The Opinions - Will 2026 Be the Year Voters Pull the Emergency Brake?

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

The midterms are coming, and President Trump is already sounding the alarm. For this week’s round table, the columnists David French and Jamelle Bouie and the Opinion national politics writer Michelle Cottle try to prepare listeners — and themselves — for how each party will frame Trump’s second term and falling approval rating.See Jamelle Bouie, Ross Douthat and Kathleen Kingsbury of Times Opinion live at the Library Foundation of Los Angeles on Jan. 20 for “Trump: The First Year of His Second Term.” Get tickets here.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail] the full transcript here: https://nytimes.com/2026/01/17/opinion/2026-midterms-trump.htmlThis episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Daniel Ramirez. Original music by Pat McCusker, Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for New York Times opinion. And this week, we have the band back together. David French, Jamel Bowie, my fantastic colleagues and columnists. It is so good to see you for the first time in 2026. It has been such a quiet start to the year. How are you feeling? Good?

I'm tired already, Michelle. You're tired already? Tired already. Chimel? I'm feeling as good as one can feel given the circumstances, which I'll let people figure out what that means. Yeah, everybody can just Google that. But Jamel, we missed you last week. But I hear that for our Jamel stands, of which I know there are many,

you're going to be doing an event live in Southern California. That's right. So they have the opportunity to catch up with you. Tell me about this. Tell me. Give me the details. Yes, next Tuesday, the 20th in Los Angeles, we'll be having an event. It will be me, our boss, Katie Kingsbury, and Ross Douth, our colleague, talking about the first year of the Trump administration and what it means and what it portends and all those things.

Oh, so it's a feel good event. Yes, a feel good event. Lots of, I don't know, laughing and chortals and like. Okay. So it's 7 p.m. at the Aratani Theater, which means nothing to me because I only go to L.A. sometimes. But I'm sure that means a lot to those there. Okay. And we'll put a link for people to get tickets in our show notes because I know we've got some demand. Yes. All right. All right. So moving right along, we spent our last episode of 2025 looking back. So now we've got to look forward.

As a political writer, I am already obsessed with the midterms. both parties have red-hot primaries coming up as early as March 3rd in Texas, and then the drama just keeps on rolling straight through November. So, okay, as political nerds, we keep close tabs on this, but for our more normal listeners, and I am so happy for y'all's sanity, let me give a quick lay of the land in terms of what's at stake in these midterms and what the parties need to do for success in November.

I'll briefly get the ball rolling, And then I want you guys to have at it, too. So as far as what is its stake, the midterms are a referendum on the sitting president. So for everyone, Republicans, Democrats, all of us, what is on the line is basically the shape and power of the remainder of the Trump presidency. If Republicans keep unified control of Congress, Trump is going to take that as a mandate to just do whatever the hell he wants for as long as he can hold on to the office. Does that seem right to you guys? Yeah, that sounds basically right. If Republicans hold on to both chambers, then it sort of all bets are off for the next two years after that. At least two years. At least two years. Yeah, I think that's 100,000 percent true because he'll take it as a validation of all of the brutality.

Because there is a sort of silent majority theory operating behind the scenes in the White House. They like what we're doing to the immigrants. They like what we're doing to, quote, criminals. they love all this. They're just not going to tell pollsters. And so, yeah, if he keeps that majority in the House, if he maintains or extends that majority in the Senate, yeah, I mean, all bets are off. Absolutely. It'll be a total validation of the administration strategy and approach. I say not total, let me be clear, political validation, not moral validation. That's a good distinction. validation of the administration's approach so far. All right. So nothing focuses the political mind, though, like a good butt weapon. So if voters rebuff his team, Republicans are going to need to decide if they really want to go down with that ship, right?

Yeah, I mean, a lot of this is about expectations. It's always about expectations, right? So I think the expectation right now is that Democrats are probably going to win back the House. I'm not sure anyone has a sense of the scale of that, and that's going to shape how people react. as well. If it's a narrow win, right, like narrowly take back the House, I think that would be read as basically like a good performance for Republicans. If Democrats sort of crash through, you know, the wall, like the Kool-Aid man and take back the House, then that's going to be taken as like a major repudiation. And likewise, with the Senate, any scenario in which Democrats take the Senate, which is a

very tough reach for them right now is a scenario in which there really has been, I think, a decisive repudiation of what the administration's been doing. And I think in that world, Republicans are going to be like, okay, we got to spend the next two years distancing ourselves from Trump. Now, the trouble, the trouble is that Trump does not want to be distanced from. So there will be a push, but there's also going to be a pull. It's like trying to break up with somebody who just won't take know for me. It's like trying to break up with the most toxic partner you can imagine.

So but if the but the dams if they underperform this is a disaster for them because they are desperate to show that they heard voters unhappiness in 2024 and have been working to correct some of those errors and if the party cannot manage to beat a broadly unpopular president in a cycle when historically whatever party is out of power in the white house does best. If they can't manage that, then I believe it's hit the red button, break the glass, full-blown panic mode for them. There was a really interesting discussion of this online yesterday about this disparity between the general election voter and the primary voter. And I think that one of the problems that both parties have right now is there is too little participation in the primary, and that is driving candidate selection in a way. way that is going to be ultimately harmful to parties in general. Let's look at Texas and let's look at the Republican side. Republicans have a real problem right now in Texas and that the latest polling that I saw on the Democratic side, James Talleyko has about an eight or nine point lead over Jasmine Crockett and Ken Paxton, who might be, I mean, there's a lot of competition for this,

but, you know, one day we should do sort of the horse race rankings. He might be the most corrupt elected politician in America this side of Donald Trump. And his wife is divorcing him on biblical grounds, despite the fact that he has been a huge player in Christian politics and driving out the evangelical vote. Oh, yeah. In the before times, I would be at conferences where he was holding court, holding forth as the model Christian politician, right? And so now his wife is divorcing him for adultery.

And he's leading in the primary. But you're talking about in John Cornyn, one of the more, you know, respected mainstream establishment Republican senators, and he's in the fight of his life in a primary against a walking ball of corruption. And so that's one of the issues that's unfolding here. And look, the Republicans, I think in particular have that primary voter problem, but I also think the Democrats have a primary voter problem issue as well. When you have a race that concentrates your most hyper-engaged, hyper-aware, sort of political nerd, so to speak, their priorities don't align completely with the sort of the voter that kind of lays low and just kind of walks into the polls every two years.

They have different kinds of concerns. And it's one of the reasons why these parties are lurching in and out of control because in many ways, these parties are built for their primary voters. They're not as built for the general election voter. Okay. So let's dig in a little bit to the Dippincrats. Looking at a midterm, which we all understand is different than a presidential year. What message should the party be focused on?

They've leaned into the anti-Trump theme for cycles. Didn't work so well in 2024, but, you know, how do they balance that message in a midterm that acknowledges some of the Trumpian chaos that we've been seeing? But also gets in those, you know, quote-unquote kitchen table issues and other things that voters are, you know, that are top of mind for voters. You know, part of the issue, and one of the problems you're going to have in analyzing this election is, as we said at the very top of this, these midterms are mainly verdicts on the president. And so running for things like affordability or building more housing, those are kinds of issues. Of course, the kitchen table issues that voters want to hear about. Also, at the same time, when you don't have the presidency, it's very hard to implement an agenda. It's very hard to run on, this is the agenda we're going to implement if you vote for us.

It's much easier to run on, here's all the crap, we're going to stop. In some ways, I think what you're going to have is a kind of, you know, go back to this analogy, a break glass in the case of emergency sort of election, where you're saying we're in an emergency situation right now. There is a lot of chaos. There's a lot of confusion. There's a lot of rage. There's a lot of anger. And we're going to be able to at least provide some accountability and some,

restraint that doesn't exist right now. And I think that that's going to be just a very compelling top line message. You know, one thing that is fascinating to me is a lot of these things that just totally consume the online world do not escape into the offline world. But I don't think that's true of the killing of Renee Good, for example. The polling indicates that anywhere between almost 70 to around 80 percent of Americans have seen video, have seen the footage of that. shooting. And so there will be these things that break through. You know, as we're recording this, the podcast, Trump has threatened the Insurrection Act. And, you know, these are things that they create a big online tempest. Maybe people don't, will not know 48 hours from now that Trump threatened

the Insurrection Act. But if he invokes it, they'll definitely. They'll definitely know. Yeah. Jamel. I think David's right that in terms of messages to win, all you really have to do is like announce your intention to hold the administration accountable and like, you know, concrete ways. I do think that Democrats are going to be using the midterms to test out messages, right, to try to reach out to voters that they know they're going to need in 2028. And so I would expect to see some version of what Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said a couple days ago, I believe. She was like walking in the steps to the Capitol and said to a reporter, you know, they cut your health care to pay for this ice stuff, right?

That's both a accountability message and like a kitchen table affordability message, right? It's both they cut food stamps so they could shoot a woman in the face. I mean, I don't know if anyone's going to go that. Like, that's how I, if I were running for office, that's what I would say it, right? Like, I'm a little blunt in that regard. But I would imagine you'll get some version of that. That, like, the government could be doing these things to help you. but they cut all of that to pay for, you know, armed thugs harassing your friends and neighbors.

That, I think, is going to be the way they try to capture both ends of this. And I actually think that's a pretty effective message, right? I think it's both a recognition of kind of like the material stuff that people really care about and a recognition of the kind of soul of America stuff that people do really care about. There's also an appeal that Democrats can make to sort of the, educated, Republican voters. And you've got some messages there that I think could resonate with them. You know, Trump just proposed a $600 billion increase in defense spending, $600 billion for one year, okay? He proposed a plan that the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget would say,

would add almost $6 trillion in deficit in debt to the United States. And, you know, why is that? Well, his Don Roe doctrine is going to bankrupt America, because when you alienate all of our allies, guess what? They actually carry all of our allies collectively carrying more of the defense burden than we do. Okay. And so if you alienate our allies, we're going to bankrupt ourselves trying to pick up that slack. And so there's lots of things how you can make a Greenland controversy or the Venezuelan intervention resonate in domestic terms. say this your bank your arrogance and your pride and your alienization of allies is bankrupting this country so i think that's exactly right earlier this week i was talking to chuck schumer this

senate democratic leader and he was kind of walking me through the party's umbrella theme for the midterms of and we got to go with the alliteration costs chaos and corruption that gives them a framework for saying these are all tied together. When Trump is doing all these things abroad, it adds to the chaos. When he is cutting, you know, questionable deals with certain companies or favoring his favorite players, you know, that kind of quasi-corruption adds to not just the chaos, but the costs that you're going to pay. Even when he does something like decide he's going to proxie. prosecute the Fed chair. That doesn't really resonate with people in and of itself, but if you pitch it as, well, it's going to make everything more expensive if we destroy the independence of the central bank, then people are going to pay a lot more attention and they're certainly going to care. Mary Peltola, the former House member Democrat, just jumped into the race in Alaska

for Senate. And you can see in her messaging already how these things all tie together. You know, she's saying that big corporations because of the corruption in Washington are being allowed to essentially rape Alaska's natural resources, that nobody in the lower 48 cares about Alaska. They're just like feathering their own pockets. So you see how the costs and the corruption and the chaos all tie together. And Schumer was saying that, you know, this, this is absolutely something that works as kind of a big framework. So the last thing on the Democrats, you don't want to overlearn the lessons of any particular election because obviously everyone's different, especially like depending on, you know, off cycle year, presidential midterm. But there was a bit of a blue wave in the 2025 off cycle races.

Are there lessons that you guys think the Democrats should be taking forward from those? I mean, the big lesson to me of the 2025 wave such that it was is that Democratic voters, they want people who are going to be aggressive, right? They want people who are going to be fighters. But one of the results that just shocked me the most was the Virginia Attorney General race, right, where the candidate had, you know, texted about, you know, like. It was an unfortunate, unfortunate text. to air, shooting, you know,

an opponent's family. And he won by six points. And it's like, that to me was a sign, that was a sign that Democratic voters

in Virginia were like, yeah, we don't care, you know? And part of that is that we've witnessed how the president talks about opponents.

Yeah, there's been a desensitization. For years. People are desensitized to it. But I think it's also sort of like, you know, hey, if that guy's willing to say that,

Maybe that chose he's willing to fight, right? Yeah. And I think that desire for fighters is the lesson to take from last year, that I do not think that candidate to take a very kind of cautious. Oh, we just all want to get along with their Republican friends approach are going to do very well. So I have a question for you, Jamel, related to that, which is that. So the Attorney General candidate in Virginia was who he was. but Abigail Spanberger

Mikey Sherrill Premier races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia they weren't milk toast but they were

very pragmatic in their approach do you think that there's a way to blend those two things which is that I'm a fighter

I'm going to fight for you but I'll work across y'all with people who are reasonable as well how do you see

that kind of reconciling yeah so I think I think one can think about fighter in any number of ways. And one of the ways you can think about it is in terms of accountability politics, right? Not fighter in terms of I'm going to humiliate my partisan opponents, but a fighter in terms of there was wrongdoing that happened. And I want to deal with that wrongdoing.

And that is not incongruent, right? That's not intention with the more modern and pragmatic politics in other places, right? You can be someone with moderate views and any number of, like, issues and then also say, there's no way we can fund ICE in its current form. Or we have to think about reorganizing DHS, given the abuses we've seen, right? Those two things are not in tension with each other. You could make the argument, right, that sort of someone willing to be kind of bold and progressive in their policy preferences, maybe is a little more likely to be aggressive in the accountability front.

but there's there's a bit of conceptual separation there. I had a question for David, actually. And this is thinking about post-Trump politics. Like, just to lay the cards in the table, I think that any post-Trump politics that's going to put us in a place that doesn't just lead us back to where we are is going to have to rest on aggressive accountability

for wrongdoing and lawbreaking of a kind that I think Americans are actually kind of uncomfortable with, right? You know, if we, you know, investigations of the executive branch of what Stephen Miller's been up to, what does Russ vote been up to during these years, a willingness to say people who broke the law need to be held criminally accountable. People who were engaged in this massive corruption flowing from the White House, we need to freeze those assets. We need to refer them for criminal prosecution. And so that's going to read as very aggressive. It's going to read it's very partisan. It's going to read it's very divisive.

But I think it's necessary or you just come right back to where we are. And my question, David, is like, how do you perceive that? Like I don't perceive that as tit for tat trying to humiliate my opponents. I perceive that as trying to clean house. But I'm curious to know what you think. Yeah, I think that we have lost the distinction sometimes between the notion of fighting hard for a position and fighting hard for accountability, fighting hard for justice, and personally attacking human beings. So these are the distinctions that have sometimes been lost

in this Trump era. And it turns out often that a lot of the people who are very good at lacerating other human beings and sort of very good at that politics of the attention economy of extremely aggressive politics, as we're learning in MAGA republicanism, are not often all that competent at things like governance, accountability, stuff like that. Sometimes the people are extremely competent at the things that you're talking about, Jamel, which I agree with. I think there should be an accounting. Although I think you have to be, you have to be very careful calling for that,

because one of the things Trump is doing going into the midterms is whining that if Democrats retake either chamber of Congress or retake the House, they're going to impeach him again. Right. And he's using this as like, they're out to get me. It's another witch hunt. I mean, he is the master of victimhood. Boo-hoo, poor me. But you have to be really careful with that.

No, I do agree with that. You have to fight hard and smart at the same time. My issue is that when you're talking about a creation of an attention economy and politics, it really, really puts a premium, especially in the online world as to who has owned you, or destroyed you. And that is a perversion of our political culture that I think has completely consumed the right. I mean, you've got cabinet officials

who are more concerned about angry podcasters than they are about popular opinion. And I'm just saying this is very dangerous. This is one of the ways in which Trump has impacted our politics in a dangerous way that could easily outlasts. Well, I think the party, I think the Republican Party in general has gotten bitten by that lately. I mean, Marjorie Taylor Green, she basically learned her own lesson and got, you know, decided that it was time to leave the house when all of that venom got turned on her. So can I make a take that might age very poorly?

Well, please do. Please do. Okay. So here is my theory. Okay. My theory is that we're going to be very soon reaching a point where you need to stop looking at Trump's approval rating to know how popular MAGA is. And here's what I mean. Trump, I think, at this point, we're now in the 10th year since he came down the escalator and announced his presidency.

So in the 10 years. Oh, my God, I can't wait until that phrase is dead. I am, like, I would like to burn that escalator to the ground as a medical. I just, I just like imagining like a calendar where it's like beating. E and A.E. Before Esk later. Oh, gosh. I mean, so does Trump, Jamel. So does Trump. Go ahead. So we're in the year 10, A.E. And so in the year 10, A.E, I think a lot of Trump voters, that is part of their identity now. It is fixed. And from now on, Republicans are going to be running without Donald Trump on the ballot. And so I think that the Trump position is going to be an.

artificially high indicator of the popularity of MAGA policies, that the actual indicator of MAGA policies is going to be much more indicated by, in some senses, although I think issue polling is often kind of quasi-garbage, but if you start to see overwhelming numbers in issue polling, and then ultimately in the outcome of the midterm elections, and I think a lot of Republicans are, it's starting to sink in, that the rules that apply to Trump or the rules that don't apply to Trump still apply to them. Okay, which brings me to something

I need both of you to address, which is we've spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about Republican members of Congress pushing back against Trump or rather not. Do you already see signs of this changing? I'm thinking in particular of like the opposition to Trump's persecution of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.

But there have been a couple of up there episodes of this of late, and I was talking to Thomas Massey a couple of weeks ago, who, as I'm sure you know, is Trump's least favorite House Republican. And he predicted that after this cycle of primaries, some of his colleagues would start to loosen up and be more willing to defy the White House going forward. What do you think? I'll believe it when I see it, you know, like, okay, okay, Representative Massey, sure. I'll believe it when I see it. I do think that, you see, I mean, on sort of things that are truly beyond the pale, you do see Republicans kind of blanched a bit. You know, House Republicans recently joined with Democrats to put a health care, you know, ACA subsidies extension, you know, passed out of the House. There's a decent chance to pass the Senate. But as far as anything more serious than that, again, I will believe it when I see it. I want to add one comment on I think David's good point about the delta between MAGA issue, and Trump issue, you might say.

I think you can see that in the relative approvals of Trump and J.D. Vance. You know? Good point. J.D. Vance, not especially popular, right? In a post-Trump world, J.D. Vance clearly wants to be the standard bear for MAGA. And he is just broadly disliked in a way that is obviously somewhat just him. Well, he's like the opposite of Trump as a cultural phenomenon, right? J.D. Vance is pure political aspiration.

and like you're kind of just straightforward political business as usual. He's not a celebrity. He's not charismatic. He can't order a donut without looking awkward. He doesn't know how to talk to people. He's every senator in a suit who hears hail to the chief playing in his head on some way. Right, right, right, exactly. And we consistently underestimate the extent to which Trump is a completely unique cultural figure as a politician.

And those of us who have dived into this for a long time, the mystique is over with Trump. Like, the mystique is gone. But I think we underestimate the extent to which for a lot of Americans, the mystique still exists. Well, so talking about him not being on the ballot, him having a position that nobody else in the GOP has, you know, like, what are they going to do with the midterms? What should they do going into the midterms? At a House retreat for Republicans last week, the president told the party to campaign on his policies. You know, border security, anti-transgender athletes, tax cuts, roadmap to victory, he called it. I mean, is that what they should be doing?

I mean, what is their path forward? If I were a Republican running in an unfavorable condition, I would try to localize things as much as possible. actually talk about the policies in the most abstract way. You know, I brought you tax cuts to, you know, for X, Y, or Z, but really try to keep things local and try to erase whatever connection as much as possible you have to Trump. That would be my advice in terms, but that never works, right? Every midterm cycle when it's going to be bad for the president's party, people are like, yeah, you got to keep. things local. And it never works, right? Like voters understand these things to be referendums on the president. Can I just say, this can be cut. If this is too much, this can be

cut. Just depending on how much time he's been online. And Trump talks about this. He was like, things are going so well. Maybe we don't have to have midterms. And like there's like this chit chatter on the internet about like the president canceling the election. And I just, I feel like since we're having this conversation about the midterms, I feel obligated to say that, That's not a thing. And I know the response is going to be, look, he does everything else he wants. And I think that actually intelligent response to that is like actually there's a lot of things on which he's stopped or he's blocked. But that in a very practical sense, right, like states run elections, states run federal elections, not the president.

The president has no role in federal elections. The president has no role certifying federal elections. The president has no role seating members of Congress. When it comes to the conduct of federal elections and the results, at least for legislative elections. The president is just a guy. He's just a guy watching on CNN like the rest of us. And yes, he has, you know, he has ice. He has like a little private army. Ice on paper has 22,000 people. Looking at Minnesota right now, Minneapolis, they've committed more than 10% of their on paper agents to try to pacify the 46th largest city in the country, 45th, 46th, and they can't do it.

You know, obstinate midwestern, you know, middle-aged midwesterners have essentially stopped ice from operating in Minneapolis in a meaningful way. So I just feel like saying, I feel it's necessary to say that there's a lot of fear mongering and scaremongering about what the president can do with regards to the midterms. Well, he just got shot down by the courts, right? He was arguing that he needed to deprive states of federal funding if they didn't follow his rules for how they run their election. and the courts are like, no, bro, step back. He's demanding voter rolls and the courts are like, no, none of this is your business. So for Trump to try to cancel an election in Virginia, for example, like Abigail Spanberger would have to be like, okay, sure, right?

Like, yeah, that's going to happen. How is Donald Trump going to stop Gavin Newsom? How is he going to stop Kathy Holkel, right? Like, you have to think in practical terms. And I understand the temptation to, like, latch on to worst-case. scenarios and fantasies. It makes a lot of sense in the moment. But you have to temper that stuff with sort of like, okay, how does the practical operation of government actually work? That's all. I think Jamel is exactly right. I'm glad you brought it the numbers of ICE. Ice cannot control

America. It cannot do it. And then there's another factor that I don't think people have appreciated quite enough. And that is the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. Illinois here in the last few weeks. where it upheld an order blocking the National Guard deployment under this particular statute that Trump was trying to use, that if he was permitted to use it, sort of at his discretion at his will, yeah, we don't have very many ICE officers, but we've got hundreds of thousands of guards of soldiers in the Guard.

And you could easily imagine a scenario where he starts deploying the Guard into, quote, to preserve the sanctity of the election. or whatever pretext that he would use, not in a way that would overtly block people from voting, but then would create an atmosphere of intimidation that might sort of deter people from going to the polls. And I think that Trump v. Illinois case was very, very important because it's really cut off from him this ability

to just deploy the guard at his whim. Now, there's still the Insurrection Act hovering out there. That's a whole different can of worms. But I do think that there is great, to the point where I think it's irresponsible to argue otherwise that the election and the off-year, I mean, the midterms are going to be regular elections under regular order, counted in the regular way. That's the way this is all going to unfold. And I think it's very important to get that message out there. As far as what are Republicans going to do, I think what

you're going to see is just more of what Republicans firmly believe works for them, which is negative polarization. And I think that one thing, and this is, I'm going to take this in kind of a dark direction, it is very hard for me to watch ICE tactics without thinking that there's a purpose here beyond intimidation and that is absolutely provocation and that Trump is trying to, okay, it creates the impression, ICE tactics create the impression that Trump is trying to, and the administration is trying to recreate many of the conditions in 2020. I think that's absolutely right. Because I think in, I think in Republican circles, there is a firm belief amongst a lot of more radicalized Republicans at 2020 and the rioting and the violence

in the streets in 2020, A was Democrats' true colors. And B, that that's the reason why in actuality Trump didn't lose more decisively in 2020 was because of, you know, the fact that, you know, of the unrest. And so that's why I think this moment is so incredibly dangerous. What we're watching looks exactly like deliberate provocation. And if you saw it in another country, what we're seeing today, you would say that's a brutal crackdown that seems designed to trigger an angry response. And so I'm at a position right now where I'm very, very worried that we're going to see an actual tactic of trying to foment urban unrest as a means of proving or demonstrating that Trump's crackdown was necessary in the first place. And that is one thing that I'm very concerned about in the midterms. Okay.

On that super up. I told you was going to go dark. I know better than to let you have the last word on anything. I mean, but while I could talk about this, all day, we got to land this plane. But that just means it's time for wrecks. And David, last week, you were fired up to defend the Stranger Things finale. Are you going to go down that road and confront the haters today?

Or are you going to give someone off the time? I have to. I have to. You know, I know, they landed the plane in a way that I thought was true the story and true, more importantly, to the ethos of the entire show. And it kind of comes full circle in a way. And maybe I just hit me in all the feels because Michelle and Jamel, this might come as a surprise to you. I was a dungeon master in middle school and high school. I am putting that one in my pocket for a later use, David. I was a dungeon master.

You told me that. And just that, you know, that chapter of life. was really special and just sort of seeing the development of friendships and the bonds that you form with your childhood friends. And then the sense of loss as you grow older and you lose touch to some degree, some greater or lesser degree, I just thought it was so emotionally true and real in a way that a movie about superpowered telekinetic people doing battle with Demigorgans from another dimension. In that context is one of the most emotionally real shows I've seen. You know what?

I support you in this. I support you, David. I've never seen a second of Stranger Things in my life, and I don't intend to change that. You have so much to look forward to, Jamil. I know, Jamil. It's literally never going to happen. I know. It could.

Never say never. So my recommendation is also a visual. It's a film. I am a huge fan of the director, the late director, John Frankenheimer. Films Frankenheimer is directed include the Manchurian candidate. Awesome. Seven Days in May. Awesome. Awesome. His most famous one of the 90s is Ronin with Robert De Niro, probably De Niro's best performance of the 90s. And before that, he directed a picture for HBO that I watched recently called Against the Wall. It stars Kyle McLaughlin and Samuel L. Jackson,

as well as kind of a bevy of Thespians. And it is a dramatization of the Attica, prison riot. And it is terrific. I had such a good time watching it. Frankenheimer is a great director of action and like kinetic action in particular. And the prison riot scene, uh, feels like you're in the midst of it. It's so well shot and so well directed and captures sort of the sense of especially from the perspective of the guards, the sense of surprise and shock. And then from the sense of the prisoners, the sense of opportunity, like, oh, we are actually doing this. Yeah. This film has been kind of in my watch list for a long time. So I was like, let me just watch this as kind of a Frankenheimer completionist. And I came away thinking that this is

some of his best work. That's so funny you brought that up. Last night, my husband and I rewatched Dog Day afternoon where Al Pacino has that famous moment where he's one of the bank robbers. He comes outside and gets the crowd cheering. At a cup. At a car. I did come. So, like, why on earth would we have that overlap? That is not what I am recommending for the week, though. It's lovely. Watch it, of course. It's classic.

But I just finished watching the trailer for the new season of Shrinking, which I love. This is a complete, David, you better not say anything unfortunate about it. Oh, I love that show. Okay, this is. I love that show. This is a show. that was, it stars Jason Siegel as a therapist whose wife gets killed and he's mourning and as a kind of part of his grieving coping process, he starts meddling in his patient's lives. And it is, despite that basis, hilarious. It is one of the rare shows that I watch that just makes me feel better about the world. The cast is spectacular. It's like this sprawling cast of his friends and family and three words, old Harrison Ford. so magical.

So it's going to start airing on January the 28th, which means you just have time to binge rewatch the other seasons. I can't recommend that show enough. Yeah, it's so good. That's it, guys. That's all I got for the week.

Thank you so much for coming to plan. Oh, always a pleasure. Bye, guys. Bye, David. And everybody, remember, if you're on the West Coast or planning to be on the West Coast, get your Jamel tickets.

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