Trump’s New Press Secretary Flops During First Briefing

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While your vet bill is so high, that's this week on Explain it to me. Listen to new episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Good morning. I want to thank you. What? I know. I feel as if we took the 11th grade debate team coach and said, "Are you a public citizen?" And you have blonde hair and attractive. Let's make you press secretary. I mean, she's really not the spokesperson. She's the opening act. So, you know, Levitt left to spend more time with her kids. The joke is that Zacharias taken a job to spend less time with the truth. Welcome to Ritchie Modern. I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Tarla. Make sure to subscribe to support our show and stay up-to-date on all the news. All right. I'm just checking on some of the key races we're watching, which is 19 days until election day. Here are where things stand. Kalshi puts the odds of Democrats retaking the Senate at 62%. I have trouble believing that number, but anyway- Well, that's because we're bedwaters. It's in our nature. So we are? Yeah. Or that's what I'm telling myself. Because my bed is wet. And I don't want to think of what else is happening there. Just kidding. Maybe cut that out. I don't know. You got me. I get up four times a night, unfortunately, now to not wet my bed. All right. And you go back to the polls. You got polling shows 53% of likely voters in Senate, states, favorite Democrats, okay? A new Washington Post polls shows George Axon with a narrow lead over Susan Collins. New York Times polling suggests moderates are finding ways to distance themselves from the party's far-left brand. And in deep red Kansas, Kalshi has the odds of Adam Hamilton pulling off an upset at 37%. Take this. I would just love some color here. Talk a little bit first. The one I'm most worried about, I don't know about you, is Maine. Talk about Maine. Yeah. So this was one of the polls that was favorable for Troy Jackson. But in majority of them, Susan Collins has a slight lead, which is where I think the race stands. If I had to bet today, I would guess that we don't flip Maine. And that we're able to pull off some sort of miracle in like an Iowa or Texas. And that's just pretty insane of a place to be considering the composition of these states. I mean, Maine is a blue state that likes Susan Collins. The other states are red states that haven't liked the Democrat since Barack Obama. So a little bit concerning. And I meant that about Iowa and not about Texas, who did not vote for Obama. I think Susan Collins continues to be sneaky good. And I just don't think Troy Jackson is connecting with people that well. Quite honestly, you know, there were huge problems with Graham Platner. We talked about that and saw that in the primary. There wasn't a good alternative, like a Jared Golden for people. And people were obviously hungry for something to the left of the quote unquote establishment. But I just haven't seen that excitement for Troy Jackson in the same way that you're seeing for other Democrats across the map. I think that the New York Times chart about all of these candidates being able to run away from the far left branding is absolutely fascinating, raging moderates out in the wild, doing well in these races and also doing excellent work in making positions that even, you know, a few years ago might seem like a NASMA to core voters, independence, even right leaning independence, just feel sane for the moment, like, you know, raising taxes and making sure that people have affordable health care. I think that will be the most seismic shift in our politics that talking about the need for some sort of universal coverage is not as frightening as it used to be. And the Talleriko stuff, I seems like it's died down. Obviously, it's been proven over and over and over again that he was not an elemental health facility in Ohio. Now, there's ring cam footage. The New York Times did a whole deep dive. He was home at Austin being sick because the guy has diabetes and got the flu low and behold. So I don't know if lawsuits are going to start flying about that one, but it was curious timing because the Wall Street Journal had a very interesting piece of op-o on Ken Paxton from a couple years ago that he was seen partying New Year's Eve in Dubai with his mistress. I don't know if it's the same mistress that he was in London for the Fourth of July with or this is a different one. I don't know if he's like a one woman mistress man. Is that what you call it when you're so committed to your mistress or if you just fly around with whoever, but he was there with her and with two fugitives from U.S. law. So that's a pretty interesting one and it's funny timing. This whole look over here, James Tallerico is getting on a private jet with a Republican donor to go to an Ohio mental health facility and the Wall Street Journal comes out with this piece about what a slime ball Ken Paxton continues to be and also those fugitives donated I think $190,000 to Ken Paxton campaign. The guy is rotten. That doesn't mean that Tallerico is a shoe in to be able to pull this off, of course, but if there is someone deserving of your ethics ridicule, it is certainly Ken Paxton. And another poll today, Gina and Yohosa, who we're going to have on raging moderates next week up on Governor Abbott and that it would just be the coolest if she was able to pull that off. Is that going to, are there any racists I didn't cover that you're wondering about? I just want to double click on Maine. I would argue that Choi Jackson has been an enormous disappointment that a couple of months ago he was up around 65% on calcium as of now Collins is at 44% Jackson is at 56%. When I saw the debate, I mean, maybe you just need to just show up with chest hair and not be, you know, not be accused of rape. Maybe that's enough. I thought she cooked them in the debate. I thought he came across this really like brightening up her room by leaving it. I thought his line about road salt was good. And you know, spurred a lot of memes and we know that memes matter, but votes matter more. And we have, you know, I feel like we're just trying to prop this up as something that perhaps it isn't. And people should be focusing their attention, you know, in Maine, of course, but looking all over the map, making sure that Peggy Flanagan is good in Minnesota, Sarah Longwell, and I were talking about that last night, Chris Papis, in New Hampshire, the way that the GOP is spending their money indicates that they see the writing on the wall in North Carolina. In Georgia, apparently, Democrats are also pulling their money out and is there that confident in John Assoff and last night, Keisha Lance bottoms running for governor. The Republican, Rick Jackson, didn't even stand up. We had an empty podium situation, which doesn't bode well for him if he doesn't even want to stand there for an hour and answer questions. But I would largely agree with you about me. And it's disappointing because that's a blue state and you should have blue representatives if that's where the populace is. Well, hopefully he's a, you know, just an okay candidate gets elected and ends up being a great, a great lawmaker who knows. I was shocked. I thought she actually looked, I mean, I think I've created my own image in my mind that, you know, she's, she's essentially Diane Feinstein from Maine at this point, but I thought she came across. I actually thought the debate, that she won the debate. Let's just do a quick swing through Michigan, where El Sayed, how she has him at 67%, so two-thirds likelihood that Sayed is going to pull this off, your thoughts. I mean, it's what the prediction markets are saying, the polling, you know, has him up most cases within the margin of error. It's a swing state. Elisa Slocke and only one by 22,000 votes granted that was a big trump year. This is a very different environment and my graduate is running away from a lot of poor positions like saying the tariffs are okay, voting for the Warren Iran. It's going to come down to consolidating the support that was backing Haley Stevens. When you have an event that was going on this morning, I was just looking at footage from it with black voters from Detroit who are backing El Sayed talking about how microadgers has never cared about them and doesn't care if. they're right to vote is preserved. So, you know, Haley Stevens is working her butt off with a slothkin, Gretchen Whitmer, Jocelyn Benson, who's doing very well performing at the top of the ticket. She's running for governor against John James, who I don't think is particularly strong candidate, but I would imagine a close-ish race. And yeah, I would give the edge to Abdualsley ad right now for sure. - I don't think I've ever seen a candidate as strong as Talleriko. I mean-- - He's great, isn't he? - He really is. - I think he's just acquits himself with such dignity and generosity and grace and his ability to weave his spirituality into politics without-- I mean, it's just so, he's just reminded us that the Bible didn't say anything about abortion or, you know, basically cutting off welfare. And he's like, this just couldn't be more. Hey, the Bible doesn't talk about abortion and be, you know, it talks about loving that neighbor. And he just is able to just flip the Bible dramatically towards, towards, I think a really compelling vision of what democratic politics are, you know, at its best, supposed to represent. What, if you were to try and give two races that you think will shock people like your, your, you know, Jess Tarlov shows up, shows to the five, just glowing and just like in your face and spikes the ball on the desk, what would those two races be that we have an outside shot? And I think you mentioned a couple things before that you didn't think it did. It would just really send a chill down the spine of the GOP. Well, I think what's going on in Iowa with obviously Rob Sand, who's just like a miracle candidate and then Josh Tarrick. I mentioned this yesterday when I was potting with Sarah Longwell, that Josh Tarrick actually cut a border ad, like got border chiefs in Texas to support his candidacy. And it shows that he also understands the way that these issues work, that you have folks inland that have been fed some degree of lies about, you know, how Democrats think about immigration and that we would just leave the border wide open. But also the reality that there are people who have crossed this border that have gotten into the country illegally and that have committed crimes against American citizens and that that's unacceptable. So I absolutely loved that from Josh Tarrick. I think that would be, you know, big chill down your spine situation. Also, I saw that Republicans are pulling money out of Iowa's first congressional race, which is a big deal. I don't think that we talk about Roy Cooper, enough in North Carolina, the kind of normal campaign that he is running, but Mary Petola, I guess, would be my other chill down your spine, winning in Alaska. So I'd go Iowa and Alaska, you know, Texas, because we already talked about Texas anyway. It does feel like the Republicans are reaching when the kind of campaign strategies they're implementing right now or to acute people of liking women's basketball or being in a mental institution. It does feel like they're kind of, they're grasping right now. All right, let's get into the regular news. Trump is continuing to defend his decision to temporary lift sanctions on Russian diesel despite the action-causing division with our allies in Europe and with many Republicans back here at home. The plan has Russia immediately supplying around 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by increasingly larger amounts. In part, depending on the condition of Russia's refineries, the total amount proposed over the next six months would cover just about nine days worth of US diesel use. Jess, this is interesting, right? Some Republicans have actually broken from this. What do you think ends up happening here? Well, I think that we should pause to first reflect upon the fact that in a best-case scenario, this is a few days of relief and that no serious analyst thinks this is actually going to affect the price of diesel. So this is a big PR stunt, which is Trump's favorite thing. I'll give you $5,000. I'm going to sign all the checks in huge font. And I'm allegedly going to make it easier to be a trucker or a farmer in America. But none of those things are going to happen. The Republicans that are pushing back, they're the ones that you would largely expect. You have the strongly worded note from the seven senators. And it's like the Tom Tillices of the world. I'm sure Flindsay Graham were alive. He would be hopping mad and pushing back as well. The idea, though, which seems to be correct in that this bipartisan group of senators is pushing forward, say, Susan Collins is in there as well. Obviously in a tight race, is that it's legal to do this. And that because of the sanctions ban against buying Russian energy, it started in 2022 that you literally just can't do this. And I'll be interested to see if they get anywhere with this because there have been a lot of things that a few members of the Senate and the House have said, oh, you're not allowed to do that. Like you can't tear off people just because it's Tuesday. And you know, we can't take us into war and then keep us there without any sort of re-upping of congressional authorization. And Trump is basically just plowed through all of that and said, like, I don't give an F what you've got to say. This one might be so unpopular that they could get somewhere with it. And something that stuck out to me that I wanted to mention to you-- and I didn't know this before I started researching for the show-- that Putin actually just released Russia's 2027 budget. And there's a 27% increase for the military. And when Trump is out there saying, oh, this war's got to end, this is what everybody wants. It's Zelensky that's standing in the way of all of this. And you look at a 27% increase in the military budget from the Russians. Like, you've got to think these guys are going for as long as physically possible. And even perhaps beyond the bounds of what's physically possible considering the access of evil that they're involved. And they'll just keep importing people from other countries that don't care about their people, as little as the Russians do. So I thought that was interesting. And I hadn't seen that or known about the Russian budget. Yeah, so I'll bring this back to me. Right out of business class started a strategy firm, and we used to do scenario planning. We would take a board or a management team offside. And my job being angry and depressed as a function of my resting bitchface life was to come up with risks. Like, what are the risks to the business? There's risks, you know, the fun stuff is risks to the upside. How could we triple the market cap in five to seven years? And I would talk about risks to the downside and things you need to be mindful of. And typically the risks to the downside are things you never see coming, right? We didn't see two planes slamming into the World Trade Center. We didn't see a pandemic. The risks I see right now are a big risk we're not talking about is Russia's economy right now is unsustainable. It's rates are at 14% or GDP is shrinking. War spending is about 20% of the budget. I mean, that's just striking. And the thing about these dictators, the autocrats when they fall, almost no one's expecting it. No one thought Assad was going to fall. No one thought Gaddafi thought it's like how Mark Twain described going bankrupt slowly then suddenly. And if Putin, if there were to be a power struggle and Putin were to find a window on the ninth floor, we don't know what would happen there. This is a, this, this nation has the second most nukes. You don't know what hardliners would potentially take over. The potential for hummel at the top or an attempt to consolidate power and maybe use a tactical nude if all of a sudden what happens when Ukraine lights all a Moscow on fire? And Putin feels like he's losing his grip because there's no democratic election or I don't think there's a nice retirement home for him and Odessa and Paris. I think his, his losing power involves a window for him. So this, I think that is a fairly big risk. Also, as an October surprise, and it would be a good thing globally, but it would be weird for the election. I think there's a non-zero probability that before November the 3rd, something happens in Iran. I mean, the purchasing power of Iranians come from $320 a month to $80 a month. The sanctions are actually taking a really heavy toll on Iranian citizens. And while the IRGC is this kind of distributed octopus that grows new tentacles and one is cut off, I think we're underestimating the likelihood that that regime could fall. So there are just so many, so many risks back to your point about it just how symbolic this is is about the whole six-month deal amounts about nine days of US diesel. We are a diesel exporter where the largest producer in the world of diesel second to distance second is Russia. This whole deal is about one day of global demand. What this is is symbolic. This is us saying, or this is the president saying, I'm supporting Russia over, I'm supporting the invader as opposed to the nation and that is bravely fighting off an invader. It's ineffective, it's symbolic, but it is powerful in the sense that America is seen as giving comfort to our enemies and betraying our allies. Vladimir Putin for his sanctions relief. It's a huge puff up his chest moment, right? Where everyone is out there talking about what a bad guy he is. We're all like, all eyes on Mark Carney, this beacon of democracy and freedom and leadership and defending his people. And then Vladimir Putin's like, oh, your old friend, actually. like he's in my back pocket, not in yours. Everyone's talking about the prospect of a democratic wave in the midterm elections, but here's something that matters just as much. The battle to control state legislatures. That's the most important thing we should be focusing on right now. The GOP has a trifecta in 23 states, which means if they control the governor's seat, plus the statehouse and the state senate. For Democrats, it's 16 states. Meaning that the opportunity to pass the policies that the majority of our state supports things like increasing minimum wage, legalizing marijuana, codifying abortion. If Democrats flip just a handful of state legislatures, the majority of Americans will now live in the state under full democratic control, which could have big policy implications. That's all on the table with the democratic trifecta. This week on America actually, we're in Wisconsin and we talked to Francesca Hong. We have an opportunity through Wisconsin to actually start improving the brand for Democrats. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Support for the show comes from Quince. I think it was Flannery O'Connor who said a good shirt is hard to find. Pretty sure that was her, but feel free to double check. Quince also knows how hard it is to find high quality everyday wardrobe staples that won't break the bank. That's why they use premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and marino wool. But they also work directly with factories, so you're paying for high quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. 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Districtions apply. Individual results may vary. See HIMS.com for full details. So moving on, Ukrainian drone strikes over the past week have hit multiple data centers belonging to Russian internet giant Yandex, knocking them offline. After Cloud Flare showed a drop in Yandex botrific, this is my favorite story of the week because I feel like it's validation for my paranoia of elastereos, which doesn't mean I'm wrong. Some people suggested that the strikes cause a drop in Russian social media bot activity, including Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, and a European member of parliament whose tweet went viral. But experts responded that the loss traffic largely came from automated search crawlers, not criminal link disinformation bots. I'm going with the bots. Going up in the smoke. Troll farm operations were unaffected and experts wanted to suggesting otherwise could create a dangerous false sense of security ahead of the midterms. All of a sudden, the Alberta separatist site went dead. Yandex, Yandex go boom. Alberta separatist, a very divisive issue in a Western economy. They go dark. Anyways, any thoughts on this, Josh? Well, I think that's the point about how we need to make sure that we stay alert to what's going on is what's most important here, and that we don't want to be lulled into this false sense of security that maybe things are better online and that it's over. That it's over. And there are so many conflicting reports going back and forth. There are people with enormous accounts and huge amounts of influence people with great experience working in the region who have gotten this wrong and then issuing public apologies about it. So I think that we need to remain vigilant and know that we're dealing with an enormous amount of bad actors who would love to see us in complete chaos come election day and certainly in the aftermath when Trump mounts all of these various lawsuits. And I think that there are three or four more Yandex data centers that Zelensky could target after this, and it was a real shot across Putin's bow. I did not realize how many essential services are linked to Yandex. And so basically the banking system gone. So people can't access their money, having trouble withdrawing funds, making payments, carrying out transactions, the taxi drivers and couriers are all on this system as well. So stuff isn't moving around. Restoring these data centers, they're expecting it'll take six months or more. And there is an enormous amount of data that is just permanently lost. And I was reading about the implications for the crypto industry with that as well. Like when you have fake money. And then the information system gets blown up. You might not have access to that money anymore. So this is a really big deal. I was talking to a friend of mine who worked in Russia for a long time. I believe one day he'll admit it that he was also in our intelligence services while he was living over there. And he said, I cannot even begin to explain to you how much of Russian society runs on Yandex. And what a big deal it is that Zelensky went after them in this way. So those are my two cents. Yeah, imagine if Uber went down, I'll write a healing app sent down. And when you logged into Wells Fargo or B.O.A. or JPMorgan.com and it showed your account balances NA. I mean, this is a big deal. To your point, and it was, he references earlier and I hit to admit it, but you're right. Or I'll just say you're right. This is basically, you have a bad mailman and you got him fired. But the arsonist is still working. And the most dangerous thing in security is not a threat. It's false confidence that you don't believe the threat exists any longer. And you know, these troll farms would like nothing more than for us to believe that the that the war is over. I think this war comes to and if a key moment, there's a drone strike against Grindr's servers and Republicans are stressed and decide to actually fight this war and support Ukraine. I think taking out the Grindr's servers would be a real disruption to the GOP at this point. All right, let's move on. Can I mention something about Grindr? Go for it. No, not about. I haven't been on Grindr since I last saw you. So nothing to be there. You can use my account anytime. I mean, my kids use my Netflix, my co-hosts can use my Grindr account. But there was this other insane story about the hackers who hit France and forced the temperatures as a fridge and freezers and French supermarkets up to 122 degrees, causing fires and spoiling food. So this is one of the bigger cyber attacks that they've experienced. And I thought looking at both of these stories and the shutdown of Russian society or huge segments of it as a result of the strikes on Yandex, what these hackers are doing in France. And you're always saying this that warfare is changing faster than we can keep up with. And I don't know, I just found it really striking. A lot of disruption going on around us. All right, moving on to more fun stuff. Should we talk about Kimberly good foil? No, let's talk. No, it's the new press secretary. We have to talk about her. Okay, let's talk about her. You give us the rundown here, Jess. No, there's a clip. We've got to play this. She's so bad. Please. Play the clip. Katie Zachariah. This is going to make our day. Yeah, it is. Good morning. I want to thank President Trump for his trust that he has placed in me. I have wanted to work for him for a very long time, especially as we are in the middle of the midterm blitz with energy and excitement. Never seen before in the history of midterms thanks to President Trump. He is an energetic president. First of all, on Kimberly Gilquil, the Daily Mail has been reporting on her since last year. The President said yesterday to reporters that he is considering firing her. Do you know what timeline for that? We have asked Ambassador Gelfoyle to resign. She has been a wonderful asset to the team and we wish her well. Okay. - What? - I know. I was thinking about, you know, when you're at a wedding and like eight girlfriends get up to do a toast of like how amazing the bride is and how they had the best time that summer camp with her and it's just terrible. That's what this felt like to me. And she did like eight minutes and then she only took three questions, Fox, Breitbart and Daily Mail. So not spreading the ideological wealth around. She messed up so many times and I loved this. I was watching Stephanie Rule and she got a quote from an anonymous White House official so they could say something. And they said getting behind the podium is tough but she got off on the wrong foot. She needs to get much better fast. Otherwise she'll break scared Mochie's record. - Yeah. I thought this is a real task to fail to overconfidence 'cause she doesn't seem very. I feel as if we took the 11th grade debate team coach and said, oh, you're a Republican and you have blonde hair and attractive. She makes, yeah. She makes Sean Spicer seem like, you know, I don't know, name a great press secretary. Who goes down in the annals is the best press secretary? - Who does go down in the annals is the best press secretary? - I think they just go down as if you're confident you can get out of that. You basically get out there. And your job is to put Vaseline over the lens of every mistake that your president makes, right? In this instance, it's the only job where your boss is also your loudest competitor. She's not the spoke, I mean, she's really not the spokesperson. And the average tenure here is about what it is for the free trial on Netflix. She needs to understand pretty quickly the difference between misleading and actionable. You know, Levitt left to spend more time with her kids. You know, the joke is that Zacharias taking the job to spend less time with the truth, right? And this is becoming incrementally more and more comical. You looked at the press core like, okay, let's just go with that. I mean, at this point, why not? Like, I'm pretty sure they're going to start serving high balls and doing, you know, sake bombs. It just, it feels like the whole thing's got in a little, unserious deeply. And I think she's an interim pick where they'll like figure out what to do based on the midterm results. I, it is a big deal that she said that they've asked Kimberly Gilfoyle to resign. She was facing a whole host of allegations, you know, accepting lavish gifts, political connections for private business interests, which is just regular fare for the administration. She apparently asked this Trump donor to pay off her AMX bill in exchange for access. And there are daily meals been publishing text messages of hers about Don Juniors. Now wife, this was when she was just her girlfriend 'cause Kimberly obviously got dumped for this other woman. And I think they thought the safest thing to do would be to plant her in Greece. But I guess she's gone too far. It does continue the trend though that only women have to leave. That you have all of these incompetent men that are self-dealing and they just get to hang around. So women's rates. - Well, I don't see, I would push back. I think that all the men, I would say all the male ambassadors need to get 100K equal pay, just equal pay. That they need their own donor to pay their AMX bills. - All right, so on to something ghoulish. Trump is having second thoughts about live streaming the execution of the Fort Hood shooter Nadal Hassan who killed 13 people in 2009. Defense Secretary Pete Hexet proposed broadcasting the farming squad execution publicly, arguing it would serve as a warning to others. The idea has drawn by partisan backlash and Trump is now privately expressing doubts about whether it should happen. Jess, do you think he goes through with this? - I don't. No, I think there are too many signals from important people like JD Vans, like Mike Johnson, that they are casting doubt on it and that they wouldn't be tuning in to think that this is going to happen. And I also don't think that it's actually in Trump's nature to want to watch this, frankly. And the reporting is, is that Pete Hexet surprised everyone, which doesn't surprise me that he picked one of the more ghoulish things that you could suggest and didn't run it by anyone, you know, even people within the army and the Pentagon didn't know. And there are questions around also, the unit that's been selected to carry it out and their identities. And if they can say no, right, like of a soldier, she's just be like, I actually, I don't want to be involved in the live streaming of an execution of a paraplegic. Like could we do it? I know we've had trouble with lethal injection just in the last week. I don't, I think there are many people, you know, I'm not a death penalty person. I think that if, you know, one person is put to death who didn't deserve it and we have records of that happening, then it invalidates the entire system, you know, just not an eye for an eye kind of girl either. But if there was someone who I would nominate for deserving to die for what they did, I would put this guy on the list. So I understand that. But if you want to do a firing squad, I struggle with even talking about this, but like I can wrap my head around it, like do it in private, we're just, we don't do things like this in the United States or not since 1961. Yeah, it's, obviously it brings up a larger conversation around the death penalty in general. And I was actually, I don't always say pro-capital punishment, but it was fine with it when you hear about the crimes of some of these people commit they do. And you, I think you could argue they deserve to die. And then the one photo, the one image, imagery is just so powerful. One photo can literally just change everything for you. There's this fairly famous photo of, he's not a man, he's a boy, a black boy, but they decided to electrocute the kid. And there's pictures of this boy being led to his execution. And the reality is our government has periods where it just gets it wrong. And so state-sponsored execution should just not be a thing. And we can have an argument or discussion over that, but an easy one, a layup of any sort of morality or just from a defensive standpoint, trying to maintain some motorcoming of being the good guys around the world, we should just not join Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea as a nation that livestreams public executions. The last public execution was in Pennsylvania in 1834. It drew about 20,000 people. And so we didn't stop because we went soft. We stopped because they turned into carnivals with vendors, crowds and drunkenness. And the spectacle itself began to swallow justice and just reflect so poorly on our populace. And also his basic notion that it's a deterrent, there's nothing to support that. The National Research Council in 2012 concluded that capital punishment is not a deterrent. And there's just no evidence that it's a deterrent. And this isn't about deterrents, it's about content. We'd be turning state power into a vile streaming event. And so I like you believe Hassan deserves whatever the law hands him. America doesn't deserve to become the kind of country that monetizes or in some sort of weird, really weird. Like I've taken way too much peptides into testosterone and have turned it, ruin my judgment. I've completed leadership with violence. So fortunately, my prediction here is this is not gonna happen. Trump will not bring this up and he'll just he'll distract us with something else and it's just not gonna, it's just not gonna, it's just not gonna happen. But it's such a, it's such a gross thing that this is where we are, that we would even, that a cabinet member would suggest livestreaming a public execution. It's just shocking to me how far we have fallen and what people distinctive what you think about the death penalty livestreaming it or not. I heard actually what I thought the best argument for livestreaming it was, if you're gonna be comfortable with a death penalty, then you should be comfortable livestreaming it. I think that is a real, but I think that's a little, there's some legitimacy to that. I'm not comfortable with the death penalty, but it's just stupid. The two most powerful aircraft carrier squadrons for the United States are one of the US dollar. Everybody settles in dollars, which means we see the flow of power, our sanctions have power. People have to flow through us and two, our reputation abroad. 98% of the world will never come to America. So whether they help aid in about terror cells, decide to send their kids to PhD programs in the United States by our products, watch our TV and our media with men and tights and capes, it's all dependent upon the Sentendable Association that is brand America. And something like this just says, oh, they're not the good guys. These are not good people. I'm going to buy a European or a Chinese product and all of those. The. those mean people who are, from what I understand, taking pilots lessons such that they can infiltrate the West and create an act of terrorism, you know, I'm just going to keep that to myself. I'm not going to form the US Embassy. This is a stupid, it is not only immoral, it's just bottom line strategically very stupid. I mean, I'm in complete agreement and the barbaric nature of it, that it was even considered and floated by our secretary of defense, it does and ripples across the globe. And people spot us and say, like, oh, no, they got someone, you know, high up there that is into this sort of thing, which I think is meaningful. And then there's a larger electoral point. And I was talking about this yesterday on the five. You look at how Democrats are closing this election. We have 19 days to go. They're talking about your grocery bills, they're talking about getting you decent health care, they're talking about protecting small businesses, human dignity, raising the minimum wage, protecting, you know, women's rights, like very normal, run-to-the-mill stuff that actually affects people's lives when they sit down, you know, at the kitchen table and they're talking about their lives, those topics are going to come up. And then Republicans are closing on, let's live stream executions. And I'm going to pay you $5,000 to vote for us because I have nothing else to say. There is no record or there's no decent record to be able to even run on. And I think the priorities of the parties could not be made more clear and the contrast could not be starker than between talking about getting you universal health care and live streaming a public execution of a paraplegic. That's it. And that is a contrast. I hate to say it and I'm bed wetting as well, but going into an election, I feel good about that. And I feel good about the political party that I am a member of, that we don't have people that are thinking like that, talking like that, or that we certainly would never elevate to a position of power where they could actually think on December 3rd. We're going to be doing that. I'm Seth Matlinz and on this week's episode of Creator Destroy Reimagining Marketing, I'm talking with streetwear legend Jeff Staples, who in 2005 designed a Nike collab which was the pigeon dunk that caused a riot, resells for thousands of dollars 21 years later and gets the credit or blame for bringing sneaker culture to the masses. In our conversation, we talk about why you can't buy your way into culture no matter how big your check by 40 hours of meetings a week, with none of them talking about what the customer actually wants is the most common way he sees businesses destroy value. And why, when I asked him what he'd destroy with all the power in the world, Jeff said likes and comments because if likes and comments existed when he started, he never would have made the next thing. Creator Destroy, it's a business show, a marketing show, and the show that argues they've always been the same thing. From The Wisdom is Company and The Fox Media Podcast Network. Support for the show comes from Quo. Think about the last time you called a business and nobody picked up. What did you do? You called the next one. Your customers do the exact same thing. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O. The business phone system built so you never miss a call. All your texts, calls, and voicemails live in one place so anyone on your team can pick up the conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. Quo was trusted by over 90,000 businesses who rely on it to stay reachable and look professional every day. Set up takes minutes, you can keep your existing number, and add teammates as you grow. Quo's optional built-in AI agent handles after hours calls, answers questions, and even books appointments. That way, you never miss a lead even when your team is offline. Quo integrates with the tools your team already uses, such as HubSpot, Zapier, Claude, and more. Save time, say organized, and spend less time chasing information between systems. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to Quo.com/moderates. SpelledQ-U-O.com/moderates. What if we told you there was one thing you could eat to reduce your risk of death by about a quarter? Interested? And what if we added that this magical substance can dramatically lower your cholesterol, improve your mood, and keep your weight stable? No, it's not protein. It's actually fiber. Belie-sexy, most overlooked nutrient of all. But what is fiber? How could one nutrient do all those amazing things? And how can you get enough? Is a powder you stir into some water going to do it for you? All that plus the strange tail of the Gorilla Poop Obsessed, Father of Cornelikes, in the latest episode of Gastropod. Find Gastropod and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, speaking of people who are near death, Senator Chuck Grassley has filed his paperwork with the FEC to run for re-election in 2028. The Senator is currently 93. Okay. I have a few thoughts here. Let's have them. So if he wins, he'd be about 101 at the end of the term in January 2035. In the prime of his life. Yeah. He'd be, as President Pro Tem, he's the third in line to the presidency. We've built. Okay. So the U.S. is the most powerful country and staff, the cockpit, like a retirement community. We've got a B2 bomber that's being run by the Golden Girls plus 40 years. The median age of people writing the rules keeps rising while the median age of the people living under them stays the same. The average age of American is 38. And gerontocracy and my ageism isn't about their ability, although their ability is substantially impaired. It's about whose future gets priced into the laws that survive for decades. Who are we planning for? Who are we shaping our society around? Your 401K has a target date fund. You've got to pull it out by 59.5. You've got to start spending your money. If you are in the military, not allowed to command soldiers, if you're in a pilot, you're not allowed to fly a plane. If you're a surgeon at some point, they take the scalpel away. As should the Senate. This isn't a party problem. It's an encompassy problem. And the encompassy income inequality, the construct of income inequality, begins with a constant regulatory capture by the incumbents to capture and usurp power and money and leverage from the entrance. And that's what happens here. When, because of Citizens United, the incumbents have all the power. What do you end up with? You end up with skyrocketing education costs because the incumbents, the people who have degrees like the idea of not making the investments or opening up your freshman class, that's that entrance could have a shot at the same economic elevator you had. It ends up taking housing costs way up because we took housing permits out of the hands of bureaucrats and put them into the hands of old homeowners who like the idea of having less traffic and fewer homes, such as the value of their home goes up. We end up letting $120 billion cost of living adjustment for Social Security fly through Congress, whereas the $40 billion child tax credit, which would cut child poverty by 50% gets taken out of the infrastructure bill because who votes and who is willing to listen to these people, the land of the dead and the golden girls being elected by people over the age of 65. We have a group of old people voting themselves more money and constantly taking power and opportunity from the entrance. And it starts with this. It starts with a basic sanity check around term limits about a recognition, the cognitive decline, the first victim of cognitive decline is your own ability to recognize your own cognitive decline. These people claim they're serving America. They out themselves as having no fucking fidelity whatsoever to the nation only to their own relevance and a belief that if I leave, I'm going to die. Yeah. That's the point boss. Go home. Go home. It's time. You no longer have the skills. You are bad for America. You no longer represent America. Your judgment is impaired and in a minimum just operationally, there is about a 80% chance between now and the end of the term, you are going to have to miss votes. You are going to put tremendous stress on your staff. You are going to delay Congress. You are going to mean that your state is not represented. It is going to mean that on key votes, we're trying to create this optical, weakened bernies for some dignity and absolutely makes the whole fucking institution. Trust in institutions, the erosion results in measles. It results in depraved behavior when one president can overrun our institutions. And part of the reason our institutions have lost so much credibility is they're filled with people who have no sense of self. This is an enormous brand erosion and brand hit for the US Senate and Chuck Grassley. Senator Grassley is about to go down. He's had a distinguished career. He is a fine public servant. And he's about to go down again, like Feinstein, a Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Biden and Trump is someone whose own ego, own lack of self-awareness, came well ahead of any concern for American citizens. I mean, you said a lot of my thoughts. I just, I don't know how it can be allowed. Like I get that we don't have a term. limits rule, but it does feel like this is a moment where your caucus says to you, we gotta go in a different direction. He had this whole, and it was quite funny, this thing that he did with his vacuum cleaner, and the vacuum cleaner is gone now. And I think Chuck Grassley should also be gone from the Senate. Maybe he's too afraid though that a Democrat would win his seat because I was turning. That's the only thing I can come up with. And the insane selfishness, don't you want to be with your wife and your grandkids and like great-grandkids? You must have great-grandkids now. It's very bad. Yeah, fucking 93-year-olds are out of touch. They're out of touch. They're not creative. They don't understand technology. They don't have new ideas. I do want to talk about one last story because it's from one of my favorite writers, and that is Derek Thompson. He has his own sub-stack now, formerly of the Atlantic. His total Benjamin Button. The guy has aging in reverse. He looks 14. Pretty soon he's going to have a big wheel. He has a new article out, basically saying that America isn't doing so well. We know the marriage rates and birth rates have been falling, but what about falling in love rates, some stats? The share of 40-year-olds who have never been married has quadrupled since 1980. Half of men age 24 to 35 without college degrees are single compared with 31% of college educated men. Among women, there's almost no comparable education gap, and also the popularity of dating apps is even falling. Any thoughts here, Jess? Confumbs me out. Being in love is one of the most incredible experiences that you can have in your life, and doesn't mean you have to be in love with the forever person. Some of people's best relationships are ones that have a deadline on them, or there's a finite period of time that you spent with X-person, but you just, you lived so fully, and you adventure together, and you fought and made up, and just loved. I hate that people aren't taking that plunge, and there's a bit of conflation in the data between, you know, like there's love, and then there's also marriage rates which don't necessarily have to be the same. A lot of people, you know, are in relationships where or have been in loving relationships with don't end up getting to the altar, but I think that this is a bad trend line for all of us, and I don't belone the loss of the dating apps necessarily, because I do think that people, it actually encouraged a lot of folks not to end up in relationship, because you're just sitting around swiping all the time, or you go on a couple dates with this person, but there was always this thought that there was someone around the corner better, perhaps. And it let you also sit in your apartment, or wherever you're living, and just text for weeks, months, years, whatever it is, versus getting out there, and actually touching grass, and touching each other appropriately. I don't like it, and it's not a good trend when you think about population growth, and also just happiness. You know, it has to be a good relationship or a good marriage, but it is directly correlated to prosperity and happiness, which are two things that I think we should all be hunting. Yeah, I find this an absolute punch in the gut. If you look at how we separated from the hominids and became the apex predator, it was through our ability to communicate and cooperate, and the most accretive move you to make in your life. And unfortunately, I don't think the bar should be being in love. I think it should be a decision to partner with somebody. And by the way, you might partner with your sister and decide to raise your kids together. You might partner with your brother on a business, but to be irrationally passionate about someone's well-being, and that it's not that the relationship is a transaction, but it's an opportunity to be better to them, even when they're not as good to you. I think that is the healthiest, most productive thing anyone can decide in society, and whether it's people who decide to overdose on opiates, take their own life, the homeless. It's people who don't have anyone looking after them. It's people who don't. There's no one to call. I've been looking into the homeless issue a little bit, and I used to think that it was veterans. Veterans are only 4% of the homeless. The HUD has done a really good job, as is veteran affairs, ensuring that veterans have homes. The homeless, generally speaking, are people who have no one. They haven't attached anybody. They don't have families who's irrationally passionate about them. They don't have a sibling. They don't have a boyfriend, a girlfriend. They're alone. It really is. I do believe the government programs that the answer is in each other, and while having kids is wonderful, I don't think you need to have kids to be happy. I think romantic love and sexual experiences are really important, but the basis of all of it is just a decision to invest in some sort of partnership in your life, and what I mean, to share half of non-collegiate men 24 to 35 are single versus 31% of college. Something we don't talk about openly because it's sexist, and I believe the sexes are different. This is an economic story disguised as a romance story. Women sort for men with trajectory, and we've stopped giving men non-college men a trajectory or a path, which makes them irrelevant and invisible in the mating market. Basically, the top 10% of men, it's the stock market. The top 10%, we had monetized and financialized everything. The top 10% of men are bit up like Nvidia, and everyone else trades like a penny stock. A man without a relationship is a man with no reason to show up. Unattached, young man are the most dangerous cohort in any society. More prone to violence, extremism, and despair. The wrinkle there is that they're more prone to violence against themselves than anybody else. People want to portray them on TikTok as predators in the most dangerous person in the world. If you decide to go on a date with a man, just keep in mind, he's 16 times more likely to go home after the date and hurt himself than hurt you. Also, I don't think there's a lifestyle trend. I think it's a national security issue. We don't have a loneliness problem. We have a relevance problem for young men. Loneliness is the symptom. We need apprenticeships, national service, vocational pathways, third spaces, tax policy that restores money from fucking Chuck Grassley to AOC and people of her generation. Young men need an economic trajectory in a path because at the end of the day, 75% of women say economic viability is key for a man, only 25% of women. Without a partner, I think of it as dads. I've been thinking everything through the lens of stop talking about politics and the media and higher ed. It's like, okay, dad. You got to get your kids out of the house. You got to get them comfortable with meeting people. You got to find leagues for them. You got to encourage them to meet people. You got to let them get into a little bit of trouble. Basically, get out of the house, join a gang. If you get arrested, don't add to the population. Don't subtract from it. If you get arrested and are in jail, establish dominance early and I kind of only have joking, the answers in each other and we need more religious institution, more leagues, national service, more third spaces. After schooling, I would like to see childcare where kids spend more time together, but we're mammals. If you want to see what happens to our society, just leave a Belgian mall and wall or a dog alone for a day. That is literally what happens to our society. The mammal alone starts tearing it's society, it starts getting aggressive and when it does run across other mammals, it becomes violent. I think this is the issue of our times. I want to end on a more positive note in that as I do think there are things we can do, but at the end of the day, I do think the answer is in each other. Any thoughts before we close out? No, I love that. The answers seem each other. Let's leave it there, Jess. Have a good rest of the week. You too? [Music]