1055: Trump is Crashing Out And We're LOVING It

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It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. though they do know is cry about everything oh the we got to take our ball and go home because the halftime show is getting sung in spanish you guys are everything that you ever said the left was ever worse worse worse oh of course worse hello everyone this is jvl here with my best friends sarah longwell and tim miller of the Bulwark. Last chance. If you are in Minneapolis to come see us, we've got a few dozen tickets left. We are also coming to Tejas, to Dallas and Austin coming up soon. Go to thebulwark.com slash events to get your tickets now before they're all gone. Guys, I come to you with glad tidings because before we sat down, YouGov dropped a poll and I am just going to read some numbers for you. Donald Trump's overall approval rating, 37% approve, 56% strongly or somewhat disapprove. When you break down, he is underwater with men. He's 10 points underwater with men. He's underwater with white people. Stuff white people don't like, Donald Trump. he's minus eight with white people he is at 27 approve 61 disapprove with independence but here's the big one here's the big one and sarah this is just for you thank you with republicans he is at 14 disapprove and only 82 approve and that's actually pretty good you i don't think that's pretty good i think 82 approval rating from republicans for trump is a flashing danger sign oh no that's what i mean i mean good for us yes like it's a pretty good drop because he usually stays high 80s, low 90s with Republicans. And Sarah, the Bush line. Oh, please. Five points away from the Bush line. Five points away from the Bush line. I don't understand why there were complaints about the fingering trio, but I have to hear about the Bush line. I can't hear it anymore. It is disgusting. You think that the Bush line, which, by the way, started out as a very legitimate phrase of analysis, one that I stick by and said on a podcast that Tim and I were on yesterday together. It's terrible phrasing, Sarah. It refers to a president. I'm sorry that you boys can't get your heads out of the gutter long enough to just understand my political analysis here. Okay. It's just a gross phrase. Point is, if he is going to head towards George W. Bush territory, which by the way, I don't know if you guys realize this. I wrote about it today. At the time of the midterm elections and in george w bush's second term he was only net minus 16 the real collapse happened after the elections yeah anyway point is that collapse was due to republicans abandoning him and so if you're gonna drive trump really down like below the the mid or high 30s you're gonna drive him down to, I think Bush cratered at like 27% total approval. That has to be because Republicans leave him. And so this poll combined with all the other stuff we're going to talk about, guys, I think we're winning. I'm Ron Burgundy. I mean, I think that the American public is reacting, which when you say this is for me, I do want to take a moment to say, like the idea that no one cares my friend my best friend jbl that it won't matter it it does matter he is chipping away at these and if i could because i don't want people to just rely on one poll uh and so i did not knowing that you just had that new poll i had pulled the aggregate numbers from nate silver and i'm just going to run through those very quickly uh because I want to talk about the shift that Trump has not enjoyed, doing the opposite of enjoying. His general approval on February, what? No, his general approval in February 1st of 2025 was up 5.9%. Okay. He was in the plus territory, almost 6%. At August 1st, it had dropped to negative 8.5%. And today it is minus 14.5% with a total shift of minus 20% in overall approval. So there's been a 20% overall drop. That's a big number of drop. But on immigration, he started at 8%. He had plus 8%. Now he is, the total shift has been minus 18.5. He's experienced a drop of 18.5 points on immigration. He's experienced a minus 25. There's been a minus 25% shift on the economy. There's been a minus 22%, almost 23% on trade. And on inflation, He is also minus twenty five point nine. Like that is how much that's almost twenty six points specifically on inflation. And so I just when I would argue going into the election that it was around the economy, that a lot of people just said, yeah, I know he's a bad guy, but, you know, I need a better economy. None of us liked that as a reason. We all saw the BS in there. But that's that economy is eating Trump the same way it ate Biden. I mean, if I could just sidebar before I throw to you, Tim. I mean, the inflation isn't that bad. It's not great under Trump. It's not it's not what we want it to be. It's not in a good place. But voters are doing an insane inflation panic thing with him the same way they did about Biden. And I find it funny in its own way. I'm going to cry about it. I'm just going to admit that like, you know, the inflation under Trump is not great. It is a smidge above where it should be. There are persistent concerns because you have this while you also have job contractions. But people are acting like it's at like 9% and that's insane. Okay. Timothy, take a victory lap, buddy. Come on. Have some good news. I do appreciate your consistency on that, JVL. um because it is true like the economy is not great in the sense that trump inherited like a pretty good an economy that's pretty good but kind of annoying for people um and and made a series of decisions like to make it marginally worse you know which is it has been you know i just saw how by today i was like the average person paid an extra grand last year because of tariffs that grand is not nothing the grand matters to people and their lives and their budgets it's also you know i mean like it is not as as if the bottom has fallen out from the economy or anything either. So I do think there's some interesting socioeconomic kind of discussions to have about why people continue to have such negative views about things now that we've had kind of a control trial with both parties in charge and seen a similar type of feedback. Yeah, I think that there's balance in the universe, JVL. And you're so excited about this that I feel compelled to be the wet blanket. But it's good. It's good. You know, I think that the polls going down are notable. The fact that, like, you're looking at, what, one in five, basically, Americans have changed their view on Trump. We've talked a lot about what we've seen in the special elections. I expect a big landslide from the Democrats in the fall. But, like, you know. I don't know. The damage persists. The world is going to still be terrible. I'm trying to do my best JVL. It's like, OK, so we win the midterms and so what? And then Donald Trump does his authoritarian thing and it spirals the authoritarian playbook. Timothy J. Miller. I don't remember what your middle name is. Tim, let me see if I can. Hold on, Sarah. Let me see if I can elicit something from you for this. Yesterday, the White House published an unbylined article. Not a press release. Not a statement. They listed it as an article saying, headline is, don't be a panicking. I guess that's a word. We're winning and we're not slowing down. When you have to say we're winning, that is not often a sign that you are, in fact, winning. I mean, we're going to get job numbers tomorrow, right? So we're going to get unemployment tomorrows, which they are already trying to suspend and say, hey, people should understand that, you know, the numbers don't look so great. It's because we've deported a lot of people. There are fewer people in the labor force. So, again, if the Republicans in Trump are out there saying, don't panic unnamed people who may be panicking, we're actually winning. That's a good sign. Right, Tim? I did enjoy the don't be a panicking thing. It is – it hits a couple of my pleasure centers. Number one, like you said, just on its face, it's such an absurd article to put out. And it's just an admission that they understand things are not going well for them. If they have good news to put out, they would just put that out instead of don't be a panicking. Also, it is reminiscent of things that have caused the Democrats problems in the past. I've been a longtime monitor of this where your team gets way too responsive to things that are happening on the Internet. And this was like a big issue for the Democrats in 2019 and 20 in that primary where like all of the campaigns were very responsive to what the craziest lefty said in their Twitter mentions. And like Joe Biden didn't even know that the Internet existed. And he kind of cruised through the primary just like talking as Joe Biden had always talked and ends up winning. I feel like there was a lesson in that. Like you can just you can't. The Internet is real life in this day and age. It is. But you can over learn the lessons of it. And this term panicking is like a MAGA term. I see it in my MAGA feeds where they like make it's like an internal. They make fun of the other. It's like a MAGA on MAGA attack. Right. It's like, hey, you other MAGA like don't be in the Democrat parlance. This was bedwetter. A lot of Democrats you might have seen online say don't be a bedwetter. Don't be a bedwetter. This is like the MAGA parlance. Don't be a panicking. And so it's kind of amusing to me to see them to see something befall the Trump administration that, you know, had already befallen. their foes as far as a political misjudgment is concerned. Can I add to that just really quickly that like you coin a phrase panicking, which is a Republican who is panicking. It means enough Republicans are panicking that they needed a term for it. Yeah, it merited a term. I think that's the big takeaway from that. Also, it is much like that weird meandering speech that he gave right before he went to Davos, which was like the 365 wins that we've had, they find themselves in the unenviable position of having to try to keep saying, no, no, no, look at this little thing that we did that you should be excited about. And he did that again, right? He's like, well, we have stock market success. And that's because our stock market has become entirely untethered from the actual marketers being propped up by AI. And then it's a lot of like ICE arrested 650 illegals in West Virginia. Okay. And then ending the barbaric mutilation of children, which is a reference to getting a Minnesota hospital to stop prescribing puberty blockers because of the Trump administration's relentless pressure. And I guess I know from listening to the focus groups that there are plenty of voters who will say, yes, the economy is bad. Yes, I don't really like these aggressive ICE tactics, but I am glad that we're not doing the thing to trans kids anymore. Like, that's good. So this plays, but also like, does it have an impact on very many people? I don't think so. And it's such a typical politician move. This is what I enjoy about it, right? Like this is Trump dealing with the same problem that regular politicians have always dealt with. And like in a lot of areas, he's been able to just sort of break the rules and break the norms and do shit that no other president has done. And he gets to play by a different set of rules as other people. And on this, it's kind of like, nope. If people are unhappy with how things are going, there is no kind of magic tabloid Trumpism that can fix it. Like this, the don't be a panic in here, my 365 elements of success is no different than Bidenomics or mission accomplished with the Bush banner or go back to any other administration through history that was dealing with something that they knew was unpopular and that they were trying to spin it as something good. There was one other piece in the thing where he was listing the successes. He did the ICE stuff. He did the puberty blockers. And way down on the list was everyday costs continue moderating. So not we've got a great economy. It's on fire. You know, whatever. It's just everyday costs continue moderating. And then it's got some very like bespoke. Put that on a bumper sticker. Put it on a red hat. uh president trump launched trump rx.gov a transformative new government platform that gives americans direct access to dramatically lower prices you know so he's got like his own health care thing that's that's the prices moderating is that they've got trump rx now it just to have the economy and affordability be so far down in one's list of accomplishments to me kind of that's the story of trump trump is focused on i was talking about this yesterday on a podcast that Tim and I were doing. And it's like, whenever people are like, will it matter about the East Wing? Will it matter about this or that? I'm like, well, it all matters in contrast to prices and affordability. If all of those things are solved, if people are like, man, the economy's on fire and I feel great about my future prospects and my 401k is doing great and cost of housing is coming down, they're much more willing to tolerate the excesses of Trump. But when what he's doing is building the triumph day Trump arc or whatever his next big building thing is, what people feel from that is you are focused on the wrong things. You are not focused on the things that matter to me. Well, there are other issues as well. For instance, Jeffrey Epstein. We'll get to that in a minute. First, just really quick. I need to shout out that other podcast me and Sarah did was the Sam Harris podcast and he's a big reader. I wasn't sure if we were allowed to do that. Seems to, yeah, it's out tomorrow. Uh and it seems like he read the triad more often than Sarah lately And uh he was going to a pretty dark place I would say Before we go to the ad I just want to get the red hat exactly one more time It was everyday costs continue moderating Everyday costs continue moderating. I'm going to be honest. If we sold a red version, a red hat in the font with that phrase on it, I would wear the shit out of that on the show. Everyday costs continue moderating. 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When you visit wild grain.com slash the next level, or you can use promo code, the next level at checkout. artisanal is like an artisanal strip tease you know that's what you call it when you have a yeah when you have a stripper come over to your house but not kind of a mass market stripper an artisanal stripper i wouldn't know about that uh it's only hot cops or heart cops so uh let's talk about jeffrey epstein because some more stuff is happening howard lutnik it turns out do you remember when we were early on in this we were like look how's that you're talking about howard you're not gonna get me to do it oh you're not gonna get me to say it because once i start saying it my brain will never turn it off like i'll just do it all the time i don't know if you guys remember this but months ago when we got the first glimpse of him we were like see even howard lutnik is a normal person he met this guy once he brought his wife with him and then he said, I'm never going over there again. I think that may not be the real story. Is that what you're getting? Definitely a lie. A complete lie. Because again, the three of us sat on this show and we held him up as the example of- You gotta hand it to Howard. Gotta hand it to Howard. He behaved like a normal human being. Here's what I don't understand about Elon, about Nutlick, about any of them. There you go, Tim. did they not they must have really thought this stuff wasn't going to come to light like they thought that Trump that Pam Bondi was going to really keep these things because they must have known it was in there like you don't think Elon went and looked and was like what did I send to Jeffrey Epstein let me just go back in my gmail see oh no I said what wild parties you got going on uh or that Lutnick was like you know what slipped my mind the business I started with Epstein. Like they started a company together. He took his wife and family to dinner there. And nanny. And it was lunch. Oh, okay. I think it was at 5pm. I'm sorry. A late lunch. An executive lunch. He was trying to, he was, Lutnick was trying to parse the dinner from the, it was just an aperitif. Is it dinner if it's not after 6? Right? I was not in my formal wear. So what am I? My favorite was that he asked Jeffrey Epstein to be involved with an effort to do some NIMBYism on the museum in their neighborhood. He kind of reached out to him. 2018, 13 years after he said that he was so grossed out by Jeffrey Epstein that he could never be in this disgusting man's presence again. And 13 years later, he was like, sir, would you like to sign my NIMBYism? You know, what the hell do you call those things? Petition? Petition. Thank you. My NIMBY petition. I need you to sign that. We can't have this. We can't have this museum in our neighborhood. It's okay to have a child sex trafficker living next door to me. I'm not going to do any objections about that. But if this museum adds on a new wing, the traffic on the sidewalk is going to be a little bit too hard to bear. I can step around the child sex trafficking victims, but the line for the museum might be too much. And so me and Jeffrey need to unite on that. That was 2018. And it's worth noting this idea that Lutnick had one meeting with this guy in 2005 and decided he was beyond the pale, creeped him out, never going back. It's not like he had one encounter, which maybe he forgot the petition for the NIMBY thing, whatever. He was in touch with him the whole time. Like he went and visited him at the island very shortly after his 2008 conviction. Like just the lies and the lies. It's a weird thing to lie about it, right? It is. And I don't even think that it's so weird to me because I don't actually think that Lutnick necessarily did any of the bad things. Like there's no reason to believe that he was somebody that was trafficked to or was there for the massages. Like that's right. So why was he lying about it to everybody? Because that's the part – and this is where when Trump's administration wants to tell us anything now, they want to list all their good things that they've done. We don't need to take any of it at face value. They're all lying to us all the time. Yeah, they're all liars. I will say this. There's something – and this is not at all a defensive line. I do think that there's like a mental, like our brain rationalization is very powerful in our brains. And I did a podcast with Ryan Holiday about this a long time ago. I wrote the book, The Daily Stoic. And he was in his book. I'm forgetting what the name of his original book was, but where he talked about leaving the crisis PR business because it's too icky for him. And he said that both my book and his had a similar thing in it, which was like we saw this bad thing that we didn't like. and our memory was that we said okay no that's too far for me this is a red line i want to be out and then when we're writing our books we went back and looked at the emails and you know and he was like in his book it was he's like i still was consulting for that guy for like a year or two after i thought in my head i had quit and i did the same thing i was looking back through and i was like i think i sent that email to scott pruitt saying never contact me again you know two months into the trump term and then i went back and looked through my emails and it was like 14 months into the trump term or something like that you know and so you do i think there is like a little bit of that like that's like if the latinx thing was you know there was one other meeting you know it's kind of like you're a hero in your own mind you remember telling your wife you were never going to talk to that disgusting guy again you can understand how that could happen like that's just how brains work that's not what this is like the meeting the the the alleged meeting where he went to the guy's house where he saw the massage table in lieu of a dining room table that was the story he told it was so disgusting it was like why do you have a massage table instead of a dining room table i'm so creeped out by this i never want to see you again that happened in 2005 the the nimby petition request was 2018 in the intervening period he took his boat to his island with his children and started a business with them. So I just I'm sorry, like, you're lying to me. I cannot pause. You cannot pause. We tell me that this was just you had a slip of the mind. You had a meeting. We had one other meeting with them a couple months later. And then that's when you pulled the plug on them. And by the way, it's the same shit with all these guys. It's the same shit with the entire Trump administration. It's also the same shit with everybody outside. There have been many other people, men in particular, you know, who I've seen in various other settings who like said, who had previously said that they stopped talking to him in 2012. And oops, turns out 20, 2017 and a half actually. So Ro Khanna and Thomas Massey went to look in at the files. They found six names, which they said were improperly redacted. I guess these would be like the unindicted co-conspirators. Massey, I think, said that maybe I'll have to read these out on the floor of the House that I'm protected from litigation, which is wild. Massey getting hammered at home by his sort of county GOP, I think. Is it too much to ask him to stop caucusing with the Republican Party and switch to being an independent who caucuses with Democrats? I love this JBL. Is that too much? I love this JBL. His party wants to murder him, and yet he can't leave it? We can't hand it to the guy? Yeah, I think we should just hand it to him. I think we just got to hand it to Thomas Massey. Let's do both. Okay. He has been relentless on this. Good for him. And I don't know. I guess the idea of him staying a Republican while he really burns it all down on this and helping to bring over Lauren Boebert, who I don't know if you saw them get her right after looking at them and had to stop. I need to say this right now because that was Pablo. Manriquez has got a great sub stack. I played that clip on the Daily Pod today, but I didn't credit him. But yeah, no, he questions her on the steps and she goes off. Yeah. She's basically like, fuck this. And she doesn't say the F word, but her energy is F this administration for putting Gilayne Maxwell in that minimum security prison. She deserves way worse. She's just way worse. Like she needs more years in prison. Yeah. And we can get to Ghislaine here in a minute because there's a lot on her. Yeah, but I just – look, I kind of don't care about the party switching because I think that Thomas Massey, part of his principled commitment to this is rooted in the fact that he is a very staunch libertarian to the point where if you started rattling off a list of policy issues, you'd go, oh my goodness. He thinks what? He's got some weird ones. I think that just Sarah's point, though, I think it's really important. I just want to put a final line on it. Is it not more useful for him to do this from inside the Republican caucus at this point? It is. Sure. If it was, if another Republican dies or resigns or, you know, has a solid Damascus moment and it's really one, like he could switch the speaker if he switches, then I'm on board with a pressure Thomas Massey campaign. But for now, I think it's useful. And I think that he has, by the way, he mentioned the two people. and and the Lex Wexner thing is everybody kind of assumed Lex Wexner was involved in this on Jeffrey he gave Jeffrey Epstein his power of attorney which is about the strangest thing a billionaire could possibly do yeah it's basically saying I'm guilty this guy has all my common prats yeah it's like if I had to give one person in the entire world it's going to be Jeffrey Epstein but then there's the sultan from the UAE that got named which is I think very damaging to Trump potentially. I mean, A, because the Sultan and Trump have been pictured together a bunch. Sultan was at Trump's first inauguration. And also the Sultan is sultaning in the same country that gave Trump half a billion dollars for his crypto company. And so that's pretty noteworthy that Massey named him. And Julie Brown, we should say, has said that she has reporting showing that two victims who don't know each other have both also mentioned the Sultan. And this is important, actually, about why, because I do think it's become, as we get deeper into the Epstein saga, a bit of a, like, understanding Trump's role is getting more and more difficult to sort of figure out. We're going to get to that in one second. But Sarah, first, you got to give us a word from our sponsors, our friends at Quince. This podcast is sponsored by Quince. I love Quince. I swear by Quince. I'm always wearing Quince. Quince is all about elevated essentials that feel effortless, and you know how much I like not putting in effort. Designed for layering and mixing, each piece helps build a timeless wardrobe made to last. 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Look, we're hitting the road next week for some live shows in Minnesota. We want to look sharp on stage and around town, but we also don't want to freeze because it's going to be cold. Thankfully, I can check out Quince to make sure that I'm looking my best and feeling my best when we get to the Twin Cities. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com slash the next level for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. Canada, you're the best. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash The Next Level to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash The Next Level. Sarah, so we gotta unpack the Trump role in all this because we got a Miami Herald report from our friend, Julie Brown, That in 2019, he did an interview and he said that Trump called him in the early 2000s when he was investigating Epstein and said, thank goodness you're stopping him. Everyone has known he's been doing this. And then I think maybe called Ghislaine Maxwell evil. Yes, that is in the report. Who is saying that? It's a police. Well, it's a police officer. Trump said to the police chief. Yes, that's right. That's what this is. And the police chief recounted this story in 2019. So that's the game of telephone that's happening here. That strikes me as a little odd. Well, this is the part, like I was saying before the ad break, and Tim reminded me, this gets to sort of Trump's role in it all, which has been befuddling. Because on one hand we know very clearly they were good friends like very close friends party together all the time Perhaps Epstein introduced Trump to Melania He was recruiting girls out of Mar And so I do think, and this again, like Lutnick, gets us to the lying piece. The question I think for all of us has been, not just is Trump in the files, because he clearly is maybe more than anybody else. Like if you go through the mentions, he's been mentioned like 5,300 times, which is considerably less. Did you see Raskin today? Raskin said they went through the unreleased files and he's in there a million times. I don't know if that's true, but that's what Jamie Raskin says. He is all over these files. It doesn't seem, though, as these guys are going through the unredacted files, that what is in there is some evidence that Trump was part of this trafficking. And so I don't know what is true yet, but I do think what is clear is that Trump knew what was going on. He knew the whole time. And if this police chief is to be believed and Trump called and said they're evil, well, now that's weird because Trump has done praising of them subsequently. and so at minimum though I think what we're going to find is that Trump knew and Trump did nothing about it and was in the presence of it from much like many of the people who were in there like there is just a high probability that many of the people had a kind of wink and nod way or like a joking way of being like oh this guy gets massages from underage girls and we all know it and it becomes part of the jokes we all tell to each other. And so it's unclear whether in this telling that Trump is a, I don't want to go so far, like not certainly not the hero in his own telling, but it is possible that as things were starting to come out about Jeffrey Epstein and as Jeffrey Epstein was looking to be prosecuted, it was becoming clear he was going to be prosecuted, that Trump did try to insert himself in some way and put himself on the side of, oh yeah, this guy's a scumbag. I want to help you with some of the conundrum. I think that there's a lot that we don't know but i think that there's one element of this that i think is pretty easy to decode which is that trump praises people that like him and are nice to him even if they're evil and trump disparages people who are mean to him even if they're good um and so he will also disparage people that are evil if they're mean to him and like that's pretty much trump's worldview and i and so what i think what i think is happening here if you cobble together some other reporting is that there was a period of time in the aughts where after their you know bromance where there was some disagreements whether that be over land you know over property that they're trying to buy over a young lady spa employees yeah right teenage spa employees over you know some some young woman or you know who knows how old um that they were competing over like there's some tiff you know and there have been different reports on the different reasons for the tiff um and so you can imagine a person like trump during that period getting a call from the cops and being like oh yeah that fucker that's screwed that you know has been going against me on his real estate deal or has been causing trouble over the teenage spa um employee that i sent his way um yeah he's evil he's been doing it you should keep looking into him and then fast forward 15 years later where Jeffrey Epstein is like doing a documentary with Steve Bannon about how great he is and telling people that Trump is the real deal and that Ghislaine Maxwell is you know partying with him and talking about how great he is then he goes and changes his tune to oh yeah these people are great I love Ghislaine Maxwell I wish her the best right like I so I think that is the best way to interpret like his change of tone that is in line with his character and past behavior. I don't know that that, again, that doesn't answer the broader, bigger question about like what, you know, how tied into the sex crimes that Jeffrey Epstein was doing, was he? I think that still remains a little bit of an open question. Do you guys have considered thoughts about Ms. Maxwell pleading the fifth when she was with the House Oversight Committee on Monday? I do think it's interesting that both Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were asked the same question about whether or not they were ever in the presence of Donald Trump with the underage girls. And in both cases, both took the fifth. Now, if they wanted to exonerate Trump, they could in those moments. But of course, Ghislaine Maxwell, what she is doing right now, she is saying, I will give full testimony if I get clemency from Donald Trump. Like there is a very clear quid pro quo right now happening. And obviously it's not even remotely hard to interpret this, which is she is saying, if I get clemency, I'll lie under, I'll go and lie for you. You know what's funny is that normally the way this works is that you're pressuring the perp to roll on somebody. And so the idea is like, hey, we'll give you some clemency if you will testify against this person and tell us that they were doing the bad thing. But in this case, it's the opposite. The government will give you good things if you will simply testify that this other person did not do any bad things. Yeah, it's a little on the nose. It's a little on the nose as far as some clemency requests are concerned. I would think that somebody who for decades was the point player in a child sex trafficking ring who needed to show, you know, put on a good face and be deceitful, but also respected. You'd think that somebody like that would have the skills to be a little more subtle. But I guess desperate times call for desperate measures. It shows they don't trust Trump, right? Because in an ordinary world, she would trust that like some agreement was made behind the scenes so that she could simply say, see, nothing. No, no, there was nothing there. And like Steve Bannon, right? Remember Steve Bannon, you know, in jail saying, you know, hey, you keep your mouth shut and he'll do right by us. And he was right. I forget who he said that to. um uh no you know it wasn't it was manafort i think it was this was it was paul manafort not steve bannon i'm sorry steve um don't apologize to steve bannon he is up to his eyebrows in these epstein files have you watched any of the bannon interview of meaning to do you tell us what's in it it is so bizarre steve ostensibly at least there are multiple videos throughout so i can to speak to what i've watched which was essentially steve bannon prepping him for 60 minutes because the idea was that jeffrey epsom was going to do 60 minutes to defend his honor and in this case steve was supposedly playing the role of you know whoever like wallace yeah leslie stall like wallace probably dead by then playing leslie stall but but he's not not having been in media training as you appreciate this sarah sometimes your your client gets their butt hurt if you're too mean you know yes so i do understand that part of it where you have to be a little bit maybe nice you got to warm them up a little bit before but this video goes on for hours like i literally i watched 20 minutes then fast forward to an hour point you know to see it and it's still going on and steve is just asking me just like jeffrey i mean uh the the amount of research you've done into higher mathematics is just so impressive and like tell us about that and and your relationships with the Stephen Hawking's of the world and, you know, your creative tax accounting strategies. And it's like, how did you go from being the wunderkind math teacher to the high finance? It's like Steve is just slobbing his knob like over and over. It's the most obsequious thing I've ever seen. And so it's very it's jarring. It's like unnerving to watch kind of where it's just like, what is? what kind of prep is that? I think Steve Bannon was really charmed by him maybe. I don't know. It was really strange. This is where when you get this elite class The Epstein class. The Epstein class. I like to think of it as the Epstein administration as you can see so many. Because there's two kinds of people in Trump's administration. There's people who are in the Epstein files and there's people who are covering up the Epstein files. Like, that's it. There's two types of people. And so, because even if you're Marco Rubio and you are just sitting back being like... The State Department would have some purview, I think, over a UAE sultan who's doing business with the United States doing child sex trafficking. Yeah, I think maybe he'd have an interest in that. Okay, so we can put him in the cover-up category. Wouldn't want to revoke his visa, though, because he didn't write any college paper op-eds about Palestine. So, you know. I was just thinking about what, like, losers so many of these people were, like, in high school and how, like, you know, they were just kind of all friendless chuds for much of their career. And now they find themselves with these smooth-talking Ivy Leaguers. And, like, it is funny how they think they get charmed, right, by, like, a guy who is clearly, like, handsome and good at, you know, wielding his power in a way that Steve Bannon is like, you know, covered in ash and wearing many shirts. Yeah. Yeah. Envious for sure. Yeah. All right. Well, before we move on from this, none of this is good for Trump, right? No. Okay. Just making sure that I understand this. He has done everything he can to make this go away and it is not going away. And this is why Steve Massey deserves so much credit is like Trump has been putting as much pressure. Sorry, Thomas Massey. But this even Lauren Boebert deserves some pressure. Like Trump was trying to punish her by canceling, you know, some money that her district was getting because she voted against him to release this stuff. And like, I mean, look, I don't ever want to hand it to Lauren Boebert at all. But so to speak, she does seem, though, quite committed to this particular thing. And the other thing is just like this goes back to this inflection point. We talked a lot about it last fall, but I think it's important to re-up it now because it's even more striking now than it was then, which is we just are a long way from February 10th, 2025. And it was really hard to imagine anybody speaking out against Donald Trump in February 2025. And there was a chill across industry about this. And the entire Republican Party was in lockstep. I mean, like the only thing they did between him winning in February of 2025 to check him at all was was not letting Matt Gaetz be attorney general, which is really too bad, unfortunately, because like the deep irony of Matt Gaetz being attorney general right now is so delicious. I feel like the script writers fucked that up. We should have let Matt Gaetz be attorney general. But besides that, like everyone was like, yes, sir, Mr. Trump, sir, you're the greatest, sir. So to go from that to having multiple factions inside the party now starting to express concerns, whether it be about Epstein or the crypto corruption, et cetera, is like – it's not nothing. It's bad for him. And Kash Patel lied under oath. Like if they get their stuff together and Dems take the house in 2026, like Kash Patel lied. Like we know he lied. There are six co-conspirators in here. Massey is unearthing them. And Cash said that they didn't exist. Interesting. Cash lied. Lutnik lied. Elon lied. Bannon lied. They're all lying. Trump lied. Trump. And this Trump is clearly, I don't know if this, sorry, this goes back to like what his role is. I don't know if it's him for sure with the girls. It's him for sure lying. It's him for sure protecting people like the Sultan, I think, right? Like, I just think when he said, because he said this at a point, like, people are going to get hurt. Like, my friends are going to get hurt. This is who he's talking about. And it's him for sure on the plane with Ghislaine Maxwell and sex trafficking victims. Yeah. I just want to, because we do want to move on from this. But I do want to remind people that Lauren Boebert was such an embarrassment to her district that the local Republicans went and recruited Jeff Hurd. a normal, honorable, upstanding Republican to come in and replace her. And so she had to change districts. And Jeff Hurd has said fuck all about the Epstein files. So you know what? It turns out that he, Jeff Hurd, is a much bigger embarrassment than Lauren Boebert is. Fuck you, Jeff Hurd. That's a great point. Fuck you, Jeff Hurd. Continuing on, because again, the theme of this show is like, sure looks like Trump is losing. he posted last thursday night right before sarah and i did secret the he he posted a video on his truth social which was a minute and two seconds of election conspiracy theory stuff that one minute into the minute like flashes a picture of the obamas with their michelle and barack obama's heads photoshopped onto apes and the lion sleeps tonight music in the background needle drop in the background not the lion king the lion sleeps tonight um trump refused to apologize and said he didn't do anything wrong but they did take down the post again it just feels weak and it's like I mean, it feels like weakness is what I mean to say here. And I was curious if you guys had thoughts about this. Am I overinterpreting? I mean, I think he's on the back foot, right? I mean, he didn't – weakness in the sense that they did take it down after they got caught lying about it. He blamed it on a young person to whom he handed his phone to complete – At 1144? To complete the truth socialing, right? It's all a lie, but like Carolyn Levitt lied originally out of the gate about what it was about. And Trump like has, yeah, refused to apologize. He's doing that thing that he does where he tries to breeze in through it. And it will probably work because like the memeing stuff tends is even though it was horrendously racist, lots of Republicans called him about it. this is one of the ones where Trump hopes people just move on from it, right? That over time, it's just, it's like a tweet. They kind of come and go. But no, he's on his back foot. I don't know about weakness, but like he's on his back foot in a lot of areas. There has been no good news for Donald Trump. And this is just another example that I said before about Republicans speaking out. I mean, Tim Scott, no profile in courage, but spoke out about this, which is a change from last year i guess i would like for the white i'd like for somebody in the white house press corps to ask carolyn again i know that they do want to move on from this who posted it it is pretty curious the president didn't post it they said a staffer posted it who like is it dan scavino the guy who had a wedding at mar-a-lago on the taxpayer dime that posted it and if so is there any repercussions for him is there any oversight over him. And I would think that it pretty concerning that there are young interns that control the communications channel for the leader of the free world or the once leader of the free world and that they can just post in the middle of the night And the entire administration will speak in lockstep the following morning about how that post was great until people realized it wasn't actually the president that posted it. That seems like a pretty big problem. And I know that, you know, some folks are like, well, it's just Trump being Trump again. But I would like to a little bit. I'd like to know. There is a story here. The process. Yeah, there's a story here. I'd like to know a little more about the bleeding process. All right. And before we get to the last big loss, Tim, you got to talk to us a little bit about our final sponsor for the day. It's our friends at Upwork. One of the biggest growth hacks is realizing you don't have to do it all yourself. Sarah and JVL. Upwork makes it easy to bring the right freelancer when you need them so you can stay focused on what you do best. Upwork is a one-stop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data analytics, marketing, business operations, and more. Upwork helps grow your business by giving you fast access to specialized talent across 125 categories. So you can fill skill gaps, launch projects faster, and scale up or down with support without committing to a full-time headcount. You can browse profiles, review past work, and get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly. With Upwork Business Plus, you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork. And with AI-powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. No endless searching required. I've mentioned this to Sarah probably weekly for the past five years. I'm not interested really in taking on management duties. You know, I'm trying to just talk. That's what I'm interested in doing. I'm lucky to have some colleagues that are doing the grunt work for me. And so Upwork can help with that and help our team get the support we need and set me to do what I do best, which is, you know, sarcastic puns. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, Upwork.com. He used an ad to passive-aggressively criticize us, JVL. I don't think that was criticism. I think that was him trying to help us. That's how I took it. So, Bad Bunny. Tim, you discussed Bad Bunny with Bill Kristol. I did a show with Sarah and Adrian about Bad Bunny. I now have seen the numbers. 135 million people watch the halftime show. I guess what I want to say is, I think Trump picking a fight over Bad Bunny turns out to have been a mistake. But I wonder if he had any choice in the matter. Like the fact of Bad Bunny as the Super Bowl halftime act is in itself a provocation. Trump feels as though he has to weigh in on everything because he is America's number one poster. And so he couldn't not make it a thing. Except that Bad Bunny, again, Bad Bunny is like in deep with wrestling culture and all sorts of like. Wouldn't the wise Trump have just been like, Bad Bunny is pretty good, actually. Could have used a little more English. And moved on? Yes, that is what a wise term should have done. But wouldn't that have been? Again, once TPUSA decides we have to counter-program this, then Trump is kind of locked in into it. Yeah, I don't think that Trump should feel like he's getting dog-walked by TPUSA. So I think that's a pretty big mistake for him to put on the collar and let Erica Kirk walk him around the neighborhood. Because I do think this was good for TPUSA. I think it was bad for Trump, bad for the Republicans. Again, on the margins, right? But just not a good moment for them. and uh and unhelpful politically and yet tp usa i think has successfully since charlie's charlie getting assassinated has successfully like um imprinted itself in the public consciousness i i was i was watching at the airport um and uh you know just casual people around me like just listening to them talk like knew about the tp usa halftime show know what tp usa is know who charlie kirk is like the types of people just via context clues i don't think probably we're familiar with TPSA two years ago. So I do think that they gained some from this, unfortunately. But that might, on the fortunate side, have like a net negative influence for Republicans down the line because they don't know that TPSA's culture is like that appealing broadly. I think it's ghettoized, right? It's returning to a conservative ghetto and it's getting turned off the cul-de-sac of like, hey, we're going to conquer the mainstream. That's how I took it. Sarah? Look, I think the way that I personally think that Joe Biden overread the election and his mandate on policy in the 2020 election. And I think that the Republicans have really over interpreted their mandate on culture now. We're like there was this backlash of culture. I have said for a long time that I think Trump winning in 2024 was like he won the culture by even more than the popular vote. In large part, there was just sort of a rejection of everything. DEI, Black Lives Matter woke like there was sort of a peak woke that led to a backlash. COVID. That's right. Like there was this backlash. And so they like overtook they took that mandate, though, and was like, you know what everybody wants? they want Kid Rock in jorts with like a bad laser show. And that's not true. That's just not right. And so I actually think it showed that they're not as strong on the culture as they think. I mean, it wasn't cool. That's the other thing, right? It was just cringe. It was just cringe. It's cringe. It was cringe and not, there's nothing punk rock about it. I'm glad you mentioned the word cringe because cringe is often like, cringe is a guardrail in our culture. now, right? It's like when something moves into cringe territory and you're like, well, what does that mean? And it's like, you know it when you see it. It's like the Supreme Court and pornography. You're like, it's when you hit, it's when you are, your eyes roll accidentally. You're just like, okay. And I think that they are quickly squandering their cultural advantage and walking right into cringe territory in which they are no longer the cool kids table, but like the dorks with Kid Rock. All right. Final, final piece of Trump losering. And then we're going to move on. So Donald Trump is picking another fight with Canada. I don't know if you guys saw this. He's trying to block the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge connecting the U.S. and Canada. Fun fact, I used to live across the street from as a kid from Gordie Howe's son, Mark Howe, who played for the Philadelphia Flyers. And my sister babysat Mark Howe's kids. And I could care less about hockey. I have nothing to do about hockey, but I remember coming out on like a Saturday morning to do something in my driveway and Mark and Gordie Howe are standing in their front yard, like, you know, just a dad and his adult son and they're watering the lawn, just like hanging out, watering the lawn, like any other suburban couple. And I thought, I thought to myself, if I was a Canadian hockey head, this would be a life defining moment. And yet for me, it's like looking at two accountants could not mean less to me. Anyway, nice guy, Mark Howe. So Trump is trying to get Canada to stop this. And he does it by saying that if Canada makes deals with China, China will terminate ice hockey being played in Canada and permanently end the Stanley Cup. it's the saddest most pathetic threat because it's like there's there's no again it's like crazy old person yelling at the moon nobody thinks this is possible nobody thinks this is a thing that would happen and also the canadians are gonna be like yeah fuck you yeah come for just feels like Weakness. Come for hockey, bro. It feels like weakness to me. You know what it is? And it goes back to the previous topic about the halftime show, which everything that they're doing right now is the snowflakiest. Like, oh, we have to get rid of hockey because I don't like the bridge they're building, which, by the way, is between Canada and the state of Michigan. And like, all they do know is cry about everything. oh the we got to take our ball and go home because the halftime show is getting sung in spanish uh you guys are everything that you ever said the left was ever worse you know the defining meme of this year yeah to think about how they've lost the culture the defining meme of this year is going to be zoran and miss rachel doing the wah wah wah thing um at the manga guys because that's just all it is it's just like they've won everything they still just cry and bitch and moan about stuff so i don't know i'm in jvl territory that's like take please cancel the stanley cup trump that's great like attacking olympians like this like we didn't even talk about this uh because speaking of hockey the women's ice hockey team is crushing it right now um and but like so you know trump is like going after these olympic athletes and they're not even saying they're not saying not trump is a monster they're just saying you know i i love my country i'm here representing the United States, but you know, we're having some hard times in the country right now, and I just want everybody to feel good and be included and like lead with empathy. These are my values. And Trump's like, and Megyn Kelly's like, cancel them. They should come home. They should be stripped of their team membership. Oh my God, is this cancel culture? I was reliably told that this was cancel culture. Ik snap dat je je podcast wil luisteren, dus ik zal het kort houden. Want als jij het So, we can now listen to your podcast. marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Well, I'm sure the free press is going to do a couple pieces on how that's bad, right? Actually, I just pulled up their page. I'm not seeing anything on it, but I do see that a dark money group that backed Kamala Harris faces questions over a donation. Maybe there's some corruption of the Harris campaign. I wonder if there's any corrupt donations happening currently, right now. Let's fucking do the news. Okay. So we had some good times this week for the first time in God knows how long. So we'll close with bad things. um nancy guthrie the aged mother of savannah guthrie seems to have been kidnapped it's now been like two weeks uh this is a story which is horrible and like out of some terrible movie we just got ring camera or no i'm sorry not ring a nest camera uh of an image of a guy in a ski mask we you know at her doorbell he seems to have disabled the camera it looks like dwight yokum in panic room neither of you have seen panic room if there are five people who are watching this video who have you'll know exactly what i mean i don't know what to say except that it's horrible and i hate that we live in a world where people go and abduct elderly women i don't know yeah i just wanted to talk about it briefly because you know we're not doing true crime news around here right and so i just haven't had an opportunity to talk about it um but i um i know savannah a little bit uh savannah's husband i know really well and i worked with him for a long time and they're the sweetest and like their kid is the sweetest uh their kids are the sweetest excuse me and um i just like saw that that video of the fat guy in the mask it looks like a mustache outside the window of this 84 year old woman you just start to think about your own grandmother or mother and i just like this rage is boiling up inside of me and it's just like i i you know this would be the type of crime that you could get me on board for really old testament type punishment which i which i'm not for in principle but like that is my initial like animal reaction to this like the idea that you would abduct an elderly woman like from her home sitting peacefully in her home in arizona in a retirement community masked can take manhandler taker and and now you want crypto money put into your account in order to give her back and it's just it's unimaginably horrible and i just i'm just my heart like breaks for savannah and mike and the rest of their family and it's i just I hope that this video – this is the one time I hope these fucking chuds at the FBI get something right because I just hope that this video coming out helps them identify who this person is and bring Nancy home. All right. Sarah? I mean I don't know enough about it. None of us know, right? None of us know what happened. And all I know is that the thing Tim said about, like, you imagined your own family. And I just, all I want is for her to get her mother back. I just, I don't want anything bad to happen to anyone. And I, yeah, I always hate when we live in a world where this kind of thing can happen. It's too awful. And our hearts go out. I didn't realize Tim knew them so well. Um, but, uh, so I'm just sorry for everybody and I hope it gets resolved. Um, cause we'll be rooting for Savannah and her family. Yeah. Went to arrest that guy. Yeah. Put him away forever. All right, guys. Uh, I mean, it seems weird to say hit the like button, so I won't say that. Just subscribe to the channel and, uh, we'll be back. Well, Sarah and I will be here on Friday with a secret show. It's going to be a very celebratory secret show because we have some good things happening in our relationship. We've taken it to a new level. And the three of us will be back next week together. We're going to do live show. Live. Live show in Minneapolis. Is that next week? Is that a real thing that's happening next week? Good Lord. It's happening. I can't believe that. Can't wait to see you guys out there. Best friends. This show will be late next week, though. This show will be late because we're going to use the live show for TNL next week. So you'll be catching us live on stage in Minneapolis with all our pals. Appreciate everybody coming up. And meet space. Good luck, America.andez