The Right Time with Bomani Jones - Van Lathan breaks down Stephen A. Smith vs. Jason Whitlock beef, TSA airport Chaos | 03.25

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Bomani Jones is joined by The Ringer's Van Lathan. First, they dive into the escalating Stephen A. Smith vs. Jason Whitlock feud and why media beef keeps pulling people in. Later, they discuss the chaos at Atlanta’s airport as TSA lines spiral out of control across America. Finally, Van shares hilarious stories about working with Joel Anderson on The Ringer Tailgate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time, a wave original. My name is Beaumani Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater, and it is that time of week where we have a guest.

Join us. Check him out on Ring a Tailgate. Check him out on higher learning. I mean this when I say that. I believe to Van Lathen right now is the most versatile talker that we have really just about anywhere. Oh man, I appreciate that, bro. Versatility is very, very important to me.

That's, you know, and I guess I'm versatile, but it's also just a ton of shit to talk about right now. No, there are, but you also can. Because, I mean, I admit that part of this is you can talk about all those things that I want to hear you talk about and you are really good at talking about all kind of dumb shit that I don't really care about.

And then movies, which are not dumb shit, but not necessarily my space. Like, I feel like we could drop you off at a bar and whatever they on, you can go get on it. Well, that's kind of, that's kind of what podcasting is. It's trying to, like, make friends and meet people at a specific wavelength and ride that wavelength until you have an audience in the community that you've built.

So I take a lot of pride in that, but... But not everybody can talk on all the podcast. Right. Like, I feel like at the Ringer, you ever hear of your Jimmy Jam, tell that story about going to school with Prince. And like every instrument he tried to get all this like damn Prince is on that one too Like there's somebody at the ringer that's like yo I got this into they pull up and it's like He in here too

Well I think to be real with you at the ringer and this is what we finding out with our mutual friend At the ringer it's probably more of those Swiss army knives than at least has been at least I've worked way before Like at the ringer when they kind if you a one-trick pony there you definitely that That one trick got to be fantastic. You and Bill getting together, I was like, oh, this can work. This is a, this is a strong pairing. He knew it too. I was kind of trying to feel my way around.

But you know what? It was a really good situation in the beginning. The first podcast I did at the Ringer was way down in the hole, which you heavily influenced, by the way, heavily, heavily influenced way down in the hole. Because the whole, now you've completely changed your internet. When we first started that, you don't actually talk about this that much. When we first start that podcast, the idea that Stringer Bell was a fuckboy, which Jamel gotten to, was kind of novel. I want you to go into Wirelore now, though.

There are legitimate YouTube videos, how dumb is Stringer? The top ten dumbest things that Stringer did. I think it was me, because I will fight Jamel about this. I tell Jamel, like, you changed her. She goes, no, I didn't. She's like, and Ashley comes from Bumani. And so for me, it was hard for me to see at first because, boy, when you grow up in the neighborhood,

you want to believe that the smarty-a-a-kignaug is the smarty-art nigger. You want to believe it so bad. The dude that come along and go, hey, man, you heard about Kim Trails? You like, oh, shit, break it down. You know what I'm saying? And then it turns out that stringer, even though he did make a lot of moves that were,

I guess you could say we're smart moves. He could see different things and stuff like that. There are certain things. He told DeAngelo, he said, hey, hold their pay. And the first people that the people that don't buck up are the people that's probably snitching.

He had some stuff. But most of the big things, total with, I couldn't see it. That's how I started at the ringer away down in the hole. And that kind of got me comfortable. And ever since then, it's kind of been smooth sailing. Yeah, I ain't gonna lie. I don't, like, it sounds terrible when I say this.

But I feel like I have had like a couple moments of legitimate culture. influence and I don't really talk about it that much and I probably need to because it get forgotten because I do agree people was on a whole different kick about Stranger until I brought them this year truth and that truth that truth was before them and people saw the other thing is I got y'all to stop saying that one dude's name out loud you remember oh boy he he got a son that played for the partners right now I got I got I got everybody to understand that that ain't uh that ain't gonna be what we do nah that was that was that

was me and you, that was after I had had him on a podcast. And then me and you talked. And that was more of like a, like a personal thing. And so that, that, me and you talk, even when I see what's going on now, I'm like, oh, somebody didn't get the memo. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, man. You know, hey, hey, hey, look, it ain't, it ain't for me to be the one to tell you right now. Now, we had a plan to just kind of talk about a few things, Van, but one just dawned on me. I generally stay out of this one, but I can't help it because I'm talking to you. And I really think that you're one of the few people, I think, that we can actually have an interesting conversation about this that is not just messy.

When are Stephen A. and Whitlock just going to scrap it out? Shit. It seems like to me that that's what Stephen A wants. And for those who don't know, by the way, Whitlock went on Cam Newton's podcast, which who. He said watch on wild shit over there. I didn't see it. Oh, man, I just saw clips.

The big one was the clip I saw that let me know, okay, like, we're in something else. And Cam, who does Stephen A's show, I would not have booked that interview myself. And it seems very clear to me that Stephen A thinks that KM should not have booked that interview, but whatever. But they would talk about that time that people saw Stephen A play. Solitaire at the basketball game. And Willowx said, just say that you're gay and you don't like basketball. Wow.

Both of those are, like, is it just because it was Solitaire? I will admit, that's kind of like playing pinnuckle or Jen Rummy or what, like, all the games in the world. I remember Solitaire was the game we had to play on devices, right? Yeah, yeah. Now, he's playing it.

All right. I saw this clip of Stephen A. and Stephen A said he started to go fund me for, and I quote, fat bastard lock, because Stephen A ain't heard nothing about, we ain't supposed to talk about fat people like that. And then said, do you need some money, bro? Reach in his pocket, pull out his wallet and threw bills on the floor,

and I assure you they were not fives. Nah, nah, let me tell you what I learned about Stephen A in his retort in this entire deal. So I don't know how much I've ever learned about basketball watching first take, or learned about football, learned about none of that stuff. ESPN got a lot of great shows where you go on the show and you learn a shit ton

about what they're talking about. I think ESPN's football coverage is the best in the business, right? And then their basketball coverage, too, in different places. First take is not about that. First take is an entertainment show where the personalities really drive the reason that you watch it. That's the reason why you watch it.

You're not going to go there and learn what a RAM screen is or learn about different actions or all of that. That points per possession, all of that stuff. You're not going to learn that on first take. but you are going to see really inciting basketball and football and sports culture discussions. I think in the response to Whitlock,

I finally learned why Stephen A is a one-of-one when it comes to that. Forget about the rhetorical nutrition of what was in there, because there's really nothing that he can say about Jason Whitlock that we don't already know, right? He's not going to expose anything about Jason Whitlock that we never heard before or give us any new ideas about him. That's not going to happen. But what he can do is like paint a picture.

And when you do that, you almost got to be like a writer-director. The suit that he was wearing, that might be the best Stephen A. Smith has ever looked in the suit. The suit was cold. The suit was shining. And so when he got around the table to sit on the suit, to sit on the table to show the suit off, he's going, yo, look at me. Look how crazy fly I look. Look at my studio.

Look at my life. I'm not asking you guys to get with me or be on my side because Jason Whitlock isn't as smart as me or Jason Whitlock isn't as erudite as me or whatever. I'm telling you, who would you want to be? That was the thing. Like, he's looking in the camera and he's not going, you know, I'm not saying none of this.

He might be a fraud and all of that stuff. But look, who would you want to be? In this situation, like Matt's Kellerman says, about scoring a boxing around, you could easily score the round by just saying, which guy would you rather be? And that's what Stephen A did. And that's easy to understand. You don't have to translate that. Like, I watched it, I was like, oh, this is his attempt to son him in a profound way.

And last thing I'll say is a lot of these media beefs, and they are getting to be just absolutely. just almost it's an unfathomable amount of media beeps. I just can't I can't gauge how many you guys don't even understand the ones that even don't come to the light where we all on text trying to stop people from going at each other. It's just like a completely different time in media that we're in right now.

This one is different though. This one is different. This one is like I'm not ruling out a TMZ headline three months from now. They saw each other somewhere and Stephen A put hands on them. They really don't like each other in a visceral way. And it comes across Stephen A with a scowl. He's like he wants to be. It's totally different.

It's totally. But whoa, it's totally different, bro. It's totally different. It's weird. I don't know that I've seen one like this. Like, I go back with Whitlock. I haven't talked to Whitlock in a very long time, but I go back a long way with Whitlock.

That's a man, huh? At a time, he was. Like, I tell people this all the time. Whitlock put me on in ways. that nobody else did. Right? Like there's a... I don't talk about Whitlock

that much in public because I was cool with him at a time where he did some fucked up things to other people. And I didn't say much about it because I was cool. Right, because I was cool with him

at the time, right? Yeah. But if I didn't say that he was fucking up then, I am not the appropriate narrator to say he's fucking up now. You know, you know what I'm saying? And like, like that would, I don't know, that doesn't sit right with me.

And like I said, there are a lot of people in this game that I know I don't get on with Dan, if not for Whitlock in all likelihood. Like that's a, like that's a big part of it somewhere along the way that all changed, right? But I'm not, I'm not going to say there are not, the things that are bad to say about Whitlock, people don't need me to say them. They're self-evident, right? Like they're, I don't want to have an observation necessarily. But I bring all that up to say, I know.

why Stephen A does not fuck with him. Like I specifically understand what, I know when it really went, right? And I don't blame Stephen A for how he feels. I don't really

understand what it is on Whitlock's end that he has such a problem with Stephen A. Smith off, right? Like on that other side, I don't get it. I get where Stephen A comes from. We see what it looks like with Stephen A is TV man or like TV charged up about some topic or whatever it is that he's going to say. Like, for example, Stephen A does

like LeBron James. He's honest about the fact that he doesn't like LeBron James. I think he gets a bad rap for like how much he talks about it because he keeps going on. He won't turn an interview down. So he goes and does interviews with people who only go talk to him once in life and they're like, ooh, ask him about LeBron James. And he'll answer every question, right? So it seems like he always talks about him. My point is simply, he don't sound nearly as mad talking about LeBron James as he sounds when he talks about Whitlock and we know he can't stay in LeBron he hates Whitlock hates him what gets me about it and i think you hit it early we talked about media beefs is i don't know what somebody would have to say to me about me in this business for me

to make it content out of it right like i feel like there's a level at which we are all above this but people love it if you go look at the numbers on all that stuff people eat this stuff up when we get to argument with you. Yeah. I mean, I mean, that's in this, that's in anything, right? Like, it's, it's like, I was a deer hunted my entire, my entire childhood, right? My whole childhood, a deer hunted. And there's something that you do to call deer and you take two horns and you rattle them. You rattle the deer to you. There's all kinds of different things you can do to call deer. There's, you know, you wear the deer spray. Sometimes we'll take a little deer piss and put it on us.

Okay, during a rut, you put like deer piss on yourself. The deer, you know, during the rut, the deer comes to you. But one thing you do is you rattle the deer. Take two rattles and you rattle. And the reason why that calls deer is because the other deer think that two deer are fighting. So, the other deer think that two, two deer are fighting. They can come see it.

What's going on? Like, what's happening? You rattle them up and they think that two dears are locking horns. This is something that's territorial during the rut. They're fighting for a dough, the whole nine, whatever. So like you rattle in a deer come by, like, ask my dad. I'm like, dad, why would that make two deer come? It's like, well, shit, everybody wants to stop and watch a fight.

We get them over there. They stop and watch the fight. Boom, we hit them with the goddamn 30 on six. But what I'm saying is that I understand. I'm not pure in this. I work at TMZ for nearly a decade. So for me personally, the calculus is always at, for me right now at this point in my career, just a back and forth,

it has to be about more than just personality. It has to be about, it has to be nutritious for me. If there's like something that I've said or something that I've done or something that someone else has said or done, that I can then sort of pull back on and expose the analysis

in a way that is more meaningful, I'll do it. But the people that I don't like in this industry or I don't like jive with or get along with, I really try to ignore them and stay out of their way. because I'm too emotional like a lot of this stuff,

Stephen A also has an ability and a lot of people at this level have an ability that is really underrated. It's an ability to be personal, but not be consumed by it. So I don't think that Stephen A somewhere right now is going, yo, the next time I catch Whitlock, I'm a, like, I don't think he's being that way.

I think that could happen if he saw him, but I really do think he gets into that on a Thursday, and then on a front of, Friday, he's on to the next thing. I ruminate, I get obsessed. I'm like, yo, is this a lot? It gets to me in a way that it doesn't get to other people. I don't think that it gets to him that way.

I do think, though, that if he ever ran into Jason Whitlock, that the animus is deep enough that something would happen. Yeah, and the thing with Whitlock is, Willi don't really get mad. Like, think of all the times you've seen Willough and things you've seen Whitlock talk about, it doesn't go like that. You know what I mean? It's not a up-down situation,

which make it worse when you get super hot because that's when somebody says something that makes you really want to burn this motherfucker down, right? But I think the part that strikes me is I am amazed at how many people are able to make a living covering us, right? Nobody goes to a sports game to watch the refs.

Nobody goes to watch the media. But when the game is over, I am shocked by how many people, make their living. I can name people to make a living talking about me. Right? Like it floors me that people care that much, particularly about sports media. I know that there is some coverage around the other media worlds and maybe I'm not as aware of the discussion because it's not about me. But they talk up in sports media in particular, people talk about us so much more. And now we're at the player part of it. And so the players,

they're going to have their back and falls with each other. They're going to have the ones where they come at the media people. Maybe they don't like or whatever. it is. But it's like a rassling shoot every time it feels like somebody decides to log on and get the thing cracking. Like with Stephen A, that was a long-ass shoot. Like you were wrestling dude. You know it. Like, that was a long-ass shoot. And I just, I just can't, nobody can ever, nobody can ever say that I take myself too seriously because clearly there are other people out here that take me way more seriously than that. Well, I don't know that they care about you as much as they care about mess. And the way I know this, or my, the reason why I suspect this is because of me. I'm on YouTube and I'm looking around on YouTube. I watched the video yesterday. The video was 15 minutes and it was about Brendan Schaubb. Like Brendan Schaubb, the M.M.A. fighter who also, it became a comedian, the fighter and the kid, the whole nine.

It was a 15-minute video about Brendan Shob, and it was all of this shit that had happened. Apparently, Brendan Shab tried to hit on a comedian's wife or something. I don't know. It was all of this shit that happened like last year or the year before, two years ago. They made a song out of it. The song was called Trug Walk. It was based on Plug Walk, because apparently Shab had asked this girl to walk him out to his truck, and she felt like he was asking him, asking her to walk out there. because he wanted to get a blowjob or something like. It was a whole thing.

Here's the point. I don't give a fuck about none of this. You were riveted. I was enthralled. Now, there were people, there were famous people involved in this that I knew, right? There were names, like Bobby Lee was involved, like all these different comedians.

And I knew those names, but that's not why I was watching. I was watching because this ended up being a fucking opera of mess. An opera of mess. mess. And then it led into like how Brendan Shab is considered now. Is

Brendan Shott? And then I thought, wait a minute, they at war in Iran, I need to watch some other fucking shit right. Not the fuck am I doing. But I just think the internet is such fertile ground for narrative creation and also for playing on our basis instincts, which is

if you rattle horns, dear come to see what's up. And if two people are into it, we want to know why. Yo, so it's So I think that last part really drove something home for me that I think is interesting. And I've been reading all these different things about the internet driving our base impulses and how these people have figured out that like rage is what really drives the ship, right? Like like rage is where making people mad.

People can't help it. They keep coming back to it. But you are right in that some for real complicated mess. That is, that's hard to pass up, man. like mess that has actual factual layers to it, no matter what it is. If you see something that is like a progressive chain of mess, and we have the situation where a big part of it is with the internet,

people decide to make it public because they want the attention. So now it comes up for everybody else. But like, I ever tell you about the time I was at the airport and his white man had all these people trying to beat him up and I couldn't figure out what it is. And it turned out that he had called somebody the N-word. There we go. At Hartsfield.

Oh, shit. Right, right, right. This motherfucker got a dance weird. So he does in our hearts field. And so he does in her hearts field and somebody tried to get him and it was some army cats and they were holding a dude back. And then somebody else got heated enough to try to get him again. And, you know, there was a little back and forth or whatever. Then finally the white man started walking away.

And for some reason, I just decided to follow him because I figured that the mess wasn't over yet. And so I just kept walking. and he went into the Hudson News, and he was talking to the black people that were, the black women that were working in the Hudson News, and he was talking about how these people were trying to beat him up, and it was all, it was giving him the sympathy or whatever.

And I couldn't help it, man. I just popped up, and I was like, hey, man, he called a couple people, the N-word over there. And they were like, what? And he kept talking to stuff about, my brother works for the FBI. Like, his brother was going to save him and everything else. But I only followed him because I was like,

how is this going to resolve itself? I think that was the part that I needed was how is this going to end? With the media beef, I don't think there's a, how does it end question? It's just the back and forth that comes out of it. But if you give me something where I'm like, huh, I kind of got to know how that wraps up.

Yep, I can probably stick around. That's why threads catch on, not the site threads, but just the idea of three. Yeah. Like, we are all like slaves to story. Speaking of the inward, We are, like, we are, story gets people, man. It's just, like, we are this big combination of all of these factors.

We keep telling the same stories over and over every single generation. We always have a story for someone. You always have a story for what went right in your life and what went wrong in your life. And neither story is 100% accurate, right? You remember the people that helped you in a little bit grander of a way than they probably actually did sometimes. You remember the people that harmed you in a little bit more sinister way than it probably was at the time because we are just used to telling ourselves story. That was kind of the thing that I learned at TMZ more than anything else, was that you could

take a video of LeBron James when he doesn't talk to the TMZ camera guy and still make a post out of it. Because number one is LeBron. Number two, to watch. is expensive. Number two, the car is, number three, the car is expensive. Like, what restaurant is he coming for? All of that stuff, just the story of the presence of LeBron James' life in that piece of video, right? That is meaningful to people. Like, I started looking at, like, what people are interested in differently, and they just want to know. Like, people legitimately, they were just an inherently curious species. Like, we just want to know. And so when you see two people arguing or fighting, what the fuck happened? If it resolves itself, cool, if it doesn't resolve itself

kind of even better, because that means it's got a second act and a third act. This thing between fucking Whitlock and Stephen A, they're going to be, they're older black men now, they're going to be elderly black men doing this. Remember some years ago when there was two Canadian like hockey or football guys on the stage? Remember this? And they started scrapping. And they, they, they're 70s. Like, I did as much work on that as I could at the time, and it's already jumped out of my mind, is just who we are. The question now is that, like, how cynical do you want to be with your platform

as far as indulging into that? Like, how, because you could. You don't have to be smart. You don't have to be funny. You don't have to have observations. You don't have to be brave anymore. You just have to be willing to get super duper dirty. and YouTube will pay you for the rest of your life.

Yeah, look, ridiculous people being wildly angry never stops being funny. But anybody, it almost doesn't matter why, anybody that feels on site about somebody is going to be hilarious, right? What you do is you try to get them, and the way to make it really funny is you get them talking about it and then you try to change the subject

and that's not going to work, right? And then you just, hey, I got one more thing I want to say about that right, fast. You know what that nigga did? I didn't even tell you about this. I didn't tell you about this. No, no, no, no, no, we're on it. Let's stay on it.

I even tell you about this. Like, you're the one that brought it up. Yeah. Coming up next, speaking of people being very angry, me and Van going to talk about the airport and wait till he hears what I'm about to tell him. Ever wanted to go to the NBA finals

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and I just played a sound of a snippet of some music for Van Lathen, and I'm going to tell you what that sound was that I just played. It is from a tweet that was just sent, and somebody sent it to me, and it has a video, and the caption on the video is, lines at ATL TSA so bad they brought out live entertainment and so in the TSA line that is a white woman

and a black cocktail dress that got shinies on it and she playing at an electric fiddle to try to keep shit cool because them TSA lines at the Atlanta they've been talking about it's like three, four hours in there I just told you that they'd be ready to scrap it to get you know I'm mad

you got to be to fight at the airport The only person I've ever seen fight at the airport is Pac-Man Jones. And for what it's worth, I don't think he started it. But anyway, they got white girls in here playing music in line to try to keep everything cool. I went to the airport about 10 days ago. I left LaGuardia.

I went to a mid-sized city. I was smooth on both ends, but I was over in the bougie lines at LaGuardia, right? I was looking over there with Los Ordinarios, And the lines were getting a little longer. You could kind of tell. Brother, I've been looking at these videos, man. If I got to get there four hours early,

I don't even want to go. Like, I had a trip to take this week that turned into a train trip. Because I was like, brother, I ain't missing my flight on the- Imagine you wait three hours and you still don't get on. You still don't get on the plane. It's tough. It's tough. It's always, flying is always stressful enough.

Like, you know, I fly now and I do the whole Delta one thing. It's actually a lovely experience, right? But then like, this is how fucked up I was. It's facts. It's lovely. Like, Delta 1 is so great. And I'm not sponsored by Delta 1. But Delta 1 is so great.

It actually makes me wonder like why I, why anyone would fly private, right? Like, why anyone will follow it? It's very nice. But even when you go there now, they have to take you up and you have to do the other TSA line and all of that stuff. Oh, that's right. Because they got the Delta 1 line now. Because they got their own security. They own Delta 1 thing down there.

Right. So like, but now they don't have that anymore. So you got to go somewhere else. I'm like, this fucking political strife and unrest is really fucking with my fucking comfort. Oh, my God. You 1% at the fuck out of this one, brother. It's not true. I'm just telling people how I live now.

This is an apartment. But I do fly Delta 1. Okay, so like, come on. Give me a break. So look, this is what I'll say. When I, when I, and my brain, my brain can only look at the tremendous amount of dysfunction. When I see that, I think about the guys on the Titanic that when the ship was sinking,

that they were still trying to, remember that? They were still trying to play the violin. They were, remember if you guys ever saw the movie Titanic, the ship is sinking, and as the ship is sinking, they're the guys and what they're hired to do is their whole thing was to play move music on the Titanic. They played it in the dining hall. They played it, you know, out on the deck.

People will be nice violin music and stuff like that. Well, the boat is actually sinking, and these guys are not going to be able to get on a life raft. So what they do is, while this whole thing is going down, our one job is to continue to play this music. So we're actually going to play music to the sinking of the actual ship. While some people are going to lose their lives, we're going to give them a little bit of comfort

while this entire dysfunctional thing plays out behind us. That's how I feel about that. And that's what we're doing in more cases than just that. We are. We are. As these tremendous societal problems get mainstreamed and mainline. We are trying to flag football players versus NFL our way out of it. We're trying to Drake versus Kendrick our way out of it.

Content. We're just looking for something to take our minds off the fact that it is actually happening, guys. It's going down. We're losing the whole fucking thing. And we never really had it, right? Right. But the actual thing

from the economic standpoint, from geopolitics, from just basic decency by, not even decency, they were never decent. Just like, they don't even lie about being decent anymore. The whole thing is turning,

but we just have to concentrate on something else. So while people are waiting in that line and that woman is, she's doing the right thing. She's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down. Yeah, I do think that people underestimate

like how dire the situation is. I want to put a pin in that, though, because I have a thing about the TSA that I want to run by you. And I want to say, if you think anything similar to what I think about this. So Ryan just sent me this tweet

is from NBC News, and it's the call-out rates at TSA for various airports. These are the ones that they listed. Houston, H-O-U. so hobby, 40.3. 40%. Hartfield, 37.4.

Houston Intercontinental. Shout out to those of us who was there before it was Bush. 36.1. New Orleans, 34.9. JFK, 33.7. BWI 30.4. Pittsburgh, 27.5. LaGuardia, 20.3. Philadelphia, 19.7, and Phoenix, 19.3.

The Houston, Atlanta, Houston, New Orleans is what jumps out to me. I, as someone from Houston, I have been trying to find, is there a science to where they do and do not call out at these airports? And I will tell you this about Houston. Houston is about money. And what is really not about is not getting money. Showing up to work and there ain't no check. I'm surprised even 40% of the people showed up at this airport. airport. Atlanta at 37,

New Orleans at 35, it's just hard for me to ignore the fact that the top of this list is some blackety black ass cities, brother. What the fuck is? And by the way, I don't know where I've been where TSA is that, TSA is typically

pretty blackety black no matter where it is, but in those places, we ain't coming. We are just letting you know right now. If it ain't no check, we ain't coming. TSA is so black. that is good for my self-esteem. Because if I'm having a bad day

and I got to fly, I know I'm gonna get love when I'm going through TSA. When I'm going through TSA, I'm gonna get love, man. I always get love for my people at TSA. Hey, man, hey, bro, I'm not gonna blow your shit up with that Kanye shit.

Put your hands up. Let me. Cool, turn around. Okay, cool. Appreciate you. Keep doing your thing, man. I see you next time. I always love.

And it's just interesting, right? Like all of these powerful people at the top And you're going to ask these people that's coming from I don't know man The wards in Houston South Baton Rouge We ain't got no airport like that But you know the Ninth War in New Orleans You're going to ask these people to come to work and not get paid

With no guarantee of when they are going to get paid Brough is parties to be had Is it to be done is madden to be played, as books to be read. It's a lot of things to do that's a better option than going to work

at the airport if you're not fucking making no money. What's the shit? I'd say it is. A lot of shit. Apparently Delta is sick of this shit. Let me find this thing I saw from the report

for Atlanta Journal of Constitution. Congressional staff or not, news congressional staff is not going to like. Delta is suspending its special congressional death service for members of Congress until the shutdown is over. Like, oh, man, we got to turn,

they got to turn this back around on them. Like, when I went to LaGuardia that day and the airport wasn't crazy, my thought was, oh, okay, because you just, New York can't stop. Then I looked up in New York has stopped. It looks like, like, hey, man, the state's too high to be playing that game up here, I thought. Like, we got to find one way

or another to make this shit happen. I mean, what I try to do on higher learning, Rachel and I, is just let people know, like why this is happening. We could fund TSA right now if we wanted to. Even some Senate Republicans, John Thune has indicated that he is okay with the deal that funds all of DHS except for ICE and CBP. So there actually is a deal on a table, something to Democrats, and some Senate Republicans have

floated to the president, but the White House is dug in. They want to keep Congress there. They want to keep the fight about the Save Act going, and they don't want to have to give in to some of the reforms surrounding ICE that the Democrats want. These people could be getting paid. They could be getting paid. I think a lot of people saw kind of some of the things that happened in the last shutdown, and they were like, okay, well, let's attempt to close portions of this so that during this particular time, when the summer's coming, the spring is coming, it was already summer in LA. The spring is coming. People are about to start traveling. Spring break is coming. Let's not cause

this type of gridlock in the nation's airports, but once again, everything is political and these type of wars, the blood is going to be spilled by the average American. I mean, a lot of the people making these decisions are going to be able to opt for private

planes, not those congressmen that you're talking about. They broke too. Some of them. Some of them are doing tremendous amounts of insider trading and are way up. No what, let me not say they broke to, make them seem like they are. They different. They make money. They're selling books. They get all kinds of crazy shit. But some of them aren't going to be as impacted by that.

As we will. We will, that are flying will be impacted, but more so the people that have to go work at the TSA, they will be impacted. But nobody gives a fuck about that. I got to watch more Brendan Shaw videos. I got to know what happened. When are we going to get our... I can stay on TSA, but I got to know what happened

when Brenda Shab went on to Joe Rogan experience just recently. Hey, man. It's coming close. April 5th is Resurrection Sunday. will that be when we get our first full-on Donnybrook, Pier 6, a show of Brouhaha at the airport. Like, it's a matter of time before somebody starts scrapping it out.

Like, here's the thing about the line at the airport, man. People in that motherfucker for a number of reasons. Some of them come with great trauma, anxiety. and people anxious anyway just about getting on planes, right? Yeah. Somebody go scrap it out on this motherfucker at some point. Yeah, it's

it happened and then would be funny. That would be, that's a funny idea right there. Yeah, of course. It's like, like, it's just a heightened place. We all know you're nervous to fly. You don't know what's going to happen at the airport. The airport itself is a target. All of this security exists because of all of this trauma that we have

for witness some of the things that have happened in the the airport, there's still this post-9-11 haze it exists, even though that's like almost 30 years ago at this point. So it's like, it's just like it's travel itself is a stressful thing. And to add so much stress to everybody's lives, it's a cruel thing to do. But I do think that you're right. This is going to spill over somewhere.

I guess the question for you is, based upon a lot of the statistics and information that you have, which city is going to be the city that breaks out into this, Donnybrook. Where do you think is going to happen? I mean, is it New Orleans? Is it Atlanta? Is it if someplace we don't think, right? Like, where is it going to happen? I think the fact that Atlanta is the first city that, to my knowledge, has brought out street performers. It implies to be that someone has recognized that the tension has built in such a way that we need to start smoothing this situation out. Like, what we need

to figure out is the city where the airport has a greater collision. of walks of life, right? Because that's the thing about Atlanta. Atlanta got a lot of walks of life going through that. Ooh, I don't know what the situation currently is in Las Vegas, but it's a little bit of everybody in Las Vegas. And while Las Vegas is down, that means that you can get a deal,

which changes who the demographics are that are in this line in Las Vegas. And a high percentage of people that have never been all the place, before perhaps. You'd say what I'm saying. Also, people who are fucking drunk and are coming right to the plane after fucking going crazy.

You see that in Vegas all the time. And losing all their money. Vegas used to be a house of horrors. It could be anything. Yeah, bro. And then there's people gambling in there. So you might have lost some bread and then went to wait

to a long-ass line and had a little liquor in you. Vegas is probably the answer. Yeah. Yeah, there's great room for bad things to happen at the gate in Vegas. I remember I flew out of Intercontinental of Bush in Houston. Me and my mama flew out of there last year. And so the thing about having all the airport hacks is you forget that not everybody has them. So I'm at the airport with my then 81-year-old mother, and I'm showing up on the hack schedule.

And then I look at her and I'm like, do you have a boarding pass? And she says no. because she does not traffic in the world of technology in the ways that we do. So it's a little bit tight. You know, we got to go in. We got to print a board and pass. Tough.

Yeah, we get all that stuff. And then I remember that we're in the line. You know, so we get in the regular line. And I go with her and I put her stuff down. And then I showed the woman my boarding pass. And she says to me, well, you know, you could have gone to the other line. I'm like, yeah, but I hear with my mom. She's like, wow, you're a good son.

I'm like, do you think that I was just going to go through the other line? And let your mom. Can you imagine if somebody saw me do that and that wound up on the internet about how Bobadi left his mama to go through that or whatever it was? But I always knew, though, that as that went, my mama looks good for her age, but I could always pull that card if it came to. Like, can we get a wheelchair? Right? Like, can we get those things? But we got it done because she don't move as fast as she used to.

So I did to walk with her. I got her to her gate. You know, I did all of those things. But imagine being in a similar situation now and you're not with your older mother and you're trying to get through and this shit just going slow. You know what I'm saying?

Like it's tight. Now, I got to say something. The video that you just described, bro, I will watch that bitch. This will be the headline. It would say, Bomani Jones, abandoned. And abandons would be in caps.

Yes. Abandones would be in all caps. Bomani Jones, abandons mother in airport. lives the cozy life while she stands in line. And then some sister would come on, probably like with a septum ring, some sister would come on and she would go,

I always knew this nigger, and it would be picture of you was trash. And I will watch the whole video and then I would just send it to you like, Bo, they're talking about. You know what I'm saying? That's what I'm talking about. That's funny.

That's the type of shit that's funny. But you thought about it, you didn't do it. Look, I don't know how this shit is going to happen. I know. I did not think about it. I did not think about it. Let me, let me, let me go ahead and get in here right now. And I ain't gonna lie.

Literally, every other one of you motherfuckers, I had a laugh. And I say that because my daddy don't fly no more. Right. Every other one of you, I would have seen you on the other side. Yeah, I wouldn't have that problem with my father right now. That's not a concern. But it's okay.

Dark humor, everybody just laugh. But yeah, look, man, I don't know how this shit is gonna play out, but I know it's gonna last for a lot longer. And now you didn't fuck with my brain so bad. I'm gonna be like scanning the... There actually kind of was an incident. I feel like this was in San Francisco,

but, you know, now they've kind of ratcheted things up by putting ice, making ice the TSA. Hey, I don't think that's a good idea, guys. No, one day we'll look on the fucking, it'll be like 12 dead. Like, so, so, I mean, now ice is... Here's my question. What are they doing? Are they checking IDs?

Like, what are they doing? I have no clue, bro. I wouldn't, I legitimately, when I say this, I legitimately, legitimately would not trust the ICE agents to walk my dog. And that's, I wouldn't. They will kill the dog. The dog will bark. They will execute the dog.

They do all kinds of creatures. I would not, I saw a sister. And I don't know, you can't be masked in the airport, I guess. I guess the ICE agents that are in the airport are, they can't have a mask on I don't think that it's the same because some of the ones I've seen in the airport they don't have masks on.

You are fucking brave. I see you and you are ice agent like it's I'm gonna remember you homie. I don't know how, I don't know when, I don't know how we're gonna do it but that is,

who, that's like being the parking attendant. people. Yo, can you imagine having a job where you got to hide your face? You Ron Simmons and Butch Reed, you know what I'm saying? Like, and with them, everybody knew who it was. These cats, like, maybe you think you're getting by, right? But you, you, dang. And America love law enforcement.

Yeah, they normally, but like in this situation, they're kind of like a mascot for everything that's going wrong. You know what? Now that I think about it, I, in all my time in L.A., the parking is so bad that the, the parking attendant people are like a unique, a unique group of people that are kind of reviled out here. I don't know if these people are real.

I've never known anyone that did that job. I never just like was hooping with somebody. I was like, hey man, what you do? So yeah, I'm the, I'm the parking enforcement people. I've just never, I've never, I've been out here 20 years.

That's never happened. These people, robots? Like, are they, what? I've never, this just occurred to me. I've never in L.A. met someone or been around someone. Every other position that is available, I know people work at the different car washes out here.

What about the dog catcher? I knew a guy. I hooped with a guy who it was so funny that he went from being a postman to working with the animal people. He was working with the dog catching. Yeah, no, he went from, yeah, he was. He went from being a postman

because it was very funny. He went from being a postman. He was a letter carrier. he had been in the military. He went from being a postman, and then he became a part of like the dog catcher people here out here, the animal control. Animal control.

He was a part of animal control. We used to always made fun of him. So I at least knew one of those guys. He's dead now. I at least knew one of those guys in 20 years. And in 20 years in LA, I've never known someone that's like, yeah, I'm a parking attendant people. I wonder if those people are actually real.

Yeah. No, airport, the day is coming. I got one last thing. I want to ask you. And I'm going to do this for the people who listen to this show and have listened to this show for a while and know people who are part of this show who are family of sorts.

And we pub it up, but a lot of people who don't know this, Van is the co-host of the Ring of Tailgate and one of his co-host is our favorite hated Joel Anderson. And so we were just kind of wondering, like, what's it been like for you to work with our good friend, Joel? Who my love, by the way? He helped me do an edit on an article I.

just wrote. So Joel is to me, and it's not going to stay this way, if I have any say, Joe to me is the best kept secret in this industry. Period. He's the best kept secret

in this industry. I had no idea. I was on a a pod with Bill maybe like two or three years ago, and me and Joe were pod with Bill, and all of a sudden Joe just started hating on LSU for no reason. Like for no reason.

It's like, hey, just let you know, LSU ain't shit. And really, what's happened at LSU has been just recent. Before then, he's like, LSU is basically Texas Tech with a good run. I'm on the podcast. I'm like, yo, is a nigga talking to me? Because like, is, I was such, I was, like, I love Slow Burn. I say loved. I love it.

I still listen to Slow Burn. It's such a great work, right? It's such a big fan of Joel Anderson. He used to hit Joel up and all of that stuff to tell him what a big fan of Slow Burn I was. This is back in the day. Me and Joe first got cool because I was listening to what he was doing at Slate on my walks and stuff like that.

He did one about Edward Nell, not Edwinner. He did one about David Duke. A lot of people that I know from Louisiana are involved in that story and stuff like that going way back. It's been a big fan for a long time. When he did that, I was like, shit. First of all, I felt played as fuck that he did that on Bill's podcast. I just felt super play.

I'm like, what this nigga? Like, a nigga trying to get me out of my character. Then I came to love it so much because he is so unpredictable except for one thing. Whatever you love, he will assassinate. It does not matter what that thing is.

Whatever it is that you love. Like, I could say, man, I went to this place and I had the best fucking burgers ever. Joe's going to be like, man, them burgers small, they suck, and the cheese don't taste like it's real. Whatever you love, Joel will hate on it.

And once you know that, it is just endless comedy on tell game. It's just endless comedy, Beau. Bowen, he doesn't know how to, like, ignore a slight. Like, whatever anyone says, if you are the 50th person in the comments, you have legitimately 12 numbers next to your name. Claude 815.

657-1-2-3-1-9-5-251. And you say, Joel was off on this episode. There is going to be a reply. Shut your whole ass up. It is fucking amazing. And I've never seen anything like it. Between that and everything and this just weird comic timing, Joel makes tailgate.

It, I lobbied and lobbied and lobbying for us to do the pod. We all put it together. Joe, like, all that stuff. But it's become essentially his podcast. It's a complete vehicle for everything that he does well. Yo, at once, Joel claims that I am responsible for this narrative of him being a hater. Joel sat up in this podcast and told me that Bun B needed to stop hanging out with me and start hanging out with him because he could not be friends with us both.

Right. Okay? Okay. But I created this narrative. I have heard this man say word for word. I am motivated by spite. Yeah. Wife once posted on the internet, the text exchange,

where Joel got a new job and immediately was like, I wonder what my old boss is going to think. What he sees this? What the fuck, bro. He is powered by spite. So my favorite Joe clip ever is when for some reason Does the Twitter handle Reddit I got let me, okay

Is it ready to CFB? So Reddit CFP says something about Joe. I don't remember what they said. And Joe and so we're So we're at Tate and Billy We're like We're picking at Joe about it. And you guys go watch the clip.

And Joe goes, that's the type of shit. That's the type of whole shit that red his CFP is on. And then he went, that's the type of whole shit that Charlesville. I'm like, yo, bro. This nigga not acting. This nigga is really. Now, he gets back and he got back real quick. And he's mad.

It's in his face. And then all of a sudden, he just gets back. And he's laughing with us. But for that moment, that, those feelings. actually sweating. Those feelings were 1,000% genuine. Man, like, bro, like, I hit Bill, I'm like,

bro, this podcast is going to work. Like, this guy is something else. Like, this, like, this pot, but between me, Tate and Joe, we're having so much fun. But Joel is different. Not only that, but just like the lore. Fastest 10, 10-year-old ever in Texas, right?

I invented raised the roof. In America. In America, fastest 10-year-old in America. Like, I invented range the room. all of this lore. I ran for 220 yards on 13 carries against, and he was really nice when he was in high school. He was just, like, super nice.

But it's just, all of this stuff is funny. He's, I'm having a lot of fun. And he's, and he's also, like, obviously, incredibly talented writer, super smart, all of that. I don't give a fuck about none of that. He's just, like, he's just, he's just the funniest guy that I think that I've ever hosted a show with. I just needed you to share all of this as it is gone with him,

because you told me the Reddit TFCB. story and I was like, yep, you guys, you guys are, you guys. And see, the difference to you and me is I'll really be messing with Joel. I do kind of, because I'm like, I don't know where this might go, right? Y'all, y'all be messing with Joel. And it's also funny to me as I watched my buddy Billy, when Billy started working on that show, those Billy Gil used to work with Lovetar. And when Billy started working on the show, I was like, bless your heart dealing with

Joel. It's like, what do you mean? I'm like, no, I love Joel. But then I came back later, it was like, I told you. Yeah. He told me a story. I didn't realize how tight you guys were. He told me, he told me, you know, some of y'all greatest hits, some of some stuff that y'all, you know, although he told me the live show story.

He told me a bunch of other stuff. Yeah, he told me, like, so, you know, but that's my guy, man. And him and Billy's dynamic is really funny, too. Billy is another guy. Billy is, like, super fucking funny. But whatever. Yes, he's hilarious. Yeah, Billy's fucking funny.

So we having a lot of fun. Billy is one of those. Billy is not monotone, but Billy uses the same voice for everything, which adds to the funny. And only changes his facial expressions. Yes. Same voice, but only he'll go, yeah, so the thing is, and he's using the same voice, but his face is changing.

And that's hilarious for some reason. I have a content idea for you. I don't know if you've thought about it. I don't know if you can get the people to go along with it. You know, Billy's fast, too. Billy won the race against the freeze. In Atlanta. Oh.

No, Billy's a D1 athlete. Oh, yeah, he was a long jumper. Yeah, yeah, Billy's a D1 athlete. Joel say he fast. Oh, shit. Bo, if you, you know what, here's the thing. If you call the race. I'll do it.

If you call the race. I'll do it. If we can do a crossover, if you call the race, I'll do it. We need to find a way to like recruit, like record promo. and script this up, I think that we could, we could have the ring or tailgate field day with the right time, and I just want to see them two dudes race against each other.

You know, what's interesting is I think that, so what I always wanted to do, I always wanted to have like a regular guy's combine. Because one of the funniest things, I know, you know, we almost had time by you got to say this, one of the funniest things is that if you go on your Twitter right now, it's you right now with all the followers you got, right? You go on your Twitter right now and you just go,

yo, what could y'all run into 40? Oh, God, yes. Listen to the ridiculousness that we'll come back to you. 4-7. Right now I think I could probably 4-6, 4-7, something like that. 4-5 if I'm really in shape. And I'll just be under this shit, I'd be like, hey, just to let you know, like 4-5 is flying.

Right. Okay. Like, you're on a fucking spaceship if you're on a 4-5. That's like, for us, like you don't know, like 4-5 is, flying in the 40. But nah, man, but I was pretty fast, bro. I was pretty fast. I was one of my family, for show.

So I always wanted to do just like a regular guys combine where we have guys sign waivers. They could be guys at the gym, whatever. We do the 40. We do different shit, all the night. And then we just great. We crown a regular guy combine champion.

And at this event, we do the crossover event, this could be one of the events could be the Joel versus Billy race. Now, this might ruin. tailgate, right? Because if Billy loses no big deal, if Joe

loses, this will be the biggest deal of anything that's ever happened on the ringer. Like there will be this will be different fucking narratives about this forever. But I would love to do that. Let's figure it out. Let's figure it out. Van Lathen, check him out on the rang of tailgate. Check him out on higher

learning. Check them out everywhere. My brother, I appreciate you. Always, man. Appreciate you both. All right, man. And ladies and gentlemen, and thanks so much for joining us here on The Right Time. We do this four days a week. Ryan Brumley, Handel, thank you, sir. Hit the voicemail line, 3-2-3-5-9-6-7-67-67.

Remember, follow the right time, subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. We'll talk to you guys in a couple of days. Take it easy.