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July 15, 2025 - The Muckrake Political Podcast

01:01:34

The Truth Behind The Epstein Files, With Aaron Rupar

Nick Hauselman hosts while Jared Yates Sexton is unavailable, and he interviews Aaron Rupar, an independent journalist and publisher of The Public Notice Newsletter. As the tweeter of record of all things political on broadcast air, Rupar has a unique insight into the Epstein case, Trump's ineffective relationship with Putin, and lots more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	Hello, everybody.
	Welcome to the Muckrake Political Podcast.
	I am your host, Nick Hauslman.
	And at the current moment, Jared Yateson is not with us today, but I am really pleased to bring on to the show Aaron Rupar, who is an independent journalist and the publisher of the Public Notice newsletter, which you can find at publicnotice.co.co.
	And Aaron, thank you so much for joining us.
	I really appreciate it.
	Yeah, it's great to connect.
	You know, I knew you from your basketball account.
	I wasn't even aware that you do a political podcast, but looking forward to talking some politics and maybe a little bit of hoops here and there too.
	We'll see.
	Oh, absolutely.
	We can definitely get into that.
	And there's actually, there's some interesting parallels as well to that.
	So, you know, for those of you who are out there who are listening, who are not familiar with Aaron's work, it is a yeoman's job to go through hours and hours of video, of interviews, of all sorts of things the Trump administration is doing and posting them and sharing them.
	So, you know, we just went through a NATO meeting in the White House with Trump.
	Give us a little insight into what that's like to have to cover these things live and then, you know, as quickly as you possibly can, get these clips out while they're happening while adding perhaps a little bit of context to what's going on.
	What is that like for you?
	Yeah, you know, it feels like the Biden years were kind of a reprieve from this because, you know, of course, I covered Trump during his first term as well, back when I was at First Think Progress and then Vox during those years.
	And so, you know, I've been doing this for a while, but there's kind of the sense that you're on call every day.
	And, you know, you and I were talking over the weekend about scheduling this conversation.
	And, you know, I regret that I have to be kind of like, well, you know, it depends what Trump's schedule is going to be like.
	And then you were kind of like, well, he has an event.
	What time is it scheduled to start?
	And I had to explain like, well, it doesn't really matter when it's scheduled to start because in the case of this event with the NATO secretary today, it started about an hour late.
	And you just don't know.
	But like you kind of alluded to, that's a big part of my job is watching these events live and clipping them.
	And of course, there is kind of, you know, it's like any type of news reporting, you know, in the basketball context, I guess we can reflect on like the shams, Woge rivalry from back in the day.
	Of course, Woge has moved on, but where, you know, you do want to be first with the clips or at least be timely with them because there's not much value in posting a clip an hour late that, you know, is already widely out there.
	So there is kind of that reality that when you're, you know, kind of playing the social media game, you have to sort of be locked in and be flexible.
	And so, you know, it makes for kind of unpredictable schedule.
	Of course, I'm covering these events remotely almost all of the time.
	So, you know, there is that.
	At least I'm not like on the road, you know, having to put my life like totally on hold.
	But, you know, with Trump, you know, even last night as he was traveling back to the White House, he had a little stop and chat with reporters at an airport in New Jersey.
	And so, you know, I happen to just be kind of sitting around my computer when that happened.
	But, you know, events like that will happen where you feel like you have to kind of hop on and lock in and start clipping what's going on.
	So, you know, and it's not just Trump.
	I mean, there's, you know, State Department briefings every day.
	There's, you know, Pam Bonnie will be on Fox News.
	There's just stuff happening all the time.
	And so there's always stuff that you could be clipping.
	You know, I could do that 24 hours a day if I wanted to, but I also do the newsletter.
	And so it does lead to kind of long days, but I am grateful to be able to do this for a living because, you know, as bleak as it is a lot of the time, there is the sense that I'm kind of covering historic events.
	And, you know, that's a lot more interesting than most jobs are.
	For sure.
	I mean, it seems a lot easier to digest what's going on with, you know, the little sound bites that you're providing versus having to go through.
	I mean, I watched a lot of today's, you know, press conference that Chump did.
	And, you know, it drones on and on for quite a long time.
	So it's much more, I would imagine, more valuable in today's society to be able to have the sound bites.
	I'm kind of curious.
	You know, when I'm doing this on the basketball side, like during basketball games, I will clip a play and then I will offer a little analysis of what happened.
	And I get accused of bias all over the place all the time.
	And when in fact, I don't care at all who plays, who's in the clips or whatever.
	And I'm kind of curious if you have to deal a lot with that.
	Do you even pay attention to your mentions anyway, like on Twitter, for instance, or anywhere else?
	How does that play out for you?
	You know, I pay attention to them insofar as if I'm following someone, I'll get a ping, you know, if they reply or repost or something like that.
	So, but I'm not reading all of the randos who are replying because, you know, a typical post will have hundreds of replies.
	I mean, I have a hard enough time these days staying on top of email, just given the flood that comes in.
	But, you know, I mean, I came up as a progressive journalist and I make no bones about the fact that, you know, I think my values are pretty centrist in that, you know, I'm for kind of tolerance and at least equality of opportunity and, you know, fairness and, you know, just kind of values that I wouldn't think are super controversial.
	And I don't think traditionally have been, you know, kind of until this Trump era.
	So yeah, I mean, it's not really, I mean, I guess it'd be kind of analogous to, you know, if you're covering basketball and you're kind of like openly rooting for a team, although, you know, I don't really root for Democrats in that way.
	I certainly, you know, root against Trump because I think we can kind of see what he, you know, has done to the country and continues to do to the country.
	And, you know, I don't think by and large they are good things.
	So I don't really make any bones about that.
	And, you know, but I try to be fair to the extent of like an example was maybe you saw the JD Vance clip from yesterday of him kind of like running awkwardly.
	I think he was out with his kids at like Disneyland or something.
	And, you know, it went super viral.
	I saw a couple of clips of like millions of views.
	But, you know, I have two small kids.
	I can kind of relate, like if you're in a theme park, I wasn't exactly clear from the clip what was happening, but it kind of looked like he was like chasing after one of his kids or something like that.
	That wouldn't be something that I would necessarily drag him forwards because, you know, when you take a shot or when you criticize, you want it to be kind of fair in that respect.
	And so, you know, Trump, it's a very target-rich environment.
	You know, he's lying constantly.
	He's breaking his promises constantly.
	You know, he's saying things that he has no intention on following through on all the time.
	So it's a target-rich environment.
	So I do try to be fair just because when you do criticize, you want people to take it seriously or at least, you know, find that you have enough credibility to make that sort of criticism.
	And if you're just kind of, you know, kind of going willy-nilly or hog wild with stuff like that, I think it kind of denigrates your credibility in that way.
	But yeah, I mean, you know, I guess the analogies Sebastopol don't totally work because no one is really covering it as necessarily rooting for teams in that way.
	You'd be more of like a fan journalist or like, you know, something outside of journalism.
	But I think any political journalist that's kind of worth their salt, the objectivity thing is a myth you're always bringing your values to the table and so you know I think I'm just a little more kind of transparent about that than some reporters are sure and you know having followed you for a long time I do feel like and maybe correct me if I'm wrong it seems like maybe you've weighed in a little bit more with the editorialism or sort of an opinion on some of your you know the tweets where maybe in the beginning it was a little bit less of that or maybe just like the clip itself
	without maybe any any uh text alongside it i think if anything i've kind of stuck more to just trying to quote people these days um you know certainly i offer a lot of commentary but sometimes i look back on some of the clips that'll you know that'll be recirculated into my timeline that i posted like in 2017 or 2018 i think i was kind of leaning into it a little bit more back then in terms of like really being critical of trump and have sort of in a way that transcends just like quoting him or describing what he's up to um because you know back at that time i was at think progress which
	um you know wasn't exactly like a radical publication but was part of the center for american progress and was certainly center left and then you know i think once i got to vox you know vox had much more of a focus on like let's you know kind of stick to the facts here like it's okay to be critical of trump but we don't want to be like polemical and um and then you know i think these days there's a lot of value i mean some of the clips i just posted from this event with the nato secretary um i'm just kind of quoting trump or like you know transcribing the exchanges that he has because i think that they kind of speak volumes and you know there are times where i still think it's appropriate to
	include fact checks and things like that um you know some of the lies that trump tells he he repeats them so much that it almost becomes um kind of tiresome to include the same fact checks over and over not that that's a good reason not to do them but um you know i think a lot of times with trump because some of the stuff he says and does is so outrageous it's enough just to kind of transcribe what he's saying and put that out there for people so you know you make that editorial judgment you know with every clip that you post in some form or fashion um but to try and insulate myself a little bit from you know some of the
	criticisms of being just like a you know partisan shill i i do try to when possible just kind of stick to what trump is saying for sure well you know now that we've kind of gotten the baseline of how this works for you we got to talk a little bit about the etstein files um it's impressive that they've haven't gone away in the era of uh you know attention span being so short um this actually kind of feels to me like um something that might give trump a little bit of a hit to his power and to his control over what's going on um
	what do you make of the whole thing thing you know having the base of the Republican Party or the MAGAs now so completely up in arms is that surprising to you that that's how they're feeling and willing to maybe even criticize Trump a little bit off of this because all of a sudden there are no Epstein files it is a little bit surprising to me because if you go back to Trump's first term I think it was 2019 when Epstein was convicted and there was a scandal involving Trump's then Secretary of Labor,
	Alex Acosta, who was a Florida prosecutor back when Epstein was initially arrested for sex trafficking back, I think it was like 2007, somewhere in there.
	And Acosta was involved in basically cutting a sweetheart deal for Epstein that allowed him to be released and essentially reoffend.
	And then he was convicted on those further offenses in 2019.
	But then the occasion of all of that news breaking was when MSNBC published the footage of Trump and Epstein partying in the 90s.
	And there was kind of a whole round of reporting about things that Trump had said about Epstein and how they were friends who both had a taste in young women and things like this.
	And that was kind of a that lasted a few news cycles back in that day, but then it kind of faded.
	And by the time the 2020 campaign came around, it was sort of on the back burner where it wasn't really like something that people were talking about.
	And so it seemed like MAGA back then learned to kind of make their peace with it.
	I don't think the facts have like hugely changed with the exception of people like Pam Bondi and Cash Patel and Dan Bongino, who during the campaign made a big fuss about how Trump was pro-transparency and that if he was elected, they would release all of the files that they had.
	And then, of course, you had Pam Bondi, who I'm sure regrets that interview she did on Fox News.
	I think it was in February, where she said something to the effect of, I have the Epstein files on my desk and I'll be releasing the client list anytime now.
	And now, of course, she's saying that there is no client list and that she misspoke or is being misinterpreted.
	So kind of has the whiff, I think, especially because of the Bondi comments of being a cover-up.
	And of course, if there is a cover-up, the only person that it would make sense for them to be trying to protect is Trump.
	It's not like they're protecting Bill Clinton or these other high-profile political people or, you know, business people who have been implicated with Epstein over the years.
	But yeah, I mean, you know, it kind of caught me off guard in that, you know, this whole thing with Epstein this time around, as you alluded to, really kind of percolated from Trump's right, you know, where now he's posting the message he posted over the weekend kind of urging people to move on from it.
	You know, I think he referred to like his guys and gals or something at the top of the post, which people thought was kind of amusing.
	But if you read the replies to that, True Social, even his like hardcore fans are not happy with the lack of transparency and kind of the sense that there's a cover-up here.
	So I'm still pretty skeptical that there's like any big bombshells around the corner here.
	You know, I've always been kind of skeptical of the idea that there was some huge cover-up or that Epstein was murdered in prison and some of these allegations that have been out there.
	But then, you know, I mean, there's even the bit with like the footage from the jail where there's a minute of tape that's unaccounted for.
	And there's kind of an open question as to whether that was like a technical glitch or something in the video system that they use in that prison or was there really tape being deleted.
	I mean, it seems pretty clear based on a wired report that the footage was at least tampered with, you know, because they went and looked at the metadata that had been imported into basically a video editing software before it was released.
	So, I mean, there's enough kind of circumstantial stuff here where it seems like there's some sort of cover-up happening.
	But, you know, again, I'm pretty skeptical that we're going to ever actually know whether that's true or what the cover-up is.
	But, you know, it is notable, I think, that Dan Bongino, who is a hardcore Trump supporter, you know, was apparently willing to leave his post over this, although Trump made some comments yesterday indicating that they've kind of smoothed That over.
	So, you know, there might be more shoes to drop this week as we sit here and talk on Monday.
	But I guess my kind of overall stance on this hasn't changed.
	I'm pretty skeptical that there's some big scandal here that we're going to get to the bottom of.
	But I am surprised that this seemed to be, you know, one of the very few scandals that kind of broke through, you know, beyond, you know, kind of centrists or, you know, center left people to the Trump base where they're taking it seriously.
	And not only are they taking it seriously, but they seem to be willing to criticize Trump and have some suspicion of him over this whole thing.
	Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating.
	I mean, here's the thing, though.
	Epstein's guilty.
	You know, they found him in a court of law as guilty as being a pedophile and being someone who was trafficking.
	Jelaine Maswell is guilty, is in prison right now.
	What's strange about all of this is that for them to be guilty, there has to be other people who were guilty because they're the ones committing the acts of the, you know, the girls that they were trafficking.
	So it just boggles the mind.
	Now, because in theory, with control over the DOJ, they could just scratch out Trump's name, right, and release everything else.
	And I just wonder if this is just more part of the gross incompetence and stupidity of this administration.
	They can't even figure out how to make that work.
	You know, if they're willing to be as corrupt as it appears that they are in a myriad of ways, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that they wouldn't have just released something that was like either heavily redacted or just because we, listen, as an expert at Adobe Premiere using that software, it is obvious that they doctored that footage.
	And there's not that many other explanations for that other than that you saw somebody go in there, right?
	And or you saw something that they had to get rid of that would have implicated that it was not a suicide.
	And, you know, Epstein was up for a parole.
	He was potentially up for a pardon.
	Jelaine Maxwell is up for a pardon.
	That just came out the other day.
	And by the way, how rich is it that of all people to be advocating for a pardon for Maxwell, it's Alan Dershowitz, right?
	Who was probably a client as well.
	It really kind of boggles the mind.
	And so like, if you wanted my take on it, I'm kind of curious your take.
	I mean, this is clear, a clear cover-up, right?
	Is there any other way to explain it other than that?
	Yeah, you know, when you kind of laid out like that, I think you probably are right.
	I think the video tampering is the one that really stuck with me more than anything Pam Bondi said as being evidence that something is kind of amiss here.
	The Bondi thing, I sort of dismiss because these people go on right-wing TV all the time and say all sorts of crazy stuff.
	And oftentimes it's totally disconnected from reality.
	So you kind of take that with a grain of salt.
	But yeah, I mean, I don't understand what the explanation would be for kind of fussing with the video or why you wouldn't just release the raw footage.
	Now, it does kind of raise a question of wouldn't someone at that prison have the undoctored footage?
	Like, you know, whenever there's an allegation of big cover-up like this, you know, I tend to think about, well, you know, who might leak about this or who would have kind of the, you know, the real scoop here?
	And, you know, we haven't really seen anything like that yet, at least.
	And I haven't, you know, independently reported in terms of like the chain of custody there who might have that footage.
	But, you know, Wired is a very legit outlet.
	And so when they report that the footage was tampered with, I believe that the footage was tampered with.
	And there is a fact pattern here that's obviously pretty difficult for Trump to explain away.
	And that, you know, Epstein died in 2019 when Trump was president.
	And I think there's a temptation, of course, with Trump's post over the weekend where now he's trying to kind of allege that, oh, you know, Obama and Hillary somehow responsible for the Epstein files.
	And why didn't Biden release it during his presidency if there are big bombshells there?
	You know, that's kind of the default posture, I think, for Trump when there's a scandal that implicates him or that looks bad for him is to try and blame it on someone else.
	But I think even the most red-pilled MAGAs are aware of the fact pattern and the fact that Trump was president when Epstein died.
	And so that's a pretty difficult thing to explain.
	But if it's true based on what Trump said over the weekend that Bongino has kind of agreed to stand down and is going to stay in his post for now, I guess we'll see if this kind of dies away like a lot of Trump scandals have where they're very attention grabbing for a week or two and then they kind of fade into the background or if this one really does have staying power.
	And I just, I don't have a great sense for that.
	But I think it'd be helpful if we got some sort of new information or something beyond kind of just all the smoke that's out there that's more of a fire for people to really, for it to kind of drive the new cycle further.
	And I just don't have a sense of whether that's going to happen or not.
	Fair enough.
	Fair enough.
	I mean, like having being an amateur expert at the JFK assassination, I mean, we just got 80 or whatever years later, sorry, what's he, 63, whatever it is, just recently, the Secret Service guy says, oh, I put the magic bullet on the stretcher.
	Like, whoops, you know, we just found that out.
	And I'll be willing to say that, having studied this as long as I have, that actually does, you know, make a lot of sense, regardless if he's trying to sell a book or not.
	But so it's like, you never know.
	We can find out some of this stuff like years and years later.
	The weird thing, though, is we still have, Jolene Maxwell is still alive.
	Like she is still there.
	She's the one who can say, well, here is the list.
	These binders that Pom Pambandi made and handed out to these right-wing influencers who were waving them around in front of the White House of all places.
	I mean, it really boggles the mind.
	And there's actually this interesting parallel where Natalie Bennett, who was a former prime minister of Israel, comes out just the other day or yesterday, whatever it was, and says that Epstein had never been a Mossad agent or worked with Mossad to get all this dirt.
	Because again, that's another interesting side note to this.
	And I actually posited this last night before I even saw that tweet where it could very well be that Epstein was just a guy that was manipulative and wanted money, right?
	And wanted power and figured this is a great way to be able to get people to invest in the things he wants by having, you know, throwing parties with, you know, underage girls and then filming it and then having blackmail.
	I mean, I have to imagine, I don't know what you think, that is as plausible as anything else.
	I mean, to the point where I'd say that's probably more plausible than working with Massad.
	Yeah.
	And when you bring up Glene Maxwell, that was another aspect that I think people have maybe forgotten from Trump's first term, where if you recall when she was initially arrested, or maybe it was after she was convicted, where Trump was asked about her, and I believe his direct quote Was I wish her well, you know, which is like a very odd, you know, for this movement that's so fixated with pedophiles and it's like this, you know, thing that they're just obsessed with.
	And Trump wishes everybody well, right?
	I mean, that's always what he says.
	Well, other than you know, Biden, I mean, he said that he was, you know, he doesn't feel bad that Biden has cancer.
	I mean, you know, it depends who he's talking about.
	Right.
	But that's why, you know, even at the time, it was kind of this like off-key thing where it would have been easy enough to say something like, well, you know, pedophiles are terrible and she deserves justice or something like that.
	But, you know, he kind of went the other way with it.
	And, you know, again, I, you know, and I haven't followed every last development with this, but you mentioned earlier that I think there's some decision to be made this week on Maxwell, whether, yeah, whether she's up for a pardon or up for being released from custody or something like that.
	So, I mean, there could be kind of a, you know, further news on that front this week.
	But, you know, that was another comment that Trump made that I think people kind of memory hold that, you know, in hindsight, when you think back, it's like, why was he so kind of solicitous of her?
	You know, it doesn't smell right for sure.
	For sure.
	And, you know, it's funny because the crown of Scaramucci, I thought, was for sure going to go to Hegseth at some point.
	And I don't know how he survived that.
	It seems like Mondi, it would be next and she's going to want to take some more time to be with her family.
	Did I have a fever dream or did I see that like Matt Gates was supposed to visit the White House this week?
	Did you see that?
	Am I crazy?
	You know, I did see some tweets to that effect over the weekend when I was kind of like half tuned out of the news for a couple of days.
	So I'm not totally sure on that.
	I mean, it's funny to think back that, you know, that the idea on Gates when he was nominated for AG was that he was unconfirmable.
	But I think, you know, we learned that that was not true.
	You know, if RFK Jr. can be confirmed and, you know, all of the parade of horribles that's in the cabinet, I certainly think Matt Gates could have been confirmed.
	And, you know, it's a little bit of a case to be careful what you wish for because if Bondi does step aside, I'm sure it'll be someone terrible like him who will take that role.
	But I think that that's one of the differences between Trump 2.0 and 1.0 is that my sense is that Trump is going to be really, really reluctant to fire any of his key people this time around.
	I think he really wants to project an aura of these are the right people for the job and I'm going to be loyal to them.
	So he did kind of force out Mike Waltz, but that was a little bit over policy, it seemed like, where Waltz was too pro-Ukraine.
	And of course, Trump is trying to have it both ways there too, where his comments today about, oh, I'm really going to get tough on Putin in 50 days.
	Just wait.
	But anyway, so with Bondi, the reporting that she was on her way out or that it was either going to be Bongino or her.
	I was pretty skeptical of that.
	I think Bongino mostly misses the attention that comes with being kind of a prominent podcaster more so than he has principal disagreements with Pam Bondi's handling of Epstein.
	But I don't get the sense that whether it's Heg Seth or Bondi, that any of these people are going to be fired anytime soon.
	Especially, but I guess there is a lot of pressure, I guess, now from Trump's right flank with people like Laura Loomer, who is really not a Bondi fan at all.
	So that is a different sort of dynamic where it's not the lefties or the people that Trump is in the habit of just kind of dismissing who are pressuring Bondi to go, as was the case with Pete Hegseth, where you had the more center and center right people who are pro-Ukraine who wanted him to go.
	Now it's really coming from the other flank, from his right flank.
	And I guess we'll see how responsive he is to that sort of pressure.
	Oh, and bringing that up, it was fascinating to see that he's, well, I'm kind of curious why the terrorists have to go into effect in 50 days.
	It's like these made-up numbers and it's an extra time to give Putin to kind of finish it off.
	But I do feel like, or I'm wondering what you feel like.
	It seems to me that Trump had this image of what his relationship was like with Putin from his first administration.
	And whether or not you want to think that Putin helped him or not, it looks, you know, I would be willing to say that Putin did help him actively.
	I mean, the Senate agrees with me in a bipartisan way.
	And I do feel like there might be this notion that Putin has now decided that he's not going to be as friendly to him.
	And I think that Trump is maybe finally realizing that he has been a dupe in all of this.
	What do you think about that?
	Because obviously he'll end the war in two weeks is what Trump had said.
	He thought he had this kind of control over Putin.
	And it obviously was never that way.
	And I feel like is Trump maybe now kind of realizing this?
	That's a really curious one to me because the way that I still think about the Putin-Trump relationship is that Trump has yet to take any sort of action that would actually coerce Putin into ending the aggression in Ukraine.
	So I kind of discount Trump's talk and it seems like talk is pretty cheap in this instance.
	And even his stuff about demanding a ceasefire right away, to me, that still kind of read like Trump doing Putin's bidding, because of course, Russia is occupying something like 20% of Ukraine right now.
	So if you kind of freeze the lines where they are right now, it might not be Putin's maximal goal of taking over the whole country, but it's still a major, he could frame that as a major success that look, our borders are secure now.
	We're occupying 20% of what used to be Ukraine.
	Now that's part of Russia.
	So and I think the stuff that Trump said today about like, oh, I'm really going to impose these, you know, these 100% tariffs on Russia in 50 days.
	Well, first of all, we barely trade with Russia.
	So, I mean, tariffs on Putin isn't really going to be a game changer in terms of bringing him to the table.
	And secondly, you know, we've seen how Trump moves the goalposts on tariffs over and over again to the point where, you know, the markets have basically tuned him out.
	You know, the fact that the Dow was up kind of flirting with record highs last week.
	Like if we were really taking seriously Trump's threats of 35% tariffs on Canada as of August 1st, 30% on Mexico and so on and so on, you know, Japan, South Korea, like if the markets really believe that, they would not be near all-time highs.
	So I think they are kind of sort of assuming that Trump is going to taco out, so to speak, and move the deadline yet again.
	I mean, I put deadlines kind of in air quote because obviously it's not a deadline when it keeps moving.
	And so that's kind of how I read this stuff with Putin today that, you know, it's just kind of Trump buying more time.
	But it is, you know, the reason that I'm a little bit of two minds about that is because I think, you know, again, like had Putin just agreed to a ceasefire that would have froze the lines, I think that would have been, you know, by any objective standard, a major win for him.
	And I'm sure Trump, I don't think Trump has any great affinity for Ukraine.
	I mean, think back he was impeached in his first term For basically trying to extort the country for opposition research on Biden that would have helped him during the campaign.
	So I don't think it's that.
	I think that, you know, Trump probably to safe face politically doesn't want Putin to kind of go for the maximal goal of his, which is basically taking over most of Ukraine.
	And so maybe that's the difference.
	You know, I think you could read it that way where, you know, Putin's war aims are still kind of more in the maximal end, and Trump wants him to kind of take the victory with sort of a limited version of that.
	And maybe that's unacceptable to Putin.
	So I haven't seen anything that sort of shakes me from that, you know, from sort of the idea that Trump is still very friendly to Putin and is very inclined to kind of do his bidding across the board.
	But, you know, it's notable today he announced that, you know, they're going to be sending military aid, not directly, but through NATO.
	And the NATO secretary who was with Trump seemed to view that as kind of a big victory for Ukraine.
	So, you know, again, I hate to keep saying we'll see, but, you know, it's kind of a fluid situation at this point.
	Yeah.
	And the way Trump operates is like if he notices or feels like you're not on his side, you're not, you know, and by the way, to watch the Secretary of NATO just fluff him the whole time and just have to be able.
	Yeah.
	But he gets it.
	He understands that he'll get what he wants if he can, you know, pump up Trump to his face as much as possible.
	And I think that, you know, Putin perhaps just stopped doing that.
	And like, and what Trump has described is he has these great talks with Putin.
	He's talking to Putin a lot, which is a little strange because typically American presidents wouldn't be talking to Putin as much as he has.
	And then they hang up the phone.
	And so what I'm gathering from that, and it's easy to read Trump, is that Putin's like, ah, Donald, don't worry, I will stop bombing and we'll get this going, whatever.
	And then literally a few hours later, he's just flying ring missiles all over the place and probably laughing and drinking solely off of this, right?
	So at some point, Trump might actually turn and be like, okay, F that guy.
	He's not saying the nice things to me anymore and he's not listening to me.
	But I also think that the calculation was way off from the Defense Department and anybody else involved in sending the weapons from the U.S. because I'm not sure that they realize that if we cut off all aid, which I think was going to be the threat or maybe even the way to end the war, then NATO and Europe will just join in and give them weapons to continue going with this campaign, right?
	So that calculation probably says, oh, well, we can't end the war then in that way because they'll continue to get weapons.
	And so maybe we might as well just continue doing what we're doing or flip the switch here and not cut off aid.
	I think that that might have been a calculation they didn't make or didn't realize.
	Yeah, I mean, you know, the other kind of bedrock thing that I think we have to keep front-center is that Trump is hostile to democracies and he's very solicitous of authoritarian rulers.
	And that's kind of been a bedrock principle, whether it's Kim Jong-un or obviously Putin.
	You pick your authoritarian leader or Orban in Hungary.
	Trump is very, very fond of those type of strongmen and he talks about them in a way that he does not talk about Democratic leaders with the exception of leaders who really butter him up and kiss his ass, as we see with Rute, who I think would fit right in with like Lindsey Graham or these other Republicans who pretend to be kind of serious foreign policy hawks, but try to kind of persuade Trump by kissing up to him.
	Every time Rute's in the White House or meeting with Trump, I think of that where it's like he seems like kind of an American Republican to me.
	And maybe he is being strategic.
	And it does seem to be working to an extent where you think back on Trump's first term or even during the campaign last year, Trump was very hostile towards NATO.
	And he talked openly during the campaign of possibly withdrawing from NATO on day one.
	And it seems like Rute has kind of forestalled that and has Trump a little more on side now with the kind of Western world agenda.
	But I don't think it's because he has any sort of affinity for democracies or for kind of the Western world.
	If anything, I think maybe it is that he's frustrated with Putin because he senses that Putin is kind of playing him, which I'm sure he is, and sees this opportunity, maybe to even gain a little bit politically because now he's seen as kind of being the hero who stood up for Ukraine in its moment of need or something like that.
	But then again, it's kind of hard to square that with two weeks ago delaying military aid, and there's all sorts of questions about, apparently that was a Pete Hegseth move kind of unilaterally, but then Trump said he was aware of it.
	So if Trump was aware of it, then how did Hegseth operate on his own?
	Or who really made that call?
	You know, it's just bizarre to me that the policy seems to flip kind of every week on this.
	And so give it a week and, you know, Trump might be kind of, you know, talking bad about Zelensky and trying to, you know, basically bully Ukraine to the table again.
	And that's part of the frustrating thing with covering this stuff or just kind of being an American is that it's really opaque, you know, what the sources of the policy are.
	I mean, even today, you know, Trump talked about how he talks to Putin very often.
	You know, he kind of implied it was almost like a daily thing.
	And like, you know, it wasn't so long ago that when American presidents had big calls with other foreign heads of state, that there would be a readout and that there'd be some sort of public disclosure of that.
	But now it seems like Trump is talking to these dictators all the time kind of, you know, through back channels, you know, and it seems like directly in Putin's case.
	And he's like, what are they talking about?
	You know, and I think that's one of the many ways in which Trump is kind of making the American form of government more like the authoritarian ones that he seems to really have a lot of affinity with.
	You were a little bit nice when you say back channels.
	I think what you mean is that he's on his unsecured iPhone, probably being listened in on.
	So whatever readout we don't get, I'm sure, is going to China and everywhere else because they're monitoring that stuff.
	It's really kind of sickening, especially because we know that he essentially won the 2016 election on security or on keeping top secret things safe with Hillary's emails.
	And meanwhile, the guy in that authoritarian way has been able to cover those things up.
	It's truly remarkable that that's been sort of swept under the rug as well.
	Let's talk a little bit about, anything else I think from you, since you monitor so much of this stuff, what else do you feel like has bubbled up in the last week that maybe you feel like isn't getting enough coverage from the Twitter zeitgeist?
	Well, I mean, the one that comes to mind, which you've already touched upon a little bit, is the tariffs on August 1, which, again, I guess I'm skeptical that they're actually going to go into effect, but I think people have kind of like, it's not that economics was wrong about tariffs as the Trump people want people to believe, that like the idea that tariffs are inflationary and raise prices on domestic consumers, like that is a real thing.
	now it might have been the case with some of the big retailers, you know, when some of the tariffs were rolled out earlier this year, kind of the 10% across the board, that they had inventories where they didn't have to pass those along right away, or that in some cases for companies that have bigger margins, that they just ate some of the costs themselves.
	But, you know, if Trump goes forward with these tariffs that he announced last week for August 1, like it's going to have really negative effects on the economy.
	There's no way around that.
	And that's, you know, kind of a ticking time bomb that's only what, like two, two weeks and some change away from happening.
	So I guess we're going to have another round of like willy or woney.
	And, you know, maybe Trump just kicks the can down the road another month or two.
	Like I said, the markets already seem to be kind of assuming that, but, you know, I don't think that's really got enough attention.
	And then, you know, I guess the other one that I would just kind of mention, because we've covered in the newsletter is, you know, for all of the, for the, you know, the big bill that just passed on July 4th that has the terrible Medicaid cuts, which, you know, I think there's been kind of adequate attention paid to that.
	Although, you know, I guess I think back with like how in 2017, when Republicans tried a similar maneuver, like that was big front page news.
	And of course, McCain's big thumbs down, you know, is one of the indelible images from Trump 1.0.
	And, you know, it felt like everybody was kind of watching that night to see how the vote went.
	And the cuts this time, I think, flew a little bit more below the radars, maybe because there was so much other stuff going on with Trump, whether it be kind of the lawless kidnappings of people on the streets.
	But there's two parts of that, the bill that I think are worth kind of highlighting.
	One is the ICE funding.
	And I still think we don't totally know what that's going to look like in practice, basically having ICE be the size of many major economies the size of their military.
	Like what is that going to look like on the streets of the U.S.?
	I think that's pretty scary.
	And then the other is just like the complete gutting of any sort of climate policy, the incentives for renewable energy that were in the Inflation Reduction Act.
	That's going to have impacts for generations to come that we're now, in some cases, actually incentivizing fossil fuels instead of clean energy, which is kind of the direction that most of the world obviously is going in.
	So not only will have climate impacts, but I think economically that's pretty harmful as well.
	And I think that kind of flew below the radar.
	We did a whole piece in public notice on that specifically, just the climate aspect of the bill and how it's both bad for the climate and bad for the economy.
	So those are a few things that come to mind.
	But I think this is part of what helps Trump be successful is kind of the flooding of the zone with just so much stuff where it's hard to know what's distracting you from what.
	Is the Epstein stuff a distraction from the Medicaid cuts or are the tariffs a distraction from Epstein or maybe it's all just bad?
	And I guess I kind of tend towards it's all pretty bad.
	And you can kind of choose your own adventure in terms of what you want to talk about.
	For sure.
	I mean, the markets for what it's worth, I think are riding this weird wave until August 1st.
	They react very quickly.
	So once they realize what that impact is, it will have the effect of, you know, the market can go way down.
	But we also, another thing that hasn't been mentioned is how often people are front-running this news.
	It seems clear that there are people out there that perhaps have a direct line through the White House, know ahead of time what's going on, and are making moves to leverage that information in a way that will never be prosecuted, will never be enforced in a way that if it comes down to corruption, we're talking about what motivates Trump.
	Is it power?
	Is it whatever?
	I just think it ends up being money.
	I think whatever it is is to be as corrupt as possible is what he wants to do.
	And that generally is, so it doesn't even have to be nefarious about like collusion with Russia or other authoritarians or whatever that is.
	It's like, how can I make more money?
	Is that a regulatory agency in my way?
	Great.
	Let's bring it.
	We'll bring Musk and he'll dismantle that in the midst of all the investigations on him, where he just basically targeted all the agencies that were going to investigate his company.
	So if that didn't shake MAGA's faith in Trump, just getting back to the original thesis here, what's striking to me is that the Epstein stuff seems to.
	I mean, do you believe that there's going to be a shaking of the tree here and they will lose votes over this?
	Again, I'm pretty skeptical of that.
	I'd like to believe that it's true, but I just don't know if I buy that.
	I mean, unless there's some sort of bombshell where we know more about what's being covered up or like who's being protected.
	I mean, it's obvious who's being protected.
	But I think it's also plausible.
	And maybe you know more about this than me, but it could just be the case that there isn't that much there there in terms of like files that the government has.
	Maybe there is really no kind of like client list per se.
	And maybe what they released to the right-wing influencers back in February when they all had the binders that they were kind of waving around at the White House, maybe that really was all there that is there, so to speak.
	And I think that's as plausible as anything here.
	So I don't know.
	I mean, I tend to think politically, I guess maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I tend to think that kind of the prospect of people losing their health care and tax breaks for the rich and people being kidnapped off the streets to me are going to be a little more motivating for people.
	But at the same time, as I say that, you think about kind of Trump's coalition.
	And if there is just a little bit of fracturing, I mean, Elon has talked a big game about starting a third party.
	Like, you know, you peel off even 5% of Trump supporters.
	That can really make a big difference electorally.
	Now, I think that to the extent we have free and fair elections next year, which I'm still a little bit concerned about that, but I think it's going to be a really tough environment for Republicans anyway next year, even outside of like, you know, Elon, you know, getting serious with a third party that peels off some votes for Republicans.
	And, you know, but that's still, man, you know, that's what we're sitting here in July.
	That's what, like 15 months down the line.
	So I'm still, you know, people, I think, really want to, you know, whether, whether it's next year's midterms or 2028, I mean, people want to kind of live in the world of normal politics where it's like, how is this going to impact the midterms?
	Who are the contenders for 2028?
	And I think we can kind of take stock of all the harm that Trump has done in six months, basically.
	And when you kind of, you know, what, 100% of that, two more, you know, basically, well, no, 150% of that, you know, if it gets 150% worse, the country is going to be in pretty rough shape by the time we get to November 2026.
	And so, you know, it's kind of a bleak mentality.
	But, you know, I mean, this is unfortunately what people voted for.
	You know, and so we just have to kind of live with the damage.
	You know, I wish people, again, you know, this was stuff that was out there in Trump's first term, all the Epstein stuff.
	And, you know, during the campaign, it wasn't really an issue.
	And there was this tendency that I think a lot of the elite media had.
	And, you know, and a lot of people on the left had to, you know, kind of view Trump as the Pepsi to Biden's Coke.
	And they were wrong in thinking that.
	And Now we're kind of, you know, elections have consequences, and now we're in the consequence phase.
	Well, I have been saying this for a little while now: that when you take into consideration this big, beautiful bill that cuts Medicaid to so many people, and the terrorists are going to really cause a lot of pain, and people are feeling it even now, going, you know, the eggs price and whatnot.
	The only thing that makes me worried is that these Republicans who are rubber stamping everything are just behaving in a way that indicates to me that they are not concerned about free and fair elections going forward.
	And that's a real concern because it used to be, you know, that they would have to deal with that and have to, you know, come to terms and acknowledge these things in some degree.
	And instead, they're leaning into this more and more.
	Now, the only other way I can figure this out is that get it all done right now so that 15 months from now, like no one's going to remember.
	Like, I don't, other than that, which I suppose could be a 20% chance.
	My worry, now, do you have, you just mentioned that a second ago.
	Do you have, I mean, how legitimate is that fear that you have in terms of what these elections are going to be like going forward?
	You know, I think if you talk to, you know, kind of lawyers and experts in the election law space, you know, people I think are broadly not super worried because, you know, elections are largely administered by the states.
	Now, I think we're going to see Trump, and he's already talked a little about this, try to leverage federal funding in the sense of like, we saw this with like the California wildfires, where when there was talk of federal aid, one of the conditions Trump wanted them to, you know, to satisfy to get aid was to implement voter ID.
	Now, California had resisted that, and it seems like we kind of came out the other side of that.
	Trump has talked about doing an election security bill, you know, which would be aimed at sort of rigging it for Republicans in the sense of, you know, if you don't have basically proof of citizenship, you can't vote.
	You need ID, this and that.
	Now, that's going to take 60 votes in the Senate because you can't do that sort of policy change in a reconciliation bill.
	And I don't think they're going to get there for it.
	But, you know, so, you know, I think Republican legislators, I don't think, really have any grand scheme to kind of disenfranchise Americans ahead of the midterms.
	But I would not be surprised if Trump has some plans up his sleeve that are extra legislative.
	And I'm just not totally sure what those would be.
	But, you know, certainly he's been very willing to kind of try and leverage federal funding, kind of use it as almost like a mob boss would, you know, like a gangster where do X or you're not going to get Y kind of thing, you know, quid pro quote quo, basically.
	And I guess we'll, we'll just have to see how that plays out.
	But, you know, I mean, I think that Republicans, you know, they might have kind of outsmarted themselves with the way the Big Beautiful bill works because, you know, of course, the Medicaid cuts, which are one of the worst aspects in terms of how those are going to affect, you know, everyday Americans, those go into effect in 2027.
	And I think the idea was, well, you know, we'll kind of kick the can down the road past the midterm so Democrats can't really run on this next year.
	But, you know, as Jamie Raskin during a TV hit that he did yesterday was pointing out, like that actually provides a big opportunity for Democrats to kind of make the election about the Medicaid cuts where it's like, hey, you know, elect Democrats, we'll stop this to the extent that we can.
	You know, if you vote Republicans, you might lose your health care.
	Now, you don't want to give people false hope because unless Democrats can retake both chambers, just because they have one chamber, it's not going to be enough to repeal Trump's big bill.
	But at least you can kind of make the election about that and give people a way to kind of vent their frustrations over it.
	So you asked what's my concern level?
	My concern level is pretty high because I think we've seen so many authoritarian overreaches in Trump's first six months, first six months that people didn't really anticipate.
	You know, I don't think people were really anticipating Americans being kidnapped off the streets by ICE during the campaign.
	And so what does he have in store, especially as ICE becomes, you know, this huge bohemoth of a law enforcement organization bigger than ever has been before?
	I don't know what he has planned.
	I don't even know if Trump really knows what he has planned, but we do know that he will use it to try to further his ends.
	And there's a lot of time between now and next November.
	So I am concerned that Trump will try to corrupt the election.
	I just don't know exactly what form that's going to take.
	Fair enough.
	My red line, by the way, is simply the midterms generally after the White House flips goes the other way.
	And if Trump ends up increasing the lead or the Republicans increase the lead in the House, that is a real, like, perhaps I start looking at like other countries to live in at that point because that would be really concerning.
	And I know we can't really use any kind of historical precedent now because things are just so crazy.
	But that one to me is worrisome, especially in the face of what we're going to, you know, what the hardships that they're creating on purpose for most Americans here.
	I know we went a little over, but I got one last question for you.
	Sure.
	If that's okay.
	You know, because you study the video footage as much as you have over the last, you know, it's been like, what, like 10 years, 12 years?
	How long have you been in this space?
	I started covering national politics in February of 2016, and I really started doing the type of video work that I do now late summer of 17.
	Okay, so it's been a long time, and it was certainly throughout the entirety of Biden's administration.
	You know, there's a denigration that Trump has to do every time he speaks out loud to denigrate the Biden administration.
	Part of me feels like he has to do that because he's got to put somebody below him, right?
	His administration is so bad.
	I remember hearing people thinking that the Obama presidency was the worst presidency we ever had.
	And my only explanation for anyone saying that, in despite of all the accomplishments he had, was they just needed to figure out some way to get somebody below Trump.
	But my question then is, there is a bit of an interesting veracity perhaps to what he's saying about the auto pen and about his mental faculties.
	And I don't necessarily want to relitigate all this stuff because I know Biden is now a privacy and free to convalesce the way he wants to the rest of his life.
	But what did you feel about that as far as like, is there some sort of truth to the fact that he really wasn't aware of what was going on, you know, with especially with Jake Tapper's book and that kind of stuff?
	What's your reaction to those kind of things?
	And then just what your reaction would have been studying the actual video footage of him talking and moving and all that kind of stuff?
	Well, let me, first of all, say that, you know, there's no excusing the debate performance that Biden had.
	And I still, because I look back at that with such kind of like shock and dismay because, You know, I knew a lot of people around and in the Biden administration.
	And, you know, I mean, you can go back and it's obviously different when you're kind of reading from a teleprompter, but you think back on his state of the union from a few months prior to that in 2024.
	You know, I just didn't see that coming.
	But then, you know, you think back on other interviews that he did, and certainly they weren't like amazing, but still, I never got the sense that he was like so out of it that he wasn't making decisions in the White House or, you know, just kind of having his aides sort of run things.
	So, you know, the whole autopin thing, I think to me, you know, first of all, it's it's kind of classic Trump conspiracy mongering.
	You know, it's kind of like catnip for Fox News.
	And, you know, it gives him, you know, part of any sort of authoritarian movement like Trump's, you need to have enemies at all times, right?
	Like, because it's a very negative type of political movement.
	It's not really trying to help people.
	It's trying to kind of stifle your real and perceived enemies.
	And so I view it kind of as an extension of that, where it's a way to denigrate Biden.
	And then also, you know, I think there was at least a moment a few months ago where it seemed like they were really using that as almost like a pretext to try to repeal legislation that Biden signed or pardons that he signed, where the idea being that, well, if he really didn't sign these himself, then they're kind of like null and void.
	So I think there was kind of more of an agenda there than like a legitimate concern that Biden wasn't with it.
	But, you know, I think back even to the final interview that Biden did with Lawrence O'Donnell just before Trump's inauguration, where he was clearly cogent and with it.
	You know, he clearly had more and more difficulty kind of communicating for a guy who was never particularly a gifted communicator to begin with.
	And I tend to look at what happened at that debate.
	And first of all, I do agree with the idea that obviously Biden should not have tried to run for another term.
	I mean, there's no disputing that that was kind of a world historical disaster.
	But I guess the question is, it certainly seemed like there was a lot of decline that happened 2023 into 2024.
	Now, the debate, his aides did him no favors with his schedule leading up to that.
	If you recall, he was in Italy like the night before, and then he went to California for the fundraiser where he reportedly, if you want to believe Jake Tapper couldn't recognize George Clooney, which was kind of the whole premise for the Jake Tapper book.
	And then the debates, I think, was like three or four days later.
	He probably should have been taking a little bit easier to really kind of save up his energy for a debate that really, I think, kind of set the entire country back in a lot of ways.
	Like if he even would have had kind of like a C-min performance there, I wonder how last year kind of plays out differently.
	And maybe it doesn't.
	But anyway, so the auto-penn stuff, I don't really see any compelling reason to believe that Biden wasn't with it.
	And I think if anything, there's positive evidence to the contrary that, you know, despite his communication issues, he was doing just fine and thinking cogently.
	And, you know, there wasn't a whole lot of policy coming out of the White House in 2024 because it was an election year and Congress was kind of busy campaigning.
	But I don't put a ton of stock in that.
	I think there are kind of ulterior motives on the Trump side for pushing that conspiracy theory.
	Yeah, I hear you.
	I hear you.
	I mean, there's an interesting thing that when we look back maybe 20, 30 years from now and the whole process, even the process of picking Biden in 2020, how that played out.
	There's a little distinct lack of sort of democracy going on here to some degree where a pressure was brought to bear to make sure that Biden was going to be the nominee versus anybody else who might have had more electoral, who was getting more votes or more popularity.
	And then that league.
	I disagree with that.
	You do?
	Well, no, I agree that pressure was brought to bear, but so if you think back at what happened there, Biden won the South Carolina primary on the backs of black voters who put him over the top there.
	And so it was basically down to at that point, Bernie Sanders or Biden.
	And, you know, Bernie Sanders, like, you know, I have a lot of respect for Bernie, but, you know, he was running explicitly against the Democratic Party.
	And so, you know, it really wasn't any mystery that people like Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, you know, kind of lifelong Democrats who have a stake in the success of the party would have sided with Joe Biden over Bernie Sanders.
	And I think there was also reason to believe, even setting that aside, that Bernie, that Biden was much more electable in a general contest than Bernie Sanders was.
	And that proved to be correct in the sense that Biden went on to win the 2020 election.
	So I think there was probably a little bit of hubris after the 2022 midterms turned out much better for Democrats than people thought going in.
	When you think back, there was all this talk of a red wave because inflation was bad.
	And when that didn't really materialize, I could understand kind of looking at it from 30,000 feet, if you were on Team Biden kind of saying like, well, this is a really good sign for him.
	Trump at that time, of course, he was indicted a few months later for felony charges.
	It seemed like he was kind of, he had his own problems to deal with at the time.
	And so I can understand that, but I guess no one really, maybe people should have been able to foresee this was just the decline that Biden had, which was undeniable.
	And I'm not trying to kind of excuse that, but the allegation that there was some sort of rigging of the Dem primary, I don't really buy that because I was covering at the time.
	And I was no big Joe Biden fan, but when it came down to it, the fact that Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Clyburn, these institutionalist Democrats, the fact that they would pick Biden over Bernie Sanders, who really made a point of campaigning against the Democratic primary.
	I mean, at some point, it's on Bernie Sanders.
	He could have gone two ways with it.
	He could have tried to bring those people into his tent or he could have alienated him and he alienated them.
	And so I think Bernie gets a little bit of kind of the, there's a little bit of a Trump aspect of the Bernie appeal where it's like, he can't fail.
	He can only be failed.
	Like, you know, I remember some of the stuff that Bernie Sanders was saying and posting, and it was very alienating.
	And again, as someone who wasn't a Biden fan, when people kind of make claims like that, it's like, I don't think that really, that's how primaries work.
	I mean, you build coalitions, people drop out, they endorse other candidates.
	I'm sure Pete Buttigieg foresaw that if Biden went on to win, he'd probably get a cabinet role, which he did.
	And so that's just normal politics to me.
	Yeah.
	And even to further your point, Bernie is not a Democrat.
	And so, of course, and then Matt got into place back in 2016 as well when he was running against Hillary.
	Again, however, however that played out as well, which is another interesting thing we can look back on, I get it.
	Bernie is simply not a member of that party.
	And so, of course, they're not going to necessarily cider or support that.
	Then the question arises, why would they schedule a presidential debate as early as they did?
	And the conspiracy theories in my mind were like they kind of understood where Biden was going, what his ability was.
	We need to do this early so we can, the public will see.
	I mean, it doesn't make a lot of sense, right?
	But, you know, why else would they put it in when was it in July or June?
	Whenever they had that, you know, it was just months before it normally would have been in June.
	And, you know, there's probably two explanations.
	One was, well, let's just get it out of the way.
	People are going to find out.
	We'll have enough time, quote unquote, to like fix this situation.
	And by the way, the other part of this interesting thing is, which kind of falls under the non-democracy part is how Kamala then becomes the nominee.
	Do you believe it was some sort of like FU on the way out by Biden to sort of like, you know, have some semblance of control over the process while he was being forced out?
	I don't think so.
	I mean, first of all, I think with the scheduling the debate early, I legitimately think that Team Biden thought he was going to do well.
	You know, he didn't.
	But, you know, I guess that maybe speaks to kind of the nature of a decline of that sort where Biden had his good and bad days, right?
	I mean, the State of the Union was widely regarded.
	I mean, to the extent where if you remember the thing coming out of that for Republicans was that what sort of drugs was Biden on during the State of the Union, right?
	I mean, and even the day of the debate, I mean, Biden was joking about that.
	Remember, he had the post, which is now widely mocked, but of him like drinking some sort of water, you know, that had the dark branding meme on it.
	And he said something about I'm taking my performance enhancers or something like that.
	Like I legitimately thought that they thought, because if you think back, Biden, at that point, the polls had been static for six or eight months where Biden was slightly behind Trump.
	And so I think the thought was that, you know, Biden will go and have a strong debate.
	It'll kind of reset the race and set it up for a summer where he can kind of, you know, pull ahead and beat Trump.
	It obviously didn't work out that way.
	And then, you know, in hindsight, I think it's easy to say there should have been some sort of like, you know, flash primary after Biden dropped out.
	I don't, you know, I don't really know how that would have worked.
	I mean, I guess in hindsight, maybe that should have been how it played out because obviously we know how we know how it did play out and Trump ended up winning.
	So, you know, anything, you know, anything that would have forestalled that, I guess, looks good in hindsight.
	But there was a completely unprecedented situation.
	So I don't know.
	I mean, I think that Kamala was a perfectly viable candidate.
	You know, I don't think she ran a fantastic campaign, you know, and we can get into that if you want to.
	But I think that, you know, I don't think it was any sort of FU.
	I think Biden legitimately thought that she had the best chance of winning.
	She was the vice president.
	So if anybody had kind of standing to cut ahead of the line, so to speak, or get sort of coordinated into that role, it would have been her.
	And I think it was a combination of like, I thought a lot of the media coverage was really bad.
	I thought a lot of voters really had the wrong priorities, especially people on the left.
	The portrayal of Biden as some sort of like fascist dictator, I think, did him no favors.
	And I thought a lot of people, because Trump had been off the national stage for a number of years, I think there was kind of this weird nostalgia for his first term and kind of the idea that, oh man, the economy, you know, say what you want about crazy old Trump, but at least the economy was good.
	There was a lot of kind of that, you know, projection onto Trump of like, you know, that he really wasn't that bad.
	And I tried to warn people, but here we are.
	Here we are.
	Well, I can't think, we know we went over it, but hopefully it's because we were enjoying the conversation.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	You know, your Timberwolves, really quickly, you know, they didn't really do too much this offseason.
	So in light of what's going on like in Houston and then what OKC did, I'm a little bit worried that they're going to get stuck in the, you know, in a lateral, no upward mobility here for them.
	See, so the 2023 offseason, if you remember that, so they traded for Gobert in 2022.
	And then 2023, they basically stood pat and people weren't happy because they were coming off kind of an underwhelming season where they lost in the first round.
	But, you know, that's the type of player that Rudy Gobert is where you need kind of some time to acclimate to him.
	And so I was okay with it.
	You know, I think they're banking on guys like Taryn Shannon, who's looked great at summer league.
	You know, the one question I do have is they're putting a lot of trust into Rob Dillingham as being like a key rotational player, if not even possibly starting, depending on where Mike Conley is.
	And it certainly looked like he had lost a step or two last season.
	So, you know, they do have a big trade exception still.
	Like there might still be one more move to add another guard, a ball handler, which I think would make sense.
	But the rest of the team, I think, looks pretty solid.
	So I know it's not sexy.
	I know people kind of gravitate to the teams that make big moves.
	I think Houston obviously got a lot better.
	So, you know, I'm not out here saying the Wolves are going to win the conference or anything like that.
	But I think when you look back at the analogy between now and 2023, I'm not super down on their offseason.
	Fair enough.
	I mean, there's two things.
	I think that there's a ceiling that Rudy puts on any team he plays on, unfortunately.
	But that said, I was happily surprised that they were able to put it together after the year before that and be so tough.
	But you're right.
	The Mike Conley position needs to be upgraded.
	It's needed that way for a couple of seasons, I think.
	Dillingham has been, you know, there's a little evidence there, but I don't think you want to roll with someone that young and inexperienced in the conference finals.
	I think what they screwed up with, you know, Orlando ended up signing Tyus Jones.
	He would have been just perfect, you know, just a solid, doesn't turn the ball over, can shoot the three, you know, like kind of like what Conley does and plays within himself.
	It really would have been, that's the guy.
	So they miss out on him.
	And it's like, how many other players are like that anymore in this day and age in the NBA or just like the traditional point guard role that they desperately need?
	I'm with you on that.
	I thought Tyus would have been, who was on a minimum contract last year.
	I don't know if he quite got the minimum this year, but he certainly was affordable on a one year.
	And I will note, you know, because I've watched, I've kind of been in and out of summer league.
	Like I've mainly been watching clips, but a couple of the beat writers who I trust, I was listening to their podcast yesterday.
	And there's starting to be a little bit of a lack of belief in Dillingham where it's kind of like, you know, because he's had a ton of turnovers in the Summer League games.
	Just his size and kind of lack of force, I think it's kind of tough, you know, in the modern NBA.
	So again, you know, they still have ways to make a move this summer yet.
	They have a trade exception.
	You know, they have some movable contracts.
	I don't get the sense that that's coming, but I agree with you that, you know, bringing in someone like a tias, you know, just kind of a reliable vet as kind of an insurance policy would have made a lot of sense because that is kind of a huge hole in the roster.
	Even if you're not starting Mike Conley, he's still going to be playing pretty heavy minutes as the roster currently stands.
	And we certainly saw in the playoffs how when you get to kind of the top level of competition, the only guy who could get into the Paint was Anthony Edwards.
	And they really need another ball handler who can break down a defense, get into the paint, kick it out.
	And I'm not sure Dillingham is that guy, but they gave up a lot.
	Basically, I think it was a very lightly protected, might be like top one protector or if it is unprotected, the first that they sent to San Antonio to move up to get Dillingham.
	So they put a lot of draft equity into him.
	And I'm assuming he's going to get a chance to kind of sink or swim in some sort of role this year because he really didn't play much last year.
	But if you want to be, you know, kind of, I guess to be bearish on their chances for this coming season, I think that's where you look as their backcourt and Rob Dillingham in particular.
	Well, fascinating.
	The depth of knowledge you have on the basketball side is equally impressive.
	So you'll have to come over to that side.
	We'll come over and have a discussion on D-ball breakdown.
	For what it's worth, Jaden McDaniels perhaps could be a guy who showed some prominence off the dribble a little bit in pull-ups.
	They might have to be bank on that.
	And summer league isn't always a great barometer, but for a guy that's played 50 games last year as a rookie, generally what you'd want to see in the summer league here would be dominating.
	And he's not doing that.
	And that's a concern.
	And that's at least the precedent we've seen for those players.
	They'll usually shut him down after like three games because there's no point.
	The guy's just killing everybody.
	So that is a worry.
	You're right.
	So we'll see.
	But listen, I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show and breaking this stuff down.
	And also just to thank you for the work that you do.
	I think it's really important.
	You know, you probably are aware, like you shape the narration.
	You shape the discussion as much as probably anybody out there because Twitter has such a huge impact on our political institutions.
	Yeah, thank you.
	It's a pleasure joining you.
	I mean, yeah, you know, I was kind of the first, not the first, but one of the first kind of in the space doing clips like this.
	And so I think, yeah, I was just kind of, I really stumbled into it, but I was a little bit ahead of the curve, you know, and that has led to me being able to kind of have like a very large platform, which is kind of surreal, you know, given my kind of humble situation, this little condo that I'm in here in Minnesota right now.
	But I used to live in DC, obviously, during Trump 1.0.
	And that's kind of a whole long story how I ended up back here.
	But yeah, we'll save some for another time.
	I'll come back and talk with you again.
	And if you ever want to have me come on and talk some wolves on the basketball side, I'd love to do that too.
	But really great meeting you.
	And thanks for having me on the show.
	No problem.
	And by the way, the funny thing is, is like I basically am the same thing on the basketball side, you know, in a weird, in a weird, you know, confluence of events here.
	So yeah, it's really interesting to be able to have that where you can use the power of video and use the power of what Twitter and influence.
	And so again, thank you so much.
	Just tell the good people out there exactly how they can find you again and they don't want to miss it.
	Sure.
	You can find me at ATRupar on Twitter.
	I am at atrupar.com on Blue Sky, aaron.rupar on threads.
	And then you can find Public Notice where, you know, if you enjoy this kind of stuff, I'm clipping and posting.
	I think you'll like the newsletter as well at publicnotice.co.
	Okay.
	Well, thank you so much again, Aaron.
	And for everyone out there, stay tuned for our Friday weekender episode coming up later on this week.

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