Tom Nichols: There’s Something Wrong with the President

Hello there, Tom Allen here from the Pottering Podcast. This episode is brought to you by My Garden Escape at QVC. I don't know about you, but the moment the sun started peeking through the clouds, my mind immediately wandered to the garden and getting it summer ready. And if you're the same, then My Garden Escape at QVC is a perfect place to start. It's a bit like having your own virtual gardening centre, where you can browse a whole range of plants, garden decor, tools, planters, outdoor lighting and more, all from the comfort of your own home. You'll find inspiration and expert gardening advice all at your fingertips, whether online, on socials or on QVC's streaming platform QVC+. And if you're planning a bit of alfresco dining, take a look at their gorgeous outdoor furniture ranges from 70s inspired retro looks with avocado greens and bold stripes to modern neutrals with rat-an accents. Whether you're creating a space to host friends and family or in need of a relaxing retreat, My Garden Escape at QVC is your ultimate gardening destination. Search My Garden Escape at qvcuke.com to discover more and use code POTTER for £10 off your first purchase with QVC over £30. For full terms, visit the QVC website. You're due for a change of scenery, so see yourself in Harford County with outdoor fun for everyone. Explore local hiking and waterways, great for fishing, kayaking and boating. Spend an afternoon at one of the 11 breweries, distilleries and wineries, plus outdoor concerts, festivals and events every weekend, conveniently located just off I-95. It's time you see what Harford County has for you. Plan your trip at helloharford.com. See you soon! Hey, everybody! Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. We are Doing It Live today! We're Doing It Live! We had an all-hands meeting. Thankfully, it went better than the Iranian All Hands Meeting a couple months ago. We're all live and well, but I could not take the pod in the morning. And since we're Doing It Live, I wanted to bring in our resident guest, who's 10 years old, and he's a very good friend of mine. And he's our guest, who's temperament most matches Bill O'Reilly. And that is Atlantic Rider Radio Free Tom Tom Nichols. Oh, that stings! But hell, we're Doing It Live! Thank you for those of you with us live on YouTube and Substack. Everybody else will be in your ears a little late today. And then we're back to our normal schedule tomorrow. We've got a great lineup the rest of the week. So much to discuss. We'll do a little music at the end, as is our want. But I kind of wanted to frame up the whole conversation, just by taking a look at the bleeds that Donald Trump sent on Monday night, between 10.15 p.m. and almost 2 a.m. Luckily, friend of the show, Harry Sisson, kind of summarized each bleat. There are 45 of them from our totally insane and sleep-deprived president. And we're just going to go through a few. 10.15 accuses Barack Obama of attempting a coup. 10.15 says Obama worked with the CIA to overthrow Trump. 10.15 reposts the tweet saying Obama is a traitor and he should be arrested. 10.22 attacks Dominion voting systems. There's been some lawsuits about that. 10.23 back at Obama. Accuses him of personally making 120 million from Obamacare. I don't know how that happened. 10.27 demands Senator Mark Kelly resign. 10.30 demands Jack Smith be arrested. It's kind of lucky for Mark Kelly to resign for him, or jail for Jack Smith. 10.30, Obama Clinton and yesterday's guest, Jim Comey, are guilty of treason. 10.39 reposts the tweet from a MAGA account saying they have secret intel proving Clinton and Obama committed crimes. 10.39 reposts the MAGA tweet saying Hillary Clinton should be sent to Haiti. I'm going to fast forward because there are so many. 10.41 accuses Obama and John Brennan and Clinton of sedition and treason again. Then he starts posting some like Boomer Post. 10.42 is a picture of a man on CCTV footage knocking over food a waiter was carrying. 10.47 Obama is the most demonic force in American politics. 10.49 brings up to Dominion again. 10.51 reposts a fake Charlie Kirk account that claimed Obama blocked Hillary Clinton and prosecuted 11.28 claims to senior Democrat just testified under oath that Senator Adam Schiff leaked classified information. Not true. 113 AM attacks the New York Times for their report on his reflecting pool remodel. So we're in the middle of a war with Iran, major economic uncertainty, three hours of deranged posting from the president of the United States. You post a lot, but boy. I'm not actually holding the codes to the nuclear arsenal and I don't have early morning briefings from the CIA on the condition of the world. And I'm not required to make any major decisions about, you know, the fate of billions of human beings. So you'll have to forgive me if I do a little late night posting. But if that were my dad, you know, I said and I were watching, you know, my dad or my grandfather posting like this, I'd want to, I'd be out there the next day. Dad, are you okay? You sleeping enough? You know, because then the next day, of course, when there is the actual business of government taking place, you know, he's doing touch and goes, you know, or the military guys, you call them snap rolls, you know. And, you know, he's just not there. I mean, there's something, look, there's something wrong with the president. I think there's, he's having health issues, which is not unusual for a man who's almost dating. The neck bruise is kind of for the hand bruises of moves. I mean, he's got makeup on his hands. Or we don't know that. Let me, let's be responsible and say he's walking around with what looks like makeup slathered on his hands. There's something wrong here. And I think, you know, it's a fair question to ask. American citizens have a reasonable concern about the mental stability of their commander in chief. And, but we're not getting those answers because everything in this White House, you know, when you're reading through the reading through those tweets to him, it's a reminder that no matter how powerful he gets, no matter, you know, he's the president, he's got a second term, he's got complete control in the Republican Party, everything that he's ever wanted. And yet he just radiates this, this paranoid insecurity that you can't stop thinking about Barack Obama. Can't stop thinking about, you know, John Brennan and Joe Biden. It's just, it's incredible, you know, how unbelievably insecure and freaked out this guy is all the time. And, you know, probably being a week till two in the morning when you're, you know, 79 years old and you're in a demanding job probably isn't, isn't helping any of that. Yeah. And again, we're not doctors sort of be responsible, but I mean, he is demonstrating paranoid delusions. And he appears to have insomnia, at least at night. He's dosing off a little during the day. It's not really a great, like, pairing of traits. Just even putting my Trump's rangement syndrome aside, like, you know, in the middle of a hot war, whatever we're calling it, a decrease fire. You wouldn't really want somebody posting paranoid delusions all night long. I wouldn't think. Well, you know, and the thing is, of course, his supporters always say, well, he knows what he's doing. He's just goofing around. And, you know, he's having fun. He puts up tweets about making Venezuela the 51st state, you know. And he knows it's just a joke. And then, of course, someone says, so what was that about? He goes, no, no, I mean it. You know, the one of the most, I mean, it would be funny if it weren't so terrifying. One of the one of the most amusing things about the entire Trump era, Trump says something crazy. His supporters get way out on a limb to say he didn't mean that. That's not what he said. It's a joke. And then the next sound you hear is Trump behind them while they're on that limb going, you know, sawing off. I'm saying, no, no, I really meant it. No, I really want to do this. No, I'm not kidding. No, I really believe this. And then, boom, you know, they all they all fall off that that limb. There is, I mean, I don't, I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't know if these are paranoid delusions, but I keep referring back to the book. He's paranoid and he has delusions, I guess. Whether it's a clinically paranoid delusions, I don't know. But like, yeah, I'm not a clinician. He seems to he seems to think that everybody's out to get him and he believes things that are not true. Let's put it that way. I keep referring back to this book, Night of Camp David that was written in 1965 about by the guys who wrote seven days in May about a president who, you know, goes like they said, Dr. Strange up goes a little funny in the head, you know, and wants to take over, you know, all of Europe and form a confederation with the Russians. I mean, it's just this crazy stuff. And the stuff Trump is putting on social media is is nuttier is crazier than the stuff that was in a book that 50 years ago, 60 years ago was considered a political thriller that was too outlandish to be known. It was outlandish to be made into a movie. So that's where we are. That's I mean, I keep saying this is the guy in the book is President Mark Hollenback and I keep saying, OK, this is I used to say this is Mark Hollenback behavior. This is beyond what's in a book that was written as fiction. And we and I don't I don't know what's happened to this country that people just kind of shrug and go, what are you going to do? You know, yeah, he is impeachment now. I just I want to start there because now we go through some pretty serious matters. And I think that thinking about his mental state is an important way to contextualize it. Jonathan Swan, our guy over at the New York Times, had this story yesterday. Classified military intelligence assessments from early this month show Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities, including the US Intel assesses that Iran has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites that maintains along the Strait of Hormuz and 90% of Iran's underground missile sites are partially or fully operational. Relevant for a number of reasons like number one, that's another thing that he's either lying to us about or diluted about when he talks about the state of the Iran military. Number two, that's if that is the intelligence he's getting, that's an extremely relevant fact for thinking about what comes next. Because if they maintain most of their missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz, like the idea of going into open it militarily. And you tell me you were the Naval War College professor, but seems extremely risky. Yeah, there are a couple of things occurred to me when I saw that first. It's interesting that the reaction from the administration is basically who told you that, which is not, you know, denial. And, you know, that's a lot of leaking going on apparently, but I'm guessing this, you know, that this is coming out of the defense and the intelligence communities because they would be the people who would know. And that's really alarming. So the other thing that I immediately thought of is, well, we've been bombing the piss out of them for two months, according to, you know, everything we're being told. What are we hitting? What have we been doing for two months if you saw 90% and, you know, I mean, we've been told over and over again, you know, they're decimated that they don't have anything left, that it's all over, that they're scrambling, that they're wandering around in the wreckage, you know, good, rending their garments in the smoking ruins. Well, apparently not. And that, you know, that's really a serious problem. I mean, this is, you know, even during Vietnam with body counts and, you know, Matt, we weren't getting, there wasn't such a huge delta between what seems to be happening and what we're being told is happening. As for what happens next, I think, you know, Trump keeps saying, well, what in this time, this time we're really going to, well, I mean, then if we, what have we been doing for eight weeks, nine weeks going on nine weeks? I think what happens next is, he gets tired of this. And he just, you know, he's apparently some of these reports say he's already asking, how do I just declare victory and walk away from this. You know, you declare victory. I think if the war ends right now, which it probably has to, unless we really want to go big and invade Iran and do something, you know, Vietnam level, then it's a strategic loss for the United States. We are, we are without question worse off than if we had not gone to war at all. That's the thing that we really are going to have to grapple with here. It's hard to imagine how we'd even get back to even. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, it's, you know, the Iranians have now, you know, the Trump administration keeps saying, well, for 47 years, you know, we've been at war. The Iranians agree. They say, yep, for 40 odd years, we've been waiting for this. And now we've proven that we can survive it. All of that was notional. We've proven that we can close the straights. That was notional. We've proven that we're going to continue to basically control or exercise some control over the straight. That was notional. So basically by going to war, which is often what happens with a war of choice like this, you take hypotheticals and you turn them into realities. What would happen if they survive it? What would happen if they closed the straights? The straight. And I don't know how we get back to even on this. I think, you know, we keep looking for all these complicated reasons that Trump did this. He did it for glory. He thought it was going to be easy. He's looking to put merit badges, you know, on his, you know, he wants things like Brezhnev. He wants to have another row of medals on his coat. And his answer is, well, it's okay that we did this because now Iran will never get a nuclear weapon. Iran was not close to a nuclear weapon. No reputable experts, no intelligence agencies. Nobody believed that. I mean, that he wasn't even being told that from his own people. And they pretty much tell him almost anything he wants to hear. And so, you know, that's his going to be his fallbacks. Like, yes, get you saw him yesterday, right? I don't think about the economic situation of the American. Oh, good to hear, Mr. President. Thank you. Yeah, look, here's the thing. I was on, I basically had the view you did four weeks ago, right? Which was like, he doesn't have any good alts. He's bored with this. He doesn't really want to be in a hot war in Iran. He thought it was going to be easy like Venezuela and he's just going to declare victory and turn around. That's really tough right now to do because you end up with just such an obvious strategic defeat with whatever happens in the Strait of Hormuz. And so I'm at least my worry level on the escalation is a little higher. And there was another report yesterday that the US military is considering what the second phase of the more active part of the war would look like. They would rename it. Ops, right? Sledge Hammer Sledge Hammer. I guess we know what the song is today. Peter Gabriel. Although people my age, Tim, have been posting names of the famous 1980s TV show Sledge Hammer about a comedy about a nutball cop who carried a giant gun. I think that's even more appropriate and who is in that show. Is that what I know anyone from that show? Yes, you would. David, his last name escapes me. He was the lawyer in succession and you'd recognize him from a lot of other shows. Yeah, it was early in his career and it was really actually a pro. I recommend it to people. It was a funny 80s show that didn't catch on because it was kind of like airplane except like in a cop show kind of thing. I like airplane David Rash. Maybe I should go check that out. David Rash. That's right. So Operation Sledge Hammer because for two reasons. One, why they care about the War Powers Act when they break every other law? I don't really understand. But part of their rationale would be that it would restart their 60 day war powers countdown. The other part of the rationale is just their internal bullshit spin that they want to be like, these one was a victory and like now we are moving on to Operation Sledge Hammer. I don't know. There are certainly factions within the administration that want this to be go time. I'm going to push back a little bit on escalation simply because you're right. I mean, we could start another round of bombing and we'll say, okay, fine, we're going to go in and we're going to bounce the rubble and we're going to do this again and blow some stuff up. I haven't seen an analysis that suggests that there is short of an invasion, short of seizing things and holding them that that would have any significant change in the strategic situation now. Maybe the Joint Chiefs know something I don't. Sure they do. But whether that actually changes the equation on the ground in Iran, I don't think so. But the other place I want to push back, you know, you said, well, he can't walk out now when it's so obvious that it would be, but we're talking about Donald Trump, Tim. We're talking about a guy who manifests things, right? Who says, if I say it, it becomes true. So I never underestimate his ability to say, you know what? True. We won. Let me let me push back. Push back. No matter how many people say we didn't win, he says, you know, he does the Jedi hand wave over over Magworld and says, these are not the analysts you're looking for. We want to push back. Let's hash this out. Because I think in almost every other situation, we would be in agreement. You and I, because I do I fall back on this. I forget. I think I'm doing it from Lee and Donovan. But like Trump's superpower is always that he can like start start to create a problem and then just declare the problem solved. And his cultists will go along with him. And like he we've seen this a million times in the past. But let me just let's just use one example here. The 2020 election, right? So 2020 action, he creates this new reality. And I'm going to say it was it was this uniquely Trumpian thing, like no matter how much you hate JD Vance or 10 crews or anybody like nobody else is psychotic enough to like keep the bit going for that long, right? To be like, no, I'm going to pretend like I won. And I'm going to keep pretending and like create and go and make up new absurd lies every day. Like it's just it creates a certain you need to have a certain type of psychosis to be able to like do that. And but people went along with it, as you're saying, right? And like, well, I understand why people would go along with that. But though the Maga people because they wanted to believe, you know, he was creating a new world that they wanted. And they didn't suffer any consequences, except for the handful of people that got arrested at the Capitol, right? Unless you were one of the people that broke into the Capitol, like you didn't suffer any consequences for believing this fabrication. The Strait of Hormuz staying closed and becoming an Italian excuse me, an Iranian toll bridge, like and then six dollar gas this summer. I mean, Trump is pretty powerful and his ability to create worlds. But it's that's a pretty tough sell to people that like that it wasn't him on this one. I just I mean, sure, they'll be a handful of cultists that will believe it. But it becomes a very hard sale to people if the gas prices stay this high all summer. Well, I don't want to say you're wrong. So I'm just going to say you're right. And I'll just pile on and say this war, I think is the first time he ever really lost control of something that he couldn't just make go away because domestic stuff, it's odd tariffs, it's liberation day. And somebody comes in and says, you know, beef, and he goes, okay, fine, you know, beef tariffs are gone, you know, or whatever it is. This is he's in a he's in a war with a large country with a fanatical regime that isn't going to play along. So he has lost control of the situation. So I agree on that completely. I also agree. So many times, there are only two things that you couldn't lie to Mago World about. Epstein and a foreign war. Right, they were they were willing to just take in to just submerge themselves in in, you know, oceans of bullshit, but not those two things and Trump has betrayed them on those two things. So and he's clearly paying the price for it. I mean, you know, his approval rating is now places I never thought it would be. I mean, 33%. You know, it's pretty remarkable, you know, getting down to kind of Nixonian and days kind of levels. With all that said, I think that the complexity of restarting a war and anything. And let's let's be clear what we're talking about. I'm with you that he may well say Operation Sledgehammer go and we fly a bunch of sorties, we drop tons of steel on things, we blow up a lot of stuff, and we come home and we say mission accomplished and nothing happens. Okay, but to say I really must change the current situation. That means seizing the strait, seizing car, putting in troops, really making a dedicated effort to topple the regime. I just don't think he's going to go there. I think he's fed up with it. He's bored with it. He it would be, you know, complete outrage in MAGA World. So I don't think that's going to happen. On the other hand, you know, I didn't think he would threaten invade Greenland either. So, you know, I could be wrong. I want to throw in one more option. The president's been calling it the n word. But before we get to that, we'll leave a little cliffhanger for everybody on the n word. I do need to read the ad I apologize to board plus members, because you pay to not have to listen to ads. But we're doing this live. And so it's the only way to do it. So, you know, I owe you one if you're a board plus member listening to this ad. Here it is. And then we'll get back with the n word. It's I'm sure that the people at function health are really thrilled about that cliffhanger and that transition into their ad. I've been paying more attention to how my body actually feels because I'm getting up into the Tom Nichols age range. And if I'm being honest, I've been slacking off a little bit at the gym, because I just I'm tired. I'm worn down and my little ladies weights class, it's intimidating to go to the ladies weights class, so I'm getting dominated by the other moms in the class. And one thing that I've been working on to improve that is I've learned that your muscles don't just need training, they need the right internal conditions to recover and stay strong. 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It's like looking at the results and comparing it to Claude because he's the one with muscles. All right, that's Tom Nichols. We're back. The n word. I just want to say getting up there in the Tom Nichols age as my Greek grandmother used to say you son of my beast. Yes, the n word. I got some grades there. Hold on. Before we go into my my catastrophizing where everybody's going to know. I just want to start. I knew you obviously this has been an area of expertise with yours nuclear proliferation. And so just the other element of this that like you can tell Trump's looking for what's my out right like what is something that you know I can make seem like a win and when you watch this press conference yesterday is like we just got to get the nuclear we got to get the nuclear nobody wants to hear the n word to the nuclear. So like what would it actually even look like the ex fill of the nuclear in Iran because there are kind of two sides to the nuclear in this case. Like what's your sense of like the state of play on that and whether there's any possible face saving option for the Iranians could say what they said to us you know 10 years ago. Fine we won't build an nuclear weapon go away. Except that we won't have inspectors we won't have what we had you know I was not a supporter of the of jikpo of the Iran the Obama Iran deal because I felt like it front loaded too much benefit to the Iranians without requiring them to do very much to get it I thought it was kind of a basic violation of diplomacy one on one. But once it was in place and working it was the only game in town so what Trump might have to settle for. Is a kind of crappier version of the Obama deal. With less inspection because otherwise if you're talking about going in and getting Trump keep calling it the nuclear dust. He's just so I mean it's I'm sorry I've been saying it for 10 years but he's so odd. But you know the stuff that's buried you can't just go in there and say all right we're going to be here for two days. Put it all on the plane right here. I mean that stuff is buried under rubble it requires special handling. Let me if I can just take a take a short digression Tim we actually did this in a in a. Kind of like this in Kazakhstan in the Clinton administration where true story guy like opens a shed and and like there's all the you know radiation symbols and goes oh shit how come nobody knew this was here. You know like it was old Soviet nuclear stuff and. Who is we in the way we the United States. Got found we found out from somebody in Kazakhstan that some guy you know like the janitor opened up a closet and went yikes and there was all this leftover nuclear stuff. And so we did this thing called operation. I've checked me if I'm wrong folks but I think it was operation sapphire and we fly in with a bit like in the dark we don't want to make a big deal of this we don't embarrass their government we're not going to you know. Now this was in a permissive not wartime situation and even this where everything was stacked and we knew exactly where it was and it was all wrapped up and ready to go. And this was a dicey operation where we flew in put all the stuff on airplanes flew out you know turned all the lights off flew back out in the dark it was. You know credit to the Clinton administration it was the right thing to do and they pulled it off and it worked you're not going to do that here. This is a country where a war with they're not going to just clear out a space and say all right come on and bring the C-130s. You know build a runway do whatever you need to do that's not going to happen. Now if we get to some deal where the ceasefire becomes a you know peace agreement. And they say fine you can come in you know over the next I don't know six months whatever it's going to take but it's not going to happen we're not going to like do a lightning raid and get you know thousands of pounds of this stuff. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pounds of this stuff and then fly out so I don't know how that would work if that's one of the plans they're cooking up because they would have to clear all that rubble have a place to land have the machinery have the manpower. I just it was dicey enough to do it under almost ideal circumstances and Kazakhstan I don't understand how people think we're going to do it run. I don't know what time the universe is sending me but I swear to God in the elevator this morning going down to the lobby. I walk in a guy's in there he's like hey you're Tim from the board and I was like yeah hey what are you doing in town he said I'm doing a nuclear deep proliferation class here we're reviewing what we learned from Kazakhstan to see the second person to discuss. That's a nuclear case to me today and I'm like I don't know what to make of that but I don't know it means that there's a real lesson. That's the definition of synchronicity. Okay so now on the other side we've discussed how Trump is back into a corner we've discussed how his brain is turning into mush how he's sundowning. On a scale of zero to 100 do you have any level of concern that Trump's just like you know what I know we said we're going in there to get their nuclear but maybe we should just hit them one. Any concern about that. Sure I'm just a little bit of concern about it. Yeah sure I have concerns about that. You know he doesn't understand this stuff he doesn't listen when he's briefed. He is as I've written many times the president of the United States is the sole authority for the use of nuclear weapons. No one gets to say no to him about this. If he says bring me the football you know and opens up this 40 45 pound case that he always travels with. He can do that now. Normally you would think that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs or the secretary of defense who normally would have to be in the room because they have to. They don't get to countermand his offer they have to authenticate that the person speaking and giving these orders is in fact the president so they're not they're not there to say yes I agree they're there to say yes this is the right person you're talking to. Could he do that. Sure. Now would you know would Pete Hegceth agree to Pete Hegceth will do whatever he's told that's why he got the job because yeah except we'll do whatever he's told to do. Will other people do it. I don't know. Could they talk him out of it probably. I don't think now let's you know get a grip sitting here today. I'm slightly I mean obviously the Iranian regime is horrible. I'm not trying to compare the Iranian regime to anybody. The I told us horrible the way they treat their people horrible caveat caveat caveat. I'm just saying like as a personal matter today on the nuclear question you know Trump and BB are a little bit higher on my worry list. Yeah well we have nuclear weapons for one thing. But I mean let me just say that yes I have a concern but it is in the very tiny single digits if that but it is not zero. That's higher than it was like you know our entire life before now and then your entire life. Well not my entire life. It's higher than it was for I think the 90s 2000 you know about 30 years we've gone through where there's not really any worry that the US was going to drop a nuke. I never I never worried. I mean the greatest worry I had was during the 1980s because things were so tight. But after that you know there's there's a lot of memoir material that came out for example after the first Gulf War and then the second Gulf War where you just had decision makers. You know you're a chained. You know nobody's going to accuse of being you know God rest his soul. Nobody's going to say the guy was a weak sister. You know Cheney and Paul and others saying we're not even going to talk about it. It's off the table. We're never going to do this. And that's that. Now you know the problem is that you have Trump who has talked about nuking hurricanes. and make it so frustrated to say, well, for example, I could imagine somebody in this administration because there are some crackpots wandering around the White House saying things like, well, let's blow one up in the Persian Gulf as a warning. Exactly. Kind of like we were worried about Putin doing in the Black Sea, for example, in the early days of the Ukraine war. I could see somebody suggesting that, but I would hope that this is where a lot of people of much cooler temperament would come in and say, finally, say the thing that nobody appears to ever say to this guy, which is, Mr. President, it's a really bad idea, and I can't be involved with executing this. Hello there, Tom Allen here from the Pottering podcast. This episode is brought to you by My Garden Escape at QVC. I don't know about you, but the moment the sun started peeking through the clouds, my mind immediately wandered into the garden and getting it summer ready. And if you're the same, then My Garden Escape at QVC is a perfect place to start. It's a bit like having your own virtual gardening center where you can browse a whole range of plants, garden decor, tools, planters, outdoor lighting, and more, all from the comfort of your own home. You'll find inspiration and expert gardening advice all at your fingertips, whether online, on socials, or on QVC's streaming platform, QVC Plus. And if you're planning a bit of alfresco dining, take a look at their gorgeous outdoor furniture ranges from 70s-inspired retro looks with avocado greens and bold stripes to modern neutrals with ratan accents. Whether you're creating a space to host friends and family or in need of a relaxing retreat, My Garden Escape at QVC is your ultimate gardening destination. Search My Garden Escape at qvcuq.com to discover more and use code POTTER for 10 pounds off your first purchase with QVC over 30 pounds. For full terms, visit the QVC website. Are you really buying a car online on AutoTrader right now? Really? I can get super specific with dealer listings and see cars based on my budget. You can really have it delivered. Or pick it up. Mommy, look! I think your kid is walking up the slide. Really? AutoTrader, buy your car online, really. Speaking of crazy people walking around the White House, do you have an article in The Atlantic today? You read my mind. It is... That is good podcasting. It is headline, The Trump Counterterrorism Strategy is a Dangerous Joke that is being managed by Gorka. Senator Gorka. Who is a Hungarian lunatic. He unscreened at me in a... I guess we were, I guess in the hallway of a conference room, various political conference. And he started shouting at me about how I'm an idiot. But not great breath, better than Corey Lewandowski's breath, but his breath was smellable from the distance with which he was shouting at me. Doesn't seem to be... I have never met him. So I don't have that level of intimate detail to share with you. Anyway, I wanted to treat myself. So reading you is usually a treat. But in this case, since you were coming on today, I was like, I'm not gonna read it. I know it's about Gorka. I just wanna go in blind and I wanted to hear Tom Nichols give me a tight five on Gorka in the article. It's not really about Gorka. It's about Gorka being assigned as the White House, special assistant to the president for counterterrorism and all that, waving my hands. He was supposed to produce this thing, a document, the White House counterterrorism strategy, the 2026 counterterror strategy. He was supposed to produce it like a year ago. And my name is Hannah Allum at ProPublica. Kept kind of goosing him about it and saying, is it done? Is it done? Is it done? And finally, he just put out this thing last week. This kind of half-baked mess that includes, I mean, it's just so stupid and sloppy that I can't even begin to explain to you how bad it is. One of my favorite lines, and I did put this in the piece, was it's a principle. I wanna get this right, so I'll just read it to you. Because it was really, America's new US counterterrorism strategy is driven by the principle that America is our homeland. Okay, thank you for clearing that up. I'm back, so you're mad at me? That's a kind of email, faber, faber, statue. Knowledge is good, but there's a lot of this kind of nonsense in there. What it boils down to is this. It's a half-baked, underdone souffle that basically says all enemies to the left, anarchists, of course, he does say, big threat, Islamist, terror is big threat, but the rest of it is drug cartels, which is nonsense, not a counterterrorism operation. Drugs are drugs and been around for a long time. This is not terrorism. And radical left transgender anarchists. So, you know, like. That's what we'll watch out for. Yeah, you know, like I said, like, you know, this is like Antifa. Not transgender, I'm sorry, RuPaul. She's just a drag queen, but yeah, I'm trying to think radical left and. Antifa is like this, yes. And Antifa, which they capitalize because Antifa comes out of this report as like, you know, a transgender anarchist specter, you know? It's like they're dealing with Thrush or Specter or some huge transnational terrorist organization. It's laughable nonsense, except that it's probably what people like Orca hope is the predicate for going after, you know, every left-wing group, you know, no Kings or the SPLC or whoever they're gonna pick, you know, as their targets. Now, I don't think because the document's such a hot mess, it's not really actionable in any way. Like there's no set of things that say, and they're forming the X, Y, and Z. It's kind of like the NSPM7 thing. It's kind of like that NSPM7 doc, right? There was just like an internal doc talking about how they're gonna target these left-wing groups and like treat them as like. But this wasn't internal. I mean, this is meant for public consumption. So, you know, it's, I mean, it's just, it's just a complete dog's breakfast of, you know, random. It's almost like you took a bunch of terrorism and counterterrorism ideas and terrible problems that are going on in the world. Drugs, oppression of Christians in Africa, you know, the Charlie Kirk's assassination, and you threw them all in a bag like refrigerator magnets, and then you just put them all up and said that's our counterterrorism strategy. It's- If there's a meeting of the radical left transgender and our guests out there, I'm interested in attending because that does sound like a fun group. The other, this is, these things are related. So I had Comey on yesterday. Quick aside, I love that there's a lot of new listeners and viewers to the pod. And so I appreciate this. This is not sarcastic at all. But I had a lot of people that emailed saying like, why didn't you ask Comey about 2016? I'm still pissed about him about 2016. I've had Comey on three times. So I have, so if you're interested in my exchange with him on 2016, you can go, we'll put a link in the show notes so you can go back and watch my interview with him where, you know, I also was pretty hurt about Jim Comey's behavior in 2016. And we hashed that out and, you know, we can't do the same interview every podcast. But anyway, one of the things I talked to him about was, you know, like there's multiple layers here, right? There's their priorities are wrong. You know, they're going after the transgender anarchists, like you mentioned, they're doing support work for immigration enforcement. And they're firing experts, you know, like the Iranian team got fired because they were wrapped up in the Trump documents case because Trump had Iran war plans and fucking his bathroom in Mar-a-Lago. It's like those people didn't do anything except their job and they got fired. And, you know, Comey was just basically like, look, maybe nothing will happen. I hope nothing happens. But like the risk is higher, you know, when you take good people and experts whose job it is to find people that want to do harm to America and you fire them or you instead make them, you know, do like drag queen story hour enforcement. Yeah, I mean, you read this document and it's mercifully, it's pretty short. I mean, it's kind of like one of the things I pointed out in the piece was the reaction from some other experts, one of them said, I read like it was written by an intern. You know, another said, I would have given it a D plus in my class, but and so it reads like, you know, a night before a project that some junior, you know, who'd never done this before, sort of threw together for class. But yeah, I mean, it does raise the threat of, are you creating the permissive environment to start saying anybody we disagree with is by definition a terrorist. And it's funny, funny, it's funny ironic instead of ha ha, that the report says for too long, the intelligence community has been weaponized against American citizens. And we're not doing that anymore. Like that, you know, I'm reading it going, wow, this is some serious projection going on here. But the other problem is, and I thought of this as a former government employee myself, if I got this report, this mess on my desk, and they said, you know, and I were like a GS 15 at the agency or, you know, the counterterrorism center or something. My question would be, I understand it's a predicate for doing all these things and forgetting the transgender anarchists and the, you know, and their scuba gear as they come ashore in Miami, whatever the hell they're gonna do, you know. But what am I supposed to do with this? Like, what am I supposed to do with this report as a government official or a law enforcement person or a function? You know, Juliet Kiam, my friend and an occasional contributor to the Atlantic, who's a security expert, Juliet said, you know, these are things that are usually meant to communicate not just to the American public and to the rest of the government, but to state and local governments as well. Like, hey, here's the things we're worried about. Here's things you should be looking out for. Here's the stuff we can do together. You know, it's kind of, then you work it out in the, what, you know, you know this wonky term, the interagency process, right? Where you get everybody together and get the CIA and the OD and treasury and everybody. There's none of that here. So on the one hand, it's a very threatening document because it's paranoid and weird and just kind of randomly lists everybody that Trump doesn't like as a terrorist, right? On the other hand, if you had to work from this document and you open it up and you're at the FBI or the CIA or wherever, you'd go, what the, what the hell am I reading here? What am I supposed to do with it? And in that sense, I think you can be kind of, glad that it was Gorka working on it instead of somebody who might have been more competent because there's just nothing to pull from it except what a crappy report it is. Well, fingers crossed, nobody wants to terrorize us in the next two and a half years. I want to talk about the economy. I mean, when you're at war with a fanatical Islamist regime, who needs experts? Whew, I don't know. It'll be fine, I'm sure. Which craft is that? The, we're gonna go deep on economic stuff tomorrow, but I just, I do want to head a top level because Trump's, I don't even want to call it a gaffe. Trump's comment yesterday is deeply revealing comment, cannot be overlooked. So basically, state of play, we had an inflation report this morning which showed that the producer prices have risen 6% year over year, the rose 6%, excuse me, now it's 4.8% year over year. And, you know, which is an increase. And like, and it's more of an increase than we saw from the consumer inflation report. And it's not, because usually the consumer inflation report lags, right? Like this makes sense, right? You know, if you're a producer, if you're, you know, if you're the, if you're a farmer or whatever, and your prices start going up, like eventually it gets passed down to the consumers. Takes a while to ripple to the rest of the prices down. Exactly. And so it seems like really bad sign for inflation ahead. Bad sign, as we've discussed at an OSEAM about gas prices ahead. Trump yesterday was asked about this on the White House lawn. And as we do on the show, we don't play his voice. So I'll just tell you, the reporter said, what extent are Americans financial situation motivating you to make a deal in Iran? Trump says, not even a little bit. And then he talks a little bit more and then he goes, I don't think about Americans financial situation. Very Don Draper. I don't think about you at all, right? I mean, you know, it's a little- Imagine if Barack Obama or Joe Biden had said, I don't think about your economic situation. I mean, it would be the streets around Fox would be a burning moat of oil, you know, with the people from Fury Road, you know, banging their spears against the wall. But, and his answer, by the way, the rest of his answer in fairness to the president was, because that way I don't care, because that way you don't get a nuclear weapon. And that's his answer now for everything. It's like, oh, you're gonna complain about gas prices? That's how you get a nuclear Holocaust. I mean, it's sort of like the worst cold war moment from the fifties, maybe, you know, now on steroids. Oh, you're gonna complain about the price of apples? That's how you get Stalin, you know, marching through New York. And it's nonsense. One thing that's, no, let me just in fairness say, look, when Joe Biden was president, I thought people bitched way too much about inflation because I grew up in the seventies where, you know, inflation was double digits, right? I mean, interest rates were, you know, 18%, all that. So I was like, come on, calm down. There was a pandemic, post-pandemic inflation. Everybody knew it was coming. We had a soft landing. The problem for Trump, this inflation is directly traceable to something he did. This is one of the few times that there's ever a moment where you can say, because normally, again, let's be fair to all presidents. Most presidents don't have a lot of control over things like inflation, the price of gas, other stuff. Right? I mean, there's big macroeconomic tectonic plates that shift. Presidents can try and do what they can do with interest rates and other, you know, little knobs that they can argue with Congress to twiddle. This is one of the few places where, again, Trump is just screwed because of his own behavior because this is directly a straight line. People, even in MAGA World, can trace a direct straight line from decisions Trump made to things being more expensive. You don't usually get that in a presidential term. Gas is more expensive because Trump went to war in Iran. Period. That is just how it is. Other items are more expensive because Trump, unlike everyone else who got over this 80 or 90 years ago, still believes that tariffs are a good thing. A direct straight line. So this is really an interesting moment where, you know, you could, again, I was one of the people, when Biden was president, I said, look, inflation's not that bad. It's certainly not the 70s. He didn't cause it. There's not much he can do about it. Here, there's no doubt that if you think these levels of inflation are bad, and I think they're, you know, bad but not grievous at this point, then you have to say, look, there is only one, for once in American history, in post war American history, there's one person to blame because he did obvious things that made things more expensive. And I don't, you know, again, he just waves his hand and says, doesn't matter. It wasn't me. I thought it was like 80 million Americans to blame actually, or 70 million. Yes, but they didn't pick a war in Iran. On this, I will be fair to the MAGA voter, Tim. They did not pick a war in Iran. I thought they were picking the guy that wasn't gonna do this. At our meeting today, I demanded the JVL stickers. I don't know why an enterprising listener has not done this already. I want the picture of JVL pointing at the person to sign you did this. And I wanna put them in red state gas stations. It is too good not to do. I'm gonna do a little, I'm gonna, I have a little trip planned for June going around Louisiana. And I'm gonna do it. And I wanna do it. I need the stickers because people need to deal with that. People need to reckon with the fact that they did it. They did this. And that they were- It was not geopolitics. This was not- They didn't vote for it, but they voted for the guy that they didn't believe us. You, me, JVL and others said, no, no, he's gonna do it. I was warning about him trying to attack Iran at the end of his last term. And I took all this static, you know, oh, that's parent, he would never do that. That's crazy. Because I did a piece just before he left office saying, beware, Trump might try to attack Iran on his way out the door to see if he can just scramble the deck. And it turns out from people in the administration, yes, he was in fact thinking about it. We warned everybody about this. I admit, I've gotten like you about that. As a cranky old man, now that my age has become an issue here. But I do find myself, when people come on the TV and say, boy, you know, I'm a gas and I just can't fight. I said, wait a minute, did you vote at all? And who did you vote for? And, you know, that's really not a good answer because people suffering and their kids, you know, not being able to afford shoes is not, you know, you have to have some empathy here. But on the other hand, I, you know, I agree. There needs to be- Accountability, empathy and accountability can go hand in hand. And go together, they can go hand in hand, exactly. Yeah, you did this. Hello there, Tom Allen here from the pottering podcast. This episode is brought to you by My Garden Escape at QVC. I don't know about you, but the moment the sun started peeking through the clouds, my mind immediately wandered to the garden and getting it summer ready. And if you're the same, then My Garden Escape at QVC is a perfect place to start. It's a bit like having your own virtual gardening centre, where you can browse a whole range of plants, garden decor, tools, planters, outdoor lighting and more, all from the comfort of your own home. You'll find inspiration and expert gardening advice all at your fingertips, whether online, on socials, or on QVC's streaming platform, QVC Plus. And if you're planning a bit of alfresco dining, take a look at their gorgeous outdoor furniture ranges from 70s inspired retro looks with avocado greens and bold stripes to modern neutrals with ratan accents. Whether you're creating a space to host friends and family or in need of a relaxing retreat, My Garden Escape at QVC is your ultimate gardening destination. Search My Garden Escape at qvcuq.com to discover more and use code POTTER for 10 pounds off your first purchase with QVC over 30 pounds. For full terms, visit the QVC website. Don't you wish everything was more rewarding? With Rakuten, almost everything is. You can earn cash back on those new shoes you've been wanting. You can save on the next trip you book. You can cash in on groceries. Just join, shop your favorite brands and save. Target, Instacart, Expedia, Macy's, Sephora, CBS. The list is long. Save online, in-store, and at over 22,000 restaurants. And when it's time to redeem those rewards, get your money exactly how you want it. Choose PayPal, check, built points, or cash out with gift cards. Eligible American Express card members can choose to earn membership rewards points instead of cash back. Terms and conditions apply. So go ahead, take a trip, fill a cart, order dessert. Rakuten is a world of rewards. Join today for free. Go to rakuten.com or get the app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. Okay, well as a result, we are seeing some people jump off the boat. You mentioned this earlier. The Nate Silver just dropped this morning like his latest average of the polls. And Trump said his lowest approval rating ever. Lower than after January 6th. And I think we got a ways to go. I think we're gonna get even lower. I kind of hate this though, Tim, because to say that Americans get more angry about gas prices than a seditious revolt against the Constitution. Tells you something about how decadent and self-absorbed a nation we've become. It's like, I know some guys tried to overthrow the Constitution, but I got summer plans. We're gonna drive down to the floor of Obama. We are gonna drive down to the floor of Obama. I'm trying to get to Orlando. I was gonna go to Orlando on spirit. So that, it bothers me. But on the other hand, if that's what it takes, I mean, on this, it's not unique to Trump voters or anything else. Most Americans just don't pay attention to politics until there's actually pain in their lives about something, right? That their health insurance, the price of gas, whatever it is. So, but I agree. I think there's room to fall. I think, here's a question. You're the, this is where you get to say, it's my show, Tom, I asked the question. No, put it back over here. I've been watching, believe it or not, my new rerun occupation or obsession has been LA law, which has been hilarious for me to watch because I lived through the 80s and it's just really funny. But anyway, what do you think the floor is for the hard, I think it's about 25%. I answer the 25 and 30% of people who say, if Donald Trump launches nuclear weapons and melts the earth, and we must root through the ashes for canned goods, I'm okay with that. I think it's lower than that. Really? Yeah. That's encouraging. I think it's lower than that. I don't, I mean, look, there's just a lot of people, you have to appreciate that and particularly in the Trump coalition. There are a lot of people that just don't really watch the news. This is like a cultural thing. I'm starting to interrupt you, but they do that on purpose. And one thing I've really noticed over the years, talking to my friends and family who have been Trumpers, they will, they not only don't watch the news, they avoid it because of the cognitive dissonance that it causes. So they don't watch the news. And then, so there's those folks. And then there's another group of folks who were never really news watchers, Trump brought them in because whatever, he was famous or they liked it, he gave the people they hate the what for or whatever. Oh, kiddies in the picture. Hey, kiddies. It's Lily, she finally made her appearance on TV. What up, Lily? I'm live, baby. So my answer is that like, I think that his core base was about where we're at now. Like I always thought it was about a third, like 30 to 33% if nothing catastrophic happened. But if we really are in a position, I've been going deep on gas analysts and petroleum analysts and stuff. And listening to my odd lots podcast a bunch. And like, what if gas gets to seven bucks everywhere? Yeah. But do you think? I think we can get lower, baby. I think we can get under 20 bucks. Okay, but that's approval. And maybe the thing I'm thinking of is, you know, I always had that floor somewhere around 35%. And as you say, absent some kind of catastrophe, right? But that also, hold on. Don't. Oh, look, the cat is in trouble. I didn't move something. The cat has a tendency to turn off the computer when she stands over there. So I could have been gone in like two seconds. Hi, Lily, you little brat. So, you know, 35%. But will they ever vote for somebody else? Will they vote for Democrats? Now, here's the thing. If you start getting down to 20%, 25% approval. I mean, have we ever seen lower than 27? Which we just did this. I just Google this on the next level. We called it the dick line. I went to look at what Richard Nixon's approval was after. I think it was like 24. I'm going to have some memory now, but I think it was like 24. It was in the 20s. So they won't vote for a Democrat. Perhaps, as some of them have said, and I know you guys run Sarah Runes focus groups, and they'll say, I'm not gonna vote. We're just gonna, I'm just opting out. I suspect too, when like one of the things that Vance and Ruby or the pretenders to the throne have to worry about later is, Trumpism is not portable. It doesn't port. It doesn't, you know, the people who were not involved in the political process will again not be involved in the political process. That's partly what happened at 20, I think. But it's just amazing to me, the degree to which that it is now calcified, negative partisanship has now calcified to the point of saying, you know, Donald Trump has 25% approval, but that doesn't translate into a win for anybody else. It's just people that say, find them out. My guy isn't doing well. So I don't want to know, you know, I don't want to know from politics. All right. Really quick couple of the things and we'll end with a little music. I don't, we were discussing it before. I don't know what there's a bunch to say about China. I just want to acknowledge that Trump is now going, they have the summit with Xi. Tim Cook is going with him for some reason. Elon Musk, I guess we know the reason. And- Apparently no China experts. Like saw this, now maybe that's false, but one of the things that kind of went past my eyes on acts from somebody in one of the news sources, no China experts, but you know, who needs those? Yeah, I thought this was interesting. So they're en route or maybe getting there around now. The White House had said that the meeting will focus on trade, fentanyl and the war on Iran, all areas with the Trump administration has had little luck getting deals or concessions from China. Notably Beijing hasn't provided any details. They just said that Trump and Xi will discuss major issues concerning China-US relations according to one of their spokespeople. I thought that was kind of telling in a way about to use a Trump phrase who has the cards here and who is going into this meeting really needing something. I think obviously she would like some relief from some of the tear-offs that they're having some economic issues domestically as well. But you know, it seems like, it doesn't feel like this meeting is having from position of strength for Trump. No, and you know, one other thing about if the old, us old Cold War guys, we always said about summits. You don't have a summit unless you have a reason to have a summit. Like you prep it with a lot of guys at the second and third, you know, tier below the principles. And then you give your principles, here's the stuff you're gonna shake hands on and talk about. And maybe a couple of things that require a personal touch. But you don't just like blunder over and say, hey, you know, you don't do, you don't have the, it's a Joey from friend summit, how are you doing? You know, I mean, come on. How are you doing, Xi? Yeah, how are you doing? And if I were the Chinese, I would sit back, I would tent my fingers and say, those are all very, yes, absolutely, we will, we will cut the flow of fentanyl, Mr. President, absolutely. Iran, we have our concerns, but we understand why, you know, and just wait till Trump feels good enough to say, okay, fine, no more tariffs. Because that's how people manage him. We've seen this over and over and over again from our allies when NATO, when the NATO partners come over and say, you know, switching to another pop culture reference, you know, the Twilight Zone episode, it's good what you did, Anthony, it's good. It's good that you wish the guy into the cornfield, Anthony, you know, until Trump says, okay, fine, we're friends again, our enemies do it, our friends do it, they manage him until they get what they want. My guess, because the Chinese are not stupid and they are good at this, is that that's what they're gonna do, but I don't think when Trump sits down and says, I wanna talk about Iran and Fetin, and they're gonna go, yeah, whatever, okay. Hello there, Tom Allen here from the Pottering podcast. This episode is brought to you by My Garden Escape at QVC. I don't know about you, but the moment the sun started peeking through the clouds, my mind immediately wandered to the garden and getting it summer ready. And if you're the same, then My Garden Escape at QVC is a perfect place to start. It's a bit like having your own virtual gardening center where you can browse a whole range of plants, garden decor, tools, planters, outdoor lighting, and more, all from the comfort of your own home. You'll find inspiration and expert gardening advice all at your fingertips, whether online, on socials, or on QVC's streaming platform, QVC Plus. 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Always read and follow label instructions. Well, this is just unbelievable. And there's all the list of the Trump stuff. And I guess maybe I should have paired this with, you know, Trump saying that he doesn't think about Americans financial situation at all. Well, he obviously is thinking about his own financial situation quite a bit. We covered with Ike's all the graphs that's happening with his family outside the government. Obviously he's putting his face on everything, the passports, we have the triumphal arc, et cetera. This one might be the most egregious of all. The Justice Department, according to a report, is having internal discussions about settling President Trump's lawsuit against the IRS in the coming days. So maybe when he's in China or on the way back, he will, the US taxpayer will write a check to Donald Trump for his emotional distress of having his tax. That's astonishing. And it's astonishing to be, you know, the plaintiff and the defendant. You know, I'd like to negotiate over the amount of this settlement, hang on, you know, switch to the other chair. How much would you like? Well, several million would be, it's literally insane. And again, it shows you first how worn down everybody else is that they just kind of, you know, the thing is Trump exhausts people, right? I mean, it's just exhaustion, you just say fine, you know, whatever. But also the degree to which the hypocrisy of his supporters that if any other president did this, particularly a Democrat had ever done this, again, there'd be, you know, I always think that they, I keep going back to this movie, but you know, they'd be like the guy, you know, in front of the big tractor trailer and, you know, Fury Road, you know, playing the guitar with the flames. You know, we're gonna burn the city down because it's wrong. And we used to know the difference between right and wrong and not ignore that purely for tribal and partisan reasons. Trump has been- I'm saying, does it take him a salary? Those days are gone. We're just writing him checks. We're just, they're just settlements for the taxpayers who's writing him checks for his emotional distress. It's truly insane. Double the cost of the ballroom was the other thing that happened this week. And they are just lining their pockets. Yes, you dumb person. I mean, again, something that almost any other, we've just, we have set the bar so low on America's ill tempered juvenile here that when he says to a, and of course, it's always a woman and in this case, a black woman, you know, you dumb person, that's your stupid, that's a stupid question. No, that's a question about the expenditure of public money, the destruction of one of our national landmarks that you don't happen to own by the way, you are a steward and temporary occupant of that house. But, you know, he does that and everybody goes, you know, what are you gonna do? Not me. I rage, I rage, Tom Nichols, I rage- No, you've become too complacent, Tim, I'm tired of it. I've become complacent. I just wanna see if you're listening. I need to run down to the White House right now and then fucking shit town. I have to tell Uber to not drive around. I was like, I can't drive past the Justice Department. I can't see his fucking face on the building. I'm gonna stroke out, my child needs me. Okay, I have to be a parent still. She's only in second grade. This is great. All right, let's end on yesterday's pod. I always try to give a cheeky song for the audio listeners at the end. And because we were talking about Cash Patel's drinking, I went with Long Cole Rowland in a black dress because, you know, Saturday night, I was downtown working for the FBI, sitting in an estima bad men, whiskey bottles piling high. And that's Cash, obviously. Well, except for bourbon bottles. Yeah, bourbon. Who gives out a bottle of bourbon as their business card? Hi, how are ya? A fucking dollar sign in his name. What a dork. But it made me wonder, and you're the person to come to on this, of this era of music, I feel like the gap between Long Cole Woman and the rest of the Hollies catalog has to be the biggest gap between the best song and the rest of the catalog of anyone. Is that a fair assessment for you? The Hollies, well, you know, you've come to the right place. I know. Annoying know-it-all about all old music. You know, the Hollies actually had two other songs, of course, The Air that I Breathe, which was, do you know the song? I might if I heard it, would you want to say it? Oh, I'm not singing, no, no, no, no. It's not karaoke hour, but stop, stop, stop. Stop all the music, right? And, but also, one of the great Guy Cry mushy songs of the early 70s. He ain't heavy, he's my brother. Oh, that's the Hollies? Yeah, man. Okay, well, there you go. So that's not that far of a gap, that's a great song. Yeah, so, you know, everybody remembers Long Cole Woman, but the Hollies actually had a string of hits from the mid-60s onward. And then, if my trivia, if my trivia superpowers are not failing me, doesn't their lead singer, isn't that Dennis DeYoung? Doesn't he go on to Sticks? I think there's some connection here. I have no idea. All I know is I love Long Cole Woman in the back dress. I know literally nothing about the, Graham Nash was in the Hollies apparently, is that true? Oh yeah, you know, the family tree of these like groups from the 60s and 70s are just so fascinating because you find out that like, you know, that they all share like superstars that kind of pass through them. Yeah, it does not look like Dennis DeYoung was in that. Oh, where did I get the idea? What was he in before Sticks? The original members were Tony Hicks, Bobby Elliott, Ian Parker, Peter Howarth, those were Peter Howarth's on lead vocals. And then they had the Graham Nash in that purple. Where was Dennis DeYoung before? I can't believe that I have screwed up a musical trivia issue live. Argypridie champion. I know, I know. I think I should do Celebrity Jeopardy. How do I get in there? You got it in? I feel like I should do something. I was watching some of you, Jeopardy. I bet Jeopardy doesn't want to hear a thing from me because I've been bitching ever since they overturned the five game rule. And I think. You were right about that, I think. Oh, absolutely. I mean, look, the kid, very nice kid, some grad student. He just won like 31 games. Yeah, it's boring. Well, it's not just boring, but it's unfair to everybody else who walks in. I will tell you a quick anecdote. By the time I'd won like two or three games, I'd heard, you know, like gossip from the contestant wranglers that like people didn't want to play me by that point because it was all in one day. So it was like, you know, cause once you're in that groove and you've got the buzzer going and all that, but also I think guys like Jeopardy, James there, they just ruined the game. It's everybody goes in, they bounce around the board looking for daily doubles to make big bets, to get far ahead. And, you know, I liked Jeopardy when it was school teachers and postal workers and subway cops, you know, just kind of in a pleasant show of how much they knew, you know, as opposed to the guy who, the woman who beat James wrote her master's thesis on Jeopardy. Oh, bus stop. Yes. I didn't mean to put up bus stop. Bus stop is another good one. I want to put this up. We're live. The podcast part of the podcast is over. We're live on YouTube and I love this. I just looked at the comments here. Here's a guy with the time card. Dorks like Nichols are chronically wrong. All caps. And a good day to you, sir. Dorks lecturing us about Jeopardy. All right, time. You got anything else you want to leave us with? No, I apologize for the Dennis the Young failure, but I did come up with the other hollies. It's, so I hope people will remember that as, even though it doesn't seem possible, I am human. So sorry. Sorry about missing that. Thank you for doing this live experience experiment with me, Tom Nichols, thanks to the board, class members that had to suffer through an ad read. Hopefully I made it entertaining for you. We'll be back tomorrow. Regular deal taped. It's a double header. Both guests are going to be fun. It's going to be great. Tom Nichols, we'll see you over the summer. All right. Thanks, Tim. All right. Thanks everybody. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Peace. I wanna be You're a snitch, have a Why don't you call my name? Why don't you be a snitch, have a This will be my destiny The board podcast is brought to you. 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