The Bulwark Podcast - Tommy Vietor: Deniability Is All That Matters

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Republican senators don't care that Trump's nominees are lying—like Kash pretending he didn't know a Nazi-adjacent podcaster whose show he's been on eight times—because the confirmation process to them is all a game and truth is irrelevant. And nominees are also mad-flipping on their signatures issues: RFK, Jr. on vaccines, Tulsi on Edward Snowden, and Kash on the Jan 6 cop beaters. Meanwhile, RFK knows embarrassingly little about the programs he'd be administering, Democrats should try combat on for size, and the Fox hosts/reality show stars turned in quite a performance after the first plane crash in 16 years.  Tommy Vietor joins Tim Miller.

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. We have a massive day today. The Cash Fatale and Tulsi Gabbard hearings are happening as we speak, as is a press avail that Donald Trump and JD Vance are having about the tragic plane crash in Washington. So we'll get to some of that. fans are having about the tragic plane crash in Washington. So we'll get to some of that.

For Borg Plus subscribers, we'll do a full wrap up at the end of the day. That link will be in your inbox or you can go to borg.com slash subscribe. If you're not a member yet, I don't know why that would be. And of course I'll be back tomorrow for a recap. But for today, we've got the co-founder of Crooked Media, co-host of, it's something called Pod Save America. He also has another podcast I like called Pod Save the World. He was a national security staff spokesman

during the Obama administration. It's the man Ben Shapiro calls Tehran Tommy, Tommy Vitor. How you doing? You know, I'm good buddy, it's great to see you. Actually, I think in like 2018, I emailed Ben, because I used to call him baby Bannon, which honestly was kind of unfair because I think he left the Bannon world.

We agreed to not be quite as mean to each other online, but I never actually met Ben, so I should probably do that someday. Yeah, I don't know. I listened to his podcast for the first time in a while yesterday, and it is un-listenable. The fact that he beats us in the ratings sometimes is, well, me always, but you sometimes should really make you have to reflect on some things. How do you do a show without someone to talk to? I don't get it.

It's just a monologue. It's just monotone. Wanted Sarah Callum, a castrated chipmunk. It's just like a castrated chipmunk giving you a 50 minute lecture in the same tone. It's an interesting podcast. Fun guy. You know, teach their own, right?

You know, everybody, people like different things, different strokes for different folks. All right, as I mentioned, there was a just horrific midair collision last night outside of Reagan National DCA. There were no survivors. The collision was between a passenger coming in from Wichita and an army helicopter.

As we're coming on here, I believe still happening in the Brady briefing room is Donald Trump and JD Vance talking about this. I wanna play one clip from the president talking about what he thinks was the reason that this crash happened. They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA's program. Then another article, the Federal Aviation Administration, this was before I got to office, recently second term. The FAA is actively

recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency's website. Can you imagine? So, I guess it's black people and the people with mental health problems that caused this. He went on to say that Pete Buttigieg was a disaster who's just got a good line of bullshit. And he followed up that by saying, now we mourn and we pray. So, thoughts on the president's reaction to this tragedy. I mean, I have two sort of buckets of thoughts, Tim. I mean, the idea of blaming this crash on DEI

before there's an investigation and then handing the mic to a real world Boston cast mate turned Fox News host turned transportation secretary with Sean Duffy, who then hands the mic over to Fox News weekend anchor, turned secretary of defense Pete Hegseth is a lot. It's a lot for me to take in. You don't feel like that was a meritocracy there, having two reality show stars and one

weekend host being the point people for responding to this. You don't think that... And they are all white males. So, I mean, they had to overcome the obstacles of the DEI to get to the jobs. They did. They succeeded somehow in spite of all the obstacles in front of them. So, that was one bucket of frustration. And then I just started to think about like, what would Obama have done? What would George Bush have done? What would Reagan have done in a moment like this?

I think you go out and give a speech that's thoughtful and that is about the victims and mourning and this sort of like collective wound that the nation is experiencing because of this tragedy. I don't think any president in history would go out and do like a freewheeling press conference, even if they did have command of the facts, but it's just, this is like the Trump era, right? Like it used to be you didn't want to own bad stories

or disasters and now he's just puts himself in the middle of everything. And it's just, it's an interesting, I guess it's just how communications is now. I mean, not really. And it's how communications is for Trump, I guess. Not for Biden, that's for sure. Yeah, well, that's another challenge.

But maybe there's value to this, right? You are, you're commanding, like you're owning every story. You have the attention on you at all times. Like it goes against my instincts, but I'm wondering, I don't know, is this the right instinct? Yeah, maybe there's political value, I don't know, but just like from a human standpoint, it's just so atrocious.

Oh, for sure. There are people that, many people that lost loved ones. I saw an interview last night with a local news, you know, there's a guy waiting for his wife, hoping that she survived. Obviously, she didn't survive. I assume that there were it's a black woman or a black woman. I'm not sure if it's a black woman or a black woman. I'm not sure if it's a black woman or a black woman. I'm not sure if it's a black woman or a black woman. I'm not sure if it's a black woman or a black woman.

I'm not sure if it's a black woman or a black woman. I'm not sure if it's a black woman or a black woman. I'm not sure if it's a black woman or a black woman. I'm not sure if it's a black woman or a black woman. I'm not sure if it's a black woman or a black woman. I'm not sure if it's a black woman or a black woman. I'm not sure if it's a black woman or a black woman. I'm not sure if it's a black woman or a black lady that was in the cockpit. I just don't get that. Yeah. No, the substance is atrocious, and that is unequivocal.

There's a stylistic and process point that was interesting to me, that I guess what we're going to be living with for the next four years. No, obviously, it's atrocious. I guess what is the point? He's also not running again, I guess. You know what I mean? So it's like, what is even the political point, right? Like this is, this is the one sort of element of all of this. Like you would think that, you know, he also had a written statement.

It was classic Trump that's talking about uniting the country. Like we don't even really know what happened. Like I saw this kind of right wing pilot of a, somebody that had been a pilot of a Black Hawk helicopter, that was the helicopter that crashed into the passenger plane and you know, dude, there's like gave a very detailed list of all the things that could go wrong and how it's more challenging than you think and how there's a watch person there's two, right? Like we know nothing, you know? And so to pop off on that is pretty ridiculous. It is Trump, but as you're saying about just kind

of how things are right now, at some level, it reflects a little bit of a just kind of how things are right now. At some level, it reflects a little bit of a just kind of breakdown of our entire society that also is maybe Trump's fault. But, you know, I saw some other, some of our YouTube competitors out there yesterday that were blaming it on the fact that the FAA administrator got fired already and we didn't have a replaced FAA administrator. And that saying that it's Trump's fault, Democratic congressman, woman, Norma Torres, and that saying that it's Trump's fault, Democratic congressman, woman, Norma Torres, said that the families deserve answers because Trump gutted an aviation safety committee, which I think that was really a TSA committee. But again, this happened on the other side.

I got into fights with Republicans back during the East Palestine train derailment, where they were like Rudy Giuliani and other people were out there talking about how Pete Buttigieg's Paternity leave was to blame for this and it might so maybe Trump is just taking advantage of like our broken society well I think he's speaking to like a really hard reality in politics in that like sometimes really bad things happen in the world and There's no rhyme or reason to it and it makes us feel better When we can throw a conspiracy theory around the chaos or around the pain or something to explain this to ourselves.

But that's not always going to be the case. And this might have just been a horrible accident here. We'll figure it out, right? But I saw the same things you did, like people blaming the air traffic controller shortage or the buyout proposal or firing ahead of know, firing the head of the TSA. And my instinct was to find that gross. And then I saw Trump this morning and I thought, I don't know, maybe I'm not built for politics anymore, Tim.

Like maybe this is how it goes. Gross is what it is. Maybe you aren't built for this. You're kind of a softie. Yeah, I don't know. I do have to tell you my initial instinct to be like, fuck it, blame Trump. Fuck it. Why, blame Trump, fuck it, why not? Blame Trump.

I mean, you know, he blamed a Newsome for the fires and Pete, like caring for his kids in the NICU was blamed for like everything that happened all over the country for two years. So why not? But, you know, I took a couple of breaths and I was like, well, you know, we could probably just see what actually happened. We could probably just see what happened. And I don't think that like my tweet or Norma Torres' tweet is really going to be the thing

that takes Trump down here. So, I think we can probably wait to see what actually happened. Somebody who didn't wait to see what actually happened on various things is the nominee to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Bobby Kennedy. Were you a big Bobby fan before last year? Huge, huge Bobby fan. I also just want to, before we get into substance, again, point out how tan he looks all of a sudden. I know he lives in California, but it hasn't been that nice out.

So I'm wondering if there's a bronzer adoption is kind of a administration wide thing now. I got to say, despite the fact that he wants to maha, I've seen the shirtless pictures on the golds and that does not look like a natural human body. No, that looks like TRT. Yeah, that looks like, well, I don't know anything about TRT. That may be something you're into. Nor do I, but I'm thinking about getting into it because he looks pretty shredded, if we're

being honest. He looks shredded in some ways, but he has parts of his body that are like malformed in the size of which is not natural. So that's not for me. I just, I like guys with muscles, but I like them to actually look like male humans, right? Not like male humanoid kind of avatar. You're a Schlossberg fan living in RFK world.

We, we, I do like the noodle boys. I want to listen to some of a RFK's testimony from yesterday. What should we do first? Let's fuck it. Let's do heroin first. Let's listen to RFK talking about heroin. Well, listen, I know people, including members of my family, who've had a much worse time getting off of SSRIs than they did, than people have getting off heroin. The withdrawal period is,

and it's written on the label. I have some experience with this myself. This is very well documented. I have some experience with this myself. Has he watched a movie about the opioid crisis or read a magazine article about this? It's kind of a pretty big deal lately, how hard it is for people to get off of heroin and cause a nationwide crisis and many thousands of deaths. Yeah. I mean, I don't have a lot of experience with either SSRIs or heroin.

I'm not aware of them, SSRIs, causing like a euphoric high or a craving or the need to take another one an hour later. I don't know, maybe you have more experience with these things. Me neither. I've got my own vices. Neither of these are them. But like, again, I've read the news, you know, and I've watched Ope 6 really good really good serial the book Yeah, that's great. I haven't heard any stories of people that are like, you know, of course getting off Lexapro

These sorts of things I do think is not I don't want to be like, oh, this is nothing It's easy But like there aren't any stories of people that are so jonesing for their Lexapro that they've turned to fentanyl I haven't seen anything like that out there. Right? That's exactly right Yeah, I mean, certainly your body can adjust to their presence in your system and then getting off them can cause challenges, can lead to withdrawal symptoms.

But to your point, I think this is kind of a few days or a few weeks long process, not an addiction that can plague people literally for the rest of their lives and can ruin their lives at a moment's notice if they relapse. So it's an outrageous and absurd comment. Luckily, the Secretary of Health and Human Services doesn't need to know anything about this. There are some other things that he didn't show a ton of knowledge about. I want to play a couple

of clips of him being asked about Medicaid. Mr. Kennedy, do you know how many babies born in this country are covered through Medicaid? Mr. Kennedy, do you know how many babies born in this country are covered through Medicaid? I would guess, I don't know the answer, I would guess about 30 million. I have it Mr. Kennedy, about 41% or 1.4 million babies births are financed by Medicaid according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Republicans again are looking at ways to potentially reform Medicaid to help you know pay for President Trump's priorities but to improve outcomes. What thoughts do you have regarding Medicaid reform? Well Medicaid is not working for Americans and it's specifically not working

with a target population. Most Americans like myself, I'm on Medicare Advantage and I'm very happy with it. Most people who are on Medicaid are not happy. The premiums are too high, the deductibles are too high. There aren't premiums and deductibles on Medicaid. I don't know, how many people does he think is in the country if there are 30 million babies on Medicaid? One billion Americans, Matt Iglesias would be happy, but I don't think that's true. We impressed with his command of these very important healthcare policy matters that he's going to be in charge of. Yeah.

I mean, he's such a slippery, terrible person. And it did seem like he crammed for the test, but he kind of skipped like the 101. I mean, if you're going to merge Medicare and Medicaid, which is a proposal he floated, you should probably have an idea for how that would work. But when pressed on that, he's like, I don't have a plan. I'd love to work it out with you, a member of Congress. At times, it didn't seem like he understood that it was Medicare, old people, Medicaid, poor people.

He said Medicaid is fully paid for by the federal government. That's wrong. It's actually paid for by a combination of federal and state funds. And again, you made the point about how he was wrong about premiums and deductibles. They don't exist for the vast majority of Medicaid recipients. We're talking about nearly $2 trillion worth of federal spending. I think Medicare was 14% of total spending in 2023. So these are enormous programs that he doesn't understand the basics of, let alone how to

administer them. What are your thoughts on what the Democrats are supposed to do with this kind of thing? I want to get into cash and Tulsi in a little bit. That's happening right now as we speak about him and Bondi and Hegseth. We get into nitpicking, right? Like how they're handling the Q&A and could they have a better plan or could they coordinate better? They ask tougher questions. That's on the one hand. On the other hand, I'm like, this is all farce. RFK is like during the hearing yesterday, pretended like he's for

vaccines now. He has no idea what he's talking about, about the major programs that are gonna be under his auspices. So like, what is a useful, a valuable use of Democrats time on a hearing such as this? Yeah, I mean, like we're looking, the no votes you're looking for are what? Collins, Murkowski, McConnell and Cassidy. That's kind of like the four that people have ID

that you'd need. So knowing that list, I mean Presumably the ways to reach them would be through talking about the fact that he's clearly pro-choice and now he's pretending to be anti-abortion Maybe they don't believe him. I'm curious what you think about this pitch Tim The problem with attacking RFK is you kind of de facto end up siding with big pharma, the drug companies, the healthcare industry, right? Which is not where I like ideologically am. Like I don't like those guys either. I also don't think it's smart politics.

So the question is like, okay, how do you pick an enemy to kind of counteract that? I've noticed that the Wall Street Journal and their editorial page have decided that the enemy is trial lawyers. And they're saying that Kennedy is just gonna open up a whole bunch more litigation pathways for his trial lawyer buddies,

and that he might personally profit from some of those lawsuits. And I'm just curious if you think that angle is effective. Like I remember Atla being an enemy from my John Edwards for president days back in 2004. People didn't love trial lawyers. I remember my dad referring to Edwards as an ambulance chaser and 24 year old me got very

offended, but I don't know. Is that an effective approach? I mean, I love going after trial lawyers. So that works for me. It is confusing to me that like the Republicans are now the party of trial lawyers and just like they love passing legislation that lets people randomly sue. Like that was what underlines the don't say gay bill in Florida. You know, you can sue the school if a teacher says something too gay.

And so once underlines the bounty abortion bill in Texas, you can sue, you know, a woman or the provider if they break the law, right? So there's a lot of new pathways for suing. I don't know if that's really going to land. I don't know. I'm torn. I think the Medicaid, why I wanted to play the Medicaid clips and the whole hearing was a fucking just farce and clown show, so we could have played many clips.

But to me, I think that the Medicaid ones are probably the best bet for Democrats. And I think that like, this is a program that serves poor people and it serves a lot of poor working class whites and red States who are for Donald Trump. And Trump has been pretty deft at kind of claiming that he's not actually coming after the services that they like. So I think going after that, and I guess going after the Republicans for being phony, it does create a pickle here on this whole thing. Right.

It's just like, the whole thing is ridiculous. I mean, that you have Tom Tillis, you have corporate Republicans out there being like, boy, I really love this guy that sued companies on behalf of environmentalists and sued pharmaceutical companies on behalf of anti-vax kooks. So maybe going after them instead of going after RFK and trying to wedge is a better strategy. Because I hear you, like defending the status quo is not really a winner for Democrats. You saw Polis try to navigate this a little bit.

Yeah, it's not really a winner. I. You saw Polos try to navigate this a little bit. Yeah, it's not really a winner. I mean, then there's the specific stories. I mean, I don't know how much you guys have talked about the Samoa incident on the show, but I do think it is, it tells you everything you need to know about this guy. Like the quick and dirty version, right, is in American Samoa, there was this horrible incident

where two babies died because the nurses administering the vaccine mixed the measles vaccine with an expired aesthetic and it killed these two children. It was this horrible horrific mistake and it ultimately, though the two nurses went to jail for it, but it led to Samoa stopping vaccinations for about 10 months and then starting them up again and then obviously people were very hesitant. So into the breach jumps RFK Jr. and the anti-vax crowd and this sort of information vacuum and climate of fear and according to NBC News what he was hoping to do was basically set up a jumps RFK Jr. and the anti-vax crowd and this sort of information vacuum and climate of fear.

And according to NBC News, what he was hoping to do was basically set up a study comparing the health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated babies in Samoa. And when it definitely happens, right, someone comes from New Zealand, they have the measles, an outbreak starts, like dozens and dozens of kids die. In response, Samoa launches this vaccination campaign. And in the midst of that, RFK is still having this people say, no, no, no, just give them vitamin A and vitamin C. But fast forward six weeks, 95% of kids in Samoa are vaccinated and there's no more measles related deaths. But just like the fact that what this man wanted was to run this giant, you know, eugenics

adjacent experiment on babies, I think kind of tells you everything you need to know about him and how he will approach overseeing the medical community. I mean, like, this is fucking deadly, completely unethical, immoral stuff that he's going to do. And like, this is his approach. This is what he believes. Pete It's just a couple other thoughts are coming to me as you say that.. Like on the one hand, I do think vaccinations are just broadly generally popular. I know that, you know, maybe just focusing on the re-emergence of the whooping cough is something that is, that is useful. I do wonder though, like, is there a way just to sort of reframe this whole

thing back to, back to him being a Kennedy? Like these guys, like Trump and Kennedy, like they're pretending that they're going after the status quo, but they're not really. They're taking cash for themselves. They've now aligned themselves with the richest men in the world. I don't know. I'm just spitballing live here, but I do think maybe that's a more fruitful line than, I guess, going after him for being a kook.

I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I guess going against the establishment or American royalty, that could work. But I think, I mean, you know this better than I do. What the MAGA movement loves more than anything else is a convert. Whether you are a person of color or you're gay or you were once a liberal, that's why they love Tulsi. That's why they love RFK Jr.

Those are the people that prove that they've been right all along over in the MAGA movement, and the Libs were stupid. So I think that's kind of his entire power, is his last name. It has to be somewhat appealing to you, though, when you think about the incoming administration, that you do have a far left polygamist environmentalist,

right, and you have somebody representing Aloha in Hawaii, you know, a lot of diverse, it's kind of a woke cabinet. It is the spirit of Aloha. Let's talk about Tulsi for a second. Some of the reporting people in the Hill say that they're, they're concerned about Tulsi, but Tulsi had Tom Cotton doing the intro for her. I mean, like if there's ever going to be somebody that was going to be opposed to her, it'd be that. She's totally flipped on all of her, you know,

all of the things like FISA and the National Security Republicans don't like. So I don't know. I'm wondering what you think about the Tulsi nomination. Yeah. I mean, she's not remotely qualified to do the job, but I think it's just good to remember kind of first principles here. I mean, like they're like, oh, she was in the military. She had a security clearance. That doesn't mean she had access to any information. It doesn't mean she knows how the intelligence community works.

It doesn't mean she knows how to manage all of these people. It does seem like her biggest problem is her willingness to believe bad information and discount good information, especially when the bad information is coming from the Russians or the Syrians and the good information is coming from the US. But then the second biggest problem I seem to have with her or I see for her is that she is a liar You've probably talked about her trip to Syria in 2017 where she met with Assad for three hours You're not a daily listener of the pod. I take it. Of course. I am of course

I am I do nothing else met with Assad's wife for an hour and then met with Assad again When she got back to the US her staff was was trying to scramble to report to the ethics committee why she met with Assad since that wasn't cleared in advance. They left all the Google Doc changes on, so some reporter found the Google Doc and could see all their spins and lies. Long story short, she goes to Lebanon, dips over to Damascus for a meeting with Assad and pretended that it was spontaneous. She got there, Assad just over to Damascus for a meeting with Assad and pretended that it was spontaneous.

She got there, Assad just wanted to meet with her, but actually the meeting was within one hour of her arrival. So she lied to her colleagues, she lied to her own staff, she lied to the ethics committee about all of this and it just leads you to the question, why? Is it a general matter? I'm not offended by meeting with adversaries, but meeting with Assad in the middle of this brutal civil war where he's killing half a million people is bizarre and gross and also

Did you know that she brought her spouse and she went with Dennis Kucinich who brought his wife? Like who brings a plus one to a civil war? Yeah, then she spun for him, right? I guess the other thing I'd say again, it's like because that's the quick response you hear from her defenders. It's like, well, we should have open dialogue. Okay. Well, I mean, we can, I don't know, I'm probably less keen on open dialogue than you and Tulsi, but okay, that's fine. That's one thing. But then it's like, you have the dialogue and then you come back and you're a propaganda tool for Assad, right? I mean, that is the thing. And then our own intelligence services at the time, this is a story I was reading yesterday, And then our own intelligence services at the time, this is a story I was reading yesterday, you know, said that they caught chatter of Hezbollah terrorists they were monitoring that were talking about how Tulsi was meeting with the big guy.

So Joe Biden, I assume. Joe Biden, 10 for the big guy. We got, it's always a question, who is the big guy out there? So many big guys. To me, it is just, it's absurd to think that, that national security Republicans would go along with this. But like, at this point, we've, we've learned that they don't actually care about anything besides suckling up to Trump. But I guess as somebody that has actually had security briefings, and then, you know, kind of involved in these conversations where you're

getting intelligence and trying to translate it and figure out how to use it and what to do with it. What would be the legitimate concerns that people would have about somebody like Tulsi managing that process? Yeah. Ultimately, Tulsi and the agency she runs is going to be charged with putting together the PDB, the President's Daily Briefing, which is the most crown jewels of all US intelligence on all the issues happening in the world that Trump needs to know about.

And is she going to bring in credible stuff? Is she going to put that document together in an ideological way? Is she going to continue to disbelieve the CIA or other components, the intelligence community when they say Assad used chemical weapons and blamed somebody else. So I think the question is like, what information is she getting? How is she constructing that document for Donald Trump

and filtering intelligence information to the President of the United States and other top decision makers? And on top of that, like every National Security Council meeting will usually begin with a laydown from the DNI of the most relevant information on whatever the topic is, Afghanistan, Yemen, whatever it is.

So she's going to be doing the PDB process and then repeating that in every National Security meeting. It's like, why her? No one can answer the question, why does this person make sense for this job other than some kind of payback for a political favor? Well, I mean, she's probably the most in line with Donald Trump out of all the nominees as far as like processing intelligence and turning out something that you

like. I mean, Tulsi like got tricked by Gateway Pundit, right? And that's kind of what Trump's looking for, I think, in somebody that is going to take the craziest shit that advances his narrative that is out there in the ether and like presents that as the main narrative and, you know, blocks out or pushes out things that are contrary. That's what her skill set is, I think. Yeah. I don't know. The things that some parts of the MAGA movement liked about her, anti-surveillance, pro-Snowden,

she seems to have flip-flopped on a lot of that. It sounds like she's now in favor of Section 702 Intelligence Collection, which is the US government working with American technology companies to get access to stuff. It sounds like she was a huge proponent in 2019. I think she went on Rogan and said that she would drop all charges against Edward Snowden if she were president. Now it seems like she has flipped on that position.

So I guess I just don't know where Tulsi stands on anything anymore. Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm gonna sound like a cliche, never Trump cuck, but it is noteworthy in these hearings. I've had to suffer through to like all of the controversial shit that is out there in MAGA world that we say are conspiracies and that they're like, no, I don't know. There's really something here.

We're just asking questions about that. Across the board on all of that stuff, these guys are flipping, right? I mean, Tulsi is flipping her view on Snowden and on the corruption within the intelligence community. RFK is flipping his view on vaccines. When you get to Cash Next, he's flipped on the January 6th cop beaters. That trend you would think would be noticed at some point.

The QAnon cash flipped on. You know, on all of these things, a generic MSNBC watching wine mom, who we love, who has no experience on anything, would have been more correct than the people that are now nominated to run these agencies who have now flipped their views to match the view of the generic MSNBC wine mom. I do think that's a noteworthy trend.

Yeah. And, um, I guess that's all that's required for Tom Cotton. He's just like that credulous. He's like, all right, cool. Works for me. Let's have another two support and Snowden's, uh, stay in the jail. I'm good. Speaking of credulous, I'm just getting fucking Pister and Pister

as we go on here today, Tommy. I'm going to have a fucking heart attack before the end of this administration. I was just thinking back, I am still mad about the, about Trump and Vance. I'm just like, the more we talk about it, this was happening live, so I'm processing it live. And the poor family members of these victims of this plane crash, like have to watch the president rant about DEI. Yeah. I mean, that's just the whole thing is pissing me off. Well, and all the, all the secretaries and JD, I mean, they just got up there

and they just fluffed the president and said how amazing his leadership had been. It's like, I don't know. It sounds like he did a commerce call. Some of the worst people. All right. Credulous. You talked about how credulous Tom Cotton was. He's got nothing on Jimmy Langford and Tom Tillis.

Here's James Langford today. There's a social media, national media persona of who Cash is. And then there's who he actually is. There's this cartoon of him that's out there that he's mean, hateful, intense. And then when you meet him, you think, where is that person that's being described? I don't know, James, have you ever watched a show about a bad guy? I don't know. Maybe Tony Soprano can be pretty charming in a 20-minute meeting. You can be a person that is advanced, hateful, intense, and mean material and conspiratorial

material and then also be able to pull it together for 20 minutes to suck up to a Senator. Oh, there's a bad social media perception and persona of Cash Patel out there. Whose fault is that? Maybe him tweeting that he's going to chainsaw off the heads of various elected officials or going on every right-wing podcast and talking about his enemies list and all the evil happening in the deep state and lying about his background and pretending he was the lead prosecutor in Benghazi when he was just like a junior lawyer kind of helping out on the edges. Like, yeah, there's a bad sort of sentiment out there about Cash Patel because he's an

unqualified, deeply dishonest person. And that seems like a bad thing for an FBI director. He's a clown that had a podcast on Epoch Times, which is a conspiracy website. I didn't know that actually. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. He was a competitor of yours.

He didn't see him on the charts, but he had a podcast on the Epoch Times with the Caches Corner, I've had to suffer through it a few times. He didn't, doesn't even deny any of the things that people say he said. It's just like, well, I guess that's just part of the K-fabe, it's like WW, it's like rowdy, rowdy, Piper getting on the mic.

And it's like, that's not the real Rowdy, Rowdy. You know, he's just saying what he said about Jake the Snake Roberts because that's part of the show. I guess that's their argument. A lot of people confuse Is a Good Person with Nice to Me. You hear that with a lot of these kind of bro influencers who like, oh, Trump was great when I met him at UFC 64 or whatever. It doesn't mean he's a good person. The single most troubling story about Cash Mattel to me, Tim, comes from his time at the Pentagon at the very end of the Trump administration.

Long story short, there was a hostage being held in the kind of Nigeria area. The Pentagon launched this rescue mission. They had a bunch of Navy SEALs in an airplane who are going to parachute out of that plane, land, traipse over, like walk a couple miles, and rescue this guy. And to conduct a mission like that, you need to get permission to fly into the country's airspace, in this case, Nigerian airspace.

And they're about to turn on this operation, green light it, cash says, the State Department got us access into Nigerian airspace. And then right as the plane with the Navy SEALs in it is about to fly into that airspace, they figure out that he had lied. And he just made that up. And so Cash Patel nearly blows up what was ultimately a successful rescue mission. And also, I mean, the worst case scenario is you fly a bunch of US military aircraft

into Nigerian airspace and it gets shot down. To this day, no one knows why he lied about it. Mark Esper, the Secretary of Defense at the time, writes about it in his book. There were top Pentagon officials screaming at cash and he was like, who fucking cares? Everything worked out in the end. It's just the most irresponsible thing I've ever heard. Okay.

I just want to say, just for the record, in case there are lawyers listening, that that story that Tommy shared was shared by Tommy. That is alleged. And former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper also shared it. But cash is currently suing Olivia Troy, my friend, for relaying that same story on MSNBC. So I just want to say that if there are any lawsuits pending, that was Tommy Vitor that said that, and I'm just, I'm open to any facts that might emerge.

I'm very open to any facts. If Cash Patel wants to come on this show, or any of the shows on Crooked Media, and correct the record and correct me, I am absolutely willing to listen. This is what I read. That's great. You're a fair questioner.

I've watched some of your interviews. Speaking of cash lying, I've got a clip here from today's hearing that I would like to play. Stu Peters, is that name ringing a bell? I'm sorry. Are you familiar with Mr. Stu Peters? Not off the top of my head. He made eight separate appearances on his podcast.

He promoted outrageous conspiracy theories and worked with a prominent neo-Nazi. This is like when my mother was like, was there a glass bong in your room? I'm like, I'm sorry, what? Is there a what at the party? Glass bong. I'm like, ooh, that doesn't ring a bell. She's like, ooh, that doesn't ring a bell. And she's like, this glass bomb. It's like, what?

Eight times he's been on the podcast. A guy named Arjun Modi, who's a GOP Senate staffer, came to Cash's defense. And as I tweeted about this exchange and he came to Cash's defense, he writes this, in context, Cash did over 1000 media interviews submitted to the committee. I don't remember what I had for lunch yesterday. Okay. What do you think about that, Tommy? Do you think there's anybody who's done eight podcast interviews with you who couldn't recognize your name? I am forgettable. You are just a white guy named Tom.

Just a DEI hire. What that story tells me is the degree to which Republican senators see things happen where they know a nominee that they're about to vote for just lied and just don't care. And they just think it's a game. And they think that deniability is all that matters and the truth is irrelevant. And it sucks. It's incredibly frustrating. Because what do you do there? Well, you know, it's like the worst fight in a relationship ever.

It's like when you say to someone, you know, you did this and they just won't give you an inch and they give no quarter or they deny it and you know they're lying, but where do you go from there? Yeah, I might revisit it, I guess. I don't know. I'm feeling like the Joker. But in the afternoon session of this, I might just kind of revisit cash. I'm sorry. I know this might seem silly, but I've got to go back to the Stu Peters thing. Does it ring a bell now that you've been reminded you did eight podcast interviews with him? Yeah, that's a good way to do it.

As a general matter, what I think I'd love to see every single senator at these hearings do is stop giving fucking speeches and just use your eight minutes for questions, but that's a perennial problem. I've been torn on this because I've also been giving the Democratic senator shit. I had Mark Kelly on this pod last week and I was like, why don't you guys coordinate better? He didn't have a good answer to that really. I thought his questions were good, but some of the others weren't.

That was worth the cost of the Hegseth hearing. But I don't know, man. If the Republicans are going to vote for this guy anyway, are we sure that giving a speech that goes on YouTube or TikTok isn't a better use of time than like asking him questions, he's going to lie about. I, that's a genuine question. I kind of, I'm kind of going back and forth on what is a useful, like if you thought that you could stop it, then I think strategy is important, but if we're

just accepting that the Republicans are totally shameless and are going to vote in these unqualified people, then maybe the strategy mindset changes a little bit. I don't know. Look, I think use your time to get information, try to pin them down on things, whether it's policy or perjury. But I mean, if it's a really good speech, it's an incredibly compelling, passionate speech that goes super viral on TikTok. That's great.

But like I was watching Peter Welch spend like several minutes talking about how much, you know, he was like a RFK scholar in college. And I really liked Peter Welch. I think he's like good on policies and a lot of great stuff. But I was like, what are we doing here? It's like four minutes of your time. You also just know your skills, you know? Yeah.

Peter Welch is a nice person. He's fine, but maybe, maybe give your time over to somebody that knows what they're doing. Yeah. Amy Klobuchar was pretty good this morning. That's what they did at the Jan 6 committee, right? Like they kind of gave it to a prosecutor or gave it to one individual and let you really narrow in.

It's a much better way to go. You know, it'd be like if the bulwark had a, like weightlifting competition against crooked media, you know, I'd be like, who would win? I'd be like, don't probably, don't put me in on that one, you know? Like put me in,

put me in on one of the other events where I know that, where I can add some value. Is JVL your ringer? Joe Perticone, I think losing Caputo is pretty big on that, unfortunately, but I don't know. Sam Stein's not. I've been over to crooked headquarters. I don't think the competition's going to be very stiff on the weightlifting.

Oh, I had one more thing on cash. I think Tom Telles might be my least favorite sender now. Tommy, the thing I want the most in the world, which means it won't happen is I want the porn store pizza man to challenge him in a primary and beat him. Like I just, I want it. I want it really badly. Tell us passed out a cash K money sign H bingo card game today that, uh, you know, check the square. If a Democrat says subjects such as deep state or enemies list or QAnon.

And it's just like, the problem with him is, you know, some of these guys, Marjorie Taylor green doesn't pretend to be serious. So like give me Marjorie Taylor green over this. Tom Tillis is like condescending lectures about how the Democrats are the ones that are asking unfair questions, you know, amidst a hearing where like you have legitimate questions about an incoming FBI director that was producing the January 6 choir. To act like that is some preposterous thing for the Democrats to bring up that you should just mock with your silly bingo card game I fuck you Tom Tillis. What what is this?

You got a 44 year old guy with no relevant experience barely any relevant experience He's nominated to lead the FBI for a decade because Trump fired the last guy He nominated to leave the FBI for a decade after firing the first one, Jim Comey. Yeah, so we should be asking the dude questions. I mean, the enemies listing is the part of that that pisses me off the most. It's in his book. He published a book with a list of enemies. Does that, if that does not bother you.

And he talked about it a lot. Yeah. On several of those 1,000 podcasts he talked about. It is exhausting. Yeah, Tom tells, he's up in 26. I guess he must have decided that this is the one he's going to go full mega on. They're never going to like you. They're not going to support you.

You're not going to get like, you're not going to be accepted by them. Be your own man. I will say it was interesting. Much more on cash tomorrow. We got Andrew Weissman on, but just one other thing that was interesting from today. He didn't ally the question about the pardons for the cop beaters. He specifically said he disagreed with that. I did not see that.

Interesting. Yeah, I found that interesting. I mean, it's fake. Probably have to say it. Yeah. For the bill. Yeah. And I'm sure he cuts the deal behind the scenes. He calls Don Jr. or whatever. And it's like, just tell daddy. Maybe he calls shadow president on Musk. I don't know. Maybe he calls Donald directly. But it's just like, hey, I'm just going to, you got to give me one here so that we can get through. That's a weird one, though. Like, who is that for? It's for the building, I don't know, or he calls Donald directly, but it's just like, hey, I'm just going to, you got to give me one here so that we can get through. That's a weird one though.

Like, who is that for? It's for the building, I guess, for the FBI when you get there. But does it get you anything from the senators who vote on you, who give you the job? I don't know. Yeah, who's the fourth senator that would have cared about that? That's a good question. I don't know. Not Tom Tillis.

I wanted to hear your take also on, there's just been this kind of clown OMB, we're freezing and then we're rescissioning the freeze and then we're refreezing and then we're unfreezing and a lot of the stuff, the details are going to bleed out. The one area where they do seem to be pretty serious about freezing grants and funds is in foreign aid. Then they brought up the fake story about the Gaza condoms as one of the things that they're going to freeze. That's not true.

Actually, the condoms are going to Africa as part of the anti-aids program, as part of PEPFAR, which was a Republican program initially. But they're going to cut that, cut all USAID. So I'm just kind of curious, given your experience in that world, what you think the potential ramifications of this are. Yeah, I mean, I think they're calling it a freeze. I think we should assume that all of these programs

are gone unless otherwise indicated and gone permanently, right? I think- Well, they didn't freeze. Just to be clear, they did not freeze the aid to Israel or Egypt. Which is for Israel. So heck of a job to the Egypt bag men and to our friends who protested genocide, Joe. Yeah, well, the Egypt money

is all about Israeli security operations. So, I mean, in 2023, there was $63 billion of foreign aid that's less than 1% of the federal budget. But as you know, Tim, when you do focus groups or polling, people think the foreign aid budget is closer to 10%. So there's political, you know. It's a political winner for sure. Yeah.

But like the money we're talking about goes to fun things like combating Ebola or Marburg virus outbreaks abroad or monitoring the avian flu or cleaning up mines and cluster munitions that didn't blow up in places like Ukraine or Laos and Cambodia. But it also, there's also money for education in Jordan, the country,

which gives us enormous leverage in political influence in these places. And if we just turn that off, that influence is now gone. And you mentioned, I mean, like there is a lot of political attacks on foreign aid, but you mentioned PEPFAR. I mean, PEPFAR is George Bush's greatest accomplishment. It saved 25 million people. It was like universally supported. Recently, I fret with the Republican Senator,

started attacking it because like $4,000 were accidentally spent on abortion services in some country and that money was refunded. And I don't know if that got it on the chopping block, but now it sounds like there's, you know, AIDS drugs on the shelf in clinics that they're not allowed to distribute. It's just, it's insane. There's also the soft power. You were kind of forgetting at this in the Jordan example, but like the soft power element to this, particularly in the context of China, like the thing to me that's like the most incoherent about this is you've got some elements of the Trump administration and Trump world that are very saber-rattling about China and China hawks and the threats from China and this great power struggle that we're in.

Part of that is the fact that China has been buying influence with a lot of countries throughout the world, particularly some in our hemisphere now, you know, doing programs such as the one you described in Jordan, right? And so if we kind of get off the playing field there, you know, you already saw this little dust up with Columbia. If you're Petro, like, why aren't you like, well, I guess I'll just deal with China. I'll do trade with China, right? They might feel like a more reliable ally right now. Like To me, it just undermines the whole China hawk element of what they're arguing. Totally. I mean, the China infrastructure projects often are devastating for countries

down the road because they create these debt traps that the countries can't get out of. But you know what they don't come with? You're saying you can't trust the CCP? That's not xenophobic. Now you're on the Bullwork podcast, you can say it without any accusations of sinophobia. War and pandemic, we're on the show. We're talking about the CCP. But the Chinese money doesn't come with any strings attached around human rights. So it's a little bit easier. But you're right.

I mean, it's not just that we're turning off money that gives us influence in places in China can fill the breach It's that we're actively being dickheads to people in Panama Colombia Denmark for absolutely no reason and these are like Denmark's a NATO ally like okay Let's play this out for me Tim the United States military sends a whole bunch more US military members to our base in Greenland and we just decide we've annexed that and occupied it like what happens Does NATO have an article 5 responsibility to respond to this US invasion of Greenland on behalf of Denmark like this whole thing Just it's like a farce in some ways. It's insane, but this is kind of the reality of what we're talking about right now and It makes us look like clowns and unreliable

talking about right now. And it makes us look like clowns and unreliable. When you talk to folks in like advocacy world, and is there anything in particular that they're the most alarmed about, I guess, in the first week and a half, particularly kind of what the pod save the world had on? I mean, the most interesting kind of thread I saw on this was by a guy named Matul Gawande, who got into all the public health projects that were being impacted by this, the funding freeze, and that, I think, was where people's heads

instantly went, just in terms of the risk to Americans, like something that could boomerang back on us pretty quickly. I want to do a little politics, and then every time you're on, I like to give you a world leader quiz. Looking close at that. But I was talking with Chris Hayes on Tuesday, and he's got you're on, I like to give you a world leader quiz. Looking close at that. But I was talking with Chris Hayes on Tuesday and he's got the new book about the attention economy and how like Trump has successfully leveraged this. And this is, I guess, kind of related to our first topic and the darkest sense of how Trump

has leveraged this leverage, so to speak, this tragedy outside of Reagan airport. But you know, one of the things we're talking about were the Democrats, I guess, just are struggling with this. And in part because they have to kind of go through this deprogramming from what was a smart politician behavior 15 years ago versus what is smart politician behavior now. And I played him a clip of Gretchen Whitmer. And I hate to pick on Gretchen Whitmer because I think this is across the board, something that all Democrats are doing. But I just want to use it as an example, because she is the type of person that might be up in 2028. And because it is just spot on what we're talking about here. So let's listen to Gretchen Whitmer on CBS. I think this is the story of Michigan, right? We're a very diverse state. We are a state that tends to go back and forth and like some balance in our politics.

And I've won twice with big margins within two years of Donald Trump also carrying Michigan. And so, as I said in my recent address, I'm not out looking for fights. I'm always looking to collaborate first. Won't back down from an important one, that's for sure. But I got a job to do and we're gonna stay focused on moving forward and trying to find common ground where we can.

What's the lesson in that split ticket situation for you as governor now? I think it's to keep listening to the people and it's part of what I talk about in my book that we've just made for young adults. These are lessons that you can use at any age, right? Learning how to listen is a superpower that not enough people tap into. All right, Tommy, I want you to pretend we're at a DNC media training session. We just played that clip when you're talking to the candidates. What kind of feedback do you have for Big Grudge?

I guess where I'm struggling with this is, I do think that voters want to hear about common ground and working together and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But right now we're an opposition party with no power. So it doesn't fucking matter if we work together with them or not. They don't need us. They don't want us. They don't care.

And so I think you have to act accordingly and raise the awareness and the cost of some of the most egregious things Trump is doing. And that gets complicated when you're talking about areas where clearly Democrats are off sides like immigration. The Lake and Riley Act got a bunch of Democratic votes. It does things that I find like indefensible on a policy level, like just deporting people accused of a crime that just discards all due process rights for people in this country. I think mostly it's like be fucking interesting, talk like a human being,

pick a fight, go into places that are unusual so that whatever you're doing gets shared on social media. I mean, Tim, you and I both spend a lot of times in safe spaces with people who agree with us like MSNBC, whatever. But you know, I went on Fox the other day with Jesse Waters and that interview is I heard from more people I got more pick up than like anything else I've done. So I don't know. Maybe we need a little more a little more combat Yeah, I've got some feedback for you in your Jesse Waters interview Okay, so I'm gonna stick with Whitmer here first or not whatever just with the Democratic challenge broadly because like I Don't like in reality actually the gamble so you said right that like they don't need us. They don't want us

Like we're hoping it's got to do need Democrats actually to get stuff done. I will see what they can do. I think that they're going to be in a big challenge on the Hill to get things passed. Republican study committee put out a statement the other day that's, I think, 180 House members that were like, we're only going to vote for a reconciliation bill if it cuts the deficit. And if you go back and listen to the Liam Donovan interview I did a couple weeks ago, like you can hear how that's impossible, right? So, you know, they're going to come to the Democrats for bailouts on budget stuff. So get something for it. They came to the Democrats to get to the 60 votes on the

Lake and Riley thing. Maybe that was the right strategic thing to do, but maybe not. Or like, are people really going to be voting on the Lake and Riley Act in 2026? We're 20 months away from another election. I don't know, actually. Is saying that we're going to collaborate with the Trump administration really getting you anything? I mean, it's just the most anodyne talking point. Whether or not those are the right words to say, who's gonna hear

that? Right? Like there's no pickup of this, of just kind of very boring comments about Trump. I've played it twice on the podcast now because it was so boring. So kudos to you for that. Listen, like on the politics question, like I don't know, the politics for Ruben Gallego in Arizona are probably very different than a lot of other members, right? And Ruben was like very vocally for the Lake and Riley Act. And will people be voting on immigration in the midterms? I don't know. I mean, the Trump's goal, presumably, is to lock down the border and solve all our immigration problems. And it doesn't mean they'll stop talking about it or making up caravans, but does that reduce the salience? Like, I don't know. It's an interesting bet. But yeah, no, I think we're an opposition party and we have

to act accordingly and talk like people and be nimble and be interesting. Has anybody done well in the last week and a half? Again, it would be one thing to be complaining about this in December, but he had an inauguration. We've had all these hearings. We had this press conference today. There have been plenty of opportunities to go say interesting things, to go to different types of places. Is there anybody that you think is really nailing it?

Yeah, I mean, like Congressman Pat Ryan's sort of been saying and doing interesting things, trying to be out there, trying to be clear-cut, clear-eyed. I mean, I think what you're getting at and what Democrats are feeling is that there is a leadership void. We have, you know, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are the leaders in both houses in the Senate or the Congress, but there's not a democratic leader. Like there's not a nominee. I mean, Schumer talked about how aroused people are.

Yeah. That was pretty good. That was hard to watch. I'm all right. We'll flaccid. We'll tepid. Yeah. So, you know.

I just go to like, look, there's the thing in 2016. I used to make fun of it. So I'm, I'm the person I used to make fun of now. So I, I'll, I willass it. We'll tep it. Yeah. So, you know. I just go to like, look, there's the thing in 2016. I used to make fun of it. So I'm the person I used to make fun of now. So I will admit it. But in 2016, when I was working for Jeb, like we would mock, like the defense of Trump among, you know, the Winnie the Pooh and the Tuxedo defense of Trump back then in 2015 was like, but he fights. You know, he might be, he might have some, he might have some issues in his personal life. Like we want somebody that fights these evil Obama bros, right? And that didn't resonate with me then because, you know, I think you made some mistakes, but I wasn't, I didn't really feel deep in my core that you needed to

be fought by the stupidest American. Um, but so that obviously is why I'm, I'm, I'm disconnected from my former party. But like, now I feel that you could sell me on that, like a butt she fights or a butt he fights as somebody that I don't agree with on every issue. I want to fight her too. That I know is going to go there and go to the mat against this farcical shit, this sham that we have to, that we've been subjected to for the last week and a half. And it's like, I, nobody's really given me that.

I know you'll see a little bit, you mentioned about Ryan, Chris Murphy a little bit, but no guttural, nothing from the gut. Yes, I want a fighter. I also think obstruction works. Mitch McConnell built an entire career off of that. So the senators should find ways to bog down everything Trump does.

It's also just like when Barack Obama won in 2008, he got 365 electoral votes. We had huge majorities in the House and the Senate. Did Republicans wipe their hands and give up? No, they fought everything we did tooth and nail and they drove down our favorables into the midterms of 2010. And that to me is the roadmap.

It's just all focused on the midterms. I've been saying the word sham too much. So people, I gotta get out my, I gotta get out my the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the- the-, I gotta get out my, really get out my, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the I've got some feedback for you. So I want to listen to a clip of you on water's world. I'd love to hear your media training. How many genders are there, Tommy? How many genders are there, Tommy? The honest answer, Desi, I don't care. I'm a libertarian. I don't care. You can be what you want to be, Jesse.

Well, I'm not a Democrat and that we know. What happened? I didn't know you were a libertarian. I actually run the New Hampshire Democratic Party's Libertarian Party Speed. Yeah, I, first of all, I don't think that anyone who goes on an unserious show should treat, be forced to treat unserious questions like they're serious. The subjects I was sent in advance were like,

we're gonna talk about Biden's legacy, the pardons and Democrats going forward. So that just gives you some insight. Also though, I am libertarian on most social issues. I think the role of the government should be to leave people the fuck alone. If you decide your gender is something other than male and female, good. Good for you. Live your life however you want.

If you want to have an abortion, the government should leave you the fuck alone. I very much am a libertarian on a whole basket of issues. The libertarian moment is back. I was just happy to hear it. I'd never heard you say you're a libertarian before. I was like, man, we've got more and we got more in common than I thought. I wasn't expecting that. I don't know.

I might've used it as an opportunity to go after Jesse to be like, yeah, Jesse, you know, I don't know. I think that there are two genders, but like sometimes people, you know, process like their alignment, which with each gender differently, you see this in sex as well, you know, like they're men with two balls, there are men with one ball, there are men who gave both of their balls over to Donald Trump. Wow, okay.

You know, like you, like that'd be one thing to do. Like there are only a couple of ways to do a marriage, right, you can have a closed marriage, you can have an open marriage, or you can have a closed marriage where you cheat on your wife with a woman that works for you and you're a sex pest at the office. Like that might've been another thing to consider.

I'm just spitballing here. Those are different approaches and I think they all kind of worked. The one thing I thought about after the fact that I should have done was just be like, can we talk about Dominion voting or what was one, anything they've been sued for for various defamation cases, just try to repeatedly bring that up. That's a next time thing. Dominion. All right. I think you should keep going on there.

Is there anything else you want to do? Like just generally speaking like bro pods crypto like what like what do you think could be a useful use of your time now? The Jesse waters appearance is kind of like a training room. I want to practice What would I preach a little bit get out some more? I really respect the fact Tim that you do a lot of adversarial stuff, like you're kind of at press conferences. That was not a fish for compliments. No, listen, you found one. Fish on.

In seriousness though, like what is actually useful? No, I'm sorry, so you go to tea- Like sometimes it's not actually useful. Like me yelling at Clay Travis, like I find kind of satisfying, but am I convincing it? You know what I mean? Is that useful? I don't know. I've been thinking about this a lot. I've actually, you know, I've taken your counsel. I'm happy to be public about this. Like, I find Steve Bannon very interesting.

I listen to his show often. I think when you listen to Bannon talk, you're usually like a couple of weeks ahead of the curve on where the MAGA movement is going. I would like to better understand what he thinks Trump 2.0 is like. I'd love to press him on whether the mega populism he's voted for is represented when you have billionaire liberal tech oligarchs sitting on stage and Elon running huge swaths

of the administration. I went on a Barstool show when I was in New York. I want to do more stuff where we're just like, I hate the fucking platforming debate. I'm done with the platforming debate where people are platformed, then I just want to go into places where there's a little more. I don't like debate, like I hate the like Ben Shapiro owns a 19 year old content, but a conversation with someone that disagrees with you, vociferously, like that's a good thing. I agree with that and I just and particularly the non-fuel, this is, I guess, what I'm trying to think of it, I think it's more challenging, but I think it'd be valuable

for you and all your fellow bro, probably not love it, but Fabro and other fellow bros, Pat Ryan's to go on non-political conservative coded shows, right? Like, because I think that there's limited, maybe minor value in me yelling at Clay Travis. I think that'd be very real value and go again going on the barstools, the Theo Vons, some of those other kind of stuff. The Aiden Raw, right? Like the streamers doing some of that I think would be useful. I do. It is all kind of tied up in crypto. Yeah. Do you do? Do you own any crypto? I own like a little tiny bit. I wish I owned a lot more. Do you have any crypto? I own like a little tiny bit. I wish I owned a lot more.

Do you have any regrets over that? Because I've been thinking about this lately. Yeah. I'm so fucking pissed about the Trump coin thing and how this whole thing is just like such an obvious fraud and like how so many of these coins are such an obvious fraud and like how these rug pulls are going to screw people over and it's been making me mad. But I've been doing some self-examination and I'm wondering if part of my anger is related to the fact That I've left so much money on the table. So I'm wondering what you think about that. Yeah, we all missed a Generational wealth opportunity. I lived in San Francisco in 2015

If I just listened to like one nice nerd who said hey, you should buy aetherium or whatever It was at the time. It would have been cool. A couple of thoughts on this, Tim. I think we all have to stop saying like, bro, tech bro, crypto bros, because it's obviously like I'm a pod bro. It's obviously pejorative and condescending and like,

you know, I think they don't like it. It's no mystery why whatever comes after that. Leave it to the libs, more speech codes for me. All right, I can't say bro. I've got to say latinx. I get it, oh whatever Tommy, all right. We can say what we want. We can say what we want, but we should probably not be surprised

when people tune out everything after. Okay, fair. I was talking to Ro Khanna about this the other day. One thing I think Democrats miss is there is a piece of the crypto story that is aspirational. It's not just like get rich quick, but there is that. It's also anti-establishment. It's people who felt like they were sticking it

to the big banks in the system and kind of operating outside of the control of, you know, whatever they they're kind of pushing against. And I do think Democrats can sound overly negative in like assholes who are just oppositional to this stuff. So we have to, we have to capture part of that narrative in the hopeful message, but also talk about the fact that Trump coin and meme coins and so much of this stuff is a grift, is a Ponzi scheme.

It is going to hurt people. You're going to have more like kind of SBF collapses and Lunaterra collapses and there need to be like regulations that protect people. So that's the other part of the message. It is tough, right? That's my problem with the whole road talking point on all this, right? It's like, okay, I've got to be more open-minded

towards the Ponzi scheme that's getting the worst people in the world rich, I guess. All right, sure. That's good advice. It's just about how you talk to people. It's just about like persuasion, hearing people and trying to like not make them feel attacked. And I think, you know, Biden did some good things trying to regulate these tech companies.

It was obviously a long past time, but in the process, seems like we radicalized a lot of rich people who poured money into Donald Trump and Republican coffers. Finally, before I get you on the where in the world is Carmen San Diego pop quiz, I am curious about, you know, you're monitoring the world. We're looking for positives out there. Not a lot of positives happening domestically. Do you have a favorite world leader? Like, I wish I could like Malay, you know, he'd be right in my actual libertarian bones, but he wasn't such a suck up to Trump. And so I'm like, you know, I'm looking, give me a, give me a lib, give me a good lib around

the world that I can, I can be excited about. Uh, Anthony Albanese in Australia. OK. He doing anything for you? I know nothing about that person. So that's a good project for me this weekend. Anthony Albanese. Progressive. You can Google him. The problem is right now, things are a little messy internationally. You don't. You saw the Canadians.

You said Trudeau stepped down. There's a real chance that Pierre Polyev comes to power in Canada, the conservative leader. We got, it looks like the G7, you got South Korea. They just had a little martial law incidents. They're trying to prosecute, impeach and remove their president. That seems bad.

The Germans are about to have an election. We got Elon kick it up dust for the far right party. So things are a little messy, man. I don't know. There's not a lot I'm Especially hopeful me cure starmer and the Labour Party they had a rough start but they're gonna be in power for a while They could do some good things that that helped David Lammy foreign secretary in the UK I like him a lot know him a little personally. All right big New Yorker piece on him this week I'll check out that New Yorker piece. I'm just looking for hope anywhere. All right. Take us to the final topic. You know that George W. Bush was embarrassed

when he was asked to name random foreign leaders and all the other Libs were so excited to make fun of him for not knowing that. And since you have a podcast about the world, I'd like to ask you about that. I've got some friends who are traveling through Asia. Oh, God. I'm not going to know any of these names. And so I'd like for you to tell us the Prime Minister of Japan or the President of Vietnam or the Prime Minister of Thailand.

Any of those three world leaders? Can you get any of those? What did you say? Thailand is a... Japan, Thailand and Vietnam. Thavisen. Thavisen is which one? Thailand.

No? I don't know. The current Prime Minister is Shinwarata, actually. Are you sure? But maybe there's multiple. I don't know what the Thai system is. Maybe it's a multi- I'm going to cheat on this one.

You're Googling? No, no, I'm just going to Google Thavisun. Oh, yeah. No, Thavisun has been gone since August 24. To be fair to you, Thavison just went out August 2024. So that's pretty good. We'll give you half a point for that. Shin Awatra is the new prime minister.

Okay. Well, and then, yes. Sorry, you're right. That's a good point. And then the Japanese have had like a bunch of leaders very recently. Aishiba is the current one. That's correct. Aishiba. Okay, good. What was the other current one. That's correct. She got good.

What was the other country you asked about Vietnam? No fucking clue. No clue about Vietnam. I can't pronounce this person's name, but it looks like since 21, another new one, a lot of turnover over there. General, it's a general. Oh, watch out for Vietnam.

Kong, quang, general quang. So there you go. One and a half points out of three, watch out for Vietnam. Kong, Quang, General Quang. So there you go. One and a half points out of three, that's a C. That's not good. That's not good. But it's pretty good. Pakistan Shabash Sharif. I brushed up. It's good. It's a good podcast though, Pod Save the World. I

do listen to it on the plane and I doze off to it actually usually. So it's kind of you and Ben Rhodes in my dreams that's nice times when I'm on flights so I appreciate you yeah thanks for coming back to the podcast do you have anything else you want to promote any other final thoughts for everybody no let's just um let's come together Libs we can do this we're gonna make it through this two years I get into some doomer places like I know you do Tim usually around 10 p.m. at night on Sundays. And we gotta pull up.

Gotta pull up the plane. No Sunday scaries with Tommy V Tor. Guys, we're gonna be back here tomorrow with Andrew Weissman. Look forward to seeing you all then. Peace. I say heat wave can't complain if the world's that large, why should I remain?

Walked away to another plant gonna find another place maybe where I can stand and move on to another day to a whole new town with a whole new way went to the porch to have a thought got to the door and again I couldn't stop you don't know where and you don't know when but you still got your words and you got your friends Walking on to another day Work a little harder, work another way Well, uh-uh baby, I ain't got no plan

But I float on, maybe would you understand? Gonna float on, maybe would you understand? Well, I float on, maybe would you understand? Well I float on, maybe would you understand? The days get shorter and the nights get colder I like the autumn but this place is getting old I talk about belongs and I hate the coast It might not be a lot but I feel like I'm making the most The days get longer and the nights smother me

I guess it's not surprising but it's spring and I should leave I like songs about drifters, books about the same. They both seem to make me feel a little less insane. Walked on off to another spot. I still haven't gotten anywhere. And did I want, did I want love? Did I need to know why it doesn't always feel like I'm caught in an undertow? The Bullork Podcast is produced by Katy Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.