Sam Stein: The Ridiculously Unserious President

I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Thursday, March the 12th. I want to bring a little comfort

food, a little porridge, a little ice cream. You know, whatever it is, makes you feel good

inside. A little crawfish at two-fei. And it is my friend and years of managing editor of

the bulwark, Samuel Stein. How you doing? Good. I, every, every one of those was great except for

porridge. I don't want to... Why did porridge come to mind? I don't know. I don't know. When's the

last time you had porridge Tim? I can't recall the last time I had porridge. What's your middle name?

I was going to do your middle name. It's Ignatius. No. It's... Do we have to? Ignatius would be Catholic.

So, it's something Jewish. What's an eye? What's a Jewish eye name?

The Ratchet. There's a good story here. It's short. My middle name is Irving. It's named after

my grandfather Irving Fine, who was a famous composer in his day, tragically, that at the age of 49.

But look him up. Good friends with Aaron Copeland, Leonard Bernstein. He wrote some great

classical music bits, started the music program at Brandeis. Well, Stein family history for you.

Wow. It seems fake and it seems like your parents are just big Irving crystal acolytes and

we're trying to come up with a different, different reason. You don't want to give Bill the credit.

We have a lot to talk about. You said you're nervous. Yeah. Well, doing talk about why before we

get the news. Yeah. So, I listened to the podcast today with Saga and I feel like he's like a

seven-course meal-type guest. He's talking about like bad missiles and he's reading the front pages

of the Korean press and he's got all these analogies to... What more or less do you do it?

He's doing General Westmoreland spooch bits. And I'm like de Giorno's. You're going to enjoy it,

but it's not good for you. And so, I'm a little bit worried. My intellect is not on

level. And yeah, I woke up a little bit early today in sweats thinking about this.

Here's an important thing, Sam. There's difference between intellect and wisdom.

Well, I don't have that either. I think that there was a shortage of the latter.

That's what we appreciate him coming on. Now, he was great. Let's talk about the news. We're still at war

with Iran. We're still climbing the mountain of conflict. We're still having a...

What did Trump call it? An excursion? An incursion, I think is what he meant.

Yeah, he means incursion. I think he just doesn't either. He doesn't understand the difference

between the words or no one's bothered to correct him or both, but he definitely means incursion.

He keeps saying excursion. Yeah. An excursion is like we're taking a short little excursion to

buy you. With our porridge. Yeah. We're doing an incursion. Okay, so here's the latest from the

incursion excursion. Yesterday, Iraq and Oman closed oil terminals after two tankers were attacked

and left burning off Iraq's coast. The IEA said on Thursday that the war is because the largest

supply destruction in the history of the global oil market, 800,000 people were displaced in Lebanon,

amid continuing Israeli strikes on Hezbollah. Cargo ship was struck by an unknown projectile near

Dubai. There's like a style section piece about rich people that are never going back to Dubai after

the trauma they've experienced. Early assessments for the UN refugee agency find that up to 3.2

million people have been displaced in Iran since the war started. We are continuing our onslaught

onto Iran about 1,500 people dead there. Eight American soldiers dead. So that's the state of affairs.

Donald Trump says we've already won basically. It doesn't feel that way. Yeah, why does he keep saying

we've won? We obviously haven't won. Although he does say we won, but we're also still fighting. He has

this weird way of justifying this. I think this is a mess. I mean, it's a mess, right? I suppose

I would feel differently about it all if I understood why we were doing this. And I'm not really sure

anyone's given a convincing explanation for why we're doing this. Yeah, generally speaking,

like if you're going to kill somebody, it's a good start to have a reason. Let's say someone

said, what's your interpretation of their reason? Why would you say? I would say that Israel feels

a real and legitimate security concern with Iran. They felt that way for a long time. Israel's

military is demonstrated like really impressive capabilities between the Pager attack and the

first 12-day war with Iran and other the ability to to capitate Iranian leaders. And Israel has

a not imminent but like real security concern. And they convinced Donald Trump to do it with them

because Donald Trump like enjoys seeing things go boom. I guess that would be the reason that I

would offer. You mentioned Israel like four times in that. And I mean, it's just like,

but like what else? Obviously, we would not be here if Israel did more.

Right. Okay. So that's like Donald, it's just like obvious. Let's say Israel didn't exist.

Sure. Let's say that, you know, you know, like that that, you know, that was entirely

well, let me try to paint like the most sort of generous reason for this. This is the most

generous interpretation of what we're doing, which is the Iranians posed a regional threat,

but also to a degree, a threat to the United States through ballistic missiles through their

ability to disrupt. Do you want to agree? To what degree? I don't know. To some degree. A

comedy degree. A two degrees. It depends. Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll we'll go back to the degrees.

And that you couldn't live in a world where, you know, they were threatening us like this.

And I just even that doesn't really make sense because we were living in a world. And like that,

one of the most interesting rationales was one thing. I think it's Tom Cotton. They're like, you

know, they've been an imminent threat for 47 years. It's like, yeah, we've lived with this for 47

years, right? Like we have. And Trump was already president once during those 47 years. We lived through

with Trump. I guess when I look at what's happening in all the sort of disruption and the loss of

life and the tragic killing of these girls in this elementary school and the displaced people

and the costs and the trauma and everything that comes along with it, I can't accept it because

it's hard to understand what any of it is for. That I think is one of the primary failures of

the administration and really Trump, honestly, because he seems so much more tuned to trying to

win some sort of daily PR battle around the war than he is about actually prosecuting it and

explaining it to the American people. To put a finer point on this, both our colleagues,

William Crystal and Jonathan last were smeared yesterday on the podcast as warm,

hungering bloodthirsty neocons, who are to blame for a lot of things. And both of them have

newsletters in the last 24 hours about this topic that presheds a little bit of light on. I think

your confusion about what we're exactly it is that we're doing there. JBL's yesterday,

it was had my dire straits, the Iran Wars run by idiots. And I don't want to speak for them,

but I think that both JBL and Bill and myself would like to be open to interesting proposals

considered on how to help the Iranian people find freedom from a horrific regime. But what they're

doing is not that. JBL goes in depth to white papers that have been written by experts

over the past quarter century, talking about how Iran has prepared for this moment.

And some of the obvious things that they would do in reaction and our government seem to

either not know or not care or not think about that or not bring in the people who did know

when they were making the decisions. Bill writes this warning about how they should rename

this epic failure. I mean, I'm not going to read Bill's email headline because it's the perfect

bill email. I'll read it. Sing goddess of the fury of Trump. The wartime president is focused on

footwear. It's a classic bill piece. There's references to Homer and Elliott and Achilles,

all in all, though, the summation of it was, I Trump don't know what he's doing. Like this is

all just about megalomania. At that point, I mean, it's like if even people that like

hypothetically could possibly have been sympathetic to a commission are looking at this and saying,

this is madness. It's insane. It is done in the most stupid way possible. I think that kind of

tells you what you need to know. Yeah. And I've seen people say, you know, and I don't want to speak

on Bill's behalf. He can do that very much himself. Let's see him on Monday. I've seen people say,

well, you know, Bill's just cladded by TDS and anything Trump does. He's going to pose like,

how could this guy of all people oppose what's going on in Iran? And I just don't see that. I mean,

like, Bill is pretty open-minded. I talked him all the time and I've edited the newsletters he's

written about Iran. I think he would be supportive of a war that was based around some principles

that he believed in. And this is not that. I think it'd be supportive of a war that was done

with proper and professional execution, too, but this is not that either. And just if you

kind of narrowly isolate the issue of the Iranian people and this idea that they deserve a government

that is more liberal democratic and respectful of human rights and all the things that I think

Bill legitimately believes in. I mean, what about this war has been pursued to that. We're going

to end up with a more autocratic regime with a younger, more despotic, Ayatollah. Or maybe they

kill him and see what the next person is. And it's like dealer's choice. We're kind of just...

Well, we killed the people who we thought were going to be good for new Ayatollahs.

The Iranian people are seeing their capital city absolutely, you know,

bomb to smithereens. They've seen schools bomb. They're seeing their water supply. They're all

absolutely decimated. They have oil rain coming down from above. Like, is that really supportive of

their rights and their hopes and aspirations? There's nothing that would give you a sense that

this is being done for the purpose of helping a beleaguered Iranian populace. And I think

everything indicates that this is being done to JVL's point by people who don't really actually

pay attention to the details. I've got JVL's calm spot on.

Yeah. And I think, again, just to look back on the Israel part of it, I do think that

I can be read the press there. There's not like a clear end goal, but I think that the people in

charger Israel are kind of happy with any out. If it's a weakened Iranian regime with fewer missiles

that could they could shoot at Israel, but a similar radicalism, not great, not the best outcome

by still improvement. If it's total chaos and they have internal fighting and warring,

so they're focused on each other, not their neighbors, that's a win, right? If hypothetically,

you get somebody who's more moderate and even the best case scenario, right? So I don't think that

they have like a plan for the outcome for the end gain. That seems to be exciting, though, right?

It's like, why would a failed nation state in Iran be a win for the region? I mean,

what you'll end up happening is no one who can control anything. It's at least understandable,

though, because they're getting rockets fired at them all the time. You know, I think the point

is that Trump is just along for the ride with that. But I hear you. In the refugee situation,

one thing I didn't get to is soccer. I wish I'd got two more because it's something

that he's good on, but we're spending too much time on the stuff he's good on. I want to make

sure we had a little time for me to dunk on him is the comparison to Syria. Like,

I serious so much smaller than Iran. Yeah. Like it just didn't like the number of

humans that live there. And like the Syrian refugee crisis had ripples throughout the entire world.

Syria. Yeah. Yeah. So today like Syrian refugee crisis explains like why Brexit happened

possible? You know what I mean? Like there's a whole, yeah, you know, the whole

Western world and obviously the Middle East dealt with the ramifications of that.

And so if you end up in that situation that's even like in the ballpark of that in Iran,

given the number of people that live there, I just it's unimaginable. It's cataclysmic. I mean,

we're talking not just about refugees. You're talking about famine, disease, you know,

the potential for more terrorist attacks, guerrilla tactics that JVL laid out. It's unfathomable

to imagine. And then just the scope of human suffering is really, you know, it obviously

goes underappreciated, but like we can't lose sight of that. One more thing is kind of back to

we don't know we're doing. And I don't see anything that we're doing helping support like

making the Iranian people feel like we're looking after their best interests to the bottom of the

girl school. I think it was yesterday the other day kind of there'd been some discussion about how

maybe it was the AI targeting and Claude that was how that happened. As more reporting comes out

and it kind of shut up to the remaining reporters who are on this beat after places like the Washington

Post eviscerated their Middle East reporting. You saw the Reuters times, much of other places are

doing good reporting. What we're learning from them is that it may have actually just been out of

date targeting like that there was the school is near a military base and like this was, you know,

the things had changed in the past seven years or whatever since whatever the targeting they're

using. Just deeply tragic. I don't even know how much of what more there is to say about it. And

the fact that the president of the United States just continues to lie about it is unfathomable.

Unconscionable. Unconscionable. Let's just be real about this. Every bit of evidence now points to

you, including our own review. The own United States Review, Plymer Review says we fucked up.

We did this. We are responsible like whether it was cloud or, you know, old day data is kind of

irrelevant, but. And it's a little relevant just in the case of like you'd be pretty alarming if

our new AI tool. Are you saying he's mixing it? Does this make the case for AI? I don't know.

No, not really. It's just like it's good to know that so far like yeah, isn't hallucinating and

trying to kill young girls. Like that's all it's just a fact. It's just a fact that hasn't happened

yet. We thought it might have happened. So that's the only reason that's. Wow. That is that is quite

the silver lining. That's the silver lining. Just like we should know whether the AI, the defense

department's AI is hallucinating targets as girl schools. That's always the exact cloud or like

yeah. Trump should be, I mean, a normal empathetic human being let alone president would say

something to the effect of this is a tragedy. No matter what we're looking into it,

we're still investigating it, but no matter what, it is a tragedy and it's horrifying to

imagine what these families and people going through. This president has not even acknowledged

that this exists. He's denying reality. What in the front to like basic humanity that he can't

even bring himself to just say, I'm sorry that this happened. He wouldn't respect someone who couldn't

do this in normal life. Well, exactly. I don't respect him. So that keeps me nice and even.

The cost is nothing that we have. I mean, there have been some speculation, et cetera,

not you can even trust the fucking Pentagon who knows, but Pentagon, the Pentagon tells Congress

at the first week of the war to seven days cost 11.3 billion. So about a billion and a half a

day. It's pretty significant. Not there. I think from my perspective, I'll just, can we just put

on our just to cliche hats here. From my perspective, it's somebody who's concerned about the 30 plus

trillion dollars we have in debt. It seems not great. That once again, we're doing absolutely nothing

to care about that. Maybe from you as a former Huffington Post lib perspective, you might look at

this and say, isn't that about what the Obamacare subsidy is starting to cost 11.3 billion?

If we keep going at this pace for a couple more weeks, I think it's three more weeks. It will

be the cost of the Obamacare subsidies, which we couldn't afford. Can afford too expensive.

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joined delete me dot com slash borr code borr could a bunch of other stuff to get to. I have a section

here titled Louisiana themed fuck ups from the administration. One is related to the Iran war

and then we'll move on to some politics. There is something called New Orleans, Yuria.

I'm not going to pretend like I know about this. What is that? It is Yuria is basically fertilizer.

It is kind of natural gas and ammonia and nitrogen and you get fertilizer.

I was listening to the AdLots podcast. My favorite dork podcasts are pods of the world

they usually fall asleep though. AdLots, which does like random economic stuff. Joe Weiss is on

Tracy Elliott. They've been on the show. Derek Thompson's show I had him on last week.

I come up on a nerd out on stuff. Those are some of my favorites. I was listening to AdLots show

and I was like, oh, the New Orleans, Yuria. I should care about this. The Port of New Orleans is

the primary hub for importing and storing this fertilizer. It is coming though from the Persian Gulf.

Shucks. Gotta go through the straight of four moves. 45% of the world's tradable Yuria comes from

the Persian Gulf. China has also has some of the remaining 55% but they have an export ban because

China cares about their own people and they ban the exporting of Yuria so they don't ever have

a shortage. So what we're going to see now as we head to the spring harvest is farmers paying more.

I mean, some of them have already their fertilizer but like paying more. Long story short,

this is just going to lead to additional costs, not just in gas prices but in food and grocery

prices because the trucks are now paying higher in diesel, driving the food around the country

and the farmers are paying higher in fertilizer because we have a fertilizer shortage. So

there's another fallout for this. I was talking with Katherine Rampel about this yesterday.

We did a little thing on the takes feed for those who haven't followed. You should check

out the takes feed. The economic ramifications are pretty wild and they're going to get much worse

assuming this keeps going because precisely what you said. I mean, so much is dependent on

not just fertilizer but fuel and Trump himself has been very adamant like, well,

if you bring good down gas prices, everything gets brought down and he'd talk about like,

you know, doughnuts. You know, he had this famous thing where he's like, you know, cost of

doughnuts, it depends on gas. And what's been crazy to me is to watch Republicans in Congress try

to rationalize this where there's just like, I think one person I think I forget who was was

just like, you know, well, they're all like freedom isn't free. We should play, you should

pay for freedom. Who's fighting for freedom? Freedom, like you can't use the George W Bush talking

points if you're not doing the George W Bush war. I'm sorry, like you can't do freedom isn't

free for this unless we're fighting for the freedom of the Iranian people. In which case, I think

people are going to have to be on the ground in Iran. Sure. Well, that's the thing you don't

free people by bombing them. That doesn't work. That's the benign time. Someone else was just like,

well, you know, these people are kind of poor and they don't really understand how to have

to do that. That was Senator Heustead. He's great to know how to get shared around where he is

just like, you know, the poor people don't really understand how to manage their budgets

at the grocery store. I can't believe you said that. The thing is going to spell out of control.

And it's hard to like draw it back. And here's like the dark irony of all this is like,

they basically have inflation under control. Like they weren't right. Obviously,

prices were going down. And that was a stupid thing to to promise because you don't want prices

to go down because I'm using a recession. But like inflation in the February was down to like

basically the target. It was like a little, you know, you want 2% it was like 2.8% or something.

It was like how in housing was it was the reason essentially that it was higher. And it almost

gotten back to normal. But then they do this war of choice. And it's like not only has gas

prices just skyrocketed. And immediately, but it's going to trickle down to like all the other

shit that regular people pay for. Yeah. 100%. On top of that, here's the crisis. This will be the

Tim Cook section because this is a real crisis for me. Tim Cook or Tim Cooks. Me. Okay. Tim Cook.

I sometimes Tim Cooks about Tim Cook. I've had a few of those. We have a crawfish crisis in

Louisiana. And this affects me. Obviously, grocery and gas prices affect me personally, but

nothing affects me more than this. I want to read this story from Steven

Mark Cantal and the advocate. It's spring and Charlie Johnson's crawfish processing plant

in Bowbridge should be humming. This crawfish peeling and cook room is usually staffed by Mexican

migrant workers along with a handful of older locals. On a typical day, they'd rotate between

Spanish and country music as they work. Some employees have worked to the plant for 14 years and

can process 4,000 pounds of crawfish me today, which is important because I'm eating like 5 pounds

today myself. The peeled tails are shipped to restaurants and grocery stores. But on Friday,

nearing peak crawfish season, typically, raucous room is silent and empty. That's because crawfish

processors across Louisiana say a shortage of temporary work pieces has left them without the

migrant labor. They depend on forcing plants to sit idle during the busiest part of the season.

It's not like that they were hiring illegals. It's not even that. They've broken down the entire

immigration system. They don't want new people coming into the country, so we don't have seasonal

workers temporary work pieces that we needed to carry out important services like

make sure I can get my fucking crawfish during crawfish season. This is an outrage. And it also,

you know, crawfish inflation probably won't affect you, Sam, up in the Northeast. But it will affect

me, but there are other examples of this. This is just the one that I care about personally,

but where we're not getting seasonal workers. Fruit's going to be more expensive, vegetables

are more expensive. And like yesterday, it was the thing that maybe I got the most mad about or

second most mad about with with soccer when we were arguing about this and he was talking about like

Tim, you're treating these humans like they're utils. And like, the only care about them for your

neoliberal goals. It's like, no, actually, I care about them as individual humans and don't think

that we should be shipping them to foreign gulags. And I also simultaneously think that like

Americans should be able to have cheap fresh fruit and produce. And if that is supported by,

you know, having some temporary migrant labor, then like great. Like what's the what's the problem

with that? Here's the alternative. Fucking Charlie Johnson's crawfish plan is empty.

And once you go for the crawfish, you've gone too far. Yeah, this is this is not great. And I don't

get Saga's point. I mean, this is a win-win, frankly, for the US society. They want the work.

We benefit from the work. The American economy clearly benefits work. Click any statistical

breakdown of that. And now anecdotally, we're seeing what happens when you don't have this.

So this is holistic too. It's like, you know, across the board, it's not just seasonal workers,

obviously, you know, everyone from the seasonal workers who pick your fruit to the foreign

PhD students who would normally come and study here are like, no, thanks, or we can't get in.

And then I saw this morning, the one, the one group that we have been letting in the white

Africaners, did you see this guy? Oh, I love this. My favorite story of the week. Thank you for

bringing it up. The guy comes in one, at least one guy comes in. He's like, actually, this is

too violent. I'm going back to South Africa. It's too violent. Too many guns and everything

costs too much in America. I'm going to go back to South Africa. Yeah. There we go. The refugees,

the white refugees that Stephen Miller is bringing in. Look, I've been raging about the

administration's immigration policies from the start. And I just, I can't imagine anything

that could have gotten me more upset about it, but fucking with crawfish season. It's the final straw.

Okay. It's all going to be talking to my Louisiana neighbors about this impeachment at this point.

I mean, impeachment or at least, I mean, Bill Cassidy, where are you? Like, Bill Cassidy,

if you aren't going to save us from the measles by blocking RFK junior from running health and

human services, like at least you could fucking ensure we have people to work in the crawfish

processing plant so we can have our crawfish. At least you could do that. Bill Cassidy,

are you completely worthless? Where's your governor? He's like too busy with green lands. Yeah,

he's yeah. Where are those boats, by the way? There's a big announcement, Jeff Landry and

Donald Trump made a bigger announcement. Oh, he's the medical boat. We're in a sense of medical

boats to Greenland. What happened? Do we have an update on those boats? Have they made it to Nuke?

We got more following up on these random stories. We should just have a feature in the newsletter.

That's a great email. The administration asked them what the status is on the boats that are

going to Nuke. It's a great idea. I'm going to do that. I would like to know about that. Okay.

I also just like to know generally what they think. This was a strategic imperative for our safety

that we take Greenland and it seems like we've got our eye off the ball now that we're like

raining hellfire down on Iran. Thank you, Bill. Next. Yeah. Speaking of immigration policy,

we have a new Secretary of Homeland Security. Great news for everybody. If you're getting bored

of Sam's stick around at the end, we are going to be giving you our updated cabinet rankings,

which I know is whatever is the reason why Sam's on the show today. So we can't include Mark Wayne.

Mullin. Former. Is it really Mark Quayne? No, it's been Mark Quayne. Mark Quayne. Mullin. Former

semi-pro MMA fighter. It was three in his career, one win over Huggy Bear, and then two wins over

another guy, the same guy in a Tulsa semi-pro MMA. Yeah, what's your fucking record, Tim?

Well, I got into one fight on time of circle that I think was a win back freshman year of college,

and then there was another time when I was trash talking somebody to bar, also probably

freshman year of college. I was pretty hot as an 18-year-old, and it was like it was a bicycle

themed bar in Denver and I was trash talking to guy. My friend said we should leave the guy

followed me out, and then one of my buddies was a golden club boxer. He smoked him in the face,

and then I kind of just ducked, and so that's another win. That's like 0.5. No, that's like half a

minute. No, no, no. 1.5. Yeah, anyway, they're going to have to vote, I guess Donald Trump just wants

to name him. His secretary has done how it works, has done a lot to approve him, presume he'll get

through. But you know, there's been a lot of focus, I think, on the scandals around Kristi

Nome, her personal life, and her spending, and her physical appearance, and you know, the

snuff films that she's put out, like all that kind of stuff. But like on the actual policy,

there's not a ton of evidence that things are going to be very different. And Adrian wrote about

this earlier this week for us, Mark Wayne Mullin said, Renee Good, engaged in domestic terrorism.

He called out, it's Freddie Durange. He said, the Liam Ramos story was false. He said, I should

remain masked. He's called for the National Guard to go into the cities. He's opposed judicial

warrants. He, it looks like there's a review happening of CBP policies, and they're instituting

a lot of stuff that the little guy, little Miss Vivino had been putting in place now. They've gotten

rid of him, but some of the policies, I think are going to be in the new rulebook. So, you know,

there's a little bit of a new boss, same as the old boss, just kind of a different face situation

here. So I guess in one sense, the scandals, like those sort of like high profile scandals involving

personality and corruption will be gone, right? It's not going to be, you know, there's no jets

where there's a bedroom that may or may not be for, you know, hanging out with Cory. But on the

actual substance, it's very much the same. I mean, we don't know. Yeah, we don't know. We don't

know what Cory's willing to do to stay inside the graces of the second. Anything it takes, Cory.

It's back on Cameo. Is he? He's back on Cameo, yeah, helping people with their poopies all day.

Well, yeah, but on the actual substance, I mean, look, this, and I do think this actually

matters because I, you know, I think my hope in my belief is that a lot of the public

revulsion over Trump's immigration policies had to do with how they react to things that people

saw with their eyes. So you saw the shooting of Renee Good, you saw the shooting of Alex

Prattie, and then you saw Christine Omanichin's saying, well, these racks of domestic terrorism and

so on and so forth. And people looked at them like, what the hell are you talking about? Like,

this is not, we can see this. You realize there's video footage of this stuff.

And if you have someone like Mark Wayne Mullen, who is just going to echo exactly that,

I don't think it does, it means any sort of fundamental shift in how they're doing this.

And we know, and let me just say they, we know that they do want to at least pretend like they

are shifting, right? It's not just that they have sack gnome and replaced her. It's that there's

leaking of these stories of, you know, their political principles going to the hill and saying,

like, don't talk about mass deportations. You know, we need to just, you know, sand down the

rough ridges. So they care about this stuff, but this guy is just going to do exactly what

Stephen Miller says. The other thing that's like happening simultaneously to all of this is

we still aren't funding DHS. I mean, like the DHS has a ton of funding from the last,

right? In the most recent budget negotiations, you know, DHS is still in a partial shutdown,

which is affecting airports, affecting FEMA, affecting other types of security. I have seen

some reports of like pretty gutted other parts of DHS, you know, things that you would think

that they should be focused on child trafficking, things of that nature. And so the Mullen

confirmation will be happening simultaneously to this, like debate over whether to fund DHS.

I don't see how any Democrats can vote for it. This website is Federman. Federman's already

said even for it. Yeah. And so how does the log jam break on that? Like in a normal world what

you'd happen, if we go back to 2013, what would happen in a situation like this is the incoming

secretary would make some concessions to the other party. And as part of the confirmation hearing,

like they would fund the department and confirm that person and they would make some changes.

It's not going to happen this time. Well, in 2013, it would require, I believe, 60 votes to get

this guy confirmed, they changed the rules. So now they don't have to make those concessions.

And it's not definitely not going to happen because this administration views any sort of reform

as an indictment of something they've done or as an admission that they did something wrong. So

if you're like, well, we'll vote for Mark Wayne, Mark Wayne Mullen, if you, you know, let's say,

just throw something out there, institute a, you know, no mask and policy for ICE agents.

This administration would say, no, they would say absolutely not. You're going to doxies people,

you know, we weren't doing anything wrong. How does the shutdown end?

I mean, there's been, there's been negotiations happening on the Hill. They don't seem to be going

anywhere. There's been an offer from Democrats to fund, for instance, the TSA and all the other

agencies other than ICE and CBP. And that's not going anywhere because that would just isolate

even further. So I don't know. I mean, there was, we reported that Republicans had been, you know,

hinting to Democrats, hey, if we turn against Christie, no, I mean, we get her out.

Would that unlock these votes for DHS funding and the Democrats I talked to on the Hill or like,

no, absolutely not. That's nothing. And because of this, because there's no distinction between

Christie and Mark Wayne Mullen, other than, you know, the $200 million ad campaign with her

on a horse and the jet with Cory and all that stuff. Well, I guess that's a distinction.

But maybe he'll be doing an ad campaign on a horse too. I don't know. We don't know.

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All right, let's move forward to some other politics stuff. Related to this,

now in Oklahoma Senate seat opens up. Right. This is maybe my second favorite story of the

week behind the white South Africans going home. It was America's two expensive and violent.

This is from your old pals of Politico. Governor Stit, the old government who's been kind of

unexpectedly, I'll just demonstrate a little bit of independence at times from Trump.

Oh yeah. That's not exactly the state you'd have thought to hear that. But,

boy, this report is, well, it's discouraging. It's really just reflective of

the idiocracy meets corruption of the Trump 2.0 era. Stit is meeting a Trump today

with that central seat. Why? I don't know. Who cares what Trump thinks about that?

He has no, it's Governor of Oklahoma's job, but I guess you got to go kiss the ring.

I think in any administration, the president would probably want to have a little bit of say, right?

I guess. We do live in a federalist country. We don't have a king. I guess you're still stuck

in 18-year-old Tim. Yeah. I am. I am. I'm going to get my fucking apartment constitution right here.

I grabbed, I brought it back up. Is that what you brought to the fight when everybody had punched

like I had? You weighed the pocket constitution. My fighting happened right after my pocket

constitution phase. I think I was like, I might have just did a white lie there to kind of

preserve my ego. I do. I think 18-year-old was pocket constitution Tim. I think probably 20-year-old

was fine. I just did. I was a little embarrassing to say. So I said 18. I can't find it. I got my

pocket constitution around here somewhere, but we are still a federalist side. Anyway, Kevin Stitt

is considering two people from all on the seat. His own senior advisor. So I've never heard of.

Or oil magnate and Trump ally Harold Ham. Oh, yeah. One of the largest donors to Trump super packs

going back all the way to 2016. Huge supporter has dumped tens of millions of dollars into Trump

in his packs. The idea that this guy gets a Senate seat would be like to I mean, third world

banana republic shits. Quite literally buying the Senate seat. It's incredible. And Trump probably

would love it and demand an exchange that he like put more oil out onto the market. And you know,

if Kevin's if Stitt doesn't do it, do you think like Trump, you know, takes FEMA contracts away?

I mean, we're talking the range of possibilities for retribution and grift is incredible.

And this one. Love it. We'll keep an eye on it. It's simultaneously thinking about corruption

and lack of seriousness and etc. We've got John Corning down in Texas. You go across the Red River.

So what's happening there? So the Republican Senate primary went to run off.

Telleriko won in the first round on the Democratic side, Paxton Corning.

Corning had won very narrowly as a three person race. Certain hadn't won. But Corning had the most

votes very narrowly over Paxton. Trump kind of throws out this trial balloon basically that says,

hey, I'm thinking about endorsing Corning. And I think that whoever I endorse, whoever I don't

endorse should just drop out for the sake of the party. Paxton doesn't like that none too much.

Paxton says, I'll drop out if Corning and the Senate passes the SAVE Act, which they can't do

without breaking the filibuster. The SAVE Act is this kind of preposterous federal crackdown on

voting rules in various states. Makowski said she was against the yesterday. So it'd make you

disenfranchised so many Alaskans. And so like, that's going to worth things stand. In the meantime,

ton of Oppo dropping like my megapheed is just all Corning Oppo just about how he's a Rhino

cock or whatever. And the polling is coming out showing that Trump endorsement might not even

really matter that much in this case because Maga people want Ken Paxton. So it's an interesting

evolving dynamic. John Corning is trying to navigate that and get the Trump endorsement and

survive. Have his political career survive. And he's also a little grumpy about that. It seems

kind of getting to him. And here was John Corning walking through the halls of Congress yesterday.

Previously said that Nuking the filibuster would be taking a wrecking ball to Senate rules.

Is that no longer true? I said I'd be open to reforms. What would you say to those who say

you just change your mind to win the president's endorsement? I'd say that's not true.

You also said that it's I think I think we're through going away.

Think we're through go away. Hand in the face of the reporter. Didn't want any follow-ups on that

because obviously that's exactly what he did. Yeah, it would be amazing if he was like,

yeah, that's what I did it. I mean, I needed to win Trump's endorsement. I love it. I

fucking love it. I love it. Get rid of the filibuster. None of these guys actually believe in it.

I mean, come on. Do they? They're all willing to throw. Maybe there's like three of them that are

unwilling to change their opinion when it comes down to their own career. But two of them are gone,

mansion and cinema. I guess McConnell still likes this stuff, but like his career has done anyway,

just get rid of it. Can you send him a condemned corner yet? Have you seen it? She's a new

columnist, right? She got a new columnist gig. I forget. It was for some weird

ale monitor or something. I don't know. The Washington reporter or something. Yeah. Yeah,

why should I be writing a column about this? Yeah, I don't know. What do you make of it?

You probably like the filibuster, right? I do like the filibuster. I did like it generally. I

mean, I always was, I was for the talking. I got the way that the filibuster has been used

as ridiculous. It's like preposterous. It's like, okay, well, wait, now it's a 60 vote threshold

for everything like that. Silly and not what it was meant for. I, you know,

as somebody who likes drama and speechifying and politics and, you know, if somebody feels so

passionately about something, you know, that they're going to go and stay and try to block it.

Okay. Like, great. Like, let's, let's, that's fine. Let's do that. The current system is bad.

I'm starting to even evolve. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Where's that pocketbook

constitution? Where is the pocket? I guess I said, I maybe it's down to here. Can you find the

page that, find the page that points to the filibuster in there? Okay, buddy? It's not in there.

They never imagined this shit. Come on. Thank you, note from Pete Buttigieg right there. I can't

find. Oh, wow. I got, I got, I got Tyler's. Thank you, cards for when he worked in the

capital. There's my favorite note from Barack Obama. Got some stationery. Yeah. Okay. It's in

here somewhere. Anyway, yeah, at this, at this point, we don't even have a Congress. So like,

if you're getting rid of the filibuster, like, makes Congress actually do work, then I guess I

before that. Trump was back out in the streets yesterday. He's been in his bubble and he decided

to go back out, do a rally, you know, the jerk off dance was happening. I grit his,

how your soldier's dying. In the Middle East, he was golfing this weekend. Yesterday, he was doing

the jerk off dance to YMCA. And he went to Kentucky for the very important purpose of retribution

against Tom Massey, because Tom Massey embarrassed him over the Epstein files. And so Trump is there

trying to support Tom Massey's opponent in that primary, which will be watching Jake Paul,

the MMA finder was there with like very sweaty armpits, like sweating through his suit.

And he went on stage and Trump endorsed him for a for a future office.

Am I reaction to that? Are we playing a clip? Yeah. There's no, but that's just no. There's no

thing that's just we don't play Trump's voice on. Yeah. This gets back to the, the first part of

our discussion about Iran. So like, take me from Jake Paul back to Iran. I'm going to get you

back there, which is, it's very evident that Trump, you know, all he cares about, I mean,

it's not in the revelatory observation here, but like it's all, it's all about just, he has very

little attention to Spain. He just cares about the news headlines and he's just, he's doing things

that do not in any way signal that he is seriously worried about what's going on in Iran. Let alone

paying attention to him. He's playing golf, the weird, you know, rally, Jake Paul. I looked at his

treat social feed prior to coming on here. It's, you know, a lot of it's about oil, but some of it's

about like Gavin Newsom. I don't know. He had some riff and I think we're going to play it about

Obama and like the stairs on Air Force One. Yeah. We're not going to play it, but I'll read it for

you. Trump, the only thing I admired about Barack Hussein Obama, which was nothing actually,

but the only thing is the way he was bobbing down the stairs. You talk about unprecedented

show. He would bob. And I couldn't believe that he made it without at least a noticeable major fall.

What? Like, what, what, where does that even come from? Why did he even bring that up?

I think he's very self-conscious about his own ability to walk up and down the stairs.

Sure. I get it. You don't need to talk about that out loud. And then, but it's not even just

Trump, too. It's like, you know, Pete Hagseth, the story yesterday that he kicked out a photographer

from the pool because he knew it wasn't sexy enough in the pictures or something like that.

He didn't like his recessed side profile. Yeah. Yeah. The jawline wasn't strong.

These guys, you might want to smash. You want to shake them and just be like, yo, there's

serious stuff happening now. Please get a grip. Focus on things. They're 12. They're 12.

Yes. I'm like, literally. And Trump, like met his favorite WWE personality reality star.

And he's very excited to meet him. He is making bombs go boom. And like, that is it.

Like, it's like, this is something like an effort. He's like excited about an F1 race around

Washington DC and cash. And then my fighter is chaining the FBI. And it's like, yo, it just,

at some point, you just want to say, please take this job seriously. Just take this job seriously.

I just want you to take it seriously. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know if they're capable.

So I don't know. Do you have any hot takes on the mat? Do you think Masey can survive the

Trump primary? It is. It's actually, it's a pretty interesting inflection point. Yeah.

Because Masey has done the thing. He's done it. Yeah. Which nobody else. This is true. Is it

nobody else? How would you say Liz Cheney did it? No, no, she did it. I'll have to explain the

thing I'm talking about, which is they're going to oppose Trump on a matter of principle.

They are going to not waver on it. They're going to campaign on it. And they are not going to go

full bulwark then because people always say like, that's what you're demanding people. It's not

what I'm demanding people. They're not going to be Tim Miller and just shitposting them all the time.

Like they're not going to kind of give up and basically soft retire. That's what Liz Cheney did.

I mean, we love Liz, but Liz didn't take that with that Wyoming primary seriously at all.

Like she wanted to stay in the race because she didn't want to give up, which was admirable,

but like she didn't campaign to win that race. She campaigned as kind of this valedictory message

sending type campaign that like a noble loss. It was like a noble loss type campaign.

Thomas Masey is trying to win. He wants to stay in Congress. He's a libertarian. He's not a

resisted lib. Like he is against Trump on the war. He's always been into war. He cares about the

Epstein files. He's always cared about them. He's fiscal hawk and he's such conservative on

other issues. I'm like, he's that's him. He's just going to do it. If it works, if it works,

and that's why I wanted MTG to do it in Georgia. And if either of them would have worked,

I think it's a real signal that it's kind of like you can see the end. It's not anywhere near

the end, but you can start to see an exit path off of Trump because he doesn't have that effect over

people. Yeah. I agree with you 100%. But the flip side of that is if it doesn't work. Yeah.

The message that sends pretty, pretty dark for sure. Very interesting primary. Thank you

for watching. Okay. We are going to get to the cabinet rankings. But first there are two members

of the cabinet. I promised the audience that I will only spend 15 minutes per week maximum

on 2028 hot stove. Now, my exception to that is if I have a 2028 potential candidate on,

okay. But like we're not going to do, it's too early now. Too early. Lots going to happen.

No sense doing it. But it's a little fun. So we allow ourselves like a little more

celebrity now. And then Trump has been pulling Mar-a-Lago attendees about JD and Mark.

The respray, which I don't think should be surprised at given that like it's Florida and these

are the rich people. And they probably, you know, there's probably a lot of folks that hate the

Cuban commies down there. But overwhelming feedback pro markup at Mar-a-Lago at the country club

as the rightful air. Not JD. And that is not nothing. It's not nothing to me for two reasons.

One, I always like it when Trump's asking this because number one, I like it when he creates drama

in his own side. And number two, it means that he's not thinking about how he can stay in power.

So like those are small, very light silver linings, very narrow linings. You can almost, it's

hard to see them almost, but they're there. What do you make of the polling, the Mar-a-Lago?

So my general theory of this is that Trump will ultimately annoy someone because he wants to be

Kingmaker. And so there's not going to actually be like a primary is my sense of it, right? It's like

everyone's just going to basically say, well, who's Trump going to annoy and that person's just

going to run and they'll win. So in a weird way, these Mar-a-Lago sessions where he's asking his

buddies, like who they like really do matter, like they really do matter. And then the other

component here is that, yes, it does signal that Trump's not going to run again. But, you know,

is he going to like not to borrow some sort of anti-Semitic imagery, puppet master, these people?

He's not doing something. Or did a Putin thing, or you run with me, or you run with me?

I didn't meet you. I didn't get a picture. Yeah, who's that?

Junior? Yeah. Who's the major? And I guess the other thing and I know this is not going to

happen, but it is worth. I don't think I think since you're Jewish, I can do it. And Trump is a

Gentile. Yeah. I don't think that there's any anti-Semitic subtext. I feel fine. Oh, I feel

fine with this. I don't want to there to be any, but we just wanted to vet it. What about

Don Junior? I know it's not going to happen, but where is Don Junior in all this?

Too stupid. And I think that the idea was that JD was the John Junior vessel.

Right? Because JD, so I've asked people like reporters, Dr. Robert Draper about it,

love Robert Draper, great reporter, great profile writer. He did a profile recently about

a kind of an ayahuasca type trip that people should read if they're interested in that. It

wasn't ayahuasca. It's a different thing. I can't remember the name of it. Anyway, you know, he is

still just from a profile writer standpoint, like around the ball in that world.

Because he wrote about MTG, he wrote about them. And I just was like, I refuse to believe that

JD Vance and Don Junior are real friends because Don Junior is so fucking stupid. And this is JD

is like a sociopath that will pretend to be friends with anybody in order to gain power.

I've been sure that they are genuine friends. I kind of don't believe it. I think the JD is

such a convincing sociopath that he can even fakes people out who are discerning. That said,

I think that JD was like the Don Junior standard because of their friendship.

Interesting. Yeah. We never talk about Eric Trump either. You know, poor Eric.

He seems to be running the business. Yeah. It's making money. He's all he's all whatever.

And he's robbing people with the very crypto currencies. So that's pretty good. And maybe he's

the true error, honestly. Okay, we'll keep monitoring it. I think that the Marco thing is interesting.

And I guess lastly, if we get the cabinet ranking, speaking of Marco,

the shoes picked shoes going around. Yeah, what do you make of that? That's crazy, right?

So Trump's been giving them all a certain type of shoe. And it's been described as like a light

hearted loyalty test, which is a little fashy for me. Like it's like making people wear costumes

and uniforms for you. It's like, it's not all the way there. They're not military uniforms yet,

but it feels like a step in that direction. But to me, the funniest part about it, it's like,

I think Trump just like guesses what their shoe size is. Because if you look at the picture,

it's like some of the like Marco shoes are way too big for him. Maybe Marco lied to Trump

about his shoe size. Maybe this is probably it. Marco lied to Trump about his shoe size.

That's probably the way he got happened. Yeah. He's like, he's probably like a seven,

but he's like, yeah, give me a nine. He's not gonna get me a fun of. He knew if he told Trump,

he was a seven, the Trumpy walk around all the time. That's like, you know what that means.

Mr. Seven over here. So he lied. So he's in these huge shoes. He's like in these clowns shoes.

And then there are other guys, I think I forget who it was, who's like, they're barely

stuffed into the shoe. Right. And it's confusing. For starters, why wouldn't they just buy them

themselves? It costs like 150 bucks. Just get the right size yourself and don't tell Trump.

Sure. Or otherwise, like the psychological, this was an Android, but this was running like

the psychological torment. Like imagine the place you have to get in. You're walking around

every day in clown shoes to make your boss happy. Like there's something submissive about

like that deeply submissive. I mean, so much, there's so much to impact it. One is, if it were me

and Trump was saying, you know, I'm going to get you these shoes. What size are you? And I know

that he equates shoe size with dick size. I'd be like 14, sir. Size 14, Mr. Trump, I know.

Just comes. Then you go buy your own regular correct size shoes. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly

what you give the 14s to me. Since that's my actual size. Two is, if you've ever worn shoes

that are too big for you, and it has happened occasionally, you buy a pair of shoes, you wear them

like you wear them once. Oh, shit. This is too big. It's awful. I mean, it's awful. Like they're

falling off. You're like scraping the bottom, you're tripping over shit. Like these are our

secondary state is doing this on a regular regular basis where he's got to go through life in

these oversized shoes. I can't imagine doing that. It's awful. And then third, it's so embarrassing

too. Because it's like, do they have to wear these every day? Like I don't want to wear this.

I never wear the same shoes every day. But I guess apparently these guys just show up and

like, oh, fuck, I got to wear the Trump shoes again today. Like do they do they change their suits?

I very like do they I guess they have to match the whole thing so stupid, but it's very fitting for

the Trump era. I hadn't thought about that. Just how awful does this slide around the shoes.

Personally, is this true? You know how, as you get old, you stop growing your ears, get bigger,

and like it's especially true for Marco, because like it's like, Marco's Pinotio curse.

So every time he buys his ears, get even bigger. But for me, I feel like, is it possible

my feet are getting bigger? Because it's not been too big shoes for me lately. It's been too

small. Like every show I buy, I've been the same shoe size my whole life. Like it feels like

and now they're a little tight. And I'm wondering, is it possible? Could your feet grow after 40?

I think it's the doctor's way on on that for me. But I think it's possible that your feet

actually go wider. I don't know. I don't know. I think they're widening. Comment on that if you're

a foot. But when you're like me and you're a size 14, you don't know how to find shoes. Yeah.

All right, let's close with the counter rankings. Me and Sam have been doing this since the

start, just kind of an assessment of, it's sort of representative of where things are going

the worst in the administration. It's also an interesting exercise. It shows our differences,

but where we're coming from. For most of last year, Sam had RFK ranked as the worst cabinet

secretary. I was vacillating back and forth between Nome and Bessent for most of the year.

At the end of the year, Sam realized I was correct. And we united on Nome being the worst.

And we were both ended and we both ended up in, right? She's the first one out. The rest of the

rankings, Sam had RFK 2, Hegseth 3, Russ vote 4. We're going to take Russ out for this one. We're

just talking about cabinet. We're just talking about secretaries now. It gets too confusing for

lumpin' in the train wrap in the element. I had Nome, Rubio, Bessent vote. So Sam had Nome, RFK,

Hegseth. I had Nome, Rubio, Bessent as the worst 3. I want to go through. I'm just going to list

everybody really quick. How did we do this last time? Did we give great days or did we? Last time,

because people want to go watch the whole 30 minutes. We're already an hour into this pod,

so we're not going to do an abbreviated version. But you can go look at our year end. We'll put

a link in the show and she's going to look at our year end. And we went through, we gave everybody a

great. But we're not going to do it this time. But I'm going to read all the cabinet. And what I'm

asking for you is to give me the largest, small person. We're not going to impune any little people.

But the best, the person who stands out among the little potions.

Go through them. I'm going to tell you how about we do it this way. I'm going to give you my five

worst. You give me your five worst. And then we'll rank them. But I also want from you if there's

a sleeper out there that doesn't make the top sleeper. Here's the list. I'm just going to

under the dollar. Okay, Mark Rubio, Scott Besson, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondy, Doug Burgham,

Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture, Howard Nutlick, Commerce, Laurie Chavez-Duremer,

Secretary of Labor, RFK Jr. Scott Turner at HUD, Sean Duffie at Transportation, Chris Wright

at Energy, Linda McMahon at Education, Doug Collins, Veterans Affairs. And then I'm also going

to actually lump in there the intelligence agencies, Tulsi, Gabbard, and John Ratcliffe at CIA.

So we'll start with like, who is, who's the standout performer for you?

Standout performer's got to be, it's, well, geez. Oh, I get so tough. Speaking today in this very

moment, it's got to be Hegseth, right? It's got to be Hegseth. No, this is your worst.

The worst of the worst. Is that what you say? Okay, sorry. I thought I'm at standout performer,

let's start with compliment. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Start with that. And then we'll, you know,

I still, I still feel pretty good about my guy, Doug. I mean, Doug, yeah, I agree with the interior.

He is making people like, do errands for him. I'm at a different one. Doug, I think, I think

there are only two possible choices for the best of the worst. And Doug Burgham is one

possible choice. And the other one is one I'm going to go with, which is John Ratcliffe. Why?

And I'm just grading him, well, because I'm rating him purely on skills, demonstrate it.

He's demonstrated no skills. I mean, we, we don't know the, we successfully kidnapped the leader

of Venezuela with no casualties. Well, that's pretty good. I mean, give that to Pete, give that to

Pete. The CIA, they found, come in, come in. They found him. Okay. Okay. So I'm giving it to

us. Sure. We can agree. That's great. Okay. Now we'll go to our, to our five worst type.

You want to go one to five? Let me just, let me, let me, this, this is the pool I have.

Step awesome nominees. Okay. We'll give her this is the pool I have. And I have to narrow down to five.

But in this pool, I got, obviously, my man Pete Hegseth. Okay. I got Tulsi. I got

R of K. I'll never, never drop him from my five ever, even though he'll go up and down.

I got Bondi. I kind of have Rubio, but you know, that's might be just because we're in the middle of war.

I got Lautnick, because we're still in the Epstein saga. And then my sleeper is Chavez Deremer.

So did you mention Bessent in there? No, I didn't even mention

I did not. Okay. So you at RFK, like, this is pretty great, actually, about how many bad ones are.

I'm happy we did it like this, because I think that now that, that means that there are 10 possible

people for the worst five slots, because I'm going to add, oh my, I think we've got to throw in

Bessent as a potential nominee. Okay. And I'm going to add also Chris Wright, that secretary of

energy. I don't think, I think he should not go without a mention. And I don't know that

secretary of agriculture, Brooke Rowland should go without a mention. She's always packed my top five,

but she's been terrible and she keeps getting worse. I mean, the foreign country is getting

absolutely annihilated and all she, and she's like, grow your own chickens.

Like, honestly, she did it in a three dollar administration. She would be the worst.

She did any other administration. She didn't have the $3 meal.

Is she like, you know, in the $3 meal? All right. All right. Here's my. Okay. So there's 10

categories. No, we're, I'm just going to read them one more time for you so they can make their own

in the head. Rubio, Bessent, Hegseth, Bondi, Rollins, Nutlick, Dremmer, Kennedy Juner, Chris Wright,

Tulsi Gabbard. This is 10 nominees for the top five worst members of the administration.

This is tough. This is tough. Okay. Here it is. My five. You already have it. You're

ready. I'm still working. So I'll go through this. You work while I go through this.

Oh, there's one that I kind of want to swap. Oh, boy. Okay. No swap.

Okay. Coming in at number five is, uh, Lutnik. I just can't, I can't

with the Epstein. Yeah. Epstein. Yeah. I agree. No, it did not make either of our

lists in the fall in the park because it was like, he's kind of silly. Like, like, my

rationalization of putting Bessent on over Nutlick, excuse me, not in the fall at the end of the year,

rankings was, um, was that, like, I expected more out of Bessent. It's like economic fall.

He was a nightmare. And, and I like, I was grading him a little bit on a curve.

He just felt like he just, yeah. But now with the, with the Epstein lies, I do agree.

You gotta take a second look at that. He's my five. He's my five. My number four is Tulsi.

What's she doing in Fulton County? Come on. Come on, girl. What are you doing? Okay. There.

Number three, Mr. Measel's. Okay. And that is a demotion because he has been my one and two.

He's down to three now. He's down to three. He's down to three. I think he's been

tamed a little bit. I want to say, um, so I'm feeling a little bit better about that. Number two

is Bondi. Okay. Just because of the DJ is a fucking mess. And she doesn't give a shit. And the

number one is Pete. And like I said, Shava is the reamer. She is, she, I, she's sneaking up on,

on five. And she, what she's done is truly incredible. She's like, but it's like, almost like I

appreciate the game in a way. Like she's boozing. Like, you know, she's sort of hurt the parties

for herself. Now, her husband is harassing sexually. Apparently some aids there. I don't respect that.

But I'm some of the other stuff. They're, honestly, like the reason why she can't make my top five

is because I, you could do, what's the show that's on Apple that has John Hamm where he's like a

rich friend of neighbors, yeah, friends of neighbors. Like we could do a, like that type of dark

comedy about the department of labor. We took the secretary and her husband are both having

affairs with different people. Like what's happening at the department of labor? Yeah,

what do you think they do when they go home and they're talking about work?

I don't know, really incredible stuff. Yeah. Okay, this is challenging. Of the 10, I had to cut

Tulsi because like, I don't see how she makes my top five. I mean, she's not doing anything in

the war. She's, she's been sidelined. She's in Fulton County. To me, it doesn't seem like she's

doing anything. She's doing yoga. She's living the spirit of Aloha. She's not in my list.

And the beginning of last year, she was in my top three. I was very worried about her.

Chris Wright, I, I had to cut, but I, I, I, I got to put him in. I wanted to put him in. Yeah,

I, I, I, he lied about the straight of her moves being opened. Just long enough for some traders

to benefit. Yeah. Laurie Chavez-Duremer is out as mentioned. So now that means that I,

I sub seven to choose from. And I still have to cut. And I think I have to cut Brook Rollins,

unfortunately, I really want to get her in there. She's been a nightmare, but I got to cut her.

I don't know what to do about my top six here. So I'm going to do it live. Number one,

I'm going to go the opposite way of you. Number one is obviously Hegg stuff. Yeah. It's just like

unbelievably bad. Number two is Rubio. Rubio. So you didn't even make your list. Yeah,

I mean, like we're only doing this stupidly stupid wars because of Rubio. Honestly,

actually, I'm flipping it for the same reason of Bessent and not like for the end of the year.

Rubio is the worst now for me and Hegg stuff too.

Number three, I think you got to go with who's getting that rose.

I'm looking at not like in Bondy. I think you got to go with Bondy at three still.

She's so she's failed. Part of me doesn't want to do it because she's not really failed that

successfully getting anybody, but like the the the the minister not to get serious for a second,

like and trying to investigate Renee Good's wife, like all that kind of stuff. Just totally

unacceptable. She's three on pause for a second. I see where this is going and I don't like this.

I know exactly where this is going. I don't think you do because I don't know who my fifth spot is.

We'll talk about tonight. I'm going to be mad. Okay. Fourth. Fourth is not like. Okay. You can't put

not look over Bondy because Bondy's covering up the Epstein files. Let me extend them.

So I think you have to put him before the low hurt. So we've got Rubio, Hegg, Seth Bondy,

Lutnik and the fifth spot is a competition between Bessent and RFK. I know where this is going.

Like Bessent is overseeing just a totally voluntary collapse of the economy and he's being so obnoxious

about it. RFK has brought back measles. The economy is affecting everybody. The measles are

only affecting people in small areas of South Carolina. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. RFK

not Bessent. It's got to be RFK. Come on. Okay. We'll put RFK at five. I wish I could do a tie.

We'll put RFK at five. So one more time. Where were our differences? I had Rubio in there.

And you had Rubio and you had Gabbard. So you had Rubio. I did not have Rubio. I'd Gabbard.

Yeah. That was the main one in terms of who we had versus who we did not have. And then the

rankings I'd Hegg, Seth one. You had Rubio one. I had Bondy two and you had Hegg, Seth two. I had

RFK three. You had RFK five. I had Tulsi four. You did not have Tulsi. You had Lutnik four.

And I had Lutnik five. There it is. What a show. Thank you, Sam Stein. That was the

porridge that everyone needed after Sagar. We'll be seeing you on the take speed. I already

subscribed to Borg takes as well. We appreciate you. Everything you're doing,

over there, managing the boards. I don't have to. And tomorrow we have one of our faves.

So we'll see you all then. Peace.

The Borg podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with Audio Engineering and Editing by Jason Bratt.