World Cup and Social Cohesion

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Trampia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks follow,ed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self inject Trumphia, proper training is required. Trumphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderate ly to severely active ulcerative colitis, serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trumphya today. Call one eight hundred fifty six seven seven three six to learn more or visit, Trimf ayahradio. com Hello and welcome to Bullwick podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday, so of course we are here with editor at large Bill Crystal. Who is free? We're all walking free . Though we were watching very closely at one of our colleagues who is the first person down there doing intrepid reporting at the reflecting pool , noticing or maybe not noticing, but documenting the blue paint was coming off. Chipping would be the most generous thing you could say to Donald Trump's reflecting pool paint man. Huge portions of it were coming off . And in the intervening period , we've heard that arrests happening for any troublemakers who are observing the president's failures. As Andrew pointed out this morning, it's funny, but maybe not so funny because people actually have arrested the sixty seven year old bicyclist who showed up and seems to have simply reached into the pool to see like what it feels like with all the algae and the part of the bottom coming off there. And I think he has been arrested. I mean, I mean, and presumably he has to I don't know, get bail and get a lawyer and all this like everything , you know, it is one part ediocracy, one part menace, you know, there are elements of it that are concerning. The North Korean elements, you know, people cannot observe our governments incompetence and waste and buffoonery without fear that the state will come after them. To examine this , Judge Box of Wine was on Fox News over the weekend speaking to Peter Dusey and they talked about how seriously they're taking the investigation regarding any so called v andals of the reflecting pool and that includes those in the press. Let's listen to that. Trump's got a crime stoppers tip for you . Lightweight ABC reporter Jonathan Carl was seen sticking his hand into the pool and trying to rip the rubber off the surface . Judge, is Jonathan Carl from ABC in trouble ? Well, you know, it depends, you know , anyone who was in a position of vandalizing or attempting to vandalize the reflecting pool will face the criminal justice system in DC. Look, the president has made it a priority to make DC not only safe but beautiful . And there are several citations that have been handed out to individuals and these are cases that will be prosecuted to the full extent . Prosecuted. Both of those people have a face and voice for print. I'm not sure that what Fox is doing there with their lineup, but prosecuted to the fullest extent . This is the world we're in. It is farcical. Everyone doesn't want it. Mostly it's farcical. And it's actually doing Trump damage, which is good. I think because everyone's just laughing at him both at what's happened, of course, with the pool itself and the algae and the paint coming paint chips, as you said he'd be charitable if you can call them that huge chunks of the bottom of the pool, basically. And then this attempt to intimidate people from going and looking at it or maybe even feeling what it's like or pulling up one of these loose pieces of stuff. Trump has invented this vandalism capital V he puts was on it on at the vandalism of two hundred and fifty feet. Then I think it became three hundred feet, I noticed in some later tweet. Someone went in and gashed the pool for three hundred feet. That's kind of a big gash, you know. I feel stupid even taking it like quasi seriously. I think this thing is on camera twenty four seven no one went into the pool and gashed the bottom. And this is I mean the big lie thing, but here we have Fox sort of treating it like a real thing and I don't know this as I said there could be some people who are being harassed. I mean, Peter Ducey they're basically agitating for John Carl to be arrested. And he doesn't like this fake laughing voice . But honestly, I mean, you're interviewing the person that arrested the sandwich man . Right. So I mean, you know, Judge Janine is going to , you know , do investigations. And it's kind of reminiscent of it's like a nineties movie with a school principal. You know, it's kind of reminiscent of like a Simpsons or a Ferris Bueller Stay off type situation where you have a grumpy principle. It's like anything you do to embarrass me, you'll get detention. You know, there's that like element to this, which is, you know, not how things should be going in a free country. I think we're enough of a free country still that it is more farcical than medicine. I agree. Unlike some of the other things he's doing, which really are probably more medicine than farcical. But look, it's very important, I think, to I was on a call early this morning, some lawyers were debating. There's actually some lawsu that's pending from some historic preservation group that this was filed four weeks ago by you shouldn't be messing around with the reflective pool this way. There are processes you should go through if we change the historic site like that. And I think they're thinking the lawyers of revitalizing this suit in light of subsequent developments might not a bad idea. And there was a little bit of an argument, well, isn't it taking it too seriously and all that? But I think the more news, the more attention the reflecting pool gets the better we only're what he's giving a speech there Wednesday. Trump isn't the beginning of this great American fair, whatever the heck it is, you know, that all the artists pulled out of and that he decided he would give this opening speech at I'm hopeful that a no one will pay any attention to it would be to the degree people pay attention it's entirely to take a look at the reflecting pool not to of course listen to Trump's interpretation of our children fiftieth birthday. So well there was a dead duckling in the reflecting pool of the bad. Don't you think that's bad , I think you did this stuff for a living once ten, fifteen years ago and I think I think a dead duckling is not good, not good not good imagery. It's going to be the opposite of Bernie's bird. Remember when the bird landed on Bernie's podium and all the Bernie people made a big deal. But that's sort of like the opposite to that. It's the dead bird . The taxpayers will pay. They'll be paying more to fix that. He posts or work, will begin immediately on fixing the reflecting pool. So the bill will go up for that just like for , you know, the ballroom and the ball there no bid another no bid contract contract a guy that looks like he's a bad guy from the nineteen eighties movoofy who was part of the gym traffic scandal. The guy part of the gym traffic ? No, it's he can't make it up, right? Fucking ridiculous. Okay, well just as for the bicycling men, and we will continue to keep an eye on the story. Let's move on to Iran. The Strait of Hormuz was closed again over the weekend in response to Israel and Hezbollah continuing fighting in southern Lebanon and attacks back and forth there. If you look the analysis of kind of just monitoring the ships going through the strait and it does seem like that there's maybe ghost ships going through, et cetera, but just the ones, you know, that you can monitor . Before the war started, you know, I was looking at a chart. It looked like spending on the day, sixty, seventy, eighty ships were going through. That went down to basically zero . We hit a peak after Treaty of Versailles two Electric Boogaloo of fifteen ships making it through. That number went back down to three yesterday as Iran closed the strait again . Meanwhile , the vice president and the president's son in law are in Switzerland negotiating . Yeah, quote negotiating. They seem to be giving giving Iranian war to try to get that straight open again. And since Trump correctly said it, this is going to cause the longer it stays closed, the more problems for the for the global economy . This thing is ridiculous to follow every twist and turn. I feel like part of me writing warning shots this morning, I don't have to write about Iran. It's kind of important . Oh my God another like fake toughness from Trump, fake negotiations with vans, fake concessions here, fake achievements there. The IAEA might get back in. I believe they were in there. That was the whole point of the Obama deal, you know? They were in a very complicated and serious way, actually. And now Iran's vaguely promised, yeah, we'll let some of these inspectors in maybe Vance says they promised. We don't even know if they promised, honestly. Meanwhile, we're giving up sanctions, we're giving money right and left to them. They're doing fine, and that's going to continue to be the case. Yeah, so that was the big new quote unquote news this morning. The inspectors are coming in. They also the vice president said this at a press conference this morning. Jared Kushner came up with a very interesting idea during the negotiations. Kushner and the Qataris figured this out together. Vance said it is kind of interesting. I mean, we had the big signing on Wednesday . So it feels like the ideas about the sanctions relief and the inspectors kind of should have been previously to the MO, but anyway, nitpicking. Derrick Kushner according to Vancouver with an interesting ideas idea, which is that when we unfreeze the money for Iran . That will then actually go to buy American soy , American corn and American wheat for the benefit of the Iranian people . What Jared and the Qataris and the entire team here at Bergenstock accomplished to me as a classic Trump deal maybe true, but not in the way that the vice president means a classic Trump deal. But like all of this is absurd. And it's desperate and it's just like, oh, okay, well we took some heat that we're giving the Iranians so much money. So it's like it's going to go to the American farmers now. It's like, does anybody believe this? Do the Iranians even care? Why is Jared there? We have a we have an agent of the Saudi government who doesn't work for our government, who the vice president is crediting with being the point person on this negotiation. I think one interesting side sort of minor aspect of it was advance dragging Jared, I mean, mentioning Jared so prominently, right? That Jared negotiated this very well. So this is Don't you think this is Vance trying to make say this is Trump's deal. This is Trump's Trump family's involved. This isn't just they try to put me out there as the kind of sacrifice me as the sacrificial lamb on this, but I'm working closely with Jared. It's also pathetic on a different level . Or maybe Jared is in charge that is pathetic. I bet he's not trying to do anything. Maybe he's just he is just totally cucked by Jared and the Trump family and he's like, whatever you say, sir. I don't know. It's hard to say. And they posted the Qatari's posted a picture of Jared , JD and the Curry representative, like, you know, it looked like kind of like a hotel conference room. There's a Curig machine in the back and they were like hunched over a single laptop and JD has like a woman's ID card put into the computer. So I don't know, maybe he forgot his passcode for, you know, Jerry doesn't have a security clearance. He's in there. We have a foreign agent. And then we have the vice president who I guess didn't have his passwords. Some other woman's card is in there. And like that's the picture that they're putting out. And it's like the Iranians are kind of just chilling. Yeah. It's like all of the optics of this about who has the power in the negotiation. And there was a video from the initial meeting in Switzerland and the Iranians didn't show up to the open press part of the meeting. It was just kind of Jared Milling about talking to a couple of Gulf St ate leaders . I mean, he is just clearly the beta party in the negotiation right now as we are like begging them to get the straight back open and also giving them money. Yeah, I guess was a picture , photo put out by the Qataris. I think so probably, right? And so yeah, by the Qataris. Yeah, so they're relishing their status here. They're a country that we have . We have had in the past some real issues with, I believe, tolerant, you know, Hamas is headquartered there and stuff, but you know, they're great. And we're happy to use their passport, their card for the computer, no issues there, no security problems. They're giving us the plane. We got all the planes on us. That was a great gift. It only costs taxpayers a billion dollars to retrof it it to make it both secure . So we could look for all the bugs that they put in there. Yeah, also the thing JD's walking around where he's milling about the Pakistanis are also there and Jadie's like, we love the Pakistanis. Thank you. It's like, do it. Weren't they hiding Osama bin Laden? Actually, didn't we have to ascend a sealed six in there in secret at night? If we liked the Pakistanis so much, couldn't we have like negotiated the arrest of Osama bin Laden would have needed to fly in undercover of darkness and kill him? The whole thing is absurd . This is Trump's foreign policy, right? We're in great terms with Qatar, P theakistanis , getting we're on great terms with Iran , traditional democratic allies, people Ukraine who were fighting for their survival and for liberal democracy. We don't care that much about them. Yeah, Reuters also said I just should note that even once the straight gets back open, you are going to have to fill out a TPS report before you can get through. It's got to be submitted through three Mullah Bobs. And you got to do it forty eight hours in advance. The cover sheet's got to be right and so we'll see how that shakes out. I wanted to play a little cope from Fox about how they're feeling about things. It's really interesting to watch . You know, there are kind of two factions on Fox, right? There is kind of like the Americ a first . We shouldn't be involved there at all, like whatever, who cares? Like we should be humiliated and just let the Iranians have whatever they want and get out of their crowd and you know go back to focusing on things that really matter, like mass deportations and like menacing people at Kinseniris. You know, like there's that crowd at Fox . And then, you know, that kind of overlaps just the cultist type. So it'll just like say everything's great no matter what happens. And then there are the hawks are still kind of trying to spit backfill and spin this idea that's like, well, you know, Trump might be there might be some forty chess at play here. You know, Trump might be waiting until after the election. Trump might be, you know , leading Iranians into a trap . And in that category, we had Trey Gaudy last night interviewing the former vice president Mike Pence . And I was kind of tickled with the end of the exchange in that interview. I'd like to play for you . I've seen his patients run out with me on the golf course. I don't know if you've ever seen his patients run out, but that is not something the Iranians, I think ,. Well let see's . There's so many players there. It's like on the one hand, it's like, oh, the Iranians better watch out. It's like Donald Trump's getting impatient now. It's like, oh wait, he just signed a surrender in Versailles in France like last week. And then number two, it's Groudy looking at Pence being like, has you ever seen Trump run out of patience with you? It's like, yeah , he sent the mob to kill me. I think Pence had a little grid on his face when Gaby said, I didn't think Pence was aware of the irony of the situation . It's like yeah Trey he's run out of patience with me . That's the kind of material you're getting on weakened Fox. So it's all kind of post hoc backfilled spin from the Magafolks. The one thing I will say is like , if it were true that Trump cared about the actual result in Iran, which it isn't . Like chilling out now and avoiding the energy crisis and then handling it during the lame duck two years like would actually be the smart thing to do, but it's just I just don't think that that's real. Yeah, no, I think I don't think it's going back there. And also what would that even mean? I mean, handling it, right? We tried to handle it for thirty seven days, didn't work out. So can another thirty seven days of bombing as possible. The ground troop's options really on the table. Great point. This goes back to the whole like the premise of the war was wrong. It's not just Trump being like it's true that Trump Trump is humiliated and he's walking away and he's embarrassed and he's weak. But it's also true that the whole premise of the war was flawed as Bob Kigan laid out from the start, you know, and that like going back to doing it again next year would not have any better of a result? Yeah, I think that's right. The real world effects are bad. It's one of these things. This one is on the faracle plus disaster side. This one's farcical also of course watching the negotiations and watching Trade Gaudi stuff, but it is more disastrous than farcical. Whereas the flight of it was more far so that disastrous. This is the way we balance things in the Trump era, you know, there is all right, y'all. I've got some more travel coming up this week it's summer. 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So JD has been on his media tour about the war and about his book Communion. For people that missed it, over on the Bork Takes Feed on YouTube JVL and I did a dramatic reading of some sections of his book of Communion and Spoiler alert, we weren't impressed . We weren't impressed, but people can go check that out. You guys are good dramatic readers though. I want to say that. I hadn't realized that was your in your tool tool kit. That was good. Yeah . You know, I've got a lot of weaknesses, Bill , but I have a few surprising strengths as well . You know, another person that had that did something surprising was Ross Delfet in the interview with JD Vance , because Ross doesn't want to really go at him hard. You know, you can tell it's a friendly space . But Ross has not you know completely given himself into the devil in the way that JD has, you know, and he still has I think he's still, you know, trying to process how to balance sympathies with Maga with genuine Catholic faith, which at times creates tension between him and JD because for JD the whole thing is a force, right? The whole thing. I mean, who the hell knows? He might be a baptist in two years if that helps him out politically and the whole thing is ridiculous . And so that creates tension at times. And during JD's interview with Ross, Ross was asking him how he manages to align the rhetoric of this administration with Christian teaching . And I want to play a little bit of that exchange Let's be honest, the tone of the administration is not consistently a Christian tone. There is a tone of aggressive uncharity to people who aren't on board with the administration's policies. I'm not saying we're perfect because we're not. My point is that the tone argument is in some ways, I think, people see what they want to see . And I also think that tonal argum ents are ways of frankly policing working class ways of communication and covering them in elite preferences. Ross's face there's worth viewing on the video version. He's just like he can't even fake it on this one. Jadie with one of his tells their frankly , frankly , this is just a way of policing the way that the working class talk. What do you make of them though? Jadie's amazing, right? I mean, he's read some of this, he's not stupid and he's read some sort of high tone bullshit about in defense of Maga world and working class prejudice world if we can be honest about it over the years. And one of them is something about yeah elite policing of working class real man real manly talk there in Middle America or something . And so JD throws out this one or two sentence is total gibberish, right? I mean, what is the relevance to what he's what he's saying here. And essentially, it shows what JD really thinks about the working class. He has he thinks they can't be asked to do better than be aggressively uncharitable. I guess that was Ross's term, right? My experience with the working class people is many of them are quite charitable. They have somewhat fewer resources than some upper middle class and wealthy people and often they're better. They're more charitable. You know, I think there's a lot of we've all had that experience in life, the person who is a nurse or a school teacher or works in the cafeteria and is a very generous and warm person, much nicer than the wealthy guy down the street who's a jackass, you know, but that would be the kind of obvious answer to make here, but JD doesn't go there because he does have deep contempt. They all have such contempt. I guess you've made this point and maybe this is a JVL point too. I mean, they have the Maga Maga world leaders have such contempt for the actual followers . Yeah, of course. And JD Mote's family did DC, like this is these are not JD Vance's people. Like he, you know, went to Yale. The whole thing is is preposterous, but it is. And it is extremely revealing. Like this idea that it's like, oh, well, it's the working class people who are uncharitable. Ross's question was not, oh about how you're craft , right? It might be one thing to say, oh , you know, in these fu fu elite circles , you know, people want us to use fancy hundred dollars words and or whatever. And like Donald Trump talks in more of a reality TV you know way, which and he'll curse and he'll, you know, be a little crazy. Like that wasn't the question the question was about the administration's tone of aggressive uncharity to their opponents , right? And so he's referring to there as obviously a million examples of all the ways that Donald Trump insults, dehumanizes his opponents. But JD himself just the other day, I believe it was on I think it was on Greg Gut feld show on Fox where he's talking about how Democrats are just bad people because they don't like America. That is the aggressive uncharity we're talking about. It's talking about how somebody that you disagree with politically , that means that they're a bad person. And that means that you can insult them and be mean to them and be an asshole and be cruel and not consider their humanity . Or maybe the example of talking about a group of people that are migrants into a community and you create a lie about how they eat their dogs and they eat their pets because you want to use them as a cudgel. Like that is aggressive uncharity to people That is something that is distinct to MAGA leaders and it is something that is in JD Vance and Donald Trump's character that they are so nasty and cruel to people that either oppose them politically or that they can use to advance their political interests. And JD's response to that is well, that's just kind of how working class people are. They're all fucking assholes like me, right? Like they're all dicks . And that is an unbelievably revealing admission in addition to it not being true. And the whole thing shows how much of a put on it all is too. It's like, oh yeah, okay, whatever. Like, oh , that's how the regular folks are. They are really nasty to people. And it's just like, that's not how America is. Like that's not true actually. Like you don't go to Like, you know, if you're at a church function, if you're at a YMCA event, if you're at the Skarkard team, like people are not like aggressively uncharitable to the fellow people in their community. Like, that's just not true. Yeah, that's a good point. I really thought I mean, JD somewhat cleverly, you might say, takes a question of Ross's straightforward question about the administration with aggressive uncharity doesn't defend the administration, makes it seem as if Ross is asking about or almost attacking working class people who are not in the question to my knowledge for not living up to liberal elite culture standards and then gives a fake defense of working class people, which is itself a , you t knower,rible con cession that somehow they're not behaving well, but that's just an elite cultural judgment of them. So it's really like a two or three or four step, I don't know , evasion plus I'm sure he's unwilling to defend the administration, I guess what that's worth cost. Maybe if Trump's reading it carefully or listen to this, he will turn he will get even more annoyed JD. But it is very much their deflection, right? If you criticize anything, if you criticize ICE for, you know, what they've been doing., Yeah you just don't understand work class America Tim, you know, that's inside the beltway coastal because the people working in the kitchen that IC is menacing, they're not working. They're not the working class Americans we're talking about actually. We're just tal king about a specific type of white working class people that support us. Like that's what we're talking about. They also want to go with us. And I don't think about anyone. That's what's actually right. I mean, they're talking about themselves. They're finding a way to deflect criticism of themselves. And they have contempt for the working class people they don't like, especially if they're people of color, and they have contempt for the working class people who mostly have voted for them, many of whom have voted for them. So they're losing some of them now I point out because they have contempt for them too. Vance is almost as much of a phony Trump. I mean, it's really kind of more, isn't it? More . Yeah. Trump is Trump is a liar, but he is authentically himself. Yeah. Like Trump lies in his own self interest, right? Like he is he's a megalomaniac. He loves himself and he will do and say anything to support his own interests, which in a way is like it's like the old billboard they're going on. Like at least I like I knew he was a wolf like I'd rather have a wolf than a wolf in sheep's clothing or like Trump is just kind of authentically wolf. Like the JV the whole thing is fake. Like the whole thing is the whole thing he's trying to, like the book the degree to which his like conversion story is just so obviously phony . It's like hard to really put into words. Like the rationales that he comes up for it like don't even make any sense. He's like, Oh , Peter Thiel taught me that religious people could also be smart . It's like you didn't know that before . You met Peter Deal of all people. You know, the whole thing is just he's so transparent. He's changed his name three times. He's changed his religion several times. He's changed his political ideology. The whole thing is fake. And but he's talented. I mean , what was the George Packer wrote about this? He's a talented Mr. Ripley. Like he's a talented con man. Like he's deaf at trying to find cute sounding rationalizations for all of this, just like in this in this interview, right? It's like you can see what he's trying to do. Like he's trying to , you know, avert accountability for his own behavior and you know immediately pivot it back to an attack on some elite culture. But he also in the book, I'm sorry now you've got me on one about JD he fucking pisses me now so much. No , this is interesting though. But most of us haven't read but you've read this book so most of us don't have to, Tim, so that's yeah. Well, I actually shout out to Ansley who read it on the just gave me key sections because I can only take so much. The streets don't want me to have struck down last week. You know, I just thought to stay out of the hospital. You know, the blood pressure gets high just talking about it. But he also reflects on like how wasp culture was superior to our meritocracy. This is another kind of old ganard of the right wing. I'll just like it wasn't actually that bad when before DEI and before the left wing meritocrats and technocrats took over, we had when we just had white Protestant s running everything and, you know, handing things down to their children. It was better because they had this like nobless oblige, right? Like there was this they believed in certain Mores and and you know,, they cared about service dignity. And it's like there's something to that, right? Like it's like the whole premise isn't crazy, but like he's citing like George H. W. Bush this type of person as an like example of this, right? And I do think that kind of era there was more of a cultural norm and a cultural sentiment that you know you should be respectful and you should give back and you know that because you didn't really earn this, right? Like you had an obligation to give back to the community, right? But then there's no following of any of that. And the idea that George H. W. Bush would in any way like defend this type of behavior towards fellow Americans. And it would be totally anethema, right? And so he's trying to have these things together, like a defense of the white Christian supremacy and also a defense of like whatever crass maga nastiness, Donald Trump's nastiness, and he's trying to unite those ideas. And it's just like it doesn't work. They're fundamentally at odds with each other. I'm glad I got you to go on this rant on the book. That's actually a very important point. I mean, the hex attack blocks the promotion of to general officers of various women and minorities because of meritocracy. But they also the Maga Types advance themselves vaguely remember they don't like that kind of technocratic meritocracy because that was also very bad because that's globalist and it's elitist and this. So there they want to go back further to sort of white America of nineteen twenty seven or nineteen thirty five or something like that. But then I thought they were now they're for meritocracy, but they're not really for meritocracy. Yeah, what it comes down to is they're for white America, run by them. Yeah , run by them, run by them, and that they can, you know, hand out, you know, kind of like a spoil system . I think that's really where they want to take things back to introducing the all new Mazda CX box, featuring more connection. Hey Cookele, where's the nearest pilates class? Safety that has your back . 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Gentleman's name is Chris Butler. He goes by Guru Sidaswa Rupananda Para Mahamsa . I'm just going to call him Guru Chris. He's a white guy from Hawaii and it's insane. Tulsi's whole career . He was writing memos and giving dictates to her about what she should say and do . Her parents were in this cult. She was part of it. It's kind of a spin off of Hinduism. It's sort of rude to the Hindus, I think to say that, but like that's how they that's what they claim it is. This report the Washington Post John Swain shouted to him. There was a member of the group who became estranged from the cult because was trying to protect a kid that was a runaway from, you know, some one of the families it was abused or whatever and then the cult came after her. And so she founded her archives like all of these memos and these emails between Guru Chris himself isn't on the email s, but he has an intermediary that is sending stuff to Tulsi. Among the things being said to her serious subject of many of the memos, including one from august sixteenth that documented tactical advice on preventing the United States from ousting Bashar al Assad . So he was a big pusher of Tulsi's pro Assad stance . He would sent through talking points for TV hits They looked through the talking points that were sent and then Tulsi's remarks in thirty two TV interviews . And on twenty four occasions, she used the language in the memos basically verbatim . In the other eight instances, she used different words but promot ed basically the same ideas. There are a million other examples. You really should read the whole story. It's insane. But I just bring it up in the context of this person was the director of national intelligence and she was apparently under the sway of a cult leader the whole time . So I don't know if that makes you feel good about I sleep at night. Maybe Bill Palty's looking good by comparison all of a sudden. But it's fire intelligence wasn't that great actually about Iran and its capabilities and what would happen and so forth. Yeah, Bill Folty, so it's like you go out of the frying pan to the fire where you have a cult leader , you know, someone who's taking orders from a cult leader or we have a totally more standard corrupt henchmen, you know, it's really again that that is sort of Trump world too, right? Where it's like the, you know, either they're crazy or they're just corrupt ion. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's sort of like you're either like genuinely crazy, which maybe seems like case here or like corrupt and an on the take or you know just like a total phony driver who like saw the opportunity to get close to power and like this is your chance to get on to get on the train or just have the personality and character of a really creepy authoritarian bully who likes making people's lives visual. There are quite a lot of them around, I would say . That's a great point. You shouldn't forget them. Yeah, we should do a full character sketch A lot of interesting stuff happening around the world with world leaders. We'll just do a little carm in San Diego what's happening around the world with you, Bill. You wrote about what was happening in the UK for morning shots to your Starmer is out . Where are your takeaways? Fifth British P Mrinimeister to leave in ten years now leaving, I guess he's going to stay a month or two for transition . Yeah, that Brexit thing didn't work out so well. And I don't know. I am struck. I mean, I remember this twenty sixteen. I don't know if you felt this when Brexit won , it was right at this time of years, ten years ago tomorrow, I think , by three or four points, it was close, but still I kind of had this moment of premonition of oh my god, it's going to happen. It happened there. It's going to happen here. Part of this was driven by my memory of the Saturday seventies, thatcher won in ' seventy nine, and it was such a she was such an outsider. People have sort of forgotten this. I mean, she was the first female British Frime Minister ever, but also you know, she'd been a minor figure in the Conservative Party had sort of toppled the established leadership. Then she had to beat labor. She did that in a big upset after they had a very visual winter in ' seventy nine . And so she wanted. I remember sort of thinking as a young kind of Reaganite Republican type by then, you know, if she could do it there, we could do it here. And there was I mean, Thatcher's victory kind of was both a harbinger of Reagan, but also a bit of a encouragement, I'd say, to those of us who wanted a change from Carter. And I kind of feel like Brexit helps Trump, you know, that you think it sort of in retrospect, yes, I wish I could say that I also had that premonition. I probably would be smart for me to lie and pretend like I did. And I would just like, oh, fucking Europeans like stepping on their own dicks again. I don't know. That's where I was at on it . So I guess a little egg on my face on that one since it did come our way afterwards. But yeah, I don't know, I thought more on the vein of our friend Stan Boy who likes to tweet the British experiment and self government continues and I kind of feel more felt more that way about it. But I agree with all that and I think that you know taking the lens back , the degree of dysfunction since Brexit and the problems that have come are really telling. And I think that honestly there, they part'icreularly protected in Europe here, like they're like anything else, like you can have access in anything. So they're like legitimate critiques of some of the immigration rules and policies. But it's like the idea that it's the skeleton key to fixing everything I think continues to bear out that it's not the case. But I was more struck about a different element of Starmer being pushed out, which was kind of the Biden parallels a little bit. Just like, I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in everything that's happening domestically in the UK , but directionally he's like kind of fine. I don't know. I mean the cost of living issues in the UK are really, really bad, particularly in London and I've got friends over there and it's like tough, you know, even for middle upper middle class people to like the cost of living issues are really bad if you're in London in particular . But like, you know, Starberg did some basic reforms. Like they're in a really shitty financial situation, you know, and people are like, well , you know, he did too much austerity. On the other hand, it's like, well, they hadn't done austerity, like who knows this is kind of an unfalsifiable thing, but like who knows what the bond markets would have done and that could have like you know they could have ended up in a hyperinflation place where costs got over even worse than they are. Anyway, they've got problems over there. But like the idea that Kirstarmer has like the popularity of lower popularity than Trump is a little bit kind of hard for me to process. And I get he's a little bit of a what's a British word? Like a little bit of a milk soap or something . You know, America come a little bit of a wet noodle. I don't know. Like the degree of unhappiness , my guess is that they'll probably end up with six prime ministers in twelve years. I guess is where I'm coming from. Introducing the All New Mazda CX five , featuring more connection. Hey Google, where's the nearest pilates class? Safety that has your back . More discovery on the scenic crowds . More passion in the details and more control in changing weather . The all new Mazda CX five more to move every side of you. See it in five films at Mazdausa dot com slash five sides. Google is a trademark of Google L C, sequences shortened and simulated . There are gifts people love , and then there are gifts people never take off . The watch they reach for every morning . The piece of jewelry they wear to every milestone that comes after . At Shriveen Company, you'll find extraordinary jewelry and time pieces and the expertise to help you find the one that becomes part of someone's story . Shrive and Company and Stanford Shopping Center , find the one worth keeping To this, I don't think that the replacement's going to solve their problems. They've got some big issues over there . Why do we just keep pomping around Europe ? I'm fascinated by what's happening with Maloney . And this is I wish that there wasn't so much craziness in our country because one of my visions for the podcast had Kamala one was going to be like, you know , one or two days a week we'll learn about something together. You know, and I was like, I'd love to do a deep dive on Maloney and just like understand what's happening because it's hard for to tell. And the things that overlap with my interests , Trump. She's been like surprisingly good. She's been surprisingly good on Ukraine . She stood up to him on the Iran war . Now we have this recent kerfuffle where Trump, you know, I guess said that she was begging to be in a picture with him and you know it created an international incident and now the Italians are no longer coming for a visit to America and she's popping off on him about how Italy's strong and she's going to protect Italy's interests. So she keeps doing some surprising things for somebody that when she came in was kind of pitched as like an Italian orband . And I think domestically , not good for gays and like there are other things that are not great . And so anyway, I still might do this anyway in this case because I've become so obsessed with Maloney. People might have to deal with having one Maloney episode at some point over the course of the next few months, but it's pretty interesting what we've seen from her. She should do an episode because I need to learn a lot more. I mean, I'd like to say this, but this is based on like very little knowledge that this you could start off as a populist nationalist with some pretty creepy associates maybe yourself aren't quite as bad. And maybe this is the sort of the good story, you know, the happy way it can be you can work out, you know, you can end up okay some things that one doesn't like in policy terms, stuff and, not a bit of decent agenda in terms of Ukraine and in terms of fighting Trump and also not really authoritarian, I don't think at home in the sense of or corrupt, just conservative, you know , in a sort of old fashioned way, maybe with touches of intolerance, maybe to some groups, but not real authoritarianism. I don't know, maybe this is ridiculous for my part. This would be the combination of Maggiar, who was, after all, part of Arban's party, Maloney, maybe there's a way back that for parts of Europe and maybe for maybe for people here in the US, you know, we need a Maloney here . Who's the Republican Maloney? Yeah, and again with,out over stating the Maloney part of this, my people had asked me this would be like years ago when I was doing my book tour because like at this point this is kind of a ridiculous question, but I get the question a lot, which is like, do you think the Republican Party can come back to something that you could support or something that you think would be healthy . And like my answer was always that the classical liberal elements of the Republican Party are gone. You know, like it will look more like a European right party like in the European continent, you know, than like we've had these kind of outlier parties in the Anglosphere in the UK , you know, Canada here, Australia where, you have more, you know, kind of parties that are more of the free markets free people, less of the blood and soil nationalism of that, you know, that sort of stripe. And I was like, I think that that's over. And a bit. so And I think that like the best case scenario I would say that you could hope for would be like a Boris Johnson type, like kind of one of the Brexit type right from the Conservative Party folks who is like a little populist and a little rough around the edges, but like not fundamentally like wanting to turn the country into a dictatorship, you know? And I do want and maybe now that we've gone a little bit further down the path, David is even th aough little optimistic maybe the Milani model is more obvious. I don't know, but like that's like what I do think is not a good outcome in the sense that like I'm going to vote for Republicans again anytime in the foreseeable future but, the outcome like we're not in an existential threat to the country anymore. If you know you have some kind of right populist that also is at least in touch with basically like reality and you, know , wants to be a positive influence on the world, maybe not an aggressively, you know, like maybe not an active influence on the world, but like, you know, it is not trying to be actively harmful . I don't know. And to that extent, maybe that's how the Maloney story is like relevant here. Yeah, the one thing that again, if I knew more, I'd be more intelligent on this. I mean , one thing that I think has happened, though, that does happen in Europe is the EU constrained someone like Maloney. That was constrained Orban, but not so much, but in a way, it did ultimately constrain him, I would say, and probably helped defeat him. And the guardrails here have to be internal on Trump. They can be a little bit external. Someone like Mal an piushing back doesn't hurt actually , and there are people in the U. S. not who will know she is, but you know, kind of vague sense of, well, he's even alienating the more right wing types in Europe, you know, or the more the sane version of the right wing types in Europe. So anyway, I think the EU has turned out to be a positive force there that we don't have here. The degree to which Trump just pick up our earlier conversation for one second , I mean, really, who are his allies now? His allies are literally the worst dictators , period and the you know, most corrupt Gulf States basically . And he doesn't have Maloney. He doesn't have the conservative prime minister of Japan. He doesn't have , you know, kind of anyone who's a vaguely recognizable norm,al . Introducing the all new Mazda CX Box, featuring more connection. Hey Cookele, where's the nearest filtrate class? Safety that has your back . More discovery on the scenic crowds , more passion in the details , and more control in changing weather . The all new Mazda CX five, more to move every side of you. See it in five films at mazdausa com dot slash five sides. Google is a trademark of Google LLC sequences shortened and simulated. There are gifts people love and then there are gifts people never take off . The watch they reach for every morning , the piece of jewelry they wear to every milestone that comes after . At Shriveen Company, you'll find extraordinary jewelry and time pieces and the expertise to help you find the one that becomes part of someone's story . Shriving Company and Stanford Shopping Center . Find the one worth keeping . Conservative leader in a democracy. He has only autocrats or aspiring autocrats or corrupt cheeks. And he's about to get some more new allies. That's the other place I swing to go and around the world. Things are not great in Latin America. We've had a series of elections in South and Central America where it's like there's a funny meme going around which like all Latin American elections are on the one hand it's like socialist school teacher who wants to redistribute money . And then it's like right wing uber fascist cadillo. And then it's like and it's like socialist school teacher forty nine point nine nine nine percent like right wing cardio fifty point zero zero zero one percent. And that's like every election. And it's like been true in Peru, even though that election, I don't think it's called. They're doing California style counting down in Peru. And then in Colombia over the weekend . And the other alarming thing I did just want to flag is Colombia President Gustavo Petro says that Israel stole the election. He was not running as his successor on kind of more on the socialist side. The software was compromised, he says, the only entity in the world capable of doing that is the state of Israel . And I do think it's important to bring this up because we're simultaneously processing through a world where there's some legitimate complaints about Israel and actions on the world stage, where they were encouraging Trump to get into the stupid war. There also is a serious amount of Israel derangement syndrome out there and like the fact that the Colombian press , does he believe this? I don't know. Does he just he just wants to