fiction. And I don't know what's happened to this country that people just kind of shrug and go, eh, what are you going to do? You know, it's why he is. Impeachment now. I just, I wanted to start there because now we go through some pretty serious matters. And I think that thinking about his mental state is an important way to contextualize it.

Jonathan Swan, our guy over at the New York Times, had this story yesterday. Classified military intelligence assessments from early this month show Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers, and underground facilities, including the U.S. Intel assesses that Iran has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the Strait of Hormuz, and 90% of Iran's underground missile sites are partially or fully operational. Relevant for number of reasons. Like, number one, that's another thing that he's either lying to us about or diluted about when he talks about the state of the Iran military. Number two, if that is the intelligence he's getting, it's an extremely relevant fact for thinking about

what comes next, because if they maintain most of their missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz, like the idea of going into open it militarily, and you tell me, you were the Naval War College professor, but seems extremely risky. Yeah, there are a couple of things occurred to me when I saw that first. It's interesting that the reaction from the administration is basically, who told you that, which is not, you know, denial. And, you know, that's a lot of leaking going on, apparently. But I'm guessing this, you know, that this is coming out of the defense in the intelligence communities

because they would be the people who would know. And that's really alarming. So the other thing that I immediately thought of is, well, we've been bombing the piss out of them for two months, according to everything we're being told. What are we hitting? What have we been doing for two months if you saw 90%? And, you know, I mean, we've been told over and over again, you know, they're decimated, that they don't have anything left, that it's all over, that they're scrambling, that

they're wandering around in the wreckage, you know, rending their garments in the smoking ruins. Well, apparently not. And that, you know, that's really a serious problem. I mean, this is, you know, even during Vietnam with body counts and, you know, Matt, we weren't getting, there wasn't such a huge delta between what seems to be happening and what we're being told is happening. As for what happens next, I think, you know, Trump keeps saying, well, well, and this time, this time we're really going to, you know, well, I mean, if we, what have we been doing for eight weeks, nine weeks, going on nine weeks? I think what happens next is he gets tired of this. And he just, you know, he's apparently some of these reports say he's already asking, how do I just declare victory and walk away from this?

Now, you can declare victory. I think if the war ends right now, which it probably has to, unless we really want to go big and invade Iran and do something, you know, Vietnam level, then then I'm a lot. it's a strategic loss for the United States. We are, we are without question worse off than if we had not gone to war at all. That's the, that's the thing that we really are going to have to grapple with here. It's hard to imagine how it's going to happen. It's hard to imagine how we'd even get back to even on that. I don't, I don't know. I mean, it's, you know, the, the Iranians have

now, you know, the Trump administration keeps saying, well, for 47 years, you know, we've been at war. The Iranians agree. They say, yep, for 40 odd years, we've been waiting for this. And now we've proven that we can survive it. All of that was notional. We've proven that we can close the straits. That was notional. We've proven that we're going to continue to basically control or exercise some control over the straight.

That was notional. So basically, by going to war, which is often what happens with a war of choice like this, you take hypotheticals and you turn them into realities. What would happen if they survive it? What would happen if they close the straight? And I don't know how we get back to even on this. I think, you know, we keep looking for all these complicated reasons that Trump did this. He did it for glory.

He thought it was going to be easy. He's looking to put merit badges, you know, on his, you know, he wants to, he's like Brezhnev. He wants to have another row of medals on his coat. And his answer is, well, Well, it's okay that we did this because now Iran will never get a nuclear weapon. Iran was not close to a nuclear weapon. No reputable experts, no intelligence agencies. Nobody believed that.

I mean, he wasn't even being told that from his own people. And they pretty much tell him almost anything he wants to hear. And so, you know, that's going to be his fallbacks. Like, yes, you saw him yesterday, right? I don't think about the economic situation of the average American. Oh, good to hear, Mr. President. And thank you. Look, Tom, here's the thing.

I was on, I basically had the view you did four weeks ago, right? Which was like, he doesn't have any good outs. He's bored with this. He doesn't really want to be in a hot war in Iran. He thought it was going to be easy like Venezuela. And he's just going to declare victory and turn around. That's really tough right now to do. Because you end up with just such an obvious strategic defeat with whatever happens in the

Strait of Hormuz. And so I'm at least my, my worry level on the escalation is a little higher. And there was another report yesterday that the U.S. military is considering what the second phase of the more active part of the war would look like. They would rename it. Operation Sledgehammer Sledgehammer. Sledgehammer.

I guess we know what the song is today, Peter Gabriel. Although people my age, Tim, have been posting memes of the famous 1980s TV show Sledgehammer about a comedy about a nutball cop who carried a giant gun. I think that's even more appropriate. Who was in that show? Is that what I know anyone from that show? Yes, you would. And David, his last name escapes me.

He was the lawyer in succession. And you'd recognize them from a lot of other shows. Yeah, it was early in his career. And it was really actually, I recommend it to people. It was a funny 80s show that didn't catch on because it was kind of like airplane except like in a cop show kind of thing. I liked airplane. David Rash. Maybe I should go check that out. David Rash. That's right.

So Operation Sledgehammer, because for two reasons. One, why they care about the War Powers Act when they break every other law, I don't really understand. But part of their rationale would be that it would restart their 60-day war powers countdown. The other part of the rationale is just their internal bullshit spin that they want to be like, phase one was a victory and like now we are moving on to Operation Sledgehammer. I don't know. There are certainly factions within the administration that want this to be go time. Yeah.

I'm going to push back a little bit on the less worried about escalation simply because you're right. I mean, we could start another round of bombing. I mean, we'll say, okay, fine. We're going to go in and we're going to bounce the rubble and we're going to do this again and, you know, blow some stuff up. But I don't, I haven't seen an analysis that suggests that there is short of an invasion, short of seizing things and holding them, that that would have any significant change in the strategic situation now. You know, maybe the joint chiefs know something I don't. Sure, they do.

But whether that actually changes the equation on the ground in Iran, I don't think so. But the other place I want to push back, you know, you, you said. well, he can't walk out now when it's so obvious that it would be. But we're talking about Donald Trump, Tim. We're talking about a guy who manifests things, right? Who says, if I say it, it becomes true. So I never underestimate his ability to say, you know what? True, we won.

Let me push back on the pushback. And no matter how many people say we didn't win, he says, you know, he does the Jedi hand wave over MaguWorld and says, these are not the analysts you're looking for. We want. Let's hash this out because I think in almost every other situation we would be in agreement, you and I, because I do,

I fall back on this. I forget, I think I'm doing it from Lee and Donovan, but like Trump's superpower is always that he can like start, start a, create a problem and then just declare the problem solved and his, his cultists will go along with him. And like,

we've seen this a million times in the past. But let me just, let's just use one example here, the 2020 election, right? So the 2020 election, he creates this new reality. And I've always said it was this uniquely Trumpian thing. Like, no matter how much you hate J.D. Vance or Ted Cruz or anybody, like, nobody else is psychotic enough to, like, keep the bit going for that long, right? To be like, no, I'm going to pretend like I won and I'm going to keep pretending and go and make up new absurd lies every day. Like, it's just, it creates a certain, you need to have a certain type of psychotism. to be able to like do that.

And but people went along with it, as you're saying, right? And like, well, I understand why people would go along with that, but though, the Maga people because they wanted to believe. You know, he was creating a new world that they wanted. And they didn't suffer any consequences except for the handful of people that got arrested at the Capitol, right? Unless you were one of the people that broke into the Capitol, like you didn't suffer any consequences for believing this fabrication.

The Strait of Hormuz staying closed and becoming an Italian, excuse me, Neuron, and Tolbridge. Like, and $6 gas this summer. Like, I mean, Trump is pretty powerful and his ability to create worlds, but it's, that's a pretty tough sell to people, like, that it wasn't him on this one. I just, I mean, sure, there'll be a handful of cultists that will believe it, but it becomes a very hard sale to people if the gas prices stay at this high all summer. Well, I don't want to say you're wrong, so I'm just going to say you're right.

And I'll just pile on and say this war, I think, is the first time he ever really lost control of something that he couldn't just make go away. Because domestic stuff, it's tariffs, it's Liberation Day. And somebody comes in and says, you know, beef. And he goes, okay, fine, you know, beef tariffs are gone, you know, or whatever it is. this is he's in a he's in a war with a large country with a fanatical regime that isn't going to play along so he has lost control of this situation so i agree on that completely i also agree and i've said many times there are only two things that you couldn't lie to maga world about epstein and a foreign war right they were they were willing to just take in to just submerge themselves in in you know

oceans of bullshit, but not those two things. And Trump has betrayed them on those two things. And he's clearly paying the price for it. I mean, you know, his approval rating is now places I never thought it would be. I mean, 33%. You know, it's pretty remarkable, you know, getting down to kind of Nixonian end days kind of levels. With all that said, I think that the complexity of restarting a war in anything. And let's let's be clear what we're talking about. I'm with you that he may well say, Operation Sledgehammer, go. And we fly a bunch of Sartees. We drop tons of steel on things. We blow up a lot of stuff. And we come home and we say mission accomplished and nothing happens. Okay. But to say, I really must change the current situation.

That means seizing the straight, seizing carg. including in troops, really making a dedicated effort to topple the regime. I just don't think he's going to go there. I think he's fed up with it. He's bored with it. It would be, you know, complete outrage in Maga World. So I don't think that's going to happen. On the other hand, you know, I didn't think he would threaten to invade Greenland either.

So, you know, I could be wrong. I want to throw in one more option. The president's been calling it the N-word. but before we get to that, we'll leave a little cliffhanger for everybody on the N-word. I do need to read the ad. I apologize to Bollard Plus members

because you pay to not have to listen to ads, but we're doing this live, and so it's the only way to do it. So, you know, I owe you one if you're a Bollock Plus member, listening to this ad. Here it is, and then we'll get back with the N-word. I'm sure that the people at Function Health

are really thrilled about that cliffhanger and that transition into their ad. I've been paying more attention to how my body actually feels, because I'm getting up into the Tom Nichols age range. And if I'm being honest, I've been slacking off a little bit at the gym because I just, I'm tired. I'm worn down.

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When they're dialed in, you actually see the results you're working for. That's why I use function. 160 lab tests. You can see exactly what's going on, not guess at all. If something's holding me back, I want to know, that's what I actually taking care of your performance looks like. And as you guys know, this is peak pit mail performance. You're watching right here, Tom Nichols and Tim Miller. Check your health the way I do.

160 plus lab tests a year for 365 bucks, plus the ability to dive deeper into your results through functions connections to platforms you already use like Claude. Join at functionhealth.com slash the bulwarker use gift code, the bulwark 25 for a 25 buck credit towards your membership. If we're being honest, it's really my husband that's like looking at the results and comparing it to Claude because he's the one with muscles. All right, that's Tom Nichols. We're back.

The N-word. I just want to say, getting up there in the Tom Nichols age. friend. As my Greek grandmother used to say, you son of my beast. But yes, the N-word. I've got some grades. Hold on. Before we go into my catastrophizing where everybody's going to know, I just want to start. I mean, you obviously, this has been an area of expertise with here as nuclear fluorification. And so just the other element of this that like you can tell Trump's looking for what's my out, right? Like what is something that, you know, I can. make seem like a win. And when you watch this press conference yesterday, he's like, we just got to get

the nuclear. We got to get the nuclear. Nobody wants to hear the end word of the nuclear. So like, what would it actually even look like? The ex-fill of the nuclear in Iran, because there are kind of two sides to the nuclear in this case. Like, what's your sense of like the state of play on that, whether there's any possible face-saving option for him on that front? The Iranians could say what they said to us, you know, 10 years ago. Fine, we won't build a nuclear weapon. Go away. Except that we won't have inspectors. We won't have what we had. You know, I was not a supporter of the, of Jikpoha, of the Obama-Iran deal, because I felt like it front-loaded too much benefit to the Iranians without requiring them to do very much to get it. I thought it was

kind of a basic violation of diplomacy 101. But once it was in place and working, it was the only game in town. So what Trump might have to settle for is a kind of crappier version of the Obama deal with less inspection. Because otherwise, if you're talking about going in and getting Trump keep telling the nuclear dust, he's just so odd. I mean, I'm sorry, I've been saying it for 10 years, but he's just so odd. But, you know, the stuff that's buried, you can't just go in there and say, all right, we're going to be here for two days. Put it all on the plane. We're out of here. I mean, that stuff is buried under rubble. It requires special handling. Let me, if I can just take a short digression, Tim. We actually did this in a kind of like this in Kazakhstan in the Clinton

administration where true story, guy like opens up a shed and like there's all the you know, radiation symbols and goes, oh, shit. How come nobody knew this was here? You know, like it was old Soviet nuclear stuff. And who was we in the we there? We, the United States, got found. We found out from somebody in Kazakhstan that some guy, you know, like the janitor had opened up a closet and went, yikes.

And there was all this leftover nuclear stuff. And so we did this thing called Operation I've checked me if I'm wrong, folks, what I think was Operation Sapphire. And we fly in with a bit like in the dark. We don't want to make a big deal of this. We don't embarrass their government. We're not going to, you know. Now, this was in a permissive, not wartime situation. And even this, where everything was stacked and we knew exactly where it was and it was all wrapped up and ready to go.

and this was a dicey operation where we flew in, put all the stuff on airplanes, flew out, you know, turned all the lights off, flew back out in the dark. It was, you know, credit to the Clinton administration. It was the right thing to do, and they pulled it off, and it worked. You're not going to do that here. This is a country where it war with. They're not going to just clear out of space and say, all right, come on and bring the C-130s, you know, build a runway, do whatever you need to do.

That's not going to happen. Now, if we get to some deal where the ceasefire becomes a, you know, peace agreement, and they say, fine, you can come in, you know, over the next, I don't know, six months, whatever it's going to take. But it's not going to happen. We're not going to, like, do a lightning raid and get, you know, thousands of pounds of this stuff, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pounds of this stuff and then fly out. So I don't know how that would work if that's one of the plans. they're cooking up because they would have to clear all that rubble, have a place to land, have the machinery, have the manpower. It just, it was dicey enough to do it under almost ideal circumstances in Kazakhstan.

I don't understand how people think we're going to do it in Iran. I don't know what sign the universe is sending me, but I swear to God, in the elevator this morning, going down to the lobby, I walk in, a guy's in there. He's like, hey, you're Tim from the Bullwork, right? And I was like, yeah, hey, what are you doing in town? He said, I'm doing a nuclear deproiferation class here. we're reviewing what we learned from Kazakhstan. So you're the second person to discuss

the Kazakhstan nuclear case to me today. And I'm like, I don't know what to make of that, but I don't know. It means that there's something, there's a real lesson. That's the definition of synchronicity. Okay. So now on the other side,

we've discussed how Trump is back into a corner. We've discussed how his brain is turning into mush, how he's sundowning. on a scale of zero to 100 Do you have any level of concern that Trump's just like, you know what? I know we said we were going in there to get their nuclear,

but maybe we should just hit them one. Have any concern about that? Sure, I do. I'm just a little bit of concern about it. Yeah, sure. I have concerns about that. You know, he doesn't understand this stuff. He doesn't listen when he's briefed.

He is, as I've written many times, the president of the United States is the sole authority for the use of nuclear weapons. That's it. No one gets to say no to him about this. If he says, bring me the football, you know, and opens up this 45 pound case that he always travels with, he can do that. Now, normally you would think that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs or the Secretary of Defense, who normally would have to be in the room because they have to, they don't get to countermandation. is offered, they have to authenticate that the person speaking and giving these orders is, in fact, the

president. So they're not, they're not there to say, yes, I agree. They're there to say, yes, this is the right person you're talking to. Could he do that? Sure. Now, would, you know, would Pete Hegseth agree to? Yeah, Pete Hegseth will do whatever he's told. That's why he got the job, because Higgs-Seth will do whatever he's told to do. Will other people do it? I don't know. Could they talk him out of it? probably. I don't think, now let's, you know,

get a grip here. I'm just saying, sitting here today, I'm slightly, I mean, obviously the Iranian regime is horrible. I'm not trying to compare

the Iranian regime to anybody. The Naitola is horrible. The way they treat their people are horrible. Caviott, caveat, caveat. I'm just saying,

like, as a personal matter today, on the nuclear question, you know, Trump and Beebe are a little bit higher on my worry list. Yeah. Well,

we actually have nuclear weapons for one thing. But I'm, I mean, let me just say that, Yes, I have a concern, but it is in the very tiny single digits, if that. But it is not zero. That's higher than it was like, you know, our entire life before. Oh, no, not your entire life.

Well, not my entire life. Entire than it was for, I think, the 90s, 2000, you know, about 30 years we've gone through where there's not really any worry that the U.S. was going to drop a nuke or there was a number zero. I never worried. I mean, the greatest worry I had was during the 1980s, because things were so tight. But after that, you know, there's there's a lot of memoir material that came out, for example, after the first Gulf War and then the second Gulf War were you just had decision

makers, guys like Dick Cheney, you know, nobody's going to accuse of being, you know, God rest his soul, nobody's going to say the guy was a weak sister. You know, Cheney and Paul another saying, we're not even going to talk about it. It's off the table. We're never going to do this. And that's that. Now, you know, the problem is that you have Trump, who has talked. about nuking hurricanes, you know, and make it so frustrated to say, well, for example, I could,

I could imagine somebody in this administration because there are some, you know, crackpots wandering around the White House saying things like, well, let's blow one up in the Persian Gulf as a warning. Exactly. You know, kind of like we were worried about Putin doing in the Black Sea, for example, in the early days of Ukraine war. I could see somebody, you know, suggesting that, but I would hope. hope that this is where a lot of people of much cooler temperament would come in and say,

finally, say the thing that nobody appears to ever say to this guy, which is Mr. President, it's a really bad idea. And I can't be involved with executing this. Speaking of crazy people walking around the White House, do you have an article in the Atlantic today? You read my mind. That is good podcast. It is headline, the Trump Counterterrorism Strategy is a dangerous joke.

That is being managed by Gorka, Sester Gorka, who is a Hungarian lunatic. He unscreamed at me in a, I guess we were, I guess in the hallway of a conference room, various political conference, and he started shouting at me

about how I'm an idiot, but not great breath, better than Corey Lewandowski's breath, but his breath was smellable from the distance with which he was shouting at me. I have never met him, so I don't have that level of intimate detail to share with you. Anyway, I wanted to treat myself. So reading you is usually a treat.

But in this case, since you were coming on today, I was like, I'm not going to read it. I know it's about Gorka. I just want to go in blind, and I want to hear Tom Nichols give me a tight five on Gorka in the article. It's not really about Gorka. It's about Gorka being assigned as the White House special assistant to the press. for counterterrorism and all that, you know, waving my hands. He was supposed to produce this thing, a document, the White House counterterrorism strategy, the 2026 counterterrorist strategy.

He was supposed to produce it like a year ago. And a woman named Hannah Allum at ProPublica kept kind of goasing him about it and saying, is it done? Is it done? Is it done? And finally, he just put out this thing last week. It's kind of half-baked mess that includes, I mean, it's just so stupid and sloppy that I can't even begin to explain to you. How about it is my, one of my favorite lines, and I did put this in the piece, was it's a principle. I want to get this right, so I'll just read it to you.

Because it was, you know, really, America's new U.S. counterterrorism strategy is driven by the principle that America is our homeland. end. Okay. Thank you for clearing that up. Auxiomatic. That's a kind of email faber, favor, statue. You know, knowledge is good. But there's a lot of this kind of nonsense in there. What it boils down to is this. It's a half-baked, you know, underdone souffle that basically says all enemies to the left. You know, anarchists. Of course, he does say, you know, big threat, Islamists. Terror is big threat. But the rest of it is drug cartels, which is nonsense, not a counterterrorism operation.

You know, drugs are drugs and been around for a long time. They're not, this is not terrorism. And radical left transgender anarchists. So. That's what we'll watch out for. Yeah, you know, like, and I said, like, you know, this is now like Antifa. Not transgender, I'm sorry, RuPaul. She's just a drag queen.

But, yeah, I'm trying to think radical left. Antifa is like this. Yes. And, an Antifa, which they capitalize because Antifa comes out of this report as like, you know, a transgender anarchist specter. You know, it's like they're dealing with thrush or specter or some huge transnational terrorist organization. It's laughable nonsense, except that it's probably what people like Gorka hope,

is the predicate for going after, you know, every left-wing group, you know, no kings or the SPLC or whoever they're going to pick, you know, as their targets. Now, I don't think, because the document's such a hot mess, it's not really actionable in any way. Like, there's no set of things that's saying, therefore, it's kind of like the NX, Y, M-S-S-E. It's kind of like that NSPM-7 doc, right? It was just like an internal doc talking about how they're going to target these left-wing groups and like treat them as like this wasn't internal i mean this is meant for public consumption um so you know it's i mean it's just it's just a complete dog's breakfast of you know random it's almost like

you took a bunch of terrorism and counterterrorism ideas and terrible problems that are going on in the world drugs um oppression of christians in africa um you know the charlie kirk's assassination and you threw them all in a bag like refrigerator magnets, and then you just put them all up and said, that's our counterterrorism strategy. Well, there's a meeting of the radical left transgender anarchists out there. I'm interested in attending, because that does sound like a fun group. The other, this is, these things are related.

So I'd call me on yesterday. Quick aside, we love that there's a lot of new listeners and viewers to the pod. And so I appreciate this. This is not sarcastic at all. But I had a lot of people that emailed saying, like, why didn't you ask Comey about 2016? I'm still pissed about him about 2016. I've had Comey on three times.

So if you're interested in my exchange with him on 2016, we'll put a link in the show notes. You can go back and watch my interview with him where, you know, I also was pretty hurt about Jim Comey's behavior in 2016. And we hash that out. And, you know, we can't do the same interview every podcast. But anyway, one of the things I talked to him about was in a, like, there's multiple layers here, right?

Their priorities are wrong. You know, they're going after the transgender anarchists, like you mentioned. They're doing support work for immigration enforcement. And they're firing experts. You know, like the Iranian team got fired because they were wrapped up in the Trump documents case because Trump had Iran war plans in fucking his bathroom in Mar-a-Lago. It's like, those people didn't do anything except their job and they got fired. And, you know, Comey is just basically like, look, maybe nothing will happen.

I hope nothing happens. But like the risk is higher. You know, when you take good people and experts whose job it is to find people that want to do harm to America and you fire them or you instead make them, you know, do like drag queen story hour enforcement. Yeah, I mean, you read this document and it's mercifully, it's pretty short. I mean, it's kind of like one of the things I pointed out in the piece was the reaction from some other experts, one of whom said it read like it was written by an intern. You know, another said, I would have given it a D plus in my class. But and and so it reads like, you know, a night before project that some junior, you know, who never done this before sort of threw together for class.

But yeah, I mean, it does, it does raise the, the threat of, are you creating the permissive environment to start saying anybody we disagree with is by definition a terrorist. And it's funny, it's funny, ironic instead of ha-ha, that the report says for too long, the intelligence community has been weaponized against American citizens. And we're not doing that anymore like that. You know what I'm reading it going, wow, this is some serious projection. going on here. But the other problem is, and I thought of this as a former government employee myself,

if I got this report, this mess on my desk and they said, you know, and I were like a GS-15 at the agency or, you know, the counterterrorism center or something, my question would be, I understand it's a predicate for doing all these things and for getting the transgender anarchists and the, you know, in their scuba gear as they come ashore in Miami or whatever the hell they're going to do, you know. But what am I supposed to do with this? Like, what am I supposed to do with this report as a government official or a law enforcement person or a function? You know, Juliet Kayam, my friend and an occasional contributor to the Atlantic, who's a security expert, Juliet said, you know, these are things that are usually meant to communicate not just to the American public and to the rest of the government, but to state and local governments as well.

Like, hey, here's the things we're worried about. Here's things you should be looking out for. Here's the stuff we can do together. You know, it's kind of, it's, then you work it out in the, what, you know, you know this wonky term, the interagency process, right? Where you get everybody together and get the CIA and DoD and Treasury and everybody together. There's none of that here. So on the one hand, it's a very threatening document because it's paranoid and weird and just kind of randomly lists everybody that Trump doesn't like is a terror. On the other hand, if you had to work from this document and you open it up and you're at the FBI or the CIA or wherever, you'd go, what the Sam Hill am I reading here? What am I supposed to do with it? And in that sense, I think you can be kind of glad that it was Gorka working on it instead of somebody who might have been more competent because there's just nothing to pull from it except what a crappy report is.

Well, fingers crossed, nobody wants to terrorize us in the next two and a half years. I want to talk about the economy. I mean, when you're at war with a fanatical Islamist regime, who needs experts? I don't know. It'll be fine, I'm sure. Which craft is that? We're going to go deep on economic stuff tomorrow, but I just, I do want to hit a top level just because Trump's, I don't even want to call it a gaffe. Trump's comment yesterday is deeply revealing comment, cannot be overlooked.

So basically, state of play. we had an inflation report this morning, which showed that the producer prices have risen 6% year over year. The rose 6%, excuse me, now it's 4.8% year over year. And, you know, which is an increase. And it's more of an increase than we saw

from the consumer inflation report. And it's because usually the consumer inflation report lags, right? This makes sense, right? You know, if you're a producer, if you're, you know, if you're the, if you're farmer or whatever, and your prices start going up, like eventually, gets passed down to the consumers. Takes a while to ripple to the rest of the prices down there.

Exactly. And so it seems like really bad sign for inflation ahead. Bad sign, as we've discussed at nauseam, about gas prices ahead. Trump yesterday was asked about this on the White House lawn. And as we do on the show, we don't play his voice. So I'll just tell you. The reporter said, what extent are Americans' financial situation? and motivating you to make a deal in Iran.

Trump says not even a little bit. And then he talks a little bit more. And he goes, I don't think about Americans financial situation. Very Don Draper. I don't think about you at all, right? I mean, imagine if Barack Obama or Joe Biden had said, I don't think about your economic situation. I mean, it would be the streets around Fox would be a burning moat of oil.

You know, with, with, you know, the people from Fury Road, you know, banging their spears against the wall. But, and his answer, by the way, the rest of his answer, in fairness to the president was because that way, I don't care, because that way you don't get a nuclear weapon. And that's his answer now for everything. It's like, oh, you're going to complain about gas prices. That's how you get a nuclear holocaust. I mean, it's sort of like the worst Cold War moment from the 50s, maybe, you know, now on steroids. Oh, you're going to complain about the price of apples? That's how you get Stalin, you know, marching through New York.

And it's nonsense. One thing that's, now, let me just in fairness say, look, when Joe Biden was president, I thought people bitched way too much about inflation because I grew up in the where, you know, inflation was double digits, right? I mean, interest rates were, you know, 18 percent, all that. So I was like, come on, calm down. There was a, there was a pandemic, post-pandemic inflation. Everybody knew it was coming. We had a soft landing. The problem for Trump, this inflation is directly traceable to something he did. This is one of the few times that there's ever a moment where you can say, because normally, again, let's be fair to,

all presidents. Most presidents don't have a lot of control over things like inflation, the price of gas, other stuff, right? I mean, there's a big macroeconomic tectonic plates that shift. Presidents can try and do what they can do with interest rates and other little knobs that they can argue with Congress to twiddle. This is one of the few places where, again, Trump is just screwed because of his own behavior, because this is directly a straight line. people, even in MagaWorld, can trace a direct straight line from decisions Trump made to things being more expensive. You don't usually get that in a presidential term.

Gas is more expensive because Trump went to war in Iran. Period. That is just how it is. Other items are more expensive because Trump, unlike everyone else who got over this 80 or 90 years ago, still believes that tariffs are a good thing, a direct straight line. So this is really an interesting moment where, you know, again, I was one of the people, when Biden was present, I said, look, inflation's not that bad, certainly not the 70s. He didn't cause it.

There's not much he can do about it. Here, there's no doubt that if you think these levels of inflation are bad, and I think they're, you know, bad but not grievous at this point, then you have to say, look, there is only one per for once in American history. In post-war American history, there's one person to blame because he did obvious things that made things more expensive. And I don't, you know, again, he just waves his hand and says, doesn't matter. It wasn't me.

I don't know. There's like 80 million Americans to blame, actually. Or 70 million. Yes, but they didn't pick the war on. On this, I will be fair to the maga. Tim. They did not pick a war and a run. They thought they were picking the guy that wasn't going to do this. At our meeting today, I demanded the JVL stickers. I don't know why an enterprising listener has not done this already. I want the picture of JVL pointing at the person to sign you did this. And I want to put them in red state gas stations.

It is too good not to do. I'm going to do a little, I'm going to have a little, I'm going to have a little trip plan for June going around Louisiana. And I'm going to do it. And I want to do it. I need the stickers because people need to deal with that. People need to reckon with the fact that they did it. They did this. And that they were not geopolitics.

They didn't vote for it, but they voted for the guy that they didn't believe us, you, me, JVL and others said, no, no, he's going to do. I was warning about him trying to attack Iran at the end of his last term. And I took all this static, you know, oh, that's parity. He would never do that. That's crazy because I did a piece just before he left office saying, beware. Trump might try to attack Iran on his way out the door to see if he can just scramble the deck. And it turns out from people in the administration, yes, he was, in fact, thinking about it.

We warned everybody about this. I admit, I've gotten like you as a cranky old man now that my age has become an issue here. You know, but I do find myself, you know, when people come on the TV and say, boy, you know, I'm a gas. And I just can't apply. I said, wait a minute. Did you vote at all? And who did you vote for? And, you know, that's really not a good answer because people suffering and their kids,

you know, not being able to afford shoes is not, you know, you have to have some empathy here. But on the other hand, I, you know, I agree. There needs to be. Empathy and accountability can go hand and hand. And go together. They can go hand in hand. Exactly. Yeah, you did this.

Okay. Well, as a result, we are seeing some people jump off the boat. mentioned this earlier. The Nate Silver just dropped this morning, like his latest average of the polls, and Trump's at his lowest approval rating ever, lower than after January 6th. And I think we got a ways to go. I think we can get even lower. I kind of hate this, though, Tim, because to say that it took that Americans get more angry about gas prices than a seditious revolt against the Constitution. Yeah.

Tells you something about how decadent and self-absorbed a nation we've become. It's like, I know some guys trying to overthrow the Constitution, but I got summer plans, you know. We're going to drive down to the Florida of Alabama. We were going to drive down to the floor of Alabama. I'm trying to get to Orlando, you know, and, you know, what a, and I was going to go to Orlando on Spirit, you know, and. And I was going to go to Orlando on spirit, you know. And I mean, I just, so that it bothers me. But on the other hand, if that's what it takes to, I mean, on this, it's not unique to Trump voters.

There's anybody else. Most Americans just don't pay attention to politics until there's actually pain in their lives about something, right? That, you know, their health insurance, the price of gas, whatever it is. So, but I agree. I think there's room to fall. I think here's a question. You're the, you know, this is where you get to say, it's my show, Tom, I asked the question. No, put it back on me.

I've been watching, you know, I've been spending my nights watching, believe it or not, my new rerun occupation or obsession has been L.A. Law, which has been hilarious for me to watch because I lived through the 80s and it's just really funny. But anyway, what do you think the floor is for the hard? I think it's about 25%. I answer to me 25 and 30% of people who, who say, if Donald Trump launches nuclear weapons and melts the earth and we must root through the ashes for canned goods, I'm okay with that.

I think it's lower than that. Really? Yeah. That's encouraging. I think it's lower than that. I don't, I mean, look, there's just a lot of people, you have to appreciate that there's, and particularly in the Trump coalition, there are a lot of people that just don't really watch the news.

this is like a cultural thing. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but they do that on purpose. And one thing I've really noticed over the years, talking to my friends and family who have been Trumpers, they will, they not only don't watch news, they avoid it because of the cognitive dissonance that it causes. So they don't watch the news. And so there's those folks. And then there's another group of folks who were never really newswantress. Trump bought that brought them in because whatever they, he was famous or they liked that he gave the people they hate the what for or whatever.

Oh, kitty. She's in the picture. It's Lily. She finally made her to appearance on TV. What up, Lily? We're live, baby. So my answer is that, like, I think that his core base was about where we're at now. Like, I always thought it was about a third, like 30 to 33 percent, if nothing catastrophic happened.

But, you know, if we really are in a position, you know, I've been, you know, going deep on gas analysts and petroleum analysts and stuff. and, you know, listen to my Odd Lots podcast, a bunch. And, like, what if gas gets to seven bucks everywhere? Yeah. But do you think? I think that, like, I think we can get lower, maybe. I think we can get under $20. Okay, but that's approval.

And maybe the thing I'm thinking of is, you know, I always had that floor somewhere around 35 percent. And as you say, absent some kind of catastrophe, right? But that also, hold on. Don't. Oh, look. The cat is in trouble. A cat has a tendency to turn off the computer when she stands over there.

So I could have been gone in like two seconds. Hi, Lily, you little brat. So, you know, 35%. But will they ever vote for somebody else? Will they vote for Democrats? Now, here's the thing. If you start getting down to 20%, you know, 25% approval. I mean, have we ever seen lower than 27?

We just did this. I just Googled this on the next level. We called it the dick line. I went to look at what Richard Nixon. approval was after, I think it was like 24. I'm going to remember now, but I think it was like 24. It was in the 20s. So they won't vote for a Democrat, but perhaps, as some of them have said, and I know, you

guys run Sarah runs focus groups and they'll say, I'm not going to vote. I'm just going to, I'm just opting out. I suspect, too, when, like, one of the things that Vance and Rubio or the pretenders to the throne have to worry about later is Trumpism is not portable. It doesn't port. It doesn't, you know, the people. who were not involved in the political process will again not be involved in the political process. That's partly what happened at 2020, I think.

But it's just amazing to me the degree to which that it is now calcified. Negative partisanship has now calcified to the point of saying, you know, Donald Trump has 25% approval, but that doesn't translate into a win for anybody else. It's just people that say, fine, I'm out. My guy isn't doing well, so I don't want to know, you know, I don't want to know from politics. All right. Really quick couple of the things and we'll end with a little music. We were discussing before.

I don't know what there's a bunch to say about China. I just want to acknowledge that Trump is now going. They have the summit with Xi. Tim Cook is going with him for some reason. Elon Musk. I guess we know the reason. Apparently no China experts. I saw this.

Now maybe that's false, but one of the things that kind of went past my eyes on X from somebody in one of the news sources. No China experts. but, you know, who needs those? Yeah, I thought this was interesting. So they're on route or maybe getting there around now. The White House had said that the meeting will focus on trade, fentanyl, and the war in Iran,

all areas with the Trump administration has had little luck getting deals or concessions from China. Notably, Beijing hasn't provided any details. They just said that Trump and Xi will discuss major issues concerning China-U.S. relations, according to one of their spokespeople. I thought that was kind of telling, in a way, about. to use a Trump phrase, who has the cards here, and who's going into this meeting really needing something. I think obviously she would like some relief from some of the tariffs

that they're having some economic issues domestically as well. But, you know, it seems like it doesn't feel like this meeting's having from position of strength for Trump. No. And, you know, one of the thing about us old Cold War guys, we always said about summits. You don't have a summit unless you have a reason to have a summit. Like, you prep it with a lot of guys at the second and third.

tier below the principles. And then you give your principles. Here's the stuff you're going to shake hands on and talk about and maybe a couple of things that require a personal touch. But you don't just like blunder over and say, hey, you know, you don't do, you don't have the, it's a Joey from Friends Summit. How are you doing? You know, I mean, come on. Are you doing, she? Yeah, I'm doing. And if I were the Chinese, I would send back, I would tent my fingers and say those are all very yes absolutely we will we will cut the flow of fentanyl mr president absolutely um iran we have our concerns but we understand why you know and just wait till trump feels good enough to say okay fine no more tariffs because that's how people manage them we've seen this over and over and over again

from our allies when nato when the nato partners come over and say uh you know switching to another pop culture reference you know the twilight zone episode it's good what you did Anthony. It's good that you wish the guy into the cornfield, Anthony, you know, until Trump says, okay, fine, we're friends again. Our enemies do it. Our friends do it. They manage him until they get what they want. My guess, because the Chinese are not stupid and they are good at this, is that that's what they're going to do. But I don't think when Trump sits down and says, I want to talk about Iran and fentanyl and they're going to go, yeah, whatever. Okay. The last one, this is just unbelievable. And there's all the list of the Trump stuff. And I guess I think I should have paired this with, you know, Trump's

saying that he doesn't think about American's financial situation at all. Well, he obviously is thinking about his own financial situation quite a bit. We covered with Isaac saw all the graft that's happening with his family outside the government. Obviously, he's putting his face on everything, the passports. We have the triumphal arc, et cetera. This one might be the most egregious of all. The Justice Department, according to a report, is having internal discussions about settling President Trump's lawsuit against the IRS in the coming days. So maybe when he's in China on the way back, he will, the U.S. taxpayer will write a check to Donald Trump for his emotional distress of having his guys. That's astonishing. And it's astonishing to be, you know, the plaintiff and the

defendant. You know, I, I'd like to negotiate over the amount of this settlement. Hang on, you know, switch to the other chair. How much would you like? Well, several million would be, it's literally insane. And again, it shows you first how worn down everybody else is that they just kind of, you know, tired. The thing is, Trump exhausts people, right? I mean, it's just exhaustion.

You just say, fine, you know, whatever. But also the degree to which the hypocrisy of his supporters. that if any other president did this, particularly a Democrat had ever done this, again, there'd be, you know, I always think that they, I keep going back to this movie, but, you know, they'd be like the guy, you know, in front of the big tractor trailer and, you know, Fury Road, you know, playing the guitar with the flames. You know, we're going to burn the city down. Because it's wrong.

And we used to know the difference between right and wrong and not ignore that. purely for tribal and partisan reason. When Trump said he wasn't taking a salary, those days are gone. We're just writing him checks. We're just, they're just settlements for the taxpayers, just writing him checks for his emotional distress. It's truly insane. Double the cost of the ballroom.

Was that the thing that happened this week? And they are just lining their pockets. Yes, you dumb person. Again, something that almost any other, we've just, we have set the bar so low. on America's ill-tempered juvenile here that when he says to a, and of course it's always a woman, and in this case, a black woman, you know, you're dumb person. That's a stupid. That's a stupid question. No, that's a question about the expenditure of public money, the destruction of one of our national landmarks that you don't happen to own, by the way. You are a steward and temporary occupant

of that house. But, you know, he does that and everybody goes, you know, what are you going to do? Not me. I rage. I rage, Tom Nichols. I rage to eat. No, you've become too complacent, Tim. I'm tired of it.

I've become complacent. I just want to see if you were listening. I need to run down to the White House right now. I'm in this fucking shit town. I have to tell the Uber to not drive around. I was like, I can't drive fast the Justice Department. I can't see his fucking face on the building. I'm going to stroke out.

My child needs me. Okay, I have to be a parent still. She's only in second grade. All right. Let's end. On yesterday's pod, I always try to give a cheeky song for the audio listeners at the end. And because we were talking about Cash Patel's drinking, I went with Uncle Roland in a black dress because, you know, Saturday night I was downtown working for the FBI, sitting in a nest of a bad man, whiskey bottles piling high. And that's cash, obviously.

Well, except bourbon bottles. Yeah, bourbon. I mean, who gives out a bottle of bourbon as their business card? Hi. Hi, how are you? Here's a business. With a fucking dollar sign in his name. Oh, what a dork.

But it made me wonder, and you're the person to come to on this, of this era of music, I feel like the gap between long, cool woman and the rest of the Holley's catalog has to be the biggest gap between the best song and the rest of the catalog of anyone. Is that a fair assessment? for you. The Holly's, well, you know, you've come to the right place. I know. An annoying know it all about all old music.

You know, the hollies actually had two other songs. Of course, the air that I breathe, which was, do you know this song? I might if I heard it. Would you want to sing? Oh, I'm not singing. No, no, no, no. It's not karaoke hour. But stop, stop, stop, stop all the music, right?

But also one of the great. but also one of the great guy cry mushy songs of the early 70s, he ain't heavy, he's my brother. Oh, that's the Hollis? Yeah, man. Okay, well, there you go. So that's not that far of a gap. That's a great song.

Yeah. So, you know, everybody remembers long, cool woman, but the Hollies actually had a string of hits from the mid-60s onward. And then if my trivia, if my trivia superpowers are, failing me. Doesn't their lead singer, isn't that Dennis DeYoung? Doesn't he go on to sticks? We're going to Google this line here. I have no idea. All I know is I love long cool woman in the back dress. I know literally nothing about the Graham Nash was in the holidays apparently. Is that true? Oh yeah. You know, the family tree of these like groups from the 60s and 70s are just so

fascinating because you find out that like, you know, that they all share like superstars that kind of pass through them. It does not look like Dennis DeYoung was in the. That was in the island. What was he in before? The original members were Tony Hicks, Bobby Elliott, Ian Parker, Peter Haworth,

those Peter Haworth on lead vocals. And then they had Graham Nash and that. Where was Dennis DeYoung before? I can't believe that I have screwed up a musical trivia issue live. Our Jeopardy champion. I know. I think I should do so.

I'm sorry. How do I get in there? You got it in? I feel like I should do. I was watching some of your Jeopardy. I don't. I don't. I bet Jeopardy doesn't want to hear a thing

from me because I've been bitching ever since they overturned the five game rule. Oh, yeah. You were right about that, I think. Oh, absolutely. I mean, look, the kid, very nice kid, some grad student, he just won like 31 games. Yeah, it gets boring. Well, it's not just boring, but it's unfair to everybody else who walks in. I will tell you quick anecdote, by the time I'd won like two or three games, I'd heard, you know, like gossip from the contestant wranglers that,

like people didn't want to play me by that point because it was all in one day. So it was like, you know, because once you're in that groove and you've got the buzzer going and all that. But also I think guys like Jeopardy, James there, they just ruined the game. It's everybody goes in. They bounce around the board looking for daily doubles to make big bets to get far ahead. And, you know, I liked Jeopardy when it was school teachers and postal workers and subway cops, you know, just kind of in a pleasant show of how much they knew. you know, as opposed to, the guy who, the woman who beat James wrote her master's thesis on Jeopardy. Oh, bus stop, yes.

I didn't mean to put up bus stop. Bus stop is another good one. I want to put this up. We're live. The podcast part of the podcast is over. We're live on YouTube. And I love this. I just looked at the comments here.

Here's a guy out of the Trump. Corks like Nichols. Dorks like Nichols are chronically wrong. All caps. And a good day to you. sir. Dorks lecturing us about Jeopardy. All right, Tom, you got anything else you want to leave us with?

No, I apologize for the Dennis the Young failure, but I did come up with the other Holly's hits. So I hope people will remember that even though it doesn't seem possible, I am human. So sorry. Sorry about missing that. Thank you for doing this live experiment. with me. Tom Nichols, thanks to the board plus members that had to suffer through an ad read. Hopefully I made it entertaining for you.

We'll be back tomorrow. Regular deal, taped. It's a double header. Both guests are going to be fun. It's going to be great. Tom Nichols, we'll see you over the summer. All right. Thanks, Tim. All right, thanks, everybody. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Peace. The Borg podcast

is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate Producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.