Mea Culpa (with Joan Walsh)

Hey, welcome to the Bulwark next level Sunday interview. I’m Tim Mueller. I got Joan Walsh with us today. Joan Walsh is, at the Nation Magazine. She’s the author of a new book, corporate bullshit, which we get into.

This is a little bit more political than the fair I usually prefer for a Sunday show, but it’s really worth that to be I’ve just been blown away by my unexpected internet bromance. Can it be a bromance with a man and a woman? I don’t know. Whatever you call know, internet affection between me and Joan Walsh of late. She came to our New York event.

And, I think that this interview will kind of bring a little bit of a different perspective hope you enjoy this. We’ve got some good, non politics guests coming down the pike the next few weeks. So, you know, get your little politics fix here. And one more thing, I don’t know if you’ve been noticing. We are posting more and more stuff on YouTube.

We’ve found that discoverability, people finding the Bulwark, we’re having a lot of success over on YouTube bringing in new people. We love all you, you OGs. We love you, but it’s nice to bring new people into the fold. And so know, we wanna make sure you’re not missing anything. So go ahead and make sure to subscribe to the Bulwark on YouTube if you haven’t and check out, you know, the videos of me and Charlie and Bill Crystal and others have been have been putting up there.

So up next, Joan Walsh, I think you’re gonna enjoy it. But first, just a little bit from our buddies in acid tongue. Peace.

Hello, and welcome

to the Bulwark next level Sunday interview. I’m here with Joan Walsh, the great Joan Walsh, who is a lot taller than I thought when I met her in person, of the nation, and many other things she’s the author of a book coming out later this month, corporate bullshit. Joan, I wanna start here. So you’re a bigwig at the commie Nation Magazine, and here you are on a podcast. Run by Neo Con exiles and a former conservative talk radio host in Wisconsin.

What a world? I I

don’t know Tim. If you told me this, well, it’s been it’s going on eight years now that I think we’ve all kind of been in Yeah.

So you’re getting used to it.

Secretive bet together. So I’m getting used to it, but as you know, I love Charlie Sykes I I’m going to do a profile of Charlie Sykes it kills me. I really think that that would be a fun matchup. But, yes, I mean,

I do too. Because you grew up in Wisconsin. That’s right. Are you in Wisconsin as a teen or

yourself? I grew up in New York, and then we moved to Wisconsin when I was thirteen. And so I went to high school and college in Wisconsin, Shorewood, nice north shore suburb of Bulwark, and then of course Madison. I am a badger. And so I’ve known about Charlie for a while.

And I was

Was Charlie contaminating the radio waves while you were

a bit drunk. I’m I’m

too old

for that. I don’t think he was, but I did I did learn of him, you know, pretty quickly. And I this is gonna be a shocking revelation. I was not a fan of governor Scott Walker. I couldn’t vote there.

I was gone, but my Madison and Milwaukee friends I mean, I have a lot of friends who are teachers. So they just didn’t like the guy. And, you know, Charlie was a big booster. So, you know, I think of all the people that I’ve wound up on the same side as now, Charlie is really one of the most remarkable, but I read Charlie every day. You know, I find Charlie really, really valuable, and he’s a great writer.

So I love that. I’m looking forward to this profile. I’ve said this maybe on another podcast before, but, just for your validation, you know, I inter before I interviewed with Job, I interviewed Scott Walker to be his comes director on his presidential campaign, and he was maybe the stupidest person that I’ve ever spoken to in person. It was a very embarrassing forty five minutes. I I don’t know anything.

I’m, like, twenty nine or whatever at the time. Maybe thirty one or something. And he’s interviewing me. And at the on the at the end, I do the thing you’re supposed to do, right, which is kind of like, ask a couple questions. So, you know, the first one was like, well, what role do you think I’d have?

And the next question is kind of like, alright. So Like, what’s the core that I don’t give me your b. Like, what’s the core message of why you should be present? Like, why you’d be a good president? Like, the old Ted Kennedy question, you know?

And he looked at me, and he, like, stammered out a UW lacrosse College Republican boilerplate about small government And then, like, he could tell he wasn’t confident in the answer. And then I was like, well, but, I mean, I, I get the talking points, but, like, what about you as a person? And he, like, stammer to get me, he’s like, wasn’t that why I’m hiring you to help me with that? No. And I was like, no.

You’re running for the leader of the free. This was before we had a game show host the freehold worlds. We’re running for a very important job, and I’m like a I’m a hack. Like, I am a I I cannot tell you why you should be You

tell me. President. Then I go out

That was concerning. So I rejected Scott Walker that time, and that that felt like a good decision in retrospect. Okay. So I wanna do I wanna get we’re getting the core bullshit towards the end. I have a couple of nitpicks.

We’re gonna maybe go back to our old natural state of not always agreeing about everything. So I wanna get to that at the end. But I wanna do some McCarthy shot in Florida. We just have to, and then talk about a couple other things you’ve worked on. So we’re here this week.

Kevin McCarthy has been the first speaker in history to be vacated. Everyone listening knows that, but I just love saying that. First one to have his office vacated. Short as speakerships in a fellow that died of tuberculosis in eighteen seventy six. And so I just wanna do a little bit.

I just wanna hear your take. You had to have you know, saw this coming. Like, what is your take coming from more of a lefty perspective about this whole question of is the next guy gonna be worse? Know. What do you think You’re cool.

I have no idea who the next guy or gal or they or whatever is gonna be. So I I can’t tell you that they could be worse, but In a certain way, Tim, they could not be worse because he was such a liar, and he had no backbone. And so when did I know that he was going to be deposed? On the fifteenth vote when he finally got the speakership, we both know. We might have, you know, tweeted.

It’s gonna be over soon. It took longer than I really thought. What? Nine months? You know, it’s it’s really something.

When I really, really, really knew, and I I don’t mean to sound like a know at all because you knew it too, but, seriously, when he went on face the nation and said, Well, I didn’t know it was gonna pass because the Democrats were doing everything. I’m giving you a draw. He doesn’t have one. Bakersfield, whatever that democrats were doing everything they could to stop it. And even Margaret Brennan, who’s the, you know, very nice person, very deferential, was like, the Democrats back it.

You know, she couldn’t believe that he was saying that. Right. At that moment, I said, wow, this is over. And they showed that clip at the caucus meeting. I’m sure everybody came to that caucus meeting with their own reasons not to vote for my Kevin, but I just think that cemented everybody.

You know there were blue dogs and whatever we call them border state frontline candidates who maybe kinda sorta wanted to figure out some moderate compromised. He didn’t give them anything to work with and he insulted them when, you know, some of them were risking some parts of their constituency, you know, the the battle over Ukrainian aid, you know, as speaking as someone for the left, I don’t speak the left. From the left, I support it. I do support it. But I understand why it’s controversial.

And there are people on the left of the Democratic caucus and in the center who have some questions. So But they just did it. They just did it. And they kept the government open. And then he spit in their faces on Face the Nation, and it was like, it was over.

What do you say to the norms crowd? My friend, you know, Joe Scarborough and the and these folks that are like, you know, it might not be fair, but the Democrats have to be the adult here. And I guess the most generous version of this question is we might now end up in a situation when the government is shut down in forty days where Ukraine doesn’t get funds. Right? Like, So maybe Democrats should have just held their notes.

No. No. No.

I mean, I only interviewed Nancy Pelosi two or three times. But it was on the verge of another shutdown. And she said, sometimes I worry that we’re enabling Republican bad guys and girls. By

It’s interesting.

Doing what has to be done by being the grown ups, we are the people who care about the people who are gonna lose food stamps or, you know, military families. We’re gonna lose whatever. We care. We can’t let that happen. So we step in time after time.

And I’ve had my ups and downs with Joe. I I like and respect him, but he’s just wrong. And I I really say to my mainstream media colleagues, I go back to what Nancy Pelosi said to me. Do you ever think that you are enabling this by acting like the Democrats are the only ones with any freaking. I don’t know how much we can curse here.

We can think fuck on here. Yeah. Great. We’d like that work.

It only fucking people who do the right thing, and that’s just a way of nature. That’s just The natural state Tim, so they just gotta do it. Again, and again, that has enabled the worst actors in the Republican Party. And even a few that used to be a little bit sane to just do the wrong thing again and again and again. And if I were my friend, Joe, I would just be having a little talk with myself in the mirror and being like, Why do I keep doing this?

And I, I will say that. I could say that. We could name lots of names of people who are doing that.

Oh, yes, sir. I was just gonna give you an example. They’re just sort of a lot Yeah. I mean, not Lewis. I mean, that’s not all even never Chopper’s Andrew Yang was saying this.

Like, this is like a pundit brain worms.

Yeah.

Right? A lot of pundits were signed in.

Yeah. And even people who are sometimes brave and tell the truth. Just get into this crouch, like, oh, god. You guys show. I mean, basically, the back of his mind is like, even when I was a Republican and and a bomb thrower even I counted on the demos to do the right thing because we were crazy.

You know, so it’s just like, I am so tired of it. I am just what did you think?

Did you hear Kevin relay, a story about how Nancy said to him in private that the Democrats would. Did he hear this? Yeah. During his press conference, he was like, yes. When I moved the motion of AK down to one, I had a private conversation with Pelosi where she said that she would have my back.

I find it hard to believe that that conversation happened. But, this seems like it’s one of Donald Trump’s, sir, conversations, but

I don’t in tears Nancy Pelosi approached me in tears and said, sir, I will have your back. Some version of that might have happened, but then she watched him both sell out his own people and sell out Democrats and break his word time and time and time again. You know, obviously, he wasn’t in control of what Matt Gates did. No one is including Matt Gates. But he does this while she is grieving for Diane Feinstein be cynical if you want.

She was my Congress will twenty five, thirty years. Like it or not, they are friends. She I’m sure she’s very sad that Diane passed, especially in the way that she did. So she’s away at a funeral, and you guys are making this move. If she ever said any encouraging words to Mike Kevin, she had the right to take her word back after things he did.

And then this week, I’m sorry. She should have left. I think I believe Diana’s lying in state at City Hall. Oh, I knew that was gonna happen to us.

Final thing of this, the Nancy thing just while we’re on it. Because we didn’t talk about it much on the Wednesday show, is that little dwarf Patrick McHenry, you know, who’s like, jams the champs the Gallaudine. He’s like, I’m mad at you Democrats. I’m mad. And then I’m gonna take away Nancy Pelosi’s office.

You know, whenever I ask any of my Republican friends in DC, I’m like, Okay. Are there really any normal people left in Congress? I keep hearing there, but who are they? His name is always one of the ones that comes up. And, like, he’s this little angry lep Con taking away Nancy’s toys because he lost to Matt Gates.

I mean, the whole thing is pathetic.

He took away his daddy’s orders today. You kicked Steny out of whatever little Lara Steny has. I mean, I don’t care. But but right.

But it’s still pathetic.

It’s so pathetic. She gave she gave space more space to Danny Hastard. And, you know, we don’t have to go there. Denny Hastard, his poor victims. I mean, again, not to pick on my friend, Joe, There’s so many people doing this today, but this is what we collectively have enabled to some extent.

Each of us in our different ways. Let’s just say that. And and now you see what are they doing today? What it’s so urgent. There’s so much happening, and they’re taking away Nancy and Stenny’s little hideaways.

I can’t wait till Hakim Jeffrey’s, I don’t know, but Patrick McHenry in stock. Or something. You know, here’s your space, you know, just stand here for a few days. And,

well, I could make him walk through it and through a little dog door or something. You know, like the little door inside the big door, and make him walk through one of those. Okay.

I think so.

That’s enough of my Kevin. The Bulwark listeners have gotten wall to wall, Mike Kevin College. We gotta take our shot in Freud where we can get it here. I’m sure that they’ve been enjoying it, but I wanna talk about another Bulwark favorite. He actually tweeted one of our articles recently, and so I was hoping that maybe this person might do some learning.

Had he exploit some of the other material on the site, and that is Robert f Kennedy Junior. I was so impressed. I guess maybe it’s somebody that has a lot of regrets in life, feel like I’m now in community with other people who have been like, you know, I missed that one and take responsibility moved on. You wrote a piece about the vaccine autism link based on our K Junior’s claims way back in the day Will Saletan.

Two thousand five.

Will Saletan, I guess, which was rejected to, what, eighteen years ago now. Now his campaign’s back up. He’s repeating a lot of these claims. He attacks you, salon. And so you wrote about this recently.

So folks who, like, kind of missed this of back strokes, you could have just ducked and and pretended like this wasn’t happening, but you wrote about it and took it head on, which I appreciate it.

Yeah. I mean, I had just taken over as editor in chief of salon. I was the first editor in chief after our founder stepped away. David Talbot, great guy, good friend, very, very, very conspiracy theory minded. That’s not an insult.

That’s a description. He But

he writes season of the witch.

He did, and that’s a great book.

That’s so good. That’s so good. It’s about

the history of San Francisco.

It’s unbelievably good. Anyway, but

then he went on to just a lot of Kenny conspiracy theories. He believes that both Bobby and Jack were killed by, I don’t know, the CIA, somehow, maybe Alan dulles, Not personally, he never says that. I don’t I don’t wanna insult anybody. I just wanna stick to

the truth. Okay.

And so I just taken over. I kind of inherited this relationship with Rolling Stone and Yon Wenner, who I also wrote about recently, where they Yeah. Somebody who’s

not taking responsibility for his mistakes. Yeah.

I know. Oh, if you you know, none of those black artists were really part of his zeitgeist nor were they articulate, but okay. I digress. So I inherited this partnership with Rolling Stone, which once I took over was not easy because they were all they also wanted people to believe that John Carey one, Ohio, and therefore, he was the president. And I assigned somebody with Eahn’s money to look into it.

And he

The deviled machines.

The default, exactly. And he found that that had not occurred, and jan wasn’t happy with me. So then along came the Bobby autism piece. And it he made the claim that the CDC had falsified and taken down and switched and da da da. This whole study suppressed a study that showed the link between vaccines and particularly the time aerosol.

Now I’ve gone too far. Once you say you’ve gone to. No. I think

so. This is this is interesting.

You know, the CDC had basically suppressed this information, this research that it had done and that he it knew that there was a link between vaccines and autism childhood, mainly measles mumps and rubella vaccines and suppress it and, you know, big pharma was behind it blah blah blah blah blah. Our partnership with Rolling Stone included me doing all the heavy lifting of editing, but they were gonna do the fact check And that that was important. Right? And they Right. You know, they, at the time, and probably still do have a really robust fact checking department when they assign a real feature.

I mean, it fallen short in a few other cases. But anyway, part of what I said that was, you know, really the May of Kalpa part, I had misgivings, and I just didn’t really push hard enough. I knew that Jan was on my board. I had just taken over. David Talbot was on my board.

I liked my job and I wanted to keep it. And we had great fat chicken. So everything was good except it wasn’t. From the minute it went up on the web, we started getting irate and also erudite letters explaining what we got wrong. And it just went on and on and on, and we kept appending corrections and corrections.

And then Seth Mnuchin wrote a book that dealt with this and he did the research to show that I don’t know if Bobby did this intentionally or stupidly He had cut and pasted from a transcript of a CDC sponsored meeting where they discussed this research and he had cut and pasted kind of the one of the worst sins of journalism because we’ve all been tempted. It’s like, this is a really good quote if I just chopped off the part where he says I don’t act The first three words. And he had done that, and he had chopped it up, and he had put things in different orders, and made it sound like these people were all in on this big pharma cover up. They were not. And when we saw that, it was humiliating, but it we took it down.

Now, there’s still an argument about you know, whether you should take things down or just leave them up and put, you know, big caution tape or something. We did take it down because it was sort of like so bad. You couldn’t correct it. And Right. Anyway, honestly what really provoked me was not that I’m a good person, which I’m a wonderful person, but Bobby started saying that big pharma got to me.

Like, okay. I have a nice little apartment. Big format. No. Never didn’t try.

You know?

You’re not on Fies or payroll, Moderna? Moderna’s not throwing over cash in your your way.

You know, I can’t retire. So This

podcast is still looking for sponsors if Moderna is out there.

Fries are changing. We did take it down, guys. Totally joking. But, I mean, that just pissed me off so royally. This Syan.

I mean, the poor man suffered major trauma. And I always say that when I’m asked about him. He It

was Bobby Junior.

Crazy. Bobby junior. But we might Beg to Differ we lived through what he lived through. But anyway, he’s going around now in real time saying that big pharma got to me. And I was just like, no.

The truth got to me. Concience got to me, Bobby, and I’m just not I’m not here for that. So, you know, I guess in some ways I was defending my own honor, not really necessarily doing a mea culpa, but as you know, it was a mea culpa. I mean, you, you know, he did it. Your book was great.

And it’s just like, you gotta do it sometimes. It’s like, here are the reasons that I It

is just I mean, it’s not it’s not an apples to apples comparison, but the similarities is, like, the things I feel the most bad about is I look back at, like, I wrote this. I was like, it was with Palin, I knew.

Right.

I know something is wrong with this. It smells bad. I still like John McCain to disrespect him. There are other rational. I still in my career.

I still have other opportunities. It’s when you’re like, man, I smelled it, but I just kind of ignored the smell. For various reasons. Like, that’s the part that I think is. I think a lot of people experience that.

I think that’s important to speak it out loud because word for like that is a good learning for the next people. When something smells bad, it probably is bad.

It really is. I mean, and I say this in the piece, part of my self justification was Everybody was super busy at Salon. I mean, we were always overworked. The two thousand election, Florida recount, and then nine eleven turned us from a sleepy little web publication that published maybe once a day to a twenty four seven publishing operation with the same number of people. So it was really, really, always really hard and really fun.

It was great. But I I told myself, I’m the editor in chief, first of all, the buck stops with me, but also I’m a good editor if I really use my brain, and I can do it. And I don’t wanna dump this on my news editor who’s drowning or my features editor. Likewise, he’s doing ten things at once. That’s another way, you know, in terms of if people are wrestling with these kinds of issues where you’re just like, I just need to spare these other people.

They’re right.

The burden. When you really there’s a part of you that’s like, if I show this to these other people, I won’t mention their names, but they are just the greatest people in the world, and they’re so smart, and they have so much integrity. If I they were both so mortified on my behalf and also theirs because it was, you know, really a bad look for salon. They would have found it, they would have come to me, we would have killed it. If I had simply done that and not said, I’m just protecting them.

Really, your conscience, your mind, your psyche does really weird things when you’re, you know, trying to justify doing the wrong thing.

Did you know Bobby at all? Kennedy?

You know, I have never met him. I talked to him a million times. Probably literally a million. He would call me all hours of the day and night, and he was charming and I’m Irish Catholic, if you don’t know. I worship the Kenby’s as a child, my family, You know, my father was gone, but it would have been a really big deal for me to be, like, editing Bobby’s son.

You know, you have those milestones in your life that are like their personal view. He was charming. He was funny. He had stories. He talked about his family.

And then over time, he became really bullying. And then when we took the piece down, oh my god. He wrote like a thirteen page whatever rejoinder where he shared some of my editing notes and then lied about some other things, but that’s par for the course we’ve learned. So, yeah, but I never did get to meet him or Cheryl Hines who, you know, I love.

I’m curious to review both A on, like, kind of the rationalization of his campaign now. What do you think thinks he’s getting out of it. And also, really even, I’m more curious about what you think about, you know, there’s the horseshoe element. Yeah. Like, you must have people in your life Right?

I assume. Since you’re like, of this world who are like, far lefty, progressive hippy folks that have jumped on this bandwagon that’s sort of trumpy leftism. That that RfK represents.

My beloved friend David Talbot has, and he’s all over Facebook with it. And I just do my best not to comment and just wish him a happy birthday or whatever.

It’s an interesting species, the lefty horseshoe jumper. People who don’t understand this concept, it’s like the instead of a straight line, our politics is a horseshoe. And so there’s the middle on one side. There’s like the Bulwark centrist. Kind of middle, but then there’s the other side of the horseshoe where the far right and the far left get kind of close to each other, and some people sometimes jump over.

Right? Because there’s There’s so far on the left. And I think RfK is just like the prime example of this. He wasn’t a moderate democrat. He was a very progressive Democrat who’s kind of gotten on board.

And My theory is you get, oh, all these institutions are bad. It’s occupy Wall Street. It’s the government. It’s, you know, the left the conspiratorial thinking. And You can then kind of see how it’s easy then to be like, oh, big farm is bad.

Oh, the vaccines are bad. And now all of a sudden I’m a trump Right? Now we can’t trust anybody. Right? I don’t I don’t know.

But anyway, I’m but that’s an out what’s your take on it?

Obviously, I know of the theory. I don’t we need a better theory. I don’t know exactly how to describe this coming together, but, you know, I also meaacalpa I contracted with Glenn Greenwald at Salon.

Another example.

Another example. I do think it’s definitely your conspiracy minded. Glenn was right about a lot of stuff.

We were

doing some torture. RIP Diane Feinstein. You were definitely to my right, but you shown in the moment when you released that report on on torture. We tortured. Glenn was writing about it.

And I don’t know. I mean, he left Salon He took in snowden. But I think there is an element of your conspiracy theorist. You’re right about some things but then you see it everywhere. I mean, I know with Glenn and we had some fights about this.

Barack Obama was a centrist to me. He really was. Sorry folks out there, but as a democrat, he really was a centrist. He happened to be Bulwark. So he fooled people.

I’m not saying fooled people as in he did anything wrong. But he was the centrist. He governed to the right of where Joe Biden is today. Don’t you think so?

For sure.

For sure.

For an economic stuff for sure. And And I think even on foreign policy, I would say.

Probably on foreign policy, he got us out of Afghanistan. He warned Obama against escalating, you know, the troop numbers when Obama did that.

It was

the first one to come out for gay marriage. He forced Obama out on gay marriage. I don’t love everything about uncle Joe, although I do love uncle Joe. But to get back to Obama, Glenn saw similar things happening under Obama. There was still a lot of drone warfare.

There wasn’t. I’m not saying there was torture. But there were some sketchy things, foreign policy, other things. And I think once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And there’s a certain kind of integrity in saying Bush did it, but now Obama’s doing a lot of the same stuff.

But then I don’t know. Then you just go off the cliff or you the horseshoe comes around and you just are either imagining the worst or seeing the worst or believing the worst and that’s that’s where he went. We’ve got the same thing in terms of Russia. Where, you know, obviously, it’s a staple of Trumpism. The Russia hoax was a hoax.

Russia did nothing wrong. Putin is a great man. But there’s the horseshoe theory, then there’s also the tankies on the left who support Putin. Putin did nothing wrong. People like me who believe that Russia did interfere in our elections in some fashion, Russia hoax, MSNBC, shitlives, They all went, and then, you know, the war happens in Ukraine.

And suddenly, the Ukrainians are the aggressors, and NATO the US provoked that poor Russia had no choice but to take Crimea because NATO was aiming its weapons at Russia.

I do think some of that is ideological. I know while we’re doing no offense, we’re always some pro Russia left to there. That’s not exactly a new thing. That was true in the eighties, and has been true for a while. Now we’ve got more, I think, pro Russia righties.

So, you know, it’s a Mona Charen. My colleague’s been saying that she’s gotta update useful idiots to make it about the right this time. She made it about the pro. It was about the pro Russia lefties in the eighty Right. But anyway, I digress now, but I think some of it is also about resentment.

And that’s the common line, I think, between Kennedy and Greenwood. I don’t know Talbot, but that the people we’ve been talking about is they are resentful that the whatever you wanna call it, center left, corporate lib. Whatever pejorative or compliment you wanna use Neil, they resent that this crowd is at the state dinners and on television and getting the contracts and that they feel like a personal desire to wanna take them And resentment can lead you to some bad places. Right? And I think that what you’re saying is right is, like, if you are correct that that group missed some things, miss some things going along with the Iraq War.

They miss some things to the great recession. But, like, once you’re convinced that those people are bad

Right.

And that everything that they do is bad.

They’re not just wrong or bad. Right?

Yeah. Then that incentivized. So I think that there’s like that personal resentment contrarianism is a big part of it.

Yeah. I would agree. Although, you know, again, I have to say, Bobby could retire and, you know, live out his life with his dogs and his wife and his falcons and everything else. He’s really apart from losing his dad is terrible. Bobby’s done well.

Glenn’s done really well. But he Glenn got a lot of money to start the intercept, to lead the intercept. God knows what else he’s gotten. Glenn you know, Glen’s doing well.

There’s no substitute for recognition, though, for being seen. Yeah. You know, Kennedy’s like his family. You know, they’ve got statues and sculptures. There’s no

Right.

Subs there’s no amount of money that’s a substitute for that.

That’s true. Yeah. That’s true.

Anyway, my last thing on on our cake, I think the conventional wisdom Nate silver weirdly wrote in Barry Weiss’s think that he’s because he always has re counter conventional wisdom now. So the key wrote the counter conventional wisdom is Kennedy will help biden and who Kennedy would hurt Trump if you’re in as a third party.

Oh, right. It’s a counter counter counter counter convention.

Yeah. I thought that was the conventional wizard. That’s what I think. But anyway, I’m with the view that Kennedy would hurt Trump, actually, and help Biden, because I think because of this that we’re talking about at this point, to be mostly kind of mega types that would go for Kennedy But maybe that’s wrong. I don’t know.

So I’m curious what you think about that. Maybe there are enough lefty, Jill stein, Bernie Sanders types that would vote for him that it would actually hurt by. I’m open.

You know, I didn’t support Bernie either time, but I would never put his name on that list. Sure.

I wasn’t comparing I just

met with his villager.

Yes. You know,

I I’m always in trouble for supporting Bernie in my world. I don’t know. I think it is Which

is a different world.

I know. Our worlds. I think it’s really interesting that Steve Bana now thinks Now, he’s now cursing out Bobby. He encouraged Bobby to run, but he’s now cursing out Bobby because he thinks that Bobby if he runs an independent campaign. Will hurt Trump.

It’s a canary in the car.

I really don’t know, but I think there’s a decent argument to be made that he would hurt Trump that his family is going to go all out for Joe Biden. Everybody that I know. I mean Sarah Longwell, Jenny Shlossberg, she doesn’t do a lot of interviews, but she did a really great interview. I think it was with Gail King and her Upstart son and her son had gone on TikTok and then like uncle Bobby go away. You’re crazy.

He’s the kind of Kennedy we like. Yeah.

He’s a

handsome airhead who’s doing the right thing. Yeah. You do your thing, Jack. Do your

thing young, Jack. Caroline was just really obviously amused. Anybody like my late parents or my aunts and uncles who revere the Kennedy’s who’s still a Democrat. That’s another conversation. They will not vote for Bobby when this gets going.

Yeah. And I do think that we have some crunchy liberals. I mean, we covered it at salon. We had anti vax parents in Marin County who were, you know, voted for, but that back at the time, Carrie or Obama who weren’t getting their kids faxed. It was crazy.

So there is there’s definitely the goop Democrats.

Right.

They are out there, but I think the people who’ve just really made anti vax stuff, a political movement, not just like a lifestyle choice or They’re, they’re on the right. They’re also dying. You know, it’s really sad when you look at the red state, COVID deaths. But anyway, I can’t tell you for sure, but my ma I go back and forth on this one. I I could see it either way.

I was not planning on messing with this, but I’m like fascinated by your opinion. The progressive media world, it was so ascendant in this time you’re talking about, the glory days and the post nine eleven. That area, you’re talking about where salon is growing. It’s like salon and mother Jones and slate and I guess New Republic’s moment was maybe a little before that, but I don’t know. Like, in this day and age, it feels like the right conservative media is so influential.

The Magham Right Media, not like the national review. Right. Might as well.

Whatever they are.

Will be dead. But, like, the daily wire in that world is so influential. And it, it feels like the left media. I don’t know, Brian Butler, a friend of mine who is a crooked who just started in the sun stack, kind of made this point that he’s like, he doesn’t feel like when he was coming up in the two thousands, the lefty media was so vibrant and it was challenging authority. And he feels like it’s stagnating a little bit.

I’m curious what you think about that.

Well, you know, I wouldn’t necessarily say the lefty media like salon. I would say the blogs. That’s when talking points memo. I think Brian started there. Yeah.

He did. There there was a, I mean, the Iraq War, the late Eric Bulwark, my good friend, who also worked at salon, did a lot of reporting on this that the logosphere really exploded around post Florida recount post nine eleven and around the Iraq War when so much of the mainstream media. There are people at salon, including David Talbott, by the way. Who supported the Iraq war who were like, we’ve just gotta stop Saddam. They didn’t believe that he’d triggered or, you know, funded nine eleven, but he’s a baddie.

You’ve gotta get rid of him.

We’re just gonna say then, post that little clip on David for Talbot’s Facebook page just to, like, create just to extract a little bit.

Usedessions of a liberal Iraq warlock literally. Wiggle it. But the blogosphere exploded in anger that the liberal media and the New York Times in Judy Miller, and all these people really selling this thing that the late David Carr loved him. I actually wrote a very compassionate story about me, and it’s funny because it linked me with Katrina Manahuevel at the nation as two sad lefties who had been left behind by history after Saddam’s statue was toppled and all was well in Iraq. The invasion went, as you recall, it was a cake walk.

Okay. The it’s not sneering because he really did like me. It’s almost sneering a profile of us and a few other people that looser.

Do you have that framed now?

I do. I do. I’ve written about it hundred times, and David at some point apologized. But, yeah, it was lonely out there, but the blog took off and took over. And that’s what I recall.

And I don’t know what’s going on now. We all bet on the internet and you know salon and slate. We’re gonna eat the New York Times is lunch and salon. God bless them. They’re still slogging along.

Slates doing a little better, but it’s a slog. Huffing and Post was gonna put everybody out of business. And then I forget the order, but Buzzfeed was gonna put the Hoping and Post out of business. And Vox was gonna put buzzfeed out of business and this and that. You know this.

I told you in person. I love the bulwark. I subscribe to it. I read multiple things every day. You’re never claiming that you’re gonna put everybody out of business.

And there’s just also a grappling with what we don’t know that you can say, I don’t know if Bobby Kennedy is gonna take votes for Trump.

Yeah. Sure. We’re in a fractured media environment. We’re in niche thinking we know. Yeah.

I don’t know. So I I really like that. Humility, which we didn’t have a salon, and the, you know, the subsequent generations haven’t had. And then I don’t know what’s on the left today. You know what?

There’s the the sub stack revolution. I I don’t know. I think and it’s kind of sad to say, but individual writers and TV personalities have their own kind of platform and brand, but

Right.

Yeah. I don’t wanna insult any of my peer left

I think it’s kind of related to the threat from the right. And I think that Brian Butler sees this when he wrote about this, I’m interested to see what he’s gonna put on his substrate because he’s smart.

And I

think that his point is, like, he thinks that a lot of his peers are kind of scared to challenge conventional. It’s hard to create a website or a news identity that always agrees with everything that the White House does. Right? Like, it’s hard to challenge, you know, to to get a, like, why don’t anybody read you if you just heard a DNC press release machine. Right?

I get that. But I think that there’s good reason why some on the left are, like, I’m hesitant to do this intra coalition criticism, like we did in the bush years, because I’m so fucking scared of the Nazis that are about to take over. Right? And it’s just like and I feel this way about Joe Biden. And then I’m I guess I’m quasi in this coalition at this point where I’m like, I just don’t I don’t love nitpicking Joe Biden that much because it’s like he’s so much better than the alternative.

Right. And so I think maybe there’s something to that and that that’s created some a little bit more of a sclerotic environment in the lefty media. Anyway, that’s my

I I think you’re right. I think it’s really it’s hard. You know, it’s also there’s the woke element, which I don’t really wanna get into. I I mean, I don’t

Let’s get into it.

Well, then, great, though. We’re saying that to Tim because now you’re fucked.

Okay. Well, I

think there’s a lot of orthodoxy, and there are things that people on the left have a hard time being honest about or asking questions. There is a great deference that I think can be based on race or gender identity or, you know, that is earned and deserved, but then there’s also a kind of timidity. I’m a big fan of People who’ve been left out should have more of their say and their turn right now. Okay. That’s it.

I agree with that. And

you agree with that. But there’s also just things that I think lefty people get kind of tongue tied about

wanna go down to defend the police rabbit hole, but this was like an example of this. Right? I think that this was clearly something that had some issues like police reform, obviously questioning the police and racist cops. Like, oh, that’s fine. But, like, because people were worried about that, they were afraid to be like, Hey, are are we we overstep in a little bit here.

There’s some excesses over there. And eventually that and, right? This is why I think that, like, the left is actually kind of more healthy than the right because, like, eventually, that it. Right.

And by

twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, there are plenty of people that are like, yeah, okay. We overstepped there. But in the moment, there was a little bit of timidity. It felt like of speaker.

Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I don’t know that I defended it, but I defended not attacking it. Like, I thought Kamala Harris handled it really well at one point. In a debate with Megan McCain on the view. And she was like, we’re not talking about that.

We’re talking about reorganizing the police. And this is still true for me, Tim. People were out there literally putting their bodies on the line. And they had demands, and they had language. And I did come around to disagreeing with it publicly, but I definitely had a point and I don’t really regret that point where I was kinda like, who the fuck am I a white lady?

You know, living in a nice neighborhood to be, oh, I just really wish you wouldn’t make that request of the nice police. You know, my my favorite uncle was a cop. You know? I just was kind of like, I’ve just I’ve gotta take my time. I’ve gotta take my time.

I’ve gotta listen to them. I’ve gotta listen to my own internal reservations. I don’t regret that. It’s messy. Again, I do feel like liberals progressives, whatever, are grappling with that more openly or more honestly then, certainly forget about Maga, but

I

think it’s just a tough time. And I think on Biden, It’s so funny. I’m privy. To many left conversations that are semi private, so I won’t mention any names. But a couple weeks ago, major panic attack about, you know, Biden’s numbers and, you know, Democrats don’t like them and Democrats really do like them.

But anyway, they’d like somebody else to run And, and, you know, one of the names was Gavin Newsom. That’s a whole other podcast. I I really like Gavin, and I call him Gavin because I’d known him. I wrote the first feature about him when he was running from Air. And I really grew to like him.

But these people are like, Gavin Newsom should run and he’s gonna run. He’s not gonna run. Not gonna run against Joe Biden for sure. Gavin Newsom has some issues. A lot of them are public, but like now they’re freaking out because Lafanza Butler has appointee to the Senate worked for Airbnb for a while after a career in the labor movement.

There’s just a level of bedwetting to use a term that people do use. On the left and among liberals that is just like you don’t have any say about it. Joe Biden is running. If something happens to him god forbid, we’ll face that then. But why are you why are you people David Ignacia is not on the left, but why are you people sitting around coming up with reasons that Joe Biden is gonna be terrible?

Or you know, should step aside or you know, take your victory lap Joe, but don’t give it to Kamala because we don’t like her either. It’s just like Come on, people.

It’s not one way. Sometimes sometimes mild people find the left annoying. I always say that. Left sometimes lefties listening, get mad at me. And they’re like, sometimes y’all can be annoying.

Some of the stuff. It’s just like really

when you’re

mad at her about Airbnb. While we’re doing the the identity stuff real quick, and now I’m gonna get to your new book next, but I’m just gonna admit this. I did not read it. So it’s not in my I was not in fond with Joan Walshra, so maybe I’ll go back to it now, but you wrote. What’s the matter with white people while we long for golden age?

It never was. I mean, this is kind of like this concept is related a little bit, right, to the know, I said let’s go there on the woke stuff. This is related, you know, a little bit to what that whole mindset, right, that that white people want to maintain a society that maybe worked for them in the 1950s. So anyway, what was behind the idea to write about that?

It’s a really good book. I stand by most of it, but not all of it. It’s kind of like half memoir and half political analysis, and I don’t think I ever really nailed it perfectly. But I come from a family where my dad was a Christian brother Irish Catholic stayed super super especially on civil rights. And most of the rest of my family, they were classic Reagan Republicans, Reagan Democrats, but they are look ins now.

Although some of them wouldn’t vote for Trump, so that’s good. And I try to understand that and be a little bit sympathetic, but also be like Republicans. I I’m sorry. Mitt Romney God bless him for everything he’s done, but he sought Trump’s endorsement in twenty twelve. Eleven, twenty twelve.

What did Donald Trump have going for him? Birtherism? That’s what made him a force in the republican party. And Mitt Romney lowered him self. And I think he knew what he was doing.

He never looked happy doing it. Some people were really overtly appealing to whiteness and being overtly racist. And then he and Paul Ryan claimed that Obama cut Medicare to give it to those people on Obamacare who had the Obama phones. Didn’t happen. You know what I’m saying?

There was coated braces and even, you know, you look back fondly at Mitt Romney I kinda do.

So I’m in the twenty twelve campaign. I didn’t work for rounding the primary. So I was kind of on the outside of the circle. Right? So I’m not in like the what ad should we do conversations, you know, spin it once they’ve decided part of the team.

Right.

Right. Right.

And so they put out these welfare to work they come through the process, you know, when we’re deciding who we need to get, you know, how do we do the press rollout? And I just remember being like, why are we doing this? What is this? And and, you know, they’re like, oh, this pulls well. I’m like, oh, well, that’s why.

I wonder why it pulls well. Like, right? Or talking to, like, that. We’re talking eventually to the Obama Trump voter. That’s who that ad was for.

I mean Stewart Stevens is a good friend of mine, and I’ll tell you this now. Like, it’s just like, that’s what they were doing, and it speaks directly to this kind of white an angst stuff. It just it wasn’t as overt as Trump, but, like, that was the point.

Right. That’s what I loved about Stewart’s book. Like, Stewart just really owns it all. He really does. And Stewart and flashed back in the day, as you and I did.

And he’s from Mississippi. He finally got down. I was like, Yeah. That’s what we were doing. We didn’t mean to.

It’s kinda like me and Rfk Junior. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want I just didn’t want those other people to have to work too hard. Yeah. We tell ourselves stories.

And then at some point, you can’t tell yourself that story anymore. And Stewart is somebody who really owned it, and some other people have too. And you have some people know, need to go a little further for my taste, but I mean, Trump is in my book. It came out in twenty twelve. Trump is in my book.

I didn’t know he was gonna run, but it’s like that was such a clear dividing line for me. Birthism was such a clear dividing line for me. Fox News was you know, running a fifty state strategy. Megan Kelly was blaming Obama’s election on the new Bulwark Panther party, seven disabled Bulwark guys in Philadelphia who allegedly if they scared anybody, they screwed black people. At the polling places, they weren’t going to, you know, Bucks County.

To suppress the white vote. I mean, come on people. It just got so obvious in those years. So that’s a lot what it’s about. Also thought that if Democrats made more of a case to the white working class, they would get more white working class voters.

I did not count on Donald Trump running and making such a racially explicit appeal. Obama did great things for white workers, white auto workers, Obamacare health maybe not proportionately, but millions more white people than black people because there are a lot more of us. And Joe Biden is in more things for the white working class. I mean, Joe Biden is in trouble for directing money to red states and to part of the auto worker tension is that Right. Giving money to build these plants in red states.

He’s very consciously trying to help red states and some blue states and union workers are really pissed about it. But It’s not working. The the materialist, you know, those materialists are like drop the identity politics and just go straight working class, white working class, Here’s your Biden phone. I don’t know what you’re supposed to get. Here’s your trump phone.

No, it didn’t work. It’s not working. I don’t know what will work, but that I think I was way too optimistic about just get back to, you know, bread and butter, kitchen, butter.

Okay. Corporate bullshit. Tell us about it. And then, and then we’re gonna spar a little bit.

Oh, no. Okay.

There’s a little. I know. It is it’s it’s an easy page, sir. They they sent it to me last night. And I was like, I’m not gonna have time to read this.

Got up this morning. And I was like, oh, yeah. I was like, you know, it’s very it’s an easy that Ryan Holiday who I’ve interviewed for this. He’s like, your next book, you should try to write a perennial seller. And I was like, what’s that?

He’s like, it’s a book that, like, this will still be relevant in two thousand and fifty too. And I’m like, I don’t know how to write a book like that. This is kind of like that, like, conceivably. Right? Cause it goes it talks about the corporate bullshit that’s been going on since the nineteen twenties, right, whenever you started it.

Right. I mean, even if, you know, we go back to slavery and, and everything old is new again, you know, because defenders of slavery, yeah, they were racist as fuck. But they often couched their defense as in we’ve done so much for the negro race. They were just a depraved, demented people who we brought over. And, you know, we gave them good jobs and religion, and we, we protect their women.

So the DeSantis curriculum. Yeah.

It was, you know, they they wrote it John Calhoun, former vice president racist secessionists of South Sarah Longwell. Yeah. He’s in there. The Distansis stuff came out after we finished the book, but Yeah. It’s all there.

I mean, basically, it’s a handbook of like the way that corporate America and its defenders, you know, going back to the south that’s complicated. More complicated in terms of the civil war, but the defenders of the status quo always have these kind of high minded reasons for why you, the reformer, you, the people are just wrong about it. One thing I liked about the project, there was this unbelievable data bank of quotes and I didn’t compile them. I found a handful, but they needed to be organized. And what we decided to do was organize them terms of, okay.

Here’s a chapter on global warming. Here’s civil rights. Here’s slavery. But rather around the common arguments that they trot out. To defend everything.

So obviously they deny things are a problem. Then they say, okay, maybe it’s a problem, but It’s your problem. It’s your fault. Workers are the major cause of worker mishaps on the job. They don’t wanna wear their helmets or they don’t wear the right boots or men who drink are more susceptible to chemical poisoning.

I don’t know if you knew that, but the guys who don’t drink, they’re fine. The drinkers are killing themselves. Everything’s a job killer. Everything’s gonna kill more jobs and and hurt the people. The minimum wage really it I don’t know if you know this.

Really hurts Bulwark.

Kills jobs.

Kill. Well, it kills jobs for sure, but it it really

hurts black people.

Because for whatever reason, people would hire them for below the minimum wage, but they don’t say they’re not worth the minimum wage. Just like, we all, we all just kinda know what we’re talking about. It’ll hurt young people and black people. There’s always this high minded social reason for why we can’t solve these problems. And then there are just like out and out lies, like the way And we do have a little case study about the way the oil and gas industry absolutely new about climate change.

New why. Had made some attempts at amelioration and reform, and maybe we should do something about this guys. And then we’re like, Holy shit. No. We’re not.

And just went into complete denial, which has now been re you know, there are books about it. And so It’s really kind of remarkable how often they recycle these same defenses for different reasons. And we felt like it’s kind of like a handbook of fighting back and understanding that they’re almost always wrong. Maybe not always, but made

me feel a little bad. I will say going through it because of my dalliances and corporate PR in between campaigns. And, I have guilt about it. And, I looked back and and also a little bit of humiliation and shame because, like, I’m reading some of these. I’m like, yeah, we basically did this for very clients, and I I love the old old examples because they bring in the stark relief, the newer Sarah Longwell.

Like, our emaciated child workers could kick your anybody’s ass when there’s a slip tie.

You’re coddled asses of the kids who are not child laborers.

Yeah. We’re the real tough. The one I liked meat is just as good with age, like whiskey. I liked that. Lead helped to guard your health.

That was the national led company that said that. So anyway, it made me reflect on some of my clients in a negative way. And I do think that it is useful in that as like a playbook for understanding just these tools and just how they look a lot sillier. Newer examples of this, like like the Facebook stuff. And like of that.

Like, it feels a little bit more defensible. But when compared to, like, the led council’s arguments, all of a sudden, you’re like, wait a minute, actually. In a hundred years, we’re gonna look at this and it’s gonna look the Lead Council’s arguments, right? And it’s just like you gotta separate yourself.

Facebook had no evidence that its algorithms and its practices were contributing to the horrible self regard of teenage girls. You did. And, you know, the sacklers saying the problem isn’t our product and the fact that we’re getting doctors to overprescribe, it’s the addicts. Make the addict the enemy. Right.

And they did that. They actually succeeded even though they’ve had to pay a lot of money. You know, really sick people with pain con chronic pain can’t get payments today in a lot of cases because we’ve criminalized that and made them seem like addicts. That’s another. We can have a whole other.

Okay. Hit.

So so here’s one of the ones that I didn’t feel guilty about. My old Republican, you know, muscle started to flex Okay. So I’d so let’s I just wanna do it. A couple of the things in your playbook. One is free market does knows best.

And the other is you’ll only make it worse. These are like two themes that corporations and their defenders use to fight against various regulations. I just gotta say, okay. The I’m I hear you on that, but The US economy is doing way better than the European economy for a reason. Right?

I think there are definitely some regulations the over regulations that are happening in some of these other social democracies that are preventing growth that are hurting middle class incomes, our median income is pretty darn good compared to Europe.

Right.

And you only make it worse argument is true sometimes. I mean, in your beloved California, Sequwa, You know, these environmental review laws that were well intentioned and whatever regulations, like they did have unintended consequences in certain cases, and there is a reason why you can’t fucking build anything in California and why it’s really expensive and why people are moving. So Don’t the free marketeers have some points here?

You know, occasionally, they do have points and probably in the case of Sequua. I mean, you know, they do. Used to be more than Nimbi. And now I’m like, build everywhere, Yimbi. You know?

Right. Welcome aboard. Right. Okay. But on the other hand, look, Part of why we’re doing better is that we pour a shit ton of money into the pandemic relief and really helped a lot of people.

That’s one reason. We’ve just invested a lot in the economy. So I think that’s an argument for the free market doesn’t always know best. And we also have a whole chapter on calling things socialist, and now Marjorie Taylor Green, even the Mitch McConnell calls Joe Biden a socialist and Joe Biden’s got the best answer. He’s like, I’m not a socialist.

I beat the socialist. I kicked Bernie Sanders’s ass. I’m not a socialist. But they derive these things as socialism when a lot of us I guess myself included. I probably once thought I was a socialist, but I don’t I’m not anymore.

I’m a social democrat. Very heavily regulated capitalism is the answer. Okay. And I was just in Scandinavia for the first time.

Do we need in the middle on medium regulated capitalism? No. We need very heavily, but medium to medium high.

Recently, regulate capitalism we totally would disagree about. But

Anyway, you are in Scandinavia. I know this was gonna be the next question. So you want us to become normal. That’s where you’re going with

I know there are problems, but I just have to say this. I was with my sister and brother-in-law. They took me as a gift for my eightieth birthday. I like to say I’m eighty now because people say you look really good. It was my Medicare birth date.

You do. Like, you do look great.

Anyway, we were running to these people who were, you know, like waiters, people at, like, the fancy hotels were thing and they’d be like, oh, you know, we’d love the US and we’re so overtaxed and da da da da da. And then they’d be like, oh, yeah. I’m taking off three months for paternity leave. Or, you know, it’s just been so great because we have free childcare and blah blah blah. So in this span of a conversation, they go from being like, we hate taxes and we love lean and mean US, and then we love our quality of life.

I mean, basically. Like, it’s really pretty sweet over here. We would just like to have another car.

They don’t even have dishwashers. Like, you know, I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t think they even have dryers. No. I think they’re still hang drying in Norway.

No. I’m pretty sure that’s right. We can we can Google up. We have more dryers here. I can promise you that.

We also have more people, friend.

Per, meaty, per van, per household. We have more time. Alright. Anyway, I hear. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s fine. I get it. Hopefully we could live in a world again where we can decide whether or not, you know, we want to live in Norway or whether we wanna live in Colorado.

Like, I think Colorado with Jared Polis is doing very well within the American system, some regulation. I don’t think we gotta go all the way to Norway, but That’s okay. That would be that’d be a reasonable debate for us

to be

able to have. Unfortunately, it’s like Naziism or a, a game show host and probably not nazism, but a game show host autocracy versus, okay. Hold on. What’s the nazis? We have dishwasher Okay.

Sebastian is telling me that the internet says that Norway has dishwasher. So I’m leaving it up.

I was told you, I didn’t see clothing out on the clothes lines. Tim. They’ve got dryers too. Thanks for that.

Okay. We’ll we’ll go to that. We’ll go to the Google on that. Alright. That’s what we’re going to rapid fire really fast.

First rapid fire question, you said you changed your mind, nimby, the there anything else you’ve changed your mind on as you’ve been reading the Bulwark and seeing the light of your socialist past? Any any other any other issues you wanna reflect on.

What I really enjoy about the bulwark is that you guys are still really grappling with what you believe. You’re just really not sure. You want everybody to have a dryer. I get that, Tim. But other than that.

And so do I. I get, you know, I I lived for six weeks in the department without a dishwasher. Never.

It sucks.

I wanna be more ready to grapple with things I’m not sure about than I feel like I have been. And again, that feels like a luxury of not being on the brink of fascism, but I’d like to put it in my back, you know, back in my portfolio even while we’re on the brink of fascism because if we slip over to fascism, not really gonna have any choices or a dishwasher. So, you know, I better yolo rethink your priors while you can.

I’m rethinking many of my priors. I hear that. Okay. We have a politician who most disappointed you.

I should have this one. I have very low standards. You know? I mean

That’s a great answer, actually. I’ve low standards.

I forget. I mean, like we said, this whole thing about the funds of Butler.

How about Andrew Cuomo? How about your governor, Andrew Cuomo? Did he not disappoint you a little bit?

Oh, great. Oh my god. I was never a Cuomo. Thank you. You saved me.

I was never a Cuomo sexual. I knew, you know, he’s too conservative for me and he’s an opportunist and a freaking asshole. But Did I watch those daily COVID briefings for a while on my sofa under my blankie with a cup of tea being like, I don’t wanna die. Yes, I did. Did I laugh at his jokes and the boyfriend and all that?

Yeah, I did. I yes. I I had higher hope for a minute, but I always knew he was an asshole.

Were you a John Edwards or an Obama person or no, either Hillary? Were you Hillary?

Oh my god. I was a John Edward person, but I don’t even remember that. But, you know, John Edwards was a dog.

Okay. So I’ve given you both your answers then. No. You, you haven’t been disappointed by No.

I was very point, but I never really cared that he was a way for a lot of people to get out of the Hillary versus Obama nightmare.

And

then I went to Hillary. So that’s a whole other thing. And I have no regrets. Love her.

You shouldn’t. Okay. Final question. You wrote another book. We haven’t mentioned yet.

It was with the father of my friend, Wilnevious.

Oh my god. Yes.

I know this. I knew this book is called splash Hit. I’ve not I’ve also not read it. It’s about baseball, apparently. Yeah.

I don’t watch baseball. So my final rapid fire question is tell me something about the San Francisco Giants or about my friend, Will Nenevious’s father. That I can use to embarrass him. Either one of those will be acceptable.

Chuck Maybe he’s just a great person. So I just I I can’t do that. I loved the San Francisco Giants. I shared season tickets. I got season tickets to that.

That ballpark was built in two thousand, and I, at the last minute, was asked they’d had a photo book and Chuck had written some introductions based on the building of the stadium, which was actually very interesting. It was privately funded. We didn’t have to do corporate welfare. And then, like at some point, someone realized the stadium is built, the team actually went to the post season that year, we really should have somebody come in and write about the actual stadium and the experience of it, and they hired me. And I can’t remember how little I worked for, but it was little.

But I got an all access pass. My daughter and I had tickets for the rest of the season, for the post season. We got to go in the dugout. I love Barry Bonds because he was nice to me and my daughter. Fight me.

I don’t care. I have other reasons for loving Berry bonds, but it was really one of the greatest experiences of my life.

And, this is a great this is great. So if you are listening Scott Woodward, athletic director of LSU, or Josh Crunky, president of the Denver nuggets, or any of my other teams, I will take this job. I will do it. I will do very light work, very soft, no hard questions, easy peasy book about your team and your stadium in exchange for full full passes. I want to dug out, but I need full all access pass, and I will do the Joan Walsh for

you. I got into the locker room would always ask permission is everybody decent. I was not I wasn’t doing a job where I required to go in there, but I did get to see people stretching and stuff. What the other thing, the other topic,

like No promise that I’ll ask about the Ron DeSantis, but I everything else shoots it out.

You don’t have to. I did. But I’d like to be in charge stretching before the games because when you watch those guys get their hammies stretched, there’s a beauty to it. That’s all I’m gonna say. Also Dusty Baker is my lifelong hero.

We’re gonna end on the Hammy stretching porn. Joan Walsh, this has been so delightful. I have to tell you, among the things that I look back on with regret, which a lengthy list as we’ve been discussing. I don’t know that I would have given Joan Walsh a chance in two thousand and seven, and it was a me problem. Not a you problem.

Just I bought a the Bulwark. And I was just totally wrong. You’re delightful. And the people that I was working with are actually terrible. And it was them I shouldn’t have been giving a chance.

So anyway, thank you so much for the time, and we can fight more about the name income in Norway versus Colorado at a later date once the fascism threat has passed.

I look forward to it. Thanks, Tim. It’s really helpful.

Thanks so much, John. Go get corporate bullshit. We’ll see you back here on Wednesday with JBL and Sarah. For the next level podcast, Joan Walsh will be listening. Peace.