OLIVIA NUZZI Talks Trump, Scandal, American Canto

- Well, do you think being so successful, so young, like kind of robbed you of an early adulthood, like? - And that's why I'm fucking up now. - I don't know. I'm just asking you. - Maybe. - Do you think you have to catch up on like 24 now? 'Cause you were chilling with Trump the whole time? - Yeah, I think I'm good on like, fucking up for now. - I don't know, you baby. I don't know. What do you guys get up to? Zach? - Yeah. - What's, what's like the vibe over there? - Back here. - Yeah, no, no. I mean, like, like for what you do, like, what kind of stuff do you do? (laughing) - Okay. - What's that? He plays guitar. Are you a lyrical guitar? - I really wanna get my pilot's license. - Oh, pilot's license? - Yeah. - Oh, that'd be cool. - That'd be cool. - That'd be cool. (upbeat music) ♪ All my family and children ♪ ♪ All my family and children ♪ ♪ All my children ♪ - Welcome back to the Adam Friedland show. I'm Adam Friedland. I'm going back on the road with Caleb Pitts, Emerald City Comedy Club Seattle Washington, January 22nd to 24th. We're doing five shows. Get tickets at emeraldcitycomedy.com. There's also a link in the description. And guys, tickets are going fast. They will all be selling out because I'm fucking famous. And Caleb's famous, we're, it was that. Also, as always, I wanna thank our members here on youtube.com. You make the show possible. Guys, seriously, you have supported us all year and we could have done it without you guys. We get, if you're not a member and you'd like to join, members get access to all the episodes early. And if you'd like to join at the second or third tiers, you can get your name the credits of this very fun program. If you'd like to join the Freedom Family Foundation, you can do so by clicking the join button here on YouTube or clicking the link in the description below. Also, if you have Patreon, you prefer to use it, then the link for that is also in the description. And guys, merch is available. The AdamFriedland.show, check it out, holiday season. - Present. - Present. Get your dad a hat. I think people's parents might have seen some of the show. My guess this week is Olivia Nuzzi. Nuzzi, if you're not familiar, made a name for herself as a correspondent for the Daily Beast, where she covered Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. And subsequently, she was hired in 2017 by New York magazine, where she published various well-regarded profiles on the present. In September 2024, new surface that she had been engaged in an inappropriate relationship with current health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that was described as emotional and digital in nature. She was subsequently fired from New York magazine and has just released a book about the experience American Conto, which has been overshadowed by a five-part sub-sec published by her ex, Ryan Liza, alleging that Nuzzi had acted as a defect-o-political operative for Kennedy among other accusations. Guys, the lesson here is that journalists should not be famous. And I stand by that statement and I will die on that hill. So, let's get to it. Please enjoy my interview. I don't know why I hit her. So, let's get to it. Please enjoy my interview with Olivia Nuzzi. Scandalous, I think it is. I hope you like it. I hope it wasn't good. You guys liked it? I wonder if people could, yeah, okay. All right, good. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome journalists, author. The new book on Simon & Schuster, American Conto, Olivia Nuzzi! Olivia, welcome. Welcome. Thank you for doing this, I showed. Thank you, you're a nice outfit. She didn't want to do the walk-out and-- What do you have? You know, you're a good guest. Yeah, I'm-- it's my house and you have to-- is that I'm being like the guy who asks his friend to come over and play video games and then he doesn't let him play. Is that a type of guy? No, I'm sorry. I'm scared, right? Why am I scared, right? I don't know. I don't know, because what you yelled at me about, what was that the Hitler thing we were fighting about on the foot? You just kept talking over me. No, you said something insane and then-- Oh, yeah. I said, you said that Donald Trump is selfish. Are you afraid of women? When I get yelled at by them, I don't want to get yelled at. I wouldn't say yelled. I don't know what's-- in that situation, I'm just constantly like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It feels terrible. Anyway, I've heard your name a bunch. You're a journalist. You've interviewed the president multiple times. You're attached to various political campaigns. You made a name for yourself very young. And you've recently just published this book. How does it feel to get it out? Fine. Fine? Yeah. Yeah, I felt like I was sort of-- I started covering Donald Trump in 2015. I guess I interviewed him for the first time in 2014. And I didn't know that when I signed up to do that, that it was going to become a whole era, right? You caught a big one. And so I felt like this book was sort of completing this thought that I had begun forming 10 years earlier, you know? Correct me if I'm wrong. Journalists-- you guys all hate each other. Is that the deal? Is it a band of brothers or is it-- No, man, anyone. I think that what one thing that I'm resistant to is that I just had a sports journalist on. And he said that we're a pundit, actually. He's not a journalist. But he said that I was like, is sports coverage kind of celebrity gossip at this point? And he said some of the things that get the highest engagement isn't even related to the players. It's one pundit being mattered another pundit, right? And that's kind of become the news. Where it's like the people covering the news kind of are the stars, if anything. Is it-- am I off there? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of manufactured public drama. And there are a lot of people who are sort of operating in bad faith in public spaces who are just trying to perpetuate it for personal gain of some kind. But if you see two journalists popping off on against each other, if you see our girl-- I watch that. --if you see our girl Taylor just going out to another one, people are locked in on Twitter or something. Yeah, although I mean, I think going back, I mean, it's not a new thing for journalists to have a sort of a personal brand, right? I don't know. Edward Armero, his most famous-- So you're right. --his most famous moments were often when he deviated from the straight new stuff and he expressed an opinion, right? And he expressed something of his character. So I don't think it's totally new. It's just a new medium. Well, that was new in that era, right? In this day, an agent feels a kind of more-- and I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. But people are up front about-- Well, things are bad thing, probably, yeah. But I think just there's always going to be sort of friction when different practices are evolving on different mediums, right? One thing I noticed when I've read your profiles and they were like, I really loved them. But the way you write-- in your writing, it does track-- it could be about Rihanna or something. Politicians are celebrities now, you know? It's about character, right? But I'm always interested in his understanding the human beings that I'm writing about, right? And for most of the last 10 years, covering Trump's rise to dominance-- You caught a big one. That's been about just understanding the people seeking or influencing or clinging to power. And when a character wants something, it's a good engine for a story and a good way to sort of see their character brought into sharp belief. Yeah, I mean, he's the most fascinating, probably, public character. He's very simple. Oh, it was my lifetime. I mean, he's very simple. And since I've had the experience talking to him, we're all be asking a question, something about his psychology. And I'll see him start to lose interest in the question I realize, oh, I've thought about your inner life so much more than you ever have. I love the parts in the book where you write about Trump. Thank you. They're like so three-dimensional. And he is as a character, just like-- He's fascinating. He's fascinating. Yeah, singular. He's strange. I mean, there's this one exchange with him. I think it's in the book where he was talking about how he's not weird. He's not a weird person. Yeah, and I was like, OK, well, are you-- would you say you're unusual? And he's, OK, yeah, I'm unusual, but I'm not weird. I'm the most not weird person. I guess there's a connotation more of-- unusual, you could be like the cool art kid. I knew you were more neutral. Yeah. Then weird is more of an accusation, I think. You're from New Jersey. The thing-- your book is like kind of like a shoe box of like photographs, right? They're like just little pictures, I feel like. Is that-- It's like expressionist. Yeah, yeah. It's not like a linear as much as like kind of images in different times. Yeah, I was trying to just sort of replicate the experience of the last 10 years. And with my proximity as this like official witness to Trump's rise, what it feels like. You were remarkably successful, remarkably young, right? And unsuccessful. No, I mean, like you were like kind of in the press pool in the West Wing at like what, 22, 23. Something like that. Is that-- was that stressful at any point? Would you just take it as a lie? It's easy when you have a mission, like when you-- I think it was like-- like the stakes of politics are inherent when you're covering it. You never have to wonder if what you're doing matters because it obviously does. And that's like a great gift in some ways, right? Because I think-- I think you grew up fast, it feels-- it seems. Like you became an adult quickly. Well, but he was-- it was his first time there as well, right? But there was something-- But there was something sort of-- and I felt like I understood something of his psychology because he grew up in Queens, right? He grew up in Jamaica, states. I grew up in New Jersey. When you're on the periphery, when you're out of bro trash, when you're on the periphery. His knee was state too, it's disgusting. You know, it's looking at the center at Manhattan, and like his whole life seemed to be about getting there and then, you know, ascending to whatever midtown heights he wanted to send. Not only good for him, but the personality of a striver in him, right? And this kind of resentment that he always had about Manhattan, it was interesting to watch it transported to politics. One thing I thought was an interesting thing from the book is that you associated New York City from a very young age with Trump. Did you feel like you knew him kind of like-- you known him for a while or something? Well, he was just like this great tabloid villain of my childhood, right? And then the apprentice premiered when I think I was in like the third or fourth grade. He was always in the papers that my father always brought home the New York Post and the Daily News. Is what? He's an intellectual. I mean, he was a-- he were for the sanitation department in New York. And I just was used to seeing him every place. And I don't remember a time when I was not aware of him, right? He's in Home Alone, too. And there's this scene in the book where I just-- I remember being in my dad's truck on Central Park South. I have an accident. And him pointing out that Donald Trump's town car was in front of us. And I was like six years old, I think. And I knew exactly who he was. I thought he was scary because he was the beauty pageant guy. I thought beauty pageants were scary. Here's an interesting thing. And this is related to you. It's the toughest interview. Oh, Trump? Yeah. You possessing that ability, just-- it's the hardest difficulty setting. And being able to do that from a very young age like, did you feel like you became an adult early? Yeah. I guess, you know, I was a child of alcoholics, and it's like a pretty typical response, yeah, not successfully. But it's a pretty typical response to like, try really hard to appear collected, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Can you just like tell us more about how you just instantly knew how to approach that subject? I didn't. He's really-- he's a domineering force. And he's sort of like the great force around which we're all oriented, right, in some sense, in the culture for the last 10 years, increasingly so. You have to be very like active, and in an interview with him, you have to-- it's like dealing with a wild animal, you know, like, so you have to just-- he's sort of assessing in real time, like, what he thinks that you want or what you need, and so he's trying to manipulate you. How do you, like, disarm that? You don't really. You just have to, like, meet him on his level. And depending-- I mean, sometimes he's just in a bad mood. But if you go in there thinking-- I would die. You're going to-- No, he's a scary. Do you think Trump would like me? Do I think he would like you? I don't-- Yeah. I'm not politically. I don't like him. What he's doing. But you want-- But you want. You want him to like you. If Trump was like-- the way he, like, Zora, I mean, he was just like in love with-- he was like, oh, Mike. Zora don't ask the next question. They're fucking ridiculous. That was incredible. It was sort of like-- it was the perfect example of how he just-- he oriented himself around power, too. And he responds to energy. And he's sort of-- He's sort of, like, just this wild animal who synthesizes other people's energy. And he's very-- for someone who's so egocentric and so unconcerned with others, he's really interested in others. And he's really sensitive to kind of what other people are putting down. He is? In the sense that he has any empathy, right? But sensitive, like-- Figuring out someone. Yeah, he-- I mean, it's like why he has to do the rallies and why, like, during COVID, for instance, when he couldn't do the rallies, it contributed to, like, what was described to me by people close to him as sort of his version of depression. And it was-- He missed the-- he missed the shows? Well, it was, like, he was able to-- yeah, he missed the shows. And he-- I mean, he approaches-- I mean, he kind of-- he's energized by other people's energy. He's the type of extrovert who just, you know, he requires other people's energy. He feeds off of it in a kind of vampiric way. I mean, you've probably been to a Trump rally, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, they have so much fun about-- they love it. Do the people there, like-- No, not really. It's interesting. It's better than the Democrat ones. Um, well, they don't try to-- they seldom try to replicate anything like that, right? So that made it hard in, like, 2016, for instance, to really know how much value to place in the Trump rallies, right, especially when it wasn't being reflected in polling, because it's, like, she's not trying-- Intel Reckland is not trying to host an event at a monster truck arena. So there's nothing really to compare it to, right? They're just wheeled out, like, Oprah and be, like, the way they-- I also just think it-- part of it's just, kind of, about loneliness and boomer loneliness where it's, like, there's just-- he's-- the show is rolling through talent, and maybe you're, like, Baloxie, Mississippi or something, or, um, Summer and Oklahoma, and, like, you-- there are not that many, I think, opportunities to hang out and chalgate and listen to Elton John and Stones and Paparazzi and, uh-- And YMCA. And Chal with, um, it's funny for a long time, the song at the, like, end of those rallies was not the YMCA, it was, um, you can't always get what you want, which I thought was very fun. When he came out on election night, right, didn't he come out to the-- I remember-- I remember, it was the-- like, 2016, didn't he come out to-- Yeah, so, you can't always get what you want, and I remember his fat body and silhouette, like-- Yeah, like a Hitchcock. Maybe it was-- I mean, it was one of the most insane things I've ever seen my entire life. But I talked to him about this, um, and it's in the book where I, that night, when he came out, we were in Midtown, I think, at, like, the health center or something, and he looked, there's this scene in the movie The Candidate with Robert Redford, um, that I think is about Jerry Brown, but he, um, he wins, and he has this dumbfounded-- he just looks-- I remember that. --charified, right? And, um, he says to his aid, um, what do we do now? And he looks really scared, and then the crowd sort of comes between them, and, well, he looks helplessly. And I brought this up to Trump, and I was like, oh, you reminded me of Redford, and he was like-- he got very, like-- He was a fellow blonde. He was thrilled to hear that, uh, I reminded him of Redford, and I was like, you look scared, and he went, like, you know, kind of sank back and-- He liked that you were blonde, do you think? No, no, I was telling him-- I know, but like-- I know, but like-- But was that part of the bond? Yeah, it was a bond. Because some-- I mean, more of-- So, like, when I say another Jew, I'm like, uh, uh, we're both blonde. Yeah, he likes it. He's like, oh, there's another blonde person here. I-- it's even more about New York. Like, I think he really missed New York when he was in the White House, um, and felt sort of, um, you know, like he was in an alien space, um-- I made a joke to Zora, and where I was like, do you think the hang is so bad that, like, a cool guy came to hang out with him, and then he, like, just-- That kind of now seems like that's, like, kind of a real thing. I think so, and I think he's, like, homesick for New York in a-- Does he have no friends? I don't think he has friends in the manner that, like, you might think of a friend. I think there-- there are people that he-- he doesn't, like, hang, really, you know? Yeah. Well, it's because he-- I mean, since I've always been-- I've always been-- He's, like, it's a very-- How does that work out? You guys are very similar. Yeah, I love the phone. Yeah. You have a phone. You have a phone. Yes, do you like home? No. Really? I don't care. I do this joke every episode. I really do it. If this is the first one that actually happens, Olivia-- You should call him. What can you do? I don't want to call him. I don't want to say anything. He's not going to pick up for me. Does he pick up-- Oh, you said in the book, he picks up every call. Yeah. Give my phone. Give my phone right now. This is amazing. No, it's in the-- oh, my god. Does he pick up every call? I mean, I-- in my experience-- What if he's like, hello, Adam? Oh, my god. Hi, Nate. Nate, may I please have my phone? Wait, you want to say-- you want to just say-- You want to say the number so our listeners can also give them a call? No, well, I don't want-- Oh, I just don't really want to give you this number. I feel like that's not responsible. Okay, so I'll call for your number. I have my phone. Where is it? Oh, it's right behind you. So you also have-- No, I don't want to call from my phone. I'm not going to pray call from when I'm with you. I think-- I shouldn't even care. You know, you can have this. Is this cool? It's good. This is awesome. Caleb, why don't you look more excited? I need you guys-- you're the best together. This is the best day of my entire life. This is the best day of my life. Whoa, dude. Oh, no, you have pink. What? Nothing. All right. I have orange, bro. What do I say to Trump? Hello. Hi, yay. No, I should give him a piece of my mind after all this. All right, wait, can I have your phone? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Can you unlock it? Oh, yeah, yeah. Here. I don't know. You think maybe he saw the Zora on episode? Should I ask him that? I don't know. Is it ringing? No, I can call you. I don't know. Your phone's about to die, by the way. That's okay. That would be amazing. You're on 4%. You're on 4%. That's enough for a Trump. Okay. Wow. You're on 4%. no that's not his actual number. That's the number you got? Yeah. I'll probably go back. Hello Mr. President, it's Adam Friedland. I'm a talk show host in New York City. I would love to extend an invitation for you to come on the show. I just had Zora Mamdani who I know you're quite fond of and it's a kind of an intellectual style in the vein of Dick Cavett talk show. We also had Steini who I think you're friends with as well for the male voice. Alright, thanks a lot. Mr. President, it's a great honor and I hope you're having a good day. I dropped Steini. I also dropped Steini. He might know that. Why the hell was Trump on the fucking Steini's podcast? Anyway, okay. So I guess like I'm flying. When did you first want to be a writer? I always wrote. I was always writing when I was a kid, but I loved comedy. You did? Like what? I loved Carlin, Prior, Chappelle, Jean-Grofflo. Casey calls back. And your book is inspired by the divine comedy? It's sort of in the structure a little bit. Were you always a big John Waters fan? I do look down on it. It's just wake up a little bit guy. I loved it. It was the last interview. I loved it. This was the last interview. This is by six and two. Olivia, let's make her feel like the biggest star. You are the biggest star in the world. You're our favorite. This is the best interview you've ever done. You always like comedy. Do you write comedy? The first pieces I wrote were satire. Do you have it somewhere? Really? What? Do you remember it? I wrote the first letter to the editor that I was the subject of. I was writing for an alt weekly in New Jersey. They published this letter to the editor that was like, what does Olivia do for America? I was really upset. I was like, why are you publishing hate mail against me? I didn't realize how it worked. It was some really terrible thing. It was about the border wall. It was like if Republicans are so serious about the border wall, they should send the Boy Scouts to go form a human sense. Why? I don't know. I was like 17. You're 17 with the border wall? We had border wall. I guess so. I associated with Trump. I mean it was early 1900s. It's like a USDA. How could I forget it? Yeah. How could you forget it? It's defining a feature of the country. The border wall itself didn't really become the point of immigration debates on the left and right until the Obama administration. Before that, it wasn't so much about the interior of the country. It was a bipartisan issue to fund the border wall. 2006 Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, all sorts of Democrats, funded and voted to fund the border wall construction. So it was not like this super contested issue for a long time. Should I call Trump back? Maybe I forgot. I feel like I'm just thinking about this. I'm just thinking about this call. How's he? He's just like, you just know that. Here's the thing that's fascinating. You write critically, right? And you still maintain his trust. He doesn't heed. Well, he hates the media. Well, he's been mean to me. What's the mean to say he said to you? He said his dumbest rocks. He said I was a little derivative. Yeah. I thought that was funny. He said I was a black job. A black job? Yeah. It's pretty funny. Pretty good. Yeah. He called me. That's so Trump to say a black job. Did he ever call you a dog? Because he always calls women dogs. He also says people like have choked like a dog, like Mitt Romney, choked like a dog. Like a dog. He hates animals. And so when he talks about, he compares people to animals, it's usually just to humanize them in some way. To dog him. To dog them. Yeah. Well, bag daddy, right? When he killed that terrace, he said he died like a dog. Right. Which is what I don't know what that means exactly. To die like a dog. Yeah. What does that mean? I don't know. So, so he went, well, do you remember what Spirnd is his anger at you? Sometimes it's a question he doesn't like. Or if like he's failing in his efforts to sort of manipulate you in real time, he gets agitated. Who does he manipulate? Who's like? He's very like he's charming. Yeah. And so and he's like a good hang in a way. Like you can talk to he wants to talk about he likes to gossip. Yeah. He loves talking about. Oh, I got a good gossip for him. I should call him out. Yeah. Yeah. I'm okay. I can't say on this. Celebrity. You want to talk to him in private? Yeah. I heard that. I just heard that Marilyn Manson got one of his ribs removed. Oh, yeah. He was up before after the Richard gear thing. I heard that Richard gear. Well, the first one was Rod Stewart was OD and then he got a stomach pumped and there was two liters of semen in it. Which is so much fun. I mean, it's like an insane amount of come. Like take us through his charm a little bit more because I think it's just fascinating here. Like I mean, he's just he's a performer. Yeah. Right. Like and so he's always trying to get people to like him. He wants to be liked. I mean, we all want to be liked. Right. But with him, it's amplified and even like I think the defining trait of a politician. And I think I write something about this in the book is just like a politician is a man who wants to be loved more than other men and through his pursuit reveals why he cannot love himself. Right. And all politicians really want to be loved. But with Trump, it's like the added sort of Elvis quality to him, right? Or Lebrouchy quality. Yeah. The vagus in him, if you will. Well, he's a television star too. He's in show business. Yeah. He's way more that than like goal. People think he like Goldman Sachs. He's like from New York City real estate and you kind of fuck it up. And not even really marketing. Yeah. And like he wanted to be in show business. He wanted to be a movie business. He wanted to go to film school. And I feel like the great lesson, one of the great lessons of the 20th century is if someone wants to be an artist, you have to let them because the consequences are dire. Oh, okay. Because of, yeah. Because of. Oh, Hitler. Oh, Hitler. I wasn't thinking of that. What were you thinking of? I was thinking of George Bush. Oh, also that. Yeah. We let him paint. I mean, here's the early painting. He's the early ones are good. I prefer his earlier work. Yeah. The naive ones. Yeah, where he's trying to wash off his sins. Yeah. He's just haunted by the ghosts of the dead Iraq. Yeah. Yeah. One million or whatever. Yeah. You kind of your first arrival was you were an intern with a friend of the show. I would say best friend. Would you guys say best friend of the show? Best friend of the show. Anthony Weeters campaign. And then you left the campaign. You wrote became a front page story. Is that Trump? No. Gmail. Okay. Sorry. So nervous. Okay. Yeah. And then the New York Daily News, were you recruited from there to become a journalist or did it feel like, oh, now I'm in the game or like, when did it dawn on you that you were getting? I'm going to be a journalist. I was writing for this alt weekly when I was a teenager in New Jersey. And I ran out of opinions really quickly because I didn't know anything. Garbage weekly. Yeah. And then the sanitation news. Yeah. And then when I started performing acts of journalism, and I realized that you could do that, that you could just ask anyone anything. And that there's sort of like mechanism for my curiosity. Yeah. And like a way to utilize that. And it was justified because it's in the public interest. Like that was fascinating to me. And I was, I was interviewing. I think it was Rush Holt. He was a congressman and rocket scientist from New Jersey. He was running for the Senate in a special election to fill the seat, vacated by the death of Frank Lawton Burke. And I had all these questions written out. And I was like, really nervous. And then we started talking. And I just, I threw the questions out because I realized like, you have to, if you're in the conversation, you don't need to be nervous. You don't need me, right? No, I just, I don't know. Is there an overlap between like having a theatrical training early on? And like, is there a performance aspect of journalism? Maybe. I mean, we'll certainly like going on TV and doing stuff like that. Yeah, probably. Yeah. And understanding Trump, I think it was helpful too. Yeah, because he's also show, Randall Dazzle's showman. Yeah. I mean, there's someone of like a long time aid of his in American canto says, you know, in another era, if he was better looking, he probably would have loved to have been like a carried grant or something like that. I think I remember you say that, but also he is just way hot. He's one of the hottest. You think he's hot? Yeah. He asks. He doesn't call. Okay. That was the big. I ran out of money. Got you all fired up. Today's episode is sponsored by Incogni. Incogni helps you wipe your data from the internet and protect your privacy. Guys, I use this product. It's an excellent product because my data is everywhere. I've been spreading data all over the internet since I was away at the AOL days, you know? But it's time to get clean with Incogni. Thousands of companies are collecting and trading your personal data without you knowing it. You have the right to request data brokers to delete the information they have about you. It would take years to do this manually. Incogni does the messy work for you. Incogni reaches out to data brokers on your behalf requesting your personal data, removal and dealing with their objections. 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Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions, apply. - Your first place on the Chrissy campaign with the Daily Beast. Were you at those primaries in 2016? 'Cause that was the best show of all time. - The 2016 primaries? - Yeah, well the debates. I guess what was it like to see the R&C crumbling? Because he was a virus on the system, right? They kept trying to, there was one week where lying Ted would try to take him down. And one week where they were like, Marco, you gotta do it this week. And he was just, you just saw this guy like Agent Smith. He was like growing in power, it's like a moment of American history that you had a first-hand account of. - I mean there was, in some sense you could look at it, there was a real democratic process on the right that year, whereas I think there are a lot of people who, for good reason, feel that there wasn't on the democratic side, right? That Bernie Sanders maybe wouldn't have been the nominee, had the party not put it's thumb on the scale. - I think she persisted actually, yeah, nevertheless. But it was like nobody, there were no experts available to help contextualize what was happening, because I remember it was my first election year that I was covering, and I would talk to, I don't know, a political scientist or somebody to try and help me understand it, and they would tell me something like, you know, well people lie to pollsters or people get serious once it really becomes time to vote, and I would go on like television and say this, and you know, I talked to so and so, who said this, and as it turned out, there were no experts. Like there are no political science as a contradiction in terms, and like politics is extraordinarily emotional, and American politics and domestic politics is extraordinarily emotional. And he was manipulating that successfully. - I mean, he knew how to do TV. - If you've ever gone back and rewatched some of those debates, - Yeah, they're in the best, I watch all of them. - But your eyes just go to his center, right? Like he is the point. - And they're all, they look ridiculous. - You remember they were telling the crowd's not to cheer, and they just couldn't help, they were like, "Ah, yeah." Like when did it dawn on you that this could be the president of the United States? - I remember, I had, you know, it was hard because I was mostly covering him. So it's not like I was at every Hillary Clinton event or you know, I'll make her out with her constantly. And I was mostly just trying to understand his supporters and also just trying to understand the kind of machinations of our election system for the first time, formally, professionally. - At 22? 21? - I think I was 22. - Yeah. - Yeah, right? - Mm-hmm. - Yeah, and so I had a feeling, but like, I remember discussing it with them to friends of mine that we all had feelings that he would win, but you can exactly like go report, like according to my female intuition, he's gonna win. - Uh-huh. - There was no way to, you know, to corroborate that with the own data. - Yeah. - So, yeah. - And it was also hard to like, you know, it was hard to know like how much value do you put on the sides of his crowds? Are they just there because they're curious and it's kind of like the circus is rolling their own and it's something to do. Or are they there because it's an actual expression of how they're gonna vote? And it's not like, so he won the popular vote, right? - Right, it was razor thin. - Yeah, so in the end, it's like, this was this marginal victory. And I still don't really know how much, when you look back at just like the visuals of it, right? Like Hillary Clinton in like a half-full high school auditorium versus Donald Trump selling out some big stadium. That wasn't really a reflection of what ended up happening, right? - Right. - So. - People are just like a whole vote for her. Yeah, fine, all over Hillary. I'm not gonna go to the thing though. Yeah, I'm not gonna go to the high school and stand there and listen to her, but all over her fun. Well, it's not like the types of people who usually shop to political events are unusual. Yeah, right? They're unusually engaged and yeah, or they are unusually like not busy in the middle of a work day So it's not you don't really get a great sense of what like a quote-unquote average voter thinks by going to I don't know, a rally in Des Moines or games or something. There's a really funny thing I pulled from from the book It's in the Oval Office You're handed a page with 58 bullet points typed in large font and at the top it underlined and bold all caps It said Trump administration accomplishments. Yeah, do you still have that piece of paper? Do I I don't know? My my impression of that first term was like he was just like you kind of what you Illustrated earlier. It was like he's the loneliest man in the world because it wasn't like classy to work for Trump It was a lot of people that hadn't been there before either, right? And then there were sort of like people who had been in politics But probably would not have gotten the opportunity to work in a White House Some of the people who work in politics. That's the goal, right? Yeah, and then you work in the White House for a few years and your stock rises and you can sort of you can command much more in the private sector It's like this totally central price evolving door. Yeah, yeah But it was You know, there were a lot of was the food good? They let you hit the cafeteria or you have to go off If you were like meeting with someone Like Dirty you could go with someone who worked there, but you can't like in the the White House Like press briefing room and behind it where the reporters are there was just a vending machine That's all you're on. He has his own chef It's not fair. If I was the president let all the reporters have the food So they write nice things about me, right? President Adam gave us carnitas today. He's the coolest president. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you know, that's what did you ever watch movie in the movie theater? No President Trump's stocks, dude. Don't tell him I said that to hold my No, it's my friend text me Why what why did you write the book as a blind item like as a that like literary device or like, you know Was that just a choice like a flourish? I only named I named Founding fathers. I named writers and I named publications. Yeah But I didn't name most other people. I use, you know, me and the fellas. We've been having a blast trying to figure out who the people were Yeah, I think I know who the politician is George Centos. It is It is George Centos. No, I guess you've written it over the last year So what was the you're well on the at the outside like what was the book attempting to do it wasn't really attempting to Do anything? I mean, I just was writing it right and so I in September of 2024 my Had this like rapturous event in my life, right? And I fled, New York, I fled fled, New York. Why don't I talk it's my last interview here September 11th. I saw myself in the middle of it At the end you're like kind of left like there's no triumph at the end, right? They're rarely yes But I so I was writing it and you know, I kind of fled New York and went to the West Coast and then The election was coming to a close and like this story that I had wanted to see through the election um, I Did you not watch? No, I watched but I was watching from this different vantage point, right from from like the edge of the In fact, yeah, um, and it was like, you know, it was the first time in my life where I didn't have a job And I didn't have anything to really go hurry and do and I was sort of still for the first time in 10 years and I was able to synthesize the 10-year period and like look back and and try and make sense of what happened in our national politics and to the character of the country But also when it happened, you know, in my own life to my own character And this sort of this warping of reality And like it seemed to me that like amid Trump's rise to dominance There's this sort of sprawl of this distortion field, right? That like he is this center And in like the heat around him everything worked. Yeah, and um, I was in that center for a long time and it worked for me small and that seemed like important and something that I should really try to understand. Do you feel did you on style being in California writing a book? People, you know, I always felt like I was too Italian to understand her like It's like too Italian American to understand you're getting marinara on the book to understand that sort of like detached Wasp ethos, you know, I think it's nice to be mean to heip like what to heip like what is what's wrong with wanting peace But anyway, I I but then I did understand it. I Some people in my life were like you can't be living out there in Malibu and not you know Be reading that dude like a e-pray love. I don't know then I read it and I was like okay Maybe I'm like finally sad enough to understand it Why is it such a stir I guess like in your estimation? What my book? Yeah, and just like the why are you like in the middle of a fucking controversy? I mean last year When I was at New York magazine, right like I fucked up. Yeah, I didn't disclose Well, yeah, like those ethics rules exist for a reason. They're good roles. Did you kill stories on behalf of Secretary Kennedy? No, that's been alleged. Yeah, a lot of things have been alleged. Yeah, I've heard so long. I did not so that's not true. Yeah But I Those rules are good and there was a reason why people were really mad at me and they were right to be and so Regular folks are mad about journalists again, but I don't care. It doesn't matter, right? Like it just I did something wrong and in that way I heard the whole industry and like that's I take that really seriously Um, this feels different though like this current cycle of just um Uncharitable I don't you know, I think I guess it's I kind of feel like it's not like my business. Like your business your life. I mean your career Yeah, but I wrote this book that like I Think is valuable. Yeah, but people are hating on your I mean like just as you for your career writing a book and everyone's like fuck you It's like yes, you're you're selling you want to sell a book to people, you know? I wanted to crap it all over you But I wanted the book to be um like an honest expression About this 10-year period and about my own experience And I'm happy with it and I also knew when I was working on it anytime It would sort of like intrude like how are people gonna react to this? I was pretty clear right about the fact that people might just say like get the fuck out of here People reacting to the book are they reacting to what's happening around you right? I think they're writing more to the latter Yeah, so that's why I'm saying like it's obviously it has affected your abilities to get your book out there into people, right? Yeah, but I that's all right like, you know, I just wasn't I felt like you could possibly feel like this is fine. Well, it's not going well, right? No, no, no, no, I'm not talking about the book I'm talking about it. I'm just talking about like the way that people are like people are fucking like pissed off of you But I could take it like I don't feel a little picking up about it. Yeah, I feel I think it's interesting Well, here's the other I'm more curious about it than I am devastated by it. You're ex-part partner I read the subject like I really don't care about journalism like this I don't care. I watch I watch sports. I read his thing. I didn't And first of all, I don't understand like I'll say this for me. This is my opinion. Okay, but it's like a little bit like bitches To serialize details about your a past relationship and a breakup For behind a paywall on your like writing a journal website. I mean like just for money to talk about like painful real life experiences I think it's a little bit. It's a little bit. I don't know. No one's really having that reaction to him I think everyone seems to be better you and then the third party seems to be a sitting member of the federal of the administration and I To me, I'm an outsider, right? So I'm about. I've just learned about this glass fucking four days Yeah, but um, I feel like an outsider. It's not distributed Equally, right? No, I mean, I don't write about that person much in the book I read but like I forgot him, you know, and I didn't want to remember and so this is playing out of public It's really unfortunate and I also just think it's like, I mean, this is this Like harassment campaign that's been going on for like 16 17 months, right? It started when I went during the scandal in 2024 yeah, um, and it continued um, and now it's like this bad faith effort, I think To preserve this sexist among other things. I think it's harassment. I think it's abusive. Like I think I just someone I met when I was 19 years old, right? I was with for a really long time and um, it's Just like engaging the public and the rest of the world In this like when I left that relationship, I left this abusive dynamic, right? And it seems like that person is still existing within it And if that person can't like control my life from within my life, then they'll try to control it from the outside. And it was all a way of just like stepping on the book, right? And like writing over the book that I wrote before anyone had a chance to read that book, right? It started before the book came out. >> There's that, but then there's also, just like- >> I don't think it's providing a tell all that I didn't write. >> And if it did, I'm taking you in good faith, like like, I mean, from what I wrote, here's the thing that I'm going to ask you directly about. Because I don't understand why no one even cares, right? >> The most absurd allegation that's levied is that there was a recording that was a surreptitiously made by an illustrator in New York magazine. It included the president talking about details related to the Butler- Pennsylvania assassination attempt that I've been hidden from public knowledge. >> Yeah. >> And that you received a phone call from Secretary Kennedy while he was in Mexico on vacation, and that you deleted that recording. Is that true? >> That's not true. >> It's not true. >> No. First of all, with all this crap coming out, no one's talking about that even. Even the people that are taking his words as gospel, I'm like, listen, I'm talking to you right now, I'm taking you in good faith. But no one even cares about that one part, which is like, what, it was an assassination attempt. So is this individual just completely just free-solid on this shit? >> No, I mean, some of the stuff, it's rooted in some fact, right? And then it's like contorted in such a way that it's unrecognizable, and that's what makes it hard to respond to, right? Because I can't say every single thing that this person said is false. Some of it is, it's like, when you get down to it, there's some truth there, but it's not, it's like, there's this report. >> But why would you pursue defamation claims? I mean, this is like, I don't want to, because it's like, I don't want to be involved with this person. >> No, if it did, this is not true. Saying that you fucking like, covered up something related to an assassination attempt is like, is, is, is, is egregious. >> Yeah. >> And it, and it, it's career, ending. Beyond your, your, your failure to disclose your relationship with, I mean. >> But the, but the things that this person has written are not publishable by the standards of any actual news organization, right, it just would not make the standard. >> But that is deaf, he's defaming you in public, even if it's on the internet, right? >> But from my point of view, it's like, okay, the best case scenario, what, I spend several years, and probably like, seven figures, to get a sub-stack retracted and some kind of forced apology. I, that person, I was with that person for 12 years, like, I don't want to spend any more of my time. >> So you make a fucking Jewish guy do it for you, the court. I mean, it's your name, and you have, I mean, if indeed this is like, if indeed you weren't killing stories on behalf of a politician that you're recovering. And if indeed like you didn't cut, like, delete evidence related to a presidential assassination attempt. You, you got to clear your name. I mean, I would see no other, no other, of course, of action. >> My point of view is like, I don't feel like the Onus should be on me to answer for this person's allegations. You know, the book is not about this person. >> Well, I'm not even talking about the book, I'm talking about the way people talk about you right now. >> But this is about the book, the whole thing is designed to write over this book that I wrote. And I don't want to attack that person, like, I feel sorry for them. Like, it freaks me out, and I think it's like disturbing. And I hope that they move on. I think the problem was that it was, you know, a situation where like, I was really, really young when I got involved with this person. And I think that they became accustomed to like, violating my privacy, my space, et cetera. And I left, you know, and like, I didn't leave it a great way, obviously, right? >> Yeah. >> Like, I don't view this person as credible. I think this is obviously this like, vengeance campaign, right? Designed to inflict harm on me. And it's related to a fucking, the president, someone shooting him. >> But there are so many things. >> It's like, it's like, James Bond's allegations. >> This is like an eight part series. >> It's five, and you're acting like you don't know, but you're at all. >> No, I haven't read any of them. >> You're also a better writer than him, too, he's probably. >> Thank you, but I haven't read any of them. >> You know, you're a better writer the whole time? >> Just don't date another journalist. >> A very different type of writing. That's part of what was so weird. >> You're being nice to him, though? >> I've always been being nice about him. Like, I don't have much, I've never been in, I'm not in a few. You know, this person is trying very hard and succeeding, frankly, in assassinating my character, and like, that's the choice. And I made a different choice. I have to, like, part of getting through this period of like, being publicly shamed over the last 16 months, right? I had like, rules for myself of how I would deal with things. And the first rule was just that I would never use anyone else as a human shield. You know, I would never try to like, wriggle out of culpability by harming anyone else. I would, like, I had to remember anything that was fake is probably a femoral, right? That time, if I sort of didn't waste the opportunity of this crisis in my life, this fuck-up, the opportunity to like, proceed better and become better, then anything fake wouldn't stick around, right? Like, that's my belief about it. >> Yeah. >> And so I wasn't like terribly concerned with that stuff. Like, I know it's not true. And like, you know, I have my lawyer respond when appropriate, but like. >> Oh, so you got one. >> Yeah. >> Thank God you have one. That's all I'm asking you, if you have a guy. >> Of course I have a lawyer. Yeah, he's amazing. >> Do you have a support sister around you? >> Do you have like a good friends that are there for you? >> Yeah, absolutely, I'm, this is not at risk of shattering me, you know? It's just not, I think it's unfortunate, but I think it's very interesting. But the response to this also is in the book, right? Like, I write about it and I did wrong at my book. I write in American canto about the truth of that affair, right? I write things that don't make me look good. I didn't think anything would redeem me and I wasn't trying to do that. >> He said you lied, but I assumed it was kind of vague. He said, I committed, I think so I also said, and you also said, and I lied for him, right? >> Yeah, he did lie for him. >> But it was, yeah, it was, it was with, Lizzo, it was with your part. >> But I, you know, the spin that he and I agreed on was like, it's a flirtation, nothing more, right? And I was, you know, what, it's been, the only thing that I've been surprised by, because I knew, like when I poked my head up from being in this sort of isolation, that I might be met by, like, some madman charging at me with an axe, right? Like, I figured that people weren't going to be normal in general about me writing a book, but I didn't know that other people would participate in the harassment, right? Or other institutions would participate in the harassment, or in my violations of privacy, or in my being slandered, or, you know, just character assassination, like I, that was a surprise to me, but it's been interesting. >> Why is this not spurred to political, like, scandal? Like, it feels like it's all about you and your ex-partner. >> Because I, my ex-partner is trying to harm me, but it's not, but, yes. But like, kind of like, like, it seems like the political sex scandals are like one of America's favorite things. Isn't that, everything is so schizophrenic these days, and there's just scandal, scandal, scandal, scandal. That no one has time. >> There was a scandal about it, there's a scandal about it in New York, right? >> Right. >> And did he face any blowback from it? The honorable Reverend Dr. Secretary? >> I mean, it was before the election, right? It was- >> It was a candidate or a surrogate for Trump. >> He, at that point, that the scandal kind of sparked, he had dropped out of the presidential race, and he had endorsed Donald Trump, yeah. >> Do you buy all that crap he says about the, you know, the health stuff? You think it's dangerous? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Some of it, yeah, I mean, I also think that there are some good things that he's done too. Right? Like, I think when it comes to processed foods, diets, pesticides, I thought the work that he did as an environmentalist was an important suing Monsanto. >> Yeah. >> That's great. >> Like, that's not a good thing. >> Like, I think that's great. But when it comes to, like, you know, degrading trust in medical profession, or when it comes to negatively, you know, affecting vaccination rates, or I'm still in confusion about that stuff, or relying on people who are not credible, or just not being transparent in the government. >> Doctor Umar. >> That's not good, right? And I, you know, among things that we shared, I think, was just like a broad skepticism about power, right? >> You fell in love with someone? >> Yeah, I just fell in love with someone, and in the wrong circumstances, in the wrong person, right? And I had the wrong way. >> Why did you feel like you fell in love? >> You know, I've read about it in the book. >> Yeah, but like, he's told you he loved you, you didn't say it back a couple of times. Had it started before your profile of him? >> No, after. >> Because you kind of flamed his, you dunked on his ass in that. It was a critical profile. >> Oh, yeah. >> Yeah, they were critical, he hated it. >> Yeah, he hated it. >> He really hated it. >> You are able to, like, write critically about subjects and then maintain kind of their trust in an interesting way. >> Don't you find, like, if you're critical of someone, but you're being honest about it, and it's not coming from, it's not in bad faith. You're not trying to inflict harm or just being honest. That, not, you know, oftentimes people are all right with that. >> No. >> No, you don't find that. >> No, no one likes to be criticized, even if it's legitimate. How did New York Magazine find out about your relationship? Like, how was that, how did they tell you about it? >> They, the editor-in-chief confronted me in a meeting. - Had someone leaked it to them or? - Yeah. and Kara Swisher had brought it to them. She later told the New York Times about that. - And she became aware of it from, you don't know, or? - I have my suspicions. - I guess so, so you didn't feel like you were on a house of cars that could come to like that. - Well, I mean, it just felt really besides the point, which is my mistake and one of the delusions I was operating under was that it didn't matter, right? And it mattered, everything matters so much, right? Every little thing that we do here matters. And so I think, to me, it seemed, in part of what I spent a lot of the last year thinking about was like, you don't just wake up one day and make a big mistake, right? Like, if you're gonna make, if you're gonna fuck up in some rapturous way, it's probably gonna be proceeded by like imperceptible errors in judgment. And a lot of letting things slide with yourself that sort of amounts to like a misconfigured worldview, right? Or like amounts to a path before you that's like gone awry. And that was important for me to assess 'cause a lot of people had told me, you know, when I was fired from New York Magazine, a lot of people had said like, oh, like, fuck it, just continue to cover the election. You should take this assignment or that assignment and you should just pretend that this didn't happen. You should be shameless. And it was like this expectation that I shoulder that I could assume the sort of shameless posture that animates so much of American life now. - Yeah. - And certainly animates the kind of powerful social strata in American life. And that I couldn't do that, you know? - Are you saying you're like chose to remove yourself because of the kind of ethics violation? Or was it because- - Well, I was fired, right? - Everyone was fucking hated you. - Bulls, right? - Bulls, like, I was fired. I also fled out to the West Coast and I was really scared. And I was like, in hiding and I didn't want to be found. And I was scared of the person who's now writing those sub-stack things and I didn't really know like, everything had shifted completely in my life. Like, I had been one way for a really long time and I didn't know what to do. And so I just, but I'd also just struck me that like, personally, as an interior matter, it was like this big spiritual event and like my moral error was important. Like, it was important that I take that seriously. And I became really grateful that it had happened because it felt like, I think I write in the book about how it felt like the hand of God had come and like, swatted me off the path that I was on. And I became very grateful for that that the only thing really lost was public scanning and a job rather than something much more serious. These days, in any industry, there's a tremendous amount of nepotism. You're a self-made individual from a working class background. If you are looking at losing that 10 years of like your work product or that trajectory, can you continue to that trajectory or I feel like it's knocked off course and it kind of-- - But I found a different trajectory. Like, when that happened last year, when I was fired and when I was writing the materials at first that became American canto, I was already on a different trajectory at that point, right? And that was OK. And I was interested in that. And that was necessary for me to have the perspective required to write that book. Like, I couldn't-- when you're really-- I write about how something can become so familiar. You can become so close to something that it ceases to be familiar, that it becomes-- - You're ready for president. - And how old do you have to be? - 35. - Once the next one, 2020? - Yeah, but you're 21. - I would be able to do it. I'd be 35, I think. - Oh yeah, you're 32. - Jesus Christ. - But so my point was, I was already on a different path. And I was all right with that. Like, I was grateful to be on that other path than to be interested in to have the perspective to synthesize that 10-year period. - So what's the path now? - I mean, this book came out like a week ago. - Yeah, but when you look at it-- - Where the book leaves you and where you're at right now, sorry to be a Jewish mother and tell you what's going on. But like, it isn't a place of that's like-- - But you're talking about career and you're talking about material things. - I'm not, though. - What do you mean? - The book is, to me, it was this spiritual moral event. - I understand, yeah. - And this book was a creative effort about, in some sense, this spiritual process of understanding this 10-year thing, understanding my fuck up, understanding where I fit and where the corrosion of my character fit within this broader story about the corrosion of the American character in this 10-year period. And to me, it's like, I'm not so concerned with the, like, nothing can be taken from you that didn't belong to you. - Yeah. - Right? If something, like, nothing can be taken from you that wasn't handed to you unjustly to begin with. And there's no such thing as, like, justice in public narratives. There's such a thing as poetic justice in public narratives. But, like, the only justice is knowing that you do not share the qualities that the people who have behaved unjustly towards you have. - Yeah. - Right? - Yeah. - So, I'm not so worried about all that. Like, I'm proud of American Kanto. I think it's valuable, but I also was aware of the whole time that maybe it wouldn't be considered valuable for, like, 10 or 30 years. - But you feel as if you've, like, proud of your work. That's what you're saying. What I'm seeing, and maybe I'm reading between the lines, is like, well, you think being so successful, so young, like, kind of robbed you of an early adulthood, like-- - And that's why I'm fucking up now. - I don't know. I'm just asking you. - Maybe, maybe, you know the writer, Annie Hamilton. - I know Annie. - Yeah. - She's an actress of that. - Well, I guess I think of her as a writer, but she's an actress too. - Yeah. - She's an actress too, and she's hilarious, I love her. But she said something really funny once. I can't remember who's in, like, a piece or a tweet or something, but that people always used to say that she was an old soul, and then at a certain point, or that she was mature for her age, and then at a certain point, they stopped saying that. - Uh-huh. (laughs) - Yeah. - Probably something so funny. - Do you need me to catch up on, like, 24 now? - Yeah, I think I'm good on, like, fucking up for now. - I don't know. I don't know. Zach? - Yeah. - It's like the vibe over there. - Back here. - Yeah, no, no, I mean, like, like, for what you do, like, what kind of stuff do you do? (laughs) Zach's a band. - Okay. - What's that? He plays guitar. - Nate. - You should learn guitar. - What? - Are you a learned guitar? - I really want to get my pilot's license. - Yeah. - That'd be cool. - That'd be cool. - Yeah. - Trump didn't call me back. - Trump didn't. - Oh, um. Should I call him back again? - He texted him. - Um, I don't know. I'm just trying to like, no, I'm not saying that's what you're fucking him now. Like, was it, was, I'm just saying for you as a person that's like, you were busy, right? You were busy very young, right? - Yeah, but I'm not, um, I don't know. I just feel, I guess, like-- - Do you have free time now? - I'm never bored, because I'm interested in things. - What kind of stuff do you use? - I spent California stuff. - Like a lot. - Green juice, crystal. - I don't know. I don't drink, I don't like cold beverages. - You don't like cold beverages. You drink hot water? - Room temperature. - Room temperature. - Oh, me too. Yeah, I don't like ice water, 'cause they hiss my teeth. - I don't, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're dressed the same. - Yeah. - It's crazy. I just think it's, yeah. I'm annoyed that I had to learn about any of this crap. But I'm really glad that we got, I got to meet you and talk to you, 'cause I-- - Thank you for having me. - 'Cause I think that, um, I don't know, we just had Alec Baldwin on the show. I'm very similar. - Oh, but it's just like, the way people are well known, the way people process their lives fucking up is there's a revelry that people have, people have kind of like jack off to it, you know? In the same way, I think that I see how talented fucking Alec Baldwin is. And I was saying this to him, but it was like, you know, he struggles with celebrity. - Yeah. - Undermind the very reason for him being a celebrity. It was interesting though, because it's like, I spent so much of this tenure period as like officially cast as like a witness, right? And then to be someone who suddenly becomes witness, and to like be witnessing the witness being witness, right? It created this really, and as someone who's been in the media for this really long period of time, I guess I used to think that there was like, subject and chronicler, right? And there were like, there's that vantage point and this vantage point, there's inside the story and outside the story. And then this whole experience has sort of crystallized for me that it's more like this kaleidoscopic thing, right? It's more, there are a million facets to a story, a million different vantage points. It's much more complicated and more interesting than I had given it credit for. You like being the subject, it kind of probably sucks. - No, it sucks. - Maybe you should apologize to Trump. Say now I understand what it's like to be the subject. subject. It sucks but it also teaches you about being the chronicler in a way that like just doesn't make sense it's like you see. You need like Trump right article about you. You see like when you're when you are written about right. Yeah. I can't read it. It's really really hard to read. Are you going to watch this? No. You come on. I'm going to ask. You're going to want to see what it is. I'm going to ask Nate to watch you. Wait. Was it it was mainly sexting not not on the phone or texting? I don't talk about that. Well you know what the joke the obvious joke is. You're going to get mad at me. The obvious joke is that because he has to text you. He talks so funny. George Santos. We're here. That was the everyone. He's maddening. [Music]