TRUMP CURSES KNICKS

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Ask to receive it by email. Questions? Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Votefromablog.org. Welcome to PlotSafe America. I'm John Fevere. I'm John Lubbett. Tommy Ditor. On today's show, we'll talk about the biggest outbreak of violence in the Middle East since the so-called ceasefire went into effect. The growing split between Trump and Netanyahu. Why Trump ripped off his mic and stormed out of a Meet the Press interview. His new conspiracy about voter fraud here in California and what that could mean for November, Scott Pelley, going public with his allegations against Barry Weiss, and Trump's decision to attend Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden. Then Tommy talks to Roger Bennett of Metin Blazers about the World Cup kicking off on Thursday in the implications for global politics. Before we start, if you don't like listening to podcast ads, subscribe to Crooked Media and become a friend of the pot because you get ad free episodes of all your favorite Crooked Pods. Plus you get to support pro-democracy independent media. Scott Pelley hasn't accused us of injecting any bias yet, into any of his reporting. But once he starts, we just hear Crooked hopefully will keep the bias out of his report. We don't have time to inject bias to Scott Pelley's reporting. We're too busy injecting him bias into everything we do. There you go. That's what I was trying to get on. Thank you. That's perfect. Let's put that right in. And you also get access to all of our great sub-stacks. You get our subscriber only shows like Polar Cruster with Dan Pfeiffer and lots of other fun parks. So, consider subscribing. All right. Happy 100-day anniversary to the war that was supposed to be over in just a few weeks. Here's where things stand with Iran in the Middle East as of this recording. Over the weekend, the U.S. and Iran were shooting drones and missiles at each other after oil tankers tried to pass through the straight-of-formos without the IRGC's permission. Then the newly negotiated ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon fell apart when Israel bombed Beirut after claiming that Hezbollah targeted them first. Then responded by launching missiles at Israel for the first time since the April ceasefire. Trump then told Axios that he would warn Netanyahu, "Not to retaliate and told the financial times that he, quote, calls the shots. Netanyahu doesn't call the shots." Then Netanyahu essentially said, "Yes, I do call the shots and struck Iran." So for now, both sides seem to have de-escalated and on Monday morning Trump posted that final peace negotiations are, quote, "subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way." The president was asked about the war in a prerecorded Meet the Press interview that ran on Sunday. Here's some of what he said as it rained heavily in the background. "Is the United States at war with Iran?" "Well, they've been largely de-capitated and I call it a military exercise because people would rather have it call that. It's not a big war for us." How long are you willing to give Iran to make a deal? How much longer? "I've been talking for quite some time." You really have it. Again, you were in Vietnam for 19 years. You were in Iraq for many years. "Gas is up diesel. It's all coming down as soon as the war's over." Well, 70% of farmers say they can't afford fertilizer. The farmers are doing very well. One of your consistent campaign promises was no new wars going all the way back to 2015. Did you break that promise to the American people? "No." What changed? Because you were assisted no longer. "So what?" "Because why didn't you?" "Garantine war." "Then garantine no war." The rain on this interview is pouring rain. They have to stop for periods of time. I can't imagine anything more unpleasant than sitting in front of a tractor for five minutes while you wait for the rain to quiet down in between questions about fertilizer. That's right. Hammering on a tin roof. I know they had the John Deere tractors strategically placed, but those are the Hezbollah flag colors, by the way. They're pretty good. That's yellow and green, just like that, so you and his son are big fans of that flag. Here's what Trump said, of course, what promise? I didn't make any promise about no new wars and here's a not-so-fast montage put together by decoding Fox News. "Oh, we can't vote for him. He's going to start over. No, I used my personality that we didn't have to have wars." I was the first president in decades who started no new wars. Who started? No new wars. We don't need the wars, foreign lands, countries you've never heard of. Countries that don't even want us there. We will expel the war mongers from our government. Look at me. I'm the one that kept us out of war. I'm going to keep you out of wars. I kept you out of wars. We had no wars with Donald Trump. You're not going to have a war with me and you're not going to have a third world war with me. That I can tell you. The war mongers. Did you get that? It's the third world war. I think a third world war. Not a third world war. Oh, thank you. Yeah. I mean, look. And you're like, excuse me, Mr. President, it's developing nation war. Yeah. We're very dated Cold War terminologies. It's a global south war. Yeah, we're not aligned with the Soviets anymore. I don't know why. So it's a go on that danger. Do you think he's just convinced himself that Iran doesn't count as a real war? What's the alternative? He's not telling the truth. But yeah, I do think he's trying to make us believe this. No, the real wars are the ones where you send troops overseas and they're deployed on the ground and they occupy a country. And by the way, Vietnam is 19 years. Has it been 19 years, folks? No, this is a little excursion as he calls it when we all think he means incursion still, right? Yeah. So I do think that's their attempt at selling this. It's pretty tough, though, given the outside's economic costs, given the closure of the straight-off removes. Yeah, there's just, you know, there's a big space between no war and Vietnam, right? It's like, wow, we're so grateful you didn't launch another Vietnam. Well, we, that's not the standard, it would be worse if this war had been going on as long as the Vietnam War. There's also something he's done it before, but he is so glib when he talks about people who died. He's like, oh, there's not a big war. It's not a big conflict. You lost thousands in these other, are there conflicts? We've only lost 13. And he adds a perfunctory and any death is unacceptable. But you're like an American president and refer to the deaths as being minimal in this way as if like that is acceptable or that makes it okay, it's just, it's still drunk. Yeah, and it's not just the fuel price is either, like fertilizer prices, it's actually hitting farmers pretty hard. His only real message for farmers is like, just wait till it's over. Right. It'll get better. It'll get so much better. Just wait till it's over. By the way, that's also, of course, not true, right? Like prices aren't going to suddenly drop if there's an agreement. And maybe there's some, like, immediate effect, but like the ramifications of the closure of the straighter for a moose are going to last for a very long time. So Tommy, what did you make of the Wall Street Journal report on how Trump failed to rein in Netanyahu over these latest strikes? The New York Times had kind of the opposite take, which is that the eventual halt to the fighting on Monday left Netanyahu appearing as beholden to Trump as ever. So I think that the context people you understand is that these rallies also have an election coming up. Hopefully be sometime between now and October 27th is when it will get scheduled. And so for Trump, we know he has a midterm, a bad result will make his life complicated because of investigations and Democrats being in power. But for Netanyahu staying in power is existential because that could be the only way he stays out of jail because there's all these corruption allegations and investigations. And so, but politically, Americans and Israelis feel very differently about the war. Americans are like, this is dumb. Why are we doing this? We heard that supercut of him saying there would be no wars. They're like, end it. The prices are high. End it. The Israelis feel like this is not going well. We have not won Netanyahu looks weak. And Netanyahu is actually getting attacked from the left and from the right for not finishing the war. And so he's in a tough place politically. And so, Iran firing ballistic missiles directly at Israel because of something Israel that Lebanon exacerbates that problem for Netanyahu further. So, now Netanyahu is in a very tough political situation. He wants the Trump peace talks to fail, but he can't be completely over in his meddling with those peace talks. He doesn't want to piss Trump off and then lose his political support and the military support. And so, he also can't look like he's being fully controlled by Trump. Like, when Trump calls the F.T. and is like, "I own this bitch," you know? Like, that's a tough place for him to be politically. And he also doesn't want to look like he's going to let Iran fire missiles at me. Mr. Security bebe Nanyahu without responding. So, it was just, he's in a very tough place. It sounds like they navigated it better on Sunday than they did in the last call. Or, I guess, Trump was like, "Hey, man, you're a fucking asshole. You being jail, if not for me." But, you know, the divergent interests are making this more and more complicated every day. Did you see when U.S. officials told Axios they described the call between Trump and Netanyahu as, "polite" while a second U.S. official noted that nobody shouted. So, that's the one. There we go. That is the standard. Yeah, it is difficult for, it makes diplomacy a little bit harder when Trump makes all of the subtext text all the time. Yeah, right. Yeah, well, as a rule, when someone says, "I call the shots around here," that's rarely said from a position of strength. You don't usually have to say, if people know, if you're calling the shots, you don't have to say it. You're just in the midst of calling the shots. Like as he's been saying, he holds all the cards. I hold all the cards in this war and I call all the shots. Well, he's saying he calls all the shots in a call to the reporter before he calls another guy, who's that? To say, "Stop shooting." The sequencing wrong, sir. BB said, "I thought this was captured, the situation." Israel has a full right to self-defense and we are exercising it. I say this with appreciation of respect for my good conversations with President Trump. And so, he just does the praise piece, but then he does whatever he wants and maybe he's being limited in some ways and not in others. But if the U.S. cannot constrain Israel from escalating in Lebanon, how can there be a deal between Iran and the U.S. in which Israel at any moment can break the ceasefire? And so, like, any ways in which the U.S. cannot constrain Israel is proof that a deal will not be upheld by our side. And so, we're just in this place where everyone's testing each other and the idea of success is getting Benjamin Netanyahu to only bomb outside of Beirut and not Beirut proper. And that's Donald Trump exerting his power. I don't know how that ends with Iran having confidence that we can maintain a ceasefire. Yeah, this is the rub. Iran is, I think, very successfully made a peace deal contingent on the war ending on all the fronts. So, in Iran itself, but also in Lebanon, it's other Lebanon, whereas the Israelis are like, "Nah, these are different conflicts with different timelines, and we want to keep prosecuting this fight against Tezbullah because people in northern Israel are still under threat from drone attacks." And I think that's going to, again, come into conflict here. And from the other side, right, Iran has an interest in making this a larger conflict in which they can use the Hezbollah Israel conflict as a part of their negotiation. And so, they can prolong it there and then walk away from the table saying they're blaming Israel, right? Like, everybody is using the leverage that they have. Reportedly, the argument that Trump made to Netanyahu too is don't retaliate because I think I'm a few days away from a deal. And then if we don't get the deal, then maybe I'll lead the strikes next time with you. So he really does, that's another one we're like, I think he genuinely believes or at least his team keeps leading him on, we're so close. We're on the one yard line. We're so close to a deal and it just never actually happens. Yeah, I just believe it when I see it. And I think, yeah, I was going to hate the deal that's on the table. Reportedly, we don't have to go through all the details. But it's a lot of sanctions relief and unfrozen assets. And so, yeah, again, it just seems like they're in very different pages here, BB and Trump. Well, even if it's this mini deal where it's just reopening the straight and you don't even get into a ton of sanctions relief somehow, that doesn't really do anything about Israel and Lebanon. No, or solve the nuclear issue. Or, yeah, of course. So meanwhile, as the ceasefire was teetering, Pete Hegseth was in Europe to mark the 82nd anniversary of D-Day where he insulted our European allies with a speech that included lines like this. Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Each is in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? This is one of my favorite analogies I've ever seen in the history of speech writing. Because in that analogy, he is putting current European leaders. They are the Nazis. And the migrant caravans are boats. That's D-Day. And so, in your analogy, you're making the Germans the Nazis again. Well, he definitely wanted to twist it so that it's like different dangerous ideologies around the continent, but then also wanted to compare the boats landing with the boats landing. It didn't work on a number of levels. No need to pick just one, but yeah. Yeah, the good guys were in the boats storming the beaches, and now the dangerous ideologies are storming the beaches. So it's like, Sir, did the dangerous ideologies raise the flag of the Ujima? Because I feel like you've got this whole thing backwards. Well, I wasn't in the whole speech, and it's so bad. It's obviously, we can get into the actual substance of going to Normandy on D-Day to pick a fight for some reason. But he also makes his plea. It's always in this sort of like the kind of like whatever Christian nationalism, Western ideology thing that he's always doing, but he's like, you know, we defended Western values here at D-Day, or something to that effect. Guys, do you remember who the sides were in Europe? It was West on West violence. You know, it's like, you know what I mean? It's just stupid. It's just stupid. It's also just like when you get underneath the bad analogies, and Peter, except not being the best speaker, like the fact that replacement, the great replacement theory, which once used to be like this far right extremist thing that we talk about once a mile, now it's like the US Secretary of Defense goes to Europe, and it's like the official position of the US government that the problem with mass migration, we're not even going to pretend it's border security, or it's job competition, or it's like, you know, government's having to spend too much money to house migrants or anything like that. No, it's just, it's dangerous ideologies. It is people who come ashore most of them women and children, some of them dead. He says men. There's so many of us have to say that, because they're so desperate in the countries, and this represents a dangerous evil ideology in the eyes of the US government, and what you said, Christian nationalism. The Pope, the first American Pope, is going to spend July 4th on one of those islands, Lampedusa, where migrants come ashore, which he's doing because the last Pope also would do that all the time, and honestly, he's doing it in honor of Pope Francis. And this is like, you know, Pete Hexeth is talking about this as like evil. Migrants are as dangerous to Europe today as Americans were to the Nazis. That's the analogy. He says in the speech that what was being defended on D-Day was the Western tradition of freedom. As if, like, again, it's just sort of going back to Christian nationalism, and it's sort of whole, like, Western ideology. But what are you talking about? Like, there was a Western, it was Weston West violence. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah, there also, like, there seem to be two criticisms in the speech. He, he, part of it's a criticism of like defense spending or lack of defense spending in Europe, and kind of the typical free, you've been free writing on the US and NATO argument that we hear it. And then there was this criticism of European immigration policy, and European countries letting in migrants, many of whom were escaping wars, by the way. In some cases, war started by the United States. Either way, it's just a wildly inappropriate place to be such a dickhead. Like, usually cemetery. Usually these are just celebrations of the few remaining veterans and the people we've lost in the war. It's also, like, an example of how the free world came together to defeat fascism. Meanwhile, like, Pete Hegseth and Trump and the Pentagon are allowing Ukrainians to just kind of dangle in the wind in their effort to fight back against Vladimir Putin. So it's like, I don't know, just the whole thing felt so inappropriate. How many times Republicans told us, like, that's not the forum to have a policy dispute, right? Like, I'm a memorial is not where you talk about gun control or, like, actual efforts to stop gun violence. And he's just going there and yelling at people for 13 minutes in this weird speech. A long way from Reagan's Punda Huck speech. Yeah, no kidding. Well, you know, I was thinking about that. That he was thinking about that speech when he was trying to do this. Yeah, it's also like, you know, you have Vance wang in on, like, a horrible death in the UK. He's just traveling all the way to Normandy to weigh in, like, immigration is a domestic issue. Like, you're talking about a domestic policy issue. Uh, he also at the, in the, the Tommy's point says, like, no, you know, in World War II, like, there was, we really put ourselves in the line for each other. It wasn't just slogans, summits, and communicates. Like, yeah, man, it was World War II. Like, we, there, it wasn't up. We were at war. You do, you know, you had to actually fight everybody, like in peace, right? And you would work with your allies, presumably having some kind of conversations via whatever means you'd want. It's just very, like, stupid, like, stupid guy. Like, it's just, it's just stupid, just stupid guy be okay. Uh, no slow, but it wasn't just slow bag day speech, right? Yeah. It's like, yeah, I gotta go there and tell you know, I don't, for me, World War II wasn't just slogans. Yeah, man. Did you catch how it started? The, the most offensive line maybe was the very first line was thank you Ambassador Kushner. How I didn't catch that. I didn't catch that. I didn't catch that. Oh my god. Ambassador to France. Oh, is that, is he France? Isn't that depressing? Yeah. I forgot about that. Sakura Blow. Good stuff. Well, happy, happy, happy day. Potsy of America is brought to you by Aura Frames. Dad's loved to tell stories. Sometimes more often and for longer durations than they wish they would. 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It started with some tough questions from Kristen Wilker about the insurrection in a slush fund, which led to Trump repeating his favorite conspiracies about January 6th in the 2020 election. And then things just devolved from there. The whole sequence lasted about six minutes, which we won't play in full, but here are the highlights. I don't know what's going to happen with the weaponization fund. I love the idea. They sent people to jail who did nothing wrong. All right, just be very clear. There's no evidence of what you're saying. But we don't know what about it. We don't know what about it. The election was rigged. It was a dirty election. And it's happening again right now in California. It's happening right now in California. Right now it's looking. Look at what's happening to that. It's four days. And they aren't even close to coming up with it. That's how they can have the funds. You know why they're doing that? Because they're cheating on the election. What do you have evidence to support? All I have to do is look. You read the crooked or you're stupid. You play right into their hands with this guy. Your elections are crooked. And you're crooked. At least the press is crooked. And so is ABC and CBS and CNN. But Mr. President, you're one sided crooked network. So let's call a switch because I've had it. Thank you, darling. Have a good time. Mr. President, please, I travel all the way to Wisconsin. I've traveled all the way to Wisconsin. I travel all the way to Wisconsin. On and off in the rain. And I've given you enough time. You ought to straighten out your press. Because you know what? A country can never be great with a dishonesty. You travel all the way to Wisconsin for the city. I can't tell if he did it on purpose. I think he accidentally crunched it. It reminds me of when-- Everything else was on purpose, but that. But when I went to when I'm into Michigan and interview Bernie and then like about 12 minutes in, he's like this. That was a tough-- remember that? Wrap it up. That was a-- that was a gut punch. That was a good punch. You're either crooked or you're stupid. Actually, that's a great slogan for our subscriber push from now on. Please consider subscribing to front of the pod because you're either crooked or you're stupid or you're going to come. Slash friends. That was-- he was very mad there. He really wrote like, you're crooked. He was like the part of things. I'm going to put the whole goddamn system on trial. You're crooked. They're crooked. CNN, NBC. ABC. Is there anyone else left? Schwarzenegger was worse than reprentice than I was. He yells at Chris and Welker like she's here. Yeah, she dare to go be crooked. I elections. But when they came back, I watched the Meet the Press version. And when Welker comes back after the interview, that I spoke to the president again, and he said he'd happily come on and get it in the future. So he called her-- So it's all a show. He loves her. Also, she's such a nice, calm, measured person. The idea that you'd flip out on Chris and Welker. That is so funny. You know why? He's such a baby. He flipped out because she said, do you have the evidence? Where's the evidence? It's like, no. In his mind, it's just like, well, that's what my people told me. And I saw it on the TV. And I saw it in the truths that I reposted, that I retruthed. And so he has no fucking ideas. All you have to do is look. If everyone would just look at what I looked at, you'd know that it was crooked. I think it's your asking for evidence. You know I don't have that. Fuck you. I've got to make it up on television. You know that. So mad about the rain as if she's making a rain. He also did the-- because it was too long. We didn't play it. But he did the whole thing again on January 6th, the FBI agents. The FBI was standing outside, sending people in to the Capitol. And it's like, you were fucking president, dog. They only pleaded guilty because they were threatened with jail time. What are you talking about? They're on video beating up cops. Everyone is knocked down this dumb conspiracy that the FBI somehow set up the January 6th rioters. The FBI that was under the control of Donald Trump on the slush fund. We'll start there, then we can get to the fraud in California. We talked last episode about Todd Blanche telling Congress that the administration would not be moving forward with the idea, even though Trump says still, he loves it. And then Senate Republicans blocked the bipartisan attempts to actually ban the slush fund, just in case Trump changes his mind. Now the House is going to give it a go. Democrat Tom Swazine, Republican Brian Fitzpatrick, will launch a discharge petition this week to force a vote on their bill to ban the slush fund. Two questions. You think the vulnerable Republicans who voted to kill the fund have successfully neutralized their political risk? I think that was Collins, Houston, and Dan Sullivan. I'll up for re-election, but then they voted for the final bill. And do you think Trump will actually just let this thing die, or is this not the last refer to it? So he also says to Welker, at some point, he still likes the fund, but you have to get it approved. And if it didn't get approved, I'd be disappointed. So that's where he's at. Now, approved, he didn't claim to need it approved in the first place, and now he's hiding behind the idea of it being approved in some way. So he's sort of leaving his options open, I think, to let it go or do it in some other fashion. I think it's very clear that they did not appreciate how big of a political problem would be to launch this thing. Todd Blanche clearly thought this was going to be doing what he Trump wanted, got him the nomination to be Attorney General, and then just the whole thing blew up. Yet to me, he sounds like a man who is not ashamed by the fund or word about the politics. It sounds like he thinks he's owed this. Genuinely thinks he has owed this money. He deserves this money just like he has owed the money from CBS because of that lawsuit, or the bribes from the tech companies to build his ballroom, and God damn it, he's going to get it. And that's why, to me, the political risk for all the vulnerable members does not go away, because I don't think he's going to drop it. And I think it's going to be an ongoing issue. And just like, to be having this conversation is so politically damaging, this man is trying to extort us taxpayers for $1.8 billion to pay off people who beat up cops. That is crazy. - This is the taxpayer-funded transition surgery for prisoners issue from 2024 in the 2026 midterms. I have not seen a poll yet, but throw in a poll, $1.8 billion from the taxpayers to pay out people who were convicted criminals on camera trying to murder cops. That's what we're doing. That's where taxpayer money's going at a time of inflation and high gas prices. That is like, and also for like Susan Collins and John Houston and Dan Sullivan, they voted for the bill. They voted for the, they tried to vote for the provision that would block it, but then when that failed, they gave the green light to the whole bill that went forward and they didn't do anything to stop it. They could have voted again. 'Cause you know who did vote against the final bill? Lisa Murkowski, and she's the only Republican who did, and the rest of them just said, fuck it, I'm just gonna vote for the bill anyway. - It is the sort of like, even on the merits. This is the core of the problem of someone like Susan Collins or these Republicans who try to once in a while stake out an anti-Trump view, but for the most part vote with the caucus, which is they are part of enabling Donald Trump. And the only reason we got to the point where this fund could be proposed is because Donald Trump believes that he has the Republican caucus in his pocket and he is right. And for all they're kind of hemming and high, all the concerns who's in Collins has shown she is one of the 50 enablers of Donald Trump time and time again. And you can go to the podium and give these statements, but at the end of the day, you support a Senate majority in the Senate, you support Donald Trump being able to do it every once without any kind of accountability. - So let's talk about the fraud claims from Trump and that Meet the Press interview, which again started with his usual bullshed about 2020, but also included some fresh material on last week's California primaries, where the votes are still being made. counted a reminder that everyone here in California gets a ballot in the mail, which you can return by mail or drop off in person. As long as you get it postmarked by election day and it arrives within seven days, it does get counted. That process means the count is very slow and big changes can happen late, especially in an election like this where a lot of voters, especially Democrats, were undecided until the very end. That is, of course, what is happening right now in the L.A. mayor's race, Nithya Rahman has now overtaken Spencer Pratt in the count, and it appears she will make the runoff and face Karen Bass in November. That's what some organizations are projecting, AP hasn't gone with it yet, but it's definitely trending that way. This led to many Trump posts, the most recent as of this recording being, quote, "Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had. Third world nation, rigged elections. Now they'll be working on a great guy, Steve Hilton." Hilton is the Trump endorsed Republican in the governor's race, who is currently sitting in the second general election slot, though Tom Steyer is gaining on him, unclear if Steyer will actually catch him. And plenty of mega dipshits are following Trump's lead on this. Here's just a sample. I'm not saying it's rigged. I'm saying it stinks to high heaven, and everybody knows that California is playing around with us. But what evidence is there to prove that there was a range? I don't. Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream that is impossible to prove, but I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here. So people can just dig through garbage cans, find ballots, and send them in, apparently forever, after an election is over. He went to Harvard. He's not okay. It's not like I'm doing anything. Really? The people need to go to the game. He acts down. He's smart. That's what Randy Fine looks like. Randy Fine, Randy Fine Harvard. What's a Harvard? Twice. Let me check it. I'm going to check the facts. Check it. So look at it. I'll give you just through in twice. Undergrad and grad. What was his-- What was his-- Graduate degrees. I must remember this. Harvard. Harvard University. It's the Kennedy School. BA. MBA. Wow. MBA. What's the business school? There we go. There we go. These school sounds like a good time. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people get into Harvard, but he's smart. Not a people don't get it. That's the cool thing about Harvard. So before we even get to the fraud part, thoughts on Nithia overtaking Pratt? It's a bad day for Karen Bash. They thought they could have a nice little runoff where basically she got to run against Rick Rousseau with a head injury and instead instead, instead, instead, she's going to face somebody that has a hot-- that actually, you know, Karen Bash is unpopular at Nithia. I think a lot of people don't know Nithia, but she has a positive approval rating among people who do know her. It doesn't surprise me that a lot of the kind of hyper engaged LA voter who didn't want to vote for the governor's race to the last possible minute were a bunch of Nithia ramen voters that were paying really close attention. But I do think it's very good for Los Angeles because it means we now get a runoff with real stakes about what kind of democratic leadership we want, as opposed to what we would have had with just six months of fear monitoring on Spencer Pratt. Yeah. Yeah, just to be clear, establishment Democrats in California are rigging the election to make it harder for the incumbent mayor to win the mayoral here in Los Angeles, but also rigging it. So, the statewide race will include a Republican, so that Steve Hilton has a chance to become governor. It's because we know what's up here in Los Angeles. Because that makes sense. That makes sense. I mean, you get a loving point. You know, head injuries. It's like waxed by a big crystal in the head. Like, now it's a real race. Like, Karen Bash is a weak incumbent because of her handling of the fires, homelessness, cost of living, like, angered incumbent generally. And Spencer Pratt was dominating the battle for attention for super online people. If you're a Twitter power user, if you're super politically engaged, Spencer Pratt was everywhere because our algorithms were feeding us his AI-slop crap and, you know, just felt like he was all over. And that's a small slice of the electorate it turns out because the LA Times did a poll right before the election, where they modeled the actual electorate. And that poll looks like it was pretty much spot on at this point. Yeah. And so, what actually happened is what I think that political professionals always assumed would happen, which is the MAGA adjacent candidate, Spencer Pratt was never going to do very well in Los Angeles, in a county where 15% of registered voters are Republican and Trump is 55 points underwater. And Pratt was aligned with Trump. Like, that, of course, that was what's going to happen here. In fact, Spencer Pratt's campaign was nothing special at all. And like, you know, I think you could look at the media tactics and say there's things for other candidates to learn about how to grab attention. But yeah, the LA Times poll that you mentioned to me, it was May 28th, like a couple of weeks before the election, and it was Bass 26, Ramen 25, Pratt 22. Didn't get as much attention because it sort of went against the prevailing narrative of like the super online set, which is journalists and all of us and people all of us for sure. And then, but today, it's right now, it's Bass 34, Ramen 27, Pratt 26. And, you know, you could see Pratt going even lower and maybe Bass going a little bit lower as the final vote comes in, but we'll see. And it turns out that Spencer Pratt is probably going to finish almost where Donald Trump finished in 2024 in this city. And now that's a bigger electorate, so like you can't, it's not exactly apples to apples. But he also, he did much worse than Caruso did. Caruso spent more money, but also Spencer Pratt raised more than Caron Bass or Nithia, spent more, had crazy amount of attention and basically performed like a standard issue Republican in Los Angeles, absolutely no better at all. Imagine if Joe Biden had given an interview saying that like Amy McGrafts lost is because of fraud and Kentucky because everybody loves Amy McGrafts and Amy McGrafts is doing incredible stuff out there. Look, there are people that, you know, they are captivating to the kind of people that are watching really closely, that are hyperpartisan, but then voters in a light who I think are really frustrated with Caron Bass, really frustrated with Democrats, they would, and for all we know, like we don't know, right, if Nithia, Ramen weren't in the race, like how many anti incumbent votes might have gone to Spencer Pratt, like I think it's a, I think it's a little bit more than just kind of, he got the kind of standard Republican vote, you know, we don't know how many votes for Ramen are sort of Democrats who are just anti incumbent and maybe they could have been Spencer Pratt voters, right, because they just did not want to vote for Caron Bass. But regardless, as much as people in this city are really frustrated with Democratic leadership, they're not going to vote for someone aligned with Trump who was going around saying crazy shit about the city. He ran a horrible campaign and he actually became more mega the closer it got to election day. I think we talked about this, maybe off mic, or I'm like I can't remember anymore, but he spent the weekend before the election in New York on Fox and Friends. He was on Godfeld, too. Calling for Nithia and Caron Bass to be jailed and then talking about how people were raping dogs in Skid Row. Like that's how he, that's how he ended the race. He became more of like a mega maniac at the end or at least openly. He didn't try at all to distance himself from Republicans at all. Like Rick Caruso ran a race where he was at least like, I'm going to listen to both sides. He tried to be as nonpartisan as possible, which is probably why he ended up doing better. The Spencer Pratt, but Spencer Pratt actually got more mega seeming the closer it got to election day. So anyone was like, oh, it was a brilliant campaign this and that's like, no, it wasn't. He had the possibility of maybe running a campaign where he had this like angry, populous message and he sort of tapped into the frustration with the government, but he just fucking blew it as the race got closer. Yeah. And I should say like, obviously, I've been very insulting to Spencer Pratt. And there's a, like, he lost his house. There's a lot of anger about the way the fires were managed, but he just didn't run that campaign. And I do think there's like a kind of insular conversation that happened. If you look at the map of where Spencer Pratt vote came from, there's this kind of ring of like, wealthier places around the city that that like are people that are very online. I think very kind of like Bill Mar. Very wise world kind of coded at least like just sort of tapped into that world who are really frustrated with Democrats. You think the Democrats have gone crazy and moved too far left, right? And there's just not that that's, that is a big pool of people on the internet, right? And it's a big pool of people who, yeah, on the internet and just who have like, outsized influence and louder mega phones than other people because it wasn't, I will say, it wasn't purely an online phenomenon and that like, we all know people and we were in circles where someone's like, oh, I've talked to some Democrats who were voting for Spencer Pratt. And now I would always ask them like, are you, are they Democrats who voted for Karen Bass last time or are they Caruso voters who are now Pratt voters? And you didn't find too many Bass Pratt voters out there, right? There was a genuine frustration with Karen Bass. I personally felt it. We talked about this on the show. Her management of the city around the fires I thought was really, really bad. And I think for Spencer Pratt, having his house burned down, understandably he was channeling some legitimate and righteous rage about all things L.A. and the fires. If Rick Caruso had won again, I think there's a very good chance he could have done well and made it run off maybe one outright because he had a track record. He was like, I built the grove and Spencer Pratt's like, I coined the term spidey and maybe leaked a sex tape about LC, but for me, like he's the self-evidently not qualified for the job. So I mean, like, this is what was so frustrating I think about the boom lit about the guy was it was just like, kind of like TMG adjacent, Twitter algorithm pumped bullshit and hype. Yeah. Back to my nothing. Well, and to your point, I love it about the map. And now I guess two, for those of you listening from DC or who have been to DC, like how people in Northwest DC and Northwest DC think like that's the whole city and there's actually three other quadrants in DC where a ton of fucking people live. They're just not as loud or as privileged as everyone in Northwest. And that I think is what happened in L.A. too is like, this is a big, big city. And all those places that voted for bass, especially in Southern and Eastern L.A. and Nithia as well, like they're just not at Nithia's areas are definitely wealthier for sure. But there's just an outsized influence and loudness you get from people in the West side that doesn't actually represent most of L.A. So on the fraud allegations, how seriously do you guys take those allegations from Trump and other Republicans as a potential harbinger of things to come in November or future elections, I guess? Trump's going to say that any election he or Republicans did not win was stolen, right? It did. It's a heads-eye win tells you lose setup. I think this was kind of the perfect storm, you know, the Spencer boom lit, this expectation that just built and built and built that he was some great candidate and going to win. Then there's the California voting process and how slow it is, and we'll talk about that in a second. And then, you know, this just, it wasn't like a big election night with a lot of other things to talk about. It was a lot of people focusing on this and this little counting. And so, I think what I found personally so annoying about this is how much information you can find about the process if you try to find it. Like, I got in a little exchange with Megan McCain about this on Sunday. I was bored on a flight. She's an unpleasant person who doesn't apparently want to educate herself, but like, you could go, reporters, the counting process is live streamed. Reporters can and do go to the processing center. The general public can and do go to observe the counting if you want to. Their representatives from the campaigns observing the counting, like the problems are well documented. LA County is the largest election jurisdiction in the country. There are more registered voters in this county than 41 states have statewide. I know. 10 million people in LA County. People don't understand this. It's really big people. It's really big here, everyone. Come visit. And in California, most of us vote by mail. It's like 80 or 90% of California voters use the valve that gets mail to your house compared to 15% in Texas. And I love that because our ballot is really long and complicated and there's a lot of stuff you got to Google. It takes hours. I'm glad I could do that at home. And so, like you mentioned, vote by mail ballots. If they're postmarked on election day, received within seven days, they get counted. The signature matching process can take a lot of time. Again, that's a thing where Republicans like that. I was going to say. Yeah. I think you guys like the signature matching process. That's called voter verification. And if there's an issue with your signature, there's time to cure it and fix it. That can take time, takes time to open the ballots, check the signatures. Like what we should do is put more money, more time, more resources, more people, more machines. Throw it at this problem, try to speed it up a little bit. That would be helpful. But like, we have a lot of people here. This is how we vote. Yeah. I mean, we have a lot of people, but the scale shouldn't be a factor in how quickly we count the ballots, right? Like Texas can count the faster for other reasons. I'm saying that there are ways in which we can keep postmarked by election day. We keep all the kind of provoder policies we have, and it could be done. It should be faster. It'd be much faster. Now, I do think one part of this is I, a lot of people held their ballots because they were waiting, they were being strategic about the governor's race or maybe they just weren't and just actually didn't feel inspired by their choices, whatever. People really helped them to their ballots. I think the two things should happen. One, going into November in California, I think we all really need to view it as kind of a civic responsibility to get our ballots in sooner. Right. I think we can all help by having more ballots in. And then two. So California now counties have to have to count the most of the votes within 13 days or they have to notify their provisional ballots and exceptions. But they have to count within 13 days. But with some more resources, it should be possible that on election night, they've counted all the ballots they've already received and can put those numbers up. And then kind of the counts can be happening quicker. And that is a resource question. You have counties where they're still taking days and days and days after they're getting ballots. They can ultimately get to counting them. They have limited hours. They have limited space. Like all of this could be resolved. And Governor Newsom has talked about this about wanting the ballots to be faster. I just don't appreciate when the Secretary of State of California is like, we want to be, it's accuracy and not speed. I wish there was more acknowledgement that the process could be faster, what the resources would be required. Because it's a huge problem. And look, there's nothing you can do to account for the fact that these people are going to accuse us of fraud. But I do think we should be able to count our ballots faster even at this size, right? I agree. Look, that's why I said. No, I know. More time. More money, more resources. Like, we should count faster. It's, it sucks. It's frustrating. It's embarrassing. What I just have no time for is the people who don't spend one second trying to find good information. They spread the meme that they got forwarded by their aunt on Facebook and then like, they're like, like, people kicking up the quote from Trump. It's like, he doesn't know a goddamn thing about what's happening. There's no-- Also, let's be clear here. The reason we all want it counted faster is because we know that if it's not being counted fast enough, then Republicans now cry fraud in the election. There's no civic governmental reason for it to be counted faster. It would be nice. We're all fucking impatient people and just want results really fast. But like, now, look, to your point, love it. There are other states with mostly mail-in ballots where you can postmark by election day, Washington State, Colorado, et cetera. They're all faster than us. Now, they are smaller states. I do think the biggest problem in California is we leave it to the counties still. And so, like Los Angeles, actually, Los Angeles County was still posting updates over the weekend. A lot of counties just-- no one works on the weekend to count the ballots. They don't have enough staff. They don't post anything on the weekends. And there's just not enough machinery. So-- Yeah. I think there is no excuse for the state legislature, which is controlled by Democrats. And there's a Democratic governor to pass more funding for staff or resources for a faster signature verification process, which you could probably do as well. You could probably limit the window for curing your ballot if the signature doesn't match, because it's very-- you have like 20 days, I think, to curate your ballot at this point, which is-- it's pretty long, right? So there's definitely things you can do on the margin to make it faster by making it a whole state thing instead of county by county. Yeah. And yes, it is to answer totally bullshit allegations of fraud. But also, we're the fourth, fifth largest economy on Earth. Why are we having so much trouble doing some of the other places can do faster than us? Like, I do think that that is like-- it's about good government too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Positive America is brought to you by HIMS. ED is way more common than most guys think. Millions of guys deal with it at some point. It's exactly why HIMS offers a straightforward way to handle it. HIMS connects you with license, health care providers online, giving you simple access to legitimate ED treatment options from home. No awkward appointments, no pharmacy lines. Just complete a simple online intake and a provider will review your information to determine if treatment is right for you, if prescribed your treatment ships directly to your door and discrete packaging, your own little stimulus package. That includes-- so then a fill, also known as a generic for Viagra, which is available through HIMS at up to 95% less than the brand name version. 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Try it. Get a six pack or whatever. Try it one time when you have like two or three drinks, one night I guarantee you it will make you feel so much better the next day. Go to Zeebiotics.com/cricut to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use Cricut to check out. Zeebiotics is backed with 100% money back guarantee. If you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money. No questions asked. Remember to head to Zeebiotics.com/cricut and use the code Cricut to check out for 15% off. All right. Alex and I talked on Friday about the mess at 60 minutes and Scott Pellies decision to sound the alarm about what he says is conservative bias at CBS News under Barry Weiss, which led to Pellies firing. He then sat down with the New York Times for a conversation with Lulu Garcia Navarro at the interview, which published over the weekend, where he elaborated on his claims for the first time. Let's take a listen. About four hours after our deadline. Barry Weiss sends an email to my boss, Tony Simon. Two of the things in the email include, can we make the protesters look more violent? Now, I'm paraphrasing, I don't have the quote, but that's what was communicated to me. And the other thing was Renee Good's car, you need to describe her as driving toward the officer. There was a thumb on the scale for the president's version of events that I felt was a level of political influence that I had never seen in 37 years at CBS News. Did you guys listen to the whole interview and what do you think? Yeah, I watched the whole thing. The thing that jumped out to me was, he talks about the bias and pushing on these stories. And CBS gave a comment to the Times basically saying there was a back and forth, not everything that was requested, ended up in the final piece, whatever. So they're saying, look, we had a back and forth about it. But let's assume that there is some bias. The point that Pellie makes is just what I take from his broader interview and the story here is that it's not just about the biased, about the incompetence of the whole operation, that they just have not communicated well. Now, I think some of this has been motivated reasoning because then he then also refuses to meet. It sounds like he did refuse to meet with them for a time as well. Tempers were clearly high, but you do get the sense that he makes the point that Nick built in his friend of mine was reading from his phone in one of the meetings. And clearly that was making Pellie get mad in the moment. And some of this is just people that have been accused of being brought in to be pro-Trump, to have biased help else and get deals done. And then, like sort of handfissively firing people, trying to kind of have editorial opinions, it confirming people's worst expectations and it kind of spiraling out of control. Yeah, but look, I thought what we just watched there were some pretty damning allegations that, you know, Barry Weiss is just interfering with segments. Not just in a political way, but like in a way that was not factual. Like, make it look like Renee Good's driving at the cop pretty clearly was not with your own eyes. I also was taken by just how incompetent he described the new team as being like entire episodes of 16 minutes almost didn't make air. That seems bad. They couldn't get Tony Ducopal Avisa to cover the president's trip to China. Also pretty big deal. Pretty bad. Pellie also overtly uses the words. He accuses CBS of paying a multi-billion dollar bribe to President Trump when they settled the lawsuit around the 16 minutes edit of Kamala Harris's interview. And so, look, like, you know, I don't know Barry Weiss. Some people say she's lovely and charming. Some people think she's, you know, the devil, like, right. The truth is, obviously, some are in between. I've met Nick built in before. It seems like a nice guy, good author or smart screenwriter. Neither of them has any TV experience. And seemingly have no business overseeing the most successful TV news show at this network. I mean, Barry Weiss is the editor in chief of CBS TV, CBS News. But Nick built and has never worked in TV. And he's getting put in charge of 60 minutes, which is by every measure of success. The ratings were up 9%. They make nearly $70 million in ad revenue in 2025. Like, it's not a thing that's broken, needs fixing, which is a lot of Pellies point. And I think ultimately, like Weiss and built in were brought in as part of a corrupt project to change CBS News to make it okay for President Trump in some way to grease the Paramount Skydance merger or whatever merger they want to do in the future. That's what I think Pellie thinks happened here. And there were times in this interview where it can seem a little pompous and sound like self-righteous. And it's very emotional. Pellie seems to compare himself to veterans in combat at one point, which is a little odd. Refers to 60 minutes, as is spouse being murdered? Yeah, so it's very emotional. But like, this guy who loves his job never wanted to do anything else, never wanted to leave. He didn't seemingly didn't think he'd get fired, even when he let his new boss on fire in front of the entire group. But it's worth the listen, I think. He also, I think, gets most emotional when he's talking about tiny assignment and some of the other people who've been fired and who have been treated poorly, which I think is telling. I actually think that if you took Trump out of the equation, I think Barry Weiss still would have sent that email, those emails about Renee Good because this could be happening. She might not think to herself, I am doing Donald Trump's bidding. But if anyone has experienced the free press, read the free press, or trafficked in any of the circles of the anti-anti-Trump Republicans, who are always making excuses for Trump, but they think that they're more like moral and normal and sane. If there are only people who haven't lost their minds, that's like, to me, it's the only people that haven't gone crazy. We saw this split in the conservative movement between the Renee Good killing and the Alex Prede killing, and that some of them who tried to push this narrative that Renee Good was driving at the cops, and stuff like that, they kind of broke off when it was Alex Prede, and it was even more obvious, and they were like, okay, this one is bad. So it actually made sense to me that Barry Weiss would do this because, and I think this is probably indicative of what happened at CBS and why 60 Minutes, and the people at 60 Minutes were so angry, is I think Barry Weiss came in, and I'm having seen Nick built in tweets and commentary here and there. I think he's someone who's like, okay, the lips have gone crazy too. They both get in there, and they're thinking, this is another evidence of liberal media that we got to fix, and I'm sure the staff at 60 Minutes and the reporters there are like, you know what? We take our jobs very f*cking seriously and do really good reporting and fact check it a lot, and we don't consider ourselves part of the liberal media and bias, and so I think there was that clash between ideologies. I think I got a revealing point where at some point Barry Weiss says, if you're not biased, why does the country think you're biased, right? Which is an article of faith, and what's the evidence for that, and so, look, Scott Pelley in that clip is paraphrasing an email he didn't see. I don't know what the exact text of it is, I don't know how I am sure it was trying to push it more in a way that was more favorable to the Trump version of events, but the non-liberal version of events. It was the entire right wing media ecosystem version of events. But the other thing that's strange about this interview is, I mean, he wants Barry Weiss fire, right? But he also has a lot of nice words to say about Ellison, which is really strange, right? And what I took from this interview is he's like, oh, we were excited when Ellison came to the newsroom, he greeted us, he called me Sir, right? Like, there's this way in which what I was wondering when I was watching these interviews, is this somebody who was trying to get Barry Weiss shitt canned, and then someone who can go back to CBS, and he's saying to Ellison, hey, I'm not a problem if Barry Weiss isn't there, right? You're good, Barry Weiss is, I'm not your problem, Barry Weiss is your problem, because now I'm talking about how great you were when you came, and she's the one that's got to go. So I thought that was sort of like, because if Barry Weiss is part of some Ellison project to kind of grease the skids for a deal, right? It would be Ellison at fault too, but that's not how Pellet talks about it. No, what he says about David Ellison is this, like he's pissed at Sherry Redstone for cutting the deal with Trump and paying the bribe to make the lawsuit go away, and the lawsuit was obviously bullshit. And I think he views that as unforgivable than it permanently damaged 60 minutes, and so he's like, look, a new guy came in, had some money, had some political swat, like we're all good there. Like if you want to support our project here, and you've got the balls to stand up to people, I'm there with you. It could be strategic, and then he's trying to divide the two of them, but I found that interesting too, and pretty notable, and maybe believable. But also, he's not dealing with David Ellison, he's dealing with Barry Weiss. You know, like you can be nice to the boss as boss, who when they greet you, is like, hycer, nice to meet you, and then Barry Weiss is the one who's murdering 60 minutes. Right, right, Ellison. And then, and then also, Nick Bellton, who she just sent in, and didn't even go to the meeting herself, and just made him deal with it all. Yeah, look, I stand with Nick, look, you go to that first meeting, you think, all right, I'm going to kiss everybody's ass, and get every back, get her back on the side, and you're like, oh, fuck. This guy is mad. Could you imagine, I'm just like trying to imagine too, like, you're at your first day at work, and Scott Pelley, one of the most famous journalists in the world, is like, you're murdering the most beautiful thing that any of us has ever seen, round of applause. Do you think someone is holding up the tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick I know everything, you know, I'm gonna be the one like uploading the video to the satellite truck is like, okay buddy. - Well, it's the Barry Weiss free press salon party circuit. It's the exact kind of language. It's all, there's just a whole set of them. - Yeah, the point that Pelley made in that conversation is like, how could you take a job like this given the circumstances, right? And that does mean whoever's gonna run 60 minutes if he wants to prove something to these journalists has a lot of work to do, right? [BLANK_AUDIO] Like the I'm like used to Leslie Stahl and so the other people are staying right and like I don't know what the what the the future of this thing looks like, but I do think that a world where 60 minutes gets to kind of continue to exist and there's and maybe this continues to like boil over into the public and I don't know like if you're taking the job right and you've never had TV experience you're doing it after all these firings and you walk in expecting to be given the benefit of it. It's just like not what's going to happen, right? And like Barry Weiss doesn't have TV experience. Nick doesn't have TV experience. You're taking over like one of the most important jobs in all of television. They're not qualified for the job. They're just not and it's not mean or insulting to say that like you never worked in TV. You are not qualified for this job and taking it is ridiculous and what do you think it's going to happen? Yeah, it's just to give me a break. So the last 10 years have been just a rash of people who are like wealthy and powerful and influential thinking that because they're good at one thing they can be good at other things. Exactly. It's a real fucking problem that we have in this country right now. Just talked to any of the tech pros. Exactly, we're Donald Trump. One last news story to get to here. We are recording on Monday afternoon, California time. Shortly after we leave the studio, Trump will depart his golf club in New Jersey for Midtown Manhattan, where he will attend game three of the NBA finals at Madison Square Garden, which will bring traffic to a standstill, require ticket holders to arrive hours early for security checks and force the cancellation of the watch party outside MSG for people who don't have tickets, which is just about everyone. So how are people feeling about the decision? Quote. Of all the selfish, narcissistic things, Trump has done, attending MSG to see the next play in person Monday night is the absolute worst. These are the sentiments of none other than Anne Colter. But the feeling also seems pretty widespread. Let's listen. Since when Trump be at mixed games, now all of a sudden we're winning. He want to be here. If the Nick's loose tonight, I blame Trump. I don't want Trump at the game is I don't want no new people at the game. Coming to game three of the finals, and I don't want them there. It has everything to do with him. Disrupting and contributing at the same time to the chaos. If it causes the New York Knicks to win to lose tonight, I'm blaming him. I'm blaming the president in the United States. Of course, everyone probably recognizes Stephen A there. Before Stephen A was mace, that was mace. Stephen A guest on this show, I list Stephen A in a bright pink suit in a bright pink tie, ranting about Donald Trump going to a next game. That's what I want out of sport media. That is that is perfection. You know, Trump is expected to be to to boot, to be boot probably. They better boot this also. There's going to be an unfavorable split screen with actual Nick's fan, Zora and Mumbani who coughed up a thousand bucks for a standing room only ticket. That's going to be an interesting thing. Mumbani also decided to throw free watch parties in Bryant Park and I think two other locations as well because the area around MSG is closed down. What do you guys think Trump's doing this? He knows the power of by professional sports and that's the only like a model cultural events we really have left. That's why he goes to a lot of games. Usually it's the NFL. He went to the Super Bowl. Do you think that's the DC Championship? What's something like? What's it about college football championship? I think he's been to NASCAR. So he's more welcome in those southern NFL spaces. I don't think he will be here. He's also buddies with James Dull and I think the owner of the next. He was a terrible guy who like, he's surveils people who like are mean to him at games. Always pals with the owners. Not a real player guy. No, but like Roger Bennett and I talk about this in the interview. I just remember last year Trump went to the FIFA club championship in the US and he was supposed to walk up with Johnny and Patina, the head of FIFA, hand the trophy to the Chelsea players and then walk off the stage so they could celebrate and he just stood there and jumped with him and like celebrate with him. So he makes it about himself because he loves the limelight. He loves every spotlight and he will attempt to co-op this one too. Yeah, he doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself. We know this. When you have to decide whether the president of the United States is going to attend an event like that, the biggest consideration, well, first of all, you talk to a service and be like, okay, what does the security have to look like? And you need to listen to secret service and especially Donald Trump, he's been, you know, survived multiple assassinated nation attempts now, right? But then when the service tells you what it's going to require security wise and they tell you that well, as a consequence, going to, you know, inconvenience quite a few Americans, then sometimes the president's like, well, do I really want to piss off that many people by doing this? Is it really that important? If my going means a whole bunch of other things and then you say, well, maybe not. Maybe it's not that important for me to go. Trump would never say that. Yeah, he wants to go to the game. He wants to go to the game. He wants to sit there. He wants to be boot by New Yorkers. He wants to be the center of attention and he doesn't care to be two hour waits outside that I barricade whole parts of Midtown Manhattan to make this pause by the cancel of Washington. I mean, arguably worse is when he always wants to, like, if there's a natural disaster somewhere and he's got to go beyond the scene immediately, even when local officials are like, please, we're trying to clean up the disaster here and we can't have a presidential visit because it's too much mess and security right now and just come later. He's like, I don't give a fuck. He also, he thinks he's a New Yorker and that New York likes him and they do not. Well, he's, because he's also like shit all over it when he left. Yeah, he was like, Lurdian. I mean, he was like, fuck New York, fuck that. I mean, it's become trash now. Yeah, I don't think he's going to love the split screen. I hope whoever is on the ones and two is just go, "Mondani, cheers like crazy, Trump, booze. Go back and forth. Give us a couple back of course." And because Mondani's so talented, he's going to be, he's going to be so nice about it too. Like, he's not going to try to, you know, jab Trump at all. No, they're going to, they're going to have, they're going to have a shot of Donald Trump being booed while Mondani's like going to be nice. It's going to be, that's, I hope we get that. There's also like only that. A bunch of cool celebrities who always go to games, like Timothy Chalamet and Tracy Morgan and Ben Stiller, who will be like, on the wood with the people, like, join the game and Trump will be up hiding in a luxury box, like kind of lurking from behind, hoping he doesn't get booed. We can't say a court side. No, it would be great if he tried to walk down there. People were retweeting some old tweets from Josh Hart today, next player, just like shitting all over Trump, but he's not a, I don't think he's beloved by the next. No, we also remember, like, Trump very specifically, I think, yelled at, or was me the little LeBron James. He's always shut up in dribble guy. He's also like basketball. It's so much smaller. It's so much closer. They're just like right there. Like, it's going to be part of the game that Trump is at this game. Yeah, I mean, look, if Fox News and Trump, they love to tell athletes, especially black athletes, to not have political opinions. But if you like Trump, then you are allowed to have a political opinion. You can come to the White House, maybe you can participate in an ultimate fighting championship event on the South Lawn, right? That's how this works. Yeah. Sadly, no, no, John at that one. Yeah, Favre didn't make the cut just real bummer. So close. So close. That's so fun. It would have been very funny. I think what would have happened is you would have shown up at the place where you get the van to the go to the thing and someone would like clock your face and be like, Oh, no, that's not what I thought that. But like 4,000 people on the South Lawn, it's a lot of people to really be like doing the face sheet because it's not. It was inside the White House. It'd be like, yeah, no way. But I don't know. I think, I think there was, I think, once you're at that point, there's nobody knows. They random people like celebrities are showing up all the time. You never know. We're part of some Trump drug deal. Suddenly, I'm walking and I'm taking my seat right next to Vince Fawn. Yeah, buddy. He's like, what are you doing? Love you, the swingers. It's going to be so hot and so miserable out there. So I was looking at the weather for this because there's like a, like a chance of thunderstorms now too. And it's 91 and maybe thunderstorms. 91 degrees. It's like humid bugs everywhere, awful people all around you. And I don't have any to fight in that. Yeah. And then they get a white set too. He was like, it's not the ideal, it's not the ideal environment to have a UFC fight. Imagine they're like, we got to pull it down because of lightning. They don't want to pull it down because of lighting. And all of a sudden, you have basically a biblical event. It's that just metal things. And anyway, things are possible. Can't wait to check it out. All right, when we come back, Tommy's conversation with Roger Bennett of Men in Blazers. Today's show is sponsored by strawberry.me. Think about your career. Close your eyes. Maybe it looks good on paper, but does something feel a bit off? Sometimes. Maybe you're stuck. Maybe you're burned out. Maybe you're ready to move up to that next level. Or maybe you just want clarity on what's next. That's where a mentor comes in or a coach or just someone to help you figure out that path to the next wrong up on your journey. That's where today's sponsor strawberry.me comes in. Strawberry.me matches you with a real career coach. Carefully selected based on your goals, your personality and your professional background. These aren't random internet gurus selling their advice. Coaches on a platform, average 16 or more years of experience across 900 companies in 37 industries that have been leaders, founders and executives themselves. And it's not just a single conversation. You have one-on-one video call with your coach. Build a personalized plan together and stay connected between sessions when real life challenges arise. Most people had a meaningful milestone within four to six sessions, whether that's landing a new role, getting unstuck, building confidence or finally taking action on something they've been putting off for too many years. Visit strawberry.me and start with the coaching trial today. Tell them pot-save America sent you and get 50% off your first session. That's strawberry.me. Tell them pot-save America sent you for 50% off your first session. U.S. voters abroad. Go to votefromrabraud.org and click request my ballot as to receive it by email. Questions? Don't delay. Vote from abroad.org. Longplay, our docuseries exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. Newsflash, the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South too. We're in the final stretch of the midterms, and the political map has only gotten more competitive with new states and districts emerging as potential flips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Aaron Haynes, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics, and I'm Jennifer Paul Mary, former White House communications director. Tune in on Mondays to Longplay series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. My guest today is the co-creator and longtime host of the smash hit Men and Blazers podcast, the Men and Blazers media network, really. He's a New York Times bestselling author whose most recent book is called "We Are the World Cup" by it now. It's also an international man of mystery and a sex symbol. Roger Bennett. How are you doing, buddy? Well, it was good until he just said that, so I'm so lovely to see that you look amazing, man. You too. Long time no see. I'm thrilled to talk to you now, because, boy, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of football, a lot of soccer in the world. For anyone who wants to learn more about the World Cup, you still have time, and I cannot recommend enough. You are the World Cup, you'll learn about the highs, the lows, the agony, the more agony through Roger's eyes, right? I mean, I wrote the book. If you've had the memories of the World Cup, it will reignite them. I hope you can relive them again as powerfully as you did the first time. And if you're a newcomer planning to watch the World Cup, it will give you the depths, the nuances to understand and feel all of it. Edward, they've got the honor, you're a guy and poet, one straight football is a pleasure that hurts and we're about to experience it all a bit. Weeks and weeks of it, I literally cannot wait. I love the World Cup. This is going to be so much fun. And so, before we ruin this conversation with a little bit of politics at the end, let's just talk soccer. So, starting with Team USA, I know they are hardly favorites to win the tournament. But you know, interest has gone up, expectations go up every year for Team USA. Who should we be watching and what's a good result do you think for Team USA this year? Oh, winning it, Tommy, I know I sound to many of your new listeners that I am from England but I'm love America so profoundly and like a way I like to believe slips me somewhere between Bruce Springsteen and Kenny Powers. So I do this team. I first came over here in 1994 ahead of the last time the men's World Cup was here. It was meant to turn America immediately into a football-loving nation, taking a lot longer. But the United States and the Economist was just found to have soccer be the third most popular sport in the world, which is mind-blowing. Amazing. Because I wrote it in my book, but before the 94 World Cup, Tommy, a similar study found out. Soccer was 67's most favorite sport and tractor pulling. I crap you not, was 66, where are you now, tractor pulling? So to some degree, the winner of the World Cup for me, US perspective, will be the massive fan base that it leaves behind. We've always joked on our show, Sakka is America's sport of the future as it has been since 1972. Like it's perpetually the next big thing. I think this World Cup will cement it, normalize football in our sporting reality. But from an actual competitive POV, this is the most talented group of individuals we've ever had. But the crazy thing is, you know, our women kick ass, take names, win things, our men in the whole history of our nation, going right back to George Washington, who I'd like to believe would have loved the football. We've won one knockout game in World Cup history, which is shocking for a nation like ours that invented animal-style burgers in an hell and, you know, the corona, human beings on the moon, democracy, all those things. So I'd say, if we can win two knockout games, which we stand a good chance of in this very bloated, big, gulp, massive World Cup, it would be an incredible result. This World Cup is going to be big, whether the US do well or not, but the US boys will write their narrative into it, which is critical. Is Christian Policic the one we're watching most, or what other names would we be looking at? Christian Policic is, if you're a football fan, you'll know, he's jokingly called the LeBron James of soccer. He's from Hershey, Pennsylvania. He was a prince that was promised. He broke through into this team when he was 70. He is probably the most talented outfield player we've ever had in terms of his accomplishments in European football. He's a very sensitive human being. He needs to love and be loved. I just went on first date with Steven A. Smith and compared him to Tray Young as a player that can do unbelievable things if he feels great. Steven A. Smith slapped me down, that's a terrible comparison, he said, and then went off from Tray Young for a long, long period of time, but I'll stand by it. And then there's so many remarkable human beings. I really do root for this team as individuals. He's a beautiful man, Chris Richards, son of Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, SEC, country, Roll Tide, who must have been a big fish on every playing field he was in in Alabama. Then went over as a team to one of the greatest teams in the world by Munich, suddenly became a tiny fish in an enormous trout form, lost all of his confidence, got complete cultural dislocation, but has been able to tenaciously resummon. His presence as a defender, kind of like a lockdown corner back now in the Premier League. He's won things, still a sweet, soft, soulful, wonderful human being. I mean, there's many, many players like him that I root for, one touch, one goal, one moment. The commercial upside for this world cup to become the face of this team, to have a tick-tock that goes viral, because it's something beautiful that you do. It's a diverse team, I think they're a great face of our nation. They're led by a manager, an Argentinian, Mauritio Pochettino, who's like a globally revered manager. He's either going to lift us up, like a basketball coach going to Iona State and taking them. What's that guy? Patino. Yeah, yeah. He'll have a patino. It takes us up to his standard. He'll bill Bella check it and just suddenly be chasing after a floundering on the floor at North Carolina. And we've done this for a 20-year-old, in Syria or something like that. There's that at the point. Go to Milan. Yeah, that's exactly right. You can't wait to leave in many ways. Yeah. But we will go as he goes, if he, you know, if he does his thing and raises us up, joy can be ours. We could be just lolliphing around on the floor, chasing after a cheeseburger in Hasselhoffi and fashion. It could be great. It could be darkness. We do not know. We only have until, you know, three days to find out. Yeah. We'll all hope ahead of us. All right. Let's talk about the big dogs. Some of the best teams, some of the best players that you're watching. I've heard France, Spain, UK mentioned a lot, like any sleepers. The UK or London. London. England. Well, that would be amazing. Tell me. Can you imagine if it was cities? Oh, my God. That would be cool. That would be cool. The World Cup for cities. That's actually for the future. Then they can get four more than 48 teams in it. It would be amazing. Come on. Sarajevo. England. Scotland. They're also in it. God bless. They're coming over here with a very different goal than everybody else. Their goal is to just drink Boston and Miami dry in the first two weeks of the tournament. And I think they'll probably do it. The Tartan Army. I think America, one of the joys of this tournament that I hope we get to talk about, is the world coming to terms with the United States. You see it now all over social media, German fans going to a waffle house for the first time having their mind blowing, you know, going to a lemon pepper wet. What is this? And also American sports fancing, global football culture. Many of them for the first time seeing 60, 70, you know, seeing thousands of Dutch fans marched down the streets of Kansas City before a game in their orange clad shirt, bouncing to the left and the right behind our large bus. No one quite knows why. It's just what they do. It's going to be quite ecstatic. To Scotland, England, I mean England, they're fascinating. I mean, they used to have an empire, then they lost that. They used to have a monarchy not doing so well nowadays. They had down to Navi no longer on the air. So what they have is football and they invented it. So they think they should win. They've won once 1966, which is like 1066 in the English school kids imagination. And since then, they've always believed with great surety they're going to win, very quickly crapping the bed, shattering in nation's heart. They like Charlie Brown running at a football with Lucy holding. Apart from this time round, they're pretty bloody good, Tommy. So it is quite fascinating to think of England winning the World Cup in America when it's the 250th anniversary of independence is mind melding. So we think we're going to say bye to some great players this tournament, Lionel Messi. It's probably, we assume it's his last tournament, although people said that in 2018 and 2022. Cristiano Ronaldo will say goodbye to him, bye to all of his abs. Maybe. Although he's like mostly, I think he's the football player most likely to go like Ted Williams and putting his head in the crowd and he just frees it up. three of those abs, same for later. - Yeah. - Is there a next stop? So those two, they're not just the biggest stars in soccer. They're some of the biggest celebrities on the planet, the most famous people on the planet. Is there anyone you're watching that can fill their shoes? Any stars that are gonna transcend this tournament, we hope. - The stars, young stars, and it is it that there's this age it, I mean, deeply age it. We're talking about like footballing the LeBron age. I mean, Ronaldo is, it's, it's, it's, it's like 41, Lionel Messi, late 30s. This is, oh, should be their last dance. And then there's a slew of teens coming through, with nature aboard the vacuum. So this football, a Spanish wonder child, 18 years old, Luminium R. He's already one massive tournaments. You know, he's almost, if he wins the World Cup with Spain, having won one, he's won already. He'll be like Alexander, the great, you know, tearing up because there is no more world left to conquer. So, the early in Harlan, a young Norwegian, who is, other than Shaquille O'Neill entering the NBA and just breaking backboards, shattering them, you know, gaming, game out. I've never seen anyone score goals. It's like as if Dolph Lundrum was a football player if AI created just a, yeah, some kind of Norse demi-god, he's bringing Norway over. So there is that battle. And again, because it's here to me in the United States, this commercial hotbed of sports, all of these footballers, and we're spring to a slew of the great footballers in the world. They're all looking at the United States market, knowing one deep run, one, you know, set of ecstatic moments, the financial payoff for this World Cup commercially, to kind of be what Pele was to previous generation, the face of the game in the United States. There's the sporting competition, but there's also the commercial competition to be that footballer. They all think they can, you know, be the next Pele, they don't quite know, that David Beckham's already won the World Cup. That man is in almost every single commercial and he's not giving up his hold on our imagination anytime soon. But they're also incredible stories. The will-filler World Cup, like Haiti, this tiny tea, for whom, you know, just qualifying is everything. The political chaos that's unspooled over there, which has impacted football, you know, the football stadium. Their trading centre was set fire to by insurgent gangs and porter prints. The fact that they've even qualified is remarkable. They had to play all their games on neighbouring Curacao. Their football is a brought up from all over in the Haitian diaspora. Just taking the field for them is going to be just a joyous geopolitical moment where the word Haiti is seen in a joyous spotlight, a wonderful spotlight, who desperately needed. And it could be one of the most powerful storylines in the opening round. - Yeah, that's exciting to watch. So, you know, you've touched on this, Rob. The scale of this tournament is just like, unlike anything we've seen before. It's happening in three different countries. I think there's 16 host cities. There's 48 teams. I think at some points in the tournament, there's going to be six games a day. How the hell are you going to pace yourself here, buddy? What are you going to do to, like, get through to this? - Yeah, I mean, I feel like I was laughing with you. I already feel like I'm halfway through, but it's not kicked off yet. It is epic in scope. Three nations hosting for the first time. Canada, the United States, Mexico. When it was given 2018, it was talked about as a unified, almost the NAFTA World Cup. Obviously, the realities have changed. It feels almost like three parallel track World Cups. But what drives me in any World Cup is the narrative, is the story, is the human wonder. The scale of it is epic. You know, I think it's projected to revenue-wise, reported $80 billion will be made, which apparently is the GDP of Belarus, but I'm sure you knew that, Tommy. That's probably the first thing that went into your head. - It's the idea of Belarus, yeah. - You know, it's really a human ecstasy. 200 million people watch the Super Bowl. We think of that as the ultimate in the United States. Five billion people watch the World Cup. What is the World Cup? And this is what I wrote in my book. It's like a global eclipse that emanates from the game, sweeps the entire world instantaneously and holds it in its rule for 39 straight days. And so that's the magic of it, the energizing magic. What keeps me going is a sense that when these games go on, we're watching human beings live out under the crucible of pressure, you know, human decision-making. What separates good players from the truly greatest of decisions they make under those pressures. There's gonna be heroes whose names we don't even know who are gonna reveal themselves. And within seconds of some kind of kung fu fighting S-goal, their name is gonna be bled out by millions of children in school yards across the globe, you know. There's gonna be heroes who will fall in tragedy, comic ways. We're gonna watch the greatest telenovela. And the thing I'm most excited about Tommy is, I don't know if you've noticed, it's a very dark world. We're living in the time of challenge. I hope, I hope when this kicks off, you know, when Lionel Messi takes the field, all of the darkness kind of is smothered. It's almost like a derational is replaced by the emotional. And it's that sense of global unity, obviously an illusion, obviously fleeting. But knowing that you're making memories, profound memories, it's like the theory of my book most of, I'd say 87% of my most important memories are located in World Cups, the Jit Cross generational memories with my dad, my mom, my grandchildren. It's the same for millions around the world. That conscious act of memory making that you're sharing with the planet is really what drives me on wood. - I think we've all earned that release, that reprieve from reality, and that moment just come together and enjoy it. Just to ruin this whole thing with politics though, I mean, President Trump understands the scale of the stage, right, he's got this preter natural understanding for the role that Swarth plays in culture. As we talk today, I think he's preparing to fly up to New York for the next game. Do we know, does he deliver remarks at any of these events? Is he going to attend games? What do we know about his participation? - Not a lot, yeah, but football is, I mean, I talked about the number of people watching. It is the last global megaphone that is, audible across the entire planet. There's nothing like it. There's nothing like a World Cup, even Salt Bay inserted himself into the final season. That's how massive it is. - That's very favorite. - Yeah, go bless. I mean, he's still got me talking about it four years later. And so ultimately, politicians of all stripes are drawn to football. And have been since the very beginning, 1934. Second World Cup was held in Italy by Mussolini, who wanted to present Italy to the world, subsidise foreign travel to Italy for the tournament. The detail, I've most about this story, is that he made sure the tickets were intricate paper cuts so that fans would go home afterwards. I cram, you're not told me. And be like, these are the tickets in Italy. Look when the advanced country it is. - Right, right. - So from the very beginning, the roots of the tournament have always had a geopolitical reality when two teams take the field. The nation's history, the nation's politics, the nation's culture takes the field alongside, and that's what gives it its epic power. Everything matters. It's not, you know, I love American sports. When my Chicago Bears play, you know, the LA Rams, it's a big game. It's exciting. I know the narrative. But when Germany plays England, the levels of history, you know, I think, was it Emerson who said it contains multitudes? The World Cup contains multitudes, and every politician knows that, you know, and President Trump has embraced football. There was a tournament here last, almost a dry run called the Club World Cup. He presented the trophy right at the end. The road, the ritual of trophy presenting in football is whoever gives it. It's often ahead of state. We'll hand the trophy over to the, you know, the sweaty footballers on a podium, and then step out of the way so that they can lift it up and smoke comes off and confetti blows up, and then the footballers bounce up and down, waving their arms like this, which is the standard football guidance. Chelsea Football Club, whom he hands the trophy over, and then stands in the midst of them. And, you know, the footballers are confused. They don't quite know what to do. There's a standard way of doing this. And then in the end, they just like saw it. They did it with him in the midst of it. It's a remarkable image. You know, the smoke goes off, the confetti blows up. Some of the dancing, some of them are looking at the present. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that was the photo moment that would go around the world, and that he'd become friends and center. So the World Cup contains that power, times a million, you know, 2018, Putin, Randall World Cup, and was very front and center 2022. It was in Qatar, first game. You and I watched. They had the Qatari leader sitting right by the Saudi Arabian, Muhammad bin Salman. I believe this is your expertise, not mine, but the two of them had had frosty relations before that. To see them unite was deeply similar. Like a symbol, I think one was even wearing the scarf or the other country. So there's a story on the field. There's always the story off it and the optics, the soft power, the hard power is written all over this tournament every time it occurs. - You know, President Trump is both head of state and also famously won the FIFA Peace Prize. So maybe he could invite the new Iranian supreme leader to the US to sit next to him at a game and we could have another moment like the one you just described. I'm just pitching ideas. - Yeah, I mean, well, we're pitching ideas. I think this should be a FIFA music award. Like a Grammy for like Kid Rock or vanilla ice. I would say you will watch this world cup with a split lens and who is invited and where they say it is for you and pod save the world is gonna be, you know, I'd say a sport in itself, but it's not a sport. That gives it a sense of a lack of meaning but that narrative will be enormous in macro ways. And in macro ways, we just had Wagner Maura, the Oscar nominated actor Pablo Escobar from Norco's "Come on, I'll show you his football mad." And he talked with an amazing passion about how Brazil, Brazil wears a yellow shirt, it's iconic, you know, it's synonymous with a beautiful style of football that kind of coincides with the advent of color television. And he talked about how when Bolsonaro was president, he co-opted the Brazilian shirt and that shirt became a symbol of his regime. And Wagner Maura talked about how this world cup in a post-Bolson era realm is a chance to reclaim it. So the narratives within this thing, if you're a football fan, you know, it's the Ronaldo, the Messi, that Portugal, the France, the Spain, but if you're a pod save the world fan, you know, the world cup is, is all of that and more. Yeah, so there's always sort of like issues and anxieties going into these world cups. Sometimes it's political, sometimes it's, you know, security or logistics. This year, people were talking about potential ice presence at games, there are questions about travel restrictions or visas more recently, you know, there's a lot of discussion about ticket prices. Has any of that deterred attendance as far as you can tell? Is the world still coming to the US for these games in Mexico and Canada? You know, the narrative of any world cup is decided afterwards. And this one in the run-up has been about safety fears, but not just in the United States in Mexico, the drug cartel violence, the global tensions, the travel restrictions. Well, one of the reasons I love football is that more than any other sport, it holds up a mirror to the world that surrounds it. I've always loved that. It's always, you know, one of my definitive moments in life, not just in football, is 1986. England played Argentina. Diego Maradona, his Argentina, one of the greatest to ever play the game, just a pick, just a street urge in turn, you know, kid of gold. They call him Peebe de Oro. In the shadow of the Falklands war, and England, they were our heroes, and Argentina destroyed them. One gold tiny little Diego punched it in in the era before video referees. He punched it in over a six-foot-two-goal keeper, used his hand and immediately when asked, did you punch that in? He came up brilliantly with his own marketing. He said it was a little bit the head of Diego, and a little bit the hand of God. And then when we were reeling in agony as an English nation, he picked the ball up, it deepened his own half, and then just ran through the entire team single-handedly. Every hero, he eviscerated all of them, and then just rolled the ball home, which kind of echoed the first score. I did that cheated because I could, but I also could have destroyed you single-handedly if I wanted to, and I just did. That goal was an agony, and as an English human being, it kind of put us all in our place, so just where we were in the global food chain. But now, it's actually the poster that the photograph I have in my office on my wall signed by him. It makes you feel things. It makes you feel alive. That agony is like one of my proudest agonies. It's an honor to have that agony. So everything is always geopolitical. The run-up to any wool cup in the modern period is always a human darkness. The South African wool cup, 2010. The whole reporting going in was how everybody was going to be card-jacked, there was an epidemic, just the violence was going to destroy the thing. The electricity bell was not enough to power the state. It was a disaster. Why is Africa hosting this? It turned out to be one of the most significant wool cups of my lifetime, Nelson Mandela, Africa presenting it to the world in majestic fashion. Same with Brazil, 2014. The violence, rioting, social unrest in 2013. The people rose up around games, marched on the stadium. Every stadium I was in, there were riots demonstrations for social justice, for education, not football. It meant to be a disaster. And then once a ball is kicked, Tommy, cognitive dissonance kicks in. I'm not sure this is a good thing or a bad thing to be honest, but it's what happens. Once the Lionel Messi takes the field, you know, all the storyline just falls away and we kind of become mesmerized by that global eclipse thing. So it is a lot of global tension. It is a mirror to the world. The world is understandably challenging, but again, once that opening whistle goes, the past wool cups, everyone has gone from fear and darkness and catastrophizing to a sense of, albeit fleeting sense of wonder. - Yeah, well, I cannot wait for it to start, but again, the book is, we are the World Cup. So pick up a copy now and then Raj, if listeners want to just hear more from you throughout the World Cup, where should they look? - Tommy, we're headed to you tomorrow. We're going to LA. We have a bus in the style of John Madden, a big orange bus. We're driving it across country. Can't tell if this is the greatest idea we've ever had or the worst. We'll find out. Starting in LA, we're going up to Seattle. Coming back to LA, we're doing, and then going across the country through Texas, to Atlanta. We're going to be doing the college game days before the biggest game. Starting with the United States, we're going to be on Santa Monica Pier on that first US game on the 12th with Rob Mac. And then we're going up to Seattle, where we've got John Green, the greatest novelist. I think everyone would agree. Old Skittles, your man. The greatest seahawk of all time. It's going to be joining us and more and then back to LA. And then we're going across. And I will say, as we go across, this is a wild time tommy. Many sports fans in America will be turned onto football for the first time. America loves the circus. They love an excuse to daytime drink. They love massed desire to cut work, which is approved for 39 days. But I will say, seeing these fans, and there will be thousands of fans coming in. There have been travel bands. They do it. There are some teams who have no fans able to get visas because of the modern reality they've been caught up in. In that issue. So like Haiti, Iran, Senegal, Ivory Coast. But there are thousands and thousands of fans coming. And this moment for 39 days, for the world to shine a spotlight on, not just LA, San Francisco, Seattle, but cities like Houston, which are about to be beloved. When the world finds lemon pepper wet in Atlanta, when there's 20,000 Argentinians running around Kansas City tasting Arthur Bryant's slaps and going, oh my God, we've been doing barbecue all wrong. They're all this time. That, to me, is I hope how America can be a winner for 39 days showing a face of ourselves, which is meaningful and warm and welcoming and filled with a joy I want so from Liverpool. It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait for much of Europeans to try Dunkin' Donuts when they get to Boston for the first time. Raj, great to see you. Great to talk with you. Good luck with this tournament, buddy. I'm excited to walk through your eyes. I'll see you in LA, beautiful. I'm really, really excited to be of your courage. That's our show for today. Thanks to Roger Bennett for coming on. Alex and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Bye, everyone. Paws of 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 Heffko, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Carol Pellevive, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is probably unionized with the writer's Guild of America East. Longplay, our docu-series exploring the people and forces shaping the South is back. New Slash, the South, is the new political epicenter of the country. I'm Aaron Haines, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics, and I'm Jennifer Palmerry, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to Longplay Series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.