The White House UFC Invite Story

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Made for work, built for your business. Looking for your next office? Discover WeWork's new real estate platform built for a smarter way to work . With 45 million square feet of office space in 1 20 cities across 34 countries. We've got you covered. For global co-working to CustomOffice Solutions, visit WeWork.com. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau. And I'm Alex Wagner. In studio in LA. I came to cast my ballot. Just kidding. I'm here. We'll still take it. Still being counted. See you in 2023. How many do you want to drop off? Several. All for Heidi Montag. Just trying to get on the five. Uh It's good to see you. It's great to be here. I'm so I'm always so thrilled to be in person with you guys. I hear that we're doing this two weeks in a row because Mr. Pfeiffer is out Oh my god Thursday as well. Wow. I know. I'm so glad that you're in control of the calendar. I had no idea . I feel very blessed. I just found that out yesterday. I'm sorry, everyone who wants Dan Pfeiffer on this show, which is probably most people, but sometimes Dan has to Dan. It's rare that Dan takes a break from anything. No, that is true. Well we're very happy to have you. And uh on today's show we have lots to talk about. Uh whether the insurrectionist slush fund is really dead. We're also going to talk about Todd Blanche's promotion to attorney general. Congratulations. Bill Pulte's promotion to America's spy chief. The latest results from Tuesday's primaries in Iowa and California, yet more Grand Platinum , the meltdown at 60 Minutes, and finally, for the first time ever, I will reveal a secret I've been keeping and tell the story of how I was invited, actually invited, to the White House UFC fight. Oh, what a deep tease. As they say in the TV industry. That is a deep tea. Deep tease. It's happening. Um, before we start. If you want to find out the real story, you'll have to subscribe. No, just kidding. But you should subscribe. If you haven't subscribed already to Crooked, you could become a friend of the pod. Uh Crooked.com slash friends. You get ad-free episodes of all your favorite pods. I mean, there's really nothing better than that. Isn't it nice to listen to this and all your other crooked pods? Well, we love our advertisers, Sean. We of course we love our advertisers, but some people like the advertisers, some people just want to get free. They want to get right to the meat. And you know what? If you do like uh ads, there's a lot of other benefits too. There's subscriber-only shows like Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer. That's a must-listen. Our special extra secret episode of Pod Save America called Pod Save America Only Friends. Oh, I mean, and it is really an inside scoop, inside dope. Inside scoop. And uh lots of substack newsletters these days. And you get to support an independent, proudly pro democracy media company that Barry Weiss can't murder. And Scott Pelly's soon to join the the roster, right? That's right. That's right. It's called 1 53 Minutes. That's the name of his podcast. Quite long. Uh Crooket.com slash friends, check it out. All right, Alex. Uh the Republican Congress has been hard at work this week tr,ying to shovel another $70 billion of our money to Donald Trump so that ICE can keep rounding up immigrants and locking them away in barbaric detention camps. Trump wants even more, of course, a billion dollars for his ballroom and $1.8 billion for a slush fund he could use to make cash payments to convicted criminals who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. Republicans denied him the ballroom money in this bill, but they did uh on Thursday block a Democratic amendment that would have killed the J6 slush fund. Uh acting Attorney General Todd Blanch said this week that they wouldn't be moving forward with the slush fund. But when Trump was asked about that, he gave an answer that surprised absolutely no one. I love it. I think it's so important. On Thursday, he did a uh clean coal event in the Oval Office, uh, where we all thought he'd elaborate on the future of the slush fund, but instead he uh dozed off several times in between his home renovation updates, which today included an announcement of yet another brand new construction project. Uh let's listen. This is now open. You see the size of that compared to some of the biggest buildings in the country. Actually the biggest Hi Peter. Hey President Trump. And uh we have it finished. The water is pouring in as we speak. This is from just a little while ago. Nice clean water . The Lincoln Memorial uh the front was supposed to be the back, the back was supposed to be the front. It never got built because they built two roadways behind it after it was built and it shut off the uh gateway to the water. That was really gonna be the main entry and we're gonna be doing that. We're gonna it's called the promenade. They want to call it the Trump Promenade, but I don't know if I want to do that. What the fuck is happening? It's um we really need to talk about how unwell this man is. Yeah. First of all, was there a penis also on that that like that chart of big things that Trump's obsessed with? I don't know. Has led off an event in the oval by holding up a chart to show that the reflecting pool is bigger than most buildings. Yes. But like it's not even something that he can brag about like he did it. He didn't lengthen the reflecting pool. It was built in 1920. Right. He just put in a he just painted it and renovated it, but now he's obsessed constantly with like holding up a billboard of how it's big. What the what? It's a sort of I mean it's it's legacy by way of phallic imagery. I think it's just an obsession with size . It is uh it is inversely proportional to his rate, his approval ratings, right? So as as he sinks in the polls, he needs to erect or claim the erection. I'm sorry I keep saying these sort of penile the vocabulary, but it it is all I mean it's all intermingled. And it's the only way he believes he'll have a legacy is brick and mortar. And even if it's not his own brick and mortar. I mean, he's destroyed he is destroying the country. He's lost the faith of maybe his even his own party in Congress or is losing it. He has you know he uh uh a colossal a bloodletting ahead of him in in November, which is gonna leave him even more castrated. And so what's his recourse? I I guess reflecting pools and promenades. Yeah. Big penis pool. And the pro now we're doing a promenade around the Lincoln Memorial? I mean, are we though? Are we gonna get the like Are we gonna get those Mar-Lago yellow umbrellas like we have in the what used to be the Rose Garden RAP? I I don't know that any of this is gonna come to pass. I mean, truly, first of all, he's over budget and and uh over over time on all the projects that are already underway. The Republicans in Congress have gotten very um fatigued of of I think the the ego and the the vanity projects. And I you know, they're not giving him a billion for the ballroom. I just I think that this is all first of all a distraction from what's really happening and we should talk about what's unfolding in Congress right now. But like I don't know how fast can you build build a promenade? The thing they're doing in the reflecting pool isn't even fixing the leaks. It's gonna be covered in mold in like a year or a couple months. And the arch, don't forget about the arch. I don't know, man. I don't know. I just hope all of them become intake processing centers for newly arrived migrants. Like that's just the only good y drain the pool and let pe make it you know, put bedding down, let people sleep there. Like just make it something useful for this increasingly poor and destitute country that he's running into the gro Aaron Powell I absolutely loved the John Oss offline from over the weekend about all this where he said, Yeah, he's building all these monuments to himself because after he's gone, no one else will. Yeah, that is absolutely devastating. That is and Osof has been so good on s inforcing the narrative that this is all the kind of Louis the Fourteenth style corruption and self-current Versailles on the Potomac. That's what we're doing. Exactly. I mean it is. Spanish, not French. Thank you for thank you for moving that one forward. It's a disaster of epic proportions in terms of one man's ego, but I am skeptical that it actually um comes to fruition, the Trump promenade at least. Let's hope so. Um what did you make of the uh the dead or alive drama around the slush fund and the Republicans refusal slash failure to kill it for good because some tried today but they could not get their caucus on board. Some tried to save their own asses. Some not all. I think number one, it is important that there be specific written language passed by Congress that outlaws the slush fund. It is quite clear to me, especially based on Trump's suggestion that he l not explicit declaration that he loves the fund. Todd Blanche will do anything Donald Trump wants. If Todd Blanche says on Monday, the slush fund is gone, and Trump says on Tuesday, I love it, that means by Wednesday the slush fund could be up and running. It is imperative that the legislative branch shut this thing down, right? So I think the movement to attach an amendment to this reconciliation bill that's being voted on right now is essential. What is the point of Bill Cassidy? Bill Cassidy is a senator in his he's the Republican who upon which this uh like the future of this fund in large part hinges, right? He was the holdout today. He delayed, delayed, delayed. People thought oh my god, he's gonna kill this thing, and then decided at the last minute after three hours of deliberation, you know what, I need this to be a Republican effort and not a Democratic effort. Bill Cassidy gave the country a raccoon-testicle-obsessed health and human services director who is va an anti-vaxxer, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he, a doctor, Bill Cassidy, gave us a lunatic at HHS. He was the pivotal vote. This was the one chance Bill Cassidy had to redeem his reputation, his stature as a statesman, and like what did he do with it? What's the point of mounting resistance for three hours and then saying on partisan grounds, I can't, I can't accept this amendment. I need Republicans to author it. Yeah, so just to catch people up on what happened here, Democrats offered an amendment to say it's nice that Todd Blanche said that this we're not moving forward the fund, but we're going to kill it statutorily. We're going to put it in law to make sure that it's gone for good. And Schumer offered the amendment . And they got Collins and they got uh Dan Sullivan in Alaska, whose Mary Peltola is running against. And John Husted. Uh Husted? Who'sted? Whosted? Whosted? Who knew who? Exactly. Anyway, he's the guy that Sherrod Brown's running against in Ohio. Yeah. Who uh Fox News poll came out yesterday that shows him trailing Sherrod Brown by eight. Sherrod's best poll. Awesome. Um, but anyway, those three, just coincidentally, um, voted in common. Yeah, they voted um to kill it uh as Republicans, but you're right, Cassidy and Tillis thought they would be cutesy, and they decided not to vote for that amendment. They were introduced their own, which was to say you can't use the slush fund in the way that Trump wants to use it. It has to be used for the anti fraud initiative that J. D. Vance is running, which is basically like, you know, robbing states of Medicaid funding if they find someone committing fraud somewhere, they just sort of collective punishment for the rest of the people who are on Medicaid. So they introduced that amendment, and obviously Democrats weren't going to support that because it's crazy and the anti-fraud initiative is bullshit. So they got like, I don't know seven, eight, nine Republicans on that one, but that one didn't pass either. So now we don't have no language. We have no language to kill the fund. And and I say this, it's like fool me once, shame on m you fool me twice, shame on me, fool me seventeen times, I should stop talking. And that's how I feel about Republicans in Congress. It's like I can't believe I'm even still fucking entertaining the idea the idea that they'll do the right thing on this, that they'll actually deliver on something they say they're so against, which is the slush fund. But I st stupidly hold out hope that Bill Cassidy will get something done, that Tom Tillis will find a backbone that Susan Collins, Susan Collins for whom there's a specific place. And you know what? It doesn't count, Susan what Susan Collins. No, of course not. And Sullivan did because if it really counted and they really didn't want the fund, they could vote against the final bill. They could vote against the final bill. They're all on their way out. Tom Tillis and Bill Cassidy are out. It's a joke. It's a fucking joke. At the same time, it's really important that this get done. I know. Because we cannot have a two billion dollar taxpayer slush fund given to insurrectionists. Like that is not so someone I mean, I don't know. So I I I'm outraged. I'm incensed by the existence of Bill Cassidy. And I , you know, I look for redemption. I hope there is some for them. Aaron Powell What's your level of concern that there hasn't been more drama around the ICE funding itself, which is sort of uh not even being talked about as much, partly because I think it was baked in that it was going to pass way back when you know the government shutdown happened, uh or the D HS shutdown happened. I know you covered ICE detention centers on Runaway Country this week. Um I interviewed Andy Kim on Tuesday's pod, senator from New Jersey, about the horrific conditions at the detention center in Newark. I mean, this is one that has been like making me quietly sick every time I see more stories because it's like I'm very aware that we finished the episode of uh Trump's America where there was the Battle of Minneapolis and then Christy Gnome was fired and then they pulled back and Stephen Miller was sort of like, you know, had to go back in his cave for a little bit. Um and so everyone moved on and thinks, okay, now things are good No. There may be fewer expenditures on expensive horse rental under Mark Wayne Mullen, the new DHS secretary, but things are as dastardly as ever. Let's just, I mean, just for people who have not paid attention to what's going on in terms of detentions. Caitlin Dickerson, who we have on the show on Runaway Country this week, has been doing some essential reporting from on the ground. The idea of family separations still happening. Sh by her estimate, I think 200,000 parents have been deported and separated from their children, some of whom have ended up in foster care, some of whom have ended up with other relatives or strangers. No, there's there's no tracking for that part. And they can't get their kids back. In many cases, they're in dangerous places where they have no home. They're facing threats of gang violence. Their children are locked in the United States. It is a devastating situation. So there's that reality. And then when you talk about what's happening inside the detention centers, I mean, there there are, I think 50 people have died in detention since Trump took office. The the standard of care in these detention centers is appalling. You're talking about medical concerns like people needing to see doctors for routine small issues that when they aren't treated become life-threatening issues. Um the lawyer that we spoke to, Melissa Shepherd from Immigration Defenders, talked about someone who had a hangnail that was left untreated and couldn't see a nurse, couldn't see a doctor, and eventually was at risk of dying from sepsis because of this, right? These are, I mean, then you talk about just basic, you know, basic, basic, basic, basic levels of care, including clean water. They're being given moldy food or not enough food or contaminated water. The latrines aren't being cleaned. Detainees are volunteering to clean up and and create shifts because nobody else is cleaning the facilities. I mean these are pregnant women. And the children. These are people. Elderly people who need their medicine. I mean, John, these are people that have been living in the United States for like twenty years. Yes, that's right. They used to go to CVS to get their prescriptions. Like this is and that doesn't it doesn't make it easier, it doesn't make it better if they weren't those people, but they were integrated into American society. And even if they didn't have the paperwork, they were living like we are. And they have been shunted into a just dark and unimaginably depressing , devastating environment from which there seems like no escape. These private prisons, these private detention centers, are being run by for-profit companies, like the Geo Group, from which the Trump administration is cherry-picking executives and making them the new head of ICE. Tom Homan was a can a consultant to the geo group. AG Bondi back in 2019, another consultant to the geo group. It's a revolving door where you know the snake is eating its own tail. And as a result, there are, you know, Geo Group has made, I think, an 800% increase in profits between 2024 and 2025. It's really lucrative business to cram a bunch of people with no legal representation into subhuman conditions and charge the government a lot of money for it. And that's what's happening. And now we're about to dump another $72 billion in ICE and CPB's lap. Trevor Burrus And like we've both interviewed people who've been caught up in this and people who probably like have more means and maybe they're like Canadians that got caught up in it, but right. And um they will say, like it's not even like they're just deporting people, right? Like that's but I I think people have this image of oh Trump wants to de port people and he wants to deport, you know, the worst of the worst, or maybe just undocumented immigrants, and obviously it's gone beyond that. But it's beyond just deportation, which in some cases would be more humane than what they are doing to people in these detention centers. Some people are like begging to be deported somewhere. Yes, well, that that's the point. I think one of the things they're doing is making the life so abominable that people just decide I'm gonna give up on my case. I mean, and by the way, half the time they can't be in touch with their lawyers, they're shipped around from detention center to detention center, they're lost in the system. And they give up hope. I mean, it's an incredibly emotionally traumatic thing to be snatched off the street. Kids. Kids. Children taken or children themselves. Well. And like what happens after you spend a month in a detention center like that? I mean, I offer I mean there's no oversight into any of this. And you see Andy Kim who you had on. I mean, when you have congressional representatives who are, you know, tasked with oversight trying to do their job, they are pepper sprayed, they are arrested, they are charged with crimes. I mean, and we have no idea what's happening in Dilly detention, which is where all the kids are. I will tell you, when I was talking to Andy Kim, I was thinking about remember that he was he was like a brand new uh brand new to Congress the time of January 6th, and he was in the Capitol picking up the trash. Yes. And and like I remember interviewing him after that and he was like so still so like hopeful. Yeah. Even though that had happened because he was like and you know when I interviewed him on Tuesday, he seemed like beat down. Yeah. Like when you see something like that, it's like, and he's not the type of he's not the type of politician who's like hair on fire, partisan, this, that. He just he saw something and uh you can tell he like can't even believe what he saw. You can't unsee it or unlearn it. And I have to say one the one of the advantages of the way uh the government is handling uh deportations right now is it's happening in large part behind the worst parts of it are happening behind closed doors. Yes. When Alex Prady and Renee Nicole Good were killed, it alarmed the entire country because it was happening in broad daylight. And now the abuse and dehumanization of people is just happening behind closed doors. And they're brown people and they have fewer rights and there's less mainstream media coverage and the federal government makes it very difficult to get information. Nonetheless, I mean, you know, this is happening in our name, and we are doing this to people who were once integrated members of our society who contribute to our economy and to the fabric of our democracy. And I just think, you know, it's it's devastating for anybody that works on it, but we should be, I mean it we should be all more publicly devastated by it. And and in the context of this funding, you know, these jabronies in Congress doing whatever they're doing, we shouldn't forget that the essential fight here, the reason this ha bill is happening through reconciliation is because the Democrats didn't want to fucking fund ICE and CPB without reforms because what they're doing is an abuse of power. It is not constitutional. And that should always be the sort of end note for any discussion about whatever Congress ends up doing on rec- reconciliation. Aaron Powell Did you uh one more thing on this? Did you see on Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen refused to rule out his crazy ass plan to basically shut down, not basically it would, shut down international travel at airports in sanctuary cities by removing customs and border patrol officers. So here, LA, I mean the first threat was Newark because there were the uh protests outside the Delaney uh detention facility. And um that is like I don't know whether to be like that is completely insane and scary and what are we gonna do or like go for it, touch the stove Shut down Shut down international travel in this economy to the United States. That's gonna work. Yeah, no Republicans fly though, right? They only they travel by pony Can you imagine the hit to the economy? It would be so bad. It's such an example of this idiot ass administration cutting off its nose to spite its face. I mean, good job, guys. Like make gas a trillion dollars a gallon and then shut down air travel. Way a way to make America great again. I I mean and Mark Wayne Mullen in his you know notes on this plan suggested that it's something they've been cooking up for a while and they're ready to execute on it. Until and unless ICE officers are respected. Well, you know, on some level, I have to say, John, maybe doing that, I mean taking the setting aside the hit to the economy, it's like at least people would be reminded that this is an ongoing fight. I know that's a it's a it's a touch and stove moment. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the tools you need to promote and get paid for your services in one platform. Whether you offer consultations, events, or other experiences, Squarespace can help you grow your business. Squarespace offers a complete library of professionally designed and award-winning website templates with options for every use in every category. No matter where you start, your website is flexible to what you need, with intuitive drag and drop editing, beautiful styling options, unrivaled visual design effects, on-brand AI content, and more ways to list what you offer. 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So you could just fill it with a bunch of family photos and then seeded through every 40th picture is just Jeffrey Epstein, named number one by wire cutter. You can save now by visiting or frames.com for a limited time. Listeners can get $35 off of select frames with code crooked. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com. Promo code crooked. Support the show by mentioning us a checkout. Terms and conditions apply for the uh the brains behind the J6 slush fund. Trump announced this week that he intends to officially promote acting attorney general Todd Blanch to permanent attorney general Todd Blanch. The president's former personal defense lawyer has been on a roll uh since he took over for Pam Bondi. In addition to coming up with the slush fund, uh Blanche has brought a second indictment against Jim Comey for his uh Seashell art picture. And uh he's also stepped up an investigation into John Brennan. Blanche's nomination will have to go through the Senate Judiciary Committee, whose Republican members include John Cornyn and Tom Tillis. Um, are we gonna be stuck with Todd Blanche for as long as we're uh stuck with Donald Trump? Well, first of all, I mean, no matter what Tom Tillis intends on doing, there is the reality that Todd Blanche can stay acting A G till Trump is out of office. Forever, basically. I don't know if this is the time to mention the Julie Sue uh situation, but under Biden in twenty twenty two, he could not get his acting or his deputy labor secretary confirmed to be labor secretary, in large part because of Joe Manchin and Kristen Cinema. We'll set that aside for a rainy day. Another ranch. But effectively set, and I don't want to say set the precedent because I think what's happening here is much more nefarious, but opened the door to a mechanism by which a deputy uh secretary can become acting secretary for a largely indefinite period of time, assuming that the sort of paperwork around that is taken care of every year. And Republicans are looking at that, or the Trump administration, I would assume, is looking at that and saying, well, if you could do that with your labor secretary Julie Sue, we can do that with our wannabe A G ring kisser extraordinaire Todd Blench. And this is sort of I mean it's been the law forever and it's sort of like the the vacancies act, uh w without getting into all of the details on this, yes. If you are confirmed to be a deputy something something at a cabinet agency, it and and then you're gonna be acting, it is pretty easy to just restart the clock every year. Every year. We're now we're withdrawing the nomination, we're doing it again, it's gonna get a vote. They didn't take you down you know, so like you can just play with the paperwork and and Todd Blanch can serve forever. Thank God. For as long as we have Donald. I don't know I guess good job, Todd. Like what what how what didn't you s bow and what didn't you scrape in order to get that nod? Yeah, no, he's he's got it, that's for sure. But and yet he's not the worst, I think, of the nominees that have been proposed this we week. Well, here go. I'm teeing it up for you, John. It it it the the Blanche News did briefly overshadow the appointment of Bill Poulti. Yes, the same Bill Poulti who's been using his perch atop the Federal Housing Finance Administration to man ufacture mortgage fraud allegations against people on Trump's enemies list. Don't worry, he apparently still gets to keep that job too, because he's doing such a good job. Good, yeah. Um can he be the viceroy of Venezuela as well? Probably. We only have a couple people to do all the jobs now. No one else wants to work there. This is also the same Bill Poultey who Scott Besson threatened to punch in his fucking face. Um and it does seem like even Republicans and other Trump administration colleagues may not be super thrilled um with making this doofus America's top spy chief. Uh let's listen. Do you think that Bill Poulty has the experience to be the acting uh DNI? I'll I'll uh defer to the chairman on that. Um Center Cotton, you want to speak to that? We have uh four more weeks with Director Gabbard as the DNI, and I look forward to implementing last year's Intelligence Authorization Act with her. I have no observations on the matter. Have you ever , specifically in the context of the intelligence community, heard the name Bill Poulty? In the context of intelligence? That's what I said. No . Did he mean like the intelligence community or just intelligence generally. That's my question. Tom Cotton saying, I have no observations on the matter. I know. That is all we got. So Tom you speak for all of us. Trump was asked about this one uh in the oval uh when he was giving us his uh renovation updates. And uh here's his explanation. Why do you think Mr President he's the best person for the job? Well he's very smart. He's a person who's got high integrity Does he have a necessary in your view, Mr. President, the necessary Well I do, and I think he does actually because he's smart. That's it. Trump says you're smart, you have all the experience. Uh what's your level of concern on this one? High. Very highigh. H, hi. I think even and especially the fact that he's just serving for a specific window to find election interference right ahead of the midterm elections. What could go wrong? I will draw everybody's attention. I'm so glad you brought this up. Oh my god. It's such a good story. It's such a good story. Everyone go read it. Pulti spent till like much of twenty twenty three trying like as a meme stock investor trying to get people to invest in like worthless shares of bed, bath, and beyond. Yes. And as his this was his sole mission. Yeah, that's all he did. And like basically they will Will talks about how he organizes an event in December of 2023 at a Florida hangar, I guess like an airplane hangar, that was dedicated to the conspiracy that bed battle With Pulti sitting on stage, one promoter slapped a grateful supporter in the face with a green dildo, which was apparently a powerful symbol in their inscrutable online subculture This is the person that Trump wants to put in charge of our intelligence infrastructure. Do you see the um the what he got at that event? So he was sitting there with while the dildo incident occurred. Someone else got slapped in the face with the green dildo and then uh Holty was given a a little trophy with a T-Rex on it. And it said, um, it said, Poult y only fucks the young. Well, okay. I think they were on two, it was two different sides of the trophy. But yes, if you put all the sentence together, that's what it would be. Or pultifux only the it's yeah. It's it's only the young and he fucks. He fucks is on one side and I believe the cracker jack fact checking scene here at Ponte Blackwell. Yet he fucks only the young. It is all I mean, I just we have to go back to the phallic obsession of this administration. It is all just about dick swinging. And like he proved himself to be both at once willing to be castrated by Donald Tr ump, but having some kind of dick to swing around at some point, or at least a dildo. I'm sorry that this has gotten so lewd. I know it's a family problem. It's not it's the it's the new acting director of national intelligence's faults. Who reportedly gave Trump the you are the j uh you are Jesus JPEG? Yes, the guy he's the brains behind AIG and the fifty year mortgage boondoggle. Like what we're really talking about this guy. I mean, not only does he have I mean the it's almost like the the fact that he has zero qualifications for the job are an afterthought, he is completely morally and like I I would say ethically corrupt. He's a joke. And I th I would hope that Trump's suggestion that he'll only be in the office temporarily is some kind of hat tip to the fact that he knows that he's a joke. But that should not calm anybody's fears because as, you know, it's quite obvious. I mean, he's putting being put in there for one reason only, and that is to help Trump find a reason to say that the results of the 2020 election were fraudulent and potentially to say that the results of the 2026 midterms should not give Democrats the gavel. And you know, we just talked about why it's challenging to um prevent the president from putting someone in a temporary position and um at for, you know, for as long as he wants. Um Section 702 warrantless wiretapping authority uh is up for renewal. That old chestnut. And uh both parties have negotiated uh surprisingly uh a an agreeable solution uh to that. So they were gonna put that up for a vote. But now Democrats are saying we're not gonna reauthorize that if the person in charge of it is this fucking doofus. Um and they're wondering if enough anti-Pulti Republicans um would join along, try to use that as leverage. I I think I saw maybe Collins, Murkowski, and Tillis voted for an amendment that would prevent Poulti from being uh DNI chair that they added, but I don't think any of the other Republicans voted for it. I don't think it passed. I can't believe you have to bait them. I know. Like we know he's a clown. We know he's a maniac. We know he's completely untrustworthy and could do crazy damage to the democracy. But if that's not enough, we're gonna hold 702 uh FISA reauthor wiretapping reauthorization hostage. Like it's it's insane to me that Democrats have to add a sweetener to attract more Republicans when this person is so categor ically unqualified for this job. It's shameful. Aaron Powell I wonder what John Ratcliffe thinks, who is the CIA director and like not my cup of tea, but like a professional. Yes. And you know, I know that the org chart there is a little little loosey-goosey, but he still has to like like this is the director of national intelligence. Uh maybe they just cut him I bet they cut him out of all the important stuff and then when Trump wants really bad shit done, then Poulte gets access to everything that's right. Which is what he's already doing. Digging up, you know, he's rummaging around mortgage files trying to find fraudulent mortgage applications so that he can tag Letitia James and and Jim Comey. I mean he uh i this is all so utterly embarrassing and yet what's crazy is we don't know what happened. Like we don't know if the FISA reauthorization is gonna be sufficient enough to get Trump's party to shut down the nomination of someone who could do grave damage, not just to the democracy, but even to them. You know what I mean? Once you cross Trump, once you're no longer in office , at anything's fair game. Like they're in peril as much as anybody else. You know, there's a lot that if Democrats take Congress that they can't achieve in two years with Donald Trump as president, because he's still got veto power. But this these are the kinds of things, especially Pulti, where if Democrats have control of Congress, you haul this guy in for questioning, you send subpoenas, not just for him, but for document like you can you can make stuff happen uh if you control Congress with appointments this horrendous for sure. It makes Tulsi Gabber look like Jay Edgar Hoover. It does. Doesn't it? It does. I guess in a yeah in the in the best possible way. 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Um four House Republicans, including Thomas Massey, joined Democrats on Wednesday in passing a war powers resolution directing the president to end military operations in Iran. Democrats and Republicans in the Senate advanced a similar measure a few weeks ago. This is all largely symbolic, however, because Trump can just veto the resolution, which he's not too happy with. He responded on Thursday by calling the war powers vote unpatriotic, the Republicans who voted for it grandstanders, and the Democrats Democrats, which seems to be his new nickname of choice. We haven't played a clip yet of this on this program, but he has said now multi ple times. He tells this story and he's like, No, a lot of people don't know that dumb has a B at the end. This is what he's been saying. And like straight face. And he's like, I call them the Democrats, but also. It's not for who the bell tolls. It's tolls for the people don't know all this time. There's a B at the end of dumb. Um meanwhile, there seems to have been zero progress this week in actually ending the war in Iran, um, which Trump said Wednesday is quote, not a big thing, not a big thing for the U.S. to detour. I'd like to read you some rave reviews about the Iran War in the Wall Street Journal today, Thursday. Quote, it has achieved enough to produce a far better Middle East, quote, reaching no deal is fine, and quote, this is a new day in the Middle East. Care to guess the author? I'm gonna say who who who, John, who loves ill -conceived regime change more than someone from the George W. Bush administration? Could it be Condoleezza Rice? It's Condoleezza Rice. Pops her head up to just give a ringing endorsement of our progress on Iran. Which is less welcome, the Jill Biden memoir or the Condoleezza Rice op-ed? Honestly, the Jill Biden memoir. That's saying something. But the the con only because the Kandi race one is like, what is this gonna do? What also what are you doing? What are you doing? Let me burnish my reputation by defending a failing president. a A true that is wildly misguided war. That is commitment to the bit. That like she is a true true neocon till till the end. I read this and I was like, are you kidding, lady? The war. First of all, she writes about it in the past tense. And I'm like, wait a second, it drew America, Israel, and Arab states closer through defense cooperation and intelligence. What? Didn't draw draw the region closer. It also showed that although Iran can close the Strait of Hormuz, that leverage is limited. Oh what? It doesn't seem like it. His approval rating is like negative one million right now, and he's about to hemorrhage uh i i any leverage he has in Congress. Like what in the fuck are you talking about? Also, and she's like, and do we need the enriched uranium? Sure, but that can be a tomorrow problem. Yeah. Yes, John , there are large stockpiles of highly enriched uranium somewhere in Iran, but this is a problem for the future, not today. Really? Well, and then goes on to just like spout pure conjecture about like anyway their their ways of enriching it are probably dismantled or destroyed trust me what I don't like hindsight is negative 2020 like the whole thing is just like we have learned I mean I I just the hubris, the foolishness, it anyway. I delighted in it actually. It was a nice break. It was a palette cleanser. I was trying to figure out what it was, and and buried in there is her saying, like, you know, no deal is fine, and that's better than a bad deal. And she said under no circumstances can we be lifting any sanctions and giving the money. And so she is doing the classic anti-anti -Trump Republican thing of being like, I think we can play him, right? Because we'll tell him that the war went great, but what we really don't want is pellets of cash to Iran. Right. And they don't want a deal where we uh unfreeze uh sanctions and unfreeze funds for them in exchange for getting rid of the nuclear material, which was the whole reason that we started the war in the first place, ostensibly, and opening the State Strait of Hormuz, which was open at the beginning of the war. Um and so she's like, Yeah, I understand all that, but things aren't that bad. And so what she really wants is a deal to open the straight, no money to Iran, and then just cut and run. Right. I don't know how you uh negotiate that deal, and nobody seems to be able to, but like I guess nice try, Condi. You're totally right that it's like we will stroke the dog will come running at us with saliva foaming at its mouth, and we will stroke the dog right between the eyes. Right between the eyes, and we will calm the dog down. And then we will get it into the cage. And it's like, no, that dog's gonna fucking bite you. It's gonna be a dog is rabid. All right, let's talk about the big elections we had this week. In Iowa, Josh Turek beat Zach Wallace to become the Democratic Senate candid ate. He'll be squaring off against Ashley Henson in November. In a race that Cook Political Report has now shifted from likely Republican to lean Republican. So, Iowa Senate in play. In Montana, a Bernie AOC backed smoke jumper and union leader named Sam Forstag beat two moderate Democrats to become the nominee in the state's first congressional district, which ri Republican Ryan Zinke is vacating. Hot fireman dude. That's what everyone said. We need more fucking smoke jumpers. I'm sorry to curse them. We need more smoke jumpers. Please delete the fucking. We need more smoke jumpers. Smoke jumpers. I just look up what a smoke jumper was. I did. I actually just assumed it was fire related. But I'm glad that it's not some acrobatics that I was unaware of. Like parkour for fire. No, it's like fi it's definitely fire related. Um and here in California, we're still counting votes, as we will be potentially for another week or two. It's so embarrassing. I know, it is embarrassing. Uh as of right now, the governor's race shows Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Javier Becerra in lead, though there's a small chance that Democrat Tom Steyer could catch Becerra as more ballots are counted. He's currently about six percent behind. In the mayor's race, Karen Bass is headed to the runoff in November. And currently Republican reality TV douche Spencer Pratt is in second, though there's also a chance that Progressive Challenger Nithia Raman could catch him. She's currently seven percent behind. Uh, election analysts say that in the past the ballots got bluer the later they were counted. And that may be uh especially true in this election, since a lot of undecided Democrats held their ballots until the very end. Like the people who usually sit at this table. Like the people who usually sit at this. But I did I turned it on Monday. Yeah, that's it. That's still considered late in Monday. Yeah, I dropped it in, I dropped it in a box on Mon day, so who knows when it finally got to the May not have. Yeah. Um while we have you here in LA, what have you made of our our California primaries? A lot faster. I know. There are machines that will help you. Um, I am I you know we we we focused actually on both Texas and California in last week's runaway country, and we had the inimitable Dan Daniel Pfeiffer on. Uh-huh . And it worries me as someone who would like to see a changing of the guard in 2028 about what this could portend for the Democratic Party writ large. That's a good point. Just because there's I mean, I think the gubernatorial race is a little different. It was hit with obviously the Swalwell revelations or accusations or whatever we're calling them, and that upended, I guess, the race. But there's a real lack of enthusiasm, no coalescing. It's the what exactly the party wants to do in terms of like its priorities for like arguably one of the most the most important state in the union. I'm a New Yorker, so I can't really give you that. But you know, that there's no clear agenda, there's a lack of enthusiasm, there's a sense that every one's votes are very scattered and it's based on strategy, and that's not how you win a national election. And I worry that some of that can trickle down to what is gonna be a very crowded primary field, and where I think the order of the day is gonna be electability, which is so what the fuck is that? And I mean it I guess it makes it super important, super hard to define. Exactly. Very subjective. And and and self-determined. Not totally subjective, though. You want to be like, well, you can't dismiss it totally and be like, well, it's all subjective. No one knows electability. Yeah, you can kinda tell, but it's also not perfectly objective either. Yeah, and and the mayoral race really worries me. Yeah. Anyways, the gubernatorial race I will set aside to like sort of strange dynamics, but the mayoral race seems like an area where Democrats are having a really hard time articulating a message that is addressing people's deep-seated concerns, so much so that a no-nothing reality TV star sounds familiar has somehow vaulted to the like the head of the pack. I mean, that's that's not good. That means there's real desperation inside, you know, one of the bluest cities and the blueest states in the country. So what does that mean for the country where it's not as blue and it's not as concentrated? I I just I worry. I don't like what I'm seeing here. And and I gen I genuinely love this state. I have been um like grumbling about this to anyone who listen, but all the Democrats running in California in these primaries, mayor and governor. Um who's the really inspiring communicator? Yeah. Who's really good? Who gets who's good at getting attention um by just talking and not spending 200 billion dollars yeah 200 million dollars um like tom styre did um not a lot of them and then you have someone Katie Porter's a good example here's someone who in 2018, rising star , great communicator, policy wonk, but also someone who's like explained it in accessible way, had the whiteboard, and then she has a personal character issue, right? With staff. So then you got that. And that that becomes a theme in the Democratic Party as well now, right? So you got that kind of person. You got your uh Nithyas like this and um a lot of other folks who are running too who are like good at the job. You can tell they're gonna be good at the job and they're they're brilliant people, but like were they born to be campaigners? Not really. We've had a lot of that in the Democratic Party. Yeah. Right. And then you have the Biser as, the Karen Basses, who their claim to fame is just sticking around long enough and just hanging around democratic politics and being part of the establishment and making enough connections in the establishment that suddenly people are ready to rally behind you. And do you have good intentions? Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure Karen Bass had great intentions when she took the job. And same with I'm I'm I'm I assume that of Javier Bersera because I like to always assume well about people. Um but Karen Bass didn't adequately communicate in the last couple of years on this job. She didn't show the kind of urgency you need to show to be mayor of a city this large. Um even though it's a weak mayor, that actually means you have to work even harder um to communicate uh in in a weak mare system. And you know, I don't that doesn't surprise me because in Congress, as a member of Congress, which she was for so long, you can just kind of hang around in Congress and take your votes. But like we need leaders. Yeah. We need people to like stand up and and point somewhere and say, This is where we're going and this is how we get there and get behind me and we're gonna get excited. And it's like, where is that? Well, and the party by nature doesn't lend it's sort of antithetical to be standing up and guiding everything in the Democratic Party, which is much more of a consensus-oriented group of people, right? And it's much more inclusive and expansive in thought and agenda and all the rest, but that is a sort of structural problem for a party that desperately needs leadership and like executive style leadership. Yes. And it and it bums me out to say it because first of all, it is really hard to run for office and it's a lot of sacrifice. And especially in this environment, it's like, why does anyone want to go through that? Right. And there are so many people who are going through it right now who are wonderful candidates who people will maybe never hear about because they're just putting their head down and trying to win their races and they're not as flashy as some of the other candidates we talk about and like God bless them. But when we get to president, this is the this is gonna be the challenge. Yeah, this is why it's like it's spooking me. Because you can you can do that in a congressional race, you can do that, probably even in a senate race. As you get to governor in this state, or as you get to a mayor, or now especially when you get to president, it's gonna be a lot tougher to do that. Just sort of fake it. Yeah. You need the real talent there. And it's true. And none of that talent's come from California. JK, JK. It's a great state. A lot of great people here. A lot of great people. Favreau 2028. Yeah, right. Um, okay . Right as we were prepared. Speaking of all this, right as we were preparing to record this, uh, the much rumored second New York Times story on Graham Plattiner's problematic behavior dropped. This one talks about his relationships with his past girlfriends. Several of them spoke of him fondly. Three others the Times spoke to described, quote, toxic relationships that were unsettling. I'm gonna try to quote as much as I can here because it is it's a lot to untangle in this piece. Um the most prominent voice uh in the piece is a longtime conservative activist. He dated between twenty 2 thirte0en13 and 2015. So I guess this is when he was in DC. Um and she said that while Platiner, quote, never hit me, um, he once yanked her out of a cab by her wrist and also during one argument , twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom, and told her to remain there until she was calm. Plattiner strongly disputes any claims of physical intimidation or altercations. This is all according to the times. Seems like uh every time you're on the show, uh, there's a big turn in the Platinum story. So welcome back. Coincidence or not? Uh what'd you think of this one? I feel like I get the Graham Platinum or hot potato lamb. I really do. And there's not even Dan here to, you know, create some levity around the absurdity of all of this. Dan Dan never gets it, by the way. I feel like every time great well, it's just a quiet sort of rivalry that Dan and I have. Like Platinum or V Mills. I um I will say there's another part of the piece again quoted uh a quote or a ret old by this conservative activist former girlfriend, where she says that Plattner had what she described as a warrior ethos and would fantasize about killing people he deemed a threat. She said that he told her that rape was about power. It was something that stuck with her through the years, she said. He said this a lot. If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them, she recalled, saying that he added it would not be in a sexual way, not in a gay way. He was like, I would rate them to show them that I'm dominant . Yeah. I mean, I okay. I this is where it's like, this is really this fucking sucks. Yeah. I I um I want to be a person that has learned the lessons of like if you have multiple people accusing the one person of very similar behavioral patterns, like there's a good chance there's something there . This story goes, I mean, they go out of their way in the Times piece to quote girlfriends who were like, he was a gentle giant. I I have nothing bad to say about him. But then there are a handful of women that were like, I you know, his behavior was sometimes made me feel not safe. And then this one in particular, this one ex-girlfriend has the most distressing and uh in my mind disqualifying things to say about him. And I think like I we can't this can't be brushed aside. He has to he has to you know tackle this head on. And if this was a Republican, everybody would say, no fucking way. Yeah. I mean, that's just the truth. Like with all of this. She also suggests and then they'd be elected. Right. Well, fine. And ultimately, this isn't up to you and me. This is up to the voters of Maine. And this is a really interesting study. I mean, so much of what Platiner represents was the left's answer to the toxic masculinity of the right. And what's really fucking unfortunate is that this kind of masculinity , if this stuff is true, is just as fucking toxic as everything being served on the right. And there has to be a difference. There has to be a difference between what the left is proposing men and strength can look like and what the right is, because otherwise, we as women and as citizens of a democracy are completely fucked. So I would love to hear a lot more from Grand Platiner on this. Like, like getting into these allegations. She also suggests that he taught her the name of his Nazi tattoo, a new very much that it was a Nazi tattoo called the toten toten koff. My Totenkopf which makes me is the exact language that was used in Andrew Kaczynski's piece about this because Andrew did this who's a great reporter and said this on Tuesday, basically reported that an acquaintance of his said that he had told her my Totenkov before. So I was like, I wanna if the the language was the same, so I wonder if it was the the same source, but regardless. Look, I said on Tuesday show that Plattner's biggest issue going forward is trust. Yeah. And there are allegations in this story about the the SS symbol and and when he found out and what he knew and you know af,ter that, he got more questions about, you know, were there any more skeletons in your closet? He said no. Then the sexting story came out. Um, he got more questions about whether there are additional allegations coming out from Democratic senators this week? And he said nothing like the rumors that have been circulating. I'm not going to shed the rumors here, but the rumors have been they have been actually much, much worse than what the New York Times ended up with. And he said, no, nothing like those rumors that we've been hearing, which may be technically true, but now there's this story, right? And even if he is completely telling the truth, and this is it, and he really is a different, better person who, and he says in the story, I was a bad boyfriend. I drank too much. He has said all kinds of things about how horrible he was before he tried to turn his life around. Even if he is telling the truth about that, which I can't judge, you can't judge, none of us can judge. The problem is it's gonna be really hard to blame voters who wonder whether they can believe him. No, you can't blame voters. But also it's not even beyond just And that sucks. Is this a person who does this stuff? I mean that that's a finan cial question. It is harp it is like very difficult. Well, that's what I think given how how absolutely asymmetric the uh asymmetrical the value system is here, that Democrat, you know, like that a person who otherwise has adopted a a a very sort of strong set of beliefs and policies that would help a large part of this country, and seems very much like he believes those things, could be shut down based on this. But if this is true, I mean you can't, that it's amoral. You can't behave like this. You can't talk about women and do things like this to them. You can't talk about rape like that. I mean you just you cannot fucking do that. That is n those are not the morals of a sensible party. And I I don't know. I I I gotta say because I I mean I remember the I under and I understand the repulsion of like having the DSCC involve itself in a Senate race. But everybody was like, Janet Mills is too old. And I remember talking to Dan about this and I was like, I mean, yeah, she's old. But like, Graham Platiner has a lot of fucking question marks, guys. Yeah, well, I mean, here's the thing about that is uh two things can be right. Yes, fine. But I do think like I think like people ha you know I would all I'm saying is, and I see that like there was so much interest in the fact that he could be a noose kind of masculinity for the left. And it's like I 'm sorry that she's old and that she's a woman and that she was governor, but she was tough in her I'm not a Mills person. I'm not a Mills person. But and I'm and I'm not like an anti like if they if if if you know if they decide tomorrow like they're gonna replace them with Mills and Mills it's like I'm gonna be like, oh no like great. We need to win the fucking seat. That's the most important thing. I just 'm about like it's about Grand Platinum, right? It's about it's about winning the seat. It is and and you know what? It's a good fucking thing. I was back on the map, I guess is that well it it's's also like I do try to separate like this is a political situation and this is like a personal situation, right? Like imagine if we were talking about this person and he wasn't running for office. Okay. Just as a just as an experiment here. Because this is the I think this is what has like been bothering me about it. Is like I do very much believe in the ability to redeem oneself and to change and to become a better person. And I still think it is very possible that the that this is the case with him, that all that stuff in the past is true. Yeah. And that somewhere along the line, as he says, he was like, my life is really fucked up. And, you know, i people say like he's blaming the war, but like, you know, every time every person who's fucked up is a product of their environment and their own choices. It's both, right? And so his own choices, his environment led him to this moment where he was really fucked up. He gets help. He tries to, you know, work in his community, organize people, tries to turn over a new leaf. And then someone's like, you should run for office. And he's like, me? What the fuck? And then he's like, okay, I guess, but what about my past? You can do it, right? You're you're a changed person. And then he does it, and then this is what happens. Now, no, no, I'm just saying. Yeah. The more these I I'm telling you what I feel like. Like the more these stories come out, the more I'm like, yes, that could all be true, but there's a bigger there's a bigger uh there's more at stake here than your personal redemption story because we need the sentence. So that's where sorry I'm landing, but I'm just saying Can I say one thing to that though? Yeah. I don't think I mean I think at essence, it I wouldn't divorce the personal from the political in this, in part because there's been such an assault on women in this country. Whether it's denying them basic reproductive health, continuing to drag feet on basic you know, maternal health questions, especially in low-income communities, or on paid family leave. You know, they're they're essential questions about how much you value women and families. Like these are questions that senators are gonna have to answer if Democrats have power again. Like there needs to be legislation to address the wrong s and the assault on women's lives. And I, you know, you want people that see women as co-equals. You want people that see families as a, you know, an important unit of American society and believe in the pr and I don't mean to sound like some family values democrat, but I I think you know it is this is the reason this stuff bleeds into the political is because those are your you know those are organizing principles. And if you're living your life in such violation of some of those principles that you then need to turn into legislation. It makes you question how effective someone's going to be in office if they get there. I mean that's all I'll say about it because I I I don't I don't know if any of this is true. No, I don't either. I don't think the excuse the reasoning that he's given this far is sufficient to paper over this new reporting. I guess is what I would say. And I guess I'm just saying like don't don't we want people who change and who are like, I I what thought back then, what I said back then was fucking wrong, and I actually mean it. And like whether it's a someone who voted for Trump and who supported Trump, whether it's uh fucking Oysterman in Maine, whether it's um we're a party who wants to rehabilitate people who serve time in prison and give them a second chance, who were murderers, and we get attacked for that by Republicans. We say no, we think it's important to do re you know rehabilitation. And again, I don't people are gonna take this out of context. I'm not saying that therefore Graham Plattner must get a set C we must do it for him. I am just saying that on an individual level as a party, sometimes I think that one of our and maybe this is just me, but like I I want to I want to believe well about people and then I want to believe that when people fuck up and do something horrible and are genuinely sorry and genuinely want to change that they are able to do that and that people can accept them for doing that, no matter who they are, what they believe, what their background is. Fucking Donald Trump. No, not Donald Trump. Yeah. Um Todd Blanche. No, not Todd Blanche. That is like I that's just like me therapizing this and just like talking about like this is this is divorcing it from the like I I do think this is a huge fucking problem right now. We want people who've made mistakes because life is full of mistakes . But there are mistakes of behavior that suggest that lessons are have not been learned and then there are mistakes that you make and move past. And I just don't know which one this falls into. Yeah. And also it's like, and again, how many can you add up and pile up if you want to be a United States Senator? Now I also think that it's a the other challenge is, you know, contrary to what people online have said, like the guy generated an impressive amount of support in Maine. I mean we we already know that, but like it really doesn't like it will be very interesting to me as someone who's interested in kind of the social currents that I mean, I say this as an armchair sociologist , but whether this is an issue for him. I mean, it's entirely possible. Well, and it also that he can move past it, I guess. It's also too like it's it's, you know, um for all the what did Chuck Schumer and the D SEC do with Janet Mills? Or what did the left do forcing Graham Platinum on? It's like no one forced Janet Mills on anyone. No one forced Graham Platinum on anyone. Main main shows. Graham Plattiner decided to run and a bunch of people showed up. Uh Chuck Schumer wanted Mills to run and she said sure and she ran a campaign. Like and then the people of Maine came out and you know what? We have a primary uh on Tuesday. And I do think like, I mean, he's she's on the ballot still, there's like one other candidate as well. Um, you expect him to get like if he was a normal candidate without scandal in a situation like that, eighty-five, ninety percent of the voty percent. If he's down to like sixty, sixty-five, it's a real fucking problem . Or if and like I don't want to just cause because you don't want to just base it on polls, but like, you know, we haven't seen any polls post the sexing scandal except for their internal, which had them only out four for a while. But like there's gonna be plenty of polls that come out. Yeah. And we'll see what happens in the primary, but the party has till I believe July 13th, if he drops out to replace him with someone else. So there's there's some time here. There there's there's another month of pain. I don't want to do this show until this primary is over. Same. Get me out of this seat. Same. It's but like you said, we'll end it where you begin. It sucks. It fucking sucks. It sucks. Pods of America is brought to you by Z Biotics. Uh you've heard us all talk about Z Biotics a million times. Um we once again, uh, when uh Love got married the other weekend, um, he was giving out zebiotics to folks and uh at the wedding, and people were like, Does this really work? I heard you guys talk about this on the pod . And every single person took zebiotics the next day was? I like, oh wow, you guys weren't lying about that. It's like, yeah, of course we're not lying about that. Uh anyway, Z-biotics works. Uh, it's a pre-alcohol probiotic drink. 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Book online at half.com or give your local halfers garage a call and we'll sort it. So you can keep moving with confidence. Garage services not available in Northern Ireland . One other big topic to get to. Oh my gosh, I can't believe we're just here now. 60 minutes. Meltdown at 60 minutes. Oh, we should we could go forever. This isn't this as you said, this show isn't called sixty minutes. It's called 1900. Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick. As you know by now, ever since uh Trump pal David Allison put contrarian conservative columnist Barry Weiss in charge of CBS, she's taken a special interest in 60 Minutes. Uh last week, Weiss fired the show's executive producer along with several correspondents and hired Nick Bilton, a tech journalist with no broadcast experience to run the program. At Bilton's introduction meeting, which Weiss did not attend, maybe the funniest part of the whole story. I know. Um, veteran correspondent Scott Pelley accused Weiss of trying to, quote, murder the show. And uh according to recordings of the meeting that have circulated. Shortly after that, Pelle was fired, um, and then on his way out publicly accused Weiss and CBS leadership of instructing him to quote, inject falsehoods and bias and unverified assertions into quote a politically sensitive story. You worked at CBS News for a while. I did. Um I know you've been uh writing about this story a bunch on your excellent Substack. How the hell with Alex Wagner. Perfect title. Perfect. Great name for a substack. Care to unquirk on this one? Yeah, I do. How much time we got. Can you hear the sound of me rubbing my hands together? Please do it. Um So I have so much to say about this, but I know I can't spend an hour on it. I can't spend 60 minutes on it. Um it's appalling what Barry Weiss is doing. It is all part of a project that Barry Weiss is a small player on a larger machine, which is for the Ellisons. I mean, I actually don't think uh David Ellison, who I uh call refer to as Lord Collagen on my sub stack. Have you noticed how just it's like too ripe. But also just ripe the ripeness of his cheeks and lips. Very collagen filled, but not. I think he's naturally just peach like. Anyway. Sure. We'll go with that. He I don't really I mean I think they're conservatives. This is I mean they are they want to make m a lot of money. And the way they're going to do that is by currying favor with this the Trump administration by any means possible. And they've figured out wisely that the best way to do that and ensure that they can proceed with the paramount Warner Brothers Discovery merger, which is supposed to happen as soon as next month, is to show Trump that they have no compunction about gutting legendary news institutions and destroying the fourth estate if it's inconvenient to this president. And that's what's happening here. And you know, Barry Weiss is a fool, I will say that. This is foolish, bad, amoral, unethical behavior. She's hollowing out this institu tion that was one of the last , you know, we talk about this moment in American life when people used to gather around and watch things on the television. Sixty minutes is like the last bit of appointment television we have. We've had a real monoculture problem in this country the last 10 years. And um it's I don't think much is gonna exist of it uh uh at the end of all of this and that's a real travesty because I don't think you ever get those viewers back. I mean that's a the problem with broadcast. It's an iceberg that melts and once it's melted there's no refreezing. Um and so you know what I would love to see in all of this is the people who count in terms of the Ellison 's life and financials say something about it, which means I sit here in Los Angeles, California. And the thing that the Ellisons are interested in is television and movies. That's their bread and butter. That's what makes money for the Ellisons and Paramount. And like, it is one thing for Alex Wagner and John Favreau to stand in solidarity with Scott Pelley and the staff of CVS and 60 Minutes. It's another thing for everybody who's on a Taylor Sheridan or Tyler Sheridan show to say, hey, you can't gut the fourth estate just because you want to make money on entertainment. It's like where are all the people that have movies made by Paramount? Where are the people that have TV shows made by Paramount? I think this is their fight too, because this is an issue of free speech. And until and unless they stand up, it's not gonna make a difference. News doesn't fucking make money. News is an afterthought. This is an inconvenience for the Ellisons. The only thing they care about is making money through entertainment. And until the entertainment world stands up and says you can't do this. Uh uh, you know, a crime against one of us in terms of free speech is a crime against all of us, this goes nowhere. You can tell that um uh Nick Bilton, did you see like his long note that he put out today where he was like, and I, you know, we're we're committed to transparency and honest journalism and I I've talked to Leslie Stahl and the remaining correspondents and you know to get you can tell there's a little he's a little worried. Yeah, he should be a lot worried. A lot worried. And they and they promoted uh Maria Gavralovich to senior producer, who's I think we both know, I know I've known for a while and she's fantastic. It was a separate office with better lighting, better everything. I think it was like soundproofed, so you never knew what was happening. You know what's really annoyed me about this? I mean there a a lot of it, everything you said is like right on. The sources that are saying to media reporters about this, you know, the culture was kind of bad at sixty minutes and it's not you everyone, you know, all you all you TDS libs think it's all politics, but there was a culture problem that needed to be solved, and this is just maybe a bit of a rough way to do it. Fuck off. I mean I for yeah. It drives me nuts. Well, and as someone who I was on the fucking uh the the farm team over at CBS, right? I was doing C ABS this morning, CBS this morning on the weekends, like I was the bottom feeder and you'd look enviously across the street, but there was a reason you were envious because the quality of investigative research and reporting they were doing was bar none. I mean, there was just no nothing like it. And they deserved to be an island unto themselves because of the rigor of what they were doing and the audience that they commanded, you know what I mean? Sorry that they were on top and sorry that it sucked for everybody else and especially the CBS News Division, which was starved into obsolescence and left to eat, you know, moldy green beans in the cafeteria from 1976. That was literally something that I did on a daily basis. But like they they earned that reputation for a reason. And the Schaden freude around this among news industry veterans and people who once worked there, fuck off. This is not about like a dick swinging contest about who got what resources. This is about a tax on the free press and this administration through the lackeys that it has put in its corner disassembling like one of the last great institutions. It's also like you think there's a culture issue, you think it's a fossil, you think it needs to be updated for the digital age, fine. Think about all the ways to do that that are not this . Because if you wanted to do that, um, like you'd have to be a you'd have to be really fucking incompetent to do it this way. More so and like you're not gonna tell me like Barry Weiss is a lot of things, you're not gonna tell me that she and Nick Bilton and all the rest of them are this fucking dumb that they think that this was the best way to change the culture at 60 minutes. It's totally vindictive and none of them have any qualifications. Like show me the show me the media companies that either one of them have turned around. Show me the experience they have in television or broadcast or news. They got Nada. Bad. Goose egg baby. Bad. Um all right. It's been a long show, but before we go. Before we go, I have to um the deep tease. All right. So I'm just gonna um you know some of this. You know some of this. I only I kind of had two martinis when you told me. That's true. That's true. I did tell you that. Um I'm just gonna read aloud to all of you an email I received on March twenty-fifth. I think months ago now. Oh my god. Uh it's from TKO Events . TKO Events uh uh sent it to me, John Favreau. And the subject line of the email is UFC Freedom250. Oh god, I love it. John. We are honored to invite you to UFC Freedom two fifty on Sunday, June fourteenth, a special evening celebrating our country. This once in a lifetime event marks a historic moment and we would love to have you join us. This invitation is non-transferable and does not include a plus one. We need your RSVP by Tuesday, March 31st, as there are significant logistics with the White House . More details to follow. So I saw this and it was like, uh, is this a joke? Did someone prank me? Um why am I invited to the White House? And I'm and then I looked and in the CC line of TKO events was Ari Emanuel, who owns TKO events, and then I looked up TKO events. I'm like, oh, and they own UFC. Yeah. And then I and then I did a little digging and I was like, oh, so Trump had all his tickets. There's four thousand tickets. Trump gets most of them. Some go to the military. Two hundred go to RE Emanuel at TKO events, 200 go to Dana White. And Ari chose me because what I thought is he thinks I was the other John Favreau. Iron Man John Favreau. Yes. Because way back when I was represented at WME and I believe that uh Ari was John's agent, and I think John must like UFC fights or whatever. But anyway, I RSVP'd yes, because I thought, fuck it, I'm going to the White House. Yeah, you fucking are. And I'm gonna go in there with a GoPro. And I'm gonna check it out. Maybe I'll see my buddy Steven Miller or my friend JD Vance and chat them up. I like possibly You're gonna climb the octagon. Possibilities were endless. So I RSVP'd I. got this follow-up on April 2nd. Your ticket to UFC Freedom 250 in Washington, D.C. on June 14th is confirmed. Ticketing and arrival details surrounding your visit will be sent from TKO events during the week of June 8th. Please reach out with any questions and let us know if you're no longer able to attend. Thank you. So I'm like, okay, it's still happening. A few weeks ago on May 11th, I got another email. Ahead of your trip to Washington, D.C. for the historic UFC Freedom 250 , we are collecting identification details from each guest. Due to the heightened level of security that will be in place throughout the weekend, the information is required to ensure there are no issues with ticket distribution. So I gave them all my info on May twenty seventh. I got more details, including suggested dress code, business formal, a reminder to bring my government issued ID, instructions of how to get my ticket, the week of the fight, a whole whole thing.. No So I had I made plans. You bought a ticket? Bought a ticket to DC. To DC, like booked a hotel, had a whole meeting here with the club. Maybe it's Sunday, June 14 th the next day i was going to chicago for the obama library opening it heard of it probably not too many people going to both of those things nah da goosey very excited trying to figure out like how am I gonna play this what, if I get right, what's going on. And then today another email from TKO events. Too good to be true. Hi Jonathan. Now when I gave all my info, of course I gave my real info, which is Jonathan Edward Favreau. And the only thing that's different between me and the other John Favreau is our middle name. You know, he's he's he's J-O-N too, but he's K, John K Favre, and I'm John E. And I think because then also they they went with my full name. I think then they probably when they saw that they finally checked the list. Our sincerest apologies. No. But we've just discovered there was a miscommunication about our allotted number of guest invitations for UFC Freedom 250 on June 14th. Unfortunately, as a result, we are under allotted and no longer able to accommodate your attendance. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Thank you for your understanding. We would love to host you at a future event. Yes, perfect. For the for the third and autonomous.. Fuck I was so close. I knew you know what? I knew something must have gone awry, because you certainly wouldn't be broadcasting this. No, I was gonna keep it all secret . I wasn't gonna say anything until I was safely out of there. I to anybody who's listening to this, you should be watching it on YouTube because Favros like the the way his eyes dance when he talks about this. It was so it was such a fun story. Oh my god, it's like watching a balloon take flight. Like the glee . I will say though it was like it's such a fun story, but as I was getting closer, I'm like, what is this gonna be like? What am I gonna do? Oh we I mean I really was like, can we put a GoPro in your trench coat? Can we put can we put Love It in your trench coat? Well I was trying to figure out 'cause I'm like, you know, been to White House events and inside the White House they always take people's phones for well at least we did. Uh well but who knows but this these people anything. Um but on the South Lawn, and I know it's high security. I'm like, I bet people are gonna be taking pictures all over the place in the South Lawn. So I didn't think they were gonna be taking my phone. Um but also I was like, what if I get recognized? Are they gonna kick me out? What's gonna happen? Like am I gonna talk to someone? I'm not type who's gonna go up and like yell at someone, you know me. Maybe your shrink bill will be less because you had to have a lot of contingencies. But I mean, really the service you could have done our country l again, climbing the octagon , unfurling