How to make money in Washington, with Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman
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From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Channels with Peter Kafka. That's me. I'm also the chief correspondent at Business Insider. Thank you for all the nice feedback about last week's interview with A.G. Sulzberger. Double thanks to the people who told other people to listen. You guys rock.

Today we've got two interviews in one. At the start, Punchbowl News co-founder Jake Sherman gives us an update on his business. Spoiler, it's a very successful trade pub covering the ins and outs of Congress. And then Punchbowl News co-founder Jake Sherman explains exactly what Congress is doing and what it's not doing during the second Trump administration. And I think by the end of the conversation, we've somehow selected Jake as Disney's next CEO. All right, let's get to it. Here's me and Jake Sherman.

I'm here with Jake Sherman. He is the co-founder of Punchbowl News. Welcome back, Jake. Thanks for having me, Peter. Thanks for being patient with me. I've been trying to get you on the show for months, really. And

the only reason we can do it right now is because Congress is out of session. And that is your job is covering Congress with a laser focus. And it's gone really well. I want you to do two things in this conversation. I want you to tell me how your business is going. And I want you to explain how Washington works in 2025. Um,

But we only get how much how much time do I have? We don't have days. We'll do we'll do the abbreviated version. But it's funny, you put out an item. So just if anyone hasn't is not familiar with what you do, just describe Punchbowl News briefly.

Yeah, so Punchbowl News, and thank you, Peter, for being patient with me as I've tried to find a time to do this. I love the podcast. I listed it in, I did an interview with, or a guest lecture in Emily Sundberg's newsletter yesterday. I'm going to ask you about that interview because I could only read up until the paywall.

Oh, you should be paying for Emily's newsletter, which is terrific. And I think she's like I think she's terrific. And I think her content is terrific. I think she does a great job. And as I said in the interview, I don't really know why I read it, but I find myself reading about things that I actually don't care about or have. I do care about them, but I have very little direct interaction with anything that she's saying. But I like it. Emily Sundberg, come on the pod. We'll get her. We'll get.

We'll get around to it. I will put in a good word for you. So listen, Punchbowl News, as a god, I think I did this with you a couple of years ago when we first started. So we launched in 2021. It was four founders, myself, Anna Palmer, who's our CEO, with whom I wrote Playbook at Politico for four years and I worked with for longer. John Bresnahan, who we also worked with for 11 years at Politico. Anna for longer. She was an intern at Roll Call with Brez.

Back in the, I don't know what year, but a long time ago. And Rachel Schindler, who had worked with us at Politico, we started it. Our concept was simple. It was to cover Congress with a laser focus on the leadership. We launched in 2021 with four of us. We grew to six and now we are 40. So fast forward. 40 people.

Fast forward a couple of years. I want to get more into business, but just the very top line stuff. The last revenue number I saw for you guys was 20 million in 2023. Have you put out a new number since then? We've not. And to be honest with you, I don't know what we've said. It's more than that now. And as we've grown, and I'll tell you how we've grown.

And one of the things that I appreciate about what we do, and I don't appreciate it as much as this is the decision that Anna, myself, and Brez have made,

over the years is we have decided to grow slowly, relatively. We only raised a million dollars once. We've never raised more capital than that in the four and a half years. All of the growth that we've done has been organic and come from our balance sheet, which is, in my view, as somebody who is relatively risk averse in some ways, it's

It forces you to be even more focused. So like the majority of my time is spent on the editorial side, but what we do, vast majority, 99%, but when we create new growth opportunities, it has to be a marriage of Anna saying, yes, there is a business case for this. And me saying, yes, there's an editorial case, me and Brez. So we have a...

We have gone into two areas so far. We have gone into financial services and taxes, which is one area called the vault. And we have gone into tech policy. We thought in those two cases...

that there was a gap in the marketplace, that there wasn't good coverage of those two things in the way that we cover Congress. We've seen a retrenchment from financial services policy from all the incumbents on Capitol Hill and a huge opportunity to fill in that niche. And we have one person covering taxes, Laura Weiss, who's tremendous, and what a time to be covering taxes, and Brendan Peterson, who covers financial services for us. I

And what we do is it's, that is a subscription product. So that is, I don't want to misquote the price. So I'm not going to say the price it's available online. I just don't remember what it is. I looked on, I looked online. You've got two price. You get free. That's the version I get. Yes. 300 for the basic and then 1200 for the super duper financial services. Yeah. So what we do is we have a weekly 300 a year, 1200 a year. Sorry. Correct. Yes. Um,

Financial Services comes out with a weekly edition, as does Tech, and the content is interspersed throughout our newsletters, our premium newsletters, which is the PM and the midday editions throughout the week. Same thing with Tech.

So, that is our growth in the editorial space. We've also invested, and I'll let you ask questions in a second, but I want to just talk about this new thing that we're doing, which is extremely exciting. We, a couple of years ago, acquired a pre-revenue company called ElectoAnalytics, which is a

torn that apart. Not in a bad way. We have kind of stripped it down to the studs, rebuilt it as a data product. So that's congressional data, directories, bills, regulations. And we have also built something new called NBlockAI, chat GPT for Congress, which is taking all of the, or not only for Congress, but for Washington, but taking all of the databases that we

All use on a day-to-day basis in Washington legislation, directories, FEC, which is campaign finance, lobbying transcripts, and put them into a searchable database, which is incredibly useful. Basically we built it from my brain and Brez's brain. And we,

These are all things that we do every day. So what is the product that I would use and that the Hill would use? And how can we make everything quicker that we know should be quicker? It's funny because you see lots of publications trying to figure out how to use AI and they're kind of going back and forth. And a bunch of them, including Business Insider, have some sort of AI search system.

And I won't weigh in on the BI search. But in general, you sort of see this and go, I'm not really sure many people come into the Washington Post because they want to talk to an AI chatbot. But it makes perfect sense for what you guys do, where there's just reams and reams of data that would take you a long time to get through. And you know there's stuff in there that you want, and you guys can now access that. We saw, you know, I had a hunch. I don't really know...

much about like what I know, generally speaking, what people are doing in the AI space, like the times and Axios and all those folks, mostly because I listened to podcasts like yours and talk to, talk to people like Jim Vande Hei, who is my mentor and dear friend for, you know, 15 years. They signed, I believe a deal with open AI, if I'm not mistaken, I could be everyone at the New York times has signed a deal. Right. Yes. So what, not what we basically decided to do is like, we,

We've spent a lot of money and a lot of time building out this product. So like,

I can tell you that it touches every sphere of D.C. If you're a lobbyist and you need to know how people vote and you need to see or you need to find out, show me every tax staffer who works for members of Congress from Ohio who voted for this bill. That would take you a long time. It doesn't take you a long time with this. And we are going to keep investing in this. And it is going to be part of and let me just say one more thing. It's going to be part of a data subscription that will include the baseline portal product, which is what we'd

what we made of the company that we bought in portal includes includes nblockai and here's my feeling my feeling is that the the incumbents in the data space in washington have had um power to this sounds bad but to fix prices not fix prices in an illegal way but to develop an all a a um

How do I say this without getting myself in trouble? You're the new guy in town. You get to offer different products in different pricing. Who are the incumbents in the data space? Who are you thinking about? Politico, Pro, Bloomberg, those folks. Less so CQ Roll Call, but probably a little bit of them. And I could just say this, and again, I'll shut up after this. We feel very strongly that we at Punchbowl News know the end user better than anybody because we live among them.

Jake, you have, you have flipped the interview for me. I was going to do the business stuff second, but we're here. So let's, no, no, no, it's good. Let's keep talking about it. Can you tell me how many subscribers you have? How many paid subscribers you have to the data product or to, to, uh, overall, how many, I don't think I could say, I don't think I could say that because I don't think we've said it publicly, but,

But we are – I don't know what we say. I should really just text Anna right now and say, what do we say about subscriptions and stuff like that? I mean, we have a – I will say this. We have a multimillion-dollar subscription business. Yeah. Look, if you said – if you guys were saying in 2023 that you're doing $20 million in revenue, a good chunk of that I'm assuming is subscriptions. And so we can –

We can sort of, I guess... Can we back out? I don't know if we can back it out. No, you can't. Because basically, listen, here's the deal. Our advertising business, which includes newsletter sponsorships, events, which we have a massive, massive event business, and social events and things like that, that's a big part of our revenue, as is subscriptions. We have really super-charged subscriptions in the last...

So let me let me let me let me put this away that you can't answer. Who is a punch bowl subscriber, right? There's the there's literally people who work in Congress, right? But it's obviously a bigger it's about a bigger group than that. So who is paying you money to read this stuff on a day in day out basis? Very simply, people who are obsessed with legislative politics and the way Washington works.

So that's Capitol Hill. I mean, the Speaker of the House said on stage, I read all three editions a day. The entire leadership reads it. The lobbyists, media, it is. And the great thing is our retention rates. Once people sign up for the news for

either the AM edition or the basic package, which is 350, I think you said, and I think that's right, $50 a year, $350 a year. We don't really lose them. People who have a professional interest in knowing not just generally what's happening in Washington, but the ins and outs, and this bill is going to this committee this afternoon. And also just power.

Just power, power, power in Washington, who was interested, you know, that is the that is the general reader, like what we always said. And God, we said this back when we were at Politico, Anna and I did. Anna's from North Dakota. If her mother in North Dakota is interested in Congress and politics, they're going to subscribe.

but we don't change the content for a general audience. We just don't see much, you know, we don't, we're not. You're a trade publication, which some people see as a, as an insult, but it's, it's not, it's a very good business and it provides a service.

Yes. And listen, we see as there is as some news organizations see get interested in, you know, expanding their remit or their kingdom. We outside of Washington, we don't see that like we want we want we see there's like several lines of business in Washington that we have not even started yet.

that we think are multimillion-dollar lines of business that we haven't even announced publicly or- Is it all going to be Congress-focused, Congress-related, or do you think you could eventually sort of expand beyond Congress and cover other branches?

I think that we, this is always the building I sit in now. The Capitol is always the center of our universe. Um, and we, but we will, we see ourselves, um, there's other areas of interest that touch other parts of government and other parts of the city, most importantly. So, um, I think there will be some of that, but I don't have a, I don't want, you know, I, I,

I don't want to say what I don't want to do, but I don't, we'll never be a, you know, there'll never be a Punchbowl News sports, right? Like that's just not what we're interested in or a Punchbowl News Milwaukee. Although we've had people come to us and say, hey, you should do this. You should buy this publication in London. You should go do it in Brussels. We got enough, I don't want to say problems. We have enough to do here. That's basically what I'm trying to say. I don't think it's,

And you came of age at Politico, which at the time was this really novel way of presenting news. And a lot of the focus, a lot of the discussion about Politico in its early days was sort of the breathless sort of minute by minute. This thing just happened. This person just walked into the office. I'm going to tweet it out or text it out. Is that still a core thing for your audience? Do they need that minute by minute stuff or is it more of a...

We're stage setting for the day. They need minute by minute stuff. Both and everything. We, so we have a...

uh, our, our premium subscribers have option to have an opt-in to text alerts, which we try to send out news first on because people are not, you know, a lot of our audiences on Twitter all day where I still, or X all day where I still engage. But, um, some people are not, uh, lobbyists are in meetings, members are in meetings, uh, aides are in meetings. So we do still text it out. But what we try to do is, um,

both set this, tell people what's coming around the corner, but also give them minute by minute updates to the extent that they're necessary. I don't think it's mutually exclusive, but yeah, I listen, I joined Politico in 09 when it was still like Jim still was interviewing all the job candidates at that point. So like much of my framework and Anna's framework of the world is

It's really astonishing, the lineage. I mean, those guys were connected to the Washington Post, created Politico because Politico was a big part of the political universe.

Washington Post wasn't serving that hardcore DC audience and now we have you guys, we have Axios, we have other folks trying to break into the space. It's kind of wild that the Post basically gave up on that business of doing sort of

you know, all-encompassing Washington news. There was a story in The Times connecting you guys and The Post. That was, what, a year ago? Suggesting that The Post might be interested in buying you. Has that ever progressed? There are a lot of people who have a lot of ideas for The Washington Post in the media reporter space who have said that. The thing, it's an honor to be considered we're not for sale right now. We are, we have, we see, like,

I'm young. I'm 39 years old. So I don't have any designs on retiring anytime soon, unless I could just follow Phish full-time with an all-access pass, which I don't think they would like me to do. You know, it's really funny. Some people have said, you know, as the post kind of looks around for business model and...

The easiest business model is right in front of them. I mean, this is a city that has a million interesting stories, a captivated readership with elastic spending capabilities. And I mean, this building alone, right? There's 535 members of Congress. There are thousands of aides, Capitol Hill aides. There are...

I don't know how many lobbyists there are, but many, many, many thousands or hundreds. I don't know. I don't know exactly an organization that,

like the Washington Post should just be owning this space. I mean, you think about all the publications that were able to get, get a foothold in Washington, the post, sorry, Politico, us, Axios, Semaphore. This is what I'm saying. This is what I'm saying. It seems like Jeff Bezos could, could go acquire one or two of you guys, but like you said, you're not for sale. So we'll never know. We will never know. We will never know. It's right.

We'll be right back with Jake Sherman, but first, a word from a sponsor. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today.

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And we're back. Here, I'll start moving into what's going on today. Did the makeup of your audience and or what they wanted to know about change with the new Trump administration?

Not change as much. I mean, you know, it's interesting. We started in 2021. So when we hired our first kind of reporters outside of the four founders, two of whom are reporters, me and Brez, we hired...

One reporter named Max Cohen, who's still with us, one named Christian Hall, who is no longer with us, went to Bloomberg and then went someplace else. And and like it was funny, we were telling him about the Trump administration and how just chaotic it was. We don't get into the who does Trump hate on on Trump?

every given day. But the just the like the legislating is appreciably different, right? Like he is a very different president than any other president we've covered. And back in a couple months ago when there was this government funding fight and Elon Musk starts tweeting against the bill and like Mike Johnson is trying to pass it is like that is different, right? It is different to have an aide to the president come out and dump all over a bill that that

The president's trying to pass. But many of the mechanisms of governing are different, are similar as they were to a normal administration, right? They have a legislative affairs staff. They are trying to get a big tax cut and spending cut bill through Congress. They have...

They have references on things. They have fundraiser, you know, like some of that is the same. Obviously, the policy is very, very different. But listen, we have I know a lot of people in this administration. There have been a ton of people who have come from Capitol Hill to work in the administration. So that hasn't changed. But our audience is not our audience gets its fill of.

outrage and things like that from other places. That's not a business that we're in. Yeah, no, I get that you're not in the calling on Trump to step down or doing polemic stuff. But I am curious, and you wrote about it today. This was something I wanted to ask you about. From my outsider's perspective, a casual but interested observer, it seems like

even before we get to Trump, Congress is sort of polarized, very difficult for the past legislation, kind of not even interested in it in some aspects. And then you had this piece today saying that under in this version of Trump, they've done less lawmaking than ever before. You go on to explain why. Yeah.

Well, first of all, tell us tell us why, if you haven't read the. Yeah, I mean, listen, it's a lot of reasons. Mike Johnson has the narrowest majority in many years. They're spending a lot of energy on this tax cut bill. And so all of those things are contributory to that. But I don't. But also that Trump that also that Trump doesn't seem very interested in. Right. He doesn't seem very. Yeah.

By the way, it's very ironic because he likes the bill signing ceremonies and things like that. So I'm actually surprised that he doesn't do more of that. Well, he does the executive order signing ceremony, which I think fulfills the same. It scratches the same image. Yeah. But I don't you know, I'm not sure that that's a different story that we would have written if it were Biden. Right. Like, I don't I think that we probably didn't write it under Biden, but maybe that was a fact then.

That we were so new and we didn't, you know, we were just trying to keep our heads above water. That was the post January 6th era. So we were like very, you know, we started three days before January 6th. So that was a very, um,

chaotic era. But I think our audience is looking for us to tell them what's going to happen next based on our very good sourcing at the top levels of the leadership of both chambers. That hasn't changed, and I don't think that will change. But just to make it really dumb for me, if Congress isn't passing laws, definitely under Trump, and like I said, prior to Trump, this was an ongoing trend,

Literally, what are they doing and what are you covering minute to minute? That's a really good question. And I'll answer that in a really basic way. So first of all, this the bill that they are winding up to pass this massive tax cut and spending cut bill will touch every sector of corporate America. It will touch from individuals down to the smallest corporations will have impact on all of that.

hugely, uh, substantively important number one and hugely important for the politics of Congress, right? That he has Mike Johnson has a narrow majority. They could, um, they could lose the majority based on this bill. They could win the majority based on this bill. That is all very interesting. So every twist and turn meetings happening directions, things are going new trends, new policy prescriptions, all of those things we're covering, uh,

That's number one. Number two, there's always fights on Capitol Hill for power, right? There's always power plays. There's always who's up, who's down, who's trying to do what. All of those things are of tremendous interest to our audience. At some point in the next year, we will shift over to covering more of the political impacts of this bill and things like that. But even when Trump is not

Or when a president is not making law and Congress is not giving laws for the president to make, there is still a ton going on. And by the way, what doesn't happen and the fights for things that don't happen are oftentimes as interesting as the things that do happen for our audience, which is, by the way, why we're different than a lot of other news outlets, right? The Washington Post wouldn't or the New York Times might not write a story about things that

I mean, again, it seems like to me, from my outsider's perspective in Brooklyn, that Congress either explicitly or tacitly is just sort of handing the Trump administration over to the other side.

a lot of the power they used to have. Yes. Okay, so I want to make sure I'm getting that right. Yes. The president has way more power than ever before. And by the way, that is not... With the assent of Congress. I mean, it's because they're not challenging a lot of what he's doing. For sure. Like...

Put any member of the leadership on truth serum and they will say we do not like and I'm just projecting because I've covered Republicans for a long time. They will say we don't like tariffs. Tariffs are a tax increase on everyday consumers who are going to be buying when they go to buy everything from, you know, a crappy little postman.

plastic toy from, you know, Amazon to an iPhone, they're going to be spending more money, right? It's a tax increase. But Mike Johnson used a procedural method to choke off the ability of members of Congress to use a fast track mechanism to disagree with Trump's tariffs because he wants to back Trump. So that is in and of itself interesting. But so, yes, they are they are

deferring to trump i'll say it nicely deferring to trump on almost every issue but all of that said the long tail or the long narrative of congress uh uh giving more power to the administration predates trump yep um goes to obama it goes to every issue foreign policy and um

There are a lot of powers that Congress has given up over the years in ways that I think as somebody who cares about Congress unwise. And is there any sense among the leadership or anyone you talk to in Congress that this is something that's going to change? Is this a long term trend that that whoever the next president is, we'll see this played out or is this Trump specific?

It's probably on this case, Trump specific. I mean, listen, like I find this ironic. Republicans are now obsessed with this idea that judges should not be allowed to issue nationwide injunctions. Right. If a judge in Arizona decides or a judge in Chicago decides something.

on a policy that the Trump administration has pursued, they shouldn't be able to pause it for the whole country. Now, I remember when Biden was president, they had no problem with that dynamic, right? With judges being able to stop Biden administration policies on things like guns and the environment and things like that. So a lot of it is selective, right? A

I think once Congress gives away power, it's really tough for it to wrestle it back. And, you know, we saw this on earmarks, congressional directed spending. Congress banned it for years. The administration instead decided where money was going to be spent. They're trying to wrestle some of that power back, but it's still difficult. Right. Congress is I sound like an idiot. And this sounds really simple. Congress is an equal branch of government. The best government.

members of Congress over time say they serve alongside a president. They don't serve under a president. Congress, president, equal footing. Yeah, no, I got my education from schoolhouse rock. I mean, that's I understand that. But that's I'm not saying you don't. I'm just saying some. No, no. But I but I keep looking going. It doesn't look like we're in that world anymore. And that's that's, you know, you have whether it's a world of terrorists where the president's essentially setting up

macro and micro policy sort of minute by minute. There's this tariff, now it's gone. There's an exemption for Apple, maybe there isn't. And then you're also on the same thing with the courts, right? We're recording this on Tuesday. On Monday, the president was asked about the Supreme Court ruling about deporting people to El Salvador. And he essentially said, we're not going to do anything about that. We're essentially going to ignore the Supreme Court. Where does this go?

I don't know the answer to that. That part is alarming. If the president ignores court orders now on this instance, they say, and I'm just telling you what they said, and I say, I agree with it or not. They say the Supreme Court left it ambiguous. There's a lot of ambiguity in the ruling, meaning they have to effectuate the return of him. They don't have to, you know, they see some gray area. I don't,

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see any gray area. Now, I will say this, though, just broadly speaking about the about the Congress's relationship with the presidency. Donald Trump has a lot of people in his administration who, quite frankly, don't know what they are talking about when it comes to setting policy like Howard Lutnick going on. And I forget what podcast he went on, whether it was all in or one of those one of those are on television where he says the president is thinking about waiving taxes for people under one hundred fifty thousand dollars.

There's no way to waive taxes. Taxes are...

law. If the president would like to change the law, he could pursue a change in the law. I know maybe I'm old fashioned, but that's how our government works. But you would understand that from somebody who was running a brokerage for years is now commerce secretary and has no maybe has no idea about how the laws work in a traditional sense. So, you know, that is and by the way, that happened to the last Trump administration when we were at Playbook and myself and I gave a lot of

uh threw a lot of shade at steve mnuchin who was the treasury secretary who also said similarly and actually ended up being a relatively important person in the trump administration the first time when it came to covet and working with nancy pelosi to get covet relief bills across the finish line he didn't know what he was talking about in some respects he said the tax bill was going to be done by the summer it was done by december so there's a lot of that this time around with just the administration not um being so focused on on the division of labor here

Yeah. Or or I guess you could flip it around and saying they are focused and they think they they do all of it now that they can't. And no one's pushing back. And so here's where we go. There's a conventional wisdom. The Democrats will get the House in the next cycle. If that happens, I assume that's extra exciting for you because now you have more narrative, more conflict.

Yeah, well, it's a good story. Now, the trifecta, the Republicans controlling everything is a great story. If Democrats control the...

that's a great story for a million different reasons. I'm not rooting for an outcome one way or the other, but Hakeem Jeffries would be the first black speaker. He would be the first speaker since Nancy Pelosi, the first, you know, Nancy Pelosi became speaker 2007. And there has not been a democratic speaker since then besides Nancy Pelosi. And, and listen, Hakeem Jeffries ability to,

to wrangle his members will be a story that we will watch. And we will again, focus all of our attention, just like we're focusing 85% of our attention on Republicans. Now we will focus 85% of our attention on Democrats. And on top of that, the, the, the fervor with which Democrats will pursue things like impeachment and like the relationship between Hakeem Jeffries and Donald Trump, two New Yorkers who have had basically no relationship with,

their entire lives will be forced into a marriage of necessity or not marriage, but relationship of necessity. That will all be very interesting if that were to come true. We'll be right back with Jake Sherman. But first, a word from a sponsor. And now two pigeons bemoaning the fact you can choose the TV you want with DirecTV. Sorry.

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Try new Purina One Live Clear today. Purina One, a difference from day one. And we're back. Before I let you go, two questions. One is also about predicting the future. What's going to happen with TikTok? There is a law passed by Congress, signed by Joe Biden, upheld by Supreme Court, and I know that said as of January 19th,

This year, TikTok had to shut down in the U.S. if there was not a buyer, a non-Chinese owner set up. And it allowed for an one time 90 day extension if there was a deal, a signed deal in place. And they were just sort of right just to close the deal out. Right. So Trump just blows past that and creates an EO.

Actually, even before he was president, he was lobbying various tech firms to keep TikTok going. Created an EO and then has extended that again. Is there any appetite in Congress to go, and we were already discussing them, but is there any appetite in Congress to go, Mr. President, there is a law, we should shut TikTok down. You can't actually continue to keep, you can't keep it alive just because you want to keep it alive.

There is not that much of an appetite, but I will say this is a real test for Congress because there are a lot of people up here on Capitol Hill. First of all, the banned TikTok legislative effort passed with flying colors, right? It was a very bipartisan effort. The one thing Congress could pass. One of the few things they could pass. I always say cracking down on China is like the only bipartisan thing Congress does. There are people who are going to be very skeptical of, um,

of any deal that keeps Chinese control of this company in any way, shape or form. And I think you're going to see a split among Republicans on that between the Trump White House and Capitol Hill. Will they do anything? I don't know. If they pass a bill, Trump will veto it. Overturning a veto is very difficult.

I don't know what's going to happen in the administration. We've had a lot of reporting on the status of that, but I think Congress is going to freak out. Just like, by the way, I think they're going to freak out over Iran, which you didn't ask me about, but there's a new Iran nuclear deal. Steve Witkoff, who was last seen as a developer of apartment buildings and country clubs, has said that Iran could effectively enrich uranium as long as they don't build a weapon. Now,

That is a very different deal than Obama cut. He said this on television, I think, or maybe in an interview, actually an interview with Josh Dossi at The Wall Street Journal. That is going to be something that Republicans are going to lose their mind over because. Yeah. Is there a single issue where you can see a meaningful number of Republicans in Congress actually defying the president and saying, we're going to go ahead and we're going to pass this law that you don't like? Yeah.

Yeah, I think – listen, I think if he kept the tariffs on and the market was down 60% in a month, I think there would be tremendous pressure to do so, and there might still be tremendous pressure to do so if these free trade deals don't come soon.

to fruition. I think on Iran, if he sends, I don't think he'll send anything up for ratification, any tree up for ratification, to be honest with you. But I think that there will be meaningful pushback there. I don't think there'll be meaningful pushback on spending on anything like that. And I don't think, and this is a bit of a hobby horse of mine that I've been writing about, Steve Bannon and some folks in the administration have said they're going to hike taxes on people making a lot of money on millionaires or whatever they've said to 40%.

I don't think that's going to happen. Mike Johnson has said it's not going to happen. So that's something the administration wants to do or might want to do. I think there'll be meaningful pushback there. But on the core tenets of his presidency, a strong executive branch, perhaps too strong based on our system of government, I don't see significant pushback. I just don't.

Okay. Last question. I didn't, again, I didn't read the full Emily Sundberg piece cause I'm not a subscriber, but I saw an excerpt where you said you get up at 4am daily. Yeah. Four o'clock. We, what are you doing? That's you're not Bob Iger. You're not running Disney. I know I'm not, but I, we have three newsletters a day. Um, the, the AM edition is mostly written, um, the night before by the team. And we have nine reporters now or so. Um,

And we get up and we reread it and we get our we get make sure nothing broke overnight. We Anna and I record a podcast, The Daily Punch, which for reasons beyond me is quite popular in D.C. about what's going on in Congress and basically riffing on the newsletter. And we have it out by 515. It's amazing to me that three of the founders are still the ones that get up in the morning to get the newsletter out.

We have a great producer that works with us. He's actually just walked in the room, Jalen Beckford, who helps us get this out early in the morning. And then I go to the gym. So I am not Bob Iger, but I think the commonality here is that we both exercise in the morning. But that's a commonality with a lot of people. Jake Sherman just announced that he is the next CEO of Disney. I'm glad I got you before that. I'm glad I could break the news. Does that come with an airplane? Because I would love an airplane. Yeah.

I think it does come with an airplane. There's lots of good books. So if Bob Iger's listening, I am interested in running Disney, but I don't really have any qualifications to do so. Hey, I mean, they're looking at a... Well, I'm going to save that for a different podcast. And on that note, Jake Sherman, back to work, and maybe you can get some rest, too. Thanks for your time. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thanks, man.

Thanks again to Jake Sherman. Thanks again to Jelani Carter, who edits and produces this show. Thanks for advertisers. Thanks to you guys. See you soon.