Jonathan V. Last: How Much Stupid Can We Possibly Take?

Hey, it's Mario Lopez from the All Mario Lopez Daily Podcast. All right. Quick question. You ever notice how some cars just steal the spotlight? Well, that's the 2026 Toyota RAV4. It's got bold standout style, intuitive tech inside, and now hybrid power standard, which means efficiency without the need to plug in. So whether you care about looks, smarts, or just everyday practicality, RAV4 brings all of it. If you've been holding out for the right SUV, this is your sign. Check out the 2026 Toyota RAV4 at your local Toyota dealer or visit toyota.com. See packages and options at toyota.com for feature availability. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I want to start with a big shout out to my guy, Pablo Torre. So rarely. Do the good guys win in a story. So rarely do our big, rich oligarchs get punished for their cheating. And it happened. People doubted Pablo. They smeared Pablo. And he was fucking right. And Steve Ballmer. Sorry, Steve Ballmer. I mean, there are other rich guys I wish would be punished before Steve Ballmer, but it's just nice to get one. It's nice to have one happy story. So if you guys don't know what I'm talking about, you can Google it. But Pablo did a deep investigation to the way that the owner of the car, Steve Ballmer, of the Clippers cheated. And boy, was the punishment real. So shout out the bulwark.com slash events. Go there. The Columbia, Charlotte and Atlanta shows are coming together and they're going to be bopping. So if you don't have your tickets yet, please go get them. Also, if you're on YouTube right now, half of you don't subscribe. About 47% of you based on the data. Why? Why not? You're hurting my feelings. You're right there on YouTube. Just click the little subscribe button. Help us out. We're going for 2 million. And this is the moment to do it because this show today, it's going to be a doozy. It's going to be straight fire. I'm bringing in the resident prince of darkness at the bulwark. He's the author of the Triad newsletter, something you should also be signed up for. He's the editor of this here bulwark. It's JVL. How are you doing, Jonathan V. Last? You know, it's great to be here. I will say that considerably less than 50% even of the people watching this are signed up for the Triad newsletter. I don't know why. Seriously, it's the best fucking newsletter in the business. So go get it. With this, the show, I want to start with some happy news because it's going to be all downhill from there. Okay, we're going to get increasingly dark and then maybe for dessert, we'll give you some laughs. So we'll begin with the happy. I had a fellow by the name of Rich Barris, big data Republican, the people's pundit on the bulwark takes feed last night. This is 30 minutes of just pure joy for you if you're listening right now, if you just want to treat yourself. If you want to treat yourself to a little guilty pleasure, 30 minutes of listening to a mag, like a really dyed in the wool maga pollster talking about how fucked the Republicans are because Donald Trump is screwing everything up is really satisfying. I loved it. I loved him. I, again, Tim, I have a real soft spot for genuine magas. Yeah, right. Like people who just believe what they believe. Okay. Right. The MTGs of the world. This guy, what I don't like is the ones who like, you know. You know, piss in your pocket and tell you it's raining and, uh, and he didn't do that. He was great. I think you ought to make it a regular, regular bit. Me too. We didn't. I wanted to argue with him a little more, but rich projects, uh, easy wins for John Ossoff and Abdul El-Sayed and, and he thinks that even some of these Tucker endorsement last night, not exactly. I don't want to impugn Abdul with saying he got the Tucker endorsement. I think what Tucker said, I don't have the quote in front of me, but it was something like I would kill myself before voting for Mike Rogers. So it's kind of like a negative. That was an endorsement. Would he write in? I guess he wouldn't write in America first. He said Abdul was really America first. Abdul is really good on APAC from Tucker's point of view. You know how we always made fun of all the never Trumpers who couldn't decide between Kamala and Trump or Biden and Trump. And so they wrote in Edmund Burke, who would be the Tucker version of writing in Edmund Burke? Who would he write in? That is a tough one. It would be kind of like. Father Coughlin or something. I'll workshop that. We'll workshop that. Huey Long. Pat Buchanan. Pat Buchanan. Pat Buchanan. Yeah. Tucker wrote in. Ding, ding, ding. Here's some other good news. Isn't just Rich Barris. It isn't just the people's front. Karl Rove from the establishment side of the Republican Party said this on Fox yesterday. Time is running out. If the president wants to have Paxton win, he needs to start tossing a lot of money Paxton's way. A lot of people are raising this alarm. People on the Republican side don't understand why they're not spending to help Paxton. They're very concerned. Paxton might lose Trump. Have they seen Paxton? Well, Trump was asked about their concern. Trump was asked about this yesterday. Actually, I have to apologize. Yesterday we played an ad where his voice was in it. It didn't occur to me that that counts, but we don't play clips of Trump. So I'm going to have to read it and you hate to hand it to Trump, but this is a good one. Ken Paxton, you might not like the way he dresses and I say this. It's so insulting to him, but I might as well say it. You might not like the way he looks. You might not love his television interviews, but he was the best attorney general and that speaks a lot louder than the suit that he's wearing that doesn't look so great or than anything, frankly. I like how he goes back in. It's kind of one of these things where he's like, I'm attacking him. He's ugly. He dresses horribly. His interviews are boring. He's really unappealing, but he's good. But also he really does. Dressed badly. So this is all good news, right? JVL. Should we stop the pod here? Rich Barris, Karl Rove, Trump, nobody. And it seems pretty negative. I still think Tallarico is a stretch, but you know, like there's a chance, right? Even if it's a one in three chance, one, if you had been told you have a one in three chance of winning a Texas Senate seat, you would have thought to yourself, that's pretty good. I'll take it. I'll take that. I mean, what did you have any thoughts on the weekend, Paxton? Dresses? You're not really a sartorial critic. I would say when you're a man of a certain age, you do have to stop wearing untucked button down shirts. Leave it at that. Yeah. I don't wear untucked button down shirts. I'm younger than that, dude. I do. But you know, I was at ladies weights class last night. You're, you're also much younger. Not that much. Trump, you know, very rarely makes me laugh and other people. We find, find a very funny, but every once in a while I do have to admit he gets me. And the only thing I felt was missing from Ken Paxton was the classic Trump comment about Barney Frank, RIP, where he said, Barney Frank looking disgusting, protruding nipples. And I was, as I was watching the Paxton video, Paxton also had protruding nipples. And so then we were, we're going to know Paxton's really in trouble as Trump points out his protruding nipples. All right, there we go. That's enough happy news. We're going to move on. We're going to move on to the Department of War. We talked about this a little bit with Michael Weiss yesterday, create a little bit of a stir talking about Ricky Buria. Some, I hear there's some scuttlebutt over in, um, in the Pentagon about, uh, the Ricky Buria Rasputin information coming out into the public sphere. And, uh, among the people that have taken the news of what's been happening in the Pentagon poorly and, and Dan Driscoll being fired from our army secretary was North Carolina center Tom Tillis. Hmm. Yeah. Would you like to hear what he said or I'd love to hear it and then I can react to it. I mean, I'm, I'm cheating cause I know this cause I wrote about it today, but God, okay. Well, I'm excited to read what you wrote about it. I, I almost had a stroke on x.com yesterday when I started reading this. So here we go. We'll see if I can make it through, make through it. I served on the Senate armed services committee for eight years. And as chair or ranking member of the personnel and readiness subcommittee, I have never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country hangs up as intimidated by competence and retreats to ginning up culture wars instead of soberly interesting word, attending to the vital work of our national defense and the health and wellbeing of our fighting force. I urge the president to find a new leader at the Pentagon who will retain and empower our military talent rather than diminish it. Tom Tillis, you might think I like that statement, but you would be wrong because Pete Hegseth got confirmed by a vote of 50 to 50 and there was a single person who could have stopped him from doing this. This very predictable thing that everybody said was going to happen. This very obvious thing that a drunk weekend talk show co-host was going to be put in charge of this massive bureaucracy, the biggest military in the world. Everyone knew that was going to be a disaster. And do you know who confirmed him for that role? Tom fucking Tillis. I don't have a question. More of a comment. It's a. Well, I'm so I struggled with this aspect of it, Tim. Would you prefer he didn't say something? Yes. Yeah, I would. I don't. I think I mean, have some go away. Go to Siberia. Tom Tillis, like go to Siberia or I guess what I would prefer in the in the, you know, perfect world is Tom Tillis to come on to the Bollard podcast and say, I fucked this up worse than anything I've ever fucked up in my life. And it was extremely predictable and I should have known it. and you guys were right, and I will do whatever you ask. i i like put me in coach i will go campaign for abdul al-sayyed if necessary i will do anything don't get too crazy i mean that's what he should do of course that's what he should do he made pete eggs at the head of the secretary of the department of defense you know insane insane he was once the ranking member of the personnel and ready sub subcommittee you think he would know so this is the thing that i and until it's just did this what four weeks ago with the blanch stuff right yeah yeah and then he voted for him and then and then again but here the phrasing of his statement alibis trump again like you know i'm calling on it's hegs hegseth is the problem please mr i urge the president i urge you so like it isn't that if trump doesn't fire him then trump who's the commander-in-chief is the one who's doing something terrible but he can't say that it's just him jerking off in public isn't it yes yeah that is what like if if you can't say this way possible hegseth should be fired and if hegseth isn't fired then the commander-in-chief is a fuck up and ought to be impeached or something i mean because if it is true that what he says that this is the most incompetent secretary of defense ever and that he's harming the troops etc and it is true that their president won't replace him then the president should probably be impeached shouldn't he yeah or we should do everything possible to contain him but tillis won't even go to criticize close your ears mom but to your point of jerking off in public like this like this is exactly he's doing he's sucking himself off like he's like oh oh you guys are so stupid look at me yeah look at my huge member like i am so great and like you guys are so bad and so dumb and like wow you should really do better let me finish on you like it's like what you did this you did this tom tillis you put hegseth in secretary before you hired him you hired him you know it's weird that he can't even insert a boy i can't believe this guy fooled me right like there's no it is as if that thing that happened well that was an alternate universe that was uh that was tom tillis from earth x who cast that vote not me i didn't do that that was the the other earth tom tillis it's like there's just no or i'm a weak man these guys are all weak trump was right man trump was right yes right i mean trump looked at the republican party and said these guys are a bunch of fucking weaklings and he was right jay mart was interviewing susan collins yesterday and she i think she does not look good i mean she's very shaky and she passed her prime no i wouldn't say that you're 116th i do it's a joke i'm saying a joke cancel me you're 116th of a doctor but yes doesn't look right but she's kind of stuttering out like why she has done what she did and not what liz cheney did with the case of liz cheney what influence does she have today it's not just that she lost her her seat is that she has no impact in my view what influence and impact have you shown like pete hegseth is the secretary of war like you guys did have a chance to have influence and impact you know you could have done your job which is to advise and consent the president and if the president decides that he's going to like like to us is doing this thing like you said like uh what's the russian line about how you know the uh the something not the czar oh the commissars if only the czar knew what they were doing or something yeah and this is like that but like you are the advisors in this case like there's one opportunity where you were able to advise trump and you said okay sure we're gonna put a total buffoon in charge of the defense department we're gonna put somebody that doesn't believe in mrna research in front of hhs like we're gonna like we are gonna do this i'm gonna rubber stamp it i mean collins i think voted against hegseth i should say but like if she's saying she has influence and impact you would think that among the places she would have influence and impact would be her colleagues in the senate but she couldn't she hasn't stopped anything she hasn't done anything like what is the impact it's like like 1988 where there's a lot of pork barrel stuff you're bringing home like they're not even passing anything like she's ahead of the approach of creations could be and she did fund the ice agents that killed somebody in the streets of her state but like what where is the impact so with susan collins it's actually worse than that because she works very hard to not have influence right right i mean you look at her voting record and what she does is she makes sure that her vote won't matter and if her vote doesn't matter then she'll go and do the opposite right and and hop off the bus and so it's like her entire career in the age of trump has been making sure she does not influence anything right i i don't even know what to say like so what is the influence i guess like you tell yourself you have this influence because i don't have a security and you got staff and people call your office and you write them letters but like on any of the big things like the big ticket things that have happened that have hurt the state of maine the murder in the street the tariffs you're a neighbor to canada like it's like the gall to tell jonathan martin that you're you took the path you did so you could have influence and impact like three days and then you're like oh my god i'm gonna go to maine and i'm gonna go to maine and i'm gonna go to maine and i'm gonna go to maine and i'm gonna go to with a border a country that borders you where there's a ton of you know uh economic cross pollination and tourism where was your influence in her defense i do suspect that susan collins believes what she's saying sure i i do too total delusional yeah i think she's just delusional yeah my favorite anecdote about susan collins ever by the way i love bringing this up anytime she comes up is that on january 6th she's going to be the president of the united states and she's going to be the president of the united states and she's going to be the president of the united states up is that on january 6th i forget what i was watching she was doing an interview and she said when started i at first i thought it was the iranians she was dead serious this is not like matt gates pretending like he thought it was antifa you know for spin like she was dead serious like she somehow thought that the iranians were storming the capital could have been yeah well there were a lot of iranians down at the at the speech you could see when the cameras panned through through all those brown faces yeah i really hope she loses okay i want to go to yesterday's news is there anything else on hegseth you said i haven't read your tries out yet so in my defense i'm not staring i can't have read it but is there any other hegseth yeah it's okay people can read it it's uh it's about how he's already working hard to lose america's next war like he's he's not finished losing the current war but he's already working ahead and and getting started on the next the next war too well that's great news congrats to tom tillis that'll be another l on his head it's past week we're on the market for some like i don't even know how to describe it like what i want like i guess it was kind of like a privacy screen i was like i want like the green monster from fenway i just you know wanted a little bit more privacy in the old backyard i was looking for something like cool and vibey you know but i i don't know where to shop for that i don't know like where to even start and after some googling it was hard to tell what what's going on and i was like i don't know what's going on and i was like i don't know what's going to be sturdy you know what was going to actually look like it looks online then i remembered i could turn to our friends at dupe.com and at dupe.com they helped me find the best possible solution for my back patio needs it's a genius tool that helps you find high quality budget-friendly versions of the expensive pieces you've been on it's stupid easy to use just go to dupe.com and paste any product url or upload a photo and bam it shows you lookalikes that won't drain your savings account and these aren't shady knockoffs a lot of the time they're made in the exact same factories just sold under a different name what's a less scary price tag so that six thousand dollar cloud couch influencers are always lounging on should i be looking into a cloud couch i don't know maybe dupe can probably find something for you for a fraction of the price same vibe same plushiness but you don't have to sell a kidney it's totally free dangerously addicting and blowing up on tiktok for good reason if you've got expensive taste and a very unexpensive budget dupe.com is your new best friend using dupe.com is insanely simple just go to dupe.com and paste any product url upload a photo it'll instantly show you similar items for way less there's also an app and a browser extension if you want to make it even easier no account needed totally free start saving money with dupe.com today i want to talk about your newsletter from yesterday about venezuela and this mob deal that we're doing for the oil in venezuela i kind of feel like this i wanted to mull again on this one and i talked about it on monday and i felt like i was in a situation i was like guys you don't understand how crazy this venezuela thing is like it's just on its face obviously it's ridiculous but it's even crazier you guys understand and then i felt like when i i didn't i didn't feel like i explained it properly and then your newsletter yesterday like really laid it out and so i want a second swing i want you to tell people what exactly is going on with this supposed oil deal okay so uh the oil deal is illegal and i i mean this in all of the ways so it is the department of defense which has taken i think it's 30 percent stake 35 35 stake in this venezuelan company which is a state-run company so the department of defense is not allowed to take equity positions there's a reason for that which is that the military should not have an independent source of funding do you know what happens in countries where the military funds itself they wind up taking over yeah right - Right, right. In Venezuela, their own constitution says that this is illegal. It's Articles 12 and 13 that are like very, very clear. Foreign entities cannot touch our national resources. They can't have leases. They can't rent them like this. No, no, no, no, no. So it's illegal from both ends. It can't possibly last. By the way, it's on a bunch of land that's really inaccessible and the reserves aren't really useful for American purposes because of the quality of the oil. Leave that aside. And then the craziness is I, so I got pulled down the rabbit hole of this guy who was the intermediary of all this, who is Alejandro Betancourt Lopez, who is like a, like Jared and Don Jr. had a baby. A Latino baby. A Latino baby. Yeah. Okay. So, so keep going. Tell me about. Tell me about Alejandro. It's the craziest fucking thing. So this guy is very young. He's 46. He is born in pre-Chavez Venezuela when Venezuela is a functioning, actually very well-to-do liberal democracy. He's 19 when Chavez takes over. And by the time he's out of college, and he comes from a very wealthy family to begin with, you have in the early Chavez years, the elites in Venezuela doing one of two things. They're the people who decide they're going to try to oppose Chavez, and recapture liberal democracy. And then you have rich guys like Alejandro who decide they want to play ball. And they go from being like, you know, normal rich to being filthy fucking oligarch rich. And this is what happens every time a strong man takes over everywhere in the world. This is Saudi Arabia. This is Putin's Russia. It's a tale as old as time. This is happening right now here. In America. Right. Right. Right. With Nutlick and the- Trump kids. The Trump kids. Who's the guy who- The Witkoff kids. The Witkoff kids. Yeah. All those. Anyway. So Alejandro decides, I'm going to play ball with Chavez and Maduro. And what he gets in return from that is a bunch of state-run contracts for power generation. And so he's like 29 years old, and he's being given $2 billion to, you know, oh, I think you're just the kind of guy to go building power plants for us. Yeah. Right. And he then goes from that to he gets a stake in the state-run oil conglomerate. And then he starts making a whole bunch of really weird moves internationally. He becomes part of a financial services conglomerate, part of a conglomerate that's opening up banks in Africa. He buys a discount sunglasses company called Hawkers. He opens up a Spanish version of Uber, basically. And so he's doing all of these very strange, unrelated businesses internationally. And by total coincidence, a whole bunch of countries start investigating him for money laundering. And it does seem possible that the guy whose entire career is made by currying favor with the narco-terrorists who run Venezuela might have been- Potentially, allegedly involved in some way. Now, important to say, he's never been fully charged or convicted in any jurisdiction. He's fled a couple of countries. He has fled a couple of countries. And then he hired Rudy in the Trump first term. Right. When he was investigated by Trump's DOJ. Yeah. And he hired Rudy and the Trump DOJ dropped it. And then somehow after that, also Switzerland decided to stop pursuing him because Switzerland was the first country to stop pursuing him. So he gets in all of this by being in tight with Chavez and Maduro. And at some point, Maduro cuts him out. And it's not entirely clear what happens here. My guess is some other oligarch made a better offer. And so Maduro forces him to sell his share in the state-run oil company, or he's stripped of it. I forget whether he sells it or is stripped of it. And he then decides, Alejandro, well, fuck that. I'm going to get Maduro. And so he starts putting money into the opposition. He flees the country. He has all of his assets that are still in Venezuela seized, but he's got assets all over Europe and Africa and stuff. So he's doing fine. He's living high on the hog in Spain. He then has to leave Spain because the Spanish police are investigating him for money laundering. So he goes to the UK. He sets up business in the UK. He winds up being kept under house arrest in the UK because the Swiss are trying to extradite him because they're doing a money laundering investigation. But while he is in the UK, Delsi Rodriguez calls him up and is like, hey, you know, if you wanted to come back, as long as you promise to be a good boy and you don't cause any trouble for Nikki, I think I could probably make that work. And he realizes, oh, I now have something to give Trump, right? He had needed Trump's help, which is why he hired Rudy. And so he becomes the back channel to Delsi Rodriguez. And it is now clear as day. And I think I said this to you when we did the kidnapping in January. Obviously, Delsi gave up her boss, right? Oh, yeah. And he's on the phone in some of this reporting. Alejandro is like on the phone with her. Alejandro is on the phone with her that night for hours and hours and hours. And she's freaking out because she thinks that the Americans killed Maduro. And her understanding of the deal was that they were only going to arrest him. And Alejandro is saying, no, no, don't worry. He's not dead. It's all going to be OK. You can run everything, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So Delsi takes over. And one month later, Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche start talking to the Swiss saying, hey, guys, you got to drop this extradition request. We need him to be able to travel freely between the US and Venezuela. He's doing important work for us. It's quite the story. It's amazing. So we do a legal coup with a international criminal, money laundering criminal, allegedly. Allegedly. And we work as a team with him, take over the government and now are illegally stealing their oil. Yes. With Venezuelans. It's a short summary of what happened. When you hear the story, you're kind of like oligarchs, rich people, international. You might think, God, this sounds like the Epstein class, doesn't it? And I got to tell you, I got a DM last night about this story. And it's not just the Epstein class. It's Epstein's friends. Again, it's an Epstein friend. The Trump did this deal with Alejandro and Epstein were LinkedIn friends, which is nice. I don't know if you knew this. Alejandro requested Epstein on LinkedIn. That's in the files. Some emails back and forth. Epstein asks another intermediary if he insulted Alejandro, misspells Alejandro. He says, why did you guys disappear? He's copied on emails about a meeting in Palm Beach. So it's like, we did a coup with an Epstein associate to take over Venezuela and steal their oil illegally. That's what we got. Great. Okay. Great. I just, I felt like people deserved the full story there because it's one of these things like is obviously on its face. It's insane that we're kidnapping people in Venezuela and trying to steal their oil. But like the details get a little complicated, but I think that the detail it's important to, to wade through the scope of the madness around us. I want to go from there to an interview that J.D. Vance did with a child podcaster. My understanding is you've not watched this interview. I'm coming in cold. I have to suffer through J.D. It's, it's, I guess it's relevant to what we're about to talk about. It's a little bit of the Catholic in me. You know, I feel like it's kind of the penance I have for being a former Republican. I have to do self-penance. I have to do self-penance various times. And one of the self-penances I have to do is monitor the person that most offends my being, you know, and it's like, that's the kind of cross I have to bear, if you will, to use a Catholic phrase. J.D. talks about his faith a lot, but doesn't really ever use any Catholic phrases. The response to the first clip I'm going to play one of these clips, I get a laugh from a post on X from a gal named Claire Stagg, who says, and so I want to use that as the kind of intro to a series of clips of J.D. Vance talking to a child podcaster about his faith and how he kind of balances his faith with his responsibilities as a leader. What I'm trying to focus on is doing as much of God's work as possible right now. And if that leads to the end times, okay. Why would it lead to the end times? I, like, I don't, I don't understand. There's so much to unpack in such a short clip. Are you doing God's work? Is kidnapping people and sending them to a foreign country God's work? Is shooting people in the street God's work? You're calumny and blood libels, right? The, the things he's doing where he, he says things that are knowingly false about people to demonize them and then promises to keep saying those false things. Is that God's work? Is that God's work? Emily Zanotti wrote this. I don't exactly know where she is in Trump these days, but she was, Trump curious, kind of a right-wing media figure. She writes this about JD. You know what? I give up. This belief isn't even Catholic. dispensationalism is a heresy i don't think he's doing a heresy but it's deeply weird matt who's who's such a mean handle is matt please clap which is rude like do we really start to be making fun of jeb 10 years later fun fact roman catholicism doesn't believe that human actions can bring around about an acceleration of the end times it's like he really struggles with kind of the basics in a different interview that we don't have the audio of or a print interview he said earlier this week he was trying to describe blood libels what or why anti-semitism was a blood libel and he misunderstands blood libels which is kind of an old testament thing okay but then he says that you know something along the lines of like you know it's deeply anti-christian to believe that somebody is guilty based on their blood and i was like it's kind of like the original sin is kind of like the fundamental thing pretty sure it's actually kind of like step one it's like love your neighbor as yourself original sin like if you know you know things like kind of those are the things that are going to make you feel guilty you know anything else in the end times or should we move on to whether jd's going to heaven i mean i have never in my life heard a catholic use the phrase end times i don't think like that's just an evangelical way of talking about the world that's fine all right let's go to clip two is jd going to heaven uh on a scale of one to ten ten being absolutely certain one being not certain at all how confident are you that you'd go to heaven oh man that is a tough question it's high but it's not ten right i mean it's it's it's it's a seven or it's an eight like i'm always one of these people who is is always going to have little doubts and like if you'd asked me that question a year ago probably was like a five or a six wow wait why why the why the change like five or six and now seven or eight because i'd say the difference is and again all respect to to god but you know what i'm saying i'm not going to say that i'm not going to say that i still occasionally have doubts like is is this actually real yeah right wait i might be in a simulation he's a seven or eight not because he has doubts about whether he might be going to hell he's a seven or eight because he doesn't he's not sure that god exists actually right we might be living in a simulation i do talk to peter teal about that quite a lot and elon elon says there's a high chance that we're in a simulation so uh you know that's why i might not go to heaven how do you process that well i mean look i don't want to i don't i don't want to speak for everybody but my sense not a priest not a canon lawyer is that every catholic's answer to that question should be one one right every catholic's answer to the question of how sure you that you're going to heaven one right should be it because you don't get to go to heaven on your own it is only by god's grace that you go to heaven because his mercy is infinite right and that's so it's also an evangelical thing right to think to be in your phrase it's a seven or eight because like it's a few you know we're now going to get into a little dorm room theology talk but like you know this view that by accepting jesus into your heart like that's you know then that's all you need to do right like that's not the catholic view right like right and so like you can understand why he'd be like well i'm going to you know if you were of a faith if heaven exists i'm going there right yeah if you're if you're in a faith journey where you know you have a faith tradition where like all you have to do is is believing is enough then like yeah then then you're going to go unless we're unless heaven doesn't exist right like that the framework that he's thinking about it in and it's like whatever that's fine if it wasn't for the fact that he just wrote a fucking book about his conversion catholicism he like doesn't understand anything about it he doesn't he doesn't seem to have thought about any of the catholic teachings at all for like even one second i mean are you surprised i'm a little surprised that you can't fake it better like jd's a little bit of like a cipher i get a sociopath like i i don't know like i i mean you were different you're still a catholic in good standing and and believe this i i don't i'm lapsed but i could fucking fake it like if i decided to run for president i needed to be a good catholic i could sit down with this child podcaster and i could fucking fake it but he he can't even fake it i don't know who i think might have been caris who said this talking about elon musk who said that you know elon musk sounds really smart so long as he's talking about something you don't know anything about and if you know like you know if you are even half of a subject matter expert and he starts talking about the the area of the world you know you look at me like this is fucking bullshit jd's the same way and so like i hear jd all the time and i i just can't believe anybody can be persuaded by anything he says because he's he's so fucking stupid about the world um he's just a bullshitter and uh so that's how i i mean i just assumed this this whole catholic thing was just part of his brand repositioning and not having to do with anything real seven or eight but you know i don't uh i don't know the disposition of another man's soul i hope i hope i mean he you do kind of because he wrote in his book i guess he wrote in his book that he doesn't think about hell he doesn't fear hell he doesn't think about that well you know he it's just a strange deal like he he he is concerned that his actions might bring about the end times here on earth but he's not concerned at all that like his actions might lead to god judging him and sending him to hell like to call it sociopathy really kind of understates it honestly well he's he's a hundred percent associated yeah total hundred percent we have one more i'm sorry we have one more we gotta just do one more it'll be quick okay i think that we're in the end times i don't know and i think that it's probably bad for me spiritually to focus too much on it because there are like things you got to do i gotta be good to my wife i gotta be good to my kids i have to be you know a as good of a leader as i can for the united states of america and so i think that focusing well i'm fascinated by it i think focusing on it is too much can be very bad i think that there are like things about the world that make me feel like not shocked if the antichrist was was walking among us but again i try not to focus too much on it same we'll see i'm glad we were able to kind of find a place for jd and i to agree common ground the antichrist might be walking among us sure might be might be the funder of your whole political project actually i was gonna if i was gonna rank the most likely people to be the antichrist all right that was good i've got two other topics i guess that's kind of related to you know we're going through kind of like a podcast different rites of confession right now and so i've got a topic where we can discuss something jd might need to confess for and then i have a topic that i suspect might lead you to go to confession which we do first let's stay with jd and then and then we'll go to you okay the news in springfield lately like really has me like struggling with my rage like i think i posted on on substack the other day one of jim swift's dispatches from from springfield like saying like i'm i'm susceptible to being recruited by a militia right now like an anti-government militia came to me like i would be my ears would be more open than they've been before i don't know how to use any weapons i'm kind of a girly boy so i don't know why i would be a top recruit but like i don't know maybe they could put me in the in the propaganda department or something i'm like really fucking mad and the story of the pierre bell he did nothing wrong he went to college he should have a student visa we shackle him with this massive ankle bracelet he can't play soccer he can't do jrotc he did nothing wrong he kills himself it's just it makes it hard to get up in the morning honestly so anyway i don't know what do you think of it i have a question for you i want to stay with the militia thing so do you remember the bundy ranch standoff yeah yeah sure yeah right and so uh a bunch of militia guys a lot of guns got together and obstructed the work of federal agents and do you remember what the federal agents did remember how they they rammed their cars and then pushed them all into the ground and shot them in the back and then you know just started to open up do you remember oh that didn't happen i don't think that's what happened i was a child as the 90s i'm pretty sure the agents kind of like stayed at a distance in the woods while they gathered their weapons for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks to find an and then eventually compromised i wonder if people on the left decided that they were going to start embracing the second amendment like really embracing the second amendment and organizing and created like a like a ranch in springfield where the haitians could live where they protected i wonder if the government would show the same restraint and wisdom which by the way i think i'm in favor of the way the government handled the uh the bundy ranchers i think probably good they didn't massacre you know 200 people but i wonder if that same sense of restraint would would be true or if suddenly these would be domestic terrorists i don't know it's hard to say i think we know the answer oh i saw this clip yesterday of mike dewine who is the governor of ohio who's like one of the three quasi normal republicans left in the country and and he was talking about how that the situation of pierre and how tragic it is and after he talked about how tragic it was and you know how unfortunate it is He said, I think that it should lead us to think. you know as a country about the mass deportation effort and we should really think about that and like whether it's a good think it's the right thing for the country yeah have a nice thing and i'm like you're the fucking governor of ohio like this is your like what happened to like we're a republic and not a democracy this is states rights like you're the governor like you could go through the legal route and sue the administration sue the department of homeland security and the way that they're carrying out their actions i you could go further but the ohio state police in the streets of springfield to make sure that residents the government government agents are behaving themselves you can protect legal residency there's a lot of things you could do tons of things you could do past thinking like tom tillis yeah tons of things you could do i don't know it's tough to come out off of jd talking about going to heaven and like looking about these stories these people who like i would be against this if they were actually illegal immigrants but and hadn't broken any rules but like these this kid's going to right state like there are a bunch of other kids at right state who have student visas who are from other countries who aren't aren't legal permanent residents the administration is turning them into illegal yeah choosing to he volunteered to serve he's in the jrotc they killed himself like the like the administration did it like because they because they specifically targeted the haitians because of their race because they were a useful foil to advance a what bible against like right but jd's chances of going to heaven have grown up in the last year so we want to do everything we can tell the people of springfield so i know that jim swift in the newsletter has put out um various organizations that are doing good work and i will i'll put them in the show notes if you want to help them i have a little bit more sympathy for a different group of people and i and i just i get the sense that i'm not going based on some messages that i got from you and uh and just knowing you so well with all the time we spent together that maybe your empathy doesn't quite extend to that group um it was on tuesday of this week i had ruby kramer on the podcast she wrote a really great show yeah thank you really elegant profile she's a great profile writer of this couple in west virginia and that basically got divorced over maha and their kids got what appears to be measles kind of weird situation everything about it said measles but the test came back negative and then but they're also there are false negatives and so there's a little bit of mystery in the story as well but the kids including one that has special needs were not getting the medical services they needed regardless whether they got measles um because of their mother's maha beliefs and and ruby and i expressed you know obviously frustration with that but also empathy and also thinking what's the right way to go about this and we talked a little bit about how you know by telling them listen to your doctors and follow the science people feel like you're talking down to them you're condescending them and that has a backlash effect i sense that you you maybe don't care that much about the backlash effect so i was in the car listening to this show literally screaming out loud like a crazy person as i was listening to it and the first part was when ruby was describing the the woman leah as you are literally screaming literally screaming like like sam kittinson i was screaming uh very healthy very good it's good to scream when you're listening to podcasts shows that's uh it's a show that's good for you and uh leah describes herself as just you know being a person who's just really open-minded and she explains that that's how she got into the maha stuff because she's just open-minded about things people are so stupid and one of the ways in which people are incredibly stupid is they have absurd self-images because leah is not open-minded right leah has her mind made up about exactly what she wants and there is nothing that can convince her of otherwise right and so this is you get in this fundamental place where you're trying to convince people who can't even understand themselves of the world around them and can any of us really understand ourselves i i think that's part of the challenge of being human and many people succeed at it yeah it's true not people like leah it's hard and when ruby said ruby said something like you know when you say things like but look at the scientific literature look at the uh epidemiology etc people feel like they're being condescended to and like you're telling them that they're stupid and i just thought yes yes and why can't we just say that why can't we say instead of like you know patting them on the head just say listen you are stupid you don't know anything about this shit where did you go to college what did you major in do you understand how a g-couple protein works do you have any idea like how pharmacological mechanisms function do you think that white blood cells function because they want something because there's a little white blood cell brain that's saying oh i gotta go get the germs like you're in the fucking saturday morning cartoon explanation of how bill becomes law that's not it's all just fucking physics all right all of everything that happens inside the body is physics it all boils down to math and let me tell you leah you are stupid you don't have any fucking clue as to how the world works and so you should just listen to the people who are smarter than you that was really satisfying because that's not condescending a little rude but there is a lot to be explored and this is kind of like a small c conservative insight actually this is something that i would hear when i was in republican circles for a while and in the 90s back in the good old days which is like participation trophy culture stupid right like life is hard you know life's challenging some people are better certain things like this notion that like everybody is equal like right it was like this idea that was kind of like a namby-pamby way of thinking right that this was like some liberal nonsense and it's better for people just to to understand their various unfairnesses in the world understand their strengths and weaknesses and you know that can lead to meanness sometimes and cruelty that's unnecessary but also just when it's blunt it is true like in some ways maybe this is the participation trophy we are all stupid like we're stupid about different things yeah exactly i didn't know half the words you just said i think i said this to sam this week like my act science score was so bad i didn't know half the words you just said i think i said this to sam this week like my act science score was so bad i didn't know half the words you just said i think i said this to sam this week like my act science score was so bad that it brought down the rest of my score from being like at the top going to being able to go to a really good college to be like sorry you have to go to a regular college like george washington because your act score it was so bad but it's just because i don't i didn't know anything about science and and i'm bad at it and maybe i could be better if i tried harder but like whatever and like there's i can't i'm not gonna win any weightlifting competitions right like every like we all have our weaknesses and frailties and stupidities and it's better to just kind of accept that probably it is only with the science stuff that we adopt this pose of well you have to respect their feelings not really economics we have to do it we have to do it with economics too i guess we have to do with economics too um that's right but if you took your your car wasn't working and you took it to the shop and the mechanic looked at it and i don't know anything about cars right your mechanic said to me uh your johnson rod is bad this is a costanza joke from seinfeld right the johnson rod has gone bad and i said uh you know i don't know anything about cars right i don't know anything you know i don't think that's it actually i think the problem is that i was driving over roads that were paved to gray instead of black so i'm only gonna drive on black paid black tar roads not the roads that have you know sort of the gray or the the tan concrete because i think that's really the problem would the mechanic have to say to me sir i understand because of your life experience that you may think that that's it but really it's you know if we could just look at it and see if it's looking at the sign you'd say like what the fuck is wrong with you you're a moron yeah we should just be able to say that that's an apt comparison for me because as a child uh and as a child like as a teen after i got a car i didn't know how to do anything with it and i had people in my life say to me like are you too stupid to like figure out how to change your own oil like you're a smart person i can't you figure it out and it's kind of like no i i was too stupid to do that like there are people that are good at that this is not in my like maybe if i really really did worked on it i could do the minimum but i i you wouldn't you wouldn't want to drive a car that i worked even if i spent all of my brain power this is different though tim this is way different because what you correct me if i'm wrong yeah you did not say i don't really believe in oil changes right no no no of course that's the analogy you know this is my point i don't believe in oil changes i don't think cars need oil changes i think what they need is the natural viscosity that oil creates over time and that that actually because the the motor the engine discovers because of the viscosity of old oil that it has to work harder and it makes the engine stronger i didn't do that i accepted natural immunity that old oil gives your car engine i think it's it's better just to know what you don't know you know there's some wisdom there oh that was pleasurable that was i need a cigarette after that one um okay we have a mailbag i want to get to but you have an upcoming triad you wanted to work out with me that you just described only as. very dark JVL tryout. So let's kind of just work out the first draft of that and then we'll hit the mailbag and let people go. So I need a little bit of help on this. I got to think it through. I just sort of looked up the other day and realized that the people around me, many of whom work in the bulwark, there seems to be a working assumption that there will be a democratic president in 2029. Like just a, you know, like a 90%. Like it's almost like given. All the questions are like, well, how does a democratic president fix everything? You know, how do we go back? What do we. And I just looked at all that. I thought to myself, I don't know. Why are we assuming that? Because I got to tell you. Is it even a coin flip? Maybe. I don't know. I mean, I don't know what it is. I don't know what the odds are. Right. But if a Republican gets elected again after Trump too, what does that tell you about America and Americans? And that's the dark thought that I was having, right? If after all of this, it happens again. Does it tell you anything we don't already know? And this is a tough part. Like, you know, one of the things, I talked about this a little bit with Nicole a couple of weeks ago, but like after. He won this time. Like one of the hard parts about like getting back on the horse and doing this job is just like, it feels, it feels hopeless. You tell yourself, people tell yourself like, well, it's kind of bad luck and like Biden's hubris and the economy. And it's like, we can still get things back on track, but it's kind of like, if people chose that again, we did already live through it once. We did already have a capital storming. Doesn't that just say that something is fundamental? It's fundamentally broken. And so would them winning again do anything? In some ways, I don't know. Would that change anything? Have not you already just accepted that things are fundamentally broken? Again, I'm just thinking all this through and that's a good point. But I feel as though there is a strain of alibying of the country, which has settled on, yeah, but people didn't vote for this. They didn't vote for that. They didn't really. They didn't realize what mass deportations would be. They didn't, they just thought he would give good economic jobs or whatever, right? You know, whatever the stupid idiot shorthand for the period of Trump's first term where the economy was good, which ignores the period of his term when the economy was bad. If a Republican wins again, like what alibi is there left? I think maybe there isn't any. I mean, I can tell you what it will be. It will be, well, the Democratic Party failed again. What will it be? The Democratic Party failed. Look, they put up candidate X and candidate X did these five things wrong. And you can't expect independent voters and Republican voters to vote for Democrat unless they're absolutely perfect. And that'll be what it is. And also, they'll blame us, right? There'll be this, there was this boy who cried wolf thing. Like you guys said Trump would end democracy and you guys said Trump was the worst thing since Hitler, even though it was only the VP that said that. And like you said all these things, and then they didn't come to pass. Like instead, we just like got into a stupid war and like the economy got worse and whatever. Like instead, none of those, none of those like worst case scenario things came to pass. And so you have to respect the voters who then look at JD Vance or Marco Rubio and say, well, yeah. And say, well, they said it was going to be horrible when we survived it. And so, and these guys aren't as crazy as Trump. You know what I mean? Like there'll be that kind of element of it that, um, that the alarmists are to blame. Yeah. It'll be like the future of fire burning. Right. It'll be. Yeah. This is yeah. Yeah. A million people died from COVID and the real villain is Anthony Fauci. Okay. Look, a lot of this is coping. People need to get by day by day. A lot of it is though, I guess by one thing, I think I would ask you to think through as you write the article is are the people that are talking about Democrats in 2029, do they really just assume the Democrats are winning or is it a psychological exercise for themselves? Yeah. Where like the re the answer is they agree with you. Like they will be broken if the Republicans win again in 2029. And so there's no point in even thinking about it or dealing with it because the project in the country will be broken. And it's just like, whatever, I'll cross that bridge when I get there. That's more of a fruitful thought exercise to think about how we could repair. I, cause I think that's what's happening. I think that there are obviously some people out there that think it's a fate of company, but I think that most of the people that are talking about it are saying, well, it's not a fate of company, but it's a fact of company, but it's a psychological kind of, we'll see. I look forward to the newsletter. Mailbag. Here's the mail. It never fails. It makes me want to wag my tail when it comes. I want a whale. All right. Three, uh, three mailbag questions. One of them's more of a comment than a question. I just really liked it. And it's very relevant and apps to the topics of today. And it's something I hadn't thought about. So I like it when a, when a reader proves you, you get such great comments in the triad and always getting things to kind of spark the brain. And so it's nice. I like getting a reader comment that, that makes me think, um, about a new strategy. LJ writes, I was listening to the next level this morning. I don't know exactly what spawned this, but could someone start to create outrage about the number of Christians being deported? It seems likely to cause a problem. Maybe for a bit of someone could gin that up thousands of Christians being deported by the Trump administration. I don't know if that would actually work, but it's an interesting thought exercise because that is a talking point that I speak to this because here's why it didn't work in 2016 when Trump was doing the Muslim ban, one thing that we did on the job campaign, I think markers campaign and some others did this was like, okay, we know that Republican voters don't care about the Muslims that are being, you know, deported or being screwed over in the middle East. Right. But like, but maybe they'll care about the Christians. Right. And so like, we took this weird third path that I have regrets about, but that felt strategically, right. It was just like, what do you mean? Trump, we're not going to let in the Syrian Christians that are being persecuted by Assad. Like we won't let them into the country. Like we are not going to like Trump is anti-Christian. Like he won't even let the Christians being persecuted into the country. That didn't work. Unfortunately, I want it to feel like it should, but I assume you agree. So it won't. And I can tell you why. Okay. It's the easiest reason in the world. So I was looking at a piece by Radley Balco today about a guy in Louisiana who was just let off of death row because he was on death row and turned out to be completely innocent. Like not like there was a technicality, like he was actually, he just did not do the thing he was accused of doing. Did in fact, nothing wrong. And I, I said to myself, as I finished, why is it the conservatives think that everybody who works for the government is a crook and you can't trust them. And if they work at the IRS or they're a teacher or they, they work in the department of public works or something, anybody who works for the government is, is a liar and you can't trust them unless they have guns. And those guys have never been wrong in their lives. We have to trust everything they say, totally and completely in the answer of court. Like, of course we know why it's racism. It's because they, they don't care about criminal justice because they don't care what happens to black and brown people. Yeah. It's the same thing with the Christians. Oh, are they white Christians? No, give a shit. I think that is right as a political answer. I liked it because if not for nothing else than, you know, self-soothing, it's nice to shame them. Would it be more powerful? Like when the story of the, uh, couple with that we deported back to shit, I can't remember if it was Honduras or Guatemala, but, uh, they went back to this kind of gang riddled area of, of the, of their home country. They weren't criminals hadn't done anything legally here. Uh, they had a small baby and they go back, they get murdered. By the gang. And, and this is just this horrible story I read on the show the other day where like the baby is like left by the mom's dead body. I mean, you just, it just, it's too much to bear, but like talking about that, like we sent two Christians back to die and leave their baby out to watch their mother bleed out. I don't know. Is there not, is there not something there? So I don't know. I mean, I can only answer this way. If you believe that people are reachable, and that they operate in anything close to good faith or that they actually mostly believe the things they say they believe, then it's worth doing those sorts of things. Cause maybe you can argue them into, into coming around. Yeah. I've pretty much given up on that. Like I, I, I'm not a hundred percent of the way there, but I'm 98% of the way to like, people are just, they want what they want and they backfill everything else from there. You know, they say they're pro-life because they want these five outcomes that come from being quote pro-life. And, uh, you can't argue them into this shit because they didn't argue themselves into it. They just want what they want. Yeah. Do you have the links I sent you? I do. All right. I didn't tell you about this one because it's going to be tough. We're gonna have to edit it a little bit for Shannon's sake. Um, but I received this email. Okay. Tim, this may be the toughest question you'll ever have to answer. F Mary kill Trump, you're going to have to answer it. I'm going to be honest with you. Thank you. Mr. Newport. Uh, thank you, Mr. Newport, uh, for a couple of reasons, uh, JBL is in a committed and so there's not going to be any effing we'll call it candlelight dinner okay for the mary category we're just going to assume that unfortunately you know your shannon has passed on our ip and so you're a free man so candlelight dinner mary falcon heavy because we're not we're not also not going to do anything that brings cash to us so candlelight mary falcon heavy the trump cabinet uh there are not very many women in the trump cabinet and and mr what was his name there mr uh mr newport mr newport didn't say trump's current cabinet so i'm going to take the most expansive version of this possible and i've sent you the links to all the members of both cabinets first term and second term um for this category and um i'm sure you're going to take a second to peruse so do you want me to go first while you think about it because i've already i've already prepared yeah you go first if you want you can make me to the second cabinet after because all of my answers ended up being from the first cabinet i would like to candlelight dinner if i was going to choose i looked through the cabinets very closely and i settled on donald trump's first secretary of energy rick perry i've heard some things about rick perry and i think that we could get rowdy i'm just gonna leave it at that i think that if i had to do one of them not a lot of great options to choose from but i think me and rick i think we could have a good old time after a night out in austin uh moving on to mary i found all of these people disgusting and i was hoping that the first cabinet had somebody who had like made it a full change and the only person that is on that list is mark esper and i just really don't want to be married to mark esper and so i decided that the right thing to do strategically would be to marry wilbur ross he's still alive i think so wilbur was born in 1937 and and he's extremely wealthy and so i think that we could have a good short loving marriage that might accrue to the benefit of my progeny so there we go for falcon heavy it was tough from this administration because there are so many and you don't know i i kind of didn't want to back to the future it where you you do something and it makes things worse you know kind of like right like i falcon heavy marco but it ends up who knows you know what i mean something happened so i didn't want to i didn't want to risk that and so i decided just to go back to term one and i'm falcon having bill barr fuck you bill barr of all those people bill barr was the closest to being able to stop this from happening again and he pussed out so that's my list perry fuck ross mary bar falcon if you make me do the second term i will so long as we are understanding that the fuck mary kill here is really a metaphorical thing and not a rule because um candlelight dinner candlelight dinner uh for me my candlelight dinner is lynda mcmahon because if i get a couple drinks we can do wrestling talk like i could get through two hours with lynda mcmahon just by talking about the business yeah i love wrestling all right that's good that's a good pick mary is easy mike pence no you can't get my pants vp counts his cabinet i was thinking about pure he's on the list i opened up two lists mike pence is there oh this is a cheat code okay uh then if i can't have mike pence it's gotta be either rex tillerson or steve mucin because those guys are the least trumpy and the most like they came from outside maga they they did their jobs sort of and then they left and they they want no part of this bullshit rex is a great pick you're like living the land man you're like living the land man you're like living the land man you're like living the land man life now you got a private jet you're flying out to midland yeah i feel like you're going shopping at sax rex and i could have a good gay marriage together rex was born in 1952 god he looks horrible anyway okay falcon heavy so i was gonna put jd on the falcon heavy but you're saying i can't do that because i i feel about jd i would also do that the way you know and that wouldn't do anything about uh donald trump himself yeah but if i can't have jd um i genuinely think that hegseth is the most damaging member of the cat more than rfk the rfk was when i really sat with because i was like it's it's hard to imagine him picking a worse replacement for rfk and that could save lives yes if hegseth got sent off i don't i don't know are we sure that don jr doesn't run the military i i don't i no no we're not you're probably right i mean in a weird way he could find another hegseth you can't find another rfk because rfk i mean the only trump himself isn't wedded to any of the rfk bullshit like he just he made a deal to get rfk in the coalition and then like trump's policy is dictated by this one guy in his own obsessions so maybe that's the smart thing um but where i struggle with this is that people have agency rfk is not forcing anyone yeah to not get the research vaccinated research part yeah yeah you're not wrong i'm surprised you didn't consider kelsey for your candlelight dinner no okay no we'll leave it at that we'll leave it there if i had to do this second administration i think i'm definitely fucking jameson greer but uh and and i guess i'm i've just talked myself into falcon having uh kennedy the marriage is tough though the marriage is tough like thinking about where who did you who'd you pick you went first term as well if you had to marry somebody from this term it's really it's a it's a really rough list to check the rackless what about kelly leffler i might pick kelly leffler just to kind of figure out what's happening with her she is super rich you get to go to a lot owner suite at wmba games and uh you make a strong case for kelly leffler and maybe you meet the aliens because whatever's happening with her is not does not come from a human so maybe you learned something about science okay we've gone way long good show long show final question was for sam but i'm gonna flip it on you it was would sam be willing to step in the box or an at-bat against jvl's son jvl's son flash is in college a college baseball player a pitcher as a 90 mile an hour fastball how had no he's not at 90 yet he sits in the high 80s high 80s throwing so my question for you is would you do you stand in could you do you stand in for 88 high heat high and inside from flash so this is a genuine answer um nobody who can't protect themselves should get in the box with somebody who is that level of a player it's so i play catch with flash still and it's terrifying because the ball comes in so hard i have to use a catcher's mitt just to like have catch with him um and there's so much movement on it and you know he's not trying to kill me like he never throws 100 you know i don't catch bullpen sessions from him like i couldn't catch bullpen sessions with him so uh yeah if you can't protect yourself you shouldn't really see anything over like 75 miles an hour no i would say so when was the last time you really like you stood in the box for flash with flash uh yeah he's probably 12 the last time i would stand in the box and like it's like my brother is this level of tennis player where he was i would be able to beat him up through like 11 or 12 because i would be able to win the mental game like i just shit talk him enough that i i'd get him off but then just one like one summer came back and it was just like i can't even hit the serve like it's not even yeah i mean and flash is bigger than we all are now too i mean he's he's over 200 pounds he's just he looks like a professional wrestler you know what a good kid what a show what we're aiming for on the podcast is we're trying to touch all of the human emotions the entire human experience in one one hour period we went a little long today 70 minutes but you know we definitely laughed we got angry were there i got a little emotional i got a little emotional we felt bad i thought that's good rich tapestry of life all right tomorrow we're gonna make it we're gonna find somebody that's a little bit more balanced emotionally than me how are we gonna do that we're gonna try to find a podcast that kind of eases us into labor day weekend makes us feel nice and warm and cozy get your head out of the gutter jvl i look forward to that thank you so much for coming on the show jonathan you're going to be back in a few weeks you're going to be back more often i hope people like that let us know in the comments what you think about the show and our answers to the fmk and uh we'll see you back here tomorrow please don't laugh only half of what i said was a joke every catholic knows he could have been oh the bulwark daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer katie cooper associate producer ansley skipper and with video editing by dante de chico and audio engineering and editing by jason brown