Gas Stove: A Knives Out Controversy

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next level I’m JBL here with my best friend, Tim Miller, and a a very good acquaintance. Sunny bunch sitting in for Sarah Longwell, both of the Bulwark Before we get started, go hit the subscribe button. Hit the thumbs up button. Give us the five stars.

Do all the things. And don’t forget to come to the bulwark dot com and sign up for Charlie Sykes’ morning shots newsletter and his pocket, all of the things. We give away all of these things for free, and you should come in and partake of them.

You really should. Boys, how are we, Tim? You look very sun kissed. I’m tan. A little red, but I’m Lebanese.

I I don’t know if you know that. Partially Lebanese instead of my oh, yeah. So my red will pivot to tan. I also think this lighting in my child’s bedroom might be giving me a little more rosacea than when I look at myself in the mirror. A lot of tan, a little red.

We’ll get to that

The interest between you and Sunny who who is like Nusfirato is pretty stark.

I live in a cave. I do not I do not have to put outside unless I absolutely have to. I park as close to buildings as I can so I can sprint from my car to the cover of shade. Smart.

Yeah. I I I liked how you upgraded Sunny. I called my friend of me when you’re out of the next level and he’s in, and you give him friendly acquaintance, which I think is nice.

Oh, well, I’m So the the joke here, of course, that I’ve been IRL friends with Sunny since he was in high school

I introduced you and and Sarah, I think. I literally

introduced

you and Sarah. This is why I’ve been supplanted. That must hurt.

I’ve known Sunny since he was in his teens. JBL, I’m so up until last evening. I

was so

excited to see you in person this week. Yeah. Maybe see in San Francisco. We’re gonna see each other in Los Angeles for the live show. If you haven’t signed up in the live show in Los Angeles, not too late, Thursday night.

See you in Seattle, Saturday. And then I last night, I had a dream. Mhmm. And I gotta tell you, I don’t get anxious about public performance. It’s not my thing.

Even as a little kid, you know, I was a showboat. I know this is gonna be a big surprise to the listeners, so I believe it. I know this is not a fear that I have. Why? And yet, last night in my subconscious, during my dreams, we were in Seattle at the Seattle event.

The venue was very big. And we went to go out there on stage. And you and me and Sarah, and you took two two steps and then just face plant it. Just as stuff full face of my hat? Because you because you were on so much Xanax.

You had passed out. And Sarah Sarah panicked. About what I’ve got having to deal with you, and I’ve been active about how to make the show still good. And then I went kind of like on an adventure movie through Seattle trying to find Dan Savage, and I couldn’t find him. And the whole time, you were just passed out in the Klonopin Hall.

Unable

to

do anything. Yeah. So anyway, now I’m a little bit nervous for the first time about the live performance. But hopefully, you’ll you won’t you’ll be able to stay upright.

Gonna be great. It’s gonna be so great. I’m very excited. So my little bottle of Xanax has things you should do, some do’s and dumps on it. And next to the the little martini glass is a wink.

So I think that means they encourage you to drink while taking the Xanax.

Is that right? That’s right. Of that. I don’t

think that’s right. This is the Lucille booth told me this. Yeah.

You put them in the bottle, you you

drop it into the martini with the wink. Ma’am. Yeah.

It’s like a Canacks stuffed olives. That’s what you want. Yeah. Alright.

So, listen, we’re gonna start with the most important thing which is facing the Republic right now, which is the war on gas stoves. I’ll just set the table. I have a lot of thoughts. A Democratic appointee to the consumer products safety mission was giving an interview to Bloomberg News, and he sort of said an offhand way, yeah, we may have to look at doing something with gas stoves. And the entire right wing entertainment complex lost their minds.

And then the entire act tool elected branch. Now

is that exactly right? After he said that, weren’t there also some Labs who gave him an attaboy as well? Maybe there were Labs on Twitter. I

mean, look, I’m sure there was a lip somewhere who gave them an Attleboy. Look it

might have even been an elected official or two who gave them an Attleboy.

This

I’m being gas lit right now on the show that I am being that I am being asked

to speak. So to speak,

you I am being gas stove right now. This whole week has I been the flames on the side of my face lady from clue listening to this stuff. But go ahead, JB. I’ll keep going. So the

precipitating event of this is a peer reviewed study, one study saying that the ventilation from gastroes can be a contributor in twelve percent of childhood asthma cases. And so everybody lost their minds. And the forty four Republicans in the House, the new House majority went and introduced the let me sorry. I’m gonna make sure I get this right. Guard America’s Stoves Act.

Get it? Gas. Gas. And Rhonda Santos rushed out to unfurl his posters with a don’t tread on stoves, you know, the Gaston flag. I would like to to just set the table here.

I myself am an electric stove owner. I have never I as an adult lived in a house with a gas stove, I’ve always wanted to because gas stove are for the people who enjoy cooking the best way to cook. I guess. But once you have children who could possibly enjoy cooking because every meal time is a war anyway and they hate everything you serve them, you might as well just use Electric.

Forty five minutes of bliss while I’m there on the stove. It’s great.

Oh, it’s the best. I I would just like to say this. Guest stove comprise one third one third of American stove usage. These stoves are predominantly in coastal states, you know, where the the elites are. For instance, in Florida, the percentage of people who use electric stoves is ninety two percent ninety two percent of Floridians are using electric stoves.

So what this seems to me is like a blue state thing that conservatives have now talked themselves into because, you know, some lived somewhere set it. And then some other lip on Twitter was like, I’m in favor of it. I’ve talked themselves into believing that Gastows are the most important right wing cause ever. And that’s fine. If they wanna do that, that’s great.

I personally would just like the Consumer Product Safety Commission to come out and talk about how important seatbelts are. And if we could do that so that maybe the conservative infotainment complex could be anti seat belt and that could become a cause to love for them. That would be great if it’s

a cause for the lab, probably. And —

Right. — we can talk about it in the in the nineteen seventies, a hundred percent.

I think it is still, like, kind of, on the back burner, like, you know, we’re gonna get seatbelt laws repealed across the country.

So again, most of the gas stoves are being used by lubes in their wealthy coastal enclaves for their Epicurean cookies. Real Americans use electric stowows, I’m sorry to say, especially the real Americans in the heart plan. And Republicans have talked themselves into thinking that this is now I guess this has replaced the Caravans and replaced CRT, and we have this this rolling thing of the most important crises facing America. The current and this is now the Newmost one. Well, Fox

has twenty four hours of content they gotta fill. You know? So

Yeah. So, please, Sunny. As our guest,

So now now that JBL has done just totally gaslighting me. Alright. So here is what actually happened. What has actually happened is for the last like four or five years every two or three, four months, you’ll get a story in the newspapers about how gas stoves and gas appliances in general are really bad. We need to get rid of natural gas bad for the environment.

Bad for your health. Every three or four months, again, get rid of your gas stoves, get rid of your gas heaters, etcetera. Municipalities have banned new installation of gas lines in buildings in, like, New York City. Right? LA, San Francisco, same thing.

They’re banning the installation of gas lines. The New York governor suggested, you know, maybe we should actually just ban the sale of gas stove altogether. If you’re gas stove breaks, you should have to buy induction know, they’re better.

No. Is that a come and get it situation? Or they’re

gonna come to

your house? It’s not gonna be coming to their house to rip out the existing house.

Not yet, but we’re getting there. So, like, that is the background to all of us. That’s the background to all

of us. Brief pause, Sunny. Brief pause is somebody who’s recently remodeled a kitchen. Where are you on induction stoves? Because I think they look pretty awesome.

I

rented a a place where the glass top induction style stove that didn’t was frankly closer to electric than induction, but I didn’t like it. For a lot of reasons. It’s super messy. I’ve told to someone the story on one of my other podcasts, but I moved into a a house where, like, the person who lived here was a professional chef or something. And has remodeled the kitchen with like a six burner, not quite viking range.

It’s like the next step down from that.

It’s

like one one step of low viking. With like a built in subzero freezer. I’ve got the double oven. It’s actually very pleasurable for me to cook now because I have all the tools. I got all the tools that I need to make gourmet oven or

mabot is gonna protect your stove. Don’t worry. The menu

style meals. So, like, there’s a whole background here. Years and years of studies and stories and municipalities saying, we need to get rid of the guestos. We need to get we need to ban them. We need to get them out of how you know, it’s not good.

We need to get rid of natural gas. And then when the government official says, yeah, maybe we need to look at banning the gas stove. And Democrats such as AOC is out there saying, yeah, we gotta ban the the gas stove. She says, like, with her gas stove in the background, all of a sudden, it turns into Republicans’ pounds. Now, I we can talk about, you know, the the semiotics of this and whatever.

But, like, the story all of a sudden becomes Crazy Republicans are angry that anyone would suggest that we need to ban gas stoves. It’s insane. The conservatives did not go out there and pick a culture war fight about this. I am sorry. That is not at all what happened.

What has happened is that there’s been a steady drumbeat of left wing progressive activists saying four years we need to get rid of gas stoves. Maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s not. Maybe we do need to get rid of gas stove.

Let’s shut these gas stove down until we can figure what the hell is going on with them.

Maybe there’s a magic bullet study that’s gonna come down the pike and it says, everybody who has a gas stove in their house gets dementia at age fifty six and we all we all gotta get rid of them. Alright. Like, okay, fine. Maybe that’s the case. But do not lie to me and say that these things have not been being discussed.

And then say, all Republicans are just making this all that’s what

drove people on the right crazy. I will say in good faith, the very first time I have ever heard this before was literally just you talking thirty seconds ago. I read the newspapers. I’ve never seen the news. So I’m

plugged into this very tightly because I wrote a piece in the Washington Post four years ago that you had a

pocket of big gas.

I am now. Now that I live in Texas, I all of my stuff is gas powered. If if they take gas out, I’m screwed. I don’t know how to power things with plugs and electrical lines. That doesn’t make any sense to me.

But no. But I actually am very plugged into this because I wrote a piece for the Washington Post four years ago. That have the headline environmentalists make great movie villains because they wanna make your real life worse. So anytime a story like this happens, where an environmentalists group wants to pull something away, take something away, band something. I get fifty tweets about it.

I get a hundred people are like, look, and more proof. And I’m telling you I’ve been seeing this gas stove thing for like three or four years now. People have been trying to get rid of them. And then as Tim says, it’s not just Richard Trumpo was saying, oh, we gotta maybe get rid of them. Then immediately, like a flip switch that was like, well, if you don’t wanna get rid of them, then you’re a terrible person and you have ALC out there saying, oh, it’s bad for your kids.

You gotta get rid of it. Why would anybody want gas anyway? You’ve got induction stoves and they’re better and you’re just a luddite who wants to cook with fire instead of using the power of magnets. Magnets, baby. That’s how and like, whatever, it’s it’s fine.

Again, maybe induction stopes are better. I didn’t really like the induction stove I had, but it was an old one. Maybe these new ones with the magnet power. It’s amazing and it’s great.

Fine. We need Tesla branded induction and stoves to make this culture more complete. That would actually be funny

if Tesla bought up all of the induction companies in the country. So

I guess my question though is Sunny. I hear your point about how Republicans get mad over the Republicans pounced thing. But that’s really what you’re talking about is like the eight closet normal Republicans that you follow on Twitter. Right? Like, that’s who you’re really talking about.

Like, they get mad about the pouncing. Right? Like the the pure uncut magna media that their actual Republican voters listened to, they were performatively mad about the stoves, not about the pound. Thing.

And maybe and look, and maybe JVL is right that these people are all mad about something that they don’t own anyway and would never put in their their house. Again, I I can I believe and appreciate all that. And it’s embarrassing to have the Republicans out there with the Gastove Act and the the Gaston flag. Like, this is this is all childish embarrassing nonsense. Yeah.

But, like, again, the impetus of all this was not Republicans just deciding they didn’t wake up one day and were like, you know what? Gastrobes are our thing now. They didn’t wake up and say, gastoves, that’s what we’re gonna go to war over today. They wanted it. It it’s just not.

It’s not at all what happened. The fox

fruit is just kinda dead. And they used it as an impetus. You know, for okay. Well, here’s gonna be our thing this week. That’s I’m not saying it just started that day, but but yeah.

They were like, okay. Well, here’s here’s some grist for the mill. I guess my question is, you know, and this is this is cut Tim coming in into play here, but it’s kinda like So if California, which has seventy percent gas stove usage, It’s like, might be a problem, actually. I I don’t mean in the way of childhood asthma, but in the sense of, like, if

we tell the conservatives that most of the gas stove users are actually California labs. Are they gonna want to get rid of the gas stove?

Maybe. Maybe they went about this in the wrong way from strategic standpoint. Maybe they should have turned Gastaut into an Elite phenomenon. Mhmm. Only the Davos set was using, and that might have been more useful than what the Biden administration did.

I could appreciate that strategic critique. But so, like, let’s say the Gaffe who needs something to do next week decides that he’s gonna ban gas stoves in new builds. That all the new builds in California will have electric stoves just like all the stoves are in like lots of the country. Who cares? Why should anybody care about that?

I I just I can’t imagine a reason why someone would become upset that a blue state governor would want to create regulations in their state. Right? Like, what is the real world harm that is being done to

The goal here is not to ban it and come California and New York. It’s to ban it everywhere. It’s to phase out natural gas in general, which is a foolish thing in a country that relies mostly on coal for power anyway. Or it relies too much on coal for power. This is like the first time I’ve been on the idiot conservative side in so long.

I like, I’m I’m gonna just do it on it. It’s really energizing for me because I finally get to return home. This is like

a center for consumer freedom type thing. You know? I get to

be a real reactionary on this. And like, look, it’d be one thing again if these stopes are being replaced by electric stopes that run on nuclear power. You put a hundred nuclear power plants in, replace all the coal, and then natural gas suddenly becomes much worse for the environment. Fine. As it is right now, natural gas not worse for the environment.

Little nuclear reactor stows. Yes. Like, little each stove was nuclear powered. But in

California, that’s trying to move to zero carbon stuff. California is not using coal. To power the electric grid in a meaningful way. Right? So this might be a fine critique of California, really important.

It’s like they have all these mandates on their electric grid. It’s learn is gonna cost people more money on their electric bills. That’s a meaningful critique. But it’s not like California is using fucking coal in their electric grid. So California decides that we got too much natural gas in home usage.

Okay. Tim, let

me switch sides here for a moment, please. It takes Sunny’s point for a month. First of all, it seems to me that in this specific case, it is not an environmentalist thing, but is a health outcomes No.

I think both. No. No.

It’s both. Trust me.

Okay. I have several friends in the environmentalist community. And so like Sunny, I was ahead of you on this. And I got a big briefing on gas stove, from one of my venture fund —

Greenblazer.

— what is your stove? Who is trying to go about it? And the free market is what’s your stove, what you love. Which is coming up to household items that are more electric funded. So it’s green in addition to the twelve percent childhood asthma.

Into

the question, Timothy, what kind of stove do you have? I

have a gas stove because I live in California. Yeah. We have a gas stove. And I gotta tell you, I’m ready

to make the move. So this whole controversy has backfired on the

conservatives.

I I hear it now. And I’m kind of like, you remember when David Hogs? Like, I’m gonna wear a mask just to piss off the cons. Like, I’m there. I’m like, we’re gonna refurb this kitchen and put an electric stove just to piss off sunny and fucking baseball crank and whoever else wants to get mad.

Some of

the big specialty dollars. I know this is consumer choice. Go If you want an induction stove, get an induction stove. I opposed bands. I’m opposed to bands in general.

That’s

what I Let me take your side here. The history of consumer products in safety standards in America is such that individual states or municipalities making changes to local laws can sometimes cause the entire industry to shift. California as an enormous market. When California sets like a a standard for car emissions, the rest of the country. That’s good.

It is

good. But I’m saying that you asked why Sunny would care about, you know, what what is a matter to him of California changes? The answer is that maybe Right. In fact, the the whole reason we have, like, I wrote a piece about this years ago. We reformulated dishwasher detergents a long time ago, and that changed dishwasher design.

It was all because of the town of Tacoma, Washington. Anyway, but

this is why it’s not your hometown. I wanna own it. But again, this goes to consumer choice. You just like

if you wanna buy a house that has lead pipes in it, you can do that. Just go out there and you can find a house that’s built before nineteen seventy two or whatever. And if you But you’re not

allowed to hire somebody to put lead pipes in. This isn’t

lead pipes. And if I want lead

pipes, I can’t find a plumber who will put lead pipes in now to be in that position. It’s

not asbestos. It’s a nonsense study from an environmentalist group that’s about carbon neutral.

Great.

What I was gonna say, oh, twelve

percent of childhood asthma, not twelve percent of children, twelve percent of all childhood asthma cases. It’s like I can’t. Tell

me there is gonna be so much property in Bakersfield and Fresno that if you wanna keep that gas stove even after the ban is place. You don’t even know what to choose. You don’t

afford to live in California. Have you seen the tax rates out there? You paid more in taxes on the five minutes of bid on this call, but I pay a whole year in Texas. Worth every

penny. I am

excited that six months from now, we are gonna get a study that shows that When you do party ID breakdown of Gastove ownership, it’s like eighty percent of Gastove owners or registered Ds. And all of a sudden, then the politics of this will flip. And it’ll be fantastic. Alright. You know, this actually dovetails nicely because I I wanted to talk a little bit about Twitter dot com.

One of your favorite websites, both of you gentlemen. Yeah. And Twitter was a big help in airing out this very important issue that previously had been under discussed perhaps in America, certainly it passed me by. Maybe it’s because I hadn’t been on Twitter dot com. That I did not notice that for the last four or five years, this was a hot topic.

Mhmm. Because Twitter is, as you said to us in the green room before this sunny, Twitter is a a machine designed to help people think through their positions. Right?

Wait. Hold on. Let me the actual phrase I used was social media companies thrive as hate box And that’s what Twitter is. Twitter is a hate box. It’s a it’s a place where you go to find things you hate and get your blood pressure up.

I love that. So

can you explain to the people where this insiders came from because it was from a a recommendation. Right? Well, yeah,

yeah. So, I mean, one thing that people have been complaining about on Twitter since Elan’s takeover is the the pushback towards the algorithmic feed. Now this is a thing that actually predates Elon. It’s they’ve been trying to get folks to move to the algorithmic feed for years now. But Elon Twitter has made a change that brings it very much right to the front of your home screen on on Twitter, and it’s and it’s switching you back and forth without letting you know.

So, like, sometimes you’ll log on to your phone and you’ll look at Twitter. You’ll see a whole bunch of tweets from people you don’t know that say they’re for you. And it’s like Mike Cernovich saying, like, we need to put all the doctors who gave out the shots in prison or whatever. Did

you see Mike Cernovich’s pro choligula tweet recently? I did see.

Well, who knows? What did he say?

That was for me. That was for me. Tell

me about it, Timothy. It was about George Santos. It was about how Coligula sent his horse to the Roman Senate and how that was Coligula’s way of saying that he does not care about the morays of the elites and Roman times and George Santos with

our horse. That is what the good people of Long Island were doing.

Yeah. It is our signal to the elites that we don’t give a fuck is a big middle finger. And so it was it was a rare kind of pros coagulatake. You don’t usually hear people being like, I, like, was reading a couple stories about Coligula, and I think we should model our system after his leadership style. You don’t hear that very often, but and so that’s why Twitter is valuable.

You know, that’s why it’s nice to get that sort of it right into my 4U page. Right.

So that’s the sort of thing that gets served up to people as for you. And as friend of the show, Ben Dreyfus noted, when getting one such tweet recently, he was like, the idea that this is for me is the most insulting thing I can imagine. And he tweaks out a screenshot of it and he does a whole thread. And you know what he’s doing? He’s driving engagement.

He is actually proving the algorithm right. He is showing the algorithm that these are the things I interact with, and so I should keep getting more of them, frankly, because I can’t get enough of this hateful content. I

can’t get enough of hating. Elon says this directly today. Did you see this? No. I didn’t.

Our chief whip Here we go. Here’s a tweet from our cheap tweet a couple hours ago. Trashing accounts that you hate will cause our algorithm to show you more of those accounts. As it is keying off your interactions. Basically saying if you love trashing that account, then you will probably also love trashing this account.

Not actually wrong, l o l period, Elon Musk. That is the absolute core fundamental principle of social media

in general. If you see a thing that you hate, it is about connecting the world and loving and holding hands with with people from different cultures. Hate drives more passion and more energy than anything else. Just look at me on gas stoves this week, finding people to hate for trying to take away my delightful six burner range. I don’t I don’t want it.

I don’t want that in my basing it.

Is that true though for all social media just Twitter because, like, Instagram doesn’t seem to function that way. Neither Snap nor TikTok seem to function that way. Facebook seems to function by putting you into silos that you never encounter somebody. Who you just like, the Facebook is all that big gaps. Right?

You get into a group with, you know, thirty three thousand, you know, true conservatives for Maga or something. And that’s where you get cocoon. I

think you’re basically right.

I mean, Instagram is more specifically key to things you love, things that you like because I think because it’s visual. It’s it’s the difference between a visual social media network and a a literary social media network. It’s easier to read and write about hateful things than it is to see, like, if I’m just tested by, I don’t know, like, dogs and dresses. If I find that offensive to my eyes, I’m not gonna look at more posts like that on Instagram. But if I find them

delightful, I’m gonna get a whole bunch of those in my reels. You’re gonna look at things that you’re into like cows and skirts. How is it going? Wearing a skirt.

If I’m into dolphins wearing tiara’s, that’s what I’m gonna get lots and lots of videos of. Right. Not that I’m speaking from experience. But on Twitter, it’s different, I think. Like, you go to Twitter to fire off snappy barmats and to dunk on people in quote tweets.

And to get likes as a result and to get retweets. Facebook used to be much more like this where there was people would like show up in comment sections and get into big fights with people and they have changed their algorithm to do what you say, JBL, to kind of reinforce like likes to just be like, here’s the things that you like and you’re we’re gonna give you a hundred times more of that. Which has its own negative consequences in a lot of ways. What’s funny is

that the Twitter thing which you describe is something which Twitter saw for a very long time as a big weakness of the platform. And at Jack Dorsey, this was a thing he talked about often about, like, getting rid of the retweet button or possibly getting rid of the heart like button because he thought that those things were encouraging, the sort of, as you say, the the hype boxy behaviors. Somebody wrote a really good piece about this three or four years back that people say, like, oh, it’s a human problem. But it’s not really, it’s a design problem. And that the site is designed to exacerbate the human problems, that there are ways in fact to design it, to mitigate those problems It’s just that Twitter the company isn’t interested in that.

And Elon is

specifically saying that he wants that now, what the more for you page. That kind of design. Right? Like one example, if you wanted to

stop the

dunking and and use Twitter as more of a discovery platform, like, maybe you could imagine as more like Google reader. I’d really like Google reader. You know, where it’s like, I’m discovering writing. I’m discovering people. I like, maybe this is a short micro version of Google reader.

We just ban quote tweets. Right. Yeah. Done. You just ban quote tweets.

And that that way, you don’t get the people dunking on people, and you can you keep retweets so your friends could share things that you think your friends might wanna see articles or funny comments or whatever. And that would be a very simple way. To just change the incentives of the platform away from this kind of hate machine that Sunny

brings up, and yet they’re going the other way. Well, it’s interesting though because Twitter used to not have a retweet button. You have to use to do manual retweets. Right? Remember, this is where RT

apps name I’m an OG, baby. Yeah.

So, like, they change these things, and I think having an automatic retweet button is good. Having an automatic quote tweet button, instead of having to do a manual quote tweet so to speak — Yeah. — has been the worst thing for the site. It’s been the worst thing the site has ever done because even adding that one extra step of, like, you’re gonna have to go one level furthers before you can say LOL ugly pig to, you know, somebody who says something you don’t like. On Twitter would reduce the amount of hate by, like, eighty percent, I think.

I like our friend, Walter Olson, contributor to

the Bullock, did this tweet. Twitter’s you might like feature, which is this 4U page, is like a high chair with a parent, offering me forkfuls of things I’ve already rejected a hundred times. So it comes airplane. Here’s more CERNOVICH, but you don’t think I’ve seen Nike CERNOVICH and Archie decided, I don’t wanna follow him. Like, I know what Mike’s

Arnevich’s offering, and I’ve chosen to not take it.

Okay? And yet, they continue on. Pizza

gate jack. It

just doesn’t work. It’s not the same as TikTok. And the TikTok’s for you page is its masterpiece and the undoing of society all in one. Like, it’s beautiful. Right?

It’s different. And the the nature of the video platform and the nature of what they’re trying to serve you is different. This is not gonna work. But the whole thing is just worth saying that, like, I will be the last man standing on Twitter. I don’t care.

I know that a lot of people who really hate Elon want me to leave. I know people who care about my mental health like JBL want me to leave. I do not care. I’m never leaving and I will be the last person there, but it is objectively worse and worse every day now. And

I know it’s too funny to use like a tweet deck or something that keep shivering it, but we were discussing this before the show as well. I actually haven’t noticed any difference to like ninety percent of my Twitter experience when I’m not looking on my phone and when I’m not looking at the the desktop version because I use tweet

deck. It’s funny, doesn’t everybody use tweet deck. I was shocked to learn that there are people in the world who don’t. Apparently,

nobody uses it because I keep seeing complaints about algorithmic feeds or whatever, and that just doesn’t exist on tweet deck. Yeah. Deck is

just

it’s just I get my chronological I used to use three deck

and then I quit it. It was like a personal thing. Like I like, when I was on my computer, I wouldn’t have to go to the browser because my computer was more about you know, my time for writing or researching or whatever. My phone was my Twitter habit. Right?

So that that’s why. So maybe I need to go back to tweet tech for this reason, but I just have to tell you, the ads are so bad now, and it’s all, like, far right clap, trap, that is not just BS. Maybe that’s what they are serving me because I follow some of these people. Hey, the I hate boxed. Yeah.

It’s hate boxed. Bory Weiss, you all like this JBL. The ad that I cannot get rid of is this ad attacking Bory Weiss. As like a defender of canceling Palestinians or something. And it’s just it has like ten million views on it now.

And I can’t get rid of it. It’s like the the writer of the Twitter files is getting personally attacked in an ad and I can’t get away from it. And then for you for you page, is just a fucking hellscape of all the worst people. And and now it’s on you the Twitter app on the phone, it sends you their first like every time you open up the app, you’ve gonna move over to the following feet. And meanwhile, the Tesla stock is like having a epic door collapse, like, at the same time that Elon is, like, making Twitter worse.

I mean, it really for a guy who was on top of the world, While my beloved Twitter is getting ruined, I’m appreciating the shot in freud of it. You must have lost, like, a hundred billion dollars this year. I mean, how many people You

have to be excited about this. Right? Because you’ve always thought Tesla was a nonsense stock. So I have hated Elon Musk for, like, a decade.

And I hated him originally

first on the hate. I

mean, yes. Yeah. Because this guy was getting shoveled taxpayer dollars for his super luxury electric sports cars. And it it drove me insane. The idea that your tax dollars were going to give a rebate to Matt Damon when he bought a sports car that went zero to sixty in two point five seconds.

Fuck that. Right? Absolutely absurd. Anyway, so I hated him with that. I hated him because he was always over promising and under delivering the other

side of

the horse here. The the squishy part of the horse you. Were your conservative impulses of now overlapped with your cultural influence? Because he was a

scoff law. I mean, he would go out and say stuff like, yeah, we’re gonna take Tesla private. I’ve got the financing in place and then doesn’t do it. And it it just market manipulation. And, like, the SEC comes in and beats them up in his responses, f u.

Go ahead, make me. You know, like like, this is not how the rule of law works, and then he became a right wing darling and I hate him now too. It is great to watch him, didn’t be undone, but it’s even better for people to finally understand that the meritocracy is not like an ironclad thing. It’s more like a set of guidelines. You know, like Elon Musk didn’t make all this money because he was the smartest guy with the best ideas.

He made a lot of the money because the market is weird. And sometimes when you strike it rich early and you get a big chip stack, it’s pretty easy to push people around on the board. And and make your chip stack go bigger. I mean, it’s, you know, I don’t

know. If you

look at the the forget the Twitter files, when you look at the Musk texts, which which came out over the course of discovering the lawsuit. That is where you start to to look and say Does this seem like the smartest guy on the planet? Or does he just sound like another Twitter random? And the answer is he sounds like another Twitter random. There

was an enjoyable exchange, though. I do in appreciating other people’s pain throughout all this. David Sachs is like the Magna Curry and Venture

capitalists

guy out here. Hate. And there’s an article in the verge today. Our friend Casey Newton, who writes five more, was doing this, and then he has his anecdote. From when Elon buys Twitter and he goes to meet with the team and that’s they’re discussing the tech stack with him.

And the first, the source is like all of his questions are stupid and like, aren’t relevant to, like, the core questions about the tech stack. But yet, he’s lecturing us about how he in the nineties, he was on this and that and he’s, like, David Sachs walks in to participate in the meeting and they go. Ewan looks at her and he’s like, sorry, this is too technical of a meeting for you. And David asked, like, bow his head and leave. And I’m just like, I love that.

I love that he’s humiliating these other, you know, VC bros who just wanna kind of swim in his wake. I do get some enjoyment out of It’s kind of like when Trump would humiliate someone, you’re like, you hate to give Trump credit. Christie.

Hey, Chris. There’s the plane. Get out of it.

I’m enjoying Chris Christie and David Sachs getting humiliated. If I don’t really like the person doing

the

humiliating. So here’s

the truth about Elon Musk, which is that he is closer to Russ Hannaman than he is to the holy guy. Right? From Silicon Valley. I was Russ Hahneman. Russ Hahneman.

Trey Hahneman? The billionaire. I want a car with billionaire doors. You’ve not

watched the show, Silicon Valley. It’s been a I haven’t watched in a lot. When I

moved out here, I couldn’t watch anymore. It was too close I bet. So I so I haven’t launched it for, like, five years. But Okay. Yeah.

Why

I didn’t do Veep? Yeah. And and Gavin Bellson is ridiculous, but of course, Gavin Bellson was once on a time, like, a genius dev and engineer. Right. Russ Hahneman is just like a guy who runs around with his giant chip stack.

I love this money. There’s a a great moment where he says to Richard, you know, I had one point two billion dollars by the time I was twenty five. You know how much I have now? One point four billion. And, like, you know, all of a sudden Richard is doing the math in his head and realizing, wait a minute, if he’d put this in a savings account, he would’ve had a higher return and would’ve had Anyway.

Okay. Last bit, I guess the most important bit, I would like to talk about the new College of FloRida. Flow is that how it’s pronounced? Where governor Ron DeSantis has appointed a huge slate to the board of trustees to remake it in the image of Hillsdale College, a Christian conservative school.

Hillsdale or Trump. Hillsdale. Hillsdale. Hillsdale. Is the explicit

model for it, including Chris Ruffo of the Manhattan Institute, who is, to my mind, the most important intellectual in the Republican Party right now, And what

do you guys

think of it? I mean, I Kathy Young had a fantastic piece on the site, which everybody’s listening to this should go and read, and we’ll put it put it in the description or in the comments or something down below. Go to the bulwark dot com for more pieces like that from Cafe Young. It’s pretty bad I think, and Kathy comes from a very anti anti woke place and a big, like, libertarian type, you know, galaxy. Shut down the craziness on college campuses, and she came away from this like, dude, this isorbonism.

This is a Victororbon style kind of thing. Sunny, do you wanna do you still feel up enough to be able to defend a conservative stuff here? Or are you off the train now? Well, this is one

of these things where is most revealing about it is just how small potatoes penny any bullshit it is. So, like, I am not quite as worked up about it as you are JBL because when you say to somebody, I wanna make this other college, the Hillsdale of something. Everyone’s gonna look at you and say, what? What’s what’s the Hillsdale? It’s not like taking over Yale or Harvard.

Right? It is making another niche, whatever. And the other thing that was interesting from Cathy’s piece was who was the Not Ruffo

Mark Bauerlein. Mark Bauerlein. The Catholic National is a

magazine. So Mark Bauerlein said in an interview somewhere not to Kathy, I can’t imagine he would ever speak to Kathy. But he said, you know, look, we really can’t change that much. It’s already a class liberal arts education. You know, we’re tinkering around the edges, but like, the core curriculum is basically there.

And at that point, it’s like, well, what’s the point of this? And the point of it JBL is with the point you made in your newsletter today, which was This is not about actually have Sunny on

instead of Sarah. He’s actually read the material. Sorry, sir. But

you’re in your newsletter today, you made the point, which I think was totally spot on that this is me paraphrasing. It’s only marginally about the actual school itself. What is the key here is Rhonda Santa shoring up various elements of the outsider GOP. Caucus. Right?

So you’ve got Ruffo, right, which shores up Manhattan Institute, which is arguably the most important thing tank in the right wing world right now. Kessler is the Clairemont guy, Wireline’s the first things guy. So he’s shoring up the outsider position — Yeah. — giving them jobs. He’s giving them props.

He’s becoming a patron for these these sorts of people, which then kind of limits their ability to support Trump going forward. And it does the whole red meat to the base thing. He’s like, look, as governor of Florida, I went to a tiny liberal arts school and I got rid of DEI and I changed it to a merit system. And like, okay, fine. This is not going to actually change anything in higher education, but it does allow him to go out there and say, within the bounds of power that I had as a state official, I did this, this, and this.

That’s the other important thing here that it is it’s just a signal to folks who want to back him in the primary versus Donald Trump. I agree with that as a political matter strategically. The interest thing

thing for me out of all this. And the fact that they go to Ruffo, it’s first things guy. It’s just like how shallow the pool of maga Intelligence is, our Magna policy people that you could turn to. I mean, said Gorka was busy. I mean, honestly, like, JBL, you kept up the grip.

You know, and just moved on over to the examiner and started writing about this. I mean, you could be a president of a universe. I see

you on that board. Yeah. You could

be a university

president

right now. I mean, honestly. And and so, like that to me is telling, you know, in the conservative world, right? There’s always been this like kind of push and pull

between Okay. Do we

need to infiltrate quote unquote the existing institutions and make sure they’re conservative minds there? Or should we start our own institutions? Right? Like that’s and particularly in academia, that’s a question. But, you know, and you just look at the difference between what was what happened in, like, Crystal’s generation in the IVs.

You know? And you get, like, Harvey Mansfield. And, like, these very like, these serious scholars, like conservative scholars that go into universities, and so students get exposed to this sort of

thing. Adrian Vermeul is now the serious conservative intellect at an elite college. Yeah. Rhonda,

Santa doesn’t even need to turn to. The whole world is his oyster, you would think.

Right? Like, he’s a leading candidate to be the president. You might be the secretary of education after this, you know, if you take a job on the trustees of this

new school in Florida. And he, like, looks around and surveys universe, and it’s, like, infects out Rufa, who’s like a PR hack. You know, it would be like Jared Polis

turning to me and being like, I can learned about the conservative infiltration of some institution in Colorado. Well, let’s bring in miller. You know? And it’s like, no. Right?

I’m a fucking hack. You know, like, there are people that have, like, given their lives to these sorts of things, to pedagogy, and and who know what they’re talking about. And but the megaworld just hasn’t built that up at all. And Trump so repulsed everyone who might possibly be attracted to this type of thing, you know, that all of them has just checked out. Say, hey, no, I’m not gonna be the Ron DeSantis puppet at this university.

To me, it’s most interesting from that perspective. Because it gives you a little bit of insight into just like what a DeSantis White House would look like? I mean, like, these are the people that he’d be pulling from. Yeah.

I have to say, I I find two other things interesting. First is that I think I might be slowly re appraising my view of DeSantis. I had generally been of the idea that, you know, he has no charisma. He’s bad at retail politics. On the other hand, he is very shrewd about fight picking and fight picking is, I don’t know, eighty five ninety five percent of Republican politics these days.

Mhmm. He’s very good at that. The Christmas thing is a problem, but Donald Trump never did retail politics. Right? I mean, maybe retail politics, that age is over.

I don’t know. I don’t know. Jay Martin had a good

article on this today, and I love Jay Martin. I greeted everything in an article with inception of. He kind of gave Biden a little more credit. I thought he was due on the retail side. You know, and the the Clyburn thing was a relationship which is maybe an issue surrounding it just the, like, the retail part of it wasn’t exactly like or Obama.

I mean, w wasn’t, like, it’s kinda hard to remember the last time. Like, Clinton, I guess. Is the last one is w was a

good retail politician. People forget, like, on on the stump or in a room, people loved him. Why the stump he was good? DeSantis’

problem is that, like, Trump may not have been a good retail politician, but he was an entertainer — Yeah. — to get

up there

on the stage. The charisma deficit. Okay. And command thirty thousand people, you know, showing up to to come to his dumb rallies and, like, that would then be on TV and he does not have that. Which could be a problem for him, but it also like, if Trump really does stay off Twitter through the election and isn’t dominating news coverage every time he utters some dumb thing, I think that that path is kind of cleared for DeSantis.

Isn’t it? The other point that

this beginning to firm up for me is that Trump seems to think that all the people that he bought over the last five years are gonna stay bought because like they owe him or something. And that’s crazy. All I could think about Sunny was that seen in the dark night where the Joker goes and he’s he’s just burned the mountain of money and the chechen is there and he says, you know, you tell them they work your boys work for me now. The chechen is in dignities. Like, what do you mean?

They’re they belong to me. You know, they would never work for a freak like you. The children says, when dogs are hungry, they’ll eat anything. And Donald Trump is sitting on a ton of money. He just sold all these stupid NFTs.

Right? He’s got, you know, it’s like,

don’t know what

he took from that. I think it was like five million. I’d have to go and redo the math again, but took a lot of money from that. Why isn’t he setting up some bogus think tank to throw money at some of his people to make sure that they stay with him. Right?

Why isn’t he keeping his troll army fed? Right. And the answer is either because he’s lazy or entitled or just tired and can’t think to do it. That makes me think that maybe he’s weaker than I, for the last two years, thought he was. He’s

got loser’s stake on him. He wreaks a loser. And that’s a real problem. I mean, here’s the problem. It wasn’t just losing the Biden.

It was losing the Biden and then whining about it all the time. And then having Biden be out there looking not at the top of his game all the time. He just looks weak and has looked weak for the last, like, three years now. Tim, what do you think? Part of it is he’s weak.

Part of it is he’s lost a

step. Part of it is is I think he is a nostalgia for the good old days, you know, where it’s just him and the catty. And, you know, stab your eyes, Lewandowski, and hope on the plane, and they’re just like three kids in a dream. So he don’t I don’t think he feels like he needs to do what you’re talking about with creating the nonprofit, but he really does. Right?

And so I I think that like it’s a huge mistake. And I think that he’s just making a lot of these mistakes now. And it ties into a lot of the mistakes he was making, honestly, from sixteen on, which was This thing happened where everyone told him he had no chance to win. He didn’t even think he was gonna win. He wins.

So he already was just this narcissistic monster. Right? Who doesn’t listen to anybody? Now after everyone who’s smart was wrong and he was right, now he has literally no reason to ever listen any of these people. Right?

There’s nobody around it. I mean, Susie Wiles is like the person Olivia and Olivia’s podcast with Charlie, which was really good. If you haven’t listened to Olivia and Buzzy’s guess with Charlie about what Trump is happening tomorrow. Go to the Bulwark dot com and sign up for

Charlie’s show. Yeah. Sign up for it. So good. And Olivia

is telling Charlie that, like, when she was interviewing Trump, Susie on the call. And god loves Susie. She’s a southern lady, Pat Summerall, is her dad. That, I mean, I I don’t I don’t wanna be aegist or ager or whatever, but, you know, This is not somebody who’s in touch with the maggot troll army. Okay?

She was John Huntsman’s campaign manager in twenty twenty twelve. Alright? Like this is a person that he can run over. You know, he’s just not cultivating that. The scientist is much more in touch with that world as evidenced by the fact that he put Chris Ruffo on on the board of trustees.

Yeah. Alright.

Tim, I would like to turn the show over to you because it sounds to me like we need to

have some talk therapy here and you’ve just gone through something. No, I don’t think it’s therapy. I just wanted to close by letting some of our I know we have some listeners who are, you know, kinda like Bernie Bros. You know, and they come to us because it’s like, this is as far like, sunny as as much as I can take. Okay?

All those people just hit the on try button after my

gas stove. Right? Yeah. They’re not listening to any other I mean, you are left after Sunny’s

gas stove ramp. You know, any of our socialist listeners are left after Sunny’s gas stove ramp. I gotta tell you, I’m recruitable. Okay? I’m recruitable right

now

because I just spent the weekend in Saint Bart’s. Are you familiar with Saint Barth alchemy? A little bit in the Caribbean, a little bit? It’s like Santropay in the Caribbean. It’s French.

Colony. My best friend is a extremely successful eye surgeon. He got into med school and like Jabil. And really top of the class, and he’s to quite well for himself. Sorry, Jonathan.

And and so he held him and his wife. He was also a very close friend, also very talented and own right. Held their fortieth in St. Bartz, which is a vacation spot for the rich and famous. We saw Emilio Estebes, at the Ireland.

Steve Forbes was on my little puddle jumper, you know, in the airline. Like, this is the class of people that you’re dealing with in Saint Francis. I’ll speak French. Eleven Mile Island. It’s just all rich people and the people that are serving their people, but it’s it’s not like some of these other islands where there’s a lot of indigenous culture.

Right? Like, the people that are carrying your bags look like they make ninety thousand dollars a year and move from Paris just because they want it to the sun. I mean, it’s just it is a next level. And when we got on a boat and we’re going around, we do a circle the island on a boat. And I’m looking at all these other boats.

And on the one hand, I’m like fucking thrilled that we have been seizing these Russian boats. K? So that’s one little observation. One of my proposals is I think we should start seizing these boats. Bringing them up to America and making them like public utilities.

If you want a party on a boat, we’re gonna put one of these in Tampa. And you can just sign up and party on a Russian yacht. That’s just one idea I have as part of my wealth redistribution from the Russians. That the other is that some of these guys could probably pay a little more in taxes. That’s all I’m saying.

I just mean, the the decadence in Saint Parks I’m sure there’s some people there that are really up from their bootstraps type of guys and deserve every penny, but boy with a lot of NAPO babies around. And I was speaking with a lot of Napo, but if

you tax them five percent more, where’s their incentive to keep inheriting wealth? And partying in Saint Parks. That’s a good question. So are they gonna afford their induction

stoves when you steal their gas stoves? So all I’m saying

is I haven’t made any deep changes to my political philosophy, but just after spending some time with Nevo babies in Saint Bartz and looking at the boats. I’m open for recruitment to the Bernie Bros lessening the podcast. That’s all I’m saying. Let me

ask, is this a white Lotus location possibility? Could this be did you have strong white Lotus vibes. That

would be an amazing white Lotus location. And absolutely This

is white Lotus.

JV, we talked about this on another podcast that you didn’t know. It’s a show on HBO that’s from two’s already lost. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

It’s marvelous. And very white lotus vibes, I was playing the Italian remix. On our little speaker with people and kinda getting them going. And, yes, there could be a murder mystery here. You know, there could be people cheating on their wives here.

There were definitely some what was the prostitute character’s name in the second White Lotus season? Loved her. She was great. She’s my favorite character. I I it’s hard for you to remember.

Maurizio? Maurizio? Merizia? Sure. There were definitely some Maurizio hanging around.

God bless you. Sebastian says Lucia and

Mia. Lucia

and Mia. Thank you not even close to Maurizio. It’s kind of a Mia and Lucia come by mind? Thank you, Sebastien. Lucien Mia.

I met some Lucien Mia’s at the bar one night. How did you know? A lot of context clues and just their lack of interest. What are

your context clues? Well, I don’t I don’t I don’t

wanna assault their game, but let’s just say that their interest in me Like, their whole mood and tone changed once I informed that I was a homosexual. And some of them changed in which way,

for the better, for the worse.

Well, I I just I think that the pitch got a lot softer and they, you know, we we joked a little bit and then they kind of moved on to other potential. People. So

it was great though, but and I support them with you

know, and I watch this on the plane. I’m gonna

be on planes for ninety hours this week. Should I watch white lotus? I think so. I think so. It

definitely is better than

glass onion. She

did not like. So there we go. So that’s it. I’m open for recruitment. You know, for ways that we can take care of the NEPO babies in the same parts.

But boy, it was lovely. If you are an NEPO baby, if you’re not one of the Bernie Bro listeners, if you’re a NEPO baby listeners, Boy, do I recommend the Rosewood at Saint Bart’s? Wonderful way to spend that money if you’re not gonna give it away to poor children.

Alright. Sunny.

Thanks for sitting in for Sarah. Tim. Great to see you as always. Please don’t give me COVID when we see each other later this week. That would be excellent.

Actually, we’re having dinner tomorrow night. We are having dinner tomorrow night, Tim. Can you believe this twenty four hours from now? I can’t

wait. You and I

are sitting down to break bread. I’m so excited. I’m

just gonna breathe all over you. That’s

okay because I spent the money on real n ninety five masks, not the Chinese non golf k n ninety five masks. I’m just gonna wear three of them the entire

time because I don’t want to get sick. Might wanna wear to dinner with me because I just flew from San Francisco to Miami to San Juan to St. Bart’s and

back. You have all the diseases. Dengue fever, RSV, foot and mouth, flu, strep throat, Right? You’ve got you’ve got old of them. Thanks for

not naming some of the other ones. I appreciate

it. Alright, guys.

We’ll see you next week. And if you’re gonna be in Los Angeles, or Seattle come to one of our shows. It’ll be great. And even if you’re not, go to the bulwark dot com. Sign up for the newsletters.

Listen to the podcast. We do it all for you for free. Bye.