Mar-a-Lago's Funniest Home Videos

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm the alien, Mussolini found Jon Lovett.

I'm Tommy Vittor.

On today's show, Donald Trump's primary opponents wake up to the fact they're running against a criminal defendant who's still nearly 40 points ahead of him. Sam Alito flips off Congress and the Wall Street Journal, a House Republican, screams at some kids. Kevin McCarthy almost comes to blows with Eric Swalwell. Aliens Might Exist, and later, Tommy talks with Lydia Kiesling about her new novel, Mobility, our very first book from Crooked Reads. But first, we are still waiting for Donald Trump to get indicted over his attempted coup. Any minute now, maybe by the time you've heard this, I think I even said that before.

One could end up going to prison.

I mean, that's the election right there, it's perfect. Could end up going to prison, could end up being president, that's it, that's what we got.

So a couple of things I hadn't seen. This came out when we were in New York doing, and I'd like seen some, read some news about it, but I hadn't actually seen the document. First of all,-.

You were a low information voter who's now become a high information voter.

Yes, absolutely. And so, first of all, there's incredible. First of all, Jack again, thank you, great job, great writing, Scab.

To kick off the whole thing.

To kick off the whole thing, that's 24 minutes, what were they talking about for 24 long minutes, the person that it wasn't about?

Here's what I can't figure out. How do you think they got that conversation? How do you think they know that? It was 24 minutes between Trump and Oliveira? Because he's not cooperating.

Any cell phone record?

So we'd have both whipped the contents of the call, we're guessing-.

You don't know, we don't know. Oh, you just know. The metadata of like, start, stop.

We just know, yeah, we have that. And then the other thing that really jumps out is the lengths to which Nauda was going to keep his involvement. Oh yeah, I mean, obviously idiotically, but like the Shush emoji, that's hilarious. But one thing that must clearly come from security camera footage is the fact that when Nauda meets with De Oliveira, Nauda comes through the bushes, grabs Old De Oliveira and says, Come with me. And they go through the bushes to some adjacent property, talk for a minute and then De Oliveira comes back.

That's my favorite part, too. Doing this sort of cloak and dagger nonsense and getting caught on the security camera footage that you were trying to delete. Perfect.

Well, they're getting caught on the footage, they're trying to delete. There's clearly the other side of the text messages have now been given over to the special counsel because we have the Shush emoji. So, between the first indictment and this indictment, he was his lawyer, he had the same lawyer as all these guys. He clearly this indictment comes out. And he's like, Oh, no, thank you.

You have a target letter, yeah.

And he does not. He's like, I don't want to be a part of this at all.

No, he got a target letter from the FBI saying you're a target of this investigation. That's when he clearly started talking, because the FBI knew he wasn't being forthcoming about what he knew in some way.

Yes, and so then he switched lawyers, and so then he switches lawyers. And then he's in this document being like, I don't know, I don't think this is right. Which is which I love.

Yeah, I mean, what, he-?

You're usually convinced by a target letter to when someone tells you they're a target to the target of the investigation. To maybe change your mind on something that you might not have said before.

Right, and so what he must have provided to the FBI that we've learned in the superseding indictment is the detail of this conversation. In the audio closet, which do you guys know what is an audio closet? Does anyone know the podcast studio?

I think we're in an audio closet.

It's currently where we are.

So we're all located, it's where you have, like, some speakers set up. I don't know that's where they had this conversation. But, like everything about this superseding indictment makes sense to me. Because from the very beginning, the problem wasn't necessarily the original crime of taking these documents.

Here's the thing that I also don't understand, which is this is all taking place in June, but the famous flooding is until October.

Yeah, interesting.

We still don't know about the flooding and how that's involved. We know that it's the-.

I'm just desperate for it to be involved.

I know, I know we all are, but it does seem like taveras. The IT guy also gave them the Signal Chat, or multiple signal chats. Where Nowda, Trump's co-defendant Valet, asked an employee whether De Oliveira would remain loyal to Trump. And then they have Trump calling De Oliveira again, promising to get him a lawyer, which this is the move.

Strategy changes.

This is what happened with Cassidy Hutchinson during the January 6th hearings. She got a new lawyer and suddenly she was talking more. So, this seems to be a pattern. I also think so much of the focus of this last superseding indictment has been on destroying the security footage. But the charge of willfully retaining the Iran war plans seems pretty open and shut. Because they clearly now have the document, and they have Trump on tape, not only talking about the document, but talking about how he's not supposed to have it.

Yeah, and they also have Carlos De Oliveira lying about knowledge of the boxes getting sent to Mar-a-Lago in the first place. And the question now becomes, Does De Oliveira or Walt Nowda do they freak out and flip and give testimony? Because they're in even bigger trouble than they were before?

That was the other thing that I took away from this, which is like, Nowda has been around Trump for a long time. This guy De Oliveira, he just works at Mar-a-Lago and he just got broke into this. And you read the transcript of the moment where DOJ is now saying that De Oliveira was lying? And he's asked the question, Do you were you? do you ever, even do? Do you even know, like, if you were even there, or where that boxes were?

He needed a little legal guidance before that, I do not recall what had gotten him a lot further.

And he is, and he is having this conversation, he is put in this position because he is sharing he is. His lawyer is the same as now, as lawyer, he is in the same boat as all these other guys. And it's I guess today he, uh, he didn't actually make a plea because he didn't have a local lawyer.

If he chose to cooperate, or for some reason now to choose to cooperate, undoubtedly it strengthens the case. But I will say Jack Smith, so far from what we've seen in these indictments, from what we've heard from him, it seems pretty damn thorough. It's like he has, he has locked up this case. So if Dale O'Veara decides not to cooperate, if not, it decides not to cooperate. If they decide to say loyal to Trump. Like, it's still like, this guy's got a lot of evidence, that only. And that's just what we've, what we've seen so far and read in the indictment.

And the other part of this, too, is all these questions around, Um, Eileen, Canada and how much she's going to be in the tank for. Trump, like Jack Smith, is making her life so much harder if what she wants to do is be friendly to Trump. First of all, you had this, this motion where Trump is like, Hey, can I look at classified documents in Mar-a-lago? And they're like, No, you fucking idiot, that's what this is all about in the first place.

He has to, he has to his, his lawyers, has to discuss them. In Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster, like, you know, so maybe not necessarily see that to have the documents there, but discuss the documents in some place. That's not a skiff, and again, that is the whole point of why we're here is because Mar-a-Lago was never a skiff, nor was Bedminster.

You're also reminded in all of this, like, Trump tries to operate like a mob boss. He doesn't email, he doesn't put things in text message, he only does in person meetings. But all the morons around him put everything in writing. They talk on the phone, they're sloppy, they're ham handed, they crawl through the bushes to have a meeting that's being taped in real time.

It's just so Trump. Trump's response to this, uh, to the superseding indictment has been to say that. Actually, the tapes weren't deleted, and he never told anyone to delete them. Yeah, I think his lawyers wrote that one, you think that was a unadvisive counsel?

Yeah, well, that that's the thing, like all the the the. The evidence that Trump was directly involved is in the conversations that Now and Daily Vera had with all these other people. Right? There's no actual text from Trump, there's no words from Trump.

That, uh, Walt Nauda and Carlos de Oliveira and the IT guy, they all just made this shit up, they made up the whole thing.

They care about me so much, they obviously I was concerned about these, about what was happening, but these people, they were trying to protect me.

They didn't delete any surveillance footage, but they thought that maybe they should for some reason. Yeah, that's his defense.

Well, that's the other thing. It goes even further than that, which is in this document. The DOJ sent a draft subpoena. All of this takes place after DOJ, yeah.

That's why he was charged.

But, but, but, but that, but that. Like, you can delete your own surveillance footage if you don't get a subpoena for the footage. But like, he gets the draft subpoena and then.

Next day, all of this is spun up, no time to waste and the Feds are coming, but whatever.

All these, all these, uh, these damning transcripts. They have the footage of all these guys running around with boxes trying to figure out how to delete server videos, which they don't know how to do and can't figure out. Uh, and then they go and they talk to DOJ, uh, they, they go and talk to the grand jury. And they're like, I didn't see anything, I didn't do anything, I didn't see any boxes. And I know this is, uh, can we just, uh, roll the quote from Hogan's Heroes, please?

Oh, you went too far, I must report this.

It would be worth my life if I do not report this.

It's only until tomorrow and then he's going to take it off again. After he steals the tank from the Panzer division, he brings it here into the barrel.

Oh, I see nothing, I was not here, I did not even get up this morning.

Thank you, that was from Hogan's heroes.

1965.

You guys love Hogan's Heroes, right?

I don't know, I don't know that reference.

Little queer coded, huh? he's a little, he's a little gay, He's a little like, Ooh, I know nothing.

I see nothing well Nazi coded, let's see.

Also that.

Yeah, no, I think, uh, I did. I saw some of the some of the Maggot idiots who hadn't got the memo yet on what the talking points were supposed to be. We're like, what in America, you can't be deleting your own surveillance footage?

You can't do that.

The thing I don't, I don't quite understand. So clearly there was some effort to delete the footage. DOJ at some point thought they weren't getting all the footage. There's some question of like, did the footage come from Mar-a-Lago?

So we're talking about how everyone got lawyered up. Thanks to Trump. Uh. Washington Post and The New York Times, UH, reported over the weekend that Trump's Save America super Pack, Uh, save America. Not to be confused with this podcast. We can sue them for taking our name because we were first, we were first on that one anyway. Save America is hurting for cash because they have already spent $40 million on legal fees just this year for Trump and his goons.

It's so perfect. They also reportedly spend another 16 million in the previous two years on legal fees, so that's quite a price tag. I mean, this is going to hurt him politically, not just because of the facts of the case. But the the Save America Pack requested that a $60 million donation they made to another super pack supporting Donald Trump be returned. They're having, they're asking for money back.

I actually, when I saw that cause, it was actually it was. Originally 99 cents, we're going to the to the campaign, then one cent. And the the Times, you know, publish that they were. That the ratio had been switched, and I was like, Oh, I wonder what it's going to be 90 10..

But still, I mean burning money.

So I think, like, you know, most of his fans don't give a shit that they're giving money to his legal defense fund. They'd probably like, happily give Donald Trump their firstborn child, um, but I do think that the strongest argument against Trump has always been to a general electorate and to skeptical Republicans. That he's only in this for himself, right? That it's only Trump does not care about you, he cares about Donald Trump, and only Donald Trump.

Well, Chris, that's not Chris Christie was making, but the rest of them not so much.

You see the uh, the shady shit, uh Leavitt's got Tim Scott's doing in terms of campaign finance, what, what, what, what, what does Tim Scott? He paid $5.3 million to shadowy entities, as the New York Times described the newly formed limited liability companies with no online presence. No record of other federal election work. That were basically just created for him to pay money out from his campaign to to hide how it's being spent.

What do we think he's doing there?

Well, I'm sure he has raising his campaign expenditure.

So, uh, like we said, we're still waiting for this, uh, the the D.C. grand jury to act here. Here's what we know. They sat for seven hours on Friday, uh, they reportedly heard from no witnesses. And it was the same day that Trump's team met with the Department of Justice and Jack Smith's team. So all the the legal analysts, they think that Tuesday is the next meeting of the grand jury, so they think all signs are pointing to Tuesday is the day they vote on the indictment. Because it's not like there was a whole bunch of extra witnesses or evidence or something like that on Friday, because there would have seen witnesses going in.

What a gentleman Alvin Bragg, he said. Just because my indictment was first doesn't mean my trial has to be first. I was like, Thank you.

Although he also said he's not in control of moving the dates, the judge would be. So it's sort of like, huh? This is confusing.

I don't know how this works, but again, there's just so many.

How this works is no one has five trials at the same time for different issues. Nobody, so no. So what he says is that that, what he? What Bragg said is like it would actually be up to the judge and the judges would have to confirm.

Yeah, and also in Georgia, there's an August 10th hearing where Trump's team is going to try to disqualify Willis. And also toss out a bunch of the evidence she collected and remove another Fulton County judge from the case. So I wonder if she's going to let that hearing happen first before laying out her stuff, or wait until after.

Did you see there was one? There was an attempt to disqualify her, another attempt to disqualify her that was just rejected by a judge today.

That judge rejected, that, rejected. Yeah, it's sort of like, Well, we're going to direct this batch of ridiculous claims about why you can't be tried today. I'm willing to do it and you're going to lose again. But not until August 10th.

So Trump's primary opponents had more to say than usual about his latest felony charges. Ron DeSantis told a reporter that quote If the election becomes a referendum on what document was left by the toilet at Mar-a-Lago, we are not going to win. His campaign also hit Trump on the Super Pac story, accusing Trump of spending people's money on his own legal fees instead of defeating Joe Biden. Nikki Haley was on CBS this weekend. She said the party needs to move beyond Trump, or else quote We will have a general election.

Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison. And if we elect?

The truth is hard.

But if we elect Donald Trump, we are willingly giving Joe Biden four more years in the White House, and America can't handle that.

God bless you and God bless America.

I mean, except for the last part, everything he said was true.

Truth was poorly received. You hear that one person clapping.

It was a Will Hurd staffer, it was the one. it was the one Will Hurd staffer. Yeah, maybe it was his wife.

It just kills me watching, like, what a moment you could make out of being booed. There's so many jokes, there's so many things you could do with that. These guys just don't have the stuff.

I will say this is probably more covers than Will Hurd has gotten on. Any other day combined, every other day combined, I should say.

Except for the first day he announced it.

So I don't know that this is going to help him win the nomination, but it's certainly getting a cover.

I also don't know if it will help him win the nomination.

I mean, listen, like, I don't think you're going to make that argument and people are going to be like, Oh, you know what, he's right. But I think over time, if you make it repeatedly, over and over again, the doubts creep into these voters head. And the electability argument is the only thing I think that's going to reach the persuadable voters here. There might not be in that room, but.

I totally agree. I mean, like, good for him for making it.

That's a party fundraiser that's like a hardcore Republican audience.

That's, yeah, you're not getting, you're not getting a lot of applause there. Why do you think it took felony counts, uh, 73 and 74 and 72 through 74 for these people to finally say something aside from Wilhite?

Yeah, both both Haley and DeSantis, like the other half of what they said, is so cynical and so pathetic and speaks to the whole. They've dug for themselves because they both make this point of saying, Look, you talk about the chart, I mean, they, they, they both issued. It was all word salad. But both of them make this argument that, like, Look, do I think there's prosecutorial overreach?

Yeah, and the and the reason why is is, you know, Tommy made the point. It is like, that is that is a crowd of sort of the most hardcore Republican activists. But almost every poll of Republican voters, including the one we're about to talk about from the New York Times, shows that. Like, upwards of 70 of the Republican electorate doesn't think Donald Trump committed any crimes at all. So, you know, when you say he's running to stay out of prison, most people don't agree with that, and there are Republican voters.

So yes, first of all, a terrible poll for anyone not named Trump. There's no really good news anywhere in it for any other candidate. Here's the thing that I thought was most interesting. One 17 said that Trump committed serious federal crimes. But of those 17, 22 of those voters still prefer Trump to DESantis voters who are woke focused, right?

Yeah, I mean, I think the big picture takeaway is a third of the electorate is the MAGA base, another third is persuadable. A quarter of them do not want to vote for Trump, including some who say they will not vote for him in a general election. So, yeah, this is a terrible poll for everyone. Not named Donald Trump, but there's opportunity there if someone can consolidate the 37 persuadable and 25 never Trump.

So the other, I'm glad you brought up the like, the three different segments of the electorate. Which is basically that was the basis of the piece that Nate Cohn wrote a piece off this as well. And so you've got, you've got the 37 that are the MAGA diehards. And this is the same as what you were just saying, right? Like the people who are very, very favorable towards Trump. This is not just polling stuff.

And even even the group of people that are maybe the most amenable to an alternative. College educated Republicans are still only breaking, are still breaking to Trump by 12 points.

Well, and in this poll, and Nate and The Times does, the poll matching the voter file I looked. They're only 36 of the Republican electorate, that's the problem. So, like, even if you consolidated all the college educated Republicans, which is hard to do, like, you're still, you still have an uphill battle.

I do think the electability thing is the only option. This is an actual quote from a voter in the New York Times story, actual quote. He might say mean things and make all the men cry, because all the men are wearing your wife's underpants and you can't be a man anymore. David Green, 69, a retail manager in Summersworth, New Hampshire, said to Trump, Of course, he's from New Hampshire. You've got to be a little sissy and cry about everything, but at the end of the day you want results.

I don't think anyone has ever articulated why Donald Trump gets so much support. Better David Green David Green, from Summersworth, New Hampshire.

The media that that person is, that guy's consuming, is just like, of course, these guys can't break through. Of course, of course, nobody believes the charges. Of course, they're having trouble making an argument against Trump, like all, this guy is consuming day in and day out, says that Trump is the best and he's being railroaded.

They did some attributes to. which of these attributes better describes Trump? which describes Ron DeSantis, Trump crushing DeSantis on strong leader 69 to 22. But Tommy made this point at the very beginning of this whole primary, uh, get things done 67 22, which was like, DeSantis's whole thing is getting things done in Florida. electable 58 28 again.

He's a fun asshole, he's a fun asshole.

That's what they're in this for.

You know, we talked about why this this primary isn't being fought on policy, but this is the point that times, this is the point that the poll makes. And head to head matchup. Trump was ahead of Desantis among Republicans who accept transgender people as the gender they identify with. And among those who don't, among those who want to fight corporations that promise woke ideology, and among those who prefer to stay out of business. Among those who want to send more military to Ukraine, among those who do not, among those who want to keep Social security and Medicare benefits, among those who want to take steps to reduce the budget deficit.

It's not about issues.

Well, no, but well, just yes, it's not about issues.

It's almost as if it's a it's a cult of personality.

I mean, it's just better.

It's the one interesting thing. Because, you know, we have spent so much time making fun of Ron DeSantis for his horrible campaign. And we'll continue to right after this section. But the favorability ratings are still, you know, 76 for Trump and 66 for DeSantis. And the way The Times writes it up, you could. They has interviews with voters. Other than that fantastic quote that Tommy read, where people are like, I like him plenty, I like Ron DeSantis and next time he's the one right.

It's the same, it's just the same trend from like since the very beginning. DESantis makes them feel like their needs are met, and Trump makes them feel like they have no needs. And it has been the same from this entire primary.

You mentioned the the woke, the people who think woke is a big deal. There's another question in the poll which of these two Republicans would you be more likely to support for president? A candidate who promises to fight corporations that promote woke left ideology, or a candidate who says that the government should stay out of deciding what corporations can support? The latter wins 52 to 38. So, even when you don't put Trump and DeSantis. Just the idea that there is an appetite, even in the Republican party, for someone who's going to go after corporations because they're too woke.

As this guy's announcing another lawsuit against Bud Light, or an investigation at the Bud Light? Because their stock went down. Because people like Ron DeSantis criticized Bud Light for being nice to one transgender person.

I think that shows how so online DESantis is and the DESANTis. Ben Shapiro That whole group that doesn't actually have the support for Trump on the Republican Party is not about that. Yeah, and you can. Also, there's a question about woke versus borders and law and order. It's still the immigration shit, the law and order shit. That's all the reason that they like Trump, to the extent that it's about any policies.

And if there's any connection at all between DESantis inability to have a human interaction with anyone on the campaign trail and this, it's that. Like, he's just trying to pander, but he doesn't get the people he's trying to pander well enough to make a mark. Like, you know, he did this economic rollout, and he's like, I'm going to fight, I'm going to take, I'm going to end. Joe Biden's war on crypto. He's interviewed about RFK Jr. and he's like, he'd make a great head of this fucking CDC.

Well, he just stepped on a rake so hard. He was like, Yeah, I'm going to piss off all these libs by saying I would make RFK Jr. CDC director and Mike Pence. Of all people, like not the most deft politician, is like, immediate press release, yeah.

Well, I mean, speaking of DESantis interactions with voters, their new strategy of letting Ron be Ron already seems to be paying dividends. Let's listen.

Oh, what is that?

An icy.

Yeah, that's probably a lot of sugar, huh?

Well, I'm here, I don't know the other one. Okay, all right, all right.

It's good, it's good, all right.

Say hi to everybody.

Yeah, the first one was Ron DeSantis trying to tell a little girl to put her, put her icy down.

It's so funny, the fun comment is so telling. I mean, for a lot of people, we all like, despise Donald Trump, but he's a horrible person. He's did bad things to the country, but a lot of his voters love watching his rallies.

They travel across the country to go to them.

It's like a carnival for them, and I can't imagine anything less enjoyable than watching Ron DeSantis talk about almost literally anything.

Or, like, imagine meeting a kid who's got an icy and being like, whew, a lot of sugar in that, huh?

You're at a fair, that's where you eat sugar, you moron.

Have a funnel cake and shut up.

I got to tell you, Ron DeSantis has grown on me. If I see one more interaction with this guy, having absolutely no ability to interact with anyone, I'm just falling in love. Look at this poor, this guy, so broken the hole in his bucket, he's got to fill it with politics, he can't make it work.

Can someone get him one shirt or one jacket or vest that doesn't have his name on it? You don't have to have your name on all your clothing. Are you at camp? Are you going to lose something?

What's happening? He's terrible, it's really, I mean, I don't have anything else to say. We're just we're now at the point where we've done all the Ron DESantis analysis we can do. We're just playing clips now.

I just I love what let him cook.

The second clip was just somewhat. He was like some woman, she's got a beer, he's got a beer. She's like, here you are drinking beer, and he's like, Ha ha, I'm drinking beer, ha ha.

It really does having fun on the campaign trail, like you really can feel the difference when a candidate is having fun. Like there were times when Barack Obama hated every minute of his day.

Like the first year.

Didn't want to be there.

Look, here's the thing I want to be a candidate. Have a go to a pie shop, have a charming interaction with some shop owner, say I'll have an apple and a blueberry. Have a huge smile on their face. Get in the car and just throw them in the garbage. That's what I'm looking for. That's what you want in a president.

You know, who seems like he's mostly having a good time when he's campaigning Joe Biden, I will say that about him.

Even your guy, Chris Christie, like, you know what? He didn't agree with you on a lot of stuff. But he was like having fun, mixing it up, fighting back, talking to shit, you know?

He just like he has a. he has this, he's a charismatic, normal person, yeah.

Like Tim, Tim Scott, Nikki, Haley. Like they smile, they smile naturally. Ron DeSantis smiles like he stepped on a LeGo. He's just like, it's too big.

It's too big, his laugh is too big.

Everything about it.

It's just there's a lot of other stuff.

There's time he has money, but my God, man.

You can't fix that, though, that's the thing.

That's talent.

That's what, that's why, that's why I like him now. You can't fix that.

I will say Echelon Insights finally just did a poll that just came out today, doing head-to-head matchups with Trump and other candidates besides DESantis. Because so far, they've only done. It doesn't get any better for any of the other ones. It's like, it's like, 70-20 Tim Scott, 70-20 Nikki Haley. Now again, this is all early, but we're not talking, we're not taking like 20 points, we're not talking 30 points.

Was that a national poll? Yeah, I mean, the name ID is probably like so low for Tim Scott.

The point Nate Cohn made, I believe, is that we're it's not early anymore. And no candidate that's been up by 20 at this point in these polls has lost the nomination. And he's up by more than double. And so does that mean this can't change? No, this May. This is a unique primary. We've never had a candidate who's a former president charged with multiple felonies before. Let's see how that shakes out.

And you gotta be again. I think the idea that Donald Trump is vulnerable, politically vulnerable, even within the Republican Party, is one that I buy. But you still have to beat, you can't beat something with nothing, and so far we have a lot of nothing.

And there's a, and there's a, you know, there's a Ron Desantis in the parking space that's going to have to move.

All right, let's do a quick roundup of some other headlines. Justice Sam Alito is once again whining in the pages of the Wall Street Journal about how his branch of government should be able to get away with whatever it wants. In an interview that ran last week, he said I know this is a controversial view, but I'm willing to say it. No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court, period. He was commenting on recent efforts by Senate Democrats to impose ethics reform on the court. And, of course, one of the authors of the piece that features the interview with Alito is a lawyer who has business before the court next term.

Look, there's nothing, there is nothing in the Constitution that says a dog can't be speaker of the House. That is the level, that is the level that we're at.

You guys literally think they're above the law.

I mean, I don't know what happens now. So the Senate Democrats are moving this legislation, it's going to get blocked by Republicans. There was some talk early, like maybe there'd be bipartisan ethics reform like that was never going to pass the House.

Yeah, I mean, I think, look, that core problem with the court is that there's this big conservative majority and that is not going to change until someone retires. I do think there's a medium term problem, which is that these guys think they're above the law and they say things like what Alito said in this interview. The takeaway for me from all of the most recent rounds of whining from various Supreme Court justices is they really, really hate scrutiny. The hate and media scrutiny. They're offended by ProPublica's existence.

It is remarkable even how far Alito, who's always been one of, if not the most right-wing judge, has, how far he's come. In terms of his willingness to just sort of defy tradition and speak publicly in his confirmation hearing, he's very clear. You know, judges shouldn't be coming out there, and you know, basically just sort of improv-ing about issues that could come before the court. He's out there. Not only is he saying that he thinks the Supreme Court can't be regulated by Congress, he's asked, Do the other justices agree? He says. I don't know that any of my colleagues have spoken about it publicly, so I don't think I should say. But I think it is something we have all thought about. And, as our friends at Strict scrutiny pointed out, this is basically like, kind of like some version of an advisory opinion, saying, if you pass a law like this, we'll overturn it.

Strict scrutiny did a great job on this. I highly recommend it, so go check it out. No, I mean, here's what we can do go donate some money and help out Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester. And some of these really close Senate races and then flip the house.

Yeah, that'd be good. He was apparently drinking in his office before this, and also he's a former Navy Seal. So this isn't some, like, you know, bookish nerd screaming in the faces of a 16 year old that they're a little shit and they're defiling the Capitol. It's a big, intimidating veteran who also yelled at a bunch of librarians back in the day because he was very mad about a pride flag in a library somewhere in Wisconsin.

I think we need more people to yell at teens.

Do you think they're just getting too big for their Britches?

Yeah, you got a bunch of teens.

He does get points for novel defense of himself. He said something about how the Capitol Rotunda was once a field hospital during the civil war.

What was that?

Get out of here. This was once a field hospital during the civil war. Anyway, you can't take pictures.

Anyway, we heard about this story. We, of course, reached out to Ben Wickler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. And we put together a link that you can donate to Van Orden's eventual opponent. Because we don't have a Democratic nominee yet for that seat, but we will eventually, so we'll tweet out again from all of our accounts if you want to give.

All the Senates are, yeah.

Except, except. Did you see what Kevin McCarthy said?

Yeah.

Kevin McCarthy said this. It wasn't first of all, he said. It wasn't the norm for that congressman, which is, as Tommy just suggested, is not true.

Think about all the times he gets drunk and doesn't yell at teens.

Well, then he said this, I guess the interns have some ritual of laying down or something like that. I think it's a misunderstanding of all sides.

This is what happens when you need literally every vote to stay speaking. I love it, you defend everything.

He is just pathetic. We have, well, we have more to say about Kevin McCarthy.

That cadence is that cadence is documented in the Daily Beast.

To which McCarthy responded by walking away. This story is sourced to two House members who declined to give their names. Do you guys think one of them was Eric Swalwell? Yeah.

It's, uh, I love it, I love the whole thing, I like that, I like that. Also, we're just sort of like, there's just that part of us.

Well, it is funny, though. Like, he goes, you're weak, and then he comes in and he's like, Don't call me a pussy.

So weird. I also like that this didn't just happen on an average Thursday when they're voting on like renaming a post office. This was right before the Prime Minister of India addressed a joint session of Congress. So these guys almost threw down before, like the eyes of the world were on the U S Congress. My only take on this is, I think more members of Congress should just fight.

Well, we didn't, even I don't even know. Have we talked about the Marjorie? the ongoing Marjorie? Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Will? They won't?

Look, here's the thing.

Everyone needs to come, everyone needs to. They should go on, get, get them on vacation, get them, get them out of that place.

The slower, the slow erosion of, like every civic virtue in this society. Like, it's been just really frustrating and hard to experience. But if it does result in physical confrontations between the speaker of the House and a Democrat, or between Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, I don't know, okay.

See, I'm, I'm not with you there. I think this isn't an erosion. I think this is a throwback to the old school ways of doing stuff in Congress. And we used to cane each other and do other things also, like, Swallow's a pretty big guy.

Yeah, I do, too. I think we should bring back the canings.

I want to see Kevin McCarthy's Hold Me Back guy. Is it like a chip Roy?

Toxic masculinity all over the place.

Absolutely.

That's what this is.

We're coded in toxic masculinity.

I told the story about about the Eric Swallow thing in New York, and it's like, you know, this progressive audience. They were like, he called him a pussy and he didn't fight. They freaked out, they loved it so much. We're all, we're all just a bunch of, well, a bunch of apes running around wearing suits.

The other Republican leader on the hill has had a tough week. Mitch McConnell was in the middle of giving a statement at a press conference when he froze up and apparently lost the ability to speak. It's a pretty scary thing to watch. McConnell was hospitalized back in March for a bad fall that kept him out of the Senate for six weeks, and reportedly has had another fall since then. Uh, of course. President Biden called him immediately after the press conference to see how he was doing.

Mostly, mostly okay.

Like, got into windmills.

How did we get the windmills?

He does hate the Windmills you get from, like, What do you think of Mitch McConnell's episode to Windmills? Mitch McConnell didn't give the Democrats any money for that, he didn't support the it wasn't the Green New deal. I think he was referencing the IRA.

Yeah, I think it was John Oliver who several years ago did a piece where they had, uh, some other third party, just a random person. Do a reading, not dramatic or otherwise, just a reading of a section of a Trump speech, and it is just incoherent gibberish, top to bottom. And I think this is a great example in that Breitbart interview.

I do not think he has the personality to be in a customer service position.

No, no, no, he cannot, he cannot interface with the customer.

Maybe he could be in the back of the kitchen.

He could flip the pies.

No, he can't, he does not, he does not have that human touch.

He cannot be delivering those pizzas, he's trying to, he's basically trying to deliver pizzas now without the pizzas. Not going to endorse, it's not going well, it's not going well.

What's wrong with you? Unidentified flying objects was good, it wasn't broken. Why are we fixing it?

UAPS unidentified aerial phenomena All right, I know that's.

You say that the government is in possession of potentially non-human spacecraft. Based on your experience and extensive conversations with experts, do you believe our government has made contact with intelligent extraterrestrials?

Something I can't discuss in public setting.

Okay, I can't ask when you think this occurred. If you believe we have crashed craft stated earlier, do we have the bodies of the pilots who piloted this craft?

As I've stated publicly already in my News Nation interview, biologics came with some of these recoveries.

Were they, I guess, human or non-human biologics?

Non-human. And that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program I talked to that are currently still on the program.

Was this documentary evidence, video, photos, eyewitness? How would that be determined?

The specific documentation I would have to talk to you in a skiff about.

Non-human biologics, What do you guys think?

Oh, that I want this to be good and true.

Yeah, I think even the people chairing the hearing were like, welcome to the most popular subcommittee hearing in history. They're just in on the fun and the press coverage also. Wait a minute, I name-dropped the news nation there.

Sorry, pal, because I said in my News Nation interview, you talked to Chris Cuomo.

Did you apparently miss the watching of repeaters out there?

I guess you were too busy having premarital sex. Nancy Mace to watch my phenomenal News Nation interview. Oh my god.

We might have to offer some context there in a second.

Oh yeah, no, I'm sorry. She said at a prayer breakfast that she couldn't fuck because she had to go to the prayer breakfast. And then she got into trouble for that. And then she said she was kidding. And the Republicans were like, we don't like when women joke about sex, we like what Tim Scott does nothing.

Anyway, aliens, aliens.

Too much, I mean, no.

I think it's just right, I think it's enough.

I'm open to aliens existing, I believe. These two Navy pilots who are at the hearing said they keep seeing weird stuff that accelerate in ways they can't explain. They have no reason to lie, but this guy? He also said that the program is above congressional oversight and paid for by misappropriation of funds. Again, that would create some sort of paper trail that I feel like someone could find.

There's one guy who was pretty high up in the government who is famously bad at keeping secrets or handling classified information. And if there was something out there, we would have heard it from him, or Barack Obama, or Donald Trump would have told someone else, or he would have leaked it somewhere. The other thing is, this guy, this guy, basically admits he has no first-hand knowledge of these purported programs. He hasn't seen any craft, or he hasn't seen any alien dead pilots.

Yeah, and there's been, I think, questions, too. In the years since The Times ran that story about the provenance of that Times story, that was like the first big story in the Times.

I think they feel burned.

Yeah, yeah, I think Dean McKay was like, Oh, cool.

Sounds neat, Yeah, I agree, like, yes. There have been kind of unexplainable videos that actual pilots and actual members of the military have seen. They can't explain them, believe them to.

He said We've likely been aware of non-human activity since the 1930s. So, again, it's just a very long time to keep a secret through various administrations. Lots of people that wouldn't have knowledge of this unless it was so secret that whatever they were working on or studying was kept away from all presidents and political hires or anybody that would touch this stuff, I just, I find it a little hard to believe.

I'm just waiting for an RFK Jr policy speech about this. He seems like he'd be right in on this. That's a good call. Elon Musk.

We're hiding it with bitcoin, maybe.

Hiding it with bitcoin.

There's also just such a human-centric view of all of this. There's such a like, what's the word like chauvinism about being a person? That the assumption is that like, Oh, there must be a craft with a pilot, what? Oh, because that's how we do it.

And we also recently learned that the Chinese have been flying gigantic spy balloons over our country at 60,000 feet. Like, there's lots of weird stuff going on up there, there's lots of weather balloons, there's lots of unexplained phenomenon, there's lots of weird new weather patterns, like, who knows?

So Tommy, can you tell us?

I wish I did, your wife? asked me every time she drinks.

Is that what she asked you?

And I was going to say, and unfortunately, times when she doesn't drink also.

And I'm like, Listen, I wish I knew about the moon landing, but no one would have told me for obvious reasons.

Anyway, no aliens, as far as we know, as far as we know, hold on a second, as far as we know.

Hold on a second, it's a big universe out there.

At least this hearing has not proved, this hearing did not prove that there are any.

It proves that this guy wants to make some cash money, and I support that because it's America, and Georgetown is in Congress and you get yours.

All right, before we get to the interview, two quick housekeeping notes on Tuesday, August 8th. Abortion rights are on the ballot in Ohio. There will be a ballot measure in that state this November to pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion access. But since the Republicans who control the state legislature do not want that to happen, they created another ballot measure for August 8th. That would raise the threshold for passing constitutional amendments from a simple majority to 60 percent.

First of all, I love Lydia. We did this event last week. Dynasty Typewriter The house that John Lovett built.

It was in my time slot.

A bunch of folks came out, we talked about the book, about writing in general. It's fiction, it's a novel. It's a really fun novel that follows the main character, Bunny. From her time as a teenager as a foreign service brat in Azerbaijan, to her adulthood working in the energy industry.

Where do they come down on windmills?

I think they're pro-Windmills, but I'll double-check with Lydia.

Anyway, you are all, after the break, about to hear a portion of the conversation between Tommy and Lydia. Everyone go buy Mobility, Crooked.com, Slash Mobility, or wherever books are sold, check it out now when we come back. Lydia Kiesling.

Thank you so much Tommy, thank you to Zando and Crooked Media who have worked so hard on this. I'm just so happy to be here, thanks to all of you for coming out and to Dynasty Typewriter.

The book is deeply researched, Bunny's deeply researched. At this point, both the industry but also the scenes feel so real. You were telling me that you did some pseudo-detective work to make those scenes come to life. Can you tell us a bit about that process?

Yes, a lot of the book was written, I wrote part of the book before Covid started, then it ground to a halt when the pandemic began. Then I went back to it. But obviously there was no going anywhere during those time periods for research.

How'd that go?

I was like, I'm only in town for this one day to see my dream wedding venue. And I mean, it was kind of like, once I got up there, I was like, I could have just asked to see it just because I wanted to. But it was way more fun to be like, my reception is going to be amazing in the Aramco room with the view of the city, I mean, it is, you know, it's got amazing views. So, yeah, there's a little subterfuge, some light.

Offshore rig, yeah.

Yeah, I would just like go out in a canoe. No, it didn't extend that far.

That's so funny, you said it was your wedding. They're like having you do a cake tasting in the back, you're like, I'm just going to take you guys down. If I'm being honest. The other parts of the book that felt so real to me were When Bunny's in Baku, she's living at the embassy.

Yeah, I did grow up in the foreign service. We were not posted to Baku, but we had a number of overseas postings. And yeah, I mean, a lot of writing this book, I think, was the process of sort of like unlearning the attitudes I would call it, sort of like American supremacy. That you just imbibe when that's how you grow up.

You're not projecting American power by virtue of your posting in Greece or whatever. Yeah, no, I get that. So your father, you were telling me, your father quit, resigned from the State Department in protests in advance of the Iraq war. Was that hard for you guys?

I mean, I was in college when it happened, so my life was hard for other reasons.

I remember, look, we were talking about this backstage, I was 23 at the time.

Well, yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of people now who are like, Well, of course, the Iraq war was a disaster and it's like the same people who were like. This seems like a great idea. I mean, there's been, I mean, for that whole era of, you know, American politics and sort of media coverage. There's no accountability for. I mean, the war on terror is just, which is, you know, ongoing, there's not. Yeah, I mean, we were talking about this, like I, that's one of the sort of sub themes in the book. I read a lot about the war on terror years, and, you know, not all of it made its way into the book. But I was sort of thinking of it similarly to working in oil and gas above a certain level.

We're beyond petroleum. Yes, didn't you hear it? It's literally the name. So did you go into the book? Intending to use fiction and novel and these characters in the story as a vehicle to educate people about the energy industry? Or did that just kind of happen along the way?

That definitely happened on the way. I was interested in writing about that kind of upbringing and that sort of like. Because I think I obviously can't speak for, like other people who have lived overseas, or, you know, familiar places when they're kids and teenagers. But in my case, you know, there was definitely. You grow up being told like, Oh, this is such a. This is such an enriching experience that you're having, and you, you know, you have so much like insight now because of this experience. But then you realize it's like, No, you're just being an American in, like, another location, it doesn't, you know? There's still like a huge amount of insularity to that experience. And so I was wanted to kind of play with that and think about it. And also, I'm just interested in teenage girls, and I wanted to talk about a teenage girl who was familiar to me. But as I was, you know, for a while, I, it's like, you know, Bunny was there, but I had no kind of justification for her other than that.

So you have this sort of spectrum of interesting views of characters in the book. Like there's literal like oil and gas executives, there's kind of like, sort of the parody of sort of the the super liberal critique of the industry. And there's Bunny who, sort of this naive person who brings us through all the years of the story.

So actually, when I when my first book came out after in the like year or two after. I had a couple of occasions when I was driving to L.A. for some sort of book thing and driving there and back from San Francisco. When we lived there and I started listening to the audio book of the novel, Oil by Upton Sinclair, they later made. That's what There will be Blood is based on, although they have, like, almost nothing in common they. It's like, I think he used like the first 30 pages and then just like, threw away the rest of the book.

I optioned it, that's kind of expensive.

I mean, you know, I'm sure he had. They're both, you know? It was like a generative work of art that created another work of art. But they have no bearing on each other. And but so the the main character of Oil, the novel, is named Bunny. He's a boy, and he starts out as like a young, like a tween or a teenager. And he's like a little oil scion, and he follows his father around and watches as he, like, buys up, oil leases.

She's very fun to follow. I mean it, the the challenge that we've had. Let's talk about climate change. It can be really hard, right? Because it's such a big problem, it's hard to feel hopeful about it.

Well, I think I, I really like, gave up on the I don't think fiction is like, I don't, although I just said all that, I'm not opting. Sinclair, like educating people through his novel. I don't ultimately think that. I think of fiction more as like a as a documentation project, rather than necessarily like a didactic or like educational one. Um, I mean, I think, you know, people talk a lot about like fiction as a vehicle for empathy. And like, yes, that, in some cases, like, is true, but I don't think that empathy necessarily like Spurs action, usually just more as like, cathartic. Um, and so I wasn't really like. There were some moments where I'm kind of like, people need to know, you know, like that these oil companies are, they're all connected. Man. Um, but I, I really like pretty early was like, this isn't going to be a novel.

I love that. No, that should, absolutely. We'll go to brunch and talk about that. Um, what are you reading? anything you like?

So I just read a wonderful novel, Um, called Enter Ghost by Isabella Hamad, and it's about doing a performance of Hamlet in the UM, in Palestine and in the West Bank. And it's a beautiful novel, um, she also wrote a novel called The Parisian, which is a wonderful novel I also want. I think these people are in the audience. But um, my book comes out on August 1st, and so does, um, Eden the Pucky. Her novel is called Time's Mouth, and it's amazing.

Appreciate it, thank you please. Uh, buy a book, buy two, buy one for a friends, um.

And thanks again.