Bill Kristol: Make It the Summer of Epstein

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That's theRealReal.com. Terms apply. Daring leaves. Epic thrills. Team wins. Giant swings. I'm feeling unstoppable. This summer, join us for the adventure of a lifetime on a PGL Kids Camp, where challenges are faced and memories are made. Discover our special offers for this summer at pgl.co.uk. PGL. Made by Adventure. Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday, so of course we are here with editor at Large Bill Crystal. There is so much news to talk about. We're going to try to carve out some time for the NBA at the end, since Donald Trump is sullying the beauty of the NBA finals. Bill, how are you doing? Good weekend for you? Yeah, good. The Knicks, maybe not aware of that. The Knicks looks strong. We'll get to that at the end. We'll race through all the other topics to get to the Knicks. You're looking nice in that green polo. It's a good color for you. All right, let's talk about what's happening in Iran. I'm just going to run through the last 24 hours. We're very much deep into the Groundhog Day portion of the Iran War. But here we go. Yesterday, Israel was carrying out strikes against Hezbollah forces in Beirut. This prompted Iran to fire missiles at Israel. Trump then urged Israel not to return fire, and for both sides to stop shooting. Really strong. That's a strong man right there. Say, after you've been bombed, do nothing. Israel nevertheless responded. They were not moved by Donald Trump's pleas. They launched air strikes against Iran early this morning. Following that, Iran announced that they're halting military action in Israel. Israel continues to strike Lebanon. Axios is Barak Revid post another siren alarm tweet about how Trump says, we are in a ceasefire and a deal is coming soon, and the stock market is up. I don't know what you make of all that. Some senses, an increase in hostilities in another way. It's just kind of a different version of the same story that we've seen for the last 100 days or so. Yeah, I do think it's a Groundhog Day pretty much. A couple of little tidbits that are amusing. I'm not amusing, but depressing about our commander in chief. He seems to have called your friend Barak Revid at Axios before calling BB to directly tell him not to retaliate. He was like, isn't that right? Yeah, he talked to several reporters. There's a New York Post reporter he also spoke to. There's a third one I'm forgetting. It's unusual management of the war, certainly, to have the ally that you're in war with, for better or worse, get attacked and then for you to immediately start telling media outlets that you want them not to retaliate. And you're about to call their prime minister to tell them not to retaliate. I think the gulf between Trump and Netanyahu and really between the US and Israel is probably greater than they're letting on. And then we might think given history and given that both real history over decades, but also history of Trump and BB, which has been a lot of close coordination obviously. And let's not forget that we got into this war. BB's urging, he's allowed to urge the US to do it. I don't think it proves anything inappropriate, but he urged the US to do it. He had this moment of opportunity to bump off the top leadership and we took it. So I wonder really where, once this ends, and I kind of still think it will, this Trump really, really, really doesn't want to continue as we've seen. It will end, of course, with Iran having some ability to just shut the straight again. I mean, it's not going to be true free passage where God knows the nuclear program, they can kick that down the road, I suppose. They'll arrange to get some money to Iran through the Gulf States. All of our allies will have lost total faith in us. But I think one thing that will happen over the next several months, I wouldn't be surprised to see the administration turned against Israel. And then you really have an interesting moment, right, for MAGA and for the Republican Party, I think. I definitely agree that's possible. A couple of other ways to look at this. I don't think this is happening right now, but I think it bears mentioning that Trump and BB have done the good cop-bad cop thing in the past. It doesn't appear that that's what's happening now, where Trump kind of pretended like he wanted peace and to give cover for BB to continue to prosecute wars. We saw this in Gaza and other places. So it's possible. I don't think that's what's happening now, but it's what Bear's mentioning. I think the one element of what happened yesterday that makes it slightly different from what we've seen for the past three months is if there are continued hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Iran, and if Trump can't contain that or can't credibly say that he wants to contain that in a negotiation, I do think that further complicates his ideal to get a final deal. I mean, Iran's, it's hard to even say what each side's terms are to end the war because the ball is moving on both sides a lot. You can't really trust anything coming out of either party. But if you take Iran's stated metrics for ending the war, one of them is tell Israel to stop attacking Lebanon. They want reparations for the finances lost. They want some element of control over the straight-up or moves, and they want Israel to stop attacking Lebanon. And if Trump can't promise that as part of the deal, then that complicates the deal somewhat. And I do think that that's kind of the one development from yesterday that is, that's new-ish and relevant. And it highlights the fact that Iran has made this a demand, and it's being treated seriously as a demand. So that Trump is in fact telling BBA lay off on Hezbollah too much because it's going to screw up the deal with Iran. But that's really amazing when you think about it. All of Israeli strategy for the last several years has been, and it's been quite successful, incidentally, in totally degrading Hezbollah and limiting that threat, obviously post-October 7th, that was related, and then attacking Iran for other reasons, one of the reasons being to weaken Iran's hold on its proxies. And that's been the, and then they seem to be doing a pretty good job of that until this war. One of the 19 different bad effects of this war is that it's restored Iran's ability to claim control and probably to exercise control over its proxies and make an attack on Hezbollah and attack on Iran. That was never Iran's, incidentally, positioned or policy in the past. They might talk to a good game, but they never actually got into fights because Israel went into Lebanon or anything like that. I mean, they might do a little terrorist on the side, but the actual launching of missiles against Israel. The extent of the damage Trump has done to U.S. credibility, U.S. foreign policy, all of our allies' interests. It's a pretty astonishing achievement for one stupid war. I guess the last thing I've said this several times, but I kind of don't ever want this topic to go by anymore without mentioning just how humiliating and weak it is, just because it is truly unimaginable that Barack Obama would do something like this, start a war, demand unconditional surrender, and then start tweeting, please, baby, don't bomb. I mean, honestly, like the people at Fox News could not contain themselves. I like talking about how much he's a bicycle riding, a rugula eating weak leftists. Trump has demonstrated more weakness and less resolve than any president that we've had in modern times in this war. I just think that continues to bear mentioning, speaking of Trump being weak and erratic, he was on Meet the Press yesterday and could not handle the tough questions from Kristen Welker and at a temper tantrum stormed off. I did a kind of full sports center style breakdown of the tape over on the Bork takes feed. If people want to check that out, but I was just wondering, Bill, what your big picture of thoughts were on the interview? I mean, Trump goes real domestic, it's in Wisconsin, ostensibly as part of some proactive messaging about how the administration is caring about farm country and despite the fact that farm country is getting eviscerated by their policies. And so, you know, they were there by some big tractors. The rain was hitting the barn roof. And so the audio is very strange. And he ends up melting down and leaving on the topic of the 2020 election. But there's a bunch of other stuff in there, too. I don't know what struck you. No, I think your coverage was excellent and people should watch that. And then they can skip the interview and they were going to watch it anyway. I've got to think I certainly didn't, but you see clips of it in your coverage. So that's good. The 2020 election, again, people treated a little bit too much like, well, he's obsessed with it. It's kind of weird. He's obsessed with it because he's going to try to do it again. I do think that's why he's so both insistent on promoting the lie and at every opportunity, but also very sort of sensitive about the discussion of the lie. Extremely sensitive. What do you make of that? I mean, you watched the whole show, so we didn't have to. And comment on what is going on with him. I like to turn to George Conway for armchair psychological analysis of Trump. But since he's still in the campaign, I'll do my best to fill the role. Are you ever getting into a fight? I'm sure this never happens to you, Bill, with your spouse, where you kind of know that you're wrong. There's one point in which you sort of know that they have you, but you don't want to give in because for whatever reason, you're defensive, you're in a grumpy mood, you want to make your broader point. And so kind of go over the top. You lose your cool a little bit because somewhere deep down, you know, you know that they have you. I think that that's what's happening basically with Trump on this. It's just like, it seems like he's talking to the press a lot, but he's not because he's talking mostly to people that just suck up to him. And they're in these very managed settings where he can just, if he does get a hard question, he just calls Caitlyn Collins ugly or whatever and then moves on to the next person. And that's how he behaves. So it seems like he's getting on, but he's never really getting challenged on this stuff. And Kristen, I really wasn't even challenging that hard. It was just she was doing the natural reporter thing following up saying like, you don't have any evidence of this. It's relevant now in particular for a couple of reasons. One, he's making up lies about California and two, he wants to give that slush fund to the people who are allegedly victims of his lies. And so he can't like provide any actual evidence or data. And so he ends up lashing out. And I think it's extremely important. I saw Charlie Gasparino of Fox News, or Fox business being like, why do we even care about this anymore? It's five years old. It's like, it's extremely relevant to the policies that he's putting forth right now, whether you want to get appointed to cabinet level positions, the slush fund, California, their plans for the midterms. And it all is related to his delusions, self delusions about 2020. What implication what you're saying though is that as his popularity goes down and it gets the sense that maybe he won't be able to pull all this off. He won't be able to do it all by elections legitimately and that he worries maybe won't be able to pull it even off with with Pulti and Blanche and all these people. If even if they get in, he gets more desperate. He gets more radicalized. I guess that's the way to say it. The anger would fit in with a sort of increased disregard for, I don't care what people say about it. I don't care if people can tell me it looks bad or I'm losing some swing voters. He doesn't care at this point. Lashing out. And really, in my psychological analysis, it's probably less that you or me in a fight with our spouse. And it's more like a child or when I was a kid, like I changed my report card in sixth grade, which I did one time. And then I finally got called. Finally got called to the mat on it. You better not run for office. That could be big. Yeah. I know. The most embarrassing thing is I think I just changed a minus to a plus. I don't know. It's something extremely embarrassing, but whatever it was, when I got caught, it's like you first before getting to acceptance and asking for apologies. It's like tantrum, you know, screaming. How could you accuse me of this? And there is a little bit of that. He's like a child having a tantrum. And I do think that he will, that it will, you know, continue to get more and more alarming, you know, as, as we get closer to the end. So that's the thing to be concerned about. The good news is, Tim, that the Republican members of Congress, they see what you see and they act accordingly. They're going to act accordingly. They're going to put guardrails in place and check him and not just go along. They know how dangerous it would be just to passively go along with this increasingly deranged and authoritarian president. Hmm. Okay. Well, I appreciate your optimism. Bill, keep an eye on that. All right. Father's Day is coming up. We're actually celebrating my dad's retirement this week. So it's a double for me. I had a little bit of writer's block on my retirement toast, but it just came to me in the shower over the weekend. And I'm very happy about that. So I don't know if hopefully dad's not listening to this, but I'm excited about the toast. Can we hard to stay connected though with your father if you're living away like I am? And one thing that you can do if you haven't already as a Father's Day gift is aura frames. We gave my parents the aura frame and they love it. It's a great way to make sure they aren't missing out on any of the big moments and they get excited. Every time a new picture shows up on the frame, I saw a dude out at Jazz Fest, young guy who was fucking pumped about the aura frame that he had delivered to his mother on Mother's Day as a result of this very advertisement. So how's that for an endorsement? Aura frames have free unlimited storage. You can add as many photos and videos as you want. You can preload photos before it ships and keep adding from anywhere, anytime from your phone. They're using the free aura app or texting photos straight to the frame. And aura frames also makes it easy to personally share gift for your father. You can add a little message before it arrives. It's named number one by Wirecutter. You can save now by visiting aura frames.com. For a limited time, listeners can get 35 bucks off select frames with code double work. That's aura frames.com promo code double work. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout terms conditions apply. One example of where Republicans in the Senate could do that. How about this for a transition is Todd Blanche is being officially put forth as the permanent attorney general, which means I have to go through a confirmation hearing, which I expected this year for reasons we've discussed before, which is that, you know, on the one hand, you could have kept him as acting into next year, but then he's not confirmable. The basic of the options for Trump was to try to confirm him this year when they have a Senate majority that's big enough to potentially do it, or going to do a musical chairs of acting attorneys general for the rest of the term. And they seem to be going through the formal route, which I guess is not nothing. You wrote about the kind of the upcoming confirmation and how Democrats should think about that. So talk about your newsletter this morning and then there are a couple other elements that I think are worth getting into. Just an obvious point. There are many lawyers and judges for that matter. Well, how many Republican lawyers in the country and unfortunately quite a number of them are pro-Trump. Some of them would even have, you know, some qualifications to be nominated as the attorney general, members of Congress, judges. I'm worth getting into because he's chosen one man, Todd Blanche, and what's the one most distinctive thing he's done? He organized and executed the Epstein cover up. That's his claim to fame, right? I mean, Tom Pambon, he testified about 10 days ago and really explained. I mean, she was partly just ducking, but she was, I think, telling the truth. This was Todd's baby and he did it. And I just go through some of the things he said in the course of both executing the cover up. Of course, the famous visit to Ghislaine Maxwell and then the moving her to the nicer facility as a reminder that she could be in her interest to keep quiet about Trump. And maybe better things will be coming at some point down the road. Trump hasn't ruled out a pardon there. And then obviously he's been publicly out there defending Epstein or as he calls him, Mr. Epstein. I was really struck by that in the interview with Laura Ingram where he says he makes this astonishing comment that's gotten a lot of publicity, but you get even more that it's not a crime. It isn't a crime to party with Mr. Epstein. He really says that two or three times. He thought that was a good talking point. It's like, I was kind of mind boggling. But Laura Ingram asked the question in a formal way. This isn't testifying before Congress where one gets all maybe sort of formal, not the most Trump administration. People do that. But anyway, what maybe that Todd Blanchett, I haven't looked at all the transcripts. This is literally on Laura Ingram's television show. Laura Ingram says, what about Epstein? It's pretty bad things happen at this party, Todd Blanchett. It isn't a crime to party with Mr. Epstein. He adds the honorific misters. Like really? Does he refer to all the people he's sent to? He's defended sending to unjustly to El Salvador. Mr. Hernandez Romero or whatever. Yeah. Do you think he's very careful to always put the honorific in front of all men and misers? Mr. Elbrico Garcia. Yeah. And I, yeah, Mr. Alex Pretty. I'm somewhat a little doubtful that he's been so careful in all these cases. But Epstein, Epstein is Mr. Epstein. Mr. Epstein. Anyway, they just need to hang Epstein around his neck ruthlessly and totally, totally fair to do it. And just make the Republican senators who want to, if they're going to vote to confirm Blanchett, they're confirming that they approve of the Epstein cover-up. They think there's no reason why anything further should have been looked at. Any of the survivors should have been taken seriously. Anyone else should have been investigated or prosecuted. Really wrap it around their necks. I like the honorific point, but I think your most important observation there is about how it's prospective. Right? Is that that with Mr. Blanch in charge of the Department of Justice, the Epstein cover-up will continue. Yeah. And I don't imagine that he has a great answer for that. Right? Like he can, you know, do the same Gishwagalop nonsense about the past and what happened and why they were delaying and why they were reviewing documents. He's good on all that. But when it comes to the question of, well, are the rest of the documents going to be put forth? Are there going to be additional investigations? I can't imagine he has a good answer. I could lie, I guess, and say we're looking into it or whatever. But I think it's pretty clear that if you put in the point person for the Epstein cover-up and at the top of the Department of Justice, the Epstein cover-up will continue. So I think that is an important part of his confirmation. The other part is the nomination for attorney general is not going to be the thing that makes or breaks the Republican senators in these swing Senate states. Obviously, like it's just not an issue that is that broadly of concern to the public. But it's still pretty noteworthy that you will have Husted, Sullivan and Collins, three people who are going to claim to be moderate, claim to be middle of the road, you know, claim to be sensible Republicans as they run for reelections. You would think that Trump would need at least one of them in order to get Blanche confirmed. And, you know, I haven't heard anything from any of them. I think that it puts them in a little bit of a tough political position. It's hard for you to kind of look at me with a straight face and say Susan Collins is a moderate that needs to be defended in the Senate if she's even open to the idea of confirming the person that orchestrated the Epstein cover-up that came up with the Kakamemi slush fund. It was going to pay $1.8 billion to insurrectionists and Blanche is obviously unqualified for this job on so many levels. And I think that will be one of several things that put somebody like Collins in a tough spot. Yeah, I think, look, normally, as you say, an attorney general, any cabinet confirmation really pretty hard to elevate it to the level that one could elevate it, perhaps, except Epstein. That is kind of a huge, huge, huge issue. And if you can make this about Epstein, I think suddenly it maybe even dwarfs some of the other debates we're going to have. It could become the debate of the summer. If you're going to be in court nomination or two, they'll presumably be pretty well prepared for that. And the Democrats historically have not been great in dominating that debate. I think they might be better this time. But still, so I would just from a political point of view that we want to have a huge debate about Epstein all summer. Yeah. And I think that that is something that can trickle down to your point into the main Ohio, Alaska Senate race, right? Because Donald Trump is putting up a guy that's going to continue the Epstein cover up. And Susan Collins and Dan Sullivan and John Hustead will see, but seem to be going along with that. On the other nominations front, so Bill Pulte, who has put forth to be the acting director of national intelligence, absurd nomination, of course. So, two things are happening there. We are finally seeing some minor Republican backbone on this one. And basically going along with the Democrats, they're using this FISA reauthorization as kind of like the hostage to try to prevent Bill Pulte from becoming DNI, saying that they won't reauthorize FISA if Pulte is in there. I think that's interesting. Does Trump actually care about that that much? I'm unclear, but we have kind of an example of something that I know you've been arguing about for a lot over the last year and a half, which is, you know, Democrats in the minority, but and also a handful of Republicans like actually using the levers of power they have to try to limit Trump from kind of his worst instincts and impulses. The Democrats who are ranking on the two committees in the House and the Senate Intelligence Committee said kind of signed off on a deal on Section 702 on the FISA eavesdropping and how it affects Americans. Who's at the Times in the House? Yeah, Mark Warner in the Senate. So, Himes was sort of hesitant to sort of, he thinks, this important program, which he probably knows a lot about and maybe he's right, probably right. Still, he was hesitant to sort of say no with Pulte there. I'm not willing to necessarily not reauthorize 702. I believe he finally on Friday, he sort of came around on that. And I think it's pretty obvious that you should cannot have this guy Pulte running ODI with everything that we've already seen Tulsi Gabbard do in terms of election interference. Foreign election interference is the excuse for the national intelligence world to get involved in our elections. And Tulsi Gabbard already has tried to use that to get involved in Fulton Georgia. We now see Trump's eagerly charging fraud in California. I mean, why won't the next thing be if Pulte's in there the two weeks from now? Oh, got some interesting intelligence findings here about munking around with a vote in California. I mean, it's very dangerous. 26 is infinitely more dangerous than 28, obviously. Warner has been a little more hesitant than Himes, but he seems, he loves that, you know, he's worked well with Tom Cotton. I just heard him say that on something recently I know. And he's proud of some of the reforms they've added to the 702 program. I can't judge if they're serious or not. But so I'd say there's still a little bit of reluctance to play real hardball here. But this isn't hardball. This is honestly, this guy is so mind bogglingly on qualify. And it certainly, this doesn't require a huge, a big reversal by Republicans in Congress. It doesn't require a policy change that Republicans don't like. It requires Trump literally just not appointing Pulte to be the acting director of national intelligence, a job that he's adding to Pulte's other jobs. It's so ludicrous anyway. No one's even saying that he has to fire Pulte from the housing job, though he should be fired from that too for what he's done. No one's saying that he has to put in someone we like a lot in national intelligence just withdraw it. So I think they have a, they should really make that case more, more energetically, honestly. Trump can solve this problem in one minute. By getting rid of Pulte, you mean? By just redrawing his appointment or his planned appointment to be acting director. Doesn't require going to the Congress. It doesn't require removing him from something he's been doing. He hasn't begun yet, right? This is a very easy one to fix. But why would Trump do that, right? I guess to my, and I think Trump obviously seems more interested in having Bill Pulte in there, DNA creating problems for his enemies and he cares about Pfizer, the particulars of protecting the country. Trump doesn't even talk about protecting the country. Totally. No, no, no, totally. I just think it's a, but Democrats can make just the point usually. Oh, it's a good message. Yeah, it's kind of the Mark Warner thing. Mark Warner seems like a good person, fine person. I think it's in particular, but it is funny from a political standpoint. He's up this year. It's like, it's kind of funny that there's, there's sometimes this Scuttlebutt that you hear about how the Democrats are having their tea party moment and the Democrats are following the Republicans down the extremist path. And it's like Mark Warner didn't even have a primary. I don't know. I'm a middle of the road person and I might have been interested in a Mark Warner primary. I don't know exactly what it would have looked like, but I think it's just a, you know, a little creative destruction, getting some more ideas in there, maybe pressuring a minimum, pressuring him to be a little tougher and less willing to talk about how great his partner is, Tom Cotton, unintelligence committee actions. I don't, I don't really believe that Tom Cotton is that great of a partner. Sorry. But here we are, Mark Warner kind of moseying on towards reelection as if we aren't in a national crisis. Something pretty great happened for me on Sunday. I slept in. I slept in. I didn't go out on Saturday night. Was not hungover. I didn't have to wake up in podcast. I didn't get woken up by my daughter for some reason. And I looked at the clock when I rolled over and I was like, damn, 848. That is a treat. And we might have to give at least some of the credit, maybe all the credit to our friends at Helix. My Helix mattress is helping me work on my sleep habits. It keeps me cool and comfortable. Plenty of support and also a little firm for mattresses. What I'm looking for. No waking up with a random makes and pains that you get from sleeping on the uncomfortable mattress. Plus Helix makes it easy to upgrade your setup. They deliver your mattress right to your door with free shipping in the U S. They got 120 night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty with the happy Helix guarantee. You can rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. Go to helixsleep.com slash the bulwark for 20% off site wide. That's helixsleep.com slash the bulwark for 20% off site wide. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you. It's helixsleep.com slash the bulwark. Okay. The Department of War is led by Pete Hegceth. We can talk show co-host and he to our great embarrassment was giving a speech honoring the anniversary of D-Day in France. And the speech just overall was just nauseating. But there was one particular clip that got a lot of attention that I want to play for you. Their legacy demands far more than quiet reflection. It requires our active vigilance. Sadly today different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Lot of issues there. For starters in that metaphor he's the Nazi. I just think that's an important thing to bring up. Famously on D-Day it was the Allies, the Americans that were storming the beaches that were trying to ensure that the European capitals were protected from the internal fascists. And so in this metaphor I guess he's talking about how he wants to defend the capitals from the invaders. Which again would have put him on the side of being the Nazis. So that's maybe a miss on the metaphor. On top of that this whole thing is just it's so insane where they're at. Like where he thinks that the parallel is immigration. And that immigration is the apt comparison to what happened in World War II and not Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Russia's menacing of Europe. Because he's got nothing to say about that. He doesn't think that America should be involved in that. He doesn't think that Americans should be helping to defend European capitals from fascist invasions. He only wants to wave his finger at the Europeans and say let in fewer brown people. That's basically his lesson of D-Day and the brave men storming the beaches of Normandy. He thinks that the lesson today that we could have learned from them is we should be harsher about the brown immigrants. Yeah some number of those people storming the beaches on D-Day were the sons and grandsons and great grandsons. Obviously of immigrants quite a high percentage I would expect. So yeah who came here for the same reason there's a lot of those migrants that come with the Europe. That doesn't mean that they should let maybe they've made some mistakes in immigration policy. Yeah it's such an unbelievably inappropriate metaphor comparing them to the Nazis. Plus the reversal of who's storming the beaches and who's not. It's really kind of a grotesque. Just embarrassing. Mark Hurtling our colleague when he was still in active duty when he was a general, a general gave the speech maybe 11, 12 years ago. I think shortly before he left retired at the ceremony. It's an annual ceremony obviously. And I was in touch with him over the weekend. He was so personally just offended and appalled that this could be happening. This is such an important ceremonial occasion. A moving one usually the veteran, the old veterans are there, the locals in France but other Europeans as well take D-Day seriously. They put flowers on the graves. The American soldiers buried in the famous cemetery in Normandy but also in other cemeteries in France and Holland and Germany actually. To use it as an occasion for this is so gross really. Yeah it's depressing honestly. Yeah it's gross and depressing. It's just like to have this buffoon giving this kind of like. It's not even a high class version of the conservative worldview. And it's like a tabloid, weekend Fox news version of what the argument would be. And it's really shameful. This is where we're at. It is striking how much I took to Tom Jocelyn about this in the Sunday Bull Work Show yesterday. And I don't fully understand. I guess I underestimated a little bit. There's a lot of kooky things and Trumpism, you know, a lot of things that I don't like and are deplorable. And there's a lot of just garden variety racism and bigotry and nativism and all this. But the degree to which the great replacement theory and the re-migration agenda is really at the heart of it. I think I sort of underestimated that. You know, there's so many other things that are very unpleasant to say the least. But he could have done much more of an America first foreign policy type. He could have had some fake, I don't know what the analogy would be. You know, we have to be strong and tough in the Department of War and we have to, weakness doesn't work. But he went right to the re-migration agenda. I don't know. I used to a little surprised how central that's all becoming the second term. I guess it was central in the first term too. I mean, it's tied to the original Trump escalator speech of the invasion of America. You know, in this way, it's just like Father Coughlin stuff all over again. You know, and it's just a sense that like the real threat is that, you know, these third worldists or whatever are, you know, invading our, you know, pristine Western civilization. And, you know, none of them actually go to Europe either. This is like the other thing. It's just, it really, I mean, truly they take the worst examples. Kathy Young wrote about this and you're in the morning shots this morning, actually. There is this horrible story in London, you know, of a Brit that gets killed by a migrant and there's a misunderstanding. The police come and the migrant that killed him had actually called the police. And so the police didn't know who the perpetrator was and who the victim was. And they obviously fucked it up. They, they've like turned it into this big, you know, sort of example of why, of how immigration is killing London. That's just like, they've never been to London. They don't talk to anyone. I was in Manchester last summer. I was, I'm telling you, Manchester is not, there's not an, a migrant invasion happening in Manchester. It felt very British. I think though, like their worldview depends on this, right? The real threat is from, you know, this, this other. And like if you centralize that, then, you know, you don't have to feel so guilty about, you know, being on the side of Russia and Ukraine, for example, or, you know, some of the other, you know, ways in which they've departed from more, you know, classical Reagan. That's right. Conservative ideology. Right. And then they could be on the side of all the neo-Nazis and nativist parties in Europe, which obviously have, have gained ground in many places. And so that's also could be one last thing about D-Day, just as I was struck by this, that Trump, this was Saturday, right? June 6th. And I, I was looking around on Twitter or whatever and plus guy and all that. And Trump seemed not to have posted anything yet about D-Day, which is a little odd for the American president. So I sort of double checked, especially good, true social and all. And he seemed not to. So I just pointed that out. And, you know, Zelensky had made a very moving statement about what D-Day meant. Trump had said nothing. But I kind of figured since, you know, 50,000 other people had made the same point by the time I made it, I believe, and social media and elsewhere. I think, you know, someone in the White House would fake, you know, would write some vaguely appropriate or even inappropriate thing for Trump to say about D-Day, you know, so he could sort of avoid that criticism. And he never did. You know, it's, he posted about a whole bunch of other things. He had a lot of insane AI photos and went out about that kind of stuff, the arch, he posted the arch and it's going to be great. But he didn't say anything about D-Day, which is somehow very revealing. Well, he thinks that there's suckers and losers, you know. Well, he thinks there's suckers and losers. And the megalomania, the degree to which it's now all and entirely about him. There's no sense that there's like American history, other generated things that happened in the past, generations we should look back to with gratitude. It has become so narcissistic and so lopsistic that he can't even bring himself to go to the trouble of shouting at one of his aides, write me, you know, write three sentences about D-Day and post it. You mentioned the arch there. You're mad about the arch. That's interesting. I am. I want to sort of stoke your anger, you know, because it's hard to be mad about everything now and certain things happen that pique my anger and, you know, listeners can tell when that happens. And for some reason for you, it's the arch. So I want you to try to get my dander up about the arch because it's one thing. I don't like it, but it's just I'm not feeling it in my core. So I want you to make the pitch to me about why it should be mad or about the arch. I mean, you know, Washington, but so we live in Northern Virginia. There are like three bridges basically you drive across four maybe to Washington. And one is the Morial Bridge, which has our own cemetery on the Virginia side and basically the Lincoln or the mall, the Lincoln Morial on the other on the DC side. And it's a wonderful vista coming either way. And so I do that fairly often. And the arch is supposed to go up smack in the middle of this. There's a little plot of land. So it's just a circle that it would take up all of totally dominate. The height is unbelievable. 250 feet. I mean, people just haven't sort of maybe quite internalized how much it would loom over everything, but especially loom over Arlington. So for me, that's really disgusting in a way that I got to say just, and again, this isn't rational, really. The White House stuff is terrible. Believe me, I'm not, you know, the ballroom. The cage match. But I don't know if it's the White House, you know, it can be fixed by the next occupant. He's living there. So I guess, you know, he's got, I don't, he doesn't title to ruin the place, but it's sort of more understandable that he's doing so. But the arch is not, that's like not on his grounds, you know what I mean? That's like actually sort of in between sort of between Virginia and DC, right outside Arlington. I come back to Arlington. So I guess it just moves me. And what is it need? What is it a symbol of? It's a symbol of imperial triumphalism. The French put it up and they didn't do too well in the subsequent wars they were fighting. Maybe it's a bit of a, you know, irony of history kind of situation. But anyway, but what has he done? What have we done to be totally honest in the very recent years to put up the arch? We should put up a tribute to the Ukrainians, not some fake triumphalist arch. You're getting my dander up a little bit. It's coming. It's coming slowly to Shirley. I've walked across that bridge a bunch. My senior year college apartment was just kind of right on the other side of the Memorial Bridge there. So I went down there a lot. I had a smoke to bowl on the bridge one time. That's memorable. I want to mention since we have Hegstedt really quick, the Mormons are mad. And I mostly just want to mention this in the spirit of like, you know, first they came from the trans. And I said nothing for Mike Lee and the Mormons. Hegstedt winnowed the Pentagon's list of recognized faith codes from over 231. LDS was still listed, but it was moved out of the section for the Christian faith. For example, it says Christian seventh day Adventist, but not Christian church of the Latter-day Saints. Mike Lee tweeted angrily about this repeatedly over the weekend at about midnight last night. He tweeted, I just got off the phone with Trump. We discussed the Pentagon's Christian list. I won't speak for him, but I'm thrilled where this is heading. We're the most fortunate that Trump loves us and stay tuned. So I just wonder where the, what the Mormons thought was going to happen when they put the Christian nationalists in charge of the Department of War. But anyway. And you know, I'm not an expert on this, but in real Hegstedtian Christian nationalist supremacist circles, they don't like the Mormon. I mean, we know this, if you, this was an issue in the Brownie campaign, it kind of popped up a couple of times. They quickly suppressed it, you know. But yeah, they don't think, they think the Mormons are called and not legitimately Christian and so forth. And so this is someone, I guess, who was running this in Hegstedt world was more of that was a format part of the Christian nationalist world and took out his animosity to the Mormons. Yeah, they are a big group and an important group and a very impressive group of Americans. And so it's probably a mistake and they have senators. So they dominate a state, Utah, Mormon senators, not the only Mormon senators. And so they probably a mistake to pick that fight, but I and Trump couldn't care less. Either way, obviously. So, yeah, it's like, does two Corinthians say something about the Mormons? I mean, Trump's Trump's in his head is just like, I mean, you guys are, I gotta be kidding me about this. We're going to fight about your imaginary, you know, Skye Jesus, whatever you guys want. I don't care. Summer is in full swing here in Nola and that impacts how I get dressed. It's hot. It's getting hot out there. You need pieces that feel lighter and more breathable to deal with the summer heat. And that's why I keep coming back to Quints. They focus on high quality essentials that feel and look amazing. Think breathable linen and soft organic cotton, well made basics, but without the luxury markup, Quints, European linen pants and shirts are the perfect warm weather upgrade. Your rotation starting at just 34 bucks. 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Now, I'm paraphrasing. I don't have the quote, but that's what was communicated to me. And the other thing was Renee Good's car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer. We have gone out of our way in our plan from the very beginning to show the protesters for the responsibility that they had. We had already scrubbed the video archives looking for those scenes. But it somehow wasn't enough for Miss Weiss. The video showed that the officer wasn't standing in front of the car and she wasn't driving toward him, but that's what the president said about that. And that's the way she wanted it described. That's pretty striking and concerning just how blunt he is that Barry Weiss came in and said after agents of the state killed Renee Good, she was demanding that the 60 minute story reflect the point of view of the killer and of the president as much as possible. Too little things just struck me that she directly intervened. I mean, presumably when people want to put their thumb on the scale, it's happened, got in us in life. I mean, they do it through intermediaries, they have a little deniability. She didn't care about the liability. Maybe she didn't want the liability. Maybe she was fine. She wanted to be able to tell the White House, hey, I fixed the look. I mean, this thing was much better than you would have thought. They wanted to make it all, you know, the ICE agents fault for murdering Renee Good. So that part strikes me. I mean, does she even mind this coming out? I mean, I just don't like it, but they certainly went out of the way not to pacify anyone at 60 minutes, right? Not publicly. I guess they had a private meeting with Bill Whitaker. Which was terrible, apparently. With Whitaker. With Whitaker, yeah. Maybe they want to have, keep some of it. She and her bosses, a paramount, I don't really understand the corporate structures anymore, but whichever bosses she has who want the merger approval, and for either past mergers or future mergers, they want Trump to know that she and they are on his side, right? And the old days, they would do these things, you know, under the cover of darkness, if you're going to distort the news a little bit. They want Trump to know, which is another step down the authoritarian path. And this is why Nick Bilton couldn't answer the question when Pelle was asking him at that original meeting that leaked about like why they had fired the other, the previous executive producers in the heads of the show, right? This is why it was so important for Barry Wise to get somebody that was her choice in charge of the show, that they couldn't, you know, do what they had done traditionally, which is, you know, promote the person internally, that had been the best story producer. Like that's how 60 minutes worked, right? They would, you know, promote from within. They'd find somebody that was, that understood the program and that had demonstrated, you know, skill and leadership at shepherding various stories to the TV. Instead, she has to bring in some outside guy and it's like, why? Well, it's for this, you know, it's so she doesn't have to send an email to somebody she doesn't know saying, hey, you know, can you make sure the story reflects the lie that the president told that Renee Good was aiming her car at the officer when all video shows that she was doing the opposite. Now she can just communicate that to Nick Bilton and, you know, have him try to do it. So we'll see how it continues to go. I was, look, everyone needs to do what's right for them. I understand the reason Leslie Stahl and Bill Whitaker said that they want to stay. I think that they probably are rightly worried that had they quit, it's over. Like 60 minutes is basically dead. And maybe by having them around, you can kind of shepherd this thing and model through into something different in the future. But I don't, it seems to me like the writing's on the wall. I guess I was just thinking we discussed Bill Pulte earlier. I guess Barry Wise is the Bill Pulte of CBS News, right? I mean, she's utterly unqualified. She'd never run anything big and I mean, with all due respect to the Free Press, certainly not a TV news room, certainly not a TV news organization. She comes, takes over and immediately starts spotting right into Von Trump's behalf, which is exactly what Bill Pulte is going to do with national intelligence. I mean, the authoritarian stuff happens within government and of course it happens within other organizations that they want to corrupt and shape. That takes us to the LA Mayor's Race with all due respect to the Free Press. Matt Iglesias shared this screenshot this morning of their coverage of that race. I'm just going to read for you a couple of headlines. Heidi Montag, Spencer Pratt's wife, is already LA's first lady. The revenge of the California Republicans inside Spencer Pratt's viral video machine. Spencer Saca la Basura, well LA's Latino's back Pratt. Pratt Daddy's revenge. Everything is reality TV and Spencer Pratt knows it. It goes on. The very obsequious fangirl-ish even coverage of Spencer Pratt's mayoral campaign for the Free Press and a bunch of other center-right folks on social media, bragging about how great of a campaign he ran. It turns out, as the count continues to trickle in six days later, that he will not even make the runoff. He's been passed by Nithya Raman, the more of a... It's kind of hard to frame her ideologically because in some ways she's left of Bas, but she's also been trying to move a line with the Yimbi crowd, which you would maybe say is more to the middle of Bas, but she now appears certain to enter the runoff with Bas. Pratt, it looks like, will get a smaller percentage of the vote than Trump did in Los Angeles, which goes to tell you that the whole buzz about this campaign, it was just this bubble, just a total online bubble of a certain type of person that was excited about this. A lot of people don't live in LA that liked his videos, and those videos can do well on X, but that is not a substitute for an actual campaign. I don't know if you have any thoughts on Spencer Pratt. No, it's a good sign if the right, if the mega world is being deceived by their own bubble. I mean, it's a big, and somewhat correct indictment of the left that it lives in a bubble and blah, blah, blah, and they didn't understand Middle America got to go to diner. Maybe they should go to some diners in LA, you know, and talk to an actual people who live there. I don't know. Maybe, yeah, maybe the mega media should go to some diners in LA, or, you know, I don't know, maybe a taqueria. Yeah, so it's not diners, it's taqueria, or a few little, you know, vegan cafes or whatever. I want to talk about the conspiracy theories, which now are proliferating online, and by proliferating, I mean, obviously the president himself shared conspiracy theories about this LA mayor's race. I've seen it from Megan Kelly. I saw it from Will Chamberlain. I've debated on the Piers Morgan show. I've seen, I just, it's really widespread. The federalist, Megan McCain. Megan McCain even shared a potential conspiracy theory about the LA mayor's race. And I just, if you have friends in your life that are sharing conspiracy theories about the count in the LA mayor's race, I just would like to offer you an easy rebuttal to send them. It's important just to start from the baseline here that 15% of people in LA are Republicans, 15%. And so Pratt did not even run a campaign to try to appeal to those who are not Republicans. He did AI videos that were very withering, making fun of Democrats. And those were very popular among Republicans who live in other places online, understandably. But like that is not how you appeal to a city that is 60% Democrat and the rest independent, 25% independent. And so you had all these people online, all these Republicans from other states say like, Spencer Pratt is running this amazing campaign. It's like, well, he's running an amazing campaign to appeal to you, like Maga Republican that lives in Orlando, or like Republican commentator that goes on Fox News and lives in New York. Like he's running these, no wonder you like it. He's appealing to you, but he did not run a good campaign appealing to Democrats that live in LA. It's possible that you could reach them. I think that there's some unhappiness with the Democratic governance there. But the way to appeal to them is not to run a Maga campaign. And so the reality is that Pratt had zero chance to win. Like even ahead, he made the runoff. There was no path to getting a majority of the vote running a Maga campaign in LA. And so the whole conspiracy theory rests on this notion that Karen Bass wanted to prevent Spencer Pratt from getting into the runoff, which is like the opposite of true. Now Karen Bass is in a real danger. Like the incumbent LA mayor, who I assume, I guess nobody ever says who is doing the election thieving, but I would assume it would be the incumbent mayor who would have some control over the election process for whom the people that run the elections work for. Why would she want to rig the system to get a more formidable challenger in the runoff? I think it's a decent chance that Karen Bass loses. And we've now been through this system a million times. I mean, literally in LA, we went through this, whatever that was four years ago, where Rikaru So was winning an election day against Karen Bass, and the mail came in and Karen Bass won. If you tell voters that mail in ballot is fraudulent and you shouldn't use it like the Maga Republicans do, then it shouldn't be a surprise that your voters don't use the mail and that progressive voters do. And if the mail ballots get counted later, it won't be surprised that the more progressive candidate will do well in the later counts. This is very easy to understand. It's very easy to explain. There's no conspiracy. And yet, like ostensibly reasonable people who've worked in politics for years, whose parents were senators, have decided that like they think that this is a big conspiracy, and yet the conspiracy makes no sense. And the Democrats in this case held their, I think the disproportion between the early vote and the later mail-in vote and the majority of the vote in California's mail, and I believe it would be a large majority. That was, this portion was accentuated by the fact that Democrats were holding back on the California Gouda's Hoyle vote, but it's the same, at that place, so it's the same ballot as the mayor, because they wanted to see which of the Democrats were going to emerge so they could make sure that you didn't get a Republican, Republican, primary right. So there was a, first of all, there was a straw well, and then there was a question about who was, so it's, yeah, looks like more of a disproportion, but it's perfectly understandable, plus the normal disproportion that you mentioned between Republicans voting earlier, probably thanks to Trump and Democrats voting later. Yeah, anyway, there's literally no evidence, then no one, whatever they, maybe they should count the ballots faster, maybe you don't like mail-in voting, generally, and you think they should vote more, fine, that's a policy issue, different states run differently. There's literally no charge of fraud here. I'm not even like a fake charge of that we had in some of these other areas where some, I don't know, one box got mixed up for 10 minutes, and it looked funny when they moved to somewhere, whatever their charges were in other states in 2020 or whatever. Yeah, the bamboo ballots or whatever, voting machines, there's nothing, they have nothing. It's just like it looks fishy. It's like it doesn't look fishy, actually. It looks exactly like what you would have expected, what I would have predicted would have happened beforehand, and what election launchers would have predicted beforehand, and there is also no motive. If you're going to say that there's election fraud, what would be the motive of Karen Bass to have to run against a more formidable Democratic challenger? It doesn't make any sense at all. The whole thing is idiotic. So you're running out of closet space. The good news? You don't need to stop shopping. You just need to start selling with the RealReal. 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Do you have any updated Platinum thoughts or should I move on to the other Senate races? No, I would. I guess it's a ranked choice voting. And I personally, if anyone cares, since a couple people have asked me, I would vote for Mills and for Costello and rank them and not rank Platinum and hope that 51% of Mainers maybe decided to think better of Platinum. Whatever they even if they like him and respect him, that maybe it's a little whiskey just nominating him on the entire U.S. Senate is at stake here, conceivably. But no one really cares about my opinion about who they should rank in the Democratic primary, I suppose. I don't think they do either. And my other thing I would say about this is like, Maine is not California. And Grand Platinum has been campaigning a lot throughout Maine. And so the people of Maine have got the chance to meet him. They know him. There have been plenty of examples of quotes you see of people and, you know, Alex Sideswald, who is a guy I used to know as a national reporter who moved to Maine to edit a local paper. And he's like, I hear from people that say, you know, everybody is two degrees of separation from Platinum. I heard the stories about him. I was for him and I knew things before the New York Times even wrote anything. I think that there is that element there that a lot of this stuff is baked in and Maine voters like his message. And that's democracy. I continue to share the concern that there's little risk. I don't know that Maine voters maybe know everything. So it remains to be seen. But anyway, that election is tomorrow. Iowa, I had Josh Turc on Times of the Five Circles. That last week, the day after his primary win, I think it was last week, we have a pull-out this morning that shows the Iowa race tied. I should say it's an internal DSCC polls. This is one of those things where the DSCC is the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. Having been in this boat as a press secretary, it's like if you, people oftentimes say that the internal polls are like rigged to make your candidate look better. That's not what's happening. Internally, you want to know what the truth is, but you just don't tell reporters if it's bad. You do tell them if it's good. And so if there's like a margin of error and you've gotten three-pole, you know, you do a poll every week and two weeks are down five and then one week it shows you tied, then you're like, you show the reporters, hey, we're tied, right? So I don't know that this means that the race is actually tied, but it does show Ashley Hinson underwater. The Republican just turk up big with independence. I think that's encouraging. To me, Iowa is the battleground. I said this a little bit when he was on last week. I was like, when his dad did the Florida, Florida, Florida, I'm Iowa, Iowa, Iowa in November. Rob Sand, they just announced this morning I think astutely. He chose his Lieutenant Governor candidate, a guy named Dave Mollvowler. I know nothing about this person except for that he is a farmer from Crawford County, Iowa, which is real rural. I've been to Crawford County. That's not fake rural. It's not like Des Moines Ex-Arbs. That's out there in farmland, northeast Iowa. And he's got a cowboy hat on in his picture. It seems like the aesthetic choice there of who they're trying to appeal to is pretty obvious. I don't know if you have any thoughts on Turrick or what's happening in Iowa. No, I think I do think the farm economy stuff is very real. Everyone I talk to is from there, who has business there, who's visited there, says that. It feels like, don't you think Iowa, Alaska, and Ohio are really close to toss-ups at this point, I think, and those with this. I think Alaska and Ohio are toss-ups. I think Iowa, I would have leaned towards the Republican and the Senate, Ashley Hinson, and the Democrat and the governor's race. I know that there's going to be skepticism. I've heard some from one listener in particular about the idea that ballot splitting still happens. And I just think that on the margins, there's enough. Governor's races and Senate races are different. There is a psychological barrier. If you are yourself, like, I am a Republican. I've always been a Republican. I don't really love Trump that much. If you're that type of person in Iowa, then you're like, we really need a new state government. The state government has not been serving us well. And the public has nominated a guy from Kansas who is a total clown who is an investor in a cockering company, Firm Tech. I don't know if you know about cockering, Bill. Just when I read online a little bit, I haven't read too much. I haven't read too much. I don't really want to know. But go ahead and tell, please. Shout out to our friends at Firm Tech. When they were mentioned last week, I received a free sample, which I've not tried yet. So I can't give an endorsement, but I appreciate them. So the Republican nominee for governor and conquering investor lives in Kansas at just absolute absurd choice to be governor of the state. No, I career political operative that he marries a rich person. He's just a nepo baby that is totally out of step. So back to my point, you can imagine the Republican in Iowa looking at that race and being like, this is crazy. Our obscene seems like a middle of the road guy and then struggling to also pull D in the Senate race. I can imagine that. And so I do think that there's a little bit of an additional barrier for Turk. I think it's doable, though, for sure. Democrats have won the governorship in Trump time, recent times, Trump times, and obviously in Kentucky and Kansas, actually, a couple other states that are now black down for a second. Whereas the Senate races, which get our federal races do become referendum on the parties as a whole. Trump's weak enough that that could hurt in a couple of cases, I do think now finally. And again, if the Republicans and his have to vote to confirm the organizer of the Epstein cover up, that wouldn't hurt either to make the federal race less lopsided. Trump carried 25 states three times. All of them now have two Republican senators. That is those they have 50 Republican senators for those 25 states. So at the federal level, the ability to withstand the fact is I just don't really want Elizabeth Warren running the Senate. I mean, whatever they're going to sell themselves. You know, it's been more powerful at the state level. There's more reality. This Republican governor screwed up. We're going to put in a Democrat, you know, and so I do. Yeah, intrinsically, it's easier to win the state and local level race for that matter than the federal race. But this might be different with Trump at the top of the table. With Trump in his second term as president, though, and him, if he's a 38, 37 percent, I come back to the single best thing you can do. You don't live in one of these states and don't control can affect the campaign tactics or whatever. And persona of these candidates is to knock Trump's numbers down. I mean, it just makes a huge difference at these federal races of Trump's at 36 or 39 or even in these states. It'll be higher because these Republican states, but makes huge difference if he's at 44, 45 instead of 50. I mean, that's, you know, so. Yeah. And I think that's where he is an hour right now, 44. And I think that puts Rob Sand in a good place and he's got to get down closer to 40 for Turk to be there. But that's very possible. Doesn't seem like things are getting better economically in farm country. All right, we've gone along. Bill said we had a lot of topics today and he didn't even know we were going to talk about cock rings and said it was going to maybe be three hours. And it's only been an hour. But I do, we do want to just briefly discuss the NBA playoffs in part because it's overlapped with politics because Donald Trump is doing his best to salt the vibes for the New York next. We've won 13 straight games. It's just been a truly unbelievable run. And they go home to Madison Square Garden tonight has not been a finals game of Madison Square Garden. And I'm going from memory like 20 some odd years, 30 30. Yeah, 1999. So that would be what 27 years. And Trump is going to go to game three, which is annoying, you know, making the finals about yourself for starters. Obama was a legitimate basketball fan did not go to NBA finals games when he was president in part because he's president thing in part because it creates a huge issue where, for example, the Knicks have had to cancel the like street parties, watch parties outside the stadium. You can't get in. And this is the hottest ticket in the history of sports. Like you can't get into the stadium for less than $5,000. And that's like the worst seat in the stadium is $5,000. So if you're a regular New Yorker, you know, from Queens and wanted to go down and be there and experience that what they had been doing was outside the stadium, they'd play the game on on the big screens outside Madison Square Garden, then you'd have a kind of a watch party vibe. They've canceled that because that makes it unsafe for Donald Trump, which is, you know, really kind of the turret in the punch bowl here on what should be a massive party for New York and for the Knicks. And to me, I feel like it might be a jinx, might be a hex. I think he might be a hex and the 13 game winning streak. It's something to keep an eye on whether Trump hexes the 13 game winning streak tonight. But it's been an awesome finals. I felt very bad. I didn't do you watch game two? No, I was dinner. I felt very bad for Wemby. It's Ty game and Wemby the star of the spurs like had the ball had the ball at the chance to win and he just threw it off his teammates back. It was really sad. I was watching with my daughter and she was like, I feel sad for Wemby. That's good. But anyway, Bill, as a New Yorker yourself, do you have any, any takes? Yeah. And then Wemby missed the makeable shot. Right. He got the ball back at the buzzer. Yeah. Oh, it's been an amazing run for the Knicks. I mean, the Trump going is really, I don't even recall him being a basketball fan, particularly I've been sort of a Knicks fan. Not as much these days as I mean, I'm not as much follower of NBA basketball the way you do. I don't recall Trump showing up in Knicks games the way a lot of people have for years. And even though they've had some rough, rough stretches here in the last 20, 30 years. It's not a Ben Stiller, you know, who is there in the hard times. Exactly. Right. Like Lee. No. And so, yeah, well, it's true. I mean, so it really is just, he's just going to, yeah, the city really, I was struck. I happened to see a couple of people from New York this weekend who aren't huge basketball fans and one is, but two aren't. And, and, and they said it's really amazing. Everyone's talking about in the city. Everyone loves it. They're everyone's reading up on all the stories about the individual players and they have these Knicks or likes the last time the Knicks one is unbelievable with 73, which was teams. They were teamwork teams, you know, and, and they had some stars. But actually what was most amazing was they're working together and this team is like that. But everyone sort of internalized that there's a lot of good mood and good will, I'd say, about it. I watched some of the clips of the press, you know, thing they do during the playoffs yesterday with all kinds of celebrities sort of fat. My friend, Fat Joe was there, you know, and joking around with coach Brown and with the players. I mean, it was, it's really the city, I think, is feeling in a very upbeat mood and Trump's going to show up. They get one, wait two hours to get into the garden or get there two hours. So he killed the, you know, the watch parties outside, get booed, I suppose, when he shows up and make it about himself. I mean, it really is terrible. I hope he, I don't quite know what, I don't quite know what to hope. I hope he actually pays a political price for it. I don't know how that could happen really. Is that going to win New York anyway? Maybe, maybe there'll be some indirect annoyance from people. I don't think it'll be well received. Do you think that I don't feel like NBA fans? That's true. I don't know. I know it will be the rich next fans who can afford the game, but I don't think so. I don't think so. On the other hand, though, I mean, I had to experience this. Trump showed up to the LSU national championship in 2019 and like there was a moment and that's very different because it's south, right? So, we're playing Clemson. So, the crowd was mostly Trump. Yeah, and football, right? Football, which is different. But he goes out there and there was mixed, you know, a lot of cheers in my section, some booze, got a little heated in the section for a minute. Not going to blame my husband for that, but it was his fault. And, you know, there's got a little hot. And then after that, he goes away and it's just kind of like, can we just enjoy this, you know? And I do feel like there's that. I don't want the, if you're a liberal next fan, I don't want you to, don't let this ruin it for you. You know, a good middle finger at him and then moving, then focusing on Carl Anthony Towns and his brilliance, I think is probably the right thing to do. So, there's a funny viral video going around. It's so funny. So, we'll play the audio. My mayor Muslim, my bagels Jewish, my Christian New York, dead, dead, dead. Just like, just so shoot. It's very New York. Yeah, it's a very New York little scene. ASAP Rocky was out there. Anyway, it's fun. All right, Bill Kristol. There it is game tonight. We'll be back tomorrow. I guess I just will say to people, we're going to publish the next level early tomorrow. So, if you don't like tomorrow's guest on this show, you will have the next level podcast as well to choose from. And I think I'm going to enjoy myself. So, it'll be a little bit of a swerve from our usual fair. And then we'll be back to business as normal on Wednesday and the rest of the week. We've got a good schedule for you this week. Thanks to Bill Kristol. Everybody else. We'll see you tomorrow. So after school, I take a dip in the pool, which is really on the wall. I got a color TV so I can see the next playing basketball. Hit me, talk to my checkbook. Could it cost more money? I've been a sucker could ever spend, but I wouldn't give a sucker or a pump. I'm a rockin' out of time till I made it again. Everybody gets more. The podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer, Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown. So, you're running out of closet space. The good news? You don't need to stop shopping. You just need to start selling with the RealReal. 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