Joe and Mika Do the Trump Dance

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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
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I'm Jon Lovett.
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I'm Tommy Vitor.
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On today's show, Democrats prepare a new strategy to fight
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Trump and get ready to pick a new party leader...
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Joe and Mika kiss the ring at Mar-a-Lago while the
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new MAGA clique sits ringside at a UFC fight. Then
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NBC News' Brandi Zadrozny, one of the best source reporters
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on the RFK beat, talks to Tommy about what we
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know about RFK's plans for the medical care you get
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and the food you eat.
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It's funny that they're the best source. It's like, she's
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talked to the worm.
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The worm, the whale, and the... What was the other thing?
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The bear.
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The bear!
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The bear! RFK Jr.
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Is a source close to the worm.
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We.
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Brandy and I talked. She's also such a... She's an
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expert in online disinformation and misinformation too. And we also
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talked a lot about the wellness space and how people
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who consume wellness content inevitably get to a lot of
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the things RFK Jr. is focused on. Not just vaccines and,
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you know, misinformation he pushes around vaccines, but also... the
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broader sort of Make America Healthy Again agenda, which includes
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food safety, et cetera, which I think is why he's
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very attractive to a lot of people.
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People like West Coast Moms and Jared Poulos.
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I'm on the wellness algorithm road.
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For sure.
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So it's only, you know, right now it's vitamin C
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in the morning, but we'll see where it gets me.
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I'm excited.
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RFK Jr., very anti-ozempic. Did you see that?
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Oh, well, okay. from my cold, dead hands.
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Four years from now, I don't know what the future
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holds for this country, but I'll have Manjaro in one
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hand and Diet Coke in the other. You'll have to
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take it from me by force.
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We will also talk about how, like, there's some parts
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of what RRK wants to do that, who disagree with, like,
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healthier foods or getting pesticides out of the environment, et cetera.
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But how is that going to work with the broader
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Trump's deregulation agenda?
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Well, yeah, because the people that used to disagree with
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it were all the fucking Republicans.
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Exactly.
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All right. Well, stick around for that interview.
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But first.
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I regret to inform you that the news about Trump's
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cabinet picks has not gotten any better. Let's start with
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his nominee for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, who resigned his
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seat in Congress just before the bipartisan House Ethics Committee
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could release a report about his alleged illicit drug use
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and sex with underage women. A lawyer for two adult
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women who already testified before the committee said that Gaetz
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paid them for sex and that one of them witnessed
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Gaetz having sex with a third woman who was then
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17 years old at a house party in Florida. Democratic
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and Republican senators have said they want to see the
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committee's report before voting to confirm Gates, though Speaker Mike
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Johnson says it shouldn't be released. And apparently the ethics
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committee will meet on Wednesday to decide. It seems unlikely
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to me that Gates gets confirmed without at least the Senate,
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if not the public, viewing this report. But what do
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you guys think?
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So John Cornyn was asked about this, and he said
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to reporters that the truth is that the information is
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going to come out one way or another. He also said,
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I think in order to do our job, we need
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to get access to the information also to protect the
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president against any surprises that might damage his administration. So
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John Cornyn is just looking out for number one, who
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is Donald Trump. Yeah, I just I find it unlikely
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that we won't know most of what's in that report
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by the time we get.
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To a vote. If we get to a vote, you
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get 10 members on the House Ethics Committee. Let's look
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at their website today. I saw 28 staffers. Apparently, all
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10 members had access to the full report. So it's
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a lot of people. And apparently the ranking Democrat, Susan Wild,
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just lost her race. So what does she have to
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lose by floating that thing to some nice media member?
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The email is hey at crooked.com.
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Hey at crooked.com. Listen, we won't, you know, remember when...
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The Intercept posted that file and that poor person had
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to go to jail because they didn't get rid of
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the copy marks.
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Reality winner, yeah. We will not do that.
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We will protect your anonymity.
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Sidney Sweeney needs no more rolls.
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We're certainly not asking for any classified information. Let's not
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say something we're going to regret, Tommy. We're not soliciting
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any classified information.
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No, this is all public.
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Just everything that's public.
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You have to think, all these Senate Republicans, they know
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Matt Gaetz is a sketchball, but they don't know the
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extent to which. You would want to know that information
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before you vote for or against him. The risk though,
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the flip side is he might end up being attorney
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general and he can target whoever puts out information about him.
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So it's a scary situation.
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Yeah.
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I think there's no way that he gets confirmed or
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the nomination hearing goes forward without at least the senators
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on the committee or all the senators seeing the report.
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I can see reasons if you take like Matt Gaetz
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and the specific substance of this, these set of allegations
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out of it, why a house ethics committee like wouldn't
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publicize the their reports, because especially depending on what they found,
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if someone is innocent or whatever, you don't want like
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salacious allegations out there. But that said, probably leaks. And also,
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if it doesn't leak, you could imagine Democrats on the
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Judiciary Committee just sort of redoing the investigation in public
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as part of the confirmation hearing.
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Yeah, it's also like we should try to get the report.
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You don't need the report to know Matt Gaetz is
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a scumbag. He famously would walk around the floor of
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the House showing photos and videos of his exploits to
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horrified or annoyed or somewhat disgusted colleagues, you know, as
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has been reported by members of the House.
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A U.S. senator who will now vote on his nomination.
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Right, right.
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Mark Wayne Mullins was in the House when that was
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going on.
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Yeah.
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And the context here is normally all of these nominees
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go through an FBI background check, but that background check
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is requested by the White House, not the members of Congress.
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So if Trump says, we're not going to request one
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this time, it might not happen, or maybe he'll use
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an outside firm. So, I mean, the next chairman of
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the Judiciary Committee is going to be Chuck Grassley, spring
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chicken at 91 years old. He will likely work with
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Dick Durbin to structure these hearings. Presumably, Durbin will have
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some leeway to call witnesses who could be people who
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are also associated with this House ethics report, but they
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would have to be willing to come forward and testify.
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They couldn't compel them.
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I will say these allegations are incredibly serious, if true, horrific.
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I hope that they are not the primary focus of
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the confirmation hearings, just because the position of attorney general
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is so powerful. And I think a lot of people,
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you know, we all think it's pretty scary, the idea
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of Matt Gaetz being attorney general, but maybe most voters
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have no idea what they're in for other than Matt
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Gaetz seems like a scumbag because of these sexual allegations.
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But like, I hope they ask him about political prosecutions,
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civil rights, following the law. maybe his position on sex trafficking,
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which I know is a big deal for his friends
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at QAnon.
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It's true. And also the Senate Democrats could also ask
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the Department of Justice to turn over any relevant documents
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about their investigation into Matt Gaetz, which didn't turn into
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a prosecution, but they still could have found things in
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there that are politically relevant. Yeah.
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The Gaetz folks are saying, well, Merrick Garland's Justice Department,
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you know, found him not guilty. It's like, eh, they
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didn't bring the case.
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That's a prosecutorial standard. This is something different. This is
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a political vetting. Yeah.
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And I agree with you. Like it's hard, right?
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Because, and we'll talk about Hegseth, but like with Gates, right?
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These are disqualifying allegations, right? And they should be enough
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to make it so that we don't have to deal
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with someone like Matt Gates in Congress, otherwise attorney general.
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Or someone like Donald Trump as president.
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Exactly.
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But the, but like, These are the most sensational and
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interesting stories around these cabinet appointments. And what we are
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seeing is the most radical, unqualified group of people who
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are promising to do deeply unpopular things as leaders of
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the administration. And if the focus is on just these stories,
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we will have missed this chance to talk about what
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Donald Trump will actually do as president. I do think
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like there is a way to talk about what these
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allegations represent and why they are so dangerous. to have
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an attorney general who's been accused of these things or
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has been alleged to do these things, what it tells
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you about what he thinks about the law, who the
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law applies to, who the law doesn't applies to, who
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he respects, who he doesn't. I think there is like
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a story there you can use to talk about the
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broader reasons Matt Gaetz shouldn't be attorney general, but I
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have the same worry.
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So it turns out Trump's pick for defense secretary is
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also facing sexual misconduct allegations. The reported incident involved an
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unidentified woman and took place in 2017 at a Monterey
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hotel where Pete Hegseth was speaking at an event. The
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Trump transition team apparently has a memo, which we haven't seen,
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but the Washington Post reports on. It says the woman, quote,
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didn't remember anything until she was in Hegseth's hotel room.
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And then the next day, quote, had a moment of
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hazy memory of being raped the night before. Hegseth says
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through his lawyer that there was an encounter, but it
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was consensual, that there's surveillance footage of the two walking
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back to his room, smiling with their arms locked. and
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that the person involved has tried to, quote, blackmail him.
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Hegseth reached a settlement with the woman that apparently prohibits
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her from talking about it. Separately, concerns have been raised
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about a tattoo on Hegseth's bicep. It says Deus Vult,
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which is Latin for God Wills It, a phrase that
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started with the Crusades but has been used more recently
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by Christian nationalists in the far right. The tattoo was
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apparently why Hegseth was ordered not to deploy as a
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member of the National Guard to Biden's inauguration in 2021,
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an incident that has fueled Hegseth's complaints about the so-called
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woke military. Not to downplay the seriousness of these charges either,
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but in the context of a president who himself has
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been found liable for sexual assault and dined with white
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nationalist Nick Fuentes, do you think at least four Republican
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senators could care enough about these issues to tank Hegseth's nomination?
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I don't think we should spend a lot of time
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on the tattoos, but I think the assault allegations are
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very recent and very serious. And the Senate has an
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obligation to investigate them as Hegseth will be in a
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position of enormous power and he will manage hundreds of thousands,
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if not millions of women in his role as secretary
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of defense. And so I agree. Like, it's very frustrating
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because Trump has managed to evade accountability on this set
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of issues over and over and over again. But that
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Teflon does not apply to everyone he nominates. And we've
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seen him jettison people that he views as politically inconvenient
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in the past. I do agree that much like with Gates,
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I think there's got to be a broader conversation here
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about just his utter lack of qualification. I mean, again,
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this guy, this guy will run an organization. The next
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secretary of defense runs an organization that that oversees employees
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well over two million people. What has prepared you for
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that weekend anchor? He personally lobbied Trump to pardon service
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members who had been convicted or accused of war crimes.
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Hegzeth would be the primary point of contact for his
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counterparts in foreign countries at places like NATO. What like
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diplomatic experience does he have? He'll be the top advisor
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on defense policy and military and security issues. He'll oversee
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an $ 800 billion annual budget with a wildly complicated acquisition
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process underneath it.
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Two million employees.
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More.
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I mean, it's insane.
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Two million.
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His biggest job was, I think he managed a nonprofit
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that had between 11 and 50 employees. Five zero.
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I will say that I have been, when Dan and
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I first talked about this, some of these cabinet picks
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last week, and I was talking about like, they don't
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have qualifications, they don't have experience. And I thought about it.
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That is actually like a benefit to a lot of
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Trump supporters and a lot of people who voted for
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Trump and a lot of people in the country. Like
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they want someone with not a lot of Washington experience
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or quality. Like they don't care. I do think that
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like the politicization of the military could be extremely dangerous.
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Right.
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And I would really want to zero in with him
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on questions of like, you know, There's reports that Trump
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is drafting an executive order to, you know, fast track
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the purging of generals he doesn't like. He's talking about
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the woke military. Pete Hegseth had comments about doesn't think
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that women should be in combat roles. People should ask
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him about Donald Trump and the Insurrection Act. Like if
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he if you have a military that is only filled
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with Trump loyalists, at least in the senior ranks, it's
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a real fucking problem.
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Yeah.
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I want to talk about the stupidity of the focusing
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on the tattoo for a moment. Because I saw people
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talking about the tattoo and then that it's this Latin
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phrase and it's a dog whistle for white supremacists. And
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someone on Twitter pointed out that this phrase really wasn't
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in common use until it was the name of a
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video game expansion for a video game called Crusader Kings.
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And so then the phrase took off a little bit
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because it was associated with that video game. Also, the
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reason people used to talk about dog whistles, it was
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meant to signal that this was somebody that had secretly
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very dark motives, right? That they're not telling you the
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whole story, right? They're pretending to be normal, but then
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you see the dog whistle. He's got a secret white
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nationalist tattoo. These people are telling us what they're going
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to do. And what they're doing is very terrible. Like
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the fact that he has a deus volt tattoo on
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it just doesn't fucking matter at all because we already
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know that what he has talked about, what he wants
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to do, whether it was maybe being the person that
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gave Trump the idea for a preemptive strike in North
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Korea or talking about purging the military or whatever other
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heinous ideas he's bringing to the table, they're no longer worried.
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about speaking at a tone only dogs can hear. And
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so like the idea that like, oh, he's got a
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secret white nationalist tattoo.
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It's not a secret.
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He's telling us what he wants to do.
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Yeah, he posts shirtless selfies. It's not secret at all. Yeah,
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I agree. That's like, it's a silly sidebar to me.
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And it's an easy thing that the Republicans can use
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to make us sound ridiculous.
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Yes.
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But John, I also worry about like the qualifications trap
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that you're talking about. Because if I'm a MAGA person,
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I'm like, oh, you don't think this guy, who has
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two bronze stars, served in combat, went to Princeton and Harvard,
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is qualified? But you think that all these four stars
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over there who kept us in endless wars in Iraq
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and Afghanistan and before that Vietnam and Korea, those people
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were qualified? Thousands and thousands and thousands of service members
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killed under those leaders, but my guy can't do it
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because he's a disruptor? That's a powerful rejoinder. And I
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agree with you that even listening to my own kind of,
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litany of questions about his qualifications, I feel like I'm
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getting myself in a trap here.
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I know.
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And it's funny too, because we, a million years ago,
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were in a campaign with Obama, where Obama was hit
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with all of these same accusations, right? That he was like,
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he was a empty suit and didn't have a lot
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of experience. And our whole rejoinder was, yeah, he doesn't
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have Washington experience. He's going to shake up the system.
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Change.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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So But there's plenty to focus on with like their views,
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these nominees and what the views are. And I think
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that's what we need to get at. And that speaks
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to the tattoo stupid thing that keeps everything else like,
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forget about, we got to move away from just the
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offensive things these people might say or symbols or this
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or that or the other thing. It's like, what are
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their views? What are they going to do if they
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have power? And what is that going to mean for people?
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I agree.
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I agree with what you're saying with Hegseth. But with
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Matt Gaetz specifically, he spent a couple years saying, at
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a Northwest Florida corporate law firm before, like, Nepo babying
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his way into Florida politics.
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Yes, he's different.
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His only exposure, it seems, to criminal law was his
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own potential prosecution. Like, I do think a qualification argument
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with Gates specifically is worth making.
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I agree with you there. I totally agree. And although
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he's just a career politician, everyone hates career politicians. Hegseth, though,
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I think, has these, you know, bullets on paper that
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look pretty good. Yeah.
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Meanwhile, one major cabinet post that Trump has not yet
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filled is Treasury. which is reportedly causing a little intramegadrama.
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The soft consensus is that it's a race between Scott Besant,
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who heads up the Key Square Group hedge fund, and
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Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and chairman of
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Trump's transition team. You might have remembered him from his
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interview with Caitlin Collins, where he said, of course, RFK Jr.
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is not going to be Health and Human Services Secretary.
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Nailed it.
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Finger on the pulse.
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But also where he was so charmed by RFK Jr.,
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he came to become an autism vaccine connection guy. Just
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based on that one conversation with RFK Jr., who must
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be the most charismatic man on the fucking planet.
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Dark.
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So Elon Musk tweeted over the weekend that he thinks
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Besant is a, quote, business as usual pick and that
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Lutnick will actually enact change with RFK Jr. chiming in
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to say Lutnick would be great on crypto. There's also
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a vocal pro-Besson camp that includes a lot of Wall
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Street types and potentially Steve Bannon. What is the Trump
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world debate going on here actually about? How are these
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guys different from each other?
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Tommy? You know the scene in American Psycho where they're
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all comparing business cards and they're all just like white
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with black print, but it's just like, this is bone.
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The typeface is ceiling rail. I feel like that's what
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we're looking at is for identical business cards. But there's
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a sense in Trump world that Besson And another guy
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named Mark Rowan, who co-founded this massive investment firm, Apollo Management,
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they would make the markets happiest. They're the least true
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believer-y when it comes to putting in place massive tariffs
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on imported goods, especially goods from China. While Lutnik is
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seen as more of a true believer on tariffs and
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going hard at China, and I guess supporting cryptocurrency, even
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if maybe long-term there's a view that cryptocurrency could help
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displace the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency and
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harm U.S. power abroad. I also think there's some intrapersonal
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shit going on over here, though, as always with Trump World. Like,
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Lutnick's the co-chairman of the Trump transition. The Bulwark reported
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that there's a lot of people in Trump World who
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find him aggressive and thirsty for press coverage and annoying,
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and they feel like he's Dick Cheney-ing himself into the
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role of Treasury Secretary. I remember when Dick Cheney famously
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helped George W. Bush find a VP and was like, aha,
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I found it. It's me. So that seems like there's
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some intra-Trump fighting happening too.
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Yeah.
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It's hard to really, if you dig down, what is
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the actual policy dispute here? Then CNN put these side
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by side and I thought it was pretty instructive, which
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is like, okay, both these guys are going to execute
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Donald Trump's agenda.
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We know that.
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But Besant wrote an op-ed and he said, tariffs are
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a means to finally stand up for Americans. But Lutnick
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at the speech at Madison Square Garden said, when was
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America great? 125 years ago. We had no income tax.
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All we had was tariffs. And it does seem like
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he's a style guy.
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Or I don't even know if Lutnick has those genuine
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beliefs about tariffs or his genuine belief is that he
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wants the job and will just say whatever Trump wants.
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And I feel like that you always get a leg
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up on everyone else. Unless you're unless you're very public
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about everything and then try to get too much news
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coverage then. So that's where he may not end up
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in the job.
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Yeah, but it's like the like the signaling that like
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he's willing to say the crazy thing. Whereas I think
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the money guys are like, listen, we know that Trump
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is talking about tariffs, but he's not going to fuck
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with the markets. And we got to have somebody in
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there that knows how to speak the language of the markets.
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Because I look, we're all having fun here. This has
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all been a big fun joke, but nobody messes with
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our fucking money.
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Yeah. There's like tariffs as a threat or tariffs as
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a thing we do and potentially crater the economy. Same
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with deportations. There's deportations as a threat and there's actually
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throwing 20 some odd million people out of the country and, again,
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cratering the U.S. economy.
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There's some reports that Trump may go another direction from
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either of those two, which I could get because one
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00:19:44.750 --> 00:19:48.329
thing Trump doesn't like is getting pressured to do something
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and then actually doing it.
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Yeah.
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Either camp, right? And now that the, you know, the
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pro-Bessant and pro-Lutnik camps are so public, like it just, like,
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you know, if it's Bessant, then it looks like Wall
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Street wins, you know, and Trump doesn't want that. And
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if it's Lutnik, it looks like, you know, Elon tweeted
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it and I'm sure he doesn't like the idea that
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he's going to be led around by Elon Musk. There's some,
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maybe a little drama brewing there too. Elon Musk overstaying
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his welcome at Mar-a-Lago.
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Yeah.
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It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Like they've created now this,
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this choice wasn't actually a choice that was going to
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determine whether Trump was going to go hard on tariffs
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or be against crypto, but like it, by making the
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choice now, it maybe like removed some of his like
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strategic vagueness that he loves to have.
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So. Yeah, I can see that. Ludnick was also accused
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by some in the Trump world of leaking the Rubio
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pick for Secretary of State to The New York Times.
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And maybe people think he asked Elon to lobby for
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him on Twitter. And that's just seen as a big
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no-no to pressure the boss publicly.
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I do think the big policy implication here is like
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how serious Trump is about the tariffs. And I think
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they don't know yet because the tariffs in the first
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term We're nothing like what he's proposing or what he
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has talked about for the second, for this coming term.
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And it's one thing to impose targeted tariffs on, you know,
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aluminum or steel from China, one country. You're doing across-the-board
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tariffs on every single thing that's imported from every country. Like,
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not only is Wall Street not going to like that, but, like,
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consumers are not going to like that.
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Yeah, it's going to be very disruptive.
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Talk about, like, inflation and prices. I mean, it could
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be pretty bad. Last personnel thing we wanted to get
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into today is Trump's pick for FCC chairman. That's the
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Federal Communications Commission. The guy's name is Brendan Carr, who
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literally wrote the FCC chapter of Project 2025. Trump appointed
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him as one of the commissioners of the FCC in 2017.
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Right after Trump announced him on Sunday night, Carr tweeted,
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We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech
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rights for everyday Americans. He's also talked about going after
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the licenses of broadcasters like NBC per Trump's demand. Anything
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else to know about this guy? What do you think
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he represents in terms of policy change? And what can
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an FCC chairman do?
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So two big things that I think are not getting
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the headlines but are pretty important. One is he may
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have the ability to drive a bunch of money towards
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Elon Musk and Starlink. The second, which I think is
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00:22:14.329 --> 00:22:18.910
pretty important, is the FCC decides how restrictive the ownership
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rules are around local TV stations. The last time Trump
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had the FCC, there was a lot of bluster on
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a lot of different issues, but one of the most
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impactful things they did was make it easier for there
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to be consolidation in the ownership of television stations, which
489
00:22:31.549 --> 00:22:35.910
has benefited right-wing news organizations like Sinclair. Now that Trump
490
00:22:35.950 --> 00:22:40.220
has won, the head of Sinclair, the Sinclair CEO, said
491
00:22:40.299 --> 00:22:43.900
that it feels like a cloud over the industry is lifting.
492
00:22:43.920 --> 00:22:47.109
We're very excited about the upcoming regulatory environment. The rule
493
00:22:47.140 --> 00:22:49.500
that stays in place right now is that no one
494
00:22:49.559 --> 00:22:51.819
company is allowed to own stations that would collectively reach
495
00:22:51.859 --> 00:22:54.960
more than 39% of U.S. households, and no single entity
496
00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:57.839
can own more than one of the four largest stations
497
00:22:57.900 --> 00:22:59.779
in any single market, right? These are the kind of
498
00:22:59.900 --> 00:23:03.579
last rules preventing even more consolidation in the industry. Carr
499
00:23:03.599 --> 00:23:07.099
would like to lift those rules. Some right-wing Republicans, organizations
500
00:23:07.119 --> 00:23:08.900
like Sinclair would like to lift those rules and have
501
00:23:08.960 --> 00:23:10.920
even more control over the local news that people get.
502
00:23:11.319 --> 00:23:13.480
And those to me are sort of the two biggest,
503
00:23:14.660 --> 00:23:16.890
right now, things that they can do with power. Beyond that,
504
00:23:16.970 --> 00:23:21.380
it's a lot of like, bully pulpit and a lot of, look,
505
00:23:21.619 --> 00:23:24.509
news organizations are already squeamish, right? We saw that after
506
00:23:24.670 --> 00:23:28.349
Kamala Harris was on SNL, they gave Trump a free
507
00:23:28.390 --> 00:23:31.089
spot on NASCAR, right? Like they don't need to kind
508
00:23:31.109 --> 00:23:34.089
of bring the hammer down for news organizations and media
509
00:23:34.130 --> 00:23:37.160
companies to be afraid of the FCC chair and afraid
510
00:23:37.200 --> 00:23:39.700
of having a letter from the FCC chair or afraid
511
00:23:39.859 --> 00:23:42.460
of being called into Congress for hearing or being kind
512
00:23:42.480 --> 00:23:44.920
of investigated. And so that, that to me is the,
513
00:23:45.039 --> 00:23:47.160
is the biggest concern. It's like these sort of regulatory changes,
514
00:23:47.180 --> 00:23:49.309
but also just someone like this having the bully pulpit.
515
00:23:49.829 --> 00:23:53.569
He's a very hardcore conservative activist. He's exactly what you'd
516
00:23:53.589 --> 00:23:55.750
expect to come out of the Heritage Foundation. And he
517
00:23:55.789 --> 00:23:59.710
will know how the mechanics of the agency work to
518
00:23:59.799 --> 00:24:03.339
actually use it for power, to implement the Trump agenda,
519
00:24:03.359 --> 00:24:07.180
whether that's punishing enemies at tech companies, whether it's punishing
520
00:24:07.240 --> 00:24:10.900
enemies in the media, whether it's steering money to Trump
521
00:24:10.940 --> 00:24:12.660
allies like Elon Musk. So he's one of those people
522
00:24:12.700 --> 00:24:16.170
that's not like a name brand MAGA type, but knows
523
00:24:16.210 --> 00:24:18.589
what he's doing. And I think that's the danger here.
524
00:24:19.390 --> 00:24:23.710
It's interesting that he, in the Project 2025 chapter, he
525
00:24:23.730 --> 00:24:24.529
wants to ban TikTok.
526
00:24:24.569 --> 00:24:24.890
Big time.
527
00:24:25.130 --> 00:24:26.130
Which is interesting since.
528
00:24:26.029 --> 00:24:27.930
Now Trump is... One of many actually in the cabinet now.
529
00:24:27.950 --> 00:24:31.240
Since Trump has flip-flopped on that. So that'll be interesting. Yeah,
530
00:24:31.259 --> 00:24:34.779
he talks a lot about regulating tech. Google and Meta
531
00:24:34.940 --> 00:24:38.240
aren't defined as communication services. So he doesn't really have
532
00:24:38.559 --> 00:24:40.619
the authority to do that. They would need to change
533
00:24:40.680 --> 00:24:43.839
the law probably with the FCC. The FCC is also
534
00:24:43.910 --> 00:24:47.839
prohibited from punishing television and radio stations for editorial decisions.
535
00:24:48.660 --> 00:24:52.059
So like you said, it's more bully pulpit than actual,
536
00:24:52.859 --> 00:24:55.180
you talked about ownership, changing ownership so that people can,
537
00:24:55.460 --> 00:24:58.359
an entity can own more. He also block mergers. The
538
00:24:58.440 --> 00:25:02.279
FCC can block mergers. So for communications companies and media
539
00:25:02.319 --> 00:25:05.900
companies that he doesn't like, he could stop that.
540
00:25:06.029 --> 00:25:09.349
Yeah, but that also then it's like, okay, well, that
541
00:25:09.390 --> 00:25:12.700
depends what court that ends up in front of.
542
00:25:12.759 --> 00:25:12.910
Right.
543
00:25:12.930 --> 00:25:14.400
And so like a lot of this is like how,
544
00:25:14.500 --> 00:25:16.519
how much power he ultimately has also depends on how,
545
00:25:16.880 --> 00:25:19.480
how much the right wing court, uh, is willing to
546
00:25:19.700 --> 00:25:21.779
step into the fray. And then more broadly, like this
547
00:25:21.839 --> 00:25:24.440
is part, there's like a, there's a, like a lot
548
00:25:24.460 --> 00:25:27.480
of this will be about what Congress does. Well, uh,
549
00:25:27.509 --> 00:25:31.289
Congress is, uh, enamored of the same, uh, right wing
550
00:25:31.309 --> 00:25:33.769
beliefs about the media, uh, that this guy is. And
551
00:25:33.809 --> 00:25:36.069
so like, you know, there will be hearings and they will,
552
00:25:36.170 --> 00:25:38.630
this guy will testify for Congress about the need to, to,
553
00:25:39.250 --> 00:25:42.430
Stop the censorship caused by big tech and all the
554
00:25:42.470 --> 00:25:45.180
different ways in which the media is biased against conservatives. Like,
555
00:25:45.200 --> 00:25:47.500
this is part of a long-term effort, and they have
556
00:25:47.519 --> 00:25:48.079
been succeeding.
557
00:25:48.920 --> 00:25:51.660
Big, big personnel news while we were recording, guys. Sean Duffy,
558
00:25:52.220 --> 00:25:56.380
nominated to serve as the Secretary of Transportation, first real-world
559
00:25:56.420 --> 00:25:58.490
Boston cast member in the cabinet.
560
00:25:58.609 --> 00:25:59.690
But maybe not the last.
561
00:26:00.250 --> 00:26:04.569
Wow. Rachel Campos. Rachel. Yeah, she might get in there, too. Yeah. So.
562
00:26:04.960 --> 00:26:07.680
We love reality TV representation in government.
563
00:26:07.759 --> 00:26:09.500
There's a lot of it, right?
564
00:26:09.559 --> 00:26:10.279
Top down.
565
00:26:10.339 --> 00:26:12.440
There have been great people that have been on Survivor
566
00:26:13.339 --> 00:26:16.369
that have run for office. Something to think about. Also
567
00:26:16.390 --> 00:26:17.150
some misses.
568
00:26:17.589 --> 00:26:20.009
Speaking of needing experience and qualification.
569
00:26:21.829 --> 00:26:24.130
You see Biden wandering off into the middle distance in
570
00:26:24.150 --> 00:26:26.269
the Amazon. Everyone is like, hey, were you there?
571
00:26:26.349 --> 00:26:27.970
A lot of tweets that said he looked like he's
572
00:26:28.029 --> 00:26:28.730
at a tribal council.
573
00:26:28.789 --> 00:26:42.250
Yeah, for sure. Let's talk about what the Democrats are
574
00:26:42.289 --> 00:26:44.269
up to. There was an article in the New York.
575
00:26:44.430 --> 00:26:44.990
Who are they?
576
00:26:45.009 --> 00:26:46.910
Yeah, exactly. There was an article in the New York
577
00:26:46.930 --> 00:26:50.400
Times on Saturday detailing the party's new battle plan against Trump,
578
00:26:50.759 --> 00:26:53.960
which basically involves Democratic governors and attorneys general using their
579
00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:56.859
power to protect people in their states. One thing that
580
00:26:56.880 --> 00:26:58.500
was notable in the piece was that a lot of
581
00:26:58.539 --> 00:27:02.119
governors who seem to be on the Democrat shortlist for
582
00:27:02.119 --> 00:27:06.630
2028 have not yet signed on to this. It's basically
583
00:27:06.710 --> 00:27:12.940
a Pritzker, Governor Pritzker-led... Governor Polis-led sort of alliance, but
584
00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:15.329
there was no Gretchen Whitmer on it, no Josh Shapiro,
585
00:27:15.349 --> 00:27:17.930
no Tony Evers. What do you guys make of the
586
00:27:17.970 --> 00:27:20.750
plan and the fact that some big-name Democratic governors haven't
587
00:27:20.809 --> 00:27:21.410
yet signed on?
588
00:27:22.089 --> 00:27:24.130
Some of the plan is just common sense. You fight
589
00:27:24.170 --> 00:27:26.430
bad laws in courts. You pass what you can pass
590
00:27:26.470 --> 00:27:29.029
in state legislatures. There were other pieces in there that
591
00:27:29.049 --> 00:27:30.289
were a little weird. I wasn't sure if they were
592
00:27:30.309 --> 00:27:33.650
part of the broader plan, like someone pitching opposition research
593
00:27:33.869 --> 00:27:36.650
on the Murdoch family or on Elon Musk. I could
594
00:27:36.690 --> 00:27:39.809
imagine why an elected official might want some distance from
595
00:27:39.829 --> 00:27:44.910
that like big picture. I imagine that every governor is
596
00:27:44.970 --> 00:27:49.470
doing what they can internally to quietly prepare for a
597
00:27:49.690 --> 00:27:51.890
second Trump term and have been for a while, but
598
00:27:51.910 --> 00:27:53.650
they don't want to signal that it's part of some
599
00:27:53.769 --> 00:27:57.829
resistance 2.0 or some big donor led effort. And they're
600
00:27:57.869 --> 00:28:00.450
ultimately going to frame anything they do is fighting for
601
00:28:00.509 --> 00:28:03.130
the people who voted for them, not as part of
602
00:28:03.250 --> 00:28:07.869
some broader democratic party thing. That's my guess. Yeah.
603
00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:10.890
Pritzker's office said that not all governors wish to be
604
00:28:10.910 --> 00:28:13.349
named publicly because of the potential for to be threatened
605
00:28:13.410 --> 00:28:17.710
by a new Trump administration. I was reading their release, too.
606
00:28:18.210 --> 00:28:19.630
It was a lot. It was hard to find like
607
00:28:20.130 --> 00:28:22.930
what it actually is, you know, because I mean, the
608
00:28:22.970 --> 00:28:25.799
truth is the big issue that they're going to face
609
00:28:25.839 --> 00:28:29.880
right away is sort of cooperation with the feds on
610
00:28:30.099 --> 00:28:34.940
potential deportations and whether local law. Because here's the thing that,
611
00:28:35.119 --> 00:28:38.690
you know, ICE and the new The new ICE guy,
612
00:28:39.410 --> 00:28:42.400
Tom Homan, has said that like, oh, I can do
613
00:28:42.440 --> 00:28:44.500
it with ICE agents alone. We don't need local police.
614
00:28:44.599 --> 00:28:46.380
But the truth is, it's a lot easier if they
615
00:28:46.420 --> 00:28:50.259
have cooperation with local law enforcement. And in some states,
616
00:28:50.740 --> 00:28:54.460
the law says that local law enforcement can refuse to cooperate.
617
00:28:54.559 --> 00:28:56.480
In some states, they don't have to refuse and they
618
00:28:56.500 --> 00:28:58.839
can cooperate. So I'm sure a lot of it is
619
00:28:59.380 --> 00:29:04.220
probably figuring out what powers... Democratic governors, attorneys general, and
620
00:29:04.279 --> 00:29:06.839
local officials have and don't have that are currently on
621
00:29:06.859 --> 00:29:08.900
the books or not on the books. And some legislatures
622
00:29:08.940 --> 00:29:10.579
are already thinking like, do we need, like I think
623
00:29:10.619 --> 00:29:14.079
in New York, they're thinking about maybe passing new laws
624
00:29:14.099 --> 00:29:17.880
around immigration. So I think it's a lot of, but
625
00:29:17.900 --> 00:29:19.559
it's a lot of like, you know, powers that they
626
00:29:19.599 --> 00:29:20.220
currently have.
627
00:29:21.420 --> 00:29:25.000
Yeah, it's like, what is the value of getting out
628
00:29:25.039 --> 00:29:27.440
in front and having a kind of branded response as
629
00:29:27.500 --> 00:29:29.900
opposed to like, kind of just being ready for anything
630
00:29:29.940 --> 00:29:32.539
and fighting where you can? Like it is, I think, Obviously,
631
00:29:32.559 --> 00:29:36.470
like chilling that Democrats are afraid to say the ways
632
00:29:36.509 --> 00:29:38.369
in which they will want to fight against Donald Trump
633
00:29:38.410 --> 00:29:40.970
for fear of retaliation. We saw during the pandemic that
634
00:29:41.259 --> 00:29:42.890
Democratic governors had to go out of their way to
635
00:29:42.930 --> 00:29:44.559
praise Donald Trump because they wanted to make sure they
636
00:29:44.579 --> 00:29:47.079
were getting the supplies and resources they needed. That is
637
00:29:47.140 --> 00:29:51.019
part of the menace that Donald Trump poses. But I also,
638
00:29:51.039 --> 00:29:54.559
I don't totally understand how the sum is greater than
639
00:29:54.579 --> 00:29:57.819
its parts of them all doing it together. As opposed
640
00:29:57.839 --> 00:30:00.210
to just they're going to be fighting these guys the
641
00:30:00.250 --> 00:30:03.109
way they fight them state to state. And like beyond that,
642
00:30:03.130 --> 00:30:03.430
I don't know.
643
00:30:03.470 --> 00:30:03.869
I don't know yet.
644
00:30:03.890 --> 00:30:06.589
I feel like it's we're just in this space where,
645
00:30:06.750 --> 00:30:10.500
you know, Trump is not yet president. The threat is perspective.
646
00:30:10.559 --> 00:30:12.279
We don't totally know what he's going to try to do.
647
00:30:12.599 --> 00:30:14.000
By the way, there are ways in which I am
648
00:30:14.099 --> 00:30:17.640
sure Trump and his goons would love to fight with
649
00:30:17.839 --> 00:30:23.000
New York about deporting criminals. And I am sure that
650
00:30:23.079 --> 00:30:25.119
these governors, I'm sure the Shapiros and the Whitmers are
651
00:30:25.220 --> 00:30:26.720
very aware of the fact that they do not want
652
00:30:26.740 --> 00:30:28.759
to be drawn into one of their first public fights
653
00:30:28.779 --> 00:30:32.440
with Donald Trump over stopping deportations of people that they
654
00:30:32.480 --> 00:30:34.990
will point out are violent offenders, like that is a
655
00:30:35.009 --> 00:30:37.230
fight they don't want. And so I think like, it's
656
00:30:37.269 --> 00:30:40.000
just tricky. And so I think I'm like, just sort of,
657
00:30:40.230 --> 00:30:42.849
I'm like concerned about what it means to brand it
658
00:30:42.890 --> 00:30:44.690
before it exists and what that gets you.
659
00:30:45.319 --> 00:30:47.240
They really do want a reaction. They want to provoke
660
00:30:47.259 --> 00:30:51.789
a reaction. And Trump also confirmed today on truth social
661
00:30:51.809 --> 00:30:54.369
because tom fitton of judicial watch was like oh yeah
662
00:30:54.410 --> 00:30:56.839
he's going to use the military to assist in deportations
663
00:30:56.880 --> 00:31:00.119
and trump said true which is it's you know being
664
00:31:00.140 --> 00:31:02.579
treated as news today but he said it of course
665
00:31:02.819 --> 00:31:05.000
all during the campaign in every interview he was asked
666
00:31:05.460 --> 00:31:07.119
but you can tell that's the kind of thing where
667
00:31:07.140 --> 00:31:10.230
they they want to provoke the reaction and then to
668
00:31:10.289 --> 00:31:12.710
say oh actually this person that we're deporting committed a
669
00:31:12.730 --> 00:31:16.440
violent crime you know um So Democrats are also trying
670
00:31:16.460 --> 00:31:18.519
to figure out who's going to represent them as the
671
00:31:18.559 --> 00:31:22.980
next DNC chair. On Monday, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley
672
00:31:23.000 --> 00:31:26.180
became the first person to officially launch a bid. Other
673
00:31:26.220 --> 00:31:30.660
potential contenders include Minnesota Democratic Party Chair Ken Martin, Wisconsin
674
00:31:30.680 --> 00:31:33.799
Democratic Party Chair Ben Wickler, former New York State Assembly
675
00:31:33.819 --> 00:31:37.259
member Mike Blake, and maybe even former Chicago mayor and
676
00:31:37.299 --> 00:31:40.569
White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, although reportedly he
677
00:31:40.609 --> 00:31:43.890
seems less interested now. Despite being a decision made by
678
00:31:43.930 --> 00:31:46.960
less than 500 committee members, the race for DNC chair
679
00:31:47.049 --> 00:31:50.089
will serve as the first big public debate about the
680
00:31:50.150 --> 00:31:53.750
future of the Democratic Party. How fun. You guys have
681
00:31:53.769 --> 00:31:55.990
thoughts on this and what the role of a DNC
682
00:31:56.029 --> 00:31:57.569
chair at a moment like this should be?
683
00:31:58.210 --> 00:31:58.890
I know and like Ben.
684
00:31:58.910 --> 00:32:05.720
I mean, there's a couple different forms. There could be,
685
00:32:05.740 --> 00:32:07.160
you're going to have to raise a ton of money.
686
00:32:07.720 --> 00:32:09.680
You're going to have to try to coordinate and create
687
00:32:09.700 --> 00:32:12.349
strategy for how Democrats get back on their feet and
688
00:32:12.380 --> 00:32:15.589
win elections and down ballot races starting pretty soon. You're
689
00:32:15.609 --> 00:32:18.569
a key spokesman and fundraiser for the party. You'll oversee
690
00:32:18.609 --> 00:32:21.849
the platform and the convention eventually. But by then, there
691
00:32:21.869 --> 00:32:24.690
will be a nominee running for president. So I don't know.
692
00:32:24.710 --> 00:32:26.630
There's different forms you can imagine. You can imagine someone
693
00:32:26.650 --> 00:32:29.789
who's more of a classic organizer that's getting to the
694
00:32:29.849 --> 00:32:32.130
nuts and bolts and kind of trying to reshape and
695
00:32:32.190 --> 00:32:35.569
rethink how the committee operates. Or it could be someone
696
00:32:35.630 --> 00:32:38.329
that is a spokesperson and just raises a shit ton
697
00:32:38.369 --> 00:32:43.630
of cash. And I'm not totally sure what the Democrats
698
00:32:43.670 --> 00:32:44.190
want at the moment.
699
00:32:45.509 --> 00:32:46.269
Yeah.
700
00:32:47.609 --> 00:32:51.490
We've spent years of seeing endless sort of conspiratorial thinking
701
00:32:51.529 --> 00:32:53.990
about the power of the DNC and its role in
702
00:32:54.009 --> 00:32:57.180
determining in back rooms who the Democratic Party chooses and
703
00:32:57.200 --> 00:33:00.640
who the candidate is and whether they try to stop
704
00:33:00.680 --> 00:33:05.279
Bernie or whatever it might be. We have to have
705
00:33:05.339 --> 00:33:09.380
a big conversation about the future of the Democratic Party.
706
00:33:09.440 --> 00:33:12.410
That's like an organizing conversation. It's a fundraising conversation. It's
707
00:33:12.430 --> 00:33:16.349
a policy conversation, a messaging conversation. And the DNC chair,
708
00:33:17.150 --> 00:33:19.589
it can be somebody that is central to that conversation
709
00:33:19.650 --> 00:33:21.430
and like helping to lead it and think about it,
710
00:33:21.509 --> 00:33:23.329
that it can also be someone who is doing behind
711
00:33:23.369 --> 00:33:27.250
the scenes operating while that takes place in other forms.
712
00:33:27.289 --> 00:33:30.309
I just don't know. I think that's partly what this
713
00:33:30.329 --> 00:33:32.519
debate is about, like what the role of the DNC
714
00:33:32.539 --> 00:33:36.160
chair will be in the next couple of years. And
715
00:33:36.180 --> 00:33:39.059
I mean, the one thing I just think about what
716
00:33:39.099 --> 00:33:39.680
happened after.
717
00:33:39.700 --> 00:33:39.779
So.
718
00:33:41.680 --> 00:33:43.819
Two thoughts about this is one, just that what we're
719
00:33:43.859 --> 00:33:45.700
saying right now, how we're thinking about the future, it
720
00:33:45.940 --> 00:33:48.119
will turn out to be wrong in some fundamental ways, right?
721
00:33:48.180 --> 00:33:50.259
Like just things will change over the next couple of years.
722
00:33:50.480 --> 00:33:52.660
We will be overtaken by events. What happens with the
723
00:33:52.680 --> 00:33:56.109
Trump administration will kind of inform the politics of the
724
00:33:56.150 --> 00:33:57.609
next couple of years. But I will say that like
725
00:33:58.210 --> 00:34:00.490
one lesson from 2004 that I've seen people talking about
726
00:34:00.569 --> 00:34:03.829
is that people took the loss as a need to
727
00:34:03.869 --> 00:34:06.490
reinvest in a 50 state strategy to think about how
728
00:34:06.529 --> 00:34:09.119
we win everywhere. And if there's one place I would
729
00:34:09.139 --> 00:34:11.039
like the DNC chair to be thinking about, it's how
730
00:34:11.079 --> 00:34:14.130
we build and organize organizations. everywhere across all 50 states,
731
00:34:14.170 --> 00:34:17.090
that that is only additive to all the other debates
732
00:34:17.170 --> 00:34:19.409
and strategy discussions that will be unfolding.
733
00:34:20.090 --> 00:34:22.690
I really agree with that. I know that this will
734
00:34:22.730 --> 00:34:26.849
be seen and treated as this first big public debate
735
00:34:26.889 --> 00:34:29.119
over the direction of the party. I think that this is,
736
00:34:29.449 --> 00:34:31.230
at this moment, this is not the role where you
737
00:34:31.269 --> 00:34:34.630
want someone with a strong ideological view of where the
738
00:34:34.670 --> 00:34:37.130
party should go or allegiance to one faction of the
739
00:34:37.170 --> 00:34:39.809
party or another. I just think, at the end of
740
00:34:39.829 --> 00:34:43.380
the day, the DNC chairman of course, becomes a spokesman
741
00:34:43.420 --> 00:34:46.920
for the party, but they are seen as partisan. They
742
00:34:46.960 --> 00:34:49.820
go on TV, they give a message, and we're eventually
743
00:34:49.840 --> 00:34:51.360
going to have in the midterms a whole bunch of
744
00:34:51.380 --> 00:34:53.380
Democratic candidates, and we're going to have primaries for that.
745
00:34:53.480 --> 00:34:56.000
And then we're going to have a primary in 2028
746
00:34:56.000 --> 00:34:59.019
where all of these debates should be worked out. And
747
00:34:59.039 --> 00:35:02.889
I just don't, I think that the DNC chair should
748
00:35:02.949 --> 00:35:07.869
be thinking about organization, party building, like someone who you know,
749
00:35:07.949 --> 00:35:10.579
knows that the key to winning is organizing everywhere and
750
00:35:10.619 --> 00:35:14.639
building relationships with voters all year round. And, um, so that's,
751
00:35:14.860 --> 00:35:16.239
that's sort of what I think.
752
00:35:16.280 --> 00:35:16.480
Yeah.
753
00:35:16.659 --> 00:35:19.809
And this is partly because of when we did this
754
00:35:19.909 --> 00:35:22.369
in 2016, I remember, you know, we had a lot
755
00:35:22.409 --> 00:35:24.989
of the candidates on positive America when we just started
756
00:35:25.010 --> 00:35:26.670
positive America. And it did seem like it was going
757
00:35:26.690 --> 00:35:29.719
to be this big ideological debate about where the party was.
758
00:35:29.800 --> 00:35:31.679
And it's just like that, That ends up not being
759
00:35:31.719 --> 00:35:32.730
what the DNC chair is good for.
760
00:35:32.739 --> 00:35:35.019
That's not the role. That's not the role. And you'll have, look,
761
00:35:35.239 --> 00:35:38.369
in terms of spokespeople, you'll have congressional leadership that will
762
00:35:38.389 --> 00:35:40.809
be doing a lot of that. The midterms will be key,
763
00:35:40.849 --> 00:35:44.250
as you said. And look, the 2028 presidential primary started
764
00:35:44.510 --> 00:35:47.610
on November 6th. So that will be revving up soon.
765
00:35:47.769 --> 00:35:49.789
And whoever wins is going to be, you know, going
766
00:35:49.809 --> 00:35:52.780
to fundamentally reshape the entire party. So it's not, it
767
00:35:52.880 --> 00:35:55.280
matters a lot who the DNC chair is, but for,
768
00:35:55.320 --> 00:35:56.920
I think, the reasons that you were talking about, which
769
00:35:56.980 --> 00:36:00.320
is just the need to kind of rebuild and organize
770
00:36:00.340 --> 00:36:03.599
the and get back to the grassroots and not, you know,
771
00:36:03.739 --> 00:36:05.030
it's less of a spokesperson job.
772
00:36:05.340 --> 00:36:08.610
Yeah. And look, I mean, we're all biased. We love
773
00:36:08.630 --> 00:36:09.050
Ben Wickler.
774
00:36:10.269 --> 00:36:11.889
Um, and I do, and I worked with Michael Blake
775
00:36:12.030 --> 00:36:14.110
in Iowa a million years ago and he's been a
776
00:36:14.130 --> 00:36:16.050
vice chair. So there's a lot of like great candidates
777
00:36:16.090 --> 00:36:17.110
out there floating their names.
778
00:36:17.380 --> 00:36:20.300
We've worked for ROM in the white house. We've had
779
00:36:20.320 --> 00:36:20.900
that experience.
780
00:36:21.159 --> 00:36:21.280
Yeah.
781
00:36:21.539 --> 00:36:25.280
Um, Maybe what we need is someone to yell at
782
00:36:25.340 --> 00:36:28.840
us to win again. I'd like, you know, maybe that,
783
00:36:29.559 --> 00:36:31.559
no bad ideas in a brainstorm, maybe some more yelling.
784
00:36:32.179 --> 00:36:34.579
I'd like to hear more from O'Malley. Obviously, you know,
785
00:36:34.619 --> 00:36:36.980
we've known him for a long time just as a
786
00:36:37.019 --> 00:36:39.199
public figure. I don't know much at all about Ken Martin,
787
00:36:39.340 --> 00:36:41.840
but he apparently he's not just the chair of the
788
00:36:41.860 --> 00:36:45.039
Minnesota Democratic Party or the DFL as it's called there.
789
00:36:45.420 --> 00:36:47.739
He's the DNC vice chair because he's also the president
790
00:36:47.780 --> 00:36:51.570
of the Association of State Democratic Chairs. So he has
791
00:36:51.590 --> 00:36:54.480
a position at the DNC now and just long time
792
00:36:54.500 --> 00:36:55.860
in politics in Minnesota. So I would love to know
793
00:36:55.900 --> 00:36:57.840
more from him. Do you think that, you know, if
794
00:36:57.880 --> 00:37:02.780
Ben decides to do this, Wisconsin was the smallest swing
795
00:37:02.860 --> 00:37:05.510
towards Trump of any swing states in all but four
796
00:37:05.690 --> 00:37:09.030
other states. He has been organizing that state, leading that
797
00:37:09.050 --> 00:37:11.230
state for a long time. He's got a really strong
798
00:37:11.289 --> 00:37:14.250
record of winning that he can talk about. So that
799
00:37:14.309 --> 00:37:16.510
is that's that's one thing in Ben's favor. And he
800
00:37:16.590 --> 00:37:19.079
is he is liked by multiple factions.
801
00:37:19.340 --> 00:37:22.369
Yeah, we've talked about wishing we could replicate Ben Wickler.
802
00:37:22.449 --> 00:37:23.389
Yeah, that's my secret.
803
00:37:23.550 --> 00:37:26.429
And short of that, this is perhaps a way for
804
00:37:26.730 --> 00:37:29.349
us to get closer to that than we otherwise could.
805
00:37:29.650 --> 00:37:33.610
Yeah, and to Rahm's sort of like the most divisive
806
00:37:33.710 --> 00:37:35.369
one of the names that's been floated out there, I
807
00:37:35.389 --> 00:37:38.650
think the credit to him is in 2006, he ran
808
00:37:38.789 --> 00:37:41.190
the DCCC, and we won a ton of races, and
809
00:37:41.230 --> 00:37:43.800
he deserved a lot of credit for that success. And
810
00:37:43.820 --> 00:37:45.360
then he was the White House Chief of Staff, and
811
00:37:45.400 --> 00:37:49.030
he went on to be Mayor of Chicago. I think
812
00:37:49.090 --> 00:37:53.150
the record in Chicago in particular, though, is seen as
813
00:37:53.309 --> 00:37:56.349
divisive for a variety of reasons among Democrats. He's someone
814
00:37:56.369 --> 00:38:01.150
who greatly pisses off the left, often on purpose. So,
815
00:38:01.190 --> 00:38:04.090
I mean, I think the upsides for Rahm would be
816
00:38:04.199 --> 00:38:06.860
a track record of success. The downside would be some
817
00:38:06.900 --> 00:38:11.000
pretty obvious splits in the Democratic Party from the first minute.
818
00:38:11.800 --> 00:38:15.320
It said in the report today that now his interest
819
00:38:15.400 --> 00:38:19.280
is maybe tepid because if Durbin- decides not to run again,
820
00:38:19.360 --> 00:38:21.980
he could run for senator in Illinois. Or if Pritzker
821
00:38:22.420 --> 00:38:24.300
doesn't run for governor again, he could run for governor
822
00:38:24.340 --> 00:38:26.840
in Illinois. If I was Rahm, I would rather do
823
00:38:26.880 --> 00:38:29.280
that than come fucking.
824
00:38:28.800 --> 00:38:29.989
Be DNC chair.
825
00:38:30.070 --> 00:38:32.530
I remember one time in the White House, I can't
826
00:38:32.550 --> 00:38:34.389
remember what the speech was about, but I got called
827
00:38:34.429 --> 00:38:39.449
into Rahm's office and he just started, he yelled at
828
00:38:39.489 --> 00:38:41.659
me and I remember just being, it wasn't like, it
829
00:38:41.699 --> 00:38:47.510
was just loud. And I remember saying something like, oh,
830
00:38:47.550 --> 00:38:50.170
you're doing the thing where you're yelling. What is this
831
00:38:50.190 --> 00:38:50.730
supposed to do?
832
00:38:50.750 --> 00:38:52.389
Why are you doing this? I think you're the only
833
00:38:52.429 --> 00:38:53.190
person that's happened to.
834
00:38:53.510 --> 00:38:54.429
No, but it was such a funny thing.
835
00:38:54.449 --> 00:38:56.010
It was just sort of like, oh my God, you're
836
00:38:56.030 --> 00:38:57.889
yelling at me, like the famous thing that happens.
837
00:38:58.409 --> 00:38:59.369
Why?
838
00:39:00.230 --> 00:39:01.409
What is this tone meant to convey?
839
00:39:01.750 --> 00:39:03.510
He did that all the time. All right, before we
840
00:39:03.530 --> 00:39:06.590
go to Tommy's interview with Brandi Zadrozny about RFK Jr.,
841
00:39:06.739 --> 00:39:08.780
two quick notes on how our friends on cable news
842
00:39:08.960 --> 00:39:11.960
are reacting to a second Trump term. On Saturday night,
843
00:39:12.019 --> 00:39:13.780
Trump went back to Madison Square Garden to see a
844
00:39:13.880 --> 00:39:16.639
UFC fight with his new MAGA pals. He had Elon.
845
00:39:17.289 --> 00:39:21.000
Vivek Ramaswamy, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Mike Johnson, who did
846
00:39:21.019 --> 00:39:23.159
not look like he belonged. They were also hanging out
847
00:39:23.179 --> 00:39:26.320
with Joe Rogan and Dana White. CNN panelists didn't quite
848
00:39:26.340 --> 00:39:28.610
know what to make of this. Here's the reaction from
849
00:39:28.650 --> 00:39:29.889
the Bulwark's Mark Caputo.
850
00:39:30.400 --> 00:39:33.519
I mean, and it really looks like ancient Rome here.
851
00:39:33.679 --> 00:39:36.940
This is sort of the conquering Republican Caesar who's going
852
00:39:36.980 --> 00:39:39.679
into the Coliseum and everyone's cheering and he's got his
853
00:39:40.139 --> 00:39:44.610
political gladiators with him. That appearance isn't just about him
854
00:39:44.670 --> 00:39:47.789
enjoying the applause. He's sending a message to the Senate.
855
00:39:47.909 --> 00:39:48.190
For sure.
856
00:39:48.210 --> 00:39:50.929
Like, Not only are you entertained, but these are my
857
00:39:50.969 --> 00:39:52.949
people and are you willing to fight because here's who
858
00:39:53.050 --> 00:39:53.389
I have.
859
00:39:54.530 --> 00:39:54.789
Okay.
860
00:39:55.389 --> 00:40:00.639
Meanwhile, Trump's favorite on-again, off-again frenemies at MSNBC, Joe Scarborough
861
00:40:00.659 --> 00:40:03.579
and Mika Brzezinski, revealed on Monday's Morning Joe that the
862
00:40:03.639 --> 00:40:06.500
couple made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago for a meeting with
863
00:40:06.539 --> 00:40:09.659
Trump that Mika compared to a kind of diplomatic summit.
864
00:40:10.099 --> 00:40:13.820
Joe and I went to Mar-a-Lago to meet personally with
865
00:40:13.929 --> 00:40:18.460
President-elect Trump. It was the first time We have seen
866
00:40:18.519 --> 00:40:20.300
him in seven years.
867
00:40:20.739 --> 00:40:23.539
And it's going to come as no surprise to anybody
868
00:40:23.599 --> 00:40:27.300
who watches this show, has watched it over the past
869
00:40:27.380 --> 00:40:29.139
year or over the past decade.
870
00:40:29.659 --> 00:40:32.019
That we didn't see eye to eye on a lot
871
00:40:32.059 --> 00:40:33.800
of issues. And we told him so.
872
00:40:34.500 --> 00:40:38.409
What we did agree on was to restart communications. And
873
00:40:38.449 --> 00:40:41.809
for those asking why we would go speak to the
874
00:40:41.869 --> 00:40:46.329
president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess
875
00:40:46.369 --> 00:40:50.550
I would ask back, why wouldn't we? Joe and I
876
00:40:50.610 --> 00:40:54.460
realized it's time to do something different. And that starts
877
00:40:54.539 --> 00:40:58.340
with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking
878
00:40:59.059 --> 00:40:59.440
with him.
879
00:40:59.909 --> 00:41:01.090
It feels like it's going to be a long four
880
00:41:01.139 --> 00:41:05.000
years at CNN and MSNBC. Do you guys see Trump's
881
00:41:05.079 --> 00:41:08.860
return as conquering Caesar in ancient Rome or more of
882
00:41:08.940 --> 00:41:12.260
a Stalin at Yalta situation?
883
00:41:13.159 --> 00:41:15.699
I saw it. I was like, guys, at some point
884
00:41:15.739 --> 00:41:19.010
we all just need to realize that sitting ringside at
885
00:41:19.030 --> 00:41:22.329
a fight and then flying home on a PJ while
886
00:41:22.409 --> 00:41:23.949
crushing McDonald's with the boys.
887
00:41:24.010 --> 00:41:25.070
It's cool. That's pretty cool.
888
00:41:25.110 --> 00:41:26.730
It's a fun time. It seems like a good ass
889
00:41:26.769 --> 00:41:28.630
time to most people in this country. And I think
890
00:41:28.670 --> 00:41:29.429
that's what it's about.
891
00:41:29.920 --> 00:41:32.000
You don't think it was a message to Kevin Kramer
892
00:41:32.059 --> 00:41:33.409
and John Cornyn about the picks?
893
00:41:33.679 --> 00:41:37.750
No. And then, you know, look, I was watching football yesterday.
894
00:41:37.769 --> 00:41:37.849
Okay.
895
00:41:37.909 --> 00:41:42.230
You know. I'm kidding. Keep going.
896
00:41:43.489 --> 00:41:43.690
What?
897
00:41:44.170 --> 00:41:45.909
I was watching football yesterday. And then, like, you have
898
00:41:45.929 --> 00:41:50.389
all these players celebrating, doing the Trump dance. John Jones,
899
00:41:50.789 --> 00:41:53.769
who was a UFC fighter who won the fight that night,
900
00:41:53.829 --> 00:41:56.460
the fight Trump was at. He came over and kind of, like,
901
00:41:56.519 --> 00:41:59.219
kissed the ring with Trump. Like, these guys all like him.
902
00:41:59.550 --> 00:42:01.570
They think he's cool. There's a huge swath of the
903
00:42:01.630 --> 00:42:04.289
culture that is just into Trump. And also just to
904
00:42:04.650 --> 00:42:07.210
look at it aside, we worked for Obama. Obama was
905
00:42:07.250 --> 00:42:10.530
seen as being aloof and he didn't socialize enough, right?
906
00:42:10.550 --> 00:42:12.050
There was the famous, why don't you have a drink
907
00:42:12.090 --> 00:42:16.010
with Mitch McConnell thing. This is the absolute opposite of that,
908
00:42:16.329 --> 00:42:20.110
which is he names these weirdos and goobers to his
909
00:42:20.179 --> 00:42:23.239
cabinet and then he flies them all to a UFC
910
00:42:23.280 --> 00:42:26.239
event and allows them into his entourage for like the
911
00:42:26.340 --> 00:42:31.119
cool kid show. And you, like, dorky little Speaker Johnson who,
912
00:42:31.579 --> 00:42:34.820
you know, in his day job is setting up software
913
00:42:34.880 --> 00:42:38.110
with his son to monitor their masturbation is now, like,
914
00:42:38.639 --> 00:42:41.309
hanging out with Dana White. I mean, it's a brand
915
00:42:41.329 --> 00:42:44.829
of politics that combines the professional and the personal in
916
00:42:44.869 --> 00:42:46.570
a way that has to be pretty powerful.
917
00:42:46.690 --> 00:42:49.690
Didn't see Barack Obama taking Ray LaHood to the Wizards game.
918
00:42:50.570 --> 00:42:50.769
Yeah.
919
00:42:51.250 --> 00:42:51.769
Probably should have.
920
00:42:52.210 --> 00:42:52.409
Yeah.
921
00:42:52.429 --> 00:42:53.610
I was trying to decide if that had happened.
922
00:42:53.630 --> 00:42:55.250
It's a joke.
923
00:42:55.429 --> 00:42:56.440
Hit the Republican you put in.
924
00:42:56.449 --> 00:42:56.840
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
925
00:42:56.889 --> 00:42:57.550
Right, right, right.
926
00:42:58.130 --> 00:43:01.110
Yeah, like the dance thing too.
927
00:43:01.190 --> 00:43:03.730
It's like, there's something about it that's like, it's not
928
00:43:03.769 --> 00:43:08.000
just like pro-Trump, but it's like anti-everybody that hates Trump.
929
00:43:08.219 --> 00:43:11.539
And it's like, ha, you lost. You have no real power.
930
00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:15.920
Like we're done pretending, right? And I do like, that
931
00:43:15.960 --> 00:43:17.300
to me is what like sort of is striking about
932
00:43:17.320 --> 00:43:18.980
the whole thing. Cause it's like, it's not like everyone
933
00:43:19.019 --> 00:43:22.579
suddenly loves Trump so much. It's like Trump exists as
934
00:43:22.599 --> 00:43:24.219
like a fuck you. And like the dance is like
935
00:43:24.280 --> 00:43:27.690
part of this, like big old fuck you. I will say, man, Now,
936
00:43:27.789 --> 00:43:29.429
if you're going to I get why Mika and Joe
937
00:43:29.469 --> 00:43:32.809
went to see Trump this week, because like Donald Trump,
938
00:43:32.869 --> 00:43:37.940
imagine getting president and basically getting acquitted of 5000 felonies,
939
00:43:38.280 --> 00:43:41.059
like all in the same day. Like he must be
940
00:43:41.099 --> 00:43:44.710
the happiest guy he has ever been in his whole life.
941
00:43:44.750 --> 00:43:47.090
If there's ever a question you wanted to ask Donald Trump,
942
00:43:47.170 --> 00:43:48.010
this is the time.
943
00:43:48.849 --> 00:43:51.090
See, I was thinking. A lot of the reaction to
944
00:43:51.130 --> 00:43:52.909
Mika and Joe going was like, oh, I guess all
945
00:43:52.949 --> 00:43:55.869
that Hitler rhetoric didn't mean much. I'm like, maybe they
946
00:43:55.889 --> 00:43:57.630
didn't really believe it after all. I was like, or
947
00:43:57.849 --> 00:43:59.309
did they believe it too much?
948
00:43:59.429 --> 00:43:59.710
Yeah.
949
00:43:59.789 --> 00:44:04.090
And that's why they went to go kiss the fucker like, hey, Mr. Trump,
950
00:44:04.170 --> 00:44:05.139
be nice to us.
951
00:44:05.199 --> 00:44:07.820
You don't crawl towards Kublai Khan because you think he
952
00:44:07.880 --> 00:44:08.480
won't kill you.
953
00:44:08.500 --> 00:44:09.000
Yeah.
954
00:44:12.460 --> 00:44:15.440
Do you think it's just to, like, repair the relationship
955
00:44:15.480 --> 00:44:19.449
so they can have hard-hitting journalism? No, they're fucking probably scared.
956
00:44:19.510 --> 00:44:22.130
Trying to get off of the Gates hit list.
957
00:44:22.230 --> 00:44:25.130
Look, I'm trying to take seriously. We all should reach
958
00:44:25.170 --> 00:44:27.250
out more, try to understand the other side, interview them,
959
00:44:27.409 --> 00:44:29.610
talk to people who disagree with us, et cetera. But, like,
960
00:44:30.030 --> 00:44:35.460
you don't host the kind of establishment show in Washington
961
00:44:35.619 --> 00:44:39.179
for decades without access. And that's what this trip was.
962
00:44:40.110 --> 00:44:42.170
They're just trying to reestablish that. And remember, Donald Trump
963
00:44:42.190 --> 00:44:46.590
almost wanted to do their wedding at the White House.
964
00:44:47.130 --> 00:44:49.820
And then he called Mika a crazy psycho who was
965
00:44:49.889 --> 00:44:52.739
bleeding badly from a facelift on Twitter.
966
00:44:53.599 --> 00:44:56.239
I forgot about that.
967
00:44:56.380 --> 00:44:58.179
It's been a long eight years.
968
00:44:58.239 --> 00:44:59.400
It's great work, actually.
969
00:44:59.539 --> 00:45:01.340
If it's true, it's great work.
970
00:45:01.840 --> 00:45:03.719
Watching this sort of swing on a cultural dime really
971
00:45:03.820 --> 00:45:07.570
is amazing to behold. In 2016, people were You know,
972
00:45:07.670 --> 00:45:09.329
a lot of them were ashamed of supporting Trump or
973
00:45:09.369 --> 00:45:13.349
they didn't tell people they didn't have Trump signs. But now, like, again,
974
00:45:13.409 --> 00:45:15.849
this NFL player named Nick Bosa plays for the 49ers.
975
00:45:15.889 --> 00:45:18.230
He wore a Trump hat during I think it was
976
00:45:18.250 --> 00:45:21.739
like a pregame or postgame interview and he got fined
977
00:45:21.800 --> 00:45:24.860
by the NFL. And, you know, the kind of narrative
978
00:45:24.900 --> 00:45:27.599
on the right is like, ha, he can do that
979
00:45:27.659 --> 00:45:30.460
in your face, free speech, whatever, a decade ago. it
980
00:45:30.480 --> 00:45:33.599
was black NFL players kneeling during the anthem and they
981
00:45:33.619 --> 00:45:35.940
were told that they were insulting the troops and you
982
00:45:35.980 --> 00:45:38.659
had Trump tweeting about them and how dare they bring
983
00:45:38.719 --> 00:45:42.090
politics into sports and just like the pendulum has swung
984
00:45:42.250 --> 00:45:44.570
so thoroughly. It is head spinning.
985
00:45:44.650 --> 00:45:48.869
Yeah, you also see like right-wing stories about like, you know,
986
00:45:49.210 --> 00:45:52.130
CBS censors the Trump dance. They don't want America to
987
00:45:52.190 --> 00:45:54.429
see the Trump dance. They're just like spinning it up
988
00:45:54.469 --> 00:45:56.119
because like, it's like they're.
989
00:45:55.929 --> 00:45:57.860
Making- They don't want people to see the double jerk-off?
990
00:45:58.219 --> 00:46:00.579
Well, it's- It's just sort of like it's like it's
991
00:46:00.860 --> 00:46:04.300
it's both like it's like they are in power. Trump
992
00:46:04.340 --> 00:46:08.090
has won. They control all branches of government. Like showing
993
00:46:08.130 --> 00:46:11.650
your support for this is somehow both like like you're
994
00:46:11.730 --> 00:46:15.389
you're embracing the most powerful forces in American life. And
995
00:46:15.409 --> 00:46:17.639
it's like an act of resistance against the kind of
996
00:46:17.699 --> 00:46:20.710
like woke mob. And man, we got to figure out,
997
00:46:20.909 --> 00:46:23.429
we got to figure out a politics. That's fun because
998
00:46:23.869 --> 00:46:24.250
this sucks.
999
00:46:24.550 --> 00:46:25.090
Yeah, that sucks.
1000
00:46:25.309 --> 00:46:27.840
That is the key thing. Like those photos and videos
1001
00:46:27.889 --> 00:46:30.340
of Trump walking to the UFC thing surrounded by goobers.
1002
00:46:30.579 --> 00:46:32.460
It looks really fun. So that's like a party people
1003
00:46:32.480 --> 00:46:34.119
want to be a part of. And we have to
1004
00:46:34.480 --> 00:46:35.579
figure out how to emulate that.
1005
00:46:35.699 --> 00:46:35.960
Yeah.
1006
00:46:36.059 --> 00:46:40.469
I mean, the first time Jeffries to go to suffs, suffs,
1007
00:46:41.309 --> 00:46:42.030
get on the plane.
1008
00:46:42.050 --> 00:46:43.150
We're all going to suffs.
1009
00:46:44.070 --> 00:46:45.530
I mean, the first step is not to fucking whine
1010
00:46:45.550 --> 00:46:48.389
about it. Right, for sure. That is the first step
1011
00:46:48.429 --> 00:46:49.289
to not like.
1012
00:46:49.429 --> 00:46:51.349
Or pretend it's something that it's not. It's not like
1013
00:46:51.389 --> 00:46:53.809
a threat. It's just a guy going to a sporting event.
1014
00:46:53.909 --> 00:46:56.090
Well, it's like, once again, they want the reaction. I
1015
00:46:56.130 --> 00:46:58.829
saw a bunch of like right-wing commentators on X being like,
1016
00:46:59.409 --> 00:47:02.250
the libs have been kind of silent since you won
1017
00:47:02.269 --> 00:47:05.889
and they're not complaining. They exist to have the fight.
1018
00:47:05.989 --> 00:47:09.320
They want the fight. They want the liberal tears. They
1019
00:47:09.360 --> 00:47:11.380
want people doing it right. And if you don't give
1020
00:47:11.409 --> 00:47:14.329
it back to them, they get pissed, you know? Okay,
1021
00:47:14.710 --> 00:47:16.070
when we come back from the break, you're going to
1022
00:47:16.090 --> 00:47:19.210
hear Tommy's conversation with Brandi Zadrozny about RFK Jr. and
1023
00:47:19.230 --> 00:47:21.949
all the wellness and vaccine skepticism craziness that got us
1024
00:47:21.969 --> 00:47:24.409
to where we are today. One quick thing before we
1025
00:47:24.449 --> 00:47:26.889
do that, this week on Assembly Required, Stacey Abrams talks
1026
00:47:26.909 --> 00:47:29.639
with historian Heather Cox Richardson to see how history can
1027
00:47:29.659 --> 00:47:32.400
be our guide in charting our path forward. Together, they
1028
00:47:32.420 --> 00:47:35.699
dive into strategies for countering disinformation and harnessing states' rights.
1029
00:47:36.260 --> 00:47:39.369
And Stacey answers audience questions on getting involved. Listen to
1030
00:47:39.389 --> 00:47:42.809
the latest episode of Assembly Required now or watch on YouTube.
1031
00:47:43.190 --> 00:47:45.010
When we come back, Brandi Zadrozny.
1032
00:47:56.619 --> 00:47:58.590
I am so excited to welcome to the show today
1033
00:47:58.659 --> 00:48:02.230
Brandi Zadrozny. She's a senior reporter at NBC News. She
1034
00:48:02.269 --> 00:48:07.750
specializes in misinformation, extremism, and the intersection of technology and politics,
1035
00:48:07.809 --> 00:48:10.010
and is someone whose work I have read for a
1036
00:48:10.090 --> 00:48:11.900
very long time. Brandy, it's great to see you.
1037
00:48:11.909 --> 00:48:13.860
Thanks for having me.
1038
00:48:13.969 --> 00:48:15.630
Thank you for doing this. So I just wanted to
1039
00:48:15.670 --> 00:48:19.159
start big picture. I mean, the context here is Robert F.
1040
00:48:19.159 --> 00:48:21.920
Kennedy Jr. is now nominated to be the Secretary of
1041
00:48:21.960 --> 00:48:24.860
Health and Human Services. Very big job. And I want
1042
00:48:24.880 --> 00:48:26.659
to talk a little bit first about how we got here,
1043
00:48:26.840 --> 00:48:31.710
because I imagine for some listening, Robert F. Kennedy's popularity
1044
00:48:31.829 --> 00:48:36.030
is quite surprising. But for others, especially those who consume
1045
00:48:36.050 --> 00:48:40.269
kind of wellness content on social media, the issues he's
1046
00:48:40.349 --> 00:48:45.269
talking about are very familiar. Kids' foods being unhealthy, additives,
1047
00:48:45.409 --> 00:48:49.710
dyes in food, fruit loops, how stuff we eat here
1048
00:48:50.210 --> 00:48:55.380
is actually banned in other countries, corporate capture of regulatory agencies,
1049
00:48:55.460 --> 00:48:59.340
et cetera. Can you just kind of describe for listeners
1050
00:48:59.880 --> 00:49:03.340
the wellness media space and how you think that has
1051
00:49:03.400 --> 00:49:05.679
helped Kennedy build an audience.
1052
00:49:07.039 --> 00:49:07.820
Yeah, I mean, the.
1053
00:49:08.320 --> 00:49:12.170
Wellness media space is really a woman's space in so
1054
00:49:12.210 --> 00:49:15.590
many ways in terms of consuming, right? And so, you know,
1055
00:49:16.090 --> 00:49:20.860
we can talk about this in the frame of Kennedy himself,
1056
00:49:20.960 --> 00:49:24.519
you know. The way that he became where he is
1057
00:49:24.599 --> 00:49:27.639
now is truly a story of women. It's a story
1058
00:49:27.659 --> 00:49:30.530
of women on the internet who had babies who were
1059
00:49:30.570 --> 00:49:33.489
sick and they didn't understand why. And so this was
1060
00:49:33.550 --> 00:49:36.559
a real problem they were facing. They, you know, No
1061
00:49:36.599 --> 00:49:38.460
one had an answer for them. And then they came
1062
00:49:38.579 --> 00:49:41.760
onto the internet, and there was this really burgeoning community
1063
00:49:42.420 --> 00:49:48.389
of wellness mamas, of autism moms, they called themselves, warrior moms,
1064
00:49:48.429 --> 00:49:51.730
this Jenny McCarthy era that we remember pretty well, of
1065
00:49:51.989 --> 00:49:54.070
women saying, there's no answers for us, so we're going
1066
00:49:54.090 --> 00:49:57.349
to find some ourselves. And he became a champion of
1067
00:49:57.389 --> 00:49:59.349
these women. You know, they literally came to his door
1068
00:49:59.389 --> 00:50:02.260
with a stack of, you know, papers and data and said, see,
1069
00:50:02.500 --> 00:50:05.519
the data shows this. And it did not then, and
1070
00:50:05.579 --> 00:50:09.119
it does not now, but he became their champion. And
1071
00:50:09.239 --> 00:50:13.469
he went to spaces like churches in Harlem. He went
1072
00:50:13.530 --> 00:50:17.329
to spaces that people who had real health concerns weren't
1073
00:50:17.369 --> 00:50:19.809
being heard and said, I am your champion. I have
1074
00:50:19.849 --> 00:50:22.510
an easy answer for you, as conspiracy theorists.
1075
00:50:22.230 --> 00:50:25.599
Do, and gave them that answer. He grew his.
1076
00:50:25.539 --> 00:50:28.539
Organization from one that was making less than a million
1077
00:50:28.579 --> 00:50:33.300
dollars in 2015, 2016, to an organization that's making, you know,
1078
00:50:33.300 --> 00:50:35.139
20 something million dollars a year now.
1079
00:50:35.599 --> 00:50:36.179
It's huge.
1080
00:50:36.300 --> 00:50:39.539
And it was a big movement anyway, even after, you know,
1081
00:50:39.940 --> 00:50:45.239
we decided that Jenny McCarthy's and that like whole campaign
1082
00:50:45.539 --> 00:50:47.639
was no good. We didn't want it, you know, in
1083
00:50:47.699 --> 00:50:51.000
public anymore. It was relegated sort of back to the internet.
1084
00:50:51.420 --> 00:50:52.679
But then COVID came along.
1085
00:50:53.340 --> 00:50:57.429
And with COVID, that audience of like moms who were
1086
00:50:57.469 --> 00:51:01.030
looking for answers for why their babies were sick, Now
1087
00:51:01.110 --> 00:51:06.489
was everybody looking for answers for what is this disease?
1088
00:51:06.590 --> 00:51:09.539
What is this sickness? What causes it? We were all,
1089
00:51:09.559 --> 00:51:10.860
you know, I.
1090
00:51:10.800 --> 00:51:14.619
Was, I was taking, you know, wipes and like wiping
1091
00:51:14.679 --> 00:51:15.559
off my groceries.
1092
00:51:15.599 --> 00:51:17.260
We just were all scared.
1093
00:51:18.000 --> 00:51:21.880
And so just his audience just exploded. And he has
1094
00:51:21.920 --> 00:51:24.400
been saying the same thing that he was saying those moms.
1095
00:51:24.639 --> 00:51:27.389
The world is sick. I know how to fix it.
1096
00:51:27.760 --> 00:51:32.309
Yeah, I'll never forget like Clorox wiping. every individual Clementine,
1097
00:51:32.570 --> 00:51:33.809
knowing that I was going to peel that thing at
1098
00:51:33.829 --> 00:51:36.190
some point. It seems stupid in hindsight, but that's how
1099
00:51:36.230 --> 00:51:38.250
scared we were. But yeah, I want to get to
1100
00:51:38.289 --> 00:51:40.889
this broader cause, the Make America Healthy Again cause. But
1101
00:51:40.909 --> 00:51:43.989
let's start with vaccines, because that has been Kennedy's focus,
1102
00:51:44.409 --> 00:51:47.989
primary focus for 20 plus years now. He could be
1103
00:51:48.070 --> 00:51:51.670
very evasive, though, when asked about what he really believes
1104
00:51:51.849 --> 00:51:56.199
about vaccines or his claims about their efficacy. or the
1105
00:51:56.300 --> 00:51:58.599
harm that's caused. Can you just give us a bit
1106
00:51:58.619 --> 00:52:01.400
of the backstory about how he kind of came to
1107
00:52:01.440 --> 00:52:05.000
the vaccine cause and what he's been saying and how
1108
00:52:05.059 --> 00:52:06.659
those claims have evolved over the years?
1109
00:52:07.760 --> 00:52:12.440
Yeah. So he came to the anti-vax cause in 2005. Again,
1110
00:52:12.860 --> 00:52:15.760
he was giving these environmental talks and a couple of
1111
00:52:15.820 --> 00:52:19.090
women who were at the forefront of the movement came
1112
00:52:19.130 --> 00:52:20.469
to him and said, you know, you could be a
1113
00:52:20.489 --> 00:52:22.130
great champion for us, basically.
1114
00:52:22.670 --> 00:52:23.849
And so he wrote.
1115
00:52:23.690 --> 00:52:29.389
This article that was really well-received. He was on Morning
1116
00:52:29.550 --> 00:52:31.949
Joe or whatever it was called at the time. John
1117
00:52:32.010 --> 00:52:34.989
Stewart interviewed him because he wrote this article saying basically
1118
00:52:35.030 --> 00:52:39.469
that the CDC in a secret meeting in Georgia determined
1119
00:52:39.570 --> 00:52:43.239
that autism was caused by vaccines and that they weren't
1120
00:52:43.280 --> 00:52:43.900
telling anybody.
1121
00:52:43.920 --> 00:52:44.860
It was a big cover-up.
1122
00:52:45.480 --> 00:52:48.079
That probably sounds like a familiar storyline for him now,
1123
00:52:48.159 --> 00:52:49.820
even to people who aren't familiar with them.
1124
00:52:50.199 --> 00:52:51.380
But that was the storyline.
1125
00:52:52.630 --> 00:52:56.190
That has since been retracted by Rolling Stone and Salon.
1126
00:52:56.349 --> 00:53:00.059
We learned that not only that piece that he wrote,
1127
00:53:00.139 --> 00:53:04.320
but also the wider research that he based his piece on,
1128
00:53:04.659 --> 00:53:10.110
including Andrew Wakefield's debunked study about the MMR vaccine causing autism.
1129
00:53:10.530 --> 00:53:13.469
That has all been debunked at this point. He never
1130
00:53:13.829 --> 00:53:14.349
backs down.
1131
00:53:14.840 --> 00:53:18.119
He never says, oh, maybe I went wrong about that thing,
1132
00:53:18.199 --> 00:53:20.159
despite the fact that he says he does that a lot.
1133
00:53:20.719 --> 00:53:24.079
And I was still sort of reporting on the movement generally.
1134
00:53:24.139 --> 00:53:27.150
But in 2015, I was working at the Daily Beast.
1135
00:53:27.710 --> 00:53:30.710
And this is an interesting story. And I'll keep it short.
1136
00:53:30.750 --> 00:53:33.050
But I was working at the Daily Beast.
1137
00:53:33.130 --> 00:53:37.210
And he came to my editor-in-chief at the time, John Avalon,
1138
00:53:37.250 --> 00:53:40.530
and said, I have an essay that I want printed
1139
00:53:40.550 --> 00:53:42.960
in the Daily Beast. And the headline was, I'm not
1140
00:53:43.000 --> 00:53:46.150
an anti-vaxxer. And that was the moment where he was like,
1141
00:53:46.789 --> 00:53:50.340
I wanted to sort of turn the story around. He
1142
00:53:50.380 --> 00:53:52.679
was tired of being called an anti-vaxxer. And he's like,
1143
00:53:52.739 --> 00:53:55.099
I'm not one. And he laid out this whole reason why.
1144
00:53:55.420 --> 00:53:58.320
It was given to me to fact check. And so
1145
00:53:58.420 --> 00:54:00.579
I fact checked it. He had tons of footnotes in
1146
00:54:00.599 --> 00:54:02.599
the bottom. I called the people who had written the
1147
00:54:02.639 --> 00:54:04.760
studies that provided the footnotes. And they were like, this
1148
00:54:04.800 --> 00:54:09.389
person's crazy. No, that's not what my research says. And furthermore,
1149
00:54:09.550 --> 00:54:11.530
don't put my name in this because I'm afraid that
1150
00:54:11.590 --> 00:54:13.780
his minions on the internet are going to reach out
1151
00:54:13.800 --> 00:54:18.019
and harass me. That was 2015. So he's been wanting
1152
00:54:18.039 --> 00:54:20.320
to say that he's not an anti-vaxxer for a long time.
1153
00:54:20.340 --> 00:54:24.119
He can say it forever, and it's just not true.
1154
00:54:24.739 --> 00:54:28.789
When COVID happened in 2021, that was the first time
1155
00:54:28.829 --> 00:54:31.030
that I had seen him saying, we don't have to
1156
00:54:31.070 --> 00:54:34.429
hide anymore. Anti-vaxxer is fine. And so he said on
1157
00:54:34.469 --> 00:54:37.039
a podcast that, this thing that I think about all
1158
00:54:37.079 --> 00:54:40.579
the time. He told these other people on the podcast,
1159
00:54:40.619 --> 00:54:44.219
this is our moment. We've been hiding in the closet
1160
00:54:44.260 --> 00:54:48.150
as anti-vaxxers too long, afraid of our family disowning us.
1161
00:54:48.230 --> 00:54:50.670
But COVID has now given us this big audience. People
1162
00:54:50.710 --> 00:54:53.349
are believing what we're saying. And so now, he said,
1163
00:54:53.389 --> 00:54:55.429
I go on my morning hikes. And if I see
1164
00:54:55.469 --> 00:54:58.139
a woman with a baby, I tell her, you better
1165
00:54:58.199 --> 00:54:59.800
not vaccinate that baby.
1166
00:54:59.920 --> 00:55:01.099
You better save that baby.
1167
00:55:01.730 --> 00:55:03.909
And so the idea that he could even claim to
1168
00:55:03.969 --> 00:55:06.889
be not an anti-vaxxer is so wild. He says that
1169
00:55:06.929 --> 00:55:09.800
no vaccines are safe and effective. And if you believe that,
1170
00:55:10.320 --> 00:55:14.300
then it's curious to me, then why wouldn't he be
1171
00:55:14.420 --> 00:55:16.860
an anti-vaxxer? Why wouldn't he own that label? And it
1172
00:55:16.900 --> 00:55:19.800
seems clearly because he's in this space where he wanted
1173
00:55:19.940 --> 00:55:24.860
mainstream acknowledgement. He wanted mainstream acceptance, whether running for president
1174
00:55:25.019 --> 00:55:27.360
or now as this HHS secretary pick.
1175
00:55:27.789 --> 00:55:28.010
Yeah.
1176
00:55:28.030 --> 00:55:29.690
And just to dig in a little more to his claims,
1177
00:55:29.730 --> 00:55:31.550
I mean, his primary claim for a long time was
1178
00:55:31.570 --> 00:55:36.210
that an additive called thimerosal was causing autism because it
1179
00:55:36.230 --> 00:55:39.329
was in vaccines. My understanding is I think thimerosal has
1180
00:55:39.369 --> 00:55:43.369
now been out of basically all vaccines for decades, but
1181
00:55:43.469 --> 00:55:48.210
rates of autism did not collapse when that happened. And RFK,
1182
00:55:48.369 --> 00:55:50.699
as you just mentioned, has not since said, hey, sorry.
1183
00:55:51.230 --> 00:55:53.510
I was wrong, what he does is he shifts the goalposts.
1184
00:55:53.550 --> 00:55:56.150
And he says, well, actually, now the problem is that
1185
00:55:56.170 --> 00:55:59.449
thimerosal is in the flu vaccines. Now, nevermind the fact
1186
00:55:59.510 --> 00:56:02.590
that I think a little over half of kids aged
1187
00:56:02.710 --> 00:56:06.309
six months to 17 years got the flu vaccine in 2023, 2024.
1188
00:56:06.309 --> 00:56:10.239
That was down from pre-COVID levels, by the way. And
1189
00:56:10.989 --> 00:56:13.980
the single dose flu vaccine, which is the most popular kind,
1190
00:56:14.019 --> 00:56:16.659
doesn't have any thimerosal in it because it's a preservative
1191
00:56:17.019 --> 00:56:19.159
that you use in multi-dose vaccines. But this is what
1192
00:56:19.199 --> 00:56:21.460
he does, right? He just when you call him out
1193
00:56:21.500 --> 00:56:23.940
on a factual error, he just shifts the goalposts. And
1194
00:56:23.960 --> 00:56:26.869
this is why he's so challenging to debate as a
1195
00:56:26.909 --> 00:56:27.489
public figure.
1196
00:56:28.460 --> 00:56:31.260
And it's so nebulous. Like, he does this thing called
1197
00:56:31.300 --> 00:56:34.320
the Gish Gallop, which I know that you're familiar with. It's,
1198
00:56:34.360 --> 00:56:38.320
you know, just throwing spaghetti at you and, you know,
1199
00:56:38.380 --> 00:56:39.280
seeing what sticks.
1200
00:56:39.639 --> 00:56:41.039
He has a lot of facts and figures.
1201
00:56:41.099 --> 00:56:43.820
He talks about, like, well, in 1999, you know, the
1202
00:56:43.920 --> 00:56:46.420
vaccine was increased to this many shots and that many shots.
1203
00:56:46.460 --> 00:56:48.139
And so at the end of it, you're like, whoa,
1204
00:56:48.199 --> 00:56:51.059
that man really sounds like he knows what he's talking about.
1205
00:56:51.579 --> 00:56:55.400
But in general, like, I've interviewed him several times. I
1206
00:56:55.699 --> 00:56:58.820
have read everything that he's written. I have watched every
1207
00:56:58.860 --> 00:56:59.460
podcast I.
1208
00:56:59.460 --> 00:57:00.420
Think that he's ever done.
1209
00:57:01.019 --> 00:57:04.250
And the main idea of his worldview is actually so
1210
00:57:04.349 --> 00:57:09.610
broad and nebulous. It's that one, vaccines don't work. So
1211
00:57:09.670 --> 00:57:12.670
he's a vaccine truther. He doesn't believe that the polio
1212
00:57:12.710 --> 00:57:16.969
vaccine solved polio. He doesn't believe that vaccines have saved
1213
00:57:17.070 --> 00:57:21.000
us at all. He thinks it's this like, larger issue
1214
00:57:21.039 --> 00:57:24.050
of sanitation, which of course makes us healthier. But his
1215
00:57:24.110 --> 00:57:28.210
main idea is that vaccines don't work at all. And
1216
00:57:28.289 --> 00:57:30.130
he may not. So now he's like, OK, maybe it's
1217
00:57:30.150 --> 00:57:32.670
not thimerosal, though he does think that was dangerous and
1218
00:57:32.710 --> 00:57:34.230
he was right at the time and has never said
1219
00:57:34.250 --> 00:57:34.789
he was wrong.
1220
00:57:35.150 --> 00:57:38.210
But he now thinks, well, it's some sort of environmental.
1221
00:57:37.599 --> 00:57:40.449
Toxin or something else in the vaccine must be it.
1222
00:57:40.519 --> 00:57:43.420
That's what you're talking about, moving these goalposts. And so
1223
00:57:44.320 --> 00:57:47.139
there is no fact checking him. There is no like
1224
00:57:47.179 --> 00:57:48.960
if we can just show him that this is wrong,
1225
00:57:49.000 --> 00:57:50.039
then surely he'll change it.
1226
00:57:50.480 --> 00:57:51.610
Just go on to the next thing.
1227
00:57:51.630 --> 00:57:55.170
Yeah, actually, I came across this claim that the polio
1228
00:57:55.190 --> 00:57:58.190
vaccine didn't work, actually, because I was watching Joe Rogan
1229
00:57:58.289 --> 00:58:01.219
talk with some of his buddies about the Trump interview
1230
00:58:01.239 --> 00:58:05.019
and sort of it was actually Rogan's frustration that. Trump,
1231
00:58:05.059 --> 00:58:08.920
in that interview, named polio as a successful vaccination campaign because,
1232
00:58:08.960 --> 00:58:11.139
in fact, Joe Rogan did not think that was true.
1233
00:58:11.179 --> 00:58:13.219
And we don't have to belabor the audience here, but
1234
00:58:13.239 --> 00:58:16.579
to your point, this goes beyond just the COVID vaccine.
1235
00:58:16.599 --> 00:58:18.920
They're questioning all vaccines. But let's get back to RFK
1236
00:58:18.960 --> 00:58:21.960
because if he's confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services,
1237
00:58:22.780 --> 00:58:26.139
Kennedy would oversee the Food and Drug Administration, the Center
1238
00:58:26.179 --> 00:58:29.610
for Disease Control, the National Institute of Health. He would
1239
00:58:29.630 --> 00:58:32.309
advise the president on health policy. He would oversee the
1240
00:58:32.349 --> 00:58:38.769
regulation of drugs and vaccines. biomedical research, HHS's massive budget. Generally,
1241
00:58:39.650 --> 00:58:41.110
I saw a quote from him the other day that
1242
00:58:41.130 --> 00:58:42.510
if he gets the job, he's going to say to
1243
00:58:42.630 --> 00:58:45.630
NIH scientists, bless you all. Thank you for your public service.
1244
00:58:45.650 --> 00:58:48.429
We're going to give infectious disease a break for about
1245
00:58:48.510 --> 00:58:51.179
eight years. I imagine that means R & D. But
1246
00:58:51.429 --> 00:58:54.059
what kind of things do you think Kennedy could do
1247
00:58:54.619 --> 00:58:58.000
with that power as Secretary of Health and Human Services
1248
00:58:58.039 --> 00:59:01.480
that might impact drug or vaccine availability or usage in
1249
00:59:01.519 --> 00:59:01.880
this country?
1250
00:59:03.480 --> 00:59:05.320
There's so much he could do.
1251
00:59:05.340 --> 00:59:10.429
A former HHS secretary called the position a shocking. amount
1252
00:59:10.449 --> 00:59:13.539
of power with the stroke of a pen. And so
1253
00:59:13.559 --> 00:59:17.420
on day, I mean, we could talk about just this
1254
00:59:17.500 --> 00:59:21.179
one thing forever. But the thing that people are concerned
1255
00:59:21.219 --> 00:59:23.179
about that I talk to in the public health space
1256
00:59:23.639 --> 00:59:27.420
are a couple things. One, there's an advisory panel that
1257
00:59:27.539 --> 00:59:30.449
basically have doctors and experts, public health experts, that meet
1258
00:59:30.550 --> 00:59:33.230
and they look at all the science around vaccines. They
1259
00:59:33.250 --> 00:59:35.409
look at the safety signals. They look at the data.
1260
00:59:35.769 --> 00:59:40.130
And then they make recommendations for certain vaccines. Those recommendations
1261
00:59:40.170 --> 00:59:43.739
are then given to the states that make their recommendations
1262
00:59:43.860 --> 00:59:46.940
and make their school policies, stuff like that. He could
1263
00:59:47.039 --> 00:59:51.949
disband that tomorrow if he's in power. And like, That
1264
00:59:51.989 --> 00:59:55.090
would be really helpful to him, actually. And Children's Health Defense,
1265
00:59:55.130 --> 00:59:58.550
his organization, often makes a big show of going to
1266
00:59:58.590 --> 01:00:04.480
those advisory panel meetings and having their anti-vaccine activists make
1267
01:00:04.860 --> 01:00:07.739
hay at those meetings so they get airtime and public comment,
1268
01:00:07.760 --> 01:00:10.079
stuff like that. That's long been a target for them.
1269
01:00:10.380 --> 01:00:12.480
So there's no reason to think that he wouldn't do that.
1270
01:00:12.559 --> 01:00:14.739
If we don't have data and we don't have good
1271
01:00:14.760 --> 01:00:17.559
people weighing in and we don't have advice to give states,
1272
01:00:17.639 --> 01:00:21.789
then that could hurt the public rollout of vaccines. Also,
1273
01:00:21.849 --> 01:00:24.409
vaccines are like it's not like it comes. It's a
1274
01:00:24.429 --> 01:00:28.949
really complicated process, actually, to get vaccines into enough children
1275
01:00:29.250 --> 01:00:31.630
that they have herd immunity in this way that they
1276
01:00:31.650 --> 01:00:34.050
can we can ward off diseases like the measles or
1277
01:00:34.110 --> 01:00:37.179
whooping cough, which is rising now. And what that takes
1278
01:00:37.300 --> 01:00:40.840
is lots of public private sort of partnerships working hand
1279
01:00:40.900 --> 01:00:43.639
in hand. And that a lot of that funding comes
1280
01:00:43.699 --> 01:00:47.360
from HHS. He could say tomorrow, all of this stuff,
1281
01:00:47.440 --> 01:00:49.699
all of these like those partnerships, we don't need those.
1282
01:00:49.739 --> 01:00:51.360
Let's turn off the lights there.
1283
01:00:51.730 --> 01:00:52.710
He could do that tomorrow.
1284
01:00:53.090 --> 01:00:55.449
I mean, you know, we could go on and on
1285
01:00:55.469 --> 01:00:58.030
and on, but he did this interview with a colleague
1286
01:00:58.050 --> 01:01:02.840
of mine recently, and he was asked, would you stop vaccines?
1287
01:01:02.880 --> 01:01:05.039
Would you stop giving people vaccines?
1288
01:01:05.059 --> 01:01:07.500
And he said, no, no, no. I would never, I
1289
01:01:07.519 --> 01:01:09.440
would not do that. If you want a vaccine, you
1290
01:01:09.460 --> 01:01:13.000
can have a vaccine. But he could make getting vaccines very,
1291
01:01:13.139 --> 01:01:16.590
very difficult. He could also, this is an important thing,
1292
01:01:16.610 --> 01:01:20.550
he could also, you know, vaccine makers have liability issues.
1293
01:01:21.000 --> 01:01:26.679
against lawsuits because they were being frivolously sued in the 70s.
1294
01:01:26.739 --> 01:01:30.179
Vaccines are not a huge moneymaker for drug makers. And
1295
01:01:30.239 --> 01:01:34.309
if they're sued by people who have their child has
1296
01:01:34.329 --> 01:01:36.150
an illness and they'd like to explain it with a
1297
01:01:36.170 --> 01:01:39.250
temporal association and they get sued, they might say, which
1298
01:01:39.289 --> 01:01:40.849
they were starting to do, this isn't.
1299
01:01:40.670 --> 01:01:43.659
Worth our time. And so they have this liability.
1300
01:01:43.840 --> 01:01:47.599
He could take all of the vaccines that currently enjoy
1301
01:01:47.639 --> 01:01:51.679
that liability and he could erase them, basically. And so
1302
01:01:51.739 --> 01:01:54.739
that would change quite a bit. And the last thing
1303
01:01:54.760 --> 01:01:56.780
he could do that he's already signaled that he wants
1304
01:01:56.840 --> 01:01:58.739
to do, and not the last thing, that's a lie,
1305
01:01:58.800 --> 01:02:01.619
but one other thing he could do is that he
1306
01:02:01.659 --> 01:02:05.239
has said that he wants to look under the hood, basically,
1307
01:02:05.539 --> 01:02:11.820
of all these departments and look at the data. And Lutnick,
1308
01:02:11.929 --> 01:02:15.309
the co-chair of Trump's transition team, said on CNN the
1309
01:02:15.349 --> 01:02:17.010
other day, he wants to look at the.
1310
01:02:16.989 --> 01:02:20.349
Data So he can show that they are unsafe.
1311
01:02:20.530 --> 01:02:20.789
Right.
1312
01:02:21.150 --> 01:02:25.000
This is not science. Yeah. And so what happens when
1313
01:02:25.500 --> 01:02:27.860
what happens when the head from the government, the head
1314
01:02:27.880 --> 01:02:31.599
of HHS is giving us giving the public misinformation that
1315
01:02:31.639 --> 01:02:33.039
says vaccines are unsafe.
1316
01:02:33.360 --> 01:02:34.880
You have a lot of people who aren't going to
1317
01:02:34.900 --> 01:02:35.900
vaccinate because of that.
1318
01:02:36.239 --> 01:02:39.000
And you just need 10 percent, whatever it is, that
1319
01:02:39.059 --> 01:02:41.579
threshold to say not for me to cause a public
1320
01:02:41.619 --> 01:02:43.780
health crisis in this country like we have never seen.
1321
01:02:44.469 --> 01:02:46.710
And just to give folks a real world example of
1322
01:02:47.010 --> 01:02:49.289
such a public health crisis, can you tell us the
1323
01:02:49.309 --> 01:02:52.989
story of RFK Jr. and anti-vax in Samoa? Because I
1324
01:02:53.010 --> 01:02:53.869
think it's instructive.
1325
01:02:55.090 --> 01:03:00.559
Yeah. So in 2019, there was a measles outbreak in Samoa.
1326
01:03:01.059 --> 01:03:06.440
And there was a measles outbreak because two babies had
1327
01:03:06.519 --> 01:03:11.920
died after receiving a measles vaccine. Now, There was space
1328
01:03:11.960 --> 01:03:16.019
in between when those children died and learning why they died.
1329
01:03:16.039 --> 01:03:19.820
And they didn't die because the measles vaccine is dangerous.
1330
01:03:19.940 --> 01:03:24.889
They died because two nurses incorrectly mixed the vaccine. And
1331
01:03:24.929 --> 01:03:27.449
so instead of mixing that vaccine with water, they mixed
1332
01:03:27.550 --> 01:03:30.449
it with a steroid, and it killed these babies.
1333
01:03:30.469 --> 01:03:31.409
It's tragic.
1334
01:03:31.449 --> 01:03:31.889
Horrible.
1335
01:03:32.469 --> 01:03:35.349
But in that space, when no one knew what was
1336
01:03:35.389 --> 01:03:37.429
the cause, there was a lot of fear. And so
1337
01:03:37.469 --> 01:03:41.659
people en masse stopped vaccinating. They were supported by a
1338
01:03:41.699 --> 01:03:47.090
couple of local activists and misinformation provided by Children's Health Defense,
1339
01:03:47.269 --> 01:03:51.170
specifically from Robert F. Kennedy, who came to Samoa with
1340
01:03:51.250 --> 01:03:54.690
his lovely wife and, you know, met with government leaders,
1341
01:03:54.809 --> 01:03:58.429
met with anti-vaccine activists, and then came back and wrote
1342
01:03:58.469 --> 01:04:02.039
a letter to the head of the government of Samoa saying,
1343
01:04:02.880 --> 01:04:08.320
in effect, don't vaccinate. Now, people started dying as they do.
1344
01:04:08.989 --> 01:04:13.010
mostly small children and babies, as what happens when you
1345
01:04:13.030 --> 01:04:16.630
get a measles outbreak. And so I think in total,
1346
01:04:16.630 --> 01:04:21.170
83 or close to that people have died. The government
1347
01:04:21.210 --> 01:04:25.320
reacted with an immediate vaccination campaign, but it was too late.
1348
01:04:25.420 --> 01:04:28.840
And so a lot of people died. And more than that, too,
1349
01:04:29.019 --> 01:04:31.420
a lot of people got sick. A lot of babies
1350
01:04:31.500 --> 01:04:34.260
got sick. And I know you have a young child
1351
01:04:34.300 --> 01:04:34.579
at home.
1352
01:04:34.599 --> 01:04:34.699
I do.
1353
01:04:34.699 --> 01:04:35.860
A lot of kids died.
1354
01:04:38.400 --> 01:04:41.519
Needlessly got sick, which is really sad too. Like we
1355
01:04:41.539 --> 01:04:43.619
don't want to pepper over that, right? Or like skate
1356
01:04:43.699 --> 01:04:48.409
over it. And so after this measles outbreak happened, I
1357
01:04:48.489 --> 01:04:49.489
asked Kennedy about this.
1358
01:04:49.550 --> 01:04:51.050
He's been asked other places about this.
1359
01:04:51.550 --> 01:04:56.949
But he denies that the measles killed those children and
1360
01:04:56.969 --> 01:05:00.030
killed those 83 people. And instead thinks that it has
1361
01:05:00.110 --> 01:05:04.969
something to do with the vaccination campaign itself. Although he's
1362
01:05:05.010 --> 01:05:10.289
been a little quieter on that conspiracy theory only because
1363
01:05:10.349 --> 01:05:13.389
it's linked to the deaths of these children and he'd
1364
01:05:13.429 --> 01:05:17.579
very much neither like him nor his organization to be
1365
01:05:17.639 --> 01:05:18.460
linked with that.
1366
01:05:19.420 --> 01:05:22.039
He's just like it's like the most everyone's had a
1367
01:05:22.079 --> 01:05:25.079
relationship with a friend or a partner or that person
1368
01:05:25.099 --> 01:05:27.079
just will never concede an inch or ever say they're
1369
01:05:27.119 --> 01:05:29.619
sorry or ever give you just like a little like
1370
01:05:29.639 --> 01:05:30.960
you just want I want you to say sorry one
1371
01:05:31.000 --> 01:05:33.000
time and then then we can be friends again and
1372
01:05:33.039 --> 01:05:34.500
it just they won't do it and it drives you
1373
01:05:34.519 --> 01:05:37.320
insane and that is Robert F. Kennedy stepping back from
1374
01:05:37.360 --> 01:05:40.489
my weird psychobabble and away from vaccines for a second.
1375
01:05:40.670 --> 01:05:43.190
There is this broader Kennedy agenda, the kind of Make
1376
01:05:43.230 --> 01:05:46.170
America Healthy Again agenda. And I think it sounds very reasonable.
1377
01:05:46.369 --> 01:05:48.360
I want my kids to eat healthy. I don't want
1378
01:05:48.400 --> 01:05:53.539
my kids ingesting pesticides or chemical additives. I think he's
1379
01:05:53.599 --> 01:05:58.219
right that there is corporate capture of regulatory agencies, meaning
1380
01:05:59.469 --> 01:06:02.489
it's more likely the corporations are telling the regulators what
1381
01:06:02.530 --> 01:06:04.590
to do than vice versa, and people kind of siphon
1382
01:06:04.630 --> 01:06:07.639
in and out, right? All of that is true. What
1383
01:06:07.679 --> 01:06:10.519
I don't get, though, is how Kennedy is going to
1384
01:06:10.639 --> 01:06:14.400
solve these problems when so much of the Trump agenda
1385
01:06:14.579 --> 01:06:19.780
is deregulation. And you've got Republicans getting, I think, $ 40
1386
01:06:19.400 --> 01:06:23.769
million from Koch Industries, for example, which does, you know,
1387
01:06:23.789 --> 01:06:26.769
they have the chemical industry, they're in the ag industry.
1388
01:06:27.369 --> 01:06:30.429
Trump got tons of money from the tobacco industry. So
1389
01:06:30.449 --> 01:06:34.250
there's all these cross pressures and something's got to give, right?
1390
01:06:34.309 --> 01:06:36.610
I mean, how do you think Kennedy is going to
1391
01:06:36.670 --> 01:06:39.369
be able to sort of exist in that ecosystem when
1392
01:06:39.389 --> 01:06:42.340
you've got Lee Zeldin over at EPA, for example, who
1393
01:06:42.400 --> 01:06:46.280
I'm guessing is not going to want to overly regulate pesticides?
1394
01:06:47.420 --> 01:06:48.059
I don't know.
1395
01:06:48.079 --> 01:06:52.940
I mean, I don't, I'm shocked constantly. I'm constantly in
1396
01:06:52.980 --> 01:06:55.880
a state of shock about like why people are doing,
1397
01:06:55.960 --> 01:06:58.719
nothing makes sense to me ever. So I don't, I don't,
1398
01:06:58.800 --> 01:07:02.469
I can't like pretend to peek into the president-elect's brain
1399
01:07:02.510 --> 01:07:05.289
and determine like why or how he would get this
1400
01:07:05.489 --> 01:07:11.849
he wouldn't listen Kennedy says a lot of things that
1401
01:07:11.909 --> 01:07:14.949
are not true Kennedy says that he is going to
1402
01:07:15.010 --> 01:07:20.820
go into HHS and figure out within two months he
1403
01:07:20.860 --> 01:07:26.670
says what is causing the childhood uh disease epidemic, as
1404
01:07:26.710 --> 01:07:29.829
he states it, you know, obesity, asthma, like literally everything
1405
01:07:29.889 --> 01:07:32.440
that befalls children or that could, he's going to figure
1406
01:07:32.460 --> 01:07:33.519
it out within two months.
1407
01:07:34.119 --> 01:07:36.739
And then within two years, he's going to fix it all.
1408
01:07:37.139 --> 01:07:39.429
So like, I don't know what he's going to do.
1409
01:07:39.699 --> 01:07:40.679
I also don't know.
1410
01:07:41.900 --> 01:07:45.039
People have asked me for over a decade whether Kennedy
1411
01:07:45.219 --> 01:07:50.489
means it, whether he believes any of this stuff. Yesterday,
1412
01:07:50.570 --> 01:07:53.369
I saw him on a plane eating McDonald's and drinking
1413
01:07:53.389 --> 01:07:57.230
a Coke. And I was like, Wait, but I thought, like,
1414
01:07:57.329 --> 01:08:01.269
this is, I'm so confused. So maybe getting so close
1415
01:08:01.329 --> 01:08:05.409
to the halls of power is enough to make him say,
1416
01:08:05.690 --> 01:08:07.769
you know, I did what I could and not mess
1417
01:08:07.809 --> 01:08:10.530
with things too much. You know, I do know that
1418
01:08:11.269 --> 01:08:15.250
there are a group, a large group of people, these,
1419
01:08:15.349 --> 01:08:19.149
you know, autism moms, this anti-vaccine movement that he's built
1420
01:08:19.189 --> 01:08:21.560
that treat him like a god. And that he could
1421
01:08:21.619 --> 01:08:24.140
say basically whatever he wanted in terms of like what
1422
01:08:24.180 --> 01:08:27.319
I tried, what worked, what didn't, and they would be fine.
1423
01:08:27.680 --> 01:08:29.000
My concern is that I.
1424
01:08:30.510 --> 01:08:33.689
Just, I have to believe, or I still hold on
1425
01:08:33.710 --> 01:08:37.850
to the fact that Trump in 2017 met with RFK,
1426
01:08:38.289 --> 01:08:40.210
you know, signaled that he was going to do some
1427
01:08:40.250 --> 01:08:43.710
sort of vaccine whatever with him, vaccine, make him a
1428
01:08:43.750 --> 01:08:46.310
vaccine czar, have like a working group or something. And
1429
01:08:46.350 --> 01:08:49.350
then better angels or smarter advisors came and said, don't
1430
01:08:49.470 --> 01:08:52.409
do that. And then that was squashed pretty immediately. If
1431
01:08:53.699 --> 01:08:56.140
he gets confirmed, I don't know. If he gets in,
1432
01:08:56.180 --> 01:08:58.689
how long will he last before Trump says, actually, it
1433
01:08:58.750 --> 01:09:01.109
probably wouldn't be a really good time. idea to spark
1434
01:09:01.149 --> 01:09:04.529
a public health crisis on many different fronts. Maybe people
1435
01:09:04.569 --> 01:09:08.210
wouldn't like if I did that and got rid of him. TBD.
1436
01:09:08.409 --> 01:09:11.029
Yeah, TBD. And look, it's not just that we're hoping
1437
01:09:11.069 --> 01:09:13.600
for better angels to get to Trump. It's also I
1438
01:09:13.609 --> 01:09:15.819
think there might be corporate interests that get to Trump
1439
01:09:15.859 --> 01:09:17.439
that just say, oh, this guy's not going to do
1440
01:09:17.460 --> 01:09:19.020
it because it's going to hurt our bottom line. But
1441
01:09:19.039 --> 01:09:21.399
I think you're getting at something that is, it's kind
1442
01:09:21.420 --> 01:09:24.199
of hard to convey to people about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
1443
01:09:24.500 --> 01:09:28.149
because it sounds kind of harsh and it sounds very partisan.
1444
01:09:28.710 --> 01:09:33.010
But the reality is he's just incredibly dishonest. And I
1445
01:09:33.050 --> 01:09:35.050
know he's a famous guy and I know he's named Kennedy.
1446
01:09:35.130 --> 01:09:36.510
But like, you know, a year ago we had Jake
1447
01:09:36.529 --> 01:09:39.420
Tapper on the show. And Jake told us how back
1448
01:09:39.460 --> 01:09:42.579
in 2005, around that Salon Rolling Stone article that you
1449
01:09:42.619 --> 01:09:45.399
talked about, that Kennedy wrote that was later retracted about
1450
01:09:45.439 --> 01:09:48.319
vaccines and autism. Jake did a piece on it for
1451
01:09:48.359 --> 01:09:51.170
ABC News. And he had this conversation with Robert F.
1452
01:09:51.170 --> 01:09:55.569
Kennedy Jr. And the way RFK represented what they talked
1453
01:09:55.609 --> 01:10:00.069
about was just like entirely fabricated, utter bullshit. And of course,
1454
01:10:00.189 --> 01:10:03.359
you know, The representation was that, you know, Jake called
1455
01:10:03.399 --> 01:10:04.539
him and be like, look, man, I got to pull
1456
01:10:04.560 --> 01:10:07.710
the plug on this thing because big pharma overlords are
1457
01:10:07.770 --> 01:10:11.069
beating down my neck. Right. Like just didn't happen. Nonsense.
1458
01:10:11.130 --> 01:10:15.470
But RFK tells the story this way, including like a
1459
01:10:15.510 --> 01:10:19.470
few months ago. And so I'm trying to understand how
1460
01:10:19.729 --> 01:10:22.979
there's that reality. And then there's RFK Jr. 's popular appeal.
1461
01:10:23.279 --> 01:10:26.359
But then also he has like supporters in big places,
1462
01:10:26.479 --> 01:10:31.329
big tech places. Hollywood, sports, Aaron Rodgers, politics. I mean,
1463
01:10:31.470 --> 01:10:34.449
you spent time with RFK. Where do you think his
1464
01:10:34.510 --> 01:10:39.050
appeal comes from? And how have these lies not caught
1465
01:10:39.109 --> 01:10:39.689
up to him, really?
1466
01:10:40.829 --> 01:10:43.649
So the first line, I'm going to mess it up,
1467
01:10:43.720 --> 01:10:47.920
but the first line in RFK's book, American Values, is
1468
01:10:47.960 --> 01:10:51.000
something like, I knew very early that the world was
1469
01:10:51.039 --> 01:10:54.770
made up of gods and monsters, good and evil. And
1470
01:10:54.850 --> 01:10:56.409
I was like, no, no, it's not.
1471
01:10:56.510 --> 01:10:58.130
Like, that's a really problematic.
1472
01:10:58.369 --> 01:11:00.590
For me, as a person who knows that the truth
1473
01:11:00.670 --> 01:11:04.819
is almost always found in nuance, that's a problematic worldview.
1474
01:11:04.979 --> 01:11:11.319
And I think that it is very intoxicating, especially for
1475
01:11:11.739 --> 01:11:14.699
someone who's looking for an answer and not finding one.
1476
01:11:14.720 --> 01:11:17.359
There are a lot of frustrated people out there that,
1477
01:11:17.739 --> 01:11:21.170
like you said, I don't want crap in my kids' lunches.
1478
01:11:21.430 --> 01:11:24.710
My kid has not a great lunch at NYC public schools.
1479
01:11:24.770 --> 01:11:29.180
My kid who needs special education, they can't figure out
1480
01:11:29.220 --> 01:11:32.220
the bus on time for him. COVID is scary.
1481
01:11:32.680 --> 01:11:33.920
Wealth gap is real.
1482
01:11:34.579 --> 01:11:36.880
The money, I'm never going to buy a house. There's
1483
01:11:36.920 --> 01:11:40.819
just all of these grievances that have no home.
1484
01:11:40.619 --> 01:11:41.850
Politically, it feels like.
1485
01:11:41.930 --> 01:11:44.189
And so when a person like Kennedy, again, is saying,
1486
01:11:44.609 --> 01:11:47.659
I can fix it, I think it's very, very alluring
1487
01:11:47.760 --> 01:11:50.159
and it's not just health right he ran on this
1488
01:11:50.199 --> 01:11:52.600
campaign of all of these sorts of issues and having
1489
01:11:52.640 --> 01:11:55.739
these very very easy answers for them and i think
1490
01:11:55.779 --> 01:11:58.859
that's having a person that knows all the answers is
1491
01:11:58.899 --> 01:12:02.260
an intoxicating thing having him be a kennedy is an
1492
01:12:02.319 --> 01:12:05.600
intoxicating thing we tell we are storytellers we tell ourselves
1493
01:12:05.619 --> 01:12:09.710
stories for everything and i just he's he's a he's
1494
01:12:09.890 --> 01:12:12.789
just a crazy alluring figure in that way i.
1495
01:12:13.149 --> 01:12:16.529
Think intoxicating is is the perfect word Because there is
1496
01:12:16.569 --> 01:12:18.649
that time when you read something and you feel like
1497
01:12:18.670 --> 01:12:21.189
you just learned like kind of the Rosetta Stone to
1498
01:12:21.270 --> 01:12:26.260
solving like a whole worldview. And it's this amazing, empowering feeling.
1499
01:12:26.300 --> 01:12:28.539
And before we started recording, I said to you, I
1500
01:12:28.539 --> 01:12:31.159
wanted to approach this conversation with empathy because I think
1501
01:12:31.180 --> 01:12:34.850
these are understandable feelings. Every parent wants to protect their kids.
1502
01:12:35.310 --> 01:12:37.590
If your kid is harmed, you want to know why
1503
01:12:37.750 --> 01:12:40.229
and you want to prevent it from happening again. A
1504
01:12:40.289 --> 01:12:41.850
lot of the women you were talking about who sort
1505
01:12:41.869 --> 01:12:44.710
of like getting these Kennedy messages are We're doing it
1506
01:12:44.829 --> 01:12:49.229
at a moment of real emotional vulnerability and trauma. I
1507
01:12:49.270 --> 01:12:51.250
know for my wife and I, we experienced a ton
1508
01:12:51.270 --> 01:12:54.170
of pregnancy loss and all of a sudden TikTok knows
1509
01:12:54.310 --> 01:12:59.640
and you're bombarded with information about potential causes or fixes
1510
01:13:00.140 --> 01:13:04.399
or fucking snake oil. And then COVID, right, upends everything
1511
01:13:04.760 --> 01:13:06.920
and pours gas on all these feelings. And I feel
1512
01:13:06.939 --> 01:13:11.000
like actually raise some It was a more legitimate conversation
1513
01:13:11.100 --> 01:13:14.460
about vaccines that were relatively new and mRNA technology being
1514
01:13:14.520 --> 01:13:19.770
new and vaccine mandates versus people's freedom not to take them. Right.
1515
01:13:19.829 --> 01:13:22.250
And so it just all got so much more complicated.
1516
01:13:22.689 --> 01:13:24.069
But now it's like I can't remember if it was
1517
01:13:24.109 --> 01:13:26.909
in one of your stories or someone else's stories or
1518
01:13:26.930 --> 01:13:31.229
something else I was reading. There was an effort. People
1519
01:13:31.250 --> 01:13:35.590
were shown kind of anti-vax conspiracy theory video and then
1520
01:13:35.750 --> 01:13:38.229
as sort of a test of They tried to show them,
1521
01:13:38.510 --> 01:13:41.909
these researchers, that video with kind of fact-checking below it.
1522
01:13:42.289 --> 01:13:47.649
And in fact, the fact-checking actually hardened people's views about,
1523
01:13:47.750 --> 01:13:49.949
you know, sort of their belief in these conspiracy theories
1524
01:13:49.970 --> 01:13:52.880
they were hearing. And it just made me want to wonder, okay,
1525
01:13:53.439 --> 01:13:55.119
what's the best way to talk to people in our
1526
01:13:55.159 --> 01:13:58.000
lives about these problems? Like everyone has a family member
1527
01:13:58.060 --> 01:14:00.720
or a friend or someone who is vaccine hesitant or
1528
01:14:00.819 --> 01:14:04.020
anti-vaccine at this point. What do you think, what's the
1529
01:14:04.060 --> 01:14:05.319
best way to approach that conversation?
1530
01:14:07.770 --> 01:14:11.409
I mean, in terms of health misinformation, I.
1531
01:14:13.590 --> 01:14:18.020
Don't know if you and I around the Thanksgiving table
1532
01:14:18.140 --> 01:14:21.720
or whatever can make much of a dent in someone's
1533
01:14:21.760 --> 01:14:25.979
belief in that way. Because like, again, health misinformation, if
1534
01:14:26.020 --> 01:14:29.359
we zoom back, has always preyed on the vulnerable. And
1535
01:14:29.560 --> 01:14:32.380
the vulnerable are new parents, even if you have healthy kids, right,
1536
01:14:32.420 --> 01:14:34.399
where you're just like, I don't know what to do
1537
01:14:34.510 --> 01:14:38.010
with this. beautiful baby like and it's all it's literally
1538
01:14:38.050 --> 01:14:40.760
life or death every second going a nap is life
1539
01:14:40.819 --> 01:14:43.920
or death and so that's a very scary place to
1540
01:14:43.960 --> 01:14:46.520
be in and you're googling all the time at 3 a.m
1541
01:14:46.539 --> 01:14:50.220
in the morning and so like and like the same
1542
01:14:50.260 --> 01:14:54.560
is true you know beyond this Kennedy's also like a
1543
01:14:54.600 --> 01:14:58.050
cancer truther he's got like these wider ideas too so
1544
01:14:58.090 --> 01:15:00.470
like again people that have cancer and it's not getting
1545
01:15:00.489 --> 01:15:02.609
better with you know the doctor or whatever they're they're
1546
01:15:02.649 --> 01:15:06.899
looking for these other avenues. I, I sort of, one,
1547
01:15:06.949 --> 01:15:09.100
I do think that empathy is always the way to
1548
01:15:09.140 --> 01:15:12.359
go for anything. Like, I don't think being mean to
1549
01:15:12.399 --> 01:15:15.000
people and making them feel stupid or like is ever
1550
01:15:15.039 --> 01:15:17.800
going to make anybody sort of see your side of things.
1551
01:15:19.090 --> 01:15:21.770
But like, we have got to get to a place
1552
01:15:21.869 --> 01:15:27.489
somehow where like experts are in the same places that
1553
01:15:27.550 --> 01:15:32.109
these like influencers and who are chasing clout or cash
1554
01:15:32.149 --> 01:15:34.510
or whatever it is. And, you know, that is Kennedy too.
1555
01:15:34.949 --> 01:15:39.229
Like where they're so available, their content is so quick. And,
1556
01:15:39.489 --> 01:15:41.350
you know, we did that a little bit during COVID.
1557
01:15:41.369 --> 01:15:43.770
There were, I think, doctors who were like, this is
1558
01:15:43.810 --> 01:15:45.810
where we need to be. We need to be online
1559
01:15:45.930 --> 01:15:48.170
and we need to be authentic. We can't be like,
1560
01:15:48.710 --> 01:15:51.609
you know, we have to show our homes. We have
1561
01:15:51.640 --> 01:15:54.260
to show our own struggles. We have to be creators.
1562
01:15:54.800 --> 01:15:56.479
And like that really works.
1563
01:15:56.680 --> 01:15:57.579
I think sharing.
1564
01:15:58.140 --> 01:16:02.779
content from creators who are meeting these other creators where
1565
01:16:02.819 --> 01:16:05.699
they are is really, really helpful. So like I have
1566
01:16:05.739 --> 01:16:09.250
a host of doctors and creators that I follow like that.
1567
01:16:09.369 --> 01:16:12.550
And you'll see in their comment sections, people that have
1568
01:16:12.590 --> 01:16:15.890
come from the wellness space that have come from, you know,
1569
01:16:15.909 --> 01:16:19.170
the Dr. Mercola's and the Kennedy's who were only talking
1570
01:16:19.210 --> 01:16:21.729
about that. And now they have an answer to some
1571
01:16:21.770 --> 01:16:24.560
of their questions from someone that they actually trust. Because,
1572
01:16:24.569 --> 01:16:26.380
and I'll just say one more thing is that, like,
1573
01:16:26.399 --> 01:16:29.920
you know, Kennedy likes to talk about how nobody trusts Congress,
1574
01:16:30.000 --> 01:16:33.220
nobody trusts government, nobody trusts the media. And he is
1575
01:16:33.260 --> 01:16:36.000
the answer to that. But, like, Kennedy is a lawyer.
1576
01:16:36.020 --> 01:16:38.369
I remember they were always the butt of the joke
1577
01:16:38.449 --> 01:16:40.930
in terms of trust. Like, we should not be trusting
1578
01:16:40.970 --> 01:16:43.750
this man. And when you see these content creators up
1579
01:16:43.810 --> 01:16:46.430
against Kennedy, I think that stands a real chance.
1580
01:16:46.250 --> 01:16:46.850
Of breaking through.
1581
01:16:47.140 --> 01:16:48.500
Well, yeah, and you and I both have sort of
1582
01:16:48.579 --> 01:16:51.100
obliquely referenced this wellness scene a couple times. I mean,
1583
01:16:51.390 --> 01:16:52.750
can you just tell us a little bit more about that,
1584
01:16:52.810 --> 01:16:55.109
how people are getting drawn in? And then is it
1585
01:16:55.649 --> 01:16:59.670
a profit-motivated scene, or are these people who are true believers?
1586
01:16:59.770 --> 01:17:01.890
Of course, it's probably a combination, but what's your sense?
1587
01:17:03.149 --> 01:17:06.699
I don't know. Sometimes I think there are content creators
1588
01:17:06.739 --> 01:17:09.239
that are so out there, like the woman who said
1589
01:17:09.279 --> 01:17:12.920
that you could heal your eyes. Did you see that?
1590
01:17:12.939 --> 01:17:15.319
There was one that said like, you don't need glasses anymore.
1591
01:17:15.359 --> 01:17:16.359
You can heal yourself.
1592
01:17:16.420 --> 01:17:16.960
It's just big.
1593
01:17:16.979 --> 01:17:19.300
Oh, well she's right. Yeah. She's got it. She's got it.
1594
01:17:19.399 --> 01:17:19.920
That's true.
1595
01:17:20.479 --> 01:17:22.819
I mean, I, you don't have glasses and I do.
1596
01:17:22.899 --> 01:17:25.619
So who's the real loser? Big, big glasses.
1597
01:17:25.819 --> 01:17:26.279
That's me.
1598
01:17:26.779 --> 01:17:29.050
Um, but yeah, so like, it really is like a
1599
01:17:29.159 --> 01:17:33.109
spectrum and like, I like, again, like it's a big,
1600
01:17:33.449 --> 01:17:36.189
it's a big movement of women, like again, driving sort
1601
01:17:36.210 --> 01:17:37.489
of a lot of this content creation.
1602
01:17:37.529 --> 01:17:41.590
And so like, it's, I like girly stuff. I like wellness.
1603
01:17:41.710 --> 01:17:44.170
I like, you know, I'm a crunchy person. I'm a
1604
01:17:44.189 --> 01:17:47.569
crunchy mom. And so like, it's a big industry that's
1605
01:17:47.609 --> 01:17:50.460
like mostly fine, actually. Like a lot of it's just
1606
01:17:50.520 --> 01:17:53.899
fine content, mommy blogging stuff. And then it's, but it's that,
1607
01:17:53.960 --> 01:17:57.699
that small portion that's just sort of insidious and gross
1608
01:17:57.739 --> 01:17:59.880
and leads you to like these websites where they want
1609
01:17:59.899 --> 01:18:02.739
to sell you, you know, lemon supplements to cure your cancer.
1610
01:18:02.779 --> 01:18:03.840
Which gets problematic.
1611
01:18:04.300 --> 01:18:06.560
Right. Or like natural sunblock because the other sunblock doesn't
1612
01:18:06.600 --> 01:18:08.199
work and you shouldn't wear it. And it actually makes
1613
01:18:08.220 --> 01:18:10.409
you burn The one I really don't get, as a
1614
01:18:10.430 --> 01:18:11.930
pale person, I find that very offensive.
1615
01:18:12.449 --> 01:18:12.729
I know.
1616
01:18:14.050 --> 01:18:15.590
That's Nicole Shanahan's thing.
1617
01:18:16.010 --> 01:18:19.600
Yes, it is Nicole Shanahan's thing. The RFK's former vice
1618
01:18:19.640 --> 01:18:21.579
presidential nominee. The one I really just don't get is
1619
01:18:21.640 --> 01:18:23.439
raw milk. Why do people want to drink raw milk
1620
01:18:23.460 --> 01:18:23.779
so bad?
1621
01:18:24.460 --> 01:18:24.640
Ew.
1622
01:18:24.859 --> 01:18:27.199
I don't, like, have they never been to a farm?
1623
01:18:27.350 --> 01:18:31.029
I just, it's so... It's crazy that that's what you
1624
01:18:31.090 --> 01:18:34.149
want to do. I don't know. I mean, I lived
1625
01:18:34.189 --> 01:18:36.479
in Vermont for a while. I've seen lots of farms.
1626
01:18:36.579 --> 01:18:38.840
I've seen a cow being milked. And you could not
1627
01:18:38.899 --> 01:18:41.500
pay me to drink that.
1628
01:18:41.779 --> 01:18:42.180
It's dumb.
1629
01:18:42.720 --> 01:18:45.170
The milk stuff is pretty close to the poop stuff.
1630
01:18:45.569 --> 01:18:47.270
You always want to keep that in mind. Do you
1631
01:18:47.289 --> 01:18:49.949
think there were errors by the government or tech platforms?
1632
01:18:50.060 --> 01:18:54.159
when it comes to talking about COVID, vaccine efficacy, the
1633
01:18:54.180 --> 01:18:55.920
kind of silencing of debate?
1634
01:18:56.220 --> 01:18:57.079
Did that make it worse?
1635
01:18:58.939 --> 01:19:03.270
With a conspiracy theory, a pretty important part of making
1636
01:19:03.329 --> 01:19:07.279
it bigger is being able to to say, or just
1637
01:19:07.319 --> 01:19:09.460
saying most of the time, but if you can say
1638
01:19:09.479 --> 01:19:11.479
it and it's true, that's even better.
1639
01:19:11.920 --> 01:19:16.279
That nobody wants you to know this. This is the
1640
01:19:16.319 --> 01:19:17.500
answer they don't want you to hear.
1641
01:19:17.640 --> 01:19:21.869
And so that was a really big part in propelling
1642
01:19:22.229 --> 01:19:23.989
some of this misinformation.
1643
01:19:24.069 --> 01:19:25.489
So that was a problem.
1644
01:19:26.149 --> 01:19:30.909
I think that platforms should have a North Star, generally.
1645
01:19:31.069 --> 01:19:33.439
I think if you're going to be the steward of
1646
01:19:33.479 --> 01:19:34.319
a public square.
1647
01:19:35.539 --> 01:19:38.199
then you should probably, you know, make.
1648
01:19:38.060 --> 01:19:40.890
Sure that your parks department keeps it clean of trash.
1649
01:19:41.369 --> 01:19:44.810
You should probably make sure that, you know, if you
1650
01:19:44.829 --> 01:19:48.029
have a naked person screaming, well, that's not good for kids.
1651
01:19:48.050 --> 01:19:49.470
Like, let's get that guy out of here.
1652
01:19:49.489 --> 01:19:52.760
And you don't want people just propping up booths.
1653
01:19:52.619 --> 01:19:54.739
And selling snake oil all the time.
1654
01:19:54.800 --> 01:19:56.979
That would probably not be a fun place where, like,
1655
01:19:57.060 --> 01:19:58.359
you'd want generally to come.
1656
01:19:59.180 --> 01:20:01.220
And so, like, I sort of think the same thing
1657
01:20:01.500 --> 01:20:03.270
of social media platforms.
1658
01:20:03.659 --> 01:20:07.319
Twitter was not perfect. Like, yeah, it turns out probably
1659
01:20:07.359 --> 01:20:13.369
shouldn't have stopped the Biden laptop from spreading. That was
1660
01:20:13.390 --> 01:20:18.949
probably a huge mistake. Probably shouldn't have labeled so much,
1661
01:20:19.029 --> 01:20:21.470
just from what we know now from research, labeled so
1662
01:20:21.529 --> 01:20:25.659
much COVID misinformation. Probably should have knocked Kennedy off when
1663
01:20:25.720 --> 01:20:30.520
he was president. breaking the rules in 2018 and 2019 against,
1664
01:20:30.779 --> 01:20:35.060
you know, targeted ads or misinformation around vaccines when we
1665
01:20:35.100 --> 01:20:36.180
were having a measles outbreak.
1666
01:20:36.220 --> 01:20:38.979
We knew about that then. So, like, I think you
1667
01:20:39.000 --> 01:20:40.960
can get the worst actors off your platform.
1668
01:20:41.319 --> 01:20:43.560
You can try to provide good information where you can,
1669
01:20:43.779 --> 01:20:46.760
and you cannot get so in the weeds that it
1670
01:20:48.220 --> 01:20:50.640
gets out of control. But, like, I'm, you know, I
1671
01:20:50.680 --> 01:20:53.979
don't know how you say that because I don't know sports. Quarterbacking, armchair.
1672
01:20:54.140 --> 01:20:55.510
Monday morning quarterbacking.
1673
01:20:55.779 --> 01:20:58.060
That's me. So it's a hard job.
1674
01:20:58.119 --> 01:21:03.449
Content moderation is really, really hard. And until Musk fired
1675
01:21:03.489 --> 01:21:05.789
them all, there were some really thoughtful people doing some
1676
01:21:05.829 --> 01:21:06.649
really thoughtful work.
1677
01:21:07.029 --> 01:21:08.350
Did they get it right all the time?
1678
01:21:08.489 --> 01:21:08.710
No.
1679
01:21:08.810 --> 01:21:11.630
But my big take from the Twitter files was just that.
1680
01:21:11.689 --> 01:21:14.449
There were a lot of really professional people trying to
1681
01:21:14.489 --> 01:21:15.550
keep their platforms safe.
1682
01:21:15.949 --> 01:21:17.279
Yeah. You're not going to get it right 100% of
1683
01:21:17.520 --> 01:21:18.880
the time. Yeah. I mean, I got to tell you,
1684
01:21:18.939 --> 01:21:20.199
I have a lot of people that say to me,
1685
01:21:20.899 --> 01:21:23.859
which of these cabinet choices are you the most worried about?
1686
01:21:23.880 --> 01:21:27.239
Is it Tulsi? Cause she's a Russian stooge, blah, blah, blah.
1687
01:21:27.279 --> 01:21:28.640
I think we all should stop saying that stuff by
1688
01:21:28.659 --> 01:21:30.520
the way. Or is it, you know, this person or
1689
01:21:30.539 --> 01:21:33.140
Matt Gates for me right now, it's Robert F. Kennedy jr.
1690
01:21:33.579 --> 01:21:35.979
Because as you mentioned, I mean, I have almost a
1691
01:21:36.100 --> 01:21:39.220
two year old, I have a six month old. I'm
1692
01:21:39.279 --> 01:21:43.850
just worried about them being at physical risk period because
1693
01:21:43.890 --> 01:21:47.529
of fear mongering, because of some step to limit access
1694
01:21:47.590 --> 01:21:50.390
to medicines that they need. I mean, I think in
1695
01:21:50.409 --> 01:21:53.550
like right now we're holding out hope that Republicans spike
1696
01:21:53.609 --> 01:21:56.880
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because he is pro-choice and they
1697
01:21:56.909 --> 01:22:00.220
really want a pro-life nominee. That's where we're at. That's
1698
01:22:00.260 --> 01:22:00.869
good news for us.
1699
01:22:02.899 --> 01:22:05.199
I'm not a political person. I'm just not.
1700
01:22:05.399 --> 01:22:10.729
But like it's such a dangerous, dangerous idea. And I
1701
01:22:10.819 --> 01:22:13.609
talk to doctors all the time. I talk to pediatricians
1702
01:22:13.630 --> 01:22:17.729
who've like cried to me just like hoping, hoping that
1703
01:22:17.770 --> 01:22:20.420
this doesn't happen. Like when somebody says I want to
1704
01:22:20.439 --> 01:22:23.939
dismantle public health, we should believe them.
1705
01:22:24.239 --> 01:22:26.699
Yeah, we should believe them. Brandy, where can people find
1706
01:22:26.720 --> 01:22:27.000
your work?
1707
01:22:28.100 --> 01:22:29.140
NBCnews.com.
1708
01:22:29.319 --> 01:22:30.140
And I'm on Blue Sky.
1709
01:22:30.760 --> 01:22:32.520
Oh, you're Blue Sky-er. I haven't gotten over there yet.
1710
01:22:32.539 --> 01:22:34.470
I'm worried it's going to be a lot of like,
1711
01:22:34.789 --> 01:22:38.310
you know, progressives either agreeing or telling me that I
1712
01:22:38.350 --> 01:22:39.649
suck because I'm not far enough left.
1713
01:22:40.170 --> 01:22:43.130
That's what I hate about threads, actually. I find it
1714
01:22:43.689 --> 01:22:45.409
just like, oh, insufferable.
1715
01:22:45.510 --> 01:22:49.310
Everybody's like, signaling how whatever they are, I just don't
1716
01:22:49.329 --> 01:22:52.489
like it. Blue Sky has like very early Twitter feelings
1717
01:22:52.510 --> 01:22:54.470
where it just feels like a fun place to be.
1718
01:22:54.489 --> 01:22:57.850
And like, that's all I'm looking for in these dark,
1719
01:22:57.869 --> 01:22:58.310
dark times.
1720
01:22:58.520 --> 01:22:59.560
Maybe I'll check that out.
1721
01:22:59.680 --> 01:23:00.560
Please do it.
1722
01:23:00.859 --> 01:23:02.859
Brandi Zabrosny, thank you so much for coming on the show.
1723
01:23:03.199 --> 01:23:04.699
Thanks for all your great reporting on this. I think
1724
01:23:04.720 --> 01:23:06.479
people should follow you because I do, you know, look,
1725
01:23:06.619 --> 01:23:11.159
the science is not a clean, easy process, nor is
1726
01:23:11.659 --> 01:23:15.069
media or information gathering or combating misinformation. I think it's
1727
01:23:15.090 --> 01:23:18.380
going to take Lots of intensive work by people like
1728
01:23:18.420 --> 01:23:21.359
you to, you know, build a body of evidence that
1729
01:23:21.399 --> 01:23:23.920
this guy is just wrong and dangerously wrong. So hopefully
1730
01:23:23.960 --> 01:23:24.489
we'll keep it up.
1731
01:23:25.279 --> 01:23:25.859
I hope so.
1732
01:23:26.460 --> 01:23:26.659
Thanks.
1733
01:23:27.239 --> 01:23:27.649
Thank you.
1734
01:23:33.090 --> 01:23:34.970
That's our show for today. Tommy will be back in
1735
01:23:35.010 --> 01:23:38.069
your feed tomorrow with guest host Liz Smith, one of
1736
01:23:38.090 --> 01:23:41.329
the smartest Democratic strategists out there. You'll also hear Dan's
1737
01:23:41.350 --> 01:23:44.529
interview with Senator Jon Tester. on Democrats' problems in the
1738
01:23:44.569 --> 01:23:46.970
heartland and how we can make our brand more appealing.
1739
01:23:47.869 --> 01:23:50.369
Talk to everyone soon. If you want to listen to
1740
01:23:50.409 --> 01:23:53.350
Pod Save America ad-free or get access to our subscriber
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01:23:53.390 --> 01:23:56.710
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01:23:56.729 --> 01:24:00.369
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01:24:00.409 --> 01:24:03.609
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01:24:03.649 --> 01:24:06.590
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01:24:10.210 --> 01:24:12.050
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01:24:12.069 --> 01:24:14.680
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01:24:17.699 --> 01:24:21.239
Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin.
1750
01:24:21.680 --> 01:24:24.859
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1751
01:24:24.899 --> 01:24:28.119
executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The
1752
01:24:28.159 --> 01:24:31.600
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1753
01:24:31.659 --> 01:24:34.409
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1754
01:24:34.689 --> 01:24:39.140
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1755
01:24:39.239 --> 01:24:41.720
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1756
01:24:41.760 --> 01:24:44.680
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1757
01:24:45.239 --> 01:24:49.020
Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford,
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01:24:54.329 --> 01:24:54.989
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