Trump's Trade War Hits Hollywood
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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. All right. On today's show, we're going to talk about Trump's new movie tariff proposal, his plan to reopen Alcatraz. It's like a fucking parody. It's unbelievable. And his big loss in court over his attempt to ban certain law firms from practicing law in federal court. Then later, you'll hear Tommy's interview with our friend Chastin Buttigieg. Tommy, what'd you guys talk about? We, so Chastin's got a book coming out called Papa's Coming Home. It's a children's book.

We talked about why I wanted to write that, LGBT representation in books, what it's like to be the focus of disgusting, constant right-wing attacks on his family, book bans, their adoption story, being a dad. Pete's beard got into that. Pete's journey into the manosphere. It's fun to just hang.

I, uh, Chasten was kind enough to bring some extra copies of his new book that night. I read it to Charlie. I told Chasten this, but Charlie loved the book. Like multiple LOLs from my, yeah. Going on the back jacket. He was a big fan. Big fan. Charlie's first blurb. Yeah. Maybe Pete will do an interview with Charlie.

All right, let's get to the news. And we'll start with the economy, where Donald Trump is doubling down on his message that Americans just need to suck it up and sacrifice for the sake of His Majesty's trade war. Especially our kids, who've frankly been spoiled with too many dolls, pencils, and strollers. He's got a point. The president sat down for pencils. Pencils.

Who's the worst? Pencils is such a dated word. Where'd the fucking pencils come from? I don't know. You think he spent a lot of time down on the floor playing with the kids? He doesn't know what the toys are. He thinks we still have the sharpeners that you do this to. Most people don't even know what I'm talking about. If we did have those, maybe things wouldn't be so fucking fucked up. Get kids doing this. Yeah, there you go. The sharpener. You're in the Make America Great Again camp there. He's not totally wrong. All right. Okay, there you go.

Sounded more like your dad every day. All right. We're a mega curious podcast. Wait till we get to the movie tariff. I know. All right. President sat down for a long meet the press interview where Kristen Welker asked him about the recession predictions that have accompanied his tariff policy. Here's a sampling of his answers. Is it okay in the short term to have a recession? Look, yeah, everything's okay. Are you worried it could happen? Do you think it could happen? Anything can happen. When does it become the Trump economy? I don't know.

It partially is right now. And I really mean this. I think the good parts of the Trump economy and the bad parts of the Biden economy. Are you saying that your tariffs will cause some prices to go up? No, I think tariffs are going to be great for us because it's going to make us rich. But you said some dollars are going to cost more. Isn't that an acknowledgement that some prices will go up? I don't think a beautiful baby girl needs that's 11 years old needs to have

30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls. They don't need to have 250 pencils. They can have five. So true. Just in case anyone thought he might have misspoken there. Here's what Trump said when asked about this again on Air Force One Sunday night. A young lady, 10-year-old girl, 9-year-old girl, 15-year-old girl.

Does it need $37? She could be very happy with two or three or four or five. I would, I would, let's not waste a lot of time. What else? I'd like Americans to look at an industry, lift it up and ask themselves, does it spark joy?

Him just listing off the ages of girls just creeps me out. Especially that voice. The number of dolls, the number of pencils, the ages of the girls. It's just changing everything. He's doing a weave on this one. 15-year-olds with dolls, bud. Isn't it?

It's not the part that's gotten the most attention, but when she said, you'd be okay with the recession? Yeah, everything's okay. Everything's okay. Which I think really nails his mindset right now. It's like a philosopher. I know. More than anything else. He becomes... I really... When he becomes a kind of sage-like figure, which is we're all a bit too materialistic. In the long run, we're all dead kind of vibe. It's interesting. What do you guys make of Trump's insistence on sticking to this message? Are you surprised he's not just saying...

there won't be any recession or pain or need for sacrifice. The guy is like not exactly known for telling hard truths. Yeah, I think there's a couple parts of it. Part

Part of it is like it's not dumb to do a little expectation setting when you know your tariff policy is going to create some at least rocky shores financially in the short run. But then he's betting that blaming Joe Biden for everything, whether it's tariffs, the economy, Ukraine, immigration, Gaza, all of it is some sort of get out of jail card, free card. Yeah.

And so, I don't know, when he gets to the $30 versus $3, it's so tone deaf because he doesn't realize that there are kids who can currently only afford $3, right? Who have zero dolls. That's the part he can't compute. I don't know if you guys saw this. When people were posting a bunch of photos of his kids when they were younger, like driving around like little toy Mercedeses and things, like every toy you could ever imagine. Yeah, of course. That's the

Money is love with him. I think he knows how to buy his kids $30. Yeah, I can't. So first of all, him saying the good parts of the economy are me and the bad parts of the economy are Joe Biden. That's a joke he's made real. Like that's what we were all joking about. It's incredible that he's just saying it out loud.

I can't tell on the $30 front. It seems like he knows he kind of fucked up and didn't say something exactly politically useful. And now he can't let go of it. He can't back down. It's true. I'm sort of with Tommy's point. I think he's just I know this is like perfect Democratic messaging, but I think he's genuinely out of touch.

You know, I mean, he's always out of touch, but like, this is like, this is Lucille Bluth, not Lucille with the, Lucy with the candies. Yeah, yeah. This is Lucille Bluth. I know Lucille Bluth. What is it? Well, this was from last time. So callback from last episode. I get it, I get it. With the one banana, Michael. What could it cost? What could it cost? $10? The man covers everything he sees in gold.

He's covering the Oval Office ceiling in gold. The whole thing looks it's all covered in gold now. He's talking to Kristen Welker in another segment in that same interview about building a new ballroom in the White House. He's throwing himself a military parade for his birthday. Like the guy just he has no he's not anywhere close to in touch with what people are going through. Yeah, there was somebody tracked down.

what the objects were that have been attached to the Oval Office walls. And it turns out it seems like they just sent someone to Home Depot to buy kind of little spray painted objects to attach to the wall, little like lawn decorations. - Yes. Can I just make a request to Kristen Welker, whoever gets to interview Donald Trump for an hour next, the 10th time he complains,

Can someone just say to him, sir, do you ever get tired of just constantly whining about the media? He was so whiny. He's such a bitchy little baby. He's like, you never ask the night, you never say things like,

The economy is doing – some companies are doing great. And this is what happened. I'm like, yeah, because she's not one of the fucking right-wing influencers that you let into the briefing now to ask you all the questions. Right. You never take a moment in these interviews to stop asking questions and to just praise me. Which is what he has become accustomed to not only from his staff now but from the reporters that he faces every day. They all praise him. Yeah.

Yeah, it's... And so do foreign leaders and so do business people. Everyone is praising him now because everyone, either they're afraid of him or they want to suck up or they're looking out for themselves. So it's very rare that he is challenged. Well, it is and it isn't, right? Because on the one hand, yes, he's sort of pushing AP and Reuters aside to make room for...

right-wing Gazette and Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend to slather on the love with him. But he is sitting down for a ton of interviews with combative reporters over and over again. And, you know, we- But he seems genuinely surprised by each time when I'm asked a challenging question. Like Terry Moran just blew his big break by asking a challenging question about a brilliant dark side. It's a shame. Back to the minors for you, Terry Moran. Terry, I chose you.

Because he didn't know who he was. Incredible. Former Congressman Trey Gowdy said on his Fox News show, didn't know until this that he still has a Fox News show, that Trump should triple down on this message with an Oval Office address where

where he'd presumably talk more about why our kids need to give up their dolls and pencils. Karl Rove had a very funny response to that. I think we have a clip. I thought it was really problematic when he said, well, you know what? The kids, you know, those little girls at Christmas, they don't need 30 dolls. They can do it too. And if they have to pay a couple more bucks for them, you know, OK, well, it sounds like Mr. Scrooge. Karl Rove. Yeah. It's also, you know, boys play with dolls.

And obviously that's not the most important part of this, but you know, and shout out to the little boys out there who want a doll for Christmas. And very few young children use pencils. No, none do. It's weird that Trey Gowdy has kind of become a voice of reason. He opened that segment criticizing Trump for talking about invading Greenland and Canada. I

And then Rove made some smart points, I thought. He talked about how Trump hadn't visited the border yet. Why hasn't he visited the border? It's the only thing you seem to care about, sir. Why wouldn't you just go to the border and take some credit? The Oval Office address idea is absolutely stupid. Oh, I disagree. It's an antiquated understanding of the media.

I want to say Trump would own us libs so hard if he gave a primetime Oval Office address on why Americans must sacrifice more for his trade war. I want to see that. Stephen Miller is going to outright you too. Yeah, please don't do it. Don't do it. You'll get us. Yeah, we'll be gone. It's so like this idea that like, no, no, like we need to sacrifice. For fucking what? For what? It's sacrifice to make ourselves poorer and other nations poorer and basically everyone poorer. Yeah.

Does sound good when you put it that way. That is the goal. I guess sacrifice so that Donald Trump can, as he's told the Atlantic, run the world and everyone has to beg him for exemptions and this and this deal and that deal. He just wants to be the center of everything. I guess it's just sort of like, hey, we're going to have a couple of Christmases with more expensive dolls because in a few years there'll be American-made dolls. Is that what we're meant to? I guess so. From their own point of view, what is the sacrifice for? It's just not clear. No.

Also, Rove said that the Pope Photoshop was very offensive. As our resident Catholic, were you seeing a lot of chatter about Catholics upset about that Photoshop thing? No, I just think there's so much to be offended by. Even if you're a devout Catholic...

there's so much to be offended by from Donald Trump that I don't think the image of the Pope is gonna do much. - I would say, especially if you're a devout Catholic. - Right. - But it's your religion. - For example, his immigration policy, his policy towards the poor. - Yeah, they tend to trade all that stuff for the cruelty to people they don't like. - And the big hats. - Not Pope Francis.

He was good. He was our guy. He was people's pope. But the, I talked to Dan on the YouTube who made fun of me for saying the YouTube like Chuck Schumer. He should. But I don't care. Snap face. But,

Like, I think it's... There are all these dumb things that Trump is doing that are worth making fun of. I do think when it tilts over into... It's going to cost him the Catholics in Ohio because it's just so offensive. It's like, are you offended or are you just hoping people are offended? Like, I don't know. Yeah, I was just surprised to hear Rove say it. And there's someone at Fox News asked Trump about it today in the press briefing. So I just didn't know if there was a critical mass of angry Catholic Photoshop gates. How mad could you be? There's a few conservative Catholics that are like, this, this...

is what's going too far. Got it. J.D. Vance thinks it's a joke and just used the opportunity to attack Bill Kristol for the Iraq War. How bad of a photo could it be? It is a costume you can buy at Spirit Halloween. I will say that J.D. Vance, he really like stopped posting for a while and I thought maybe like

Maybe Usha said to him, like, you got to stop posting so much. But he's back. I think he just took a – he was traveling and was taking a break because the last 48 hours he's been – he's getting into it with Bill Kristol. He's posting about all kinds of shit. I think all of them, they kind of like – remember in the 2008 campaign, Bill Burton told all us little young comm staffers that we had to call 10 reporters before 10 a.m.? I think they have to pick like 10 Twitter fights before 10 a.m. with annoying libs. And that's just kind of how this White House operates. Yeah.

you know have you figured out a way to post in the shower yet there's only a few last kind of frontiers for you while you're sleeping posting while you're sleeping i'm sorry excuse me i saw you posting about all kinds of movies today i'm sure we're gonna get that sure you're warming up a take for here absolutely okay great great that's where i put on that's where i that's where i work things out just gonna wave to you in that glass house over there scott besant scott besant was out here in l.a uh

on Monday, just a fortuitous time for him to be here talking to investors at the Milken conference. Uh, this came after he wrote a piece in the wall street journal about Trump's economic strategy. Besson's taken a sunnier approach. He's telling everyone that we're close to making trade deals. The economy is going to be quote humming during the second half of 2025. He's going to be talking to investors at the Milken conference.

I don't know. It does feel like this is a play to calm the market. To calm the market. That was so awesome. Unbelievable. He just went back to Southie. Calm the markets in the short term. I don't know if it's the best long-term strategy or maybe it just doesn't matter. What do you guys think? Yeah, it just seems like clean up because...

steps one and two are undoing the damage from what they've already done. It's like step first, first things first, I want you to stop worrying about all the harm we've already caused. We're in the process of trying to unwind some of that harm. Step two is the tax cuts we've already been talking about for months. And step three is a bunch of

I guess, you know, AI server farms. I guess that's something to look forward to. Right. The policy is like white label Republican policy. It's like tax cuts and deregulation and then these stupid tariffs that are causing all the problems. Let me read you one line from this op-ed, though. Mr. Trump intends to usher in the most prosperous decade in American history, but not at the cost of the spiritual degradation of the working class.

Did that give you a bit of like a Joey a job is about more than a paycheck? I feel like that was an edit from the VP's office. Huh? Because that's the that's the he's going into the sort of right wing view that like we must bring the manufacturing back because the jobs we have now this is like the Gen Z boss in a mini.

Yeah, this is email jobs make you gay. Email jobs make you gay. Right. We're just, we're all too materialist except for the crypto. Right. Those guys are cool. Yeah. And except for all the billions that we have. But otherwise, everyone's too materialist. And what we need is to be making the iPhones and making the shoes again. Besson was at Goldman Sachs, I believe. Right. Yeah. Besson. All these rich people. Yeah. These are all the wealthiest people on earth. A Soros agent, as Elon Musk called him. Oh.

Yeah. Dustin is the most upright person I've ever seen. Sorry to interrupt. He almost leaned backwards. I was going to say, yeah, he's tipping over. He's tipping over this way. He's a Southern gay. They have great posture. You have to. You have to if you're going to be a Southern gay. Anyway. Yeah. I was going to, like, this comes back to Trump.

talking about the dolls. And I do think it's kind of his ham-fisted, heard it during a meeting, J.D. Vance thing about like the kind of... It's a ban thing too. Yeah, it's a spiritual crisis thing. We need to get back to making things in real work. Yeah, yeah. I'm wondering if like as...

Besant was landing in L.A. and saw the Hollywood sign outside of the plane window. He saw the truth post from Trump Sunday night that was a little bit of a surprise, where Trump announced that he will be expanding his trade war to the entertainment industry. The president posted that our movie business is, quote, dying a very fast death as other countries steal our entertainment jobs and make films that are just, quote, messaging and propaganda. So he's directing his administration to implement, quote,

a 100% tariff on any and all movies coming into our country that are produced in foreign lands. Foreign lands is title case. Trump was asked about this in the Oval on Monday. Here's what he said. Our film industry has been decimated.

How about this, guys? How are we, how's it going to work? How are we going to tariff the movies? Yeah, I don't, it's hard when a lot of them come in through ones and zeros. Yeah.

It's hard to figure out where to put the little tax bill. Yeah. When I saw this story, I swear, the first thing I thought was, this is Jon Voight's fault. I really did. I was like, Jon Voight. And it was. And it turned out it really was. Although not really, apparently.

He met with John Voight, but did you read and it was either deadline or I can't remember which of the trades it was. John Voight talked to him about bringing production back and the tax incentives, but it said that he did not propose the tariffs. No, no, no. My assumption is that John Voight has been taking these meetings to try to figure out there is a genuine problem, which we can talk about, but that he has been like as Trump's ambassador to Hollywood and trying to figure out what to do about how to try to bring about how to bring production back.

to the United States and to Los Angeles specifically, which is really important and a serious problem. And I'm sure he talked to Donald Trump about it. And then it kind of went through the fucking Rube Goldberg's contraption at Trump's reign. It came out with, we're going to tariff 100%. And then at some point that will be kind of squeezed through some fucking broken, chaotic policy process and emerges his victory, his whatever real policy ultimately lands at the end of it. That is not going to be a tariff on films made in foreign lands, whatever the fuck that means.

Is it films? Is it TV too? Is it some of the production overseas? Is it all of it? Is it where you shoot? Is it where the production company is? None of this makes sense. Yeah. So what's happening right now is there has been a strike. There was a pandemic that had a terrible impact on the film industry and television industry in California and in the United States.

Over the last decade or so, lost a ton of production from California to other parts of the US and collectively the United States has lost a lot of production to Canada, Australia, Europe. - The UK. - And the UK. And it's a genuine emergency. I do think California

California government has been slow to respond, but right now they really are genuinely responding. Karen Bass has been talking about this ways to make it easier to shoot in Los Angeles. She's a little bit, uh, hamstrung because it actually is a big state issue, but they are trying to dramatically increase, uh, the amount of money that goes towards subsidizing production through the tax code. Uh,

increasing the number of the types of productions that are eligible to receive it all of which will go a long way because this the real crisis is that There's a ton of people that live in California who are the best at what they do in making television and making film they live here because things were produced here and fewer and fewer productions are Taking place here and a lot of the recovery that happened after the pandemic after the strike has gone elsewhere not just to New York or to Georgia but also to other countries and

It's not wrong to say that California Democrats collectively have been slow on this, but they're on it. They really are genuinely trying to figure out how to fix it right now. There's also a policy question where to be on it is to, like you said,

offer tax incentives, change the tax code, whatever else. Tariffs are a fucking terrible idea, especially since, you know, one of the many explanations, rationales for the trade war has been the trade deficit, right? On this instance, we export three times more content than we import in this country. So if we went the tariff route at all, other countries might start saying, okay, we don't want American, we're going to put tariffs on American movies and American production that come here. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, Trump throws out ideas and we all sound insane trying to make sense of them. Yeah, you're stupid. I have a few thoughts. One, industry. One soul. Not industry. Always. Industry. Insane. Two, he's calling it a national security emergency. He's trying to do this, I think. They're floating doing this under the typical AIPA policy.

the legal authority that are doing all the other tariffs, which would mean he's declaring a TV and film national emergency, which is just so stupid. Again, just to make fun of how stupid this is. Also, the Gavin Newsom approach, as you said, love it. It's to increase the tax credit from $330 million to $750 million annually to try to bring back some of these productions to...

to the LA area, to the Hollywood area. But I was talking to someone in Gavin's office today and they're like, yes, we have to do that part for Paramount, but we also need to do more for like the person who works craft services on these productions, help them find more affordable housing, better schools, better services. So they're trying to think of it in a more holistic way. And Trump's just like, I don't know, tariff it.

Yeah. At the core of this is, yes, there's just, we need to be competing on the tax structure to get more production here. But there's also just bureaucratic hurdles that need to be lifted that have to do with like, you know, a lot of long running problems in California. And it's just fucking expensive to be in California, which goes to the deeper problem we have about not building enough housing, not building enough transportation. I'm sorry. I'm just a little- Ezra Klein has entered the chat. Abundanza. Are we abundant? What are you saying about the word industry? He says industry. Oh.

Oh, I see. It drives me crazy. He said it was... The clip we just played, that was the worst I've heard. Industry. Film industry. Film industry. Very odd. He's saying it like... Are you saying... And you want it to be industry? Industry. Just quick. Right. You want it to be a dactyl. I want it to be, I don't know, better. It's interesting. You don't know which way this is going to go. He said, I don't want to hurt the film industry, which the film industry believes they would be hurt by this. So either some of them will come in and meet with him and then he'll make something up. Or...

Some Hollywood stars will go out there and yell about it and he won't like them and then he'll get dug in further and then we'll have a thousand percent tariff. You never know. This would kill like a Disney, for example, because they make the Marvel movies and the Star Wars movies in England. So if those movies are getting tariffed at 100%, they are screwed. Yeah, there's a ton of... The other part of this too is like the production stuff...

Same problem with the fucking tariffs coming on and off and being so chaotic like every other industry. It takes months, years to plan these things to be shot when they're going to be shot. Do you know how hard it is to get on fucking the schedule of some of these actors? They're busy. Yeah, they're busy people. I'm sure you know who didn't have a good morning is Ted Sarandos because Netflix, most of their production is overseas. Their stocks all went down like a couple percent. I mean, they recovered one day. Everyone realized it was made up. It's all so fucking stupid.

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One person who may get richer because of Donald Trump's trade war, Donald Trump. We have a quick corrupt date for you all. We've talked a lot on the show about how the Trump family is basically inviting people to bribe them through their World Liberty financial crypto business. Well, the Huffington Post reports that a company called FR8 Technologies, which handles shipping logistics for trade between the U.S. and Mexico, raised $20 million in financing

to buy $20 million worth of the Trump meme coin. Makes sense. A move that the company is hoping will be a, quote, effective way to advocate for fair, balanced, and free trade between Mexico and the U.S. Just said it. Just put a statement out saying that. Again, the Trump family owns the majority of the Trump coins, and they get a cut of every transaction fee. So this is just a naked form of bribery right out in the open.

Meanwhile, Trump's headlining a MAGA Inc. Super PAC dinner at one of his golf clubs in Virginia Monday night for quote unquote crypto and AI innovators. The price tag, $1.5 million ahead. Kristen Welker became one of the first journalists to ask Trump about his crypto dealings during his Meet the Press interview. Let's listen. You've branded your own cryptocurrency.

The coin's values actually surged recently after you announced that top holders would be invited to have dinner. I don't even know that. What did it surge to? What did it surge to? Yeah, what's it worth? You might as well tell me because I have no idea. Well, 14.32. What? No dollars per cryptocurrency. Billion dollars? No. But let me just ask you, what do you say to those who argue that?

that when they hear that they worry you're profiting from the presidency i'm not profiting from anything i'm just all i'm doing is you know this i started this long before the election you're not profiting off of the cryptocurrency i haven't even looked i'll tell you what look if i own stock and something and i do a good job and the stock market goes up i guess i'm profiting

but who really profits is somebody like nancy pelosi who uses inside information got her do you uh you think it's plausible he's not paying attention to any of this

Absolutely no chance. I was talking to someone in the crypto industry today who said they believe that Trump's family has probably made around a billion dollars in cash from their crypto ventures. We're not talking about unrealized gains of the coins. We're talking about like transaction fees on the meme coin. So you get fees, as you just said, when they buy and sell the meme coin. They think they made that much just on the transaction? Yes. Wow.

And also when you buy and sell the World Liberty financial tokens, the Trump family is entitled to 75% of net revenue on those token sales. And the family owns 60% of the company itself. And by the way, there's like zero upside for the people who buy these tokens. You don't get any profits. You don't get to trade them. It just like makes no sense. And also in that interview, he's like,

All Upstate's like, we started this long before I ran for office. They started the company in September of 2024. It was right before the election. I mean, this whole thing, it's like, the grift is staggering. Yeah, and by the way, we also, all of that is an estimate. We don't know that there aren't people just like,

putting, just giving him money. Like there could be huge amounts that are just being just directly transferred to him into his wallet. We'll have no idea. There's no way to know that he could just, someone can go to the Oval and just show him their phone and be like, look, look what I gave you. The only thing that's surprising is that Freight Technologies is so far the only company that we know of that has just spent $20 million to try to influence him on the trade, to get an exemption for the trade war, to influence the trade policy. Because I imagine if the tariffs stay in place,

We'll be seeing a lot more of that, right? Yeah. I mean, that's the only one on the trade war, but there's a far more egregious example that's out there. So there's this Emirati state-owned investment firm called MGX. The president of the firm is like the president of the UAE's brother or something, runs the company. They want to make a $2 billion investment into Binance, which is the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange and one that has gotten into a lot of legal trouble in the United States because they were allowing people to like money launder, evade sanctions, criminal behavior, just like the wild, wild west.

And the company paid $4 billion to the government because of that. And the CEO did jail time. So MGX wants to buy a piece of Binance.

for instead of doing it in cash, for absolutely no reason, they are purchasing $2 billion worth of Trump's stable coin. It seems like some reason. The only reason is purring favor with the administration because presumably it will cost them more than $2 billion because there will be a transaction fee on the purchase of the stable coin. So that one transaction will make Trump's stable coin one of the biggest stable coins in the world.

And I think we're liberally, we'll probably get paid on both sides because they'll probably get a fee when you buy the stable coin from them. And then normally the way these stable coins are supposed to work is they're supposed to be backed by something which they use to peg the value of the stable coin to like $1. So presumably they'll buy treasury bonds or something, and then they'll get the interest on those. And by the way, that's like the safest version of this scheme. We don't know that they'll actually buy treasuries because we don't know how this works. So again, this Emirati state-owned company

is just going to buy $2 billion worth of Trump coin for no reason. - The stable coin, the Trump stable coin will eventually be pegged to the Melania stable coin. - Right. - It'll just be one. - And you know what? The American people are getting pegged. That's what's happening here. - I wish, you know what I mean? But what were we talking about? - Pegging? - No, but I was thinking about this too, which is like, there's this kind of, I don't know, this feeling of like,

They're openly corrupt. And this kind of feels like, okay. And then because Republicans in Congress don't care, it leads to nothing. And I do think we need to be talking about this. I think it's really important. I do think people really care about this. Just for the politics of it, this is important to our politics. But I think long-term, we need to be thinking about

How do we start talking about, A, these are crimes. People are committing federal crimes every day, all the time. And just because your friends are doing it doesn't mean it's not a federal crime. Just because everybody's applauding in the ballroom doesn't mean you're not part of a federal crime. But then you have to also assume that Donald Trump is going to use the pardon power that they're going to try to find ways to wiggle their way out of this. And it would be

Think a lot about that that Jonathan last piece around Pascal's wager and the bet that Democrats will never

and will behave really responsibly and always try to look forward. And we really do need to start talking about what we will do to investigate these crimes and make these... and look back and make sure people pay a price for having been brazenly and openly corrupt, even if Republicans won't do it. So that the crypto industry will then dump a couple hundred million dollars on that Democrat who said they'll investigate the crimes in the next election. It is a tough... We should talk about that. Yeah. It's tough. But I mean, well, look, we can...

how much does that money get you, right? Like we just went through a round of, in Wisconsin where Elon's money could not buy them. Right? Like we have to, we have to try. We have to try. Well, Senate Republicans have been trying to pass a bill with new rules on the stable coins that they thought had enough votes from Republicans

more pro-crypto Senate Democrats to pass. They had enough to pass until nine of those Democrats just announced over the weekend, led by Ruben Gallego, that they'll oppose the legislation. Republicans were reportedly stunned by this news. Are you guys stunned by this news?

No, I mean, the politics are complicated for the reason you just mentioned, because I think the crypto industry spent like $130 million last cycle on either pro-crypto candidates or to target anti-crypto Democrats, even ones who were not anti-crypto at all. Their number one target was Sherry Brown, former senator from Ohio. I think that one crypto PAC spent $40 million to defeat him. And that was like their head on a pike to send a message.

And I've been told by someone today that getting Sherrod Brown is a verb now on Capitol Hill. And so, Howard Lutnick and David Sachs were trying to ram this crypto bill through Congress. Democrats, I think, were trying to figure out how to be for something. Because there's not just the crypto money, but then there's a constituency that likes crypto, that thinks it's exciting, that thinks traditional financial services are broken and rigged against them, and they're not

wrong, but we don't need like a worse version backed on the blockchain. Right. And like getting that message through is really hard. But I think what happened here is

And Trump's stable coin corruption with the UAE was so brazen that even the member of the Democrats who are for this in committee were like, OK, we can't do this right now because this would essentially allow like Trump put out an EO saying he has control of independent financial regulators. And this bill would give him the authority to regulate the stable coin market as he is entering it.

And like, that is just insane. And it would also give big tech companies the ability to issue stable coins. So you would see like, Oh Jesus. X coin on from Elon Musk or like Libra, I think was the version that came out of Facebook. And,

And so that they stopped, they stopped because traditionally, like there was an effort in like 2005. Someone was reminding me that Walmart basically tried to launch a bank and we tried to keep those two things separate because it's really bad. But now the outcome of this bill passing in a bad form would be you would have like bank like consequences.

performing bank-like services with no banking regulations. Also, you get one bite at the sample on legislation. And, you know, Gallego was saying, he's like, they should not have been stunned. We worked with them for weeks and months to try to make the provisions in this bill have real teeth and, like, have real regulation. He's like, and then the version that showed up on the floor didn't have, like, it was just weakened.

He's like, so he was saying he's like, I'm happy to continue working with them to make it stronger. But like, don't you know, they're not going to water down a crypto regulation bill at the same time that the president is just, you know, inviting people to bribe him. You look, there's a there's a nuanced debate, I suppose, around crypto, around the technology, the blockchain technology, the ways it can make life better. There are genuine applications.

But the concern voiced from the beginning is this is going to be a tool for crime and corruption. It is currently the most brazen and grandest

grand corruption tool in the history of our country. That's it. I don't, unless, I mean, I don't know if you guys are experiencing day to day the benefits of the blockchain, but what I'm seeing is the most corrupt administration in history using it to enrich themselves to the tune of billions of dollars. Donald Trump never been a billionaire maybe for, you know, whether or not Donald Trump's ever been a billionaire, he is one now because of just complete and total corruption because of crypto.

crypto. Yeah. So the Democrats on the committee, like Elizabeth Warren, they're trying to improve the bill by being like, hey, what if it said the president and members of Congress can't get into the stable coin business? How about that? Or like big tech can't either, or we got to apply consumer protections to stable coins. But I think the Republicans on the committee are trying to exempt stable coin regulations from the CFPB, for example. So there's all the consumer protections are going to go out the window.

Yeah, and they can't cross the administration or the Trump family in any way, right? They're there to serve but like the Rubin guy goes the world look I understand people are trying to work on this stuff in good faith But like at the end of the day the crypto industry fucking hates you right like it is run by people like Marc Andreessen who have a radical Libertarian vision of the world they view you as the enemy they will not think twice about dumping tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars on

on your head in the next election and just go in there eyes wide open because like you're not saving yourself from these people. Trump also made plenty of news over the weekend on Meet the Press and elsewhere regarding his continued attack on the Constitution, particularly its separation of powers and amendments protecting free speech, due process and the right to counsel. Those are big ones. Yeah, those are big ones. Those are big ones. I didn't even mention. S-tier parts of the Constitution. I didn't even mention cruel and unusual punishment. I probably should

that one in two here he is answering a question about defying court orders your secretary of state says everyone who's here citizens and non-citizens deserve due process do you agree mr i don't know i'm not i'm not a lawyer i don't know well the fifth amendment says i don't know it seems it seems

It might say that don't you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president? I don't know I have to respond by saying again. I have brilliant lawyers that work for me and They are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said What you said is not what I heard the Supreme Court said they have a different interpretation Yeah, Stephen Miller has a different interpretation He is not a lawyer

On the bright side, Trump did say that running for a third term in 2028 is, quote, not something he's looking to do. And then he name dropped Vice President J.D. Vance and surprisingly, National Archivist Marco Rubio, who currently holds three other titles as well. Secretary of State, USAID administrator and now national security advisor. Big shoes for little Marco to fill. So Trump's now using this talk to my lawyer's answer every time he gets a question on disobeying the courts. What do you guys make of that?

It seems like he went to, I have to talk to my lawyers, answered too quickly. Like he was still processing her previous sentence when he got to like, you know, you have to uphold the constitution, right? I got to talk to my lawyers. It seems like, but wait, wait, wait. That's like you had took an oath. It's like the first sentence of the oath. Yeah. I mean, we sort of talked about this last week too. It's the most beta sentence.

passive aggressive way to start a constitutional crisis ever. Like the big strong man who says I alone can fix it is now like, oh, I got to defer to my lawyers. You've been railing against the courts nonstop for years and now you're deferring them. This is just a simple difference of opinion on legal precedent. What are we talking about? Yeah, he's attacking the judges every day. Every day. He's like, he was at the rally in Michigan for 100 days and he was like,

the judges are taking your president's power away, but I defer to my lawyers. Well, he won't, right. It's the, it's the footsie with defying the orders. There's still, look, they, they see Donald Trump sees all the polling and he can pretend it's not real all he wants, but he sees it. He knows that defying court orders, deeply unpopular, uh, uh,

deporting people without due process, deeply unpopular. So when he's in front of Kristen Welker and he's asked directly about this, he does not want to come out and brazenly say he is going to violate the Supreme Court. So he leaves it to Stephen Miller to go out there and sort of rant about how the ruling really said it was 9-0 in my favor. And actually, we are following the order because the order technically doesn't require us to do anything at all. And as Stephen Miller did today as a follow-up to this interview, said,

No, due process is for citizens. It is not for immigrants who aren't here legally, which is just a lie. It's a lie. It's been litigated for like hundreds of years. Well, it's a plain language of the Constitution. Alito said this. It says persons. It says person, but even if you leave it to the courts to interpret person and what it means, right? The most recent ruling in April.

on a Brigo Garcia. We even had fucking Alito and Thomas jumped in and said, yes, of course due process. He said, then they, they said due process is afforded to all people. Immigrants were here legally or not. As the government has agreed to,

In this case, Trump's own DOJ said that, plus Rubio. But Miller's out there being like, no, it's not true. Imagine the counterfactual. Imagine if it were not the case. If you're a green card holder and the government could just threaten to punish you unless you, what, gave them money, supported them politically? It doesn't make any sense. What Stephen Miller's argument is is nonsensical. It's completely un-American.

I mean, the Washington Post did an investigation over the weekend, another one about Seacott and El Salvador and who ended up there. And they found two people, at least two men, were sent there, even though they had already been approved as refugees for resettling. Four people were sent there, even though they had legal protections to avoid being sent there because they had temporary protected status. So already people who are here legally, who had gone through a process here, were sent to a

foreign gulag. We're only talking about Ebrego Garcia because he's the only one that the government admitted in a court filing they sent mistakenly. It's so stupid on its face. Due process is for only people who deserve due process.

Okay. How do you figure out who those people are? Well, you have to have some kind of a process. The process that they do. The process is DHS decides now who's a criminal, who's not. They have evidence. Trisha McLaughlin puts it out on Twitter and she said, we have plenty of evidence and intelligence. It said this person's a danger. Say, what is the evidence? They go, we're not going to tell you. Even just at face value, it is predicated on the fact that A, the government is acting in good faith and B, if the government makes mistakes, they will try to rectify it. They are acting in despicable bad.

bad faith without regard for these people. And it is their official position that if they even, that even when they admit a mistake, they have no ability or need to rectify it. So this is dangerous. It's so obviously dangerous on its face. You guys find that 2028 answer any more

assuring than the previous comments on the topic it's real weird that he led with rubio rubio's not mega he's just pretending his real beliefs are done he wants to keep he wants to keep the celebrity apprentice going you know yeah he can't have jd vance getting too high on his own supply he's got to make it everyone's got to feel needy they need the boss's approval uh uh look you know we're at the point where president united states is like uh

Joking around about violating the Constitution to stick around he already tried to do that when he committed an insurrection so and then you got JD Vance doing interviews is like This is classic Donald Trump humor. All right. This is the the funny guy. We all know and love He dresses up as the Pope he threatens to not leave office in a kind of coup d'etat like that is fucking hilarious That's a school scolds in the media. We just don't have a sense of humor. I

Yeah, J.D. Van Soothe, like his tone is either the most self-righteous, sanctimonious, insufferable prick you've ever met online or like, why can't you take a joke, man? Drives me crazy. Legal ass comedy. Some good news from the courts. A federal judge. You know who had a great sense of humor? Who? Ashley Babbitt. Let's cut that.

I just thought, no, because she thought it was really funny when he was talking about staying in office. Remember Ashley Babbitt? She thought it was so funny when Donald Trump was joking around staying in office. And so she wanted to be part of the joke. So she went to the Capitol. I don't remember if you were happy, but like, honestly, that joke killed. Because if you remember, Ashley Babbitt died. A bunch of people died at the Capitol. I say leave it in. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's all funny. It's just really funny. He's just a very funny. Yeah, J.D. got that one. Tax dollars are now going to payment for the settlement that the government has reached with her family now. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. It's just a funny joke. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's what happened. Remember the insurrection, how many we were laughing? Yeah, we're paying for that. Remember how funny it was? All those people that died? We also have reparations for the Jan 6th

- It's just like, you guys don't know how to fucking laugh. - Well, that was 'cause they had that fire jam they put out. - That's right. - The J6 choir. - Yeah, the choir. - They get the stream money.

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Federal judge permanently blocked Trump's executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie. Judge Beryl Howell said that the order itself was unconstitutional and opened her 102-page ruling with a line from Shakespeare. The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. And wrote that, quote, eliminating lawyers as the guardians of the rule of law removes a major impediment to the path to more power. In not as good news, Trump renewed his pledge on Friday to take away Harvard's tax-exempt status because it's, quote, what they deserve. Yeah.

Harvard's president, Alan Garber, did an interview with The Wall Street Journal calling the move highly illegal. And an unnamed Trump administration official did say to the reporter that Trump's post did not constitute a formal directive to the IRS. Got it. Sure, sure. You guys think that the Perkins win and Harvard's willingness to fight will maybe stiffen the spines of other law firms and colleges and institutions that Trump's targeting? I hope so. I think we've been...

I think two things have happened that have made people realize that there's value in fighting. One has been seeing the positive response to the institutions that do fight and the fact that they're winning in court. The other is the relentlessness of Trump's attacks on the places that have compromised. And the fact that once you capitulate to Trump, he doesn't leave you alone.

All right. He's still he's still going after ABC News. He's not going to give them a break because they did their 16 million dollar dirty deal. You saw what he did to Terry. Yeah. He like Terry or Terry. Big break. Still going after Columbia. Relentlessly going to go after Columbia, even though they did this kind of a deal. So I think that and then all these demands that an interview after interview, he's basically saying that all these law firms that capitulated admitted guilt.

And then some of their clients are starting to think about going elsewhere. There's a report that I think Microsoft is thinking about leaving, I can't remember which one of these fucking interchangeable firms in my brain they're gonna leave, but hopefully they're gonna start to see negative repercussions. So I think the combination of not getting what you think you're gonna get out of this deal, plus seeing the positive response to fighting can't be anything but helpful.

Obviously, it was unconstitutional, right? Of course. You can't tell the IRS out of something. I mean, I think the reason the judge used such dramatic language here, it's like, I don't know, the first, the fifth, the sixth amendments violates all of those.

Also, she made an example of the firms that capitulated is also part of the reason it was unconstitutional because she's like, well, the reason that you know it wasn't for – they didn't take – this executive order didn't target these firms for reasons that weren't political is because the ones that capitulated suddenly didn't have the EO targeted at them anymore, which is the same thing where – this is why the unnamed official said his post about Harvard, it's what they deserve. That's not going to hold up well in court. I'm trying to roll back the –

Harvard's tax exempt. And by the way, they didn't need the, they didn't need the fucking tweet or whatever true social posts to make clear that this was targeting because Donald Trump has been talking about it and all the administration been talking about it openly. By the way, there's tons of record in the negotiation between the administration and Harvard that we can't see that would certainly come out. And by the way, even if you take it at face value, no, you can't make some claim that we are targeting Harvard because of antisemitism. And so therefore we're going to, uh,

eliminate funding across a broad swath of research. That's like the definition of an unconstitutional first amendment violation, not just to liberal judges, but to conservative judges. The problem here, right, is of course it's unconstitutional. The lawyers knew it was unconstitutional. Disney's lawyers, because they're lawyers, Disney's lawyers knew that the case against fucking George Stephanopoulos was bullshit. They gave in, right? Paramount knows that the lawsuit against CBS is fucking bullshit. It's because they're saying it's not worth winning.

They're saying it's not worth winning because Donald Trump is such a headache. Well, and also the heads of these law firms. I understand there were actual real business pressures. Like if you're a head of a firm and some other firm is trying to poach your clients because they think you can't represent them because you can't go into a government building, that sucks. I get that.

But the people doing these negotiations thought they could be cute and just agreed to do pro bono work on like helping veterans or stopping any semitism. And Trump is like, actually, you're defending the coal industry. Yeah. Here we go. The QAnon shaman. Yes, exactly. And like the firms that capitulated publicly are getting most of the shit as they

deserve. But, you know, someone from Paul Weiss was saying, look, when we were first making the deal with Donald Trump or talking to Donald Trump, we were looking for allies. We were looking for people who would stand with us and say no. And what the people were, what our competitors were doing instead was poaching our clients and taking our partners. And I do think it was a, like, and

From going forward, now that we know that he's losing in court over this kind of shit, all the colleges and universities, all the other law firms, other media places should stand together and not be fucking afraid. Yeah, Harvard threw the first brick at Stonewall. I've always said that.

In Maine, Janet Mills, governor of Maine, remember, Trump yelled at her in the governor's meeting because he was going to freeze funding. And he tried to freeze funding in Maine for education because she was not abiding by his trans policies. And just one court and the government had to back down and they unfroze the funding in Maine. So looks like you can take on Trump.

Yeah. And not have to worry about it. Yeah. I mean, look, yes, until there's a fucking fire or flood or natural disaster. And like, I, I, everybody should fight, but like, we should like,

The point was never that these people thought they couldn't win in court. I think they all believed that they could win in court. It's just whether or not Donald Trump is going to abuse his power and make life difficult on other matters, right? Whether it's in Michigan, whether there's more. He will. And he will. And he will. But you have to fight anyway. The point is. That's why you need. That is the purpose of collective action. Yes. Right. Like that is why you need to go find allies and you need to stand together because he is not as powerful if they all stand together. That's right.

Of course, his favorite target is still immigrants. There are now multiple reports that the administration is looking at more places to deport people beyond El Salvador, including Libya, Rwanda, Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Moldova. Even if the people who'd be deported to these countries have never stepped foot in them. Marco Rubio basically confirmed this last week, saying, quote, the further away from America, the better.

Trump also hasn't forgotten about the people he calls our, quote, homegrown criminals. In a Sunday Truth social post that seems to have caught everyone by surprise, Trump directed his administration to, quote, in all caps, rebuild and open Alcatraz because our country, quote, will no longer be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and judges that are afraid to do their job. In the Oval on Monday, Trump talked at length about the inspiration behind his plan to reopen the notorious San Francisco prison facility. Let's listen. Hello.

How will you use it? How did you come up with the idea? Well, I guess I was supposed to be a movie maker. We're talking about we started with the movie making and we'll end. I mean, it represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order. Alcatraz is, I would say, the ultimate, right? Alcatraz, Sing Sing and Alcatraz, the movies. You look at it, it's sort of an amazing... You saw that picture that was put out. It's sort of amazing.

But it sort of represents something that's both horrible and beautiful and strong and...

miserable week. It's got a lot of, it's got a lot of qualities. Alcatraz contains multitudes. I've always said that. He's an artist. Let him cook. The Independent reported that Trump announced the Alcatraz reopening just a couple hours after Escape from Alcatraz aired on PBS. That's awesome. So causation is in correlation, but you know. I would like to imagine he's watching PBS. I think he's got the John P.

He met with John Voight. He's thinking about movies. He's got the whole, you know. I just hope they keep the tours. I think they've got to keep the tours. It's a museum. I've been down. You've been down, Travis? Yeah, we've all been down. Over a million people a year go there. It makes money. There'd be a huge loss of tourist revenue. But also, they closed the prison in 1963 because it was three times more expensive than normal prisons because you have to take everything there by boat.

And also you have to take your sewage back by boat. It's really expensive. - Fucking cold ass boat ride. I remember we went in August and it was still cold. - Oh, well that's San Francisco for you. That's why you don't wanna live there. - I really, among other problems, a lot of fags, but the- - Jesus Christ.

But it's so funny, just like, again, he proposes this incredibly stupid thing and then you have to walk through. Well, actually, logistically, it's quite expensive. It's been a museum. It's a museum. It's a San Francisco museum. Let's not turn this museum back into a prison because we are not. Are you boys under the impression that we have a huge problem of people escaping from our jails? No. In fact, more people escaped from Alcatraz than escaped from any of our super max prisons, which are perfectly fine and have been...

Bigger, on land, easier. He just needs to, look, Democrats are not fighting back enough on just him fighting regular crime. There always has to be another threat, right? This is the whole, because he's an authoritarian. And so we always have to be just on the verge of being overrun by criminals. Like we can put them in our supermax prisons forever if we want. Yeah, this one isn't even a threat to me. It's just like a headline grab. It's like, I don't know, like reopen Alcatraz. I don't care at all.

No, I like that tour. It's a good tour. You're right. Kids go there. They get to walk around. I was talking to someone in Gavin. It's a little bit strange when you think about it. It is a little weird. Now that I think, I haven't thought about it. But Al Capone went there. Suffering tour. Yeah, that is right. It is a great movie, the Clint Eastwood movie. I was talking to someone in Gavin's office today about this and I was like, have you seen any economic assessments of what... He's like...

Why are we talking about this seriously? This is not a serious idea. Also, but the Rwanda piece of tending migrants to Rwanda, I just wanna point out was a Boris Johnson idea from 2022. They were trying to send people who sought asylum in the UK to Rwanda and then forcing them to go through their legal process. And if they were granted asylum, they would have to stay there. So we're stealing this one from the floppy haired idiot across the pond.

Libya. That's a good one. We're just really, really safe places. And so this is, you know, we are constantly conflating what he's doing to people by sending them to El Salvador. This would just be deporting people to these places. And that would be where they'd have to rebuild their lives. And presumably it would be because their home country wouldn't take them back.

Although none of that makes sense because my understanding is that Venezuela is now taking deportation flights that leave out of Honduras. They just didn't want to send their planes to the United States because there was concern under the Alien Enemies Act that those assets could be seized by the U.S. government and claimed under forfeiture. Also over the weekend, I believe this was part of the Washington Post reporting, the investigation, is that it turns out their discussions with Venezuela were going well even when they ended up sending people to Seacott.

Venezuela was willing to take some... Well, yeah, Rick Grinnell, like a former human Twitter troll, came to life, became a person, wanted to be Secretary of State, didn't get the job, but he was going down on these little missions to go see Maduro and trying to get back people, Americans who were in prison. And he tweeted, I think, like the day they sent all these Venezuelans to El Salvador that he had gotten a deportations agreement signed with the Maduro government. And it really is why, like...

I don't like talking about this in terms of immigration because it's not about immigration. It's not even about deportations. Even renditions is hard because renditions, like they're trying to get intelligence out of the person. This is just literally sending people to a prison for the rest of their lives in a foreign country based on no trial, no due process, nothing. That's what it is. And as the...

like you know trump today is saying oh we're going to give everybody a thousand dollars if they self-deport threatening to send migrants to countries that they have no familiarity with a lot of this is about

Scaring people. Yes, for sure. Terrifying people into not coming and if they are here to leave. I think that's partly why they won't give an inch even in these even where they've already admitted like in Abreu Garcia, that case that they've made a mistake. It is all about instilling fear in people as a means of getting people to never come or leave.

And there's just a, there's a dehumanizing aspect to this too, whether it's intentional or not. And I believe it's intentional, but I mean, there was some, there's some crime on the subway in New York and they were all out there. Stephen Miller, the White House, Caroline Lovett, like screaming at the New York Times for not detailing the person's immigration status who committed the crime and like demanding that the New York Times. So now I guess every time someone commits a

crime in this country. We need to know exactly what their immigration status is. This is also behind the whole, he's not, he'll never be a Maryland man. He'll never be a Maryland father. He's MS-13. So like you can't even now say that immigrants who aren't here legally, you can't say like where they live in the United States or where they're from, or the fact that they're parents. The only identifier has to be that they are illegal and not here. By the way, the crime that they were all tweeting about that happened in the New York subway was a man who

raping a corpse. Yes. And the mega people were like, why did you say he was an illegal immigrant? I'm sorry. That's not the part of that story that worries me the most.

That's not the part that shocks my conscience, his immigration status. Also, if we're going to start listing everyone's immigration status that commits a crime in this country, it's not going to look good for what they're trying to prove here. Right. Since most of the crimes aren't talking as an immigrant. And wait till they hear who commits crimes in women's restrooms. No, seriously, this is their playbook, right? If a crime is committed by one of their unsavories, that's really important. If it's not, it shouldn't be mentioned at all. Right.

It's bad. All right. We're going to take a quick break. Two announcements before we do that. We got a new book from Crooked Media Reads. Our friend Amanda Lipman has written When We're in Charge, The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership. It drops next week, May 13th.

Amanda's the co-founder of Run for Something. So she has more experience than almost anyone in helping young people get into leadership positions. She talked to a ton of people for the book, everyone from Maxwell Frost to Teen Vogue's Versus Sharma. It's a fascinating book, essential for anyone considering that next step. Interviewed Amanda a couple weeks ago on Pod Save America. You can pre-order the book right now at crooked.com slash books or wherever you get your books. Also, some exciting Love It or Leave It shows coming up in L.A.

What do we got? What do you think? On May 8th, I believe you guys are going to be at the Dynasty Typewriter. We have a bunch of great shows lined up in LA. We're going to have some surprise, very special guests. We'll be at Dynasty Typewriter this Thursday. Then next week, we'll be at Flappers in Burbank. We have, I think, Sarah Silverman. Yeah. You have it. Who else is going to be there? Sarah Silverman.

Lamorne Morris. Oh, Lamorne Morris. Lamorne Morris and Esther Provitsky. Oh, great. That's a great show. So, yeah, we're going to be at Flappers. Flappers. That's a fun name. I never even heard of Flappers. It's a comedy club. Cool. Grab your tickets now. Yeah. Crooked.com slash events. When we come back, Tommy's interview with Chasten Buttigieg. Pod Save America is brought to you by Zbiotics pre-alcohol. Let's face it.

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Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash cricket and use the code cricket at checkout for 15% off. My guest today is the author of the new children's book, Papa's Coming Home, which is out May 20th, right? But available for pre-sale now. That's right. Yeah. Chasten Buttigieg, great to see you. Nice to see you. You're also the bestselling author of a young adult memoir called I Have Something to Tell You. Yeah. Folks can pick that one up too. Thanks. Thank you for making the trip to LA. Happy to be here. I know it's not an easy thing when you have little kids at home. In fact, that's

kind of the point of the book in a lot of ways. I hope you don't mind if I give listeners just a little peek behind the curtain here. So I called Chasten, was it Monday night? We had just recorded Pots of America. I called you at like 4.30 Pacific. And you would just put the kids down and we were kind of like commiserating over the battle that can be bedtime and like patting ourselves on the back for getting it done. And I hear this adorable little voice in the back. It's like, daddy, who are you talking to? Yeah.

Yeah, it was like the kids in The Shining. I turned around and they're just two twins standing around. I didn't even hear them come down the stairs. Just jailbreak? Yes. And they're really into talking about our friends right now. Okay. So they'll be like, who are you talking? Are you talking to your friends? Or if we're FaceTiming one another. If I'm FaceTiming the kids back home, they'll say...

If I was FaceTiming them right now, they'd be like, can I see your friends? Even if they had not met anybody in the room and they would have to say hello to everybody. I think that's good. I think that's great. Do they manipulate you at bedtime the way my daughter does me, just like for extra seconds? Extra seconds. Hours. Hours. The other night, I think I'd read Lizette like 10 books. You know, like the stack just gets higher every single night. So I read through all the books. Hannah comes in to say goodnight.

She has this little stuffed animal called Pink Lovey. It's a little bunny, right? We sleep with it every night. We have like four of them because Pink Lovey gets like kind of nasty and you got to wash Pink Lovey, but God forbid you don't have Pink Lovey at bedtime. So sometimes she'll tell us she wants not that Pink Lovey, but that other identical Pink Lovey. And she started to fake cry, but then halfway through made herself cry up. And we just like had this moment where we like all were laughing about knowing she was manipulating us. And it was just the funniest thing too. How old is she?

Oh, wow. Yeah, I'm done. I'm screwed. Yeah. She's got me just... The floor around Gus's bed is like 30 stuffies. Yeah. And people just give them to you and they just keep giving them to you. And it's really hard to make them go away. And then he doesn't have a favorite one though. So every night it's like, I want little bear. And I have now learned that little bear is the tiny white bear. There's 15 bears in there.

But of course, it's always the one that you can't find. 100%. You have to turn the lights back on, look under the bed. Yeah, it's a journey. So your book, Papa's Coming Home, it's a very sweet bedtime story about a young family welcoming dad home from a work trip. And by the way, I appreciate that you guys, the dog is like a fully-

Fledged, you know, family member. That's how we are, too. Yeah. Why did you write the book? And what's kind of the deeper message, you know, for the parent reading the book? Yeah. I mean, our kids are about to turn four. So it's weird to think that I wrote this book, I believe, before they turned two.

I was coming home from a work trip and had been thinking about writing a children's book because I had asked around for books that looked like our family. As you know, you read 15 books every night. So it would be great if just one of those books featured a family that looked like ours. And we came up short. There are a couple of good ones out there. And it was also important to me that

You know, the lesson in the book was just a family loves each other. Unconditional love for your child. It wasn't kind of punching you in the face with like the morals. So I was on an airplane and the idea came to me, how excited I was to get home and how excited my kids might be that I'm coming home.

And that was it. I just wanted a nice, sweet story, especially for bedtime. I was kind of thinking of the book that incorporates that message of unconditional love for your kid, but also with some silly things in there that they're going to latch on to. Yeah, it's very cute. I think the little kids, they'll like the way the story escalates. I don't want to ruin the ending for anybody. Yeah, they helped me write it, right? Because there's so many...

that they decided to bring to the airport to greet Papa with. And that was fun to work with Gus and Penelope on. And I would workshop it and see if they'd giggle or not. - Perfect, I love it. You talk about the need for representation in books like this. Republicans, they love to make LGBT parents the focus of their attacks, their culture war, like things they're demagoguing. You and Pete get singled out in very terrible ways by some of these horrible people.

How do you deal with it? Is that something you have to talk to your kids about? Well, luckily, no, right now. I can shield them from the internet. There are only three. You know, we try in our house to leave the discourse at the door. It's very hard. It doesn't need to be at the dinner table. It doesn't need to be in the minivan on the way to school. We don't need to be talking about, you know,

negativity while our kids are around. Yeah. Like another thing about Tucker Carlson, Gus. Yeah. Well, like, you know, the kids are talking to you and there's like spaghetti flying at the dinner table, right? It's like, Hey, did you see this crazy thing that, you know, Caroline Leavitt decided to say, say like, why does that need to be in our kitchen? Why does that need to be at our door? And I'm, you know, I'm, I'm no stranger to the attack.

But I have always believed that the best thing that we can do for our community and our family is just to live our lives authentically, to show people who we are. We're just like every other family, you know, going about our day, reading 15 books at bedtime. And, you know, there's probably a lot of applesauce and mac and cheese stuck to our kitchen table chairs just like yours. And to the dog. Yeah.

Yeah, Buddy loves it. Buddy's like a Roomba. Yeah, my dog has gained 15 pounds probably, but her fur is just, you know, finally you get her groomed. It's like, you know, there's constellations in there. The book is coming out at a time when books like yours are being targeted, challenged, banned, taken to court. What is it like to debut this book while the Supreme Court is hearing this case? It's Mahmoud versus Taylor, where parents are trying to pull kids out of lessons with just, you know, LGBT characters like this.

Yeah, I mean, I started writing it, like I mentioned, two years ago, so I didn't see the Supreme Court case coming. And now, of course, it's coming out in a couple weeks. And I just keep thinking about what a kid like ours might feel sitting in a classroom where someone says, like, I don't want to read that. I don't want my kids exposed to that when it's simply a book about, you know, two loving parents going about their day. And at the end of the day, loving their children unconditionally. So...

You know, I'm really disappointed, especially to see that the conservative Supreme Court seems to be favoring the parents in this particular case.

As a former teacher myself, I think that's going to put a lot of unnecessary burden on teachers and schools. I mean, the school district in that particular case already said they tried it, right? And it failed. It didn't work. It was so cumbersome to constantly deal with those. Like communicating what's going to be in the lesson and letting people opt out. And then, like, where does the line get dropped?

Like, I want to pull my kids out of lessons about evolution or like how many permission slips are we sending every day or every week to pull our kids out of certain lessons. So again, like this book, it was very important to me that this is a Father's Day book. It's just a book about two dads who love their kids. I think it's like a modern American family. And so I hope that other families will enjoy it. I hope it brings a lot of joy to bedtime. Yeah.

But again, I'm not naive and understand like what we're up against as a community and as a country. So not to be like, you know, the guy out here hawking his book, but like a great thing that you can do is request books like this at your library and at your school.

because I do think it represents who we are as Americans. And there's room for everybody at the table. It also works. You know what I mean? Like it does normalize like families that look all kinds of ways. Yeah. As an educator, I mean, I imagine when you were teaching like the kind of libs of TikTok, kind of like these assaults on teachers, like they probably weren't happening. But I mean, do you talk to educators? Are they scared of, I don't know, being singled out, being targeted?

Well, I think this administration definitely seems to love to go after teachers and families, right? Making it harder for teachers and harder for families.

Imagine that you're like a 21, 22 year old college graduate with your bachelor's degree in education. And you're looking around thinking, okay, I'm ready to start my career in education. Where am I going to go? Places like Florida, probably not as attractive. You know, places like Oklahoma that, that welcome libs of TikTok in, right. Who, who bring her to the table to, to draft policy, you know,

you know, just a bigoted real estate agent is now the person who's going to be helping draft education policy. But imagine that college graduate thinking, is this really what I want to do? Or, you know, what kind of environment are we creating as a country that asks people to step up to the call to become educators, right? You're, you're, uh, underpaid, right? It's a really hard job. You don't get the appreciation, respect on the way over here in the Uber. I was reading about, um,

how they want to do away with Head Start. Like, you're talking about the most vulnerable kids in our country. So now you want to take away Head Start. Now you're putting tariffs on

on baby goods coming from Asia, right? So now you're making car seats more expensive, strollers more expensive. And these are the people in Washington who are screaming, like, have more kids, right? It's like their weird thing right now. It's like, well, natalism is real weird. We'll give you money to have kids, but then like we can't afford childcare. We can't afford a stroller, right? The rub is it's got to be an Elon Musk kid. It turns out to be. I thought you were going to say an Elon Musk designed stroller. No. No, I saw a cyber truck. Those explode off the truck. Yeah.

I have, you know, experienced like the joy and like the wonder of being a parent and also setbacks and the challenges that go into the process of trying to become one. I know that you and Pete have talked about the adoption process and setbacks you guys had, heartbreak. Did that like, what was that experience like for you? Did it cause stress between the two of you? And do you have advice for other parents like going through the adoption process, which I know can be tough? Yeah.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, it's so weird to think about that chapter in life now that we have these, you know, brilliant, incredible kids running around our house and just destroying the walls. Um, but when we were, crayons everywhere, they just started. Yeah. And you know, I, I swear like the other week I was like, I think they're doing really good with the white walls. Right. And then just like, boom, just like crayon on loud. Everything. Yeah. Jinxed it. You know, there was a time when, when Pete and I, uh,

We were on a list. We were on an emergency placement list. So that's where you sign up and say, you know, if there's a call in the middle of the night. In our case where a kid is left at the hospital, the hospital works with an adoption agency to make an adoption plan.

So a parent might need to be called right away. So we had about 24 hours notice. They give you the call and say, hey, you're next on the list. We really need you. Are you stepping up? Yes or no? And you have a couple hours to decide. We had about five adoptions fall through in the span of a year. And the really hard part is they tell you not to plan the nursery. Don't buy anything. Because when...

one of those cases might inevitably fail, it hurts to look at the crib, to look at the room, to look at the nursery and have it fall through. So we, you know, for Christmas and birthdays and stuff, like aunts and uncles and parents, like couldn't help themselves. Right. And so they'd start getting things.

And it did. It always hurt seeing those things in the corner. You get the call in the middle of the night. There's a situation. Are you guys ready to step up? We'd say yes. And then, you know, it turned into 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 4 a.m., 8 a.m. We wouldn't hear back. And then ultimately something changed where you think you're going to be parents and then you're not. But then it works out. And, you know, whatever happens.

uh, God you believe in or however you come to religion or belief. I think like the stars just aligned. And then one day you're standing in a, in a hospital room and you're holding your kids. Um, but it, there were multiple, there were multiple nights along the way, uh, where there was some heartbreak. Yeah. But then my God, as you know, that moment you hold them as there's nothing like it. Yeah. No, I, I know exactly the feelings you're talking about. Like,

get that stroller out of this house. I don't ever want to fucking see it again. We had that. And then there's also the moment you meet your kids. And in a weird way, you're like, okay, everything that came before this had to happen, should have happened because it brought you here. Right. All the heartbreak, everything that gets you to the point. That's beautiful chaos now. Yeah. It's like, you want it so bad and we wanted to be parents so bad. And, and that's the thing that

I felt like I kept saying to them when they were, they had some health complications after they were born. We were in the hospital for quite some time. RSV? Before the RSV. So after they were born, we were in the hospital for almost two weeks and we went home and then I got RSV and that's when Gus wound up on the ventilator. I just remember like holding them and thinking like, you're so loved. Like you are so wanted in this world. Like just, just looking at them, they were like barely five pounds. They were premature and just,

Thinking how badly we wanted that and how loved that they were and that they were going to be. This huge community, excited to welcome them. And then, yeah, you fast forward. It's like, why is there a magnet tile under my pillow? You step on another Lego and you're like, rah. Do you put in for twins? Was that in a miraculous accident? How does that work? Yeah, I was helping my dad.

And helping is doing a lot of work here. My dad would say a floor in our basement. And I needed to go to Lowe's to get some more tile. Sure. And I was driving to Lowe's. As one does in Michigan. Yeah. Right. Just me. Hammer. Tools and stuff. Yep, yep. And I get a call from the adoption agency and immediately panic. Because whenever I see that number come up,

It usually means like there's going to be a heartbreak. I just know like that's that was my history with it. Right. So talking to the social worker and I say, you know, here's the situation. And they said, like, are you sitting down? And I was like, well, I'm driving to Lowe's right now. And they're like, OK, well, like pull over. Like, don't crash. Yeah. Like it's twins. I was just like, oh, shit. What a curveball. Yeah. So I had to. So Pete was on a work trip.

And I remember like pacing outside this gas station and I called him and he's like, hello. Like very formal. It's like, hey, the adoption agency just called and it's our turn. Like they think it's real this time. And like, here's the situation. I'm giving them all the details. I'm like, and by the way, like, are you ready for this? Are you sitting down? It's twins and it's just silent. Oh my God.

And then I just hear him go, okay, well, thanks so much for that information. And I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Oh, no. And I was like. He had some serious meeting. Yeah, I was like, are you around a lot of other people? And he's like, yep. He's like, okay, call me back. And then it turns out he's on an airplane. Oh. And he's like, he's somewhere out west. And he couldn't call me back until he like lands at the next spot and had to like turn around, get on a red eye. Oh, my God. Come home and meet me at the hospital. Oh, my God.

But yeah, the twins thing really threw a wrench in everything. Incredible. You and Pete, you walk this tightrope of your public figures. You're also millennial dads who spent half your life on social media. I know for me, I struggle with, I got a cute video of my daughter and I want to post it on whatever. Oh, yeah. But then I know it's in the world forever and strangers will see it and my kids don't have a say in that decision. How do you navigate that?

Yeah, you know, one of the things that bugs me the most about being a public person, like the thing that people say to me that bugs me the most is when they say, like, I want to see more pictures of those kids. It's like, you don't, like, they're not yours. Like, you don't, like...

you're not entitled to access to them. And it kind of creeps me out. And I know that maybe that's coming from a really good place. Like they're so happy for you and they want to see how happy they are. But I don't know if you've read Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation. No, but I've read enough takes on it to feel like I have a good sense. Yeah. But, you know, my kids can't consent to that. Right. Like they can't consent to having their face online. And like in a digital age, like I've seen enough deep fakes online

of my husband and I that I don't need to put my kids on the internet. One, because they can't consent to being on the internet. And two, I don't want people messing with them. And even when we were in Washington, I remember we were taking them to the Easter egg roll. We were so excited and picking out outfits. And Pete's mom was with us. It was going to be a big family day. And the moment we came out of the White House, I sort of had a panic attack because for some reason,

All morning, I hadn't thought about the press. It's like open press, yeah. And the moment we walked out, there's just a flood of cameras. And my heart sank because I just, I didn't think about it. Right. And then sure enough, the next day they were on the cover of the Washington Post. I got my cousin Easter egg roll tickets in like 2011. And then in 2012, I was like, hey, Jeremy, you want to go back? And he's like, no, we're good. Yeah. It was a lot for me. Yeah. And plus, like, you're just on, you know, like...

it's really hard to feel like you're having an authentic family experience when people are photographing you. Right. Of course. The constant click, the camera and, and you're just trying to protect your kids. Totally. So, um, yeah, it's, you know, you, you want people to see your joy and your happiness. And like, I like talking about dad life. Um,

But there's still an element of that that kind of creeps me out. Yeah, it's a fuzzy line. It's hard to know where to draw it. Speaking of more personal questions on a podcast, you'll be heard by strangers. Who keeps the baby monitor on? You didn't ask for pictures. That's right. That's my next question. Who keeps on the nanit or the baby monitor at night? Or do you guys trade off? Well, we don't need it now. You're fully done with the...

Yeah. I guess they get out of bed and they IRL wake you up. Oh, yeah. And I've like lately I just sleep through it. I feel really bad. It's like people be like, oh, Penelope had a really bad dream last night and she woke me up like to like what? I didn't hear any of that. That's awesome. Yeah. You can do that. Which makes me feel really bad. But yeah, I mean, they'll come they'll come get us and

Gus is up with the sun. It's usually like 5.55 on the dot. He's up. He's singing. He goes downstairs and gets his little power tools. He's got this little drill. He's fixing things around our bedroom. Penelope, she's a teenager. You have to drag her out of bed to get ready for school in the morning. My kids...

Last night, I think Lizzie was kind of chirping on the Nana at like 10, 2.30, 3.30, and then at 5. The whole family was just up. We got to get them to sleep in. There's two modes. They will go down at 7.00.

Like they're wiped and they just go down or they're going to be up till 10. Battle. Yeah. I know the feeling. Are you going to enter the Manosphere podcast universe on your book tour the way Pete has? Is this not the Manosphere? I don't know. Maybe the beta Manosphere. The Rogan, Theo, Vaughn, Flagrin. Are you doing any of those? I don't think I need to. I'm glad Pete is. I'm glad he is too. I thought I listened to the whole Flagrin thing. The whole thing? Yeah.

Okay. You know, it's 75% of it. Yeah. I opened it. I was like, oh no. I got in this weird Twitter back and forth with Andrew Schultz about it too. Cause I was like, I tweeted that I was, I thought it was good that Pete went on. I guess I described it as like unfriendly territory. Yeah. And that was maybe, I think an unfair shorthanding of their political beliefs. Yeah. But I do think like, I don't know. I'm, I am glad he's going on these shows. I'm trying to force myself on these shows. Cause I do think, yeah. What's the point of.

I think it shows a side of him that a lot of people hadn't seen before. Like, you know, when he was mayor, you have to talk to everybody, right? We live in North Michigan. You talk to everybody. And this is one thing I really admire about him is he can talk to anybody and he can hold his own. And I love, I love when you hear the host go, Oh, Oh, I had no idea. You know, like he's not only is he like surviving in that environment, but he's actually teaching him something. He was thriving. He got a fire clip that.

He's also good at... That's a quote. He's also good at just pretending he didn't hear the thing he doesn't want to respond to. You know, like the dude in the fourth row chirping the kind of sexual innuendo or whatever. And he's like, yeah, it's gonna... Yeah, that's just... Yeah. I feel like every time I go to the gym, I'm in the manosphere. Because it's just like, yeah, it's like innuendos flying and jokes flying. I can only keep up with half of them. Yeah, that's his professional and personal life. Because he probably...

It's probably getting that for me too. I'm just a constant roll of puns and jokes. And so he's pretty good at tuning out what he doesn't want to respond to. It's a necessity in this weird world we're all in. There's a lot of commentary on Pete's new beard. Yeah. I'm a fan. Fan? I love it, yeah. Okay. I can't grow one. Me either. But now I can usually let it go two days.

Where it's not like terrible, but like I can go to like the grocery store and go to Meijer and no one's going to say like...

Well, he's really letting himself go. But now I feel like since Pete does have a beard, if I even let my stubble grow for like one day, they'd be like, oh, he's trying too. Oh, he's, okay. Like I'm not. No, I just was really lazy today. You're doing like a same-sies. Yeah, I just get like a patchy thing here and then. Yeah, it's not good. It's not good. It's not great. I'm like waiting for it to work. It doesn't. He's like a teenager about it right now. They'd be like, it's really scratchy though. Like, well, did you put moisturizer on it? Did you like put the beard balm or like beard oil on it? No. Oh, that's a thing? Yeah, it's like don't.

I didn't even know that was a thing. I just told him yesterday, like, stop complaining about something you're in control of. Just put the beard balm on. Shave it, pal. Yeah, do whatever you want. What do you think? Should he keep it? I thought it looked good. I like it. Yeah. I don't know. I just wish I could grow one. Seems cool. Same. Seems cool. Yeah. Just have options, you know? I've had the same haircut since I was birthed, essentially, and can't grow a beard. Sucks. Barely have eyebrows. Yeah. Yeah.

Pete seems like a bit of a workaholic. Does he drive you crazy if he's home too much? No, he, when he, when we moved back from DC, he set up an office in the basement. So it's really just become like the Pete cave down there. It's like the Pete office in the laundry room. So go hang, fold some laundry. Yeah. Do some calls with Biden or whatever, whatever you do down there. Yeah. That's good. Um, you guys, anything good on TV, anything you're streaming?

Oh, man. We just watched, was it episode two of The Last of Us? Of the new season. So I don't want to spoil anything for anybody, but, you know. And finished The White Lotus. Mixed. Can I say one thing? Sure. He went on that pod, flagrant, and they were talking about The White Lotus. And he was like, hot take or whatever. Like, Lachlan should have died. That was my hot take. Oh, okay. And he just goes on a pod and says it.

When he came home, I was like, you can't just take my hot takes without crediting me. Spoiler alert, we were absolutely right. Oh, you're right. I just spoiled that one. Well, you guys can cut that out. We'll just take it back to the last question and start over. There was nothing to spoil. Whatever. It's been out for long enough, right? So long. Everyone can deal with it. One month. I thought, I don't know. It just didn't do it for me this season. It's fine.

I really liked this season. It's beautiful places, beautifully shot, fun to watch. Yeah, half of it is just like, yeah, travel candy. Brothers doing that? Okay. What a twist, you know? But that's Mike White. He knows what he's doing on that show. Yeah, he does. And that's why I like it. It just slowly builds, and then it all just falls apart. I've been loving the studio on Apple TV. It's like Seth Rogen, 30-minute comedy,

Oh, hilarious. Makes fun. It seems like every terrible TV executive that they've ever come across makes a cameo in this and they're just like, it's like a punching bag, like catharsis for them. I, that sounds like something I would like. I started the residence on Netflix. Okay. Cute. Um, it's like a murder in the white house. Oh, it's like a murder caper. Um,

It's kind of weird. I know I'm going to hear the words that are going to come out of my mouth, but if you've been to the White House, it is wild. They do it well. It's done so well. You're like, yeah, when you do walk down that stairwell, that's what it looks like there. And it's very fast-paced and it's very funny.

But we don't really watch a lot of TV together. We commit to one show to watch together and then everything else we're on our own. - More than one is too many. And also it's so hard to find overlap. I know what you're saying about watching these shows and having worked in these places in politics.

and then becoming the annoying person about realism. - Yeah, like I don't wanna be that guy, I'm sorry. - I know, well, I don't even, my wife got really into like the ambassador or whatever it was. - Oh yes, yeah. - And I'd be like, this is not how it is. And she's like, I don't care. - They would never email that. - Yeah, shit like that. I remember when Homeland came out, I was in the White House at the time and I was like talking to a bunch of people and Obama was there about it. And we all like loved it. We were like, yeah, this guy's fucking texting from the sit room. Come on, man.

That's why this whole Signalgate thing is so wild. It is so funny. The ways in which I could not communicate with my husband when he worked about mundane stuff. It's just like, you can do whatever now. Yeah. Pete Hegseth is just hammering classified details. He's copying and pasting from a Centcom mail. Nothing matters. Mike Waltz is out, though, so some good news. Yeah.

Didn't he just get... Did he get nominated for UN ambassador? He got sent to New York. Is he out? They're like, this was really bad, so we're going to let him go represent our country in front of the United Nations. That's a good spot to put him in. It says a lot about what they think about the UN, that they were trashing this guy. There's no top secret information at the UN. No damage can be done there. Imagine meeting him. Hi, Mike. What brings you to the UN? Oh, well...

Humiliated out of D.C. I was just sharing confidential information. Well, listen, Chasten, thank you for joining us today. You got it. Pop is Coming Home is out on May 20th. Everyone pre-order it today. Oh, thanks. Buy one for your local library. I appreciate that. Yeah, support your local library. Support your local library, and thank you for coming in. Appreciate it. That's our show for today. Thanks, Chasten, for joining. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday.

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Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari. Reid Cherlin is our executive editor, and Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Madeline Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroat is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant.

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