Jon Favreau: Why Aren't More People Talking about Nipple-Gate?

In 300 metres, take the second exit in the roundabout towards the next exit. What? Managing your prescriptions can feel difficult, like driving when the kids have changed the sat-nav to Spanish. What's in his cuerta? Booth's new prescriptions plus makes it easy, with convenient delivery, ready to collect texts and expert advice in store. So chat to our pharmacy team and they'll help you switch today. Booth, with you for life. TechSignup required, £5 delivery charge applies, contact your local pharmacy for details. With Woop, you can focus on living better for longer, understand your sleep, optimise your training, and build habits that support your wellbeing. Woop gives you personalised insights into your sleep, your recovery, your strain, and the patterns that may influence how you feel. With more clarity and consistency, you can create routines that support you throughout the year. Add more life to every moment. Discover Woop at Woop.com. Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show. Co-founder of Crooked Media, co-host of something called Pod Save America. He also has the podcast Offline with John Favreau. That's been a good nap podcast for me lately. It's John Favreau. What's up, man? What's up? Has that replaced Pod Save the World as your nap podcast? No, they both, they're kind of going back and forth. I was getting bored with the wrong word talking, Pod Save the World. Are we all? Going to Offline. I like both. You know, usually the first 25 minutes are good and then kind of dips in and out. Then I kind of roll back in around minute 50. Apologise to people. For number one, this could be a long podcast itself that you might want to nap to. And I'm sorry if it came up a little bit late, but Favreau was working out this morning and he had to get his pump in. And I was just hoping since neither John Ossoff nor Rafael Warnock would tell me what their workout routine is, I was hoping that since you're not running for Senate, you could do that. You could just tell us what you did this morning. Well, because I am old now, I've like stopped running. I used to run all the time and now I just lift and I just do, you know, not too heavy because again, I'm old, but I'm trying to do like lower weight, but more reps. That's what I'm doing. No reps on what then? You do back one day. Yeah. You do. So you do, you know, you do all the groups. You do, you do front of your body, front of your body one day, and then you do back the other day. So what was today? Today was back. Yeah. So I did some back stuff. I did some, some deadlifts. My hammy started doing a deadlift. Some triceps. My ladies weights class, they've got me doing the deadlifts. And the moms are mocking me on the deadlifts. My hamstrings get a little tight. You can't skip leg day. You can't, you can't. And it's one of the down and upsides you're spending on how you look at it. To the fact that I do a ladies weights class is that there's a lot of glute work. It's important for women. I understand. I don't know. You would know better than me, but that's like, you know, it's something that are interested in and molding. And so I feel like my glutes have gotten kind of a disproportionate amount of attention lately. Let's move on to Iran. I'm done. This is why John, I didn't want to do it. This is why John, I didn't want to talk about. He's smart. This is why you could run for president. He's smart. All right. We have a deal according to Iranians. Do we? Here's what the Iranians said this morning. You know, they put it out into their state news media, so their version of Barak Revit. The deal says this, a permanent and immediate cessation of all war on all fronts, including Lebanon, great. U.S. commitment to not interfere in Iran's eternal affairs. Full lifting of the naval blockade. The U.S. and its allies will be required to present reconstruction plans for Iran, worth at least 300 billion. Suspension of sanctions on oil. Reopening of straight-and-forward moves within 30 days under arrangements determined by Iran. And a 60-day negotiation period aimed at reaching a final agreement. So Trump said yesterday they had a deal done. And that's what the Iranians said the deal was this morning. He wasn't thrilled about that, it turns out. He posted a bleep that's saying these terms are fake news. There's no relation to the truth. Iranians are very dishonorable people to deal with. They better get their act together and fast. That's going to work too. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, last night felt like there was a deal. I mean, you know, you taped Potsdam, America yesterday. We had a deal when you guys taped with Alex Wagner. Yeah. I was trying to think about, like, how we get out of this cycle and why we're in this cycle. Yeah. And I think it's because the sort of the press around this and the perception of the deal is almost more important than the deal itself. Right. And what you realize when you're in government and you're doing diplomacy is that sometimes if you want to actually make progress, you're just going to have to eat shit, like, in the press. And you're going to have to take a hit and people are going to have to criticize you. And by its very nature and definition, a compromise is going to have something that pisses off both sides. But for Trump, he cares so much about perception and so much about sort of the narrative and the show around this, that every time they get close and then the Iranians spout off all this bullshit about how the deal is so great, he can't just sit there and eat shit for a while until the deal is signed and then go tell his story. He has to immediately go and bleep something like that. And now what are the Iranians going to do? Well the Iranians aren't going to sit there and be like, oh, Donald Trump, everything he said is wrong. They're going to now be like, OK, well, I'm going to try to hold out for more. Or maybe we're going to try to make sure that our deal points are included in there. So this is why we just keep going in the around and around. It does feel like the path out of this would be just to let Trump say one thing and the Mueller say a completely opposite thing and let them both lie to their people. And then all of us who live in reality could yell about that, but then they just kind of move forward. That does feel like his best path out. The problem with that, the hold up on that strategy, which Trump has been able to get away with similar versions of that in the past, is that he has some people who have genuine things they want out of this around him. His allies, and Israel, Bibi in particular, and then the American supporters of Israel, the Hawks, they're not going to let him get away with the, oh, I really won the deal on this and the way that they did on stuff that was lower stakes for them. No, in Trump's mind, what he wants is the straight opened and then he's fine-lifting the naval blockade if the straight is opened. And then he wants to kick these negotiations over the nuclear material and everything else, Israel, Lebanon, all of it down the road because he realizes probably correctly so that once the straight is opened, everyone will stop paying attention to this. And if he doesn't get a good deal on the nuclear stuff, no one's going to fucking care and he can just move on with his life. The Iranians, of course, know this. Yeah, right. Right? They're not stupid. And the Israel-Lebanon situation is interesting too because yesterday when someone contacted Netanyahu's office, they were like, this is a surprise. Israel, Israel's not part of this deal. Israel didn't know what's going on. Now the Iranians are saying Lebanon is included in the deal. So that seems like it would come as news to Israel. And so I don't think Netanyahu's going to let Trump just be able to turn away from this even if they reopen the straight because he's got an election coming up in the fall at some point. And Netanyahu's incentive is to show how tough he is on Lebanon and Hezbollah. And so that's going to keep going. And then the Iranians, if their proxies are in a war with Israel, you think they're just going to sit back or might they close the straight again? Might they start firing rockets into Israel again and then we're right back into it? So the problem is like there's no deal unless all the parties are involved and everyone's a little pissed off. The fact that we're doing this skinny deal where maybe we just open the straight. But Pakistan is the middleman. Like we're not even talking really to them. It doesn't seem like Trump's even actually talking to any of the Iranians. Yeah. They want to call it like the Islamabad Accords, of course, because again, just like Trump and Bibi Narsim, Pakistan's very interesting in getting some good PR for Pakistan. I loved this. They did the briefing this morning that they've been doing for the MAGA influencers. And then all the MAGA influencers then post on the X, like Siren, senior administration official tells us no dollars without dust. And Kayleigh McEnany, former spokesperson posted this morning, 75% there. President's instinct is to give them five, six, seven more days. I'd like to add, especially because Kayleigh two weeks ago was on Fox talking about how they're 95% of the way there. So we've gone, we've gone backwards now, but it's okay. It's right around the corner. I'm sure it'll be done by Sunday. I got kind of a political question about how the Democrats should deal with this freedom. I was dozing off to Pod Save the World on Sunday. And Tommy and Ben were talking about this. And you can tell they like really want to call Trump the P word, you know, and just be like, you got into this thing, but you don't want to file through on it. And now you're stuck in this deal is humiliating and it sucks. And it's embarrassing and you're weak. And like Tommy was saying that basically, but then it's like, there's always a caveat in the progressive circles. It's like, well, I don't, I don't want them to actually escalate. You know, like I don't want to scare them to escalate. Brian Grimm posted this this morning, just telling me did great. And he won bigly and we can get out of this lefty kind of populist. Graham, who's on a couple of months ago, I feel like Democratic senators kind of have this in their, they're not as explicit about it as podcasters, but you can kind of tell it's in their internal, you know, monologue, like they don't want to mock them. And I just, I don't know. I kind of want to give Trump the Jimmy Carter treatment. Like how would Fox have treated Jimmy Carter, you know, like, and I just, I feel like MSNOW and you guys and Democratic senators and everybody should just be like, you're a fucking little bitch. You saw this is humiliating. Like this is so embarrassing. Like you started a war and you can't finish it. Like, why, why, what's the case against doing that? Besides, you know, humanitarian political. My view on these things is you always start with what is true and what you actually believe. And what I genuinely believe is that, of course, I don't want, I want the hostilities to end. I want the straight to open. And so if a deal does that, great, but he has fucked up so much to get us to this point and cost us so much to get to this point. And it seems like this deal is going to leave so many questions unanswered and so much possibility for future disaster and catastrophe that I don't think I think you can rightly criticize Trump for every like deciding to go to war, everything he did leading up to this point, all the money he cost us, all the higher fuel prices he cost everyone, the 13 Americans who died, the thousands and thousands of other people in Middle East today, like there's plenty to criticize him on and still say like, you're glad that the war is, is over and that hostilities have ended. And I don't think that's like being soft on Trump or that we should like congratulate him. I don't think you have to do either of those things. I think you just like, like, I cannot believe we just went through this fucking catastrophe that has set this country back on every possible front because of this idiot. Yeah. I kind of feel good to see to nominate one person to be the one carrying the Trump's a bitch. You know, like there needs to be one prominent Democrat who's going to run into it because the other, the counter argument to myself on this is I, I simultaneously want Democrats to give Trump the treatment that Fox would have given your boss a fee. Yes. This and the Fox did when, you know, on the red line and serious, like the red line in Syria is such a, like a twainy queen. I can't compare to this, right? I mean, we weren't even really involved. Like that was just what I was saying. If you do this, we would get involved and then we did it. Like in this case, Trump like started it and then said, you need to give us unconditional surrender or else I will end your civilization. And then he didn't do anything. And then he kept like tweeting about how, please give us a good deal, Mr. Gay, I told him, and it's like, okay, so I want him to be mocked on that. I simultaneously to that think that the Democrats should be using this as opportunity to like regain the anti-war mantle. And it's kind of hard to do that when you're trying to, you know, bully him into, you know, being tougher, right? So that's, that's why I want one or the other though. And I feel like I'm getting a little bit of wishy. You know what I mean? Like I want, I want either code pink, you know, anti-right, like this Trump's war for oil is raising your gas prices. Like I want that or I want Trump's, you know, a little girly boy, right? Like they can't follow back up what he, what he offers. I think we have come to think that painting Trump is weak, you know, unlock some kind of political benefit that we have been missing for so long just because their side is all about, you know, making their opponents weak and that they're strong. But I think that like, I still think in a way that's playing on their field. Like the vision of government we want is not a strong man or an authoritarian who makes all the decisions and just fucking runs into wars all the time. Like we don't, we don't want that vision of government. We want a vision of government where like people cooperate. And I think what most people in the country want is they don't want a war like this. They do want America protected, but they don't want unnecessary wars that cost American lives and taxpayer dollars and killing a bunch of civilians all over the world. Like that's, that's what most people in the country want. That's where they are. So Democrats should be there too. That sounds right. What I'm just trying to do is, is I feel like it's my role as a former Republican to kind of inhabit the skin of what Sean Hannity would do. So like, I'm not saying that I want like misogynistic attacks on Trump and talking about how he's basically a eunuch, you know, like, I don't, I don't know that that's like, I really want the Democrats to do. Like I understand why people would bristle at that. But, you know, there's just something that's a little bit unsatisfying that it's not happening, you know, when I know that it would happen. It's not, she's on the other foot. You know, the guys, he's at the, well, he's at the Bush line. He's, he's going to head down to the Dick line. Yeah. Thank you. People are thinking about him in some way that's not great. And if it's not that like he's a weak pussy, then it is like he's a unbelievably corrupt narcissist who doesn't give a shit about anyone by himself. Like that's fine. Yeah. That's a, that's a good thing. He doesn't want to care about you. He blundered his way into the stupid for war. And that's good. People don't like that either. Yeah. You know. And also like he tried to be strong, but like is the, is his version of strength working out for anyone? I don't think it is. Maybe stupidity is right. Like this is really dumb. You know, like this is the stupidest war imaginable. You don't know why he's doing it. He doesn't know why he's doing it. You're being hurt. People are. You said you're bored of listening to the war about the war and around like he's, he's bored. The president who took us to war is now bored because he has no attention span because he's an 80 year old fucking, you know, narcissist and doesn't know what he's doing. So like, and he just wants to like work on his home renovation projects. Like that, that is enough. An 80 year old narcissist with a nipple fetish. I want to talk about that a little bit. Oh boy. Oh boy. Have you been in the situation room? I have. Yeah. You got to go in there. I never, I never won. So I never, I don't know what it's like. Not a lot, but I went in there sometimes when there's crises like that aren't necessarily national security. Like when Gabby Giffords was shot and we had to write a statement in there, we actually went into the the sit room for that because it was, you know, sort of a domestic attack. So I was in there for that. So when you were reading the New York Times story, Maggie and John Swan story about how J.D. Vance called a situation room meeting to discuss the Epstein coverup. And he brought in the attorney general, deputy attorney general, who's not the current nominated to be the successor to attorney general. So the Department of Justice heads are in there. The Twitter posters are in there as well. The rep response team, Steven Chung, big boy. And J.D. calls over here on the table and he's like, this is kind of a problem. We should discuss what our strategy should be. And he's like, maybe we should have Tucker Carlson interview Golanemax well to, you know, so maybe she might exonerate us a little bit and it should release some documents. I go as your reaction to like that meeting happening, but then also it happening in the situation room. Yeah. Well, I mean, look at who's in the administration. Like you got a bunch of shit posters and idiots. So they've got all sit somewhere. They've sort of like degraded the White House like everywhere else. So like might as well do the sit room too. My big takeaway was, of course, the J.D. Vance stuff was fascinating because what a what a window into his 2028 presidential run with the kind of communications strategic mastermind that J.D. Vance has to offer the group, which is to have Tucker interview Golanemax well. And then later when they were going to put Todd Blanche on Joe Rogan to talk about everything that was going to be the big interview. And then Rogan was like, I don't want fucking Todd Blanche. I want to J.D. Vance or no one and J.D. Vance is like, you know, I could do Joe Rogan. And the thing is, if I do it and I'm the vice president, he'll only ask me about the Epstein files for a few questions. And then the rest of the time I can talk about the working class tax cuts that we passed in the progress we're making on the economy. Sure. That's brilliant. Brilliant, sir. Brilliant. I also liked when, when the White House Council, the White House Council raised the idea of pardoning Golanemax well, you know, the piece made sure to note that everyone around the table registered their strong disapproval. But then big boy, Stephen Chung, his quote was just fantastic, which is pardoning Maxwell, a trafficker of young girls would create a huge PR problem. You don't say. Wow. This is why he was picked for the job. Also, also right goes right to that, right? Like not even a shred of, of like moral appropriation, appropriation. Right. Just before I get to the nipples, these are the two things that is don't want to gloss over. Number one, there's, it's a very long article. I get no point anywhere in the article is anybody like, you know, we, we really probably should take seriously the idea that we should go through the Epstein files and identify people that were involved in the child sex trafficking and that were complicit in the child sex trafficking and have investigations with them or that we should try to find justice for the victims, the girls who were raped by these powerful men. Like that does not come up at all in the situation of meeting. The partening of Maxwell is brought up in Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan podcast interviews are brought up, but nothing at all, even remotely approaching any consideration about the actual underlying crimes. Nothing. And we can talk about, you know, Nipplegate and everything. We're going to. Yeah. Even on that, it's like, we now have an allegation that the president of the United States potentially had sex with an underage girl that was part of the, the trafficking ring that Jeffrey Epstein let child trafficking ring, but we don't, we don't know for sure, right? All this is uncorrelated, but like, is that an allegation to anyone, anyone who works for the president is going to take seriously? No, we're not, we're not gonna, we're just going to figure out how to cut with the fastest way to cover it up, best way to cover it up. Yeah. And then the other thing I want to just, just get to just explicitly is like, how insane it is that the attorney general and deputy attorney general in this meeting. And I know that like at this point where we've just become accustomed to the idea that the justice department is totally corrupted, but it's great. I was like thinking when I was reading the story about the Bill Clinton tarmac meeting, you don't remember this. This was during the Obama administration. Hillary's emails are being investigated. Clinton is on the same tarmac as Loretta Lynch and the Justice Department at the time. Bill Clinton. Yeah, Bill Clinton, not Hillary. Right. Gets off his plane, gets on the Lynch, the plane that Lynch is on, they talk. We never really figured out what they're, they're a couple minutes. Yeah. A couple of minutes or accusations that he came on, told her like, you know, go easy on Hillary or whatever. Like that's the worst case scenario, right? That there's some conversation about telling the Justice Department to chill out on Hillary on the email scandal, which by the way, also this entire administration has no interest or accommodation at all and FOIA requests and making sure all of their emails are on government servers. And so like even that investigation, it looks ridiculous, but like, like this was a campaign issue. Like Brett Baer covered it nightly on the Straight News Fox News show. Just like, it's why, it's why Jim Comey did the press conference himself because he thought Loretta Lynch was too compromised because of the tarmac thing. And so that asshole went out and did that horrendous press conference and decided to characterize the investigation, which you also don't do in the Justice Department. And the reason he did that is because they thought Loretta Lynch has to must recuse now because Bill Clinton said hi to her. There's a perception of corruption here. Like the Justice Department needs to be totally separate from any political considerations. Perception is bad. Here, the fucking Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General in the situation room, like being included by this vice president in the cover up plan. If Trump was Obama and Loretta Lynch was doing this, it wouldn't have been go on to the plane and say hi or pressure in private. It would have been a bleep. There would have been a bleep that said, hey, Loretta, drop the case against Hillary because you know what happens to people who prosecute my friends. Trees and death. That would have been it. It would have been a death threat. It would have been a thinly veiled death threat over truth social. So a total corruption of the Justice Department. OK, now that we've got that down, I want to read the section about the Nipples. I think because, you know, it's an uncorroborated accusation and because of the prurient nature of it. I don't feel like it's gotten as much attention in the news. Same. So I'm going to I'm going to read it. So this is this is from the Virginia Jifre case file. This is tragic story. She was on the young girl that worked at Mar-a-Lago and then an Epstein and Prince Andrew others raped her and assaulted her. She ended up killing herself subsequently. So in that case file, there's another woman, girl at the time, Sarah Ransom. And she wrote this to a journalist. Ransom claimed that she knew a girl and Epstein sex trafficking ring named Jen, who said she had sex with Trump. Ransom also claimed that Jen had told her that Trump had a predilection for nipples and that he had aggressively flicked and sucked her. As Ransom wrote that she had seen evidence when she shared a bathroom with Jen, they looked incredibly painful. They were red and swollen. And I remember wincing when I looked at them. So that was discussed in the situation room. Trump's alleged nipple attack on a young girl that was in Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring. Yes. Like, I mean, I do feel like there would have been some coverage for that. And like a little more, you know, maybe would have been higher in this story. In other. You think that's a serious allegation, right? Partly because this was this was not like Trump in his bachelor days with like a consensual sex. If that's like something he was into, like who cares? Right. Like that's that's his business. And I don't really want to. It's really his business because like I'd rather not know. No, like what his kind of nipple interests are. If they're in the Epstein files and knowing what happened to Ginny Jouffray and this other girl, Gent, like that, then it's they're underage here and this is part of a trafficking thing. And like that is an incredibly serious allegation. And the team in the sit room, they immediately say, oh, it's wrong. Right. Like, oh, she made it up because I guess this woman, Jen, rescinded her some other allegations because she said she was afraid for her life. And so they say, oh, she's not reliable because she recanted some other allegation. So no worries. Let's move on to how we keep this out of the files that we put on the website, which goes back to then the incompetence because by keeping it out of the files that they put on the website, obviously people were going to realize that there were some files that included Trump that were missing from the website. So once again, you have the malevolence and then you have followed by the incompetence. And that's that's the Trump administration at nutshell. We're going to start to stop talking about Trump making. Nipples get swollen and I don't I don't know that we need any more unless you do want to do any more on Trump's nipple. No, just that, you know, our friend Tommy brought up when we talked about this this week that he's like, you know, remember the Stormy Daniel stories where like the the spankings and everything like there's it's it's clearly there's a pattern here if you're just trying to figure out whether to believe it or not. There's a pattern of these allegations about Trump sort of. I only really remember the mushroom dick description from the Stormy Daniel stuff. I don't remember. I forgot. I could forget. The Bull Work is brought to you by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. You hear us talk a lot on this show about Democratic guardrails, the things that keep a free society functioning. And as America approaches its 250th anniversary, one of those guardrails deserves a lot more attention to separation of church and state. This country began as a rebellion against monarchy and divine rule. And the founders responded by creating a secular constitution, no religious test, no state church and government accountable to the people. That framework made pluralism possible. You know how much I love pluralism, big pluralism guy. But right now they're growing efforts to blur that line between religion and government and ways that affect policy, public education and individual rights. We're seeing that up close and personal here in Louisiana. The Freedom From Religion Foundation is working to protect the First Amendment because it protects all of us. As we head towards America 250, this isn't just about celebrating history. It's about deciding what kind of country we want to be. If that matters to you, go to FFRF.US slash religion or text religion to 511-511 to join or learn more. Go to FFRF.US slash religion or text religion to 511-511 right now. It's about deciding what kind of country we want to be. Text religion to 511-511 today. Text fees may apply. Speaking of trying to do a transition into John Cornyn, do you have any areola or nipple themed puns that we can use to get over to John Cornyn? So you have somebody who's got spanked by Trump. There we go. There we go. John Cornyn did an exit interview with Carl Hulse, the New York Times. I just want to read a couple of the quotes after his defeat. He says, it does give some of us a little more freedom and certainly leverage. Didn't realize he didn't have freedom before. I thought he was a United States Senator. He didn't have any agency before. As the president, I like this too. As the president told President Zelensky when he was in the office a year ago, he said, you don't have any cards. Well, we've got some cards to play. So I guess he was impressed with Trump's cards analogy there. Mr. Cornyn says he reserves the right to choose where I'm going to or going to not defer to Mr. Trump. He still reserves that right. That's nice as a free man in a free country. He says, things are never going to be good enough for Trump other than 100%. You know, slavish adherence to whatever he wants. But obviously that's not what the center of the scroll is supposed to be. You know what I'm saying? Big John. Big John. Unfortunately, that is the position that I found myself in for the last several years. And what did I do about it? Nothing really. My final favorite one. I've always said that former senators look happier, healthier, and they're certainly more prosperous. So I'm kind of looking forward to what comes next. So just in case you feel sad for Big Bad John, who got utterly humiliated in the most like embarrassing SNM way fashion, like he wanted to rename a highway after Trump, pretend like he was reading his book. He had to rub Trump's little, little tiny toe digits. And he like did everything he could to get Trump to love him. And then Trump said, I don't care about you. Anyway, and left him on the side of the road. And now here he is. He's like, you know, good news is I'll get to make money as a lobbyist after this. And so you better know, I'm not going to be too hard on Mr. Trump now. I mean, I might not defer to him totally like I was before, but you know, I'm going to defer mostly because I do want my calls returned. This is probably off the topic of what you're asking about here. But when I see things like that, it's like, this is why I don't invest a ton of time in like despising people like John Cornyn and thinking that like at some point they are going to retire in some kind of a misery and be all torn up about this. And, you know, like we're rooting against these people because like Donald Trump is like, you know what? Probably Donald Trump is going to at some point leave office. And no matter how he is remembered and no matter how much of the country turns against him, he is going to be like, well, I'm rich. I think I did great. And he's probably going to die happy. And it's like, so that so that just doing this so that we hope that these people are going to feel bad someday is just like not a good motivation. Like John, like John Cornyn. How's he going to retire? I've done this a lot at Yoga Love and Oakwood when I was there in 2017 to 2019. I just kind of accepting that internally, right? That like they are going to, you know, we can mock them. They're going to be fine. Yeah. But at the end of the day, they're kind of happy about the choice that they've made. Yeah. They're happy about the choice they made. They're happy about the choice that we've made. You know, that's exactly right. And so we just got it. We just got to beat them because we can't count on John Cornyn to ever do anything. Like I read that interview and I was just like, yeah, what? I'm not surprised by anything. I'm not surprised by any of this. It is funny. They all called us cucks though. It's like Carl Hulse might as well have been in a motel six interviewing John Cornyn while he was sitting in a cuck chair while his wife was getting fucked by Donald Trump or Ken Paxter. Like honestly, like what would have been any different about this interview? If that would have happened. Those are the better scene setting, I guess. Well, the other thing is the thing that they don't want to say, but is true. And I mean, this is JVL would certainly go here. Which is that like their voters prevented them from having a spine and standing up to Donald Trump. Like that's what Cornyn is saying right now. He's a free man now because he doesn't have to face his voters who he clearly a little more freedom, a little more freedom because he doesn't have to face his voters who he clearly who he clearly believes are slavishly devoted to Donald Trump. And, you know, Trump wants a hundred percent agreement. And guess what? So to his core base of voters. And so if you find yourself in that party, like what are you supposed to do? You either you either agree with Trump or you lose your job and you go make money. Yeah. And for a while, Cornyn thought and then some of them think they can do both, right? And Cornyn probably thought he could do both for a while. And then now he realized he can't do both. And so he's just going to go make money. Reserves the right to choose just what just he's just so disgusting. Is that right? How you say it is slavish, not slavish? Slavish? I don't know. I pronounce everything wrong. One of the worst parts about being a podcaster is that you find out how many words you don't know how to pronounce, you know, a ton of them. I guess I was saying scourge wrong. I've been told I sing scourge wrong. I don't score. I received several messages. Scourge. Scourge. So that's a tough one. See, that's scourge. Yeah, I know. I received several messages about that one this week. Every week I get messages about different words I pronounce wrong. So I have this one on there's a single hill where I'll die on a defensive canvas, which is there's the funny X account that like makes fun of her for all the words that she mispronounces. And I'm just like, you know, that's how I mean, she read like she learned the word at some place. That's better than anyway, that's my only defensive candy. The funny, the funniest one I have heard recently is on your podcast, a friend, Sarah, who calls Rob Flaherty, Flaherty. Flaherty, Flaherty. I'm like, it's Flaherty. Never heard of Flaherty? She's not a fucking Mick like you from Boston. You know? Yeah, that's true. Flaherty's was probably like the like 10 bars that we went to. Flaherty's a very common name in Boston. Well, let's do a little politics talk. I have an article out today, a newsletter I set him for JBL. And I did a big prologue about how I think donating to campaigns is mostly stupid. And I think having been on the inside of campaigns, like a huge percentage of the money is wasted. Like the most of the like testing and metrics tools people use to determine whether things are effective messaging is like basically like looking at chicken bones and like bringing in a shaman to tell you like what ad is better. I like literally I was like shocked when I sat through a first ad and ad test for the first time and I was like, this is how we decide. It's like 20 random people are like playing video games and then watching an ad and they need to vote on it before they get to continue their video game. And I'm like, nobody knows themselves. So if you ever go into a philosophy class, like it's hard. It's like it's a huge journey to actually know yourself to be able to say, I watched this ad and it motivated me. The whole thing is crazy. And there's no incentive to save money. If you're on a campaign, you got to spend it all. There are a lot of drifters out there. So usually people ask me what to donate to them, like donate to a food bank or like go treat yourself to a spa day. But like I understand that that's not satisfying, right? Especially for people who are, who want to, you know, use their resources for good and help democracy. So after this long windup of how donating to campaigns is stupid, I wrote about like where I think you can make some difference on the margins. And I was really pushing towards your kind of these stretch house races in red parts of the country where, you know, Democrats have not done well and lately, but like might be able to do well now because of the, because of the wave, you know, particularly Hispanic ones, talking about Bobby Polito down on the Rio Grande, you know, that was, that Republican won by 17 points last time in the poll I'm saying now is that that's tied, you know, some of these Senate races that aren't going to have as much money in them. Iowa, Josh Turrick on this week, you know, some of the more stretch races you never know how you could expand the map maybe in some of these Senate races. So anyway, people can read the article. I'm just wondering where you are on that concept. If there's any candidates campaigns that are catching your eye, how you think about where it's worth people's time to get involved. I will say your diagnosis of the problem is one that I share have come to share, especially after the last couple of cycles, which is, I think, you know, the majority of these budgets go to ads. And I think that in the Democratic Party, like especially we could use way more creative ads, ad makers, types of ads, the way we place them, the way we deliver them to people like I just think we need a lot of innovation there. And so I think we're spending a lot, just wasting a ton of money. And it drives me crazy on the question of where to donate. I remember in 2018 with Vote Save America, what we tried to do is the closer we got to Election Day, we worked with one of these Democratic data groups who we knew from the Obamadays and we had like a list of 10 candidates that we updated every week. House candidates who were like, like the formula for how we picked the candidates was how much money do they have on hand? How much money does their opponent have on hand? What's the polling look like? What's the partisan lean? And basically, like, what's the most bang for your buck? Right? Like, if you're going to do it's like money ball for politics. Like that's that's sort of what we need. It's what we've been trying to do with Vote Save America is that you don't want to tell people to either donate to someone who is the marquee race that ever is going to have like more money than God anyway. But you also don't want to tell someone to donate to like Amy McGrath in Kentucky. And Tori McGrath and Jamie Harris that are always the people mentioned. I know I feel sorry. I know I do feel bad. Amy's a good person. But yeah, that is true. A lot of money was wasted in that race just as what it is. Right. That's why I picked on Ron DeSentimonius and Tom Steyer as my examples in the article, you know, to try to mix it up a little bit. But that's a good one. Yeah. OK. Well, people should. Like I would do. So I would do I would do these house races that are, you know, like the R7s to R9s to R10s. That's exactly the list that I put together. So in the Senate, like I would again, in the Senate, I would look at not just what they have, how much the Senate candidate has raised, but like what kind of cash their opponents have, you know, and I think like, I mean, it's funny. You say this to like, we're holding a fundraiser at our home tonight for Sherrod Brown. Because because, you know, my wife, Emily, worked for Sherrod. That's how we met when she was she was the deputy president. That's an important race. But Sherrod's super PACs, especially like crypto super PACs, which did this to him last time, are going to dump just an insane amount of money into Ohio. And so some of the donating is just to like it's just for defense, right? Because even if you can say that like our ads can be bad, like if their ads are running and ours aren't and we can't match that, like that is going to have an effect on your low engagement voters. Well, this is why I didn't include Sherrod Brown on the list, because the rich are riches of West Hollywood are handling that. Like you guys got that covered. All right. We do. So, you know, let me know what kind of boldface names you're going to have. You're going to want to leak the party list to not many, not many. Politico playbook, you know, want to get your names in there. The people that showed up. All right. People go check out that. I'll put the link in the show notes. I mentioned this yesterday, but I'm only five weeks away from my summer vacation. I can't wait. We're going to be in Europe for a little bit of it. And normally about this time before a big international trip, I'd be getting nervous about my language skills. I might start cramming, but this time I'm a little more prepared. Thanks to our friends at Babel. If you're traveling this summer, here's a real hack. Don't wait until you land to start learning the language. Instead, try Babel. Even just 10 minutes a day with Babel can help you start having real conversations in as little as three weeks. Instead of memorizing random vocab, you're learning phrases you'd use ordering dinner, asking for directions or talking with the loks. Babel works the way I like to learn. No memorizing vocab lists or verb charts, just real conversation practice. Lessons are quick, practical and built by more than 200 language experts. We've got interactive dialogue, personalized reviews, all designed to get you speaking quickly and confidently. Me and Talus have been doing it together at the dinner table. A couple of minutes a day. It's fun. If you've got summer travel coming up, now's the time to start so you can actually use what you learn on the trip. Right now, Babel is offering listeners up to 60% off. Go to babel.com slash bulwark. That's Babel, B-A-B-B-E-L.com slash bulwark for up to 60% off. Rules and restrictions upon. Well, talk about Moneyball for Politics. I want to do a little bit with you on 2028. I have a self-imposed limit of 15 minutes per week on 2028, but I've done zero. So we can go for as long as short as you want. And there's a poll out that created a lot of follow-up. Dan Pfeiffer wrote about the poll and Messagebox, GLI at Morris wrote about the poll, a data analytics, but the nuts of it was this. It was like, Democratic voters are a little schizophrenic on what they want. They want the party to move to the middle, but they also want socialism. I don't know if they want socialism, but they like socialism. And so GLI at Morris was trying to understand that. And there was kind of some jokes about it on social media, but I don't think that's that confusing to me. And for me, if I was going to do a Frankenstein candidate for 2028 and just build one out of a lab, I would have you be the speech writer for it. So we'd move you off the field of my podcast competitor back into the campaign space. So just prepare yourself for this. And I would have them basically, it would unfortunately probably be a guide. I think a woman could be a great president, but just for the purposes of having to deal with the realities of living in American society. Maybe Hispanic or a black guy. And I would have them kind of be able to do long form interviews such as this, be able to communicate. I would have them talk as much like a normal person as possible. I would have them move to the middle a little bit. Not, we want to build the wall even higher, but just move to a little bit, a little bit on immigration and crime and talk about how criminals should be punished. Migrant criminals should be punished to the following son of law or sent home or combination of both. Right. And actually talk about it. Not just like have that as one line on their website, but like have that be where they strategically make a decision that I am going to show people that I'm moving to the middle and whatever your perception was of the Democratic Party fair or unfair on immigration and crime. Also, I'm going to issue some of the silly cultural woke stuff that you see. And some of that is racial. Some of it's not. Like for example, in New Orleans this week, my phone alarm woke, blared at 6, 10 a.m. I had a siren go off on my phone. It was an updated version of what's the lost child's law? Amber Alert. Yeah. It's an updated version of the Amber Alert called Brian's Alert. And it's for autistic kids. I'm concerned about autistic kids, but there's an autistic kid that was lost. And the phone blared. Every phone in New Orleans blared at 6, 12 a.m. And the kid was not even lost. Turned out they were found it. Like when that happened, like his brother said, wait, no, he was at my house. That's 7, 10. You know, it's kind of like sometimes like there's just like we're going a little bit overboard on, you know, the social justice and cultural care. I think we can care about autistic kids and not have people's phones blare at 6, 12 in the morning. It could have been a text, you know? So I do just various things like this. Like just kind of some common sense moving to the middle on cultural stuff. And then simultaneously, my Frankenstein candidate is going to do like extremely creative, painful, punitive, rich people taxes. Like, I don't know, you know, I don't know what a private jet cost to rent. That's not my, I don't have that kind of money. Let's say it costs 20 grand. Okay. So if you're going to take a private jet flight that costs 20 grand, we have a new private jet tax. It's 300%. So it's 60 grand of taxes. So now it's an 80 grand flight. So if you're a billionaire and you want to fight there, like we're going to take a 300% tax on all private air travel. And so if you otherwise, you know, you can take commercial air, you can be on Delta with me. Right. You know, just like creative things such as that punitive, socialist left-wing taxation. And as we mentioned earlier, maybe chilling out a little bit on wars. I feel like that's my Frankenstein candidate. And so I'm asking how you react to that, how you would message that person and why you don't think that person exists. I think that's a pretty good candidate. I think that, you know, you're interesting. You said Frankenstein candidate. I think the challenge is we can't, and I know you know this, but we can't Frankenstein a candidate because the first thing that has to happen is you have to think to yourself, why am I running for president? And what do I want to do for the country? And the other side of the really creative rich people taxes is like, what are we going to do with the money? And I think where you get sort of the economic populist sentiment among the electorate, it's not just in the like, let's punish the rich people. It's let's make sure that if we are working, then maybe like we can see a doctor and like we're going to be able to live somewhere and afford rent and a mortgage is like basic shit. And if people can't do that and the government can't deliver on that, then they're not going to trust the government. Then we're going to get more Trumps. That's just the basic. And like someone's going to tell the whole story. And someone's also like be honest in a way too, which is tricky because Trump has done so much damage that. Okay, well, a lot of the money that we get from the rich people is going to at some point we are going to have to deal with the debt. I know I'm not just not just not just doing fan service here on the ball. Welcome to the ball. We're not just doing fan service, but no. And like think and you know, there's that clip of you and you and I are on John Stewart where you talk about how we meet in the middle. I still see that they fucked you. John Stewart's people fucked you. So they clipped that and put it on Instagram. Oh, I don't mind. It still gets sent to me. To people. People are like, I told you, John Favreau was a corporate chill. He says on John Stewart's show, he's even to the right of Jeb Bush, Flunky, Tim Miller. I get that in my social media like one of the week now. None of this faces me anymore. Okay, great. That's great. But yeah, no, like, so I think that I think what we are lacking is our candidates who. Know first what they want to do and why they're running and what they believe. And then second, go figure out how to sell that to people, which is still important. I'm not going to be like, oh, fucking West Wing about it. And you just go out there and say what you believe. Like you still need to figure out how to sell it. But people are just everyone is so scared and so cautious. Probably because they're listening to us too much, reading too many polls, looking at too many focus groups that like they think that they have to sort of walk on egg shells to run. And I think that ironically becomes the biggest weakness of most of the candidates is the caution because they have, you know, they've had all these ad people who are like, we focus group this ad and this and that and other thing. And so like, you get this Frankenstein monster of a campaign and it doesn't work for people. Right. Like again, no one would have said. You're right. I'm so. I would have said that the state senator, black guy, Barack Hussein Obama from Chicago, who lived for a time in Indonesia was what the Democratic on paper. That was fucking crazy, crazy for the Democratic Party to nominate Barack Obama after we just lost with John Kerry, war hero. And yet we did it and it worked because Obama knew what he wanted to say and knew he wanted to believe and knew what he believed. And that was that. And wasn't afraid to lose. You know, this is why you won presidential campaigns and I didn't because you're right about this. You do need to have like, honest, like it has to be believable. Right. And like this is like what I just offered is fair critique of Kamlo's campaign, right? Like that my stupid private plain tax is like not any different than, you know, they felt like they were doing this. I'm going to reach a different part of the electorate by we're going to have this proposal that's going to help. What was at the sandwich generation? Or if you have, you know, you're taking care of your parents and your kids. So you get a certain tax break. I don't even remember what the exact proposal is with some gimmick proposal for that group. And that's a legit thing. I get legit that like they're starting to have friends in this boat, you know, taking care of kids and parents. And that sucks. And it's hard. And but like the rationale people need to buy. Right. And like there needs to be a broad story that they need to buy. And that is kind of more important than the gimmick. So I do like my private playing gimmick. But you got to do both kind of. I was going to say, because it's not like we were in above gimmicks on the Obama campaign. And in terms of the moderation you talked about, like if you listen to Barack Obama talk about immigration, it's like exactly the way that you just talked about immigration. And and that was just his view on it. It wasn't like where he but he also he also knew what the politics were in immigration. But he could talk about his beliefs about why it was a more complex, nuanced issue than many people perceive it to be, or at least that the media talks about it. And pundits talk about it. He understood that. And so he just sort of talked about why he believed what he believed and trusted people and trusted that people were going to be OK with that. Now, it's harder now because of the information environment. It's way harder because all the incentives are to get attention. And everything you do to get attention is by definition more black and white, cut and dry than it should be in the context of politics, governing a country of 300 plus million people. And so all the incentives are pointing in the wrong direction for these candidates is the problem. And so that is the answer to the question. I guess that's what I don't like. The Democrats have done. I think sometimes get a bad rap on recruiting the cycle. I've never recruited some good people. Mary Peltola is good candidate. Like I said, I'd turn on he seems like a good candidate. Really Cooper seems like a good candidate. But like there just is the caution across the board. Like I don't I don't see anybody doing what I just said or what Obama did even on some cultural issues. Like it's hard to find a Democratic candidate at a statewide level in the swing seat who has a policy platform on cultural issues. That's meaningfully different from Clinton, Biden, Harris. I think because I think even if they do, it's because whatever that platform is, as soon as people hear a sound bite of it, it's like touching the hot stove. And then suddenly everyone descends on you and says, oh, you're like the worst person and you you hate marginalized groups. And, you know, and even if that's molten on the transports thing. And even if even if you are more nuanced about it, even if your actual belief and record show that you very much stand up for trans, you know, just to use that example, trans rights or immigrant rights or whatever it may be, it doesn't matter. And so everyone's like, what is the what is the benefit of saying what I really believe on this if it's just going to be taken out of context and used to screw me even in my own party? It's not somebody would try. They're going to be that's when you need someone to try 2028. And it would be nice to have somebody try some different stuff. Well, and I will say like on the other side of it, because I've seen and I and I. Rome is great, but I've seen Rome do this. You also can't look like you are your your purposely poking the left because you're like, look, I'm not like these crazy lefties. And so I'm going to say that like, Rome's line about people talked about bathrooms and not too much and not enough about classrooms. It's like, no, like no, we didn't. Right. They talked about bathrooms. We were put on the defensive. We didn't have anything to say. And so that was that, of course, we want, of course, Democrats want to talk about classrooms and education and and all the good democratic issues. But like, so so there's a way to go. This is like the Trump issue, right? Like this is why Trump was able to do this. And it's like and and maybe this is just like his sociopathy makes it possible in a way that it isn't for other people. But it's like Trump was so hard on on going after the left on various things, unfairly, a lot in lying and blah, blah, blah. Like he was and he's so extreme on immigration and race issues, mostly, but on some other stuff. They're like, he could make fun of Paul Ryan's stupid social security, Medicare cuts and not and people would yell out of my mind. He's like, who cares? Right. Like and then all this people ended up getting online. And it's like that is the path to doing it. And that is the failure of the wrong model. I agree. That's why that isn't going to work. And this is I think why Zoran, I've talked with this couple of times recently, where Zoran, you know, if you have the credibility of, hey, I'm going to fight for you on economic issues and I am against the stupid foreign wars, then you can also say, well, like, you know, we should hire some more police. Right. And it's like, well, some people might yell at Zoran and be like, you're a pig now. And it's like nobody buys it. You know what I mean? And so like you have to have credibility. The key is how you respond to the first wave of criticism and whether you back off or you just say, like, no, this is what I believe. Right. Like I like take embalm ice, for example, you know, I mean, I you and I on our respective pods have been talking about how horrific ice has been now for a year and it like makes me sick and I like lose sleep over it. At the same time, like a ball of ice doesn't make sense to me, not just because I read a poll and say that it's like not enough people support it, but it doesn't make sense because it's like we need immigration enforcement in this country. I never said that we didn't need that. I just said that we didn't need like masked, unaccountable men in the street beating the shit out of people and murdering protesters and throwing people in detention centers with subhuman conditions. Like we still have to have an enforcement system in this country. And if like you're upset that I didn't go all the way to abolish ice, then like, that's fine. But I just believe we need immigration enforcement. And I just need we need to like rip up the system we have start from scratch. But like we still need it. Rural Britain. Gigaclear goes further than any other major provider to bring you fast, reliable, whole home coverage with free expert Wi-Fi installation. We come in, we set up, we do it all for you so you don't have to. It's not rocket science. It's installation science. Switch to Gigaclear from only 16 pounds a month faster broadband for Rural Britain. 18 month contract prices may vary. Verify at gigaclear.com. You bring up ice is another little admonition to me a little bit. So I'm going to get off the 2028 stuff for a second. I guess these two things are related. I just have this sense right now and maybe I need to get offline and go on a vacation and kind of reset. So this might be more about me, but I don't think so. I have a sense that there is like a diminishing anger in left spaces about Trump and an increasing anger about each other. Right. And I think that there is a lot, you know, and I just, I see and hear from a lot of people passionately on the left side of the Democratic Party. The thing that they're really mad about right now is like the corporate Democrats that went along with whatever, Biden's Israel policy, which is a legit thing to be mad about. But like, and like the center people who like the thing that they're really mad about is grandplattner's tattoo or whatever. Like that's legit. You can be mad about that. It's fine. But like, that somehow like we've become a frog boiling in water a little bit. And like there was a moment, I think right around Minneapolis, where like everybody did have a lot of righteous rage. And I don't, I just kind of sense it dissipating. And I think that it's dangerous. And I don't, I don't know how to combat it. I tried to combat it with myself, but I don't, I mean, what do you think? I feel it too. I mean, there's, there's days that we do the pod where we talk about like just a parade of horribles that like I genuinely, you know, off mic makes me sick to my stomach. But like you have to survive and you have to get through your day without being miserable all the time. And so then you use Gallo's humor to laugh at Trump. And then you, you do like the whole thing like, don't normalize them. Like, no, no, it's, it's over. It is normal. We're here. We're living through it. And I don't know that it has a like a positive effect or a big enough impact to be at an 11 all day long. I think the reason you see people start punching at each other is because like we all want to believe that we have agency. We all want to do something about the situation that we're in. The truth is we can't for a while, at least not the solution that we want, which is no more Donald Trump and a Republican party that isn't like this. We want to just live in a better political system. That's going to take a long time, even under the best case scenario. And so, but like the human, the human brain isn't made for just sitting back and being like, all right, we're going to relax and wait till then. Like we want to be able to do something now. And the thing that you can do now is to argue with people on your side about how to beat, how to get rid of, yeah, how to fix that. And I think some of that comes from a genuine place. I do, I think about that sometimes, right? Where it's just like people channel their anger at Trump at something that feels more, something that they feel like they can control more. Yes. Do you talk about your agency, right? Where it's like, I'm fucking mad about all the things that are happening in this country. And if you're, I'm just characterizing, but like if you're a left person, you're like, you know who's fault it is? The wimpy establishment like Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, they want us to continue down the same failed path. And I'm so mad at them. Why don't they get it? Like maybe they're even on the other side kind of, maybe they don't even think it's as bad as I do, right? Like you can imagine somebody like getting yourself riled up and thinking that like that's not irrational. It's not true, but it's not irrational, right? Or like the inversion of that would feel like Hasan Piker is ruining the whole party and the whole left is in trial. Yeah. I mean, in fact, Kamala, which is true, by the way, right? Like Jilt, people, somebody's, you'll vote for Jill Stein. And like they didn't even try hard the last election. I was out there in the streets. I was volunteering. I was working hard and they were shitting on us. And so it was their fucking fault that we're in this place. And now they want to control the party. Fuck them. And I understand that feeling. Like if you're a centrist or middle regular Democrat looking at become more populist Bernie, Hasan type, I almost feel like, you know, it's part of a therapy process, which is like acknowledging this, that that is happening in your brain is an important way to start, yeah, to start to have productive change going forward. Right? Like this is an anger thing that I have in my heart that I have some truth to it. But like, what am I really angry about? Like what is under not lying it? And like what I think everybody is really angry about maybe not every single person, but mostly everybody is really angry about is what Trump is doing to the country, right? And we should try to figure like, I think the key is a lead term. This is advice that I need to take and try to tell myself all the time. And I don't always follow it. But like, you need to offer everyone the presumption of good faith, which is that the reason they are angry could be the reason that you're angry. And you're just manifesting it in different ways. And maybe, you know, a lot of us want the same things. And not everyone's perfect. And so and we're all struggling and we're all under a tremendous amount of stress because of what this man has done to the country for the last 10 years. And a lot of that's very real. And so a lot of people are acting out in ways that we all act out, right? Part of it is recognizing that like, you do this too, right? Like it's like, I'm not perfect the way I do this. I'm failing at this all the time. And so and I want someone to extend that presumption of good faith to me when I'm having a bad day or tweet something awful. So I want to extend that to someone else. And I realize like, this is very out of fashion now, because when they go low, we're not supposed to go high anymore. But I do think that like, that is the that that is both in line with our vision of what American democracy should be and good for our mental health. That's why I like those things, John Fabra, because that's right. And you're putting words to something I feel, I do have to quibble with one point. We have to offer the presumption of good faith it's not indefinite up up until a point where they have demonstrated that they don't earn it any longer. When they slap it away, like the 10th time, then you can you're good. Maybe you are a bad and just to give one prime example of that just for fun. It's Friday, we're having some serious talks are just for fun. Why don't we listen to Kelly and Conway? And the rest of the Democrats, and they said, is there anything else? Ladies and gentlemen, what else do you need? Is there a magic number in the scandal? A lot of that would make you stop would do with it would have to do with Nazis or putting upon women, perhaps underage women with definitely women, not your wife of two years. Would it be that you're lying about that you're insulting heroes that you're not, he's not even fit to lick their combat boots. So I'd ask the Democrats, is power really worth that to you? Because power for power's sake is the definition of corruption. I did like kudos for scandal opera. That's good. But besides that, that is insane. How does she I think she really doesn't realize it or does she it's a troll? I think she does because there's another clip that I was wondering if you were going to play because I saw that one. The other one she said, look, I'm a Christian. I believe in second chances. But I think that grand Platon should like go home with his family and get right with them and seek forgiveness there first. Because the Senate when you're just one of 100 people representing this country, that is not the place for this kind of redemption. And I thought it was an interesting tell, because she does get that I think most Americans do want to give people second chances and they because they want to be given second chances themselves. And she does think that like this is her and she realizes that people are giving Donald Trump quite a few chances. The second part of the argument is so off because it's like, but the Senate's not the place for that. Oh, yeah, a bunch of fucking moral heroes in the Senate. And then like, what about the White House? Is the White House the place for redemption? It's like, no, you got it, you actually got to pick one. You either got to say that no, the Senate, the House, the White House, those must be places for absolutely perfectly moral, upstanding citizens. Or you can say that no, everyone is broken in some ways. And we just have to decide who is better and who's going to help us and who's going to abide by the laws that we've written and who's going to fight for people the most. And that's how we're going to like people. But you can't have both. You can't have both. I just love the balls on her that it's like, you know, the Nazi thing, okay, the cheating on the wives, okay, throwing the potentially underage. There's no evidence of underage for Grand Plotter, though we mentioned Donald Trump and the Nipples already today. But then I just feel like the icing on the cake is the insulting our heroes. And he's not even worth, he's not even worthy to lick their combat boots. It's like, Grand Plotter did have combat boots, like Trump insulted the heroes. Trump insulted our heroes not in a post 30 years ago. Trump does it like all, like he was doing it, like you want to believe multiple four star generals who worked for him told stories about this. Multiple four, not one four star general, two four star generals, one of whom was the chief staff, one of whom is his defense secretary. We're talking about Donald Trump denigrating people in the military while he was president. Fucking kill you. I have a deep question for you on this. Should we care about people cheating on their wives at all? If they want to run for the Senate, what is the extent to which we should care? I'm like, I'm kind of serious about this. Because if you'll do throw this at me, I know you, but me in particular, I never Trumpers over Trump. And I was always like, on the list of things I cared about Trump about it was always at the bottom. I don't, I make fun of him for it because like, why not? I'm consistent on this because the just happened to be the week before all the Platinum stuff was Paxton winning. And I said on multiple pods, because I believe this, that like the whole attack on Ken Paxton is an adulterer. I mean, I talked about it from a political angle, but I'm like, I think it's the weakest attack on Paxton. And I actually don't want people to hit it too much because I don't think that most people are going to be like, oh, well, he cheated on his wife and therefore he's disqualified. Like, I don't think cheating is a good thing. I saw Jerusalem, Demses wrote about this in the argument. And like, you know, most Americans, like it really bothers people when someone cheats like, yeah, it just cheats bothers me. Like infidelity bothers me. But in terms of the fact that someone, and every situation is different, which we again, like no one can, no one can keep in their heads that different situations are different, right? But if like, there is a, you had some kind of infidelity, and then you worked it out with your partner, and you've gone through therapy, and, and that's it, then like, okay, that, I don't know, it doesn't bother, of all the, of all the grand Platinum things that maybe is at like the bottom of the list for me. So no one has to do with being a Senator. The lying, the dishonesty, maybe. And this is what I've said about Platinum, the thing that I think he has to work on, and the thing that bugs me the most is like, because honesty and the ability to trust someone, like that does relate to your job as a public servant, right? And it is, look, it is, it is clear now that like, I don't believe he knew what the Nazi, what the tattoo was when he got it, and the people who he got it with his other, the other, it's fellow Marines. He obviously knew before October though. Right. Yes, exactly. And it, and it like, and clearly he's not being honest about that. And that sucks. Like, I think that sucks. But like, can I have a counterpoint for you for this from a person I don't, this is a private message, so I don't want to out them. But it's somebody that I think that we both respect, listeners respect. We're talking about this topic on text. And they said this, isn't a certain amount of tactical lying important in politics? I know, I know, I know, I know. And so the clipping of this is will be terrible and social. So I'm going to try to protect you. I'm going to have a little, we're going to have a lot of rambling here of me talking before we get to you talking. But isn't that something worth grappling with? I don't know. Like, doesn't, I don't, I didn't, like, did Barack Obama really oppose gay marriage in 2008? Right. Right. He did not. He did not. And so could he have won while still opposed, while still supporting gay marriage? Yeah, maybe I think kind of actually, maybe he's still in one. So maybe this was a lie that served no purpose. But I don't know. I mean, how do you react to that? I went through, I've gone through this in my head a few times and it's like, so Graham Plattner when first presented with the fact that, you know, it was, it was going to be public that the, but the tattoo, one answer was like, I got this tattoo with Marines and it was a skull and crossbones and we thought it looked tough. And then at some point along the way I realized it was a, had this Nazi association. But at that point, like I was, I never thought I was ever going to run for office. And my shirt was off in front of all kinds of people. And the army scanned me for bad tattoos before I went off to Afghanistan after I had come home from Iraq. And no one has said anything about it. So therefore I wasn't going to go get a tattoo covered up that only, that only, that I only read about online was this association. But now that I'm running for office and you're all talking about it, fine, I'll cover it up. No big deal. Now, would that have solved his problem politically? No. Like, clearly because of everything, like everyone still would have been like, well, you should have covered up in the fact that you didn't in the, you met the years, but like, he would have still got shit. But like, then he would have been still one primary. So when the primary would have been coming at it from a more honest position, but I, but I do put it in the category of more of it is, it is sort of tactical. Like he, he lied for the purpose of not having a bigger political problem than he did. And I don't think that worked. Or as one of the great scholars of our time, Hunter Biden said, I've not heard anything in any way that would say that he's misogynistic, anti-Semitic or racist. I've heard that he thinks we should all have free healthcare. Yeah. He wants to radically change our politics. I'm not going to take from Hunter Biden. It feels like that's what's resonating. And of course, that is the take from Hunter Biden, who has gone through this himself. My position on this is, um, I think like, I have a person, everyone's talking about like moral values and don't have Democrats giving up moral values. And I don't love to play what about ism on this all the time. Like it is fun to do. And it's hard to avoid because of how they are. Um, but I, I also want to come from a position of like, what, what do I believe? And like, what are my values and can they be consistent across both parties? And people who seek forgiveness, I believe should be offered grace. Like that is a, that is a foundational value for me. And I, and again, that is not like, that is not infinite. You could, you could extend someone grace and then they could continue to lie and cheat or do whatever and go back to them. And then, you know, that's a situation that you have to deal with. But like, when someone says, I was wrong, I made mistakes, I lived a tough life, I fucked up, and now I'm trying to change and become better. Like I want to be open to that. I want to give that person grace to change. And that is true. And so if there are a bunch of Republican politicians out there, if Ken Paxson wants to make a big speech and say like, I am, I am so sorry that I've done all these things and now they're committed adultery. If Donald Trump wants to get up there and be like, I'm sorry for my past sins. If all, like if they want to do that, then I'll listen. But like, I don't see any of that. No, they're running on the sins. We're way over. And I promise you we could do Spencer Pratt talk. So before that, I just want to give you the floor for a brief John Favreau stirring commentary on America 250, the Star Spangled Jumbo Claw that we have in front of the lighthouse. I know that you were invited to go to that event and sadly had that invite rescinded. And then you're going to go to the Obama Library the next day. And so you'll kind of had some time to ruminate about what it means to be America. It's almost like it's like too much symbolism. It's like it's a little everything a little too on the nose. The fact that we have a like a 700 foot octagon on the south lawn of the White House right next to the rubble of the East Wing. So little too little too Roman Coliseum. Yeah, idiocracy. It's a little too Hector Matinucamacho. Yeah. And look, I don't want it like I don't have a problem with like I'm not a UFC person, but I don't have a problem with like the White House holding a sporting event like that. Or the even the fact that they're holding a fight like that. Like what I what I have an issue with is that Donald Trump has clearly decided to combine his birthday with America's birthday. And what does he have to say about America's 250th birthday? He doesn't have anything to say about it, because all he can think about is himself. And so what the country has to celebrate for America 250 is just Donald Trump. It's Donald Trump and a completely airbrush version of history, where every step in every moment in America's history has led us to this final moment with Donald Trump prevailing, which is all he thinks about because he's at the end of his life and is going to die soon anyway. And so he's like my term and especially this birthday should be a celebration of me and everything I've done for America and how I'm maybe the greatest American who's ever been. And like that is my problem with Trump and America 250 more than any of the details of the celebrations or who's in or who's out. Like there is a version of this where someone who I a president who I very much disagree with politically and policy wise still gets me to feel a little patriotic because for America's 250, they decide to say like we're going to make this nonpartisan. We're going to make this about sort of the values that bring us together. George W. Bush, the ideals of the country would have done that, right? I mean literally every president before this one every single president would have done that. And that is what really bugs me about the the America 250 thing. My worst take related to all this should be sure to make everyone unhappy is I think that the UFC claw on the South line is cool. It looks fucking cool. It looks cool. I mean, it's weird that it's on the South line, but it looks cool. Yeah, the Democrats should do cool stuff like that. It's fine. And the corruption I don't like, you know, the company they're making money of all this, like it should be a non, but just the look, the aesthetic, it's cool to do cool stuff. I think the Obama Library looks cool. You do. Everyone hates the Obama Library. I haven't been inside yet. I mean, I'm not a... I'm not a... I think it's cool. It's different. It's interesting. It's weird how the speech goes around so you can't really read it. I guess that would be my one architectural note, but other than that, I think that it looks cool. Yeah, I see. I'm not a... And as people know, I also like the Oval Office with stuff on it. Yeah, like I'm not a modern architecture guy. I'm just a just a douche from Boston. So... You want something a little more... Like I would never... Like brick. You want like a brick building with, you know, the flag, you know, colonized class. I'm much more Republican that way. That sounds right. But I... But like, you know, I'm excited to look inside, obviously. I'm excited to take the kids. I'm excited to hear your readout. All right. We're gonna close with Spencer Pratt. You said that you'd come on the show if we could go through the worst takes about Spencer Pratt. So I've pulled some together. Yes. But before we get to all of the worst takes, I wanted to play one in particular since it invoked your name. This is from Nepo Daughter, podcaster, life of one of the worst people in America. Her name is Megan McCain. Let's listen. He was handily in second place last week, and now a bunch of mail-in ballots come in and he's pushing way low to third. You just don't understand why Spencer Pratt was such a... Why... He was so offensive to the Obama Bros. Like, he's so offensive. When your candidate that you're famous for had no background at all before he became president, they of all people should know that magic can happen in politics and sometimes people just come from nowhere. Magic can happen. John, why were you offended? You know, I was offended by Spencer Pratt because I thought about why it was making me so angry is that... Like, he gave this interview to us weekly where, you know, he said that this is my destiny to be mayor and they asked him like, you know, they say, one of the questions is, I wrote this down because I... It really bugged me. You were a political science major in college. Do you have any other qualifications? My number one qualification is I'm not corrupt. My biggest skill is being an actual outsider. That's it. That's it. He doesn't... And that was the whole campaign. He didn't... None of the things he proposed or very few of the things he proposed were doable even within the confines of the law. Like, I'm going to force people into treatment. I'm going to like, can't really do that. I'm going to like, build a camp on the outskirts of LA where I'm going to move all the homeless people. I'm going to ship them to Seattle, all this kind of stuff. Like, doesn't have the power... Forget about it being cruel and obscene. Doesn't have the power to do any of that. The mayor doesn't have the power to do that. So he went around and what he did was he realized that a lot of people in LA were angry at Mayor Bass and angry because of the fires and angry because of the homeless situation. And what can I do with that anger? I can capitalize on it and run a campaign and scream about the people in charge how they're corrupt. And that's all I have to do. I don't have to think about that at all. I'm staying at the Bel Air Hotel for $1,500 a night even though my whole campaign was predicated on the fact that my house burned down in the Palisades and I'm living in a trailer. Also, I have a reality TV crew that I've signed on to so that when I... If I'm mayor, then me and Heidi can have a... We can get back to basics and the TV crew can follow us around. And so it's like, no, I don't believe... Of course, like we said, I wanted to give Spencer Pratt the presumption of good faith, but he doesn't seem like he has grown it all, learned anything, has an idea about why he wanted to run. All he wanted to do was say, like, I'm an outsider, I'm pissed. And so I'm going to get more famous because of that. That's it. And you know what? That's why he got the vote he did. I mean, he lost. Some of the worst takes. I don't know if you have any that you want to nominate, but I just pulled some. And you know, this is friendly fire here. All right. So nobody should take this personally. I've had some bad takes before, not on Spencer Pratt. I have them every day. I obviously had no chance to win the LA mayor's race and people had their brains totally broken by the internet, but I've had bad takes on other things. Here's the worst takes on Pratt. Jeb Bush, my friend Jeb Bush on one of Pratt's AI ads, maybe the best political ad of the year. I think it was maybe a bad sign that his political ads were appealing to elderly Republicans in Florida as opposed to Los Angeles voters. One note. Chris Ferrufo, Spencer Pratt has had more airtime than any right-coded mayoral candidate in recent memory. He's charismatic and his video marketing has been on par with the left. There's most viral campaigns like AOC and Mamdani. Uh, Jesse Waters. Wow. Democrats like California was a lock. Then the numbers rolled in. Spencer Pratt just turned the LA mayor's race into the biggest surprise of the night. Bombshell Karen Bass. Karen's going to have to fight for her political survival. True, not at the hands of Spencer Pratt. Rick Grinnell. It's Pratt summer. Nope. It was Pratt spring. Red Steeze. Congrats. 2028 presidential nominees. Spencer Pratt. Guess not. Bethany Mandel. Um, sorry if people don't know these internet characters. This is just a special one. Spencer Pratt was doing this well because he was calling out a crooked and flawed system. If this is how they think they're going to stop him, buckle up. They're going to unleash something much bigger. Caitlyn Flanagan at the free press. Pratt daddy's revenge. Um, Pucks Peter Amby. Uh, Spencer Pratt was authentically passion, but it's also clear he did a lot of prep before the debate and he's open to taking advice, growing as a candidate, not just doing the volume 11 social media thing on stage for all the Trump comparisons. Fred is more likely to invoke San Francisco's popular democratic mayor, Daniel Lurie, who has run central plaudits, centrist plaudits for cracking down on homelessness. Um, Oh no, Peter. Yeah. A lot of, we love Peter. He had a great article on America 250. People should read a show that's just misses all over the place on Pratt. Do you have any others or is any, anyone particularly tickle you? Yeah. Well, so no, I would just say that I put like the MAGA people aside because, um, you know, for them to be excited about Spencer Pratt and to get, and especially the online MAGA people and for them to like convince themselves that he was somehow going to either win outright, which some of them bought, um, or at least, um, you know, beat Nithya by like double digits. Um, I, I, it doesn't totally surprise me because that, that's sort of how they live their lives in the, in the Trump era online. But I do think like there is, in terms of the media pundits, other folks, like they're, Donald Trump has sort of broken all of our brains. And there's this tendency to look at, um, like fame seeking populace on the right, who call out things that are pissing people off and do it in a real like authentic viral way is like, like that's a genius. And my problem is, I just don't think it's that impressive. Like, I think you were, I, so if I ran a New Orleans mayor campaign based on that alarm that went off of my phone at 612 and talked about how annoying that was, that would be something people would agree with, but it probably would not propel me to the mayorship. Right. But I think that you, I think that you and I could figure out how to run a campaign where we attacked leadership, whether it was Democrat or Republican in some city, and about fucking everything up. And we would do great. Like in terms of getting attention, in terms of getting attention, easy, easy. It's easy thing to do. It is much harder to get people's attention for some kind of an agenda, right? Which is by the way, why Mum Donnie did great, or one of the big reasons why Mum Donnie did great is not just his viral videos. It's because everyone can remember like exactly what Mum Donnie wanted to do. Um, and he was also like the other thing about Spencer Pratt too is there was a path where he could have tried to reach out to Democrats or centrists or whoever else in the city. And instead he got more MAGA as the campaign went on. He spent, he spent the last weekend in New York on Fox and Friends talking about dog raping and calling for Nithya, ramen and Karen Bass to be jailed, to be in prison. Like that's how we ended the campaign in New York. So it's like, I don't think that, no, I don't think that's that impressive. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Like I know that Democrats are we're all supposed to like learn from Spencer Pratt and do this. I was like, I don't find that impressive. Counterpoint. Dwayne Patterson, Hushu as producer. The bottom line is Pratt's ads were too good. Too good. Hopefully this bonus decision will mean that this is the last time California can pull this stunt. What a show, a good show, a long show, John Favreau. This was fun. Anything else? Anything you want to leave me with? Final words of wisdom, critiques, comments? I got nothing. I got nothing. Spencer Pratt for president. Pratt, 2028. Pratt, daddy. Pratt, daddy. Sad that Pratt summer was over. Just be over before it began. Well, Pratt summer too for me. All right. That's John Favreau. Everybody else will be back with his buddy Bill Crystal on Monday. Have a good weekend. Enjoy the fight on the White House lawn or don't. Or maybe God will have something to say about us. We'll thunder storms. Well, check in on Monday and find out together. See y'all then. The board 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.