John Heilemann: Did Trump Make an Ominous Shift on Iran?

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So we'll have much more on the implications of the Voting Rights Act ruling on the Bork YouTube page today, if you're antsy. So check that out or else later this week on the pod. I am back to streaming tonight. So come hang out about eight o'clock in the East, YouTube Substack, wherever you find our streaming. I'll take your Q&A. I just want to do more Q&A today. So holler at me. Come at me with some fun stuff. just one more reminder about our live shows in San Diego and LA it's downtown San Diego May 20th, downtown LA May 21st, working on some fun guests, we'd love to see you out there, make a little trip out of it, jet fuel prices are going to be going up this summer so May's a good time to go on vacation alright, stick around for kind of a good show long show with one of my faves, John Heilman Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show chief political columnist at Puck, host of its InPolitik podcast. He's an analyst at MS Now. He's co-host of Hacks on Tap. He's doing a lot of content. We used to be together on a little show called The Circus, and you just missed a very lively green room discussion of Uncle Barry Finn. It's John Heilman. What's up? Hey, man, how are you? I was really pleased to see for a variety of reasons, because I'm always worried about the safety of my dear friends. I was glad to see for that reason and and for the other more underlying reason. But you were nowhere near the White House Correspondents dinner. Nowhere near. Were you not there? You were not at the puck brunch? I was reading John Kelly's just kind of very flowery reenactment of the puck brunch. You didn't get the invite? I, of course, got the invite. I kept getting texts from people that night, are you in Washington? Are you at the dinner? I'm like, have we met? Have we met? This has nothing to do with puck or the puck brunch or anything else. I fucking despise that dinner. I hate that dinner. I find it atrocious. I went for most of the 90s in about 2003, 2004. I'm like, I'm never going to this thing again for all the same reasons I don't live in Washington. What was the wildest thing happening at those dinners in the 90s? Was Christopher Hitchens getting blackout drunk? and like doing, doing lines in the bathroom? Yes. Or like what was, what was happening in the nineties? You know, Christopher lived at the Wyoming, which is right across the street from the Washington Hilton. And the origin story of the, of the Vanity Fair after party before there were after parties was that Christopher threw the Vanity Fair after party in his apartment at the Wyoming. And it was an outgrowth of what was his alternative white house correspondence, dinner, dinner. So like the cool kids would, would have dinner at Christopher's house, not go to the dinner. And then that evolved into the Vanity Fair party, which then became a big celebrated thing. I remember a lot of cocaine being done in the bathrooms of the Washington Hill in the nineties at that peak. There was a lot of journalists and politicians passing, passing bullets under from one stall to the next. That occurred a lot in the 1990s. And yet even then I still hated the dinner despite all of its, despite all of its other charms. And so I stopped, I stopped going and then Bloomberg made us go one year in like 2014. and after having been gone for 10 years, I went for one year, we did color commentary on the red carpet with Walt Clyde Frazier in an alligator skin tuxedo. And then I said, I'm never going back and I have not been since. So it's been at least 12 years since I've been. All right, well, I'm going to find that archival footage of you and Clyde Frazier. I've got a great Clyde Frazier shirt that I like to wear. Let's talk about the news. I want to find that archival footage. I'm sure it exists. I could provide it for you. The big news, I guess we should start with the bulwark news, right? We should shout out a colleague, Ben Parker, who had the exclusive on this. Donald Trump has decided to put his face on the passports. And this feels like a troll of the globalist libs who get passports. He's also in line with his Caudillo-esque desire to live in a country where when you land at the airport, you immediately see the dear leader's face. And then you have to see his face on the side of buildings. And you see his face on the money. and then you see his face everywhere on the plates. And I guess that is, since Donald Trump has not had much success in making anyone's life better, I think that that is really what he's going to be focused on going forward. I would have thought it was a troll of the globalist, planet-trotting, cosmopolitan liberals like you and me, Tim, except for the fact that he's doing all the other things. If it was singular, I'm just putting my face in the passport, I'd be like, he's trolling us. But the truth is he wants to have his face on everything. He wants to have his face on the money. He wants to have his face on the buildings. He wants to have a face on the new monuments he's building for himself. It's very consistent. So I assume Trump's kind of like, you know, he'll be asking to take away state driver's licenses soon and have a national driver's license ID system in which your face will be on the ID, but the only other thing on the ID will be a larger image of him. A year ago, almost, we were over in London and Berlin for about 10 days for a couple of things, including a wedding, including the wedding of Paul Banks from Interpol in Berlin. And I mentioned that because I saw you were at the Interpol set at Coachella with Hamby. That's really great. And I got there and my passport, it turned out, was not expired, but was going to expire in six months. And there's a rule that some of the European countries like, so I couldn't go. I could fly to London. I got to England. And then they were like, you can't go to Germany because your passport's not going to inspire. I was in some weird window. Right. In the area. Yeah. Right. So I had to go to the embassy and they took care of it all. They gave me an extension. It was not a problem. It was all cool. Actually, the American embassy in London was great about this. but they were like, you have an extension now for another year. And I, the Trump news made me think, wait a minute, like I haven't gotten my passport expended yet. And I got to get this thing in under the wire. Cause the idea that like, cause this is a key element, right? If you, if I can get it in under the wire before they get his face on it, I will have a passport for a decade and I'll be past the Trump thing by the time I have to get a new passport renewal. Whereas. Baron might be president then or, well, you know like some other kind of ai overlords but yeah i mean look it's it's you know it's of a piece with so much other stuff this is one where i was a pocket constitution dork you know i i am the type of person that had a fondness for the idea that you know in america uh our president is called mr president and we you know things are much more democratic and small d i care about this kind of stuff when i went to foreign countries where they had you know authoritarian dictator banners and posters on the buildings. I found this to be very weird and foreign. And so that makes me think that people will eventually kind of blanch at this. But then on the other hand, I'm like, I don't know, maybe that's just about me and my priors and people actually don't really care at all. There are two competing things going on here, if you step away from Trump for a second. One is, I think it's true that cults of personality in general and the sanctification of individuals of various kinds, whether they be tech trillionaires or sports stars or pop stars, whatever, is more prominent and prevalent now than it was before. Personal branding, having your face, your name, whatever, if you get to a certain point on shit. So I think people's tolerance for that as a general thing is higher, right? I'm with you, and I would go even further than that. When you would go to those countries, countries where that kind of thing was prevalent, you'd say, I'm kind of proud I'm from a place where we, where if you think about it, you don't usually think about it quite this way. You think, oh, what we venerate is the institution, right? It's the presidency, not the president. It's like why people swear oath to the constitution and not to the occupant of the office because they are all regarded as transient and eventually going to just fade back into the background. This is the office is what's powerful. And you feel like I'm glad I live here. We're going to start playing some soft, patriotic music behind you as you wax nostalgic about that. Jason, make sure to add that. You just told me you were a pocket constitution dork. So like I can have said the same thing. I love it. I just think you would think about it like, I'm glad I'm in a place like that. Right. And it's, it's distressing, obviously, to think that we're becoming, you know, much more akin in both in, in not almost every level, but certainly at the symbolic level to, to the places where despotism, you know, and especially petty despotism is not just present, but is embodied. And as you see it everywhere, the signs of it are everywhere. That's the thing about despots, right? If you've traveled a lot, you know when you're in a despotic country because the despots are constantly reminding you that you're in a despotic country, right? And that's what it feels like here. What's so depressing about it is because you sort of go, it's not just that it's more like those other countries, but that you see it happening in front of you. This is how it happens, right? Which is the president just starts going, I'm putting my name on more and more shit. I'm putting my face on more and more shit. And you're just going to get so used to it that you're going to eventually go, eh, okay, whatever. And I'm not ready for that yet. I forget who I'm stealing this point from, so I apologize and I'll credit if I can find it in my social media archive. But when the discourse was going around for a while about like, is Trump Hitler? Is he Mussolini? Is he like this? Is he like Orban? Somebody observed that Trump is really kind of an Arab oil despot at heart. Like, you know, extremely gaudy, gaudy rather, wants to do corrupt deals. And whoever made this point, it was a while ago. And like, it is just so on the nose now and obvious as he's like making these deals with the Arab despots. And they are really our best allies now besides El Salvador. And like just sort of at a spiritual aura level, kind of, I do think that's how he sort of sees himself. The one caveat to that, I think that's true. Is the Sharia law. Well, no, no. I mean, I think the caveat to that is that at least. Many wives though. That's an appeal. The thing about the Arab oil despots is that they are largely anonymous. They don't want their names and faces of money. They want to be, you know, when you see these like the Forbes list or whatever, who are the richest people in the world? A lot of times we don't really know because a lot of the sheikhs are like, we don't really want them to be on that list. What we want is we want to have all the money. We want to have all the power. And it's easier for us if we're not accountable so that no one in our population can look at us and go, oh, that guy's the one who's oppressing us, right? So they kind of keep it on the down low. They have all this dough. And if you're living in the region, you know who these people are. But they're not like, they don't want to be on the cover of, if we lived in a world where there was still Fortune and Forbes as real business magazines, but they wouldn't want to be. I don't want to be on the fucking cover of Fortune. I just want to have all the fucking shit. And Trump is both. He behaves like a Middle Eastern oil autocrat, despot, whatever, oligarch. but also wants to be like, you know, like Taylor Swift. He also wants to be, you know, Taylor Swiftie and also wants to be on everything and be fully acknowledged that he is who he is. That's the big difference there. I think it's funny to think back to the McCain ad, making fun of Obama, the most famous person in the world. And that's just like literally couldn't be more on the nose for Trump. The McCain ad was, it was obviously, didn't work, but also was premised on the notion that there was a substantial number of people. The ad was called Celebrity. He's the most famous person in the world was opening that ad, right? They showed him at the Brandenburg Gate and you saw him with other pop stars and stuff. And that was supposed to be by someone's theory, all of McCain's team, Fred Davis, who made that ad. They all were like, the American electorate will be like, we don't want a celebrity as president. That was the premise of that, right? So first of all, not only were they wrong, but second of all, like now you look at it and I was like, how could you have ever thought that? That would be that would be considered like a devastating ad that would end Barack Obama's political career. Hilarious. One additional way in which he's like the Middle Eastern autocrats is he's very interested in throwing his political foes into prison over kind of non-existent, fabricated, crazy topics. Something that's very popular. MBS did this very efficiently when he took over in Saudi. So far, Trump hasn't gotten the bone saw out, but maybe that's next. It's been far less efficient with Trump. We do have the rule of law here still in courts. And so he hasn't been able to lock people up in Ritz Carlton as much as he'd like to. He's trying once again. He's back to the plate for, I think, the fourth time with James Comey. Now, this time they've indicted him. A grand jury has indicted him somehow over the seashell picture. James Comey posted a boomer resist meme where he was walking along the beach. I asked him about this when he was on the pod a couple months ago. He's walking along the beach. Some MSNL viewer. someone is a big fan of you on Nicole's show yeah exactly kind of some 71 year old upper west side lady resident who watches MSNBC all the time or MSNOW all the time who has a beach house who made this little thing on the show like Kitty Hawk or something the outer banks some seashell art in Bethany that's at 8647 which you know is a restaurant term for kill this not on the menu you know this isn't available And to be clear in that, and then just say, kill again, kill it. And when we say kill it from the menu, no one, like everybody understands that killing it from the menu involves the loss of no life. It's a metaphor. It's a metaphor. Yes. Remove it from the menu. As I mentioned the other week, it was like the Persian person who was trying to say that when we say death to America, it's like literally death. It's not, it's kind of like how when you guys say fuck Trump, you don't literally mean I want to put my penis into Trump's orifices. that's not what you're saying right correct so killing it from the menu is a figure of speech 86 47 is the seashells we're laughing it's i guess vaguely serious because jim comey is gonna have to get a lawyer go to court and defend himself over this and in an ostensibly free country where you should be allowed to say 86 47 if you want as a matter of fact i just did right there so i better watch out do you have any big thoughts before i take you as to hearing cash explain the seriousness of this investigation? Well, I will only say to your point about all these things, I found the first three Comey indictments, they're obviously, we don't even have to say, these are weaponization of the DOJ, the retribution campaign, blah, blah, blah. But like, it was actually kind of delightful to watch the consequence. And I feel, of course, sympathy for Comey for having to deal with this. But watching him roll into those previous legal proceedings with Pat Fitzgerald and be like, against Lindsey Halligan and be like, we were just going to lawyer the living shit out of you and embarrass the Trump administration every time they would go into a courtroom. I'm looking forward to that again in this, because this is not, he is not going to go to jail for this. There is not a jury that's going to convict him because it's such a ludicrous charge, but it will be kind of, I'm sorry he has to go through it, but it will be fun to watch him and his team. yet again demonstrate that the trump people are not just vindictive but incredibly fucking incompetent and don't really know their way around a courtroom at all amen and shout out to jim comey who obviously we have litigated often um the choices he made during the 2016 campaign on this show and you and i've done it together i've done it with him on the show yeah but he could have gone down a lot of different paths you know and when trump called him into the office there he could have gone down the path of, I'm going to go along to get along, like many other people did who are in high-ranking positions in the administration. He did not do that. He's being targeted for the fact that he tried to act in his own integrity, and his daughter's being targeted now because of that. And it's atrocious and an abomination, but in some ways, I do think it's an inspiring, redemptive arc from Jim Comey, and his daughter's now suing the administration. It benefits him that he's going against. It's an insult to the Keystone cops to call these guys the Keystone cops. I would like to play Kash Patel press conference announcing this very serious seashell indictment Former FBI Director James Comey has now been indicted for two felony counts While many of you may read this indictment and view this matter as a simple investigation, it is the farthest thing from that. Every single investigation this FBI and our partners at the Department of Justice undertake, especially those that involve the threats to harm or hurt or even kill individuals, whether they behold public office or civilians in our country are met with the same measure of investigative prowess and tools and personnel in partnership with the Department of Justice as anyone else. This has been a case that's been investigated over the past 9, 10, 11 months. These cases take time. Our investigators work methodically. 9, 10, 11 months, John. They've been eyeing that picture. They've looked at the metadata. They've looked at the different styles of seashell art. They've looked at, you know, inspiration from past seashell artists to see the level of menace. This actually was a tell for me yesterday because, you know, you also be at that same press conference where you saw Todd. I want to be, I want to be your AG Blanche saying, you know, there is one thing that's really clear. You cannot threaten the life of the president of the United States. And we will not, that is, that's the law. We will not let, you know, so we are going to bring these people to justice, right? I haven't done this. I actually, if I had had a few more minutes, I would have done it before the show to try to break some news on this. But I would like to go back and have ChatGPT or Claude or something, go back and look at how many people have been charged with this crime and then tell me what in the totality of those cases, what the longest and what the average amount of time is that has elapsed between the incident for which they were charged and the charge. Threatening to kill the President of the United States. is a serious crime. And I am telling you, my gut tells me that what you would find in all of the cases, however many of them there have ever been under this charge, under this law, is that the time is almost always trivially short. Somebody threatens to kill the president of the United States, man, the charges are brought instantly. And you get on it. And you get on it, right? The guy's trying to kill the president of the United States. You don't wait nine months. If the guy is seriously intending to kill the president, it would be malpractice to let him wander free for almost a year. This man wants to kill the president, Tim. And we have evidence of it, but we're going to take nine months to a year to bring the charges. Even if that, even if this wasn't obviously ludicrous because it's just an Instagram post, there isn't any fucking investigation to do. That's the only thing there is. it's like and that kind of just gives the lie to the whole thing which is the timing of this thing is the most suspect thing about it which is like what you jim comey's trying to kill the president let's wait a year before we bring the chart before we bring it to justice it just sounds so stupid even as you're saying jim comey jim comey is trying to kill the president jim comey is plotting to kill the president you know what he thought he is walking through the woods taking pictures and Like writing captions based on the poetry and literature that he's been reading. That's what Jim Comey's doing. Jim Comey wants the president dead. And what he thought the way to do it was, was to post a picture on Instagram under his own name of some seashells. Because that's what you do if you really want to see the president get killed and you want to help make it happen. It's so, I mean, it's beyond ludicrous. But the point about the timing is that they know it's beyond ludicrous. And I think to the serious point here, and you guys have talked about this already on the various Bulwark podcasts, but it's like there may be some coincidence to the fact that Comey's daughter has now got the right to sue. But I think the clearer thing is that this is – that they have been trying to capitalize on this narrative around the attempted assassination at the dinner. And they're kind of going to run out of runway on that. They got everybody to say that we need to build the, hey, oh my God, they tried to kill Donald Trump at the dinner, so we got to build the ballroom. What's the next beat of that story? What's the thing that you keep going? The president is constantly under threat. Now look, Donald Trump, there have been people who tried to kill him and we take that seriously. But if you're going to try to politicize the White House Correspondents Dinner for whatever purpose, whether it's just to make Trump look like a victim or look like a hero, or if it's to try to get the ballroom built or whatever, you need that. What's the next beat in the story? How do you keep it going? Oh, we have this Jim Comey thing that's been sitting around for a year. Oh, the seashell case. Let's bring the seashell case. It keeps assassination attempts at the top of the discourse. But it makes those other attempts feel unserious. Of course, yes. They're making them feel less serious. You said that there was a tell in the investigation. Here's my tell in Cassius' language in that clip. That's suit too, by the way. Man, he needs a new tailor. Talk about tells. I think he needs everything. His whole MN needs to change. He needs confidence. He needs a life coach. Did you say Mien? He needs a speech coach. Yeah. Because Mien needs to change? Yeah. I love it when you use that. The way he carries himself. Fancy French words on this show. His eyes need to change. He maybe needs glasses. I should go to Williamson Eye Center in Baton Rouge. Maybe we can help him out. Here we go. Especially though we take all threats seriously. And then he says this. Especially those involving threats to harm, hurt, or even kill individuals. like throwing even in there is for me the tell it's like even cash doesn't really believe this and he's kind of caveating it he feels too ridiculous to just say bluntly that james comey was going to kill the president like he can't say that sentence because it would without laughing and so even he gives a little tell there uh attempted assault with a deadly seashell um that's the that's the one missing charge they're like ah you know there's only a photo of this of the seashell I think that's I think that's a puka shell not a seashell like that's a puka shell is a seashell right yeah yeah yeah y'all know that I'm a big fan of soul I've been enjoying their out of office THC sparkling beverages for a while they're sparkling and very yummy had one last night as a matter of fact before I snuck away to Tiptina's to see my friends in dragon smoke for a couple tunes there's a lot going on here in New Orleans a lot of opportunities to drink THC sparkling beverages or have THC gummies, friends are always in town but you know I gotta be up and at them to do this pod in the morning and so something to do that makes you have a little bit more fun when you're socializing but doesn't leave you as sluggish the next day as to turn to Sol's new mood gummies whether you need that little pick me up when you're going out or something to settle down at night, they've got the perfect options to make you feel right. 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In addition to just the dinner being unbearable at any time, I felt like the idea that journalists would go to, when Trump is having a direct assault on many of their outlets in particular. And when he was telling everybody he was going to take a shit all over them in public. The dinner is terrible in almost any circumstance. You're like, hey, Trump is telling us he's going to shit on us in public. Let's go and honor him. What a good idea. So anyway, the day after, the FCC is going after Disney and the licenses of some ABC stations based on, I don't know, violations of DEI or woke or something. It's the Visby and Kiss from Buzz Lightyear or something that has been their outrage. You know, we talked about this, I think, both the last times you were on, which is the mood in the media as, you know, Trump continues to go after them. Like, obviously, at the very beginning of the administration, everybody was buckling. I think after the Kimmel situation, we got a little bit of backbone starting to pop up. But I'm just kind of wondering what you think kind of the environment's like right now at media companies and, you know, whether there's some more, you know, gumption building up or whether everybody's still pretty scared of the administration's retribution campaign. I always like my formulation about no false binaries. And now people are saying, you know, two things can be true at the same time. You know, we have a new CEO at who's Bob Iger's successor coming in Disney, who, who at first launch, we're very early in the story because of, of just really only yesterday that, that a car decided to go after those guys over these Jimmy Kimmel jokes that are like, you know, as Kimmel himself said, if what he said about Melania Trump and Donald Trump is, is somehow an indictable offense that would get you fired. Just about Don Rickles, Henny Youngman, you know, these people never would, would never have been able to work. everybody who the Tom Brady roast would have to go to jail under that theory of the case. But I think what we've seen so far in early days here is that the new CEO of Disney is trying to at least make it look like right now that he's going to fight and that there's not even going to be, as you remember the first Kimmel thing, there was the capitulation and then they found their backbone when the, basically when the viewers revolted over it. I don't want to like sort of say that there's no one who took a lesson from the fact that Disney won when they fought back on Kimmel before, and that people aren't thinking like, well, there's a way to win. We don't have to capitulate on everything when they go after us. I think there is some sign that there are people in the business who looked at that Kimmel exchange and took some comfort in that or some heart and thought, okay, maybe if we're on the receiving end of a Trump threat, whether it's a regulatory retribution threat or a legal threat that we can fight back. And obviously there are places like the New York times that have, you know, when they've, when Trump has said he's going to sue them or sued them, they'd said, bring it on, you know, we'll fight you. Uh, so there's some of that at the same time. I just spent eight days in Los Angeles and I would say they may be willing to fight back a little bit more, but the appetite for doing things that could incur the wrath of Donald Trump is, I would say, not only not greater, but less. I mean, And there is nobody, Tim, in the world of streaming television, some of the most powerful companies in the world, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, as the three main ones. And certainly we know what the situation is now at Paramount. No one expects Paramount to suddenly be an outlier here. There is less than zero appetite for anything that would be programming of a topical contemporary nature that might in one way or the other brush up against the Trump administration and potentially piss them off. There's a less than zero. Zero is come and pitch us this thing, but we're going to then respectfully decline. Their attitude now is affirmatively don't come in this office until after Donald Trump is gone. what I'm just trying to be honest with you, John, you'll be wasting our time and wasting your time because we are never going to make anything while Donald Trump is president. And maybe this will change. Maybe they'll be wrong that they will change their mind. Something will happen over the next year and they'll change their minds. But as of today, there is that attitude, which is, yeah, we don't even want to do a perfunctory meeting on this because we are never going to make this thing. If it's, if it touches on anything where Donald Trump or anything Trump adjacent could come up and there's some chance that something that you or one of your colleagues or on a show like that would say that would make them mad. The financial risk, the regulatory risk, it's just too great, fuck it, we're just going to keep our heads down for the next two and a half years. It's so crazy. I was talking about this a little bit with Nicole and Mark Elias yesterday and how these guys have been so incompetent at the active measures retribution. Everybody is walking free. They've won some settlements, I guess, with the media companies. But overall, you know, they've lost, you know, time again in court. They've not successfully gone after any of their foes. Now they've gone after regular people, obviously, you know, immigrants and, you know, folks that are in communities and stuff of that nature. But none of these high profile people have suffered at all. And yet still they've succeeded in the chilling effect. like there remains cowardice like across the corporate ceo class and hollywood very acutely you know i would say and that's why it's so shocking whenever you see somebody step up like who wasn't the one oil ceo in the meeting who was like yeah actually this venezuela thing isn't good for us right it was like oh man like how refreshing a rich person in a free country was able to just say what is true about uh the president's bad policies like this isn't north korea after all But the chilling effect side, they've still been effective at. Makes you wonder like what that person having some kind of an infarction or something at that moment. I don't know what happened there. I was having a minor stroke when I said that. Sorry, I take it back, Mr. President. But the weird thing about it, and this is actually something we did talk about before on some previous version of this show or mine or something. I can't remember. But, you know, there is one video platform that is actually growing. Only one. Even like Netflix, which is clearly the leader in streaming, right? their subscriber growth in the United States is, is now basically flat and they've brought all the live programming on. There's not really much growth for them left here. There's a lot internationally. They can still add subscribers, but here it's not really growing. None of the rest of them are really growing in an appreciable, like, like there was the boom in people making the transition to streaming is kind of over. It's now it's all incremental, but there's one platform that is now, I think uncontestably at everyone in all of this business would, would say this is one platform that's growing fast and is now the most powerful video platform in the world. That's YouTube, right? So everyone acknowledges that. And we're trying to get to 2 million subscribers on our YouTube page right now. So go subscribe. Hit subscribe. Hit like. Tell your friends. We're going for 2 million. 100%. And the Bullworth's a good example. I mean, what is it? So what's April, right? I mean, I can remember back when you guys were at 800,000. It wasn't that long ago. It was like after around the post-Kamala Harris's loss, Trump's victory, end of 2024, you guys were under a million. You guys have doubled, more than doubled in the course of basically about a year, right? But you're not alone. There's other people who are doing this too, right? Because the platform is, and that's what's fueling the, forget about what you guys do well or don't do well. You are one of many people who are driving the growth of the platform. Hey, what's interesting about that? How are you guys driving the growth of the platform? By talking about politics. And I would say that's true of the far left, really far left and really far right. YouTube's attitude, which is, you know, we have a few rules, but basically we're not going to be afraid of political content. We're not going to be afraid of controversial content. We're going to let all these flowers bloom. We're not going to, again, they might do a few annoying things about content moderation where you can't say certain words or whatever, but, but they're not like, we're not saying we won't put on, you know, Hassan Piker, and we're not going to put on Tucker Carlson. We're going to put on both and let it, and let it fly. Right. And that's not the only reason, but it is a reason why YouTube has become the most powerful video platform in the world. And every one of these streaming, these bigger streaming platforms, they know that. They see the growth. They're terrified of what YouTube is becoming. They're trying to get a bunch of YouTube. They're trying to, how do we tap into this creator thing? They're trying to get the YouTube juice all over themselves. Yeah. But they won't. So to speak. It's like, we'll bring in, pardon my take, we'll bring in Amy Poehler's show, right? Like some stuff. Yeah. But they won't touch anything. They look at it and go, God, we got to get that. we'll do this, we'll do that, we'll do this. But none of it is working because they're avoiding the thing that's actually really at the core of what's generating the actual mojo at YouTube. And it just goes back to your point of like, this is not just about political cowardice. It's about a kind of, they're making what I think people look back on as an obvious economic and business model mistake. They are being cowards, but they're also short circuiting their own commercial interests by, by being such pussies. Yeah. And it's also misjudging, I think where the public is. And I think this is particularly obvious right now, uh, after the Iran war. And that's all, you know, I want to talk about like his numbers could not be low right now. And I guess they could be, but, uh, you know, he's seen very gradual. Well, they could, they could be, yeah, they could manage the main thing is you can't, is you can't imagine what is going to turn it around. Like your Sarah's thing about the Bush line. It's not just that he's low that you've crossed a certain point. It's that there was a point with George W. Bush and with other presidents where it's hit a certain point and the dynamics are such that you're never going to turn it around. It's unsalvageable. It's post-Katrina Bush. He might stop the collapse, but he's not going to suddenly get back to 48 again or 43 again At a certain point you like you underwater now forever dude That it Starting a business can be overwhelming You juggling multiple roles designer marketer logistics manager all while bringing your vision to life Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. My guy Lakshad Jain has a new poll out today, and I want to get to the Democratic side in a second. I'm just looking at the Trump approval. Two months ago, he was at minus 15. Now he's at minus 22. And that's a very significant drop in just two months for somebody that for a long time was like pretty locked in in his fave, unfave with just high, strongly favorables, high, strongly unfavorables and a tiny window of people that were moving. Like now we're seeing a bigger window of people moving away from him who had been previously favorable to him. And, you know, they're trying to manage this with the jawboning. I've been enjoying the fact that I think we've hit an inflection point with the war and about how bad it's going. That for two straight days, we have not had an Axios report from an anonymous insider about how a deal is just around the corner. We're getting one of those every morning at 8.15. It's like clockwork. It's like, ooh, senior administration officials said the Iranians are interested in coming to the table. Senior administration officials says that they're seeing an end in sight. We're not even getting those anymore. Haven't gotten one as of 945. We're taping this this Wednesday morning. There was a Wall Street Journal report last night that Trump instructed aides to prepare for an extended blockade because he doesn't want to get back into a hot war because he doesn't want to look like a wuss. And so the blockade and hoping they crumble internally is his preferred outcome here. And that's like cutting off your nose to spite your face in the most extreme way possible. Yeah, like, I mean, there's so much to say about all this. We will not go down this tangent, but I will raise it. There was a report, NBC News report yesterday that they'd done analysis that there have been now $2 billion in maybe, I can't remember if it was winnings or betting on the prediction markets. It's about just Iran war related. Two billion. B? Billion? B with a B. B with a B. B as in Barry. B as in Barry. Two billion. What's the headline of this was? Yes. Prediction market bets on the Iran war top $2 billion. And again, the reason I said it's a tangent is that we don't want to go down is that there is nothing that signifies the dangers of the prediction markets, unregulated prediction markets, or the corruption of the Trump administration more than what I'm sure someday we're going to learn is that the profiteering on those two platforms, both of them now entangled with Donald Trump Jr. One, I think he's on the board. One, he's a senior advisor for Cal Sheet and Polymarket. And we have this one guy, special forces guy, who's being used as a sacrificial lamb to say, yeah, we're really tough on this stuff. The guy who bet on the Maduro raid, while Magamai man, the account is like betting on like the precise timing and targets of various things. various strikes in Iran and in Lebanon. It goes to the Axios thing, because a lot of those things, the Axios reports are, Tim, I think about, some of them are about the normal course of spin in the Washington message market. But a lot of them are also about Trump's desperate, frantic effort to keep the stock market from collapsing, which is just an ancillary and corollary thing to the ways that they're profiteering in the prediction markets, in the online prediction markets. All of this is about money, right? So a lot of this messaging is being driven to either enrich people who are insiders or to keep the last barometer, the only barometer of the American economy that looks healthy, however illusory that is, the stock market. Everything else in the American economy blows, but the stock market is at record highs. There's a whole other discussion about why that is, but that's clearly Trump understands that he has one last thing to hold onto as an economic argument, which is that the stock market is still doing well. I think that your point is correct in the sense that I don't understand what it is that having gotten to where we are now and elevated Iran into a kind of regional superpower by letting them demonstrate a theory, something that was previously only hypothetical, which was, can we control the Strait of Hormuz? And what will happen if we do that? They now know we can, and there will be global economic chaos, right? So they're now more powerful than they were before. They still have the nuclear weapons that they had before, nuclear materials that they had before. And the regime has only become more radical and more entrenched. The IGRC is more powerful than ever. So we have we have won narrow tactical military battles. We're degraded the ballistic missile capacity and something to kill the Navy, whatever. We've lost on the strategic level, the strategic level. And what is it that changes that equation from the Iranian point of view? What incentive do the Iranians have to come to suddenly be like, you know, let's, yeah, we're going to give up our chokehold on the straight. I don't really see it. You know, I, the most interesting thing about Trump now is that he is no longer even saying what the timeline is. We've moved into the period of indefinite commitment. He's not even making up his usual bullshit of like two more weeks, two more weeks. He just goes, you know, he just starts citing Iraq and Vietnam and Korea. And as if those are like, well, we haven't been there as long as Iraq, Vietnam and Korea. You're kind of like, well, we haven't, but what are you doing citing those? Those are like, well, until we get to the five-year mark, you got nothing to even worry about. This is a short war. It's like, I don't know, it's all very ominous to me. I think we could be there for a really long time. And again, how does that help Trump get out of the toilet politically? I don't see that. I just don't see the way out of it. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Even if it was to end soon, it's kind of like, okay, they just, uh, the house armed service committee, they got Hagseth over there this morning. I'm sure we'll be talking about that more on tomorrow's show, but you know, one thing that's come out of it already is they're estimating 25 billion has been spent. So it's like, we've lost lives. 25 billion is spent. The gas and food prices are going to be up at least through the fall already, even if they fit, even if this magically got fixed tomorrow because of the disruptions of the supply chains and all that and what, but so I would anybody have, have signed up for that deal on January 1st. It's like, Hey, we're going to lose American lives. It's going to cost 25 billion. Everybody's gas and food prices are going to be up in exchange for that. We're going to get rid of Iran's ballistic missile capacity and the street is going to be back open. The street was already open. Like what's a win? Right. And, and Iran's going to be more powerful than it was when we started. We'd never have made that deal. And I'd say, you know, I had my old, old friend, Zannie Mitten-Bettos, the editor-in-chief of The Economist, on my show right now, the one that just dropped yesterday. And I, you know, I was asking her about this and she's like, was explaining to me as the way someone who knows, really knows the movie of the global economy would, just like how the supply chain on oil stuff actually works and how long it takes to, that's a very long tail. And she's like, the oil shock is coming, you know, and we could, as to your point, if this all were resolved tomorrow, the way that the supply chain works, you're not going to get the worst of it for another several months. And as we sit here today, I think it's the case that in Europe, the stocks of jet fuel are down to like days now, right? The airlines are starting to cancel mass numbers of flights for the summer, like Lufthansa. The beginnings of the serious oil supply shock are going to hit Europe and are already hitting Asia. They're doing rationing of diesel across a bunch of Asian countries. We will be the last to feel it, but we will feel it. And again, to the point of what's going to turn things around for Donald Trump and for the Republican Party between now and, say, the midterms? Nothing. This is all in the pipeline, so to speak. You know, there's no way to turn that around. And here's Trump's message this morning. Iran can't get their act together. They don't know how to sign a non-nuclear deal. They better get smart soon. They better get smart soon. I just, I don't know. I was ready to go to the next level yesterday. But like for all of the messaging on the right about how much of a wet noodle Jimmy Carter was during the hostage crisis and how much of a wuss he is, I think people are afraid to say this about Trump because they're worried they're going to bait him into doing nuclear war, which, you know, whatever. But like this is the most embarrassing limp thing possible. It's like you started this war. You agreed to a ceasefire. You unilaterally continued the ceasefire, even though there's no deal. And now you're just like, you better get smart soon, Mullis. Right. You never know. And again, people are afraid to say this because to really make your point, how many it was like two weeks ago that Trump was threatening to annihilate their civilization from which they would never recover? like the bluster of, you know, you fucking lunatics better, you know, open up the strait. You, you know, like all that Easter Sunday stuff where he's threatening civilizational annihilation. That was the tenor of him a couple of weeks ago. And now he's going, you better hurry up and get sensible, you guys. And don't forget to brush your teeth tomorrow. You know, like, you're going to get a cavity. Sounded like Michael Tracy. Meet me at the Hampton Inn, Mullis. I'm out here at the Hampton Inn. I'm ready to fight. starting a business can be overwhelming you're juggling multiple roles designer marketer logistics manager all while bringing your vision to life shopify helps millions of business sell online build fast with templates and ai descriptions and photos inventory and shipping sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl that's shopify.nl it's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. I want to do some poll nerding stuff because here's my caveat. I feel like I've been uncharacteristically optimistic. So Raincloud Tim wants to come back for a second. Because there is some political. I miss Raincloud Tim. I miss him. There's some political caveats. I mentioned that poll today from Lakshad Jain about Trump's approval being down at minus 22. In the same poll, Trump went from minus 15 to minus 22. The generic ballot has gone from D plus six to D plus six. So no positive movement for the Democrats. The House Dems put out this internal poll. And you and I are old hands at this point. When you put out an internal poll, it's because the poll came back. And you're like, this is kind of on the upper edge of the margin of error. And so we want to make it look as good as possible. It didn't really blow me out of the water. And some of this stuff is going to be a little nerdy for some listeners. but others like they put out in arizona six the democrat is leading by three but the republican siskamani only won by three last time so that's a six point swing in colorado three is when i know um they say trump is underwater well heard only won that by five last time so and the iowa three uh you know trump won by four last time now they're saying he's underwater you know this stuff is all good the democrats are still gonna win the house like if you're just putting this out only through the construct of I represent the House Democrats and this is good for the Democrats taking over the House. It's a fine press release to put out. But, you know, there's just not a ton of sign in the numbers right now that we're seeing as the bottom falls out from Trump that we're seeing like people in red areas saying, OK, you know, it's so bad I'm going to take a chance in the Democrats. Now, there's plenty of time. It's only April. But I just I do think, you know, I'm hearing a little bit more bullishness on the Senate than I think the data indicates at this point. Well, I think the key question here is, which data? And by that, I mean, we have, I would say, these two big and differing data sets, right? One data set is what the polling is telling us. And I'm not trying to be irrationally exuberant about anything. I'm just trying to say, you know, we have now, over many cycles, Tim, as you know, come to, and we always find ourselves saying, whenever various outcomes occur, we're like, man, the polling's broken. You know, we don't, the polling, we've been said this in 2024, we said in 2022, we said in 20, we're constantly, right? And yet at this moment, you know, we're sitting here, I'm not like attacking you, but we always end up reverting back to the polling. People who've done this for a long time, right? I will say kind of the polling in 2022 was better than the punditry, actually. Sure, all I'm saying is that we've had systematic polling flaws from going back to 2016 now where it's been quite, And yet we don't really fully incorporate that into the way we do analysis. And the only reason I'm saying that is not because I'm a poll, a de-skewer or truther or something, but just to say that what we also have is another data set, which is what Democrats have performed in elections from the beginning of Trump 2.0 to now. So just to take the most obvious example, the Marjorie Taylor Greene district, where where the polling didn't have a, what was I think a 25, 26 point swing in that district, a very, very red district that ended up being carried by a Republican, but you saw like a 26 point swing in the course of two years. That typified, exemplifies what we've seen for the last 14 or 15 months. So I think if you're going to make the case for Democrats are on the way towards whatever a wave looks like in the environment, winning the Senate, the structural environment. And honestly, probably winning 52 senators to protect yourself from John Fetterman switching parties. That's the bar, I would say. If you're going to make that argument, the argument, the best set of data to support it is not the polling, but is the actual performance in actual elections over the last 14 months. I don't think anything is about as conclusive, but I do think it's worth at least contemplating that given a full decade of experience, which tells us that polling is broken, has been broken, has been been subject to systematic error, it might be worth at least equal, at least looking at both data sets and putting them and saying, well, the data over here is telling one story, which is that Democrats are in a good position, but not great. Maybe not as the polling doesn't show the kind of overwhelming wave that you might expect, but the data from all the elections in the last 14 months does sort of indicate that. And we'll see what turns out to be the case. But to the point we were making earlier, you know there is not only are the macro factors that are driving voter sentiment kind of locked in and in a bad place for trump and republicans but on the other side there's almost nothing they can do to countermand it i mean it's like we're at the point where we're almost out of runway for anything their legislation has not been very big on the republic they're not even claiming that they have anything to countermand honestly it's not even as if they have some message about like Here's the plan. Right. You know, firebombing Democrats with ads is like basically like negative, you know, negative polarization. I mean, in the absence of a Martian invasion that Mike Johnson and Trump and Kash Patel repelled, and we had actual live video footage of them repelling a Martian invasion. An Independence Day type situation, like Bill Pullman. Yes, Independence Day. So, yes, right. Right. Mike Johnson gets to be Will Smith and Kash Patel gets to be Bill Pullman. I just don't see it. We're locked in. And the question is really only how much more it spins in the anti-Republican direction, not the other way. I just don't see what those factors are that will turn it around. I take your polling caveat, but I'm just going to throw one little piece of candy at you because you just, why not? Why not do it? Do it. We're 50 minutes in. Two polls out of Texas this week. Yeah. UT poll has Calarico 42, Paxton 34, and that's a ton undecided. It's the Texas Public Opinion Research Poll I was more interested in. Tallarico, 46. Paxton, 41. Tallarico, 44. Cornyn, 41. Now, the one way to look at that is I don't know that Beto was ever up by five, even in the good campaign. Maybe one poll. On the other hand, 46 is about what Beto got. So maybe there's like a ceiling, a Democratic ceiling there. But, I mean, that's the best data points in the polling that we've seen for the Democrats all year. Your previous thing was rain cloud is back. The polling is not that strong. I was saying, well, look at the results of how Democrats have been doing. Like a caveat, but a caveat in the direction of there's reason to think there might be, I hate to use the word wave, but whatever. Democrats are going to overperform the polling. Let's put it that way. You look at the Tallarico thing and you feel better rather than feeling worse. I'm just intrigued. I mean, it's interesting. It's two poll numbers. I'm not getting emotional about Texas Senate polls. I'm just saying that like, that's an intriguing data. Well, I, I, I am, I am intrigued also. Um, and I don't get emotional about, about those things, but I thought, I think Tallarico is a, is a super interesting candidate and someone who I totally have my eye on as someone who, you know, could have a big future in national politics. I'm over-indexing my attention on that race. I just, all I'll say is that both of those polls are margin of error. I mean, they're, they're ties. And so for, for real people who, who are, you know, sophisticated about this, you look about those polls. They're both inside the statistical March of Era. They're tied. They're right way to talk about this is not Tallarico is leading in the Senate race. The right way to talk about this statistically speaking is Tallarico is in a statistical tie with either of the two And he performing a little bit better against Paxton in the bandwidth of in the band of tie He's better against that, which doesn't surprise anybody. I think he can win the state. I think he can win by, I think it's going to be very, very close. I don't think anybody should think James Tallarico is going to win. He would be helped enormously by Paxton being the nominee. And I don't think even then he's going to win by 10 points or six points if he's going to, you know, he's going to win by one or two if he wins. But I think it's going to be super competitive. The most interesting thing to me is that the, once he won the primary, watching what they tried to do to muddy him up and how little that had the effect on him, because I think that is really, you know, you saw the initial wave of how they were going to try to disqualify him and it hasn't hurt his numbers at all. In fact, his numbers have gotten a little bit better. Speaking of Trump weakness, remember when he was going to bully Ken Paxton out of the race? Remember that, that whoever won the first round, he was going to endorse, then the loser was going to drop out and they're going to do it for the good of the party. that didn't turn out to happen did it he seemed to have as much success bullying ken paxton as he has the mullahs in iran and there's just well i don't think he even try i don't think he even tried and i think the thing is there again if you're looking for various data points i know we we are watching the there's the trump's general political standing but there is this really now for the first time really we are seeing not just anecdotal but empirical signs that the trump basis is, if not crumbling, is like real erosion in the MAGA base. The fact that he didn't try to bully Paxton out of the race tells me that Trump knows that's right. Because I think he just looked up and went, I don't want to be on the wrong side. The thing I most had is my base. I'm starting to see that it's starting to crack. And I don't want to go and try to, I don't want to exacerbate that by going after the MAGA guy. I don't know. How's it going to help me with my base if I'm I mean, his base is he's now insecure with his own base. If he goes after after Paxton and ends up on Korn inside, there's just one more reason for the base to be like, fuck you. You're a liar and a fraud to begin with. I don't know if this is a raincoat anecdote. I just saw this article yesterday. I was like, I bet Heilman will have a good shtick on this. Barney Frank is dying, which is sad. And he's got a book coming out. and he according to the article in politico about his book he's hoping to use his reputation in his record of being on the left to give courage to many of my colleagues who i know agree with me but are inhibited from saying that some of the left-wing politics is making them too unpopular he says until we separate ourselves from the far left agenda we don't win you know barney frank obviously mostly known for gay rights frank dodd frank you know popular Northeastern liberal. And there's one way to look at that, which is like, this is an old, like move aside, old man. You don't, you don't understand where the world is going. But the other way to look at it is, I don't know, maybe is he savvy? Is he, is he seeing something? What do you make of the Barney Frank swan song? I can, maybe I can talk about Barney Frank all day. Barney was, is a literally by sheer coincidence, not the first national magazine story I ever wrote, but the first story I wrote when I became, when I wanted the staff of the Economist magazine in the fall of 1990 was about Barty Frank and the scandal that was then enveloping him because he had been involved with this male escort. And he had paid off a bunch of his parking, fixed a bunch of his parking tickets. And there was a thing that was around the house gymnasium and it became a whole thing. And it'd been obviously a bad thing in those days, Republicans were- The escort was in the house gymnasium? There was an element of the story that involved Barty and the escort in the house gymnasium engaging in some activity that was, you know, not what you want to be doing in the House gymnasium. The original Senate twink, kind of. Yes, exactly right. Republicans really seized on that. There was so much homophobia in the closet was so firmly entrenched back then. But the main thing about Barney, he got past that. There were people who thought it would end his career. And he got past it. And he eventually, you know, he stuck around for a really long time. He was by everyone's, and he is, I don't know what kind of condition he's in right now, But he was, if you asked a four or 35 members of the house, who was like the smartest member of the house, just pure candle power, like a high IQ, almost everybody would put Barney on the list of the top smartest house members they ever saw. Incredibly brilliant guy. Very, very, very, uh, uh, intellectually sophisticated and, and, and savvy, funny, quick on his feet. Um, all of that. And it's not surprising that like the, the, the legislation that he, uh, that Dodd-Frank is the legislation will be most remembered for because, you know, he was a very, very serious person about a pretty complicated area. public policy. But here's the thing about this thing. I haven't read what exactly, I don't know what's going to be in the book, but characterize the way you characterized it. The political experience that shaped him and his outlook on the world more than anything else is when he was the senior aide, Kevin White, the mayor in Boston, when the Boston busing experience happened in the early 1970s. If you read J. Anthony Lucas's book, Common Ground, and one of the most brilliant pieces of nonfiction writing anybody's ever done. So the story of how busing tore Boston apart in the early 1970s. Barney was the chief legislative aide to the mayor at the time. And I think for a lot of people of that generation, the experience of going through a thing where liberals had ostensibly and really committed to the notion of racial integration had implemented a policy that was what we would today call woke and was a disaster for the party, for the black kids that it was meant to help. That is the kind of thing that I think shaped his worldview. And he was always a super progressive guy who kind of worried that Democrats would pursue identity politics in ways that would harm, again, not just the party, but would also harm, in fact, the groups that they wanted to try to help. So it doesn't, in a weird way, it doesn't surprise me. It sounds a little Bill Maher-ish to me, the way it's been characterized, you know, and a little bit too kind of easy to caricature. But the notion that Barney would be on that side after the kind of career that he had doesn't surprise me. It's kind of his roots, his intellectual roots were in a series of experiences that taught a bunch of people in that kind of Clinton generation, that kind of knee-jerk liberalism, which, you know, became woke-ism. in his most easily caricatured form later on, that that was a bad bargain, again, both for the party politically and for the minority groups that was trying to help. So it doesn't surprise me in some ways. I'll be interested to read it, honestly. He's a very smart guy. Senate Twink was a Senate staffer. There's a video that leaked of him bottoming in the Senate hearing room. And I always thought it was kind of offensive because we never learned who the top was. and poor Senate Twink has now fled, I believe, to Australia or New Zealand, being so ashamed. He's somewhere far away, and we don't know who the other partner was. It's a leaked video. If that interests you at all, you can go Google it. Can I just say, first of all, when was that? 2023. 2023. 2023. I think it's just awesome that I just gave you this long thing about Bernie Frank, and then the thing you came back to was someone who captured on video bottoming. It's like, I mean, you're like, how does it know about this thing? I got to tell him about the bottoming thing. Well, there's, I mean, there was a tie between Barney's behavior in the gym. I'm just trying to make a generational connection. And I thought that you were very eloquent on Barney Frank. I'd never met him. I had nothing to add on the topic of Barney Frank. You did exactly what I wanted, which was I wanted to put a quarter in the machine and hear you riff about Barney Frank. Good podcasting. Finally, we have a couple rapid fires. Then we're going to get you out of here. Yeah. You said to me that when you travel in the country, people are asking you two of the same questions. how fucked are we and who's it going to be? We could do, and probably will, do tens and dozens and hundreds of hours on those questions in the coming year. I just want your 30, if you only had 30 seconds, like literally an elevator take on how fucked are we and who's it going to be, what would you offer? I think I'd say people mostly, I think that it's hard to tell how fucked we are, but I don't think at the extremes that you see, one of which is as soon as Trump is gone, everything's going to be fine, everything go back to normal. That's one end of that spectrum. And then the other end of that spectrum is, is we're terminally existentially fucked, the country's ruined, and we'll never be able to come back. I'm more towards the terminally existentially, but I'm not all the way there. I think the idea that Trump is going to go away in two years, and that everything, hey, Marco Rubio will be the nominee, and everything will be back to normal. I mean, we could deconstruct that in a million ways. But I think there's been significant damage done to the fabric of American democracy, and the institutions that and norms that support And there's going to have to be a serious effort to, in a concerted, genuine way, to do a large scale, broad Democratic revival, reconstruction effort. And that brings you to the second question, which is, who's it going to be? Well, who's it going to be if you ask me, like, you know, is the Iowa often say to people, do you mean, like, who do I think the Democratic nominee is going to be? Who's in the hunt for that? Or do you mean, who do I think is going to save the country? And, you know, when I, the Democratic nominee thing, you know, I think that the, you know, if you, it really is too early to say, I think, you know, we all think Gavin Newsom had a pretty good 2025. I think Gavin Newsom has a, has a very high, a two part challenge, one of which is how do you explain California? Because you can't run on the California miracle. And that is the thing that you have to explain. um and the other thing is i don't yet hear him have any larger vision for how to do the democratic revival and reconstruction that we have to like even if you let him talk about gavin newsom has good ideas on policy interesting things to say but if you ask him like like a lot of democrats jb pritzker's like this too god ai is a really big deal we have to have a really good big we have to really get to grips with ai well okay how are we going to do that well we really got to think about that. We have to think hard about it. No one's really got a vision for it. The lift of the driving dream or even the big Clintonian policy approach to these big challenges we're facing, people don't really have that. This is part of why I mentioned Tallarico. I don't think it's impossible that someone in this class in 2020, given the pace that our politics moves at now, that someone who wins in 2026 could be a presidential nominee in 2028. Again, I'm not specifying favorites here, but I don't think you can rule out if Graham Plattner wins that he's one of those people. I don't think that if James Tallarico wins, you can rule him out because I don't think the Democratic bench is as strong as some Democrats like to think. And I'm not, again, I like Josh Shapiro. I like Wes Moore. I can go on and make a whole long list. But what we've learned in our politics right now is that if Democrats are going to win, the person who's going to do that is going to be someone who electrifies the base and electrifies the whole party and looks like the future. And, you know, among the group that people tell you, I think is in the kind of a group in the democratic party, there's not, it's not like there's an obvious, you know, at this point in 20, 2008, and in this point in the cycle in 2008, you could already, even though they hadn't announced yet, Edwards, Obama, Hillary Clinton, you knew that that was going to be the triumvirate you like those are three serious people any one of those guys people could be the nominee and any one of those people could win i think you knew that by 2006 you know you could see that forming there's nothing like that right now where there's an obvious three or two who are like this is these are the heavyweights and these are the ones who could who could do it so i i tell people i think there's still a lot we'll know a lot more uh nine months from now about like who the potential people are that could be the person who is close with the hot take we had yesterday a lot of discussion on the new york times songwriters list they pulled other songwriters asked people to get to nominate uh niall rogers was number one lucinda's on there it's not right it's not ranked though though the order is not now rogers is number one it's a it's just a it's 50 unranked they are binding yes they did he's on the list you want to read the whole you want to read the whole list not really i mean i can't i was hoping you would just get people can Google it. Yeah. Yeah. 30 Stephen Merritt. I felt like there was a shortage of indie rock on there. Stephen Merritt of the Magnetic Fields. Stevie, this is all living, just as important to say, living American songwriters, right? So that's the self-limiting thing. You've got Jay-Z on there. I think the most, one of the, Paul Simon's on there, Bob Dylan's on there, Bruce Springsteen's on there, as you'd imagine, but also Missy Elliott's on there, Taylor Swift's on there. Young Thug. Young Thug is on there. Now, Young Thug, Bad Bunny. Now, I think if you, Fiona Apple, you know, there's A bunch of people have a bunch of issues with some of these people. I think Young Thug is maybe the most, if you just read the music geeks, it's like the most controversial. Not because he's controversial, but just like, really? One of the 30 greatest living American songwriters? That seems like a little, to a lot of people, like maybe an overreach. Fiona Apple is recorded in 56. He was great at Coachella. Young Thug was great at Coachella. I like Young Thug. Cceeded by expectations. I like Young Thug, but is Young Thug really one of the 30 greatest living American songwriters? Fiona Apple has put out exactly 56 songs ever total. You stand that up next to Bob Dylan. Do they belong on the same list? Or even up here, Matt Berenger. You know, like The National has many more songs written than her. I think all of these are credible choices. But Bad Bunny, you know, he's only been recording for eight years. I mean, is he really, has Bad Bunny done enough to really be in the company of Springsteen, Paul Simon, et cetera? I think that the most obvious, I was thinking about this because I knew you were going to ask. The most obvious, I'm curious what you think of the most obvious of missions, like where you're kind of like, whoa, how is this person on the list? This is a controversial thing. Controversial for a lot of reasons. But I think on the merits, Kanye West should be on that list on the merits of greatest American love. Again, he's a horrible person and he's gone totally crazy. But is he one of the greatest living American songwriters? I don't think there's a rap writer, a hip hop writer who's been more influential or greater than he is. Jason Isbell, not on the list. I think you would get anybody who lives in the world of roots, country, country rock, et cetera. Jeff Tweedy, you know, another person. A lot of people will raise those, Jason Isbell and Jeff Tweedy, and say, ah, there's a bunch of people on this list that I think could go and be exchanged for one of them. Casey Musgraves is pretty great. That's a horrible nomination. Okay. All right. Randy Newman is the most obvious mess. Randy, yes. And there's a whole string of people. Randy Newman, yes, I agree with that. Randy Newman, I would have them. Those are almost in the Bob Dylan category as far as I'm concerned. But, you know, there's, you know, if they're to your taste, you know, you have people who would put Jackson Brown on that list. People would put, there's a whole bunch of 70s classic rock people who aren't there that a lot of people have been citing. You know, Amy Mann, kind of incredible. Tom Waits isn't on the list. Tom Waits isn't on the list. I think you make a very strong case for Tom Waits to be on this list. I wasn't sure Tom Waits was still alive, so I wasn't going to nominate him. Well, he just did this protest song that just came out, the song that he did with Massive Attack. Have you not seen that? You know what? I think we're going to leave it there, John Holliman. I'm going to go listen to the Tom Waits protest song right now, and we're going to take people out with it. Tom Waits and Massive Attack. It's quite good. Okay. Well, everyone will get to listen to it now because we'll play it for the gang. Awesome. I appreciate your insight on all things Senate Twink, music, Barney Frank, history. We cover a lot of ground. Entertainment. And if you want to take a time, get in the time capsule and think about how much, how far we've come as a country, Tim, just go back and search Barney Frank and Dick Army in Google. And you will see what the then Senate House Majority Leader, how he referred to his colleague Barney Frank in public in 1995. And you will be shocked and appalled. And you will also be like, man, things have changed for the better. I guess kind of for modern days. I think the reply would be whatever. Tiny Dick Army, Micro Dick Army. You know, I think I think there's a chance that's actually what Marty Frank did say. We'll leave it there. We've left you guys a lot of things to Google. Little Easter eggs. That's John Heilman. We appreciate him very much. We have maybe one of the answers to the question of who's it going to be on tomorrow's show. So, oh, you got all then. Can I say who it is? You can guess if you want. Let's see. Is it Zoram Amdani? It is not Zoram Amdani. He can't be president. He can't be president. Yeah, I messed that up once. All right. That's John Allman. We'll be back tomorrow. We'll see you all then. Peace. The Borg Podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz, and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.