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Speaker 3: Welcome to Plot Save America.
Speaker 2: I'm John favor, I'm John Love It Tommy de Tour.
Speaker 3: On today's show, we'll talk about the biggest outbreak of
Speaker 3: violence in the Middle East since the so called ceasefire
Speaker 3: went into effect, the growing split between Trump and net
Speaker 3: and Yahoo, why Trump ripped off his mic and stormed
Speaker 3: out of a Meet the Press interview, his new conspiracy
Speaker 3: about voter fraud here in California, and what that could
Speaker 3: mean for November, Scott Pelly going public with his allegations
Speaker 3: against Barry Weiss, and Trump's decision to attend Game three
Speaker 3: of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden. Then Tommy
Speaker 3: talks to Roger Bennett, Men and Blazers about the World
Speaker 3: Cup kicking off on Thursday and the implications for global
Speaker 3: politics before we start. If you don't like listening to
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Speaker 3: injecting any any bias yet yet into any of his reporting,
Speaker 3: but once once he starts, yeah, we hearic crooked, Hopefully
Speaker 3: we'll keep the bias out of his reporters.
Speaker 1: We don't time to inject bias in the Scott Pelley reporting.
Speaker 1: We're too busy injecting and bias into everything we do.
Speaker 1: There you go, That's what I was trying to get at.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: That's perfect. Let's put that right in. Yeah, and you
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Speaker 3: All right, Happy one hundred day anniversary to the war
Speaker 3: that was supposed to be over in just a few weeks.
Speaker 3: Here's where things stand with Iran in the Middle East
Speaker 3: as of this recording. Over the weekend, the US and
Speaker 3: Iran were shooting drones and missiles at each other after
Speaker 3: oil tankers tried to pass through the Strait of Hor
Speaker 3: Moves without the IRGC's permission. Then, the newly negotiated ceasefire
Speaker 3: between Israel and Lebanon fell apart when Israel bombed Beirut
Speaker 3: after claiming that has Bela targeted them first. Iran responded
Speaker 3: by launching missiles at Israel for the first time since
Speaker 3: the April ceasefire. Trump then told Axios that he would
Speaker 3: warn Netan Yahoo quote not to retaliate, and told The
Speaker 3: Financial Times that he quote calls the shots. Netan Yahoo
Speaker 3: doesn't call the shots. Then net Yahoo essentially said yes,
Speaker 3: I do call the shots and struck Iran. So for now,
Speaker 3: both sides seem to have de escalated, and on Monday morning,
Speaker 3: Trump hosted that final peace negotiations or quote subject to
Speaker 3: ignorance or stupidity getting in its way. The President was
Speaker 3: asked about the war in a pre recorded Meet the
Speaker 3: Press interview that ran on Sunday. Here's some of what
Speaker 3: he said as it rained heavily in the background.
Speaker 4: Is the United States it war with Iran?
Speaker 5: Well, they've been largely decapitated.
Speaker 6: And I call it a military exercise because people would
Speaker 6: rather have it called that.
Speaker 5: It's not a big.
Speaker 7: War for us.
Speaker 4: How long are you willing to give Iran to make
Speaker 4: a deal? How much longer you've been talking for light
Speaker 4: and time?
Speaker 6: Well, and you really haven't you again, you were in
Speaker 6: Vietnam for nineteen years, you were.
Speaker 5: In Iraq for many years.
Speaker 4: Gas is up, diesel is up.
Speaker 5: It's all coming down as soon as the war's up.
Speaker 4: Seventy percent of farmers say they can't afford fertilizers.
Speaker 6: You're doing very well.
Speaker 4: I mean, one of your consistent campaign promises was no
Speaker 4: new wars going all the way back to twenty fifteen.
Speaker 4: Did you break that promise to the American people?
Speaker 5: What changed because you interisted? No?
Speaker 2: So because I didn't guarantee.
Speaker 3: Any war, didn't guarantee no war.
Speaker 1: The rain on this interview or it's boring rain and
Speaker 1: they have to stop for periods of time. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine anything more unpleasant than sitting in front of a
Speaker 1: tractor for five minutes while you wait for the rain
Speaker 1: to quiet down. In between questions about fertilizers.
Speaker 2: Probably hammering on a tin roof. And I know they
Speaker 2: had the John Deere tractors like strategically placed. But those
Speaker 2: are the haspul of flag colors. By the way, feel
Speaker 2: free to google it. That's those yellow and green just
Speaker 2: like that. So you and Hassan are big fans of
Speaker 2: that play. Here's so Trump said, Uh, of course, I
Speaker 2: what promise. I didn't make any promise about no new wars.
Speaker 2: And here's a here's a not so fast montage put
Speaker 2: together by decoding Fox News. Oh, we can't vote for him.
Speaker 5: He's going to start to with no. I used my
Speaker 5: personality that we didn't have to have wars.
Speaker 6: I was the first president in decades who started.
Speaker 5: No new wars, who started no new wars. Wait, don't
Speaker 5: need the wars.
Speaker 6: Foreign lands, countries you've never heard of, countries.
Speaker 2: That don't even want us there.
Speaker 5: We will expel the war mongers from our government.
Speaker 2: Look at me.
Speaker 7: I'm the one that kept us.
Speaker 2: Out of war.
Speaker 5: I'm going to keep you out of wars. I kept
Speaker 5: you out of wars.
Speaker 2: We had no wars with Donald Trump.
Speaker 7: You're not gonna have a war with me.
Speaker 5: And you're not going to have a Third World war
Speaker 5: with me.
Speaker 8: That I can tell you.
Speaker 3: The warmongers is a third World war, I think.
Speaker 1: I think a third World war a war, oh like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you're like, excuse me, mister president, developing nation war.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very dated Cold War terminologies.
Speaker 3: It's a global South war.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're not aligned with the Soviets anymore.
Speaker 3: To go on that tangent. Do you think he's just
Speaker 3: convinced himself that Iran doesn't count as a real war.
Speaker 2: What's the alternative he's not telling the truth? Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: I do think he's trying to make us believe this, Like, no,
Speaker 2: the real wars are the ones where you send troops
Speaker 2: overseas and they're deployed on the ground and they occupy country.
Speaker 2: And by the way, Vietnam was nineteen years Has it
Speaker 2: been nineteen years, folks? No, this is a little excursion
Speaker 2: as he calls it, when we all think he means incursion.
Speaker 2: Still right, Yeah, So that I do think that's like
Speaker 2: their attempt at selling this. It's pretty tough though, given
Speaker 2: the outside's economic costs, given the closure, the straight hor moves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's just you know, there's a big space between
Speaker 1: no War and Vietnam. Right, it's like, wow, we're so
Speaker 1: grateful you didn't launch another Vietnam h Well, that's not
Speaker 1: the standard.
Speaker 2: It'd be worse if this war had been.
Speaker 1: Going on as long as the Vietnam War. There's also
Speaker 1: something he's done it before. But he is so clib
Speaker 1: when he talks about people who died. He's like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's not a big war. It's not a big conflict.
Speaker 1: He lost thousands in these other other conflicts. We've only
Speaker 1: lost thirteen. And he adds a perfunctory and any death
Speaker 1: is unacceptable. But you're like an American president refer to
Speaker 1: the deaths as being minimal in this way, as if
Speaker 1: like that is acceptable or that makes it okay. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's just it's it's it's still drawing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's not just the fuel prices either. It's
Speaker 3: like fertilizer prices. It's actually hitting farmers pretty hard. His only,
Speaker 3: his only real message for farmers is like, just wait
Speaker 3: till it's over, right, it'll get better. It'll get so
Speaker 3: much better it's over.
Speaker 2: But by the way, that that's.
Speaker 1: Also of course not true, right, Like prices aren't going
Speaker 1: to suddenly drop it there's an agreement, and maybe there's
Speaker 1: some like immediate effect, but like the ramifications of the
Speaker 1: of the closure of the straight up, our mooves are
Speaker 1: gonna last for a very long time.
Speaker 3: So, Tommy, what did you make of the Wall Street
Speaker 3: Journal report on how Trump failed to reign in net
Speaker 3: Yahoo over these latest strikes? The New York Times had
Speaker 3: kind of the opposite take, which is that the eventual
Speaker 3: halts of the fighting on Monday left nt Nyah, who
Speaker 3: appearing is beholden to Trump.
Speaker 2: As ever, So I think the context people you understand
Speaker 2: is that the Israelis also have an election coming up.
Speaker 2: It will probably be sometime between now and October twenty
Speaker 2: seventh is when it will get schedule. And so for Trump,
Speaker 2: we know he has a midterm. A bad result will
Speaker 2: make his life complicated because of investigations and Democrats being
Speaker 2: in power. But for net Yaho's staying in power is
Speaker 2: existential because that could be the only way stays out
Speaker 2: of jail because there's all these corruption allegations and investigations
Speaker 2: and so. But politically, Americans and Israelis feel very differently
Speaker 2: about the war. Americans are like, this is dumb, why
Speaker 2: are we doing this? We heard that super cut of
Speaker 2: him saying there would be no wars. They're like, end it.
Speaker 2: Gas prices are high, end it. Israelis feel like this
Speaker 2: is not going well. We have not won. Net Yeah,
Speaker 2: who looks weak, and men Yea was actually getting attacked
Speaker 2: from the left and from the right for not finishing
Speaker 2: the war. And so he's in a tough place politically,
Speaker 2: and so Iran firing ballistic missiles directly at Israel because
Speaker 2: of something Israel did Lebanon exacerbates that problem for dan
Speaker 2: Yao further. So now n Yah is in a very
Speaker 2: tough political situation. He wants the Trump peace talks to fail,
Speaker 2: but he can't be completely overt in his meddling with
Speaker 2: those peace talks because he doesn't want to piss Trump
Speaker 2: off and then lose his political support and the military support.
Speaker 2: And so he also can't look like he's being fully
Speaker 2: controlled by Trump, like when Trump calls the FTE and
Speaker 2: is like I own this bitch, you know, Like that's
Speaker 2: a tough place for him to be politically. And he
Speaker 2: also doesn't want to look like he's gonna let Iran
Speaker 2: fire missiles and me mister security bet Nen Yahoo without responding.
Speaker 2: So it was just he's in a very tough place.
Speaker 2: It sounds like they navigated it better on Sunday than
Speaker 2: they did in the last call, where I guess Trump
Speaker 2: was like, hey, man, you're a fucking asshole. You'd be
Speaker 2: in jail if not for me. But you know this,
Speaker 2: the diversion interests are making this more and more complicated
Speaker 2: every day.
Speaker 3: Did you see it? One one US official told Axios.
Speaker 3: They describe the call between Trump and Netanyahu as quote polite,
Speaker 3: while a second US official noted that nobody shouted.
Speaker 2: So that's one. There we go.
Speaker 3: That is the standard. Yeah, it is. It is difficult
Speaker 3: for uh, it makes diplomacy a little bit harder when
Speaker 3: Trump makes all of the subtext text all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, as a rule, when someone says I call the
Speaker 1: shots around here, that's rarely said from a position of strength.
Speaker 1: You don't usually have to say if people know people,
Speaker 1: if you're calling the shots, you don't have to say it.
Speaker 2: You're just in the midst of calling the shots.
Speaker 3: Like he's like, as he's been saying, he holds all
Speaker 3: the cards. I hold all the cards in this war,
Speaker 3: and I call all the shots.
Speaker 2: Well, also he's saying he calls all the shots and
Speaker 2: a call to the reporter before he calls the other
Speaker 2: guy who's stop shooting.
Speaker 1: Get the sequencing wrong, Sir he Be said, I thought
Speaker 1: this was captured the situation. Israel has a full right
Speaker 1: to self defense and we are exercising it. I say
Speaker 1: this with appreciation and respect for my good conversations with
Speaker 1: President Trump. And so he just does the praise piece,
Speaker 1: but then he does whatever he wants. And maybe he's
Speaker 1: being limited in some ways and not in others.
Speaker 2: But if the.
Speaker 1: US cannot constrain Israel from escalating in Lebanon, how can
Speaker 1: there be a deal between Iran and the US in
Speaker 1: which Israel at any moment can break the seasefire? And
Speaker 1: so like any ways in which the US cannot constrain
Speaker 1: Israel is proof that a deal will not be upheld
Speaker 1: by our side. And so we're just in this place
Speaker 1: where everyone's testing each other. And like, if the idea
Speaker 1: of success is getting Bejamin net Yahou to only bomb
Speaker 1: outside of Beirut and not Beirut proper, and that's Donald
Speaker 1: Trump exerting his power, Like, I don't know how that
Speaker 1: ends with Iran having confidence that we can maintain a
Speaker 1: seas fire.
Speaker 2: This is the rub Iran Is, I think very successfully
Speaker 2: made a peace deal, continue on the war, ending on
Speaker 2: all the front so in around itself, but also in
Speaker 2: Lebanon and so other Lebanon, where as the Israelis are like, Nah,
Speaker 2: these are different conflicts with different timelines, and we want
Speaker 2: to keep prosecuting this fight against Tesbula because people in
Speaker 2: northern Israel are still under threat from drone attacks and
Speaker 2: I think that's going to again come to conflict here.
Speaker 1: And from the other side, right, Auran has an interest
Speaker 1: in making this a larger conflict in which they can
Speaker 1: use the Hesbela Israel conflict as as like a part
Speaker 1: of their negotiation, and so they can prolong it there
Speaker 1: and then walk away from the table saying they're blaming Israel,
Speaker 1: right like everybody is using the.
Speaker 2: Leverage that they have.
Speaker 3: Reportedly, the argument that Trump made to net Yahoo too
Speaker 3: was don't retaliate because I think I'm a few days
Speaker 3: away from a deal, and then if we don't get
Speaker 3: the deal, then maybe maybe I'll lead the strikes next
Speaker 3: time with you. So he really does. That's another on
Speaker 3: where like I think he genuinely believes or at least
Speaker 3: his team keeps leading him on, like we're so close,
Speaker 3: We're so we're on the one yard line, We're so
Speaker 3: close to a deal, and it just never actually happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I just I'll believe it when I
Speaker 2: see and I think, yeah, I was going to hate
Speaker 2: the deal that's on the table. Reportedly, we don't go
Speaker 2: through all the details, but it's a lot of sanctions
Speaker 2: relief and unfrozen assets and so yeah, again, it just
Speaker 2: seems like they're in very different pages here Bb and Trump.
Speaker 3: Well, even if it's this like mini deal where it's
Speaker 3: just reopening the Strait and you don't even get into
Speaker 3: a ton of sanctions relief somehow, that doesn't really do
Speaker 3: anything about Israel and Lebanon.
Speaker 2: No or saw the nuclear shape. Yeah, of course.
Speaker 3: So meanwhile, as the ceasefire was teetering, Pete Hegseth was
Speaker 3: in Europe to mark the eighty second anniversary of D Day,
Speaker 3: where he insulted our European allies with a speech that
Speaker 3: included lines like this.
Speaker 9: Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies.
Speaker 9: Beaches in Spain, in Italy and Greece and Bulgaria, boats
Speaker 9: and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about
Speaker 9: that invasion?
Speaker 1: This is one of my favorite analogies I've ever seen
Speaker 1: in the history of speech rating, because in that analogy
Speaker 1: he is he is putting current European leaders they are
Speaker 1: the Nazis, right, and the migrant caravans or boats. That's
Speaker 1: d Day And so what why is your in your
Speaker 1: analogy you're making You're making the Germans the Nazis.
Speaker 3: Again, well, he definitely wanted to twist it so that
Speaker 3: it's like different dangerous ideologies around the continent, but then
Speaker 3: also wanted to compare the boat's landing with the boats landing.
Speaker 2: It didn't It.
Speaker 3: Didn't work on a number of levels. Yeah, no, need
Speaker 3: to pick just one, but yeah, yeah, the good guys.
Speaker 2: Were in the boats storming the beaches, and now the
Speaker 2: dangerous ideologies are storming the beaches. So it's like, sir,
Speaker 2: did the dangerous ideologies raise the flagg ofy Regima? Because
Speaker 2: I feel like you've got this whole thing backwards.
Speaker 1: Well, I listened to the whole speech and it's so bad.
Speaker 1: It's obviously we can get into the actual substance of
Speaker 1: going going to going to Normandy on D Day to
Speaker 1: pick a fight for some reason.
Speaker 2: But he also makes this point.
Speaker 1: It's always in this sort of like the kind of
Speaker 1: like whatever Christian nationalism Western ideology thing that he's always doing.
Speaker 1: But he's like, you know, we defended Western values that
Speaker 1: here at D Day or some something to that effect. Guys,
Speaker 1: do you remember who the sides were in Europe? It
Speaker 1: was West on West violence. You know, it's like, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, it's it's just stupid. It's just stupid.
Speaker 3: It's also just like when you get underneath the bad
Speaker 3: analogies and pdxth not being the best speaker, like the
Speaker 3: fact that you know, replacement, the great replacement theory, which
Speaker 3: once used to be like this far right extremist thing
Speaker 3: that we talk about once a while. Now it's like
Speaker 3: the US Secretary of Defense goes to Europe and it's
Speaker 3: like the official position of the US government that the
Speaker 3: problem with mass migration. We're not even going to pretend
Speaker 3: it's border security or its job competition or it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, government's having to spend too much money to
Speaker 3: house migrants or anything like that. No, it's just it's
Speaker 3: dangerous ideologies. It is people who come ashore most of
Speaker 3: them women and children, some of them dead because there's men, yes, passment,
Speaker 3: because they're so desperate in the countries. And this is
Speaker 3: this represents a dangerous evil ideology in the eyes of
Speaker 3: the US government and what you said, Christian nationalism. The Pope,
Speaker 3: the first American Pope, is going to spend July fourth
Speaker 3: on one of those islands, Lampadusa where migrants come ashore,
Speaker 3: which he's doing because the last pope also would do
Speaker 3: that all the time, and so he's doing it in
Speaker 3: honor of Pope Francis. And this is like you know,
Speaker 3: Pete Hegseth is talking about, this is.
Speaker 1: Like evil migrants are as dangerous to Europe today as
Speaker 1: Americans were to the nothings. That's that's the analogy. He
Speaker 1: says in the speech that that what was being defended
Speaker 1: on D Day was the Western tradition of freedom.
Speaker 2: As if like.
Speaker 1: Again, it's just sort of going back to Christian nationalism
Speaker 1: and a sort of whole like Western ideology. But like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about, Like we weren't there was
Speaker 1: a Western it was Western West.
Speaker 2: Violence doesn't make any sense. Yeah, they're also like there
Speaker 2: seem to be two criticisms in the speech. Part of
Speaker 2: it is a criticism of like defense spending or lack
Speaker 2: of defense spending in Europe and kind the typical free
Speaker 2: you've been free riding on the US and NATO argument
Speaker 2: that we hear it. And then there was this criticism
Speaker 2: of European immigration policy and European countries letting in migrants,
Speaker 2: many of whom were escaping wars, by the way, in
Speaker 2: some cases were started by the United States. Either way,
Speaker 2: it's just a wildly inappropriate place to be such a dickhead,
Speaker 2: Like usually cemetery. Usually these are just celebrations of the
Speaker 2: few remaining veterans and the people we've lost in the war.
Speaker 2: It's also like an example of how the free world
Speaker 2: came together to defeat fascism. Meanwhile, like Pete Hegseth and
Speaker 2: Trump and the Pentagon are allowing the Ukrainians to just
Speaker 2: kind of dangle in the wind in their effort to
Speaker 2: fight back against Vladimir Putin. So it's like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: just the whole thing felt so inappropriate, And how many
Speaker 2: times have Republicans told us like, that's not the forum
Speaker 2: to have a policy dispute, right, Like the memorials not
Speaker 2: where you talk about gun control or like actual efforts
Speaker 2: to stop gun violence. And he's just going there and
Speaker 2: yelling at people for thirteen minutes and this weird.
Speaker 3: Speech about the long Way from a long Way from
Speaker 3: Reagan's Ponda Hawk spyn Okay.
Speaker 1: Well you know I was thinking about that. That's he
Speaker 1: was thinking about that speech when he was trying to
Speaker 1: do this. Yeah, it's also like you know, you have
Speaker 1: vance weighing in on uh, like a horrible death in
Speaker 1: the UK.
Speaker 2: It's there.
Speaker 1: He's just traveling all the way to Normandy to weigh
Speaker 1: and like immigration is a domestic issue, like you're talking
Speaker 1: about domestic policy issue. He also at the in the
Speaker 1: Tommy's points, I was like, no, you know, in World
Speaker 1: War two like there was we really put ourselves on
Speaker 1: the line for each other. It wasn't just slogans, summits
Speaker 1: and communicates like yeah, man, it was World War two
Speaker 1: like there, It wasn't up. We were at war, you
Speaker 1: do you know you had to actually fight everybody like
Speaker 1: in peace right and you would work with your ally,
Speaker 1: presumably having some kind of conversations via whatever means you'd want.
Speaker 2: It's this very like stupid, like stupid.
Speaker 1: Guy, h but it is just it's just just stupid guy.
Speaker 1: Uh no, slow There wasn't just slow bag day speech, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, I got to go there and tell
Speaker 1: you know, I don't for me.
Speaker 2: World War two. It wasn't just slogans. Yeah, man, did
Speaker 2: you catch how it started? The most offensive line maybe
Speaker 2: was the very first line was thank you, Ambassador Kushner.
Speaker 2: I didn't care. It corrupts dad. Oh my god, our
Speaker 2: ambassador to France? Ose?
Speaker 3: Is he France?
Speaker 2: Isn't that depressing? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I forgot about that soccer and good stuff? Well, Happy
Speaker 3: Happy d Day.
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Speaker 1: with Built. Join the membership for where you live at
Speaker 1: join built dot com, slash crooked. That's j O I
Speaker 1: N b I lt dot com slash crooked. Make sure
Speaker 1: you use ur ur L so they know we sent you.
Speaker 3: All right, So the most viral moment from Trump's Meet
Speaker 3: the Press interview was when the president ripped off his
Speaker 3: mic and stormed off set.
Speaker 2: Did he stump on the mic? A lot of people
Speaker 2: are saying that you threw on the ground and stun all.
Speaker 2: We can watch a second. It's unclear.
Speaker 3: It started with some tough questions from Kristen Welker about
Speaker 3: the insurrection a slush fund, which led to Trump repeating
Speaker 3: his favorite conspiracies about January sixth and the twenty twenty election,
Speaker 3: and then things just evolved from there. The whole sequence
Speaker 3: lasted about six minutes, which we won't play in full,
Speaker 3: but here are the highlights.
Speaker 6: I don't know what's going to happen with the representation front.
Speaker 6: I love the idea they sent people to jail who
Speaker 6: did nothing wrong.
Speaker 4: Just be very clear, there's no evidence of what you're saying.
Speaker 4: But Toddlin, the election was rigged.
Speaker 5: It was a dirty election. This is happening again right
Speaker 5: now in California. Happening right now in.
Speaker 6: California, right now, it's looking look at what's happened in
Speaker 6: California that it's four days and they aren't even close
Speaker 6: to coming up with it. You know why they're doing
Speaker 6: that because they're cheating on the election.
Speaker 2: What do you have evidence you have to do?
Speaker 6: You're either crooked or you're stupid. You play right into
Speaker 6: their hands with this rep Your elections are crooked, and
Speaker 6: you and West Depresses crooked, and so.
Speaker 5: Is ABC and CBS and the mister press, the.
Speaker 6: One shided crooked network shot let's waller switch because I've
Speaker 6: had a though, thank you, darling, have you go please?
Speaker 4: I traveled all the way to Wisconsin, im I know
Speaker 4: IA on.
Speaker 6: And off in the ring, and I've given you enough
Speaker 6: time you would to straighten out your pressed because.
Speaker 2: You know what, mister prof.
Speaker 4: Country can never be great travel with a We traveled
Speaker 4: all the way to Wisconsin for the I can't till
Speaker 4: he did.
Speaker 2: It on purpose?
Speaker 3: Think he accidentally crunched it, okay, reminds me of when
Speaker 3: everything else was on purpose.
Speaker 2: But that but when I went to when.
Speaker 1: I'm into Michigan and interview Bernie and then like about
Speaker 1: twelve minutes and he's like this, that was a tough
Speaker 1: remember that, Austin, wrap it up?
Speaker 2: That was that was that was a gut punch. It's
Speaker 2: good punch.
Speaker 3: You're either crooked or you're stupid. Actually, that's a great
Speaker 3: slogan for ourself from now, please consider subscribing in front
Speaker 3: of the pod because you're either.
Speaker 2: Crooked or you're stupid dot com slash friends.
Speaker 3: That was he was very mad there.
Speaker 2: He really rose like you're crooked. He was.
Speaker 1: He was like the part of the I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: the whole godamn system on trial there.
Speaker 3: Crooked, CNN, NBC, ABC, Is there anyone else?
Speaker 2: Lest Schwartz was worse but apprentice than I was.
Speaker 1: Yells at Christen Welker like she's, yeah, elections, but did
Speaker 1: you get when they came back? I watched the Meet
Speaker 1: the Press version and when Welker comes back after the interview,
Speaker 1: she that I spoke to the president again and he
Speaker 1: said he'd happily come on and get into the future.
Speaker 2: So he called her. So it's just it's all, it's
Speaker 2: all a show. He loves her also, like she's such
Speaker 2: a nice, calm, measured person. The idea that you would
Speaker 2: flip out on Christen Welker like that is so funny,
Speaker 2: you know, such a baby.
Speaker 3: He flipped out because she said, do you have the evidence?
Speaker 3: Where's the evidence? It's like, man, in his mind, it's
Speaker 3: just like, well, that's what my people told me. And
Speaker 3: I saw it on the TV, and I saw it
Speaker 3: in the pote and the truths that I that I reposted,
Speaker 3: that I retruthed, and so he has no fucking ideas.
Speaker 3: All you have to do is look, if everyone would
Speaker 3: just look at what I looked at, you'd know that
Speaker 3: it was crooked.
Speaker 2: I think it's you're asking for evidence. You know I
Speaker 2: don't have that. Fuck you, I've got to make it
Speaker 2: up on television, you know that, so mad about the
Speaker 2: rain as if she's making rain.
Speaker 3: He also did the because it was too long, we
Speaker 3: didn't play it, but he did the whole thing again
Speaker 3: on where on January sixth, the FBI agents the credit
Speaker 3: FBI was standing outside sending people in to the to
Speaker 3: the Capitol. It's like you were fucking president dog.
Speaker 1: They only pleaded guilty because they were threatened with jails.
Speaker 3: Were talking about they're on video beating up cops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone has knocked down this dumb conspiracy that the
Speaker 2: FBI set up. The January sixth rioders the.
Speaker 3: FBI that was under the control of Donald Trump on
Speaker 3: the slush fund. We'll start there and then we can
Speaker 3: get to the fraud in California. We talked last episode
Speaker 3: about Todd Blanche tell in Congress that the administration would
Speaker 3: not be moving forward with the idea, even though Trump
Speaker 3: says still he loves it, and then Senate Republicans blocked
Speaker 3: the bipartisan attempts to actually ban the slush fund just
Speaker 3: in case Trump changes his mind. Now the House is
Speaker 3: going to give it a go. Democrat Tom Swazi and
Speaker 3: Republican Brian Fitzpatrick will launch a charge petition this week
Speaker 3: to force a vote on their bill to ban the
Speaker 3: slush fund. Two questions, You think the vulnerable Republicans who
Speaker 3: voted to kill the fund have successfully neutralized their political risk?
Speaker 3: I think that was Collins, Housted and Dan Sullivan all
Speaker 3: up for reelection. They vote, but then they voted for
Speaker 3: the final bill. And do you think Trump will actually
Speaker 3: just let this thing die? Or is this not the
Speaker 3: last we've heard of it?
Speaker 1: So he also says to Welker at some point he
Speaker 1: still likes the fund, but you have to get it approved.
Speaker 1: And if it didn't get approved, I'd be disappointed. So
Speaker 1: that's where he's at now. Approved they didn't. He didn't
Speaker 1: claim to need it approved in the first place, And
Speaker 1: I was hiding behind the idea of it being approved
Speaker 1: in some way. So he's sort of leaving his options open,
Speaker 1: I think, to let it go or do it in
Speaker 1: some other fashion. I think the like it's very clear
Speaker 1: that they did not appreciate how big of a political
Speaker 1: problem it would be to launch this thing. Todd Blanche
Speaker 1: clearly thought this was going to be He was doing
Speaker 1: what he Trump wanted and got him the nomination to
Speaker 1: be Attorney general, and then it just.
Speaker 2: The whole thing blew up. Yeah. To me, he sounds
Speaker 2: like a man who is not ashamed by the fund
Speaker 2: or worried about the politics. It sounds like he thinks
Speaker 2: he's owed this, genuinely thinks he has owed this money.
Speaker 2: He deserves this money, just like he has owed the
Speaker 2: money from CBS because of that lawsuit, or the bribes
Speaker 2: from the tech companies to build his ballroom, and goddamn it,
Speaker 2: he's going to get it. And that's why, to me,
Speaker 2: the political risk for all the vulnerable members does not
Speaker 2: go away, because I don't think he's going to drop it,
Speaker 2: and I think it's going to be an ongoing issue,
Speaker 2: and just like to be to be having this conversation
Speaker 2: is so politically damaging, Like this man is trying to
Speaker 2: extort us taxpayers for one point eight billion dollars to
Speaker 2: pay off people who beat up cops. That is crazy.
Speaker 3: This is the taxpayer funded transition Surgery for prisoners issue
Speaker 3: of from twenty twenty four in the twenty twenty six
Speaker 3: mid terms. Like I have not seen a pole yet
Speaker 3: about this, but like throwing a poll at one point
Speaker 3: eight billion dollars from the taxpayers to pay out people
Speaker 3: who were convicted criminals on camera trying to murder cops.
Speaker 3: That's that's what we're doing. That's where tax paramney is
Speaker 3: going at a time of inflation and high gas prices.
Speaker 3: It's like, I can't great. And also for like Susan
Speaker 3: Collins and John Houstead and Dan Sullivan, they voted for
Speaker 3: the bill. They voted for the like they tried to,
Speaker 3: you know, vote for the provision that would block it,
Speaker 3: but then when that failed, they gave the green light
Speaker 3: to the whole bill that went forward and they didn't
Speaker 3: do anything to stop it. They could have voted again
Speaker 3: because you know who did vote against the final bill,
Speaker 3: Lisa Murcusky, And she's the only Republican who did, and
Speaker 3: the rest of them just said fuck it, I'm just
Speaker 3: gonna vote for the bill anyway.
Speaker 1: It is this sort of like even on the merits
Speaker 1: like this is the core of the problem of someone
Speaker 1: like Susan Collins or these Republicans who tried it once
Speaker 1: in a while, stake out and anti Trump view, but
Speaker 1: for the most part vote with the caucus, which is
Speaker 1: they are part of enabling Donald Trump. And the only
Speaker 1: reason we got to the point where this fund could
Speaker 1: be proposed is because Donald Trump believes that he has
Speaker 1: the Republican Caucus in his pocket and he is right
Speaker 1: and for all their kind of hemming and high and
Speaker 1: all the concerns, who's in Collins has shown she is
Speaker 1: one of the fifty enablers of Donald Trump time and
Speaker 1: time again. And you can go to the podium and
Speaker 1: give these statements, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you support a Senate majority in a Senate, you support
Speaker 1: Donald Trump being able to do whatever he wants without
Speaker 1: any kind of accountability.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about the fraud claims from Trump and
Speaker 3: night Meet the Press interview, which again started with his
Speaker 3: usual bullshit about twenty twenty, but also included some fresh
Speaker 3: material on last week's California primaries where the votes are
Speaker 3: still being counted. A reminder that everyone here in California
Speaker 3: gets a ballot in the mail, which you can return
Speaker 3: by mail or drop off in person, and as long
Speaker 3: as you get it postmarked by election day and it
Speaker 3: arrives within seven days, it does get counted. That process
Speaker 3: means the count is very slow and big changes can
Speaker 3: happen late, especially in an election like this where a
Speaker 3: lot of voters, especially Democrats, were undecided until the very end.
Speaker 3: And that is of course what is ha happening right now.
Speaker 3: In the LA mayor's race. Nathie Rahman has now overtaken
Speaker 3: Spencer Pratt in account and it appears she will make
Speaker 3: the runoff and face Karen Bass in November. That's what
Speaker 3: some organizations are projecting. AP hasn't gone with it yet,
Speaker 3: but it's definitely trending that way. This led to many
Speaker 3: Trump posts, the most recent as of this recording being
Speaker 3: quote not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the
Speaker 3: LA runoffs after the big lead he had Third world
Speaker 3: nation rigged elections. Now they'll be working on a great guy,
Speaker 3: Steve Hilton. Hilton is the Trump endorsed Republican in the
Speaker 3: governor's race, who's currently sitting in the second general election slot,
Speaker 3: though Tom Steyer is gaining on him. Unclear if Styer
Speaker 3: will actually catch him. And plenty of maga dipshit's are
Speaker 3: following Trump's lead on this. Here's just a sample.
Speaker 10: I'm not saying it's rigged. I'm saying it stinks to
Speaker 10: high heaven. And everybody knows that California is playing around
Speaker 10: with us.
Speaker 5: But what evidence is there to prove that that it.
Speaker 6: Was his rank?
Speaker 10: I don't Some of these efforts are so diabolical and
Speaker 10: so far upstream it is impossible to prove. But I
Speaker 10: think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here.
Speaker 3: So people can just dig through garbage cans, find ballots
Speaker 3: and send them in apparently forever after an election is over.
Speaker 2: It's not okay. Really smart people need to go to
Speaker 2: the acts. Dum smart. That's what Randy Fine looks like.
Speaker 2: Randy Randy Fine, Harvard Harvard twice. Let me check it.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna check the facts.
Speaker 3: Check the fine.
Speaker 2: Randy Fine, Harvard.
Speaker 3: Undergrad and grad. What was his I don't know what
Speaker 3: the graduate degree.
Speaker 2: Is Harvard Harvard University b A N B a.
Speaker 3: Wow, NBA, it was a school.
Speaker 2: There we go, There we go. Sounds like a good time.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, a lot of people get into Harvard,
Speaker 1: but he's sparking a lot of people don't get it.
Speaker 2: So that's the cool thing about Harvard.
Speaker 3: So before we even get to the fraud part, thoughts
Speaker 3: on Mithia overtaking Pratt.
Speaker 2: It's a bad day for Karen Bash.
Speaker 1: They thought they could have a nice little runoff where
Speaker 1: basically she got to run against Rick Caruso with a
Speaker 1: head injury.
Speaker 2: And instead it's.
Speaker 1: Instead instead, and instead she's going to face somebody that
Speaker 1: has a hot that actually, like, you know, Karen Bass
Speaker 1: is unpopular Nythia. I think a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: know Nythia, but she has a positive approval rating among
Speaker 1: people who do know her. It doesn't surprise me that
Speaker 1: a lot of the kind of hyper engage LA voter
Speaker 1: who didn't want to vote for the governor's race to
Speaker 1: the last possible minute were a bunch of Nythia Rahman
Speaker 1: voters that were paying really close attention. But I do
Speaker 1: think it's very good for Los Angeles because it means
Speaker 1: we now get a runoff where with real stakes about
Speaker 1: what kind of democratic leadership we want as opposed to
Speaker 1: what we would have had, which is six months.
Speaker 2: I fear mongering run spen spread. Yeah, just to be clear,
Speaker 2: establishment Democrats in California are rigging the election to make
Speaker 2: it harder for the incumbent mayor to win the mayoral
Speaker 2: here in Los Angeles, but also rigging it so the
Speaker 2: statewide race will include a Republican so that Steve Hilton
Speaker 2: has a chance to become governor.
Speaker 3: It's because we know what's up here in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: That makes sense, that makes sense. He did love his point.
Speaker 2: You know, head injuries is whaxed by a big crystal
Speaker 2: and the like. Now it's a real race, like Karen
Speaker 2: bass is a week incumbent because of handling of the fires, homelessness,
Speaker 2: cost of living, like anger at incumbents generally, and Spencer
Speaker 2: Pratt was was dominating the battle for attention for super
Speaker 2: online people, if you're a Twitter power user, if you're
Speaker 2: super politically engaged. Spencer Pratt was everywhere because our algorithms
Speaker 2: were feeding us his AI slop crap, and you know,
Speaker 2: just felt like he was all over And that's a
Speaker 2: small slice of the electorate. It turns out because the
Speaker 2: LA Times did a poll right before the election where
Speaker 2: they modeled the actual electorate, and that poll looks like
Speaker 2: it was pretty much spot on at this point. And
Speaker 2: so what actually happened is what I think that political
Speaker 2: professionals always assumed would happen, which is the MAGA adjacent candidate.
Speaker 2: Spencer Pratt was never going to do very well in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles in a county where fifteen percent of Regis
Speaker 2: voters are Republican and Trump is fifty five points underwater,
Speaker 2: and Pratt was aligned with Trump like that of course
Speaker 2: that was what's going to happen here.
Speaker 3: In fact, Spencer Pratt's campaign was nothing special at all,
Speaker 3: and and like you know, I think you could look
Speaker 3: at the media tactics and say, there's there's things for
Speaker 3: other candidates to learn about how to grab attention. But yeah,
Speaker 3: the La TA the La Times poll that you mentioned, Tommy,
Speaker 3: it was it was May twenty eighth, so like a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks before the election, and it was Bass
Speaker 3: twenty six, Romen twenty five. Pratt twenty two. Didn't get
Speaker 3: as much attention because it sort of went against the
Speaker 3: prevailing narrative of like the super online set, which is
Speaker 3: journalists and all of us, and people are all us
Speaker 3: for sure, and then but today it's right now, it's
Speaker 3: Bass thirty four, Romen twenty seven, Pratt twenty six. And
Speaker 3: you know, you could see sort of Pratt going even
Speaker 3: lower and maybe Bass going a little bit lower as
Speaker 3: the as the final vote comes in. But we'll see,
Speaker 3: and it turns out that Spencer Pratt is it's probably
Speaker 3: going to finish almost where Donald Trump finished in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four in this city. And now that's a bigger
Speaker 3: electric so like you can't it's not exactly apples to apples.
Speaker 3: But he also he did much worse than Caruso did. Uh,
Speaker 3: Cruzo spent more money, but also Spencer Pratt raised more
Speaker 3: than Karen Bass or Nythia spent more, had crazy amount
Speaker 3: of attention, and basically performed like a standard issue Republican
Speaker 3: in Los Angeles, absolutely no better at all.
Speaker 1: Imagine if like Joe Biden had give an interview saying that,
Speaker 1: like Amy McGrath's loss is because of fraud in Kentucky,
Speaker 1: because everybody loves Amy McGrath and Amy grath is doing
Speaker 1: incredible stuff out there. Look, there are people that, like
Speaker 1: you know, they are they're captivating to the kind of
Speaker 1: people that are watching really closely that are hyperpartisan. But
Speaker 1: then voters in LA who I think are really frustrated
Speaker 1: with Karen Bass, really frustrated with Democrats, they would and
Speaker 1: for all we know, we don't know, right, if Nythia
Speaker 1: Ramin weren't in the race, like, how many anti incumbent
Speaker 1: votes might have gone to Spencer Pratt.
Speaker 2: Like I think it's a.
Speaker 1: I think it's a little bit more than just the
Speaker 1: kind of he got, the kind of standard Republican vote.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't know how many votes for Ramen
Speaker 1: are Democrats who are just anti incumbent and maybe they
Speaker 1: could have been Spencer Pratt voters, right, because they just
Speaker 1: did not want to vote for Karen Bass. But regardless,
Speaker 1: as much as people in this city are really frustrated
Speaker 1: with Democratic leadership, they're not going to vote for someone
Speaker 1: aligned with Trump who was going around saying crazy shit
Speaker 1: about the city.
Speaker 3: He ran a horrible campaign, and he actually became more
Speaker 3: maga the closer it got to election day, like he's
Speaker 3: I think we talked about this, maybe off Mike or Onike,
Speaker 3: I can't remember anymore. But he spent the weekend before
Speaker 3: the election in New York on Fox and Friends. It
Speaker 3: was not Gutfeld too, calling for Nithia and Karen Bass
Speaker 3: to be jailed and then talking about how people were
Speaker 3: raping dogs in skid row, like that's how That's how
Speaker 3: he ended the race. He became more of like a
Speaker 3: meglomaniac at the end, or at least openly. He didn't
Speaker 3: try at all to distance himself from Republicans at all,
Speaker 3: like Rick Caruso ran a race where he was at
Speaker 3: least like, I'm going to listen to both sides, like
Speaker 3: he tried to be as nonpartisan as possible, which is
Speaker 3: probably why he ended up doing better than Spencer Pratt.
Speaker 3: But Spencer Pratt actually got more maga seeming the closer
Speaker 3: he got to election day. So andyone was like, oh,
Speaker 3: it was a brilliant campaign this and that's like, no,
Speaker 3: it wasn't. He had the possibility of maybe running a
Speaker 3: campaign where he had this like angry populist message and
Speaker 3: he sort of tapped into the frustration with the government,
Speaker 3: but he just fucking blew it as the as the
Speaker 3: race got closer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I should say, like, obviously I've been very
Speaker 1: insulting to Spencer Pratt, and there's a there, like he
Speaker 1: lost his house. There's a lot of anger about the
Speaker 1: way the fires were managed, but he just didn't run
Speaker 1: that campaign. And I do think there's like a kind
Speaker 1: of insular conversation that happened. If you look at the
Speaker 1: map of where Spencer Pratt vote came from, there's this
Speaker 1: kind of ring of like wealthier places around the city
Speaker 1: that like are people that are very online, I think,
Speaker 1: very kind of like Bill Maher fairy Weiss world kind
Speaker 1: of coded at least like like just sort of tapped
Speaker 1: into that world who are really frustrated with Democrats, who
Speaker 1: think the Democrats have gone crazy and moved too far
Speaker 1: left right, And there's just not that that's that is
Speaker 1: a big pool of people on the internet, right, And it's.
Speaker 3: A big pool of people who yeah, on the Internet
Speaker 3: and just who have like outsized influences and louder megaphones
Speaker 3: and other people. Because it wasn't I will say, it
Speaker 3: wasn't purely an online phenomenon, and that like we all
Speaker 3: know people and we were in circles where someone's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I've talked to some Democrats who were voting for Spencer Pratten,
Speaker 3: and now I would always ask him like, are you
Speaker 3: are they Democrats who voted for Karen Bass last time
Speaker 3: or are they Caruso voters who were now Pratt voters?
Speaker 3: And you didn't find too many Bass Pratt voters out there.
Speaker 2: Right, There was a genuine frustration with Karen Bass. I
Speaker 2: personally felt it. We talked about this on the show.
Speaker 2: Her management of the city around the fire, as I thought,
Speaker 2: was really really bad. And I think for Spencer Pratt
Speaker 2: having his house burned down, understandably he was channeling some
Speaker 2: legitimate and righteous rage about all things LA and the fires.
Speaker 2: If Rick Cruso had won again, I think there's a
Speaker 2: very good chance he could have done well and made
Speaker 2: the runoff maybe one outright, yeah, because he had a
Speaker 2: track record. He was like I built the grove and
Speaker 2: and Spencer Prats like I coined the term Spidey and
Speaker 2: maybe leaked a sex tape about LC. Yeah it's for me,
Speaker 2: Like he just let you self evidently not qualified for
Speaker 2: the job. So I mean like that, this is what
Speaker 2: was so frustrating. And I think about the boomlet about
Speaker 2: the guy was it was just like kind of like
Speaker 2: TMG adjacent Twitter algorithm pumped bullshit and hype backed by.
Speaker 3: Nothing well, and to your point, love it about the map.
Speaker 3: It's it's analogous too for those of you listening from
Speaker 3: DC or have been to DC. Like how people in
Speaker 3: northwest DC and northwest d C think like that's the
Speaker 3: whole city and there's actually three other quadrants in d
Speaker 3: C where a ton of fucking people live. They're just
Speaker 3: not as loud or as privileged as everyone in the northwest.
Speaker 3: And that, I think is what happened in LA too,
Speaker 3: is like there's this is a big, big city and
Speaker 3: all those places they voted for Bass, especially in southern
Speaker 3: in eastern LA and Nythia as well, like they're just
Speaker 3: not a Nythea's areas are definitely wealthier, for sure, but
Speaker 3: there's just it's just an outsize influence and loudness you
Speaker 3: get from people on the west side that doesn't actually
Speaker 3: represent most of LA. So on the fraud allegations, how
Speaker 3: seriously do you guys take those allegations from Trump and
Speaker 3: other Republicans as a potential harbinger of things to come
Speaker 3: in November or future elections?
Speaker 2: I guess I mean Trump's gonna say that any election
Speaker 2: he or Republicans did not win was stolen, right, It's
Speaker 2: a headside wind tells you lose set up. I think
Speaker 2: this was kind of the perfect storms. The Spencer Boomlet,
Speaker 2: this expectation that just built and built and built, that
Speaker 2: he was some great candidate and going to win. Then
Speaker 2: there's the California voting process and how slow it is,
Speaker 2: and we'll talk about that in a second, and then
Speaker 2: you know this just it wasn't like a big election
Speaker 2: night with a lot of other things to talk about.
Speaker 2: It was a lot of people focusing on this in
Speaker 2: this still counting. And so I think what I found
Speaker 2: personally so annoying about this is how much information you
Speaker 2: can find about the process if you try to find it.
Speaker 2: Like I got in a little exchange with Megan McCain
Speaker 2: about this on Sunday, I was bored on a flight.
Speaker 2: She's an unpleasant person who doesn't apparently want to educate herself.
Speaker 2: But like, you could go reporters, the counting process is
Speaker 2: live streamed. Reporters can and do go to the processing center.
Speaker 2: The general public can and do go to observe the
Speaker 2: counting if you want to. There are representatives from the
Speaker 2: campaigns observing the counting. Like the problems are well documented,
Speaker 2: LA County is the largest election jurisdiction in the country.
Speaker 2: They are more registered voters in this county than forty
Speaker 2: one states have statewide.
Speaker 3: I know ten million people in LA County. People don't
Speaker 3: understand this. It's really big, people, it's really big here.
Speaker 2: Everyone come visit. And in California, most of us vote
Speaker 2: by mail. It's like eighty or ninety percent of California
Speaker 2: voters use the valve that gets mailed to your house,
Speaker 2: compared to fifteen percent in Texas. And I love that
Speaker 2: because our ballot is really long and complicated. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff you got to google and it takes hours.
Speaker 2: And like, I'm glad I could do that at home.
Speaker 2: And so, like you mentioned, vote by mail ballots, if
Speaker 2: they're postmarked on election day, received within seven days, they
Speaker 2: get counted. The signature matching process can take a lot
Speaker 2: of time. Again, that's a thing Republicans like I was gonna, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think you guys like the signature matching process. That's
Speaker 2: called voter verification. And if there's an issue with your signature,
Speaker 2: there's time to cure it and fix it. That can
Speaker 2: take time. Takes time to open the ballots, check the signatures,
Speaker 2: like what we should do is put more money, more time,
Speaker 2: more resources, more people, more machines, throw it at this problem,
Speaker 2: try to speed it up a little bit.
Speaker 1: That would be helpful. But like, we have a lot
Speaker 1: of people here, this is how we vote. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean we have a lot of people, but the scale shouldn't.
Speaker 2: Be a factor.
Speaker 1: And how quickly we count the ballots, right like Texas
Speaker 1: can count the.
Speaker 2: Faster for other reasons. I'm saying that there.
Speaker 1: I think there's there are ways in which we can
Speaker 1: keep postmarked by election day, we keep all the kind
Speaker 1: of pro voter policies that we have, and it can
Speaker 1: be done. Should be faster, It'd be much faster now.
Speaker 1: I do think one part of this is a lot
Speaker 1: of people held their ballots because they were waiting. They're
Speaker 1: being strategic about the governor's race, or maybe they just
Speaker 1: weren't and just actually didn't feel inspired by their choices. Whatever,
Speaker 1: people really helped them to their ballots. I think the
Speaker 1: two things should happen one going into November in California.
Speaker 1: I think we all really need to view it as
Speaker 1: kind of a civic responsibility to get our ballots in sooner, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I think we can all help by having more ballots
Speaker 1: in and then two. So California now counties have to
Speaker 1: have to count the most of the votes within thirteen days,
Speaker 1: or they have to notify their provisional ballots and exceptions,
Speaker 1: but they have to count within thirteen days. But with
Speaker 1: some more resources, it should be possible that on election
Speaker 1: night they've counted all the ballots they've already received and
Speaker 1: can put those numbers up and then kind of the
Speaker 1: counts can be happening quicker. And that is a resource question.
Speaker 6: You have.
Speaker 1: Counties where they're still taking you know, it's days and
Speaker 1: days and days after they're getting ballots that they can
Speaker 1: ultimately get to counting them. They have limited hours, they've
Speaker 1: limited space, like all of this could be resolved, and
Speaker 1: you know Governor govin Newsim has talked about this about
Speaker 1: wanting the ballots to be faster. I just don't appreciate
Speaker 1: when the Secretary of State of California is like, we
Speaker 1: want to be it's accuracy, not speed. I wish there
Speaker 1: was more acknowledgement that the process could be faster, what
Speaker 1: the resources would be required, because it's a huge problem.
Speaker 1: And look, there's nothing you can do to account for
Speaker 1: the fact that these people are going to accuse us
Speaker 1: a fraud.
Speaker 2: But I do think we should be able.
Speaker 1: To count our ballots faster, even at this size.
Speaker 2: Right, I agree, Like that's why I said no more money,
Speaker 2: more resources, Like we should count faster. It sucks, it's frustrating,
Speaker 2: it's embarrassing. What I just have no time for is
Speaker 2: the people who don't spend one second trying to find
Speaker 2: good information. They spread the meme that they got forwarded
Speaker 2: by their aunt on Facebook, and like they're like people
Speaker 2: kicking up the quote from Trump. It's like he doesn't
Speaker 2: know a goddamn thing about what's happening.
Speaker 3: Also, let's let's be clear here. The reason we all
Speaker 3: want it counted faster is because we know that if
Speaker 3: it's not being counted fast enough, then Republicans now cry.
Speaker 2: Fraud in the election.
Speaker 3: There's no civic, governmental reason for it to be counted faster.
Speaker 3: It would be nice. We're all fucking impatient people and
Speaker 3: just want results really fast. But like, now, look to
Speaker 3: your point, love it. There are other states with mostly
Speaker 3: mail in ballots where you can postmark by election day,
Speaker 3: Washington State, Colorado, et cetera. And they're all faster than us.
Speaker 3: Now they are smaller states. I do think the biggest
Speaker 3: problem with California is we leave it to the counties still,
Speaker 3: and so like Los Angeles, actually Los Angeles County was
Speaker 3: still posting updates over the weekend. A lot of counties
Speaker 3: just no one works on the weekend to count the ballots.
Speaker 3: They don't have enough staff, they don't post anything on
Speaker 3: the weekends, and there's just not enough machinery. So I
Speaker 3: think there is no excuse for the state legislature, which
Speaker 3: is controlled by Democrats and there's a democratic governor to
Speaker 3: pass more funding for staff or resources for a faster
Speaker 3: signature verification process, which you could probably do as well.
Speaker 3: You could probably limit the window for curing your ballot
Speaker 3: if the signature doesn't match, because you have like twenty
Speaker 3: days I think to cure your ballot at this point,
Speaker 3: which is it's pretty long, right, So there's there's definitely
Speaker 3: things you can do on the margin to make it
Speaker 3: faster by making it a whole state thing instead of
Speaker 3: county by county.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yes, it is to answer totally bullshit allegations
Speaker 1: of fraud, but also we're the fourth fifth largest economy
Speaker 1: on Earth. Why are we having so much trouble doing
Speaker 1: something that other places can do faster than us.
Speaker 2: I do think that that is like it. It's about
Speaker 2: good government too. Yeah. Yeah, Positive America is brought to
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Speaker 3: All right, So, Alex and I talked on Friday about
Speaker 3: the mess at sixty minutes and Scott Pelly's decision to
Speaker 3: sound the alarm about what he says is conservative bias
Speaker 3: at CBS News under Barry Weiss, which led to Pelly's firing.
Speaker 3: He then sat down with The New York Times for
Speaker 3: a conversation with Lulugarcianavarro at the interview, which published over
Speaker 3: the weekend, where he elaborated on his claims for the
Speaker 3: first time. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 7: About four hours after our deadline, Barry Weiss sends an
Speaker 7: email to my boss, Tanya Simon. Two of the things
Speaker 7: in the email include, can we make the protesters look
Speaker 7: more violent? Now I'm paraphrasing. I don't have the quote,
Speaker 7: but that's what was communicated to me. And the other
Speaker 7: thing was Renee Goods car you need to describe her
Speaker 7: as driving toward the officer. There was a thumb on
Speaker 7: the scale for the President's version of events that I
Speaker 7: felt was a level of political influence that I had
Speaker 7: never seen in thirty seven years at CBS News.
Speaker 3: Did you guys listen to the whole interview and what
Speaker 3: do you think?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I watched the whole thing. The thing that jumped
Speaker 2: out to me was.
Speaker 1: Pelly makes he talks about the bias and of pushing
Speaker 1: on these stories. And CBS gave a comment to The
Speaker 1: Times basically saying there was a back and forth, not
Speaker 1: everything that was requested ended up in the final piece whatever.
Speaker 1: So they're saying, look, we had a back and forth
Speaker 1: about it, but let's assume that there is some bias.
Speaker 1: The point that Pelly makes is just what I take
Speaker 1: from his broader interview and the story here is that
Speaker 1: it's not just about the biased, about the incompetence of
Speaker 1: the whole operation that like that they just have not communicated. Well, now,
Speaker 1: I think some of this has been motivated reasoning, right,
Speaker 1: Because then like he then also refuses to meet It
Speaker 1: sounds like he did refuse to meet with them for
Speaker 1: a time as well, right, So like tempers were clearly high,
Speaker 1: but like you do get the sense like he makes
Speaker 1: the point that Nick Bilton, who is a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: was it was reading from his phone in one of
Speaker 1: the meetings, and clearly like that was making Pelly get
Speaker 1: mad in the moment, right, and like so some of
Speaker 1: this is just people that have been accused of being
Speaker 1: brought in to be pro Trump, to have bias to
Speaker 1: help Ellison gets deals done, and then like sort of
Speaker 1: hamphysically firing people trying to kind of have editorial opinions.
Speaker 1: It confirming people's worst expectations, and it kind of spiraling
Speaker 1: out of control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I look, I thought what we just watched there
Speaker 2: were some pretty damning allegations that, you know, Barry Weiss
Speaker 2: is just interfering with segments, not just in a political way,
Speaker 2: but like in a way that was not factual, Like
Speaker 2: make it look like Reney Goods driving at the cops
Speaker 2: pretty clearly was not with your own eyes. I also
Speaker 2: was taken by just how incompetent he described the new
Speaker 2: team as being like entire episodes of sixty minutes almost
Speaker 2: didn't make air. That seems bad. They couldn't get Tony
Speaker 2: ducoppol a visa to cover the President's trip to China,
Speaker 2: also a pretty big deal. Pretty bad. Pelly also overtly
Speaker 2: uses the words he accuses the CBS of paying a
Speaker 2: multi billion dollar bribe to President Trump when they settled
Speaker 2: the lawsuit around the sixty Minutes edit of Kamala Harris's interview,
Speaker 2: and so look like, you know, I don't know Barry Weiss.
Speaker 2: Some people say she's lovely and charming, some people think she's,
Speaker 2: you know, the devil like right, The truth is obviously
Speaker 2: somewhere in between. I've met Nick Bilton before. Seems like
Speaker 2: a nice guy, good author, smart screenwriter. Neither of him
Speaker 2: has any TV experience and seemingly have no business overseeing
Speaker 2: the most successful TV news show with this network. I mean,
Speaker 2: Barry Weiss is the editor in chief of CBS TV
Speaker 2: CBS News, but Nick Bilton's never worked in TV, and
Speaker 2: he's getting put in charge of sixty Minutes, which is
Speaker 2: by every measure of success. The ratings are up nine percent.
Speaker 2: They make nearly seventy million dollars in AD revenue in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five. Like it's not a thing that's broken
Speaker 2: needs fixing, which is a lot of Pelly's point. And
Speaker 2: I think ultimately like Weiss and built In were brought
Speaker 2: in as part of a corrupt project to change CBS News,
Speaker 2: to make it okay for President Trump in some way
Speaker 2: to grease the Paramount Skydance merger or whatever merger they
Speaker 2: want to do in the future. That's what I think
Speaker 2: Pelly thinks happened here. And there were times in this
Speaker 2: interview where it can seem a little pompous and sound
Speaker 2: like self righteous, and it's very emotional, right, Like Pelley
Speaker 2: seems to compare himself to like a veterans in combat
Speaker 2: at one point, which is a little odd, refers to
Speaker 2: sixty minutes as his spouse being murdered. Yeah, so he's
Speaker 2: very emotional. But like clear, this guy who loves his job,
Speaker 2: never want to do anything else, never wanted to leave,
Speaker 2: didn't seemingly didn't think he'd get fired, even when he
Speaker 2: like lit his new boss on fire in front of
Speaker 2: the entire group. But it's worth the listen.
Speaker 3: I think he also, I think gets most emotional when
Speaker 3: he's talking about Tinya Simon and some of the other
Speaker 3: people who've been fired and who have been treated poorly,
Speaker 3: which I think is telling. I actually think that if
Speaker 3: you took Trump out of the equation, I think Barry
Speaker 3: Wise still would have sent that email, those emails about
Speaker 3: Renee Good because this could be happening she might not
Speaker 3: think to herself, I am doing Donald Trump's bidding. But
Speaker 3: if anyone has experienced the free press, read the free press,
Speaker 3: or trafficked in any of the circles of the anti
Speaker 3: anti Trump Republicans who are always making excuses for Trump,
Speaker 3: but they think that they're more like moral and normal
Speaker 3: and sane.
Speaker 1: People who haven't lost their minds. That's to the people
Speaker 1: that haven't gone crazy, right.
Speaker 3: Like if that was like, and we saw this split
Speaker 3: in the conservative movement between the Renee Good killing and
Speaker 3: the Alex Prettie killing, and that some of them who
Speaker 3: were who tried to, you know, push this narrative that
Speaker 3: Renee Good was driving at the cops and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: they kind of broke off when it was Alex pretty
Speaker 3: and it was even more obvious, and they were like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this one is bad, you know. So it actually made
Speaker 3: sense to me that Barry Weis would do this because
Speaker 3: and I think this is probably indicative of what happened
Speaker 3: at CBS and why sixty minutes and the people at
Speaker 3: sixty minutes were so angry. Is I think Barry Weiss
Speaker 3: came in and I'm and I having seen Nick Bilton's
Speaker 3: tweets and commentary here and there. I think he's someone
Speaker 3: who's like, Okay, the Libs have gone crazy too. They
Speaker 3: both get in there and they're thinking like, this is
Speaker 3: another evidence of liberal media that we got to fix.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure the staff at sixty Minutes and the
Speaker 3: reporters there are like, you know what, we take our
Speaker 3: jobs very fucking seriously and do really good reporting in
Speaker 3: fact check it a lot, and we don't consider ourselves
Speaker 3: like part of like the liberal media and bias. And
Speaker 3: so I think there was that probably that clash, yes, ideologies.
Speaker 1: There's I think like a revealing point where at some
Speaker 1: point Barry Weiss says, some versions, if you're not biased,
Speaker 1: why does the country why does the country think you're biased?
Speaker 2: Right? Which is an article of faith. They're like, well,
Speaker 2: what's the evidence for that? Right? And so look like
Speaker 2: Scott Pelly in that clip.
Speaker 1: Is paraphrasing an email he didn't see, right, Like that
Speaker 1: is like I don't know what the exact text of
Speaker 1: it is. I don't know how they I am sure
Speaker 1: was trying to push it sort of more kind of
Speaker 1: in a way that was sort of like more favorable
Speaker 1: to the Trump version of events. But the non liberal
Speaker 1: version of events.
Speaker 3: It was the entire right wing media ecosystem version of events.
Speaker 1: But the other thing that's strange about this interview, right
Speaker 1: is like he had I mean, he wants Barry Wise fire, right,
Speaker 1: he but he also has a lot of like nice
Speaker 1: words to say about Ellison, which is really strange. Right,
Speaker 1: And what I took from this interview is like he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we were excited when Ellison came to the newsroom. He
Speaker 1: greeted us, he called me sir, right, Like, there's this
Speaker 1: way in which was what I was wondering when I
Speaker 1: was bouting to the interview, is this somebody who was
Speaker 1: trying to get Barry Weise's shit canned and then someone
Speaker 1: who can go back to CBS.
Speaker 2: And he's saying to he's saying to Ellison, hey, I'm not.
Speaker 1: A problem if Barry Weiss isn't there, Right, You're good
Speaker 1: Barry Weiss's I'm not your problem. Barry Weiss is your
Speaker 1: problem because now I'm talking about how great you were
Speaker 1: when you came and she's the one that's got to go.
Speaker 1: So I thought that was sort of like, because if
Speaker 1: Barry Weis is part of some Ellison project to kind
Speaker 1: of grease the skids for a deal, right, it would
Speaker 1: be it would be Ellison at fault too, But that's
Speaker 1: not how Pelly talks about. No.
Speaker 2: What he says about that David Ellison is this like
Speaker 2: he's pissed at Sherry red Zone for doing a deal
Speaker 2: with Trump and paying the bribe to make the lawsuit
Speaker 2: go away. And the lawsuit was obviously bullshit, and I
Speaker 2: think he views that as unforgivable. Then it permanently damaged
Speaker 2: sixty minutes, and so he's like, look, a new guy
Speaker 2: came in, had some money, had some political swat, Like
Speaker 2: we're all good there, Like if you want to support
Speaker 2: our project here and you've got the balls to stand
Speaker 2: up to people, I'm there with you it did you know?
Speaker 2: It could be strategic? And then he's trying to divide
Speaker 2: the two of them. But like, you know, I found
Speaker 2: that interesting too, in pretty notable and maybe believable. Got it.
Speaker 3: But also it's like he's not dealing with David Ellison,
Speaker 3: He's dealing with Barry Weiss, you know, like you can
Speaker 3: be nice to the boss's boss, who when they greet
Speaker 3: you is like heiser nice, and then like Barry Weiss
Speaker 3: is the one who's murdering sixty minutes right right else
Speaker 3: and then and then and then also Hilton, who she
Speaker 3: just sent in with and didn't even go to the
Speaker 3: meeting herself and just made him deal with that.
Speaker 2: Look I stand by with Nick.
Speaker 1: Look you go to that first meeting and think, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to kiss everybody's ass and get her back,
Speaker 1: get her back on side, and you're like, oh fuck,
Speaker 1: this is mad.
Speaker 2: Could you imagine?
Speaker 1: Just like trying to imagine too, Like you're just your aunt,
Speaker 1: You're at your first day at work, and Scott Pelley,
Speaker 1: one of the most famous journalists in the world, is like,
Speaker 1: you're murdering the most beautiful thing that any of us
Speaker 1: has ever seen?
Speaker 2: Round of applause. Do you think someone's holding up? I
Speaker 2: just don't think that.
Speaker 3: Like, how can you expect anything else when you have
Speaker 3: obviously been following along what Barry Weiss has been doing
Speaker 3: and the firings just happened right like of course, Like
Speaker 3: it's not like it's not like he got to the
Speaker 3: meeting and all of a sudden someone's like, excuse me,
Speaker 3: Nick building, they just fired a bunch of the staff.
Speaker 2: And again, like I met Nick a couple of times
Speaker 2: he's always seemed nice, but he did a series of
Speaker 2: interviews media journalists where he just could not have sounded
Speaker 2: more pompous and insulting, and like, I know this is
Speaker 2: going to be easy. I know everything. You know, Like
Speaker 2: I'm going to be the one like uploading the video
Speaker 2: to the satellite truck is like okay, buddy, Well, like.
Speaker 3: It's a Barry Wise free press salon party circuit. It's
Speaker 3: the exact kind of language. It's it's there's just a
Speaker 3: whole set of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The point that Pelly made in that conversation is like,
Speaker 1: how could you take a job like this given the circumstances?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And that does mean whoever is going to run sixty
Speaker 1: minutes if it wants to prove something to these journalists,
Speaker 1: has a lot of work to do, right, And like
Speaker 1: the fact I'm like used to Leslie Stall and some
Speaker 1: other people are staying right and like, I don't know
Speaker 1: what the what the future of this thing looks like,
Speaker 1: but I do think that a world of war sixty
Speaker 1: minutes gets to kind of continue to exist, and there's
Speaker 1: and maybe this continues to like boil over into the public,
Speaker 1: and that's I don't know, Like if you're taking the
Speaker 1: job right and you've never had TV experience, you're doing
Speaker 1: it after all these firings and you walk in expect
Speaker 1: to be given the benefit out.
Speaker 2: It's just like, not what's gonna happen? Right?
Speaker 1: And like Barry Wise doesn't have TV experience, Nick doesn't
Speaker 1: have TV experience. You're taking over like one of the
Speaker 1: most important jobs in all of television.
Speaker 2: They're not qualified for the job. They're just not And
Speaker 2: it's not mean or insulting to say that, like you
Speaker 2: never worked in TV, you are not qualified for this
Speaker 2: job and taking it is ridiculous. And what do you
Speaker 2: think is gonna happen? Just to give me a break?
Speaker 3: So the last ten years have been just a rash
Speaker 3: of people who are like wealthy and powerful and influential
Speaker 3: thinking that because they're good at one thing, they can
Speaker 3: be good at other things. That it's a real fucking
Speaker 3: problem that we have in this country right now. Just
Speaker 3: talk to any of the tech pros. Trump exactly what
Speaker 3: Donald Trump? One last new story to get you here.
Speaker 3: We are recording on Monday afternoon, California time. Shortly after
Speaker 3: we leave the studio, Trumpell to part his Golf Club
Speaker 3: in New Jersey from Midtown Manhattan, where he will attend
Speaker 3: Game three of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden,
Speaker 3: which will bring traffic to a standstill, require ticket holders
Speaker 3: to arrive hours early for security checks, and force the
Speaker 3: cancelation of the watch party outside MSG for people who
Speaker 3: don't have tickets, which is just about ever. Ever, so,
Speaker 3: how are people feeling about the decision? Quote Of all
Speaker 3: the selfish, narcissistic things Trump has done, attending MSG to
Speaker 3: see the Knicks play in person Monday night is the
Speaker 3: absolute worst. These are the sentiments of none other than
Speaker 3: and Coulter, but the feeling also seems pretty widespread. Let's listen,
Speaker 3: since when Trump the Mixed Games now all of a
Speaker 3: sudden weren't winning.
Speaker 5: He wanted to be here.
Speaker 2: If the Knicks lose tonight, I blame Trump. I don't
Speaker 2: want Trump had the game is. I don't want no
Speaker 2: new people at the games come into Game three of
Speaker 2: the Finals, and I don't want them there. It has
Speaker 2: everything to do with him.
Speaker 6: Disrupt thing and contributing at the same time to the chaos.
Speaker 9: If it causes the New York Knicks to win, to
Speaker 9: lose to Night, I'm blaming him.
Speaker 5: I'm blaming the president of the United States.
Speaker 3: Of course, everyone probably recognizes stephen A. There before stephen
Speaker 3: A was Mace.
Speaker 2: That was excuse stephen a guest on this show. I
Speaker 2: listened stephen A in a bright pink suit, in a
Speaker 2: bright pink tie, ranting about Donald Trump going to a
Speaker 2: next game. That's what I want out of sports media.
Speaker 2: That is, that's perfection.
Speaker 3: You know, Trump is expected to be uh to booed,
Speaker 3: to be booed.
Speaker 2: Probably.
Speaker 3: Also, there's gonna be an unfavorable split screen with actual
Speaker 3: Knicks fan Zorn Mumdani, who coughed up a thousand bucks
Speaker 3: for a standing room only ticket, So that's gonna be
Speaker 3: an interesting thing. Mumdannie. Also, uh decided to throw free
Speaker 3: watch parties in Bryant Park and I think two other
Speaker 3: locations as well, because the area around MSG is closed down.
Speaker 3: Why do you guys think Trump's doing this?
Speaker 2: I mean, he knows the power of live professional sports,
Speaker 2: and that's the only like kind of monocultural events we
Speaker 2: really have left. It's why he goes to a lot
Speaker 2: of games, usually the NFL. I went to the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2: What do you think the SEC champions? What's something like
Speaker 2: a college football championship in NASCAR. You in Nascar? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think he's been a NASCAR you know, so usually
Speaker 2: he's more welcome in those, you know, sort of southern
Speaker 2: NFL spaces. I don't think he will be here. I mean,
Speaker 2: he's also buddies with James Dolan, I think, the owner
Speaker 2: of the Knicks, who's a terrible guy who likes because
Speaker 2: he surveils people who like are mean to him at games,
Speaker 2: always pals with the owners.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not a real player guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, But like look Roger Bennett and I talk
Speaker 2: about this in the interview. I mean because remember last
Speaker 2: year Trump went to the FIFA Club Championship in the
Speaker 2: US and he was supposed to walk up with Johnny
Speaker 2: and Pattina, the head of FIFA, hand the trophy to
Speaker 2: the Chelsea players, and then walk off the stage so
Speaker 2: they could celebrate, and he just stood there and jumped
Speaker 2: with them and like celebrate with them. So he makes
Speaker 2: it about himself because he loves the limelight. He loves
Speaker 2: every spotlight, and he will attempt to co opt this
Speaker 2: one too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he doesn't give a shit about anyone by himself. Like, right,
Speaker 3: we know this when when you have to decide whether
Speaker 3: the president of United States is going to attend an
Speaker 3: event like that. The biggest consideration, Well, first of all,
Speaker 3: you talk to Service and be like, okay, what does
Speaker 3: the security have to look like? And you need to
Speaker 3: listen to Secret Service, and especially Donald Trump, he's been
Speaker 3: you know, survived multiple assassin to nation attempts now right.
Speaker 3: But then when the Service tells you what it's going
Speaker 3: to choir security wise, and they tell you that, well,
Speaker 3: as a consequence, it's going to you know, inconvenience quite
Speaker 3: a few Americans. Then sometimes the President's like, well, do
Speaker 3: I really want to piss off that many people by
Speaker 3: doing this? Is it really that important if my going
Speaker 3: means a whole bunch of mother And then you say,
Speaker 3: well maybe not, Maybe it's not that important.
Speaker 6: For me to go.
Speaker 3: Imagine Trump would never say that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think he just wants to go to the game.
Speaker 2: He doesn't give a fuck. He wants to go to
Speaker 2: the game.
Speaker 1: He wants to sit there, he wants to be booed
Speaker 1: by New Yorkers. Uh, he wants to he wants to
Speaker 1: like be the center of attention.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 1: And he doesn't care there'd be two hour waits outside
Speaker 1: that to barricade whole parts of Midtown Manhattan to make
Speaker 1: this pause by the cancel the watch.
Speaker 2: He didn't give a fuck.
Speaker 3: I mean, arguably worse is when he always wants to, like,
Speaker 3: if there's a natural disaster somewhere and he's got to
Speaker 3: go be on the scene immediately, even when local officials
Speaker 3: are like, please, we're trying to clean up the disaster
Speaker 3: here and we can't have a presidential visit because it's
Speaker 3: too much mess and security right now and just come later.
Speaker 3: He's like, I don't give a fuck.
Speaker 2: He also he thinks he's a New Yorker and that
Speaker 2: New York likes him and they do not.
Speaker 3: Well, he's because he's also like shit all over it
Speaker 3: when he left, Yeah, mar blurredy like New York that
Speaker 3: it's become trash now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think he's gonna love the split screen.
Speaker 1: I hope whoever is on the ones and twos it
Speaker 1: just go man, Donnie cheers like crazy Trump booz go
Speaker 1: back and forth, give us a couple back for us.
Speaker 3: And because mom Donnie's so talented, he's gonna be He's
Speaker 3: gonna be so nice about it too, Like he's not
Speaker 3: gonna try to you know, jab Trump at all.
Speaker 1: They're gonna they're gonna have They're gonna have a shot
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump being booed while I'm Donnie's like gonna
Speaker 1: be nice, and it's gonna be I hope we get that.
Speaker 2: There's also only that a bunch of cool celebrities who
Speaker 2: always go to games, like Timothy Shallome and Tracy Morgan
Speaker 2: and Ben Stiller, who will be like on the wood
Speaker 2: with the people, like join the game and trouble will
Speaker 2: be up hiding in a luxury box like kind of
Speaker 2: lurking from behind, hoping he doesn't get booed. We can't
Speaker 2: say courtside. No, it would be great if you tried
Speaker 2: walk down there.
Speaker 3: People were retweeting some old tweets from Josh Hart today
Speaker 3: Next Player just like shitting all over Trump. But he's
Speaker 3: not a I don't think he's beloved by the next No.
Speaker 2: We also remember like Trump very specifically, I think yelled
Speaker 2: at or does me the lebron James shut up and
Speaker 2: dribbled guy.
Speaker 1: It's also like basketball, it's so much smaller, it's so
Speaker 1: much closer. They're just like right there, like it's going
Speaker 1: to be part of the game that Trump is at
Speaker 1: this game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look at Fox News and Trump. They
Speaker 2: love to tell athletes, especially black athletes, to not have
Speaker 2: political opinions. But if you like Trump, then you are
Speaker 2: allowed to have a political opinion. You can come to
Speaker 2: the White House. Maybe you can participate in Ultimate Fighting
Speaker 2: Championship event on the South Lawn. Right, that's how this works. Yeah,
Speaker 2: sadly not no John at that one. Yeah, I faver
Speaker 2: didn't make the cut just a realm so close. I
Speaker 2: read that it would have been very funny.
Speaker 3: It would have been very funny.
Speaker 2: I think what would have happened is you would have
Speaker 2: shown up at the place where you get the van
Speaker 2: to go to the thing, and someone would like clock
Speaker 2: your face and be like, oh no, that's.
Speaker 3: I had thought that. But like four thousand people on
Speaker 3: the South Line, it's a lot of people to really
Speaker 3: be like doing the face sheet because it's not I
Speaker 3: it was inside the White House, it'd be like yeah,
Speaker 3: no way. But I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think I think there was.
Speaker 1: I think if once you're at that point that nobody
Speaker 1: knows that they random people like celebrities are showing up
Speaker 1: all the time. You never know what part of some
Speaker 1: Trump drug.
Speaker 3: Deal suddenly I'm walking. I'm taking my seat right next
Speaker 3: to Vince Vaughn and anybody. He's like, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: Love swingers? Loved even swingers. It's going to be so
Speaker 2: hot and so miserable out there, and.
Speaker 3: So so I was looking at the weather for this
Speaker 3: because there's like a like a chance of thunderstorms now too,
Speaker 3: and it's ninety one and maybe thunder storm any one.
Speaker 2: Degrees like humid, bugs everywhere, awful people all around you.
Speaker 2: Imagine I have to fight in that. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: they get.
Speaker 3: In a white said too. He was like, it's not
Speaker 3: the ideal it's the ideal environment usf.
Speaker 1: Imagine they're like, we got to pull it down because
Speaker 1: of lightning. They don't want to pull it down because
Speaker 1: of lightning. And all of a sudden, you have basically
Speaker 1: a biblical event hits that just a metal things and
Speaker 1: are possible.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to check it out, all right when
Speaker 3: we come back. Tommy's conversation with Roger Bennett of Men
Speaker 3: in Blazers.
Speaker 2: Today's show is sponsored by Strawberry dot Me. Think about
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Speaker 2: Tell them pot Save America sent you a get fifty
Speaker 2: percent off your first session. That's Strawberry dot Me. Tell
Speaker 2: them pot Save America sent you for fifty percent off
Speaker 2: your first session. My guest today is the co creator
Speaker 2: and longtime host at the smash hit Men in Blazers
Speaker 2: podcast the Men in Blazers Media Network. Really, he's a
Speaker 2: New York Times bestselling author whose most recent book is
Speaker 2: called We Are the World Cup. By it Now. It's
Speaker 2: also an international man of mystery and a sex symbol.
Speaker 2: Roger Bennett, How you doing, buddy?
Speaker 8: It was good until he just said that to me.
Speaker 8: It's so lovely to see that. You look amazing man.
Speaker 2: You two longtime no see, I'm thrilled to talk to
Speaker 2: you now, because boy, there's a lot going on. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of football, a lot of soccer in the world.
Speaker 2: For anyone who wants to learn more about the World Cup.
Speaker 2: You still have time, and I cannot recommend enough We
Speaker 2: Are the World Cup. You'll learn about the highs, the lows,
Speaker 2: the agony, the more through Rogers eyes. Right, I mean
Speaker 2: I wrote the book.
Speaker 8: If you have had the memories of the World Cup,
Speaker 8: it will reignite them. I hope you can relive them
Speaker 8: again as powerfully as you did the first time. And
Speaker 8: if you're a newcomer planning to watch the World Cup,
Speaker 8: it will give you the depths, the nuances to understand
Speaker 8: them fail all the things that Edward de Galiono, the
Speaker 8: Uruguayan poet, it once. Very football is a pleasure that hurts,
Speaker 8: and we're about to experience all of it.
Speaker 2: Weeks and weeks of it, and I literally cannot wait.
Speaker 2: I love the World Cup. This is gonna be so
Speaker 2: much fun. And so before we ruin this conversation with
Speaker 2: a little bit of politics at the end, let's just
Speaker 2: talk soccer. So starting with Team USA. I know they
Speaker 2: are hardly favorites to win the tournament, but you know
Speaker 2: interest has gone up, expectations go up every year for
Speaker 2: Team USA. Who should we be watching and what's a
Speaker 2: good result do you think for Team USA this year?
Speaker 3: Winning it?
Speaker 8: Tommy, I know a sound too many of your new
Speaker 8: listeners that I'm from England, but I love America so
Speaker 8: profoundly in like a way I like to believe slips
Speaker 8: me somewhere between Bruce Springsteen and Kenny Powers. So adore
Speaker 8: this team I first came over here in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 8: ahead of the last time the Men's World Cup was here.
Speaker 8: It was meant to turn America immediately into a football
Speaker 8: loving nation. It's taken a lot longer, but the United
Speaker 8: States and the economists was just found to have soccer
Speaker 8: be the third most popular sport in the world, which
Speaker 8: is mind blowing amazing because I write in my book.
Speaker 8: But before the ninety four World Cup Tommy, a similar
Speaker 8: study found out soccer was sixty seventh most favorite sport
Speaker 8: and tractor pulling, I crap you not was sixty six.
Speaker 8: Where are you now tractor pulling? So to some degree,
Speaker 8: the winner of the World Cup from a US perspective
Speaker 8: will be the massive fan base that it leaves behind.
Speaker 8: We've always joked on our show soccer is America's sport
Speaker 8: of the future, as it has been since nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 8: like it's perpetually the next big thing. I think this
Speaker 8: World Cup will will cement it normalize football in our
Speaker 8: sporting reality. But from an actual competitive POV, this is
Speaker 8: the most talented group of individuals we've ever had. But
Speaker 8: the crazy thing is, you know, our women kick ass
Speaker 8: teake names, win things on men in the whole history
Speaker 8: of our nation, going right back to George Washington, who
Speaker 8: I like to believe what I loved the football. We've
Speaker 8: won one knockout game in World Cup history, which is
Speaker 8: shocking for a nation like ours that invented animal style
Speaker 8: burgers in and out and you know the Kroner put,
Speaker 8: you know, human beings on the moon, democracy, all those things.
Speaker 8: So I'd say if we can win two knockout games,
Speaker 8: which we stand a good chance of in this very bloated,
Speaker 8: big goalt, massive World Cup, it would be an incredible
Speaker 8: result in that this World Cup is going to be big,
Speaker 8: whether the US do well or not. But the US
Speaker 8: boys will write their narrative into it, which is critical.
Speaker 2: As Christian Polus the one where we're watching most or
Speaker 2: what other names do we be looking at?
Speaker 8: Christian poliitic Is. If you're a football fan, you'll know
Speaker 8: he's jokingly called the Lebron James of soccer. He's from Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 8: He was the prince that was promised. He broke through
Speaker 8: into this team when he was seventeen. He is probably
Speaker 8: the most talented outfield player we've ever had in terms
Speaker 8: of his accomplishments in European football. He's a very sensitive
Speaker 8: human being. He needs to love and be loved. I
Speaker 8: just went on first hate with Stephen A. Smith and
Speaker 8: compared him to Trey Young as a player that can
Speaker 8: do unbelievable things if he feels great. Stephen A. Smith
Speaker 8: slapped me down, went mad. That's a terrible comparison, he said,
Speaker 8: and then went off on Trey Young for a long
Speaker 8: long period of time. But I'll stand by it. And
Speaker 8: then there's so many remarkable human beings. I really do
Speaker 8: root for this team as individuals. As a beautiful man.
Speaker 8: Chris richards Son of Alabama Boomingham, Alabama sec country role
Speaker 8: tide who must have been a big fish on every
Speaker 8: playing field he was in in Alabama and then went
Speaker 8: over as a teen to one of the greatest teams
Speaker 8: in the world by Munich, suddenly became a tiny fish
Speaker 8: in an enormous trout form, kind of lost all of
Speaker 8: his confidence, got complete cultural this location, but has been
Speaker 8: able tenaciously to re summon his presence as a defender,
Speaker 8: kind of like a lockdown cornerback. Now in the Premier League.
Speaker 8: He's won things. Still a sweet, soft, soulful wonderful human being.
Speaker 8: I mean, there's many many players like him that I
Speaker 8: root for. The one touch, one goal, one moment, the
Speaker 8: commercial upside for this World Cup, to become the face
Speaker 8: of this team, to have a TikTok that goes viral
Speaker 8: because of something beautiful that you do. It's a diverse team.
Speaker 8: I think they were a great face of our nation.
Speaker 8: They're led by a manager and Argentinian Maricho Pocchettino, who's
Speaker 8: like a globally revered manager. He's either going to lift
Speaker 8: us up, like you know, a basketball coach going to
Speaker 8: Iona state and taking them what's that guy? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 8: you'll have a Patino take us up to his standard.
Speaker 8: We'll build belicheck it and just suddenly be you know,
Speaker 8: chasing after floundering on the floor at North Carolina.
Speaker 2: Or something like that. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 8: You can't wait to leave him many ways, but we
Speaker 8: will go as he goes. If he you know, if
Speaker 8: he does his thing and raises us up, joy can
Speaker 8: be ours. We could be just lollopping around on the
Speaker 8: floor chasing after a cheeseburger in Hasselhoffee and fashion. It
Speaker 8: could be, It could be great. It could be darkness.
Speaker 2: We do not know.
Speaker 8: We only have until, you know, three days to find out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I'll hope ahead of us. All right, let's
Speaker 2: talk about the big dogs, some of the best teams,
Speaker 2: some of the best players that you're watching. I've heard France, Spain,
Speaker 2: UK mentioned a lot like any sleepers the UK. Well,
Speaker 2: that would be amazing, Tommy.
Speaker 8: Can you imagine if it was cities, Oh the world
Speaker 8: cover cities that's actually for the future, then they can
Speaker 8: get far more than forty eighteens in. It would be amazing.
Speaker 8: Come on, Sarajevo, England, Scotland, they are also in it.
Speaker 2: God blessed.
Speaker 8: They're coming over here with a very different goal than
Speaker 8: everybody else. Their goal is to just drink Boston and
Speaker 8: Miami dry in the first two weeks of the tournament,
Speaker 8: and I think they'll probably do it. The Tartan Army,
Speaker 8: I think America. One of the joys of this tournament.
Speaker 8: Who we get to talk about is the world coming
Speaker 8: to terms with the United States. You seeing it now
Speaker 8: all over social media, German fans going to waffle House
Speaker 8: for the first time, having their mind blow and you know,
Speaker 8: going to eat lemon pepper wet. What is this and
Speaker 8: also American sports fan seeing global football culture, many of
Speaker 8: them for the first time seeing sixty seventeen year seeing
Speaker 8: thousands of Dutch sands march down the streets of Kansas
Speaker 8: City before a game in their orange clad shirt, bouncing
Speaker 8: to the left and the right behind a large bus.
Speaker 8: No one quite knows why, it's just what they do.
Speaker 8: It's gonna be quite ecstatic. So Scotland, England, I mean
Speaker 8: England are fascinating. I mean they used to have an empire,
Speaker 8: then they lost that. They used to have a monarchy
Speaker 8: not doing so well nowadays, they had down to Avy
Speaker 8: no longer on the air. So what they have is
Speaker 8: football and they invented it. So they think they should win.
Speaker 8: They've won once nineteen sixty six, which is like ten
Speaker 8: sixty six in the English school kids imagination, and since
Speaker 8: then they've always believed with great surety they're gonna win
Speaker 8: very quickly, crapping the bed, shattering a nation's heart. They're
Speaker 8: like Charlie Brown running at a football with Lucy holding.
Speaker 8: Apart from this time round, they're pretty bloody good, Tommy.
Speaker 8: So it is quite fascinating to think of an England
Speaker 8: winning the World Cup in America when it's the two
Speaker 8: hundred and fiftieth anniversary of independence. Is is mind melding.
Speaker 2: So we think we're going to say bye to some
Speaker 2: great players this this tournament. Lionel Messi it's probably we
Speaker 2: assume it's his last tournament, although people said that in
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen and twenty twenty two Christiano Ronaldo will say
Speaker 2: goodbye to him by to all of his abs.
Speaker 8: Maybe maybe, although he's like mostly I think he's the
Speaker 8: football player most likely to go like Ted Williams and
Speaker 8: putting his head in the crygantic chambers.
Speaker 2: Just freeze it up those abs same later, Yeah, is
Speaker 2: there a next up? Like, so those two they're not
Speaker 2: just the biggest stars in soccer, they are some of
Speaker 2: the biggest celebrities on the planet, the most famous people
Speaker 2: on the planet. Is there anyone you're watching that can
Speaker 2: fill their shoes? Any stars that are going to transcend
Speaker 2: this tournament?
Speaker 8: We hope the stars young stars, and there is that
Speaker 8: there's this aged I mean deeply aged. We're talking about
Speaker 8: like footballing lebron age, I mean Ronaldo is I mean,
Speaker 8: it's it's like forty one Linnel Messi late thirties. This
Speaker 8: is or should be their last dance. And then there's
Speaker 8: a slew of teens coming through nature of bards, a vacuum.
Speaker 8: So this football a Spanish wonder child eighteen years old,
Speaker 8: Lamina Marl who's already won massive tournaments. You know, he's
Speaker 8: almost if he wins the World Cup with Spain having won,
Speaker 8: when he's won already, he'll be like Alexander the Great,
Speaker 8: you know, tearing up because there is no more world
Speaker 8: left to conquer. So the early in Harlan, a young
Speaker 8: Norwegian who is other than Shaquille O'Neal, entering the NBA
Speaker 8: and just breaking backboards, shattering them, you know, gaming game out.
Speaker 8: I've never seen anyone score goals. It's like as if
Speaker 8: Dolph Lundram was a football player for Ai created just
Speaker 8: a some kind of Norse Demi God, he's bringing Norway over.
Speaker 8: So there is that bat and again because it's here,
Speaker 8: Tommy in the United States, this commercial hotbed of sports,
Speaker 8: all of these footballers and a spring to a slew
Speaker 8: of the great footballers in the world. They're all looking
Speaker 8: at the United States market knowing one deep run, one
Speaker 8: you know, set of ecstatic moments, the financial payoff for
Speaker 8: this World Cup commercially to kind of be what Pela
Speaker 8: was to previous generation, the face of the game. In
Speaker 8: the United States, there's the sporting competition, but there's also
Speaker 8: the commercial competition to be that footballer. They all think
Speaker 8: they can, you know, be the next play. They don't
Speaker 8: quite know that David Beckham's already won the World Cup.
Speaker 8: That man is in almost every single commercial and there's
Speaker 8: not giving up his hold on our imagination anytime soon.
Speaker 8: But they're also incredible stories that will fill the World
Speaker 8: Cup up. Like Haiti, this tiny team for whom, you know,
Speaker 8: just qualifying is everything. The political chaos it's unspooled over there,
Speaker 8: which has impacted football. The football stadium, their trading center
Speaker 8: was set fire to by insurgent gangs importer prints. The
Speaker 8: fact that they've even qualified is remarkable. They had to
Speaker 8: play all their games on neighboring Curisow. Their football is
Speaker 8: a broad from all over in the Haitian diaspora. Just
Speaker 8: taking the field for them is going to be just
Speaker 8: a joyous geopolitical moment where the word Haiti is seen
Speaker 8: in a joyous spotlight, a wonderful spotlight so desperately needed,
Speaker 8: and it could be one of the most powerful storylines
Speaker 8: in the opening round.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exciting to watch. So you know you got
Speaker 2: you touched on this rager. Like, the scale of this
Speaker 2: tournament is just like unlike anything we've seen before. It's
Speaker 2: happening in three different countries. I think there's sixteen host cities.
Speaker 2: There's forty eight teams. I think at some point in
Speaker 2: the tournament there's going to be six games a day.
Speaker 2: How the hell are you going to pace yourself here? Buddy?
Speaker 2: What are you going to do to get through this? Yeah?
Speaker 8: I mean I feel like I was laughing with you.
Speaker 8: I already feel like I'm halfway through, but it's not
Speaker 8: kicked off yet. It is epic in scope. Three nations
Speaker 8: hosting for the first time Canada, the United States, Mexico.
Speaker 8: When it was given twenty eighteen, it was talked about
Speaker 8: as a unified almost the NAFTA World Cup. Obviously the
Speaker 8: realities have changed. It feels almost like three parallel track
Speaker 8: World Cups. But what drives me in any World Cup
Speaker 8: is the narrative, is the story is the human wonder.
Speaker 8: The scale of it is epic. I think it's projected
Speaker 8: to revenue wise reported eighty billion dollars will be made,
Speaker 8: which apparently is the GDP of Belarus. But I'm sure
Speaker 8: you knew that, Tommy, That's probably the first thing that went.
Speaker 2: Into your head.
Speaker 8: You know, it's really a human x to say, two
Speaker 8: hundred million people watch the Super Bowl, we think of
Speaker 8: that as the ultimate. In the United States, five billion
Speaker 8: people watch the World Cup. What is the World Cup?
Speaker 8: And this is what I wrote in my book. It's
Speaker 8: like a global eclipse that emanates from the game, sweeps
Speaker 8: the entire world instantaneously and holds it in its thrall
Speaker 8: for thirty nine straight days. And so that's the magic
Speaker 8: of it, the energizing magic. What keeps me going is
Speaker 8: a sense that when these games go on, we're watching
Speaker 8: human beings live out under the Crucibler pressure. You know,
Speaker 8: human decision making, what separates good players from the truly
Speaker 8: greatest decisions they make under those pressures. There's going to
Speaker 8: be heroes whose names we don't even know, who are
Speaker 8: going to reveal themselves and within seconds of some kind
Speaker 8: of kung fu fighting s goal, their name is going
Speaker 8: to be blared out by millions of children in school
Speaker 8: yards across the globe. You know, there's going to be
Speaker 8: heroes who will fall in tragy comic ways. We're going
Speaker 8: to watch the greatest telenovela. And the thing I'm most
Speaker 8: excited about, Tommy is, I don't know if you've noticed,
Speaker 8: it's a very dark world. We're living in a time
Speaker 8: of challenge. I hope, I hope when this kicks off,
Speaker 8: you know, when Lionel Messi takes the field, all of
Speaker 8: the darkness kind of is smothered. It's almost like the
Speaker 8: rational is replaced by the emotional, and it's that sense
Speaker 8: of global unity. Obviously an illusion, obviously fleeting, but knowing
Speaker 8: that you're making memories, profound memories. It's like the theory
Speaker 8: of my book. Most of I'd say eighty seven percent
Speaker 8: of my most important memories are located in world cups,
Speaker 8: the cross generational memories with my dad, my mom, my grandpa,
Speaker 8: my children. It's the same for millions around the world.
Speaker 8: That conscious act of memory making that you're sharing with
Speaker 8: the planet is really what drives me onwards.
Speaker 2: I think we've all earned that release, that reprieve from reality,
Speaker 2: and that moment has come tog other and enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Just to ruin this whole thing with politics though, I
Speaker 2: mean President Trump understands the scale of the stage, right,
Speaker 2: He's got this preternatural understanding for the role that sports
Speaker 2: plays and culture. As we talk today, I think he's
Speaker 2: preparing to fly up to New York for the next game.
Speaker 2: Do we know, like, does he deliver remarks at any
Speaker 2: of these events? Is he going to attend games?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: What do we know about his participation?
Speaker 8: Not a lot yet? But football is he mean I
Speaker 8: talked about the number of people watching. It is the
Speaker 8: last global megaphone that is audible across the entire planet.
Speaker 8: There's nothing like it. There's nothing like a World Cup.
Speaker 8: Even Salt Bay inserted himself into the final seasons at
Speaker 8: that massive it is. Yeah, go bless. I mean, he's
Speaker 8: still got me talking about it four years later. And
Speaker 8: so ultimately, politicians of all stripes are drown to football.
Speaker 8: And happened since the very beginning. Nineteen thirty four. Second
Speaker 8: World Cup was held in Italy by Mussolini, who who
Speaker 8: wanted to present Italy to the world, subsidize foreign travel
Speaker 8: to Italy for the tournament. The detail of most about
Speaker 8: this story is that he made sure the tickets were
Speaker 8: intricate paper cuts so that fans would go home afterwards,
Speaker 8: I crap, you're not Tommy, and be like, these are
Speaker 8: the tickets in Italy, look on the advanced country. It
Speaker 8: is so from the very beginning, the roots of the
Speaker 8: tournament have always had a geopolitical reality. When two teams
Speaker 8: take the field, the nation's history, the nation's politics, the
Speaker 8: nations culture takes a field alongside, and that's what gives it.
Speaker 8: It's epic power. Everything matters.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 8: You know, I love American sports. When my Chicago Bears play,
Speaker 8: you know, the La Rams, it's a big game, it's exciting,
Speaker 8: I know the narrative. But when Germany plays England, the
Speaker 8: levels of history, you know. I think was Emerson who
Speaker 8: said it contains multitudes. The World Cup contains multitudes, and
Speaker 8: every politician knows that, you know. And President Trump has
Speaker 8: embraced football. There was a tournament here last almost a
Speaker 8: dry runt called the Club World Cup. He presented the
Speaker 8: trophy right at the end the route that the ritual
Speaker 8: of trophy presenting in football is that whoever gives it,
Speaker 8: and it's often a head of state will hand the
Speaker 8: truth over to the you know, the sweaty footballers on
Speaker 8: a podium and then step out of the way so
Speaker 8: that they can lift it up and smoke comes off
Speaker 8: and confetti blows up, and then the footballers bounce up
Speaker 8: and down waving their arms like this, which is the
Speaker 8: standard football guy dance at Chelsea Football Club.
Speaker 2: Won.
Speaker 8: He hands the trophy over and then stands in the
Speaker 8: midst of them, and you know, the footballers are confused,
Speaker 8: they don't quite know what to do. There's a standard
Speaker 8: way of doing this, and then in the end they
Speaker 8: just like saw it and they did it with him
Speaker 8: in the midst of it. It's a remarkable image. You know,
Speaker 8: the smoke goes off, the confetti blows up, some of
Speaker 8: them were dancing, some of them are looking at at
Speaker 8: the present. He knew exactly what he was doing. He
Speaker 8: knew that was the photo moment that would go around
Speaker 8: the world and that he'd become front and center. So
Speaker 8: the World Cup contains that power times a million. Twenty eighteen,
Speaker 8: Putin ran the World Cup and was very front and center.
Speaker 8: Twenty twenty two, it was in Katar. First game you
Speaker 8: and I watched, they had the Katari leader sitting right
Speaker 8: by the Saudi Arabian Mohammed bin Salman. I believe this
Speaker 8: is your expertise, not mine, but the two of them
Speaker 8: had had frosty relations before that. To see them unite
Speaker 8: was deeply symbol like a symbol. I think one was
Speaker 8: even wearing a scar for the other country. So there's
Speaker 8: a story on the field. There's always the story of it.
Speaker 8: And the optics, the soft power, the odd power is
Speaker 8: written all over this tournament every time it occurs.
Speaker 2: You know, President Trump is both head of state and
Speaker 2: also famously won the FIFA Peace Prize, So maybe he
Speaker 2: could invite the new Iranian Supreme Leader to the US
Speaker 2: to sit next to him at a game and we
Speaker 2: could have another moment like the one you just described.
Speaker 8: I'm just catching ideas, Yeah, I mean, well, we're pitching ideas.
Speaker 8: I think this should be a FIFA music award, like
Speaker 8: a Grammy for like kid Rock or Vanilla. I. I
Speaker 8: would say, you will watch this World Cup with a
Speaker 8: split lens, and who is invited and where they sit
Speaker 8: is for you and pod save the World is a
Speaker 8: is going to be? You know, I'd say a sport
Speaker 8: in itself, but it's not a sport that gives it
Speaker 8: a sense of a lack of meaning. But that narrative
Speaker 8: will be enormous in macro ways and in microwaves. We
Speaker 8: just had Wagner Moora, the Oscar nominated actor Pablo Escovar
Speaker 8: from northaast I want to shows Football Mad and he
Speaker 8: talked with an amazing passion about how Brazil, Brazil wears
Speaker 8: a yellow shirt. It's iconic, you know, it's synonymous with
Speaker 8: a beautiful style of football that kind of coincides with
Speaker 8: the advent of color television. And he talked about how
Speaker 8: when Bolscenario was president, he co opted the Brazilian shirt
Speaker 8: and that shirt became a symbol of his regime. And
Speaker 8: Vakta Moore talked about how this World Cup in a
Speaker 8: post Bolsonario realm is a chance to reclaim it. So
Speaker 8: the narratives within this thing, if you're a football fan,
Speaker 8: you know it's the Ronaldo, the Messy, the Portugal of France,
Speaker 8: the Spain. But if you're a pod Save the World fan,
Speaker 8: you know the World Cup is is all of that
Speaker 8: and more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's always sort of like issues and anxieties
Speaker 2: going into these World Cups. Sometimes it's political, sometimes it's
Speaker 2: you know, security or logistics. This year people were talking
Speaker 2: about potential ice presence of games there are questions about
Speaker 2: travel restrictions or visas. More recently, you know, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of discussion about ticket prices. Has any of that
Speaker 2: deterred attendance as far as you can tell? Is the
Speaker 2: world still coming to the US for these games in
Speaker 2: Mexico and Canada.
Speaker 8: You know, the narrative of any World Cup is decided afterwards,
Speaker 8: and this one in the run up has been about
Speaker 8: safety fears. But not just in the United States. In Mexican,
Speaker 8: the you know, the drug cartel violence, the global tensions,
Speaker 8: the travel restrictions. Look, one of the reasons I love
Speaker 8: football is that, more than any other sport, it holds
Speaker 8: up a mirror to the world that surrounds it. I've
Speaker 8: always loved that. It's always one of my definitive moments
Speaker 8: in life, not just in football. Is nineteen eighty six
Speaker 8: England played old Argentina. Diego Maradona. His Argentina, one of
Speaker 8: the greatest to ever play the game, just a pick,
Speaker 8: just a street urchin turned you know, kid of gold.
Speaker 8: They called him Pbade, the Oro in the shadow of
Speaker 8: the Falklands walk and England they were our heroes and
Speaker 8: Argentina destroyed them one goal, tiny asl Diego punched it
Speaker 8: in in the era before before video referees. He punched
Speaker 8: it in over a six foot two goalkeeper used his
Speaker 8: hand and immediately when asked did you did you punch
Speaker 8: that in? He came up brilliantly with his own marketing.
Speaker 8: He said it was a little bit the head of
Speaker 8: Diego and a little bit the hand of God. And
Speaker 8: then when we were reeling in agony as an English nation,
Speaker 8: he picked the ball up deep in his own half
Speaker 8: and then just ran through the entire team single handedly,
Speaker 8: every hero. He eviscerated all of them and then just
Speaker 8: rolled the ball home, which kind of echoed the first goal.
Speaker 8: I did that cheated because I could, but I also
Speaker 8: could have destroyed you single handedly if I wanted to,
Speaker 8: and I just did. That goal was an agony and
Speaker 8: as an English human being, it kind of put us
Speaker 8: all in our place, showed us where we were in
Speaker 8: the in the global food chain. But now it's actually
Speaker 8: the post that that a photograph I have in my
Speaker 8: office on my wall, signed by him. It makes you
Speaker 8: feel things, it makes you feel alive. That agony is
Speaker 8: like one of my proudest agonies. It's an honor to
Speaker 8: have that agony. So everything is always geopolitical. The run
Speaker 8: up to any World Cup in the modern period is
Speaker 8: always a human darkness. The South African World Cup twenty ten,
Speaker 8: the whole reporting going in was how everybody was going
Speaker 8: to be, you know, carjacked.
Speaker 2: There was an.
Speaker 8: Epidemic, just the violence was going to destroy the thing.
Speaker 8: The electricity belt was not enough to power the state.
Speaker 8: It was a disaster. Why is Africa hosting this? It
Speaker 8: turned out to be one of the most significant World
Speaker 8: Cups of my lifetime. Melson Mandela Africa presenting it to
Speaker 8: the world in majestic fashion. Same with Brazil twenty fourteen.
Speaker 8: The violence rioting social unrest in twenty thirteen, you know,
Speaker 8: the people rose up around games, marched on the stadia.
Speaker 8: Every stadium I was in, there were riots, demonstrations for
Speaker 8: social justice, for education, not football. It's meant to be
Speaker 8: a disaster. And then once a ball is kicked, Tommy,
Speaker 8: cognitive dissonance kicks in. I'm not sure this is a
Speaker 8: good thing or a bad thing, to be honest, but
Speaker 8: it's what happens once the Lionel Messi takes the field.
Speaker 8: You know, all the storyline just falls away and we
Speaker 8: kind of become mesmerized by that global eclipse thing. So
Speaker 8: it is a lot of global tension. It is a
Speaker 8: mirror to the world. The world is understandably challenging. But again,
Speaker 8: once that opening whistle goes the past World Cups, everyone
Speaker 8: has gone from fear and darkness and catastrophizing to a
Speaker 8: sense of albeit fleeting, sense of wonder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I cannot wait for it to start. But again,
Speaker 2: the book is we are the World Cup. So pick
Speaker 2: up a copy now and then, Roger, if listeners want
Speaker 2: to just hear more from you throughout the World Cup,
Speaker 2: where should.
Speaker 8: They look, Tommy, We're headed to you tomorrow. We're going
Speaker 8: to LA. We have a bus in the style of
Speaker 8: John Madden, a big orange bus. We're driving it across country.
Speaker 8: Can't tell if this is the greatest idea we've ever had,
Speaker 8: all the worst. We'll find out. Starting in LA, we're
Speaker 8: going up to Seattle, coming back to LA We're doing
Speaker 8: and then going across the country through Texas to Atlanta.
Speaker 8: We're going to be doing college game days before the
Speaker 8: biggest game, starting with the United States. We're going to
Speaker 8: be on Santa Monica Pia on that first US game
Speaker 8: on the twelfth with Rob Mack. And then we're going
Speaker 8: up to Seattle, where we've got John Green, the great
Speaker 8: the greatest novelist. I think everyone would agree Old Skittles,
Speaker 8: you man, the greatest Seahawk of all time. It's going
Speaker 8: to be joining us and more and then back to
Speaker 8: La and then we're going across. And I will say
Speaker 8: as we go across, this is a wild time, Tommy,
Speaker 8: in many sports fans in America will be turned onto
Speaker 8: football for the first time. America loves the circus, they
Speaker 8: love an excuse, the daytime drink, they love, you know,
Speaker 8: mass desire to cut work, which is approved for thirty
Speaker 8: nine days. But I will say seeing these fans and
Speaker 8: there will be thousands of fans coming in. There have
Speaker 8: been travel bands, you know, there are some teams who
Speaker 8: have no fans able to get visas because of the
Speaker 8: modern reality. They've been caught up in in that issue,
Speaker 8: so like Haiti, Iran, Senegal, Ivory Coast. But there are
Speaker 8: thousands and thousands of fans coming and this moment for
Speaker 8: thirty nine days for the world to shine a spotlight
Speaker 8: on not just La San Francisco, Seattle, but cities at Houston,
Speaker 8: which are you know about to be beloved. When the
Speaker 8: wolf finds lemon pepper wet in Atlanta, When there's twenty
Speaker 8: thousand Argentinians running around Kansas City tasting Arthur Bryant's slaps
Speaker 8: and going, oh my god, we've been doing barbecue all
Speaker 8: wrong all this time. That to me is I hope
Speaker 8: how America can be a winner for thirty nine days,
Speaker 8: showing a face of ourselves which is meaningful and warm
Speaker 8: and welcoming. I'm filled with a kind of joy. I
Speaker 8: want saw from Liverpool.
Speaker 2: It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait for much
Speaker 2: of Europeans to try dunkin Donuts from make Up for
Speaker 2: Boston for the first time. Roger, great to see you,
Speaker 2: great to talk with you. Good luck with this tournament, buddy.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to watch through your eyes.
Speaker 8: I'll see you in La Beautiful. So I'm really really
Speaker 8: excited to be of courage.
Speaker 3: That's our show for today. Thanks to Roger Bennett for
Speaker 3: coming on. Alex and I will be back with a
Speaker 3: new show on Friday. Bye everyone. Positive America is a
Speaker 3: Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher,
Speaker 3: Saul Ruben, McKenna, Roberts and Ferris Safari with re Jerlin,
Speaker 3: Elijah Cone and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt de Groat,
Speaker 3: Ben Hefcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlottelandis Krol pel Avive, David Toles,
Speaker 3: Mia Kelman, Ryan Young and Naomi Single. Our staff is
Speaker 3: probably unionized with the Writers Guild of America East