Pool Me Twice, Shame On You

Podsave America is brought to you by SimplySafe. Summer is here, which means cookouts, pool parties, and wondering if your packages will still be there when you get back from vacation. Or you could skip the worry altogether with SimplySafe. I said it was SimplySafe. It's easy to do. Customize it to your home. It comes in the mail. You could set up it a matter of minutes. You have to drill or anything. It's very easy to do. Then the app is great. Easy to use and the customer support, incredibly reliable, gives you a piece of mind. With SimplySafe, kept your package safe. That's right. That's right. You kept my package safe. It means it's all there. It's all there. With SimplySafe, there are no long-term contracts. You're in cancellation fees. They earn your business by keeping you safe. Not by trapping you in a contract. You can customize your system to fit your needs. Then it ships fast directly to your door. The app guide is set up as simple. There's no drilling required. So you can install an armory system in under an hour. SimplySafe is more than just a security camera. It's a comprehensive system of sensors and indoor and outdoor cameras. Twenty-four-seven professional monitoring. Over 5 million people value and trust SimplySafe with their home security every day. Right now, our listeners will get 50% off a new system. When you sign up for professional monitoring in your first month is free. Just visit SimplySafe.com/Cricket. That's half off. At SimplySafe.com/Cricket, there is no safe, like SimplySafe. [jazz music] Welcome to PotsAve America. I'm John Favre. I'm John Lovett. Tom Evetor. On today's show, we'll talk about the latest developments in the on-again, off-again, war/peacedale with Iran, which seems to be playing its hand better than master negotiator JD Vance. We'll also get into the reflecting pool drama, which has gone from farce to fascist, as federal agents start arresting people, Trump's accusing of phantom vandalism. Plus, the president unveils his new Katari jet. Bill Poultey officially takes over as acting DNI. It appears that the outgoing DNI might have been under the influence of a cult leader, and we'll talk about the potentially criminal lobbying campaign behind Trump's decision to spring a convicted fraudster from jail. Then, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swann talk to Tommy about their explosive new book, "Regime Change," which is full of fascinating revelations about Trump's second term White House. Did you think better if Donald Trump after reading it? Yeah, I think it's just misunderstood, and the guy is just doing his best. You know, he's got a moral core. This is good. Now, it's a really good book. I really expect the day just inhaling it. And even for sickos like us that follow this stuff closely, you learn a lot about the process, the kind of narrative around how these decisions actually got made, what it's really like in the Oval Office. It's really, really good. Yeah, it's someone who doesn't read books, but is also a sicko. I think I'm going to read this one. You're going to like it. You're going to like it, yeah. It's a picture. All right. Let's talk about how the memo of Versailles is holding up. As of this recording, both the US and Iran are now saying that the peace talks in Switzerland are going well and that they're making progress, though it certainly didn't seem like that over the weekend. The ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon briefly fell apart. Iran announced to close the straight again. The US said that wasn't true. And then Trump demanded that Iran reign in Hezbollah or the US would resume bombing. For good measure, he also threatened to take over the straight of Hormuz and seize 20% of the oil that passes through it, which is something that he can definitely do. JD Vance, who Trump has generously made the face of America's surrender to Iran, cited three points of progress on Monday. One, he said the US and Iran agreed on measures to keep the straight open. Two, they agreed on a mechanism to diffuse flare-ups between Israel and Hezbollah. And three, he said that Iran has agreed to let international nuclear weapons inspectors into the country for the first time since Trump tore up Obama's Iran deal, though we haven't seen confirmation of that yet from the Iranians. In exchange, the US has agreed to wave sanctions on Iranian oil for 60 days. First time we've done that in like four decades, so congrats to Iran. Trump got asked about all this at a signing event in the Oval on Monday, just before we recorded, where he showed off his absolute command of what's going on. If the war with Iran could cause a worldwide depression, as you noted, Mr. President, are you willing to risk economic catastrophe and strike Iran again? Well, not the way I'm doing it, it's not going to cause depression. Yes, but if they don't abide by the matter. Well, nuclear weapon supersedes depression. Depression is real bad. Nuclear weapon will cause depression. In short, the Iranians won't use profits from oil sales to rebuild their military. Well, they're not supposed to be doing that, so we'll say, but they're supposed to use money to buy food for their people, because right now that people are very hungry. As long as they respect us, we're going to be fine. What do you think they're going to use all that money to buy food for their people? Oh, yeah. And then show us nothing but respect. For sure. There's nothing. There's nothing to stop them from using the money to buy whatever they want with it. That's not part of the deal. There's no deal. There's nothing. You want to just say that we're actually going to benefit from this because if they buy food, they're going to buy food from us. So really, the money find us way back to us. That's, yeah, that's actually what he's talking about. It's crazy. I hope they enjoyed Dunkin' Rooves over there. I mean, who doesn't? Who does enjoy Dunkin' Rooves? Yeah, once I'm now. Tommy, what do you make of the latest developments? Are we in a better place, a worse place, the same place, too hard to tell? I mean, per that reporter's question about, could the ongoing closure of the straight-or-harmoose lead to an economic calamity and, you know, like famine in places like Africa? I think we're in a worse place because over the last week, Iran has signaled that they are willing to happily close the straight-or-harmoose again or at least announce it's closed. And I think what folks have to remember is like, this is not a valve that goes on and off. This is a bunch of economic decisions made by shipping companies who are thinking to ourselves, we get these giant tankers. I could send it to the straight-or-harmoose. I could send it somewhere else. If there's a 3% chance, it gets stuck in there for a couple weeks because the Iranians fire off ballistic missiles or something worse could happen. They could shot at, you know, like that's a big capital expenditure that could go to the bottom of the ocean for them. And so, I'm worried about this just kind of bumping along in an unsettled fashion for a while. I'm worried about ongoing high-energy prices. I'm worried about the shortage of fertilizer shipments, which are already going to show up too late to hit a lot of crops. And they're going to lead to lower yields and less food for people and higher prices and more hunger. And then whatever this mechanism is, this solve the flare-ups between Hezbollah and Israel, I don't buy that for a second. Is it like a deconflicting cell? It's probably like a conference call. But like, again, the Israelis, they're not pulling troops out of Lebanon. They're occupying six miles of territory into Lebanon. Hezbollah is going to attack them. The IDF will respond. And then it's going to lead to these events. So, I don't feel great about it. Yeah, I would say we're better off in peace talks than we were when there were no peace talks. We're better off not being in war than we were when we were at war. We are worse off than we were before the war started. And we are worse off than we were when there was the JCPOA in place. All these hawks were trying to find their way to justify supporting this deal or not being as critical of this deal. I'm just waiting for something to happen in which Iran has conceded more or given more than they did under the horrible, unacceptable, worst deal in history made by Obama. I'm waiting for one thing where they've given, given up more. Because as of right now, how different would it look if Iran had said, we are shutting the strait of Hormuz unless until you negotiate a better deal with us? Like, we are going to, like, you know what I mean? Like, we have not launched a war. But Iran had just said, we're closing the strait of Hormuz unless you give us a bunch, until you give us a bunch of concessions. I don't know how much different it would look than this, right? I mean, I saw that Steve Rantner on Twitter said that the oil waivers could bring them $10 billion in sanctions relief. Just from, not just oil sales. Right, from all the, yeah, right, right. There's a sanction, there's a 60 day sanction to waver on oil sales. Those sales could be up to $10 billion. Well, and also he noted that in the JCPOA, we didn't give any sanctions relief until they allowed the inspectors into Iran. We have, you know, best sort of posted today that there was the sanctions relief has happened. Although they asked Trump about that, then he's like, I'm not sure I have to check in on that. And they haven't allowed a single weapons inspector into the country, nor have they even confirmed what JDVant said about those that they are willing to do so. And the devil is the details there. And you remember the JCPOA had lots of IAEA access and inspections, but the Republicans were mad that they would have to give 24 hour notice for certain sites, like snap inspections, right? Like he is to be able to go to wherever you want, whenever you want it. So you can't move shit around. Like, yeah, I'm like, love it. I'm like glad we're in talks. I'm glad there's not an ongoing conflict. The devil is in the details here. And also we're still sending like these hapless idiots, like JDVant and Steve Wyckoff and Jared Kushner. And the Iranians are sending nuclear experts who have nothing better to do and nothing but time to grind them down. And they also know that Trump doesn't want to go back to war and is giving up all his leverage, which just doesn't make me confident that we are going to get a better JCPOA. Again, I want the war over. I'm not some hawk attacking him for the right here, but just sort of like realistically looking at the setup now after the war started and ended and now we're here. Like Trump's leverage is just gone. He's given the sanctions relief. The threat of a military action is gone. I just don't know how you get to a better deal. So did anyone have any catch on JDVant's interview with Ross Douthit? Pieces. Yeah, what they talked about this. And it was interesting because a lot a lot of things, Judy. as people who don't want the war to go on like us. I was like, "Oh, that's good, you know, that's a good case." But where he really stumbled or I think just lied was talking about the JCPOA. They get one point, he's like the difference, the real difference between this deal and the Obama deal is the Obama deal. Just let them have all this enriched uranium that now this deal we're gonna get to take away. - That's like opposite. - Literally the opposite. - That's what I thought. I was gonna text you, but I feel like I'll ask you here on the pot, didn't they enrich all the uranium after he pulled out of the deal? - Under the JCPOA, they shipped out 97% of their stockpile. I went to Russia where they disposed of it. Under this deal, they're talking about down blending and insight and keeping it in the country. It's the opposite of what he's saying. Ridiculous. Ross did not press him on that. So we've talked a lot lately about how Republicans are coping with this. They continue to be all over the map from kissing Trump's ass to threatening new wars to open revolt. Let's take a listen. If we have inspectors going in there and if that straight is open for business and yet all is flowing, then I think it's very clear that the United States will have won this conflict. - If this deal fails, President Trump is gonna take the straight-up hormones over by force. The United States will control the straight-up hormones. We'll charge a fee for all those who go through through to pay for the operation. And if Iran contests control of the straight-up hormones by the United States, we'll obliterate them. I would not support the Republican Party. There's no chance I would support the Republican Party. How could I or any American voters support a political party that's not loyal to the United States that puts the interests of a foreign country above those of its own citizens? Like so no, I'm out. And if I'm out, then I think a lot of other people are out. - Okay, so Tucker is out. Lindsey Graham's threatening to take over the straight-up hormones completely. And Jim Comer, the head of the oversight committee, he thinks that if the straight is open and we get inspectors in there, we have won the conflict. We guys think of the fractures here getting worse, getting better. - Yeah, the straight is open as it, that's a victory even though it was not something we had to worry about until they started the war and inspectors back in as you had under the old agreement that they tore up. The thing that I saw that I think is the most alarming are, is the cope by the Iran hawks who are also aporagics trying to get behind what Trump is doing. And you saw Hugh Hewitt and Mark Levin doing this kind of, like 40 chess basically saying, the political calculus is that in order to prevent Republican losses and deal with the fact that the country has not been persuaded to be in favor of this war, you have to get into negotiations and punt because then after the election, then you can get back to bombing. Well, Hugh Hewitt called it clarity. And then also said I assume if Marco Rubio is seeing what's happening here, that he would not go along with a deal that doesn't treat the Iranian regime like the threat that it is and he would resign. - Yeah, usually he's pretty vocal and matters of conscience like this. - But I do think it points to what some of these hawks are hoping, which is that they can prevent the worst political blowback from the war, get cost down and then go back to being Bellicose regime changers once the midterms are behind us. - Yeah, like ultimately like guys like Lindsey Graham is always gonna get in line because that's what he does and he's talked in articles before about all he cares about his relevance and he wants to be uptrump's ass and get to play golf with him and be in the room and he knows that Naga wants him just to be with Trump on everything. So I think the elected Republicans will get in line. I think the hawks will get in line and kind of keep their powder dry for another day. Ironically, Iran has more of a complicated system with factions that might oppose the deal like the IRGC like they're gonna be out there allowedly advocating against a deal. There's a bunch of nationalists sort of like for ever getting whipped up. I think they can rightly say like, why would make a deal with the Americans? They just reneg on them. They pull out and the next president will pull out anyway. Tucker, who knows what his incentives are these days? And he's got an audience that he's building and they'd be a presidential run. Can I just ask, why does face the nation book Lindsey Graham? He's like one of their most booked guests. He disgraced himself for the country of Iraq war. He was catastrophically wrong about Iran. There in that clip, he's threatening to have Trump do something militarily that we all just watch Trump fail to do, which is defeat the Iranian regime militarily and then take control of the street or who moves. If that was on the table, we would have done that. So like, why do we book this man on television just to like spew this hawkish bullshit? What point do you get discredited and no longer invited onto face the nation? Or at least be in the penalty box for maybe a couple of weeks? I imagine when they're doing their booking, they're just saying, okay, we need the administration mouthpiece perspective. It's kind of tie on the Sunday. 'Cause if we can't get Trump or JD or something, we need someone who's gonna spout that line, I guess. How are the pro Trump hawks feeling, you know? Go to Lindsey Graham, who's basically proposing that the US take over the street or for a move. I assume there'd be some sort of like, maybe you have Disney help and do some sort of fast pass situation, you're gonna use a genie app to get through. Yeah, sort of begs the question, why haven't we done that already? It was on the table, we would've done it. Yeah, well, you didn't. But now we're gonna go back and take 20% of aggregate oil revenue from this, like what the fuck are you talking about? If you remember, there was a fair time where we were begging, you're up to help us do something, we didn't need their help to do, which is retake the straight up for moves, which we never did. It's just like, it's so fundamentally un-serious and he's such a discredited individual, but it speaks to how war is covered in Washington where like, the hawkish view is the serious view. These are the very serious people who talk about serious things in the old office. And if you're anti-war or you say, like we should be pro diplomacy, you are not booked on these shows or treated seriously, and it drives me nuts. Well, you know who's not buying all this shit? Voters. - Yeah. CBS, the same CBS that headlines a grandma, has a new poll on Sunday. Huge majority of people support ending the war, roughly 80/20, but by similar margins, they think we have not stopped around nuclear program for good, created a better situation for around people or installed a regime that's friendly to us. In other words, most voters are familiar with the reality of the situation. Just saying true things, American voters. So it would've guessed, got it. Big picture, 70% of people say the war was not worth the cost. Only 30% say it was. Only one poll, but lots of good data, good questions in there. What jumped out at you guys? - One thing was just a thing about what Tucker Carlson was saying there about being out and the other kind of people that would be out. You would think that the kind of America first, Maga crowd would be more skittish about continuing the conflict, but it found that among Republican 60/40 I want to end the conflict now, rather than continue until Iran gives up more. And it's a small difference. But actually, you were Maga reps. - But you said America first, which is telling. That's not America. - Well, it is. - Maga is whatever Trump wants, I'm good with. - Well, that's what I mean, right? The people that you would think would be the America first that were against these kind of interventions because they're behind Trump. It's their job to be supportive of Trump. There's no, they're not brooking as much dissent here. I mean, I would say even the fact that 60% of Republicans want to end the conflict. Not even 56% of Maga Republicans, like does tell you how unpopular this is, but I think they're striking that you don't have a bigger break among people that would have considered themselves more aligned with Tucker. - Yeah, what do you think? - Yeah, I mean, you have 70% of the country saying this was not worth the cost. I mean, that is-- - You don't get 70 for much. - You don't get 70 for much. I too love it. I was kind of struck by the splits within Maga that 56% saying, end it now, 44% continue to get more from Iran, keep fighting to get more from Iran. But then, you know, they did like kind of an intro Maga, self-identified Maga poll, and 90% of the Maga people poll to the deal is better for Iran. 19% of all Republicans said the deal was better from Iran. So it just, I don't know, it speaks to the way the failure here has broken through to even the kind of cult members, the Maga cult members. And I think it tells you something about wars and how they end up being damaging for presidents. It's like presidents are actually often not, you don't get hurt politically if you kind of bump along. But if you end a war and are perceived to have lost the war, I think voters will punish you. It seems like we're seeing the beginnings of that for Trump. - One number that's stuck out at me, it could be a problem for them in a problem for the administration in the coming weeks and months. There's a plurality, 42% think gas prices will go down in the next few weeks. And there is an expectation, you can tell in these polls that they think it is over. Yeah, now things are gonna get better financially, economically, and that's, and maybe that happens eventually. But I think it's gonna take a bit of time just because the price of oil is falling, doesn't mean the price of gas will as well. And you know, you're seeing like, I think this poll has like, has a proof rating, take up a point from last time, which is, you know, like margin of error, meaning that's meaningless. But overall, you've seen some, you know, last week, you could say maybe the generic ballot got like a point closer to Republicans too. So there might be some expectation around the war ending that relief is coming, that I don't know if Trump is actually going to be able to deliver on, which is certainly something to watch for. Which is why I think he's giving like this 60 day immediate license to the Iranians to sell oil and gas, 'cause they're just trying to flood the zone. Oh yeah. And get prices down as fast as they can. It, I agree, it's an open question about how quickly gas prices come down, and whether they come down to where they were, and whether that's kind of how people are anchoring this in their mind, but. Yeah, but the, you know, gas prices aren't just determined by the amount of oil that Iran lets do this straight. And by the way, it's not as if the straight is back up to where it was before there's so much less traffic through there, but if you have Iran, I think immediately saying we are going to close this straight again to sick, I think purposely right to sick, whether whatever the, the, the inciting cause to signal, but at any moment we can shut this thing down again, that that is our power and we plan to use it, right? How is that going to give anybody confidence prices are up. you're going to be reliable, that oil will be reliable, that you can count on prices coming down. I just, Trump threatening them, threatening to kill them, go shaders. I mean, we're just, it's just millennial, you know, locker room talk. - Yeah, it's a tricky one. - It's called it. - Yeah, yeah. (upbeat music) - Positive America is brought to you by Zipper Cruder. Whether you own your own business or in a position to hire, you want to find people who are as excited about the work you do as you are. Zipper Cruder is a new feature that quickly lets you see the most interested in qualified candidates first, so you meet the right people faster. And now you can try it out for free at zippercruder.com/cricut. Zipper Cruder Smart Matching Technology connects you with qualified candidates instantly. Candids can tell you in their own words why they're interested in the job. 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Sildena Phil is the generic version of Viagra. Viagra is a registered trademark of Beatrice specialty LLC. hymns is not affiliated with or endorsed by Beatrice. (upbeat music) - All right, we briefly discussed this on Friday's pod, but Iran isn't the only work Trump's loss lately. He's also been defeated by the algae and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Turns out Trump's Marlago PAL, who got the no-bid contract for $14 million in counting to renovate the Reflecting Pool, a fellow convicted criminal by the name of John Caffaro. Have you seen this guy's picture? Incredible. - Yes, I recommend everyone Google right now, John Caffaro, find the photo of him in the '80s, wearing the double-breasted suit. Is it a comb over or a hair piece? - I'm clear. - I don't know, it looks like he's trying to kill the aristocrats. (laughing) - He pleaded guilty to the bribing James Trafiken. - Yeah, that's who it was. - Wow, I saw the bribing. - I don't care on hair violence. Those guys both are amazing sets of hair. - Two convictions, campaign finance, bribery. - Yeah, this is the guy that got the no-bid contract. - Shocker. - So he didn't do-- - He looks like when he gets mad, his shirt rolls up. Like what's that thing called when you have a texito? - Oh yeah. - The texito front, it looks like his, (imitates roll) rolls up. - That probably happened when he found out about the allergy. - So John Caffaro didn't do the top-notch work he's known for, and now they have to drain the pool and start from scratch. The president per usual is blaming everyone else, including reporter John Carl of ABC News, quote, "Dirty cop James Comey" and other alleged vandals, five of whom have apparently been arrested, including a former Olympic canoeer, who says he was just reaching into the pool to feel the detached liner. - Seems like he was up there reflecting pull without a paddle, this guy. (laughs) - Trump threatened the rest of us with a 10-year prison sentence for the destruction or even the attempted destruction of such things, which he said, quote, "will be fully enforced." Naturally, Trump got a lot of appropriately skeptical questions on this and the oval on Monday. Here's what he said. - Are the contractors who did the initial work for the reflecting pool? Are they splined for the current condition? Or is it the advantage of the-- - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. - Vandals, vandals, you know, we have 100, and we have a, I think 29,300 foot slit right through. It's probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind. - The National Guard and police have been all over the mall. How would these vandals have gotten so close to do something like that? I mean, we didn't have, we didn't have a lot of them then. Who would think that somebody would go into a pool and take a knife and start cutting it? - Did you approve of that? Did they-- - Yeah, yeah, I did approve. - Well, let's put it this way. When you have a 350, I think it's 350, not 250, a 350 foot slit from one end to the other. You think that's proof? - Of course, I've been down there today looking for that slit that you mentioned. - Well, well, what you'd have to do is see the box department. They'll show it to you. - What I'm curious about this situation is we stood here with you in April when you first revealed the plans. - I said what? - In April, we showed us pictures of what you were gonna do with the one you said you had a guy who was gonna do it in a week for about a million dollars. - Well, it's been just 16 and a half million dollars. - Yeah, okay, ready? Brock who's saying Obama, have you ever heard of them? - Yeah. - He's spent two years and over a hundred million dollars. I spent two months, maybe, less. And I have a better product. Now, I can't help but if somebody goes in where the knife and starts hacking it up. And we also have pictures of it, you know. - Can you release the photos? - No, that's a lifetime, you'll see it in court. - Oh, he's so pissed. - Find the guy who did the slit. - Yeah, with a box cutter, like it's a reflecting pole, Muhammad Ata just-- - Also terrorizing. - I wonder where someone could have possibly gotten the idea to use a knife to cut their reflecting pole. I might have a clue here, let's watch. - This will last for at least 50 years and you'll never have a link. It's very strong. You couldn't, if you had a knife, I don't want to give anybody ideas. If you had a knife, you can't even cut it. It's so strong, so powerful. - That's a powerful rubber. - Powerful rubber. - Powerful rubber. - Not so powerful. So I feel like this went for mostly funny to fairly alarming now that they're trying to arrest random scapegoats just because Trump can't admit he fucked up. What do you guys make of this whole situation? - So you make a big deal about how you're going to finally fix the pool because Raku's ain't Obama and Joe Biden couldn't do it. You're the only one who has the ability to do it. You do a no-bid contract for a guy who is the crony picture in the crony entry of the dictionary. You declare victory, then all of a sudden the algae's coming back and so you have your people lie about that. They post pictures saying that it's better that this is not real, it's perfect, it's perfect, it's perfect. The lie draws more attention to the story. So reporters start covering it, okay? Because you hyped it up so much and are lying, the media is making more of an issue of it. So you start blaming saboteurs, even though they don't seem to exist. That generates only more coverage. Now you're arresting random people for checking out the mess that you've made. Now you've turned what was a silly and ultimately small story about a pool renovation into gross incompetence corruption and rising fascism. So there's even more coverage. And then you declare that the media is obsessed. Why is the media so obsessed with what's happening to the reflecting pool? Well, maybe you said you went and held up a picture about who you were the one that was going to fix it and then turned it into just an example of every aspect like of the lying, the lawlessness, the corrupt deals that you're making, the incompetence. You just turned it into a perfect metaphor for everything you've done wrong in this administration. So yeah, people are going to cover it. - I'm selling the mostly funny camp. (laughing) - Yeah, I think Jim Comey at his house cultivating sea monkeys in the backyard, releasing them into the reflecting pool. That's funny. Like John Caffaro having a company called Green Water Services. - That's fine. - That's some funny shit. - That is very funny. - Obviously it's bad that they're arresting this random Olympian man who was just biking around and accusing of sabotage. You're like, you watch Jeanine Piro ranting away on Fox about this stuff. And we're all used to seeing her six shard nays deep, just kind of like doing a prime time hit. And then you remember, oh way, this woman can issue a subpoenas. That's actually a little scary, it's bad. But I think all of this will probably go away. 'Cause obviously this is just, algae grows because it's sunny. And it's hot in the pool and there's water in it. - We're talking about it. - It sounds like they just did everything wrong. - They did a bad job is the other thing and they spent a lot of money on it. Also, like none of these people are going to jail because all of this is gonna get laughed out of court. TMZ, TMZDC was down there. I'll date today and they have all this footage of people being arrested, detained. And these people are like you can see on camera. They're just like, look, some of them are just looking down to take pictures. And like seven, like there's like park police, there's DC, they're all, it's complete madness. It is just, it is a lie on the level of like, now we're back to like Sean Spicer and the inaugural crowd. It's like, you know who cut the 300 foot slit in the reflecting pool? Fucking no one. Because that, it just, it did not happen because that you look at their reflecting pool, there is no slit visible. Reporters have looked even since he just said that. So it didn't happen. It's impossible to do that 300 feet. That's the size of a football field. Someone's gonna take a box cutter and kind of slip the size of the football field and no one's gonna pay attention to that. No one's gonna see that. They're not gonna be seen. Also, even if they did, wouldn't cause the algae, wouldn't cost the problem. Also, you spend $14 million on a Renault that can be undid with a box cutter. (laughs) What kind of renovation is that? - It's also not a, there's chunks of it floating up all over the fucking thing. - Yeah, I'll just be growing since last week. It's what everybody said would happen. I just, like obviously this is very silly, but now we're at the point where they got federal cops patrolling the national mall to arrest people who are going to point things out that embarrass the dear leader. It is a, you know, the ballroom and now this, these are perfect metaphors for what this administration has done. I think it's the kind of thing that'll stick with people, in part because it's also stupid that this is what's taking up the president's time. - Even if no one was paying attention to it, probably still taking up this time. - Yeah, well, he's the reason we're all paying attention. - He's the reason we're all focused on that. - Drove his ass down to the reflecting pool. He, like, this all started with him doing a drive-by at the thing. - They're gonna build a wall around this thing too. They're gonna have to cover it. They're gonna cover it up so people can take photos of it the same way they built that giant wall around the renovation of the ballroom 'cause he didn't want embarrassing photos of the ballroom. Like this, it's not gonna go away. The reflecting pool's just there. It's a big part of the national mall. It's eight acres big. It's massive and it is not gonna be fixed for a long time. They don't know how to fix it. - And look, we know how serious this administration is about punishing people who destroy federal property and it's just something that they have cared about for a long time. - Take it very seriously. - Take it very, very seriously. - Very, very seriously. Every single person who did that on January 6th, completely free, pardoned, commuted. And now they're just arresting random people, which is fascinating. He's also now saying that people are dumping fertilizer in there. - They're dumping fertilizers. Vandals are dumping fertilizers. - That's combing, yeah. - So they got that through the straight. And now they're dumping it in there. Yeah, the combing thing for those who didn't pay attention is someone, there was some vandalism where someone on the lawn did like an '86, '47. - And unrelated to the, unrelated to the reflecting pool. - Unrelated to the reflecting pool. - Car of '86, '46, '47 in grass. - The truth about it. - And so Trump thinks that because Comey did that with the shells or took a picture of the shells and posted it, which he's now also being prosecuted for that someone was inspired by that to box cut his reflecting pool. - It's been one of the stupidest fucking thing. We've covered a lot of stupid stories. - Yeah. - This is gonna be a, this is a chapter you're gonna wanna come back to. - Yeah. - When the Trump story is, we'll probably forget about it by the end of the Trump administration. But the reflecting pool, this is one of the dumber ones. - I don't know that, look, I think it's gonna be in the ballroom category because this is just gonna be something for months and months now. They gotta drain it again. It's not like their plan worked the first time. They gotta better plan this time because apparently the shit they put down on the floor that reflecting pool didn't work. It's still, I don't, is it the same jack-off that's gonna be doing the next round? Or are they getting a new, new big, no-bit conflict in there? - Shunks of blue rubber floating in their pool. - It's nuking it with chemicals. - Well, so many 'cause when the whole thing started, they were like, it seems kind of strange. It's hiring just like a pool guy. And it's like, nah, he's got it. - Well, it's also funny that last time we recorded, I think the Department of Interior was just posting fake pictures of the pool as blue and saying everything's great in AI. - So they thought that was their plan for all. They were just gonna AI their way through it. - Yeah. - Now they're like, all right, the AI stuff didn't work. So now we're gonna have to blame some fake vandals and now we're gonna-- - We're not that far away from like the government posting. Great news, everybody, gas is down to $11 a gallon. You're all getting more chocolate this week. Your chocolate rations are up. (laughing) - So one renovation that did go well for Trump this week, the brand new Katari Force One that he'll be flying around in and ultimately taking with him when he leaves the White House as a parting gift. The government won't say how much we all paid to retrofit the new plane that the Secretary of the Air Force set in a hearing last year that it would probably be less than $400 million. Privately, the Air Force said it would use some of its nuclear modernization funds to pay for upgrading the plane. 'Cause why do we need those? And sure enough, a month later there was an unexplained $900 million transfer from a nuclear account to an unnamed classified project. They are calling the plane project classified, which is why they're not revealing and he hit the costs. Not the Trump wants you to think this thing was done cheaply. He's actually proud of how much money it cost. Here he is now. - This plane was transformed into a flying White House at a level of luxury that nobody's ever seen before. - Probably even almost outside of an airplane. Nobody's ever seen anything like this. - Nobody's ever seen anything like it. - Not even, it's nicer than any room outside of an airplane. That's all but a very small set of room. (laughing) - There's still another two Air Force ones on order. This is just what the Pentagon is calling a bridge aircraft. - Yeah, I'm gonna steal it after that. - This is the bridge one, 'cause this is the one he takes to get. This is the go one. - You fly this, you know. - This is the dog that he's gonna take with him. How old do you think this one pulls? - I mean, I talked to Maggie and Jonathan Swan about this and their book, they report that Qatar initially wanted to be paid $150 to $200 million for the plane. And then suddenly the plane was a gift. And they report that the idea for making a gift was, quote, generated at the POTUS level. So it's just part of this like ongoing corruption story. I think this has really become a monument to the corruption and it really broke through in the moment. And I do think this is a big problem for him politically to the extent that he cares. I mean, it is a problem for him politically. But like one of his superpowers as we all remember is the years of branding on the apprentice and with the art of the deal was that he was a brilliant businessman and he was rich and he didn't need this job and he had all the money he wanted. This was really a sacrifice coming into government. And this, the plane, the narrative around the corruption has really pierced that narrative. And you would think he would care, but then we watch him do like a rollout of his corrupt gifts. - Very proud. There's remarks in like a staged photo op. So, you think the guitarries are feeling like they got their money's worth? - Yeah, this worked out great for them. - You think they give this free airplane and look what they got. They got around blown their shit up and their economy in trouble because of the war in the Middle East, the Trump cause. I don't know if they feel like they got a good deal out of this. - Sitting there next to JD doing track changes. - That's fucking document. No, no, no, we can't do that. They're not doing that. It is, it's interesting the difference between term one and term two with Trump, right? 'Cause term one, he felt like he got all the kind, he gets all the prestige and benefits of being present. He loves having that plane. He would do speeches in front of the plane, he loves doing that. And it was always such a bummer to have Trump garner the prestige of the White House, right? Like he had that power behind him, which he did. And that included Air Force One. It was like, oh, so sad to see a Donald Trump representing our country on that plane. And now we're gonna have this new version of the plane that looks different. And it's actually his plane that he's taking with him. And so now whenever he gets off the plane, we're gonna have this little symbol of corruption behind him and every shot. And he's gonna still use it like he did the old one. But their behind him is the proof that he is the most corrupt leader on earth. Maybe the most corrupt, certainly the most corrupt president in American history right there on the tarmac. - What do you guys think of the red, white, and blue? I kind of like it. - Oh, I like it. - Yeah, it looks pretty cool. I mean, the old version, I like the old version too, like the Robin's egg blue on the bottom. And that was also a little piece of history. I mean, that was redesigned by JFK in 1962. He also spent a bunch of time personally with the designer named Raymond Lowey, like redesigning the look of Air Force One and Trump just sort of trash that as he's trashing the Kennedy Center and renaming that and all these other monuments in institutions. So it's a piece of a puzzle. But yeah, I mean, aesthetically, it's like a sick plane. As far as Donald Trump being in charge of any kind of design, I feel like he didn't fuck it up too badly. It looks good. I could have-- - It's not like the oval. - No, I thought it could have worked. We'll see what the inside looks like. Yeah, we haven't seen the inside yet. - I saw a few pictures. - I haven't seen the, I just saw the outside. I think it's just bigger and better. - It's bigger and better. - But I will say, the one thing that is incredibly ugly is they have, instead of the kind of classic American flag on the back on the tail, they have a waving American flag. - Oh, that's no good. It looks tacky, and it doesn't fit with the design. - It does fit with his design. - Yeah, so that makes it, okay, good. At least there's some Trump on there. - Yeah, so instead of having just sort of a classic straight American flag as you would, that's not waving 'cause it's not a fucking flag. It's a painting of a flag. So you don't need to paint it waving. They painted the cheesy waving thing on it, which looks like ass. - I'm surprised he didn't put his fucking name on it. - I am too. Again, in the Maggie and Jonathan's book, they talk, there's the same word Caroline Levitt walks into the oval office and Trump is personally super gluing some little gaudy gold thing onto the pencil piece. - Oh my God. - He's so personally engaged and invested in this stuff. - 'Cause he's a bored old man. - He barely is just bored. - There was no interest in governing. - It's just like, why couldn't he go into? - It was interesting using the governing to make money for himself and his friends and to settle old scores. - And interior design. - And interior design, that's his hobby and golf. - Yeah, at least like Howard Hughes had the decency to lock the door and fill the jars with piss. This guy's just a different kind of old craziness of like putting your name on everything, putting gold on everything. - The question of what does Qatar think they got a good deal here as an interesting one? Because remember in the first term, Qatar was briefly blockaded by all the other countries in the Gulf. - Oh yeah. - And then ultimately that deal was mediated by Jared Kushner. And interestingly, that mediation happened right around the time when the Qataris, I think, finally came in and bailed Jared out for like the 666 parkaver or whatever real estate deal. He had done that went terribly south because they did the biggest real estate investment and men hadn't history right before the financial crisis. So it's interesting though, these Qatar is tiny and super isolated and pisses all its friends off through Al Jazeera and its foreign policy choices. And I think they wanted to get in. well with Trump but then of course the Iran stuff kind of complicates the the ledger here on whether this worked out well. And look now they gave a plane to one president now the expectation is going to be that every American president gets a plane. I know. Here's a plane. Can you do us a favor and stop causing foreign policy disasters that lead to our hotels exploding? That would be great. If you could just we gave you the fucking plane. We got a we got a rosewood on fire here. We're trying to convince people that it's awesome and no big deal that we're this close to these to Iran. Yeah Jesus Christ you know yeah the gay people can't hold hands but we got a fucking four seasons going. Can you help us out? Trying to build an even taller building. Pots of America is brought to you by Helix. Sleep is I think maybe the most important thing in my life when I get a good night's sleep. I feel great. I'm ready to tackle my day and better at work, better at being a parent, better at working out, better at eating, everything and when you get a bad night's sleep it sucks and you feel sick and your body hurts and you're just not as ready to live. How about that? Now I was ready to be alive. Love it. 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Smalls.com/cricket, that 60% of your first order, plus free shipping, and free treats for life. When you head to smalls.com/cricket. All right, we didn't get a chance last week to talk about the latest with the Bill Pulti saga. Well, surprise. This corrupt moron has now taken over for Tulsi Gabbard as the acting director of national intelligence, a development that both Democrats and Republicans had tried to avoid. As Senator Mark Warner explained to Tommy, the original plan was to immediately confirm Trump's permanent pick for the job, federal prosecutor and former SEC Chair Jay Clayton. But Trump got wind of that and announced that he was pulling back Clayton's nomination until Clayton's replacement at SDNY is approved by the Senate, all but ensuring that Pulti gets at least some time on the job. Why do you guys think that Trump didn't want his own pick, Jay Clayton, confirmed as soon as possible? He did pick him. Well, it's hard to be inside of his mind. I think there's two things going on. One is the the machinations around FISA and getting the SDNY confirmed who is a former federal prosecutor, but also his personal lawyer at, I think, Sullivan and Crossollovina Cromwell, I think is where he is. So he's sort of wants to get one of his guys in at SDNY fine. I think also Bill Pulti can do a lot of damage being DNI for a couple of weeks. Get some good political prosecutions going if he wants. That's what he did when he was going through the mortgage documents and trying to find ways to go after Komi and Tish James and all the rest. So yeah, let's get your fingers into all the intelligence you want for a couple of weeks. That's valuable. Apparently someone a source familiar told CNN just before we recorded that Pulti's going to start carrying out firings. That the deep state firings have begun and that part of it is to get him in there so he can fire a bunch of fucking deep state people. Yeah, so Mark Warner, when I talked to him, was so concerned about Bill Pulti's access to information or being in the job even for a minute, that he was basically ready to unanimously confirm Clayton by UC, just push him forward and get it done. I think that Trump's weird gambit here is like he's mad the Republicans told him no about anything so he's going to just freak out and decide to change the kind of up the ante. I think he genuinely seems to think that he can use the bipartisan desire to pass a very important intelligence collection program as a way to shoehorn in the Save Act and get that done, which is their crazy build to tackle the made up problem of non-citizen voter registration, which doesn't happen. But then with respect to Pulti, I think the question is does he want him to root around intelligence information, find stuff about it, enemies, and then refer to the DOJ or do something with it, or does Trump just want a purge of DNI employees? I don't really get why he couldn't have had Tulsi Gabbard do a purge of DNI employees. I also seems like Jake Clayton would be happy to do that too. Jake Clayton is not something like he's better than Bill Pulti, but he's been very loyal to Trump. He's very naggo. I think he's a serious person who's a serious prosecutor. Was he SEC? He's had big jobs and hopefully brings some relevant experience to this job. Pulti's obviously a clown. Speaking of Tulsi Gabbard, did either of you guys read the insane Washington Post story about the cult she grew up in that maybe still controls her? Wild. Wild story. Yeah, it's one of those things where because it's coming out after she's gone, it's like, oh, well, she shouldn't be DNI. Well, and she's not. But man, the thing that I took away from it is one of the things about Tulsi Gabbard, I think that she's just a puzzle. She's just kind of confusing figure. There's like a few more pieces when it's a place after that story. Yeah, but it was always like, wait, she introduces Bernie at the convention. She used to be seen as on the left. She was anti-war. Had this strange refusal to criticize Assad. Then goes in this Trump direction. It was all just confusing. Hershey was ideologically confusing. And then you dig into it and there's this collection of memos. First of all, you've never seen anything like it. Just random. There's this collection of memos that seem to be from this figure, this sort of religious leader inside of her life. These sort of like harsh, insulting directives coming all the time. In her direction, what she should say on television, what bill she should introduce, how she should talk about certain issues. They deny that it's him. There's a lot of denials in the thing, but there's also references inside of these memos to his own life that don't refer to anybody else. Also, she said, there's like, they matched like what she actually said on TV in the legislation changed her dues and they matched exactly to all these memos with this person who was telling her to do these things. Yes. And then on top of that, you have this collection of people. It's all this sort of strange bit of it. It's very cultish. It's also very like ham-fisted and silly and amateur. They have a collection of people running dummy accounts to comment under articles on Hawaii newspapers about Tulsi and there's in like on Twitter and all the rest. It's this little kind of ram-shackle, small operation. And then at one point, which I thought it spoke to the kind of, I don't know, what kind of like master plan they thought they were implementing, that once Trump started running, there's one of the notes that says something along lines of, it's a shame you're not running because he's doing what you were going to do. It's like, be president or what are we talking? Well, she, I mean, she ran and she thinks that apparently thinks the DNI is a platform to run again and wants to try. And it's apparently the thing that she and Trump had gotten in fights about because remember when she put out that weird video after getting back to Hiroshima, because of my nuclear annihilation. It was like clear the context was in the midst of both the Putin and Russia talks, but also the Iran negotiations and Trump, I guess you all did her about it. I mean, my reaction to the story was somewhere years. Love it, which is like, she's such a bizarre character. And like, maybe this helps us understand this fucking weirdo that she was just taking a literal direction from a cult leader. I hope it will get her out of politics forever and that she will not run for president again. Apparently, like, I think was it Roger Stone or Steve Bannon. and one of those guys thinks that she could actually run, but it's fucking, it's crazy. And this person with the director of national intelligence, just sort of speaks to the utter failure of vetting for any of these individuals. - Yeah, or the success of the vetting, because it seems like this is who he wants to stack his administration with. You got RFK, Gene, conspiracy, theorists, kooks. I mean, John Swain, who wrote the story, he said with his Washington Post colleague, Aaron Schaefer, I compared Gabbard's remarks in 32 TV interviews, between 2014 and 2016, with the talking points memos intended for them. This is what the cult leader wrote, although he didn't sign his name to them, but they're all from the same person. On 24 occasions out of the 32, Gabbard used language in the memos almost verbatim. So this is like her entire congressional career. She's just going on TV and saying the, I mean, this is like, this is like a right-wing conspiracy, but it's real, you know what they think of like, you know, like Democrats being controlled by global forces, but like, here's Tulsi Gabbard, just going on TV, introducing legislation, that this random cult leader told her to. - What's funny, too, is they're trying to now say, they're like, oh, this is just anti-Hindu bigotry. When I say, there's nothing. There's nothing, Hindu going on. - No, no, no, no. - And then there's the one line that I thought was great is, there was some line that was something, this was the one I said, no matter how much you've basically, to paraphrase it, don't worry, no matter how much you fuck up tomorrow, I love you and Krishna loves you, which I didn't really appreciate. There was one memo that I thought was very funny 'cause it was very, it was about some statement she gave I believe after the State of the Union, and it was actually, you had some like, very good advice, which was something along lines up like, hey, you just gave a generic boring statement, you sound like a politician, if you have nothing to say, don't say anything, which only have something to say if you're prepared. - Let's get this guy in a Democratic campaign. - Yeah, can't do worse than a lot of the guys, a lot of consultants we've got going. - The range of the advice was funny. It was like, introduce this exact policy, and then some emails would be like, stop doing the weird eye thing. - Yes. - I was so doing it. - You know what I read that and I was like, "Oh, she does do a weird eye thing." - Yeah, he was on something there. - He reminded me there was, I remember there was, somebody, when I was working for Hillary at some point, she went to the floor to speak on the Senate floor by some issue, and one of the consultants accidentally replied all, mending this and send the note to just one person, and the email just said something, like, how could you let Hillary go out there and looking like shit like that? - She was on the reply. - No, no, Hillary, the whole staff was. We all know. I wasn't, that was early in my days. I was not on a small email chain about Hillary. - Oh, I didn't know she was included in the office. - No, no, no, no, I don't think she was. I don't think she was. - 'Cause I think that person would have been vaporized. - Yeah, just sort of, just sort of blipped out of existence. I mean, maybe we all need like a cult leader in our lives given our varnished feedback, you know? - That is true. - I was like, "Damn it." - I was like, "Damn it." - That's already a message box. - The way to the memo's come out. - Yeah, they are. Speaking of corrupt goons, we should talk about the wild and infuriating New York Times story that sheds new light on why Trump may have freed a convicted fraudster named David Gentile less than two weeks into a seven-year sentence after Gentile stole over a billion dollars from what the Times calls thousands of mostly mom and pop investors. The commutation also meant Gentile no longer had to pay as much as 15 and a half million dollars in restitution. Well, apparently according to Can Vogel at the Times, a couple of Trump's political appointees killed an early-stage investigation by the office that prosecuted Gentile into how the clemency came about, including, quote, "Jailhouse communications," where he discussed making over $2 million worth of payments to secure his freedom. The Times reported that one of the people who communicated with Gentile in prison, in quote, "came under scrutiny by investigators," was Reverend Frank Mann, a retired Catholic priest from Queens whose friends with Trump and spoke at his inauguration last year, wild. What do you think? Is this the kind of thing Democrats should investigate if they take Congress? Or does this fall into the category of things we can't really do much about because the pardon power is absolute. Oh, we've got it. This is some of the most brazen corruption of the administration. And by the way, again, there's going to be a lot of people that say we shouldn't be looking backwards, but one of the reasons we're going to have to look backwards is so we understand what we need to do to fix it. And pardon reform, some kind of constitutional amendment is going to be on the table for how to protect our democracy. So I think we absolutely should be investigating this. One other reason to do it is there is daylight here between Trump and some of the people around Trump. Like, have you noticed the Caroline Levin statement in that article says something like the idea that people would be trying to profit off of clemency is like repugnant or something to that effect. And at least cut Trump in. Yeah, yeah. The man get his beak wet, all right? It's got a lot of renovation. He's not doing a lot of interior decorating. He's got a lot of expenses, a lot of renovation projects. But so there's also apparently in this story, according to this story, after the reports that this retired priest had taken cash, Trump called. To find out if it's true, because could we Trump on his word had commuted this guy's sentence. And there's one point in the story where it seems as though this former priest accidentally buttoiled the reporter and left a message while he was talking about meeting with Trump and having lunch with him. So I do think we should be investigating this. I do think there's just an incredible amount of corruption going on around Trump related to these pardons and commutations. When you love to hear the conversation between Trump and the priest when he asked him if it was him. Yeah, if he took any money. I mean, Trump is immune from prosecution around pardons, but the people selling pardons are not. So we should absolutely investigate the hell out of it and see if we can bring some of them to justice. And also, I think stories like this where you've got this corrupt guy who went to fraud the $1.6 billion worth of money from mom and pop investors is how to describe. Like this directly connects the corruption to how it's hurting you. This is like kind of the exact sweet spot of the messaging. And again, my first thought was like, oh, this is going to end up in a John Austin issue. Absolutely, probably it was already there. Like a video, yeah. And then, you know, you're about this. You hear about this one? You read about this? And then, you know, again, to talk to Maggie and Jonathan about this, but just all the examples of corruption. And Jonathan's one was like, they're like, they're very serious journalists, right? Like, I'm trying to fuck around and they're just being, you know, telling me just the facts of the reporting. And Swan, like, looks into the camera. And he's like, I think we know about 1% of the corruption stories of that's actually happening here. So just right. The avenue is for investigative reporting, lawsuits, congressional oversight. Like, there's a million stories like this that we do not know that we are going to have to try to find out. And that's the only way I think that the NAGA cult will ever realize that this man was taking advantage of them and harming them. By the way, it doesn't take a leap of faith to believe these stories. Like, oh, you think that a bunch of criminals, people who were convicted of crimes, including the president, and this guy that he's sentence of community. You don't think that he was selling, he was in jail and thinking to himself, how do I get out? Well, I got to have Donald Trump do it. Who can get to Donald Trump? Well, someone that maybe I can pay. Maybe this friend who's a Catholic priest, whatever, like, in the retired Catholic priest who just happens to be Donald Trump's buddy. Like, of course this happened. Like, what are you talking about? - By the way, like, the story inside of this, the retired priest cleaned up the graveside of Trump's parents and then sent the picture. And that's what gets him invited. The whole thing reeks. The whole thing just, it's this like, what are we talking about? It is the culture that Donald Trump created when he got to the White House and basically was like, "Oh, I'm gonna just pardon anyone who I want to pardon." And it doesn't matter what kind of crime you committed, January six rioters, people who've defrauded people, whatever AB. Like, if you can curry favor with me and you know me and you're connected to me, you get a pardon. So of course, an entire industry is gonna spring up of people who sell access to Donald Trump for pardons. - Why wouldn't you, of course. - You're in jail, you know you're being in jail for 10 years, and then all of a sudden this glimmer of hope opens that if you get this money to some shmuck around Trump, some lobbyist or consultant around Trump that you could potentially get out, he'll walk away, - Get Sam Banking live now being like, he wants a pardon. - I literally was just gonna say, Sam Banking Free is like openly lobbying Trump for a pardon. - Tamara's gonna be like, I saw the guy who used the box cutter on the pool. - I will provide you, sir. But also when the president of the United States takes a plane from the guitar government or the cells have another signal. - Crypto company and a secret deal to an Emirati backed investment firm, everyone around him sees that, and that approach to governing filters through everyone else. They're all thinking, how do I get mine? - Yeah, I also will say too, that I think there's sort of this sort of like fatigue and you're like wow, any one of these scandals would have defined a previous administration, but like Trump we sort of get glamored by the ways in which there's always a new scandal on a new controversy, but this is Republicans in Congress because if the reason it got to this point, the reason we have this level of corruption is because there have been multiple scandals, which if they had marched to the podium and say this stops today, it could have stopped. And they chose not to, they are responsible for this. They are the ones that are enabling this every day. - The corrective for this in the Constitution is of course impeachment. And you know, there's obviously gonna be a question if Democrats take Congress back to impeach Trump because it's obviously not gonna go anywhere. There's part of me that thinks like, you just do it as a matter of fact, like hey, look at all this corruption. If Republicans actually voted to convict, part of what we wanna do is get some of this money back for the American people that he stole from the American Treasury and from the American people, we don't expect Republicans to actually vote for this, but we wanna go on record and realize that like this is the president committed a bunch of crimes, stole a bunch of money from people. Like you have to make a big deal of it. I don't know, I'm still thinking about it. Like I don't, it is hard to go to that path 'cause it takes up a lot of oxygen, But again, when a president does kind of. this kind of thing when he abuses the pardon power when he's this corrupt when he's stealing from the American people the remedy in the constitution is to impeach the guy and if you don't do that then you know yeah by the way both impeachments were vehicles to educate the country we learned a lot in those that those and what did it work well the hearing you know the the yeah and then even the January 6 hearings that came later I think were really important no they did not work because here we are but I do think like at a certain point yes I there will be strategic argument against that I get that but like man have we done a lot of overthinking about strategy to end up in this place too yeah all right now you guys get to hear when we come back more about all of Trump's machinations in the second term when Tommy talks to Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan right after this positive America is brought to you by cook unity I love cook unity and I just had a meal last night what did I have last night I had the Thai beef curry it was with rice and who knows what I'm going to have tonight maybe it's like a good chicken dish that gave me anyway I've used cook unity for years long before they're ever sponsored it's great it's the first chef led meal delivery service that makes your meals and small batches inside local microkitchens across the US not factories so every dish arrives with the kind of freshness you'd get the restaurant itself meals from Michelin star chefs James Beard winners and food network stars go to cook unity dot com slash crooked or use code cricket before check out 50 percent off your first week every cook unity meal is handcrafted by chefs in local microkitchens not mass produced in large facilities fresh never frozen and can be refrigerated for up to seven days cook unity uses real culinary talent cooking in real kitchens not a brand slapping a chef's name on a factory product cook unity works with some of the best chefs in the country to bring creative delicious meals to your door there are hundreds of dishes to choose from and the menu is updated constantly taste what happens when real award-winning chefs make fresh small batch meals just for you go to cook unity dot com slash cricket or enter code cricket before check out to get 50 percent off your first order that's 50 percent off your first order by using code cricket or going to cook unity dot com slash crooked today I am thrilled to be joined by the authors of the new book regime change inside the imperial presidency of Donald Trump Maggie here from in Jonathan Swan great to see you both thank you for having us thank you for doing this so first of all congrats on the book and forgetting this thing into the world I know a a staggering amount of work went into this book that I think you wrote you have over a thousand interviews that is remarkable in the result is just this incredible page turner that provides a level of insight into how Donald Trump operates and how this administration works that I just haven't found everywhere else and I'm a I'm a total sicko and I follow this for a living and I follow these people for a living and I was learning a lot and I know you both are sickos who follow every move of this president naggy I know you have the good fortune of getting to know him back in New York a long time ago so you guys know the subject as well as anyone so my first question is just a general one which is for both of you on what's the top line takeaway for you in terms of what you think is changed from Trump 1.0 to Trump 2.0 and then after that I was hoping you both could just sort of tell us about the experience of bringing this reporting to Donald Trump and having to interview him about it what is our view Maggie sure I so one of the things that we tried to convey in this book and I think we did Tommy is that this is just a fundamentally different term than Trump one this is a very different presidency this is not 2017 anymore this is not people who this president had never met before serving not just throughout this administration but in his White House this is a group of people who are deeply aligned with him who had spent many many years thinking of some of them not all of them but thinking about how they could use the levers of power for a specific agenda Trump himself has been thinking about various aspects of this presidency one of which he's been very open about which is retribution and you are seeing a president wheeled power in a way that is fundamentally changing the way people look at America around the globe the way Americans interact with their president and certainly not in our lifetime that we've seen this I'm not sure there has been something like this and we tried to show additionally to his unique qualities never admitting defeat never having any shame refusing to be thrown out of the arena the various factors outside of his control that added to that but he is coming back to what had came back to Washington with a very very different climate it was a completely cowed Republican Congress, cowed tech leaders, cowed donors, law firms who were facing threats of executive orders media companies that were concerned about being targeted by the government and he has very happily wielded that power I agree with everything that you said it's it's really hard to emphasize sufficiently how different this is from term one it's almost unrecognizable in the way he's he's operating as president and I'll just give you one kind of other way to think about it which is in term one he was quite reactive to domestic politics he you know the polls were down he'll be reactive to that stock market you know what's it doing today what did he last see on TV and I still think that's a lens through which people are viewing him this term I still see a lot of kind of commentary that kind of analyzes him through that term look it's not binary so black and white it's not to say he doesn't care at all about those things in the midterms but he cares far less Donald Trump this term we picked this up pretty early in our reporting and it became very evident when we sat down finally across from him he views himself and is trying to create this for himself as a capital G great man of history as a sort of Napoleonic figure and he literally handed us this two-page document when we were there with him in the Oval Office which he said was written by a historian and it compared him to what he described as the quote unquote top 10 Mao Stalin Hitler Alexander the Great Gangus Khan Attila the Hun William the Conqueror the Cezars the Cezars the Cezars so and you know I'm not sure that most American presence would be happy about being included in that company he was relishing this comparison it wasn't a moral comparison there was actually very almost no mention of of morality or values in this document it was it was purely comparing them on the metric of power and the assertion that this quote unquote historian made was that Donald Trump is the most powerful man who's ever existed on the planet because he's in charge of the United States the most powerful military it's ever existed most powerful technology that's ever existed but that he's also that he's willing to use that power and you know as peculiar as the source of this information was it actually turned out not to be a historian it was it was Gary player the golfer's former caddy okay but but setting that aside the thesis actually was not so dissimilar to the reporting that we had been doing which is this is a president now who is willing to take enormous risks enormous risks on the global stage whether it be going in and snatching a sovereign head of state out of his bedroom in his pajamas without even talking to Congress whether it be starting a new war in the Middle East without even talking to Congress starting a trade war against the whole world which he did last April he wants to put his imprint on the world and this country and build monuments to himself and he's far less concerned about whatever the latest polls are or the midterm elections or the future of the Republican party then he is making Donald Trump a capital G great man of history. Wow Gary player's caddy what a okay hot start guys this is um that's an amazing anecdote okay so there's so much I would ask you but I personally think for me that the corruption has been the most shocking part of the second term we could go to the list there's the stock trades there's the people trading on the Maduro operation on Kelsey there's the secret half a billion dollar sale of the crypto business to the Emirati back firm there's the pardons there's the Katari jet the list literally goes on and on but I want to focus on the jet for a minute because you reported in the book that Katari initially wanted to be paid between 150 to 200 million dollars for the plane but then suddenly the plane was a gift and you said the idea for making it a gift was quote generated at the potas level and I was wondering if you could unpack what that means a little bit and then just your sense of Trump's general mindset about using his office to make money and how that mindset has sort of extended or not to his family his staff and the people around him. So working backwards on that one Tommy on the Katari jet and that was really the first neon sign example of what we saw with this president outside of the crypto business which you know came into existence in 2024 during the campaign that alone was a norm that that was completely shattered we've not seen a president do something like that before it speaks to a mindset that is across this government it is certainly clear for this president And it is clear for members of his family that they feel like like they gave up a lot, I mean, they openly say this. We gave up a lot because the Trump ran, we were under investigation, we lost lots of money, we lost, you know, golf tournaments at our clubs and so forth. And there's no laws prohibiting this and there's nothing that stops this. And Trump openly said this to some of our colleagues earlier this year, actually. And he also said, you know, nobody cared that he was trying to adhere to some guidelines. There were people who cared, it just didn't violate laws. And presidents are exempt as most people know from ethics laws in a different way. So this jet was initially described by, we actually think we're the first people to write about the fact that they were thinking about this jet. Suddenly, there was this memo, this joint memo from the DOJ and the White House Council. And it was that there was nothing that was going to prohibit the government from accepting this jet and then it being transferred over to the Trump library. It is true. There have been times in history of this country when the Defense Department has accepted gifts right in the forms of plane or aircraft or whatever, not usually quite like this. And yes, this was an older jet that the Cotari Royal Family had used. It was not brand new. They, according to our reporting, did initially want to sell it. And then it suddenly became a gift and generated at the police level in our understanding was it was conversations that people close to the president were having with counterparts elsewhere as to how to acquire this. I think there is still a lot to be learned about how it happened, but remember the president described this as a, as a free jet that this would, no taxpayer money would go to it. In fact, it has cost several hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer upgrades to make it safe for presidents. It's just got delivered in recent days. So that was, that was one example that made clear that we were just in a very, very different world. It took months of reporting by the Wall Street Journal to uncover that secret sale of a 49% stake in the Trump crypto company that they have with the Wittkaugh family. To, I think it was an Emirati Royal backed company, Royal Family Back Company, there are other deals that the Trump family is engaged in. And again, the posture has been, nothing prohibits this, we're allowed to. It's so blatant and on the scale we have just never seen before. There have obviously been accusations of self-dealing from presidents in the past. This is unlike anything that I can recall seeing and really being written about in modern history at any rate. And I do think that the public is starting to pick up on it. That is puncturing something that he had been able to hang on to for a long time, which was this sense that, you know, he is a successful businessman. He didn't gain anything from this. There is a recurring theme and it's, it's hard to ignore. Yeah. And Jonathan, I mean, staying on this corruption piece. We've heard about the ballroom. We've heard about the arc to Trump, the PAC fundraising. You guys do a bunch of reporting on the Trump presidential library fund. In fact, you report that a commerce secretary Howard Lutnik personally donated $25 million to the Trump presidential library fund and that this donation came after reports about Lutnik's kids maybe making money off of administration policy in a way that was deemed unsavory in the press. I'd love to hear more about that. And then also, can you talk about, you know, it sounds like Eric Trump is leading a very aggressive effort to raise money that includes individuals like Mahabab and Salmon, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf, just sort of blatant conflicts of interest. I'd love to hear more about it. People around Trump have described to us that they want to raise $2 billion for his presidential library. And if you've seen it, it's essentially a tower that looks like the Freedom Tower that sort of towers above the Miami skyline. In no way is it a presidential library and you've seen like the montage of you going there and there's like a gold statue of Donald Trump and restaurants and God knows what else. So the reason we found out about the Howard Lutnik example is in the Oval Office, Trump brings it up. There was something that Howard Lutnik said and Trump said, this is in front of a group of people, based on something's the effect of the only reason I put up with Howard's bullshit is he gave me $25 million. And you know how Trump just the way he talks and other times you say, how it's so great, I just asked him for the money and he immediately gave it to me or some version of that. But what we also found is that people around Trump, Eric, Trump and others have been approaching and discussing with Gulf monarchies funding this library and often the trail heads back to the Gulf. You know, this is what makes a lot of this so remarkable is you have an administration that is conducting foreign policy dealing with the Gulf. I mean, selling chips, highly advanced chips to the Emirates at the same time as the Emirates are putting $2 billion into the Trump and Whitcoff family crypto business. You have the the Katari jet, the Trump family business doing all kinds of deals in the Middle East and then the business of state, it's just one giant, you know, playground really with no borders between, well, let's just say it's very hard sometimes to delineate the borders between official business and private business. And so it's almost impossible to cover because I truly think we only know 1%, maybe 5% of what's going on. And we, this is a story that our colleagues have done phenomenal reporting on people like Eric Lipton, the Wall Street Journal and others, you know, we've done us, you know, our modest part of it that we've tried to contribute in this book. But my lord, like we have, I don't think we really have a concept of the breadth and depth of this yet. I really don't. Now, and one thing to tell me that I would just add is that you figure $2 billion, it's double to a presidential library that I think you might be familiar with. And our understanding from our reporting is that that's not a coincidence. President Trump has never stopped being very focused on President Obama. But he was also in our reporting found delighted that President Biden is having a very hard time fundraising. And that just made him want to do more. But to Jonathan's point, the models that they have for this library, it's a hotel is how it's conceived. And they are also still planning on taking the scotari jet with them. I don't know what that looks like for Air Force One for another president in two and a half years. But Jonathan is right that there is a, there is a lot more to be learned here. We don't pretend to think we have covered the waterfront. Yeah, I mean, the crypto transactions alone are, you know, you can't possibly follow who is buying Trump coin or Melania coin on any given day. I mean, the opportunities for corruption are just staggering. Maggie, one thing that reading the book really helped me understand in a new way was just how chaotic the management of the country and then Trump's own time when he's in the Oval Office really is. You describe Trump's time in the Oval Office, not really as a day that is structured with meetings, but more like kind of a rolling bull session with some advisors, whoever's in town visiting. You guys report on a scene where like there's some poor NSC goons in the corner trying to get signed off on a classified program on the other side of the office. Someone's on speaker phone from Mar-a-Lago, the fucking decorator walks in with like rug samples or something. That blows up the whole conversation. The papers. The Rose Garden. Yeah, the papers. The Rose Garden. Yeah. Tell us about like paying us a picture of what it's like inside the Oval Office and how decisions are getting made. Yeah, look, I mean, we describe, as you say, this setting, it's an, it's, we're describing sort of an average day, right? And you could take any given moment over the course of the last 17 months, eight, whatever is 17 and a half months, and one meeting collides into the next and Trump often invites people in to take part in other meetings, you know, one example of that in the book is the meeting where Laura Lumer is listing people at the NSC and elsewhere in the government who she is telling the president or against him and Scott Perry, the congressman, comes in for a separately scheduled meeting and then they start talking and then, and so there are, there are constant scenes like this and it has just become very familiar to everybody in Trump's world. It's how he functioned at Mar-a-Lago, it's how he functioned at Trump Tower. Some of this was the case in term one, it is, it is much more expansive now. In terms of how the government is being managed, what was really striking to us and we do describe this in the reporting in the book is just how small the group of people running this government is, if they are, there's a, there's a handful of people and at their agencies at the State Department, at the Pentagon, at the CIA, at ODNI, you can go down the list and if they are not, people leading those agencies are not in the room with the president, if they're not in the Oval Office, they often don't know what's going on. One of the things that we talk about a lot is the fact that this administration makes a show of transparency, but they actually are quite good at keeping secrets when they want to and prefer it. There is a great deal that has kept secret so much so that in the lead up to the Iran War on February 28th, the Energy Secretary and the Treasury secretary had not been part of most of the meetings. The two people who would be impacted by a global energy crisis the most in this government. We're not part of it because this government is also very paranoid and worried about leaks. That's also why you see the situation room use the way it is so often. Yeah and it's probably not going to be helped by your book because we're all reading about the big freak out about everyone wondering about your sourcing which I will not ask you to comment on. But Jonathan, related to the kind of management question is just the picture you paint of how Trump gets information. For example, you guys report that Trump was kind of largely oblivious about this massive fight within MAGA that has erupted over U.S. support for Israel. And that anecdote really shocked me because I mean, it seemed like everyone was talking about and reporting on it. And usually he has a pretty good sort of antenna for the base. And it made me wonder about his information diet generally which you guys I think describe as information from Fox News and then positive news printed out by a staffer named Natalie Harp. Can you tell folks who Natalie Harp is and sort of more about this information diet and whether does any news break through to Donald Trump that is like factual but bad for him at this point? Yeah, it's not quite as black and white as that but it's not far off what you just described. Natalie Harp is a young woman who has worked for Donald Trump for a few years used to be an anchor on OAN which is a far right network. She won the story that Maggie and I broke and it's mentioned in the book. She's basically the most devoted let's say to Donald Trump more than anyone we've ever seen. She writes him these, she has written him numerous letters that she's left for him including one that says you are all that matters to me or some some version of that. Raise the eyebrows of the Secret Service during the campaign. Some of these med letters that were left in some of his private quarters and she's just totally devoted to him. In in Oval Office meeting she sits on the chair, the side of the room with her laptop open and Trump, they call her the human printer. So Trump basically just says, Natalie, get me this or he's, you know, Google this. We have a scene in the book where during the trade war, lead up to the liberation day where he declares a trade war against the whole world where he's just not believing the trade and up the deficit numbers that Howard Lightning is giving him and he says Natalie Google me the real numbers. So she's, you know, furiously googling, you know, and of course the real numbers don't exist because what Secretary Luckney could given him were actually real numbers. So that's who she is. His information diet has constricted. There's no question. In term one, he was scrolling Twitter a lot more, which just gave him much more exposure to just random things that were coming across the Transome. He still does watch MSNBC as you've noticed when he rages against Joe Scarborough and Meeker and you know, he'll still watch CNN and, you know, but it's really Fox all the time and that whole world of the Manusphere podcast, he exploited that to his advantage very effectively during the campaign. But it wasn't like he was ever a consumer of it. Like Donald Trump doesn't sit there listening to like Theo Vaughn and Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson's podcast. They might as well not exist. He'll occasionally hear Joe Rogan's been criticizing you, but he's not tuned into that. He's just watching Fox and hearing largely from people who support him. You know, the patio at Mar-a-Lago is full of Flatterers who come in by you. Great job. You're doing an amazing job, Mr. President. And his staff are people who largely believe in him, like him, not people like the first term who thought that he was dangerous or somebody that needed to be rained in. That's just not the dynamic at all. And then he's got, you know, outside people like Boris Epstein, who's his personal lawyer and enforcer, who, you know, he is so positive to Trump that Trump even jokes about it. He'll tell AIDS like, oh, I get indicted and Boris tells me it's the best news ever. So that's, I mean, that's the environment. You know, presidents always exist in a bubble, but this is a really thick bubble. This is an almost impenetriple bubble that Donald Trump exists in. He's also much less willing to believe the bad news is the other piece, frankly. I mean, people will bring him information and say things like, you know, we've always heard him say some version of, you know, to Jonathan's point about, you know, bring me the real numbers. Those poll numbers are fake, you know, the real ones are, you know, Trafalgar or whatever, or something that he considers to be more in line with how he sees the world, but it is harder for people who are trying to tell him that actually there are other things happening to get through to him that way. And just one addition to Jonathan's point about how often Foxes on Foxes, far less critical, just in the may of him, than it was at various points in turn one. Not, you know, Foxes obviously not MSNBC, but he received more criticism on certain shows than he does it all now. And that has an impact too. So that sort of brings me my next question about the lowest moment. It wasn't a moment. It was the lowest several months, which was their handling of the Epstein files and mishandling of the Epstein files. And I just want to get you read on how and why you think they mishandled it so badly. Is this because there's no good answers. Trump was really good friends with Jeffrey Epstein. He was for decades. He was a total creep at the time. Maybe like there's not a great great way to spin that. Did they misread the politics and not listen to the more online people, like JD Vance, who were warning them. And then relatedly, I mean, you guys have these incredible scenes in the situation room where Trump's team is trying to figure out how to do damage control for him. But the story keeps getting worse. You know, we see the doodle that is in the Wall Street journal that he put into the birthday book for Jeffrey Epstein. Did anyone you talk to say to you, like, you know what, it was personally pretty upsetting and demoralizing to learn that this guy we work for was actually part of this cabal that we had promised to take down during the campaign? Well, I think at the start of all of this, the first thing to understand is that from a staff point of view, you're limited in what you can do when the person you're working for the president wants it all to disappear. He wanted this whole thing to disappear. I mean, he didn't want transparency. He didn't want all this stuff to come out. And he would get snappy when people brought it up in his presence. So what the staff did was they had these conversations largely away from Donald Trump. They had them in the situation room for secrecy. You know, as you know, Tommy, from your time in the, but this is one of the most guarded rooms in the government as a national security command center. It's essentially that they turned into a sort of Jeffrey Epstein crisis response center. And these are the top officials in the government sitting around the table trying to craft a PR strategy. What was evident to his stuff very early on was that a Donald Trump's name was all over these files. I mean, the New York Times, we found more than 38,000 references to Trump and his family and places like Mar-a-Lago in these files. But it was also just a sense of not knowing really what was out there and not being able to have these candid conversations with Trump. I do think one thing you said is true, which is early on senior people on his team underestimated the political salience of this issue. And remember, for a lot of them who've gone through all kinds of scandal and crisis with Donald Trump. From their point of view, this is just another one. Why would we, why would this be different from, you know, access Hollywood or, you know, go down the list? But it was, and it was very frustrating to Trump himself because he's so used to telling his base, think this, do this, and it shall be done. And this was this issue where perhaps because some of his own people had helped, you know, whip up the hysteria and conspiracy about Epstein, the base just wasn't listening. The base just refused to kind of take direction on that and it just hung around. And one thing we obtained in our reporting for the book is private focus group research that Trump's team did this year, not last year, this year, almost a full year after they first tried to start dealing with the Epstein thing. Epstein was still cutting through in these focus groups to an alarming extent for Trump's team. So, you know, all these meetings happened, but it was a turning point. I think we can now say, with some level of confidence, last summer is when Trump's political fortunes really started to decline. And one of Trump's advisors compared to Biden's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan as sort of the moment in the Biden admin when he started to see, you know, it's not dissimilar with Epstein and it's still a problem even to this day politically. Maggie, you know, you guys have reported on a bunch of folks about to report it on Trump, enjoying to compare and publicly rank Rubio versus JD Vance. But you guys write that even early on, like back in 2021, I think, that Trump's age noticed he had more personal chemistry with Marco Rubio that Vance now Vance obviously wages a pretty effective charm campaign. He goes from calling him, you know, comparing him to Hitler. to getting on the ticket. You write that Trump was impressed by Vance's intellect and good looks, going to take issue with the part of that. But whatever, is this an endlessly fun parlor game and way to torture these guys? Or is he really trying to kind of constantly focus group and figure out the future of Naga? How do you view it? A couple of things, but one is you mentioned the JD Vance criticism of Trump and the Hitler comment, which I think was made in a text exchange with someone, it's not like Marco Rubio was exactly subtle about Donald Trump. They ran against each other. There was a whole, you know, genitalia adjacent, whatever on the primary debate state. It wasn't very adjacent. Oh, sorry, it was just genitalia. Sorry, excuse me. It was a literal dick measuring contest that aroused everything. Just I'm just going to leave it there with you, Tommy. So I think that a couple of things. One, as you know very well, the second that somebody who is in office and is term limited, which the president is, despite all of the conversation around this, once they endorse somebody, they stop being quite as relevant and their lame duck status starts to increase. Donald Trump is not exactly somebody who is going to disappear quietly into that good night as we've been saying throughout this episode. Number one, so he's in no rush for that because he sees us as his party and his movement for a variety of reasons. I do think it is fun for him. I do think he enjoys it. As long as he has been in politics, he has done this. He did this with Mike Pence and Newt Gingrich and Chris Christie in 2016, immediately in the lead up to when he announced that it was Pence. He was still leaving the idea open that it might be Chris Christie still, which he'd already offered it to Pence. So yes, there is the game aspect of it. It's hard to look at the existing fundamentals of the modern Republican Party and the Maga movement and not see how JD Vance is still very much the prohibitive front runner. Now, obviously, lots can change, but I also don't think that Donald Trump is going to completely defy reality if that's where it's going, but again, these predictions are not worth a whole lot. I do think we will continue to see much more of this going forward. But it's totally on an interpersonal level. It's just, it's totally bizarre. I mean, we have a lot of this in the book, but we have a scene in the book where Rupert Murdoch comes to the White House for dinner, just sitting on the same table as Trump in the blue room of the White House. And JD Vance and Marco Rubio are at the table. And Trump right there with both of them at the table asks Rupert Murdoch to assess each of them. And Murdoch gives Marco Rubio much more hearty endorsement than Vance. This is what Trump is subjecting his vice president to. I think the only thing we can be confident of is that he's not going to make it comfortable or easy for him. He's just going to keep doing this. It's just who he is. Yeah, I think the quotes you have is Murdoch says, I think JD has the potential to be great. And of Rubio, he says, Marco is brilliant. So yeah, that'd be tough to hear. Jonathan, I track the Trump foreign policy closely. I just find it particularly interesting. And since the beginning, I've been trying to understand the emergence of Steve Whitkoff, who for the listeners is like Trump's real estate and golf buddy, turned diplomatic envoy for everything. This anecdote from the book, Blue My Minds, you have this scene where Whitkoff is, I believe, in Moscow meeting with Vladimir Putin. The anecdote goes like this, what are you drawing, sir? Whitkoff asked, Putin held up a piece of paper in thick, looping pen strokes. It said 3 plus 2, which is shorthand for the territorial framework that the Whitkoff had discussed with him. 3, Oblast, Russia would keep outright and 2, where the fighting would freeze in place. Quote, can you sign that for me? And I can take it home, Whitkoff asked. Putin signed the drawing and Whitkoff brought it home where he had it framed in black with taupe mats. So two questions for listeners. Like basically, what Whitkoff is asking to be framed there is a piece of paper that would memorialize the agreements that would be capitulation for the Ukrainians. And I think a lot of people would argue validates Putin's decision to invade Ukraine, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Why would Whitkoff want that in your view? And then more importantly, like, what do you make of Whitkoff's emergence and his motivations? Because by all accounts, he seems like a very nice man, one who seemingly is in over his head understandably, by the way, I think anyone would be in his position. But also, it's hard not to see his son's role at world liberty financial, the crypto business, and worry about conflicts of interest and corruption. So Steve Whitkoff has no-- before this term had no diplomatic experience fullstop, no foreign policy experience fullstop. There is a commonality at the most senior levels of Trump world, which is a contempt for subject matter expertise and subject matter experts. Jared Kushner would often to others speak with contempt about people who've worked on Middle East deals forever. And there's just a feeling from these guys, there always has been that they have fresh ideas, fresh answers, private sector thinking, you've heard all of this before. Trump, again, Trump feels comfortable with Whitkoff, saw him as a dealmaker, thought that he could bring home a quick deal with Putin. Trump thought it would be very easy to end this war. When he was saying 24 hours, it actually in Trump's mind I don't think was that much of a rhetorical flourish. I think he genuinely thought he could end this conflict very quickly, and it's been quite frustrated that Whitkoff hasn't been able to bring home a deal. Whitkoff, from what we can gather from his colleagues, views the conflict. There's not really a sense of Putin as a villain and an aggressor and Ukraine as a victim, it's actually-- we have a scene in the book where Trump is with his inner circle in the Oval Office, hashing out supposedly going to hash out the Russia-Ukrain policy. And Keith Kellogg, who is his original envoys, juicifully giving this presentation, which he'd spent all this time on, unbeknownst to Kellogg. Trump already had a back channel set up with Whitkoff. He had told Kellogg about that. He's doing this presentation. And during the presentation, Trump is interrupting him by saying things like the only good thing about Ukraine is the women. They keep winning misuniverse. Zelensky's terrible. He's destroyed his country. So when the animus comes out, it's almost never against Putin. It's almost always against Ukraine and Zelensky. And I think Whitkoff saw his job as bringing this conflict to an end, but really viewed those leaders on a flat plane without really making moral distinctions. I mean, we have another line in the book where he tells Putin that Russia's good at a lot of things, but they're really bad at PR, as if the Kremlin's main problem was a PR problem. So that's the mindset. And he goes and meets with Putin on his own. He really doesn't use staff, like someone in that role would normally use staff. And as a result, there have been times where I think there's been miscommunication and misunderstandings, and it turns out diplomacy is complicated, and this conflict was not easy to resolve. And in fact, it's still raging on. Many, many 24 hours after the initial 24 hours when he was going to solve it. Right. Well, I think, well, down the road, maybe we'll learn more about this. Whether there's a corruption piece of this to the Whitkoff story. But listen, you guys have given me a lot of time on an unbelievably busy week. The book, again, is regime change inside the imperial presidency of Donald Trump. I cannot recommend it highly enough to our audience who are desperate to try to understand. Donald Trump, the man, this administration, the decision-making process, and also just two. I think even read things that we knew again, but in a way that puts together the whole scene and helps you understand all the different motivations and people involved. It's an extraordinary piece of work. So congratulations to both of you for getting this thing done and out into the world, and for talking with me today. Jonathan Maggie, thank you so much. - Thanks, Tommy. - Thanks so much. (upbeat music) - That's our show for today. Thanks to Maggie and Jonathan for coming on. Everybody check out regime change. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Pods in America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari with Reed Charlene, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Heffcoat, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pellavive, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is probably unionized with the writer's Guild of America East. (upbeat music)