Joe Biden's Re-Election Announcement Inspires No One
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss Tucker Carlson's first appearance since being summarily fired for... being too magnetic to Rupert Murdoch's ex-fiancé? Josh Hawley is at it again with his T-shirted pseudo manliness grift, and Joe Biden releases a ridiculously bad video announcing his re-election campaign.
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I'm Jared Yates Sexton, fresh off a trip to the West Coast to hang out with my buddy Nick Haussleman.
Had a great time clanging, banging by the pool, seeing what Phoenix, Arizona had to offer.
Nick, I couldn't have had a better time.
Well, it was necessary to actually be in the same room with you.
And I got to tell you, the book signing podcast episode went really, really well, too.
People seemed to like it.
But I think that there was something going on there, just being in the same room with you, too.
That was amazing.
And by the way, thank you to all of the loyal listeners who showed up to the LA Tim's Book Festival, who showed up at the Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix, Arizona.
Thank you, by the way, to Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix, Arizona.
What a wonderful time.
Great conversations, great people.
It made my heart so full, Nick.
It made me feel complete.
It made me feel so good to hang out with my friend.
To meet all of these people and endure all of their kindnesses.
Thank you to everybody.
Wonderful.
Yeah, a perfect buddy road trip.
I agree.
And I wish that we could have live streamed it.
Tons that we talked about.
I wish could have made the podcast.
Some stuff that couldn't have made the podcast.
We got a full show today.
We are back in our domains.
We're taking care of business.
TCO being, as I like to say.
Listen, we're checking in on Tucker Carlson.
We're looking at Josh Hawley talking about masculinity.
We're talking about the presidential field, which is just wild at this point.
And we got a special from the New York Times and friend of the pod, Maureen Dowd.
Before we do any of it, Nick, I got breaking news, bud.
There is another Chinese balloon coming over the American heartland.
Are you okay?
Do you feel threatened?
Do you feel Cold War mania?
How's this making you feel?
How does it make me feel knowing that China is, I guess, you know, because it's so weird why they're even doing it.
They can spy on us every other way they would ever want to.
So I don't know, maybe I'll go out and do some sunbathing and see what happens.
You're not gonna pull a JD Vance and go grab a semi-automatic and put on some boots that you've never worn and make sure that somebody takes a picture of you with social media like you're gonna shoot the thing out of the sky?
Yeah, I will not do that, because remember, if you do shoot the bullets up in the air, they come back down.
I mean, listen, it's a story as old as time.
I'll tell you why China is doing this, because they can.
That's why they're doing it.
And because it is, I'm sorry, but it has to be enjoyable to poke people like this.
It has to be a lot of fun.
They're mapping the lands, they're freaking the Americans out.
They're just having a great time, is what's happening.
Mission accomplished.
Mission accomplished, everybody.
On that note, speaking of mission accomplished, we are going to check back in to the wild saga of Tucker Carlson, of course, getting booted off Fox News.
There are some interesting new revelations that have come out in the past few days.
But before we dive into that, Tucker made an appearance on social media, put out his own video that I think, and we'll talk about in a second, gives us a glimpse into exactly where he is headed.
Good evening, it's Tucker Carlson.
One of the first things you realize when you step outside the noise for a few days is how many genuinely nice people there are in this country.
Kind and decent people.
People who really care about what's true.
And a bunch of hilarious people, also.
A lot of those.
It's got to be the majority of the population, even now.
So that's heartening.
The other thing you notice when you take a little time off is how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are.
They're completely irrelevant.
They mean nothing.
In five years, we won't even remember that we had them.
Trust me, as someone who's participated.
And yet at the same time, and this is the amazing thing, the undeniably big topics, the ones that will define our future, get virtually no discussion at all.
When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues?
It's been a long time.
Debates like that are not permitted in American media.
Both political parties and their donors have reached consensus on what benefits them, and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it.
Suddenly, the United States looks very much like a one-party state.
That's a depressing realization.
But it's not permanent.
Our current orthodoxies won't last.
They're brain dead.
Nobody actually believes them.
Hardly anyone's life is improved by them.
This moment is too inherently ridiculous to continue.
And so it won't.
The people in charge know this.
That's why they're hysterical and aggressive.
They're afraid.
They've given up persuasion.
They're resorting to force.
But it won't work.
When honest people say what's true, calmly and without embarrassment, they become powerful.
At the same time, the liars who've been trying to silence them shrink, and they become weaker.
That's the iron law of the universe.
True things prevail.
Where can you still find Americans saying true things?
There aren't many places left, but there are some, and that's enough.
As long as you can hear the words, there is hope.
See you soon.
Okay, so we'll dive into the ramifications of this in just a second.
Nick, I gotta tell you, that doesn't sound like a person who's going to run for the nomination of the Republican Party, does it?
No, definitely doesn't sound like that either.
It sounds like he's gonna, you know, relaunch the same thing he's been doing this whole time.
That's exactly right.
I mean, and like, this was I think what people were waiting for was to get some sort of an idea of exactly what Tucker was going to set his sights on next.
I think we're very lucky that he isn't going to get involved in electoral politics, but I will tell you that like, this is like, very...
It's bracing stuff to know that he is setting his sights on the media.
He's going to go in that direction.
Also, by the way, I don't know how you feel about it.
Outside of demographic change being something that we need to talk about, which is just dog whistling for white replacement theory, people of color taking over for the white race, What he said there, linguistically, about the state of our politics, not having conversations about this, a duopoly of parties, he's not wrong.
Which is why he is a very dangerous person, is because he takes what is true and what is actually happening and then twists it and perverts it.
And by the way, still at the top of his powers in that regard.
Yeah, well I actually wrote some things down because I wanted to hit on exactly what you were saying because he can get people nodding when you say like both parties are bereft of ideas or whatever.
He said it's all stupid debates on TV that we won't remember in five years.
Like, yes, that is very alluring because I can agree to that, too.
Like, he can get both people, but then he has these absolute statements that don't make a lot of sense, and he both sides it.
He wants to make it seem like both these parties are the same, and that, you know, what the Republicans are doing is just as bad as the Democrats, and so we just need something else completely, and that's what's so ridiculous and, you know, not on the same page.
And it's, you know, honest people say what's true, and they become powerful.
Um, you know, I think he's just, these guys are just frustrated that they get called out for being dicks.
I mean, it really seems like what it is.
And that's the question is, where is he going to go be a dick now?
Right, like what is the dick platform that he's going to go to?
Is he going to create his own?
Again, as we talked about and as I talked about with Pete Dominick, it's the Meemaw and Papaw question.
Can you get the people who watch Fox News, because it's on their cable that they still have, can you get them to switch over and get a Roku or put on an app?
Or are you going to go to Newsmax?
I don't know what's going to happen to Tucker, but I will tell you the fact that he's not even pretending like he's going to get into electoral politics also tells us kind of how not powerful the presidency of the United States is.
Like, he didn't even flirt with it.
You know what I mean?
It wasn't even like sort of on the agenda.
It was just obvious that the money is going out somewhere and having his own type of platform.
That's the only thing.
It wasn't even something that he even started to consider.
He has already put out there this is a media situation as opposed to a political situation.
And I think he may have found out that he isn't as powerful as he thought he was.
Right?
You know, thinking about somebody who's over the age of 65 or 70 installing an app on their phone makes me realize that, like, and I've seen, have you seen this happen before?
Somebody older trying to put an app on their phone?
I've seen it, yeah.
Yeah, it happens.
I mean, it's not a unicorn situation.
Like, people are able to do it.
It's just, it's just, they, They literally, and you and I, we watched the video while we were traveling.
It was like Brian Kilmeade being brought on to like try and stanch the bleeding.
He's like, I'm here for Tucker Carlson.
Immediately, it was like a million Fox viewers scratching their foreheads, you know, and like just being like, what now?
But I truly believe in that setting with that audience.
It's a funnel, it's a fox.
And I know Newsmax for a minute was able to try and, you know, zort some of their audience because they were more radical.
But I think that over time people, you know, forget.
Like a guy like Bill O'Reilly, you know, he's got a little bit of a niche.
He's got, you know, an audience that he was able to carry over after he got fired.
And Glenn Beck, too.
But I do feel like the biggest numbers he'll ever get, Tucker Carlson will ever get, will be where he was on Fox.
And he'll never be able to replicate that kind of intense, fervent following.
And I think that's more than likely, particularly considering he's going the media angle as opposed to the political angle.
By the way, I want to talk about the spicy meatball that has started to roll around, and I've talked to multiple people who feel like this is a large part of the story that hasn't been told.
There was a lot of conjecture.
Was this because Tucker was costing them advertisers?
Part of it.
Was this because, you know, they were ready to turn over a new leaf?
Part of it.
And by new leaf, I mean, are they going to find the newest type of racism and conspiracy theory out there to peddle?
Yes.
But Gabriel Sherman, who is a Fox whisperer, he is one of these people.
And all that you know about Roger Ailes, the former head of Fox News, being an absolute lecherous, assaulting creep, it came from Gabriel Sherman.
Like, for whatever reason, he knows the people in Fox and they want to talk to this guy.
Gabriel Sherman got on Vanity Fair, and I'm just going to read a couple of things from this article talking about the Tucker Carlson situation.
To start with, quote, By the way, Nick, we should have been at the Heritage Foundation's 50th gala.
Fox Corps chair Rupert Murdoch removed Carlson over remarks Carlson made during a speech at the Heritage Foundation's 50th anniversary gala on Friday night.
By the way, Nick, we should have been at the Heritage Foundation's 50th gala.
What were we doing?
It's an outrage.
I have to imagine our invites got lost in the mail.
Carlson laced his speech with religious overtones that even Murdoch found too extreme.
The source who was briefed on Murdoch's decision making said, Carlson told the Heritage audience that national politics has become a Manichean battle between good and evil.
Carlson said the people advocating for transgender rights and DEI programs want to destroy America and could not be persuaded with facts.
Quote, we should not say that and stop engaging in these totally fraudulent debates.
I've tried.
They don't work.
The answer Carlson suggested was prayer.
I have concluded it might be worth taking just 10 minutes out of your busy schedule to say a prayer for the future, and I hope you will.
So the source said that Rupert Murdoch was uncomfortable with this, but Nick Doesn't it feel like there's something, just like a little bit more, just like maybe just a little tiny bit more to the story?
Sure.
I mean, by the way, I love the fact that the spiritual stuff freaks Rupert out.
I think if you don't have a spirit, then you don't want to hear anybody else talking about it.
And by the way, we're going to get a little bit into this here in a minute, but like, These corporate executives and billionaires, they don't care about religion.
They understand that this is a ruse that they can use to get people to do what they want.
It's not hard for them to figure that out.
But, Carlson, that's this thing where, again, it's like, is it really a terrible idea to suggest to people that, you know, take 10 minutes out of your day and, like, meditate or have a prayer or something?
That's not a terrible idea at all.
And I don't know why that would be such a fireable offense to someone like a Well, let's dive a little deeper in this article, shall we?
This is again from the Gabriella Sherman Vanity Fair article.
Rupert Murdoch was perhaps unnerved by Carlson's messianism because it echoed the End Times worldview of Murdoch's ex-fiancée and Leslie Smith, the source said.
In my May cover story, I reported that Murdoch and Smith called off their two-week engagement because Smith had told people Carlson was, quote, a messenger from God.
Murdoch had seen Carlson and Smith discuss religion firsthand.
In late March, Carlson had dinner at Murdoch's Bel Air Vineyard with Murdoch and Smith, according to the source.
During dinner, Smith pulled out a Bible and started reading passages from the Book of Exodus, the source said.
Quote, Rupert just sat there and stared, the source said.
A few days after the dinner, Murdoch and Smith called off the wedding.
By taking Carlson off the air, Murdoch was also taking away his ex's favorite show.
I gotta tell you, that sounds a lot like how a corporate executive actually makes their decisions.
It wasn't that, you know, that Carlson put the company in trouble.
It wasn't that he was being sued or the workplace was being sued for being improper.
It's not because of advertisers.
It's because of petty bullshit personal problems.
That's how this stuff works.
You know, it's funny because Succession had almost the same kind of thing and nobody wanted to tell the boss's, you know, girlfriend or whatever that she sucked as an anchor.
And so they wrung their hands trying to figure out how can we say something that would get the point across.
You know what?
It does.
You're right.
There was a sudden tinge of electricity in my in the cockles somewhere because that does make sense.
Like, that is right.
He's like, I can't stand her anymore.
I want her out.
And you know what?
She really This is Rupert Murdoch's MO.
He did it with O'Reilly.
He did it with Glenn Beck.
Now it was time to do it with Tucker Carlson.
You know, it really boggles the mind that a business could be run by someone that would be willing to do something like that.
Because, again, if you're looking at a business standpoint, Tucker Carlson was somebody you wouldn't get rid of because of the ratings.
Even though he was listening.
This is Rupert Murdoch's M.O.
He did it with O'Reilly.
He did it with Glenn Beck.
Now it was time to do with Tucker Carlson.
I mean, some owners and executives, they have peccadillas like this.
They just get tired of whoever's out front.
They want to sell off the star player.
They want to go ahead and bring in somebody new.
The new coach, it doesn't matter.
In this situation, and I've talked to a few people off the record who are around Fox News, know about Fox News, If this wasn't one of the main motives, it was in the motives.
Like, this actually played into the situation, because he had this fiancée that he had an engagement to for about two weeks, and by the way, it just so happened that Tucker Carlson had her complete and utter blessing, and then he, uh, what is it the kids say, Nick?
He got the ick.
He got the ick with this person.
And this very well, I think, played into the entire part of it.
I always thought ick was like what a fish gets when it gets sick, which kind of... We're so old.
I feel like the genesis of ick might have something to do with fish ick.
Yeah.
I mean, Icky... He has that fish look to him, I guess, so I'm going with it.
Scaly and whatnot.
Well, I promise you, everybody, we are going to keep an eye on not just this situation, but the Fish Ick situation.
We're going to get down to the linguistic roots of where the Ick, capital T, capital I, came from.
Speaking of the Ick, Nick, that was pretty good.
Yeah.
That's not a bad segment idea.
Speaking of the Ick?
Speaking of the Ick, Nick, Oh, okay.
That's not bad.
Okay, we'll take that under consideration.
Speaking of the icknick, in Missouri, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, who is... Man, I gotta tell you, if he is trying to be the creepiest, most disturbing person in the United States Senate, he's giving it a run.
He really, truly is.
Uh, Holly, uh, gave an address at the stronger men's conference.
And, uh, we, we're going to examine a little bit of this because I think it's pretty telling of what is happening with the right wing, what they're trying to do.
And, uh, I, I just think it's instructive roll that beautiful bean footage.
No matter how you feel, no matter how the last two months have gone for you or the last few years, your life is a life of influence.
Your life is a life of significance, and God wants to use you to do something that he won't use anybody else for.
He has something for you that he doesn't have with anybody else.
He has called you to a specific task and purpose in this day and in this hour, and the world needs it because he's chosen you to do it.
Nick, I gotta tell you, what Holly did right there is very familiar to me as an evangelical, like, who grew up with televangelism and with all of these, like, Christian conferences and performances.
I don't think you probably have that much experience with people giving those performances.
You've probably seen them on Twitter, particularly with Christian nationalism, which is what this is all tied into and what we're going to get into in just a moment.
What does that feel like to you?
I'll give the analysis after that, but what's it feel like to somebody who hasn't experienced much of this?
I mean, it just feels like he's going to try and sell you something.
He's going to try and get your money for something.
You know, he's making me feel, you know, listen, whatever my relationship with God is on an individual basis, it does feel just ick to have somebody else trying to, like, point that out and tell me that and, like, convince me of this.
I guess it's what a preacher is supposed to do, but I'm not getting that vibe.
I'm getting some sort of really, you know, what's the word I'm looking for?
Corruption.
That's what I'm getting from that.
I, by the way, this is again one of the reasons you're the best co-host in the entire podcast business.
You just put your finger right on the pulse of the situation.
This is an absolute grift through and through, but also a political call for radicalization.
It's telling white men, like, you have to stand up, you have to be ready to be warriors, which is what Howley's all about, which is why he always talks about masculinity being under threat.
It's always weird, by the way, that all right-wing conspiracies, the target of them, white men.
Like, white men are just absolutely essential for the Republic to stand.
And that's why they're always being attacked.
That's why outside puppeteers, inside traders, people of color, women, all of them are coming after white men.
It's really weird how it works that way.
But meanwhile, while he's not just talking about Christian nationalism and basically neo-fascism, Nick, I'll tell you something interesting about the senator from Missouri.
Here's a little product.
It's called Manhood!
The Masculine Virtues American Needs.
And this is a book by an author, let me check my notes, Josh Hawley, that is coming out in just a couple of weeks.
I'm going to read you the description.
Quote, the American founders believed that a republic depends on certain masculine virtues.
Senator Josh Hawley thinks they were right.
In a bold new book, he calls on American men to stand up and embrace their God-given responsibility as husbands, fathers, and citizens.
No republic has ever survived without men of character to defend what is just and true, starting with the wisdom of the ancients from the Greek and Roman philosophers to Jesus of Nazareth.
By the way, Nick, this is the antithesis of the Midnight Kingdom.
I don't know if you've noticed that.
Right.
It's propaganda.
It's the exact opposite in the Midnight Kingdom history of power, paranoia and the government crisis.
Halley identifies the defining strengths of men, including responsibility, bravery, fidelity and leadership.
This is this is the selling of a book.
It's the selling of a book through a political platform, through religion, and all of the adherent principles of it.
Sometimes it's a book, sometimes it's dick pills, sometimes it's a, you know, a multi-level marketing scheme, but you nailed it dead to rights.
This is a United States Senator grifting his ass off.
Um, you know, here's the problem with some of this is that, you know, is it bad to talk about, you know, fidelity?
Is it bad to want people to aspire to that?
And I think we become so cynical and jaded that we kind of know a lot of these guys are cheating on their wives and they're doing their horrible leaders or horrible bosses.
all these different things.
So it's, it's, that is sort of the, the, the issue.
But, but, you know, is it, is it a terrible thing to try and, and, you know, inspire people to, to those virtues?
What's the answer for that?
Well, the answer is that first of all, these aren't masculine virtues.
There's no such thing as actually masculine virtues.
Those are all made up.
Gender is an absolute construct.
And by the way, this is exactly striking out and basically saying there are two genders.
And one of the genders is strong and should be the leaders.
And the other gender, women by the way, Should be subservient and do their duty to God and men and all of that stuff.
And by the way, like, Fidelity, like, what are we doing here?
Really?
This is a guy on January 6th who raised his fist to a bunch of people who are getting ready to try and overthrow an election and invade a Capitol.
You know what I mean?
Like, this guy, he is an incredible grifter, dangerous person, and is using all of this stuff as a medium for selling a book.
And, by the way, I guarantee, he thinks that he's going to be President of the United States sooner than later.
I don't think he's going to run in 2024.
I think he has his sights set on 28.
Without question, he's been building this up to become, to run.
He's in all the secret societies already, so he's got that down.
He's the, you know, there's no question.
You know, I'm surprised that he's willing to go out there in a t-shirt knowing that he's going to run eventually.
Even though, you know, he might look good in the t-shirt, it's just that the whole image is so strange to me.
Like, he's kind of doing, he's a little bit protesting too loudly.
Like, he's trying a little too hard on all this masculine stuff.
Yeah, for anybody who hasn't seen this, he's out on stage in this, like, black t-shirt, and, like, he's totally trying to look cool, and it looks absolutely absurd.
By the way, speaking of looking cool and trying to be cool, play this next clip, Nick.
This is wonderful.
Significance doesn't depend on your position.
Your significance doesn't depend on a title.
Your significance depends on the power of the Spirit of God working through you.
That's where your significance comes from.
It's a rock and roll jamboree, everybody!
Josh Howley.
Josh Howley.
I always worry about that when people want to, like, you know, throw up their, you know, their motivations of what they do in life to God as if they're channeling Him.
It doesn't seem to say that I don't have any, like, any mistakes I might make I'm not responsible for because it's like it's God controlling me the whole time.
Oh yeah, no, that comes down to the theology side of this, which is just that, and by the way, it's weird, we don't talk about it in America, the Religious Foundation of America, and by the way, the American government and republic was not set up as a religious government.
It was set up in spite of religion.
All of the founders understood that this type of nonsense was dangerous, right?
For all of the mistakes they made, and they were many, they understood that this stuff was dangerous.
The American religion was set up on not just Protestantism, but it was set up on Puritanism, which, by the way, is one of the reasons why we all want to be pure and judge everybody else and just absolutely, you know, slash and burn, but also on, like, the Protestant sort of idea of people being chosen and that there are chosen elect that God is showing his preference to by giving them wealth and power and privilege.
Right?
And that, you know, the gospel of prosperity is absolutely playing through.
But I will say something.
One of the things that he's doing, and this is a lot like Tucker Carlson saying what he said in his video, you'll notice he says that you were not defined by your position.
This is a response to a hollowness of meaning in the United States of America.
We've been hollowed out by neoliberalism.
We've been told the only thing that matters is whether or not we have a good job, whether we have a lot of money.
Meanwhile, we've all reached this point, particularly post-COVID, where all of a sudden we're like, man, I don't think that stuff has meaning.
I want meaning!
And what Hawley and other people like him in the national conservative movement are trying to do is they're trying to create purpose for people.
It's not good purpose.
It's fascistic purpose.
It's oppressive purpose.
But it is a semblance of purpose.
And what's happening here is they actually are speaking to a problem, which is you are not your job not to rip off Fight Club too much.
You know, you are not your job.
You are not your office.
You're not your possessions.
Those things don't actually mean anything.
You should go out and find interconnectedness.
You should go out and find meaning in others.
But what he is saying is God, and I'm putting quotes around God because it's the national conservative God that they use in order to overthrow elections and hurt people, you should be serving that God and you should be coming over here and this is answering a deep, deep cavity of meaning at this point.
For sure.
I think he's also trying to channel the, like, if he says the right words in the right way on that stage, a lot of the work he would have had to have done to get people to vote for him, it's kind of done very quickly because he taps into the religious aspect of it, of which people are trained to follow.
You know what I mean?
And that gets them, it kind of cuts through, like, in a very cynical way, which he is, by the way, right?
He's very cynical in this.
Very cynical.
He's recognizing that.
He's like, gosh, I don't have to, you know, go door to door and do all the other stuff I have to do, whatever.
I can just say these things.
It'll get shared on social media.
And I can almost, like, instantly turn that light switch on because they recognize the level of language that I am, you know, manipulating to get them to follow me.
It's like, he doesn't have to say anything about policy.
He doesn't have to say anything about what he might do to help the country or what he wants to do.
Well, and by the way, like, that's the entire point of what the National Conservatives are doing.
They're going to use God, masculinity, and by the way, Holly and other people like him are going to use militarism, right, to basically say, listen, not only are we not going to help you, you don't want us to help you.
You need to help yourself.
And everything that you're suffering and everything you're going through is in a larger crusade.
You're doing it for God.
You're doing it because you're on the right side of history.
You're doing it because you're a holy warrior in a holy war.
And as a result, they are creating a base of people who are like, don't help us!
Absolutely don't give us that.
Don't take care of us that way.
That is the message that Hawley and the National Conservatives are absolutely preparing people for.
And what's even worse is that then they will attack the left as godless sinners, right?
And when you look at that, Nancy Pelosi, for instance, I think might be the most religious of anybody in Congress as far as her faith and how she practices it in a traditional sense.
And a lot of Democrats are.
Certainly a lot of people are.
Nobody wants to be accused of being godless or whatever, but it turns out that when you use that, that should be out of bounds as well.
It probably used to be at some point, but they'll use that as an example where it turns out that People of faith are obviously across every party, it doesn't have to do with what party you're in, but they're vilifying that, using God, and that is just, you know, a real, real problem because you never, how do you shake anyone from that once you've told them that and they believe it?
That's another reason why we're stuck in this, where we are now.
Absolutely.
And Josh Hawley, incredibly dangerous person, really, really dangerous person who brings a lot of different aspects of the far right and national conservatism under one banner.
He's a really dangerous person.
And he reminds me, to a certain extent, Nick, he reminds me of maybe a more personable Ron DeSantis.
Right.
We're going to shift into the presidential field right now.
It's getting weird out there!
It's wild, wacky election season.
And I gotta tell you, Ron DeSantis, and we're gonna get into a couple of reports that are coming out right now, This is a really strange thing that has been happening lately, which is everywhere that Ron DeSantis goes, every place that he goes, there are reports coming out consistently that people are not impressed by him, that they're put off by him, and that donors are like, oh my god, this is the guy that I've given millions of dollars to?
And do not underplay the fact that he has over a hundred million dollars worth of political donations.
Like, he has a war chest unlike any other.
But let's take a look, Nick.
By the way, he went to Japan, made a fool out of himself.
He went over to the UK.
This is from European Politico.
I'm sorry, but when a headline reads, quote, Ron DeTedious, DeSantis underwhelms Britain as business chiefs, here are just some quotes.
He was described as, quote, horrendous, low wattage, low energy people.
Quote, it felt like the end of an overseas trip.
On top of that, he looked bored.
He stared at his feet.
Nobody in the room, quote, was left thinking this man is going places.
Quote, that's not the guy.
I gotta tell you, it's starting to feel like this guy don't have the juice.
Starting to?
Okay.
It's starting to feel that way, yes.
You know, well, the only reason why you have to say starting and it's not over is because of all that money he's raised in the same way that Jeb Bush did, too, and we thought that was gonna be it.
Yeah, I mean, did you see the Piers Morgan thing that he was on?
Uh, you know, yeah, and it was, um, he has no, um, there's no substance at all if you try and ask, ask any question.
Now, by the way, Trump had less substance to his, those things.
So that's, but, but Ron DeSantis didn't have a very wildly successful, uh, TV show for a lot of years to garner all that, uh, that fervor.
So that's his problem.
He needs, that's all he needs.
It just needs to launch a TV show for about 10 years and be a really big star there.
And then, then maybe he can figure it out.
They'd be like, Jag Tallahassee, is what it would be.
No, it's so bad.
And one of the things, Nick, as this rolls in, I have been thinking a lot about this.
This guy ran roughshod over Florida.
Still is.
Gets everything done that he wants to get done.
No opposition.
The federal government lets him discriminate, lets him do whatever he wants, runs the Sunshine State like an absolute tin pot dictatorship.
They have been afraid to step up to him.
The people who are afraid or unwilling to step up to Ron DeSantis have allowed this to happen!
If this guy is a paper tiger, if he is absolutely without any type of juice, What he has been able to do in Florida is not what he has been able to do.
It's what people have allowed him to do.
If this is how bad of a politician he is, if this is how bad he is out in public trying to sell himself, then the people who should have stood up, the federal government, the president of the United States of America, the Democratic Party, you name it, the people who thought that he was doing damage, if they really believed what they believed, they would have already jerked a knot in his tail.
You know, it's funny because a lot of times when you see an article like this, it's like planted by Trump or somebody, you know, it's an opponent, but it doesn't feel that way.
Like, I don't think Trump has enough juice to be able to get Politico in Europe to like write this hit piece on his, you know, chief rival right now.
And I, so what I'm gathering is they are just being accurate.
About a guy.
This is not a hit piece at all.
And I don't think he's going to survive this.
It'll just keep getting worse.
And I think that when Trump finally does start to try and do some stuff and smear him, which he will do to no end, it'll be, it'll be over just like it was for like Jeb Bush in a different way.
And I, and I think all those people, you know, all that money he raises is going to be such a waste.
It's going to be, you know, thinking about what you could do with that money and help people is crazy.
Yeah, no kidding.
What I'm going to be keeping an eye on is undoubtedly, I mean, that amount of money is going to get spent.
It just is.
And at some point or another, they're going to get back into the United States of America.
They're going to get back in the swing of things.
By the way, I love that he's going ahead and bolstering his presidential appeal by making this trip and using all this money.
Fantastic.
What a great system we've got.
Wait, I can't remember the last time I heard about a governor making a trip to Europe like this, right?
Am I crazy?
It seems very rare.
No, I mean, it's a trade mission, Nick.
He didn't go over there for S's and G's in his presidential campaign.
It was a trade mission.
No, it's total garbage.
I have to imagine that there's going to be something that changes.
Every time that you announce your candidacy, it's a chance to reboot your pre-candidacy.
They're going to have to.
And I don't know what they're going to do unless they give this guy a complete personality transplant.
I mean, this is literally, this is like the equivalent of Scott Walker back in 2012 and or Rudy Giuliani there for a while.
People who, I mean, the entire Republican Party and the establishment were absolutely frothing at the mouth at.
And now, I mean, like, this is going over like a lead balloon.
Just let, all you gotta do is let him talk.
Actually, it's a lot like The Apprentice.
When the guy starts to do badly and you just gotta shut up and let him, you know, do it.
He'll sink himself.
And you called this a long time ago.
It's a personality thing, I think, is a big part of it.
That's what I'm reading between the lines here, right?
They don't like it because he's looking down at his shoes.
He's not really, like, engaged.
Like a guy like maybe W was, right?
W could go on this kind of a trip as a governor of Texas.
And charm everybody.
And love them, yeah.
They would have loved him, talking great about him the whole time.
This guy's got a personality disorder to some degree, or something, where he just does not have any of that magnetism, and you need a little bit of it at least.
Well, he is, deep down, he is a jag who, by the way, was present for people getting waterboarded.
I mean, that's who he is.
It's a corrosive ugliness at the heart of this guy.
It's why he's so cruel.
And by the way, you keep talking about The Apprentice, we gotta talk about Donald Trump.
Donald Trump right now is the odds-on favorite to be the Republican nominee again.
By the way, he is being accused of rape by E. Jean Carroll, who is in a courtroom giving testimony to that fact.
On top of that, Nick, I don't know if you saw this, it's late-breaking news.
CNN!
CNN is hosting a town hall with Donald.
Damn.
Trump.
Here too.
We love it, folks.
We love it when our media learns all of their lessons and they don't repeat the same old mistakes.
There's a ton of meat on this bone.
I gotta tell you, Nick, I'm really grossed out all the way around that the leading contender is being accused of rape.
And by the way, CNN, we're just gonna do it again.
We're gonna run the same play.
Don't worry about it.
Well, so you simply wouldn't want CNN to get in the platform at all anymore?
Stop!
Stop.
Stop it.
Stop hurting America.
What if the argument is, well, let's put him out there so we can demonstrate how horrible he is and we need to see it again.
I have to assume that when they're selling ads for that show, that's what they're thinking.
Yeah, sure.
The American media is addicted to Donald Trump, and the entire capitalist system, particularly our media, is completely and utterly wired to sell chaos and anxiety, and Donald Trump gives that to them.
He was not lying when he said that he was essential for all these people.
He absolutely is, and they cannot learn their lesson.
But isn't there a shelf life to this kind of thing anyway?
I mean, isn't there?
I don't know!
We talked about it when I was out there, Nick.
2024 is starting to look like 2020 again.
What the hell?
How is that even possible that we can go through another cycle and get right back to where we were?
Well, obviously, because Biden's the incumbent, that part of the equation, which is frustrating, was always going to be on the table once he got elected in 2020, I guess, right?
We kind of sensed that.
So I think how is it possible that Trump is doing it again?
And that's probably what your question is, right?
It seemed for the longest time that DeSantis was going to be the kryptonite to Donald Trump and that that was going to be where the establishment moved and they were going to try and take over the party.
By the way, it just shows us the establishment within the Republican Party sucks.
Sucks.
Like going back to our first segment, Rupert Murdoch maybe getting rid of Tucker Carlson because his ex-fiancee loved him.
They suck.
They don't, they, you want to talk about lack of juice?
They don't have any juice.
Their best is like Ted Cruz.
And that guy's more worried about growing a beard than he is like, you know, growing an actual political profile.
Well, just be careful because if things go poorly for Trump over the next six, eight months legally, and poorly enough where, like, yeah, it does sink him, well guess what?
All of a sudden... He's a Hutchinson!
Yeah, okay, you know, but the Senate's looking around going, you know, hey guys, I happen to have a hundred million around, I could probably, you know, use it to something, so...
You know, weird things could happen.
I think I'm with you, which I think you're thinking that someone else is going to get into that vacuum.
But I don't know, man.
DeSantis could very well somehow resurrect that if Trump is going to crash and burn illegally.
It would have to be, I mean, it would literally have to be the moment in She's All That where she takes off the glasses and everybody goes, what?
I mean, it would have to be that amazing of a transformation at this point.
By the way, speaking of Joe Biden, the President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, has announced his re-election campaign.
Nick, are you ready to get inspired?
Oh, I could use a little inspiration today.
Let's bring the energy up, fella.
Freedom. - Personal freedom is fundamental to who we are as Americans.
There's nothing more important, nothing more sacred.
That's been the work of my first term, to fight for our democracy.
This shouldn't be a red or blue issue.
To protect our rights, to make sure that everyone in this country is treated equally, and that everyone is given a fair shot at making it.
But you know, around the country, major extremists are lining up to take on those bedrock freedoms.
Cutting Social Security that you paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy.
Dictating what health care decisions women can make.
Banning books and telling people who they can love.
All while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.
When I ran for president four years ago, I said we're in a battle for the soul of America.
And we still are.
The question we're facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom.
More rights or fewer.
I know what I want the answer to be and I think you do too.
This is not a time to be complacent.
That's why I'm running for re-election.
Because I know America.
I know we're good and decent people.
I know we're still a country that believes in honesty and respect and treating each other with dignity.
That we're a nation where we give hate no safe harbor.
We believe that everyone is equal.
That everyone should be given a fair shot to succeed in this country.
Thank you for choosing us.
Every generation of Americans has faced a moment when they have to defend democracy.
Stand up for our personal freedom.
Stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights.
And this is our moment.
So if you're with me, go to JoeBiden.com and sign it.
Let's finish this job.
I know we can.
Because this is the United States of America.
There's nothing, simply nothing we cannot do if we go together.
Nick, are you ready for a year and a half of let's finish the job? - I, I'm ready for a commercial where they actually do the sound mixing properly.
What the hell is that?
Terrible.
Terrible.
First of all, the mic, I don't like where they put the mic.
Half of his thing is not balanced properly with the music.
It's like, how kind of, what ineptitude is going on there?
The editing style, by the way, did you count how many times Kamala was in there?
about four times.
I think it might have been like six at the very end.
They threw a couple of really quick shots of her, whatever smile.
They're always smiling.
You got to be able to edit that out.
If you need to, that's the whole point.
You got, you got to hope if you need to, you can edit that out.
Well, he mentioned her the other day in the speech too, a little bit.
So I feel like they're, they've already, they, you know, we're going to get the same thing.
Although the only question now is who's Trump going to run with.
But we're going to get Kamala and Biden, there's no question.
But they better up their game.
First of all, it's way too long.
And by the way, I'm sorry, I'm hijacking this for a second.
There's a part in the middle where he starts talking about how Americans all should be equal and equal chance or whatever that is.
That's how this thing should have started.
So I don't understand why he would have started this thing on such a downer and an eerie and it's like and all the horrible things that are going on.
You know, he needs to focus on how he can reach everybody and everybody can get a, you know, an equal share of everything.
Frightening if this is what they're going to release.
So I'll go ahead, and again, I know there are people within the Biden campaign and the Biden administration listening to this show.
Here's a helpful little hint.
You have been president for four years.
If you start your ad off by showing all of the dangers, you are saying we haven't fixed the dangers.
You ran in 2020 to fix the dangers, right?
You can put that in the middle, but that's not your initial thing.
The entire point that Biden needs to run on is, here's all the stuff that I've done.
Remind the people!
And by the way, they're never specific.
They're showing people working and putting up girders and stuff.
Like, actually talk about, say what it is that you've done.
And don't just sit there, and by the way, protecting people's rights, protecting women's right to abortion, protecting, you know, books and learning.
You haven't done anything about that yet.
You've said a bunch of things.
You've gone out and you've given speeches saying that people should be able to vote and that women should have control over their bodies and people should have books and they should love who they want to love.
You haven't done anything about it yet!
You haven't, and that's one of the biggest black eyes of this presidency, is they have been afraid to step up to the plate and push back against this stuff.
This is a failure of an ad.
It's a failure of an ad, and it needs- and by the way, like, it is way too long, it sounds terrible, there's not necessarily a cohesive message, and nobody told me in that ad what we're gonna do in the next four years.
Finish the job!
I said this to you in Arizona!
That sounds like you hit a deer!
And you need to, like, take care of it and put it out of its misery!
That's not inspiring!
You're moving to an end?
No!
No!
Jared, have you ever hit a deer with your car?
Uh, yeah.
It was okay, though.
It got away.
Oh, only because they'd say if you really hit a deer with your car, I mean really hit it, you're not, you're probably dead.
You're gonna die.
That can take you out.
I've known some people that's taken out.
Right?
Like your car could be totaled.
So yes, that's not what I'm picturing right now.
For people who don't know, that's Midwestern stuff.
Do not say finish the job.
You gotta stop.
You can't say.
Do you remember, Nick, I don't know if you've seen, have you seen Wag the Dog?
Yes.
Okay.
Wag the Dog, I think, is an underrated 1990s political movie.
The president in that movie was running for re-election.
Do you remember what his campaign slogan was?
Oh, man.
Remind me.
You don't switch horses in midstream.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
That's the only thing worse than this.
This is up there with Jeb!
Exclamation mark.
Finish the job is piss poor.
It's not good.
Yeah, finish the job, sweep the leg, all sorts of terrible stuff.
Sweep the leg?
Put him in a body bag!
Yeah, do it for Johnny.
Terrible.
There's a problem here and they don't have the creativity and the connection that other candidates have had.
Even candidates that are directly related to Joe Biden.
I don't know.
I don't know.
borrowed and I guess they're not available suddenly.
I don't know.
But it's early.
It's early, Jared.
He might be able to figure something out and, and, and, and, and improve.
Right.
Right.
I don't know.
I'm not going to hold.
Does it really matter what the first impression of your reelection campaign is?
Does it, does it really matter?
It's a good chance to set a tone is what it is.
It's a pretty good way to set the tone for what's coming up.
And by the way, I mean, let's be very clear.
We talked about this a couple of years ago.
The original Joe Biden for President campaign didn't work that well.
It was not good.
He was absolutely DOA by the time that he got to South Carolina, and they said, we need to stop it with this Bernie nonsense, you all need to get out, and we need to go ahead and get Joe over the finish line.
It was not a good campaign.
And again, this administration is so bad at touting what it has done.
They're terrified to talk about it.
They're terrified to take, like, these big controversial stances.
The only thing, by the way, in this ad that even actually made that much sense was when it showed Trump with DeSantis.
That was smart.
That was a smart little piece of editing.
You didn't see that on the podcast, but that's about it.
This is not great.
It's not great.
I'm looking almost for my old text.
I feel like you had texted me about Biden in Iowa at some point, like way back in the day.
But when I basically got early coronavirus, I went to a Joe Biden rally in Iowa.
That was when John Kerry was at the hotel telling people that he was going to come in and take the nomination and that Biden sucked.
It was bad.
The people in the Biden campaign were telling me, this ship is going down.
Like it was it was really, really bad.
And it something has to change.
Yeah.
Well, the only thing that's going to change is what happens to Trump, right?
That's going to rock their landscape or potentially or not.
And I suppose I feel like everyone's kind of waiting for that to happen.
And that's what they don't have to do.
Do any campaigning until that happens they figure out once he's gone then it'll be easier.
I don't know how else to explain it because you had a lot of time to develop something to re-announce your re-election campaign.
It's almost like you know when Saturday Night Live comes on for the the season premiere in September or October whatever it is so they technically they would I mean I know they have a week to do the show but they probably had you know you know a little bit of lead time too to come up with some ideas they knew who the host was and then it's a done it's like it's the same same thing I've seen for years.
Yeah, you have all this time.
And by the way, the Biden administration has some W's on the board.
They have some things that they have done.
It has been consequential legislative-wise.
I don't think it's been enough.
I think there was plenty of room to build off of that and build off the majorities in the Senate and Congress.
Didn't do it!
And didn't defend the country, didn't defend voters, didn't defend women, didn't defend children.
That's a black eye on this administration.
It needs to be taken care of very, very quickly.
Nick, before we get out of here, I want to talk about an article.
And you sent this to me this morning, and I was so happy that you did.
This comes from Maureen Dowd.
And for anybody who doesn't know, I have met Maureen Dowd.
I was on a panel with Maureen Dowd.
How she appears in the New York Times, how she presents herself, Nick, that's who she is.
That is Maureen Dowd out and about in the world.
She is a force of nature, but we need to talk about this stinker of an article that appeared in the New York Times.
This was Maureen Dowd basically singing an elegy for the newsrooms of old.
Let's start with, quote, I don't want this to be one of those pieces that bangs on about how things used to be better and they'll never be good again.
By the way, Nick, anytime somebody writes that, what do they want to do?
It's going to be exactly that.
It's going to be exactly that.
But when it comes to newsrooms, it happens to be true.
Quote, What would a newspaper movie look like today, wondered my New York Times colleague Jim Ruttenberg.
A bunch of individuals at their apartments surrounded by sad houseplants using slack?
Mike Isikoff, an investigative reporter at Yahoo, who worked with me at the Washington Star back in the 70s, agreed.
Quote, newsrooms were a crackling gaggle of gossip, jokes, anxiety, and oddball hilarious characters.
Now we sit at homes alone staring at our computers.
What a drag.
As my friend Mark Leibovic, a writer at The Atlantic, noted, quote, I can't think of a profession that relies more on osmosis and just being around other people than journalism.
There's a reason they made all those newspaper movies.
All the president's men.
Spotlight.
The paper.
I just want to point out, before we move any further, they are talking about MOVIES.
They are talking, they are defining their careers based on movies about their careers, and no field does that more than journalism.
They love it, they love these movies, they love defining themselves based on all the presidents, men, that is what they're talking about.
Okay, and listen, Frank DeFord was a guy who I, you know, loved to read in Sports Illustrated, and he had a book about his life.
He was, you know, a sports writer, but he described the same kind of thing, right?
Where you wear the trench coats, and you go into the room where you're writing, you know, the office, and then they go get drinks afterwards, and they gossip, they talk, and that was life.
That was how you did your job.
You know, is there some sort of gauze over the lens going on here with the lighting that they're remembering?
Some people I saw on Twitter were upset because it felt like to them that they didn't have to really work, they would just hear other people's gossip and that gave them the leads they needed to get the news broken.
And maybe that was true too, I don't know, but I don't know.
I do think that there is some, there probably was something nice of a camaraderie that did exist in those newsrooms.
Quote, 40 years later when I began working in the Times newsroom, it was still electric and full of eccentric characters.
The green eye shades were gone and nobody yelled hat and coat to send you out on breaking news.
It was quieter as it computerized.
I had had a taste of the old loose glamour at the Washington Star.
When I first started, I was a clerk at the 9 p.m.
shift.
Afterward, we'd go to the Tune-In, the only bar on Capitol Hill that would serve Bloody Marys at dawn.
My job was to type up stories on my royal typewriter with carbon paper, dictated by reporters who called in from the field, including from the trial of the Watergate burglars.
It could get rowdy, and not just because mice occasionally ran across our keyboards.
An editor sent me out for beer on deadline and then almost fired me when I brought back Miller Lite.
Reporters had temper tantrums, smashing their typewriters or computer terminals on the floor.
Isn't it weird, Nick, how every time these people start waxing nostalgic, you find out, like, how awful these workplaces were?
It's not weird, you're right.
And yeah, the decorum, the standards of behavior for all those years, yes, was so bad.
And by the way, this is a woman writing it who would have had the brunt of this and more, right?
Women really were treated horribly back then.
And is it clear that she's pining for this again?
I can't quite tell, necessarily, that that's what she wants to have happen again.
She absolutely, and we'll read an excerpt exactly that professes that in a second.
Nick, this is part of a phenomenon that we talk about on this show every now and then, which is, the older generations want the younger generations To pay the same dues and go through the same travails.
They want them to work in workplaces where they don't feel safe.
They want to work in workplaces where they're mistreated.
It literally is a phenomenon where generations don't want people to have better lives.
Like, who thinks a workplace where people are smashing terminals and typewriters is anywhere that anybody should work?
That's a problem.
I would argue that threatening to fire somebody for getting Miller Lite, which by the way, you know, Miller Lite is making love to the canoe, but it is worse than witnessing someone smashing a typewriter.
And I've always said that as a person in power, even when you try and joke about that, joking about like, oh, you're fired.
And by the way, it's a Trump thing, Trumpy thing.
That is not good psychologically.
It does not do well for your work environment at all.
It's terrible.
She says, quote, As I write this, I'm in a deserted newsroom in the Times DC office.
After working at home for two years during COVID, I was elated to get back so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
Which is weird, you shouldn't be getting the scoops at your office, but whatever.
But in the last year, there's only been a smattering of people whenever I'm here, with row upon row of empty desks.
Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels.
Bagels are good.
Remote work is a major priority in contract negotiations for the Times Union, which wants employees to have to come into the office no more than two days a week this year and three days a week starting next year.
Management, which says one thing it is worried about is that young people will stagnate and see the institution as abstraction if they work remotely too often, has committed to a three-day-a-week policy this year but wants to reserve the right to expand that in the future.
Now before I finish this out, Nick, she's in the union!
Like, the union didn't make this up because the union wanted it.
The people in the union wanted it.
They don't want to have to go into the workplace.
Why does management want it?
Because they'll stagnate?
No!
Management wants it so they can supervise them.
So that the people over them, the middle managers, will continue to be hired.
They do not trust the employees to do what needs to be done.
She's siding with management!
That's what she's doing right here.
By the way, okay, so let's just say you don't have the managerial class overseeing your workers.
Would there be a possible way that would ensure that the workers would treat their jobs properly and actually do the work?
Wouldn't there be a way for management to make sure that would still be in place?
For sure!
And if you think that they're going to... Listen to this!
I worry that the romance, the alchemy, is gone.
Once people realized the completely stunning fact that they could put out a great newspaper from home, they decided, why not do so?
Hell of a question!
That's the whole point!
Yes!
It's not hurting the quality of the newspaper.
Like, they don't have to be in there.
What she is wishing for is a completely imaginary place that used to exist, and she's just rhapsodizing about it and wants to put people into unnecessary situations.
And a large part of this, Nick, is all based on the idea that these offices What do they do?
They prop up restaurants.
They prop up real estate firms.
They are doing all of this stuff in order to keep all this stuff going.
It's not about the quality of the newspaper or what gets produced.
People work just as well at home than they do at work.
And, like, this fact is really freaking out these people who don't understand what's going on.
And the answer to my question, I think, would be I'm a journalist.
I'm a writer for a newspaper.
And I'm not pulling my weight.
I'm not writing good articles.
I'm not turning things in on time.
They'll fire you.
Or ChatGPT will take your job.
Right.
So I think there's plenty of pressure on these guys to actually do the job, even if they're doing it from home, you know, properly or else they will lose that job.
So I do feel like that's the knee-jerk reaction in the managerial classes is that they don't think that people are going to take advantage of it somehow.
And the bottom line is, what is the goal?
Is the goal to put out a paper?
Is the goal to have these articles written?
Are they a high enough standard?
If that's the case, then it doesn't matter where they are when they do that.
In fact, it saves them money.
It's insane.
Okay, let's finish this thing up.
Quote.
I'm mystified when I hear that so many of our 20-something news assistants prefer to work from home.
At that age, I would have had a hard time finding mentors or friends or boyfriends, which, man, that's a weird thing to put in this article, if I hadn't been in the newsroom.
And I never could have latched onto so many breaking stories if I hadn't raised my hand and said, I'll go.
And by the way, you can do that on Slack, but that's neither here nor there.
Mary McGrory, the liberal lioness columnist, never would have gotten to know me at the Star, so I never would have gotten invitations from her years later like this one.
Let's go see Yasser Arafat at the White House and go shopping.
That's bizarre.
And finally, as Meijer, Jane Meijer, recalled, when a big story broke at the Star, you could see history happening.
People would cluster over a reporter's desk, pile into the boss's office, and sometimes break into incredibly loud fights.
There were weirdos in newsrooms and fabulous role models occasionally in the spirit of being part of a motley entourage.
Now it's just you and the little cursor on your screen.
This is nothing more than nostalgia porn that wants to make people go in and do the things that other people have had to do.
It's kind of weird and disturbing.
Or it's someone who is so lonely right now and isolated that it's a call for help.
Which, by the way, we can't ignore that there is something about... By the way, I've never worked in an office.
I've never gone to a nine-to-five.
I don't know what that's like.
But, you know, even the nostalgia in me, there are probably a little bit of benefits of being around some people and not just being completely isolated and don't talk to anybody.
But again, what journalist in your right mind would ever Not talk to people and not be out on the street like that.
That's that's half of your job anyway.
So that's not that's not the issue there, I guess, in this field.
But it does sound like Maureen is just is feeling a little lonely out there and needs something to fill that hole up.
It's really weird how much of our media now is full of people who are wasting all their column inches on this stuff.
Right?
Young people don't want to work.
They don't want to go into work.
The young people don't appreciate this.
They don't find these awful environments to be charming and lovely.
And it's amazing how much of our media is defined by that now.
It's head-scratching.
And she's describing this, you can see history happening, people would cluster over reporters' desks, pile in the boss's office, yada yada.
And there's some reason, she's using you, you know, as the quote from Mayer, but it makes it kind of feel like, yeah, we all can see that, but in fact, whenever a news thing would break in a story, like there, it's like what, like there's six people in the room, or eight people, and they go in the office, whatever, it's not Not anything that we would be part of anyway doesn't grab me because I'm like, no one will ever see that scene when it was happening in the 60s or 50s, right?
So anyway, I hear you, but I certainly want to make sure I advocate for people that work like me alone, that you get out there and please find ways to interact with people in real life too.
Have meaningful interactions with other people.
Invite your friend to come out from across the country and hang out.
And drink Bloody Marys at dawn.
There you go.
Wonderful.
That's exactly how life should be.
And by the way, we hope you all are having wonderful lives.
We appreciate you so much.
Again, the kindnesses as we went on the road were absolutely wonderful.
We're going to be back on Friday with The Weekender Edition.
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If you need us before then, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
