NBA Offseason and Player Trades

The NC Bank brings you the call of the wild money Hear that? That's an internet troll telling you to put all your money into a single investment. He wants you to liquidate your emergency fund and buy a digital race horse named Silicon Steve. stay vigilant, He's very persistent. Yo! Guard against wild Money moves with PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since eighteen sixty five In a country that never stops moving, reliable energy is essential. People need oil, and natural gas for heating, transportation, and everyday items like clothing, cell phones and contact lenses. Behind the scenes, one of America's largest pipeline operators, Energy Transfer works all day, every day to transport the energy that our communities depend on Energy transrfer invests in modern infrastructure as technologies like AI drive greater need for reliable natural gas. Learn more at energytransfer. com Hello and welcome to the Bolark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. Gide, welcome back to the show, opinion columnist for the Failing New York Times. He's also co host of legal podcast addvisory opinion addvis your opinions. He was a jG officer There are a lot of opinions today. and so we've got them on the podcast. It's David French. How you doing Tim, it's great to see you. Do we have anything to talk about today? Any a few things. if a few things think about two minutes before I got down, I got a blaring headline in the Blor Slack Samuel Alito resigns and I was preparing some Martha Anna Alito jokes. She had flipped the flag upside down at her home to mark the moment, but apparently NPR just kind of fucked up. So that's good. So now we just have to go through the rulings instead All I saw was no resignation. I did not know that anything else went out like that. That Somebody had popped something off. It happens. You know, you get an itchy trigger finger on the publishing button. So we'll keep an eye on it as the show continues. The news of the morning, the biggest news of the morning is that birthright citizenship is alive and well in the country. It was a six or three decision. They struck down Trump's EO Three was pretty notable to me, the three number as opposed to zero or two. Gorsuch was the third descent, but I was wondering what your takeaways are First top line takeaway is Thank the Lord, this is over. What a ridiculous diversion to try to change centuries of American law and precedent because of your malice against immigrants. I'm glad the Supreme Court ended this thing. I'm glad that's over I am surprised by the three. I wouldn't have been surprised if it was seven two after oral argument. I am a little surprised that Gorsuch joined in this. So I'm surprised by how narrow the margin was. It was more of a five one, three. Kavanaugh was concurring in part and dissnding in part But bottom line six three. Yeah. I'm just just on Kavanaugh this is all coming in quick, but it seems like he He basically said that the law Congress passed nineteen in the nineteen fifties is the reason why birthright citizenship is st out and that Congress could overturn that law if they wanted to. So it wasn't on constitutional grounds. Is that right Right. know, so the fourteenth Amendment says in its text that it empowers Congress to pass laws to facilitate the enforcement And so Yet, the bottom line is Donald Trump six three, Donald Trump could not do it you had five very solid votes for the idea that look, this is just the Constitution. The cononstitution says And then you have Kavanagh. the statute says. And so All of this is sort of like, we're in real time digesting. There might be something at the end of this, Tim where somebody says they NPR it. They said something's okay. shouldn't have said about interpreting. But we're trying to, you know, we're in real time trying to figure this out. The bottom line is it's gone, it's dead. The Trump EO is gone, it's dead. Birthright citizenship is still the law of the land I don't see any reasonable prospect for it not being the law of the land Anytime in the near to medium term future, this debate is settled for now. and thank the Lord. Look good and time for America two hundred fifty two. You know we can wal American flags and know that Isn't it great we're not fundamentally changing American citizenship to be more exclusive on America two hundred fifty? It is great. It is great. It's not that great that the president of the United States wanted to fundamentally change the nature of American citizenship to make it more exclusive on America two hundred fifty, but the fact that he failed In some ways, it's poignant Honestly. Half full. Yeah. We're in a half full glass half full podcast. All right, well, we'll see how that goes. This is not a new one. We have a couple of other cases from yesterday and today I want to get to, but I just want to throw this in the immigration bucket which was the TPS ruling last week, which I've been waiting to get your take on Always when analyzes Spreme court cases You have to kind of separate inside yourself, okay, what are your feelings about the actual law and the actual ruling and feelings about the policy itself? because sometimes those are in conflict. On the policy itself, I'm just so outraged by it. It's so tragic. It's insane.ike The idea that somebody that came to this country under temporary protective status has been working, had kids here, goes to church is a good member of their community and now like who knows? they can be worried that the federal agents are going to knock on their door and send them back to a failed state. it's crazy. just just on a practical level. Yeah. On the legal side of it and I know you and I agree on that. on the legal side of it, you know, this is more your expertise, but I was seeing some interesting analysis of this last week about basically the court saying that like This is outside of their purview And so like taking that to its logical conclusion, like a Democratic president could wave their wand and make anybody protected immediately, which would have been news to Barack Obama who tried to pass DAA several times. But I don't know, what do you think Well, this is one of those cases, Tim that I'm one hundred percent with you that the administration is being unspeakably cruel here, unspeakably cruel, vicious. I think they're being blatantly racist. I don't think that requires tryrying to interpret dog whistles, it just requires us to listen to bullhorns. at the same time The law here as written, is a terrible, dreadful law Because what it does is it gave an enormous amount of discretion to the administration and then had another element in there that said that revocation of TPS status is not reviewable by the courts. So in other words, the actual law here is Congressional malpractice That's at eleven on a scale of one to ten because it's just taking congressional prerogatives and authority and handing it over to the president and then even doing something worse than that, Tim, writing into the law The judges cannot interfere So this created a real problem. If you're wanting to challenge the revocation of TPS status. And so what that meant was The argument became, okay, well We can't review the actual decision But we We are asking the court to review the process that led to the decision. Now the way I talked about this case right after That's a hard argument to make. I'm not saying it's like a frivolous argument. It's not a Silly argument, but it's a hard argument to make. The odds are against you If you're asking a court to review something when a statute says it's not reviewable. That puts you behind the eight ball. And so there was a lot of anger at the court over that that I think was misplaced, which was, why aren't you talking to Congress passing these laws that give so much discretion to a president At the same time, there was another element there, which was Was this a violation of the Constitution? In other words Did all of the racist statements mean that This is something that was Beyond that the Constitution, of course, sits over a statute, a statute is subordinate to the Constitution And so when they targeted the Haitians, for example, racially Did that mean that they committed a constitutional violation that the court could remedy that would mean that the stat that statutory discretion didn't come into play. Okay? That was a more complicated second question. And this is one where I've got problems with the court's reasoning on that part of it because Here's what they said. They said, lookook, there were a lot of racist statements that Trump made But so far The Trump administration has cut off every single TPS designation that has come up for review, regardless of what country it's from. So he's not just targeting people in the race. he's getting rid of all TPS designations as they come up Now the counter to that is, well every TPS designation that's come up has so far been from a majority minority country. And so then the next question is has is there a majority white country that has a TPS designation? Yes, Ukraine But that hasn't come up yet And so The court was trying to was essentially saying, well, look, yes, there was this vile rhetoric they're just canceling TPS to everybody, which they have the discretion to do And then there was the Alito had the Sopranos's defense, you know, which is that everybody gets vile rhetoric against them sometimes I mean, the Italians. Yeah, right. They treat cololorasay. Right That's really unfair And so but also at the same time, and this is just to stop me for just getting too much in the weeds here. No, please. I felt there was an inconsistency between the way the Supreme Court talked about race in the black codes in the Hawaii gun control case and the way they talked about race in the TPS case. And here was the difference. Explain I haven't covered the Hawai case just. Okay quick what happened. Yeah,' my goodness, we're in it now, too. We're in it now. Okay, that's good. So the Hawaii case was this gun was a case involving a gun regulation that said in Hawaii that unless a private property owner like a store or whatever clearly indicates that you can bring a gun inside. By default, even if you have a concealed carry permit, you cannot carry the gun in. So private property by default in Hai is barred for guns, but owner can say yes and allow And the Supreme Court struck that down as being overly restrictive of gun rights. But when Hawaii was trying to justify this regulation, it It said it was similar to a law in Louisiana, your Louisiana Tim in eighteen sixty five great That ban's always a good model. Yeah. eighteen sixty five, reed flag flying, right. And that at least purportedly, on its face appeared to be a race neutral ban on people bringing firearms onto private property And they said, seeee, this goes back to eighteen sixty five And and the majority was like, shame on you, Hawaii. These were the black codes. These were the laws that were passed. and then enforced against black citizens So even though the law said on its face that nobody could bring a weapon onto private property without the property owner's permission The reality was this was aimed at Back citizens And so the majority of the Spreme Court said, don't at these, don't look at these because they are discriminatory But then you flip around and you go to the TPS case, and here you had very racist statements against the backdrop of a sort of presumably neutral application And they said here, well, the neutral application is what matters, not the racist statements You got to kind of figure out how are you dealing with overt racism from public officials? And when does overt racism for public officials trigger that enhanced constitutional scrutiny? This is going to take us to the Calvin Ball debates that I want to have at the end once we go through all of these rulings to answeriew I know Calvin and Hobbs in the cartoon. Calvin played a game where he just changed the rules all the time whenever he wanted to. And there's some accusations that that's what's happening in the court where it's like, well, you know you can't in this case, we want to protect gun rights. And so the racist premise is something that we can't abide. In that case, we don't really care that much about the Haitians rights. So the racist premise, we're not going to consider as much. That's one potential way to look at it. Okay, let's go to the firing power because there is some I think interesting potential subtext, know in that category on this as well. So the two big rulings or slaughter and cook, they can go different ways. Basically, this is about the executivive' power to fire people at independent agencies. The court ruled in Trump's favor in the slaughter case, basically saying that the administration can fire people at independent agencies at W Trump's bleach about this when it happened, he's very excited. Today's historic slaughter decision by the Spree Court is the greatest increase in presidential power in a hundred years such a monumental ruling at such an important time. He did another bleat to show the importance of the slaughter case ninety years of president ten years less has been completely and unequivocally overruled, greatly increasing presidential power at a time when it is most needed. You can see how I'd be a little alarmed by those comments, but why don't you give us just kind of a summary of the cases Yeah, alsoso listeners don't rely on Donald Trump for your Sureme Court analysis. Okay. Well, I think that it's important to see how Donald Trump is interpreting the Supree Court rulings, may. Maybe that can be something that's telling. but anyway, go ahead. So this is the I'm not going to say the culmination because it's not. It's part of a long running trend with the conservative majority in the Supreme Court. and that is this. The Supreme Court is giving the president more authority over the executive branch but it is at the same time diminishing the power of the executive branch. Okay, what do I mean by that the Supreme Court did in slaughter is basically say, if you have an executive branch agency, if this is an agency that exists within the purview of Eecuting the laws. That's what it part of what it does is it executes the laws And it has a presidential appointee at the top of it that that executive branch agency And really, here's the core of the ruling is going to have to be accountable. to a political figure whether it's a president If it's an executive branch agency, it has to be accountable to the president. If it's a legislative agency, it has to be accountable to Congress You cannot create an agency with lawmaking law enforcement powers that is not accountable to an elected official And so theseese independent agencies, which have had often multi member commissions with staggered terms were're created often with the purpose of, well, they have independent expertise that they should exercise regardless of who's in office And that problem with that is each one of these independent agencies exercises enormous power, lawmaking power, law enforcement power And this is the conser a very long standing conservative argument That's creating, in essence, an additional branch of government one not contemplated by the Constitution becausecause the Constitution only contemplates branches of government that are either run by judges judicial branch or elected officials, the president or Congress. And so But the slaughter case is saying is if you are a lawmaking part of government, you are accountable to the president Now, it is not saying The civil service rules are gone. that the president can do whatever he wants with the executive agency that the president has unlimited authority or control over the executive agency, far from that. It is saying that if you arere a law enforcement agency You're under a president And so what that will mean is the next Democratic president can then sweep out all the Trump appointees at the top of these agencies, they don't have to linger around like they would under previous rules. So this really does both ways and it's different from Cook. interestnting ways and similar to cook in interesting ways and Yeah, it's fascinating. Yeah, okay, well, let's get to cook. There are a couple of layers here and I just you just mentioned one. so we'll just start with that. I do think You know, Donald Trump is still president for two and a half more years. I don't know if you're aware of that. So things that give him additional power make him feel like he has additional power do concern me. Me too. Yeah. me too. cting cutting the other way though is one of the big challenges that Democrats were going to have in twenty twenty nine is what do we do with all of these people that Donald Trump brought in here who are total hacks and, you know, who might have corrupt or malign intent within the government and You know, Spreme Court's making that challenge a little easier on them. So that is I do think silver lining to this. But what's the other side of a silver lining? Do we have an interest Dark clouds and silver l dark Okay. I've got a couple dark clouds too. But let's start with the cook ruling. There's some technical parts of this you should maybe get into, but like it's top level, it kind of seems like they basically are just carving out the Fed from what you just said because for kind of reasons, they're like, well, the Fed's existed. hasn't really it's only existed since nineteen ten, but it had a precursor that existed since the beginning. And so it's kind of like, will sort of waive this rule for the Fed. That's my layman's understanding. So Tim, I've been mlling over this ruling for like twenty four hours and thinking about it I've read it twice now all the way through and I'm kind of where you are. And let me But not I'm not all the way there. This let me Steel manan and look, I'm super glad the case came out the way that it did. I think I think it is actually a sound ruling. And I'll explain why, but I think we have to own it Okay, you have to just own it. And so here's what I mean So If you read the majority, they're basically saying in both text and subtext that the Fat is just different It's just different from any other agents like the FTC or the SEC. It Just like SC football. It's justilt which is built different You just can't compare. And you know that's true, Tim. You know that's true., you can't compare. You can't compare. But it's just different. It is not an FTC. it's not an SEC. it's not an EPA trraces its lineage back to quQasi public and private entities that even existed before the Declaration of Independence There have been a sort of bank like this or bank like structure like this through most of American history. And if you want to talk about sort of original public meaning of what the Constitution does and does not permit the majority opinion sort of laid down the Look, Hamilton and Madison were with us. You know, that's like the getting dealt two aces in Texas Holdem is when if you're making an originalist argument, you've got Hamilton and Madison on your side, you're You're in a great position And so they're essentially arguing that this thing is something that would have been contemplated and existed at the founding, this recognizable structure that is indispensable. to sound monetary policy So therefore, it's just not the same. And we're not going to apply the same rules as we do in sllaughter because it's just not the same thing And we're going to uphold the independence of the Fed. And' even, you know, in Kavanaugh had a concurrence where he was just like, we're upholding the independence of the Fed here. We cannot introduce uncertainty into the world markets Now the problem is, Tim, just from a conceptual standpoint The Fed doeses an awful lot that is actual rule making lawmaking? I mean, the Fed has a real governmental role, okay? It really does And And so, okay, if it has a real governmental role, which branch of government does it fit into whichich elected official is it accountable to And the court doesn't do run the traps in the same way as it did with the slaughter case. like, okay, if you have a law making or law execution role, which elected official are you accountable to Here the court just essentially saying Look, this is a This is a historic American institution that's just basically grandfathered in And here's where I say that I wish we'd kind of own it. And here's what I mean I find the arguments that the Fed as distinct from say the FTC or the SEC, is just its own thing completely and therefore president or the Congress isn't in charge of it not be super persuasive But here's what I do find to be persuasive that if you're ever talking about sort of ending precedent, if you're ever talking about changing a legal structure There is in the law something called reliance interests. In other words, you are, if you're talking about overturning a legal structure You have to think carefully about what will happen if you do So for example In the Dobbs decision, this was a very big and contentious part of the Dobbs decision. The Justice Alito laid out Reliance interests are very important in starry decisis analysis or in the, you know, in the legal analysis. And so If An entire society has ordered itself around a particular legal structure You have to think it's like a Chesterton's fence kind of thing. There's a fence. Let's knock get down. No way Why is it there Wh Why is it there? And so essentially what I see Kavanaugh doing is basically saying Can we just be real here? Right? If we go in and wreck the Fed. It's not just three hundred thirty million people In America, it's a global economy. The reliance interests are about as strong in guaranteeing the independence of the Fed, as you can have in law, because you've ordered an entire economic system around a particular legal construct And that's what I say about own it. you kind of just have to own it. That makes sense to me. But then the problem is is that why does this only extend to the Fed there other liance' interest? There are other government interests, right? It's's And so it's like, okay For example you know, after Watergate You know, there were a lot of reforms that were put in place that were like, hey, we saw that the way that the structure was working allowed for a lot of corruption. And so we want to create independent oversight bodies. We have, you know, new per inspectors generals, spepecial counsel, And so like there are a bunch of other things that you could argue, you know should have some independence from the executive, particularly oversight things, such as inspectors general And the Supreme Court has washed all that away. I mean, like a lot of the, you know post wateratergate reforms now are moot because the president can just fire. people at will. Tim, you raise a really good point and that is Eesssentially There's a weird thing that happened post Watergate and post Watergate You know, there will be people who are listening who experts and sort of all of the regulatory reforms Post Watergate is shorthand for a. there was a period of time in which there were a lot of reforms, and some of those are in real jeopardy are gone now and partart of the problem that you had And this is where the reliance argument, I think really starts to lock in in the slaughter case. In other words, you've got actually a stronger reliance argument than maybe the the majority acknowledged, but Dorsuch did in his concurrence, which is Would Congress have created all of these agencies If it knew that the president, it couldn't make them independent. Would they have ever existed in the first place Or it would they have existed in that form And I think the answer post watercade is no They wouldn't have even made the agency certainly not with that structure wouldould they have made it a ure executive agency with fewer powers that the president controlled or would they have been you know, move some powers into a legislative agency. I mean, these are options they would have had. And so I do think it's a very solid critique of the court's opinion to say, well, wait, for decades, Congress is actually working creating these agencies with the expectation that this was the legal structure And Gorsitich acknowledges that. He says, would they have done this? And he kind of answers his own question but then says, well, our obligation is in essence, to keep the executive pned into his constitutional box, which means that all of these agencies just don't have as much power as Donald Trump thingsings they do. And And so that's why I say, I think what the court is trying to do is give the president more power over the executive branch but give the executive branch less power which is nerve wracking In the present moment, to say the least.peally In the present moment, you have a Congress that doesn't want us to have any power. with the Congress has abdicated all power essentially in broad strokes Okay, nerve wracking. nerveking with nerve wracking say the leave on this. Americans are carrying over a trillion dollars in credit card debt at rates north of twenty three percent, Yikes. That's more than two hundred billion dollars a year in interest paid mostly by households who happen to be sitting on the largest pool of untapped home equity in U. 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Avven Financial Inc NML S two hundred four two three four five charardge issues pursuant to a license from Visa USA Inc by Coastal Community Bank and MLS four six two two eighty nine. member FDIC, equal housing lender, subject to approval terms apply visit Avven dot com for details Yeah, this other case dropped right before we started, so I don't expect you to have done the twice overreading. but I just do want to mention because it's a little bit more into my wheelhouse, which is campaign finance world And that is the Supreme Court ruled six three to strike down coordinated spending limits between candidates and party committees This is basically as part of a campaign finance reform, there was you know a rule that kind of benefited campaigns. They got they got preferential rates on TV and there various other benefits that you got with if you're spending money that was like donated to a campaign opposed to donated to a PAC or to a party committee like the Republican National commommittee of the Democratic. Congressional campaign commommittee. the majority ruled that the limits on those expenditures for the other committees violated the First Amendment ' kind of just another extension of Citizens United basically, you know, leveling playing field, giving more, I mean, kind just in the sense of like you're weakening the campaigns themselves. Supree Citizens United, like campaigns themselves basically did the advertising. There were some exceptions, but like basically it happened through the campaigns themselves. since United allowed more power for these outside groups to spend unlimited money. and now it' just the campaign committees now having equal power. I'm wondering your take on this. I guess I will begin by saying I'm a little Unconvinced by the idea that this is a violation of F Amendment rights to the campaign committees. don I don't do campaign committees have first ammendment rights is one question. Another question is does having to pay higher ad rates? Is that a violation of my First ammendment rights? Like if I called the if I called the New Oleans Time Peun advocate and said I want to run an advertisement tomorrow and they quoted me a rate that was higher than the lowest rate that they'd quoted, any of their other customers in the past are my first Amendment rights being violated then you know, I just I'm a little skeptical So we'll put it there One of the big parts of this was the coordination part. In other words, have the you had this weird prohibition in coordination between parties and candidates And that to me made no sense, and it ended up empowering super packs to this just massive degree. And so Tim, here's I feel like we need to go and just rip up the whole campaign finance structure and start over because It's like everything we do to fix the last problem creates another problem, which then then you try to fix that and it creates another problem But me let me just back up First principles here If the First Amendment means anything, it means political speech is the highest. That is the reason for being of the First Amendment is the protection of political speech. Yes, all other protected speech is included in there, but political speech is the core of this. It's the core of why we have a First Amendment is to influence politics and to influence public debate And so Right there, if you're going to be restricting and you're going to enact a labyrinth of regulations that start to really restrict a way in which ordinary Americans or the clubs or groups that we belong to interact with the political process You're setting off all my alarm bells because the First Amendment exists for the protection of this political participation Then if you start to restrict the way people can interact and then you make it more complicated as it is infinitely complicated now then you Always look at it like this. Complexity is a subsidy for the wealthy A whole lot of money allows you to hire the lawyers that allow you to participate legally in the public square So if you have reggulation plus complexity around political speech You are creating a very uneven playing field and you are you are starting to create a situation in which the very purpose of the First Amendment is being violated. With that as a backdrop Let me just say we've done that at scale for years Think about this, Tim Let's suppose you want to support a candidate Like you're just a group of people and you want to support a candidate and you get together with a bunch of friends and you start to try to pool resources to Put up yard signs, all of a sudden you're going to find yourself locking into a lot of legal regulations that are very difficult to understand and comply with. And then you began to have all kinds of barriers if you're in a campaign, who can you talk to? who can you not talk to And what all of this has done is it has really diminished the power of political parties to define who they are It has diminished the power of political campaigns as super as super pAC money comes rolling in. So I actually kind of like an opinion that grants more coordinating ability between a political party and a campaign, which is ostensibly a part of that political party. As an academic exercise, I agree. As a practical exercise, we're here and you have campaign contribution limits. So if you're one of those people in a group right out and you want to get your friends together and you're like, hey, we're all going to go support Candidate X You can each person can only spend seven thousand dollars per candidate un unless you go form a official committee, right? You can give to the party committees forty something thousand now, fifty thousand. It keeps going up a little bit And then you could give to a super pack as Elon Musk found out, half a trillion If you want.. Thats sense. I don't it makes no sense. No sense. also makes no sense. Yeah Yeah. But then the so then the law that's like, okay, well we're going They're kind of offsetting this amount by saying, okay, we're going to give cheaper ad rates to the campaigns themselves. pref to give them preferential, you know, treatment to be able to get on the airavways and communicate their message to voters before the election It' like, okay, that makes sense to me, I guess, within this labyrinth of rules. Butway, I don't know. the whole system is pretty stupid. I guess I just I don't know. I I was pretty skeptical of the notion that this is and I guess they're not trying to fix the whole system. They're just trying to to make it makeack I know. It's whackable. Every new fix creates a new problem. It's a giant mess I might sue though, over my First Amendment rights. I feel like I'm not going to get the same rate that the party committee does. and so then we can just keep going down down the rabbit hole. Trump hit some L's. I just want to just really quick hit the Trump L's because that's nice. It's always nice when Trump gets L's at the Spring Court It was a five to four ruling on the States may accept mail in ballots that arrive after election day This is kind of like the inverse of my opinion on the TPS ruling. I think that this is stupid how we're doing mail and balloting right now. and I think it's actually hurting the democracy. I've talked about that a lot on the podcast, but whatever. if the state wants to do that, they're allowed to accept mail in ballots after election day as long as they're postmed by election day. I thought it was kind of weird that there was only a five four ruling really. And then Trump also Most deliciously lost his appeal in the Egene Carroll case. And so now he does have to pay that woman her money when it comes to the adjudicated sexual assault Yeah, this was On balance, not a great term for Trump. I mean, he definitely had some wins. We've talked about two of them sllaughter and agency heads and the TPS So it's no one should say that the Supreme Court just spent the whole timeerm rebuking Trump But he took some massive losses, National Guard in Illinois. Tariffs, tariffs were the centerpiece of his domestic policy agenda You know, he just left birthright citizens. So maybe they were trying to give him a win in a form of a loss sometere. Maybe was the Supreme Court trying to help me kind of saved his economy maybe over time. But you know, so, you know, and then he took a loss on birthright citizenship, which is really a center piece of what you might call the big MAGA agenda of narrowing and transforming the very nature of what American citizenship means and you know, sort of moving America from being a crerededal nation to a nation that is more quote unquote, heritage American blood and soil European kind of model He took very big losses. He also had several wins. but I think on balance, if you're looking at The Trumpest attempt to kind of recreate the American Republic has been rebuked prettyre decisively Shout out to my gl Robby Kaplin, who is Jean Carol's lawyer on all that. And once she's in wr, sorry, David Above you on my favorite podcast guest, in part because she listed out all of her sex past sexual partners when she was on this podcast. Jeane Carroll did. I'm not gonna to ask you to do that, but it was a delightful experience. And it was the list the list was unbelievable. I mean you it was like an astronaut and an Oscar winner the best list ever, so I guess I'd brag about it too. So good on her. Tim, if that's what it takes to be at the top of the podcast list, I'll just have to Settle for second tier.' just defer. I'll just ask you. I'm so sorry. That's great. now. I wasn't asking, but thank you for contemplating. All right, we're taking back the fourth of July at the Bulwark. Donald Trump and MGa is trying to own July fourth and patriotism in general That's fucking stupid We shouldn't let them do that Right It's our country. It's here. We're here. We're queer. We're Americans. We love it. We're patriotic. We can wave the flag That is about the values that we all share as fellow Americans It is about that creed. Jie Vans and Donald Trump want to pretend like we're not a nation based on a crereed or a nation based on Like their whiteness and orangeness And that just ain't true And so We're going to take back the holiday I hope you join us and do it along with us. If you've been thinking about becoming a member in the Bowwar community right now is the moment this week only fourourth of July week We've got a deal for you. a full Bulwk membership for everything we offer on our website. eighty six bucks a year That's fourteen percent off. So come on, do it. this is your moment. The bulwark dot com slash july four. Again, the bulwark dot com slash july four. We'll put a link in the show notes Comeing booard cllust member, come hang, yeelp me at the comments. It'll be great USA Just really quick on the DOJ stuff, just gonna update from you on that. A on what we've been seeing from Blanche In particular, this case in Prairie land, I mentioned on Friday' show. I don't know if you've been following that. the protests, the ice protests with the AntIifA where the DOJ put out this press release that said leaders of Antifa seell led to a hundred years in prison Kind of a complicated case in the sense like one of these protesters did shoot a cop. Yeah, know So this is not we're not talking about, you know, people that were completely without merit and being looked at by the Justice Department. On the other hand, one of the people that was part of the Antifaell leaders was not even there at the protest and was arrested subsequently for carrying Atifa materials in their car, thirty year prison sentences as part of the Trump EO around domestic terror, left wing terror. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or what we've seen from the DOJ lately. Yeah, the issue with that case is not the sentences with these guys. I mean, there if you really dive into the facts of this case, this was a violent This wasn't like a bunch of innocent folks arriving in a protest and, oh my gosh, somebody has a gun and how did this you know, this was not This was not that So the issue here is not was justice done on those guys You know Any one of those given sentences, you should be any of us should be very careful at just saying a jury verdict And when you have a jury verdict and sentencing under the federal sentencing guidelines that that somehow the fix was in. You know, we need to be careful about that. These cases are tried in front of juries. juries render verdicts based on the facts and the law And this was violence. A cop was shot. So I have no sympathy unless I saw some very compelling evidence that there was a miscarriage of justice However What about the J sixixers R You know, so this is this is the problem you have here, Tim is that In a country where the rule of law is fracturing Yeah, it can still impose justice on somebody who's not a friend of the regime. It will still be you know, uh I wrote a piece some time ago about this concept of sort of the dual state that existed and has existed in the rise of totalitarian regimes, and that is The justice system can exist for most people in a normal way But if you are in a category of person disfavored by the regime or favored by the regime, you enter the second state And the second state is Well Justice will not be imposed upon you if you have committed crimes in service of the king, you know, in service of the sovereign in service of the regime And so that's the impunity that the Trump Allies have. There was some reporting earlier this week that I saw You know, there's it's kind of an open secret kind of thing that two million dollars gets you a pardon And and so that's problem that we have. It's not that justustice isn't being done in someess like a crime. Yes. W that a crime? Well, you know, after Trump United States, it's actually an open question which is kind of weird to think about problem here is It is justice for thee and not for me when it comes to friends of the administration. That's the issue evenven more than that, I guess I would say this reg like setting aside the merits of this case, it was like creating a new, you know, terrorism designation just Yeah Yeah. like that that's. you know what I mean? Again, so that so it's even a it's it's kind of, it's justice for the, not for me. And then for the, actually, it's a little bit like justice plus. You know what I mean? And so I think that's a little bit of what we're seeing from the DOJ, they failed at that a lot at the top level you know, with the famous opponents, but and I think that is that's why I kind of want to mention the P O kids because I think that they're that may they are having more success. Well, I think that better example of the real double standard is int the Prairieand case where a person was actually shot It's all these cases that are falling apart in Chicago where Case after case after case has been brought against protesters only to be dropped by prosecutors you've had the exceedingly rare circumstance where Grand juries have refused to indict. You have now seeing a scandal of where it's coming out that officials the U S. attorney's office. assistant U. S. attorneys were behaving improperly in front of the grand jury, trying to lobby the grand jury in improper ways disci for the ice protesters going after the ed protesters at Broadview outside in Chicago Land area And so There's a woman who was shot five times. called a domestic terrorist And then buy know a press release, and then when the evidence comes out, they drop the case, you know, and they find out that it was nothing like the initial press release. So there are putting aside that prairieand case where a cop was actually shot There are lots of other cases where the administration is overcharged. made up things, has slandered innocent citizens And it's just case after case after case, after case like that And for some reason, they haven't gotten the attention. that these Texas cases have gotten But the Texas cases aren't necessarily a great isue Well it's because they're winning. Yeah it's because you misranges lose. Yeahah. it's like okay. Yeah, but there you go Fair enough It's called soccer. It's called football. U soccer Fot Bl Domino's bestest deal ever lets you get any pizza, including stuffed crust with any toppings for nine dollars ninety nine cents Okay we can agree on that. Yeah fully. So pineapple, don't ruin it. Get any pizza including stuffed crust with any toppings for nine dollars ninetyine nineents. Finally something everyone can get behind. And if the rest disagree, that's between them and Domino's, Which means the only thing left to fight over is who's ordering? Priceices is hire for some locations, excludes XL and specialty pizzas. Select this offer from six hundred fifteen to seven hundred twenty six onnline only. Size availability varies by crust type, max, seven toppings, six per pan and New York style crust. M minimum purchase requred delivery. Prices, participation, delivery area and charges may vary. Why is it always chaos when we link up? Because nobody plants anything, bro. Good thing the roue's ready like that. For real, rain, dirt, whatever. Available all wheel drive, five modes we still outside. And they got some kick too. That turbo? Torque is crazy. The most in its class, it moves, moves. Rogue doesn't mess around and peep the space Merch on merch, gear, mics, all the fits. Load up, We out. twenty twenty six Nissan Rogue, built for all of it. Auto Pacific segmentation, twenty twenty six Rogue versus latest in market competitors in the XSUV mainstream midsightize class, excluding electrical vehicles based on manufactured websites Oing into Dem politics stuff and what we see in the DSA this week. but we saw a surprising Maybe not surprising let me rephrase We saw a really adamant defense of the Constitution and American values, even when it's inconvenient politically. comoming from the left wing of the Democratic Party over the weekend. And I don't think that got enough attention. Maybe it's a low bar to step over but it's not one that any of the Republicans have stepped over recently. And so I want to play for you Zon Mandani on this week So we're just about out of time. I got to ask you, I noticed You you're turning thirty five soon, right? A few months. Y. So you now hit one of the constitutional requirements to run for president. But there's another one that says you have to be a natural born citizen. you were not born here. Yes. But do you think that's something that should be changed in the Constitution? We would take an amendment, but do you think that we should change that No. No I think the Constitution looks good the way it is. Just the way it is. Just the way it is. I'm very excited to focus on New York City Very different than twenty twenty eight hats. Republican senators are lrying That's interesting. I had not seen that. I had not seen that. That's very interesting that he did that. Yeah. I I happen to disagree with him. Oh, really? How about that? How? Ioran should be eligible to be president? Or not not him in particular, but Arnold Schwarzenegg. To be clear, I'm not saying we'd amend the Constitution so Zoron is I think a U. S. citizen should be eligible to be. any U. S. citizen should be eligible to be president naturalized or natural born I think we should be on the exact same footing. We're all equally citizens of this country. And I would say that some of the naturalized citizens I know are some of the most Patriotic Americans You know, I've encountered now I could be talked out of that. I mean, are it's not that it's just a purely bigoted reason that you would choose natural born citizens But that's funny. I disagree with Mom Donnie on the number of things and That's another another one of them. That's another one. But you had to be at least feel good that he u you know, isn't doing the wink and n that Trump was doing. which is just my point. It's a notable difference. It's like, well yeah, you never know. You never know, John Carl, mayaybe we could challenge it We have people looking into this. There are many other different ways to go about this and there are smart people that think the other that tr. I think it's the biggest issue in the world. Like I have a list of constitutional amendments I'd like to see passed to really keepe another authoritarian moment like this from ever happening again to really try to deal with American polarization and dysfunction I've been taught a class called fiveive Constitutional Amendments to Saveve America, which was a ton of fun. I love that. That's not one of them. like amending natural that's soow that's not that's not an urgent issue. All. Well, we're going to go back to the earlier clip and just make sure that MAGA social media sees this. It's like French change constitution to help Zoan get elected president. Oh just people That's what happened. If you guys do that, if you guys proose this podcast. friend. You're can destroy me. Okay. Well, I don't know, I think they already hate you enough, David. Maybe just lean into it. Maybe just lean into it as a troll. That's what they you know. learn about the troll. All right, we'll let you get some street cred back on DSA thoughts. I want to talk about Graham Platinner pull out. Sienna Po, New York Times, Portland Press Herald shows him beating Susan Collins forty nine, forty seven Close interestnterestingly Grand Pner is losing with white non college voters fifty nine to thirty six h and he's winning college educated whites sixty eight to thirty one None of that's surprising. Yeah But it's interesting. It's interesting. None of it's surprising. The DSA model appeals disproportionately to rich white progressives or privileged white progressives. I think it's young people across the board. because I did, I got some pushback on this because I made this exactly a couple a week ago. And I think in fairness, if you look at what happened in New York rich white progressives, college educated progressives And and you the young young people, black brown, white everything. You know, I think that that's kind of the coalition basically And there's a lot wrong here, Tim. I think I think we might disagree about Graham Platner, but I think you know, there's a lot wrong here And one is hidden in not nearily hidden in those numbers. and that is this sort of idea that we're going to select a Graam Platinner, a guy with a Nazi tattoo, a guy with a history of sexting women, not his wife, who was only recently on retty gross you know, pretty gross sex site while still being a married dude. Like we can go down all the list to then turn around and say, well, this is an authentic working class guy. U Kinda tells a lot of working class people that, you know, that DSA consultant class thinks you're a bunch of scumbags Beause I don't know, regardless of class in this country If you're walking around with a Nazi tattoo, if you're sexting a person when youre when you're married to a person that's not your wife, if you're saying a bunch of the things that he's done, I don't denigrate the claims against him about his that he manhandled a former girlfriend. likeike at any social class, that is scumbaggery in any social class. And the idea that to turn around to working class people and say, Haha, what of you I think it's just so It just is it's so condescending. It's absurd You know, when I grew up, the term working class values meant things like a man's word was his bond. that that was sort of viewed as like working class values. It's not overlook that Nazi tattoo. This takes us to the Texas thing because I do just want to explore this and this question. I understand the sentiment that it's condescending. I also understand this idea like Democrats need to try to figure out a way to try to reach working class men. And I never thought that like the thing that was a feeling about Graham Platner to them was the scumbaggery. L the case would have been like the idea was that he was to use a lib word centering their concerns. you know, that would be the case for it. And the scumbaggery thing cuts both ways like when you start to look at Texas, right? Because we' also seen a Texas poll Talor Rico forty seven, Pxt in forty seven thought it was interesting. I was while you were reading the Cook ruling two times over, I was deep in the cross tabs on this text poll trying to understand what' happening there. Pert Rico's basically overperforming among old whites which is interesting and Hispanics, wayay overfing Hispanics. And and that is kind of what has has them close to a tie with white non college and with whites outside of the big metros in Texas.'s getting annihilated. Platinum is fifty nine thirty six. Talico is losing white young college sixty eight twenty seven. So I don't think the non college whites in Texas are looking at Fxton and saying, well, that scumbaggery is not my working class values that you're es spoused there. So you know, to me, But you also have to lay over religion, There are massive differences between the white working class of O of course and Sure, sure sure of course. So anyway, I guess I have two thoughts on this My first question is you just kind of look at Platinner and Tel Rico and you see kind of this weakness of the Democrats effort to try to appeal to these groups that they need to win. Platinner was trying to, you know, be a working class guy for working class people, Puerto Rico, religious guy for religious people. And like you're not really seeing it. in either place. Well, but also we have to look at the background. So here you have Graam Platinner in a state that is what D plus fourteen. And he's up to on Susan Collins. You have James Talerico in a state that Trump went by what eight or nine And he's tied with Ken Paxton.. And so So what you have here your opponents, I mean, you about Susan Collins much more peeling opponent than Ken Pack. Much more feelealing opponent Yeah exactly. But here's what I'm worried about, Tim, is I feel like you could have a situation where a Talorico In large part because of his underlying decency and openness to people with disagreeable points of view he disagrees with ends up overperforming a normal Democrat substantially, but losing. And Platner ends up underperforming a normal Democrat, but winning And it incentivizes every all these bad takes and traits. right like S this is what we needed. Bingo. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Like if you're winning a D fourteen state by three I mean, you won Yeah, but you're like JD Vance in the Ohio Senate ranks, right? You underperformed Yeah. And if you're in a R plus eight state that is Texas that is the heart the beating heart of the political power of the right in the United States and you lose by two Yeah, it's still a loss. I got you. It's still a loss, but You had a chance there. And I feel like we're being perfectly positioned right now, Tim, to take the wrong lesson out of twenty twenty six And that really concerns me And this matters actually, narrative matters. This is where most of what we do, hot air, punditry, gas baggery doesn't really matter that much. But Joe Biden's run in twenty twenty four, I think was in large part premised on people taking the wrong lessons from twenty twenty two Hrightly And so it's like they the Democrats didn't, you know, there wasn't a red wave. so that means that the Democrats did well and that people are happy about the Biden administration. It's like no, there wasn't a red wave because Republicans dominated a few insane people and because of the RoeV Wade overturn. Like that's why there wasn't a red wave. its nothing to do with Joe Biden or the Democratic brand at all It was Dobs plus Doofuses that there you stopp the red wave. Yeah. absolutely Big transfer news today. whoose moment? me W to the couch, with Domino's best deal ever since they just added stuffed Crust. Any pizza, any toppings now with stuffed crrust for nine dollars ninety nine c. It's a long term contract, with no release clause. Only nine doll ninety nine c. Yeah, that sounds like the move. I'm heading straight to Dom. Pr price is high for some locations, excludes excel and specialty pizz. select this offer from six hundred fifteenenth seven, twenty six, onnline own. Size availability varies by he tyight, max, seven topp, six for and in New York style creest. M minimum purchase required for delivery, prices, participation, delivery area and charges may vary. Why is it always chaos when we link up? Becauseuse nobody plants anything, bro. Good thing the rogue's ready like that. For real, rain, dirt, whatever. Available all wheel drive, five modes we still outside. And they got some kick too. That turbo? Torque is crazy. The most in its class, it moves, moves. Rogue doesn't mess around and peep the space Merch on merch, gear, mics, all the fits. Load up, We out twenty twenty six Nissan Rogue built for all of it. Auto Pacific segmentation, twenty twenty six Rogue versus latest in market competitors in the XSUV mainstream midsize class, excluding electrical vehicles based on manufactured websites on that question of kind of the impacts that eles and you know people can have. This is one area I think maybe we have a little disagreement with. I just want to hash out about what kind of deemocratic establishment people should do with regards to whether it be Platinner or Chevalier or anyone that they you know don't prefer either for policy or character reasons. I do see a lot of kind of like pressure from the DC consulting class on the Democratic establishment to be like You must stand up right now and show backbone and oppose the things that you don't like within your party and go after them. And to me having lived and then they'll look at us and never Trumpers and be like, you must do that as well to demonstrate that you're a good never Trumper. And to me, I'm like,, wait a minute, I lived through the Tea Party thing actually in twenty ten. And I think that if the lesson that you take away is that the establishment people should attack them. I think that you really didn't weren't awake during the Tea Party of twenty twenty ten. And let me just explain what I mean by that. It's like the people the Republican Party base was mad at the Republican establishment. They said you did not reflect our views enough. You did not care about our concerns about immigration. You did not care about our concerns about the war in Iraq. You did not concern about our concerns about our jobs being sent overseas Regardless what you think about the policies, like those were things that the Republican base was mad about. And the Republican Party leaders, myself included back then were like, no, you're supporting insane people. And what we really need to do is move to the middle on immigration and appeal more to suburban women. And the Republican voters were like, fuck you. No, like byy John Bayner, buy Er Cantter, byy, you know, fuck you And so I think now I'm seeing a lot of Democratic consultants in the middle like move into the same thing where it's like, okay, I'm going to attack the left who has who whatever you think about it, they're mad that they don't think that the party were successful in standing up to Trump. You won twice. They were right about that. They don't. They don't think the party cared too much about foreign concerns r than domest and they don't think that they arere standing up enough for their economic concerns. That's what the Democase is mad about. And so to me, I think if I was a cental left Democrat, what I would try to do is talk to those people about the ways that I agree with those concerns. And like that I'm going to be responsive to your concerns on this right now. and also, you know, and I'm find you a new way to beat Trump and fight MAGA. And I think that what you're seeing a lot is a lot of the center left jumps say, you know, I think we should do more of the same. And it's like, well, no shit. you're empowering the DSA. like attacking the DSA and saying we should do more of the same. All you're doing is creating more DSA So anyway, this is just a strategic question about how to manage that. and I think that there's some misses happening. But I'm curious you feel free to disagree with me on that, but that's just kind of how I think about it I mean, look, I'm going agree in part to use the language of I'm going concurnt part and decensent part So let me let me concur for a moment and that is Our political part if aem if there is a party that needed a bigger tent, it's the Democratic partarty. because there was, especially in twenty twenty four What was very plain was that the bigger ideological tent belonged to the Republicans, that the Republicans were more welcoming to different points of view. And as long as you put on the red hat You are welcome. So pro vaccine, anti vaccine, pro Ukraine, anti Ukraine Like you you Pro life, pro choice And so the Republicans actually ended up with a broader ideological coalition than the Democrats. And so the Democrats absolutely needed to broaden the tent But it still has to be a tent. It can't be an open field, right So there have to be lines you will not cross. And And especially when those lines start to get into outright bigotry and discrimination I don't care how much you talk about universal healthcare if you're against interracial marriage And you believe that Vladimir Putin had some has some good points You know, no. No right. That's true. No. That's true. Okay. I agree with that. You can be for universal healthcare, but if you're a raging antiemite, no And so, you know, and I mean a genuine anti Semite. I don't mean just critiquing Netanyahu And then the other thing is a lot of these left I'm sure you saw the video of the Scott Wiener event situation in San Francisco. I was going to talk about that on tomorrow's spot, but let's do it. Let's do it. If you want to talk about a guy who came towards the left with an open hand and actually changed policies in some ways to be more critical of Israel. And yet he's run out of And showing up to demonstrate four trans people in his j in his in his constituency and he's run out because he's not all the way radicalized or whatever the complaint was, just remarkable stuff. And so I think also Democrats, you have to understand and having lived through this onn the other end with the tea partarty of on the backke end of the tea party, which is o, I really realize that some of these people actually They just wanted to occupy and take over one of our two great political parties and transform it into something unrecognizable. to what it was a few years ago There's a lot of, I think a lot of mainstream Democrats would do well to know that some of the a lot of these far left. I'm not talking about left Yeah, Bernie or AOC I'm talking about far left that some of these DSA candidates we've seen recently They hate the Democratic establishment as much or more than they hate MGa More, moreore For sure. M. And in fact, they were happy. someome of them were happy to see Trump win to punish Biden And so you have to have a tent. It cannot be an open field. And And so if you're bringing in, and here's my here's my basic bottom line You do not need red shirts to beat brown shirts. You do not need brown shirts to beat red shirts And that's shorthand for brown shirt, fascist, red shirt Cun And so if you ever find yourself tempted to ally with communists or outright fascists Beat the other side, you are playing into the extremist playbook which is to present themselves as the only effective opposition to the opposing extreme I think that that was more concur than dissent. and I'm going to revise and end my remarks because I think that the point I'm trying to make it I think that the miss that this people on the center Left Make is not that there should not be Pes. It's not that you should not call out bigotry or illiberalism when you see it. It's just a likeike You also need to provide people who are unhappy within your coalition about your leadership. you need to show them that that they're total agreement. I guess, like, hey. 'cause that's not what John Behner, what Eric Cantter, what Mitt, God love them. like they Mitt did it a little better than Bayetner and Cantter actually. but like mostly that's not what the Republican establishment that got overthrown did. Jeb, I'm talking about my own mistakes I'm throwing myself in the pire. It's like you have to say to the voters Like you're right. likeike the way we've been doing things got us two terms of Trump Okay. And we need to do things differently and and and we're going to And and here are the you know, here are the things that I think that we should do that are within my values, blah, blah, blah, that are a new strategy that's responsive to your concerns about our whether it be foreign policy or cost of living And instead, sometimes what you see is, you know, like we're we've got a handle of things here. We're doing pretty good. And it's like these crazy people over here like look at like I don't I don't support that. And like and like that's where I start to, it's just it's about the emphasis. You know, you put the emphasis on the right syllable So you know, one of the things that's I think so telling is that it's young people who are driving a lot of this on both sides. So if you're looking at Who's going to be fascist curious? It's typically not going to be seventy eight year old uncle Bob, right. You know, it's I think actually ago the Teler Rico poll. That's why I mentioned it. Who is Teler Rico overperforming with O. kind of George Bush Republicans in the Texas suburbs.pan.ike that's who he's overperforming with Totally. ye yeah. So you're worried about his nephew Gunner, not old uncle Bob, So the nephew Gunner is watching Nick Quintes and all of this. Here's the problem. You remember that old Churchill adage, Democracy is the worst system of government except for every other one We have a a group of young Americans who've grown up with democracy is the worst system of government and they've had no exposure to the others that the older boomers had when they saw fascism, when they saw communism, when they saw immperial Japan, when they or lived in the shadow of all of those evil empires, right? And so The younger cohort is growing up with all the flaws of democracy without first had an experience of the horrors of many of the alternatives. So we have to do two things at once. One, to your point, we have to go and say, we got to try to make democracy better We can't just sit there and say socialism, communism, whatever are horrible. We have to make democracy better. And so absolutely and that's the first point of your thing, which is We have to walk with an open hand to young people who are growing up in this miserable political environment And if we're sitting there going, ain't democracy grand and it's this one, right. We have a huge obligation to do better. att the same time At the same time, we have an obligation to draw lines and to educate And you cannot forsake either obligation. He Miss way I like having you on David French. I like that wisdom. You're making my point better than me. All right, we're out of time. We're way over. And so I want to do this. You had a great article on one party rule hiding in plain sight. I'm just going to endorse it and tell people to go read it. We'll put a link in the show notes. You had another column that I just want to mention, give you briefly if you could explain the purging of General Donahhue and why that is so alarming to you. Yeah. We have seen a lot of things from the very beginning of Heexas tenure that should be quite alarming. Everything from using a non classified social media to communicate you know, airirstrike information to what to launching wars without congressional approval, although that is primarily a Trump thing, firing multiple generals and admirals you know, lots of evidence that he's and been, you know, that their Americans are engaged in unlawful strikes in the Caribbean. I mean, there's just thing after thing after thing. and sometimes you never know What will be the straw that breaks the camel's back? But in this case, I think what we had was maybe a two by four that help break the camel's back because Hexetith essentially forces out A General Donahghue, CD Donahghgh, who might be one of the single most respected, universally respected war fighters in the Amy. just universally respected. and so The thing about this is I think there were two things happen at once. One was timing This happened after the Hexith military adventure in Iran was floundering not because of the military failure, but because of terrible political leadership You just had a flu outbreak in a basic training base because of the loss of the flu, you know, making the flu vaccine voluntary. You'd had a series of other firings of generals. You'd had the signal. So one after another after another, but the whole time Hex Hexeth is saying, All of this is for a meritocracy All of this is for lethality And then what does he do? He basically forces out one of the If he is out, If he isn't good enough, there's no argument that excellence can trrump politics in Texas military. And I think that's why this was the two by four that broke the campbeel's back. And I'm seeing alarm from Republicans. I'm seeing alarm from Right leaning independence, off course, all the alarm from the people who've already been saying that there's a problem But I really feel like this was a This was a moment, you know, their old Hemmingway statement. How does a company go bankrupt gradually then suddenly? I think this was the gradually then suddenly moment on the broader public sort of that broader public sense of the state of the military And it ties to kind what we were saying earlier about the slaughter case and all this is like this is happening all over the government, right? That where good people, good public servants are getting removed. and they're being replaced by hacks. and it's obviously particularly alarming in the military. Okay, last thing you' the loveo Memphis Grizzies who made a trade. John Morant is off to Portland. The Jailblazers are back U the of a lot of buzz about maybe the nuggets and and the Celtics looking at a big trade potentially centered around Jayalen Brown will see. I'm wondering just, you know, how you're feeling about the state of play is there any hope in Memphis? Are you sad to see Jh Go? Are you just succumbing to the reality and just becoming a SpurRs fan so So Tim, also, while we were talking, I got a news alert shams, LeBron is leaving the Lakers, but we' play next year Wow. So So much that's interesting. Yeah. Wri' sppurs are are the two most likely I would say for for Or does he go back to the cabs to try to win one for the hometown before he Yeah. Cleveland's pretty far from LA. I don't know. he likes his house. Yeah yeah Yeah, I think so I What a league, Tim. So we went from Probably the most depressing regular season that I can remember where it felt like by the last forty percent of the of the time A third of the league was just tanking, which completely distorts the competitive environment. It was miserable to watch