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About this Episode
The Supreme Court tanks Donald Trump's tariff program in a 6-3 ruling supported by two of his hand-picked justices. Lovett talks to Jerusalem Demsas, economics writer and editor-in-chief of The Argument, about the epic presidential tantrum that followed and what Trump might do now. Then they discuss the findings from a new Argument poll about the backlash to trans rights, why Congress won't assert itself as a coequal branch, the way forward for housing policy, and why all the commentary about the anti-Trump resistance being "cringe" is missing the point.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast.
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Hey, Lover, leave the listeners.
It's me, the titular John Lover.
Here to tell you that I'm coming back to Washington, D.C.
for Lover, leave it live at the Lincoln Theatre on April 23rd.
That's right, spring in D.C. is all about cherry blossoms
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We're so excited to be back in D.C.
It's a tradition now that we come around the time of the car response
and or even though the car response center really no longer has comedians.
I believe there's going to be some kind of a magician or a mind, mind melder.
Yes, a magician.
Yeah, I'm a mentalist.
A mentalist, because I guess Trump wouldn't know.
Trump's also going.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's in there.
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Very excited for the D.C. show.
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Some pretty exciting, maybe.
Cricket.com slash events.
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Welcome to Ponce of America.
I'm John Levan.
Today on the show I talked with Jerusalem Densis.
journalist and founder of the arguments and independent
liberal media company recovered a lot of ground
uh... the supreme court's terror friendly against trump the arguments new
controversial poll on trans rights
why democrats have been losing ground on this issue how we can get it back
we talked about housing affordability we talked about the role of resistance
cringe and fighting fascism
love talking to the russell on the word
from the producers in the room is that they are quote obsessed
uh... so uh... let's jump in
and you're so good to see you
hey nice to see you too
so we are both really from having just watch trumps response to the supreme
court's ruling rebuking his emergency tariffs let's start
with the ruling itself to do something what was your response to how the court
uh... ruled on trumps tariffs
i wasn't super surprised i mean i just thought that this is where it was going
to go like obviously there's some kind of like
you know there's it there's a level that there's a level at which you're
worried that the court has gotten so partisan that maybe they will just like
stop adhering to like even the most normal expected jurisprudence but
uh... this is where i think most people thought i was going to go i think most
markets assumed it was going to go in this direction
so yeah
there are a few on the court that are still
uh...
base
partisans you have
uh...
kavanaugh elito
and
thomas ruling with
trump kavanaugh
seem to be
frustrated with the fact that the court doesn't have an answer
for how to deal with the roughly two hundred billion dollars that has been
collected but it's usually not
you know you don't wait if a bank robber has a bunch of cash in a pile
you don't often say they get to keep it
because it'd be so hard to figure out who it belongs to
i mean like this is honestly like sometimes how
like the supreme court
does work in ways that are kind of frustrating like we don't
i don't think anyone really thinks an ideal world at the supreme court or
courts in general should be in charge of legislating these people aren't
actually policy experts
like hopefully their legal experts but they're not like policy experts in like
you can hear them sometimes or arguments trying to become it and like i've
some sympathy for the fact that they're being put in this position
because
presidential administrations in particular this one are forcing them to make
decisions that should have been legislated by congress
but at the same time it's just like yeah like
what i don't know like what should they do about it like that's like asking
me what they should do but i probably know more about this in some people in
supreme court because they're not economic policy people but like
i agree like this is the main unanswered question like i am someone who i
to personally pay tariffs to like get my wedding dress sent to the united
states of america hundreds of dollars that was out expecting to pay
it's like am i getting a refund is that happening i don't think so so
yeah i paid thirty bucks on a rug yesterday
i like i literally paid it yesterday i'm like so fucking pissed
i'd waited one day like i might have got i want to that's thirty dollars
how many get that thirty dollars back i feel like you're being held up to
like you get an email that's like we have your package
send us this money right now or like i don't even believe i like am i being
scam but got you get an email that says you're what we will not give you this rug
unless you pay us thirty dollars yes so uh
people were also saying that this was the court potentially saving trump
from himself and yet you have trump in this press conference
obviously attacking the judges quite personally
but then saying that this is a ruling that is terrible to disgrace it's a disaster
for our country but also it doesn't matter because i can impose tariffs
through other legal means how do you square that circle
i mean trump loves in every conversation to like
i'll have his cake and eat it too like it sucks that you did that but it doesn't
actually matter at all and like who cares like we're going to make america
great again also america is also great but we're going to keep saying make
america great again because mag is a great slogan like you can just this is
how he like constantly wants to win win win it but like on the merits
itself like it is always been the case that um
there were more legal there were legal pathways for trump to impose tariffs i
mean most legal pathways would have involved going through congress and
congress could actually engage in and take on that that authority that it's
kind of allowed the federal government to to have or to or allow the executive
branch to have for for many years now but there are other
less dramatic pathways that were available to trump the difference is
those ones don't let him do what he likes to do which is to say i'm going to switch
on tariffs today by this amount now i'm going to take them off and like that
kind of instability is like i think a part of how trump likes to do politics and how
he likes to make deals and that i think is important that we can take that
away because that was really destabilizing for both
businesses but also various countries who had no ability to make any kind of like
long-term economic planning if they thought okay well tariffs are this today
but quite literally by 5 pm they could change that is now that is now not possible
yeah it also seems part of this is the court did
avoid really getting into what constitutes an emergency
or not and there seems to be this reluctance across different uh
rulings by the supreme court by lower courts both for trump and against
trump uh a reluctance to engage with the kind of plain meaning of these
terms because uh it the courts don't want to say
we can tell the president what an emergency is or isn't and yet when the
president stretches the bounds of this definition like
we do not have an emergency with the Swiss based on
the president not liking the Swiss leader's voice or
whether or not he's given a gold brick or not or whether or not marcarny gives
a speech that trump likes or not like yeah even if you want to give the
president an expansive uh space to decide what an
emergency is at a certain point the court does have to say
the word has some meaning like you can't just use it to mean anything you
want i mean this is the problem right is it like there's a level of
discretion that especially the supreme court is used to
giving um the executive branch in interpreting
what congress has given the interpretive executive branch powers to do so like
congress passes a law and they might test to interpret that law okay they say
like you could have to do this health care policy
but they don't write out and this is how you should allocate the money and these
are the ways that you should you know uh you know
write the equations for who gets to qualify you have to have some interpretation
otherwise like government couldn't function like how could you even run
a massive bureaucracy and that sort of logic
works when everyone is like generally acting in good faith about like
what words mean and like oh how they should be used and what did people
try to try to use those for in the past but um when you get to a point where
someone's clearly just wanting to ram through their
policy preferences regardless of the plain meaning of the
statutory language that exists then the court has to intervene and i
agree with you that like it's not getting to the point where it's like okay
we need stream court to say like this is an emergency this is not an emergency
we're drawing these boundaries but also we also need congress to do that like at the same time like
yes i'm a noted supreme court but like all this comes back to the fact that
congress refuses to reassert its role as a co-equal branch of government they
have decided like all right i guess we're gonna get cucked by trump for the next
like two years and i guess i'll continue happening forever and that's yeah
that's where we are so what happens now trump is
not gonna be able to do the same kind of queen of hearts off with their heads
tariff implementation but he does have the ability to put tariffs in place
what do you think happens now like what are the economic impacts of this
i think it's um i think he's gonna try and i mean he just announced this in the press conference
like i didn't i didn't take those from the specific numbers he was saying but he
was he's going to be uh re-implementing these tariffs through uh the
existing authorities that are let that require a lot more process to go
through but like are legal so i expect that we will see significant tariffs
being levied on um you know in the exact same format and structure really it'll
just take longer it'll have to go through go through the normal administrative
processes um in order to get there um the economic impact of that because
it will take more time from to actually be felt
seems unclear you already see a bunch of other countries
really attempting to build bilateral trilateral multilateral trade agreements
that exclude the united states in order to sort of develop you know supply chains different
markets um that don't rely on the united states anymore either to like get those goods and
services or or to be a place where they can sell their goods and services
that's like a real loss for them obviously because the u.s. is a massive market that you know
has a lot of value for people but it's also like a long-term loss for us like if the rest of
the economic global economy like decides to figure out a way to like replace the u.s. market with
other either emerging markets or or other other existing markets like China or anywhere else like
that's really bad for the united states and so you know this is something where like the long-term
picture like relies on like what the uh choices of a bunch different actors are going to be so
i think anyone who's like really prognosticating about like a couple years from now what this looks
like i don't really know how you how you would know that but i just i don't think it's going to be
good for us i think it's currently gonna be a bad situation right like even the short term we
aren't paying the tariffs because we pay the tariffs obviously but whatever the the kind of
realignment that's happening will not stop because he's first of all he's already promising to
put them back on also a lot of these are long-term plans that have that every trump can put
tarot take tariffs on and off in a week but companies and countries can't change their trade
policies in days or weeks exactly before we go to break there's a brand new episode of
polar coaster with dan fight for its out now for friends of the pod subscribers dan breaks down
a new cnn poll that takes a look at where voters have shifted since the 2024 election talks about
gallops decision to no longer do presidential polling and a bunch of other great questions from
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So I want to switch gears because one reason I wanted to talk to you today is the argument which
is the independent media company you've launched put out a poll and the headline on the poll was
the trans rights backlash is real this caused quite a firestorm on social media so let's just
start with what the poll found. Can you just walk us through the top line results?
Yes so it's actually a very very long poll so I'll draw out I think what was
causing a lot of controversy because we were trying to pull on a bunch of different issues
regarding gender that we haven't even gotten to to fully explore but the poll centers on
these questions of trans policy and also people's views their own personal values about how they
think gender roles should function and it finds a bunch of depressing things like one thing that
it finds is that what used to be a majority issue which is that people didn't really want to see
bathroom bills I didn't like the idea of like the government getting involved in what
bathroom people were using now you see that's flipped you see the majority of Americans saying that
people should be required to use the bathroom that corresponds with the sex they were signed at
birth and you also see this on a couple of other policies too so on questions of allowing
puberty blockers for minors the majority of the public does not want that to happen even when
doctors and parents have consented they still don't want kids to be able to have access to puberty
blockers we also asked about allowing gender surgery for minors when deemed medically necessary
by doctors with parental consent this is a very rare thing this does not happen very often
but it's it's even more unpopular than allowing puberty blockers but the good news in the poll
I would say is that when we ask specifically about protecting kind of more core civil rights
questions like banning discrimination against trans people and hiring and housing that's a place where
the majority of the country is in favor we should not have discrimination in that way and it's
a much bigger margin to you if like 63% of people saying they want to ban discrimination against
trans people and hiring and housing whereas you have roughly like 56% of people saying they
don't want to allow a puberty blockers for minors so I mean like this is something that I think
you know our takeaway is largely there is a real backlash here when we compared it to polls
you know from from a few years ago you do see more of the public turning against
these issues that are core to the LGBTQ rights community and you also do see that this is
happening across subgroup so one thing that we wanted to do because I was interested in a bunch
of different gender questions and I wanted to see real subgroup analysis but like in a lot of polls
like the numbers are so small it's like you can't really make decisions on this so we paid extra
to have this be a 3000 and poll rather than a 1500 person poll which would which would allow us to
actually look at subgroups and what you can see is that across subgroups including people who were
Harris 2024 voters you still see this backlash happening against trans people obviously it's
much worse and more conservative subgroup demographics like Trump 2024 voters but it's something where
you see across the board a real shift happening and and it's it's even more concerning because it's
happening at a time where the Democratic Party I think is is doing very well in polling like in our
poll Democratic Party is plus six like this is not actually a meaningfully affecting the chances of
the Democratic Party's ability to regain regain the House this year but on other issues like
immigration you've seen that thermostatic opinion shift happen you've seen people viewing what's
going on with ice and the interior enforcement horrors the killings that are happening in Minneapolis
and they're like okay I don't like what's happening my views are shifting towards the Democratic
Party on this issue but we don't see that with with this issue which I think is is notable
so what is your interpretation of that like what do you view as driving the shift um I think a few
things are driving the shift so first I think when you think about the issues that have always been
kind of perennially more popular for civil rights movements in in this space it's the core issues
on discrimination like people even if they disagree with you and how you choose to live your life
they don't really think you should get fired for like your gender your sexuality like they they
have like an aversion towards the government engaging in that way um and uh the uh but the LGBTQ
rights movement particularly trans rights movement has been more focused um or the debate has been
more focused that is on issues that are less central to that it's been focused on things like um
sports and whether trans women should be able to play with cis women in sports it's been more focused
on um whether uh on children and what they should be taught in schools etc in places where I think
that um people view that as less central of a uh of an issue and the reason for this I think is
there's a bunch of reasons I think one is it I mean there's been like hundreds of millions of dollars
spent to focus attention on these issues because the right understands that this is the country they
live it and that they want to be able to focus on issues that make this more difficult for trans people
to get you know greater access to civil rights so you see this with um in 2016 when the bathroom bill
is being debated in North Carolina um Republicans like saw that like the right saw that they saw how
businesses turned against them they saw how regular people in a state that is not blue um were
horrified by this decision to like try to police who is going into a bathroom and I think they took
this lesson and we're like okay that's not the place to put a bunch of our energy we're gonna put it
over there um but I also think there's like secondarily um there was a lot of you know when you think
about the decisions being made within the progressive side around what things to focus on um at some
level there was a conceding of that being the core debate like there was constant focus on
trans visibility and on on uh these questions of uh of what we taught in schools and in a way like
I think this has to do with like a difference amount of money being spent in these spaces I tried
to figure out like how much exactly it was spent but it's very difficult because some of this being
sent with dark money or whatever but like largely you can tell like way more money is being spent on
the right that on the left here but I also think it's like you know very reasonable that people
were concerned with you know the democratic uh democratic president's in power we have the ability
to do visibility for people to make them feel better about um there are people like them in high
places of authority and that's like a reasonable impulse to have but I think that people misjudged
how far the country had come on these issues I think that we saw um a lot of horror by people who
are on the right on this and who are more socially conservative about bathroom bills and a lot
of us including myself interpreted that to mean that attitudes had shifted more fundamentally
about whether people were okay with gender non-conforming people but like those two things actually
don't always move together like you can be really opposed to people acting differently than the
birth their assigned at sex and still think they shouldn't be discriminated against and then when
you see okay well they're not just asking not to be discriminated against they're asking me to like
you know see them in a positions of authority or whatever that triggers I think much more big a
tree in the public than then otherwise and so I think both of those things played a role in in uh
this backlash yeah you do like in the numbers you do see that that what republicans understood
is that this was just not deeply felt yet right like this was just there was a lot of room for
persuasion and it does seem like democrats were on a stronger footing when they were talking
about freedom from government control that's how the original debate around bathroom the bathroom
bill in North Carolina would just like get out of the bathroom we don't want the government in
the bathroom like we when we were talking about trans issues here like we we focused on just leave
trans teens alone like just leave people alone and when I was looking at your poll like the framing
around the questions right like allow gender surgery for minors when deemed medically necessary and
this is also around supporting reposing national laws enacting these kinds of policies like is
there part of this that's just a framing issue like if you ask the same group of people a question
that was more along the lines of do you believe the government should be able to ban parents and doctors
from determining the Beth health care decision for their kids who are trans like you could conceivably
get a different answer right like I didn't do you agree with that I mean wording matters a lot
in polls for sure so one thing that we do and are in the argument is after we've drafted the
questions we said them to an independent review panel that includes both democrats and republicans
to review our language for bias to make sure that we're not just doing a push poll and but even
with that like even with that there's no like perfect way to ask this yeah one thing that I'll point
out is that there are other polls with different wording that have found very similar trends
and so even if you you know you might think like okay well the wording moves this way or that way
that's something to keep in mind but on top of that too like you want to test language
or or policies in various types of wording because the goal is not just to
can you get the public to agree to one specific type of of how I frame an idea it's okay when they
approach this idea how it will be presented to them in public how will they react to it because
republicans and like people who are more conservative on this issue are not going to try to figure
out the most like liberal sounding frame for talking about these issues they're going to use
language that is way more hostile than what we're talking about in this poll and way more loaded and
way more likely to make people feel uncomfortable with the idea so if even in this language which is
should you even allow someone to do something even and to me like we got feedback from some people
that it's maybe we're loading the poll too much in the progressives favor by putting in that
that's only when doctors and parents consent and like that that addition was considered like okay
well maybe you're pushing it a little bit too much to try to get people to agree with you and so
you know even in this framing you still see this shift I think is really concerning yeah
I'm not asking because I I want to get to the backlash to the the polling itself but the reason I
ask is also like I'm trying to understand what directions democrats should be going and making
an argument and to me the argument has to be around freedom that we're on a better footing when
we're talking about freedom but at the same time I think what what's here is like what is very
clear is whatever views that people have like they're not that strongly held even now right like
this is an issue where people seem to be open to persuasion and I and I want to understand why
republicans have done such a better job of the persuasion it does like if you these these
issues right like my treatment for miners bathrooms and sports like that is where republicans have
focused their energy but it's also where republicans it seems have a more genuine
passion around it right like democrats whatever position they're taking like their hearts are
not really in these issues like this is not something they're passionate about they seem scared
to be on the wrong side of the populace of like the public but also scared to be on the wrong side
of activists in the end result is you have democrats advocating a range of positions
with a lack of real enthusiasm and then you have republicans hammering this from like like with
like their base like fully behind them like excitedly pushing this narrative and and I just
I'm curious how like you wrote a piece basically against what you described as thoughtless moderation
which is between ignoring this data or quote throwing trans people under the bus and I'm just like
what is the third direction here like what what do we do if not those two options yes no so I mean
I think that there's a clear answer in this poll a large majority of americans do not think you
should be able to discriminate against trans people in hiring and housing I would expect that those
numbers stay solid when you look at other kinds of public accommodations too so for instance like
can you refuse service to someone because they're trans like these are things like that I think most
people would find to be unacceptable and that's actually not the law the land right now like Iowa if
for one has just repealed legislation that they repealed gender identity as a as a core protected
part of the Iowa Civil Rights Act they're trying to stop localities from being able to even enact
their own protections at the local level the Supreme Court through Bostock has protected
trans people in in hiring and employment decisions obviously that requires a federal government
that wants to enforce that kind of civil rights law and even under a democratic administration it's
very very difficult to enforce that sort of thing from the federal government side it just
requires people complaining and then the government can eventually kind of maybe put in a lawsuit
and so I think that there's like a lot of room here for the trends movement and for liberals to
like focus on these issues and make hay out of the fact that they're trying to strip people of their
ability to rent an apartment if they are trans like like that's what it means to strip someone
of discrimination or are there bill not to be discriminated against in housing those sorts of
things I think are a really really solid footing and I am not like you know I'm not like saying
that there's like there's like a obvious step one two three here but I think from an orientation
perspective like there needs to be a lot of this there needs to be a lot of effort to make clear
that just as it you know in previous civil rights movements trans people are not asking for
special treatment they're asking for equal treatment like the right to do the exact same thing
everyone else is the right to make decisions with their doctors about their own health the right
to make decisions with their kids about their kids health like who is better position to know what
kinds of medical decisions your kids should have other than you like on in a society like we often
we always say like okay your parent can sign off on whether or not you get a boot job you know
whether or not you get a nose job like all these things like we have to defer to parents make
those decisions and like these are areas where I think there's actually a lot of sympathetic stories
to be told but I think that starting with uh clearing examples of discrimination in places where
people who already disagree with you think that there should be protections winning there I think
is the important part on on actually winning more hearts and minds and I don't think this is easy
because you don't control everything everyone says like other people are going to talk about
bathrooms other people are going to talk about sports and like that's hard but um I think that's
only place to go yeah I think that that's largely right like to me it's like you have to have a
larger story you're telling about LGBT rights that starts from a place of freedom and equality right
you start from freedom and equality for all people and then you have to turn around the idea that
Democrats are focused on this because the truth is why did why does Kamala get tagged with this
because she answered a question on a survey now that survey was written by people who seemed
more interested in in their survey than winning whatever there's a lot of problems on the
Democratic side she also was part of a group of Democrats who became completely unable to
have a world view uh that might be in conflict with there's a lot of things that led to what happened
in in in in in 2024 but the ability to tell a story that basically says we are for freedom
we are against discrimination and we are not the ones obsessed with trans people these freaks
on the right are obsessed with trans people we want to get out of people's medical decisions we
want to get out of uh of of people's uh bathrooms we want to let people live and be free uh like to
me like if you can start from a place that says that then that there by the way people might trust you
a little bit more when you disagree with them and say actually you know what uh uh like i actually
think even if you you you're not sure about uh um like what should be happening with trans teens i'm
not i don't agree with you i want to leave that to doctors and parents even if you don't agree or
by the way on sports like like you want to talk about uh uh like nc double a uh top competitive athletes
i just want trans kids to be able to play sports with their friends like like i think sometimes
this idea like there's so much um i think there's a lot of anxiety on the part of people that care
about these issues and on the part of trans people around like feeling like democrats just are not
reliable that they don't have the credibility as fighters and so there's no space to have this
debate because the democrats are not seen as like kind of tough strong representatives who they
can count on even if they don't always see it eye to eye and it seems like what we need to do is
kind of build up some trust and that starts with like like having democrats willing to kind of
like take a strong clear pro transposition that also has popular support and like uh but i don't
know like right now it just does feel like there's still this tension where uh if you even want to
have this conversation you are pretty well like attacked as being kind of uh uh unsafe like unsafe
to the movement yeah and i mean i think that there's like to separate out things like i think
i understand why trans people would be extremely sensitive to this and are you know i've like no
critique for people who are afraid about their civil rights being taken away and and are are upset
about anything that makes them feel that that might happen or might push people to to do that
but i think that like when it comes to people who have decided to become activists whether they're
trans or not if your decision is that your goal is to enact electoral change um you need to stop
thinking about elected officials as your friend or people who are going to be loyal to you especially
when it comes to rights movements where you're unpopular like i do not care how nicely i am treated
by any elected official like i don't care if they like me i don't think here if they like feel
loyal to me i care if they feel beholden to my interests because there's actual power
and persuasion that we've built this this is difficult work and it's not the work of an election
cycle it's the work of like many many years and maintaining that cultural power and that's about
convincing enough people in real life to be on your side it is not like we've seen this with abortion
rights it wasn't durable to just protect us through the courts like women in many places across
the country do not have the right to their own body in situations of potential death because
we they were protected only by um having convinced like five people on the supreme court like that's
that's how you convince people um on convince people on that issue and um it's really important to
realize that like that is a type of protection that's important we want legal protections that
happen through the court system like those are not things to just give up on but mass persuasion
in a democracy is always going to be the most powerful thing whether or not democrats stand by
trans people if this issue becomes salient in an electoral way which i don't think it is right now
at all but if it does become salient it's gonna rely on not on democrats courage really which i
mean like some people would make decisions on how courage they are it's on whether that's popular
or not these are representatives of the public and if the public is telling them i don't want you to
allow minors to get puberty blockers and there's 60% of them saying that to them in their districts
like that's not about just courage on the democrats part it's like how are we convincing people
to have different views such that we allow our like officials to do that now i think that there's
like a fair point to be made here that like elected officials are not just you know a tomatons
that go like what is the most popular thing and like let's just do that thing um and i think that's
like clearly happening right now like the democratic parties position on trans rights it's like
way to the left of the country right now in a way that i think is correct like they are right now
holding the line like there's not they're not like democratic politicians proposing bills or
supporting bills right now to try and strip trans people of the rights that are unpopular in the
public like that is something i think people should have some sort of um you know take take heart
in the fact that there's been a real holding of the line on the specific rights now we have seen
shifts in language i think in ways that people are right to be um you know paying attention to
i think that's on sath molten is one of these people and also of course Gavin Newsom more more
more recently but even while their language has shifted like california is one of the safest
places in the country to be a trans person and so is Massachusetts where sath molten is elected
official and sath molten itself is like voted um in favor of of legislation to protect trans people
so i think this is something where like people need to be really focused on outcomes here um
because there's like actually a real long road ahead in trying to move the country in a better
direction on this issue
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dot com slash cricket for five dollars off hey lover leave listeners it's me the titular john
love it here to tell you that i'm coming back to washington dc for lover leave it live at the
Lincoln theater on april 23rd that's right spring in dc is all about cherry blossoms and lover leave
it bringing you a stack lineup of guests that's what makes it america's number one late night gay live
comedy political podcast we're so excited to be back to you see it's a tradition now that we come
around the time of the car response and or even though the car is honest and are really no longer
as comedians not believe there's going to be some kind of a magician or a mind mind melder yes a
magician yeah my I'm a mentalist a mentalist uh because i guess trump wouldn't know it's also going
yeah yeah yeah that's it yeah it'll be there yeah there's there's there's a man there's a mental
case and then and trump is also going that's not it tickets won't last long there's some pretty fast
so get yours now while you still can at crooked dot com slash events very excited for the dc show
got some big guests some pretty exciting babies crooked dot com slash events
i want to talk about cringe it's time to talk about cringe uh you and i are aligned on the
topic of cringe there's a lot of people that see what happens at a no kings protest they see
the signs about you know like that make fun of trump they're very earnest they're very sweet
they're they're very hamilton and people call it cringe and you wrote a great piece about it
about about cringe being born of insecurity and fear what is the role of cringe in the resistance
to fascism in america in 2026 uh cringe is just normy behavior and if you don't win the
normies you've just lost like normy is the average person so like anytime you're in a movement and
it's too cool you're losing like that's like it's like too cool like not enough people are with you
if the losers aren't with you if the moms aren't with you if the grandpas aren't with you like
it's like not going well so when you look at mass movements that have actually
succeeded like the idea there wouldn't be some element of like i don't know people dressing up
in weird ways or like having signs that are like okay like i guess you almost got there but there's
something a little bit weird about that like that's the kind of thing that you expect to see and i
also think too like i don't know i've reported on um a variety of protests including no kings protest
in places um across the country and i think that like on social media and on like you know uh you
know tiktok or whatever if you're just like kind of scrolling your feet and you see these signs
divorced from context and divorced from the person it can really like maybe seem a little bit
more embarrassing or weird and when you're in person you're interviewing people like these are
people who and i you know ask them what their signs like what does this mean like they often
actually have like quite moving stories about like why they're doing this like what brought them
there i talked to a very old man i think more than 80 years old in Berkeley, California at the last
no kings protest who said he had never protested in his life until this moment and he felt really
awful about that and that he had realized like what he needed he was on his own he didn't have
friends with him he was filming with him he's like i needed to go do this because i realized like
i can't be a part of the silent um majority and like i don't remember what his sign was but i
remember like it's like the kind of thing that people would have cringed at that would have been
like oh gosh like it's written terribly and like it doesn't look nice and it's not you know whatever
and so you know i think that like things can play different on on social media and that's like
important to think about but but yeah yeah well i'm interested in cringe because i feel like
the cringe it's about it's a description of a feeling you have when you see something right you
cringe you're in bar it's a it's a secondhand embarrassment of a sort and it feels like we're
come we combine a lot of different things into what that is like one is just being uncomfortable
with earnest displays of emotion right just someone who doesn't seem embarrassed of their feelings
which seems like a very like uh and cringing at that seems like very high school very afraid of
what the cool kids are going to say right like that's part of it but then there's also i think
like when when people say that Chuck Schumer is cringe right or Nancy Pelosi is cringe that's
actually i think more of a valid more it's more worth thinking about what that is and that's not
just oh that's an embarrassing display it's that's a performative display that goes beyond their
actual either views or prerogatives so i mean i think what's happening there is when people say
like people say it's cringe that like i don't know like Nancy Pelosi uh you know wore a
kentay and put her a fist up in the air on the ground whatever right like i think that like when
people say that's cringe what they're saying is like i can't believe someone who i had to who i
voted for or is on my team is like doing something so embarrassing i think it's still as internal
and i think the root of the problem there is that people are thinking too much of politics as a
source of identity like if Nancy Pelosi isn't cool that has like nothing to do with me like i do
like like whether i'm cool has no like Chuck Schumer has no bearing on it he came jeffrey says no
bearing on it like it's like not relevant to like my own self perception of myself but as we've
gotten into a place where politics is not just a uh an arena to win specific material gains
but actually a reflection of who you are as a person and what kind of person um uh or what kind
of vibe that you yourself hold um and we see this in a lot of places right like i'm i was just
wondering if you're watching love is blind right now but i just watched spoiler alert i don't
want to like give anything away are you into love is blind i'm not i love okay for the deer listeners
there's about to be a spoiler for love is blind this season i haven't watched this season
every earmuffs in the studio yeah so spoiler alert for for love is blind but like there's one
there's one of the men in the couples is asked by his his fiancee's dad like who did you vote for
and you know he's like you know he like it's like oh yeah i would have i didn't vote but i would
vote for trump and you don't i mean and like like this sort of thing coming up in reality tv shows
dating as like now it speaks to his person's entire uh character which you know i think that's
reasonable to like view that like values shift shift but like that wasn't like normal even like 15-20
years ago for like politics to be so central to like these cultural uh uh uh uh uh uh shows and
movements and i think that to me is to me is a reflection of the fact that um we've lost a lot of
other ways that we describe ourselves and politics is now the place where people derive a lot of
meaning um instead of like whether it's church or the kind of whether you are in part of a club
or whatever so you see this associational decline happening in life and like we've moved all of
that energy towards politics and as a result now i'm like really concerned if people associate
me with something cringe that like uh you know uh elective official does and like you should
free yourself of that so i want to make yeah i i agree with that i i do think it's more i think
it's more than that i think it's more than just identity because a lot of what republicans do
would be cringe to us if we were republicans but we're not and so there is a little bit of the
narcissism of small differences you Lydia Paul Green wrote something about the indigo girls
that cringe implies a naivete that gets coded as feminine a silly belief that human beings through
sincere effort might actually improve themselves and the world and i do think there's a kind of
uh um cynicism that undergirds this which is like if you you're not jaded enough that you don't
understand how the world really works you don't understand how broken things are you're too hopeful
right like i i do think that's part of it too dude what do you think i know i agree i mean i think
that there's like anyone who really works in politics whether it's as a commentator as a journalist
as an activist you know we're much more ideological than the average person and by that i mean we have
like a uh uh uh you know we think about policies in our world views as as connecting in like very
um uh consistent ways whereas when you talked like most voters like they'll say a grab bag of
things that you're like well how do these things go together like how do you support this and also
that like you get you have to tax rich people more if you want medicare for all like you don't
mean like why are these things more consistent and you see this in polling as well where people often
will hold very inconsistent views in ways that seem like they don't make sense but like we are
actually the weird ones for being so ideological and consistent and so i what why i say that is
that i think that when you are someone who's like an expert in your field and whether that's like
politics or whatever it is and you see someone who doesn't do that a lot kind of just like get on
the ice for the first time you're like oh my god that's not how you move the puck oh god that's
like not how you shoot a basketball and like we're like oh god that's like not how you do politics
but in politics like yeah maybe we're the experts but like everyone has the same voice so you don't
we don't get to tell people how to be yeah there's a like a i like my my like i'm my i'm working
towards a theory of cringe that ultimately lands at being anti cringe is in the same way like
a Rockefeller was offended by the strivings of people who'd made their own money
that there's a kind of class aspect to this we're like like look at all that trying and look at
all that effort like with the kind of image in there which like sort of like as if all politics is
in performance for a 32 year old white rich guy who has a very dark comedic aesthetic and who
has seen it all and done it all kind of a thing and like who is that well that's a that's a that's
a kid who went to NYU because they had the money to go that like look who exactly real who is
that high school kid that who's that popular kid you're worried about what do they look like what
are their equities i don't think they're poor i don't think they're poor i mean i'll say this i
think that the the class aspect is like maybe to me less central than the that the age aspect like
we're now in a moment where young people um because the democratization of social media because of like
the a bit like you know just the shifts in culture that have allowed people young people to have
more access to a microphone um which which are good but that means like they're like entering
politics and realizing oh my gosh politics is dominated by like 50 year old white people and like
that's so embarrassing and cringe and like it should be dominated by 43 year old white people exactly
exactly that that will be our utopia but i i mean like i think that it's like just you know young
people always think older people who are in the more cringe like that's just like how life works
in every generation yeah but like now they now have the ability to go online and like by the
thousands and go like ill like what is this and it's like that's like politics like please
go to a rally like go to local government meeting like that's what it is they're in control of all
the power like please
hey lover leave listeners it's me the titular john love it here to tell you that i'm coming
back to washington dc for lover leave it live at the link in theater on april 23rd that's right
spring and dc is all about cherry blossoms and lover leave it bringing you a stack lineup of guests
that's what makes it america's number one late night gay live comedy political podcast
we're so excited to be back and you see it's a tradition now that we come around the time of the
car response and or even though the car is honest in a really no longer has comedians that
believe there's going to be some kind of a magician or a mind mind melder yes a magician yeah
i'm a mentalist a mentalist uh because i guess trump wouldn't know it's also going yeah
yeah yeah that's in there yeah it'll be there yeah there's there's there's a mental case and then
and trump is also going that's yeah tickets won't last long there's someone pretty fast so get
yours now while you still can at crooked dot com slash events very excited for the dc show got
some big guests some pretty exciting maybe quicky dot com slash events
speaking of old people being in charge and having all the power do you want to touch on housing
so trump signed an executive order aiming to quote stop wall street from competing with main street
home buyers this has long been uh uh an issue on the left the effect that private equity
has had on the housing market it seems like trump is trying to co-op this issue but at the same time
the critique of this argument is this doesn't actually have that big of an influence
on the effect of housing would you make of that trump announcement
this has like been my like hobby horse for years john like i feel like i have to like experiment
like do like deep breathing like like short inhalation long exhalation like hearing people like
stay calm i mean this is one of those things where i think the media has done like a severe
disservice to the public and informing them about things that are important like
institutional investors whatever you think about their ability to engage in the housing
market like just putting that aside are like definitionally like a tiny percentage of the housing
market i just pulled up an article i wrote earlier this year called everybody hates renters um
that like you know we have a chart in there that shows this mega investors made up 2.2 percent
of investor purchases of investor purchases in June 2025 so in June 2025 mega investors
made up 2.2 percent of investor purchases that doesn't even include all the purchase that are
non-investors this like this is like a tiny tiny amount even in submarkets where you hear things
like oh wow like 30 percent of homes were bought by investors when you hear that headline
what that is saying is not private equity coming it it means anything from
someone who owns who's buying a second home someone buying a home through an LLC a small
investor who's a developer in your area who's now renting out apartments or multi-family units like
all of those purchases count as investors so like i don't want to get two into the weeds on this
because i could go on this for forever but part of the problem is that there's been such a focus
on this issue um and it is obviously because private equity institutional investors these are like
easy punching bags because people hate them already on on across the political spectrum
but as a result it allows Trump to sound like he's doing something meaningful on an issue that's
actually very important to people housing affordability housing access um homelessness these are
issues people are very very attuned to particularly since 2020 when we saw um prices skyrocket
across the entire country um and this is not going to meaningfully affect anything about people's
ability to afford housing and it is really really disappointing to me that like actors uh in the
media have allowed this story to spread to the point where now yeah he gets a lot of political
wind and say like yeah we ban institutional investments at the housing market i'm like
all right you didn't even do that and also it's it's not gonna do anything so let's talk
about what could make a difference i'm curious where you think we're at in the great yin b housing
wars of that began with the with the last like a couple of years so california passes sb-79 this
is to allow building towards around transit a huge victory uh for trying to address california's
massive housing shortage meanwhile los angeles has been fighting it tooth and nail uh
carren bass our mayor came out against it the city planner just put out a document with all the ways
they're going to try to uh screw with the implementation of sb-79 it feels like nationally the
politics of this really have shifted i think there's been a big debate people are even you know
from mom donny to to the abundance uh uh world people are getting behind the need for more market
rate housing and getting rid of rules that prevent people from building and yet
one of the biggest cities in the country in a democratic bastion we seem unable to address it
what do you think this is one of the most difficult policy issues to make progress on because it
doesn't just require convincing a bunch of people it which i think successfully has happened you
now see across the focal spectrum like mom donny is a yin b champion you have like even trump voters
in arizona and uh trump elected officials in arizona and and texas who are who are passing yin b policies
montana etc um and so you know that is that is great and i'm like super happy that we've moved
this far in this direction to be in favor of building more housing um but like the central critique
has always been that there are so many veto points to actually getting housing built like you can
convince like the majority of people that actually there really should be an apartment building on
this block but if you allow there to be whether it's loopholes and how people can sue um you allow
discretionary approval processes in local government so like if local government doesn't have to just
say like okay you passed all the rules you did all the safety checks this is the homes that have been
approved there you're not building in an environmentally like um dangerous area all that's good we've
given you your permit good to go now instead they can say well you've passed all those things but
we're just gonna sit on this for a while and we're gonna like have 15,000 more hearings and we're
gonna demand more information and we're gonna and like when they do this right like it can seem
facially very neutral you just say like oh they're just asking for more information the communities
upset they want to know more what's going on but that delay like housing delayed is housing denied
like because of the fact that you have made um developers affordable housing developers to private
market developers wait you are increasing the cost of housing and I think that people don't realize
it I mean in in Los Angeles in particular I did I did a story a few years back about about
affordable housing developers in Los Angeles affordable housing developers have a much harder time
with maintaining um control over land in order to build housing on it over successive years
because affordable housing developers are often like getting their financing from a bunch of
different mechanisms and like though there are different rules for how that that money has to be
spent in what time period reporting or whatever and so when they have all that lined up and they go
to the city they say we have all the financing here's our permit we'd love to build some affordable
housing for homeless people and the city says well let's just hold on for a little bit and then
the financing uh rules changed now they have to get uh get it reupped or the the the interest rates
shift such that like the financing no longer pencils out for that project those projects just
disappear and the city never has to say like actually we don't want that anymore and Los Angeles
like you know we've seen this like prop triple a to pass like I don't know like a decade ago now
which was in Los Angeles meant to uh provide I was a billion dollars for affordable housing I mean like
like so much of that has yet to be actually spent and because because people don't want to fix
these problems yeah the uh there was just uh uh uh uh some money that LA returned because
was unable to spend it in time just free money that they were given for uh uh uh global development
projects just sort of gone you've started a media company final topic the argument what have you
learned in your transition from being part of a larger media company to starting your own um so
many things john so much I'd never managed that many people before now we have a great team now we
have a um we're 10 people uh the argument magazine is is is is is is it's going strong but at the same
time management is just like it's a whole different ballgame I had no idea how how much stuff I was
making my editors or managers do for me in the past I don't know like reflecting I actually reached
back to my old editors and I was like hey guys like sorry about that and they're like you it's a
circle of life but I think one of the coolest things that I that I've learned about this is um and part
of the reason for starting the argument which is meant uh an argument really focused on political
liberalism and how to reinfigure it and um really make it meaningful to people's lives by focusing
on um the core issues whether those are economic material growth whether it's um gender and family
which is you know what we were talking about earlier today or about AI and technology and society um
and and how technology policy should interact with society these these big issues like what can
liberal ideas actually say to them is it's something that I think there's a lot of hunger for like
people are not just looking for a technocratic answer to their question they're looking for a
framework that they can that can feel like uh ideologically true to them and feel like it's
actually speaking to the broader questions they have about meaning and where they get it from and
what politics is supposed to do and what it's supposed to be like and there are things a lot of people
who are unsatisfied both by the kind of like moderate just kind of like skewed the median voter
like angle that a lot of politics is felt like and also like the way that progressivism felt for
many much the 2020s and the uh you know the late odds where it felt like you're not allowed to um
you know engage in meaningful debate over questions over which there's a lot of uncertainty or
these are these are not places where you can actually um uh you know have reasonable disagreement
without just shutting down the conversation and that's why we're called the argument is like we
platform a lot of different views in contention with one another and I'm constantly
publishing people that I disagree with and you know we have this this this this this column called
madlibs where I just argue with people and I just think that like that's really important to do
because most people don't have my views I'm like not the average voter like they don't agree with me
on a lot of stuff and if you don't figure out ways to talk to them then you're either consigning
yourself to okay maybe I can hold on to New York and Los Angeles and live in my safe haven and
you know fuck everyone who can't make it here or you're consigning yourself to losing forever
and that's something that I'm not willing to do well that's good news because everyone can't
move to Los Angeles because we can't build a fucking house for people to live in here so uh
Jerusalem wait wait bring that around that was great yeah thanks Jerusalem Jevnes I'm such a fan
thank you so much I just want to sum up where we're at just because we covered a lot of topics uh
one tariffs bad but he's probably gonna be able to do it anyway uh to cringe good uh cringe good
three uh we have to be able to talk about why we're losing ground on trans issues if we want to
protect trans people for we have to build houses yes and five arguments good arguments good arguments
great argue with people we covered a lot of ground Jerusalem is just so great thank you so
so fun thanks for having me I'm such a fan of the show I'm glad to be here and that's our show
thank you so much to Jerusalem Demsys for joining john Tommy and I will be back in your feeds with
a new episode on Tuesday morning and that's it if you want to listen to pod save america ad free and
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this episode and everything we do here at cricket pod save america is a cricket media production
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of america beast
hey love it or leave it listeners it's me the titular john love it here to tell you that I'm coming
back to washington dc for love to leave it live at the link in theater on april 23rd that's right
spring and dc is all about cherry blossoms and love it or leave it bringing you a stack lineup of
guests that's what makes it america's number one late night gay live comedy political podcast
we're so excited to be back to dc it's a tradition now that we come around the time of the car
response and or even though the car is honest in a really no longer has comedians not believe there's
going to be some kind of a magician or a mind mind melder yes a magician yeah my a mentalist a
mentalist uh because i guess trump wouldn't know it's also going yeah yeah yeah that's it there yeah
it'll be there yeah there's there's there's a there's a mental case and then and trump is also going
there's tickets won't last long there's someone pretty fast so get yours now while you still can at
crooked dot com slash events very excited for the dc show got some big guests some pretty exciting
maybe quicky dot com slash events
