Team USA and World Cup Narratives

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Apex november third through Fit Learn more at apexhow dot com slash podcast . Get three months free plus free install on one hundred percent fiber internet from race communications , stream, game and work without buffering. Order online today at offer. Race dot com and get three months free Welcome to Plaza America. I'm John Favre. I'm John Love Tommy Tour. On today's show, we'll talk about the biggest outbreak of violence in the Middle East since the so called ceasefire went into effect. The growing split between Trump and Netanyahu , why Trump ripped off his mic and stormed out of a meet the press interview . His new conspiracy about voter fraud here in California and what that could mean for November, Scott Pelley going public with his allegations against Barry Weiss and Trump's decision to attend Game Three of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden, then Tommy talks to Roger Bennett of Men and Blazers about the World Cup kicking off on Thursday and the implications for global pol itics before we start , if you don't like listening to podcast ads, subscribe to Cricket Media and become a friend of the pod . Because you get ad free episodes of all your favorite crooked pods, plus you get to support pro democracy, independent media . Scott Pelley hasn't accused us of injecting any bias yet into any of his reporting , but once he once he starts we just crooked, hopefully we'll keep the bias out of his reporting. We don't have time to inject bias into Scott Pelle's reporting. We're too busy injecting bias into everything we do. There you go. That's what I was trying to get at. Thank you. That's perfect. Let's put that right in. Yeah. And you also get access to all of our great substacks. You get our subscriber only shows like Polo Coaster with Dan Feiffer and lots of other fun perks. So consider subscribing. All right, happy one hundred day anniversary to the war that was supposed to be over in just a few weeks . Here's where things stand with Iran and the Middle East as of this recording. Over the weekend, the US and Iran were shooting drones and missiles at each other after oil tankers tried to pass through the Strait of Hormuz without the IRGC's permission. Then the newly negotiated ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon fell apart when Israel bombed Beirut after claiming that Hezbollah targeted them first. Iran responded by launching missiles at Israel for the first time since the April ceasefire. Trump then told Axios that he would warn Netanyahu, quote , not to retaliate and told The Financial Times that he quote calls the shots. Netanyahu doesn't call the shots. Then Netanyahu essentially said yes, I do call the shots and struck Iran. So for now, both sides seem to have de escalated. And on Monday morning, Trump posted that final peace negotiations are quote, subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way. The president was asked about the war in a prerecorded meet the press interview that ran on Sunday . Here's some of what he said as it rained heavily in the background. Is the United States at war with Iran? Well, they've been largely decapitated, and I call it a military exercise because people would rather have it called that. It's not a big war for us . How long are you willing to give Iran to make a deal? How much longer you've been talking for some time? Well, you really haven't. Again, you were in Vietnam for nineteen years . You were in Iraq for many years . Gas is up, diesel is up. It's all coming down as soon as the war's up. Seventy percent of farmers say they can't afford fertilizer The farmers are doing very well. One of your consistent camp aign promises was no new wars, going all the way back to twenty fifteen . Did you break that promise to the American people? No. What changed because you insisted no loud. So loud. I didn't guarantee no war guarantee no war . The rain on this is it's boring rain. They have to stop for periods of time. I can't imagine anything more unpleasant than sitting in front of a tractor for five minutes while you wait for the rain to quiet down in between questions about fertilizer hammering on a tin roof. And I know they had the John Deere tractors like strategically placed, but those are the Hezbela flag colors by the way. Feel free to Google it. Yellow and green, just like that. So you and Hassan are big fans of that fun . Here's so as Trump said, of course, what promise? I didn't make any promise about no new wars. And here's a here's a not so fast montage put together by decoding Fox News. Oh, we can't vote for him. He's going to start a wood. No, I used my personality that we didn't have to have wars. I was the first president in decades who started no new wars who started no new wars . We don't need the wars , foreign lands, countries you've never heard of, countries that don't even want us there. We will expel the war mongers from our government . Look at me. I'm the one that kept us out of war. I'm going to keep you out of wars. I kept you out of wars. We had no wars with Donald Trump. You're not gonna have a war with me and you're not gonna have a third world war with me. That I can tell you the warmongers a third world war. I think I think a third world war. Not a third You thought like yeah. I mean, look, you're like, excuse me, mister President, it's developing nation war. Yeah. Very dated Cold War terminologies. It's a global south war. Yeah, we're not aligned with the Soviets anymore. I don't know why I decided to go on that tangent. Do you think he's just convinced himself that Iran doesn't count as a real war? What's the alternative ? Is he telling the truth ? Yeah, like I do think he's trying to make us believe this. Like no, the real wars are the ones where you send troops overseas and they're deployed on the ground and they occupy a country. And by the way, Vietnam was nineteen years. Has it been nineteen years f,olks? No, this is a little excursion as he calls it. We all think he means incursion still, right? Yeah. So I do think that's like their attempt at selling this. It's pretty tough though, given the outside economic costs, given the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah, there's just, you know, there's a big space between no war and Vietnam, right? It's like, wow, right . We're so grateful you didn't launch another Vietnam . Well , that's not the standard be worse if this war had been going on as long as the Vietnam War. There's also something, he's done it before, but he is so glib when he talks about people who died. He's like, Oh, there's not a big war, it's not a big conflict. You lost thousands of these other conflicts. We've only lost thirteen. And he adds a perfunctory and any death is unacceptable. But to hear like an American president refer to the deaths as being minimal in this way as if like that is acceptable or that makes it okay? It's just it's still drawing. Yeah, and it's not just the fuel prices either . It's like fertilizer prices . It's actually hitting farmers pretty hard. His only real message for farmers is like just wait till it's over. Right. It'll get better. It'll get so much better. Just wait till it's over. Who by the way, that's also, of course, not true, right? Like prices aren't going to suddenly drop if there's an agreement or maybe there's some like immediate effect , but like the ramifications of the closure of the Strait of Hermuse are going to last for a very long time. So Tommy, what did you make of the Wall Street Journal report on how Trump failed to reign in Netanyahu over these latest strikes? The New York Times had kind of the opposite take, which is that the eventual halt to the fighting on Monday left Netanyahu, appearing as beholden to Trump as ever. So I think the context people you understand is that the Israelis also have an election coming up. It will probably be sometime between now and october twenty seventh is when it will get scheduled. And so for Trump, we know he has a midterm . A bad result will make his life complicated because of investigations and Democrats being in power. But for Netanyahu, staying in power is existential because that could be the only way he stays out of jail because there's all these corruption allegations and investigations. And so but politically, Americans and Israelis feel very differently about the war. Americans are like, this is dumb. Why are we doing this? We heard that super cut of him saying there would be no wars. They're like, end it. Gas prices are high. End it. The Israelis feel like this is not going well. We have not won as Netanyahu looks weak. And Netanyahu is actually getting attacked from the left and from the right for not finishing the war . And so he's in a tough place politically. And so Iran firing ballistic missiles directly at Israel because of something Israel did in Lebanon exacerbates that problem for Netanyahu further. So now Netanyahu is in a very tough political situation. He wants the Trump peace talks to fail, but he can't be completely overt in his meddling with those peace talks because he doesn't want to piss Trump off and then lose his political support and the military support. And so he also can't look like he's being fully controlled by Trump . Like when Trump calls the FT and is like, I own this bitch, you know, like that's a tough place for him to be politically. And he also doesn't want to look like he's let going to Iran fire missiles at me, Mr. Security Be Netanyahu without responding . So it was just he's in a very tough place . It sounds like they navigated it better on Sunday than they did in the last call where I guess Trump was like, Hey, man, you're a fucking asshole. You be in jail, if not for me. But this divergent interests are making this more and more complicated every day. Did you see it one U. S. official told Axios they described the call between Trump and Netanyahu as quote polite while a second US official noted that nobody shouted. So that's the one . There we go. That is the standard. Yeah, it is difficult for for it makes diplomacy a little bit harder when Trump makes all of the subtext text all the time. Yeah . Right . Yeah, well as a rule , when someone says, I call the shots around here, that's rarely said from a position of strength. You don't usually have to say if people know people if you're calling the shots, you don't have to say it. You're just in the midst of calling the shots. Like he's been saying, he holds all the cards. I hold all the cards in this war and I call all the shots. Well, he's saying he calls all the shots in a call to the reporter before he calls the other guy who's saying stop shooting . Get the sequencing wrong, sir. He said I thought this was captured the situation. Israel has a full right to self defense and we are, exercising it. I say this with appreciation and respect for my good conversations with President Trump. And so he just does the praise piece but then he does whatever he wants and maybe he's being limited in some ways and not in others . But if the U . S. cannot constrain Israel from escalating in Lebanon, how can there be a deal between Iran and the U. S. in which Israel at any moment can break the ceasefire . And so like any ways in which the U. S. cannot constrain Israel is proof that a deal will not be upheld by our side. And so we're just in this place where everyone's testing each other and like if the idea of success is getting Benjamin Netanyahu to only bomb outside of Beirut and not Beirut proper and that's Donald Trump exerting his power. Like I don't know how that ends with Iran having confidence that we can maintain a ceasefire? This is the rub. Iran has, I think, very successfully made a peace deal contingent on the war ending on all the fronts, so in Iran itself, but also in Lebanon and Southern Lebanon, whereas the Israelis are like, Nah, these are different conflicts with different timelines and we want to keep prosecuting this fight against Tezbullah because people in northern Israel are still under threat from drone attacks. And I think that's going to again come into conflict here. And from the other side, Iran has an interest in making this a larger conflict in which they can use the Hezbollah Israel conflict as a part of their negotiation and so they can prolong it there and then walk away from the table saying they're blaming Israel, right? Like everybody is using the leverage that they have. Reportedly the, argument that Trump made to Netanyahu too was don't retaliate because I think I'm a few days away from a deal. And then if we don't get the deal, then maybe maybe I'll lead the strikes next time with you. So he really does that's another one where like I think he genuinely believes or at least his team keeps leading him on like we're so close. We're on the one yard line. We're so close to a deal and it just never actually happens. Yeah, I mean I just I believe it when I see it . I And think Netanyahu is going to hate the deal that's on the table reportedly. We don't have to go through the details, but it's a lot of sanctions relief and unfrozen assets. And so yeah, again, it just seems like they're in very different pages here, BB and Trump. Well, even if it's this mini deal where it's just reopening the strait and you don't even get into a ton of sanctions relief somehow, that doesn't really do anything about Israel and Lebanon. No, or solve the nuclear issue. Or yeah, of course . So meanwhile, as the ceasefire was te etering, Pete Hegseth was in Europe to mark the eighty second anniversary of Day , where he insulted our European allies with a speech that included lines like this . Sadly today Today , different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies . Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece and Bulgaria , boats and men arrive , when will Europe an capitals do something about that invasion? This is one of my favorite analogies I've ever seen in the history of speech writing because in that analogy , he is putting current European leaders there the Nazis and the migrant caravans or boats, that's Day . And so the what? Why is your in your analogy , you're making you're making the Germans the Nazis again? Well, he definitely wanted to twist it so that it's like different dangerous ideologies around the continent, but then also wanted to compare the boat's landing with the boat's landing. It didn't it didn't work on a number of levels . No need to pick just one, but yeah. Yeah, the good guys were in the boat storming the beaches and now the dangerous ideologies are storming the beaches. So it's like, sir, did the dangerous ideologies raise the flaggy Ijima? Because I feel like you've got this whole thing backwards. Well, I listen to the whole speech and it's so bad it's obviously we can get into the actual substance of going to going to Normandy on Day to pick a fight for some reason . But he also makes this point it's always in this sort of like the kind of like whatever Christian nationalism, Western ideology thing that he's always doing, but he's like, you know, we defended Western values that here at Day or something to that effect , do you remember who the sides were in Europe? It was West on West Violence. You know, it's like you know what I mean? It's just it's just stupid. It's just stupid. It's also just like when you get underneath the bad analogies and PetXer F not being the best speaker like the fact that replacement, the great replacement theory, which once used to be like this far right extremist thing that we talk about once in a while. Now it's like the U. S. Secretary of Defense goes to Europe and it's like the official position of the U. S. government that the problem with mass migration, we're not even going to pretend it's border security or it's job competition or it's like, you know, governments having to spend too much money to house migrants or anything like that. No, it's just it's dangerous ideologies. It is people who come ashore , most of them women and children, some of them dead men's half men. Because they're so desperate and leave the countries. And this represents a dangerous evil ideology in the eyes of the US government. And you said Christian nationalism , the pope, the first American pope is going to spend july fourth on one of those islands, Lampedusa, where migrants come ashore, which he's doing because the last pope also would do that all the time so he's doing it in honor of Pope Francis. And this is like, you know, Pete Hexeth is talking about this is like evil. Migrants are as dangerous to Europe today as Americans were to the Nazis. That's the analogy. He says in the speech that was what being defended on Day was the Western tradition of freedom, as if like again, it's just sort of going back to Christian nationalism and a sort of whole like Western ideology, but like, what are you talking about? Like we were on the there was a western it was West on West Violence. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah, there's also like, there seem to be two criticisms in the speech. He part of it is a criticism of like defense spending or lack of defense spending in Europe and have the typical free you've been riding on the U S and NATO argument that we hear it. And then there was this criticism of European immigration policy and European countries letting in migrants, many of whom were escaping wars, by the way, in some cases, war started by the United States . Either way, it's just a wildly inappropriate place to be sort of a decade. Like usually cemetery. Usually these are just celebrations of the few remaining veterans and the people we've lost in the war . It's also an example of how the free world came together to defeat fascism. Meanwhile, like Pete Hexeth and Trump and the Pentagon are allowing the Ukrainians to just kind of dangle in the wind in their effort to fight back against Vladimir Putin. So it's like, I don't know, just the whole thing felt so inappropriate. And how many times have Republicans told us like that's not the forum to have a policy dispute, right? Like a memorial is not where you talk about gun control or like actual efforts to stop gun violence. And he's just going there and yelling at people for thirteen minutes in this weird speech about long way from a long way from Reagan's Pondah speech. You know, I was thinking about that 's he was thinking about that speech when he was trying to do this. Yeah, it's also like you have Ban swingzay in on like a horrible death in the UK. It's like he's just traveling all the way to Normandy to weigh in. Like immigration is a domestic issue like you're talking about a domestic policy issue. He also at the in the Tommy's point says like, no, you know, in World War two, like there was we really put ourselves in the line for each other. It wasn't just slogans, summits, and communicates. It was like, yeah, man, it was World War two . Like there , it wasn't we were at war . You do , you know, you had to actually fight everybody. Like in peace, right? And you would work with your allies, presumably having some kind of conversations via whatever means you'd want. It's this very like stupid like stupid guy 's just a stupid stupid guy no slow bag it wasn't just like slow bag day speech, right? Yeah. It's like yeah I got to go there tell you I don't for me World War two wasn't just slogans like yeah man . you D catchid how it started? The most offensive line maybe was the very first line was thank you Ambassador Kushner. How I can corrupt Dad? Oh my gosh. Ambassador to France. Oh, that is he France? Isn't that depressing? Yeah, I forgot about that. Saccharab . Good stuff. Well, happy, happy Day . Ponsie of America is brought to you by Aura Frames. Dad's love to tell stories, sometimes more often and for longer durations than they wish they would. This father's day share some reference photos of the moments he's always talking about with Aura Frames. Honestly, a lot of dad's stories would be much improved by a visual aid. Every aura frame features free unlimited storage, meaning you can add as many photos and videos as you want so the stories never end. It comes beautifully packaged in a premium gift box and you can preload photos before it even ships. Then you can keep adding photos from anywhere anyt,ime via the free Aura app or texting photos directly to your frame. Aura makes it easy to shop for dad or any great storyteller in your life. 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That's JOIN BILL TO. com slash crook ed, make sure you use our URL so they know we sent you . All right, so the most viral moment from Trump's Met the Press interview was when the president ripped off his mic and stormed off set. Did he stump on the mic? A lot of people are saying that he threw on the ground and stop and we can all we'll watch in a second. It's unclear . It started with some tough questions from Kristin Welker about the insurrectionist slush fund, which led to Trump repeating his favorite conspiracies about january sixth in the twenty twenty election, and then things just evolved from there. The whole sequence lasted about six minutes, which we won't play in full, but here are the highlights. I don't know what's going to happen with the weaponization front. I love the idea . They sent people to jail who did nothing wrong. Just to be very clear, there's no evidence of what you're saying. But Todd Blanton the election was rigged . It was a dirty election. And it's happening again right now in California. Presented happening right now in California . Right now it's looked at what's happening in California to that. It's four days and they aren't even close to coming up. That's how they count. You know why they're doing that? Because they're cheating on the election. There's what do you have evidence to support? All they have to do is look at . You're either crooked or you're stupid. You play right into their hands with a scrap. Your elections are crooked and you're crooked at least the press is crooked . And so is ABC and CBS and CNN. You're one sided crooked network. Sorry. Let's call it twitch because I've had enough. Thank you D,arling. Have a good time . Please, I traveled all the way to Wisconsin. I've traveled rain all the way I know. I've traveled an hour. On and off in the rain and I've given you enough time. You ought to straighten out your press because you know what? A country can never be great traveled with a dishonest. Listen, we traveled all the way to Wisconsin for the symbol. I can't tell he did it on purpose. I think he accidentally crunched it. Okay . Reminds me when everything else was on purpose but but that, like when I went to when I'm into Michigan to interview Bernie and then like about twelve minutes and he was like this . That was a tough. Remember that all? Wrap it up. That was a gut punch. Punch. You're either crooked or you're stupid. Actually, that's a great slogan for our subscriber push for now . Please consider subscribing to front of the pod because you're either crooked or you're stupid . com slash friends. That was was he very mad there. He really was like he was like the part of the was I want to put the whole goddamn system on Trial. You're cooking. They're crooked. CNN, NBC, ABC, is there anyone else left? Schwarzenegger was worse and apprentice than I was. He yells at Christin Welker like she's the electorate. Yeah, she goes elections. But you did when they came back, I watched the meet the press version and when Welker comes back after the interview, she said, I spoke to the president again and he said he'd happily come on and get it in the future. He called her. So it's just all it's all a show . He loves her. Also she's such a nice, calm, measured person. The idea that you would flip out on Kristin Welker like that is so funny. You know what? He flipped out because she said, Do you have the evidence? Where's the evidence? No, and in his mind it's just like, well, that's what my people told me. And I saw it on the TV and I saw it in the truths that I that I reposted, that I retruthed. And so he has no fucking ideas. He's like, all you have to do is look if everyone would just look at what I looked at, you'd know that it was crooked. I think it's you're asking for evidence. You know I don't have that. Fuck you make it up on television. You know that's so mad about the rain as if she's making a rain. He also did the 'cause it was too long. We didn't play it, but he did the whole thing again on where on january sixth the FBI agents, the FBI was standing outside sending people in to the capital and it's like, you were fucking president, Dog. They only pleaded guilty because they were threatened with jail. What are you talking about? They're on video beating up cops. Everyone has knocked down this dumb conspiracy that the FBI somehow set up the january sixth rioters. The FBI that was under the control of Donald Trump on the slush fund, we'll start there and then we can get to the fraud in California . We talked last episode about Todd Blanche telling Congress that the administration would not be moving forward with the idea even though Trump says still he loves it. And then Senate Republicans blocked the bipartisan attempts to actually ban the slush fund just in case Trump changes his mind . Now the House is going to give it a go. Democrat Tom Swazy and Republican Brian Fitzpatrick will launch a discharge petition this week to force a vote on their bill to ban the slush fund. Two questions You think the vulnerable Republicans who voted to kill the fund have successfully neutralized their political risk? I think that was Collins , Housted and Dan Sullivan , all up for reelection, they vote and but then they voted for the final bill. And do you think Trump will actually just let this thing die or is this not the last we've heard of it? So he also says to Welker at some point he still likes the fund , but you have to get it approved . And if it didn't get approved, I'd be disappointed. So that's where he's at now approved. He didn't claim to need it approved in the first place and I was hiding behind the idea of it being approved in some way. So he's sort of leaving his options open, I think to let it go or do it in some other fashion. I think the like it's very clear that they did not appreciate how big of a political problem it would be to launch this thing. Like Todd Blanche clearly thought he was this was going to be doing what Trump wanted. He got him the nomination to be Attorney General and then it just the whole thing blew up. Yeah, to me he sounds like a man who is not ashamed by the fund or worried about the politics. It sounds like he thinks he's owed this. Genuinely thinks he has owed this money. He deserves this money, just like he has owed the money from CBS because of that lawsuit or the bribes from the tech companies to build his ballroom and goddamn he's going to get it. And that's why to me, the political risk for all the vulnerable members does not go away because I don't think he's going to drop it. And I think it's going to be an ongoing issue. And just like to be to be having this conversation is so politically damaging like this man is trying to extort us taxpayers for one point eight billion dollars to pay off people who beat up cops. That is crazy. This is the taxpayer funded transition surgery for prison ers issue from twenty twenty four in the twenty twenty six midterms. I have not seen a poll yet about this, but throw in a poll one point eight billion dollars from the taxpayers to pay out people who were convicted criminals on camera trying to murder cops. That's that's what we're doing. That's where taxpayer money is going at a time of inflation and high gas prices It's like and also for like Susan Collins and John Husted and Dan Sullivan , they voted for the bill. They voted for the they tried to vote for the provision that would block it, but then when that failed, they gave the green light to the whole bill that went forward and they didn't do anything to stop it. They could have voted again because you know who did vote against the final bill? Lisa Murkowski. And she's the only Republican who did. And the rest of them just said, fuck it, I'm just going to vote for the bill anyway. It is sort of like even on the merits, like this is the core of the problem of someone like Susan Collins or these Republicans who try to once in a while stake out an anti Trump view, but for the most part vote with the caucus, which is they are part of enabling Donald Trump. And the only reason we got to the point where this fund could be proposed is because Donald Trump believes that he has a Republican caucus in his pocket and he is right. And for all their kind of hemming and high, all the concerns Susan Collins has shown she is one of the fifty enablers of Donald Trump time and time again . And you can go to your go to the podium and give these statements, but at the end of the day, you support a Senate majority in the Senate. You support Donald Trump being able to do whatever he wants without any kind of accountability. So let's talk about the fraud claims from Trump in that Meet the Press interview , which again started with his usual bullshit about twenty twenty, but also included some fresh material on last week's California primaries where the votes are still being counted , a reminder that everyone here in California gets a ballot in the mail, which you can return by mail or drop off in person . And as long as you get it postmarked by election day and it arrives within seven days, it does get counted . That process means the count is very slow and big changes can happen late, especially in an election like this where a lot of voters, especially Democrats, were undecided until the very end. And that is, of course, what is happening right now in the LA Mayor's race, Nithi Rahman has now overtaken Sencer Pratt and account. And it appears she will make the runoff and face Karen Bass in November. That's what some organizations are projecting. APP hasn't gone with it yet, but it's definitely trending that way. This led to many Trump posts , the most recent as of this recording being, quote, not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the LA runoff s after the big lead he had. Third world nation, rigged elections. Now they'll be working on a great guy, Steve Hilton. Hilton is the Trump endorsed Republican in the governor's race who's currently sitting in the second general election sl , though Tom Styr is gaining on him, unclear if Steer will actually catch him . And plenty of Magadipshits are following Trump's lead on this . Here's just a sample. I'm not saying it's rigged. I'm saying it stinks to high heaven and everybody knows that and California is playing around with us. But what evidence is there to prove that there was rigged? I don't some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it is impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here . So people can just dig through garbage cans, find ballots, and send them in apparently forever after an election is over. It's not okay. It's okay. Really? Smart people need to go to the acts dummy smart. That's what Randy Fine looks like. Randy Fine Fine Harvard. It's a hard twice. What? Let me check it. I'm gonna check the facts. Check the fact you just threw him twice this . Randy Fine . Randy Fine Harvard undergrad and grad uate. What was his graduate degree is? I must have Harvard, Harvard University. Kennedy BA, MBA. Wow. MBA. It wasn't the best school. There we go. There we go. Sounds like you've got time. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people get into Harvard, but he's smart . A lot of people don't get it . So that's the cool thing about Harvard. So before we even get to the fraud part , thoughts on Nifeia overtaking Pratt? It's a bad day for Karen Bass. She they thought they could have a nice little runoff where basically she got to run against Rick Carusa with a head injury and instead Instead, she's going to face somebody that has a huge that actually like, you know, Karen Bass is unpopular Nithia. I think a lot of people don't know Nithia, but she has a positive approval rating among people who do know her. It doesn't surprise me that a lot of a lot of the kind of hyper engaged LA voter who didn't want to vote for the governor's race to the last possible minute were a bunch of Nithi Rahman voters that were paying really close attention . But I do think it's very good for Los Angeles because it means we now get a runoff with real stakes about what kind of democratic leadership we want as opposed to what we would have had which is six months of fear mongering around Spencer Prett. Yeah , just to be clear, establishment Democrats in California are rigging the election to make it harder for the incumbent mayor to win the mayoral here in Los Angeles , but also rigging it so the statewide race will include a Republican. So that Steve Hilton has a chance to become governor. Because we know what's up here in Los Angeles. That makes sense. That makes sense. He had to leave his point . You know, head injuries whacked by a big crystal in the head like now it's a real race. Like Karen Bass is a weak incumbent because of her handling of the fires, homelessness , cost of living, like anger and incumbents generally. And Spencer Pratt was dominating the battle for attention for super online people. If you're a Twitter power user, if you're super politically engaged, Spencer Pratt was everywhere because our algorithms were feeding us his AI slop crap and you know, just felt like he was all over. And that's a small slice of the electorate, it turns out, because the LA Times did a poll, right before the election where they modeled the actual electorate and that poll looks like it was pretty much spot on at this point . And so what actually happened is what I think that political professionals always assumed would happen , which is the MAGA adjacent candidate, Spencer Pratt, was never going to do very well in Los Angeles in a county where fifteen percent of registered voters are Republican and Trump is fifty five points underwater, and Pratt was aligned with Trump. Like that, of course, that was what's going to happen here. In fact, Spencer Pratt's campaign was nothing special at all . And like, you know, I think you could look at the media tactics and say there's there's things for other candidates to learn about how to grab attention . But yeah, the LA the LA Times poll that you mentioned Tommy, it was it was may twenty eighth so, like a couple weeks before the election, and it was a Bass twenty six Ramen twenty five Prat twenty two. Didn't get as much attention because it sort of went against the prevailing narrative of like the super online set, which is journalists and all of us and people of us for sure . And then but today, it's right now, it's Bass thirty four, Ramen twenty seven, Pratt twenty six. And you know , you could see sort of Pratt going even lower and maybe Bass going a little bit lower as the final com vesote in, but we'll see . And it turns out that Spencer Pratt is probably going to finish almost where Donald Trump finished in twenty twenty four in this city . And now that's a bigger electorate. So you can't it's not exactly apples to apples, but he also he did much worse than Caruso did. Caruso spent more money, but also Spencer Pratt raised more than Karen Bass or Nythia, spent more , had crazy amount of attention and basically performed like a standard issue republican in Los Angeles absolutely no better at all. Imagine if like Joe Biden had given an interview saying that A likemy McGrath's loss is because of fraud in Kentucky because everybody loves Amy McGrath and Amy Grath is doing incredible stuff out there . Look, there are people that like, you know , they are they're captivating to the kind of people that are watching really close ly that are hyper partisan, but then voters in it who I think are really frustrated with Karen Bass, really frustrated with Democrats. They would and for all we know, look we don't know, right? If Nathi Orman were in then r'acet, like how many anti incumbent votes might have gone to Spencer Pratt? Like I think it's I think a little bit more than just kind of he got the kind of standard Republican vote. You know, we don't know how many votes for Ramen are sort of Democrats who are just anti incumbent, and maybe they could have been Spencer Pratt voters, right? Because they just did not want to vote for Karen Bas. But regardless, as much as people in this city are really frustrated with Democratic leadership, they're not going to vote for someone aligned with Trump who was going around saying crazy shit about the city. He ran a horrible campaign and he actually became more MAGA the closer it got to election day. Like he , I think we talked about this, maybe off Mike or on Mike. I can't remember anymore, but he spent the weekend before the election in New York on Fox and Friends. There's not Gutfeld too. Calling for Nythia and Karen Bass to be jailed and then talking about how people were raping dogs in Skid Row. Like that's how he that's how he ended the race. He became more of like a megalomaniac at the end or at least openly. He didn't try at all to distance himself from Republicans at all. Like Rick Caruso ran a race where he was at least like, I'm going to listen to both sides. Like he tried to be as non partisan as possible, which is probably why he ended up doing better than Spencer Pratt. But Spencer Pratt actually got more magazining the closer you got to election day. So anyone was like, Oh, it was a brilliant campaign, this and that's like, no, it wasn't. He had the possibility of maybe running a campaign where he had this like angry populist message and he sort of tapped into the frustration with the government, but he just fucking blew it as the race got closer. Yeah, and I should say like obviously I've been very insulting to Spencer Pratt and there's a like he lost his house. There's a lot of anger about the the way fires were managed, but he just didn't run that campaign. And I do think there's like a kind of insular conversation that happened. If you look at the map of where Spencer Pratt vote came from, there's this kind of ring of like wealthier places around the city are people that are very online, I think, very kind of like Bill Maher , Barry Weiss world kind of coded at least like just sort of tapped into that world who are really frustrated with Democrats who think the Democrats have gone crazy and move too far left, right? And there's just not that is a big pool of people on the internet. Right. And it's a big pool of people who, yeah, on the internet and just who have like outsized influence and louder megaphones than other people because it wasn't, I will say it wasn't purely an online phenomenon in that like we all know people and we were in circles where someone's like, oh, I've talked to some Democrats who are voting for Spencer Pratt and I would always ask them like are you are they Democrats who voted for Karen Bass last time? Or are they Caruso voters who are now Prat voters? And you didn't find too many Bass Prat voters out there. Right. Right. There was a genuine frustration with Karen Bass. I personally felt it. We talked about this on the show. Her management of the city around the fire, as I thought was really, really bad. And I think for Spencer Pratt, having his house burned down , understandably he was channeling some legitimate and righteous rage about all things LA and the fires . If Rick Caruso had won again, I think there's a very good chance he could have done well and made the runoff maybe won outright yeah because he had a track record. He was like, I built the grove and Spencer Pratt's like I coined the term spitey and maybe leaked a sex tape about LC. Yeah. For me. Like he's self evidently not qualified for the job. So I mean, like that, this is what was so frustrating I think about the boom lit about the guy was it was just like kind of like TMG adjacent Twitter algorithm pumped bullshit and hype backed by nothing. Well, and to your point, Love about the map. It's analogous to for those of you listening from DC or who have been to DC, like how people in Northwest DC and Northwest DC think like that's the whole city. There's actually three other quadrants in DC where a ton of fucking people live. They're just not as loud or as privileged as everyone in Nor thethwest. And that I think is what happened in LA too. It's like this is a big, big city. And all those places that voted for BAS , especially in southern and eastern LA and Nithi as well, like they're just not Nithia's areas are definitely wealthier for sure. But there's just an outsized influence and loudness you get from people in the West side that doesn't actually represent most of LA. So on the fraud allegations , how seriously do you guys take allegations from Trump and other Republicans as a potential harbinger of things to come in November or future elections, I gu ess. I mean, Trump's going to say that any election he or Republicans did not win was stolen, right? It's a headside win tails you lose setup. I think this was kind of the perfect storm because you had the Spencer Boomlet, this expectation that just built and built and built that he was some great candidate and going to win. Then there's the California voting process and how slow it is and we'll talk about that in a second. And then you know this just it wasn't like a big election night with a lot of other things to talk about. It was a lot of people focusing on this and the slow count ing. And so I think what I found personally so annoying about this is how much information you can find about the process if you try to find it. I think I got in a little exchange with Meghan McCain about this on Sunday. I was bored on a flight. She's an unpleasant person who doesn't apparently want to educate herself. But like you can go, reporters, the counting process is live streamed. Reporters can and do go to the processing center . The general public can and do go to observe the counting if you want to. There are representatives from the campaigns observing the counting, like the problems are well documented. LA County is the largest election jurisdiction in the country. There are more registered voters in this county than forty one states have statewide. I know. ten million people in LA County. People don't understand this. It's really big people. It's really big here everyone.. Come visit And in California , most of us vote by mail. It's like eighty or ninety percent of California voters use the ballot that gets mailed to your house compared to fifteen percent in Texas. And I love that because our ballot is really long and complicated and there's a lot of stuff you got to Google and it takes hours and like I'm glad I could do that at home . And so like you mentioned vote by mail ballots if they're postmarked on election day, received within seven days, they get counted. The signature matching process can take a lot of time. Again, that's a thing Republicans like I was going to say. Yeah, I think you guys like the signature matching process. That's called voter verification . And if there's an issue with your signature, there's time to cure it and fix it. That can take time. Takes time to open the ballots, check the signat ures. Like what we should do is put more money, more time, more resources, more people, more machines throw at this problem, try to speed it up a little bit . That would be helpful, but like we have a lot of people here. This is how we vote. Yeah, I mean we have a lot of people, but the scale shouldn't be a factor in how quickly we count the ballots, right? Like Texas can count the faster for other reasons. I'm saying that there I think there's there are ways in which we can keep postmarked by election day , we keep all the kind of pro voter policies and it could be done. It should be faster. It'd be much faster. Now, I do think one part of this is a lot of people held their ballots because they were waiting they were being strategic about the governor's race or maybe they just weren't and just actually didn't feel inspired by their choices . Whatever, people really held onto their ballots. I think two things should happen. One, going into November in California, I think we all really need to view it as kind of a civic responsibility to get our ballots in sooner. Right? Like I think we can all help by having more ballot in. And then two, so California now , counties have to have to count the most of the votes within thirteen days or they have to notify their provisional ballots and exceptions, but they have to count within thirteen days . But with some more resources, it should be possible that on election night, they've counted all the ballots they've already received and can put those numbers up. And then kind of the counts can be happening quicker. And that is a resource question. You have counties where they're still taking, you know, it's days and days and days after they're getting ballots that they can ultimately get to counting them. They have limited hours, they have limited space. Like, all of this could be resolved. And Governor Newsomis, Gavin Newsomas talked about this about wanting the ballots to be faster. I just don't appreciate when the Secretary of State of California is like, we want to be it's accuracy and not speed. I wish there was more acknowledgement that the process could be faster, what the resources would be required because it's a huge problem and look, there's nothing you can do to account for the fact that these people are going to accuse us of fraud, but I do think we should be able to count our ballots faster even at this size, right? I agree. Like that's why I said no more money more resources. Like we should count faster It sucks, it's frustrating, it's embarrassing. What I just have no time for is the people who don't spend one second trying to find good information. They spread the meme that they got forwarded by their aunt on Facebook and like they're like people kicking up the quote from Trump. It's like he doesn't know a goddamn thing about what's happening. There's no , let's be clear here. The reason we all want it counted faster is because we know that it if's not being counted fast enough, then Republicans now cry fraud in the election. There's no civic governmental reason for it to be counted faster. It would be nice. We're all fucking impatient people and just want results really fast. But like now, look, to your point, Love it, there are other states with mostly mail in ballots where you can postmark by election day, Washington State, Colorado, et cetera. And they're all fas ter than us. Now they are smaller states. I do think the biggest problem with California is we leave it to the counties still . And so like Los Angeles, actually, Los Angeles county was still posting updates over the weekend. A lot of counties just no one works on the weekend to count the ballots. They don't have enough staff, they don't post anything on the weekends, and there's just not enough machinery. So yeah, I think there is no excuse for the state legislature, which is controlled by Democrats and there's a Democratic governor to pass more funding for staff or resources for a faster signature verification process, which you could probably do as well. You could probably limit the window for curing your ballot if the signature doesn't match because it's very you have like twenty days, I think, to cure your ballot at this point, which is it's pretty long, right? So there's there's definitely things you can do on the margin to make it faster by making it a whole state thing instead of county by county. Yeah, and yes, it is to answer totally bullshit allegations of fraud. But also, we're the fourth fifth largest economy on earth. Why are we having so much trouble doing something that other places can do faster than us . Like I do think that that is like it's about good government too. Yeah, yeah Positive America is brought to you by HIMS. ED is way more common than most guys think. 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About four hours after our deadline , Berry Weiss sends an email to my boss, Tonya Simon Two of the things in the email include can we make the protesters look more violent ? Now I'm paraphrasing. I don't have the quote, but that's what was comm unicated to me . And the other thing was Renee Good's car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer. There was a thumb on the scale for the president's version of events that I felt was a level of political influence that I had never seen in thirty seven years at CBS News. Did you guys listen to the whole interview? And what did you think? Yeah, I watched the whole thing. The thing that jumped out to me was Pelly makes he talks about the bias and sort of pushing on these stories. And CBS put gave a comment to the Times basically saying like there was a back and forth, not everything that was requesteded end up in the final piece whatever. So they're saying, look, we had a back and forth about it. But let's assume that there is some bias. The point that Pelle makes is just what I take from his broader interview and the story here is that it's not just about the biased, it's about the incompetence of the whole operation , that they just have not communicated well. Now, I think some of this has been motivated reasoning, right? Because then he then also refuses to meet. It sounds like he did refuse to meet with them for a time as well, right? So like tempers were clearly high, but like you do get the sense like he makes the point that Nick Bilton, who is a friend of mine, was reading from his phone in one of the meetings and clearly like that was making Pelle y get mad in the moment, right? And like, so some of this is just people that have been accused of being brought in to be pro Trump, to have bias, to help Ellison get deals done, and then like sort of ham physically firing people, trying to kind of have editorial opinions, it confirming people's worst expectations and it kind of spiraling out of control. Yeah, look, I thought what we just watched there were some pretty damn allegations that Barry Weiss is just interfering with segments, not just in a political way, but like in a way that was not factual. Like make it look like Rede Goods driving at the cop, pretty clearly was not with your own eyes . I also was taken by just how incompet ent he described the new team as being like entire episodes of sixty minutes almost didn't make air. That seems bad. They couldn't get Tony Dukopol a visa to cover the president's trip to China. Also a pretty big deal , pretty bad . Pelly also overtly uses the words he accuses CBS of paying a multibillion dollar bribe to President Trump when they settled the lawsuit around the sixty minutes edit of Kamala Harris' interview . And so look, like, you know, I don't know Barry Weiss, some people say she's lovely and charming. Some people think she's, you know, the devil. Like the truth is obviously somewhere in between. I've met Nick Bilton before. It seems like a nice guy, good author, smart screenwriter. Neither of them has any TV experience and seemingly have no business overseeing the most successful TV news show at this network. I mean, Barry Weiss is the editor in chief of CBS TV, CBS News , but Nick Bilton's never worked in TV, and he's getting put in charge of sixty minutes, which is by every measure a success. The ratings were up nine percent. They make nearly seventy million dollars in ad revenue in twenty twenty five. Like it's not a thing that's broken needs fixing, which is a lot of Pelle's point. And I think ultimately, like Weiss and Bilton were brought in as part of a corrupt project to change CBS news to make it okay for President Trump in some way to grease the paramount skydance merger or whatever merger they want to do in the future. That's what I think Pelle thinks happened here . And they were times in this interview where it can seem a little pompous and sound like self righteous and it's very emotional, right? Like Pelly seems to compare himself to veterans in combat at one point, which is a little odd. Refers to sixty minutes as his spouse being murdered? Yeah, so he's very emotional, but like clearly this guy who loves his job, never wanted to do anything else, never wanted to leave, didn't seemingly didn't think he'd get fired even when he lit his new boss on fire in front of the entire group , but it's worth the listen, I think. He also, I think, gets most emotional when he's talking about Tanya Simon and some of the other people who've been fired and who have been treated poorly , which I think is telling. I actually think that if you took Trump out of the equation , I think Barry Weiss still would have sent that email, those emails about Renee Good because this could be happening. She might not think to herself, I am doing Donald Trump's bidding. But the if anyone has experienced the free press read the free press or trafficked in any of the circles of the anti anti Trump Republicans who are always making excuses for Trump, but they think that they're more like moral and normal and sane. There are these people who haven't lost their minds. That's like to me that haven't gone crazy. Right. Like if that was like and we saw this split in the Conservative movement between the Renee Good Killing and the Alex Predi killing and that some of them were who tried to, you know, push this narrative that Renee Good was driving at the cops and stuff like that, they kind of broke off when it was Alex Pretty and it was even more obvious and they were like, okay, this one is bad, you know? So it actually made sense to me that Barry Weiss would do this because and I think this is probably indicative of what happened at CBS and why Sixty Minutes and the people at sixty Minutes were so angry is I think Barry Weiss came in and I seen Nick Bilton's tweets and commentary here and there, I think he's someone who's like, okay, the libs have gone crazy too. They both get in there and they're thinking like this is another evidence of liberal media that we got to fix. And I'm sure the staff at sixty minutes and the reporters there are like, you know what? We take our jobs very fucking seriously and do really good reporting and fact check it a lot and we don't consider ourselves like part of the liberal media and bias. And so I think there was that probably that clash ideologies. There's I think a revealing point where at some point Barry White says somebody who if you're not biased, why does the country why do people why does the country think you're biased, right? Which is an article of faith. They're like, well, what's the evidence for that? Right? And so look, like Scott Pelley in that clip is paraphrasing an email he didn't see, right? Like that is like, I don't know what the exact text of it is. I don't know how they're I am sure it was trying to push it sort of more kind of in a way that was sort of like more favorable to the Trump version of events, but the non liberal version of events, right? It was the entire right wing media ecosystem version of events. But the other thing that's strange about this interview , right is like he attacked, I mean, he wants Barry Weiss fired, right? He but he also has a lot of like nice words to say about Elson, which is really strange, right? And what I took from this interview is like he's like, oh, we were excited when Allison came to the newsroom. He greeted us, he called me sir, right? Like there's this way in which what I was wondering when I was watching this interview is somebody who was trying to get Barry Wise shit canned and then someone who can go back to CBS . And he's saying he's saying to Ellison, hey, I'm not a problem if Barry Weiss isn't there, right? You're good. Barry Weiss is, I'm not your problem. Barry Weiss is your problem because now I'm talking about how great you were when you came and she's the one that's got to go . So I thought that was sort of like because if Barry Weiss is a part of some Ellison project to kind of grease the skids for a deal, right? It would be it would be Ellison at fault too, but that's not how Pelle talks about it. Now what he says about David Ellison is this like he's pisted at Sherry Redstone for doing a deal with Trump and paying the bribe to make the lawsuit go away and the lawsuit was obviously bullshit. And I think he views that as unforgivable than it permanently damaged sixty minutes. And so he's like, look, a new guy came in, had some money, had some political swat. Like we're all good there. Like if you want to support our project here and you've got the balls to stand up to people, I'm there with you. It did, you know, it could be strategic and then he's trying to divide the two of them. But like, you know, I found that interesting too and pretty notable and maybe believable. But I don't know. But also it's it's like he's not dealing with David Ellison. He's dealing with Barry Weiss. You know, like you can be nice to the boss's boss who when they greet you is like Heiser, nice to meet you and then like Barry Weiss is the one who's murdering sixty minutes . Right. Right. Ellison. And then who she just sent in with and didn't even go to the meeting herself and just made him deal with it all. Look, I stand by with Nick. Look , you go to that first meeting and you think all right, I'm going to kiss everybody's ass and get her back, get her back on side and you're like, oh fuck Mad. Could you imagine? I'm just trying to imagine too, like you're at your first day at work. And Scott Pelley, one of the most famous journalists in the world is like you're murdering the most beautiful thing that any of us has ever seen. Round of applause. Do you think someone's holding up the tick tick s unbelievable? Like, how can you expect anything else when you have obviously been following along what Barry Weiss has been doing and the firings just happened, right? Like the quarter. Like it's not like it's not like he got to the meeting and all of a sudden someone's like excuse me, Nick Bilden, they just fired a bunch of staff. Again, like I met Nick a couple times. He's always seemed nice but he did a series of interviews with media journalists where he just could not have sounded more pompous and insulting and like I know this is going to be easy. I know everything . You know, it like I'm, going to be the one like uploading the video to the satellite truck is like, okay, buddy. Well, like it's a Berry Wise free press salon party circuit. It's the exact kind of language. It's there's just a whole set of 'em. Yeah, look, the point that Pelley made in that conversation is like how could you take a job like this given the circumstances, right? And that does mean whoever is going to run sixty minutes if it wants to prove something to these journalists has a lot of work to do, right? And And like the fact I'm like Leslie Ston and some of the other people are staying , right? And like I don't know what the future of this thing looks like, but I do think that a world where sixty minutes gets to kind of continue to exist and there's and maybe this continues to like boil over into the public. And I don't know. Like if you're taking the job, right, and you've never had TV experience, you're doing it after all these firings and you walk in expecting to be given the benefit of it's just like what's gonna happen, right? And like Barry Weiss doesn't have TV experience, Nick doesn't have TV experience. You're taking over like one of the most important jobs in all of television. They're not qualified for the job. They're just not. And it's not mean or insulting to say that. Like you never worked in TV. You are not qualified for this job and taking it is ridiculous. And what do you think is going to happen? Give me a break. The last ten years have been just a rash of people who are like wealthy and powerful and influential thinking that because they're good at one thing they can be good at other things . It's a real fucking problem that we have in this country right now. Just talk to any of the tech prospects . Yeah, exactly, Ronald Trump. One last new story to get to here. We are recording on Monday afternoon, California time. Shortly after we leave the studio Trump will depart his golf club in New Jersey from midtown Manhattan, where he will attend game three of the NBA finals at Madison Square Garden , which will bring traffic to a standstill, require ticket holders to arrive hours early for security checks and force the cancellation of the watch party outside MSG for people who don't have tickets, which is just about everyone. So how are people feeling about the decision? Quote, Of all the selfish, narcissistic things Trump has done, attending MSG to see the Nicks play in person Monday night is the absolute worst. These are the sentiments of none other than An Coulter But the feeling also seems pretty widespread. Let's listen. So this is when Trump be at mixed games. Now all of a sudden we're winning. He wanted to be here. If the Knicks lose tonight, I blame Trump. I don't want Trump at the game. I don't want no new people at the game. He's coming to game three of the finals and I don't want them there. It has everything to do with him disrupting and contributing at the same time to the chaos . If it causes the New York Knicks to win to lose the night . I'm blaming him. I'm blaming the president of the United States. Of course, everyone probably recognizes Stephen A there before Stephen A was Mace, that was Mini . Excuse Stephen A guest on this show, I list Steve A and in a bright pink suit in a bright pink tie ranting about Donald Trump going to next game. That's what I want out of sports media that is perfection. You know, Trump is expected to be to boot to be booted probably. They better boot this. Also, there's gonna be an unfavorable split screen with actual Nix fan Zoran Mumdani who coughed up a thousand bucks for a standing room only ticket . So that's going to be an interesting thing. Mumdann alsoy decided to throw free watch parties in Bryant Park and I think two other locations as well because the area around MSG is closed down. What do you guys think Trump's doing this? I mean, he knows the power of live professional sports and that 's the only kind of monocultural events we really have left. That's why he goes to a lot of games usually at the NFL he went to the Super Bowl. Do you think the SEC Championship? What's some like what's a college football champion? NASCARD in NASCAR? Yeah, he's been in NASCAR, you know, so usually he's more welcome in those sort of southern NFL spaces. I don't think he will be here. I mean he's also buddies with James Dolan, I think the owner of the Knicks who's a terrible guy who 's gonna he surveill s people who like are mean to him at games. Always pals with the owners . Not a real player guy. Yeah. No, but like Roger Bennett and I talk about this in the interview. I mean, guys, remember last year Trump went to the FIFA Club championship in the U S and he was supposed to walk up with Jianni and Fantino the head of FIFA, hand the trophy to the Chelsea players and then walk off the stage so they could celebrate. And he just stood there and jumped with them and like celebrate with them. So he makes it about himself because he loves the limelight. He loves every spotlight and he will attempt to co opt this one too. Yeah, he doesn't give a shit about anyone about himself. Like Rhett, we know this when you have to decide whether the president of the United States is going to attend an event like that, the biggest consideration, well, first of all, you talk to service and be like, okay, what does the security have to look like? And you need to listen to secret service, and especially Donald Trump, he's been survived multiple assassin ation attempts now, right? Yeah. But then when the service tells you what it's going to require security wise and they tell you that well, as a consequence, it's going to , you know, inconvenience quite a few Americans . Then sometimes the president's like, well, do I really want to piss off that many people by doing this? Is it really that important if my going means a whole bunch of ? And then you say, well, maybe not. Maybe it's not that important for me to go to Mag Ticrump would never say that. Yeah, I think it was the game. He was going to fuck to go to the game. He wants to sit there. He wants to be booed by New Yorkers . He wants to he wants to like be the center of attention and he doesn't care there's two hour waits outside there to barricade whole parts of midtown Manhattan to make this possible by the cancel the wash fuck. I mean, arguably worse is when he always wants to like if there's a natural disaster somewhere and he's got to go beyond the scene immediately even when local officials are like, please we're try,ing to clean up the disaster here and we can't have a presidential visit because it's too much mess and security right now and just come later. He's like, I don't give a fuck. He also thinks he's a New Yorker and that New York likes him and they do not. Well, he's 'cause he's also like shit all over it. when he left Lirty and I'm like fuck New York fuck that I'm it's become trash now. Yeah. I don't know he's gonna love the split screen. I hope whoever's on the ones and two is just go Mandani, cheers like crazy, Trump booze. Go back and forth. Give us a couple back and forth. And because Mondani is so talented, he's going to be he's going to be so nice about it too. Like he's not going to try to, you know, jab Trump at all. Yeah, they're going to have they're going to have a shot of Donald Trump being booed while Mom Donnie's like going to be nice . It's going to be I hope we get that. There's a hope we'll get only that a bunch of cool celebrities who always go to games like Timothy Shalomay and Tracy Morgan and Ben Stiller who will be like on the wood with the people like joining the game and Trump will be up hiding at a luxury box like kind of lurking from behind, hoping he doesn't get booed. We can't sit courtside. No, it would be great if he tried. People were retweeting some old tweets from Josh Hart today, Nick's player just like shitting all over Trump. Like he's not a I don't think he's beloved by the Nick. No, we also remember like Trump very specifically, I think yelled at or was me to Lebron James. It's also like basketball it's so much smaller. It's so much closer. They're just like right there. Like it's gonna be part of the game that Trump is at this game. Yeah, I mean, look, Fox News and Trump, they love to tell athletes, especially black athlet es to not have political opinions. But if you like Trump, then you are allowed to have a political opinion, you can come to the White House, maybe you can participate in an ultimate fighting championship event on the South lawn, right? That's how this works. Yeah. Sadly, no John at that one. Yeah, Faber didn't make the cut. Just a real bummer. So close. I was really close. So it would have been very funny. It would have been very funny. I think what would have happened is you would have shown up at the place where you get the van to the go to the thing and someone would like clock your face and be like, oh no, that's not. I had thought that, but like four thousand people on the south line, it's a lot of people to really be like doing the face sheet because it's not if it was inside the White House, it'd be like, yeah, no way but I don't know. I think I think there was I think once you're at that point, nobody knows. Random people like celebrities are showing up all the time. You never know what is part of some trumpet drug deal. Suddenly, I'm walking taking my seat right next to Vince Fawn and Hey Buddy. He's like, what are you doing? Love Eatin swingers. Love you and swing . It's gonna be so hot and so miserable out there. I was looking at the weather for this because there's like a chance of thunderstorms now too. And it's ninety one and maybe thunderstorms. ninety one degrees like humid bugs everywhere, awful people all around you. Imagine having to fight in that? Yeah. And then they get Dana White said too. He was like, it's not the ideal terror ideal environment to have you fight. Imagine they're like, we got to pull it down because of lightning. They don't want to pull it down because of lightning, and then all of a sudden you have basically a biblical event. It's that just to mental things anyway. Things are possible. I can't wait to check it out. All right, when we come back to Tommy's conversation with Roger Bennett of Men and Blazers . Today's show is sponsored by strawberry dot me. Think about your career. Close your eyes . Maybe it looks good on paper, but does something feel a bit off . Maybe you're stuck. Maybe you're burned out. Maybe you're ready to move up to that next level, or maybe you just want clarity on what's next . That's where a mentor comes in or a coach or just someone to help you figure out that path to the next rung up on your journey. That's where today's sponsor strawberry. me comes in. Strawberry. m meatches you with a real career coach, carefully selected based on your goals, your personality, and your professional background. 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Construitocon, Potentia Nival Professional, Maxima Precio, Idurabil acri Pedonier. Esorade Mas. We see the Festival USA Puntokomoi Barbener Mas information . Looking for a home that puts you in the middle of everything the Bay Area has to offer without the San Francisco price tag? The Highlands in San Bruno by City Ventures is a new community set among scenic canyons and oak groves just minutes from San Francis co, SFO, top rated schools, and major tech campuses. You'll also have easy access for some of the region's best hiking trails. Every home is all electric with biorowned solar included. Explore what's possible at city ventures dot com dot CityVentures. com . My guest today is the co creator and longtime host of the Smash Hit Men and Blazers podcast, the Men and Blazers Media Network, really. He's a New York Times bestselling author whose most recent book is called We Are The World Cup. By it Now, he's also an international man of Mystery and a sex symbol. Roger Bennett. How you doing, buddy? It was good until you just said that Tommy. It's so lovely to see you that you look amazing, man. You too. Long time no see. I'm thrilled to talk to you now because boy, there's a lot going on there's a lot of football, a lot of soccer in the world. For anyone who wants to learn more about the World Cup, you still have time . And I cannot recommend enough. We are the World Cup. You learn about the highs, the lows , the agony, the more agony through Roger's eyes, right? I mean , I wrote the book If you have had the memories of the World Cup, it will reignite them. I hope you can relive them again as powerfully as you did the first time. And if you're a newcomer, planning to watch a World Cup, it will give you the depths, the nuances to understand and feel all of it. Eduardo Galliano, the Uruguayan poet once wrote football is a pleasure that hurts and we're about to experience all of it. Weeks and weeks of it and I literally cannot wait. I love the World Cup. This is going to be so much fun. And so before we ruin this conversation with a little bit of politics at the end less talk soccer. So starting with Team USA . I know they are hardly favorites to win the tournament, but interest has gone up. Expectations go up every year for Team USA . Who should we be watching and what's a good result do you think for Team USA this year? Oh, winning it, Tommy. I know I sound to many of your new listeners that I'm from England , but I love America so profoundly in like a way I like to believe slips me somewhere between Bruce Springsteen and Kenny Powers . So I adore this team. I first came over here in nineteen ninety four ahead of the last time the Men's World Cup was here. It was meant to turn America immediately into a football loving nation. It's taken a lot longer . But the United States and the economists was just found to have soccer be the third most popular sport in the world which is mind blowing. Amazing. Because I write my book but before the ninety four World Cup Tommy , a similar study found out soccer was sixty seventh most favorite sport and tractor pulling. I crap you not was sixty six. Where are you now track to pulled ing? So to some degree , the winner of the World Cup from a U. S. perspective will be the massive fan base that it leaves behind. We've always joked on our shows. Soccer is America's sport of the future as it has been since nineteen seventy two. Like it's perpetually the next big thing. I think this will cut will cement it normalize football in our sporting reality. But from a actual competitive POV, this is the most talented group of individuals we've ever had. But the crazy thing is, you know, our women kick ass, take names, win things, our men in the whole history of our nation going right back to George Washington who will like to believe we'd have loved the football . We've won one knockout game in World Cup history which is shocking for a nation like ours that invented animal style burgers in and out and you know the corona put, you know, human beings on the moon, democracy, all those things . So I'd say if we can win two knockout games which we stand a good chance of in this very bloated big gold m,assive World Cup, it would be an incredible result. In that this world cup is going to be big, whether the US do well or not, but the US boys will write their narrative into it, which is critical. Is Christian Policis the one where we're watching most or what other names should we be looking at? Christian Politic is if you're a football fan, you'll know he's jokingly called the Lebron James of Socca. He's from Hershey, Pennsylvania. He was the prince that was promised. He broke through into this team when he was seventeen. He is probably the most talented outfield player we've ever had in terms of his accomplishments in European football. He's a very sensitive human being. He needs to love and be loved . I just went on first hate with Stephen A. Smith and compared him to Trey Young as a player that can do unbelievable things. If he feels great, Stephen A Smith slapped me down, went , that's a terrible comparison. He said. And then went off on Treyng for a long, long period of time . But I'll stand by it. And then there's so many remarkable human beings. I really do root for this team as individuals. It's a beautiful man , Chris Richards, son of Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, SEC country, Roll Tide , who must have been a big fish on every playing field he was in Alabama then went over as a teen to one of the greatest teams in the world by Munich, suddenly became a tiny fish in an enormous trout farm, kind of lost all of his confidence, got complete cultural dislocation but has been able tenaciously to resummon his presence as a defender kind of like a lockdown corner back now in the Premier League he's won things still a sweet, soft , soulful, wonderful human being . I mean there's many, many players like him that I root for the one touch, one goal, one moment, the commercial upside for this world cup to become the face of this team to have a TikTok that goes viral because there's something beautiful that you do . It's a diverse team. I think they're a great face of our nation . They're led by a manager an Argentinian Marico Pochartino, who's like a globally revered manager . He's either going to lift us up like , you know, a basketball coach going to I own a state and taking them. What's that guy? Patino. Yeah, he'll have a patino take us up to his standard or real Bill Belichick it and just suddenly be chasing after floundering on the floor at North Carolina and we 're twenty Seri or something like that. Doesn't have the plan. Go to Milan. Yeah, that's exactly right. You can't wait to leave in many ways. Yeah , but we will go as he goes. If he, you know, if he does his thing and raises us up joy can be ours . We could be just lolloping around on the floor chasing after a cheeseburger in Hasselhoffee and Fashion. It could be it could be great, it could be darkness. We do not know we only have until you know three days to find out . Yeah, well all hope ahead of us. All right, let's talk about the big dogs. Some of the best teams, some of the best players that you're watching. I've heard France, Spain UK mentioned a lot. Like any sleepers? The UK or London, London, London, England. Well, that would be amazing. Tommy, can you imagine if it was cities? Oh my god . The world cup for cities, that's actually for the future. They can get far more than forty eight teams in it. It would be amazing. Come on, Sarajevo . England, Scotland are also in it. God bless. They're coming over here with a very different goal than everybody else. Their goal is to just drink Boston and Miami dry in the first two weeks of the tournament and I think they'll probably do it the Tartan Army . I think America, one of the joys of this tournament that I hope we get to talk about is world coming to terms with the United States. You seeing it now or over social media? German fans going to wafflehouse for the first time having their mind blow and you know going to lemon pepper wet. What is this? And also American sports fans seeing global football culture , many of them for the first time seeing sixty, seventeen seeing thousands of Dutch fans march down the streets of Kansas City before a game in their orange claid shirt bouncing to the left and right behind a large bus. No one quite knows why it's just what they do. It's going to be quite ecstatic. So Scotland, England , I mean, England are fascinating . I mean, they used to have an empire , then they lost that. They used to have a monarchy not doing so well nowadays . They had Downton Abbey no longer on the air. So what they have is football and they invented it so they think they should win. They've won once nineteen sixty six, which is like ten sixty six in the English school kids' imagination. And since then they've always believed with great surety they're going to win quickly crapping the bed, shattering a nation's heart. They're like Charlie Brown running at a football with Lucy holding. Apart from this time round, they're pretty bloody good, Tommy. So it is quite fascinating to think of a England winning the World Cup in America when it's the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of independence is mind melding . So we think we're going to say bye to some great players this tournament . Lionel Messi, it's probably we assume it's his last tournament, although people said that in twenty eighteen and twenty twenty two. Cristiano Ronaldo will say goodbye to him, bye to all of his abs. Maybebe may he's like mostly I think he's the football player most likely to go like Ted Williams and putting his head in the cryogenic chamber just freeze it up three thousand abs same later is there a next up like so those two they're, not just the biggest stars in soccer. They're some of the biggest celebrities on the planet, the most famous people on the planet. Is there anyone you're watching that can fill their shoes? Any stars that are going to transcend this tournament, we hope. The stars, young stars and there is there's this aged, I mean deeply aged. We're talking about like football in the Lebron age. I mean, Ronaldo is I mean it's like forty one , Lynol Messi late thirties . This is or should be their last dance . And then there's a slew of teens coming through . Nature abores a vacuum. So this football a Spanish wonder child eighteen years old Lemini Maul who's already won massive tournaments you know he's almost if he wins the World Cup with Spain having won one he's won already',ll you be like Alexand er the Great, you know, tearing up because there is no more world left to conquer . So the Elin Harlan, a young Norwegian who is other than other than Shaquil O'Neill entering the NBA and just breaking backboards, shattering them , you know, gaming, game out, I've never seen anyone score goals. It's like as if Dolph Lundram was a football play er if AI created just some kind of Norse demigod. He's bringing Norway over. So there is that battle. And again, because it's here, Tommy, in the United States , this commercial hotbed of sports . All of these footballers I'm springing to a slew of the great footballers in the world. They're all looking at the United States market knowing one deep run, one set of ecstatic moments . The financial payoff for this World Cup commercially to kind of be what Pelle was to previous generation, the face of the game in the United States . There's the sporting competition, but there's also the commercial competition to be that footballer . They all think they can be the next pallet. They don't quite know that David Beckham's already won the World Cup. That man is in almost every single commercial and there not's giving up his hold on our imagination anytime soon. But there are also incredible stories that will fill the World Cup like Haiti, this tiny team for whom , you know, just qualify ing is everything. The political chaos that's unspooled over there, which has impacted football , you know, the football stadium . Their trading center was set fire to by insurgent gangs in Porta Prince , you know, the fact that they've even qualified is remarkable. They have to play all their games on neighboring Kurasao . Their football is brought from all over in the Haitian diaspora, just taking the field for them is going to be just a joyous geopolitical moment where the word Haiti is seen in a joyous spotlight, a wonderful spotlight so desperate ly needed . And it could be one of the most powerful storylines in the opening round. Yeah, that's exciting to watch . So you touched on this, Roger. The scale of this tournament is just unlike anything we've seen before , it's happening in three different countries. I think there's sixteen host cities. There's forty eight teams . I think at some point in the tournament, there's gonna be six games a day. How the hell are you gonna pace yourself here, buddy. What are you gonna do to like get through this? Yeah, I mean I feel like I was laughing with you. I already feel like I'm halfway through, but it's not kicked off yet. It is epic in scope. Three nations hosting for the first time , Canada , the United States, Mexico. When it was given twenty eighteen, it was talked about as a unified almost the NAFTA World Cup. Obviously the realities have changed. It feels almost like three parallel track world cups . But what drives me in any World Cup is the narrative, is the story, is the human wonder . The scale of it is epic . You know, I think it's projected to revenue wise reported eighty billion dollars will be made, which apparently is the GDP of Belarus, but I'm sure you knew that Tomm,y. That's really the first thing that went into your head. Yeah. It's really a human ecstasy. two hundred million people watch the Super Bowl. We think of that as the ultimate in the United States , five billion people watch the World Cup. What is the World Cup? And this is what I wrote in my book . It's like a global eclipse that emanates from the game, sweeps the entire world instantaneously and holds it in its thru for thirty nine straight days . And so that's the magic of it, the energizing magic. What keeps me going is a sense that when these games go on '.re We watch ing human beings live out under the crucible of pressure, you know, human decision making, what separates good players from the truly greatest decisions they make under those pressures ? There's going to be heroes whose names we don't even know who are going to reveal themselves and within seconds of some kind of kung fu fighting s goal, their name is going to be bled out by millions of children in school yards across the globe. You know , there's going to be heroes who will fall in tragic comic ways . We're going to watch the greatest Telenovella. And the thing I'm most excited about, Tommy is I don't know if you've noticed. It's a very dark world. We're living in a time of challenge . I hope , I hope when this kicks off, you know, when Leonol Messi takes the field, all of the darkness kind of is smothered. It's almost like the rational is replaced by the emotional. And it's that sense of global unity, obviously an illusion, obviously fleeting , but knowing that you're making memories, profound memories. It's like the theory of my book most of, I'd say eighty seven percent of my most important memories are located in World Cups, the cross generational memories with my dad, my mum, my grandpare, my children . It's the same for millions around the world. That conscious act of memory making that you're sharing with the planet is really what drives me onward. I think we've all earned that release, that reprieve from reality , and that moment just come together and enjoy it. Just to ruin this whole thing with politics though. I mean, President Trump understands the scale of the stage, right? He's got this predat or understanding for the role that sports plays in culture. As we talk today, I think he's preparing to fly up to New York for the next game . Do we know like does he deliver remarks at any of these events? Is he going to attend games? Like what do we know about his participation? Not a lot yet, but football is I mean, I talked about the number of people watching. It is the last global megaphone that is audible across the entire planet . There's nothing like it. There's nothing like a World Cup. Even Solbe inserted himself into the final season. That's how massive it is. Yeah, God bless. I mean, he still got me talking about it four years later . And so ultimately, politicians of all stripes are drawn to football and have been since the very beginning. nineteen thirty four, Second World Cup was held in Italy by Mussolini who wanted to present Italy to the world, subsidize foreign travel to Italy for the tournament, the detail I love most about this story is that he made sure the tickets were intricate paper cuts so that fans would go home afterwards. I crap you not told me and be like these are the tickets in Italy. Look what advanced country it is. So from the very beginning the roots of the tournament have always had a geopolitical reality when two teams take the field, their nation's history, their nation's politics, their nation's cult ure takes a field alongside, and that's what gives it its epic power . Everything matters. It's not you know , I love American sports when my Chicago bears play , you know, the LA RAMs. It's a big game . It's exciting. I know the narrative . But when Germany plays England , the levels of history, you know , I think was it Emerson who said it contains multitudes? The World Cup contains multitudes and every politician knows that, you know, and President Trump has embraced football . There was a tournament here last almost a dry run called the Club World Cup . He presented the trophy right at the end. The route, the ritual of trophy presenting in football is that whoever gives it 's often ahead of state will hand the trophy over to the, you know, the sweaty footballers on a podium and then step out of the way so that they can lift it up and smoke comes off and confetti blows up and then the footballers bounce up and down, waving their arms like this, which is the standard football guy dance . Chelsea Football Club won, he hands the trophy over and then stands in the midst of them um and you know the footballers are confused they don't quite know what to do there's a standard way of doing this and then in the end they just like sod it and they did it with him in the midst of it. It's a remarkable image . You know, the smoke goes off, the confetti blows up, some of them are dancing, some of them are looking at the present. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that was the photo moment that would go around the world and that he'd become front and center . So the World Cup contains that power times a million. In twenty eighteen Putin ran the World Cup and was very fr ont and center. twenty twenty two was in Qatar, first game. You and I watched. They had the Qatari leader sitting right by the Saudi Arabian Mohammed bin Salman. I believe this is your expertise not mine, but the two of them had frosty relationships before . To see them unite was deeply symbolic like a symbol. I think one was even wearing a scar for the other country . So there's a story on the field. There's always the story off it, and the optics, the soft power, the hard power is written all over this tournament every time it occurs. You know, President Trump is both head of state and also famously won the FIFA Peace Prize. So maybe he could invite the new Iranian supreme leader to the US to sit next to him at a game and we could have another moment like the one you just described. Yeah, I mean while we're pitching ideas, I think this should be a FIFA music award, like a Grammy for like Kid Rock or Vanilla Ice. I would say you will watch this World Cup with a split lens and who is invited and where they sit is for you and pod save the world is a is going to be, you know, I'd say a sport in itself but it's not a sport that gives it a sense of a lack of meaning, but that narrative will be enormous in macrays and in microwaves we just had Vagna Mora , the Oscar nominated actor Pablo Escovar from Narcos come on our shows football mad and he talked with an amazing passion about how Brazil Brazil wears a yellow shirt, it's iconic . You know, it's synonymous with a beautiful style of football that kind of coincides with the advent of color television . And he talked about how when Bolsonero was president , he co opted the Brazilian shirt and that shirt became a symbol of his regime. And Vagamorea talked about how this World Cup in a post bolsen era realm is a chance to reclaim it. So the narratives within this thing, if you're a football fan, you know, it's the Renaldo, the Messi, the Portugal, the France, the Spain, the , but if you're a pod save the world fan, you know, the World Cup is all of that more. Yeah. So there's always sort of like issues and anxieties going into these World Cup. Sometimes it's political, sometimes it's security or logistics. This year people were talking about potential Ice presence at gam es. There are questions about travel restrictions or visas . More recently, you know, there's a lot of discussion about ticket prices . Has any of that deterred attendance as far as you can tell, is the world still coming to the US for these games in Mexico and Canada? The narrative of any World Cup is decided afterwards and this one in the run up is been about safety fears but not just in the United States in Mexico, the drug cartel violence, the global tensions, the travel restrictions. Look, one of the reasons I love football that more than any other sport it holds up a mirror to the world that surrounds it. I've always loved that. It's always one of my definitive moments in life not just in football is nineteen eighty six England played Argentina . Diego Maradona, his Argentina, one of the greatest to ever play the game just to pick just a street urchin ed you know kid of gold they call him PB Or in the shadow of the Falklands War and England they were our heroes and Argentina destroyed them . One goal, Tiny Ed iego punched it in in the era before video referees. He punched it in over a six foot two goalkeeper, used his hand and immediately when asked, did you did you punch that in? He came up brilliantly with his own marketing. He said it was a little bit the head of Diego and a little bit the hand of God and then when we were reeling in agony as an English nation, he picked the ball up deep in his own half and then just ran through the entire team single handedly. Every hero he eviscerated all of them and then just rolled the ball home, which kind of echoed the first goal. I did that, cheated because I could, but I also could have destroyed you single handedly if I wanted to, and I just did. That goal was an agony . And as an English human being, it kind of put us all in our place, showed us where we were in the global food chain . But now it's actually the post that a photographer have in my office on my wall signed by him . It makes you feel things. It makes you feel alive. That agony is like one of my proudest agonies. It's an honor to have that agony. So is always geopolitical . The run up to any World Cup in the modern period is always a human darkness at the South African World Cup twenty ten . The whole reporting going in was how everybody was going to be carjacked. There was an epidemic, just the violence was going to destroy the thing. The electricity belt was not enough to power the state. It was a disaster. Why is Africa hosting this? It turned out to be one of the most significant world cups of my lifetime, Melson Mandela, Africa presenting it to the world in majestic fashion. Same with Brazil twenty fourteen, the violence , rioting, social unrest in twenty thirteen . You know, the people rose up around games, marched on the stadium. Every stadium I was in, there were riots, demonstrations for social justice, for education, not football. It was meant to be a disaster. And then once a ball is kicked on me , cognitive dissonance kicks in. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing to be honest, but it's what happens. Once Leonol Messi takes the field, you know, all the storyline just falls away and we kind of become mesmerized by that global eclipse thing. So it is a lot of global tension. It is a mirror to the world. The world is understandably challenging. But again, once that opening whistle goes, the past World Cups , everyone has gone from fear and darkness and catastrophizing to a sense of albeit fleeting sense of wonder. Yeah. Well, I cannot wait for it to start. But again, the book is we are the World Cup. So pick up a copy now. And then Rodge, if listeners want to just hear more from you throughout the World Cup, where should they look? Tell me we're headed to you tomorrow. We're going to LA. We have a bus in the style of John Madden, a big orange bus . We're driving it across country. Can't tell if this is the greatest idea we've ever had or the worst. We'll find out starting in LA, we're going up to Seattle, coming back to LA, we're doing and then going across the country through Texas to Atlanta . We're going to be doing college game days before the biggest game, starting with the United States. We're going to be on Santa Monica Pier on that first US game on the twelfth with Robback and then we're going up to Seattle where we've got John Green, the great the greatest novelist. I think everyone would agree. Old Skittles , your man , the greatest Seahawk of all time is going to be joining us more and then back to LA and then we're going across. And I will say as we go across this is a wild time Tommy many sports fans in America will be turned on to football for the first time America loves a circus, they love an excuse to date home, drink. They love you know mass desire to cut work which is, approved for thirty nine days . But I will say seeing these fans and there will be thousands of fans coming in. There have been travel bans , you know, there are some teams who have no fans able to get visas because of the modern reality they've been caught up in that issue. So like Haiti, Iran, Senegal, Ivory Coast. But there are thousands and thousands of fans coming