Tucker’s War With Fox

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau, I'm Priya's Epic Jon Lovett, I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Joe Biden gets some rough polling as he prepares for his debt ceiling showdown with Republicans.

Politics They just had a bunch of elections. What does that mean for the Labour Party? There's a lot of shared challenges right now between the Labour Party in the UK. That's pundit hacking up a bone.

About it. So Tommy talks to Nish. And all of you should check out the very first episode of Pod Save the UK. It's up Now, the number one podcast in the UK, the number one podcast in the UK.

Should be in jail and president. I'm really just dumbfounding. That's a good-looking voter for you and we love him.

Make the world go around. They think they're listening.

Does anyone want to unskew the poll? First of all, we should stipulate that we don't yell at polls here. They're inanimate objects. They did nothing wrong, they did.

Nothing to you, they're just data sets. Yeah, look, here's what I would also say.

They're pretty real. But if we were to yell at some polls, it is weird that 56 say that Trump should face criminal charges, but 49 say they'd vote for him. That seems challenging to make work.

I don't know, I wouldn't say. It unskews the poll, but gives you reason to believe that it's less. You can step back off the ledge a tiny bit, it says. He has 26 approval among.

Trump's winning young people, Biden's winning old people. That doesn't make a lot of sense either. It's all just sort of weird, it's confusing. Here's what to do.

Third in the average, yeah, 538. We were going to do that after the conversation, but we still got stuff to do before the mattress ad.

So the average has Biden's approval steady, around 42-43, so no sudden upticks or down ticks in the approval rating for Biden. So it's a little higher than the 36 in this poll, though, you know, the Quinnipiac poll. In terms of polls, first of all, there haven't been many for 2024 yet, but the Quinnipiac has him at like 37.

Yeah, you said that this doesn't have a lot of good news for Trump either, which is true. But it sort of fits with where Trump always is, which is just he always has very bad polling, that kind of fits with where this was at. The one thing that I pulled out that I did think was worth talking about is it said. 33 say Trump is honest, 63 say he's not. That is where Trump has always been on the honesty mark.

I do think that for a lot of presidents, they're honest and trustworthy. Numbers tend to go down over the course of the eight. Do you have an AI thing ready? Oh, no, no.

Imagine if I just had a soundboard?

You have the face that you have when you're ready to introduce a bit to us, which I was really excited.

Yeah, I mean, look, it has been steadily going down and that is probably just a result of people just being disappointed with the differences between what a candidate sounds like and what a president sounds like. Which is, of course, true. But, like, over eight years, and even when his disapproval dropped, there were certain metrics of his sort of personal likability. That kind of stayed buoyant. Which was a protection against people like Mitt Romney, for example. And I don't know, that was just nerve-wracking to me.

So easily could be a bad sample, bad poll, or it could be right. We don't know. The RCP average has Trump leading by one with this poll in it. So either way, it's going to be a close fucking race.

That's a long time, a lot of undecideds in this poll.

Trump is once again around 45 46, right when you don't push leaners, which is always where he's been. And if it's just Trump and Biden, then, you know, probably a little better for Biden. But again, we get third parties in there and suddenly it could be 2016 and Trump doesn't have to get much higher than 45..

We're talking about that RFK Junior Magic.

Or fucking no labels. And whether they're going to Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, or someone else.

And a lot of the drop in here is not just independents, but Democrats.

Yeah, that's, and that one, that one's probably most easily fixable.

I will say, it's hard to, you know, the 60 saying he's not doesn't have the acuity viewing Trump as having being more kind of up to the job.

That may be a little more nervous than the honest and trustworthy ones, even.

I don't like either.

Yeah, I mean, instead of just complaining about what we don't like about this poll, that's easy enough to do.

Well, that part's over.

We got any advice, any advice for the Biden campaign as they look at these numbers.

I think that ultimately, Joe Biden is going to have to say things are better, but they're not perfect. I know you don't love me, but these guys are crazy, like, look over there. They're going to destroy the economy with the debt ceiling, they're going to do nothing to stop guns, gun violence.

Yeah, I think that's right.

Oh, you said, with Trump.

With Trump, yeah.

Yeah, I can't tell. I mean, I think that I feel like opinions about Trump are pretty hardened. But that the campaign is going to hinge on reminding people how awful he is, right, which is not hard to do.

Yeah, I'm sure they're very frustrated because I think the economy has added 13 million jobs, or just shy of 13 million jobs. Since he took office, unemployment is at record lows, like 3.5. You're reading all these announcements about companies literally opening manufacturing plants in Georgia and other places because of tax credits in the IRA. But he doesn't seem to be getting any credit for it, so I agree that he's got to be out more. I do think it's good advice. But I think there's limits to how many people are actually going to hear about these stories just because of the way the media works.

That's why it's just a volume.

I feel like big shoes.

Big shoes. It's quantity at some point, right? Because getting attention, even when you're president of the United States, in this media environment, it's just harder, you know? And doing a typical event where you're just going and touting some manufacturing jobs, like, it's just that, won't get you the attention anymore. And I think it's not only what Joe Biden has done, but that he continues to show this fighting spirit on behalf of working people.

Love this?

Love this?

This is good stuff.

They should do some fun stuff with this to again really get some attention.

I love the fee stuff.

You know what, sure.

Don't harsh my vibe.

The rule-making process, the rule-making process, I love it.

It's a great idea. Integrated Character IP life Enhancement via Airlines.

Don't just give me a voucher fork over some extra cash, I love that.

Go to an airport.

Why didn't we do more of this? Going after these terrible, monopolistic companies is a great idea. Do it every day. Joe Biden.

We did a passenger bill of rights, but it didn't quite go as far as this.

And we said they couldn't leave you on the tarmac for more than eight hours or something. Yeah, there was that JetBlue flight that went fully, kind of Lord of the Flies.

But Biden out there, fighting against corporations on behalf of working people over and over again, that's good stuff. Yes, that's good stuff.

And just, you know, let's get him out there. Meeting people between 10 a.

And joke, and he should be joking about his age all the time. Yeah, he did it at the correspondence center, he should do it some more.

I'm older than the trees.

He said something about his 280 year career That's great the other day, That's great. Do that.

I like it.

All right, Donald Trump still has a few bumps on his road back to the White House. New York Times reports that in the classified documents investigation, special Counsel Jack Smith has obtained cooperation from a secret witness who worked at Mar-a-Lago. And he's also issued a new wave of subpoenas, including for records related to Trump's business dealings with Saudi Arabia.

His name Juan Jr.

Juan Jr.

You get it, you get it.

That's funny. Also, after the leader of the Proud Boys and three others were convicted of seditious conspiracy, congressman Jamie Raskin told Jen Psaki over the weekend that Trump could absolutely face the same charges. And jurors have just heard closing arguments in the rape and defamation case brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll. Against Trump, who not only turned down a second last minute chance to testify, but presented no defense in the case whatsoever.

None, just so people understand. So the reason there was this second chance to testify is that when he was opening up a golf course in Scotland, he did the thing he always does. Which is, I could testify, happily testify, love to testify. And the judge was like, OK.

I'm coming back home, I got to go back home to testify.

I have to leave the country early.

I have to leave at five p.

Very strange.

So the jurors did get to watch a video of Trump's deposition from October, which we have some clips from. Let's listen. And when you're a star, they let you do it, you can do anything, grab them by the pussy.

It's just such an awful human being.

So disgusting.

Unfortunately or fortunately.

I mean, a lot of these are things he's said before. But he just compounds it any way he can, by just being the most disgusting human being in these depositions.

You know, it's things he's said before, but I will just say, I know that. We're all inert to this now because we've had a lot of years of Donald Trump. But let's remember when the Access Hollywood tape comes out, and Donald Trump actually gives the remember the live on air apology, he does. That is, you know, this is not what I meant. Blah, blah, blah. Now it's just like January 6th. He's long gone past. Oh, I didn't say that, or that was just a joke, and now he says, Oh, no, what I said was true.

When he makes it worse and he insults the lawyer and she's, Yeah, it sounds awful.

We'll leave the legal consequences of Trump's actions to juries of his peers. It does seem like the political consequences of all these cases could be a bit more damaging for Trump than the hush money case. But what do you guys think of all these developments that have popped up recently?

There's a lot of, I mean, certainly, this conversation we're having right now reminds you. There's just a ton of legal uncertainty swirling around him as a person, around the campaign. And the fact that DeSantis and all the other opponents can't seem to get it together to.

Yeah, I'd also just say that deposition interview footage always looks bad, really bad. It always just. It has that just sort of feel to it, it has a feel to it.

I definitely include trying to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.

A hundred percent, I don't even mean, obviously, but I mean in terms of like, the public, the public reaction to him. Where, you know, like, we just talked about how robust and like how stable his polling always is. And like, what are the things that managed to kind of, like, pull that clothesline down a little to weigh it down? It was Access Hollywood, it was healthcare.

I realized that this is incredibly hackish of me. But when I saw that deposition footage, my first thought was ads, Democratic super pack, I was a Democratic super. Back out there. I would throw some of that deposition footage in an ad and test it first, you know, test it for in front of voters. Focus groups, see how it goes.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's getting less coverage because it's just different phases of the trial, I mean, similarly, the in the Mar-a-Lago case, I've always wondered whether people would really care whether or not he took classified documents. But when you start to read about how the FBI is looking, they're talking to his staff to see if they were directed to hide or move things. After the subpoenas came through, or if they deleted footage of what happened, that feels like a big deal. I mean, like, Jack Smith is flinging subpoenas like a like a blackjack dealer down there, like, the whole staff has now been subpoenaed.

I think a single, I think one of them is a calamaro.

My favorite anecdote from this New York Times story about the Mar-a-Lago case was among the information. They have gathered in interviews concerned his habit of flushing material down toilets, according to a person familiar with the matter. And I just like, love the idea of some very serious FBI agent, like asking questions, be like, number one.

So this goes down the shitter as well.

If it's a yellow, let it mellow, okay, number two.

Tommy, can you give us your take on the potential Saudi connection here? It was just sort of slipped in as weird. Paragraph 20 of the New York Times story. It's like, Oh, by the way, there's a subpoena for Trump's business dealings with the Saudis over there, their golf venture.

Yeah, I don't know what to make of that, and I've never really believed that.

Do you want to red string it for us? Yep.

They never really believed that Trump took a bunch of classified documents to sell them to some other country or anything like that. But if you were looking for a way to trade this information, to, let's say, the Saudi government for cash. It does seem like having the live golf tournament host a bunch of matches or whatever they're calling them, they call it. Something different at his clubs would be a great way to launder that money.

Great way to get his beak wet.

Unbelievable.

We didn't even also talk about the fact that they've given immunity to a bunch of the fake electors.

Oh yeah.

In Georgia.

They all have immunity deals.

They got immunity, so what do they know and where are we giving it?

Fannie Willis isn't giving out immunity for free.

And what those people did was very serious, very illegal and very wrong. And so you know who are the people you're going after? There's not very many above the electors that aren't named Donald Trump.

As Tommy pointed out, one person who's still not taking advantage of any of this is Ron DeSantis, who's busy dealing with more of his own bad press. ABC obtained video of Tiny D's debate prep sessions from his 2018 race for governor. Where he suggested that when he gets to the podium, he should write the word likeable in all caps at the top of his notepad. You can also see Matt Gaetz telling DESantis to tone it down during prep, and DESantis struggling with how to avoid pissing off Trump's voters. Let's listen.

Has the NRA donated to me? I don't think the NRA is quite the boogeyman the Democrats think it is. Do we hit him on guns or does everyone who cares about guns is going to vote for me?

Is there any issue upon which you disagree with President Trump?

Obviously there is because I voted contrary to him.

I have to frame it in a way that's not going to piss off all his voters.

So what I do is I do what I think is right. I support his agenda in terms of what he's been able to do. If I have a disagreement, I talk to him in private.

I think when you walk up there at the other pad, you have to write in all caps at the top of the pad. Likeable. I do the same thing because I have the same personality, we're both aggressive.

I do the same thing.

Do you guys think it's a good sign for your political prospects when the person advising you on likability is Matt Gaetz?

Matt Gaetz is dressed like he's going to go sell nitrous balloons at a Dave Matthews concert. He's wearing the rainbow flip-flops and a too-tight t-shirt.

Matt Gaetz is telling you to tone it down. Yeah, that's it, this fucking guy.

Matt Gaetz is like, Here's how to be likable. Can we just be honest, take it from me, Matt Gaetz?

It's not bad advice, it's such pretty good advice from Matt Gaetz. The whole thing seems kind of normal and more reasonable. I don't know. Even DESantis kind of seems smarter about politics, but he comes off as very angry about everything.

You might say he comes off as a little sanctimonious.

He comes off like the Mars attacks aliens.

Write that one at the top of the notepad.

That's what that reminded me of.

Saying write likable on your notepad is so goddamn funny. It's terrible advice. you can't just remind yourself to be likable you are or you are not.

When George H.

It was like saying your name here. I think there was something revealing when Gates is telling him, Oh, you were too aggressive in what you just said. What he was referring to is during debate prep. Remember back in the 2018 race? At one point, DeSantis says, All right, Florida, don't monkey this up by voting for Andrew Gillum. And everyone took it as a racist statement.

He's a big whiner and he's resting dumbface and the whole thing. I mean, yeah, it's a weird debate. staff, I mean, Matt Gaetz is running your debate prep. That's just a strange decision.

Yeah, and now he's for Trump, so yeah.

Well, I mean, that must worry them. I mean, these kinds of tapes leaking. I don't know if I've ever heard of that happening before. That's a pretty big breach.

Debate prep is kind of like an inner circle, kind of sacred space. Yes, very much, so that shit doesn't leak.

And Gaetz goes from DeSantis guy to Trump supporter. Sycophant. DeSantis had a big split with Susie Wiles, who was running his campaign at the time. She's now working for Trump. I would be sitting there thinking, Oh my God, what else are they sitting on?

That's cool.

Yeah.

Big week in D.

Yeah, Janet Yellen is just white, knuckled on a toilet somewhere, just fucking anxiety for fucking days. she's not.

Is she on a toilet?

Janet Yellen hasn't had a solid shit in two weeks. Oh my god, I'm just saying she's anxious.

You can't hear that on any other podcast, you can't hear that on MSNBC. Oh my god. This comes after 43 Republican senators signed a letter over the weekend saying they will not support a debt ceiling increase without substantial cuts of the kind the House passed. Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy and leadership aides are trying to tamp down expectations within their caucus about what would constitute a win for Republicans. Since his most extreme members are saying they won't vote for anything less than the House bill.

I would say, first of all, I think, to get 43 Senate Republicans together to say anything close to this, it had to be vague and purposely vague. So what they say is they're united behind the House Republican Conference in support of spending cuts and structural budget reforms as a starting point for negotiations on the debt ceiling. That leaves a lot of room to maneuver, and that they won't vote for cloture on any bill that raises that ceiling without substantive spending and budget reforms. Which also gives you a lot of space, um, 50 shades of gray.

So it was, it was vague, but still, they didn't get a, they didn't get Romney, Collins or Murkowski to sign on to that letter.

Uh, they didn't, you're right.

So I don't know.

They got 40.

I think what the Republicans have done, which is smart here in the Senate, is they're like, we cannot leave, at least at this point. We can't leave McCarthy out to dry, he's passed through the house, We've got to lock arms with McCarthy. We can't have any daylight between the Senate and the House Republicans, otherwise we're not going to get anything out of Biden.

I would say it's getting getting this off. This says where the state, the Senate Republicans are. I don't know that this is something that puts any more pressure on Biden than what he already was facing. But I think publicly, it answers the mail on what McConnell's been getting asked over and over again.

Yeah.

I'm just so caught up on that, you know? Previous comment about the Treasury Good news, bad news, good news. You can't really get much worse than a $1.5 trillion debt limit extension for less than a year for 5 trillion in cuts. So baby steps to better. I still don't see a path forward, though.

The reason I mentioned that on the McCarthy side, what we saw in Playbook today that he's telling he's tamping down expectations is. There were some senior Republican aides in the House who were like, if we just get, if we just get the unspent Covid funds and permitting reform, that's a win.

It's a reminder, it's a reminder that, like that with the House Republicans. Some of them play crazy, some of them aren't crazy. And some of the ones that play crazy are just like a little bit nervous with some of the ones that are. Hey, like, I'm visiting this asylum, I don't, I don't fucking live here with people.

I do think, though, like I don't see a clean increase happening at this point. Because forget about the 43 Republican, you also got Joe Manchin, you're dealing with the Senate, forget about the House at this point.

I also think a lot of this is semantics, like I don't know what, like if let, like, for example. We don't know what's going to come out of a conversation with McCarthy and Biden tomorrow. But one thing potentially is some sort of a framework that is a short-term debt ceiling extension, with some kind of cap on spending. That kicks you to a negotiation over government shutdown, plus that Biden gets the call, that a clean raise to get you to the field, to the TO.

The contract strategy.

Right, and so, but, like, did Biden get a clean debt limit? uh, increase in that case? Yes, no, I think the semantics fall apart when you tie it to another negotiation.

We need a bipartisan coalition of reporters, TV broadcasters, podcasters to come together and say we're sick of talking about this. It is so boring, it makes us want to die. Please just fix it so we don't have to talk.

You know who's going to help us with that, our audiences?

People keep saying, people keep saying, it's boring, I'm interested.

I like, I think the gamesmanship is kind of interesting.

I think it's fascinating.

It's a lot of game theory stuff.

Yeah, it's game theory, it's real negotiations, it's real stakes.

It happened to my friend.

I think what's also exciting? What's also exciting to me about a two track strategy is you get to do something, you get to do something. That's, I think, classically American, which is you kick the can down the road and raise the stakes, which is a classic American.

Kick the can, raise the stakes.

Procrastinate and make it worse.

We're at season six and everyone's lost the plot. It's Westworld all over again.

It's Westworld all over again, it's Westworld all over again, it's all over again. Anyway, your mind is the scene of the crime.

Speaking of entertainment.

Different thing.

Axios reports that Tucker Carlson is about to go to war with Fox News in order to get out of his contract. Which is basically paying him $20 million to not work for any competitor or himself until 2025.

What fucking bodies over there? What do we not know about this heinous right wing fascist organization?

It's got to be actual bodies.

Is it actual corpses? Because what it feels like, what Fox News feels like right now-.

Did they bury Roger Ailes under the newsroom?

How it's felt watching this over the last six months is like a graveyard after a hurricane. And all the bodies have kind of come fully up already. What bodies are left? I'm crushing it today, I'm crushing it today.

Here's what I know.

What do you know?

Your Ellsberg's Daniel.

Oh my god.

Your Brockovich's Aaron.

Alright.

You could be that Tucker Serpico in a bow tie. Tell the truth.

The way in which Aaron Brockovich, Serpico and Ellsberg are so different and just different analogies.

Tell the truth, tell your truth, tucker.

Tell me, I have a different take.

Oh, wow.

I want Fox News to win this one. I'm with you.

You've always been a Fox fan? No, no, no.

Because, to Lovett's point, what else is Tucker really going to do to Fox that they haven't already done to themselves? Through various depositions and discovery processes over the last several months? But if Fox can somehow stop Tucker from having a platform for the next two years, I think that's a win for all of us.

I think that's great. Yeah, that's where I'm at, too. I want Fox to just hold the line on this fascist non-compete.

We're with you, Murdoch's.

Keep the faith. What I'm most interested in in all of this is which mainstream media outlets are willing to uncritically print everything. Tucker's lawyer says bodies are buried. I got bare knuckle brawlers standing by to fight.

Not just his lawyers, his allies, friends, sources close to Tucker.

Everyone is offering tucker money. I mean, the amount of posturing going on in these news stories that are just going unquestioned is notable.

One of the reports said that Daily Wire was like, I've been waiting for the fucking Tucker Carlson Caravan and the Ben Shapiro Caravan. Those places, those people should meet in the middle.

I mean, there is, look, tucker Carlson will wind up on a rumble or a Daily Wire type outlet. I think the question really is whether his non-competing prevents him from going to.

60 minutes, New York Times calm.

Cancel Culture Run amok this week at The New York Times.

Pamela Paul and Tucker Carlson having a conversation.

They're doing one of those chats.

I was watching CBS Sunday morning because I'm 75 years old.

How do you even get that thing? Do you have rabbit ears?

And they had George Will doing a puff piece on Henry Kissinger and I was like, What era am I living in? You saw that, too.

I did not see it, no, I saw Tommy tweet about it.

Sorry to do that to you.

Anyway.

Yeah, I agree. Anything that keeps Tucker Carlson quiet for a while, I'm for.

But, you know what, go at each other, burn the whole conservative ecosystem.

My point is quiet is going to be a range. Because I do think he's going to have a podcast on Rumble or something like that. He's going to do something. It's a question of whether he's on Newsmax or he's a non-compete.

Or he can just tweet a video and Elon will just juice it and promote it, all right. Finally, the list of Clarence Thomas scandals just keeps getting longer. Harlan Crowe didn't just secretly pay for private jet rides, luxury yacht trips, and the home of Clarence Thomas mother. The latest proPublica bombshell says that Crowe also paid the private school for Clarence Thomas grandnephew.

Well, I can tell you that you can play these out and try to guess what the Supreme Court opinions resulting from it will be. The bottom line is, though, we have in the past had members of the Senate sitting here, Democrats and Republicans who have been absent because of medical conditions for lengthy periods of time. I want to treat Dianne Feinstein fairly, I want to be sensitive to her family situation and her personal situation. And I don't want to say that she's going to be put under more pressure than others have been in the past.

What is going on?

I will say this, so, first of all, Dick Durbin is the person that has set off this. It was Dick Durbin's comments to CNN that set off the calls for Dianne Feinstein to retire. It was him telling a reporter, Hey, I'm not going to be able to move judges through this committee. We're deadlocked in a bunch of shit.

Yeah, I agree with all that. Probably people would have noticed. That's why the nominations were holed up. They didn't count the votes on the committee at some point.

Yeah, for sure, he went out there, but I'm saying he went out there and kicked it out.

Well, he did in a very dick, durbin way.

Look, all of this is in a very dick Durbin way. The velvety-est of velvet gloves is that he is approaching all of this. I mean, this went viral because of Jake's question, not because of Durbin's answer.

I get that these people are all collegial and they're all friends in the Senate, I get it, I get it. You don't want to be nasty to someone who you've served with for many years.

Well, he goes on to say in that interview that when Feinstein put out in her statement that nothing is being held up, that he just doesn't agree with that. That her absence is being felt on the committee. The subpoenas for Harlan Crow or for Clarence Thomas? It is slowing down the nomination process. So he is saying that, I mean, look, I don't know why I'm defending Dick Durbin.

Biggest dick Durbin Offender?

I don't know, I'm surprised by myself. Dianne Feinstein should fucking retire.

The reason, like Durbin's, answers Durbin's sort of letter to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court about ethics. Inviting him to come to the committee was very frustrating and seemed incredibly feckless because it was but.

Sadly, the RSVP No.

Right? Not only did the RSVP No.

Will not attend.

The only thing in response was basically like, how dare you even ask me? Strict Scrutiny did a great episode on all these sort of ethics issues that you should listen. But the biggest challenge is because Feinstein isn't there, he can't issue a subpoena.

They can't do anything.

And so, listen, setting aside the whole Dianne Feinstein of it all. No one individual lawmaker's hurt feelings should take precedent over the work that we all send them there to do. And like the suggestion, otherwise, this silly, forced collegiality. She's 89 years old. Several years ago, there was a round of stories about her asking the same question at a hearing verbatim, twice in a row. That's when people really started talking about this stuff.

I think the saddest part of this also is now we are now in. We've been in weeks and weeks of stories about a lot of people calling for her to retire. A lot of people questioning whether she's mentally fit. And certainly whether or not she has the sort of physical stamina. To ever return to the Senate through that entire period of time, she said, I will return but will not give a date. This is really sad because it tells you that her health condition is very serious, that she cannot return to the Senate. So it is all very like. It is obviously human. And it is somebody who is afraid to have their final moments in public life be defined by their illness and calls to resign. That is obviously sad. But one person's ego and the staff's desire to protect that person's ego is not more important than confirming. Justices, getting these subpoenas out the door and having full representation for California in the Senate.

And I hate this isn't even potentially the worst of it. Like, you know, Dianne Feinstein's making an argument that, oh, look at how many judges they confirmed, and you know, this argument is like, we're getting through all the judges that can be confirmed right now.

Or it just sets one card against us even further of having to need every vote.

Ro Khanna tweeted about how, because Senator Feinstein was absent, the Senate overturned a Biden rule. That would cut pollution from heavy-duty trucks and cause all of us to breathe in worse air. I mean, that has happened in the past, and yeah, it's not just about confirming judges. I mean, they can spin this all they want, but that's not the extent of the problem. More broadly, on these Clarence Thomas revelations, it's now like multiple stories about Clarence Thomas and ethics.

Sub-tweeting Nina Totenberg.

I'm not sub-tweeting.

Take that Nina Totenberg, I'm with you.

Everybody, we've got to go a little harder with these folks.

These people got to reform the court, that's the only way out. They're not going to make ethics rules for themselves. They're clearly not embarrassed by any of the reporting, they don't feel shame on this stuff.

Or we have enough senators to get rid of the filibuster, we can do it with a few more.

Or if we have enough senators to get rid of the filibuster.

The Clarence Thomas story about the tuition is, I thought, pretty funny. Because the only defense that it's not a gift for Clarence Thomas is that it was actually a gift to the child. Which is really funny to think about a billionaire giving a suitcase full of cash to some kid so he could go to school, as we all know, it's the child who pays tuition at school.

Well, I think that was. And Crowe's statement in response to the story was like, How could you turn his love of education into something political?

His love of education, yeah.

Education and nazi memorabilia.

And I believe that Thomas did disclose when someone else paid for part of this kid's tuition. The most amazing thing about the Thomas revelations is it's even forcing reporters from the New York Times to be like, Yeah, I looked at it. No offense, but it's pretty illegal, they can't spin it into a, they said, he said. They said.

Every defense of.

He said, they said, they said, they said.

Sure, every defense of Crowe giving all this money to Clarence Thomas has fallen apart. For example, Crowe gave an interview with The Dallas Morning News where he recounted how he first met Clarence Thomas. And it was Crowe offering Clarence Thomas a ride home on his private jet.

That's how they met on a private jet. They're PJ buddies, they're PJ buddies.

During that flight, we found out we were kind of simpatico. I bet you did, I bet you did, that's a direct quote.

I bet you did.

I saw my copy of Mein Kampf fall out of my bag.

He's a collector now. It was a statue of Hitler.

Yeah, I got this at an auction.

The funny thing is, it's like, Oh so, you caught a ride on a billionaire's private jet and you had a great discussion with him. Paying for the privilege of being on that private jet. With your conversation, you know, like earning your keep as an interesting guest aboard this private jet. Gross, I say, it's gross.

RBG should have retired.

And you know what, I'll tell you something else. We got shit for that. I wasn't one of these ginger people. No, I'm just saying I'm sexist for calling Feinstein to resign.

Can you find some old dude, Chuck Grassley?

Chuck Grassley's gotta get out of there.

Strom Thurmond.

Let me just say, I'm just saying, I remember. Whenever you even hinted at the idea that RBG should retire, you were properly for notorious RBG, you were castigated at the time. I'm just saying, you look back at it.

Okay, well, hopefully our producers can find some clips of you calling for the RBG to retire.

You can find it, Olivia, you can find it, go to the archives, to the archives.

When we come back, Pod Save the UK host Nish Kumar talks to Tommy about his new podcast and King Charles Coronation.

Alright, it's been a wild week in the United Kingdom. Which is why I am so excited to welcome the co-host of Pod Save the UK to the show. Nish, it is so great to see you. You are number one in the UK on Apple Podcast charts. Are you drunk with power right now?

I'm drunk with power and I'm drunk with alcohol. Tommy, I don't know how much you know about British culture, but when things go well, we get incredibly drunk, and when things go badly, we get incredibly drunk.

I love that. Let's all get pissed. Also, I want to clarify to all our listeners in the UK that I'm wearing this hat with Pat the Patriot on it. Not to be a troll, but because I need a haircut, so let's just get that on the table, okay? King Charles had his coronation bash over the weekend.

I mean, I think that there is. There remains, like a section of the public for whom the Royal family are an incredibly important part of their lives. And I don't know if I can speak to 64. I mean, I think in terms of who watched it, it would probably be more than that. Just sort of out of sheer curiosity, I think. Whether you care or not, there were a lot of people that just tuned in, I mean, literally, because they sort of took over all the TV channels. You know, like a supervillain does in a movie when they're threatening a country.

I have images of BBC broadcasters kicking down your door on your face to make you watch like, I love the BBC. But God, they love these royal events.

I couldn't agree with you more strongly on both of those things. Absolutely love the BBC, but yeah, they go hard. They've got a Perma boner for the Royal Family, and for coverage of the Royal Family, it's relentless.

This is why I love your show so much, because you guys had this really thoughtful academic on and you were talking about federalism versus the monarchy.

This government has a kind of the sort of larger background to this is. The government has passed a bill that specifically makes it more difficult to protest in this country. Some of that protest bill was on the back of some of the kind of climate protests that have been happening all over the world, but specifically in Britain, some of the climate protests that have been happening. The government have passed a bill, some of the terms of which allow police to set an appropriate level for protest. Which, I mean, I don't think anybody thinks a good idea. But some of the new powers given to them in this protest bill seem to have been used on protesters. It's weirdly not actually just protesters that have been arrested. There were three people were arrested in Soho on Saturday on a conspiracy to commit public nuisance. And it transpires that those people were volunteers for a programme run by Westminster City Council to distribute rape alarms to women who might be vulnerable. Travelling on their way home.

Yeah, we'll arrest you anyway. Every time we talk, I realise how similar our nation's problems are. Getting that balance right of allowing protesters to do their thing has been a real challenge for us the last couple of years, too. So the monarchy has existed for a very long time. That doesn't mean it's going to be around forever.

And let me say, as a representative of the United Kingdom, we would like to thank His Majesty, the Burger King. Several of his embassies have opened throughout our country and we remain grateful. It's the interesting thing about having a conversation with someone like Amelia Hadfield, who's a politics professor, that we talked to on the show. Is that the mechanism for removing the royal family. Moving to a republic is very complicated and would require almost certainly a referendum, which is, I think, at this point, if you told the British people that they could either have a referendum. Or repeatedly be smashed with a cricket bat in the genitals, they would say, Well, bring on the bat, cricket's the most English of games.

Yeah, sounds like our Supreme Court seems like there's some transparency needed here before we move on. Have you seen this Twitter theory that people who believe that Meghan Markle actually did attend the coronation, despite saying she was sticking around? In California, there was a 79-year-old man named Sir Carl Jenkins. Apparently he's a composer, he's got long white hair, he's got a moustache, he's got glasses. Your classic disguised get-up.

Yes, look, I'm afraid to say, Sir Carl Jenkins is an extremely talented composer. Unfortunately, he has chosen a moustache and haircut and glasses combination that makes it look like Sacha Baron. Cohen is doing some sort of. It is deeply unfortunate and he was pictured at the coronation. And yeah, I understand that there is a theory that people are saying Meghan Markle disguised. If anything, it would be fitting that the most high-profile member of the Royal family, who is a person of colour, had to disguise themselves as a white man to get into the Coronation.

I love this because, you know, the absurdity of this theory did not stop the New York Post from writing it up. So that's how I read all about it.

So I understand the New York Post is, I believe, at least philosophically, the bastard child of the Sun newspaper in the United Kingdom. And I guess both of those newspapers have had a tenuous relationship with the truth of the past.

Oh oh, tenuous at best, OK, so back to a little more serious stuff. So England just had some local elections, yes, in the U.S, I think it'd be the equivalent of, kind of like a city council or mayoral type position. But they're always looked at as a bellwether ahead of the next national elections.

Well, the first thing I want to say is just briefly on Liz Truss, and it is good to be brief on her as it fits her time in office. She was at the coronation. And it's this weird spectacle that I guess an equivalent is you guys having one-term presidents at the inauguration, and I guess it's the equivalent of this. But she's going to be at all of these events, she was at the fucking coronation for longer than she was prime Minister. It was absolutely obscene that she got a ticket, but yeah. The Conservative Party lost 1,061 seats.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of comparisons to 1997 when Tony Blair had this massive victory, and that was preceded by doing even better in local elections. But boy, my big takeaway from your answer there is, My God, am I jealous that you have an electorate that remembers things that happened six months ago? We're working on 30 days, man. A couple of years ago, Trump was like, Yo, storm that Capitol and kill some people, and people were like, Oh, he seems like a decent guy.

Genuinely, I would love for you to come and explain that to some of the people that live here, Tommy.

Help me understand this, how the Tories made this such an issue.

Look, it's a section of people in the United Kingdom who believe that the country is connected via airport-style travelators. That just bring a ceaseless stream of job-stealing immigrants into the country. It's become. But the key thing with it is that, like the U.S. Republicans, the sort of the tail is kind of wagging the dog. Here, the Conservative Party is being led by a small section of the British electorate.

Stop the boats are the migrants who are coming from, I believe.

France Crossing the English Channel of the UK People are making crossings of the English Channel from France, and they're sort of it's, they've turned, stop the boats into our caravan of migrants.

Yeah, that seems right.

I don't think this is going to change anybody's minds. I think it is a really valuable...

Our countries are both stuck in this weird place where we threw our leaders overboard, Trump and Boris Johnson, but they won't go away. It's like you threw a party, that drunk guy's still there, he keeps turning up the music, he's hitting on your girlfriend. What do we do here? How do we get them to take the hint? Do you have any ideas that we could borrow?

No, I mean, he's, where possible, he's sort of trying to distance himself from Johnson, which is very difficult to do. Because he was Boris Johnson's chancellor. So notionally, he was the second most powerful person in that government, so it is extremely difficult for him to distance himself from that. But I think the similarities between the two projects, I mean, which doesn't, it doesn't feel like you should even call it a project, but between the two, shit shows. One of the key similarities, I think, is both of them kind of approached a scorched earth policy to their own parties. So either you got in line or you were bounced out.

Late at night, lots of waves. Yeah, it was a terrible thing. And it's just deeply frustrating that a big chunk of the country doesn't look at that memory or think about that history and think that was really bad. Let's not do that again. That's all I'm asking, yeah.

But if you have the kind of apparatus of a media machine, you know that regardless of. You know. All of those revelations in the Vanity Fair article about Rupert Murdoch and his contempt for Trump didn't stop him from eventually completely signing up to it. Wholesale. And Trump was this kind of careering freight train that Murdoch forgot he was responsible for setting off from the station. You know, it's the same thing in this country, you know, the Daily Mail, the Sun Newspaper, which is a Murdoch paper. They all have done such an aggressive PR job. And even the day Boris actually officially left office, The Sun and The Mail both had headlines to the effect of How could the Conservative Party do this?

Yeah, exactly exactly. Well. Nish Kumar. That is why Pod Save the UK is so critical. Because you are the leading edge of the spear that is going to take down the Murdoch empire. We heard it here first.

I don't believe he could be killed, Tommy, I don't believe he could be killed.

He's very old. The guy in succession died. Spoiler alert.

That's, I think, because Jesse Armstrong is not just a great writer, but a deeply moral man. And I think he's hoping Logan Roy's some sort of voodoo doll, that if he gives a heart attack to it, it might take down Murdoch.

I'm just going to not comment on that.

Thanks Tommy, you're the best.

Thanks to Nish Kumar for joining us today and we'll talk to you guys later.

Thanks to the Calamari's, too.

Thanks to the Calamari's as well. Pod Save America is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producers are Andy Gardner-Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.