TRASHFUTURE - Slow Midas feat. Charles Star

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

We temporarily pivot to America because we have the opportunity to speak with Charles Star, a friend of the show and a law understander, who can give us insight into just how much the U.S. Supreme Court has retooled itself to enable total right-wing capture. However, we also have a chance to speak about Trump’s ballroom, its impossible proportions, its Sims-tier design, and Trump’s own declaration that gold is “God’s favourite metal.” Check out more from Charles on No Homework here! Get more TF episodes each week by subscribing to our Patreon here! RILEY ALERT Check out No Gods, No Mayors here! HUSSEIN ALERT Check out 10k Posts here! MILO ALERT Check out Milo's tour dates here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/liveshows NATE ALERT Nate's band Second Homes has just released their debut album and you can stream it for free here! Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

Hi, everybody. Welcome to this free episode of TF. It is Riley. It's Nate. It's Hussein. Fuck, Hussain. Every time you have a new Zencaster name at Huthi Hank Hill is what I'm going to... I fueled my used Japanese forerunner with propane. I thought of it when I was in the playground just now. I was in between talking to other dads about poop, both our kids, and our own. And you were like, what if, you know, what... if some of the putative new government of Yemen did have a really fat ass. Flat ass.

Damn it. IEDs and IED accessory. That voice you're hearing is our guest today, Charles Starr from the A-Lab and No Homework Podcast, who's joined us to discuss one very particular, I would say, party planning related event, perhaps, the most constitutionally significant piece of party planning that the world has ever seen. However, as I am also technically on vacation, I am doing a little bit of showrunner torch passing today

to our wonderful Nate, who has done all of the research on this, who's going to be taking it through us, and I get to be the one who does all the tangents this time. So I hope you're ready for, I want to say, a decade of backlog of me wanting to be the one who does the distracting. We've got like two documents. One is the notes of the show and one is like the notes of your bits

that you've written up. I don't know why it's. double the size of the show notes, but I'm very excited to hear a sampling of it. All of your revenge for all the times I've broken into song. All of your revenge for the times. I'm like, no, Riley, it's fine. Let the distraction go on.

You're like, I did a lot of work on this. You get to do it, man. I didn't go to accent school, so I never learned Latin. And then I don't know what the thing is for the middle age. It's where like the rules get reversed and the bishops become the naves and whatnot. But it's that for podcasting. I believe they call that Freaky Friday. Yeah.

Shot not Jamie Lee Curtis. is it Jamie Curtis? I don't fucking know, man. I don't know. All this stuff. It's like, it's like Charles's voice is a barrage of Americanness, which is refreshing to me, but that also reminds me of how much I've forgotten. So I'm going to do my best to reclaim the mantle of the show's one American because we are going to talk about the most decorated bunker in history or soon to be. We're going to talk about an incident, a plan, an event, specifically the one in which America's big wet president has decided to build a White House ballroom. that's uglier than fuck and has the footprint the size of a football field. It's 60% bigger than the actual White House. There are some really comical scale models made of it where it just looks like the best way I could describe it is it looks like someone has decided to kind of add an additional wing of a high school but onto the Winchester mansion. It's grim, but there's a whole legal process that's supposed to be, I suppose, followed

before one demolish his part of the White House. Anyway, there is. Charles happens to know stuff about the law. I don't. So Charles, we wanted to bring you on to talk about this because, I mean, we can look at the designs. We've looked at some of the articles about this. The stairs that don't actually go to the ballroom. The windows that are fake because if they were real, they would open up directly into the bathroom stalls.

The bunker security aspect of it, the whole simsiness of it all. Why did they let Grover do national security, like a national building? Come on. You know what it really looks like? If you were to define the ballroom, imagine there was a Lego set for the White House, and box two was Duplo's. Right? So the ballroom is two big Duplo blocks that you put on your big sister's White House.

She's been working on it for months, and you just kicked over the East Third and threw a couple of duplos on there. The Supreme Court is your parents who are like, you know, you have to let your brother participate. You've got to let you. He needs to be included too with his fucking Goon project. Yeah, like when my sister was very into like houses and stuff

when we, when she was a child and I insisted that I got to play as well. And so then all of our sort of mutual playtime involves some kind of bionicle. And like everything was about like bionical. wars and stuff like that. This feels like, I'm looking at this picture of like the White House right now and I'm just like this needs a bionicle

and a mecha Godzilla. It looks like to me is the sort of Shoshescu era buildings from Romania, but those were at least symmetrical. This feels like you've got one half and then they cut your budget. And so it just has this, the deeply asymmetric aspect of it. And then also

there are a couple of different elevations they put together of renderings of different sides where there's other columns and Apex's and weird fake Greek classical architecture shit. And the only thing I can describe it as is it reminds me of the kind of like early version Photoshop mansions in the background of Penn Pixel rap covers. Like these guys in Houston that would do these really kind of really brute force Photoshop illustrations.

Famously, there was one for an artist named Young Star called the album was called Throat Young play. And on the cover, his mom was feeding him cereal, which is diamonds coming out of a box of serial and in the background was a huge mansion. And also there was like, the best way could describe it as like a ferris wheel, the size of the Empire State building. That, it's like that. But Trump is like, no, I'm going to make this real.

This is going to happen. And I'm going to knock down the East Wing. In fact, I've already done that. And if there was anything toxic inside, don't worry, I threw it on a fucking golf course somewhere in Washington, D.C. Can't you look, I approve of throwing it on a golf course. We'll get to that point in detail because it is very funny. Because it wasn't even like, oh, it's like some annex.

There's like between the third and the fourth hole. they're like just dump that shit right there put a very flipsy fence around it apparently it's got arsonic and cadmium and look sorry sorry you you call a sandrapper of water hazard a hazard a hazard why do we have a hazard with real stakes well I mean I would admit

my take on golf is that if you're going to play golf you should play golf where they filmed the movie stalker where the entire crew got cancer but like I didn't expect Donald Trump to do it in his own back yard especially given how big of a golf guy he is it should be like the chemical pit that turned the joker

Playing golf, you want to know how I got under par. Look, also, you mentioned the people's palace in Romania earlier. I think the best possible way to understand this is the people's palace, but they do like the rubberyest chicken wrapped in Parmaham that cost $80 a plate you've ever seen for, like, Italian weddings. You see years ago when we first moved here, we stayed in temporary place where that had a bunch of furniture that clearly had been looted from communist era of Romania because it had the stamps of like the Romanian Ministry of the Interior on the bottom of the furniture with like the seal of the communist government. And it looked like Venetian style like big long ass sideboards and stuff, but it was all veneer. And underneath it basically looked like the fence that Tom Sawyer has to paint. And so it was cheap. They were all fakes basically. But that makes sense because I mean it's Romania in the 80s. They've, They needed to cut down their old growth force to sell it to IKEA, but they weren't going to do it to make fake furniture for their government offices. But doing this, Trump does this in a way that's like the chintiness of it surprises me. The just the fact that nothing can break through, but also I think more importantly, the fact that this has been his fixation for well before he became president, before he even ran for president. In fact, we're very grateful for the New York Magazine article that came out last week. authored by Ben Terrace, who has some great, great, great pictures of this, great vignettes because he went and talked to Trump and walked around the construction site.

Trump apparently called David Axelrod in 2010 when Axelrod was working in the Obama White House and started banging on about how they needed a ballroom and that when the White House hosted events, there were like, I guess, temporary outbuildings. He said, as Trump referred to it, shitty tents. He's claimed numerous times that these tents are an affront to him. He said that there's no security for the president in a tent, but also he wants to get revenge on the guy who's making a killing in Washington renting tents to people. So he just wants to wet his beak.

I think he genuinely is bothered by a non-permanent structure. When he sees a tent, he's like, well, people shouldn't be inside that because that's not actually a building. I'm into construction. I'm into concrete. He and Inverhocksha could shake hands and their love of solid, reinforced structures. You should hear him talk about the. Ringling brothers. He thinks they should rebuild in every city on tour.

That would be actually kind of amazing to see, though, Trump being like, you know, that tent, it's unsafe. Who's going to pull security on those lions? Those lions? They might get out, but someone might attack them. Someone attacked me. They missed. This all started this administration.

And Charles, you've been following and critiquing Trump for a very long time. But this became a fixation kind of like as he, entered the newest, most advanced stage of dementia. And it feels like the whole schick behind it was, we're going to build this new structure. It's going to be amazing, but also it's only going to be funded by donations. And off the bat, like, that seems a little bit, I don't know if that's so illegal, but it seems dubious. So I'm curious of your perspective on that. There are a lot of things going on. I mean, the first is using private donations to finance government construction is already dubious, especially because of how obvious it is a conduit for

bribery in both the old-fashioned and the campaign finance sense of the word. We have a huge tradition in the United States going back 20 or 30 years of legal bribery and an older tradition of just flat out graft, and it's hard to tell which this falls under. And so private donations to do this kind of thing is nonsense. And it's just basically a way of getting around the process. The bigger issue is that you can't do anything in terms of like real government construction without congressional authorization, either for the construction itself or for the financing of it. And so it's just a dodge. This whole thing. This whole thing. saying it's going to be privately financed besides being not even true.

Like everything he says about money is just largely false. I mean, I think I read some with it. There's like $300 million that is coming out of the, you know, out of the treasury. For some of it, like some of it may even be legitimate. Like they're not necessarily saying that all the underground Batcave security aspect of this thing is going to be privately financed. But $300 million is $300 million. And it's not what he said when he was pitching this

as a place to hold White House public events. And that is, it's only use. It is bigger than the White House. It's going to be bigger than the executive residence. And it's effectively this enormous tall, cavernous building that is just going to be a big event space. Like, as I understand it, there's not, it's not like there's going to be some sort of like flex spaces where they can go do

government work. Like it's entirely meant to be a, for lack of a better word, kind of grand reception palace. And I think one of the things that didn't come as a surprise to me at first hearing that, you know, big tech companies, ones we've talked about quite often on the show, lined up to donate. But when I actually got a list reading the same New York Magazine article, I was, this is a little bit interesting. So they obviously doesn't surprise me that major donors like, Miriam Adelson would donate to this big Republican conservative donors. But as far as companies go, Apple, Amazon, Google, meta, Lockheed Martin, Coinbase, Microsoft, Comcast, the Winklevoss twins. This, to me, this just feels like almost like a novelty oversized version of corrupt patronage,

like pay-to-play stuff. Like this is like, it's not just out in the open. It's like, you're giving him, you're only allowed to pay bribes with like the great big checks they give for publishers, hearing house. You need space for the zeros. Yeah, exactly. And then we'll be the only space that can hold that many gigantic cardboard checks is this enormous basically looks like a hanger. Right.

They're all going to be on the walls like Gernica. So when you go into the ballroom, that's like the brass plate donor wall. See, yeah. To me, I'm trying to think of like, what would be big enough that you would need a hanger this large? And it's like, well, you're not going to get like a, you know, a C5 galaxy in there because there's no runway. And it's like, well, that's maybe, maybe Trump, maybe he's going to surprise us all. Maybe the $300 million from the treasury is actually to fund a nuclear armed walking battle tank called Metal Gear.

It's shitting nobody else in the administration donated other than Howard Lutnik. It's like, you go, if you have like someone, I don't know, like leaving or, you know, like, you know, Jane's dog has cancer or whatever, you do a little whip around. Like you're like, hey, put some money in this. Like, they said an email out. Here's a nation link. hey, put some money in the envelope. And like, only Howard Lutnik was like, you know what? I actually love the president's idea for a cool party house.

Also that article is fascinating because like Trump's aide who is in charge this project. Like this guy won't shut the fuck up with everyone about this goddamn building. And like Marco Rubio is basically on record in this article saying, yeah, we try to have foreign heads of state and we have a timeline for like two hours. So we know it's going to be four hours because he won't shut the fuck up and take them on tours and show them. Like look how thick this marvellous. is going to be. Look how thick this concrete is. We're subjected to a lot of people, I think,

as, I don't know, the people who live in, you know, the non-car dealer reality in the UK and the US. We're subjected to a lot of shit from these people. There is probably a good 5% of the population that I'm going to take your PT Barnum's permanent circus tent in every city idea and turn it, which is just there's a permanent construction site. It is the car dealers convention center, something like this. Boat dealers convention center maybe if you're living by a lake. And it is permanently under construction. And these guys, they're all preening, right? They are all divas. And so much of their attention is just taken up by, hey, you know, you guys can all start like making policy about like what people can do with their bodies or get to get married, whatever. But first, you got to decide on the

curtains for this place. It's fascinating too, because what you're just describing is like the car dealers and boat dealers run the city and have this enormous palace constantly under construction. It's basically the like the Ryugyang Hotel in Pyongyang except if it was in Indianapolis. Yeah. And then they're all arguing about curtains. Everyone else gets to get on with their lives. Speaking of, I have to say, I feel really sorry

for, first of all for me for living under him as actually my president. But I feel bad for the rest of the world to have to learn names like Howard Lutnik and Miriam Adelson. That should be curtains for Zusha

for you guys. You shouldn't, like, hear those names and recognize them, you know? Like, this should be for the entire trashfewshire audience in the United Kingdom, that should be utterly meaningless and you are forced to have these people in your brain. It's like, look, the American car dealer and their representative governs a great deal outside. Like, foreign policy, like, domestic politics stops at the water's edge. No, domestic politics carries on well, around the world. It's just all car dealer politics.

Yep. Well, I mean, looking at this, I was surprised at the speed with which it kicked off. And the fact that basically, as I understand it, they started by demolishing the East Wing, which was built in 1902 under Theodore Roosevelt. I believe it was renovated during World War II. Once they started demolishing it and they started excavating the, as I said before, at least 100-yard huge footprint for the ballroom itself. They decided to requisition space on a federally owned

golf course called East Potomac Golf Links and dump all of the waste. Now, a building built in 1902 predates not only modern safety standards, but even the quite evocative novel, the jungle, that kind of led to some of, well, at least food safety standards, but a lot of safety standards in America.

In fact, that book was written during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, who even brought Upton Sinclair to the White House until Upton Sinclair basically yelled at him about how he had to do Socialist Revolution and Roosevelt was like, could you get the fuck out and let me run the country, please?

And I'm not making that up. I mean, it's very funny. I see in your notes that he wanted to talk to Sinclair about the distressing amounts of rat shit in American food. Maha is like, was it really distressing? Was it really that bad? I mean, like, yeah, all those Lithuanians

who were getting built out of the fake mortgages in Chicago, They probably ate really, really healthy. Those sawdust sausages were actually really good for you. They had way more fiber than modern meat. I guess to me, that was the first surprise. Being abroad and then hearing that like this was going to happen, you're like, wow, this sounds really stupid. And then almost in a flash, demolition begins, construction begins.

And it was only through researching this that I learned about the fact that in order to gain permission to do this, Trump had to, Trump's administration had to get the approval of the National Capital Planning Commission. and the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. And Charles, you dug a little bit into this for me, and I really appreciate this about, like, how that both that Trump achieved this by basically either appointing his people or firing the entire commission and replacing them.

Yeah, the same thing he did with the Kennedy Center, right? He replaced a lot of the Kennedy Center board, which is how he got them to retroactively. Because he did it really without, you know, he's big on it's better to ask for forgiveness than permit. and then also doesn't ask for forgiveness. So he just put his name on the Kennedy Center, and he just bulldozed the East Wing.

Like, people woke up, and that shit was rubble, you know. And once you, it's very easy to knock things down. And once you knock things down, that's the new status quo. And so that's what he did. And he did that simultaneous to putting people on the Capital Planning Commission, putting people on the Commission for Fine Arts, which had, you know, a great deal of jurisdiction over the Kennedy Center and, you know, the historic nature of the White House. And so they could retcon an approval after he had really already sent the bulldozers in.

And so there were efforts to get an injunction. There were suits filed. And then it took a couple of rounds for that to actually be approved. Could you talk us through that? Because what I found interesting that by the time it happened, they then appealed to the Supreme Court. and it seems like the Supreme Court said, nah, let him have his fun build while you're waiting for us to say it's okay.

It's really weird because by the time we get to the Supreme Court, you see what a pathetic Dodge their opinion was. So it starts in December 2025. The East Wing comes down and he announces all the grand plans for the ballroom and they issue these AI images of what it's going to be. and the National Trust for Historic Preservation is a private not-for-profit who is exactly what they say they are, right? They are focused on the classic architecture of D.C., 1700s, 1800s, you know, the East Wing was 1902, but we're talking centuries-old buildings and all the iconic stuff that's like on the back of dollar bills and in Memorial Day ads.

as cartoons, like all these, like, iconic images. And so they sue and they are like, this is our specific interest. We are suing because he doesn't have any right to do this without congressional approval, without giving anyone the chance to weigh in. And they file a suit in the District of Columbia. And of course, the East Wing is already down. And the plans for what the building is going to be are really sketchy. not sketchy is the wrong word because even though it is sketchy, I mean tentative.

It's still unclear as to what the White House is going to do. And so the first time they file, it gets thrown out because they said it's too early. This issue is not ripe yet. Then the circuit court for the District of Columbia affirmed that and said it's too early. So they wait and the White House then releases more official plans on what's going to happen below ground and what's going to happen above ground. And now they're saying it's very important for security purposes to do all of this.

They're building an underground tech center, which is very updated, state-of-the-art secure, which is crazy because there was already a bunker for him and Natalie Harp to kill themselves in. But they need a new bunker, so they have a new bunker, and they're going to have this above-ground ballroom. So the National Trust for Historic Preservation

amends their complaint And they're like, well, we've got the actual plans now. And the way they did this doesn't follow the Administrative Procedures Act. And the Administrators Procedures Act, unfortunately, only governs federal agencies, things like the IRS or the Environmental Protection Agency or something like that. But it doesn't cover the executive branch. And so it gets thrown out again because he's like, this is Judge Lee. in the District of Columbia, who this time is kind of pissed

because he's on their side. Like, he wants to stop this, but he's like, the lawyers, you fuck this up again. I can't stop this under the Administrative Procedure Act. I've never seen that many exclamation points in one of those court documents written by a federal judge.

There's a lot of exclamation points. He does. And this time he's like, you didn't even include an ultra-virus claim when ultra-virus is just sort of a catcher. doctrine that means this is beyond your authority, right? And so he throws it out again. And then they amend again. And this time they file the ultra-virus claim and say that a president literally can't do this without congressional approval. And here are all the reasons why. And this time, Leon is like,

finally, idiots, you got it right. And so he issues the injunction. And that was, March of 2026, I think. And so the White House appeals to the circuit court again. And the circuit court is like, we don't know if you really evaluated it correctly under the right standard. So we're lifting the injunction and we're throwing it back to you. I have one question, right? Because I couldn't, following this from elsewhere, I think to really follow this, you need to be on the street looking at whether following on your phone, the court

decision and looking at whether or not the diggers are continuing to tear down the East Wing and, you know, part in the fake marble. Is construction actually stopping at any of these times or is he just like... Above ground. Okay. The above ground, like they never stopped them from, like once the East Wing was knocked down, they didn't stop them from digging the hole. Yeah. Is there just still Tyvec home wrap flapping over a big hole? No, there's not a lot built above ground as far as I could tell. I think, I think because I think they're still building out underground. But I don't know that for sure because I live in Brooklyn, not D.C. And I never look at, you know, very closely at the newest pictures.

But I do think, and there's a lot of fence around now. And they wrap the fence. So it's very hard to just look at the White House grounds from the street now. Like that used to be an iconic thing in D.C. And now it's got, you know, it looks like a Little League field where everything is surrounded by chain link fence. and then the chain link fence is, you know, covered with plastic wrap so, you know, people can't look in. So the first thing was they said you can dig the hole. And then after the circuit court sent it back to the judge, the judge is like, well, I've looked over the things you said,

and I'm still authorizing the injunction for above ground construction. But historic purposes don't involve what's underground and not visible to the public. so we're not going to stop the underground security feature construction. Of course, the layer provision that all presidents get. What I was going to say is that you'd say that it doesn't apply to the executive branch. So it's just sort of this free agent that has the ability to do whatever it wants. And also laws don't apply below the surface of the earth. That's only, I want to be clear, that's not actually crazy.

Because the statute itself is designed only to apply to executive agencies. And the White House. has been exempt from that for a long time. So it didn't, that wasn't a new creation here. That's why the district court was so mad that they blew this, you know, there was an easy way to sue the White House and instead they chose a tougher way, you know, one that didn't apply under pretty basic legal principles, statutory principles. It's a completely different version of Mr. Policeman.

I gave you all the clues when it's the actual judge who's like, I'm going to be the one here in this case. Can you please fucking do this? Yeah, and he even told them how to do it. So the next time they got it right. Like, he's like, I didn't think I needed to tell you the first time. But very clearly, this time I do. And so the third time was the charge.

So after it gets kicked back to him, he says, you can't build above ground, but you can build below grade. And so they do. So they start building below grade. It goes back to the DC Circuit, who immediately issues an administrative stay, which is like a thing we'll get into more, which is like we're not deciding on the merits,

but the status quo is that they're building. And until we decide this, we're not going to stop them from building. And then they take a few months and then they say, no, he got it right. And they issue the injunction over the objection of Naomi Rao, who's a Trump judge on the D.C. circuit. and one of the biggest hacks on the appellate court

is certainly one who isn't in the Fifth Circuit in the Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi area. So they stop it again. Appeal to the Supreme Court, who again issues an administrative stay, which means that they can start working again. For a non-mobbed-up construction crew, these guys must spend a lot of time sitting on lawn chairs eating sandwiches.

But they keep. getting foiled because the judges keep telling them to go back to work. But one judge says stop and they're like, excellent. And as soon as they unwrap the sandwich, they're like, no, go. Fuck. It's called muscle confusion. It's the principal behind CrossFit. So what the Supreme Court does is they ultimately say they throw the whole case out

and they throw the case out on standing ground. which is to say that we can't issue this injunction because this plaintiff doesn't have the right to sue over this at all. Because what the National Trust for Historic Preservation said was this is our mission, is preserving the architecture of the District of Columbia because it has historic value, because it has important aesthetic value, both as an institutional interest and as the interest of the individuals who work. for this. And so if we can't stop it with an injunction, there's no way to have the legality of it officiated at all. And the Supreme Court basically said, that's not worth anything. That aesthetic injury is, can be a necessary condition because it's something that has been used by environmental groups to stop habitat destruction or to preserve species. They could say we have an aesthetic interest in seeing whether it's the snail daughter or the

spotted owl or the whatever. And so this excessive environmental destruction can cause us an aesthetic injury. And the Supreme Court has approved that to some degree in the past. And this time five justices said no. and they didn't evaluate the merits at all. I wonder which five. Yeah. Well, guess the sixth, right?

Who's the sixth one who defected? Oh, it actually is genuinely tough to say, right? Because I don't know. And you'd initially guess Roberts because he's the one who likes to play that he defects. Kavanaugh does actually defect kind of some more of the time on just really specific issues. You had it in the first one, Riley.

It was Roberts. Yes. Okay. All right. Well, fine. Yeah, it was. It was Roberts this time. And Roberts wrote the dissent, and what he said in dissent was, are you insane?

There's no way that this is legal. And we all basically know that this is illegal without congressional authorization. And to reverse this on the ground, like saying that aesthetic injury isn't real, generally goes against our precedence. And saying aesthetic injury isn't real. real in this specific case where it is the National Trust for Historic Preservation, who has more than like a generalized interest in seeing a fuzzy creature, you know, like even if you thought the old environmental arguments were kind of weak sauce, this is real. This is like directly tangible to the

organization's interest. Also, what do you think about historic buildings in Washington, D.C., and ones are probably going to be subject to a lot of control and, you know, oversight, you know, in order to maintain them as historic places. The White House is kind of the one at the top. It's kind of the important one above all else.

And the fact that like that... It can't keep covering it with tents. I mean, the tents, the tents profaned the solidity of the structure. This ground is no longer hallowed and asked to be purified by building a bunker with infinity basements

until Brett Kavanaugh tells you you can build something on top of it. Nobody actually thinks he can do this. Even the five Supreme Court justices who voted to throw the suit out, nobody thinks he can do this. And he says that it's for security and they lie about progress constantly because they tell the court it's like 85% done underground. But then none of the appropriations or other paperwork or reporting internally in other directions,

those statements. And they keep adding more and more nonsense to it. Like Trump says that the balustrade is going to be bulletproof and it's six inches of glass so no one can fire in. It's like he is saying he is taking you seriously. It is built to defend against bionical. I mean, that's very relevant to me, but also very upsetting.

Because I feel like I've been listening very interesting. But one of my main takeaways after you saying this is that it's a shame that future generations of Americans will not, and future generations of children in general will not get to sort of experience the noble race of the bionicles. Well, yeah, they won't be able to accomplish any of their mission. So they'll just, they'll die of broken hearts. And yeah, Trump will reign supreme forever inside his bulletproof glass bunker. We talked a little bit about the kind of ridiculous design aspect of it. And I think it's relevant because there are, are some really, really great anecdotes in some of the articles that I read for this about Trump, both forcing people to visit the construction site and also finding a way to shoehorn in discussion of the ballroom to literally anything. Now, it is known that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong visited the White House and was made to visit the construction site. Apparently, as I said before, any visiting dignitaries made to do this, but I'd like to just read a segment of this article because

there are some really, really great moments here. I mean, bad for America, the world, for our sanity, but good, great in the sense that you will laugh at the man's lack of shame or ability to think about anything else. So could it be said, before I let you start, could it be said that, look, Apple, Metta, Lockheed Martin, Miriam Abelson, whoever, whatever they paid to fund the construction of the ballroom is not the actual bribe that actually costs them something. The actual. The actual actual bribe you give to Donald Trump is that you'd accept that like you're going to have to endure like a medium length feature film of him talking about the finishes and the balustrades of this to you. That's the bribe.

That's what you're giving him. That's why he's going to like give you a thousand percent tax break and exempt you from child labor laws if you build a data center. Yeah. And you know what? I just realized something. Everyone talks about Trump and legacy and how he remembers everything from his childhood. And I think that he wants to give people these ballroom tours because he saw Jackie Kennedy

give the tour of the White House, right? The huge, the hour-long feature film documentary of her showing off the White House and all of the appointments and he wants to just throw on a construction helmet and go, this is where there are going to be columns. They finally reinforced a pillbox hat for construction. I like the idea that he also wants it to resemble what the proportions of the White House ballroom would have felt like to him as a six-year-old, but for adults. That's why it's so fucking big because it has to be imposing.

He's got to be able to have arena football in it between state events. We've got cloth mother. Mother will be welcoming everyone to the White House ballroom. She's 20 feet tall, just like mother always has been. Everyone knows mother's three times the size of a normal human.

Damn it. Does it feel good, Riley? Is it feel good to interrupt the shit out of me? This is great, actually. I appreciate. But you finally get to be not in the driver's seat, but in the passenger seat, fucking with the gear shift, turning the stereo up really loud, all the stuff you've wanted to do this whole time.

Hey, what's this too? Hey, yeah, Kai Steer, Kai Steer, Kai Chich Gears. Hey, what's this too? Contchage? I turn with music. Oh, but Toddles, it's true. Yeah, it's probably not great that you brought me in, too, because I'm just like a capuchin in the backseat. But I mean, you can, you can decode the sort of, you know, the mystic ruins of the law. So there are a lot of things here where I look at it. I'm like, oh, I think this is good or bad, but I don't know. The judges normally use this much punctuation, but you can actually tell me for a fact. So, you know, in a way, it's like you're a good backseat driver.

Riley is a front seat asshole. That's right. Do judges normally pinch the bridge of their nose this much when they give an opinion? Look, I'm just going to read this because I feel like there's some gems in here. So, please. In November, Trump stood at a lectern of the eastern of the White House in front of an audience of foster parents and children. He was met to speak about an executive order to address the broken foster care system. But first, he gave a site briefing, right behind me, by the way, in about two years,

years from now, we'll use a much bigger room because we had to turn away a lot of people and it'll be right here, he said, telling a bunch of foster children, we had to turn away a lot from the beautiful house. I know it wasn't the first time for a lot of them. I promise to all the foster children of America, if you start a very large

company and donate a very large amount of money to me, you will not be turned away from the White House. I had a friend who would like to gather a lot of children in one place. We don't talk about them much, you, Dave. I asked to make it like the tempo. They said that's actually too far.

I really just have to do this though because Trump's ability to do like a complete no-cell segue is absolutely brought to light in this. So as Trump says here, this will be the entrance. That's a knockout panel. It's called a knockout. It looks pretty nice now, but it's going to look a lot better in a little while. And we're going to go from this room into a room that seats a few more people and it's going to be beautiful.

They've wanted it for 150 years. And they're getting it. And they're getting the best. It'll be the best anywhere in the world. Without so much of the pause, he continued, each year more than 15,000 young people age out of the foster care system and unfortunately too many struggle to become self-sufficient. We've rendered them down into a very fine marble substitute.

And you can tell that every time he talks, when he switches from the rambling weave to whatever is on the cue cards, it all of a sudden goes like to hostage video talk. Yeah, I mean, I thought I was bad about going from like the sort of bantering talking to reading off a script where it's obvious. But in Trump's case, it's like it's fully, yeah, like someone's jerking on the puppet string inside his brain

to make him read the teleprompter. Just imagine, just a mat, right? The foster system in the United States is like, it's broken in like 12 different ways, right? Like, A, like, yeah, as he actually mentions, people age out of it with very few prospects. A lot of people who engage to be foster parents

are frequently like doing it very cynically or they're abusive and stuff like this. And like, if you're in that position, you can't expect much. But imagine you go there and he's just like, this is called tool. It's very beautiful on top of curtains. And you're like, I literally live in a cupboard. To quote the article, this is one of the strange features of Trump's second term. No matter the subject, be it child rearing, public policy, baseball, death, or the audience, billionaire

businessmen, cabinet secretaries, children who have faced housing, insecurity, he's probably going to bring up the ballroom. In September 2025, a day after the conservative commentator, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated, Trump was asked outside the White House how he was coping. I think very good, he said, putting to a herd of construction vehicles. Thanks, man. By the way, right there, you see all the trucks? They just started construction on the new ballroom.

And that was, he said that as he was pouring out of 40. This is like, but this is always how Trump was, like, if you go back into Trump, what, he also hated Charlie Kirk back then. I'm almost done with this quote because there's two things here that I think you're going to really enjoy. First of all, this is just Trump talking to Ben Terrace,

the journalist who was actually there talking to him on the construction site. For me, it's good, Trump tells me. Most of my times doing other things like the markets, Iran, Venezuela, the military. A lot of people don't do construction. It drives them crazy. For me, it's actually relaxing

because I'm good at it. And when done, according to the article, the ballroom will be lined with large arched windows with softly draped curtains and fluted comments. The ceilings and walls will be awash with accents of gold, or what Trump refers to as, quote, God's favorite metal. It's really incredible how he really has the aesthetics of evil kings from Greek mythology.

It's like you can, you either have some sort of, yeah, overcooked, you know, wicked villain from a decadent and fallen kingdom or like, I don't know, the fixation on. What was it somebody said that he loves? He loves Drabba and gilded stuff in huge window treatments. He's basically Iranian. Yeah, well, I mean, he's like a certain type of like elderly person who also is really into that type of like quite gaudy and tacky stuff, right? And like, you know, you see it in their house sometimes. You're just like, yeah, I mean, I don't know what the American, like, I've seen it in sort

of British contexts. And it's just like, okay, like, it's not my taste, but like, this is your home. Like, you've had it for a while. Like, the carpets are a bit weird. Like, you know, yeah, you've got all this kind of weird gold stuff that you've bought from Amazon or Timu or whatever. But that's fine. That's your own space. You're not knocking anything down. I think it's obviously another thing to kind of just like deal with this guy who, I mean, on top of like all the evil shit that he is actually doing or at least he's enabling. Every single time there's a fucking press conference on the Oval Office, it's just like, oh, he's got a new thing.

And it reminds me a lot of just like my uncle or like my dad sometimes. We're like their hobby now that they've sort of retired and they're not really doing much. is just buying shit from TEMU. And it's just like, every time you come in and it's just like, oh, you've just got this new thing.

And it's not coherent with any of the type of like interior that you've already got. Imagine your dad and your uncle, but they control the world's reserve currency. Right. Exactly. Imagine your TEMU addicted uncle,

like gets to decide who lives or dies. So maybe the terrorists were actually a cry for help. He wanted to try to like reduce his screen time on TEMU. And so he's like, by doing the terrorists. and making it more expensive for me to buy this gaudy shit, I can get some control of my life again. You know, I can read a book.

He has not looked at a price in 70 years because someone else is always paying. But you can really see the evolution in the literal room where he, like, meets with dignitaries. Like, months by month, there's, like, an additional set of, you know, symmetrical sconces behind him. Like, every, every month,

there's, like, another, two gold sconces. I'm slow midas. It turns to gold eventually. Hopefully I die before it becomes tragic. Shake his hand, Eric. Shake his hand. Shake his hand. You'll be gold, but not soon.

Who wants to pay the price? You want to become God's favorite son in God's favorite medal. You know, Riley, you do the, weird like staring up into space while kind of curling your tongue thing that Trump does. I've seen you on camera and it's just, it's, it's disconcerting. It's, uh, it's gonna throw me up. You want to channel the guy. You got to go method. By the way, um, I've decided to go method. I've knocked down portions of all of your homes like Jared Letto and Joker. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm playing Trump. I'm at the point now where there's basically no doctor willing to see me unless I give up my McDonald's habit. I've, uh, knocked down things. I'm building a bunker. Um, I don't know. I've got the whole, I, I've managed to get. I, the Supreme Court stacked with people who are willing to to basically decide when they are too stupid to read or not. I think that's pretty impressive considering I'm not president. Well, I mean, yeah, but you know what? You had me fooled there, Riley.

I thought I was talking to the man himself. I'm shoving the Persian guy that lives near me who has identical, completely identical taste. So, Charles, one of the things that we wanted to talk about is my Trump-like rough segue where the puppet strings have been jerked inside my brain is that Trump being able to be even more destructive this time than before has been enabled by the Supreme Court and the fact that he basically has a rubber stamp. But you and I talked about this previous to this episode. And there

are quite a few things about the way the Supreme Court has changed its own procedure to basically make this even easier. That came as a complete surprise to me. And I thought I knew a decent amount. And I feel like maybe if we could just kind of talk about how the Supreme Court in the case of the ballroom, we've covered a little, but also in general how this has become the story in terms of yeah, Trump can do whatever he wants. Not all the time, but most of the time. Sure. I mean, the most obvious way that it manifests itself is it happened in the ballroom case,

an administrative stay, which is not just the Supreme Court, but a lot of circuit courts, particularly the conservative judges on circuit courts, issue administrative stays, which used to be a lot more rare. If a district court issued an injunction and the losing party appeal, they would ask the district court judge for a stay. And sometimes, like, there's a whole set of rules for when you do and don't issue an injunction. And then a separate, but very similar set of rules for when you stay the injunction. And it's a little too much in the weeds to get into.

But sometimes the district court will issue a stay. You know, like if they say that party A has to pay party B money, they will stay that until the appeal. are decided because once you pay, it may be hard to get it back. They'll restrict you from, you know, hiding your assets or whatever. You know, people can try to evade it, Alex Jones, whatever. But there are circumstances where you issue a stay. But usually, whatever the district court decides, the circuit court will respect, right? They will just, if you wouldn't give the stay, they won't give the stay. Obviously, not universal, not all the time. But in the same, but in the time. But it has become very routine for circuit courts in the Supreme Court to issue administrative

stays, which makes the status quo that someone was trying to, you know, it's a weird way to look at the status quo, right? Thing A is happening. Trump intervenes and there's an injunction placed, and the court decides that Trump's intervention is the status quo. Instead of the state of thing, until the bull ran into the China shop, which is what most people would have thought of as the status quo. So by shifting the perspective on what the status quo is, you change the frame of the stay analysis. And so Trump wins that fight a lot more often

because they say that the status quo is after the executive order. Or they say that the irreparable harm, which is one of the most important standards, in deciding whether an injunction should issue, they say that the irreparable harm is to the executive authority to do a thing, right? So if Trump wants to knock down the East Wing or issue a Muslim ban or whatever his latest bullshit is,

restraining the executive is actually the big irreparable harm because he can never get those three weeks back, you know, or whatever, until for us to reasonably decide this. And that's very new and obviously very bad. And so it feels like there have been, there have been a number of cases that have been really shocking, I think, specifically as regards the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act. And then obviously it was Trump's appointees from his first term who helped decide

Dobbs in 2022 that basically ended the constitutional right to an abortion. But I'm curious about some of the cases we've seen recently. if there are examples that you can think of where it's just like, because what you're describing is just sounds like, oh yeah, you train your entire life to basically learn all of the kind of like, you know, rudiments and fundamentals and intricacies of how the law is applied in the U.S. And all of a sudden they're like, yeah, fuck that. No, it's whatever he said. That's the new norm.

And that I didn't realize it had gotten to that extent and that it was, because I mean, we've heard this comment a lot in American political commentary about the called Calvin Ball courts, like the idea of the game from Calvin. Hobbs where you just make up the rules as you go and like you can literally do whatever you want and there's no rhyme or reason to it. But I didn't realize it advanced this much. Yeah. And I think that I think you see it in a lot of cases, but without getting into case names too much, the most I think profound ones have to do with voting rights and gerrymandering where states pass very restrictive rules, whether they are voter ID requirements that are very exacting,

or they close down all of the polls. Like, there used to be drop boxes for early voting in Texas in a lot of places. And in a lot of rural counties, there would be drop boxes with, you know, say 10 to a square mile. I'm making up the numbers. But they literally made it so that there was only one in, I'm forgetting the name, it may even just be Houston.

county, but I don't think it is. But the county that Houston is in is the largest population, the largest county by population in Texas. It is also geographically fairly large, though maybe not by Texas standards. There was one drop box. And it's because that's where all the black people, not all, obviously, but it's where the largest concentration of black people in Texas live. And so they made it harder for them to vote early. And it's so naked and obvious, and while it was being litigated, that got an administrative stay. And all of these restrictive voting rules get administrative stays. And when you think about what it signals, it is now legal to do partisan gerrymandering.

It's been legal to do partisan gerrymandering since 2019. And the Fifth Circuit basically okayed partisan gerrymandering before the Supreme Court did, basically issuing an opinion that said, based on recent changes to the court and R.T. leaf reading, we think we can jump the gun on this one. And they were right, as it turns out, but it is a real offense to the way lower appellate courts are supposed to work. You know, but they got a stay, I believe, from the Supreme Court for this fucked up ruling because they liked the result. you know, and you see it in the way they manage what, you know, the Supreme Court won't let you call it this, but what some academics, I think Stephen Vlatt came up with the term, called the shadow docket,

which is where they issue injunctions without full hearing and they decide all sorts of cases. It's where a lot of the death penalty appeals go, you know, because a lot of those are on an expedited basis. and so people ask for a stay. And so while the ultimate merits won't necessarily be decided on the shadow docket, whether an injunction against execution is performed will often be on the shadow docket. And there was one case called Bucklew

where, you know, the person said the method of execution was harmful and in very abstract sense because of the pain it would cause. But also, I have a particular condition. I don't remember what it was. But the side effects of whatever method of execution it was going to be were going to have

like really gruesome effects on him because of his physical condition. And so they shouldn't be allowed to do it. And the Supreme Court did two things. One, they rejected it on cruel and unusual punishment grounds because they're like, they eventually finally just came out and said something. along the lines of, they're going to kill you. Who fucking cares if it hurts for a couple of minutes. That was essentially the jurisprudence.

And they kind of slipped into the opinion. Gorsuch kind of slipped into the opinion that this whole idea of 11th hour appeals to the Supreme Court is bogus anyway. We think you just game the system by waiting until the last second to file these things so you can keep postponing your execution And so we are now officially saying it is the policy of the Supreme Court that an 11th hour appeal is constitutionally suspect and probably gamesmanship.

And we don't have to treat it as seriously as we would an otherwise timely filed request for an injunction. And that's Neil Gorsuch, Trump's appointee from 2017, in the spot that, you know, where Antonin Scalia had. died, but Mr. McConnell didn't let Obama fill the seat. Yeah. And I don't know. I hear that. I'm just like, that's, yeah, I knew that these for assholes. The decisions were terrible, but I didn't realize that the idea of like, oh, you're, you're just trying to not die.

Stop wasting my time. Like that's, yeah, that's. And then when a similar case came up, and this also came up more recently in other shadow docket opinion, another, shadowed opinion, another. case came up and Bucklew, because it was decided on the shadow docket, was generally understood by practitioners in lower courts as being non-precedential, right? The Supreme Court said it, but the reasoning is kind of a one-shot deal because it didn't get the full briefing and full consideration that, you know, the main, there's no real good terminology for it, but the regular docket has. and Gorsuch wrote a real snotty opinion where he's like, did you not think I was serious,

start treating these opinions like they're precedential to. And so now these kind of tossed off things that have much less analysis are more somehow openly ideological than even the benefits of the regular docket all have to be treated as presidential, you know? And especially on voting rights stuff, it's a real double whammy because they issue these stays on very thin reasoning and the case, you know, time just moves on. And the closer you get to the election, the closer you get to another Supreme Court doctrine that is just kind of made up for their own convenience called Purcell. And what Purcell says is that changing things too close to an election is too disruptive.

Right. And so if you try to change something too close to the election, we're not going to let you do that. It finally worked in the right people's favor, by the way, this week when Missouri wouldn't let the Republican legislature shoehorn in some bullshit gerrymandering to preserve Republican seats right before the election. and the Supreme Court kind of let the Missouri Supreme Court step on the necks of the Missouri Secretary of State. But it usually doesn't. And so they issue a stay, which delays the consideration of things.

The court can sit on it until it's too late to change anything and then say it's too late to change anything. And this has happened multiple times. So I think leading up to the fact that there's a, you know, a lot of hopes pinned on the upcoming midterms to potentially allow the Democrats to put some some controls and scrutiny on Trump. I guess my question to you is do you think that looking at the way

that this president has been established and just the kind of things we're talking about, even something as garish and ridiculous as the ballroom, do you think there is a possibility of rectifying this? Because when you told me, we were talking about this previously that, for example, that Gorsuch and Barrett had worked

on Bush v. Gore on the Bush side and that Kavanaugh had worked for Ken Starr for the Star report, the investigation into Clinton. I was like, it was just sort of, you know, like a like a hall of mirrors through time. It's just sort of like, oh, the people who fucked everything up the ruined shit back then and it's still happening. And it just feels like I don't want to, I don't want to be the kind of person who says, oh, it's only ever going to get worse. But in my adult lifetime, things that have seemed kind of ridiculous stretches in terms of the way that the laws is applied, decided and applied are now becoming more and more common, and more and more extreme.

And I'm curious because I don't know that much about it. Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, I don't like to talk like a doomer, and I don't like to just talk in terms of legal realism, because I think it's so easy to do with a shrug and not think about a lot. I think there is some but very limited salvation in the Democratic Party,

especially one that has shown itself historically to be reluctant. to do a lot of meaningful things. Like, I don't think they really do have the political will to end the filibuster and pack the court, which I think are both kind of necessary. I just said this on a different podcast called Out of the Jaws, but maybe they may do some jurisdiction stripping,

which they can do under the Constitution, like make certain types of congressional and executive action not reviewable. by the Supreme Court, which they've done, you know, to some extent in the past or, you know, and so you may see something there. But what worries me more than that, I don't, like, it's complicated because at some level, I'm kind of trying to, I don't know if black pill is the right word, but to give myself a reverse Q&ONON, because I think it's funny.

And in the reverse Q&ON, Donald Trump is actually working for the good of the left. in America by so discrediting conservatism that he gets sweeping losses for the Republican Party in such a way that we can actually do something with the Democrats in Congress. Now, obviously, I only think this is funny, which is why I want to force myself to believe it. But I don't know because the current Democrats don't seem like they will do the right thing with some significant parts of their power if they get it. I think most glaringly right now, it's with trans rights where you see them being weak

in a way that scares you into thinking that they won't do anything with a majority. That's actually a relevant point. And I was going to ask, Hussein, I wanted you to weigh in as well because, because things like, for example, there's a mandatory voter ID everywhere in the United Kingdom now. There was a thing that happened under the conservative party

and labor kept it. A lot of the most recent really egregious things that have been happening in the UK, you know, in terms of restricting trans rights, in terms of giving guidance that basically makes it almost impossible or completely impossible in some cases to, to receive gender confirmation surgery or any kind of trans health care is happening under a labor government. A lot of the really unbelievably restrictive and expensive and cruel and just kind of mind-bogglingly harsh, unnecessarily harsh restrictions on how long it takes to naturalize as a UK citizen, how much money, you have to earn for you to sponsor your spouse for a visa. These are all things that have either been kept from previous Tory administration or made

worse under labor. And so, you know, when you talk about the Democrats not having the will, uh, seeming weak or in some cases seeming complicit, I feel like you can look at, you know, labor wins a very, like generationally huge majority in 2024. And just about everything from certainly on, on issues like immigration and trans rights from the Tories are either kept bad or made worse. And I guess in Hussein, in your case, like, you know, you've also seen this stuff up close

in the UK and it's like living in America's future yeah I mean I don't know like I think from thinking about like Kirst Starma and the sort of Labor victory and the ways in which that was done like I think you know it's very it was very evident and one of the things that also

was very clear that Kirstama was a goner you had all these pundits who were once sort of like sort of championing in Kirstama is sort of being kind of like you know the return to centristism this sort of definitive proof that like you know elections are won in the centre all this type of stuff,

finally kind of saying, oh, yeah, actually he kind of only won because everyone else got sick of the ruling party and the voting system that we have is one that sort of favors,

you know, the next big party, right? And even so if you sort of like really break down how successful the Labor Party was in the 2024 election,

what you sort of find is that they really scraped victory for like quite a lot of the constituencies that they ran in. They did not have like a particularly strong mandate if you really sort of

go down, of the specifics. But the narrative was very much one of like, well, look, you've had 13 years, 14 years of Tory government. They've sort of, you know, the sort of the consequences of austerity and Brexit and all that stuff, like, has been so catastrophic that like your choice is really either go with us or have that, but you can't really have anything else. And I think that sort of presented this sense of giving license to the Labour Party to kind of not have to really do anything because, you know, for them, it was like the other side was so disliked that they could could kind of do politics on easy mode, but the problem is you can't because you actually have

real problems. My sense of like America, and correct me if I'm, if I'm wrong here, because I'm just, I largely just watch it on Instagram, you know, while I'm, while I'm in the toilet, which is, which is that like, because everyone has breasts that large. Hussain has experienced America, though, and having been raised in the United Kingdom when he ate chop cheese in New York City for the first time he got a fever. Yeah, that was horrible. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, one day. Yeah, if you really dig into the archives, there's one where I got so sick

because, like, I had my first bodega sandwich and it was just like, it tasted great at the time. Okay, good. But, like, the next morning, my God, I just sort of, I felt like I was dying. That could have been our air. That's true.

That is also true. There's a story for another time. But it was my impression, like, listening and watching, like, aspects of American politics and kind of, like, you know, the fact that, you know, we do this show in America comes up a lot more than I would like it to is,

that because everything is so supercharged in culture wars and because everything is very like driven by big personalities big kind of like evil forces like you know sort of evil characters who very much express their evil in a way that I think in British politics is still a little bit subdued although we are kind of getting there there is this sort of sense that the Democrats only kind of need to present themselves as like sort of superficial good guys and that's all they have to do And one of the challenges, I suppose, is that because I think I read an article over the weekend, which suggested that, like, like, actual sort of Democrats of Porses across the United States are a lot more in line with DSA than they are with, like, the mainstream Democratic Party.

But the mainstream Democratic Party wants to sort of, like, prevent as much DSA as possible. And obviously, like, Zoran winning in New York kind of pose some challenges. But maybe they've sort of thought that because Zeran is, like, a fairly agreeable person, you know, that, like, they wouldn't have to sort of deal with, like, the more. more firebrand elements of the DSA, the ones who are like a lot more angry and a lot more sort of vociferous in terms of like their aggrat. And you know, and ones who are a lot willing to be a lot more aggressive, but challenging the democratic establishment. And so I feel like we're sort of entering potentially a sort of Kirstarmerich situation where the Democrats largely benefit because of how hated Trump is. But the message that they get from that is, oh, the demos, like,

you know, voters just want to get rid of Trump and they want to get rid of like the Trump administration, but like broadly, you know, on the specifics, like, you know, we'll figure that out afterwards. And I guess this is also the story about Kirst Stama and the UK Labour Party as well, which is a lot of their approach. And this is actually written in like some of the books that have sort of been published, both in the years that Stama was prime minister, but also afterwards. And, you know, again, one of those things were like people admit after the fact. Like they were like, oh, we actually didn't really have a plan coming in.

We sort of felt that we could figure it out once we were in that. The aesthetics of the vulgarity, the aesthetics of Johnson and then Sunac and Lys Trust and all this stuff, suddenly it's like, well, we're not them. So everyone's just going to be happy. And it's like, that was certainly the 2020 election. Yeah, right. Yeah, for sure. You know, Biden won the first time with a lot of the exhaustion from the first Trump administration. And I think if Biden doesn't run a second time, virtually anyone who was. responsible for running the second election from the get-go has a better argument for remember Trump. But Biden was just a kind of lackluster candidate the second time around. And so Trump could take enough pet pills to show up on stages and be like, look at old, you know, sleepy Joe. And I guess like there's something to be said. I think the assessization of it and how that has ramped up, I think, will really sort of like shape the way.

that like Democrats kind of like pursue strategy and also they don't because I think in some ways like their opponent is like one of the least sophisticated people like they have to deal with right yeah and it but it feels like a very weird short-term strategy right you can only run against the horrible aesthetics of Trump when Trump is on the ballot and if you spend your time only focusing on Trump's aesthetics and refuse to engage with the larger corruption of the republic Republican Party. And if you do things like, you know, Hakeem Jeffrey's meeting with Jared Kushner or Tilarico making his conciliatory shitty arguments about gender confirmation. Trans women in girls, you know, trans girls in sports. And, you know, if you do all of these hedging things, you undercut yourself for every future election when you're running against the people who do those things, because you're trying to triangulate on issues where there shouldn't be an ethical middle ground. And so I think it's pennywise pound foolish. And I don't even know how penny wise it is.

All I can think is, you know, the only thing I can say is that the biggest reason I don't like Dumerism is because it is demotivational wreck or shit. it's not because I don't think things are bad. I just think if you cabin yourself in hopelessness, it is bad for you on an individual psychological level, and it is bad for your side on a will to action level. And so all I would say is no matter how many podcasts you listen to, where people talk about how things are fucked up in the world, that doesn't create a lot. a space for you to stop caring. It only gives you a space to focus your caring in ways that are not destructive to the self.

Damn, shit. No, that's like genuinely very edifying because it's something that I struggle with sometimes, too. We can always make funny jokes about the bad situation. And there's obviously like, you know, an opportunity to, you don't want to, you don't want to be proven right about everything's going to get worse than it does. You're like, well, fuck, I guess I was right. But no, I do appreciate that. genuinely, because it's pretty easy to be like, all right, I'm going to talk about how the world's getting worse. But there are other things you can talk about, such as the podcast. Such as, right.

So such as my other, I have two podcasts going on right now. One is called no homework. I do that with Elron Mexico and Patrick Cosmos. And that's nominally about shitty jobs and hardly working. But it's, we talk about whatever we feel like talking about. We have a guest on not, you know, most the time. It's very hard for the three of us to all be on at the same time because of our various work schedules. So we'll try to get a third seat in any event. But we have guests just because. And then this is something that your audience may care about less, but I'm going to promote anyway because we play a game in London every year. I'm a fan of the New Orleans Saints. And so Elron Mexico and I have a football podcast. I guess I should.

say American football podcast, about the New Orleans Saints. And that is a weekly podcast during the NFL season. American football is weirdly popular in the United Kingdom, which throws me off sometimes when people know more about the Colts than I do. Now, I don't really follow it anymore, but it's still odd. But no, that's, thank you so much for making time for this. Thank you so much for the help, the insight and also the help in researching. I feel like this has been, there's been a lot of tones reached in this episode,

funny and also really somber, but I'm very, very grateful for your time. Yeah, thanks. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. And I especially want to thank you because this is part of my 2026, 52 plus one podcast guest challenge where I am going head to head against Josh Borman. So if anyone wants me to help me defeat him, you know where to be. Yeah, sorry.

You know what? I'm torn because I can support a fellow Midwestern or I can support the guy who's made this episode a lot easier to fucking do because I don't know anything about it. So you know what? I'm going to, I'm going to be a Democratic Party member and I'm just going to sit this one out. Thank you. I take that back. I don't say,

I don't mean, fuck Josh. I mean, I respect Josh, but sometimes I shake my head to show that I disagree with him. In general. So thank you so much. Hussein,

you want to shout out your shows? Yeah. I mean, I do a show called 10,000 posts with Phoebe Roy. It's a show about technology and internet culture. I've been doing it for a while. I don't plug it. I probably really should. So go check that out if you don't listen to that already or are interested in that type of stuff. And also I'm going to shout out our co-hosts,

our absent co-hosts podcast, as Riley had to step out. Riley in November have no gods, no mayor. It's a podcast about every mayor ever. Riley has a show called Trouble in River City with some friends who talk about scams. I do a military disaster podcast called Lions Live by Donkeys. And November does kill James Bond, a feminist film podcast. And she also does be gay, solve crime. a podcast about detective fiction. And I'm in a band called Second Homes, and our debut album is available everywhere on streaming. And on Bandcamp,

if you want to actually give us money for it, so we can recoup the costs of making it. Thank you so much. A band is like a podcast, but like they have instruments. Yeah, a band is like a podcast where you can't actually really do any riffing

unless you're really, really good. You actually have to prepare a ton of work. And everyone is mad because instead of it being like, oh, when's the next episode? I was like, when's the next album coming out? I don't know.

Two years from now, perhaps. But you know what? I wouldn't be doing it if it weren't for podcasts. So thank you. And thank you out there in listener land. We very much appreciate you listen to our show. And there will be a bonus episode on Patreon on Friday. So check that out if you're interested. Bye, everyone. Bye.