Collect Them All!

Hello everyone. This is JVL here with my best friends Sarah Longwell Publisher of The Bulwark. Sarah, I am super happy today, Friday, December sixteenth because late late last night, the snow turned to rain, and I woke up and I didn’t have to shovel this morning.

You know, this is you because you now live in, like, what, the upper northern peninsula of New Jersey. Just and also for our listeners just so you know, what JBL does now all the time is just tweet me pictures of things that they’re doing and say, like, it’s great to be a New Yorker. Great to meet New Yorker. Just and I he’s from he lives in New Jersey. Did

you get my did you get my picture on Wednesday? Did you get my picture on Wednesday?

I get all your pictures. Oh,

because you don’t respond to them. I was just in the city as one does on a school night to see Hades town with my two oldest children.

Did you see Haiti’s town? Was it good?

I it’s so good that I went to see Haiti’s town twice in a week. So I I saw last Wednesday night Shannon took me and I loved it so much. I wanted to take a favorite and flash. And so I picked up tickets. And I you know, you know, less So we’re sitting in the theater and she, you know, she’s twelve years old and she has like, we’re we’re having an intermission this very sophisticated discussion about the show because she is she is catching what’s going on in the show at every single level.

You know, like at all of the the the idea of circularity and etcetera and I just leaned over and I said, you know, you’re the most extraordinary kid I’ve ever met. And she goes, dad, he’s right there.

She’s correct.

Because flash is only the area he’s like, oh, that evil noblazada is so hot. Like, yes, yes, the Noblesada is very hot. But, you know, he’s experiencing the show at a different level than the new favorite and IR. Anyway, it’s amazing. And I am I I am one hundred percent going to take you to this show.

When you just tell me when you’re gonna be up here, and I will move

to New Jersey. I never come to New Jersey. I will move to what’s happening. Okay.

Yeah. It’s it’s amazing. Or or if you guys could wrangle a babysitter, we could double date you, me, Shannon, Karen.

Which

If you guys had got to do a weekend in New York.

That would be great. Yeah.

Okay. So

A

bunch of things. On the show last night, we talked about the Trump NFTs. I would like to buy one. Mhmm. Get I feel like I could put it next to my Jared Polis NFT in my NFT collection.

Do

you have an NFT collection? Uh-huh. What’s a Jared Polis NFT?

I I so Jared Polis as a stunt, as a fundraising stunt, sold NFTs. I think they were thirty five bucks or something. I mean, incredibly ridiculous. And I bought one purely to trolled Tim. So I could send Tim pictures of my Jared pull us any NFT because Tim is a Polish stan.

And anyway, and so I feel like maybe I ought to have, you know, the Malaga god king NFT as well. And I can do it without giving him money. I can buy it on the secondary market. And so this way, he would not be getting my money. Thing.

That’s that’s for another decision. Twitter last night.

Wait. Ugh.

We’re not gonna give you any NFTs at all. We could talk about a little bit short. Just what are your thoughts?

Okay. So here’s my main Did you watch the video that accompanied it?

No. So I I spent a lot of time on the website last night, and let me tell you that thing does not work very well. Oh,

really? Because it looks good.

Oh, it does.

It looks good if you’re selling marvel, like, cards. Like, it whatever, then you should go watch the video. People, if you have not, watch it because he goes, hello. It’s your favorite president. Better than Lincoln and Washington.

And it’s so I was doing Chris Hayes last night, and this was like he opened with this. And something he said that actually I thought was a good point, was he was like, you know, this actually feels right. Like, it feels like the earth is healing itself because Donald Trump is selling schlotchy, you know, things that go by the way, directly into his bank account. It is not a fundraiser for his campaign. It is direct.

And and the reason I wanted to talk about it even though it’s been sort litigated. Everybody knows it’s stupid. This is a couple of things in the video. One of them is, he said, these are limited. There’s only some.

And I was

just curious. I

was just curious. Mhmm. If you create an a a a a thing on the Internet —

Mhmm. —

is it that limitless? Like, how

Oh oh, these are on the Polygon network blockchain, and so these are very, very limited. Look, he’s already sold ten thousand of them.

Is that true?

Yeah.

So ten thousand times ninety nine dollars is how much money?

A hundred thousand. No. A hundred thousand dollars. Right? Well,

that’s not very good.

No. That’s wrong. That’s wrong. It’s

amazing. My phone. It’s amazing.

Okay. Uh-huh. Sometimes times ten thousand. Yeah. There are ten thousand of them for sale on Open Sea right now, which suggests

Meaning that people that’s for the secondary market, so people have already got the thousand to sell on the secondary market.

Yes. So, you know, why somebody who is worth many billions of dollars needs a million bucks in walking around money? Who can say. But they are they they have rarity. Some of them are much more rare than others, Sarah.

I’m sure that’s true. I don’t really understand blockchain or NFTs, but I can tell but I do understand this. Donald Trump does not look like a person who wants to be president. Like, this that that doing that felt Okay. So first, I oh, here’s the other thing.

Reason I wanna talk about it. So he does this thing, right, where he says on big or no, he doesn’t say on Twitter. He says

it on — Truth.

— truth social. He drooped that, you know, a big announcement was kinda major announcement. And so, like, Mago World is like, what’s he gonna say? And I gotta admit, I went god. I wonder if he’s gonna endorse Elyse Stefonic for speaker or like somebody other than McCarthy.

Like, is he gonna like, I thought it was gonna be an actual political thing. And the entire political press obviously stood to attention when he said this. And then it was NFT Internet trading cards of him looking a hundred pounds slimmer than he is. Hawking things that don’t even go to his campaign but go to him directly. And I was like, how many of these does he get?

Right? Like, the predicament that the political press is in, he is a declared candidate for president. You have to take seriously because he was just the president. And everybody knows he he has proven over time that, like, to discount him or mock him or assume that the on serious stuntting hurt him with voters. That’s not that’s not what happens.

And yet, It just doesn’t and, yeah, like, I don’t look, I haven’t heard in the focus groups that I’ve been doing and I’ve been doing a lot, and I wanna talk about to Santos too, you know, people are not that pumped about Trump, round two. And but it’s not because he had dinner with anti Sempites, and it’s not because he’s releasing these cards. But it is that whole sort of Is this an era of desperation? Is it It’s just sort of pathetic now? It doesn’t feel real?

But I watched I looked at that thing yesterday, and I was like, the political press can’t go in on all of these. Now, like, he only gets a few boy who cried wolf. And if

teammates This is his this is his modus operandi, though. Like any time he teases a major announcement, it’s never important. The important stuff is always the off the cuff BS. Like, you know, you just tweet. So I just fired Mc Mulvaney, you know, or something like that.

Right. That’s the the or the I’m going to meet with Kim Jong il. With Kim Jong il. Yeah. Yeah.

It’s it’s always out of nowhere. Well, anything that he says is a major announcement, It’s very wrestling. This is very how, like, Vince McMahon would do things. Here’s the thing. He doesn’t want to be president.

But he sure his shit doesn’t want anybody else in the Republican side of the field to be president either.

Yeah.

Right. Because because that means somebody else is more famous than him. Yeah. And he can handle a terrible Democrat being more famous than him? I mean, to Joe Biden isn’t more famous than him, but, you know, he he’s okay with, like, some some mopey, commie, Marxist socialist.

Being president, but he does not want some other Republican to suddenly supplant him. As as a fetish object. And I I think that’s a pretty powerful motivator. But also he doesn’t seem willing to do the work. Right?

I mean, he’s — Right. — he’s just sitting at home.

Right?

He’s not campaigning. He’s not

Cold rally. Show people that you can still fill a stadium. Do you think he thinks he can’t fill a stadium? Like, what is going on

here? I think he probably worries about that. And I think he worries about, like, who would he get to come in? Appear with him right now because a lot of people are, you know, inching away and maybe March wouldn’t do it. Maybe, what do you ought to do, honestly?

Is you ought to bring Mike Kevin to a rally with him? And put and and so that if McCarthy gets over the top for speaker, he can then claim credit for that. I

don’t know, though, that’s pretty risky.

It is reasonably risky. Yes.

I’m not sure he can take another brand hit like that if it doesn’t happen.

Yeah.

Trump’s apparently been calling people the holdouts like Gates and those guys to whip for McCarthy, and they’re saying, no.

Gates member Gates didn’t show up to the announcement, the campaign announcement. Yeah. Oh, there’s rain. I don’t know if my plane is gonna be able to take off from Washington and I’ll be there in spirit. Yeah.

It’s a it sure is interesting. But again, it’s the the drive and the vigor, which I think worries me the most if I am in Trump world. Right. And I’m in Trump world. It looks like a guy who is it feels like the late fat elvis stage in Vegas where they basically have to drag him on stage.

Oh, you should see this is you should be on Twitter. I’m gonna steal that. Late stage Elvis is a great comparison. Mhmm.

Thank you. Thank you. Enjoy that on Twitter. Maybe I’ll maybe I’ll put it on post dot news. Do you

wanna talk about Twitter? I know that’s where your heart is.

No. No. I wanna I wanna I wanna hear your just Santa stuff first, though.

Well, so I’m I’ve been so number one, I I don’t have my my focus. I ended the focus group pod for the year. But I kept doing focus groups because I’m, like, desperate.

You are junky. And

such a junky. I can’t I can’t let it go. It’s like keeps saying to Megan. Just

doing it for fun.

I’m like, Megan. We need

to do it on the ball. We’re just, like, grab six people in the food court and say, hey, God. Which if I gave you twenty bucks, would you just come over here corner by Cineplex, and let me talk to you for five minutes.

I’m so bad at parties now. I’m always just like, yes. Could I get five of you to stand here? What what who did you all want to run the primaries in twenty sixteen? Oh, you’re a casing voter.

Okay. So who did you call in? Like, I mean, I’m

I’m I’m

a nightmare. Mhmm. But anyway, so I so I so we’ve we’ve been we’ve quickly been pulling together just like straight Trump voters, twenty sixteen Trump voters, twenty twenty Trump voters. And so two time Trump voters. But you know, what I really need to do is start to segment them by people who view Trump very favorably right now and people who view him, you know, with varying degrees.

Of favorability. Because it’s hard one of the things I don’t think anybody’s got their head around.

So

we’re seeing some of these head to head. So Wall Street Journal had a whole bunch of polls have been coming out that are showing desantis. We talked about this in the next level a little bit. They’re showing desantis with a lot of strength on Trump. And that’s fine.

They’re all over the place though, and I don’t think they’re particularly good polls exactly. The Wall Street Journal one is. But just so Trump is at his lowest level of approval, basically, since twenty fifteen. Like, he is at a very low level of approval. And normally when he’s at a super, like well, when he goes away, right, his approval goes up, and that is, like, bearing out right now.

But his approval is at a very low level. And so people are interested in these alternatives and talking to these Trump voters and the focus groups, they’re like not that excited. Like, there is one there was one guy in one who was excited about Trump twenty twenty four. There were two in another group who were excited by Trump twenty twenty four. And the arrests were like, no.

I don’t want somebody new. And they throw out DeSantis.

And

this is the thing I want to talk about. They throw out DeSantis, but like, their relationship to DeSantis is incredibly shallow. First of all, a lot of them call him DeSantis. And so, like, they’ve heard of him. He is a name that they know.

He’s got, like, this and and a lot of times in the groups too, like, someone knows his name. So someone’s, like, I like the same extent. Other people are like, oh yeah, that guy. And or some people are like, I haven’t heard of him. Still, because he’s still just he’s still a governor from Florida.

If you’re not, in the right wing ecosphere, but, like, you’re you are you’ve always sort of always overhugging. Like, you don’t have that not necessarily that plugged in. And so what I think is interesting as a dynamic. And I tweeted this and all the DeSantis anti anti has yelled at me again. Every time I say something like this, But I was saying one of those protective pressures.

Yeah. You gotta protect the pressures. But somebody in the group said a funny line. I’ve heard a lot of, like, Trump without the baggage, Trump without the brains or sorry, Trump with brains, but somebody said he’s Trump not on steroids. Which I thought was a funny formulation.

And so I had tweeted that. But I also said, like, one of these that’s interesting to me is the way that And this is everybody in the focus groups talks about DeSantis as a calibration on Trump, like as a variation on Trump. Right? So if he’s Trump but without the baggage. He’s Trump with the brains.

He’s Trump not on steroids. Right? So he is a he’s a flavor of Trump that they see as like ten percent more electable or fifteen percent more electable, which is their central concern about Trump. But I was trying to explain this last night on TV and it’s hard to unpack at all in such a short period of time. But, like, sometimes people will be like, the Republican party is breaking with Trump, and I’m like, no, it isn’t.

These guys do not in the grid. They’re not excited about the Trump run, but nobody’s like, oh, he had dinner with white supremacists. I mad at him or The January sixth committee really blew him up or he’s about to get indicted on three different fronts. And so I don’t like it anymore. That’s not it.

They like him, but they’re worried he’s unelectable. And so they like DeSantis in a very shallow way as like a one standard deviation less crazy than Trump. And they think that one standard deviation makes him electable. And that is their relationship to DeSantis right now. And frankly, that’s the relationship that, like, the anti anti natural view crowd has.

Like, they have realized that the things that they have fought for their entire careers, limited government free markets, American leadership in the world, not what voters are interested in. And so what they like is they’re like, okay. Well, I can’t defend this strongly.

Yeah. I’m sorry. That’s that’s incorrect. Democratic voters are interested in all those things now. Right.

This is the policy. That’s right. The democratic voters are interested in not limited government, but but good functioning government. They’re in robust America place in the world. They’re interested in free markets.

And in natural view, and those those I don’t mean to single out national view, but that that part of the world finds going for semi authoritarian anti free market isolationist Republicans a more palatable switch than voting for a Democratic candidate.

Yeah. That’s right. That’s that’s exactly right. And I’ve never understood that. But and, like, I mean, you know, what they seem to say to still like, here’s a basic one.

Right? So right now, for people like me, one of the things Biden has done incredibly well and that I’m so glad he’s president, is the way that he’s handled Ukraine. And, like, that matters to me. I don’t think it I’m not sure it matters, but, like, we’ve watched the Republican Party go from being very supportive of Ukraine. I remember doing focus groups.

I remember the time saying, this isn’t gonna stick. But this is what they’re saying, which is like they were like, I will tolerate higher gas prices if it means sticking it to Russia. And, you know, now six months later, it’s basically like, you know, I don’t think we should be sending money over there, fifty percent of Republicans. But, like, Rod DeSantis probably would support Ukraine. You don’t think so?

I don’t think so. I think he will see exactly He he can’t be to the Trump’s left. Trump’s left.

Yeah.

Right. Interesting. And he can’t be to Trump’s left. I mean,

if he was governing,

If he was president? Yeah. I think it would depend on where Republican voters were. Honestly. And if the look, if the if the, you know, industrial entertainment, political entertainment complex, is anti Ukraine.

I think he’d have to be where they are. Yeah. Because not a leader. It’s a fault. I mean, he just he sees where the memeing is and then just jumps over to that stuff.

Just side note, speaking of which, if you haven’t watched, there’s a clip, the Republican accountability project, put it out of Steve Bannon, watching the Trump commercial on the NFTs. Steve Bannon and his guest going. And they’re like, I can’t watch this. Like, turn it off. Like, this is awful.

And it’s really funny. And it’s funny to watch them start to their It’s

the n f t’s that made them finally realize. The interaction they can live with Charlottesville, fine, mismanagement of the pandemic, whatever.

Will Trump’s a bad gravy train for them if this is how he behaves? Right? Because number one, he made them all look like jerks because they all got super amped about his major announcement. Right. And turned out to be the NFTs.

So that was bad for them. But also, like, Trump’s just making money for himself doing shawky things. That doesn’t give them content to work with. It doesn’t give them fodder for their audience. Like, he’s not their big avatar punching back on the left or whatever.

And, like, that’s bad for business for them. Like, Trump the relationship of Trump is that he’s a like, being in Trump world gives you a cachet and you can monetize it and, like, they can’t. Yeah.

He’s he’s not fighting the people. He’s not hurting the people he’s supposed to be hurting.

That’s right. He’s not. Yeah. The Okay. Sorry.

I didn’t mean to pull us off topic.

No. No. That’s that’s that’s all to the good. DeSantis. Yeah.

Oh, but can I sorry. This is my last point, which

is

I I argued something on Twitter, and this is one of the things they are mad about, which I was like, you know, if Trump just collapses entirely. Right? Like, if if after this entity, like, he just doesn’t even he’s not even wanting to do it. He’s really and, like, we don’t know yet what I think the percent. We know he’s got a committed base, but like, what percentage is that?

I’m not sure we know. Now. I think a lot of times people estimated at thirty or forty percent of the Republican Party. I’m not sure it’s that big right now. And I think we need to, like, dig into that question because that is that’s a key part of the math going into twenty twenty four.

Because one of the things Lee Drummond had a piece yesterday that was really good and it’s something that us on the sort of strategist side I’ve been talking about, which is the Republican primaries right now, are either winner take all or winner take most right now, which means if you have a few people in the primary, it’s not just one on one, you have a few people. As long as Trump’s getting thirty, forty percent, that’s probably enough for him to win the whole state. Right? They don’t, most of them are proportional. A few of their early states, very early states are.

Like New Hampshire, but like super Tuesday, which is by the way, it’s March fifth twenty twenty four. March fifth twenty twenty four Super Tuesday. It’s when the bulk of states are gonna vote. Big states, Texas, California, and the Republican primary there, winner take all, massive delegates. And now that will be the time.

Right? If there’s not consolidation by then. But but again, but let’s say that Trump so right now, we all assume he’s got this thirty, forty percent. Let’s say he doesn’t. Like, let’s say he totally collapses.

He’s selling NFT’s. A bunch of people get in. Scott gets in. Nikki Haley gets in. Rod Santa gets in.

Glen Youngkin gets in. Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, you

know. Chris Christie.

Chris Christie. Right? We’ve got this. Chris Chanutu, by the way. Me at some point about Chris Nino.

Let’s say they all get in. And Trump’s like collapsing.

But he’s at twenty seven percent?

Well, no. No. No. Well, let’s well, let’s say he’s at fifteen percent. Okay?

K? What’s interesting to me about that? And the reason the anti anti aren’t mad at this is that the thing that they like about DeSantis is that they think that DeSantis can consolidate obparality against Trump’s plurality. If it’s one on one. If Trump looks so

weak and

he’s not holding on to a plurality, and you’ve got much more of an open primary, then DeSantis is one among many and not a de facto alternative to Trump. And instead, he kind of looks like the Trump under study compared to other people led much. I mean, I have no idea how good of a candidate any of these people will be. But let’s say that DeSantis isn’t exceeding people’s expectations or even meeting people’s expectations. Like, that’s just a much more interesting, open primary

Yeah. It’s pretty clear that Larry Hogan winds up as the nominee. I

don’t think that’s

the case.

I think that’s what they thought I was saying. Like, I think that’s what they they think that, like, I’m saying that if Trump collapses, does scientists you know, because people are kind of like, Trump, like, they think I’m saying, well, this, then they’re gonna elect, you know, a Larry Hogan, and I don’t think that. But could they elect to Chris Sunu knew?

Well, here’s here’s what is missing from this scenario though. What? There is no wildcard outsider. And it has been a long time since we’ve had a Republican primary without one of those. Right?

Whether it’s a Trump or a Ben Carson or Herman Cain or, you know, a new Kingrich. We always get a a papu cancer.

They always

get I don’t think he’s running as a Republican. Is he?

Oh, I don’t know. Working party?

I I If not Trump, why wouldn’t it be a Candice Owens or Tucker Carlson type? Right. And this is this is what I would fear. Candice

Owens, her name comes up a

lot. I know. You think I’m kidding. I don’t think she’s old enough. Right?

I mean, I can be wrong, but I think she’s too young. But why, you know, I don’t know, why couldn’t Elon Musk say this stuff about the constitution, the natural born stuff, we’re gonna litigate that. I don’t think it’s real. I’m running for president. Yeah.

I think Elon Musk will crush Rhonda Santos like a bug. Right? I mean, this is really, like, there’s there’s always an outsider in the Republican primary. And we don’t know what that looks like. But if the outsider is any of the people that I’ve just mentioned to you, I think I would probably like their chances above most if not all of the traditional Republican politician types.

Yeah. I don’t know. Ted Cruz is gonna run by the way.

Oh, yeah. Ted Cruz.

Please please. That’d be amazing.

Alright.

Let’s talk about Elon. Can we talk about

Elon? Yes. Go ahead.

So Thursday night, while we were taping the the livestream, a bunch of journalists were banned from Twitter. It is unclear. It is unclear to what extent some of these journalists claimed that they had been told they were permanently banned. Elon ran a poll asking whether these people should be un banned. With four different four different options, I think, one of which being immediately, one of which being, like, a day, one of which being a week, one of which being much longer.

He set this poll to run for, I think, an hour. And at the end of the hour, unbanning the journalist immediately one. And so he then said, never we’re gonna do this poll for for twenty four hours. Fox populate, Fox Day. Are we all prepared to say now that the Musk regime is because everything is projection.

If you are bothered by the way the old Twitter regime was run, which, by the way, it was terrible. But inevitable is my argument. The old Twitter regime has run terribly, but a platform at that scale will always be run terribly. There is no way to do it well. And that the musk thing is doing all of that but worse.

Maybe from a from a different lens, which is worse. And I I have not seen Barry Weissen Matt Taiby doing an expose on why the process that Musk went through to to ban and suspend these accounts yesterday? I am certain that they are very interested in that. And that they will be putting out very, very long investigative pieces about it. I’m looking forward to reading those.

And this is all this, like, of course, Musk can do any of this. He owns the thing. He could ban everybody. He could ban me tonight for no reason. And that’s that’s fine.

What do I care? None of this is about you know, can or what up. But there is a level of stupid hypocrisy And it drives me crazy. Mhmm. It drives me really crazy.

And it’s all it’s all the same conservative demology — Yes. — that we’ve been seeing for forever. And it’s it’s idiotic in every context, and it’s idiotic in this context. And the people who can torque themselves to to try to find a kernel of a good point somewhere in it. God love them, and I appreciate that we should all look to struggle with the the best arguments of our people who are opposed to us and not their worst.

But on the other hand, like, at some point, you just gotta say, no. Like, this is what it looks like. No.

Yeah. I I mean, I don’t know. I’m I’m learning so much about free speech.

Yeah? Yeah. Tell me tell me all about it.

Well, you know, I do think that one of the hardest things about maintaining free speech in a pluralistic society is that you you have to figure out how to overcome your free speech for me but not for the perspective. Litch musk. I mean, this is it is it is amazing to watch him brand himself. As a free speech warrior,

and

then immediately start knocking under and his claim is that they docked

him. And

it looks like he’s funny. He’s got, like, personal lines. He’s, like, this is and because what people were reporting on where he is, I mean, what what’s funny about his definition of doxxing is that every paparazzi, every cameraman every event, every person who’s, you know, taken us somebody’s photograph them a bottle, whatever. They’ve all been docked. I did not know I did not know that there is an epidemic of doxing, but like it is much bigger than I thought if that is how we are applying this particular rule.

And I just I just the hubris that it takes, the blind spot that one must have, to fashion oneself as a free speech culture warrior, and then to turn around and cancel

and,

you know, block, drop people. It’s, like, take a bunch of journalists. Like, these aren’t even, like, random these are journalists reporting on people, like, what an amazing cell phone?

Yeah. And the the, you know, kicking kicking Kanye off the platform just because he tweeted a star David with his waska in it, which, you know, I think is probably meant as a, can’t we all get a long gesture? You know, like Nazis and Jews, can’t we all be friends? Because time — Yeah. — like Elon loves humans.

Yeah. And, you know, somehow that gets Kanye kicked off the platform. I don’t understand that. Alex Jones, just because Alex Jones did some you know, a little bit of defamation about Sandy Hook and Elon Musk has some very, you know, deep Speaking of doctor’s feelings about about children,

Dozing is when is when you have you create a a you you talk about the families of children who were murdered in a shooting. As crisis actors, actually, this probably isn’t quite the demo.

That isn’t Actually, because I’m not sure if

you, like, put their information online or whatever. Although he did talk about individual parents as crisis actors, and his deranged fans went after these parents who had lost children in one of the there’s, like, that’s the anniversary of Sandy Hooks. Like, people are doing these retrospectives, and I have to turn them off. Like, I I can’t the second they come on, and it’s, like, they’ll come on, like, NPR Morning Edition when, like, when I’m still in bed or whatever, and I’m, like, stop. Like, it’s it’s a I don’t understand the monstrosity that Alex Jones must possess to have been willing to do this to those families.

Anyway, the point is Elon has some lines. They all happen to be his personal lines, which is again, not how free speech works. Howard Bauchner:

And, you know, he wants to prosecute Anthony Fauci. Those are his priorities. I mean, it’s just you look at it and I The the extent to which conservatives jumped to fall in love with this guy? I I think it just it’s very revealing of their psychology. Right?

It’s not, you know, again, I would bet anything that Elon Musk is a pro choice on abortion. Right? I would bet we know that Elon Musk is a squish on American foreign policy because he is super in bed with with the Chinese Communist Party — Mhmm. — because he does business over there. All these things, the conservatives, you know, as a policy matter, it’s not clear to me that he believes anything the conservatives believe in.

But he does hate the lips. And so if that’s enough, Yeah. Because that’s what conservatism has. Yeah. Right?

It’s just, you know, you hate the lips. Yeah. That’s all. Yeah. I hope people leave.

But also, when I I said this last night briefly, I will I will say this here too. On the left, The hypocrisy is people who are now saying like, oh, Twitter has become terrible. No. Twitter was always terrible. And don’t romanticize this hell site, which is destroyed our public square in terms turned brothers and sisters against one another and made everybody angry all the time.

Don’t go telling yourself that it oh, it used to be great. It didn’t. It was always terrible. And so you should all get off of it there. Hard to post.

Hard disagree. Come to post. Come to post. News.

I have not gone to any single I haven’t

even looked at Reddit

these I’ve I mean, I’ve looked at Reddit before, but post, massed on, whatever. He’s also banning. He’s just banning anybody else. Like, they’re mastodon.

Oh, yeah. Because Mastodon is I don’t understand the logic on that except that Mastodon is a competitor. Right? So

Yeah.

And so why you know, he’s perfectly allowed to do that. Yeah. So

he’s allowed to do all these things. He owns it. It’s fine. It’s just contrary to what he’s been telling us. Because if that’s the case, if that’s if that’s the rules, then, like, Jack’s rules were fine too.

Yeah. Right? Everybody’s rules are fine.

Everybody’s rules are fine, the owner’s rules are fine.

Yes. Yes. The difference being that when Twitter was a publicly traded company, the rules in theory were accountable to the marketplace.

Yeah.

Right. And so the marketplace judged whether the rules were good or bad. You know, the CEO would set some rules, but if the rules if the rules were bad, then the stock price would go down and the CEO would get in trouble. Mhmm. And so there was you know, in theory a an external disambiguated set of judgments being rendered upon whether or not the rules were good or bad for the platform itself.

Mhmm.

Mhmm. And now It’s just Elon. I do wanna ask you this though because you love capitalism. And I have a mild likes. I have a mild like for capitalism.

Yeah. You one of the theories is that what Musk is doing is trying to make Twitter toxic. So that so he’s got thirteen billion dollars of debt that he owes the bank.

Mhmm. Thirteen billion?

Thirteen billion.

It sounds like a lot.

It’s a lot of money. It’s probably the value of Twitter. It’s probably the entire value of Twitter right now. Yeah. The bank has not been able to syndicate that debt.

Right? So in a normal deal, the bank loans Elon Musk thirteen billion dollars, but the bank does not hold onto that debt. It then sells that debt off piecemeal to other people who become, you know, holders of the debt. Because this was such a horrible deal, nobody is willing to purchase this debt. And so the banks have it just sitting on their balance sheets, and they would love to get it off.

And they are probably coming to terms with the fact that they’re gonna be getting pennies on the dollar, that they will not get a hundred cents. Of of every dollar of this debt repaid to them. And

And people buy the debt because normally what they did buy it, they get the interest on the damage.

You buy it. You get the interest and then eventually gets paid off. Right. Right. It’s

it’s

form of securitization. So the Musk may be trying to make the platform so toxic that even vulture capital investors. Right? Vulture capital where the people who buy distressed assets will be unwilling to touch it because it’s too risky. So that he can go to his banks and say, I’ll give you thirty cents on the dollar.

That’s the best deal you’re gonna get. And the banks will take it because they don’t they can’t hold all thirteen billion dollars on their balance sheets indefinitely. And if they think because, you know, fair’s got nothing to do with it. If they think that they cannot get anybody to give them thirty five cents on the dollar, than they might take Elon’s thirty cents on the dollar. What would you think about capitalism if Elon Musk was able to get out of his debt?

Simply by purposefully trying to sabotage the product. Does that seem fair to you?

It doesn’t seem fair to me. I’m trying to is that right? Is that is and do you think because don’t you think there was a period of time where the like, what I guess I don’t understand is that his behavior analyses consistent with his behavior from the jump. And I I guess I do you really think that from the beginning, he didn’t have any designs on, like, I can improve this product? Like, you think you think he’s made a decision, a a decision where there was no point at which.

He wanted to try to improve the product. To get to make it grow in its value.

I think he may want to do that once he’s out from underneath the debt. But that he’s he’s got it. This thirteen billion that’s hanging out there is a weight from under which the company cannot get out. There is no world in which Twitter can succeed with this thirteen billion dollar debt hanging over it. Yeah.

And so if he can get out of it by getting into the point where he only asked to pay off, like, four billion of it, then he could do that. Right? He can get his hands on four billion dollars pay off the debt, retire it. And now Twitter is free and clear, and all cash flow can go to operating expenses. I mean, it’s so bad that Twitter is auctioning off all this stuff from their offices.

Like, this is I mean, they are in so scrounging for cash. I don’t know if you saw this. But,

like, there’s so starting into

kitchen equipment and chairs and desks and bookshelves and stuff. They’re just if you want, like, one of the giant Twitterbirds that they had as wall decorations in Twitter corporate h HQ. That is the level of attempt to generate cash flow that the company is under right now. Yeah. And it’s it’s really quite quite bad, I think.

Mhmm. And I think he’ll get away with it. I suspect that that the banks will, you know, nobody else will be willing to touch it. And he will get out from under the debt, and the banks will take the loss, and they’ll pass it on to their customers. And Elon Musk will get a sweetheart deal out of it.

Peace capitalism is great. Mhmm.

Somebody said something to me recently that I thought was interesting, which is that capitalism, as we’ve always understood it, like might, like, can’t survive necessarily in, like, the new economy of all things Like, we’re goods and like, it used to be that goods and services were tangible. And the amount of intangible products now and the valuation of those products being essentially made up means that capitalism no longer functions in the way that those of who were up like in capitalism. Like

and

I guess that’s what they mean by late stage capitalism.

Everything will be a service. Right? This is I don’t know if you’ve noticed this. One of the things are what you think about this. So you know, you don’t really own your cell phone.

Right? You don’t really own your iPhone. You you have bought it, but you are signing away your life to Apple. For you with the terms and services. And if, you know, you do something to the iPhone that Apple doesn’t like, they can break the phone in your Outlook.

Some EVs electric cars are getting to the point where you you’ll be paying for software packages, not for like a bigger engine, but for better software to make your car go faster. And and and one of the things will be that these you will not be able to simply purchase the software package, but it will be a monthly fee. Like your subscription to Netflix. You would like your new shiny EV to be able to to be at the fastest setting. Will that sixty nine dollars a month?

So you don’t really own it. I mean, you don’t you sort of own it, but you you sort of don’t in their terms of services, and this all concentrates power in the hands of the capital holders and the good corporations. And I wanna I’m about to get what my lame is. You know, lot of resistance or whatever. Anyway, it’s all it’s all great.

Elon is great. I I’m looking forward to his presidential campaign. I I think it’ll be great for America.

Hey, is this our last show before Christmas? Or are we doing another one?

I think we are supposedly doing one next week. One next week. One next week. I wanna update. I wanna thank everybody in the comments after last week’s show because a couple hundred people came to the comments to talk with me about middle school girls basketball.

Mhmm. I do be appreciative of it. I I feel like I owe you an update. Last week, I I was not able to I was not able to attend our game. I got of the other dads to show up and coach for me because I was off seeing the sound of music.

You know, I just I love the theater. Being in the city. So often, I I can just go to the theater a couple times a week, Sarah. It’s really lovely. The culture.

The culture you get from being a New Yorker is really something. Sure. And anyway, without me, there they won. Maybe I’m the problem. How they won a game?

I don’t know. Maybe the shots were just following. Mean, I wasn’t there, so I couldn’t say. But I’m not gonna say, that I wish they had lost. Because that’s not entirely true.

Well,

because that’s a psychopathic response.

But I will say that part of me was was wounded.

Yeah. We’re wounded.

Did they get there, but we’ll probably wind up being their only win of the season when I didn’t show up.

Yeah. Your ego isn’t tuned quite right because in my my the way I would respond to that. Is that my coaching, up to this point, my motivation was so great that if I wasn’t there, they would be like, we’re gonna do this one for Sarah. We’re gonna and and and look how much we’ve improved. I would just feel why why do you have to you have to taking credit for other people’s achievements feeling the credit is is great.

It’s like a win win. Like, you feel good. They’re achieving

Yeah. If I was there to be part of it, this is them achieving because it turns out that I was holding them back. That’s the problem. That’s the problem. Maybe this other dad, I wasn’t there.

Maybe he was a hard ass. Who was, you know, yelling at them and getting them in debt. That’s what they responded to. Mhmm.

It’s probably true. It’s probably right. You’ve always been too soft on these things.

That’s That is the problem. Big softness. Alright. Sarah, have a great weekend. I will catch you next week before Christmas.

Alright. See you.

Rebecca, take us home.

Seven AM waking up in the morning. Gotta be fresh. Gotta go downstairs. Gotta have my bowl. Gotta have cereal.

Gotta have cereal therapy and everything that Tom used to in takin on and on everybody’s mission. Gotta get down to the bus stop. Gotta catch my bus. I see my friends. Sticking in the front seat, sticking in the back seat.

Gotta make my mind a little bit messy. Can I take It’s Friday. Friday. Gotta get down. Friday.

Everybody. We’re gonna go to work you looking forward to the weekend, partying, or partying, and partying, fun fun fun fun fun and fun looking forward to the weekend. Our German on the highway because we’re so fast. I want on the fatter. Fun.

Thank you very much. You know what it is. I got this. You got this my friends by my right day. I got this.

You got this. Now you know which chicken in the front seat, chicken in the back seat. Gotta make my mind We see Canada. It’s Friday, Friday. Gotta get down on Friday.

Everybody. You’re gonna go forward to the wheel. And then, and then, and then, I’ll ride. Everybody looking forward to the weekend. Party and you know, party and party and party and fun fun fun fun looking forward to the weekend.

Your day was Thursday, where it’s day. Today. It’s Friday. Friday. Oh, we we we we so excited.

We inside day. We’re gonna have a ball today. Tomorrow is Saturday. And Sunday comes afterwards. I don’t want to speak.

They are the Rebecca Black It’s a school for us in front of me. Next, take time. Take time. One is free. My time is Friday.

It’s a weekend. We gonna have fun. Come on. Come on. Yeah.

Out.

Friday, Friday, gotta get down Friday, everybody. Friday, Friday, Friday, everybody looking forward to. And party and party and party and fun fun fun fun looking forward to the weekend.