The Daily Beast Podcast - How Trump Will Cheat to Stay in Power

Episode Date: June 29, 2025

Brian Tyler Cohen joins Joanna Coles for a dissection of the digital age’s political battleground. Cohen—solo creator of one of the largest progressive platforms in America—reveals how he turned a dead-end acting career into a media empire with 4.5 million subscribers and zero writers. Cohen explains that Trump’s chaos isn’t incompetence—it’s a strategy: flooding the zone, exploiting the slow reflexes of legacy media, and redefining the presidency as a form of cultural warfare. He blasts the Democratic Party’s gerontocracy, their obsession with MSNBC over TikTok, and their chronic failure to meet the moment. As Trump installs loyalists like Pete Hegseth and Dan Bongino into key roles, Cohen warns the real danger isn’t just Trump—it’s the bootlickers willing to weaponize law enforcement on command. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What causes me to lose sleep at night is the prospect that Trump will say, you know, we need to, we need to take a look at what's happening in all the population centers in these swing states in Atlanta and Philadelphia and Milwaukee and Detroit. And I think that there were late night vote dumps and all of these votes have to be cast out. And instead of having somebody like Bill Barr who's going to call it bullshit, rightfully so, you've got these other people who are going to say, you know what, we think there was. I think we think there were fraudulent votes. and so we have to get in there and seize the voting machine. I'm Joanna Coles. I'm the chief content officer of The Daily Beast, and this is the Daily Beast podcast.

I hope you're walking your dog or doing something very useful while you're listening to this, but if you're watching it on YouTube or on your television, you're going to see someone that I am obsessed with. Brian Tyler Cohen, he speaks with an extraordinary fluency and an urgency, and that has earned him four and a half million followers. on his YouTube channel, where he chronicles the news with a myopic precision.

Anyway, I've long been an admirer, and I'm very pleased to spend the next half hour talking to him about what he thinks about what the legacy of the Republican Party may be, and also what the Democrats should be doing to take it on. Couldn't be more excited to talk to Brian Tyler Cohen. Why is that such a mouthful your name? I do not know. but I am astonished at your output. You are like a one-man broadcasting machine.

Just reassure me, how many people do you have writing for you at this point, Brian? So writing for me is just me. I write everything that I put out. Write everything you put out because sometimes you do up to seven podcasts a day. Yeah, it's amazing what you can do when you're willing to sacrifice all of your mental health and meaningful relationships. I don't believe that for a minute. I think your mental health is probably very good. because you've got so much, you're clearly enjoying yourself so much.

You know, I'm very grateful for the opportunity to do what I do. I will say that it's gotten, it has gotten tougher to compartmentalize over the years. I mean, I've been doing this since Trump came on the scene, and it used to be a lot easier to put my work aside and then to get back into my normal life. And, you know, it chips away over the course of years and years and years. But now it's more of I have to make a concerted effort to make sure I preserve some sense of sanity, which I think a lot of people can relate to. All right.

Well, let's come on to your lifestyle in a moment. But you say you started when Trump did. You've got four and a half million subscribers. You have a massive impact. You have a whole group of followers. What I really respond to when I hear you is your apparent authenticity. And also your sort of anger and your perception about what's going on. And in particular, and for those watching this or listening to this who don't know your work,

I really recommend your pieces after Donald Trump sends in the National Guard to L.A. I really recommend they look at your analysis of the great military parade. Just two recent pieces that I just thought were absolutely terrific. What makes you the most sort of angry? I think there are a few things. one is a little bit inside baseball, and that is the inability of the people who are in positions of power to meet the urgency of the moment. And I think that that's why I'm here. That's why I do what I do.

And again, I'm grateful to have the opportunity to do this. I wish I wasn't in a position where it was necessary. I wish that the people who hid behind slogans like democracy dies in darkness were able to meet the urgency of this moment and to recognize that, okay, if democracy is going to die in darkness, then it's your responsibility. It's everybody in the media's responsibility to actually call out what's happening. And so often I feel like we continuously use, and that is like the everybody in the, the media, we'll use the same playbooks that we've used in decades past and try to transpose them onto this moment. And we can't because we're in a different moment. And it requires fighting in a different way than we have fought before. And the Republicans get that. They get how to how to adapt

to this moment, how to adapt to the Trumpism of it all and how to fight with everything they've got because they know that their goal at the end of this is to consolidate power for themselves. The left and the media doesn't seem to get it. We seem to be stuck in this, in this idea that we can, that we can, like, usher in some bygone era of, of bipartisanship or compromise, and we're just not there anymore. And that's not just, that's not just us failing to meet the moment, but it's actually giving a green light to the worst actors in government to know that we're just not able to do what needs to be done to confront them. And, and, man, if I was them, I would feel so, I would feel so, um,

I would feel like I have such a clear runway to just do whatever I want, knowing that my opponents are just so unwilling to kind of meet this moment with the urgency that it deserves. Well, you've used the word urgency, and that's what I love that you bring to your recordings in particular. And also you've said repeatedly that you think that the Democrats are just ignoring the digital moment, that they don't know how to lean into the digital moment. You clearly do, as I said, you've got four point, you know, four and a half million. subscribers. Let's step back a bit. How did you get into this in the first place? Because you literally

are like your own one-man broadcasting channel. So you say you feel very lucky to have this opportunity to do it, but you created your own opportunity. Yeah, I was on Facebook back in early days of the Trump administration and I thought that that would be a great way to be able to reach as many people as I could. And this was before there was, I mean, you didn't go to Facebook really to get your news, but more and more people were coming on to Facebook. And that was my first. foray into digital media online. And I started to notice as I was on Facebook that that as it related to video content, there was no left-wing video content. I was only being served right-wing content. And I live in Los Angeles. I had moved here initially to work in the entertainment

industry. Ironically enough, my first job was at Fox. It was Fox Broadcasting Company, but I was, I worked in the in the drama and comedy departments for TV. And I thought that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to work in the industry. And so I was in development. And when I was there, we developed shows like Bob's Burgers, for example. You developed Bob's Burgers? No, no, no. Well, you were on that team?

I was, I was at Fox when they had, when they had developed that show. I was, I was an assistant to the comedy and drama managers. So, so all the credit goes to them. And this was after you'd left Lehigh University? This was after I left Lehigh, yeah. So I came out here to L.A., and so I wanted to be in the industry. and all of my friends out here were actors, and so I started getting the acting bug

and I did some stuff in front of the camera. But even as I was waiting in the audition rooms to do like a Doritos commercial or whatever it was, I mean, just like, it felt so unfulfilling. And I would be on my phone, I'd be looking at what's happening in the news, and then you'd go into this whole separate world where I'm like, how does nobody know what's happening around us? Like, you know, we have crazy stuff happening in D.C.,

and like now I'm in an audition, for, you know, ice creamers, for Doritos, like, whatever it may be. And there came a point where I remember my last, my last audition. I called my agent as I was on my way out. And I was like, I just cannot do this anymore. And she was like, I had a feeling that was coming. But, you know, I had some experience in front of the camera, so I figured if I'm only getting served right-wing content, I'm just going to start making this content on my own and putting it out there and see how it does. And I just kind of, for years and years kept my head down, posted consistently, every single, single day. And, you know, it was actually the perfect, it was the perfect move for me at that time,

because working in the entertainment industry, you have to wait on hundreds of people to give you permission to be able to do what you want to do. I had, I had to find representation, somebody who wanted to represent me. Then they had to submit me to cast and directors who wanted to see me. And then if the cast and director liked me, you have to make sure that the producers and the directors liked you. And then you have to get, you know, approval from studios, approval from the rest of their teams, from other producers, and then I've been on jobs where then you get cut from the final product. And so it's just a lot of people there that are in a position to tell you no. And now I'm in a position where I work for myself. And so if I want,

if there's something that I want to say, if there's something that I want to do, I'm able to do it with full autonomy. And so it was a great change of pace from an industry where probably more than any other industry, you were just waiting for permission from a lot of people who are just lined up to be able to tell you you can't do it. Right. So you took that control. You started your own thing. How did you lean into politics and how did you decide what issues you were going to embrace first? Yeah. I've always been obsessed with politics. When I was at Lehigh back in 2008, I organized buses to bring all of the students from campus to their polling places. And then, you know, look, I'm part of the same class of Americans who got especially

involved in politics when Trump was elected in 2016, took office in 2017, and it became all I could think about. And I had other jobs in the meantime, but it was it was hard to, it was hard to do a normal job and just kind of recognize the insanity of everything that it was happening around me. In terms of what I wanted to focus on specifically, I'm especially focused on, I really love, like, litigation. I love, like, the issue of voting rights. I have a series that I do with Glenn Kershner and Mark Elias, both of whom are at the top of their fields. So, just learning about the law and more importantly being able to teach people about the law is really where my passion is. And look, I hope we get to a point where instead of focusing on the legal issues,

because we're so immersed in this stuff, and instead of focusing on all of the affronts to democracy, we can get to a point where then I can talk about here's what we can accomplish. Here's what we can do as far as protecting the planet from climate change is concerned. Here's what it looks like to move into, you know, deep into the 21st century with a fully, a fully renewable energy sector. And that's the stuff I hope we get to instead of being able to become an expert at legal things because we're just watching, you know, watching trumpify court orders. And so what does that mean?

What does it mean to go from the trial court to the appeals court to en banc review to The Supreme Court, like, I, again, like, all of this is kind of a testament to the fact that we have to learn this stuff. But I hope there comes a point where we can pivot to, okay, here's how to hold bad actors accountable, to here's what we can actually accomplish once we do have control of government. So you've been in the entertainment business before you started essentially your own broadcasting channel. What do you think of Trump as, what do you think of the president, I should say, really? It sounds somehow so disrespectful to the office just to refer to him by his last name. But what do you think of what he has brought to the presidency in terms of celebrity and energy? I really take your point about the Democrats not having fully embraced the potential of digital.

What do you think he's brought to it? Because you can't deny that he's a very successful television programmer in the way that he thinks of his presidency. 100%. I think that, and this is to my own dismay, but I think he has. he has allowed culture to shift from the Democrats to the Republicans. When I was coming of age in politics, Obama was the president. And Obama was cool. Like, there's no way around it. You can't look at Obama, especially when, you know, he's running against like John McCain. He was running against Mitt Romney. These guys weren't cool. And Obama would play basketball. He was young and charismatic

and energetic and good-looking. And so it became a thing where I, the notion when I was in college of anybody being like I'm a Republican was just so so outlandish. And now I think that by virtue of the fact that, well, you know, Democrats have a lot of responsibility here too in that we are very bad on the left at making way for the next generation. And so, you know, the same people who might have been cool 20 years ago, well, they're still office. And so it's a lot harder to relate to people when you've had the same representatives, the same senators for decades and decades. and decades and decades inherently, you're going to be, you're going to have less and less of an

ability to be able to relate to newer generations who are coming onto the scene. And so our inability to kind of make way for the next generation, plus the Republicans embrace of independent media, while the Democrats were focusing on, you know, MSNBC and CNN and the New York Times, all of which play an important role in our media. The Republicans weren't getting what they needed from liberal media. And so they created their own outlets. But the difference is that those outlets are not objective news sources. These are, you know, Fox News and OAN and Newsmax and the Daily Wire and, you know, Alex Jones's show. And so these are avowed Republicans. And so that created this asymmetry in the media where Democrats continue to rely on legacy media, which again is important, but these are

not on Team Blue. And then you've got these right-wing outlets, which are on Team Red. And so that That asymmetry was just so staggering and it took so long. It took until, you know, December of 2024 for us to even recognize that there was a problem in the vast majority of this party. And so now we're, you know, sprinting from behind to try and create parity. But at least there is a recognition that the problem exists. And so now it's a matter of whether we're going to be able to have the tools to fight back, you know, and build up our presence where people actually are getting their news. Brown, I'm really enjoying talking to you, but we have to take a break for some messages. We love our sponsors, but we're back with Brian Tyler Cohen.

So going back a bit, you talk about Obama being cool. And actually, Obama is an interesting politician because he sort of defied the normal time that you're expected to serve. He came in after two years in the Senate. And then he spun out, right? He's not still around. I mean, it's one of the arguments that lots of Democrats have with him or one of the beefs they have. with him, I should say, that he's not very visible right now. But, and you make the very good point that John McCain and Mitt Romney, who ran against

Obama, weren't cool. Donald Trump arguably wasn't cool either. I mean, he was a bit of a joke when he started. Nobody thought he would get through. What is it about him do you think that has been so unassailable? Yeah, I think it's, it's a couple of things. One, he talks like a normal person, and I think that in an era where, where language on the, the left has become increasingly politically correct. Donald Trump served as the antidote to that. He also understands that we're in an era where if you mess up, which Donald Trump does on a daily basis, that the only way to get past that is to come out guns ablazin the next day and the next day and the next day and just kind of offer up a barrage of where even if, even if you've

screwed up royally on Monday, you've said so many things. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, that there is not a shot in the dark that anyone will be able to continue talking about what's happened on Monday because you've given them so much more. Correct. And the Democrats don't understand that if you make a mistake, if you say something that's one inch left of center and you're getting criticism for that, they will retreat and figure out, like, go into a, you know, pull a committee together and figure out how to craft the perfect response. And they give you no more information. They don't put anything else out into the zeitgeist. And so inherently, the only thing to focus on is that mess up.

And Trump is 10 steps ahead. He's already, yes, granted, he's screwed up 10 times in the meantime. But you can't talk about the first nine because you can only focus on the last one. And this is a deliberate strategy. It's what Steve Bannon calls flooding the zone with shit. And he understands that. But Democrats are often so safe, so unoffensive. We make sure that all of our messages are poll tested.

If news breaks, then we have to wait three days before we figure out what we can say and who we can say it to and what language would be perfect. And that new cycle has moved on. And I think his understanding of how quickly the media moves these days has helped him figure out how to kind of manipulate it. And you're right. He's not particularly cool. But I think when you're when contrasted with the Democrats

and how slow and safe and unoffensive they've become, well, you know, if it's between A and B and he's moving 10 steps faster than the Democrats, then it's not really much of a question on who's going to win. So did you know when Carmelah Harris was in the middle of her election campaign, which admittedly was incredibly short 103 days, I think it was. Did you sense that she was going to lose? No, I didn't.

And admittedly, like, I'm not who you want to go to the racetrack to bet on things. I mean... People thought she was going to win because it seemed unthinkable that Donald Trump would get back in power. Yeah, it's true. No, I thought that she would win. I thought the energy that she was able to harness in just three months was really impressive, given the time constraints on her campaign. But, you know, I think the reality is, and this comes with experience too,

but the reality is that there were a few things that were holding Democrats back, and one was the economic environment, you know, not just in the United States, but across the world when you have a high inflation environment. and even people who are not paying attention to politics recognize what's happening because they feel it, and they're going to blame the people in charge, and the people in charge were the Democrats, and so it's as simple as that. In that respect, I don't know who you could have chosen. I don't know that it's necessarily even a matter of Kamala being the nominee. I think anybody with a D next to their name in an environment where Americans were looking to punish the D's,

those people would have failed. And the second thing is that, again, lending itself to what we were speaking about earlier, is that Republicans just dominated the media ecosystem where people are getting their news. And like, you know, Kamala, God knows how much money went to like the sphere in Vegas or, you know, I'm sure plenty of funds were wasted. But the reality is that where the Republicans spent their money was where people actually were. It was on these digital platforms. It was on vertical content platforms. And I think, you know, the silver lining of this is that Democrats'

recognized where we have to start investing some resources. The flip side of that is that it came at the cost of allowing Donald Trump back into office. So I want to come back to the Democrats and who you think are really the potential leaders for the future in a moment. But first, let's just talk about Donald Trump, because who do you think are the most dangerous people in his cabinet? How much time you got? I mean, the problem is his cabinet, they all share the same quality, which is that they're there to serve as a rubber stamp on him. There are no bulwarks against the worst excesses of Trump. And so you have somebody like Pete Hegseth, who is imminently unqualified.

I mean, this is a weekend Fox anchor who's running the military right now. And even in the moment that we're in as we're recording this, which is that we don't know whether the attack on Iran's nuclear facilities were successful, Well, the Intelligence Committee says that they weren't entirely successful, but you have Trump trying to save face for himself saying that they were. And of course, Pete Higgseth, here's the clarion call. He just parrots exactly what Trump says. And so what good does that do to have somebody in office who is not there to serve as anything other than just someone who's going to regurgitate what Trump says? But then even more insidious than that is the folks, I think, at the law enforcement agencies.

and that is Dan Bongino, Cash Patel, and Pam Bondi, because we've seen the ways in which Trump has an eagerness to pervert what's happening in the law to help himself politically and electorally. And so we saw in the last election when Trump tried to say that there was massive fraud in the cities, that there was fraud in Detroit and Milwaukee and Philadelphia and even Bill Barr, who is not some crunchy liberal, right? This isn't a guy that's like marching down the street alongside BLM protesters. This is a pretty damn conservative Republican. Even he came out and said that what Trump is saying is bullshit. And so thank God they weren't able to basically exploit our law enforcement agencies to lend itself to Trump's fever dreams. But now we're in a situation where Cash Patel and Dan Bongino are perfectly content to do that. Pan Bondi is perfectly content to do that.

And so what causes me to lose sleep at night is the prospect that Trump will say, you know, we need to take a look at what's happening in all the population centers in these swing states in Atlanta and Philadelphia and Milwaukee and Detroit. And I think that there were late night vote dumps and all of these votes have to be cast out. And instead of having somebody like Bill Barr who's going to call it bullshit, rightfully so, you've got these other people who are going to say, you know what? We think there was. I think we think there were fraudulent votes.

And so we have to get in there and seize the voting machines. And now we're also in a situation where there are troops, here in Los Angeles. And if he exports that strategy to other states, well, then there are boots on the ground, literal boots on the ground, to be able to go in and effectuate his plans. And so, you know, not to not to bring the conversation down, but that is the stuff that scares me about putting these complete, groveling, slavishly sycophantic Trump devotees in these positions of power and the law enforcement agencies. So one of the other people that you've also been covering with real meticulousness is Robert Kennedy Jr.

Do you want to add him to your list? Yeah, that's in a little bit of a different category. So again, what I'm especially passionate about is like a defensive democracy, right? Robert F. Kennedy poses separate dangers that I think are just as, I mean, I'm the son of two health care workers. And so, so, you know, I have seen the ways in which A, the health care system doesn't work, but B, how it could be undermined by bad actors like him. And, you know, I had the opportunity to interview him before the election.

And I don't know how it actually happened because, because. He probably thought you were working for someone else. I presume so. But, you know, I had the opportunity to speak with him. And look, I think that he has a law degree. He has no, he has no degree in medicine or public health. and especially, I mean, it is outside the realm of like, of reason and logic that we would have somebody at this moment of time in the immediate aftermath of a pandemic who has no backgrounds, no bona fides in any of any public health or medicine that he would be there to lead the nation's health care agencies. I mean, to be the guy who has, has oversight over the CDC and the NIH and Medicare and Medicaid. But that's the moment we're in right now.

And so it's just one more thing that's at risk, not just at the hands of RFK, but also, I mean, all of these Republicans who are looking to strip health care away from Americans, kind of in defiance of history, because we watched what happened when Republicans went after the ACA in 2017 and they lost the House in 2018 by the biggest margin in modern American history. They're kind of repeating the same strategy now. but kind of weirdly, I actually, from a raw political perspective, I understand what they're doing, and it's almost impressive because they know what they want. And that is they want to give themselves tax cuts and they want to consolidate power for themselves. And they have a tax cut on the table right now. And they want this tax cut to be permanent. And they know what happens when you go after health care.

But they need some way to offset these tax cuts for themselves. And so they're going to do it. And they also understand that they may lose in midterms, but that it's temporary and that when they are given the opportunity to get into power, they will exercise that power to the nth degree, even if it means that it's to their own electoral detriment. And they may very well lose in midterms, but they'll come back. I mean, they incited an insurrection against the U.S. government in 2020, and it's 2025, and they have full control of government right now. They know that Americans have short attention spans and short memories. But what they do with power is they figure out exactly what they want. And unlike the Democrats who often feel like they figure out any way not to accomplish what they want to do,

the Republicans say even if it means it's to our own electoral detriment, we will get what we want. We will give ourselves a tax cut. And yes, we may lose the election after that. But guess what? Our wallets are going to be fatter and we're going to be happier? All right. So who are the Democrats going to put forward who can take this crew on? Who would you put money on if you're a betting person?

and you may be a betting person. Who would you put money on? Top three, top three. I would say that we're going to be in a situation. We may very well be in a situation like Barack Obama where in, you know, in 2000, let's see, this would be the equivalence of like 2005. I don't think anybody knew who Barack Obama was

outside of Illinois. Barack Obama had had a keynote at the previous convention four years before he actually ran. So people say, oh, he was complete unknown. He wasn't a total unknown. It wasn't a total. unknown, but unless you're a political junkie who's watching political conventions, especially in an era where not that many people were tuning into politics like they are today, generally people

didn't know who Barack Obama was. But I think very likely we may be in a situation like that. But to give you a straight answer, if I had to guess from the crop of people that we're looking at right now, three names that probably jumped to mind. And this is, there are two names that I think there are two names that I think are owed to the fact that these folks know how to get into uncomfortable spaces, and that is Gavin Newsom and Pete Buttigieg. And we've seen instances where they're both going on Fox News. They're both going on these right-wing podcasts. And I do think it's important that we get into spaces that are uncomfortable because Democrats lost the popular vote, they lost the electoral vote. We are not in a position where we can just stay within the confines

of our own base. Inherently, we have to be able to reach people outside of, of our tent. One other name that I think is interesting is Wes Moore. And he is a young, charismatic, a governor in Maryland. He's largely unknown. So I think that's actually a benefit for him because, because, yes, Gavin Newsom has built up kind of a brand for himself as a fighter. Yes, Pete Buttigieg is, you know, probably the best spoken politician that we have. But both of them have baggage. I mean, Gavin Newsom is a punching bag for Republicans from this big blue liberal bastion of California. And so Republicans are very good at making, you know, Democrats into boogeyman. And they did it with Hillary Clinton for the better part of, you know, a couple of

decades. Now they're doing it with Gavin Newsom. And of course, Pete Buttigieg was in the Biden administration. And there's baggage that comes with that. West Moore benefits from the fact that he's largely unknown. So, you know, but that's, again, that's at, you know, in this snapshot in time and things can change over the course of days or weeks in politics today. But I would say, you know, in late June of 2025, some folks that I'm looking at right now that I think are probably ahead of the pack are going to be Newsom, Buttigieg, and Westmore. You mentioned Wesmore, Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom as potential leaders.

What about AOC who is pretty competent when it comes to handling digital? Yeah, I mean, look, I think she is in large part the future of the Democratic Party. I think we should be elevating her. every chance we get. I don't know that she's in the running for, I mean, I feel like, I feel like it would be impossible to look at Gavin Newsom and not recognize that he's running for president. And the fact that Pete Buttigieg skipped out on running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan also lends itself to this idea that he's probably running for president. I don't know that we've gotten any indication from AOC that she's going to throw her hat in the ring. And she's also been

very deliberate about the steps that she takes. You know, she, she, she, she, she, she, she, She, I feel like is not just throwing herself at every opportunity that she's very strategic about the way that she advances up up the chain. But look, I think that that, and I'm proud to say that I think she's the future of the Democratic Party. She is passionate. She's progressive. She deeply believes in what, in what she says and what she stands for. She's probably one of the best speakers that we have in the party. She's able to capture attention. And going back to what we were speaking about with Obama, she's, she's, cool. Like, you know, people, she's charismatic. People are drawn to her. They want to hear what she has to say. And just being able to garner attention in this media environment is half the battle. I think

Trump has benefited from it so much. And if somebody as reprehensible as him is able to garner all of this attention because he knows how to operate in this media ecosystem, imagine somebody like AOC who has virtuous ideas behind her, who isn't out there trying to rip people out of their communities because of the color of their skin, who isn't out there trying to strip health care away from people, who isn't out there trying to take food assistance away from the most vulnerable among us, who isn't out there denying the impacts of climate change, even as insurance companies, or pulling out of places like Florida and California. So if you have a competent speaker and you mix that with virtuous ideas, I think that that's a recipe for success. So I have

no doubt about the extent to which she's going to ascend on the left. Let me ask you then, just before we wrap up, what do you think the chances are? that we get through to 2008 with democracy still intact. I mean, I really appreciate the way you focus on what the Justice Department is doing and clearly the Democrats are using

the courts as a form of resistance as the Trump government oversteps the mark. I guess what I'm asking is, do you think the courts will hold and do you think we get through to 2028 with the possibility of a fair election? It's a really good question. I do think it could go either way. I mean, my honest opinion is if we have Democrats who are willing to fight with everything they've got

and not kind of defer to this bygone era of our friends on the other side of the aisle, if we have people who are truly looking to exercise the full strength of the party, the courts, the law, whatever we have at, disposal, then I think there is a world in which we can stave off what I believe is an inevitable onslaught by Republicans. I don't think that Donald Trump is firing career civil servants and replacing them with political loyalists because he has, you know, a focus on the next three and a half years. I think that the Stephen Miller's of the world and the Russ votes of the world, the folks who are operating in the background, have every single intention of entrenching

Republican power for the foreseeable future, like indefinitely. So it could, in my opinion, it could go. And I understand this is not really a satisfying answer, but I do believe that it could go either way. Because if the Democrats don't have their wits about them and the Democrats are going to maybe defer to like, you know, the processes of the bygone era and focus on norms and kind of show some of the weakness that has been roundly criticized in the past, then I think Republicans will be successful at undermining our democracy. And I don't know that we'll be in a position where we'll be able to fight back in 26 and 28. The flip side is if we do have people who are looking to leave it all on the field and fight with everything they've got, folks like Mark

Elias, who are on the front lines every day, looking to, you know, understanding the urgency of this moment that we're in, then I think that we'll be in a position where we can fight back. But look, it could go either way. right now and it just relies on having people who who understand this moment and are willing to like actually fight with the same with the same strength that republicans are fighting right now. Has the Democratic Party reached out to you or have any candidates reached out to you to get your help as they navigate the next few years? No, but I don't think that. I mean, I've spoken, I've spoken with Democrats about how to

optimize like on digital media platforms and I've helped, I've spoken with a lot of, of elected officials in terms of doing that. But in terms of the messaging, no, I mean, I'm not consulting with any Democrats. But I think that what I've been able to do is just kind of lead by example. And I've been focusing relentlessly on fighting back and elevating fighters. And that's something that I talk about almost every day, certainly something that I posed to all of the elected officials that I speak with. And oftentimes, I'll only speak with elected officials who are getting out there, figuring out how to break through and figuring out how to fight. And so I think just by doing that, that kind of offers some incentive structure for the

people who are in office to know, okay, if I want to get attention, at least just from this one channel. And there are lots of us in the pro-democracy ecosystem. And I'm glad to be surrounded by a growing ecosystem here of folks who are fighting back against what's happening. But, you know, all I can do in my little corner of the internet is try and elevate people who are actually fighting who are actually meeting with this moment with the urgency that it deserves. And I think that that's catching on. And so insofar as I can be helpful on that front and say like, hey, the way to get some attention, the way to get an interview, the way to get some coverage is to do something that shows that you're willing to fight. If I can do that, then I feel like that's me

doing my job. Well, you certainly seem to be very successful in doing your job. Your urgency comes through the, I don't know what the word is prolificity, I want to say, but I don't think that's a word. the prolific nature of what you do is deeply impressive, especially as to someone who's putting out three podcasts a week, and that's enough. So thank you very much, and I would love to have you back, especially at moments. I mean, it feels like every week there are new moments, and I was particularly struck, as I said, by your analysis of the parade. But then, of course, we've moved on.

Nobody remembers the parade anymore. No one remembers Elon Musk. No one remembers the tariffs, because we're deep in the Iran moment at the moment. But huge thanks for coming on. We really appreciate you taking a break from your schedule. Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. They do say never meet your heroes,

but I will say that Brian has become a hero of mine, and I am very curious to meet him in real life, but I loved meeting him on digital life. I think he's a really extraordinary talent, and I hope that we can become reverse mentors, though I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to mentor him on, but I would like all sorts of tips from him on how to brawl. effectively on YouTube.

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