1066: How Much Pain Before MAGA Turns on Trump?

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Hi, this is Alex Cantrowicz, I'm the host of Big Technology Podcast, a long time reporter

and an on-air contributor to CNBC, and if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how

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Captain.

I am the captain.

I am the captain.

Who's the captain now?

Hello, everyone.

This is JVL here with one of my best friends, Tim Miller, and like very good friend.

Same Stein.

Very good friend.

Very good friend.

Very good friend.

Very good friend.

Very good friend.

We've got a lot of intelligence colleagues.

Now you've got a colleague.

Yeah, I just feel like we're getting closer every day that goes by.

So Sarah's out today.

She is doing more work on her book, which I know.

Please is Tim.

Very great deal.

It's just unbelievable.

Why is it unbelievable?

People got mad at me.

They thought there is there's some chatter on this in the comments in the next couple of

a couple of weeks.

So I do just want to come clean.

There's some people who are upset because they were like, they thought that I was negging

Sarah, that there is professional jealousy at play.

Not being supportive.

because we're not being supportive,

so we're joking about how I didn't want to write the book.

And the truth is,

number one, me and Sarah love each other,

and we demonstrate our love via playful teasing.

So you don't have to worry about us.

We go back a long way.

That's interesting.

I demonstrate my love for people by giving them gifts.

I know.

Well, so it's different.

We're all built different.

And she knew me when I wore fake glasses

and was heterosexual.

So, you know, me and Sarah got bent through some bumps.

And the other thing is,

I didn't want to write the book

because it's fucking annoying to write books.

And I knew, and we have a growing enterprise,

you know, that's very valuable to all of you,

the listeners.

I wanted Sarah's total focus on that.

And I wanted her to help,

and what we have found is that she was able to somehow

manage to steer the ship and help

it grow with the help of Sam and JVL mostly.

Well, you know, I just blab and and write the book.

And yet, there are still moments

where I think that my original point is validated

such as right now where we have to suffer Sam's company.

What?

Check, catch and strays.

Wait, you're, you're not heterosexual?

Sorry.

It's a business.

No longer.

Yeah, it was a phase.

All right, we got to, we had to move this show along.

War.

We are still a war.

Okay, so this is last week, I think,

the week before we went live,

because we were afraid that everything would change

between when we taped and when the show came out.

This week, we're rolling the dice.

We're actually taping on a Tuesday afternoon.

The show won't come out for three, maybe even four hours.

So it's possible everything could change.

It's possible we should can have another big bit of insider

trading. Who knows?

The commander of the 82nd Airborne is being sent over there

with a lot of troops.

Yeah.

Nothing they could do.

That is that is true.

There are a couple things that that could mean.

We'll talk about that in a minute.

I just want to do a little temperature check here on you guys.

What is your sense of the direction

that things are moving right now?

Hi, that's a good question.

It depends on the moment, right?

So here we are.

It's 208 PM.

You look at the news reports from this morning,

and you just kind of read into it,

and you're like, okay, Trump clue is looking for an off ramp.

They're having some sort of back channel negotiations.

He touched the stove.

He wants to get away from this.

And then you look at,

it was literally broke two minutes ago,

which is, again, as Tim said,

the commander of the 82nd Airborne division

is heading overseas.

And you just don't know.

I mean, I guess if past his prologue,

Trump likes to ratchet things up and all that,

I guess past his prologue, he can write,

he does this and then he tries to use it as a negotiating

clue, but then at the same time he's done this

and he has then gone ahead with military action too.

So it's really hard to tell, honestly.

It's really hard to tell.

I just don't know if I have a good answer

into how I feel things are going.

I will say this.

It's very clear that the administration

wildly misjudged what would happen, right?

I mean, like they are now several weeks into this,

still searching for some sort of coherent plan

and rationalization for what they're doing.

And I feel like that itself is a huge indictment.

And the long-term impacts are clear,

even if we were to get out tomorrow,

the long-term impacts are very, very evident.

I'm just more apoplectic every day.

That's what I guess I would say.

You know, I can't help this.

I just like, it's the stupidest thing

that I've ever seen, I think.

And I just, I can't believe that he has managed

to not meet my expectations, which were below the earth.

And then he managed to kind of borrow

even further below them and do something that even I,

who have like the most acute case of TDS in America

would look at it and be like,

that's fucking stupider than I thought.

What were your low expectations?

I just, I mean, like, sure,

I expected him to totally script the economy,

I expected him to have a ham-handed mass deportation campaign

that ended up causing great harm to both American citizens

and guests and immigrants.

Like, I expected him to do stupid shit.

Like, maybe I couldn't have predicted

to think about invading Greenland,

but like, could he do something dumb like that?

Yeah.

But like, this fucking Middle East War

for nothing about nothing that he has,

he can't explain what it's for.

It's like, we're degrading Iran ships.

Like, that's really the end goal right now.

We're degrading their ships.

Who cares how many ships Iran has?

Like, I understand that MBS and BB both really care about that.

I don't see why Donald Trump should care about that.

I certainly don't think any of the American people

care about that.

And I was talking this with Tobil yesterday.

I met some guy with the weekend

who was like, really struggling with their finances.

He was asking me about this.

And it's like, how do you explain to somebody

who can't afford to fill up their tank?

That they can't afford to kill up their tank

because we're degrading Iran ships.

Because for 47 years,

Iran's proxies have gone after people.

In the Middle East, it's just like,

it has nothing to do with us.

It's extremely stupid.

I have no idea why he hasn't just declared victory

and turned around.

It doesn't seem to me like he's talking.

It's like, all the signs to me seem to be like,

he's escalating and he's just trying to stall

him by time with the markets.

And I just, I am, I'm gobsmacked.

And any time I listen to somebody

who gives like a defense of it,

I become more and more incensed.

Like Tom Tillis earlier this week,

Tom Tillis, who's like the smart Republican,

the normal one, he was giving this interview,

was that on Sunday?

Well, in the Sunday show.

And I didn't get to watch it till yesterday afternoon.

And because I saw a clip and I was like,

no way, it was this bad in context.

I watched the whole thing.

And Tom Tillis is basically like,

we don't have a plan, we don't have an objective.

We should come up with an objective.

In the meantime though, I support the mission.

And I'm like, what mission, what do you support?

Why do you support the mission?

We don't, we don't have an objective.

We don't have a plan.

We're just going to bomb Iran.

I don't know what the mission is, but I support it.

I still don't call, we're going to call,

bomb Iran until they call, I guess is the mission right now.

It's, it's crazy.

I find it just, I'm just totally crazy.

I mean, I, so when you talk about everything is stupider

than you could have imagined even just as the most obvious

for instance, why are we talking about the Iranian Navy

when what matters is their drone strike capability?

Right, I mean, this is like, so does it matter if the Iranians

have, have capital ships?

No, it doesn't matter if they have capital ships,

doesn't matter if they have fast attack boats.

I mean, not really, the most dangerous thing

is the drones, they are, they have demonstrated

pre sophisticated drone operations

and the ability to strike at sea with drones.

The drone range, I think it's 1,000 kilometers

for their main drone.

I just, and look at Ukraine as an example of this.

Look at Ukraine.

So Russia, you could imagine Russia.

So in this, in this analogy, Trump's Putin,

so this shouldn't be that hard for people.

You could imagine Putin saying that he has said this,

like, you know, Ukrainian, Ukraine has been weakened

to such a degree.

You know, like, we'll be able to, you know,

take back the Ryan Land or whatever the thought,

you know, in a moment, they say uncle.

Yeah, okay.

And it's true.

And I get in a lot of ways

Ukraine has been weakened economically.

You know, the local system is weakened somewhat,

though it was unsuitable power.

What has a, Ukraine now has better drone capabilities

and better capabilities in this front

than they had before the war started.

Better than America.

Yeah, because they are forced into the situation

where they had to defend themselves.

So I'm not saying that the Iranians

will demonstrate the same level of ingenuity

and whatever commitment that you're creating this.

Maybe they will, maybe they won't,

but like, they probably will come out of this

with like a better sense of actually

what they can do to harm us, right?

Like they know now that they can just throw a couple drones

into the straight of horror moves,

take out a couple of oil tankers

and they're emboldened kind of.

I mean, Bill made this point with you yesterday.

This has been a proof of concept

for Iranian strategic defense for 47 years.

Their strategic defense concept has been,

well, worse comes to worse,

we can close the straight

and cause enormous amounts of economic pain

for the entire world, but mostly for America,

because they're so heavily reliant on oil.

And nobody ever really knew if they could close the straight.

Like we did have a tanker war before,

like, you know, this has been an open question.

Well, now they can, right?

This is, they've demonstrated the proof of concept works.

That increases their position.

No, I mean, yes, for now, yeah.

But like, let's just kind of tease it out.

What does Trump's pain threshold here?

So could Iran control the straights

if, for instance, we put in 10,000 new strips,

obviously, Trump's not gonna do it, right?

But let's say we did, or 20,000.

Maybe.

Could we take over the straights?

I'm pretty sure we could, right?

We would suffer casualties for sure.

It would be bad politically for Trump private tankers go through.

Sure, our ships could go through the Navy,

right, the US military ships.

I'm just saying, I'm saying we could go through.

I have, I'm not like as schooled in the military aspects

of this as you guys are, but I have to imagine

that we could, if we devoted whatever resources we could

to the enterprise that we could take over

and run the straights, we just, we're not gonna do it

because it would cause real harm.

Human harm, economic harm, political harm.

That's the problem with what we've done, right?

Is that Trump has gone in with no clear objective

and he has a ever changing pain threshold here.

So he's, we're making all these plays,

for instance, sending over troops to the region,

the 82nd Arab-born division now.

And it's not clear to me that he's ever intent on using,

he's not why I want him to,

but this is where I think the Iranians have really benefited,

is that they essentially, I mean, really as weak,

called his bluff.

I said, if you attack our power plants,

we're gonna attack desaltation plants across the region

and Trump backed away.

And I think for a ran, that's the victory,

is that they can call his bluff

and then turn around and say, look, we called this bluff.

I just wanna put a point in this.

So the Iranians main drone is the Shahed

and that has a 2,000 kilometer range.

If you take a, drop a pin in the straight of our moves

and then just like swing it on a, you know, on a compass

to, we could not secure 2,000 kilometers in every direction.

From drone attacks, from drone attacks in the straight.

So 20,000 American troops would not solve that problem, right?

You could, you could solve some close-up problems,

but it's a loitering munition and it's sort of a fire, forget.

I, and again, these are private boats.

I guess this is my point, like you see,

in the technical sense, like, could we technically do it?

Probably, like, so the ships could go through,

could we do give it to, with such a degree of confidence

that if you're a, if you're a company,

then it's your ship and it's your tanker and it's your oil

that you want to send it through and just kind of go, you know,

Lee Roy Jenkins, we're going to destroy.

We trust, we trust, we trust Pete Hegseth, we'll protect us.

We're going to go through and we're going to duck.

Again, I don't know, maybe some of them will do that.

I bet there would still be huge disruption.

And like, this is a thing I don't get, like where I'm,

and, and Javiel, I'm curious, you're, I'm curious,

I'm curious, I'm curious to go stick on this,

because me and Joe Wyzen thought kind of had a heated agreement

about this.

Where, like, I, I feel like the oil prices are under,

are, it's, you know, it's underpriced.

Yeah, what the reality is.

Well, you know, and, and Joe says basically,

if it is underpriced with the realities,

if you're just talking about like discrete reality,

like, if you went to Oman right now and said,

I would like a barrel.

It's causing more than what it's going to cost on the market

because of the destruction.

Right.

So, but, but there is a sense,

there's the old suite about how Donnie Trump will wriggle

his way out of this one.

So, you know, you know, you know,

Donnie Trump will wriggle his way out of this one.

You know, and I think that the people at the markets,

political commentators, I think a lot of people

just continue to look at Trump and say,

hey, I, I don't want to be that guy that's saying

the doors are close, you know, the walls are closing in on him.

I don't want to look like an idiot.

I don't want to bet against him because maybe he'll talk

to him tomorrow and that, you know, if you're,

if you're a financial, you know,

I don't want to put my money on the line to bet against him

because maybe he'll, you know, turn it around.

A lot of people have lost money betting against him.

And so, I think that there is a lot of people right now

that are kind of hedging in what they,

in their analysis of this because of Trump's past.

Many successes wriggling his way out of jams.

And I just don't see it on this one.

Maybe I just am feeling great.

Like I'm taking crazy pills though, maybe.

I guess it's really dependent on context, right?

Like, I mean, there's been plenty of stories

about airline industries.

For instance, pricing and 170 out of the barrel.

Gas, I mean, they're not,

they're not predicting that he's going to wiggle his way out.

Wiggle is right out of this.

And then I, you know, I also, I think it's like kind of,

how do I articulate this?

I feel like your analysis just now underestimates the damage

that's already been done in a way, okay?

Like, gas prices are astronomically higher than they were a month ago.

Astronomically higher, okay?

You know, crude, astronomically higher.

The stock market significantly, sorry, diesel.

The stock market significantly, significantly lower.

I mean, we are being, I was talking about with Catherine Rampell about this.

We are being propped up by the, like, the tiniest,

the little stools by AI and 570.

Yeah, I guess it is.

Yeah.

And it's like once one of those or two of those

emerge victorious, which will happen.

And then all the others one, all the others kind of collapse.

That is going to be catastrophic.

And on top of that, there's these things called private capital markets

or whatever the jargon she used.

She was just outlining it to me.

I'm like, holy shit.

Like, even in this optimistic analysis that you offer,

things are not great.

I mean, they're bad.

And, yeah, maybe they can get much, much worse

and we're hoping that it doesn't get there.

But some of us are hoping it doesn't get there.

Yeah, it doesn't feel like we survived.

It feels like we've gotten significantly worse.

At this point, I introduce a practical question.

How do you get, even if Trump wanted a settlement?

So let's pretend Trump wants to get out.

How does he get there?

So I read a big Ocent nerd this morning

who made the very smart point that part of what got us

to like the day one decapitation strike

was the long negotiations that we were having,

which were both a diplomatic negotiation

that we were having with Iran,

but also turn out to have been an intelligence gathering operation

trying to identify how to get to their leadership.

So you've shown the Iranians that you will use negotiations

as ways to kill their leadership.

You need their leadership to get a negotiated settlement

because without leadership there is nobody to negotiate with.

Right.

There's nobody there to say, yes, we're going to reopen

the straight-up hormones.

Yes, we're going to stop shipping.

It becomes kind of hard to have, like, I'm just logistically,

it becomes hard to have these conversations

because you're making the Iranians run a whole bunch of different traps

in order to have conversations with you

because they're worried that you're going to be using that

not as good faith negotiations,

but as a way to identify their leadership

and come and kill them again.

I don't know.

I asked for my elbow when it comes to the internal machinations

of the various factions inside the IRGC

or the, you know, any, like, the Iranian internal politics

and don't want to pretend to.

But just like an observer of how, of politics

and how political machinations work and how people elbow for power.

Like, in this moment, there's like a power vacuum kind of in Iran, right?

I mean, like, they have, I told the junior, you know,

but that seems shape.

Supreme leader.

Yeah, they've been his supreme leader,

but certainly if you're internally trying

to figure out who has the power center,

that feels a little shaky.

They have the, the person who's the, whatever,

the speaker of the parliament,

who was a real estate guy.

I guess some people were saying Trump was trying to talk to.

Do you want, if you're in your situation,

if you're like, wake off.

Yeah, and that guy posts on sex in English.

Like, no, I'm not talking to Trump.

Because like, you have to imagine like the worst thing

you could be right now is, is to have the people with the guns

be thinking that you're the one

who's doing back channel negotiations with Trump.

Right?

And so like, I just even in turn, even like trying to identify

who is the person to negotiate with?

Like, what is the deal we could get from them?

Like, I'm not saying that's impossible,

but like all the stuff that became pretty challenging

when you like killed the people that you had previously identified

as the successors.

I think the, so ironically, if you're playing this out,

you would have to probably produce a deal for the Iranians

that is more lenient than the JCPOA under Obama.

Because you'd have to give them some sort of incentive

to come to the table.

And the good news is you don't have to give them the pallet

to cash in that deal, because you're already decentralized.

You already did.

Yeah.

The 14 billion in oil release sanctions we gave.

But you can say to voters in Pennsylvania that it's the best deal ever.

So this is the other, this is what I was just going to say, man,

this is the, I mean, Trump is, Trump benefits so much in ways

that other politicians in America don't, which is that he can.

And I mean, this is a great feature he has for his presidency.

He can just present his voters with Obama on steroids deal

for the Iranians and Tom.

It's a great deal.

And only he could cut it.

And Mago would support it 95% across the board.

That, I don't, I don't think that gets you to a deal.

But boy, like, that definitely wasn't the case with Obama.

I covered the JCPOA negotiations.

I covered them.

It was fucking hard.

Not just among Republicans who all universally hated it.

Among Democrats.

Because they had to have that thing voted on.

Schumer hated it.

Menendez, who was chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,

hated it.

He was taking bribes at the time.

Yeah, they turned out financially.

He was incentivized to hate it.

No, not he was.

Well, no, I don't think it was right.

Still, I don't know if he can fully disentangle all the bribes.

He's just true to Trump too, by the way.

My boy is Trump.

Yeah.

Trump has a good hand in that he can get his base on board this thing.

It's the Iranians who logically would say,

why would we negotiate with you?

Probably, you know, about the bomb us.

Yeah, two thoughts on this.

One, Phil Gordon, my interview is going to be on the show tomorrow

that he was, was Harris's national security advisor.

And just basically not the same thing as you did, Sam.

It's like the, like, Democratic presidents.

And they have to figure out how to change this in the future.

Maybe they need a cult leader of their own or something.

But like totally hamstrung, you know, and panicked about like,

you know, right wing criticism.

If they do one thing left wing criticism.

If they do the other thing, establishment,

interest group criticism.

If they do another thing.

And so, and that was very limiting.

I asked about why Biden didn't try to kind of reengage these negotiations.

And he did a little bit.

Like basically it was just like the hassles too big.

Like the hassles too big is what they come stand to.

My question though is to your other point about whether Mag will stay with him.

And this is where I want to come back to and get JBL your take on my.

I don't know if it's an optimistic or pessimistic view that like things are way worse than they seem right now.

But because that's pessimistic for the country.

But I think it's optimistic as far as the political ramifications for Trump.

Because everything we've been talking about.

And the fact that like the best case scenario economically,

it's like where we're at now, which is a real,

which is real pain for people to experience.

I don't think the 90% of the mega folks are going to stay with him.

I really don't.

I, I, we are, it's hard to tell in the polls right now.

Because you know, there's a lag.

And you know, if you're, if you're,

if you're filling up your tanks a little more expensive one time and you're a mega person,

you know, you start to get your backup.

Like, oh, hey, all right, we got to go kill the mollus.

You know, I'm happy to do it.

Right, you get your backup.

Okay.

August.

We're trying to go on your family road trip.

And like you can't.

Because fucking food is more expensive.

Gas is more expensive.

And it's like the reason again is that we needed to bomb the Iran ships.

I, I don't, again, I don't, I'm not saying it's going to go to zero.

If the wheels are going to fall off that I just,

I think that things are going to get a lot worse from one of the,

all right now for people.

And eventually that pain does, does matter.

Like eventually people will like suffer enough.

Right now, there's no amount of consequences that people would suffer to say,

I don't off the ship on this one.

Pun intended.

I mean, we'll find out.

I couldn't wait.

Right.

I think so.

Wait, again, what are we talking about?

People are off the ship.

I mean, yes, self-described mega folks.

90% of them are supportive of Iran.

But that's just people who are self-described mega folks.

I mean, how many people in those polls don't self-define as mega folks anymore

because of what's happening?

As we are sitting here, literally as we are sitting here,

the Marquette University Lapo, which is like the gold standard in Wisconsin.

They put out a poll today.

Trump's net approval rating is minus 14, which is quote,

the lowest net approval figure for him in both of his terms as president.

I mean, these numbers are, who knows, they're catastrophic.

They are.

I mean, 14 doesn't sound all that badly.

What's the, what's the, what is 14 is not bad?

It was constant.

Oh, come on.

Come on.

Oh, it was constant.

I'm sorry.

It was constant.

What is that 42, 56 or something like that?

Yeah, in Wisconsin.

It's the lowest they ever recorded in both their terms.

I was not bad.

It's bad.

But is it as bad as you'd expect given the reality of everything that's happening?

And that's where I kind of, you know, it's impossible to know, right?

And you're an uncharted territory, so you don't know.

But it does feel like it should be a little bit worse.

It's weird to me.

The 42% of the people are like, yeah, I approve of this.

I think it's getting worse.

I think it's getting worse.

I guess my point.

And I think, and I guess the point that I keep coming back to is,

I believe that because I believe that the actual environment,

the people cannot accurately see the environment around them.

But if you are just, right?

Like if you're just living your life in Green Bay,

and the only real damage you've had your life right now is that you felt your gas tank up

one or two times.

It's been more expensive.

Okay.

Like some people, that's been enough for some people already.

It's standpoints out.

If we're really going to put troops in there.

And if like, if it's true that like the price of oil right now is actually a little undermarket,

because people are just assuming the Trump's going to wriggle his way out of this one.

And it actually is going to go up to 150 or 170, which I kind of think.

And so if you think that, then you think, man, minus 14 is really bad.

Because he's at minus 14 and shit is about to really hit the fan for him.

Think about how low he can go.

Again, let me just, let me try this another way, if I may.

What?

Are you not happy with that?

During the spring and summer of 2020,

when a pandemic was raging in this country and race riots were happening in cities across the country.

And 20 million people had lost their jobs in one month.

And the stock market was taking a fucking beating.

His approval rating in Wisconsin never dipped this month.

I just want to be clear about that.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

But that was the lib's fault.

So here's the difference.

The China virus was the Chinese and the lib's fault.

Okay.

The lib's were making them stay at home and not going to church.

And it got snuck out of China.

Maybe actually maybe it was a bio weapon.

Donald Trump, Donald Trump bravely and heroically protected us from that.

This isn't that.

Yes.

I really don't.

I mean, are there going to be, are you going to be able to convince some people?

Is Wilson?

We're going to find the group of people that really believe that, you know, the Iranians are about to, whatever.

I can start a bio weapon into the bloodstream of people in rural America.

Maybe like, I think that most people are going to look at this to be like, bro, you did this.

Like you did this.

What are you doing?

Why did you do this?

You told us you weren't going to do it.

And you did it.

Nothing happened.

You told us you weren't going to do it.

You bound him anyway.

Then you told him you had achieved, achieved unbelievable success.

And he told us we didn't need to do it again.

And then one day we woke up.

I got home from my job.

I pulled up my laptop and AOL.com told me that we're going to war with Iran.

And I'm like, why?

I voted for Trump.

He said we weren't going to go.

He said we'd obliterate it everything.

And now my life is in shambles, the economies in shambles.

I don't.

I don't know, man.

I think that the China virus situation was an easier spin for him than this one.

There's my robot.

All right.

Very quickly on the troops.

Do we do we think car guidelines could?

Okay.

Do we think that the deployment here means that car guidelines is happening?

The other possibility of is that actually it's possible they can be trying to go to Isfahan,

which is where Iran has stashed underground.

There are 440 kilos of enriched uranium, which turns out is really important and wasn't totally obliterated.

As some of us pointed out back when we were called anti-American and troop haters.

So it's possible they could try to go and like seize a facility and ex-filterate a bunch of,

a bunch of enriched uranium.

That's the thing they could do, maybe.

Why?

Why?

Look, as we're speaking here, as we're speaking here.

Again, we have to we have to say this is 2.230 pm on Wednesday because things change every time.

The Trump is speaking currently as we are recording here.

And again, the signals are just what they are.

It could change in any moment.

But here's a quote and you tell me how you read this.

You tell me how you read this quote.

This is Trump on Iran.

Quote.

I don't want to say in advance.

Of course, he now says in advance.

But they've agreed they will never have a nuclear weapon.

They've agreed to that.

That's a Trump quote.

All right.

To me, that's him being like, I got a deal, folks.

Of course, the Iranians are like, we're not even talking to this guy.

But that's just Trump saying that.

That has been the uranium position for forever.

I know.

But the uranium position for forever has been, this is purely for internal energy production purposes.

We're not going to build a nuclear weapon.

But Donnie got a deal.

Donnie got a deal.

Come on.

But this is why I think he can get out of this.

Right.

If he can find somebody to make the deal with and he can give them enough sweeteners,

that again, because come any needs to be able to in order to make it work on his end and not wind himself up dead,

he needs to be able to show like a real victory to the people who run the revolutionary guard.

And he needs to get enough from Trump that they can all be like, yes, this is good for us.

That's why I loved when Trump proposed sharing control of the street with the Ayatollah,

where they would take a little bit of Bitcoin each.

That's too long.

Windsor for the Ayatoll booth that they were going to put up the Trump Ayatoll booth as a good,

as a good coinage.

I just want to say about the troops.

Like for the reason that I've been laying out this whole podcast, I feel my head is spun.

I cannot put myself in his position for once.

I do not understand what they're doing.

Every second that goes by, I'm like, why hasn't he quit this?

It's an obvious disaster.

I think that in the end, it's already going to become such a catastrophic disaster that it is,

like he will almost certainly now, like there will be a faction running against him,

which like up until this war, like even on Epstein, there are people that voted against him,

like even if he continued to cover up the Epstein files,

if he had stayed the course that he was on a month ago,

there probably was not going to be like an anti-relevant, and there'll be some gadflies,

but like a relevant anti-Trump America first faction challenging him.

And I think that it is inevitable that will happen now,

that there will be someone from the Joe Kent Tucker world that now runs as an actual,

you know, the only true Scotsman, America First Men.

And so, anyway, I say all that to say, I think this is such a disaster,

I cannot imagine that he puts more troops in.

But he keeps doing shit, I can't imagine, so I don't know,

I guess they'll probably put more troops in. Who the fuck knows?

I don't know, MBS wants them to.

VB wants them to.

Higgsath wants to.

Higgsath wants to.

VB wants them to.

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All right, before we leave this section of the show,

Joe Kent has been off doing a little media tour,

set time with both Megan Kelly and Mark Levin.

Awkward.

The Mark Levin interview is very awkward.

I didn't see that one. What happened?

There's nothing to see. It was just on the radio show.

Just putting aside the merits of the arguments each side was making.

Mark Levin has passed his prime.

He just, I get one point,

Joe Kent was talking too fast,

and Mark Levin was like,

I need you to make your points more slowly,

one at a time,

so he could address them one at a time,

and then he's like,

I can't hear you.

And then he has to interact,

and the music comes in, and he puts on ads.

He just, he wasn't up for it.

I mean, I think Mark Levin's show is mostly just him ranting

into the microphone,

and I just don't know that he was ready for a,

a tattoo, a tattoo.

Joe Kent on that show,

and on all the other shows,

keeps doing Joe Kent things,

which is like having some moments of lucidity

about the problems with this war,

like intermixed with like,

very strange,

conspiratorial thinking,

and like,

just asking questions,

comments about the Charlie Kirkamarder,

even though he was the head of a counterintelligence.

We got to talk about that.

We got to talk about that.

Oh, the pickleball stuff.

Did the pickleball stuff?

Not a pickleball stuff.

No, no, no.

It's not that.

He basically is saying that he's seen intel

that Charlie Kirk was not,

sorry, Tyler Robinson was not the assassin of Charlie Kirk

or wasn't working alone.

I mean, this has real,

but it's crazy,

but this is a foreign country.

Does this war in country?

He throws out there,

the board country.

This is not like some,

but this is not some gadfly.

This has real potential to fuck up the trial

for the federal government.

This is not like not a nobody.

This is someone who had presumably

access to intelligence.

What is he doing?

I mean, if you're the defense attorney's there,

what a gift.

Gotta be thinking.

What a gift.

I have maintained all along

that we are in the funniest and also worst timeline,

but the funniest thing that could possibly happen

in this timeline would be for Candace

to be right about all of this.

And for it actually to be,

no, like it is really a French team

of assassins who are behind a funny.

It turns out that they were the ones

who really,

it really was some weird,

foreign opians.

Well, that's not true.

That's not going to happen.

That is not true.

It didn't happen that way.

I am getting off though.

That could happen.

And then the,

and then the conspiracies proliferating

and then years down the line,

you know, people talk about

the Charlie Kirk murder,

the way they talk about the moon landing.

I mean, like that.

That seems almost inevitable.

That seems almost inevitable at this point.

It's very strange.

And then you have everybody.

Like,

did you see the joke that other joke

can't show a Kirk thing where he said

that about the last time he talked to Charlie?

And it's getting religious.

It sounds like some of the stories

that you hear from like the Saints talking about,

you know, like an apparition of Mary appeared to me.

Very accurate.

And I don't know.

No, don't want to impune anybody who said

an apparition of Mary appeared to them.

But we weren't that thought of us.

We weren't.

And that does feel more likely

than an apparition of Charlie Kirk appearing

for a variety of reasons.

But Charlie,

joke said,

like the last time you saw him,

you looked him in the eye

and grabbed him by the shoulders.

And it's like,

you need to make sure they

don't get us into the Iran War.

And joke,

and he said,

that is your job, Joe.

And it's like,

what?

You have like random lizard people,

anti-Semitic conspiracy theories

are like the last thing Charlie Kirk said to you.

And this was the guy Trump made

the head of his counterterrorism unit.

And then 18 months later,

a man is dead on a pickleball court.

Oh God.

Come on.

People die on pickleball court.

All the time.

All the time.

I'm not overwhelmed by this one.

I gotta be honest.

Pickleball is the silent killer.

Okay.

Let's talk a little bit about ice.

So we have,

I guess a conservative radio host

joked that ice should go to airports

to help with the TSA line.

No, it was a collar

into a conservative radio host.

I mean, a collar at a concert.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so that's now the policy of the United States.

Two things I want to talk about here are

Trump saying that no masks

at the airports.

That interests me.

Tim, you and Bill talked about this

a little bit.

And the second thing is

Bannon saying that this is a perfect test run

for, to see how we could use ice in 2026.

I'll take the second one first.

And I agree with Bannon.

It's rare to say this.

I do think it's a good test run

for how they can use ice at the midterms.

I think what you'd end up seeing

is like five dumbasses

who were inspired by a Dean Kane

segment on Newsmax,

standing around in tactical gear,

like eating crispy cream,

and looking at their phones,

scrolling through,

I don't know, white nationalist memes

on TikTok and X

and people walking by them and voting.

I think that's what would happen

if they put the ice people outside the voting booths.

That's generous.

That's what I think would happen.

I don't think it's crossed.

That's like the most platonic outcome

Yeah, there's an ominous possibility,

but I'm just telling you what I see in my crystal ball,

which is just what we're saying now.

The ice agents have been deployed.

Did you see when the Tom Homan is like,

they can work the exits.

They're highly trained.

They can work the exits

to make sure nobody goes in an exit.

And I was like, great.

Really?

There's always somebody say,

a CS agent sitting on a stool

like the exit,

or just leaving the secured area.

And they're just there to make sure

you don't walk backwards.

Yeah.

It's a good thing we're paying these guys

big signing bonuses

because otherwise,

you could never find somebody to do that work.

Don't shoot anybody.

Well, you sit on the stool.

Don't shoot.

That was my question.

I don't think anyone's really properly answered this.

Where are these ice agents coming from?

Where they just kind of sitting around

in like a warehouse

and we were just like,

hey, go to the airport.

Like, where do they come from?

Well, in New Orleans,

we got them because there are some leftovers.

We had some leftovers

that didn't get deployed to Minneapolis.

And they've just been,

they've been kind of roaming the French quarter

and we just,

we moved into the airport.

What have they been doing?

Well, they've been menacing people

outside of Kingston,

you hear us, I think,

for the most part.

I know that.

I know.

But like,

but like,

do we have a strategic

reserve that we're just tapping into?

I just don't understand

logistically how this is working.

We've hired a lot of people.

Ice has hired a ton of people.

I mean, we,

they had an unbelievably large budget.

A significant portion did go to cowboy hats

and other kind of set design

for Christie now.

But we also hired a lot of people.

We needed a department of government efficiency

to really

sustain this stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Following we had that.

Can we talk about the mask part?

Please.

Well, I mean,

it's like one of these things

where Trump kind of blurt's out

how he feels politically, right?

It's like,

he knows that

having massed agents terrorizing people

at airports is obviously problematic.

So,

it is kind of telling.

I feel like Trump,

Trump knows where things are going.

I don't know if Stephen Miller cares

or anything like that.

But,

you know, we've had enough

leaks strategically

to, at this point,

tell us that,

you know, like the earlier one was that they are not,

they're going to move away from mass deportations.

They don't want to do mass deportations anymore.

And like,

obviously firing Kristinaum.

So,

it's late.

It's way too late, frankly,

for him to get on the right side of this thing.

But it is another occasion

that they know they fucked it up.

Guys,

can I bring some breaking news to you?

Sure.

Yeah.

On two types,

Trump's talking right now.

Trump's always talking.

Yeah.

On ice.

And the question about the deal,

Katie Britts

and Democrats working out a deal.

He was asked,

would you sign the deal

to fund everything

but ice to get those TSA agents repaid?

Trump,

any deals,

deal Democrats make,

I'm pretty much not happy with it.

Wow.

So,

I don't know.

Do this then.

Don't know.

I guess,

by definition,

a deal that the Democrats will vote for,

I won't sign.

Okay.

So, I guess I'll,

I guess the end of the filibuster

to try to jam through the Save America Act.

And then on to negotiations.

You can have to,

you're not to stick with me here

because we're going to go on a journey.

Ooh, I can't wait.

The leaders left.

Left is an interesting word.

The leaders left.

The leaders are all gone.

Nobody knows who to talk to.

But we are actually talking to the right people.

And they want to make a deal so badly.

You have no idea how badly.

They want to make a deal.

And we'll see what happens.

That's the status of the negotiation.

Sorry.

Those are the Iran negotiations.

Yeah.

The DHS funding.

Yeah.

Those are the Iran.

That was both.

I was giving you the update on both.

So, we don't know,

we don't know who we're talking to,

but we know that the right people.

Correct.

Okay.

Americans have fallen for this shit for a decade.

Wait, I just, I don't know.

Can I, can I?

Nobody wants to hear about COVID masks.

But can we do 90 seconds on Trump and masks?

I mean, I remember the mask wars.

I don't know if you guys have blocked that out of your consciousness.

Oh, no, I remember them.

I was a fighter.

I was a, I was a freedom fighter in the mask wars.

You were a face-looker.

And you were a conscientious face-looker.

You just like said, it's important for you to come.

And I was sort of in the middle, right?

I was not one of those people saying, you know, I believe in, you know,

we ought to always recognize the abstence fallacy just because you don't wear a mask once.

Doesn't mean that,

because, hey, it's not the end of the world,

but B, it doesn't mean that, you know, it's useless to wear them.

And that there are certain settings, certain types of masks, right?

If you could get your hands on a can, 95 respirator,

those are, those are pretty good.

There are certain situations in which they could be helpful.

Other situations in which we, they weren't.

Nobody needs to lose their minds in a grocery store,

because somebody isn't wearing a mask.

Like it's just, okay, it's fine.

But there was a moment when there was this pandemic raging through the country,

and it didn't wind up killing one million Americans.

And the guy who was president then, like refused to put a mask on.

And like made a big stink about, no, I don't think people should be wearing masks and whatnot.

And that did result in some excess deaths.

And he, he's against it.

You're a pussy if you're wearing a mask in order to try to not get people sick around you.

But if you're using it because you want to be able to shoot people and not get identified,

that's right. He's a big fan of that.

You're tough guy. Yeah, you're awful.

I, not all respect for them.

It amazes me that that gets tolerated by half the country.

Half the country looks at that.

I was like, yeah, signing up.

Nothing.

Nobody else wants to.

Okay.

Fine.

I think you said your.

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Got a new update for you.

Oh, yeah, from the president.

This makes me anxious when you keep saying this.

Go ahead.

This is great news.

I don't know why you should be anxious.

The people of Iran, Iran, gave us a gift.

And the gift arrived today.

Oh, it's worth a lot of money.

Yeah.

I won't say what the gift was.

But it showed me that we're talking to the right people.

Wasn't related to nuclear matters, but toy on gas.

So to some of the leaders left.

We should have done this show live.

We don't know who the leaders are, but we're talking to somebody.

They gave a gift.

They gave a gift.

They made us think we're talking to the right people.

The gift was something that was valuable.

It was not nuclear.

But it was related to oil and gas.

And here we go.

Is it a plane?

Is it a gold ball on Apple?

Is it a peace prize?

Is it larger than a bread box?

They did not need any oil and gas related gifts from the Iranians

until we started the stupid war that closed the straight of hormones.

This is like a fundamental.

This is where I'll start to lose my mind if the people of Pennsylvania end up cablying

one of these deals, which is like gas prices were going to everything was fine.

We had energy independence.

The Iranians were no threat to the Americans.

And so we started a war.

We created a crisis.

And now the people that we started a war with apparently are giving us a gift.

To somewhat alleviate the crisis.

You know what I've noticed.

And I don't know if you guys have picked this up.

It actually ties what JVL was saying about masks a little bit.

He's talking about the Iran war in kind of the same way he talked or has talked about the COVID pandemic.

It's like this little blip that he had no responsibility for.

Everything was going great.

And then we had to deal with this little thing.

And we're going to make it great again.

Don't worry.

And it's just like it's given me these very intense flashbacks to him talking about COVID.

And I do wonder if the people of Pennsylvania and to your point are going to look when they get,

when oil comes back down inside of the gas is only 350 gallon.

And like, man, he's given us so much relief from when it was close to four.

It's like, no, that's what's going to happen.

No.

No.

So I wrote a piece about that.

I can't imagine.

I will be an individual person going gas station to gas station in rural Louisiana.

With a picture showing people in mega hats, the picture of what it cost before.

That's not how it works.

He sets their house on fire.

And then it burns for a year.

And then he comes and he puts the fire out and says, hey, you want to give me a medal?

I put that fire out for you.

And people said, yes.

Sure.

But here's another thing.

And I'm not trying to be overly capable.

The opposition here is kind of weak, right?

You all remember the stickers all over the gas stations, a buy-it-end point.

Have you seen one Trump sticker on any guy?

I haven't seen a single thing.

It's just starting, baby.

It's just starting.

It's just starting.

We'll see.

I don't endorse vandalism of public property.

That's not vandalism.

It's speech.

All right.

We'll get to my full Joker in a minute.

But I wanted to talk a little bit about there was a piece in political.

Maybe you guys don't care about this.

There was a piece in political about conservative think tanks.

And this is my sweet spot.

This is why I grew up in conservative think tank world.

I was never really a Republican.

But I did hang around like the American Enterprise Institute all the time.

My office was in the same building as theirs.

So this was about the new MAGA think tanks.

And they're jockeying with the old conservative think tanks like heritage.

And how they're all going to get ready for the post Trump future.

One of them bought a $20 million building.

One of the new MAGA think tanks.

Like two blocks from the White House.

That's great.

I found the entire thing fascinating.

Is it a MAGA think tank kind of a misnomer?

That's why.

And so because what we have is we have this universe of people,

like Orren Cass and the guys at Claremont,

who saw Trump come in and decided,

I can build an ideological framework around this.

And 10 years in, they're still trying to do that.

Even though Trumpism is whatever Trump says it is in any moment.

And like, you know, he creates the entire universe a new with his whims.

And yet they're still all running around trying to act as though

there's a coherent ideology in here somewhere.

If only you could really tease it out.

And I don't know.

Like Tim, I don't know how close you were with conservative think tank world.

And Sam, you must have seen it all from the outside.

So it must be weird.

I saw from the outside.

Yeah.

Here's what explains this to me.

I can explain this for you.

Because that was never like you inside the think tank world.

Because I'm not.

I'm not a point deck star.

You know, but occasionally I'd be at meetings with them and such and understand how it works.

You know, it's funding the stuff.

Yes, it's some big mega donors that I want to feel fancy and smell their hearts.

And like, you know, show off to their friends that they can get, you know,

Susie Wiles or Russ votes to show up to their house or their conference or whatever like this.

So there's some of that right happening.

Here's the other thing now.

Because mega has like say no core is wrong.

But because there isn't really a coherent policy world view around mega, you know,

except for in a few instances, it leaves this huge opening for groups like this to be bought off.

Right.

And so you have the crypto people, you have the AI people, other, you know, more social media tech folks.

You've got the natural gas people.

Hell, you've got the wind people probably pay these guys, right?

Because they want to, you know, put a white paper put out from the America first institute.

That's like wind is really America first.

It's the only thing we're making here, right?

Every, every fucking industry around the sun pays these people.

And it's not impossible.

But it's harder to pay off thing tanks that have a coherent ideology because, you know,

they're not going to just totally switch their view on something unless you're really signing a big check.

But these guys like, they can't be against immigration deportations, right?

Like now they can be on any side of the war.

You know, they have to be at least kind of pro tear ups, right?

Like besides that, it's like it's a blank slate, baby.

You can pay Kevin Roberts is like, go pay me, you know, big tech guy.

I'll be for AI.

I'll be against AI.

I'll be pro credo.

Whatever you whoever's writing the biggest check.

Look, I'll just say this.

I mean, I think my vantage point, I've not been involved in this.

I have reported a little bit on it.

I've observed it.

The same problem does too much lesser degree, I think, exist on the left.

Like there's been some issues back in the day, for instance, around tech.

And how close some of these things were to this, you know, for instance, Facebook, Numbat and other places.

And then on Israel, too.

This was a big thing in the left where it's like some of these sink tanks had just problems around donors who were very pro.

Israeli and people were internally at the think tanks wondering if that was affecting their policy up.

But to me, and you guys concurring me from wrong, it does seem like it's more pervasive on the right.

And it's not just think tanks.

It's conservative press too.

I mean, we just published last night this will summer piece about this ridiculous pay all the scandal where it's just like these conservative outlets for $500.

Like really cheap money.

We're just putting ghost written articles on their publications being like this Jack Abramoff crypto firm is like getting an unfair deal from the NFL.

And it's like, is everyone is on the take.

Everyone on the take.

But it's not them.

It's not just the lowest editor out of publication or think tank.

It's the administration.

I mean, like so much of what this administration does is just basically, oh, you gave enough money to my political action committee.

I will give you this favor.

That's it.

It's just on the take.

And I've been actually shocked by it.

And I do think where I'm trying to get summer to write a piece on this too.

I do think this is kind of a soft belly vulnerability for Trump.

Because you do see it every now and then where people on the right are like, man, it's way more corrupt than I thought.

Like this part and stuff is very corrupt.

Some of the stuff happening here is grifty as hell.

And I do think people are kind of grossed out by it on the other hand.

Okay.

I think you could make the argument that project 2025 was one of the most successful think tank led policy initiatives ever.

Ever?

Yeah, 100%.

I wouldn't disagree with that.

I would say analyzing how that happened then becomes kind of interesting.

Because what project 2025 was was largely was a vetting operation for apparatus.

Right.

And in the actual goals for what you wanted to do were secondary.

The first thing it was was we can vet a whole bunch of people because the executive branch needs bodies.

And we will just turn into we'll spend four years vetting bodies so we can shove a list of resumes under the front door.

The minute Trump gets elected.

And that that's different.

That's something like parties used to do.

You know, and and the parties can't really do that anymore.

Not it's or maybe they don't want to.

I don't know.

But the heritage was able to do that and heritage and that is interesting to me.

It's like that's what Kevin Roberts understands that orange cast doesn't.

Like orange cast thinks he's like there to, you know, I'll make good faith arguments about policies that will be pro union and pro worker.

I'm sorry.

Get the fuck out of here.

I want to quibble with the project 2025 being the most successful project ever.

Because and this probably we're just spitballing here.

We're at the end of the next level.

But yes, it's probably requires a little bit more studiousness to for me to come down with a very important opinion.

But dosions up being a total disaster.

Well, and from whose perspective.

Hold on one second.

Yeah.

From what from my vantage point.

I guess the vantage point is like.

They wanted to kneecap the administrative state.

Right.

Like that was the whole point of this.

Right.

Like they wanted to defend the administrative state and pull it and pull up the size of right.

And they managed to kill USAID, which was like not the top thing on the list.

The lawyers in the administrative state have so far pretty successfully pushed back on them through the courts.

I mean, a lot of pain has been caused.

They've not done anything to reign and spending.

And I don't think they've done a ton to limit the ability of a future democratic administration to start using the administrative state again.

I mean, like they've got some people now embedded in their issue.

They're in the issues.

Right.

No doubt.

But I did they create do any structural change there.

Another big part of what the project 2025 was was like putting people like Joe Kent.

Inside the deep state to defying the deep state.

And that didn't seem to work.

The deep state seemed to win.

And you know, whatever you want to explain what's happening in the Iran war.

It's not the Tulsi and Joe Kent people that have won the election stuff.

They haven't figured out quite anyway.

I guess maybe I would say that the jury is still out on the six on whether there is sustainable success.

Sustainable.

I'll give you the sustainable success.

I think when you're cutting federal jobs and changing regulations, like inherently,

if you believe in executive power to that degree, then next democratic president can do the exact same thing and add jobs and reverse the regulations.

I just think that as just like a wrecking ball enterprise, not a deficit reduction enterprise.

Doge was remarkably successful.

I think, I mean, if you had to guess how many what percentage of the federal workforce left or was fired in the past year, what would you guess?

15%.

Well, you overestimated it.

It's 11%.

That's 315,000 federal employees gone.

Any environmental regulation that was ever on the books basically gone.

All the worker protection regulations basically gone.

CFPB is only hanging on because of some judicial interventions.

Education departments completely undone.

If you look at the granular level, it is a remarkably damaging administration with respect to the federal bureaucracy.

The high-picture stuff like the deep state in prosecuting your political opponents.

No, they haven't gone there.

But I'm not sure that was ever Doge's sort of value proposition.

I think they were there to just wreck the government.

Yeah.

The saving money was the pretext.

In the same way that free speech maximumism is always the pretext for these fuckers.

Yes.

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All right.

I just want to do a quick, we're going to talk about Greg Bavino.

We'll close out with Greg Bavino.

But just a quick couple of cleanups from Texas.

Were you guys surprised that the Talleriko interview went as far and why as it is?

Maybe a lot of news to him.

I'm not surprised because you're a master interviewer.

I think there's a lot of interest in that race.

He's very interesting.

I think that the right-wing media is very keen on crushing him.

I think that I was impressed by Talleriko and he's better than my expectations.

I think we talked about this last week on the live show.

I also think that like, you know, some of the things that I asked him about that got a lot of news and right-wing media are things that he was like saying and doing during peak woke that are polarizing.

And he was going to have to think about how to talk about them at some point.

I just happened to be the one that was there and I was able to do it in a cheeky enough way that he was able to explain his views.

I think that his theory of the case now makes a lot of sense.

And, you know, the fact that he has an actual idea for what his message is for winning over Trump voters is a good start.

Will, and I asked him this literal question, like, will those cultural cleavage points so be so great that it doesn't matter they can't hear him?

Because all they heard is all the other stuff that he posted.

You know, just he has six genders or whatever meet, you know, and all those things.

And so, you know, he had to talk about those.

We talked about them. I thought I was impressed.

I'm not surprised that the bright part was not impressed.

But, you know, I think going forward, one of the things like if you asked me to kind of like rank, which of the states that were best suited for Democrats to win in November of the stretch states.

Like, I would have said, like Alaska and maybe Nebraska over Texas, in part because like the candidates are a little more profile for those states, right?

Like, it's a little tough. And in Texas, like, give this tough balance.

We sell the bed out of like, you got to be able to do both.

You got to like persuade some people and just turn out.

And that's a challenging thing like doing one of the others a little easier.

So anyway, that's that's kind of my feeling on it.

Sam, did you have thoughts?

It's like, I'd like to him. I'm sort of curious how you balance those two needs, right?

I mean, I think the bedo experience and how Tolerico looks back at it is going to be really interesting.

Because my recollection of bedo was, you know, he was just, you know, constantly live streaming and doing things.

And not unapologetically grasping on to sort of very progressive policies like gun control in Texas, which in retrospect probably was not the smartest idea.

That's one of the second time.

Okay.

Well, either way, he was being unapologetically progressive about these things.

I think he was like pro kneeling, like Colin Kaepernick, if I'm remembering correctly, he's the support of that.

I think Tallerica, and this is gets back to in a way to the sort of the group's answer and things like that.

Tolerico understands that there's got to be more nuance there.

That's clear to me just watching and watching the interview.

He's not going to, you know, go, you know, absolutely balls to the wall.

And maybe that will cost him a few million dollars and raise money.

And maybe it'll cost him a little bit in turnout.

But I happen to think that Democrats are so desperate at this point.

And so anxious about the state of the country that there is a real appetite in a sort of sophisticated understand a more sophisticated understanding about some of the compromises intellectual compromises that the candidates will have to make.

And that they're going to be willing to just say, sure, whatever, like just win.

And I don't know if that gets Tolerico over the hump.

It's so hard. It's such a big state.

So much money has to be spent so many different media environments.

It's really, really expensive and hard.

And I continue to think the other states are better.

But, you know, I wouldn't totally rule it out either.

Just win, baby, I'll date us.

I just do think there's a lot of demand.

Is that all Davis or Barry switcher?

I'll Davis.

Is that all Davis?

It was Davis.

Yeah.

I just want to make sure.

All right.

Well, I was going to say something about the people who are angry with me for, for being

gleeful about consequences and stove touching, but I don't, either of you read a newsletter

that I, I put out today, not yet.

Tammy, I can always count on you, Tim.

Well, I got very excited about it.

And I saw the headline.

I smiled.

And I said to myself, I'm going to, I'm going to like save this to really savor it this evening

at the end of the day.

I just came out a little close to the shaving rather than kind of rush through it.

So I want to savor it.

So why don't we just, I think everyone should savor it with me.

And we should just, yeah, experience that together and reading.

And then, and then we'll talk about it next week.

All right.

So Greg Bavino sat down with the New York Times for a very long, very glossy America's top

Nazi profile.

And it is crazy for lots of reasons.

I just want to just read out two little things for, for you guys to react to previously unreported

legal documents show that Mr. Bavino also admitted he had referred to undocumented people as

quote scum trash and filth while giving a speech to his agents.

He said at that time, he had been referring to criminals such as child rapist, but also

he refused to back down all illegal aliens are criminals.

I don't know why I was only talking about criminals, but of course all of these people are

criminals.

So therefore they are all scum trash.

Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz.

I'm the host of Big Technology podcast, a long time reporter and an on air contributor to

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And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the

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Mr.

Bavino said he had a master plan that was in motion before his exile back to El Centro.

It would have neutralized protesters, he said, and made it possible to deport 100 million

people. That is a goal that the Department of Homeland Security has widely promoted.

100 million people is a third of the country.

Third of America.

We believe there might be as many as 20 million undocumented people in America.

He would like to deport five.

He had a plan to deport five.

I said, I don't know what you guys think of this.

Part of me was a little bother that the New York Times was willing to give him the glossy

treatment.

What's a glossy?

Can we pull this up on the screen?

Let's pull this up on the screen.

This is a picture of him in the woods.

He's looking like a lesbian, Colonel Steve in lock jaw, looking off into the distance.

Let's see if you say fuck in this photo.

If you want to say it's glossy, I still think it's fine.

There's a distinction between giving glossy treatment to like a Richard Spencer, right?

Who is, you know, I remember this was a big controversy.

It's like, why I give that guy glossy treatment?

He's just a Nazi.

Greg Bovino was the most powerful immigration official in the country for a period of time.

I mean, he's significant.

Yeah.

I want to know what he was going through.

But it treats him as a normal political figure.

I mean, whether or not he's normal, he was official.

And he was powerful.

And he had, and I think there's a real value add to knowing how distorted his worldview was.

And the type of thoughts that went into the shit he did.

There are some quotes in here that like you kind of sit back and be like, I can't believe this.

I just feel like the piece should have been more adversarial.

I'm not saying like don't run the piece.

But the piece reads, this reads the same as I would expect any piece about anybody who has ever been head of any federal agency ever.

Any other lesbian?

I could have been Janet Napolitano.

No, you know, this could be Janet Reno.

It could be Greg Bovino.

It could be the head of the FDA.

Yeah, right.

It could be the head of the National Park Service.

Like that's the tone of the piece.

I hear you.

That's just that's pretty far down my list of complaints.

Yeah, they have a set and they're like sitting down for eggs and bacon and hanging out at the bar and walking in the woods.

Yeah, it's, I mean, he comes off horrible.

I don't know.

I find it would be utterly appalling in every way.

And I think, I don't know.

I also think it's pretty revealing in newsworthy that like he was, he said what a lot of the private reporting said, which was that he was hard line.

And the rest of these guys were handsies that Tom Homan wasn't willing to go there.

So I think it would be interesting to see how that turns out.

Guys, good show.

Incredibly long show.

We'll be back next week.

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Hit subscribe.

Follow the channel.

Luck America.

Bye.

Thanks, Sam.