The end of MAGA as we know it?!

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Hello and welcome to American Friction, the US politics podcast that's not undergoing any

sort of regime change anytime soon.

I'm in charge.

I'm Jacob Jarvis.

And apparently, I'm considering a coup.

I'm Chris Jones.

And Piffus is our beloved co-host and who knows what she's plotting now.

Is Nikki McCann Ramirez?

Hi, Nikki.

It's me.

Hi.

She's here.

It wasn't the most tasteful joke this week.

Not really, actually.

I mean, like in terms of tasteless things we've done on this podcast, it's better than condoms,

which was last week.

Yeah, exactly.

Is it that condoms are good?

Well, we're objective.

The condoms are good.

Yeah, they're very forceful good in the world.

Anyway, let's, let's move on from here.

Right.

Today, we are talking about Trump's split with Magger.

As he starts more wars instead of ending more wars, aren't even his biggest fans going

to get angry at him, kind of like when Dylan went electric, of niche reference for his

hair as well.

No way.

You won't get any way.

Right, Chris?

Kick yourself then.

I still don't know what you're in about, but this is American Friction.

Before we start, we need your support to keep the show going.

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Yes.

Right.

On to the show.

Okay.

Then breaking news alert.

Simon put a breaking news alert sound in there.

We need some big sound effects on the go.

Let's get them in there right now.

Okay.

Kristie known dog killer extraordinaire.

And I think she could have got it as well or some shit.

I don't know.

And it was a baby dog, right?

It was a puppy.

It was, yeah.

It was like 14 months old.

Yeah.

Okay.

So she though, she's now having a bad time.

She has been somewhat killed politically fired up.

Yeah.

She's been fired from her.

She's been taken to the gravel pit.

Yeah.

Exactly.

The sort of mega gravel pit.

We'll see what's the official line on her departure, Nicky?

Yeah.

So this has felt very like first Trump administration in that it came down via a truth

social post.

There was some reporting in the background by a couple outlets being like, oh, they're

planning on firing Kristina, but like the actual announcement didn't really come in

like a formal way.

It was just Trump posting on truth social.

He was very happy to nominate Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullin to the Department of

Homeland Security.

He thanked Kristinaum for her service, la, la, la, la, and then was like, she's going

to be appointed like on-boy to the shield of America.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It felt like a sort of blue-peat-a-batch job.

Like it really didn't feel like very much substantial.

So we don't really know much about this shield of America yet.

Well we know, most of what we know is basically from this truth social post.

I imagine it's like Trump's board of peace, but apparently aimed for like cartel containment

in the Western hemisphere.

Okay.

Who's a member?

We don't know.

When does it start?

Who's to say how did countries get in?

I don't know.

Lots of money is how I'm imagining they get in.

Yeah, pretty much probably.

Yeah.

What we do know now is that Kristinaum is the American representative at the shield of America.

That's good.

That's good then.

It would honestly be just like less offensive to fire her in my opinion.

Yeah.

I think it's, I wouldn't want to just be given a really, but then look, I'm sure she'll

get given money.

So maybe if you've got no morals and principles or career left, having a shitty job that makes

some money is better than no shitty job, I guess.

Why do you think it's happening now?

Because it's been on the cards for a little while and then it's happened.

So yeah, what do you make to the timing?

I mean, I think this is pretty directly connected to her hearings at the Capitol this

week.

She appeared before the House and Senate oversight committee is she got reamed out by

Republicans and Senate oversight who really pressed her on a couple things.

They pressed her on the statements in the aftermath of the killings of Renee Goodin, Alex

Prady, where DHS was essentially calling them terrorists.

She was pressed on why the department had tried to stifle investigations into the killings.

And then separately, she was pressed into this insane $220 million ad campaign that the

Department of Homeland Security embarked on that heavily featured dome.

She loves to be on TV.

So there were like all these ads featuring Kristi Nome, which like, okay, but it was $220

million, which is an insane amount to begin with.

And then it turns out that some of the contracts related to these ads had been granted in a

suspiciously not competitive process to a firm owned by the husband of one of Nome's

like deputy press secretaries.

Her name was Trish McLaughlin.

You know Trish McLaughlin.

She's on TV all the time.

She just left the Department of Homeland Security, but she was married to this guy who I believe

had connections to like Kristi Nome's gubernatorial campaign or something.

He creates this ad firm and eight days later, the firm gets this massive contract from DHS

to produce these advertising campaigns.

And of course, it's like highly suspicious.

So she was pressed about it in the hearing and she was asked directly by several senators

like did Trump know about this and she goes, yeah, no, Trump, she was like, yeah, totally

Trump approved this ad spend.

They were like, really?

Because like, we know Trump and he's not the kind of guy who just spend $220 million

on ads.

I think he might be, but yeah, Trump apparently saw that.

And from the reporting that we have did not like that.

He like talked to Reuters and was like, no, I didn't know about this.

I feel it seems to be that in that hearing, that was the thing that Trump like really latched

on to to like be the straw that broke the camel's back and finally got Nome ousted because

I think there's a couple of things at play here.

If you are a member of Trump's cabinet, you can be insane.

You can be racist.

You can be sloppy.

You can be bad at your job.

You can be really fucking embarrassing.

You just can't be more than the president, you know?

Yeah.

I feel like he would be, he'd be happy to spend $220 million on ads if they were completely

about him and how awesome he is.

But one thing is he's quite scatagon with how he represents himself, but he is also quite

obsessed over his own image, isn't he?

I think that's the other thing too of no, it's like he doesn't mind making himself look

stupid.

And you can make yourself look stupid and as soon as you work for him, that doesn't make

it.

And he can make you look stupid.

Yeah.

But like just don't make him look stupid.

Exactly.

And Nome was on a really, really bad streak of stupid and embarrassing, starting with everything

that went down in Minnesota, like them having to pull Dan Bavinos and Anton Homan, the

sort of national outrage over that entire operation, how just bad it's been for ICE in the

last couple weeks.

And then on top of that, you have the rumors that she and Corey Lewandowski, Trump's former

campaign manager are fucking and that they've been using like government jets with bedrooms

built into them as like their sex den in the sky.

And then there was just, there was controversies because DHS is also trying to buy some

new jets, luxury jets and Christina, I've got a bunch of questions about like why do you

need luxury jets for deportations, explain yourself.

There was that report that she and Lewandowski had like a Coast Guard pilot fired because

Christina left her blanket on an airplane and they were like, we don't get the airplane

back, you're fired and then they had to unfire him because they didn't have another pilot

to fly the plane.

So then they had to bring him back and it was and then another outlet, well, here's the

thing.

Another outlet reported out that it wasn't actually a blanket.

It was a bag of personal items that would have been very embarrassing to know if someone

had found it.

I think it was a sex bag, but that's just me.

But anyway, you have all of that and then she like goes into this hearing and just absolutely

gets reamed out in a public fashion and you know, she's out, she's, she's the first,

the first man down of the Trump cabinet.

I wasn't necessarily sure it was going to be her, but here we are.

Is this replacement Mark Wayne, such an American name fair play to the guy, Mark Wayne, is

he, is he going to be any better?

Define better, I mean, competently evil rather than just incompetently evil, is that

what might, what might happen, no, here's the thing, here's the thing.

The real person running DHS is Steven Miller.

We know that.

We've talked about it.

My former colleague, Oswin Sub sang and I did a really big piece on it in October.

I think it was Steven Miller runs DHS and Mark Wayne Mullin is a meathead.

This is a man who is most famous for trying to physically fight the head of the teamster's

union during a Senate hearing, like he's not an adept legislator, he's like a nice

guy, kind of a dunce, but if it comes to like, oh, this man is going to like very competently

run an agency and like go above and beyond the call of duty to like really execute the

Republican vision.

No, he's a guy that I think the Trump administration thinks that they can push through a confirmation,

especially when they don't have a lot of good will with Democrats right now and won't

put up a fight when Steven Miller tells him to do things like, yeah, that's why he's

there.

He got on TV and called Pete Hegseth, president Hegseth, like two times the other day.

Okay.

Cool.

So it's not Kristi-nome, but it isn't going to get better.

Just one final bit, I suppose, that Shardon Freud over Kristi-nome, she was given like

a weird press conference whilst people were finding out this where she's misquoting

all well at the time for a quote that definitely wasn't George Orwell.

Yeah, what was going on there?

So when this news dropped, Kristi-nome had been scheduled to like give a prepared speech

at like a law enforcement conference.

It wasn't a specific press conference about her firing.

So the news drops and it's not entirely clear that everyone in the room knows that she's

been fired.

Yeah, apparently, Nome did know, but she just kind of like went on with her regular

speech.

She had a Q&A after it.

No one really asked her about it.

She then posted a tweet being like, thank you, Mr. President, for my new fake job is so

nice to work here.

And that's been that I'm sure she'll be on TV.

I'm sure she'll have more to say about it and we'll have more to say about it, but

damn.

Yeah.

What goes on in the interim though, then I guess, right, because it's going to be effective

March 31st.

So it doesn't say if Kristi-nome is going to keep the job until then or if she's on gardening

leave or what, but I mean, I guess if Stephen Miller is running it, then it doesn't fucking

matter.

But that does feel quite like a long time if there's no technical leader there to carry

on.

Yeah, I think she'll probably sort of fade into the background while they start trying

to push for Mullins confirmation if Mullins confirmation is delayed.

And I think Senator Tom Till has said that he would block confirmations.

I don't know if he can necessarily do anything here, but that he wouldn't support, you know,

confirmation hearings about a bunch of stuff nominations until he got answers to some

information request that he had sent DHS that Nome had been ignoring.

So I don't know.

There may actually be a bit more of a battle here, but I don't anticipate it.

If there is, Trump would probably just nominate like an interim DHS secretary to hold the

job for like whatever amount of time it's authorized.

OK, well, let's see.

Right.

Well, that's the, that's the breaking news wrapped up.

Thanks, Nicky.

Let's get back to the normal show.

Simon, I don't know if you're going to put weird sound effects in here of any kind,

but if you do great, we'll get back to it.

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Nikki, is it getting harder and harder to define who and what

MAGA is at the moment?

Yeah, MAGA has always been an amorphous catchphrase kind of used to justify.

Anything Trump, his cabinet members from two administrations.

Republican lawmakers just down the ballot across the country in states and cities.

Do even if it actually isn't good for the public see RFK Jr.

And the dismantling of sort of the American vaccine program that is in the long run.

Probably going to kill and hurt lots and lots of people.

Um, MAGA has also been a signifier by and large of loyalty to the president.

If you are a MAGA Republican, you are a Trumpian Republican.

You are a Trump faction member of the GOP.

And I think in Trump's second term, looking down the barrel of the midterms,

as all this sort of backlash starts to crystallize in the conservative right against Trump,

is governing policies.

The reality that Republicans might lose the House and the Senate in November.

I feel like Republicans from lawmakers to influencers who see the potential end

of the Trump era of politics depending on how a lot of things go.

This could be the potential end.

They're kind of looking around and saying,

I don't know if this label is actually going to help me keep my seat.

I don't know if it's going to help me raise money.

I don't know if my fans or my audience or my constituents are going to like this.

And so yeah, I think if you treat MAGA as a signifier of loyalty to Trump,

it is getting more toxic and not necessarily more difficult to define,

because I think the definition still remains fairly clear cut.

But it is becoming a little less appealing as sort of the guiding political philosophy

of a lot of Republicans.

When it comes to this situation over Iran and how Trump is behaving here,

which MAGA diehards are the most pissed off?

This is absolutely divided.

The quote unquote MAGA base.

You have former MAGA loyalists diehards,

standard bearers for the movement like Marjorie Taylor Greene coming out

and saying, you know, why are we being pushed into foreign wars by Israel?

Tucker Carlson who was always kind of critical of Trump.

He has never been fully on the wagon.

Has been super critical of this offensive to the point where like another figure,

Candace Owens, it's just gone into the outright like anti-Semitic.

But yeah, you also have figures like Candace Owens.

You have Republicans in Congress in the House and Senate who see this as a bad idea

that could potentially spiral into a larger regional war that we are not prepared.

To deal with or that the American public wants or supports,

support for a war against Iran is probably one of the worst polling issues

in the country at the moment.

But yeah, I mean, you do still have a coalition of war hawks,

really hard line Republicans who have wanted to see, you know,

the regime in Iran overthrown for decades.

We're very publicly supportive of this.

We're kind of ignoring the reality that it looks like we entered this war,

which the government can't even decide if it's a war or just a temporary military offensive.

But they keep calling it a war.

If we entered this war because it was actually in the interest of the United States

or because Benjamin Netanyahu asked us to and Israel wanted us to get involved,

which is a huge shift in the sort of war powers treatment

by the executive in the United States going to war is supposed to be an action

that is authorized by Congress.

That's how it's enumerated in the Constitution.

The offensive military powers of the executive are supposed to be like limited and small.

And in any case, whether it's Congress, the president or whatever,

that military action is supposed to serve the American people.

And it's becoming abundantly clear through like the contradictory statements

being put out by the administration or the outright admissions,

that this was not a war about American interest.

It was a war about Israeli interest.

And we went into this not because we were under a direct threat from Iran,

but because Israel wanted to conduct an offensive

and they wanted the US's backing to do it.

And I don't, I can't think of a time in American history

where we have so directly outsourced the American war power to another country.

You mentioned though, we've took Carlson and how he hasn't always been entirely in with Trump.

But then at the same time, he was kind of Trump's biggest ally

when it came to the whole election fraud claims, kind of tanked his own career

by getting Fox sued, but for hundreds of millions of dollars

or whatever it was over that.

Why is it that he doesn't seem to care about anything Trump's doing domestically

as much as he does care about what he's doing internationally?

It's just something I'm struggling to square up there.

Tucker in particular, to contrast with a lot of other figures on the Maga Right.

And I don't mean this to say, I didn't mean that to say that Tucker actively disliked Trump.

He was absolutely an aiter and a better of the policy.

But you could tell because what I was at media matters,

it was quite literally my job to watch him every night.

You could really tell that he found Trump as a character as a person incredibly abrasive.

It wasn't hishtic.

He was always very comfortable critiquing the administration,

typically in matters of foreign policy.

And I think that goes back to sort of who Tucker Carlson wanted to be

when he was a young and up and coming journalist.

I don't think he ever saw himself necessarily as someone embroiled in the day-to-day

machinations of American politics, which is what he ended up being.

And it's fine. It's what I do.

Tucker's father, Dick Carlson, was also a very famous broadcast or lobbyist.

He was the director of Voice of America for a couple decades,

which is the sort of international news service run by the State Department.

So Tucker really grows up embroiled

and like seeped in coverage and discussion of international news of the United States

as sort of this like empire builder abroad,

this like force of heart and soft power,

and pretty much every region of the globe,

this idea of just like American unipolarity.

And I think it's always really been like his true core,

his heart of hearts, his news and political passion is international

and foreign relations and how the United States relates to that

and what the role of the American government is balancing duty to people

versus duty to the world at large.

And yeah, you can see it for ages.

There was a time period where people kept trying to tell me that

Tucker Carlson was anti-war because he was opposed to the war in Russia.

And I was like, absolutely not.

Tucker Carlson loves war.

He wants the United States to like go to China and crush some skulls.

Like Tucker Carlson is not anti-war.

But he has for a very long time been hypercritical about what wars and what international conflicts.

The United States chooses to engage in and how they ultimately benefit

our domestic and like international interests.

Because Tucker Carlson is racist.

He's an anti-Semite.

He's a lot of things.

He's not stupid.

It's not a weird thing we're saying for the for the Maga crowd who are maybe going off Trump

that politically it feels like there's just not,

there's not really anywhere for them to go though

because as you say, their foreign policy position is anti-war Trump's doing.

But then it doesn't align with the other large block of people who are anti-war

Trump's doing which are progressives.

So it kind of puts some weird spot that they kind of where they would translate to

would mean translating a whole load of other views at the same time.

Yeah, and I think that's why Republicans are so vulnerable in the 2026 midterms

because just taking the foreign policy for a second.

As an example, as we've discussed before,

of the promises made, promises thrown out the window of it all in Trump's 2024 campaign.

The Maga movement for years now has been operating under this like,

quote unquote, America first principle.

Like, Maga and America first go hand in hand.

And when the war between Russia and Ukraine broke out when the invasion happened,

within like a year, Republicans became very adamant that it was not

the United States' responsibility to like prop up the Ukrainian government.

From the Republican side, it was very much if Ukraine can't handle this war,

we shouldn't have to intervene or get involved.

And you know, there was all the fights over funding aid.

JD Vance has berated Zelensky in the Oval Office.

There's been a massive counter-programming campaign by the right to the war.

In Russia, and we see the long tail effects this war has now extended for what,

what are we going on like four or five years?

Fuske, oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And when you make that such a central component of your political philosophy,

when you build a right wing movement and electoral movement around the idea

that it's not the United States' job to serve the interests of the rest of the planet,

whether that be wars or as Republicans like to talk about being like a recipient

for the world's poor and undocumented immigrants and that kind of thing,

the foreign policy of the Trump administration, the Republicans,

in the last like 10 years has been verbally, rhetorically, really isolationist.

Yeah.

But Trump has now bombed more countries than his three predecessors than Biden, Obama, and Bush.

Like, so yeah, I'm looking toward the midterms.

This is another example of the manner in which Republicans promised American voters a government

that prioritized them that would help them get healthcare and jobs

and kick out all the undocumented migrants.

So you will be, you will be the people experiencing the bounty of your taxpayer dollars.

None of that has manifested.

They've cut healthcare.

They've cut food assistance.

They've militarized immigration enforcement to the point where you basically have like

roving rogue armies going into American cities, terrorizing people, killing citizens.

And at the same time, prices are still up.

The job market still sucks.

Groceries are expensive and we're spending like a billion dollars a day on bombing Iran.

So if Democrats can make the argument that like, hey, they promise you all those things.

Look what they actually gave you.

We know you don't really like us, but here is what we can offer you.

Yeah, it puts Republicans in an incredibly vulnerable position going into 2026.

If Democrats can actually do the argument, which, who's to say, they're historically not like in great?

Yeah, I can't see.

Well, you know, maybe Chuck Schumer is the guy to make an argument of some kind at some point.

Maybe he'll step up finally.

Chris, what's polling like around the Iran issue?

Well, it's not good job.

No, I'll tell you that.

So you have conducted a polling at the start of March, using around 1,600 US adults.

And they found that 37% either strongly approve or somewhat approve of the action taken against Iran.

And 48% either somewhat disapprove or strongly disapprove.

And then they asked another question, which is slightly different, which says,

do you think the US attacks on Iran are justified or not justified?

42% said not justified.

35% justified.

23% just on shore.

But then I wanted to look at something a little bit broader, because Nicky brought up a minute ago in terms of the military action.

The Trump has carried out across this presidency, not just, you know, in Iran, but elsewhere.

Venezuela, for example, Reuters and Ipsos conducted a poll in terms of whether people thought that he'd done too much or too little or just right, just the right, you know, just the right amount of bombing job.

And they found this amongst Republicans, 23% said that he's done too much and 73% about the right amount of military action slash interventionism amongst Democrats, 87% sorry, say too much.

And then with others, so really independent, 63% say too much and 26% about right.

So really people on the whole think that he's he's doing too much in terms of military action around the world.

One thing just on some other polling.

I've got some polling to contrast your polling.

Sorry mate.

Yeah, I know I'm pulling some out today.

This is from Gallup.

And I just thought this was a really interesting one in why it is hard to get a read on what do Americans actually think of interventionism here?

Basically, and I think this is a bit of a confusing question to ask in in polling slash the results are hard to tell.

But basically people were asked, do you think that the US should take a leading role in world affairs, a major role, but not the leading role, a minor role or take no role at all?

And so across the whole political spectrum across just US adults, 21% said leading role, 26% said no role.

So more people say no role, but the biggest group was 43% who said a major role, but not the leading role.

That to me is just really interesting because it's like, well, what do you mean by that?

And it seems to be this weird mindset perhaps it's like, well, we don't want America to actually have any responsibility on the global stage.

But we want people to listen to us and just to still have weight and impact would be my reading of that.

I think a thing that's interesting here is that obviously no one is kind of shedding tears over the death of the Iatola.

And I think most people would say that guy wasn't a great person to be to be leading any sort of nation.

But it's interesting that maybe America is saying, well, we're happy for that to happen, but we wish we didn't have to be the ones to be taking the front foot on it.

But then simultaneously, if you want to be a major role, what does that mean? That's just a really vague term there.

So I think it's quite hard to know.

And I suppose in the MAGA grouping, they do want America to be less interventionist, but I imagine they wouldn't want America to be less important.

So how do you juggle that?

I imagine some of that polling may have been impacted by Americans drinking the kind of anti-nato callage.

You know, this Trump sentiment that every other member of NATO is not paying its way under the US is propping all of basically global defenses up.

And people kind of being swayed by that in terms of saying, NATO needs to step up because we're doing everything right now.

And that's not strictly true.

Yeah, I just think it's, yeah, it's interesting.

What does a major role mean if not a leading one?

Nikki, let's talk about Marco Rubio quickly.

I've just got in here a really direct question.

We can maybe expand, but I've just wrote, why is he so dumb?

I don't think Marco Rubio is dumb.

He just says stupid shit then.

What's going on there?

Yeah, I think Marco Rubio suffers from something that will never get him the presidency.

And that is a slight abundance of earnestness.

Yeah, he is unfortunate.

He feels like of sort of Trump, Hegsf and Rubio is a low barred cross, but he does feel like the most honest of the three of them,

which is probably what's going in hot water.

Yeah.

And it has bitten him in the ass at every turn in his career.

And I've said this before, but I think Marco Rubio is also one of those Republicans who really had a lot of disdain for Donald Trump.

Realize they were never going to get to like the presidency, which is ultimately what they wanted.

He did run at one point.

Yeah.

And then decided to kind of sell out at the literal price of their soul.

Like you see this guy in press conferences, in White House meetings, and he just constantly looked like he's seeing demons.

He's also, along with Hegsf and Trump, been a major part of the reason why the public justification for this offensive against Serran has been such a mess.

Because they all keep fucking contradicting each other.

It's like, no, Israel didn't like, go this into the war.

And then Marco Rubio gets on TV and it was like, well, Israel was going to attack.

And Iran was going to attack us.

So it was preemptive in the sense that, you know, we had to make sure that when Israel attacked, we didn't get attacked.

It was just like, that makes no sense.

So you literally just did it because Israel told you to.

They just keep contradicting and failing to justify like what the actual motivation, what the actual benefit to Americans is behind this offensive outside of like,

well, we killed the Ayatollah, which is something we wanted for a very long time.

It's like, okay.

But what's going to come next is probably a military dictatorship.

Yeah.

So one of the figures that is supposedly on deck to take over is the Ayatollah Sun, who's supposedly very deferential to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

But then you have Trump saying, oh, well, we think we can do this like Venezuela.

Well, like we'll just install someone who likes us.

I'm sorry, who in the Iranian regime likes the United States?

Yeah.

Point me to them.

What are we doing here?

Anyway, good luck to Marco Rubio.

Your career will never recover from this.

Yeah, I think I saw it.

It was trending on Twitter, people talking about how it feels the same as taking 20 years to swap the Taliban for the Taliban.

And it's kind of like, it looks like a similar thing might end up happening in this situation.

Chris, how are, how are other world leaders reacting to this?

And who seems the, I mean, obviously, Iran are probably the most pissed off.

I would say.

Imagine you'd be peeved.

Yeah.

But who else is the most pissed off?

Well, I'm going to flip that on his head.

I'm going to start with the people who perhaps aren't.

Well, they are.

But they're not necessarily showing how pissed off they are.

And that's China.

A Xi Jinping, which is, I think it's really interesting because China creates its relationships, its partnerships with other nations of the states differently to how the US would, for example.

So some people might have expected China to be really angry at what's happened in Iran.

Iran, of course, being an ally or partner of China of sorts.

But there's a piece in the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace that explains why China hasn't come out organs blazing in reaction.

To what's happened.

And it says in the article I'll read out.

It says China had productive relations with Iran, but also with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, even Turkey, and for a time with Israel.

And Latin America too, its eggs were never only in Venezuela's basket.

So to argue that Chinese policy is hung on alliances in the American sense, with imputations of obligation, quite misses the point.

China's posture is better captured by a market metaphor than a geopolitical one.

Beijing has diversified its portfolio by multiplying both its partnerships and its areas of focus with these partners.

So essentially what I read from that is that when China enters these partnerships is without the obligation for defensive action to support countries such as Iran to come to their aid.

So that's potentially a reason why we've seen a kind of muted, almost response from China.

So China has its finger in so many pies.

It doesn't really care about the pies anymore.

Exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

Very good.

Very good.

And then there's Russia, which has also been, I guess, a kind of muted response in terms of what people might have expected.

Sergey Lavrov has said though that Russia will stand by Iran and was ready to help with diplomatic relations.

Diplomatic being the...

I imagine they're...

Militaristically, they're pretty much too tight up elsewhere.

Yeah, pretty much.

You'd imagine so.

And then there's also other issues around gas and the prices of energy at the moment.

But one of the most interesting reactions coming to your point in terms of who's pissed off is actually Spain.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will flat out refuse to let the US use military bases in Spain to carry out militaristic operations aimed towards the Middle East.

And he said just simply we say no to war.

And then Trump responded.

I don't know if everyone saw this saying we're going to cut off all trade with Spain.

We don't want anything to do with Spain.

And that has caused quite a lot of tensions in Europe in terms of how do we now react?

How do we come together as one?

And that is...

Well, it's a massive conundrum for Europe at the moment.

It just feels like such a petulant child, isn't it?

You're not a petulant child.

I am, I can be.

Shut up.

No, that was me being petulant.

Nikki, just one thing, let's go on to Pete Hegsiff briefly in this.

His comments and the Pentagon generally, it seems like they're fairly content with Americans dying because of this situation.

They don't seem particularly perturbed by the idea of boot from the ground.

You're my squirter.

Yeah, like what's going on there?

Do they just not seem to care all that much?

Have you seen the memes relating to Trump's speech to what Lord Farquad said in Shrek?

Yes.

Some of you may die.

That's exactly what Trump said, actually.

Some of you may die.

So Lord Farquad is Trump.

No, quite literally.

I mean, I need people to rewind to the withdrawal from Afghanistan when 12 service members were killed as the evacuation was taking place by a suicide bomber.

And it was a catastrophe.

It was awful, but it was also just weeks of Republican news cycles, conservative commentators being like the Biden administration doesn't care about our troops.

They're just like wasting lives that this was a completely avoidable mistake that the American government right now is getting on TV every day and being like, yes, more people are going to die.

These have already died.

More people are going to die.

And particularly Pete Exeth is acting like a South Park character.

I don't know if you guys watch Saturday Night Live or see the clips on YouTube, but Colin Jost who parodies Exeth on SNL.

It literally feels like a parody of a parody.

Like in what world do you get on TV?

Talk about dead soldiers and they'd be like, well, you know, we have great air defense, but sometimes gets something gets through.

Oh, we call that a squirter.

And it hit and they died.

Yeah.

It's like, hey, I googled and I talked to my marine friends and they were like, that's not what we refer to when we say squirter in the military.

It usually refers to like an enemy combat and who's running away, but that's not neither here nor there.

This is not a man who knows how to actually run a military.

He knows how to cause play a soldier.

He knows how to cause play what he thinks.

The secretary of defense would look like in a Michael Bay film because that's what he is fundamentally is he's a TV guy.

He's an actor, which is what it really is what Fox News people are.

It's just their actors and the role they're playing is conservative.

He is not prepared to deal with what casualties actually mean.

Not just for like the American military, but in the psyche of the American public who has watched for more than two decades.

Soldiers get like thrown into a meat grinder in the Middle East before that in Vietnam.

It's just I don't think the administration fully understands the precariousness of the position there and Trump waited almost 48 hours to get in front of a camera and do a live address regarding the situation in Iran.

His first two like public updates were pre-recorded videos.

Yeah, which is an insane thing to do when you're the president of the United States and the commander in chief.

And people have died under your orders.

And when he finally addressed it publicly at a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House.

Before he got to talking about the dead soldiers, you know what he wanted to talk about.

His curtains, which he picked out for the room like what are we doing?

Right, let's round up some other stories that you might have missed.

So the Texas primary, Nicky, Talleriko, he won.

Talk us through him, what's your take on him and what's your take on that victory there.

Yeah, I think voters picked better candidate.

I really do. I am getting yelled at across various social media platforms because I said that Jasmine Crockett ran a bad campaign and I stand by that.

Talleriko has significant weaknesses as a candidate.

As we're seeing on Twitter, he's made some like fuck ass statements that are a little too lefty for a really Republican state.

But it's fine. He's been in office like four terms there in the state house.

It seems like this is all stuff that he's ready to address. He's kind of boring as shit.

He's like plain oatmeal. He doesn't have the sort of like snazzy charisma that Beto had.

I think what Talleriko's strengths have been in this campaign cycle were that like Beto absolute workhorse candidate has been campaigning up and down the state constantly moving has a really robust ground game.

So volunteers, door knockers, phone beckers, people who are like, I think it's something like 20,000 volunteers for the campaign throughout the state who are out there canvassing.

I would compare it for people who are maybe paid attention to like the mum Donnie model his campaign structure is quite good like everything from voter outreach to making sure people knew where their polling places were.

That's all been very good. His communication staff is very responsive.

And on top of it all, he is campaigning on like very concise messaging points. I think the one slogan that's probably going to outlast his candidacy whether he wins or not is top versus bottom not left versus right.

He is essentially making an argument you know that they want us to like keep fighting amongst ourselves while the rich get richer and you get poorer and the like like big, big boot politicians and DC make money off your taxes and embrace corruption and all that.

And on the flip side, Jasmine Crockett ran a campaign that had no real identifiable structure. She didn't really have a ground game.

She insisted that she could just campaign and sort of the big urban centers pull enough to get through the primary and then we'll see where we go from there.

The problem is in a state with as slim margins as you have in Texas if Democrats win, they're not going to win by 10 20 points.

They're going to win by like maybe five points at most and that would be like a blowout by democratic standards in Texas.

You do not have the voters to spare. She is a great speaker. She has been phenomenal on the hill, but we knew going into this that one of the big weaknesses was that like as we've seen candidates we've been observing it for a while.

Fail when they try and make their own candidacy just to straight juxtaposition to Trump.

They're like, oh, I'm a fighter. I've taken it to MAGA Republicans. And yes, that's good. That's necessary. We absolutely need people who know how to like shut down Republican arguments and like provide good counter messaging to shitty policy.

The thing is here, the elections we are seeing where Democrats succeed in the off cycle are not candidates who are doing the anti-Trump thing.

They are doing the for you thing. What am I giving you? And I cannot think off the top of my head of a slogan related to Crockett's campaign that spoke to me of what she was going to do for the voter.

The entire campaign, it really felt like she was trying to like catch up to what like a good robust campaign apparatus needed to look like she didn't have an issues page until two weeks before the election.

When her campaign rolled it out, it was a disaster in her debate against halorito. She was constantly battling sort of the 60 second time limit on the clock. She didn't really have good answers to basic questions.

Like when they asked her, okay, there's been a lot of discussion in this race about electability. Why do you think you're the candidate for Texas? It was something along those lines.

Her response was essentially, well, I'm looking at the polls and the polls say I can be.

And that was really just what like I like Jasmine Crockett. This was an incredibly disappointing campaign. It was really messy. And then she was getting into like fights with the media, getting caught lying about stuff.

And again, when you're trying to do the near impossible in a state that hasn't won a statewide seat for a Democrat in like 34 years or something like that, you can't have

it. You can't approach the campaign with the idea that oh, you're just going to like bust through the primary and then figure it out headed toward the general.

We are in March. It's April, May, June, July, August, September, October, seven months, seven months between now in November, where every vote counts, where you are going to be constantly facing Republican attacks attacks at the national level,

the state level, the local level. If you are a strong candidate on a ticket in a state like this, you also kind of have a responsibility to maybe help pull up down ballot Democrats who may not have the national profile that you have.

And the race isn't going to pause for you to get it together and build a campaign apparatus and build your ground game. That is the kind of thing you start doing in the primary.

Yeah. If being not Trump was enough, then the political landscape would be very, very different, wouldn't it? Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, we'd have President Hillary Clinton.

If being don't Trump wasn't enough, for example, they want a concept. It still jars me every time I think about it.

I do like to imagine the sort of the alternate reality would be in, but they gave testimony in regard to the Epstein files as a weekly Epstein files check-in.

Did we learn anything particularly new there or was it just kind of conspiracy theorists leaning people trying to catch them out like your Lauren Boeberts of the world?

Did we get very much useful from this testimony?

I don't really think we got much of use from either of them. Again, I think I said it like a week or two ago when we were first discussing this.

For all the problems with Bill and Hillary Clinton and there are many.

Yeah.

These are not stupid people. Maybe Bill, like Hillary, not stupid.

And I was talking about it with some friends of mine. The really interesting thing was watching her kind of just tear someone like Boebert to shreds.

Without really trying and being like, yeah, I think Hillary Clinton was not an appealing candidate. She made a lot of mistakes in the campaign.

But she absolutely had that sort of like Nancy Pelosi-ish thing, a little unkillable, you know?

Yeah, it really felt like she was just there, like just sort of letting Boebert come at her and then just going, uh-huh.

That fucking stupid. And it was like, okay, great. Like, you know, she didn't have to be still on the front foot almost.

It was like she was just letting her come and then making it look like an asshole.

And I don't necessarily consider the Clintons to be good people. But I've said it before.

One of the things that really just like me about the Trumpiers is

how low effort a lot of politics has become.

Like, I'm not saying that I need all politics to be like the fucking West Wing.

But as a kid, as like someone who was coming of age in the years of Obama, seeing politicians who were like rhetorically inspiring and adept at just like

rhetorical fencing with the opposition and knew when and how to like actually push the buttons and actually use rage to get something done.

And again, I may be looking at this with like rose tinted glasses.

But again, just seeing someone like Hillary Clinton, which again, I consider to be odious in a lot of ways.

Yeah. Go up against someone like Lauren Boebert and just like, like a bug.

Yeah.

It was, it was, that was what was interesting about it to me.

I also thought like the interactions between the like lawyers sitting there with the Clintons were very interesting.

But I don't think we learned or uncovered anything new about the Epstein scandal that we didn't know at the end of the day.

This was a humiliation ritual by Republicans.

It was intended to be like a struggle session for the Clintons.

And they kind of just, they were like, all right, bring it on.

And I think they came out pretty unscathed.

I think one of the things for me that came out of it, which is something we knew.

But it was a, a, a cementation of just how fucking stupid Boebert is when she posted a picture of a private hearing before the hearing had finished.

And of course, Hillary Clinton to basically just storm out of the hearing.

Just like this person's in charge of making policies and shit.

And they don't understand basic rules like that.

Yeah.

Unbelievable.

So she understands the rules. She just doesn't care.

That's like Republicanism in the nutshell.

They understand the rules. They don't give a shit.

Chris, can we just on a final note get a little Trump polling check in just a quick one?

Because I'm assuming it's going badly there.

And that is just occasionally nice to hear when the world's going to shit.

It's not going great job.

No, be honest with you there.

Well, according to the cook political report polling tracker, Trump's approval rating is now 41%.

And then if we look into some individual polls, see an end.

This poll of polls has him at 38% approval, which is pretty bad.

And Fox News 43% right across the board.

Really, his approval rating is way lower than when he began the job.

And also according to Fox, everything, every policy, every area apart from board of security is below the 50% approval mark.

So yeah, pretty bad.

It's all turning right on that note.

And then let's finally end on a silly question, Chris.

Well, you're asking me, but I've delegated this to our pal Simon, producer,

Simon's in charge of the silly question this week.

So Simon, please reveal the silly question. Please Simon.

All right. Okay.

Come on, actually with the silly question this week, then.

So everything's bigger in Texas.

The silly question is, what's your favorite supersized thing?

Could be, you know, a meal, could be some kind of landmark.

Could be anything that's just ridiculously big and doesn't need to be.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Then if you've seen the doorkin cock,

there's a massive cockful in doorkin.

Yeah, there's a massive cock.

Yeah, the huge cock, the doorkin cock, and it's there.

It's just kind of shit.

My friend wants out, we were talking about our landmarks from where we grew up.

And in Lincoln, we've got a massive cathedral.

Unnecessarily big, but I would say also necessarily big.

It's really cool, Lincoln Cathedral. That's my favorite landmark.

And he was like, oh, we've got the doorkin cock.

And I was like, you can't seriously be comparing Lincoln Cathedral,

former tallest building in the world with the doorkin cock,

a big metal cockful on a roundabout in...

It's on a roundabout.

Sorry, yeah, it's just you just sort of drive around this cock roundabout.

Yes, a massive cock roundabout.

Yeah, they honorable mentions the doorkin cock, Lincoln Cathedral.

Wins, I've been really nerdly into spominix lately,

which are these kind of massive Yugoslavian statues.

They look really Star Wars-esque.

Why are you into that?

Because they're just really fucking cool.

And I went to a couple of countries that had them.

And I would see them.

And they look really massive in Star Wars-esque.

And they're just an interesting thing.

But do you mean like a massive in Star Wars?

Well, there's just a huge one here that looks like a tie fighter.

There you go.

Okay.

There's these huge statues they were kind of put in the way of churches

so that people would have to see them.

There's a whole thing.

Yeah, there were like World War II memorials.

Oh, okay.

They're just huge statues.

Huge statues are fucking cool, but they're like very much across the Yugoslavian.

Maybe they are cool.

Sorry though, I know about shit that you don't know about me.

Quite a lot, I guess.

Yeah, exactly.

Nikki, why don't you tell Chris about some more shit that you don't know anything about?

It can't be hard, can it?

You just said tie fighter fucking statues.

Oh my God.

Things said giant things that I love.

Yeah.

I will say, getting like those like giant sodas in Texas always made it like that makes me happy.

Big sodas.

Yeah.

Love big sodas.

Nikki, the shill for big soda.

I love tall boots.

I think the coolest tall thing I've ever seen and I was very little and I would like to go back someday.

Was the Hoover Dam.

That shit's insane.

Like gargantuan.

Yeah.

I do love like big structures.

Big structures make me happy.

I love just like looking up at something.

It brings me no small amount of joy.

I'm drawing one else.

I like five pound bags of candy.

Nice big candy.

Yeah.

Like John Candy.

Big pop and big candy then basically.

Chris, what about you then?

You must have thought about this on the team.

Well, I've just gone down the food route basically.

Okay.

So first of all shout out to a YouTube channel bid meets food.

You've not seen this channel.

He eats just a godly amount of food.

Big food.

Everything is massive.

But actually, I'll flip this question around on his head and I know the big thing, the supersized thing, food wise,

that I least like.

And this is going to be a surprise because it goes against every essence of my being.

It's Yorkshire pudding wraps.

You don't like them.

No.

I'm not a driver.

I think they look kind of good though.

Yorkshire pudding should be crispy.

Big crispy.

Hold the structure.

And they're just always big soft, flabby Yorkshire puddings.

I don't like it.

Okay.

Anyway, that's that right over.

Yeah, fair.

I thought I thought I'd get more, more.

Yorkie Ballad.

Yeah.

You have me.

None of us are as interested in Yorkshire.

No.

I don't think so.

Any of us have eaten one of those to be honest.

Yeah, I've eaten one.

I've just eaten one.

It Christmas.

You go to a Christmas stall.

Yorkshire pudding wraps.

You are not tempted to get one.

No.

I've seen him on just four.

Yorkie food.

Don't fancy that.

That merch balloon.

Not fancy it.

It's Sunday dinner in a, in a wrap.

Yeah.

And I don't think I like eating Sunday dinner as a dinner.

Personally.

What do you mean?

I don't need to eat it as a wrap.

Do I?

You don't like, sorry.

No, sorry.

You don't like Sunday dinner as dinner.

No, I said, I don't mind Sunday dinner as a dinner.

I'm happy to eat it as a dinner.

Yeah.

Well, so what would I eat as a wrap?

Well.

Yeah.

I mean, sure.

Not all of it needs to be done.

No, it doesn't.

Yeah.

That's kind of my policy.

Exactly.

We're agreeing.

Right.

But also fish and chips.

I really like big fish and chips.

Okay.

Some of them.

Big stuff to you, like.

Seafood tower.

I'm a fan.

I mean, it's the classic one.

But just a massive popcorn.

Yeah.

That's the street.

There's kind of like no receptacle too large for popcorn, really.

And just keep eating it in the whole movie.

Yeah.

I'm into that.

That's popcorn.

And then there's a giant cat in cat food in South London.

Okay.

I used to see when I was a kid.

And it was just like the scale of it was just really impressive to me.

It was stuck in my mind.

So I don't know.

It was kind of scary.

But also kind of cool at the same time.

Was it like just a regular cat that was just overfed?

Or was it like one of those like weird breeds of big cats?

No.

It's like a, it's not an actual cat.

It's a fiberglass cat.

Oh, right.

Yes.

Yes.

I thought you were the statue.

A cat's spominic, if you will.

Yeah.

Cat's spominic.

Exactly.

It was very good.

Yeah.

It was just kind of sitting above a shopping area there.

Okay.

I saw it really a real life gigantic cat.

A cat and a Airbnb I stayed out over summer.

Giant.

And I looked in the window and I was just like, what the fuck is that cat?

And it was some weird, it was like a stinks.

Maybe a Bengal or something.

Yeah, maybe.

It was huge, man.

And it's like, fuck that.

Yeah.

For that for a laugh.

Yeah.

It's just a house cat.

Anyway, meow.

That's the end of the podcast.

See you later.

And that brings us to the end of this episode of American Friction Chris.

Meow.

Meow.

And Simon.

Meow.

Meow.

Nicky.

Meow.

Meow.

And listeners.

Meow.

Thank you so much.

Spit with.

Fuck is wrong.

It's a bit forward.

Listeners, join us on Patreon.

I'm going to get you to come over to our Patience.

Very good.

Yeah.

Come and join the Patience.

So if you want to back it.

We said.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, this is great.

Yeah.

Right.

Back on Patreon for more of this or less of this, whatever you want.

I don't fucking know.

Right.

Yeah.

What do you want?

Come over here.

Right.

Search American Friction podcast Patreon.

Or go to patreon.com for that.

American Friction directly to sign up to our Patreon.

Patreon.

The link in the show notes to our Patreon.

We want to keep going.

But we need your support.

Yeah.

So you get to go to Patreon.

The link in the show notes to our Patreon.

We want to keep going.

But we need your support.

You get episodes without ads, bonus content, Patreon.com for such American Friction.

You can't back us there.

We get it.

But please do go meow your way over and, uh, fucking no.

Review, rate, say stuff about ourselves where anything else does you do, Chris?

Comment meow.

Yeah.

Comment meow.

Everyone comment meow on this.

Why not?

If you don't support some Patreon, you have to comment meow or your favorite cat or cat sound.

Is it a real cat or a fiberglass cat in cat food?

Whichever.

Tell us.

Anyway, right.

Do that.

Cheers.

Bye.

This was American Friction.

Meow.

His per.

I've run out of cat stuff.

Wait, it's over.

It's just over.

American Friction.

Good look editing that Simon.

Yeah.

So leave it in.

Chris.

See you guys.

Peace out everyone.

Meow.

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