Pool Me Twice, Shame On You

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[01:32] *Music* [01:53] Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Hubbett. Tom Needy Torr. On today's show, we'll talk about the latest developments in the on-again, off-again war slash peace deal with Iran, which seems to be playing its hand better than master negotiator J.D. Vance. We'll also get into the reflecting pool drama. [02:10] which has gone from farce to fascist as federal agents start arresting people, Trump's accusing of phantom vandalism. Plus, the president unveils his new Qatari jet. Bill Pulte officially takes over as acting DNI. It appears that the outgoing DNI might have been under the influence of a cult leader. And we'll talk about the potentially criminal lobbying campaign behind Trump's decision to spring a convicted fraudster from jail. [02:33] New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan talked to Tommy about their explosive new book, Regime Change, which is full of fascinating revelations about Trump's second term White House. Did you think better of Donald Trump after reading? Yeah, he's just misunderstood. He's a good guy. He's just doing his best. He's got a moral core. This is good. No, it's a really good book. I really spent the day just inhaling it.

[03:03] made, what it's really like in the Oval Office, it's really, really good. Yeah, as someone who doesn't read books but is also a sicko, [03:09] I think I'm going to read this one. You're going to like it. You're going to like it, yeah. It's a page turner. All right. Let's talk about how the memo of Versailles is holding up. As of this recording, both the U.S. and Iran are now saying that the peace talks in Switzerland are going well and that they're making progress, though it certainly didn't seem like that over the weekend. The ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon briefly fell apart. Iran announced it closed the strait again. The U.S. said that wasn't true. And then Trump demanded that Iran rein in Hezbollah or the U.S. would resume bombing. [03:39] He also threatened to take over the Strait of Hormuz and seize 20 percent of the oil that passes through it, which is something that he can definitely do. J.D. Vance, who Trump has generously made the face of America's surrender to Iran, cited three points of progress on Monday. One, he said the U.S. and Iran agreed on measures to keep the strait open. Two, they agreed on a mechanism to diffuse flare ups between Israel and Hezbollah. [04:09] tore up Obama's Iran deal. [04:12] though we haven't seen confirmation of that yet from the Iranians. In exchange, the U.S. has agreed to waive sanctions on Iranian oil for 60 days. First time we've done that in like four decades. So congrats to Iran. Trump got asked about all this at a signing event in the Oval on Monday, just before we recorded, where he showed off his absolute command of what's going on. [04:33] If a war with Iran could cause a worldwide depression, as you noted, Mr. President, are you willing to risk economic catastrophe and strike Iran again? Well, not the way I'm doing it. It's not going to cause depression. Yes, but if they don't abide by the memorandum of understanding. Well, nuclear weapon supersedes depression. Depression is real bad. Nuclear weapon will cause depression. Are you sure that the Iranians won't use profits from oil sales to rebuild their military?

[05:03] supposed to use money to buy food for their people because right now the people are very hungry. As long as they respect us, we're going to be fine. What do you think? You think they're going to use all that money to buy food for their people? Oh, yeah. And then show us nothing but respect? For sure. There's nothing. There's nothing to stop them from using the money to buy whatever they want with it. That's not part of the deal. There's no deal. There's nothing. You want to just say that we're actually going to benefit from this because if they buy food, they're going to buy food from us. So really, the money finds its way back to us. What? Yeah. That's actually what he said. What are you talking about, dude? It's crazy. [05:33] over there. [05:34] I mean, who doesn't? Who doesn't? I want some now. Tommy, what do you make of the latest developments? Are we in a better place, a worse place, the same place? Too hard to tell? I mean, per that reporter's question about could the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz lead to an economic calamity and famine in places like Africa, I think we're in a worse place, because over the last week, Iran has signaled that they are willing to happily close the Strait of Hormuz again, or at least announce it's closed. And I think [06:02] What folks have to remember is like this is not a valve that goes on and off. This is a bunch of economic decisions made by shipping companies who are thinking to ourselves. We have these giant tankers. I could send it to the Strait of Hormuz. I could send it somewhere else. If there's a 3% chance it gets stuck in there for a couple of weeks because the Iranians fire off ballistic missiles or something worse could happen. They get shot at, you know, like that's a that's a big capital expenditure that could go to the bottom of the ocean for them. And so I'm worried about. [06:28] This is just kind of bumping along in an unsettled fashion for a while. I'm worried about ongoing high energy prices. I'm worried about the shortage of fertilizer shipments, which are already going to show up too late to hit a lot of crops and are going to lead to lower yields and less food for people and higher prices and more hunger. And then whatever this mechanism is to solve the flare-ups between Hezbollah and Israel, I don't buy that for a second. What is it, like a de-conflicting cell or something? Yeah, it's probably like a conference call.

[06:58] troops out of Lebanon. They're occupying six miles of territory into Lebanon. Hezbollah is going to attack them. The IDF will respond, and then it's going to lead to these events. So I don't feel great about it. [07:09] Yeah, I would say we're better off... [07:12] in peace talks than we were when there were no peace talks. We're better off not being in war than we were when we were at war. We are worse off than we were before the war started. And we are worse off than we were when there was the JCPOA in place. All these hawks who are trying to find their way to justify supporting this deal or not being as critical of this deal. I'm just [07:42] under the horrible, unacceptable worst deal in history made by Obama. I'm waiting for one thing where they've given up more. Because as of right now, how different would it look if Iran had said, [07:55] We are shutting the Strait of Hormuz unless until you negotiate a better deal with us. Like we are going to like, you know what I mean? Like we have not launched a war, but Arana just said, we're closing the Strait of Hormuz unless you give us a bunch until you give us a bunch of concessions. I don't know how much different it would look than this. [08:10] I saw that Steve Ratner on Twitter said that the oil waivers could bring them $10 billion in sanctions relief. [08:21] Not just oil sales. [08:24] There's a 60-day sanctioned waiver on oil sales. Those sales could be up to $10 billion. Also, he noted that in the JCPOA, we didn't give any sanctions relief until they allowed the inspectors into Iran.

[08:40] that the sanctions relief has happened, although they asked Trump about that. Then he's like, I'm not sure. I have to check in on that. And they haven't allowed a single weapons inspector into the country, nor have they even confirmed what J.D. Vance said about this, that they are willing to do so. And the devil is the details there. And remember, the JCPOA had lots of IAEA access and inspections, but the Republicans were mad that they would have to give 24-hour notice for certain sites, like SNAP inspections, right? [09:10] around. Like, yeah, I'm like, love it. I'm like glad we're in talks. I'm glad there's not an ongoing conflict. The devil is in the details here. And also we're still sending like these hapless idiots like J.D. Vance and Steve Wyckoff and Jared Kushner. And the Iranians are sending nuclear experts who have nothing better to do and nothing but time to grind them down. And they also know that Trump doesn't want to go back to war and has given up all his leverage, which just doesn't make me confident that we are going to get a better JCPOA. Again, [09:40] over, I'm not some hawk attacking him for the right here, but just sort of like realistically looking at the setup now after the war started and ended and now we're here, like Trump's leverage is just gone. He's given the sanctions relief. The threat of military action is gone. I just don't know how you get to a better deal. Did anyone happen to catch J.D. Vance's interview with Ross Douthat? Pieces. Yeah, when they talked about this and it was interesting because a lot of the things J.D. [10:08] people who don't want the war to go on like us. I was like, oh, that's good. That's a good case.

[10:13] But where he really stumbled... [10:15] or I think just lied, was talking about the JCPOA. At one point, he's like, the difference, the real difference between this deal and the Obama deal is the Obama deal just let them have all this enriched uranium that now this deal we're going to get to take away. That's the opposite. That's what I thought. I was going to text you, but I feel like I'll ask you here on the pod. I was like, didn't they enrich all the uranium after he pulled out of the deal? Under the JCPOA, they shipped out 97% of their stockpile. [10:45] Under this deal, they're talking about downblending it in sight and keeping it in the country. It's the opposite of what he's saying. Ridiculous. Ross did not press him on that. So we've talked a lot lately about how Republicans are coping with this. They continue to be all over the map from kissing Trump's ass to threatening new wars to open revolt. Let's take a listen. [11:05] If we have inspectors going in there and if that strait is open for business and oil is flowing, then I think it's very clear the United States will have won this conflict. If this deal fails, President Trump is going to take the Strait of Hormuz over by force. The United States will control the Strait of Hormuz. We'll charge a fee for all those who go through. [11:27] through to pay for the operation. And if Iran can test control of the Strait of Hormuz by the United States, we'll obliterate them. I would not support the Republican Party. There's no chance I would support the Republican Party. How could I or any American voter support a political party that's not loyal to the United States that puts the interest of a foreign country above those of its own citizens? Like, so no, I'm out. And if I'm out, then I think a lot of other people are out.

[11:57] to take over the Strait of Hormuz completely. And Jim Comer, the head of the Oversight Committee, he thinks that if the Strait is open and we get inspectors in there, we have won the conflict. What do you guys think? Are the fractures here getting worse or getting better? Yeah, the Strait is open. That's a victory, even though it was not something we had to worry about until they started the war inspectors back in, as you had under the old agreement that they tore up. [12:27] is the cope by the Iran hawks who are also apparatchiks trying to get behind what Trump is doing. And you saw Hugh Hewitt and Mark Levin doing this kind of like 4D chess, basically saying the political calculus is that in order to prevent Republican losses and deal with the fact that the country has not been persuaded to be in favor of this war, you have to get into negotiations and punt because then after the election, [12:54] then you can get back to bombing to bombing to well you know he called it uh clarity uh and then and then also said i assume if marco rubio is uh um seeing what's happening here that he would not go along with a deal that doesn't uh treat the iranian regime like the threat that it is and he would resign yeah usually he's pretty vocal and matters of conscience like this but but i do think it points to what [13:17] some of these hawks are hoping, which is that they can prevent the worst political blowback from the war, get costs down, and then go back to being bellicose regime changers once the midterms are behind us.

[13:30] Yeah, like ultimately, like guys like Lindsey Graham is always going to get in line because that's what he does. And, you know, he's talked in articles before about all he cares about is relevance and he wants to be up Trump's ass and get to play golf with him and be in the room. And he knows that Naga wants him just to be with Trump on everything. [13:50] So I think the elected Republicans will get in line. I think the Hawks will get in line and kind of keep their powder dry for another day. Ironically, Iran has more of a complicated system with factions that might oppose the deal. Like the IRGC, they're going to be out there loudly advocating against a deal. There's a bunch of nationalists sort of like forever getting whipped up. I think they can rightly say, like, why make a deal with the Americans? They just renege on them. They pull out. The next president will pull out anyway. Tucker, who knows what his incentives are these days. I mean, he's got an audience that he's building and maybe a presidential run. Can I just ask? [14:20] Why does Face the Nation book Lindsey Graham? He's like one of their most booked guests. He disgraced himself when it comes to the Iraq War. He was catastrophically wrong about Iran. [14:32] There in that clip, he's threatening... [14:34] to have Trump do something militarily that we all just watched Trump fail to do, which is defeat the Iranian regime militarily and then take control of the straight or hummus. If that was on the table, we would have done that. So like, why do we, why do we book this man on television just to like spew this hawkish bullshit? Like at what point do you get discredited and no longer invited on to face the nation or at least be in the penalty box for maybe a couple of weeks? I imagine when they're doing their booking, they're just saying, okay, we need, uh, we need the administration mouthpiece perspective. You got in a tie on a Sunday.

[15:04] or JD or something. We need someone who's going to spout that. [15:07] What's about that line, I guess? How are the pro-Trump hawks feeling? [15:10] You know, go to Lindsey Graham, who's basically proposing that the U.S. take over the Strait of Hermoves. I assume there'd be some sort of like maybe you have Disney help and do some sort of fast pass situation. You know, you got to use the genie app to get get through. It sort of begs the question, why haven't we done that already? [15:23] If it was on the table, we would have done it. Yeah, well, you didn't. But now we're going to go back and take 20% of aggregate oil revenue from this. Like, what the fuck? If you remember, there was a period time where we were begging Europe to help us do something we didn't need their help to do, which is retake the straight-up for moves, which we never did. It's just like, it's so fundamentally unserious, and he's such a discredited individual, but it speaks to how war is covered in Washington, where like, the hawkish view is the serious view. Right. These are the very serious people who talk about serious things in the Oval Office, and if you're anti-war, you're not. [15:52] Or you say, like, we should be pro-diplomacy. You are not booked on these shows or treated seriously. And it just drives me nuts. Well, you know who's not buying all this shit? [16:01] Voters. CBS, the same CBS that had Lindsey Graham on, has a new poll out on Sunday. Huge majority of people support ending the war, roughly 80-20. But by similar margins, they think we have not stopped Iran's nuclear program for good, created a better situation for Iran's people, or installed a regime that's friendlier to us. In other words, most voters are familiar with the reality of the situation. Just saying true things, American voters. Who would have guessed? Big picture, 70% of people say the war was not worth the cost. [16:31] say it was. Only one poll, but lots of good data, good questions in there. What jumped out at you guys?

[16:36] One thing was just a thing about what Tucker Carlson was saying there about being out and the other kind of people that would be out. You would think that the kind of America first MAGA crowd would be more skittish about continuing the conflict. But it found that among Republicans, 60-40 want to end the conflict now rather than continue until Iran gives up more. And it's a small difference, but actually fewer MAGA reps. But you said America first, which is telling me that's not America first. [17:06] I'm good with. Well, that's what I mean, right? That the people that you would think would be the America first sort of that were against these kind of interventions because they're behind Trump. It's their job to be supportive of Trump. There's no they're not brooking as much dissent here. I mean, I would say even the fact that 60 percent of Republicans want to end the conflict. Now, even 56 percent of MAGA Republicans does tell you how unpopular this is. But I think it's striking that you don't have a bigger break among people that would have considered themselves more aligned with Tucker. Yeah. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, you get 70 percent of the country saying this was not worth the cost. [17:36] much you don't get 70 for much i too love it i was kind of like struck by the the splits within maga the 56 saying end it now 44 continue to get more from iran keep fighting to get more from iran but then you know they did like kind of an intra maga self-identified maga poll and and um 90 of like the maga people pulled to the deal was better for run 19 of all republicans said the deal was better from iran so it just i don't know it it speaks to the way uh the failure here has broken

[18:06] the cult members. And I think it tells you something about wars and how they end up being damaging for presidents. It's like presidents are actually often not, [18:15] Uh, you don't, you don't get hurt politically if you kind of bump along, but if you end a war and are perceived to have lost the war, I think voters will punish you. Uh, and it seems like we're seeing the beginnings of that for Trump. [18:27] One number that stuck out at me that could be a problem for them [18:30] in a problem for the administration in the coming weeks and months. There's a plurality, 42% think gas prices will go down in the next few weeks. And there is an expectation, you can tell in these polls, that they think it is over. And now things are going to get better financially, economically, and maybe that happens eventually. But I think it's going to take a bit of time just because the price of oil is falling doesn't mean the price of gas will as well. And you're seeing, [19:00] rating take up a point from last time, which is, you know, like margin of error, meaning that's meaningless. But overall, you've seen some, you know, last week, I'd say maybe the generic ballot got like a point closer to Republicans, too. So there might be some expectation around the war ending that relief is coming that I don't know if Trump is actually going to be able to deliver on, which is certainly something to watch for, which is why I think he's giving like this 60 day immediate license to the Iranians to sell oil and gas because they're trying to flood the zone. [19:30] fast as they can. I agree it's an open question about how quickly gas prices come down and whether they come down to where they were and whether that's kind of how people are anchoring this in their mind. Yeah, but gas prices aren't just determined by the amount of oil that Iran lets through the strait. And by the way, it's not as if the strait is back up to where it was before. There's still much less traffic through there. But if you have Iran, I think, immediately saying we are going to close the strait again, I think purposely, whatever the inciting cause,

[20:00] that at any moment we can shut this thing down again, that that is our power and we plan to use it. How is that going to give anybody confidence that prices are going to be reliable, that oil will be reliable, that you can count on prices coming down? [20:12] Trump threatening them, threatening to kill negotiators. I mean, we're just... It's just millennial locker room talk. [20:19] It's called it. [20:29] Positive America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Whether you own your own business or in a position to hire, you want to find people who are as excited about the work you do as you are. ZipRecruiter is a new feature that quickly lets you see the most interested and qualified candidates first so you meet the right people faster. And now you can try it out for free at ziprecruiter.com slash crooked. ZipRecruiter's smart matching technology connects you with qualified candidates instantly. Candidates can tell you in their own words why they're interested in the job. No wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. [20:59] Media. We've hired a bunch of great people. It made the process way faster. You get great candidates almost instantly. It helps you sort through them quickly. You can find folks who are actually interested in the job and not just applying to a million jobs. We highly recommend it. Use ZipRecruiter and find enthusiastic talent fast. Four to five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash crooked. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash crooked. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. [21:29] Pod Save America is brought to you by HIMSS. ED is way more common than most guys think. Millions of guys deal with it at some point, and that's exactly why HIMSS offers a straightforward way to handle it. HIMSS connects you with licensed healthcare providers online, giving you simple access to legitimate ED treatment options from home. No awkward appointments, no pharmacy lines, just complete a simple online intake, and a provider will review your information to determine if treatment is right for you. If prescribed, your treatment ships directly to your door in discreet ways.

[21:53] packaging. That includes Sildenafil, also known as generic for Viagra, available through HIMSS at up to 95% less than the brand name version. And if that option isn't right for you, there are additional treatment options available so you can find what works best for your body. It's straightforward, transparent, and designed to make getting care feel easy. To get simple online access to personalized, affordable care for ED, weight loss, and more, visit HIMSS.com slash crooked. That's HIMSS.com slash crooked for your free online visit. HIMSS.com slash crooked. Prescription [22:23] information. Sildenafil is the generic version of Viagra. Viagra is a registered trademark of Viatris Specialty LLC. HIMSS is not affiliated with or endorsed by Viatris. [22:32] All right, we briefly discussed this on Friday's pod, but Iran isn't the only war Trump's lost lately. He's also been defeated by the algae in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Turns out Trump's Mar-a-Lago pal who got the no-bid contract for $14 million and counting to renovate the Reflecting Pool, a fellow convicted criminal by the name of John Cafaro, have you seen this guy's picture? [22:57] Incredible. Yes. I recommend everyone Google right now, John Cafaro, find the photo of him in the 80s wearing the double-breasted suit. Is it a comb-over or a hairpiece? I don't know. It looks like he's trying to kill the Aristocats. [23:16] He pleaded guilty to bribing James Travickin. Yeah, that's who it was. I saw the bribery. Hair on hair violence. Those guys both had amazing sets of hair.

[23:27] that got the no-bid contract. He looks like when he gets mad... [23:32] the his uh his shirt rolls up like what's that thing called when you have a tuxedo thing the tuxedo front it looks like it rolls up that probably happened when he found out about the algae so john kafara didn't do the top-notch work he's known for um and now they have to drain the pool and start from scratch the president per usual is blaming everyone else including reporter john carl of abc news quote dirty cop james comey and other alleged vandals five of whom have apparently been arrested including a former olympic canoer who says he was just reaching [24:02] the pool to feel the detached liner. Seems like he was up the reflecting pool without a paddle, this guy. [24:07] Trump threatened the rest of us with a 10-year prison sentence for the destruction or even the attempted destruction of such things, which he said, quote, will be fully enforced. Naturally, Trump got a lot of appropriately skeptical questions on this in the Oval on Monday. [24:24] Here's what he said. [24:26] Are the contractors who did the initial work with the reflecting pool, are they to blame for the current condition? No, no, we have vandals. You know, we have 100 and we have a... [24:37] I think 290, 300 foot slit right through it. Probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind. The National Guard and police have been all over the mall. How would these vandals have gotten so close to do something like that? Do you have any proof of the slit? I mean, we didn't have a lot of them then. Who would think that somebody would go into a pool and take a knife and start cutting it? Did you have proof of that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your photos or videos? Well, let's put it this way.

[25:02] When you have a 350, I think it's 350, not 250, a 350-foot slit from one end to the other, you think that's proof? You think that's proof? The employees have been down there today looking for that slit that you mentioned. What you'd have to do is see the parks requirement. They'll show it to you. I'm curious about this situation. We stood here with you in April when you first revealed the plans. I said what? In April, you showed us pictures of what you were going to do at the pool, and you said you had a guy who was going to do it in a week for about a million dollars. [25:32] Well, it's been two months, $16.5 million. Okay, ready? Barack Hussein Obama, have you ever heard of him? Yeah. He spent two years and over $100 million. I spent two months, maybe, less, and I have a better product. Now, I can't help it if somebody goes in with a knife and starts hacking it up. And we also have pictures of it. Can you release the photos? Yeah, at the right time, you'll see it. You'll see it in court. He's so pissed. [26:02] the guy who did the slit. Yeah, is it with a box feather? Like it's a reflecting pool of Muhammad Atta? Also, I wonder... [26:12] Where someone could have possibly gotten the idea to use a knife... [26:16] to cut the reflecting pool. [26:19] Might have a clue here. Let's watch. [26:21] This will last for at least 50 years. You'll never have a leak. It's very strong. You couldn't – if you had a knife, I don't want to give anybody ideas. If you had a knife, you can't even cut it. So strong, so powerful. Powerful rubber.

[26:36] Not so powerful. So I feel like this went from mostly funny to fairly alarming now that they're trying to arrest – [26:42] Random scapegoats just because Trump can't admit he fucked up. What do you guys make of this whole situation? [26:48] So... [26:49] You make a big deal about how you're going to finally fix the pool because Barack Hussein Obama and Joe Biden couldn't do it. You're the only one who has the ability to do it. You do a no bid contract for a guy who is the crony picture in the crony entry of the dictionary. You declare victory. Then all of a sudden the allergy is coming back. And so you have your... [27:07] people lie about that. They post pictures saying that it's better, that this is not real, it's perfect, it's perfect, it's perfect. The lie draws more attention to the story, so reporters start covering it, okay? Because you hyped it up so much and are lying, the media is making more of an issue of it, so you start blaming saboteurs, even though they don't seem to exist. That generates only more coverage. Now you're arresting random people for checking out the mess that you've made. Now you've [27:37] gross incompetence, corruption, and rising fascism. So there's even more coverage. And then you declare that the media is obsessed. Why is the media so obsessed with what's happening to the reflecting pool? Well, maybe you went and held up a picture about who you were the one that was going to fix it and then turned it into just an example of every aspect of the lying, the lawlessness, the corrupt deals that you're making, the incompetence. You've just turned it into a

[28:07] wrong in this administration so yeah people are gonna cover it i'm still in the mostly funny camp i mean i'm imagining jim comey at his house like cultivating sea monkeys in the backyard releasing them into the reflecting pool that's funny like john cafaro having a company called green water services that's fine that's some funny shit too obviously it's bad that they're arresting this random olympian man who was just biking around and accusing of sabotaging like you watch um uh [28:37] to seeing her, you know, like six Chardonnays deep, just kind of like doing a primetime hit. And then you remember, oh, wait, this woman can issue a subpoenas. That's actually a little scary. It's bad. But I think all of this will probably go away because obviously this is just algae grows because it's sunny. [28:52] And it's hot in the pool and there's water in it. It's what we're talking about. And it sounds like they just, they just did everything wrong. They did a bad job is the, is the other thing. And they spent a lot of money on it. Also, um, [29:02] Like, none of these people are going to jail because, like, all of this is going to get laughed out of court. TMZ, TMZ DC, was down there all day today, and they have all this footage of people being, like, arrested, detained. And these people are, like, you can see on camera, they're just, like, look, some of them are just looking down to take pictures. And, like, seven, like, there's, like, park police. It's madness. There's DC. They're all, it's complete madness. It is just madness. [29:28] It is a lie on the level of like, now we're back to like Sean Spicer and the inaugural crowd. It's like, you know who cut the 300-foot slit in the reflecting pool? Fucking no one. Because that, it just, it did not happen. Because you look at the reflecting pool, there is no slit visible. Reporters have looked even since he just said that. So it didn't happen. It's impossible to do that. 300 feet, that's the size of a football field.

[29:58] cut us up the size of the football field and no one's going to pay attention to that no one's going to see that they're not going to be seen also even if they did wouldn't cause the algae wouldn't cause the problem also you spend 14 million dollars on a reno that can be undid with a box cutter what kind of renovation is that it's also not a there's chunks of it floating up all over the fucking thing the algae's been growing since last week it's what everybody said [30:21] would happen. I just... [30:23] Obviously, this is very silly, but now we're at the point where they got federal cops patrolling the National Mall to arrest people who are going to point things out that embarrass the dear leader. It is the ballroom and now this. These are perfect metaphors for what this administration has done. I think it's the kind of thing that will stick with people in part because it's all so stupid that this is what's taking up the president's time. [30:49] Even if no one was paying attention to it, it would probably still take up his time. [30:52] Yeah, well, he's the reason we're all paying attention. He's the reason we're all focused on this. He drove his ass down to the reflecting pool. This all started with him doing a drive-by at the thing. We're going to build a wall around this thing, too. They're going to have to cover it up. They are. They're going to cover it up so people can't take photos of it the same way they built that giant wall around the renovation of the ballroom because they didn't want embarrassing photos of the ballroom. It's not going to go away. The reflecting pool is just there. It's a big part of the National Mall. It's eight acres big. It's massive. And it is not going to be fixed for a long time. They don't know how to fix it. [31:22] serious this administration is about punishing people who destroy federal property. It's just something that they have cared about for a long time. Take it very seriously. Take it very, very seriously. Every single person who did that on January 6th, completely free, pardoned, commuted. And now they're just arresting random people, which is fascinating. He's also now saying that it's people are dumping fertilizer in there. Vandals are dumping fertilizer. So they got that

[31:52] in there. Yeah, the Comey thing for those who didn't pay attention is someone, there was some vandalism where someone on the lawn did like an 8647. Unrelated to the reflecting pool. Unrelated to the reflecting pool. Carved 8647 in grass. Right. Truth about it. And so Trump thinks that because Comey did that with the shells or took a picture of the shells and posted it, which he's now also being prosecuted for, that someone was inspired by that. [32:17] to box cut his reflecting pool. [32:20] It's been one of the stupidest fucking things. We've covered a lot of stupid stories. This is going to be a chapter. [32:28] you're going to want to come back to yeah when the trump story is we'll probably forget about it by the end of the trump administration but the reflecting pool this is one of the dumber ones i i don't know that look i think it's going to be in the ballroom category because this is just going to be something for months and months now they got to drain it again it's not like their plan worked the first time they got a better plan this time because apparently the shit they put down on the floor of that reflecting pool didn't work uh it's still i don't is it the same jag off that's going to be doing the next round is so are they getting a new new no-bit contract of blue [32:58] Just nuking it with chemicals. Well, it's so funny because when the whole thing started, they were like, it seems kind of strange. He's hiring just like a pool guy. [33:04] And he's like, nah, he's got it. [33:06] Well, it's also funny that last time we recorded, I think the Department of Interior was just posting fake pictures of the pool as blue and saying everything's great. So they thought that was their plan for all. They were just going to AI their way through it. And I guess now they're like, all right, the AI stuff didn't work. So now we're going to have to blame some fake vandals. And now we're going to. We're not that far away from like the government posting. Great news, everybody. Gas is down to $11 a gallon. You're all getting more chocolate this week. Your chocolate rations are up.

[33:36] the brand new Qatari Force One that he'll be flying around in and ultimately taking with him when he leaves the White House as a parting gift. The government won't say how much we all paid to retrofit the new plane, though the Secretary of the Air Force said in a hearing last year that it would probably be less than $400 million. Privately, the Air Force said it would use some of its nuclear modernization funds to pay for upgrading the plane, because why do we need those? [34:06] They are calling the plane project classified, which is why they're not revealing any of the costs. Not that Trump wants you to think this thing was done cheaply. He's actually proud of how much money it cost. Here he is now. This plane was transformed into a flying White House at a level of luxury that nobody's ever seen before. [34:29] Probably even almost outside of an airplane. Nobody's ever seen anything like this. [34:34] nobody's ever seen anything like it. It's nicer than any room outside of an airplane. That's all but a very small set of rooms. [34:44] There's still another two Air Force Ones on order. This is just what the Pentagon is calling a bridge aircraft. Well, he's going to steal it after. This is the bridge one because this is the one he takes to go. This is the to-go one. This is the one he's going to take with him. How well do you think this one pulls? I mean, I talked to Maggie and Jonathan Swan about this. [35:04] that Qatar initially wanted to be paid $150 to $200 million for the plane. And then suddenly the plane was a gift. And they report that the idea for making a gift was, quote, generated at the POTUS level. So it's just part of this ongoing corruption story. I think this has really become a monument to the corruption, and it really broke through in the moment. And I do think this is a big problem for him politically, to the extent that he cares. I mean, it is a problem for him politically. But one of his superpowers, as we all remember,

[35:34] apprentice and with the art of the deal was that he was a brilliant businessman and he was rich and he didn't need this job and he had all the money he wanted. This was really a sacrifice coming into government. [35:44] The plane, the narrative around the corruption has really pierced that narrative. And [35:50] You would think he would care, but then we watch him do a rollout of his corrupt gift. Very proud. Where he does remarks in a staged photo op. You think the Qataris are feeling like they got their money's worth? Yeah, this worked out great for them. You think they give this free airplane and look what they got. They got Iran blowing their shit up and their economy in trouble because of the war in the Middle East that Trump caused. I don't know if they feel like they got a good deal out of this. Sitting there next to JD doing track changes to that fucking document. No, no, no. We can't do that. [36:20] doing that they're not doing that that that that that that the it is like [36:24] It's interesting the difference between term one and term two with Trump, right? Because term one, he felt like he gets all the prestige and benefits of being president. He loves having that plane. He would do speeches in front of the plane. He loves doing that. And it was always such a bummer to have Trump. [36:39] you know, garner the prestige of the White House, right? Like he had that power behind him, which he did. [36:45] And that included Air Force One. It was like, oh, so sad to see it. [36:49] Donald Trump representing our country on that plane. And now we're going to have this new version of the plane that looks different. And it's actually his plane that he's taking with him. And so now whenever he gets off the plane, we're going to have this little symbol of corruption behind him in every shot. And he's going to still use it like he did the old one. But there behind him is the proof that he is the most corrupt leader on earth, maybe the most corrupt, certainly the most corrupt president in American history, right there on the tarmac.

[37:14] What do you guys think of the red, white, and blue? I kind of like it. I like it. Yeah, it looks pretty cool. I mean, the old version, I like the old version too, like the Robin's egg blue on the bottom. And that was also a little piece of history. I mean, that was redesigned by JFK in 1962. [37:31] He also spent a bunch of time personally with a designer named Raymond Lowy, redesigning the look of Air Force One. And Trump just sort of trashed that as he's trashing the Kennedy Center and renaming that and all these other monuments and institutions. [37:44] It's a piece of a puzzle. But yeah, I mean, aesthetically, it's like, it's a sick plane. As far as Donald Trump being in charge of any kind of design, I feel like he didn't fuck it up too badly. It looks good. It's not like the oval. No, I thought it could have. We'll see what the inside looks like yet. We haven't seen the inside yet. I saw a few pictures. I haven't seen the, I just saw the outside. I think it's just bigger and better. It's bigger, but yeah. [38:14] they have a waving american flag like that's no good cheap paint like it looks tacky and it doesn't fit with the design it does fit with his design yes which is that makes me okay good at least there's some trump on there yeah so instead of having just sort of a classic straight american flag as you would on that's not waving because it's not a fucking flag it's a painting of a flag so you don't need to paint it waving they painted the cheesy waving thing on it which looks like ass i'm surprised he didn't put his fucking name on it i am too busy again in the maggie and jonathan's

[38:44] Caroline Levitt walks into the Oval Office and Trump is personally super gluing some little gaudy gold thing onto the mantelpiece. Oh my God. He's so personally engaged and invested in this stuff. Because he's a bored old man. He really is just bored. Who has no interest in governing. Yes. It's just like, why couldn't he go into like- He has interest in using the governing to make money. [39:04] for himself and his friends, and to settle old scores. And interior design. And that's it. An interior design. That's his hobby in golf. Yeah, at least, like, Howard Hughes... [39:13] had the decency to lock the door and fill the jars with piss. Like this guy's just got, it's like a, just a different kind of, of, of, uh, kind of old craziness of like putting your name on everything, putting gold on everything. The question of what does Qatar think they got a good deal here is an interesting one because remember in the first term, Qatar was briefly like blockaded by all the other countries in the Gulf. Oh yeah. And then ultimately that deal was mediated by Jared Kushner. [39:43] the time when the Qataris, I think, finally came in and bailed Jared out for the 666 Park Ave or whatever real estate deal he had done that went terribly south because they did the biggest real estate investment in Manhattan history right before the financial crisis. It's interesting, though, because Qatar is tiny and super isolated and pisses all its friends off through Al Jazeera and its foreign policy choices. I think they wanted to get in well with Trump, but then, of course, the Iran stuff complicates the ledger here on whether this worked out well. [40:13] gave a plane to one president, now the expectation is going to be that every American president gets a plane for the military. Here's a plane. Can you do us a favor and stop...

[40:23] causing foreign policy disasters that lead to our hotels exploding. That would be great. If you could just, we gave you the fucking plane. We got a, we got a Rosewood on fire here. [40:34] We're trying to convince people that it's awesome and no big deal that we're this close to these, to Iran. And you're kind of. Influencers aren't doing it. We need it. Jesus Christ, you know. [40:44] Yeah, the gay people can't hold hands, but we got a fucking Four Seasons going. Can you help us out? [40:49] Trying to build an even taller building. [40:59] Pot Save America is brought to you by Helix. Sleep is, I think, maybe the most important thing in my life. When I get a good night's sleep, I feel great. I'm ready to tackle my day. I'm better at work, better at being a parent, better at working out, better at eating, everything. And when you get a bad night's sleep... [41:15] It sucks. And you feel s***. And your body hurts. And you're just not as ready to... [41:21] live. How about that? I was ready to be alive. Love it. One important part of getting a great night's sleep is having a great mattress. Helix will deliver one right to your door with free shipping in the US. How do you know which mattress is right for you? Take the Helix sleep quiz and you get matched with the perfect mattress based on your personal preferences and sleep needs. They have over 20 mattress models so you can find the perfect model for you. The Happy with Helix guarantee offers a risk-free customer first experience designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. You can rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. Plus, [41:51] offers a 120-night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty. We have a Helix mattress at our house. It is unbelievably comfortable. We actually have it in the guest room, so whenever folks come and stay with us, they'll always say, what a comfortable bed, what a great night's sleep. And we say, you know what? Helix. I can send one to you tomorrow. Go to helixsleep.com slash crooked for 20% off site-wide, 25% off luxed mattresses, and 30% off elite mattresses. That's helixsleep.com slash crooked for 20% off site-wide, 25% off luxed mattresses,

[42:21] such as helixsleep.com slash crooked. [42:25] Pod Save America is brought to you by Smalls. Smalls makes fresh human-grade food for cats. It's made from the same stuff you or I would eat. [42:32] but formulated specifically to help cats thrive. Cats are obligate carnivores. You need lots of, I don't know what an obligate carnivore is. I don't either. Just a carnivore. What a helpful description. Yeah, I guess we're, what is it called? Multivore? What is humans? Multiverse? [42:47] Omnivore. That's our dilemma. That's wrong. Omnivore. I love being an omnivore. The multiverse dilemma. I don't want to be an obligate carnivore like one of those meat people from YouTube. [42:57] The liver king over here. Those meat people, their faces are bright red. You can see every vein in their body. [43:02] felt better. I don't know that you know what feeling better is. [43:05] And the point is, your cat... [43:09] Gotta keep that cat healthy, and that means meat. [43:12] Most cat food out there uses meat byproducts and cuts their food with cheap grain, filler, artificial ingredients. Basically, it's full of stuff that isn't great for your cat, just so the big pet food companies can save a couple of dollars. [43:23] Smalls is different. Their fresh recipes are over 80% animal protein, and they never use fillers or artificial ingredients. Their food is so healthy that 88% of cat parents say that after feeding Smalls, [43:34] They notice that their cat has better digestion, softer and shinier, [43:38] coats, I spoon, and have more energy to play because it's actually good for cats. If you want to invest in your cat's health, Smalls has given you 60% off your cat's first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life. [43:49] When you go to smalls.com slash crooket, your life or the cat's life?

[43:52] you know, [43:53] Honestly, good question. [43:54] Smalls.com slash crooked. That's 60% of your first order plus free shipping and free treats for life. [44:00] When you head to smalls.com slash crooked. [44:03] All right, we didn't get a chance last week to talk about the latest with the Bill Pulte saga. [44:10] Well, surprise, this corrupt moron has now taken over for Tulsi Gabbard as the acting director of national intelligence, a development that both Democrats and Republicans had tried to avoid. As Senator Mark Warner explained to Tommy, the original plan was to immediately confirm Trump's permanent pick for the job, federal prosecutor and former SEC chair Jay Clayton. [44:40] on the job. [44:43] Why do you guys think that Trump didn't want his own pick? Jay Clayton confirmed as soon as possible. He did pick him. Well, it's hard to be inside of his mind. I think there's two things going on. One is the... [44:54] the machinations around FISA and getting, um, [44:58] The SDNY confirmed who is a former federal prosecutor, but also his personal lawyer at I think Sullivan and Cromwell, I think is where he is. So he's sort of wants to get one of his guys in at SDNY. Fine. I think also Bill Pulte can do a lot of damage being DNI for a couple of weeks. Get some get some good, good, good political prosecutions going if he wants.

[45:28] James and all the rest. So yeah, let's get it. He gets it, you know, get your fingers into the, all the intelligence you want for a couple of weeks. That's valuable. Apparently someone, a source familiar, [45:39] told CNN just before we recorded that Pulte is going to start carrying out firings, that the deep state firings have begun and that part of it is to, I guess, get him in there so he can fire a bunch of fucking deep state people. Yeah. So Mark Warner, when I talked to him, was so concerned about Bill Pulte's access to information or being in the job even for a minute that he was basically ready to unanimously just like confirm Clayton by UC, just like push him forward and get it done. I think that Trump's weird gambit here is like he's mad that Republicans told him no about [46:09] to just freak out and decide to change the kind of up the ante um i think he genuinely seems to think that he can use uh the bipartisan desire to uh pass a very important intelligence collection program as a way to shoehorn in the save act and get that done which um is their crazy bill to like tackle the made-up problem of non-citizen voter registration which doesn't happen but then with [46:39] information, find stuff about his enemies, and then refer to the DOJ or do something with it? Or does Trump just want a purge of D&I employees? I don't really get why he couldn't have had Tulsi Gabbard do a purge of D&I employees. It also seems like Jay Clayton would be happy to do that, too. Jay Clayton is not some, like, yeah, he's better than Bill Pulte, but he's been very loyal to Trump. He's a very MAGA. I do think he's a serious person who is a serious prosecutor, was the SEC.

[47:06] So he's had big jobs and hopefully brings some relevant experience to this job. Pulte is obviously a clown. [47:12] Speaking of Tulsi Gabbard, did either of you guys read the insane Washington Post story about the cult she grew up in that maybe still controls her? [47:21] Wild. It's a real story. Yeah, it's one of those things where because it's coming out after... [47:28] She's gone. It's like, oh, well, whew. [47:30] She shouldn't be DNI. Well, and she's not. But man, you kind of the thing that I took away from it is. [47:36] One of the things about Tulsi Gabbard, I think that is she's just a puzzle. She's just kind of confusing figure. It was like a few more pieces went into place after that story. Yeah, but like it was always like, wait, she, you know, she introduces Bernie at the convention. She used to be seen as on the left. She was anti-war, had this strange refusal to criticize Assad, then goes in this Trump direction. It was all just confusing her. She was ideologically confusing. And then you dig into it and there's this collection of memos. First of all, you've never seen anything like it. [48:06] There's a collection of memos that seem to be from this figure, this sort of religious leader inside of her life. [48:15] these kind of like harsh, like insulting directives coming all the time in her direction, what she should say on television, what bills she should introduce, how should she talk about certain issues? They deny that it's him. There's a lot of denials in the thing, but there's also references inside of these memos to his own life that don't refer to anybody else. Also, she said there's like they matched like what she actually said on TV in the legislation she introduced and they matched exactly to all these memos where this person was telling her

[48:45] that you have this collection of people [48:48] It's all this sort of strange bit of it. It's very cultish. It's also very like ham fisted and silly and amateur. They have a collection of people running dummy accounts to comment under articles on Hawaii newspapers about Tulsi and like on Twitter and all the rest. It's this little kind of ramshackle, small operation. And then at one point, which I thought it spoke to the kind of, I don't know what kind of like master plan they thought they were implementing that, that once Trump started running, [49:18] one of the notes says something along the lines of, it's a shame you're not running because he's doing what you were going to do. It's like, be president? What are we talking about? I mean, she ran and apparently thinks the DNI is a platform to run again in this. [49:30] wants to try and it's apparently a thing that she and trump had gotten in fights about because you know remember when she put out that weird video uh after getting back to hiroshima about nuclear annihilation it was like clearly the context was in the midst of both the putin russia talks but also the iran negotiations and trump i guess yelled at her about it i mean my reaction to the story was similar to yours love it which is like she's such a bizarre character and like maybe this helps us understand this fucking weirdo that she was just taking literal

[50:00] ever and that she will not run for president again apparently like i think was it roger stone or steve bannon one of those guys thinks that she could actually run but it's fucking it's crazy this person was the director of national intelligence like just sort of speaks to the utter failure of vetting for any of these individuals yeah or the success of the vetting because it seems like this is who he wants to [50:23] sack his administration with. You've got RFK, conspiracy theorists, kooks. I mean, John Swain, who wrote the story, he said with his Washington Post colleague, Aaron Schaefer, I compared Gabbard's remarks in 32 TV interviews between 2014 and 2016 with the talking points memos intended for them. This is what the cult leader wrote, although he didn't sign his name to them, but they're all from the same person. On 24 occasions out of the 32, Gabbard used language [50:53] her entire congressional career she's just going on tv and saying the war i mean this is like this is like a right-wing conspiracy but it's real they think of like you know like democrats being controlled by global forces but like here's tulsi gabbard just going on tv introducing legislation that this random cult leader told her to what's funny too is they're trying to now say they're like oh this is just anti-hindu bigotry when i say there's nothing there's nothing hindu going on [51:23] this was the one that said uh no matter how much you basically to paraphrase it don't worry no matter how much you fuck up tomorrow i love you and krishna loves you which i did really appreciate there was one memo that i thought was very funny because it was um it was very uh it was about uh some statement she gave at least after the state of the union and it was actually had some like very good advice which was something along the lines of like hey you just gave a generic boring statement you sound like a politician if you have nothing to say don't say anything but you only have something to say if you're prepared let this let's get this guy in a democratic campaign yeah

[51:53] lot of consultants we've got going. The range of the advice was funny. It was like, introduce this exact policy, and then some emails would be like, stop doing the weird eye thing. You know what? I read that, and I was like, oh, she does do a weird eye thing. Yeah, he was on to something there. It reminded me, I remember there was somebody, when I was working for Hillary [52:15] she went to the floor to speak on the Senate floor by some issue. And one of the consultants accidentally replied, all meanting this and send the note to just one person. And the email just said something like, how could you let Hillary go out there looking like shit like that? She was on the reply. No, no, Hillary, the whole staff, we all got it. I wasn't, that was early in my days. I was not on a small email chain about Hillary. Well, I didn't know if she was included in the office. No, no, no, I don't think she was. I don't think she was. That person would have been vaporized. Yeah, just sort of blipped out of existence. [52:45] I mean, maybe we all need like a cult leader in our lives, given unvarnished feedback, you know? That is true. That's what Dan's for. [52:53] That's why we read Message Box. Way to the memos come out. Yeah, they are. You can subscribe. [52:59] Speaking of corrupt goons, we should talk about the wild and infuriating New York Times story that sheds new light on why Trump may have freed a convicted fraudster. [53:08] named David Gentile, less than two weeks into a seven-year sentence after Gentile stole over a billion dollars from what the Times calls thousands of mostly mom-and-pop investors. The commutation also meant Gentile no longer had to pay as much as $15.5 million in restitution. Well, apparently, according to Ken Vogel at the Times, a couple of Trump's political appointees killed an early-stage investigation

[53:38] in quote, jailhouse communications, where he discussed making over $2 million worth of payments to secure his freedom. The Times reported that one of the people who communicated with Gentile in prison, in quote, came under scrutiny by investigators was Reverend Frank Mann, a retired Catholic priest from Queens, who's friends with Trump and spoke at his inauguration last year. [54:01] Wild. What do you think? Like, is this the kind of thing Democrats should investigate if they take Congress or does this fall into the category of things we can't really do much about because the pardon power is absolute? Oh, we've got it. This is some of the most brazen corruption of the administration. And by the way, like, again, a lot of there's going to be a lot of people that say we shouldn't be looking backwards. But one of the reasons we're going to have to look backwards is we understand what we need to do to fix it. [54:31] protect our democracy. So I think we absolutely should be investigating this. One other reason to do it is [54:38] There is daylight here between Trump and some of the people around Trump. Like if you notice the Caroline Levitt statement in that article says something like the idea that people would be trying to profit off of clemency is like repugnant or something to that effect. At least cut Trump in. Yeah, yeah. Let the man get his beak wet. All right. He's got a lot of renovation. He's got to do a lot of interior decorating. He's got a lot of expenses, a lot of renovation projects.

[55:08] his word had commuted this guy's sentence. And there's one point in the story where it seems as though this former priest accidentally butt dialed the reporter and left a message while he was talking about meeting with Trump and having lunch with him. So I do think we should be investigating this. I do think there's just an incredible amount of corruption going on around Trump related to these pardons and commutations. Wouldn't you love to hear the conversation between Trump and the priest? [55:35] When he asked him if it was him. Oh, yeah. [55:37] Yeah. If he took any money. I mean, Trump is immune from prosecution around pardons, but the people selling pardons are not. So we should absolutely investigate the hell out of it and see if we can bring some of them to justice. And also, I think stories like this where you've got this corrupt guy who, what, defrauded $1.6 billion worth of money from mom and pop investors is how it's described. Like this directly connects. [55:58] the corruption to how it's hurting you. This is like kind of the exact sweet spot of the messaging. And again, my thoughts, when I read this, my first thought was like, oh, this is going to end up in a John Ossoff. Absolutely. Probably it was already there. Like a video. Yeah. And then, you know, you heard about this? You heard about this one? You read about this? And then, you know, again, I talked to Maggie and Jonathan about this, but just all the examples of corruption. And Jonathan's one was like, they're very serious journalists, right? Like I'm trying to fuck around and they're just being, you know, telling me just the facts of the reporting. [56:28] And Swan looks into the camera and he's like, I think we know about 1% of the corruption stories that... [56:36] Oh, that's actually happening here. So just the avenues for investigative reporting, lawsuits, congressional oversight. Like there's a million stories like this that we do not know that we are going to have to try to find out. And that's the only way I think that the MAGA cult will ever realize that this man was taking advantage of them and harming them, by the way.

[56:54] It doesn't take a leap of faith to believe these stories. Like, oh, you think that a bunch of... [57:00] criminals, people who were convicted of crimes, including the president and this in this guy that he's sentenced and commuted. You don't think that he was selling. He was in jail and think to himself, how do I get out? Well, I got to have Donald Trump do it. Who can get to Donald Trump? Well, someone that maybe I can pay. Maybe this friend who's a Catholic priest, whatever, like in the retired Catholic priest who just happens to be Donald Trump's buddy. Of course this happened. What are you talking about? By the way, like the story inside of this, like the retired priest [57:30] of Trump's parents then sent the picture and that's what gets him invited. The whole thing reeks. The whole thing just, it's just like, what are we talking about? It is the culture that Donald Trump created when he got to the White House and basically was like, oh, I'm going to just pardon anyone who I want to pardon. And it doesn't matter what kind of crime you committed, January 6th rioters, people who defrauded people, whatever it be. Like, if you can curry favor with me and you know me and you're connected to me, you get a pardon. [58:00] to Donald Trump for pardons. Why wouldn't you? If you're in jail, you know you've been in jail for 10 years, and then all of a sudden this glimmer of hope opens that if you get this money to some schmuck around Trump, some lobbyist or consultant around Trump, that you could potentially get out. He'll walk away. Get Sam Bankman-Fried now being like, he wants a pardon. I literally was just going to say, Sam Bankman-Fried is like openly lobbying Trump for a pardon. Tomorrow he's going to be like, I saw the guy who used the box cutter on the pool. I will bribe you, sir.

[58:30] But also, when the President of the United States takes a plane from the Qatari government or sells half of his crypto company in a secret deal to an Emirati-backed investment firm, everyone around him sees that. And that... [58:45] approach to governing filters through everyone else. They're all thinking, how do I get mine? I think there's this fatigue. Any one of these scandals would have defined a previous administration, but Trump, we get glamoured by the ways in which there's always a new scandal and a new controversy. This is Republicans in Congress because if... [59:09] The reason it got to this point, the reason we have this level of corruption is because there have been multiple scandals which, [59:17] If they had marched to the podium and say this stops today, it could have stopped. [59:20] and they chose not to, they are responsible for this. They are the ones that are enabling this every day. [59:25] The corrective for this in the Constitution is, of course, impeachment. And, you know, there's obviously going to be a question if Democrats take Congress back to impeach Trump because it's obviously not going to go anywhere. There's part of me that thinks like you just do it as a matter of fact, like, hey, look at all this corruption. [59:55] The president committed a bunch of crimes, stole a bunch of money from people. Like, you don't have to make a big deal of it. I don't know. I'm still thinking about it. Like, I don't... It is hard to go down that path because it takes up a lot of oxygen, but...

[1:00:04] But again, when someone when a president does this kind of thing, when he abuses the pardon power, when he is this corrupt, when he's stealing from the American people, the remedy in the Constitution is to impeach the guy. And if you don't do that, then, you know. Yeah. And by the way, both impeachments were vehicles to educate the country. We learned a lot in those. Those did it work. Well, well, the hearing, you know, the and then even the January 6th. [1:00:27] hearings that came later, I think were really important. No, they did not work. [1:00:32] Yeah. Because here we are. But I do think like at a certain point, yes, I there will be strategic argument against that. I get that. But like, man, have we done a lot of overthinking about strategy to end up in this place, too? Yeah. [1:00:43] All right. Now you guys get to hear when we come back more about all of Trump's machinations in the second term when Tommy talks to Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan right after this. [1:00:59] Pod Save America is brought to you by CookUnity. I love CookUnity and I just had a meal last night. What did I have last night? I had the Thai beef curry with rice and who knows what I'm going to have tonight. Maybe it's like a good chicken dish they gave me. Anyway, I've used CookUnity for years, long before they were ever a sponsor. It's great. [1:01:29] factories so every dish arrives with the kind of freshness you'd get at the restaurant itself. Meals from Michelin-starred chefs, James Beard winners, and Food Network stars. Go to cookunity.com slash crooked or use code crooked before checkout for 50% off your first week. Every Cook Unity meal is handcrafted by chefs in local micro kitchens, not mass-produced in large facilities, fresh, never frozen, and can be refrigerated for up to seven days. Cook Unity uses real culinary talent cooking in real kitchens, not a brand slapping a

[1:01:59] CookUnity works with some of the best chefs in the country to bring creative, delicious meals to your door. There are hundreds of dishes to choose from, and the menu is updated constantly. Taste what happens when real, award-winning chefs make fresh, small-batched meals just for you. Go to cookunity.com slash crooked or enter code crooked before checkout to get 50% off your first order. That's 50% off your first order by using code crooked or going to cookunity.com slash crooked. [1:02:24] Hey, so listen, whether you're in the States, across the pond, or somewhere on the other side of the world, we love that you tune in to Crooked for US News. But did you know we also have a UK news show? Yes, that's right. It's called Pod Save the UK. Pod Save the UK is a no-bullshit, unabashedly progressive conversation about politics focused on the issues that matter most to the people of Britain. With all the changes in our government, including the fun revolving door of Prime Ministers we have here, there's always lots to talk about. [1:02:54] to journalists, politicians, experts, comedians and activists. We've had great comedians on as well, like Rosie Jones, Stuart Lee, Aisling B. We've also had Tommy Vitor on, who may be our boss. We still don't know. We're not quite clear on who our boss is. I thought it might be Tommy Vitor. I thought it might be Jon Favreau. [1:03:13] Bye. [1:03:13] Don't know if it's John Lovett. It's hard to say. It's not clear to us who our bosses are. Some of our listeners call us irreverent but not stupid. I object to that. I'm deeply stupid. It doesn't sound too bad. So look, come check us out. Come join us. Pod Save the UK every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

[1:03:34] Today I am thrilled to be joined by the authors of the new book, "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency. [1:03:42] of Donald Trump, Maggie Heberman, Jonathan Swan. Great to see you both. [1:03:47] Thanks for having us. Thank you for doing this. So first of all, congrats on the book and for getting this thing into the world. I know a staggering amount of work went into this book. I think you wrote you have over a thousand interviews. That is remarkable. And the result is just this incredible page turner that provides a level of insight into how Donald Trump operates and how this administration works that I just haven't found everywhere else. And I'm a I'm a total sicko. And I follow this for a living and I follow these people for a living. And I was [1:04:17] I know you both are sickos who follow every move of this president. Maggie, I know you had the good fortune of getting to know him back in New York a long time ago. So you guys know the subject as well as anyone. So my first question is just a general one, which is for both of you, what's the top line takeaway for you in terms of what do you think has changed from Trump 1.0 to Trump 2.0? And then after that, I was hoping you both could just sort of tell us about the experience of bringing this reporting to Donald Trump and having to interview him about it. [1:04:47] Why don't we start with you, Maggie? Sure. So one of the things that we tried to convey in this book, and I think we did, Tommy, is that this is just a fundamentally different term than Trump won. This is a very different presidency. This is not 2017 anymore. This is not people who this president had never met before serving, not just throughout this administration, but in his White House.

[1:05:17] how they could use the levers of power for a specific agenda. Trump himself has been thinking about. [1:05:23] various aspects of this presidency, one of which he's been very open about, which is retribution. And you are seeing a president... [1:05:31] wield power in a way that is fundamentally changing the way people look at America around the globe, the way Americans interact [1:05:41] with their president and certainly not in our lifetime that we've seen this. I'm not sure there has been something like this. And we tried to show additionally to his unique qualities, [1:05:54] never admitting defeat, never having any shame, refusing to be thrown out of the arena, the various factors outside of his control that added to that. But he is coming back to Washington. [1:06:07] with a very, very different climate. It was a completely cowed Republican [1:06:11] Congress cowed tech leaders, [1:06:15] Cal donors, law firms who were facing threats of executive orders, media companies that were concerned about being targeted by the government. [1:06:25] And he has very happily wielded that power. [1:06:29] I agree with everything Maggie said. [1:06:32] it's really hard to [1:06:35] uh, [1:06:36] emphasize sufficiently how different this is from term one. It's almost unrecognizable in the way he's operating as president. And I'll just give you one kind of [1:06:46] other way to think about it, which is in term one,

[1:06:49] He was quite reactive to domestic politics. [1:06:53] um he you know the polls were down he'll be reactive to that stock market you know what's it doing today uh what did he last see on tv and i still think that's a lens through which people are viewing him this term i still see a lot of kind of commentary that kind of analyzes him through that term look it's not binary it's not black and white it's not to say he doesn't care at all about those things in the midterms but he cares far less um [1:07:19] Donald Trump [1:07:20] this term, we picked this up pretty early in our reporting, and it became very evident when we sat down finally across from him. He views himself and is trying to [1:07:32] create this for himself as a capital G great man of history, as a sort of Napoleonic figure. [1:07:42] And he literally handed us this two-page document when we were there with him in the Oval Office, which he said was written by a historian. And it compared him to what he described as the, quote-unquote, top ten. Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, the Caesars. The Caesars. [1:08:07] And, you know, [1:08:10] I'm not sure that most [1:08:11] American presidents would be happy about being included in that company. No, not at all. He was relishing this comparison. It wasn't a moral comparison. There was actually almost no mention of morality or values in this document. It was purely comparing them on the metric of power. And the assertion that this quote-unquote historian made was that Donald Trump is the most powerful man who's ever existed on the planet because he's in charge of the United States, the most powerful military that's ever existed,

[1:08:41] but that he's also that he's willing to use that power and, [1:08:46] As peculiar as the source of this information was, it actually turned out not to be a historian. It was Gary Player, the golfer's former caddy. But setting that aside, the thesis actually was not so dissimilar to the reporting that we had been doing, which is – [1:09:04] This is a president now who is willing to take enormous risks, [1:09:08] enormous risks on the global stage, whether it be going in and snatching a sovereign head of state out of his bedroom in his pajamas without even talking to Congress, whether it be starting a new war in the Middle East without even talking to Congress, starting a trade war against the whole world, which he did last April. [1:09:28] He wants to put his imprint on the world and this country and build monuments to himself. And he's far less concerned about whatever the latest polls are or the midterm elections or the future of the Republican Party than he is making Donald Trump a capital G great man of history. [1:09:47] Wow. Gary Player's caddy. Hot start, guys. That's an amazing anecdote. There's so much I would ask you about. I personally think... [1:09:57] For me, the corruption has been the most shocking part of the second term. We could go down the list. There's the stock trades. There's the people trading on the Maduro operation on Kelsey. There's the secret half a billion dollar sale of the crypto business to the Emirati backed firm. There's the Pardons. There's the Qatari jet. The list literally goes on and on. But I want to focus on the jet for a minute because you report in the book that Qatar initially wanted to be paid between $150 to $200 million for the plane. But then suddenly the plane was a gift.

[1:10:27] "generated at the POTUS level." And I was wondering if you could unpack what that means a little bit, and then just your sense of Trump's general mindset about using his office to make money, and how that mindset has sort of extended or not to his family, his staff, and the people around him. - Yeah, so working backwards on that one, Tommy, on the Qatari jet, and that was really the first [1:10:47] neon sign example of what we saw with this president outside of the crypto business, which, you know, came into existence in 2024 during the campaign. That alone was a norm that that was completely shattered. We've not seen a president do something like that before. It speaks to a mindset that is across this government. It is certainly clear for this president. And it is clear for [1:11:12] They feel like they gave up a lot. I mean, they openly say this. We gave up a lot because Trump ran. We were under investigation. We lost lots of money. We lost golf tournaments at our clubs and so forth. And there's no laws prohibiting this. And there's nothing that stops this. And Trump openly said this to some of our colleagues earlier this year, actually. And he also said, you know, nobody cared that he was. [1:11:37] trying to adhere to some guidelines. There were people who cared, it just didn't violate laws. And presidents are exempt, as most people know, from ethics laws in a different way. So this jet [1:11:51] was... [1:11:52] initially described by, we actually I think were the first people to write about the fact that they were thinking about this jet. Suddenly there was this memo, this joint memo from

[1:12:03] The DOJ. [1:12:04] and the White House Council. And it was that there was nothing that was going to prohibit the government from accepting this jet, and then it being transferred over to the Trump library. It is true, there have been times in the history of this country when the Defense Department has accepted... [1:12:19] gifts, right, in the forms of plane or aircraft or whatever. Not usually quite like this. And yes, this was an older jet that the Qatari royal family had used. It was not brand new. They, according to our reporting, did initially want to sell it. And then it [1:12:37] suddenly became a gift and generated at the police level. And our understanding was it was conversations that people close to the president were having, uh, [1:12:46] with counterparts elsewhere as to how to acquire this. I think there is still a lot to be learned about how it happened. But remember, the president described this as a free jet, that no taxpayer money would go to it. In fact, it has cost several hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer upgrades to make it safe for presidents. It's just got delivered in recent days. So that was one example that made clear that we were just in a very, very different world. It took months of reporting by The Wall Street Journal to uncover that secret [1:13:16] sale of a 49% stake in the Trump crypto company that they have with the Whitcoff family, to, I think it was an Emirati royal-backed company, royal family-backed company. There are other deals that the Trump family is engaged in. And again, the posture has been

[1:13:34] Nothing prohibits this. We're allowed to. [1:13:39] Latent and on a scale we have just never seen before. There have obviously been accusations of self-dealing from presidents in the past. This is unlike anything that I can recall seeing and really being written about in modern history at any rate. [1:13:55] And I do think that the public is starting to pick up on it. That is puncturing something that he had been able to hang on to for a long time, which was the sense that, you know, he is a successful businessman. He didn't gain anything from this. There is a recurring theme and it's hard to ignore. Yeah. And Jonathan, I mean, staying on this corruption piece, we've heard about the ballroom. We've heard about the arc to Trump, the PAC fundraising. You guys do a bunch of reporting on the Trump presidential library fund. [1:14:25] In fact, you report that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick personally donated $25 million to the Trump Presidential Library Fund and that this donation came after reports about Lutnick's kids maybe making money off of administration policy in a way that was deemed unsavory in the press. I'd love to hear more about that. [1:14:55] in the Gulf, just sort of [1:14:57] Blatant conflicts of interest. I'd love to hear more about it. [1:15:00] People around Trump have described to us that they want to raise $2 billion for his presidential library. And if you've seen it –

[1:15:07] It's essentially a tower that looks like the Freedom Tower that sort of towers above the Miami skyline. In no way is it a presidential library. And you've seen like the montage of you go in there and there's like a gold statue of Donald Trump and restaurants and God knows what else. Yeah. [1:15:27] So the reason we found out about the Howard Lutnick example is – [1:15:32] In the Oval Office, Trump... [1:15:34] brings it up. There was something that Howard Lutnick said, and Trump said, this is in front of a group of people, something to the effect of the only reason I put up with Howard's bullshit is he gave me $25 million. And you know how Trump just, the way he talks, and other times you say, you know, Howard's so great, I just asked him for the money and he immediately gave it to me. [1:15:53] some version of that. But what we also found is that, um, [1:15:58] people around Trump, Eric Trump and others, um, have been approaching and discussing, um, with, uh, Gulf monarchies funding, uh, this library. And often, uh, [1:16:11] the trail heads back to the Gulf. [1:16:13] You know, this is what makes a lot of this so remarkable is you have an administration that is conducting foreign policy dealing with the Gulf. I mean, selling chips, highly advanced chips to the Emirates at the same time as the Emirates, putting $2 billion into the Trump and Whitcoff family crypto business. You have the Qatari jet, the Trump family business doing all kinds of deals in the Middle East.

[1:16:43] And then the business of state, it's just one giant... [1:16:47] playground, really, with no borders between – let's just say it's very hard sometimes to delineate the borders between official business and private business. [1:17:03] impossible to cover because i truly think we only know one percent yes maybe five percent of what's going on yes um and we this is a story that our colleagues have done phenomenal reporting on people like eric lipton the wall street journal and others you know we've done a you know our modest [1:17:21] part of it that we've tried to contribute in this book. But my Lord, like we have, I don't think we really have a concept of the breadth and depth of this yet. I really don't. No, and one thing, Tommy, that I would just add is the figure $2 billion, it's double to a presidential library. [1:17:39] that I think... [1:17:40] you might be familiar with. And our understanding from our reporting is that that's not a coincidence. President Trump has never stopped being very focused on President Obama. But he was also, in our reporting, found... [1:17:54] delighted that President Biden is having a very hard time fundraising. And that just made him want to do more. But to Jonathan's point, the models that they have for this library, it's a hotel is how it's conceived. And they are also still planning on taking this Qatari jet with them. I don't know what that looks like for Air Force One for another president in two and a half

[1:18:24] We don't pretend to think we have... [1:18:27] covered the waterfront. Yeah, I mean, the crypto transactions alone are, you know, you can't possibly follow who is buying Trump coin or Melania coin on any given day. I mean, the opportunities for corruption are just staggering. Maggie, one thing that reading the book really helped me understand in a new way was just how chaotic the management of the country and then Trump's own time when he's in the Oval Office really is. You described Trump's time in the Oval Office, [1:18:57] rolling bull session with some advisors, whoever's in town visiting you guys report on the scene where like, there's some poor NSC goons in the corner trying to get signed off on a classified program on the other side of the office. Someone's on speakerphone from Mar-a-Lago saying, [1:19:10] The fucking decorator walks in with like rug samples or something that blows up the whole conversation. The pavers for the Rose Garden. Sorry, the pavers for the Rose Garden. Tell us about like paint us a picture of what it's like inside the Oval Office and how decisions are getting made. Yeah, look, I mean, we describe, as you say, this this setting. It's an it's we're describing sort of an average day. Right. And you could take any given moment over the course of the last 17 months, whatever, 17 and a half months. And one meeting collides into the next. [1:19:40] And Trump often invites people in to take part in other meetings. You know, one example of that in the book is the meeting where Laura Loomer is listing people at the NSC and elsewhere in the government who she is telling the president are against him. And Scott Perry, the congressman, comes in for a separately scheduled meeting and then they start talking.

[1:20:10] It's how he functioned at Mar-a-Lago. It's how he functioned at Trump Tower. Some of this was the case in term one. It is... [1:20:18] It's much more expansive now. In terms of how the government is being managed, what was really striking to us, and we do describe this in the reporting in the book, is just how small the group of people running this government is. [1:20:48] Yeah. [1:20:48] they often don't know what's going on. You know, one of the things that, that, [1:20:53] we talk about a lot is the fact that this administration makes a show of transparency, but they actually are quite good at keeping secrets when they want to and prefer it. There is a great deal that is kept secret, so much so that in the lead up to the Iran war on February 28th, the energy secretary and the treasury secretary had not been part of most of the meetings. The two people who would be impacted by a global energy crisis the most in this government [1:21:23] government is also very paranoid and worried about leaks. And that's also why you see the situation room is the way it is so often. Yeah. And it's probably not going to be helped by your book because we're all reading about the big freak out about, you know, everyone wondering about your sourcing, which I will not ask you to comment on. But Jonathan, related to the kind of management question is just the picture you paint of how Trump gets information. For example, you guys report that Trump was kind of largely oblivious about this massive fight within MAGA

[1:21:53] Israel. And that anecdote really shocked me because, I mean, it seemed like everyone was talking about and reporting on it. And usually he has a pretty good, you know, sort of antenna for the base. And it made me wonder about his information diet generally, which you guys, I think, describe as information from Fox News and then positive news printed out by a staffer named Natalie Harp. Can you tell folks who Natalie Harp is and sort of more about this information diet and whether does any news break through to Donald Trump that is like factual but bad for him [1:22:23] Yeah, it's a... [1:22:25] quite [1:22:26] as black and white as that but it's not far off what you just described. Natalie Harp is a young woman who has worked for Donald Trump for a few years, used to be an anchor on OAN, which is a far right network. She [1:22:46] one story that Maggie and I [1:22:48] broke and it's mentioned in the book. [1:22:51] She's basically – [1:22:54] the most devoted, let's say, to Donald Trump, more than anyone we've ever seen. She writes in these, she has written him, [1:23:01] numerous letters um that she's left for him including one that says you are all that matters to me or some some version of that raised the eyebrows of the secret service during the campaign some of these letters that were left um in some of his private quarters and uh she's just totally devoted to him in oval office meetings she sits on the chair [1:23:22] the side of the room with her laptop open and Trump, they call her the human printer. So Trump basically just says,

[1:23:29] Natalie, get me this, or he's, you know, Google this. We have a scene in the book where during the trade war, lead up to the Liberation Day, where he declares a trade war against the whole world, where he's just not believing the trade, the deficit numbers that Howard Lutnick is giving him. And he says, Natalie, Google me the real numbers. So she's, you know, furiously Googling, you know, and of course, the real numbers don't exist because what, you know, Secretary Lutnick had given him were actually the real numbers. But so that's who she is. [1:23:59] His information diet has constricted, there's no question. In term one, he was scrolling Twitter a lot more, which just gave him much more exposure to just... [1:24:09] random things that were coming across the transom. He still does watch MSNBC, as you've noticed, when he rages against Joe Scarborough and Mika, and he'll still watch CNN. But it's really Fox- [1:24:25] all the time. [1:24:28] that whole world of [1:24:29] the Manosphere podcast, he exploited that to his advantage, [1:24:34] Very effectively during the campaign. But it wasn't like he was ever a consumer of it. Like Donald Trump doesn't sit there listening to like Theo Vaughn and Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson's podcast. They might as well not exist. He'll occasionally hear Joe Rogan's been criticizing you, but he's not tuned into that. He's just watching Fox and hearing largely from people who support him. [1:24:56] You know, the patio at Mar-a-Lago is full of flatterers who are coming by you. Great job. You're doing an amazing job, Mr. President. And his staff are people who largely believe in him, like him, not people like the first term who thought that he was dangerous or somebody that needed to be reined in. That's just not the dynamic at all.

[1:25:26] He's so positive to Trump that Trump even jokes about it. He'll tell aides like, oh, I get indicted and Boris tells me it's the best news ever. So that's – I mean that's the environment. Presidents always exist in a bubble, but this is a really thick bubble. This is an almost impenetrable bubble that Donald Trump exists in. [1:25:47] Much less willing to believe the bad news is the other piece, frankly. I mean, people will bring him information and say things like, you know, we've always heard him say some version of, you know, [1:25:58] to Jonathan's point about, you know, bring me the real numbers, the, the, um, [1:26:02] Those poll numbers are fake. You know, the real ones are... [1:26:06] you know, Trafalgar or whatever, something that he considers to be more in line with how he sees the world. But it is harder for people who are trying to tell him that actually there are other things happening to get through to him that way. And just one addition to Jonathan's point about how often Fox is on. Fox is far less critical just in the me of him than it was at various [1:26:36] was obviously not [1:26:37] MSNBC, but he received more criticism on certain shows than [1:26:46] then he does it all now. And that has an impact too. So that sort of brings me to my next question about the lowest moment. It wasn't a moment. It was the lowest several months, which was their handling of the Epstein files and mishandling of the Epstein files. I just want to get your read on how and why you think they mishandled it so badly. Is this because there's no good answers? Trump was really good friends with Jeffrey Epstein. He was for decades. He was a total creep at the time. Maybe there's not a great way to spin that. Did they misread the politics and not

[1:27:16] to the more online people like J.D. Vance, who are warning them. And then relatedly, I mean, you guys have these incredible scenes in the Situation Room where Trump's team is trying to figure out how to do damage control for him, but the story keeps getting worse. You know, we see the doodle that is in the Wall Street Journal that he put into the birthday book for Jeffrey Epstein. Did anyone you talk to say to you, like, [1:27:39] You know what, it was personally pretty upsetting and demoralizing to learn that this guy we work for was actually part of this cabal that we had promised to take down during the campaign? Well, I think at the start of all of this, the first thing to understand is that from a staff point of view, you're limited in what you can do when the person you're working for, the president, wants it all to disappear. [1:28:01] He wanted this whole thing to disappear. I mean, he didn't want transparency, didn't want all this stuff to come out. And he would get... [1:28:09] Snappy. [1:28:11] when people brought it up in his presence. So what the staff did was they had these conversations largely away from Donald Trump. [1:28:20] They had them in the situation room for secrecy. [1:28:23] You know, as you know, Tommy, from your time in the back, this is one of the most [1:28:28] guarded rooms in the government as a national security command center, essentially, that they turned into a sort of Jeffrey Epstein crisis response center. And these are the top officials in the government sitting around the table trying to craft a PR strategy. [1:28:45] What was evident to his staff very early on was that, A,

[1:28:50] Donald Trump's name was all over these files. I mean, the New York Times, we found [1:28:55] more than 38,000 references to Trump and his family and places like Mar-a-Lago in these files. But it was also just a sense of not knowing [1:29:04] Really, what was out there and not being able to have these candid conversations with Trump. I do think one thing you said is true, which is early on senior people on his team underestimated the political salience. [1:29:20] of this issue. And remember, for a lot of them who've gone through all kinds of scandal and crisis with Donald Trump, [1:29:28] From their point of view, this is just another one. Why would this be different from Access Hollywood or go down the list? But it was, and it was very frustrating to Trump himself because he's so used to telling his base, think this, do this, and it shall be done. And this was this issue where perhaps because some of his own people had helped Trump. [1:29:51] you know, whip up the hysteria and conspiracy about Epstein. The base just wasn't listening. The base just refused to kind of take direction on that. And it just hung around. And one thing we obtained in our reporting for the book is private... [1:30:08] focus group. [1:30:09] research that Trump's team did this year not last year this year almost a full year after they first tried to start dealing with the Epstein thing Epstein was still cutting through in these focus groups to an alarming extent for Trump's team so you know

[1:30:25] All these meetings happened, but it was a turning point, I think we can now say, with some level of confidence. Last summer is when Trump's political fortunes really started to decline. And one of Trump's advisers compared to Biden's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan as sort of the moment in the Biden admin when you start to see, you know, it's not dissimilar with Epstein. And it's still a problem, even to this day, politically. [1:30:55] enjoying to compare and publicly rank Rubio versus J.D. Vance. But you guys write that even early on, like back in 2021, I think, that Trump's aides noticed he had more personal chemistry with Marco Rubio than Vance. Now, Vance obviously wages a pretty effective charm campaign. He goes from calling him, you know, comparing him to Hitler to getting on the ticket. You write that Trump was impressed by Vance's intellect and good looks. I'm going to take issue with the part of that, [1:31:25] and way to torture these guys? Or is he really trying to kind of [1:31:29] constantly focus group and figure out the future of MAGA? How do you view it? [1:31:33] A couple of things, but one is you mentioned the J.D. Vance criticism of Trump and the Hitler comment, which I think was made in a text exchange with someone. It's not like Marco Rubio was exactly subtle about Donald Trump. They ran against each other. There was a whole, you know. [1:31:52] genitalia adjacent whatever on the primary debate stage. It wasn't very adjacent. Oh, sorry. It was just genitalia. Sorry. It was a literal dick measuring contest at a rally.

[1:32:14] term limited, which the president is, despite all the conversation around this. Once they endorse somebody, they stop being quite as relevant and their lame duck status starts to increase. Donald Trump is not exactly somebody who is going to disappear quietly into that good night, as we've been saying throughout this episode, number one. So he's in no rush for that, because he's not going to be a good night. [1:32:35] He sees this as his party and his movement for a variety of reasons. I do think it is fun for him. I do think he enjoys it. As long as he has been in politics, he has done this. He did this with Mike Pence and Newt Gingrich and Chris Christie in 2016. [1:33:05] To look at the existing fundamentals of the modern Republican Party and the MAGA movement and not see how J.D. Vance is still very much the prohibitive. [1:33:16] front runner. Now, [1:33:18] Obviously, lots can change, but I also don't think that Donald Trump is going to completely defy Trump. [1:33:24] reality if that's where it's going. But again, these predictions are not worth a whole lot. I do think we will continue to see. [1:33:31] much more of this going forward. But it's totally, on an interpersonal level, it's just, it's totally bizarre. I mean, we have a lot of this in the book, but we have a scene in the book where Rupert Murdoch, [1:33:42] comes to the White House for dinner, sitting on the same table as Trump in the blue room of the White House.

[1:33:49] And J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio are at the table. [1:33:52] And Trump, right there, with both of them at the table, [1:33:56] asks Rupert Murdoch to assess each of them, [1:33:59] and Murdoch [1:34:01] gives Marco Rubio a much more hearty [1:34:04] endorsement than VATs. I mean, this is what Trump is subjecting [1:34:10] his vice president to. I think the only thing we can be confident [1:34:14] of is that he's not going to make it comfortable or easy for him. He's just going to keep doing this. It's just who he is. Yeah, I think the quotes you have is Murdoch says, I think JD has the potential to be great. And of Rubio, he says Marco is brilliant. So yeah, that'd be tough to hear. Jonathan, I track the Trump foreign policy closely. I just find it particularly interesting. And since the beginning, I've been trying to understand the emergence of Steve Whitcoff, who for listeners is like Trump's real estate and golf buddy turned diplomatic envoy for every [1:34:44] thing. This anecdote from the book blew my mind. So you have this scene where Whitcoff is, I believe, in Moscow meeting with Vladimir Putin. The anecdote goes like this. What are you drawing, sir? Whitcoff asked. Putin held up a piece of paper in thick, looping pen strokes. It said three plus two, which is shorthand for the territorial framework that Whitcoff had discussed with him. Three obelisks Russia would keep outright and two where the fighting would freeze in place. [1:35:14] So two questions for listeners.

[1:35:27] an agreement that would be capitulation for the Ukrainians. And I think a lot of people would argue validates Putin's decision to invade Ukraine, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Why would Wyckoff want that in your view? And then more importantly, like, [1:35:42] What do you make of Witkoff's emergence and his motivations? Because by all accounts, he seems like a very nice man, one who seemingly is in over his head, understandably, by the way. I think anyone would be in his position. But also it's hard not to see his son's role at World Liberty Financial, the crypto business, and worry about conflicts of interest and corruption. So Steve Witkoff has no – before this term had no diplomatic experience, full stop, no foreign policy experience, full stop. [1:36:12] senior levels of Trump world, which is a contempt for subject matter expertise and subject matter experts. Jared Kushner [1:36:22] would often to others speak... [1:36:25] with contempt about people who've worked on Middle East deals forever. And there's a feeling from these guys, there always has been, that they have... [1:36:35] Fresh ideas, fresh answers, private sector thinking. You've heard all of this before. Trump, again, Trump feels comfortable with Witkoff, saw him as a dealmaker, thought that he could bring home a quick deal with Putin. Trump thought it would be very easy to end this war. When he was saying 24 hours, it actually, in Trump's mind, I don't think was that much of a rhetorical flourish. I think he genuinely thought he could end this conflict very quickly and has been quite frustrated that Witkoff hasn't been able to bring home a deal.

[1:37:05] cough. [1:37:06] from what we can gather from his colleagues, views the conflict. There's not really a sense of Putin as a villain and an aggressor and Ukraine as a victim. It's actually... [1:37:17] We have a scene in the book [1:37:19] where Trump is with his inner circle in the Oval Office hashing out [1:37:25] you know, supposedly going to hash out the Russia-Ukraine policy. And Keith Kellogg, who was his original envoy, is dutifully giving this presentation, which he spent all his time on. Unbeknownst to Kellogg, Trump already had a back channel set up with Whitcoff. He hadn't told Kellogg about that. He's doing this presentation. And he's... [1:37:44] During the presentation, Trump is interrupting him by saying things like the only good thing about Ukraine is the women. They keep winning Miss Universe. Zelensky is terrible. He's destroyed his country. So Trump. [1:37:56] The animus, when the animus comes out, it's almost never against Putin. It's almost always against Ukraine and Zelensky. And I think Witkoff saw his... [1:38:08] his job as bringing this conflict to an end, but really viewed those leaders on a flat plane without really making moral distinctions. I mean, we have another line in the book where he tells Putin that Russia's good at a lot of things, but they're really bad at PR, as if the Kremlin's main problem was a PR problem. So that's the mindset. And he goes and meets with Putin on his

[1:38:38] someone in that role would normally use staff. And as a result, there have been times where I think there's been miscommunication and misunderstandings. And, you know, it turns out [1:38:49] diplomacy is complicated and this conflict was not easy to resolve and in fact it's still raging on [1:38:55] Uh, many, many 24 hours after the initial 24 hours when he was going to solve it. Right. Well, I think, well, down the road, maybe we'll learn more about this, whether there's a corruption piece of this to the Wyckoff story. But listen, you guys have given me a lot of time on an unbelievably busy week. Uh, the book again is regime change inside the imperial presidency of Donald Trump. I cannot recommend it highly enough to our audience who are desperate to try to understand Donald Trump, the man, this administration, the decision-making process, and also just [1:39:25] even read things that we knew again, but in a way that puts together the whole scene and helps you understand all the different motivations and people involved. It's an extraordinary piece of work. So congratulations to both of you for getting this thing done and out into the world and for talking with me today. Jonathan, Maggie, thank you so much. [1:39:43] Thanks, Tommy. Thanks so much. [1:39:51] That's our show for today. Thanks to Maggie and Jonathan for coming on. Everybody check out Regime Change. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Pods of America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Farrah Safari with Reed Juerlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hefko, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Carol Pellaviv, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

[1:40:17] Hey, so listen, whether you're in the States, across the pond or somewhere on the other side of the world, we love that you tune into Crooked for US News. But did you know we also have a UK news show? Yes, that's right. It's called Pod Save the UK. Pod Save the UK is a no bullshit, unabashedly progressive conversation about politics focused on the issues that matter most to the people of Britain. With all the changes in our government, including the fun revolving door of prime ministers we have here, there's always lots to talk about. [1:40:47] of fabulous guests to talk to. Journalists, politicians, experts, comedians and activists. Yeah, we've had great comedians on as well, like Rosie Jones, Stuart Lee, Aisling B. We've also had Tommy Vitor on, who may be our boss. We still don't know. We're not quite clear on who our boss is. I thought it might be Tommy Vitor. I thought it might be Jon Favreau. [1:41:07] I don't know if it's John Lovett. It's hard to say. It's not clear to us who our bosses are. Some of our listeners call us irreverent, but not stupid. I object to that. I'm deeply stupid. It doesn't sound too bad. So look, come check us out. Come join us. Pod Save the UK every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.