The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Philip Bump Debrief with Michael Moynihan, Mike Pesca and Eli Lake

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

Noam Dworman and Dan Naturman have a round table to discuss the episode with Philip Bump that went viral.  Eli Lake is a journalist and the former senior national security correspondent for The Daily Beast and Newsweek. Currently, he is a columnist for the Bloomberg View. He has, among others, contributed to CNN, Fox, C-SPAN and Charlie Rose. Created and hosted by Mike Pesca, The Gist is the longest running daily news podcast in history, consistently ranked in Apple's Top 20 Daily News charts. In addition to guest hosting NPR Programs, he has frequently appeared on MSNBC, CNN, and The PBS Newshour, and written for The Washington Post, The Guardian, GQ, and more.  Michael Moynihan is a journalist, former National Correspondent for Vice News and co-host of The Fifth Column podcast. He was the cultural news editor for The Daily Beast/Newsweek, and the managing editor of Vice magazine.

This is Live from the Table, the official podcast of the world-famous Comedy Cellar, coming at you on Sirius XM 99 Raw Dog. And wherever podcasts are available, Dan Natterman here, along with Comedy Cellar owner Noam Dorman, Perrie Lashenbrand, back from her trip to Israel. Welcome back, Perrie. Thank you. Hi. And we have three esteemed guests to discuss last week's episode, which was probably our most listened to episode with the Washington Post columnist. Philip Bump.

Philip Bump. So we have with us today to parse that episode and discuss whatever else might come up, Mr. Eli Lake, former national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and host of the ReEducation podcast. Michael Moynihan here to my left, contributor for the Daily Beast and News host of the Re-Education Podcast, Michael Moynihan, here to my left, contributor for the Daily Beast and Newsweek, former contributor, and current fifth columnist. He's co-host of the Fifth Column Podcast, and our dear friend Mike Peska. One of the most famous podcasts in America, by the way.

Yes. Very high up in that list. Is that true? I think it is. You just said that, and you were like, really? Well, because you make a living from... I do indeed. Yes. Yeah, we don you make a living from I do indeed, yes. Yeah, we don't make a living from this. Mike Peska is not only a

current guest at the Comedy Cellar, comes frequently to see shows here. He's also creator and host of the podcast The Gist, the longest running daily news podcast. Welcome all three of you, and I probably won't say too much from here on out, but I'll then now I'll pass the baton to Noam to take it from here.

Well, we did that podcast last week. And can I can I can I speak out? Yeah. Can I out you? Yeah, do it. So the origin of that podcast was really that I was turning blue, arguing with Fred Kaplan, my friend Fred Kaplan, and with Mike about what seemed to me to be clear indications that Devin Archer was trying to telegraph to everybody that there's more to this story than I'm willing to say and that you think. And Mike just wouldn't have it. I got so frustrated.

I said, I want you to come over to my house and we're going to watch it together because I fantasized I'm going to stop it. What did he mean there? What did he mean there? What do you mean there? And he dug in. So I said, all right, Mike, tell me who the smartest guy in America is that you think has your basic. Who's the human shield for your invite to watch the testimony together? And he said, Philip Bump. So being, you know being a good faith person that I am, I invited Philip Bump, sight unseen, onto the podcast. No, he called it an ambush and all that stuff. Perry Elkish showed you the email. It said, we want you on to discuss Hunter Biden, Devin Archer's testimony, and Burisma.

That's specifically what it said. And then I actually thought it hadn't gone well because I had so many points. Yeah. And he dug in like, you know, you try to walk a dog and they dig in. Or Ray Romano used to say he tried to raise a crying three-year-old and they go like this and you can't lift them, the kind of anti-gravity lift. And so I was very clip at the end, but I declined to cut that into a clip because I don't ever want to market somebody getting kind of humiliated or whatever it is. They're nice enough to come. I don't want to use them. The rest of the internet did that for you.

Yeah, the rest of the internet. But I declined to do it, just so you know. Periel knows that. So I thought it was going to fade into obscurity. And he was out there tweeting, it gained no traction, blah, blah, blah, all kinds of stuff. But then it caught on. What I hadn't counted on was that the psychodrama of it all,

more than the substance, I have to say, more than that I said anything that smart, the meltdown was very, very compelling. And I think it did tell people something about the aggressive lack of curiosity, at least to, now you may disagree about the answers, and I'm going to turn it over to you guys

literally for the next hour and a half or whatever it is. You may disagree about the answers and what the explanations are, but the fact that he seems to show no interest in getting to the bottom of things, that he'll chalk off all these statements by Devin Archer as, he's just doing it to the bottom of things. That he'll chalk off all these statements by Devin Archer

as he's just doing it to please Tucker Carlson. And actually, he didn't even want to consider the interview because Tucker Carlson asked the questions, which is just so, I mean, anyway. So I'll turn it over to you guys to discuss the interview, what I did wrong. Maybe you want to talk about whether I was right or not to cut in some things as I did.

What does it say about the press? All of it. Who wants to go first? Mike, you want to go first? Yeah, I thought that... And ignore me. Go ahead. Bump is a smart guy

and he marshals his case. You know, it's a prosecutor's brief when he writes as a columnist, which is fine. I think on the show, he comported himself exactly like a Democratic witness getting grilled by a Republican House committee. And so he thought that this was give and take.

And he thought that if he could zing you as much as he got zinged, then he'd win the day. But he did come off really thin skinned, I think. And I think this is really important to your entire critique of this. You said that you're not even so much upset with what Joe Biden might've done or Hunter. This is a media critique for you and a press critique and him acting this way as a columnist and someone with opinion,

but also the person who's written about it the most in the mainstream media, it's somewhat infuriated you. And he had, and he comported himself in person in an even more infuriating way. So the psychodrama, I do think did not play to his strengths, but I also think that he should have engaged your points in a little better faith,

but I don't think he said too much. I would have to go over the tape and after minute 45, when he said I was only here for 45 minutes, maybe we cut him some slack, but no, and every podcast goes over and he wasn't here for an hour and 15. He was here for an hour. Maybe we cut him some slack. No. And every podcast goes over. And he wasn't here for an hour and 15. He was here for an hour. Yeah.

So I don't know how much he actually got wrong in substance versus in how he dealt with your questions. Maybe he was too dismissive. I think he got every single thing wrong, but I'll let Eli. Eli's a better expert on this than I am. Well, I mean, the problem is that he approached the topic

as if nothing had changed in the Hunter Biden story. Everything has changed in the Hunter Biden story. Everything that we were told by people like Philip Bump, and I say this as somebody who's a journalist, and I have a lot of friends at the Washington Post. It's not that, but it's just everything that was sort of insisted that if you disagreed with it, you were peddling disinformation. In 2020, your account could be suspended if you were, you know, talking about this story the laptop. And they said the laptop was Russian disinformation. And then we find out, amazingly, like this summer, that the FBI had not only confirmed the laptop by December 2019.

Before the debate. Before the debate. So what is the FBI doing? A warning of like possible Russian disinformation coming out, you know, and letting the social media companies believe, this came out in the Twitter files nine months ago, that this story was, you know, fakery when they knew it was right. How did that happen? So that's just one example of like, you know, the first like thing that I thought was like, why are you acting like, oh, here we go again? No, the people who oh, here we go again?

No, the people who should be here we go again should be you, DeVille Bump. Like, what do you mean you don't have questions now after everything that we were told about the laptop, about, I mean, Hunter did nothing wrong. Remember that? Like it was a smear to suggest that he was monetizing, you know, the Biden family name. We now have evidence from these bank alerts that it's like

what 27 million dollars for five years that's a lot of money it's even for washington that's a lot of money i gotta say um it's and and then you put it in a broader i think you have to put in a broader perspective it's not just barisma there's a company that's now defunct that was called china cefc that is red commie Chinese trying to advance what's known as the Belt and Road Initiative, which sounds innocuous, but it's like China's plan to take over the world.

Okay, Hunter Biden gets a diamond from the CEO of that, and it's not suspicious. But that's post-vice presidency, right? I believe it's... You might be, I think it is maybe... Which is important. Yeah, but also he did go to China and meet with those guys when he traveled on the vice president's plane.

The other thing I thought was amazing is that in 2018, another figure, and I don't remember his name off the top of my head, from CEFC China is arrested in New York. And it's part of a scandal for evading sanctions and lots of other things. When he goes to jail, he calls Jim Biden, Joe Biden's brother, but he thought that was the number for Hunter. And he has never been seen again, by the way. I am not joking. He disappeared off the face of the earth. Yeah, and then the CEO has disappeared in China.

So anyway, that's just a part of what I've called the Hunter Biden scandal. Abra. And we were and it was we were told not only that the story isn't right, that for a period in the most important part of the run up to the campaign, you couldn't post stories that were true. So it was like the whole thing was inverted. So and Philip doesn't seem to have any recognition of all that, and just thinks the Republicans are at it again. Now, on the specifics of what to make of Devin Archer's testimony, I think you raised a very important point, which is that he seemed to be speaking almost like a kind of double talk, if you compare, if you look at the whole record, which was what he said to the committee and then what he said to Tucker Carlson. But he seemed to be suggesting there might be more. And I think it's very significant that the people who told him that a Burisma board wanted, you know, didn't want him gone,

Shoken gone, or didn't matter, were the Washington team and not the Burisma people in Kiev. Okay, that seems like relevant to me, especially since all these other pillars of the story have collapsed. Well, wouldn't he know what they felt in Kiev? He would think he would. He's on the board. Of course he would know. Well, I mean, it's also possible, to be fair,

is that his job at Rosemont Seneca was to structure these public-private partnerships, and maybe he didn't have access to that. But he had Hunter or Powell's, and he's speaking. structure these like, you know, public private partnerships and that maybe he didn't have access to that. But there's there were. But he had Hunter or pals and he's speaking. It's inconceivable to me that I spent some time in Ukraine. There's drinking parties. Everybody's talking. This guy seized all the property.

Now he gets fired. He it seems to me some he would know if the actual feeling was, oh, no, that's a good thing. So here's what I just said. That's a bad thing. We had him under control. There is a fact here that is important to kind of get it for the other side. And that is, it's also true that the

United Kingdom, the European Union and all of this kind of good government anti-corruption people thought that Shokin was corrupt. The World Bank, the Atlantic Council, basically everyone who looks at corruption. Right. So they all said this guy's corrupt. And it was U.S. policy. It wasn't like Biden was overruling the State Department.

This is what everybody wanted. But that said, that doesn't change the fact that... What about that memo that came out a couple weeks ago that said that it wasn't conditional on Shulkin and one of them gave a compliment to Shulkin. It was in the Post. Is that Newland wrote a... I would have to see it.

I mean, but I just, I remember in 2019 when the impeachment stuff was going on and I did a little bit of a dive and I had just come from Kiev after like the story broke and everything.

And I guess I would say that it doesn't matter though if it turned out that Shulkin was also corrupt. It could be, two things could be true, which is that all these people thought he was corrupt

and Burisma wanted him gone because they were either being squeezed by him for corrupt reasons. By the way, that distinction that Bump made, oh, so it's like if it's different that they would want it because he was corrupt as opposed to he was trying to regulate them. It doesn't matter. If you hire a guy, if you hire the vice president's son for influence in washington and the vice president does exactly what you wanted it doesn't matter if there were other good reasons for that that's a problem and you know what i mean it's and and there's seems that there might be other things

so it seems to me like i'm at the phase where i'm not saying i know for sure that this was a corrupt deal because i don't think we do but i'm'm no longer accepting the, you'd have to be crazy. This is Russian disinformation. If you have some questions about whether or not Biden, you know, basically was in some ways doing the bidding of, uh, you know, his, you know, for his son's foreign contacts, he certainly assisted the business by showing up 20 times on these FaceTime calls and meeting them at Cafe Milano. So let me just say a couple of things and bring Michael in. First of all, as a boss,

quite often there are scenarios, and I try to avoid them at all costs, where you can do a justified thing, justifiable thing, for the wrong reasons. I have half a staff of employees who I could fire for cause. But, you know, if I didn't like one of them or I saw some other thing to gain by firing them, I'd say, what do you mean?

Don't you know that they were, I have these six emails complaining about them and the managers complained about them. That's not enough. And that's what seems, that's what I suspect could have been going on here. Just to say, this is from the Post. Victoria Nuland, the

State Department's top point person in 2015, even sent Shulkin a letter praising the prosecutor for his work. We have been impressed with the ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda. I know this can be pro-formist stuff. That's like everyone who's fired said, but I got a good performance review. And then later in the

fall, where is it? There was a memo where they approved the aid without any requirement that Shulkin be fired. And apparently from this article in the Post, it took everybody by surprise. Nobody but Biden knew that Shulkin was going to be fired, which indicates not well for him. That comports with his story and his anecdote. If he's not fired, I'm not giving you the aid, he seemed to say, and surprised them in the moment. I should say that happens all the time

in terms of U.S. diplomacy. So if we think that there's a very corrupt official in an important position in a country that we're more powerful, that we provide a lot of aid to, we condition aid to them, removing them. That happens a lot. So, I mean, I'm just saying, if that was the only thing, it would be, but what's going on with Hunter is so much more.

What's even more disturbing on the Hunter Biden stuff, and I would love to hear Philip Bump explain this one away, is what happened, you had this crazy plea deal that the judge looked at and said, we can't have it. And then they all turned around and they're like, OK, no more plea deal. We're going to charge him now with the gun charges. We're going to do all this. So that strikes me that there was like something there. Basically, the Justice Department somewhere was corrupted in such a way to bend over backwards to give the president's son the best possible deal.

Meanwhile, they're taking a very hard line on people in and around Trump. I'm not trying to say, but it certainly fuels the perception of a double standard of justice when you see the president's son getting this unprecedented treatment. Like, I mean, legal experts were saying they'd never seen a plea deal like that. Oh, I spoke to an attorney general, I mean, a prosecutor, who told me he's never seen a statute of limitations lapse. Yeah, right. That's another thing. They always bring charges.

Why did they let it lapse? Like all this stuff. And it's like, OK, like this, you know, sometimes I'm banging my head against the wall. I'm not a Trumper by any stretch. But you're making the argument for them when you do stuff like this. So you want to jump in? I do. I mean, you said at one point during this very frustrating interview, which I did the right thing. And if you haven't listened to this, ladies and gentlemen, do so.

But don't do it the way I did it initially. You sent this to me and I consumed it in pieces and didn't realize just how fucking irritating it was until I listened to the whole thing beginning to end today on my drive all the way east here. And I almost had to pull over and find someone to punch in the face because I couldn't believe. That's the next killer app right there. You actually imported yourself very well. You conceded points. I would have reached over and open hand slapped him.

But here's the thing. And I know that's me saying it, not you. What this thing drove me, this is exactly why people hate the media in almost every way, and I know people say that a lot. I know it's kind of hardening it away into a cliche,

but just a couple things. The two or three invocations of, you know, well, I work at the Washington Post, made me want to kill somebody. It's like, yes, so did Janet Cook. Can you find her? But you know, I told I work at the Washington Post. Made me want to kill somebody. It's like, yes, so did Janet Cook. Can you find her?

But tell the listeners who Janet Cook is. Oh, she was somebody who made up a, what, an eight-year-old heroin addict in 1981? She won a Pulitzer Prize for it. So that doesn't do much for me. And the other thing is, and you handled this quite well, Noam, was the scoffing, audibly scoffing at an answer given to Tucker Carlson. The interviewee

doesn't matter. And you have to say, well, you're parsing words, Noam. You can't do this. Well, by the way, as a journalist, that's what you do. You parse words. But then I'm going to say, well, listen to his, you know, he's just trying to impress Tucker Carlson. How do you know that? Well, it doesn't make any sense because what he says to Tucker Carlson, he also said under oath multiple times. And yes, there's the intervention of his lawyer, but what you're doing when you don't have all the information that you need and you're a journalist, you start parsing that stuff and it is very curious when you start using the same words over and over. No one ever does that.

It must be the curious words, too, in both interviews and when you're on the road. Now, the thing that drives me... It's spun, in fact. It's spun, and how it's spun to me, not how it was, how I heard it. This is why I disagree with Eli, because spun implies I do know,

and I'm skeptical, as opposed to, I really wasn't involved in that, but that's what I heard. I mean, spinning is the spin room after a debate, is when you say things that, you know, you cover up for bullshit, basically. I'm spinning it. And what about, this is not chess.

This is very complex. It's not checkers. It's not checkers. It's not checkers. Can I give you the greatest spin I ever got from a spin doctor? It was the 2008 campaign. And I don't know if this is a minor story, I guess, but it came out that Sarah Palin's daughter,

who was, I think, 16 or 17, was pregnant. With her seventh child. Right. Something like that. Brick or brack or whoever. So my editor at the time, I was I think 16 or 17, was pregnant. With her seventh child. Right. Something like that. Brick or brack or whoever. So my editor at the time, I was at the New York Sun, my editor at the time said, you know what? I want you to call up the McCain campaign,

and I want you to call all these groups that were against teen pregnancy and ask, what do you think of it now that the future potential second lady as daughter is a teen whatever? And so I can't say who I talked to, but somebody on the campaign, who is a good friend of mine, and I'm like, you know who it is, Mike. I do.

And I was like, I need a comment on this story. I mean, you know, Ira's telling me I got to write this, and you know, like, what do you have to say? And the response was, this is the greatest spin ever. There's a lot of Americans out there with knocked up daughters. They vote too. I mean, I have to say that the last bit, which you thought would have been unfair to clip at,

which I think that was the right instinct, and it got out there anyway. If it's worthy, people will find it, cut it up. Tell me what happened. The last bit of this interview, when Philip Bump essentially leaves, will find it cut it tell me what happened the last the last bit of this interview when philip bump essentially leaves oh because you're holding the kind of ace card the whole time which is the one that should set off alarm bells for literally every journalist in the country and i guarantee

you if you ask most people reasonably informed people in in this city do they know about a text message that the president's son sent to his daughter saying, I have to kick 50% of the proceeds to my father? Is there nothing curious about that? Could he have been making it up to his daughter? I don't know why. Maybe there's some innocent explanation for it. I doubt there is. But that is the first thing you say, well, there's no evidence. And you say, well, that's evidence. And he says, well, that's the evidence that you like. Well, I mean, of course it's the evidence that I like because it's Hunter Biden saying I give half of my money to my father. Now, one would imagine that would precipitate a number of journalists to get in their investigative mode and start looking into this. I think that Comrade Peska's description is the right one. He used to say it did seem like someone from the Democratic Party defending themselves against the Republican interlocutor during a hearing.

Because that's how he comported himself. What you should have said is, I have a dossier compiled by a former British spy that says 50% of Hunter's income is going to him. But exactly, the double standard on top of all this is more than anybody can take. But, you know, we've gone down the road a little bit. First of all, during your interview, did you talk about the laptop? Did the laptop come up extensively with Bump? Not extensively. Because I don't have any objection to what you were saying, Eli.

Yesterday I interviewed Michael Vickers. He's, I think, the third person of the 51 intelligence officials who testified that it was Russian disinformation as a former intelligence czar for Obama. Do you regret signing that letter? He said he did. I asked David Preece the same question. He said he did. He did regret signing the letter, knowing what he knows now. And a few of them will.

Jim Clapper won't. They're very good friends. But yeah, I totally agree. And Philip Bump, by. Jim Clapper won't, and they're very good friends. But yeah, I totally agree. And Philip Bump, by the way, was defending that in that very, very curious way which he was, guess what he was doing? He was parsing language. Yeah. When he said that, well, they didn't say that it was from Russia

because what happened with the Hillary Clinton emails. It has all the hallmarks. It has the hallmarks, but they were weaponizing something that was real, but the Russians were the one that were weaponizing it, so that's important. But they also said that the reason they were suspicious is because it's at the last minute while Trump is down in the polls. But if you know that actually the FBI had the laptop a year earlier, that makes no sense any longer. And nobody told them that.

But to me— So the letter, even when we heard about it, was already moot. Your disagreement with Bump, the crux of it, we need to lay the predicate or you tell me what your thesis is, because I took that you advanced two theses as regards what Joe Biden received for Hunter Biden working with Burisma. And the thesis was one vague one that I can't sign on to, which is you define corruption as anything that a father engages with that generally helps the son. And you correctly said that if my son is rich,

I mean, this is in my interest too. But that's not what corruption is under the law. Parents will vaguely, indirectly help their son get to a position that they wouldn't have gotten. And we all know he wouldn't have gotten that position if his name wasn't Biden. And the only reason he had that position was his father was the vice president. No one disputes that.

But that is not corruption. That is not the corruption of Joe Biden, as I see it. So I happen to have an email up here. I wrote something. I do think the fact that Joe was in charge of attacking Ukrainian corruption while his son was taking part in Ukrainian corruption made the United States look ridiculous and gave the appearance to those hardened gangsters in Ukraine that the vice president was a crook. You agree with that so far? It's a great way to phrase it. I don't think it at the time gave that impression.

How could it not? Because everything in the hiring of Hunter Biden could have given anyone the impression that the vice president was somehow dirty. The only reason, and this is what everyone says, the only reason that Hunter Biden ever had that job, it's not his Yale diploma, it's his last name. That's it. And the only thing he ever had to do in that job was have that last name. And occasionally- No, but if I'm looking at Burisma and I know they're paying this dummy drug addict a million dollars, I'm saying the smart money is the father's in on it. Well, it doesn't matter if that person's either right or wrong. Right, but it gave the appearance that the vice president cooked.

It could have or it could not. Take it step by step. And Biden is aware, you know what? This might make them think that I'm in on it. So at that point, if Biden has dinner with these people or chats with them or in any way makes steps to ingratiate himself to them, he is hardening that position and he's undermining American policy. And I don't see any way out of that. It's not as if he wasn't in charge of Ukraine. And yeah, then I say, yeah, it's just, but this is different.

He was in charge of hunting down the corrupt Burisma. Burisma was on the radar as a corrupt enterprise. He knows already, unless he's an idiot, that this must look weird to them. They might suspect that I'm in on it. Now they see me have dinner with them. I am undermining America. So, and now that's not, you know,

that's not impeachable, but that's a scandal. And if he did pull the trigger and in any way then with mixed motives fire Shulkin, now you are 100% impeachable by the Trump standard, which was Trump trying to look into this

both for American policy and for his campaign chances, right? No, because what Trump did, I mean, listen, the problem with Trump is he's kind of an incompetent buffoon and the way that you would do that if you were I mean, listen, the problem with Trump is he's kind of an incompetent buffoon.

And the way that you would do that if you were competent would be you would you would get a guy to tell another guy in the Justice Department that and do it through a proper channel. When you have the leader of the American president talking to the Ukrainian president, I mean, that's just so nakedly like corrupt. Well, no, because he's that's his he knows he thinks he's going to run against Biden, and he's like, oh, can you start an investigation into him? Well, what he said, I don't want to start defaming Trump, but what he said was, I'm going to put you in touch with my attorney general, which would kind of put it through proper channels. Now, look, well, except that the weird thing is that if it's true that Hunter Biden was corrupt here, then Trump was not doing anything wrong by asking the guy to look into it, right? Well, no, it's wrong for the president who has like all

the, that's why there's all these like buffers and layers. So, I mean, listen, I was against it, by the way, I didn't think you should have been impeached for that. I don't think you should have been. I do agree with you that when we were doing, when that impeachment scandal was happening, the dominant media narrative was that it was made up out of whole cloth and there was tons of substance behind it that nobody really looked at. And so that part is absolutely true.

I'm only making the point that Trump was, you might think that what Trump did was much worse and I probably agree with you. I don't want to say much worse. I just think it's like a different kind of thing. But what Trump was impeached for was bending American policy to serve his personal interests rather than

the purity of American interests. He's bending American policy to fire Shokin not because he thinks it's the proper thing, a considered decision on behalf of America, but because it's good for his son. Correct. Then that is the same

category of behavior that Trump was impeached for. Whether it rises to impeach, that's a political issue. Some people think it's worse. Some people think it's not as bad. I think it's exactly the same. As I understand. If it's true. As I understand your thesis, first of all, on the show, you did talk about if you do

something that helps your son, even vaguely, you're helping yourself. But what Comer, what the committee, what I guess most of the people who make these accusations against Joe Biden is, is that there's money there. He benefited. He got some material benefit. And there really is no proof of that. There is no proof that he lined his pockets

in any way with what Hunter did. Except for the email on his computer. That email. No proof, but there's evidence. That email written in, that was's evidence. That email written in the text message. Yeah, the text. It was written as part of like a series of texts. Now this is when I guess he was in the throes

of addiction. He was very upset with his daughter. He was telling him, I don't even know who these people are. Find an apartment with Peter by next week. Send me the keys and leave all my art and furniture. I guess his art's valuable. I love all of you, but I don't receive any respect. And that's fine, I guess. Works for you, apparently. I guess his art's valuable. I love all of you, but I don't receive any respect. And that's fine, I guess. Works for you, apparently. I hope you can

do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years. Really? Is that accurate? Is that what he's done? How old is Hunter Biden? He's been paying for everything for that family for 30 years? He's exaggerating. I'm sure he's sure. It's really hard. But don't worry. Unlike Pop, I won't make you

give me half your salary. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That's pretty suggestive, isn't it? No, that is not. That's an excited utterance. It's not suggestive when you're like, that thing that crackhead said? I am saying a cure item.

Every time I get fucked up on crack, I'm like, I give my money, half my money to people. No, that's like, literally, that string of text doesn't change that. I'm agreeing with you, Moynihan. We should look into this, but there are a lot of other explanations. This is a guy who's an addict.

Who knows that he's overseeing his son's money because his son is blowing $27 million. I'm giving half my income to my father. We don't know if it's true. We don't know why. I am on drugs, and therefore I'm willingly giving. That's a bit of a stretch. I'm curious about it. I don't think it shows.

I don't think it demonstrates. I think we all agree on the following. Yeah, I don't think that it demonstrates anything, you know, but I'll tell you what. I think that this is... Why couldn't it demonstrate that Hunter Biden can't be trusted with his expenses, which is true. So Joe Biden, as a concerned father,

intervened and said, I'm putting this... If he has that level of control in his son's life, I presume, contrary to Philip Bump, that he'd know who he was going to dinner with, who he was doing business with, all these things that Philip Bump said. Well, you know, he doesn't know who's on the call. He doesn't know who's at this dinner. It's like you have to be willful. It just strains credulity when you hear somebody like Bump say he didn't know of any of this stuff.

This man is the vice president, a longtime plagiarist senator, now the president, and now he doesn't know anything. But he also knows enough to keep half of Hunter Biden's money in control of him. Here's the thing that I think is important.

Is that when you, Trump did this so well, and he's such a scumbag, and I hate giving him any credit, but just the idea of the swamp, right? People talked about this. You know, the corruption. I'm a new guy in town. I'm not part of going there to drain the swamp. He doesn't need the money because he's a billionaire, right? People hear this stuff, and then we're parsing things like, well, is it illegal? I don't know. What's the legal statute?

You know what seems really bad? Is that when your portfolio is Ukraine, and it's corruption in Ukraine. It's part of it. There's other stuff, too. And your son decides to join the board of Burisma. I mean, I know he's an oil and gas genius. He knows so much about this stuff. It's so ridiculous. It's so ridiculous. This is everything that is wrong with Washington. A relation to someone powerful gets you millions of dollars.

You might not get it yourself because that's a little too obvious. So it is suggestive that it's if it's coming through him. And people always used to say like Biden has been in Politics for so long. Where is this money coming from? It's a totally reasonable question But the more reasonable question is why did his father not go to him and say son? This is my remit. Mm-hmm. You cannot do this and you have to step down now. You have to he doesn't have control of it Okay, then why didn't the Obama administration say, look, we can't have him running this policy. His son is part of the corruption.

Of course. Why, when you look at Washington, D.C., and you see this, you see a fucking swamp. From a political perspective, that's a great argument. Wait, toothache, toothache. All I'm saying is there is, okay, I know what evidence means. I'm not going to take the Philip Bump line that there is no evidence. There is no proof.

And by proof, I'm not suggesting you need the bank receipt. There are intimations of improprieties. And I think going back is wrong for Biden to not tell Hunter, get out of this business. We all agree there's no proof. Yeah. And we can only take it to so far. And at that point, we say, where the fuck is the media? Because this stuff is not unascertainable. Much of it can be found out if you had the curiosity to do so.

But I am intrigued. If I found a text message from my wife to some dude who says, you know, my boy's son's DNA matches yours. And my wife said, don't jump to conclusions. Don't think it means what it says it means. You keep on bringing this up now. It's quite the benefit of the doubt you're giving him when he says, I paid half my money to pop.

Yeah. That probably means what it says it means or exaggerated. I think it means that he's resentful that he has given some or some of his money was taken or overseen. And by the way, Mike, I have to say that if he is to your, I mean, again, it's just a guess on your part. It's reasonable to do so.

But if your guess is that he is trying to take it over because his son is a drug addict, it might be also good if your son is a drug addict to say maybe you shouldn't be taking millions of dollars from an oil and gas company in Ukraine. I mean, maybe that is the better way of intervening and taking the money away from somebody who's getting it for free. How do you take it away without a paper trail? A third of the Senate. They set up all this like shadow corporations and dummy corporations. They had an elaborate web that triggered tons of alarm bells, according to the IRS whistleblowers. I mean, I'm saying that kind of activity, if it was a legitimate consultancy, you wouldn't need to do that. So that's itself a huge red flag.

Another red flag, by the way, is the letter that Biden writes when he's vice president to Devin Archer saying, I'm so glad you're in business with my son. It's a giant nothing burger. He's being nice to his son's business associates. No, he's being nice to the criminals. I'm saying, no, no, no. He's being nice to Devin Archer, who along with John Kerry's son is in a business

and he pulls in Hunter Biden because Hunter Biden is a wastrel in a ne'er-do-well who doesn't have any legitimate business prospects. Hey hey thanks for taking care of hold on wait a second if that was the is that how you get involved in businesses hold on if that was the only evidence i would agree with but we were just having a conversation about like well what did what did biden really know about his son's business well he knew enough

that debbie knew that devin archer was in it he was he was encouraging it he's like hey i interrupted a meeting with g to you know whatever i mean i sorry, but that's like knows who his son's business. No, no, no, no, no. Adding to this other evidence, not proof that there was some sort of payoff there. And by the way, if it was the most charitable explanation, which Representative Dan Goldman, who I don't like, has said, is that he wasn't selling access, he was selling the illusion of access. Well, then Joe Biden is committing a fraud on these, you know, poor hucksters from Burisma and China. He's basically like helping, he's supporting the illusion that they're going to get something for paying millions of dollars to his son.

Devin Archer said the same thing. If we're credited in his testimony in one area, not the other. We could play the clip of him saying that to Tucker. The Vice President of the United States cannot cooperate in the illusion that he is a crook

to a foreign country. I think that's right. I think that is right. He can't do that. It's poor. It's inadvisable. No. It's unacceptable.

The Vice President cannot cooperate to tell he's let's just take it in a very like base way. We're spending millions of dollars on this policy and he's underm's let's just take it in a very like base way we're spending millions of dollars on this policy and he's undermining the whole thing by signaling to them actually um

it's an impossible situation they did not know at the time and again listen to devin archer on tucker could you imagine yourself this kind of defense for if trump was having done this i have come around to bend over backwards to give trump the defense, and I've come to realize... In fairness, I have to say... But there was no evidence with Trump. I've come to realize... This is the mirror image. With Trump, with all conclusions and no evidence, here there's all evidence

and everybody's reluctant to jump to a conclusion. It's literally the mirror image. What I was saying before is that... And you didn't put this directly to Bump, but do you think that with what we have now, which is suggestive, and I agree that there is no proof that Joe Biden took any money,

obviously that would be difficult proof to obtain. It'd involve the Treasury Department and people getting warrants to see. There's a web, as Eli points out, of companies and shadow companies. Or if it's Eliot Sp spitzer they just flag you if they just flag you the money the money is held until sometime in the future when he might need it yeah yeah it's somewhere right yeah if what we know about this do you believe that if this were going in the other direction politically yeah that people would be as ignorant as they are about this. So you want to talk about the political

issue. It's incredible how little people know about this story. Considering that there's smoke, well, let's start looking and see if there's a fire. I believe that the Comer investigation, I believe that it should be better covered, more seriously covered, because if it was covered

by even more incredulous media, I think we'd get you better answers. I wish this testimony were more seriously covered because it was covered by even more incredulous media. I think we'd get you better answers. I wish this testimony were on camera and not just on a transcript. But what I was saying with the Devin Archer, Tucker Carlson interview, even Archer said at the time, I thought Burisma was legit. If we credit Archer's testimony in some areas, we have to credit it in others. At the time when Biden was doing the firing of this universally renowned corrupt prosecutor, there wasn't the conception that Burisma itself was

the corrupt entity. What Joe Biden should have done, if he could have done, was tell Hunter Biden, well, he should have told him never to do drugs, but he should have told Hunter Biden not to work for this company. But half the senators who have children who are 30 or over and probably half the representatives, they're all these family members are working for consultants, are working in lobbying. This is exactly what they do. Their business is the family last name and influence or the appearance of influence. So I'm sure you agree. Joe Biden didn't love it, but he said, you know, I'm going to have enough of a Chinese wall to make it work.

And I do fault him for going to a dinner with Burisma and doing a phone call. But I also say that 20 phone calls in 10 years, when you talk to someone every day, you are just randomly going to wind up in dinner conversations with whoever he's having dinner with. That 20, by the way, that number is from Mike. That's what Archer said. And he said roughly. We don't know if it's 20. Mike, I gotta tell you, I deal on a very small level here with issues of conflict of interest all the time.

And I am so careful about them. I run from them all the time. I keep myself out of these things. I can't imagine being Vice President of the United States and doing such things. Unimaginable. It's crazy. But you can't tell your adult son that he can't imagine being vice president of the United States and doing such things. Unimaginable. It's crazy. But you can't tell your adult son that he can't take a job. Oh, yes, you can.

Oh, yes, you can. You can say to your adult son, you are going to make a fool out of your father if you think you're going to take this opportunistic job based on the fact that I'm the new sheriff in town, so you're going to sell the idea that the sheriff is corrupt. But if they didn't know Burisma was corrupt at the time, you can't make that determination.

I don't know how your father was. This would be a major falling out, never speak to each other again incident in my home. I believe in any home. And it's I just don't think you actually believe what you're saying. I do, I do. And if my son were to do it,

I want you to think, if my son were to do it, I were to and if my son were to do i want you to think if my son were to do it i'm sorry if my son were to do it against my wishes yeah i would not be me having dinner about an addict son you're talking about someone who took up with your favorite son's wife you're talking wait wait wait i don't want to be dead horus would you agree just you said evan archer thought it was legitimate. In a country like Ukraine, is there such a thing as legitimate? Not only is it not plausible, because Ukraine has for a very, very long time... Even if you want to be legit,

you can't. It's the locus of corruption in Europe. People talk about this constantly. Is it not an indication of a company's corruption when it hires Hunter Biden to be on its board, who has no experience? I was just saying, you don't agree. The game theory of running a business in a totally corrupt town is you have to do what you have to do. Which is itself a type of corruption.

Yeah, that's my point, actually. There is no right and wrong in a situation like that, because the only alternative is just to you know, just to fail. I think in the developing world, in emerging democracies everywhere, this is how the game is played. Just to say on the Burisma was clean. I mean, I'm sure Devin Archer believed it was clean. It was in his interest to think that. But Jim Risen wrote for The New York Times before this became a big thing. It's really it's it's effed up that, you know, Hunter Biden is working for Burisma

because it's a corrupt, I mean, there were people who were aware of the corruption in the U.S. government and also in media. If you're the vice president, it takes how many phone calls to say, what is this company my son is working for? But I'm telling you the dynamic of the father and the addict son and trying to get him

in something going on in his life that is in a positive direction. Getting him millions of dollars to spend on crack. That's probably not the best. Can I ask a totally different question? I just want to know if Mike agrees with Noam's

central beef that the press shows a lack of curiosity, has lost the ability to smell blood in the water. What should Bump have done as a journalist? Oh, I think that, I think first of all, he should admit in his columns or with you the things that you have to admit.

Everything that you were saying about the laptop now, to parse words on that, to dither about that, just really hurts his credibility. And I'd meet you halfway. I mean, that text, I'm not trying to explain it away as it means nothing, but I'd meet you halfway and say I'd like to know a lot more. He seemed to be defensive. Does Bump, after all the brouhaha

with this podcast, does he extend an olive branch? Does he meet Noam halfway? No, because it's in his self-interest to play. The answer is yes he does. Issue two. Chuck, come on. Issue two. Chuck your balls. Fill a bump.

So let me ask you guys a totally different question as journalists. How do you prevent being co-opted by personal relationships? I already sense, you know,

I'm making certain, getting emails and making people ingratiating themselves. Maybe that's the wrong word. People becoming friendly with me who are very much of the right, who are really happy about this.

And, you know, at some point very soon, I might want to criticize these people. And already I feel the weight of, I don't want to do this. And you guys have layers and layers of this. It's even worse for a working journalist because your sources who you

have personal relationships with, I mean, they keep you in business. You're only as good as your sources. So if your sources are feeding you legit stories and then there's something bad that happens to them. I mean, I can say with personal experience, this happened to me. And I ended up writing a column. It's like sort of regret because he ended up being right about everything. But I had, you know, Devin Nunes and I knew each other very well. He's the former chairman of the Intelligence Committee. And I had to write a column, I remember, in 2017 that was

like, you know, Nunes misled me on this point. He made it seem like he had sources in the intelligence community when they were, in fact, White House sources. And then he was briefing. And that's how I tried to handle it. But I didn't see anybody who was pushing the Russiagate stuff, you know, have, well, no, no,

there were, there were Mike Peska, our friend here included, I want to say. Um, and, um, you know,

weirdly, um, who's the media guy who was great at the post? You know who I'm talking about? Wemple. Eric Wemple. Just went like just ham. It was amazing.

Um, and so there are some, but for the most part, I mean, Mike Iscoff is another one who I think has acknowledged that there were these. And so, but it's rare. I mean, he has his name on the front of a Russiagate book, which is a bit. With David Korn. With David Korn.

And Jeff Gerth wrote the long piece for CJR. Yeah, but Jeff Gerth was never on the Russiagate story. But I guess maybe institutionally CJR, Columbia Journalism. Right. But it's not that many on that side who are adhering to that standard. And it gets to a deeper problem, which is we are in a crisis of legitimacy with so many institutions in this country. And the way that you preserve legitimacy, the way that you earn legitimacy for these institutions is for those kinds of moments where like, hey, Jim Comey told us one thing and it turned out to be wrong. And, you know, shame on Jim Comey. And, you know, that hasn't happened.

Andrew McCabe, who the inspector general of the Justice Department called a liar and has been exposed now with all the other documents that have come out, is still a contributor at CNN. And so when people say, why don't people believe the mainstream media anymore? I'm like, well, it's because the mainstream media, for some reason, stopped copying to its errors at some point. They stopped doing that. And the legitimacy of the institutions has suffered as a result. No, I think that's right. I mean, you saw that in your interview when you mentioned two words. And I mean, I didn't see this on video, but I could hear it when you said Matt Taibbi. And it was like, no, no, no, no, no, we don't talk about him.

Matt Taibbi, four years ago, he would never have said, we can't talk about that person. He was at Rolling Stone. He was a lefty journalist in good standing. But I mean, the fact that you recoil from an interview done with Tucker Carlson, and I think Tucker Carlson is, you know, I've known him over the years and I've seen this collapse and it's absolutely baffling in a lot of ways. And I think it may be chasing the money, but it doesn't make a difference because the person on that program was the person who mattered, not Tucker Carlson. But that kind of dismissal of things because of who you talk to. I once was in a green room, cable news. And I said, I don't know if I, to the person next to me, who is a well-known journalist. And I said, I don't know if I want to go on because this person is a complete fucking nut

or is becoming nuttier. When I first started going on the show, he seemed just some normal guy. I didn't really know much about him. And he looked at me and he's like, you know, you're going to make that mistake because you're only responsible for what you say. You're not responsible for what he says. And that is something that when we see this kind of bifurcation of the media and this kind of recoiling, well, I can't listen to something because Tucker was talking to the guy, or I can't, Matt Taibbi, are you going to hit me with Matt Taibbi now? It's like, well, no, I'm going to hit you with something that he highlighted.

Forget about Matt Taibbi. But that shows you something, and the constant invocation of, I'm the expert from the Washington Post. Like, legitimately saying that. Unironically saying that. I thought that was the most embarrassing thing of that interview.

You're not going to, oh, you're going to give me evidence that I don't know? Yeah, that I don't know. I'm from the Washington Post. It's like... He says something, and I say, let me look it up. You don't trust me. It was totally wrong what he said. Totally wrong. I said, well, let me just... No, no, no. You don't believe me?

And I was like, I believe you, but you know, it's like... Yeah, you're being very generous in saying it, but the point is not to believe them. We don't believe you. You actually have to prove it to me. As far as the question that you asked, there is a double bind, though, because the answer should be our institutions are strong and they believe in something akin

to objectivity. I'm talking about the big newspapers and media organizations. Fine, you don't want to use that word. You could think of a different way to get at the idea of, we don't know the truth going in. We haven't predetermined what's good or bad. Now there literally is a big move among editors at The Washington Post to cast aside the idea of objectivity. We understand truths. It's really terrible in terms of where journalism is steering.

But the double bind is, so we want our institutions to be able to say, hey, it's not my job to be friends with you as a source. It's my job to tell the truth. So then, well, what is Matt Taibbi and Michael Moynihan and me and Eli with his podcast? What have we done? We've hung up our own shingles. Now you're in the area of audience capture. And I know that your audience, Moynihan, pillories you if they don't like what you're saying. All the time. My audience, I have a broad, different kind of audience, but I want to hold on to as many of them as I can. When I have Camille Foster on, they're like, oh, there's a guy who's taking the money from Peter Thiel.

You know, it's very, it's very hard. If the answer to the institution are things like Substack and independent journalism, then the audience will have so much more. It's a very, very good point. Yeah, audience capture is a very dangerous thing. I mean, I never was concerned about who funded what. Because, you know, oh, a tobacco company funded that study. I don't care. Can you replicate the study?

Do it three or four times and have other people do it. If the first person who did that, you know, funded it for icky reasons, fine. But we can keep going through this process. But audience captures, I think, what's happening to Tucker. I mean, he had a toothless man on yesterday claiming that he had sex with Obama after smoking crack with him in 1999. I think that's probably something that the nuttier elements, and they're coming towards Tucker

because he had those guardrails at Fox News. People don't think there are guardrails at Fox News, but there are. And they were telling him what not to say. And he said, oh, well, thank God, now I don't have them. His name was Roger Ailes, the guardrails at Fox News, but there are. And they were telling him what not to say. Yeah. And he said, oh, well, thank God now I don't have them. His name was Roger Ailes, the guardrails. I mean, it's incredible that those are guardrails, but that is- Are Ailes. That is, but that is a thing that we do. Look, I think that our podcast could make a lot more money

if we gave people exactly what they wanted all the time. And we get a lot of people that cancel subscriptions, that yell at us and send intemperate emails. But it's just boring to actually do that. And there's enough people, I think Philip Bump, I'm from the Washington Post and I'm here to help. Those institutions, that means nothing to people now. And it means even less when you see a performance like that. Because you essentially have someone saying that, I'm the person, I'm the arbiter of what's true here. Are you going to trust me or not? Because it's incredible that I came,

I think one of the most telling things about this interview, is going through the entire thing and just upbraiding Noam at the end of this interview and saying, I can't believe you had me here and you don't agree with me. How did you not? That's exactly what it was. How did you not?'t believe you had me here and you don't agree with me. How did you not? How did you not? I'm telling you the thing and you don't agree with me. He qualified as an ambush.

It was just people. A set up. A set up. Similar. What obligation does one have, if any, to a guest when they invite them? To a journalist. To a journalist. I mean, an ambush would be like bringing to a guest when they invite them would obligate...

To a journalist. To a journalist. To agree with them. It's crazy. I mean, an ambush would be like bringing somebody from his past into the room. And he said, I asked him gotcha questions. But I think that's, to Mike's point, I mean, that's an audience capture thing on its own for the mainstream media,

is that he's not expecting to come into an interview. He doesn't do interviews with, you know, sub stacks or Fox news or news max. He gets, you know, the feedback loop interview and he comes in here and he gets totally blown away by it because the people that guys like that talk to, and I'm not saying it's just Phil bump, it's people on the other side to just talk to their own also. And they're just totally, completely unprepared to be challenged on this.

That's how Fox news changed. I don't want to get sucked into Fox News, but the one thing I used to like about O'Reilly's show was that my instinct about O'Reilly was he says, I don't agree with this. Get me the smartest way. Bring in George Will. I want to have it up. Bring in Charles Krauthammer.

He was itching for a fight all the time. The current Fox News just brings in either idiots or people who will agree with him. It's uninteresting to me. I think you're wrong. I think your podcast succeeds because you don't give people, because you're not a bubble cap. Yeah, I hope that's true.

There's a market for that. There is, yeah. I mean, that's why I would listen to it. I'm not interested in the other things. But just this personal co-option. I got a really, really nice and gracious contact from Glenn Greenwald, who has been right on a lot of things now for a number of years. But I do remember hating Glenn Greenwald.

Yeah, he's not right on Israel. And not only do I not agree with him on Israel, but I remember at the time, and I don't remember the particulars, and maybe he's changed, or maybe I've changed, but I remember thinking he was unfair and dishonest about Israel.

I remember really not liking Glenn Greenwald. Oh, nothing's changed on Glenn and Israel. He's exactly the same. You just didn't talk about it very much anymore. And I found myself completely seduced by this wonderful contact he made with me, and he's very, very nice. And now tomorrow he says something terrible about Israel,

I'm going to be like, ah, shit. I don't want to come at Glenn Greenwald. He was so nice to me. But the thing is, Glenn is the example of what you should be. Because Glenn will send you a message, and I've been on the receiving end of something nice from Glenn Greenwald, and then three days later, he'll be like, you are the worst human who's ever lived.

And you get all of his fans swarming you. This happens to, I mean, he is pretty honest in that way. I've had like a love-hate friendship with him for a very long time and we've debated and we've agreed and like, I have to say, he's the kind of guy who I really wouldn't worry about that because he doesn't

have like these ideological tests on people that he engages with. And he can acknowledge like, hey, you know, you're a horrible neocon who loves... And the reason is because the thing that he's best on is issues of speech and issues of expression. And so if you believe in free exchange of information, you're going to have some views where you're 180 degrees from someone that you could still have that 180 degree conversation. And it's also weird. People say to him all the time, oh, you've changed. I remember when you were such a great lefty.

They always fail to notice the one important thing, that the Republican Party has changed. I mean, conservatives have changed. I mean, every time I'm on a conservative website, I saw this twice today, people denouncing neoconservatives, the undead, the neoconservatives are coming back. The Republican Party, when Glenn Greenwald was on the other side,

was essentially a neoconservative party. It's now kind of a Buchananite party when it comes to foreign policy. That lines up very closely with where Glenn has always been. I don't think he's changed. I think politics has changed in a weird way. Were the neocons really that wrong? I mean...

You are! When you're dealing with policies in Iraq... He's the spokesman for neoconservatism. I feel like no matter what policy had been chosen to handle Afghanistan, we'd be here saying that policy is discredited because nothing was good. I just read a book by Wolfowitz, not Paul, his ex-wife, who makes this exact point that there's really good reason. His Palestinian ex-wife.

Oh, is that right? No, you see, it was his girlfriend, Palestinian. Yeah. No, I think his side piece. What point does she make? That we had a really great justification to go into Iraq. It's really there, if you really look. Just knowing, you know, and she even frames it like this.

We all know about Rumsfeld and the knowns and the unknowns. What about the unknown knowns? Which is that this is true. We just don't know it. We just don't care to know it anymore. Anyway, it's a good book. You should listen to Eli Lake's podcast on this because it has become very popular amongst Republicans to get up on a debate stage and say that Iraq was the worst foreign policy disaster in the last 50 years. I don't think most of the

people believe that. I don't think they've thought it through. They just know that's the line that you take. And I give Eli credit, not saying I agree or disagree with this. I give him credit for doing a podcast in the past year saying Iraq was the right decision. It's a brave position to take in 2020. It was a little bit, yeah. I tried to get into the history of Saddam Hussein

and everything, but yeah, I mean, I'm not cowed by the current trends. And you never know if it was a bad idea or bad execution. And I mean, execution is really important. That was Hitchens' argument. Well, the thing is with American military might, and I was talking to Vickers about this, we always eventually get tactics right. The analogy I made is it's the Yankees and free

agent signing. They could sign every bad free agent. They have so much money, it doesn't matter. They'll eventually get it right. So, you know what Vickers was saying. I've talked to many people of this ilk. There's just freshness in my mind. Afghanistan, we went in pretty much right from the get-go. In Iraq, it took a long time.

But eventually, we do have so much knowledge and wealth and the best training that we get the tactics right. You have to know when you're going to commit a land war in Asia or in a Muslim country that mistakes are going to be made and they can undo you. And another thing that we always get wrong is that every single time a military excursion or foreign policy doesn't go right, we always say, well, we took our eye off the prize, right? We took our eye off the prize. We were in Afghanistan. We took our eye off the prize by going to Iraq or we defeated the Russians, the Soviets in Afghanistan.

And we took our eye off the prize by letting the ex-Mujahideen fester and become Al Qaeda. That's how America works. We always will be taking our eye off the prize. So factor that in, I would say, before you go into an excursion. Because, you know, we have elections every couple years, unlike empires like China can keep its eye on the prize because they're not nearly as sensitive to whims or public opinion.

All right, we've got a few more minutes. What's anything hot you guys want to talk about? I just want to make a point, kind of getting back to what you were saying and like why we're in this legitimation crisis and in my view i think it starts with the fact it a lot of it has to do with the fact that both poles of our politics right now believe when the other side is just going to destroy you. And I absolutely believe that. That is sure. And that is what happened when Trump was elected, is that all of the norms for the media, for the most part, I think just kind of went,

just went away because there was a much more important thing that had to happen, which is you had to destroy Trump because he was going to destroy our country. And the same argument is made by the Trump supporters about the left. And that's a cycle for the ruin of our Republic. I mean, I've been reading a lot of Roman history, particularly the history of like how the Republic of Rome failed. And it, you know, there's so many interesting parallels. Just the idea,

like this is something I didn't know until I started kind of doing some reading on this. There was a law fair that was a huge problem for public officials in Rome in that century before Caesar, which is that if you were like pro-council, you were in the Senate and you lost your position, you could be sued and go, all these bad things could happen to you.

So it became a perverse incentive for people to stay in power. Well, what we have right now is we kind of, to borrow another Roman phrase, cross this Rubicon with, you know, having all of these indictments against someone running for president and a former president is, I just think we're reaping the whirlwind in that regard. And there's all kinds

of other things as well. And I just think that it's really important maybe to just take a step back and understand that, you know, Trump's bad and I, but he's not this existential threat. And you know what? I have a lot of problems right now with the so-called, you know, with the, with the national security state and the FBI and the Democratic Party, but they're not the boogeyman that is portrayed and, you know, among the sort of pro-Trump media. And it's really important to kind of try to remember that. Do you think that motivated Bump and his... I think Bump is part of the resistance. First of all, can I just say, if you call yourself a resistance and there is no chance you will

be arrested and tortured, you're not a resistance. Stop it. No, I think that's a hugely important point because I noticed that happening and it takes very, very little, it took very little for the media to change its rules and become more adversarial.

It took me being in that press pen a number of times at Trump rallies and saying, you know, the fake news, the enemy of the people, people turn around and boo you. What happened every time, by the way, is you go outside with your cameras and people would want to take pictures with you.

They didn't. I mean, it was wrestling. It was a show. But people took that in a way where, you know, in six months, the top of the Washington Post said, democracy dies in darkness, right? Every time you saw a chy, you know, in six months, the top of the Washington Post said, democracy dies in darkness, right? Every time you saw a chyron on TV,

they would say, we're not going to allow the lies to happen. In the chyron, we're going to be calling out the lies. There's a point at which the changing of the guards means you have to call the lies out on the other side. So I've always pointed out that what has disappeared in the past three or four years, three years, I guess, is the phrase without evidence. Every newspaper, Donald Trump said, comma, without evidence, comma. So this is gone?

People, the current administration is just saying everything with evidence? Well, no, they're not. Now we're not doing that. But that adversarial thing, I'll give you an example. This has happened. You said, what else do you want to talk about? I'll give you one small media item. And when I was working at my last job, there was a point at which I couldn't imagine going into an editorial meeting and pitching a story about certain things. There was a passel of things that I just would never talk about. They were totally reasonable that probably 50 to 60% of the population agreed with, but the

newsroom and the kind of the kind of the ideology of it, I suppose is what I'm trying to say, but it's not really explicit in that way, but it all hardened that you couldn't really just say anything. You couldn't say, I want to pitch this story. It's pretty interesting. They're like, no, no, this is not what we talk about. We're in the real media. That's for the sub-stackers and that's for the people on Fox News and talk radio. I cannot imagine that when Enrique Torrio, the head of the Proud Boys, was just sentenced to 22

years. It is fucking insane. I'm sorry. I don't have to throat clear and say that I think that January 6th was an abomination. I said it that day. I said that day, every one of these people should go to jail. 22 years? John Walker Lind, who fought for the fucking Taliban, got 20.

But these people meant the people actually inside the Capitol, not the people who were a state away when it happened. He was in Baltimore, but he was the brains behind this. And I literally saw a piece I can pull it up on my phone and take a screenshot of it. It said Enrique Torrio,

the head of the white supremacist organization, the Proud Boys. He's black. Well, he's Latino, Cuban. By the way, it depends on when you need to use that. There's certain times when he looks black to anybody who's walking by him on the street. If he said, I'm black,

nobody would be like, no, you're not. Yes, a white supremacist organization. The boss of whom is black, who is a state away in Baltimore, our drive in insurrection that is not armed, um, gets 22 fucking years. Now imagine trying to go to, you know, the Washington post and CNN and having a robust debate about this rather than people being, as far as I can see, just being celebratory about it. The people who are prison abolitionists who say that we spend way too much money on people. Where are they?

Lara Baslam would agree with you. Lara Baslam would absolutely agree. She does. And David French wrote that as well. And I think the New York Times, by the way, is getting better. I do too. Glenn Crush put a I think the New York Times, by the way, is getting better. I do too. Glenn Crush put a story on the front page about, well, he was one of the co-writers about Hunter's problems. And Sulzberger is not calling it objectivity, but he planted a flag and said, essentially, we're getting back to objectivity.

And there's just less nonsense there. And another thing that I would say is, you know who Robert Pape is? He's a university of Chicago researcher. There is a narrative. I who Robert Pape is? He's a university of Chicago researcher. There is a narrative that we're on the brink of a civil war. And as much as what you're saying, Eli, is cause for concern, we are not. We are just not. Not only do most people not care about politics that much, even the good surveys will indicate it's not a quarter. It's not even 10%. It's a tiny fraction, the same fraction as believes there was no, the moon landing was fake,

would resort to political violence. And I think that that idea though, and this is an MSNBC viewers honestly believe that the right is, I don't know, probably half full, at least a quarter full with people who are willing and eager to take up arms in violence. And that's dangerous because it's only going to lead to counter misimpressions. You know how many, the ADL does this count every year. You know how many people were killed last year

in an act of political extremism? 22. And the biggest, whenever there's no mass shooting, the biggest victim category is members of the Aryan Brotherhood killed by other members. In prison, yeah. There are 26,000 homicides in 2021 and 22 acts of killing in the name of extremism. One-tenth of one percent.

I wish it was zero and so do we all, but come on. There is a danger. Crystal knocked it as not. Is it just that people weren't as against war back in the old days? Have we lost our taste for war? No, people love war in the old days. Just if you look at human history, they love it. No, but I'm saying, have we gotten less?

We're soft. Is that why it's only 22 extremists? Yeah, it used to be. Sacco and Vincetti and bombing of Wall Street and Adrian LaFrance in the cover article in the Atlantic said things are really bad, but of course they always have been and anarchy has been all around us. Sacco and Vincetti and bombing of Wall Street and Adrian LaFrance in the cover article in The Atlantic said things are really bad, but of course they always have been and anarchy has been all around us.

You can look this up in Days of Rage, Brian Burroughs' fantastic book about the late 1960s and the extremist groups. I think, what was it, 200 plus bombings in New York City in 1970? Sounds right. I mean, every day. In trash cans, sometimes in a pub

that killed people downtown. Right, right. Political violence, when you didn't actually... Puerto Rican statehood killed more people than adherence to any kind of philosophy.

You know, something that about 4% of people in Puerto Rico actually wanted. But the incredible thing about it is that this was a time in which there was no Twitter. There was no way of organizing in an easy

way. You couldn't subpoena people's WhatsApp records and say Enrique Torrio was sitting in a hotel room bed, you know, sort of orchestrating the revolution like Lenin in St. Petersburg or something. But that happened all the time. But there is an enormous danger of constantly calling your opponents fascists. It might be hilarious and fun and good for ratings if you're Mehdi Hassan or these people, but fascism means something. And it's not only cheapening to the Holocaust and victims of Nazism and victims of fascism

in Spain, in Portugal, in Italy, etc. But you're not saying fascism because you've looked at the political ideology and you've determined that this is actually what's happening. You're trying to to say nazism but you don't want to say it because it's it's obviously too toxic to say like don't call people hitler and nazis you say fascist it's redolent of nazism it means nazism but it's not exactly saying it so when you call the other party

nazis all the time look it's the same thing. If you storm the Capitol and some idiots on, you know, MyPillow TV or whatever are saying that they stole the election, I get it. I get why you're there. You think that democracy was stolen. You might as well go up there and say they stole it from us. I'm doing a civic duty. When you

tell people things like this, there are consequences. January 6th is a consequence. And fascism and the other side, there's a lot of consequences for that. My feeling about Trump, and I know a lot of people will roll their eyes, I know what a liar he was. Everything he said was a lie. But I always felt that his basic intention

towards the United States of America was not a lie, and his basic intention wasn't so bad. It was kind of like an old school Archie Bunker-ish little bit. What did you think it was? Because it's very hard to determine. I thought he wanted what's best for the country.

He kind of respected the rules, unless his ego was bruised by it. He didn't want to be president forever. He just wanted to be president for four more years. And I don't even think that he didn't want any more immigrants to come in. I think he wanted to control the border. Just the shithole country immigrants. Yeah. Who's he was again?

And the Muslims, which he banned. Well, yeah, all that to some extent. But I'm saying like. But he was flexible on the Chad Muslims. If Trump could have had his way, would he, would we be living in some sort of fascist country? No. I never felt that way. Maybe I'm wrong.

I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to like, but, you know, you have the Trump's most vigorous opponents are the ones who demand social media, like ban disinformation, which is a term that, you know, originated basically in the Soviet Union and was used as a way to sort of justify their own state censorship. You know, it's like sometimes I ask this question, who will save our democracy from the people saving our democracy? I mean, prosecuting your political opponents. Now, again, I don't want to parse all of the indictments because some of them are more merit, you know, some of them have more merit than others.

But, you know, some of them, like Alvin Bragg's indictment is just crap. I mean, and it would not have happened if it wasn't Donald Trump, you know, who was the, you know, it's, it's, so some of this stuff is like, look in the mirror. Now, it's not to say that I think Trump really is a threat because my, my basic equation is this. He told us in 2016 that he would not say whether he would accept the results of the election. And so if you are running for office in a republic like ours and you are you've proven that you will not accept the results of elections that you lose. For me, that's an automatic disqualification.

I agree. Full, full stop. But that's that doesn't mean that the people who oppose Trump are not also eroding and damaging and threaten some ways to our democracy. What's that Justice Department? Is it 90 days or six days? Justice Department normally doesn't bring a suit if it if it interferes with an election. Right. The guidance says, I think. What's the Justice Department, is it 90 days or six days? The Justice Department normally doesn't bring a suit if it interferes with an election. Right. The guidance says, I think 90.

What's the number of days? I think it's 90. 90 days. That logic implies that, yes, it's important to lock up criminals, but it's also important not to interfere with elections. And the idea of bringing these actions against Trump, even if they're meritorious, that's not the end of the consideration. We're in a presidential election. I agree with that. That's exactly right. The fantasy of Trump in a jail cell

with his commode while Biden's being inaugurated, how that will go down to the United States, is that worth it? Can you imagine the anger this is going to unleash? Why are they doing that? Because of some shenanigans? What about the cost of not prosecuting? I don't see any cost of not prosecuting. Well, I think with the documentsigans? What about the cost of not prosecuting?

I don't see any cost of not prosecuting. Well, I think with the documents, there's a clear cost of not prosecuting it. The reason I think there's no cost, I think Trump is a singular guy. I'm not saying he's going to jail. I'm saying you absolutely have to prosecute those documents. This is my opinion, and this is a little risky. Trump is a singular narcissistic guy, and I don't think the next president is going to say,

I can keep the documents now because Trump got away with it. I think most people will say, I don't want to be embarrassed the way Trump was embarrassed. I'm going to give the documents back. On that specific... That's my feeling about it. On that specific, probably true. I think that the Jack Smith indictment has a lot of merit to it.

I think that... I don't know. When you talk about Trump's intent, he showed us his intent. It was to not leave office. And that is a caustic and horrible thing. Yes. Intent or desire? Well, he married intent to desire.

But they're so dishonest. Giuliani said trial by combat. This was a big thing even in the indictment. But trial by combat meant in a courtroom. Yeah. I mean, they are so dishonest with the way they present this case.

But when I know a few key facts are totally dishonest, I don't do a deep dive into all of them. I say, you know what? Wake me when it's done because I really can't believe anything here and I'm not inclined to. But I know that if I find a few whoppers in there, it's filled with whoppers.

And I think that when this finally goes to trial, we're going to see more whoppers come out and maybe deflation like we've seen already in other short things against Trump. I'm sure Trump has committed crimes, but I don't think the country is better off by prosecuting him when he's the candidate. If he doesn't win the nomination, go to town. Do you think January 6th was an insurrection or a coup? Because I don't. No, I think January 6th was like... I think it was a disgrace, it was a riot, it was horrible, but...

I think some people found themselves in the... Holy shit! What the fuck? I never... Most certainly, that was the case. They were like, holy fuck, I'm in... There's no guards? Yeah.

Who would have fantasized ever they could get in there? What would rise to the level of an insurrection? What would need to have happened? Here's my... Usually a coup involves a cabal of generals and officers who like... Pinochet. Yeah. Who either threaten to or shoot the leader and take over the radio station.

I mean, an insurrection usually you need weapons, and there were no weapons. I mean, listen, it was terrible, and I'm not trying to defend it, but these distinctions matter. It's like he can be a bad guy and not be a fascist. It's like this similar kind of thing, but when you say sedition, sedition, sedition,

that's how you get Enrique, what's his name? Torrio. Torrio, 22 years. On a terrorism charge, by the way. On a fucking... People who didn't like throwing around the word terrorism 15 years ago don't seem to mind so much now. But I would say this.

It is a very difficult thing to do because you do have to do the throat clearing every time which i find very frustrating and annoying that you have to say well yes i think it was terrible i said at the time and i'll say it you know again um you had the best line michael when you said this is like the last time there was a coup committed by guys with like v were the Vikings. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, like that guy is a mental illness. It's obviously not a coup because they never had any chance, 0% chance of taking power. Keep in mind that for a while, and you can look this up,

the number of days, weeks, months, and I believe, I remember Nancy Pelosi saying it, referring to it as an armed insurrection. Why are you inflating things like that? The amazing thing about it was because that it was illegal to open carry, they didn't bring their guns. There were no arms at all? I mean, I'm sure there was something here and there,

but no. There was one person who showed up armed, but it was after all the action took place. Yeah, I mean, this is not... They had Bears Gray, right? They had other stuff that's not great. When you say an armed insurrection, you know what the code is.

Yes, the right to bear arms doesn't mean bear spray. It does not mean the right to bear spray. The worst thing about January 6th to me was I have no love for these people. I don't know specifically what they did. I hope they all get... You don't like that Camp Auschwitz guy? I hope they all get what they deserve.

What really offended me about it is that this was an opportunity for the left to then try to paint all the rest of the reasonable center-to-right people as somehow part and extension of these crazy people living in their parents' basement. I mean, these are the fucking crazy people. Well, including most of the people that showed up for that rally didn't actually end up inside the Capitol. And that's pretty crazy to end up at a rally in D.C. to say that the election was stolen. That's pretty extreme. And most of the people there stayed where they were. What about all the Republican votes not to certify the election? That's somewhere.

So I agree. It's not a coup. That's a problem. But the reason it's not a coup is they had no chance of working. Do you give them? It's sort of like attempted murder. If you're a blind person trying to fire a gun that actually doesn't work, is it

attempted murder? You still have the intent to murder. I do think under the law attempt has to have some just under the strict law. If I remember from law school. It's not a coup but insurrection, I'm not clear I don't know if there is a precise definition of that word and I'm not clear what the precise

definition is. But then you have so many and if you want to come back at me and say- They want you to disrupt the government. Yes. If you want to come back and say, hey, look at the black delegation about certifying Al Gore, I'll agree with you. And I've talked about that on my show. But there were people, you know, the majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives, not the Senate, who voted not to certify the election. That's insurrectionist-ish behavior.

I don't know. Like, if you say, without evidence, that the elected president is a Russian agent who cheated and colluded with Russia, without evidence. There's evidence. It's not proof. Okay. And you have, what, like, not my president. And, like, there was even, I am so sorry to say this.

As a West Wing fan, President Jed Bartlett is an insurrectionist because he did this, there's a video. You should find it and, like, play it because it's still on YouTube. I'll cut it in half. Yeah, yeah. But he's, like like he makes an appeal to the electoral college he says we don't not all of you but it's such a close thing that if some of you could just vote for you you don't have to vote for hillary if you're republican that happened

that was a real plan yes there were like democratic operatives who were at a last-ditch effort trying to get electors in the electoral college when they were certain to certify to change their vote well i mean i'm not i don't want to like this it's not the same i'm not trying to make it to equate it but again it's like if you are unaware of these double standards i'm not saying it's going to be a civil war mike pesca that's a very good point but it's not a good thing yeah that we are in a bad place right now as a country we're going to lose the ability to have an effective FBI if the country doesn't believe anything we say.

It also tends not to be an insurrection if you have to vote for anything at any point. Yeah, exactly. It's usually disqualifying for the election. I know it was a scary couple hours, but they did come back that night and certify the election. Yeah, yeah. If we all agree that a civil war is not in the cards,

what about an amicable divorce? No, no. That is a fantasy of people on the far right and the far left. It doesn't exist. I mean, also because there's a myth of red states. Red states don't really exist. It's rural versus city.

Every city and every red state is very left-wing. I mean, this is almost, Kansas City has, you know, 55 gay bars and is like, votes for Barack Obama. Like, it's just never going to happen. It's impractical. And I think that the one thing that is kind of a cliche, and it sounds like you're creating some sort of, you know, ad for, you know, running for Senate or something. But the robustness of American institutions was quite impressive after January 6th.

You know, it circles back. So this laptop, turns out that the FBI had it in advance. Turns out that Trump's henchman, Bill Barr, kept quiet about the laptop being legitimate during the election. Right? He kept quiet about it. Yeah, also told Trump and resigned honorably, in my view,

to say, no, there was no fraud. It's not there. You know. Gets no credit for it, right? Because he has to be a villain. Yeah, he was quite a villain for a while, yeah. Turned out to be a villain. He was quite a villain for a while, yeah. He was presented as quite a villain for a while. He had a lot of integrity, I guess. And actually,

that whole summary that he did, finding that Trump was not guilty of obstruction of justice, well, I guess he was right because they didn't bring any of those charges. I mean, it also is a testament... Not a single one of those charges was brought. I mean, it's a testament to the robustness of American institutions and individuals.

When you count the number of people within the Trump administration who came out and said, either this man is a psycho of some sort, he's lying about the election, a million different things from the generals that, you know, from McMaster on. There were a lot of people that were part of this administration were like, this is really horrible. That's not normal. His administration wasn't normal also. But it's not as if you can run a freight train through Washington when you had at the beginning of Trump's administration, both houses of Congress and the presidency and a bunch of people ready to do some mustache twisting bad deeds. But was that a hard choice for them?

Wasn't that largely influenced by the fact that it was a loser as a bet, ultimately? All these people who stood their ground and did the right thing? I mean, I always said that our country's going to— Professionals doing their job will be our deliverance, and it was. Yeah, of course. And I would say the majority—well, the vast majority of nonpolitical appointees, maybe even the majority of political appointees, did not go along with the coup behavior. But it just seemed like such an obvious loser that had to have influenced or convinced the Bill Bars of the world.

Final dumb question. Six years ago, when people were up in arms that Trump was making noises about trying to end the sanctions against Russia, which were about Crimea mostly, we had an argument here. And I said, look, it's not because Trump's in Russia's pocket. It's basically the Pat Buchanan position that sanctions, I said at the time, sanctions against Russia until Russia leaves Crimea are sanctions till the end of time. Everybody knows they're never leaving. So it seems reasonable to

me to try to figure out something, some way to end this because, and this was my quote, because it's dangerous to the world. And of course there's no way Trump could have made a move in that direction because people would have immediately accused him of being in Putin's pocket. He made a move in the opposite direction.

He sold Ukraine arms and Obama wouldn't have sold them. Well, they're not mutually exclusive. He could sell Ukraine arms and still look to settle it. But is there a... There's a lot of things that Trump did policy-wise. Now, maybe Trump didn't know his government was doing it, but, I mean, I cover this stuff really closely, and he... Mike Pompeo is a Russia hawk.

The people that he brought in to actually implement his policy. John Bolton. He got out of these arms control deals that the Russians were cheating on that they loved, and he's like, nah, we're not doing it. So here's the counterfactual question, and maybe the answer is no.

If Trump had never been accused of being in bed with Russia, is there a counterfactual where we don't have a Russian invasion of Ukraine? I can't imagine it. I think it was mostly motivated by Putin's sense of what he needed to do to advance his own standing with his own people and in the world. You don't think it was also motivated by the fact that we just had the humiliation in Afghanistan? Yeah, no one put up a fight the last time. By the way, on your point

with six years ago and the Russian sanctions, very similar dynamic was at play with getting the Ukraine mention out of the Republican convention platform. That was entirely consistent with their worldview, and it would have been weird

to have it in the platform anyway. I hated that. And it's not evidence of corruption. And I was in Cleveland for the convention. And I remember having a conversation with somebody in the Trump orbit about the comment. You'll remember this, Eli, about Tallinn, about Estonia. Right. And, you know, he didn't care if there were tanks taking over the former Baltic states.

Just didn't care. I hated that. I thought it was bad policy in almost every way. But it seemed like a wild leap to me that this was part of some concerted effort by the FSB and by the GRU to make Trump behave this way because he'd been upfront about this the whole time. Also, if you have any knowledge of conservatism

in the last hundred years, you know that this is a strain that has run through conservatism from the last hundred years, you know that this is a strain that has run through conservatism from Robert Taft to, you know, all these people. It's a strain that he endured. Final thing, I wish we were making clips at the time. I had David Frum on the show. How long did the Mueller thing go on? Almost two years?

Yeah. I know, we're getting in. And it was about a year and a half into it or something like that. And I said, listen, isn't it obvious that Mueller didn't find anything? I said, what do you mean? I said, well, if Mueller found that Trump was being controlled by Putin, he would have to come forward with it immediately. He couldn't take his time. That's a great point. Yeah, like ending a clinical trial if you're killing the patient.

Trump's leaving NATO, and we know that Putin's behind it. And Frum said to me, no, no, Mueller would do things by the book. Yeah, right. And I said, how ridiculous. This is a very smart man, David Frum said to me, no, no, Mueller would do things by the book. Yeah, right. And I said, how ridiculous. This is a very smart man, David Frum. David's a friend of mine, and we have had many exchanges on this. But this is how emotion can bend. I mean, obviously that's true.

Similarly, they lied about weapons of mass destruction. Really, they lied about weapons of mass destruction, but they had no plan to find weapons of mass destruction once they got there. They also didn't lie about weapons of mass destruction. Really, they lied about weapons of mass destruction, but they had no plan to find weapons of mass destruction once they got there. They also didn't lie about weapons of mass destruction. They got it wrong. They took the whole country to war,

and we know it's a lie. There's no weapons. But when we get there, what are you going to say? Hey, boss, what are you going to say when we get there and there aren't no weapons? Ah, nothing. We'll figure it out.

How about we plant a few weapons just to knock that? That would be wrong. You're sinister enough to lie to get the country That would be wrong. You're sinister enough to lie to get the country into war, but you're not sinister enough to plant the weapons.

A little bit of uranium. Come on. These things are stupid, right? Yeah. Anyway, okay. Listen, guys, it's been a dream come true having you.

Let me just say, can I just say that Michael Moynihan sounds vocally like a cross between Ann Coulter and William F. Buckley. Yeah. Dan. Michael Moynihan sounds vocally like a cross between Ann Coulter and, uh, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,

we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,

we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,

we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,

we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,

we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,

we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,

we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,

we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,

we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,

we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,

we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,

we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, It's a borrowed voice, I guess. Are you guys going to hang out for a while downstairs, have some drinks, listen to your show, whatever?

Absolutely. All right, guys. Thank you all very much, especially to Eli Lake, who traveled here and I'm a huge admirer of. Thank you so much. Not only if you check out his podcast for the substance and talk, but the music that he chooses. Fantastic.

Is fucking expert. Oh, wow. I'm a musician, too, and I notice every single one of these deep cuts that he chooses which have a tangential relationship to the subject matter. Thank you for noticing because I spend a bit of time on it. I'm working on this Deep State episode part two which is going to be great but it's a

lot of rabbit holes and at one point I was entertaining the idea that like could I score this episode entirely with Steely Dan song? And I actually think I could. I have Fagan's email address if you want to. I'm a Steely Dangelist.

He came down to see my band and he wrote me an email. That's one of my claims to fame. He also saw me on stage, but I don't think he laughed at it. Did you sufficiently introduce Pesca's podcast when Dan was doing the introductions? No, I said the gist. He mentioned it, but it wasn't noted as one of the most popular or famous podcasts, like

some other podcasters here. Well, step up your game. I gotta get more famous. It's the gist of it. I don't know why I said that. That's a good plug on the way out. I'm sorry. Alright. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. Podcasts at ComedySolar.com. Good night.