The Bulwark Podcast - Will Sommer: Across the MAGA-Verse

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

To find out what's really going on in Trumpistan, the AP is out and random lifestyle Instagrammers and MAGA conspiracy posters are in. Meanwhile, hothead Dan Bongino couldn't join the FBI until he fulfills his commitments to his podcast advertisers, Seb Gorka—the new counterterrorism chief—is a prank caller, and RFK Jr. resurfaced to ordain beef tallow fries a healthy food choice. Plus, did Elon go to Trump with tears in his eyes, and ask, "Sir, will you buy one of my cars?" The Bulwark's new Senior Reporter Will Sommer joins Tim Miller. show notes Ben Dreyfuss tribute to Kevin Drum Tim's 2024 interview with Julie K. Brown about Jeffrey Epstein Bloomberg story on Don Jr's plans to monetize MAGA (gifted) New International Version of Proverbs 1:33

Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Today's guest is the newest senior reporter here at the Bullwork. He joined us from the Washington Post where he covered the media and conspiracy theories and other such matters. He's the author of Trust the Plan, The Rise of QAnon, and The Conspiracy that Unhinged America and he's the former host The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy that Unhinged America. And he's the former host of one of my favorite pods. It was called Fever Dreams of the Daily

Beast. It's Will Summer. And right now, he's living that fever dream in our, your fever dreams are our reality, I guess is what I meant. Yes, we're all in the fever dream now, right? I want to start by, before we get to the news, by doing your backstory. I mean, I guess we all imagined that Trump could possibly win again, right? It was not like we were totally blindsided by that possibility, particularly here at the bulwark. But I mean, did you ever imagine when you were covering the fever swamps of QAnon,

you know, back four or five years ago doing this podcast that like these people would be literally running the country. It's true now even in a way that it wasn't in 2018. Yeah, I mean, it's it's difficult to imagine. I feel like sort of every step on the road and I'm sure a lot of people feel like this is that it's like every step is like, wow, I never would have thought it would have come to this. The idea that, you know, we're at the point where Dan Bongino getting appointed to the

FBI or cash Patel even ahead the FBI, you know, I think it's like, oh, Cash Patel, the recurring Steve Bannon guest? And it's like, oh, of course, now that that's such a common thing. I mean, it's a lot to grapple with. And I think it sort of alarmingly raises questions about what's going to happen in two or three years from now. But at the same time, I think that's why there's such value in kind of keeping up with these characters. And I say this to people who are not of this world, which include, you know, kind of my normie former Republican friends, as well as like liberals and progressives. I'm like, I know these people, and it gives me a different perspective on what we have to come.

I guess I won't join this you by telling you what I think. The fact that you have just entrenched yourselves in these fever swamps, does that make you more alarmed, more concerned, more feeling like it's going to just be a clown show? How does your perspective inform what you think is ahead here? Yeah. I grew up as a young teen Republican in Texas. I was obsessed with Bill O'Reilly and Ayn Rand and all this stuff. I I, you know, I stay up late listening to talk radio and it really sticks out to me. I was like in eighth grade listening to Michael Savage and he was like, we just got to nuke China, just nuke those dams and flood the whole country. And I thought, man, if this is what like one of the

main voices in the party wants here, you know, in the right wing media, I feel like there's this disconnect between the voters and what the politicians are doing, which is, you know, like cutting social security, trying to balance the budget, stuff like that. And ultimately, we saw that that contradiction resolved by Trump, who, you know, is giving the voters all these kind of atavistic or giving into their urges. And so, yeah, I mean, I think it is ominous for me because to be keeping up with this stuff so closely and then think, well, geez, you know, it seems like Trump is really willing to do a lot of things for the base. And so what is he going to do next?

So well, the shorthand of that is what you're telling me is that what the realization I came to about the dangers of my party, like in my 30s was something you realized in eighth grade was that the short summary? It went on for a few more years. And then I was like very I was working for this, this like state Senate primary campaign in Texas and Dan Patrick, who's now the lieutenant governor, he won and he beat my candidate and I thought, well that guy's like a total lunatic. If this is what, and he went in a landslide and I thought if this is, that was kind of like my crisis moment

with the GOP where I thought, if this is what the voters want, I mean that's not what I want, you know, and so I think I have to go another direction. I wish I had my crisis moment in high school. Yeah. I mean, like the thing that I tell you is I, I don't want to judge, you know, lest I be judged, you know, in these sort of situations, I try to follow the, you know, guidelines and the morals that I was taught as a youth. But like, what I tell you is these people are worse than you think. You know, and I had an opportunity to hang out with, you know, one of these kind of bro podcaster guys recently, you know, who obviously doesn't know anything about politics and has

been having, you know, Republicans on the pod. And that's like what I tried to get through to them is I was like, I don't think you actually know these people. I don't think that you're necessarily a bad person. I said that a lot of these people are very bad and their intentions and motives are bad. And if you follow them over time and see the way that they act,

you know, in the way that they change their tune to meet the moment and the way that they're needlessly cruel to people to advance themselves, right? Like, I just, the evidence piles up that there are many people, maybe not the entire Trump administration, but many people who are ill-motived.

And that to me is like the most alarming thing that I try to get through to people. I don't know. Am I being too harsh? Well, no, I think there's a lot to that. I mean, you think about Trump's interview on Joe Rogan where people said, oh, he just came off like a normal guy. I thought he'd be kind of foaming at the mouth or doing Hitler salutes or what have you. And so you have to kind of, as you said, you have to kind of build up, as I do, I mean,

I build up kind of files on these people and build up kind of like what they're, that's why I'm so fascinated by kind of the feuds and the kind of these inflection moments where people really have to sort of reveal themselves. Yeah, right. What we're going to do around the world with some of the people that you've built up files on over the years at the end of the pod, we've got to do a little bit of news. And I guess this is news in the world that we live in now, but Trump is out with a bleat. That's how we find out what's happening in this country.

And today's announcement is kind of an interesting one. He says that he's going to buy a brand new Tesla today as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk. He does that on the heels of an interview last night that Elon Musk did with Larry Kudlow. I'm about to play the clip. Musk in this clip is, it seems to me on the brink of tears and he's withering and hemming and hawing in the face of softball questioning from, from Kudlow, who worked in the Trump administration and could best be described as a lick

spittle. So here's Musk responding to Larry Kudlow, who worked in the Trump administration and could best be described as a lickspittle. So here's Musk responding to Larry Kudlow's very tough question. How are you running your other businesses? With great difficulty. Yeah, I mean. But there's no turning back, you're saying. I'm just here trying to make government more efficient, eliminate waste and fraud. And so far we're making good progress.

The pauses are longer every time I listen to it. That sigh, that mic, really crisp mic for the sigh there. What do you make of this? I mean, obviously, Elon's like the Tesla stock is crashing, the rocket was shooting debris over the Gulf of Mexico. I do have to say producer Jason is wearing a Gulf of Mexico shirt today. So it's another message to you, Eagle Ed Martin, you can come at this podcast if you want, if you think that it's worth targeting over WrongSpeak. But he has some

failings in his private businesses. I guess Trump is trying to bail him out. The folks that you're monitoring, what do they make of the fact that Elon is pretty obviously unraveling? I don't think it's tedious to look at that interview and be like, this is a man that is losing his grips on things. Well, it's interesting to see, you know, as you pointed out, I mean, Larry Kudlow is not really like grilling Elon. He's just saying, how do you do such an amazing job saving the country and running all these businesses?

And Elon goes, oh my God, I don't know. It's not going well. You know, I mean, it's remarkable. I mean, it's just crazy to think about the Tesla brand, even just since this administration started. In December, I had a family member who was like well you know kind of California Democrat well maybe I'll buy a Tesla and I don't love Elon but now I mean the idea of buying a Tesla just seems crazy I think for liberals at least.

For sure yeah no I've been discussing about how much joy I got on Lundi-Graw watching people pelt the cyber trucks with beads. It was a big father moment for me having to tell my child my seven-year-old that she couldn't participate in that. I was like, we've got to be the bigger people. We can't pelt it with beads while it's silently inside. I'm beaming. As part of this, there are the people in MAGA world who are just, they're on board for everything.

We're so excited for Doge, whatever Mr. Trump says we're on board with. You have the more ideological MAGA, if you will, the band and wing, the people that have an actual view of nationalism, maybe a skepticism of the big tech oligarchs, a skepticism of the fact that there are so many South African billionaires around the president right now. And then you have people that just want to succeed. I've seen in my feed some random MAGA, just like random like mega people that I follow that are just kind of like a little worried about like just that the Elon thing is hurting Trump, right? That he's just not that effective. Like what are you kind of seeing out there? Do you see any fissures? Obviously there doesn't

seem to be fissures between Trump and Elon since he's trying to boost his company right now, which is, I guess it shouldn't go without saying is like not very presidential material like in the past. So if Reagan was like holding up the product of his biggest of his biggest donor, I think that would have been maybe a scandal in the newspaper the next morning. But anyway, what do you what do you see in other? It is striking. I mean, I feel like we're so just through the looking glass, but the idea of the president being like, Look, my buddy's company is in trouble. You got to go buy buy buy. Yeah, I mean, I think you're the president being like, look, my buddy's company is in trouble. You've got to go buy, buy, buy. Yeah. I mean, I think you're right. I mean, there, there are, it strikes me as a sort of a weak point, a weak moment for Elon.

A lot of these agencies previously did not have heads or people were kind of the cabinet heads were just getting in control of them. Now we're starting to see, obviously the times reported on the Sean Duffy Elon fight. And I think there's a lot more of that, like, all right, buddy, like back off, stop sending your, the 12 year olds into my office to fire everyone. I think there's this kind of classic that like, all right, buddy, like back off, stop sending your the 12 year olds into my office to fire everyone. I think there's this kind of classic challenge between what you describe as the the Bannonite wing perhaps, and their main focus is immigration, deporting people, building the wall, sort of I think Russia tilting foreign policy as secondary, but they don't really care that

much about the budget. And so they don't care about these kind of hack and slash things that they know are going to just anger people and get them kicked out of office or lose control of Congress quicker. And so that's kind of the fracture point. Bannon would be happy to tax the Illons of the world. Where they come into alignment is they do both want liberal deep state bureaucrats to suffer. Yes. Right. And so they're getting a little bit of joy out of that. Right. Like, but again,

this is where the Trump line for about the using a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. Like, I mean, like when I was interviewing Bannon and I asked him, like, who do you want him to go after? I knew he was like talking specifically about the TV lawyers because they annoy him because he watches a lot of cable news and it's like the FBI, you know, the FBI officials and the DOJ officials that investigated Trump and like the random liberal bogeymen at, you know, the EPA and the Department of Education.

It's not like they were out there clamoring for, you know, the people in Los Alamos to get fired, right? Or like the VA to be unraveled, right? Like some of the VA people are like, are listening to Bannon, right? I mean, like there's just been totally indiscriminate in a way that I think is not helping them on the one area where they might have been aligned. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think they're missing the there's a sense of like that's why USAID made such a

tasty target for them because it's like, you know, it's these these liberal pencil necks who are helping people in other countries. It is surprising to me that the VA has been such an immediate target because you know, you would think of that as something you wouldn't really hit to avoid alienating Trump voters. The other thing about Bannon is like, I think it's important to keep in mind how much of his agita towards tech people is motivated by his belief that we're going to become robots essentially. I think a lot of people underscore like he has a singularity correspondent, a guy who comes on the show every couple of weeks, and the singularity being by the way, the moment our consciousnesses are uploaded into the matrix. Essentially, we all become robots. And so I mean, this is like a very pressing issue to him. On the other hand, Elon is implanting chips in people's brains. So he's really on there on the opposite sides of like, do we become cyborgs? And for both of them, they see this as like a very, like, very relevant issue. Okay. Well, had Kamala won and had there been no news today, I would have just derailed

the entire podcast and we would have spent the rest of the time discussing the singularity versus cyborg war between Bannon and Musk. But unfortunately, we have other stuff to get to. So we'll come back to that another show. Right. A lot of people have been following the drama related to Aretha, the neighborhood cat that became our cat that is now maybe the neighborhood cat again. I'll give you a quick update here. During the 100-year winter storm, while I was stuck in New York City, my husband and child invited the neighborhood cat that we'd been feeding Aretha into the home. and child invited the neighborhood cat that we'd been feeding, Aretha, into the home. They thought they pulled one over on me because I'm not really a pet man myself, but they

were so delighted. And you know, I just accepted it. I accepted it, accepted that it was going to be my reality. But the cats still like to go outside sometimes. My daughter really loves the lion king, so we used to joke about how sometimes the cat likes to roam the pride land, sometimes it likes to come back. As the weather's gotten warmer, as we've moved into spring,

what we found is that Aretha actually prefers the pride lands to the home. And so while it still comes back from time to time to get his smalls, and and is still occasionally persuaded to come back by a jiggling of the smalls treats by my daughter. I'm finding out that maybe I didn't get the house cat that I thought I had agreed to after all. So to me, it kind of feels like a win-win. Aretha is getting its smalls cat food and I'm getting a part-time pet, I'm getting the credit, everybody's happy.

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Catch the Michael Steele podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast groove on. I want to get your take on the maha wars. I mentioned yesterday's podcast at RFK had been kind of quiet, which I'm happy about less RFK, the better I think the more dilettante RFK, like hanging out with the rich people that had snubbed him, the better. The more RFK meeting with researchers and the NIH and telling them that they, you know, have to look into different solutions for the mumps, the worse. But RFK came back out in

the public yesterday. He's at Steak and Shake. This hurts me as a St. Louis native born in St. Louis. Steak and Shake was very formative to my childhood. A lot of Steak and Shake rewards after my report cards came in. And Steak and Shake has gone Maha, allegedly, at least for branding purposes. We'll get into that in a second. And been posting about how they are now making their fries beef tallow and as appreciation for that Hannity and RFK went to a steak and shake and did an interview yesterday I want to play you a clip from it. Steak and shake has been great we're very grateful for them for RFKing the french fries they turned me into a verb but also Popeyes, by the way a plastic straw. Thank you. Thank God.

I can't stand those paper straws. I hate them. Okay. All right. You see RFK uncomfortably kind of laughing there. I think RFK probably be on the side of paper straws. He, you know, he's not sure exactly of that where he is on the culture wars here. And also in the interview, the waiter, the poor waiter brings RFK a free shake.

It is called steak and shake and RFK freaks out. And like, has like a moment where he stares at the camera. Like it's like one of the TV shows with the confessional. And he's like, I didn't order this. I didn't order this. He stares right at the lens. It was very, it's a very uncomfortable moment. But talk to us about the Steak and Shake affair

and what's been happening with the beef tallow. Yeah, so this is an unusually controversial choice for a fast food stop. Yeah, so last week, Steak and Shake tried to rebrand as the sort of like anti woke fast food chain. They put up some stuff with like kind of suspiciously kind of like Nazi type font, like a lot of like Gothic font about their burgers. And they said, well, we're going to start doing our fries only in beef tallow. And so the, there's sort of like this paranoia about seed oils.

So like canola oil, other oils, this idea that they're like introducing some sort of like impurities into your body. This is very big on the right. They call them the sinister oils. They call the hateful eight. So it's like, you know, it's good they're not getting over dramatic about it, but the hateful eight oils. Yes. Yes. So it's like the, the oils. It's like, you know, can oil oil in the hateful later. Is that on a good side? I was curious about this. Actually the olive oil is safe, I guess. So,

so that's all good. And so they say what the, what instead they wanted to cook things in is beef tallow. So beef fat. Now when second shake said, well, we're doing beef tallow, people said, oh my gosh, this is amazing. But then some of these like maha influencers, this woman named Alex Clark said, well actually no, it's pre, their fries are pretreated in seed oil, which seems to, and I mean, this is getting to the point trying to figure this out that I need to go to a steak and shake and just go in the kitchen because I asked steak and shake about

this and they didn't get back to me. But they said to Alex Clark, they said, well, supply chains are hard. They basically said, you're right. They said, well, who's to say, you know, we're trying to get the beef tallow in. Another guy, a maha guy showed up at a steak and shake and said, I want to see the beef tallow. And they said, well, here's a picture on our cell phone

of what it looks like. It's very like citizen journalists. Like, you know, they're trying to figure it out. It doesn't seem like RFK really cares. He's just happy that he's been verbed. Yes, exactly. They said, yeah, we've RFK'd. Maybe they'll send the inspectors.

We fired most of HHS. I don't know if they've got any staff yet. They can reapportion some of the people that were supposed to be doing research on infectious disease and have them go to random steak and shakes to test whether any of the hateful 8 oils, I've pulled them up just for people who are concerned. Soybean oil, corn oil, canola, sunflower, cottonseed, safflower, grapeseed, or rice bran. Boy, I'm sure some of our soybean farmers will probably be unhappy to learn that they're part of the hateful 8.

Well, you know, they really hate soy. I mean, soy is probably the most hateful, right? Because that's why they call you soy boys. They think it's feminizing and all that. Yeah. Huh. Do you sense, like, any, when you're following these, because my influencers is one area that I've not really delved into, do you think that there's going to be an awakening moment where they realize that like the other, the people that they have now aligned with actually don't care about them at all.

You know, it's a good question. I mean, there is this tension where they say, oh yeah, you know, it is time we get America healthy again and all this. But I mean, you think back to Michelle Obama's, you know, let's get moving. Let's give kids like a piece of lettuce exactly for lunch and just the huge reaction and the idea that, you know, we're going to tell all these gigantic food conglomerates that back the Republican Party to suddenly get into ditch the hateful aid and et cetera. I mean, it just seems very slim and so, but for now, I mean, I don't know, it seems like RFK is probably skeptical

enough of vaccines and all that, that'll probably keep them happy. And also during the interview, Hannity orders a Coke and then like, he kind of apologizes to RFK for it. And he's like, ooh, this guy might get mad at me. He's like, I won't drink the whole thing. And it's just like, this is very, very opposite to the fact that Fox prime time like paid their bills on anti nanny state thing, like making fun

of the nanny state was like the bread and butter of Fox for a while. And like here you have like the signature Fox host, like literally apologizing to the nanny sitting across the table from him for ordering a Coke. I just don't know how long that marriage is going to last. I want to get into Pam Bondi drama because we haven't talked about it at all on the pod. Bondi, you might think that some of the things that people would be concerned about are the fact that she's basically said that we're not investigating foreign interference in elections anymore. We're not investigating a lot of different white collar crimes. It's going to be a really golden age for white collar criminals right now. And that the controversy

might circle around that from the working man. But instead, people are mad at her because she has not fully publicized the documents around a couple of key conspiracies that they have. The Seth Rich conspiracy and the Epstein thing. We'll get into the Epstein binders. She did kind of a half job on that. But what's the deal with the Seth Rich thing? So there's this whole demand for disclosure and like, we're going to get the documents in the Seth Rich case. There's a lawyer who's been suing for several years now to get the FBI files on Seth Rich, who was, of course was murdered in 2016, the democratic staffer. Just, just really quick for people who don't know.

It's such a f*****g horrible story. It's so sick. This poor guy is murdered coming home from the bar late at night and his family has been harassed for years because he became the center of this controversy that like the Clintons had murdered him because he had the secret document that knew that Bernie should have won or whatever. And there's this really great book, Murder on W Street by Andy Kroll, a great reporter about this. And it's just the way that this family was treated is horrific. And so anyway, they're now trying to, I guess, resurrect that. Yeah. So they write in and the key to that would be that if you proved I mean, there's

no evidence but if you proved that Seth Rich leaked the DNC emails to WikiLeaks, then that would mean the Russia hack was fake. And so Trump would be exonerated. And so that's kind of like why they pursued it. So this guy has been pushing for these documents forever. I suspect the documents are just, you know, the DC police saying, yeah, we think it was a botched robbery and that's it. But now that the FBI has continued to withhold the documents and said, well, maybe we'll give you a list of the documents. So now that we see these pro-Trump influencers saying, you know,

Pam Bondi, Gal Darnit, you got to release this stuff. And let's say she does release it. They're still going to be mad because there's not a document that says Hillary Clinton. Here's a picture of Hillary Clinton shooting Seth Rich. And so that's going to keep going. And I think she's, I mean, it depends how much Trump cares about this stuff. Probably not hugely, but I do think she's really being set up to take the fall for a lot of these conspiracy theories not coming true. To this point, also on the Epstein files, she tried to split the baby, I

guess, on this. We covered this a little bit on the Epstein files. She tried to split the baby, I guess, on this. We covered this a little bit on the podcast last week, but just to set the stage, there's this demand. I don't really understand, me and Matt Iglesias are aligned on this. I don't really understand how the left let the Jeffrey Epstein prison murder become a right-coded conspiracy theory when, like, if Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in prison, like it happened during the Trump administration and Trump and Epstein were friends and Barr and Epstein, that Barr was AG, they had connections and Acosta who was in the Trump cabinet had very deep connections to Epstein.

I did a long interview with the best reporter on this for a while ago, Julie Brown, we'll put it in the show notes if people want to go and listen and learn more about the Epstein conspiracies. But anyway, despite that, it's become this conspiracy on the right that it's like the left, the deep state was covering this up to protect deep state left-wing people. And so they demanded a list of all of the Epstein associates, even though much of that list has been reported by Julie Brown, and they demanded some other materials, I guess. So that's the back story. So take us to kind of what has been happening since then. There's this real focus on, they imagine that there's this huge client list that's going

to be Oprah, Tom Hanks, and whoever. I mean, it's going to be very vindicating. But on the other hand, as you said, I mean, Julie Brown, who knows this better than anybody and other Epstein reporters have said, there isn't really a client list. The names have been redacted to mostly victims or people who weren't really involved, but just who come up in the documents. Nevertheless, Pam Bondi was ramping this up. She said, I've got the list on my desk.

We've just got to review it. And so then a few days later, all these influencers, these MAGA people come to the White House for an unrelated meeting. And according to ABC's reporting, Pam Bondi then said, won't we surprise them with the Epstein documents? And so she and Cash showed up and said, like, hey, we got them. And then as we know, it turned out to be nearly entirely previously released files, but it still occasioned this kind of like, you know, in retrospect, kind of sick,

the photo op, everyone's like, look, you know, we got evidence of the child trafficking. Yeah, there was a smiling. Yeah, very happy about it because they say that they were sending the message to the press. They were taking pictures of them like, we're the media now. Yeah, it's a bizarre thing. I mean, like stepping back from everything, like the people that they chose, right, like the DOJ. I mean, if you were going to do something like this, you know, I don't know. I'm trying to think about like back when I was a flack, you know, way in the before times. I remember, for example, we were going to give a select group of reporters Jeb's tax returns, right? Because those, you know, to try to pressure Trump to put out

his tax returns. This is, you know, simpler times and obviously was a strategy that backfired. So the communications director gets a negative mark on that one. But you know, it's like, we picked a couple of friendly reporters, right? So hopefully they'd focus on the nice stuff where he gave money to charity or whatever. But then you give a call, you know, you have the AP in there, like you have a finance expert in there. So, so, you know, they're going some credibility to it. Like that is not at all what

happened here. Like just talk about the group that was included and that was given these, this binder full of sex offenders. Yeah, I mean, in this case, these are even more sensitive documents. Let's make sure that they're treated with, you know, the discretion and the respect, you know, that this issue deserves. Right. Think about the victims on respect. Yeah, instead of a party favor for visiting the White House. And so instead, we have Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobic, who are notorious pizza gate promoters and right-wing media characters.

I guess when it comes to the credibility of their claims, perhaps I would not give them the Epstein documents. We have a woman named Jessica Reed Krause, who I think, put a pin in that. I think she's going to become like, this is one to watch. The character in the new one. Okay. Yes. And so she's called House Inhabit on Instagram. And she kind of emerged, she was kind of like a lifestyle blogger in Orange County. And then she got really RFK-pilled.

And then, you know, kind of became part of his entourage and had kind of like a feud with Olivia Nuzzi over RFK and all this stuff. And so she got one and now she's kind of like a citizen sleuth. But this sort of backfired because the influencers who weren't invited like Laura Loomer then start digging up things on the ones who were to prove that they're, you know, deep state shills. And that's why we didn't get the real news. And they found this picture of the Krause once wearing a free Ghislaine Maxwell shirt. This is the house and inhabit lady from Instagram.

Yes. Okay. I'm just trying to get my character straight. She was wearing a free Ghislaine shirt. Yes. And so I don't know the situation where you ever think that's a good idea. She said at the time she was like, look at my provocative shirt, which it certainly is. DC Dre know was also there.

Yeah. DC Dre know Chad Prather who were kind of like MAGA meme lords. This is kind of like the equivalent of like Carpe Donctum, if people remember him kind of, you know, people who make like funny little little video edits or memes. Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, in addition to just like the absurdity, right, that the Department of Justice gives like random lifestyle Instagrammers, like these these

sensitive documents. And it's just telling like who they are trying to cater to. That's something I was working on to kind of hit the cutting room floor, but it was a, the New York young Republican dinner, gala dinner. This is like one of the MAGA young Republican groups. I remember being struck by like Trump is at the head table and like who was with him at the table. It was like some people that people will know of like Bannon and Psobiak. But then it was

like these folks, like he goes on stage and he's like, he name checks DC drain now and he's name checking, right? Like all these other people. And it's like, that is this circle. Like this is why this is so important. Like I think I've said this before, And it's like, that is this circle. Like, this is why this is so important. Like, I think I've said this before, but it's like this, it's like the men in black where, where the tabloids have the real news. It's like, these are the people that they're going to give special access to over the next four years. And so not that they're going to be offering real news, but like, you'll be able to learn things that will not have been provided to actual journalists.

Yeah, I mean, it's there's sort of like a criminal analogy to it. And so you can see like it's like, Oh, well, everyone is turning on, for example, after this debacle on Pam Bondi. And so that seems to be reflecting some anger within the administration or the idea that she's been set up as the scapegoat. These Twitter accounts that obviously have the verified thing and it's just like FBI real news. Last week they reported, or I should say loosely reported, oh, cash wants private bodyguards. He's concerned about his security. That's the kind of thing that obviously I discounted. It got 10,000 retweets.

And then last night some real news outlets tweeted that. There you go. That's men in black. It's happening. The tabloids have the real news. The blue, the random blue checks have the real news. Exactly. Yeah. The cash, as you mentioned it, that's the other thing I've been noticing in the

scuttle cash is already kind of taking some shots at bonding, even though he like sort of works for her, right? Like there is already some sense there, like he wants her to be the fall guy for this stuff. Yeah, well, within hours of this, the binder debacle, you know, she sent him a letter saying, you know, cash, ooh, you held back the good documents. And then they sort of seem to have triangulated on like,

well, let's blame SDNY and the, and the FBI office there because maybe we want to purge them anyway. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely this back and forth where then he says, well, let's blame SDNY and the FBI office there, because maybe we want to purge them anyway. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely this back and forth where then he says, well, you know, I gave you the documents. Now, there's supposedly more documents to come. I mean, but this is a this is sort of a going to be a fruitless journey, but one that I think continues going on with that, the JFK files, all these sort of files. It's just the reality of where we are that like this is probably something that makes Bondi more vulnerable than like legitimate scandals, right? Like if something is going to cost her standing in the administration and in MEGA, it is going

to be getting on the wrong side of these mega influencer weirdos, right? Not the way that she's dismissed people within the DOJ who are just doing their job. Yeah, certainly. I think these kind of scandals are the idea, mini scandals perhaps, the idea that if it just becomes reflexively like, oh, she's a rhino, right?

As you know, I mean, that is kind of like once you get hit with that, then every time anything goes bad in the Justice Department or they don't indict some random Democratic member of Congress they don't like, they're going to say, this is because Pam Bondi is running interference for them. Once you get hit with that, it's kind of hard to get back in their good side. And certainly not something like not enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, they don't care about that. Well, the scary thing is, no, the way to get back on their good side is to do ridiculous things on their behalf. And so this takes us to one, which is not bonding with the administration, but it's like this explains the Tate brothers stuff.

And so I know you'd written about them at the Washington Post, and now there's a little bit of this intro-magic divided with them. But we've been talking about these guys so listeners know, but like they're, you know, this becomes a priority of the administration, I guess, allowing them travel and reprieve from the legal targeting, not legal targeting, like the legitimate investigations of the Romanians and UK had been doing against them. And now they're like palling around with Dana White and Vegas, Cash is there, Zuckerberg's there.

And you know, one way to kind of signal to the mega audience that like you are on their side is to be like, I'll defend, I'll do the most ridiculous thing possible. Like I'll defend these guys who are unapologetic, misogynists, sexual assaults, conspirators, et cetera. Yeah, I mean, the Tate thing is I think so fascinating. When the Tates were first under investigation

for human trafficking a few years ago, it was striking to me how few ties they did have to the MAGA movement at the time. I mean, they were living in Britain and then Romania. They went to the Trump Hotel with kind of some right-wing influencers. But other than that, they weren't huge figures. It's only after, I mean, you would think that this would have been the fall was the human trafficking investigation, but they actually have become stars since then. And so this idea that the US pressured Romania to let them travel and then, you know, once they're here and particularly if they get on a plane to Dubai or something, I mean, they're going to escape justice. I mean, they're also wanted

in the UK. And so you have this interesting divide where I think kind of more your classic conservative types, Ron DeSantis, the Ben Shapiro crew, et cetera. They, I think, understandably do not think conservatives should embrace alleged human traffickers. People who are on video, I mean, it's not even an allegation. I mean, they said all this stuff about sort of entrapping women into being CAM operations and all this kind of stuff. Andretta is one of the rape charges in the UK. And then you have kind of the more, you know, whatever will get me clicks or the more Trumpian types who are more than happy to host them on their podcasts. As you said, Dana White embraced them. It was striking to me that not really a Trump figure,

but someone from Vanderpump Rules also took pictures with them. And then he said, oh my gosh, I didn't know who those guys were. I did now stuff. Mario Lopez did Slater. Yeah, exactly. What's up Slater?

What are you doing? It's really, it's interesting also to have this kind of focus on Epstein and human trafficking and all that's the worst thing you can do, but then also say, oh, come on in, Andrew Tate. Yeah, it's just, it's a good type of human trafficking. It's the mega human trafficking. The Shapiro part is interesting because I think work with me here on this theory, but

it goes to like the vice signaling of all of this. Like in order to get the mega audience to really feel like you're on their side. You have to take positions that are anathema to like elite sensibilities, right? Or to even moralistic sensibilities. So, forget elite sensibilities. So, while Shapiro is holding the line, if you will, by saying that the Tate brothers are bad, like he's simultaneously doing like a MAGA media tour right now talking about how Trump should pardon Derek Chauvin, the cop that killed George Floyd with the knee to the neck. And this media tour is like pretty, like he's on Charlie Kirk's podcast talking about this in addition to talking about it on his own. Like he's really been pushing

this and Trump doesn't even have a lot of jurisdiction here. It's a local charge. There is a more minor federal charge that wouldn't get him out of jail. To me, Ben is just betraying the like, okay, it's a calculation. To demonstrate that I'm still on the mega culture war side of things, I'm just going to take an out there position and if I'm not going to do this on the Tates or on whatever, on being pro-Putin, then I've got to find some other thing to do it on and I'm going to do it with Derek Chauvin. What do you think about that theory? I think there's a lot to that. I think each of these people kind of evaluates their audience and their reputations and say, okay, well, it's going to be a little difficult for me to endorse

an alleged human trafficker. Maybe on a women's issue, I'll have to shy away. But on a race issue, I can just say, yeah, pardon Derek Chauvin. Yeah. All right. As I tease at the top, I want to do around the world of Trumpistan for people. Because we've talked about all these people, but unfortunately, well, you don't have to. I guess everybody has the option to just not care about this and live your life, intend to your garden.

And I honor that choice if you've chosen to do this. But if you want to know what's happening in the Trump administration, unfortunately, you have to understand these people. And so a couple of characters, I mentioned him earlier in the pod. You've been covering all these guys for a while now. So I just want you to give us a little nugget on them, a little backstory. The Washington DC, the US attorney, Ed Martin, Eagle Ed Martin. Yeah, Ed Martin's a fascinating guy.

I don't think he has any experience as a prosecutor. No. I was previously aware of him because Phyllis Schlafly is sort of the anti-feminist icon who died maybe a decade ago or so. He was kind of like her chief crony and there was this big flap over like control of her legacy. And so I was familiar with he got this memo that was just like, here's how we wrest the control of Phyllis Schlafly's image away. And I'm going from memory. Is it not true? Wasn't he on the side of the gay son? But like the gay son was kind of like a self

hating gay or something. I think it's Andy Schlafly. Yeah. I feel like they aligned against the more against like, and because they went mag and they aligned against the more religious children. I'm going just from memory. I think that's exactly. Yeah. I can't remember what they like sort of disposition of the other children, but it was like they, they went with sort of even like a more kind of aggressive like name. It was sort of a more aggressive, like MAGA type brand. And so, but it was like they went with sort of even like a more kind of aggressive like name. It was sort of a more aggressive like MAGA type brand. And so there was that. And then when he got appointed, I was like, wait, like the Phyllis

Schlafly guy, you know, because I think I talked to him at the time when I was writing about it. And US attorney is also a uniquely important role in DC because it also prosecutes sort of street crime and drugs and gun stuff, unlike other jurisdictions. And so I thought, oh, geez, I thought there was supposed to be this like we're going to take crime in DC really seriously. I thought that was part of the administration's job. But instead we get him, this is the guy who's posting

the letters people have may have seen, Elon, I heard that they're coming after Doge. You know, I'm working on the president's behalf, or I think he described himself as Trump's lawyer in one case. And so it's kind of a clown show so far. Yeah, you bring up a good point. There's we talked about this a little bit with Se Cup yesterday, like the crime was

allegedly one of the kind of core tenants of what they're running on. And so this US this DC US attorney pick, right? Like, you know, crime DC is up, all the Trump people are living there now. Like you could have imagined a route that they went where they picked somebody that was like a very draconian, like aggressive, like crime stopping US attorney that was like going to clean up DC or whatever. And instead they've like done the opposite.

Like, and this guy's like writing letters to Georgetown about how they have too many DEI offices in their college and sending off letter, attacking the AP for not using Gulf of America and like a total clown with no prosecutorial experience who is clearly not focused at all on actual crime in the District of Columbia. Yeah. I mean, this is the same prosecutor who sent the letter to, I believe, Chuck Schumer and focused at all on actual crime in the District of Columbia. Yeah, I mean, this is the same prosecutor who sent the letter to, I believe, Chuck Schumer and another member of Congress for saying, you know, something like, you got to bring a, don't bring a knife to a gunfight, like these kind of like rhetorical gambits and

saying, you know, were you threatening to kill someone? Yes, it was. Chuck really was. He was threatening. He was threatening murder. You got him, Ed. We'll see you in court, Chuck was threatening murder. You got him Ed. We'll see you in court Chuck. All right. You mentioned him earlier. Deputy FBI director, Deputy FBI director Dan

Bongino. Before I give you, you get to give your backstory because I don't think I've gotten to this in the pod yet. I have actually two facts that I want to share from my side. Number one is I have good authority that, or I guess this is public now, yes, this is public now, that Cash met with the FBI union, the Bureau, the agents union, met with the leadership and promised them that he was going to have a deputy that was somebody that had experience and there were certain metrics that they wanted the deputy to have. Cash agreed to that. Cash suggested, I hate to hand it to Cash, but Cash suggested, you know, kind of metrics that they wanted the deputy to have. Cash agreed to that. Cash suggested.

I hate to hand it to Cash, but Cash suggested, apparently, a couple of people that would have fit this bill. Trump says no, overrules him, picks Bongino, who has no experience, has never been an agent. And then Bongino can't join for a week because he's got to keep podcasting to fulfill the obligations to his advertisers, including one advertiser that's like, we protect you from the deep state, which Dan Bongino is about to be. The whole thing is just so fucking ridiculous. So anyway, I'm sorry.

Ball's in your court, Dan Bongino. Well, I mean, it's important to have your priorities straight, get those referral codes out and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I mean, Dan Bongino is a guy I became aware of just sort of like driving around DC and it's important to have your priorities straight. You know, get those referral codes out, all that kind of stuff. I became aware of just sort of like driving around D.C. and listening to the local talk radio. And this was like a local talk radio guy, I mean, 13 years ago, 14 years ago. And he was a former Secret Service agent and he would call in and say, and then he had this kind of failed run for the Senate in Maryland. And I thought that was the last we would hear of him.

And then I was like, oh, he got a talk radio show, and he filled the Rush Limbaugh's time slot for a lot of people. And then now he's going to be the FBI Deputy Director. And as you said, I mean, this is traditionally sort of a grizzled old hand, sort of someone who in a way sort of represents the line agents. And instead we are getting a guy who's never been in the FBI and obviously is most recently a podcaster. I'm curious. The Bongino Show never hit for me. All right. I'm an amateur in your space.

You're monitoring all this stuff for a profession. I do it kind of as a side hustle because I'm a sicko. But I get the ban and appeal. I get the Candice appeal. I find Ben Shapiro totally revolting, but I understand it. I understand what people like about it. I don't get the Bongino thing. Why did his little talk radio show thing succeed? This person, when I listen to his show, I wonder if this person is literate, if he can read. I mean, is it just a show for really dumb people? Is there something that he does very well that I miss? Like, is there, I guess a podcast or is there something I could learn from him? You could pick up a couple of tips.

I mean, you're right. I mean, there is, you know, for those of us who consume this content, but don't share their politics, I think we can tell when there's a, you know, someone who is a gifted broadcasters entertaining or, or you kind of figure out what niche they're fitting into versus Dan Bongino. And that's why I was surprised when a lot of stations picked him up to replace Limbaugh because I thought Limbaugh was a fun guy to listen to. Whereas I mean, Dan Bongino is kind of, there's kind of like a classic like replacement level

talker type who's just like a mad guy, kind of like Mark Levin. And you listen to these guys and it's like, this guy's just mad about it, you know, like Kennedy too, where, you know, he's just giving you the talking points. There's not like a lightness to it, but I agree. I'm not a huge listener. Yeah, okay. So the madness, you think, is what his hook is,

that he just gets mad and people want somebody that's mad. It's sort of a community of, obviously it's sort of the MAGA universe. It's a world that's not short on people who are mad And so I think it's kind of funny when when someone stands out for being mad I mean he he's not like my colleague at the post an email that was you know, oh you dipshit all this stuff So, you know, there are certain guys who are just like I'm mad. He's the hottest of the hotheads I need to take a pause from around Trumpistan because we do have some breaking FBI news

per Bill Mitchell. Oh, okay. It's just been sent to me. Bill Mitchell is another figure on the online right. And so we'll see whether this ends up being fake news or real news, but it is important that we, I feel like we got to find like the old men in black music or something. We need a segment for the oil summer segment about, or just maybe an audio clip of Tommy Lee Jones talking about how this is where he gets the real news.

I'll work on that. Me and Jason will work on that. In the meantime, Bill Mitchell breaking FBI news. FBI director Cash Patel has requested a direct line from his home and office to Trump's Oval Office bypassing AG Pam Bondi. This goes to exactly what we were just talking about. I mean, who knows if this is true or not, but I think it's pretty telling about what they're doing here. I mean, it kind of seems like Cash is going to be the next Attorney General, right?

And he already runs the ATF. Yeah, right. I think it makes a little more sense because, you know because initially it was like, wow, it's a real reach for Cash to be the FBI director. But now you say, well, he's already been the FBI director. How far is attorney general? So I do think, Pam Bondi, I think you can tell that she's not as adept in this world of right-wing influencers.

She should be the one leaking to Bill Mitchell. All these people are from Florida. And so there was this claim after the binders thing happened, just briefly, that basically she gave them these binders to butter them up because she knows she has this deficit They're from Florida. guy in Las Vegas. Have you read this story? I have read it. I don't know a ton about it, but it is sort of another, it's just like another like really weird thing. Yeah. It's very strange. It's something I've got my house on. Cash wants to live in Vegas while he's running two very large, complicated bureaucracies. He wants to live in Vegas part time. And I guess I have a direct line from Bill Mitchell says his home, but reportedly based on the Nevada independent, it's not actually his home. He lives in some rich timeshare scammers house.

I asked David from about this last week and he's like, I hope that it's sexual in nature because if it's not something really bad, it's happening. That was a good take. All right, back to around the world of Trumpistan. I don't know if I've mentioned him since he got this job. This is how fucking ludicrous this administration is. The counterterrorism chief for the United States of America is Sebastian Gorka. Tell us about Sebastian Gorka.

Yeah. I mean, Gorka, as you said at this point, it's like, oh, thank gosh. Thank gosh the adults are in the room, right? Gorka's here. That's how I felt with, you know, amid everything else. I mean, Gorka is another, it's good to do him after Bongino, because Gorka is like another like classic mad guy, but in kind of like a more gentlemanly way, an old world sensibility. You know, obviously we know he has in the last administration, there are all these questions about his ties to kind of like neo-quasi-Nazi European groups. And did he get a medal from one of them or what have you. But these days, you know, he he too was in talk radio. I mean, it's it's a sign I think, you know, we're talking about

the second administration versus the first Trump administration of how things have changed that in the past, you know, five years or so, I think Gorka has kind of presented himself as like somewhat of a voice of reason. I mean, he had this like really long running feud with QAnon people where he was like, you're not cases and this kind of stuff. I mean, so it's still, I would say disturbing. And he's not a guy that is I would call judicious. Even keel. I mean, he lashed out at me one time in the hallway of CPAC started shouting me down. He's taller than you think. He's very tall.

Yeah, not great breath. And I kind of forget it's in the circus archives somewhere. I forget what he's calling me. Not a nice name. He's come after you too, I think. Yeah, I sent him a very nice email. I think it maybe was a story about his feud with QAnon and I sent him an email. And then I was just a few few hours later I was just sitting around and he called me and I never talked to him before and he said it is Will Sommer and I said yeah and he said stick your head in a bucket full of eels and I was just I was just shocked that I had to have him I said can you say that again like I need to get that quote down and he said stick your head in a bucket full of eels and I thought really

nothing of it I said okay well that's a little weird and then he played it on his show and he played it as sort of like kind of a crank yanker situation where he sort of said, I had a clever little call. So it's, he's an unusual guy. It's the counter-terrorism chief of America. And you, I mean, like, okay. I guess, I guess, do you feel safe listeners? He's going to prank call Hamas.

All right. I want to close by getting into the grifting world. I want to really close with the greatest grift that's going out there. But before we get to that, I just wonder if you have any thoughts going to open season on either the crypto grifts and all the various crypto characters that are around. It's very different from Trump 1.0. And another thing, Bloomberg has an interesting story on this 1789 capital, which Donald Trump Jr.

has gotten his hands in. And just like the madness of the fact that there's now this mega VC firm and I can order to get in the good graces of the administration. Like huge companies are now like raising funding rounds. And it's like, we're going to include Sequoia and we're going to include Black Rock, and then we're going to include Donald Trump Jr. and Blake Masters' firm and give them a little taste. I don't think people have really just kind of appreciated how deep that grip is going. So I'm just wondering if you have really just kind of appreciated how deep that

grip is going. So I'm just wondering if you have thoughts on any of those characters or what's what's happening there. Yeah, I mean just, just jumping on the 1789 thing. I mean, it is fascinating that we just have these situations and where, you know, people with connections to the administration or with the ability to sway the president are just sort of really have their pockets. They're, they're saying, Hey, you know, come on through. If you want to butter up to me, you know, donate to my VC fund. The Bloomberg article is interesting. sway the president are to really have their pockets

so they're saying, hey, come on through if you want to butter up to me, donate to my VC fund. The Bloomberg article is interesting. Basically, I guess the pitch is that this is kind of the anti-ESG, this is the anti-woke capital situation. But I think in practice, as you said, it's interesting that they're having these massive funding rounds and then also Don Jr. is coming. In terms of the crypto stuff, I follow crypto world relatively closely. I think it's been interesting that in some ways it seems like the main, like real heavy bag holders as they say, are getting frustrated that Trump seems to have been captured by what you might call shitcoins. Like when he announced the Bitcoin reserve or the crypto reserve and he said, look, we're going to have Bitcoin and we're gonna have

Ada and soul and Luna I mean are these various kind of minor coins that made people concerned? I think that he was just trying to to pump the bags. Don't you fucking downgrade Solana? Okay. All right. Don't you lump Solana and with all these other shit coins. all right? Like this is, this is serious business. That's a real, that's a real coin there. It's a lot of value underneath there. Are you, are you holding onto that one? No, I'm not holding on to any stuff.

All of the crypto listeners get so mad at me. You are correct that there are some serious crypto people that are expressing annoyance with Trump because it is, you know, obviously Bitcoin is down, ETH is down, and at some level, I think they rightly see undermining the credibility of their product. And I think that there is clearly some difference between what Bitcoin and what ETH are trying to do and what some of these other total scams are. That said, they're not that mad. I mean, if it keeps going down, they're going to be mad. You know, there have been a lot of people who've been making money

off of this and like getting in on it. And there doesn't seem to be like, honestly, if I were like a big Bitcoin advocate, right, or a CEO of Coinbase. I would be in a panic over this. Like I would be out there like trying to, you know, do anything I could to protect myself from the shrapnel of the just of this just naked grift that the President of the United States is running with his coins. And like you're not really seeing that. Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, they think they are, I mean, they obviously realize I think this administration is friendlier to crypto than any Democrat would be. They all got fucking rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams during the Biden years. So I understand that Gary Gensler is like, whatever the greatest, the greatest devil that history

has ever known to the crypto world. But you know, all those guys are going to vacation in Tulum, thanks to the money that they made during the Biden years. But anyway, I'm sorry to interrupt. I just think it's interesting that like this this frustration they're having that basically it's like they were kind of playing like three card Monte or something and then Trump came and set up a way bigger table to do his own three card Monte, but he's doing it a lot of clumsier. So people are like, wait a minute, I can see this is a con, you know, they're like, hey, cut it out, Trump.

The 1789 Capitol thing. I'm looking forward to future Will Summer reporting on this. It's astonishing that Don Jr. is at these tables. Have you seen the meme of like the, with the dragons? That's like the two angry dragons and the one dragon with like the eyes and tongue going sideways like the one dragon that looks like they got hit on the stupid tree and they fell all the way down. Like that is what is happening in these investment rounds.

It's like they're four serious investing companies at the table and then there's Don Jr. And I don't know, who knows if the guy that got, I guess he didn't get fired from the administration, but one of the cast offs from Doge are sitting there getting paid. The greatest grift of all though, the ties to, you know, you said your youth as a religious man, everybody who believes in God and believes that we should follow the righteous path,

they should feel comfort knowing that the leader of the White House Faith Office, the leader of the White House Faith Office, the leader of the White House Faith Office, Paula White, offered this video to her supporters this week. So what are you going to do? You see, I have to be obedient to God. And you must sacrifice in some way during this prophetic season because it's through sacrifice that your spirit opens up so wide that you can receive divine direction. This is a deliverance seed that needs to be sown now, to be in position, to see increase,

to activate God's promises. And if you're able, I challenge you to sow $133 because we sow in accordance to the Word. I love to get a word from God and put my faith with it. And 133 stands for Proverbs 133. Proverbs 133. You just give me $133 and man, this moment of divine prophecy in Trump's golden age will shine on you, Will Sommer. I was just about to say, where's she getting the 133? But it makes sense now. Proverbs. I feel like that's a little cheap.

I feel like she could have maybe punched it up a little bit. What, the Paula White? Where did this lady come from? Yeah. I mean, she's been around the administration for a while. I think the previous administration, I mean, she's kind of like a, just a, a sort of one of these charismatic ministers. I looked her up.

She, every, every couple of years, she gets like a big viral, viral clip where like she was saying, you know, she's trying to get Trump reelected. And then she just said, and strike and strike and strike for like about a minute. But I guess it worked. All right, Wendit there. I am, I'm super looking forward to all the reporting on these weirdos and characters that you're going to do to educate us. You'll be kind of like a layer of the tabloid news, right? Kind of translating the tabloid news for all the rest of us. I really appreciate it, Will.

Thanks for having me. One more thing before I leave. I just wanted to shout out Kevin Drumm. He's a longtime blogger, a longtime liberal blogger that died this week. I've gotten to work with him a little bit. We'd sparred a couple times when he wrote something when I was a flack of the RNC. Then we sparred again when I was a writer for the Bulwark and we disagreed about a culture war column that he had written. But he's always fair-minded, always serious. I'd recommend going out and checking out his archives if you weren't familiar with him. Wanted to honor Kevin Drumm a little bit. But there's a story that my friend Ben Dreyfus wrote about him that I wanted to share with you

guys. Ben writes the Calm Down sub stack, which is advice that I don't take from him, but his sub stack is usually quite amusing, if nothing else, and insightful. And he wrote about Kevin that they'd worked together at Mother Jones at the height of the awakening in the cancel culture world on the left. And Kevin was more of an old school liberal. And he'd written a couple things that some of the younger progressive staff didn't like. And this came to a head when he wrote a blog post about the movie Parasite, of all things,

and how he didn't really prefer subtitles. And some people on the staff, some of the young progressive staff decided that was racist, I guess, and this thing snowballs and eventually results in Kevin leaving and going out on his own. All this happened. He'd already been diagnosed with cancer at the time. The thing that Ben shares about Kevin is that at the time he was driving most of the traffic to the site.

You know, he set a 1.33% and then it went up and up and up and was the second biggest driver for Mother Jones of revenue to the site. But every time they tried to give him a raise, he wouldn't take it. He said he didn't need it and he wanted to put that money back into the fellowship at Mother Jones. He wanted to support the mission. He wanted to support the salaries of the very people that ran him out on a rail. And he didn't say anything about that.

He didn't tell anybody. He went out on his own and continued writing, continued to be true to himself. And I thought it was a lovely story. It is a model that all of us should try to live up to about being true to oneself, about not being bullied, about trying to support a cause that is greater than yourself, even if you don't agree with every single person that is associated with the cause. And man, he was a great writer. He influenced a lot of writers that I like and he'll be missed.

So rest easy, Kevin Drum. Thanks to Ben Dreyfuss for sharing that story and everybody else. We'll be back here tomorrow for another edition of the Blurred Podcast. We'll see you all then. Peace. Mr. TV President You go and train your hands To hold your head up high On the path of illusions

You lost your passport and your dolphin When you went on vacation And now there is no vacation For you, I call Fever, fever Feel love in the summer room Feel love, feel love Dream kiss Our nights stay on the way And playing on the waves The cold, the sun, and the sulfur

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Take it to the top Take it to the top The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with Audio Engineering and Editing by Jason Brepp.